Good views and smells in the desert

Southern Arizona, where I live, is one of the hottest and driest places in the nation. The fact that the weather is hot and dry is why a lot of people, including me, like to live here. I had enough of winter and snow (not a skier!) and especially shoveling, driving on ice, and just being unable to enjoy being outside a lot. The summers are rough, but not as much as the winters in the north (to me) and the fact that it is dry makes the heat a little more tolerable (although 110+ is still hot!).

But the dryness, while helping modify the heat in a way that you don’t get in, say, humid Florida, and good for aching joints, is much more severe when it means Not Enough Water. Not Enough Water conservation is the mantra of the desert, and requires a proactive attitude. You need to carry a lot when you hike. And if you feel the need to flush the toilet after every #1, you’re living in the wrong place. And, according to the recent climate change report issued by the federal government, it is getting worse and going to continue to. The Southwest is not just dry, with a few years of drought, it is moving into aridity, a permanent state of dryness. Thus, the impact of climate change. The wildfires devastating California and much of the West are, apparently, only going to be tempered by the eventual loss of anything that can burn.

The patterns of our rain (and we do get rain, obviously, although the average annual rainfall is less than 12”) are affected by a variety of extrinsic factors. Typically, there are two “monsoon” seasons, in the winter (mostly January and February) and in the summer (July and August), with the latter having the heavier intensity thunderstorm type rain. But El Niño and storms off the coast of Baja California, such as this October’s Hurricane Bud, also bring us rain. While October was rainy, November not so much, but a little rain in its last few days, along with colder temperatures.

This morning I walked the dog at 7, when it gets light this time of year, and it said 37 on my phone but that is the airport; another dog-walked told me it was 32 up here, but the plants didn’t freeze, so maybe the wall helps. Gotta be aware of the potential for freezing though; a sheet or towel may make the difference in whether a particular plant survives or not. Styrofoam cups can protect cactus!

But, even as wildfires ravage California and the prognosis for the desert is grim, there are the good morning walks, with clouds covering the mountains in both the morning and afternoon, and sometimes rays of sunlight peeking through, and the pungent damp morning smells of the desert (like the greasewood especially) that even my nose (not to mention Maggie’s!) can appreciate.

Rating the Comics

For many years, I have taken two local print (yes, print!) newspapers daily, the New York Times and the local paper (now in the 4^th different city). In addition to the local news and sports and culture, they all offered something the Times famously does not – comics! I read them daily; if one of us is out of town, we save them up. So, I thought I’d rate the comics in my local paper, the Arizona Daily Star.

First of all, it is an OK-but-not-a-great lineup. Overall, it is worse than the Kansas City Star or the San Antonio Express-News or the Chicago Tribune. For goodness sake, it doesn’t even have Doonesbury, even on the editorial page, where it lives in some papers. I guess that it is possible that better comics are more expensive, I guess. During a recent trip to Ithaca, I remembered that, in the 1960s, the Cornell Daily Sun carried only two comics, Peanuts and Pogo. If you are going to be parsimonious, that is the way to go.

I’m going to start with the worst comics; that is easier, because I use the simple criterion of “is it funny”. There are, of course, comic “genres”, and when easily identifiable I’ll note not only how good or bad a comic is but where it fits in its own genre (considering that I will, like most people, find some genres generally less appealing). To its credit, the Arizona Daily Star does not have any of the strips that I call “soap opera” (classically also known as the “Mary Worth” type), which, in addition to an ongoing story try to draw more “lifelike” characters, although it does have “Mark Trail” and “Prince Valiant” on Sunday. OK, here we go:

The “Nancy” Award for “Worst comic” clearly goes to “Mutts”, a strip that has, like the award’s namesake, never been funny. “Mutts” is in the “Cutesy Animals” genre and is easily worst-in-class of even that D-league (you can read that also as D-). The Star has another animal comic in the at-least-trying-to-be-funny class, “Marmaduke” (also in the “One Panel” class), which is sometimes funny, albeit predictable. The Star does not include perennial national favorite “Garfield”, not great to me anyway.

