When The Dish closed for dinner service in March of this year, owner Tom Smith assured that the restaurant would still host occasional dinner events for their loyal fans and customers. A little over two months later, The Dish announced its first in a series of one-time-only dinners, resurrecting the Tucson favorite on Saturday, May 30.

The "Favorite Things" dinner will bring back The Dish's last chef, Michael Muthart, for a six-course dinner paired with wine. The dinner runs at $195 including tax and gratuity. Attendees will also have the opportunity to order any of the wines served at the dinner with a 15 percent discount.

You can make your reservations for the dinner, which starts at 7 p.m. by calling 326-0121. The event will be held at The Dish's old location inside RumRunner, located at 3131 E. First St.

Here's what you can expect to eat and drink at the event:

Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick announced today that she wants a promotion to the U.S. Senate.

Kirkpatrick, a Democrat serving her third term in Congress representing Northern Arizona, is seeking the seat now held by Sen. John McCain.

“I respect John McCain’s service to our nation,” Kirkpatrick said in a video announcing her plans to run for Senate. “I just believe our state is changing. I believe Arizonans should have a real choice who they send to the United States Senate.”

McCain has already announced he’s running for reelection, but the 78-year-old Republican may be vulnerable as he seeks his sixth term. A recent Public Policy Polling survey showed that his job approval rating was down at 41 percent, with half of the 600 voters surveyed saying that they disapproved of the job he was doing.

In a head-to-head matchup, McCain had the support of 42 percent of those surveyed, while Kirkpatrick had the support of 36 percent. Trailing by 6 percentage points isn’t a great place to start out, but the election more than a year away and Kirkpatrick has proven that she can win over independents in the competitive District 1, a massive and mostly rural district that includes Oro Valley and Marana as well as Flagstaff, most of eastern Arizona and the Native American reservations in northeastern Arizona.

Not a purveyor of reproduction “surf” music, Donavon Frankenreiter all but takes you to the beach for the beer, the horsing around and the righteous endorphin afterglow, grateful for the cozy fireside singalong with a family-tight surfing circle. A beach is anywhere you feel good.

Frankenreiter went pro as a surfer at 16 and took up the guitar while on the competitive surfing circuit. He could still boast Billabong as a sponsor, surfing the world’s most exotic settings for their videos and helping design a line of their clothing.

His music has been compared to Jimmy Buffet, but it might be more fun—his voice more lived-in and his lyrics a bit more literate. He has a sizable—and passionate—following: 225 thousand Facebook fans can’t be wrong.

We connected with him soon after he landed in L.A. after a show in England.

You know we don't have beach here in Tucson, right?
But I heard that somewhere in Arizona you have a really great wave machine!

Is there a philosophy or a frame of mind that's transferable from surfing to making music  and managing your music business?
I think the greatest thing in common is that they're forever changing. You never get the same wave twice. I never have a gig where I go "Oh gosh, here we go again. Another same 18 songs." Every night's different—the crowd's different, the venue's different, how you feel's different. So you don't ever know if you're going to go to the beach and catch the best wave of the day or the best wave of your life. These moments happen and they keep you coming back for more. Great music is sort of like the uncommon surf, sort of the denominator of everybody's feelings, you know? I feel like it's an international religion for everybody. It's been a part of everybody's culture forever.

Your last record Start Livin' has a sense of intimacy and a lot of offbeat instrumentation I would think would be tough to pull off on a big tour.
It's actually a really unique and super fun show. I have this bass-player/electric guitar player. He plays both at the same time. He has a double-neck guitar that's a bass on top and a six-string guitar on the bottom. So he'll make some bass loops and then go to the guitar. And then I got this electric guitar that inside the body of it is the sounds of a Hammond organ, so it's called a "guitorgan." And then the drummer switches off to percussion. So it's super fun. We're creating the sound of maybe five or six people. It's all live, no pre-processed loops. 

You have more than 225,000 fans on Facebook! What's your secret to social media domination?
Things have changed a lot over the last 12 years I've been doing this. We just recorded our brand new record (The Heart, out August 4 on Frankenreiter's own label, Jamboree.). We streamed (the sessions) for eight hours a day, ten days straight. We did a song a day, and every one of those songs is up on YouTube. Go to my Facebook, you can click on the links that are on there and you can watch what we did each day. It's a highlight reel and the song unmixed and unmastered, that we did that day and you can hear the whole new album, in its entirety and watch the whole video.

So you'll be playing new material at the Rialto?
We'll probably slide in a couple of new songs but I don't want to play a bunch of stuff they' haven't heard before. I want to play what they want to hear. They like "Free." "They like "It Don't Matter," "Glow," and just certain songs off every record.

Don Frankenreiter plays  with Leila Lopez at The Rialto Theatre, located at 318 E. Congress St, on Wednesday, May 27. Tickets are $26 in advance and can be found online, along with more information, on the Rialto Theatre website.

There's really no reason for anyone to know that Holsteiner Agricultural School, a charter school in Maricopa, exists, except for the families it serves. It's a tiny school, 50 to 60 students max, and it appeared from the outside to be completely unexceptional until Diane Douglas added it to her erase-and-replace AIMS cheating list—possible cheating list, I should say, though the evidence against this and the other seven schools is pretty damning. I began hunting around the web to see what I could find out about Holsteiner charter, and what I found led me to look for more, then more, all of which led me to ask a number of questions I can't answer.

First the [possible] cheating story. Holsteiner Agricultural School's state grade made an almost unbelievable jump from a "D" in 2013 to an "A" in 2014. It turns out, the jump very likely shouldn't be believed. On the 2014 tests, an unlikely number of wrong answers were changed to right answers.

"(S)tudents in the fourth grade corrected their responses to the right answer 83 percent of the time in reading and 85 percent of the time in mathematics," a letter from the Education Department states.

The school superintendent's answer to the cheating allegation raised a huge red flag for me.

Holsteiner Superintendent Tanya Graysmark, however, told The Arizona Republic in an e-mail Friday that her school has done nothing wrong.

"We worked with our students all year on best test practices (to go back and check their answers and make any necessary changes to their test — to do the best they can) prior to turning it in," she said. "This may have caused a lot of erasure marks," she wrote.

Graysmark should have said, "I'll look into it," instead of denying there was any wrongdoing and suggesting that the school's eagle-eyed fourth graders made mistakes on their first pass through the test, then went back, found the mistakes and came up with the right answer over 80 percent of the time.

I decided, if Graysmark would make a comment that questionable and self serving, she and the school deserved a closer look. Here's what I found.

Kayla—3.5-years-old —Pit Bull Mix—F—#803050
Kayla is too sweet for her own good! Easily stealing the hearts of many since being at HSSA for two months, Kayla is one darling pup! Kayla is gentle, playful, easy to walk, and has a beautiful temperament. Although this adorable girl can be quite shy in some situations, she is likely to warm up quickly to those that give her a good back-scratch. Kayla is looking for an indoor lifestyle with a family that has a calm home environment, no cats, and lots of love to give. Kayla will need patience and plenty of adjustment time as well. If given the chance, this sweetheart will easily become the furry love of your life! Please come by HSSA today to meet precious Kayla.

Tucson's incorrigible Steve Gall won't give up. State bills he's worked on to mandate structured recess in Arizona schools, or recommend structured recess, or recommend a certain amount of weekly physical activity for kids during school hours, have gotten close but never made it into law in recent legislative sessions. He's volunteered for years in TUSD, organizing physical activity with kids in a number of schools. His urging helped lead the district to recommend 90 minutes of physical activity a week in its schools.

Steve is one of the voices in an article, Active 'Brain Breaks' Increase Focus, Leaning, Teachers Say, in the Arizona School Boards Association newsletter, AZEDNEWS. We shouldn't need an article to tell us that kids' brains go numb after sitting in class too long, and there's nothing like moving the body for a few minutes to get their brains moving again. What group of people should be least in need of that reminder? Educators, of course. But in today's "skill building," test-driven educational world, seat time is too often equated with learning time, and recess, or even stretch, jump and run-in-place exercises in the classroom, are considered time wasters.

It's a good article with lots of links to other resources, including GoNoodle.com, a site devoted to helping teachers create quick, fun brain breaks for their kids.

Prep & Pastry owner Nathan Ares excitedly shows off touches to his new restaurant called Commoner & Co. There's large, raised plush seating, high top tables, a lovely marble-topped bar and lots of bright colors at the restaurant located at 6960 E. Sunrise Dr. You might remember the location as the former Brian Metzger restaurant The Abbey, but Ares is looking to create something new in the space with upscale bar fare with a fusion twist.

To execute the menu, he brought on Virginia Wooters—a veteran of Fox Restaurant Concepts and Metzger Family Restaurants alike. She says she sees Ares as the next in a lineage of Arizona restauranteurs.

"Nate's got an eye for what's trendy and popular," Wooters says. "And he goes after what he wants."

What he and Wooters both want for Commoner & Co. is a good neighborhood bar for the foothills that serves fresh inventive food. Offerings include a brown sugar and black pepper crusted burger with pork belly, mussels with Thai curry, handmade pasta with Calabrian chili and lemon broth, pan seared halloumi cheese and housemade duck pastrami. Wooters explains that the fusion elements are an homage to her favorite dishes to eat when she dines out.

"We wanted it to be fun, different stuff that no one else is doing," she says. "It stems from the stuff that I like to order when I go out to eat, but if I could remake it how I like it."


While one of Wooters' favorite dishes of the new menu is a slow braised short rib with a caramel jus and a bone marrow bread pudding, Ares says he thinks the chicken fried duck and blueberry waffle will be a real hit. 

Behind the bar, local beer, cocktails created by Ares and sangria from local bartender Matt Martinez will keep guests sipping their way through the drink menu. Ares made a pickled pineapple margarita, a house pickle brine martini (shaken) and a riff on the sloe gin fizz with rose and lemon rose petal cordial for the menu. Martinez's sangrias offer red strawberry gastrique and a white Thai chili with clarified grapefruit juice. 

Although all of that sounds pretty fancy, Ares assures that he aims to price the menu competitively with the area's other bars. 

