The Burrow

Ouch.  And it only got worse.  If puns make you ill, feel free to come back tomorrow.  For the rest of you, there's a treat in store. The Gaslight Theater has been in Tucson for 32 years.  It's a measure of the wonder that is Gaslight that I remembered details from the History section of the program.  Apparently, a group of friends from UofA went to Alaska in 1977, lasted one summer having  produced one show, came back to Tucson and never left.  The whole thing felt like a family affair; the Kitchen Staff is listed in the program alongside the Costume Designers and the Controller and the Board of Directors.  Our server began her career there when she was 16..... as did one or two of the patrons that afternoon.  It's one of those 1890's Wild West Saloon-type places, those over-the-top tourist attractions with a 3-man-band, sing-alongs and free popcorn on the table when you sit down.  It felt like a frontier cocktail lounge. If you are...

It's College Fair time and I'm a busy girl.  Today, I started at 2pm and I will finish at 9.  I'll have visited a Catholic high school, a non-denominational private high school and tonight, 3000+ students and their parents will descend on the Tucson Convention Center for the big public high schools fair.  That's a lot of talking (something that's never been a problem for me) and a lot of driving (80 miles by the time I'm finished) and many bottles of water.  I drag my boxes of Cornelliana from my trunk to the venue using my luggage cart and my muscles.  I have a Cornell banner to decorate the front of my table, and this year I remembered to put a roll of packing tape in the box so that I can attach it to the front of my space.  Some schools come with their own tablecloths, but I am not that fortunate.  However, I do have a poster that I can use to protect my delicate self from the rough table tops that the schools bring out for these events.  Spli...

I am supposed to be able to garden now.  It's late September and I really should be back at school.... oh, apologies to Rod Stewart but I'm addled right now.  I've spent 2 hours in my front yard with a pointed shovel and four 3-gallon plants and I am no closer to having them in the ground than I was before I started. It is not for lack of effort, I assure you.  I waited til the sun had gone behind the clouds.  I had my favorite gripping gloves protecting my delicate digits from cactus prickers. I'd planned and placed the newbies in exactly the right places.  I was properly hydrated and nourished.  I'd foregone the weight room this morning in the gym in order to save my strength for digging.  And the plants are still in their pots. I started with the easy things first.  I know, I know, just like homework, you're supposed to start with the most difficult tasks when you are freshest.  But I wanted to be sure that I had something to be proud ...

Aged Parm and I met the Big Cheese for lunch and politics on Friday.  Our drive up to Saddlebrooke was quintessential Arizona - big blue sky, white puffy clouds and the mountains hugging the side of the road.  I-77, Oracle Road here in Tucson and beyond, is built on the fault line.  I like to imagine the earth pulling apart from itself, little by little, over deep time eons, as I cruise northward in The Schnozz.  But I had little time for reverie on the drive, because Aged Parm was fired up and rarin' to go.  I love the company of an active and engaged mind, especially when there's attitude attached.  And let me tell you, the woman is nothing if not filled with attitude. The Home has been sponsoring candidate forums as we approach Election Day, and Aged Parm has been on the aisle for each and every one of them.  She's also, apparently, been the only one asking any questions.  And hers are serious questions - how would you fund the tax breaks you...

Musical accompaniment to the post a special feature of today's Burrow, just for you! uploaded by crazybeatlefan to youtube -- recorded for Hullabaloo March 21, 1966 Click the video and let it play in the background as you read my tale of woe, I'd gone to dinner with Amster and a lady-lawyer-friend of hers that night at the end of May.  We'd gorged on fresh fish and veggies and laughter until 11:30pm... truly a late night for yours truly.  I dropped Amster off at her car and headed for the highway and home.  It was a pretty night  and my windows were down and the air was cooling off and the stars were twinkling.  Tucson has a dark skies policy, so there's only a minimal amount of ambient light;  it's a big black sky out there.  It hadn't rained for months and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  The music was good (I get the community radio station, KXCI,   down there, before the Santa Catalinas interfere with my reception further north) and ...

My mind is everywhere today.  Running riot in my brain are thoughts of John Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity on October 30th and how I can justify the expense of flying out to meet and talk with like minded non-insane people.  My favorite cousin-in-law will be attending, and Brother and his girls have been urged to be The Burrow's on-the-scene-correspondents, but I am feeling an immense tug of my own. Gabrielle Giffords and Jesse Kelly facing off with she's lying NO he's lying television ads as they vie for her seat in Congress. Elizabeth Warren getting her dream job, only not really getting it. Obstructionist politics imposing a glass ceiling of its own right there above her head.  I can't imagine how she's feeling as she carries the baby to term and then hands it over to the real parents. The private company that wants to build a landfill in the desert, near the homes of desert dwellers who live far from the hustle and bustle of city life (if suc...

