Fitz's opinion: A collection of David Fitzsimmons' 2021 columns
- Updated
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Tomorrow’s the Fourth here and sure as drought we Tucsonans will appreciate the fireworks that will bring us together with oohs and aahs, followed by the inspirational brush fires.
We may even find time to think fondly of our Founders for a second or two, in spite of their dithering on human bondage, because, at the very least, renouncing the rule of monarchs and granting ourselves the right to free expression, the task of perfecting our very own union, and the freedom to be Unitarians, Scientologists, Southern Baptists, Buddhists, Hassidic Jews or even a heathen, damned to perdition, is a fairly good bargain worth toasting.
Independence Day falls on Sunday this year, meaning every patriot in the Old Pueblo will wake to the sound of roosters crowing followed by church bells clanging, beckoning our neighbors to their haciendas of worship in every barrio and burb.
Mine eyes have seen the Glory and we’ll hear it down the street and across our valley, the soft murmurs of We standing together singing hymns of praise and “God Bless America.” We’ll pray for our Country and beseech our Gods for rain. E Pluribus Unum, pax vobiscum.
We’ll light sparklers on our porch and dine on the all-American cuisine of jackfruit tacos, pho, veggie burgers, Sonoran hot dogs, paletas and mochi ice cream balls, because walking out the mailbox to post old glory on the fencepost one can build up an astronomical gastronomical appetite.
In 1776 my great-great-great-great-great grandpa, Isham Brown, “By profession a cultivator of the earth,” enlisted in America’s revolutionary Continental Army and served in Virginia’s 4th Regiment, dodging musket balls at Princeton, engaging Lord Cornwallis’ redcoats, and fighting with General Washington at Germantown, Brandywine, Trenton and Valley Forge only to return home to lose his farm, divide the dirt among his three daughters and move on, as we Americans always do.
Isham lived to be 89, long enough to see his colony become a free democratic republic. The old revolutionary’s bones rest in Missouri shade, beneath a modest headstone next to his patient bride, Martha.
Isham’s great-great-grandkid, James, ended up in the Civil War, fighting to preserve the Union that Isham fought to create, enlisting on the right side of history to defend his nation from the same forces of division we fight today.
Grandpa Dick served in the First World War as a Dough Boy, a term that perplexed this child. Did he serve in the Pillsbury army under General Poppin’ Fresh or was the old coot a Yank who fought to end all wars, machine gunned and mustard gassed for his troubles? “Lift your pants’ legs, Grandpa! Show us the scars from the bullets,” I’d beg.
My great aunt’s boy, Kenneth, a barnstorming crop-duster turned ace, was shot down in the First World War over France, fueling her pilgrim’s pride and forever breaking her heart.
The Master Sergeant never spoke of Pearl Harbor. When asked about what he witnessed there on December 7th, Pop would just shake his head. “We gave them democracy,” he’d say.
Decades ago, reading a history of D-Day, I came across a hapless Captain Fitzsimmons, no relation, who was among the casualties when the ramp of his Normandy-bound landing craft dropped and Nazi bullets strafed every would-be liberator.
Three years ago I lied, claiming to be related to my namesake, when a French travel host insisted on thanking me for my country’s sacrifice after his first visit to Normandy. Stunned, humbled and proud I thanked him for Lafayette, who made our defeat of the British possible, the Statue of Liberty, a lovely housewarming gift and for Brigitte Bardot. “Something worth dying for,” the Master Sergeant would say.
I’ve been privileged to stand where a King was defeated at Yorktown, where the Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox and where King had a Dream, confident the moral arc of our nation still bends to better days.
Tomorrow we’ll crank up “Born in the USA,” watch the sky overhead light up with fireworks and wish America Feliz Cumpleaños. We’ll toast the revolution of 1776, which was over before our mission, San Xavier del Bac, was finished.
We’ll celebrate those who risked it all for an America-yet-to-be, revolutionaries who swore they’d kneel before no man, dedicated to the yet-to-be realized ideal: Whether immigrant, native, pauper or king, we, in our humble desert village, are each other’s equal, a radical proposition to celebrate long after the pyrotechnics and the brush fires on Sentinel Peak are extinguished.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I waved my hand over the faucet and waited for the water to trickle into my glass. The taste left something to be desired. “Water is water,” I thought.
I’ve seen the videos from the 20th century. In one an old man said, “The water was better when I was a kid. Back then it was pure aquifer,” as if describing a fine vintage champagne so delicious, so prized, no one could imagine it.
We couldn’t imagine seeing our grandchildren again yet they were coming.
I looked out my kitchen window and admired our zen garden. Beyond our wall the sea of shade sails and solar panels shimmered. In the distance the bleached barren mountains baked in their perpetual haze. Momma used to say, “I swear, it’ll rain diamonds before it rains actual water here.”
Earlier I took a walk around the neighborhood, inspecting the shade cast by the ever present canopy of sunscreen sails and solar panels that cover the length of every footpath here. As electric vehicles whirred past I noticed the only other sound I heard was the hum of the carbon collectors.
What must it have been like to hear a mourning dove? I’d been told it was a lush desert, alive with wildlife and even, on some occasions, wildflowers. No one I know has ever seen a wildflower. Not here.
We’ve seen the holograms of the bobcats, tortoises and javelina that once lived here. Too bad what happened. The electric charging station down the street has a quail design on it, a tribute to the departed, I guess.
I was born long after the die-offs. Not even creosote could survive the Great Drought coupled with the Great Warming. Wildfires took the junipers and chaparral. Water became so precious in the last century we couldn’t even share it with the saguaros that withered and fell.
A convoy of driverless tankers, filled with desalinated water from the Sea of Cortez, rolled past. When I saw the 1,000-foot-high salt dunes near the desalination plant in Puerto Peñasco for the first time I wondered if this was what the Rockies looked like back when snow fell in the lower 48.
De-Sal. Twice the cost, half the taste. Water is not always water.
Above me an elegant shuttle, bound for Tucson’s aging spaceport, banked over the barren Catalinas, ferrying hydro-archaeologists back home from a water conference on Mars.
That’s my field. I took that flight many times myself. Every time we passed over Hoover Dam, the antiquated relic, the long abandoned 726-foot wall dividing sand from sand, I wondered why our ancestors were so foolish, so blind.
I was always happy to return to Tucson, a desert metropolis thriving beneath a vast patchwork quilt of thousands of solar rectangles and triangular sails, cooling towers and water collectors, completely surrounded by dunes, dunes and more dunes, linked to distant communities by road and rail snaking to the north, west, south and east beneath elevated ribbons of the omnipresent solar collectors casting welcome shade.
Soon the kids will be here. I set my glass of De-Sal on the counter. On our kitchen window sill I keep my prized pottery shards. My favorite shard, a small beige triangle, was once part of a large water jug made by an Indigenous potter, long ago, back when Tucson was an Eden. And a river flowed.
Imagine that.
I read that it snowed here. More than once.
Imagine that!
I licked my thumb and used the spit to dab the shard and darken the pale red jagged line that represented flowing water. By the 13th century the Great Drought drove the Hohokam away.
In the 21st century the Great Mega-Drought came along with a vengeance, fueled by climate change, denial and an insatiable thirst for profit that led our ancestors to encourage growth even as the desert began to dry and die around us.
Decades later, refugees from warming in the south overwhelmed our desert city. There’s only so much water in the canteen. Restrict your population size or perish.
Thanks to today’s blistering sandstorm, our kids will begin their day with a beautiful crimson sunset. They’re coming for our 400th Annual All-Souls’ Procession set to begin at 3 a.m. Here’s hoping they’re rested and ready for the night ahead. Adapting to siesta culture was easy when I was kid, sleeping the endless hot days away, rising at sunset to attend school.
Like our Chamber of Commerce says, “Every night Tucson comes to life as the nocturnals rise to work or play beneath their neon.” They don’t mention water, the lack of it or the price of it.
One adapts. Water is water. The kids will be here soon. Hope they like the weather.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Years ago I hiked into Aravaipa Canyon with my small daughter. As I sat in the shade of a cottonwood, carving apples for our picnic I watched her play and splash in the stream that trickled past. I closed my eyes and memorized the sublime moment, serenaded by songbirds in the trees and little Sarah’s laughter.
I gave this decades-old expedition no thought until the recent anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.
In 1921 a mob of racist whites in Tulsa, Oklahoma, believed a big lie, and stormed a thriving Black community, burned 1,200 homes, killed hundreds of Black Americans and evaded justice.
After college I lived a short while in Oklahoma, making graphics for The Daily Oklahoman. I was repelled by the persistent racism and de facto segregation I found there. Generations after the Tulsa Massacre, the racist horror was erased from memory by the white citizenry, much like one might deny an Insurrection.
I fled Oklahoma City to work in Virginia where this Westerner learned many white Americans possess a gift for selective memory. Much to my surprise I learned the Civil War began yesterday, not 1861. Old times there are not forgotten, do not look away, Dixieland. The very mention of Lincoln among some could earn me a Confederate sabers-drawn glare.
A Westerner, I was self-righteous about my superior tolerant views on race, shaped by growing up in integrated housing on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and then in an integrated multicultural Tucson neighborhood.
In Aravaipa Canyon my little girl and I didn’t see many people, only scampering coatimundis and skittish mule deer. As we followed the creek up the lush narrow canyon I did not tell her it was a haunted place.
I should have taught her to memorize the year 1871.
At the time Chiricauhua Apaches had been battling settlers, stage drivers, couriers and ranchers in the territory for decades. Tales of torture and constant carnage fed the spirit of vengeance festering in the saloons of Tucson.
Many whites felt betrayed by the decision of the U.S. Army at Camp Grant to broker peace with the Aravaipa Apache, a different band of Apaches. Under Chief Eskiminzin they were now living in relative peace under the promised protection of the feds, in the idyllic canyon some 70 miles north of the Catalinas where I once watched my daughter skip stones.
Truth didn’t matter. The law didn’t matter. To hell with President Grant.
Tucsonans John Wasson, Charles Etchells, William Oury, Sidney DeLong, James Lee and the Elias brothers took action, leading a mob of Mexican vigilantes and club-wielding Tohono O’Odham on a three-day expedition to Aravaipa Canyon to address the Apache problem with madness.
At sunrise the mob entered the canyon and slaughtered, mutilated and scalped 136 Aravaipa Apache women and children. Only eight were men. The intended victims, the men, were away from their families, hunting.
John Wasson, editor of the Arizona Citizen, had fanned the flames of hatred for the “worthless” troops at Camp Grant and called for the end of the “savage” Apaches. Our highest peak in the Tucson Mountains is named after after the man, a fitting honor, I assume, for mass murderers.
Sam Hughes was sorry he couldn’t be there with his pals for the slaughter but provided the mob with carbine rifles, water and supplies. Lee and Oury had parks and streets named after them.
What sounds startled the Apache mothers awake that morning? The thumps of bludgeoned skulls? The crack of Sam Hughes’ rifles? The shrieks of the mothers as their babes were torn from them and, according to eyewitnesses, dismembered?
Their village was leveled. Twenty-eight small orphans were taken by the mob as slaves.
President Grant was horrified.
A jury in Tucson was not horrified, judging their fellow Tucsonans to be as free of guilt as the fine white citizens of Tulsa in ’21. Weeks later the ringleaders ran for office and won every seat from mayor down. Elias was elected dogcatcher.
Cochise and Geronimo rose up with a vengeance. After years of war the various Apache bands were defeated and relocated to the San Carlos Reservation, where today they are fighting a copper-mining corporation aching to carve the largest mine in America into their sacred land, their Mount Sinai, their Holy Temple Mount, at their revered Oak Flats.
Many of the Apaches resisting this desecration are descendants of the relocated survivors of the massacre.
In the canyon where the Aravaipa and Pinal Apache once lived visitors can listen to the soothing creek and escape the troubles of this world. But one cannot escape history.
Listen with an open heart to the wind rustling the cottonwoods and you can hear the ghosts of 1871 asking only to be remembered.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
It was early May when I got a surprising email regarding the matter of my lineage. Usually this genre of letter is from an angry reader. Like the reader who questioned my pedigree. ”Was your family tree a shrub?” Or the reader who questioned my birth. “Did your parents have any children who lived?” My favorite question from such readers? “Who do you think you are?”
Who do I think I am?
I have no clue.
Dad was an orphan. Mom fled her abusive family during the Depression. Estranged from their bloodlines, their family was a quilt of friends. I filled in the blanks, imagining my ancestors to be the peasants you saw in Hollywood epics that met their fates in chains, dungeons and coliseums. Just another extra among a cast of thousands, a nameless nobody left off the credits, forgotten by history.
And then this extraordinary email arrived. The writer thanked me for my columns and cartoons and then surprised me with an offer: “I would be delighted to research your ancestry. For free, of course, as a thank-you gift to you.”
How could I say, “No”? I told my kind genealogist what I knew. Undaunted, he began digging.
My kind genealogist found names. And links and graves and enlistment notices and military records and census data. Every day I’d open my email wondering who I was going to meet next.
My kind genealogist returned a procession of heretofore unknown great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, abducted by death, back into the world.
I won’t bore you with names, dates or pictures. We all have a similar rogue’s gallery. And please don’t reach for your faded pictures, either. I don’t care what your great-great-grand father looked like unless he was the Elephant Man. It’s exhausting poring over the old sepia portraits of another’s clan and pretending to be very, very, very interested. What can you say? “Look at that! You have your great-great-grandfather’s sepia-colored eyes.” Or “She certainly is beautiful, by 18th century standards.” Or “Which great uncle did the old battle ax poison?”
My kind genealogist emailed me a pedigree chart, confirming I was that most aristocratic of all American breeds, a mixed-breed mutt, a glorious mongrel.
I never cared for purebreds. Nothing but trouble and dim as they come.
How can I thank my kind genealogist?
Ellen said, “It would be impossible to thank him.” She’s right. How do you thank a benevolent detective who finds stories of your kin from the decks of sailing ships and the backs of conestogas?
“One of your ancestors was in the Civil War.”
“Which side?!” In 2021 this matters.
“Union. Here’s his picture.” I looked into the former private’s eyes and promised to continue his fight to preserve our Union.
I was struck by how simultaneously meaningful, and meaningless, it all was. I wondered about their lives, studying their stern, stoic faces for clues and found their familiar eyes revealed little save for the harsh nature of their lives as immigrants, soldiers, farmers, journalists, laborers, civil servants and pioneers.
What will our great-great-grandchildren wonder when they see images of us?
I doubt they’ll be able to divine from looking at a picture of me and my older brother Bob together, that he patiently taught me to walk when I was a toddler, to love poetry when I was a teenager, to honor service to our nation when he was in Vietnam and to laugh at the absurdities of growing old together.
Studying them one can become prideful, reveling in the history of their extraordinary persistence, grit and resilience, it’s easy to flatter yourself and believe you are the inheritor of your ancestor’s more heroic traits.
When Bob, my last surviving sibling, left the world mere weeks ago, I assumed the rank of patriarch and felt the honorable burden of being the sole caretaker of my family’s stories. I felt the loneliness of a generation drifting inexorably into history where we all will slumber until we are discovered by kind genealogists in the future who will tell our stories.
Next time I’m asked, “Who do you think you are?” I will argue I am more than family histories over which I have no control. I am the sum of the people I love. As surely as I am the sum of my immigrant and pioneer ancestors I am the sum of a laughing brother on his knees holding out his arms encouraging me to take my first step.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
When the weather wizards on TV declare “Memorial Day is the beginning of summer,” we Tucsonans smile, roll our eyes and politely nod because we know a season can’t “begin” if it never ends, and as sure as there are death and potholes any fool can see summer never ends. Winter here is, at best, a visiting breeze, a fraud, a seasonal sham, a meteorological hoax — and autumn? A rumor to be forgotten.
We’re good humored about summer because exposure to the sun has baked our brains into tiny charred maniacal raisins. For laughs, some raisin-brained Tucsonans have been know to put on sweaters in January. We keep our sweaters next to our galoshes and ice scrapers in our entryway closets because, like we tell every newcomer, “you never know. We could get a blizzard.”
Last Blizzard I got was at a Dairy Queen in Gila Bend in July of 1973.
Any summer dweller worth his sunscreen who hears the radio say “Tucson hit the 100-degree mark today” will tell you Tucson doesn’t “hit” the “100-degree mark” as much as it hits us, whomps us good, landing like an acme anvil on our Wiley Coyote heads. Before you can say “heatstroke”, as Yosemite Sam would say, our “biscuits are burning.”
When the obvious is announced, “Tucson is heading into triple digits,” we hold our defiant single-digit response up to the sun and carry on. Because we like summer. We like the heat. We like having raisin brains.
“We’ll be seeing above-normal temperatures again,” says the weather wizard. Really? Isn’t that every daily headline for the foreseeable future?
“ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AGAIN,
JUST LIKE YESTERDAY AND YEAR BEFORE,
GLOBAL WARMING SUSPECTED”
When visitors say, “It’s hot as hell here” I tell them they could not be more wrong. It’s hotter. Which is why we Tucsonans have little climatological apprehension about ending up in hell, much to the disappointment of our moral superiors.
“This is hell?”
“Welcome, sinner, to your eternal torment.”
“Can someone turn down the AC? I’m chilly.”
“What?”
“‘It’s chilly. I’m from Tucson. Trust me, this is not hot. Not ‘summer’ hot.”
“Silence, Foul Pestilence! No place is hotter than hell!”
“Try Speedway and Country Club in a month. I’m not even breaking a sweat here. Is it this cool year-round?”
“Into the ‘Lake of Fire’ with you!”
“Oooh. A ‘Lake of Fire’. Let me tell you about Tucsonans, lobster boy. We love heat. We like to soak in flaming hot tubs filled with salsa. We gulp down jalapeño peppers like grapes, breathe fire and complain that it’s not hot enough in June. Tell your manager, what’s his name, ‘Lucy’—”
“Lu-ci-fer.”
“Well, you tell Lucifer I’m not impressed. What you call ‘hot’ we Tucsonans would call ‘brisk.’ Like a pleasant sunset in July. My friends back home’ll be jealous! Look. I got goosebumps!”
“Taste my branding iron!”
“Been there, done that. Summer of 2019. I sat right down on my white hot seatbelt buckle which I’d left sitting there in the sun when I got out of my truck to pick up a solar-powered sauna in June . Scarred my biscuits. Want to see?”
“No. You’re all checked in. Go.”
“Great. I’m still freezing here, pal. You got a sweater I could borrow?”
“Next, please.”
“Don’t you keep any sweaters around, just in case? I’ll bet down here you keep them where all my friends back up in Tucson keep their mittens and their ice scrapers. Hall closet, right?”
“Our gift shop carries sweaters. They come in burlap, steel wool. Next to the ‘down’ escalators. They also carry jalapeño chewing gum, toy pitchforks, rubber snowballs and the foulest of abominations, ‘Best Puns of 2020.’”
“Got any hot cocoa? I’m catching a cold. I am shivering.”
“Check out the lava lamps. Real lava! Nothing says ‘Hello from hell’ like a red-hot lava lamp.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Too late.”
“Got any postcards that say ‘Hell! Compared to Tucson in June, It’s Heaven’?”
“Be on your way! Heed the wails of the condemned burning in our fiery depths!”
“Is that what I’m hearing? A bunch of whiners crying about a little heat? Who are they? Heathens from Wisconsin? Unitarians from Seattle? Big babies.”
We good-humored Tucsonans are a hardy people, our souls are heated and hammered into a strong shape by the fierce forge of summer. We apply our sunscreen with a paint roller and believe “that which does not incinerate us makes us stronger.” When the sidewalks roll up and the streets are empty we raisin-brained summer-loving saps will savor our due, the slowing of life’s pace. And I, in the shade of my porch, will enjoy my lava lamp and dream of blizzards in Gila Bend.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Late last summer I turned 65. To celebrate I chained a bench to the mesquite tree in our front yard, raked gravel, yelled at a “punk” javelina to get off my dead lawn, powerlifted a Sonoran hot dog and sprained my entire body.
Aging is not for the old. I noticed this when I started going to lunch with my fellow 60-plus geezers. All we talk about are death and disease. I don’t remember talking about death and disease quite so much when I was 6 at lunch in the cafeteria.
“Did you hear? Tommy. Skinned his knee.”
“No. How old was he? Four? Pablo had an asthma attack!”
“Poor Pablo. Jimmy’s in the hospital.”
“No! Didn’t he just turn 5? So young! What was it?”
“Tonsils.”
“Tonsils are the first to go.”
“I lost a tooth last week. Just fell out!”
“Joey fell. That’s what I heard. Off his bike. Frankie how’s your pee-pee?”
“Doc said it’s all good. Yours?”
“It’s good. I had a good No. 2 this morning.”
“Me, too!”
“Me, too! Let’s order.”
This is how we grown men talk.
“In whose name is your reservation?”
“Prostate Roundtable.”
Today’s special will be Charlie’s Bursitis with a side of Buck’s Melanoma. The Soup? Carlos’ Colitis. And for dessert: Paul’s Prostate Numbers.
“Can I bring you gentlemen anything? Medicare supplemental plans? Burial insurance? Brochures from the Neptune Society?”
“I’ll have the Metamucil cocktail. Make it dirty with two ibuprofen.”
“Your age is just a number,” says Charlie. Uh huh. Try telling the cop who asks you if you know how fast you were going: ”Officer, a number is just a number.” Try telling St. Peter at the Pearly Gates when he asks you if you knew how high your PSA was: “A number is just a number.”
“I can’t stop doing the math,” said Carlos. “In 20 years I’ll be 85. If I stop sinning and enjoying my life now, I figure I’ll be able to not enjoy the decades of life that I have left — in good health.”
“What? How many Metamucil cocktails have you had?”
The waiter asks if we want bread. We looked at each other as if the evil temptress asked us if we wanted carbs, calories, sugar and premature death due to freshly baked gastronomical pleasure. Carlos caved.
As we dine we turn on each other. “Buck, is it true you’re so old Coronado went to a high school named after you?”
“Henry, I hear you’re so old Doc Holliday gave you your first colonoscopy.” Colon health is our favorite lunchtime topic while eating.
“Yup. He used laudanum and a drill from the Copper Queen Mine. Fitz here can remember when Old Tucson was called New Tucson. Weren’t you here when Reid Park was Jurassic Park?“
We’re comfortable in our own skins. I am. For one thing it’s a loose fit at my age.
Buck told us about his favorite new dispensary, Orthopedica. “They got strains like Scooter, Old Spice, Mellow Yoda, White Light and Medicare Plan THC. A mortician friend told me so many seniors have weed cards that he always masks up during cremations to avoid the contact high.”
I love my friends’ stories but I gotta go home, check the mail and forward the cremation flyers to the estate planners. With our summer heat who needs a cremation plan? When I go, leave me on a bus stop in July so the sun can incinerate me into Old Pueblo powder. Let a passing haboob carry my ashes away.
Pete told us about his tour a new assisted living facility-slash-casino. Their slogan: “Every day’s a crapshoot for our residents.”
“I told my wife, ‘If I’m ever incapacitated pull the plug. And make it look like an accident. I wouldn’t want you to get blamed.’”
Henry asked, “What did she say?”
“Don’t worry. No one would ever blame me.”
Charlie told us about the free “Intro to Medicare“ class he took at the Pima Council On Aging. “I learned there are 4,788,271,556 Medicare plans. There’s Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan DDT, Plan STP, Plan ZZTop and for boomers, Plan CBD.”
“Time to go. Good lunch, fellas. Good luck with your probes this week. Your EDs, STDs and EKGs. Love you guys.”
On my way out Henry said, ”I was looking at myself in the mirror when I was surprised to see my father’s face staring back at me.”
“Are you sure it was your dad’s face?”
“I’d recognize it anywhere. Stray nostril hairs. Long as kitty whiskers. Neck like a tortoise. That’s him. I’m as old as my dad. It’s not possible. Can’t be me. I’m still 7 years old between the ears.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I hear tonsils are the first to go.”
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Feeling good about the recount up there in Maricopa County, I drove my pickup into town. Larry Liberty, 1776 on your AM dial, was talking about the tyranny of Arizona’s rigged election, how it gave us Sleepy-Joe-Stalin-Biden, Barack-Hussein-Obama’s-Hand-Puppet, and how we got to keep fighting “the tyranny of socialism, and the transgenderfication of our children, by supporting the Cyber Ninjas hunting for Chinese bamboo fibers among the ballots with specially trained bamboo-sniffing panda bears.”
They’re so serious they’re wearing lab coats and they even called in the “Amazing Kreskin of Apache Junction” to help.
I was riveted!
And then I had to hit the brakes.
A school bus, driving in front of me had stopped, right there, in the middle of traffic and stuck a big old stop sign out the left side and everybody stopped. For the first time in my life, I saw the tyranny of the deep state’s mind control right there plain as day. Why should my right or anyone’s right to drive freely be infringed by some “government school” bus coddling their nanny-state socialist day-care minions just so they won’t have to “dodge” drivers enjoying the pedal-to-the-metal blessings of freedom and liberty?
Every useful idiot in the herd did what sheep always do. They all stopped and bowed down to the Deep State! Even the ones on the other side of the street!
I was pretty sure those so-called “kids” were “crisis actors” who’d just come from rehearsing some phony red flag mass shooting to take away our guns. One flipped me off.
I honked, rolled down my window and hollered, “Drive free or die!”
Sitting there fuming, I listened to Larry Liberty talk about the Lamestream Media’s plot to undermine the vote audit up there in Phoenix by insisting on “observing the process.” How can we get to the truth if everyone insists on watching?
Kids kept getting off the bus and I just got madder than Paul Gosar at a diversity workshop. I cranked back my sunroof, stood up and shouted at the cars and trucks around me, “This is tyranny, people! Rise up!”
I honked at the bus again. Still more kids got off. Back when America was great, no one had to stop for anything. Dodging traffic made America great. Not this. Not the tyranny of the nanny state run by the vote cheaters.
I yelled at the kids wearing masks.“Masks are tyranny! Free the face!” The liberal stooge in the Prius behind me glared at me like she was Nancy Pelosi herself, shooting her hate-filled laser eyes right through me. A guy in the Mazda next to me threatened to free my nose from my face! One of the brats took a video of me hollering.
