Quick bites...

Brief lunch-break musings...

This past Sunday afternoon, while going for a little hike in Sabino Canyon, I saw my first rattlesnake.
Walking with a friend, he almost stepped on it, when we heard the trademark warning-noise; no matter how many times you've heard it on t.v. or have seen snakes behind glass, that rattle makes your heart jump.

It was 'just a baby,' less than 4 feet long...
...but I've been told that bites from babies are more dangerous, since the youthful serpents don't know how to 'measure' their venom just yet, so they give you all of it...

Then on this morning's news--a story of a New Yorker who was out here over Labor Day for a weekend trip. While taking trash out, she was bit--not once, but twice, on both her feet.
So, her weekend trip out West became a month-long hospital stay,
with two dozen doses of anti-venom...
and...
since she has no health insurance, a bill that bites as well:
Eighty-nine thousand dollars.

Health-care-reform, anyone?


So I'm having my first 'hot' lunch at work since the school-year began--
I finally got around to getting a little microwave--on sale, of course: 35$
...and to think that my parents spent over 300$ on their first microwave back in the early 80's...

...so, another appliance plugged in, sucking energy...adding to my 'carbon footprint.'
That's an expression that wasn't around a few years ago, eh?
But, wouldn't it be more accurate to say:
carbon buttprint?

I mean, really--a footprint is small, our collective consumer glutei taking up more space, no?
And we SIT for most of the things that make our carbon-contributions larger, anyway:
we SIT in cars...we SIT in planes...we SIT and watch TV...we SIT while the dryer dries our laundry.
Just a thought.

And the monsoon-season is now officially over here in Tucson.
Morning lows are positively chilly now--60 degrees...(still 90 in the afternoon)
Cool enough to plant cilantro.

Local calendar. Names and figures.

The school-year's about a month-old down here...

and as usual, by now kids are coming to school with late-summer colds and runny noses...

and eventually the teachers catch it as well.

So I'm at home this morning, sitting here with a faithful box of kleenex at my side...

Before the school-year started, one day we drove by Saguaro National Park's eastern district, which edges up to our part of Tucson. Their newsletter included the native calendar--how the local tribe, the Tohono O'Odham people, call the months.

Here we go, then...I'll start with now.

September

Wasai Gakidaj Masad

(month of dry grass)

avg. high temp.: 94 degrees; avg. low temp.: 67 degrees

Bats and hummingbirds preparing for early October migration; activity increases.

First-year juveniles must gain strength for first long flights to wintering grounds to the south...

October

Al Ju:big Masad

(month of planting frost-hardy squash)

avg. high: 84; avg. low: 57

Cactus wrens begin to build winter nests in cholla cactus...

November

S-ke:g S-he pjig Masad

(month of pleasant cold)

avg high: 73; avg low: 45

Ocotillos produce new leaves within five days of winter rainfall...

December

Ge'e S-he:pjig Masad

(month of big cold)

65/39

Desert mistletoe bearing fruit...

January

Gakimdag Masad Masad

(month of depending on stored foods)

64/38

Succulent plants filling up with winter moisture...

February

U: walig Masad

(month of mating deer)

68/40

If the winter has been rainy, desert wildflowers, such as Mexican gold poppies, begin blooming...

This is also the month of "Festival de los Vaqueros,"

or 'rodeo'-time. Tucson schedules one of its school-vacations for this long-weekend...

March

Ce:dagi Masad

(month of new plants coming up)

72/44

Brittlebush blooming; beetles appearing...

April

Uam Masad

(month of desert in bloom)

81/50

Gambel's quail begin mating; snakes active if the winter has been quiet...

May

U'us Wihogdag Masad

(bean-gathering month, time of hunger)

89/57

Nocturnally-flowering cacti in bloom, including saguaro and night-blooming cereus...

June

Ha:san Bak Masad

(saguaro-fruit-gathering-month)

99/67

New saguaro-fruit ripening, falling to ground--harvested to eat and make wine...

July

Jukiabig Masad

(month of rain)

98/74

Desert toads croak at night to attract mates...

August

Sopol Esabig Masad

(month of short planting)

97/72

Barrel cacti, asters, morning glories, devil's claw, trailing four-o'clock all blooming

...

And now for a few more, non-calendar, figures...

Demographics gleaned from this morning's paper:

One in five Arizona adults was born in another country.

Hmm....I wonder where--

The Census Bureau really had to spend lots of data-crunching time

to figure out that 2/3 of these come from Mexico?

Borderlands...

About 1/3 of Arizonans classify themselves as Hispanic.

Statewide, however, only 25% of the population says they speak Spanish.

Among the foreign-born AZ residents, (who number about 900,000) 85% speak Spanish,

and only 157,000 of them say they speak English very well.

2.2 million AZ adults were born in the state. 3 million were born in a different state. 70,000 born outside the country but born as citizens. 273,000 foreign-born, but naturalized US citizens. 655,000 non-citizens.

"Locals" are a minority.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day--it read "Leaving Tucson? Take a friend with you."

Nice. The driver of the vehicle, though, wasn't looking too 'native'...

Yes, this is a RANT...

For los amigos who are reading this--please accept my apologies in advance.

I really don't want to treat this blog--and you--as a dumping ground for my frustration.

So...instead, view the following rant as a way for you to be aware and 'enlightened' about idiotic bureaucracy and the dangers thereof. I sent a copy of more or less the same content as a 'letter to the editor' to one of the Tucson papers...it will likely not be published, so I am 'self-publishing' here...

(An acronymous explanation: TUSD stands for Tucson Unified School District, one of the state's largest employers, by the way.)

================================================

TUSD's Human Resources Dept. evidently does not consider verifying potential (and current) employees' past work experience as being part of its job.
As a result, experienced teachers end up not being paid what they were told they would be when hired. Let me explain.

I am a teacher with a graduate degree and have been teaching since 1998.
I just moved to Tucson from out of state.
I was offered my current job back in the spring.
When I got my first local paycheck recently, it seemed (surprise) even smaller than I thought it would be.
Yes, I knew moving here would involve a paycut.
But I didn't think that TUSD would, as a 'welcome gesture', pay me on the 'STEP 1' of its salary schedule.
That means that right now, I am being paid as if I have zero teaching experience.
This is thousands of dollars less than I was offered.

When I asked about this, a Human Resources employee said:
"Well, someone should have told you when you were hired that until we receive verification from your prior employers you will be paid accotrding to Step 1 on the salary schedule."
In all due respect, I replied:
"Isn't that the job of the Human Resources dept.? I mean, I was hired back in the spring--in between then and now, no one has verified my work experience?"

The reply from HR was "do you realize how many employees we have?"
In other words, 'we don't have time to do that; we couldn't be bothered.'
So--TUSD does not consider that verifying prior work experience from its potential employees as being part of its job.
Instead, they hand new teachers paperwork that we have to send to our prior workplaces, who surely have nothing else to do than fill out paperwork for people who no longer work for them?!
Until that paperwork is returned to TUSD, TUSD does not pay its teachers what those teachers had been told would be their salary.

The previous district where I worked had a HR department that did consider it part of its job to verify its employees' past work histories. Imagine that.

How many 'professional' organizations out there have HR departments that don't bother to verify their potential employees' past work experience?
This is a needless disservice to TUSD's current teachers, and a potential danger to TUSD's students, wouldn't you think?
In the meanwhile, teachers who are new to the district are treated as if their past experience doesn't exist, and this hits home in a very real financial way.
What a 'professional' policy...'Welcome to TUSD,' indeed.

Increasingly charged...

...like the air of an August afternoon in southern Arizona:
above the heat, the clouds build, filled
with the promise and threat of rain and lightning;
the sky's electric...
The national discourse/debate/hand-wringing/scape-goating/concern both sincere and xenophobic--
call it what you will--
all of it about immigration--
gets more and more charged, every day.

A new resident in this borderland, I read the local paper, watch the national news, scan headlines on the Internet...and I have the occasional enlightening/disturbing doughnut. What I mean is, during a recent stop at a doughnut-shop, I saw this flyer pasted onto the side of a newspaper dispenser:

Now, I am by no means an apologist for illegal immigration. But to put words in God's mouth, as if the Creator takes sides in 'The Tortilla curtain' debate?...Wow. Partisan presumption, all the way...

(...I've been sitting here for a few minutes now, wondering how to type something that won't be too vitriolic in my disdain for people who would come up with such a flyer...)

Alarming, this abundance of historical aliteracy --not illiteracy, but rather the willful constructing of a bubble of ignorance of time and place beyond one's current everyday existence. YES--border 'control' and illegal immigration is a problem...YES something should be done..YES the lack of humane consistency in immigration policy is absurd...

But...To frame the dilemma in a jingoistic 'God bless America but damn all those outside our borders?' To thumb one's nose at darker-skinned south-of-the-border desert-crossers, while sneering 'sucks to be you?' And to do that while invoking 'christianity?'

It makes me want to spit venom--venom not to harm, but venom that would inject into someone a socio-moral conscience capable of empathy, if even for only a week. Venom that would make them crack open a book, make the effort to know personally at least one person from 'the other side', to translate 'wetbacks' into 'human beings,' to understand clear and present background issues instead of resorting to kneejerk reactions...

Fear of drugs, fear of violence, fears of terrorism, not to mention linguistic chauvinism and blatant racism--such a virulent stew in which to try to cook up anything productive in this debate-on-immigration that grows tiresome but no less urgent.

'To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome,' penned the writer of Ecclesiastes...But--here's one (more) thing to read to get a bit more of an understanding of what's going on just south of the border: Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border by Luis Alberto Urrea. Here's a link to more information about it...

On a related but lighter note, in yesterday's paper, I saw this cartoon:

So much for that. Never in human history have languages respected borders. Neither have borders respected humans. There's the problem.

...

Evenings are beautiful here...after sunset, when a storm has washed away the afternoon heat, the desert looks tranquil, even the urban jungle that sprawls across it...

Sunset monsoon photos

...so many things swimming around in my head since the last posting,
but before words, pictures. (click on them for a larger image)

And to preface the photos, a few words:
This afternoon my wife and I decided to drive up the Catalina Highway--the local cliché holds true: 'thirty miles, thirty degrees cooler.' We had a late-afternoon picnic in the shade of pines at 9000 feet, almost chilly in the 67-degree air. (That's the coolest we've been since we arrived here in early July!)

On the way down, just before the highway heads off the foothills, we stopped at a scenic overlook, since it was just about sunset...
...and this is what we saw, pretty enough, clouds to the SW of Tucson, over the Tucson Mountains:

To the left of the saguaros in the above photo, you can see where the clouds are a bit thicker.
Just a few minutes after taking that picture, those clouds began to leak a tiny stream of rain:

...and it grew into a few more wispy strands of a distant shower:
...and then it really began to pour:
Now that is indeed an 'isolated, localized' rainstorm, eh?We stuck around to watch the sunset-storm panorama for about a half-hour.

When I turned around, I was treated to this pastel-moon-rise:

...ahh, the desert sky can be like a drug...

...not that I would know...

...and just as we pulled out to drive back down into town, we noticed the scene below. (The photo's blurry since I was trying to snap the shot from the driver's seat before the clouds moved.)

...hmmm...gives the feeling of being watched, no?

Clouds and mountains in Arizona--never dull.

...current afterthoughts...

After posting the monsoon-photos I just uploaded, (in the 'sunset monsoon photos' posting) anything else feels like a letdown...but here a few more everyday photos, accompanied by thoughts just as mundane..but hey--when you have moved to a new place, even the prosaic is new, so...that's what blogs are for...

I've gone from Rainier-vision in our living-room in WA to Catalina-vision as I look out the window from my desk (when I'm sitting there, which is rarely) at work:

About a 1/2-mile away from there is the Tucson botanical garden, where I met my wife one HOT afternoon this past week after work. Surprising, though, how after living here for several weeks, we now feel 'cool' in the shade even on a 100-degree afternoon...

All throughout Tucson, since we got here, we've noticed the 'Mexican red bird of paradise' plants in bloom. When we lived in Nicargua, we saw them too, but didn't know the name...

...also at the Botanical garden, there is an example of a 'cristate Saguaro,' a mutation that occurs in about 1 in 100,000 cacti! Botanists are not completely sure why this happens--it could be a lightning strike, an 'impact injury' when the cactus is young...This is only the second one we've seen in our outings in and around the city:

A couple of weeks ago, just before the start of the school-year, we drove out west of the city, to catch a sunset at Gates Pass:

Now with the school-year underway, mid-week sunset-viewing drives will be a rarity...

