Goodbye and good luck to Gardner and Hammon

Dan Mooney of the C Hill Foundation waxed poetic in his description of the work on the flag last weekend.

Reaching deep into the lexicon, he pulled out the word conation, which means the spirit of a winning team.

"The combination of desire, volition and striving drove the winning team on Saturday to dismantle the flag, remove weeds, wash it, repair holes and tears, install strips, eat lunch, hold a flag ceremony and learn about how to

do it better next time and have fun all in about four hours."

Any endeavor dealing with the big flag requires Herculean effort which in the case of the U.S. Forest Service was running 1,300 feet of hose up the hill so the flag could be cleaned.

Dan thanked supervisors Robin Williamson and Richard Staub and the Carson City Chamber of Commerce for their help.

My animal folks are both planning fund-raisers in the near future.

Isabel Young of the Capital City Humane Society says the annual Paws in the Park will be Nov. 9 at Riverside Park. Tom Blomquist of the Silver Springs Spay and Neuter Project is cooking up a non-event to raise money for the shelter.

"Isabel and I are working on some joint fund-raisers," he said. "I'm thinking of doing a non-event. We could try to get Tom Baker not to show up. We could even do a skit where we try to teach Isabel how to say the word Nevada."

Speaking of cooking, Tom said he picked up top honors at the Stew Doo, last weekend.

"My goal was just to make a stew that didn't embarrass us and I ended up winning the darn thing."

I went to put a quarter into the video poker machine at the grocery store, and couldn't.

They've changed all the machines to dollar bills. What's more, instead of the clink clink of coins hitting the bucket, the machines print out a receipt at the attendant's station for the payoff.

I'll admit to habitually putting a quarter or two into a slot machine, but to slide a dollar in the slot takes a real gambler.

I talked to the gentleman watching the slots Tuesday and he said the new poker machines have been in use for about three months.

"When I used to run the route through Carson City and Gardnerville, there would always be four machines that were empty," my source said. "Someone would say to me, 'I wanted to play the machine while it was hot and I couldn't.'"

Sheila Gardner and Amanda Hammon bid farewell to the Nevada Appeal on Thursday.

Sheila is taking her long and distinguished rZsumZ across town to the Reno Gazette-Journal's Carson-Douglas Bureau.

Sheila served as night desk editor for the Appeal for a couple of months shy of two years when she moved from the editorship of The Record-Courier.

She is taking over duties as bureau chief from Record-Courier alum Ray Hagar, who is moving to the capitol beat for the Gazette.

City reporter Amanda Hammon isn't just leaving the Appeal, but Nevada entirely.

It will be the first newspaper gig for the 25-year-old Austin native outside the state.

Amanda is a graduate of Nevada's Don Reynolds School of Journalism and interned at the Appeal in 1998. She replaced Kelli Du Fresne on the city beat in 1999.

She is going to work for the Yakima Herald-Republic, where she will work for the Lower Yakima County bureau.

Though she lives in Reno, Amanda was a real member of the Carson community.

She ran in the Nevada Day Marathon and had a small part in the musical production of "My Fair Lady."

She spent a semester teaching remedial English to college students.

The Appeal sprung for a cake for the pair on Thursday. I missed the cutting, but Sheila told me it was one of the cakes we get that shows the front page of the newspaper. The banner headline for Amanda and Sheila's cake was "Appeal bids farewell to Amanda" or some such. Down the page and in the corner appeared the other headline, "Gardner eaten by alligators."

Perfect.

Kurt Hildebrand is former managing editor at the Nevada Appeal. Reach him at

887-2430, ext. 402 or e-mail him at kurt@tahoe.com.