The runner-up “worst” is clearly “Rose is Rose”, perennially unfunny and worst in the enormous class of “Comics about Families”, which the Star (as all papers) have plenty of. These include, in more or less ascending order, the generally undistinguished “Adam”, “Grand Avenue”, the enormously popular “Family Circus”, and “Baby Blues”, probably the best of the bunch. There are other strips that at least sometimes feature families but are in other classes like “Teen” and “Quirky/Witty”. The best of the bunch in the Star is only on Sunday, “Fox Trot”. In this class, I miss the Canadian strip “For Better or For Worse”, even the reruns of the entire series in the KC Star.

Another genre that has multiple representatives in the Star’s comics section is “Old People”, and two of them, “Lola” and “Crankshaft” are also runners-up for overall worst, but better than “Rose is Rose”. “Crankshaft” actually is occasionally good – funny and or incisive – but these are rare strips. “Lola” is in the sub-genre of “out-there old ladies”, and is another worst in class, being mostly mean and almost never funny, even worse than “Diamond Lil” (in the KC, not AZ, Star), and nowhere as good as Nicole Hollander’s “Sylvia”.  The Star contains “Pickles” as the best of this bunch, never really funny, and not matching the best of “Crankshaft”, but funnier on average than the latter.

Straddling the line of “Family” and “Soap Opera” but not drawn as too-lifelike, is the “Teen” (but growing older, very slowly) awful strip “Luann”, another absolutely worst-in-class, which would be at the bottom if not for the competition from “Mutts” and “Rose is Rose”. Its only interest is in finding out how many Scandinavian names it can come up with, especially for boys (Axel, Gunther, Lars and others all appear; I assume its creator must be from Minnesota).

OK, so what is good in the AZ Star comics section? We have eliminated the bulk and are left with only a few contenders. “Zits” is probably the best in the “Teen” genre but in a whole other subclass from “Luann”, and is usually pretty good. “Dilbert” is a long-time player, and is in contention for best strip, probably a bit ahead of “Pearls Before Swine”, which I put in the “Quirky/Witty” category rather than animal; PBS loses points for its frequent lazy pun-focused strips. The Star has two others in this category, “Bizarro”, an often good (but never as good as either late-lamented “The Far Side” or its closest successor, which appears in the Star on Sunday only, “Argyle Sweater”), and “Non Sequitur”. After some thought, I have decided that “Non Sequitur” (which could also, but only sometimes, be considered a Family strip) is my choice for Best Comic, edging out “Dilbert” and “PBS”. Sadly, the Star doesn’t have “Rhymes with Orange”, which is probably better.

OK, maybe you disagree with some of my ratings or choices. But they’re mine. And if you like the ones I rated lowest, good for you. I guess.

Growing up with restrictive rules: does it lead to advocates of authoritarianism or freedom?

I don’t completely agree with all that NY Times columnist David Leonhardt says in his column “A plea for a fact-based debate about charter schools” (July 23, 2018), but his comment about the restrictive rules that led to a protest at the G.W. Carver charter school in New Orleans resonated with me:

“But the students were right. The rules were extreme. Students walking between classes had to stay on the right side of the hallway, for example.”

I remember that rule, and many others, from my own education in the New York City public schools a long time ago. That particular rule didn’t kick in until junior high school (7^th-9^th grade, since replaced by “middle school”), because in elementary school we didn’t really walk the halls; all of our classes except gym were in the same room. Students walking to different rooms for different teachers for different subjects (called “departmental”) began in 7^th grade, but elementary school had its own set of restrictive rules that Leonhardt and most students today might find extreme. We didn’t have to wear uniforms, but the boys had to wear ties. In elementary school! This was ridiculous, not only on the “restrictive” level, but because little boys don’t always stay, um, neat, especially when eating or running around. Some of the most popular authorized types of ties were the pre-tied kind that just clipped under the collar, or the late unlamented but valuable-at-the-time “cross-continental”, kind of a bow that just snapped under the collar. And, yes, we had to wear shirts with collars! Luckily, at some point schools came to their senses and by the time I was a parent the totally appropriate attire for elementary school students was jeans and t-shirts. You want to guess who looks neater at the end of the day, a kid in jeans and a t-shirt or a kid with a stained askew tie over a dirty shirt with the tails hanging out?

Actually, the rules on ties got better as we aged; in junior high we were freed from that rule in the month of June. (And yes, we went to school in June, unlike a lot of the country our school year was Labor Day to June 30. Always June 30.) In high school, we didn’t have to wear ties at all. But the most interesting (??) rule in elementary school was that on Thursday, “Assembly Day” where the school got together to pledge allegiance to the flag and have some kid read a psalm (apparently Psalms were ok because they were Old Testament and thus kosher for Jews and Christians; no one even thought about other religions, or, God forbid, atheism!), and maybe other stuff happened but I don’t remember it, we had to wear a white shirt, blue pants, and a red tie! True. Literally true. Not in a Christian fundamentalist private school in the South run by the DAR, but in New York City public schools! I wonder if there were any clean white shirts by the end of the day?

So, maybe you can tell I thought those rules were not only “restrictive”, but on a graph of good-bad vs wise-stupid, definitely down at the bad and stupid end. However, I am absolutely certain that there are people who do not think so (now that they are no longer those students), who, reading the Leonhardt column think “Yeah! We had to walk down the hall on the right side! We had a lot of dress codes and behavior rules and other things, and look at me now! That kind of structure and discipline is what made me into the fine person I am today!” ((I was going to say “man” but don’t so as not to seem insensitive, and there are probably women who feel that way, but in my experience I almost always hear that rant from men.) Even if that fine person is an out-of-shape, bigoted, opioid-addicted and generally unpleasant specimen. (OK, I’m stereotyping again, maybe they are bank presidents or FBI men or even teachers.)

This suggests something to me about growing up, power, and possibly something about the political divide in our country (and, in some sense, the world) between those who relish authoritarianism and nationalism and those who believe in openness, freedom of expression, and plurality. Many of us grew up with such rules, structure, restriction, and impingement upon our freedom to act as we saw fit. Not coincidentally, these behavioral restrictions coexisted with restrictions – at least efforts to restrict -- our freedom to think. (True story: in high school, in the mid-60s, a group of us in the History Club planned a “teach-in” on the war in Vietnam. The chairman of the History Department heard about it and burst into a class many of us were taking, Economics I think, and railed at us, calling us “Munich appeasers”.) But not all of us reacted to it in the same way.

For some people, as I have noted, these “rules” seem to (in retrospect, at least) have been important in forming them into the “good people” they see themselves as. For others, it was resistance to such rules and thought-policing that led them (OK, us) to become the “good people” they see themselves as today. Put another way, while almost all of us looked forward to “growing up”, becoming adults and not being subject to these rules, and even be able to make the rules, we responded in different ways. One was to think “we will not have such stupid rules” governing children and the world; we will have greater freedom of ideas and expression and behavior. Another was to think “I can’t wait to be a grownup and make rules that benefit me and mine, and oppress others”. I don’t know if they think about it that way, but it is the way many behave. See, for example, the right-wing nationalist movements in Europe and Israel and other parts of the world, as well as in the US.

There are many examples of people, as individuals or groups, responding to their own oppression by oppressing others. We know that people abused, physically or sexually, as children often become abusers of their own or others’ children. The Puritans, unable to freely practice their religion in England went to Holland and then left because it had religious freedom not only for them but for everyone, and came to the America to establish theocracy in Massachusetts. We have seen the descendants of the victims of the Holocaust create both de facto and now de jure restrictions on Palestinians in Israel (Max Fisher in the Times quotes “Ben-Gurion [who] insisted that Israel give up the territories it had conquered. If it did not, he said, occupation would distort the young state, which had been founded to protect not just the Jewish people but their ideals of democracy and pluralism.’

Of course, there are extremes. I am not saying that there should be no rules for children or even discipline. But I am also saying, very strongly, that having been oppressed, as an individual or as a people, is a good reason to empathize, fight for the rights of others, and not to look for ways to oppress someone else.

The world could do with a lot few authoritarian strongmen, and a lot fewer of their fans.

Lamenting Fry the Dog in Santa Fe

We had to put Fry The Dog down a few weeks ago. He had a big tumor on his shoulder, but we elected to not have it removed because the x-rays showed metastases in his lungs and abdomen. He did fine for a long while, but the tumor continued to grow and it hemorrhaged at the vet’s so we had it removed, and he continued to do well, until he didn’t, and then it was time. It’s been hard for us, and I don’t know how Maggie The Dog (they have the same middle name also!) feels.