One little detail about my new workplace that makes me smile is the manner in which many students address me.
About half of the students in this school are Hispanic, and they very earnestly call me "MEES-ter."
Not "Profe" or "MEES-ter my-last-name;" just "MEES-ter." Slowly, though, they are coming around to using "Monsieur." Poco a poco...

The socioeconomic setting of this urban school is a world apart from the semi-rural/suburban district I just moved from, where 90 percent are 'pan blanco,' compared with here--about 50 percent 'tortilla.' Add in the refugee population, and there are a whopping FORTY-SEVEN languages spoken in the homes of the students! Challenges, of course, but never a dull moment...

On my way home, I pass a little Asian market--alas, not the weird-snack-food-and-cheap-produce-paradise of H-mart--but it has the essentials: all flavors of ramen and udon, dried squid strips, fresh California rolls (kimbop) on Thursdays and Fridays, etc. etc...
...and, to my Engrish-lover's delight, whimsically-labeled candy, such as this:


Feeling crunky? Eat some chocolate...

---

Since I am a language teacher, I enjoyed this cartoon:


Yes, we are all human, and gestures can get you far...but sometimes not far enough, eh?
Achtung...Cuidado...Attention...Jo-shim-hae!!

---

I'm enjoying my new work environment as far as the students go...
I am not enjoying my new work environment as far as the bureaucracy goes...
...because nothing seems to get very far fast enough in a large organization.
There is much talk in the education-world today of 'smaller learning communities'--yay! Yes, we need to not have our adolescents channeled through institutions so huge that they become 'anonymous.' So let's break up our large schools into smaller 'communities' where students are 'known' and things are relevant for them....
...BUT, at the same time, maybe we should be applying this principle to the bureaucracy of large districts, where too often people make decisions without being in touch with reality---and then they can hide in their maze of 'central district offices,' anonymous from those who live with the consequences of their ineptitude.
No--I'm not bitter, and in all seriousness, things haven't been that bad...but I DO sense the world of difference coming from a small district, where accountability has a face on it, to a large district where incompetence hides in cubicles.
And so, the following comic strips really 'spoke' to me this past week:


And I guess that's how I'll end this posting, as negative as it may seem...

The sun also rises...and the cacti will bloom again!

Thoughts on a 'humid' Tucson night.

When the humidity here in southern AZ climbs above 25%, people start complaining about how 'muggy' it is.
But back east--whether you're in Boston or Savannah, on an August midnight when it's still in the 80's and the humidity is above 80% as well--now THAT's ' humidity.' Oh, and the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua from May to November? Ay...Gimme Tucson anytime...

And so here we are, parrots asleep, ceiling fans humming.

July 2007 turned out to be one of the three wettest months ever recorded in Tucson--a whopping six inches of precipitation! A 'wet' desert indeed...The dry 'washes' have turned into 'rivers' worthy of the name...for a few days or weeks, at least, before they become sun-baked ditches again...
...and so things are greening, as the photo below of nearby Sabino canyon shows:
(and it's only a 15 minute drive from where we live!!)

(click on any of the photos for a larger view...it 'usually' works...)

Beauty and greenery recorded on a digital camera notwithstanding, the Sonoran desert can be harsh.

It's a new and bizarre thing for me to live in a place where the local newspaper regularly has articles about bodies found in the desert--death from exposure, already nearing 200 just since January 2007!--almost all of them undocumented immigrants, 'illegals,' 'economic refugees,' call them what you will--they are people who have died while crossing the desert, looking for better-paying jobs, looking to join their husbands or wives living and working in the 'land of opportunity.'

I think this recent cartoon (from the Tucson Weekly) captures the heartbreaking irony well:

Radically different from the 'foundation myths' of Ellis Island, no?

=====

The other day, to take a welcome break from the endless unpacking and errand-running that accompany getting settled in a new city, we drove south down I-19--perhaps the only Interstate highway in the nation that has kilometer-signage instead of mile-markers--to Tumacácori (more in a future blog) and Tubac.

Tubac bills itself as the place 'where art and history meet.' I have to gag a bit on that p.r. schmooz-ese.
But it is a historic place full of art galleries; there you have it. There we went.

