Fitz's opinion: A collection of David Fitzsimmons' opinion columns

Fitz's Opinion: Should 2020, like old acquaintance, be forgot and never brought to mind again?

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Moments before the New Year, little 2021, in fearful desperation, toddled up the familiar staircase of nearby clouds and knocked on Cupid’s star. “Hello?” Cupid yelled from inside his celestial home. “Go away! Come back in February. I’m busy.”

“Take my place, please! Have you seen what’s happened to the mortals? At this hour the world needs you and your quiver of love far more than it needs my confetti. At least give me your quiver and bow.”

Silence.

“I’ll trade you my top hat!”

“Talk to me on Valentine’s Day. Go away!” And so the new year did.

2021 nudged his top hat to a cocky angle, hiked up his diaper and clutching his fistful of confetti in one hand and a bottle of Champagne and two flute glasses in the other, toddled toward the old bearded man in the robe who was striding his way across the heavens in his direction.

The old year bent down to greet the new year. “So you’re 2021!”

Smiling nervously up at the old man the toddler stammered, “H-h-how was it?”

“It was what it was. You can’t control it. Mortals will do what mortals do.” The tiny figure recognized the truth, sighed a resigned sigh and popped his Champagne cork, sending it flying over the moon. “Champagne?” They clinked glasses and toasted each other. It was 11:59:59. They could hear the mortals counting down the seconds.

2020 handed down the sacred ancient hourglass.“I believe this is yours now.”

2021 set the empty bottle down on a nearby cloud and accepted the hourglass as the last grain of 2020 dropped.

The New Year read aloud the words engraved around its base. “TEMPUS RERUM IMPERATOR.” 2020 nodded. “Time, the commander of all things.”

He flipped it over and as the first grain of sand dropped 2021 saw the words engraved on the opposite end of the hourglass: “VERITAS FILIA TEMPORIS.”

“Time is the father of Truth,” said the old year. With there being no point in lamenting that Truth had been in short supply during his tenure the old man asked the babe, “Where are Cronos and Demeter?”

“Father Time and Mother Nature are waiting for you at the Celestial Gate.” 2021 tipped his top hat, winked and in a burst of confetti the new year vanished, on his way to earth to reign over his four allotted seasons.

Cronos greeted 2020 at the Celestial Gate with his tired ancient joke. “You don’t look a day over 2,000 years old!”

“Ha. Where’s Demeter?”

“Grieving over the state of the natural world, my son. She has sought solace among her seven sisters, the Pleiades, where she mourns, inconsolable.”

2020 thought it foolish to expect more from shortsighted mortals. “It is what it is. When I saw the Easter Bunny in April I told her, ‘You would not believe the nonsense mortals believe.’ For 365 days I watched many mortals waste their year on anger, resentment and selfishness. Few mortals are mindful that time is their most precious gift.”

Father Time somberly quoted ancient wisdom. “Memento mori.”

“Remember, I will die,” answered 2020.

“A curiously life-embracing truth. Most mortals squander their hours as if they are immortal. Unlike wealth you can’t make more time. Many of the fools believe they are their possessions!”

2020 mused, “How did I get so old? I arrive at a cloud and then I cannot remember why I went there.”

Cronos laughed. “You should see 4365 B. C. Lost his sash, his sickle and his keys in the Dark Ages. 1776 found them in the Age of Enlightenment. What of the plague?”

2020 smiled the smile of one familiar with the timeless, always prepared for the worst in mortal behavior. “There was no Marcus Aurelius this time.”

At that moment an eavesdropping Cupid opened the door of his star to show off his knowledge. “I knew Marcus Aurelius! He was the Roman emperor who was born wealthy and who reigned with virtue, reason, humility and courage, even when barbarians, wars and the Antonine plague threatened the survival of his empire.

“Care for a chocolate heart?”

“No, thank you.”

“Without self-pity the emperor stayed behind in Rome, as other leaders fled, to comfort his afflicted people, even selling his possessions to fund Rome’s faltering treasury. In spite of believing there will always be selfish, destructive people, he wrote, ‘We came into the world for the sake of one another.’

“Anyone care for a creme-filled dark chocolate?”

Both answered, “No, Cupid, thank you.”

As they walked through the Celestial Gate together, Cronos paraphrased the long dead Roman.“Take comfort in what the old emperor understood, 2020, that which most mortals across time never have nor ever will. History repeats itself and fear can destroy a civilization. Little is new under Apollo’s chariot. Welcome home, 2020. Happy new year.”

Fitz's Opinion: A mostly aluminum atomic age Christmas in Tucson in 1963

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

“Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” barked out of the Magnavox as the Master Sergeant, kneeling, inserted silvery aluminum foil branches reverently into the silver wooden trunk of his brand new Evergleam, mostly aluminum Christmas Tree. “Made in Manitowoc. By Americans, by God!”

Eyebrow arched. “Thing’s an electrical death trap. Can’t have any lights, son.”

“No bubble lights?”

“Something better. A color wheel thing that sits on the floor.”

I helped Mom set out her chalkware manger figurines, a cast so scarred they resembled medieval relics. Our nativity crèche looked small, lost behind the presents, overshadowed by dad’s giant fake tree.

Christmas morning, the year before, I was awakened by the fleet of Strategic Air Command B-52 bombers warming their engines as they did every morning rehearsing their delivery of prompt and utter annihilation to the enemies of freedom and my beloved Santa Claus. With disappointment the Master Sergeant told me, “the Reds hate religion. They hate Christmas.”

The Master Sergeant told me about the Red Menace, the X-15 and nuclear destruction. We were all fighting communism. I didn’t say, “what about the baby who said we should all love our enemies and turn our cheeks?”

Seven-year-old me was confused. How could the commies hate Jesus when he talked like a communist, always preaching about sharing and loving your enemies and feeding everybody?

That was ’62, the year the Cuban missile crisis inspired Mrs. Weed to train us to hide under our school desks after we pledged our third grade allegiance to our mutual assured destruction, from sea to shining sea. Seven-year old me was confused. Would the North Pole survive Armageddon?

My brother, the medic, claimed in a letter from Vietnam that Tucson’s sand would turn to molten glass. We’d be radioactive for a gazillion years. What became of peace on earth, good will to men? “Peace through strength,” said the Master Sergeant.

“Peace is our profession,” claimed the Strategic Air Command.

I listened to SAC’s Christmas Eve news bulletins about sighting Santa and their jets escorting him. To protect him from the commies I hoped.

I inspected, and shook the wrapped presents with my name. This was so far back in time “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would not air for another three years, a long time for me to wait for Linus to explain what Christmas was really all about.

The Master Sergeant told us he believed it was about the baby who, “grew up to preach peace, and good will and was killed, and lives in Heaven forever with His dad, God, and Santa works for Him.”

And I believed I was getting lots of toys because my parents were sorry for their constant fighting. They stopped fighting for “Red Skelton’s Holiday Special,” “Bob Hope’s Millionth Christmas Special” and “King of Kings” only to bicker over the identity of the duet singing “Baby, I t’s Cold Outside” on the radio. “Wrong! They never sang together!”

The angry air raid sirens howled over Tucson every Saturday afternoon, drowning out my parents and reminding us to frantically search for a nearby school desk under which we’d be incinerated.

That Christmas Eve I wondered if the commies and President Johnson were going to keep bickering, eventually causing a nuclear fireball fight that would ruin Christmas. I also wondered, more importantly, would I get the Big Daddy Rat Fink model kit I lusted after?

I’d been good.

Christmas Day, I let my parents have their “Santa is real” fun. They swapped slippers, colognes and robes and behaved as though they came from Santa. “Well, the old boy got the color right. Too bad it’s too small, Santa.”

And the fight started. They quickly moved on to bickering over how to dispose of the shredded wrapping litter. “Don’t burn it!”

I watched “A Christmas Carol” on Christmas Eve. The parable of the repenting miser burrowed into my 8-year-old psyche. People can change. Maybe there can be peace on earth or at least in the living room.

The Master Sergeant had given us the coolest Christmas tree that year in spite of mom’s barbs about how real trees smell like Christmas and not aluminum. I fell asleep certain Scrooge would give away his fortune and become, probably, the most welcome guest of the holiday season, in all the best houses, next to the chalkware baby Jesus, of course, whose parables and beatitudes would become more dear to - and this young boy with every passing year.

Fitz's Opinion: A Christmas without the Arroyo Cafe Radio Show is one to remember

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I can’t let the year 2020 pass with out noting the absence of the Arroyo Cafe Holiday Radio Show this year. It’s a hole in this ham’s heart.

I miss Jay Taylor, who left us last year.

It is with reverence I recall his rendition of “Grandpa got beheaded by a fruitcake”:

“Grampa got beheaded by a fruitcake

Walking past the nuthouse Christmas day

I knew that stuff was real hard on your stomach

Who knew that it could take your head away.

They never caught the maniac who threw it

He certainly was not a friend of mine

Now we keep poor Grampa on the mantel

Thank goodness he was whistling at the time.

At bedtime we can walk right by and kiss him

And hope we do not see him in our dreams

They shouldn’t have put the light bulbs in his eyeballs

‘Cause all out nighty-nights turn into screams.

Nighty-night Grampa…”

You can find the shows on YouTube. Last night I searched for Mike Sterner’s song “Here comes Sandy Claws” which he performed, in character, as Wilbur the Wildcat.

“Here comes Sandy Claws, here comes Sandy Claws, right down Sandy Claws Lane!

Eight adorable poodles with sweaters are pulling on the reins.
His sleigh is loaded with balls of yarn and lots of other fun toys,
Like a cardboard box full of packing peanuts for kitty cat girls and boys.

We Love Sandy Claws, here comes Sandy Claus, right up Sandy Claws Road!
He's as fluffy as a blow dried Persian and whiter than if it snowed
At the amplified sound of electric can openers, hear those kitty cats cry.
It sounds like if they don’t get fed soon, they very well may just die.

Here comes Sandy Claws, magical Sandy Claus, right down Sandy Claws Street!
All the kitty cats that were good this year will get a selection of meat,
So keep your plastic dinner bowl tucked beneath the Catmas tree.
There’s parakeet patties and goldfish stew for kitties like you and me.”

Crystal Stark ,  Julie Anne Boos and Katherine Byrnes as ““Triple Threat” shook the bolts out of the Rialto with their swinging version of   “Don't go walking in Winterhaven” sung to the tune of  “Don’t sit under the Apple Tree”.

“Don't go walking in Winterhaven with anyone else but me,

Anyone else but me, anyone else but me.

No! No! No!

Don't go walking down Candy Cane lane with anyone else but me,

Anyone else but me, anyone else but me…

…Don’t sit under the Christmas tree with anyone else but me

’til I come swinging home!”

I loved MIke’s tribute to hiking Tumamoc, sung to the tune of “California Dreaming“:

“All the lawns are brown,

And the pools are green.

Back-home my friends are shoveling snow

To keep their driveways clean.

If a blizzard’s what I wanted

I’d go to Dairy Queen.

Tumamoc dreaming

This sunny winter day.

Slipped into some shorts.

T-shirt says UofA.

I mean U-Arizona!

I-climbed--up on my hands and knees,

My calves are DOA!

Thank God an ER’s near the trailhead.

St. Mary’s, Carondelet.

Tumamoc dreamin’

On this sunny winter’s day!”

It was fun to sing his “Jingle Bells.”

“Dashing through the desert

leaping over sand and rocks

Jumping cactus as we go

Getting spines stuck in my socks

Bats on bob tails flit

From ‘neath an overpass

What fun it is to run and laugh

Before falling on my asphalt driveway

Tumbleweeds, tumbleweeds

Tumble near and far,

Oh, what fun they are to catch

On the bumper of my car…”

I thought of our show as a celebration of the holiday and of Tucson itself.

“Mission bells ring, are you listening?

In the wash dew is glistening,

A beautiful sight, oh, we're happy tonight,

Living in our desert wonderland.”

And I will close with this poignant excerpt, written by Julie Anne and  sung to the tune of “God rest ye merry gentlemen.” It offers comforting memories this difficult year:.

“God rest we weary Tu-cson-ans— it’s finally wintertime.  

The Christmas lights are glowing and so’s this heart of mine.  

4th Avenue looks festive, let’s go dine and drink some wine, ‘cause

We’re in Tucson and the sun will always shine —It always shines!

We’re in Tucson so the sun will always shine…”

Hey lyrics end with the promise of days ahead, days when I hope my friends will join me in downtown Tucson on a beautiful winter afternoon to once again rock the magnificent Rialto in downtown Tucson:

“…God rest we weary Tu-cson-ans—it’s finally wintertime.  

Let’s decorate our cacti and mesquite so they’ll look divine.

We’ll walk ‘round Winterhaven with a nice bottle of wine

‘Cause it’s  Tucson and the sun will always shine.

It always shines.

We’re in Tucson so the sun will always  shine.”

Fitz's Opinion: A desert Christmas story about stories told under a creosote

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

This was Papa Quincy’s first Christmas without Queenie.

And he was sure the quail he saw on the other side of the road looked familiar. They both cocked their heads. Could it be?

He had been thinking about how he met Queenie long ago on the miraculous Christmas day it snowed. He was just a chick. A cold chick that had been lost for days. A twig snapped by a coyote flushed Queenie straight into his tail feathers as he pecked, beak down, for seeds in the snow. Within days the two crossed their crown feathers to form a heart, becoming one for life, through wildfires and wildflowers.

In their three seasons together Papa Quincy and Queenie produced many chicks. Could this bird be Quill, Papa Quincy’s firstborn? “You were a cotton ball with a comma poking out of your tiny head!”

In their third year a bobcat took Queenie from Papa Quincy. They all saw the bobcat coming. Quincy cluck-clucked at his brood to bolt. Queenie, seeing little Quill was oblivious, caught the attention of the bobcat, who snared her in his jaws and claws. Faster than lightning, Queenie was gone.

Heartbroken Papa Quincy had their last brood to raise, to guide across streets and to lead to food. Teaching the art of bolting took more energy for the old bird than it used to take. This summer they left the nest and disappeared into the vast desert and Papa was left to dream of Queenie.

The young quail on the other side of the road did look familiar. “Quill!” Papa Quincy clucked. “From my very first brood!”

They raced to each other and spun around in the middle of the street.

“The sun has been kind to you, Papa.”

“The desert has been good to you, Quill.”

“Papa, I have a mate, Quintessa, and a brood of chicks. They’re over there under the creosote on the side of the road.”

Papa and Quill scurried over to Quill’s family. “You have nine grandchicks, Papa!”

“Quill, they’re beautiful! What a lucky bird I am to see you all. Once a chick leaves the nest no one ever sees them again. Not in this vast desert. Quill, how are your sisters and brothers?”

“I’m sorry, Papa. Harris’ hawks took Pablo, Quentin and Quade from us. And Quintana was taken by a house cat. The rest, a hummingbird told me, all have mates and broods upon broods.”

“Quill, I’d like to stay a while if I may. I want to spend my last days playing with my grandchicks. Do they know you can smell desert rain if you rub a creosote leaf? Or why palo verde beetles stick their rears in the air? Do they know where the good seed blocks are? Or how to hide from a hawk? Or about snow or Santa?”

Quintessa said, “Papa, nuestra familia es tu familia. Our family is your family. Bienvenida a nuestro nido. Welcome to our nest.”

One of the chicks chirped at Papa Quincy, “Is Papa Noel real?”

Papa smiled. “Ask any Elf Owl.”

As the winter sun set Papa Quincy told his grand chicks stories of brave Queenie, their grand hen, and of their many aunts and uncles and their adventures and of “your ancestors from many sunsets ago who survived against all odds. Every hawk, bobcat, coyote, owl and rattler wants to eat us! And then there’s stampeding javelina, flash floods and cholla forests.”

The grand chicks listened to the old bird late into Christmas Eve beneath a starry winter sky.

“My little ones, when you tell an ancestor’s story you are bringing your ancestor’s light back to our world — to warm and enlighten us. In turn, my little ones, live good lives so that when your stories are told your light will shine and you will be remembered well.”

“Here is the story of my time that I hope you will remember.”

The stars leaned in. The cholla, too. Only the jackrabbits were indifferent.

“There once was a quail who shared a nest with a quail named Queenie. For three seasons they raised 57 chicks who flew out of their nest into the world like beautifully hewn arrows from an Apache quiver. When Queenie left the world, and became a story to be remembered, the old quail was left to raise their last brood alone. After those chicks flew the nest, the old bird dreamt of meeting Queenie again, beyond the big blue mountains, where they’d scratch the clouds with their feet like happy fat chickens and cross their crown feathers to form a heart among the stars.”

After two more stories the chicks fell asleep. Quincy waddled out to look at the moon and found himself wondering, “Is that star new? Or is that you, Queenie, twinkling because you heard your name spoken aloud? Or did you remember our anniversary? Can you see our grandchicks sleeping soundly? Such wonderful little stories yet to be.”

Fitz's Opinion: An old Tucsonan remembers the Pandemic Winter of 2020

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I lived though it.

And remember it plenty.

The “Terrible Winter of 2020.”

A time I recall from my youth,

When we strayed from science and ignored the truth,

And a pandemic swept through Tucson.

And this was after we’d been through the longest, hottest, fire-breathing summer.

Endless drought without reason!

Followed that winter by the killing season.

The pandemic was back, stalking the living.

The Christmas gift that just kept on giving.

Whether another spike was surging, or a surge was climbing,

For my beloved Winterhaven Festival of Lights

— It was terrible timing.

Way back in ’49, homebuilder C.B. Richards had a dream.

An inspired madcap vision,

A Christmas-themed subdivision!

Winterhaven.

Holiday homes decorated with flair!

Bedford Falls surrounded by prickly pear.

A Leave-it-to-Beaver-ville with a jingle bell twist.

That magically appeared every December

— as if out of the mist!

A “White Christmas” brigadoon made of candy canes and holly,

Conjured by Winterhaven’s elves, so clever, so jolly.

The whole town would come out to see what wonders there were to see.

The Grinch who stole Kris Kringle’s ladder!

Santa meets Linus the Shepherd Boy meets the Martians!

— Part Three!

There’s no better place to waddle off your holiday feast.

Tucson Boulevard’s to the west. Country Club’s to the east.

Three-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-three-miles south of the North Pole.

You can’t miss it. It’s right there.

On Ft. Lowell.

If all us young’uns had been good and we was behavin’,

My folks would reward us with a trip to Winterhaven.

Over the arroyo and past ironwoods —

To the coolest place we’d go.

To sing “Jingle bells, Batman smells,”

Eat kettle corn

And roll around in fake snow.

That winter the grim news came fast,

Our safety came first and Christmas came last.

With the spike spiking to such terrible heights,

Folks in Winterhaven were within their rights,

To cancel their beloved Festival of Lights.

The local news headline read, “Old Pueblo Pleasantville pulls plug!”

It was not a safe time to cuddle or huddle or let alone hug.

It was a time when momma spoke of strange things.

Did you know whenever a person back then wore a mask

An angel got her wings?

That was the year we spent Christmas apart.

And Winterhaven went dark.

No choirs singing. No sleigh bells ringing.

No Rudolph the red-nosed pickup truck.

No hayrides. No Grinch. No Linus!

No “parking space luck!”

The folks of Winterhaven gave up their light festival,

The thing they loved more than anything else in the world,

To keep the townsfolk safe, to flatten the curve.

It was a very Christmas thing to do.

They put the health of us first.

And still the hospitals burst.

I figured I’d look on the bright side.

With no Winterhaven Ward Cleavers decking their halls,

There’ll be no hammered thumbs, no saw cuts and no ladder falls.

No staple gun “incidents,”

No 9-1-1 calls!

No Winterhaven, no electric Santa and no Charlie Brown.

That was the Christmas we all hunkered down.

Could Christmas get canceled and not come to town?

Silly me. I was just a kid. What was I thinking?

Just because Winterhaven’s bright lights had stopped blinking?

Christmas is more than a place, that much I know.

It’s more than dancing elves or an amazing light show.

It’s more than “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” in big flashing letters,

It’s more than singing snowbirds and chihuahuas in sweaters,

It’s more than boxes of lights on a shelf.

It’s children who still believe in a jolly old elf.

It’s the dream of peace on earth.

And goodwill to all.

It’s random acts of kindness,

And that’s not all.

It’s more than one light festival. Here it is in sum:

Christmas is the promise of better days yet-to-come.

We were the lucky ones. We all survived.

And on December 25th? Christmas still managed to arrive.

Gifts were given and candles were lit,

Grandma and Grandpa on zoom were a hit,

Jingle bells were rung and Grace was said.

We prayed for the sick. We prayed for the dead.

We prayed for the healers and gave thanks for the vaccines,

For Christmases-to-come, and the days in between.

We masked up. We did the right thing.

We looked to the promise of the coming Spring.

And that’s when I heard stories of a meeting of Winterhavians

Under a Winterhaven tree.

At Christmas Avenue and Kleindale at quarter past three.

And what I heard made me cheer,

after surviving that year.

On the group’s agenda, item one:

Winterhaven Festival of Lights.

December 2021.

Fitz's Opinion: A zoom Thanksgiving celebration took place long before yours, pilgrim

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I was surprised to learn the first Zoom Thanksgiving celebration took place in 1620. Who knew?

- Good morrow, Hester. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee! Who did thee invite to thy Zoom?

- Good morrow, pilgrim John. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee! I invited the Wampanoag Nation. Chief Massasoit. The Standish family. The Hawthornes. Reverend Dimmesdale and —

- Good morrow, Massasoit. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee!

- Same to you, Hester. Where’s pilgrim Toobin?

- In the stocks. Freezing his blunderbuss off.

- He claimed he didn’t know his video was live. He claimed he was churning butter.

- Are thou wearing thy loin cloth, Nakomis? We can’t see!

- Very funny, Myles. Where are your breeches?

- Thou are so funny the devil tempts me to laugh. How fares thee Massasoit? And thy people?

- A side from the pandemic you introduced to our shores that is wiping out our race — we’re fantastic. When your colony’s Governor Smith instructed you to wear “thy masks” you should have listened. Instead you burned three witches. Speaking of burning I see smoke coming from Abigail’s hearth. Check your chowder!

- Look at all the participants signing on! It’s a Mayflower reunion! The whole Wampanoag nation is here! A blessed Thanksgiving to thee all! How goes it at your longhouse, sister Kawhita?

- I got a text from Constance. She’s having trouble signing on.

- Tell her to, “click on thy link, use thy code and then thy password.”

- Constance is asking Patience where is thy password?

- We need our IT guy. Squanto? A blessed Thanksgiving to thee, Squanto!

- A blessed Thanksgiving to you! Resending the password, now. Text Constance to check her e-mail.

- We thank thee, Squanto. Ephraim, I like thy hearth behind thee. Is that a virtue background?

- Room Rater gave it a 99. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee!

- Hester, unmute me.

- Ebenezer, can thou unmute Constance?

- Thou can unmute thyself, Constance. My feast grows cold.

- Make me a co-host. Huzzah! Thou hast video and audio, Constance!

- I pray thee hang on. Can thou hear me now?

- Running Deer! Thy new moccasins! Where did thou find …

- Amazon. What’s for dinner at your lodge, Abigail? We are having cod. From Long John Silver’s.

- We are having turkey, corn and homemade stuffing. And a Costco pumpkin pie the size of a wagon wheel.

- May we begin? Will thou lead us, Hester?

- A woman? How progressive.

- Thou art so Old World, Ebenezer.

- Get thou with the times. It’s 1620. It’s a New World!

- Brothers and sisters, bow thy heads.

- Brother Thomas! Thou are too close to thy camera. Thy entire screen is taken up by thy bald spot. We can count thy moles. Thou hast six moles on thy bald spot. Are thee a witch?

- John, unmute Reverend Dimmesdale.

- Seven moles are the sign of the Devil. Six moles bring luck. Thou art good.

- I pray thee begin, Hester. My stomach is as empty as a chamber pot.

- Elizabeth, thou art so witty Lucifer tempts me to chuckle. Not.

- Everyone. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee all. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, and heavenly Father, for Thy bounty we give thanks. Amen.

- I’m not finished, Squanto. Nathaniel, drop thy bun.

- Sorry.

- With thankful hearts let Thy blessing rest upon these, Thy good creatures. We humbly beseech Thee, Lord, that as we share Thy bounty, online, under our thatched roofs, and in our lodges, next to our warm glowing fires, to fill our hearts with love and compassion for those who are without shelter, and sore in need, at this terrible time of want. We humbly beseech Thee, Lord, to keep all from harm, to heal the sick, to welcome the dying to Thy embrace, and to comfort those who mourn. Squanto?

- And for this working internet connection, we give thanks. Massasoit?

- Mother Earth, we thank you for this harvest. We thank you for our elders. For our ancestors and for our beloved friends and family gathered here on one screen. Mother Earth, we ask that you protect our healers. And our warriors far from home. Give us strength and patience during this time when we are apart and alone. Let us remember the prophecy of our elders who tell us it is by being apart and alone that we secure the promise of next Thanksgiving, when all of us will feast together as one family. As one people. Hester?

