This week Bobby and Cynthia review Marvel comics, Winter Soldier: the Bitter March #1! The story takes place in the James Bond like 1960s time period. Shield agents Ran Shen and Nick Fury are in the middle of the Cold War and come across the very lethal Winter Soldier. Who is the mysterious Winter Soldier? This is a must read for any Rick Remender fan, and movie lovers excited for the new Captain America sequel.

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• Photo courtesy of Greer family.
• William F. “Bill” Greer

Beloved former University of Arizona journalism professor and Associated Press editor, William F. “Bill” Greer, died in San Diego on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014 at the age of 68.

A staunch believer in social justice, Greer, who joined the UA Department of Journalism in 1980, recruited and mentored students from diverse backgrounds. Greer taught several courses at the university, including photojournalism, and was the advisor for The Tombstone Epitaph, the historic newspaper of Tombstone, Ariz. produced by UA students since 1975.

Former students Greer noted that, although he could be gruff at times, Greer could see the potential in each and every student whose life he touched.

“He liked to be your friend,” said C.T. Revere, a Greer protégé who now works as a senior community relations officer for the Arizona Department of Transportation. “He taught you life lessons, but he would be mean as hell if you got off track.”

According to Revere, Greer got to know his family: his parents, his sisters, his brother. “He became a positive influence in their lives too,” said Revere.

Many student staffers of the Epitaph bonded with Greer in the production room.

“He used to piss us off all the time,” said Alfredo Eduardo Araiza, now a professional photojournalist with the Arizona Daily Star. “He would change our copy. Then he’d leave, and we’d change it back…. He didn’t give anything away. If you were good, he wanted to make you better.”

Greer moved heaven and earth to help his students. On one occasion, Greer arranged transportation to a job fair held in Los Angeles by the California Chicano News Media Association.

“Thanks to him and that job fair, I got my first internship at the Hartford Courant where I eventually worked for 25 wonderful years,” said Greg Morago, one of Greer’s first students in the early 1980s. Morago is now a food editor for the Houston Chronicle.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2014 State of the City Address. I’d like to thank the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the Tucson Convention Center for hosting this year’s event. Thanks especially to the Chamber for sharing proceeds with three local nonprofits that are helping with several of my initiatives: 51 Homes Vets, Make Way for Books and Tucson Clean & Beautiful.

Each of these charities works in a different area — ending veteran homelessness, increasing childhood literacy and restoring Tucson’s tree canopy — yet all share the same model for success: bringing together individuals, businesses, government and nonprofits to address community needs.

In June, I accepted the President’s challenge to end veteran homelessness in Tucson by December 31, 2015 — which means placing 1,650 homeless veterans in permanent housing. That’s a goal we’re on track to meet. Working with 18 partner agencies, including the City’s Housing Department, we’ve already housed close to 500 formerly homeless veterans.

In August, in partnership with the Arizona Daily Star, we launched a volunteer recruitment drive to double the number of reading coaches in Reading Seed, a program that pairs struggling readers in grades K through 3 with trained volunteers. Too many of our children don’t read at grade level by 3rd grade, a critical milestone that predicts future success in school. We met our goal, adding more than 600 volunteers, who will help more than 1,200 students, all, or almost all, in Title 1 schools. 1,200 lives changed — 1,800 if you count the volunteers, who often find their lives changed, too.

In October, in partnership with Tucson Clean & Beautiful, TEP, Long Realty and others, we rolled out our 10,000 Trees Campaign, encouraging individuals, business and community groups to plant desert-adapted trees, especially in neighborhoods that lack shade. That’s another goal we’re on track to meet. To date, we’ve planted more than 4,000 trees.

These are basic needs our community is tackling together, through public-private partnerships:
housing, literacy and the environment.
Of course, City government works to meet basic needs every day — water, transportation, sanitation, public safety, parks, courts, building safety and others. There’s renewed emphasis on the basics — on what the City does best, and what’s best left to others.

The basics matter. Like moving forward on long-delayed road restoration projects, as we’ve begun to do with passage of the $100 million road bond — on time and on budget, I might add. Like building sidewalks, cleaning medians and removing graffiti. The basics build pride in our community. Doing the basics well helps attract the capital we need to build our community.

I just gave some examples of public-private partnerships with the nonprofit sector. These partnerships can work equally well with the for-profit sector.

Downtown Redevelopment

For example, downtown looks quite different than it did two years ago. It looks quite different than it has for the last 40 years — a veritable, Biblical wandering in the desert. How did this happen? Ending the Rio Nuevo dispute, building the streetcar line and adopting a tax incentive
— a public-private partnership — that helps developers yet guarantees a greater return to
taxpayers — all this has visionary developers and business owners investing in downtown.

Over the next year, you’ll see close to $9 million of strategic improvements made to the Tucson Convention Center. You’ll see young entrepreneurs move their businesses and dreams downtown — at CoLab or Connect Coworking. You’ll see artists and crafters mixing with coders and hackers at places like Maker House and Xerocraft. You’ll see ground broken on a new, modern, urban hotel. And, as people continue to move downtown, maybe — just maybe — you’ll see that cornerstone of urban neighborhoods, a grocery store.

I don’t highlight downtown redevelopment just because it’s a success we can all see. I highlight it because it’s a working example of what our city can be.

I want to review some of what we accomplished last year, working together. Too often, we underestimate our city’s capabilities.

I also want to preview what lies ahead. Tucson is a city in transition.

Sunday’s Final match of the Accenture Match Play tournament had enough excitement to make even the greatest golf haters want to rush out into garage, blow the dust off grandfather's clubs and hit the driving range.

The heavy weight match that stared young guns Jason Day and Victor Dubuisson had enough miraculous shots that the grass covering Bobby Jones grave has probably grown 6 feet since Sunday. The final 7 holes alone were so impressive that golf legend Gary Player (A 9-time major winner) tweeted, “Not sure I can recall anything like this in 60 years as a pro. Player’s correct, this match seemed to take slices from the movies 300, Gladiator, Star Wars and Bruce Almighty and smash them all together to provide a spectacle of golf round. Yeah, it was that good.

Just to catch your interest, check out this amazing shot by Day on the 11th hole.

There is a lot of information out there about SB1062, so let's try to break it down.

How this came to be: There's a group called the Center for Arizona Policy and they were scared of a case in New Mexico where a lesbian couple sued a photographer for not photographing their wedding (they were able to find a cheaper photographer in time to shoot their wedding, but still sued for discrimination and won the lawsuit). So this group proposed a bill and got Sen. Steve Yarbrough to sponsor SB 1062 in the Senate and Rep. Eddie Farnsworth to sponsor another version in the House.

Legal issues: The LGBT community is not a protected class in Arizona or the United States, but they are a protected class in some cities, like Phoenix and Tucson. So technically, if you're gay you could be denied service from a gas station in Casa Grande right now, even without this law because you're not protected. However, with this bill, state law trumps city law which could cause problems in Tucson and Phoenix.

How the Democrats see this bill: This is a discrimination bill. This bill was designed for the sole purpose of discriminating against the LGBT community. Even though there is no law protecting the LGBT community now, this will provide a safeguard years from now when there is a law protecting the LGBT community (Republicans can see the writing on the wall). Even if this bill doesn't defend people who are discriminating against gay people, it will give them a "legal" defense that can only be overturned in court. That means theoretically a businessman can turn a gay couple away and just take his chances on whether or not he will be taken to court. This will hurt business in Arizona. Just look at the companies that are calling for the Governor to veto the bill. If she signs this into law the economy will be significantly damaged because companies won’t want to move to Arizona’s hostile culture.

How the Republicans see it: This bill is being blown out of proportion. The LGBT community isn't protected, so this changes nothing for them. All it does is protect people's religious beliefs. People who are religious shouldn't be forced to violate their religion because the government says so. This bill also tightens up the language on the existing Religious Freedom Restoration Act from 1999 (similar to the federal one from 1993) and makes it so that there has to be a substantial burden on a person's religion in order for a business to turn them down. Their goal is so that it protects churches that don't want to marry gay couples or doctors that don't want to perform abortions. It's not intended to protect bigoted business owners that don't want gay people's money. The Democrat’s claims that people will be discriminated based on religion, race and sex are unfounded. All three of those classes are protected by federal law, which trumps state law.

PHOENIX — Rep. Bob Thorpe (R-Flagstaff) may have missed out on the first Constitutional Convention, but he doesn’t plan on missing a second one if it ever happens.

Thorpe is the sponsor of House Resolution 2017, a resolution that calls for Congress to call an Article V convention. The resolution barely passed through the House on Tuesday.

The recent Article V movement nationally centers around the clause in Article V of the U.S. Constitution saying that new amendments to the Constitution can occur if two-thirds of the state legislatures call on Congress to form a constitutional convention.

