The Prim Library at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe is the perfect location to play host to a new public speakers’ series — Talks at Tahoe — where our Incline Village and surrounding communities can join together for engaging conversations. We hope you consider attending Talks at Tahoe, where we’ll invite notable guests to engage you in meaningful conversations on topics relevant to our local region, nation and world.
Check back soon for upcoming events.
Legacy of James E. Church’s snow science research preserved with Dr. Carlos Ramirez-Reyes
Thursday, September 21, 6 p.m.
Because we experienced one of the biggest winters in more than 40 years and since we reside in a high desert environment, it is critical for scientists and researchers to understand how winter snow impacts spring and summer streamflows and water supply. James E. Church figured out and perfected a way to measure snow moisture content along various snow course locations found across the Sierra Nevada. Dr. Carlos Ramirez-Reyes will discuss how an interdepartmental team of experts from across the University Libraries worked together to digitize, preserve, and make accessible data found in the James Edward Church Papers manuscript collection.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Meeting the Tides of Life Through the Practice of Poetry
Wednesday, September 6, 6 p.m.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes a poem every single day guided by the question "What is the truest thing I can say right now?" This simple daily practice of honest presence has sustained her through the most devastating tragedy a parent can know—the death of a beloved child—and enabled her to grow to become a beacon of hope, compassion and resilience for thousands of readers.
In this program, Rosemerry will read selections from her new book and join the audience in a conversation about how to meet life in all of its paradoxical facets, exploring how creativity can alchemically transform the pain of profound loss into a source of brave beauty that calls us into deeper relationship with all that is.
“The title of the book is a nod to how all the honey in the world comes from two opposites—the sweetness of nectar and the bitterness of the pollen that feeds the bees,” Rosemerry says. “Those extremes are both found in this book—poems that explore extreme grief and astonishing beauty.” On that note, the book contains both very playful poems (like Mr. Clean coming to seduce women in their kitchens) and also poems that explore the first raw and fragile days after the suicide of Trommer’s teenage son, Finn.
“At first I didn’t think both kinds of poems could inhabit the same pages,” Trommer says, “and then I realized, ‘Of course, they can. Because that is what we as humans are asked to do—to inhabit worlds of great joy and great despair at the same time.’”
Monster Fish, Zeb Hogan
Thursday, August 24, 6 p.m.
University of Nevada, Reno professor, fish biologist, and host of the National Geographic television show, Monster Fish, will share his experiences traveling the globe to find some of the world’s largest fish. Dr. Hogan will share tales of his adventures as documented in his recently published book, Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish. Combining science, adventure, and wonder, Dr. Hogan provides insights into the key role the massive fish of our lakes and rivers play in our past, present, and future.