- Through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Massasoit?

- So be it.

- Amen.

- Amen. Amen, Amen.

- Ditto.

- Amen.

- Dig in! Pass me the salt. Hester! Are thou talking about me behind my back in thy chat with Massasoit?

- Who said, “Ditto?”

- Brothers and sisters. I propose a toast. A blessed Thanksgiving to thee all.

- And to Thanksgivings to come. Huzzah!

Fitz's Opinion: The tale of Libby and Sam and their problem child

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Sam, exhausted from wrangling baby Donnie, insisted Libby take the little sidewinder with her to the store. After all these years Sam, an old Westerner with a white goatee still carried a torch for Libby, his statuesque New Yorker.

As Sam buckled Donnie in his car seat the little Gila monster bit down on his daddy’s arm with the ferocity of a sprung bear trap. “Let go of your father’s arm, Donnie! Sam, use a cigarette lighter or crowbar to pry him loose. Worked last time.”

And thankfully, it worked this time.

“What do we need , Sam?”

“Bandages, bread, milk, masks, sanitizer and a muzzle for ‘Demon Seed’ here. And see if there are any exorcists in town for ‘Damien in Diapers’ while you’re there, Lib.”

When she arrived at the Cactus Flats strip mall, Libby grabbed her purse, and donned her mask and turned to free Donnie from his car seat. Donnie bared his teeth and refused to budge. “No go! Me stay. Me stay!”

And then baby Beelzebub shrieked so loud three turkey vultures fell from the sky.

“Fine!” Libby rolled down the window a crack and went shopping.

Libby inserted her card, tapped in her code, grabbed the receipt, wished the clerk a good day, and wheeled her full cart out the door. She wondered who was honking their car horn like a lunatic.

Pushing her cart across the lot she was stopped by a friend who asked her why she was tweeting unintelligible gibberish.

Libby said, “What? What are you talking about?” and then fishing in her purse she noticed her phone was missing. “I’ve got to go! Oh, dear, I think that stuck car horn is mine!”

When she got to her car Libby was horrified to find her malevolent munchkin in the driver’s seat. “Demon Seed” was giggling, rocking the steering wheel back and forth and pounding the horn. Lib saw the child hold up her phone and grin.

“Are you tweeting on my phone! Unlock the car! Open the door. Now. Roll down your window!”

The little snake rolled down the window and as soon as Libby stuck her hand in, car keys in hand, he rolled it back up, pinching her arm and grabbing the keys. He took a video of Lib as she struggled and cursed, posted it on Twitter with an indecipherable caption, grinned a wicked grin, tossed her keys on the seat beside him and proudly shoved her phone into the front of his diaper.

“Roll down this window. My keys! Give me my phone, right now, mister. We are done playing here!” Oblivious, little Donnie joyfully tweeted pics of her in various states of distress. Accompanied by incoherent prattle.

“If we don’t get this show on the road our groceries will go bad. Everyone is back home, waiting—and we need those masks. There’s a spiking pandemic out here!”

He glared defiantly. He posted videos of himself mimicking her desperate pleas. He tweeted endless babble. He was a smug tyrannical tot.

And then he rolled down the window. And waved his mother close.

She read his lips. “I not budge. My car. I drive.”

Libby decided right then and there to just wait him out. She camped on the hood and folded her arms. On he tweeted. She watched the sunset. On he tweeted. She watched the moon rise. On he tweeted.

Days passed.

Weeks passed.

Somewhere between the honking, tweeting and shrieking for attention she managed to sleep every night. And then, one cold morning, around the 20th of January, Libby woke up to silence.

“That’s strange!” She turned to see the car door was open, and the driver’s seat was empty.

Little Donnie was gone. Libby’s phone was on the seat.

Months later, when folks would say, “What became of your precious little Donnie?” Libby and Sam would shrug their shoulders and struggle to feign sadness. “Wasn’t he somethin’? No clue. We think a Bobcat got him. Or a chupacabra. We moved on.”

To hear folks tell the tale some say he’s out there still. Tweeting gibberish. Wailing in the night.

Last time I saw Lib and Sam they had news. “We got two on the way. Twins. A boy and a girl.”

“Holy jalapeños. That’s great. Got names picked out?”

“Joey and Kammy. Nice to chat but we got to run. We have a lot to do.”

“Where are you all headed?”

“Home.”

Fitz's Opinion: My interview with Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Former Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup is turning 85 on Nov. 14. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has him tethered to oxygen 24/7 and Bob is telling me stories, while he still can, at his dining table, all the while smiling that indefatigable smile.

From Ames, Iowa, Walkup’s still tall as a barn and honest as a cornfield. When this cross between Harry Truman and Jimmy Stewart, with a touch of Ike, says aloud, “The thought of telling a lie is so painful,” you believe him.

This give-me-a-problem-we’ll-fix-it man served in the Army Corps of Civil Engineers, oversaw Fairchild-Republic’s production of the A-10, seamlessly consolidated and moved Hughes’ newly acquired missile production operations to Tucson and led 6,000 skilled taxpayers to Tucson.

When Bob was mayor, Tucson annexed the land his old missile-making employer sat on, hauling in a bundle of revenue for our city, helped create the Regional Transportation Authority plan, persevered through Rio Nuevo’s initial boondoggles, kick started the streetcar and planted the seeds that would revitalize our downtown.

I told him I thought his greatest accomplishment was rebuilding a ’77 VW surfer van to cherry perfection. Bob laughed. We sat among the many grandfather clocks he made for his kids. “Good legacy,” I said.

Legacy has been on his mind.

A lifelong Republican, he told me his greatest regret was not standing up to the tea party in 2006 when they cleansed his beloved party of the old-school Republicans. Folks like himself.

When he went to the statehouse asking for help, the tea-party punks sneered at him, deriding him as a “RINO” — Republican in Name Only. Bob’s sin? “When a proposal came up I asked myself, ‘Is it right or wrong? Good or bad? Not, ‘Is this an R or a D?’”

I voted for Bob three times.

“I was a track star,” he told me. “Set the state record for hurdles in 1954.” Never waste your time trying to slow Walkup down with hurdles. Engineers love challenges.

Attending his 60th birthday party, Sally Drachman, a Tucson philanthropist on the board of everything, greeted Bob with the title she hoped he’d hold. “Hi, Mister Mayor.”

Then she added, semi-apologetically, “Oh, it’s just you.”

The hint stuck with Bob.

“Mayor. I like that title. That’s the title for somebody trying to do something,” Bob told me. “I don’t want to be ‘just’ Bob. I can learn how to do this.

Beth, his bride, partner and personal “James Carville,” nudged him. “You’d be a great mayor. And I’d be a great campaign manager.” Beth’s dad and grandfather had been mayors of small towns in the heartland.

An accomplished educator and fundraiser, she met Bob when she was representing Care International at a conference back in ’94. The focus was on raising money for a Challenger Center at Tucson’s Children’s Museum. Beth’s first impression of Captain Confident was, “Who does he think he is?”

Weeks before the ’99 mayoral election he went to a candidates’ debate in the Carrillo Elementary School cafeteria. Most candidates bored the assembled kids with talk of streetlights and potholes.

When it was Bob’s turn he pulled the mic off its stand and sat down on the bottom step to speak eye to eye with the third graders. “How many of you have a pet?” Bob talked about his love for his dog, Zoey. “You love and protect and care for your pet, right?”

Same with our parents, and our friends, and our city, right? The master storyteller wove it all together and promised, if elected, to return with his beloved pooch. True to his promise the first thing the newly elected mayor did was return to Carillo, his pup in tow. “They loved him!”

Beneath Bob’s perpetually cheerful exterior is a strong sense of right and wrong.

Mayor Walkup was invited to speak at a conference of mayors from all over Russia in Almaty, Kazakhistan, one of Tucson’s six sister cities. Beth told him what she’d learned that morning at a domestic violence shelter about oppressive attitudes about women throughout the region.

Bob addressed the mayors. “We don’t have snow like you do.”

Laughter.

He then talked about what we do have in Tucson: compassion for the welfare of women and intolerance for domestic violence. No laughter. “I was not warmly received by the crowd.”

Bob was mayor when six Tucsonans were killed and 12 wounded by a man with a Glock semi-automatic pistol on Jan. 8, 2011. Bob welcomed President Barack Obama to Tucson and watched him scribble his speech on the run. We Tucsonans gathered at McKale to hear the president.

“We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives,” Obama said. “Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children and our community, whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality.”

This next line is Bob’s favorite part.

“And we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame, but rather how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

These words, this sentiment of service sums up Bob Walkup’s life.

“Beth and I want that on our tombstone.”

Fitz's Opinion: I wish I could say I miss getting campaign texts and emails

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Beep.

Hi David, it’s me. We’re hoping you’ll chip in $5, $25 or $50 to support our cause of building a time machine so we can go back in time and elect more Democrats to Congress. Or to keep Donald Trump’s parents’ parents from ever meeting. Will you make sure to donate whatever you can to fund our Time Machine project? Can we depend on you to go back in time?

Delete.

Beep: Hi, David after 300 hang ups I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other.

Delete.

Beep: Hi, David after 301 hangups I feel like we’ve really hit it off and ...

Delete.

Text: Hi David, it’s me. Let’s be clear: You voted for real change. And speaking of change can we depend on you to go back in time to work for change?

Text: Hey David, we miss you so much. Just to hear the sound of your voice here at our party headquarters we love to replay our 307 recordings of you saying, “Go to Hell!” and hanging up on us. You’re adorable when you’re angry.

Delete, delete.

Beep: Hi David, it’s me. It’s going to take all of us to elect the best candidates in 2022. And 2024. And 2026. And 2028. And …

Delete.

Text: We need to talk to you about 2022 right now. Can you help us out? We’re being outspent and we notice you haven’t been answering when we ring your doorbell. Or tap on your windows. Or shout down your chimney. Are you OK? We haven’t noticed any unusual odors emanating from your home so we haven’t called the authorities. (Reply HELP for help or we will.)

Text response: DROP DEAD STAY OFF MY ROOF

Text: Hi David, it’s me. It feels like we have some chemistry here. (Reply WRONG if I’m wrong.)

Text response: WRONG

Text: Sorry. I didn’t quite get that. Look. The truth is I love you. (Reply ILOVEU2 if you feel the same way.) Question. Will you vote in 2036?

Text response: IHATEYOU

Email: Will you answer our poll? Who do you plan to support in the upcoming election in 2024? Reply “Ivanka Trump,” “Kamala Harris,” “Buttigieg,” “Bernie Sanders’ frozen head,”“Undecided” or “Moved to Canada.”

Delete.

Text: Hi! Is something wrong? Is it something we said? We really want to hear from you. Hey, we’re all ears! Want to talk politics? Hello?

Text: Hi David! This is Cactus Flats Votes. Are you planning on voting early or in person in 2024? Reply STOP to opt out. Please don’t opt out. We’re lonely. And depressed after this election. Want to talk about cats?

Text response: STOP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP

Email: Hi David! It’s me with an important post-election reminder. And it’s not about you-know-what. I just wanted to remind you to bathe, shave, launder your clothing and get on with your life. And one more thing. Pull yourself together and reply, you wonderful man.

Delete.

Text: Did you know somewhere in the world a polling place is always open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.? Let me know if you need help finding one! (Reply STOP 2 YOO-HOO-WAZOOO-HIBBITY-BIBBITY-HEY-HEY to opt out.)

Email: Hi David! This is Cactus Flats Votes. Reply U R NOT CHOPPED LIVER or I’m sharing your number with every phone bank I know.

Blocked.

Fitz's Opinion: Voting my dreams with faith in my fellow Americans

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I check my pulse and the polls hourly. The polls are holding steady yet my pulse is not.

“Where is your faith in America,” I ask myself. “Mister O’ ye of little faith?”

Where is my faith in my fellow Americans? I lost it in 2016.

Didn’t you? I did. Today I’m not sure of anything.

Pacing and sweating in front of my television I yell at myself. “Why are you addicted to the talking heads on cable? You’re pathetic. They fill you with more dread than information.”

I know. I know! They always leave me with more anxiety than hope.

My parents barked at each other constantly. I promised myself I’d never endure that kind of corrosive rage day after day. Got out. Why volunteer for anxiety?

Until this year. Promise broken, I cannot resist the television remote. I’m an addict reaching for a news needle, thirsting for rage, jumping from one gut-churning cable news panel to the next, feverishly hunting for the news fix that only makes this news junkie want more soul-numbing news.

What am I desperately searching for? A dream. Here it is: Breaking news. This just in. America is normal again.

America will never be normal again in my lifetime. My dream is being eclipsed by the growing nightmare of COVID-19. Like a jack rabbit sensing something amiss, I have frozen in place. If I am sufficiently still, can the pandemic, which is out there circling closer and closer to us all, touch me?

A lifelong friend has it. He’s 80. I lit a candle for him.

And another friend has it.

And another.

I check my pulse.

I check the numbers.

I channel surf to another shouting cable news anxiety provider.

Another friend tells me he and his entire family had it, across the generations. His sick wife watched her father die on a small glass screen. Today, my friend, vigorous and athletic his whole life, has searing headaches, can’t function past noon and has the crippling aches of an old man.

I thought of this when I received my mail-in ballot and inked the ovals.

I thought of the Black Death that swept across Europe in the 13th century. And as I voted, candidate by candidate, I thought of the Renaissance that followed the plague as sure as spring follows winter.

I voted for an American renaissance, placed my ballot in my worn aluminum mailbox and raised its flag.

I tell myself on Election day, and however long a result takes, I will hold fast to my belief in the America I love, the America that stormed Utah beach to liberate the world and linked arms to cross the Edmond Pettus Bridge. The limitless America that dreams of one day growing a rose on Mars.

The America of our dreams. Breaking news. This just in.

Fitz's Opinion: Finding the heartless and hopeful in America's heartland, Oklahoma City

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

In the early ’80s, I was a mapmaker at The Daily Oklahoman. The paper was downtown in Oklahoma City near the impressive Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. I often walked past it on my way to lunch. Our neighbors had a kid at the day care inside.

In America’s heartland, Rush Limbaugh taught listeners to hate “welfare queens” (Blacks), “femi-nazis” (uppity women) and, with zeal, the federal government.

Years later I watched on TV as smoke curled out of the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. On that April morning, a white supremacist had killed 168 public servants and 19 children. He maimed an additional 680 people.

Tim McVeigh hated the federal government.

McVeigh loved loony conspiracy theories.

McVeigh dreamed of triggering a race war.

This October, I wonder how many seething McVeighs are out there now, standing back, standing by. I saw hundreds of McVeighs march in 2017 at Charlottesville. Last year, a Trump admiring “McVeigh” drove to El Paso to gun down Mexican-Americans, posting a manifesto that could have been Trump’s. In August, a Trump admiring “McVeigh” drove to Kenosha to gun down Black Lives Matter protesters. This past week a band of Trump admiring “McVeighs” plotted to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan.

Why is America cursed by these white jihadis?

In 1985, in a Virginia thrift shop, I picked up an old 45 rpm. At home I listened to a “Grand Wizard” preach over sacred music, “Why the Klan burns the old rugged cross.”

White supremacy was a religious conviction. Dixie’s white churchmen had to author a racist theology that justified slavery, to please the plantation masters who ruled over their collection plates. Human bondage was blessed by God. White supremacy became as American as apple pie at lynching picnics.

Ever hear of “Mississippi appendectomies?” Spawned in the same America, the Eugenics movement led to the sterilization of more than 70,000, winning the attention of Germany’s Nazi elite who admired American race theorists and anti-Semites. An ascendant Adolf Hitler had Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic screeds distributed throughout Nazi Germany.

Hitler, feeling America was the global leader in writing race law, sent Nazi lawmakers to America to study our “Jim Crow” laws. What they learned inspired the Nazi segregation laws that led to the “legal” annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

In the ’60s, the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and lost white, Southern Democrats to Nixon’s Party, a club happy to welcome the “betrayed” white confederacy to their ranks by shamelessly cloaking their racism under the laughable hood of states’ rights .

Fast forward to today’s mostly rural, mostly white, mostly uneducated Republican Party, headed by a racist. The long history of racist exclusion at Trump properties is well documented.

Mary Trump, Donald’s niece, surprises no one when she claims Donald casually uses racist epithets. Trump believes he’s genetically superior. He told CNN, “I have a certain gene. I’m a gene believer.”

Speaking to white Minnesotans, Trump said, “You have good genes, you know that, right? A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe?”

No, I don’t believe it’s about the genes. Unlike you, Donald, I belong to no superior race. I am an American.

As surely as the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was transformed into rubble by a foolish government hater given to absurd conspiracy theories, Trump has demolished the EPA, the Justice Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department and Rule of Law.

During a family summer trek back east in 2001, I visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial. I saw the decency and diversity of America in the biographies and portraits of the adults and children who perished because a civic illiterate, comforted by voices of hate, felt “called to action.”

That same trip east I drove miles out of our way to sit in our van and stare down the road at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 11, when the sun set forever on the remorseless McVeigh.

Back then, the radicalizing voices remained equally remorseless in the face of the carnage wrought by toxic hate. They still are. Look no further than Tucker Carlson, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Trump praising the Kenosha McVeigh, Kyle Rittenhouse.

The Republican media machine that for decades encouraged trolls, conspiracy peddlers and disrupters created the orange tail that today feverishly wags the dog that appears to have had its vocal chords cut. About to perish at the ballot box, they yawn as their president refuses to damn white supremacists and refuses to damn party candidates who hawk QAnon, a ludicrous conspiracy buffet of cannibals and pedophiles that argues blacks “plan to mongrelize the white race.”

Stand down, Mr. President. Where there’s a will, there’s always a McVeigh.

At the Oklahoma City memorial, President Bill Clinton said, “When there is talk of hatred … when there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it.”

I’m done with “talking”. This is the hour to stand up, America. This is the hour to vote.

Fitz's Opinion: Heat waves, hummingbirds and endless summers

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I love Tucson’s exuberant meteorologists.“Another record-breaking triple-digit day! That’s another one for the books!”

Thanks to our record-breaking temps we have no books. According to Ray Bradbury books burn at 451° Fahrenheit, and we hit 457° at Tucson International around noon, before chilling down to a nippy 422° at sunset. That’s another one for the record books that are a pile of smoldering ash.

I’m beginning to detect a pattern.

I have no faith this summer, our umpteenth record-breaking summer in a record-breaking row, will actually end.

“Umpteenth” is a unit of measure devised by my mother to describe the incalculable number of times I was in trouble, measuring somewhere between a gazillion and infinity.

We’re in trouble a gazillion times over. And we don’t have an infinite amount of time to deal with it. Tucson is record-breaking its way into becoming Tatooine with saguaros. Eventually our City Council will have to give up on the silly idea of winter and resolve to go with 365 days a year of summer.

“Is it fall?” visitors will ask.

“We don’t have fall anymore. Just summer. Our four seasons are summer, summer, summer and summer. Sometimes, between summer and summer we get a fifth season. Fire.”

“Sounds toasty.”

“This October check out our corn maze wildfires. And December? City sidewalks, scorching sidewalks. Ever build a snowman out of sand? Stay for our Sandy Claus parade.”

H.L. Mencken observed Tucson’s the place where summer spends the winter and Hell spends the summer. This summer Hell overstayed its visit, torched the Catalinas, banished the monsoons scorched our valley, drank all of my Gatorade and cremated all of our climate deniers.

In spite of the fact Hell is planting its hooves here I am inspired by the residents of plucky Sierra Vista, who, undaunted, dare to dream of a bright future. The fine folks who once dreamt of sucking the San Pedro River dry, now dream of making their humble strip mall on steroids the “Hummingbird Capitol of the World” and I’m humming their tune.

Being the “Hummingbird Capitol of the World”will be a boon to birders, and to Sierra Vista’s entrepreneurs, residents and plucky house cats.

Think big. Host the “National Hummingbird Rodeo Finals,” which would highlight the lesser known sports of netting, wrangling, branding and banding hummers. To participate rodeo riders must weigh less than 12 ounces and measure less than 2 inches in height. Many of Arizona’s legislators are sufficiently lightweight and insignificant in stature to qualify.

I see a “Nectar Fest” in Sierra Vista’s future, featuring music by “The Hootchy Kootchy Ruby-Throats” of Huachuca City, a cappella humming by the “Peeps,” a migratory barbershop quartet from Willcox, and of course, a “Nectar” drinking contest requiring 6-foot straws and nectar made with mystery ingredients acquired from a still in the Huachuca Mountains.

Hummingbird fever will change Sierra Vista. Picture the headline! “Millions of Birders Descend on Sierra Vista, Spending Nest Eggs.”

Rest assured residents will cheerfully adapt to being shushed by visiting birders anxious to hear the distinctive call of the broad-billed yapper or the tufted loudmouth.

The nearby tourist trap on I-10, “What in Blazes Izzat?”, will have to add a “Giant Prehistoric Sumatran Hummingbird Mummy” to its tourist snaring collection. “More terrifying than the Pterodactyls of Toltec.”

“Do we want pollinators coming and going here?” asks longtime resident Ruth Jenkins. “I don’t want our children exposed to feral feathered promiscuity.”

“Dutch” Dangolang is equally concerned. “Why are we inviting foreign birds here? Their tiny kind can just keep going. Disease-carrying rapists always flock together. Birds of a feather, right?”

Sierra Vista’s Kazoo and Choir director, Nova Tonic told me they’re involved in the planning of what promises to be a beautiful tradition. “We’ll proudly welcome the black-chinned hummingbirds back to Sierra Vista, every year, by humming ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ on kazoos, as soon as we spy the flock descending over the Whetstone Mountains. Some Audubon killjoy thought fireworks would discourage the hummingbirds so we canceled that fun idea.”

I’m confident “Nectar Fest” will win over the skeptics, especially if Patagonia’s 102-year old Edwina Ronstadt, the Human Bird Feeder, is the headliner. Edwina feeds hummingbirds by filling her cheeks with “Perky Pet” hummingbird nectar and puckering her lips, painted red with “scarlet honeysuckle” lipstick until she attracts thirsty hummingbirds to savor her nectar. It’s inspiring and disturbing.

Sierra Vista you are a birder’s paradise. I salute you. Let us all celebrate, protect and nurture the tiniest among us by doing the big things.

Like reversing climate change.

Saving our riparian areas.

Repairing the world.

And if it we are going to have summer year-round let’s put those “POSSIBLE ICE ON BRIDGE” signs up on eBay. We can use the money to buy hummingbird feeders. With tiny fans and shade awnings.

Fitz's Opinion: The Arroyo crew gathers under an old mesquite on a fall morning

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

We met under the shade of the old mesquite tree next to the rusty racks and barbecue smoker sitting idle behind the dormant Arroyo Cafe. Rosa brought thermoses of her coffee, the nectar of life. Carlos brought breakfast burritos, Sour Frank brought his oxygen tank, Lurlene brought folding chairs and I brought my bluetooth speaker so Linda Ronstadt could join us and serenade our socially distanced picnic with songs from “Canciones De Mi Padre”.

Setting out the folding chairs Lurlene announced she had a riddle. “For y’all. What’s the significance of seven hundred and fifty?”

Rosa guessed first. "Number of customers in line in front of me at Fry’s this morning?”

Sour Frank guessed second. "Number of times my Trump/Pence 2020 yard sign . . . wheeze . . . has been defaced?”

Lurlene shook her head. “Y’all! It’s the amount — in dollars — your favorite so-called billionaire paid in taxes.”

Lurlene pointed at Rosa. “Girl, I know you paid more than $750. Carlos, you paid twice that. Frank, it’s a good thing you got a giant honkin’ snout like a javelina.”

“Why?”

“Because I know for a fact you paid through the nose.”

Sour Frank scoffed at the prattle. “That’s how the rich roll. Trump’s smarter than all of us. Lurlene, Trump . . . wheeze . . . is just taking advantage of tax loopholes.”

“What exactly are loopholes?”

Rosa poured me a cup. “The most nutritious part of fruit-loops.”

After scarfing down her burrito, Rosa turned serious. “Listen everyone. He’s flat broke, in debt up to his eyeballs and he’s facing eviction soon.”

Lurlene smiled through her mask. "Trump?!”

Rosa wished that were the case. “Naw. My brother-in-law, Ramon. He teaches middle school. In the middle of a pandemic! He’s got huge bills; he’s behind on his rent.”

Sour Frank asked, “What’s his rent, Rosa?”

“$750.00.”

We passed Carlos’ hat, tossing in what we could. Sour Frank emptied his wallet. Rosa was touched. “Gracias, mis amigos. Dios te bendiga.”


Lurlene smiled. “That’s what friends do. De nada. We step up, mija.”

Carlos squinted up at the sun. “Unlike the Tax Dodger-in-chief. He thinks only suckers pay taxes.”

He needs a new slogan. Rosa had it. ”Make America Great Again! On some other sucker’s dime”!

”Good one, Rosa,” Carlos laughed. “Could be trouble for Trump. Did you hear he claimed a $70,000 deduction on his income taxes for ‘hair care expenses?'”

Lurlene choked and spat out her coffee. “Gorilla glue and cotton candy costs that much?"

Sour Frank defended him. “Why is it all my friends are haters? It’s fake news! Let’s look at the pros and . . . wheeze . . . cons of Trump’s so-called tax troubles.”

I smiled. “Sure, Frank. I think a lot of cons in the slammer would like the help of a pro with their taxes.”

Sour Frank huffed. “Fitz, you’re just bitter you can’t deduct your Arroyo Cafe booth as a workspace.”

After refilling all our cups Rosa plopped down on a bench. “I’m wiped. Cheer me up. Fitz, tell me a joke.”

“Tax relief.”

Rosa hammered out a rimshot on her thermos.

Lurlene held onto Trump like a bobcat on a kangaroo rat. “He’ll be crying over another terrifying caravan before the election’s over.”

“Honduran migrants?” I guessed.

Frank guessed, “Antifa anarchists?”

Lurlene shook her head. “Nope. IRS Auditors. Heading for Trump Tower.” She laughed her mask off.

Rosa swung in her hammock. “Let’s talk about something fun. Like Halloween!”

Carlos said Halloween’s been cancelled but that hasn’t stopped Melania from throwing a costume party in the Rose Garden.

Sour Frank coughed. “Can’t you talk about anything else? You’re all suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Carlos ignored Frank’s plea. "Trump’s already chosen his favorite masquerade costume for Halloween: A successful billionaire. Same one he wears every day.”

I said, “Holy Jalapeños, man! In the last decade your boy Trump paid a porn star more than he paid the IRS.”

Lurlene poured her cold coffee on the ground. “Stormy Daniels said it all evened out in the end. Because her experience with Donald was so taxing.”

I had to go. We all did. Houses to clean. laundry to wash. Brothers-in-law to help move out of their homes onto the street.

In site of the times I declared it good to see everybody. “Rosa? Before I go can we break into the cafe? I need to borrow your old cash register.”

“What for?”

“I heard you need a register to vote.”

The groans morphed into goodbyes and next times. No need to fret over the election. Everyone in our group was voting, as sure as the Catalina's are blue. Everyone.

Fitz's Opinion: Trump, the military and the stories we proud Americans tell

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Trump called D-Day’s war dead “losers” and the 1,811 Marines buried in the Belleau Wood “suckers” and his suckers stood by him and chuckled at our outrage, preferring to believe the media was lying to them. Who are the true suckers here?

He could tweet, “There were good people on both sides of Omaha Beach”, rename the White House “Hitler’s hacienda” and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with a banner that asked, “What was in it for you?” and the faithful would stick by their faithless chicken hawk.

Like every American, I grew up hearing stories of service. My grandfather gassed, machine-gunned — in the trenches. Ken, the barnstorming WWI ace. Shot down over France. The Captain who perished at Normandy. The brothers who survived Inchon, Khe Sanh and Tet. My brothers. The nephew who flew Blackhawks in Desert Storm. The niece who served in Baghdad as a medic. “Don’t worry, uncle Dave, I’m in the last Humvee.”

And the greatest Master Sergeant who ever lived; he survived Pearl.

When the Master Sergeant’s honor guard fired their salute and our nation’s stars and stripes were neatly folded into a triangle above his casket, my grief was supplanted with profound abiding pride. I do not need a bumper sticker to tell me to respect and love our treasured men and women who choose service.

It pains me to imagine the Master Sergeant in Noncommissioned Officer’s Heaven listening to our draft dodger in chief disparage his beloved military. And his belief in duty, honor and service. As if those quaint notions don’t matter anymore.

They still do, Pop. No matter what a small sick coward says.

Here is what I prefer to imagine:

The “bone spurs” ruse failed. Enlistee Donald J. Trump got off the bus at Parris Island in 1968 and was immediately barked at by a foulmouthed drill instructor who used the most vile racist language to describe every enlistee of every color.

Buck Private Trump whispered to the recruit next to him. “I like this guy! Calls it like it is!”

“Who spoke? Was it you, Private Orange? You will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy hole will be ‘sir!’ Do you understand me, private?”

“I’m not supposed to be here. Not with these losers. Can we make a deal? I’ve got bone spurs. In my left foot. Or my uvula. Could be a clavicle thing. Or up my nose. I’m not sure. But—”

The sergeant howled “Private Bone Spurs! I’ll make you a deal. I won’t rip your head off —and you will give me twenty, soldier!”

“Twenty grand? I’ll have my dad wire you the money.”

“Push-ups, Bone Spurs! Drop. Now!”

An hour passed. “That’s one. You’re pathetic, Bone Spurs.”

“On your feet, Bone Spurs. So you think you’re smarter than all our generals? Tell us what Veterans Day is. Private?”

“The day we honor America’s great animal doctors. Especially Doctor Dolittle.”

“Well, what do we have here? A genius! Bone Spurs, the only battle you’ve ever been in is the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, and it looks to me like your gut surrendered to a battalion of doughnuts!”

“Big Macs, sir!”

“Shut your pie hole, private! Ten hut, ladies! Next stop? Vietnam!”

“Can’t we just go with mail-in bullets?”

Before Pvt. Trump was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese he told his fellow grunts, “Generals tell me I’m the best warrior. I’ll die a hero before I let these German idiots capture me! Not like those losers at Covfefe or Bataan.”

Between sobs Pvt. Trump told his North Vietnamese interrogator, “I know more than all our stupid generals. I’ll tell you anything. What’s in it for me?”

“Shut up, American butcher! Take away his his blow-dryer!”

“Don’t torture me! I’ve suffered enough! I have bone spurs!”

“Stop crying. We are not going torture you. Let’s make a deal. Your rich father will pay us to release you ahead of your fellow captives. All you have to do is to tell Americans we love America. Deal?”

“Deal! I’m out of here. So long, suckers! Losers.” His cellmates did not miss him.

Pvt Trump was airlifted to Hawaii. Everyone at the hospital knew his name as well as the name of the POW still there, the one who refused to sell out his country, John McCain.

“Fake news!” He shouted from his bed. “Nurse! There’s an amputee in here. So nasty. Move him!”

She ignored the private, blood bags in her hands.

“Don’t you know who I am? Unbelievable.”

She stopped. “The whole country knows who you are.” She turned to tend the heroes. “And what you are.”

Fitz's Opinion: Waiting for rain and spiritual realignment in my garden

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

“Where do you go to escape the madness, captain crazy shorts?” a friend on Zoom asked. “Where do you find refuge, Mr. Looney Toons?”

“Some rely on opium dens, some flee to Mar-a-Lago, some channel surf themselves into a fantasy world. Not me. ‘Beam me off this troubled world, Scotty!’ Out to my desert garden. Even in blistering triple-digit heat my water-smart Eden remains cool and lush.”

“You’re bragging.”

“Twenty years of honest labor.”

My neighbor’s rooster reveilles, the radio clucks “the hottest on record” and I’m up, gardening. I went native years ago when I noticed my water bill was higher than the Bellagio’s. Trial and error taught me what thrives here, here on “Tatooine with Saguaros.”

This morning the sky above me is blue yet I smell water. When Tucsonans sniff rain we follow the scent like a pointer after a duck. A storm drapes a cool gray veil of rain across the Tucson mountains in the distance. A cloudless Groundhog Day awaits my forsaken acre.

I tend my rock figs, my heat-loving, rock-consuming giant bonsais, found in northern Mexico in the harshest volcanic moonscape.

In case it rains I set out the buckets to catch the precious water.

I take cuttings from the massive euphorbias of Morocco. They resemble giant olive-green sea anemones. Models of thrift and adaptation to mirror. By 2050 we’ll need to possess the genes of a saguaro.

I collect seeds from the brittle bushes that in spring yielded daisy-like flowers.

Gethsemane is in every garden. Suffering and reassignment. I remove a shed and expose three tarantula burrows. Three furious tarantulas emerge, 24 eyes see each other and a three-way duel-to-the-death unfolds.

I rake.

On the side of a barrel cactus I find a bird’s skeleton, wings outstretched, a crucified cactus wren, ensnared, a totem, a reminder to be careful when approaching a desert fruit.

I stir mulch.

A deer skull hangs over our hacienda’s back door, emblematic of the cycle that rules out here. Fixing the fence, I watch ants disintegrate a deceased kangaroo rat. We’re all just jackrabbits waiting to be pancaked into the asphalt. Vulture vittles.

Fence fixed, I look up to see red-faced vultures floating in the blue, patiently waiting for death to serve up their Daily Bread.

Over the kitchen window hangs this cartoonist’s favorite cartoon prop, an old scythe, an ode to the Grim Reaper. And to my uncle’s farm, where boyhood summers taught me to love turning earth. Beneath shade sails and shade trees, water conserved, the seasons and I have turned this earth, where drought-resistant life thrives, producing the weird beauty desert dwellers savor.

My prized fat-bottomed karoo roses, from Africa, spawn rose-like blooms. My drought-resistant divas from the deserts of Mexico, Peru, Morocco, South Africa, Arabia and Australia flower defiantly in this brutal summer heat. Some are aromatic.

A desert garden is a sensuous place. I insist visitors smell the minty leaves of the Mexican oregano. Smell the sage, Artemisia tridentata, burned in rituals as old as the pueblos. Remember Taos.

Chew on a Mormon tea stalk, catch the caffeine-like buzz. Recall a river trip.

Nibble soft Palo Verde beans. Suck the nectar from our ocotillo blossoms. Taste their honey-like sweetness. Crush the ancient creosote’s leaves to unleash the perfume of rain. In the Mojave Desert there’s a creosote that’s 12,000 years old, dating back to when ancients hunted woolly mammoths.

Feels like it hasn’t rained here in 12,000 years. Hasn’t it been 12,000 years since life was normal?

A regal Gila woodpecker chastises competitors. Hummingbirds hover, hum, and thrum, a blur of prismatic jewels jousting in midair, spinning and buzzing from blossom to blossom, feeder to feeder, duel to duel.

Perched on their telephone poles a family of three Harris’s hawks triangulates another aerial kill as I refresh the feeders. Doves coo the blues.

Seventeen years ago I was pushing my 1-year-old in a stroller in our neighborhood when a hawk, wings outstretched, talons out, silently swooped down — was my baby boy it’s prey? — right in front of us, and past us, into a nearby creosote where it subdued its intended target, lifting a writhing, rattling rattler aloft, back up to its telephone perch where the day’s sushi was hammered and devoured.

I wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Weary from the honest labor of digging, planting, “potting up,” weeding, propagating, grafting and pruning I sway on my hammock in the cool shade of my favorite tree, serenaded by a choir of gently jangling wind chimes, a tinkling composition deftly conducted by a summer breeze. A miserly breeze that bears no scent of rain.

A faded saint in a weathered shrine, votive candles melted, smiles down on me and my empty rain buckets.

Time to return inside, refreshed, to the daily task of reacting to the lunacy of my species, at peace, knowing refuge is always just beyond my door.

Fitz's Opinion: An update on the fate Jordanian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I was heartened by the outpouring of support for my fellow cartoonist Emad Hajjaj of Amman, Jordan. As the result of the international outcry from rights groups I have good news to report. Emad was freed from prison.

When he was arrested I thought surely, my country will step up on behalf of a free press. I had forgotten we are in a dark age, recalling the vile words that uttered by the President of these United States, Donald Trump, "The Press is the enemy of the people," words that offer comfort to those who would imprison Jordanian cartoonists, kill Saudi columnists or silence dissent.

Emad's troubles are not over. He is home with his family. According to an article in the Times of Israel, https://www.timesofisrael.com/amman-frees-cartoonist-who-mocked-israel-uae-deal-downgrades-charges/, Emad will still face trial for “slander and libel”. The initial "cyber crime" charge carried a sentence of up to five years in jail, but now Emad faces between six months and two years if found guilty.

We texted Sunday morning. "David! Thank u man I really appreciate your great support, I'm reading now what I have missed during my stay in the prison, but I wanted to thank you my dearest friend for everything." When I asked him about the remaining charge he texted,"David , will contact u later, soon, talk to u all about it."

It's been a harrowing week, with a colleague,a friend, jailed for the act of cartooning on the other side of the world while here in my country one of my cartoons, shared in a middle school classroom in Wylie,Texas was rebuked by the Governor of Texas who demanded the District fire the educators who dared to share it with their students. This led to coverage by CNN, https://bit.ly/2DcK0Z8, and other outlets and a deluge of emails for me to wade through. A majority were encouraging and positive. A tiny minority were ugly and threatening.

I hope my friend evades prison time. If Trump is reelected I suspect one day I may need him to add his voice to those hoping to free me from jail.

Fitz's Opinion: Free my friend, Jordanian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

On Thursday I learned heartbreaking news about a very dear friend who draws cartoons a world away in Amman, Jordan. Emad Hajjaj, a brilliant cartoonist, and an utterly charming man, was arrested Wednesday. He faces five years in prison for a cartoon described as a “cyber crime” that “insulted another Arab country”.

Hajjaj’s cartoon questioned Israel’s rapprochement with the United Arab Emirates, depicting an Israeli dove soiling the face of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates.

Daryl Cagle, who syndicates Emad’s cartoons writes, “Emad’s drawing shows that Israel has embarrassed Mohamed bin Zayed by blocking the sale of F-35s after UAE agreed to the peace deal.”

Hajjaj and I became good friends in Mexico City. Our worldview and sense of humor are similar. We spent much of the Paris Cartooning Forum, and the St. Just-le-Martel satire festival together. Emad’s wife Lena and my wife Ellen became good friends on that excursion. We have kept our friendship alive with Skype and texts. Emad has a boy my son Matt’s age. We have no clue what will happen to his family.

The International Press Institute notes: “In recent months, press freedom in Jordan has come under threat from the government. As part of its efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19, the government declared a state of emergency in March 2020, introducing a 1992 Defense Law that gave authorities sweeping powers to impose curfews, close businesses — and gag the press. At least 13 journalists have been arrested and summoned for questioning by security forces since the pandemic began.”

When it happens up close it’s unbelievable. Horrifying. Perplexing. I cannot imagine a government fearing a cartoon, fearing lines on paper, trembling before mere ink on a page, pixels, an idea, a thought. Whether it’s a Jordanian court calling for cartoonist to be imprisoned or a Texas governor calling for a Wylie, Texas, school district to fire social studies teachers, the intolerance for expression is medieval.

I texted our friend, another cartoonist in Amman, Mahmoud Al Rifai. He responded, “Unfortunately, he is being held in prison for 14 days before he comes to court ... there is no phone for his wife, but I will get it and send it to you soon ... I will keep updating you about Emad ... hope he will back home soon.”

Indeed, my friend. Come home soon.

Fitz's Opinion: My totally biased report on the 2020 Republican Convention

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I loved the Republican National Convention for all the obvious reasons. I love horror. And fantasy. And I was hoping to see the Tiger King. Here is what I did see, for those of you snowflakes too chicken to watch. But first a toast. For my “Convention Kool-aid” mixer I used the following ingredients:

1.5 ounces of Lysol

Jigger of Clorox

Dash of UV rays

On the rocks (Tide pods)

Injected, not stirred

Cheers!

Monday:

Presentation of the Confederate flag.

National Anthem, “Dixie,” sung by Sen. Lindsay Graham and the Fox News Glee Club and Think Tank.

Prayer: God bless the prideful, gluttonous, wrathful, greedy adulterers among us who lust for power. Amen.

President Trump gavels the 2020 Republican National Coronation to order with a nine iron.

The Pledge of Aggrievance.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Harken as I call the howling demons forth from the bowels of Hell in 2020, the year the Beast rises to smite the Post Office.

Donald Trump, Jr: Like my dad, I’m into women who howl like banshees on coke. And ending nepotism in the Democratic Party.

Nikki Haley: Why selling your soul to Donald is a Trump family value that all children of immigrants should follow to their political demise.

Donald: Me, again. Did I mention QAnon loves me? They say Biden is a pedophile cannibal. That’s what people are saying. Good people.

Scott Baio: Chachi loves Donald.

Chuck Woolery: Why we shouldn’t listen to celebrities or reality TV stars.

Donald: Me, again. Biden will make America worse than I have.

In memory of Black Lives Matter protests the Trump University Glee Club performs “Another one bites the dust.”

Donald: Me, again. Kamala Harris is an angry, nasty black woman. Is she a citizen?

Rich White Racist Gun Nuts of St. Louis for Trump: The forgotten persecuted white American.

Steve Bannon’s Bail Bondsman announces GoFundMe page for indicted scammers.

Donald: Me, again. I am the Party of Law and Order. Kudos to the vigilantes shooting black protesters.

Rod Serling hologram celebrates the president’s many achievement since 2016. OK. Half of one achievement. Five miles of new wall. Update: Four miles just collapsed into the Rio Grande.

Kim Jong-un of “Dictators for Dotards,” President Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin nominate Donald Trump.

Zooming ovation.

Tuesday:

Procession sponsored by “Tiki Torch Town” of Charlottesville.

First Lady Melania: Take my husband. Please.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: Who needs treaties, allies or a president who knows Nambia is not a country or that WWII did not end in 1918 or that Washington didn’t defend our airports from the redcoats? Pick, pick, pick.

Donald: Me, again. Why Sen. Mitt Romney, former Sen. Jeff Flake, former Vice President Dick Cheney, my former defense secretary General Jim Mattis, my former White House Chief of Staff retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, and Mary Trump are all untalented losers.

Acting Secretary of Dudes, Eric Trump: God bless dad’s America, a “land of opportunity” for grifters, scammers and con men with a dream.

Donald: Me, again. And McCain is still not a hero.

Acting Daughter Tiffany Trump: Nepotism in the gnarly Democratic Party is totally icky.

Acting National Security Director Bonzo “Chimp Eyes” Trump: What Tiff said.

Donald: Me, again. Radical Dems want to force you to stop spreading the virus, which is a hoax.

Sen. Rand Paul: Expanding our tent to include Caucasian libertarian ophthalmologists unsure about criminalizing lynching.

Wednesday:

Vice President Pence accepts Party’s Abomination, Trump.

Donald: Me, again. Why one Pence is better than Two Corinthians.

Second Lady Karen Pence: We are evangelical Christians proud to declare we have no pool boy.

Acting Secretary of Who Knows, Jared Kushner: The nepotism and corruption of the Democrats.

Acting Secretary of Golf, Mulligan Trump: Stop the nepotism. And low flush toilets. And asking Donald to keep an honest golf score.

Reverend Jerry Falwell, Jr., introduces a video he likes to watch.

Donald: Me, again. Why are ex-Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Colin Powell, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, former Sen. John Warner, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Rep. Susan Molinari and ex-President George Bush low-life backstabbing $#!!?#.

Indicted Felons Chorus performs “It’s just a matter of time.”

Kellyanne Conway: Why destroying my family was worth every lie for my orange master.

Thursday:

Ivanka Trump: Introducing my new line of “End the Nepotism” Ivanka wear! Order yours today!

Donald Trump: Me, again. I’d date her in an instant if I could. Isn’t Biden creepy?

Ted Nugent: Sings “Just a Gigolo” and skins an elk.

Rudy Giuliani: Why Biden is Lex Luthor on Lipitor and why I’ve never combusted like Nosferatu in sunlight.

Mitch McConnell: Proud to be running interference for Moscow.

Clint Eastwood’s chair introduces the nominee.

Donald Trump’s acceptance speech: My bold vision for America.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good night, Americanski.

Bravo. A toast. To democracy!

Fitz's Opinion: Covid-19, Mr.Skate and a tale of two worlds

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Mr. Skate sipped his Pinot Grigio as he surfed the web for the answer to the question that had haunted him since brunch; when will a vaccine be ready and which promising pharmaceutical stock to buy?

Beyond Mr. Skate’s wall a teacher wondered. Which masks to buy? What would become of her children if she came down with the coronavirus? She gripped her crucifix and prayed away the cold uncertainty.

Mr. Skate shouted at the help. “I’m cold in here. Can you turn down the AC?”

Beyond Mr. Skate’s wall an old woman in quarantine, confused, swamped by unpaid bills, sweltered in front of her array of thrift store fans in her hot box apartment, unable to afford to turn up the AC.

Mr. Skate went for his daily bike ride through his upscale neighborhood. Who can afford to miss a day of exercise? Everybody waves! Mr. Skate found this touching.

On the south side an exhausted nurse hoped the touch of her gloved hand would comfort her COVID-19 patient as he left the world. She joked she hasn’t slept in 401 days.

Mr. Skate reported their 401(k) earnings to Mrs. Skate. “Damnedest thing. Just keeps growing! We must be making a thousand a day.”

In the distance a boy posted the passing of his grandmother. “A thousand people a day are dying from this pandemic. Where’s the outrage?”

“Where’s the remote?” Mr. Skate wondered. “There it is! The sunny side of this COVID thing: We finally had the time to organize everything in our home.” At last. Order.

Across town, as her children wailed, a frantic mother searched through the teeming chaos in her tiny apartment for the diapers she had gotten from the Diaper Bank. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m losing my mind!”

Mr. Skate, losing his chill, asked Alexa to play “wind chimes” as he watched the hummingbirds come and go on his porch.

On the East side an exhausted doctor cued up Mozart’s “Requiem” as he watched the COVID-19 patients come and go, the dead bound for the humming freezer trucks.

Mr. Skate knew he was lucky. “I’m white. I have a remote gig, a roof, a full fridge and a wonderful partner.” So lucky.

Beyond his estate a woman knew she was lucky. COVID-19 spread through her barrio and her family, killing her father and brother. Hospitalized alongside her father she was able to say goodbye before he died. “I’m the lucky one.” So lucky.

Mr. Skate adored his new truck. He was saving a fortune not spending money on gas and eating out. “It’s all money in the bank, Mrs. Skate. We’re blessed.”

In midtown a single mom, laid off when her restaurant closed and riding on an empty gas tank, stalled her adored rusty inheritance out in the middle of the intersection. Sobbing, forsaken, she pounded the steering wheel.

Mr. Skate steered his broker to the pharmaceutical shares that looked promising.

Under a distant overpass a homeless man studied the well trafficked street corner that looked promising for panhandling if only the heat would subside.

Mr. Skate was proud of himself for laughing it off when Mrs. Skate criticized his Paleo Lasagna, “I’m cursed.”

Down the street a raging Paleolithic man cursed the cops, his cuffs, and “that” woman for daring to question him “once too often,” the petite, battered woman that was zipped into a body bag.

Mr. Skate, who often sent donations to the politicians that cut university funding, sent a generous donation to his alma mater. “They’re going through uncertain times.”

On the west side, a promising young man decided against college, discouraged by the massive debt it would cost him in these uncertain times. When he talked to his recruiter he knew he was breaking his mother’s heart.

Mr. Skate talked to his therapist. “This whole thing has left me anxious and depressed.” Mr. Skate was going to try the breathing exercises next time he watched cable news.

Well beyond his Skate’s gate, an overwhelmed mom waited in line in her car to get a box from the food bank because her babies were hungry. She was afraid of what might come next.

The weed and wine would blanket her pain.

Mr. Skate was hungry. He was afraid that Mrs. Skate had eaten his leftover salmon. Disappointed, he microwaved a package of lentil soup, gulped down a medical marijuana gummy and dozed through the lamentations of cable news.

Miles away an old forgotten man floated through another day alone at the senior care center, another day, like every other, with no messages, no calls, just the ticking clock and his abiding fear that he may be the next to die, “in this pandemic death trap.”

Mr. Skate floated on his float in his beautiful pool and wondered if the pool boy had been affected by the pandemic.

As he brought his Margarita to his lips he thought maybe he should leave a tip, after all, they were weathering this “dreadful disaster” just fine.

That’s what he’d do, by George. Leave a nice tip.

Fitz's Opinion: Tucson shopper's performance is not to be missed; you'll laugh yourself sick!

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

“A video of a man yelling angrily about mask requirements at a Tucson-area Sprouts has collected millions of views a day after it was first posted online.”

—The Arizona Daily Star

The comic genius who premiered his “Only pu----s wear masks” routine in front of a live audience of masked shoppers at a Tucson Sprouts is being hailed as the bright new comedy star of 2020 by fringe critics, and this gourmand of fine comedy could not agree more. Retweeting the video I commented, “Genius! The Andy Kaufman of the anti-mask movement. Kudos for a captivating performance!”

A performance that stands out among his anti-mask comic peers for its raw humor and bold physical comedy. When he artfully punctuates the conclusion of his performance by breaking wind as he is “restrained” by his son who carries him “offstage” to jeers from his audience, I laughed so hard I dropped my chloroquine mixer. His mastery of slapstick was simply stellar.

One can clearly see the influence of Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges in his work. In my estimation, his performance even outshined that of a conceptual virtuoso, a rising anti-mask star, a woman in California who allegedly finished her bravura performance in a Verizon store by urinating on the floor.

Our Tucson Titan, who artfully projects the retro throwback feel of “Hee-Haw” meets “Mr. Deeds Goes Ballistic,” knows how to read a room, introducing his brilliantly crafted monologue with “You’re a bunch of idiots wearing masks. You know it’s not real!”

His command of the stage, in the baked-goods section, was incomparable. His timing? Impeccable. His next line — Wait for it!—is a shrewd takedown of a mask-wearing audience member: “You look like you got it off your mom’s countertop!” What a rapid-fire intellect! If only the butcher behind the counter had a snare for a rimshot. And then, without missing a beat he “kills” with his trademark punchline, “You (inaudible) got a f---in’ doily on your face.”

Who knew Sprouts had a budget for such high-brow in-store comedy? Kudos to Sprouts! Up your game Safeway and Fry’s!

Word on the street is Hollywood agents have been calling our local superstar. Ted Nugent has asked him to open for him on his It’s Just The Sniffles Tour. Dubbed the “Oscar Wilde of the Right,” he’s been asked to headline a Q-Anon cruise and, dig this, local gossips tell me our Tucson treasure is in the middle of negotiations to be the new host of “Alex Jones’ Funniest Viral Videos”!

Sturgis is calling! I have no doubt President Trump, who has described him in a tweet as “The Larry the Kable(sic) Guy of our time!” will invite him to headline at the CPAC Comedy Festival, world renowned for its paucity of actual humor.

Interviewed by a gushing Tucker Carlson he said, “Tucker, every word and exquisitely choreographed move is finely hewn by me. And yes, my daring use of language is exquisitely calculated. The costuming is entirely mine.”

“What were you shopping for at Sprouts?”

“Cruelty-free organic pork rinds.”

“Really?”

“… and lactose-free Lysol milk. They were out.”

I admire his spellbinding gift for out-of-the-box zingers such as the trenchant “You look like an idiot!” Who has the dazzling brainpower to improvise on the spot like that? Who? With peerless aplomb he crushed his hecklers with such inventive jewels as “You look like a dork” or “I’ll beat that mask off your face — you look like a f---ing r-word.”

Overwhelmed by his new-found fame, and the clamor of fans, our local star will soon be courted by Sean Spicer, of Spicer, Stone & Scaramucci, to handle the inevitable pop-up book deals, the merchandising of “Hey, dork! Is that a doily on your face?” T-shirts and caps, and the all-important copyrighting of his hilarious trademark flatulence often mimicked by armpit-pumping admirers.

Gov. Doug Ducey has announced he will be inviting him to perform at a Koch Brothers retreat, saying, “I’m more than willing to unleash a COVID-19 surge — just for the much-needed chuckles! Masks optional!”

What’s next for our angry anti-mask superstar? Performing outside a school? A senior care center? Or a hospital emergency room entrance? Or better yet, showing up at the funeral of a pandemic victim to “set them idiots straight?” “It ain’t real!” followed by breaking wind. Always brings the house down.

Fitz's Opinion: Exclusive interview with Tucson's oldest living weather forecaster, Ned Nimbus

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

This week I sat down with Southern Arizona’s oldest living weatherman, Ned Nimbus.

You just celebrated your 127th birthday, Mr. Nimbus. Congratulations.

Thanks, sonny.

You knew some of the great weather forecasters?

Yep. I Knew “Sunny” Rodriguez, “Scorcher” Santa Cruz and “Triple Digit” Jones. Taught Dolores “Dust Devil” Dominguez and Michael Goodrich how to point.

You were doing the weather by telegraph when “San Pedro Pete” rode a lightning bolt in 1901?

Yep. Pete rode it clear from Tubac to Tortolita. Eventually ended up in Hollywood doing stunts for silent Westerns where he met a young Yosemite Sam on the lot and told him how he shot across the Arizona sky shouting, “Mah biscuits are burning!” — a phrase Yosemite would later make famous in many a Warner Brothers cartoon, slapping his smoldering buns.

When did you do your first weather report?

I issued my very first flash-flood warning before there was nary a pueblo in the Old Pueblo. It was a volcanic lava alert. Even then, there was always some Neanderthal who’d ride his mastodon right into the flaming river. Saw a pterodactyl hit by lightning. Better than fried chicken.

Where’s our rain, Mr. Nimbus?

Drought sure makes folks edgy. In territorial days the last varmint to sing, “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day,” was lynched between two horse thieves.

Can’t blame ’em. Some folks here ain’t never seen rain ’cept in picture books, or maybe they heard some cowpoke tellin’ tall tales around the campfire about things looking like teardrops falling out of giant cotton ball-like things called “clouds.”

Is it possible to make it rain?

Folks here’ll try anything to make it rain, even some nonsense called cloud seeding. How you gonna get your tractors and plows up there?

Some wash their cars. When I was kid we’d wash our buckboards. Grandpa even tried washing Grandma. Nary a drop.

Then there’s the Precipitation Peddlers.

Last Rain Man come to town was a feller named Dustin Hoffman and he was no help, aside from telling us what the weather was on a Tuesday in 1639.

Tucsonans go crazy when it rains. Why?

Soon as them tiny drops spank them creosote leaves and tap dance on our tin roofs we slip ’n’ slide all over our roads and drive into flooded washes. Our “Stupid Motorist Law” was modeled after Tombstone’s “Danged Fool Rule of 1883” which declared that any “id-jit dumb enough to drive their wagon into a crick deeper than the Rio Grande gets what’s coming to ’em, including a bill for the rope and mules, or we’re throwin’ ’em back in.”

Heck, I found a “Village Idiot Code” dating from 1378 which read “Ye ride into my moat, Ye best pray ye float.”

Do Tucsonans love rain?

Does a javelina stink when it’s wet?

I know fer a fact Karen Carpenter never spent much time in Tucson. How else could she write “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down?” We’d welcome a month of Mondays if they were rainy!

Spot a drop and we start singing in the rain. What a glorious feelin’, we’re as happy as Gene Kelly again, hoppity-scotchin’ across puddles giddy as Colorado River toads.

You’ve seen historic floods?

Yup. Seen a wash fill up faster than a saloon spittoon in Saskatoon. Before noon. Big monsoon. Saw the Gullywasher of ’92 and the Santa Cruz Soaker of ’29!

One flood season was so bad I saw two fellers, name of Lewis and Clark, canoeing down the Canyon del Oro wash, followed by a Kon Tiki raft complete with a National G-O-graphic film crew followed by a boat called “The Minnow” packed with fools that had done set out for a three-hour tour. I larnt the first “do not enter when flooded” sign was posted at the Red Sea ’cause I seen one of the pharaoh’s chariots float past that same day. That’s the year I gave up licking the backs of toads.

You know how you can tell can tell when rain’s coming? Watch your desert tortoises. When they tuck in their feet and sprout periscopes, it’s time to head to higher ground.

Why do we freak out when it rains?

Because rain is more rare in Tucson than toenails on a tarantula.

Pardner, rain always triggers the following six stages:

1. Flood warning

2. Thunder boomers

3. Rainy drops

4. Stampede out into the rainy drops

5. Sirens!

6. A million mommas yelling at their whippersnappers, “You best not bring that mud into this hacienda!”

Any tips for newcomers ?

Yup. Chubasco ain’t a dance; it’s a storm that’ll blow your spurs off and El Niño is Spanish for “The” Niño.

Ned Nimbus’ secret to a long life?

Always wear a smile behind your mask and don’t enter any danged place when its flooded with rainy drops or them corony virus bugs.

Thank you, Mr. Nimbus. Will it ever rain?

It always rains. Monsoon or later.

Fitz's Opinion: Gloom and doom on Zoom: Catching up with the Arroyo Cafe crew as the pandemic worsens

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I spent the morning on Zoom catching up with Lurlene, Carlos and Rosa.

The latest?

Sour Frank is in rehab and learning to walk more than three steps without gasping for air.

Carlos is working on his food truck.

Rosa’s collecting unemployment.

And Lurlene is still cashiering at the grocery store. “Thank God I ain’t the manager. She spends all day at the entrance, stopping customers from coming in barefaced. I’d rather mud wrassle a javelina.”

Carlos repeated his familiar refrain.“Mask it or casket, amigos.”

Lurlene told us, “If we get any blow back about wearing masks we have code names for them. ‘Entitled Litter in the Express Lane’ is my favorite. I also like ‘Bananas in the Liquor Section’, ‘Tin Foil next to the Party Nuts’, and ‘Snowflake Clean up in Produce.’ ”

“I always look every customer in the eyes. I always smile. I might be the only person they’ve seen in a week or more! Pitiful things. One regular says he feels like Matt Damon on Mars. Some ask me what day it is. One customer says he’s pretty danged sure every day is Groundhog Day. They either want to tell me their life story or get out before the damned corona virus gets ’em. I know the feeling! I’m cooped up in here all day, with God knows what floating around this corral.

“My customers are worried about rent. Jobs. Or they’re scared to death ’cause they’re high risk. Or they’re caring for someone who’s sick. Or worse, they want to tell me every painful detail of the death of a friend. I can barely hear half of them through their masks. I nod and nod and nod as I add up their totals.

“Last week one of our cashiers, Victoria, a pretty young thing, called in sick. She’s stuck in quarantine.”

“Uh-oh,” we all said. Was Lurlene exposed?

“I’m getting tested tomorrow.”

Anxious silence.

“Been less than a week. Anyway her whole family got exposed to it and one of her baby girls isn’t doing well and, even scarier — her husband’s on a ventilator, in Phoenix! Her mom blames herself for the whole family getting it. She was a custodian at a senior center, kept working through it all. Caught it from a co-worker who caught it from her teenager. Idiot thought a party would be a good idea.

“Before her mom was prepped for intubation a nurse held her iPhone up to her face so my friend could see her mom. She could barely hear her. ‘Forgive me, mija’ was all she said.”

We all sat silent in front of our screens.

I reminded everyone to chill, because, after all, it’s a hoax, right? —and it’ll just go away. “And you know the only reason we have more cases is only because we have more testing. That’s the reason why Tucson is so damned hot. It’s because we have so many more thermometers than any other place.”

Bitter laughter.

Rosa was worried about her sister, Maria. “She’s in Cactus Flats. She’s a teacher and a single mom with kids. My nieces. She says it’s no surprise the same creeps who did nothing after Sandy Hook would be happy to send our kids straight into a raging pandemic in the very same public school system they’ve been attacking and tearing down for decades!”

Agreed.

For the rest of our Zoom chat we talked about our pets and the video of the flash flood of black charred debris from the Bighorn Fire that’s been circulating online.

Before leaving our Zoom chat I doubled back to ask Rosa what her sister’s plans are for her kids. “Can they do online only or will she have to send her kids into the soup? Will she have to hose them down every night in the yard with Lysol? Bleach their clothes every day? What if they’re asymptomatic carriers? Will she make them wear masks, and social distance, in the house so she doesn’t get it?”

Rosa shrugged.

“Is she going to teach school in the fall?”

Rosa shrugged again. “My kid sister loves teaching. She told me if her district gives her no choice she’ll go back.” Rosa looked off in the distance for a moment. “Yesterday we updated her will.”

On that abruptly sobering note, I noted my time was at an end and we held our coffee cups up in front of our computers, and toasted the coming week, wishing each other safety, health and sanity. And rain. Sweet rain. Ever onward, my friends. To better days ahead.

Fitz's Opinion: Moving on from the Arroyo Cafe until this pandemic passes

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

As Carlos opened the door of the Arroyo Cafe wide enough to haul his boxes out he wondered where he’d come up with the money to pay the back rent when this thing finally ends. And when will this ever end? Not by August. Not by this winter. He pulled his drooping mask up over his nose.

Rosa, packing boxes, encouraged Carlos to have faith. “I pray for all of us every night.”

Carlos suggested to Rosa she, “Pray instead for Sour Frank.”

Rosa had news about their friend. “Lurlene says Sour Frank’s mom says our boy’s off the ventilator.” Rosa heaved a box. “Where do you want this?”

“That’s paperwork. Taxes. Put it on the front seat. Next to the menus. You know we could have taken two paths, right?”

“Two paths? What two paths?”

“First there was the rational path.” Carlos set down his boxes.

“Tell me more oh great Buddha.”

“Happy to, grasshopper. What do you do when the first case of a new highly contagious virus appears?” Rosa shrugged.

“You listen to your scientists. You lock down your entire nation. You stock all your hospitals with the finest equipment. You send out an army to test and track your entire population. Your elderly. Your prisoners. Your packing plant workers. Mobilize your nation. A wartime effort! Find every carrier. Quarantine every last one. Use the federal government to muster the finest equipment you have. Treat the sick. Rally your nation behind a single message. Mask on. Find it and contain it so you can safely reopen. Subsidize employees, the workers, at 80% for the duration. Subsidize every small business for the duration. Rent moratorium until it’s over. You contain it in one month. You reopen. No second wave. You play whack-a-mole when hot spots pop up. You get a nice U-shaped economic recovery. You take a bow, go out to your socially distanced dinner and celebrate America’s can-do spirit.”

“Dinner out would be nice. I’m sick of this. I’ll make a reservation for us, Carlos. Dinner for two. 2021. March. The vaccine riots should be over by then.”

“Or, Rosa, you could take the second path, the path our leaders chose.” Carlos stacked boxes onto his dolly. “What do you do when the first case of a new highly contagious virus appears?”

Rosa shrugged again.

“First, you ignore the seriousness of the reports. Downplay them. Claim it’s overblown. Over by Easter. It’ll just disappear. Then you scapegoat and go golfing. You sow division. You ridicule science. You muzzle and contradict your scientists.’

“Isn’t that happening now?”

“Tell everyone you accept no responsibility for what’s happening. Blame the overwhelmed hospitals, blame the media for telling the truth, pass the buck down to the smallest government entities. Ridicule masks. Mock testing. Don’t track. Manipulate data. Close down your commerce too late because after all it’s a hoax. Peddle snake oil. Lie. Host super spreader events.”

“Take a breath, Carlos.”

“Then reopen way too early. Tell your people to live with it. Congratulations, Rosa. You have created the perfect storm for perpetuating this pandemic resulting in a deep and lasting economic depression.”

“Are we done?”

“Nope. Claim victory, Rosa! Celebrate the greatness of your leadership. Rate yourself a 10. Rosa, what’s that in your hand?”

Rosa stood before the open hatchback of her Pinto studying a beloved artifact from her childhood, a toy plastic cowboy boot from Old Tucson that resembled a bank. “Tip jar, Carlos.” Rosa tossed it onto her tangled heap of Arroyo Cafe memories. Rosa slammed the hatchback shut. “We will be back, right?”

“It’s up to this virus, the vaccine developers and our landlord. Speaking of landlords Molina’s rent’s due. I gave him what I could spare.”

“And Zeke?” Rosa crossed herself.

“Zeke’s unemployment is covering his rent, for now. Buried his mom last week. They sent her to a Phoenix hospital where she died alone.” They hauled boxes until the property was vacated.

Carlo slammed the door on his beat up old van, and squinted at the flame-seared Catalinas. “I might convert this beauty into a food truck. Home deliveries. That kind of thing.”

“Or you could bring it back. Two paths, right?” Rosa offered a thumbs-up over her rolled down car window. “Keep me posted.”

She held her tears until Carlos was gone from her rearview mirror. As Rosa headed into the unknown she looked forward to checking in on Lurlene down at the grocery store.

Fitz's Opinion: A Fourth of July Dream at the Drawing Board

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I was working on a children’s book about the monuments on the National Mall when I dozed off a little after midnight and laid my weary head on my rendering of the Lincoln Memorial.

In my dream, across the miles, far from Washington D.C., the granite faces on Rushmore, America’s most iconic quartet, paid me no attention as they fretted in the moonlight, lamenting the state of their aging Union. One fought for it, one wrote it into existence, one expanded it and another preserved it. The two white slaveowners, the reformer and the savior of the Union agreed on one thing. They all saw this coming. All of it.

On Liberty Island in New York Harbor, the Goddess of Democracy, Liberty, stood alone on her pedestal, in pitch black darkness. The 112-foot mother of immigrants stared into the dark, as her torch lay discarded, cold, at her feet, the world’s beacon extinguished. She drummed her lips as she struggled to remember Emma Lazarus’ words, the credo that had been erased from inside her pedestal. “ … yearning … to breathe free.”

As her feet brushed against the unlocked manacles, she knew, “Too many still struggle for breath.”

The crack in the Liberty Bell had grown, nearly cleaving the bell in two. The bell’s promise to, “proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof,” had rung false to too many for too long.

In Washington, the Jefferson Memorial, more suitable for a Greek god than a man who owned 600 human beings, was not that far from where Lincoln, the Colossus, presided in splendid white Georgia Marble in his memorial over the reflecting pool in which too few had sought reflection.

Bronze Thomas Jefferson asked the marble Abraham Lincoln if it was true, the talk, the rumors. Jefferson coughed, and waved away the sting of tear gas as the unnerving sound of chains rose out of the mist, in the moonlight.

Jefferson coughed again and repeated himself. “Was it true?”

Lincoln looked Jefferson directly in the eyes and nodded. “Our Constitution is beginning to fade, and worse, your magnificent Declaration of Independence and even our beloved Bill of Rights are crumbling … they’re disintegrating.”

The American giant, striding out of the granite at Martin Luther King’s Memorial bowed his mighty black head, clenched his fist and prayed aloud, as only Martin could, for resolve and strength, steeling himself to bear witness to yet another march on Washington. He turned his head in the direction of the whispering chorus drifting up from the mall.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture wept, wailed, sang and raged. Jefferson hung his head in shame, centuries too late, at the sounds of bondage echoing down the mall. Jefferson saw it coming. Can bronze beg for forgiveness?

Among the red granite and waterfalls of his sprawling monument, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw it all coming. The bronze man was all too familiar with the challenges America faces. The man who had shepherded our nation through the Great Depression and World War II, knew rebuilding America, rebooting a functioning government, addressing racial, economic and social injustice and combating climate change would call for a war footing. He sat in his wheelchair, anxious for battle.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial mournfully noted the new Pandemic War Memorial, a man-made abyss carved out of the earth by an army of bulldozers and diesel-powered shovels, was growing longer and deeper by the hour.

And the sound of chains grew louder. Throughout the halls of the Smithsonian you could hear Dorothy’s red slippers clicking their heels together, longing for anywhere but the present.

A bronze slaver had been toppled off his pedestal in England. A Christopher Columbus had lost his stone head. White, racist generals in Virginia were defaced and dethroned. The Confederate traitors had all seen it coming.

Some were caught by surprise. At the WWII Memorial, the spirits of the 405,000 fallen wondered how so many Americans could embrace the fascism they fought.

At the Capitol, in the rotunda, Will Rogers, his sense of humor turned to cold alloy, stared, bereft at his bronze lasso. He had finally found a man he didn’t like. Nearby, in Statuary Hall, Rosa Parks was the first to hear the bricks.

Each brick in the Capitol, lain by a slave, whispered that slave’s story, forming a mournful chorus of men, women and children. Drifting across the vast American mall were misty rivulets of pain swimming, curling and snaking around the great slave master’s obelisk, the Washington Monument, through the cherry trees and over the reflecting pool, up to the feet of the Great Emancipator still wiping his eyes from the residual tear gas. He had seen it coming centuries ago.

As stars filled the sky free of fireworks, the cries of history’s slaughtered, beaten, chained, whipped and lynched, grew louder by the hour, moving Lincoln, sitting wide awake in the darkness, to cradle his head, aching with the knowledge that he, like the people, could never let Washington sleep soundly again.

Fitz's Opinion: A visit to Arroyo Cafe for a cup of human contact

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

It took all my courage and a reliable mask to walk into the Arroyo Cafe and order a cup of Rosa’s finest. I watched her pour it into the paper cup crossing my sanitized fingers, hoping Rosa wouldn’t touch the lip of the cup with her hands. I needed this human contact after wasting my morning bickering with fools on Facebook asserting their “right” to not wear a mask, their “right to breathe.”

Using George Floyd’s dying words for their selfish stupidity left me with no appetite for breakfast. The morning paper on the counter noted the horrifying toll that they laughed at and ridiculed as a hoax, a lie, an exaggeration. If anything the government’s numbers underplayed the biblical scale of the tsunami rolling our way.

I sat between two Plexiglas partitions, no one on either side of me. “Did you see them protesting in front of our mayor’s house without their masks? As the death and case rates skyrocket in our state!”

Rosa nodded as her eyes rolled over her mask. “Ally Miller and Steve Christy voted against masks. They’re trolls, like Ducey, McSally and Trump.” She muttered an epithet in Spanish. “Can you believe what Ally Miller said about the virus? ‘We don’t know what we don’t know.’ I know what I do know. Miller’s a fool.”

Agreed. “They’re making this pandemic partisan. This isn’t right or left. It’s rational versus irrational, plain and simple. Their magical thinking is murdering us.” Rosa quoted Carlos. “I say, ‘Mask it or casket’.”

Carlos, masked, came out from his kitchen to give me an elbow tap. “You been good?”

“Considering none of us have a clue what tomorrow or next week will bring — yeah, I’ve been OK. At least I got a roof and a job. More people I know are getting this thing. How’s your dad doing at the home?”

“Did you know he fought in Vietnam? He never thought the government he fought for would abandon him to fend for himself against a disease. You’re more likely to die from COVID-19 here in America than in any other country on Earth.”

I missed my friends. I didn’t want to stay long. Not in an enclosed space. Not now. When this pandemic’s spreading like the wildfires raging across my state. Not when our state is packed like a giant cruise ship, captained by a fool who set sail too early, barking “Full speed ahead.”

Rosa sighed. “See the folks packed in at the Phoenix church where Trump spoke? Said their magic air filter would stop the coronavirus from spreading.”

I shook my head.“See? Irrational. Magical thinking. Who was the King of Denial talking to?”

“Students for Trump.”

Carlos chuckled at the thought. “True/False tests got to be tough for kids that follow a pathological liar.”

Rosa laughed. “I hear if you can correctly identify Covfefe on a map you’ll make honor roll. I wonder if you can earn extra credit by mastering division. … Speaking of math, mark your calendars for exciting news from that church come July 7. Incubation for the coronavirus takes two weeks.”

I took no pleasure in her schedule. By then our hospitals will be overflowing with the plague.

Carlos said he had talked to Lurlene who had talked to Sour Frank’s mom. “Sour Frank has gotten worse. They intubated him last week.”

Rosa crossed herself and said a private prayer. We all did. Carlos poured himself a paper cup of Rosa’s brew and wondered what happens when you get the disease. I answered as best I could.

“First your sense of smell and tastes goes. You might get tired ... get a dry cough … sore throat ... chills, fever. Hard time breathing. A friend told me when she was in the hospital her lungs burned with every painful breath. Worst endless fevers and headaches she ever experienced in her life. The virus nails as many organs as it can, sometimes causing organ failure. Diarrhea. Vomiting. Pneumonia. Can last for weeks.”

Carlos and Rosa blinked and tugged their masks tighter around their faces.

“Your lungs fill with fluid. Like you’re drowning, I guess. Each breath is a desperate struggle.”

The two other diners, eavesdropping, stopped eating. Another paid his tab and left quickly.

“Pretty soon you can’t breathe and they got to knock you out in order to shove that tube down your throat. Better say your goodbyes at that point. Some who come out of it are never the same. Those who don’t come out of it … ”

Rosa refilled my paper cup.

“They die alone.”

We thought of Zeke, the other cook, who was at the hospital now praying for his mom on a ventilator. We thought of Sour Frank. With sadness, and anger, Carlos whispered, “If Sour Frank doesn’t make it, at least when he gets to h eaven he can tell St. Pete he owned the libs.” We tapped our paper cups and wished our lifelong irrational friend, whom we loved, the best.

Fitz's Opinion: The Arroyo Cafe opens as the pandemic closes in

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Carlos called the meeting to discuss the future of the Arroyo Cafe, the diner he’d poured his life into. Rosa and Elena, the new waitress, and Zeke, the young cook, and Kid Molina, the dishwasher, stood 6 feet apart, in front of the old cafe, wearing their threadbare masks. Carlos was strict about his crew wearing masks. “I hate to wish the fools who refuse to wear masks ill. Because they’ll the fools who’ll be the first to cut in line in front of me for the ventilator in the ICU. Cabrons! It’s like herding javelinas during a thunderstorm.”

Elena, the waitress, had no choice but to return to work. “Rent’s due. I’m facing eviction.”

Molina kept working at Carlos’ side, scrubbing his pots and pans through the carry-out months. “Mi madre’s diabetic. I can’t bring the virus home. It’ll kill her. I live in my truck. I need this to pay her rent and buy her food.”

Zeke, the other cook, was happy to be back after surviving COVID-19. “With every breath my lungs burned. I was hammered with headaches. Down for three weeks. Then two weeks quarantine. And that’s not all.”

Zeke’s mother was on a ventilator. Rosa crossed her chest and whispered a prayer.

Carlos’ dad was still behind glass in his assisted living center. “He’s terrified. My old man calls it ‘Alcatraz with Alzheimer’s.’ Three of his best friends died in the past couple of weeks.”

As turkey vultures circled over the cafe, the gossip went on.

Lurlene’s still a cashier, scared to death. She quit smoking.

Before checking in to TMC, Sour Frank, between coughs, said, “My right to not wear a mask shall not be infringed.”

Romero had a dry cough yesterday and tested positive.

Carlos’ crew admired the new windows. Carlos told Molina, “I was here the night of the protest. I kept shouting, ‘I’m not the enemy.’ But what can you do? I agree with them.”

Walking into the cafe, Rosa spoke. “The governor says we’ve got more cases because there is more testing. Dumb as Gila Monster spit. We’re going to have so many cases, Arizona’s going to look like Italy with saguaros.”

Zeke nodded. “We closed too late and now we’re opening too early. We’re going to surge worse than New York City.”

Molina had a theory. “I heard our governor’s been infected. With the Trump virus.”

“Trump virus?”

“Eats your spine. Kills brain cells. Blinds you to facts.”

The diner counter seats were now 6 feet apart with clear partitions between the customers. Four booths replaced 10. The parking lot was now Carlos’ new “Dining Al Fresco” patio: four tables under a tent. “That investment cost me my last nickel. If we don’t make bank, the Arroyo Cafe is gone. Like a tumbleweed in the wind.”

Carlos clung to hope like a man holding fast to a tree branch in a 100-year flash flood. Rosa, Elena, Molina and Zeke sensed Carlos’ desperation. They looked at him like jackrabbits caught in the headlights of a floored semi. Carlos pointed to the cleaning supplies. “The health inspector is going to be on us like sweat on a snowbird. We have to make this work even as hundreds of Arizonans are getting sick every day and hundreds are dying.”

Carlos paused. Thinking of his father he wiped a tear. “I built this cafe. It’s all I have and I’m desperate to keep it alive while seeing to it that not a single one of you catches this damned virus.”

Zeke pointed out that Carlos had touched his face and handed him a wipe. Carlos cursed. Rosa had her back to the group. “Rosa, what are you looking at?”

“At my Catalinas.” The bright-red slurry lacerating the mountain looked like flesh burns tormenting a living thing. “Thousands of saguaros gone. Maldito buffelgrass! Entire canyons up in smoke. I think Mother Nature was joining the protests. Dios bendiga a los bomberos.”

Carlos translated for Zeke. “God bless the firefighters.”

Molina hung his homemade sign over the door. “No Mask, No Service. 6 feet apart or 6 feet under.”

As Rosa disinfected the counter she told Elena, “Ducey broke our ‘Stupid Motorist Law.’ He drove this state into the middle of an arroyo flooded with coronavirus. And now we’re up to our masks in it!”

It was time. Carlos walked to the door of his cafe, turned to his crew and said, “Stay safe. For each other. For our abuelos. Our elders. And may God have mercy on Doug Ducey’s soul. Y los idiotas who think this is over.”

He took a deep breath through his mask. “Let’s do this.”

Carlos unlocked the door. “The Arroyo Cafe is back. Where everyone is welcome. As long as they’re wearing a mask.”

As Rosa fired up the coffeemaker, Carlos turned on the neon “OPEN” sign in the new window. It glowed like an Arizona sunrise on a cloudy day.

Fitz's Opinion: D-Day: Imagining President Franklin Delano Trump's finest hour

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

June 6, 1944, 0300

Supreme Allied Command War Room

President Franklin Delano Trump

Today the liberation of Europe begins in spite of the president’s belief there are good people on both sides of the channel. The president, surrounded by his command staff, wondered aloud, “What if we poured Jell-O into the channel? Have you tried that?”

General Pensive rubbed his forehead as General Lackey unrolled the schematics. “Here’s the plan, sir. It’s called ‘Operation Overlord.’ Did you read the briefing, Mr. President?”

“I don’t have time to read anything. I’m too busy sending thousands of carrier pigeons out every day one right after another with my random thoughts. Betty Grable? A ten. I never touched the Andrews sisters. We should thank Boris Karloff for inventing the jitterbug. General Kushner filled me in.”

Lackey jumped in. “Quick review, sir. When Germany occupied France—”

“Germany occupied France?!”

“Read the dispatches, sir.”

“I was busy writing fan mail to Mussolini that year. Fantastic guy!”

“In ’41 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Then you declared war on Japan, Germany, sauerkraut and the ‘Republic of Covfefe’. A month later you called Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and the Saturday Evening Post ‘Enemies of the people.’ Then you awarded Charles Lindbergh the Medal of Freedom and called on America to stay out of the war at the same time the Battle of Midway was being fought and won.”

“And I said it would be over by spring and here we are! Spring!”

“That was the spring of ’42. It’s ’44, sir.” The president glared.

“Sir, We’ve suffered nearly 400,000 American casualties in the Pacific and European theaters.”

“I knew it. People are getting killed in theaters. Round up everyone at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. My gut tells me the Chinese are behind this. Arrest Charlie Chan, kill Ming the Merciless and shoot Fu Manchu!” The generals looked at each other.

Pensive continued. “The invasion…”

“Tell me all about it, Pensive.”

“Sir, it’s a matter of seconds. You must give the command to launch the invasion.”

Trump stared at the microphone. “There are good people on both sides of the rind.”

Lackey rolled his eyes. “Rhine.”

Trump fumed. “Have General Eisenhower do it. Amos and Andy are on the radio.”

“You fired Eisenhower last week. By messenger pigeon. Then you told Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell you were smarter than all your generals, sir.”

“But I am smarter than my generals.” He glared at them all, folded his arms, rocked on his heels and smiled.

“Read this, sir. For broadcast to all our men and women in uniform.”

“Fine. You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. Blah, blah, blah... The eyes of the world are upon you. Yada yada yada. Happy, Pensive? People tell me they hear griping about the ships, tanks, plane, guns and boots. Know anything about that?”

“You told the men it was up to their states back home to find equipment for them.”

Lackey pointed to the map. “The British and Canadians are to establish beachheads here, here and here... while our boys take Utah and Omaha Beach.”

“We’ll be in Salt Lake City by Easter! The beaches in Nebraska are fantastic.”

“We expect to lose up to 4,000 Allied troops in the invasion, sir, with thousands wounded or missing.”

“Well, I’m missing a round with Bob and Bing.”

“Sir?”

“General. I nearly forgot. New code of conduct. Prisoners of war are not heroes. I don’t want any of our men captured by the Hens.”

The General offered a crisp salute. “‘Huns,’ sir. Mr. President, Normandy is heavily fortified. The Huns call it the ‘Atlantic Wall.’”

“The Huns. Walls are smart! Their wall will keep us out. Can’t get through those things. Cancel the whole thing. I’ll declare victory.”

Fitz's Opinion: The story of the great Cactus Flats conflagration of 2020

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

The screaming smoke alarm drove us through the smoke and fire, out of our burning house, onto the street, coughing, in our robes. I called the the Cactus Flats Fire Department just like Darlene told me to. “Our house is on fire! The whole house! Come quick! ”

I told Darlene what the Fire Chief said. “Wait it out,” he said. “It’ll go out by itself.” Between coughing fits Darlene sobbed. “It’s spreading to all our neighbor’s houses!”

I told Darlene the Chief said, “It’ll be out by spring! Like a miracle.“

Seconds later we saw him on Darlen’s phone holding a press conference. “Sand! It’s a beautiful thing. A lot of people are talking about how sand can help. Try throwing sand on the fire. If that doesn’t work try pouring gasoline on the fire. Long as I can remember I’ve always poured gasoline on fires. Better yet try drinking the gasoline! And spitting it on the fire. That should work. Look into that.”

At last. A gleaming fire truck, sirens blaring, lights flashing, rolled up to our inferno, followed by the Chief in his pickup.

“I am so glad you showed up. The whole neighborhood is burning. Do something!”

The Fire Chief winced. “I don’t see a fire. It’s way overblown. You’re just doing this to make me look bad.”

As sparks fell on the roof of the assisted living home at the end of our block I shouted at the firefighters, “Where is your fire gear?”

“We don’t have any. Chief said we needed to get our own gear ourselves. Have any you could spare?”

“Like what?”

“Hatchets, gloves, jackets, oxygen units, regulators, helmets, masks, safety boots, pike poles, ladders, extinguishers—”

“You don’t have extinguishers?”

“We were outbid again.”

“Where’s your hose?”

In unison the fire crew shouted, “We got rid of our hoses last year. The new Chief didn’t like the old chief.”

The Chief nodded.

“Or the old chief’s firehoses. Or his readiness drills. Or his manuals. Chief said they were a waste of time. Didn’t you see his tweet?”

The Chief beamed and rocked on his heels.

“Sorry. I haven’t. I’ve been a little busy dodging falling power lines, pulling blazing tree limbs off my neighbors, carrying grandma out of the rubble, giving our cat Tingles CPR, and spraying down Darlene with my neighbor’s garden hose. Our world is on fire and Nero here is fiddling.”

The entire crew froze in fear at my words, stunned into terrified silence by my brazen insult. “Don’t  let the Chief hear you say that. Or he won’t help you!”

“Whatever! Buckets?" I asked,”Do you have buckets? There’s a hydrant right over there.”

“Chief says we’re only to use water as a last resort. Says water is over-rated. Main thing is for you to get accustomed to living with the fire. ”

“What?”

The Chief glared at the blaze all around us. “Everybody dies from something. Just distance yourself from the flames.”

Darlene wailed, “We can’t go back in there and go about our day like everything’s fine! ”

The Chief said it was our duty. “Did you know a cow was behind this?”

“No one in Cactus Flats has a cow.”

“A cow knocked over a lantern and started this mess. And my gut tells me it was a Chinese Lantern.”

His crew nodded. As flames jumped from house to shop to factory, the Chief tweeted, “It’s safe to go back in your houses now. The fire is contained!”

Darlene’s jaw dropped. “To what? This hemisphere?” Darlene showed us an “expert” being interviewed on her phone. “Hot spots are reigniting. This fire’s different. Spreads like nothing I’ve ever seen. Tricky. Unpredictable. Should’ve been extinguished hours ago.”

The Chief glared at her phone. “Fake news! Go home.”

“To the one that's on fire?”

“Buy some sand! Wear a barbecue mitt on your tiny head! Drink gasoline! Innovate! We’ll never get back to normal with your do-nothing attitude.”

Darlene dropped to the curb and wept. “Cactus Flats looks like the burning of Atlanta scene from ‘Gone with the Wind’.” She sobbed, ”What’ll we do?”

The Chief told everyone he loved “Gone with the Wind” more than “Birth of a Nation”. “Can’t wait to see it tomorrow at the Cactus Flats Multi-Plex.”

Backlit by the massive inferno that blazed as far as the eye could see the Chief spoke to Phil Wong, a reporter from the “Cactus Flats Tribune” he always mistook for a Native American. “A lot of your people are telling me about this amazing thing called a rain dance. It’s incredible, really. I’m going to create a Rain Dance Task Force my son-in-law, Rufus, can chair.

"And stop lying to your readers. This fire is a hoax. And this hoax is 100% contained.

"And anybody who wanted a fire extinguisher got a fire extinguisher. Although I think fire extinguishers are overrated. You should really look into that Chinese lantern thing.”

Fitz's Opinion: Is this cartoonist a hater or a lover?

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I've been called a Hater. A sociopath. Obsessed, deranged man and anti-American. I’ll cop to three out of four.

Trump has no clue how many millions and millions of Americans feel a profound, deep, raw hatred  coupled with an intense disgust for him and Party, a party that attracts racist birthers, Confederate flag fetishists and Biblical illiterates like untended outhouses attracts flies. Could be that bubble, that echo chamber he lives in, like a Biosphere Econaut, unable to see beyond the thick glass.

You who support him might ask yourselves why is it that so many of The People view your savior as a vile racist, your heroic leader as a repugnant ill-mannered troll, and his party a craven white cabal of sociopath enabling lick spittles? Why is that? Why do millions lack your insight into the man?

 Simple. "They're Haters."

Pawns of sinister puppeteers. Soros. Hillary. Shrug your shoulders. Keep your dial on Fox. Blame agitators. The media. They’re all criminals. Call for law and order! Dominate them. Call out the Marines, so that the Great Man can fearlessly hold aloft a Bible, upside down, an appropriate metaphor for the inverted, perverted logic that drives him to such madness.

You didn’t see or hear the civil protest. You deny tear gas and violence befell the peaceful assembly. You believe your fine man of great moral character wanted to reassure the Nation he stands with God, guns and the Old American Way.

Careful. Turn the channel.

Seething Hatred on a Biblical scale changes history.

Careful. Turn off talk radio.

The Haters may hate you into the dustbin of history and slam the lid down.

Careful. Listen to pollsters beyond your own. I would not be surprised if in November the Haters kick you into the deep dark abyss of eternal historical disgrace.

It’s entirely possible I'm simply deranged. Obsessed. A sociopath. A Hater.

I like to think not. I like to think I'm a lover not a hater. I love this country. I love its Constitution. I love our Preamble. Our free press. Our diversity. Most of all I love our potential for true greatness. Doesn't everybody?

Fitz's Opinion: A conversation about race postponed for too long

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

When she told me her name the coincidence was so startling I cupped the back of my damp neck and felt the slippery sweat that is ever present in the oppressive Virginia summer.  I wiped my hand dry and grinning, earnestly shook her delicate hand. I searched her eyes, the eyes of the beautiful young black woman sitting next to me on the midtown Richmond bus,  for connection. “We have the same last name. My last name is Fitzsimmons. ”

I said it with gee whiz delight, as though we were kin of a kind who would become the best of friends. We’d talk blues, Dick Gregory and all the things that I, in my profound ignorance, thought every black person enjoyed talking about with earnest white people. As our bus rolled down the boulevard of confederate heroes, Miss Fitzsimmons lowered her gaze to the hands folded on her lap. “My daddy’s daddy told us we were given that name by his granddaddy’s owner.”

The word “owner” lodged in my brain like a lit stick of dynamite in a deep dark ancient place among the clank of chains and the wail of clutching desperate families, separated by the auctioneer for the coin of my despicable kin christening his living property with his name. Slave owner Fitzsimmons? Slave trader? Slaver? I took a deep breath. “Hm, “ I said, leading right into, “Heading to the Art Museum? I am. Is it the next stop?”

Avoid the conversation. Run. Don’t confront the lynch mob in our past.

In Virginia a white man confided in me he thought of their black maid like one of the family. I nodded as if I had a Latina babysitter back where I was from that we considered family. We’re so nice.

In Middle School I was genuinely astonished Maurice Butts and I had so many interests in common. Best friends that year we never talked about race even as Detroit was burning on the Magnavox.

“Guess who’s coming to dinner” shocked, stunned, amazed, terrified and mesmerized my parents. “It’s about time,” mom said. She called black Americans “Colored People” a term which confused me.

Maurice and I were losers, nerds of the lowest order,  shunned by the thick necks who frowned at readers who traded in comic books and G.I Joe dolls, weaklings who would never lead other thick necks to valor on the field. In spite of growing up on in integrated housing at an Air Force base racist mythologies slithered into my head from the Magnavox, bubbled up and went unchecked, such as my assumption that Maurice would be poorer than we were, if that was even possible, and yet our humble dinner plates gleamed, thank you, Mrs. Butts for dinner! And why did their house look pretty much like ours?

I was 24 when our host in Oklahoma city turned on the football game and said, “look at that chimpanzee run,” it incited me to say nothing, and in that moment I betrayed Maurice Butts, like Peter betraying Christ, and worse, my 8th Grade crush, the elegant Pat Simmons, as the crowing rooster pointed at his television, while I prayed my silence would convey my agonizing discomfort which it did not. I took a deep breath. Like the witness at a lynch mob whose conscience is clear because he didn’t cheer.

Never went back. Conversation avoided.

When I read Dick Gregory’s autobiography, “Nigger” I was surprised by Gregory’s intellectual prowess and the shameful racist mythology living in my head upon which that surprise rested, the assumption being it would be extraordinary if Gregory was a brilliant writer, an extraordinary genius. He was.

I texted my beautiful granddaughter. She was watching Minneapolis burn.

I imagine my net savvy 8-year old granddaughter also saw a grown up man crying for mercy as a white man rested the full force of his knee on that nice man’s throat because he could, in spite of his pleading, his tears. She sees the killing that is commonplace in 2020 America, one hundred years after the failure of Reconstruction. Has she heard the racist mythologies that free the sadist and the mob?

They aren’t receding. I saw Detroit burn a lifetime ago. I saw the medieval torches of Charlottesville yesterday. Don’t wear a hoodie at night. There are good people on both sides. I’m calling the police. Don’t resist arrest. Don’t back talk me, my video camera’s on. And don’t drop to your knee at an NFL game for God’s sake, a gesture more horrifying to white America than the slaughter it protests, a familiar attitude in fashion since before my ancestor enslaved beings.

I haven’t hugged my granddaughter since the pandemic. Her hair is long and beautiful now. Some day I will see her. I imagine us together, sitting on a bench. And we have the conversation. And it begins with what George Floyd was pleading for, begging for. A good long deep breath.

Fitz's Opinion: My commencement address to the Tortolita Titans of 2020

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Let’s all thank our fantastic Tortolita Titans marching-in-place band for their Zoom performance of “I will survive.” Cyber high five, Titans!

As I look out upon this Zoom “meeting” of the graduating class of 2020 I want to say you look incredible in your caps and masks.

I saw you roll your eyes, Luis.

Elena! Change your virtual background to an acceptable image.

And Franklin! Stop dabbing.

When I call your name, your diploma, delivered by DiplomaDash, will be on your front porch along with your commemorative Tortolita Titans hand sanitizer.

Class of 2020, we’ve been through some amazing times together. Mass shooter lockdown drills. The sexting incident. More shooter lockdown drills. The other sexting incident. “LOL”, as you young people like to text!

Timmy, turn off your “Crickets” app, please. Don’t make me ask assistant principal Gates to mute you! For this occasion I’d like to read,“Oh the places you’ll go!” by Dr. Seuss. And speaking of Dr. Seuss, how about a shoutout to all of our brave doctors, and nurses, out there, who can’t rhyme “Ham” and “Sam,” but are saving lives!

Franklin, I asked you to stop dabbing.

“Congratulations!

This may not be your year but today is your day!

You have masks on your head. And the Pandemic Blues.

Did you wash your hands? Do our signals confuse?

With your head full of brains and a virus to beat,

You’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

Oh. The places you’ll go.

Eventually.

Like by 2021.

Or 2022.

You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights!

Cross fingers our death toll doesn’t soar to new heights!

Your brains, grit and spirit is what this world needs.

Boomers passed the buck — it’s up to you to lead.

We’re sorry about the pandemic, climate and the rest,

Whatever you do, we know you’ll be the best of the best!”

I heard that, Zeke! Mute that young man. Now. Thank you, Mr. Gates.

If I could offer one word of advice it would be this: Never offer just one word of advice.

Don’t be afraid to break the rules!

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes except when it comes to following the CDC guidelines. Can’t learn from a mistake in a coma!

I saw that, Dalton! That’s a wholly inappropriate Instagram effect, young man. Don’t make me ask Mr. Gates to kill your video feed. The future is in your hands, class of 2020. With that in mind I want to remind you to be sure to wash your hands after handling the future. Also, scrub the future thoroughly with disinfectant.

Set the future aside for at least three days before handling it again.

Class of 2020, avoid mosh pits until 2025. Don’t drink bleach. Wear sunscreen. Wear sanitizer over your sunscreen. Titans, follow your passion. At a distance of 6 feet. Be it health care, health surveillance, testing and tracing, epidemiology, virology, processing unemployment applications, crowd control or installing solar panels.

Your graduation is not an end — it’s a whole new beginning. I believe that was said by a brontosaurus to a triceratops when he eyeballed an asteroid bearing down on the Yucatan.

Thank you for that thumbs up, Jasmine. One thumbs up. What’s that, Mr. Gates? That wasn’t her thumb? Kill her video feed, Mr. Gates.

Titans, I want to close with a beautiful story about a starfish that may “unmask” your feelings on this very special day.

I hear you all pretending to cough. Mute them, Mr. Gates. Thank you, Mr. Gates.

I once saw a small child on a beach, in defiance of CDC guidelines. The small child was tossing a starfish back into the ocean. I said, “What’s the point, small child, of tossing one starfish back in? There are millions of them on the beach! It’s hopeless. The reefs are bleached, the ocean is warming and marine life is dying.”

The small child smiled at me and said. “I made a difference for that one.” Then I coughed a dry cough. And the small child ran.

Finally, tonight, Titans, I want you to party like it’s 1348!

And no, Tony, that’s not when Columbus discovered America. That was 1492. Who unmuted Tony’s audio?

The year 1348 was when the bubonic plague slammed Europe like our faculty’s been slammed learning to teach online.

Elena! Turn off your phone! I heard your “rim shot” app! Mr. Gates, mute Elena’s audio.

Class of 2020, you will be the Greatest Generation of this century. Because you have the smarts, the grit, the courage, the heart and the imagination to repair our world. And you have one thing no other generation has ever had.

No choice.

Good luck, Titans.

And now the names.

Fitz's Opinion: A Mother's Day remembrance in the untouchable age of Covid-19

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I celebrate every Mother’s Day by constructing a shrine to Artha Jean, assembling a Day of the Dead memorial homage of beat up Polaroids, candles, desert flowers, a costume jewelry necklace I gave her in 1962 and a card she gave me when I graduated from university in 1977, which I display open so I can glory in her handwritten words: “From your very proud and happy mother.” With no recording of her voice, Artha Jean’s blue cursive words, spoken with a ballpoint, suffice.

In a picture central to my shrine, my short butterball of a mother has her arm around me and it is evident I am an obnoxious, wriggling teenager embarrassed to be touched by his mom. Ignoring my protestations, her gleeful persistence is preserved by Polaroid.

How would I know she was making up for the lost warmth of a cold childhood?

“We’re all untouchables.” I adjust my mask as I kneel at Holy Hope and touch her name engraved in the stone: 1915-1979. Every visit I surrender to the tenacious yearning to feel the dead. Just one phantom touch.

I count my blessings. She sleeps beneath stone and sod rather than staring out at me from behind the window of assisted living in the age of distance. Memories of touch bubble up.

Artha Jean’s hands were rough, perfumed fists with pudgy short fingers and thick nails, fire engine red. I studied her scarlet talons when she grabbed my thieving little hand and held it tight all the way up to the surprised manager of the grocery store. A sharp fingernail silently nudged me to confess and return the pack of gum. I close my eyes and recall her stroking my shivering head and cooing as I sobbed in shame in the front seat of our aqua blue Pontiac.

Hugging, ribbing, elbowing, tapping, backslapping, nudging, and hair mussing, her repertoire of touch, is understandably on hold in the age of corona.

She would approach you for a hug like a condor coming in for a landing, her endless wing span of outstretched arms enveloping you, pressing you against her soft roundness, rocking you in her maternal refuge where you were safe from all monsters, beasts and things unknown.

Her repertoire of touch was extensive.

The Muss. If your hair was perfect, and you displayed a hint of vanity, you were a target for mussing.

The Jab. An elbow to the ribs was a command to join her in laughing uproariously. It’s been eclipsed by the 2020 elbow tap, followed by very nervous laughter.

The Pat. My fantasy of Artha Jean, the Encouraging Phantom, patting cashiers, national guardsmen, cops, doctors and nurses on the back amuses me. “Did you feel something a moment ago?”

The “Come here, you!” hug. This was the anaconda hug you got when you were inconsolable. People who never got the “Come here, you!” hug grow up to be sociopaths. Or worse, politicians.

The Soothe. In a December, a lifetime ago , mom and dad’s window offered a view of falling snow. Sick with fever, I watched the snow swirl as Artha Jean sang “You Are My Sunshine” ever so slowly, her hand tracing soothing patterns on my burning forehead until I drifted into healing sleep.

I whine to her headstone I have not held her great-granddaughter since Chloe was born in early March. This lament would mystify the woman who’d warn her grandchildren, “I am going to eat you up,” and then proceed to waddle after them until the squirmers were subdued with tickling, followed by a frenzy of arm nibbling, giggle inducing back-of-the-neck gobbling, chin gnawing, with a chorus of “Num, num, num” punctuated with tummy raspberries.

Where is this world where unconditional touch was the norm? Where’s your mask, Mom?

When I saw her rough, chapped, meaty hands, the hands of a gardener, a laundress, a custodian, a cook, and a dishwasher lain across her heart in 1979 I remember with shame and regret the snotty teenager who recoiled at her warm touch.

The old man kneeling at Holy Hope, in 2020, the time of 6 feet apart, or 6 feet under, remembers the moment and the boy too well. And the hands that would examine a Mother’s Day gift of dime store costume jewelry like it was the Hope Diamond, the hands that would clap a lively rhythm to “Amazing Grace,” the hands that would clap us by the shoulders and assure us everything would be alright.

I stood and promised her etched name everything will be alright, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that I will stay safe, and well, for I am counting the seasons until I can take off this mask and safely tell Chloe, Emma and Cassius, “I’m going to eat you up,” and begin the chase.

Fitz's Opinion: A big 'thank you' to Star's subscribers from yours truly

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I’m starting my second furlough week this Monday because I would do anything to insure the survival of the newspaper I love.

When I said this to a newsroom colleague, he said, “How about putting in a full day of work?”

We who create The Arizona Daily Star every day are taking furloughs, or pay cuts, because we love what we do. We didn’t go into this line of work for wealth but because we’re obsessed.

In the last century want ads in our trade publications would ask, “Do you have ink in your veins?” Yes, we do. Only today it’s not ink, it’s pixels.

Since the pandemic, digital readership has boomed. As print advertising has withered, we are relying on our digital advertisers; those all-important grants and fellowships that fund our special projects and investigative work; and you, our beloved readers.

Thank you, dear subscriber, for supporting community journalism. Patriots, I salute your civic conscience. A source once said, “Democracy dies in darkness.” I double-checked this for accuracy and it’s wrong. Our democracy is dying in broad daylight.

Pounded by this pandemic, many of our financially troubled tribunes of transparency, our community watchdogs, our enterprises most essential to a republic’s endurance, are closing shop.

The good news is The Arizona Daily Star soldiers on thanks to you, our extraordinary readers, our patrons, our boosters, our loyal critics and our champions. This is remarkable considering that since the pandemic over 36,000 news workers have been told to empty their desks, take unpaid time off or a pay cut. That constitutes thousands of untold stories of civic corruption, graft and wrongdoing left to metastasize in our body politic.

Pay cuts, layoffs and shutdowns have slammed the Denver Post, the Tampa Bay Times, the Detroit Free Press, the San Francisco Examiner, the Baltimore Sun, the Dallas Morning News, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Kansas City Star, the Miami Herald, the Sacramento Bee, the New York Daily News, the Buffalo News and the Times Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, born in 1837, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, born in 1878, and, yes, the Chicago Tribune, born in 1847. That was the year I drew my first cartoon, opposing the Mexican-American War.

Add to this list the hundreds of small-town papers that are withering and turning to dust, in town after town, and it is evident that swaths of our heartland are becoming civic dust bowls. In broad daylight.

America’s trustworthy small town Daily Bugles and Tri-City Tribunes, you know, the “enemies of the people,” have been replaced by the hyperpartisan propaganda peddlers, Breitbart, the Epoch Times, Fox News, the Washington Times, Drudge, Limbaugh, One America News or the largest owner of TV stations in America, the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Their agenda, driven not by fact-finding but by truth-deflecting, pushes a radical, anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-expertise, anti-regulation and anti-mainstream press agenda that appeals to the powerless while benefiting the powerful.

The success of this well-funded effort is evident in our response to the coronavirus, a threat that calls for scientific analysis, fact-based information, responsible regulation and respect for expertise. Instead we responded with duplicity, chaos and corruption rather than like the technologically advanced world leader rapidly shrinking in the rear-view mirror.

When the typewriter, notepad and ballpoint pen were the tools of the trade, our classified sales were golden and we bought ink by the barrel. Craigslist vaporized our gold. Free online competitors peeled off paying readers. And at that same time the well-funded right-wing mills were enjoying the fruits of their decadeslong derision of traditional journalism as ”fake news,” sowing mistrust of the “lamestream media.”

It’s a long fall from Cronkite to Sean Hannity, from Woodward and Bernstein to Fox and Friends, from vetting “facts” to reminding American “news” consumers not to drink bleach but to give hydroxychloroquine a try.

In 1877, our desert town was packed with prostitutes, murderers and horse thieves. A lawyer, Louis Cameron Hughes, was unsatisfied with his practice, perhaps because the local entertainment, lynching, was constantly depriving him of clients. Hughes decided the town needed a paper.

More than 133 years later, the Arizona Daily Star rises daily, thanks to you, our partners in service to our democratic experiment. And the local entertainment, lynching, endures as well, if you scan the letters calling for this cartoonist to be strung up.

Writing a plea to the readers of the embattled Milwaukee Journal, Editor George Stanley speaks for every newspaper in America: “Above all, please know how grateful we are to all of our subscribers for supporting independent, evidence-based journalism that informs our democracy.“

Subscribe to the papers you trust. I do.

Thank you for your support through the years and through this difficult period. Stay Safe. Stay well. Stay informed. I will see you in a week.

Fitz's Opinion: A cartoonist's guide to surviving the hunker bunker together

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Thank you, Gov. Ducey for extending the stay-at-home guidelines. My wife and I are hanging in there. This morning I woke up, went to my window, threw open the sash and asked the boy down below, “Tell me lad, what day is it?”

“Why, it’s Christmas Day, sir. Or it could be Saturday. To be honest, sir, I don’t have a clue what month is.”

“Such a fine lad. Asymptomatic? Tell me is that toilet paper still in the window of the shop around the corner?”

“Why, yes it is, sir!”

I threw him a sanitized farthing in a baggie.

We are doing fine. Talk with your roomie. We discussed the divorce rate among sheltering couples last night. I looked her in the visor shield and said, “We’re so lucky we get along. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“How much?”

“Lots.”

“ Not enough.”

“I am not letting you out of the basement.”

“I’m not telling you where I hid the Lysol. I can hear your keys, Kathy Bates.”

Here is a typical good day at our “shelter”:

Wake

Breakfast

Back to bed

Binge watch Prime

Lament no one reads anymore

Lunch

Wonder why kids are so quiet

Binge watch Netflix

Lament no one reads anymore

Binge watch news

Lament no one reads anymore

Wonder what kids are doing online

Dinner

Lament no one interacts with kids anymore

Sleep

COVID-19 nightmare

Sleep

Political nightmare

Sleep

COVID-19 nightmare

Sleep

Repeat until Jupiter applies for statehood.

Simplify. Wear the same ensemble for three months.

My wife admires my choices. “I like the way your flesh has merged, on a cellular level, with your sweatpants.

“You have so many stains on your sweatpants they look like a fashion line from Jackson Pollock’s kitchen.

“I don’t need to be tested for COVID. I still can smell your sweat pants two rooms away.”

To which I replied, “I thought you should know I found the cherry-flavored lip balm you’re using right now. Yesterday. On a park bench. A bat dropped it.”

Cultivate good humor.

“Did you just trim your own hair or did a Dewalt power tool salesman give it a go at Home Depot?”

She’s so funny.

“Hello. You’re wearing the mask I discarded yesterday while shopping at Virus-Mart. And it’s on backward.”

She does get on my nerves. Caution. Knee slapping can shed the virus which can live up to three days in a guffaw.

Keep your shopping lists. They are records of this historic time. Here’s our Virus-Mart list from yesterday. Or maybe Tuesday. Is it Cinco de Mayo already?

Untouched vintage roll of immaculate toilet paper in the original plastic wrap.

(At auction? Priceless.)

Nerf Lysol Disinfectant Blaster Soaker

Ralph Lauren N95 Respirator Mask

Keg of Febreze

Pine-Sol Crystal Light

Pangolin repellent

Bleach cocktail mixer

Tide Pod samosas.

Sneezing can alarm your shelter mate. I sneezed on Thursday. Or was it 1917? Calm your roomie. “Can you believe these allergies? It’s nothing, probably hantavirus.”

Keep your chatter upbeat.

Stay connected to your neighbors. We are.

“Do our neighbors need anything?”

“Well, how would I know?”

“Your tone is hostile. Have you talked to them lately?

“I would if you’d let me out of the basement.”

“Tell me where the Lysol is.”

“Check the fridge.”

“That’s where you left your car keys last month.”

“Exactly.”

Make lists for fun. Here’s a list of our six favorite movies:

“Pandemic”

“Pandemic 2” with Vin Diesel

“Pandemic 3: Revenge of the Boomers” with Diesel, Denzel, Neeson, Willis, Freeman, Stallone, Schwarzenegger and “Sharknado”

“Dolittle,” which according to Ellen is an overlooked children’s classic about my work ethic at home.

“Outbreak” about an acne outbreak caused by evil dermatologists.

“Idiocracy” a sci fi thriller that predicted the present moment with uncanny accuracy. Nostradamus gives it two decomposed thumbs-up.

Try crafting. We made a St. Fauci candle. It’s lit.

Tomorrow we will probably paint happy faces on our masks, talk about the upcoming depression, how to dress for it, will there still be a country, how to set Joe Exotic’s Tiger Park as your virtual background on Zoom and how long will it be before the president asks if the Arizona sun is the same sun as the regular sun.

Stay safe, stay well, stay sane. The Lysol’s in the microwave.

Fitz's Opinion: Seeking refuge from the virus in our desert wilderness

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I was a refugee seeking refuge from the asylum in my rearview mirror, escaping into the embrace of the Tucson Mountains. I promised my scruffy self my furlough would be a restorative break requiring only my camelback and my two favorite walking sticks. A hike a day keeps the chattering world at bay.

When NPR news barked from the car radio I spun the dial to avoid the knowing. Not this week. Up ahead a rusty pickup swerved with the same ferocity to dodge a vulture feasting on roadkill. The hand lettering on the rear window read, ”Will swap TP for weed.” Tough times for us all.

Before I knew it I was hiking among the Great Ironic Spring of 2020, the most beautiful spring I have ever seen. Indifferent to our suffering, the natural world is ablaze with color and life. When have these familiar hillsides brought forth a more glorious field of native wildflowers?

“Perhaps, mistaken man,” coos the mourning dove, “the penstemons, brittle bushes and fairy dusters are bouquets of condolence.”

On a high ridge I’m eye to beak with three pterodactyl-sized vultures elegantly floating on thermals. My journalist mind chatters questions. My phone tempts me with answers. I abandon the zen moment. I google, a prisoner of the restless, furtive monkey mind.

“A group of turkey vultures is called a committee, a venue or a volt.”

I pocket my phone, squinting to follow the volt of vultures, descendants of dinosaurs driven to seek refuge in their primeval sky preserve by an ancient asteroid.

“Get video!” I resist the devil in this wilderness, the digital temptation, and instead, I silently swoop with them in circles above the shadows of the clouds rolling across the desert floor below. They vanish behind a distant range of ragged mountains.

Fools say we’ve peaked.

It is not a single peak. Experts say it is a sawtoothed mountain range we must cross in the months and years ahead.

I see everything as an analogy for another thing.

Masked hikers up ahead give me more than six. “How are you folks?”

“Good. You?”

“Paranoid. Deluded. Beautiful day. Nice mask!”

I try not to exhale as I walk past. Atop the first peak I rest to catch my breath and wonder if my lungs could survive an assault by this virus.

The golden poppies at my feet are not opium poppies. Only their beauty is addictive. So is thinking. Monkey mind starts juggling. Opium poppies. Heroin. Quick fix. Chloroquine. “Chloroquine Study aborted in Brazil after deaths.” A news item among the hundreds pin balling in my brain.

I turned off the news alerts on my phone. All I want to hear is the wind.

I add a tiny golden flower to the doll-sized bouquet in my water bottle holster, a posy I’m assembling to present to Ellen when I return home.

What did the children sing? “Ring around the rosy, pockets full of posies.”

My bouquet offers no antidote to plagues. Only distraction.

“Ashes, ashes,” we sang. “We all fall down.” The trail becomes a narrow ledge. I will not fall.

A sign near beautifully crafted stone stair steps lectures me as I catch my breath. FDR created the Civilian Conservation Corps in ’33 to provide jobs for millions. A dollar a day.

How many barrels of oil could that buy? I walk on. Happy days are not here again. There is no New Deal savior. Only this daunting, rocky trail. By now Moses would have reached Sinai. This splendid trail galls like Golgotha and dazzles like Eden. From the summit this heathen shall see the Promised Land, Gates Pass, Picacho, Wasson and Golden Gate. I listen to my breathing. I surrender to the beauty that is in front of me at this moment. I commit this vista to memory.

I think of the health-care workers, the out-of-work, the clerks, the stockers, the responders, the sick, the dying, the lonely who deserve to be where I am right now, in the sun, free from fear, free from the struggle, free from the suffering, surrounded by the unnerving quiet of this ironic spring.

Down below a vulture dines on death. Repelled, I’m immune to the irony that I belong to the species that worships mammon over mothers, profits over people, pharisees over the least. In our national wilderness no one will turn these stones to bread. Or masks or ventilators. Or hearts that beat with empathy and compassion. In the valley I hear a twig and stop. A young desert tortoise crosses my path, a small marvel, persisting. If only we could hibernate in our shells through this viral season and stir on a more pleasing day.

I returned from the trail, got in my car and drove in sublime silence among 10,000 saguaros, free of rancor, rumor and chatter, windows down, blasting past the trill and dirge of the mourning doves who mourn for us all.

Fitz's Opinion: My Arroyo Cafe friend Lurlene lands a job at a grocery store

Lurlene texted me. “I got a job at a grocery store!”

We arranged to meet up at Reid Park. “I’ll be the guy by the lake with the bandana and the barbecue mitts, holding the bullhorn. There’ll be a sanitized bullhorn on the ground 20 feet away from me. No exhaling.”

Operating a bullhorn with barbecue mitts is not easy. I pulled the trigger on the bullhorn and squawked, “How’s it goin’ at the grocery store, Lurlene?”

“Scary as hell. Every customer wants to get in my face to tell me what they just learned on TV about the virus. If I want bad news I’ll look in the mirror when I get home. I did learn somethin’ the other day. They don’t like it when you nap on the empty shelves in the grocery store. Don’t laugh, darling. I was wiped out. A very handsome National Guardsman, making a racket stocking shelves, woke me up. There’s something hot about a fella in uniform wearing a mask and gloves.”

I needed the laugh. My stockpile of corn cobs weren’t selling well on the personal hygiene black market. According to Lurlene toilet paper actually exists.

I was relieved to hear this because since the pandemic I have become a Charmin Scholar Emeritus. Lurlene asked me, “When this is over are you going to apply for a grant from the Cottonelle Foundation to pursue your interest in Toilet Paper Studies at the Scott Tissue Academy?”

Very funny, Lurlene.

I no longer say “Howdy” when a stranger is approaching. I now say, “Who goes there? Friend or infected foe?”

If the sidewinder keeps coming I tell ’em, “Heads up. I could be an asymptomatic carrier shedding droplets like a June monsoon over Toltec.”

Wore my bandana over my nose and mouth into the bank yesterday. Poor tellers. No protection. Working close to each other. Fertile ground for plague. Three other customers were wearing bandanas. We looked like bank robbers from the 1890s.

At the grocery store I grabbed the cart, wiped the handle from left to right, sweeping away the microbes. Cart filled, I picked up toothpaste. Decided I didn’t want it after all. Didn’t put it back. Bought it, took it home with the rest of the grub and goods. I’m not spreading this plague. Tossed the box. Wiped down the tube. Placed it in the medicine cabinet. Where we keep the thermometers and anti-inflammatory meds. Just in case.

Why is this the most beautiful spring? Why is the natural world bursting with celebration while we mourn our fate? Such cruel irony. The showy wildflowers and lush new growth could care less about our viral misery. Like Rosa’s daughter Monica said, “Orale! The ecosystem we trashed is mocking us.”

I logged on the computer. Elena, one of our favorite waitresses, and an applicant for unemployment, was Live on Facebook, and ranting.

“Call it what you want. Kung Flu. China Virus. Boomer Flu. Revenge of the Planet. COVFEFE 2020. You’re all wrong . It’s COVIDIOT-45.” “This is an awesome sci-fi thriller we’re in — like ‘Independence Day’ — with zillions of extras dying and a pretend president who can’t act for the life of him. Thank God it ain’t real, right, ladies? Hijole!” South-side hearts bubbled up across her screen.

I talked to my daughter online. She said, “Those PBS home schooling programs are going to save this parent’s sanity.”

Having raised three I nodded.

I texted Lurlene a pic of myself reading “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Lurlene texted me she’s re-reading a book she read when she was a kid. “‘Diary of Anne Frank.’ That poor smart beautiful girl. At least for us there will be life after the attic.”

I nodded, shut off my phone and computer and went for a long walk. Alone.

Fitz's Opinion: Remembering Punch Woods

Punch was a handsome living sermon with a silver ponytail.

When I married in 2011, I asked my old friends Punch and Casey Woods to send me a picture from their wedding more than half a century ago because my bride and I wanted to create a slideshow of images of enduring commitment for our reception.

Sure enough, Charles “Punch” Woods sent us an iconic image of the ultimate hippie couple setting out to imitate Christ in a VW long before the Summer of Love.

In 1418, in a stone cold world lit by torches, Thomas a Kempis penned “The Imitation of Christ.” In the 60s, many aimed equally high.

Punch, 82, fell off his horse, died Wednesday and made me sob. The lucky man was married 59 years to the same fine woman, a woman I met a century ago when she invited this cartoonist to address her middle school students at Safford K-8.

Lean, energetic, full of life and love for her students I wondered what spring Casey Woods was tapping. Over the years I saw firsthand how she and Punch nurtured each other’s spirits with relentless humor. Casey is one hell of an impressive matriarch, a delightfully snarky and energetic force for good.

Casey, what a glorious run of good deeds you two have done together. The waters continue to ripple out.

Around about two-thousand years ago, or so, Paul, who became Saul, fell from his horse on a road to Damascus. Legend has it his redeemer came to him and assigned him a mission to feed men’s souls. Punch was always on a mission, inspired by the credo a reformed tax collector once heard a sage carpenter speak into the ear of history. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Punch began in this desert with Tucson Metropolitan Ministries and ended up shepherding the Community Food bank in seasons of plenty and seasons of want. Mostly want.

In another desert the devil said to a Nazarene, “If you are God’s son turn this stone into bread.” In spite of his hunger the son of man informed Lucifer, “Man does not live by bread alone.”

Punch devoured the bread of life. Punch had the gritty kind of grace that drives men into the deserts of want. Into the poverty of Mexico. Into the hunger of Arizona’s underbelly. Into building a food bank in this wilderness.

And lo, Punch built it brick by brick, like a fever dream Mennonite-Amish barn builder, with the same charm and vigor with which a young Sidney Poitier “built him a chapel!” in a fictional desert that looked suspiciously like east Tucson in the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field.”

Every day of his life you sensed that Punch considered the lilies of the field, how they grew. He knew they toiled not, neither did they spin. Punch knew God would provide as long as you worked at it 24/7. I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the humble soul of Punch Woods.

I like to imagine Punch humming the spiritual “Amen” to himself with every square foot he added to the Community Food Bank.

“Singing in the temple, talking with the elders Who marveled at His wisdom.

See Him at the seaside, talking with the fishermen And made them disciples.”

Punch brought disciples of all faiths and no faiths to service at his food bank. The man was a gifted fisher of men and women when it came to fishing for favors, blessings, Mitzvahs, good deeds, kindnesses for the Lord’s children, those in want, the least, those we shall have with us always.

We all have stories of the time we were cajoled, hooked and snared into performing acts of virtue by the Old Pueblo’s pony-tailed pied piper of altruism.

Before I knew it I was cranking out a bazillion caricatures of local celebs to accompany their recipes for a recipe book that Punch had concocted as a fundraiser. “Padre Kino’s Cookbook.” It did well.

“Marching in Jerusalem! Over palm branches, In pomp and splendor!

See Him in the garden, praying to His Father. In deepest sorrow.

Led by Pilate, then they crucified Him, But He rose on Easter!”

These days Punch called to mind a cross between a white-haired Peter Fonda and a west-side Fred Rogers. At lunch we talked about the world, the suffering and Mexican comic books. As I listened I basked in the reassuring lamp of my friend’s abiding kindness. Punch kept his lamp lit even in darkness.

Thank you for the Easter sermon you struggled to live every day of your beautiful life, Punch.

Peace, love and joy. Now that’s mantra, brother.

Fitz's Opinion: The Arroyo Cafe is open for carry-out orders and shout outs

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I missed seeing my friends down at The Arroyo Cafe. We stay connected online. On Monday Carlos shot me an email. “Sad about Richard Elías. Good man.”

“Sad about the rest home. All those people.” We repeat the news of the day to each other endlessly.

I sent a group email to Rosa, Carlos, Romero, Lurlene, Elena, Phil Arroyo and Frank. “Have you all noticed the world is falling quiet? Some days all I hear outside my door is the sound of songbirds and the wind. Almost no cars. The streets are growing still.”

Lurlene replied to all, “We can hear roosters in the morning clear across the barrio. Did you hear the Grand Canyon was closed?”

Rosa responded with a weeping emoji. “They need it to hold the nation’s tears.”

Sour Frank told us he finds hearing Southern Pacific roar into town on schedule is comforting. “Next to an empty I-10.”

I replied, “It’s like it’s 1896 out there.”

Sour Frank corrected me. “1348.”

Carlos and I chatted on FaceTime on Thursday. Carlos, Mister Macho, shocked me when he confessed he was scared. “I feel powerless, amigo.”

When I’m on a turbulent flight I look at the flight attendant’s face for the smile that reassures me you’ll survive this, the plane will land and you will be OK. I gave him my best flight attendant’s smile.“You aren’t powerless, my friend. You are saving lives right now. You are stopping this virus.”

We’re all scared. As long as you stay at home, wash your hands, practice distancing, and are very, very, very careful you will make it to the other side of this. “I hear your fear, brother. We are going to walk through this valley of death together. The entire world. This will change us. We will save ourselves and with hard-earned wisdom and unity we will save our planet. And one day I will say to you, in person, I’d like more sour cream on that burrito.”

On my walk later that day I saw people chatting outside in tight circles. A killer virus is on the loose and they’re playing “Tag, you’re infected.” I saw kids playing a basketball game. Each foul shook loose a mist of corona virus droplets that could kill their parents or grandparents. I saw geezers sharing golf carts and microbes. I saw “one last swim in the community pool with our friends” in a microbial soup.

I ate in my garden and envied the bees working, dancing and buzzing with each other. Absence makes the heart envy social insects.

I saw Rosa on Tuesday when I ordered breakfast to go. I pulled up across the street from the Arroyo Cafe, honked and rolled down my window. I prefer to stay 18 feet away from folks, tripling my odds. I plucked the bag of warm, delicious Arroyo Cafe grub off the end of Rosa’s pitchfork and set it down on the seat next to me. I took my slingshot out of the glove compartment and fired my debit card into Rosa’s catcher’s mitt. “Rosa. I like those surgical gloves. Been performing appendectomies on burritos all morning?”

Who was I to talk? I was wearing matching a bandanna, goggles and a pair of “Kiss the Cook” barbecue mitts. (If any reader is dumb enough to actually start using barbecue mitts for protection against this deadly horrible terrifying virus then all I have to say is two words: natural selection.)

She came back outside and presented me my receipt to sign on a nail on the end of a 10-foot pole with a pen dangling from a string.

I was not touching that plague-riddled deadly quill. “You shouldn’t do that, Rosa. Spreads the virus. Hold on. I got one.” Being a cartoonist I had 17 pens of varying quality, length, color, and nib durability scattered in all my pockets to choose from. I signed it.

Before leaving I had to ask. “How’s it goin’? You OK?”

“We’re good. Learned something new today. It’s amazing how much Lysol Disinfectant my kid’s swimming pool blaster soaker bazooka can hold. See you tomorrow.”

“Best to Carlos. Love to all of ya.’”

“Love you, too. Elbow tap.” We’re all telling each other we love each other these days.

At home, after I washed my hands like the otter at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on an all-espresso regimen, I marked my calendar. On Wednesday I’d return to the Arroyo Cafe for more comfort food.

Fitz's Opinion: The humor sustaining us in the face of this great adversity

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

On my Facebook page I asked my cyber chums to share some of the humor they’re relying on to get by in these dark times. My granddaughter, Emma, liked this one: “Why don’t ants get sick? Because they have little ant-y bodies.”

Joe Rider commented: “The amount of coronavirus jokes is worrying scientists who fear it might become a pundemic.”

Hoarding’s a favorite online topic. “They said a mask and gloves were enough to go to the grocery stores. They lied, everybody else had clothes on.”

Dumb jokes are the comfort food of the humor starved.

Tom Reavus shared this jewel: “Ollie grabs the last pack of toilet paper on the store shelf, and a customer says, ‘Hey that’s mine.’

Ollie replies, ‘Tell you what, let’s take turns kicking each other in the groin. Whoever is left standing gets the TP.’

The customer agrees and stands ready for Ollie’s kick. Ollie’s first kick sends the customer to the floor, reeling in agony.

‘Ooh, aah, ooh’, he groans, but, after a minute, or so, he pulls himself up and says, ‘OK, my turn.’ Ollie turns away and says, ‘Nah, you can keep the toilet paper.’

One online poster suggested,“You’ll never run out of toilet paper if you follow this one step. Go to the store daily and buy a single candy bar. Make sure to ask for a receipt. Daily TP problem solved.“

Don’t do that. Please stay home.

Elliott Glicksman messaged me. “I’m at senior hour at Whole Foods. Made a couple of bucks on the way in selling fake IDs to 58-year olds.”

Jeani Burins finally lost it in Albertsons. “Saw a man whose cart was full to the brim with hand sanitizers, baby wipes, soaps! Everything that people need!

I called him selfish, and started throwing a full-on guilt trip at him for all the elderly people and moms who need these types of things. Told him he should be freaking ashamed of himself!

Then he said: ‘Ma’am, are you done? Cause I really need to get back to filling the shelves now.’”

Who’s paranoid? Who hasn’t seen this meme? “I used to cough to hide a fart. Now I fart to hide a cough.” Avoid the embarrassment. Stay home.

Trivial humor offers the relief of distraction from misery. Observe the struggles of the sports deprived: “Day 6 of no sports. Watching birds fighting over worms. Cardinals lead the Bluejays 3-1.”

Howard Play commented, “Day 2 without sports. Found a lady sitting on my couch. Apparently she’s my wife. She seems nice.” Practice social distancing, lover boy.

Hand-washing hundreds of times a day like raccoons on speed is a popular topic. “Wash your hands like you just ate a bag of Cheetos and are about to crochet with white yarn.”

Becca Carroll offered this classic:

“Virus: Knock, knock.

Human host: Who’s there?

Virus: COVID-19.

Host: COVID-19, Who?

Virus: ‘Glad you asked. Wash your damn hands!’

I believe that’s an official CDC recommendation.

Cricket Grantham’s original lyrics, inspired by the Mickey Mouse Club song, are ideal for hand-washing:

“Stay inside and wash your hands across the whole US.

C-O-R…O-N-A…V-I-R-U-S!

Together we can stay apart and flatten out this mess!

C-O-R…O-N-A…V-I-R-U-S!

Wash your hands.

(Stay Inside!)

Wash your hands.

(Stay Inside!)

For one month let’s just do whatever’s best!

Come along and sing this song:

Let’s flatten out this mess!

C-O-R…O-N-A…V-I-R-U-S”

Some are NSFWfH. Not Safe For Working from Home. Like this faux headline: “COVID-19 Hits Porn Hub, subscribers lament ‘Just not Same with Haz Mat Suits’” When it comes to sheltering-in-place the humor is outside the box: “Sorry. All I have are inside jokes.” Ouch.

Many of us are not home alone. “Day 3 of home school, two kids have been suspended for fighting and the teacher was fired for drinking on the job”

Jokes vent frustration. “If the schools are closed too long, the parents are going to find a vaccine.”

Jokes express optimism there will be life after this pandemic.“Why is my sister’s name Paris, dad?”

“Because we conceived her in Paris.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“No sweat, Quarantine.”

As for the virus itself? A meme answers, “Any fool could have told you eating bats would have consequences. Just ask Ozzy Osbourne.”

And any fool can tell you when you stop laughing is when you have lost hope. We will never lose hope. And this won’t be easy. I’m with Andy Crouch on this. “Honestly, I hadn’t planned on giving this much up for Lent.”

One thing we will not give up in the trying days ahead is our sense of humor.

Fitz's Opinion: Working from home on the range can be strange

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

I started working from home during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 so I have some advice for you who will be working from home.

Many famous people work from home. Queen Elizabeth works from home. Heck, even the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, once worked from home. You’ll be fine.

The No. 1 perk of working from home is the freedom to sing without co-workers staring at you like you’ve lost your maracas. Right now, as I’m writing, I’m singing the COVID-19 anthem, the great Police song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” to my cats.

Fact: Working from home you will come to resemble Tom Hanks in “Castaway.” Men, too.

Before you name a volleyball “Wilson” be mindful of staying connected with your colleagues. My colleagues and I chat once a day. I enjoy that moment of connection with my colleagues more than I savor counting my corn cobs.

If you’re going to work from home, here’s what you have to look forward to:

Day 1: Cool. I’m working from home!

Day 2: My computer hates me.

Day 3: First client call on the john.

Day 4: Day 4 of same sweatpants.

Day 5: Who are these children smearing hand sanitizer on the cat?

Day 6: When does cabin fever give way to cannibalism?

Day 7: We need toilet paper.

You’ll be fine. (I hoarded corncobs. Email me for bargain rates.)

My home studio is in a spare bedroom. When I told my family years ago I’d be “working from home” they insisted I consider “working from room.”

Wise.

1. Set down workspace boundaries.

2. Set down work time boundaries.

3. Set down the toilet paper.

My home studio has an existing internet line, a standing desk, a good closet and a window. The window keeps me sane. My standing desk keeps me fit. My closet keeps my corn cobs secure.

Your home and family and the news will offer you endless distractions. You are going to have to prioritize. That’s what I shouted at my telecommuting bride when she disturbed my work focus by screaming, from her new home office, in the room next door, some nonsense about a “rattler” under her desk.

Some telecommuters will use any excuse to procrastinate, to avoid work.

Ration the distractions. The fridge. Cable TV. Feral children. The belts that look like rattlers.

Tip: I posted armed guards in my kitchen with instructions to shoot me if I filch one more Oreo. Costly but effective.

Cable TV news is my distracting addiction. I can quit watching any time. I tell Brian Williams, Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow the same thing when we’re looping alone at 3 a.m.

Working at home calls for great self-discipline, great self-care and someone named Ellen who loves you enough to ration your cable remote like it’s methadone.

Identify your favorite neighborhood walks. Time them. Up and around the school is a half hour. To the strip mall and back is an hour. To the bunker out back where you stockpiled your toilet paper and semi-autos is a nice 10-minute stroll. Need a 15-minute break from work? You know where to walk. Walks are great for mindful meditation and maintaining emotional balance. And spying on your neighbor.

Or as we call it in the Age of COVID-19, “checking in” on your neighbor.

When your workday ends, disconnect. If there’s a crisis, they’ll call. Schedule and limit your digital check-ins. And rather than checking your webcam video of your toilet paper inventory constantly, do it at regularly scheduled intervals.

Tip: Spray-paint “Family first” on the wall of your workspace over your work computer.

Here’s a typical schedule for working at home:

7:00 a.m. Wake. Slop the piglets.

7:37 a.m. Kiddie craft time! Macaroni QUARANTINE signs

7:45 a.m. Amazing commute down hall. Check email.

1:00 p.m. Urge rug rats to scavenge food between sofa cushions

4:37 p.m. Finish checking emails. Realize it’s 4:37 p.m.

4:38 p.m. Solve Shrieking Child Mystery

4:45 p.m. Order carry-out

4:49 p.m. Let’s all make 6-foot-long “social Distancing wands” out of pipe cleaners!

5:01 p.m. Pluck Lego out of 3-year-old’s nose. While boss is on hold, little Timmy deletes your desktop. Wild javelinas ransack your workspace.

5:02 p.m. Beat back javelinas by throwing toilet paper rolls at them.

Eventually you’ll find your rhythm. No whining. People are dying. You’re safe in your own home. You’re a patriot and a good neighbor. You got this. This will end. I would have spent more time on an inspiring upbeat ending but I see it’s time for my scheduled walk. And, as I like to say, you got this.

Fitz's Opinion: Down at the Arroyo Cafe there was only one topic

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

A pour of Rosa’s brew always came with a news item. “These idiots! It’s not like the flu. It’s way more contagious than the flu!”

Doc, an Arroyo Cafe regular, cleared his throat. “Flu kills one-tenth of 1%. This thing is anywhere from 20 to 30 times more lethal than the flu.”

Doc sipped. “Is it contagious? Day one in Italy, two people show up sick. Two weeks later you have 17 sick people. By March 6, 3,916 people have it. Last Wednesday it was 12,462 cases.”

We all exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and vowed to look out after each other. Rosa sounded like our mother: “If any of you feel sick, see a doctor, stay out of my cafe and stay in your casa. And don’t drink bleach. Or buy snake oil. Or think tequila has enough alcohol to sanitize your hands.”

Doc gave Rosa a thumbs-up. “Bookmark the CDC on your laptops and phones, amigos.”

I raised my coffee cup aloft. “How about a toast, my friends? To our beloved Book Festival.”

The chorus answered, “To our beloved Book Festival.”

Sour Frank thought canceling was the right move. “Like the thief said when given the choice of taking the bank safe or stealing the golden sari — ‘better safe than sari’. ”

Silence.

Lurlene snarled through her poorly fitting mask,“Our president certainly calmed the stock market with his reassuring speech on Wednesday.”

Doc was relentless. “We have to prepare for the approximately 30 million Americans who are predicted to require hospitalization and ventilators. We are not ready for those numbers.”

Gulps.

I stood. “Another toast! To councilman Koz. For organizing the meeting to help prepare the brave operators of our homeless shelters for what is about to hit. This is our moment to care for the least among us. We’re Tucson. We got this. Stop touching your face, Frank.”

Sour Frank pulled his finger out of his nose — “Damn it”— and stormed to the boys room to wash his hands.

Doc said, “We’ll have to mobilize a preemptive collective public health effort that will be massive. We have to change our behavior. We’ll have to practice the same hygiene habits.”

I said, “Watching the myth of the rugged individual die in a hundred emergency rooms may serve as motivation.”

Doc asked me to hold that thought. “After the planet has been ravaged for a year-and-a-half, a vaccine will be produced. Who’ll get it first? In the movies the National Guard always gets called out.”

Guardsman Sour Frank gulped.

Doc’s phone rang. We all eavesdropped. Even the rattlers on the porch. Doc hung up. “I got asked to help down at the hospital. I gotta go. Prepping.”

We tapped elbows. Doc promised to shake my hand next spring.

I thought of all the heroes to come. Cops. Firefighters. EMTs. Public Health Docs. Nurses. The lab techs. The scientists. The community organizers. I ate in silence and watched Rosa wipe down the menus.

Elena, the new waitress, was on her phone. “The school’s closing? What am I supposed to do with my kids?” I could hear her panic. “I don’t know if I’ll have a job a month from now!”

Lurlene walked over to her. “We got your back.”

I studied the worn dollar bills that Rosa pulled out of the register and pressed into my hand. Coronavirus? I walked past customers waiting to wash their hands in the restroom. I elbow tapped the smudged fingerprints on the door, hopped in the car, wiped my hands and steering wheel and searched for news of the virus on the car radio like a defiant Londoner during the Blitz.

I spent the day reaching out to my neighbors, forming a support group of sorts. The beautiful couple next door lives on the edge of the gig economy. Wonderful retirees on the other side are in the vulnerable age group. What if one of us has to quarantine at home? How can we help? Got our number?

“Don’t touch your face with your hands” reminds me too much of “Please don’t touch the art,” which always triggered a desire to touch the art (I’ve touched two Van Goghs). “Keep your hands below shoulder level” is so much easier for me.

Late in the afternoon, as we hung laundry, I teased my wife about how this practice could be fun. She rolled her eyes so I kissed her. We looked at each other for the longest time, wondering how much longer this embrace will be safe.

See you around at the Arroyo Cafe.

Fitz's Opinion: Tucson has survived worse calamities than this viral varmint

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

We’re a crossroads for the world. Eventually a Tucson hospital will treat a coronavirus patient. It’s as inevitable as summer heat. We’re Tucson. We got this.

The only thing Tucsonans freak out over is snow. See a snowflake in this town and the next thing you hear are sirens. Snow’s apparently the only thing that freaks us out. Thank God the coronavirus is just a disease, and not snow, because, if it’s just a disease, we got this. Buzzards fear us.

We have been living here at the base of these beautiful mountains for more than 10,000 years. We killed mastodons here. We fought over this gulch with war clubs and sabers and arrows and lances and canons and muskets and knives and pistols. Two centuries ago we were lynching horse thieves.

We survived the earthquake of 1887.

We weathered the flood of ’83.

We survived the 1918 Flu Pandemic.

We survived the Great Depression.

We survived two errant military jets slamming into our town.

In this harsh place there blooms a defiant, resolute and united people.

We saw it when Tucsonans responded to 9/11, shoulder to shoulder, in Kino Stadium, more defiant, resolute and united than ever.

And again when Tucsonans emerged from the horror of January 8 equally defiant, resolute and united.

We Tucsonans have been tested. A virus? We got this.

If it comes we won’t be wringing our hands. We’re going to be washing them one bazillion times a day and putting them to work, healing the sick, comforting their families, supporting our medical community and wrangling this nasty virus until it’s history. We’re Tucson. We got this. Sleeves rolled up, sanitizer holstered. Vigilant as Harris’s Hawks. Attitude sunny.

The hardest thing for people as friendly as Tucsonans to learn will be the art of keeping our hands to ourselves for a while. No handshakes. No abrazos. No hugs. Give up a Tucson smile instead, amigos.

We know in our bones you medical folks are risking your lives for us on the front lines. We will listen to your expert guidance. In turn, trust us with the truth. We got this.

We will reach out to our neighbors today to see how everybody’s doing because that’s what we do.

If we experience the symptoms, a cough and fever, we will seek care. And here’s the part that might make you flinch: we will accept quarantine. We all must prepare for the protocol that will protect our greater community. I’ve already set aside a room at my home where we can isolate a sick family member. My wife has reserved a pack rat den out back for my possible convalescence.

Is she trying to tell me something? My Tucson girl has got this under control. She’s in charge of sanitizing doorknobs and I’m in charge of sealing off our teenager’s room like an ICU. He’s online so much he won’t notice anything until I knock on his door next January with an “all clear.”

We will wash our hands thoroughly, marking time by singing songs, or in my case, inventing limericks:

A virus came to Tucson that stinks

Now we’re all living next to our sinks

We’re all washing our hands

And canceling plans

And bookmarking CDC links

At this time I’d like you all to raise your right hand nowhere near your face and repeat after me, “I won’t touch my nose or my pie hole with unwashed hands until this viral varmint is deader than jackrabbit roadkill. I will leave the masks on store shelves to the medical folks and the neighbors at high risk for infection. I’ll practice shaking hands with my eyes. I’ll protect my health, and keep our local economy alive, at the same time. And when Fitz catches the virus I’ll let him recuperate on my roof in my swamp box cooler. He deserves better than a pack rat den.”

To all our local business folks who are worried about the economic impact of this public health rodeo know that your customers and neighbors will be mindful of your difficulty. We got your back. My friend Bruce Nevins runs a retail business. “I just ordered a thousand gloves so we can keep working.”

We’re Tucson. We got this.

After next winter, when this is most likely behind us, I look forward to shaking your hand in a crowded park on a sunny day and congratulating you. “Well done, Tucson. Abrazos.”

Meanwhile here are online public health sources you should rely on to stay informed:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

Pima County Health Department:

https://webcms.pima.gov/cms/One.aspx?portalId=169&pageId=527452

World Health Organization:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus

And this excellent online source for fact-checking dubious claims — Snopes:

https://www.snopes.com/collections/new-coronavirus-collection/

Fitz's Opinion: Wolf Brown, a rising Native-American comedy star shines over Arizona

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Standing at my front door, my bespectacled buddy, Wolf Brown, resembles a cross between a Samoan fullback and Harry Potter. “It’s OK. I get it. People aren’t used to seeing a well-dressed Native American unless he’s standing on the other side of a blackjack table.”

When he isn’t managing all the banquets for three Gila River Indian Tribe casinos, Wolf, age 38, is a rising star on the comedy circuit. Describing himself as “Pima and Papago,” Wolf is known for his trademark bow ties. Such a dapper dude, on stage, and at work.

“I tie them myself.”

Nerd.

Wolf is from Bapchule, on the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix.

Recently Wolf dropped by after a very long week on the road.

Wednesday: Wolf headlined the “Native Tribal Brothers” show.

Thursday: Wolf killed at the Casey Jones Grill comedy night in Phoenix.

Friday: Wolf wowed a Native audience in Flagstaff.

Saturday: Wolf headlined at the Elks Theater in Prescott.

And on Sunday he was killing it on my back porch.

In the midst of all of this, Wolf makes time to be a loving dad to three beautiful kids, Harmony, age 5; Melody, age 10; and Lloyd, age 11. Wolf briefly gave up his comedy career to care for his beloved Harmony until her spinal muscular atrophy was under control.

Wolf is a kind, philosophically thoughtful man. “I’m a stoic.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you’re a regular Sitting Buddha.”

Wolf’s laugh is a musical chuckle loaded with contagious mirth and mischief.

“Were you funny as a kid?” I asked.

“I was constantly roasted.” Crack your head open and you’ll get ridiculed back to health. “I was a gifted student, teased for reading all the time. I was called an ‘apple.’” Red outside. White inside. “Socially awkward as a kid, I always felt different.”

Wolf artfully bridged those worlds with humor.

“Is your name really Wolf?”

No answer. Just a mischievous smile.

“Hardest thing about comedy?”

“Learning to make eye contact. On the Rez you never look someone in the eye unless you’re bulldogging for a fight.”

Felipe Esparza, a popular Latino comedian, gave Wolf his start. “Esparza told me, ‘Go and do comedy for a year. Do that and you can open for me.’ So I did comedy for a year. Felipe was true to his word. I opened for him. It was amazing!”

“I’m Gila Indian. Back then I called myself ‘The Gilarious Wolf’. Get it? So funny I Pima pants.”

Wolf is a prolific joke writer. He showed me his briefcase stuffed with notebooks, filled with artfully constructed jokes. “When I thought about doing comedy I asked my white friends what they knew about Indians. They said, ‘Geronimo … wagon burners … bows and arrows. What do I know about arrows? I worked at Target for a year.”

Wagon burners?

The first native comic who inspired Wolf was Charlie Hill. Iroquois. Sharp. Raw. Biting. Richard Pryor gave Hill a break in 1977 and put him on his show. We YouTubed Charlie Hill.

You should too.

Wolf showed me a video of his recent club performance. The audience howled with laughter at the big man in the bow tie.

The ideas for bits come easy. “I’ll be working in my suit and tie and a tourist will ask me, ‘Do you live in a tepee? Where is your long hair? What is your spirit animal?’”

“Really? People say that to you?” I pause. “So, ‘Wolf’, what’s my spirit animal?”

He unfurls his middle finger at me. “Bird.”

Oh snap. Writing jokes is as easy as tying a bow tie for Wolf.

“Bugs Bunny is 75. When I asked him, “What’s up, Doc?” he said, “My blood pressure.”

“Last week I binge-watched ‘Walking Dead’. Gunshots, abandoned cars, windows boarded up, the walking dead staggering home after a rough night out. I see that every day on the Rez.”

“I told my grandmother, ‘I’m sick, Grandma.’ She said, ‘Go see your uncle. He’s a medicine man.’ So I went to the Walgreens where he works.”

Last fall my friend, Dave Membrila, and I enjoyed an afternoon joking about the stereotypes we saw growing up here. Dave’s a middle school teacher, a comedian and a recovering mariachi. By the time we stopped laughing Dave and I had created my next Arroyo Cafe Radio Show, “Viva Tucson!” which will be performed March 8 at 2 p.m. at the historic El Casino Ballroom.

More than a fundraiser to honor the educator who nurtured mariachi music in Tucson, Dr. Alfredo Valenzuela, it’s a politically incorrect celebration of our borderlands heritage. Along with Mariachi Patron, The Festival band, Viva Dance, and plenty of celebrities, Wolf Brown will be joining us, bringing his wonderful humor to Tucson. All the way from Sacaton. Bow tie and all.

Fitz's Opinion: My annual State of the State of Cartooning Address

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

During the second World War, British cartoonist David Low was despised by Hitler because he relentlessly refuted the lies broadcast by the Nazi propaganda machine with every stark cartoon. We’re a long way from the age in which internationally applauded cartoonists such as Sir David Low were knighted for their heroic defense of liberty.

When I opened my annual trade journal, The American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Notebook, the bell tolled for my profession, page by page, cartoonist by cartoonist. This year our annual AAEC convention will convene in Ottawa, Ontario, with our Canadian colleagues because our numbers are so small we could meet in an abandoned Fotomat kiosk.

Political cartoonist Bruce Plante called me from Oklahoma when his paper, the Tulsa World, had just been acquired by Lee Enterprises. Needing reassurance I told him, “Lee values cartoonists.” When we began our careers four decades ago there were hundreds of us. Today there are 25 newspaper editorial cartoonists left drawing truth to power in the United States.

A lot of giants have been kicked to the curb. After winning the Pulitzer, Mike Keefe was laid off from the Denver Post. Pulitzer winner Steve Benson was laid off last year from the Arizona Republic. The Houston Chronicle, Knoxville News Sentinel and Indianapolis Star summarily jettisoned their beloved veteran cartoonists Nick Anderson, Charlie Daniel and Gary Varvel.

Most troubling, Rob Rogers, the popular political cartoonist of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was fired by a pro-Trump editor who replaced him with Steve Kelley, a cartoonist who once informed me the most oppressed group in America was white men. Rob relies on syndication and Patreon online subscription patrons to get by.

Scott Stantis has a pseudo-freelance arrangement with his Chicago Tribune. Pat Bagley’s Salt Lake Tribune miraculously survives because it’s owned by a nonprofit corporation. Jack Ohman’s Sacramento Bee is part of the McClatchy chain, which just filed for bankruptcy. My friend and Tucson resident, Chris Britt, formerly of the Illinois State Journal-Register and News Tribune of Tacoma, transitioned to creating children’s books to supplement his syndication earnings.

Syndication is no longer reliable career insurance. Luckily, I’m syndicated to over 700 sites worldwide by Cagle Cartoons. In my AAEC Notebook, Daryl Cagle notes that newspaper chains are consolidating their editorial staffs into one central staff that generates cookie-cutter editorials for the entire chain, adding, “Newspapers are shutting down editorial page staffs faster than they are dropping editorial pages.”

When I was a kid I didn’t listen when the Master Sergeant sarcastically encouraged me to consider a backup plan.

“Doing what?”

“Carving gargoyles. See all the cathedrals in the want ads — hiring stone masons? Your odds of finding work are just as bright, Sunshine.”

I’m glad I didn’t listen. I got lucky. I drew in the last century during the Golden Age of Print and my luck continued through this century’s turbulent transition to digital. These days when young cartoonists ask me for career advice I tell them, “Learn to carve gargoyles.”

It’s impossible for cartoonists to keep up with today’s relentless whirlwind of news. By the time we’ve inked, scanned and uploaded our cartoons our subject’s been eclipsed by 12 new scandals. By the time we upload our hand-rendered cartoon it’s been preceded online by a multitude of memes and YouTube rants; not to mention overshadowed by the comic observers of late night TV. We can see why the producer of “This American Life,” Ira Glass, derided editorial cartooning as “a 17th century medium.”

Ironically, practitioners of our dissed and slowly dying 17th century art form are still sufficiently feared by tyrants to get killed, imprisoned or banished in this darkening century. To the benefit of tyrannies too many regions have become news deserts.

Too many citizens are now completely dependent on the internet for their news, a treacherous cyberswamp teeming with toxic lies and divisive disinformation. The radical right’s war to sow mistrust of the critical mainstream media, which began in the ’70s, along with the rise of Limbaugh, and the billionaire-funded right-wing propaganda mills like Fox, coupled with algorithm-driven cybermanipulation, have all been effective at rendering our citizenry ill-informed and factionalized — two outcomes fatal to democratic republics.

Undaunted by these challenges this “fake news peddler” and “obscene excuse for a mudslinging hack” is proud to be in the honorable company of those persistent resisters labeled the “Enemy of the People” by fascist despots.

Legend has it that David Low had designs for an underground shelter behind his modest London home into which he had placed supplies, a drawing board and a printing press. If his beloved nation were to fall to Nazi occupation, Low had plans to smuggle his family out of the country while he would remain behind, in hiding, churning out anti-fascist cartoons and spreading sedition until his home land was free.

My kind of cartoonist.

Fitz's Opinion: Amy Klobuchar is this cartoonist's candidate of the minute

I am not a member of the Arizona Daily Star editorial board and thus, being my own cantankerous varmint, I am endorsing Amy Klobuchar for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination to run for the president of the United States against that rattlesnake, you-know-who, the one with the forked tongue and the orange gills. At least that’s how I feel today.

I know it’s early. But I’ve learned from watching Amy K that you have to strike when the time comes, like a bobcat diving on a pack rat faster than you can say, “I taut I taw a putty tat.” When all the candidates were twiddling their thumbs on the night of Iowa Debacle, and the pundits were filling airtime with blather and bilge, Klobuchar saw an opening in the news coverage and went out to speak on live TV, delivering a killer speech. She didn’t hesitate. She was decisive when her fellow candidates fretted over what to do.

In the New Hampshire debate she was equally decisive. She made me feel confident. Maybe it’s her wide prosecutor’s smile, baring teeth that call to mind the grin of great white shark that you do not want to go up against in a courtroom, a congressional race, a debate stage or a tank at Sea World. A Constitution-clutching, law-and-order mom from the Midwest, Amy’s a perfect contrast with the con man and the whole criminal cabal of Trump town.

I know. I’ve heard it. Senator Klobuchar has been described as mean to her staff. What a stinking load of sexist crap. Listen, piggies, if Klobuchar were a man the description “she’s mean to her staff” would read “she’s a demanding and uncompromising leader.” So stuff it, snowflakes.

Amy’s policy positions are centrist, which suits me fine. Give me a Clinton, a Truman or a Kennedy over a radical McGovern, Sanders, Goldwater or a Trump any time.

Amy performed best with college-educated white women. Perfect. I obey the college-educated white woman in my home or I end up sleeping outdoors with the javelinas. And yes, that musky fragrance is not my cologne. And yes, as sure as I believe kangaroo rats are not descended from kangaroos, I believe her message of economic and social justice will resonate with brown and black Americans.

When an earnest young student asked Klobuchar at a town hall if she favored free-college-for-all I was blown all the way into Santa Cruz County by her answer. She answered, “No.”

What? A direct answer?

Then she went on to logically explain her position, which I would have listened to if I hadn’t been stunned into paralytic shock from witnessing an American politician answer a question directly. It took my wife sticking my thumb in a socket to get me out of my flabbergasted stupor after that astonishing moment in American history.

I liked her practical Midwestern answer.

Unlike the rattler, she’s fluent in English. Klobuchar delivers positive, inspiring speeches, wherein she talks about decency, policy, patriotism, team work, FDR and grace. And it’s clear she relishes stomping the rattler.

I concede it would be a jarring challenge getting used to a president who didn’t lie every time his rattle rattled.

Klobuchar’s grandpa was a miner, her father a newspaper man and her mother a teacher. She wasn’t born to a racist gazillionaire like the reptile who was hatched with a silver spoon in his fangs. Unlike the con-man-in-chief she earned her life achievements with hard work borne out of working class values.

Because Klobuchar is the proud daughter of a recovering alcoholic, she has a profound personal understanding of the multiple addictions our nation must address. Because Klobuchar is a mom she has a personal understanding of the day-care issues, the choice issues, the health-care issues and the education issues that our nation must address. Because Klobuchar is a Midwestern moderate she can appeal to middle America, to the Rust Belt, to the Sun Belt and it’s clear she can handily trounce those who fight below the belt.

While the right clings to their Tiki torches, its past time for the moderates and lefties to pass their torches to the young generation.

Some nights when my beloved has tossed me outside to sleep with the javelinas I dream. Last night I dreamt Amy picked Mayor Pete as her running mate. What a joy it was to imagine Mayor Pete debating Mike Pence over the message of the Gospels and the latest Ukraine development. When I gleefully shouted, “Landslide!” the entire herd of javelinas stampeded right over me and ran off down the street, no doubt, to register to vote in Arizona’s March 17 primary.

Fitz's Opinion: A beautiful day to hike into a nearby canyon

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

My three favorite Tucson-area canyons for hiking are Sabino, Romero and Pima Canyon.

Catalina State Park’s Romero Canyon Loop Trail is where I go to jog, imagining myself a Paleolithic hunter in the wild, running, wheezing and stumbling past petroglyphs and amblers on horseback. A beautiful State Park fee is a bargain compared with a dull gym membership. I prefer lupines to locker rooms.

Sabino Canyon is where I go to walk and talk with my friends.

Pima Canyon is where I hike alone to get my “Jeremiah Johnson” fix, to savor splendid isolation broken only by the screech of Harris Hawks echoing through the canyon. I like to boorishly boast that when my time comes I’m bidding my loved ones “Happy trails” and hiking into a wild canyon to welcome the swift mercy of the elements.

Years ago I encountered a friend on the Pima Canyon trail who was there to spread his boy’s ashes on a hilltop overlooking the canyon, a testament to the timeless beauty of the place. “There could be no lovelier resting place.” Agreed.

This past Wednesday I bounded down and up Pima Canyon Trail. Walking under the modest bridge near the beginning of the trail I slowed to study the graffiti left by hundreds of visitors. Among the initials, spray-painted hearts, and declarations of love I saw “Vie est mort” scrawled in black.

“Life is death.”

 Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Circle of Life, whoever you were.

The December news of three mountain lions found feasting on human remains was horrifying.  The Arizona Game and Fish officers acted prudently when they killed the three guiltless cats. No one wants fearless cats who’ve tasted sapiens ranging near oft-travelled hiking trails. I assume the good officers took no pleasure in the grim task.

Around the time of the discovery of the remains, Daylan Thornton, 21, showed up at the Oro Valley Police Department with information related to a missing person’s inquiry. That missing person was Steven Mark Brashear, an older gentlemen who Thornton had accompanied from Oklahoma to Tucson. OVPD noticed Thornton was driving Brashear’s truck, which he claimed Mr. Brashear had given to him. Suspected of stealing the truck, Mr. Thornton was arrested on Jan. 4.

On January 22nd the Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced the human remains found in Pima Canyon were those of 66-year old Brashear.

Judging the deceased by his photo, Brashear looked like a very amiable man.

As I continued up the canyon I took note of the hundreds of saguaros who looked as if they stood ready to testify, their arms raised as if swearing to tell the truth about what happened to Brashear, I wondered if the poor man had simply walked in alone, stumbled and perished.  Or was he killed by a murderer who thought he’d conceal the evidence in the blue shadows of the canyon, dragging and heaving the deceased up and down the trail.

Today Thornton is out on bond.

No matter the good that poor Brashear may have accomplished in life, the first anecdote of his life story will be the lurid tale of becoming a feast for scavengers. May Mr. Brashear rest in peace.

From  “Grizzly Man”to “Jaws” to “The Revenant” grisly encounters with the wild fascinate us, reminding us of the struggle our barely upright forebears endured for epochs, hiding in the trees from claws and fangs in the night. I was at my drawing board last spring when a bobcat mother with three kittens, armed with impressive claws and fangs, ambled past my studio window. One of the kittens hopped up on the sill to peer inside my studio. I was close enough to see every lean muscle of the wild and beautiful cat whose mission in life was to claw protein into its digestive tract. As the French say on hiking trail walls, “Life is death.” I was grateful for the glass separating us.

The water is trickling in Sabino Canyon.  Catalina Park is green from the winter rains. Lizards are stirring and the the hillsides are lush. Pima Canyon reopened weeks ago. It’s beautiful weather for a hike. It is supposed to be 73 and sunny. Odds are good you won’t find any savage monsters on your hike in to Pima Canyon. All the savages I’ve ever observed, in this life, reside just past the trail entrance parking lot, down in our cities and towns, prowling among us.

Fitz's Opinion: When revolutions die and monarchs return where will we stand?

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” My devoted mom made me type that sentence over and over and over on our typewriter in hopes that I would learn how to type.

Fifty-years later I hunt and peck and the phrase, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” looms over my heart.

On Friday the Senate at the United States of America abandoned any pretense of truth-seeking, by rejecting eyewitness testimony, by agreeing to cover up the President’s corruption and by granting him immunity from oversight — thus unleashing a gloating tyrant.

Perhaps we deserve our fate. When it comes to civics we have been an inattentive people.

I have stood in somber reflection in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the crypt of General George Washington at Mount Vernon and the grim sarcophagus of Abraham Lincoln at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield. I never thought I’d kneel in sorrow before my mortally wounded republic.

I once held in my hand the contents of Abraham Lincoln‘s pockets the night he was assassinated. I have seen the tattered but enduring star-spangled banner that waved over Fort McHenry, Mark Twain’s writing desk and the very spot where Davy Crockett fell at the Alamo.

I thought I’d seen it all. But it’s nothing compared to what I saw in the poisoned well of the Senate this past week.

I have stood in Independence Hall, in Philly, where the Declaration of Independence was signed,  and where I was yelled at for trying to touch the Liberty Bell. I saw Appomattox where Lee surrendered to Grant and the union was preserved. I saw Yorktown where the British surrendered to Washington and a nation was born. And on January 31, 2020 I saw the dissolution of our union, and the surrender of our Constitution to by servile forces of a corrupt king.

When I saw our magnificent Constitution enshrined under glass this small town schoolboy thought he’d seen it all. When I stood in the street where JFK perished, the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. bled to death and in the bedroom where Lincoln died I thought I had seen our nation’s penultimate sites of unthinkable tragedy.

Yesterday the Senate of the United States became such a site.

I have stood at the feet of our patron saint, Lady Liberty. I never thought I’d see her nation reject her poetic ethos.

I stood where Hitler inspired a movement in Munich and in Paris, where triumphant allies marched, a decade later, under the Arc de Triomphe.  I never thought I’d see our nation appease a petty tyrant.

I own a chunk of the Berlin Wall. I never thought I’d see a day when a grinning Putin would own a piece of my democracy while one party remained servile.

I thought I’d seen it all. Yet I have never seen anything like what I saw Friday morning when our “Beacon-for-the-World” revolution fell to craven forces electing to return to rule by a monarch accountable only to his own conscience.

Mom was right. Now is the time for all good citizens  to come to the aid of their country. To resists and persist, to defend the rule of law. To demand a free and fair election. To rid us of corruption. To expose and reject dark money. To reject foreign interference. And to vigorously counter every disinformation campaign that will flood our nation’s discourse.

Thank you United States Representatives Adam Schiff, Jason Crow, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia, Hakeem Jeffries and Jerold Nadler for your unwavering devotion to our Constitution. Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and Washington and all the martyrs of 1776 would be proud of you.

The party that is covering up the president’s thuggish corruption does not resemble the party of my father, of Goldwater, or of Reagan. Loyal to a singular indispensable strong man it resembles no familiar party in recent history. Certainly not the “Law and Order” Party of Richard Nixon.

During the Impeachment Show Trial the airtight conservative bubble was on display for all to see, with “Everyone in the loop”, invulnerable to facts, endlessly spinning falsehoods, wing-nutty conspiracy theories and Russian intel inside the closed eco-system of  the right-wing spin machine, utterly oblivious to the will of The People.

Beware. The truth will come out.

As “Never Trumper” Republican strategist Rick Wilson once observed, “Everything Trump touches dies.” This week his accomplices placed his hands on the throat of our 244-year old democratic republic. And in November The People will remember.

And just when I thought I’d seen everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s fatal touch included one American political party.

Fitz's Opinion: The Arroyo Cafe diner and the Great Brawl of 2020

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

The Arroyo Cafe was as noisy as a herd of hysterical coyote pups yipping at each other over a fresh kill in a distant arroyo. Sour Frank had kicked it off. “Hey! I know who won the Iowa caucus.”

We answered like a cottonwood tree full of barn owls.

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Yeah, who?”

“Mike Bloomberg!” Sour Frank howled at his own joke.

My buddy McGrath says his campaign slogan should be, “Bloomberg: The real billionaire.”

Rosa slammed her coffee pot down. Romero, Frank, Carlos and Lurlene, the Trailer Park Queen. We all stared in shock. Trump had gotten inside her head again and Krakatoa had blown. “Can you believe the president gave the John Fitzgerald Kennedy ‘Medal of Freedom’— the same medal that was given to Rosa Parks, to Elie Wiesel and to Maya Angelou, for God’s sake!— to the man who said to a black lady, ‘Take that bone out of your nose and call me back?’”

Sour Frank winced. “Poor Rush has cancer! Have you libs no decency? What does any of it matter? Trump’s King! He was acquitted. You all wasted your time.” The whole diner fell silent. Half were simmering. The other half were indignant. Not me. I was hungry. I was hungry for bacon, scrambled eggs with a side of salsa, a flour tortilla and a refill with room for cream.

And then the stranger walked in. Heads turned to watch the mustachioed stranger lug his heavy briefcase toward the counter. He sat down in the seat between myself and Lurlene, ordered coffee and turned to see that every last one of us was staring at him in wonder, including Carlos in the kitchen.

He sighed. “Yes. I’m John Bolton. Nice to meet you. Now leave me alone. You want the truth? Order the damned book on Amazon. It’s $19.50. The truth will cost you $19.50. I got a mortgage and a mustache to maintain.”

I got in his face. “When you had the chance — why didn’t you speak out like — like a man?”

Bolton, calmly groomed his mustache. “Trump’s goons are after me. I’m being pelted with tweets, left and right. I’m more than a caricature. I may look like a cross between Wilford Brimley and a Canadian Arctic walrus to you but I am a human being.”

Carlos shouted from the kitchen, “I hear Mitt Romney is donating his spine to the Republican Party for further study. Where’s yours, Señor Bolton?”

Bolton patted his briefcase and shouted back. “In here! It’s the uncorrected galley proof of my memoir that pulls the trap door on the SOB. It’s worth three million alone.”

Rosa said, “Three million, huh?” She smiled and flashed her beautiful dark eyes at him. He was mesmerized. She leaned in close. He gulped. She said, “You’re Judas times 100,000. He only took 30 pieces of silver. And he wasn’t selling out his entire country!”

As the two stood up to bulldog each other, a rodeo between two strangers busted loose over by the cash register.

All I heard was, “That’s one too many ‘Okay, Boomer’ you whiny socialist millennial emo!”

At the same moment, “Where’s your green card, vato?” unleashed a brawl between two families sharing a table who fought with spoons, coffee mugs and a napkin dispenser harder than anyone’s skull. I saw blood as red as cherry salsa.

And thus began the great brawl of 2020.

All hell broke loose, like someone had thrown a family of bobcats into a javelina herd, inside a cafe, with windows to break, tables to bust and screen doors to plow through. By the time TPD’s finest arrived, Romero had just socked a complete stranger from Three Points in the nose because he bellowed his conviction that Romney was a “stinkin’ no good rat!” All the while I was caught struggling to stop an enraged Carlos from strangling Bolton in the midst of two smashed tables, three broken windows and a shattered coffee pot.

As we were all booked on the porch off the Arroyo Cafe we watched as more than 600 pages of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” got carried into the next county by a sudden dust devil.

I was startled when Carlo’s TV came back on, its volume cranked up all the way. “A country divided. Mike builds bridges. Mike saw what just happened here at the Arroyo Cafe. Mike will fix it. Mike Bloomberg. The real billionaire.”

Fitz's Opinion: Some revolutionary thoughts that are relevant today

When I was young I worked in the eastern United States. It was there, in a misty woodland landscape dotted with Revolutionary War cemeteries and battlefields, that I became bewitched by our rebellion against the king.

In the spring of 1775, 700 redcoats marched out of occupied Boston to seize a cache of rebel arms hidden 20 miles to the west of the fallen city. As the sun rose over Lexington, Massachusetts, a tiny band of vastly outnumbered farmer patriots, under the command of Capt. John Parker, met the most powerful army in the world, the king’s army.

Eight defiant Americans fell. It mattered little who had fired, “the shot heard round the world.” Bow and kneel before any king? We’d rather die! The New World belonged not to kings but to “The People” and the people were happy to refresh the Tree of Liberty with the blood of any redcoat who dared to strike up a quarrel.

The smug redcoats marched on to Concord where 400 minutemen, come from every farm and village, lay in anxious wait, muskets loaded. When the sparks and smoke subsided they had killed three, wounded nine and driven the rest of the Royalists into retreat.

From behind rocks and trees, the Sons of Liberty rained lead on the Crown’s best as they fled back to Boston. Would the king shirk off our revolution when he learned we had killed 73 of his finest infantrymen?

Burn an effigy of the king in Boston and you’ll hang.

In an ensuing bloody contest, 450 fearless Americans sanctified Bunker Hill with their lives. Before retreating, the colonials killed over a thousand of the king’s redcoats, leaving them to the crows.

By 1776, Congress had gathered in Philadelphia to condemn the abuses of the king and to declare our independence from the corruptions of the old world.

Outgunned and outmanned, our Continental Army would strike, retreat and repeat.

New York was lost. Battles were lost. In the winter of ’77 Congress tabled the idea of providing shoes to our frostbitten patriots at Valley Forge, where nearly 2,000 perished from illness in the cold. Nearly as many Americans perished at Pearl Harbor.

We needed a win to raise morale. It came at Trenton when Washington’s forces killed 22 mercenaries and captured 800 more.

In 1781, five bloody years after our Declaration of Independence, Gen. Washington’s army, accompanied by allied French forces, marched to Yorktown, Virginia, and crossed bayonets with the king’s finest, under the command of Gen. Cornwallis (who did not attend the surrender ceremony, claiming illness).

Eighty-eight patriots died in that final bloody battle to rid us of his royal majesty. On that Autumn day a solemn procession of 7,000 defeated redcoats laid down their arms as the king’s fife and drum played “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Seven years later, our nation’s prominent patriots debated their vision for our republic in “The Federalist Papers.” How would we govern ourselves? In that age of treachery and turmoil, when spies and foreign powers were clawing into the new world, our nation heeded the warning of Alexander Hamilton:

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.”

Too many had died to surrender vigilance against the Old World’s most sinister contagions. Hamilton had led a bayonet assault on Redoubt 10 at Yorktown on a moonless night. He goes on:

“These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?”

In 1789, thousands of veterans, widows and orphans of the revolution gathered in a free New York City to see their beloved wartime commander, Gen. George Washington, take the oath of the presidency, swearing to defend our new nation and its imperfect Constitution against every enemy, domestic and foreign.

Forged in the blazing fire of insurrection and inked with the blood of patriots, our Constitution promised the victors of our bloody rebellion a shining city on a hill, a new democratic republic free of corrupt aristocrats and petty kings, a nation where no man, whether commoner or prince, was above the rule of law. Unlike kings, accountable only to God, every last public representative in our government would be accountable to “We the people.”

The common people, who always risk all for liberty and the just rule of law, are heeding Hamilton’s words of warning from two centuries ago: “A nation which prefers disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.”

I think of the veterans slumbering in those Revolutionary War graveyards, restless in their graves, watching us, the heirs of their 244-year-old hard fought revolution, surrendering like craven Tories to a new “King George,” a corrupting monarch who, unlike the people, intends to reign eternally, above the law.

Fitz's Opinion: Martha McSally has some questions to answer from this liberal hack

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Last Thursday CNN correspondent Manu Raju asked Arizona Sen. Martha McSally, “Should the Senate consider new evidence for President Trump’s impeachment?”

Good question, right? Every constituent represented by McSally deserves to know if our appointed public servant will consider new evidence, right?

Our senator replied, “You’re a liberal hack. I’m not going to talk to you.”

CNN’s Manu Raju is a hack? Really? McSally blew off calls to apologize, saying, “I call it like it is.”

I call it like it is, too. Senator, you’re a Trump hack.

Can we talk? It’s painfully obvious the whole stunt was staged, Martha. You awkwardly lobbed a canned insult. (We know you’re desperate for funds.)

You tweeted the video. Trump retweeted it. Next thing you know you’ve got airtime on Fox. And then you still wouldn’t answer the simple question your constituents need to know.

It’s remarkable how ready your team was to hawk your “You’re a liberal hack, buddy” T-shirts by the end of the day. Why read the articles of impeachment when you can be peddling phony exchanges and trinkets to get elected?

I first met you when I sat beside you at a memorial service. You were entering politics; contemplating a run in 2014 for Ron Barber’s congressional seat, which Gabby Giffords, a pragmatic centrist, had once held. A military brat, I admired your service and your achievements. First woman to fly combat! You had the intellectual rigor one would expect from an officer who had served in the United States Air Force. You were a Republican who reminded me of a maverick I admired.

I liked you personally.

In an interview that year we joked about partisanship, and then, parting, you hugged me like a familiar acquaintance and said to me, “I’m NOT one of those weird Republicans.” You won that seat in 2014 by a narrow margin.

You lied to me, Martha.

You’ve become one of the “weird” Republicans you disparaged, a pathetic Trump toady, desperately clinging to the great shark’s belly like a remora.

Anderson Cooper responded to your embarrassing stunt by taking note of the old Martha. In 2016 Elle magazine described you as a political “moderate,” a “pragmatic” conservative who sought “to engage in rational discussion based on mutually agreed facts.”

You soon gave up that shtick.

In this upcoming impeachment trial, you have no interest in determining the mutually agreed upon facts of the case. You abandoned “rational discussion” the day Gov. Doug Ducey handed you, an electoral loser, Sen. John McCain’s seat.

Martha, you know as well as I do the maverick we knew would be disappointed by your behavior — and ashamed of your subservience to the orange chicken hawk who mocked his service to our nation by disparaging his tenure in the Hanoi Hilton, preferring those “who weren’t captured.” Surely, as a captive of Trumpism, you can empathize with all prisoners of war.

After Trump won in 2016 you cynically chose to forsake reason, intellectual rigor and your oath to the Constitution so you could embrace the most corrupt, prolific liar ever to disgrace the Oval Office.

In a 2018 Senatorial debate with Kyrsten Sinema you stunned Arizonans when you frantically accused her of treason, a crime punishable by death, and you exalted Trump as a heroic disrupter.

You flew your Warthog to the dark side. You became a wingman for the corrupt authoritarian who praised war criminals, dodged military service by lying, defied the military code of honor, committed reckless tactical blunders, insulted his generals, ridiculed Muslim Gold Star families and mocked prisoners of war for being captured.

You wear the uniform, yet you do not defend what it represents.

Fitz's Opinion: Let's examine America's greatest military strategist

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

“The Art of War,” written by the great military strategist Sun Tzu was eclipsed this past week by Donald Trump’s new treatise, “The Art of the War Deal,” a 12-chapter collection of the great strategists’ thoughts on war. Here are the most relevant excerpts from the famous best-selling volume, said to be slimmer than the rationale for killing an Iranian general.

Chapter 1: Leadership:

“Say one thing. Say another. Then contradict yourself. Then do the opposite. Then your staff will explain what you meant by it all while you tweet or nap. That’s leadership.”

—Don Trump

“The survival of a great leader matters more than the survival of the federation itself. I got that from the ‘Wrath of Khan.’ Never finished it.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 2: The Path to War:

“Escalate tensions with your enemy for no rational reason. It keeps life interesting between rounds of golf.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 3: Your Warriors:

“Keep your team loyal by threatening to whack any snitches. Worked for Commander Corleone.”

—Don Trump

“I prefer warriors who are not captured. ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ were no heroes! And why vilify Col. Klink? There were good people on both sides.”

—Don Trump

“The families of your war dead have made the ultimate sacrifice. Mock them for the amusement of partisans. Especially if they’re Muslim-Americans. This is good for national unity.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 4: Honor:

“Sure I pardoned war criminals. What’s wrong with posing with the war dead? Don Jr., brings trophy pics back from his safari hunts all the time! The military code of honor is for sissies. It’s something you have to read, right?”

—Don Trump

Chapter 5: The Geopolitics of War:

“The Kurds weren’t beside us at D-Day. Disgusting backstabbing, cowards. Some allies!”

—Don Trump

“When the Ukrainians attacked Pearl Harbor did Custer surrender? No! There’s a good reason why we dropped our big beautiful A-Bombs on China and Germany.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 6: Unity:

“Divide your people and unite your enemy. Or subdivide your enemy and unite your people. It’s one of those two. You sort it out. I’ve got Russian propaganda to spread. Buh-bye.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 7: Rhetoric:

“The emperor who threatens ‘Fire and fury’ bellows with the mighty flatulence of a thousand pouting pandas. Mulan said that.”

—Don Trump

“Subdue your enemy with the empty wind of fiery threats. But be very careful using wind of any kind. Wind turbines cause cancer.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 8: Strategy:

“This then is the 7-fold path: Betray your allies. Repeat falsehoods. Spread conspiracy theories. Study not. Blame your predecessors for your errors. Trust your gut. Order carry-out. This is the way of the Don.

“Also, declare national emergencies where none exist. This creates an unbreakable bond of trust between you, your people and their anxiety meds.”

—Don Trump

“I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear.’ Or the meaning of the words ‘strategy’ or ‘tactics,’ for that matter.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 9: Generals:

“If a great leader (me) lacks military service due to a condition such as, say, bone spurs, is it wise to declare openly he is smarter than all of his generals? Yes. Because, unlike his stupid generals, he evaded service with wile and cunning. And connections.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 11: Tactics

“It is always a smart move to provoke enraged religious fanatics in the middle of a 3,500,00-square-mile smoldering ammo dump. Nothing there but sand. Before attacking your enemy do not bother studying your enemy or his region. Trust your gut. There is great wisdom and insight in my gut.”

—Don Trump

Chapter 12: Leadership:

“Some believe all warfare is based on deception. This is fake news. All leadership is based entirely on deception.”

—Don Trump

“Be unpredictable. Be unreliable. Be impulsive. Be anything but a Kurd.”

—Don Trump

“In the midst of chaos there is opportunity. Be the chaos. Want to know who said that? It was Sgt. Snorkle. Speaking to Beetle Bailey. Or it could’ve been Rambo. I lost respect for John Rambo when he was captured in “Rambo: First Blood Part II.

“Is it tee time?”

—Don Trump

“He who avoids study, strategy and tactics shall lose the battle but win the ratings war.”

—Don Trump

“The Art of the War Deal,” by Donald Trump, is available, in very large print, wherever bomb shelters, air raid sirens and survivalist food supplies are sold. Each edition comes with a red “Make War Great Again” cap.