Few places in the country interact with Mexico as much as Southern Arizona, and several of the region’s jurisdictions have taken a collective stand against President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall expansion along the nation’s southern border. Following the lead of the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council and the National Congress of American Indians, both the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council approved a joint resolution standing in opposition to the border wall on Tuesday, June 6.

Unanimously approved by the Tucson City Council and approved by a 3-2 vote by the county board (Republican Supervisors Ally Miller and Steve Christy were opposed), the resolutions state—among other things—that the proposed wall construction stands against the core values of “inclusiveness and tolerance” and will cause “substantial environmental damage” to the region.

District 5 Supervisor Richard Elías, who along with Tucson Councilwoman Regina Romero was the prime sponsor of the joint resolutions, said the day was about standing together with the people of the region to object to the “abomination that is the border wall.”

‘We continue to understand the borderlands because we have lived here all our lives, and know this border wall is in opposition to our values,” Elias said. “We know that the border wall is in opposition to what we share in terms of the business that we conduct. We know that the environmental damage that is going to be done to wildlife, to the fauna, to the beautiful Sonoran Desert that we all share…we have to be the stewards that protect it.”

Both the county and the city have denounced Executive Order 13767, which aims to construct an expanded border wall, and the resolutions also calls for a “thorough and comprehensive analysis of the cost, effectiveness, necessity and consequences of a U.S. border-security policy and this Executive Order.”

The city’s resolution takes it several steps further, calling for the billions of dollars potentially allocated to construction to be instead spent on health care, education, housing, infrastructure repair, alleviating poverty, increasing economic opportunity and “safeguarding the health and well-being of all Americans.” The council resolution also states that the current wall has caused “substantial” environmental damage, and is “and offensive and damaging symbol of fear and division.”

Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild called the proposed wall a “terrible” policy decision and a “waste of tax dollars.”

In passing its resolution, Tucson also calls for a cost-benefit analysis, stands in opposition of “continuing expenditure of federal funding directed to private, for-profit prisons for the detention and incarceration of immigrants.”

Most controversially, and drawing immediate criticism from local chambers of commerce, was the city’s inclusion of a section which allows the council to identify companies involved in designing, building and financing border wall construction, and divest from each, as the law allows.

Martin McCann plays a character simply listed as Survivalist in the credits, a man living on a small piece of land in a post-apocalyptic world where food has grown scarce. It’s a lonely existence, but he has a crop to get by, and it’s all for him. That is, until a mysterious woman (Olwen Fouere) and her daughter (Mia Goth) show up looking to barter for food. After he refuses their offer of pumpkin seeds, Survivalist accepts the offer of sleeping with the daughter, and then things get a little complicated.

Writer-director Stephen Fingleton has made a film that is relentlessly dark, and his film has next to nothing good to say about human beings (Hey, the human race needs a good smackdown sometimes, am I right?).

McCann is highly memorable as a nervous man who yearns for companionship but trusts no one. Fouere is the right touch of nasty as somebody who has been hardened by the apocalypse. Goth plays the film’s most sympathetic character, yet even she is a schemer with nefarious intentions. The darkness of this movie plays out until the bitter end.

This is a film that aims to bum you out, and succeeds. I say this as a compliment (Available for download on iTunes and Amazon.com during limited theatrical release).

Hi, I'm Peter!

I'm a shy 1-and-a-half year-old boy and I'm looking for a new home. I'm very scared in the shelter setting, and can't wait to be adopted. During my photo shoot I preferred to be sitting close to people, and getting snuggled. I'm looking for a home where I can get ample time to adjust to my new setting and get comfortable.

I get along well with my kennel mate, know how to sit for treats, and am very gentle. If you're a patient person and have been thinking about rescuing a dog please come meet me today.
Stop by HSSA Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. to do a doggy meet and greet, or give an adoption counselor a call at 520-327-6088 ext. 173 for more information!

Lots of love,
Peter (842424)

Day 12, and last show- June 2.  Düsseldorf​: ​
I live in dread of not performing ever again. It's not an irrational fear. Tonight's show at the Düsseldorf Jazz Festival marks the end of our European spring tour, the "Woman, Who's A Woman" + special "man" guest tour. I did it all. Booking, promotion, hiring, firing, buying flights, driving and singing. Time to scream. We play a loud, raging set with hefty doses of sweetness and spunk alike to a very attentive audience. I speak little to our audience tonight, circling back to the image of the Titanic, deck chairs reshuffled and those words: "make the planet great again." I can't think of much else all day. Shivering, I nail "Amsterdam." the Jacques Brel cover, and shatter when I get off stage, unable to stand. Darkness pierced by smiles of strangers and friends, hugs. Is this it? What changed during the course of this tour? Sylvie Simmons now owns my Tucson home as of yesterday. I've fallen in love every single night with a different sound man—with my bandmates too, my wonderful, supportive, talented and wickedly fun and unencumbered bandmates Annie Dolan, Connor Gallaher and Brittany Katter. Dear Brian and Tucson Weekly, I have no dirt for you. No one got in trouble on this tour. No one got hurt. We weren't tar and feathered. Howe Gelb, our own homebrewed Casper, haunted the tour from Paris to finish. This has been easy. Not much else from this point will be. The return to mundane reality. Silence. In the morning, we will drive back to Paris and return flights to Tucson for the band. On Tuesday, I will go back home to my wooden sailboat in England. Thanks for reading. Till next!

Read the previous Marianne Dissard Tour Diaries entry here.

Now that the Arizona budget has been on the books for a few weeks, some reporters are taking a look back, and I'm beginning to read a new take on education funding that gives Governor Ducey and Republicans measured praise for putting some new money into schools. It may not be enough, the articles are saying, but it's something. Educators should give our governor credit for making an effort to help our schools and accept the money graciously instead of bitching and moaning because they don't think it's enough.

I beg to differ. It's not enough, not nearly. And most of it will find its way to fewer than 20 percent of the state's public schools.

Here's an example of the new spin on education funding from an Arizona Capitol Times article. The headline: Public education advocates bemoan school money still not enough. The word choices tell the tale. Education advocates "bemoan" the money. Complain, complain, complain. They say it's "still not enough." Will nothing satisfy them?

Here's how the article begins:

Education issues captured much of the attention this legislative session, but public school advocates say they’re disappointed with the outcome.

It’s hard to argue the budget doesn’t focus on education when much of the new spending focuses on K-12 or university education initiatives. The fiscal year 2018 budget adds $163 million above inflation funding to schools.

A news release from the "Reelect Doug Ducey" committee couldn't put the budget in a more favorable light.

Let's take a look at that $163 million in new education dollars. $163 million. That sounds like serious money. But let's remember, the Arizona legislature began stealing from schools back in 2009, and the new $163 million, even when it's added to the money voted in with Prop. 123, still doesn't bring education funding back to the level mandated by Prop. 301 which passed in 2000. We're still not back to the "good old days" eight years ago when funding was merely awful. We sure haven't invested more in our children's educations. The Republican obsession with tax breaks and tax cuts for the wealthy and the business community made sure of that, beggaring the state budget so it can't even find the money to fund schools at a level required by law. You don't steal $100 out of someone's pocket, give back $60 and expect a thank you.

Then there's Arizona's national standing. Add the new $163 million to the Prop. 123 money, and we're still in 49th place in funding per student, trailing 48th place Oklahoma. Another $100 million could put us in 48th place, barely. If we aspire to take 47th place from Mississippi, well, we're not even close. The 47th slot would cost us $600 million, almost four times this year's added money. And if we wanted to dream the impossible dream of reaching the national average, that would cost us $3.5 billion more a year.

We're spending less than we did in 2009. Mississippi-level education funding is a bridge too far. The national average might as well be on another planet. But education advocates should be satisfied with the governor's gesture financial largesse? Sorry. No.

Power pop was a thing that just never panned out for its artists or its fans. It rolled in, drafting behind car No. 2, new wave. And was punk rock's well-adjusted kid brother. A cross pollination of Brit Invasion, Brian Wilson and an army of tambourines.

Dwight Twilley was in the first class of retro-rock, a student of the game. How to rewrite pop
gems without turning breakfast into a soggy clump of Fruity Pebbles.

Twilley was an early riser a back-to-a-blueprint forged by The Flamin' Groovies, Brinsley Schwarz and Big Star, quick with three-minute turns about love, TV, losing love.

It works that way, a sun-kissed variation on universal themes that rings new bells in listener ears and was designed to survive on radio play, even three and 1/4 seconds in a snappy ad to sell a soft drink. But its main attraction was the paint-by-numbers efficiency of a record that carries its weight in near-perfect pop songs.

Dwight and partner Phil Seymour had been playing shows and home recording in Tulsa, Oklahoma since the late '60s, and they grew into each other. Multi-instrumentalists—Twilley played guitars and keys, and Phil did drums and bass—while their voices became one in unison or in the deceptively simple harmonies with which they layered their music.

In late 1974, the Dwight Twilley Band signed to Denny Cordell and Fellow Okie Leon Russell's Shelter record label and with little promotion garnered an infectious Top 20 single in '75 with "I'm on Fire," but had no album to back it up because the Shelter heads battled for months with lawyers and legalese. It was a tough break for the young band.

They recorded in England but were unhappy with the results, so they finished their debut long-player, Sincerely, back in Tulsa. Some tunes were recorded at Russell's home studio and Russell also played on a few of the songs.

The record hit in '76, nearly two years later then expected, and any buzz from "I'm on Fire" had long since faded. The album placed well outside of the Top 100 on the Billboard album charts, and thus it must've felt like a wasted effort, considering all the love and care they'd put into the project.

Day 10​—May 31. ​Breakfast on tour is a hit-it-now or forever hold your tongue. Scrambled eggs make my heart leap. I rate ours **** this morning at the bumfuck Mitteleuropa Radisson. At the music mega store, we emergence Connor's power supply - his many pedals sucked dry the previous. Oh, how I wished we'd stayed put on that retail floor until proven the new power was key-turn easy and ready to pounce that rack of slugs and sloop benders, wheeze tuners and tone coughers that Connor nicknamed "my pedal board." 
Springing life back onto the daisy-chained checker board will occupy most of our sound check time allowance in Frankfurt that evening and I try not to blow a fuse, not to beat myself too hard for letting it happen. Sound check is an ace-it-now or forever bite your tongue. But the show goes on and what a show! Again, we rock - the boat, yes truly as we are playing on a barge on the sleek and ducks river. A storied reunion of sort, with old friends and bookers from Das Bett, and a bright-eyed sound man with a full sleeve of scorpios black as midnight ink. Hotel that night sucks bad. Trip Advisor reviews warned us: "worst hotel in Europe." I love this life.



Day ​11—May 31. Frankfurt: Yep. That hotel sucked. But there was a bathtub. Hot water. Electricity. Wifi. It's 1 a.m. and I'm taking a bath, at last a bath. The phone rings. Connor forgot an adapter at the venue. I scream. Must drive back there now. Gas. Power. Frankfurt. Our hotel a block from the European Central Bank building. Power.​ And machines adding lanes on kilometers after kilometers of highways. Reconstruction. Autobahns. Snail-pacing through Germany, Europa, trucks a wall of metal and money. We make it at last to Nuremberg, a two-hour trip turned into a five hours acid wash. In town too, the traffic is insane. Our show? I drag myself on stage, muscles tense, mind a blank, with little force or consciousness. Power? From that pit of fear - to suck, to have nothing to give—come a shower of surprises. Here, a new way of singing, more meaning, there better fun, surprises between instruments, hilarious turn of syllables, notes bouncing on vocal walls. What do I fear most? I live in dread of never being able to be on stage again. Our venue tonight? Used to be a military caserne during the war. Our war today? We are our own worst enemy. Hot water. Electricity. Gas. Food. Power. We are so blind. You ask, why such tension on stage, why the rage—and the sweetness too? Aren't you enraged, aren't you? We are such fools, suckers, such needy monsters.

Read previous Tour Diary entries by Marianne Dissard here.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Germany was ground zero for the avant-garde. Electronic exploration by students and artists, working in mediums music and visual arts. A sort of Euro Popular Mechanics for oddballs, if you will, following the leading figures of a burgeoning scene. Amongst them John Cage, Wendy Carlos, and fellow statesman Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose heady subject matter in the ‘50s included directionless sound, temporal field and controlled chance with applications to forward-thinking musical and non-musical endeavors. Both groups Can and Kraftwerk studied under his tutelage.

Kraftwerk had little modern gear in their early efforts and they so hit up IBM for use of their computers. In fact, their first recordings were constructed using the electronic junk-pile left behind by the Third Reich’s war machine, whose practice of stealing timeless works of music, books and prestigious art had been geared to crush peoples’ cultural identities.

Kraftwerk’s minimalism rose heavy on repetitious "click tracks" used as rhythm machines, which can be heard on their first U.S. breakthrough, '74s hyper-hypnotic "Autobahn," which hit No. 3 on the U.S. pop charts.

Ralph Hűtter and Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk's main songwriters, along with Flur and Bartos, would catch up to their own shadow, building the Kling Klang Studio in Dűsseldorf, re-upping the stakes of information and instrumentation via Moog, ARP Odyssey and their own computer systems. It all led to a robotic pop whose technology had been waiting for a purpose. Along with Can, Tangerine Dream and other likeminded groups, Krautrock was born.

In 1975, Kraftwerk released the mechanized record Radio-Activity, a black album cover with a radio speaker, a concept of all things static. Geiger counters, S.O.S. blips and bleeps, the HAM radio operator gone to heaven with hooks, melody, and vocals fed into vocoders—an early cousin of today’s overused and abused Auto-Tune, heard on four out of five pop hits today.

The Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally celebrated with pool parties, barbeque and good-times. However, on Fourth Avenue, a few merchants rang in the holiday with passive-aggressive power moves and parallel parking wars.

Since it's grand opening on April 20, local food-truck Geronimo's Revenge has parked regularly outside of Fourth Avenue main-stay bar, Che's Lounge. Che's, as any good denizen of Fourth Avenue knows, is located at the junction of Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street.

While the truck's customers appreciate that dependability, its welcome hasn't been unanimous.

US Fries, a local poutine-n-burgers establishment, sits about two hundred feet south of Che's. Depending on what parking spot is open for the truck to park in, Geronimo's can end up even closer in proximity.

On Friday, May 27, those parking spots became the scene of a dispute between US Fries and  Geronimo's. That night, a limo belonging to US Fries that is usually used for promotional appearances was parked on Fourth between Che's and US Fries.

Jeronimo Madril, owner of Geronimo's, confirmed that in addition to the limo, a large white van was parked in the public parking spot along Seventh Street. That particular spot, which Madril said he usually parks the food-truck in, made it impossible for his business to operate.

Madril didn't want to comment on the specifics of the incident, but confirmed that both the limo and the van remained parked in place until sometime Sunday.

After the initial Friday incident, US Fries social media accounts received a torrent of bad reviews and admonishment.

"Soggy mess that was saltier than their attitude," said one Google reviewer. "This place smells, they have had multiple health code issues, and they use two parking spots for their freaking limo," said another. A search for health code violations by the establishment turns up nothing.

The Tucson Weekly reached out to Tom Jones, the owner of US Fries, but he had no official comment.

However, the backlash prompted US Fries to respond on Google Reviews. That response claimed that, due to Geronimo's being open "SEVEN DAYS A WEEK" and in such close proximity to US Fries, the company made the decision to park the limo in the parking spot in question.

"Up to three other food vendors are on our block as well," the statement said. "Though we are for fair competition and wish these vendors well, the situation has created an unfair playing field."

The statement also claimed US Fries received much more than social media backlash. "US Fries vehicles were vandalized as well," it said.

While no one currently employed with US Fries would go on record, a former employee who left just before the incident, David Goss, was willing to speak. He said that, in his year with the company, US Fries experienced more than its fair-share of vandalism.

"On two occasions our power was shut off," he said. "The breakers in the back aren't something you can just pull, you have to go out of your way to reach them."

One particular instance of bathroom graffiti caught Goss' eye. "It said 'go back to Canada,' which is where Tom is from."

Goss also felt US Fries was unfairly singled out by some merchants. "A lot of people thought we were a chain," he said. "We weren't, we're just a local business, too."

For his part, Madril denies being open seven days a week. He said he is just trying to look past the incident. "We're not interested in talking bad about anybody or any business," he said. "I'm just trying to be here to provide the community good food and service."

Arizona's voucher advocates have a persuasive, but false, narrative about the value of taxpayer-funded private school tuition. It falls apart when you look at our voucher history since the programs began 20 years ago.

The pro-voucher narrative is lovely and seductive. Lots of parents who want private school for their children just can't afford it, advocates say. Vouchers allow those parents the opportunity to choose, so of course lots of children will switch from public to private schools. Vouch it, and they will come. As the student population expands, the advocates continue, it diversifies. Minority students who otherwise couldn't afford tuition will take advantage of the vouchers and flock to private schools. And really, they conclude, vouchers are a break-even proposition, since all those new students using vouchers mean fewer students attending public schools. Vouchers pay for themselves.

That's their story. Now here's the truth. In the 20 years since Arizona began its first voucher program, private schools have gained less than 900 students. During the same 20 years, public schools added over 350,000 students. And while Arizona's Hispanic student population has increased dramatically, the ethnic mix of private school students hasn't kept up.

Before I start into a numbers dive, let me give you my sources, which are as legit and unbiased as I could find. The public school numbers are from the National Center for Educational Statistics, a vast U.S. government data archive where even an amateur like me can sort through the data to find the information I'm looking for. The private school numbers are from a 2016 study, Exploring Arizona's Private Education Sector, created by the pro-voucher organization, EDCHOICE. I begin in 1995, two years before Arizona passed its tuition tax credit law, and follow the numbers through 2014, which is the most recent year with complete data. Empowerment Scholarship Accounts began in 2011, so they're only a small part of the 20 year history.