by Alice Whittenburg At 8:45 on October 14, if a thin veil of high clouds hadn’t occluded the morning sun, a work of solar art commemorating the Tucson Pressed Brick Company would have appeared on the Luis Gutierrez Bridge on Tucson’s West Side. Because of those clouds, seven people, including myself, who had gathered on …
I made my first visit to Big Mountain in the early ‘80s. I came alone as a journalist, my personal struggle, to a world I could not have invented. Big Mountain is an area north of the Northern Arizona Hopi village, Hotevilla. Dirt roads maybe still are the only roads. I was directed to Katherine …
My interspecies family and I are coexisting peacefully in a 1350 square foot residence. There are eight feline housemates in various “shades of gray” roaming in the main living space; nine semi-feral felines hanging out in a separate 10′ x 20′ enclosed porch with an added den area; one red Pekingese pooch snooping sneakily into …
Wrenched from a bond with their families, there is a population of animals in Tucson now languishing in cages, awaiting adoption or death. Often the cause is their human companions’ homelessness. I have seen the forlorn eyes and agitated pacing of innocent creatures confined at Pima County Animal Care and The Humane Society. Estrangement from …
In its eagerness to rid its showcase downtown of the reality of homelessness, the City of Tucson is endangering the lives and health of those many homeless who are based in the downtown. After first closing Veinte de Agosto park just in time for the heatwave’s arrival on Monday — closing off one area of …
Read moreCruel and Unusual: Closing Downtown’s Parks to the Homeless in a Heatwave