Tucson Weekly, March 11, 2021

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One Year Later

12 months ago, the outbreak hit Pima County Where We Stand Now What We Can Expect Next How COVID Devastated Sports What It’s Like To Be an ICU Nurse

TUCSON SALVAGE: Down and Out in Pima County

MUSIC: Al Foul Benefit Album

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MARCH 11, 2021

MARCH 11, 2021 | VOL. 36, NO. 10

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The Tucson Weekly is available free of charge in Pima County, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue of the Tucson Weekly may be purchased for $1, payable at the Tucson Weekly office in advance. To find out where you can pick up a free copy of the Tucson Weekly, please visit TucsonWeekly.com

STAFF

CONTENTS CURRENTS

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Twelve months ago, the outbreak hit Pima County. Here’s where we stand now.

CURRENTS

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Northwest ICU nurse talks about challenges of treating COVID patients

TUCSON SALVAGE

Veterans of Internal Wars

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MUSIC

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ADMINISTRATION Jason Joseph, President/Publisher jjoseph@azlocalmedia.com

EDITOR’S NOTE

Jaime Hood, General Manager, Ext. 12 jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com Casey Anderson, Ad Director/ Associate Publisher, Ext. 22 casey@tucsonlocalmedia.com

One Year Later

Claudine Sowards, Accounting, Ext. 13 claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, Ext. 10 sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT A YEAR has gone by since the first positive COVID test here in Pima County. Since then, more than 16,000 of our fellow Arizonans have died, our healthcare system has been pushed to the edge twice, our kids have been attending schools via Zoom, our favorite restaurants have struggled, too many of our neighbors have lost their jobs, our favorite clubs and theaters have gone dark and the list goes on.

This week, we look back on COVID’s toll.

I write about what we’ve seen over the last year and where things now stand as cases decline and local and state officials start lifting restrictions. Associate editor Jeff Gardner looks at what we might see next. Longtime columnist Tom Danehy looks at the impact on sports. And staff reporter Nicole Ludden talks to a local ICU nurse about what he’s seen on the night shift.

Elsewhere in the book: Tucson Salvage columnist Brian Smith introduces us to

Frank Capanear, a Tucsonan scraping out a life on the northside; I remember legendary local banker Michael Hard, my father-in-law who died last week; The Skinny catches up on some more oddball legislation; managing editor Austin Counts fills us in on a benefit album to help local rock ’n’ roller Al Foul, who is battling cancer; Tucson Weedly columnist David Abbott looks at how Tucson is trying to update codes to allow for larger dispensaries; and you’ll find the smutty sex column, poetic horoscopes, cartoons and so much more elsewhere in our pages.

Stay safe—there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.

— Jim Nintzel Executive Editor Hear Nintz talk about the latest on the outbreak and other news at 8:30 Wednesday mornings on The Frank Show on KLPX, 91.1 FM.

EDITORIAL Jim Nintzel, Executive Editor, Ext. 38 jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com Austin Counts, Managing Editor, Ext. 36 austin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jeff Gardner, Associate Editor, Ext. 43 jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com Mike Truelsen, Web Editor, Ext. 35 mike@tucsonlocalmedia.com Christina Duran, Staff Reporter, Ext. 42 christina@tucsonlocalmedia.com Nicole Ludden, Staff Reporter nicolel@tucsonlocalmedia.com Contributors: Rob Brezsny, Max Cannon, Rand Carlson, Tom Danehy, Emily Dieckman, Bob Grimm, Andy Mosier, Linda Ray, Margaret Regan, Will Shortz, Jen Sorensen, Clay Jones, Dan Savage PRODUCTION David Abbott, Production Manager, Ext. 18 david@tucsonlocalmedia.com Ryan Dyson, Graphic Designer, Ext. 26 ryand@tucsonlocalmedia.com Emily Filener, Graphic Designer, Ext. 29 emilyf@tucsonlocalmedia.com CIRCULATION Alex Carrasco, Circulation, Ext. 17, alexc@tucsonlocalmedia.com ADVERTISING Kristin Chester, Account Executive, Ext. 25 kristin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Candace Murray, Account Executive, Ext. 24 candace@tucsonlocalmedia.com Lisa Hopper, Account Executive Ext. 39 lisa@tucsonlocalmedia.com Tyler Vondrak, Account Executive, Ext. 27 tyler@tucsonlocalmedia.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING VMG Advertising, (888) 278-9866 or (212) 475-2529

RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson

Local musicians celebrate the music of Al Foul with a compilation album after the musician recently announced being diagnosed with throat cancer

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TUCSON WEEDLY

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Tucson looks to update code to allow larger dispensaries, drive-thru service and other adjustments

Cover design by Ryan Dyson

Copyright: The entire contents of Tucson Weekly are Copyright © 2019 by Thirteenth Street Media.

No portion may be reproduced in whole or part by any means without the express written permission of the Publisher, Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, AZ 85741.

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MARCH 11, 2021

her father was a larger-than-life figure who showed his family the world.

“We grew up on this wonderful mythology of the East Coast Yale graduate who rowed and sailed and loved opera,” Jennifer remembers. “He worked hard, but then also took us kids on so many adventures.

Legendary local banker Michael Hard dies at 84 Mom and Dad always took us on vacations to places like California, England, France. Every year we’d go camping in Locketts were visiting the East Coast.

It Rocky Point with a big group of families.

By Jim Nintzel was the beginning of a lifelong romance, I remember just enjoying riding with my jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com and Michael and Kathy were married in dad in his big ‘bank car,’ as we’d call it, Tucson in 1959. listening to NPR or classical music. All of Michael would later remember arriving us kids aspired to be like him.”

MICHAEL WALES HARD, AN EASTERNER in Arizona after leaving behind a dreary His son Mike, who returned to Tucson who traveled to the West to seek his forand cold New York. “Stepping out of that to be by his dad’s side in his final weeks tune and build his family, died on Sunday, plane into the soft desert air, I thought, my alongside his other siblings, remembers Feb. 28. He was 84.

God, this is amazing,” he said. his dad as a kind and curious man who Michael was born and raised in Bay After his wedding, Michael began a was always engaged in his life.

Shore, Long Island. He attended Conthree-year stint in the U.S. Navy that “He was a quiet and steadfast role modnecticut’s Pomfret School before heading included a trip to the waters outside Cuba el by example,” Mike said. “He defines my to Yale, where he studied English Literduring the 1962 Missile Crisis. image of what it means to be a father and ature. Captain of the rowing team, his When he left the Navy, Michael began a husband.” boats won the Yale-Harvard race three a career working with the Valley National His son Chris remembers that Michael years in a row and raced in England’s Bank, embracing the bank’s commitment pushed through whatever challenges Henley Royal Regatta. “to be deeply involved in our commucame his way without complaint, inIt was while he was at Yale that he nities and support them with both our cluding the pain he felt most of his life made his first trip to Arizona to visit resources and our time to make Arizona a because of his arthritis.

Kathy Lockett. The two had been introbetter place,” as he once said.

“I admired Dad for how he lived,” Chris duced earlier by their parents while the Michael was deeply committed to the said. “His arthritis began in his early 30s community. In his position at the bank, so he had to deal with its progression for he made a point of knowing everyone his entire adult life. You would never know at branches across the state. He helped it though; dad just got on with it with launch the Tucson Mariachi Festival and integrity. That was Dad’s way. Do what was on the board of several organizations you love, in the community you love, with including the Brown Foundation, the the ones you love and, in the end, you lead Museum of Northern Arizona, the South- a full and brilliant life.” western Foundation, Up With People, the Outside of his family, Michael had a Fiesta Bowl, the Tucson Airport Authority, dynamic social circle. He and Kathy were the Community Foundation of Southern founding members of the legendary Arizona and the Amerind Foundation. He Saturday Night Eating, Drinking and brought home numerous awards, includCarousing Organization (aka SNEDCO). ing the Tucson Metro Chamber’s Man of The group enjoyed many a weekend night the Year in 2000. hosting parties in their homes and travelFor all his accolades in the community, ing together. family was at the center of Michael’s life. I Michael stuck with Valley National remember once sitting beside him at fam- Bank through its change to Bank One, ily wedding in Northern Arizona when running the Southern Arizona organizasomeone made a toast and said, “Family tion. After his 2002 retirement, he split his is the most important thing.” Michael time between his home in Tucson and a nodded in agreement and said: “You got house in Flagstaff built by Kathy’s father, that right.”

Clay Lockett.

Michael Hard in retirement.

His daughter Jennifer—who, in full Even in retirement, Michael was not disclosure, happens to be my wife—said someone who was content to sit back

CURRENTS

GOODBYE, MIKE

Michael and Kathy Hard in Flagstaff, early ’70s.

and relax. He and Kathy traveled across the globe, and he continued to serve on several Arizona boards. During summers in Flagstaff, he spent many hours tending to the old house and raking pine needles to protect it from fire danger.

While he was a good judge of character, Michael rarely had a bad thing to say about anyone. A registered Republican, he would often throw his support to local politicians from the other side of the aisle such as Gabby Giffords and Steve Farley.

“For a towering figure, he was so down to earth,” Farley remembers.

Michael battled cancer in recent years, facing it with his typical quiet strength and dignity. Even at the end, he was at peace with his fate. He died surrounded by a loving family in his Catalina Foothills home and will be much missed by his family and friends.

He is survived by his wife, Kathy, his brother, David, his three children, Michael Jr. (wife Chinita) Christopher (wife Erika) and Jennifer (husband Jim), and his seven grandchildren. ■

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CURRENTS

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guidelines to the Arizona Department of Health Services and it received approval.

The executive order also precludes local municipalities to implement “extreme measures” that would stop businesses from operating.

“Unlike other states, we never did a shutdown here in Arizona. We withstood the calls from the extremes on both sides, and we will continue to ignore them,” Ducey said. “We always knew that fighting this virus would be dependent on the personal responsibility of everyday Arizonans.”

While Ducey said the new executive order was a “measured approach” in response to the state’s vaccination efforts, he noted Arizona is “not in the March 9, 2020: Tucson mayor Regina Romero addresses the community about the outbreak clear yet” and urged citizens to continonly hours before the first COVID case is reported in Pima County. Photo by Jeff Gardner. ue proper COVID-19 safety protocols.

