Last week, the Biden administration announced sweeping new vaccination mandates affecting huge numbers of Americans.

In many ways, Nevada is ground zero for showcasing the full effects of climate change. From rising temperatures to the record-breaking drought we’ve seen ravaging Lake Mead, we now appear to be paying a price for decades of avoiding what it really means to transition to a clean energy economy.

It is my sincerest hope that, with its twentieth anniversary behind us, the insufferable annual ritual of navel-gazing about 9/11 can finally, mercifully end.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, daughter Amelia awoke nearly breathless from a sleep so troubled she couldn’t wait to talk about it.

Like the Kennedy assassination, the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the murder of John Lennon, most of us remember where we were on September 11th with unrelenting detail. 

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on America. Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial planes, deliberately crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The passengers on the fourth plane fought their captors, and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, 20 minutes outside Washington, D.C. The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations, the most horrific terrorist act on American soil.

Where were we on 9/11? We were living in the Middle East, recently posted there with my husband’s job. It was early evening in Kuwait, and I was cooking dinner. Thrilled that our daughter had arrived for a visit the day before, I was preparing a celebratory meal when the phone rang. My Texas brother, sounding out of breath, and near hysteria, was on the phone screaming at me to get out of Kuwait.

The call came sometime around 6:40 a.m. Arizona time, waking me out of a sound sleep. My dad’s voice on the other end of the line told me that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center and that the Pentagon was on fire. I jumped out of bed and turned on the television set in my college dorm room. Smoke billowed out of the World Trade Center.

I lived and worked in Midtown Manhattan on 9/11 and watched the entire attack unfold right before my eyes from less than four miles away. This is my story.

Our family reunion in July 2002 in upstate New York was like previous gatherings of my large family. In many ways we tried to be more jovial and the games were more competitive as we tried to keep busy so we didn’t dwell on what had happened 10 months earlier. The FDNY and NYPD cousins were there physically, but I could tell they were broken from what they had experienced since we last met. 

The clear blue sky on the morning of September 11, 2001 did not portend the day ahead. I pulled on a t-shirt and denim skirt in my postage-stamp-sized dorm on the Upper West Side in New York City, where I was attending graduate school. I was planning to hop on the subway to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., on business. I had taken my 11-year-old son with me to learn some history and civics in person. On New Years' 1997, we’d had our rented home destroyed by the rampaging Carson River and this—I thought—would help celebrate our return to normalcy. Little did I know…

For the better part of the last 20 years I would reflect on 9/11 through the lens of my job. By the fall of 2001, I was already a Marine Corps infantry sergeant deployed to the Mediterranean for six months aboard a U.S. Navy ship. On September 11th, 2001, I was conducting peacekeeping operations in Kosovo.

I live in District B of Clark County and have been advocating for common sense protocols that don’t leave students, teachers and families out in the cold, not only during the pandemic but overall.

One universal truth the virus has brought to every Nevadan: We need to reprioritize what is and what is not important in life.

I was in my early 20s when I had my abortion.

The pandemic exacerbated the differences between the have and have nots.

There is an abundance of data and information—and misinformation—surrounding COVID-19 and the vaccine. For the general public, it might be hard to understand what the data actually mean or even trust the information being presented.  

For more than a decade, Nevada has repeatedly stated that integrated employment for individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (I/DD) is a goal.

The CDC recently shared a case study about a teacher who infected half her students with COVID. While some may focus on her decision to remove her mask temporarily for read aloud time, the tragedy is that she felt compelled to report to work even though she was coughing, sneezing, and felt feverish.