So we are in Santa Fe for the first time since then, and just one-dogged. Maggie herself is getting older, and while she is fine with us on early morning hikes (such as the one to Diablo Canyon today) she gets wiped out for quite a while. Maggie stays near, while if Fry were off the leash he’d go off for a while. He’d come back eventually, but in his own time. Not always compatible with making plans – like driving home! We take a shorter walk in the evening and enjoy the late (it is summer!) and always beautiful sunsets. Yesterday it was a perfect evening, and we sat out on the deck and watching the sun set, and stayed for the post-sunset, as the sky gradually darkened. Cool enough, slight breeze, and no mosquitoes here. Of course, the sunset is terrific here every night, as is the sunrise (which wakes me up), but each one is also the one that is happening, and I feel inspired to take a picture.

It was a fine day, starting with the sunrise picture, and then about a 4 mile or more hike on some of the trails that surround us. Lazy afternoon, nap and workout, and then a good dinner with a good friend. Now that I don’t live in KC any more, I feel ok about ordering ribs in another town. At Harry’s Roadhouse they were actually excellent, great flavor and little fat (just enough for flavor). And then driving home to the desert as the sun is going down, the typical cottontails, and a couple of lean coyotes ambling by, and jackrabbits hopping across the prairie, so big it is somehow difficult to tell, other than by the speed, that it is jackrabbit or coyote. And, then there was the big pink racer, or red racer, or coachwhip, snake on the hike the other morning. I somehow was able to appreciate, as I saw it just off to my right, that it was red and not rattling so not venomous, and even better was moving off away from the trail. Still, when you see a 5 foot red snake right next to you, it can cause a sharp intake of breath…although they do kill rattlers.

Anyway, the sitting outside watching the light go was the best part of a good day.

Except for the pic of the red racer, which is stock, the rest are mine.

 Fry

 Maggie

Red Racer

 Diablo Canyon

Reflected Sunset

Sunrise

Sunset

Walking the dogs redux ... putting up with people!

Maybe I shouldn’t put my shoes on first. Of all the things that have to happen that precede the dog walk, that is the most obvious indication, and starts the anticipation. And then all the other things that I have to do, the smearing of sunscreen, putting on jacket (chilly in 40s here in Arizona in the am – see pic of Pat with dogs and fire a couple of days back), putting on hat, tearing off bags and opening them a bit so they’ll be ready when needed, putting on hat and sunglasses (usually last); it’s a long and tedious process for dogs, who have to do none of this, to wait for. Some dogs have been seen with sweaters or such, but mostly they are little or very short-haired, I guess; whether in the deep snow in Kansas City or the heat of a Tucson summer, the dogs wear the same things – no sunscreen, sunglasses, hat, jacket, or shoes. Just collars and leashes.

The wait, I am certain, is worse when we were up late, and thus wake late; there are some urgencies in life that get more urgent with time. If it is very cold, or raining, or even dark there is the option of opening the door to the back yard, where emergencies can be taken care of, but it is not their first choice. They will wait as long as they can. Of course, it also delays breakfast (usually on return), but that is more of a tolerable disappointment than delaying the other, um, functions. So they have to wait for me, but still are not going to do their business right away. At least outside the gate to the community (luckily only one house away); you just are not going to go too close to home, not if you are a well-bred dog! (I remember an incident with my late dog Yonkel while we were driving; he started jumping up and down, atypical for him, in the back, obviously very agitated. We figured out what he needed, pulled off the highway, attached his leash, and took him out. He walked 50 feet before taking care of an obviously desperate need. Even in such circumstances, you just don’t poop too close to home!)

Today was a late walk, and the putting on of shoes generated a lot of excitement. Although I don’t think it rained last night, there are still puddles from a couple of days ago (they should dry up in today’s sun) and the ground in the desert park is damp. This increases the smellability of things, apparently, so there are a lot more stops; I may not lengthen the distance of the walk (or even shorten it) but they can lengthen the duration. Today most business was completed relatively early, so we had a while for just walking and smelling. Too late, I guess, for the Cooper’s hawks to still be on the prowl, and we were not stalked by a coyote as they were with Pat a couple of days ago, so it a nice walk. We saw some early spring birds, particularly the cardinal-like crested ones; we saw a pyrrhuloxia (I think, although I can confuse them with female cardinals), and a few phainopepla (not my pix). It is getting warmer in the mornings, and as time goes by there will be less need for me to put stuff on, although even (especially!) in the heat of summer, sunscreen, sunglasses, hat, and of course shoes are still necessary. We do get to walk, so I think that they forgive me!

