Cover Story
Frontiers of Tomorrow
The Phoenix mission put a robotic lab on the Arctic plains of Mars. The HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to transmit photographs of the Martian surface. The UA Steward Observatory Mirror Lab crafts some of the largest mirrors in the world for telescopes. Biosphere 2 offers a unique opportunity to study climate…
More Birthday and Underpass Perspectives
Looking back at the Tucson birthday and underpass celebration on Thursday, Aug. 20, I feel conflicted that I didn’t get to the festivities in time to see Mayor Bob Walkup sporting his gray formal top hat for the ribbon cutting. I went out of my way that day to pick up my son and bring…
Friday Roundtable: Grijalva on Healthcare, Stimulus & Mining
Congressman Raul Grijalva visits Arizona Illustrated’s Friday Roundtable. He appears to have some difference on healthcare with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after the jump…
Friday Roundtable: State Budget (Part 256), Fourth Avenue Underpass & Gunplay in Phoenix
Plus, I namecheck Seuss! Tonight’s talk segment from Arizona Illustrated’s Friday Roundtable after the jump…
Tucson Birthday Festivities Continue
You’d think Tucson just turned 21, the way it continues partying into the next month, days after our city’s official Aug. 20 birth date. According to tucsonsbirthday.org, tomorrow from 7 to 10 a.m., no matter your religion or beliefs, you’re invited to pray for Tucson at the top of A Mountain. From 5 to 7…
Underpass-tastic!
Here are some photos I took at the Thursday festivities christening the Fourth Avenue underpass. The area was swarming with people, cars, bicycles and, yes, a trolley or two. A motorist got stuck straddling the virgin tracks during rush hour, and the trolley tooted madly—it was awesome! A grumpy guy in the (already “tagged”) elevator…
Create Your City Art Party Tonight
Last night’s birthday party for Tucson and underpass celebration was amazing, even if you had to wait an hour to get cake at Hotel Congress. If you stayed away because you aren’t happy with how the underpass looks or because you’re mad about anything to do with downtown redevelopment, then you missed out. I was…
Looking for the Best Undiscovered Blues Guitarist
Guitar Center is having a national competition for the greatest undiscovered blues guitarist. The national winner will receive $25,000 in cash and other prizes. Local competition dates are underway and continue on Thursday, Aug. 27 and Sept. 3. On Sept. 10, the best in Tucson move on to the District Competition in Phoenix. The Tucson…
You Say It’s Your Feliz Cumpleanos, It’s My Feliz Cumpleanos Too … OK?
Today is Tucson’s birthday, and if you look at the schedule here, notice things got started early—8 a.m., with plenty of free stuff all over the city: free chocolate chip cookies, free admission to the zoo, FREE stuff. Then, of course, there’s the Fourth Avenue Underpass party from Main Gate Square to downtown. This is…
Media Watch
Where to put the ‘Citizen’ Archives? Perhaps not at the Historical Society, mastermind behind ua sports-broadcast deal leaves.