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said he would ask the Board of Supervisors to bring county regulations in alignment with the new Twelve months ago, the outbreak hit Pima County. Here’s where we stand now. state regulations at the next meeting.

“It’s worth noting that today’s action college leaders did the same.

By Jim Nintzel by the governor restores occupancy Over the last 12 months, Arizona has jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com limits similar to what the Board had twice been one of the world’s worst imposed in May, allowing for occupanJUST ABOUT ONE YEAR AGO, ON MARCH COVID hot spots. As of Tuesday, March WITH THE SECOND WAVE RECEDING, cy greater than 50 percent if distancing 9, 2020, the first patient in Pima Coun- 9, one year after the first case was diagcould be maintained,” Huckelberry STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE ty tested positive for COVID-19. nosed, 16,326 Arizonans have died after LIFTING SOME RESTRICTIONS WHILE said following Ducey’s announcement.

Earlier in the day, a group of elected contracting COVID, with 2,262 of those “In order to match the state’s more CONTINUING TO URGE CAUTION. officials, including Tucson Mayor Redeaths here in Pima County. restrictive requirements, the Board of gina Romero and the late Pima County After 827,800 cases of COVID in Supervisor Richard Elías, held a press Arizona (and 110,642 in Pima County), GOV. DOUG DUCEY ANNOUNCED FRIDAY, Supervisors modified operational rules and guidelines for restaurants in July March 5, that he was rescinding his preconference to warn that COVID-19 was here is where we stand. to include the tighter occupancy limit.” vious executive order limiting occupancy on its way. They predicted it would be Will Humble, executive director of capacity for restaurants, gyms, theaters, like a bad flu season and encouraged COVID STILL KILLING HUNDREDS OF water parks, bowling alleys and bars with the Arizona Public Health Association, people to wash their hands more often.

ARIZONANS EVERY WEEK called the announcement “no big deal.” dine-in service.

But within weeks, it was clear this On his blog, Humble, who headed The governor’s new executive order was going to be much worse than a bad WHILE COVID CASES ARE TRENDING IN up ADHS in the Brewer administration, still allows local communities to enforce flu season. in the right direction, UA School of mask mandates, but businesses can return said “those mitigation ‘requirements’ By mid-March, dozens of spring Public Health epidemiologist and events had been canceled, from the public health professor Dr. Joe Gerald to full occupancy “effective immediately.” were just on paper anyway. They were “We’ve learned a lot over the past year. never enforced by the ADHS and for Tucson Festival of Books to concerts warned that COVID will likely continall practical purposes never really Our businesses have done an excellent at the Rialto Theatre. Restaurants and ue to kill hundreds of Arizonans per existed. Businesses have been and will job at responding to this pandemic in a bars shut down or switched to takeout week through the end of March. continue to do what they think their safe and responsible way,” Ducey said. service. Pasta, meat and especially On the positive side, Arizona apcustomers expect. They have known for “We will always admire the sacrifi ce they toilet paper began flying off grocery peared to be headed into a state of shelves. As we all learned about Zoom, moderate risk with most counties now and their employees have made and their many months that they don’t actually have to follow the mitigation measures Gov. Doug Ducey and Superintendent transmitting fewer than 100 new cases vigilance to protect against the virus.” ‘required’ by ADHS- because there has Ducey also gave Spring Training and of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman per 100,000 residents each week, but never been any enforcement.” major league sports the green light to announced that the public school that’s still two to three times as high proceed, provided they submit a plan on system would go to remote learning at as the low point reached between the how they will implement CDC and state the end of spring break; university and summer and winter waves.

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ONE YEAR LATER

“Hospitals remain busy and hundreds of Arizonans continue to die each week so we must encourage continued adherence to the recommended public health mitigation efforts,” Gerald wrote in his weekly update on the state’s COVID numbers. “Doing more to slow transmission (and keep it low) will ensure more at-risk Arizonans can be vaccinated.”

Gerald noted that in the week ending Feb. 28, at least 6,872 Arizonans tested positive for COVID, a 29% drop in the previous week’s tally of 9,649 cases.

Hospitals continued to see relief; as of March 5, 966 patients were hospitalized outside of ICUs, a drop of 27% from the previous week and 81% from the Jan. 11 peak of 5,082 patients, according to Gerald’s report. That same day, 280 COVID patients were in ICU beds, a drop of 33% from the previous week and 76% from the Jan. 11 peak.

In the week ending Feb. 28, 826 people in Pima County tested positive, a drop of 24% compared to the previous week, with cases being diagnosed at a rate of 79 per 100,000 residents.

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SCHOOLS MUST OFFER IN-PERSON CLASSES NO LATER THAN THE END OF SPRING BREAK THERE’S LITTLE ARGUMENT THAT THIS

has been a terrible academic year for many kids, who have had to adjust to learning over a computer screen while sometimes attending school a few days a week.

But most kids will be returning to the classroom later this month after Ducey told schools last week to resume in-person instruction by March 15 or the end of spring break.

The March 3 executive order came as 12 of Arizona’s 15 counties, including Pima, are “in phases where all schools are safe to open,” according to Ducey, although the majority of Arizona counties were still in the “substantial” category of COVID-19 spread.

The order includes district and charter schools.

“Arizona’s students need to be back in the classroom,” Ducey said. “More than half of Arizona’s schools are open and offering in-person options. More schools need to follow their lead, and pave the

CLAYTOONZ By Clay Jones

As of Tuesday, March 9, the Arizona Department of Health Services estimates nearly 20% of Arizonans have been vaccinated. Photo courtesy ADHS.

way for equitable education options for every Arizona student.”

However, an individual district may close if the local health department advises closure due to “a significant outbreak” of COVID-19 that poses a risk to the students or staff, and is approved for closure by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Gerald said he was generally supportive of the idea of returning students to the classroom, particularly those in

kindergarten through fifth grade, but warned that if the virus began spreading more rapidly, Ducey’s order doesn’t offer many opportunities to reverse course.

Ducey’s order came as local districts were already offering some form of hybrid on-campus learning or were moving toward resuming classes, although all districts are also offering some form of remote learning if families prefer that option. The choices available vary from district to district and sometimes from

school to school or class to class.

Tucson Unified School District, which has not resumed in-person instruction since last year’s spring break, was already planning on returning to in-person instruction on March 24. Following Ducey’s announcement, TUSD will now resume in-person learning on March 22.

Less than half of Sunnyside School District students returned to an in-person hybrid model on March 1, said Marisela Felix, director of public information at Sunnyside School District. The students are split into two cohorts, A and B. Cohort A attends a full day of school on Monday and Thursday, while Cohort B attends a full day of school Tuesday and Friday. All students attend school remotely on Wednesday.

Marana School District Superintendent Dan Streeter told families last week that the district would resume five days of in-person instruction for pre-K through 8th grades as well as MCAT students.

Marana High School and Mountain View High School will offer in-person instruction Monday through Thursday, with Fridays reserved for remote learning so that teachers will have time to work with students who prefer to remain in virtual schooling.

MARCH 11, 2021

Amphi Superintendent Todd Jaeger announced on Friday, March 5, that the district would fully reopen schools on Wednesday, March 24, with all students learning virtually on Monday, March 22, and Tuesday, March 23. (On-campus supervision of students would be available as capacity permits on March 22-23.)

Catalina Foothills School District has been offering in-person instruction since the end of winter break.

NEW PIMA HEALTH ADVISORY DROPS COUNTY’S VOLUNTARY CURFEW, ALLOWS GATHERINGS OF UP TO 25 PEOPLE AS COVID CASES CONTINUE TO DECLINE

the Pima County Health Department relaxed some restrictions last week in a new public health advisory that dropped the county’s voluntary curfew, lifted the recommended cap on safe gatherings from 10 people to 25 people and allowed the reopening of parks and recreation facilities with a limit of 50 spectators

and face mask requirements for all those in attendance except for athletes who are actively playing the sport.

HOW TO GET A VACCINE WHILE VACCINE DOSES HAVE BEEN IN short supply, more than 2.1 million vaccine doses had been delivered as of March 8. That number includes at least 1,386,000 Arizonans who have received at least one dose, accounting for roughly 20%of Arizona’s population. More than 774,000 Arizonans have been fully vaccinated. Among the million people in Pima County, nearly 310,000 vaccine doses have been administered. More than 200,000 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and almost 120,000 have been fully vaccinated.

To find out if you are eligible for a vaccine, visit the Arizona Department of Health website at AZDHS.gov.

Supplies remain limited, but at the start of this week, Pima County is providing vaccination shots to people

65 and older as well as educators, first responders and healthcare workers. Those who qualify in Pima County’s 1B priority group of eligible vaccine recipients can register for a vaccine at www.pima.gov/ covid19vaccineregistration or by calling 520-222-0119.

The county plans to expand eligibility to those 55 and older as well as frontline workers once officials estimate that 55% of the currently eligible population has been vaccinated.

A state-run vaccination site at the University of Arizona was accepting first dose applications as of Monday, March 8. As the state-run POD, or point of distribution, registrations at the UA vaccination site will go through ADHS’s website. You can make an appointment at pod vaccine.azdhs.gov, and those who need assistance can call 1-844-542-8201.

Some local pharmacies are now receiving vaccine doses. To find one near you, visit the ADHS website.

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GET TESTED: PIMA COUNTY HAS FREE COVID TESTING WHILE PIMA COUNTY OFFICIALS

continue to bicker with the state regarding reimbursement for running testing centers, the county is continuing to offer a number of testing centers around town.

You’ll have a nasal swab test at the Kino Event Center (2805 E. Ajo Way) and the Udall Center (7200 E. Tanque Verde Road).

The center at the northside Ellie Towne Flowing Wells Community Center, 1660 W. Ruthrauff Road, involves a saliva test designed by ASU. Schedule an appointment at these or other drive-thru or pop-up sites at pima. gov/covid19testing.

The University of Arizona’s antibody testing can determine if you have had COVID and now have antibodies. To sign up for testing, visit https://covid19antibodytesting.arizona.edu/home. ■

Austin Counts and Christina Duran contributed to this report.

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CURRENTS

THE COVID HORIZON

Growing impatience and repealed mandates: Where do we go from here? we’re going to have to follow the emerging research that is tracking these variants… If we get our vaccine acceptance rate to 70%, 80% or higher, then we’re good, we shouldn’t WITH 2020 IN HINDSIGHT, see a resurgence. That’s the best-case scegovernments are loosening regulations nario.” and distributing vaccines as COVID cases Because of a gradually inoculated populacontinue their decline. In the week of March tion and greater access to vaccines, Gerald 1 alone, the states of Texas and Mississippi does not anticipate the state to experience ended their mask mandates, a new vaccine from Johnnson & Johnson began its rollout, another wave as we did in early summer and and here in Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey late fall 2020. But even if we do, our hospiordered schools to offer in-person teaching tals and mortuaries shouldn’t face the same pressures they previously experienced.

by March 15 and lifted occupancy limits “I don’t think we’re going to see another for restaurants, gyms and bars. But public wave. If we do, it’s going to be smaller and health officials still stress caution, both beit’s going to have the added benefits of cause of continued cases, and the difficulty fewer hospitalizations and deaths,” Gerald inherent to predicting the pandemic.

“We want to continue cautiously moving said. “Given what we understand about the forward,” said Pima County Health Depart- current virus and variants that are present in Arizona, I’m pretty optimistic about what’s ment Director Dr. Theresa Cullen. “There going to happen moving forward.” are encouraging signs across the board as But there’s another major question: How far as cases, hospitalizations, and vaccine low can we keep the community transmisdistribution but, we cannot let our guard sion rates between now and when we can down.” get a vaccine to every person who wants For Joe Gerald, PhD, director of the Unione? versity of Arizona’s Public Health Policy & Arizona’s transmission rate is currently Management program, every COVID death around two times as high as the dip between that happens now is a “double tragedy,” because it happens in a setting in which “we 2020’s summer and fall outbreaks. This equates to 50 to 100 cases per 100,000 resknew better” and the vaccines are so close idents per week depending on the county, to being administered to all who want it. which translates to roughly 8,000 new cases Gerald has spent years researching a week statewide. respiratory-related illnesses and interven“That doesn’t seem like a lot, but I tions for them, including tuberculosis and asthma. Since the pandemic began, Gerald think that’s mainly because we’ve already experienced such dire circumstances that has managed a weekly report modeling COVID cases within the state. But even with it looks great compared to that. While in his experience, he admits it’s not possible to the moment it’s not going to add up to as make an accurate forecast for this upcoming many deaths, if we allow that to continue for a prolonged period, it still adds up,” Gerald summer or beyond. In fact, COVID modsaid. “That’s why I think many public health eling groups are hesitant to go more than officials are really frustrated with the pace four to six weeks in the future because the at which our political leaders want to go in pandemic includes so many unknowns.

Gerald says three main questions remain withdrawing business restrictions and mask for the future: how much vaccine hesitancy mandates, because we recognize it’s not over and we still have another two-to-three is there truly going to be once everyone is able to receive a dose; will a variant emerge months of hard work in front of us.”

Gerald admits there are problems with that can evade vaccine or natural immunity; Arizona’s and other states’ vaccine distribuand finally, how long will our vaccines and tions, namely racial and economic disparnatural immunity last? ities. A March 5 article in the New York “If we do a good job vaccinating, and we have the vaccine available, we’ll be done by Times reported that communities of color have received fewer vaccines. However, a May,” Gerald said. “If Biden’s plan comes survey from the Associated Press’s National true and people accept the vaccine, this Opinion Research Center also found vacsummer is going to look really good. But

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com

COURTESY ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES

New daily cases in Arizona continue to drop, with the week of March 1 the lowest it’s been since early October.

cine hesitancy to simply be higher among black and hispanic communities.

“We’re leaving out many Arizonans whose present health status, occupation, language, culture or whatever else, doesn’t allow the same access to the vaccines because the registration is difficult or confusing. This is a feature of how we structured our system.

It doesn’t have to be this way,” Gerald said.

“Right now our strategy is ‘the supply is limited, so let’s make those who can come to the vaccine, come to the vaccine.’ But we need to do more to get the vaccine to those who are vulnerable.”

Gerald argues authorities have distributed too many of our state’s allotted vaccines to largescale vaccination Points of Distribution, and have hindered federally qualified health centers who are best positioned to reach vulnerable sectors of the community.

However, he believes the upcoming Johnson & Johnson vaccine—which only requires one dose and has more flexible storage requirements—can fill in some gaps.

“It’s probably not going to happen at the state level. There’s too much riding on the Governor’s own political fortunes to show success through the state’s PODs,” Gerald said. “What we really need to see happen is the federal government allocate more to these alternative pathways directly to federally qualified health centers, directly to the retail pharmacy chains.”

However, he does say Ducey’s recent executive order requiring schools to offer in-person learning by March 15 is reasonable. This is because the Governor’s requirements align with the CDC’s re-

quirements, so long as things continue to improve as they are. Most Arizona counties are in “substantial” spread, but are trending toward moderate.

“As long as conditions continue as they are now, or continue to get better, I think the Governor’s plan is entirely reasonable,” Gerald said. “There is a little bit of risk if we get worse and experience a third wave. What the Governor calls for is if you open your high school—which you basically have to do now—and things get worse and go back to the ‘high’ transmission level, then you have to stay open; you can’t go backwards.”

On March 5, the Pima County Health Department also announced their own reduced mandates, increasing the size of permissible gatherings from 10 or fewer to 25 or fewer.

However, they stressed we are still far from the pandemic being over.

“We’re seeing this growing impatience with recommendations from public health officials, as if we want to keep the communities on lockdown and businesses closed. But I think public health officials and healthcare workers who’ve been on the frontlines, we’re coming from a much different perspective than the general community and political leaders,” Gerald said. “I think public health officials are being appropriately cautious, and there are some growing disagreements with political leaders, particularly with the mask mandates. What we’ve learned is they should be ‘first-on, last-off.’ They’re simple, inexpensive, and reasonably effective when there’s a high degree of adherence. And by keeping masks on, it actually allows us to open things sooner.” ■

MARCH 11, 2021

CURRENTS

DELAY OF GAME The pandemic laid waste to a year of sports, from the big leagues to high schools

had set themselves up to host the first two rounds of the women’s NCAAs. And then the curtain came down.

Perhaps most frustrating was what happened to the Pima College women. For most of the past decade, the team repreIN THE FIRST ROUND OF THE PAC-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament, exactly one senting the Arizona Community College Athletic Association (ACCAC) in the year ago today, the wildly disappointing Arizona Wildcats had pulled out a wildly national championship was either Pima or Mesa CC. They played each other for the disappointing seven-point victory over ACCAC crown almost every year, with the the last-place Washington Huskies. (The Cats, with their three freshman stars, had home team winning every year until 2020.

That’s when Pima had to make the trip to been a sexy pick to be among the top five teams in the country. They ended up Mesa and absolutely smacked the T-Birds.

The national junior-college governing finishing tied for fifth in the Pac-12.) board delayed the playoffs, put them off Still, they had made it to the second some more, then finally canceled them. It round and had a chance to make some was brutal. positive noise. The night before, with the For sports lovers, March 12 was The Day COVID-19 winds beginning to blow, the the Music Died. We went from a cornucoPac-12 had announced that Thursday’s pia to a bare cupboard in the blink of an games would be played in a basically empty arena. But before the games could eye. There was no easing into it, no way to prepare for the sudden emptiness. And get underway, the Conference canceled the rest of the tournament. Later that day, the worst thing of all was the grim realization that while we were whining about the NCAA announced that it was cannot being able to watch a ballgame on TV, celing all sports for the rest of the school people were starting to die. year.

If I am somehow blessed with another While the UA men’s season had been 20 or 30 years on this Earth and I am a dud, the women’s basketball team had asked to recall my most vivid memory of arrived on the national stage in a big the Pandemic of 2020, may the Heavens way. They were drawing huge crowds to forgive me because it will not be about McKale Center, beating highly ranked political atrocities or an endless cascade teams Oregon State and Stanford(!), and

By Tom Danehy tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

of facts and tragic figures, but rather about sports. Or, more precisely, about the sudden and jarring absence thereof.

The best sports day of the year is actually two of them. The first real day of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is sports nirvana. On Thursday of the first week of the Tournament, 32 teams square off in 16 games that invariably feature stunning upsets, nail-biters, crazy finishes and heartbreaking near-misses. And then, the next day, they do it all over again with the other 32 teams in the Tournament. It’s better than the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and every soccer game ever played, combined.

My favorite sports event of the year was wiped out in an instant. But we were told that all we had to do was stay at home for two or three weeks and the virus would disappear, right? We could have May Madness.

But the days became weeks and the weeks became months. The absence of sports on TV was amplified by the shutting down of local sports. The UA women’s softball team was looking like the old days, in the Top 5 nationally and absolutely rolling. The women’s golf team was looking to win its second national championship in three years. The men’s baseball team was good and the men’s golf team was on the rise. All gone.

The Pac-12 and Big 10 originally canceled the fall football season, foolishly expecting the other major conferences to go along with the safety measure. But they forgot that, down South, people worship gun racks, certain types of crosses and college football. The ACC, SEC, and Big 12 plunged ahead with their seasons, leaving the Pac-12 and Big 10 to scramble

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to catch up. Arizona didn’t play its first game until November. The Cats led Pac12 South champion USC with less than two minutes to go and then…the rest of the game and rest of the season got wiped away by the Men In Black.

The high schools had a patchwork of success. Most got in cross country and swimming seasons. Volleyball sorta happened, but football was a mess. Some teams got in nine games, others three or four. The COVID-19 splatter pattern on prep sports was random and insidious.

The Ironwood Ridge girls’ golf team won the state championship, but the football team only got in two games before closing down. The Nighthawks’ boys’ basketball team has a shot at state, while the girls’ squad shut down after three games.

In calculus terms, over the next few months, sports should approach the way things used to be as a limit. That’s the best we can hope for.

I’m really sorry that sports were so important to me during a pandemic. And I’m extra sorry that, during that pandemic, I stayed up way past midnight to watch live broadcasts of the Korean Baseball League. ■

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MARCH 11, 2021

CURRENTS

THE LONGEST SHIFT

Northwest ICU nurse talks about challenges of treating COVID patients

By Nicole Ludden tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

IN HIS 30 YEARS WORKING IN the healthcare industry, Scott Smith has never encountered a phenomenon in the medical field that caused him to cry himself to sleep at night.