KU and Arizona basketball: Comparing the fandom

The University of Kansas, in Lawrence, and the University of Arizona, in Tucson are both big basketball schools with very successful teams that regularly appear in the NCAA tournament; currently Kansas is ranked #7 and Arizona #9 in the AP Top 25. I lived in Kansas City, 40 miles from Lawrence, and worked for KU (at the KU Medical Center in KC, KS) for 15 years, and now have been back in Tucson (second “tour”) for over a year, so I’m in my second basketball season. I think I am ready to comment on some of the similarities and differences between Kansas and Arizona fans.

The similarities, of course, include large numbers of incredibly avid and passionate fans, who are regularly stoked by good teams and good coaches. Kansas has, so far, won or shared the championship in the Big 12 (now down to 10 teams, but still frequently referred to as the strongest conference in the nation) 13 straight years. Arizona is not quite as dominant in the Pac-12 (which, in fact, has 12 teams), with teams like UCLA to compete against, but is currently leading that conference. No team has the conference record of Kansas, but there are a number of other incredible dynasties, some of which (Kentucky, North Carolina) have won even more NCAA championships. The enthusiasm and noise level at both “The Phog” in Lawrence and McKale Center in Tucson is deafening. KU almost never loses at home (this year, though, it has twice) prompting an NBA scout I know to say it is less rewarding to see them at home than on the road because they always win at home. Plus they both have red and blue as school colors; I don't know why in Arizona, but KU was founded by New Englanders who were mostly graduates of Harvard and Yale, thus the "Crimson and the Blue".

But other schools have terrific home crowds; even smaller college (or really, university) towns can fill a stadium with loud cheering supporters; West Virginia U in Morgantown and Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in Ames, and even Kansas State’s Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan (the “Little Apple”) are well-known to be difficult places to win even when the teams are not having their best years. (My Big-12 bias based on following them).

But back to KU and Arizona. Neither has to depend solely upon residents of a small college town; Tucson’s metropolitan area is 1 million, and Lawrence is 40 miles from KC. But this may provide two reasons for the difference that I see in the ubiquity and degree of enthusiasm I see; it is more widespread in Arizona. More people wear Arizona shirts. More people, or at least a higher percentage of people, talk about the basketball team as “we” (as in “we didn’t shoot free throws as well as we should last night against USC”). This is not to deprecate Kansas fans at all; I see it as a result of a very big city starving for any other sports outlet.

After all, while the KC metropolitan area is quite a bit bigger than Tucson (2.1 million, #30, vs Tucson’s 1 million, #53), the Kansas Jayhawks have competition. For starters, there are incredibly popular professional football (the Chiefs) and baseball (the Royals) teams in KC. Also, the KC area is more than half in Missouri and so there are lots of U Missouri fans. Even if Mizzou hasn’t the track record of KU in basketball, many of its fans still see the two schools as bitter rivals (despite Mizzou’s departure from the Big 12 to the Southeast Conference, which one wag noted was appropriate because, of course, Missouri had been a slave state, even though, like Kentucky, it didn’t join the Confederacy). So there is more competition for the sports enthusiast. Sure, there are professional sports teams in Phoenix (including an NBA team, the Suns), but Phoenix is over 100 miles away, far to go for a game. And besides it is Phewnix, which is seen by many Tucsonans as a place to hold ones nose. Talk about rivalry!). The Kansas City Star, as well as the Lawrence Journal-World, covers KU basketball extensively, but nothing like the Arizona Star. Even in the off-season there are very often articles (i.e., several times weekly) about U of A basketball, and in season they are at least daily, often, especially after a game, 3 or 4. Big recruits at KU will be covered off season in the KC Star, but then their sports pages are more full of Royals or Chiefs. 

Of course, Kansas is the only team in the nation called the Jayhawks, with one of the most recognizable logos in sports, while Arizona is just one of at least 9 “Wildcats” in NCAA Division I, several of which are also perennial basketball powers – Villanova is currently ranked #1 in the nation, Kentucky as noted is always a national contender, and even in Kansas there are the K-State Wildcats (Northwestern would be the next most prominent).

So both schools have great basketball teams, and both have rabid fan bases, but the combination of the size of Tucson and the lack of sports competition makes Arizona Fever much more omnipresent than KU fever. And me? I will certainly root for Arizona, as well as for KU. But, should they meet in the NCAA, I still will say “Rock Chalk!”