University of Arizona President Robert Shelton delivers his State of the University address.

Any discussion of last week’s university tuition-setting debacle should begin with two statements of fact.

One, the Arizona Constitution calls for university instruction to be as nearly free as possible. Two, the state constitution specifies that the Legislature must appropriate enough funding to maintain, develop and improve all state educational institutions.

Because the legislators we elect don’t honor the second mandate, it has become impossible to honor the first.

That’s the real reason why, once again, students at Arizona’s universities were walloped with whopping tuition increases for 2009-10.

However, it didn’t help that student leaders caved when they had a rare victory in hand.

The university presidents arrived at the Board of Regents meeting at Arizona State University with requests to increase tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates by 9.9 percent at the University of Arizona, 10.4 percent at ASU and 13.9 percent at Northern Arizona University.

On Dec. 4, Regent Dennis DeConcini proposed that all three universities make do with “an inflationary increase” of 3.7 percent. It would have demonstrated that the universities were willing to tighten their belts for one year during an economic crisis, DeConcini said this week.

The regents rejected DeConcini’s 3.7 percent motion for both ASU and NAU, instead approving the presidents’ requests. But when DeConcini made the motion pertaining to UA, Regent Anne Mariucci didn’t support the president’s proposal, as she had for ASU and NAU, instead voting for the 3.7 increase. She said UA needed an extra push toward change. The motion passed 5-4.

One difference between the ASU and NAU proposals and the UA proposal is that both ASU and NAU already have adopted “indexed tuition” models that (supposedly) help families plan their college expenses.

Under the model, tuition increases for incoming students can be large, but the increase for returning students is limited to 5 percent annually over the four or five years it should take them to graduate.

UA’s rejected request had included an agreement to adopt indexed tuition in 2010.

UA President Robert N. Shelton was shocked by the board’s action. He told the media he potentially would be forced to cut as many as 50 lecturers and cancel hundreds of class sections.

It struck DeConcini, a former U.S. senator who sat on the appropriations committee, as a classic tactic.

“Whenever you don’t give an agency what they think they deserve and need, they often indicate they are going to cut things that the appropriators might like or the constituents might like, in order to get those constituencies fired up.”

Even with the smaller increase, UA’s tuition revenues would increase next year, but by about $17 million or $18 million instead of the estimated $23 million the requested increase would have reaped.

DeConcini arrived at his motion after talking with student leaders, including student Regent David Martinez III, ASUA President Tommy Bruce and Arizona Student Association board chair Michael Slugocki.

Martinez voted with DeConcini but immediately had second thoughts, he said this week.

After the vote, he talked to Shelton, student leaders and other regents to better understand what the lower tuition increase would mean on top of the millions in university budget cuts already ordered to help balance the state’s budget.

Martinez was persuaded that UA wouldn’t be able to maintain the quality of its programs, might have to cut classes and wouldn’t be able to invest in critical infrastructure. The “harsh reality” swayed his opinion.

On Dec. 5, Martinez, moved to reopen discussion of UA’s tuition increase. Regents approved Shelton’s proposed increase of 9.9 percent, setting tuition and fees at $6,076, and approved an indexed tuition model to begin in 2010 at UA.

DeConcini was stunned.

“I called them up (the student leaders) to the podium, or the table there, and asked if this really was their position. I was quite taken aback. They gave me what I thought was a pretty weak answer, that they thought Shelton was a good administrator and they had gotten predictability (the indexed tuition plan) and this was OK.”

DeConcini thinks the student leaders were taken in by scare tactics. There are other ways to trim budgets than by firing instructors and cutting classes. DeConcini also thinks he put himself on the line for the students and they “left me hanging.”

If the double-digit tuition increases for new students approved for ASU and NAU are an indicator of what will happen under the “indexed tuition” model, tuition for new in-state students in Arizona will double every six years.

Also, the maximum 5 percent increases agreed to for returning students outpace both inflation and the Higher Education Price Index, an inflation index that tracks the main cost drivers in education.

The students wanted predictability. They got it. We can now predict that a college education will be increasingly unaffordable in Arizona.

“I think they made a horrible deal for themselves,” DeConcini said.

Perhaps the student leaders should take a class in Negotiations 101, ’cause they got schooled last week.

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 undated family photograph of Alan Scherr, his daughter Naomi, 13,and wife Kia, left, taken before Alan and Naomi were tragically killed by terrorists at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai,

For a while this week I wondered if Barack Obama was going to have a hostage crisis of his own going into office. News reports out of India leave some doubt about exactly how close Wednesday’s coordinated terror attacks are to being resolved.

