JAN. 8 BRIEFS CONTINUED Luz de Luna, Salvador Duran, the Silver Thread Trio, and Mitzi Cowell and friends featuring Sabra Faulk. The show takes place at 6:30 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 15, at the Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.; $30 to $70; $75 includes a pre-concert reception. The fund was established by Gabrielle Giffords’ district director, Ron Barber. Call 547-3040, or visit foxtucsontheatre.ticketforce.com for more information. To read more about the concert, pick up the Jan. 12 Tucson Weekly. Beowulf Alley Examines Jan. 8 Word Clouds tells a moving story of ordinary and extraordinary responses to the tragedy of Jan. 8, at Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, 11 S. Sixth Ave. Performances are at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Jan. 6 and 7; $12. To read more about Word Clouds, see the Tucson Weekly’s City Week section. Call 882-0555 or visit beowulfalley.org for tickets and more information. Arizona Public Media Airs ‘Together We Heal’ Documentary Together We Heal, a one-hour documentary produced by Arizona Public Media, will air at 8 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 5; and 6 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 8, on KUAT Channel 6. The documentary, narrated by Savannah Guthrie, includes 36 interviews with victims and their families, staffers for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the medical personnel who treated the victims. For more information, visit www.azpm.org. Pima County Dedicates Trailhead in Honor of Zimmerman The Gabe Zimmerman Davidson Canyon Trailhead was slated to be dedicated in a ceremony at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 4. The trailhead— north of Interstate 10 on Marsh Station Road, about a quarter-mile west of Cienega Creek—was renamed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors to honor Zimmerman, an avid hiker and runner who helped to obtain the National Scenic Trail designation for the recently completed 817-mile Arizona Trail. The Arizona Trail Association has been working to add signs, a ramada, paths and tribute areas for Zimmerman and other Jan. 8 victims. For more information, visit www.aztrail.org. Website Launched to Help Tucsonans Mark Jan. 8 Anniversary A new website intended to be a hub for Jan. 8 anniversary information was launched last month. The site, www.rememberingjanuary8.
org, includes a list of events and information on how to volunteer for or donate to various Jan. 8-related causes. Community partners behind the site include the UA; the YWCA of Tucson; Safeway; the Tucson Together Fund; the Fund for Civility, Respect and Understanding; the Community Food Bank; and numerous other organizations. Art Exhibit Focuses on Healing Process, Response to Shootings Healing in Tucson—The Healing Response to the Violence of January 8, 2011, at the University of Arizona Medical Center South Campus’ Behavioral Health Pavilion Gallery, 2800 E. Ajo Way, features works by Southern Arizona artists that focus on the healing process and responses to the Jan. 8 shootings. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday; and 1:30 to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Feb. 26. For more information, call 310-2400. Food Bank Holds Open House for Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, 3003 S. Country Club Road, will open the doors of the new Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center for an open house and tour from 2 to 4 p.m., Friday, Jan. 6. Shortly after the shootings, Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, suggested that well-wishers donate money to the Community Food Bank or the Red Cross; more than $215,000 later, the Family Assistance Center became a reality. “This center is a positive outcome of the Jan. 8 Tucson tragedy,” said Bill Carnegie, the Food Bank’s CEO, in a news release. “Future contributions to the Gabrielle Giffords Hunger Fund will be used to expand the center’s reach into other communities.” For more information or to donate, visit www.communityfoodbank.org. REFLECTIONS: Honoring the lives of the Jan. 8 shooting victims A series of speakers, including Sen. Mark Udall, Patricia Maisch, Judge Raner Collins, Lattie Coor, Andrew Ross and Ron Barber, will reflect on the lives of the six people who died on Jan. 8, the survivors and the citizen heroes who came to their aid after the shootings. The free event is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 8, at UA Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. Tickets can be picked up at the UA Centennial Hall box office, the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona (2250 E. Broadway Blvd.) and the Pima Council on Aging (8467 E. Broadway Blvd.)
JAN. 8: ONE YEAR LATER
NOT IN A VACUUM continued from Page 24 Pima County has made an excellent start with the opening of the Crisis Response Center (www.uph.org/bhpcrc), which is taking thousands of calls a month from people who fear that they, or a relative or friend, are suffering from a serious mental illness. But the state’s leadership has shown no initiative in finding money to take care of nearly 5,000 impoverished and mentally ill citizens cut from the rolls of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. The Legislature found time to name an official state firearm, but did nothing to impede the sale of the extended-capacity magazines that allowed Loughner to mow down human beings like grass. To believe that the entrenched gun interests in Phoenix would never allow such a ban is to engage in defeatist thinking, for such a ridiculous product has no legitimate place in bigbox stores. And to say that someone as impaired as Loughner would have eventually found one on the black market is to misunderstand the horrifying casualness of his actions. Even one simple impediment, like a state-required gun-safety course, would have stopped all of this cold. Nobody in the world (except a disinterested clerk at the Sportsman’s Warehouse) would have put a Glock into his hands after listening to five seconds of his rants about a “genocide school,” or after taking even one look into those eyes. In 1755, an earthquake leveled the city of Lisbon, Portugal, killing between 10,000 and 100,000 people and permanently derailing the nation’s stature as a colonial power. It happened in the age of the printing press. Woodcut scenes of the destruction were sent worldwide. The quake had come on the morning of a church holiday, and its implications were chilling: How could a merciful God decide to take life on such a grand scale? What did it say about the justice of the universe that good and wicked people alike should die under the rubble, for no apparent reason? Preachers across Europe agonized over the Lisbon earthquake. A gloomy Voltaire concluded that this world was not “the best of all possible worlds” and blamed chance. John Wesley thought it was evidence that we should always be ready to meet God. Others thought the overcrowded conditions in the capital made the death toll even greater. The mass murder on Jan. 8 was Tucson’s version of such an earthquake, except that the seismic forces that caused it were always within our control. The city’s extraordinary show of sorrow in the days following the shootings was, to my mind, a sublimated fear of random death and a form of horror about how far we had allowed the civic discussion in our city to tilt toward the extremes. How could a person so sick be so roundly ignored that he could so easily inflict such extraordinary pain? The show of sadness was appropriate and necessary. But a more-uncomfortable discussion now needs to be more out in the open. The talk of healing and hope goes nowhere if no lessons are to be drawn, or no real improvements are made in our collective destinies; if the root causes are covered up—and this profane occurrence is allowed to be categorized as the “isolated act of a deranged gunman.” That is the worst kind of distortion. Events never happen in a vacuum. No man is an island, not even Jared Loughner. Tom Zoellner is the author of A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America. He will be at Antigone Books, 411 N. Fourth Ave., at 7 p.m., Friday, Jan. 6, to discuss the book and sign copies.
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