Again Ushikawa raised his hand to stop Tengo. It was a small hand, but the fingers were short and stubby. “Now, now, please don't get worked up over this. I don't mean any harm. All I am trying to say is that selling off one's talents and time in dribs and drabs to make ends meet never produces good results. It may sound presumptuous of me to say this, but your talent is a genuine diamond in the rough, and I don't want to see it wasted and ruined on pointless things." — 84, Haruki Murakami
1.
Last Friday I listed some of Mayor Romero’s accomplishments which included the 22nd St Bridge project that was awarded a $25 million federal grant from the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program.
Well, that project has been put on hold as the Arizona Luminaria reports that there’s community pushback due to the proposed design calls for cyclists and pedestrians to share a pathway in the middle of six lanes of traffic. It would be the only road in Pima County with such a design. The community’s greatest concerns are the risk it poses to pedestrians and cyclists, as well as the long term environmental effects the emissions from the increase of car activity could have for the surrounding area.
Joey Iuliana, a lecturer in the Sustainable Built Environments program in the College of Architecture at the University of Arizona, told the Luminaria “Having people stop traffic, go to the crossing, stop traffic, cross the middle, go over the bridge, stop traffic again, cross back to the side and continue on, is a lot for pedestrians and drivers to manage. The fact that it’s across a six-lane road just magnifies that level of risk.” He went on to say, “If you keep building wider roads, you will get more people driving. Just because people are shifting more to electric vehicles that does not solve the congestion issues. The only way you solve congestion is if you have fewer people driving, and that means you have to make it safer to walk, safer to bike, more convenient and safer to take transit.”
He also said there are many different ways to build this bridge. For example, instead of making the bridge three lanes on each side, one lane could be designated for transit so buses and passengers don’t have to sit in traffic. Or, one lane could be protected from cars and designated for cyclists and pedestrians. Read more about it in the Luminaria link above.
2.
Speaking of the Luminaria, journalists Becky Pallack and Irene McKisson of said news outlet recently reported that the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona announced a new Local News Initiative to support local journalism, to raise funds locally and nationally to support local news and information. Jenny Flynn, President and CEO at CFSA, announced recently that Democracy Fund, a national foundation that has long supported local journalism, awarded a $100,000 grant to help kick off the initiative. In the last decade, Democracy Fund has supported community-based philanthropic solutions to the local news crisis in Chicago, Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
In Tucson, the 145-year-old Arizona Daily Star (fire-walled) has seen several rounds of layoffs from Iowa-based owner Lee Enterprises. And Virginia-based Gannett closed the Tucson Citizen print newspaper in 2009. Gannett also runs the business side of the Star through a partnership agreement. We are fortunate here that we have several online news outlets including the Arizona Luminaria, Tucson Sentinel, Tucson Agenda, and the Arizona Agenda. And Pamela Powers has a Substack worth a read — she describes herself as a Progressive Democrat, political blogger, National Writers Union member, and retired Arizona State Representative from Tucson. She also plays accordion. Heh. And don’t forget David Fitzsimmons Substack. Read on and support local journalists and bloggers!
3.
What’s in your tap water? The EWG (Environmental Working Group) reports that the City of Tucson has at least seven contaminants that exceed health guidelines. Overall it reports that this water utility was in compliance with federal health-based drinking water standards, but Legal does not necessarily equal safe. Getting a passing grade from the federal government does not mean the water meets the latest health guidelines. (LFK also has at least seven contaminants that exceed health guidelines)
It was announced this year that the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled unprecedented new limits on the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS as a way to tackle drinking water contamination. The proposal targets six notorious PFAS – PFOA, PFOS, GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS.
Of course, if Republicans win the Senate, House, and/or the Presidency, all will be for naught as the orangeman will dismantle the agency, or head it up with oil company executives.
4.
Even though the majority of voters in Ohio voted last week to legalize and establish regulation of recreational cannabis possession, sales, cultivation, and manufacturing by people 21 and older, and to enshrine abortion rights, Governor Mike DeWine and his fellow Republicans who run the legislature have stopped short of calling for total repeal to make the cannabis law more restrictive and have vowed to continue enforcing abortion criminalization, in defiance of election results. These lawmakers even said that they would “consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary” over the amendment—an extraordinary prospect. “No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born,” Republican state Representative Beth Lear said in that release. Rethuglicans, looking out for your best interests every minute.
5.
A GOP Senator with two first names, Oklahoman Markwayne Mullins, challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to “stand your butt up” and settle longstanding differences in a congressional hearing. Jeebus. Who votes for these people?
The entire GOP seems to be having a meltdown (which is just a fast-food sandwich for the people who vote for these clowns) so hopefully it could be good for the Democrats come election time.
For a bit of history of violence in the halls of power, read Politico’s interview with Joanne Freeman, a Yale historian who studies political violence in America and Congress. She says that back in the 1800s, there were “fighting men” who roamed the halls of Congress — lawmakers who served as unofficial enforcers of the party line, ready to deploy violence as needed to silence their opponents. She goes on to say that “They’re not a single party. They’re a divided party,” Freeman said, with no real leadership and no way to bring discipline or accountability to members. That’s what’s fueling these confrontations.
6.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the liarface, wrote in a recent book that no Democrats stayed in the House chamber on January 6 to help defend it against rioters sent by Donald Trump to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. She wrote, “Several of the Republican congressmen said, ‘We’re going to stay right here and defend the House chamber.’ As they began barricading the door with furniture, I noticed not one Democrat was willing to stay to defend the chamber.” But, as reported in the Guardian, Jason Crow of Colorado, a Democratic congressman and former US army ranger, said “They evacuated the folks on the floor but those of us in the gallery actually got trapped for like 20 minutes as the rioters stormed the stairwells and the doors. So, Capitol police actually locked the doors of the chamber and started piling furniture up on the doors to barricade them, while holding their guns out. I got into ranger mode a little bit. Most of the members didn’t know how to use the emergency masks, so I was helping them get their emergency masks out of the bags and helped instruct a bunch of folks on how to put it on and how to use it. I wasn’t going to leave the House floor until every member was gone, so I waited until we were able to get everybody out. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us. For those of us who were there on January 6 and actually defended the chamber from violent insurrectionists, her view is patently false. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Also, Tucson’s Raúl Grijalva said in an oral history in Business Insider, “You also saw members doing their part to facilitate our evacuation – Seth Moulton [of Massachusetts, a marines veteran], Ruben Gallego, and four or five others … who assumed a role of helping us to get out of there and working with the Capitol police to make sure that we were all safe.” Gallego, also of Arizona and a former marine, told the same site: “Eventually what I did was I jumped up on a table and started giving instructions to people about how to open up the gas mask. We start seeing the doors being barricaded with furniture. We start hearing the noise of people – the insurrectionists – pounding on doors. Especially in the gallery.”
7.
The 40th Annual El Tour de Tucson is tomorrow, November 18th. There will be road closures and other traffic restrictions so check out the map below before you drive tomorrow. One of the side benefits of the ride is that El Tour enables nonprofit, charitable agencies to raise funds for their respective organizations. Last year affiliate charities raised close to $5 million, moving the overall total to $105 million since El Tour started in 1983.
8.
I’m excited to let you know that two of my recent artworks were accepted into a show that will be opening Saturday, December 2nd from 4-9pm. It’s the Untitled Gallery, 101 W 6th St, Ste 121, in the Steinfeld Warehouse downtown. Hope to see some of you there!
And now…
Lisa and I went to the open studio event in Oracle last weekend and got to see one of your mosaic shirt pieces "live", in actual 3D! The pictures of these pieces are cool, but they really look great when you see the real thing!