Sheep. Suckers. Fools. Our guy won.
I’d spritz bear spray into both my eyeballs for that man. You can’t talk sense to the left. They’re all haters.
The bus driver pulled his fascist stop sign back in, killed the flashing lights and finally freed us from slavery. I honked in celebration, and happy to leave the herd behind, floored it to freedom.
Larry Liberty said the “Stop the Steal” vote counters in Maricopa County were “looking into the claim by Marjorie Taylor-Greenjeans, a psychic from Safford, that she’d seen Israeli spies printing up exactly 666,000 fake Biden ballots in a vision.” The top auditor said, “The ‘Uri Geller of Glendale’ is on it, using his powerful mind to detect any matzo flour in the ballots.”
The truth will come out.
For luck I touched my AK-47 and my slightly used “Boogaloo Model 1984 Insurrection Pitchfork” on my gun rack. Good things to have if the thought police tried to drag me to some “Re-education Concentration Camp” down by the university.
I graduated from good old Trump U with a major in freedom and I’m smart enough to know that our Cyber-Samurai-Bamboo-Sniffers are searching for the truth using every technology available, including panda bear robots and the finest Ouija boards, and sure as Liz Cheney’s a traitor they’ll find the proof we knew was there all along, that Donald Trump is still our president.
That man taught me to see the tyranny everywhere.
Like what I saw later on, up the road a ways. That was the first time I’d ever seen a stop sign for what it was: a faceless oppressive dictator infringing my right to move about freely. And they’re on every corner! How much tyranny can a free people endure? When will the truth come out of Maricopa County and set us free?
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On a recent warm afternoon I stood in my desert xeriscape among the scarlet, canary yellow and coral pink blossoms of my fairy dusters, brittle bushes and aloes, enjoying the fruits of my labor in my desert Eden when I noticed a multitude of bees laboring about me, in servitude to some distant Queen, probing the floral trumpets, barnstorming my fields of Sonoran ambrosia, buzzing, humming and whirring, a defiant sign that life buzzes on in this season of death and drought.
Later, busying myself at my garden work bench by our shed I heard a humming thrum overhead.
Hmm.
I looked up to see a hive under construction beneath the eave directly above me, a white wax palace of thousands of hexagons, teeming with the very bees my garden had lured here.
I was mesmerized by the worker bees zooming around me, some returning with news of untapped liquid gold while others ferried bounty to her Majesty’s white castle.
I retreated for caution’s sake, vowing I’d move this hive without killing the industrious homesteaders.
All worker-bees are female and all drones are male and of course the males are louts. They don’t harvest, build, do bee dishes or throw out the bee trash.
Lacking stingers, they just do one thing. They make baby bees with the Queen.
All a drone has to do is call up a little Barry White, buzz sweet nothings in the Queen’s ear, do the DNA deed, lose his bee-hood and die a legendary “Father of the Bee Nation” until the next drone in line asks Alexa to play Lou Rawls and the ritual is repeated until the Queen retires to enjoy her 1,798,018,000 Mother’s Day cards that arrive every May, around this time of year.
Q-Anon disciples believe drones are flown remotely by 3-inch high Air Force drone pilots working secretly in a shoebox somewhere in Roswell. Doesn’t sound right to me.
Backing away from the hive I came eye to eye with an impatient bee buzzing at me to get out of her way. “I have a Queen to serve, you knave.”
That afternoon I found their savior, Monica Miksa-King, a third-generation beekeeper, online. Monica relocates bees alive and reconstructs their hive at her honey farm out by Three Points.
When word spread Monica was coming it created quite a buzz among the bees. Past-president and current vice-president of the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association, Monica’s a scholarly ally of bees, having taught, written and spoken about bees from here to Bisbee and beyond. I’d say she’s the bee all and end all of bees.
Arriving the following dusk, petite sunny-faced Monica hopped down from her working truck and asked, “Where are they?” I showed her. She sized up the situation, grabbed her gear, donned her bee hat, ascended my ladder and began slowly, carefully, gently vacuuming every bee into her portable hive box, a sort of hive away from home.
“Want to hold a drone?” She handed me down a handful of the little Romeos. “They can’t sting you.” Holding the irritated slackers buzzing inside my cupped hands took me back to when I was 10 on my uncle’s strawberry farm catching fireflies.
“Want some honey?” Finishing up, Monica had set aside a few lustrous white chunks of the dissembled hive, glistening with honey, in a bowl for Ellen and me. Unashamed to behave like Winnie the Pooh in sandals I greedily scooped up a paw full of dripping honeycomb and stuffed it into my mouth, declaring this glorious sweet moment would be worth the diabetic coma. It was.
Monica kept most of the hive segments to reconstruct their new hive back home.
“Want to see the Queen?” Monica spotted the captive queen in her portable hive among her whirring minions. She was easy to find thanks to the telltale trail of thousands of tiny Mother’s Day cards. She looked weary of Barry White. I think she’d prefer a little BeeGees now and then.
After Monica packed up the bees, her bee suit and gear we sat and talked about climate change, pesticides, bee genetics, bee varieties, John Belushi, wild bees, why pollinators are so important, planting for pollinators, her bee hive haven and her deactivated — Lord knows why she has one — Titan 2 missile silo.
I drew a portrait of Monica surfing on a swarm of bees and gave it to her along with her very fair bee fee and our bedazzled gratitude. As she drove off into the night with her buzzing cargo back home to her hives, I wondered if I could be her agent. How about a reality show called “Bee Wrangler”?
I told Ellen it would generate plenty of buzz. “You do drone on.” Whoa, Ellen. That one stung.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I’m writing about abortion in Arizona today, a grim and grievous topic so if you’re hankering for a lighter subject check back next week when I’ll be writing arthritic knee slappers about turning 65.
This past Tuesday, or perhaps it was during the Inquisition, Gov. Doug Ducey, signed a law prohibiting abortions based on non-fatal genetic disorders and that’s just the beginning.
It goes further.
Docs can face prison time.
The remains must be cremated or buried.
The father has a say.
State university hospitals can’t do abortions.
And that fetus is as much a person as a corporation and thus shall be accorded all the civil rights you and I enjoy.
This ambitious effort was fed to our fine lawmakers, who love children, by the Center for Arizona Policy, a homegrown Christian lobby with an Evangelical edge.
They’re our anti-choice, anti-weed, anti-physician-assisted suicide, anti-Equal Rights Amendment and anti-LGBTQ Taliban cabal among the tumbleweeds. If they called for the stoning of harlots and sodomites at noon in Cardinals’ Stadium on a Tuesday our God-and-Christian-Lobby-fearing politicians would have a bill on Ducey’s desk by Monday.
Most Arizonans suspect that in spite of these prohibitions women will continue to seek abortions and that’s why we persist in believing they should be safe, legal and, for those who feel queasy about the procedure, rarer than rain puddles in June.
I have a thought about their measure demanding we properly bury or cremate fetal remains. This was important to our politicians who love children and who believe Arizona’s womenfolk need to be lectured on options, shown videos, told to wait and think it over and be reminded by their moral superiors abortion is a calamitous matter, because, well, they’re women and certain men know how womenfolk can lack moral instruction and be devoid of grief.
I don’t think this weak attempt by our politicians, who tell us they love children, to spark the Supreme Court into overturning Roe goes far enough. The proud backers of this bill are spinelessly tip-toeing around the logical conclusion of their fundamental premise, unlike one spunky Arizona politician who refuses to beat around the bush, an uncommon man who does not dilly-dally when it comes to abortion like his fellow weak-kneed, Christian lawmakers who, by the way, love children.
That man is State Rep. Walt Blackman, a fearless African-American Trumper from Snowflake who considers the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist group and belongs to the “Stop the Steal” tribe.
A Bronze Star veteran of Iraq, and a family man, Blackman’s profile excited my curiosity about his audacious and clear-eyed abortion proposal, what I call his “cut to the chase.”
Blackman fathered a bill in our legislature that would categorize abortion as first-degree premeditated murder. Unlike his fellow-elected, cowardly pro-life peers, I admire the courageous and honest clarity of his daring measure.
And what is Arizona’s ultimate penalty for willful, deliberate and premeditated homicide? Death. Now that’s a pro-life position that Arizonans can respect, a foundational beginning. Thank you, Representative Blackman, for your forthright conviction.
But you’re not taking it far enough. Not for Arizona, a state that claims to love our children and care so deeply for their welfare.
Think big and brave, Arizona lawmakers. Designate every private female citizen’s uterus as public property, making womenfolk’s reproductive organs the domain of this state, subject to random inspection, and strict regulation by their devout moral superiors.
And in the name of crime prevention, your uterus should be subject to cavity searches for illegal contraceptives that your betters say kill the unborn.
Be bold. If you believe it’s murder why back half measures?
Pack Arizona’s Death Row with mothers of all ages. By the hundreds. After putting children in cages this should be breeze. Everyone who aids and abets an abortion should be held, tried, convicted and face a certain death sentence.
That includes Aunt Nelly, Doc Jones, Nurse Maria, Sally the Receptionist and Jimmy the Boyfriend, too. One to a cell. Murderers all.
I was surprised Attorney General Mark Brnovich didn’t back Blackman’s bill. He’s so pro-life he’s itching to pump poison into the veins of the living on Death Row. Fill those soon-to-be vacant cells. Deter folks from abortion by making an example of the convicted.
Just because prohibitions and deterrence are never effective at changing behavior is no reason not to enjoy a Godly crusade.
Pass a Mandatory Motherhood Act, compelling women to bear the fruit of rape. Offer $1,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the conviction of any woman seeking an abortion. Triple our prisons budgets. Think big. Do it while you still hold office.
I’d wait until after next week, after Mother’s Day.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
In 1988 I was happily cartooning the notorious Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham. Ev was a racist extremist who believed conspiracy theories and benefited from them. I was certain we’d never see his ilk again. He was good daily copy and a joy to draw. Bats swooping in and out of his ears. Price tag dangling from his hairpiece.
Ev called Asian visitors “round eyes.” He canceled MLK Day and defended the use of the word “pickaninny.” A divinely empowered religious zealot he believed all sodomites had to get out of Dodge and he had no use for science. Ev famously answered a reporter with, “Don’t you ever ask me for a true statement again.”
What’s in our water?
Ev was Trump before Trump was Trump. Only our guy got found guilty. I remember thinking “That’s the last time Arizonans will ever elect a crazy wing nut like him to office.”
Is there something in our water?
Thirty years later, Arizona’s Grand Old Party is overrun with Evan Mechams. This old, old, old Arizonan would love to blame the voting retirees from Cantankerous, Ohio, Curmudgeon, Wisconsin, and Fox Snooze, Georgia.
But the truth it there is something in our water. And I know what it is. Conspiracy theories. We have billions of squiggling conspiracy theories in our water. Flooding our washes. Coursing in our aquifers.
Two cannibals, Nancy Pelosi and AOC told me this on George Soros yacht. We were at an antifa fish fry in Rocky Point.
Arizona has more disinformation peddlers than bin Laden had holes in his apartment. Opportunistic cynics willing to sink lower than Lake Mead feed this human thirst for simple answers to complex issues and their own personal thirst for power, graft and saps to grift.
Let’s examine some favorites.
Kelli Ward, head of Arizona’s Republican Party and farther out there than Pioneer 10, Voyager 1 and Glenn Beck, has been dissing her fellow Republican, Gov. Doug Ducey, because he’s not into recounting the 2020 ballots again.
Not after we had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir count those ballots out loud at the top of their lungs. Not after we had the hand count by Sesame Street’s “The Count” — using an abacus.
Ward’s fundraising email appeals are eye-catching.
“We’ve got to stop this from happening! Joe ‘Chain Gang’ Arpaio just tweeted that a white woman named Mamie Eisenhower was killed by a Mexican produce vendor living here illegally. With a casaba melon!”
Mecham would’ve sent her $20.
Then there’s the titans Arizona sends to Washington, D.C.
Congressman Paul Gosar for example. Six of his brothers and sisters and three household pets have publicly condemned Paul. He’s so disliked for his white supremacist views, the pet rat’s talking.
He was pushing the idea of a white nationalist “Anglo-Saxon Caucus” in Congress. Stir in white supremacist with a hint of QAnon. The man is Anglo Sax-Anon. Like the great white warriors of the 11th century, Gosar’s unable to learn about the history of civil rights in the 20th century, talk to Ev about the word pickaninny or read a room.
Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs is a big boy. Big on voting down COVID relief, dissing masks and blowing off Dr. Anthony Fauci. I believe Andy felt invulnerable because word on the street was the pandemic only affected human beings.
Down around our neck of the dunes we have state Rep. Mark Finchem, the Forrest Gump of the insurrection. Finchem was so giddy to be there he was tweeting insurrection selfies like a 14-year old girl at a Taylor Swift concert.
The Mossad and ISIS tell me he’s being watched by the deep state out of an abandoned Radio Shack in Apache Junction.
I should ghostwrite tweets for him. I wrote this one.
“Racist Black Lives Matter behind cancellation of Dukes of Hazzard. Cancel culture! Freedom! They’ll get my pitchfork, AR-15 and tiki torch when they pry ‘em from my dead cold fingers. Liberty!”
These are the science-denying titans who hold their breath while going past Casa Grande to avoid getting the Gila Bends.
Can you imagine the private conversations at their shindigs? Mecham would be welcomed like a savant and a prophet.
“When those Mexican-speaking Spanish radicals take over and Arizona becomes ‘Aztlan,’ then Saddlebrooke will be made into an internment camp for Caucasians who prefer mild salsa. I have undeniable proof Kyrsten Sinema is an anime-like being created when a UFO flown by Jewish persons struck a Buffalo Exchange in Scottsdale.”
“Tell us more, Ev.”
“Vaccine passports are a plot to intimidate people who can’t spell ‘Pfizer.’ I saw spaceships in the night sky over Winslow. And then out of nowhere. Jewish lasers. Global warming is a hoax perpetuated by Frigidaire. The missing Trump ballots are buried under ‘A’ Mountain in that hippie town.”
Evan Mecham won. He’s everywhere. Don’t drink the water.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Down at the Arroyo Cafe I shared a patio table and vaccination stories with Sour Frank and Lurlene. “I was blown away by the sight of all the volunteers at the UA’s pod. I asked an older volunteer why he was there. He said, ‘Like I told my grandkids, I served my country once, I’m happy to do it again.’ I was touched by his words. And his needle.”
Sour Frank wanted to needle Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus’ good fortune. “Last time a Democrat poached an Arizonan Obama plucked Gov. Janet Napolitano to be his Homeland Security Chief. We got Jan Brewer in the Governor’s seat.”
Lurlene huffed, “The Sarah Palin in ski pants who gave us SB 1070.”
I groaned. “Reminded me of the time the Master Sergeant traded in his ‘too flashy’ Mustang for a Dodge Dart that blew smoke and swerved right.”
Lurlene grinned. “Did you notice our chief was nominated by Biden to be the head of the Customs and Border Protection the same week a volcano blew in the Caribbean? And Hawaii’s Mauna Loa began quaking? It’s no coincidence. Seismic shifts are afoot.”
Rosa, carafe in hand, agreed. “Border Patrol and ICE are long overdue for a tectonic shakeup.”
From inside his cafe kitchen, Carlos shouted, “Magnus is the vato for the job! He stood up to politicians when they pushed policies that were counter-productive to effective community policing. Like a saguaro, amigos.”
Sour Frank rolled his eyes over his mask. “Whatever, Carlos. Magnus may not survive the politics waiting for him in Washington.”
I mentioned he should prepare for the experience by running through Cholla forests naked or into Mountain Lion dens wearing jackrabbit skins or…
Frank interrupted. “And if he’s approved he’ll get to lead thousands of pro-Trump Customs and Border Protection agents hostile to any ‘progressive’ reforms.”
Lurlene laughed at Sour Frank’s grim forecast. “Magnus can handle it. Anyone who’s survived summers in Tucson has already survived all the roasting, scorching and blistering the world can dish out.”
Frank fretted that Magnus once carried a protest sign agreeing Black Americans are human beings whose lives matter.
Lurlene thought this would matter only to “Hannity, Tucker and the senators who never got word from Appomattox that Dixie was to be forgotten.” Confederacy of dunces she called them.
Carlos said, “Chief Magnus’ challenge is easy. Develop skin thicker than a javelina’s hide and keep Liberty’s lamp lit.”
“Speaking of Sean Miller…” said Lurlene.
Perplexed, I asked, “Who?” I took a sip. “Name’s familiar.”
“The former winning coach of the University of Arizona Wildcat men’s basketball team.”
“Basketball. That’s the round orange ball, right?”
Sour Frank said I could not possibly be a Tucsonan. He asked me what I knew about Lute and I said Miller earned too much loot. “Not that Lute!”
“Oh, you mean the stringed medieval instrument?”
Sour Frank said, “Fitz, you are a heretic.”
And this heretic said, “Miller would easily find a job, particularly with his gift for remaining completely unaware of what his assistant coaches and recruiters were up to at all times. In college sports that kind of delegation and trust is an essential skill.”
Lurlene nodded. “I hope he returns to the Tonight Show to juggle basketballs again, particularly now that he’s mastered the ability as a coach to also turn vermillion and pop a neck vein at will.”
It was a natural progression from neck veins popping to the Reid Park Zoo controversy. The Arroyo Cafe crew had answers:
“Eliminate the zoo. Sell the stock to slaughterhouses, illicit wildlife traders and Third World pharmacists who deal in testicles and horns.”
Thanks, Very Sour Frank.
“Declare Barnum Hill a World Heritage UNESCO site akin to the Great Barrier Reef, The Great Wall of China or Machu Picchu.”
That was sarcasm, Rosa, right?
“Expand Reid Park Zoo vertically?”
“Carlos isn’t taking this seriously.” I am. “Use the zoo bond monies to host ‘Transparency and Public Communications workshops’ for Zoo leadership.”
Rosa put down her carafe. “Expand ‘Pathways to Asia’ into the Dell Urich Golf Course. I already wrote the brochure: ‘The South Course offers a gently rolling terrain with Komodo dragons and Malaysian Tigers, providing an excellent challenge for golfers who enjoying fighting off wildlife with a nine iron.’ Coming in 2023. What do you think?”
As friends laughed hearing 2023 startled me. For a moment I wondered what year it was. “Yesterday I went for a hike on my favorite trail and saw hedgehogs blooming and I was disoriented by the sudden onset of spring so soon. Between springs there was a winter of endless empty days without festivals or holidays to mark the season.”
Sour Frank smiled, dropped his mask and lifted his cup of Rosa’s finest. “Fitz, here’s to the Spring of 2021. And better days ahead.”
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Dear COVID diary,
The whole family got vaccinated. We still mask up. We’re role models for the fools acting like the credits have rolled on this epic horror flick. Apparently they haven’t seen the trailer for “Episode 4: The Virus Strikes Back,” opening at a hot spot near you.
Spring is here and summer is careening toward us like Tiger Woods in a semi. So long sweatpants. Hello shorts. So long T-shirt and sandals. Hello T-shirt and sandals.
Next day, my 19-year-old said, “We should do Tumamoc.” Why? Because Golgotha’s booked. After three days of walking up a vertical slope I arrived at the summit, fifth in line, behind Moses, Tenzing Norgay, Edmund Hillary and the Latina cast of Sex in the City. Our desert is where I find spiritual restoration and relief from the madness.
Days later I wept when my longtime friend Mike Gordy died from COVID-19. Eternally smiling Mike, the master educator, the happy warrior, threw his heart and soul into every social, economic, education, peace and justice cause west of the San Pedro. I know for a fact Mike’s spirit was at the first “Make Peace with Cochise” rally in 1888, that he marched with suffragettes in 1918 and right now is offering to sand Woody Guthrie’s guitar to perfection in his heavenly wood shop.
Centuries ago, Mike invited me to give my pep talk to his students at Pistor Middle School. Top of every hour I entertained his students for 15 minutes, then sat in the back and watched Mr. Gordy, an inexhaustible vessel of kindness, inspire, provoke, question, amuse, mentor and teach. Like so many amazing teachers, Mike saw every interaction with a kid as a shot at changing the world for the better, making it smarter and kinder.
This week, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill protecting lethal weapons from federal gun safety laws. If Ducey protected Arizonans from COVID-19 during this pandemic with the same zeal he rushed to protect guns from sensible regulation, thousands of Arizonans would still be alive.
Next day, we were two weeks out from our vaccinations, thank you, Joe Biden, which meant tomorrow for the first time in over a year we were going to see my daughter, her husband and our three grandkids in Phoenix.
Ellen gave me that “Time to groom Yoda” look. “Let me trim those wild silver hairs.” Were the electric hedge clippers necessary? “Ears grow back.”
Next day we were so happy to be on the road for the first time in eons that when Kool and The Gang came on the radio we did the lariat dance.
I said to my wife with glee, “People are driving responsibly on the Interstate today!” Ellen noted I just lost the game we call “Things an Old Man Would Say.”
“What happened to the man who used to say, ‘Let’s see if this baby can hit light speed. Where’s the nitro-thruster-afterburner switch?’”
“That same man is up every night saying, ‘Let’s see if I can find the light to pee. Where’s the nightlight switch?’ ”
We brought keto snacks for the ride: Twigs, nuts and leaves I found foraging on the forest floor of a “Whole Sprouts” run by Chip ’n’ Dale. Not wanting to win the trifecta of “Things a Really Old Man Would Say” I did not discuss my digestion.
We arrived at their front door, rang the bell and flew into each other’s arms. I thought to myself, “You are the luckiest father, grandfather and father-in-law on Earth.”
Note to self: Next time bring kneepads. With grandkids if you’re not on your knees racing matchbox cars, wrestling, fighting with dinosaurs, finding lost doll shoes or making Lego castles, you’re on your knees begging your daughter and son-in-law to let you take your grandchildren home with you.
As I draw maps to assist Emma and Cass in running away to Tucson, baby Chloe falls asleep on my chest for a dreamy moment, inducing the most heavenly drowsiness, transporting me, coo by sigh, to memories of all of the small souls who slumbered on my chest on lazy afternoons. The only pleasure more sublime is listening to Nana Ellen read bedtime stories.
Next day I help son-in-law Joe secretly fetch a playground to assemble. My father, the Master Sergeant, wouldn’t have approved — because it was built with safety in mind. He thought the best swing sets should catapult children out of the yard. “Builds character.”
The next morning we said goodbye, buoyed by the promise of better days ahead. Packed, buckled, ready to go, we waved, they waved and tears welled. We didn’t want to go. I wanted to be “Grandpa” forever.
And then I thought of Mike, and all those we had lost, reminding us nothing’s forever. I turned the key, looked in the rearview, and muffled a sob promising myself we’d return often.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Every couple of years “Antiques Roadshow” visits our Old Pueblo. I’ve watched Tucson treasure hunters bring in amazing items.
The appraiser always asks, “What do we have here?”
“It’s a mounted javelina head. I was ‘antiquing’ at a Tortolita yard sale when I saw it. I said to Lurlene, ‘Holy jalapeños! I been wanting one of these for years!’”
“Care to guess what it’s worth?”
“Buck. Buck and a half?”
“At auction this fine example of 20th century taxidermy would fetch $350.”
“Shut the corral gate! You’re kidding!”
“Heck, yes, I’m kidding. Next. What do we have here?”
“It’s an ‘original’ DeGrazia tumbler. Me and Ed got the receipt. Ed likes the angels. I like the way he used dots for eyes.”
“Complete with your provenance this fine example of mass-produced midcentury folk art in today’s art market would fetch as much as $2.95.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Heck, yes, I’m kidding. Toss it in our dumpster on your way out. Next! What do we have here?”
“A vintage set. I got a Stumble Inn bar coaster, a Dusty Chaps cassette tape and a popcorn kernel from the Bum Steer. Found these treasures in the summer of ’76 in a trash bin behind a U of A dorm after the students moved out.”
“Next.”
“My grandfather’s alien registration receipt card from the ’40s granting a worker legal residence.”
“A hair ribbon woven from a tin foil blanket by an orphaned girl in immigration custody.”
“My mother’s ‘No amnesty for illegals!’ protest sign.”
A woman cradles what appears to be a holy relic. “It’s a lock of Lute Olson’s hair. We got it from a fella claiming to be his barber for five hundred bucks.”
“Next.”
“This miracle tortilla with the face of weatherman Michael Goodrich on it has been in my family since 1999.”
“Next.”
“This is one of the pens Ronald Reagan used to sign his immigration reform bill way back in 1986 legalizing the residency of 3 million immigrants.”
The appraiser recites what he knows. “President Reagan believed if you put down roots here, even though you may have come here illegally, you should not have to live in the shadows.”
The owner nods.
“In the overheated marketplace of ideas today such artifacts have fallen out of favor. You’d be lucky to sell it as kindling. Next. What do we have here?”
“A can of ‘Tucson Sunshine,’ produced by the Chamber of Commerce, Jurassic period.”
“Next.”
“It’s a sheet or a nun’s habit worn by Sister Agnes in ‘Lilies of the Field.’”
“Next.”
“A porcelain liquor decanter shaped like a kachina.” A cultural insensitivity warning flashes onscreen.
“Next. What’s this?”
“A copy of the 2005 Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act signed by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy.”
The appraiser raised his eyebrows. “This may as well be a 13th-century Ming vase! What you have here is a rare and remarkable piece of bipartisan lawmaking which became the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. It featured, among other things, a reasonable path to citizenship, funding for border security, and a functional guest worker program. Practical and reasonable, it was doomed. It’s been collecting dust in America’s attic ever since. In today’s market I’d estimate your historic artifact to be a costly reminder of our nation’s failure to do the right thing. Next.”
“I found this at an estate sale. It’s a black-and-white glossy of an unidentified congressman using our border for a campaign photo op. He’s waving his fist. Caption on the back says he’s decrying the crisis on the border.”
The appraiser studies it. “It could be from 2012. No, I’m wrong. It’s from 1992. On second thought it could be from as far back as ’86. Maybe earlier.”
