Are books being banned from Tucson Unified School District classrooms as part of the district's work to dismantle Mexican-American studies after the governing board voted Tuesday, Jan. 10 to end the classes?

Well, it depends on your definition of "ban" ... maybe yes, and maybe no.

School textbooks are being taken out of MAS classrooms—the seven books on a list referred to in administrative Judge Lewis Kowal's recent decision. Teachers are also being told by administrators that they need to be careful about other books they teach from and the curriculum they use, and that perhaps the best way to handle this is to refer to the administrative judge's decision and state Superintendent John Huppenthal's ruling, which cite a variety of other contemporary novels and writings that are considered suspect.

The school district says no books are being banned; they're still available in libraries and other areas. But teachers are being told to stay away from books and lessons that have themes on race, ethnicity and oppression.

Right now this mess is ripe for an allegory based on Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Until this anti-Mexican American Studies law is gone, anyone can complain about anything taught in a former-MAS teacher's class and accuse him/her of violating HB 2281.

On Thursday, Jan. 12, The Range talked to Chicano-literature teacher Curtis Acosta. Several things you should know about Acosta: He's a finalist for the UA's Circle K Teacher of the Year award, he was honored with the 2011 University of Arizona Goodman Award, the 2009 Martin Luther King Jr. Classic Dream Award, and chosen as the 2010 Tucson High Magnet School Teacher of the Year.

The result of the Jan. 10 vote, according to Acosta, is a picture of confusion further fueled by administrators unable to answer specific questions.

“We’re filled with the vagueness that the law is founded upon,” Acosta said. “No one knows what to tell us definitively or when we ask specific questions.”

That vagueness has strengthened the inequities from classroom to classroom. Teachers not under the MAS banner and in other schools throughout the district can teach and are teaching from books that Huppenthal found objectionable or questioned — but not Acosta and his MAS co-workers.

Acosta said teachers have been told that they can no longer teach Chicano literature or history, or keep specific books in their classrooms, such as 500 Years of Chicano History: In Pictures, edited by Elizabeth Martinez, and the acclaimed textbook Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years.

Please enjoy the first episode of Tucson's new rock-and-roll cooking show Rocking Gourmet, which you will find below. This episode features music by the Cleavers and the Cordials and tips on grilling ribeyes and making a Manhattan. Bon appetit.

After winning 50 votes in the 2008 Arizona GOP primary, Republican Charles Skelley is back for another shot at winning the hearts and minds of Arizona Republicans.

Here's his platform:

THE WON-2-3 PLAN — FIXES THE US ECONOMY BY FIXING MANUFACTURING

Part 1: Defining the core US economic problems in 2011

This WON-2-3 plan is named after Wealth of Nations, Book 2, Chapter 3

Adam Smith's "macroeconomic" principles (from Book 2, chapter 3, of Wealth of Nations) can be used to solve interrelated US economic problems of high structural unemployment, huge Trade Deficits, unsustainable Federal Budget deficits, and entitlements. Putting additional people to work in the US Manufacturing sector will improve all four of these issues simultaneously.

The US Manufacturing sector lost 5.8 million jobs during 1998-2011; and the US now has a $700 Billion/year Trade Deficit for goods. (i.e. The Sep 2011 Trade deficit for goods was $59 Billion.) If these millions of lost US Manufacturing jobs are not replaced quickly, then the huge US Trade Deficit will soon ruin the value of all US dollars.

• Louise Serpa
• Jim Mihalek on HUD, Tucson Rodeo 1971

The Range is regrettably late in expressing our condolences to friends and family of rodeo photographer Louise Serpa, who passed away on Jan. 5.

I only met Louise a few times, but she was a wonderful woman and an extraordinary photographer. She took a cherished portrait of my late dog Cricket one summer in Flagstaff.

Emily Wilkins at the New York Times Student Journalism Institute at the UA School of Journalism wrote a lovely obit:

She was elegant, but not dainty; classy, but not snobbish. She would come adorned with jewelry and leave covered in dirt. She dressed like a lady and drank with the boys.

Her strength of character translated to physical toughness, her daughter said. She got close to her subjects, despite the dangers involved. One time a bull charged her. Her ribs were broken, her sternum split. She stood up and finished shooting before going to the hospital.

She was a fixture on the circuit for almost 50 years. As an old woman with bright eyes and a worn face, she was a rodeo staple, lugging a 30-pound bag of equipment around the arena.

She didn’t allow herself to cry at rodeos and wouldn’t allow others to cry when they came to say their final goodbyes, her daughter said.

I really wonder how someone finds the time to assemble something like this, only to know that for a few days people will be highly amused, then it will sink back into the collective forgetfulness of the internet. Still, Lionel Richie songs are kind of funny, so this works.

Peter "Simon" Bollander made quite a splash in his first run for the presidency in 2008. He's back this year, although he's switched from a Democrat to a Republican and has evidently joined the Hair Club for Men.

We don't have time to go into Bollander's entire 10-Star program, but we're hoping he has time to send us an electronic version so we can share the entire plan with you. But we can tell you what we told you in 2008:

Peter Bollander boasts that he has more than 100 hours of on-camera television experience and an excellent speaking voice that can deliver heavy Jewish and Italian accents. He’s worked summer stock in Hawaii and has karate training. And he’s managed up to five people at any given time. His obvious qualifications for the White House aside, Bollander has some big ideas. Here’s one: The “Uncle Sam Sweepstakes.” Bollander proposes that lottery tickets be sold across the globe, with 10 percent of the proceeds going to the winners and 90 percent being locked in a trust fund. In just a few decades, we’d have a couple of trillion dollars to solve the nation’s financial problems—all financed by Third World residents who dream of a better life and are really bad at math.

I honestly can't explain what happened during last night's debate when Mexico was mentioned briefly as a question about Romney's grandparents, and it seemed to be just one or two attendees, but this is where we're at now? People are just booing when someone just says "Mexico"? Way to go, South Carolina. I'm so glad your state gets to close out the Republican nomination.

Democrat Richard Carmona, the former U.S. surgeon general, releases a Web video as part of the formal launch of his U.S. Senate campaign this week. He's speaking to reporters in Tucson and Phoenix today.

I don't really know what sort of people are working in the writer's room at Jeopardy!, but I sort of think that someone must have known that someone would have answered "donkey punch". There's a Wikipedia article for the (hopefully) imaginary practice and everything. However, this does start preparing the game show world for more R-rated content, including a seemingly inevitable future for Wheel of Fortune when they run out of phrases to use as puzzles and have to open things up to profanity.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced Monday that the Internet's collective knowledge bank will be blacking itself out Wednesday, Jan. 18 to protest both the Stop Online Piracy Act moving through the U.S. House of Representatives and the PROTECT IP Act that will be voted on by the U.S. Senate Jan.26.

From Wales's Twitter:

This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!

This will be "wow" indeed, Mr. Wales.

Keep in mind that, as of this writing, only the English language Wikipedia will be blacking itself out; those fluent multilinguists among us will still be able to get all of the "research" they need using Wikipedia's other languages.

For an early analysis on the effects of SOPA and PIPA, read CNET's take.