Posted by Rebecca

Every July, Reno is Artown.  Artown is a month-long festival that celebrates the arts – gallery shows, music and dance performances, plays, and movies.  It’s great!!

This guy and his cool-cat pups are a fixture at the Reno summer festivals.

Friday nights all month feature Movies in the Park in downtown Reno.  This last Friday the movie was Strictly Ballroom.  Some friends and I packed blankets, chairs, food and drinks, found a spot on the grass, and enjoyed the evening. The film is a fantastic Australian movie, about a ballroom dancer who pushes the boundaries of “acceptable” routines and, despite much opposition, follows his dreams.  It’s funny, quirky and inspirational.  If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

The best line, and the real theme of Strictly Ballroom is this:

“A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.”

I’ve spent a lot of my life being fearful.  Fearful of making bad decisions, displeasing others, failure, plane crashes, germs, poisonous South American frogs….  Needless to say, I was an overly cautious child who had once viewed a very ominous National Geographic on the creatures of the Amazon.  My fears, though, have been in vain.  They haven’t made my life better, or prevented bad decisions and moments of failure.  They have just wasted my time and energy.

But, with a lot of hard work, I am learning, slowly, to leave fear behind.  And to live my full life, not just half of it.  I am a work in progress.

A nice little Fred Astaire routine kicked off the evening.

Rebecca Knabe