He takes out his magnifying lens and scans the image. “Wait just an ‘Antiques Roadshow’ minute! I see only 48 stars on your politician’s flag pin. Hawaii and Alaska didn’t become states until 1959! This vintage image of this politician ‘decrying the crisis on the border’ has to be from the early ’50s.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“Not really. It’s utterly valueless. The market is saturated with thousands and thousands of these images of politicians ‘decrying the border crisis’— dating all the way back to the Gadsden Purchase. Next.”
“I was out hiking when I found this beautiful tiny child’s rosary.”
The appraiser was intrigued. “It’s carved out of wood from Central America. It’s quite weathered and old. Where did you find it?”
“Out in the desert in an area we call the ‘Devil’s Highway.’”
“Children’s rosaries like this are common. Probably worth a few pennies at most. What became of the owner?”
The man shook his head. The value of his world-weary expression? Priceless.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I have observed that America replays the same script after every mass shooting. We’ve heard this script over and over since we were children. It begins with a news anchor’s voice. “ Breaking news. We’ve just received reports of multiple shots fired.”
A gunman, with a _____, purchased legally/illegally, entered a _____ at _____ and shot and killed _____ adults, and_____ children, wounding _____. Veteran Officer _____ , of the _____ Police Department, the _____ officer to arrive at the scene, was killed by the shooter/ gunman/ assailant/suspect who was armed with a _____/ , a _____/ , a _____ /and was wearing _____.
The chief of police of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The mayor of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The district attorney of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The FBI agent said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The ATF agent said, “Our hearts go_____.”
The city’s spokesperson said, “That’s all we have at this time. We’ll have more information _____. Our hearts go_____.”
The suspect, _____ , is: in custody/among the dead.
Family members said the suspect, “was angry/disturbed/a loner/heard hallucinating/very quiet/normal/bullied/friendly/isolated/an OK guy/violent/not the guy on TV/abusive/ordinary/odd/political/racist/was happy, this is shocking/an ex-felon/clean/an addict/radicalized.”
Investigators found _____ , suggesting he was _____.
Congressman _____ called for gun safety legislation, saying, “Now is the time for _____.”
Sen. _____ accused Congressman _____ of politicizing/exploiting “this terrible tragedy,” adding that universal background checks/banning assault weapons/closing gun sale loopholes/licensing guns/banning high-capacity magazine sales/red-flag laws/risk protection orders/firearms registration were off the table.
This morning Sen._____ announced he would block any attempts at gun reform, sending his thoughts and_____ to the victims.
_____ called for a national moment of silence.
The National Rifle Association issued a statement. “This is an attempt by_____ to take away your guns. Our Second Amendment right _____.”
There’s blood on the NRA’s corrupt hands. And Congressman _____ takes their blood money. Not even _____ the faces of the widows/children/orphans/maimed can move them.
Mourners have begun placing _____ at the site of the shooting.
At the funeral of _____ , his/her grieving husband/wife/mother/ father/child/ child/grandchild/son/daughter/brother/sister/fiancee/boyfriend/ girlfriend/ lifelong friend/best friend spoke to the press, saying, “Everyone _____ him/her. _____ was a _____ person.”
The White House asked that flags be lowered to honor the victims. It’s announced the president will be visiting _____ to grieve with the survivors. He feels our_____ .
_____ called this “A wake-up call.”
Today on our broadcast we remember the victims of the _____ mass shooting that happened yesterday/this week/last week.
The recent mass shooting at _____ is reminiscent of what took place at Columbine/Aurora/Tucson/Las Vegas/Orlando/Sandy Hook/Killeen/Camden/Wilkes-Barre/Sutherland Springs/San Diego/Parkland/El Paso/ Jacksonville/Edmond/Seattle/Salt Lake/Charlotte/Virginia Beach/Pittsburgh/Brooklyn/Thousand Oaks/Atlanta/Austin/Blacksburg/San Bernardino/Rockford/San Francisco/Milwaukee/Pensacola/Santa Clarita/Midland-Odessa/Dayton/Gilroy/Stockton/Louisville/Chicago/Fort Worth/Fullerton/Honolulu/Tallahasee/Annapolis/Scottsdale/Fort Hood/Red Lake/Geneva/Kirkwood/Omaha/Portland/L.A./Washington, D.C./Colorado Springs/Nashville/Plano/Little Rock/NYC/Fresno/Burlington/Baton Rouge/ Oakland/Seal Beach/Carthage/Binghampton/Springfield/Anchorage/Miami ...
Over _____ mass shootings have occurred since _____ with a mass shooting taking place every _____ in America. This year alone,_____ Americans have been gunned down. There is an epidemic of_____.
Years later, _____ is still recovering from the wounds that left him/her _____.
The memorial/park honoring the victims of the _____ shooting, which happened_____ months/years ago, was dedicated today. There have been_____ mass shootings since that _____ day.
Breaking news. Reports of multiple shots fired.
With us today, our panel of experts on this issue include _____ , _____ and _____ , here to start our conversation about _____.
Reports of multiple shots fired. We’re following the story.
_____ said the problem was mental illness/America’s violent culture/America’s gun culture/the availability of combat-style firearms/Hollywood/video games/the NRA/Congress/lack of sane gun safety laws/the courts.
_____ said, “Guns don’t kill people, _____ kill people.”
_____ said, “No one wants to take away your guns.”
_____ said, “If the victims were armed, this tragedy _____.”
Breaking news. Reports of multiple shots fired at a _____ in _____.
_____ asked, “When will _____?”
Officer down. People inside. A gunman with a _____, purchased legally/illegally, entered a _____.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
When Congresswoman Ophelia Payne was called to the White House and informed she was the best choice to head the newly created, Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Empathy, President Joe Biden warned her about the nominating process. “I feel for you, Miss Payne.”
Why? She had agreed to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show that evening.
“Miss Payne, thanks for coming on the show. Isn’t pushing empathy down our throats just another far-left radical attempt to control our lives? Aren’t you just another misguided woman guilty of wanting to kill us with your misguided so-called kindness?”
“Pardon me?”
“Take this pandemic, Miss Payne. Your extreme empathy for the sick is what has murdered our economy — not some silly virus! On our border, your sickening empathy for sniveling children, rapists and terrorists has created a crisis! Tell us, are you ‘empathetic,’ Miss Payne, are you soft on the antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists?”
“What?” And then she was off the air. Commercials for pepper spray and portable bunkers followed.
Payne’s nomination was opposed by the Ayn Rand Society, Sociopaths United, the Proud Boys, the Associated Bullies of America, and the National Indifference Association, a group described by the Southern Emotional Poverty Center as a hate group funded by billionaires.
Payne soldiered on with the the backing of the Fred Rogers Institute for Neighborliness, the Dalai Lama, former President Bill Clinton’s I-feel-Your-Pain Foundation, the pope, and the BKM, the Be Kind Movement.
The next morning, Payne appeared for her confirmation hearing before the Senate. Sen. Ted Cruz interrogated her first. “Miss Payne, why should any American walk a mile in someone else’s shoes? Especially in those high heels you’re wearing.”
Laughter. Cruz didn’t realize his mic was hot when he whispered to Sen. Ron Johnson, “Speaking of shoes I’d like to give her my boot, right up her ... ”
Payne tapped her mic. “Was that a question?”
Sen. Ron Johnson barked, “Where was your bleeding-heart for the white supremacists falsely accused of attacking our Capitol?”
“What?”
Sen. Sinema interrupted. “Where did you get your outfit? I like the whole look. Do you like my outfit?”
“It’s very Bjork.”
Sen. Rand Paul interrupted, “Empathy didn’t build America, Miss Payne! Our national anthem isn’t ‘Stand by me.’ Indifference to the suffering of others built this country, not hugs! Indifference to Native American genocide, to slavery, to the voting rights of minorities is what made America great.”
Payne attempted to respond over the clack of the gavel. “Senators, a house divided will not stand. We are morally connected, one to the other. Our founders knew this back in 1782 when this very body decided upon our nation’s motto: E Pluribus Unum.”
Sen. Cruz shouted, “Speak English! This is America, woman!”
Payne calmly replied, “Out of many, one.”
Sen. Cruz gagged. ”Why in God’s name would anyone want to ‘bring us together?” Cruz excused himself and left for Majorca.
On Wednesday, Payne was confirmed by the Senate along party lines, with 50 senators opposed to empathy.
The next day, as Secretary Payne walked up the steps of the new Department of Homeland Empathy, the “National Ben’s Bell of Kindness” rang out in celebration.
As the Marine Band played “Eleanor Rigby” in the foyer for the celebrants and dignitaries, Payne found her office and began her tenure. That afternoon a sour Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a speech to an empty Senate chamber calling empathy “a weak un-American trait” and “naked communism.”
In April, at Payne’s first press conference, she stood in front of a giant marble statue of her favorite lifelong Republican, the late Fred Rogers, that looked out upon the press with sincere benevolence. His words were the theme of her address.
“The space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.”
At the close of her remarks, Secretary Payne issued a warning. “Thousands of more Americans will die in ICUs because some of our fellow citizens are refusing to wear masks and refusing to get vaccinated. This pernicious lack of empathy for the fate of our fellow Americans, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, promoted by cynical leaders and commentators, threatens our nation’s survival.”
In June, Secretary Payne was to speak at the Father’s Day Commemoration held at the Tomb of the Unexpressed Emotion. As she rode in her limo she scanned her daily briefing: news summaries of hate crimes, child abuse, elder abuse, political violence, sex trafficking, suicides triggered by bullying, and mass shootings.
On the seat were binders filled with small, effective, anti-violence and anti-bullying programs that she hoped to lift up and implement on a federal level. The ridicule, mockery and threats were sometimes overwhelming.
As she was escorted to the next event by her Secret Service protection she thanked each agent, “for all you do for me and for others.” Being in favor of empathy in the United States of America in the 21st century could get you killed.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I strutted into the newly opened Old Tucson Movie Studio Theme Park, a 7-year-old cap-gun slinger with my Ma and Pa. After seeing the “High Noon” mock gunfight this buckaroo got lost and ended in an alley that was a replica of a Chinese street complete with laundry lines and chicken coops.
I knew all about Asian Americans in the Old West thanks to the Magnavox. White as the cast of the “Donna Reed Show,” my family loved “Bonanza.”
Dave Tang Jr., an old friend I often tap for iconoclastic insights, was on my back porch, masked as I was and seated at a distance, when I said with a straight face, “Everything I know about Asians I learned from the character Hop Sing on ‘Bonanza.’ Did you watch ‘Bonanza’ when you were a kid, Dave?”
Dave rolled his eyes, winced. “We didn’t have time. We were working in the store! Everybody worked nine to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at my dad’s store.”
Dave looked at the Catalinas. “Hop Sing normalized racism.”
Dave’s dad came here in the 1920s. He was 12! Here long before my family.
Every white kid I knew mimicked Hop Sing just as we laughed at Bill Dana’s cruel “Jose Jimenez” character on “The Steve Allen Show.” Imagine a Mexican astronaut! We all did imitations of “Jose Jiminez” on the playground. We were clueless bullies witlessly ruling the racial hierarchy, parroting Hollywood’s racism, convinced it was OK, normal.
Many Chinese laborers in Tucson stayed, becoming cooks, launderers and merchants. Urban renewal bulldozed all the Chinese restaurants, laundries and storefronts that had thrived downtown since the 1880s. Tucson’s understandably insular Asian community persisted and thrived at a time when the word “coolie” was as common as “wetback”and deeds prohibited the sale of real estate to Asians.
Hank Oyama was a Japanese American icon in Tucson. In the 1940s he and his family were sent to an internment camp. In the ’50s Oyama fought a legal battle to overturn Arizona’s interracial marriage ban so he could marry Mary Ann Jordan. (The late Tucson restaurateur Magdalene Gerrish made her way to New Mexico in 1958 so she could legally marry the white man she loved.)
In the ’60s, Oyama, a master educator, ended up the nationally acclaimed Father of Bilingual Education. The man sent to internment camps by his country served that country as a translator, retiring an Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Dave Tang Jr., was born in 1947. “I grew up in the aftermath of the Korean War. Tucsonans were not kind to Asian faces. I was called a chink more than once. My dad came here when he was 12 and he did everything humanly possible to fit into white culture. It was an English-only home. ‘Don’t speak English with an accent.’ Don’t stand out.”
Dave’s voice revealed regret. “I was embarrassed by my dad’s accent. I was a kid. He was quiet, reserved and he supported my mother. I admired my dad.”
“What do you make of the brutal attacks on Asian Americans? Kung flu and China virus?” I asked.
Dave sighed again. Normalized racism. Dave asks us to examine our own common racism.
“Dave, I love Margaret Cho. What do you think of Asian female comics who mimic their immigrant mothers?”
Dave was pained. “It is what is is. They promote stereotypes.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to watch a YouTube clip of Hop Sing with me?”
I enjoy Dave’s familiar exasperated laugh.
For the first 12 years of Dave’s academic life in Tucson, the only other Asians he ever saw at school were his two sisters. And the Asian caricatures he saw in broader culture who were either slavishly servile or wickedly sinister.
Dr. Seuss’ drawing of yellow Asians normalize and reinforce racism. I like to think that today, Theodore Geisel, a smart sensitive man, would be as embarrassed and ashamed of those drawings as I am of my childhood imitations of immigrants struggling to succeed.
I told the story of my half-Asian friend Chris. We were 6, playing outside his Tucson home with our toy soldiers. Chris’ Japanese mom came outside to the driveway where we were waging war, bearing Oreo cookies and tall tumblers of ice-cold milk. I had a big plastic Japanese toy soldier in my hand. With his grimace, his overbite and his sinister slits for eyes behind thick eyeglasses he looked like he stepped out of a World War II era “Popeye” cartoon.
I hid it from Mrs. White in the dirt behind me; where such things remain buried yet ever present.
Dave, the only son of the late, great Esther Tang, is now the patriarch of his family. He asked, “Are we really that old?”
We Tucsonans laughed, nodded and toasted each other with glorious shots of Bacanora mezcal.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
SUNDAY
Watching CPAC so my readers won’t have to. Hm. Odd. Entire conference only lasts an hour.
My mistake.
Ellen tells me I’m watching a CPAP infomercial.
Thanks, Ellen.
I channel-surf and find the actual CPAC fun fest. I gasp in shock and disgust so often I’m short of breath. I channel-surf back to the looping CPAP infomercial and order a CPAP.
MONDAY
To break the monotony, Ellen and I try COVID games like “Find the Mask,” “Socially Distanced Tag” and “Count to 500,0000.” Bored, I clean the oven with a Q-tip.
Been way too sedentary and gluttonous during this stressful time. Learned a hummingbird’s heart beats 6,000 times a minute. That is almost as fast as my heart beats whenever I bend over to pick up the Uber Eats delivery left on my porch.
Ellen butters me so I can squeeze through the front door.
TUESDAY
I visit the Arizona Daily Star building on South Park for the last time. We’re Zooming these days and moving to better digs.
Inside the giant building, which I always thought resembled a concrete fortress, it’s dark and silent save for friendly ghosts. Is that a whiff of Jack Sheaffer’s cigar smoke in the old photo lab? Am I imagining the faint whisper of wire machines and typewriters clack-clack-clacking away in the shadows? So many years, so many ghosts.
I say goodbye to our beloved printing press, a leviathan of cogs, rolls and ink wells, a dinosaur felled by an asteroid called The Internet. In the dark I yell “Stop the presses!”
Always wanted to do that.
I find the 35,000-year-old cafeteria table where I was informed I was hired. Pre-Columbian, I think. Smithsonian-bound.
I like our new offices. In the heart of town, downtown, along the Santa Cruz. Always thought South Park looked like the kind of bunker you’d find on a cliff overlooking the beaches of Normandy.
One last gaze out my old office window at the parking lot where I often enjoyed seeing furious readers with torches, catapults and pitchforks.
WEDNESDAY
Vaccination appointment day! As I turn into the UA pod, I’m listening to KXCI on my radio. Buck Owens is singing a perfect anthem for this moment:
“Oh the sun’s gonna shine, in my life once more. ... No more loneliness, only happiness ...”
Heck yeah. I thank the traffic cones. I thank the flashing signs. I thank every volunteer I see. I thank a volunteer directing traffic with the calm grace of an air traffic controller. “Keep moving, sir.”
I thank the volunteer about to give me my shot. He says, “Don’t thank me. First time I’ve ever done this.” A comedian! Thank you, comedian. “Can I keep the needle in my arm as a keepsake?”
“Keep moving, sir.”
I think of all those in our town still waiting for their turn. Before driving out I ask an older volunteer why he’s doing it. “Like I tell my kids. Served my country once. It’s a chance to serve again.” I choke up. What Americans can do when we’re motivated. “Can I give you a big kiss? “
“Keep moving, sir.”
THURSDAY
Daughter keeps us up on the grandkids with a weekly digest app called “Qeepsake.” Qeepsake asks her quirky questions daily about the kids and every week I get her answers, her stories, her videos and pics of the beasties.
I want a version of Qeepsake for grandparents.
Qeepsake: “Did you take a funny picture of grandma this week?”
“I did. Grandma stubbed her toe and cursed.”
Qeepsake: “What did Grandpa learn today?”
“Not to take ‘funny’ pictures of Nana Ellen.”
FRIDAY
Ellen and I watch “Antiques Roadshow.” Weary of me ridiculing her favorite show, she spikes my punch. I wake up bound and gagged like Bobby Seale at the Chicago 7 trial, forced to watch a “Roadshow” repeat featuring a visit to Tucson.
Gives me a column idea. “I was antiquing at the Tortolita Swap Meet. I said, ‘Holy jalapeños!’ I ain’t never seen a javelina head mounted like a trophy before. Especially missing a glass eye. And a fang.”
“On the open marketplace this fine object could fetch $12.95!”
“Well, shut my door, buck my bronco and refry my beans!”
SATURDAY
Today’s the big day. The Tucson Virtual Festival of Books. Check it out. https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org
I can’t wait to watch 165 amazing authors unmute themselves — with 27% unsure how to do it. I got my feet up, kettle corn’s in the microwave and an infinite margaritas flowing nearby.
This is great.
No crowds.
No endless walking.
No lines.
No sunburn.
No bag of books to haul.
If I want a book, I’m burning Bezos the bookstore killer, by ordering mine from the UA bookstores:
I lift my margarita to toast TFOB 2021. Viva Tucson! And the first presenting author online who says, “I’m not a cat.”
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Our fellow primates in Texas are not adapting well to climate change. Note to Texas: Sweden’s wind turbines work.
Before pointing fingers at our thawing neighbors, we anthropoids of Arizona, about to broil for months in our heat islands, must examine our own adaptation to climate change.
After flowing for 6 million years, the Colorado River, the magnificent force that carved the Grand Canyon 5 million years ago is, in the last one hundred years of its existence, a nano-second in time, drying up, thanks to our civilization’s exhaust and our insatiable thirst.
I love the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, which wisely canceled this year. I am a sucker for fossils, for the clues they reveal and the stories they tell.
Here’s ours:
If you were standing where the Whetstone Mountains are in Cochise County 125 million years ago you’d meet sonorosaurus, a 30-foot-tall, 50-foot-long dinosaur. Teeth marks on the fossilized remains suggest it was a snack for a larger beast.
Stand where Gates Pass is today, about an astonishing 65 million years before the Grand Canyon existed, you’ll see a large hadrosaur wandering a tropical swamp gobbling grub with its duck bill.
Jump ahead to the Miocene Period, around at least 20 million years ago and you’ll find ancestors of gila monsters lumbering about. Tortoises, too; living fossils millions of years older than the fairly recent Grand Canyon.
In my garden I have a tennis-ball-sized chunk of cooled lava from the Tucson Mountains that’s probably older than the Grand Canyon. Ten to 20 million years ago Tucson was hellzappoppin’ with volcanoes. The Tucson Mountains came to mark the edge of a large volcanic crater, a lava lake that stretched across our valley some 10-15 miles in diameter.
Doesn’t seem possible. Tucson seems timeless. Our lush desert feels as though it’s been here since the beginning of time. Some say it’s hard to tell when the seasons change save for the heat.
Here, beneath your feet, my dear bipedal life form, there’s been lava, swamps, oceans teeming with trilobites, primeval forests, flying reptiles, savannah grasslands, coral reefs, sharks, tropical jungles, coniferous forests, warmer climes and multiple ice ages.
And across this vast span of time there have been five mass extinctions of nearly all life. Across the eons, five complete living worlds teeming with life’s experiments, utterly alien and unknown to each other, save for messages in the rocks, have risen and fallen on this third rock from the sun.
“Change is constant,” say the Buddhists. And every climatologist, paleontologist and geologist worth their basalt.
Eighty million years ago the Rocky Mountains begin rocking into existence. Fifty-eight million years ago cacti show up. The Catalinas were smushed into existence 26 million years ago. I can’t comprehend it. Waiting for a vaccine feels like forever.
We are lucky to be in a 300,000-year-long interglacial period, a warm valley. A rare long stellar sweet spot. Every 145 million years or so we get an ice age. Wouldn’t a good name for an ice age be the Zambonian Period?
A few icicles after our most recent ice age, 12,000 years ago, a giant sloth might be reading this over your shoulder. Or a bison, a camel, or a North American lion or a mammoth like those found at the San Pedro River where early paleo-Flintstones set up a butcher shop.
Fast-forward 11,000 years to the 10th century and you could have watched, alongside Anasazi cliff dwellers, the plumes from Arizona’s last volcanic eruption giving birth to Sunset Crater, part of a volcanic field that’s been active for 6 million years.
If our planet’s 4 billion years of existence were a day, we chimps dropped from the trees, at less than a second to midnight, and set about fueling our “civilization” by unleashing carbon, heating the planet at a heretofore unseen rate, melting the ice, freeing more carbon, raising the seas and setting our heavenly body on a path to hell that will be irreversible if we chimps do not change our ways.
Responsible for our planet’s sixth mass extinction since life began 4.5 billion years ago, our allegedly intelligent species appears likely to broil and flood our planet into hot sauna-like forests and vast barren deserts unfit for human life.
At the time Romans were crucifying Judeans, the Hohokam began farming along the verdant Santa Cruz river here. They vanished in the 14th century leaving behind the question, “What happened?”
In a million years an alien rover may rove our world. Perhaps it will beam stunning images of our hot-box planet across the stars back home to a civilization that will ask the same question, “What happened?”
Our fossil records will tell them most of us were much like our fellow simians in Texas. Culturally ill-equipped to reverse our self-inflicted fate. Broken into warring tribes, earthlings rejected the collective action essential to saving this beautiful world from mass extinction, this magnificent sixth attempt at life on this planet.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Monday
Dear COVID Diary,
Today my adult daughter texts me, exasperated with her three beasts struggling with remote learning. Can Grandpa help via FaceTime? I give my grandbabies an essay assignment titled “What I did last winter, day after day, staring at a screen, with no friends to play with, while every grown-up idiotic boomer did nothing about the unfolding apocalypse.”
Daughter texts me. I’m not helpful. I point out my video teaching the 4-year-old the correct way to pick your nose with kitchen utensils was a monster hit.
I fall asleep rummaging through the road trips, camping adventures, Nerf duels and treehouse fort projects yet to come.
Tuesday
I go for a bike ride. Pass by the nursing home. Took the kids there every Halloween. Fun. Cute. Sweet. It’s a ghost town, a pandemic prison. I wave at someone’s grandmother. Parking lot’s empty as a promise.
After lunch, over the fence, I ask my neighbor how she’s been. “I have no income, huge debts, and no clue where their next meal’s coming from. I lost my dad to COVID in October, and I can’t sleep because we might get evicted.”
I had no clue. “The kids?”
“I make them turn off the lights they aren’t using. Make ’em take quick showers. We can’t waste food. A couple of times I’ve gone without so they’ll have something to eat. We haven’t eaten out since last March. We recycle pop cans. Soda pop and paper towels? Luxuries. We all wear Goodwill. Nothing but tough choices.”
My toughest choice today? Which wine to pick up at Trader Joe’s. “Your car still run?”
“I drive super slow to save gas. Never fill up the tank. Groceries come first.” I will help.
Later, I visit a Zoom-circle of friends. Again, the disparity. I notice every Latinx person has heart-crushing stories of COVID decimating their families. I add candles for Maria, Jesus and Paul to my COVID shrine. Lit, they glow like a California wildfire.
Wednesday
In the produce section I turn to see a man shopping next to me wearing a military vest, military boots, khaki shorts and a field hat. Trump guy?
Later I find myself frozen in the frozen food aisle trying to decide which ice cream to buy. I joke to the customer next to me, “So many choices. I can’t believe it’s takin’ me 10 minutes to decide.”
The customer next to me, the man in the field hat and the military vest, opens the freezer door, reaches for a tub of Breyers and says in a thick, Borat-like accent, “I always know what I want. In my country there was no choice.” A wink. Dark laughter. “That’s why I’m here.”
“We’re blessed,” I say and immediately think, “Why on earth did I say that? Thirty-one flavors! One of the many blessings of Liberty?” Moscow-on-the-Hudson smiles through his mask.
At the check out, the clerk holds up one of my purchases. “Sir, only one to a customer.” Guy behind me snaps, “You got two 6-packs of toilet paper? Buddy! That’s twelve rolls.”
A woman shoots video. Through her mask she mumbles. “Jerk. Posted!”
“I heard that.”
My phone rings. “Martin Savage here, with CNN. Have you seen the shares and retweets the shocking video of your shocking behavior is getting? Why are you a hoarder? Do you realize we’re in a pandemic?”
I hang up. And leave. Joke’s on them. I’ve been hoarding corn cobs since March.
Thursday
Perseverance lands on Mars. Much better name than Percival, Perseverance. Perfect metaphor for this moment in history. Will we persevere?
First images back: rocks, sand, Matt Damon’s bones, B-52 missing since 1957, boulders, craters and Ted Cruz on holiday.
What in the heck! Ellen tripled my life insurance!
Friday
It’s been a long year but Ellen and I get along great. Just ask me. She’s up late again. “What are you watching?”
“‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. Taking notes. It’s about minerals and doilies.”
For fun she’s taken to gardening “exotics” with weird names like “hemlock” and “nightshade.” Says they’re herbs, like oregano and thyme. Cool! So quiet lately.
Saturday
Big hero. Brought home pot pies. The legal ones.
While I was out picking them up I saw lanes of cars! My shot at a vaccine!
Got in line. Waited forever. Finally. Asked the kid with the clipboard, “Is this where I get my vaccine? Can I get tested? Do you do testing?”
“Emissions testing. Turn off your engine.”
“Not now. I got pot pies thawing in the back seat.”
“Check your tailpipe?”
“Hilarious. Bye.”
Argh.
Sunday
My vaccinated teacher pal is ready to go back. Says it’s been such a long time since he’s seen his students he expects his seniors to be senior citizens. “Our cafeteria should be offering prune juice, marmalade and Metamucil.”
Ha! Finally got my vaccine appointment. Online. For March. Hope the vet knows his stuff.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Saturday
Dear COVID journal, it’s been more than a year since I started you. Two years? Could be a decade. Not sure. I now wear a loincloth, eat small game over a fire in our TV room and have taken to etching my daily accounts on our wall with stone chisels.
And yes, I wore this same ensemble to bed yesterday. Are sweatpants supposed to make cracking sounds when you bend at the knees?
I blame Zoom for what happened earlier. I went for a bike ride, mask on. Neighbor, Edna Quigley, shrieks. Like she just saw a flaming javelina on a unicycle. My mistake. Remembered my mask. Forgot my pants.
Coronavirus question: Is “Toobin” a verb?
Dr. Fauci on TV says this’ll be over by summer. Then we can play together, hug our friends and talk about something other than this Godforsaken virus, like “Why has it been 122 degrees for the past hundred days?”
On an errand to buy black market Cottonelle, I drive past a strip mall. In the parking lot I notice a long line of cars, orange cones, yellow tape, a tent, and people in lab coats with gloves.
Vaccines?! Immunization pop-up?
Fifteen minutes later the kid in the white coat with the clipboard tells me I’m in line at Chick-fil-A. I order a Pfizer sandwich, the Moderna fries and a small AstraZeneca to go. Hold the chloroquine.
Sunday
We are marooned on a hostile planet. While Ellen’s growing potatoes on the floor of our living room like Matt Damon in “The Martian” I’m talking to “Alexa” the way “Dave” talked to “HAL” in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” asking her, “When will we be receiving our next transmission from the grandkids back on Earth, HAL?”
I get an app alert. I open the pod bay door and search the stars for the other space station.
Monday
Monday means Zoom. I occupy Paul Lynde’s square on our workplace “Hollywood Squares” with my co-workers Charo, Peggy Lee and Rich Little.
I ask my boss, Joan Rivers, what day it is. She says, “Blurs-day.”
She’s right. What day isn’t “Blurs-day”?
What month is it? No-wonder? Skip-tember? Never-ender?
Tuesday
Checking our mailbox is a major event. Our postal person dreads me. Masked, I lie in wait, armed with three topics: 1. the weather, 2. the mail, and 3. vaccination schedules. And two lemonades, desperate for a “chat” and junk mail about discount cremations.
A delivery truck passes by. I salute every Amazon, FedEx and UPS delivery truck as if they were jeeps full of Yanks liberating Paris, tossing smokes and chocolates at we civilians weary of the occupation by this coronavirus.
Wednesday
Tried to register today. I’m 65. Have to wait. Googling for “vaccines,” I get lost online and order two cases of Bactine Pain Relieving Spray by mistake.
Fetching that delivery from the porch, I notice our front door resembles the entryway to a MASH tent. On the small table next to our door are enough masks, hand sanitizers, disinfectant sprays and sterile wipes to last us until we defeat the killer robots from the future.
Below our little entryway pandemic triage table is our recycling bin, which is full of empty wine bottles. Many, many, many empty wine bottles. The Pandemic Grigio was sweet, but Johnson & Johnson’s COVID Cabernet was the best.
Thursday
Our three cats, Finn, Tubbles and Nala are watching me type. One’s homesteading the printer, one rules the towering bookcase and the other owns the “in” basket. Not a thought in the skulls of those three owl-faced felines. Finn tiptoes over my kkkkkkk-k-k-keyboardddddddzfdwy5 and reclines beneath my computer screen.
Wild thing, you make my heart sing.
How is it I love these creatures who are as indifferent, cruel and merciless as a virus?
Friday
I go for a long walk. I say to the dog walkers, ”Nice of that dog to take you out for a walk.” I get a “Beautiful day. Got your shot?”
“No. I got Chick-fil-A instead.”
“What? How are you?”
“Cheerful. Delusional.”
“Stay safe and strong. Be well.”
We talk like Marvel superheroes. It’s the effect of the mask.
Didn’t tell them I’m waiting for my shot. I’m 65. Vaccinated neighbors and friends come up to me, in masks, and whisper alternate routes to the needle.
“Hang around. Sometimes they have leftovers.”
“Volunteer.”
“Do you know the terrifying alley behind the dicey clinic a block over?”
“Psst. Try Chick-fil-A.”
Saturday
I walk, masked, with a hermetically sealed friend to Starbucks. As we order, a young guy behind us says, “It’s on me.” Turns to the couple behind him. “You, too. In memory of my friend, Chachi. Died yesterday from COVID. Gave me a small inheritance. Paying it forward. It’s on him.”
“Here’s to Chachi!” say a room of masked strangers on a painfully beautiful day, when the crystal clear blue sky and the perfect afternoons cannot counterbalance the pall of the cold numbers.
Ever onward. Tomorrow I’m going on a bike ride. Pants on.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I was at my favorite seedy bar when a peacock, his tongue loosened by seed and Scotch, began crowing about “a band of activists who’d found their hill to die on.”
“Barnum Hill? Over at Reid Park?”
The peacock nodded and pecked at his beer nuts.
I was on this case like flies on a water buffalo. “The voters voted. The zoo’s expanding. What’s the problem?”
A duck nursing his daiquiri at the end of the bar piped up. “It’s daffy.”
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Mike Hammer.”
“Daffy’s not my name. The opposition to the expansion is daffy. My name’s ‘Donald,’ no relation. I gotta waddle back to park. My shift’s starting.” Donald left, telling the squirrel monkey tending bar to “Put it on my bill.” I cast my peepers into my martini. “Well, isn’t that ducky.”
Wanting the facts straight from the horse’s mouth I went to Reid Park Zoo and found two zebras, “Are you two horses opposed to the expansion?”
“We’re zebras. Different species, Detective Dolittle. Opposed? Us? Neigh. We’re for it. For us it’s as clear as black and white.”
“You mean white and black.”
“Black and white.”
“White and black.”
“Black and —”
I had no time to horse around. I moved on to a different corner of the zoo where I found a gregarious grizzly with a thoughtful take on the Barnum Hill brouhaha.
“Many humans find change unbearable. Calls for forbearance. You need to just grin and bear it.” I thought to myself here’s a bear so wise he should be a yogi.
The meerkat cracked soon as I offered him two bits and a live cricket. “Every meerkat ... crunch ... stands in favor of replacing Barnum Hill and the south pond ... crunch ... good cricket ... with our zoo addition. We’re happy to help with the excavation . . crunch, crunch . . along with the groundhogs. Ignore the rumors. Don’t believe every ‘vague thing’ you hear from the Gnus.”
“I don’t! I hate vague news.”
A pair of very snobbish otters, rudely eavesdropping on us, informed me they disapproved of puns, warning me I otter know better. A dissident duck nipped my leg.
“Notice which pond is disappearing? South side. It’s always the south side that gets rolled in this town.” Her pal, a flamingo, flamed the whole kerfuffle. “Yeah. The town that sacrificed an entire barrio for the TCC is weeping over a hill.”
From somewhere behind me, up high, leaves rustled. “Hey, you! The short white ape.”
I cast my peepers over my shoulder and met a giraffe, eye-to-eye, chewing on leaves and opinions. “Listen, you mug, we giraffes always take the long view. I’m sticking my neck out here but we think this could make us a class attraction.”
“Tell me tall boy, can you see the beloved hill, and pond, in question, from up there?”
“Yeah. And Nogales. And Picacho Peak. I got to agree with what the anteater said. They’re making a mountain out of an anthill.”
The whole ark supported the expansion. I didn’t tell any of these featherheads and furballs I once rode my bike down that anthill, sledded there, slipped and fell in there, broke a tooth there, made out there, drank wine there, slipped and fell in there again, smoked there, partied there, stained the rocks there, wept over a dame that dumped me there, and then barfed straight into the waterfall and slipped and fell in again.
A ring-tailed lemur dropped down from a tree, grabbed my lapels and shook me out of my reverie. “Listen up, you galoot. When the new zoo addition opens no one will remember that hill. Or that pond.” Then the palooka plucked a mite from my hair and vanished into the trees.
One of the African elephants was listening. “I’ll remember. An elephant never forgets.” I told the elephant, “I won’t forget my memories. The slipping. The falls. The barfing. But I think the addition of Malayan tigers, Komodo dragons, the Temple of Tiny Monkeys and the red pandas will more than make up for the loss. Speaking as a cartoonist — I think Asia-ville will be a big draw. “
Yebonga and Fireball, the white rhinos, horned in on our conversation. Yebonga said “I guess a hundred public meetings weren’t enough for the critics. Can we tell you what we love about being rhinos at the zoo?”
“Sure. When your shift’s over meet me at the bar down the street. It’s where a duck and a peacock I know hang out after work.” It had been a long day. I’d need a stiff drink if I was going to listen to a pair of rhinos toot their horns.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
Pima County’s Old Tucson Task Force is currently evaluating proposals for Old Tucson, the Western movie set theme park that’s up for lease. I imagine the bids are intriguing.
“Tell us your name and your proposal.”
“Pete and Hilda Popper. We’re from Patagonia. Originally Pottstown. Here you can see an aerial view drawn up by our son, Pauly Popper, of our proposal, ‘Hilda Popper’s Javelina Petting Zoo.’”
“Next.”
“Tarantula Petting —”
“Next.”
“Gila Monster Pet —”
“Next.”
“Knott’s Huckelberry Farm.”
“Next.”
“Name’s Buster Disney. No relation.”
“Go ahead.”
“Paint the town red. Make ‘Satan’ the sheriff. Add a ‘Lake of Fire’ for ‘Beelzebub’s Bumper Boats.’ Throw in our summer heat and you got ‘Hell on Earth’ the amusement park! We expect our ‘Snowball-in-Hell’ snow cones to be big sellers —”
“Next.”
“Imagineers of Barrio Hollywood. We envision a theme park based on life out West here in modern-day Tucson centered on our daily performance of ‘Melanoma: The Musical’ featuring a cast of —”
“Next.”
“Kiki Rickles. Why not celebrate Old Tucson itself? Imagine the voice of Samuel L. Jackson narrating the tour: ‘And then the fire happened. The theme park known as ‘Old Tucson: Twelve Miles and a Hundred Years from Town’ became known as ‘Old Tucson: 100-Miles from a Fire Hydrant.’”
“Next.”
“John Doe. Your park should definitely have a ‘Kon-Tiki Room’ featuring an animatronic Joe Bonanno and other —”
“Next.”
“Howdy. Lurleen Laveen here from Wagon Wheels East RV Park. I call my idea ‘Little Mexico,’ or ‘Mexico-cito.’ I sketched my first ride idea here on this Arroyo Cafe napkin. I call it ‘Border Wall Catapult!’ Ain’t been tested yet but I’m pretty sure it can lob up to 300 pounds clear into Pinal County.“
“Next.”
“I got another one. ’Border Tunnel!’ It’d be like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ without the Caribbean. And our scary pirate robots would be mules and drug lords and —”
“Next.”
“Greta Pickle. Good afternoon. Picture a Western ghost town of the future, devastated by climate change with attractions like ‘Extinction Express,’ ‘Carbon Land’ and ‘It’s a Hot World’ — with animatronic Polar Bears singing ‘It’s a hot, hot world.’”
“Next.”
“We’re Dale and Roy. Two words? Camel rides!”
“Next.”
“Ostrich ri —”
“Next.”
“Kangaroos?!”
“Next.”
“Steve call me ‘Steverino” Sanchez. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? I was in my car listening to 101.7 and the idea just came to me! ‘Margaritaville!’ Take it! Free of charge. Just name it ‘Steverino’s Margaritaville.’”
“Next.”
“Pepe Pinkerton of Pinkerton Design. Our proposal? Real Old West thrill rides that push the envelope. We’ve got three so far: ‘Runaway Buckboard,’ ‘Flash Flood Escape’ and ‘Cattle Stampede.’ We are confident ‘Cattle Stampede’ will do for Tucson what the ‘Running of the Bulls’ did for Pasadena.”
“Pamplona. Next.”
“Chuckie ‘Chewbacca’ Wang. I have bitcoin investors lined up. Upgrade your gunfighters to stormtroopers, add giant sandworms and call it ‘Old Tatooine.’ I have friends who’d camp in line to get in.”
“Next.”
“Snowbird Aviary.”
“Next.”
“I’m Candy Samples, from the Save the Hill and Pond Coalition. Relocate the Reid Park Zoo ‘Pathways to Asia’ expansion to Old Tucson’s Chinatown Alley.”
“Next.”
“Glenda Gladiola. As you can see on this schematic our proposed park will feature an array of fun high-stakes games. Like scorpion hopscotch, rattlesnake wrangling and bobcat roping. Plus we’re in talks with the Discovery Channel to shoot a season of ‘Naked and Afraid’ in an adjacent cholla forest.”
“Next.”
“Popeye Portillo. Three words. Yul Brynner Cowboy Robots.”
“That’s four words. Next.”
“Coyote Windwalker. Has any amusement park ever celebrated the true history of the Old West? We begin our visit with ‘Genocide: The Ride’ which takes guests to ‘The Indigenous People’s Relocation Merry-Go-Round,’ where a live-action re-creation of Wounded Knee —”
“Upbeat! Next.”
“Mariah Candles for ‘Madame Tussaud’s Solar-Powered Wax Museum.’”
“Next.”
“Ellen Musk. No relation. My backers and I propose to rebuild the original pre-fire movie set, restore the train, revive the stagecoach rides, and add guided biking, horseback riding and hiking. Additionally our plan includes constructing state-of-the-art soundstages with CGI capability, a huge water park using reclaimed water and a spectacular climate-controlled adventure dome filled with Western-themed thrill rides.“
“Very funny. Next.”
“William Madison III. Williamsburg Foundation. We propose re-creating a living Tucson of the 1870s with residents portraying murderers, drunks and prostitutes. Throughout the day visitors will learn about Tucson’s past by witnessing assaults, hangings, massacres and —”
“Next.”
“Ruby Sands. I’m by myself. I was hoping to sing ‘The Night They Burned Old Tucson Down’ by Mike Sterner. Where’s Simon Cowell?”
“Next.”
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Sour Frank offered his thoughts to our Saturday morning Arroyo Cafe Zoom crew. “I’m wondering who Joe Biden will pick to be in charge of combating ‘Online Malarkey.’”
“You peddled the lies, brother.” Rosa had no patience.” I’m muting you for a year. Didn’t getting COVID teach you anything?”
I laughed at Rosa’s innocent hope that Frank was capable of learning. “Frank, did you hear the news? Fox just accused Biden of inciting Americans to respect the rule of law — by holding criminals accountable.”
Oblivious to the joke, Frank cheered. “See! I told you Biden’s out to destroy America!”
And with that Lurlene asked us, “do any of you find it funny that the party that impeached a president over lying about sex with an intern is aghast at the thought of impeaching a president who incited a violent insurrection that killed five?”
Gonzales held up a matchbook. “I have here the world’s smallest book, amigos. ‘Profiles in Courage: 2020.’ Know what mi abuelo calls the mob that attacked the Capitol? Pillage idiots. A lot of the pillage idiots were from Arizona. I think dehydration causes brain damage.”
Carlos noted Biden has a bust of Arizona’s native son, Cesar Chavez, behind his desk.
Carlos said his favorite Chavez quote was “You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.”
Lurlene noted that Arizona “sure needs help! Listening to Governor Ducey’s State of the State address was like listening to a sunny autopsy report issued by the murderer.”
Lurlene reminded us of how many of our friends and relatives had died from COVID-19. “It didn’t have to happen. We closed late and opened too early. Lies were at the center of it.”
Rosa smiled. “That’s why I couldn’t stop watching the inauguration. It felt so good. Like waking up from a long nightmare. ... Did you all see the sun came out and shined down on our nation’s Capitol?”
Carlos nodded. “Yup. The same Capitol that looked like ‘World War Z,’ crawling with zombies just a few weeks ago.”
Rosa leaned into her camera. “Seeing all the good that day — I felt the contrast more powerfully than ever.” She paused to cross herself. “America was touched by evil for four years. Our America! I still worry!”
I smiled back at her. “Don’t. The insurrectionists, the conned cosplay Confederates, are singing to the feds like squeezed canaries. The dragnet will grow. More criminals and their abettors on the inside will face justice.”
And when the hearings begin, it won’t look good for the squirming minority party when their treasonous radicals and terrifying crazies get grilled, tried and spat out.
It will just look worse and worse for the liar’s lickspittles. And where will their vulgar savior be? Exiled, desperately struggling to save his crumbling criminal enterprise, surrounded by endlessly shattering mirrors.”
Rosa confessed to us she wept alone in her jammies, touched by Joe Biden’s tears as he spoke of Maj. Beau Biden, bidding farewell to Delaware at the armory named in his late son’s honor.
I confessed I stood alone when Biden took the oath.
Lurlene wept alone for decency.
Frank wept alone when Lady Gaga sang our anthem. Carlos wept alone when the poet, Amanda Gorman, spoke. I stood when Biden and Harris laid the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, with the ghost of the Master Sergeant standing at crisp attention next to me. Gonzales wept when he saw the bust of Cesar Chavez behind the president’s desk.
The retelling of these moments triggered warm tears of joy, pride, hope and relief.
I told my beloved friends I thought America was coiled to spring back better than before. “The best is ahead. In 100 days, a hundred million of us will be vaccinated. We will defeat this virus. By summer we will be able to hug old friends as if we’ve been castaways stranded in a strange distant place — where the world went mad. Together, we are going to lift up this economy. For all Americans. So here’s a toast. To President Biden.”
As we held our invisible champagne glasses up high, Carlos added, “To the man who will defeat the coronavirus, preserve the Union, bring about the promise of Reconstruction, unleash America’s coiled economic might, rebuild our nation ... and ... ”
Carlos thought of the immigrant children and choked.
“And as for Liberty, may her torch, a beacon for all the world, burn bright again. To a bold future with a thriving economy and justice for all. Salud! And as Joe always says — God bless America. May God protect our troops.”
Rosa added, “And may we all be together on the day we reopen the Arroyo Cafe.”
With that we cheered and clinked our imaginary glasses to our screens.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On Thursday, I went for a morning walk in my neighborhood, greeting neighbors from behind my mask with a cheerful “good morning,” with more than one agreeing it was, indeed, a “beautiful January day. A little cold.”
And then, walking past the school, the barking dogs, the church and the jogging mom pushing her stroller I saw it and stopped.
I was never startled by the sight of it before. But now? The perilous now? The sight of the “Trump 2020” flag hanging limp in the cold, on a neighbor’s porch left me transfixed. Was it posted proudly? Defiantly?
An old familiar couple walked by. The old man, a veteran, tipped his cap. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I replied.
They didn’t look at the house once. Ignored it. Perhaps it’s better to ignore such a display of allegiance to violent insurrection when you’re just starting your day.
I shrugged it off and as I continued walking down the familiar streets of my neighborhood, I couldn’t stop thinking about my neighbor. Does he still believe the lies? After the carnage, the death, the treason? How could he? At Christmastime his light display is the most beautiful in our whole subdivision. He has three cars, a truck, a boat and a huge home. What has America not given him?
Is he enraged? Armed? Is his family proud or embarrassed by his public defiance of reality? Years ago I noticed a blue star hanging in his picture window. He smiled when I talked over his fence about the Master Sergeant and I asked him about his son and thanked him for his service.
I like his mailbox. I always wanted to ask him where he got it. What lands in his email? What toxic lies does he peddle or forward with glee and didn’t every lie contribute to this precarious moment for our nation?
A hawk on a telephone pole reminds me I went on this walk to marvel at natural beauty.
My frantic mind wanders back to that house. If this were Munich in the ’30s would he proudly fly the Nazi banner after Kristallnacht? Or after the burning of the Reichstag? If this were Honolulu would he fly the Rising Sun after Pearl Harbor? If this were April 1865, would he fly the Confederate flag after Lincoln had been killed?
This is the neighbor I envy for his drip irrigation system and his beautiful roses. I told him so years ago. If I knocked on his door would he say, “We’ve talked before. I don’t believe we’ve formally met. What’s your name?”
Would he call me an “Enemy of the People,” a traitor to America? Would he repeat the countless epithets, insults and threats I’ve gotten from his fellow true believers — for years? Does he get threats? Common ground? Would he slam his door, shouting, “Get off my property?”
Would he call me divisive? I play it out in my mind. Would he ask me “Whatever happened to ‘malice toward none?’” Ha. I’d point out Abraham Lincoln said that after Union forces had annihilated the Confederate insurrectionists and crushed their “civilization” into rubble. And then I’d panic for my life, remembering the NRA sticker I’ve seen on his truck with the gun rack.
I check my Fitbit, step around the flattened jack rabbit and keep walking. Does he care that a pro-Trump, Capitol Hill cop got his skull bashed in by a pro-Trump thug? Or is that fake news?
Does he agree with the failed plans to harm or kill Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi or is that fake news? Will he be at our state Capitol with a pitchfork in the next few days? He has a rake. I’ve seen him rake his gravel. We exchanged waves once. I smiled and shouted, “Nice yard!”
Does he curse Twitter and Facebook and my paper? Would it be a waste of time to point out our First Amendment right to free speech doesn’t apply to private enterprise, that my “free speech” is subject to censorship by my publisher? Is he desperately searching the web for messages from Trump right now?
I went on this walk to escape the madness. Quail scurry ahead of me and I focus on what a beautiful winter day it is.
My restless mind circles back. Does he feel persecuted? Does he have a clue how persecuted his Black, brown and Muslim neighbors felt every time they ventured out into his America for the past four years?
Let it go. Give him the benefit of doubt. I tell myself we both love America.
I tell myself we’ll get through this.
And I tell myself when I get home from my walk I should post our flag in front of my home. Good idea. If only to warm myself with the sight of our stars and stripes on a cold January day.
- David Fitzsimmons
- Updated
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On President Trump’s last day in office, feeling sad, he orders a massive strike, peppering the planet with nuclear warheads. In the aftermath of the global conflagration, fallout and firestorms carpet the rubble of civilization. Nuclear winter shrouds the planet.
From his bunker Sean Hannity addresses his seven surviving viewers. “I’d like to know who started this. Anti-fa? Soros? Ocasio Cortez? Pelosi?”
Rush Limbaugh, clenching a radioactive cigar between his two remaining blackened teeth, shouts into his charred microphone, “It’s a frame up! The Never-Trumpers will do anything to stop Donald Trump from making America great!”
Laura Ingraham, dazed and wandering, says to a shattered mirror shard, “Sure. Blame Trump. Rush to judgment. Fake news! Do we even have nuclear weapons? Has anyone considered the Gas Company as a possible culprit?”
Tucker Carlson, suffering from burns over 90% of his bowtie, and retching from radiation poisoning, picks up a glowing human skull, arches what’s left of an eyebrow and intones, “We may never know the truth here. I think sunblock manufacturers are behind whatever this odd weather is. Where was Hunter Biden when this went down?And Hillary?”
Three surviving members of the Trump administration, with multiple mushroom clouds as their backdrop, post a video of themselves resigning in protest. “Enough is enough.”
Rudy Giuliani, caught at Mar-a-Lago with his pants blown down by a 5-megaton blast, says to a burnt alligator carcass, “At first I thought it was another ‘Borat’ trap and then I saw the mushroom cloud,” adding, “I’m going to walk to Ukraine, and, if it still exists, I’m going to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s link to this disaster. In the meantime I’m tracking down rumors that pics of Hillary exist, riding a hydrogen bomb down, like Slim Pickens, allegedly shouting,’ I hate you, Donald.’ How sick and deranged is that? Could you hand me my left arm, please?”
The next day surviving members of Congress speak out.
From inside their cave by the Potomac the House Freedom Caucus “issues a statement” on their cave wall. “@ last! We are free frum regul8tions! And the Godliss Department of Education! Thank you, President Trump!”
Miles away, his mutton chops fried, Ted Cruz is trapped under debris at the bottom of a mile-wide crater. As night falls he lectures feral dogs eating human remains at the edge of the crater. “You realize the people who want to destroy your Bill of Rights and take away your guns are thrilled by this!”
In Texas, Congressman Louis Gohmert, buried under thousands of tons of irradiated soil texts, “Don’t believe the lying media. It’s all CGI, like the moon landing.”
In what was Arizona, Kelli Ward, the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, tells a rabid five-legged javelina, “Radioactivity is good for you! While I have your attention we desperately need to raise funds to stop the liberals from destroying what’s left of the planet. Now. Before it’s too late.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announces through a spokesperson he is still waiting in his Scottsdale bunker to receive instruction from any surviving members of the Koch family. “In the meantime gyms are wide open! And for those with hair, beauty salons are open, too.”
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who lost his famed walrus mustache in the firestorm that resulted from Pima County being struck with multiple nuclear warheads, blames “a cabal of left-wing pedophiles, cannibals, and Islamic terrorists for the unusually bad weather,” and as the second wave hits he adds, “God bless, Donald Trump.”
Outside a bunker in Cave Creek, a man resembling Sean Spicer tells people waiting in line for fresh water and body bags that “only 8,000 are dead! Not 7.56 billion,” and to “Get a grip!”
Mutants attack Ivanka when she announces a new line of lead-lined lingerie, adding she hopes to grow her hair back “to cheer people up!” Days later Trump is found miles beneath the White House rubble. His first words to the rescue team are “I won,” adding, “I must be immune to radiation.”
President Biden corrects him.
A month later, in the rubble of the Republican National Headquarters, human remains are found, but, to the surprise of no forensic experts, not one single vertebrae.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Tomorrow’s the Fourth here and sure as drought we Tucsonans will appreciate the fireworks that will bring us together with oohs and aahs, followed by the inspirational brush fires.