City Week
I Heart Art! Create Your City Art Party 6:30 p.m., Friday, Aug. 21 Pre-show: Winsett Park Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street Followed by procession to Rialto Theatre 318 E. Congress St. $10 to $25 donation 791-9359; creativecity.org Imagine taking dozens of Tucson’s art organizations—the Parasol Project, Opening Minds Through the Arts, Tucson Arts Brigade, Dinnerware…
T Q&A
Daniela Ontiveros
Changing Perspectives
While sitting on a death panel and trying to decide whether to abort your grandmother, I’ve been thinking a lot about lies and misrepresentation. So has Neill Blomkamp, writer/director of District 9. In 2005, he made a short film, Alive in Joburg, about space aliens who come to Earth as refugees and are treated to…
Danehy
It’s the middle of August, hot and nasty (and not in a good Humble Pie-kinda way), so please allow me to rant. • I sent a hand-written note to President Barack Obama the other day. (Fox News will probably be reporting that the administration will be creating a special category of its enemies list just…
Convincingly in Love
I never thought a movie about a guy trying to maintain a marriage while involuntarily time-traveling could possibly be worth squat. The commercials for The Time Traveler’s Wife were making me gag, so I didn’t sit down for the movie with a big bag of faith resting on my lap. It looked like it was…
Downing
Ah, August. As I write this, at the kitchen counter of a little house perched on the side of Oak Creek Canyon, I can hear chickadees and canyon wrens and kids laughing down in the creek. To be honest, I can also hear cars passing on Route 89a just below, but the tinkle of the…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
Guest Commentary
The news out of the recent trilateral summit between Canada, Mexico and the United States is that the Obama administration will wait until 2010 to tackle immigration reform. The justification Obama offered for the delay is that his “plate is full” with more pressing issues: the economy, health care, two wars and so on. For…
Now Showing at Home
Flight of the Conchords: The Complete Second Season, Fragments, Sunshine Cleaning
Dread to Delight
As I headed off to Evanston, Ill., last weekend to help put on the Alternative Journalism Writers’ Workshop, I was dreading the trip. Yeah, I was looking forward to seeing some of my friends in the alternative-newsweekly world, but … damn, I am busy. My plate is full, with Best of Tucson® production, the Tucson…
Melodic Sensibilities
In the four years that have passed since the last Fruit Bats album, singer-songwriter-guitarist Eric D. Johnson has toured and recorded with the Shins and Vetiver, projects that encouraged him to open up to more collaboration in his own band. So when it came time to record the songs that would become The Ruminant Band,…
Fancy Crafts
What lurks inside George Peñaloza’s fertile brain? Judging from his ceramic sculptures, anything and everything. His brightly colored ceramics feature an Egyptian pharaoh riding a billiard-ball train; an astronaut turtle holding a tiny planet Saturn; a bird in an Elvis Presley mask perching on a pool table; a tornado sporting a tux and a tie.…
Soundbites
UNDERPASS-PALOOZA! Has it really been only two years and change that the Fourth Avenue underpass has been closed for reconstruction? Because for those of us who used it regularly, it seems like an eternity. But there it is, in black and white: The reconstruction began in June 2007. Even more remarkable than time playing tricks…
The Skygreen Leopards: Gorgeous Johnny (Jagjaguwar)
The Skygreen Leopards leave the impression that their songs started out informally, with two guys strumming guitars in a park, sitting cross-legged on the grass. Gorgeous Johnny is the sort of midtempo, laid-back, jangly folk-rock that is purely California, with pre-formed images of the perfect summer afternoon, and sunlight streaming through palm trees at the…
Whole New World
As director of external affairs for Biosphere 2, Hassan Hijazi sometimes finds himself fielding phone calls from Hollywood producers who want to know if the giant terrarium is available for reality-TV shows. He politely lets them know that the Biosphere is more interested in working with the Discovery Channel these days. “We want to do…
At War: Infidel (Heavy Artillery)
As the only right-wing thrash band on the Heavy Artillery label, Virginia’s At War must work hard to convert anyone weaned on, say, Megadeth’s Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying? Sure, metal is mostly about burning up guitar frets, but when your CD includes lyrics to a track called “Semper Fi,” which begins with an…
Mr. Science
Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the UA College of Science, has plenty to boast about these days. The college is not only on the forefront of space exploration, climate-change research, biochemistry, telescope development and computer science; it also employs more than 1,700 people and brings in more money than any other department at the university. Last…
Mailbag
Letter Touting the Flat Tax Was Ridiculous I must admit that I initially thought that Troy Hyde’s letter (“A Fan of Taxing Rich People Less Makes His Case,” Mailbag, July 30) was an excellent mockery of the flat-tax position. I thought, “What a great job he’s doing of showing how ridiculous the flat-tax position is…
