LIVING AT ALBUM MARANA

55+ Active Adult Community

Greystar is excited to bring their newest Album community to Tucson. The Album lifestyle is highly sought after by young at heart, 55+ active adults. It’s perfect for those looking for more in life, style, community, and activities.

Welcome to a carefree, maintenance-free living in a controlled-access community designed to be empowering as well as peaceful. Lead your life, as you see fit, and with time to spare, in a place where the feeling is one of excitement for what the future holds.

At Album Marana, you’ll find sophisticated residences with modern features in addition to stimulating onsite offerings and beautiful social spaces to enjoy. They’ll be conveniently just outside your door; no need to drive anywhere! Your day might begin with coffee with new friends and then to the activities calendar to decide how your day will take shape. There is so much to do here. Each day will be full of variety and fun.

Album is the perfect place to share your passions, find new ones, and make friends easily along the way. What truly sets Album apart is the opportunity to have a real say in the active lifestyle clubs and events. Residents will create, contribute their talents, and run the clubs/events they want. Examples include teaching a cooking class, meeting up for happy hour (and yappy hours), walking club, flower arranging, movie/game night, and seasonally inspired events. The only limit is your imagination.

The Album Marana leasing center is now open and located at 7620 N Hartman Lane, Suite 172 Tucson, AZ 85743. Our team will be happy to provide you with more information on available apartment homes that will be move-in ready Summer 2023. Whether you are considering downsizing yourself or have a loved one far away that you want close, Album is an exciting option right here in Tucson!

Date: Tuesday, May 16th

— moved around a lot, lived in the projects once, parents found work in a textile factory.

Romny would go to sleep at night, hoping it was all a bad dream and he’d wake up in the morning back home. “I was coming from the farm, picking mangos and then landing in the Bronx.”

He’s almost shocked at his own recall. He got into fights, made friends, learned English, avoided gangs, steered clear of trouble. He said in his heart he really couldn’t hurt anyone or anything, and anyway, “once you live in the neighborhood they don’t mess with you.”

He bagged groceries, assisted a butcher and afforded a used car. He was consideredan“at-risk”kidforaspell.After graduating from South Bronx High School, he was gone, looking to untangle things, his own oppression, the world around him, and his family, in all its love and drama. He pulled an openroad-as-inner-discovery Kerouac when pre-cellphone travel into the West was still exotic, risky. Sometimes he’d travel with a friend or friends, mostly alone. Blew his mind; he still thought the entire United States looked like the South Bronx. Sleep in his car, under a tarp in the wilds. “I went as far as Alaska.”

Eventually he found his way into North Carolina, near Asheville. An educational organization called Outward Bound, where, as a high school student, he’d earned a scholarship and spent a few summers. The outfit taps into the wilderness, rock climbing to canoeing, for personal growth. The very idea sidled up to his Caribbean Island boyhood, fueled his empathy for nature and living things. He discovered carving and wood sculpture. He was hired on as counselor, would save up and travel the offseason months. He stayed at Outward Bound for a decade.

He moved to Northern Arizona, which reminded him of the Dominican Republic in ways. He worked odd jobs including Barnes & Noble and Office Max (“that was the only job I ever walked out of”) to save enough to climb into his car and fire up “some creativity.”

In Flagstaff, he worked in a state juvenile detention center and the experience left him sad, jaded. He developed bonds with some of the kids, saw hard punishments and kid restraints that didn’t fit crimes. “The system is so out-of-whack, the money wasted. I needed a break to take care of myself.”

Self-care involved the Buddhist texts he’d long been into, Taoism, Zen, which he found far less judgmental and wrathful than the fear-motivating Catholicism of his youth. Because of the detention center experience, he figured he’d have to travel to Nepal or India to find a Buddhist temple. Instead, he found the Garchen Buddhist Institute an hour and a half from his Flagstaff home. He wound up staying there two years, inspired by the teachers and their central Tibetan Buddhism aspects, the visualizations, mantras, meditation for enlightenment. “Besides having faith, I was still struggling. Tibetan Buddhism was like coming home. And they weren’t asking me for money, I helped out, landscaping, whatever. I felt very welcome.”

*** artist he is and he returns a blank stare. Like, what?

His landscape photography, line art, carving, seems to be about capturing tender or oblique moments floating in the world around him, or pulling for his childhood. “I don’t know what to call it.”

Romny is an autodidact, “just figured everything out.” He took a few art and photography classes in high school. He once took a pottery art class at NAU in Flagstaff. “Got an A in that one,” he laughs.

Much of his work embraces a certain kind of abstraction, muddles any application of a narrative. Like the man himself, it is lighthearted with a moral earnestness.

Later he shows me a piece into which he’s got 40 hours invested. It is one of his many hand-drawn geometric works, shapes and tiny lines in marker pens that take on 3D effects. The 2- by 3-foot piece flies in the face of computer-generated AI, and tiny abstract imperfections allow emotion to slip through, works like a killer Charlie Parker live recording. It is deceptively elaborate. A finished piece is hypnotic, reveals something from nature, or a form of prayer and meditation. Get him talking, and he agrees, and tells of such prayers in wholly unironic ways; sometimes a shy laugh brackets the wholly personal assertion, as a kind of embarrassment sensor, as if what comes from his lips might sound incredulous or