J.D. Souther, who counts Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles as just a few of his many collaborators, will be performing on Saturday, Jan. 24, as part of the inaugural Tucson Jazz Festival that is now underway.

Souther will be performing with the legendary Billy Childs at 8 p.m. at the Fox Theatre.

Find a full festival schedule and much more here.

Playground's rooftop area might have a space reserved in the bumping, grinding, and boozing weekend portion of your brain, but now the bar's roof will be home to beats of a different kind— specifically of the West African variety. The bar, located at 278 E. Congress St., is presenting two classes on Tuesday nights to add some flavor to your workout routine. 

The Beats & Bends Tuesday night series at Playground begins 6:30 p.m. with an interactive West African dance class led by The Movement Shala's Jade Twilite Beall featuring live polyrhythmic drumming. Then at 8 p.m., instructors from Yoga Oasis will lead an hour-long yoga practice under the stars.

Beats & Bends takes place at Playground every Tuesday. It's $7 to attend one class or $13 for both the yoga and dance classes.

TUSD's Catalina High School and the district's Food Services Department want you to come try some internationally-inspired food as the high school preps for the Healthier U.S. School Challenge: Smarter Lunches.

About the challenge:

It is a voluntary certification initiative recognizing those schools enrolled in Team Nutrition that have created healthier school environments through promotion of nutrition and physical activity.
In 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama introduced Let’s Move!, incorporating HUSSC: SL into her campaign to raise a healthier generation of kids. At that time, monetary incentive awards became available for each HUSSC:SL award level: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Gold Award of Distinction.
To date, HUSSC: SL awards have been given to schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia. As of December 22, 2014, there are 6,797 schools certified (4,638 Bronze, 1,229 Silver, 573 Gold, and 357 Gold Awards of Distinction).

At the tasting event, which will include dishes inspired by the youngsters' native countries, your role would be to stuff your face and then score the food. The winner would move forward to student tasting and would get a change to be on the school menu next year. Oh something else, the winning dish will be served on the menu at Lodge on the Desert.

Student dancers representing Nepal and Somalia will perform at the beginning of the evening, and each entrée will come with information about the country of origin.

The event takes places Thursday, Jan. 22 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. For more info, call Food Services at 225-4700.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday celebration today, the Loft Cinema is presenting a free showing of Through a Lens Darkly, a documentary that, according to the Loft's description, "traces the nearly 200-year struggle to counter demeaning and stereotyped images with positive and authentic ones, probing the recesses of American history by discovering photographs that have been suppressed, forgotten and lost."

The film screens at 5 p.m. Here's the lowdown from the Loft:

jazz-TW.pdf

Yes, we love all our comics at Weekly World Central, but we have to admit we have special place in our hearts for Hoopleville's David Kish and the beautiful artwork he produces outside his comic world—large and small cardboard artworks full of color, layers and, quite often, with a statement to remind us about the planet, justice and community.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in celebration of the late Civil Rights Movement leader's work and birthday. The city march in honor of this day starts at Santa Rita Park, 401 E. 22nd St., 9 a.m. and goes to Armory Park, 221 S. 6th Ave. A community celebration takes place there until 3 p.m.

Kish something special planned in honor of the day. Here's your invitation:

Dear Friend of Hoopleville,

On Monday, January 19, 2015 (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), Hoopleville Comics will create a temporary installation beneath the 4th Avenue underpass in Tucson, Arizona. Between 12 noon and 4 p.m., an array of cardboard sculptures depicting people of all colors climbing from manholes will line the eastern pedestrian walkway of the new underpass, urging passersby to contemplate the pandemic of poverty and inequity which stifle too many Americans.

As a cartoonist and spouse of a French national, I have been especially troubled by the recent events in Paris. However, it has occurred to me that the "freedoms" discussed in the wake of this current tragedy mean very little to someone who can't eat! Please join me and my cardboard friends on MLK Day to remember, as Dr. King so often reminded, that poverty is our colorblind enemy. Thank you.

Sincerely,

David Kish

Nicoll Hernández-Polanco is a Guatemalan transgender woman who is currently detained in an all-male Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Florence. In October 2014, she turned herself in to border agents and right away requested asylum after fleeing her native country following years of sexual and physical violence and harassment for being transgender.

From a press release sent by Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa of Mariposas Sin Fronteras and Olga Tomchin of the Transgender Law Center:

In her first month in detention, Nicoll was patted down 6-8 times a day by male guards, who Nicoll reported would grope her breasts and buttocks, make offensive sexual comments and gestures, and sometimes pull her hair. In addition to physically harassing Nicoll, ICE staff routinely verbally abuse her because of her gender identity. Nicoll has informed Tucson-based LGBTQ group Mariposas Sin Fronteras that she has been called slurs including “f***ing gay,” “bitch,” and “the woman with balls” in front of other detainees. Witnesses have heard a female guard refer repeatedly to Nicoll as “it”. Nicoll was recently punished by ICE for standing up for her human dignity by being placed in solitary confinement for "insolence."

Since she's in an all-male detention center—because she was assigned the sex male at birth, she is "legally" she's male—Nicoll is required to be in that facility and thus shower with men. She was sexually assaulted in December, according to the press release, and although an investigation allegedly took place, the results of that investigation are unknown. 

"What Nicoll is facing at the detention center is part of the larger reality of violence that immigrant trans women of color face in our society at large," said Isa Noyola, program manager at the Transgender Law Center. "Our communities are rallying together demanding her release and an end to immigration detention for all transgender women."

The release says that ICE refuses to release Nicoll, because "her past deportations when she was an unaccompanied minor...render her a priority for detention under (President Barack Obama's) recent immigration executive action announcement," the release said.

Transgender Law Center and other LGBTQ/immigrant rights groups have created a petition asking ICE to release Nicoll immediately: http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/portfolio/freenicoll/

ICE is no stranger to allegations of abuse, especially against LGBTQ detainees. The accusations are overflowing and it's gotten to the point where ICE can't hide from them anymore.

From the release:

LGBTQ people and especially transgender women of color are disproportionately excluded from the President’s relief. Additionally, a large coalition of over 115 LGBTQ, immigrant rights, and allied organizations called on the White House last month to immediately release LGBTQ people like Nicoll from immigration detention due to the dangerous conditions they face in detention.

I contacted an ICE spokesperson, and I'm waiting for a response to the allegations.

The four design teams selected as finalists to create a permanent memorial commemorating the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting victims, families and the community's response to the tragedy are in town today, and they want to hear from you.

They're not here to present their design ideas, but to talk to us and get inspired. That constant community involvement has been at the forefront of the entire collaborative process between the January 8 Memorial Foundation and the Tucson Pima Arts Council.

"This tragedy affected every single person who lives in this city, everyone remembers exactly the place where they were at the time of the shooting," said Michelle Crow, the foundation's manager. "We feel it's very important that this be very open, for people to share their ideas, express their concerns, feelings. Ultimately, all those things help inform artists and designers."

The teams will be at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. Second St., to chat with the public from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

This is the second stage of the design competition that started after summer last year. In the spring, designers are expected to present their ideas to Tucson, and then the selection panel will choose the final design team after a 30-day open public comment period.

The final team will also be heading the remodeling of El Presdio Park, where the memorial will live.

The four finalists:

The brand new bar in Reilly Craft Pizza's basement has been open less than two weeks, but is already creating a buzz around town. With a four page craft cocktail menu filled with inventive drinks, the bar has been packed most nights since it's opened.

However, the team at Tough Luck Club is hoping for an especially busy night on Wednesday, Jan. 14 because they're hosting a fundraiser to help out fellow bartender Erick Evans. The Scott & Co. employee tore his ACL at work and will be out of commission while it heals which unfortunately means no income.

TLC bartender Niklas Morris says he and Stephen Ott will be behind the bar at TLC on Wednesday night mixing up one of Evans' specialties: the Messi Situation. The proceeds from that drink, which combines cachaça, Fernet, Averna, and cinnamon, will go to Evans, as well as 100% of the two working bartenders' tips from that night. 

You can stop by the bar from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. on Wednesday to donate to Evans.

Etherton Gallery's latest show is Then + Now, a collection of photography by Mark Klett. The show continues through March 21, with an opening reception from 7 to 10 p.m. this Saturday, Jan. 10. More details here.

Here's the word on the show, via Etherton Gallery:

Etherton Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of work by photographer Mark Klett, Then + Now. Both narrator and participant, poet and geologist, Mark Klett is renowned for reinventing landscape photography beginning in the 1970s by rephotographing locations previously visited by 19th and early 20th century photographers and pairing or incorporating the earlier images with his photographs to comment on physical and cultural changes in the western landscape. Klett has spent his career exploring the ways in which a subject—whether the Grand Canyon, Yosemite or Yellowstone—is defined and even misrepresented through photography. The show contrasts images from the series, Revealing Territory (c. late 1970s to late 1980s) with work from the recent series, Camino del Diablo (2011-2013). Both series record Klett’s personal observations of the landscape. Camino del Diablo is based on the memoir of Raphael Pumpelly, a young mining engineer who journeyed by stagecoach along the dangerous Camino del Diablo trail to take a job at the Santa Rita copper mine in 1860. His memoir, Across America and Asia (1870) was written roughly during the same period as the first western geological surveys that Klett covered in his early work. Revisiting the Camino del Diablo, which partly parallels the U.S.-Mexico border, took him through the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, suggesting a continuous narrative of violence in the American west, from the lawlessness of the Camino del Diablo to the violence of border politics that now dominates the area.

Here's your chance to see a cinematic classic for free! The Loft's Essential Cinema program continues with L'Avventura at 7 p.m. tonight. You can find the details here.

Here's the Loft's description of the film:

One of modern cinema’s trailblazing works, and often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, L’Avventura is a gorgeously shot tale of modern ennui and spiritual isolation, wrapped inside a tantalizingly ambiguous mystery involving a young woman’s disappearance during a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily.