Tucson Weekly Jan. 14, 2021

CURRENTS: BARS SUE COUNTY OVER COVID CURFEW

JAN. 14 - 20, 2021 • TUCSONWEEKLY.COM • FREE

Object Lesson

Photographer Tom Kiefer creates powerful images of migrants’ possessions tossed in the Border Patrol’s trash

By Margaret Regan

TUCSON SALVAGE: RIP, Lawrence Zubia • MUSIC: New Music from the Keith Robinson Band • ARTS: Zoppe Family Circus Goes to the Drive-In

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JAN. 14, 2021

JAN. 14, 2021

JAN. 14, 2021 | VOL. 36, NO. 2

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STAFF

CONTENTS CURRENTS

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Local bar and restaurant owners file suit against Pima County’s COVID curfew

TUCSON SALVAGE

Death, loss and Lawrence Zubia

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ARTS & CULTURE

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Artist Tom Kiefer makes art out of migrant possessions that were tossed out by the Border Patrol

MUSIC

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EDITOR’S NOTE

What They Left Behind LONGTIME ARTS WRITER MARGARET Regan returns to our pages this week with a look at Etherton Gallery’s latest show, El Sueño, an exhibit of photographs by Tom Kiefer. An Ajo resident, Kiefer worked as a janitor at a Border Patrol station and collected migrant belongings that had been tossed in the trash by agents. The objects formed the basis of Kiefer’s work in El Sueño, a haunting show that also includes work by Alejandro Cartigena and a selection of Mexican folk retablos. Regan will also moderate a virtual talk with Kiefer, author Francisco Cantú, migrant rights advocate Dora Rodriquez and poet and author Jose Javier Zamora on Saturday night.

See her story for details about how you can tune in.

In this week’s Tucson Salvage, columnist Brian Smith remembers the late Lawrence Zubia, leader of the Phoenix-based band The Pistoleros. It’s a touching look at a man gone far too soon. In that same vein many years ago, Brian wrote a remembrance for the Detroit Metro Times after his friend Doug Hopkins of the Gin Blossoms killed himself in Tempe in 1993. Brian and his wife, Maggie Smith, recently sold a screenplay based on that column. Congratulations to Brian and

ADMINISTRATION Jason Joseph, President/Publisher jjoseph@azlocalmedia.com Jaime Hood, General Manager, Ext. 12 jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com Casey Anderson, Ad Director/ Associate Publisher, Ext. 22 casey@tucsonlocalmedia.com Claudine Sowards, Accounting, Ext. 13 claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com

Maggie on the movie deal—and on that baby they’ve got coming this spring!

Elsewhere in the book this week: Staff reporter Nicole Ludden serves up a look at the lawsuit that some bars have filed against the county over the COVID curfew; managing editor Austin Counts looks into whether your boss can fire you for smoking weed now that recreational use is legal in Arizona; associate editor Jeff Gardner serves as carnival barker for the Zoppé Family Circus as it returns to town with a drive-in version of its classic Italian big top; calendar editor Emily Dieckman scratches the surface of a fascinating art technique that’s having a moment at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum; and there’s more about COVID’s uncontrollable spread in Arizona, a debut release from the Keith Robinson Band, efforts to save flamingos at Reid Park Zoo, linguistical twists in Savage Love and the usual collection of comics, puzzles, horoscopes and more.

Stay well!

— 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.

RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson

Keith Robinson Band digs beneath roots music on Homecoming

Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, Ext. 10 sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com 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 Nicole Ludden, Staff Reporter, Ext. 42 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 Tucson Weekly® is published every Thursday by 13 Street Media at 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona. Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to: Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona 85741. Phone: (520) 797-4384, FAX (520) 575-8891. First Class subscriptions, mailed in an envelope, cost $112 yearly/53 issues. Sorry, no refunds on subscriptions.

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TUCSON WEEDLY

Weed in the workplace

17 Cover image courtesy Tom Kiefer

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

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CURRENTS

son restaurants he owns in the lawsuit, including Union Public House, Reforma Modern Mexican and Proof Artisanal Pizza & Pasta.

The curfew is set to end when the rate of COVID-19 transmission falls below 100 cases per 100,000 of the population.

As of last week, the county saw 7,580 coronavirus cases per 100,000 individuals.

WHY TUCSON BARS ARE FIGHTING THE CURFEW

Under Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order in March, restaurants could only perform take-out services while bars had to completely close.

In May, the governor released another executive order allowing restaurants and bars to reopen with COVID-19 mitigation strategies like limiting capacity and increasing sanitation.

When cases spiked again in June, another order was issued closing businesses with series six or seven liquor licenses, which included Cobra Arcade, HighWire and The Maverick.

“We’d already gone through one shut down and lost a whole number of our key staff members. Then, after a second shut down, we lost even more key staff memNICOLE LUDDEN bers,” said Krueger. “It’s quite difficult to A bartender at Cobra Arcade Bar. launch a restaurant all over again. It’s not something you can just flick a switch and turn on and off.”

Businesses could apply to reopen in Bars sue County, saying COVID curfew could drive them out of business August under the Arizona Department of Health Service’s restrictions, which Nicole Ludden deaths, the rate of which have only accel- requires businesses to mandate masks, nicolel@tucsonlocalmedia.com erated since the beginning of December. reduce capacity to 50% and ensure physiIn his memo arguing for the mandacal distancing. tory curfew, Huckelberry said 46 Pima “They said, ‘Hey bars, you can’t opCounty inspectors observed nearly 400 erate like bars anymore.’ ...Essentially, SEVERAL TUCSON-BASED BARS establishments for compliance to the any bar had to operate as a restaurant,” and restaurants have filed litigation previously voluntary curfew and found Krueger said. against Pima County in attempts to 15% of them didn’t comply.

With these restrictions in place, Highoverturn its mandatory 10 p.m. to 5 “Spread of Covid-19 is particularly Wire reopened Aug. 28, The Maverick on a.m. curfew they say disproportionately common during indoor gatherings such Sept. 7 and Cobra Arcade on Sept. 8. affects the private sector of businesses However, the bars contend the mandathat depend on revenue from operations as at bars and parties,” Huckelberry wrote in the memo.

“Adherence to strattory curfew set in place by the county on during these hours. egies like mask wearing and social disDec. 15 decimated their already conOwners of Cobra Arcade Bar, Hightancing is lower at these gatherings, and strained business operations during the Wire Lounge and The Maverick have joined in a lawsuit against Pima County given the colder nighttime temperatures, main hours they generate revenue. people are more likely to gather indoors “We assume COVID doesn’t know and several county representatives they what time of day it is, and we don’t know say are responsible for the curfew passed during those times.”

Under the curfew ordinance approved why the safety procedures that we have Dec. 15, including County Administrator by the board, any nonessential businesses in place at 9 p.m. aren’t sufficient any Chuck Huckelberry and the board of found violating the curfew may have their longer at 11 p.m,” owner of Cobra Arcade supervisors who voted 3-2 to instate it. business permit suspended or revoked.

Chuckie Duff said. “It feels like they’re Huckelberry proposed the curfew as The owner of The Maverick bar, Grant targeting specific businesses that make the coronavirus pandemic continued Krueger, has also included other Tucthe revenue after 10 p.m. when we don’t to set records for both infections and

LAST CALL

operate any differently than a restaurant that’s serving brunch...It just feels like we’re being unfairly punished and marginalized.”

The lawsuit says Cobra Arcade makes most of its revenue between 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. From Sept. 8 to Dec. 3, the bar made 53% of its revenue after 10 p.m., according to the lawsuit’s complaint.

In the same time period, the complaint says The Maverick generated 35% of its revenue after 10 p.m.

Within these three months, the lawsuit alleges HighWire received nearly 80% of its revenue after 10 p.m.

“Being unable to operate until 2 a.m. at 50% capacity, we’re doing about half our normal revenue, which was enough to cover rent, payroll and maybe a little bit of profit, depending on how things are going that month,” Duff said. “But then the curfew has cut us down to more like 20% of our normal revenue. So basically, we got to cut in half, and then we got to cut in half again. At that point, we’re making 20 or 25% of our normal revenue—that doesn’t even cover our fixed costs.”

