Did Thursday night's screening of Citizen Four and Q&A with Glenn Greenwald get you worked up all over again about the NSA?

Well, tonight the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences is hosting a panel on the issue—and Edward Snowden is videoconferencing in from Russia to be a part of the conversation.

The details:

The competing stresses posed by balancing government intrusion and individual rights in pursuit of a safe society will be the topic of a panel discussion featuring MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, journalist Glenn Greenwald and former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden presented by the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Chomsky and Greenwald will appear in person while Snowden will videoconference from Russia. Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, will act as moderator for the discussion.

Tickets to the event are sold out, but you can watch the livestream on The Intercept tonight (Friday, March 25) from 5 to 7 p.m., or catch up with a recording of the conversation on Monday, March 28 when it is posted to the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences website. 

Tomorrow is the big day— St. Patrick's Day! The day to celebrate Irish heritage (honorary or not,) learn a jig, eat good food, and drink good beer!

Wondering where to celebrate? Don't worry. There are plenty of options for bar hoppers and families alike.

Bar Festivals
The Hotel Congress
311 E. Congress St.
$3 at door if you're not wearing green
Party 'till 2 a.m. at Hotel Congress! The celebration begins at 11 a.m. when the Cup Café begins serving special Irish menu items. Club Congress doors open at 8 p.m. and your cover is free with green clothing! Drink specials begin after 4 p.m. The Great Guinness Toast will be at 10 p.m. in the hotel plaza.

O'Malley's on Fourth
247 N. 4th Ave.
Presale tickets $10
Green beer and whiskey will be flowing at O'Malley's! Doors open at 8 a.m., live music starts at 11 a.m. and traditional Irish food is served all day. 

Auld Dubliner on University
800 E. University Blvd. #104
Celebrate a true Irish St. Patrick’s Day from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. at the Auld Dubliner, Tucson’s authentic Irish restaurant and bar. The pub will open at 6 a.m. The Beer Garden in Geronimo Plaza will open at 11 a.m. Food and beverages will be available in both areas.

Cherish the Ladies, an all-woman Irish music band, rolls into town Friday, March 18, the day after St. Patrick’s.

“The show is spectacular,” crows Joanie Madden, the Ladies’ founder and its prizewinning flute and tin whistle player. “We’ve been getting standing ovations everywhere,”

The traveling extravaganza of Irish music, song and dance will fill the stage of the Fox Tucson Theatre with a bakers’ dozen of artists. The performers hail from all over the Irish diaspora, coming from the U.S., Canada and Scotland—and Ireland.

Fiddler extraordinaire Liz Carroll, born and bred in the Irish immigrant community in Chicago, is a superstar who played with Altan in Tucson last year. Bronx-born Madden is the daughter of Irish immigrants from Clare and Galway; her father, Joe Madden, was a noted accordionist. Guitarist Mary Coogan, likewise born into the New York immigrant community and to an accordionist father, has been with the Ladies since the band’s start 31 years ago.

Tucsonans inspired by last weekend's Festival of Books, listen up: Pima Community College is hosting a creative writing weekend this Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. 

From the press release: 

What differentiates the impulse to write poetry from the impulse to write prose? Can that seed go either way?

These questions and other innovative ways of thinking about poetry, fiction, the essay and more will be explored during Pima Community College’s spring 2016 Creative Writing Weekend Workshop on poetry writing led by writer and editor Aisha Sabatini Sloan. We will look at literary models that hover – deliriously – between fiction, poetry and the essay.

The event will take place at Downtown Campus (1255 N. Stone Avenue, room AH 140) March 25-27. 

The workshop beings on Friday at 6 p.m. with a two hour session, and continues on Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Pima students can enroll in the course (Writing 298T2, CRN 22557) as they do with regular classes. Non-students must fill out the college admission form before enrolling in the two-credit course. The cost of this three-day workshop is $177 for Arizona residents.

Visit PCC's website for more information. 

It's March in Tucson, and while that means spring has sprung, the Tucson Festival of Books has also. The annual Festival will take over the UA campus this Saturday, March 11 and Sunday, March 12 and features more than 200 events, according to my calculations. I'm a journalist, so don't take that number for gospel, but trust me—the Festival hosts a lot of readings, discussions, panels, and petting zoos, among other things. 
Hitting up every single ones of these is pretty exhausting, so if you're not looking to really delve into all the Festival has to offer, but still want to stop by for a taste, be sure to check out these five events. 

Mari laid it out in this week's Editor's Note, but in case you missed that, here's a day-by-day guide to where you can run into TW folks at this weekend's Tucson Festival of Books: 

Saturday

• Arts contributor and former editor, Margaret Regan will be on the panel Women Journalists on the Border moderated by UA School of Journalism's Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante. Social and Behavioral Sciences Tent, Saturday, March 12, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
  
  
• Editor Mari Herreras will be at the Politics of Poetry: Social Activism with a Fine Point Pen panel, Saturday, March 12 at 1 p.m., Pima County Public Library/Nuestras Raíces/Presentation Stage with Odilia Galván Rodríguez and Enrique Garcia Naranjo, and moderated by Tucson Poet Logan Phillips.
  
  
• Mari Herreras will moderate Bordertown and Other One-sided Arguments with Chicano author and illustrator Lalo Alcaraz, Pima County Public Library/Nuestras Raíces/Presentation Stage, Saturday, March 12, 4-5 p.m. 
  

Sunday

• Mari Herreras will be at Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Sunday, 10-11 a.m., Student Union Kiva with Tucson writers Elena Díaz Bjorkquist, Andrea Hernandez Holm and Roberto Rodriguez. Moderated by poet Odilia Galván Rodríguez.
  
  
• In the Human Rights panel, Margaret Regan is joined by author Luis Alberto Urrea and attorney Teri Duncan. Student Union Gallagher Theater, Sunday, March 13, 10-11 a.m. Moderated by TW senior staff writer Jim Nintzel.
  
  
• In That's Border Life, She Said, Regan shares the stage with Kathryn Ferguson and Gayle Jandrey. Student Union Kachina, Sunday, March 13, 1-2 p.m. This forum will also be moderated by Jim Nintzel.
  

That's it! The rest of us will just be running around, enjoying the literary goodness. 

Pregnancy and babies bring about thoughts of growing families, tiny socks, first steps—and safe deliveries. Sometimes, that's just not how birth happens. 

This Thursday, March 10 at 5:30 p.m., the Loft Cinema (3233 E. Speedway Blvd.) presents Birth Happens: An International Look at Birth, an event that looks at birth on a global level. 

Tickets are $12 for general admission, $10 for Loft members. 

The Loft's description of the event: 

Every day, 364,501 children are born worldwide. That is 5 children per second and 300 per minute. All children are born with their own life story, their own family, their own environment, their own culture, and their own place in the world with their own future.

“The way in which a child comes into the world is a mirror of its society and the place where our cradle is determines our future.” – Birth Day filmmaker Lieve Blanquaert

Birth Happens is a one-time only event that brings together three films, which gives a glimpse into births around the world and what women are facing giving birth in various countries. “No Woman, No Cry” a film by Christy Turlington Burns, “Birth Day” a film by Lieve Blanquaert and “Giving Birth in America- New York” a film by Every Woman Counts showcase the challenges, complexities and conditions that women and families cope with when having a baby.

An informed discussion will take place after the films with international and public health experts to learn about their experiences and what is happening locally. Come join us and be a part of the discussion. Raffle and ManDonna, a black and white photo exhibit of dads and babies also presented this evening.

The event is presented by the Friends of  Midwifery and Sponsored by El Rio Community Health Services-Women's Services. 

Female StoryTellers is hosting a benefit show for Casa Alitas—a home that serves as temporary shelter for women and children recently released from an immigration detention center.

Casa Alitas, a program sponsored by Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, is one of many humanitarian entities at the receiving end of the massive surge of Central American migrants, which mostly includes tens of thousands of families and unaccompanied minors.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement releases them from detention, the families are dropped off at Casa Alitas for food, water, new clothing, a warm bath and a bed to sleep in. The Casa  Alitas volunteers help them get in touch with family members in the U.S., as well as to buy bus tickets to head to their final destination, while they wait for their court hearings—whether for an asylum case or other opportunities to remain in the country.

In January, Casa Alitas head volunteer Jamie Flynn announced Female StoryTellers wanted to host a show to benefit the small shelter—a place that is in much-need of money, donations and volunteers.

It's a two giveaway kind of day! This Thursday, March 10, Neon Indian will be performing with BRYDES at the Rialto Theatre. Want to go? We're giving away a pair of tickets. 

Not not familiar with the music? Here's Neon Indian's bio, as told by the Rialto.  

Neon Indian (aka Alan Palomo) has announced the long awaited follow up to 2011’s Era Extraña and this year’s standalone single “Annie.” Slated for release via Mom + Pop on October 16, VEGA INTL. Night School was conceived during a period of aesthetic reinvention for Palomo, as he retooled the lo-fi and spontaneous writing style he’d developed as Neon Indian by incorporating elements of the cleaner production values and dance oriented approach of his previous recording moniker VEGA, ultimately merging the two into one fast lane. Developed over a four year period, the album brims with funk-centric guitar lines, pronounced Balearic rhythms, and the most elaborate songwriting of his career.

Composed and recorded in a variety of locations including, but not limited to, the cabin aboard a cruise ship, DFA’s Plantain Studios in New York, Pure X’s practice space in Austin, Ben Allen’s studio in Atlanta, and mixed in Brooklyn with Alex Epton (XXXchange). Upon its completion, Alan noted “most of what I’ve learned about human nature in my twenties has happened after dark. People are just kind of more honest then. More deliberate. I like to call the places I go to Night Schools.”

The new album single “Slumlord” arrives alongside an inventive relaunch of his website as Nightschool.biz The site features an hotline (+1-512-643-VEGA) to receive and send audio of the song and a special voice greeting about the album, in addition to newly announced US tour dates and an album-preorder that comes with instant grat tracks “Annie” and “Slumlord.”

Well, every so often we get to give out tickets to something other than a Basketball game and it looks like that day has come again. 

Jeff Dunham is going to be in town this weekend, and if you're so inclined, you can go see him! Dunham will be at the Tucson Arena (206 S. Church St.) on Sunday, March 13 at 3 p.m.

Tickets are going for $46.50, but we've got two to give away. Want 'em? Enter here. We'll draw a winner on Friday.