Tucson Weekly, July 22, 2021

CURRENTS: DOES DOUG DUCEY WANT COVID SPREADING IN SCHOOLS?

JULY 22 - 28, 2021 • TUCSONWEEKLY.COM • FREE

After the Blaze

Mount Lemmon Is Coming Back From Last Year’s Bighorn Fire

By Emma Brocato CHOW: El Charro’s Shrimpy Summer Specials

MUSIC: Sophia Rankin Shifts Genres

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STAFF

CONTENTS

CURRENTS

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Ducey threatens Catalina Foothills School District over COVID protocol as Arizona cases rise

FEATURE

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As Mount Lemmon recovers, residents discuss strategies to reduce future risks

CINEMA

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Joe Bell suffers from some false steps

MUSIC

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ADMINISTRATION Steve T. Strickbine, Publisher Michael Hiatt, Vice President

EDITOR’S NOTE

Jaime Hood, General Manager, jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com

Sweet Lemmon

Tyler Vondrak, Associate Publisher, tyler@tucsonlocalmedia.com Claudine Sowards, Accounting, claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com

IF YOU ASK ME, THE WORST non-pandemic disaster in Tucson last year was the Bighorn Fire, which scorched roughly 120,000 acres atop our beloved Mount Lemmon and the surrounding Santa Catalinas. Thankfully, however, the community of Summerhaven was spared, thanks to lessons learned from the Aspen Fire back in 2003, and our sky island is already showing signs of bouncing back. This week, contributor Emma Brocato looks at how preparations before the fire helped save Summerhaven, while Rae Johnson of Cronkite News Service digs into how the plants and critters are coming back.

Elsewhere in the book this week: Staff reporter Christina Duran reports on how Gov. Doug Ducey is telling local schools that they can’t tell students who have been exposed to COVID to quarantine for two weeks, despite that being the very advice the districts received from Ducey’s Department of Health (and the governor’s ill-considered push to spread COVID in schools comes as cases are again on the rise); contributor Austin Counts previews a matchup of MMA fighters who will meet this weekend at the Rialto Theatre, which is hosting its first live event since March 2020; food writer Matt Russell gets a taste of El Charro’s summer spe-

cials; movie critics Bob Grimm says Joe Bell is a tough trudge; managing editor Jeff Gardner talks with local musician Sophia Rankin about her new album, and author Larry Bird about his fascinating new book on saguaro iconography; Tucson Weedly columnist David Abbott talks to some UA scientists about that “entourage effect” we hear about when our local dispensaries are making their marijuana extract; and there’s plenty more, including Emily Dieckman’s City Week to guide you through the week, Free Will Astrology to guide you through your life and Savage Love to guide you in the bedroom.

Plus, you’ll find comics and puzzles and a look at Reid Park Zoo’s wild dogs, so settle in and peruse these pages.

Last but far from least: The second round of Best of Tucson®: Legends of the West is here! Visit TucsonWeekly.com to vote for your favorite local businesses through Sept. 1!

Jim Nintzel Executive Editor Hear Nintz talk about all the cool stuff happening this week at 9:30 a.m. Wednesdays during the World-Famous Frank Show on KLPX, 96.1 FM.

RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson

Sophia Rankin stretches beyond her folk roots on Too Close to the Riptide

Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com EDITORIAL Jim Nintzel, Executive Editor, jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jeff Gardner, Managing Editor, jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com Mike Truelsen, Web Editor, mike@tucsonlocalmedia.com Christina Duran, Staff Reporter, christinad@tucsonlocalmedia.com Ireland Stevenson, Staff Reporter, istevenson@tucsonlocalmedia.com Contributors: David Abbott, 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 Courtney Oldham, Production Manager, tucsonproduction@timespublications.com Ryan Dyson, Graphic Designer, ryand@tucsonlocalmedia.com Emily Filener, Graphic Designer, emilyf@tucsonlocalmedia.com CIRCULATION Alex Carrasco, Circulation, alexc@tucsonlocalmedia.com ADVERTISING TLMSales@TucsonLocalMedia.com Kristin Chester, Account Executive, kristin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Candace Murray, Account Executive, candace@tucsonlocalmedia.com Lisa Hopper, Account Executive, lisa@tucsonlocalmedia.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING VMG Advertising, (888) 278-9866 or (212) 475-2529 Tucson Weekly® is published every Thursday by Times Media Group 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. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN).

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TUCSON WEEDLY

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UA releases study on the “entourage effect” of terpenes with an eye to reducing side effects for pain treatment

Cover image by Jeff Gardner

Copyright: The entire contents of Tucson Weekly are Copyright Times Media Group 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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JULY 22, 2021

quarantine.

In her letter, Harrier said the policy “must be rescinded immediately,” and states the Arizona Department of Health Services is “prepared to provide guidance.”

According to Ducey’s office, the Ducey threatens Catalina Foothills School District over COVID protocol as AZ cases rise language in the legislation is specific to schools and is not the same as general “Parents and other community memBy Christina Duran public health guidelines. bers have a right to expect that their local christinad@tucsonlocalmedia.com “It takes into account that school is the school district will do what it reasonably safest place for kids, whether they are can to provide a safe educational envivaccinated or not, and that they have a LAWYERS REPRESENTING ronment for its students, and CFSD and right to receive in-person education,” said Catalina Foothills School District and PUSD are committed to providing such C.J. Karamargin, communications direcPeoria Unified School District last week an environment,” wrote Richardson. tor for the Governor’s office, in an email responded to a letter from Governor Doug “Students who are required to quarantine response. “Quarantine is a mitigation Ducey’s office that called their quarantine based on exposure to COVID-19 are not strategy. This law prohibits discrimination protocol “unlawful.” abandoned. Both school districts probased on vaccination status. The use of In a July 14 letter, Kaitlin Harrier, eduvide instruction and assistance to such any mitigation strategy should comply cation policy advisor for Governor Ducey, students during their temporary absence with the law.” told CFSD Superintendent Mary Kamerzell from school.”

However, ADHS K-12 School Guidance that the school’s isolation policy violated an The dust-up between Ducey and the for COVID-19 references their own isolaArizona statute, particularly the section on school districts comes as the delta variant tion and quarantine guideline document, face coverings, signed by Governor Ducey spreads across Arizona and COVID cases which schools use as reference for their on June 30. have begun a troubling rise across the policies. Under key mitigation strategies, “Specifically, the practice of instituting a state. they list “Contact tracing in combination mandatory 14-day quarantine for unvacciJoe Gerald, an epidemiologist and pro- with isolation and quarantine” with a link nated students who have a COVID-19 exfessor at UA Zuckerman School of Public to the guidance. posure, but exempting vaccinated students, Health, said last week that 5,813 Arizonans Both Catalina Foothills or Peoria school is contrary to Laws 2021, Chapter 404, Sec. were diagnosed with COVID-19, a jump districts made masking optional and do 12, which states, “A school district or charter of 48% from the previous week. It was the school may not require a student or teacher fifth consecutive week of rising cases. to receive a vaccine for COVID-19 or to “This week’s changes makes it likely wear a face covering to participate in in-perCLAYTOONZ By Clay Jones that Arizona will soon experience case son instruction,” wrote Harrier in her letter. rates greater than 100 per 100K residents A similar letter was sent to the Peoria per week, marking a transition from Unified School District. substantial to high levels of transmission,” Harrier stated, under the Arizona Parents Gerald wrote in a report examining the Bill of Rights, parents have the right to state’s climbing numbers. “Prudence sugmake healthcare decisions for their minor gests we heed this warning and prepare child, including vaccinations, and added for the worst even as we hope for the best.” that the policy would have detrimental Catalina Foothills and Peoria Unified effects on a child’s education, with students School Districts, along with other school unable to meet attendance requirements to districts across Arizona, follow the same advance to the next grade level.

Arizona Department of Health Services “This policy will lead to entire classrooms guidelines for quarantine and isolation, of students under 12 being kept at home which states fully vaccinated individufor nearly two weeks at a time and potenals are not required to quarantine and tially on multiple occasions with no way to quarantine can vary from seven to 14 days make up for that lost learning time,” wrote depending on various factors, like whethHarrier. er the person is symptomatic or lives in In a letter responding to Ducey’s office, a congregate setting. School districts like John Richardson of the DeConcini, McTucson Unified and Marana Unified referDonald, Yetwin, and Lacy law firm said the ence the ADHS isolation and quarantine statutes referenced in Harrier’s letter do not guidance. Other districts, like Chandler apply to the school districts’ COVID-19 isoand Gilbert, follow the Maricopa County lation policies, nor do they restrict districts Department of Public Health guidelines, from following guidance from federal, state which along with ADHS state fully vacand local public health authorities. cinated individuals are not required to

CURRENTS

QUARANTINE CONUNDRUM

not require vaccinations in compliance with recently signed statute.

The Arizona Department of Health Services had not responded as of deadline regarding whether officials will update their own guidelines to match Ducey’s position on the statute.

On Friday, July 16, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry sent a letter to Pima County school districts assuring them of the support from the county and health department.

Huckelberry said in his letter that Pima County had “independent statutory authority and the responsibility to take such actions as required to protect the community from infectious disease.” Further, the county could go before a court to request an “enforceable order of quarantine” if necessary.

“Please be assured that Pima County and our Health Department remain committed to you and all our schools as you work to maintain a safe and healthy school environment,” said Huckelberry.

“Now more than ever, as the delta variant comes into this community, it is critical that we continue to work as a team to ensure the health of all of Pima County.” ■

JULY 22, 2021

CURRENTS

PHOTO BY MATHIAS APPEL, FLICKR. / ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL 2.0 GENERIC

The African Wild Dog days of summer are here.

STAR POWER

Reid Park Zoo’s Summer Safari Nights celebrate the Dog Days

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com THE NIGHT SKY HAS SERVED humankind in everything from navigation to inspiration since long before writing existed. As we move through the warm “dog days” of summer, the Reid Park Zoo is continuing their Summer Safari Nights series by showcasing their exotic canines and animals that rely on the night sky.

The dog days run from the beginning of July through mid-August, and right in the middle, the Reid Park Zoo is hosting their “Dog Days and Astronomy Summer” special on Saturday, July 24.

The centerpiece for the dog days event are the zoo’s four African wild dogs, also called painted dogs, which bear striking coats and are known for their successful pack hunting. The Reid Park Zoo’s four African wild dogs were born in the Oregon Zoo. Originally a litter of 12, the new breed meant the Oregon Zoo then had 15 wild dogs, and they asked fellow zoos if they’d like to take some, which the Reid Park Zoo happily accepted in November 2020.

“Their social dynamics are one of the most interesting parts,” zookeeper Hannah Carbonneau said. “I have

worked with some primates, so I’m really interested in animals that have unique group dynamics. It’s interesting to go in and help foster those relationships… They are considered hyper-social, so the most reinforcing and rewarding thing for them is each other. Even wolves will disperse their packs sometimes. But the [African dogs] really don’t break apart, and if they do, they are very rarely accepted into other packs.”

According to Carbonneau, the zookeepers gave the dogs a few days to explore their new surroundings at Reid Park Zoo. The dogs did some calling for their old pack, but once they realized it was just the four of them, they settled down and sorted out the new alpha. The dogs also got used to the keepers, their new habitat, and where they felt comfortable in their new enclosure.

“Wolves and dogs have eyebrow movement and more facial expressions, but these don’t have as many, and researchers think it’s because they don’t need to reunite as much. Their social hierarchy is kind of set, and that’s that,” Carbonneau said. “So we’re constantly making sure they’re happy and getting along. Fights do happen sometimes, but that’s normal.”

Despite some of these unique traits,

the African dogs do behave similarly to domestic dogs a fair amount of the time. They play, thrash around on their backs, enjoy tearing up sticks and are always interested in poop. (So much so that Carbonneau even knows their preferred hierarchy: first rhino droppings, then elephant, then zebra.)

Also featured during the dog days Summer Safari Night is the giant anteater, featured in the Reid Park Zoo’s logo. Giant anteaters are not canids, but do use the light from the night sky for navigation. Also known as ant bears, the anteaters are mostly nocturnal due to their insect-eating habits, but it may also be in response to human disturbances.

During Summer Safari Nights, Reid Park Zoo staff also discusses conservation and sustainability of their highlighted animals. Due to giant anteaters’ nighttime navigation, light pollution is a concern. But more than that, giant anteaters suffer major losses in Brazil, becoming some of the most common roadkill in the country.

The zoo is also using the time to show off their reptiles, including skinks and bearded dragons. During the event, zookeepers will set up different display areas throughout the park

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for closer animal encounters. While Tucsonans are no stranger to reptiles, the zoo’s blue-tongued skinks are much larger than most lizards you’ll find in the Sonoran Desert.

“A lot of reptiles have desert adaptations, like the bearded dragon, even though they’re adapted for deserts on the opposite side of the world,” said lead keeper Katie Hutchinson. “Reptiles are great at water conservation themselves. So I think we can learn a lot from them, especially during the monsoon, about how to use our water resources properly.”

Summer Safari Nights takes place every Saturday evening through Aug. 14 at the Reid Park Zoo. The events include live music, recreational activities, food and drinks, and wildlife activities.

Live music for this upcoming installation will be performed by Jamie’s Gang, and the zoo will also host astronomy activities. For more information, visit reidparkzoo.org/event/summer-safari-nights-2021. ■ This article is the last in a series of three detailing the Reid Park Zoo animals highlighted at the Summer Safari Nights event series.

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CURRENTS

Rise of the Prospects Saturday July 31 Tickets: $40 Ages: 7+ Doors: 4pm First Match: 5pm

Tickets available at risecombatsports.com and ticketmaster.com For more information, check out risecombatsports.com

the pandemic because the weight class is at 115 [pounds] and it’s hard to find guys at that weight. I think that’s why it held on because these guys want to fight and there’s not many options.”

COURTESY RISE OF THE PROSPECTS A jaw-dropping moment from Rise of the Prospects 9.

Richardson said Rise of the Prospects 10 will feature 20 Muay Thai match-ups in numerous weight classes and six title fights. The fighters featured at this season’s event are coming from Muay Thai academies across Southern Arizona, After being postponed for more than a year due to COVID-19 restrictions, Tucson’s premier Phoenix and California. While the event Muay Thai event returns to the Rialto Theatre typically hosts Brazilian jiu-jitsu bouts, the promoter said they decided to keep ROP 10 strictly for Muay Thai fighters. happened but he didn’t make it to the

By Austin Counts “Right now the jiu-jitsu events are last fight,” Hermosillo said.

“I fought tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com really oversaturated because there is so there and unfortunately I lost. But the much going on these days,” Richardson promoter called me an hour after and TUCSON MMA FIGHTER JESUS “EL said ‘Keep your head up because we said. “I decided for this one show we Toro” Hermosillo has been lying in wait want you to fight Flores in July.’” would drop Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but we to face his opponent in the squared are going to bring it back for our next Rise of the Prospects 10 returns to circle for the past 19 months. the Rialto Theatre on Saturday, July 31, show.”

The 22-year-old trained for months Organizing an amatuer Muay Thai making it the venue’s first in-person leading up to his bout with Phoenix event differs from setting up an amatuer event since shuttering in 2020. Herboxer Paul Flores in what would be both mosillo vs. Flores is the only surviving Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament because fighter’s first Muay Thai match at Rise matchup from the original fight card to the latter combat sport doesn’t need to Combat Sports triannual event, Rise of return for this event, said promoter and be approved by a sanctioning body like the Prospects 10. However, the Rialto event matchmaker Jen Richardson. She Muay Thai does, said Richardson. The Theatre was forced to cancel Rise of the and her husband, UFC veteran Chris approval process can be very lengthy Prospects 10—and all future events—as Cariaso, own both Rise Combat Sports because each fighter must meet nuthe pandemic swept across the globe in locations in Tucson and San Francisco. merous requirements before the United March 2020.

The couple started Rise of the Prospects States Muay Thai Association will The super featherweight fighters were in 2017 to help unite local Brazilian consider each match associated with the supposed to meet again at a Muay Thai Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai communities event. tournament in Phoenix a few months “Everyone needs blood work and throughout the Southwest, she said. ago after Gov. Doug Ducey lifted all “We’ve got a ton of fighters returning everyone needs a physical before every of the state’s pandemic restrictions in who were scheduled to fight at that last match can be approved by the athletic March, but Hermosillo said Flores was commission. It isn’t just me deciding event. But, there’s also a lot who either unable to make it. who gets in or not,” Richardson said. moved or are not training right now,” “Paul Flores has been on my mind “The Muay Thai community is hungry Richardson said. “[Hermosillo versus since January 2020. I’m not sure what Flores] was the only fight that survived to fight and there aren’t many events

POST-PANDEMIC PROSPECTS

around here. So many people are wanting to fight after the pandemic and we couldn’t do it all. It kinda made my jiu-jitsu people mad at me because they love the show, but we promise to bring it [Brazilian jiu-jitsu] back.”

Similar to kickboxing, Muay Thai incorporates elements of traditional boxing with leg strikes. However, Muay Thai takes things a step further by allowing strikes from elbows, knees and shins, in addition to punches and kicks.

The combat sport is known to be one of the most brutal martial arts a fighter can practice and a common style used in modern MMA fights.

Ever since his youth, Hermosillo said he knew he wanted to be an MMA fighter. He fought his first MMA match when he was 12 years old and studied wrestling as well as jiu-jitsu throughout middle school and high school, he said.

Two years ago, the young fighter began training in Muay Thai at Rise Combat Sports and he said the experience has taken his fighting to another level.

“After I graduated high school, I knew it was time to fight. I always wanted to train at Rise because it’s one of the best gyms in town,” Hermosillo said. “Coach Chris Cariaso fought in the UFC at the highest level and he’s also a smaller guy around my weight class. I knew I could learn a lot from him.”

Now that his match with Phoenix’s Flores is back on, Hermosillo said he’s more physically and mentally prepared for this fight than ever before. Lately, he has been sparring with UFC bantamweight fighter Casey Kenney and a list of other local badasses to be ready for his dance with Flores on July 31.

While his Muay Thai record sits at 0-1, Hermosillo said getting those firstmatch jitters out of his system while gaining valuable fight experience will serve him well later this month, he said.

“I’m glad this fight is finally going to happen. My opponent, Paul Flores, comes from another high-level gym in Phoenix and I know he’ll be down to scrap,” Hermosillo said. “I promise our fight will be the fight of the night. Flores is the kind that will stand in the middle and throw punches with you and ask anyone at the gym...I’m that one.” ■

JULY 22, 2021

CURRENTS

specifically who is paying for and financing this legislative activity as well as precisely how much is being paid are subject to” the public record law, Judge Michael Kemp wrote in a ruling filed Thursday.

Fann has insisted since the beginning of the audit that the goal is not to overCongressional Democrats Want Answers About Arizona’s turn the results of the election, which Probe of Maricopa County 2020 Ballots Trump is pushing for, but to assure Arizona voters that they can be confident in the state’s ability to carry out elections.

House Oversight and Reform SubcomBy Brooke Newman At a meeting Thursday with Fann and mittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liber- Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, Logan Cronkite News ties said it has “serious doubts” about said his company has finished its review Cyber Ninjas’ work on the project. of more than 2 million ballots but still ARIZONA DEMOCRATS CALLED ON “The committee is seeking to deneeds information from county officials Attorney General Mark Brnovich to termine whether the privately funded before it can file a “complete forensic investigate the state Senate’s audit audit conducted by your company in audit report.” of Maricopa County election returns, Arizona protects the right to vote or But Democrats said they do not expect which they said Friday is little more is instead an effort to promote baseto see a complete report any time soon than a “sham audit” disguising a series less conspiracy theories, undermine on an audit that is merely intended “to of politically motivated attacks. confidence in America’s elections, and undermine our democracy.”