We do know that two Americans killed belonged to a group dedicated to meditation. Their peaceful pursuit ran head-on into another group’s dedication to stamping out civilization.

Because that’s where the battle lines are. It’s not East vs. West, North vs. South, Muslim vs. Christian, Shiite vs. Sunni. It’s about having a fairer, cleaner world for everyone. It’s running water, electricity and education against living in caves and hitting dinner on the head with a rock.

India apparently became a target because of that complicated country’s relative success on the global playing field.

Hope comes from other quarters this week, though. In Iraq, three rival factions agreed on a security pact.

America can’t impose its ideas of democracy on everyone, especially by force. But we can help redeem any mistakes we may have made by doing our best to get it right. Over and over and over again.

Reports: Westerners targeted in India attacks

Iraqi parliament OKs security pact

CURSES! On a much lighter note: A hex on thee, all Major League Baseball teams that bail out on the Old Pueblo. Scottsdale is wooing the Diamondbacks for spring training.

Arizona’s baseball team had the good grace to train in Tucson when an expansion team became reality in 1998.

Then it won the World Series in 2001.

A spring training triple play also meant the White Sox trained in Tucson (and won the World Series) and so did the Colorado Rockies (who won the NL pennant).

If The Bambino can curse the Red Sox for trading him, we can do the same for the heartless way all three teams may pull the plug on Tucson baseball.

In light of the Sidewinders slithering off to Reno, let’s not stop at MLB. Triple-A affiliates count, too.

Scottsdale courts D’backs for spring training

PERIPATETIC POLS: Maybe my maledictions might also aptly be aimed at politicians. Gov. Janet Napolitano and U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva could end up in Obama’s Cabinet, thereby upsetting Arizona’s carefully calibrated brand of liberal conservatism. Or conservative liberalism.

We vote conservative on some issues – gay marriage and immigration – but kept re-electing a gay congressman who advocated amnesty.

We beef up the pay-as-you go ethos at the state Legislature, then reward school-bonding proponent Napolitano with a crushing victory.

Napolitano could be secretary of Homeland Security. Grijalva’s considered a top pick for secretary of the Interior.

Between them, they would have broad jurisdiction over Arizona’s southern border and its public lands. Which covers a lot of ground.

Still – what are we? Chopped liver?

Grijalva can repair the damage

KINDERGARTEN CUTS: The loss of our elected governor would most sharply be felt in the one-party rule that will result if Napolitano defects to D.C.

Some $4 billion of our $10 billion state budget (roughly) goes to kindergarten-to-12th-grade public education.

New Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said this week K-12 spending ‘obviously’ will face cuts under a projected budget shortfall.

According to his Legislature home page, the Iowa native spent 16 years operating Rainbow Elementary Prep Schools, listed as a day care provider in various online directories.

Another Iowa transplant, Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, will likely be among the school chiefs lobbying the Legislature to protect what funding it can. Republicans quibble with the number, but Arizona often is cited as nearly dead last in per-pupil school spending.

Trim the fat, if you find any, but please let us not cheat our kids. They need math. They need languages. They need skills. And we need smart kids.

America needs them. So does civilization.

K-12 spending on ‘chopping block’

Toltec district making four-day school week work

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or by e-mail at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

At the Island of the Monkeys in Peru, Rosa, a red howler monkey, fell in love with Jeremy Isajiw, wrapping herself around his body and growling at anyone who tried to remove her.

When Tucsonan Jeremy Isajiw learned he was HIV-positive in July 2007, he went into the closet with the life-shattering news.

“I felt I couldn’t tell anybody. I felt I was going to keep it a complete secret,” said Isajiw, 30, a University of Arizona student and bartender at It’s ‘Bout Time.

He spent six months after the diagnosis in a deep funk, until he realized he wasn’t living if he wasn’t pushing himself and making himself stronger.

He stopped moping. He started paying attention to his health. He began helping others with HIV/AIDS through the Positively Beautiful organization, which pampers women and men with HIV by providing makeovers. He hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru with his doctor. He found the love of his life, and he and his groom were married Oct. 8 in California before voters passed a gay marriage ban.

“Life with HIV hasn’t been so bad,” Isajiw said.

He is among the 33 million people living with HIV worldwide, including more than a million in the United States. On Monday, Isajiw and others with HIV/AIDS will share their stories at a local World AIDS Day event, starting at 4 p.m. at Club Congress, 264 E. Congress St. It’s the 20th annual World AIDS Day.