In addition to revenue loss, Krueger said one of the biggest impacts of the mandatory curfew has been the loss endured by his employees.

The lawsuit alleges Cobra Arcade has dwindled its employee base down to eight individuals. HighWire owner Nicholas Eggman said the bar has lost 20 employees, while the lawsuit’s complaint contends 11 were laid off as “a direct result of the mandatory curfew.”

While the complaint doesn’t specifically mention The Maverick’s staff loss, it says the other restaurants Krueger owns have lost 20 employees due to the curfew.

“I just want people to think about the jobs, honestly. Sometimes, when you see something like local owners sue, people think, who cares about those guys...This isn’t about ownership, this is about our staff. This is the fact that the single mom that works for me as a cocktail waitress suddenly had her income cut by 75%,” Krueger said. “It’s about the night cooks and dishwashers, the security guards and DJs. The guys and girls that all work to serve the service industry and what’s happened to all those careers overnight.

All based on a curfew that doesn’t seem to be backed by science.”

Resultantly, Krueger joined with Duff and Eggman to file a lawsuit against the county to disband the 10 p.m. curfew on

JAN. 14, 2021

the grounds the county doesn’t have the legal authority to implement it.

“To us, there was no science behind a 10 p.m. curfew. If what we were doing was safe at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. to serve guests with all of these continued restrictions, why would we also be fazed to do it at 10?” Krueger said. “So we began to talk with our colleagues in the restaurant and bar business, and we thought we could work together and be stronger in some numbers.”

However, bars and restaurants are already seeing decreased profits due to the safety mitigations they must follow.

The Maverick, a live country music venue with a 1,500-square-foot dance floor now operates without the live music, dancing or crowds that typically draw in customers.

“It’s kind of like owning a bowling alley and then bowling is illegal, but you can still keep the snack bar and you can still rent the red and white shoes. People aren’t necessarily coming into the bowling alley for the nacho supreme,” Krueger said. “It’s certainly been a tremendous challenge for the restaurant and bar industry as a whole, and I worry that this curfew could be the knockout punch for a lot of local businesses that have just been hanging on by a thread.”

While he admits ending the curfew wouldn’t solve all the bar and restaurant industry’s problems, Krueger believes it would be an important first step.

“It certainly wouldn’t be the be-all, end-all, fix-all of most of these businesses, including some of my own, we’re struggling either way,” he said. “But it would certainly help out, and I think it would buy more time, a bit of a lifeline should we say, until vaccine distribution can reach the hospitality industry.”

In an email, HighWire owner Eggman said he hopes the lawsuit will “bring awareness to the curfew in hopes it can be reevaluated with current, factual information.”

Duff hopes the lawsuit will overturn the curfew, allowing him to resume operations at Cobra Arcade until 2 a.m.

“What it comes down to is 10 p.m. is politically inexpedient. Most people get off work and go to a restaurant, have dinner, and are at home and lay in bed by 10 p.m., so you anger the fewest amount of people by setting it at a 10 p.m.,” Duff said. “But I think what our politicians fail to realize is that there are a lot of hardworking people that make their living after 10 p.m., those people

are just as important as someone who has a nine-to-five job.”

Pima County Communications Director Mark Evans wrote in an email, “As a rule, we don’t comment on pending litigation.”

But when approving the curfew, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry laid out its legal groundwork and has since provided some evidence of the curfew’s effects.

Huckelberry provided data from 3,359 case investigation interviews. Nearly 24% of respondents reported dining in a restaurant or bar, down 2% from before the curfew.

“The decreases in reported restaurant/bar dining, gatherings of 10 or more, and travel are correctly characterized as small in magnitude but trending in a healthful direction,” Huckelberry wrote in the memo. “It is notable however that this has occurred within the relatively short time period and since the most recent Public Health Advisory and Board actions related to masking and the curfew.”

Several healthcare leaders have come out in support of curfews, and even complete closures of indoor dining.

On Nov. 27, experts from the COVID-19 modeling team at the University of Arizona called for a statewide shelter-in-place order including “closures of indoor dining and bars.”

Eight leaders from the state’s hospital systems wrote a letter to Arizona Department of Health Services Director Dr. Cara Christ on Dec. 1 pleading for statewide COVID-19 mitigation policies such as a ban on indoor dining and establishing a curfew.

In a Dec. 23 press conference, Banner Health’s Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Marjorie Bessel lauded Pima County for imposing a mandated curfew.

“There is a ton of evidence that shows that masking will help reduce spread.

There’s also great literature that shows that mitigation efforts which can include curfews can have a good effect on reducing the spread of the virus,” Bessel said at the press conference. “I want to thank Pima County and the mayor of Tucson for taking mitigation steps.”

THE LEGAL ARGUMENTS In his memo outlining the parameters of the curfew, Huckelberry cited sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes, including:

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NICOLE LUDDEN

Customers and staff at Highwire Lounge wearing required personal protective equipment.

• The board of supervisors may “Adopt provisions necessary to preserve the health of the county, and provide for the expenses thereof.”

• The county can “...investigate all nuisances, sources of filth and causes of sickness and make regulations necessary for the public health and safety of the inhabitants.”

• Title 36 outlines the powers of local boards and departments of health, including that “a compliance order issued pursuant to this section may provide for a civil penalty.”

The lawsuit the Tucson bars have joined in on outlines five specific reasons the mandatory curfew could be unlawful: • It exceeds the authority the board of supervisors has, and “Therefore, the Arizona Legislature has not made an express delegation of any authority to the Board to impose a curfew on Cobra Arcade, the Maverick, or HighWire under any circumstances.”

• The curfew is “unreasonable substantively” under the legal doctrine that applies to local government and “is an unlawful exercise of the defendants’ police powers.”

• It violates the privileges-or-immuni-

ties clause of the Arizona State Constitution, which says, “No law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.”

• The curfew violates the due process clause in the state’s constitution that says, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

• It violates Ducey’s May 11 Executive order that states “...no county, city or town may make or issue any order, rule or regulation that conflicts with or is in addition to the policy, directives or intent of this Executive Order, including but not limited to any order restricting persons from leaving their home due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.”

The county has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed on Jan. 5.

In another challenge to the curfew, state Representative Bret Roberts of District 11 has asked for Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s opinion on whether the curfew is legal. In a memo, Huckelberry said he will notify the Board of Supervisors “if and when” and investigation is launched. ■

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CURRENTS

EDGE OF CATASTROPHE

UA Prof: COVID ‘is mowing through Arizona like a sharpened scythe’ The week ending Jan. 3 saw 56,108 new COVID-19 cases statewide, a 35% increase from the week prior.

Coronavirus testing positivity reached THE LATEST COVID-19 REPORT 35% that week, setting a new record for the from a University of Arizona professor state. shows an increase in already alarming Arizona has also surpassed its deadliest coronavirus numbers as the state continues week from the summer surge in cases, and to set records for weekly case counts. Those the week ending Dec. 20 now holds the numbers are likely even higher in reality highest number of COVID-19 deaths at 709. because of a backlog in reporting.

Gerald predicts weekly death counts will Dr. Joe Gerald, who creates weekly coronaviexceed 700 in the coming weeks. rus epidemiology reports based on Arizona Gerald said testing capacity and uptake Department of Health Services data, had litremains lower than levels observed on Dec. tle good news to share in this week’s report.

20, indicating the reported numbers are “The [coronavirus] is mowing through likely higher in reality.

Arizona like a sharpened scythe,” Gerald “The test positivity rate for traditional wrote in the report. “Fatalities are stacking ... PCR testing set another record this week up like cordwood in advance of a long at 35% positivity,” he wrote. “This indicates winter. Barring intervention, daily cases and a substantial mismatch between testing cafatalities will double or perhaps quadruple pacity and demand and supports the notion before the outbreak collapses under the that viral transmission is growing faster weight of natural, not vaccine-induced, than case counts alone would suggest, that immunity later this spring.”

Nicole Ludden nicolel@tucsonlocalmedia.com

our viral control measures are wholly inadequate, and our testing capacity compared to other regions is poor.”

Pima County reported 7,470 positive COVID-19 tests the week ending Jan. 3, a 25% increase from the previous week, Gerald reported.