Their demands come as a congresreverse the result of a free and fair “Make no mistake, this (the audit) was a sional panel has launched its own election for partisan gain,” the subcom- unilateral decision from Sen. Fann,” Rios investigation into Cyber Ninjas, the mittee said in a letter to Logan. said. “Democrats were not willing to be a private firm that was contracted to do That letter cited a litany of comparty to this circus sideshow.” the audit that is still ongoing after six plaints about the auditors and the auOne way to end that sideshow, Terán months. dit. Those include claims that the firm said, is for Brnovich to get involved.

A House Oversight subcommittee has no experience with election law or “Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday gave Cyber Ninjas two election audits, that its “sloppy” procehas a duty to Arizonans and Maricopa weeks to produce documents showing dures have failed to secure ballots or their experience, their policies, how voting machines, and that its “embrace they are paid and what communication of election conspiracy theories” brings SORENSEN they had, if any, with former President into question its “ability to lead imparDonald Trump, who has insisted on tial work related to the election.” audits like Arizona’s.

The letter asked Logan to provide a State Democrats welcomed the feder- laundry list of documentation by July al probe, which they hoped would spur 28, identifying Cyber Ninjas’ owners, Brnovich to do the same. listing its previous election-related “Unless he (Brnovich) agrees to inclients and disclosing any communivestigate, there is no other conclusion cation with Trump, his campaign or we can draw upon, other than that he officials in his administration. The letdoesn’t care about Trump’s reported ter also asks for documents regarding election interference,” Arizona Senate negotiations with Senate leaders on the Minority Leader Rebecca Rios said audit contract and records of funding Friday. sources and payments for the work, Rios was joined by House Minority among other items.

Leader Reginald Bolding and Arizona Many of those records are also being Democratic Party Chair Raquel Terán sought in a lawsuit filed by government at a news conference in which they said watchdog American Oversight CommitBrnovich needs to take action immedi- tee against Arizona Senate President Karately to stop the “illegal behavior” they en Fann, who has spearheaded the audit said has been seen in the audit. effort. A Maricopa County Superior Court Requests for comment from both judge this week rejected Fann’s claim that Brnovich and Cyber Ninjas were not the records were not subject to the state’s immediately returned Friday. But in a public records law as long as they are in meeting Thursday with Senate Repub- the custody of Cyber Ninjas, which is a licans, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan private firm. defended his company’s performance “All documents and communications in the audit, now six months old, and relating to the planning and execution said its operations have been transpar- of the audit, all policies and procedures ent throughout. being used by the agents of the Senate That meeting came one day after the Defendants, and all records disclosing

BUT WHO’S COUNTING?

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County voters to ensure that there is an investigation,” but has not responded to written requests to investigate, Terán said.

“Brnovich claims he is someone who will hold Republicans and Democrats accountable,” she said. “Right now that theory is being put to test.”

In Washington, Arizona Republican Reps. Andy Biggs of Gilbert and Paul Gosar of Prescott, both members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, did not respond to requests for comment on the subcommittee probe.

But Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, applauded the committee’s investigation.

“The facts are clear, Joe Biden won Arizona’s Electoral College votes, and no sham process will change that,” Grijalva said in a prepared statement. “The House Oversight Committee will confirm this ‘audit’ for what it is: A shameful attempt by Arizona Republicans to overturn the votes of Arizona citizens and undermine faith in our elections.” ■ For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

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PHOTO BY EMMA BROCATO

BOUNCING BACK FROM THE BIGHORN FIRE As Mount Lemmon recovers, residents discuss strategies to reduce future risks

Fire is inevitable and a long-term fixture of the landscape. The Santa Catalina Mountains typically experience fires every two to 10 years, the THE SUMMER OF 2020 WAS HOT, majority of which are low-severity surface fires. The Bighorn Fire ended even for Tucson. But even hotter up re-burning some areas that had were the flames hungrily advancing burned in previous fires. through the landscape of the Santa Michael Stanley is a 40-year resident Catalina Mountains overlooking the of Mount Lemmon and the president city. The Bighorn Fire, named for the of the Homeowners’ Association mountain on which it was ignited by chapter. He also works as manager of a lightning strike, burned for several the Mount Lemmon Water District, weeks. By the time it was fully constaying behind during wildfires to suptained, it had scorched no less than 119,978 acres. ply water to the firefighters.

It was not, however, this mountain “We were definitely on edge and range’s first tango with wildfires—nor knew that we were in the fire’s path will it be the last. even though we thought that it could “Just during this 20-year period, be controlled down at the bottom there’s been a lot of fire activity in the area,” Stanley said.

Catalinas,” says Professor Donald Falk, In a frightening surprise, the Bigwho serves as chair of Global Ecology horn Fire ended up also threatening & Management in the University of the suburban Catalina Foothills.

Arizona’s School of Natural ResourcResidents of the Foothills experienced evacuation orders, as did those of es and the Environment, with joint Summerhaven. appointments in the Laboratory of Summerhaven, the community on Tree-Ring Research and the Institute Mount Lemmon’s summit, is a place of the Environment.

By Emma Brocato tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

where Tucsonans escape the stifling heat. Tami Arthur, a massage therapist, has owned a house there for six years. Her home is a cozy log cabin that was built with wood reclaimed from a Montana forest fire. Sturdy beams support the roof, and a large window behind her lets in a generous wash of mountain sunlight. Her face is framed by her ponytail, glasses and welcoming smile.

“It’s cold up here, but the cold goes away fast. The snow goes away fast because we’re still in Arizona!” Arthur says with a laugh. Confidently, she asserts that the snow doesn’t bother her.

She is one of a few dozen full-time residents, who had some indication in June of 2020 that something was a bit “off” in their beloved home. Smoke had been detectable for nearly two weeks, and their lives were about to face a brutal interruption by a force of nature all too familiar to the mountain dwellers: a wildfire was approaching— fast.

“They said it was potential to be very, very scary and bad,” said Arthur,

recalling pre-evacuation communications from firefighters. She had already received some preliminary information about the wildfire, and wasted no time preparing for the imminent evacuation notice. She had already begun packing her things, including photographs and other items of sentimental value.

Although Arthur’s home and Summerhaven were both spared, the Bighorn Fire’s damage to the surrounding land is still visible. Trees are blackened at the bottom of their trunks, showing where the flames were able to reach. Dry pine needles hang limply from their branches, taking on a sickly orange hue. A few stray, charred stumps litter the forest floor. In spots that were perhaps hit the hardest, it appears that chunks of the forest are simply missing.

“The sad part is, coming up the mountain, you see the burned areas and the trees,” Arthur said.

The Bighorn’s flames licked at other aspects of the community as well.

Residents were temporarily displaced

JULY 22, 2021

from their homes. Evacuations and other safety restrictions kept visitors from patronizing Summerhaven’s small businesses. Arthur recalled being away from her home for over a month while staying with friends, and described the economic impact, stating simply “There was no money flowing for the longest time up here, because of the fire.”

But these disruptions wouldn’t have the last word. The people of Mount Lemmon wield a fierce devotion to their community that can’t be stopped—even by Mother Nature herself. During the Bighorn Fire, they worked together to take care of residents, pets and homes. Arthur described herself and her fellow community members as stubborn people who wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, in spite of the perpetual threat of wildfire.

“I love it up here,” Arthur said. “I love the people up here. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

This impressive community spirit, in fact, has largely been credited with saving the structures on top of Mount Lemmon during the Bighorn Fire through educational programming on wildfire safety measures. Thorough preventative measures and community involvement were both key in preventing the Bighorn Fire from destroying any buildings.

Stanley expressed gratitude for the preventative work done by his fellow residents.

“One of the things that’s really helped us out as a community is our Firewise program,” he said, explaining that the program has helped their

community to become more “wildfire resistant.”

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the Firewise USA program empowers neighbors to improve their homes’ “ignition resistance.” In the Mount Lemmon community, this is accomplished through educational programming that encourages residents to clear their houses’ perimeters of anything that could serve as wildfire fuel, such as pine needles and dead branches.

The program also utilizes Firewise “captains,” who are trained to assess neighbors’ cabins according to Firewise principles.

Sally Crum serves as Firewise Chairperson for Mount Lemmon. For the past three years, she has taken an active role in educating her neighbors, and certainly has no shortage of stories to tell. Her husband, Lou Crum, is a volunteer firefighter with the Mount Lemmon Fire District.

He credits the community’s Firewise efforts, led by his wife, with saving its structures from being burned in the Bighorn Fire.

The Mount Lemmon community’s Firewise efforts were even recognized publicly by Gov. Doug Ducey and Kerwin Dewberry, the Coronado Forest supervisor. During an official press conference, the two men praised the Firewise work done by community members over several years, saying it helped allow authorities to save the structures.

Sally and Lou Crum, who have both contributed to Mount Lemmon’s fire prevention efforts, described the importance of what’s known as “defen-

sible space” around cabins. Another important practice is to remove what the locals call “slash,” or dry, dead plant matter, such as branches, that gets pruned from around people’s houses in order to prevent the fire from reaching them.

For several of Mount Lemmon’s residents, the success in saving the community from Bighorn brings to mind another historic fire, the effects of which were far more devastating.

In the Aspen Fire of 2003, the town of Summerhaven was almost completely destroyed.

According to Arthur, 95 percent of Summerhaven burned to the ground in the Aspen Fire. Only a small handful of buildings survived, including the log cabin she now owns.

Stanley recalls driving up to see that his house was entirely gone.

Sally and Lou remember attending community meetings at Sabino High School to receive updates throughout the course of the Aspen Fire. At one point, the Forest Service couldn’t even tell them which cabins had been burned due to the fire’s continuing

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

9

ferocity.

“It was just a long, scary time,” Sally recounted.

One of the main differences between the Aspen Fire and the Bighorn Fire was that the Bighorn Fire was more manageable, and firefighters were able to “stay ahead of it” while carrying out mitigation efforts. The Aspen Fire, on the other hand, was too powerful to be managed this way and caused unbelievable damage.

During the Aspen Fire, the flames ate through so much fuel that they were able to climb to the tops of trees. This phenomenon is known as a “crown fire,” when a wildfire burns among the treetops.

“It just looked like a warzone. I mean, there was nothing left. Everything was just burned to the ground,” Sally Crum recalled, pausing for a long time.

What the Aspen and Bighorn Fires had in common, however, was that the Mount Lemmon community came together to help one another CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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JULY 22, 2021

BOUNCING BACK

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

out during a state of crisis. Neighbors participated in community Zoom calls during the Bighorn Fire. Community members reached out to offer shelter, take care of pets and much more.

Stanley remembers how the generosity of his fellow community members saved his water company after he lost some customers due to the Aspen Fire. Some people whose homes were destroyed in the fire voluntarily continued to pay their water bills as a way to support the company.

“So they were able to literally keep us afloat as a water system,” Stanley said.

Firewise efforts have expanded since the Aspen Fire, giving hope for the program’s future in light of its contribution to the mitigation of the Bighorn Fire.

Some cabins that had been “firewised” ended up surviving the Aspen Fire, which prompted an increase in the program’s participation. Program leaders urged residents to create defensible space around their cabins to help mitigate the fires that they learned are inevitable. Sally Crum anticipates even more participation in this year’s program.

Another significant development has been a shift in the overall philosophy of fire ecology.

“For a hundred years, their firefighting was all suppression,” said Lou Crum, explaining that views are now evolving to involve more prevention.

Prevention entails fuel reduction so that future, inevitable fires won’t be as massive. This effect can be accomplished by allowing fires to burn at a manageable level, rather than stopping them entirely. Falk, with the University of Arizona, describes fire suppression as a dilemma, explaining that biomass accumulates every year a fire doesn’t occur. It is necessary to suppress some fires that might risk human safety or cause ecological damage.

“But if that’s our only strategy, which it was for many decades,” Falk says, “it paints us into the corner we’re

in now.”

Efforts are now more focused on working with fire in a healthy way to prevent catastrophic damage, rather than suppressing fire altogether.

But this is only the beginning. The challenge now is to ramp up these preventative measures while we still have time. Because the Bighorn Fire reduced the forest’s fuel load, a buffer of time was created, which will allow for some land management work to get done. But this buffer won’t last forever.

“We need the funding and the personnel and the planning to get to work on creating healthier forests,” said Sally Crum, stressing that the urgency of the situation is constrained by the often slower speed of government operations.

Sally Crum works with grants and with government entities to help propel this objective. Both Sally and Lou Crum emphasized that funding is an essential part of the equation. They hope to obtain the resources needed, but are concerned about the bureaucratic obstacles that stand in the way.

“We just need more money!” Sally Crum said with a laugh.

As a resident and business owner, Arthur’s biggest concern about fire ecology’s future is the carelessness of many visitors, especially with regards to cigarette butts and campfires. She expressed her wish that visitors would be more courteous to Mount Lemmon residents with their actions.

“You know, outside Summerhaven on the trails, it’s everybody’s. It belongs to all of us,” she said. “But we’re all responsible for keeping it safe.”

Although fire has caused both heartache and destruction in the Mount Lemmon community, it has also been an opportunity to learn.

“And again, the Aspen Fire was catastrophic, but it’s kinda like history,” Stanley said. “You can’t change it, I mean you just have to learn to live within those bounds and be able to make it better each time that something catastrophic happens.” ■

GREEN AGAIN

Mount Lemmon recovering from Bighorn Fire

PHOTO BY JEFF GARDNER

While Mount Lemmon is recovering from the Bighorn Fire, large sections of the burn scar remain, which can increase the severity of flash floods during the monsoon.

By Rae Johnson Cronkite News IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE THE Bighorn Fire blackened broad swaths of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. Now, a recent tour of Catalina State Park and Mount Lemmon reveals sprigs of new growth peeking through the forest floor.

Wildlife, including bighorn sheep, are returning. Life in Summerhaven, a tiny community near the summit of Mount Lemmon, has returned to normal.

But at a time when more than 20 wildfires are burning across droughtwracked Arizona, the memory of – and respect for – fire is never far away.

“The mountain was lit up like the Fourth of July, and it was very startling to many people – scary, in fact,” Mark Hart, public information officer for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, recalled on the news media tour.

The fire began June 5, 2020, after lightning struck the Pusch Ridge Wilderness. It burned for 48 days, growing

into one of the biggest fires in Arizona history at nearly 120,000 acres.

Residents of the Southwest are intimately familiar with the devastating effects of fire on homes and businesses, but Hart said wildlife in the rugged Catalina range can benefit from such events as the Bighorn Fire.

“It clears dense vegetation, promotes new growth and, indeed, can alter the landscape in many positive ways,” he said.

Wildlife has returned to the mountains, Hart said, including the population of bighorn sheep.

“We have seen abundant deer on the mountain,” he said. “The mountain lion population is healthy as ever. So those are indicators to us that, other than the burnt landscape, that the ecosystem is functioning as it should.”

Winding along the Catalina Highway up Mount Lemmon’s southern flank, saguaros give way to ponderosa pines as the elevation increases.

“Many people will remember this location as where the fire blew up, burning with extremely high intensity,” Hart said, referring to the 12 square miles of the Mount Lemmon Fire District.

Russell Benford, the hazardous fuels

JULY 22, 2021

program manager at the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, said burn areas are “almost entirely dependent on rain” to recover. But too much rain, he said, can increase the risk of flooding and mudslides.

Precipitation also affects how much flammable vegetation is allowed to grow in a given season, Benford said.

The mountain saw a wet spring this year, encouraging the growth of many non-native grasses and small flowering plants that created enormous fuel for fires when they dried out. Native plant species, however, have adapted to grow “with very little rain,” Benford said.

“Even small sprinkles, a light monsoon season, could help bring back the native plants that are less prone to burn catastrophically,” he said.

As plant life returns to normal, so does the unincorporated community of Summerhaven, near the 9,157foot summit of Mount Lemmon. Residents, Benford said, have been involved in wildfire safety and recovery through the Firewise initiative, a nationwide effort to help communities reduce wildfire risk.

Working with programs like Firewise allows towns to “create a community that is mindful of the risk that is around them … and to do something proactive about it,” he said.

Firewise aims to “create conditions that reduce wildfire intensity in communities and neighborhoods and to prevent home ignitions” by teaching people about defensible and survivable space, which are meant to create space between homes and potential damage from wildfire.

Wildfires are “no stranger to this mountain,”

Benford said.

In 2003, the Aspen Fire burned for almost a month and destroyed 340 homes and businesses in Summerhaven. The memory of that fire lingers for April Hudgens, supervisor at the Cookie Cabin, a rustic building near the end of the town’s unlighted main street.

“A lot of our cabins burned down … we were nervous that was going to happen again” last summer, she said.

Hudgens was among those evacuated during the Bighorn Fire. At the time, residents couldn’t access the mountain and weren’t sure they’d have anything to come back to, she said.

“Residents and employees all took it day-by-day when the fire was going,” she said.

Summerhaven’s residents, about 40 people and some commuters, supported each other emotionally during their evacuation, Hudgens said.

“Everyone was talking to each other and keeping tabs on each other when the fire was going and we weren’t able to see each other every day,” she said.

Fortunately, the Bighorn Fire didn’t destroy any homes or businesses in Summerhaven. Hudgens said it was “amazing” to return to homes and businesses after evacuations were lifted.

The Bighorn Fire was officially contained on July 23 after burning nearly 120,000 acres through the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was just one of a string of blazes in one of the worst fire seasons in the state, burning nearly 1 million acres.

Fires this year have been active. More than 20 wildfires have burned across the state since spring, and officials

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 11

predict 2021 will have above-normal activity. However, recent rainfall has allowed officials to reopen the Coconino and Kaibab national forests after closures due to hazardous fire conditions. ■ For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

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JULY 22, 2021

value at the time of year when we’re all hurting the most and giving our guests a reason to come out to dinner on the hottest of days and nights,” said Flores.

Taking center stage on this year’s summer menu is shrimp, sourced from sustainable farms and served in three dishes that showcase the restaurant’s creativity with camarones.

The Shrimp Poblano Enchilada Elegante features grilled shrimp, peppers, and bacon in twice-rolled corn tortillas, baked in a poblano crema with queso Oaxaca, avocado salsa, and marinated pink onion. Flores notes that this is “meatier and thicker” than the restaurant’s standard enchilada.

Those grilled shrimp and peppers also anchor the Fajita Lettuce Cups, COURTESY PHOTO with queso cotija, chipotle crema, avoEl Charro’s mojo de ajo shrimp tamal. cado salsa and a margarita lime vinaigrette. This dish has reportedly been popular with guests who’ve adopted low-carb and keto nutritional lifestyles.

Third in the summer menu lineup is the Mojo de Ajo Shrimp Tamal, a handEl Charro’s summer shrimp offer a jumbo bargain made corn tamal topped with grilled garlic chimichurri shrimp, tomatillo sauce and queso Oaxaca. Flores prefers probably chew tobacco, spit in a spitBy Matt Russell his tamales with toppers, and he sugtucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com toon and come back and make your gests the shrimp and sauce on this dish meal,” said Ray Flores, Flinn’s great, is an epicurean expression of awesome. great nephew and president of Flores With each of these dishes priced unACCORDING TO HER GREAT, GREAT Concepts which owns and operates El der $10, this menu, which runs through nephew, Monica Flinn likely spent the Charro Café. “But at the end of the day Aug. 15, makes surviving the summer a first summer at her new El Charro Café she was all about service, to her family, little easier. making pots of stew and tortillas to feed extended family and community.”

Flores has also introduced four signalocal construction workers. That was 99 It’s in that spirit that El Charro reveals ture summer margaritas, for less than $6 years ago, and summer survival contin- its summer menu that Flores says is a each, which include mango and jalapeues to be the hallmark of the season at symbol of survival. no, coconut and pineapple, watermelon each of El Charro’s Tucson locations.

“Our summer menu is kind of like a and mint, and tamarind and citrus “Tia Monica was a fierce and feisty summer survival guide, providing extra varieties. frontier woman, someone who could

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When asked which of these cocktails would appeal most to Tia Monica, Flores replied honestly. “Probably none of them,” he said. “She was a woman who preferred to drink martinis out of teacups.”

Summer is also being celebrated at Flores’ other local restaurants, Charro Steak & Del Rey and Charro Vida, with upgraded happy hours. “Coming out of the pandemic and moving into the summer, we really wanted to have a strong happy hour, so all of our stores have focused on greater and bigger offerings.”

I’ll drink to that.

“The fact that we’ve made it through 99 summers, or even one summer at all, is a testament to a restaurant’s grit,” said Flores. “Tucson has its own challenges every summer that we as businesses endure, and we know that being all in it together is what helps us get through.”

Togetherness. Family. Service. Guiding principles forged nearly a century ago by a woman who stood out among her contemporaries. Flores’ team appears to feed their community with the same affection that Flinn fed hers – minus the spittoon, of course – and in the brutal months of summer, that’s something from which we can all benefit. ■ Contact Matt Russell, whose day job is CEO of Russell Public Communications, at mrussell@russellpublic.com. Russell is also the publisher of OnTheMenuLive. com as well as the host of the Friday Weekend Watch segment on the “Buckmaster Show on KVOI 1030 AM.

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JULY 22, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

ILLUSTRATION BY MARY EATON, FEATURED ON BACK OF BOOK

COLUMNAR CHARACTERS

New book celebrates the symbolism of saguaros in Arizona and beyond

Bird originally came to Tucson to earn his master’s degree in history at the University of Arizona. Though he first lived here for fewer than two years in the midDRIVING INTO THE SOUTHWEST ’70s, he says he was quickly enthralled from any direction, the first sight of a by the desert landscape and flora, and saguaro cactus waving on the horizon research for this book served as a kind of serves as a “welcome” for Arizona resi“exercise in nostalgia.” dents and tourists alike. But even more “These photos of people posing in the than a welcome sign, the saguaro is an arms of saguaros really suggest to me icon of the American South, even for those a kind of effort to become one with the who don’t know what the Sonoran Desert plant, at one with botany, even at your is or pronounce saguaro with a hard G. own peril,” Bird said. “It’s become a kind of A new book, “In the Arms of Saguaros,” meme or regional identifier that has gone tracks the iconography of the accordinational, and even international.” on-pleated colossi alongside the devel“In the Arms of Saguaros” is published opment of the Arizona territory. At first by the University of Arizona Desert Laboa food source for Native Americans, the saguaros came to be used in art, architec- ratory on Tumamoc Hill. ture, clothing and tourism — but it wasn’t Saguaros are easily recognizable, always that way. What was at first ignored and can be enormous, but do you think

by American developers gradually bethere’s something about their vaguely came critical. humanoid shape that people connect Author William Bird followed the apwith? propriation and influence of the saguaro through decades of American history. “In Well, I always feel like they’re waving the Arms of Saguaros” serves as both a at me. That’s kind of a joke, but in every picture book rife with saguaro imagery, joke there’s an element of the truth. That and a timeline of Arizona’s growth. is always commented upon when people

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13

ally it moves to the center. So politically, it sort of begins as this fraught, problematic symbol for a lot of people… There’s almost a reluctance or “desert denial,” but they really come around to it by the ’50s and are actually creating a botanical landscape for advertising purposes that has no basis in reality. They take a golf course brochure and add in saguaros to the background. I think they recognize people are curious In all your research for the book, what about it. It’s an attraction that is unique to is the most unique saguaro memorabilia the Sonoran Desert. or art you came across?

In your research, did you see any appropriation of the saguaro imagery by I’d have to say the Mary Eaton botanartists outside of the desert or around ical illustration on the back of the book.

That to me is one of the most compelling the world? If so, how was the saguaro things featured in the book. But I also like iconography changed? the more modest things available to anyWell sometimes you’ll even see it one. Like back in the day, the items made reproduced in this country and it’s wrong. by saguaro rib crafters, those are charming and highly collectible… As a museum Or you’ll see the Peruvian apple cactus in decorating magazines and they’ll have person, I’m into the materiality of it. The icon is always there, and people always riff arms that suggest it’s a saguaro. But the on it and make it their own. But my job as ones I have seen are an English T-shirt a curator and author is to find things that with a saguaro outline, that was surprisingly accurate if you’re just trying to show are interesting to look at, and build the someone what a saguaro looks like. There story around that. are others that are completely abstract but I see that you’re the curator emeritus still spot-on, like an artist who had a knit of the political history collection at the stocking over their head with two eyeNational Museum of American History. holes that looks quite dramatic, if impractical. ■ During your research, did you see any fascinating ways the saguaro had politiFor more information, visit tumamoc. cal impacts? arizona.edu/InTheArmsOfSaguaros use it to promote the desert Southwest. It reflects the anthropomorphic moods of humankind. You’ll have ballerinas mimicking saguaros, and everyone who writes about the Southwest poses with a saguaro.

That pose is very telling. And you can’t get close enough to them, clearly, with all the old photos of people climbing in them, hence the title of the book.

Iconography is sort of an accumulative process, like getting on a slow-moving train. So I assumed quite naturally that this process was an arc that went from the lower left, and up in a steady climb. But it’s more like a sawtooth. There was a great effort made around 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair to represent the Arizona territory with saguaros transplanted to the fairgrounds in Chicago… Oddly enough, there were people who complained that was not the appropriate symbol for the territory, because it suggested that was the only thing that could grow in Arizona’s soil.

So if you look through the territory and then state’s iconography, there’s actually a paucity of saguaro imagery. In fact, the state seal today has a dam, a lake, a miner, a cow, but no saguaro… It isn’t until the ’20s or ’30s that you begin to see saguaros on the edge of the brochures, and graduCOURTESY PHOTO

14

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JULY 22, 2021

Pop Cycle Local Love Sale. Three cheers for Pop Cycle, this sweet, beloved little shop, for surviving the pandemic! To thank the community for helping support them through the last year, they’re hosting a big, 20% off sale, storewide! It’s one of their only sales of the year, and the perfect chance to pick up the piece you’ve been eyeing. Or, to (dare I say it) get some very early holiday shopping done. Then you can walk around smugly during the holiday season, telling all of your friends and family about how you started your shopping in JULY. Hooray!

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 24, and Sunday, July 25. Pop Cycle, 422 N. Fourth Ave. The Fourth for North. Happy fourth birthday to the North location of Tap and Bottle! While many 4-year-olds are just learning about concepts like counting and how to use scissors, good ol’ Tap and Bottle has already been serving up brews and local music pretty much since day one. Very much ahead of the curve. Come celebrate with them at this daylong celebration, featuring DJ Polo and Kadetree, Mariachi Tesoro and the Keith Robinson Band. They’ll also have Black Market BBQ onsite for lunch, staff favorites on tap and cupcakes. Because you can’t celebrate a 4-year-old’s birthday without cupcakes, no matter how developmentally ahead they are. Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, July 24. Tap and Bottle North, 7254 N. Oracle Road.

Sunset Yoga at Armory Park. Have you been to one of these pleasant evening yoga sessions yet? It’s worth checking out. Some fresh air, a yoga class by Kyndle Fire, and a group of other people just vibing right along with you? Neat. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a “yoga person,” what are the odds you’re really going to regret trying out a yoga class?

Maybe it’s not your thing, but if you come away feeling just a little bit more peaceful or having broken into just a little bit of a sweat, that doesn’t sound like an evening wasted to us. 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 28. Armory Park, 222 S. Fifth Ave. Free.

Summer Safari Nights. Another Saturday means another evening spent with family at the Reid Park Zoo! This week’s theme is “Dog Days and Astronomy Summer.” Come meet some of the zoo’s newest guests, the pack of African wild dogs, and learn about how they (and other species) are influenced by the stars.

Monsoon Plant Fair. As if this year’s abundant monsoon season isn’t already a gift enough in itself, Native Seeds/SEARCH is upping the ante with this plant sale! Feeling ready to get started with some veggies and herbs? Hoping to spruce up your yard with some wildflowers and landscape plants? You’ll find whatever you need here, all from local growers. Don’t you want to raise a little plant that can enjoy the rain as much as you do? And how fancy would you feel if you could cook with herbs you grew yourself?

Come check it out! See nativeseeds.org/plantfair for a list of tentative plants. 8 a.m. to noon Friday, July 23, and Saturday, July 24. Native Seeds/SEARCH Conservation Center, 3584 E. River Road.

Classic Car Shows at Little Anthony’s Diner. When the day

cools down enough to safely and (somewhat) comfortably venture outside, a car show over at Little Anthony’s is always a good choice for how to spend the evening. Chow down on some classic diner food or on something from the outdoor grill, and check out some beautiful classic cars. The event is hosted by DJ John. Wanna bring a car of your own to show off ? Just come a bit early: Registration is from 5 to 6 p.m. The show is from 6 to 9 p.m.

Saturday, July 24. Little Anthony’s Diner, 7010 E. Broadway Blvd.

Entrance is free.

by Emily Dieckman Movie Night With Cats. Ah to watch a movie while surrounded by lots of adorable kitties, and then to not have to clean up after all the adorable kitties. This is possible with a movie night at El Jefe Cat Lounge! This week, they’re playing ET. Groups of two to three people can reserve their own sofa and couch, and each get a beverage and popcorn included with admission. You can also buy candy and drinks while you’re there, or BYOB and outside food. Truly a lovely way to spend a Saturday night. If this one sells out, just keep an eye out to see which movie they show next (The Secret of Nimh and Jurassic Park are both coming up). 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 24. El Jefe Cat Lounge, 3025 N. Campbell Ave. $30 for two people.

From preparing for the seasons to exhibiting survival behaviors, both humans and animals have been guided by the stars throughout history. Jamie’s Gang is providing the live music, and, as usual, there will be games, wildlife activities and libations. 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, July 24. Reid Park Zoo, 3400 Zoo Court. $10.50 adults, $8.50 seniors, $6.50 kids 2 to 14.

Fold Workshop With X2 Dance Company. This weekend’s installment of MOCA’s summer Autonomous Space programming is focused on the intersection of movement and fashion. Sarah Elizabeth Stanley, the co-director of X2 Dance Collective, will lead this movement workshop with the same theme as the company’s 2019 work, “fold.” The workshop will explore two main questions: How does fast fashion shape our interactions and culture? And how do we express gender identity, sexuality, personality and memory in our fashion choices? Participants are encouraged to bring pieces of clothing to use as props. Workshop is 2 to 6 p.m., and the presentation is from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 24. Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art, 265 S. Church Ave. Free, but register on the MOCA website.

Tucson Sugar Skulls vs. Bismarck Bucks. Our local indoor football league is facing off against this North Dakota team this weekend. Last time, the Bucks beat the Saguaros, so we’ve got to come back at them with more energy than ever. Never seen an indoor football game? Well, heck, you’d better get on it! It’s played in a hockey-sized arena, and has been around since the late 1800s. So you’re behind the times if you haven’t. Root, root, root for the home team by heading over to the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave. 6:05 p.m. Saturday, July 24. $17 to $91+.

HUB A La Road: The Brewery Tour.

A cold beer on a hot summer night in Arizona sure is something special. A cold ice cream on a hot summer night in Arizona is also something special. So this is going to be a fun one. HUB Ice Cream is taking their vintage ice cream truck “a la road” this summer, parking outside local breweries to do pairings with local brews. Flights, tasters and beer floats will abound! This week is Dillinger Brewing Company, and you won’t want to miss it.

6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 28. Dillinger Brewing Company, 3895 N. Oracle Road.

JULY 22, 2021

CINEMA

TROUBLED DIRECTION

COURTESY PHOTO

Joe Bell suffers from some false steps

By Bob Grimm tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

notes, but those times are done in by the confusing Wahlberg performance and some terrible narrative choices, one being a gigantic head scratcher that robs the movie of its effectiveness. The gimmicky plot move damages the film in AN IMPORTANT AND HEART WRENCHING true story leads to a well-intentioned but middling film with its first half, to a point beyond redemption despite some better moments deep into its running time. The “big twist” is a Joe Bell, a “departure” for Mark Wahlberg that results in gut punch to the movie’s momentum. It’s a genuinely bad some of the more uneven work of his career. He’s all over “Oh, come on!” moment that distracts rather than enhances. the place in this movie.

The film establishes that the Joe Bell character is a conThe film is based on the real-life events that led to a man fused and anguished person, but Wahlberg’s performance named Joe Bell (Wahlberg) pledging to walk across the seems lost in the wilderness. His character swings from country in the name of his bullied son, Jadin (Reid Miller). vicious homophobia to humble apologist at unconvincing Jadin is gay, and a victim of harassment and violent abuse at his high school. Joe, a conflicted man in his own right, is speeds. Especially terrible is a scene that requires Joe to determined to do something about the harm being done to get mad at another one of his sons for a toilet seat mishap.

It’s like the writers Googled “things a dad might get mad his boy. about” and just plunked it into the script to give Wahlberg a We first see Joe walking on the highway with Jadin alongside, the son giving the Old Man some good-natured chance to shout.

Another example of odd, misguided storytelling are the guff. Joe is a cranky, irritated sort, with Wahlberg’s work Joe Bell speeches that bracket the film. His first speech is sometimes reminding of Andy Samberg’s whiny rendition an underwhelming, short mess of a time where he’s just glad of the actor during his “Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals” to be done with it and rush off the stage. The point is made sketches on SNL. Joe struggles with his own homophobic that Joe is not good in front of crowds and some of his tendencies, which still come to the surface even as he’s words are insincere. walking across the country with his son to fight homophoAfter that speech, the whole movie leads up to a mobia and bullying. ment (after a late cameo by Gary Sinise) where Joe gets Father and son talk a bit about their pilgrimage, and the mission is a solid one. There are some good scenes between up in front of a high school near film’s end for a new talk.

He starts the speech, a speech that has been set up as his the two, including some flashbacks. The movie works best redemptive moment, and then it just dissolves to another when Wahlberg is dialing it down a bit and Miller gets a scene after a few seconds. I have to think they filmed that chance to shine. Miller is good in the movie despite being saddled with a few scenes that you could swear you’ve seen whole speech. Perhaps they didn’t get a good take of it?

Joe Bell is not a well-made movie, but it is admirable a thousand times before due to lack of originality. in what it is trying to do. While fundamentally unsound That lack of originality is surprising considering the screenplay’s pedigree, written by the team of Larry McMurt- overall, it’s well meaning, it does bring some awareness to an important issue, and it does have solid work from Miller ry and Diana Ossana, the duo responsible for the Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain script. The film is directed by to counter the Wahlberg shortcomings. So, it’s a movie that Renaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men), and he doesn’t I’m glad got made even though I don’t like it. That happens sometimes. ■ have a steady hand, especially when it comes to Wahlberg.

There are times when Joe Bell hits the right emotional

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Rankin said.

Leaving it there would make for a fine Sophia Rankin & The Sound folk album, but a variety of influences Too Close to the Riptide and a full band further develop the Album release show Wednesday, Aug. 18 album’s sound. Eli Leki-Albano (bass and vocals), Connor Rankin (drums and Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. percussion) and Noah Weig-Pickering sophiarankin.com (lead electric and acoustic guitar) form a cohesive sound, and production from Previous albums available on iTunes, Apple local electronic musician Nocturnal Music and Spotify Theory results in a melding of styles.

For instance, “Moon Song” opens with some quiet piano and vocals just comes out in pop or blues or rock. before whirring electronics and proFolk music in its essence is storytelling, grammed drums give the atmosphere whether it be about myself or someone a distinctively modern feel. “Metal and else.”

Wine” dissolves with unexpected bass The songs range from “Starting to Pray,” a deeply personal story about the and a breakdown in the second half, and role of the singer, to “The People I Have “The Fray” opens with some suspenseful lead guitar in a Tejano style that is PHOTO BY TAYLOR NOEL PHOTOGRAPHY Known,” explicitly about others and (Left to right) Eli Leki-Albano (bass and vocals), Connor Rankin (drums and percussion), their moving, if brief, stories. Although replicated and replaced with electric Sophia Rankin (vocals, rhythm acoustic and electric guitar), and Noah Weig-Pickering from opposite perspectives, both tracks guitar. (lead electric and acoustic guitar).

Rankin first collaborated with Noccenter on Rankin’s smooth vocals, turnal Theory on a single “When You’re spiritual delivery and delicate guitar High” in 2020. She enjoyed his producplaying. tion so much, she soon asked if he’d be “During the year of COVID, as we up to work on a full album. so endearingly remember it, I had a “I love that he respected my ideas, friend who passed away from COVID but then put in a lot of himself,” Rankin Sophia Rankin stretches beyond her folk roots on Too Close to the Riptide before he turned 21, and another friend said.

“I wanted him to put his influence who passed away by accident. And I into the songs, but rein it in if it’s too was sitting there thinking that these are stories that need to be told,” Rankin much of him and not enough of me…

So for a track like “Moon Song,” I came

By Jeff Gardner said. “It’s not that you need to know them were started out unfinished, and it jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com to him with just me and a piano, and I where they came from and where they felt like everything was crashing down wanted him to make it not just me and went, but just that they were beautiful around us, and suddenly it felt like I unpeople and I wanted to remember them a piano. And he said ‘I’m going to take derstood them better because of what LIKE MANY OTHER MUSICIANS it and run with it, and you tell me when somehow.” the world was going through.”

Sophia Rankin had more time alone to stop.’”

One such story involved a man who Born and raised in Tucson, Rankin than she knew what to do with in 2020.

Ultimately, she says multiple songs approached Rankin after a performance released her first two solo albums while But rather than spiraling inward, the and asked her if she’d play at his funer- took her out of her comfort zone, espeattending the University of Arizona’s Tucson-based singer/songwriter used cially more synthetic tracks like “Moon al, because hers was the kind of music the isolation as an opportunity to finish School of Music. They’re intimate he’d like to go to heaven to. She was so Song.” However, Rankin says during the half-written songs and tell the stories of recordings similar to the music she’s recording process, she says she learned touched by the sentiment, and when others. The result: Too Close to the Rip- performed at the Tucson Folk Festival. how production can be an artform itself, her friends later passed, she realized The title of her second album, Solace, tide, Rankin’s third album and the first rather than simply capturing the acousshe wanted to sing about other people with a full band. As the title implies, the was thought up as an answer to when tic performance of a folk musician. and what they meant to her. In fact, her mom asked her why she wrote mualbum sees Rankin leaving her folky “But it’s weird saying it’s out of my there were so many stories about other comfort zone and exploring the depths sic. However, with this latest album, recomfort zone, because it also sounds people that for the first time she wrote leased by Sophia Rankin & The Sound, of rock, pop, country and electronic right,” Rankin said. “When I recorded companion songs to thematically link she says she learned how to make her music, all while maintaining a core of my first two albums, I wanted them to the album. music more personal, but not just about poignant storytelling. be something I could replicate live. But “It’s how I knew this was going to be herself.

