Each year our sister paper Inside Tucson Business sets out to celebrate Tucson's Women of Influence. A big part of that is looking to the future. While nominations for the WOI awards are now closed, ITB is still taking applications for the "Future Leaders Award." 

The Future Leaders Award is a $1,000 scholarship that will be awarded to two female high school seniors—young women who see themselves becoming influential women.

Publisher Steve Pope has this to say about the award:

In today's fast moving and internationally competitive environment, no community can keep up unless all the talent the community has to offer is put into play. The challenges are just too great to face with one arm tied behind our back. Making sure we nurture the talent of our youth of all genders and races is a fundamental requirement for Tucson to thrive as we all want and need. This scholarship is a recognition of that simple truth. 

The details are outlined here, and the deadline is Feb. 19. Good luck, ladies! You are going to be great.

It's cold outside. If you're brave (or have taken the initiative to actually build up a proper winter wardrobe) spend the weekend doing things! Enjoy yo'self. Or, you could brave the outdoors just long enough to get in and out of our favorite local video store, before hunkering down under a glorious pile of comforters. 

But what to watch? These were the most popular rentals at Casa Video for the first full week of 2016:

1. Sicario

2. The Visit

3. Bone Tomahawk

The oddest thing in Gov. Ducey's State of the State Address Monday was what was missing: a discussion of sentencing reform. On the morning of his address, the banner headline across the Star's front page was "Sentencing among top priorities for Ducey." On the same day, the Republic listed sentencing reform as one of the nine things to watch for in the address. But when it came time to discuss crime, Ducey talked about what a wonderful job we're doing seizing drugs at the border and what we can do to help deal with drug addiction. Nothing about prisons or sentencing. Odd.

But the weirdest thing in the address was Ducey's focus on Uber, Lyft and the "Sharing economy."

Arizona should be to the Sharing Economy, what Texas is to Oil and what Silicon Valley used to be to the tech industry.

Moments ago, I signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Council on the Sharing Economy.

Its mission: Stop shackling innovation, and instead – put the cuffs on out-of-touch regulators.

I want startups in the Sharing Economy to know: California may not want you, but Arizona does.

Does Ducey imagine Arizona will be the new Share-icon Valley? (Maybe Gigistan would be a better name). Does he see us luring Uber, Lyft and Airbnb away from California, which would create a hub for other shared economy startups? Or did he give the gig-economy companies a shout-out because they're pouring money into his campaign and his supporters' dark money war chests? Ducey thought the topic was so important, he even used a few moments of his precious SOS real estate to get specific about the Phoenix airport.

More than 40 million passengers enter our state through Sky Harbor International Airport every year. But you can’t order an Uber or Lyft because unelected bureaucrats at city hall are protecting special interests.

Sky Harbor may be a city airport, but it’s an Arizona vital resource used by citizens all over the state, and our economy is dependent on its success. I call on Phoenix city government to lift these unnecessary regulations immediately.

As I was pondering the weirdness of Ducey devoting so much time to such a small economic nitch, trying to figure out what was going on, I got the answer in an op ed published Wednesday. This is all part of Ducey's ongoing quest to turn Arizona into the Goldwater Republic. He took a big step in that direction by making Clint Bolick, Goldwater's high profile constitutional lawyer, our latest Supreme Court Justice. Now this.

Our very own Margaret Regan, author of Detained and Deported, will be a keynote speaker at this weekend's Sahuarita Border Issues Fair at the Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, 17750 S. La Canada.

The fun starts tomorrow night and continues on Saturday: 

The Border Issues Fair Concert, 7 p.m., Friday, Jan. 15, will feature Lance Canales & The Flood—a roots-blues influenced Americana trio from California’s breadbasket, where Canales lived the life that so many songs have been written about since the birth of roots music – hard labor, one room shacks and taunting ghosts whispering of a better life. Canales’ guttural vocals combine a hard-edged storytelling approach beneath a stripped down, foot-stomping, acoustic instrumentation. Opening act will be the Ambos Nogales, border singer-songwriter, Pablo Peregrina. Tickets $20.

The Border Issues Fair will begin with registration at 8 a.m. Saturday, January 16.. Donation $10 at the door. There will be three keynote addresses. The first, by Margaret Regan, journalist and author of “Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire” and longtime contributor to the Tucson Weekly, begins at 9 a.m. “Detained and Deported” was recently named a Top Pick in the 2015 Southwest Books of the Year competition.

Jennifer Johnson, Washington D.C, border policy advisor for the Southern Border Community Coalition, gives the second talk. Dr. Abby Wheatley, border activist and researcher, gives the third lecture, “Reframing Life and Death on the Arizona-Sonora Border."

