My friend Ron was halfway through a Kurt Vonnegut novel when he decided to reach out via Facebook for assurance that his particular book would get better. I replied, "It doesn't." A while later he replied saying that I was right. The subject of Vonnegut reminded me of one of his recurring characters, Kilgore Trout. Trout was himself a science fiction writer who could only achieve publication as filler for pornographic books and magazines (no internet in the 70's). Kilgore Trout, in turn, reminded me of a hilarious, wildly imaginative, and sometimes disturbing 1975 novel Venus on the Half-shell, by Phillip Jose' Farmer, originally published under the pen name "Kilgore Trout".

If you have yet to read it, Venus on the Half-shell makes for an absorbing, fast paced, escape from our crazy times. I told Ron as much.

Most authors will start a novel by painting a picture of the setting, then begin the introduction of the characters. Farmer starts Venus with the protagonist, Simon Wagstaff, having sex atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. Next came the great flood, literally. An alien race called the Hoonhor traveled from planet to planet checking out the state of evolution. If the state was not well, they cleansed it. Earth was one of these. The Hoonhor caused all the water vapor in the atmosphere to precipitate at once, washing the planet, and giving evolution another shot. 

Our hero, Simon Wagstaff, managed to float around long enough to float by an abandoned Chinese spacecraft which he boarded shortly before running aground on, where else, Mount Ararat. After learning how to fly the craft, Simon left Earth and traveled the galaxy far and wide to find the answers to unanswerable questions, like, "Why are we created only to suffer and die?"

The novel starts out with a bang, but that is only the first in a number of sexual adventures. There was, for example, the planet Dokal where all the people were identical to humans with the exception of possessing a five to six foot long prehensile tail, naked, save for a tuft of fur at the end. The Dokals insisted on fixing his lack of tail problem, and after the installation, he found it to be quite useful. Useful, he found, in ways he had not imagined, like when the King's young daughter named Tunc (an anagram) seduced him and... well, I'll leave it there.

Occasionally the humor could be a bit disturbing. As it turned out, faster-than-light travel was made possible by sucking energy from a parallel universe to feed the engine. Unfortunately, the globs of energy were actually living beings. They died in the process. The engine, in fact, transmitted the sound of their wailing death cries - the faster he went, the louder they became. Simon found it terribly unnerving.

Farmer was a great admirer of Vonnegut, and through the persona of Kilgore Trout he was able to take the Vonnegut style to far higher level of humor and creativity. Writing Venus was a joy for Farmer, and it shows in the writing. He speaks of laughing out loud while typing it, and concluded, "What a blast it was!"

Venus is a great escape novel for the science fiction buff, and the joy of the author in its creation touches you. Finish your summer reading with this!

Oh yeah, Ron's book that did not get better was Slaughterhouse Five.

I can't help it. I find the AZ Board of Ed vs. AZ Dept. of Ed train wreck endlessly fascinating. Diane Douglas is so much fun to watch. If someone can show me how she's done harm to Arizona education during her tenure, how, say, things would be better for our children, teachers and schools if John Huppenthal were still in power, maybe I'll start taking her shenanigans more seriously. Until then, I'll continue getting the same perverse pleasure from her antics that I get watching the Republican presidential race.

The one spasm of guilt I feel over my guilty pleasure is that I'm pretty sure Douglas is up to no good in her attempt to wrest power from the Board. Her dogged persistence makes me pretty certain that others are telling her, "If you can get the power to hire and fire more staff, then you can hire your own people and put some of our Tea Party agenda in motion, so keep fighting them at every turn." If she wins this struggle with the Board, it could mean trouble down the road. But it's hard for me to take the side of Doug Ducey's Board of Education against her. Look, if the two keep fighting, if the hatred between the two sides continues to grow, maybe they'll neutralize each other. With Ducey and his minions in power, I prefer inaction to action.

With that in mind, here's the latest. During the most recent Board meeting, where Douglas forms a minority of one, she kept talking when Board President Greg Miller wanted her to stop. According to Douglas, Miller grabbed her arm, and when she still didn't stop talking, he pushed away her microphone. Douglas claims Miller assaulted her, so she called the cops  on him. The thing is, she was right. He was way out of line touching her, grabbing her, in anger.

I'm not a student of Roberts Rules of Order, but I'm reasonably certain it doesn't tell the chair of a meeting to grab someone or push away her microphone when she's out of order. I'm guessing there's a procedure the chair is supposed to follow. Miller's impulsive action was a small act of violence against Douglas, but an act of violence nonetheless. It was an attempt to scare and bully her into silence. He had absolutely no right to touch her, especially in such an aggressive manner. I would think every advocate for woman's rights should feel indignant right along with her.

Should she have made this a police incident? From a political standpoint, absolutely, even if she didn't think Miller's action rose to that level of aggression. Douglas goaded Miller into an impulsive act, then she used political judo to turn his action against him. It was a very clever maneuver for a novice.

Tucson Unified School District wants to bring more local, healthy eats to its schools, so the district is partnering up with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and a network of local farmers.