“When I first started writing the an album and that would be the song to when I was working with him, I realized “I wanted the songs to feel like album, it was just little tidbits of my end the album, because the whole thing I was looking at recording all wrong. I life. And with COVID, you know you’re stories, whether they were first-person was a story about what I went through, was looking at it like a live performance, stuck in your room and the safest place or about someone else. So I think half but recording is a little space where you what my friends went through, what of the album is self-reflective,” Rankin you can go is your own four walls. So these strangers went through, and how get to explore new things, maybe things said. “I sat down and realized I am a immediately I knew the songs needed that you intentionally can’t do live.” ■ we all came out of it at the end,” folk singer through-and-through, but it to be finished,” Rankin said. “A lot of

MUSIC

PULLING AWAY

JULY 22, 2021

TERPENE TEACHINGS UA releases study on the “entourage effect” with an eye to reducing side effects for pain treatment

By David Abbott tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com WHILE CANNABIS REMAINS illegal on a federal level, the push for legalization at the state level has opened the door to more studies of marijuana’s effect.

To that end, the University of Arizona Health Sciences Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center recently released a study of terpenes and the so-called “entourage effect,” showing promise for future treatments that could prove more effective for pain treatment in cancer patients.

The paper, “Cannabis sativa terpenes are cannabimimetic and selectively enhance cannabinoid activity,” was published in Scientific Reports and explores the entourage effect with a study of synthetic terpenes found to mimic cannabinoids, producing a similar pain-relieving effect.

“The basic idea here and what motivated our research is that you have a plant, which is really complicated, but we tend to boil it down to just THC, usually, and then some people will kind of throw CBD in there,” lead researcher John Streicher, PhD said.

“But of course, it’s a complex living

organism. It’s got a lot more than that, so there are lots of different kinds of chemicals.”

The paper, co-authored by former graduate student Justin LaVigne, PhD, former undergraduate researcher Ryan Hecksel and former postdoctoral fellow Attila Kerestztes, PhD, explains that the entourage effect—a concept widely accepted in the cannabis community with detractors in the scientific community—is “hypothesized interactions between various phytocannabinoids and terpenes to produce unique outcomes from either chemical alone.”

“The evidence for the entourage effect is comprised of deductive reasoning arguments, some clinical suggestions, and a few pre-clinical investigations,” the study states. “It remains unclear whether terpenes can influence the activity of cannabinoids, and if they do, whether this modulation is a result of direct influence on cannabinoid receptors … or indirect modulation via other mechanisms.”

Streicher’s research was not only meant to determine the legitimacy of the concept of the entourage effect, but to also delve into interactions between various components of the plant

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 17

with an eye toward future treatments for those suffering from severe pain.

Since federal law creates a convoluted and time-consuming path to the study of marijuana, Streicher and his team focused on synthetic terpenes, which are readily available and do not require the bureaucratic headaches faced in the study of actual cannabis.

Terpenes are the part of the plant that provide pot with its distinctive flavor and aroma. They are also found in other plants and are the basic component in essential oils; the terpene linalool, for example, gives lavender its floral scent.

Additional chemicals in cannabis include the well-known cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the part of the plant that provides the buzz to its users.

Researchers found that terpenes by themselves mimic many effects of cannabinoids, including pain relief, and when combined with cannabiniods, amplified those effects with fewer side effects.

The study tested mice using a synthetic cannabinoid, WIN55,212-2, to CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

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TERPENE TEACHINGS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

reproduce the effects of the chemical compounds in the cannabis plant and saw “a greater reduction in pain sensation compared with either the terpene or WIN55,212-2 alone, demonstrating a terpene/cannabinoid interaction in controlling pain.”

“We wanted to test what the terpenes were doing and start to establish a theoretical basis for the entourage effect as well as investigate terpenes themselves as potentially novel medicinal chemicals,” Streicher said. “We were starting at the most basic levels. When we injected [the terpenes], they looked like cannabinoids, so they had what we call a cannabamimetic effect. They produced the effects of cannabinoids, and we didn’t necessarily expect that to happen.”

Streicher’s ongoing research is focused on the use of terpenes in combination with opioids for treatment of cancer-related pain. He hopes to eventually develop a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment regimen combining terpenes, cannabinoids and opioids, with lower dosage,

increased levels of pain relief and fewer side-effects, such as intoxication or pharmaceutical drug dependency.

“This is the basic idea of synergy, that you take a low dose of two different drugs, combine them together and you get a pain-relieving effect greater than either, but your side effects are not boosted,” he said.

The concept of the entourage effect has gained a foothold in the marketplace. Different brands sold with unique characteristics attributed to the effect are found in every dispensary and are described with phrases such as “body up, head down” or other colorful descriptions of the expected effect.

“It’s been around for awhile,” said Claire Levenberg, director of science operations for the Downtown and D2 dispensaries. “Rick Simpson Oil was the first concentrated extract, and it’s still one that gets asked for a lot at the dispensary for people looking to alleviate some of the pain associated with cancer treatments.”

RSO is a cannabis concentrate high in THC content developed by cannabis innovator Rick Simpson in 2003 to treat cancer symptoms. It has a

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA HEALTH SCIENCES/NOELLE HARO-GOMEZ

John Streicher, PhD, a member of the Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center, said the findings answered some basic science questions that allowed him to advance the research moving forward. “Now, we’re getting into the therapeutic question—what’s a good drug to give to a person to help them control their pain?”

thick, syrupy consistency and can be applied as a topical or ingested in food or drinks. Different forms of it can be found in many products on your local dispensary shelf. It’s also possible to

make at home, but the process is dangerous because it involves toxic fumes and, in some methods, the possibility of explosions.

As cannabis legalization becomes

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more prevalent, more components are being identified in commercial labs across the country, opening more possibilities for expanded entourage effect.

“I think there’s definitely a push to expand the different vectors that are possible for the entourage effect besides flower and Rick Simpson Oil,” Levenberg said. “And I think you’re going to start seeing a push for those products that are a little bit more accessible for all populations.”

While there hasn’t been a lot of clinical study of cannabis due to federal regulations, the public has had to depend on behavioral studies such as this one, which used synthetic material rather than actual cannabis.

As an institution run by its Board of Regents and dependent on federal research funds, UA has to obey the overarching cannabis laws of the land, hence its dearth of cannabis research.

“Terpenes are classified by the FDA as generally regarded as safe: GRAS,” Streicher said “That means you can give it to a human being without having to have it specifically approved by the FDA.” Streicher used synthetics as a work-

around to regulations, but the work he and his team have done has laid the groundwork for future clinical studies, when and if cannabis is deregulated on a national level.

“This isn’t a scientific question, it’s a political question, so we just have to live with it unfortunately,” Streicher said. “So even though it’s legal in Arizona, I still have to get a Schedule I license if I want the plant or if I want THC, which has been frustrating because getting that is a pain.”

Both Streicher and Levenberg are hopeful for the future though, and see legalization— and thus robust scientific discovery—on the horizon.

“I’m glad that they’re trying to decriminalize it so that it makes it a little bit more accessible to the public universities and institutions,” Levenberg said. “I’m super excited to see more studies done clinically to really prove what the possibilities are with it.”

Or as Streicher concludes: “You can’t stop this, it’s growing. Eventually, [prohibition is] going to end my lifetime, it’s going to change at the federal level. ... It’s just a question of how many people have to suffer and how long it’s going to take.” ■

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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): What does it mean to feel real? Some people have a hard time doing that.

They have such false ideas about who they are that they rarely feel real. Others are so distracted by trivial longings that they never have the luxury of settling into the exquisite at-home-ness of feeling real. For those fortunate enough to regularly experience this treasured blessing, feeling real isn’t a vague concept. It’s a vivid sensation of being conscious in one’s body. When we feel real, we respond spontaneously, enjoy playing and exult in the privilege of being alive. After studying your astrological potentials, Aries, I suspect that you now have an enhanced capacity to feel real.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): When she was a child, author Valerie Andrews visited her secret sanctuary at sunset every day for seven years. She lay on the ground among birch trees and aromatic privet plants, feeling “the steady rhythmic heartbeat of the earth” as she basked in the fading light. I’d love for you to enjoy the revitalizing power of such a shrine. The decisions you have to make will become clear as you commune with what Andrews calls “a rootlike umbilicus to the dark core of the land.” Do you know of such a place? If not, I suggest you find or create one.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I suspect that your immediate future will be a patchwork of evocative fragments. You may be both annoyed and entertained by a series of flashing attractions, or an array of pretty baubles, or a hubbub of tasks that all seem at least mildly worth doing. Chances are good that they will ultimately knit together into a crazy-quilt unity; they will weave into a pattern that makes unexpected sense. In the spirit of the spicy variety, I offer three quotes that may not seem useful to you yet, but will soon. 1. “Isn’t it possible that to desire a thing, to truly desire it, is a form of having it?” —Galway Kinnell 2. “It is not half so important to know as to feel.” —Rachel Carson 3.

“Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s

out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.” —Pema Chödrön CANCER (June 21-July 22): A Tumblr blogger named Cece writes, “The fact that you can soak bread in sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla, then butter a pan and fry said bread to make a meal is really liberating.” I agree. And I share this with you in the hope of encouraging you to indulge in other commonplace actions that will make you feel spacious and uninhibited. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll thrive on doing dayto-day details that excite your lust for life. Enjoying the little things to the utmost will be an excellent strategy for success.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo poet Renée Ashley articulates a perspective I recommend you adopt. She writes, “I’m drawn to what flutters nebulously at the edges, at the corner of my eye—just outside my certain sight. I want to share in what I am routinely denied, or only suspect exists. I long for a glimpse of what is beginning to occur.” With her thoughts as inspiration, I advise you to be hungry for what you don’t know and haven’t perceived. Expand your curiosity so that it becomes wildly insatiable in its quest to uncover budding questions and raw truths at the peripheries of your awareness.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person,” declared Virgo actor Greta Garbo (1905–1990). “It is not right that you should tell them,” she concluded. “You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.” I presume Greta was being melodramatic. My attitude is the opposite of hers.

If you find allies who listen well and who respect your vulnerability, you should relish telling them the secrets of your heart. To do so enriches you, deepens you and adds soulful new meanings to your primary mysteries. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to seek this wise pleasure in abundance.

SAVAGE LOVE IN THE STRAIGHTS

By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net

My wife got drunk at a vacation house we rented with a bunch of friends and cheated on me with my best friend in the hot tub. They didn’t have sex but they did other things. I wasn’t there but there were eight other people in the hot tub and the jets were on so no one else saw what was going on “under the water.” My wife told me about it afterward and I was hurt but also kind of excited. She proposed we “even the score” by asking my friend and his wife to have a foursome. They agreed but the experience was miserable. My wife and my friend were very into each other

and my friend’s wife was willing but I was having a hard time enjoying myself with a woman I had no interest in while my wife did things for my best friend that she would never do for me. She let him come in her mouth, which is something she never she lets me do, and she did it right in front of me. Now she says she will do that for me but only if she can keep doing it for him. This seems deeply unfair. We have kids and I don’t want to get divorced but I’m concerned that I’m going to keep getting hurt if I stay. What can I do? I need…

—Help Overcoming Terrible Worries

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Now is a fantastic time to seek out effervescent socializing and convivial gatherings and festive celebrations. If you surround yourself with lively people, you’ll absorb the exact influences you need. May I suggest you host a fun event? If you do, you could send out invitations that include the following allures: “At my get-together, the featured flavors will be strawberry chocolate and impossibly delicious. There’ll be magic vibrations and mysterious mood-enhancers.

Liberating conversations will be strongly encouraged. Unpredictable revelations will be honored. If possible, please unload your fears and anxieties in a random parking lot before arriving.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio author Andrew Sean Greer writes, “As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.” I think that’s a vivid metaphor for one of your chief tasks in the coming weeks, Scorpio: how to carefully nurture delicate, beautiful things as you coax them to ripen in ways that will bring out their sturdiness and resilience. I believe you now have an extra capacity for wielding love to help things bloom.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Suggested experiments to try soon: 1. Remember a past moment when you were touched with the sudden realization that you and a person you’d recently met were destined to fall in love. 2. Remember a past moment when you kissed someone for the first time. 3. Remember a past moment when someone told you they loved you for the first time or when you told someone you loved them for the first time. 4. Allow the feelings from the first three experiments to permeate your life for five days. See through the eyes of the person you were during those previous breakthroughs. Treat the whole world as expansively and expectantly as you did during those times.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn poet Kenneth Rexroth was shirtless as he strolled along a rural road. To his delightful amazement, a fritillary butterfly landed on his shoulder, fluttered

About This Entire Relationship Hm. I’m not convinced events went down as described, HOTWATER, or that your wife went down as described—hell, I’m not convinced your wife exists. There are just too many “unwilling cuckold fantasy” tropes in your letter, HOTWATER, from your wife cheating on you in the most humiliating way possible (with your best friend and in front of other friends), to your wife doing things for another man that she won’t do for you (and doing those things in front of you), to the sexual blackmail your wife is now subjecting you to (she’ll allow you to come in her mouth on the condition that your best friend gets to keep coming in her mouth). And the presence of an

away, landed again, fluttered away—performed this dance numerous times. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Later he wrote, “I feel my flesh / Has suddenly become sweet / With a metamorphosis / Kept secret even from myself.” In the coming days, I’m expecting at least one comparable experience for you. Here’s your homework: What sweet metamorphoses may be underway within you—perhaps not yet having reached your conscious awareness?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Each time we don’t say what we want to say, we’re dying.” Aquarian artist and singer Yoko Ono said that. I will add a further nuance: Each time we’re not aware of the feeling or experience or situation we want, we’re dying. And these will be key themes now that you’ve entered the “I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I KNOW HOW TO ASK FOR IT” phase of your cycle. The most healing and vivifying thing you can do during the next six weeks is to be precise about your desires.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1829, Piscean author Victor Hugo began work on his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He had other projects, though, and by September 1830, he had made scant progress on Hunchback. Growing impatient, his publisher demanded that he finish the manuscript by February 1831. In response, Hugo virtually barricaded himself in his room to compel himself to meet the deadline. He even locked his clothes in a closet to prevent himself from going out. For the next five months, he wore only a gray shawl as he toiled nonstop. His stratagem worked!

I recommend you consider trying a somewhat less rigorous trick to enforce your self-discipline in the coming weeks. There’s no need to barricade yourself in your fortress. But I hope you will have fun taking stringent measures. ■ Homework. Send descriptions of your wildly hopeful dreams for the future. newsletter@freewillastrology.com.

inert-bordering-houseplant best friend (did he have nothing to say to you?) with the equally inert wife (did she have no reaction to being rejected by you?) don’t make your question seem any more credible.

But on the off, off, off chance there is a wife, there was a vacation house, and something happened in a hot tub….

If you can’t make a credible threat of divorce, HOTWATER, then you’re fucked. Your wife wants to dictate terms and set conditions—conditions like you’ll only get X from her (X = coming in her mouth) if she gets to do X with someone else—and if her behavior at that vacation house are any indication, HOTWATER, she’s gonna X around with other guys whether you

JULY 22, 2021

like it not. You can tell her she’s not allowed to do anything like that ever again—you can insist on strict monogamy—but having seen what she’s capable of, under and over the water, will you ever feel comfortable letting your wife out of your sight again? Will you ever be able to leave her alone with your best friend Groot again?

If the thought of your wife cheating turned you on, HOTWATER, you might be able to make this work. And perhaps it does turn you on. You said you were excited when your wife first confessed what she’d done in that hot tub with your best friend, but things went south during the foursome you had to “even the score.” Maybe you don’t want the score to be even? If the thought of a “deeply unfair” one-sided open relationship turns you on—if the thought of getting to come in your wife’s mouth, say, one time for every 10 times your best friend gets to come in her mouth—then you should think about sharing that information with your wife. It could be the start of something big—it could be the start of an invigorating sexual adventure—or it could be the beginning the end.

But seeing as the end seems inevitable anyway… why not go down swinging?

I spent two years with a man I thought I would marry. Then he lost his job in Italy, where we lived, and COVID-19 made it impossible for him to find another job, so he returned to his home country.

I would have done the same if I were in his place. I spent the last five years getting my degree and I’m a woman who is working in my field, and I wouldn’t give that up to follow a man to another country. But his decision to go nevertheless broke my heart. Two months later he changed his mind and wants a future with me in Italy. We decided to meet in August to discuss our future and in the last three weeks we have exchanged so many messages of love. Then, classically, I met someone else. I explained my situation to him—that I’m going on holiday with my ex and that we are talking about getting back together—and he appreciated my honesty and said that enjoying the moment is more important to him than thinking about the future.

A week later we slept together. The problem is that I’m still in love with my ex and I want him to return to Italy and be my boyfriend again. But I can’t erase

my feelings for this new man. This is a difficult situation and it’s hard talk about it, even with my friends. Do you have any suggestions?

—Messy Emotions, Sensitive Situation You and your ex-boyfriend are still exes, which means you’re free to do whatever/whoever you like. Same for your ex, MESS, and for all you know he has dated and/or fucked another girl or girls and those experiences helped him realize you were the one he wanted. If he’s the one you want—and if you, like most people, are only allowed to have one—then you’ll have to end things with Mr. Enjoying The Moment when your ex returns or isn’t your ex anymore, MESS, whichever comes first.

That’s assuming Mr. Moment is still in your life at that point. Mr. Moment could wind up exiting your life just as quickly as he entered it, e.g., he could ghost on you tomorrow, or you could discover something about him next week that dries you up. But even if you ultimately have to end things with Mr. Moment because you’re getting back together with your ex—if you have to end things with Mr. Moment for that reason and no other—you don’t have to erase your feelings. You can be sad about that ending and happy about pickings things back up with your ex at the same time.

And just a little heads up: “Have you been seeing anyone else?” is a question exes often ask each other when they’re thinking about getting back together. You can and should answer that question truthfully, of course, but you don’t have to go into detail. “I briefly dated someone” is an honest answer and enough of an answer. Omitting the part about how you crushed hard on the other guy isn’t dishonest, MESS, it’s considerate. I mean, if it turns out your ex dated someone else that he really, really liked while he was in his home country, would you want him to tell you that?

I’m a straight, cis man in his late twenties and recently met a hot kinky woman my age on a kink/hookup app. We’ve had two meals together and six awesome fucks, all at my place. We’re on the same page about this being casual.

She’s never mentioned anything about being married but I’m pretty sure she’s either married or recently separated.

Instagram and Facebook make it clear

that until at least two months ago there was a husband in her life. I don’t care if she’s single or married or separated, but I wonder if I should mention to her that I’m aware her life is a little more complicated than she’s let on. If there’s a chance she’s stressing about the (possible) deception, I could save her the stress. Do I tell her what I know?

—Knowing Me, Knowing You That hot kinky woman could be cheating on her husband or recently divorced or recently widowed. Whatever’s going on, KMKY, she’s had lots of opportunities to open up to you about her life—six amazingly awesome fucks, two hopefully delicious meals—and she’s chosen not to. Sharing details about your life might inspire her to open up about hers, KMKY, but telling her you’ve been lurking on her social media—particularly if she didn’t share her handles with you—could piss her off. That said, I don’t blame you for checking out her Instagram or Facebook accounts. It’s natural to be curious about the people you’re fucking and it’s weird when people post things to public social media accounts and then get upset when someone they’re fucking—technically a member

Comics

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of the public—sees those posts. But the willingness of a new sex partner to demonstrate that they respect our privacy, maybe even a little more than we respect our own, can go a long way toward establishing trust. And not bringing up what you may have seen on the social media accounts of someone you’ve only recently met or started fucking demonstrates tact.

And finally, KMKY, kink might have something to do with why this woman hasn’t opened up to you about other parts of her life. Some kinky people prefer play partners who don’t know the mundane details of their everyday lives—for some, being known only as a Dom or a sub or an AB or an LG or a no-recip oral cum-dump latex gimp makes it easier to step into their fantasy role. If that’s the case with this woman, KMKY, knowing you know what you know about her—and learning how you came to know it—might wind up disqualifying as a friend and ruining you as a play partner. mail@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage.savagelovecast.com

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