Donations: Please bring belts and warm hat, gloves and jackets for those in the desert.

Riding the wave of a Paste Magazine article that said the Borderlands' Citrana Wild Ale was a highlight of Tucson's craft beer scene, the brewery (119 E. Toole Ave.) has plenty to celebrate right now. That's because they're also celebrating four years of crafting some great Tucson beer, and you’re invited to join in on the fun.

On Saturday, Jan. 16, the brewery will be marking the occasion with three of their most popular seasonal or collaborative brews. At noon, the event will kick off with the tapping of the Conspiracy Pale Ale—a collaborative beer brewed in conjunction with Food Conspiracy Food Co-op. Then, at 3 p.m., a seasonal apricot sour will be available. Finally, an Ermanos-Borderlands collab called Gose is the New Black will be on draft at 7 p.m.

This Saturday's event will also feature live music from 5 until 7 p.m. and eats from The Blacktop Grill food truck, with festivities lasting until 10 p.m. It’s free to attend, which means you’ll have plenty to spend on all those limited-release craft brews.

Like writers writing dust jacket blurbs about each other, there are musicians that other musicians talk about. Their names may not be backlit on marquees, but they are behind the nuts and bolts of sound within the city limits. Their peers are well aware, but an audience may not know these names, instead catching the players by sight, by style. Recognizing a familiar face on stage left or a lick heard from the smoking patio on a different night.

One of my first nights in Tucson, I was told to go to the Red Room and check out a guitarist named Jameson Clay Koweek. I walked through The Grill and into the bar, catching the last couple songs of the band Otherly Love, fronted by Ben Schneider, a local musician and promoter whom I already knew from years of touring. Anyway, I was in the crowd and, being new to town, glad to see someone I knew. His band was cooking, everyone in the room seemed comfortable and attuned, and then this guy next to Ben started peeling out on a Telecaster. There were country runs coupled with odd hiccups, ideas erased as they form—style that owed as much to Richard Brautigan as it did to James Burton. Dude could fucking play, and he was having a good time doing it.

That night, I made a mental note to remember the name Jameson Clay Koweek. When next I saw him, walking down Convent Avenue in Barrio Viejo, I flagged him down and made a point to shake his hand. Long before I ever came to Tucson, and in the years since, Koweek has been a fixture of this scene. From weekend DIY parties at the HangArt to Monday bluegrass jams at The Hut, you can find Koweek around. Also known as Donkeyman, he has kept and continues to keep busy, adding a little extra to a bunch of acts, including infamous honky-tonker Hank Topless and French ex-pat Marianne Dissard. He can hold it down up front, singing country classics and pleasing dinner crowds at La Cocina with his old Boot-Gaze Band, and then the next night be the element of chaos and noise guesting on an indie-rock set at Congress. Schneider summed it up to me that night at the Red Room, "Donkeyman is a renaissance man."


This Saturday, Jan. 16, he'll be leading his new Electrified Donkey Band through a set at our radical local vinyl shop, Wooden Tooth Records (415 N. Fourth Ave.). Koweek has also been known to sit in with the Night Collectors, a hometown Japanese psych-tribute-band-turned-multi-sax-and-guitar behemoth that opens the show. The Night Collectors have their own share of known names: Jeff Lownsbury from Katterwaul and Secret Highway Secrets, Connor Gallaher from every band ever—chances are you saw at least one of the Collectors performing on your last night out. If you do end up at Wooden Tooth for the show, which is free and begins at 7 p.m., you can bet you'll see a lot of musicians in the audience, taking notes. 

From the previews, Youth looks like Cocoon minus the glowing aliens, a goofy old coot movie with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel leering at pretty ladies in the swimming pool and complaining about their prostates. In actuality, it is far from being anything like Cocoon and, with the exception of some darkly humorous laughs and, yes, a couple of prostate jokes, not something I would classify as a comedy.

Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino isn’t interested in pleasantries or pulling punches. His movie is a beautifully brutal, almost dangerously honest take on artists and artists growing old. It’s also just a little bit crazy at times, to a point where maybe I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if crazy aliens sprang up from the bottom of the swimming pool. Caine, in one of the best and most quietly understated performances of his career, plays retired composer Fred Ballinger.