For Isajiw, it “is the first time, “that I would be publicly speaking about my status and that’s a very hard thing for me to do.”

But, he said, it’s his responsibility to stand up and talk about HIV, as well as to live a full life as an example to others. Isajiw said many young people who test positive for HIV kind of drift away from the gay community and disappear, afraid of being stigmatized, even by their peers. But if newly infected people aren’t talking about HIV, then others will forget that the virus is still a very real threat.

“It’s my responsibility now as a young HIV-positive person to become an advocate,” he said.

Isajiw is proof that HIV/AIDS doesn’t spare the young. Nor does it spare the straight.

Tucsonan Karen Petersen, 43, a heterosexual woman, learned she was HIV-positive 17 years ago. She also will speak at Monday’s event.

Petersen got tested for HIV after recovering from hepatitis B. She had a new love in her life and wanted a clean slate. The shocking positive result, she said, was like seeing one’s dreams and goals suddenly wiped away, as if written in chalk on a blackboard in one’s mind.

Petersen, who went on disability after the diagnosis, takes five medications a day to keep the virus in check. She is recently divorced but she and her ex never had children for fear of passing the virus along to her babies. Advances in medical treatment since Petersen became infected have greatly reduced the risk of mother-to-infant transmission.

Petersen said she risks being ridiculed and ostracized by publicly speaking about the disease. But she does it because she believes HIV-AIDS has fallen off the country’s radar. When you hear about AIDS, she said, it’s usually a story about Africa.

“Now, more than ever, people need to recognize that it’s still out there,” Petersen said.”It just scares the heck out of me that nobody is talking about it.”

She worries that, “people, especially heterosexual people, think they are immune to it because they aren’t gay.”

“It’s still out there. You still have to be protected. Be safe. Use a condom,” said Petersen, who, like Isajiw, most likely contracted the disease through sexual transmission.

She was on the pill, protected against pregnancy, and didn’t imagine she could be at risk for HIV.

“I’m trying the best way I know how to let people know I have it and I look like anybody else. So stop thinking that you are invincible,” Petersen said.

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

After testing positive for HIV, Jeremy Isajiw visited Peru and hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with his doctor and friend Heather Moroso.

Napolitano

If Arizona has to lose Gov. Janet Napolitano, it might as well be to Homeland Security. That job, created to deal with terrorist threats, has mostly been about policing the Mexico border – which none of the 9/11 terrorists crossed.

Napolitano has never focused on fencing, a solution that picks up plausibility as distance grows from that long, lonely line.

She knows a one-size-fits-all fence won’t stop illegal immigrants or terrorists. But plenty more can be done in southern Arizona, and Napolitano knows the turf well enough to argue for appropriate federal resources to gain operational control of the border.

The feds are hiring, which helps in a bad economy. Too bad we can’t all work for the Border Patrol.

Can we?

Napolitano Obama’s choice to head homeland security

Mexican emigration dropped 42 percent in 2 years

PLAYING TO PEORIA: Southern Arizona will need all the help it can get, because those guys up at the state Legislature would just as soon cut the state off at Eloy. Or SaddleBrooke.

If Napolitano leaves, we’ll have a Republican governor to go with a GOP legislative lineup of Phoenix-area suburbanites.

Chairmanships announced this week include some lawmakers inclined to play favorites when it comes to – for example – construction at the state’s three universities.

Committee chairmen have a lot of power to smother bills at birth. Tucson’s interests may move from the back burner to deep freeze.

New state Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, says he’d like to tackle Arizona’s $1 billion-plus deficit in its $10 billion budget before moving on to other business.

Good news or bad? It’ll take them till June to count the zeroes.

Timing of governor’s exit would be critical

New Senate President Burns wants to tackle deficit first

WOMEN FOR CHANGE: Back in the ’60s a prominent Democrat about got lynched for saying women’s hormones rendered them temperamentally unsuitable for the presidency. Like no one ever made a bad decision on testosterone.

Tuesday, Citizen columnist Anne T. Denogean puzzled over the glacial pace of women’s political gains.

That baffles me, too. Sure, it’s a heroic feat to invent yourself against the grain. Barack Obama did it, and race faded as an issue.

Next time round, voters could be asked to embrace not only change, but THE change.

And those Reaganesque jelly beans? I’m thinking soybeans.

