If you missed Paul Wine's review of Spirit Stones: Unraveling the Megalithic Mysteries of Western Europe's Prehistoric Monuments (Five Star Publications, 320 pages, $19.95) back in February, you may want to check it out here. Wine says the book is a "worthy read" and "... is an interesting and scholarly introduction to one of the ancient world's most-mystifying topics."

Last month, judges of The Eric Hoffer Award awarded Beeaff's book with a first-place prize in the spiritual books category. Read on and visit the awards site and publisher for more information.

The Eric Hoffer Award for short prose and books was established at the start of the 21st century as a means of opening a door to writing of significant merit. It honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. The winning stories and essays are published in Best New Writing, and the book awards are covered in the US Review of Books.

Of Spirit Stones, US Review of Books writes: "Beautifully illustrated with many fine color photographs of the prehistoric standing stones of Great Britain and Brittany, this book seeks not only to explain what these megalithic monuments are, but also what they meant to the Neolithic and Bronze Age people who built them. A thorough, but fascinating and account of the culture and background of these ancient builders provides both secular and spiritual links to our own culture and beliefs. Many books offer scientific and historical explanations of the mysterious stones and theories of their possible uses, but this author goes beyond the hard facts to suggest how our own spiritual growth may be enhanced by understanding things common to both ourselves and our ancestors."

Author Gary Paul Nabhan will be in Tucson this Friday to talk about his book Desert Terroir. If you've ever considered getting your mind blown by a storyteller who easily weaves ethnobotany, food, culture, history and humor into one tight fabric, you might want to attend.

Nabhan will speak at 7 p.m., Friday, May 18 at Antigone Books. From a description on the Antigone website:

"Terroir" is a term used to describe how characteristics of the land affect the flavors of the foods produced from it — the "taste of the place." Why does food taste better when you know where it comes from? Because history — ecological, cultural, even personal — flavors every bite we eat. Whether it's the volatile chemical compounds that a plant absorbs from the soil or the stories and memories of places that are evoked by taste, layers of flavor await those willing to delve into the roots of real food. In this landmark book, Gary Paul Nabhan takes us on a personal trip into the southwestern borderlands to discover the terroir that makes this desert so delicious.

Maurice Sendak, considered one of the most important children's book artist of all time, has passed away at the age of 83. While I'm sure most remembrances of Mr. Sendak will justifiably focus on Where the Wild Things Are, the first work of his that I thought of this morning was Really Rosie, a musical based on three of Sendak's books. Courtesy of a scratchy YouTube upload, a portion of the animated special that aired on CBS in 1975 is above.

The Range talked with banned-book novelist and poet Ana Castillo yesterday while she drove from New Mexico into Arizona for a weekend of readings and workshops that start tonight at the John Valenzuela Youth Center.

Castillio plans to meet with students later this afternoon before her public reading at the South Tucson Center at 1550 S. 6th Ave., 6:30 p.m.

Castillo, author of "So Far From God," said she reached out to acclaimed Chicano literature teacher Curtis Acosta to come to his classroom to read and work with his students.

"I reached out because of the situation that was going on. Two of my titles were on that banned list. Getting information through the internet and various sources, I decided to offer myself and visit the school or schools, not to go with my books, but to go and talk as a writer," she said

Castillo said she felt a particular kinship with Acosta after reading that he used her novel, "So Far From God," as part of an essay exam he gave his students. "So this is far reaching for me. I asked him 'How about I come to visit your class?'"

Castillo wanted to document part the visit, filming it with media or to post on her website. But that request was denied.

"As a writer of 40 years, I have always been conscientious in this country of freedom of speech to some degree. ... Serious writers may get censored in some form or fashion. But I don't think that I ever thought 'So Far From God,' which is very popular, would ever be taken out of schools in the Southwest," Castillo said.

It seems Tucson has an unquenchable thirst when it comes to the beer down at Borderlands Brewing Company. We stopped by on a recent Saturday to talk with the owners and they said they simply can't keep up with the demand, so they've put together a plan to expand.

This is all the more impressive when you consider the beer is only available during tasting hours, which take place for a few hours two days a week, and at the two places currently serving the beer on tap.

The Borderlands crew has already ordered another large tank, which should alleviate some of the panic they're currently dealing with as the tanks run dry each week. But Myles Stone, one of the owners, says the plan is to eventually expand the operation to six times its current size.

Former Tucson Weekly Film Critic James DiGiovanna here: I've got a new ebook single available at Amazon.com. You can read it on the web, offline on your computer, on iOs or Android, or, if you don't have any of those, just call me and I'll read it to you over the phone.

It's a longish short story about feelings, a talking tree, the nature of consciousness, advertising, and chronic pain. But mostly feelings.

It's called Plants and Animals and I wrote it to help people forget about the terrible thing that Rick Santorum did to them when they were five years old.

In the nature of journalism collaboration, here is the story done by Roque Planas, a young reporter from Fox News Latino who was just in Tucson to cover this event.

Why, you may wonder, would I post something from a News Corps. outlet on the Weekly? Well, TW's Mari Herreras was among Roque's main resources for backgrounding the his coming series. Contributor Julian Ybarra also spent nearly three days working with Planas as the camera guy.

Read on...
——————————————-
Arizona Official Considers Targeting Mexican American Studies in University
By Roque Planas, Fox News Latino

An Arizona official who led the effort to suspend Mexican American studies from Tucson public schools is considering taking his fight to the state university system.

