Rogue Columnist

David William Foster, an appreciation

David W. Foster in 2016 at a celebration of his 50th year teaching at ASU, in the Old Main building. At left is his wife, Virginia.

My dear friend, David William Foster, Regents Professor at Arizona State University, died peacefully last night at age 79. His ASU bio doesn't begin to capture the man in full, but it's worth quoting at length because of the depth and breadth of his accomplishments:

David William Foster is a Regents Professor of Spanish and women and gender studies at Arizona State University. He has written extensively on Argentine narrative and theater, and he has held Fulbright teaching appointments in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. He has also served as an Inter-American Development Bank professor in Chile. Foster has held visiting appointments at Fresno State College, Vanderbilt University, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Riverside, and Florida International University. He has conducted six seminars for teachers under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the most recent in Sao Paulo in summer 2013.

In 1989, Foster was named the Graduate College's Outstanding Graduate Mentor, and in 1994 he was named Researcher of the Year by the Alumni Association. He received the 2000 Armando Discepolo Prize for theater scholarship awarded annually by GETEA (Grupo de Estudios de Teatro Argentino y Latinoamericano) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires.In 2010, Foster was honored for his lifetime work on Argentine culture by the Centro de Narratoloia at a program held at the Argentine National Library. He is past president of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association.

We've lost a man of astounding achievements, and this comes atop the crushing loss of historian Jack August in 2017. Arizona, and the world, are less for these passages.

The Groundwater Act

History is written by the victors.

This marks the 40th anniversary of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act. The state Department of Water Resources said in a press release:

The 1980 Act was – and remains -- the most sweeping state law in the Nation governing groundwater use. In addition to creating a coherent, manageable system for helping wean Arizona’s most populous regions from groundwater use, it enacted the framework for long-term groundwater-use reduction that continues to the present.

“In Arizona, we stand on the shoulders of giants — pragmatic, visionary leaders whose achievements have shown us the way and enabled our high quality of life,” said Governor Doug Ducey.

If today's Arizonans know of the landmark law at all, it's via the shorthand that new developments were required to show a 100-year supply of water. But it was primarily intended to stop groundwater depletion, which was frighteningly reducing aquifers that had taken centuries or millennia to fill. The most noticeable sign of this phenomenon is subsidence, the collapse of the earth and opening of fissures as groundwater is pumped away.

Groundwater pumping was particularly problematic in Pinal County, which depended on it heavily for agriculture. The irrigation district from Coolidge Dam wasn't nearly enough for the demands of farming there, rapidly giving way to tract houses. The resulting dead landscape along I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson makes it The Ugliest Drive In America.

More from early Phoenix

This post piggybacks on the Phoenix at Statehood column from this past year. This time the emphasis is on photography, most from the Library of Congress and the McCulloch Brothers collection at the ASU Archives. Click in the image for a larger view. Enjoy.

Washington and Center streets in 1872. The town wasn't even incorporated until nine years later. Note the abundance of shade trees even at this early stage.

Before the arrival of the railroads, mule teams hauled freight to and from Phoenix — in this case headed for "the mines." This is the 1880s at Jefferson and Second Street (Maricopa Street).

Another view of mule teams hauling freight along Jefferson Street in the 1880s.

First Avenue and Adams (Cortes Street) in the 1890s. The 1889 Fleming Building is recognizable at right. Today the boxy Wells Fargo tower stands there.

More midcentury Phoenix

I continue to feed the endless appetite for photographs of Phoenix. The value I try to add on this site is telling some of the story behind the images. I get these from a variety of sources but one of the best is Brad Hall's History Adventuring on Patreon — pledge a dollar or more and you can get access to far more photography. Click on the image for a larger view.

Celebrity Theater, the city's main concert venue, built in the 1960s on 32nd Street north of Van Buren, a sign of the hollowing out of downtown.

Here's the southwest corner of Central and Osborn in the 1970s before the two bank towers were built. This was when the city was still litigating its long battle against billboards, hence the Eller sign advertising an early gated property around 27th Street and Osborn. Behind it is an old Phoenix stucco apartment. To the right are the Mayer towers, the short one with the Playboy Club on top and the tall one with the outside elevator, headquarters of First Federal Savings.

From when I was growing up, here's the Arizona Bank at Central and Cypress Street. The shady area to the north surrounds a beautiful building that now houses the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona. Most of these trees were ripped out for palo verdes.

The Blue Cross-Blue Shield headquarters at Third Street and Indian School, completed in 1970. This midcentury masterpiece was lost, replaced by a gas station.

Days of rage

Charles Blonkenfeld photo

Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods got it right when he tweeted, "We need to support and defend every protester. And we need to arrest and prosecute every single person who loots or damages private property. We can do both. We have to do both."

My two cents, after watching both peaceful protests and then the worst rioting and looting in modern Seattle history (yes, worse than the 1999 WTO): The events of the past several days are a combination of outrage over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, criminals who took advantage of the situation, Trump, and cabin fever from weeks of Covid-19 lockdown.

As for Phoenix, it has a downtown again. I remember when pitiful protests against George W. Bush were held on the sidewalk at 24th Street and Camelback. Now, downtown has come back sufficiently to be a dense core and offer public spaces (and police headquarters, above) to see protests and damage similar to real cities. The rocks regrettably come with the farm.

I can't think of any analogy in the city's history. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, a disturbance around Eastlake Park was quickly put down and Mayor Milt Graham and black ministers held a community meeting to encourage calm. Now Gov. Doug Ducey has imposed a statewide curfew without consulting the mayors of Phoenix or Tucson.