Alternatives to fireworks
One of the result of the pandemic was the evolution of alternative ways to celebrate July 4th.
Because of the continuing drought in Tucson and the Southwest, city officials have curtailed fireworks. The senior facility where I live, the Cascades (retirement, assisted living and memory care) devised another solution.
There are 48 balconies here that face Jessica Ave. It is near St. Joseph’s Hospital and generates a bit of traffic. Each balcony was given a 3x5 flag to fly and display for two full days. Nature cooperated and each flag flew totally extended for two days! It wasn’t until 4 p.m. on the second day that the banners took a break and stayed vertical like a stick. Their constant motion reminded me of our national anthem, the Marines at Iwo Jima, and the tattered flag of 9/11. I hear our banners were a real hit. (We have some residents here that served in WW2 and the Korean War.)
Sally Bates
Northeast side
Limousines aren’t electric
Last October, President Biden showed up in Rome with 85 limousines and other vehicles. How many of them were electric? Wake up, America!
Richard Aufmuth
Foothills
Inflation history lesson
The inflation rate is currently 8.6% this year, after an average rate of 7% last year, 2021, under President Biden. Much of this being caused as the economy came roaring back too fast, after the collapsed economy during the pandemic. Demand is currently far exceeding supply at this time. This will eventually settle down.
This is the highest inflation rate in 40 years, since 1981 and 1982, when the inflation rate was 11.8% and 8.4%. Those high inflation rates were under the first two years of President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The smart and rational people didn’t panic back then, and they shouldn’t panic at this time. Of course, that is hard not to do, when you have far right-wing propaganda news channels using the current high inflation rate as a political tool.
David Keating
East side
Shattered bones, exploding organs
Re: the June 12 article “’Children,’ ‘guns’ don’t belong in same sentence.”
It sickens me knowing this is what happens to those gunned down by AR-15s. Unlike being shot with a handgun, which we may or may not survive depending on the shooter’s accuracy, AR-15s are lethal. Period. Their shrapnel has such high velocity it sends shock waves throughout the body. Bones shatter. Organs explode. DNA testing is required to identify the dead. AR-15s turn grocery store and school shootings into what they really are, a massacre.
There’s no place in a civilized society for wartime military weapons designed to kill so ruthlessly. Grocery stores and schools are not war zones. Ordinary citizens living their lives and innocent children studying their lessons are not enemies.
It’s chilling to think we or someone we love could be caught in the crossfire of the next deadly massacre.
Assault rifles do not belong in the hands of civilians, and legislators who refuse to protect us from them must be replaced by those who will.
Jacolyn Marshall
Oro Valley
Guns are not
tools to most
Re: the June 12 article “A gun is America’s tool of choice.”
Although the writing seemed mostly “tongue-in-cheek” diatribe, some things stated: “Guns do not, in fact, kill people. People kill people.” True enough! What is rare about citizens using guns for self/others’ protection is that it rarely gets any coverage. (Does not fit the “gun control” narrative!) Neither Dirty Harry nor Rambo should be invoked here. They were both good guys. Very effective good guys. To include the “honorable” crescent wrench alongside the bald eagle is surely quite the stretch. “It is useful, adaptable and wholly incapable of slaughtering children while they sit in their classrooms!” Well, friend, neither is the ArmaLite AR-15 nor any other weapon (tool?). Until human effort by perpetrators the likes of Salvador Ramos and Payton Gendron is applied, they will remain totally inanimate. Totally inanimate.
Robert Powers
South side
Gun owners, NRA hurt their own cause
I own a dozen or more firearms (including an AR-15) and have no intention of surrendering any of them. However, it is clear the U.S. will, some day, institute new gun-control laws. Firearm owners have a choice: to be heard in crafting laws that might make a difference without harming their rights, or to keep on stonewalling and have those laws written by people who hate all firearms and want them all confiscated. A waiting period would infringe on no one’s rights, yet could significantly reduce suicides, the major cause of gun deaths. Red flag laws could significantly reduce domestic violence — if you are someone that might affect are we to feel sorry for you? Likewise, it’s time to make 21 the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle (a law that would, indeed, temporarily affect the rights of 18 to 20-year-olds, but on solid statistical grounds). Either these, or wait for Beto O’Rourke’s knock on your door.
Jonathan Hanson
Midtown
Improving CRT
With all the recent controversy over teaching critical race theory to our school children, I propose a better way to teach that subject. I went all through elementary and high school in Tucson in the ’40s and ’50s and never heard about the Jim Crow laws in the South. I learned about this firsthand when my plane landed in Atlanta in 1960 and I saw the “white only” and “colored only” restroom and drinking fountain signs in the airport. I was angry that this was happening in my country — America, the land of the free! Students today should know about America’s past and not hide the blemishes and scars that resulted from institutionalized racism and sexism. But, that should only be a minor part of the course curriculum. The majority of topics should emphasize the progress that has been made in this country towards ensuring equal opportunity for all Americans to become self-actualized and achieve their goals.
James Coan
Sierra Vista
A new term for slavery
Re: the July 2 article “Texas school proposal calls slavery ‘involuntary relocation’.”
I was interested to read in the Arizona Daily Star that a group of Texas educators has submitted a proposal to the state board of education to describe slavery to second graders as “involuntary relocations” as part of the state’s new social studies curriculum. But the term “involuntary relocation” really only covers the kidnapping/human trafficking aspect of it. They need to create an additional term to describe forced labor with threat of dire bodily harm and death. I suggest “involuntary employment.”
Who are these people that lack the integrity — and I use the word integrity in all its nuanced meanings — to face our ofttimes brutal history?
Gayle Jandrey
Northwest side
Cats should join Big 12
I can see only two options for the University of Arizona football team. One would be to recruit two more schools in the West, such as San Diego State or Fresno State, and watch as television ratings and attendance plummet. The second option, and the most practical, would be for Dave Heeke, UA athletic director, and Jim Click, distinguished Oklahoma State alumnus, to approach Bob Bowlsby, the Big 12 commissioner, and beg to be included in any expansion plans. I suggest this be done as soon as possible before other Pac-12 schools do the same.
Charles Schultz
Northeast side
GOP welcomes radicals
I think the GOP has become so radicalized because for decades they have been appealing to racist, bigoted, and/or sociopathic Americans. If you are white and fear minorities, you are welcome in the Republican Party. If you won’t wear a mask during a pandemic because you don’t care if someone else gets sick, you are a sociopath and probably a Republican. If your religious beliefs are more important than those of all other people, you are a bigot and probably Republican. If you proudly proclaim belief in false conspiracy theories to prove you are one of the “base,” you are probably a member of the GOP.
It seems to me that a political party that caters mainly to the worst elements of society can’t possibly be good for America.
Graeme Williams
Southeast side
Empathy turns to disdain
Growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, we witnessed real people, everywhere. Democrats and Republicans, drinking tea and discussing the country’s problems. Empathy was the rule back then. Parents had grown up during the Depression and WWII. So what could ever be that bad?
In a few weeks, most of America will forget this shooting. Shameful.
Today, Democrats empathize with the people of Highland Park, Sandy Hill, Parkland, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Uvalde and the next city to be attacked by cowards, hiding behind ski masks or cowering on a rooftop. They call for help from a deaf and apathetic radical party supporting assault weapons that create these mass shootings. Why do these dispassionate politicians support the massacres?
They need the support of their laid-back, rural gun-toters to which they cater and their superficial thoughts and prayers, which the Supreme Court approves.
Arianna Huffington said it best, “So, to sum up, the Supreme Court’s week: Life begins at conception and ends in a mass shooting.”
Sheldon Metz
Northeast side
Encouraging more
mass shootings?
Is anyone else concerned with all the major news networks televising a photo of the person suspected of mass shootings? They are giving these deranged individuals their 15 minutes of fame, which they seem to crave. Are they encouraging other disenfranchised people to do other heinous crimes? Also, if the pictured suspects end up not being guilty, then they are violating their right to privacy.
Victor Panizzon
Northwest side
Uncomfortable words
Re: the July 2 article “Texas school proposal calls slavery ‘involuntary relocation’.”
Texas produces textbooks for much of the country. They propose not using the word “slavery” because it may cause discomfort. Dare I mention the discomfort of actual slaves? What’s next? Slavery = lifetime job security. Slavery = On the job training or bring your kids to work day, every day, picking cotton. Room and board included. Fashion accessories = chains and whips. Family environment or just a lot of mixed-race children. Welcome to Disneyland where a Black man runs around singing “zippity doo dah, zippity yay, my oh my what a wonderful day.”
Judith Sacheck
Marana
Happy birthday, America
The Star’s July 4 front page rendering of an engraving of the signing of the Declaration inspired unique and original thoughts in me: “Look at this group of misogynists, homophobes and racist slaveholders legally concealing firearms under their waistcoats.” Thanks #metoo, thanks LGBTQ, thanks BLM, and thanks NRA for uniting the citizens of our country with your pure patriotic passions. I wonder how patriotic I’ll feel next year. Or perhaps Yeats’ thoughts were better than mine: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity ... And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward “America” to be born.” (My “patriotic” edition.)
Robert Robak
East side
Recovering two-party politics
Re: the July 5 letter “What do Republicans value?”
A reader exhorted us to consider candidates’ stated positions, not their party. I suggest voters also consider the actions and positions on party platforms of candidates. Few Republican candidates demonstrate distance from their party’s positions on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election or restrictions in voting access or allowing state legislatures to overrule election results. Indeed, in Arizona, Republican “leaders” who voted to invalidate Arizona’s election results in Congress; or who participated in the planning and staging of the Jan. 6 insurrection are seeking reelection to their current offices or running for other important offices in our state government.
It’s time to send most Republican candidates to a few years’ “time out” and allow Democrats to discuss among themselves matters of the public interest and the role of government freely and openly — at every level; and to attend to these matters of governance. I believe there will be healthy differences of opinion. But in the end, there will be constructive compromise reflective of voters’ opinions.
Paul Waugaman
East side
