Performance artist Laura Milkins is walking from her home in Tucson, Arizona to her Mom's home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And she's half-through her journey! What's more, she has a 24-hour live streaming of her walk that you can watch, too. She graciously chatted with me on her Bluetooth headset while she was mid-stride in small-town Kansas.

How are you feeling?

My feet hurt; I'm getting a new blister. That’s fine, but I thought I’d be done with blisters. That's just not true. On a humid day, wearing two pairs of wicking socks, I have a feeling that they’re pretty damp and I'm getting new blisters.

Where are you? How many miles have you walked so far?

I'm on country road, outside Salinas, Kansas. I have traveled over 1,000 miles, and have 900 or so to go. The walk is 2,000 miles total.

What inspired this project?

Other than going home, it’s really about community. I feel like we have a lot of ways of being connected to each other, but people are starting to be afraid of change and are not opening their hearts to the people around them. And yes there are bad people out there, but most people are good. And most of the creeps are not gonna talk to some girl with a webcam on her head. Everyone has a good story. I've been enjoying getting to know people. Our culture is to stay in your home; some of us don’t even get to know our neighbors. We have to reach out to those around us and ask for help. I'm finding that community is out there. There's nothing wrong with electronic social connection; if it can bring you together, good; if you’re on Facebook and not hanging out with friends, then you should probably be talking to your neighbor instead.

Can you elaborate on the equipment you use/wear as you're walking?

I have a MacBook Air laptop suspended, a webcam velcroed to my head, a Novacell battery plugged into the Mac, and a G4 HotSpot from Verizon to give me internet. Most of the time, the livefeed works; it tends to cut out on and off, but it’s worked remarkably well.

Are there some days when you just want to shut the camera off?

I do mute it. Today I was having a personal conversation with a good friend of mine; I mute it, but I don’t turn it off, so you can still see the things I see, but not everything. You don’t want a stranger to know about your friend's personal life, so I end up muting it. I try to have it on 24-hours a day. I don’t care about my privacy, but I do care about other people's privacy. Though I do get tired of being a public spectacle; I look like a Cyborg.

I read that you stay with host families each night. Are those pre-arranged or do you make friends along the way that you stay with?

It's all old-school social networking. My host called around town and found somebody; everybody knows somebody in these small towns. If I arrive into town and don’t have somebody, it just works out. Sometimes my Mom will call a church to find hosts. In exchange, I cook dinner and breakfast for them, and they tell me their stories.

What kinds of stories have you heard so far?

My last host had cancer, and she talked about all the different ways of living and dealing with her sickness. There are themes of ailments, themes of drought. In one town I walked through, they had the worst drought in 100 years, and this guy lost almost all of his cattle. There are also beautiful, happy stories. I stayed with a woman in Moscow, Kansas, and she was saying that her family has just been blessed. Several years ago, her husband started growing cotton, instead of corn, and they've been very successful. This last year, they had to sell their cattle, which was a good idea because of the drought.

Do you intend to enter this project into a festival?

Yes, I'm going to enter it into ArtPrize, which is in Grand Rapids this September. I've timed it out so that I can be there in time for the festival.

At ArtPrize, there’s going to be one large screen that plays the live feed with a banner over it that says, "Live From the Road: Laura Milkins is Walking Home." I'll also have two kiosks with small mounted monitors and keyboards and a headset. So if someone wants to watch the edited tv show on the website, they can watch those. They’re will be 40 beautifully, edited videos that my video guys have done along the way for each week, which includes a Skype interview and edited bits from the feed, video and photographs.

What's your next project?

It will look less like art, but don’t know exactly what it will be. I need to take breaks. I tend to work in a series, like I just did the walking series. This project is the culmination of that series. After this, I'll want to spend time with my family, but the next project will be something quiet.

For more information on Laura Milkins and her project, click here.

I was in New Orleans for four days. It's too early. This cup knows how I feel.

[Laughing Squid]

Amy Winehouse, troubled British singer, was found dead in London at her home today. When someone who struggles prominently with substance abuse dies, the discussion that follows the announcement of their demise is always going to be a mixed bag of reactions and looking at my Facebook feed, today is no different. However, for this music fan, Amy Winehouse was an incredibly talented singer and songwriter. I'd like to just remember a few of her great performances and be wistful for what could have been.

Amy Winehouse was 27.

Addendum (said better than I could say):

Generally, one of the advantages an incumbent has in a political race is to have an established information network. In the case of city councilmen and women, they have email newsletters they send out to their constituents. Most of these newsletters aren't anything terribly exciting: a note from the elected official, information about projects going on, events happening in the ward, etc. I see quite a few of these newsletters and I don't think these are generally distinctly political enterprises. These emails give the councilperson the advantage of seeing productive and useful, but that's about it and only among people actually reading the things.

So, maybe it makes some sense that Tyler Vogt wanted access to Shirley Scott's email list [UPDATE: According to Jim Nintzel, Vogt actually commandeered all ward email lists] via a Freedom of Information act request. It seems like a little bit of a waste of time to me, barking a little up the wrong tree, but I also would have purchased my own name as a domain, so what do I know?