Furthermore, the CDC indicated Arizona had a faster transmission rate than any other state as of last week.

As of Jan. 3, new COVID-19 cases in Arizona were appearing at a rate of 780 cases per 100,000 of the population, a rate that’s increasing by nearly 220 cases per 100,000 a week.

HOSPITALS CONTINUE TO FEEL COVID-19 STRAIN Gerald reported that as of Jan. 7, 57% of the state’s general ward hospital beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients. Of Arizona’s ICU beds, 63% held coronavirus patients.

“COVID-19 occupied ICU beds and percent occupancy have never been higher,” Gerald said.

Many of the state’s hospitals are having to prioritize care, and according to Gerald, patients who would’ve received in-patient hospital care four to eight weeks ago are now receiving care in outpatient settings.

“Make no mistake, the COVID-19 crisis is now placing a greater share of Arizonans at risk, not just those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19,” he said. “Nevertheless, the fact that our hospitals have demonstrated such resilience is a testament to the planning, skill, and sacrifice of many health professionals and administrators who will likely never be recognized.”

CALL TO ACTION Gerald is calling for a statewide shelterin-place order to slow transmission of the virus, with state funds allocated to “alleviate food insecurity, to prevent evictions and foreclosures, and to protect access to health services.”

Gerald acknowledged further statewide mitigation is unlikely under Gov. Doug Ducey and said mitigation policy should be granted to counties to implement and enforce.

“While Arizonans’ poor individual decisions are undoubtedly contributing to viral spread, the Governor’s inaction in the face of a clear and present danger is of greater concern,” he said. “Most recently, he has performed more poorly than other governors, but more importantly, he has performed more poorly compared to his prior success this summer.” ■

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Story & photos by Brian Smith

Death, loss and Lawrence Zubia MY 1-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER IS hunkered down, collecting gravel and dropping the pieces into one of many handmade luminaria bags. She does not understand how the bag is suffused with import, the pretty star and moon cutouts tender astral nods to our fallen friend.

Suddenly his mournful refrain rises over her, an almost biblical chorus, “And though I once was rich/I know what it is to be hungry…”

Rickie is playing with another little girl and my pregnant wife keeps watch over them, saddened in the final-respects assembly of friends and family as much as she is joyful of a new life growing inside her belly. Rickie rises, waddles and stumbles along in the unpretentious Scottsdale backyard, around legs of the socially distanced and masked up, oblivious to any death and the familial closeness of strangers. She catches up to what drew all of her attention, a little dog named Bill, belonging to a man who attended Coronado High School with Lawrence. Bill makes Rickie laugh and he licks her and she coos like a dove and the warm December sun shines down hard.

The refrain comes around: “Though I nearly drowned/I know what it is to be thirsty…” It is a song that offers the gathering both a rebuke and definition of lingering sorrow. It is one of the greatest songs sung by easily one of greatest singers ever from Arizona. The song is The Pistoleros’ “My Guardian Angel.”

Its singer is Lawrence Zubia, who died last month.

ONE OF LAWRENCE’S THREE kids, 19-year-old son Jack, is beautiful in the way his dad was, the cheekbones, the kindness, a mere presence that demands attention. He welcomes guests to his dad’s remembrance, offering food

and water. He listens raptly to stories of his father. I remember Lawrence telling me about Jack, “He’s so worldly. Welltraveled, well read. He is the perfect candidate to continue our legacy as an artist/musician.”

Lawrence and I were both singers in rock ’n’ roll bands when I met him, around 1991 or thereabouts. I was always fascinated with him. We divvied those romantic ideas of the written word and rock ’n’ roll and we had lots of shit in common, including addictions and depressions, and that turned to other things in common in later years, like fatherhood and overriding senses of gratitude, which dominated our more recent communications. I’d go months not hearing from him and then he’d pop up sending these long missives full of love and selfless support, and writerly anecdotes, observations and updates involving the world around him, the handyman gigs he did to survive and provide while his songs were getting used in television shows. His solo gigs he’d play a few nights a week, which designed his world around the amenity of being there for his kids. “You want to be a good parent?” He’d tell me, “I learned early the hard way. You just have to be there.”

Years ago, Lawrence discovered the body of our mutual friend Doug Hopkins after he shot himself, our generation’s tragic sacrificial lamb, and we talked about “luck” being involved that we didn’t do the same.

I remember Lawrence’s detox-ward stints and stitches, the cops literally chasing him around, the grinding through the giant ’90s-money of the major-label record and publishing machine. How he came out about the molestation he suffered at the hands of his uncle-priest. How he nearly died

Lawrence Zubia of The Pistoleros.

a number of times, for a number of reasons, all of which could be whittled down to depression. He swore his children saved him, became his life, and I believe him. He always said, “once you have a child, suicide is off the table.” He was their biggest cheerleader.

In the service, his 11-year-old daughter Toni talks of the children’s book series Stick Dog. How she wanted him to read one to her one night at bedtime, and so they went out to the bookstore to get it, returned home and they laughed and laughed along with the book.

Twenty years ago, I wrote this in a piece I did on Lawrence in Phoenix New Times, when his first child, Daniela, was a baby, and the romance is there: “What makes Lawrence’s current lifestyle all the more remarkable is that he’s a man who got into rock ’n’ roll believing that life held nothing else for him. It was a foregone conclusion that he was predestined to write songs and front a rock ’n’ roll band until the day he died.”

Well he died, pneumonia, while recovering from pancreatic surgery.

Of course, he was fighting for his children and partner at the end. And his band, the too-tough-to-die Chimeras/

Pistoleros celebrated their silver anniversary three years ago. Last time I saw Lawrence play live was at one of my Tucson book readings a couple years ago. He strummed a Doug Hopkins song.

We pedestalize our dead friends. When people die we say things, things that may not be true, attempts to get at the basic notions that make us who we are, which can only be guessed at. There is a spark inside sometimes, its genesis we haven’t a clue. We are lucky when the spark becomes flame, but where does that flash and heat originate, and, more, how do we harness it? My buddy Lawrence Zubia was forever searching for such answers.

At least some kind of explanation. Dude was all about the spark and the flash, because that is where his songs lived. It is also where the bad shit lived too. He learned to employ the heat, going there for the music but not the destruction. Such maneuvering and grasping ain’t easy, and I’ve seen precious few manage.

Even his love songs were deceptively layered confessionals, merciful with slight airs of indignation and moral grounding, as they should’ve been. He could never slip into the maudlin.

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TUCSON SALVAGE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

In this remembrance people spoke personal truths, no prattling of inconsistencies, only the solaces that belong to them. Band members who’d backed him for over a quarter century, the guitar crunches and heartbreaks, the solidarity and triumphs, the jests and the brotherhood, because here was a guy, and everyone knew this, who had that ability to turn ugliness to beauty, whose life benchmarks were so absorbed into him there were no dividing lines, and it took outsiders to remind him how those wretched or beautiful landmarks blended to become pivots of his generosity of heart. When the bad becomes the beautiful. How a gifted working-class kid who played mariachi music at 12 years old with his father becomes a self-destructive vulture, becomes a mad accomplished angel after emerging on the sober end of living and love.

He became a spindly titan of earned insights and perceptions, wholly self-

SORENSEN

aware, wounds and all. Sartorially, always a romantic timeless outlaw, which he cultivated to a degree, with the coal-black, spiked or slicked hair and overall élan of some kind of young Hispanic Keef meets Kris Kristofferson, reflective of the easy, stay-free extension of his inner-self.

He was an original. Like many of our mutual friends, the truths he mastered had no real application in a for-profit work-a-day world—generosity, soul, song, fatherhood.

He’d grown into family. His awareness of his own mortality came out in conversations usually about his children, peppered with Tibetan sayings or a Merle Haggard line. Or he’d say something hyper-encouraging, like “that’s why we’re here. To knock it fuckin’ out.”

Listen to his songs and his secrets to living are there, “I’m concerned that I’m not concerned … Suicide gives me a ring/Checking in on how I’ve been.”

Listen to his 22-year-old Paris-based daughter, Daniela Zubia, and her take of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” or her own “Country

Song,” for that same melancholy sparkle, father-todaughter.

Lawrence’s younger brother Mark is gifted songwriter and guitarist, their deep brotherhood easily heard on their albums, in their songs. Their relationship rivaled Chris and Rich Robinson, filled of love and fights and separations and reconciliations. I played in a band with two brothers, saddled with my own tenuous grasp on reality, so I understand the defenses, respect and regrets.

Lawrence’s mother, the gran matriarca de la familia, Amalia speaks to the gathering, rekindling things in tears and laughter about how Lawrence had never resigned to be held in one place.

How Mark, as a boy, would search out Lawrence’s poetry to turn into a song.

One thing I know for certain about Lawrence, when he wanted to die, he lived. When he truly wanted to live, he died, with so many unfinished dreams involving his children and partner Anne, and in song.

MY DAUGHTER AND MY WIFE and the dog named Bill and Lawrence’s loved ones and the sadnesses. I sit under the backyard umbrella at this memorial, overtaken by some inexplicable temporary grace and that sense of endless

enclosure when a good friend dies, the strange way neighboring palm trees become lonely guardians of dirt alleys, the repeating walls of backyards varying only in tones of gray, the arrangement of Lawrence images filling an alter against the house. I see him on stage, that stance with hands behind him, chest forward, as if leaning into a headwind, his beating heart leading the way, as close to some fuckin’ Old Testament seer as a rock ’n’ roll singer can get.

My mind wanders to the others in my little orbit who died in 2020, these fellow travelers, old band roadie/sidekick Greg Cox, the young and gifted Sarah Shelton, writer/funnyman Corey Hall, singer Richard Flower, poet Isaac Kirkman, all human originals whose lives were textured in ways not easily understood, so known to anyone who loved them yet inexpressible to a stranger.

My daughter Rickie breaks the trance.

She waddles up, big grin, unguarded eyes. A fetching ensemble of purple flowered dress, heart-festooned baby socks and diaper. When she reaches my knee, she lifts up her hand and it contains a gift, a handful of gravel, a Lawrence Zubia memento, which my wife, with her big belly filled of new life, intercepts before spillage. She slips the small stones into my jacket pocket. ■

JAN. 14, 2021

CURRENTS

COURTESY REID PARK ZOO

More than 20 South American flamingos now call the Reid Park Zoo home.

A WORD FOR THE BIRDS

Reid Park Zoo collaborating on international flamingo conservation

By Quinn McVeigh tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

AS SCIENTISTS WARN THAT the South American flamingo could be threatened with extinction, the Reid Park Zoo is taking steps to help the aquatic bird.

Along with fostering 26 flamingos in its own lagoon, the zoo recently partnered with the Zoo Conservation Outreach Group and Association of Zoos & Aquariums to lead the Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program for South American flamingos.

SAFE flamingo efforts are focused on the three species all living in the Andean highlands: the Andean flamingo, Chilean flamingo and James’s flamingo.

Reid Park Zoo submitted a three-year plan in 2020 involving steps for uniting research and education to ensure the bird’s survival.

According to Jennifer Stoddard, Reid Park Zoo’s education supervisor, the first part of the plan involves GPS tracking of individual flamingos with the help of the Chilean National Zoo. The goal of this is to create a better understanding of wetland use, migration patterns and breeding cycles. The Chilean National Zoo has been responsible for placing small GPS devices on flamingos and monitoring their movements.

“We need to know how individual flamingos use habitat and which habitats are important to support flamingo populations,” said Felicity Arengo, the Americas coordinator of the International Union for Conservation of Nature flamingo specialist group. “Knowing how much they move around and what sites they use is essential to designing conservation strategies based on scientific evidence.”

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, all South American flamingo species are either considered vulnerable or near threatened. A growing demand for lithium and anthropogenic climate change are combining to damage the habitat of these aquatic birds.

Lithium, used in rechargeable batteries for electric cars, computers and cell phones, is abundant in South American flamingo habitats, especially in high Andean wetlands. Arengo explained that lithium mining destroys the habitat that flamingos depend on.

Additionally, climate models have predicted that Andean snow caps and glacial ice, which recharge wetlands occupied by flamingos, will continue to retreat. According to a 2019 study in The Cryosphere, almost a third of Peruvian glacial area was lost just between 2000 and 2016. Arengo said that the loss of water could result in less food for flamin-

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9

gos, since it will affect species across the board. Stoddard said identifying the specific Andean water sources that flamingos depend on will allow targeted conservation efforts.

Another area of the three-year-plan involves bringing zoo and aquarium educators together to construct educational tool kits, focused on improving public understanding of flamingo conservation issues. According to Stoddard, the tool kits will be dispersed among zoos and aquariums so that they can use them to promote flamingo conservation within their local communities.

“Some of the educational things that we’ll be talking about are lithium mining and climate change and how everyday people can do something about that to help flamingos,” Stoddard said.

Other than the SAFE program, Reid Park Zoo is also participating in a Chilean flamingo Species Survival Plan through AZA. According to Stoddard, many Species Survival Plans aim to protect genetic diversity among zoos and aquariums. This involves determining population characteristics, whether an animal should be moved to another zoo for breeding and the extent to which individuals are related within zoo populations. SSP programs also oversee animal reintroductions into the wild.

Although no flamingo species in the Andes are currently considered to be endangered, Stoddard believes that it is important to be proactive rather than reactive in the face of growing conservation challenges.

“Now is the time to take action to save the species rather than when we’re knocking on the door of extinction,” Stoddard said.

Reid Park Zoo’s recent conservation efforts go beyond flamingos. Within the zoo, staff are working on initiatives around bee protection and sustainable water use, construction and recycling.

On a global level, the zoo has offered financial and educational support to conservation efforts like the creation of elephant corridors in Tanzania and the protection of anteaters from being hit on Brazilian highways.

“Our mission is conservation,” Stoddard said. “It is essentially to connect people to protect wildlife and wild places… it is at the core of everything we’re doing at the zoo.”

For more information, visit reidparkzoo. org/conservation/zoo-conservation ■

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JAN. 14, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

SONORAN SCRATCHBOARDING The Desert Museum’s Ongoing Exhibit Showcases Pieces by the Best-of-the-Best in a Striking, but Relatively Unknown, Medium

By Emily Dieckman tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com WHEN I FIRST HEARD ABOUT THE Desert Museum exhibit hosted by the International Society of Scratchboard Artists, I thought immediately of the artboards I used to play with when I was a kid: Use a sharp point to scratch the ink off of a black board and reveal a rainbow of color underneath.

“I think I remember doing scratchboard when I was a kid,” I tell Paul Hopman, a Tucson artist who is exhibiting work at the event.

“We all did,” he says. “The lucky ones, anyway. It’s literally the oldest art in the world. You know what a petroglyph is?”

Turns out, they work the same way

scratchboards do—or at least professional scratchboards. Unlike the ones most of us played with when we were kids, scratching off the black ink just reveals a white background. Some artists leave the work colorless, while others fill in the white sections with whatever they want, be it pastel or magic marker.

The ninth annual ISSA Exhibition, which features 67 pieces by 47 different artists, is ending in early February, and is typically an opportunity for ISSA members from all over the world to meet face-to-face, while also sharing more about the art of scratchboard with exhib- “Bliss In A Kiss” by Cathy Sheeter it attendees.

“I think it’s a beautiful form of art 2020. “This is a great opportunity to see that’s not really as well known as, say, the best people in the world—literally painting or charcoal or pencil,” said the best artists in the world in scratchAnne Palmer, ISSA exhibit director for

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COURTESY PHOTO

board—in one place.”

The art pieces (many of which are for CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

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Explorer & Marana News: FEB. 17th

Foothills News: FEB. 17th Tucson Weekly: FEB. 18th Desert Times: MAR. 3rd

JAN. 14, 2021

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sale) are incredibly detailed: Portraits of humans, still lifes, outdoor scenes and many shots of animals. And they come in both color and black and white.

Many are so realistic they look like photographs at first glance. Reproducing photos is Hopman’s specialty, actually.

He gets permission from photographers who capture iconic figures—say, the most-photographed mustang in the world—and then creates a scratchboard version of the image. The simplest pieces he’s created take about three hours. The most complex? 250 hours.

