Op-ed by former US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in yesterday's USA Today on her and husband Mark Kelly's continued work with their organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions, and their continued work for comprehensive gun reform legislation:

One year ago Thursday, the United States Senate failed us.

It was last April — mere months after the senseless slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — that a minority of senators blocked legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get their hands on deadly firearms.

Given the opportunity to stand up to the gun lobby by supporting legislation favored by two-thirds of Americans, these senators did what all politicians do when they fear upsetting powerful interests: They voted for the status quo.

These were some of the same senators who had sat across the table from the grieving parents of children massacred at Sandy Hook or who looked me in the eye as I told them what it is like to learn to walk and talk again after a bullet from a madman's gun nearly took my life.

I say now what I said then: There is more work to do. So today, I am not wasting my time focusing on this single setback in what we have always known would be a long, hard haul.

I am looking to a safer future: on Wednesday I was in Mobile, Ala., for the keel-laying ceremony of the USS Gabrielle Giffords, a Navy vessel that, once completed, will help protect our country. It will be tough, steely and ready to do the hard things, the same qualities that we should expect from our leaders in Washington.

Today, I am also alarmed by the lack of focus on the recent tragedies at Fort Hood and centers of Jewish life in Kansas City. I cannot help but wonder: Were there too few victims for this to capture our attention?

Take the Fort Hood shooting: Instead of a serious discussion on the connections between mental health and gun violence, most of what I heard were some members of Congress on TV arguing for allowing guns on bases, even though our military leaders say this would make service members less safe.

We need a comprehensive approach: a surge in mental health services, mental health "first aid" programs to identify and intervene in problems before it's too late, and a background check system that will stop the most dangerous among us from buying guns, by getting records in the system and closing the Internet and gun-show loopholes.
The many members of Congress who refuse to take action to make our communities safer surely hope the shameful lack of attention on the root causes of gun violence, and steps to prevent it, means that the call for action is fading, and we are giving up. Far from it.

Today, the organization founded by my husband, Mark, and me, Americans for Responsible Solutions, stands stronger than ever. Since our founding, more than 500,000 Americans have joined, and more than 160,000 Americans have donated. That's why we are more ready than ever to take our fight to the state and local level.
We have done our homework, and the numbers don't lie: From Texas to New Hampshire and everywhere in between, we know that support for policies such as expanded background checks continue to be popular in both parties. Gun owners and non-gun owners alike agree on expanding background checks, making gun trafficking a serious crime with stiff penalties, making it illegal for all stalkers and all domestic abusers to buy guns, and expanding mental health resources so the mentally ill find it easier to receive treatment than to buy firearms.

This is why common-sense gun policies are a winning political issue. Still, we are not naive; we understand that there will always be some in Congress who remain paralyzed by the grip of the gun lobby. Leaders at the National Rifle Association, who get paid handsomely for shilling for inaction and peddling fear, will be a force this fall.
But so will we. In the absence of a Congress ready to act to reduce gun violence, we will keep working to create a different Congress.

And come November, surely some of those politicians who were unwilling to stand up to the gun lobby a year ago will face the consequences at the ballot box. They will wish desperately that they had heeded the will of their constituents.

Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS) is working across the country to build an organization with millions of people committed to finding sensible ways to reduce gun violence and encouraging elected officials to enact responsible firearms policies that protect the Second Amendment. Today, ARS stands more than 500,000 strong.

Today I’m going to get creepy. There are many words for creepy guys, probably for good reason. One of the all-time favorites is Peeping Tom. It’s a great story.

The Celtic Fiddle Festival concert Thursday night at Berger is practically the last gasp of this year’s long Irish season (that is, if you don’t count the ceili dance at O’Malley’s at 6:30 p.m., April 25).

Celtic Fiddle Festival is actually the name of a band, a troupe of three fiddlers and one guitarist who play music from three distinctive Celtic traditions: Irish, Breton and Quebecois. The three perform “their separate and shared traditions.”

Kevin Burke, born in England of Irish parents from the west of Ireland, played in Tucson last year. Growing up in a vibrant immigrant community in London, he learned the music of Ireland and its diaspora, mastering the brisk and ornamented fiddling style of County Sligo. He circled round to live in Ireland, and is now resident in the United States.

Less well known to Americans is the Breton style, played by Christian Lemaitre of Brittany, a Celtic enclave in the far northwest corner of France. Brittany has its own Celtic language and traditional music, which has been undergoing a revival since the 1970s. Nicholas Quemener, also of Brittany, is the guitarist, and a maestro of open-tuning.

French Canadian André Brunet not only plays the violin, he does the lively foot-stomping characteristic of Quebecois Celtic fiddling. The earliest French settlers to Canada were from northern France, including Celtic Brittany, and the massive Irish immigration to the eastern provinces in the 19th century only strengthened the Celtic cast of Quebecois music.

