Friday, October 29, 2021
Hey, sports fans! FC Tucson, the Old Pueblo's soccer team, had a rough start to the season but now just has to win two more games to land a spot in the national USL League One playoffs. It's our community's comeback story of the year!
If you're interested in cheering on the team's effort to land that post-season berth, FC Tucson will take on the Richmond Kickers at 7 p.m. Saturday at Kino Sports Stadium in the last home game of the regular season. Tickets are $10 to $20. Buy them here!
It's also Fan Appreciation Night with some spooktacular fun planned for the evening, so there's fun on and off the field. There's no better place to get your kicks on Saturday night.
TOMBSTONE – Larry Widen believes ghosts and spirits have unfinished business in the human world. In what’s considered one of Arizona’s most-haunted towns, where ghosts lurk on practically every corner, his Ghost City Tours combine the Wild West history of Tombstone with stories of spirits who still linger.
“This town is one of the top 10 most-haunted cities simply because so many people lost their lives here in such a short period of time,” Widen said of Tombstone, founded in 1877. “There were lots of suicides, lots of gunfights, lots of people cheating each other in business deals because once the money started rolling again, friends weren’t friends anymore.”
Ghost tours in Tombstone and Flagstaff have seen an uptick in business during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses closed because of social distancing requirements and a lack of customers. Ghost tours were safer, outdoor options.
Widen is a senior tour guide for the national tourism company’s Tombstone location. At night, he takes customers fascinated by the paranormal on a walking tour around town to some haunted locations, including Big Nose Kate’s Saloon and the infamous Bird Cage Theatre.
Tombstone is best known for the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and it saw many less-notorious clashes among cowboys, prospectors and thieves before the silver mines played out.
But when the pandemic hit, Tombstone, quite literally, turned into a ghost town.
Thursday, October 28, 2021
In Arizona, the climate crisis has become a real and growing threat to our lives and livelihoods. Prolonged drought is creating a ripple effect of uncertainty, massive wildfires are devastating local economies, and heat-related illnesses and deaths are on the rise as triple-digit temperatures skyrocket. This week, U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema has a historic chance to change the course of this crisis. The constituents in my Latino-majority district are counting on her support of the Build Back Better Act.
The choice is crystal clear. While Governor Doug Ducey and his Republican-led legislature refuse to acknowledge reality and science, it’s up to Congress and Senator Sinema to adopt a once-in-a-lifetime plan that will create jobs and invest in a clean energy economy that protects Arizona’s air, land, and water for generations to come. Refusing to act harms us all, but it especially hurts Latinos who are disproportionately affected by climate change.
The lack of equitable access to affordable cooling has increased emergency room visits among Latinos, many of whom work outdoors—and we’ve lost hundreds of lives over the last decade due to Arizona’s extreme heat. Dirty air created by fossil-fuel polluters in our state has led to record asthma cases among Latino children. And the Colorado River Basin, responsible for 36% of Arizona’s water supply and now faced with historic water cuts due to drought, encompasses a whopping one-third of the Nation’s entire Latino population.
We can no longer sit idle. Inaction will jeopardize lives and economies, and it will hurt our black, indigenous, and people of color most. If we are truly committed to moving Arizona forward, we cannot keep going down the same path of climate and social justice apathy. It’s why Senator Sinema’s support of the Build Back Better Act is crucial.
When approved, the legislation will dramatically improve lives and economies in Arizona, tackling the extreme weather that endangers our loved ones on a daily basis. It will create 100,000 jobs annually in the state for the next decade and boost household income $3,300 a year.
This matters to our Latino families and businesses because we were hardest hit by COVID-19. With an estimated 25 percent of Latino-owned businesses permanently closed over the course of 2020, our economic recovery as Latinos has been comparatively slow. The continuous impacts of climate change only make matters worse.
Latinos in Arizona are resourceful and resilient. Experience has taught us to persevere, even when faced with systemic injustice and economic inequalities; however, we are simply tired of waiting. We want clean air, safe water, and protection of our precious indigenous lands. We are ready to write a new chapter for our community and our state. Senator Sinema: it’s time to support the Build Back Better act.