He’s been doing scratchboard for 52 years, since he first took a course at the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

After decades of honing his own craft, he’s turned his attention toward getting other people excited about scratchboard. He started Scratchboard University in 2017, a program that allows people to buy scratchboard equipment online and watch a series of videos to learn about the art. He’s reduced the price of the kit during COVID-19, hoping to help cure the “stay-at-home blues” many are experiencing. If buyers have any questions, they can contact

him directly for help.

“The premise of Scratchboard University, and my goal with it, has always been educating youth,” he says, mentioning the decline of art programs in public schools. “The people behind the blue curtain, like in the Wizard of Oz, are making decisions for my grandkids, and it’s unacceptable.”

While he hopes scratchboard can help kids have fun while learning skills like concentration and perseverance (practice makes perfect!) he also wants to introduce the art to people of all ages. When he offered a session on scratchboard at an art club in Green Valley, one woman, a grandmother, fell in love with the art and now offers her own classes.

“We’ve had so many people in Tucson who have become scratchboard artists just because they’re exposed to it,” Palmer says.

Her story isn’t too far off: She spent years as a pen and ink artist, but learned about scratchboard art through the Southern Arizona Arts Guild one day and shifted her focus.

“I love this. I put everything else aside, and this is what I’ve been doing for the last six years.” ■

COURTESY PHOTO

“Rightful Ruler” by Amy Stauffer

The International Exhibition of Scratchboard Art is on display at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum’s Ironwood Gallery (2021 N. Kinney Road) through Sunday, Feb. 7. Due to COVID-19, please check the website or call ahead to

confirm current museum hours. Desertmuseumarts.com and 883-3024.

Paul Hopman’s art can be seen at paulhopman.com. To learn more about scratchboard, visit scratchboarduniversity.com.

JAN. 14, 2021

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13

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JAN. 14, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

El Sueño: Tom Kiefer, Alejandro Cartagena and a Selection of Mexican Folk Retablos Through Feb. 13 Etherton Gallery, 135 S. Sixth Ave. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday ethertongallery.com; 520-624-7370 Masks required; no more than 10 visitors allowed at a time. Free.

EXTRA: The gallery will host a live-stream conversation, Border Stories, at 6 p.m., this Friday, Jan. 15, on Instagram.

Speakers include artist Tom Kiefer; Fancisco Cantú, author (A Line Becomes a River) and former Border Patrol agent; Dora Rodriguez, migrants rights advocate and survivor of a tragic 1980 border crossing that took many lives; and Jose Javier Zamora, poet and author (Unaccompanied) who writes about crossing the border.

COURTESY PHOTO

Billfolds and Wallets by Tom Kiefer

Follow the gallery’s account, @ethertongallery, for updates. For more information, contact the gallery at info@ethertongallery.com or (520) 624-7370.

OBJECT LESSON

To see more of Tom Kiefer’s work, visit artsy.net and search for Tom Kiefer

Artist Tom Kiefer Makes Art Out of Migrant Possessions That Were Tossed in the Border Patrol’s Trash

By Margaret Regan tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com WHEN ARTIST TOM KIEFER FIRST started working as a part-time janitor at the Border Patrol station in Ajo back in 2003, he was shocked by the agency’s practice of throwing out perfectly good canned foods they took away from captured migrants.

The boss, he says, told the agents they were not to waste time worrying about food.

“They were told that their job was to arrest people and bring them in.” Period. “I thought it showed a callous disregard for people. I was disgusted.”

Kiefer had moved to Ajo after 9/11 from L.A., where he had been working as a graphic designer and antiques dealer.

He wanted to concentrate on his photography, and with Ajo’s low cost of living, he was able to buy a house. And the job with Border Patrol was one of the best-paying gigs in town.

Still, Ajo is a low-income town and it bothered Kiefer to see food going to waste.

Margaret Regan, a journalist and author (The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands and Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families under Fire), will moderate. The conversation will be followed by a short Q & A.

When a kinder, gentler chief was installed, Kiefer asked for permission to retrieve the food from the trash and take it to the community food pantry. The new boss not only said yes. Kiefer remembers, he said “bless you.”

The change provided more food for hungry residents of the remote desert town, where the closing of the mines years ago laid jobs to waste. And Kiefer’s new food duty accidentally enlightened him to another Border Patrol practice—and led him to an important new art series.

The agents, he discovered, routinely confiscated and discarded the belongings of captured migrants. Next to the cans of beans and unopened candy bars in the trash bins, Kiefer found medicine, photos of loved ones, bibles, backpacks, toothbrushes, wallets, children’s toys.

“I saw everything,” he says.

The stolen belongings made him “see” the migrants too. Earlier on in the job, he compartmentalized, never speaking to the border crossers when he came into their cells to empty the trash and mop the floors.

“I thought it was sad that people were

forced to risk their lives to work” when they crossed the border and walked through the desert, he says. “But I looked at it as a job. I had not formed an opinion.

And I didn’t take the job to do an exposé.”

The discovery of migrants’ treasured belongings in the garbage pail disturbed Kiefer deeply. He began bringing the artifacts home, wondering what he should do.

“For the first six months, I was saying, ‘What the fuck am I going to do with this stuff?’ I was not going to let a rosary end up in the landfill.”

KIEFER DECIDED TO EVOKE THE migrants by photographing the articles that they once used.

But instead of placing just one object in each photo, he puts dozens and dozens of similar objects in the frame, each of them evoking the hundreds and thousands of migrants who have suffered in their pursuit of the American dream.

Etherton Gallery is showing more than 100 of Kiefer’s heartbreaking photos. The large scale works beautifully display the stolen migrant belongings—and, by extension, honor their long-lost owners.

“Pink Combs and Brushes,” an early work from 2014, is covered by nothing but the pink hair tools, elegantly arrayed.

The piece conjures up the women who

tamed their hair with those combs on their separate journeys. One can imagine them resuming the trek across the desert after tidying their hair, feeling hopeful that they were successfully fleeing poverty or violence in their countries—not knowing la migra would soon round them up.

Another image is filled to bursting with men’s wallets, neatly placed row upon row. The wallets come in colors—yellow, red, tan—and Kiefer, a fine colorist, places them on a rich brown background. The purloined wallets testify to a cruel practice: the Border Patrol is known for tossing out migrants’ ID’ cards, which causes them no end of trouble when they are sent back across the border.

A beautifully pigmented piece features rich blue bibles on a golden cloth and an array of battered water bottles remind us remind us of the desert’s dangers. Still another one has an infinity of gloves.

“A sea of gloves shows the mass of humanity,” Kiefer says. The multiple objects in most of the works “convey the sheer volume of people” who pass through Border Patrol incarceration.

In recent years Kiefer has been working with portraits that he found in the trash can, and he’s been experimenting with small-scale photos. But he found all the objects he works with between 2007 and 2014. Kiefer was working on the series during that time, but in 2014 he was ready to begin showing the works. He quit the janitor job and gave the Border Patrol a head’s up about his Sueño series.

His house is still overrun with the artifacts he gathered in those seven years, and he works only with that material. Friends sometimes offer migrant backpacks or shoes they’ve found in the desert but Kiefer politely declines. He wants the work to be a specific archive that illuminates a point in place (in Border Patrol custody) and time (from 2007 to 2014)—and records what happened to migrants in those years. (Ajo and the western desert have long been hot spots for border deaths—in December 2020, five migrants lost there lives near Ajo and Organ Pipe National Monument.

His works, Kiefer writes in a note, tell the truths of “what was cruelly stripped from migrants and those seeking asylum, (and) the intentionally dehumanizing effect these policies have on those who come to “America” to seek a better life… This work is in part for the viewer to empathize and find common ground with those willing to risk their life for a better life.” ■

JAN. 14, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

The Zoppé Family Drive-in Circus The Zoppé Family drive-in circus takes place next to the Mercado San Agustin.

131 S. Linda Ave. Multiple shows most days from Friday, Jan. 15, through Sunday, Jan. 31.

Tickets begin at $49 per car.

For more information, visit zoppe.net.

Courtesy photo

The Zoppé Family Circus has reworked their events for social distancing, but still feature many circus classics.

A SAFER CIRCUS

Zoppé Family Circus still swinging during COVID

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com

from your car.

