Patagonia writer Jim Harrison died Saturday, March 26. The New York Times remembers the author's many appetites:

At bottom, Mr. Harrison was not so much like Hemingway as he was like something out of Hemingway. Or, more accurately, something out of Rabelais — a mustachioed, barrel-chested bear of a man whose unapologetic immoderation encompassed a dazzling repertory:

There was the eating. Mr. Harrison once faced down 144 oysters, just to see if he could finish them. (He could.)

There was the drinking. One fine summer, he personally tested 38 varieties of Côtes du Rhône. (“It was like a small wine festival. Just me, really,” he told The Washington Post afterward.)

There was the drugging, in his Hollywood period, when he wrote the screenplays for films including “Revenge” (1990), starring Kevin Costner and based on Mr. Harrison’s novella of that name.

There was the hobnobbing with his spate of famous friends, including Jack Nicholson, John Huston, Bill Murray and Jimmy Buffett.

All these ingredients were titanically encapsulated in a dinner Mr. Harrison once shared with Orson Welles, which involved, he wrote, “a half-pound of beluga with a bottle of Stolichnaya, a salmon in sorrel sauce, sweetbreads en croûte, a miniature leg of lamb (the whole thing) with five wines, desserts, cheeses, ports” and a chaser of cocaine.

But constructing Mr. Harrison merely as a rough-and-ready man of appetite — a perennial conceit of profile writers, and one he did relatively little to dispel — ignores the deep intellectualism of the writer and his work. In conversation, he could range easily and without affectation over Freud, Kierkegaard, Stravinsky, Zen Buddhism, Greek oral epic and ballet.

The latest Empowerment Scholarship Account (aka Vouchers on steroids) bill looked like it was going to be delayed for another year. The Senate passed it, but the House balked. Something about everyone getting a voucher—"You get a private school voucher! You get a private school voucher! You get a private school voucher!"—seemed a bit much to some. Helping millionaires pay for their private schools crossed the line with enough House Republicans to kill it.

But never fear. The bill is back in a diminished form. It now includes every student on free or reduced lunch, which means if you're a family of four and make more than $44,863, no voucher for you. There are already other ways for students to qualify in the earlier versions of the law: those with physical or educational handicaps, ELL students, Native Americans, children of military families, students who attended a D or F-rated school, things like that. But no new vouchers for people whose income is above the free/reduced lunch level in the new bill.

If the diminished bill becomes law, I honestly don't think it's going to make a dramatic difference in the short term. Giving families with little income something like $5,000 a year to spend on education doesn't amount to much. Some students will transfer to religious private schools which have low tuition, but if you're thinking of "private school" as some kind of high achieving prep school, those are mostly way, way out of the $5,000 a year price range. If the bill passes, a few families will bail from publicly funded schools, but unless they're looking for a religious education, they'll do just as well at a nearby district or charter school.

The only reason Sen. Debbie Lesko, the sponsor of the bill, reintroduced it is to take her one step closer to her dream of universal vouchers. Every time you get the GOP elephant's privatization trunk a little further into the education tent, you get closer to cramming the entire animal inside and pushing everything else out. If she gets the new bill through, this time next year she's sure to put a new bill forward that completes the job.

You ever get the feeling while standing in line to order a beer that you just don’t quite know what the menu is talking about? You know the basics, sure—IPAs are bitter, lagers are smoother and you might get free fruit if you order a wheat beer.

Well, now’s the time to bulk up your beer I.Q. by attending Tap & Bottle’s beer school. With five class courses focusing on specific brewing regions, the classes offer a little more in-depth knowledge into different brewing styles around the world, led by instructor Ryan Placzek. While past classes have already featured Belgium and Germany, on Monday, March 28, you can dive into the world of U.K. beers. April 4 (USA) and April 11 (Tucson) will wrap up this series of events.

Each beer school event begins at 7 p.m. at the bar (403 N. Sixth Ave.) The classes are $15 per with a flight of beer and instruction on said beers included. You can enroll for the class of your choosing by visiting the Tap & Bottle website.

Did Thursday night's screening of Citizen Four and Q&A with Glenn Greenwald get you worked up all over again about the NSA?

Well, tonight the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences is hosting a panel on the issue—and Edward Snowden is videoconferencing in from Russia to be a part of the conversation.

