Music of Peru and the Andes Comes to Silver City Friday September 12

Silver City, Nevada - Kantu Inka brings the folkloric music of the Andes to Silver City this month in a free, public concert. Carlos Ocampo, a musician and composer for over two decades in the Cusco region of Peru, and Julie Lozada Ocampo, who also plays traditional Andean instruments, perform together as Kantu Inka. ABOUT KANTU INKA CONCERTS: Along with beautiful music, the concerts include tidbits about traditional Andean instruments and the history of songs, as well as commentary in Quechua and Spanish. Carlos says “la música no tiene fronteras y hermana a los pueblos del mundo" (music has no borders and brings people of the world together). Since 2003, Kantu Inka has been teaching culture through music with an emphasis on the Andes and Perú. They have shared their music with thousands of students in K-12 schools, and at universities, libraries and dozens of other venues throughout Nevada, California and Colorado. Among many other shows this year, Kantu Inka performed at McKinley Arts and Culture Center for Reno’s annual Artown festival, and they opened Carson City’s annual Jazz & Beyond Music Festival at the Governor’s Mansion. This year they also taught and performed at many venues across Northern Nevada as part of the Pioneer Center Youth Program and the Golden Encore Program. Director for the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, Quest Lakes, notes that “Julie and Carlos are generously donating their performance as a gift to the community, and contributing any donations at the door to the Resident Artist Program and the Silver City Preservation Society.” WHEN AND WHERE: Kantu Inka performs at the Silver City Schoolhouse at 385 High Street, Silver City, Nevada 89428 on Friday, September 12, 2025 at 6pm. Silver City is located three miles south of Virginia City, and is part of the Comstock region National Historic Landmark District. No tickets are required for the concert. Kantu Inka will give any donations collected at the door to two local groups. Julie Lozada Ocampo of Kantu Inka explains that "this presentation is dedicated to supporting two vital organizations in Silver City: the Resident Artist Program and the Silver City Preservation Society. Both work tirelessly to preserve and enrich the community. In recognition of their invaluable contributions, Kantu Inka is honored to donate an Andean folkloric music performance. We are deeply grateful to these institutions for their continued support of our work. Through their efforts, we have been able to share public folk music concerts with the community...We hold great admiration for the spirit of Silver City and feel truly blessed to be part of its cultural life.” For more about Kantu Inka, see their website at http://kantuinka.com. To reserve a seat at the concert, email Quest Lakes at 847-0742.

Farewell to Rhonda

 Rhonda Kay Powell was born on July 16, 1960. She grew up in Liberty, Indiana, and lived in the small community for most of her life. After high school, she worked at Goodwill Industries in Cincinnati, Ohio and Muncie, Indiana. Later, she worked in Noblesville, Indiana for Third Phase. 

Over the years, Rhonda had a number of suitors, but decided not to marry. Instead, she enjoyed the single life and had many adventures with her best friend Millie. Her longtime pet was a rescue named Mickey, a fiercely loyal, tiny white chihuahua. She dressed him in bejeweled collars, gave him tidbits and treats until he was quite round, and kept him on her lap while she watched her favorite TV shows. Among her other loves, Rhonda was a steadfast Elvis “stan” who slept on Elivs-themed sheets and had a collection of Elvis memorabilia dating back to the 1950s. 

She adored her nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews and was always glad to see them. She had ocean-side summer vacations at Hatteras Island with her her nieces Kerry and Jessica and their families, and her sister Bernice. She attended her niece Quest’s wedding in Nevada and went sightseeing around Lake Tahoe, Reno and Virginia City. Her nephew Dan was not only a relative, but also a friend. They always enjoyed one another’s company. 

Up until her late 40s, when arthritis began to make it difficult to write, Rhonda was a frequent letter writer. Her love for her family, and her devotion to God, were always evident in her heartfelt letters. 

Letter from Rhonda, 2001

She memorized the phone numbers of dozens of family members and friends, and would leave frequent messages, referring to herself by her nickname, R-Pooh. Her phone messages often included her favorite sayings such as “are you up and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?” 

Rhonda loved nothing more than making people laugh. Even in her last days she found ways to make others laugh with funny comments about her favorite TV shows like Dallas and Days of Our Lives and General Hospital. 

Rhonda passed away while in hospice comfort care at Reid Hospital on Jan. 29, 2025. In the days before, her sisters Connie and Bernice were with her, playing her favorite gospel tunes and Elvis songs, and many of her loved ones visited and called. 

We already miss R-Pooh.

Hold Tender This Land

By Quest Lakes, July 18, 2024

The photo below shows my grandparents in Kentucky with my mother and my uncle, around 1949. My mom was born in her Grandma Delia's home in Rockcastle County in eastern Kentucky. Our Lakes relatives have lived in the Appalachian region since the late 1700s. Many summers during my childhood, my parents and grandparents took me to Sandgap, Kentucky to spend time with my great grandparents on the Lakes side of the family. They had a small subsistence farm and also grew tobacco to make ends meet. They welcomed us with big suppers of homemade biscuits, fried ‘taters and gravy and cobbler made with blackberries they picked on their own land. Nevertheless, I do not claim to be “a daughter of Appalachia.” JD Vance, who grew up in a working class family in Middletown, Ohio rather than Appalachia, implies he's a son of Appalachia because his grandparents grew up in Kentucky. 

In a 2020 essay, Kentucky native Piper Hansen writes that Vance’s memoir “Hillybilly Elegy” is a “sociological construction of what Vance thinks Appalachia is...Vance's writing shows that he may have a seriously narrow view of not just Appalachia but the world...His memoir bashes the entire region with shocking ease and gives a false impression of what the people of Appalachia are really like.”

 It’s worth noting that the term "hillbilly" developed as a way for coal companies to eliminate empathy for the Appalachian people as they destroyed the region's beautiful mountains, forests and streams. The insult was first used in the early 1900s, around the time coal industries began to appear in Appalachian communities. The hillbilly caricature solidified during the Great Depression.

In her essay for The Guardian this week, Neema Avashia, “the child of Indian immigrants who settled in Appalachia in the 1970s”, writes that “folks outside Appalachia devoured Hillbilly Elegy because it reinforced what they already believed about us: that we were lazy, homogenous, and to blame for the unemployment, addiction and environmental disasters that plagued us. Vance’s description of a Jackson, Kentucky, where ‘people are hardworking, except of course for the many food stamp recipients who show little interest in honest work’, allowed liberals and conservatives alike to write Appalachia off as beyond saving, and its problems as self-created, and thus, deserved.” Avashia concludes that “a person who truly represented Appalachian people wouldn’t take money from the same big pharma lobby that left West Virginia with the highest opioid overdose rate in the country. They wouldn’t deny climate change in the face of catastrophic flooding that eastern Kentucky still hasn’t recovered from two years out. They wouldn’t stoke fear of immigrants, who provide essential labor in Appalachia in healthcare, agriculture and service industries. They wouldn’t sow division through culture wars in a region where solidarity is desperately needed.”

The photo below shows my relatives Polly and Tom Milt Lakes, who lived in what Barbara Kingsolver describes as a "deep hollow above the creek." Polly was a school teacher and postmaster in Jackson County, Kentucky who is remembered for having helped deliver many babies in the area. Barbara Kingsolver wrote, with tenderness and insight, about the Lakes family land near Horse Lick Creek in her book High Tide in Tucson. Kingsolver's description of the area perfectly captures the place I remember visiting on family trips as a child: " The forest is unearthly: filtered light through maple leaves gives a green glow to the creek below us. Mayapples grow in bright assemblies like crowds of rain-slick umbrellas; red trilliums and wild ginger nod from the moss-carpeted banks." 

If you want to learn more about Appalachia, try bell hooks 2012 book Appalachian Elegy, or Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hilbilly Elegy, edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll. For more about the Lakes family’s “homeplace” in Kentucky, see Kingsolver’s book High Tide in Tucson, pg 175: https://pacificnorthwestwriting.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/kingsolver_high_tide_in_tucson.pdf

The title used here, "Hold Tender This Land," refers to a poem from bell hooks 2012 book Appalachian Elegy.

Holiday events December 2023

A list of some of our favorite things in our region this December:

Christmas Tree Sales that Benefit Area Programs: Community Roots, a nonrofit garden center in Dayton, carries a large selection of fresh cut and live fir trees. And Community Roots’ gift shop is stocked with unique items such as local crafts and honey to fill your gift-giving needs. Proceeds benefit community programs such as food pantries. Location: 209 Dayton Valley Road. Hours: Monday through Saturday 10 am – 7pm and Sundays from 11 am - 6 pm. Phone:  350-9250.

Jolabokaflod: Get ready for the Jolabokaflod (“Christmas book flood”), a tradition of exchanging books as gifts on Christmas Eve and spending the night reading and drinking hot chocolate. There are free books for all ages on bookshelves inside the local post office and in the Little Free Library box outside the post office Silver City. 

Friday, December 1: Carson City's 35th Silver and Snowflakes Festival of Lights. Tree lighting on the capitol grounds includes carols by children’s choirs and the appearance of Santa and the Grinch (and photo ops) and free carriage rides. The children begin the program with singing at 5:30 pm. The Tree Lighting Ceremony, with remarks by the Governor and the Mayor, is from 5:30pm-6:15pm. Other groups will be caroling at McFadden Plaza Stage (across from Legislative grounds). 

Saturday December 2: Silver City's annual Holiday Fair is 10am-5pm at the Silver City Schoolhouse. Live music, beverages, local, handmade treasures. 

Saturday December 2 and 3: St. Mary’s Art Center Holiday Faire from 10am-4pm, Virginia City. The Faire continues on Sunday, Dec. 3 from 10am-3pm. 

Saturday December 2 and 3: Senior Center Craft Fair from 10am-5pm, Virginia City.  The Craft Fair continues on Sunday, Dec. 3 from 10am-3pm. 

Sunday, December 10 Holiday Treat Concert: The Carson City Symphony will be joined by the Carson Chamber Singers and the Victorian Dancers. Showtime is at 4 p.m. at the Carson City Community Center, 851 E. William Street. Blood donors at Vitalant's Carson City Donor Center from Dec. 2 through Dec. 9 may receive a complimentary ticket to the concert. For tickets and more information, see CCSymphony.com or call 883-4154.

Saturday, December 16 Silver City Christmas Party: Hosted by the Silver City Volunteer Fire Department, which will provide ham, turkey and beverages. Bring your favorite side dish or dessert. There will be a special appearance by Santa Claus, who will bring gifts for children on his list (add your child’s name to the sign up sheet at the post office). Event will be at the Schoolhouse. 

Through December 21 at Western Nevada College’s Bristlecone Gallery: CCAI's exhibition, "It Started with Willows" can be seen during gallery hours Mon-Fri 8am-7pm. The Carson City show presents contemporary paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from the Great Basin Native Artists collective and historic working Native baskets from the Lloyd Chichester Collection.

Arts News and Notes Fall 2023 Silver City Nevada

Call for Artists for the Holiday Fair in Silver City: Show and sell your art and crafts at the Silver City Schoolhouse during the annual holiday event, December 2, 2023. Email evangeline@evangelinepresents.com for details. 

New Edition of Neon Nevada by Former Silver City Folks: On November 9, 2023 from 6pm-8pm at the Nevada Museum of Art, Sheila Swan and Peter Laufer, authors of Neon Nevada, will discuss the influence of neon signage on Nevada’s unique culture. Stay for a book signing of their expanded 2023 edition after the talk. Peter Laufer and Sheila Swan began documenting the state's neon decades ago when they were living in Silver City. About Neon Nevada: First published in 1994, Sheila Swan and Peter Laufer take readers on a journey across the state on a quest to discover Nevada’s neon. Full-color photographs and historical commentary bring the state’s hues of neon to life through the year 2022 in the newly updated and expanded edition. The updated edition of the book was released on Oct. 24, 2023. 

