There are some nostalgic videos of the place online, but there's also this - a rundown of the mall's history, and a virtual reconstruction of it. The mall lives on!
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Cinderella City Lives On In Software
When I moved to Denver in 1976, I was awestruck by Cinderella City - largest mall west of the Mississippi.
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
There Was A Second Act To The Murder Mystery!
I just stumbled across these two amazing articles by John Dougherty, from 2004, in the Phoenix New Times. My connection here is that, from my days in Tucson, I was on the jury that convicted Alan Robert Terry of second-degree murder. There was a second act of which I was wholly unaware until today:
In December 1981, Connie Thompson was known as Connie Stacy Lynn Lutz. A week before Christmas, the then-24-year-old Lutz was in Pinetop with her biker gang boyfriend, Jimmy Lewis.
They were faced with a crucial decision.
One of their biker buddies had shot to death a 29-year-old paramedic during a traffic altercation in Tucson shortly after midnight on December 17. Later that same day, Alan Robert Terry was at their door seeking help.
Lutz and Lewis welcomed Big Al Terry into their home, provided him a car and later fled with him to California to avoid arrest. Along the way, everybody obtained fake California driver's licenses and identification cards.
Rather than assist police in arresting a fugitive who had fired three bullets into an unarmed man, Lutz went underground with a man wanted for first-degree murder.
Connie and Mark Thompson aren't letting ethics, honesty and honorable public service get in the way of boosting the fortunes of the elder care referral business they run from their Tempe office.
Instead, they are simply abusing their position of public trust to benefit their private business -- even if it means gutting protections for the old, the frail and the dying.
Mark Thompson, 46, was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives from District 17 in 2002. He ran as a "clean elections" candidate and received $31,000 in public funds, of which he paid his wife $2,888 for "political consulting."
After his election, Representative Thompson was awarded a position by House Republican leadership on the Health Committee, a perfect perch to boost the fortunes of his business.
His election came a year after Connie Thompson, 47, was appointed by then-governor Jane Hull to an obscure regulatory board that oversees nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The post gave Connie Thompson an inside track into structuring regulations that directly affect the family business.
From these two positions of public trust -- the legislator and the regulator -- the couple are in position to craft laws and regulations to benefit their business while, not coincidentally, stripping protections for the elderly out of state law.
Once a Bad Ass Biker, always a Bad Ass Biker!
Rehabilitating the Eaglet
After the chick fell, Kaersvang sprang into action, making her way to the base of the tree. When he raised his head and she realized he had survived his terrible fall, she knew he needed help. One of his wings hung limply by his side: he was clearly injured. She immediately phoned the California Raptor Center, then Yolo County Animal Services. Officer Breckenridge retrieved the eaglet and delivered him to the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, which partners with the CRC in treating birds of prey.
Liz Cheney Sees an Opening
Republican civil war. I like it!
The resolution says "Congresswoman Cheney's condemnation of President Trump and her support for President Trump's impeachment have been used multiple times by Democrats as justification for a truncated impeachment process that denies the president due process" and that her "personal position on issues does not reflect that of a majority of the Republican Conference and has brought the Conference into disrepute and discord."
The Warmonger Caucus is trying to reassert itself. That’s why Tom Cotton didn’t go for the riot (a smarter guy than Josh Hawley) and that’s why Liz Cheney is making noise now.
The Republican three-legged stool - anticommie warriors, economic types, and antiabortion fanatics - completely fell apart when Orange Twitler came along. And it’s going to be a long road back.
A Russian was once asked what it was like when the Bolsheviks took power. He described it as taking an aquarium, running it through the blender, and making fish stew. And what would the end of communism be like? The opposite process, whatever that meant.
Same with the Republicans with their stumpy stool. Good luck with that.
Biden Appeals to Our Better Natures
Rachels's missive:
Who We Are
On January 6th Joe Biden addressed the nation in his first speech as our official President-Elect, as Trump fanatics sacked the Capitol. Biden appealed to our better natures, proclaiming: “Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect the true America. This is not who we are.”
I both felt comforted and inspired by his speech -- yet also understand those who are saying that yes, this is who we are, and we need to confront it.
One of the refrains that the rioters spoke on January 6th was “This is 1776!” This invocation of revolution also made me think of President Trump invoking an Executive Order for a 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education” in September 2020.
It came about in response to the 1619 Project, “an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery [which] aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Trump declared that the Project was the best example of how “[t]he left has warped, distorted and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods and lies.” In announcing his commission, he proclaimed that “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history.”
After bemoaning cancel culture, Trump announced that “[t]he only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans.” He "authorized White House budget director Russ Vought to cancel federal workforce trainings that use 'critical race theory,' and in fact had a tip line set up."
I find it extremely ironic that Trump used depictions, falsehoods and lies to fire up a mob to defile the American Capitol while they defined themselves as revolutionaries and patriots while using any means necessary to support their leader’s fascist aims.
I also find a difference between Biden saying “This is not who we
are” and Trump dictating a “patriotic education.” I have found Biden consistently acknowledging and addressing the issues in the nation. He was not saying that this does not exist, but this is not the whole of us, and calling on us for better. As he said:
"The words of a President matter, no matter how good or bad that president is. At their best, the words of a president can inspire.
At their worst, they can incite."
Biden spoke to inspire, and to both call out and call an end to Trump’s inciting violence. His words may be aspirational, but I do not think they deny reality -- they call for us to see the ugliness but not let ourselves be defined by it. Both words that inspire and incite can be performative -- through their being spoken, they call a reality into being. In saying “This is not who we are,” Biden makes us look at the reality and who we want to be, and calls on us to act to bring that into the world.
Today President Trump will be impeached for a second time. There are some that say that it should be put aside for national unity. I believe that the crimes that have been committed need to be addressed for us to be able to go forward. Trump has been threatening that it will be divisive and dangerous to go forward with impeachment because it will cause great anger. Keeping him in power out of fear of what people will do is surrendering to a terrorist.
This is not who we are.
Efficient Benghazi
Quote at Talking Points Memo:
TPM Reader SC: “This is a Republican Benghazi, except that not only does the Republican Party get to be the cavalry that didn’t show up they get to be the terrorists, too. Very efficient.”
Archiving Parler
This is awesome!:
But the quick thinking of a self-described hacker by the name of donk_enby and a host of amateur data hoarders preserved more than 56.7 terabytes of data from Parler that donk_enby and open source investigators believe could be useful in piecing together what happened last Wednesday and in the weeks and months leading up to it. donk_enby was able to scrape and capture and archive nearly the entire content of the website after it became clear that hundreds of Trump supporters had uploaded potentially incriminating photos and videos of themselves to the platform, many filming from inside the Capitol itself.
When news of donk_enby's archival efforts broke, several viral tweets, Reddit posts, and Facebook posts claimed that she had captured private information, scans of drivers licenses and IDs, and other highly sensitive information. She said those posts are “not at all” accurate.
“Everything we grabbed was publicly available on the web, we just made a permanent public snapshot of it,” donk_enby told me.
Nevertheless, with the FBI, state and local law enforcement, and open-source investigators looking for media from Wednesday's attack, the archive could be highly useful to a whole host of people.
“I hope that it can be used to hold people accountable and to prevent more death,” she said. “I think people should be allowed to have their own opinion as long as they can act civilized, on Wednesday we saw what can happen if they don’t.”
RIP, James Chavez Glica Hernandez
Oh, this is sad news. Covid-19 is the worst. James was musical director for most shows over more than two decades at Woodland Opera House. His ready smile, energy, and sense of fun will be sorely missed. It's truly the end of an era at the Woodland Opera House.
Erik Daniells, Amy Shuman, and Jeni Price are in this video.
This tribute video says it all:
As it turns out, I hadn't had much contact with James over the last decade. We quarreled on Facebook, of all things, about former Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida. I thought Grayson's pugnaciousness was a good model for national Democrats. James disagreed. As things eventually proved, Grayson was corrupt. I'm willing to concede the point to James. In any event, faced with coarsening of the Republicans, Democrats had to get more pugnacious. We both won.
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
In An Elite Class
Looks like the Covid-19 pandemic is resolving into the UK/USA/Sweden vs. Everyone Else.
It's Not Over
It's still not clear whether Trump's coup has failed. It's ongoing. Congressional executions didn't happen Wednesday, January 6th, but they still might. This putsch was well-planned. Time to get firing squads ready.
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