The push started in the tea party movement and has been picking up momentum lately since the publishing of a book called “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic,” by Mark R. Levin, a talk-radio host and commentator. Many conservative supporters of the convention initiative hope to limit the power of the federal government over states, but some liberals see that a constitutional convention could be useful to them as well. In such a convention, amendments (if ratified) would not require the approval of the president or the existing Congress. But opponents of the idea worry about a runaway convention could occur, where significant and impulsive changes to the Constitution, including weakening of the Bill of Rights, could occur.

• Image courtesy of shutterstock.com

I've referred to the folks who write the headlines as the Star's Creative Headline Writing Team and even held a "Worst Star Headline of the Year" contest. The paper's headlines have gotten better since then, but today they slipped back into their old bad ways, with an assist from reporter Alexis Huicochea.

Here's the headline blasted from the top right hand of today's front page: Ground is familiar at TUSD's $92K event. A snark followed by a misstatement. It's a twofer.

First the misstatement. It wasn't a $92,000 event. The consultants were hired for a variety of duties. The Tuesday event was one of them. That’s in the contract language. I’m sure the contract is available to the Star. I’ve read it.

I can't really blame the headline writers, since Huicochea included the same twofer in her opening sentence:

A team of outside consultants, brought in at a cost of $92,500 yesterday, didn’t tell Tucson Unified School District leaders anything they didn’t already know or that hasn’t been said before:

The sentence says, the consultants were "brought in at a cost of $92,500 yesterday." Huicochea may have deniability here — she didn't exactly say the $92K was for that event only — but good writing is about clarity, and the clear message in her opening is, TUSD spent $92,000 for eight hours work. Later she reports that the consultants will provide some school board training and compilation of the feedback as well. Even that's incomplete. Read. The. Contract.

My opinion: TUSD's all day strategic planning meeting Tuesday was pretty good.

Let me put "pretty good" in perspective. I hate meetings. Hate them. When I was a teacher and I had to suffer through an after school staff meeting that was especially dismal or depressing, I'd stand up and walk out the minute my 8 hour day was over, even if the principal was speaking. Hate meetings. So if I say being locked in a meeting room from 8am to 3pm was a "pretty good" experience, you should bump that up a couple notches. Here's a start. The meeting was pretty damn good.

First an overview, then some random thoughts. (NOTE: The nice thing about a post like this is that other participants can chime in with comments to agree with, disagree with or elaborate on my impressions of the day. Please feel free.)

All the invitees were placed at round tables with about 8 other folks, including community members, parents, teachers and administrators. One of the visiting consultants would give a 20 minute talk on an issue, then the people at the table would discuss it for about 30 minutes. Each table had a facilitator who fed us open-ended questions and a secretary who recorded what we said on a laptop wired to a central computer, meaning all our input was gathered instantaneously. We took a 15 minute break, then we had another speaker and discussion, and so on.

No grand conclusions were reached or specific plans created, since the discussions were free ranging and different at each table. We didn't coordinate with the other tables or learn what they talked about. What happened to me was, as the day went on, I felt myself buying into the process more and more, taking personal ownership and responsibility for the issues and suggestions the group chewed over. And that was the point, I think. To get the participants involved in the planning on a personal level, to begin a dialogue, which will be followed with further input by participants at the meeting — and by others, I'm sure — resulting in the creation of a five year strategic plan. If that was the idea, the process worked for me.

• Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
• 'Godzilla' is scheduled to hit theaters on May 16.

Bryan Cranston steals the show in this latest Godzilla trailer. Hopefully, this is a refreshing take on the 60-year-old monster that has seen endless retellings and sequels. The film is scheduled to be released on Friday, May 16 in 2D and 3D in theaters everywhere.

Tired of plowing your vehicle through crater sized potholes in the mean streets of Tucson? Someone started a wordpress photo blog that exposes potholes around town. "Help hold Tucson City Council accountable for the potholes on Tucson's roads" is the blog's slogan. Tucson Potholes encourages you to email pictures of potholes and the locations.

A picture blog says a thousand words, but a meeting with Tucson Council could be more effect:

On March 4th we will be heading over to Tucson City Council to make a speech about the importance of fixing the potholes seen around Tucson. Support us by sending in pictures, stories, or facts you would like us to tell City Council.

• Photo from Tucson Potholes.
• "This is the second pothole found outside of 1304 E 10th St. Clearly this is a street that needs more attention."

If you want to take matters into your own hands, click here to get a hold of the Streets and Traffic Maintenance Division.