Hi, my name is Jezebel!

I am a 3 year old girl looking for the purr-fect family! I am a loveable girl who loves ear scratches! I tested positive for Feline Leukemia (FeLV) which means I will need to live in a low-stress home and live exclusively indoors. I can go to a home with other FeLV positive cats, as well as, FeLV negative cats that have been properly vaccinated against the disease.

Our adoption policy includes free FeLV testing and vaccinations for potential adopters’ current cats in the home if considering adopting an FeLV positive cat like me from HSSA. Cats with FeLV can live long and healthy lives. Come fall in love with me at HSSA Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd., or give an adoptions counselor a call at 520-327-6088, ext. 173.

Purrs and Kisses,
Jezebel (850718)

I felt like a nervous coach watching his gymnasts perform on the balance beam as I listened to the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High talking with the press. They're going to lose their balance. They're going to fall on their faces. They're going to humiliate themselves in front of a national audience. I almost couldn't watch. I was ready to turn the channel if things got too bad.

With relief and a strange feeling of pride, I watched these young people remain amazingly poised and well spoken under the most difficult of circumstances. Sure, some of them stumbled a bit, spoke awkwardly now and then, lost the thread of what they were saying. But that happens to lots of non-professionals when they have a camera stuck in their faces and are asked to bare their emotions at the same time they have to talk about complex issues. The Parkland students haven't just held it together. They've shone. They've pointed the way for the rest of us.

I'm an old high school teacher. I know what kids that age can do. But these folks exceeded my expectations.

The students deserve all the credit in the world, but we should reserve a little extra credit for their schools and teachers as well. The students have been educated in the skills they demonstrated to the nation.

Take David Hogg, a young man who seemed so self confident and practiced, it made sense he was singled out by the right wingnuts as a "crisis actor" flown into the school by the anti-gun crowd to pretend he was a student. He's the student director of the school's broadcast journalism program, WMSD-TV. While he was hiding inside a closet with other students during the shooting, he was interviewing them. Other staffers for the student newspaper were also reporting the story while it was in progress, taking photos and videos during the ordeal.

If you like listening to some bellicose British dudes convey their aggression through their music, you won't want to miss Shame. These raw, rhythmic post-punks are just starting off, but have already garnered a fair amount of praise from their hard rock throwback sound mixed with indie rock. They're a band that's clearly listened to the great punk classics, and that shows via their favorite albums. Catch them playing with Protomartyr at Club Congress on Tuesday, March 6.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Primary Colours

This album has an immediate identity to it, sounding effortless and confident throughout. The simplicity is what I find most powerful, in the music as well as the vocals, it feels timeless and will always be an album I can go back to and draw something different from it. 

—Charlie Steen (Vocals)

Modern Lovers
s/t

I absolutely love how painfully awkward Jonathan Richman’s lyrics are throughout most of this album, and the instrumental being so simple yet so brilliant at the same time. This was also a fairly recent discovery for me but i was hooked almost instantly, haven't been able to stop listening since.

—Sean Coyle-Smith (Guitar)

Stooges
Fun House

Stooges’ Funhouse was an album I was obsessed with when we started the band, and one I rarely tire of. The driving rhythm of songs like TV eye and Loose were a big influence on our early sound, and the sleaze of "Dirt" was a something I tried to capture with the bassline of the "Lick."

—Josh Finerty (bass)

Pavement
Slanted and Enchanted

It’s just unlike anything I’d heard before or heard since. So painfully dorky yet so effortlessly cool. Most of the time this isn't even my favourite Pavement record but it’s the album that introduced me to them so it holds a special place in my heart.

—Charles Forbes (Drums)

Television
Marquee Moon

Marquee Moon is my favourite album of all time because it introduced me to an entirely different way of playing guitar. It heavily influenced me in songs like concrete and tasteless, as I began to focus more on single note playing rather than generic chord progressions. The impact it’s had on me as a musician is invaluable.

—Eddie Green (Guitar)

“Everyone thought I was crazy,” says Genevieve Rice, founder of Phoenix’s Bird City Comedy Festival. “I still am.” In the two years since she launched the festival, she’s added a podcast, two monthly series of live comedy shows in Phoenix, Jazz and Jokes and Bird City Comedy Presents, and now The Early Bird Comedy Tour, which makes a Tucson Stop on Saturday, March 3.

The tour features Tucson comedians Mo Urban, Matt Ziemak, Rory Monserat and Chris Thayer, all of whom have won slots at this year’s Bird City Festival March 29 through 31. Heading up the bill are Los Angeles comedian and writer Anthony Desamiento, veteran of many comedy festivals and co-host of the NPR-blessed “Golden Girls Podcast”, and headliner Amy Miller of Portland, a favorite in Season 9 of Last Comic Standing, and three times named Portland’s funniest comedian. Miller has worked with such notable headliners as Arsenio Hall and singer Ryan Adams.

The March 3 show is at 10:30 p.m. at the new TIM Theater, at 414 E. 9th St., between The Coronet and Revel wine bar. Doors are at 10 p.m.; tickets are $10. Visit tinyurl.com/birdcitytucson for details and reservations.

“Both Phoenix and Tucson have great comedy scenes,” Rice says. “Phoenix has a larger scene, but I feel like the comics of Tucson collaborate really well to put together some truly fantastic shows.”

A veteran comedian and comedy-festival-goer, and a former collaborator in Flagstaff’s Big Pine Comedy Festival, Rice says, “I’ve tried very hard to incorporate the best things I’ve noticed from all the festivals I’ve attended, and I’ve sought to treat our talent really well.

“The most heartwarming thing has been to see performers who met at Bird City working together on other projects, but I feel like I’m putting on the fest I would most want to see.”

Rice has produced comedy shows in Phoenix almost monthly for the last several years. Now she considers the monthly series, Bird City Presents, to be and ongoing part of the annual event. The Jazz and Jokes series has its own genesis. “My husband, Jeff Libman, is a jazz guitarist who works with The Nash, a non-profit jazz club in downtown Phoenix.

“We’ve long talked about a way to combine music and comedy in a show. It harks back to the beginning of modern stand-up, when comedians and jazz musicians were often on the same bill. It’s been great to introduce the two scenes to each other and see how great a fit they are.”

Last week I wrote a post about Bill Gates who, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to improve education with minimal success, has begun to learn how much he still has to learn about education. And to his credit, he's beginning to look at poverty as an underlying problem with lots of moving parts, education being one of them.

Toward the end of that post I wrote a few sentences, almost a throwaway, about the relation between education and poverty.

"Education is not an effective way to fix the country's problems related to poverty when it's working by itself. But lessening the burdens of poverty is the best way there is to improve student achievement, and it's even more effective when schools improve as well."

Let me pick up that idea and expand on it.

If we're looking at schools as a primary engine to lift children out of poverty, we're looking in the wrong place. Education is necessary to facilitate greater economic mobility, but it's far from sufficient.

You hear a lot of people say, "Failing schools are the problem." If we just fix our schools, they say — improve the curriculum, get rid of bad teachers, create charters, privatize schools — that's the best way to lift children out of poverty. But it isn't. What it is, is the best way to delay dealing with the root causes of poverty.

Trying to address poverty by improving schools is the rough equivalent of seeing a problem, then creating a committee to study it.

Here's how study committees often work. A group of very serious people get together and spend a few years kicking a topic around. They gather information, call in experts, look at the problem from a number of angles. Then the group publishes a very serious report long after the heat which was the reason the committee was set up has cooled. The report is analyzed and critiqued by some other very serious people, then it's shelved. That's it. No action, no results. Study committees are the place where ideas go to die.

Here's how educational "reforms" which are supposed to help children rise out of poverty usually work. The "reforms" are put in place with fanfare and high hopes, but no one expects to see results right away. It takes a number of years for children to work their way though the educational system before we can measure whether the "reforms" yielded any results. Five years, ten years, twenty years down the line, researchers plow through piles of data and try to measure the effects. Depending on how researchers parse the data and which variables they emphasize, they find students gained or lost a little ground due to the changes. The needle rarely moves very far one way or another in terms of student achievement or improving students' economic mobility.

So we begin anew with another round of "reforms" which are supposed to fix our "failing schools" and move children out of poverty. We wait a number of years, study the results and start over again. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.

No Child Left Behind. Charter schools. Vouchers. Blended learning. Common Core. Changes in methods for teaching reading and math. Education innovations come, educational innovations go, they work a little, they don't work at all. If poverty and economic mobility rates budge in the interim, it has far more to to with outside economic and social forces than with what's going on in schools.

Who are the most enthusiastic proponents of those study committees? They tend to be people who want to keep things exactly as they are, people who benefit from the status quo. They measure the success of the committee by how little happens to address the problem it was created to study.