But nothing could have prepared him for the devastation evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith works three 12-hour night shifts a week in the ICU at the Northwest Medical Center in Tucson.

In late February 2020, the hospital designated half of its 20-bed ICU for coronavirus patients. Soon, the inundation of patients caused the hospital to open the entire ICU for COVID-19 care.

When cases dropped off in the summer, Northwest went back to 10 critical care beds for COVID patients.

But when cases spiked again in the winter, the hospital had to expand its capacity using its 15bed cardiac ICU to care for COVID patients. At its busiest, the facility held 30 coronavirus patients.

At first, Smith said patients were intubated almost immediately and stayed on a ventilator for weeks at a time.

“Now, because of the shortage of ventilators, we wait much longer before we do the intubating, put them on the breathing machine. This is all anecdotal, but I’m seeing more of them dying now than it did a year ago,” he said. “At first, hardly any were dying. We were having really good luck with it. But since the summer, it seems like a lot more dying.”

As hospitals scrambled to figure out how to treat the new virus nearly a year ago, the treatments they’re giving COVID-19 patients have evolved.

“At first, since COVID was such an unknown, we didn’t really know how to treat it, so we treated it sort of like any other sort of respiratory ailment. We were trying all the different medications that they thought might work and turned out didn’t,” Smith said.

The hospital began administering Hydroxychloroquine to COIVD patients, but after finding out the drug caused cardiac arrhythmias, or erratic heartbeat changes, Northwest stopped using it for treatment.

Now, the hospital commonly uses the drug Remdesivir to treat coronavirus, as well as giving patients convalescent plasma. This procedure involves taking blood from a recovered COVID-19 patient and administering it to a current patient in hopes the antibodies that fight COVID will transfer over.

“We have good luck with that in the early stages, but by the time you get to the ICU, its results aren’t quite as good,” Smith said. “It’s constantly moving forward, constantly learning new things and trying new techniques.”

Unable to breathe adequately on their own, the first critical care COVID-19 patients receive is intubation. Smith said proning patients—flipping them on their stomach so they’re facedown in the bed—has become a frequent practice.

But while the workers on the frontlines of the pandemic exhaust a variety of treatment options to keep COVID-19 patients alive, their families wait for results behind closed doors due to many hospitals’ no-visitor policies.

“Since we’re not letting family members in, I think that it seems like the family is much more reluctant

to acknowledge when it’s hopeless,” Smith said. “So there have been several cases lately where I’m trying to talk to family members and try to explain to them there’s really nothing more we can do. But they still want you to do everything.”

Northwest purchased iPads for patients to FaceTime their family members, but the virtual contact falls short at the most critical moments of a loved one’s life.

“Without family members around, just the actual patient care is easier, but trying to express just how grave a situation is without them there seeing a patient has been much more difficult,” Smith said. “It’s not the same as being there, seeing all the machines we have hooked up to them and all the medications we’re giving just to keep their heart beating and the body oxygenating.”

Smith said while healthcare workers deploy a variety of treatments to care for patients in the critical stages of coronavirus, the abundant deaths employees have witnessed and exhaustion of around-the-clock care have surpassed a point of desperation.

“Did you ever see the old movie WarGames with Matthew Broderick?

There’s a scene in that where they’re facing World War III, and the general says, ‘Heck, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it would help.’ And that’s been my attitude,” he said.

The nurse is used to the enervation working tediously long shifts in the ICU causes, but caring for COVID-19 patients day after day has caused a different kind of fatigue.

“Physical exhaustion is easy to deal with, you go home and you sleep for a while and you’re fine,” he said. “But there’s an emotional and spiritual exhaustion with this that I’ve never experienced before.”

As they live with the unique, multifactorial burden of caring for coronavirus patients, Smith said his colleagues and he provide each other a support system of mutual understanding.

“We know that, as humans, we are a social species. So the advantage is during work we are able to socialize with each other, and it’s not really

COURTESY PHOTO

“There’s an emotional and spiritual exhaustion with this that I’ve never experienced before,” said Northwest Medical Center ICU nurse Scott Smith.

a support group, but we do kind of function as that,” he said. “We don’t get together as a formal support group but just throughout the shift, we do talk to each other about how we’re feeling and what’s going on. It’s good to be surrounded by people that understand what you’re feeling, who see all the same things you are.”

But after facing a year of caring for patients fighting an oftentimes lethal virus on top of non-COVID-related critical patient care, Smith and his colleagues are experiencing a seemingly inescapable crisis both in and outside of work.

“In talking with coworkers, a lot of us are showing signs of PTSD just from doing this day in and day out for so many hours, and there’s no escape from it,” Smith said. “Usually, when you get off work, you can go home and get away from it. But with this, you get off work, you go home, and it’s all over social media, it’s all over the news. It’s just constant ever-present, like COVID 24/7. And I think that’s really, really draining.”■

THE SKINNY BAD BILLS Republicans push wars on voting and education at the statehouse Jim Nintzel jnintzel@tucsonweekly.com

WITH A PANDEMIC ON, THE ARIZONA

Legislature is enjoying less oversight from the public than usual (and that isn’t all that much to begin with), so the narrow Republican majority is doing all it can to mess with voting rights, cut taxes for the wealthy and screw over schools.

We’ve yet to see the tax plans, though the latest rumors suggest there will be a billion-dollar tax cut over three years and a move to a flat tax that will, as usual, give breaks to Arizona’s wealthiest residents and hose the rest of us.

On the school front, SB 1452, which is a massive voucher expansion, has already passed the Senate on a 16-14 party-line vote and is now awaiting action in the House of Representatives.

Arizona voters rejected a similar measure at the ballot box in 2018, but most GOP lawmakers are always happy to undermine traditional schools.

Speaking of ignoring the will of voters: SB 1783 would create an “alternative” tax bracket to let wealthy Arizonans dodge the income-tax surcharge on Arizona’s top earners created by the voter-approved Prop 208, passed by voters last year to boost education spending. That bill also passed the Senate on a party-line vote and is awaiting action in the House of Representatives.

Then there’s the war on voting.

One of the worst voter-suppression bills this year passed the Senate this week, again on a 16-14 party-line vote.

SB 1730 would require voters who cast ballots by mail to include an affidavit that has some kind of supporting documentation, such as the voter’s driver-license number, a copy of a utility bill, a bank statement or some other piece of paper.

Given that three-fourths of Arizonans now vote by mail, this is just an effort to suppress the vote by finding chickenshit ways to disqualify ballots or make it more difficult for someone to send their ballot back in the first place.

It’s also totally unnecessary. Voting by mail has been happening for nearly three decades in Arizona and has been growing in popularity, especially during this last year of a pandemic. In all that time, there have been no documented cases of major fraud occurring with voters casting fake ballots. It just doesn’t happen.

This legislation, sponsored by state Sen. J.D. Mesnard, is driven by one thing: Republicans have started to lose statewide races to Democrats and have a narrow margin in the Arizona Legislature. In all likelihood, the Independent Redistricting Commission will redraw lines restoring the GOP advantage in legislative districts— there’s a reason Gov. Doug Ducey stacked the judicial commission that chooses the nominations of the IRC members with his pals—but the GOP

MARCH 11, 2021

has to make it harder for Democrats to vote if they’re going to hang onto power in Arizona. The only other alternative is running candidates that are more appealing to voters, and why would Republicans take that route?

CHALLENGING THE KOZ Another Democrat wants to run for Ward 6 Councilman Steve Kozachik’s seat THE SKINNY MENTIONED LAST WEEK

that three-term Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik had picked up a primary opponent when University of Arizona academic advisor and KXCI community radio DJ Miranda Schubert launched her campaign to unseat him.

Now a third Democrat has their eye on the Ward 6 seat: Andrés Portela, who works as a policy and community development director for Kozachik’s colleague, Ward 1 councilmember

SORENSEN

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 11

Lane Santa Cruz. A Sierra Vista native who attended Buena High School, Portela said on Facebook that he is running “as a progressive Democrat with an emphasis on H.O.M.E. Housing, Opportunity, Mobility Justice and Environmental Justice.” We’ll see how that plays out with his platform, but at first blush, it seems pretty similar to what Schubert is talking about on the campaign trail, which means the two challengers could end up splitting the anti-Koz vote.

So far, no Republicans have filed to seek a seat in November.

Candidates have until April 5 to file nominating petitions—assuming, of course, that the Arizona Supreme Court doesn’t uphold a state law that would require Tucson to move its election to line up with presidential and midterm elections. Arguments in that case have wrapped up and a decision from the high court is expected soon. ■

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MARCH 11, 2021

Story & photos by Brian Smith

Veterans of Internal Wars IF YOU CAN PULL THE DAMN TRAILER OFF the RV lot, the man said, you can have it. So, Frank and his running bud Scott hauled off that old ’70s traveler and plopped it on a trailer lot near Roger Road and Fairview.

Frank had rented the lot for $200 a month on a cul-de-sac surrounded by tin outbuildings, bigger singles and doublewides, jumbles of cars and occasional household items as lawn ornaments. In Frank’s eyes, the sad, sun-faded trailer was his new home.

Several months later the trailer startles where it sits, an ornate trash-heap salvation. Like a set piece on some Burbank backlot for a 1940’s Robert Mitchum war picture, or a heady carnival attraction you’d half-expect to rise up and twirl around, Frank and Scott the cagey barkers always outside it.

Frank’s daily life lately is often consumed with ongoing trailer repair and renovation. His scrim of facial hair, the missing teeth, eyes wrinkled in eternal sun squint, the slight bow-legged movements (a wrestler’s sacrifice and crazy injury-prone limbs—we’ll get to that), all dead giveaways to life spent mostly outside in forever desert sun and dust. Yet, the dude is pushing 60, but looks more like a guy of 45 with a history of battered roadways. There’s youth and vim in his tread, a kid-like nasal to his voice, a honed sense of satire (check his green Ralph Lauren polo cap and ARMY tee), and a face transmitting hard-won benevolence.