Modest Mouse: No One’s First, and You’re Next (EP) (Sony/Epic)
This enjoyable collection of odds and ends by Modest Mouse—an EP of eight tracks at 33 minutes—collects holdovers from the group’s previous two LPs and serves as a fitting snapshot of a fecund career. Opener “Satellite Skin,” sporting the group’s current lineup with Johnny Marr on guitar, displays wide hooks, plentiful quirks and Isaac Brock’s…
Scientific Sample
Here’s a taste of the extraordinary work being done in the UA College of Science. Steward Observatory Mirror Lab Some of the most innovative telescope mirrors in the world are crafted in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab beneath Arizona Stadium. In the 1980s, UA astronomy professor Roger Angel and his team pioneered the idea of…
A Tribe Comes Together
Lynne Weinberg slept peacefully in her den, surrounded by her books and two filing cabinets filled with notes and critiques. She lay on a hospital bed that had been moved in days before. A living-room chair had been placed close by so her caregiver and friends could take turns sitting with her. The minute hand…
Live
Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers, Bobby Bare Jr., The El Camino Royales
Snip, Snip, Hack
Most people’s eyes gloss over when the conversation turns to governmental budgets. But this week and next, as tens of thousands of students return to classrooms across the city, government budgets will be forefront in the minds of many. “It’s hard to even fathom how we’ll get through this year,” admits Judy Burns, chair of…
Top Ten in Books
Mostly Books best-sellers for the week
Nine Questions
Emily Rush
Deciding to Say No
It was nearly 20 years ago that Dr. Robert Schwebel began casting about for a program to help drug-abusing teens. He’d been asked to install one at a local treatment center, and he confidently sketched what he wanted. “I told them that you have to deal with the underlying issues that occur with the drug…
Ask a Mexican
Dear Mexican: My family hasn’t been in this country for long, came here because of lousy treatment by other Europeans, and didn’t live close enough to the southern U.S. border to have exposure to Mexico or Mexicans. So, those looking down on Mexicans can be mysterious to many of us who have migrated to the…
Top Ten in Music
Zia Records top sales for the week
Unity on Hold
Maria Moore doesn’t have a budget or a staff, so when classes begin at the UA on Monday, Aug. 24, Moore wonders what she’ll be able to offer students. Moore is the interim program director of the African American Student Affairs office at the UA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center, and right now, the…
Updated Continental
Continental dining these days is often viewed as archaic. It’s what your grandparents considered fine dining. People say the food is old-fashioned; the décor is often dreary, and the wine list can be straight out of the time of Methuselah. But then there is Amber, an eastside establishment that combines the best of old-world Continental…
Figuring Things Out
A year and a half ago, Arizona Onstage Productions presented a one-man show called The Bible Belt … and Other Accessories during a dead theatrical period—the days right after New Year’s. (See “Community Theater,” Jan. 17, 2008.) Not many people attended the show at first, so now Arizona Onstage is reviving it—during the dead theatrical…
The Skinny
LITTLE MERIT It’s wise to have a grievance panel such as the Pima County Merit Commission to allow mistreated employees a chance to appeal if they’re victimized by political or other petty payback in county government. But the Merit Commission has steered way outside appropriate lines in the case of Michael Canizales, a Pima County…
Noshing Around
Culinary Festival Update The Tucson Culinary Festival has added two events: A tequila lunch at Maynards Market and Kitchen (400 N. Toole Ave.) on Friday, Oct. 2, features tastings of six types of Milagro tequila and a paired, two-course meal by chef Addam Buzzalini, all for $50. The other addition, a “Grilling With Sugar and…
Police Dispatch
BLAST FROM THE PAST NORTH SHANNON ROAD JULY 24, 11:45 P.M. A woman became irate to the point of self-harm when a long-ago ex declined to let her live with him, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report. Responding to a suicidal-threats call, sheriff’s deputies located a sweaty, bleeding, screaming female pacing back and…
Companion Concert
It’s a “ruff” time to be a dog or cat in the Old Pueblo. At least that’s what Citizens for a No-Kill Tucson, a group of “concerned citizens,” has to say. The group got started shortly after Nathan J. Winograd, the author of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in…
Save Davidson Canyon: Fight CalPortland
Maybe you just want to check out what Corona de Tucson Fire Chief Whitehouse’s band sounds like, or maybe you care more about tap water since the truth about bottled water just won’t go away. Either excuse should work to get you to show up for an Empire-Fagan Coalition Town Hall. The Empire-Fagan Coalition—those residents…