So who benefits most from maintaining that fixing our "failing schools" is the best way to lift children out of poverty, effectively kicking the can down the road a decade or two? I'll give my answer at the end of the post.

University of Arizona basketball coach Sean Miller addressed the media for the first time since last Friday's explosive ESPN article which claimed that the ninth-year coach discussed a $100,000 payment to now-freshman center Deandre Ayton.

Miller’s statement, which he gave during a press conference at Arizona’s McKale Center, relays that he intends to fight the allegations, saying he’ll coach the team’s final regular season games, against Stanford tonight and Cal on Saturday.

A fiery Miller called the allegations, “inaccurate, false and inflammatory,” saying he’s never violated NCAA rules, nor offered money to a player in his coaching career.

Miller thanked Arizona fans, as well as first-year President and Director of Athletics Robert C. Robbins and Dave Heeke.

Arizona hosts Stanford tonight at 8 p.m., with a chance at capturing at least a share of the Pac-12 conference championship with a win.

Here is Miller's complete statement:

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying I regret all the negative attention that has been focused on our program and the difficult position that this has created for President Robbins, Dave Heeke, the Arizona family and especially our players and their families. I appreciate very much all the support I’ve received during this difficult time, thank you to everybody. While I have done nothing wrong, I am responsible for our men’s basketball program, and I am sickened that we are in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Contrary to what has been written this past week, we do our very best to run a clean program at the University of Arizona. I have done that since the first day that I stepped on this campus. Compliance with NCAA rules is extremely important to us, and we work hard to create, maintain and monitor a culture of compliance within our program.

I have never knowingly violated NCAA rules while serving as head coach of this great program. I have never paid a recruit or prospect, or their family or representative to come to Arizona. I never have, and I never will. I have never arranged or directed payment or any improper payment to any recruit, or prospect, or their family or their representative, and I never will.

I also understand that there is an ongoing federal investigation, and because of this, I cannot do anything that could compromise the integrity of this investigation. However, on this point, I cannot remain silent in light of media reports that have impugned the reputation of me, the University, and sullied the name of a tremendous young man, Deandre Ayton.

Let me be very, very clear. I have never discussed with Christian Dawkins paying Deandre Ayton to attend the University of Arizona. In fact, I never even met or spoke to Christian Dawkins until after Deandre publically announced that he was coming to our school. Any reporting to the contrary is inaccurate, false and inflammatory.

I’m outraged by the media statements that have been made, and the acceptance by many that these statements were true. There was no such conversation. These statements have damaged me, my family, the university, Deandre Ayton and his incredible family. The only attempted corrections by the original source of the media statements are still inaccurate and completely false.

I also want you to know that the one time that someone suggested to me paying a player to come to the University of Arizona, I did not agree to it. It never happened, and that player did not come to the University of Arizona.

Out of respect for this ongoing investigation, the privacy of the student athlete and his family, I’m not going to share more details concerning this matter.

I appreciate more than anyone can realize Dr. Robbins and the university carefully considering this matter and acting upon facts. I have been completely open and transparent, and I look forward to coaching this outstanding team as we seek to capture a Pac-12 regular season championship this week.

I now intend to turn my focus to basketball, and our players and this team. I once again want to express my thanks to all of those who have supported me, and this now completes my statement on this matter.

It’s a brave new world for members of the Arizona basketball team, who take the stage at McKale Center for the first time since the latest FBI-related saga hit the program.

That saga, involving an alleged discussion between Coach Sean Miller and disgraced sports agent Christian Dawkins about a $100,000 payment to land Deandre Ayton, is far from resolved.

It’s also far from verified, with ESPN issuing a series of corrections to the report, including the alleged date and year the conversation occurred.

This column isn’t about those allegations, however, for we’re here today to talk about the actual sport of basketball, not the soap opera around it.

What we do know is that Ayton, who is virtual lock to be a lottery pick in next year’s NBA Draft, is averaging a team-best 19.9 points per game and 11.2 rebounds this season.

We also know that the matchup of Ayton and do-it-all Cardinal forward Reid Travis will be must-see TV, based solely on how the two played in their previous matchup this season.

In that showdown, which the Wildcats won, 73-71, Travis outplayed the Bahaman big man, scoring 20 points on 8-of-14 shooting, while pulling down 10 rebounds, to Ayton’s eight.

Ayton, meanwhile, had one of his worst showings in his short collegiate tenure, scoring nine points, while shooting 40 percent (4/10) from the field.

