Once upon a time somebody sent me a book, “File . . . Don’t Pile.” It is buried, defeated but ever hopeful, somewhere in a pile on my desk.

Last week, with no illusions that what I’m doing is mere spring cleaning, I began clearing my desk and file cabinets of 15 years of clutter.

For those who haven’t heard, it’s more likely than not that the Tucson Citizen, established in 1870, will publish its final edition March 21.

I’d be embarrassed to document my hoarding tendencies if I were the only slob here. But newsrooms are notorious for their filth, and the Tucson Citizen is no exception. Just about every desk is covered in old newspapers, documents, books and soda cans.

The government may have to declare this place an EPA Superfund site after we’re gone.

It actually was kind of liberating to chuck out a couple hundred dusty old files. But that was just the start of digging my way out of here.

From one drawer in the newsroom’s communal filing cabinet, I pulled out a collection of medical books from the five years I spent as a health beat reporter and delivered them to the “free” table in the break room.

A recent edition of “The Merck Manual of Medical Information” was quickly scooped up by the office hypochondriac, who also took “Before the Heart Attack” and “Breast Cancer: The Facts You Need to Know about Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond.”

“You’re never too old to get breast cancer,” she said.

She passed, as did the other ladies in the office, on “Stay Fertile Longer,” which apparently is a guide to getting pregnant into your eighties.

Maybe not.

From the nonmedical book collection, I happily sacrificed “Joe’s Law,” an autobiography of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to the free table. You couldn’t pay me to keep it. But some sucker actually took it.

Another cabinet drawer was filled with old notebooks, a bag of clean medical needles and a box of unused petri dishes. Hey, you get weird things sent to you as the medical reporter.

Found on my desk was a lint roller, two tubes of hand lotion, a full bottle of iron pills that I’m supposed to take daily and a stuffed brown puppy that barks and whines when you press a button on its belly.

Inside my desk were two pairs of shoes and a bra. Sorry, no salacious back story involving too much tequila and a darkroom after hours. I just tend to take things off during the day if they become uncomfortable.

Two sets of CycleBeads also emerged and landed on the free table. CycleBeads help women track their menstrual cycles and avoid pregnancy. The color-coded string of beads identifies the days a woman is likely to get pregnant without protection.

A young colleague wanted to know if she should wear them around her head. I suggested they’d be more effective if she wore them around her knees.

Here’s an appropriate, if old, joke: What do you call couples who use the rhythm method? Parents.

To be fair, not all the clutter in a newsroom is garbage. Because we’re creative types – or just weird – we each have our collections of kitsch.

One co-worker kept a life-size, cardboard cutout of Shaun Cassidy beside his desk for decades after Cassidy’s 15 minutes of fame had ended. Another colleague has a tube-shaped bomb casing on his desk. Pinned to my cubicle wall is the X-ray image of a man with a long nail in his skull, just missing his brain, a work accident with a nail gun.

The picture serves to remind me that my worst day at work was never that bad.

Among the “important” papers that turned up during my end-of-a-career desk cleaning was a letter of congratulations for a companywide award I won for column writing in 2006. It was signed by the same suit who came here Jan. 17 to tell us that the Citizen’s 139-year run was coming to an end.

I haven’t decided whether to burn the letter in a March 21 bonfire or save it to include with my résumé if, as speculated by other local media, Gannett buys the Arizona Daily Star.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

This December photo of San Xavier Mission shows completed restoration work on the tower at left. Funding to restore the tower at right has been eliminated as part of the Legislature's effort to balance the state budget

When state legislators cut Arizona State Parks funding as part of balancing the current fiscal year budget, they left nothing untouched.

The $26.3 million cut included a sweep of $4.9 million from the Heritage Fund, which, as its name implies, supports the heritage, history and culture of Arizona.

Defunding state parks is bad enough, but in raiding the Heritage Fund, the Legislature gave the middle finger to Arizona voters. Those voters created the fund in 1990, ordering that up to $20 million from the sale of lottery tickets be divided each year between the state park system and the Arizona Game & Fish Department.

The funds provide grants for projects to conserve our natural and wildlife resources. They are used for historic preservation projects, for building and maintaining trails and for acquiring land for open space or outdoor recreation facilities.

Despite public support for the fund, legislators have been looking for ways to raid it since its inception, said Beth Woodin, president of the Arizona Heritage Alliance.

The nonprofit alliance formed in 1992 to protect the fund has helped fight off more than 30 previous attempts by legislators to pillage it. Only once, in 2003, did the Legislature follow through with plans to take $10 million in Heritage Fund money from Game & Fish.

Woodin said just about every city and town in Arizona has benefited from the grants.

“The Heritage Fund represents education. It’s a form of education about historic monuments, about wildlife, about habitats. . . . To take that away is like taking away the foundation,” Woodin said.

Early this week, state park grant coordinators sent letters telling grant recipients not to spend the money that’s been awarded.

Linda Mayro, Pima County cultural resources manager, said in excess of $1.5 million in Heritage Fund grants for projects countywide will be lost.

The Pascua Yaqui tribe had been awarded $430,500 to develop Pascua Yaqui Park. Pima County is losing $59,700 it would have used to restore the historic Ajo Immaculate Conception Church. The nonprofit Patronato San Xavier lost the $150,000 it had been counting on to start restoration of the east tower of San Xavier Mission.

The red-meat Republicans who dominate the Legislature may think they’re quite clever in sweeping this fund, thus avoiding cutting the budget elsewhere or raising taxes. But it’s just another of their penny wise, pound foolish decisions and a poke in the eye to voters who told them two decades ago to keep their grubby hands off this money.

These projects often provide jobs, bring in matching federal and private grant money, and improve the assets that draw tourists to Arizona.

“These are our best amenities and it’s such a disinvestment to take this Heritage Fund away,” Mayro said.

Bill Meek, president of the Arizona State Parks Foundation, said chronic underfunding of capital needs is destroying our state parks.

“The state parks are a mess. . . . What the customers don’t see very much of is the erosion that’s going on behind the scenes,” he said. “They don’t see the wastewater systems that are being condemned by DEQ in almost every park in the state. They don’t see the walls that are about to fall down or did just fall down . . . because those things are sort of hidden from them.”

Legislative leadership has insisted that the budget must be hatcheted to address the state’s deficit, while ruling without any discussion of most alternatives, including – yes, I’ll say it – new taxes.

The deficit is daunting and deep cuts are unavoidable. But make no mistake about it, it’s the Legislature’s choice to swing the ax and let the parts fall where they may.

History, culture and education be damned.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

I haven’t written about our impending death because I haven’t quite known what to say. I still don’t.

It’s been a little more than two weeks since the boom was lowered. The head of Gannett U.S. Community Publishing told the employees of the Citizen Jan. 16 that he was sorry to be delivering such difficult news, but the Citizen is losing money, is up for sale and will cease publication on March 21 if a buyer is not found.

There’s a lot more to this story than known to the public, despite the belief of some delusional commenters who insist that I, Mark Kimble and Billie Stanton killed the paper with our liberal commentary. I’ll tell it to anyone who wants to ply me with margaritas.

The mood in the newsroom, as you can imagine, is grim, with occasional moments of gallows humor.

Some of us, with more years under our belt, will leave here with decent severance packages, buying us a few months before desperation sets in. Others need to find jobs right away. Some here have families to support. Others of us have only ourselves (and perhaps our pets) to worry about.

It’s rough. But I won’t leave here bitter. This field has given me 20 great years. During the 15 years I’ve spent with Gannett, I’ve been been treated well by supervisors, received regular raises and been given wonderful opportunities.

When I was a medical reporter, I thought I had the best job at the Citizen. Then I was promoted to metro columnist three years ago and I loved my new job even more. I have appreciated all my regular readers, even the ones who just loved to hate me.

As a city, Tucson is losing another piece of its history. The Citizen was established in 1870.

On a personal level, I feel like I’m losing my family.

For more blogs: www.tucsoncitizen.com/blog

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm infamously called Americans a “nation of whiners” during last year’s presidential campaign when he served as senior economic adviser to Sen. John McCain.

It would seem that state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, shares the same lofty opinion of Arizonans – at least those who don’t want legislators to eviscerate social services, public education and universities in the name of balancing the budget.

Earlier this week, the Arizona Republic quoted Pearce, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, as saying he would try to accommodate the public’s desire to have its say, but we “don’t want to have 300 people sign up to whine.”

Pearce didn’t return a call from me this week. But he repeated the sentiment to an interviewer from arizonaguardian.com, saying, “We are not going to have a forum just for Dr. Crow (ASU president Michael Crow) to send everybody on his staff down here to whine. I’m not going to do it. And I stand by it.”

Let me just say this: There’s straight talk and there’s stupid talk. Suggesting that the people who pay your salary are whiners is stupid.

The legislators have the difficult job of cutting $1.6 billion out of the fiscal 2009 budget for the year that ends June 30 and an estimated $3 billion out of the 2010 budget.

Not surprisingly, the members of the public want a say in how those cuts are made and what services are prioritized.

It’s not whining. It’s the democratic process.

“I think Russell Pearce has made it clear that he really doesn’t want to hear from the public,” said state Rep. Steve Farley, D-Tucson. “He’s got his own idea of what should be done and we should just shut up and let him do it.”

The public is showing, whether through calls and e-mails to legislators or by marching on the Capitol, that they want to be heard, Farley said.

“And I think we better listen to them,” he said.

On Wednesday, an estimated 2,000 students and other supporters of the state’s university system protested at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. The universities have come up with a plan to cut $100 million from the ’09 budget, but the Legislature wants to cut tens of millions more.

I guess all those folks were just a bunch of snot-nosed snivelers, not responsible citizens who care about the quality of education in Arizona.

To Pearce’s credit, he hasn’t suggested that Arizona’s economic crisis isn’t real. When Gramm called us “a nation of whiners” last year it was in the context of saying that the country was in “a mental recession,” not a real one.

I wish Gramm and Pearce would have attended Tuesday’s job fair at the Tucson Convention Center. They might have learned something about the character of the Americans and Arizonans that they are so quick to disparage.

I didn’t see any whiners there. I saw thousands of people willing to stand in the longest line of their lives in the hope of getting at least one lead on a job.

Brandy Ficzeri, 36, who was standing behind me in line, used to make $125,000 a year as a sous-chef in Cleveland.

Last year, she moved to Tucson, along with her life partner, to help out her mother-in-law, who had just lost her husband.

Ficzeri has been in the food industry for 24 years, including 10 as a certified chef. Unable to find employment for the last six months, Ficzeri said she’d take a job as a line cook for $12 an hour.

Far from being discouraged about either the lengthy line or her lengthy unemployment, she said the job fair was a great way to save people from driving all over town to file applications. And she was optimistic about her own prospects.

“There is a job out there. It’s got to find me or I’ve got to find it,” Ficzeri said.

Frankly, if I were Pearce I’d find another word to describe the resilient people of Arizona.

They deserve his respect and attention.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Closing the University of Arizona’s poison control center, as proposed by the Legislature, would save the state less than a million dollars a year. But it could cost some lives.

Here’s the background. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee has proposed discontinuing the $1.2 million it provides for UA’s Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center. The state funding makes up 90 percent of the center’s budget.

Instead, the Legislature would add $300,000 to the $675,000 it already gives to the Banner Poison Control Center at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix to expand its coverage to the whole state.

Until now, Banner has covered Maricopa County, while the UA center handled calls from Pima County and the rest of the state. Not surprisingly, the proposal has pitted the two centers against each other.

“If you are going to only have one poison center, why not try to have the best?” asked Jude McNally, managing director of the UA center.

The local center was established in 1955 as a public health service. Every phone call is answered by a pharmacist nationally certified as a poison information specialist. And those pharmacists can draw on the expertise of the larger UA community as needed.

The center has a significant research program, including a study of scorpion antivenin that is saving lives and money. It also has a pregnancy risk line that provides advice to 3,000 women and their doctors each year on how drugs and poisons interact with a fetus.

Bill Byron, Banner’s public relations director, said the Legislature has to make hard budget decisions this year.

Banner handles more calls while receiving less state money, Byron said, noting that the taxpayer cost per call at the UA center is a little more than $18 compared to $6.26 for each call taken by Banner.

The Banner center is staffed by nurses who have passed the same certification exam as the UA center’s pharmacists, he said. Banner trains physician toxicologists in a fellowship program, and its toxicologists have conducted research on a variety of topics over the past decade.

“If the Legislature is going to choose a poison center, we would want to be that poison center,” Byron said.

But there’s yet another way to look at this. Closing the UA center would net the state all of about $550,000 the fiscal ’09 year that ends June 30 and $900,000 in fiscal 2010. The money saved may well be outweighed by the human – and for that matter, the monetary – costs of shutting the local center.

While writing about the center’s 50th anniversary in 2005, I came across a family whose story demonstrates that the local poison center does so much more than just dispense over-the-phone first aid.

Tucsonans Bob and Sue Romeo said their teenage son Tommy was alive only because of the involvement of the poison center in a crisis 15 years earlier.

It happened on Thanksgiving Day, 1990. Sue Romeo called the center, mildly concerned that her 18-month-old son had just taken a swallow from a bottle of oil of wintergreen her mother kept in the bathroom.

The Romeos had called the center on other occasions – such as when Tommy ate a colorful worm, when Tommy drank shampoo and when Tommy got into WD-40. Romeo expected the same advice as before: He’s probably OK but keep an eye open for specific symptoms .

Instead, the poison specialist on duty calmly but firmly told her to call 911 for an ambulance and get to the closest hospital. Oil of wintergreen is concentrated methyl salicylate, a first cousin to aspirin. One teaspoon can be fatal for a small child.

Dr. Leslie Boyer, medical director of the poison center, quickly became involved. She was in regular contact with St. Joseph’s Hospital’s emergency room, monitoring his symptoms and condition, as Tommy was treated with activated charcoal. She was on the line with the ER doctor when Tommy suffered a complete system shutdown – cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest and seizures.

As the St. Joseph’s team worked to bring Tommy back to life, Boyer arranged for a helicopter to fly the boy to University Medical Center’s pediatric intensive care unit.

The poison center set about tracking a dialysis specialist to do an emergency pediatric hemodialysis on Thanksgiving Day. The procedure would clear Tommy’s blood of poison and reduce the acidity of his blood to normal levels. Acidosis, a potentially fatal complication of aspirin poisoning, can prevent the brain and heart from working.

When Tommy got to UMC, there was a team ready, including an out-of-town renal specialist who had been visiting Tucson when he got the call. It was many long, scary hours before it was clear that Tommy would survive.

Four days later, Tommy toddled out of the hospital.

Sue Romeo, in an interview Monday, said Tommy is now 19 and taking classes at Pima Community College. He’s preparing to enroll at UA in the fall and possibly study medicine.

Romeo said there’s no way that the Banner center could have done from Phoenix what Boyer and her staff did here. She said she’s flabbergasted at the Legislature’s failure to prioritize a program that costs so little and saves people’s lives.

“For $1.2 million, it’s an awful good investment to have that resource in Tucson,” she said.

I’m not arguing for the closure of the Banner center. Poison centers are a bargain. As McNally points out, they save millions of dollars in medical costs by keeping patients out of emergency rooms, urgent care centers and doctor’s offices.

The two-center system has worked well for Arizona. If anything, the Romeos’ story is an argument for more regional poison centers, staffed by people familiar with the resources available in their own cities.

But no matter how you look at this, it makes no sense to shut down a program with 54 years of experience in providing this lifesaving service, a major research program, extensive expertise in-house and a public health mission.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Self-portrait of artist Ted DeGrazia

The snooty art critics of the world never had much use for Arizona’s most famous artist, the late Ted DeGrazia.

The Tucsonan didn’t have use for them either. He fashioned himself into an artist of and for the people. While never selling out, he sold his work to the admiring masses and made a fortune along the way.

Not too shabby for a boy born to Italian immigrants in the mining camp of Morenci on June 14, 1909.

Friday, the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun opens its Centennial Retrospective featuring 100 significant examples of his work.

If you think you know DeGrazia because you’ve seen his oils of Indian children, think again. The sweep of his life’s work is astonishing for both the range of mediums and styles that he worked in – from oils, watercolors and sketches to ceramics, textiles and stained glass.

“We’re hoping that people get more of an idea of the breadth of what he did, in terms of working in all these different mediums and also that there is so much more to it than the reproductions that people grew up with,” said curator Kristine Peashock said. “For us, it’s a matter of getting people though the door. Then they can see for themselves.”

The retrospective will include many of the old favorites in the collection, including the 1957 “Los Niños” oil painting of children dancing in a circle, an image famously reproduced into a best-selling UNICEF card in 1960. But Peashock also has pulled lesser known works from the gallery’s vault, including, on public exhibition for the first time, “New York,” an undated oil depicting a street sweeper in in the foreground of a cityscape of grimy, gray skyscrapers.

By the gallery’s account, DeGrazia, who died in Tucson in 1982, graduated from Morenci High School at age 23 and “hitched a ride to Tucson in 1933 to enroll at the University of Arizona with $15 in his pocket.”

In 1941, Arizona Highways began publishing DeGrazia’s artwork, helping to launch his career and introduce legions of readers around the world to the beauty of southern Arizona’s native people and cultures.

In 1942, he studied under Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Rivera was so impressed with the young man that he sponsored a weeklong show of DeGrazia’s work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Orozco predicted DeGrazia would someday be one of America’s best painters.

But throughout his career, DeGrazia’s standing with the critics would be inversely proportional to his popularity with the masses.

“They thought that DeGrazia was simplistic. He painted little children without eyes. To them, he wasn’t a real artist. They didn’t see any value in what he was doing, said Lance Laber, executive director of the Gallery in the Sun.

“I think,” Peashock said, “that the art critics thought that was all he did and that it was kind of kitschy and didn’t look beyond that to the other work he had done.”

DeGrazia, she said, was a stubborn man who didn’t like art world politics. In the 1950s, he began building his own gallery in what was then the far outskirts of Tucson. The main gallery of the Gallery in the Sun, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1965.

“He said, ‘If nobody wants to display my work, I’m going to build my own museum to display my work,’” Peashock said.

At the gallery, which houses some 15,000 DeGrazia originals and attracts more than 50,000 visitors each year, you can see his more serious works. Among them are paintings that document the Yaqui Easter celebration and the stories of Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Kino and Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

DeGrazia was as much a historian and anthropologist as he was a painter, Laber said.

And let’s not dismiss his paintings of Native American children as mere kitsch. If you take a closer at these paintings in the environment DeGrazia designed for them, you’ll see they are more than just cute. In those paintings, as in all his work, he captured the sun-soaked pastels and swirling energy of the desert and the unique beauty of its natives.

“I always thought that DeGrazia’s work was beautiful,” said Bernard Siquieros, administrator of the Tohono O’odham Nation Cultural Center & Museum in Topawa, about 75 miles southwest of Tucson. “I thought just from his paintings that he saw something special in the children. . . . In fact, I was just commenting about one of our grandsons, who is 8 months old, and they came to visit my wife and me on Sunday. He had those big round eyes and I said, ‘You look like a DeGrazia baby.’ . . . I thought this must have been what DeGrazia saw in many of the children, their beautiful eyes.”

In some of DeGrazia’s paintings, the children have no facial features, as Laber noted. In others, the children have dark dots for eyes and mouths that look like sweet, black gumdrops.

DeGrazia’s work has yet to get the respect it merits from the art world, Laber said.

But his reign as Arizona’s favorite artist of the people remains unchallenged.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Famed American artist Thomas Hart-Benton (right) was a friend of DeGrazia.

DeGrazia's O'odham legend

Artwork on display at the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun. The gallery's Centennial Retrospective features 100 examples of Ted DeGrazia's work.

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IF YOU GO

What: “DeGrazia, 100 years, 100 Works”

Where: DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun, 6300 N. Swan Road

When: Opening reception is 6 to 9 p.m. Friday. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

Cost: free

Obama presidency worth it, he says

Samuel Newsome, a longtime civil rights activist in Tucson, said "Nothing this side of hell" was going to stop him from attending the inauguration of the nation's first black president Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

It would take more than freezing temperatures and health problems to keep 70-year-old Tucsonan Samuel Newsome from attending the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in Washington, D.C.

“Nothing this side of hell is going to stop me from going to that inauguration,” Newsome said Friday. “This is the completion of the Civil Rights Act.”

Newsome is an African-American who spent his childhood in segregated Mississippi and his adulthood registering minority voters in Arizona. The election of the nation’s first black president is a repudiation of the society that once was and a validation of the work it took to get here.

“All the years that I have worked as an activist in the community, it paid off. It was the icing on the cake,” Newsome said. “It might be long coming, but it came.”

Newsome, a retired master carpenter and general contractor, is the longtime president of the Southern Arizona chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. The institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of black trade unionists founded in 1965 to fight for racial equality and economic justice.

Since 1974, with Newsome at its helm, the local chapter has registered more than 50,000 people to vote. But Newsome has been registering voters since 1965 as part of his involvement with labor unions.

Newsome came to Tucson from Mississippi in 1955 at age 17. He sums up the segregated South he left in two words: “It sucked.”

Jim Crow laws. Separate bathrooms, separate restaurants, job discrimination, housing discrimination and education discrimination. In Arizona, Newsome certainly would face prejudice and discrimination but not anywhere near as oppressive as what he left behind in Mississippi.

Here, he was able to learn a trade and build a life for himself and his family. He joined a labor union in 1959. He registered to vote for the first time in 1960, years before any of his family members in Mississippi did so.

“I called and told them I registered to vote. They said, ‘One day, we’ll be able to do the same thing,’ ” Newsome said. “I was able to vote before my father, my aunties, my cousins, my mom,” Newsome said.

While he cast his first vote in a presidential election for John F. Kennedy, his family was disenfranchised by intimidation, violence and ridiculous voter registration requirements.

“A lot of people was told that they had to recite the constitution of the state or pay poll taxes,” Newsome said. “They had to tell the poll workers how many bubbles were in a bar of soap or how many mules it takes to fill about a barn that’s 300 feet long by a 1/2-mile wide. It was difficult. It really was difficult for people to register to vote.”

Newsome encountered a different kind of resistance to voter registration in Arizona during many years of going to door to register voters in Tucson’s poorer neighborhoods. It came from the people he was trying to help.

“I was threatened not by the establishment, but by individuals who did not want to register to vote and didn’t see how registering to vote helped any minority person,” Newsome said.

He met many who had no faith or understanding of how government could work to serve them. Newsome was called “a damn Uncle Tom” and worse.

He recalled one man threatening to beat the hell out of him if Newsome didn’t get off his doorstep.

Many people asked why he would waste his time.

“‘You’re not getting paid. Why are you out here doing this?’ ” they’d ask.

“Not all things you do in life you get paid money for,” Newsome said. “You get paid in satisfaction.”

The ultimate, unexpected culmination of his life’s dreams and work came on election night, Nov. 4.

He was sick in bed with the flu. But the announcement that Obama had enough electoral votes to win was a tonic like no other. As the returns were announced on television, Newsome jumped up and screamed, “We did it.”

“We got to go,” he said to his wife, Barbara, demanding that she get dressed so they could celebrate with local Democrats at the Tucson Marriott University Park. He and his wife later got tickets to the inauguration from Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.

“I’m 70 years old and that’s something I never thought I’d see: a black man or woman as president,” Newsome said.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

<strong>Ron and Anne Walker</strong> (left) with <strong>Barbara and Vice President George H.W. Bush</strong> and <strong>Nancy and President Ronald Reagan</strong> at the 1985 Inaugural Ball at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ron Walker was chairman of the 1985 Inaugural Committee.

Ron and Anne Walker probably would have been invited to Washington, D.C., next week for inaugural events had Arizona Sen. John McCain been elected president.

Instead, the Republican diehards will watch the Tuesday inauguration of Democrat Barack Obama on television at their Oro Valley home with hope in their hearts and an appreciation for the history-making moment.

“Obviously, there’s the historical perspective and significance of the first African-American, multi-racial president. I think it’s an exciting time and I wish him well,” said Anne Walker, 69.

“We’ve just crossed a barrier that we needed to cross a long time ago,” Ron Walker, 71, said.

The Walkers have a unique vantage point on presidents and Inauguration Days.

Ron Walker was a key organizer for three inaugurations. The couple have attended seven swearing-in ceremonies – from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush.

The Walkers, who graduated from the University of Arizona in 1960, moved back to Tucson in 1979.

Ron Walker, a retired government worker, began his career in Washington, D.C., as an advance man for Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. He would serve as a special assistant to President Nixon and director of the White House advance office during Nixon’s first term. In 1973, he was named by Nixon as director of the National Park Service.

“When (Nixon) won in 1968, those of us on staff who had survived the road were invited to help not only on the inaugural, but the transition as well,” Walker said.

He helped coordinate the parade and the swearing in on Capitol Hill, held at the time on the Capitol’s east portico. It has since been moved to the west front. He had a role in planning the evening’s balls and accompanied President Nixon throughout the day’s events, “helping him figure out where he was going and what he was doing.”

Walker said inaugurations for both president and staff are more stressful than exciting. It is “full steam forward.”

The president has the pressure of delivering an inaugural address to the nation. There are receptions to attend and countless hands to shake. The new president is physically moving into the White House as the old president is moved out. New staff is arriving, trying to figure out the locations of the offices and the bathrooms.

“It’s a pain in the (bleep) is what it is,” Walker said.

It’s also the time when the new president realizes the great burden of the office.

There’s a realization, “which I’m sure is happening to President-elect Obama as we speak, of the awesome responsibility that comes with sitting in the Oval Office,” he said.

Ron Walker was the White House representative to the inaugural committee for Nixon’s second term, and a senior adviser for Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration. In 1985, he was asked to be chairman of President Reagan’s second inaugural, after having run the Republican convention in Dallas in the summer of 1984.

“I finished the convention in August. (Reagan) called me probably in September. It’s bad form and bad luck to be doing anything for inauguration before the election. . . . Anyway, we did not make any announcements until after the election in November, but I had been working on it probably since September behind the scenes, getting organized and picking my personnel,” Walker said.

He had to find sponsors and raise money for the inaugural events, put together a staff of more than 3,000, arrange for tickets for all who played a role in the campaign and coordinate with the military for the military escorts and ceremonies.

“I don’t think you sleep. I was running on adrenaline,” Walker said. “I had to see a doctor when it was all over.”

In preparation for Reagan’s second inauguration, Ron and Anne Walker walked the presidential parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the White House. But Reagan wouldn’t walk it that year.

“One week later, I had to go to the president and Mrs. Reagan and cancel the parade. The wind chill factor would have been 12 below. We would probably have killed some kids from California that came with polyester suits,” Walker said.

He wasn’t kidding. He consulted with doctors from Antarctica who said the sub-freezing temperatures could kill a Secret Service agent stationed underground during the event.

The Walkers attended the first inauguration of George W. Bush but skipped the second one to give other party faithful a chance to celebrate.

The couple have known the McCains for years and are good friends with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. The Walkers saw the Cheneys two weeks ago in Washington.

“They’re ready to get out of town. . . . They both feel that history will be kind to them and they leave with their heads held high,” Ron Walker said.

Despite their solid GOP credentials, the Walkers are taking the transition to Democratic rule after eight years of a Republican administration with complete sang-froid.

“The Republican party made some huge mistakes,” Walker said. “They shot themselves in the foot and then they reloaded and shot themselves in the foot again. Their time was due.”

Anne Walker said she hopes the country rallies around Obama and supports him in every possible way.

Ron Walker said he’ll have nothing but good feelings for the new president while watching the inauguration.

“I will be sitting in my home here in Tucson, wishing him well and Godspeed and hoping it’s a beautiful day,” he said.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Anne Walker and Ron Walker with President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, at a state dinner in the White House.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, with Ann and Ron Walker at a summer party in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2004.

Ron Walker's access pass and ID badge for the 1985 inauguration.

House speaker says address has ‘curiosity value’

Gov. Janet Napolitano (right) and Secretary of State Jan Brewer after Napolitano delivered her State of the State address at the opening of the 49th Legislature. Brewer will become governor if Napolitano is confirmed for a Cabinet post.

If Gov. Janet Napolitano was expecting a fond farewell and “God Bless” from the Republican-dominated Legislature as she gave her final State of the State address Monday, then she hasn’t been paying attention for the past six years.

The response from Republican leadership afterward could be boiled down to one word:

Whatever.

In her speech, Napolitano acknowledged that difficult decisions lie ahead for the Legislature as the state wrestles with growing deficits.

She asked that legislators make choices that “are wise in the long run.”

“The task is to meet these great challenges with short-term decisions that do not dim the bright future of this remarkable state,” she said.

Such proclamations drew light applause – mostly from Democrats.

The Legislature has to cut about $1.6 billion from the current year budget and, in the face of equally bare-bones revenue projections for next year, pass a lean budget for fiscal 2010 year, which begins July 1.

Napolitano urged lawmakers to protect full-day kindergarten, early childhood education and teacher pay raises, and to continue to invest in the university system.

She asked them to consider their duty to care for the less fortunate in these hard times and to preserve services such as “education, foreclosure assistance, health care and shelter from abuse, neglect and domestic violence.”

She emphasized the need for the state to invest in its physical infrastructure with a statewide transportation plan.

But Napolitano could have stood on her head at the podium and delivered her speech in Japanese for all the impact it had on the Republicans who will set the course of the state for the next two years.

“It was a nice farewell speech and it’s probably counterproductive to get into critiquing it,” said Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria.

“The substance of the governor’s speech,” said House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, “is nothing more than curiosity value at this point.”

Napolitano promised to deliver to legislators later this week a 2010 budget that is balanced and protects the priorities she cited without any tax increases.

Burns and Adams made it clear that she needn’t bother. It was important that she had a chance to say farewell, Adams said, but, “Is it relevant to the upcoming session? No.”

The Republicans offered no details on what their budget will look like, except to reiterate that nothing is off the table. Adams said the Legislature will have to make tough decisions and is ready to do so.

“It’s not a matter of ideology,” he said. “It’s just a matter of mathematics.”

Asked whether the Legislature will cut with a scalpel or a hatchet, Burns said, “We’ll have to figure out which one of those tools we’re going to use.”

The House of Representatives will hold a “budget boot camp” and the Senate a “budget summit” starting Tuesday to lay out the details of the budget shortfall.

The Legislature’s Republican leadership also is hosting two panel discussions, having invited business leaders and local government representatives to describe their efforts to deal with the downturn in the economy and the impact on their budgets.

“The fun and games ends today,” Adams said Monday. (Tuesday) we get to work.”

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Freshman legislator Vic Williams of District 26 on the Northwest Side and his son Trevor Williams, 7, at his new desk in the House of Representatives.

Freshman legislator David M. Gowan Sr. of District 30 shows off his new name badge at his new desk in the House of Representatives.

The anti-photo enforcement movement in Arizona is moving beyond Post-it notes and Silly String to disable the controversial traffic cameras.

For all the folks out there who think there ought to be a law against photo enforcement, you’ll get your chance to make it happen. CameraFRAUD, a grass roots, Phoenix-based group, is filing a proposed ballot initiative to ban photo traffic enforcement with the state on Monday.

If CameraFRAUD collects 153,365 valid signatures, the measure would be on the ballot Nov. 2, 2010, the next statewide election. The local offshoot of CameraFRAUD, Tucson CameraFRAUD, is holding its first public protest against the cameras at Oracle and River roads at 10 a.m. Saturday.

“The ballot initiative title is End Photo Radar,” said Shawn Dow, a volunteer with CameraFRAUD. “It’s a true citizens’ initiative. We don’t have any money behind us. It’s just us. It’s simple. It’s to the point.”

Dow, a 39-year-old insurance salesman and Republican state committeeman, said the cameras violate a citizen’s basic right to privacy, do little to improve safety and are being used to cover up “our inept government’s budgeting skills.”

In recent years, the state, various cities, including Tucson and Phoenix, and various counties throughout the state have implemented photo enforcement programs that use a combination of mobile and stationary units to catch speeders and red-light runners. In approving the programs, public officials generally have insisted the cameras are about improving safety, not the huge revenues they can generate through fines.

Pima County got into the game on Tuesday when the three Democrats on the Board of Supervisors approved a 20-camera photo enforcement program to catch speeders.

It’s surely of some significance to our safety that the system also will be capable of capturing violations of the state’s new ban on license plate frames that obscure the word “Arizona” at the top of the plate. The fine for that is $130.

In what could be viewed as acts of civil disobedience, some people believed to be associated with CameraFRAUD have temporarily disabled cameras in the greater Phoenix area by placing Post-its or Silly String over the lenses. Before Christmas, a small group of rebels used gift wrap and gift boxes to disable traffic cameras.

Dow said such actions aren’t illegal. The Department of Public Safety disagrees and has assigned an investigator to find the people responsible for obstructing its cameras.

In southern Arizona, the local anti-traffic camera movement is headed by, of all people, a man in uniform: Pinal County Deputy Bill Conley.

Conley, 46, an officer for 12 years, works under new Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who describes himself as “a strict constitutionalist” and who campaigned on the promise to get rid of photo radar in Pinal County.

Shortly after taking office on Jan. 2, Babeu lived up to his word and informed photo radar contractor Redflex that its contract would be terminated. But the Pinal County Board of Supervisors has delayed action on the contract until Jan. 21.

Conley said his own concern about the cameras has less to do with citizen privacy than with the greed of the governments behind the programs.

“Traffic laws aren’t there to tax. They are there to enforce,” Conley said. “I’m not against enforcing the laws. As a police officer, I welcome that. To me, it’s just a clear and improper motive on behalf of government.”

Conley said law agencies should dispatch officers to investigate at locations presenting legitimate safety concerns.

“They should sit at those intersections and start arresting people or issuing tickets,” he said.

The problem with cameras is that they have no discretion and create a zero-tolerance policy against speeding, which isn’t the policy of any law enforcement agency in the state, Conley said.

“When a police officer pulls a person over, there’s a human element involved. The state of Arizona gives authority to individual officers when it comes to traffic laws and misdemeanors to use their discretion whether they want to cite or not. Not every situation across the board is the same,” he said.

In some cases, a police officer can educate the driver without issuing a citation, he said.

“I’m receiving e-mail from people who haven’t received a ticket in 30 or 40 years and now they’ve received three or four. If there had been an officer to pull them over that first time and educate them, there wouldn’t have been a third or fourth time,” Conley said. “That’s fairness.”

Both Conley and Dow dismissed a recent DPS report, covering an 80-day period, that linked a drastic reduction in fatalities on the metro Phoenix freeways to photo enforcement.

“It was an ingenious way to try to combat bad press,” Dow said, arguing that fewer drivers on are on the roads and that the time frame studied was too short to draw a conclusion.

“Unfortunately,” Conley said, “the waters have been muddied here. DPS and the municipalities are arguing that this is a safety issue. But all you have to do is follow the money.”

The DPS photo enforcement program, originally sold by Gov. Janet Napolitano as both a safety measure and a way to help balance the budget, was touted to bring in $90 million this fiscal year, which ends June 30. The new Pima County contract is valued at $1.5 million.

The city of Tucson’s speed and red-light cameras brought in about $1.9 million during their first 13 months in operation, with nearly all of the revenues reportedly going to the contractor, the Arizona Supreme Court and to cover the local costs of administering the program.

Dow said CameraFRAUD has 650 volunteers ready to start collecting signatures for its ballot initiative. It also has a clever strategy.

“We are going to take voter registration cards with us, go to traffic schools and wait outside, and, as they let out, we’re going to register them to vote and collect signatures at the same time,” Dow said.

Uh oh. I hope for everyone’s sake that our city, county and state leaders don’t become too dependent on the gold mine that is photo traffic enforcement.

I suspect when voters (and angry drivers) have their say, that gold is likely to turn to dust.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@ tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

———

ON THE WEB

For more information on CameraFRAUD, go to:

camerafraud.wordpress.com

tucsoncamerafraud.wordpress.com/

Jonathan Paton won’t have the most seniority of any southern Arizona legislator when he takes a seat in the state Senate next month. But he arguably will have the most clout.

Paton served four years in the state House of Representatives before being elected to the state senate in November. Others returning to the Legislature from southern Arizona have more years in office.

But Paton will be the senior Republican of the delegation when the Legislature convenes Jan. 12. Accordingly, though he won’t say it for fear of bruising some egos, he’ll be the go-to guy for issues of concern to Pima County.

“There are Democrats who are returning who have more experience than I do and I don’t want to denigrate them by saying that,” Paton said. “I am in a good position because I am in the majority party and I am a committee chair. I take that responsibility pretty seriously. But I’m not going to be able to do my job without working together with the whole delegation from both sides of the aisle on a lot of different issues.”

Paton, 37, is a conservative who falls ideologically somewhere between outgoing state Rep. Pete Hershberger, a centrist, and Al Melvin,, a far-right conservative. The two faced each other in the Republican primary for the District 26 Senate seat, with Melvin coming out on top and going on to win the general election.

Paton is also a sensible legislator who tends to look for points of agreement, rather than disagreement. One of the first things he did after the election was collaborate with Democratic state Rep. Nancy Young Wright to bring the southern Arizona delegation together for a barbecue, so members could get to know each other.

Afterward, Melvin and incoming Democratic Rep. Daniel Patterson separately suggested the group should form a southern Arizona caucus. Paton said he doesn’t see that happening at this point but he and Young Wright hope to hold a monthly meeting for the delegation and “decide how comfortable they are at making things more formal.”

The new Legislature has the unenviable task of cutting at least $1.2 billion from the current year’s budget, as well as crafting a lean fiscal 2010 budget. The cuts will be deep and painful.

Making sure Pima County and southern Arizona are treated fairly in that process should be at the top of the to-do list for every member of our delegation. Paton promised to do “battle every single day” on that front, and, as our ranking Republican, he should have the ear of the legislative leadership.

Paton, who notes that leadership will need his vote on the budget and other matters, said he’s doesn’t know incoming senate President Bob Burns well but has had a conversation with him about the concerns of southern Arizona.

“I talked to him about this specifically and I felt like he was willing to listen to me. I think that because I’ve been around for a long time, at least I have a strong relationship with the whole leadership team. I think they’ll probably be willing to hear me out,” Paton said.

On the House side, Paton will find an ally in speaker-elect Kirk Adams, who used to live in Tucson. The two worked together this year on a package of bills to reform Child Protective Services and had the same campaign manager for the election.

“I consider him to be one of my best friends,” Paton said.

While the budget will be front and center this session, Paton will have the opportunity as the new chairman of the senate judiciary committee to make headway on issues of importance to him, including the protection of women and children. He plans to put forth legislation that would strengthen domestic violence laws and will help shepherd through legislation by Young Wright to address violence against animals. Abuse of pets can be precursor or a tool of domestic violence against women and children. She also wants to ban hog-dog fighting.

Also high on Paton’s priority list is the creation of a First Amendment task force “to work on making Arizona the most transparent state in the United States.”

The task force of media lawyers, journalists and others with a stake in open government will advise on how to go about getting as many public records online as possible and how to penalize government officials who don’t comply with the state public records law with “tangible punishments.”

Keep your eye on this guy, folks. It won’t be an easy session for Paton or any of the other legislators, but it looks like it could be a productive one.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Dr. Sheldon Marks (center), performs a vasectomy on the younger of Reid Park Zoo's two lions, Kitabu.

Tucson urologist Sheldon Marks had a lion of a patient earlier this month. No, really, the doctor had a lion for a patient.

On Dec. 1, Marks and three veterinarians performed a vasectomy on the younger of Reid Park Zoo’s two lions, Kitabu. What seems at first glance to be a quirky little story turns out to be part of the zoo’s plan to slowly change over to a breeding population of lions and raise some lion cubs.

Until recently, the zoo had three lions: Kitabu and his parents, M’Bali and A-Tatu. A-Tatu, the female, had to be euthanized in October because of failing health. The upside of her sad passing is that the zoo has an opportunity to replace her with a young lioness suitable for breeding.

General curator Scott Barton said the zoo is expecting a female from the San Diego Wild Animal Park this spring.

But he doesn’t want her impregnated by Kitabu or M’Bali (nicknamed Bali). Breeding programs are cooperatively managed by the nation’s accredited zoos for genetic and conservation purposes. The breeding program wants lions with known lineages, tracing back to forefathers caught in the wild, Barton said.

“Our animals came from European zoos, so it’s tough to trace exactly their lineages . . . There’s nothing wrong as far as disease or anything else with these guys, just that their genetics can’t be traced back so that we know all of their histories,” Barton said.

Both Kitabu and Bali are in good health but at ages of 16 and 21, respectively, these elderly gents are at or near life expectancy. Lions live about 15 years in the wild and 20 in captivity. After Kitabu and Bali pass over to that great savannah in the sky, the Reid Park Zoo will bring in a young male to mate with the new female.

The zoo plans to keep the lioness separate from Bali, which is why he didn’t require a vasectomy, Barton said. And, in case you were wondering, neutering either lion like you would a dog wasn’t an option.

“If you actually neuter something like a lion, they will often lose a good portion of their mane and some of their male characteristics. We want them to still look like a male and act like a male, we just don’t want them to be reproductive,” Barton said.

The zoo has raised cubs before, including Kitabu, born here in 1992, but it has been at least a dozen years since cubs were born at the Tucson zoo, Barton said.

Marks is renowned for his expertise in vasectomy reversal in humans. And he and his wife are avid zoo supporters. She is president-elect of the Tucson Zoological Society and he serves on the president’s council.

The zoo asked Marks to participate in the surgery because of his expertise, but also because the procedure would be interesting for him, Barton said.

“It was one of the greatest honors that they would want me to do that; to do something so unique and special,” Marks said. “It was probably one of the highlights of my life.”

There isn’t a lot of information available on lion vasectomies, which are rarely performed, but the procedure wasn’t difficult, said Marks, who operated with veterinarians James Stofft, Alexis Moreno, and Sharon Stone

“The lion anatomy is surprisingly similar to human anatomy, except covered in a thick, heavy skin and then everything is covered in a thick, dense fur,” Marks said. “Once you’re in, it’s the same as a human vasectomy. It’s just the challenge of getting to where you got to be.”

To prepare Kitabu, staff tranquilized the 363-pound lion using a dart and moved him to the zoo hospital.

“Once the lion was anesthetized and resting comfortably, we did exactly like we do humans, which was we put on numbing medicine, made a tiny incision, went down and cut out the Vas, sewed it up, made it really pretty,” Marks said.

The Vas deferens are tubes that carry sperm from the testes to the urethra. About a half-inch is cut out in a vasectomy. Marks said it took 45 minutes, compared to the 15 minutes it takes to perform the procedure on a human.

Because it’s quite a task to immobilize a lion, the veterinarians also took the opportunity to clean the lion’s teeth and give him a complete physical with blood work, Barton said.

Kitabu has recovered nicely, with no complications. Other residents of Reid Park Zoo who have had vasectomies include a gibbon, a lion-tailed macaque, and two mandrills, Barton said.

I should acknowledge that this story came to my attention through pictures of the procedure posted on the Web site of Arizona radio personalities Johnjay and Rich. Marks, a friend of Johnjay Van Es, joked that the lion was a much better patient than Van Es, who has publicly waffled about having a vasectomy.

“The lion doesn’t complain, doesn’t whine. When the lion called to make the appointment for the vasectomy, he actually showed up the day he said he would,” Marks said.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Okhwan Yoon, 47, of Seoul, South Korea, has been traveling around the world on his bike since 2001, averaging about 200 miles a day. The United States is the 169th country he has visited.

A big part of the news business is the search for the next story. But sometimes it rides right up to your front door.

Monday afternoon, South Korean Okhwan Yoon rode up to the entrance of the Tucson Citizen/Arizona Daily Star plant and asked to tell his story to anyone who would listen.

Yoon, 46, is traveling the world on a bicycle and arrived in the United States three months ago.

Since leaving South Korea in July 2001, he has cycled the desert paths, mountain highways and city roads of 169 countries. He lost track of the miles he’s logged but rides an average of 200 miles a day. That’s the equivalent of riding nearly two El Tour de Tucsons every day. He wants to ride for two or three more years and visit 195 countries.

During his travels, Yoon has seen the best and worst of humanity, from poor African villagers willing to share what little they had with a perfect stranger to people who would rob Yoon of what little he had.

Yoon, who speaks eight languages, making him octolingual, has experienced the food, art and music of the globe. He’s also been hit by cars seven times, requiring five operations. He was mugged by a knife-wielding attacker in Phoenix for his bike and taken captive by soldiers in the Sudan. He’s slept in any available bed . . . and awakened with fleas.

He has become that rare creature: a citizen of the world.

“When I began this journey,” Yoon said, “I didn’t know about the real importance of every single life. Nowadays, I feel every single person is my family.”

A decade ago, Yoon was a businessman with a trading company. He suffered from poor health, including asthma, hepatitis B and chronic stomach ailments.

He spent a lot of time pondering “the real meaning of love, family and peace,” and, contradictorily, watching the news of the violence taking place around the world.

As he sat by a river one day, he remembered his childhood and his love for bicycling. He took to cycling again and soon was riding across South Korea, training in different climates and terrains, preparing himself for the global odyssey that has helped him to heal both his physical and spiritual ailments.

He’s been through Asia, Africa, Europe and Central and South America. He called his arrival in the United States “the climax” of his trip because “America is on the cutting edge.”

But he was perhaps most moved and most challenged by the continent of Africa, where he made his best and worst memories.

In the small villages, the people shared their meager food supplies and refused to accept any payment from Yoon beyond his stories and songs. He recalled watching a gorgeous African sunset while African music lulled him into a trance.

But he also caught malaria and dengue in Africa and was captured by Sudanese rebels. They confiscated his passport at a checkpoint and marched him off to their campsite. Yoon said he kept an eye on the guy who took his passport and eventually bought it back with a bribe the equivalent of $5.

As night fell, the soldiers began to drink. Yoon said he waited until they were asleep and quietly slipped away with his bike and backpack.

Yoon said the accidents, the diseases, the kidnapping and the attacks all “made me stronger than before.”

During his travels, Yoon has stayed in hotels, youth hostels, village huts and under trees. He prefers not to camp outside alone because that deprives him of experiencing the culture. He has paid for his trip through his savings, donations and honorariums for speeches.

Yoon said he has come to understand that true wealth isn’t measured by the gold, silver or dollars you accumulate on life’s journey but by the people you meet along the road.

“I spent a lot of money but I feel like I’m a billionaire,” he said.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

Shirley Freeda Preiss

It used to be I was too lazy to send out Christmas cards. Now I’m just worried that whether I send out “Happy Holidays,” “Merry Christmas” or blank, winter-themed greeting cards that someone will take offense.

You know, the whole bogus “war on Christmas” thing. In the end, I’ve decided to go with my personal tradition of offending as many people as possible by sending out my annual “cheers and jeers” list.

Here goes:

• Jeers to Arizona Sen. John McCain for his incompetent, bipolar presidential campaign and for foisting upon us the unprepared Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. Cheers to McCain for a classy concession speech, one that reminded so many of us of why we admire him. He’ll get double – make that triple – cheers and a backflip if he takes the lead on immigration reform in his remaining two years in office.

• Cheers and congratulations to Gov. Janet Napolitano, whose competence and toughness led President-elect Barack Obama to nominate her for secretary of Homeland Security. But, also, jeers to the Democrat for accepting the offer and leaving the state in the hands of Republican Jan Brewer, a woman ideologically programmed to do the bidding of a Legislature dominated by right-wing extremists.

Napolitano said it was her duty to her country and her president that led her to accept. C’mon, it’s not as if she’s the only person in America qualified to do the job. What about her duty to the people of Arizona who elected her twice?

• Cheers to the Downtown Tucson Development Co., a partnership of local developers who are prepared to invest $10 million in downtown over the next three years in an exchange for an option on city-owned land. The developers involved have a history of getting things done. Cheers to the City Council, which just approved a pre-development plan allowing the group to craft a 20-year vision for the east end of downtown and the Warehouse District.

Don’t bleep it up or the whole city will be jeering you.

• Cheers to the Arizona voters who voted down six of eight initiatives and referendums on this year’s ballot, despite the misleading names given to the measures and the deceitful advertising used to promote them.

We weren’t duped by the big spenders exploiting what is meant to be a citizen-driven process. We made toast of the payday lenders. Sadly, though, I have to say jeers to the majority of Arizonans who voted for the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. It was a shameful act of bigotry.

• Cheers to Shirley Freeda Preiss of Surprise, a 97-year-old spitfire with a record of voting in every presidential election since 1932. Her streak was jeopardized earlier this year by Arizona’s tough Voter ID law. Preiss, who moved to Arizona from Texas in 2007, didn’t have the documentation she needed to obtain an Arizona state identification card or prove her citizenship, so that she could register to vote. Her family tracked down 1920 Census records to prove Preiss’ citizenship.

• Cheers to Lute Olson, who retired in late October after finding out that his depression and inability “to put the pieces together” were caused by a stroke. Jeers to human frailty.

Olson’s departure in late October was not the glorious ending that Olson, the team or fans deserved. But he will be remembered for turning the University of Arizona men’s basketball team from a joke into a powerhouse. I was fortunate enough to be sent by the Tucson Citizen to Indianapolis during UA’s championship run of 1997. It was the thrill of a lifetime. May Olson’s retirement days be happy and healthy.

• Cheers to all those who do the work of the angels, whether they advocate on behalf of the addicted, the sick, the hungry, the poor, the elderly, the young, the disabled or the disenfranchised. Among those I wrote about this year were pre-teen Jonathan Vogel, who raises money for juvenile diabetes research; ex-convict and ex-addict Edward Grijalva, who uses his hard-earned wisdom to help free others from the slavery of addiction; businessman Jim Click, who raised $400,000 for nearly 200 local nonprofit agencies earlier this year through the raffle of a collectible Mustang; and the Miracle Center, which provides long-term housing and counseling to women in crisis who are trying to change their lives.

Next year is shaping up to be a grim one, and the angels will need all the help they can get.

• Cheers to my regular readers, whether you love me or love to hate me. May you have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or festive Kwanzaa.

Or, if you insist, Happy Holidays.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

A photo radar camera watches over a busy Scottsdale street.

It didn’t take long for the increasingly ubiquitous traffic enforcement cameras to send someone over the edge.

It was bound to happen. And so it was on Dec. 3 that a Glendale man unloaded his anger with at least six swings (allegedly) of a pickax on an innocent piece of equipment installed alongside a Phoenix-area freeway, landing himself in jail and launching the great speed camera debate of 2008.

On Phoenix radio and Internet chatter, many have mocked Travis Munroe Townsend, 26, as a crazed moron and recommended sentencing him to some time eating green bologna in the custody of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For others, Townsend has become a folk hero, the man who did what they wish they had the nerve to do.

Wrote a fan on www.azfamily.com: “Many of us can only dream about performing such an act. Hopefully we will all look at the brave and patriotic act you performed and continue your legacy! You are truly a hero.”

Wrote another on www.kpho.com: “Bravo!!!! Somebody finally took a swipe at those disgusting communist machines on the sides of the freeway. I’d like to personally say thanks to the guy who took one for the team.”

On Sept. 26, the Arizona Department of Public Safety began expansion of its statewide photo enforcement program as approved earlier this year by the Legislature. Since then, the department has issued more than 40,000 violations on state highways. The fine per ticket: $181.

By February, DPS expects to have 40 mobile photo enforcement cameras and 60 stationary cameras operating throughout the state.

In recent years, Arizona cities, including Tucson and Phoenix, have implemented their own enforcement programs with mobile speed camera units and red-light cameras.

This proliferation of eyes on the road has been met with a mixed response. Do the cameras improve public safety? Or are they just a way of filling the public coffers? Are they a necessary evil, or the evil of a Big Brother government? Do they change driving habits? Or do they create driving hazards, as people suddenly slow down while approaching the cameras.

Even before the Townsend incident, the new DPS cameras were the source of much angst in Phoenix. One clever rebel or rebels discovered you can render the cameras temporarily useless by blocking the lenses with Post-it notes. Another vandal or vandals achieved the same result with Silly String.

Townsend, far less subtle in his approach, also was less effective. He damaged the protective casing of the camera but not the camera itself.

He was caught by a DPS motorcycle officer and charged with criminal trespass, interference with a traffic control device and felony criminal damage. For the felony charge alone, he could face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $150,000.

Tucsonan Dave Johnson, 41, is no radical and believes pickax attacks are way over the line. But he also takes issue with DPS’s stationary cameras.

In April, he received two tickets for speeding on Scottsdale Loop 101, where Scottsdale and DPS had collaborated on a pilot program.

The two violations took place a minute apart. After a lawyer told him he had no chance of getting either violation dismissed, Johnson spent about $300 to pay one ticket and attend traffic school for the other. But it didn’t seem fair since there was no real opportunity for him to correct his behavior between offenses.

“I just don’t like the way they’ve done it . . . multiple fines for the single violation,” Johnson said.

The Arizona Republic reports that two citizen groups are planning anti-speed camera ballot initiatives for 2010.

It’s an issue that seems to separate people into groups.

There are the holier than thous who claim they “never” speed or run a red light and have no sympathy for those who do. The funny thing is we newspaper folks tend to hear from them after they’ve been ticketed for a photo enforcement violation that we must investigate because they “never” break the law.

There are the residents who profess their outrage at the invasion of privacy posed by the proliferation of cameras.

And there are a few Arizonans who will admit that we sometimes speed and that the use of cameras by law enforcement seems an unfair advantage.

Hey, we know we may get pulled over. But because, in most cases, we’re just keeping up with the flow of traffic, the odds are good the cop will stop the other guy. Or, if the officer is in a charitable mood, at least we have a slim chance of using charm or sense of humor to talk our way out of a ticket.

There’s something – dare I say it, unsporting – about getting a ticket three to four weeks after the fact from a faceless entity for something you don’t even remember doing.

Here’s some good news for Tucsonans. You can put away the pickax and Post-its for now – at least as regards the DPS camera program.

Of the 40 mobile photo enforcement units being dispatched, only two are dedicated to Pima County. And, according to DPS spokesman Bart Graves, DPS has no plans in the near future to install stationary cameras in the Tucson area. I guess our freeways aren’t as deadly as those elsewhere.

We in southern Arizona often complain about being shortchanged when it comes to state resources.

No complaints on this one.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.