The details:

The competing stresses posed by balancing government intrusion and individual rights in pursuit of a safe society will be the topic of a panel discussion featuring MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, journalist Glenn Greenwald and former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden presented by the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Chomsky and Greenwald will appear in person while Snowden will videoconference from Russia. Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, will act as moderator for the discussion.

Tickets to the event are sold out, but you can watch the livestream on The Intercept tonight (Friday, March 25) from 5 to 7 p.m., or catch up with a recording of the conversation on Monday, March 28 when it is posted to the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences website. 

Glenn Greenwald doesn't really like other journalists. 
"I tend not to have the highest opinion of other journalists, although there are a lot of really good ones," he told the Loft Cinema's audience at a special Q&A following the screening of Citizen Four on March 24. "You know, there are very narrow narratives that are permitted in mainstream media outlets. And that's why independent media and independent theaters like this one are so critical to being heard." 

If you didn't know, Greenwald is the reporter who initially broke the news sharing documents that proved the National Security Association, under the Obama administration's orders, had been collecting cell phone records off millions of Verizon users phones, among other companies—including Microsoft, Apple and AT&T—communication records. You can read Greenwald's other stories and op-eds about NSA privacy infringement and general national security here. 

Throughout his 30-minute Q&A Greenwald repeatedly stressed he wasn't the hero—he just broke the story. The real hero was Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and whistleblower who leaked the documents to him.


"With nothing more than an act of courage—an act of confidence—he changed the world," Greenwald said. "[He showed] the power of the individual to stand up to justice."

It's the weekend! Whether you're filling your belly with $5 foods, saving money on this month's trip to MOCA or simply driving up to Oro Valley to eat lamb with your mom on Easter, time away from the office should be celebrated.

Or, you could just hang out at home and catch a movie. 

Here's your weekly account of the most popular rentals from the Old Pueblo's most popular video store:

1. In the Heart of the Sea

Yet another article about the drop in the number of students in the nation's teacher preparation programs. Nationwide, the number has slipped from 725,518 in the 2009-10 school year to 465,536 during the 2013-14 school year. That's a 36 percent drop. The bit of good news is, the downward slide leveled out a bit in 2013-14. The numbers still went down, but at a slower rate.

The enrollment decreases at UA and ASU are similar, though a bit less dramatic. At the UA College of Education, enrollment went from 1,135 in 2009 to 900 in 2013, a 21 percent drop. And if I'm reading the numbers right on the ASU website, the numbers at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College are down from 3,756 in 2009 to 2,737 in 2013, a 28 percent drop.

None of this bodes well for dealing with the dual problems of filling current classroom vacancies and replacing teachers who will retire or just plain leave the profession over the next few years. It's hard to improve the quality of the teacher workforce, which everyone would like to see, when there aren't enough teachers moving through the teacher preparation pipeline just to take care of current vacancies.

Medical Marijuana patients, listen up! When it comes to filling your MMJ needs, Tucson has a lot of options. We're always hearing anecdotal comments about "The Best" products and dispensaries, and we decided to put the whole thing to a vote. 

Tells us about the providers and products that take the edge off your migraines and help make living with illness a little bit easier.

Voting ends at the end of the day next Thursday, March 31. Vote here! 

Tucson Unified School District teacher Dustin Williams, one of three hopeful candidates for Pima County superintendent of schools, says he has collected more than the required minimum of signatures to get on the ballot.

In an email, Williams, a Democrat, says his campaign has gathered 1,003 signatures thus far. This election, the county asks Democrats seeking a countywide position to collect at least 848. Signatures are due June 1.

The journey is only beginning with our goal of tripling the minimum number required. We are also collecting donations, canvassing, and meeting with several members of the community on a weekly basis. I'm asking for your support. 

Williams teaches 6th-grade math at Mansfeld Middle School, and says that if he is elected he will make it his goal to visit every school district, classroom and meet students, teachers and administrators countywide. We talked to him a couple of weeks ago, read.


The primary election is  Aug. 30, and the general election is Nov. 8.

Arizona is in the national spotlight again because Election Day turned into a total shitshow, particularly in Maricopa County.

Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell has taken the blame and apologized for shutting down so many polling locations that people ended up waiting in line for hours. You can read about in the Arizona Republic, but here's tl;dr version: Purcell thought that most people in Maricopa County would vote by mail so she thought she'd save some money and reduce the number of polling place. A huge mistake, to be sure, but likely more one of incompetence than malice. You're free to believe there was a plot to disenfranchise voters, but you'll have to explain to me who benefited from any of it.

Other factors at play: