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Introduce Yerself (Right On!)

Title: Message
Lenny!
 
(please forgive the quote from one of my favorite bands, the late Faith No More)
 
Hello there...seems I have become a part of this list in a rather loud manner by having one of my posts from another list reproduced here. I figured I'd better follow it up by showing up to clean up after it.
 
My name is Mr. Lenadams Dorris, Len for short (I include the "Mr." so as to avoid the common mistake of being thought of as a woman). I'm a writer based in Las Vegas, Nevada, where currently or in the recent past I have been the restaurant critic for the city weekly (six years), a daily commentator during the regional broadcasts of NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" (11 years), environmental reporter for the regional NBC affiliate's "Weekend Today Show" (3 years) and host for the locally-produced weekly show "Outdoor Nevada" on the local PBS affiliate (2 years). I have been a contributing editor for the magazine "Great Basin" and have written feature articles for "Las Vegas Life", SCOPE, "Landscape and Irrigation", "Southwest Lawn and Landscape" and "Arbor Age" amongst others. As you can see, I've managed to work in radio, TV *and* print, often simultaneously.
 
I have also worked for six years as the VP/Marketing for a chain of retail nurseries in the southwest, and for three years had my own "boutique" nursery specializing in plants from and for arid climates. More recently I was owner of a combination coffeehouse/arts center/garden cafe in downtown Las Vegas called the Enigma (which, sadly closed in December of 2000, just short of its 8th birthday). For the last year I have occupied myself as a freelance writer and home educator for my teenaged daughter, who has now gone off to school on the east coast.
 
I was honored to receive the 1999 Nevada Fellowship in Literature (for Poetry), which provided me with a $5000 check and a brief fantasy that one really can make a living as a poet. Both the fantasy and the money disappeared soon enough (stay out of the coffeehouse business!) As far as plants go, I am one of those freaky people who can get overheated while talking about them...you know, the sort who hyperventilate in certain places at certain times (like in nurseries in spring). I have always been that way...my very earliest memories are about plants. For example, my first serious injury occurred when at age four I crossed the street by myself to pick sweet peas for my mother (a particularly intoxicating strain, mind you) and was promptly run over by a speeding drunk in a black 1963 Buick. I survived with little more than some scars, but somehow the strange mixture of beauty, scent, sirens, yearning, asphalt, pain and hospital ice cream became part of my long-term personality. Sadly, it is quite difficult to grow sweet peas where I live, although I make up for them by growing all of the subtropical pea-vines I can find (purple Hardenbergia, the shockingly deep blue Clitoria, the euphonious Dolichos lablab, the sinister yet compelling Black Pea vine Kennedya nigricans, Lotus berthelotti 'Amazon Sunset', the monstrous but flamboyant Mucuna bennetti, several scandent Bauhinias...you get the point. And wouldn't you know it, but not one of them has any fragrance of note. Proof once more that we spend our lives chasing the fleeting dreams of childhood. Or something like that.
 
I am also a sucker for so-called community service. I serve on the boards of the Desert Demonstration Gardens and the University of Nevada Arboretum. In the past I have served as a board member of the Southern Nevada ACLU, the Nevada Shade Tree Council, Mojave Native Plant Society, the City of Las Vegas Downtown Redevelopment Commission and the Campaign for Liberty and  I have also been chair of various organizations: Growing Solutions/Global Relief, the "Trees for Tomorrow" campaign, the Cactus and Succulent Society of Southern Nevada, the Nevada Watersavers and probably about a dozen more I've forgotten about already. Worse yet, I was a candidate for Nevada State Assembly in 1992 (I lost, thank G-d!)
 
You can read more about me and my dissolute life, should you wish, at my shocking website: [http://radiant.org/people/lenadams/].
 
Glad to be aboard, and thanks for having me. So, enough about me. Let's talk about you!
 
Cheers,
 
Len
 
P.S. Please don't call me Lenny.
 
 
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