According to Giovanni Zoppé, the frontman for the circus, the idea of their AFTER 177 YEARS OF PERFORMING, drive-in show has existed for roughly five years. However, it took COVID for the Zoppé Family Circus knows it will those plans to come to fruition. take more than a pandemic to keep “I’m always trying to find different them out of the spotlight. The Italian ways to create art, to reach an audicircus annually performs in Tucson at the Mercado District, and will continue ence,” Giovanni said. “But I couldn’t make it work, and I was concerned that tradition this month, albeit with about reaching the audience and new precautions. Their new “drive-in” touching their emotions—happiness, circus, in town from Friday, Jan. 15, through the end of the month, includes sadness, joy—like a circus should.”

The Zoppé circus performed their a variety of acts that can be enjoyed

final show before the pandemic in January 2020 here in Tucson. Facing months of cancelled and postponed events, Giovanni began considering a drive-in circus once more, but again found the idea was “nearly impossible.”

After six months of preparation off the stage, Zoppé circus partnered with CBF Productions in Ventura, California for a three-show run where they slowly improved on the drive-in model. The shows feature many circus hallmarks, as well as large LED screens so the audience can see the performers from a distance.

“Those first shows, we had an audience, but we weren’t able to reach them emotionally, which was sad for me,” Giovanni said. “So we started coming out before the show to meet the audience as they’re driving in. And about halfway through that third show, I felt the overwhelming energy from the audience: horns blowing, people screaming, kids sticking their heads out of the car roofs. It was complete joy, and I yelled down to all the artists and performers ‘We did it!’”

According to Giovanni, that was the moment he realized a drive-in circus was truly feasible. However, there were still kinks to work out as they toured to Redwood City, California, and then over to Tempe last month. Although the circus was enjoying sold-out shows, they were still tweaking their model by reorienting their set-up and moving the display screens.

The show now allows cars to park in a semi-circle around the stage, with a large 30-foot LED screen hanging above the performers. This way, those

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 15

in the front row can see the performers on stage, and those farther back can see the performers on screen, similar to a concert.

“Now we’re coming to Tucson, and I think the show is going to be the way we need to do it,” Giovanni said. “We’re using a lot of the elements we usually do: our main pole, our cupola to hang the rigging. But it still has that feel of a circus, of the Zoppé family.”

The Zoppé family maintains the drive-in circus will be COVID-safe because the audience isn’t gathered beneath a tent, and can listen to the show through their car stereos. The circus family will also be welcoming the cars for a half hour before each show, including “an old-fashioned circus parade through the cars.”

“Tucson is going to be the first time this show is exactly how we want to do it, and I can’t think of a better town for it,” Giovanni said. “We’re the only circus in the world doing this type of performance. I have family all over the world that are in circuses, and they’re just staying still. I know there are some circuses here in America that are performing back under their tents, but they’re putting people close to each other and I completely disagree with that.”

State and local safety guidelines will be followed, and event staff will be wearing personal protective equipment as required. If a circus-goer needs to leave their vehicle, masking and safe social distancing will be enforced. Failure to follow social distancing, or the requests of staff members, could result in ejection.

This show’s performers include high-flying gymnastics and feats of strength by Aguile’s Russian Bar act, the trapeze artist Disa Carneol, circus horses, a “human cannonball,” the “wheel of death,” and Giovanni performing as Nino the Clown. Between performances, the LED screen will also play a documentary about the resilience of theirs and other circuses.

“The reaction has been phenomenal.

People are so thankful that we’re giving them the opportunity to get out of their house and still stay safe,” Giovanni said.

“My family got through other pandemics, we got through two World Wars, famine, leprosy. The Zoppé Circus has been through everything, and this pandemic is not going to stop us.” ■

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JAN. 14, 2021

MUSIC

DESERT DETOUR

Keith Robinson Band digs beneath roots music on Homecoming

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com ON THEIR DEBUT ALBUM Homecoming, the Keith Robinson Band aimed to create a record that was true to Southern Arizona—but avoided sounding “local.” In many ways they succeeded. While never straying far from a folk/rock template, much of the album’s singularity can be attributed to frontman Keith Robinson’s lyrics jumping between genre conventions and more abstract themes—and hell, even a mellotron made its way in between the acoustic guitars and desert imagery.

The album opens with “Lost In Space,” a rock song much in the borderlands vein, with fuzzy guitars and driving drums. However, it avoids sounding too familiar thanks to Robinson’s philosophical background: studying Nietzsche and Heidegger at Fuller

Seminary.

In the opener, Robinson sings about Judas and asks the Lord to show him the way, reflecting a kind of existential vertigo in the Sonoran sun. The following track, “Psalm 151,” shifts styles in favor of a sparse acoustic intro, slowly progressing as instruments join in.

It’s a delicate and gorgeous setting for Robinson to sing over: “My malaise has gotten out of hand... It’s a compromised promised land full of all these gospel songs.”

“We tried to balance the record for listeners by setting up dynamics and varying the instrumentation for different types of songs,” Robinson said. “At the same time we sprinkled some musical elements throughout the record to try to give it a unified feel rather than just a haphazard collection of songs; the picky stuff in ‘Psalm 151’ is echoed in the picking pattern in the final song, ‘Homecoming,’ for instance.

And the fuzz guitar in ‘Lost in Space’ gets a reprise later in the album in ‘Ocean Walker.’”

These varied sounds are helped with nearly every performer serving as a multi-instrumentalist: Robinson plays guitar, sings and performs some additional percussion; Evan Wagner plays bass and electric guitar plus percussion; Steven Tracy plays piano, organ and mellotron; and Dani Ponce sticks to the drumkit, though his energy serves multiple roles.

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the pandemic delayed and complicated Homecoming’s recording sessions. This isolation and difficulty is present in multiple tracks, but Robinson wrote the majority of the songs before COVID was in our collective vocabulary. This is reflected in the album cover, balancing saguaros on one side and tombstones on the other, and in lyrics like “I saw an angel in the desert sun / A crystal hourglass empties fast / I used to walk on the forest floor / Present always becomes the past.”

In March 2020, the band had a batch of songs ready to record, but everything was put on delay. While waiting, Robinson wrote two tracks inspired by the pandemic, which made their way into the recording sessions at St. Cecilia Studios in August, with Tracy as engineer.

“It would have been tone-deaf, we thought, to record an album during such global upheaval without alluding to the pandemic at all,” Robinson said.

“Everyone was wary of COVID, so the August sessions were limited to a tight little group—Steven, myself, bassist Evan Wagner, and drummer Dani Ponce. No girlfriends, friends, or outsiders allowed. We recorded the whole album in just three days—granted, three long days—with another day-and-a-half devoted to mixing and last-second adjustments.”

Robinson credits these quick and successful sessions to the fact the band had extra rehearsal time due to COVID delays—though this time both helped and hindered.

“In April I was in a bad way. I had awful bouts of insomnia, I wasn’t eating, I was cut off from almost all human interaction, I never knew what day of the week it was, and in my head it generally felt like the world was ending,” Robinson said. “That experi-

ence bled into the songs. The record, in other words, is not making any grand, definitive pronouncements about whether life is worth living or whether God exists. Those questions are up for grabs. The lyrics are more simply just an expression of how I was feeling at the time. Death seemed imminent, all around me, so I wrote material reflecting what that felt like.”

Though themes of loss permeate the album, the warm instrumentals and broader philosophical lines—such as when Robinson echoes Heraclitus’ adage that you “can’t step in the same river twice”—combine for an album that is true to Southern Arizona, and definitely true to the world beyond that.

“The record certainly contains some bleak moments,” Robinson said. “But my hope is that the gloom contributes to the beauty rather than detracting from it.” ■

JAN. 14, 2021

WORKPLACE WEED

Now that recreational marijuana is officially legal in Arizona, employers and employees should know their reefer rights while on the job.

By Austin Counts austin@tucsonlocalmedia.com AS SCORES OF ARIZONA VOTERS rejoiced after hearing Proposition 207 passed last November, just as many questioned whether they still needed to renew their medical marijuana card—at a cost around $250—when their favorite dispensary would soon be selling a consumer-grade product.

On the other hand, employers across the great Grand Canyon State heard

this news and immediately had visions of their employees showing up to work as if they were attending a Snoop Dogg concert.