Andres Cano, 29, represents Legislative District 3 in the Arizona House of Representatives. He is the top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, Energy, and Water. He is the Chair of the Arizona Legislative Latino Caucus.
The stage is set for the final debate before the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission approves its draft maps and submits them for public review after Democratic Commissioner Shereen Lerner suggested a handful of changes she’d like to see to a set of proposed legislative districts in southern Arizona.
Based on those changes and others proposed by Lerner’s colleagues, the AIRC will have three potential legislative maps to consider on Thursday. Independent Chairwoman Erika Neuberg said she wants the commission to approve both the congressional and legislative draft maps on Thursday, a milestone in the redistricting process that will open the maps for 30 days of public comment. After that, the commission will make additional adjustments and then approve the final districts that Arizona will use for the next decade.
At the end of their last meeting on Oct. 21, tensions flared among the commissioners over a map of seven legislative districts that the Southern Arizona Leadership Conference, a Tucson-based business advocacy group, advocated for.
The AIRC incorporated the districts supported by SALC, of which Republican Commissioner David Mehl is a founding member, into its legislative map. A majority of the commission was pleased enough with the result to suggest a final vote on the legislative draft map. However, that didn’t sit well with Lerner, who raised concerns with several of the districts. Neuberg decided to postpone the vote for a week so the commissioners, Lerner in particular, could propose changes.
On Tuesday, Lerner proposed a number of revisions that she said would improve the map while keeping Marana and Oro Valley together in the same district, which is a high priority for Mehl.
Lerner objected to the way District 17 on the SALC-supported map joined the area north of Tucson with the city’s east side, with the two regions completely separated by the Santa Catalina Mountains. She told the commission that it would take an hour with no traffic for someone to travel between the two parts of the district, and would require candidates to pass through another district to get from one end to the other.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
The Pima County Health Department will be giving out free, take-home COVID tests.
The kits will be handed out on Saturday, Oct. 30, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Abrams Public Health Center, 3950 S. Country Club Road in the lobby of the Abrams building.
Each box contains two antigen self-tests that deliver results in 15 minutes.
These rapid antigen tests look for COVID-19 antigens, or small pieces of protein, in your respiratory tract. These tests are not sufficient for international travel or other organizations that require PCR/NAAT (nucleic acid amplification test) results.
To find free COVID-19 testing centers from Pima County, go to www.pima.gov/covid19testing.
For more information on the BinaxNOW self-tests, including how to report results and to watch instructional videos in English and Spanish, visit pima.gov/covid19hometest.
Sections of the Bajada Loop in Saguaro National Park’s Tucson Mountain District will once again be closed from Oct. 28 to Nov. 10.
This closure does not include the Sus Picnic Area, which can be accessed via Hohokam Road. No vehicle or bicycle access to Signal Hill will be permissible until Nov. 11. More information will be available in the park’s Red Hills Visitor Center.
There will be heavy machinery, large trucks, and construction traffic moving in both directions on the one-lane road. Visitors should use caution.
Visit nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/conditions.htm for more information.
WASHINGTON — The next wave of the massive COVID-19 vaccination campaign could begin as soon as next week, after federal regulators decide if elementary school students across the U.S. should begin rolling up their tiny sleeves.
That multistep approval process kicks off Tuesday, when the Food & Drug Administration’s panel of vaccine experts will vote on whether the benefits of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the risks for kids ages 5 to 11.
If the panel and top FDA officials grant an emergency authorization for vaccinating that age group, then the next step lies with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A CDC panel would meet on Nov. 2 and 3 to craft additional guidance on how the shot would be used.
For parents with children in that age group, that could mean a vaccination appointment for their child as soon as Nov. 4. The Biden administration has said there will be 15 million doses ready to ship as soon as the FDA gives the green light.
In recognition of the difficulty parents may have deciding whether to obtain a vaccine, the administration also is taking care to connect parents with trusted providers like pediatricians. “These are our babies, and they still feel like a baby when they’re that age and that size,” said Amy Wimpey Knight, president of the Children’s Hospital Association.