Fred is on holiday at a dreamy Switzerland resort with his daughter and assistant, Lena (Rachel Weisz, delivering the goods), and his film director friend, Mick Boyle (Keitel, basically reminding you that he is still awesome). I’ll say that word brutal again, because that’s what this film is. The beauty of Sorrentino’s film is that these brutal moments are handled in nuanced, subdued fashion. Many of the characters will not have happy endings. As an aging actress who has a caustic message for Mick, Jane Fonda shows up late in the movie and simply delivers one of the greatest scenes of her career. Adding to the wonderful sound of the actors speaking their rich dialogue would be a score by David Lang that is every ounce as beautiful as the stunning camerawork by Luca Bigazzi. Sorrentino is apparently a big Fellini fan, something most evident in the film’s finale.

Blaming immigrants for high crime rates in the United States and Europe is a rhetoric that is getting old—and isn't backed up by research, according to the Washington-based nonprofit American Immigration Council.

"Immigrants have always been a convenient scapegoat," Walter A. Ewing, a senior researcher at the nonprofit told the New York Times on Wednesday. "It's always easy to blame the other group for all of society's problems..."

While the immigration circumstances of Europe and the United States are obviously different, he said, "there's a universality to xenophobia, a knee-jerk reaction. It's fear, lashing out at what you're afraid of."

Ewing, along with University of California, Irvine, sociology professor Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Daniel E. Martinez, assistant sociology professor at George Washington University, released a study in July of last year that used census data, FBI data and other statistics to strike down stereotypes about immigrants, the Times says.

One finding is that between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born population in the U.S. nearly doubled, and the undocumented immigrants population more than tripled, yet violent crimes declined by 48 percent and property crime fell by 41 percent, the Times article says.

The study also showed that more native-born Americans are incarcerated than migrants.

Such findings, the study said, reiterated what other research had confirmed for more than a century: "The overwhelming majority of immigrants are not 'criminals' by any commonly accepted definition of the term."

"An immigrant does not come here to commit crimes and get on welfare," Rumbaut told the Times. "They come here to work harder than native-born people do."

Donald Trump should do some reading before he calls all Mexican immigrants (and with that, all Latin American immigrants, because let's not pretend he knows the difference between Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico), rapists and murderers. 

The Peace Corps announced Monday that it is temporarily suspending any programs in El Salvador because the Central American country is too dangerous, according to a write-up by the Huffington Post. In fact, El Salvador is well on its way to become the homicide capital of the world.

Still, the Obama administration plans to continue deporting women, youth and children native to the region.

The home raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents—which are part of the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to deport hundreds of undocumented immigrants from Central America, who were denied asylum in the country and were issued removal orders—began the first weekend of 2016. Thus far, at least 121 asylum-seekers from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been apprehended. The federal government is focusing on families who came to the U.S. starting in 2014, when a massive surge of migrants from Central America, fleeing gang violence and extreme poverty, made their way to American soil.

It's not just the Peace Corps that considers El Salvador to be dangerous. The State Department reissued a warning in June for Americans considering traveling there, citing the rate of violent crimes in the country. According to the State Department, 34 Americans have been murdered in the country since January 2010, including a 9-year-old, and only six of their cases resulted in convictions. Although "there is no information to suggest that U.S. citizens are specifically targeted by criminals," the department warns, "crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country."

Salvadorans are in the greatest danger, which many experts say is the primary reason people, especially mothers and children, are fleeing for other countries. Since October, border agents have apprehended more than 5,000 Salvadoran children traveling without their parents and more than 7,200 Salvadoran families.

The YWCA of Southern Arizona announced today that scholarships for an eight-week business planning course are now available for women veterans, and other "underserved" entrepreneurs in the community. 

The Women's Business Center of Southern Arizona, the Connie Hillman Family Foundation, as well as the U.S. Small Business Administration, are sponsoring the aid for the program, which focuses on businesses that are in the planning stages, young companies or already-established businesses that need a revamp, according a press release from the YWCA.

The program, offered by the WBC for more than two decades, covers market positioning, management, marketing—and other tools that are "critical to running a successful business." By the end of the course, the entrepreneurs have to complete an official business plan.

The course is offered in English and Spanish. 

Scholarship applicants should submit a 300-word statement by Jan. 18:

• What's your business/ business concept?
• How will the course help you reach your business goals?
• How would a scholarship impact your ability to take the course?

The English program begins on Jan. 19, and the Spanish program kicks off on Jan. 20., at the YWCA's Frances McClelland Community Center, 525 N. Bonita  Ave. The regular cost is $300 per person.

Scholarship submissions should be sent directly to Victor Mercado, YWCA deputy director, via email at vmercado at ywcatucson dot org. For more information on the course call, 884-7810, or visit ywcatucson.org.