We may even find time to think fondly of our Founders for a second or two, in spite of their dithering on human bondage, because, at the very least, renouncing the rule of monarchs and granting ourselves the right to free expression, the task of perfecting our very own union, and the freedom to be Unitarians, Scientologists, Southern Baptists, Buddhists, Hassidic Jews or even a heathen, damned to perdition, is a fairly good bargain worth toasting.
Independence Day falls on Sunday this year, meaning every patriot in the Old Pueblo will wake to the sound of roosters crowing followed by church bells clanging, beckoning our neighbors to their haciendas of worship in every barrio and burb.
Mine eyes have seen the Glory and we’ll hear it down the street and across our valley, the soft murmurs of We standing together singing hymns of praise and “God Bless America.” We’ll pray for our Country and beseech our Gods for rain. E Pluribus Unum, pax vobiscum.
We’ll light sparklers on our porch and dine on the all-American cuisine of jackfruit tacos, pho, veggie burgers, Sonoran hot dogs, paletas and mochi ice cream balls, because walking out the mailbox to post old glory on the fencepost one can build up an astronomical gastronomical appetite.
In 1776 my great-great-great-great-great grandpa, Isham Brown, “By profession a cultivator of the earth,” enlisted in America’s revolutionary Continental Army and served in Virginia’s 4th Regiment, dodging musket balls at Princeton, engaging Lord Cornwallis’ redcoats, and fighting with General Washington at Germantown, Brandywine, Trenton and Valley Forge only to return home to lose his farm, divide the dirt among his three daughters and move on, as we Americans always do.
Isham lived to be 89, long enough to see his colony become a free democratic republic. The old revolutionary’s bones rest in Missouri shade, beneath a modest headstone next to his patient bride, Martha.
Isham’s great-great-grandkid, James, ended up in the Civil War, fighting to preserve the Union that Isham fought to create, enlisting on the right side of history to defend his nation from the same forces of division we fight today.
Grandpa Dick served in the First World War as a Dough Boy, a term that perplexed this child. Did he serve in the Pillsbury army under General Poppin’ Fresh or was the old coot a Yank who fought to end all wars, machine gunned and mustard gassed for his troubles? “Lift your pants’ legs, Grandpa! Show us the scars from the bullets,” I’d beg.
My great aunt’s boy, Kenneth, a barnstorming crop-duster turned ace, was shot down in the First World War over France, fueling her pilgrim’s pride and forever breaking her heart.
The Master Sergeant never spoke of Pearl Harbor. When asked about what he witnessed there on December 7th, Pop would just shake his head. “We gave them democracy,” he’d say.
Decades ago, reading a history of D-Day, I came across a hapless Captain Fitzsimmons, no relation, who was among the casualties when the ramp of his Normandy-bound landing craft dropped and Nazi bullets strafed every would-be liberator.
Three years ago I lied, claiming to be related to my namesake, when a French travel host insisted on thanking me for my country’s sacrifice after his first visit to Normandy. Stunned, humbled and proud I thanked him for Lafayette, who made our defeat of the British possible, the Statue of Liberty, a lovely housewarming gift and for Brigitte Bardot. “Something worth dying for,” the Master Sergeant would say.
I’ve been privileged to stand where a King was defeated at Yorktown, where the Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox and where King had a Dream, confident the moral arc of our nation still bends to better days.
Tomorrow we’ll crank up “Born in the USA,” watch the sky overhead light up with fireworks and wish America Feliz Cumpleaños. We’ll toast the revolution of 1776, which was over before our mission, San Xavier del Bac, was finished.
We’ll celebrate those who risked it all for an America-yet-to-be, revolutionaries who swore they’d kneel before no man, dedicated to the yet-to-be realized ideal: Whether immigrant, native, pauper or king, we, in our humble desert village, are each other’s equal, a radical proposition to celebrate long after the pyrotechnics and the brush fires on Sentinel Peak are extinguished.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I waved my hand over the faucet and waited for the water to trickle into my glass. The taste left something to be desired. “Water is water,” I thought.
I’ve seen the videos from the 20th century. In one an old man said, “The water was better when I was a kid. Back then it was pure aquifer,” as if describing a fine vintage champagne so delicious, so prized, no one could imagine it.
We couldn’t imagine seeing our grandchildren again yet they were coming.
I looked out my kitchen window and admired our zen garden. Beyond our wall the sea of shade sails and solar panels shimmered. In the distance the bleached barren mountains baked in their perpetual haze. Momma used to say, “I swear, it’ll rain diamonds before it rains actual water here.”
Earlier I took a walk around the neighborhood, inspecting the shade cast by the ever present canopy of sunscreen sails and solar panels that cover the length of every footpath here. As electric vehicles whirred past I noticed the only other sound I heard was the hum of the carbon collectors.
What must it have been like to hear a mourning dove? I’d been told it was a lush desert, alive with wildlife and even, on some occasions, wildflowers. No one I know has ever seen a wildflower. Not here.
We’ve seen the holograms of the bobcats, tortoises and javelina that once lived here. Too bad what happened. The electric charging station down the street has a quail design on it, a tribute to the departed, I guess.
I was born long after the die-offs. Not even creosote could survive the Great Drought coupled with the Great Warming. Wildfires took the junipers and chaparral. Water became so precious in the last century we couldn’t even share it with the saguaros that withered and fell.
A convoy of driverless tankers, filled with desalinated water from the Sea of Cortez, rolled past. When I saw the 1,000-foot-high salt dunes near the desalination plant in Puerto Peñasco for the first time I wondered if this was what the Rockies looked like back when snow fell in the lower 48.
De-Sal. Twice the cost, half the taste. Water is not always water.
Above me an elegant shuttle, bound for Tucson’s aging spaceport, banked over the barren Catalinas, ferrying hydro-archaeologists back home from a water conference on Mars.
That’s my field. I took that flight many times myself. Every time we passed over Hoover Dam, the antiquated relic, the long abandoned 726-foot wall dividing sand from sand, I wondered why our ancestors were so foolish, so blind.
I was always happy to return to Tucson, a desert metropolis thriving beneath a vast patchwork quilt of thousands of solar rectangles and triangular sails, cooling towers and water collectors, completely surrounded by dunes, dunes and more dunes, linked to distant communities by road and rail snaking to the north, west, south and east beneath elevated ribbons of the omnipresent solar collectors casting welcome shade.
Soon the kids will be here. I set my glass of De-Sal on the counter. On our kitchen window sill I keep my prized pottery shards. My favorite shard, a small beige triangle, was once part of a large water jug made by an Indigenous potter, long ago, back when Tucson was an Eden. And a river flowed.
Imagine that.
I read that it snowed here. More than once.
Imagine that!
I licked my thumb and used the spit to dab the shard and darken the pale red jagged line that represented flowing water. By the 13th century the Great Drought drove the Hohokam away.
In the 21st century the Great Mega-Drought came along with a vengeance, fueled by climate change, denial and an insatiable thirst for profit that led our ancestors to encourage growth even as the desert began to dry and die around us.
Decades later, refugees from warming in the south overwhelmed our desert city. There’s only so much water in the canteen. Restrict your population size or perish.
Thanks to today’s blistering sandstorm, our kids will begin their day with a beautiful crimson sunset. They’re coming for our 400th Annual All-Souls’ Procession set to begin at 3 a.m. Here’s hoping they’re rested and ready for the night ahead. Adapting to siesta culture was easy when I was kid, sleeping the endless hot days away, rising at sunset to attend school.
Like our Chamber of Commerce says, “Every night Tucson comes to life as the nocturnals rise to work or play beneath their neon.” They don’t mention water, the lack of it or the price of it.
One adapts. Water is water. The kids will be here soon. Hope they like the weather.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Years ago I hiked into Aravaipa Canyon with my small daughter. As I sat in the shade of a cottonwood, carving apples for our picnic I watched her play and splash in the stream that trickled past. I closed my eyes and memorized the sublime moment, serenaded by songbirds in the trees and little Sarah’s laughter.
I gave this decades-old expedition no thought until the recent anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.
In 1921 a mob of racist whites in Tulsa, Oklahoma, believed a big lie, and stormed a thriving Black community, burned 1,200 homes, killed hundreds of Black Americans and evaded justice.
After college I lived a short while in Oklahoma, making graphics for The Daily Oklahoman. I was repelled by the persistent racism and de facto segregation I found there. Generations after the Tulsa Massacre, the racist horror was erased from memory by the white citizenry, much like one might deny an Insurrection.
I fled Oklahoma City to work in Virginia where this Westerner learned many white Americans possess a gift for selective memory. Much to my surprise I learned the Civil War began yesterday, not 1861. Old times there are not forgotten, do not look away, Dixieland. The very mention of Lincoln among some could earn me a Confederate sabers-drawn glare.
A Westerner, I was self-righteous about my superior tolerant views on race, shaped by growing up in integrated housing on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and then in an integrated multicultural Tucson neighborhood.
In Aravaipa Canyon my little girl and I didn’t see many people, only scampering coatimundis and skittish mule deer. As we followed the creek up the lush narrow canyon I did not tell her it was a haunted place.
I should have taught her to memorize the year 1871.
At the time Chiricauhua Apaches had been battling settlers, stage drivers, couriers and ranchers in the territory for decades. Tales of torture and constant carnage fed the spirit of vengeance festering in the saloons of Tucson.
Many whites felt betrayed by the decision of the U.S. Army at Camp Grant to broker peace with the Aravaipa Apache, a different band of Apaches. Under Chief Eskiminzin they were now living in relative peace under the promised protection of the feds, in the idyllic canyon some 70 miles north of the Catalinas where I once watched my daughter skip stones.
Truth didn’t matter. The law didn’t matter. To hell with President Grant.
Tucsonans John Wasson, Charles Etchells, William Oury, Sidney DeLong, James Lee and the Elias brothers took action, leading a mob of Mexican vigilantes and club-wielding Tohono O’Odham on a three-day expedition to Aravaipa Canyon to address the Apache problem with madness.
At sunrise the mob entered the canyon and slaughtered, mutilated and scalped 136 Aravaipa Apache women and children. Only eight were men. The intended victims, the men, were away from their families, hunting.
John Wasson, editor of the Arizona Citizen, had fanned the flames of hatred for the “worthless” troops at Camp Grant and called for the end of the “savage” Apaches. Our highest peak in the Tucson Mountains is named after after the man, a fitting honor, I assume, for mass murderers.
Sam Hughes was sorry he couldn’t be there with his pals for the slaughter but provided the mob with carbine rifles, water and supplies. Lee and Oury had parks and streets named after them.
What sounds startled the Apache mothers awake that morning? The thumps of bludgeoned skulls? The crack of Sam Hughes’ rifles? The shrieks of the mothers as their babes were torn from them and, according to eyewitnesses, dismembered?
Their village was leveled. Twenty-eight small orphans were taken by the mob as slaves.
President Grant was horrified.
A jury in Tucson was not horrified, judging their fellow Tucsonans to be as free of guilt as the fine white citizens of Tulsa in ’21. Weeks later the ringleaders ran for office and won every seat from mayor down. Elias was elected dogcatcher.
Cochise and Geronimo rose up with a vengeance. After years of war the various Apache bands were defeated and relocated to the San Carlos Reservation, where today they are fighting a copper-mining corporation aching to carve the largest mine in America into their sacred land, their Mount Sinai, their Holy Temple Mount, at their revered Oak Flats.
Many of the Apaches resisting this desecration are descendants of the relocated survivors of the massacre.
In the canyon where the Aravaipa and Pinal Apache once lived visitors can listen to the soothing creek and escape the troubles of this world. But one cannot escape history.
Listen with an open heart to the wind rustling the cottonwoods and you can hear the ghosts of 1871 asking only to be remembered.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
It was early May when I got a surprising email regarding the matter of my lineage. Usually this genre of letter is from an angry reader. Like the reader who questioned my pedigree. ”Was your family tree a shrub?” Or the reader who questioned my birth. “Did your parents have any children who lived?” My favorite question from such readers? “Who do you think you are?”
Who do I think I am?
I have no clue.
Dad was an orphan. Mom fled her abusive family during the Depression. Estranged from their bloodlines, their family was a quilt of friends. I filled in the blanks, imagining my ancestors to be the peasants you saw in Hollywood epics that met their fates in chains, dungeons and coliseums. Just another extra among a cast of thousands, a nameless nobody left off the credits, forgotten by history.
And then this extraordinary email arrived. The writer thanked me for my columns and cartoons and then surprised me with an offer: “I would be delighted to research your ancestry. For free, of course, as a thank-you gift to you.”
How could I say, “No”? I told my kind genealogist what I knew. Undaunted, he began digging.
My kind genealogist found names. And links and graves and enlistment notices and military records and census data. Every day I’d open my email wondering who I was going to meet next.
My kind genealogist returned a procession of heretofore unknown great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, abducted by death, back into the world.
I won’t bore you with names, dates or pictures. We all have a similar rogue’s gallery. And please don’t reach for your faded pictures, either. I don’t care what your great-great-grand father looked like unless he was the Elephant Man. It’s exhausting poring over the old sepia portraits of another’s clan and pretending to be very, very, very interested. What can you say? “Look at that! You have your great-great-grandfather’s sepia-colored eyes.” Or “She certainly is beautiful, by 18th century standards.” Or “Which great uncle did the old battle ax poison?”
My kind genealogist emailed me a pedigree chart, confirming I was that most aristocratic of all American breeds, a mixed-breed mutt, a glorious mongrel.
I never cared for purebreds. Nothing but trouble and dim as they come.
How can I thank my kind genealogist?
Ellen said, “It would be impossible to thank him.” She’s right. How do you thank a benevolent detective who finds stories of your kin from the decks of sailing ships and the backs of conestogas?
“One of your ancestors was in the Civil War.”
“Which side?!” In 2021 this matters.
“Union. Here’s his picture.” I looked into the former private’s eyes and promised to continue his fight to preserve our Union.
I was struck by how simultaneously meaningful, and meaningless, it all was. I wondered about their lives, studying their stern, stoic faces for clues and found their familiar eyes revealed little save for the harsh nature of their lives as immigrants, soldiers, farmers, journalists, laborers, civil servants and pioneers.
What will our great-great-grandchildren wonder when they see images of us?
I doubt they’ll be able to divine from looking at a picture of me and my older brother Bob together, that he patiently taught me to walk when I was a toddler, to love poetry when I was a teenager, to honor service to our nation when he was in Vietnam and to laugh at the absurdities of growing old together.
Studying them one can become prideful, reveling in the history of their extraordinary persistence, grit and resilience, it’s easy to flatter yourself and believe you are the inheritor of your ancestor’s more heroic traits.
When Bob, my last surviving sibling, left the world mere weeks ago, I assumed the rank of patriarch and felt the honorable burden of being the sole caretaker of my family’s stories. I felt the loneliness of a generation drifting inexorably into history where we all will slumber until we are discovered by kind genealogists in the future who will tell our stories.
Next time I’m asked, “Who do you think you are?” I will argue I am more than family histories over which I have no control. I am the sum of the people I love. As surely as I am the sum of my immigrant and pioneer ancestors I am the sum of a laughing brother on his knees holding out his arms encouraging me to take my first step.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
When the weather wizards on TV declare “Memorial Day is the beginning of summer,” we Tucsonans smile, roll our eyes and politely nod because we know a season can’t “begin” if it never ends, and as sure as there are death and potholes any fool can see summer never ends. Winter here is, at best, a visiting breeze, a fraud, a seasonal sham, a meteorological hoax — and autumn? A rumor to be forgotten.
We’re good humored about summer because exposure to the sun has baked our brains into tiny charred maniacal raisins. For laughs, some raisin-brained Tucsonans have been know to put on sweaters in January. We keep our sweaters next to our galoshes and ice scrapers in our entryway closets because, like we tell every newcomer, “you never know. We could get a blizzard.”
Last Blizzard I got was at a Dairy Queen in Gila Bend in July of 1973.
Any summer dweller worth his sunscreen who hears the radio say “Tucson hit the 100-degree mark today” will tell you Tucson doesn’t “hit” the “100-degree mark” as much as it hits us, whomps us good, landing like an acme anvil on our Wiley Coyote heads. Before you can say “heatstroke”, as Yosemite Sam would say, our “biscuits are burning.”
When the obvious is announced, “Tucson is heading into triple digits,” we hold our defiant single-digit response up to the sun and carry on. Because we like summer. We like the heat. We like having raisin brains.
“We’ll be seeing above-normal temperatures again,” says the weather wizard. Really? Isn’t that every daily headline for the foreseeable future?
“ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AGAIN,
JUST LIKE YESTERDAY AND YEAR BEFORE,
GLOBAL WARMING SUSPECTED”
When visitors say, “It’s hot as hell here” I tell them they could not be more wrong. It’s hotter. Which is why we Tucsonans have little climatological apprehension about ending up in hell, much to the disappointment of our moral superiors.
“This is hell?”
“Welcome, sinner, to your eternal torment.”
“Can someone turn down the AC? I’m chilly.”
“What?”
“‘It’s chilly. I’m from Tucson. Trust me, this is not hot. Not ‘summer’ hot.”
“Silence, Foul Pestilence! No place is hotter than hell!”
“Try Speedway and Country Club in a month. I’m not even breaking a sweat here. Is it this cool year-round?”
“Into the ‘Lake of Fire’ with you!”
“Oooh. A ‘Lake of Fire’. Let me tell you about Tucsonans, lobster boy. We love heat. We like to soak in flaming hot tubs filled with salsa. We gulp down jalapeño peppers like grapes, breathe fire and complain that it’s not hot enough in June. Tell your manager, what’s his name, ‘Lucy’—”
“Lu-ci-fer.”
“Well, you tell Lucifer I’m not impressed. What you call ‘hot’ we Tucsonans would call ‘brisk.’ Like a pleasant sunset in July. My friends back home’ll be jealous! Look. I got goosebumps!”
“Taste my branding iron!”
“Been there, done that. Summer of 2019. I sat right down on my white hot seatbelt buckle which I’d left sitting there in the sun when I got out of my truck to pick up a solar-powered sauna in June . Scarred my biscuits. Want to see?”
“No. You’re all checked in. Go.”
“Great. I’m still freezing here, pal. You got a sweater I could borrow?”
“Next, please.”
“Don’t you keep any sweaters around, just in case? I’ll bet down here you keep them where all my friends back up in Tucson keep their mittens and their ice scrapers. Hall closet, right?”
“Our gift shop carries sweaters. They come in burlap, steel wool. Next to the ‘down’ escalators. They also carry jalapeño chewing gum, toy pitchforks, rubber snowballs and the foulest of abominations, ‘Best Puns of 2020.’”
“Got any hot cocoa? I’m catching a cold. I am shivering.”
“Check out the lava lamps. Real lava! Nothing says ‘Hello from hell’ like a red-hot lava lamp.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Too late.”
“Got any postcards that say ‘Hell! Compared to Tucson in June, It’s Heaven’?”
“Be on your way! Heed the wails of the condemned burning in our fiery depths!”
“Is that what I’m hearing? A bunch of whiners crying about a little heat? Who are they? Heathens from Wisconsin? Unitarians from Seattle? Big babies.”
We good-humored Tucsonans are a hardy people, our souls are heated and hammered into a strong shape by the fierce forge of summer. We apply our sunscreen with a paint roller and believe “that which does not incinerate us makes us stronger.” When the sidewalks roll up and the streets are empty we raisin-brained summer-loving saps will savor our due, the slowing of life’s pace. And I, in the shade of my porch, will enjoy my lava lamp and dream of blizzards in Gila Bend.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Late last summer I turned 65. To celebrate I chained a bench to the mesquite tree in our front yard, raked gravel, yelled at a “punk” javelina to get off my dead lawn, powerlifted a Sonoran hot dog and sprained my entire body.
Aging is not for the old. I noticed this when I started going to lunch with my fellow 60-plus geezers. All we talk about are death and disease. I don’t remember talking about death and disease quite so much when I was 6 at lunch in the cafeteria.
“Did you hear? Tommy. Skinned his knee.”
“No. How old was he? Four? Pablo had an asthma attack!”
“Poor Pablo. Jimmy’s in the hospital.”
“No! Didn’t he just turn 5? So young! What was it?”
“Tonsils.”
“Tonsils are the first to go.”
“I lost a tooth last week. Just fell out!”
“Joey fell. That’s what I heard. Off his bike. Frankie how’s your pee-pee?”
“Doc said it’s all good. Yours?”
“It’s good. I had a good No. 2 this morning.”
“Me, too!”
“Me, too! Let’s order.”
This is how we grown men talk.
“In whose name is your reservation?”
“Prostate Roundtable.”
Today’s special will be Charlie’s Bursitis with a side of Buck’s Melanoma. The Soup? Carlos’ Colitis. And for dessert: Paul’s Prostate Numbers.
“Can I bring you gentlemen anything? Medicare supplemental plans? Burial insurance? Brochures from the Neptune Society?”
“I’ll have the Metamucil cocktail. Make it dirty with two ibuprofen.”
“Your age is just a number,” says Charlie. Uh huh. Try telling the cop who asks you if you know how fast you were going: ”Officer, a number is just a number.” Try telling St. Peter at the Pearly Gates when he asks you if you knew how high your PSA was: “A number is just a number.”
“I can’t stop doing the math,” said Carlos. “In 20 years I’ll be 85. If I stop sinning and enjoying my life now, I figure I’ll be able to not enjoy the decades of life that I have left — in good health.”
“What? How many Metamucil cocktails have you had?”
The waiter asks if we want bread. We looked at each other as if the evil temptress asked us if we wanted carbs, calories, sugar and premature death due to freshly baked gastronomical pleasure. Carlos caved.
As we dine we turn on each other. “Buck, is it true you’re so old Coronado went to a high school named after you?”
“Henry, I hear you’re so old Doc Holliday gave you your first colonoscopy.” Colon health is our favorite lunchtime topic while eating.
“Yup. He used laudanum and a drill from the Copper Queen Mine. Fitz here can remember when Old Tucson was called New Tucson. Weren’t you here when Reid Park was Jurassic Park?“
We’re comfortable in our own skins. I am. For one thing it’s a loose fit at my age.
Buck told us about his favorite new dispensary, Orthopedica. “They got strains like Scooter, Old Spice, Mellow Yoda, White Light and Medicare Plan THC. A mortician friend told me so many seniors have weed cards that he always masks up during cremations to avoid the contact high.”
I love my friends’ stories but I gotta go home, check the mail and forward the cremation flyers to the estate planners. With our summer heat who needs a cremation plan? When I go, leave me on a bus stop in July so the sun can incinerate me into Old Pueblo powder. Let a passing haboob carry my ashes away.
Pete told us about his tour a new assisted living facility-slash-casino. Their slogan: “Every day’s a crapshoot for our residents.”
“I told my wife, ‘If I’m ever incapacitated pull the plug. And make it look like an accident. I wouldn’t want you to get blamed.’”
Henry asked, “What did she say?”
“Don’t worry. No one would ever blame me.”
Charlie told us about the free “Intro to Medicare“ class he took at the Pima Council On Aging. “I learned there are 4,788,271,556 Medicare plans. There’s Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan DDT, Plan STP, Plan ZZTop and for boomers, Plan CBD.”
“Time to go. Good lunch, fellas. Good luck with your probes this week. Your EDs, STDs and EKGs. Love you guys.”
On my way out Henry said, ”I was looking at myself in the mirror when I was surprised to see my father’s face staring back at me.”
“Are you sure it was your dad’s face?”
“I’d recognize it anywhere. Stray nostril hairs. Long as kitty whiskers. Neck like a tortoise. That’s him. I’m as old as my dad. It’s not possible. Can’t be me. I’m still 7 years old between the ears.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I hear tonsils are the first to go.”
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Feeling good about the recount up there in Maricopa County, I drove my pickup into town. Larry Liberty, 1776 on your AM dial, was talking about the tyranny of Arizona’s rigged election, how it gave us Sleepy-Joe-Stalin-Biden, Barack-Hussein-Obama’s-Hand-Puppet, and how we got to keep fighting “the tyranny of socialism, and the transgenderfication of our children, by supporting the Cyber Ninjas hunting for Chinese bamboo fibers among the ballots with specially trained bamboo-sniffing panda bears.”
They’re so serious they’re wearing lab coats and they even called in the “Amazing Kreskin of Apache Junction” to help.
I was riveted!
And then I had to hit the brakes.
A school bus, driving in front of me had stopped, right there, in the middle of traffic and stuck a big old stop sign out the left side and everybody stopped. For the first time in my life, I saw the tyranny of the deep state’s mind control right there plain as day. Why should my right or anyone’s right to drive freely be infringed by some “government school” bus coddling their nanny-state socialist day-care minions just so they won’t have to “dodge” drivers enjoying the pedal-to-the-metal blessings of freedom and liberty?
Every useful idiot in the herd did what sheep always do. They all stopped and bowed down to the Deep State! Even the ones on the other side of the street!
I was pretty sure those so-called “kids” were “crisis actors” who’d just come from rehearsing some phony red flag mass shooting to take away our guns. One flipped me off.
I honked, rolled down my window and hollered, “Drive free or die!”
Sitting there fuming, I listened to Larry Liberty talk about the Lamestream Media’s plot to undermine the vote audit up there in Phoenix by insisting on “observing the process.” How can we get to the truth if everyone insists on watching?
Kids kept getting off the bus and I just got madder than Paul Gosar at a diversity workshop. I cranked back my sunroof, stood up and shouted at the cars and trucks around me, “This is tyranny, people! Rise up!”
I honked at the bus again. Still more kids got off. Back when America was great, no one had to stop for anything. Dodging traffic made America great. Not this. Not the tyranny of the nanny state run by the vote cheaters.
I yelled at the kids wearing masks.“Masks are tyranny! Free the face!” The liberal stooge in the Prius behind me glared at me like she was Nancy Pelosi herself, shooting her hate-filled laser eyes right through me. A guy in the Mazda next to me threatened to free my nose from my face! One of the brats took a video of me hollering.
Sheep. Suckers. Fools. Our guy won.
I’d spritz bear spray into both my eyeballs for that man. You can’t talk sense to the left. They’re all haters.
