• Samantha Sais for The New York Times

Congratulations to freelance photographer and occasional TW contributor Samantha Sais for having one of her photos included on Buzzfeed's list of most powerful images of the year. Sais' photo appeared on the front page of The New York Times for a story about how immigration laws were splitting families.

Take a look at all 45 of Buzzfeed's favorites here. It's well worth your time.

• Photograph by Robert Alcaraz

The Confucius Institute at the University of Arizona collaborated with the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and the Canyon Ranch Center to host the closing events for the Second Annual Chinese Cultural Festival in Tucson.

Held at Gene C. Reid Park on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013, the festivities included performances from several groups tied to the Chinese Cultural Center and the Confucius Institute. Singers, musicians, martial artists and taiji masters took to the stage for the celebration. Different organizations, including the UA College of Public Health and Tucson Medical Center, held booths to promote health and wellness.

The event concluded 11 days of celebration, which included a Moon Festival concert and several lectures that promoted Chinese culture and arts.

• Photograph by Robert Alcaraz

• Noelle Haro-Gomez
• Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony performed to a full house at Anselmo Valencia Tori Amphitheater, Saturday, Sept. 14. Opening up for Anthony was comedian, Joey Vega. Vega had the fans laughing as they waited for Anthony to perform. Vega completed his stand-up and the lights went out; the crowd went wild. A video began playing showing Anthony walking to the stage. Smoke filled the stage and Anthony began to rise to the top of the stage's staircase. The crowd could only see his silhouette, which brought on more cheering. He slowly walked down dancing and singing "I Need to Know." It was a night full of energy and dancing as he played a lot of Salsa music. Anthony sang his new hit "Vivir Mi Vida as well as classics, such as "Mi Gente," and "Vivir Lo Nuestro."

My only complaint about the show? It was too short.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog flags a photo from the UA's HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to note that it may have rained on Mars a long time ago:

This fan is on the inside of the rim of Mojave Crater, a 60-kilometer-wide (40-mile-wide) impact crater near the equator of Mars. The structure matches an Earthly alluvial fan almost perfectly. Larger boulders are heavier and can’t be carried as easily by floodwaters, so they tend to stop soon after the terrain levels out. Smaller rocks can travel farther, which appears to be the case here. The branches, the shape, the direction: Everything indicates a flash flood on Mars.

What could have caused it? This part surprised me: It may have been due to rain, water rain, that could occur after an asteroid or comet impact. For example, ice under the surface could be melted by the impact, which would then rain down over a large area. This would be a temporary and local event, but could spark flash floods something like rainstorms do here on Earth.

But after that, gravity and terrain did the rest, on Mars as it is on Earth. That’s actually rather astonishing: Given some basic and fundamental principles, you can actually figure out how weather and erosion processes work on another planet. And when you look at it, it actually kinda reminds you of home.

• Lara Shipley

Slate's photo blog, Behold, celebrates the photography of Lara Shipley:

Lara Shipley became interested in doing a project in southern Arizona after moving to Phoenix in 2010. Shipley was raised in a small Midwestern town and sees this as the source of her interest in isolated and rural areas. Once she arrived in Arizona, Shipley began investigating the borderlands, spending time getting to know the various towns and their inhabitants and making as many as two trips a month from her home in Phoenix. She finds her subjects organically, meeting people during her visits.

Shipley’s stylistic approach is to use a blend of found and manipulated scenarios; some are staged, and others are shot as she finds them. This blending of actual, real-life documentary subjects with manipulated elements becomes interesting when applied to a region generally covered in a more straightforward documentary fashion.

Shipley's website is here.

Willie Nelson played a full set of what his fans wanted to hear at AVA last Wednesday, but not a minute more. Although he could have been days singing through his catalog of favorites, there was no encore. Still, the fans heard plenty to keep them happy. He even made time for covers of other country rebels, and he made it a family affair by duetting with his daughter Amy Lee Nelson for the two set closers. Photographer C.E. Elliott reports some memorable performances:



Stardust

Georgia on My Mind

Blue Skies

All of Me

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Funny How Time Slips Away

Crazy

Night Life

Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground

I'll Be Seeing You

Whiskey River

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

Shotgun Willie

On the Road Again

Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die 



Just hold on a little longer and , the way laws are going, everyone will be able to salute you with an appropriate smoke.

The Charlie Daniels Band brought their hits from a nearly half-century career built on trenchant nationalism, Southern pride, and showing the folks a good time, at Desert Diamond Casino, Sunday, Aug. 11. Pan-genre music afficionado C.E. Elliott was there.

Madeleine Peyroux's latest studio recording, The Blue Room, started out as an homage to Ray Charles, but genre-jumping is her trademark. Her passion is for songs, great songs, that can resonate with anybody entangled with the human condition. C.E. Elliott captured her easy style on Saturday at the Rialto.

The second annual Underwear Party apparently drew 1200 people in various states of undress to Club Congress on Saturday (around 900 attended last year, which means this event will eventually be Tucson's best-attended public gathering by 2015).

Now, whether you attended and are trying to remember what happened, or stayed home and want to voyeuristically look for people you know in their boxers/panties/whatever, some of the official photos are online now, mostly of the "teen girl bedroom" set, featuring a somewhat handsy Santa statue.

Clif Taylor's keening guitar solos stood in for the ubiquitous '70s saxophone parts as David Slutes crooned the era's hits and the waxing moon out-romanced any lava-lamp-lit waterbed for the second Yacht Rock party at La Cocina. As the Platinum Foxes played, hilariously vamped and occasionally dogpaddled through under-rehearsed material and requests, some partiers, including co-organizer Kenny Stewart, joined the performance by bringing their period-sleaze costumes and funky dance moves to the front of the stage. It was a vision of '70s porn stars, but the clothes, by and large, stayed on.

• Noelle Haro-Gomez
• Party co-organizers Kenny Stewart and Kitty Kat McKinley are photo-bombed by lovely yachtresses.