December 1: World AIDS Day…Here’s to all my friends that are no longer here: Dennis, Rene, Leonard, Eddie, Efrain, and so many others. Living through the AIDS crisis, especially in the 80s and 90s, was such a nightmare. Thank God Ruben and I made it and didn’t get sick. Our generation of gay men was decimated.
The Tucson Aidswalk will take place on December 6, 2025.
When I lived in Ann Arbor (’87-92), ACT UP was formed by Larry Kramer in New York, and there were big, dramatic acts of disobedience practiced across the country, protesting the federal government’s lack of concern about the disease. I bought an Act-Up t-shirt with a big pink triangle in support of the cause. It was a tank top and after a while it fit too tight, so I gave it away eventually. I also coordinated UA Library participation in the Tucson Aidswalk in the early 90s. We raised a lot of money for a couple of years there. This year’s 37th annual Aidswalk is scheduled for December 6, 2025.
December 3, 2025:
Library funding at the national level is an issue near and dear to me. I’ve been going to Washington for the past three years to participate in ALA-coordinated meetings with elected representatives on Capitol Hill to urge them to continue to support the Institute of Museums and Library Services and other related programs that benefit the public. It was a real shock when Trump took the funding away. This is such good news!
For immediate release | December 3, 2025: ALA welcomes reinstatement of all federal IMLS grants to libraries.
Washington – Today, the American Library Association (ALA) greeted an announcement by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that it had reinstated all the agency’s grants, including those to libraries and library organizations across the country. The grant reinstatements come as a direct result of a November 21 federal court decision in a lawsuit brought against President Trump by 21 states.
ALA President Sam Helmick said, “ALA welcomes the good news that IMLS is restoring all federal grants that had previously been terminated. This means that libraries across the country will be able to resume vital services for learning, imagination, and economic opportunity.
“Restoration of these grants is a massive win for libraries of all kinds in all states. Every public, school and academic library and their patrons benefit from the research findings and program outcomes from individual library and organization grantees.
“We are breathing a sigh of relief, but the fight is not finished. The administration can appeal court decisions. Congress can choose to not fund IMLS in future years. ALA calls on everyone who values libraries to remind their Congressmembers and elected officials at every level why America’s libraries deserve more, not fewer resources.”
On March 14, President Trump issued Executive Order 14238, which directed the elimination of the agency. Subsequently, the Trump Administration began mass termination of the agency’s grants.
On November 21, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island struck down the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle IMLS. The decision was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 21 states. The agency’s reinstatement of grants follows that ruling.
In parallel to the states’ litigation, ALA also has led efforts in Congress and the courts to preserve IMLS. ALA filed its own lawsuit challenging the Administration’s actions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which remains ongoing. ALA also mobilized thousands of contacts from library supporters nationwide urging Congress to protect IMLS.
December 4: My brother Rudy’s birthday. He’d be 77 today. This photo was taken in 1969, I think. Rudy coached a little league team at this time. My brother Fred and a bunch of our friends from the neighborhood were on it.
Media
Rudy used to be a little league coach. This photo is from one of those group shots. He was about 20 years old here. He passed away two years ago, on November 30, 2023.
December 4: My mom’s sister Dora Sainz passed away on this day in 1994. She was quite a lady!
My aunt Dora Rascon Sainz passed away on December 4, 1994. She was my mom’s younger sister. She and her husband Armando Sainz, also pictured here, moved to the Bay area in the late 1940s and never came back, except to visit on occasion.
December 5, 2025: During a protest that occurred after an ICE raid, Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents and treated quite rudely. This occurred outside the restaurant “El Taco Giro” on N. Grande Blvd.
December 6: Happy Birthday to Agnes Moorehead.
December 6: Happy Birthday, Agnes Moorehead! 1900-1974. What a talented actress! She had a long, productive career.
Deccember 6: In memory of Roy Orbison.
Here’s a great live version of Pretty Woman. Chet Atkins and Bruce Springston share guitar riffs. It’s pretty incredible.
December 6 is also National Miner’s Day. I’m including a photo of my dad at San Manuel. He worked there a long, long time.
Here’s a song by Marta Lopez, who wrote the following corrido during the Phelps Dodge Copper Strike in Clifton-Morenci, Arizona. Teatro Libertad, the theatre group I belonged to back in the early 1980s used to sing this song during our play, La Vida del Cobre.
December 7: Pearl Harbor Day. The USS Arizona was one of the major battle ships struck down by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The USS Arizona Collection is housed in Special Collections. It has a lot of photos of the ship and the men who lived on it. For more information about the ship’s history, visit my blog post about it titled, The Life and Legacy of the U.S.S. Arizona / Exhibition, August 29, 2016-December 23, 2016.
In New York harbor.
The ship is hit and goes down. A day that will live in infamy…
December 8: John Lennon dies
December 8:
In memory of my grandfather, Antonio Palacios Diaz, 1885-12/8/1954
December 9: Brokeback Mountain premieres on this day in 2005. I loved the movie. The tragic ending hit me hard.
December 9: Happy Birthday, Dame Judi Dench, who turns 91 today. ! What a fabulous actress!
Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench, lifelong friends…
December 9: Happy Birthday, Billy Edd Wheeler! (December 9, 1932 – September 16, 2024). Wheeler was a folksinger/songwriter from West Virginia. His songs addressed themes about the environment and coal mining, and were recorded by the likes of Judy Collins and Judy Henske, as well as many others. Here’s my favorite:
December 10: Otis Redding dies in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin. 12/10/67.
Otis Redding in action 9/9/1941-12/10/1967
December 11: Happy Birthday, Big Mama Thornton
Big Mama Thornton was bon on December 11, 1926 in Ariton, Alabama. She died on July 25, 1984 in Los Angeles. She was a great blues singer and harmonica player.
December 12: El Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe
Here are Lola Beltran and Lucha Villa singing to the Virgen. From the movie, Mexico de Mi Corazon…
December 12: Vicente Fernandez dies on 12/12/21. He was born on February 17, 1940. He was 81 years old.
Here’s one of my favorite Vicente Fernandez tunes.
December 13: My grandfather, Donato Rascon, Sr. dies at the age of 41 in 1937 in Superior, Arizona.
Also on December 13th: My nice Michelle is born. She is my sister Irene’s middle daughter. We were four years apart in age.
December 14:
Dinah Wasington was a scandalous woman who had men galore and took pills and drank booze. She was also a great singer who could sing any style of music. She was married at least 7 times.
December 15: Happy Birthday, Lady Mary from Downton Abbey (Real name: Michelle Dockery, born on December 15, 1981.
Check out the following clip. It has two great scenes, from Downton Abbey, of course.
December 15: Today is the the 135th anniversary of the passing of the great Indian leader, Sitting Bull, who was killed on 12/15/1890. The great Hunkpapa Lakota leader led his people to victory during the Battle of Little Big Horn.
December 15: Remembering the great Glenn Miller, who died during World War II on this day in 1944.
3/1/1904 to12/15/1944
December 15: Happy Birthday, Tim Conway!
Check out the following clip from the Carol Burnett show. It’s hilarious.
1791 US Bill of Rights is ratified and becomes Amendments 1 through 10 of the US Constitution when Virginia gives its approval
December 15: Gone With the Wind premieres on this day in 1939. It’s an epic film that one must see at least once.
December 16: The Boston Tea Party took place in 1773. Ruben and I love visiting Boston. There is so much to see and do there. Last time we visited we walked the Freedom Trail. It was very interesting. There’s history on every corner of this great city.
My crazy, fun-loving cousin Martin Olguin died on December 17, 1994, just a day before his mom’s birthday. He was only 37 years old. Rest in peace, primo.
December 18: Happy Birthday to my Aunt Mary Olguin. She was my mom’s youngest sibling and was born on this day in 1932 in Superior, Arizona. She is shown here with my dad’s youngest brother Rafael, or Failo as we all called him. They dated briefly. The photo was taken either in the late 40s or early 50s, before both moved on and married other people.
December 19: Happy Birthday, Phil Ochs, born on December 19, 1940. He committed suicide on 4/9/76. he wrote some great music.
December 19: Work update–Today was our last day at work for the year. We are now in our winter break period. The University will be shut down until Monday, January 5. I finished out the year by completing the processing portion of the work I’m doing on the William Wilde architecture collection. It was a big project that included 10 boxes and hundreds of files. All I have to do now is to include the drawings inventory and then I have to write the narrative for the collection. Then it can be turned on and made live! After that, I plan to finish my work on the architecture libguide. I should have it done well before my final review for the year. These were two of my main goals for the year. The other was to manage Libanswers, and I’ve kept up with that work quite well.
Personal update: I’m working hard at getting a grip on my finances. I received my very first social security check this month, and with the increase in income, I’ll be better able to pay off my debts, and more quickly too. It’s been a real eye-opener seeing where our money goes on a weekly basis. As a result of this, I’ve stopped spending like I had been. I have not been eating out every day, nor have I been buying books, music or film. Ruben and I don’t go out to eat as much now, nor is he going to the store every day like he had been doing. This is all good, because we are spending less money. Everything is so expensive nowadays.
December 21, 2025: Happy Birthday Jane Fonda.
She was born on December 21, 1937. She is 88 years old. Amazing. She’s one of my favorite actresses and a real activist.
Also on December 21: Emma Goldman, along with 250 other “alien radicals,” is deported to Russia by the US government at the urging of J. Edgar Hoover. Ms. Goldman was way ahead of her time. I read her autobiography titled, “Living My Life” back in the early 90s.
December 24: Happy Birthday, Richard Elias! Looking good, ese.
December 24: It’s Lalo Guerrero’s birthday too!
December 25: Merry Christmas!
December 25: Remembering Dean Martin on the anniversary of his passing. (6/7/17-12/25/95)
Happy Birthday, Annie Lennox. Born on December 25, 1954.
December 27: Happy Birthday, Dad!
December 28: Happy Birthday Maggie Smith!
December 29: The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 took place 135 years ago today.
This May 13, 2012, photo shows the Wounded Knee Cemetery in Wounded Knee, S.D. The site, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is where more than 250 Lakota men, women and children were killed by the 7th Cavalry in 1890. (AP Photo/Kristi Eaton)
December 31: Natalie Cole died on this day in 2015. She was one of my favorite vocalists.
I love this song…
Final thoughts for the year…
Today is Wednesday, December 31. I have been at home since 12/22, as the University is closed for the holiday break. I have spent most of this time with Ruben, but he’s also been working. I don’t go back to work until January 6, next Tuesday. Although we did attend a family gathering at Ruben’s brother’s house and we had dinner with our friends Ernie and Nancy, we haven’t done much else. It’s been a quiet holiday. We didn’t shop at all, nor did we do much other than go out to eat every now and then. I must admit we have been eating well. My sister gave me a dozen red chili tamales that one of her daughters had made, and man, they were delicious! I hadn’t had such good tamales in a long, long, time.
It’s been a rough year, a tough one to get through. Trump. He’s managed to survive scandal after scandal. He’s ruined our country as much as he could this past year and he’s not done. But neither are we. We will continue to resist tyranny and fascism. We will rise in victory, and it will be soon. 2026 will be a much better year for democracy in the United States.
October 1, 2025: The federal government is shut down. Families reliant on SNAP assistance, air traffic controllers working without pay, parks rangers with no pay either, and so many more people got royally stiffed before it was all over. Meanwhile, Trump bails out Argentina to the tune of $50 billion and finds other large pots of money for his wealthy buddies and himself. Can this beast get any worse?
The impact of this is being felt everywhere. When is this madness going to stop?
10-4-25: Federal officers holding down a protestor in Chicago after there was a killing of a woman…
My dad in 1938, age 18. Photo was restored with AI on 10-9-25.
Although she wasn’t my favorite actress, I did like the First Wives Club and the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which was creepy. I also know I saw her in Annie Hall and Manhattan, but I don’t really remember them well. Rest in peace Diane Keaton. January 5, 1946 – October 11, 2025
10-12-25. My dna test from Ancestry.com states that I am 40% indigenous with roots in Sonora and Arizona. My mother’s people were Spanish, Opata, Apache, Mayo and maybe Yaqui too. I don’t know for sure. The rest of my ancestral family comes from the Iberian peninsula, with a small percentage from northern Africa and other African locations. I’m all in favor of setting the historical record straight. Columbus didn’t discover America. It was already there. He was lost. The Indians discovered him.
10-14-25: This Chicago journalist was thrown to the ground in Chicago by border patrol agents. They alleged that she threw things at them. She claimed she was merely on her way to catch the bus to work, and is suing them. See more at: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/14/us/wgn-employee-detained-debbie-brockman
10-14-25: With the help of Google Gemini, what was originally a black and white photo was transformed into a pic in full color. From left to right: Juan Villegas, me, and Scott Egan singing a mining song, most likely. This was taken during our play, La Vida Del Cobre, which ran in 1983 and 1984. Dang, I sure was thin!
10-14-25
October 15: I turn 66 and 10 months today. It’s time to apply for Social Security! My first check should arrive in mid-December!
Happy Birthday to my niece Belisa Martinez. She turned 63 on October 18. She’s my sister Irene’s oldest daughter and mother to Estrella, Raymond and Jackie. We grew up together.
10-18-25: No Kings Day across the country. Ruben and I were on our way to Buffalo on this day. We missed all the fun.
10-19-25
Here are more restored photos. The woman in the first two photos is Olivia Rascon, my grandfather’s sister. The man is her husband, Luis Flores.
My grandfather Donato Rascon Sr and his son Donato Rascon Jr. My grandfather’s sister and her family are shown in the middle. Samples of traditional Spanish dress. I love this stuff. Click on graphic to enlarge.
10-18-25 to 10-29-25: Our New York vacation.
We spent nearly two weeks in the Buffalo area for the second year in a row. We had a much better idea of what to do and where to go this time around, and we did a lot of new things, including riding on the the Maid of the Mist boat tour at Niagara Falls, taking a trek down to Jamestown to visit the Lucy and Desi museum, and a trip over to Farmington, which is southeast of Rochester, to visit the Ontario antique mall. We also shopped at the various antique stores in suburban Buffalo and went to the Walden Galleria, a big shopping mall close to our hotel. We spent a lot of money on new clothes and food, and we ate quite well. We found a new breakfast place called “the Old Pancake House”, but we still visited the Olympic Cafe several times. We had beef on Weck, delicious Polish, German and Italian meals and lots of other scrumptious food. I gained a few pounds while there. There were things we didn’t get to see, so we will likely head over to that area of the country again in the next few years. We love Buffalo!
While we were exploring downtown we accidentally got on the bridge to Canada. I left my passport in the hotel room, and they stopped and interrogated us. They fingerprinted me too. There’s another person out there in the world with the same name as mine and he’s wanted for something. We were let go after about 45 minutes. I made a real boo boo by leaving my passport behind.
We drove to Jamestown to visit the Lucy and Desi Museum. It was a beautiful, rainy drive from Buffalo to Jamestown that took us through many small towns in southwestern New York.
10-23-25 She still hasn’t been sworn in.
October 27, 2025: Freddie died on October 27, one year ago today. I’m still shocked that he’s gone. We were very close when we were kids, just 2 1/2 years apart. This photo was taken in 1979 when Fred was 23.
October 31, 2025:
Ruben and I inside the Sahuarita, Az. Municipal courthouse, where we were married on October 31, 2014 by our good friend Maria Avilez. Ruben’s parents were our witnesses. We’ve been legally married for 11 years, but together since 1993. It’ll be 33 years next February 27.
Happy Halloween!
Here’s a song for the occasion:
November 2: Today is El Dia De Los Muertos. My mom passed away on this date back in 1988. It’s always been a sad day for me. Here’s a photo of my mom when she was in her late 20s. She was such a beauty!
There are several songs about death, or “la muerte” in Spanish, including the one below, which I just love, and the one that follows. I first heard these songs sung by Amparo Ochoa, the great Mexican folk singer, who in many ways led the way for the women who are featured in the videos below. The last one below, titled La Muerte, sung by Pepe Aguilar, was also recorded by Lola Beltran and Antonio Aguilar.
November 3, 2025: My sister Irene’s 82nd birthday.
My eldest sister Irene was born on November 3. She is 82, believe it or not. The photo below was taken in 2023. She is shown here with me and my brother Charles, who just turned 80 in late September, at her granddaughter Dominique’s wedding reception.
November 7, 2025: Joni Mitchell’s birthday.
Joni Mitchell also turned 82, on November 7. I’ve been a big fan of Ms. Mitchell since my college days back in the late 70s. I’ve kept up closely with her career over the years, and I have nearly all of her recorded output. When she fell ill with a brain aneurysm in 2015, however, I was at a point where I didn’t think as highly of her as I had in the past. She had taken to speaking harshly about some of my other musical heroes, most notably Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I felt she was being quite arrogant about her own talent and art, and I didn’t like what she said. Her comments about Dylan being a ripoff artist with very little musical talent were just too much to take, and her comments about Joan Baez and her mother seemed very childish and cruel to me. Any sense of humility that she might have had seemed to have gone out the window.
It was quite surprising to see people like Brandi Carlisle come out of the woodwork to help her with her recovery. Carlisle recorded the entire Blue album in 2019, and was enamored with Joni’s work. However, I keep asking myself, who is this person? I had never heard of Brandi Carlisle. Was she a country singer? Was she a women’s singer? Who knows? I don’t know of a single tune that she’s made popular on her own. I can’t help but think that she was partly motivated by a sense of opportunism. (I hope I’m wrong). She is certainly well known now, after appearing at Joni’s side at every single public event that Joni’s performed at the past few years. Oh well. Joni made a great comeback, from nearly dying to singing and playing the guitar at public venues again. I’m glad she is doing better. One can’t deny that she is a gifted singer and writer. I’ll always love her music. The video that follows is from the album Night Ride Home.
November 8, 2025: I’ve been working all year on a committee with a group of people to pull together an exhibition and programs celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. Liz Soltero, executive director of the Sunnyside Foundation, and Professor Jaqueline Barrios, from the U of A, coordinated the work of the committee. I was asked to participate as a community “curator”, and I contributed a ton of information about the south side and Teatro Libertad. The program took place all day on Saturday. I was part of a panel presentation on the Chicano Movement that also included Dr. Lydia Otero, and Raul Aguirre. In less than four minutes I talked about Teatro Libertad and noted that its home base was the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. I mentioned a few things about the history of the group and my recollections as a former member. Lydia spoke very eloquently about Chicano ideology and Raul talked about Chicano leadership. Together, we did quite well. The audience was very happy.
Jacqueline Barrios giving a presentation to the medi. Mona Grijalva engaged in a panel discussion about her husband’s archives.
A couple of exhibition panels.
Isabel Garcia, a friend, Mona Grijalva and Betty Villegas. To the right are Selina Barajas and Ana Sanchez, who were both on the planning committee.
Exhibition panels.
Me and Jaqueline. Members of the planning group. Some weren’t present.
Liz Soltero moderating a panel that featured me, Lydia Otero and Raul Aguirre. The theme of our presentation was the Chicano Movement.
Dr. Kenny Wong, Mona Grijalva, and Dr. Jacqueline Barrios. In the photo next to them is my good friend Ted Warmbrand.
November 12, 2025
The shutdown has ended. Eight Democratic senators caved. People want Schumer removed as the lead Democratic Senator. The good news is that now that the Senate has passed this awful bill, the House has to re-convene, and Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in by Mike Johnson. She’s committed to adding her name to the list of congresspeople who want to have the Epstein files released. This should be very interesting.
“As the shutdown progressed, effects rippled. Delays and flight cancellations started racking up for passengers as the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to cut back on flights because of air traffic controller shortages. There were closures at Smithsonian museum sites and the National Zoo (although the animals still got fed). About 1.25 million federal workers haven’t been paid since Oct. 1, missing about $16 billion in wages, according to official estimates. The workers were either furloughed or worked without pay in agencies across the federal government. Many struggled to make ends meet during that time, and the regional economy around Washington, D.C., took a hit”.–AP News, story by Deepti Hajela 11/13/25
After her speech, Congresswoman Grijalva signed the petition to have the Epstein files released. Her signature was all that was needed to reach the magic number of votes to force the files to be released, so House speaker Mike Johnson is scheduling a vote for next week, before the Thanksgiving break. It will be an interesting next several days, that’s for sure, as things are really heating up over the release of the files. More and more of the material getting leaked out and is getting reported on in the news. It looks really bad for Trump. I hope justice will prevail.
November 15, 2025: Happy Anniversary Fred and Cathy. And happy birthday , Barbie! I had a great time at your gathering at the El Casino Ballroom. It was great to have a chance to hang out with my brother Charles and his wife Elaine too!
Barbie and her parents Cathy and Fred. Barbie told me I was her favorite at the gathering. How sweet of her.
Cathy and Fred are serenaded by one granddaughter, while another watches intently. It was the cutest thing.
My buddy Mario Aguilar took this photo of Elaine, Charles and me.
November 15: Happy Birthday to my niece ,Anadine Lopez. She is my sisterIrene’s daughter and she turned 59 this year. This was a photo taken in 1967, more or less. I posted it on her Facebook wall.
November 18, 2025
Both the House and the Senate voted today to release the Epstein files. At first, Mike Johnson made it sound like the Senate wouldn’t budge on moving forward, but things changed after the House was just one vote shy (427-1) of a unanimous decision to have them released. The Senate moved quickly to push the bill through. It now goes to Trump, who has said he will sign the bill. We’ll see.
November 19, 2025: A surprise from Elaine…
Way back in 1971, my brother Charles and his wife Elaine lived in a small apartment on E. Eastland, just a few blocks away from my parent’s house. On Thanksgiving, they invited me and my brother Fred over for dinner. Elaine also invited her nephew Philip to join us. I remember this occasion quite well. Their 8 month old daughter Valerie is shown below sitting in front of the turkey Elaine had preprared.
11-20-2025: Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse…
11-20-25: From the desk of Pennsyslvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Trump’s threats were widely condemned, but a few elected officials and others defended this sorry excuse of a human being. What trash.
November 22, 2025: Mt Lemon had snow yesterday and today 7 inches were expected to fall. We got a lot of rain today in the city. It’s been raining since early this afternoon.
November 22: St. Cecilia’s Day. A noblewoman from 3rd-century Rome known for her unwavering faith and vow of virginity St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music, musicians and poets. Her feast day is celebrated with musical events and church services, and is a day to reflect on music’s ability to connect with the divine and uplift the soul.
St. Cecilia
November 25: Jackson Browne’s son Ethan has died. He was only 51. How sad. He was a model, musician and actor, and according to Jackson, a wonderful father. Below is another photo of him. Ethan’s mom, Phyllis committed suicide when Ethan was three, and Jackson raised him. Ethan and his father appeared on the cover of the Rolling Stone in 1974. He was such a cute kid, and he grew up to be quite handsome and talented.
November 27, 2025:
Macy’s was having a sale! I bought these online at 8 in the morning. They arrived at my doorstep the following day. They feel very comfortable.
I promised my sister Irene that I would go to her daughter Anadine’s house to have dinner with them. Anadine lives out near Wilmot and I-10, so I left the house at 2:30 to get there on time. We agreed to meet at 3pm. I was the first one there, however. Oh well. I got to spend time with Ana. I watched as she cooked and set things up. Irene and Phil then showed up with a 27 pound turkey, pies and a lot of other food. Ana prepared a lot of dishes too. After a while other family members showed up. I hung out with Irene’s partner Phil and we watched the Dallas- Kansas City football game. The rest of the family all sat in the den and watched it too. I’m not crazy about football, so I didn’t pay much attention. Instead, I played with the two little girls shown on the right. It was soon time to eat, and before I knew it I had gobbled down a huge plate of food that included turkey, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, and other scrumptious dishes. I sure was full!
Estrella, her daughters Gabriela, Brisette and Megan with Estrellas partner and Megan’s boyfriend hanging out in the den watching the game. Brisette’s little girl and Charlotte had a great time together.
Estrella’s daughter Charlotte smiles for the camera as my sister Irene prepares dinner.
While I was at my sisters, my partner was getting ready to go see his family at his mom’s house. She told him to be there at 6pm, and I told him I would go with him. Unfortunately, we didn’t start to eat at Ana’s until 5, so I called Ruben and told him that I would just meet him at his mom’s shortly after 6. Ruben’s sister and her son and his wife were all there. Apparently, Ruben’s mom got the time wrong, and by the time Ruben got there everyone had already eaten. He did get to eat, but some of the dishes, like the stuffing were all gone. I showed up around 6:20 and ate just a little bit. I was really full by the end of the night. Ruben’s brother Robert, his wife Pat, Ruben’s sister Mina and her husband John, and their son Joe and his wife Tina were all there. So was little Rene, his girlfriend and their little boy. It was good to see them. It had been a long time.
Ruben and I left sometime around 8:30. It was a full day. I’m glad I got to see of the family. I need to do that more often.
November 29: In memory of George Harrison, February 25, 1943 to November 29, 2001. He was always my favorite Beatle.
November 29: We put up our tree early this year. I will likely put up lights outside sometime soon. The tree is decorated with a bunch of antique, vintage ornaments that we found at various antique stores in the Buffalo area the past two years. The tree is small, but it’s pretty.
November 30: Today marks the 2 year anniversary of my brother Rudy’s passing. I miss him terribly. Here’s a photo taken at my brother Charles’s house. Rudy was born in 1948 and was about 10 years and a month older than me. I always looked up to him when I was a kid. He loved the Beatles and was a talented athlete in his youth.
It’s the end of November. Where does the time go? The Christmas tree and lights are all up now, and sales ads are popping up everywhere. Both my Facebook account and my email accounts are getting hit hard. It’s very frustrating because it’s so tempting to buy just one more pair of shoes! I’ve already bought two new pairs of them!
I weeded out my closet and organized it this past weekend. I don’t need another pair of shoes or any more pants or shirts. I have tons of clothes. All I have to do is iron them and wear them. I am done wearing t-shirts to work. My brother Rudy always had very nice clothes, and the rest of my brothers and sisters also knew how to dress well. Me? Forget it. I’ve always been a bit on the sloppy side, a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, and even though I have worn button down shirts and ties in the past, I hate the way they feel on me. I have a big neck. Lately, however, I’ve begun to show more interest in what I wear and how I look. I’m told that wearing darker solid colors on top is a great way to make you look thinner. I’m very big at the moment, so I have to work at putting stuff together so that it doesn’t look like I’m pregnant. I have too many plaid shirts, and they make you look bigger than you really are. I have to stay away from them! My better half helps me with color, since I’m red/green color blind and can’t tell brown from red or green sometimes. I feel better when I am wearing nice clothes. I look forward to doing a lot of ironing in the coming year!
A New Year’s greeting card from Warsaw, Poland 1978. From the William Wilde Collection of architectural materials and drawings. Special Collections, The University of Arizona.
Things to know up front:
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Every chapter in My Life Story and many of my blogs include information about me, my work, my family and my friends.They also include information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought were significant to me personally, and important enough to add to the mix. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.
While I have included many personal photos, much of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their materials removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!
I haven’t written anything in a while. My last post went live in March, 2025, so I thought it was time to provide a general update. I’ll discuss topics and events going back to the beginning of the year, and will continue to add to this post until the end of September. Then I’ll start another entry for October. This one is going to be longer than the next one, that’s for sure. Well, here goes….
Ruben and I on vacation in Niagara Falls, Fall, 2024.
I’m still happily married to Ruben J. (partners since 1993, but legally married since 2014) and still work at the University of Arizona Libraries, where I just celebrated 33 years of employment. I manage the reference and referrals process for the Special Collections Department of the University of Arizona Libraries. Since May, I have also taken the lead in setting up appointments for customers via our online calendar. This takes up the bulk of my time. As an archivist, I also process collections and compile statistics. I am the curator for the performing arts and architecture. I enjoy working in these areas. I answer lots of reference questions about vaudeville and architecture, as well as music and local and regional history. I just had my mid-year review, and it went well. I’m on track to meet my goals on time. My updated curriculum vitae is available here:
1/7/25: Fires start in Los Angeles area. A very destructive fire. Sad, sad, sad. Over 13,000 structures are destroyed, including most of Sunset Boulevard. At least 29 deaths are reported, while 180,000 people are evacuated, with fires continuing for days. (Wikipedia)
Jimmy Carter’s official state funeral Jan. 9.
I thought President Jimmy Carter was a great man and a good president. He wasn’t a hawk, and he loosened the reigns of American imperialism in Central America. For example, he gave the Panama Canal back to the Republic of Panama, its rightful owners. This was done via the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977. The Sandinistas also came to power in Nicaragua in the late 70s during Carter’s presidency, but we all know what happened next! Reagan got elected and funded the Contra war.
Throughout his life, President Carter lived as a true humanitarian. He and his wife were models of hospitality, graciousness and wisdom. They sure don’t make ’em like this anymore!
I turned 66 on January 15. I took the 14th and 15th off to celebrate. The day of my birthday, Ruben and I had lunch at La Casa Molina. We both ate chimichangas. Mine had shredded beef and Ruben’s had beans inside. We then wandered around 4th Ave. I bought an Aretha Franklin t-shirt at the Hippie Gypsy. It was a birthday present to myself. Ruben bought a nice hat at the Tucson Thrift Shop. We had a late dinner at Portillo’s. I love their double bacon cheeseburgers the best. It was a good day. If I recall correctly, I also talked to my sisters Becky and Irene. They always call on my birthday.
A birthday card from my co-workers at the Library.
I got this for my birthday.
I published a blog titled “Happy Birthday Jose Alfredo Jimenez”. 1/19/25. He’s Mexico’s best known composer of “la cancion ranchera”. My parents just loved him. So do I. Even though his songs are full of machismo and la borrachera, they come straight from the heart. He was the best. The blog includes links to a radio show I did featuring Jimenez’s music. I did several tribute shows in his honor over the years.
Photo of Jose Alfredo Jimenez that appeared on the album “La Enorme Distancia”, his masterpiece.
Guadalupe Pineda, Tania Libertad and Eugenia Leon sing the Jose Alfredo Jimenez classic Pa Todo El Ano wth the legendary Paquita La Del Barrio, who passed away on 2-17-25.
1/19/25: Leonard Peltier’s sentence is commuted by President Biden. Back when I was a graduate student in the Sociology program in 1983, I did research on the American Indian Movement and learned about how the federal government used Leonard Peltier as a scapegoat, falsely accusing him of murder and sending him to prison for decades. One of President Biden’s last acts was to pardon him, finally.
1/20/25: Trump inauguration. A sad, sad day indeed. “In the first day of his return to office, President Donald Trump issues pardons to over 1500 of his supporters charged in connection with the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, declares a national emergency at the southern border, and withdraws the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on Climate.”
January 23-27, Trip to Chandler.
I stayed a few days in Chandler, Az (January 23-27), at the end of January. ALA was having a LibLearnX conference in downtown Phoenix. I thought it would be a breeze getting around, but downtown Phoenix has become a nightmare as far as traffic and driving in it are concerned. The conference was too much of a hassle to get to. I really tried, but I hate traffic jams, so I got out of downtown and didn’t go back. I did other stuff. Chandler wasn’t bad at all. There were lots of good restaurants and places to shop. I felt like I was in heaven because there were so many thrift stores in the area. I ended up buying over 20 books, over 20 cds and 10 DVDS. I probably ended up with even more, because I might have stopped counting at some point. I love going shopping for books and music! It’s my very favorite pastime.
My hotel room at the Best Western in Chandler was very comfortable. There were many restaurants and stores in the area. It was a fun trip.
The Henhouse Cafe and Sampurna were both excellent. I had a delicious breakfast and also had a scrumptious Indian feast. Chandler was full of surprises!
This restaurant, Tradiciones, on Chandler Blvd. was so darned good. I ate here a couple of times, as it was right next door to my hotel. I’d never had quesabirrias before, and dang, they were amazing!
January 29, 2025: A Bombardier CRJ700 airliner operating as American Airlines Flight 5342 and a United States Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter operating as Priority Air Transport 25 collided mid-air over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. There were 67 victims killed in the helicopter and plane collision.
Crews cleaning up the wreckage from the accident.
February 1, 2025: Fred’s memorial gathering at Reid Park.
My brother died in October, 2024. We had church services for him in early January, and this family picnic in his honor at Reid Park on February 1,
Our Urias cousins showed up. These are my mom’s tia Rita’s children. It’s always fun being with them. In the middle photo, Charles and Bubba are saying a few words about my brother. My nephew Gabe is in the background. In the last photo, a friend of Bubba’s was providing beautiful musical entertainment for the family. It was very touching.
2-8-25: Joan Baez tribute concert
A wonderful tribute to Joan Baez was held in February. In attendance were, among others, Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, Jackson Browne and Lucinda Williams.
Rosanne Cash and Joan sing Farewell Angelina at Joan’s tribute celebration.
February 10, 2025: College campuses across the country have been forced to dismantle their diversity, equity and inclusion pograms. See this for more information: President Trump Acts to Roll Back DEI Initiatives
February 11, 2025: 10 year anniversary of my dad’s passing. Time sure flies. I sure do miss this man. He was a real character.
Alfred T. Diaz, 12/27/1920-2/11/2015. My pop.
My great niece Dominique and her newborn baby, Emmit Henry Neubaur. The baby was born on 2/12/25 and this photo was taken the next day. Dominique is Anadine’s oldest daughter.
2/15/25: Random posting of the day:
From my Facebook wall. It’s so sad that so many of my fellow Americans have drunk the Trump kool-aid. It’s scary and sad at the same time.
February 17, 2025: Paquita La Del Barrio dies at the age of 77.
She was one mean mama. She sang songs with titles like Rata de dos Patas, and Saludame a la Tuya.
February 24, 2025: Roberta Flack died. She recorded many beautiful songs. I particularly love her album titled “Chapter Two”. Included is the song below. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
This is my favorite Roberta Flack song. She is incredible!
Raul Grijalva: 02/19/48 to 03/13/25. He died of cancer at the age of 77.
I’ve known Raul and his family since the early 80s. He was a dear friend and will be missed by many people.
2023 at my first Congressional Fly-in. Raul graciously agreed to take a few moments from his busy day to meet with me and my colleagues from ALA.
March 16, 2025. Pedro Ignacio Taibo reading at the Tucson Festival of Books. He was very friendly and warm, and he signed my Pancho Villa book too! He spoke in Special Collections to a packed house.
Pablo Ignacio Taibo is a prolific Mexican author who writes in a variety of genres. I have copies of these two titles. That’s him in the middle.
March 22, 2025 Fighting Oligarchy rally at Catalina High School.
Man, I could not believe that I didn’t hear about this rally until it was all over. I would have been there for sure. I’ve been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America on and off since the early 80s. I love Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. There was an overflow crowd. It made me very happy to see that.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Bernie Sanders came to town and spoke at Catalina High School. I didn’t even know about it until the day it happened.
AOC and Bernie in Tucson. They drew a huge crowd. 3-22-25
March 25: Today is Aretha Franklin’s birthday. Aretha sings her butt off in the video below. The songs lyrics aren’t much, but the way she gets into the groove and hits all those high notes is just amazing. She jammed on this one!
March 26, 2025: Raul Grijalva’s funeral and celebration of life at the Casino Ballroom. I attended the celebration of life, but the funeral was completely packed. Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other dignitaries were there at St. Augustine’s Cathedral. After the morning service, people gathered at El Casino Ballroom to bid farewell to this great leader and humanitarian.
Raul’s family at the memorial at El Casino Ballroom.
Memorabilia from the gathering for Raul at the El Casino.
This photo was taken at Raul Grijalva’s memorial event at the Casino Ballroom. Dolores Huerta and Raul were great friends. My comadre Lorena Howard was there and was able to get us into the back room to say hello to Ms. Huerta and to have a photo taken. 3/26/25.
March 28, 2025: Presentation on vaudeville materials housed in Special Collections
The March issue of Desert Leaf Magazine featured a story about the vaudeville holdings in Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries. The article can be read here: After reading the article, a woman named Kristen Helland contacted me to see if she and a couple of her friends could come and look at some of the materials in the vaudeville collection. I told them yes, and pulled together some sample materials from the collection for them to look at. The visit turned out very well and my visitors were quite pleased.
Special Collections is home to the holdings of the American Vaudeville Museum and several other vaudeville-related collections. These are but a few samples of what we have on hand. Kisten, Sidney and Vince, my visitors for the day. Sidney and Vince both worked in the theater as playwrights. Samples from our vaudeville holdings.
Trip to Washington DC, April 1-6, 2025
I think I’ve visited Washington DC more than any other city in the country,with the exception, maybe, of Chicago.
In April, I traveled to Washington DC to, on behalf of the American Library Association, to participate in advocacy work on Capitol Hill. My colleague Erin MacFarlane, chair of the Arizona Library Association legislation committee, (and director of the Phoenix Public Library), and I have worked together the past three years at these gatherings. We typically visit with the staff of five to six Arizona members of the House and Senate while we’re there. We do our best to convince them that we need their support to get library funding bills passed in Congress. We do this by sharing stories about how the money they have previously allocated to our state is spent and describe the positive impact those dollars have had on our communities. We provide real life examples, and over time have become pretty good story tellers, and quite a team!
Erin MacFarlane and I in Washington, April 2025.
In my free time, I visited that National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery. I also did some souvenir shopping.
The National Gallery of Art has an amazing collection of medieval religious art. This work is titled “The Coronation of the Virgin”, and the date is 1324. The artist is unknown.
This portrait of Joan graced the cover of Time magazine back in the very early 60s. It”s in the National Portrait Gallery. I’m so glad I got to see it in person!
The entire country saw massive protests on Hands Off Day, April 5, 2025. The crowds in DC were very large also.
Random photos on the street. The man on the horse is General Winfield Scott Hancock, US army general who served during the Civil War. The Hotel Monaco was quite snazzy. In a previous life it was the US Post Office. They gutted a beautiful interior, unfortunately and came up with something quite bland. Oh well.
Inside the National Gallery of Art and outside at the Federal Trade Commission. This work is called “Man Controlling Trade”.
Lenny Welch had a beautiful voice. While he was known for his big hit, Since I Fell For You, he also recorded many other memorable tunes such as Ebb Tide and Congratulations. I love his voice.
April 8, 2025 Lenny Welch died.
Here’s Lenny Welch’s biggest hit, Since I Fell For You
April 12, 2025: Random photo of the day–Ruben having dinner with our good friend, Maria. They look so happy.
Maria and Ruben have been friends since they attended Salpointe together in the early 80s.
April 17, 2025: This year Easter was late, and was celebrated on April 20. Ruben put together this Easter tree for the occasion. The little ornaments are all from Europe, Germany mostly. The saint is Elizabeth Ann Seton.
This year we have bought even more little ornaments, so this tree is going to be really full next year
May 8, 2025: Carla Hayden, the nation’s Librarian of Congress is abruptly fired by Donald Trump. Hayden is a great leader and a true champion and advocate for America’s libraries. This was a terrible act, and it was done solely because she is African American. Carla was the director of the public library system in Baltimore for many years and was also president of ALA at one point.
May 14, 2025: Bruce Springsteen kicks off his European tour and offers scathing anti-Trump commentary on numerous occasions in a number of cities throughout Europe. He called Trump “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous,” and accused the administration of rolling back civil rights, siding with dictators, and inflicting “sadistic pleasure” on workers. Trump fires back, hurling one insult after another at Bruce. It only serves to embolden “the boss” and he continues his criticism of Trump throughout his tour. The clip below is from his Manchester show on May 14. Check it out. You can hear what he says for yourself. It’s well worth a listen and is followed by a very inspiring performance of the song, “My City in Ruins”.
Springsteen performing in England.
June 6, 2025: When Trump became president, Elon Musk was with him all the way. It’s said that he manipulated the voting tallies to give Trump the presidency. Within a few short months, however, Musk and Trump had a major falling out. The honeymoon ended abruptly.
I could not resist adding this cartoon, published on May 15, 2025.
Protesting ICE in Los Angeles, June, 2025:
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 08: Protestors against immigration raids march from the Los Angeles City Hall to the LA Federal Building on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Tensions in the city remain high after the Trump administration called in the National Guard against the wishes of city leaders following two days of clashes with police during a series of immigration raids. More protests are scheduled for today.
June 17, 2025: Photos of drawings from the William Wilde Collection.
I’ve been working on organizing the papers of Tucson architect William Wilde. I ran across these renderings while working and thought I would share them. I thought they were really well done. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Trip to Philadelphia, June 26-30, 2025
This was my fifth visit to Philadelphia since 1995. The experience is different every time. There sure is a lot to see in this city!
In June, I attended the American Library Association’s annual conference in Philadelphia PA. I stayed in the historic district. It was a bit far from City Hall, but I liked it. It was a great location and I had an enjoyable time, even though it was much too humid. I attended various conference sessions, visited art museums and bookshops, saw some of my old friends, and ate a lot of delicious food. The cheesesteaks, pizza, pretzels, and bagels were delicious, but so was the more healthy stuff, like the Chinese food I ate. I especially enjoyed walking along the Delaware River and going to a thrift store in the South Street area. I think it was called Philly AIDS Thrift. It was jam packed with treasures!
This bust of Benjamn Franklin was located directly across from my hotel in the historic district of Philaddelphia.
I saw this near the Delaware River. I thought it was incredible to have stumbled upon it. I had just bought a book about the Wobblies at a local bookstore.
The Delaware River. Camden NJ is on the other side. I don’t know the name of the bridge.
This is in front of Independence Hall. Given the current political climate, its good to have a reminder of our nation’s founding principles.
July 16, 2025: Connie Francis dies. She was a great performer. My favorite songs are Where the Boys Are, Who’s Sorry Now? and My Happiness. My mother loved her Spanish album.
Connie Francis December 12, 1937-July 16, 2025
July 17, 2025: Sylviana Wood passes away,
Sylviana Wood was a founding member of Teatro Libertad. She later founded her own theater company, and was the author various plays and memoirs.
July 31, 2025: Flaco Jimenez dies. What a sad day. I loved this man. He was supremely talented.
Here is a great clip of Flaco performing with Little Joe Hernandez, one of the legends of Tejano music.
August 14, 2025: It’s difficult these days to be cheerful and happy. The world is in such a sorry mess, but humor sure helps lift one’s spirits. I just love this little video clip of Harvey Korman in drag, singing an Andrews Sisters song with Vicki Lawrence and Carol Burnett. He’s got natural drag talent! It’s a long skit, but you must see the entire thing!
My sweet cousin Susie Sainz Miller died on August 17. We were the same age. She was a karate expert and loved to cook. She was born and raised in San Francisco, and was married for many years to a wonderful guy named Ron Miller.
August 18: The following op-ed was released on August 18 in the United Kingdom. The writer has quite a colorful vocabulary to say the least.
August 18: I’m not sure who brought it up recently, but back in 1953, my sister Irene, my mom and my aunt Corina were all saved from drowning in the Colorado River by a man named R.J. Sanderson. I decided to use Newspapers.com to see if I could find anything about this, and lo and behold, I did! I found three articles.
The first article is from the Needles Desert Star, 7/23/53. The second one is also from the Needles Desert Star, 12/16/54. The last article is from the Arizona Republic, 9/11/64.
August 28, 2025. My world history books are in Library of Congress class order for the most part. I’ve kept books about art and other topics related specifically to a given country with that country’s history materials. Click the photo to get a closer look.
These days, in my spare time I do a lot of work on my personal library. Within the past couple of weeks or so, for example, I have put all of my history books in LC call number order, and have moved them to my bedroom. It took a lot of creative re-arranging to make everything fit, but I did it! I have also organized my literature collection and have inventoried my entire film collection. I am now inventorying all of my books and have begun re-organizing the shelves in my office.
August 29, 2025
Images from a book I recently found in Special Collections. August 29, 2025
I have also been reading a lot of history. There’s so much to learn, it’s mind boggling, but I’m doing it. I have reached a point where I am not going to be close minded about stuff. I think about Europe, in particular. Being three-fifths Spanish, I have every right to claim my European heritage. I’ve always been ashamed to admit that I’m Spanish, because it was far hipper to claim my indigenous roots. Well, those days are over. I’m proud of the heritage of my paternal grandfather. Asturias is a great region of Spain. It was its own kingdom for a long time, and the Moors could not conquer it. My interest extends beyond Spain at this point. I want to know all about Germany, France, Italy, Russia, the Balkans, and England and all the other countries of the world. I want to know all of it. I have this hunger for knowledge that is just insatiable.
September 2, 2025. Pressure has been mounting all year for the release of the Epstein files. Trump has so far successfully kept them out of the public eye. He’s in them, of course. It’s already been proven.
I first posted the following flyer on my Facebook feed on September 14, 2014, It popped up again recently as a “memory” post, so I re-shared it. I miss my radio show. I had so much fun putting it together over the years. I did this work for nearly 20 years altogether, first from 1983 to 1986, with a small break in the middle, and then from 2005 to 2020, with another break in the middle somewhere. I have taped many of my shows and have digital versions of them too. I listen to them sometimes. I love them. All my shows from 2013 to 2020 are on my website. The above flyer popped into my Facebook feed recently. It’s been 11 years since I created it. I never did distribute it, unfortunately.
Downton Abbey Grand Finale: September 12, 2025: I’m looking forward to seeing Downton Abbey on the big screen. This summer, I watched all of the previous episodes, including the two movies that came out, so I’m all caught up and quite excited about seeing the new movie in a real movie theater.
9-12-25: Ruben and I saw the film at the Roadhouse Cinema. It was fabulous!
Some of my favorite Downton Abbey characters…Matthew Crawley, Mr. Bates and Anna, and Tom Branson…What a memorable series this has been. I’m so sad that it’s over. The entire acting ensemble was simply amazing.
This gay dude was an evil little rascal throughout much of the series, but by the end of everything, he was happily partnered with a movie star. I thought that was great.
I’m so shocked at the state of our world at present. I feel so sad and angry all the time. I wish I could do something that would make things better. I know I’m not alone, but I do feel helpless much of the time. The world today is just plain crazy. I know it’s important to focus on what I can control. There’s a lot that I need to work on, like my weight, and my health. I have a nice, big home that needs a lot of attention and work, and I have a big family and many friends that I do not see often enough. There’s so much to look forward to, I refuse to let the current political climate immobilize me completely. Fuck Trump.
Well, I guess that’s about it for now. I can be reached at jdiaz204@gmail.com.
September 14: Oops. I guess I’m not done. I just have to share that I discovered a program called Google Gemini AI. It isn’t perfect, but in most cases, it transforms old beat up photos to brand new looking pics. You can colorize them too. Here are some of them. They are of my mom and dad, from back in the 40s and 50s. I never dreamed I’d see the day when these were all restored and in color!
Dad and mom in the late 40s in Guaymas, Mexico. They were there with my mom’s sister Mary and my dad’s brother Rafael.
Mom and dad at home in their living room. I remember that corner table well. That’s where we had our television. It was a big black and white that didn’t work all that great most of the time. Ha!
My mom and dad at my dad’s sisters’ wedding. Mom was a maid of honor for Aunt Carmen. 1955.
Two more photos from the 40s. The one of my mom and dad on the left is from either 1943 or 1944. The one on the right (my dad is in the middle) was from right before my dad enlisted in the Navy in 1945.
Ok. I think I’m done now. Until next time….
September 15: Oops. I lied. I just received in the mail these gorgeous prints from the Balkan region (Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia) of Europe. I’ll just post a few here. There are about 30 of these in two volumes. I love this stuff.
Ok. I’m done for the time being…
September 16: Today I co-taught a class with my colleague Alba for Dr. Jacqueline Barrios. The course was Public Applied Humanities 420. The students are studying Tucson’s southside area and the history of the fight to clean up the contamination caused by industrial pollution, specifically TCE. Alba and I shared a variety of resources the students could use for their assignments and I found the following photos of various locations on the southside. These are from the Jack Shaeffer photography collection. In all honesty, it is a real shame that there is so very little documentation about this part of town Neither the Arizona HIstorical Society nor Special Collections have much at all. Here are the photos I found:
Veteran’s Day ceremony at South Lawn Cemetery. Children playing in the flooded streets in South Tucson.
S. 6th Ave, also known as US Route 80, looking north. Students from the newly opened Sunnyside Jr. High, mid-50s.
Sunnyside Jr. High when it was first built. Two children eating at the Pima County Fair.
The professor also asked me some questions about my memories of the southside, and I talked about my family and how we’d visit our cousins the Olguins during the holidays. I talked about Southgate and the various places people went, like the A&W Root Beer stand and Shakey’s. I talked about the Mission. I still have my notes, and plan to write up a little summary for Dr. Barrios.
The VA Hospital, located on S. 6th Ave. Southgate Shopping Center, just north of the hospital.
Crowds attend the Pima County Fair when the fairgrounds were on 6th and Irvington, adjacent to the rodeo grounds.
McLellans was a great five and dime store. This one was at Southgate. There was another one downtown. The Apache Drive-in was on the Benson Highway, just east of Park Ave.
September 16, 2025: According to Wikipedia, A United Nations commission of inquiry finds that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The attacks on Gaza by Israel have increased and the Israelis are now in the cities invading the area.
Ruins of Beit Lahia, in the Gaza Strip, destroyed by Israeli bombardments, February 23, 2025.
Every country in the UN other than Israel and the United States have acknowledged the country of Palestine as its own legitimate autonomous state.
September 17: Dang it. Robert Redford died yesterday, (on September 16, 2025). I’m so very sad. I loved this guy. I think I first saw him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with friends or family at a local drive-in theater. It was probably the late 60s. He acted in lots of wonderful movies over the course of his career He even produced and directed some too. He’s great in The Way We Were, which I just love. I have a lot of Redford’s movies and some books here at home. This summer, I read his biography and purchased many of his movies. I have a lot of them, but not all of them. I hope I can acquire more. I’m going to post some movie and magazine covers below. They are not in any particular order.
Sample movie titles and magazine covers.
We lost a real hero. Man, I miss him already!
I got to listening to gospel music on Youtube the other night. The Caravans were absolutely wonderful and amazing. I found this gem:
Albertina Walker was known as the queen of gospel music. She was the leader of the Caravans, a female gospel group that over time included Inez Andrews and Shirley Caesar, among other great gospel vocalists.
September 18: I’m still playing around with Google Gemini AI, the program that cleans up old photos and colorizes them. Today, I worked on more photos of my family. It’s amazing how they look when they are in color! The first holy communion photo had to be worked on a few times before it came out right. Some of the photos don’t come out well at all, unfortunately. Here are a few more:
My mother, Josefina Rascon with her brother Eduardo Rascon. First Holy Communion. My dad and mom walking in downtown Tucson mid-50s.
My dad and his brothers Mino, Raul and Val, plus Aunt Prudence and Serino, a cousin. I don’t know the rest. Superior, 1945.
My sister Becky and brother Rudy, around 1952.
My dad in his Navy Uniform in 1945. My cousins and me in front of my parent’s house, 1964.
This is the only family photo that I have with all my brothers and sisters and parents. It was taken in 1986 at my house on Manlove. The faces are not all perfect, but pretty close.
Summer, 1976. I was chosen as this year’s Salpointe delegate to Boy’s State, held in Flagstaff every year.
September 22, 2025:
There is so much unbelievable stuff going on in the world. A couple of weeks ago a 31 year old Trump supporter named Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a rally on some college campus in Utah, where he was speaking. Kirk got his start young, and was groomed and supported by the ultra-rich as he rose to prominence in MAGAland. He would tour college campuses and debate young students, making them look dumb, since he knew how to twist his words well. He spewed nothing but hatred and targeted gays, black people, other minorities, and women. He was staunchly anti-abortion and stated at one point that if his 10 year old daughter were raped and became pregnant, that he would force her to have the baby. How fucking sick is that? He also said that the civil rights act was a bad idea and that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a bad person. Trump and the right tried to blame the left for the killing, but it turned out it was another MAGA conservative, a young guy under 20, that did the deed. Kirk has been turned into a martyr on the right. Yesterday, over 40,000 people, including Trump, showed up to his memorial in Glendale, AZ.
When he spoke, Trump spewed even more hatred, and is now attacking the left like never before, stating outright that he hates the left and that it should be illegal to be a leftist. Can you believe it? We are in Nazilandia…. He recently pressured ABC to take the Jimmy Kimmel show off the air, but Mr. Kimmel and all his supporters are fighting back, and Disney is already feeling the effects of the boycott that started when the news about Kimmel’s cancellation was announced. The latest news is that Disney and Mr. Kimmel are in negotiations to bring the show back, but with some modifications. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
9/22/25: Here’s what happened:
“Shortly after Kimmel’s suspension was announced, Disney stock dipped about 3.5 percent and continued to trade lower in subsequent days. That loss in market value has amounted to about $4 billion.”– Robert Reich
ICE is raiding cities and other places all over the country too. They’ve been at it since the first day of Trump’s presidency. It’s incredible that ICE isn’t in the news much. Below are links to a couple of recent articles describing what ICE is up to. It’s some scary stuff!
The Epstein files haven’t been released either. Trump seems to be getting his way with this one. I bet the list will create a HUGE scandal if its released. Trump is doing all he can to take attention away from all of this, and he’s using Kirk’s death to distract everyone. It’s not working, however. At least I hope it’s not.
September 22, 2025: I just stumbled upon this interview between Nicole Wallace and Joan Baez. It was posted earlier today on youtube. It’s an excellent interview and well worth a listen.
Nicole Wallace interview with Joan Baez. It’s very good!
September 23, 2025: Today is Bruce Springsteen’s birthday. He was born on this day back in 1949. He’s 76 years old. This is one of my very favorite songs. I remember well how lovely this song sounded when my good friend David Gouge sang it at Richard Elias’s memorial celebration a few years ago. It blew me away.
September 23, 2025: Here are some more photos that I’ve had colorized and restored:
My dad with Charles and Irene, mid-40s; My dad with my brother Rudy, 1951.
My mom and Becky, mid-50s; My mom with Rudy and Freddie, 1963.
My Aunt Helen with my brother and sister and cousins; Becky, Charles and Rudy. At the ranch in the early 50s.
Serino, my dad, my uncles Mino and Valentin. Mid-40s.
Wow. This was amazing. Jimmy Kimmel is a badass. So is Robert DeNiro! Watch this! It aired tonight. (9/23/25).
9/23/25: Adelita Grijalva wins a seat in Congress, replacing her deceased father. She won by a landslide. Way to go, Adelita!
Congratulations, Adelita! I know your dad is watching and is very proud of you!
My dear friend Ramona Grijalva with her daughter Adelita and another dear friend, Betty Villegas at Adelita’s victory party the the El Casino Ballroom on September 23, 2025.
In mid October, I’ll be going with Ruben back to the Buffalo area one more time. We’ll be there about 10 days. We want to go to Jamestown to see the I Love Lucy museum, and back to Syracuse to go antiquing. We also want to go to the Finger Lakes area, maybe to Ithaca to see the Cornell University campus. There’s going to be a lot to see this time around. We’ll be heading back up to Niagara Falls again and hopefully take the Maid of the Mist boat tour this time. We missed it last time by a day or two. The tours shut down for the Winter.
September 25, 2025: I just received a Facebook post regarding the upcoming issue of Time Magazine. Bruce Sprinsteen is on the cover! You can read the article here:
Slated for release in early October.
9/25/25: Random photo of the day:
Two men in traditional Dutch pants, circa. 1900. From my Facebook feed…
September 25: When I get down in the dumps, I like to listen to songs that help lift up my spirits. This is one of those. God bless Rodney Crowell!
9/25/25: More family photos. These are me and my brothers and sisters. I inherited my family photos, and have all of my sisters’ and brother’s school photos and many more. I’m so glad these can now be easily restored and shared with others via the internet.
Irene and Charles.
Becky and Rudy
Freddie and me.
September 26, 2025: Today is my brother Charles’s birthday. He’s 80 years old. Wow!
This is my brother Charles during his teen years. Not sure of the year.
September 27, 2025:
My cousin Denise (Dee Dee) Diaz died today after spending many years battling cancer. She was a few months older than me and had just turned 67. She was my Uncle Tony and Aunt Corina’s daughter and she spent most of her life in the Tucson area and in Oracle. She took care of her parent for many years. Dee Dee was a selfless, faithful person who never put her own needs first. She’ll be missed.
September 27: I re-did more photos today. Here are a bunch, of me this time, that have been cleaned up and colorized.
Me at the age of 3. The big stuffed monkey was a gift from my sister’s ex-boyfriend.
Me at the age of 5, 7 and 8.
1968. Me, Bubba Fass, Larry Mendoza, Ricky Fass, Freddie Diaz, my brother, Roman Jaurigue and Larry Ochoa. This was at my niece Belisa’s birthday party.
1985 or 1986, when I lived on Manlove next door to Ted Warmrand, and was in library school. That little house was cool.
Summer, 1993 Tumacacori. My friends Karen, Lester and Barbara were visitng from Michigan.
2016. This photo was taken at work during a program on mariachi music in Tucson.
September 27: I just finished watching Ladies in Lavender, and watched Tea with Mussolini a few days ago. I also watched A Room With A View and Quartet recently. All of these films feature the legendary Maggie Smith. She’s amazing. So is Judi Dench, who is also in three of the films.
September 28: Here are more photos of me that have been cleaned up and colorized. The last one was originally a portrait done in pencil, but this is what Google Gemini came up with. I like it!
October 1, 2025:
The past few days have been crazy at the national level. Trump humiliated himself and the country when he spoke at the UN assembly recently. He rambled on about all kinds of nonsense. Prior to his speech, as he stepped on to the escalator, it stopped. He ended up having to walk up the escalator stairs, and it really made him mad. He blew the whole thing out of proportion and complained about it for days, called it a “conspiracy” blah, blah, blah.
He then made an ass out of himself in front of all his top generals yesterday. His sidekick Hegseth was just as bad. I don’t think the generals were in tune with the suggestion that they invade our own cities and practice battle skills on the ground while there. I think they all knew this was all loony tunes. Nobody clapped. Former generals are now speaking out about it, noting how frustrating and insane Trump’s words were. It’s unconstitutional for the military to turn its guns on its own citizens. Yeah, but who cares?
9-30-25– A roomful of generals listening in disbelief to a deranged old man.
I’m thrilled that my website, Bobdiaz.net, is seeing so much traffic. The most popular post is the one I wrote on Chicano culture in Tucson in 1975. Since I first posted it in 2024, it has received 1338 visits. I understand that some English instructors at the UofA have put my website, (and this blog post in particular) on their reading lists. That’s amazing, and I’m quite humbled. The posts about my two grandfathers and their families are also very popular.
As for future topics, I want to write about the friends and family members I have lost since the pandemic. There have been many. Here are some of the names: Richard Elias, Chestalene Pintozzi, Barb Hoppe, LeAnne Martin, Debbie Jerome, Pancho Medina, Jon Miles, Barclay Goldsmith, Henry Mesa, my brothers Freddie and Rudy, and my tias Mary Olguin, Corina Diaz and Armida Diaz. I also want to keep chipping away at my life story.
I will receive my very first Social Security check in December. Man, it’s been a long time coming, that’s for sure! I turn 67 in January.
Proof that I’m an old fart, but still alive and kicking. This photo was taken in early 2024 in Montreal. Get a load of those wrinkles and that shiny gray hair!
José Alfredo Jiménez was born on January 19, 1926 in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico and died on November 23, 1973 in Mexico City, Mexico.
He was Mexico’s most beloved composer of la cancion ranchera. He wrote and sang hundreds and hundreds of songs, appeared in many movies and recorded albums and singles for both Columbia Records and the RCA label.
I will be adding more information about his music and life in the coming weeks. I have scores of albums and cds as well as books, sheet music and other materials that I’ll share on this post as soon as I can get everything organized and uploaded. For now, here is what I’d like to share with you:
In 2020, in celebration of his birthday, I produced a radio show featuring his music. All the songs are composed by him, and are sung by both him and other artists. You can find the link to the show by clicking part one or part two. Each part is an hour long. Part one begins at the 3:15 minute mark, right after the closing of the Petey Mesquitey show. The set list follows below.
Jose Alfredo visited Tucson at least three times in the Sixties and Seventies. These are from the local newspapers.
Tucson_Citizen_October 10, 1962
Arizona_Daily_Star_Thu__Oct_15__1964_
Tucson_Citizen_1971_04_07
Websites that include information about Jose Alfredo Jimenez and his work
Second Hand Songs entry for Jose Alfredo Jimenez (SecondHandSongs is building the most comprehensive source of cover song information, by means of a database of originals, cover songs, sampled songs and sampling songs). This advanced database stores the data in a reusable and maintainable way, and which is interconnected to many other online databases.
Here is a live version of the song, Gracias, from a 1973 television program. Jose Alfredo died the following year.
Jose Alfredo with some of his contemporaries–Lola Beltran, Javier Solis, Tomas Mendez and Amalia Mendoza. Beltran, Solis and Mendoza all recorded his songs at one point or another.
With Amalia Mendoza, Miguel Aceves Mejia, Queta Jimenez, La Prieta Linda and Maria De Lourdes. Jose Alfredo recorded an entire album of duets with Mendoza and Miguel Aceves Mejia helped Jose Alfredo get started in the music business.
Here is Lucha Villa singing the song “Que Se Me Acabe La Vida” with Jose Alfredo. They never recorded together, but performed several duets live. Both also starred in the movie, Me Canse’ De Rogarle, a great comedy filled with Jose Alfredo’s music.
Photos of Jose Alfredo and Lucha Villa. They made great singing partners.
Here is a popurri of songs written by Jose Alfredo Jimenez and sung by Lucha Villa.
I’m including here material in my personal library.
Very rare Jose Alfredo Jimenez sheet music from the mid-20th Century.
Songbooks in my collection. These works are different from the above songbooks, in that they include just the lyrics of his songs, not the music.
Biographies of Jose Alfredo Jimenez in my collection.
Jose Alfredo Jimenez recordings: The Columbia Years ca. 1950-1960
The first album is likely Jimenez’s second recording for Columbia records and was issued in the early 1950s The next two are also original lp recordings. The last one was issued after Jimenez had made the switch to RCA records.
The fist item is a three disc set of Jimenez’s best known Columbia recordings. The second album was issued in the 1970s and includes some of Jimenez’s lesser known recordings. The final item is an lp from the 1980s that includes many popular Jimenez recordings, including “Maldicion Ranchera,” one of my favorites.These three cds were issued in the early 1990s under the Sony label, which now owns the entire Columbia catalog. He re-recorded many of these songs when he moved to RCA in 1960.
THE RCA YEARS
The following lps were all issued on the RCA label in the 1960s.
You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.
Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends.It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.
While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their material removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!
A quick overview of 1997:
Ruben and I celebrated four years together at the end of February, 1997. We had bought a car in ’94 and a house in ’95, on which we worked steadily to improve. Ruben was working at Supercuts, and I was still at the UA Library entering my fifth year there. By this time, our relationship had its share of challenges, but we worked things out as time went on. I traveled a lot this year, to Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Ogden, Utah, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. The cost of these trips, plus our spending on the house and our buying habits (home furnishings, movies, books, cds, postcards, etc) got us into debt and we had to get help with it. It would take a while, but we did eventually bring the debt way down. I applied for continuing status this year and it was granted the following year. I also applied for another job with the American Library Association in Chicago, but it was offered to someone else.
My job at the library kept me busy and my many service and scholarship activities added to the workload. In addition to juggling my three main areas of work–staff development, diversity and recruitment–the Dean asked me to coordinate the work of two visiting librarians from Saudi Arabia this particular year. I also worked with the staff development advisory group, provided funding for workshops on technology and other topics, served on the change management support group and coordinated library-wide training with various consultants. I worked with Library Diversity Council and the University of Arizona Diversity Action Council, was a member of the Arizona Association of Chicanos in Higher Education–AACHE (secretary) and president elect of the local chapter of REFORMA, The National Association for Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking. I also served on Library Cabinet and was an active participant on the Library Support Team. I compiled an affirmative action report and worked on two publication projects, one with my colleague Chestalene Pintozzi, and the other with several other colleagues for the publication, “Magazines for Libraries”.. This is also the year I started doing workshops for librarians and the public on Latin music. Getting involved with this work was the best thing that could have happened to me. It was a way to share my love of music with the rest of the world, and it was a change of pace, different from my day to day work at the Library. I could use my creativity when putting these workshops together, and I really needed that in my life at the time.
At home, Ruben and I continued to fill our house with furnishings. We bought more antiques, including a dresser and a china cabinet. We also spent lots of money on postcards, books, cds, and movies. I focused mostly on buying Mexican music and jazz. My book purchases included stuff on Chicano Studies and leftist politics. I also found some high school yearbooks from the Sixties. Our postcard collection includes the cities of Tucson, Guadalajara and Mexico City, plus other places in Arizona and elsewhere. I still have receipts for most, if not all of this stuff.
January 15: I turn 38 years old.
My friend Sandra Balderrama sent me this cool birthday card when I turned 38. At the time, she worked for the American Library Association as its head of diversity initiatives. We’ve remained friends after all these years. She’s a wonderful person.
Bill Clinton is inaugurated as our 42nd President on January 20, 1997.
President Clinton won a second term as President, but the ensuing years would be challenging, as he was impeached for his involvement with Monica Lewinsky and the Republican controlled Senate and House kept his hands tied.
January 25, 1997: Ken Frazier presentation at the UA Library
January 25: I coordinated a visit and talk by the University of Wisconsin at Madison Library director Ken Frazier, known in the library profession as “a passionate and expert spokesperson for the library community on issues related to the digital library, scholarly communication and intellectual property”. His most notable activity was being the inspiration and guidance for the launching and development of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an academic library group that formed to, among other things, challenge the rising costs of academic journals.
February 14-17, 1997: American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Conference, Washington, DC.
Attending this conference was a lot of fun. It was my first time in Washington DC. I went to lunch at the New Big Wong Chinese restaurant in China Town with Karen and Linda, and also had Thai food one evening. I stayed at a place called the Governors mansion, but the bathroom was too small, so I moved to the Holiday Inn. I saw the Jewels of the Romanovs exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery and partied at the gay bars in Dupont Circle, and had a lot of fun. I’m not sure if I hung out with my friend Richard DiRusso or not this time around. I ate at a restaurant called “Annie’s” in Dupont Circle twice. I was involved with the LAMA Diversity committee and started work on the LAMA Diversity Officers discussion group.
1880s print of the US Capitol and Washington DC.
At first I booked a room at a hotel called The Governor’s Mansion, but the bathroom was way too small, so I decided to move to the Holiday Inn, which was close to Dupont Circle, the area of town in which I was most interested. There were a lot of book and record stores in the area, including the Melody Record shop, shown here. Lambda Rising was a great place to shop for gay-themed stuff, and Kramerbooks was a discount bookstore. They were just a few doors away from eachother. The record store and Lambda Rising are no longer there, but Kramerbooks is still open after all these years. I had fun going to the different gay bars in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. There were at least four different nightspots all in the same vicinity. The Fireplace is still open, but Omega DC closed years ago. Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse catered to the late night crowd, and I ate there a couple of times after visiting the various gay bars in the area. The New Big Wong Chinese restaurant was in Chinatown. I had lunch there with several of my friends from the University of Michigan. I had dinner with other friends at the Thai restaurant. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like Thai food much. I visited the Corcoran Gallery of Art to view the exhibit “The Jewels of the Romanovs. It was a very cool exhibit. The Corcoran Gallery has since closed. Too bad. It was a nice place.
Bewitched!
Ruben and I bought this board game on March 7. It’s one of several Bewitched items in our memorabilia collection.
Appointment to the ALA Minority Concerns and Cultural Diversity Committee, Spring 1997
Paul McCartney knighted on March 11, 1997.
Paul was always my favorite Beatle, although I liked John a lot for a while. In the late 60s, Paul became the “bad guy” when he refused to allow a certain lawyer by the last name of Klein to represent the Beatles. It turns out Paul was right. Klein was crooked.
A memorial service on March 14, 1997 in memory of Shizuko Radbill, a UA Library colleague who passed away on August 30, 1996
Shizuko Radbill was a member of the Library Diversity Council. She was a very sweet woman. She fell ill after a trip to Japan. This was during the mad cow crisis, and we all thought she had succumbed to it. It was very sad.
The film, Selena, starring Jennifer Lopez, is released on March 21, 1997
I took my Dad’s two stepchildren, Bertha and Antonio to see this movie. I came away from it with tears in my eyes. The kids just laughed at me. It was a great film.
April 1-April 6, 1997: Vacation with Ruben in Los Angeles
Ruben and I went to Los Angeles and stayed in a Best Western hotel near Burbank. We did a lot of stuff, including driving to Long Beach to see the Queen Mary, going to Hollywood, Olvera Street in downtown LA, and to the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park.
Allen Ginsberg June 3, 1927-April 5, 1997
I started reading Allen Ginsberg’s poetry while college. He fascinated the heck out of me, and was so eloquent and deep at times, but very funny too.
Laura Nyro October 18, 1947-April 8, 1997
My sister Becky started listening to Laura Nyro in 1968. I enjoyed the music too, and once I started building my own album collection, I familiarized myself with all of her recordings. My three favorites are below. Ms. Nyro died of cervical cancer.
Somewhere in New York City. This print and the one above where Ms. Nyro is sitting on a stoop both hung on the wall in my apartment when I was attending college and lived near the University of Arizona.
April 11-April 14, 1997: The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 8th National Conference in Nashville Tennessee
Carla Stoffle coordinated this year’s conference, and our staff were everywhere, helping out and giving presentations. I gave a presentation and moderated a session too. Some of my friends from the University of Michigan were there, and it was nice to see them again. This was a fun trip. I went to the Grand Ole Opry museum and bought cassettes at the Ernest Tubb record shop. I also heard Cornel West speak. I asked him to talk about Allen Ginsberg and what he thought of the Allen Ginsberg poem where he says “America will die”. He was very eloquent in his response. Afterwards, I went with a bunch of people, including my good friend Doreen, to a restaurant called the Royal Thai, and made the mistake of ordering very hot soup that ruined my evening. My mouth burned for hours. I also went to the Wild Horse Saloon and partied with all my colleagues. I didn’t want to learn how to learn country two stepping, but the instructor chased me all over the place until he caught me and made me try to learn. I was hopeless.
I bought these when I visited the Ryman Auditorium.
I bought a Peruvian ocarina in one of the shops in Nashville, but it was made of clay and I chipped it, unfortunately.
“Social Equity and Empowerment in the Age of Technology,” presentation given at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference, April 12, 1997. Nashville, TN.
This was my second presentation on this topic, and I did a lot better at delivering it. However, I failed to include my footnotes and citations, which wasn’t good. Again, I was out of my element with this stuff. It was a hot topic and I argued that communities of color were going to fall further behind with the new technologies because of lack of access to key elements of the infrastructure
Ellen Comes out, Time Magazine, April 14, 1997.
A New ALA LAMA Assignment:Chair of the LAMA Diversity Officers Discussion Group
Juan Gabriel and Rocio Durcal, Juntos Otra Vez, released on 4-29-97.
The film, Austin Powers, is released on May 2, 1997.
May 12, 1997–Tornado strikes Miami, Fla.
A rare F-1 tornado strikes Miami Florida and causes $525,000 in damages.
“Musica Latina”, presentation on collection development strategies for Latin music, co-presented with Benjamin Ocon at the 1997 Utah Library Association Conference, Ogden, UT, May 15, 1997.
Musica Latina workshop at the Utah Library Association. Presentation given with Ben Ocon. He invited me. We were a big hit. We both did a lot of preparation, coming up with genres, major artists and recordings, places to buy music, history of various genres, etc. This was the first time I ever gave this workshop, and I repeated it solo in the Fall at the Tucson Pima County Library at the Sam Lena Branch. Ramona Grijalva invited me. Ogden was a trip. At the time, there were a lot of Mexicanos in the downtown area. I met a guy at one of the bars and he and I partied together. Ben was great to me. We had dinner together. He was such a gentle guy.
Doing this program was a breakthrough milestone in my professional life. After 10 years of doing unfulfilling work as an academic librarian, I finally found something that I loved doing. I’d been involved with music in one form or another since I was a child, but in the past 10 years all I had done was steadily build my personal record collection. I also read a lot about music. I was now ready to share my knowledge and budding expertise with the rest of the world. Helping other librarians learn about Latin music so that they could build Latin music collections at their own libraries became my passion and mission. Ben and I worked together two more times in subsequent years, and each time, we were a big hit. He was such a wonderful man. I’m very sad that we lost touch with each other.
John Fogerty, Blue Moon Swamp, released on 5-20-97.
My baby sister Jennifer was born on May 22, 1997. The photo below was taken at her baptism ceremony. Pictured are my aunt Carmen, my Dad, his wife Lupe, Jennifer and my aunt Helen.
My dad and his wife Lupe’s babies Jose’ and Jennifer.
Released on 6-10-97. Great album.
Released on 6-20-97. Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett was so funny!
I and other colleagues completed our work on our Magazines for Libraries chapters earlier in the year. In June, Professor Katz let us know that the new edition would be out in November, 1997, with a 1998 copyright date. He was very pleased with our work.
June 26 to July 1, 1997: American Library Association Annual Conference, San Francisco.
I stayed at two different hotels near Union Squarr and went to Berkeley for the second time. Th first time was with my cousin Susie to a concert to see Jean Luc Ponty. I shopped at a couple of record stores when I was there. I’m not exactly sure what I did when in San Francisco this time around. I have a feeling this was the trip where I had a lot of fun at the Pride festival. I also spent time away from the conference at Fisherman’s Wharf and I remember getting too much sun. I visited some of the bars in the area north of Union Square too, but don’t remember a lot more than that.
I know I saw the pride parade, since I was staying in the city when it took place. I just can’t remember it.
I hit the Mission Music Center again on this trip. Last time I was there, I bought a bunch of Lucha Villa cassettes. This time around, I focused on buying lps. They were only $5.99 apiece and I bought 9 of them, six of which are shown here.
i bought these two books at either Border’s or the Virgin Megastore. They closed years ago.
More treasures to add to my ever growing record and cd collection.
Karen Downing and I wrote a chapter for a book called “Learning To Teach” and it was published in 1993 or 1994. The ACRL Instruction section folks asked us to present the workshop as an ALA Pre-Conference in Berkeley. We did fine.
We traveled up to Phoenix on the 4th of July and purchased brass candelabras just like these at an antique store in Scottsdale. Ours came with crystal chandelier prisms.
Completion of my term on the LAMA Cultural Diversity Committee
Eduardo Ortega Rascon, February 8, 1926-July 8, 1997
My mom’s uncle Eddie was a rather quiet man who kept to himself most of the time. He was born in Superior, Az nearly two years after my mom, but spent most of his life in Tucson. He worked at various jobs over the years, including at the University as a landscaper. He was married for a while and had one son, Eddie Jr, but our families rarely interacted.
I don’t have many photos of my uncle Eddie. This one is from the late 30’s and was taken in Superior Az when my mom and uncle made their First Holy Communions.
My uncle made the newspapers back in 1948. This appeared in the July 27, 1948 edition of the Arizona Daily Star. I too once made a drive-through out of a place of business, back in 1975, when I drove my friend Roses’s Mustang right smack dab into a Circle K.
July 14, 1997: Application for Continuing Status and Promotion
I submitted my packet for continuing status in mid-July. This included an updated curriculum vitae and a candidate’s statement that outlined my accomplishments over the past five years. The process involved soliciting evaluation letters from colleagues from around the country who knew of my work and had the qualifications to evaluate it, a review of my accomplishments by a committee of fellow librarians, and a review by my supervisor, Carla Stoffle, who was also the Dean of the Library. Her recommendation then went to the President’s office where a final determination was made. I was granted continuing status the following year. This meant, essentially, that I had a job for life, unless there was a financial emergency or some other event or action on my part that gave the State the authority to dismiss me from my job. Even though I had my share of conflicts over the years, I’m still employed with the University. I will celebrate 33 years on the job in June, 2025.
Dwight Yoakum: Under the Covers, released on July 15, 1997
I started listening to Dwight Yoakum in the early 90s when I lived in Michigan. This album consists of covers of various songs made popular by other people. I really like his version of “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues”. See below.
Woolworth’s Closes for Good
After 117 years in business, Woolworth’s closed its doors for good on July 17, 1997. I used to love going to the one in downtown Tucson and the one in El Con. It was a great place to shop and the lunch counter was cool too.
Rest in peace, Lady Di… July 1, 1961-August 31, 1997
During the early hours of August 31, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died from injuries sustained earlier that night in a fatal car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Dodi Fayed (Diana’s partner) and the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, were found dead inside the car.
Mother Theresa August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997
Mother Theresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, devoted her life to serving the poor. A good friend of mine started the process of joining the order, but the required vow of silence was too difficult for her to sustain and she was released.
Alejandro Fernandez, Me Estoy Enamorando, released on 9-23-97.
This project was a big change of pace for Alejandro Fernandez. He paired up with Gloria Estefan and other Miami-based musicians to produce a lush, romantic recording that melts one’s heartstrings. His duet, En El Jardin, with Ms. Estefan was a huge hit.
Joan Baez, Gone From Danger, released on 9-23-97.
There are some very memorable songs on this album. Most of the songs are written by newer songwriters. Joan’s voice is gorgeous, It sounds deeper and richer.
“Musica Latina” / Presentation, September 27, 1997. An overview of Latin music, given at Tucson Pima Public Library Sam Lena Branch.
Ramona Grijalva invited me to do this workshop at her library in South Tucson. She had recently received a monster cd player as part of Musica Para Todos a program sponsored by REFORMA and Columbia House, and I learned how to program it and used it in my session. There weren’t a lot of attendees, but it was a fun event. Raul Grijalva, Ramona’s husband, was there.He enjoyed it a lot.
Read more about the Musica Para Todos Program here.
John Denver, December 31, 1943-October 12, 1997
The very first concert I ever attended was John Denver at the Tucson Community Center. I loved many of his songs. My brother Rudy had his greatest hits album, so I was familiar with a lot of them. I was sad to hear that Mr. Denver had died.
October 15-19, 1997: Two Diversity Conferences in Miami, FLA.
This was my second trip to the Miami area. The UA Diversity Council sent me to represent them at a joint conference on diversity in higher education. This time around I stayed at the Occidental Hotel on 4th St in downtown Miami. I visited Calle 8, and had Ropa Vieja at a Brazilian dinner buffet. I’m not sure if I partied or not. I may have. I shopped at Casino Records, Sam Goody and CD Solutions and bought over $100 worth of cds and other recordings. I also bought a statuette of a Cuban chanteuse. I think I did go to Miami Beach one night. Not sure what I did there, but I have no memories of anything particularly bad happening.
These two conferences overlapped and were held in the same place. It was a bit odd navigating things, but I managed.
Calle Ocho was fun. I went to a restaurant and watched all the old men playing board games and then went to Casino Records and bought some Latin cds. It was a lively area, for sure.
10/19-10/21, 1997: Job Interview in Chicago
This was a quick trip. I applied for a job as head of the ALA Office of Personnel. Did not get the job. I asked for too much money, and didn’t like Mary Ghikas the operations manager at ALA. She was pretty much in charge of the whole place and we just didn’t click.. I stayed at a nice hotel on Rush St. I think. Shopped for music at different stores. I’m not sure if I made it up to Halsted St. area. I don’t think I had time.
I bought these two books while in Chicago and added them to my ever-growing collections of leftist and Chicano studies material.
I had the Ella and Aretha recordings on lp already, I believe, but found the cd versions in Chicago. The Lucha Villa cd was interesting. Recorded in the mid-80s it became one of her best selling albums, and included a lot of hits, all written by Juan Gabriel. I’m not crazy about the album, but it’s very popular. I’m not too crazy about Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie either. There are too many very slow ballads on this disc. I prefer more uptempo material from Ella. The Aretha recording is one of my very favorites. She was at her peak when she recorded this album.
We bought this antique dresser on October 23, 1997 at a shop called TLC Furniture on Ft Lowell, just east of Tucson Blvd. It’s no longer in business, but it was a wonderful little place.
I did research on this topic specifically for this class. It was my first effort. Carla invited me back again, so I must have done pretty well.
11-6-97: AZLA Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ
I took our Saudi intern, Turki, with me to Phoenix to the AZLA conference. This was just a one day trip. He was nice, but a female colleague told me he had harassed her, so I was wary of him. He was very traditionally Arabic. He even tried to get me to convert to Islam on our drive home from Phoenix. He was persistent, but I didn’t budge. I’ve never been attracted to the Muslim faith. I don’t like how women are treated in this particular culture/religion.
Program: The Future of the Book with Dr. Geoffrey Nunberg, December 4, 1997.
I coordinated this program. Dr. Nunberg’s talk was very well received by the UA Library staff and other visitors.
To: All Staff, Students and Faculty
The University of Arizona Library cordially invites you to a presentation entitled THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK on Thursday, December 4 from 2 to 5pm in Room A313/314 of the UA Main Library. Our featured speaker is Dr. Geoffrey Nunberg, principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Consulting Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. Dr Nunberg is also the editor of the “The Future of the Book”, a new publication that addresses the various issues related to technology, libraries and scholarly communication.
Following Dr. Nunberg’s presentation, which will focus specifically on how technology is radically transforming the way scholarly communication and public discourse take place, Steven Bosch and Chestalene Pintozzi, two University of Arizona library faculty members, will offer their reactions to his presentation by comparing and contrasting how scholarly communication occurs within the sciences and humanities. Audience participation is also encouraged.
For more information on the future of the book, visit Dr. Nunberg’s website at:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/nunberg
This event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served.
Christmas, 1997
Ruben and I received many Christmas cards, but most of them weren’t dated, so I don’t know for sure which ones were from 1997. Here are two that I know for sure I received this particular year.
We ended the year with a shopping spree and bought this antique china cabinet on 12/31/97. It is now filled with a beautiful set of Wedgewood china that we were given by a good friend. We were very fortunate to receive it.
After Leslie died in 2014, when I was a member of the American Library Association Council, I authored a resolution for the Association that was passed in Leslie’s memory. I’ll never forget how encouraging and supportive Leslie was to me and my partner, with whom she became fast friends. She encouraged me to do more community organizing and complimented me on the work I did when I brought her to town all those many years ago. Introducing her to the Tucson community was one of the best moments of my career.
Oscar J. Martinez, PhD, received his doctorate in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focus is on the political, economic and social history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and he examines broad themes such as the evolution of the Mexican northern frontier cities, the Mexican Revolution along the border, and borderlands culture. He is the author of several books, including “Troublesome Border” and “Fragments of the Mexican Revolution: Personal Accounts from the Border”. His most recent book, “Why Mexico is Poorer than the United States”, is an examination of economic development in Mexico as contrasted to that of the United States. His lecture for this program assessed the role of the U.S. Mexico borderlands in the Mexican Revolution with an emphasis on controversies, disturbances, and battles that affected the history of Mexico and the United States.
Dr. Oscar J. Martinez, Regents Professor of History, The University of Arizona
Some works by Dr. Martinez: These titles link to the University of Arizona Library catalog.
The Mexican Revolution had a profound impact on the people of Mexico. In my own family, for example, my grandfather Antonio Diaz Palacios, a Spaniard who had migrated to Mexico from Asturias at the turn of the century, was forced to flee Mexico when revolutionary forces overtook Zacatecas in 1914. He and his wife Zeferina Torres, a native of Zacatecas, and their infant son, Raul, made their way north to Arizona and settled first in Ray, Arizona, and then moved up to the Verde Valley region of the state, where they resided for many years. Another relative, Raul Rascon, my mom’s tio and mayor of San Miguel Horcasitas, Sonora was hanged shortly after the revolution, during the Cristero rebellion, or so I’ve been told.
I’ve always been fascinated by the stories my father told me about my grandfather Antonio and what happened to him in Mexico, and as I grew older, I became very interested in the history of Mexico, and quite fond of Mexican folk music, particularly the corridos of the Mexican Revolution. In time, my interest in the genre led me to acquire a sizeable collection of books and recordings, and I when I became the librarian for music, dance and theater in 2000, I used my budding expertise to enhance the collections in the Fine Arts Library, by purchasing for the collection sound recordings, films, books and scores that featured the corrido and other forms of Mexican music. I also made sure to showcase this music on my radio show on KXCI on a regular basis.
“Stories and Music of the Revolution” was the first project where I worked with Special Collections staff to produce an exhibit and corresponding programming. I had not joined the department yet, as I was still a member of the Research Support Services team. I was invited to co-curate this exhibit with Veronica Reyes-Escudero and was responsible for coordinating two of the 5 programs held in conjunction with the exhibit. I was offered a transfer to Special Collections the following year, and accepted it. The success of this exhibit and these events, in my opinion, helped me get the new gig as coordinator of exhibits and events in Special Collections, but who knows for sure? After 12 years at the Fine Arts Library, it was a welcomed change.
The above program was designed by Marty Taylor, the Library’s graphic artist.
Video promo by UA News, an interview with exhibition co-curator, Bob Diaz.
Lectures Series brochure
Photos of the exhibit:
Below is a sampling of photos taken of the exhibit. My sections of the exhibit were focused on the Mexican corrido.
Sound recordings from my personal collection, plus broadsides and books from Special Collections.
Portrait of Francisco Madero and the corrido “La Muerte de Madero, part 2.
Listening station, corridos of the Revolution.
Yours truly discussing the exhibit with Carla Stoffle, Dean of the Libraries and a visitor.
Visitors viewing the exhibit on opening night.
Press coverage:
UA NEWS STORY
Special Collections Brings Mexican Revolution to Life
To commemorate the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican Consulate in Tucson has collaborated with the UA to create an exhibit on the border experience during the revolution.
By Rebecca Ruiz-McGill, University Communications
Aug. 31, 2010
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 brought on a decade of unrest for people living on or near the border.
Songs, memoirs, journals and newspapers of the time talk of battles fought on both sides of the border, and families shared stories on how troops with various affiliations would seek food, refuge and water from ranchers, who in their best interest shared what they could with impartiality to sides.
This year, 2010, marks both Mexico’s bicentennial of independence from Spain in 1810 and the centennial of its revolution in 1910. To commemorate, the Mexican Consulate in Tucson has collaborated with the University of Arizona to create an exhibit on the border experience during the revolution.
A partnership between fine arts librarian Bob Diaz and Special Collections librarian Veronica Reyes brings the revolution to life. The exhibit features unofficial correspondence among citizens, reminiscences written years after the incidents, photographs, broadsides, sound recordings, government circulars and wood-block engravings that speak to the turbulent years â from 1910-1920 â of the revolution.
The exhibit will also host monthly lectures featuring UA experts of the era. All lectures will take place in Special Collections and feature:
The social context of Mexico’s Epic Revolution with William Beezley, a UA professor in the department of history. Sept. 22 from 7-8:30 p.m.
A regional overview of the First Centennial of Independence by Luis Edgardo Coronado Guel, a doctoral candidate in the UA history department. Oct. 6 from 3-4:30 p.m.
An exploration of the literature of the era titled Writing on the Edge by Latin American Studies research associate Tom Miller. Oct. 26 from 3-4:30 p.m.
An overview of personal accounts of the Borderland Battles that defined relationships between the U.S. and Mexico by Regents’ Professor of History Oscar Martinez. Nov. 10 from 3-4:30 p.m.
An overview of Mexican corridos â songs dedicated to defining the values, issues and ideas of the revolution â presented by Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, a lecturer in the UA department of Mexican American and Raza studies, and professor Celestino Fernandez, director of undergraduate studies in the UA department of sociology. Nov. 18 from 7-8:30 p.m.
Stories & Music of the Revolution draws from Special Collections’ expansive Borderlands materials to recreate the revolution as experienced from two perspectives: those fighting for agrarian, economic, and other societal reforms, and those seeking to stabilize the nation or remain in power. Â
“Special Collections is a treasure trove for all things related to the border,” said Bob Diaz, who helped curate the display. “Visually for the exhibit, we used broadsides with images that depict what was occurring politically at the time and in the battlefield. We also display original written accounts of the time, and we are thrilled to be able to exhibit the music of the era with sound recordings, prints and sheet music.”
The materials on display were selected from a variety of collections including the papers of journalist, playwright, and women’s rights advocate Sophie Treadwell; George Hunt, Arizona’s first governor; and the Arizona, Southwest and Borderlands photograph collection.
Sound recordings, corrido lyrics and sheet music drawn from the University Libraries’ fine arts holdings and personal collections complement the materials selected from Special Collections.
News Story from La Estrella De Tucson, a supplement to the Arizona Daily Star. Sept. 10-16, 2010.
Promotional poster by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
In his ongoing efforts to bring Hispanic literature to mainstream audiences, Kanellos also initiated the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project, started in 1992 by Arte Público Press. This ten-year multimillion-dollar project represents the first coordinated, national attempt to recover, index and publish lost Latino writings that date from the American colonial period through 1960.
“Arte Público Press and the Legacy of Latino Publishing in the U.S.” showcases a sampling of Arte Público’s non-fiction titles, novels, children’s books, young adult titles, and publications in the areas of drama, theatre and poetry. A selection of publisher’s catalogs, book covers and photographs—all on loan from the press—complement the items from Special Collections. The exhibit also includes material preserved through the efforts of the “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project” and documents Kanellos’s more than four decades of professional contributions to the field.
Dr. Nichola Kanellos speaking in Special Collections.
Professor Albrecht Classen with Dr. Kanellos at the reception.
Promotional material designed by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
Talk – ‘Life, Family and the Arizona Mining Community: A Gendered Perspective |UA News…
Dr. Anny Ochoa O’Leary, head of the UA Department of Mexican American Studies
Anna Ochoa O’Leary, a professor in the University of Arizona department of Mexican American and Raza Studies, delivers the closing lecture held in conjunction with “Company Town: Arizona’s Copper Mining Communities During 100 Years of Statehood,” an exhibition at the Science-Engineering Library. The lecture will be titled “Life, Family and the Arizona Mining Community: A Gendered Perspective.”
Professor Ochoa O’Leary lived in Clifton, Ariz. during the copper mine strike of 1983. Ochoa O’Leary was also the president of the Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary in Clifton from 1985 to 1986. According to Ochoa O’Leary, the strike forever changed the lives of families who experienced it, as well as the social nexus that helped define the Clifton-Morenci communities.
The great Arizona copper strike against Phelps Dodge was a three-year struggle that ended with the decertification of 13 unions in 1986. During the course of events, the women of the community stepped outside the traditional roles that for generations had centered on the procurement and distribution of material resources to families. Faced with new challenges but encouraged by politics of equality, the women of the Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary came to contribute to political mobilization that received local, national and international attention.
Promotional material designed by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
“Join us for the opening lecture of Special Collections newest exhibition “40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself” on Sept. 12 from 6 p.m.-8:30 p.m. The evening includes a discussion about the early days of Tucson Meet Yourself featuring Dr. Jim Griffith, retired UA professor, former director of the Southwest Center and founder and former director of Tucson Meet Yourself.
A panel of notable festival volunteers and friends, including Dan Madden, Loma Griffith, Debbie Friesen, Fred Klein, Richard Morales and Gary Tenen, will also share stories and reminiscences of Tucson Meet Yourself from its earliest days and how it evolved into the largest folk life festival in the Southwest.
This lecture will be at Special Collections. It is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Bob Diaz at diazj@u.library.arizona.edu.”
Listen to the program audio here:
A panel discussion with Tucson Meet Yourself volunteers, including Jim and Loma Griffith
Promotional material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
The second program associated with this exhibition featured Dr. Maribel Alvarez, professor of Anthropology and executive director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance.
Here is the news release for the event:
“40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself: Folklife and Culture”
Join us for the final lecture accompanying Special Collections’ current exhibition, “40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself.” Maribel Alvarez, research professor for the UA Southwest Center and Tucson Meet Yourself program director, will share stories of Tucson’s folklife and culture and how they manifest themselves in every day life.
The following biographical snapshot of Dr. Alvarez is borrowed from the University of Arizona Southwest Center’s webpage:
“Maribel Alvarez, Ph.D., is an anthropologist, folklorist, curator, and community arts expert who has documented the practice of more than a dozen of the country’s leading emerging and alternative artistic organizations. She is Associate Dean for Community Engagement for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, is the Jim Griffith Chair in Public Folklore and Associate Research Social Scientist in the Southwest Center, and Associate Research Professor in the School of Anthropology. She founded, and until recently served as executive director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance, an independent nonprofit affiliated with the University of Arizona.
She teaches courses on methods of cultural analysis, with particular emphasis on objects, oral narratives, foodways, and visual cultures of the US-Mexico border. In the last few years, Maribel has written and published essays about poetry and food, intangible heritage, nonprofits and cultural policy, the theory of arts participation, artisans and patrimony in Mexico, and popular culture and stereotypes. In 2009 she was a Fulbright Fellow conducting research in rural Mexico. Maribel was the co-founder and executive director for seven years of MACLA–Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, a contemporary, alternative urban arts center in San Jose, once described as a “lab for intelligent cultural interventions.” Maribel is a trustee of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress; in addition, she has served as faculty for ten years at the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture’s summer Leadership Institute in San Antonio, TX. Currently, she is completing two book manuscripts for the University of Arizona Press, one on the verbal arts and lore of workers in the Mexican Curios cottage industry at the US-Mexico border, and another on the cultural history of wheat and flour mills in the state of Sonora in northern Mexico. Maribel was born in Cuba and came to the United States at the age of seven; she lived in Puerto Rico for eleven years before moving to California in 1980, where she became active in the Chicano arts community and multicultural arts movement of that decade.”
Publicity material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
Jan. 15: “50 Years: Tucson’s African American Community will be held 7-9 p.m. A screening of the documentary film “In Their Own Words: The 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Tucson” and a panel discussion with Charles Ford, former Tucson Vice Mayor and retired Tucson Unified School District principal, and Cressworth Lander, a native Tucsonan and president of the Dunbar Coalition.
Dr. Charles Ford and Mr. Cressworth Lander, the evening’s featured speakers
The video below offers an abbreviated version of the program.
Publicity material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
Feb. 12: “50 Years: Tucson’s Native American Community” will be held 4-6 p.m. A discussion about Arizona, the Supreme Court and legal cases affecting and involving tribal members law cases, Arizona during the civil rights era with Robert A. Williams, Jr., the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the UA James E. Rogers College of Law. https://www.youtube.com/embed/G593uE4SQdE?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
Publicity material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
April 29: “50 Years: Tucson’s Mexican American Community” is a discussion with Lupe Castillo, a faculty member at Pima Community College, and Margo Cowan, a Pima County public defender.
Promotional material designed by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
Dr. Bradley Schauer
From the UA News Service:
“In this is the final lecture accompanying Special Collections’ “Mars Madness” exhibition, Bradley Schauer, assistant professor in the UA School of Theatre, Film and Television, explores “Filming Pulp Poetry: Ray Bradbury and It Came From Outer Space.”
In 1953, Universal Studios – known for its horror films – released its first science fiction feature of the ’50s, “It Came From Outer Space,” written by prominent science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. Based in part on Bradbury’s childhood memories of living in Tucson, “It Came From Outer Space” is a haunting and beautiful film that challenges easy assumptions about ’50s science fiction films being “schlocky” or campy.
Schauer will detail the production history of the film, discussing how Bradbury and the filmmakers were able to create an eerie and poetic film while still giving science fiction fans the scares and thrills they expected from the genre.”
From the UA News Service: Join us for the second talk accompanying two concurrent exhibitions: “Celebrating Excellence: Women in Anthropology”, on display in the Main Library, and “Celebrating Excellence: 100 Years of UA Anthropology”, on display in Special Collections.
In this panel discussion, four distinguished female faculty members from the UA School of Anthropology share their perspectives on impact of their research and their professional experiences in the field of anthropology.
Panel Speakers:
Jennifer Roth-Gordon, Associate Professor, Anthropology Stacey Tecot, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Marcela Vasquez-Leon, Associate Professor, Anthropology & Associate Research Anthropologist, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology Mary Voyatzis, Professor, Anthropology
“Join us as Diane Austin, Professor and Director of the School of Anthropology and Research Anthropologist with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) opens Special Collections’ newest exhibition.
The presentation will highlight some of the key historical and current challenges addressed by University of Arizona anthropologists”
5:30: Welcoming Remarks by Karen Williams, Dean of The University of Arizona Libraries
5:45: Brief remarks from our guest elected officials Tucson Mayor Jonathon Rothschild and Pima County Board of Supervisors Chairperson, Richard Elias
6:00: Presentation by Meg Weesner, retired National Park Service Ranger
6:45: Reception
Welcome to the opening event for the “Wilderness Act: Arizonans Keeping It Wild for 50 Years” exhibition.
It has been a great pleasure to work with my co-curator and tonight’s featured speaker, Meg Weesner, on this exhibit, which celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act and acknowledges the work of three key figures in the environmental movement: Stewart Udall, Morris K. Udall, and Edward Abbey, as well as the works of early and modern wilderness thinkers and writers.
I’d like to thank Kevin Dahl, program manager of the field office of the National Parks Conservation Association, and Special Collections student assistant Jarrod Mingus, for their assistance with the exhibit. Curating this exhibit was indeed a labor of love, and a true team effort!
Thanks also to the Friends of the University Library and the Dean of the Library, Karen Williams for their support.
I hope you take some time tonight to examine the documents and photos and to read the quotes and descriptions in each of the exhibit cases. I’m sure you will be pleasantly surprised to learn how fortunate we Arizonans are to have so much wilderness in our midst.
This panel discussion is the second event being offered in conjunction with Special Collections’ exhibit, “Tucson: Growth, Change and Memories.” The exhibit, which explores various aspects of Tucson’s history and growth as an urban community, opens on Aug. 17 and runs through Jan. 14, 2016. The panel features an eclectic group of four Tucsonans, remembering life from the 1950s onward. Joining us to share their stories will be former City Councilwoman Molly McKasson, business owner Katya Peterson, newspaper columnist Ernesto Portillo, Jr., and Lydia Otero, Professor of Mexican American Studies.
From the Special Collections website: “This lecture by renowned writer and professor Dr. Thomas E. Sheridan, is the opening event for Special Collections’ new exhibition, “Tucson: Growth, Change, and Memories.” The exhibition explores various aspects of Tucson’s history and growth as an urban community.
Sheridan is a Research Anthropologist at the Southwest Center, which is dedicated to documenting and interpreting the region’s natural and human cultures. He also serves as Professor of Anthropology in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. He has conducted ethnographic and ethnohistoric research in the Southwest and northern Mexico since 1971 and directed the Mexican Heritage Project at the Arizona Historical Society from 1982-1984. He is the author of a number of works about the history of the region, including “Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941” and “Arizona: A History,” now in its second edition.
The evening’s lecture focuses on changes wrought in the Mexican community in the past 75 years as the result of rapid urbanization. The lecture will be followed by a reception.”
Tom Sheridan spoke to a packed house.
Tom Sheridan and Bob Diaz
This lady was shocked, but happy to find her car parked in front of the Otero House.
“Visions of the Borderlands: Three Women Writers Share Their Stories”, featured the writers Denise Chavez, Patricia Preciado Martin, and Natalie Diaz. The program can be listened to in its entirety below.
Steve Hussman, Director of Special Collections introduces the program and panelists.
Patricia Preciado Martin and Natalie Diaz talking to attendees of the program.
From the UA News Service:
“Denise Chávez, Natalie Díaz and Patricia Preciado Martin are three celebrated authors whose novels, poems and oral histories provide unique perspectives and indigenous visions of the borderlands. Each of these writers will present samplings of their works that will broaden understanding of and appreciation for borderlands communities.
Natalie Diaz at the podium.
Patricia Preciado-Martin
Chávez, a native of Las Cruces, New Mexico is a novelist (“The Last of the Menu Girls,” “Loving Pedro Infante,” “The King and Queen of Comezon”), performance artist and bookseller whose award-winning works offer a portrayal of life in the U.S.-Mexico border region from a female, Mexican American perspective. Díaz, a native of Needles, California, grew up on the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation. She is a poet whose work “When My Brother Was an Aztec” has been awarded the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Preciado Martin is a native Tucsonan, whose oral histories describe both urban and rural life in southwest Arizona as seen through the eyes of working class, Mexican American people”
1968: A Closer Look At Its Impact, featuring Guadalupe Castillo, Gregory McNamee, Ted Warmbrand and Barbea Williams.
October 2, 2018, Special Collections, The University of Arizona Libraries
From the UA News Service:
International and national issues hit home hard in 1968. The war in Vietnam escalated, the draft was in full swing and many cities and college campuses felt the political and racial tensions rising. Join us for a panel discussion with activists, teachers, musicians and writers who remember 1968 and explore topics including the arts, the conflicts and everyday life. Learn about the impact that “Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness” – Edward Abbey’s autobiographical work published in 1968 – had on this country and the broader world. Hear stories about what life was like in Tucson for women and people of color during this pivotal year. Remember some of the popular protest music with local troubadour Ted Warmbrand.
Panelists:
Guadalupe Castillo: Retired Chican@ Studies educator, community organizer and activist.
Ted Warmbrand: Music historian, folksinger, storyteller, activist, and concert promoter.
Barbea Williams: Dance educator, founder and director of the Barbea Williams Performing Company, adjunct lecturer in the UA School of Dance.
Gregory McNamee: Tucson based author and adjunct lecturer, Eller School of Management.
Program:“Judith Chafee: Geographical Powers featuring Christoper Domin, January 23, 2018, Special Collections The University of Arizona Libraries
Promotional material designed by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
UA professor of Architecture, Christopher Domin
From the UA News Service: “Christopher Domin, an award-winning architect, author and professor of architecture at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture, examines Judith Chafee’s impact on architectural style and the growing movement for more environmentally conscious building practices and structures.
Domin is the author of the book, “Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses” (2002: Princeton Architectural Press), and co-author of “Powerhouse: The LIfe and Work of Judith Chafee (2019: Princeton Architectural Press,–see below).
“Powerhouse is the first book on the singular life and career of American architect Judith Chafee (1932-1998). Chafee was an unrepentant modernist on the forefront of sustainable design. Her architecture shows great sensitivity to place, especially the desert landscapes of Arizona. Chafee was also a social justice advocate and a highly respected woman in a male-dominated profession. After graduating from the Yale University Architecture School, where her advisor was Paul Rudolph, she went on to work in the offices of legends including Rudolph, Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Larrabee Barnes. In addition to her architectural legacy, her decades of teaching helped shape a generation of architects. Chafee’s drawings and archival images of her work are complemented by stunning photography by Ezra Stoller and Bill Timmerman”. –from the Princeton Architectural Press site.
Program:“Judith Chafee: Breaking Barriers in a Man’s World withfeatured speakers: Kathryn McGuire, Corky Poster, Darci Hazelbaker and Aletheia Ida.March 13 2018, Special Collections, The University of Arizona Libraries ”
From the UA News Service: “Darci Hazelbaker and Aletheia Ida, both of the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, join local architects Kathy McGuire and Corky Poster to reminisce about Judith Chafee’s impact on the profession, both as a visionary architect and as a female in a male-dominated profession. McGuire and Poster both worked for Chafee, and are sure to share some memorable stories about Chafee and her work”.
“Powerhouse is the first book on the singular life and career of American architect Judith Chafee (1932-1998). Chafee was an unrepentant modernist on the forefront of sustainable design. Her architecture shows great sensitivity to place, especially the desert landscapes of Arizona. Chafee was also a social justice advocate and a highly respected woman in a male-dominated profession. After graduating from the Yale University Architecture School, where her advisor was Paul Rudolph, she went on to work in the offices of legends including Rudolph, Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Larrabee Barnes. In addition to her architectural legacy, her decades of teaching helped shape a generation of architects. Chafee’s drawings and archival images of her work are complemented by stunning photography by Ezra Stoller and Bill Timmerman”. –from the Princeton Architectural Press site.
I put this mix of music together in December, 1987 as a Christmas and birthday gift for my best friend, Richard Elias. This was my very first Christmas away from home, and I was feeling very sad at the time. I really missed him. This mix of music is, in a way, a chronological look at our friendship since high school. When he listened to the tape, he told me it hit him like a freight train. I figured it might. Our friendship only got stronger over the years, and damn, I miss him now more than ever. He’ll always be in my heart.
Joan Baez: Brothers in Arms
James Taylor: You’ve Got a Friend
Paul Simon: Kodachrome
Jackie DeShannon: Put A Little Love in Your Heart
Rumel Fuentes: Soy Chicano
Rufus and Chaka Khan: Jive Talkin’
Stevie Wonder: I Wish
Aretha Franklin: Border Song
The Eagles: My Man
The Dusty Chaps: Honky Tonk Music
Linda Ronstadt: Colorado
The Byrds: You’re Still on My Mind
Cat Stevens: Randy
Steve Forbert: Tonight I Feel So Far Away From Home
You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.
Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends.It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.
While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!
1987 marked the beginning of my career as a librarian. I had been attending school since I was five years old, and after 22 years was finally ready to do a job that I desired, one for which I had studied and had been trained to do. I was very idealistic and I still believed that I could do my part to change the world. My social/political perspective was leftist, feminist, pro-gay, Chicano, and socialist. I believed in equal rights for women and minorities and in spreading the wealth so that more people than just the rich could prosper. I believed in free education, multiculturalism and in the promotion of global consciousness. I wanted everyone to embrace socialism, as I did not value the acquisition of wealth and I thought that capitalism was deadly. Instead, I valued the acquisition of knowledge, the attainment of wisdom, and the search for truth and meaning in life. I was pro-love, pro-choice and anti-war. I didn’t believe in so-called “professional neutrality” or in the ideology of Manifest Destiny and all the lies about how if only one worked hard enough one could attain the American dream. To me, that story of “America” was one big fat lie. Freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and celebrating our human diversity were what I was all about. My goals as a budding professional were to do whatever I could to turn people on to reading and learning, to help them develop the ability to think critically about themselves and the world around them so that they could improve their lives and the lives of their families. I wanted people to learn to challenge the power structure and work towards changing society as a whole for the better.
While I focused my studies on academic librarianship in college, and had every intention of working in an academic setting after I graduated, a public services librarian job in Nogales became available, and I needed a job badly, so after applying for the position and interviewing for it, the job was offered to me. I accepted it, thinking I could have a positive impact working with children in a predominantly Mexicano community. It was an opportunity to live out my ideals. I focused on doing outreach in the primary grades to children to help them develop a love of reading and learning, to give them all library cards, to help them feel welcomed at the public library. I did story hours where I read and sang to children, I did school presentations about using the library. I did mini concerts. I wrote my own songs. I bought books that were culturally relevant. I found that I had a natural talent for working with children, and just loved it. Within the first six months of my job, I had reached hundreds of students and organized numerous library events for the community. I even applied for and was awarded a grant from the State Library to do community programming, and I implemented a summer reading program. My bilingual skills were incredibly helpful, and I felt good about my work. Working on the U.S. Mexico border provided many opportunities to help bridge cultural understanding between American culture and Mexican culture.
Unfortunately, the work environment at the library was challenging, and at times overwhelming. The library director took a hands off approach to my work. As the head librarian, she set the tone for the place, and because she had a variety of serious personal issues, it was not a very positive one. While some of the workers were competent and committed to what they were doing, others just went along for the ride. After a while, it became depressing and demoralizing. I was criticized for the outreach work I was doing. One library employee said she didn’t understand why I was giving kids library cards, because “they would just keep the books and not return them”.
Wow, I couldn’t believe it. I felt stuck and sure would’ve benefitted from talking to someone older and wiser, but I didn’t like my supervisor. She was older, but not very wise. She was wrapped up in her own world, and didn’t seem to care much about the library or its employees. I needed encouragement, guidance, and feedback. I didn’t get any at all and as a result, I messed some things up along the way. I bought a computer, for example, that would soon become obsolete, I ordered books that nobody read, I stepped on people’s toes a few times and ruffled some feathers here and there. Had my supervisor been there to give me pointers about how to navigate the politics of the community, I probably would not have hit so many brick walls. I really did need guidance, and it just wasn’t there.
Nogales, Arizona was also a small town, although there were hundreds of thousands of people right across the border. Brent and I had to hide the fact that we were a couple a lot of the time. We were not in a gay-friendly environment at all. It was dangerous, in fact. We played with fire whenever we crossed the border, especially at night. Luckily, nothing bad happened.
Thankfully, my family and friends were just 60 miles away, so I didn’t feel too disconnected from them. They came down to visit us periodically, and we also went to Tucson on occasion either to visit or to attend concerts and other activities. While Brent and I didn’t have any close friends in Nogales, we didn’t really feel like we were all alone in a strange place because we were just an hour away from Tucson. Still, it was sometimes difficult. Whereas in Tucson, I had friends like Tim, Teresa and Richard that I could talk to and do things with, in Nogales, Brent and I had only each other, and there were times when we felt smothered by each other and we clashed. I didn’t realize until much later that there were some differences that we would never resolve, and eventually those differences had a negative impact on our relationship, to the point where we finally split up in 1990.
One thing I really missed was my radio show, which I had done practically every week from the end of 1983 to the end of 1986. While I continued to listen to music and buy records all the time while in Nogales, putting radio shows together was a great way to express myself, and I missed having that creative outlet. I had invested a lot of time and effort into learning all I could about Latin music especially. I had also built up a decent following of listeners, and I missed my radio friends. I would have to wait almost 20 years before I got the opportunity to go back to doing radio again.
While working in Nogales was great fun for a while, there were too many things that were wrong, so in June I decided to start job hunting and applied to a few jobs in academia, including one at the University of California at Santa Barbara and one at the University of Michigan. I was lucky enough to get interviewed for both positions. These were initially both phone interviews, and I didn’t do a great job with the one for the Santa Barbara job. However, I did much better with the Michigan interview, and even attended the American Library Association conference in San Francisco to meet Barbara MacAdam, the director of the Undergraduate Library. It was a quick trip and we met only briefly, but I must have made a good impression on Ms. MacAdam because I was soon offered an in-person interview. I flew to Ann Arbor and back twice, once to do the interview, and then again to find housing for me and Brent once I was offered the job.
While I was in San Francisco, I decided not to spend money attending the ALA conference. Instead, I met up with Ms. MacAdam and then did other stuff. For example, I witnessed my very first gay pride parade. It was a blast. I also spent time with my friend Mike Carroll, a friend whom I had met several years earlier in Tucson. We went bar hopping one day to a number of different Irish pubs scattered throughout the city, and even attended an artsy fartsy party with a bunch of his and his partner Denise’s artist friends. That scene just blew me away. Denise was out of town at the time, unfortunately.
Making the decision to move even further away from home was difficult, but Brent was from Michigan, and he really wanted to get back home, and I was young and adventurous, so I thought, why not? I didn’t know my mom was so ill at the time. Had I known, I likely would not have moved so far away. For a long time, I felt guilty and regretted having made the move to Michigan, as my mom passed away just a year after I had left Arizona. It sounds kind of petty, but Brent also made me give away some of my furniture and a sizeable chunk of my book collection before we left for Ann Arbor, and I resented having to do that. Fortunately, however, I found a local teacher who was willing to take the book collection off my hands. I knew she would put the books to good use.
The University of Michigan is a top ranked school. Its programs in law, medicine and business are among the best in the world, its sports teams are top notch and its library system is one of the biggest in the country. The school is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a town of just over 100,000 people, just an hour west from the great metropolis of Detroit. Brent grew up on the western side of the state in a small village called Twin Lake, just outside of Muskegon, which is right on Lake Michigan. He was familiar with region, while I had only visited briefly back in 1985. I had never been to Ann Arbor before, so moving there was a big deal and a real eye opener for me.
In early 1987, there was a great deal of racial tension on the University of Michigan campus, and efforts were made to provide a better environment for the school’s minority students. More students of color were recruited, and funding was made available for programs that supported them and for hiring more faculty and staff of color. Within the library system, efforts were also made to diversify the staff. It was in this context that I was hired. I had no idea, however, that this was the case, but I found out soon enough.
I was hired to work in the Undergraduate Library, and my job consisted of providing reference service and instruction for the undergraduate population. I also had collection development responsibilities. While the training I received in graduate school helped me feel confident enough to do reference work, I had to learn from scratch how to teach effectively, but luckily, I got a lot of practice and was able to attend several workshops on teaching offered by the campus Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. I enjoyed the collection development work a lot, and after having received the appropriate training, started work on a couple of projects that involved enhancing the Undergraduate Library’s collections of Chicano literature and LGBT literature. I also spent a lot of time this semester attending orientation sessions offered by various units both within the Undergraduate Library and the broader University Library system. I also learned how to use email and word processing software, and began to get practice doing online searching. The Library was just beginning its implementation of a new online catalog, called Mirlyn, and I also attended a number of updates on progress being made getting the system up and running. The first few months flew by.
I must admit, however, that I did not like my supervisor. She had previously worked at the University of Georgia as a reference librarian, and had joined the library staff a month after I had started. She was originally from Texas and had studied theater in college. The only child of academics, she thought quite highly of herself. Almost immediately, I felt like she had issues with my ethnicity and sexual orientation, and I very quickly began to feel like she was treating me like an “affirmative action” hire, as though I wasn’t intelligent enough or worthy enough to have been hired based on my own merit. It’s so demoralizing to have a supervisor who thinks you’re intellectually unfit for a job and that you don’t belong in it. I hated her. She held me back from participating in conferences (I didn’t get to attend ALA until June, 1989, almost two years after I had been hired) and other activities in which others on our staff were able to participate, noting that I was “too new”, for example to attend ALA. She also assumed that I did not know how to write, and insisted on having weekly meetings with me to gauge progress on my work . While my previous supervisor wasn’t around much and gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted, this one had to approve my every move. I could tell she was also homophobic and racist, and her anti-gay sentiments and bigotry revealed themselves in a variety of ways over time. We never did get along, in all the years that I worked with her. Had it not been for intervention on the part of the Library administration, I probably would have left Michigan the following year because of her.
Aside from my supervisor, the majority of the people I worked with were nice. Over time I became very close friends with several of my colleagues, and we are still friends to this day. I must admit, however, that I felt out of place a lot of the time. I missed my family and friends and didn’t realize I that would miss home so much. I was in a state of shock, really, for the first few months, and had trouble “finding my voice” and feeling confident about my abilities. After a while, I wasn’t sure I made the right choice about moving so far away from home. Brent and I were also still having our share of troubles. I started smoking marijuana again and drinking more than I should have, and that didn’t help at all. At Brent’s insistence, I ended up seeing a counselor before the year was over.
On the other hand, I liked Ann Arbor. While it was much smaller than Tucson, it had a lot going on culturally, and it was gay-friendly overall. There were lots of concerts, places to go out and listen to live bands, art fairs and other cultural activities happening all the time. There were also lots of used bookstores and record stores. Detroit, the center of a huge metropolitan area of over 4 million people, was just an hour away too. Brent and I had a lot of fun exploring the region. We found good Mexican food in a neighborhood called Mexicantown, we visited the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and explored Greektown. A cousin of mine who I had gone to Salpointe with also lived in Dearborn Heights with his wife and children, so I had at least some family in the area. Ann Arbor, however, did not have a sizeable Latino population, and the Mexican food was just awful.
Writing about this chapter in my life has been difficult. I’ve struggled with the fact that I moved from Nogales to Ann Arbor, leaving behind my culture, friends, family and work that I loved doing to a job that required me to “fit in” as a member of a very elite academic community in a place 2,000 miles away from home. Did I sell out? Some of my friends thought so, and they called me a Guppie or a Chuppie at times, but I don’t think I sold out. Not at all. The work I did in Nogales was heartfelt and important to me. The work I would do at Michigan was also important, but it was more intellectually demanding and required that I fit in with a different crowd of people, many of whom were quite honestly, intellectual snobs. The environment was competitive, and there were times when I felt like a bumbling fool, but I didn’t bend to the point where my values and ideals changed, and I tried to do work that made a difference. It would take a long time to finally feel comfortable at Michigan. Perhaps I never did completely reach that state. I don’t know. I do know, however, that I learned a great deal about myself and my capabilities, and that I was truly a child of the Southwest, a region that is home to my family and my culture, and a place that I longed to go back to as soon as I could. I did eventually, but it took almost six years.
Brent and I moved to Nogales the first week of January, 1987. I started my new job on January 5.
We moved to a duplex on Bristol Drive, just off Arizona State Route 82, the road to Patagonia. We were just a few miles away from the center of town.
Inside our apartment.
January 3, 1987. Aretha Franklin becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I started my new job on January 5, 1987.
My name tag
The Nogales Santa Cruz County Library on Grand Ave. designed by reknowned Arizona architect, Bennie Gonzales.
Another view of the library. Shortly after I left, a new wing was added.
“Downtown” Nogales, Az.
I turned 28 on January 15th. Where does the time go?
A birthday card from the staff of the Nogales Santa Cruz County Library. I had asked for the day off, but the director made me work that day. She wanted me to know who was the boss, I suppose.
Brent and I had spent Christmas day, 1986, getting blitzed on tequila in Nogales, Sonora and then we drove back to Tucson later that afternoon. Richard Elias then came over and took me with him to see our friends Ron and Sandy, and this is the photo Sandy took. I was shit faced…having a little fun before leaving Tucson and beginning my new adventure as a border town librarian in Nogie…
Another great Los Lobos album, released on January 19, 1987.
This is a great song.
My very first exhibit. Carol Smith, whose photo is below helped me with the design.
Carol Smith was a great colleague and friend who early on helped me navigate the office politics of the library. She is pictured here with her husband Don.
A fotonovela about the public library, produced by the staff of the Tucson Public Library.
I was interviewed several times on KMSB, Channel 11. Shari Karam was the host who did the interviews, and she would ask me questions about the programs I was producing at the Library. I think I visited with her five times altogether.
Almost immediately, I started doing outreach work with children and the schools. I hosted dozens of story hours and visited a number of schools within the first two months of the year.
My friend Ted taught me this song. It was a big hit with the kids.
I invited my buddy Ted Warmbrand to participate in the above program, which took place on February 14. His presence didn’t sit too well with the uptight lady who organized the event. His hair was too long or something…
Ted is a Pete Seeger scholar and has a vast repertoire of union songs.
I loved visiting the schools. The children were all eager to learn about the library.
Released in February, 1987.
My favorite song from this album…
This is another song I sang for the children during story hour. I loved singing this one.
This is a great recording by three of my absolute favorite singers. So glad they were finally able to put an album together, released on March 2, 1987.
This is such a beautiful tune. My theme song…
Another creepy movie that keeps your attention…Released on March 6, 1987.
More fan mail. I loved these kids.
I wrote this song sometime in the Spring.
ALA sold bookmarks like this in bulk. I bought a bunch of these for the kids and distributed them when I visited the schools.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Larry Kramer founded ACT UP, the direct action organization that would push the envelope and force the government to start funding research on AIDS. Thousands upon thousands of gay men had already perished from the disease by the time the FDA paid any attention.
Larry Kramer, activist and author, and founder of ACT UP.
A letter from our friends Sandahbeth and Thaddeus. It was sent last Christmas, but didn’t make it to Nogales until mid-March.
I would cross the line at times and head over to my favorite birrieria for lunch on Elias Street. You entered a different world once you crossed over.
For the children. This was another one of several bookmarks I bought and gave away.
Brent’s sister Teresa and her husband Larry with their son Joshua and Uncle Jerry, Nogales Sonora, April 1987.
Brent and I, with Teresa’s son Joshua, April 1987.
Brent and his nephew Joshua in our living room, April 1987.
I attended my very first Arizona State Library Association conference on April 9, 1987 in Yuma Arizona and participated in a workshop by the Arizona State Library on grant writing.
Geoff Morgan issued several albums, all with positive messages about masculinity and feminism. Brent and I drove to Tucson to see him perform and we bought all four of his records. He signed each one for us.
A letter from my friend Annie Schmidt, May 13, 1987.
Even though I had already graduated, I was encouraged to attend this event, and I did.
I like this recording better than Whitney’s first one. Released on June 2, 1987.
I love this video.
Released in June 1987. This was Joan’s second book. The first, titled Daybreak was published in 1968. I’ve read this one at least twice.
Visiting the family in Tucson. From left to right are Gabie, my mom, me, my sister-in-law Elaine, my brother Charles and my niece Jacky.
San Francisco. My third trip there. I first visited in 1966 with my family, and then again in 1978.
I took a quick trip to San Francisco to meet the head of the Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan. We met briefly, and then I got to see my very first gay pride parade.
My plane landed in Oakland, so I had to figure out how to get to downtown San Francisco on the BART.
Revelers at the Gay Pride Parade, San Francisco, June 28, 1987.
The Ukiah Daily Journal, June 28, 1987.
Notes to myself while in San Francisco.
Released June 30, 1987
The title cut put Los Lobos on the map. La Bamba was a huge hit.
Released on July 6, 1987.
My friend Tim gave me the 45 single. It’s a collector’s item. Touch of grey. Ha! It’s now a whole headful!
Released on July 7, 1987, Emmylou’s gospel album is one of my very favorites. I listen to this recording a lot.
Also released on July 7, 1987.
This song was fun.
My trip itinerary for my job interview at the University of Michigan Libraries.
Downtown Ann Arbor.
I stayed at The Campus Inn while in Ann Arbor for my job interview. It was just a few blocks away from the University of Michigan Undergraduate Library.
The Undergraduate Library, also affectionately known as the UGLi. It would be my home base for the next five and a half years.
I picked this up when I interviewed for the job in mid-July. While I missed the street fair this time around, I made sure to attend it in subsequent years.
Released on 7-24-87.
Ruben and I went to see Thaddeus and Sandahbeth one last time before we left Arizona.
My going away party at my brother Charles’s house. Shown left to right are me, Fred, my dad. Rudy, and Charles. My mom is seated.
Released July, 1987. Joan’s first album in the U.S. in over 8 years.
Released on 7/31/87. I’ve always had a weird fascination with vampire movies.
I got the job at Michigan! Wow.
My trip back to Ann Arbor to find housing. This was another quickie.
I didn’t have a lot of time to find housing on this quick trip.
I found a two bedroom apartment four miles away from campus at Spicetree Apartments, where I would live until 1992. It was halfway between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, in Pittsfield Township.
This concert took place shortly before I was to leave Arizona for Michigan. It had been five years since I’d last seen the Dead, and it would be another five before I would see them again in 1992. Fun times with Richard and the gang.
Released on 8-21-87, the day Brent and I left Nogales, Az. for Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The theme song to the movie…
This is the route we took to get to Ann Arbor. We were on the road from August 21 through the 24th.
Brent and I ended up living in a big apartment complex called Spicetree Apartments, on Washtenaw Ave, just east of Interstate 23, about halfway between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in Pittsfield Township.
My first name tag at Michigan.
Check out my email address. This is my very first one. I didn’t have email in Nogales.
There sure was a lot to learn in this new job. The library system had over 20 divisional libraries scattered across the campus. Orientation would continue through the following semester.
Released on 9-18-87. Beautiful film.
The Law School was just south of the Undergraduate Library. I made friends with several students enrolled in the School and was able to spend time inside some of the offices located here.
These pro/con pamphlets covered controversial issues, and were distributed all over campus every month. Ann Arbor is home to the annual “Hash Bash”, which takes place every April 1st on the Diag, (in front of the Graduate LIbrary). Attitudes toward the drug have always been, at least since the 60’s, quite liberal.
Maria Hoopes, the librarian that I worked with during my internship in Library School sent me a thank you note for something I did for her. Can’t remember the details, but she notes she was happy that I finally got a good job…
Released on 10/1/87. My friend Doreen’s family was from the same neck of the woods where this was filmed in Denmark.
The interior of the Undergraduate Library.
Released 10-9-87
This album has so many great songs, but this one is memorable.
10-11-87
The NAMES project AIDS quilt.
The first display of the Project NAMES Aids Memorial Quilt was on the National Mall on October 11, 1987, during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Composed of nearly 2,000 panels, the Quilt was larger than a football field.
October 11, 1987
Ann Arbor was home to the original Borders Bookstore, on State Street, just a few blocks from the Undergraduate Library. I spent many hours and a lot of money there.
My friend Richard wrote to me several times in the Fall. This was one of his postcards. I thought his mention of Joe Biden being considered for the Supreme Court was very interesting.
Wow, what a movie! Faye Dunaway is amazing in this one.
This breezeway led to the Diag, a big courtyard area in the middle of campus. The Undergraduate Library was to the left of this building.
A concert preview from the Ann Arbor News
The Power Center, University of Michigan Campus.
She was a great performer, but the turnout was lousy, so she ended the concert early.
My favorite Mercedes Sosa song…
The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library was right next door to the UGLi. This 8 story mess of a building was built in three sections at different times. The middle section, where the bookstacks were located was quite a challenge to navigate.
This was a groundbreaking work. It was released in October, 1987 by St. Martin’s Press.
Released 10-30-87
The song, “One More Try”, from this album was a gigantic hit.
November, 1987.
My colleague Darlene and I.
There were quite a few racial incidents on the Michigan campus in 1987. This one occurred later in the year, in November, while most of the others took place in the Spring.
The UGL reference desk. I spent many hours working here.
One of my projects during slow times at the reference desk was to review the reference resources in this book.
The following album by the Eurythmics was released on 11-9-87, and the song that follows, “I Need a Man”, was on it. Incredible stuff! I just love Annie Lennox!
Brent and I visited the Detroit Insitute of the Arts and saw this magnificent mural, titled “Detroit Industry” by Diego Rivera. It was just beautiful.
We also visited Greektown. The food there is amazing.
Trapper’s Alley was a multi-level mall in Greektown. It was filled with shops of all kinds and was a real pleasure to visit. It was right across the street from several excellent Greek restaurants.
My niece Estrella wrote to me just before Thanksgiving.
A postcard I sent to my parents in late November…
Released 11-24-87
This was one of the songs my mother just loved to sing.
Released 12-01-87
This is a wonderful tune.
Released on 12-8-87.
Released on 12-17-87.
A Christmas card from our friend Annie back home.
I put this mix tape together for my friend Richard Elias and sent it to him for his birthday and Christmas.
My sister sent this to me for my birthday the following month. Her son Anthony wrote this letter to Santa…
Brent and I spent Christmas in Twin Lake with his family. Here I am getting out of our car. We had just arrived.
Brent and I opening presents in his sister Teresa’s living room, Christmas Day, 1987.
Brent reading to his nephew Joshua, Christmas 1987. .
Meanwhile, in Tucson, this happened. My first Christmas away from home and it snows!
I really missed my family. Here are a few photos taken at my parent’s house at Christmastime.
Christmas, 1987. My brother Charles is showing my mom a dance he learned while in Hawaii. He’s three sheets to the wind in this photo, according to my mom. She wrote me the following month for my birthday and sent this and the photos that follows to me.
My brother Charles, with an egg in his mouth. God only knows what he was doing…
Hello. This a quick heads up that I’ve reconfigured my website so that the first page you see is my Welcome To My World page, rather than my blog posts. If you are trying to find the posts I’ve written that are part of “My Life Story” series, you can go to the page with the same title and those posts will be listed there. Hopefully this will entice visitors to read my life story in chronological order rather than reverse chronological order. I encourage people who are interested in reading about my life to start at the beginning. That way things will make better sense, and it’ll give people a better understanding of how I met the people in my life and how my growth as a person has unfolded over time. Thanks for reading my stuff! I appreciate it. Feel free to leave comments as you see fit.
Back in 1986, when I was in Library School, I met a couple named Thaddeus and Sandahbeth Spae. They were musicians and they called themselves Amber Tide. I first saw them singing outside the steps of the Student Union bookstore on the U of A campus. They were from Seattle, if I’m not mistaken, and were living the gypsy life, going from town to town, playing music wherever they could and eeking out a living on the road. At the time, I lived next door to my friend Ted in a two bedroom adobe house with lots of space, and I invited them to hang out with me and told them they could park their camper in my driveway for a while. We became good friends, but after a while, Ted wasn’t too thrilled about them staying with me. They left after a few weeks, but we had some great times together. On one occasion I invited them over to my parent’s house to help me celebrate my birthday. My mom made a bunch of food and a lot of relatives showed up. Thaddeus and Sandahbeth gave a mini-concert for the family that day, and one of my brothers just happened to tape it. I’ve kept the cassette all these years, with the intention of one day transferring it to digital format. Well, that day has finally come. I bought myself a tape to mp3 converter a couple of months ago, and tonight decided I was going to figure out how to work the darned thing. Lo and behold I figured it out! What follows are the three songs my friends performed for me and my family. The last song, Your Cheatin’ Heart gets cut off early too, unfortunately. At any rate, I’m thrilled to be able to share this with my friends and family. Sandahbeth passed a way several years ago, but Thaddeus is still active and living up in the Seattle area.
I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan for 5 1/2 years from 1987 to 1992, where I worked as a reference and instruction librarian at the University of Michigan Undergraduate Library. While there, I made a lot of friends, many of whom I remain in touch with to this day. Last year around this time, I convinced my partner Ruben that it was time for a visit, as it had been years since I’d seen some of my old friends, so we booked a flight to Detroit and off we went. We got there on October 17, and stayed through the 24th, just in time to catch the beautiful Fall scenery.
The following photo essay consists of a mixture of photos. Some I borrowed from the Internet, and others I took myself. Since I wanted to provide a lot of detail, I’ve included more “borrowed” photos than usual.
The Detroit Metropolitan Airport, in Romulus Michigan.
We left Tucson at around 9am on Thursday, October 17, and caught a connecting flight in Dallas to Detroit. There were no delays, thank goodness. We landed in the early evening at the Detroit Metro Airport, rented a car and headed west from Romulus to Ann Arbor where we arrived in the early evening.
Map of Southeast Michigan
Our hotel, The Hilton Garden Inn, was adjacent to the Briarwood mall, which is at the southern edge of Ann Arbor, but conveniently located near the I-94 freeway. By the time we got checked in and settled, we were really hungry, so we ate at a “Mexican” restaurant close to the hotel. Unfortunately, it really sucked. I was going to add a photo of the place, but no, I don’t think so. I’d rather forget all about it. Mexican food anywhere outside Tucson, in my opinion, can be hit or miss, and the further away, the likelier it is that it gets worse…
Our hotel on the southern edge of Ann Arbor.
The Briarwood Mall was walking distance from our hotel.
The next morning we went in search of a Bob Evans restaurant, a chain breakfast restaurant kind of like Denny’s, and luckily for us, the one that I had been to before when I lived there in the late 80’s that was near Washtenaw and I-23 was still there. We ate breakfast there practically every morning. It was the best. The wait staff were really friendly and the biscuits and gravy were delicious. After eating there so much, I gained a ton of weight as a result. Oh well.
Good ole’ Bob Evans. Kinda like Denny’s, a chain restaurant that serves delicious, fatty breakfasts, and more.
We then took a little drive around the area., making it over to Ypsilanti and back. The Ypsilanti water tower is a must-see local landmark.
The Ypsilanti Water Tower, a local landmark .
We then headed back to Ann Arbor making it to the west side where we drove by the Michigan stadium.
Michigan Stadium. This place can hold over 107,000 people at once. I attended a football game there once. I know!
Since the Mall was next door to our hotel, after breakfast and our little drive, we decided to go shopping. We spent a ton of money on sweatshirts and pajamas in a store called the M Den, and we had some delicious freshly made pretzels at a little pretzel shop in the mall.
The M Den at Briarwood Mall.
This is the kind of stuff you can buy at the M Den. Ruben bought these for one of his co-workers.
Later in the day, our good friend Karen Downing came to pick us up at the hotel, and we had a very nice visit. Karen and I have been friends since 1988. I call her KD and she calls me BD. She is married to a swell guy named Stewart and has a son named Ryan who is now in college. We drove to the University of Michigan campus, where she showed us her office at the Graduate Library . We also walked around the campus. It was a beautiful day.
Ruben and Karen standing in the Law quad on the University of Michigan campus.
The Law School building.
The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan.
The School of Social Work (I think) provides the backdrop to this beautiful little spot just south of the Undergraduate Library on the University of Michigan campus.
We then ate delicious Vietnamese food for dinner.
This place was great. It wasn’t too far from our hotel.
On Saturday, Ruben and I took things nice and slow. We repeated what we had done the day before, and again had breakfast at Bob Evans. We even went back to Briarwood for more shopping and pretzels! We rested up the rest of the day, as Karen was having us over for dinner that evening.
Saturday night, Karen hosted a dinner party for us. Ruben got to meet my old friends Barb Kolekamp, Linda TerHaar and her husband Bruce, Darlene Nichols and her husband Brian and Jeanne Chesky, one of Karen’s friends. Karen’s husband Stewart was also there. Karen was a sweetheart to host us. I was so happy to see Barb, Linda and Darlene again. I think it had been like 13 years since I had last seen Linda and Barb. I see Darlene more often as we both still attend ALA and other conferences where our paths often cross.
Barb, Darlene and Linda, my pals from the Undergraduate Library at the UofM.
Ruben, Jeanne, Barb, Darlene, Stewart, Karen, Brian, Bruce and Linda. We had spaghetti and salad for dinner, with pie for dessert.
Ruben, Bruce, Barb, and Darlene relaxing in Karen’s living room. She has a beautiful home.
Barb, Darlene, Brian and Linda.
After dinner, Ruben and I went back to our hotel, but we were still a bit hungry, so a little bit later, we drove to White Castle and had what they call “sliders”, which are very greasy and unhealthy, but tasty bite-sized cheeseburgers. They didn’t sit too well, but we just had to have some all the same.
This White Castle was close by. We didn’t have to drive all the way to Detroit this time around to eat some sliders.
On Sunday, we hooked up with Karen again. This time she took us antiquing in the area southwest of Ann Arbor, where there are small towns with antique stores scattered here and there. She drove us all over the place.
The Irish Hills area
We passed by lots of farms along the way, including this one in Tecumseh.
There were at least a half dozen antique stores that we stopped at, including a couple in Clinton and one in Tecumseh called the Hitching Post that we really enjoyed.
Tecumseh’s Hitching Post Antique shop. What an amazing place!
We ended the day by driving to Ypsilanti and having dinner with Karen and her husband Stewart at the Red Rock Barbecue bar and grill in Ypsilanti. The food was delicious, but a bit expensive.
On Monday, we ate breakfast again at Bob Evans, but at a different location this time, and then went shopping at Meijer’s, which is a department/grocery store with various locations in the Ann Arbor area. I used to shop there for groceries all the time when I lived in the area over 30 years ago. It’s a big box store if there ever was one! I think we bought a few t-shirts and snack food there. I don’t really remember!
We then met up with Karen again and this time went shopping in the Ann Arbor area. We hit up Treasure Mart, a second hand store that sometimes has some very nice antiques and which I used to frequent all the time when I lived there, but we didn’t find anything that we really wanted to buy. It seemed so much smaller than I remembered it to be for some reason.
We then went to Kerrytown, a little shopping area close by that has a great open air Farmer’s Market and lots of unique shops and food spots.
We also visited my friend Gene Alloway, my old office mate when I worked at the Undergraduate Library. For many years now, he has been the proud owner of a bookstore in the Kerrytown area called Mott and Bailey Booksellers. Seeing Gene again was truly one of the highlights or our trip. I had not seen him since at least 1992. He is such a cool guy. It was great to see him again and reminisce about old times.
We saw my old friend Gene Alloway. He owns a bookstore in Kerrytown.
Gene Alloway, owner of the Mott and Bailey Bookstore.
FLASHBACK!! Back in the day, as they say… The University of Michigan Libraries Residency Group, circa 1990-91. That’s me standing in the middle of the group. My friends Gene Alloway and Karen Downing are to my left. The names of the other residents are Candy Miller, Karla Hahn, Roger Brisson, Elizabeth Robinson, David Flaxbart, and Jay Nagarashi.
Around the corner, we found a record store, and it was great. I found a few albums here, including one by the great gospel artist, Inez Andrews. It was a rare find! This and our visit with Gene made my day!
We then went to one more thrift store, where another friend of ours, Alexandra Rivera met up with us. Alex grew up in Tucson, but I met her when I worked at Michigan over 30 years ago. She now works with Karen at the University of Michigan Library as an outreach librarian.
This store was bit of a mess, but okay. Ruben doesn’t like these kinds of second hand stores. I love them.
Alexandra Rivera
After we finished shopping, Karen drove us to a nice Thai restaurant on Washtenaw Avenue, near the apartment complex I used to live at. Again, the food was just delicious!
Tuptim Thai Cuisine
The following day, we changed our plans, and instead of driving northeast to Frankenmuth to experience the Christmas store and the fried chicken dinners, we drove to Detroit via Michigan Avenue. The drive along Michigan Avenue is a much more scenic route than taking the I-94, although it takes almost twice as long. There are a lot of suburbs along the way, including Dearborn and Dearborn Heights.
Coming into Detroit along Michigan Avenue.
We drove into downtown and then turned north and drove along Woodward Avenue, eventually making our way up to Royal Oak.
Woodward AvenueComerica Stadium, home of the Detroit Tigers. One of the many massive cathedrals that can be found along Woodward Avenue.
Royal Oak is a fun place to visit. There are lots of shops and places to eat in the area.
Suburban Detroit. Royal Oak is a fun place. Driving south along Woodward back to downtown Detroit.
We could’ve kept going as suburban Detroit goes on for miles and miles, but we decided to turn back go return to Ann Arbor.
Driving south on Woodward to Downtown DetroitThe Renaissance Center is on the left. It’s hard to get a good skyline shot of the city from the ground. The Train Station has recently been renovated. It’s part of a larger effort to revitalize downtown. We even saw white ladies in broad daylight while driving through! A first! We drove by this as w headed back to Ann Arbor.
We had a burger at the McDonald’s in Royal Oak, but by the time we got back to Ann Arbor, we were hungry again. We decided to hit up the only decent Mexican restaurant we knew, La Fiesta Mexicana in Ypsilanti. The owner is from Guadalajara and the food is usually very good. Unfortunately, the service isn’t great and you have to wait a while to get your food. We had better experiences there in the past. Oh well. We would’ve been better off avoiding Mexican food altogether on this trip.
The following day, Ruben and I drove into the Irish Hills again, looking for antique stores. We ended up in a little town called Brooklyn, where we we found a decent sized antique mall, and where I found some more gospel albums. This time we didn’t go with Karen, who had actually discouraged us from going. She told us that it was Trump country. Ugh. We were hoping it wasn’t too late to see some of the beautiful Fall colors. It was mid-October, so we were pushing it, but we lucked out. Fall was everywhere.
I guess Karen was right. This was Trump country. Brooklyn, Michigan. Why can’t the grass in Tucson ever get this green? There are many lakes and parks in the Irish Hills.
Ruben and I had been here once before years ago and we remembered that this Hotel had a nice restaurant. This time around it was just so so.
Once we got back to town, we decided to take it easy and get ready for our trip back home the following day. We left the next morning bright and early, and were back in Tucson by 3pm. It was a memorable trip. We did regret not making it to Frankenmuth, but we’ll go back again one day, we hope! Next time we’ll plan our meals a bit more carefully too. Burrrrpppp…
Will this pandemic ever end? Wow, it just seems like we’re going to be in this situation a lot longer than anyone could’ve imagined. The President has botched up the whole thing, and things are as bad as ever. Man, I sure hope we can get a grip on this before a lot more people die. We’ve already lost over 200,000 people nationwide, and things just seem to be getting worse. The President’s current solution to the problem is to encourage herd immunity, which means that he wants everyone to catch the virus and then develop immunity to it as a result, but research is showing that you can catch the virus more than once, so it’s not likely going to work. Go figure. How many more dead will there be before we take this seriously?
It’s been such a bad year. People dear to me have died, including my best friend Richard, my beloved aunt Mary, my uncle Arturo and my aunt Corinna, whose death, by the way, I just learned about today. On top of all of that, our country is at present in the hands of a maniac. I’ve been watching the news a lot and caught all of the debates recently, some of which were painful to sit through. The elections are less than three weeks away, but there’s no guarantee that Biden and Harris are going to win. Trump is pulling all kinds of dirty tricks, and he’s getting help from Russia and the potential help from a Supreme Court nominee who’s a conservative, outspoken, religious bigot. People are having to wait in long lines to vote all over the country and in some places, there is but one drop off location for ballots in an entire county. I’m not going to take anything for granted. Trump could win, given all these shenanigans, or he could try to nullify the election results in one way or another. I sincerely hope we get that asshole out of office and kick him to the curb for good. He belongs in prison. He’s a low down crook.
I have been working from home now since March. I actually like it, but I do miss going out to dinner, going shopping, and seeing my family and friends in person. I’ve managed to stay in touch with my family, but haven’t spent a lot of time with them. Ruben and I visit his parents periodically and I recently checked in with my brother Charles for his birthday. My sister Irene buys me tortillas and other stuff like green corn tamales and salsa. I’ve gone over to her house once or twice. I also see my other sister Becky every now and then too. Our visits are usually very short. I’ve also been in touch with Emily, Richard’s wife, and I’ve re-connected with my friend Ricardo. I talk to my colleague Erika practically every day too. It’s important to have someone to commiserate with at times! I’ve even been in touch with my friends Bubba Fass and Ernie Carrillo. Still, I feel lonely at times. It can be a drag being home alone all the time. Ruben is working a lot, and is home just a few days a week. We get along well, so being around each other isn’t a problem. After 27 years together, we’re pretty well adjusted to each other’s quirks. We were “officially” married six years ago on Oct. 31, so I thought I’d add this photo as a little memento of that wonderful occasion.
Ruben, me and his parents at the Sahuarita courthouse, 10-31-14.
I thank my lucky stars that I have had no major health issues since the beginning of the year. I did catch two colds before the end of February, but nothing else has happened. I have to admit, I’ve gained weight, and can never seem to get enough exercise. I go out for walks in the early morning for about half an hour when I can, but I do sit all day sometimes, doing work here at my desk. When I’m not at my desk, I do my household chores or I work outside doing yard work. I rarely go anywhere, except to the bank and the grocery store occasionally. Sometimes I pick up takeout for us, but that’s about it. I always wear a mask if I do go out. I hope to get a flu shot soon. I tried to get one today, but it just didn’t work out.
I’ve spent the past several months organizing my personal papers. I have over 30 bankers boxes filled with all my photos, memorabilia, work stuff etc. all organized in chronological order. It’s been a fun project and one that has kept me busy. I will likely keep working on this project for quite a while as I still have more stuff to sort and organize. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of it down the line, but I’ll figure something out. I doubt that any archive would want my cochinero.
I’m also reading a lot. I’ve been trying to read a little every day, and I recently decided I will read a different book every day of the week and keep rotating the reading until I finish each one. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out, but we’ll see. Sometimes I just like to focus on one book at a time, especially if it’s really good. Here are the books I’ve chosen to read lately.
For the past month or so, I’ve been mostly focused on my job and service activities. I also try to write every day. I’m happy with what I’ve been able to accomplish. I’m managing our department’s virtual reference service and am doing a decent job of keeping up with it. I compiled usage statistics for the month of August/September recently, and I also drafted departmental procedures for providing reference service, both virtual and in-house, for our patrons. I was also recently appointed to a Library task force that is looking at the “future state” of the Library. Once again, budget cuts are forcing us to take a hard look at the work we do and we have to yet again revisit what our priorities are going to be given reductions in funding and staff. The focus of the group I was placed in was “research services support”. It included looking at things like data management, data visualization, evidence synthesis and systematic reviews. I didn’t know much about any of this stuff to be honest. I thought research services meant providing primary materials, books and journals to faculty and students. It turns out many libraries are engaged in providing data management support for those doing scientific research. I have to admit, this stuff is not of great interest to me, but I contributed what I could, and I learned a lot. It was interesting to see how the task force chair managed the project and the group process, and how the project unfolded. She used a variety of interesting decision making tools and techniques that helped our group, comprised of librarians and staff from various departments, get our ideas out on the table. While we all didn’t agree on everything, we discussed our differences of opinion openly and managed to complete our work on time. We’re now awaiting next steps.
I’ve also, within the last few months, involved myself in the work of the Library Faculty Assembly, and am the faculty representative to the LFA Executive Board as well as a member of the LFA Awards committee. I’ve contributed steadily and wholeheartedly to the work of these groups, attending every meeting and adding my comments and concerns along the way, and all has gone quite well. I’ve even joined the new union, the United Campus Workers of Arizona. It won’t be able to engage in collective bargaining, but it will serve as an advocacy organization on behalf of all University of Arizona employees. It just got organized, and already there are over 300 members, including folks from ASU and NAU.
I’ve also been involved in several other service activities. I recently wrote an article, slated to be published soon, for the Mountain Plains Music Chapter of the Music Library Association about how the pandemic has affected Library services to our music faculty and students, and I also wrote a program proposal for the ALA Rainbow Roundtable program planning committee. I was able to drum up a number of people to agree to participate on a panel discussion about issues related to subject access and terminology and how they affect diverse populations. I hope it gets approved. Here’s the title and abstract of the program:
“What’s in a Name: LGBTQ+ and Latinx Perspectives on Access Terminology–Challenges and Solutions“
50 years ago, Sanford Berman shone light on serious problems with some of the word choices employed by the creators of Library of Congress subject headings. Over the years, other scholars, notably Ellen Greenblatt and Hope Olsen, have also worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the need for more accurate, culturally sensitive, modern terminology. The struggle continues to this day, particularly when addressing words and phrases that describe diverse populations such as trans people, queer people, immigrants and people of color. The purpose of this program is to consider progress and share ongoing concerns and potential strategies for improvement.
I’ve also recently thrown my hat into the ring and ran for the position of Southern regional representative to the Arizona Library Association. I was appointed because nobody else ran. The conference will be held this week, and I’ll be introduced there as the new Southern regional representative. Here is the bio I recently submitted to the AZLA president:
I also just wrote a recruitment letter to students in the UofA School of Information and Library Science, encouraging them to join the Tucson chapter of REFORMA, The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking, which I am working to revive after several years of it being dormant. I’ve received several responses and will need to get things rolling next week. I’m very excited about this. The Tucson Chapter of REFORMA will live once again! I’ve also contributed to the work of the REFORMA Education committee by writing up a draft set of guidelines for REFORMA Student clubs. Our committee will be meeting again this week to review our progress, and hopefully, the guidelines will be finalized next month. Finally, I’m a member of the American Institute of Architects Arizona chapter’s archives committee, and again, I’ve attended all the meetings and have contributed a number of ideas. We recently held our annual summit, and it was very informative.
Whew! That’s about it for now. It’s been a busy few weeks.
I’ve been posting my favorite albums and books on Facebook for several months now, and have decided to transfer the entries to my website for easier access. This is the second batch of albums I’ve posted that I consider my favorites. Most were posted over the summer months of 2020. I’ve also included, when possible, one song, usually my favorite, from each album.
Aretha Franklin: This Girl’s In Love with You, released on January 15, 1970, Atlantic Records.
The Beatles: The White Album, released on November 22, 1968, Apple Records.
The Dusty Chaps: Honky Tonk Music, 1975, Bandoleer Records.
Honky Tonk Music, by the Dusty Chaps, from the album, Honky Tonk Music.
John Fogerty: Blue Moon Swamp, released on May 20, 1997, Warner Bros. Records.
Bob Marley and the Wailers: Survival, October 2, 1979, Island Records.
Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska, released September 30, 1982, Columbia Records.
Los Lobos: How Will the Wolf Survive?, released October, 1984. Slash/Warner Bros.
15 Rancheras Autenticas con Javier Solis, 1985, Columbia/Sony Records.
Las Rejas No Matan, by Javier Solis, from the album, Rancheras con Javier Solis, Columbia.
Juan Gabriel: El Mexico Que Se Nos Fue, 1995, Sony.
Etta James: Seven Year Itch, Island Records, 1988.
Jennifer Warnes: Famous Blue Raincoat, released February 14, 1987, Cypress Records.
Dee Dee Sharp: All The Hits, Cameo Records, 1962.
Dee Dee Sharp: Seven Day Weekend, from the album “All The Hits”, Cameo, 1962.
Laura Nyro and Labelle: Gonna Take A Miracle, Columbia Records, released November 17, 1971.
Buffy Sainte Marie: Coincidence and Likely Stories, Chrysalis, 1992.
The Clash, London Calling, Epic Records, 1980.
The Clash, Lost in the Supermarket, from the album, London Calling.
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA, released June 4, 1984, Columbia Records.
The Beatles, Rubber Soul, Capitol Records, released December 3, 1965.
The Beatles, Girl, from the album Rubber Soul.
Lola Beltran Canta Las Canciones Mas Bonitas de Jose Alfredo Jimenez, RCA Records, 1969.
Camino de Guanajuato–Lola Beltran
Ray Charles, A Man and His Soul, ABC Records, 1967.
There are lots of great Aretha Franklin videos on Youtube and other places. I thought I’d put together a list of my favorites. I’ll add more soon, but for now, here is what I’ve chosen. Enjoy!
Here’s something that isn’t a downer and I’m certain it won’t hurt, alienate or anger anyone. Since January, I’ve maintained a clear head, and have focused my time and energy on cleaning up my life. That means no alcohol or anything else (I won’t go into detail. You can imagine for yourself what my bad habits might have been). For the first time in many, many years, my mind is clear and sharp. I am so grateful that I was pushed in this direction, even though it’s been painful and at times humiliating to get through some of the hoops I’ve had to jump through. I’m proud to say I did it, and I am never going back. Along the way, these past 9 plus months, I also decided to let go of some things that were very dear to me, like my radio program. After being on the air every week on KXCI since 2004, I just lost my inspiration one day, and I told myself that once that happened, I wouldn’t do it anymore. So I willingly let it go, and I’m okay with it. And other stuff has happened. My best friend was taken from me. I lost several relatives, especially one very dear aunt. Not being able to attend funerals or to grieve with my friends and loved ones has made the losses even more acute, but having a clear head has helped me get through all of this tragedy. I’m so happy that I have maintained my discipline and my focus. The losses I have endured have made me stronger, and more determined than ever to make the best of the time I have left on this planet. I’m writing a lot more these days, and I have immersed myself like never before in my work as a librarian and archivist. There is plenty to keep me busy, and I have no problem being at home. I’m grateful that I have a job that allows me that luxury.
I look forward to many things. Above all, I can’t wait to hug my friends and family again, and to have nice long, in person conversations with them. I can’t wait to go out for long walks without worrying about getting too close to strangers. I can’t wait to go shopping at the second hand stores to look for music and books. I can’t wait to see the roses blooming in the rose garden at the park. I can’t wait to go out to eat dinner with my partner. I can’t wait to work out at the park. I can’t wait to sit and have coffee with someone at work or to have pizza for lunch. I can’t wait for a new president to set us back on course as a nation. Each day I get antsier, but I’ll be patient. My goal is much further beyond survival. I want to live and thrive and continue in my own way to try to make the world a better place in which to live. I always thought my radio show helped me contribute to that goal, and for some people, I’m sure it had that kind of effect, but now I’ll have to find other ways. I know there are many possibilities. I’m very excited about the future and look forward to the day when I no longer have to be fearful of getting too close to anyone. I love life and I love people. Thanks, my friends, for reading this. I love YOU too.
My dream… It was about eccentric wealth and how you have to become part of the scenery and not bring any attention to yourself as you watch the ones with the money play their games and act out their dramas. They flaunt their ideas and behave as they wish and don’t you dare raise your voice or question them or you’re out of the club. You are there for god knows what reason, and you don’t fit in, but you must behave. You must not look out of place, you must not say a word, you must just observe and nod in agreement whenever they request your approval. You’re only there for that reason, you know. To applaud them, to massage their egos, to do their bidding whenever you’re called upon to do it. And if you’re lucky, they’ll throw you a bone.
I could never fit in with the upper crust or even the middle crust. I’ve encountered them at ALA, in Special Collections, and at the Music Library. Donors, Benefactors. VIPs. They expect you to wear suitable attire, above all. Yes, above all, you must be well dressed. That’s most important. If you don’t fit in that way, you’re doomed. It’s all theater, it’s all costume. The less you say, the better. Don’t burp, don’t cuss, don’t raise your voice, don’t laugh out loud, don’t disagree, don’t talk too much, or with food in your mouth, or too loudly. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Be a good boy and you’ll get further ahead.
Do I need to grow up and be a big boy now? Should I break down and wear my suits and ties and dress shirts and polished shoes now? Can I endure the discomfort these clothes bring just enough to get through this meeting or this event or this day? I have before, but I have a big mouth. I need to keep it closed and speak only when necessary and in a softer tone. Shoot, I know I can do it if I have to do it, but I don’t want to do it. I’m a gay Chicano hippie freak, man, don’t you all get it? I don’t care what you wear, just as long as you are there, my brother!! Ha ha ha. I could’ve been more, I know. I could’ve played the game, and I chose not to, because I’ve always known it was all fake. Maybe it’s because I grew up poor and working class. I never valued high society or prim and proper ladies and gentlemen, those who smile at you while they’re robbing you or stabbing you in the back. I’m a Mexican, after all. A high school counselor once said to me “Whatever made you think YOU were going to college? You’re supposed to go to trade school and learn construction or be a mechanic or a miner. Not a professor. Not a teacher, Not a mathematician. Not a doctor. Not a lawyer. Nope. You earn your keep by doing manual labor. We don’t need your mind”. Or something to that effect.
I’m bitter and jaded and I don’t know what to do. At this age, it’s a bit too late to try to polish up my act. I feel like the alcoholic character in Barfly who tried to get her act together one day and find a job, only to sink back into her familiar habits after just a few hours trying.
I have to ask myself why I have held myself back? I’ve never felt good enough. I’ve never felt worthy. I’ve never felt like I belonged in the club. God knows I’m smart enough to do this stuff. I’m jaded, however, like I said. Can I overcome my fear? Is it fear? I don’t know. Fear of wealth? Fear of success? Fear of advancement? Fear of prosperity? Fear of rejection? Fear of acceptance? I wish I knew…
What can I contribute to the discussion? I don’t know. I don’t have any answers, except that this fight for equity and inclusion and social justice will likely not make any real headway in my lifetime. Who knows if the white folks will ever let go of their stranglehold on everything? They control it all right now. We have been thrown but a few crumbs here and there, but they eventually get back whatever they’ve loaned out. It’s not a conscious thing, you know. It’s embedded in their dna, to control, to critique, to allow, to discipline, to judge, to keep. They do the writing, they do the publishing, they do the teaching, they do the leading, they control the money, they control the gates. They control the conversation and they control the plan. Those of us who are trying to take some of their power away know they are shady and sly and that they will not give anything up willingly. Watch your backs, my brothers and sisters, for the ways of these people are sneaky and devilish and they are probably ten steps ahead of you in this game of power and control. You will need to master their ways. You will need to be better writers, better speakers, better managers, better leaders, better thinkers and better strategists before any progress is made. They are not going to let up on their control of all the standards. They define excellence. They define success. They define the conversation and if you challenge it, beware. Watch your backs, my brothers and sisters. Be your best, learn, grow, challenge yourselves, be better at their game than they are. Be smarter, be quicker, be more agile and be prepared at all times. Toughen up. Don’t back down. Toughen up. Don’t be hurt by mere words. Don’t be misled by empty promises. Don’t be delusioned into thinking they’re on your side. They are not. They know they have control and they will not willingly ever let it go. Create your own institutions. Create your own standards of excellence. Write your own books. Publish yourselves. Tell your own stories. Celebrate your own successes. You don’t need them. You don’t have to ever grovel before them. They are nothing if you are everything. Teach your own children. Don’t let your children near them. They will corrupt them. They will destroy them. They will put them in jail and they will never, ever take the blame. They have their guns and they have their cops and their laws. Beat them at their own game, my friends. Be better at it than they are and then go and create your own world. You don’t need violence or drugs or alcohol or television. You need eachother. You need your elders and your children and you need to keep on pushing and never ever, ever give up.
Today is Friday, September 4, 2020, and it’s the start of the Labor Day Weekend. The year has flown by, but man, what a year! I’ve been working from home since mid-March, and keeping a pretty low profile. I only go out to shop for groceries and to the bank about once a week. Otherwise, here I am usually sitting at my desk working most of the time. I am very fortunate that I can work from home and receive a paycheck. My partner works in a hair salon and he is in close contact with people a lot. Thank goodness he’s careful and wears his mask at all times. I have colleagues who have to go in to work at the UA library too, and I worry for them, as the students are back on campus, and the Covid-19 rates are rising again. What a crazy time.
I’ve lost some dear friends and family this year. My friend RIchard died in late March, and then my oldest cousin Olivia died, and my uncle Art died, and then my aunt Mary died. I also just found out about the death of yet another cousin. Damn. All I know is that I’m staying home! I’ve been an emotional basket case now for several months. Richard’s death hit me the hardest. I dream about him a lot, and I sure miss him. We’d been friends since high school and we managed to always hold on to our friendship. There was nobody like him. My sister saw this poster recently at a bus stop, and she sent it to me. Then later, I was able to acquire a better shot of him holding the sign. Richard was always doing the right thing. Everyone misses him.
Working from home isn’t so bad. I manage reference services for Special Collections, and I get to do research on some interesting topics like vaudeville and architecture, although not having access to the collections makes it a challenge at times. I am also on a few committees, and the work comes and goes. Some committees are better organized than others, and those that are well organized are great to work on. We get our assignments ahead of time and agendas are sent out in advance of the meetings. Those committees and meetings that aren’t as well organized are a challenge, and it’s hard not to want to throw in the towel, especially on those that are voluntary. The older I get the less patience I have for disorganized activity. Nobody likes to have their time wasted.
I have started posting my album and book of the day features on Facebook again. This is now the third round of posts I’ve contributed since I started earlier in the year. I haven’t run out of stuff to share yet, which is surprising. It turns out I’ve read a lot of books! And I have hundreds and hundreds of albums I want to share with people. Every now and then I take a break because it becomes somewhat of a chore. And then I’m back, just like that. Lately, my friend Leanne has started posting albums too, and dang, her reviews are great. She’s so smart. She has a way with words, that’s for sure. My posts, in contrast are usually pretty brief and my descriptions aren’t anything nearly as interesting as hers. It’s okay, however. I don’t like to spend lots of time analyzing stuff. I don’t have that gift anyway. I just like what I like, and sometimes I can’t tell you why.
I sure hope we get rid of that idiot in the White House. He’s sure screwed everything up. I can’t believe anyone would support that evil creature, especially since he’s done nothing to help us get a grip on this pandemic. Neither has he done anything about the rampant police brutality and racism in our country. He’s only fueled the flames. I’m so sad to realize how backward our country still is when it comes to race. I thought we had moved forward, but it’s obvious we have not.
I’m starting to listen to music again. After I left KXCI in February, I pushed it all aside. I was done with it and I didn’t want anything to do with it. Music is my first love, however, and I’ll never let it go completely. I’m enjoying listening to artists who I’ve never really heard before and those who I’ve never really paid much attention to, like Rodney Crowell. That guy sure has a gift for songwriting.
There’s also this other country singer named Josh Turner who’s been around for a long time now who I never heard until just the other day. Oh my god, his voice is gorgeous. It’s so deep and low. I love voices like his. This video is a bit silly, but that voice. Oh my god.
I’m really torn about whether or not this kind of writing is interesting to anyone. Should I post it or not? I suppose I ought to, just to keep things going. I don’t care if others don’t read it, really. Doing this is a way of keeping track of my own life. Nobody else is going to do that for me. That’s for sure. Ni modo.
Here’s a song that just blows me away. Until next time…
Wow, it seems like it’s been forever since I’ve posted anything new. I’m still here! I’ve been laying low, working from home and gaining weight, along with a lot of other people, I’m sure. I decided I’d write a quick note to let folks know that I’m doing alright. The past several months have flown right by. Wow, what a year it’s been. I’ve had my share of sadness and challenges, that’s for sure. It’s been rough having to deal with the death of my dear friend Richard Elias, and the passing of two of my relatives, my cousin Olivia and my uncle Art, but life goes on, and I’m determined to stay healthy and strong, and to continue working and contributing to the betterment of our messed up world, in whatever way I can.
I have been fortunate to have been able to work from home since mid-March, and will likely continue doing so through the end of the year. I am currently managing virtual reference services for Special Collections at the UofA Libraries, and am also finding new ways to stay involved with the library profession. I recently joined the REFORMA (the National Association for the Promotion of Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking) education committee, after having been absent from the organization for over five years, and recently got elected to the executive board of the Library Faculty Assembly at work. I’m also running for a seat on the Council of the American Library Association. Elections for that position will be held in the Spring. In addition, I’m gathering information for an article I hope to have published. It’ll be about “diversity” and my experience working to promote it throughout my career. More specifically, it will outline and discuss the efforts undertaken at the University of Arizona Libraries in this area from approximately 1992 to 2005. I have a lot of documentation that I’ve kept from when I worked as Assistant to the Dean for Staff Development, Recruitment and Diversity. I think it’s important that the history of the Library’s commitment to diversity is shared with those who don’t know what was done in the past.
In my free time I continue to work on my own personal archives. I’ve been sorting and organizing my personal photos, letters and memorabilia for a while now, and will at some point start sharing a lot of that here on my blog. I really enjoy going back and trying to remember things from my childhood and youth. I’ve been taking lots of notes and writing journal entries with information that one day will hopefully all come together in some sort of book or online publication. Who knows.
I have to admit, I do sometimes miss hosting my radio show, The Chicano Connection. I will continue to post audio recordings of some of my old shows here so folks have an idea of what I did while on the air at KXCI. I recently poured through my old KXCI files and found my very first playlists from back in 1983. My first show was a Latin show that aired on December 8, 1983, and the very first song I ever played was “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. I was in the very first d.j. class at the station. It cost me over $450 to take the class, but it was well worth it. I’ll be updating my KXCI page soon with other tidbits of information about my early days on the air at KXCI. Altogether, I was affiliated with the station for approximately 20 years (1983-1986 and 2013-2020). That’s a heck of a lot of volunteer time! And it was all voluntary. Never got paid a penny. So much for the old adage, “do what you love, the money will follow”….He he he.
I’m also slowly starting to listen to more music, and have even purchased a few cds, including Neil Young’s album “Homegrown” and a 1970 live recording by Laura Nyro titled “The Nights Before Christmas”. I’ve also discovered John Paul White and have recently listened to some music by Katey Sagal, who I think is just fabulous. It took me a while to even want to listen to music after having stopped my show. I don’t know why. I just wanted to be away from it for a while. It feels good to get back into it.
Well, I suppose I’ve rambled on enough. I’m happy that everyone in my immediate family is doing alright and that I still have a job! I’m also happy that my friends Adelita Grijalva and Andres Cano won their primary elections. I knew they would. Way to go! I’ll do another update soon.
In closing, I’d like to share a couple of music video performances that I’ve recently discovered, and have enjoyed listening to and watching…