We stopped in a rug gallery for a bit--looking to see Navajo and Hopi rugs, finding fabulous things from Oaxaca as well. We began talking with the gallery-employee, who quickly informed us that the gallery also carried many pieces from Iran, Afghanistan, etc...I 'joked' with her--"oh, all those -stan-countries in the 'Axis of Evil,' eh?"
She froze for a bit, not knowing if I was kidding. One should be careful these days...

At ease, she continued showing us things, even though she got the vibes that we are not currently in the market for heirloom-floor-coverings-from-despotic-lands. She didn't mind, she was very kind...We began talking about 'cross-pollination' of ideas and motifs in textiles throughout history and various cultures and religions, and how motifs change based on people's daily lives, etc. etc...and I mentioned I'd read an article about the 'war-rugs' that began appearing in Afghanistan during the Soviet-war back in the 1980's...

Well, lo and behold, she said, 'we have some of them!'
She went into the 'vault' (seriously, that's what it was) and pulled out some pieces for us to see, unfurling them on the floor at our feet. I felt like an anthropologist, walking on a flying carpet of historical documentation.
Yes, really, that's how it felt. ;-)

Here's one. At first it doesn't necessarily scream out 'war,' --you just see geometrical motifs, a 'link' motif on the outside edge representing prosperity, perhaps...but look closer, and you see that the 'tree-of-life' motifs on either side are divided by a red diagonal line full of a convoy of war vehicles; jeeps, hummers, etc...

(click on pictures for detail)

We were shown several more--including some from the post 9-11 era in which instead of the Soviets, the US and/or the UN are depicted--these I won't post for fear of being labeled a pro- or anti-war-propagandist, depending on one's view. (In hindsight, I do feel bad that I made the gallery-worker nervous by saying that the rugs came from the 'axis of evil countries'...) And with current legislative debate about governmental spying powers, well...

But here's another one: Again, a cursory glance might not make you think you're looking at a textile-testament of violence in wool, but in this rug, the tanks, grenades, helicopters, bombers, and missiles quickly assert themselves after a second viewing.

Crazy crazy world. Where are the flowers and antelope of yesteryear?

Then again, even a thousand years ago--in 'civiilized' Western Europe, we have the Bayeux tapestry recording the Norman Conquest. Wool or linen, Kalachnikovs or crossbows--the history we weave...

=====

Back to the atmosphere.

Last night, the local news replayed again and again video footage of a funnel-cloud sighted south of Tucson, in Sierra Vista, my erstwhile childhood 'hometown' of three years. Tornadoes are very very rare in Arizona. Gracias a Dios. (Ah, how the weather always makes the news...) A few weeks ago, right after we moved here and the monsoons first began, one afternoon, I saw this from our front yard--not a funnel cloud, but definitely not kite-flying weather:

And then, just a few days later, after grocery-shopping...cliché, cliché, yes, it screams, but to drive home and see the rainbow ending precisely over 'home,' with a weeks' worth of food...not bad:

The rainbow-motif continues in the blog, I guess, after last year's posting...

Utility bills, (shocking as they may be) are presently beginning to arrive at our rainbow's end...so--we truly are 'home' in Tucson, now...

==============

And living here now, we're getting to know the street names.

Spanish, Spanglish and 'Manglish' (My term for mangled spanglish) abound in the local toponymy. A local columnist recently wrote about it. (THIS is the link to the column--WORTH reading! It's banal title: "Some street names in Spanish are ridiculous")

Just the other day, we drove by "Calle Sin Nombre." Oh, to live where the streets have no name--you too (ahem) can do so...'Rancho sin vacas' is the name of a development--Oh yeah--I live north of the "Rillito River" (which means 'little river river') in that cow-less-ranch place...One neighborhood is full of virtue, since some of the streets are named "Calle sin pecado" (sin-less street) and "Calle sin envidia" (street without envy). And okay--we all know a San precedes a guy's name--as in SAN Diego, or SAN Francisco--and that Santa precedes a female name or noun, as in Santa Fe or Santa Anna. (So...why is it 'Santa' Claus in English, hmm...)But here in Tucson there is a 'confused' 'San Anna' street...and also a place that is Santa 'FEE'...Hmm...

Since 1987, however, the county has had a polcy requiring Spanish street names to be reviewed by a qualified Spanish-speaking interpreter--a bit of local linguistic idiosyncracy bureaucratized away...Gracias to los rubber stampedos...