Cardinal sins

Fast-forward 40 days and a myriad of changes have occurred, from Allonzo Trier’s indefinite suspension for a failed drug test to Miller’s sudden persona non-grata status.

What we do know is that the Cardinal (16-13, 10-6) will push Arizona to its limits, given their previous matchup, which saw the Wildcats’ jump out to an 11-point lead, before holding on for dear life at the end.

That victory, capped off by a go-ahead layup by sophomore guard Rawle Alkins with 38 seconds remaining, put a temporary pep in the Wildcats’ step, moving them to 6-1 in conference play.

They’ve gone 6-2 since, a feat all the more spectacular when considering the whirlwind of controversy that the program’s overcome this season.

The Wildcats (22-7, 12-4) can ensure at least a share of the Pac-12 regular season championship with a victory tonight and can clinch it outright with wins against Stanford and Cal on Saturday.

They currently lead Southern California by a half-game, with the tie-breaking advantage of beating the Trojans in their lone matchup this season.

One-sided series

The Wildcats have beaten the Cardinal 16 times in a row, dating back to 2009, and lead the all-time series 64-26.

A key tonight will be whether the Wildcats can start off hot and stay out of foul trouble, given the bipolar play that they’ve shown all season.

There’s still no word on whether Miller will be on the sideline tonight, or what the future holds for the program, two weeks ahead of the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Arizona looked great for 20-plus minutes in Eugene last Saturday and shot an eye-popping 57.6 percent from the field against the Ducks.

The issue, however, was the team’s inability to hold onto the ball, committing 17 turnovers, to Oregon’s four.

Arizona will need better ball handling as a whole to win against the Cardinal, with extra impetus placed on guard Dylan Smith, who turned the ball over six times against the Ducks.

Smith, who’s been thrust into the lineup in place of Trier, has a mediocre 1.2-1.1 assist-to-turnover ratio this season, and has shot a miserable 37.9 percent from the floor in his first season in Tucson.

The team’s success starts and ends in the hands of the University of North Carolina-Asheville transfer. We’ll see how he handles himself in primetime tonight.

How to Watch: Arizona plays Stanford at 8 p.m. tonight, with Fox Sports 1 carrying the game.

How to Bet: Arizona is an 11.5-point favorite to win tonight’s game.

Who to Watch: Stanford is led offensively by junior forward Reid Travis, who averages 19.3 points per game. Three other Cardinal players average double figures, in Dorian Pickens (14.6), Michael Humphrey (10.8) and Daejon Davis (10.7).

Your Weekly guide to keeping busy in the Old Pueblo.

Multi-Day Festivals

Wild Wild West Steampunk Convention. Put on your top hat and enormous goggles, grab some sort of tricked-out nerf gun and slap a cog onto your cell phone, because it’s time to get steampunk! Also, this is the only steampunk convention in the U.S. that takes place at a western-themed town. Hear live music from Abney Park, load up on purchases from more than 60 vendors, check out some of the 80+ panels and workshops (including make & take workshops), and see a fashion show, tea dueling and other entertainment. And this year’s theme is Robots vs. Dinosaurs, so dress/act/take sides accordingly. Friday, March 2 to Sunday, March 4. Old Tucson, at 201 S. Kinney Road, is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and it’s open to WWWC attendees only from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday. Ticket prices vary by age and number of days/events attended. Lowest price is $5 for “Dissection of a Seance”, “Shooting Sexy Steampunk” or “Tipsy Tea Dueling” events to $115 for a Maverick Family 3-day pass with two adult and one kid passes. (The Aristocrat Pass is sold out).

Fourth Avenue Spring Street Fair. Is it just us, or did the Fourth Avenue Winter Street Fair just happen? Honestly, we’re so glad that the wait is over so soon, because this is one of the greatest events in Tucson—just ask the 500,000 people and 300 artists that come from all over the place to be a part of the fair. Funds from the event go toward supporting our beloved Fourth Avenue’s infrastructure, a cluster of local nonprofits and other free community events throughout the year. A free shuttle service will take you from the Pennington Street Garage down to the fair. 10 a.m. to dusk Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4. Fourth Ave.

Cat Mountain Station Spring Art Festival. What better way to spend a spring day than at a festival full of local artists? You probably just did your spring cleaning, so you have to fill your house back up with new beautiful things to make up for the stuff you just got rid of. And it’s important to do your civic duty and support local art. To the festival! 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, March 4. Cat Mountain Station, 2740 S. Kinney Road. Free entry.