The purpose is to provide students with fresh meals, as well as help out farmers from Tucson and other Southern Arizona lands.

“It’s a great opportunity to help our children get the proper nourishment they need to become the leaders of tomorrow. We’re also glad to expand our local support for Arizona farmers, which will now include small farms within a close proximity to the community we serve," says Shirley Sokol, TUSD's director of Food Services, in a statement. 

From a TUSD press release:

Regional small farmers grow high-quality, nutrient-dense produce, but they face ongoing challenges to find stable and consistent markets for their products. Through the coordination of planting and harvesting schedules, farmers can work together to build up larger volumes of product and then sell it to institutional buyers, including Tucson Unified School District.

With its existing warehouse storage and refrigerated trucks, the Community Food Bank is well-positioned to manage these efforts and oversee the farmers as they enter into the larger marketplace. Additional grant funding from the USDA will go to coordinating and planning for the future of the partnership.

Michael McDonald, CEO at the Community Food Bank says, “Everyone wins in this partnership. Kids get to enjoy fresh, local produce, and learn about the diverse crops that flourish in our region; local food producers increase sales; and the money stays in Tucson to benefit our local economy. The Food Bank couldn’t be more excited to be part of this.”

Kara Jones, Farmers’ Market Manager at the Community Food Bank, will oversee the partnership. She says, “Tucson Unified School District has proven its commitment to local produce and to our community’s health and economic stability. It’s all very much in line with our vision of a healthy, hunger-free future and we’re glad to have the opportunity to participate in such innovative work.” 

I rarely read a book that I find to be transformative, that not only adds to my knowledge and understanding of an issue but significantly alters my way of thinking about it. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those works. It's a new book and currently sits at number two on the New York Times' nonfiction best seller list. 

Coates' book is presented as a letter to his teenage son. It's his attempt to describe what it's like growing up black in present-day America from the inside out, using his own life as his touchstone. He presents his world from a personal, subjective point of view. This isn't a sociological or political text. In the book Coates renders his confusion, his questions, his grief, his anger and his joys with literary clarity, and with a depth that can't be captured in a dry, "objective" discussion of the issues.

It would be incorrect for me to say I "understand" the book. You can only understand the world he's trying to capture if you've lived it, if you've felt it in your psyche and your nerve endings. Intellectual understanding, even combined with valiant attempts at empathy, can't substitute for being there on a day by day, minute by minute basis. I'm an older, white, privileged male who does his best to comprehend the nature of racism in this country, but I know I'm looking at that world from the outside. Coates grants me the ability to get as close to what the life of a black man is like as any recent work I can think of.

People compare Coates' book to James Baldwin's electrifying 1963 work, The Fire Next Time. It's a valid comparison, but for me, the experience of reading Between the World and Me is more like what I felt when I read Ralph Ellison's great 1952 novel, Invisible Man. That's the only other book I can remember that gave me the momentary sense of living the black experience, and helped me understand how distant it is from my experiences and how limited my understanding will always be.

This book deserves to join the literary canon alongside works by Baldwin, Ellison and Toni Morrison. So let me end by quoting what Morrison wrote about Between the World and Me.

“I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."

Born to Run turns 40 years old today. Slate looks back at Springsteen's struggle to get the album recorded in the early days of his career:

Bruce kept struggling to get on tape the sound he had in his head, and at times it seemed like he was ready to give up. Long nights at the studio ended in misery, the atmosphere tense and rancorous. To stay awake, engineer Jimmy Iovine would take a piece of gum, throw it away, and chew on the aluminum wrapping. In the end, Springsteen was miserable: “After it was finished? I hated it! I couldn't stand to listen to it. I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I'd ever heard.”

He almost didn't release it. But Jon Landau, who had stepped in as a producer, helped persuade him to let go. According to writer Dave Marsh, Landau called Springsteen and said, “Look, you're not supposed to like it. You think Chuck Berry sits around listening to ‘Maybellene’? And when he does hear it, don't you think he wishes a few things could be [changed]? Now c'mon, it's time to put the record out.” The album appeared in 1975, and it launched Springsteen toward megastardom, getting him on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously. Reviewing the album in Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus proclaimed, “It is a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him—a '57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records that shuts down every claim that has been made. And it should crack his future wide open.”

The Wall Street Journal assembles vintage performances of all the songs on the album here, Michael Calia notes:

Sun Tran says they were able to add a ninth route to the limited weekday service they're providing because of the bus drivers' and mechanics' strike that's been going on for 20 days now. 

Route 9 (Grant Road and Campbell Avenue, as well as downtown) will start running today, thanks to a combination of transit assistance coming down from Phoenix, as well as other Sun Tran employees who are returning to work—unrelated to the strike—according to Kandi Young, Sun Tran's marketing and communications director.

The current schedule for routes is Monday to Friday from about 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Here's a list of the routes:

 Route 3 – 6th St./Wilmot
 Route 4 – Speedway
 Route 8 – Broadway
 Route 9 – E. Grant
 Route 11 – Alvernon
 Route 16 – Oracle/Ina
 Route 18 – South 6th Avenue
 Route 25 – South Park Avenue
 Route 29 – Valencia

“Sun Tran remains committed to providing service during this work stoppage, as we understand how
additional service is a benefit to the community,” said Kate Riley, Sun Tran General Manager, in a statement to the media. “We also ask all employers with bus riding employees to please be patient during this time. We are working on adding more service as additional resources become available.”

Here's a recap of the strike:

I was so late to the Serial* bandwagon. I listened to the entire series in two days, only taking a break when coworkers would approach my desk demanding attention. When I finished the final episode, I was unsatisfied. I, having been a big reader/television watcher all my life, wanted a satisfying answer. A well throughout, all encompassing final chapter. But this is "real life" and this story isn't over just because we're ready for a Law & Order-style recap. 

Though Serial is done with the story that kept us so entranced last season, the story is still developing. Through Undisclosed, more details of the case are being discovered. This time around, there's no This American Life level production and the narrator is firmly on Team Anon. Its content will be interesting for Serial fans, but Undisclosed is absolutely a different experience. 

Entertainment Weekly has been kind enough to keep up with this for us and wrote something up giving us a Serial recap, the facts relevant to each claim and (!!!) five new things that have come up since the original podcast ended.  

Head over to EW to read the whole thing, but I'll leave you a taste here: 

3. The cell phone tower pings mean nothing

If Gutierrez had paid closer attention to an AT&T cover sheet that included information about the cell phone towers pinged by Adnan’s phone on Jan. 13, the trial may have ended differently. The cover sheets stated, “outgoing calls only are reliable for location status. Any incoming calls will NOT be considered reliable information for location.” One of the reasons for this disclaimer was due to a glitch with AT&T at the time, which had incoming calls ping the tower near the person making the call rather than the person on the receiving end. The two key phone calls in the case, at 7:09 p.m. and 7:16 p.m., pinged the tower that covers Leakin Park and the surrounding areas. The State claimed the pings from those calls placed Syed in the park, where he allegedly buried Hae. However both of those calls were incoming calls, thus making it impossible to determine the location status. According to Syed’s current attorney, C. Justin Brown, the fax cover sheet was included in Gutierrez’s file, but she “simply failed to act on it.”

*I'm not going to summarize it for you, you just have to listen to it. I'm obsessed with it, everyone is obsessed with it, just do it. You've put it off long enough.

Hello everyone! My name is Kitrus and I’m searching for my purr-fect home. I love to lounge with my humans and take lots of afternoon naps. My favorite place is a warm bed in a sunny window. I would love a home that is ready for a calm cat to join their family. I have tested positive for Feline Leukemia so I need an indoor-only home where any other family cats are being vaccinated for Feline Leukemia so we can all stay healthy and strong. If you are ready to add me to your loving home, please stop by the Main Campus and ask to visit me in Meowtropolis.

Lots of love,

Kitrus—2 years-old —Domestic Short Hair Mix—F—#802042

Kandis Capri was murdered last week. This added her to the list of trans women of color being brutally destroyed at a rate that continues to increase.

This calendar year is far from over and we have already passed the number of hate-fueled murders of trans women from last year.

What we don’t know is how accurate any of these numbers really are. The statistics say there were a dozen trans women murdered last year, and in 2015 we already have 20. These are the known murders of trans women and many more may be tangled in the system by the names on their driver licenses, the name at the top of the report, the failure of some families to accept who their children are, and until recently the limited ability of most news sources to know how to approach the subject. These issues need to be addressed to bring this violence into view.

Kandis Capri was loved by many people. At the vigil held this past Wednesday in Phoenix, there was an incredible mix of humanity there to attest to that love. There were  lots of little kids who adored her playfulness and friendship, buddies from childhood who had accepted the change from Dedrick to Kandis and only spoke lovingly of how Kandis remodeled the GI Joe they played with in their youth. There were members of the gay and trans youth groups showing respect and asking how to keep themselves safe. But most of all there was Adrias Gaines, Kandis' mother, who had the grace and strength to stand up and talk about the importance of love. 

Monica Jones served as the MC at this event. Her prostitution arrest garnered media attention as being only a case of “walking while trans.” Monica, who is studying social work at ASU, has stepped forward as a community activist. This is a mantle she wears well and her sincerity was beautiful. 

It is really easy to read about a murder in the paper and then never think of it again. It is easy to say that someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Violence is so much a part of the American cultural experience that we consider it entertainment. We stop and mourn when someone famous dies or when the event is spectacular. Something is innately wrong with this scene.

Ruby—2-years-old —Pit Bull Mix—F—#724594

Ruby is the definition of a love-bug! This goofy gal is bounding with energy and enthusiasm; she has a joy for life that is simply contagious. Ruby came to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona as an owner release and is in need of a family to shower with hugs and kisses. This beautiful girl is looking for a home that can offer her lots of daily exercise, an indoor lifestyle, obedience training as she is extremely smart, and endless snuggles. Ruby is a jewel and she will likely be a light to any family she joins. Please come by HSSA today to meet her!