The good news is that arts and entertainment are at the core of revitalizing downtown Tucson.

The bad news is that we’re in a recession, the number of people working downtown is insufficient to support revitalization, there are real or perceived problems with crime and parking downtown and ….

Let’s get back to the good news.

“The greatest strength of downtown Tucson is its arts community,” Glenn Lyons told a meeting the other night gathered to hear an overview of the Downtown Tucson Partnership’s revitalization strategy.

Glenn Lyons

As the Partnership’s chief executive officer Lyons is conducting a series of stakeholder sessions to brief people on the 96-page draft plan that will undergo modification through the summer before going to the Partnership board for a vote in the fall.

“If we’re going to win, we’re going to do it through the arts,” Lyons said.

Here’s a basic picture: A lively downtown magnet of arts, music, dining and entertainment in a well lighted, easily accessible setting featuring restored historic buildings at the center of an attractive business and cultural corridor stretching from A Mountain to the UA campus and beyond.

As the Partnership sees it, the starting point is playing to your strengths. Two big ones for downtown Tucson are its Old Pueblo heritage of historic sites and wonderful architecture and an arts and entertainment community that has emerged in the downtown area over the past few decades.

The vision is lofty – as well it should be. Lyons and the Partnership – a broadly based public/private coalition – are also practical. Forward steps will be made opportunistically. Think in terms of increments on a timeline of 10 to b15 years.

I’ll keep posting Partnership developments as I learn of them. The draft strategy document should be posted at the Partnership website later this month.

Let’s hear it for the Kokopelli!

Along with the saguaro, the kokopelli is the ubiquitous symbol of the Southwest. Plant the first in the front yard, and hang or display the other inside on anything from wall art to table napkins and you’ve arrived! Practically a native! Authentic Southwest!

How the kokopelli rose to the top as the lowest common denominator of native Southwestern art is beyond me.

Who or what the kokopelli represents is beyond anthropologists, too, as various origin legends trail off onto divergent paths lost to the past.

No matter. The kokopelli has charisma and charisma sells.

Camp Verde Arizona proudly claims the rights as home to the world’s largest kokopelli. Sunland Home Décor has an entire online store devoted to the kokopelli. An outfit in Houston sells kokopelli jewelry, candles, coffee cups, tiles and other merchandize. The kokopelli is carved, painted, printed, sculpted, sandblasted and cut from iron. Shoot, I even put a kokopelli inlay in one of my own pieces.

"World's Largest Kokopelli" - Camp Verde, AZ

As we all know, the kokopelli can be traced back to pictograph’s chipped into sandstone dating from about 750 AD.

In one account, the kokopelli derives from Aztec culture as a trader who traveled north, a bag of goods over his shoulder (morphed now into a typical hunchback), his flute used to announce his peaceful arrival among the ancient pueblo peoples.

McNitt inlay kokopelli

Another version is more prosaic. The name may be a combination of Hopi and Zuni words for a deity and a particular fly known for its voracious sexual appetite. Many pictographs depict the kokopelli as a Mr. Happy Pants of prodigious proportions, an appendage rarely seen in modern home décor images.

The kokopelli also has been associated with fertility and the seasonal change from winter to spring.

Be that as it may – the kokopelli, by popular consensus, represents good cheer, good fortune, playful mischievousness, healing of woes and realization of dreams.

So, be it in the form of ancient pictograph, cultural symbol in contemporary art, or everyday kitsch, here’s to the Kokopelli, whoever he may be!

Note: I welcome your suggestions for future blog posts – benmcnitt@gmail.com

A friend posted this on Facebook regarding MJ’s legacy – “of course the death of a human being at 50 is tragic, but wasn’t Jackson a talented disco singer who was part of the depoliticization of rock music during Reagan’s ascendance to power?”

As I recall it, that was the era of the me generation, a narrowing of horizons in which young people wanted to have a good time without getting involved too much in what was happening in the world around them.

 Not to take away from his great talent and unmatched ability to  touch so many around the globe in a truly positve way, but as my friend put it, a part of his legacy, too, was as “a dynamic sugary surface pop music star assisting unconsciously in the depoliticization of the culture of the times.”

What do you think?