While there are some legal questions about workplace weed that remain to be answered, Chris Mason, labor and employment attorney for Phoenix-based Jennings Strouss Law Firm, advises both employers and employees need to be aware of the rights and protections they currently have.

Mason said employees who have

a medical need for marijuana should continue renewing their card because it gives added legal protection against employment discrimination under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act that recreational users are not granted under Prop. 207.

“I know there are a lot of folks who have medical marijuana cards and are going to let them lapse because they don’t want to pay the extra fee when they can use marijuana recreationally,” Mason said. “If they let them lapse, those people will lose the protection of the marijuana act.”

Ultimately, the individual is going to have to evaluate what workplace protections they need when it comes to using marijuana medically and recreationally, said Mason. He does point out if your job is considered safety-sensitive, your boss can still bar employment for a failed drug test under the Arizona Drug Testing of Employees Act. “The Arizona Drug Testing of Employees Act provides protection to a wide swath of safety-sensitive jobs. For instance, anybody handling food would be considered safety-sensitive under that enactment,” Mason said. “I don’t know that the courts will ultimately agree with

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 17

the whole breadth of safety-sensitive positions as clarified in the law as enforceable. Nonetheless, that’s what’s written into that statute.”

For employers, Mason advises evaluating what your company does and what stance they want to take in the workplace. In many cases, marijuana use could be treated like alcohol, said Mason, meaning that what an employee does on their time is their business, but they cannot be intoxicated while on the job.

“No employer out there should simply abandon marijuana as an issue in protecting their workplace. It should be no different than alcohol prohibition in the workplace. You still have to have those expectations,” Mason said. “But there are certainly a lot of different job positions where employers could be more understanding of the rights of medical marijuana users.”

The problem with marijuana use and the workplace is it’s hard to determine when the last time a person used based on drug test results, since THC can stay in the system for days to weeks for casual users and months for habitual use, CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

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WORKPLACE WEED

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

according to the attorney.

More heavily regulated industries, such as transportation, long-haul trucking and aviation, still have federal and state legal protections that would exclude employment for testing positive for marijuana use whether the plant is legal or not.

However, Mason notes the difficulty some industries like construction are having in determining whether test-

ing for the drug is necessary. He said it comes down to being attuned to the safety needs and liability of the job position.

“The hard part for employers who don’t have those legal protections in place. Do they stop testing for marijuana in their employees’ systems?” Mason said. “Employers need to evaluate what jobs are truly dependent on safety factors and spend some time deciding at what level of employment they are going to test. Then they need to update their companies’ policies and make sure they’re compliant with the new law.” ■

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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): As you ripen into a more fully embodied version of yourself, you will summon ever-greater discrimination about where to seek your inspiration. I trust that you will increasingly divest yourself of any tendency you might have to play around with just any old mediocre fire. More and more, you will be drawn to high-quality blazes that provide just the right amount of heat and light—neither too much nor too little. And you will steadfastly refrain from jumping into the flames, as glamorously dramatic as that might seem—and instead be a master of deft maneuvers that enable you to get the exact energy you need.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Denstu is a major Japanese advertising agency headquartered in Tokyo. Annually since 1925, its new employees and freshly promoted executives have carried out a company ritual: climbing 12,388-foot-high Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest peak. The theme of the strenuous workout is this: “We are going to conquer the symbol that represents Japan more than anything else. And, once we do that, it will signify that we can do anything.” In anticipation of what I suspect will be a year of career gains for you, Taurus, I invite you to do the following: Sometime in the next six weeks, go out in nature and perform an equivalent feat.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Today I received a new email from a Gemini friend who lives in London.

It was date-stamped January 15, 2015. Weird! In it, she talked about applying for a new job at a publishing company. That was double weird, because February 2015 was in fact the time she had gotten the editing job that she still has. Her email also conveyed other details about her life that I knew to be old history. So why did it arrive now, six years late? I called her on the phone to see if we could unravel the mystery. In the end we concluded that her email had time-traveled in some inexplicable

way. I predict that a comparable event or two will soon happen in your life, Gemini. Blasts from the past will pop in as if yesterday were today.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Eugene Sue (1804–1857) was a popular French author whose stories often offered sympathetic portrayals of the harsh living conditions endured by people of the lower economic class. Writing generously about those downtrodden folks made him quite wealthy. I’d love to see you employ a comparable strategy in the coming year. What services might you perform that would increase your access to money and resources? How could you benefit yourself by helping and uplifting others?

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The beautiful and luxurious fabric known as silk comes from cocoons spun by insect larvae. Sadly for the creatures that provide the raw material, they’re usually killed by humans harvesting their handiwork—either by being stabbed or boiled alive. However, there is a special kind of silk in which manufacturers spare the lives of their benefactors. The insects are allowed to mature into moths and escape. I propose that we make them your spirit creatures in the coming weeks. It’s an excellent time for you to take an inventory of everything you do, and evaluate how well it upholds the noble principle of “Do no harm.”

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Any time that is not spent on love is wasted,” declared the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Although I am sympathetic with his sentiment, I can’t agree that acts of love are the only things ever worth doing. Sometimes it’s healthy to be motivated by anger or sadness or skepticism, for example. But I do suspect the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to be in intense devotion to Tasso’s counsel. All the important successes you achieve will be rooted in an intention to express love and compassion.

SAVAGE LOVE CUM AGAIN

By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net

As you can see by my signature, Dan, I’m a linguist. On your podcast you frequently ask researchers “whatchyougot” on all kinds of sex- and romance-related questions, I thought maybe you’d be interested in some expertise on linguistic matters too. And I have some on “cum,” “cumming,” and (shudder) “cummed.”

The technical term here used among linguists for this kind of phenomenon is “peeve.” Let me clarify, it’s not the “cum,” “cumming,” and “cummed” that’s a peeve but the shuddering. You see, the snide sound there is due to the fact that what causes peevers to shudder causes

linguists to get interested. The point is language always changes, and linguists are interested in these changes however much they horrify normal people. (That’s our technical term for non-linguists.)

Grandparents are forever lamenting about how their grandchildren’s generation is ruining the language. Documentation of this phenomenon goes back to the Roman times. And indeed generations upon generations of grandchildren turned Latin into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and host of lesser known forms of ruination.

In terms of the sticky substance at

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I heard a story about how a music aficionado took a Zen Buddhist monk to a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

The monk wasn’t impressed. “Not enough silence!” he complained. I’m puzzled by that response. If the monk were referring to a busy intersection in a major city, I might agree with him, or the cacophony of a political argument among fanatics on Facebook. But to want more silence in one of history’s greatest pieces of music? That’s perverse.

With this in mind, Libra, and in accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to seek extra protection from useless noise and commotion during the coming weeks—even as you hungrily seek out rich sources of beautiful information, sound, and art.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal,” wrote Scorpio author Albert Camus. If you’re one of those folks, I’m happy to inform you that you have cosmic permission to relax. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to explore the pleasures of NOT being conventional, standard, ordinary, average, routine, prosaic, or common. As you expansively practice non-normalcy, you will enhance your health, sharpen your wits, and clarify your decisions.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Our lives tend to be shaped by the stories about ourselves that we create and harbor in our imaginations. The adventures we actually experience, the problems we actually face, are often (not always) in alignment with the tales we tell ourselves about our epic fates. And here’s the crux of the matter: We can change the stories we tell ourselves. We can discard tales that reinforce our pain, and dream up revised tales that are more meaningful and pleasurable. I believe 2021 will be an excellent time for you to attend to this fun work. Your assignment: Be a self-nurturing storyteller.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn author Edgar Allen Poe named “four conditions for happiness: life in the open air; love of another human

hand (or on hand), cum as a verb and cumming are just alternative spellings, which are common enough for slang.

It’s slang! You really gonna insist slang follow uptight and buttoned-down spelling rules, Dan? That’s just stoopid.

Cummed is more interesting—and also causes peevers to shudder—because it’s a real change in the language. But why shudder? Why not appreciate it instead?

“Cummed” shows us how creative we are with our language, how we play with it, and in this case do something useful, differentiating the sublime “got off” (climaxed) from the banal “got there” (arrived).