The bus driver pulled his fascist stop sign back in, killed the flashing lights and finally freed us from slavery. I honked in celebration, and happy to leave the herd behind, floored it to freedom.
Larry Liberty said the “Stop the Steal” vote counters in Maricopa County were “looking into the claim by Marjorie Taylor-Greenjeans, a psychic from Safford, that she’d seen Israeli spies printing up exactly 666,000 fake Biden ballots in a vision.” The top auditor said, “The ‘Uri Geller of Glendale’ is on it, using his powerful mind to detect any matzo flour in the ballots.”
The truth will come out.
For luck I touched my AK-47 and my slightly used “Boogaloo Model 1984 Insurrection Pitchfork” on my gun rack. Good things to have if the thought police tried to drag me to some “Re-education Concentration Camp” down by the university.
I graduated from good old Trump U with a major in freedom and I’m smart enough to know that our Cyber-Samurai-Bamboo-Sniffers are searching for the truth using every technology available, including panda bear robots and the finest Ouija boards, and sure as Liz Cheney’s a traitor they’ll find the proof we knew was there all along, that Donald Trump is still our president.
That man taught me to see the tyranny everywhere.
Like what I saw later on, up the road a ways. That was the first time I’d ever seen a stop sign for what it was: a faceless oppressive dictator infringing my right to move about freely. And they’re on every corner! How much tyranny can a free people endure? When will the truth come out of Maricopa County and set us free?
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On a recent warm afternoon I stood in my desert xeriscape among the scarlet, canary yellow and coral pink blossoms of my fairy dusters, brittle bushes and aloes, enjoying the fruits of my labor in my desert Eden when I noticed a multitude of bees laboring about me, in servitude to some distant Queen, probing the floral trumpets, barnstorming my fields of Sonoran ambrosia, buzzing, humming and whirring, a defiant sign that life buzzes on in this season of death and drought.
Later, busying myself at my garden work bench by our shed I heard a humming thrum overhead.
Hmm.
I looked up to see a hive under construction beneath the eave directly above me, a white wax palace of thousands of hexagons, teeming with the very bees my garden had lured here.
I was mesmerized by the worker bees zooming around me, some returning with news of untapped liquid gold while others ferried bounty to her Majesty’s white castle.
I retreated for caution’s sake, vowing I’d move this hive without killing the industrious homesteaders.
All worker-bees are female and all drones are male and of course the males are louts. They don’t harvest, build, do bee dishes or throw out the bee trash.
Lacking stingers, they just do one thing. They make baby bees with the Queen.
All a drone has to do is call up a little Barry White, buzz sweet nothings in the Queen’s ear, do the DNA deed, lose his bee-hood and die a legendary “Father of the Bee Nation” until the next drone in line asks Alexa to play Lou Rawls and the ritual is repeated until the Queen retires to enjoy her 1,798,018,000 Mother’s Day cards that arrive every May, around this time of year.
Q-Anon disciples believe drones are flown remotely by 3-inch high Air Force drone pilots working secretly in a shoebox somewhere in Roswell. Doesn’t sound right to me.
Backing away from the hive I came eye to eye with an impatient bee buzzing at me to get out of her way. “I have a Queen to serve, you knave.”
That afternoon I found their savior, Monica Miksa-King, a third-generation beekeeper, online. Monica relocates bees alive and reconstructs their hive at her honey farm out by Three Points.
When word spread Monica was coming it created quite a buzz among the bees. Past-president and current vice-president of the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association, Monica’s a scholarly ally of bees, having taught, written and spoken about bees from here to Bisbee and beyond. I’d say she’s the bee all and end all of bees.
Arriving the following dusk, petite sunny-faced Monica hopped down from her working truck and asked, “Where are they?” I showed her. She sized up the situation, grabbed her gear, donned her bee hat, ascended my ladder and began slowly, carefully, gently vacuuming every bee into her portable hive box, a sort of hive away from home.
“Want to hold a drone?” She handed me down a handful of the little Romeos. “They can’t sting you.” Holding the irritated slackers buzzing inside my cupped hands took me back to when I was 10 on my uncle’s strawberry farm catching fireflies.
“Want some honey?” Finishing up, Monica had set aside a few lustrous white chunks of the dissembled hive, glistening with honey, in a bowl for Ellen and me. Unashamed to behave like Winnie the Pooh in sandals I greedily scooped up a paw full of dripping honeycomb and stuffed it into my mouth, declaring this glorious sweet moment would be worth the diabetic coma. It was.
Monica kept most of the hive segments to reconstruct their new hive back home.
“Want to see the Queen?” Monica spotted the captive queen in her portable hive among her whirring minions. She was easy to find thanks to the telltale trail of thousands of tiny Mother’s Day cards. She looked weary of Barry White. I think she’d prefer a little BeeGees now and then.
After Monica packed up the bees, her bee suit and gear we sat and talked about climate change, pesticides, bee genetics, bee varieties, John Belushi, wild bees, why pollinators are so important, planting for pollinators, her bee hive haven and her deactivated — Lord knows why she has one — Titan 2 missile silo.
I drew a portrait of Monica surfing on a swarm of bees and gave it to her along with her very fair bee fee and our bedazzled gratitude. As she drove off into the night with her buzzing cargo back home to her hives, I wondered if I could be her agent. How about a reality show called “Bee Wrangler”?
I told Ellen it would generate plenty of buzz. “You do drone on.” Whoa, Ellen. That one stung.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I’m writing about abortion in Arizona today, a grim and grievous topic so if you’re hankering for a lighter subject check back next week when I’ll be writing arthritic knee slappers about turning 65.
This past Tuesday, or perhaps it was during the Inquisition, Gov. Doug Ducey, signed a law prohibiting abortions based on non-fatal genetic disorders and that’s just the beginning.
It goes further.
Docs can face prison time.
The remains must be cremated or buried.
The father has a say.
State university hospitals can’t do abortions.
And that fetus is as much a person as a corporation and thus shall be accorded all the civil rights you and I enjoy.
This ambitious effort was fed to our fine lawmakers, who love children, by the Center for Arizona Policy, a homegrown Christian lobby with an Evangelical edge.
They’re our anti-choice, anti-weed, anti-physician-assisted suicide, anti-Equal Rights Amendment and anti-LGBTQ Taliban cabal among the tumbleweeds. If they called for the stoning of harlots and sodomites at noon in Cardinals’ Stadium on a Tuesday our God-and-Christian-Lobby-fearing politicians would have a bill on Ducey’s desk by Monday.
Most Arizonans suspect that in spite of these prohibitions women will continue to seek abortions and that’s why we persist in believing they should be safe, legal and, for those who feel queasy about the procedure, rarer than rain puddles in June.
I have a thought about their measure demanding we properly bury or cremate fetal remains. This was important to our politicians who love children and who believe Arizona’s womenfolk need to be lectured on options, shown videos, told to wait and think it over and be reminded by their moral superiors abortion is a calamitous matter, because, well, they’re women and certain men know how womenfolk can lack moral instruction and be devoid of grief.
I don’t think this weak attempt by our politicians, who tell us they love children, to spark the Supreme Court into overturning Roe goes far enough. The proud backers of this bill are spinelessly tip-toeing around the logical conclusion of their fundamental premise, unlike one spunky Arizona politician who refuses to beat around the bush, an uncommon man who does not dilly-dally when it comes to abortion like his fellow weak-kneed, Christian lawmakers who, by the way, love children.
That man is State Rep. Walt Blackman, a fearless African-American Trumper from Snowflake who considers the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist group and belongs to the “Stop the Steal” tribe.
A Bronze Star veteran of Iraq, and a family man, Blackman’s profile excited my curiosity about his audacious and clear-eyed abortion proposal, what I call his “cut to the chase.”
Blackman fathered a bill in our legislature that would categorize abortion as first-degree premeditated murder. Unlike his fellow-elected, cowardly pro-life peers, I admire the courageous and honest clarity of his daring measure.
And what is Arizona’s ultimate penalty for willful, deliberate and premeditated homicide? Death. Now that’s a pro-life position that Arizonans can respect, a foundational beginning. Thank you, Representative Blackman, for your forthright conviction.
But you’re not taking it far enough. Not for Arizona, a state that claims to love our children and care so deeply for their welfare.
Think big and brave, Arizona lawmakers. Designate every private female citizen’s uterus as public property, making womenfolk’s reproductive organs the domain of this state, subject to random inspection, and strict regulation by their devout moral superiors.
And in the name of crime prevention, your uterus should be subject to cavity searches for illegal contraceptives that your betters say kill the unborn.
Be bold. If you believe it’s murder why back half measures?
Pack Arizona’s Death Row with mothers of all ages. By the hundreds. After putting children in cages this should be breeze. Everyone who aids and abets an abortion should be held, tried, convicted and face a certain death sentence.
That includes Aunt Nelly, Doc Jones, Nurse Maria, Sally the Receptionist and Jimmy the Boyfriend, too. One to a cell. Murderers all.
I was surprised Attorney General Mark Brnovich didn’t back Blackman’s bill. He’s so pro-life he’s itching to pump poison into the veins of the living on Death Row. Fill those soon-to-be vacant cells. Deter folks from abortion by making an example of the convicted.
Just because prohibitions and deterrence are never effective at changing behavior is no reason not to enjoy a Godly crusade.
Pass a Mandatory Motherhood Act, compelling women to bear the fruit of rape. Offer $1,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the conviction of any woman seeking an abortion. Triple our prisons budgets. Think big. Do it while you still hold office.
I’d wait until after next week, after Mother’s Day.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
In 1988 I was happily cartooning the notorious Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham. Ev was a racist extremist who believed conspiracy theories and benefited from them. I was certain we’d never see his ilk again. He was good daily copy and a joy to draw. Bats swooping in and out of his ears. Price tag dangling from his hairpiece.
Ev called Asian visitors “round eyes.” He canceled MLK Day and defended the use of the word “pickaninny.” A divinely empowered religious zealot he believed all sodomites had to get out of Dodge and he had no use for science. Ev famously answered a reporter with, “Don’t you ever ask me for a true statement again.”
What’s in our water?
Ev was Trump before Trump was Trump. Only our guy got found guilty. I remember thinking “That’s the last time Arizonans will ever elect a crazy wing nut like him to office.”
Is there something in our water?
Thirty years later, Arizona’s Grand Old Party is overrun with Evan Mechams. This old, old, old Arizonan would love to blame the voting retirees from Cantankerous, Ohio, Curmudgeon, Wisconsin, and Fox Snooze, Georgia.
But the truth it there is something in our water. And I know what it is. Conspiracy theories. We have billions of squiggling conspiracy theories in our water. Flooding our washes. Coursing in our aquifers.
Two cannibals, Nancy Pelosi and AOC told me this on George Soros yacht. We were at an antifa fish fry in Rocky Point.
Arizona has more disinformation peddlers than bin Laden had holes in his apartment. Opportunistic cynics willing to sink lower than Lake Mead feed this human thirst for simple answers to complex issues and their own personal thirst for power, graft and saps to grift.
Let’s examine some favorites.
Kelli Ward, head of Arizona’s Republican Party and farther out there than Pioneer 10, Voyager 1 and Glenn Beck, has been dissing her fellow Republican, Gov. Doug Ducey, because he’s not into recounting the 2020 ballots again.
Not after we had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir count those ballots out loud at the top of their lungs. Not after we had the hand count by Sesame Street’s “The Count” — using an abacus.
Ward’s fundraising email appeals are eye-catching.
“We’ve got to stop this from happening! Joe ‘Chain Gang’ Arpaio just tweeted that a white woman named Mamie Eisenhower was killed by a Mexican produce vendor living here illegally. With a casaba melon!”
Mecham would’ve sent her $20.
Then there’s the titans Arizona sends to Washington, D.C.
Congressman Paul Gosar for example. Six of his brothers and sisters and three household pets have publicly condemned Paul. He’s so disliked for his white supremacist views, the pet rat’s talking.
He was pushing the idea of a white nationalist “Anglo-Saxon Caucus” in Congress. Stir in white supremacist with a hint of QAnon. The man is Anglo Sax-Anon. Like the great white warriors of the 11th century, Gosar’s unable to learn about the history of civil rights in the 20th century, talk to Ev about the word pickaninny or read a room.
Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs is a big boy. Big on voting down COVID relief, dissing masks and blowing off Dr. Anthony Fauci. I believe Andy felt invulnerable because word on the street was the pandemic only affected human beings.
Down around our neck of the dunes we have state Rep. Mark Finchem, the Forrest Gump of the insurrection. Finchem was so giddy to be there he was tweeting insurrection selfies like a 14-year old girl at a Taylor Swift concert.
The Mossad and ISIS tell me he’s being watched by the deep state out of an abandoned Radio Shack in Apache Junction.
I should ghostwrite tweets for him. I wrote this one.
“Racist Black Lives Matter behind cancellation of Dukes of Hazzard. Cancel culture! Freedom! They’ll get my pitchfork, AR-15 and tiki torch when they pry ‘em from my dead cold fingers. Liberty!”
These are the science-denying titans who hold their breath while going past Casa Grande to avoid getting the Gila Bends.
Can you imagine the private conversations at their shindigs? Mecham would be welcomed like a savant and a prophet.
“When those Mexican-speaking Spanish radicals take over and Arizona becomes ‘Aztlan,’ then Saddlebrooke will be made into an internment camp for Caucasians who prefer mild salsa. I have undeniable proof Kyrsten Sinema is an anime-like being created when a UFO flown by Jewish persons struck a Buffalo Exchange in Scottsdale.”
“Tell us more, Ev.”
“Vaccine passports are a plot to intimidate people who can’t spell ‘Pfizer.’ I saw spaceships in the night sky over Winslow. And then out of nowhere. Jewish lasers. Global warming is a hoax perpetuated by Frigidaire. The missing Trump ballots are buried under ‘A’ Mountain in that hippie town.”
Evan Mecham won. He’s everywhere. Don’t drink the water.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Down at the Arroyo Cafe I shared a patio table and vaccination stories with Sour Frank and Lurlene. “I was blown away by the sight of all the volunteers at the UA’s pod. I asked an older volunteer why he was there. He said, ‘Like I told my grandkids, I served my country once, I’m happy to do it again.’ I was touched by his words. And his needle.”
Sour Frank wanted to needle Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus’ good fortune. “Last time a Democrat poached an Arizonan Obama plucked Gov. Janet Napolitano to be his Homeland Security Chief. We got Jan Brewer in the Governor’s seat.”
Lurlene huffed, “The Sarah Palin in ski pants who gave us SB 1070.”
I groaned. “Reminded me of the time the Master Sergeant traded in his ‘too flashy’ Mustang for a Dodge Dart that blew smoke and swerved right.”
Lurlene grinned. “Did you notice our chief was nominated by Biden to be the head of the Customs and Border Protection the same week a volcano blew in the Caribbean? And Hawaii’s Mauna Loa began quaking? It’s no coincidence. Seismic shifts are afoot.”
Rosa, carafe in hand, agreed. “Border Patrol and ICE are long overdue for a tectonic shakeup.”
From inside his cafe kitchen, Carlos shouted, “Magnus is the vato for the job! He stood up to politicians when they pushed policies that were counter-productive to effective community policing. Like a saguaro, amigos.”
Sour Frank rolled his eyes over his mask. “Whatever, Carlos. Magnus may not survive the politics waiting for him in Washington.”
I mentioned he should prepare for the experience by running through Cholla forests naked or into Mountain Lion dens wearing jackrabbit skins or…
Frank interrupted. “And if he’s approved he’ll get to lead thousands of pro-Trump Customs and Border Protection agents hostile to any ‘progressive’ reforms.”
Lurlene laughed at Sour Frank’s grim forecast. “Magnus can handle it. Anyone who’s survived summers in Tucson has already survived all the roasting, scorching and blistering the world can dish out.”
Frank fretted that Magnus once carried a protest sign agreeing Black Americans are human beings whose lives matter.
Lurlene thought this would matter only to “Hannity, Tucker and the senators who never got word from Appomattox that Dixie was to be forgotten.” Confederacy of dunces she called them.
Carlos said, “Chief Magnus’ challenge is easy. Develop skin thicker than a javelina’s hide and keep Liberty’s lamp lit.”
“Speaking of Sean Miller…” said Lurlene.
Perplexed, I asked, “Who?” I took a sip. “Name’s familiar.”
“The former winning coach of the University of Arizona Wildcat men’s basketball team.”
“Basketball. That’s the round orange ball, right?”
Sour Frank said I could not possibly be a Tucsonan. He asked me what I knew about Lute and I said Miller earned too much loot. “Not that Lute!”
“Oh, you mean the stringed medieval instrument?”
Sour Frank said, “Fitz, you are a heretic.”
And this heretic said, “Miller would easily find a job, particularly with his gift for remaining completely unaware of what his assistant coaches and recruiters were up to at all times. In college sports that kind of delegation and trust is an essential skill.”
Lurlene nodded. “I hope he returns to the Tonight Show to juggle basketballs again, particularly now that he’s mastered the ability as a coach to also turn vermillion and pop a neck vein at will.”
It was a natural progression from neck veins popping to the Reid Park Zoo controversy. The Arroyo Cafe crew had answers:
“Eliminate the zoo. Sell the stock to slaughterhouses, illicit wildlife traders and Third World pharmacists who deal in testicles and horns.”
Thanks, Very Sour Frank.
“Declare Barnum Hill a World Heritage UNESCO site akin to the Great Barrier Reef, The Great Wall of China or Machu Picchu.”
That was sarcasm, Rosa, right?
“Expand Reid Park Zoo vertically?”
“Carlos isn’t taking this seriously.” I am. “Use the zoo bond monies to host ‘Transparency and Public Communications workshops’ for Zoo leadership.”
Rosa put down her carafe. “Expand ‘Pathways to Asia’ into the Dell Urich Golf Course. I already wrote the brochure: ‘The South Course offers a gently rolling terrain with Komodo dragons and Malaysian Tigers, providing an excellent challenge for golfers who enjoying fighting off wildlife with a nine iron.’ Coming in 2023. What do you think?”
As friends laughed hearing 2023 startled me. For a moment I wondered what year it was. “Yesterday I went for a hike on my favorite trail and saw hedgehogs blooming and I was disoriented by the sudden onset of spring so soon. Between springs there was a winter of endless empty days without festivals or holidays to mark the season.”
Sour Frank smiled, dropped his mask and lifted his cup of Rosa’s finest. “Fitz, here’s to the Spring of 2021. And better days ahead.”
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Dear COVID diary,
The whole family got vaccinated. We still mask up. We’re role models for the fools acting like the credits have rolled on this epic horror flick. Apparently they haven’t seen the trailer for “Episode 4: The Virus Strikes Back,” opening at a hot spot near you.
Spring is here and summer is careening toward us like Tiger Woods in a semi. So long sweatpants. Hello shorts. So long T-shirt and sandals. Hello T-shirt and sandals.
Next day, my 19-year-old said, “We should do Tumamoc.” Why? Because Golgotha’s booked. After three days of walking up a vertical slope I arrived at the summit, fifth in line, behind Moses, Tenzing Norgay, Edmund Hillary and the Latina cast of Sex in the City. Our desert is where I find spiritual restoration and relief from the madness.
Days later I wept when my longtime friend Mike Gordy died from COVID-19. Eternally smiling Mike, the master educator, the happy warrior, threw his heart and soul into every social, economic, education, peace and justice cause west of the San Pedro. I know for a fact Mike’s spirit was at the first “Make Peace with Cochise” rally in 1888, that he marched with suffragettes in 1918 and right now is offering to sand Woody Guthrie’s guitar to perfection in his heavenly wood shop.
Centuries ago, Mike invited me to give my pep talk to his students at Pistor Middle School. Top of every hour I entertained his students for 15 minutes, then sat in the back and watched Mr. Gordy, an inexhaustible vessel of kindness, inspire, provoke, question, amuse, mentor and teach. Like so many amazing teachers, Mike saw every interaction with a kid as a shot at changing the world for the better, making it smarter and kinder.
This week, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill protecting lethal weapons from federal gun safety laws. If Ducey protected Arizonans from COVID-19 during this pandemic with the same zeal he rushed to protect guns from sensible regulation, thousands of Arizonans would still be alive.
Next day, we were two weeks out from our vaccinations, thank you, Joe Biden, which meant tomorrow for the first time in over a year we were going to see my daughter, her husband and our three grandkids in Phoenix.
Ellen gave me that “Time to groom Yoda” look. “Let me trim those wild silver hairs.” Were the electric hedge clippers necessary? “Ears grow back.”
Next day we were so happy to be on the road for the first time in eons that when Kool and The Gang came on the radio we did the lariat dance.
I said to my wife with glee, “People are driving responsibly on the Interstate today!” Ellen noted I just lost the game we call “Things an Old Man Would Say.”
“What happened to the man who used to say, ‘Let’s see if this baby can hit light speed. Where’s the nitro-thruster-afterburner switch?’”
“That same man is up every night saying, ‘Let’s see if I can find the light to pee. Where’s the nightlight switch?’ ”
We brought keto snacks for the ride: Twigs, nuts and leaves I found foraging on the forest floor of a “Whole Sprouts” run by Chip ’n’ Dale. Not wanting to win the trifecta of “Things a Really Old Man Would Say” I did not discuss my digestion.
We arrived at their front door, rang the bell and flew into each other’s arms. I thought to myself, “You are the luckiest father, grandfather and father-in-law on Earth.”
Note to self: Next time bring kneepads. With grandkids if you’re not on your knees racing matchbox cars, wrestling, fighting with dinosaurs, finding lost doll shoes or making Lego castles, you’re on your knees begging your daughter and son-in-law to let you take your grandchildren home with you.
As I draw maps to assist Emma and Cass in running away to Tucson, baby Chloe falls asleep on my chest for a dreamy moment, inducing the most heavenly drowsiness, transporting me, coo by sigh, to memories of all of the small souls who slumbered on my chest on lazy afternoons. The only pleasure more sublime is listening to Nana Ellen read bedtime stories.
Next day I help son-in-law Joe secretly fetch a playground to assemble. My father, the Master Sergeant, wouldn’t have approved — because it was built with safety in mind. He thought the best swing sets should catapult children out of the yard. “Builds character.”
The next morning we said goodbye, buoyed by the promise of better days ahead. Packed, buckled, ready to go, we waved, they waved and tears welled. We didn’t want to go. I wanted to be “Grandpa” forever.
And then I thought of Mike, and all those we had lost, reminding us nothing’s forever. I turned the key, looked in the rearview, and muffled a sob promising myself we’d return often.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Every couple of years “Antiques Roadshow” visits our Old Pueblo. I’ve watched Tucson treasure hunters bring in amazing items.
The appraiser always asks, “What do we have here?”
“It’s a mounted javelina head. I was ‘antiquing’ at a Tortolita yard sale when I saw it. I said to Lurlene, ‘Holy jalapeños! I been wanting one of these for years!’”
“Care to guess what it’s worth?”
“Buck. Buck and a half?”
“At auction this fine example of 20th century taxidermy would fetch $350.”
“Shut the corral gate! You’re kidding!”
“Heck, yes, I’m kidding. Next. What do we have here?”
“It’s an ‘original’ DeGrazia tumbler. Me and Ed got the receipt. Ed likes the angels. I like the way he used dots for eyes.”
“Complete with your provenance this fine example of mass-produced midcentury folk art in today’s art market would fetch as much as $2.95.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Heck, yes, I’m kidding. Toss it in our dumpster on your way out. Next! What do we have here?”
“A vintage set. I got a Stumble Inn bar coaster, a Dusty Chaps cassette tape and a popcorn kernel from the Bum Steer. Found these treasures in the summer of ’76 in a trash bin behind a U of A dorm after the students moved out.”
“Next.”
“My grandfather’s alien registration receipt card from the ’40s granting a worker legal residence.”
“A hair ribbon woven from a tin foil blanket by an orphaned girl in immigration custody.”
“My mother’s ‘No amnesty for illegals!’ protest sign.”
A woman cradles what appears to be a holy relic. “It’s a lock of Lute Olson’s hair. We got it from a fella claiming to be his barber for five hundred bucks.”
“Next.”
“This miracle tortilla with the face of weatherman Michael Goodrich on it has been in my family since 1999.”
“Next.”
“This is one of the pens Ronald Reagan used to sign his immigration reform bill way back in 1986 legalizing the residency of 3 million immigrants.”
The appraiser recites what he knows. “President Reagan believed if you put down roots here, even though you may have come here illegally, you should not have to live in the shadows.”
The owner nods.
“In the overheated marketplace of ideas today such artifacts have fallen out of favor. You’d be lucky to sell it as kindling. Next. What do we have here?”
“A can of ‘Tucson Sunshine,’ produced by the Chamber of Commerce, Jurassic period.”
“Next.”
“It’s a sheet or a nun’s habit worn by Sister Agnes in ‘Lilies of the Field.’”
“Next.”
“A porcelain liquor decanter shaped like a kachina.” A cultural insensitivity warning flashes onscreen.
“Next. What’s this?”
“A copy of the 2005 Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act signed by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy.”
The appraiser raised his eyebrows. “This may as well be a 13th-century Ming vase! What you have here is a rare and remarkable piece of bipartisan lawmaking which became the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. It featured, among other things, a reasonable path to citizenship, funding for border security, and a functional guest worker program. Practical and reasonable, it was doomed. It’s been collecting dust in America’s attic ever since. In today’s market I’d estimate your historic artifact to be a costly reminder of our nation’s failure to do the right thing. Next.”
“I found this at an estate sale. It’s a black-and-white glossy of an unidentified congressman using our border for a campaign photo op. He’s waving his fist. Caption on the back says he’s decrying the crisis on the border.”
The appraiser studies it. “It could be from 2012. No, I’m wrong. It’s from 1992. On second thought it could be from as far back as ’86. Maybe earlier.”
He takes out his magnifying lens and scans the image. “Wait just an ‘Antiques Roadshow’ minute! I see only 48 stars on your politician’s flag pin. Hawaii and Alaska didn’t become states until 1959! This vintage image of this politician ‘decrying the crisis on the border’ has to be from the early ’50s.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“Not really. It’s utterly valueless. The market is saturated with thousands and thousands of these images of politicians ‘decrying the border crisis’— dating all the way back to the Gadsden Purchase. Next.”
