Blogging About The City I Love: Happy Birthday Tucson!

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I am celebrating my town's birthday along with thousands of other people in Tucson, Arizona.   It is a month long birthday party.  The cyber party starts today and runs through the end of the month.


Tucson, Arizona has been my home for the past 22 years.  My paternal grandfather was an Arizona snowbird way back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He continued this practice of making his summer home in Mentone, Indiana and his winter home in Casa Grande, Arizona from then through shortly before his death as an octogenarian in the early-mid 1970s.   I grew up in the middle of No-wheres-ville, Indiana on a small farm smack dab in the middle of "rented" out farm land that had no farm familes one them and thus no neighbor kids with whom to play.  I was saved from an early death by boredom by reading and re-reading the copies of Arizona Highways (and National Geographic) for which a subscription was always sent by Grandpa as a Christmas Gift.  I learned to love the magnificent and mind-boggling variation of people and places that was Arizona.  By the time I was a teenager, I knew as much about Arizona as I did about the state in which I actually lived.

In spite of my appreciation of Arizona's beauty and diversity, I never thought much about moving to Arizona, or even visiting it until I was well into adulthood.  My big trip as a young adult was a graduation gift to myself, a trip to Spain for a month during the summer after I graduated from college. But when my father passed away in 1986 I thought I should encourage my mother to accept her new life and status by traveling with her on Amtrak from Chicago to Los Angeles to visit her brother who lived in north of L.A.  We stopped for a few days in Arizona, getting off in Flagstaff along the way, to visit my father's youngest sister who lived in near Prescott.  I loved the scenery, and felt very comfortable visiting places I felt like I already knew, but I still didn't think about living in Arizona.

Then an old friend who had just returned to the U.S. after a stint as a post-doc in Zurich, Switzerland, got a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson and invited me out for a visit.  That was 23 years ago, and, as they say, "the rest is history." I fell in love both in and with the place.  It is magical.  Really.  People have been using the Tucson Basin for a home at least part of the year for over 10,000 years.  Permanent human settlements in the Old Pueblo go back at least 4,000 years.

My husband and I married in the open air in Lemmon Meadow on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountain Range. Pink Flamingo lawn ornaments marked the trail through the forest to the wedding site.  That day in June when it was 84 degrees F. where we were hitched at nine thousand and something feet in altitude, it was 117 degrees F down the mountain that day in the Tucson basin, that checks in at a mere 2300 ft. above sea level.

I have had a child here.  I was stung by a scorpion when I was 4 months pregnant.  I went on a gruesome Vindetta against any and all black widows with large shoe (for smashing), broom (for knocking down spiders out of webs) and a flashlight (for spotting the poisonous arachnids under the eaves without causing them to scurry away) every night after we move into the first only home we've owned here in the Old Pueblo until every last one of them was dead.

I was a Girl Scout leader and a Sunday School Teacher here.  I headed a section that worked to protect and secure and to allow access to the treasures of antiquity in the Arizona State Museum for several years in the mid-1990s. The future of Tucson is amazing.

I helped my neighbor, my daughter's surrogate grandmother, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 105, get groceries and run errands after could no longer walk to the nearby stores as she had done every week since that day in 1928 when her husband carried her, his bride, accross the threshold to the home he had built for her and in which they both lived out the remainder of their days.  I loved her, her stories and language out of another era.  She talked about how handsome her husband was and how "frisky" they made each other feel.  Her ancestors are honored in statuary in downtown Tucson.  Her husbands family owned part of Sabino Canyon.  Her family history became my native Tucsonan child's stories of her town. She and my mother who loved to visit us and Tucson became good friends.

There were rough times, sure.  Pubic education which my husband and I both fiercely support was not an easy path to walk with our daughter who attended a "rough" middle school.  My votes have been manipulated in voter fraud if you believe the very solid case that a friend exposed after he found discarded election paperwork outside a precinct almost 10 years ago.  I became very politically aware and active here.  I became even more progressive than I was when I was young because Tucson is such a wonderful and enlightened Mecca in the vast and barren conservative landscape that covers so much of this state.

After January 8th of this year when my huband walked into my study, in shock with tears in his eyes, and said "Gabby has been shot," well my heart ached and I knew I had to do something.   I knew so many of the people who were shot that day; and thankfully and still say, in the present tense, that I continue to know most of them. My husband, a friend and I walked the few blocks to the hospital Gabby is my Congressperson in the House of Representatives.  I've presented petitions in her office in Tucson and in D.C., many times.  We don't often agree, but dammit she is my duly elected representative.  Gabe had just begun working with my husband on bringing more green chemical companies to Tucson before he was killed.  I worked with Jim who was in campus fire safety at the time when I was at the Arizona State Museum.  Ron is a very good friend of a very good friend and we spent time together up in Oak Creek and Sedona at the Verde Valley Music Festival that was annually put on by Jackson Browne in the 1990s.  And then there is Suzi.  I figured out that Suzi was Ashleigh even before it was announced on BlogHer.com.  I am a darn good internet sleuth.  I began reading her before she was able to post again.  I commented.  I felt her desire and determination to do something for our community.  She already had.  It was up to her readers to do something;  her hands were more than full with healing body, mind, and soul. We wanted the same thing she did, to show that people can come together and good can come out of even the most horrific events.  This is doubly true for charmed places like Tucson that capture people's hearts forever even when other spendors in the state only captured their attention for a few days at most during a visit.  Tucson is special.

I decided to repurpose my Casita Gaia blog as a community-centered blog, website and company focused on the amazing and wonderful progressive (in so many ways) town I have called home longer than I've called any other place home in my life.  I went to the BlogHer|bet Conference to find out how to do this. I'm still working on the big plan for it, but I have the blog started and am carefully designing the website so as to fit my down the road plan for things to come on the site.  One of these things is for Casita Gaia to host a cyber-neighborhood event for Tucson's Birthday.  I hosted a virtual world event for it a couple years ago, but could not sustain it. But a cyber-neighborhood gathering, just like all the other neighborhood gatherings that take place at scores of spots all over Tucson during the month of August, a written celebration,  a blogging celebration, a celebration of all that is the gentle and enlightened communtiy, the biggest small town in America, well, that was something I could host and do to give back to the community to encourage the civility and friendly relationships that are Tucson.

So I am hosting a blog carnival from today through the end of August and I hope you can come enjoy the celebration on other's blogs and share a story on your blog about Tucson, why you love Tucson, why you think it is a nifty place, or why you want to visit if you have not made it here as yet.
I am getting to know Suzi/Ashleigh in real life now and was so delighted when she agreed to participate in what I have come to call the Birthday Blog-o-rama. In fact her post yesterday is the first post I've linked to on the Casita Gaia site. This past month was to have been spent doing promo for this event, as well as attending BlogHer '11, according to the original plan, but, mid-July my son-in-law was terribly injured in a boating accident and ended up deciding that he had no choice but to have the totally non-functional foot amputated; my husband decided to take a sabbatical;  my 21 year old daughter dumped her 100 lb. puppy off for us to puppy sit- for a month.  Life happens.  So I have extended the original date to 11 days of cyber celebration starting now!  Please join us. 

Once you grab your blog bling badge, like the badge near the top of this post, and post a piece of your own, be sure to let me know, so I can link to it from Casita Gaia, and so I can bundle all the links for the official Tucson Birthday site. The detailed "how-to" info is all in the post on my site.
We are a small group so far, but we are growing larger and this will be a piece of cake, literally and virtually, next year when we do it again, and the year after that when we do it again....

A Concert To Benefit the Fund for Civility, Respect and Understanding

Benefit

It is very, very difficult to try to talk about anything good associated with the January 8th assassination attempt on U. S. House of Representative Member, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and 13 physically wounded.  Countless Tucson families and citizens and all the networks all these people touched were also emotionally changed, and indeed the very community itself was injured, for when a community member is hurt, the community itself is injured.  And Tucson is a community.  We are the biggest small town in America.  We are healing, but the perception of our community, our dear Old Pueblo, is forever changed.  When talking heads use the word Tucson now they are referring to a few seconds of violence, the act of a madman, that attempted to change the vibe (We talk that way here.) of Tucson.  It isn't going to happen;  Tucson will be more like Tucson than ever in the coming weeks, months and years.  Not all communities could attract such a diverse and positive musical outreach and support network as Tucson has in  the Benefit Concert featuring Jackson Browne, Alice Cooper for the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona's Fund for Civility, Respect, and Understanding.

Click to go to ticket site. 

  

Lineup

There is an amazingly diverse line up and it is perfect.  These are all performers who have a reason to be here other than just for a pro bono feather in their service caps.   Zelisko has been promoting shows in Arizona since 1974.  Jackson Browne has had Arizona connections for a long, long time.  And I mean that in the best of all possible ways.  In the '90s I traveled up to the Verde Valley Music Festival that happened every year during the first weekend in October until 2001 when air traffic came to a roaring halt mid-September.  Alice Cooper, has lived in Phoenix/Scottsdale most of his life (even when he was Vincent Damon Furnier, and you know, I can see him as a "Vinnie") and his Christian faith certainly aligns with the cause of this concert.  Calexico IS Tucson in so many ways. Ozomatli used to play Tucson a bunch and it will be good to have them break their boycott of Arizona and show the rest of the country that Tucson doesn't deserve to be boycotted for the things Phoenix does.  Welcome back! I've seen Crosby and Nash in Tucson before, usually with another guy often linked with them.   I've seen Keb 'Mo play in Tucson,  Lofgren plays through Tucson too,  Roger Clyne is from Tempe and a third generation Arizonan, Joel Rafael wrote "This Is My Country" that was covered by Crosby and Nash and included in the Barry Levinson documentary, "Poliwood." You may remember Sam Moore from "Sam and Dave."  Milton 'Quiltman' Sahme has worked as a composer and vocalist on soundtracks & occasionally tours with John Trudell. Jerry Riopelle lives in Scottsdale and is probably best known for producing music.  And Dar Williams, what can I say about her except that as one of the very small minority of women performers in this line up she will have no problem representing anything and everything you may want or need to have reflected in this show --as she is a singer and songwriter who can present viewpoints and essences of being with amazingly deft nuance and skill.   And speaking of smarts and talent, Jennifer Warnes, is well a music legend even if you don't recognize her name at first.  She has won Oscars and Grammy Awards for songs you know all the words to, but Jennifer is perfect for this concert because as she says about music, "I'm more interested in how close we can get through the music."

