“Stories never do end, of course. That’s their special grace. Lives end, people die or walk away from you forever, lovers depart in moonlight with paper bags of belongings tucked beneath their arms, children disappear. Close Ulysses and nothing has ended. Molly’s story, Leopold’s, Stephen’s, Buck Mulligan’s—they all go on, alongside yours.” —Bluebottle, James Sallis
1.
Copper World Complex is moving ahead in the Santa Rita Mountains with the first phase of the 44-year mining plan the company hopes to launch sometime within the next two years, according to the Arizona Mirror. With a mine life of 16 years, Phase I of the Copper World Complex would be located on the west side of the mountains and would be the site of four open pits and three tailings dumps on approximately 4,500 acres of private land. In years 17 to 44, Phase II — now referred to as the “East pit” — would expand production on to federal lands, dumping nearly 2 billion tons of mine waste on more than 2,500 acres of the Coronado National Forest in full view of State Highway 83. Should the entire project be approved, a 1.5-mile stretch of ridgeline would be torn down in order to join the two sites, altering the horizon and affecting residents and wildlife at the northern end of the Santa Ritas forever.
Due to a large volume of responses to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to slow down a permit for Copper World to access valuable groundwater in the Santa Rita mountains, the comment period has now been extended from March of this year to March, 10, 2025. According to a report by Earthworks, Our research shows that water quality impacts to surface and/or groundwater are common at currently operating copper porphyry mines in U.S., resulting from three failure modes (pipeline spills or other accidental releases, failure to capture and treat mine seepage, and tailings spills or impoundment failures). These failures resulted in a variety of environmental impacts, such as contamination of drinking water aquifers, contamination and loss of fish and wildlife and their habitat, and risks to public health. In some cases, water quality impacts are so severe that acid mine drainage will generate water pollution in perpetuity.
2.
When I moved to Tucson in 1989 I stumbled into living in the Barrio Viejo just south of downtown Tucson. Some Kansan friends of mine had offices and homes in the area and helped me to get settled. I more or less lived in that neighborhood until 2004 when my wife and I bought a house midtown where we currently reside.
The old adobe above, owned by the Rollings family at the time, is a couple blocks from the Teatro Carmen on Meyer Avenue which had fallen into disuse. Once a center of Spanish-language cultural and arts activity in Tucson, Teatro Carmen also was home to an African-American Elks club and a grassroots Chicano theatre company before falling into disuse. Once reopened, the building’s rich history as a community gathering space for Hispanic, Anglo, and African-American populations will anchor humanities programming from a variety of presenters reflecting the city and region’s spectrum of historic and emerging communities. The neighborhood, listed on the National Register, is currently being nominated as a National Historic Landmark District. Teatro Carmen is a contributing building to that nomination, due to its rich and diverse cultural history and social importance within the Hispanic community.
Stratford Art Works, Inc, headed up by Herb Stratford, is rehabilitating the property which involves reactivating the original theatre as a 250-300-seat performing arts space and community cultural resource. There will also be an attached restaurant with indoor seating and outdoor patio space. I got to know Herb when he was heading up the restoration of the Fox Theatre. He allowed me, in my capacity as a panoramic photographer at the U of A, to document the construction and renovation progress over an 18 month period several years ago. Some of those large photographs still hang in the 2nd level lobby of the Fox.
Here’s a recent video of some of the happening taking place in Barrio Viejo with the segment on Teatro Carmen starting at about 2:10.
3.
We caught The Last Repair Shop on Hulu the other night. WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY! It’s the story of one of the last American cities, Los Angeles, to provide free and freely repaired musical instruments to its public schoolchildren, a continuous service since 1959. This documentary grants an all access pass to the nondescript downtown warehouse where a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople keep over 80,000 student instruments in good repair, and we bear witness to the profound life stories of four staff master craftspeople as well as the students whose lives have been transformed by their instrument. It’s been nominated for best documentary short for the 2024 Academy Awards.
4.
More fun with the MAGA crowd in Arizona as Chair of Arizona Republican party, Jeff DeWit, resigned on Wednesday after leaked audio of him surfaced, appearing to show him offering a bribe to the Republican candidate Kari Lake by asking if there were a dollar amount she would take to stay out of the US Senate race there. Heather Cox Richardson summed it up pretty neatly; The tape itself was clearly contrived to show Lake as if she were in a campaign ad, defending Trump and America, but it includes DeWit’s pleas for her to stand aside for two years, presumably while the Arizona party regroups with less extremist candidates, and his request that she name her price.
DeWit said, “I believe she orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party, and it is obvious from the recording that she crafted her performance responses with the knowledge that she was recording it, intending to use this recording later to portray herself as a hero in her own story.”
Meow!
5.
Republicans LOVE to go on about “limited government” without the benefit of telling you what they mean by that. New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu has endorsed Nikki Haley because of her support for “low taxes and limited government”: the GOP presidential candidate was ranked above Trump, DeSantis, Scott, Pence, or Christie in her embrace of “limited government” by the new billionaire-friendly think tank known as the Institute for Legislative Analysis, as addressed by Thom Hartmann in his Wednesday’s post. He goes on to say Today, however, when wielded by Republicans, “limited government” means to take power away from governments elected by and answerable to the voters and hand that power off to massive, monopolistic corporations and the morbidly rich. The “conservative” goal is to break the bond between people and the government they elect, so the functions of government can be redirected away from the needs of working-class people and toward supporting the increased accumulation of wealth by America’s oligarchs.
Also check out an article in the Yale University Press saying that there is nothing “limited” about regulating women’s bodies, interfering with the freedom to choose one’s marital partner, legislating the bathrooms we use, dictating the books we can read or the history we can learn. These are unmistakable instances of government intervention in our lives and restrictions on our freedoms. Where is the Republican concern with individual liberty? When we recognize the intrusiveness of these restrictive conservative policies the hypocrisy of Republicans’ “limited government” mantra becomes all too apparent.
Just. Vote. Blue.
6.
In contrast to those fools above, this Tucson-based program, the BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) Loan Fund was founded to promote economic inclusion for all members of Southern Arizona, regardless of socioeconomic status, through the pursuit of three distinct program areas that are foundational to individual and community well-being: Homeownership, Entrepreneurship, and Education. Check out the 2023 Impact Report and see how the government can actually work for the people.
7.
Only two more Saturdays to go to view the Small Works show at Untitled Gallery in the Steinfeld Warehouse downtown Tucson. Sat, Feb 3rd is closing night and also the 1st Saturday Art Walk for the downtown galleries.
I am thrilled that my piece, American History, As Told By White Men, In Red, sold to an out of town buyer. Since it is gone, I’ll be replacing it tomorrow with Las Vegas Folded Camp. And Tighty Whities will still be there for your viewing pleasure.
And now…