Commoner & Co. will open June 11 with the first few days of service being reservation only. After that, the restaurant will continue with dinner service, later adding weekend brunch after about a month and lunch later in the fall. Although many would worry about opening any new business (aside from a pool supply store) in Tucson at the beginning of summer, Ares says he sees the first few months being slower months as an opportunity to connect with the surrounding community and fine tune both the menu and service.

"If you're doing a good thing, people are still going to show up," Ares says. "This is like my big boy restaurant. I honestly never even expected Prep to be as big as it is."

For updates and more information, including how you can make a reservation for the restaurant's first few opening days, visit the Commoner & Co. website or follow the restaurant's Facebook page.

Although summer signifies a time for many Tucsonans when it's time to start looking for ways to get out of town, summer cocktail menus have begun popping up around popular local bars meaning that now is the perfect opportunity to explore the lighter, brighter flavors bartenders can play with.

No place is this more evident than Agustin Kitchen, where bar manager Ciaran Wiese uses infusions and interesting techniques to mix up a range of flavors on his newest cocktail menu. Done as a collaborative effort between Wiese and bartenders David Scharf and Leah Majalca, the menu is, as in previous iterations, separated into three sections based on drinkability. 

The first section—Easy Drinkin'—runs at $9 (or just $5 during happy hour) per drink and focuses on more approachable flavors and typically less spirit-forward drinks, the Sonoran Old Fashioned being an exception there. The Wildflower Sour, like many drinks on the new menu, is sunny and citrusy with a fortified Cocchi Americano wine and features a wildflower-infused gin.

You'll also find the Bartender's Whim—a weekly rotating special—on the Easy Drinkin' menu. I had assumed, wrongly, that one recent special, which included mint whiskey, was just some bottle of distillery-made mint whiskey a distributor rep dropped off at the bar and the bar staff then figured out some way to use it up. Actually, even the rotating specials get the Agustin treatment and this particular drink utilized Rittenhouse rye infused with fresh, herbaceous mint leaves.

If you're beginning to notice a theme of infused spirits here, you're right on track. Weise's bar, regardless of season, seems to have a focus on developing flavors through infusions, though this summer menu errs on the side of light, floral and herbal for a more delicate palette. 

The battles between Diane Douglas and the Ducey-supported state Board of Education have been all over the papers and The Range recently. What's going on is a power struggle. The outcome will help determine the kind of policy that comes out of the state education administration, but right now, the two sides are jostling for position, not policy.

In most reports, we hear more about Douglas' agenda than about the Board's. This video is a bit of a corrective. Remember back when, when Douglas said Ducey and the board president, Gregory Miller, want to move money from district schools to charters? You'll learn more about that, and about President Miller, in the video by Ann-Eve Pedersen, my cohost on the cable access show, Education: The Rest of the Story (which, by the way, may end its run shortly if Access Tucson is forced to close its doors).

Fun fact: Gregory Miller is CEO and Superintendent of Challenge Charter School in Glendale—population, about 530 students. His salary is $122,000. His wife, Pamela, the Executive Director and Vice President, also gets a $122,000 salary. Their daughter, Wendy, is principal and secretary of the school. Her salary is $99,000. Watch the video to find out who determined their salaries.

Whatever you might think of Democrat Jonathan Rothschild's accomplishments in his first term in office, you have to appreciate the astonishing luck he has in drawing some of the weakest challengers of any politician I've seen.

Candidates have to turn in their nominating petitions by 5 p.m. next Wednesday, May 27, and so far, the only guy who wants to run against Rothschild on the Republican ticket is a lefty Democrat.

Robert Reus has less than a week to get a minimum of 1,306 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Considering his rather short history with the GOP—he changed his registration last week, according to Becky Pallack over at the AZ Daily Star—he probably can't count on too much support from the county party apparatus. 

Reus ran a quixotic campaign against former Tucson councilman Rodney Glassman in the 2007 Democratic primary (more on that in a bit). His political activity these days is railing against the council during Call to the Audience.

Rothschild does sort of have a Democratic opponent—a B-movie producer named Chuck Williams. But that campaign looks like it's going to bomb at the ballot box office as Williams hasn't really got a grip on the whole signature-gathering routine.

And look at the political circus freaks Rothschild was juggling when he first ran in 2011: Two Republicans and an independent filed to run against him, but all three failed to come up with enough signatures and were bounced from the ballot. That left Rick Grinnell to run as a write-in candidate, but his campaign proposals—such as cutting back trash service so that residents would have to remember random days for collection—led to him getting trounced by 15 percentage points. Oh, and then there was the elderly wackjob who claimed, among other things, to be a billionaire because he owned all of the houses in Tucson. (IIRC, the Queen of England figured into it as well.) In a twist, Home was able to get enough signatures to make the ballot but he got tossed from the ballot because he didn't live in the city. But he filed a novel countersuit trying to get Rothschild tossed from the ballot because Rothschild was an attorney.

Very weird days. Anyway, here's some background on Reus from a profile I wrote in 2007 back when he was running against Democrat Rodney Glassman: