Tuesday the TUSD board passed a resolution stating "the Governing Board and the District, and its administration, teachers, counselors and staff will support all students equally, whether their immigration status is documented or undocumented." The vote was 4-1 with Michael Hicks voting No. The TUSD resolution isn't as lyrical as the one put out by the Phoenix Unified High School District—it uses the more formal Whereas/Therefore format—but the intent is the same.

An important phrase in the PUHSD statement isn't in TUSD's resolution, which states that PUHSD will stand behind its students "regardless of changes in law or policy." But really, until a district is put to the test—something we hope won't happen, even with Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign promises and similar rhetoric which has been coming from the Arizona legislature for years—we won't know how aggressively it will protect its students and their families. However, one portion of the TUSD statement is exceptionally relevant from an educational standpoint:

Discrimination against children, beyond being illegal, harms them emotionally, socially, and economically in ways and degrees that cannot be fully known or measured because their effects last throughout entire lifetimes.

I hear Pima Community College is preparing a similar statement. The more educational institutions that formalize a statement of support for all its students post-election, the better. If anyone knows of similar statements from other schools or school districts around the state, you can let me know at [email protected]. Put my name in the message and it'll get to me.

The entire TUSD resolution is below:

Here’s a very quick bit of news for frequenters (or would-be frequenters) of The Coronet: This Fourth Avenue–area café and bar now has a cozy tent around its patio—and will keep it up at least through the rest of December.

Says co-owner Gregor Kretschmann, via Facebook (hyperbolically, in case you don’t get it): “We’ve lost more than a few loyal, flip-flop-clad, t-shirt-wearing customers to hypothermia and frostbite in the apocalyptically sub 50 degree arctic blast. Never again, we say, now we have a tent! Yes, come relax in sultanate luxury in our heated, orientally appointed patio tent. Palm fronds, kaftan, tonics made of dissolved pearls, cylindrical hats, palace intrigue, live music.”

The live music part, at least, is true.

The Coronet is located at 402 E. Ninth St. Call 222-9889 or visit cafecoronet.com for hours and more information.

Producer and programmer Eremsy considers what he does as "Cliché SoundCloud rap type stuff. Not too serious." You can see Eremsy preform on Dec. 18 at R Bar and can listen to his music on SoundCloud.

What was the first concert you attended?
It was Wiz Khalifa at the AVA Amphitheater. I had lawn tickets and it was me and my cousin and we were decked out in Jordan gear, so this guy walks up to us just because we were wearing Jordan gear and he was like, "Do you guys want to sit closer?" so he offered us seats in VIP. It was pretty awesome.

What was the first album you owned?
It was Webbie's Savage Life. When I was young, I would always be watching MTV at my grandmas house and I'd see his videos. I had my dad buy it for me at Best Buy because I was too young to buy it.

What are you listening to these days?
A lot of SoundCloud, a lot of Max B lately. Yeah, a lot of SoundCloud producers and rappers.

What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone seem to love, but you just don't get?
Country. Still till this day I don't understand.

What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?
Honestly Tupac and like Ramón Ayala, honestly.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
I don't know what genre I would put it under, but its this guy named Madeon and its kinda EDM-ish—like dubstep sounding. I listen to it on my own time, never in front of people because people perceive me as just listening to gangsta rap and stuff.

What song would you like to have played at your funeral?
Probably "Never Had a Friend Like Me" by Tupac. Its a good one.

What artist changed your life and how?
I would say Kid Cudi. He was pretty much all I listened to in middle school, all his early stuff. His first mixtape [A Kid Named Cudi], Man on the Moon and stuff like that.

Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?
Kid A by Radiohead. That's my favorite album of all time, I would say. I can always go back to it and hear new things on it. It never gets old. 

Busy Wednesday night? We've got tickets to the Dec. 14 Wildcat basketball game against the Grand Canyon Antelopes, which starts at 9 p.m., and we want you to take them. There is one catch: The winner has to pick up the tickets at our office (near the Foothills Mall) sometime before we lock the doors at 5 p.m. We'll get in touch with the winner around 10 a.m. the day of the game, so that gives you about seven hours to get your business in order.

Want a pair of tickets to the game? Enter here:

Have your kids been good this year? Or at least this week?

If so, and if you celebrate Christmas and they still believe in Santa, they’ll probably be delighted to tell him that. But you don’t want to tote your fam to some overcrowded shopping mall just to facilitate this, do you?

Hell, nah, you might think—holiday spirit, holiday shmirit. Besides, what’s in it for you?

However, every year around this time, so many people heave big sighs, brace themselves and get the kids in the car, mall bound—for when, oh when, has there ever been a true alternative to the Mall Santa? He’s become a freakin’ institution. An alternative would be a real Christmas miracle.
But wait! Wipe the sweat from your brow and put away that Xanax. We’ve got your miracle right here—right downtown, that is. “Miracle on Congress Street” has brought Santa to the storefront space between HUB and Playground, where St. Nick and his elves have created a “winter wonderland extravaganza” (says the Facebook page) where your kids can sit on Santa’s lap, get photos taken, and do all kinds of other stuff like watch holiday movies and do arts and crafts (there’s a free kids’ crafts class on Saturday, Dec. 17).

Meanwhile you can get the energy you need to deal with holiday-season stress through food—yes, the most sugary kinds—and, if you wish, adult beverages—yes, we mean booze.

Every weekend at Miracle on Congress Street is a little different, but in general you can expect lots of fresh-baked treats courtesy of Miracle’s neighbor HUB Ice Cream Factory—cookies, Rice Krispie treats, almond brittle and more—and homemade beverages like candy-cane sweet tea, hot cocoa and of course eggnog (with or without rum). For adults, Miracle also has a separate “Naughty List” of hooch-spiked-only drinks with names like “Tipsy Grinch” and “Rudolph’s Ruin” (plus wine and beer).

The event is the result of a partnership between HUB and Playground, with sponsors including the Humane Society, Casa de los Niños, Higher Ground Resource Center and the Children’s Museum.

Regular hours for Miracle on Congress St., 272 E. Congress St., will be 4 to 11 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, with Santa on site for free photos 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays until Christmas Eve. Keep informed about additional hours and activities on Facebook and Instagram via @MiracleOnCongressSt.

Be prepared to get your heart ripped out by Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams in this, one of the more emotionally powerful movie experiences of 2016.

Affleck plays Lee, uncle to Patrick (Lucas Hedges), who must return to his hometown and raise his nephew after his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies. Lee is a true mess, and we learn through flashbacks what got him to his messed up state. He’s battling some major past tragedy on top of his brother’s death, and there’s no telling how things will work out for him and Patrick. The flashbacks are brutal, revealing things that go beyond terrible, and it’s no wonder Lee is having coping issues.

Affleck has turned in good work before, but nothing like what he does in this film. He’s incredible. Williams turns in a blistering performance as Lee’s ex-wife, and a scene Affleck and Williams share together is guaranteed to knock you on your ass, and will probably earn them both Oscar nominations. Hedges is mighty good as the confused teen dealing with the loss of his dad and his somewhat strange uncle.

Kenneth Lonergan directs from his own screenplay, and he’s put together some kind of movie miracle. His last big film was You Can Count On Me sixteen years ago. He’s definitely one of the great cinema comeback stories of 2016.

Besides being so emotionally powerful that you might dehydrate from crying, this movie also has some big laughs in it. It is an instant classic.

Hitler wasn't too worried about the U.S. getting involved in World War II, according to a column in the Sunday New York Times.

“I don’t see much future for the Americans,” Hitler said in January 1942. “Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half Judaized, and the other half Negrified. How can one expect a state like that to hold together?”

Man, was he lucky the U.S. hadn't decided to make itself whiter or he could have been in real trouble.

That was 1942. Since then, we've gotten even more Judaized and Negrified, not to mention our increasing Mexicanification. And what about all those Asians?

The 75-year-old quote is sounding more current these days with the recent emergence of white supremacists into the political mainstream. I'm sure I wouldn't have to dig very far to find a similar statement delivered from a podium by a clean-cut white guy in a suit, or in an article on breibart.com.

No, I'm not saying Trump and his followers equal Hitler and his followers. Like the saying goes, History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. What we may have here is a racist, antisemitic rhyming couplet.

Nobody weaves working peoples’ stories into song with as much empathy and care as Don “Doop” Duprie, a fireman from the industrial town of River Rouge, Mich. “The Corridor,” the title track off his 2016 album, is both an elegy for the eponymous neighborhood in central Detroit where the song takes place (a place whose gritty beauty and alcoholic splendor has been supplanted by the construction of a new Red Wings arena), as well as a character study with tragic dimensions. 

Narrated from the point of view of a sex worker navigating the South Cass Corridor, the song offers a novelistic portrait of lives on the edge of disaster, while also affirming the necessity of community during threadbare times. Listening to this track is like taking a master class in American songwriting. To vividly evoke setting, character, and social context in the space of a three-minute song is no small feat. Doop achieves this effortlessly time and again. “The Corridor” is an enviably well-wrought song by one of America’s truly essential voices.


For more Cal Freeman on the wholly underrated Don Duprie, go to the Museum of Americana here.

The UA is renowned worldwide for its efforts in space exploration—with involvement in multiple satellite launches, observatories, and projects with NASA, the school is a crucial arm of space exploration in the United States.

However, it comes at a cost.

“We had a little over $600 million in research expenditures, which placed us thirty-third in the country,” said Timothy Swindle, the director and department head at the Lunar and Planetary Lab, speaking of the last fiscal year.

$120 million of that fell under astronomy, as classified by the National Science Foundation.

As far as physical sciences go—physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and planetary sciences—the UA ranked third in funding, Swindle said, totaling almost $165 million.

In terms of spending, the University of California Berkeley, which was second to Arizona in astronomy funding, spent “a little more than half of what UA did,” Swindle said. “The nation’s universities as a whole spent $567 million.”

Of that total, more than twenty percent was spent at the UA.

“There are only two schools, that being Cal Tech and Johns Hopkins, that spent more on physical sciences total than we did on this category that NSF calls astronomy,” he said.

The UA, however, still spends more than any Ivy League school on astronomy, making it a major hotbed for the science. But those tens of millions of dollars must come from somewhere.

“Certainly, all the money for the space program projects comes from NASA,” said Buell Jannuzi, head of the department of Astronomy at the UA. Christine Hoekenga, a social media lead for the OSIRIS-REx mission said the mission cost $805 million, every penny of which came from NASA. The total did not include the rocket the spacecraft was launched on.

However, with the number of critical space exploration efforts the UA is involved in, the money is being spent wisely.

Much of the astronomy department’s efforts involve mirror telescopes, which are located on Mount Graham and Mount Hopkins. The UA is involved in the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope, scheduled to be completed in 2025.

Being built at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory the project aims to answer several critical questions about the universe, such as how the first galaxies formed, what materials make up the universe, and ultimately, what the fate of the universe may be, according to the Giant Magellan Telescope website.

The construction of the telescope involves planning and cooperation with many other universities around the world, Jannuzi said. “We’re partnered with many other groups, including the University of Chicago, Harvard, the Carnegie Institution in Washington… in the partnership to build the Giant Magellan Telescope,” he said.

Hi, I’m Trooper!

I’m a handsome 4-year-old boy and I need a new home! I was transferred to HSSA from a different local shelter and can’t wait to find my forever home.

I’m a little shy while in my kennel, but please consider giving me a chance. Once I meet people and have a minute to warm up, I am a very affectionate and sweet boy.

Don’t forget that you can bring your current dogs over to HSSA Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. to do a doggy meet and greet with no appointment required. Give HSSA a call at 327-6088 ext. 173 for more information or check on my availability!

Lots of love,
Trooper (833539)