Looking up and reflecting on the years

The skies over Carson Valley have been putting on quite the show over the past few days.

The Perseids meteor shower has been the main attraction for those willing to lose a little sleep.

Saratoga Springs residents Bill and Cindy Bourne got up at 4 a.m. Monday and spotted at least 50 shooting stars from the Perseids and a half-dozen satellites. Bill said Mars and Jupiter are approaching conjunction.

Rich McGuffin’s photo of the aurora from Minden surprised me so much, I thought he’d taken it from much further north. His email said it was awesome, but the phone translated that to Ithaca was awesome.

And then there are the sunsets. I’ve received easily more than a half dozen different photos over the past three days displaying the Sierra Wave turned red by the sunset.

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I walked out into the early morning dark on Tuesday and spotted a shooting star and thought about deep time.

Today marks 35 years since I started working at The Record-Courier, which was in the building on Eddy Street it had occupied for around 90 years.

Guy Clifton hired me, having just a few months prior taken over for Sheila Gardner. I met Sheila the previous week because she happened to be in the office working on Frank Yparraguirre’s front page obituary.

I was assigned a desk next to Dave Price and across from Joyce Hollister in the brick portion of the building. Photographer Chris Tumbusch sat behind Dave and I. Further back was ad production where my bride-to-be Jennifer Hollister worked on ads.

The R-C was a pretty big outfit in those days. The front office had accountants, both receivable and payable, a receptionist, circulation manager and an office manager.

In the back room, there were two typists inputting copy, including East Fork Justice of the Peace Doug Struthers’ wife, Coyla. I found a photo of the staff from Christmas Eve 1989 that listed 22 people.

The last 35 years is just the blink of an eye on cosmic terms, but it’s more than half of the time I’ve been alive.

Kurt Hildebrand is editor of The Record-Courier. Contact him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or 775-782-5122.