Tucson

Tucson so deserves to have great musicians play here and I think with this concert it is clear that Tucson has been exempted from the boycott of Arizona over the discriminatory 1070 law.  Instead of boycotting Tucson I think people from far and wide should inundate Arizona and talk to the people of state.  Come and support non-right wing, non-politico artisans and businesses  that are a far more fair representation of us than the big corporate money and religious minorities that control the politics of this state.   If you have not heard, some of us are so adamant about the distinction between us and the rest of Arizona that we want to secede from Arizona and become the 51st state. For more info just check out the Start Our State movement.  

Secession has absolutely nothing to do with January 8th.  But I just loved Fitz's cartoon and he is a great guy and didn't deserve the muzzling his corporate media boss gave him when they demanded he apologize for speaking to reporters as a private citizen when he happened to be in that parking lot that infamous Saturday morning.  But hey if you want to keep your job you have to do things that make you cringe at times. 

Ok, back to Tucson, we Tucsonans really try to be civil and peaceably live together.  We are a University town, we are one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in North America.  We are artists, writers, musicians, hikers, birders, and we have given rise to many  political families as well.  People who come to Tucson, even if they move on through it, are touched by it.  

Women participate in politics here, we won the right to vote in 1912 here in Arizona.   Look at Gabby Giffords, a Democrat who won a hard fought battle for what had been a Republican seat.  Look at all the women who came out to talk to Gabby that Saturday.  And by the way if you have not read Suzi Hileman's blog, The Burrow, the civic minded and loving neighbor of Christina-Taylor Green, The Burrow,  I highly recommend that you do.  It is inspiring.  It is very Tucson.  Hileman chose to live here in Tucson because it is such a great place. 

Oh we need this concert, just like we needed the UMC vigil that lasted for weeks and helped us to meet and heal and pray, and like we needed the uplifting words of our President here in our town.   The shootings come back into the news this Wednesday, two days from now,  when a court date is set for the shooter and our wounds will hurt all over again, but this concert will help all of us to heal and will provide significant assistance to all those directly hurt by that madman's actions and tools.   

Trying to be Positive in Tucson

I'm serious about trying to be positive and build upon rather than to tear down.   I'm taking tiny steps toward this end.  Blogger and Tucson Massacre survivor yesterday called on all of us to something:

The history is defined a little awkwardly right now, and I'm not sure any of us has it in the place we need it to be.  But I have you here in The Burrow to help me think it through, and I have all of Tucson rooting for something good to come out of this horror.  I'm going to do my part.  And I wonder, as did Mr. Obama last night, what you as citizens and parents are willing to do.

If you don't mind, why not take a few minutes and give it some thought.  Feel free to let me know in the comments if you want to make a public commitment to something.  I know that it helps me to stay focused if I say it aloud.

America is not going to get better unless we are all in it together again.  Our President is asking us to join hands and take part.  I'm throwing in my two cents, too........ let's do something..... Christina will never be able to fulfill her incredible potential..... it's on us now to do it for her.

I am blogging here again and will continue to do so.  Is that something?  It is a start. And trying to stay as positive as possible is something.  At least it will be for me when I look at topics such as those I wanted to be today's topic: Arizona as an example of what is to come if the slow, occasionally punctuated, evolution of social policy of the United States follows Arizona's example.   The most conservative political factions in the country seem to be doing this.

Shining the light of day into, the dark shadowy areas of how the non-wealthy are treated in Arizona which is a proving ground for uber States Rights funded by out of state and corporate sources will be focused on over the next few months.  I will try to keep my barbed wit within tasteful limits in memory of  little Christina murdered by a madman who has become symbol of a call for civility, but remaining civil will be difficult because of little 9 year old Brisenia Flores who, though she begged for her life, was slaughtered in her home by Arizona border militia, and all those poor Arizona children who will be denied either transplants or basic health care due to Brewer's death panels.