G'ma and I went to the movies last week.  It was a freebie from BlogHer (thank you very much!) and since neither of us can resist something for nothing we piled into the Schnozz after dinner and drove to the mall.  Using Costco's strategy of burying what you came in for far from the entrance, the Loew's Theaters at the Foothills Mall have no exterior entrance.  With our usual parking karma we nabbed the first space by the doorway and then we walked and walked and walked through the Food Court (which changed from Coke to Pepsi since last I traversed its garish halls... McDonalds has vanished, Taco Bell is there instead) and past the purse kiosks and the vitamin store and the Carter's Babies Outlet (G'ma was wondering how much they were asking for the infants they were offering..... she may lose recent events, but bad grammar is hardwired into her DNA) until we plunked ourselves down at the end of a very long line of people.  We were 40 minutes early. I was supposed...

I have spent the last week trying to get a flu shot.  Without the media fueled panic over H1N1 this year these vaccines have been traveling under the radar.  Nevertheless, while our pundits are busy wondering how the tea party could have triumphed in so many elections last week, others of us were reading our bulletins from the local hospital and deciding that protection against the flu is something that we can actually do to change our experience of the world. As the economy tumbles and health care costs soar and people persist in worrying about the birthplace of our president instead of the graduation rates in our high schools, I chose to take a step toward furthering my own personal well-being.  I have been feeling disconnected from the things that made me feel strong, lately.  I hurt my shoulder dragging my suitcase through NYC last month so weight lifting has been on hiatus.  It's still too hot to garden much past 8am.  I'm not powerful enough to affe...

Are you liking but not loving your car?  Is it close but no cigar to the kind of performance you'd imagined?  Even if you don't know anything about horsepower or torque or pulling g's as you round a corner, TBG assures me that if you examine your tires your experience will be transformed.  Really, you should believe him.  The man buys cars the way some people take vacations.  He loves them and they love him back.  They smile at him from the driveway and against the background of Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean and it's more than look at me look at me because anyone who knows him knows that that is the last thing this most private of people would ever want.  He's always been an under the radar kind of guy, proud of his accomplishments but never one to seek out attention beyond his immediate circle.  He's not driving them to show off; he'd like an invisibility cloak if the truth were told.  Nope, the man loves them as machines.  The...

Back in 2003, my liberal friends were appalled that I could find good in Arnold Schwarzenneger and that I intended to vote for him in California's gubernatorial recall election. He was a Republican, for crying out loud, didn't I realize that he was, therefore, the spawn of the devil? There was no room for discussion - I had strayed from the path of righteousness and deserved to be flogged. I remember standing on the Bill Williams Trail on Mt. Tamalpais, hands on my hips and fury blazing from my eyes.  "Girls, he's a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights Republican. Maybe there are three of them left in the world.  We have to support him.  He's an endangered species."   They were unmovable, unshakable, adamant in their conviction that he was nothing more than The Terminator, a groping, muscle bound idiot without the credentials or the gravitas to lead the Golden State. Here we are, 7 years later, and he's term-limited out of a job.  In the inter...

I couldn't come up with a better title for this post than the one that Hannah Storm and Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters gave to the story of friendship which they produced for ESPN's 30 For 30 series.  If you ever doubted that sports is about more than the athletic performance alone, one of these films might just convince you to rethink your position.  Have you wondered why I wax eloquent over something I've never done nor ever could do nor want to do and can only understand from an outsider's perspective?  It's because of the people.  I am haunted by sports stories more than by disasters or theatrics or politics.  Unmatched (careful if you are at work, there's a loud commercial as the video begins) has just added another layer to the cake full of scripts that rattles around in my head when I'm thinking about nothing.   Do you ever go to that place, denizens?  Your body is purposefully engaged in an activity which requires nothing more than the mos...

22 weeks ago I changed my comment widget to one provided by IntenseDebate.  It's bulky and requires another click but it allows me to reply to your comments through my email in-box and that made it marginally more acceptable than other options.  I added the code to my template and I was off and running.... kinda.... sorta.... but the tech support was wonderful and I've stuck with it. Now I find that JES is having issues and wants to resign from the on-line discussion.  I find that unacceptable - not his wanting to resign, but the fact that The Burrow is no longer user friendly.  Especially for such a wonderful new friend.  I'll not worry about the fact that his work computer blocks the comment sections since firewalls and I have barely more than a nodding acquaintance.  But I do wonder if others of you out there in the blogosphere have tried to comment and been thwarted by the process itself.   If you've been reluctant to join the conversation b...

 The Happy Ladies Club is on the move again, and I'm loving it.  We drove up past the ski run on Mt. Lemmon  (have you forgotten that Tucson is home to the southern-most ski resort in the Continental USofA?) and climbed even higher. Yes, as the sign says, we were 8800' above sea level when we paused to take these pictures. Pausing was a good thing - the air is quite thin at that altitude and we were all feeling it. faces blocked to protect the innocent Happy Lady Hikers from near and far were brave enough to peer around the corner of the Fire Lookout Station to get a glimpse of the cozy living space inside.  Replete with a refrigerator, an outdoor shower, and a guy wire holding you onto the mountain..... what more does one need? Did you think that I was kidding about the guy wire?  This is how it is connected to the roof. Any building which requires that kind of support is not one which I choose to hold onto and peer into. ...