Rogue Columnist

Into the wild

When I was about three, my family was driving from Tucson to Phoenix in those pre-Interstate times. I have three vivid memories. The first is the restaurant where we ate breakfast; it had ancient double doors with windows behind ancient double screens. The second is the fierce rainstorm that cut visibility severely, almost the desert version of a whiteout. We headed out of Coolidge, my mother behind the wheel, me between her and my grandmother. No other cars were on the two-lane road.

My third memory is of a vast torrent of fast-moving latte-colored water that suddenly appeared in front of us.

I'm sure it wasn't as wide or as biblical as I recall it. I had never seen water in a river before! But what was undeniable is that the bridge had washed out — perhaps at the Gila River — and only my mother's caution, slow speed, and fighter-pilot reflexes prevented our deaths.

As I write now, searchers are still trying to find six-year-old Willa Rawlings, lost when her father's "military-like truck" was swept away in flooding Tonto Creek. The bodies of her brother and cousin, both five, were found Saturday. Only Willa's shoe has been recovered. Her parents escaped.

The Republic's Laurie Roberts hit the right notes of sympathy and bafflement — that the driver would try to cross the flooded creek, and that the Legislature in its low-tax religion has failed to build a bridge. Yet I suspect little will change. Especially on the common-sense front, for bridges can be overwhelmed as anyone knows who remembers Scottsdale's comic attempts to span Indian Bend Wash in the 1970s.

The art of this deal, cont'd

For Thanksgiving week, talented friend-of-the-blog Carl Muecke has been busy creating his unique takes on our crisis. Enjoy if you dare — in times such as these satire is a great antidote. (Click on image to enlarge).

'Solutions' annotated

From the Arizona Republic on Nov. 17th. My annotations are in black.

Headline: ‘We need to act fast’: Statewide forum focuses on climate solutions for Arizona. Journalists are pushed to seek solutions to largely insoluble problems. Steve Jobs was more on the mark when he critiqued Fox News to Rupert Murdoch: "The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society."

Lede: With climate change cranking up the heat and intensifying droughts, more than 400 people from across Arizona gathered Friday and Saturday to brainstorm solutions for reducing planet-warming pollution and preparing for a hotter, drier future. What people? Doug Ducey? Developers? Republicans who have held control over the Legislature for decades? Elliott Pollack? Grady Gammage. No...

Second graf: Among them were young activists who see climate change as the defining issue for their generation. The time to act is now, they said. You bet. But what power do they have? Do they vote? Did they drive to the conference, adding to climate-causing emissions (rhetorical question)?

Next grafs: “This is rapid change and we should do something about it before it’s too late,” said Alicia Rose Clouser, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student from Sinagua Middle School in Flagstaff and a member of the Navajo Nation.

“My people will be suffering for generations on if we don’t do something,” she said. Mandatory inclusion of a woman and "marginalized person" but otherwise empty information calories.

Next: The two-day conference at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff brought together the students and teenage activists along with academics, health officials, tribal representatives, environmentalists, representatives of farming businesses, urban planners and city officials, and people from the community who said they wanted to be part of the discussion. Now we finally get the "who" — none of whom have the power to enact policies that would address climate change.

'OK Boomer'

Carl Muecke illustration.

According to the New York Times, "OK Boomer" is the Gen Z/millennial declaration of war on the baby boom generation. Shannon O'Connor, who is selling T-shirts and hoodies with the phrase, said:

“The older generations grew up with a certain mind-set, and we have a different perspective. A lot of them don’t believe in climate change or don’t believe people can get jobs with dyed hair, and a lot of them are stubborn in that view." The younger generation is mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

One problem, of course, is which boomers? The older cohort of this large and diverse generation got drugs, sex, rock'n' roll, and pensions. My cohort got the AIDS and STD scares, disco, and (if they're lucky enough) inadequate 401(k)s.

Is "OK Boomer" President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama (born 1961)? Such luminaries as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sir Elton John, Michael Jordan, UA climate scientist Diana Liverman, chess grandmaster and Trump nemesis Garry Kasparov, Stephen King (who also relentlessly trolls Trump on Twitter), Elizabeth Warren, and yes, Hillary Clinton are all boomers.

I was a loner and never much identified with my g-g-g-generation. But I hate today's "woke" ideology of forcing people into groups that can be made into neat packages of victims or villains. That includes generations. No room for individuals in that ideology.

St. Luke's memories

St. Luke's Hospital was built on the ruins of the dense Hohokam village called La Ciudad. It tilts at an angle because it had to fit against the original canal dug by Jack Swilling and his gang from Wickenburg. The Town Ditch or Swilling's Ditch was covered in the 1920s but Villa Street preserved the angle. Today's St. Luke's extends all the way to Van Buren Street with a ghastly spread of rocks and gravel. Yet the hospital you see above was built in the shady Montezuma Heights barrio of houses and public housing projects south of Edison Park. No gravel.

In my time on the ambulance, I spent a good amount of time at the emergency room of St. Luke's (or, as we called it with our dark humor, St. Puke's). In the New Testament, Luke the Evangelist was referred to as a physician.

Once, we heard an explosion outside and went to check what had happened. A patient had thrown himself off an upper floor and was well beyond our ministrations. On a happier note, we regularly had lunch (Code 7) at nearby Sevilla's (before it moved to McDowell), a family-owned Mexican restaurant surrounded by the 'Jects. The homeboys kept watched over our units so they wouldn't be broken into for drugs or stolen.

Off duty, I would visit my mother there, in her twice-annual stays as a patient, being treated for the emphysema that would kill her within a few years. The care was good.

I write all this because, after a century at this location, St. Luke's is closing.

Pushing the Pinal envelope

I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. Back then it was a compact town of 5,000 people. It boasted a charming little Spanish-style railroad depot on the Southern Pacific, with six passenger trains and many freight trains a day. My uncle showed me how to place a penny on the tracks to be mashed under a passing train.

Pinal County was home to about 63,000 people, most working in agriculture. Florence, the county seat, had a population of about 2,100, Casa Grande, another compact desert town on the SP, held 8,300, Eloy 4,900, and the remote crossroads of Maricopa a few hundred. Even then, Pinal County had a water problem: It was almost exclusively dependent on pumping groundwater. Coolidge Dam in neighboring Gila County wasn't enough for Pinal County's water needs even in 1960.

Fast forward to today. Pinal County holds an astonishing 447,000 people — more than the city of Phoenix in 1960. Maricopa alone (above) had an estimated population of more than 50,000 as of last year. This once-rural, once-distant county has become a Phoenix bedroom community — except the passenger trains are long gone. And, contrary to one of the key goals of the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, it's still dependent on pumping from ever-diminishing aquifers.

Paving Arizona

Seattle recently completed demolition of the double-deck 1950s-era Alaskan Way Viaduct, which ran for more than 2 miles along the waterfront downtown. Now the traffic is in a tunnel and the city is preparing to enjoy unencumbered access to Elliott Bay. An even more ambitious goal is to put a long lid on Interstate 5 downtown, which is already covered by a park for a few blocks.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, the $8 billion, 63-mile High Desert Corridor freeway has been canceled. It would have been the first new freeway in LA County in a quarter century. According to Streetsblog, the project "would have spanned two counties connecting the north L.A. County cities of Palmdale and Lancaster with San Bernardino County cities of Victorville, Apple Valley, and Adelanto. The route would have gone through a patchwork of privately-owned undeveloped wild lands populated by Joshua Trees." The PIRG Education Fund named it one of the worst highway boondoggles in the nation.

But that's not how we roll in central Arizona. In addition to the unneeded South Mountain Freeway (pictured above), the state Department of Transportation is planning a $55-mile freeway running from Apache Junction to Eloy. There it would connect with Interstate 10. When in a hole, keep digging.

Library late fees fade away

When I was nine years old, I went to the main branch of the Phoenix Public Library (a short bike ride from home) and applied for my youth library card (nine was the youngest one could apply). It was the most prized occupant of my wallet. It was also an important passage into growing up.

Kenilworth School had a well-stocked library. That was unlike today, where underfunded schools often lack what was once considered a basic. Along with the charter school racket, which operates out of anywhere without resources or much oversight (the better to siphon public money to the owners), the now rely on the city libraries. This is a shocking change from when I attended Arizona public schools.

Anyway, my school library wasn't enough for this young bibliophile or for many of my friends. I wanted to wander inside the big coral-colored building at Central and McDowell (Barry Goldwater's name was on the plaque, from when he was a city councilman). The Arizona Room, stocked with history, beguiled me from the moment I walked in. I wanted to have borrowing privileges. Of course if one was late returning a book, a fine was attached. But I never got a fine (and we were broke, often hovering on the edge of financial catastrophe). I took my responsibility as a card holder seriously. Being a library-card holder was a privilege, not a right. I'm still a card-holder of the Phoenix Public Library, as I have been in the many cities and towns in which I lived. Even in little Payson, when I spent the summer of 1967, had a library and I got a card.

Turns out this is very 20th century/last millennium thinking.