Don’t fall into useless peeving, Dan! You’ve famously instigated language change. Just ask Rick Santorum, your for-

being; freedom from all ambition; creation.” I’m accomplished in three of those categories, but a failure in being free of all ambitions. In fact, I’m eternally delighted by all the exciting creative projects I’m working on. I’m VERY ambitious. What about you, Capricorn? I’m going to contradict Poe and speculate that your happiness in the coming months will require you to be at least somewhat ambitious. That’s what the planetary omens are telling me. So what are the best goals and dreams for you to be ambitious about?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It’s time to launch Operation Supple Watchdog. That means you should be tenderly vigilant as you take extra good care of everyone and everything that provide you with meaning and sustenance. It means you should exercise rigorous but good-humored discernment about any oppressive or demeaning ideas that are flying around. You should protect and preserve the vulnerable parts of your life, but do so with tough-minded compassion, not ornery overreactions. Be skeptical, but warm; breezily resilient but always ready to stand up for what’s right. (P.S. The better you shield yourself against weird surprises, the more likely it is you’ll attract interesting surprises.)

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The atoms that compose your body have existed for billions of years.

Originally created by a star, they have been part of many forms before you. But they are exactly the same in structure as they have ever been. So in a very real sense, you are billions of years old. Now that you know that, how do you feel? Any different? Stronger? More expansive? More eternal?

I bring these thoughts to your attention, Pisces, because 2021 will be an excellent year for you to come to a more profound and detailed understanding of your true nature. I hope you will regularly meditate on the possibility that your soul is immortal, that your identity is not confined to this historical era, that you have been alive and will be alive for far longer than you’ve been taught to believe.■ Homework: What’s the first adventure you will embark on when the pandemic subsides?

FreeWillAstrology.com

mer college roommate, or the men who’ve cummed and cummed hard while a nice vagina-haver pegged their ass.

—Michael Newman Professor of Linguistics and Chair Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders Queens College/CUNY Thank you for taking the time to write, Professor Newman, and please forgive me for peeving you. But the sticky issue for me—if you’ll pardon the expression— remains the seemingly unnecessary and arbitrary use of an alternate spelling in this one instance. As I’ve said before, no one is confused when someone calls a person a “dick” in print and then goes on to wax poetic about the dick they

JAN. 14, 2021

sucked in the next sentence. If we don’t have to spell it “dik” when we’re referring to male genitalia—or the genitals of penis-havers—I don’t see why “come” needs to be spelled “cum” when referring to male genitalia—or the genitals of penis-havers—I don’t see why “come” needs to be spelled “cum” when referring to someone climaxing or when referring to ejaculate. Of all the words out there with more than one meaning—dick, dong, cock, pussy, beaver, box, crack, rack, sack—why does this one require special linguistic treatment?

Interesting take on cum…as your column ventured into linguistics. How do you feel about “tonite” for “tonight” or “lite” for “light”? Inquiring minds want to know.

—Commonly Used Mutated Spellings I made inquiries at the website of the world’s best dictionary (and best drag name) Merriam-Webster, CUMS, where I learned tonite is “a blasting explosive consisting of a mixture of guncotton with a nitrate” and lite means “made with a lower calorie content or with less of some such ingredient (salt, fat, or alcohol) than usual.” So you can have dinner tonight and wash it down with something lite, CUMS, but don’t have tonite for dinner unless you want to light yourself up.

I basically agree with your views about spelling the verb as “come.” However, I think one could be a bit more

nuanced about usage here. “Come” is rather polite and could easily be used in a romantic context (“Oh God honey I’m about to come”) whereas “cum” has a definite “let’s fuck” feel to it (something not unheard of in your column). Different contexts call for different styles, perhaps. I would also like to make an outright exception for the substance “cum,” which I feel should always be spelled with a “u.” For the noun, using the “u” hardly seems vulgar at all. One might wonder why cum seems more appropriate for denoting semen. I can think of two good reasons. First, “cum” evokes “scum,” which matches the feelings of some (benighted) people that cum is slimy and disgusting. And secondly, the final letters “um” occur in some medical terms—all nouns—which relate to sex, like pudendum, scrotum, rectum, flagellum, perineum. This is a very different association than scum but also seems like part of the story, at least to me.

—TK Hmm… I agree that an alternate spelling when referring to ejaculate could be helpful. But context also provides clarity. If a man and/or penis-haver says, “My come was everywhere,” no one thinks his/hers/their orgasms are Jesus Christ or dark matter—literally everywhere throughout the universe—but rather that he’s/she’s/ they’re exaggerating about the volume of a recent orgasm to make a point about the intensity of pleasure he/she/ they derived from it.

I’ve been a copy editor for 15 years and a Savage Love reader for much longer. I wanted to chime in on fellow Canadian COME’s letter about the “come” vs “cum” spelling. I fully agree that as a verb, it should be “come” and “came/coming” instead of “cummed/ cumming.” But there is a place for “cum”: as a noun when referring to the actual gooey substance (aka semen, ejaculate, spunk, etc). Consider the sentence, “I have come in my mouth.”

Are you announcing an act of autofellatio (talk about a cumblebrag!) or are you describing a substance someone else left behind? Or, “How did come get on my jacket?” Doesn’t that just look like a mistake? Millennials love turning nouns into verbs (adulting!) but I think using “come” as a noun is incorrect.

And what about describing something

as “cummy”? How would you spell that? Comy? Comey? Perhaps we can all come together on this: “come” for the verb of achieving orgasm; “cum” for the noun that describes the resulting emission.

—Copyeditor Uses Modification For A Noun Your argument convinced me, CUMFAN. If everyone else agrees to use “come” for the verb, I can swallow “cum” as a noun. The copy editor carries the day!

You were close with your advice to Cabin Fever, the man whose teenager was derailing his sex life, but it was still a miss. Instead of telling his kid to “take a fucking walk,” per your advice, he should use the moment to teach.

As you said, Dan, even teenage boys realize that happy-and-still-in-love parents are a good thing. So instead of being confrontational, CF and his wife could laugh and pay their son the compliment of being honest: “We enjoy sex but we don’t enjoy it with you in the next room any more than you enjoy hearing it.” Then come up with someplace for him to go for a few hours that HE wants to go to and make it happen. By being upfront they’ll be modeling healthy adult behavior and a healthy and adult approach to problem solving. This is truly an opportunity for good parenting.

—Mom And Dad Are Fucking

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 21

While I did advise CF to tell his kid to “take a fucking walk” when mommy and daddy wanted to peg, I expected CF to approach that conversation in a tactful and constructive manner. That said, due to the pandemic, there aren’t many places for a kid to go when his parents are fucking. A walk, for now, may be their best option. If CF’s family doesn’t already have a dog, perhaps they should get one.

To my readers: There are more important things happening in the world right now than disputes over sexual slang, I realize, but I hope today’s column was a welcome and fleeting distraction from the news… kinda like that viral video of the sweet guy whose cat won’t let him make his audition tape. I am following the news and reacting in real time on Twitter, if you care to hear what I have to say, and like all sane people everywhere I am equal parts furious and mortified. Donald Fucking Trump and every last one of his co-conspirators in his family, in his administration and in Congress belong in prison with every last traitor who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week. Impeach the motherfucker again and indict all the motherfuckers already. mail@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage.

On the Lovecast, Dan and Michael Cee discuss “the wife sharing lifestyle.”

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ACROSS Orthodontic challenges 5 Doctor’s order 10 Grp. that might hold a raffle 13 “Please, enough already!”

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21 “I’m game if you’re game!”

22 Sound track?

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57 Cold?

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Longtime Life Savers flavor 11 Lacking bite 12 Colonial workers, maybe 14 Little fella 17 Wheedle 21 It may be glossed over 23 Infirmary sight 24 Top round steak, e.g.

25 Grp. that determines what a 24-Down is 26 Pompeii, for one 28 ___ Lock (PC key) 29 When repeated, “You get the idea” 30 Frequent filers, for short 31 Player with a record 10 World Series championships 32 Superficial inspection 36 Discussed over Slack, say, in brief

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38 Magic 8 Ball, e.g.

42 You may find a range of

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Southwest Stretched (out) 50 Curmudgeonly sort 51 Resistance figure 52 A constant celebration?

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