“I was out hiking when I found this beautiful tiny child’s rosary.”
The appraiser was intrigued. “It’s carved out of wood from Central America. It’s quite weathered and old. Where did you find it?”
“Out in the desert in an area we call the ‘Devil’s Highway.’”
“Children’s rosaries like this are common. Probably worth a few pennies at most. What became of the owner?”
The man shook his head. The value of his world-weary expression? Priceless.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I have observed that America replays the same script after every mass shooting. We’ve heard this script over and over since we were children. It begins with a news anchor’s voice. “ Breaking news. We’ve just received reports of multiple shots fired.”
A gunman, with a _____, purchased legally/illegally, entered a _____ at _____ and shot and killed _____ adults, and_____ children, wounding _____. Veteran Officer _____ , of the _____ Police Department, the _____ officer to arrive at the scene, was killed by the shooter/ gunman/ assailant/suspect who was armed with a _____/ , a _____/ , a _____ /and was wearing _____.
The chief of police of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The mayor of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The district attorney of _____ said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The FBI agent said, “ Our hearts go_____.”
The ATF agent said, “Our hearts go_____.”
The city’s spokesperson said, “That’s all we have at this time. We’ll have more information _____. Our hearts go_____.”
The suspect, _____ , is: in custody/among the dead.
Family members said the suspect, “was angry/disturbed/a loner/heard hallucinating/very quiet/normal/bullied/friendly/isolated/an OK guy/violent/not the guy on TV/abusive/ordinary/odd/political/racist/was happy, this is shocking/an ex-felon/clean/an addict/radicalized.”
Investigators found _____ , suggesting he was _____.
Congressman _____ called for gun safety legislation, saying, “Now is the time for _____.”
Sen. _____ accused Congressman _____ of politicizing/exploiting “this terrible tragedy,” adding that universal background checks/banning assault weapons/closing gun sale loopholes/licensing guns/banning high-capacity magazine sales/red-flag laws/risk protection orders/firearms registration were off the table.
This morning Sen._____ announced he would block any attempts at gun reform, sending his thoughts and_____ to the victims.
_____ called for a national moment of silence.
The National Rifle Association issued a statement. “This is an attempt by_____ to take away your guns. Our Second Amendment right _____.”
There’s blood on the NRA’s corrupt hands. And Congressman _____ takes their blood money. Not even _____ the faces of the widows/children/orphans/maimed can move them.
Mourners have begun placing _____ at the site of the shooting.
At the funeral of _____ , his/her grieving husband/wife/mother/ father/child/ child/grandchild/son/daughter/brother/sister/fiancee/boyfriend/ girlfriend/ lifelong friend/best friend spoke to the press, saying, “Everyone _____ him/her. _____ was a _____ person.”
The White House asked that flags be lowered to honor the victims. It’s announced the president will be visiting _____ to grieve with the survivors. He feels our_____ .
_____ called this “A wake-up call.”
Today on our broadcast we remember the victims of the _____ mass shooting that happened yesterday/this week/last week.
The recent mass shooting at _____ is reminiscent of what took place at Columbine/Aurora/Tucson/Las Vegas/Orlando/Sandy Hook/Killeen/Camden/Wilkes-Barre/Sutherland Springs/San Diego/Parkland/El Paso/ Jacksonville/Edmond/Seattle/Salt Lake/Charlotte/Virginia Beach/Pittsburgh/Brooklyn/Thousand Oaks/Atlanta/Austin/Blacksburg/San Bernardino/Rockford/San Francisco/Milwaukee/Pensacola/Santa Clarita/Midland-Odessa/Dayton/Gilroy/Stockton/Louisville/Chicago/Fort Worth/Fullerton/Honolulu/Tallahasee/Annapolis/Scottsdale/Fort Hood/Red Lake/Geneva/Kirkwood/Omaha/Portland/L.A./Washington, D.C./Colorado Springs/Nashville/Plano/Little Rock/NYC/Fresno/Burlington/Baton Rouge/ Oakland/Seal Beach/Carthage/Binghampton/Springfield/Anchorage/Miami ...
Over _____ mass shootings have occurred since _____ with a mass shooting taking place every _____ in America. This year alone,_____ Americans have been gunned down. There is an epidemic of_____.
Years later, _____ is still recovering from the wounds that left him/her _____.
The memorial/park honoring the victims of the _____ shooting, which happened_____ months/years ago, was dedicated today. There have been_____ mass shootings since that _____ day.
Breaking news. Reports of multiple shots fired.
With us today, our panel of experts on this issue include _____ , _____ and _____ , here to start our conversation about _____.
Reports of multiple shots fired. We’re following the story.
_____ said the problem was mental illness/America’s violent culture/America’s gun culture/the availability of combat-style firearms/Hollywood/video games/the NRA/Congress/lack of sane gun safety laws/the courts.
_____ said, “Guns don’t kill people, _____ kill people.”
_____ said, “No one wants to take away your guns.”
_____ said, “If the victims were armed, this tragedy _____.”
Breaking news. Reports of multiple shots fired at a _____ in _____.
_____ asked, “When will _____?”
Officer down. People inside. A gunman with a _____, purchased legally/illegally, entered a _____.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
When Congresswoman Ophelia Payne was called to the White House and informed she was the best choice to head the newly created, Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Empathy, President Joe Biden warned her about the nominating process. “I feel for you, Miss Payne.”
Why? She had agreed to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show that evening.
“Miss Payne, thanks for coming on the show. Isn’t pushing empathy down our throats just another far-left radical attempt to control our lives? Aren’t you just another misguided woman guilty of wanting to kill us with your misguided so-called kindness?”
“Pardon me?”
“Take this pandemic, Miss Payne. Your extreme empathy for the sick is what has murdered our economy — not some silly virus! On our border, your sickening empathy for sniveling children, rapists and terrorists has created a crisis! Tell us, are you ‘empathetic,’ Miss Payne, are you soft on the antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists?”
“What?” And then she was off the air. Commercials for pepper spray and portable bunkers followed.
Payne’s nomination was opposed by the Ayn Rand Society, Sociopaths United, the Proud Boys, the Associated Bullies of America, and the National Indifference Association, a group described by the Southern Emotional Poverty Center as a hate group funded by billionaires.
Payne soldiered on with the the backing of the Fred Rogers Institute for Neighborliness, the Dalai Lama, former President Bill Clinton’s I-feel-Your-Pain Foundation, the pope, and the BKM, the Be Kind Movement.
The next morning, Payne appeared for her confirmation hearing before the Senate. Sen. Ted Cruz interrogated her first. “Miss Payne, why should any American walk a mile in someone else’s shoes? Especially in those high heels you’re wearing.”
Laughter. Cruz didn’t realize his mic was hot when he whispered to Sen. Ron Johnson, “Speaking of shoes I’d like to give her my boot, right up her ... ”
Payne tapped her mic. “Was that a question?”
Sen. Ron Johnson barked, “Where was your bleeding-heart for the white supremacists falsely accused of attacking our Capitol?”
“What?”
Sen. Sinema interrupted. “Where did you get your outfit? I like the whole look. Do you like my outfit?”
“It’s very Bjork.”
Sen. Rand Paul interrupted, “Empathy didn’t build America, Miss Payne! Our national anthem isn’t ‘Stand by me.’ Indifference to the suffering of others built this country, not hugs! Indifference to Native American genocide, to slavery, to the voting rights of minorities is what made America great.”
Payne attempted to respond over the clack of the gavel. “Senators, a house divided will not stand. We are morally connected, one to the other. Our founders knew this back in 1782 when this very body decided upon our nation’s motto: E Pluribus Unum.”
Sen. Cruz shouted, “Speak English! This is America, woman!”
Payne calmly replied, “Out of many, one.”
Sen. Cruz gagged. ”Why in God’s name would anyone want to ‘bring us together?” Cruz excused himself and left for Majorca.
On Wednesday, Payne was confirmed by the Senate along party lines, with 50 senators opposed to empathy.
The next day, as Secretary Payne walked up the steps of the new Department of Homeland Empathy, the “National Ben’s Bell of Kindness” rang out in celebration.
As the Marine Band played “Eleanor Rigby” in the foyer for the celebrants and dignitaries, Payne found her office and began her tenure. That afternoon a sour Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a speech to an empty Senate chamber calling empathy “a weak un-American trait” and “naked communism.”
In April, at Payne’s first press conference, she stood in front of a giant marble statue of her favorite lifelong Republican, the late Fred Rogers, that looked out upon the press with sincere benevolence. His words were the theme of her address.
“The space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.”
At the close of her remarks, Secretary Payne issued a warning. “Thousands of more Americans will die in ICUs because some of our fellow citizens are refusing to wear masks and refusing to get vaccinated. This pernicious lack of empathy for the fate of our fellow Americans, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, promoted by cynical leaders and commentators, threatens our nation’s survival.”
In June, Secretary Payne was to speak at the Father’s Day Commemoration held at the Tomb of the Unexpressed Emotion. As she rode in her limo she scanned her daily briefing: news summaries of hate crimes, child abuse, elder abuse, political violence, sex trafficking, suicides triggered by bullying, and mass shootings.
On the seat were binders filled with small, effective, anti-violence and anti-bullying programs that she hoped to lift up and implement on a federal level. The ridicule, mockery and threats were sometimes overwhelming.
As she was escorted to the next event by her Secret Service protection she thanked each agent, “for all you do for me and for others.” Being in favor of empathy in the United States of America in the 21st century could get you killed.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I strutted into the newly opened Old Tucson Movie Studio Theme Park, a 7-year-old cap-gun slinger with my Ma and Pa. After seeing the “High Noon” mock gunfight this buckaroo got lost and ended in an alley that was a replica of a Chinese street complete with laundry lines and chicken coops.
I knew all about Asian Americans in the Old West thanks to the Magnavox. White as the cast of the “Donna Reed Show,” my family loved “Bonanza.”
Dave Tang Jr., an old friend I often tap for iconoclastic insights, was on my back porch, masked as I was and seated at a distance, when I said with a straight face, “Everything I know about Asians I learned from the character Hop Sing on ‘Bonanza.’ Did you watch ‘Bonanza’ when you were a kid, Dave?”
Dave rolled his eyes, winced. “We didn’t have time. We were working in the store! Everybody worked nine to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at my dad’s store.”
Dave looked at the Catalinas. “Hop Sing normalized racism.”
Dave’s dad came here in the 1920s. He was 12! Here long before my family.
Every white kid I knew mimicked Hop Sing just as we laughed at Bill Dana’s cruel “Jose Jimenez” character on “The Steve Allen Show.” Imagine a Mexican astronaut! We all did imitations of “Jose Jiminez” on the playground. We were clueless bullies witlessly ruling the racial hierarchy, parroting Hollywood’s racism, convinced it was OK, normal.
Many Chinese laborers in Tucson stayed, becoming cooks, launderers and merchants. Urban renewal bulldozed all the Chinese restaurants, laundries and storefronts that had thrived downtown since the 1880s. Tucson’s understandably insular Asian community persisted and thrived at a time when the word “coolie” was as common as “wetback”and deeds prohibited the sale of real estate to Asians.
Hank Oyama was a Japanese American icon in Tucson. In the 1940s he and his family were sent to an internment camp. In the ’50s Oyama fought a legal battle to overturn Arizona’s interracial marriage ban so he could marry Mary Ann Jordan. (The late Tucson restaurateur Magdalene Gerrish made her way to New Mexico in 1958 so she could legally marry the white man she loved.)
In the ’60s, Oyama, a master educator, ended up the nationally acclaimed Father of Bilingual Education. The man sent to internment camps by his country served that country as a translator, retiring an Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Dave Tang Jr., was born in 1947. “I grew up in the aftermath of the Korean War. Tucsonans were not kind to Asian faces. I was called a chink more than once. My dad came here when he was 12 and he did everything humanly possible to fit into white culture. It was an English-only home. ‘Don’t speak English with an accent.’ Don’t stand out.”
Dave’s voice revealed regret. “I was embarrassed by my dad’s accent. I was a kid. He was quiet, reserved and he supported my mother. I admired my dad.”
“What do you make of the brutal attacks on Asian Americans? Kung flu and China virus?” I asked.
Dave sighed again. Normalized racism. Dave asks us to examine our own common racism.
“Dave, I love Margaret Cho. What do you think of Asian female comics who mimic their immigrant mothers?”
Dave was pained. “It is what is is. They promote stereotypes.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to watch a YouTube clip of Hop Sing with me?”
I enjoy Dave’s familiar exasperated laugh.
For the first 12 years of Dave’s academic life in Tucson, the only other Asians he ever saw at school were his two sisters. And the Asian caricatures he saw in broader culture who were either slavishly servile or wickedly sinister.
Dr. Seuss’ drawing of yellow Asians normalize and reinforce racism. I like to think that today, Theodore Geisel, a smart sensitive man, would be as embarrassed and ashamed of those drawings as I am of my childhood imitations of immigrants struggling to succeed.
I told the story of my half-Asian friend Chris. We were 6, playing outside his Tucson home with our toy soldiers. Chris’ Japanese mom came outside to the driveway where we were waging war, bearing Oreo cookies and tall tumblers of ice-cold milk. I had a big plastic Japanese toy soldier in my hand. With his grimace, his overbite and his sinister slits for eyes behind thick eyeglasses he looked like he stepped out of a World War II era “Popeye” cartoon.
I hid it from Mrs. White in the dirt behind me; where such things remain buried yet ever present.
Dave, the only son of the late, great Esther Tang, is now the patriarch of his family. He asked, “Are we really that old?”
We Tucsonans laughed, nodded and toasted each other with glorious shots of Bacanora mezcal.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
SUNDAY
Watching CPAC so my readers won’t have to. Hm. Odd. Entire conference only lasts an hour.
My mistake.
Ellen tells me I’m watching a CPAP infomercial.
Thanks, Ellen.
I channel-surf and find the actual CPAC fun fest. I gasp in shock and disgust so often I’m short of breath. I channel-surf back to the looping CPAP infomercial and order a CPAP.
MONDAY
To break the monotony, Ellen and I try COVID games like “Find the Mask,” “Socially Distanced Tag” and “Count to 500,0000.” Bored, I clean the oven with a Q-tip.
Been way too sedentary and gluttonous during this stressful time. Learned a hummingbird’s heart beats 6,000 times a minute. That is almost as fast as my heart beats whenever I bend over to pick up the Uber Eats delivery left on my porch.
Ellen butters me so I can squeeze through the front door.
TUESDAY
I visit the Arizona Daily Star building on South Park for the last time. We’re Zooming these days and moving to better digs.
Inside the giant building, which I always thought resembled a concrete fortress, it’s dark and silent save for friendly ghosts. Is that a whiff of Jack Sheaffer’s cigar smoke in the old photo lab? Am I imagining the faint whisper of wire machines and typewriters clack-clack-clacking away in the shadows? So many years, so many ghosts.
I say goodbye to our beloved printing press, a leviathan of cogs, rolls and ink wells, a dinosaur felled by an asteroid called The Internet. In the dark I yell “Stop the presses!”
Always wanted to do that.
I find the 35,000-year-old cafeteria table where I was informed I was hired. Pre-Columbian, I think. Smithsonian-bound.
I like our new offices. In the heart of town, downtown, along the Santa Cruz. Always thought South Park looked like the kind of bunker you’d find on a cliff overlooking the beaches of Normandy.
One last gaze out my old office window at the parking lot where I often enjoyed seeing furious readers with torches, catapults and pitchforks.
WEDNESDAY
Vaccination appointment day! As I turn into the UA pod, I’m listening to KXCI on my radio. Buck Owens is singing a perfect anthem for this moment:
“Oh the sun’s gonna shine, in my life once more. ... No more loneliness, only happiness ...”
Heck yeah. I thank the traffic cones. I thank the flashing signs. I thank every volunteer I see. I thank a volunteer directing traffic with the calm grace of an air traffic controller. “Keep moving, sir.”
I thank the volunteer about to give me my shot. He says, “Don’t thank me. First time I’ve ever done this.” A comedian! Thank you, comedian. “Can I keep the needle in my arm as a keepsake?”
“Keep moving, sir.”
I think of all those in our town still waiting for their turn. Before driving out I ask an older volunteer why he’s doing it. “Like I tell my kids. Served my country once. It’s a chance to serve again.” I choke up. What Americans can do when we’re motivated. “Can I give you a big kiss? “
“Keep moving, sir.”
THURSDAY
Daughter keeps us up on the grandkids with a weekly digest app called “Qeepsake.” Qeepsake asks her quirky questions daily about the kids and every week I get her answers, her stories, her videos and pics of the beasties.
I want a version of Qeepsake for grandparents.
Qeepsake: “Did you take a funny picture of grandma this week?”
“I did. Grandma stubbed her toe and cursed.”
Qeepsake: “What did Grandpa learn today?”
“Not to take ‘funny’ pictures of Nana Ellen.”
FRIDAY
Ellen and I watch “Antiques Roadshow.” Weary of me ridiculing her favorite show, she spikes my punch. I wake up bound and gagged like Bobby Seale at the Chicago 7 trial, forced to watch a “Roadshow” repeat featuring a visit to Tucson.
Gives me a column idea. “I was antiquing at the Tortolita Swap Meet. I said, ‘Holy jalapeños!’ I ain’t never seen a javelina head mounted like a trophy before. Especially missing a glass eye. And a fang.”
“On the open marketplace this fine object could fetch $12.95!”
“Well, shut my door, buck my bronco and refry my beans!”
SATURDAY
Today’s the big day. The Tucson Virtual Festival of Books. Check it out. https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org
I can’t wait to watch 165 amazing authors unmute themselves — with 27% unsure how to do it. I got my feet up, kettle corn’s in the microwave and an infinite margaritas flowing nearby.
This is great.
No crowds.
No endless walking.
No lines.
No sunburn.
No bag of books to haul.
If I want a book, I’m burning Bezos the bookstore killer, by ordering mine from the UA bookstores:
I lift my margarita to toast TFOB 2021. Viva Tucson! And the first presenting author online who says, “I’m not a cat.”
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Our fellow primates in Texas are not adapting well to climate change. Note to Texas: Sweden’s wind turbines work.
Before pointing fingers at our thawing neighbors, we anthropoids of Arizona, about to broil for months in our heat islands, must examine our own adaptation to climate change.
After flowing for 6 million years, the Colorado River, the magnificent force that carved the Grand Canyon 5 million years ago is, in the last one hundred years of its existence, a nano-second in time, drying up, thanks to our civilization’s exhaust and our insatiable thirst.
I love the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, which wisely canceled this year. I am a sucker for fossils, for the clues they reveal and the stories they tell.
Here’s ours:
If you were standing where the Whetstone Mountains are in Cochise County 125 million years ago you’d meet sonorosaurus, a 30-foot-tall, 50-foot-long dinosaur. Teeth marks on the fossilized remains suggest it was a snack for a larger beast.
Stand where Gates Pass is today, about an astonishing 65 million years before the Grand Canyon existed, you’ll see a large hadrosaur wandering a tropical swamp gobbling grub with its duck bill.
Jump ahead to the Miocene Period, around at least 20 million years ago and you’ll find ancestors of gila monsters lumbering about. Tortoises, too; living fossils millions of years older than the fairly recent Grand Canyon.
In my garden I have a tennis-ball-sized chunk of cooled lava from the Tucson Mountains that’s probably older than the Grand Canyon. Ten to 20 million years ago Tucson was hellzappoppin’ with volcanoes. The Tucson Mountains came to mark the edge of a large volcanic crater, a lava lake that stretched across our valley some 10-15 miles in diameter.
Doesn’t seem possible. Tucson seems timeless. Our lush desert feels as though it’s been here since the beginning of time. Some say it’s hard to tell when the seasons change save for the heat.
Here, beneath your feet, my dear bipedal life form, there’s been lava, swamps, oceans teeming with trilobites, primeval forests, flying reptiles, savannah grasslands, coral reefs, sharks, tropical jungles, coniferous forests, warmer climes and multiple ice ages.
And across this vast span of time there have been five mass extinctions of nearly all life. Across the eons, five complete living worlds teeming with life’s experiments, utterly alien and unknown to each other, save for messages in the rocks, have risen and fallen on this third rock from the sun.
“Change is constant,” say the Buddhists. And every climatologist, paleontologist and geologist worth their basalt.
Eighty million years ago the Rocky Mountains begin rocking into existence. Fifty-eight million years ago cacti show up. The Catalinas were smushed into existence 26 million years ago. I can’t comprehend it. Waiting for a vaccine feels like forever.
We are lucky to be in a 300,000-year-long interglacial period, a warm valley. A rare long stellar sweet spot. Every 145 million years or so we get an ice age. Wouldn’t a good name for an ice age be the Zambonian Period?
A few icicles after our most recent ice age, 12,000 years ago, a giant sloth might be reading this over your shoulder. Or a bison, a camel, or a North American lion or a mammoth like those found at the San Pedro River where early paleo-Flintstones set up a butcher shop.
Fast-forward 11,000 years to the 10th century and you could have watched, alongside Anasazi cliff dwellers, the plumes from Arizona’s last volcanic eruption giving birth to Sunset Crater, part of a volcanic field that’s been active for 6 million years.
If our planet’s 4 billion years of existence were a day, we chimps dropped from the trees, at less than a second to midnight, and set about fueling our “civilization” by unleashing carbon, heating the planet at a heretofore unseen rate, melting the ice, freeing more carbon, raising the seas and setting our heavenly body on a path to hell that will be irreversible if we chimps do not change our ways.
Responsible for our planet’s sixth mass extinction since life began 4.5 billion years ago, our allegedly intelligent species appears likely to broil and flood our planet into hot sauna-like forests and vast barren deserts unfit for human life.
At the time Romans were crucifying Judeans, the Hohokam began farming along the verdant Santa Cruz river here. They vanished in the 14th century leaving behind the question, “What happened?”
In a million years an alien rover may rove our world. Perhaps it will beam stunning images of our hot-box planet across the stars back home to a civilization that will ask the same question, “What happened?”
Our fossil records will tell them most of us were much like our fellow simians in Texas. Culturally ill-equipped to reverse our self-inflicted fate. Broken into warring tribes, earthlings rejected the collective action essential to saving this beautiful world from mass extinction, this magnificent sixth attempt at life on this planet.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Monday
Dear COVID Diary,
Today my adult daughter texts me, exasperated with her three beasts struggling with remote learning. Can Grandpa help via FaceTime? I give my grandbabies an essay assignment titled “What I did last winter, day after day, staring at a screen, with no friends to play with, while every grown-up idiotic boomer did nothing about the unfolding apocalypse.”
Daughter texts me. I’m not helpful. I point out my video teaching the 4-year-old the correct way to pick your nose with kitchen utensils was a monster hit.
I fall asleep rummaging through the road trips, camping adventures, Nerf duels and treehouse fort projects yet to come.
Tuesday
I go for a bike ride. Pass by the nursing home. Took the kids there every Halloween. Fun. Cute. Sweet. It’s a ghost town, a pandemic prison. I wave at someone’s grandmother. Parking lot’s empty as a promise.
After lunch, over the fence, I ask my neighbor how she’s been. “I have no income, huge debts, and no clue where their next meal’s coming from. I lost my dad to COVID in October, and I can’t sleep because we might get evicted.”
I had no clue. “The kids?”
“I make them turn off the lights they aren’t using. Make ’em take quick showers. We can’t waste food. A couple of times I’ve gone without so they’ll have something to eat. We haven’t eaten out since last March. We recycle pop cans. Soda pop and paper towels? Luxuries. We all wear Goodwill. Nothing but tough choices.”
My toughest choice today? Which wine to pick up at Trader Joe’s. “Your car still run?”
“I drive super slow to save gas. Never fill up the tank. Groceries come first.” I will help.
Later, I visit a Zoom-circle of friends. Again, the disparity. I notice every Latinx person has heart-crushing stories of COVID decimating their families. I add candles for Maria, Jesus and Paul to my COVID shrine. Lit, they glow like a California wildfire.
Wednesday
In the produce section I turn to see a man shopping next to me wearing a military vest, military boots, khaki shorts and a field hat. Trump guy?
Later I find myself frozen in the frozen food aisle trying to decide which ice cream to buy. I joke to the customer next to me, “So many choices. I can’t believe it’s takin’ me 10 minutes to decide.”
The customer next to me, the man in the field hat and the military vest, opens the freezer door, reaches for a tub of Breyers and says in a thick, Borat-like accent, “I always know what I want. In my country there was no choice.” A wink. Dark laughter. “That’s why I’m here.”
“We’re blessed,” I say and immediately think, “Why on earth did I say that? Thirty-one flavors! One of the many blessings of Liberty?” Moscow-on-the-Hudson smiles through his mask.
At the check out, the clerk holds up one of my purchases. “Sir, only one to a customer.” Guy behind me snaps, “You got two 6-packs of toilet paper? Buddy! That’s twelve rolls.”
A woman shoots video. Through her mask she mumbles. “Jerk. Posted!”
“I heard that.”
My phone rings. “Martin Savage here, with CNN. Have you seen the shares and retweets the shocking video of your shocking behavior is getting? Why are you a hoarder? Do you realize we’re in a pandemic?”
I hang up. And leave. Joke’s on them. I’ve been hoarding corn cobs since March.
Thursday
Perseverance lands on Mars. Much better name than Percival, Perseverance. Perfect metaphor for this moment in history. Will we persevere?
First images back: rocks, sand, Matt Damon’s bones, B-52 missing since 1957, boulders, craters and Ted Cruz on holiday.
What in the heck! Ellen tripled my life insurance!
Friday
It’s been a long year but Ellen and I get along great. Just ask me. She’s up late again. “What are you watching?”
“‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. Taking notes. It’s about minerals and doilies.”
For fun she’s taken to gardening “exotics” with weird names like “hemlock” and “nightshade.” Says they’re herbs, like oregano and thyme. Cool! So quiet lately.
Saturday
Big hero. Brought home pot pies. The legal ones.
While I was out picking them up I saw lanes of cars! My shot at a vaccine!
Got in line. Waited forever. Finally. Asked the kid with the clipboard, “Is this where I get my vaccine? Can I get tested? Do you do testing?”
“Emissions testing. Turn off your engine.”
“Not now. I got pot pies thawing in the back seat.”
“Check your tailpipe?”
“Hilarious. Bye.”
Argh.
Sunday
My vaccinated teacher pal is ready to go back. Says it’s been such a long time since he’s seen his students he expects his seniors to be senior citizens. “Our cafeteria should be offering prune juice, marmalade and Metamucil.”
Ha! Finally got my vaccine appointment. Online. For March. Hope the vet knows his stuff.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Saturday
Dear COVID journal, it’s been more than a year since I started you. Two years? Could be a decade. Not sure. I now wear a loincloth, eat small game over a fire in our TV room and have taken to etching my daily accounts on our wall with stone chisels.
And yes, I wore this same ensemble to bed yesterday. Are sweatpants supposed to make cracking sounds when you bend at the knees?
I blame Zoom for what happened earlier. I went for a bike ride, mask on. Neighbor, Edna Quigley, shrieks. Like she just saw a flaming javelina on a unicycle. My mistake. Remembered my mask. Forgot my pants.
Coronavirus question: Is “Toobin” a verb?
Dr. Fauci on TV says this’ll be over by summer. Then we can play together, hug our friends and talk about something other than this Godforsaken virus, like “Why has it been 122 degrees for the past hundred days?”
On an errand to buy black market Cottonelle, I drive past a strip mall. In the parking lot I notice a long line of cars, orange cones, yellow tape, a tent, and people in lab coats with gloves.
Vaccines?! Immunization pop-up?
Fifteen minutes later the kid in the white coat with the clipboard tells me I’m in line at Chick-fil-A. I order a Pfizer sandwich, the Moderna fries and a small AstraZeneca to go. Hold the chloroquine.
Sunday
We are marooned on a hostile planet. While Ellen’s growing potatoes on the floor of our living room like Matt Damon in “The Martian” I’m talking to “Alexa” the way “Dave” talked to “HAL” in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” asking her, “When will we be receiving our next transmission from the grandkids back on Earth, HAL?”
I get an app alert. I open the pod bay door and search the stars for the other space station.
Monday
Monday means Zoom. I occupy Paul Lynde’s square on our workplace “Hollywood Squares” with my co-workers Charo, Peggy Lee and Rich Little.
I ask my boss, Joan Rivers, what day it is. She says, “Blurs-day.”
She’s right. What day isn’t “Blurs-day”?
What month is it? No-wonder? Skip-tember? Never-ender?
Tuesday
Checking our mailbox is a major event. Our postal person dreads me. Masked, I lie in wait, armed with three topics: 1. the weather, 2. the mail, and 3. vaccination schedules. And two lemonades, desperate for a “chat” and junk mail about discount cremations.
A delivery truck passes by. I salute every Amazon, FedEx and UPS delivery truck as if they were jeeps full of Yanks liberating Paris, tossing smokes and chocolates at we civilians weary of the occupation by this coronavirus.
Wednesday
Tried to register today. I’m 65. Have to wait. Googling for “vaccines,” I get lost online and order two cases of Bactine Pain Relieving Spray by mistake.
Fetching that delivery from the porch, I notice our front door resembles the entryway to a MASH tent. On the small table next to our door are enough masks, hand sanitizers, disinfectant sprays and sterile wipes to last us until we defeat the killer robots from the future.
Below our little entryway pandemic triage table is our recycling bin, which is full of empty wine bottles. Many, many, many empty wine bottles. The Pandemic Grigio was sweet, but Johnson & Johnson’s COVID Cabernet was the best.
Thursday
Our three cats, Finn, Tubbles and Nala are watching me type. One’s homesteading the printer, one rules the towering bookcase and the other owns the “in” basket. Not a thought in the skulls of those three owl-faced felines. Finn tiptoes over my kkkkkkk-k-k-keyboardddddddzfdwy5 and reclines beneath my computer screen.
Wild thing, you make my heart sing.
How is it I love these creatures who are as indifferent, cruel and merciless as a virus?
Friday
I go for a long walk. I say to the dog walkers, ”Nice of that dog to take you out for a walk.” I get a “Beautiful day. Got your shot?”
“No. I got Chick-fil-A instead.”
“What? How are you?”
“Cheerful. Delusional.”
“Stay safe and strong. Be well.”
We talk like Marvel superheroes. It’s the effect of the mask.
Didn’t tell them I’m waiting for my shot. I’m 65. Vaccinated neighbors and friends come up to me, in masks, and whisper alternate routes to the needle.
“Hang around. Sometimes they have leftovers.”
“Volunteer.”
“Do you know the terrifying alley behind the dicey clinic a block over?”
“Psst. Try Chick-fil-A.”
Saturday
I walk, masked, with a hermetically sealed friend to Starbucks. As we order, a young guy behind us says, “It’s on me.” Turns to the couple behind him. “You, too. In memory of my friend, Chachi. Died yesterday from COVID. Gave me a small inheritance. Paying it forward. It’s on him.”
“Here’s to Chachi!” say a room of masked strangers on a painfully beautiful day, when the crystal clear blue sky and the perfect afternoons cannot counterbalance the pall of the cold numbers.
Ever onward. Tomorrow I’m going on a bike ride. Pants on.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I was at my favorite seedy bar when a peacock, his tongue loosened by seed and Scotch, began crowing about “a band of activists who’d found their hill to die on.”
“Barnum Hill? Over at Reid Park?”
The peacock nodded and pecked at his beer nuts.
I was on this case like flies on a water buffalo. “The voters voted. The zoo’s expanding. What’s the problem?”
A duck nursing his daiquiri at the end of the bar piped up. “It’s daffy.”
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Mike Hammer.”
“Daffy’s not my name. The opposition to the expansion is daffy. My name’s ‘Donald,’ no relation. I gotta waddle back to park. My shift’s starting.” Donald left, telling the squirrel monkey tending bar to “Put it on my bill.” I cast my peepers into my martini. “Well, isn’t that ducky.”
Wanting the facts straight from the horse’s mouth I went to Reid Park Zoo and found two zebras, “Are you two horses opposed to the expansion?”
“We’re zebras. Different species, Detective Dolittle. Opposed? Us? Neigh. We’re for it. For us it’s as clear as black and white.”
“You mean white and black.”
“Black and white.”
“White and black.”
“Black and —”
I had no time to horse around. I moved on to a different corner of the zoo where I found a gregarious grizzly with a thoughtful take on the Barnum Hill brouhaha.
“Many humans find change unbearable. Calls for forbearance. You need to just grin and bear it.” I thought to myself here’s a bear so wise he should be a yogi.
The meerkat cracked soon as I offered him two bits and a live cricket. “Every meerkat ... crunch ... stands in favor of replacing Barnum Hill and the south pond ... crunch ... good cricket ... with our zoo addition. We’re happy to help with the excavation . . crunch, crunch . . along with the groundhogs. Ignore the rumors. Don’t believe every ‘vague thing’ you hear from the Gnus.”
“I don’t! I hate vague news.”
A pair of very snobbish otters, rudely eavesdropping on us, informed me they disapproved of puns, warning me I otter know better. A dissident duck nipped my leg.
“Notice which pond is disappearing? South side. It’s always the south side that gets rolled in this town.” Her pal, a flamingo, flamed the whole kerfuffle. “Yeah. The town that sacrificed an entire barrio for the TCC is weeping over a hill.”
From somewhere behind me, up high, leaves rustled. “Hey, you! The short white ape.”
I cast my peepers over my shoulder and met a giraffe, eye-to-eye, chewing on leaves and opinions. “Listen, you mug, we giraffes always take the long view. I’m sticking my neck out here but we think this could make us a class attraction.”
“Tell me tall boy, can you see the beloved hill, and pond, in question, from up there?”
“Yeah. And Nogales. And Picacho Peak. I got to agree with what the anteater said. They’re making a mountain out of an anthill.”
The whole ark supported the expansion. I didn’t tell any of these featherheads and furballs I once rode my bike down that anthill, sledded there, slipped and fell in there, broke a tooth there, made out there, drank wine there, slipped and fell in there again, smoked there, partied there, stained the rocks there, wept over a dame that dumped me there, and then barfed straight into the waterfall and slipped and fell in again.
A ring-tailed lemur dropped down from a tree, grabbed my lapels and shook me out of my reverie. “Listen up, you galoot. When the new zoo addition opens no one will remember that hill. Or that pond.” Then the palooka plucked a mite from my hair and vanished into the trees.
One of the African elephants was listening. “I’ll remember. An elephant never forgets.” I told the elephant, “I won’t forget my memories. The slipping. The falls. The barfing. But I think the addition of Malayan tigers, Komodo dragons, the Temple of Tiny Monkeys and the red pandas will more than make up for the loss. Speaking as a cartoonist — I think Asia-ville will be a big draw. “
Yebonga and Fireball, the white rhinos, horned in on our conversation. Yebonga said “I guess a hundred public meetings weren’t enough for the critics. Can we tell you what we love about being rhinos at the zoo?”
“Sure. When your shift’s over meet me at the bar down the street. It’s where a duck and a peacock I know hang out after work.” It had been a long day. I’d need a stiff drink if I was going to listen to a pair of rhinos toot their horns.
- David Fitzsimmons
Pima County’s Old Tucson Task Force is currently evaluating proposals for Old Tucson, the Western movie set theme park that’s up for lease. I imagine the bids are intriguing.
“Tell us your name and your proposal.”
“Pete and Hilda Popper. We’re from Patagonia. Originally Pottstown. Here you can see an aerial view drawn up by our son, Pauly Popper, of our proposal, ‘Hilda Popper’s Javelina Petting Zoo.’”
“Next.”
“Tarantula Petting —”
“Next.”
“Gila Monster Pet —”
“Next.”
“Knott’s Huckelberry Farm.”
“Next.”
“Name’s Buster Disney. No relation.”
“Go ahead.”
“Paint the town red. Make ‘Satan’ the sheriff. Add a ‘Lake of Fire’ for ‘Beelzebub’s Bumper Boats.’ Throw in our summer heat and you got ‘Hell on Earth’ the amusement park! We expect our ‘Snowball-in-Hell’ snow cones to be big sellers —”
“Next.”
“Imagineers of Barrio Hollywood. We envision a theme park based on life out West here in modern-day Tucson centered on our daily performance of ‘Melanoma: The Musical’ featuring a cast of —”
“Next.”
“Kiki Rickles. Why not celebrate Old Tucson itself? Imagine the voice of Samuel L. Jackson narrating the tour: ‘And then the fire happened. The theme park known as ‘Old Tucson: Twelve Miles and a Hundred Years from Town’ became known as ‘Old Tucson: 100-Miles from a Fire Hydrant.’”
“Next.”
“John Doe. Your park should definitely have a ‘Kon-Tiki Room’ featuring an animatronic Joe Bonanno and other —”
“Next.”
“Howdy. Lurleen Laveen here from Wagon Wheels East RV Park. I call my idea ‘Little Mexico,’ or ‘Mexico-cito.’ I sketched my first ride idea here on this Arroyo Cafe napkin. I call it ‘Border Wall Catapult!’ Ain’t been tested yet but I’m pretty sure it can lob up to 300 pounds clear into Pinal County.“
“Next.”
“I got another one. ’Border Tunnel!’ It’d be like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ without the Caribbean. And our scary pirate robots would be mules and drug lords and —”
“Next.”
“Greta Pickle. Good afternoon. Picture a Western ghost town of the future, devastated by climate change with attractions like ‘Extinction Express,’ ‘Carbon Land’ and ‘It’s a Hot World’ — with animatronic Polar Bears singing ‘It’s a hot, hot world.’”
“Next.”
“We’re Dale and Roy. Two words? Camel rides!”
“Next.”
“Ostrich ri —”
“Next.”
“Kangaroos?!”
“Next.”
“Steve call me ‘Steverino” Sanchez. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? I was in my car listening to 101.7 and the idea just came to me! ‘Margaritaville!’ Take it! Free of charge. Just name it ‘Steverino’s Margaritaville.’”
“Next.”
“Pepe Pinkerton of Pinkerton Design. Our proposal? Real Old West thrill rides that push the envelope. We’ve got three so far: ‘Runaway Buckboard,’ ‘Flash Flood Escape’ and ‘Cattle Stampede.’ We are confident ‘Cattle Stampede’ will do for Tucson what the ‘Running of the Bulls’ did for Pasadena.”
“Pamplona. Next.”
“Chuckie ‘Chewbacca’ Wang. I have bitcoin investors lined up. Upgrade your gunfighters to stormtroopers, add giant sandworms and call it ‘Old Tatooine.’ I have friends who’d camp in line to get in.”
“Next.”
“Snowbird Aviary.”
“Next.”
“I’m Candy Samples, from the Save the Hill and Pond Coalition. Relocate the Reid Park Zoo ‘Pathways to Asia’ expansion to Old Tucson’s Chinatown Alley.”
“Next.”
“Glenda Gladiola. As you can see on this schematic our proposed park will feature an array of fun high-stakes games. Like scorpion hopscotch, rattlesnake wrangling and bobcat roping. Plus we’re in talks with the Discovery Channel to shoot a season of ‘Naked and Afraid’ in an adjacent cholla forest.”
“Next.”
“Popeye Portillo. Three words. Yul Brynner Cowboy Robots.”
“That’s four words. Next.”
“Coyote Windwalker. Has any amusement park ever celebrated the true history of the Old West? We begin our visit with ‘Genocide: The Ride’ which takes guests to ‘The Indigenous People’s Relocation Merry-Go-Round,’ where a live-action re-creation of Wounded Knee —”
“Upbeat! Next.”
“Mariah Candles for ‘Madame Tussaud’s Solar-Powered Wax Museum.’”
“Next.”
“Ellen Musk. No relation. My backers and I propose to rebuild the original pre-fire movie set, restore the train, revive the stagecoach rides, and add guided biking, horseback riding and hiking. Additionally our plan includes constructing state-of-the-art soundstages with CGI capability, a huge water park using reclaimed water and a spectacular climate-controlled adventure dome filled with Western-themed thrill rides.“
“Very funny. Next.”
“William Madison III. Williamsburg Foundation. We propose re-creating a living Tucson of the 1870s with residents portraying murderers, drunks and prostitutes. Throughout the day visitors will learn about Tucson’s past by witnessing assaults, hangings, massacres and —”
“Next.”
“Ruby Sands. I’m by myself. I was hoping to sing ‘The Night They Burned Old Tucson Down’ by Mike Sterner. Where’s Simon Cowell?”
“Next.”
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Sour Frank offered his thoughts to our Saturday morning Arroyo Cafe Zoom crew. “I’m wondering who Joe Biden will pick to be in charge of combating ‘Online Malarkey.’”
“You peddled the lies, brother.” Rosa had no patience.” I’m muting you for a year. Didn’t getting COVID teach you anything?”
I laughed at Rosa’s innocent hope that Frank was capable of learning. “Frank, did you hear the news? Fox just accused Biden of inciting Americans to respect the rule of law — by holding criminals accountable.”
Oblivious to the joke, Frank cheered. “See! I told you Biden’s out to destroy America!”
And with that Lurlene asked us, “do any of you find it funny that the party that impeached a president over lying about sex with an intern is aghast at the thought of impeaching a president who incited a violent insurrection that killed five?”
Gonzales held up a matchbook. “I have here the world’s smallest book, amigos. ‘Profiles in Courage: 2020.’ Know what mi abuelo calls the mob that attacked the Capitol? Pillage idiots. A lot of the pillage idiots were from Arizona. I think dehydration causes brain damage.”
Carlos noted Biden has a bust of Arizona’s native son, Cesar Chavez, behind his desk.
Carlos said his favorite Chavez quote was “You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.”
Lurlene noted that Arizona “sure needs help! Listening to Governor Ducey’s State of the State address was like listening to a sunny autopsy report issued by the murderer.”
Lurlene reminded us of how many of our friends and relatives had died from COVID-19. “It didn’t have to happen. We closed late and opened too early. Lies were at the center of it.”
Rosa smiled. “That’s why I couldn’t stop watching the inauguration. It felt so good. Like waking up from a long nightmare. ... Did you all see the sun came out and shined down on our nation’s Capitol?”
Carlos nodded. “Yup. The same Capitol that looked like ‘World War Z,’ crawling with zombies just a few weeks ago.”
Rosa leaned into her camera. “Seeing all the good that day — I felt the contrast more powerfully than ever.” She paused to cross herself. “America was touched by evil for four years. Our America! I still worry!”
I smiled back at her. “Don’t. The insurrectionists, the conned cosplay Confederates, are singing to the feds like squeezed canaries. The dragnet will grow. More criminals and their abettors on the inside will face justice.”
And when the hearings begin, it won’t look good for the squirming minority party when their treasonous radicals and terrifying crazies get grilled, tried and spat out.
It will just look worse and worse for the liar’s lickspittles. And where will their vulgar savior be? Exiled, desperately struggling to save his crumbling criminal enterprise, surrounded by endlessly shattering mirrors.”
Rosa confessed to us she wept alone in her jammies, touched by Joe Biden’s tears as he spoke of Maj. Beau Biden, bidding farewell to Delaware at the armory named in his late son’s honor.
I confessed I stood alone when Biden took the oath.
Lurlene wept alone for decency.
Frank wept alone when Lady Gaga sang our anthem. Carlos wept alone when the poet, Amanda Gorman, spoke. I stood when Biden and Harris laid the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, with the ghost of the Master Sergeant standing at crisp attention next to me. Gonzales wept when he saw the bust of Cesar Chavez behind the president’s desk.
The retelling of these moments triggered warm tears of joy, pride, hope and relief.
I told my beloved friends I thought America was coiled to spring back better than before. “The best is ahead. In 100 days, a hundred million of us will be vaccinated. We will defeat this virus. By summer we will be able to hug old friends as if we’ve been castaways stranded in a strange distant place — where the world went mad. Together, we are going to lift up this economy. For all Americans. So here’s a toast. To President Biden.”
As we held our invisible champagne glasses up high, Carlos added, “To the man who will defeat the coronavirus, preserve the Union, bring about the promise of Reconstruction, unleash America’s coiled economic might, rebuild our nation ... and ... ”
Carlos thought of the immigrant children and choked.
“And as for Liberty, may her torch, a beacon for all the world, burn bright again. To a bold future with a thriving economy and justice for all. Salud! And as Joe always says — God bless America. May God protect our troops.”
Rosa added, “And may we all be together on the day we reopen the Arroyo Cafe.”
With that we cheered and clinked our imaginary glasses to our screens.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On Thursday, I went for a morning walk in my neighborhood, greeting neighbors from behind my mask with a cheerful “good morning,” with more than one agreeing it was, indeed, a “beautiful January day. A little cold.”
And then, walking past the school, the barking dogs, the church and the jogging mom pushing her stroller I saw it and stopped.
I was never startled by the sight of it before. But now? The perilous now? The sight of the “Trump 2020” flag hanging limp in the cold, on a neighbor’s porch left me transfixed. Was it posted proudly? Defiantly?
An old familiar couple walked by. The old man, a veteran, tipped his cap. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I replied.
They didn’t look at the house once. Ignored it. Perhaps it’s better to ignore such a display of allegiance to violent insurrection when you’re just starting your day.
I shrugged it off and as I continued walking down the familiar streets of my neighborhood, I couldn’t stop thinking about my neighbor. Does he still believe the lies? After the carnage, the death, the treason? How could he? At Christmastime his light display is the most beautiful in our whole subdivision. He has three cars, a truck, a boat and a huge home. What has America not given him?
Is he enraged? Armed? Is his family proud or embarrassed by his public defiance of reality? Years ago I noticed a blue star hanging in his picture window. He smiled when I talked over his fence about the Master Sergeant and I asked him about his son and thanked him for his service.
I like his mailbox. I always wanted to ask him where he got it. What lands in his email? What toxic lies does he peddle or forward with glee and didn’t every lie contribute to this precarious moment for our nation?
A hawk on a telephone pole reminds me I went on this walk to marvel at natural beauty.
My frantic mind wanders back to that house. If this were Munich in the ’30s would he proudly fly the Nazi banner after Kristallnacht? Or after the burning of the Reichstag? If this were Honolulu would he fly the Rising Sun after Pearl Harbor? If this were April 1865, would he fly the Confederate flag after Lincoln had been killed?
This is the neighbor I envy for his drip irrigation system and his beautiful roses. I told him so years ago. If I knocked on his door would he say, “We’ve talked before. I don’t believe we’ve formally met. What’s your name?”
Would he call me an “Enemy of the People,” a traitor to America? Would he repeat the countless epithets, insults and threats I’ve gotten from his fellow true believers — for years? Does he get threats? Common ground? Would he slam his door, shouting, “Get off my property?”
Would he call me divisive? I play it out in my mind. Would he ask me “Whatever happened to ‘malice toward none?’” Ha. I’d point out Abraham Lincoln said that after Union forces had annihilated the Confederate insurrectionists and crushed their “civilization” into rubble. And then I’d panic for my life, remembering the NRA sticker I’ve seen on his truck with the gun rack.
I check my Fitbit, step around the flattened jack rabbit and keep walking. Does he care that a pro-Trump, Capitol Hill cop got his skull bashed in by a pro-Trump thug? Or is that fake news?
Does he agree with the failed plans to harm or kill Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi or is that fake news? Will he be at our state Capitol with a pitchfork in the next few days? He has a rake. I’ve seen him rake his gravel. We exchanged waves once. I smiled and shouted, “Nice yard!”
Does he curse Twitter and Facebook and my paper? Would it be a waste of time to point out our First Amendment right to free speech doesn’t apply to private enterprise, that my “free speech” is subject to censorship by my publisher? Is he desperately searching the web for messages from Trump right now?
I went on this walk to escape the madness. Quail scurry ahead of me and I focus on what a beautiful winter day it is.
My restless mind circles back. Does he feel persecuted? Does he have a clue how persecuted his Black, brown and Muslim neighbors felt every time they ventured out into his America for the past four years?
Let it go. Give him the benefit of doubt. I tell myself we both love America.
I tell myself we’ll get through this.
And I tell myself when I get home from my walk I should post our flag in front of my home. Good idea. If only to warm myself with the sight of our stars and stripes on a cold January day.
- David Fitzsimmons
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
On President Trump’s last day in office, feeling sad, he orders a massive strike, peppering the planet with nuclear warheads. In the aftermath of the global conflagration, fallout and firestorms carpet the rubble of civilization. Nuclear winter shrouds the planet.
From his bunker Sean Hannity addresses his seven surviving viewers. “I’d like to know who started this. Anti-fa? Soros? Ocasio Cortez? Pelosi?”
Rush Limbaugh, clenching a radioactive cigar between his two remaining blackened teeth, shouts into his charred microphone, “It’s a frame up! The Never-Trumpers will do anything to stop Donald Trump from making America great!”
Laura Ingraham, dazed and wandering, says to a shattered mirror shard, “Sure. Blame Trump. Rush to judgment. Fake news! Do we even have nuclear weapons? Has anyone considered the Gas Company as a possible culprit?”
Tucker Carlson, suffering from burns over 90% of his bowtie, and retching from radiation poisoning, picks up a glowing human skull, arches what’s left of an eyebrow and intones, “We may never know the truth here. I think sunblock manufacturers are behind whatever this odd weather is. Where was Hunter Biden when this went down?And Hillary?”
Three surviving members of the Trump administration, with multiple mushroom clouds as their backdrop, post a video of themselves resigning in protest. “Enough is enough.”
Rudy Giuliani, caught at Mar-a-Lago with his pants blown down by a 5-megaton blast, says to a burnt alligator carcass, “At first I thought it was another ‘Borat’ trap and then I saw the mushroom cloud,” adding, “I’m going to walk to Ukraine, and, if it still exists, I’m going to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s link to this disaster. In the meantime I’m tracking down rumors that pics of Hillary exist, riding a hydrogen bomb down, like Slim Pickens, allegedly shouting,’ I hate you, Donald.’ How sick and deranged is that? Could you hand me my left arm, please?”
The next day surviving members of Congress speak out.
From inside their cave by the Potomac the House Freedom Caucus “issues a statement” on their cave wall. “@ last! We are free frum regul8tions! And the Godliss Department of Education! Thank you, President Trump!”
Miles away, his mutton chops fried, Ted Cruz is trapped under debris at the bottom of a mile-wide crater. As night falls he lectures feral dogs eating human remains at the edge of the crater. “You realize the people who want to destroy your Bill of Rights and take away your guns are thrilled by this!”
In Texas, Congressman Louis Gohmert, buried under thousands of tons of irradiated soil texts, “Don’t believe the lying media. It’s all CGI, like the moon landing.”
In what was Arizona, Kelli Ward, the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, tells a rabid five-legged javelina, “Radioactivity is good for you! While I have your attention we desperately need to raise funds to stop the liberals from destroying what’s left of the planet. Now. Before it’s too late.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announces through a spokesperson he is still waiting in his Scottsdale bunker to receive instruction from any surviving members of the Koch family. “In the meantime gyms are wide open! And for those with hair, beauty salons are open, too.”
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who lost his famed walrus mustache in the firestorm that resulted from Pima County being struck with multiple nuclear warheads, blames “a cabal of left-wing pedophiles, cannibals, and Islamic terrorists for the unusually bad weather,” and as the second wave hits he adds, “God bless, Donald Trump.”
Outside a bunker in Cave Creek, a man resembling Sean Spicer tells people waiting in line for fresh water and body bags that “only 8,000 are dead! Not 7.56 billion,” and to “Get a grip!”
Mutants attack Ivanka when she announces a new line of lead-lined lingerie, adding she hopes to grow her hair back “to cheer people up!” Days later Trump is found miles beneath the White House rubble. His first words to the rescue team are “I won,” adding, “I must be immune to radiation.”
President Biden corrects him.
A month later, in the rubble of the Republican National Headquarters, human remains are found, but, to the surprise of no forensic experts, not one single vertebrae.
Most Popular
-
U of A president declines to sign shared governance contract with faculty -
Two Famous Sam’s pubs in Tucson to be redeveloped
-
Pima Sheriff Chris Nanos fixes résumé errors after Arizona Republic report
-
Pima County voters approve RTA Next plan, sales tax
-
Man killed when red-light runner strikes car in midtown Tucson, police say
