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I sent a copy of more or less the same content as a 'letter to the editor' to one of the Tucson papers...it will likely not be published, so I am 'self-publishing' here...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.)

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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.

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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...

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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!!

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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?

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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...

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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...

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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...

Back on-line...Photos...

Tonight, we finally have a home-phone-line again...
...and along with that, access to the Internet. So no more balancing a laptop at a cafe table in a free wi-fi coffee-shop...'Free' gets expensive when you have to buy 4-dollar lattes...

The moving-company said it should be another five or six days before our things arrive.
(They definitely have themselves covered by giving themselves a 21-day window for delivery in the contract.)

We're so glad we brought a small box of kitchen-basics with us in the car: a pot, a pan, a can opener...so we can at least cook...
We're sleeping on an air mattress. We found a bistro-table-and-two-uncomfortable-chairs-meant-for-the-patio-not-as-indoor-furniture. So we can at least eat off the floor. Well, not literally 'off the floor.' You know what we mean.
That's it for furniture.

Tomorrow makes it a week already that we're here...
Yesterday and today we had our first true monsoon-storms in our part of the valley. After the thunderstorms, it's a good thirty degrees cooler!

So, for those of you who are curious, here are a few photos of where we live now.
No more views of Mt. Rainier. (hélas...)

(you can double-click on the photos for a larger view)

First, then--our little street, with an arrow pointing to our townhouse.
We're so thankful for covered parking--no need to get 2nd-degree burns from your sun-exposed steering wheel...And I love looking at palm trees...on 'our' street! Gambel quail and mourning doves run across the pavement almost every morning, along with the occasional jackrabbit...



...the POOL! with a view of the Santa Catalina montains beyond the palo verde trees! and almost no one else uses it! and it's right next door! (sorry for all the exclamation points, but come on--we can't help being excited!)


Here's our little front patio. We've had hummingbirds every morning--southern Arizona is one of the 'hummingbird capitals' of the birding-world, evidently...

And here are the beginnings of a 'garden'...a tomato plant, basil, a jalapeño, some mint, lavender, rosemary, geraniums, thyme, oregano...it's too hot right now for cilantro, but we almost have the makings for salsa...

And on the side, we have a lemon and an orange-tree--our neighbor said that our orange tree produces good fruit--just have to make sure to water it if you want juicy citrus--should be ready in September, and if the winter is not too cold, there's another crop in March!

...looking out our front door...

And lastly, I had to include our last photo taken from the balcony of our place in WA, the night before we moved--our last Rainier sunset, July 3rd, 2007...

...desert mountain sunsets to come...

48 hours.

We've been here for 48 hours now.
No phone at home yet, so we found a café with free wi-fi--a nice break from the endless errand-running--toilet paper, a tomato plant for our little yard (!), plates to eat on, etc. etc...

We've been surprised by how green Tucson is in mid-summer. The high today will only be 95--nice for us, since the week before we arrived, it was up to 110...

So...to re-cap the road-trip up to this past Tuesday when we got to Tucson...

Sunday morning, when I last wrote, we were just about to go to the Steinbeck museum in Salinas. Appropriately enough for farming/wine country, there was a little wine-tasting in the lobby. The museum reminded me of how much I loved reading Steinbeck as a high-school student, and how much I have yet to read...
But knowing how much Steinbeck cared about public issues, I wonder what he would be writing about today--instead of chronicling the odyssey of the Joad family in search of work in California, would he be writing of the Jiménez family in search of work north of the border?
Truly--'las uvas de la ira'...

From Salinas, a drive through seemingly endless fields and vineyards, southward, stopping for lunch in the small town of Soledad. In a strip-mall off Highway 101, we found a place serving a weekend-special of 'birria'--Mexican goat-stew! mmm-mmm. A few miles away, we stopped for a few minutes at the restored Soledad mission--one of the smaller missions set up in the 1780's, now surrounded by a rose-garden, olive grove, and parallel rows of lettuce leading to the vineyars on the hillsides beyond...

That night, we stayed in Solvang--the kitschy-but-not-too-tacky 'Danish' town at the head of the Santa Ynez valley wine-country. I wonder how many of these 'European' theme-towns exist in the States? Leavenworth, WA...Helen, GA...what else? The country road from Solvang back to the highway leads through an area called Los Olivos--very reminiscent in climate and landscape of the south of France...

Monday morning, then, we drove down the Santa Ynez valley, and then up and into fogs and clouds before descending into Santa Barbara and heading towards San Diego. After seemingly endless 12-lane interstates full of aggression in L.A. and Long Beach, we took a break at the San Juan Capistrano mission--it's built right in the middle of town, so it's surreal to be in a garden planted in the 1770's and look beyond the wall at a Starbucks sign. The mission is famous for its resident swallows that return to nest, almost on schedule, every year, from their migrations to Argentina...Also, it was the first place on the West Coast where the first grapes were planted, where metal was smelted--up until then California was literally still a Stone Age society...so much can change in just two centures...

Monday evening--dinner with old friends in San Diego (thank you thank you thank you, J. & M!) and a few hours of sleep before heading on the road at 4 a.m. Tuesday to cross the desert before it got too hot.

The mountains east of San Diego are a dreamscape of huge boulders piled by titan forces who knows when or how...Then you head to below sea-level at El Centro, where we breakfasted at a completely Spanish-speaking Denny's...Over through Yuma, and several border-patrol roadblocks on the freeway (strange to be driving on the 'freeway' and be stopped multiple times).

About a third of the way between Yuma and Tucson, on I-10, is a tourist-trap called Dateland, named, appropriately enough, for a grove of palms planted back in the 1920's. "World-famous date milkshakes" the signs proclaim for miles...Downright tasty! Totally worth the stop...
While we took a stretching break, sipping on the shake under the shade of the date-palms, we heard birds--and we realized that they're the same as the birds that woke us up like clockwork in Nicaragua! "Zanates" or "great-tailed grackles"...music of 'home' now...

Last night, we finally were able to take advantage of the pool and hot-tub adjacent to our townhome. Because it's a quiet private neighborhood, and the pool access is only for the residents of our small complex, we had the place to ourselves! To look up at the first twilight stars, with summer lightning flashing far to the northeast, beyond the Santa Catalina mountains, while alternately soaking in cool and hot--so so relaxing, and such a realization--we LIVE here now--not on vacation, not going to be on the road all day to sleep in another motel, our birds no longer have to be tucked in the backseat of the car all-day--we're home!

1902 miles from last Wednesday, here we are.