Rick Shea and Tony Gilkyson play the Silver City Schoolhouse on Sunday, Nov. 19 at 7PM! Rick Shea and Tony Gilkyson, seasoned guitarists and songwriters with well known resumes (Shea with Wanda Jackson, R.E.M and others, Gilkyson with Tom Waits and Bob Dylan) team up. $15-$25 donation at the door. RSVP: evangeline@evangelinepresents.com This is a benefit for the Silver City Preservation Society. "Gilkyson is a fine guitarist and an equally fine songwriter with an eye for the ironic and darkly humorous." - Los Angeles Times "Shea is.. a hauntingly nostalgic vocalist, imperative guitarist and literate, detail rich songwriter, do yourself a favor" - Sing Out Magazine. The event is at the Silver City Schoolhouse (community center) at 385 High Street, Silver City, NV 89428.

SMAC Fall Exhibition: St. Mary’s Art Center’s fall exhibition includes art by Scott MacLeod, a former artist-in-residence in Silver City, plus art by Honey Coughlin, Shaun Griffin, Edw Martinez, Fredric Hobbs, and many others. The exhibition is on view until Nov. 26, 2023. See SMAC’s website for hours. 

Annual Holiday Fair December 2: Join Silver City for its festive holiday celebration and shopping event on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023 from 10am-5pm. Handmade fine art, pottery, beadwork, metal work, jewelry, photography, textiles and more from local artists! Enjoy mimosas, hot cocoa, music and a festive atmosphere while you peruse the wonderful offerings. There will also be an art raffle and a bake sale with delicious baked goods from Comstock bakers. Proceeds benefit the Silver City Preservation Society, a 501c3 nonprofit. The event is at the Silver City Schoolhouse (community center) at 385 High Street, Silver City, NV 89428.

Silver City Displays: At the U.S. Post Office in Silver City you'll find a changing display inside of the large glass cabinet on the south wall. Past exhibits have featured the local community garden and gardeners, musicians of Silver City, publications by Silver City locals, artifacts saved from the fire that destroyed the original Schoolhouse in 2004, and many more. 

Silver City Reads: Borrow books at the Silver City Volunteer Library (located inside the Silver City Schoolhouse), which is now open on Saturdays from 2:30pm-5pm. You can also take and keep (or exchange) books that you find at the Silver City Little Free Library (located outside the post office) and the bookshelves inside the post office. 

Alice Cazenave of London, UK, who was an artist-in-residence in Silver City Oct-Dec. 2022, writes, "As part of my PhD fieldwork, I've been tracing the mobilisation of silver used in analogue photographic industries. This time last year I spent two months living in [Silver City, Nevada.] Across only two decades around the 1870s, these sites extracted nearly 7 million tonnes of silver. The toxic legacy of that extraction is extreme and the site is now a U.S National Priorities Superfund site...Whole mountain sides were honeycombed by corporations searching for silver...My time there was spent making photo-chemistry out of the plants that help restabilise the ground. I also spent time with some of the communities living there today, as well as mining corporations that were active in the region. Every evening I went up to Tommy's to look at the view of the Sierra Nevada. He built his house on a pile of mining tailings. He drank beer and I drank tea and those moments were simple and special. I'm so grateful for those I've met along my journeys following silver." Earlier this year Alice presented some of her research at the Photographic Histories Research Centre, De Montfort University during a conference titled "Photography in Its Environment." She has exhibited some of the work she created during her artist residency in Silver City at exhibitions, including one in Silver City, Nevada ("Desert Treasure") as well as in Birmingham, England ("Beyond Silver").  Alice's website is https://www.alice.cazenave.co.uk/

SILVER PALOOZA: The annual Silver Palooza Music and Art Festival in Silver City is scheduled for July 2024 at the Silver City Park, Schoolhouse and stage.

Resident Artist Program in Silver City Welcomes Kerry Rossow

Silver City, Nevada - The Resident Artist Program in Silver City is delighted to announce our summer visiting artist, Kerry Rossow, an Illinois-based author, performer, and co-founder of the She Said Project.

Rossow will create photo essays of Silver City’s historic Comstock community and high desert landscape during her residency. Her writing has been published in three anthologies - two have made the New York Times best-sellers list.

Her photographs and nonfiction gained national attention before she co-founded the She Said Project. The Project includes “That’s What She Said” shows, which serve as a platform for everyday women to share their extraordinary stories on stage. The She Said Project also includes a podcast, co-hosted by Rossow and Project Director, Jenette Jurczyk, as well as That’s What Teens Say, an empowerment program with teen girls. Listen to Rossow's inspirational story about how the She Said Project got started in this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-she-said-project-my-sister-in-stories/id1416361738?i=1000465579093

Rossow has also taken her own life stories to the stage as part of the cast in the national series of live readings called "Listen to Your Mother", as well as in sold out performances of "That's What She Said" at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois.

About the Resident Artist Program: People creating in the performing, visual, or literary arts apply to reside at McCormick House in Silver City for periods of up to 3 months in exchange for offering performances, exhibitions, workshops, artwork, etc. to benefit Silver City and the Northern Nevada region. One of the goals of the program is to introduce new voices to the community and programs that engage people in becoming lifelong arts and culture participants or creators. Previous visiting artists include Pulitzer Prize nominated poet David Lee, internationally known photographer Frances Melhop, award winning poet Gary Short of Guatemala, and many artists such as Sophie Scott of New Zealand and Stewart Easton of London. For more information, contact Program director Quest Lakes at (775) 847-0742.

My last opinion column for MVN and RGJ

If you cannot be brave, be kind

by Quest Lakes, May 29, 2020

When I was about ten years old, my dad gave me his copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and recommended that I read it. For decades after reading it, I wondered about the people who stayed quiet and were complicit in their silence as fascism took over.

Naomi Shulman wrote that “nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

My purpose in writing these weekly columns over the last few years has been, in part, a response to a question I posed to myself as a child. If something like that happened here, what would I choose to do?

My answer to myself? Exercise the freedom outlined in this nation’s First Amendment and write columns that remind people of the steps Hitler and Stalin took to consolidate power. Authoritarians often use similar strategies, a “playbook” if you will.

One of Hitler’s most quoted passages from Mein Kampf stated that “what we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood...” In a nod to those words, in 2017 white nationalists descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia where cell phone video captured them carrying torches and chanting things like “Jews will not replace us.” Several of my columns pointed out the rise and growing coordination of white nationalists groups calling for a white ethnostate, and detailed the violence that goal would entail in our pluralistic society.

Other of my columns noted that President Trump has labeled our free press “fake news” and journalists as “liars,” a tactic familiar in Germany when Hitler declared the free press Lügenpresse (lying press). I’ve written about Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their push to create an entanglement of religion and government.

When I wrote about Gleichschaltung, the Nazi word for establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society, or the “Nazification of state and society,” I got in hot water with local Trump supporters. The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, books, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung.

My column on the Reichstag Fire Decree – similar to declaration of National Emergency – explained how the Decree was ultimately used to establish a one-party Nazi state in Germany, and hinted about the ways authoritarians use chaos to consolidate power. This week, in the midst of a pandemic, President Trump retweeted a video of a speech by Couy Griffin, head of Cowboys for Trump, that begins with Griffin declaring, “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

One of my columns defined terms like stochastic terrorism, which is the “use of mass public communication to demonize a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism.”

The Sturmabteilung (SA) or Brownshirts, were the focus of one of my columns. The Brownshirts became the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party and were essential to the rise of Nazi power. Hitler encouraged the Brownshirts to go after Germany’s leftist and Jewish populations for intimidation. They were also the bullies in brown uniforms posing as “security” at Nazi rallies and meetings. Far from being a small fringe group, the Brownshirts included millions of working class and middle class professionals and ex-military. As such, they successfully popularized the Nazi worldview of political violence, and the patriotic duty to fight “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

In one of my latest columns, I wrote about the infiltration of accelerationist and white supremacist paramilitary groups into the “ReOpen” protests across the country, including in Carson City and Las Vegas. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder has warned, “when the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."

Referring to unrest in Minnesota, last night President Trump moved this country into a new stage when he tweeted, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” His use of the phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” was a purposeful reference to bigoted Miami, Florida police Chief Walter Headley, known in the 1960s for his mistreatment of the black community and his use of that exact phrase. Segregationist George Wallace also used the phrase during his 1968 presidential campaign.

This is my last column for the Mason Valley News. The country has moved to a new stage that requires more than columns. In November of 2016, Sarah Kendzior, an expert on authoritarian regimes, wrote something that is important to remember in the coming months: “My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.”