Show starts at 7:30 Thursday, at Berger Center for the Performing Arts, 1200 W. Speedway. $20 adults; $18 students and seniors over 60, at Antigone Books, the Folk Shop and www.inconcerttucson.com.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite athlete spent the weekend injecting more steroids than you could pay for with a year's salary, or as his publicist says, "living in the gym, for the team and for the fans," an everyday hero was at work.

Our story begins in Lake Tahoe, California Republic. Again. A young man and his father reportedly went on a trip to the "snow," a weather phenomenon from traditional Scandinavian folklore where frozen water particles blanket the earth. Although a handful of Tucson locals say they have personally seen snow in the mountains in the dead of winter, others tell the same tall tales about sasquatch and the chupacabra. Bode Beirdneau and his father were spending time together riding "snowmobiles," a science-fiction transportation device similar to Santa's sled or luck dragons.

Unfortunately, the trip took a turn for the worse. After crashing his snowmobile and sustaining serious injuries, JT Bierdneau realized that riding miles into the wilderness without a map, emergency signal, radio, or phone reception was not his best idea. His nine-year-old son determined that his time window to act would be short in the severe weather and decided to ride out on his own to look for help, with no map and limited directions. He ultimately found another rider with an emergency radio and was able to direct rescue personnel to his father before the situation worsened.

In summary, Bode is a true hero: he went alone into the frozen wilderness, ignored everything taught to him by approaching a total stranger alone for help, then led the rescuers through the wilderness and/or followed his snowmobile tracks back to his father. Thanks to Bode's efforts, his father is expected to make a full recovery. I'm also obligated to add that Bode was happy that he was still able to finish his homework assignments, as that's adorable and makes us simultaneously reflect on the youthful innocence of the hero while putting his remarkable act into the perspective of an unassuming child thrust into a colossal situation or something.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

Get ready for an unshocking shocker. Parents who are taking advantage of the "Vouchers on Steroids" Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) are stashing away lots of money. They're not using it right now; they're saving it for some educational purpose to be named later.

Anyone who's surprised by this turn of events hasn't been paying attention. The generic name for the program is "Education Savings Accounts." Saving up ESA money isn't a bug; it's a feature.

The Capitol Times has the story. Parents who are using the ESAs have accumulated $2.5 million in unspent money over the past three years, meaning one dollar out of every five the state has given to parents to be used for their children's educations has yet to be spent. The Dept. of Ed. disputes the numbers — not because the Cap Times got it wrong, but because the Dept. of Ed. gave out bad numbers. However, the corrected numbers haven't been released, so it's reasonable to assume it's still a big number.

Let's look at why all that money, however much it amounts to, is going unspent. One reason is, some parents get a very large chunk of change every year. The amount is 90% of what the state would give to a public school (district or charter) to educate the child. For most kids, that's a little more than $5,000 a year. But children with special needs have considerably more allotted for their educations, as much as $20,000 a year. In the original ESA legislation, most of the children who qualified were children with special needs, meaning lots of kids had far more than $5,000 deposited in their accounts each year. Parents could choose a private school charging less than they were given and have money left over.

AC/DC isn’t retiring, yet.

The Telegraph spoke with Aussie rock band’s lead singer Brian Johnson about the rumors surrounding the band’s retirement. Johnson says the band intends on collaborating next month in Vancouver. "We're going to pick up some guitars, have a plonk, and see if anybody has got any tunes or ideas. If anything happens, we'll record it," Johnson told the Telegraph.

From Telegraph:

"I wouldn't like to say anything either way about the future," he said. "I'm not ruling anything out. One of the boys has a debilitating illness, but I don't want to say too much about it. He is very proud and private, a wonderful chap. We've been pals for 35 years and I look up to him very much."

Rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young was rumored to have suffered a stroke and unable to continue to play with the band. Fortunately, the 61-year-old is just taking some time off. It’s still unclear if the elderly rockers will play 40 different shows in 40 different venues in honor of their 40th anniversary.

A 3-year-old in Lincoln, Neb., wandered away from home and climbed into a claw machine in a nearby bowling alley. The child was found by an employee around the same time the mother called the police to report the child missing, according to WOWT NBC Omaha. Fortunately, the vendor was able to retrieve the unscathed modern day Dennis the Menace and reunite him with his mother.

The mother wasn't cited because she reacted accordingly.

Stop me if you heard this one before, Tucson is a great cycling city. Maybe we're biased, but Tucson was built for cyclist. If you won’t take our word for it, maybe USA TODAY Travel’s top 10 U.S. Cycling Cities will change your mind.

Tucson takes 7th place in this formidable “must-visit list for active vacationers of all ages."

From USA TODAY:

George Hincapie nominated Tucson for, among other things, its strong winter appeal. During the colder months, the city becomes a hotbed of cycling activity as northern-based enthusiasts come down to enjoy mild winter temps and dry conditions of the high desert. The 55-mile car-free Urban Loop, in addition to a whopping 700 miles of bike lanes, makes this college town a favorite with road cyclists, while the surrounding mountains, including Mt. Lemmon, provide a wide range of terrain for mountain biking.

We salute you, George Hincapie. You might have finished 2nd in the 2011 National Road Race Championships, but today you finish first in our hearts.

In late March, still high from the Festival of Books, Weekly World Central, well, squealed all girly like when the Tucson Pima Arts Counciil and the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry announced Junot Díaz was coming to the Moldy Pueblo. The author of This Is How You Lose Her, Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Dominican Republic born and New Jersey raised, will be at the Tucson Fox Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. on Wednesday, April 23, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. (Cost is $15 suggested donation or $25 get's you a VIP reception and reserved seating. Go here for tickets.)

Díaz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MacArthur Fellow, has gifted us with amazing stories enveloped around Dominican history, the immigrant experience and yeah, love and being a nerd. So when we reached out to his agent for an interview, it was probably a good thing the writer's busy schedule meant he'd only be able to respond to our questions by email—allowing a reporter to save face and not turn to mush on the other end of the phone in a pool of fandom.

The fandom? Well, for many in Arizona, embarrassed by our state lawmakers' anti-immigration and anti-Mexican-American studies laws and ideology, Díaz and other writers have offered a sweet balm—a reminder, that fiction writers remain important, change lives and return us to our humanity when the outside world, well, sucks.

MacArthur Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize … how do you keep it real? Your mother?

What do I know. Is "keeping it real” short hand for authenticity or humility or fidelity to a former self or is it a combination? To be hones,t I'm not sure if I’ve ever been a fan of the authentic person of color narrative. I grew up a poor immigrant kid in NJ. And yet, to NYC Dominicans us Jersey folks weren’t truly authentic. On top of that I was a kid who liked to read books. To a lot of the neighborhood that immediately disqualified me from being authentically "hood.” And so on. The question of humility . . . This is something that’s best practiced than discoursed, but for the sake of the question, let me just say I grew up in a family that prized humility over almost all other traits. I like to think that I still show traces of that upbringing. As for loyalty to a former self—you can’t deny the person you are to satisfy the standards of someone you were. One hopes for dialogue between all our former selves, but in the end, it’s to the present we owe our true loyalties. I figure if poverty didn’t undermine my core values, then maybe privilege won’t either, but only time will tell. Ultimately prizes and accolades are wonderful (and arbitrary) strokes of fortune, but they have very little to do with the actual work of crafting books. They are temptations without question —to become prideful and vain and they certainly can fill your head with a lot of empty noise. Some people get a prize and go bananas. I get a prize and am grateful, but I also know that this is only going to increase the time it will take me to lose the noise and drop down to my deepest self.

In Latino culture, sometimes people are labeled as vendidos if it is perceived they’ve aired the community’s dirty laundry. I’ve thought of you often and what you faced after you wrote the op-ed piece about the Dominican high-court’s decision on citizenship of those of Haitian-decent and accusations of racism. You faced your share of criticism. How did you deal with it?

What we saw in the case of the Dominican Republic was a coordinated attempt to silence and intimidate critics of the sentencia that more or less denationalizes Dominicans of Haitian descent. In the DR many of the sentencia's critics had to go into hiding because the reactionary proponents of this bilious legislature initiated a campaign of terror in order to guarantee that there would be no debate, no dissension. Those of us in the Diaspora who got shit thrown at us for slamming the sentencia had it easy. I didn’t go to sleep fearing that someone would burn my house or attack me on the street. To put it simply: I’m not troubled when cowardly criminal politicians and their supporters decide to evict me from their malign vision of our nation. Who in the world would want to live in that terrifying place anyway? The vision of the nation that I belong to, that I aspire to, that I strive for, does not involve denationalization or terror. From that Dominican Republic no one can deport me.

According to the Canada-based Get Real organization, they're "a university-student run non-profit that speaks to high school students about unlearning homophobia and embracing everyone."

And that's cool and all, and the video making its way into our internet hearts is nice, too, but it wasn't that long ago (almost 30 years, when I was in college at the UA), that gay men were getting blackballed from their fraternities based on the frat's founding policies.

Have those policies changed? I'd love to know, because to me, that's better than a video. Or maybe changes in homophobic policy that caused pain to young men on our campus not long ago is a secret—like the handshakes, or maybe they haven't changed much at all.