He’s the kind of guy who’ll apologize if he swears, drop a King Solomon reference as a sentence sweetener while conversing his protests with Natives over hydraulic mining or riding his bike cross-country or growing weed in the Catalinas as a teenager.

Now Frank painstakingly spray-painted the entire wheeled house in mint greens, jades, yellows and maroons—the potent hues of camo to reflect his support of war veterans, only juxtaposed in weedy floral silhouettes. Tall grass pulled from the yard and alley served as spray-over templates, and plastic fern trees greet visitors at the door.

If he sprays angles on the grass just right, the paint takes on joyous lines and shadows of nature, forest landscapes, you could say. It is spangled street art, complicit somehow, a protest silently screaming, “this is the life we choose.” It is an external of his internal philosophies, both individual and universal. Yes, home as an evergreen art project, a welcome explosion of color and whimsy to the surroundings. Neighbors don’t complain, they appreciate such refreshing detail. For a guy with zero experience in graffiti art, nothing escapes Frank’s steady hand, even the propane tanks in and out of the trailer.

In the bright wash of early March sun, Frank steps over to an ordered, waist-high piles of planks and lumber out front, slides thin sheets of maple wood out (“brand new from a Dumpster!”) and explains in carpenter confidence how it’ll panel and repair the crumbling ceiling where the rain once got in (“no mold!”), he’s already layered the roof with sealant. He lifts wooden cabinet doors, another trashheap conquest, to fashion, after a little refinishing, inside breakfronts.

“It is such a waste,” he says of the doors and wood, “I just couldn’t see them go to the dump. Everything here,” he adds, taking in the organized heaps picked from Tucson tossaways, “is recycled.” He hauls it in by bicycle.

“I’m ‘Gilligan’s Island,’” the father of four grown children laughs, “the more primitive it is, the more I like it.”

FRANK CAPANEAR ADORES BICYCLES. He gave his last car to one of his sons. Bikes are his transportation and a part of his living—found and cheaply purchased parts are refurbished into bicycles and sold at swap meets. COVID killed the flea-merchant star, so Frank, with the help of another pal, hocks his pieces at online outlets like Craigslist. That is his income, supplemented with occasional construction work with contractor friends.

Frank Capanear and his road machine.

He knows the two-wheeled agonies too. Like pedaling on mountainous, forbidding roads all the way from Tucson to, say, Jacksonville, Florida. He did such a ride, four times, as a commemorative fundraiser for wounded vets.

It began one day in 2007. The untrained cyclist clipped into a Schwinn Voyager, hardly a prime road machine, and began the slow trudge into gnarly sidewinds on uphill roads that rose unending before him.

His legs, back, lungs and heart were not at all prepared for such human suffering. To heighten such sensations, his addiction to cocaine ended the night before the journey began. One last high of shame calcified forever before paying a gnarly penance out on the saddle.

Is the road metaphor located too deep for our sonar to locate, Captain?

He did such a bike trek three more times, in consecutive years, across the busted-up highways on what Kerouac called this “horrible continent,” ending in places like Williamsburg, Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee. The “post-apocalyptic Katrina devastation in Louisiana blew my mind,” Frank says. The cowboy on pedals averaged 70 miles a day, weighed down with Pannier packs crammed with survival supplies, including a tent, food and water. His body recovered mostly in nighttime roadside tents. Forget the ungodly weather, the rain and heat, even tornados and hurricanes, the day-and-night miseries couldn’t stop this dude.

Heroic? Likely. Do heroics demand elements of crazy? Abso-fucking-lutely.

MARCH 11, 2021

“I’m not crazy,” Frank laughs from his perch atop a camo-colored chair in the shade of his camo-colored trailer. “But I carry crazy with me.”

All told, he pedaled thousands of miles through 32 states, after landing a local sponsor to pay his expenses and buy him the Schwinn. He estimates he raised more than $800,000 for veteran-related charities such as the Wounded Warrior Project, and others.

He camped with disabled soldiers, befriended Ann Dunwoody, the first woman in U.S. military history to earn a four-star general rank. In Nashville, country-music stirrer Aaron Tippin loaded Frank and his bike on the tour bus for a short run from Nashville to Texas, and brought him on stage during shows as a champ of vets, soliciting donations for his cause. Frank’s online road-diary blog, called averagefrank, is still up.

He found inner-peace in two ways, on long, lonely stretches of road and in vets and folks he met along the way. “I met so many kids who were severely wounded, their moms and dads,” he says.

“I don’t have the words to describe the feeling. They were severely damaged by wars, but it taught me; their resolve was so profound, this will to survive and live with the traumas. It humbled me more than anything else. Whether I believe in a war or not is irrelevant.”

His first inspiration for the journey was Ben, one of his three sons, who, as a teen, teared up watching the twin towers fall on television. That night Ben turned to his dad, and said, “I guess I’ll have to enlist one day.” The kid turned 18 and did. Frank didn’t like the idea, was struck with profound worry. “I’m like, ‘Dude.

Really?’”

Now he says that feeling of watching a son enlist wasn’t as difficult as watching a mother he’d met in San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center tending to her broken son. “The boy was twitching; his legs had been blown off. I thought, ‘This kid sacrificed his legs for me.’ I felt so much for him and the hundreds of others I’d met. I could see my son in every one of them.” Frank’s son Ben is now Special Forces and living in Gulfport, Mississippi with two children of his own.

Frank didn’t crash once on any of his country-wide treks, but afterwards, on a Mother’s Day in Tucson, a car plowed into him and his bike. He managed to stumble home, his youngest son Tyler

Scott Fisher (left) with dog Osso and Frank Capanear.

freaked and took him to the hospital.

Frank’s head was split open, his skull fractured with traumatic swelling of the brain, and it took 65 staples to close it up. His memory was fried for a year, he still struggles with recall. (“I didn’t have a helmet on like a dumbass.”) He lost many teeth, but took the insurance money and bought a really good bike.

“New teeth or a new bike? Decision wasn’t hard.”

FRANK IS A TOUGH SON OF A BITCH, born impoverished of Italian descent, the middle child of nine, raised in a two-bedroom house in Tucson to a father who’d beat him and his brothers. His old man worked in shipping-receiving at a grocery store for 30 years. Mom worked at the local sheet metal union. There is the story of his “made” uncle, a New Jersey mob man who died at Caesars Palace. He’d visit Tucson and give each of the nine kids a $100 bill and they’d go “buy-out” the old Sprouse-Reitz five-and-dime. “Give a 6-year-old a hundred-dollar bill! We ain’t seen nothing like it. My dad left New Jersey to get away from that.”

Frank, a somewhat diminutive kid with a chip on his shoulder, channeled his dad loathing into wrestling and became a U.S. national wrestling champion. He spent time at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, named at 18 as alternate on the 1980 Olympic wrestling

team—the year Jimmy Carter pulled the States from the games over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. To go that far as a teenager, to suffer for sport, you have to live, breathe and eat it, the external familial angers fuel such personal self-punishment, and reward. If ever a sport taught comfort in violence it is wrestling.

He’d find trouble fighting in school, says, “I’m a small dude. I got picked on by seniors as a freshman so in wrestling I whooped everybody’s ass.” He sips from a cup filled with root beer, adds, “I was arrogant for a long time. I suppose I have those traits, but I learned to keep them in check. The wrestling, the discipline at that level, took the place of my dad. He wasn’t proud, never even saw me wrestle.”

It is difficult to support oneself, much less a family, with wrestling, nearly imposEnjoy Evenings on the Patio!

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13

sible (though he did teach wrestling later at Amphi High School), and after the Olympic boycott, Frank lost heart in the sport. He became a professional tile setter, and for sport, rock-climbed, nearly every peak in Southern Arizona, and learned the landscape well. So well, in fact, he supplemented his income schlepping weed over the Mexican border for a few years in the late 1990s and early aughts. He speaks Spanish, so that helped, as did his knowledge of the borderlands. Rich guys ran the show out of Bisbee with connections in Hermosillo and Sinaloa. Frank and 10 or so others would meet south of the Canelo Hills and hike into Mexico, a trail set by migrants for hundreds of years. “We’d walk in and a truck would dump bales of weed, 25-30 pounds each, we’d take three each and walk back across the border. We’d camp out for three nights.” They’d drop the load in the desert and head home. A few day later he’d receive cash in a shoebox.

Along the way a tragedy nearly cashed him out. In 1994, he lost his wife (divorce) and four kids temporarily after an accident out near Marana on the I-10 frontage road. He was driving his truck and hit a homeless man riding a bicycle. It was dark, an early January night. Frank didn’t see him, driving 55, until the bicyclist smashed through his windshield and flew out. Frank crawled out of his mangled truck to the man on the road, who had a large hole in his skull, blood everywhere.

The man died in Frank’s arms.

An ongoing theory was a death by suicide. The sheriff said the bicyclist had been warned before not to swerve into the road. No charges filed but Frank was devastated, unable to live with himself.

He was badly injured in the crash too, temporally paralyzed on one side for a year and he couldn’t work.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

His arrogance and meanness soared and the family left him. With the help of trauma counseling, he worked his way back to his family and remarried his wife (they have since divorced again; Frank now has Sandy, a long-term girlfriend). For years he was haunted by recurring nightmares of the guy dying in his lap.

Enter the cocaine. “My children figured out I was doing it. The shame and the guilt was unbearable.”

Then jail.

“Which time?” he asks, like it is some personal right-of-passage. “Look, I’m no angel. It’s how we live and learn.” His record shows a 2014 burglary and stolen moped charge that, he says, was later expunged, after he’d served 11 months because he wouldn’t sign a plea. “I won’t say I did something I didn’t do. They could hold me in jail for the rest of my life.” Frank lost everything while jailed, an eviction tossed his life into a Dumpster, including all the memorabilia, the cross-country bike documentation, the press and soldier interviews he did, the TV coverage.

He got popped another time for lifting

a credit card. “That I did do,” he says. “My girlfriend Sandy and I got desperate in California when I was helping her move out here. We were starving, we bought food and drinks with the card I took from someone’s briefcase. I really regret it.”

He pauses, sips the root beer, adds, “I’m long done with all that. I had my run of it.”

He is close with his siblings now.

Tells of a time in 2010 when he was bow hunting with his brother who suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack. “I was doing CPR on him, I begged him not to go. That was the most painful event in my life.” Frank hasn’t hunted since.

FRANK STEPS INTO THE TINY TRAILER

to detail each rehab, pride easily detectable in his kid-enthusiasm. Two’s a crowd inside, the in-between space of a person’s private world, which seems to cradle him.

Smell of fresh spray paint dominates the lair, all hyped in the exterior’s colors, only more precise in artful aspects. The fitted refrigerator door is almost 3D in upward movement in Frank’s layered spray art, and rectangle mirrors on one wall next to the made bed give the place a bigger feel. Green plastic vines and ferns rise up

and overhead from corners, the illusion of sleeping outdoors, and there is no running water because the plumbing still needs fixing. The tiny bathroom in repair features painterly touches that show the same obsessiveness of his unyielding support of war vets. A little propane stove occupies the other end, and found keepsakes decorate shelves. He lifts from one a little plastic toy pig, movement-activated so it comes alive if you move in front of it. A child-like laugh rises, “One of those abstract things I can’t seem to throw away. When my grandson visits, he loves this stuff.” The toy triggers his own childhood, some joy in how “we learned as kids to take what you do have and make the best of it. That kind of forced self-entertainment developed a sense of humor. It was a survival mechanism.

We didn’t realize we were poor and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Look, I can’t stand seeing stuff thrown away, at least the useable stuff. I can’t stand seeing people thrown away. It’s so easy to be tossed aside if you are different, to guess at someone’s shortcomings, it just means we are different.”

He finishes the trailer tour with a story. Not long ago he was homeless by

choice, lived platonically in a wash with a woman who had been beaten, drugged and raped by her stalker boyfriend. He couldn’t keep her in his place at the time, the asshole would find them, so the wash it was, until she was safe.

FRANK’S PAL SCOTT IS ANOTHER tough motherfucker. Like Frank, he conveys stories in such a way that tragic neardeath experiences are no more or no less import than a conversation about his baby Doberman Osso. That Frank and Scott’s head scars match needn’t surprise; they live in the present moment, part hippie, part furrowed survivalists, full Zen-ass.

Scott takes a seat on a cooler out front and offers a cup of root beer. He’s strangely soft-spoken and expressive, the handsome rugged face of one who busted hearts growing up in the 1980s, whose appeal involves life-threatening risks involving boats, motorcycles, racing cars and boxing matches. (Dad pulled him from the sport, because of the beatings.)

Scott’s old man was a Golden Gloves champ who worked 46 years as a lab tech in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an inventor in plastics. Dad is dead now but Scott talks to his mother once a week, a big love there.

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MARCH 11, 2021

camping, raced to the scene and pulled the teens to freedom.

He’d stayed in touch with them for years after.

Scott’s big boxing hands are skilled too, he spent years as a union carpenter in his home state, and today he’s preparing to drop and fix the motor of his gray Chevrolet truck, which recently died.

He learned from Frank how to build and repair bicycles to help resell.

The night before the pair were on their bikes until the wee hours carting produce procured from grocery-store throwaways. “We were feeding friends living under bridges Frank Capanear’s refrigerator, covered in layered spray art. and in the desert,” the concerned gestures of rueful men who’ve paid prices.

He has endured 51 surgeries in his life, Scott’s mission in life now, he says, is to multiple skull fractures (and a titanium help others in need. Period. “Kindness is plate) borne of the accidents and darethe only thing that works,” he says. devil stunts. He’d get dumbass DUIs There’s a sadness and resignation back in Wisconsin on go-carts, boats and about Scott, an unseen orientation to the snowmobiles, did jail time for them. (Did bleak way of the universe, which is instanta short stint in Arizona for possession.) ly upended by joy when he talks of things He busted his back is several places, even he’s building.

Scott can get angry and lose surgery in his eye where his brother got his top too, needs to stay busy to avoid him with a dart as a kid. Married once, the deep depression, he says. He sleeps in with two children, which he lost in a court the fl imsy shed next to the trailer, which is battle, an experience too painful for Scott fed from an extension cord running from to broach. The ordeal kickstarted a spiral a neighbor’s place.

Frank nods to his budthat found Scott living off the land in the dy’s sleeper hut, and says, “That way my Colorado mountains for months. The head injuries left him with a disabled diagnosis. friend doesn’t have to sleep in the wash.”

Scott was homeless when he met Frank a He wound up in Tucson, far away from few years ago.

Wisconsin.

“He lost his kids and it broke his heart,” ONE DAY A COUPLE YEARS BACK, Frank says. “That began his downward Frank was “mapping” underground drainspiraling. What happened to him is hard. age tunnels in Tucson, because, well, that’s If you can’t have compassion for someone than what is the point? Ain’t none of us are the kind of shit he does. He got lost so he wrenched a 200-pound manhole cover up perfect. Society is lucky to have Scott, he a few inches to see where he was. Within helps so many people.” seconds a speeding car on Campbell AveAbout eight years ago, Scott saved nue split the iron lid into pieces and Frank high-school-age twins after their car fell back. careened off an overpass in an ice-storm CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 in Minnesota. He heard a crash while

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MARCH 11, 2021

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

“It sounded like a grenade went off,” he says. Chunks of that manhole cover shot down the stinking hole and struck his ankle, about severing off his foot. Either bleed out there or move frantically. In ridiculous agony, the foot dangling by his Achilles tendon, he hopped out of the tunnel into a wash, climbed the dirt bank and spotted a Trader Joe’s. It was before 8 a.m., luckily a few employees were working.

“She about passed out when she saw me,” Frank says.

A doctor at Banner Health said the foot had to go.

Frank pleaded with the doc to save it, told him the story of his cross-country bike treks for the veterans.

Doc sympathized, agreed to try and save the foot. A seven-hour surgery ensued and Frank spent the next six months in a wheelchair.

“I was told I was never going to run again. I don’t need to be told that shit,” Frank laughs. “I did therapy on my own, on my bike. I have a lot of love for that doctor, he saved my foot. Even he was amazed.” The ankle scar makes it look like he’s been shackled for years.

Most recently he contracted hepatitis A from human feces after cleaning a homeless camp under a bridge. Spent a week in the hospital, and he only just fully recovered.

Frank grins, says, “I’ve seen some painful times, but I ain’t complainin’ about none of it. It all happens for a reason.”

He adds, “If I was a millionaire it wouldn’t change me one bit. I’d just give it to people who needed it. I try to help as many people as I can in any way I can.

And I try to spend as much time with my grandson— my daughter wasn’t supposed to have kids. Well, she had a miracle kid, six years old. I guess I’m a little kid too. So I have to be forgiving. I have done a lot of things that need forgiving. You have to give it to receive it.”

Though a plan involved hauling the trailer to a remote acre Frank still owns in Southern Arizona’s Galiuro mountains, they may never leave this cul-de-sac.

Scott says he’ll complete a porch for the trailer soon, he just added an outside shower using two-by-fours, a small open water tank supplied by a garden hose, and a black plastic sheet for privacy. Their worry is their place might become “a little too redneck” for in town, and, yet, somehow, they’ve mastered the odd trick of inconspicuousness, despite the show, like their world adheres to some correct order of things.

In a neighbor’s yard behind the trailer, a little girl of about 4 stands at the chainlink with a sad curious stare, the two dogs beside her bark. Osso sprints off in their direction in a cloud of dust and Scott hollers him back. The day moves along like that and the buddies engage in task, a surplus of time doesn’t end in boredom, the fixed and the unfixed, the painted and the unpainted, grocery throwaways as manna for Frank Capanear working on his bathroom. hungry others, uneasy binaries with which to fortify a day. ■

MARCH 11, 2021

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 17

MUSIC

and Arrows during the same session at Dust & Stone Studios. The musicians also served as the backing band for his interpretation of Foul’s classic “Keep the Motor Running.” In under five hours, Sullivan and the musicians had Local musicians celebrate the music of Al Foul with a compilation album after recorded and mixed all three songs.

“The whole concept I had was the musician recently announced being diagnosed with throat cancer recording live takes and trying to keep them raw and wild in the spirit of Al,” Sullivan said. “We got in the studio at about 12:30 p.m. and were out the door by 5 p.m.” since I know all these people around

By Austin Counts Calexico’s Joey Burns recorded a town that play music.” austin@tucsonlocalmedia.com version of Foul’s “Memphis” for the Jim Waters from Waterworks Stucompilation—which Chick Cashman dios donated time to record several of and Kid Congo Powers also covered. the album’s tracks, although Walbank AL FOUL: A TRIBUTE TO THE ONE noted that a fair number of songs were Burns said he chose the song because and Only features 28 of Tucson’s recorded on iPhones and other devices. the city is one of his most favorite places and Foul’s lyrics capture its essence. finest troubadours, from Calexico’s “I realized that because it’s a Hearing other musicians present their Joey Burns to burlesque performer & pandemic, not everyone wants to go interpretation of the same song was a singer Lola Torch, performing tracks to the studio and not everyone had a bonus, he said. spanning the musician’s multi-decade home studio, so it was a little tricky,” “The Memphis song is just like career. The compilation is available Walbank said. “There are some songs full-on extreme, excessive party mode, through bluesman extraordinaire Tom which are done very intimate on yet it’s all in reference to recollecting Walbank’s Bandcamp page and album iPhones and stuff like that.” life before the character was arrestproceeds go toward Foul’s medical XIXA frontman Gabriel Sullivan ed and forced to do hard labor on a expenses. opened up his home studio to record Walbank said once Foul went multiple tracks for the album, like The chain gang,” Burns said. “It’s just great hearing the difference between those public with his diagnosis, he wanted to Pork Torta’s version of “M.I.A. in the help the musician and his family out War on Poverty” (which is also covered versions and it’s great to see a bunch of locals get together and show their love during this time. The two have been

by Carlos Arzate and Ryan Alfred on and support for Al.” friends who shared the same stage the compilation), Katie Haverly and As two of Tucson’s most internaon many evenings for more than 20 Ben Nisbet’s cover of “Call Me When years throughout Southern Arizona You Get to Dudleyville” and Birds and tionally known musicians, Burns and and beyond. The bluesman said he Arrows rendition of “Baby Clothes and Foul have crossed paths numerous times since the 1990s. The Calexico spent the past two weeks reaching out Dishes.” balladeer said he was instantly a fan of and collecting tracks from other Old “When Tom started putting this Pueblo musicians who jumped at a together, it was not a question at all. If Foul’s style and music when they first chance to honor the primitive rock and anybody needed studio time my doors met years ago—at the long-defunct Grill’s fabled Red Room. roll legend. were open,” Sullivan said. “Anything I “We would see each other at various “I thought about what I could do to can do to help Al is what’s important.” help. ” Walbank said. “Putting togethIn the interest of time, Sullivan said shows downtown, you know, and he aler an album seemed like a no-brainer he recorded Haverly, Nesbit and Birds ways stood out. He just had great style,

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great aesthetics and the biggest heart,” Burns said. “I always look forward to hanging out with him. So when I heard the news I was shocked and surprised and want to do anything I can to help out.”

Burlesque performer Lola Torch (a.k.a. Emilie Marchand) recorded “Shitty Little World” with guitarist Naim Amor, who has performed live with Foul for years. Marchand said she was initially hesitant to be on the compilation when approached by Walbank because of the drastic contrast between her and Foul’s music. However, serendipity struck Marchand when she thought about how sultry singer Peggy Lee would perform Foul’s songs, she said.

“I’ve listened to Al’s music live, like a million times. Once you slow it down and change it up a little, it has a very similar vibe to some of the other music I sing,” Marchand said. “Peggy Lee’s ‘Is That All There Is’ has that same divisive talking parts and storytelling vibes to it and I thought this is great.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

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MARCH 11, 2021

ROOM TO GROW

Tucson looks to update code to allow larger dispensaries, drive-thru service and other adjustments

By David Abbott

david@tucsonlocalmedia.com AS THE RULES SURROUNDING

adult-use recreational pot work their way through processes from the Arizona Department of Health Services to the municipal level, the City of Tucson is zeroing in on updates to its zoning ordinances to help adjust to the new reality of legal weed.

A series of meetings and study sessions considering updates to the dispensary zoning code began in August 2020 with an emergency resolution to address the need for physical distancing in the lobbies of Tucson dispensaries.

Current zoning limits dispensaries to 4,000 square feet, with a maximum

one-quarter of that devoted to lobby space.

The Tucson City Council agreed to loosen those rules to more space for those waiting for service at dispensaries as well as to allow curbside pickup, home delivery and the use of drive-thrus where they exist in buildings that have been converted to dispensary use.

Key amendments for consideration in the latest round include code updates to parking, dispensary size, lobby size, layout, dual-use facilities and drive-thrus.

Among the changes proposed are increasing the maximum size of a dispensary from 4,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet, removing restrictions on drive-thrus for marijuana facilities and amending the ordinance to reflect the new reality of

legalized adult use. A stakeholder meeting in mid-October led to several COVID-related temporary measures to increase sales options and expand floor space to accommodate social distancing.

An additional stakeholder meeting in December sought feedback for code updates Planning and Development Services has been tasked to achieve by April.

In mid-January, Tucson’s Planning and Development held two virtual public meetings to discuss proposed amendments to the UDC, two weeks before the Arizona Department of Health Services gave the green light to adult-use licensees to begin recreational sales.

The Tucson City Council has scheduled a public hearing and review of the amendments on March 23.

The meetings continued Wednesday night (after press time) with a study session. Next Wednesday, March 17, at or after 6 p.m. there will be a virtual public hearing to present proposed updates to the public.

For more information and to find a link to the March 17 meeting, go to the Planning Commission page at www.tucsonaz.gov/ pdsd/planning-commission.

Prop 207 allows local jurisdictions to create their own rules around recreational weed, but they are not allowed to create

ordinances more restrictive than what is currently allowed for medical dispensaries.

NEWS NUGGETS MORE RECREATIONAL DISPENSARIES ARE OPEN: The Prime Leaf and Downtown dispensaries are the latest local shops to begin recreational sales.

Prime Leaf began sales on Monday, March 8, at the University (Park Avenue) location. CEO Brian Warde says the Midtown Speedway location will begin sales at the end of the month. Sales are online only with no walk-up service for adult-use at this time.

Recreational customers can go to theprimeleaf.com to make their orders and will be offered a window of time to pick up their orders, while medical patients can still get their medicine in-store.

Warde wants to ensure his medical patients continue to receive the product and service they have come to expect at Prime Leaf and although there has been about a 20%-25% increase in prices—mainly on flower—to reflect increased costs for wholesale

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cannabis, medical patients will still enjoy daily 20% member discounts and daily specials. There is plenty of product at this time, although Warde says that due to the long-term effects of recreational sales and testing requirements, “we won’t really know what it looks like until the market adjusts.”

But overall it’s a big step into the future and away from punitive War on Drugs policies that have affected lives for decades.

“We’re working to get people trained for the new frontier,” Warde said. “It’s really exciting to think about how many people have been waiting for this day and how many lives have been ruined [by the War on Drugs].”

On March 5, both Downtown Dispensary and D2 kicked off recreational sales after some extensive remodeling to add pickup windows and additional upgrades to payment systems.

“It’s been crazy busy,” said owner Moe Asnani. “Demand is there and we’re trying to make it as easy for our customers as possible.”

To that end, the Downtown Dispensary website offers a link to street parking options and encourages able-bodied recreational patients to leave curbside parking for medical patients.

While Asnani says there has been a “significant adjustment in pricing,” there are still discounts available for patients and on products, including Downtown’s iLava brands.

Online ordering is encouraged at thedowntowndispensary.com, and don’t forget to bring some form of legal identification to get in the door.

Applications for adult-use sales began on Jan. 19, and by the end of January, AZDHS had issued 86 dual licenses and sales kicked off nearly two months before expected.

Other Tucson dispensaries selling adult-use recreational weed are Hana Meds, Earth’s Healing North, Desert Bloom Re-Leaf Center, Bloom and Harvest as Southern Arizona’s dual-license cannabis dispensaries, with more to come in the weeks ahead. ■

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MARCH 11, 2021

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

By Rob Brezsny. Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s EXPANDED WEEKLY HOROSCOPE 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 $1.99 per minute. 18 and over. Touchtone phone required.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Artist Richard Kehl tells this traditional Jewish story: God said to Abraham, “But for me, you would not be here.”

Abraham answered, “I know that Lord, but were I not here there would be no one to think about you.” I’m bringing this tale to your attention, dear Aries, because I think the coming weeks will be a favorable time to summon a comparable cheekiness with authorities, including even the Divine Wow Herself. So I invite you to consider the possibility of being sassy, saucy and bold. Risk being an articulate maverick with a point of view that the honchos and experts should entertain.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Spiritual author Ernest Holmes wrote, “True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming, it is fire from heaven.”

Unfortunately, however, many people do indeed regard imagination as mostly just a source of fanciful daydreaming. And it is also true that when our imaginations are lazy and out of control, when they conjure delusional fears and worries, they can be debilitating. I bring this to your attention, Taurus, because I believe the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to harness the highest powers of your imagination—to channel the fire from heaven—as you visualize all the wonderful and interesting things you want to do with your life in the next nine months.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I’m always waiting for a door to open in a wall without doors,” wrote Gemini author Fernando Pessoa. Huh? Pessoa was consistently eccentric in his many writings, and I find this particular statement especially odd. I’m going to alter it so it makes more sense and fits your current needs. Here’s your motto for the coming weeks: “I’m always ready to figure out how to make a new door in a wall without doors, and call on all necessary help to make it.”

CANCER (June 21-July 22): You can’t drive to the Kamchatka Peninsula. It’s a 104,000-square-mile

area with a sub-Arctic climate in the far east of Russia. No roads connect it to the rest of the world. Its major city, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, is surrounded by volcanoes. If you want to travel there, you must arrive by plane or ship. And yet Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky has long had a thriving tourist industry. More so before the pandemic, but even now, outsiders have come to paraglide, hunt for bears, and marvel at the scenery. In this horoscope, I am making an outlandish metaphorical comparison of you to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Like that land, people sometimes find it a challenge to reach you. And yet when they do, you can be quite welcoming. Is this a problem?

Maybe, maybe not. What do you think? Now is a good time to re-evaluate.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Biting midges, also known as no-see-ums, are blood-sucking flies that spread various diseases. Yuck, right? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we used science to kill off all biting midges everywhere? Well, there would be a disappointing trade-off if we did. The creepy bugs are the primary pollinators for several crops grown in the topics, including cacao. So if we got rid of the no-see-ums, there’d probably be no more chocolate. I’m guessing that you may be dealing with a comparable dilemma, Leo: an influence that has both a downside and an upside. The central question is: Can you be all you want to be without it in your life? Or not? Now is a good time to ponder the best way to shape your future relationship.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to my analysis of your imminent astrological potentials, you already are or will soon be floating and whirling and churning along on an ocean of emotion. In other words, you will be experiencing more feelings and stronger feelings than you have in quite some time. This doesn’t have to be a problem as long as you do the following: 1. Be proud and appreciative about being able to feel so much. 2.

SAVAGE LOVE CUTTING REMARKS

By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net

I’m having a problem advising a friend.

She’s been through a divorce and now the breaking off of an engagement. To put it simply, both relationships ended because she was cheated on and she has a zero-tolerance policy around infidelity.

To complicate matters, in each relationship we—her friends—have witnessed her being very cutting to the point of being downright insulting to her former partners. She has a tendency to tease her partners about their deepest insecurities in public and to express her extreme disdain for their family members openly.

I had a chance to speak to each of her former partners after the breakup and they expressed to me that they felt emasculated by her and that their self-esteem was shot and they had essentially “had enough.” However, neither have given her this feedback directly.

My friends and I have hinted to her about this pattern in the hopes of helping her see what her role might be in these breakups. But she takes extreme offense to any criticism and insists she’s the victim. I’m sympathetic to her plight but her unwillingness to accept any respon-

Since only a small percentage of your feelings need to be translated into practical actions, don’t take them too seriously. 3. Enjoy the ride!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Wendell Berry says “it’s the immemorial feelings” he likes best: “hunger and thirst and their satisfaction; work-weariness and earned rest; the falling again from loneliness to love.” Notice that he doesn’t merely love the gratification that comes from quenching his hunger and thirst. The hunger and thirst are themselves essential components of his joy. Work-weariness and loneliness are not simply inconvenient discomforts that he’d rather live without. He celebrates them, as well. I think his way of thinking is especially worthy of your imitation in the next three weeks.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Famous and influential science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick relied on amphetamines to fuel his first 43 novels.

Beginning with A Scanner Darkly, his 44th, he did without his favorite drug. It wasn’t his best book, but it was far from his worst. It sold well and was made into a movie featuring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr. and two other celebrity actors.

Inspired by Dick’s success without relying on his dependency—and in accordance with current astrological omens—I’m inviting you to try doing without one of your addictions or compulsions or obsessions as you work on your labor of love.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Ninety percent of all apples in the world are descended from a forest of apple trees in southeast Kazakhstan.

Most of us have tasted just a few types of apples, but there’s a much wider assortment of flavors in that natural wonderland. You know how wine is described as having taste notes and aromas? The apple flavor of Kazakhstan’s apples may be tinged with hints of roses, strawberries, anise, pineapples, coconuts, lemon peels, pears, potatoes or popcorn. Can you imagine traveling to that forest and exploring a far more complex and nuanced relationship with a commonplace food? During the coming weeks, I invite you to experiment with arousing metaphorically similar experiences. In what old familiar persons, places or things could

sibility makes it difficult to offer her any useful advice. I’ve been there for her, calling her daily, and stopping by when I could in a COVID-safe way. But every conversation turns into a three-hour-long rehashing of these relationships with all blame assigned to her exes. I’ve let a few weeks go by without reaching out because I don’t want to have another one of these conversations. I’m curious what you would do here. Our entire friend group is now debating whether we should share our actual opinions with her at the risk her being angry with us. The other option is to leave it alone and hope she comes to her own conclusions. I wish her exes had the courage to tell her their true feelings.

—No Brainpower For Clever Signoff

you find a surprising wealth of previously unexplored depth and variety?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Andrew Tilin testified that he sometimes had the feeling that his life was in pieces—but then realized that most of the pieces were good and interesting. So his sense of being a mess of unassembled puzzle parts gave way to a deeper contentment—an understanding that the jumble was just fine the way it was. I recommend you cultivate and enjoy an experience like that in the coming weeks, Capricorn.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Indian poet Meena Alexander (1951–2018) was bon under the sign of Aquarius. She became famous after she moved to the United States at age 29, but was raised in India and the Sudan. In her poem “Where Do You Come From?,” she wrote, “Mama beat me when I was a child for stealing honey from a honey pot.”

I’m sorry to hear she was treated so badly for enjoying herself. She wasn’t committing a crime!

The honey belonged to her family, and her family had plenty of money to buy more honey. This vignette is my way of advising you, in accordance with astrological omens, to carry out your personal version of “stealing the honey from the honeypot,” dear Aquarius. Take what’s rightfully yours.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The bad news is that the narrow buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea is laced with landmines. Anyone who walks there is at risk for getting blown up.

The good news is that because people avoid the place, it has become an unprecedented nature preserve—a wildlife refuge where endangered species like the red-crowned crane and Korean fox can thrive. In the coming weeks and months, I’d love to see you engage in a comparable project, Pisces: finding a benevolent use for a previously taboo or wasted part of your life. ■ Homework. If you have a question whose answer might be interesting to other readers, send it. Maybe I’ll address it in the column.

Truthrooster@gmail.com.

Your friend must be one scary asshole—I mean, that would explain why her former romantic partners won’t tell her she’s an asshole and why her friends won’t tell her that her assholery has consequences. Like getting dumped.

And while her exes should’ve broken up with her before cheating on her, NBFCS, it sounds like both opted to slam their hands down on the self-destruct button instead. And who can blame them?

Maybe thought cheating would help them masc back up after enduring your friend’s emasculating abuse—and that would be pretty fucked up if they thought that—or maybe they wanted to

MARCH 11, 2021

Cutting remarks

punish your asshole friend by engineering breakups every bit as painful for her as these relationships had been for them.

But why they cheated isn’t the question. You’re wondering what, if anything, you should say to your friend about this pattern, i.e. that she’s an asshole who emotionally abuses her romantic partners and it makes you and the rest of her friends uncomfortable.

If you want your friend to know she’s an asshole and needs help, NBFCS, you’re going to have to say something.

Assholes rarely have epiphanies. If you can’t bring yourself to say what you need to say to her asshole face, put it in a letter, ask your mutual friends to cosign, and email it to her. You might never hear from her again, NBFCS, but would that really be so terrible? Do you wanna be friends with someone who expects you to sit there silently while she verbally abuses her romantic partners and then expects you to sit and listen while she complains about her exes for hours? We both know the answer to that question, NBFCS, and it’s fuck no. You’ve already started to cut this woman out of your life—you’re in the process of breaking up with your friend—because her good qualities, whatever they might be, don’t compensate for her assholery. You’ve got nothing to lose by leveling with this woman except for her company, which you do not enjoy. You can’t condemn her exes for not having the courage to share their true feelings with her if you don’t have the courage to do the same.

How do I know if a guy is a player or if he has feelings for me? This guy goes to my university and we had our eyes on each

other for more than year. I made a move and sent him a friend request on FB and we started spending a lot time with each other. The problem is, I am constantly finding him with other girls. He got to know my female friends and started talking them up too and he says the same things to them that he says to me. This made me really upset and I told him I wanted some space and asked him to stop contacting me but I couldn’t tell him the real reason. Instead I told him he was suffocating me with his attention (partly true) but he kept reaching out to tell me how much he misses me. He even told me he has feelings for me but he isn’t sure what they are and so can’t put a label on them and says I’m special to him and he gets insanely jealous whenever he sees me with other guys. Feel free to ask about for more details about our story if you’re interested.

—Parsing Love And Yearning No more details. Please. While I’m sure every last detail is fascinating, PLAY, what you need to do here is obvious—it’s so obvious you’ve already tried to do it.

Zooming out for a second: “He’s a player,” is just another way of saying, “He’s a liar.” A player is a guy who tells someone what he thinks she wants to hear (“you’re so special to me”) to get into her pants. If a little play is all a person wants—if some sexual attention and whole bunch of compliments you know to be bullshit are what you want—then it doesn’t matter if the guy is a player. His lies can go in one ear and out the other at the same time his dick goes in and out of you. But if you want something serious with this guy and you know you’re being played, that’s going to be painful.

And if you want something serious with someone and you’re hanging around with or fucking a player, that’s a waste of your time.

So, PLAY, do that thing again, that thing you already did, but stick to it this time. Tell this guy to stop contacting you, unfollow him on FB, and block his number and encourage your friends to do the same.

Heterosexual, 30-something, female here.

For all of my sexual life, until recently, I really enjoyed having my nipples played with by my partners—during sex, as part of foreplay, fingers, clamps, lips, tongue, just about anything touching of my nipples was a turn-on and an orgasm-en-

hancer. But something changed after witnessing my boyfriend’s sister breastfeeding her child. Something about seeing nipples being used for, well, what they’re meant to be used for, has really squicked me out. Now, when my boyfriend touches my nipples in the slightest way, I find it irritating, a little gross, and a huge turn-off.

I think maybe this was the first time I’d seen breastfeeding in person? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that it was my boyfriend’s sister? I don’t know!

I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, seeing nipples in a different light has left me repulsed by the idea of using mine in a sexual way. If I’m close to orgasm, I can stand a little bit of nipple attention but nowhere near the amount I used to like.

I want to enjoy nipple play again, Dan! Any advice for getting my nipples back?

It’s been months!

—Breasts Out Of Business Suddenly P.S. I don’t mean any offense whatsoever to those who breastfeed. It’s not the breastfeeding that I find squicky. It’s the idea of using my own breasts in a sexual way that has me suddenly feeling all conflicted and weirded out.

I don’t wanna ruin dick for you, BOOBS, but you do know men don’t just ejaculate out of those things, right?

Dicks serve more than one purpose.

Dicks and nipples both have specific non-sexual purposes (peeing and breastfeeding) as well as specific sexual functions (ejaculating and, um, erogenous zoning). There are a lot of sensitive nerve endings and erectile tissues in and around our nipples, both the male and female varieties, and our nipples—like our assholes and our throats—don’t just have a sexual use, they have a sexual purpose. Considering that we have more sex than we do children, BOOBS, you could argue that their sexual use is their highest and best use. Which means you aren’t misusing your nipples when you derive pleasure from having them licked, sucked, clamped, etc., BOOBS, you are enjoying your nipples just as nature— natural selection and spontaneous mutation—intended them to be enjoyed.

And if thinking about breastfeeding squicks you out, don’t think about it—just like you don’t think about piss when you suck your boyfriend’s dick and I don’t think about shit when I eat my boyfriend’s ass. mail@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. www.savagelovecast.com

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 21

THE ONE AND ONLY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

Foul said he got a chance to hear Marchand’s version of “Shitty Little World” during a recent hospital stay.

The project was kept secret from him until his partner, Hannah, forwarded him the song.

“I was at a real low point and Hannah—who all throughout this seems to be able to say or do just the right thing to bring me comfort at the worst of times—sent me Lola Torch’s recording of ‘Shitty Little World.’ I find it hard to express how much hearing that worked to pull me out of that abyss,” Foul wrote in an emailed statement. “I was overcome with emotion and then that itself made me laugh so hard. If you know the song, you will understand what I mean by that. The whole situation I was in, put to that soundtrack and in that moment was just so absurd and utterly hilarious.”

Foul wrote he is “beyond touched” by the thought of everyone getting together to produce this compilation in his honor. While the musician has only heard a handful of the tracks, Foul wrote he’s looking forward to listening to the whole album now back at home and recovering.

“Often people share negative memes on social media or express the attitude that choosing to be a working musician is some form of folly or a loser’s game…driving to the ends of the earth for nothing,” wrote Foul. “But the outpouring of love I have received proves to me that is absolutely wrong. Now I see that 30 years of playing music has left me with something so absolutely pure, beautiful and beyond priceless that I will never see the craft the same way.

I am so humbled by the love that I feel now.” ■ The compilation is available for $10 at tomwalbank.bandcamp.com and proceeds go toward Foul’s medical expenses.

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