However, it's a terrible idea to take that list, and send out a email with the subject "Tucson City Council" with request for donations. It's doubly terrible to send out an unsolicited email that doesn't make it easy to get off the list that wasn't yours to begin with (several people who received the email complained online about how difficult or impossible it was to unsubscribe)...and that's what Tyler Vogt did with the email he sent out Friday. Let's ignore the generally snotty tone of the email itself, but it would have been a lot smoother if he just made the contention for his election and then given interested voters a place to get more information (and maybe even a place to donate, if they feel like it).

But instead, even if Tyler Vogt didn't legally "spam" Tucsonans, he did so in spirit. That general lack of 21st century common sense and decorum isn't a great sign for what he would do as an officeholder. Bad form, Tyler Vogt. Bad form.

The text of his email is below the cut.

I sort of feel bad for this kid...after all, he has the right to do whatever he wants with his life, he's likely to have had a rather artistic childhood, especially since his father is a music video director, and probably these days every kid thinks he's a rapper. However, this particular song is not good. Not good at all.

“I mean, really, my grandfather, I consider him the Jay-Z of his time, and he definitely has a legacy that a lot of people look up to," Pablo Dylan told AllHipHop.com in an exclusive interview. "He feels strongly about my music and I love him to death.”

Pablo is the son of the famous folk singer’s son, Jesse, famous for having directed music videos for Tom Petty and Lenny Kravitz, and for having directed the Will.I.Am music video for "Yes We Can," inspired by President Barack Obama's historic run in 2008.

“We just put out the mixtape 10 Minutes; we got like 50,000 views on that, and I just got back in the studio to work on things and perfect everything.” Pablo said.

“My single with Little Chuckee and Darnell Robinson is dropping soon," an excited Pablo said about his song with Young Money’s Lil’ Chuckee. “Me and Darnell did a song on my mixtape, he hooked me up with all the people and they sent the song back with a hook and few verses.”

Finally, just a tiny bit of good journalism news for Tucson.

The Tucson Weekly won three awards in the 2011 Altweekly Awards. The winners of the awards, sponsored by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), were announced this afternoon at the 2011 AAN Annual Convention in New Orleans.

The Weekly won top honors in the Illustration category (circulation under 50,000) for "The Nine Types of Arizona Politicians," by Lloyd Dangle and Jim Nintzel (June 3, 2010).

Margaret Regan earned her fourth Altweekly Award since 2003, nabbing second place for Arts Criticism (circulation under 50,000), for "The Whole Picture" (Feb. 4, 2010), "Tile Roofs and Borrowed Styles" (July 15, 2010) and "Deposited by Angels" (Oct. 28, 2010).

Finally, the Weekly and the UA School of Journalism earned third place in the Innovation/Format Buster category for the student-journalism project "Beyond the Border," much of which ran in the Dec. 2, 2010 issue online and in print.

Creative Loafing (Atlanta), Miami New Times, Nashville Scene and The Village Voice won the most first-place awards, each taking home three.

"Vision of Paris" by Marc Chagall, is on display in The Legacy of Surrealism: Selections from the Permanent Collection, through Sept. 18, at the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave.

Flor De Muertos Trailer (2011) from Brink Media on Vimeo.

Flor de Muertos, the documentary shot largely at the 2009 All Souls Procession and the Calexico and friends concert that followed at the Rialto Theatre, will be screened all weekend at the Rialto. Stephen Seigel wrote about it in this week's Soundbites:

If you missed the sold-out world-premiere screening of Flor de Muertos at the Loft back in May, have no fear. The Rialto Theatre, where much of the film was shot during Calexico's annual Dia de Los Muertos blowout concert in 2009, will be showing the film four times over the weekend, with bonus live performances attached to a couple of them.

The documentary was directed by BrinkMedia's Dan Vinik and intersperses concert footage from that 2009 show with scenes of the All Souls Procession, and interviews about the border situation and the attitude toward death in Mexican culture. Reports from the premiere screening were overwhelmingly positive, so don't miss it this weekend.

Flor de Muertos shows at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St., at the following times: 8 p.m., Friday, July 22 (patio reception begins at 6 p.m. with a performance by Salvador Duran; $10); 2:30 p.m., Saturday, July 23 ($6); 8 p.m., Saturday, July 23 (a performance by Mariachi Luz de Luna will follow; $15; free admission for film crew listed in credits); 2:30 p.m., Sunday, July 24 ($6). All showings are open to all ages. For more information, call 740-1000, or check out The Rialto Theatre.

If so, you should think about heading over to "These Kids Got Talent" talent show this Saturday, July 23rd from 3 p.m.-6p.m. at Tucson Mall. The event is sponsored by KU Studios, Home of Kids Unlimited. Categories include, but are not limited to vocal, rap, instrumental, dance, theater/drama, sport, and variety acts.

Prizes will be awarded for each 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner from each age category and one $200 overall talent grand prize! But only the first 20 contestants of each age category will be accepted. Slots are filled on a first come first serve basis, so submit your application on their website asap! Open to ages 3-18.

For more information, call or visit their website.

Travel and Leisure Magazine just named the Arizona Inn as one of the top 10 small hotels in cities across the U.S. and Canada.

More on the inn's 2011 World's Best Hotels honor:

Founder Isabella Greenway's great-grandson Will Conroy, the current President of the Inn, says the hotel is grateful for this remarkable honor and proud to represent the city of Tucson in such a positive way. As ever, he attributes the hotel's eight decades of continued success to the kindness and civility of its exceptional staff.