Arizona’s superintendent of schools, John Huppenthal, says Tucson’s suspended Mexican American studies curricula teaches students to resent Anglos, and that the university program that educated the public school teachers is to blame.

“I think that’s where this toxic thing starts from, the universities,” Arizona Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal said in an interview with Fox News Latino.

Read More here.

Jack Kerouac tried to convince Marlon Brando to play Dean Moriarty in a film version of On The Road back in 1957, and that misstep kicked off 55 years of attempts to turn the classic road trip novel into a movie. There's reason to believe the version coming out on May 23rd might be ok (the director Walter Salles is obsessed with the book, requiring the cast to attend a "beatnik boot camp" before filming), but the trailer isn't terribly inspiring, seeming to just assemble a bunch of period cliches together with a quick glimpse implying Kristen Stewart will be seen topless at some point, which is apparently a selling point for some people. I suppose as a fan of the book, I'm not quite ready for the Twilighting of Dean Moriarty, and if the book has been seen as unfilimable for decades, maybe there's a reason. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

However, no matter how misguided and off the mark that film adaption might be, it could always be worse, as Mike Lacher's full-length Axe Body Spray inspired parody, On The Bro'd proves. A selection:

A raw fucking thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two total players that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two hardcore eyes glanced into two hardcore eyes- the Natty-slugging player with the lacrosse shorts, and the MGD-chugging player with the popped collar that is Carlo Marx. From that moment on I saw very little of Dean, and I was a little sorry too. Their energies fucking tangled (no homo), I was a prude compared, I couldn’t shotgun PBRs as fast as them.

As the Range noted earlier today, I'll be moderating a panel of political writers—Rick Perlstein, Chris Mooney and Tom Zoellner—on Saturday at the Tucson Festival of Books. (You can get details here, but it's from 2:30 to 3:30 in Gallagher Theater and will be carried live on C-SPAN's Book TV.)

Zoellner has recently written A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America. A former newspaper reporter who worked on Gabby's congressional campaigns, Zoellner wrote a piece for TW on the anniversary of the shootings in January. Here's an excerpt:

First, there's the mystery of what caused Jared Lee Loughner to buy a Glock from the Sportsman's Warehouse off of Thornydale Road and use it to try to kill his congresswoman. He may never be able to explain it himself. Paranoid schizophrenia is a disease that makes fantasy inseparable from reality, and Loughner had been suffering from it—in an agonizingly public way—for at least four years. He had been kicked out of Pima Community College for making nonsensical and semi-violent statements. All of his friends had deserted him. There was no job for him, no life, no hope, and the neurological equivalent of a tornado spinning in his mind.

We do know this, however: His choice for a target was inherently political. This was not a random selection. Nobody who lived through the 2010 congressional election will forget the way in which Gabrielle Giffords was publicly vilified. Her face had been cast in sinister shades in negative television advertisements and outdoor ads. Her opponent encouraged his donors to help him beat her by shooting an M16 rifle at a fundraiser. In Tucson that fall, she had become the embodiment of a federal government seen as wanting to raise taxes, open the border and kill jobs. You would have had to have been hiding under a rock not to have seen Giffords' distorted face peering out from everywhere like Big Brother. (Disclosure: Gabrielle has been a friend for many years, and I volunteered on her campaigns. Gabe Zimmerman, who lost his life at the Safeway, was also a friend.)

Jared Loughner was horribly sick, but he was certainly not hiding under a rock. This is a crucial point about schizophrenia that is not widely understood. Numerous studies show that the delusions of schizophrenic patients are powerfully influenced by the real-world stimulus that surrounds them. In China, for example, the delusions of paranoid-schizophrenia patients tend to center on themes of noble ancestry or the Communist party. In South Korean patients, there was a high degree of paranoia about secret agents sent by Kim Jong Il. In Taipei, it was the presence of gangsters. "Delusions regarding political themes were thus highly sensitive to the local political situation," wrote Dr. Kwangiel Kim, the lead researcher of one study.

Of course, there is nothing unique about angry politics, gun imagery and negative campaigning that is unique to Arizona. But to ignore the context of what was happening in the final days of his sickness is to miss one of the most-important lessons of the Safeway shootings, which is the way in which we failed to take even basic care of one of our neighbors. Tucson is an easier-than-usual place to get lost and forgotten. Our far-flung instant mega-barrios and our extremely rapid turnover of residents ("Three move in, two move out" has been the mantra for years among city planners) make it harder to form the lasting, informal social connections that make people take notice of fellow citizens in trouble.

A Gallup Poll two years ago showed that just 12 percent of Arizonans strongly agreed with the idea that "neighbors here care for one another." That this is the kind of state we've created for our children should give us all pause.

Amazing things happen on the culinary stage at the annual Tucson Festival of Books. Last year Janos Wilder gave a speech that led to a change in local food policy that allowed restaurants to legally use produce from backyard gardeners. Who knows what could happen this year?

This year's line up looks promising: Ryan Clark from Lodge on the Desert, Doug Levy of Feast, Ethan Schulz of Fleming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar, Massimo Tenino of Tavolino Ristorante Italiano, Wilder and others. There's a ton of demonstrations and other culinary-related readings as well, and it sounds like there will be some pretty decent eats, too.

The event takes place this Saturday and Sunday on the UA Mall. There's more on the festival over here. If you go to the events page and search the culinary category you can find a quick guide to all the food-related stuff.