Denogean: Political glass ceiling cracked, not shattered

TUCSON, IT’S MURDER: “I want everyone to know this is a safe community,” Mayor Bob Walkup said at a news conference about police efforts after a surge of slayings.

Wednesday, a 35-year-old man became the city’s 73 homicide victim of the year, busting the previous record for homicides even though there are six weeks left in the year.

Tucson never seemed particularly safe to me, but I’ve spent way too many hours sitting next to a police scanner. Always useful advice: Know where your kids are, and what they’re doing.

Tucson cops target hot spots in effort to stop killings

Homicides by city, Arizona

DEPRESSED YET? No one has ever accused me of irrational exuberance. Expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed: I consider that plain common sense.

Even so – the Citizen’s Page 1 story Friday about jobless Tucsonans jarred a bit. It came after our Web site solicited stories of economic distress.

We wanted to hear from people who lost jobs in October – but not from those who’d found one. Nothing wrong with that – just putting a face on rising unemployment.

I truly don’t mean to trivialize anyone’s pain. I know what it’s like to be solvent – as long as a tire doesn’t go flat.

However, people can be resourceful and make good decisions. The Citizen reflected a small piece of that, such as the woman who has $300 left after paying the mortgage. That’s success, most places on the planet.

The media like to make a big deal out of things. Take it with a grain of salt.

And stock up on beans. Soy, jelly, whatever.

Job prospects grow dimmer as Arizona unemployment rate hits 6-year high

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

McCain

The party is over – and I don’t mean the GOP. Though I don’t see Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin pulling a coup in 2012.

In an era of ever-shorter news cycles even election night seemed slightly anticlimactic. Ten days later I’m still waiting for the punch line, the kicker, the surprise ending.

I turned on Leno the other night at work, hoping John McCain would say something wickedly funny. He didn’t. I flashed on Barack Obama’s remarkable rise, and reread a New Yorker article to remind myself who he is. (Note to print readers: See links online.)

And I jumped on the Economist’s coverage, eager for international analysis.

In endorsing Obama, the Economist lamented, as so many have, the mystery of the missing “real” McCain.

The real McCain makes self-defeating choices. He has class, but he courted crass – as evidenced by the boos at the Biltmore Nov. 4.

McCain now comes off as practical and forward-looking. He’ll have plenty of clout in the Senate, where Democrats still need crossover votes to get anything done. Despite his missteps, he knows who he is.

His party, not so much.

The conciliator: Where is Barack Obama coming from?

Scenes from a wake

BUBBLE TROUBLE: The University of Arizona’s men’s basketball program has been a shoo-in for the NCAA Tournament ever since time began. Or since Lute Olson became coach, whichever came first.

The Citizen’s Anthony Gimino wasn’t convinced by a dominating victory over – OK, Sonoma State.

In sportswriter fashion, the Citizen’s straight coverage celebrated the sharpshooting of Jordan Hill. In columnist fashion, Gimino said c’mon – this was a Division II team.

So he dares to raise the question: Is it too early to put UA on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament?

Yes! For crying out loud, the regular season hasn’t started yet!

The Cats have done great in adversity. Given solid recruiting in the past, maybe they’ll overcome the obvious handicap of having a brand-new interim coach.

Maybe.

Is it too early to put UA on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament?

MERGERS 101: The University of Arizona says it might hire a consultant to tell it how to consolidate operations under UA President Robert N. Shelton’s effort to streamline operations and cut costs.

Say what?

All these experts on campus, and they can’t figure out how tighten their own lug nuts?

Here’s how it works in the private sector: Someone leaves. You reallocate his or her duties. If the sky falls down or the staff has a collective nervous breakdown, you regroup.

That’ll be $100,000.

UA considers hiring consultant to assist with reorganization

AMNESTY. ¡AHORITA! Just to get it out of the way: I favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. That means pay a fine, cop to a misdemeanor, submit your prints and possibly a DNA sample.

Then your hand is stamped and you get to stay, for a while, in the great keg party that is America.

It goes without saying that if you turn out to be a wanted criminal, we’ll deport you to Papua New Guinea. Even if you’re Canadian.

That out of the way, I can’t help but cringe when Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) holds a forum where a bunch of illegal immigrants busted in Panda Express raids explain how traumatic it is to live and work illegally in the U.S.

So 200 people attend the event. Big deal. They probably were sympathetic to begin with.

We’ll have immigration reform. Now be quiet.

Former Panda staffers air worries over immigration raids

BIGGER BRAINS: Speaking of New Guinea, I’ve been reading this book, trying to figure out why it’s so much nicer to live in the U.S. than most places. The author uses that island nation to demonstrate how recently humanity invented “civilization.” Twelve thousand years – max.

So I was surprised to read a UA prof had discovered evidence that man had big brains a million years ago. Then I found out the guy was basing his find on a pelvic bone. Wouldn’t that put your head south of your navel?

Granted, for some of us, that’s not such a reach.

UA scientist: Human brain size could date back 1.2M years

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Tim Bee, who lost last week's election to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, shakes hands with students Nov. 3 at Painted Sky Elementary School, 12620 N. Woodburne Ave. in Oro Valley. Bee and Giffords attended a school program about the United States and its government.

The people of Congressional District 8 had a no-lose vote before them on the Nov. 4 ballot. They had two high-quality candidates vying to serve them in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s a shame both candidates couldn’t win, as both have proven themselves to be excellent public servants. Of course, there could be only one victor. The voters returned Democrat Gabrielle Giffords for a second term.

But her opponent deserves a huge measure of public gratitude for all he’s done.

State Sen. Tim Bee, a Tucson Republican, has been a voice for reason and common sense in a Legislature sorely lacking in both. He was a strong advocate for and protector of the interests of southern Arizona.

Believe me when I say we’ll feel the loss soon. When the House and Senate held their post-election meetings last week, no lawmaker from this region was selected to fill any of the majority party leadership roles in either body.

Bee was elected in 2000 and elevated to majority leader in 2003. For the last two years, he has served as a Senate president and proved himself unafraid of shaking up the status quo. As one of his first acts as president, Bee fired four senior Senate staffers because they were wielding more authority than some of the senators.

In 2007, Bee took the unprecedented step of bringing Democrats to the table early in the budgeting process. It brought a temporary halt to the annual routine of the Republicans in the Legislature passing a budget with few if any votes from Democrats, followed by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoing said budget, leading to a final round of name-calling before all parties finally forged an acrimonious compromise.

“I thought, ‘this is ridiculous,’” Bee said in an interview last week. “We should have everybody working together from the very beginning.”

This year, when Republicans in the Legislature couldn’t come to agreement among themselves on a budget, Bee crossed the aisle, along with a handful of other Republicans, to pass a budget with the Democrats and prevent a shutdown of state government.

He has supported increased funding for education at all levels, sponsored legislation benefiting victims of domestic violence and put forth the legislation that made human smuggling a state crime.

Bee’s advocacy for southern Arizona has been unrivaled in its effectiveness.

He supported state funding for trauma centers, including University Medical Center. He was a sponsor of the legislation that made possible southern Arizona’s major transportation improvement initiative, the Regional Transportation Authority.

He pushed the tax increment financing legislation that will keep hundreds of millions of state sales tax dollars in Tucson to develop downtown. He supported the appropriation of more than $500 million (over several years) for bioscience research and infrastructure at the University of Arizona and the Translational Genomics Research Institute.

When Maricopa County tried to hijack money headed to southern Arizona for a $17.7 million regional crime lab, Bee prevented it from happening. He sponsored a successful bill committing the state to spend $10 million on a state veterans’ home in Tucson.

Bee fought off multiple attempts to close the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center at UA, telling Phoenix legislators that if they’re so hell-bent on consolidating the state’s poison centers they can close the one in Maricopa County.

“You can’t get these things done if you’re not in a position of leadership,” Bee said.

Some Arizonans (myself included) were disappointed that Bee sponsored the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment that was referred by the Legislature to the ballot and passed by voters last week. But it would be unfair to dismiss his long list of accomplishments based on that alone.

Bee, who closed his printing business to devote himself full time to the Legislature, said he’s been too busy to give much thought to what he’ll do after his Senate term concludes at the end of the year.

“My desire,” he said, “is to continue to help southern Arizona and use my expertise and knowledge of state government to help us be successful in getting these southern Arizona initiatives (moving) forward.”

Bee made it clear he’s not done with politics.

“I definitely would consider running for office again at some point in time,” he said, adding that he hasn’t ruled out a repeat run at the District 8 seat or a run for governor in 2010.

Regardless of where Bee’s political fortunes take him, we in southern Arizona have been lucky to have him fighting on our behalf.

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.

Former Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson explains defense using Kyle Tresnak at the Lute Olson's Elite Camp at McKale Center in August.

Someone had to make the call. And not the guy in a zebra shirt. The NCAA rulebook doesn’t cover this one.

Lute Olson’s family and physician made a sensible decision to disclose details of medical problems that led to sometimes erratic, impulsive behavior that seemed counter to the coach’s public image.

When his first wife – Bobbi – died eight years ago, Olson’s jumping back into the job of coaching the University of Arizona’s men’s basketball team seemed to be good therapy. In action – including a run all the way to the NCAA championship game – he found a respite from grief.

The same does not apply to stroke recovery. Strokes cause brain damage, and although many people regain a great deal of what they lost, courtside in a top Division I men’s basketball program is not the place to stage a recovery. The coach needs rest and therapy – and at age 74 that means the end of his Hall of Fame career.

Charisma can conceal problems from the public for a long time. Family’s not so easily fooled.

Olson was looking forward to this season, and escorting him out of the spotlight might seem to some a tough call.

But for those who see past the vigor to the vulnerability, it must have been easy.

Stroke forced Olson to retire

THE AGE THING: First let me say: I’m fine with either presidential candidate. Less fine with either vice presidential candidate. Joe Biden was mean to my dad during the Bork hearings. And I have virtually no opinion of Sarah Palin, except that I mind her less than Dick Cheney.

I’ve taken for granted that John McCain would be too stubborn to die in office. The Lute thing, though, makes me think.

McCain is a tough character, to be sure. His age – 72 – has never given me pause.

I lean toward believing he has many good years ahead of him. But in the end, we don’t get to choose when our bodies will betray us.

Count me as undecided, right up till Tuesday.

McCain camp confident of its chances in Arizona

CROSSING THE LINE: If I thought sealing the U.S. border was possible, I might support it.

But while the Department of Homeland Security this weekend pointed to its efforts (and bigger government) for a drop in apprehensions, I reckon the tanking U.S. economy may play a part.

Either way, I don’t foam at the mouth about “amnesty.” With either John McCain or Barack Obama as president, that would probably amount at least to a hefty fine and fingerprinting.

But if we do let 12 million stay – won’t a whole ‘nother group of desperate people stream in to undercut the newly legal?

This week, a mom fell behind as a group of illegal immigrants walked through the desert. A smuggler refused to leave behind the woman’s 12-year-old daughter, but then abandoned the girl anyway. What did he want with her? She may be lucky to get shipped back to Guatemala.

Also this week, a Tucson jury got the case of a Border Patrol agent accused of homicide in the fatal shooting of an illegal immigrant.

Whatever that jury decides, I salute the many members of the Border Patrol who save people from death. Or fates even worse.

Migrant girl, 12, rescued from desert near Arivaca

Jury gets case in fatal Border Patrol shooting

HUNGRY HOUND: Friday, I nearly tripped over a basset hound dressed up in battle fatigues. For Halloween – I hope.

Which reminds me of Guthrie, a basset who was left behind in the yard of a vacant house and rescued after neighbors took an interest in the neglected dog.

His only water came from the slime in the bottom of a swimming pool at the Glendale home.

It took rescuers 45 minutes to gain Guthrie’s trust to save him.

He’s headed to a happy ending, the Citizen reported this week.

Chances are Guthrie won’t be in the same bind again. For other hounds, a word of advice: Just bay. They’ll hear you a mile away.

Unfed hound in vacant home rescued

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

I exercise for one reason only: My doctors force me to.

Perhaps “force” is too harsh a word. Perhaps I should use “encourage” or “suggest” but when I’m sitting on an examining table getting a lecture, it doesn’t feel like a suggestion.

That’s because, unlike folks who say they love to “feel the burn,” I would rather sleep than sweat. I rationalize eating peanut M&Ms by saying the six grams of protein per serving more than make up for the 250 calories of fat. Left to my own devices, I’d be a 400-pound slug.

But about four years ago, my body erupted with strange and seemingly unrelated symptoms and I felt like I was auditioning for a reality show called “America’s Next Mystery Disease.”

Sundry expensive tests and treatments later, three of the six doctors on the medical merry-go-round said 45 minutes of “hard sweating” exercise six days a week would, if not cure whatever ailed me, make me feel better.

“I already exercise,” I protested. “I walk two miles a day.”

“Walking,” they scoffed, “hardly counts.”

The theory behind their treatment read like a mathematical equation: Hard exercise = endorphin release = lowered stress hormones = less heart palpitations, coughing fits, nausea and depression about all three.

At that time, I woke each day feeling as though I’d been a victim of defenestration and spent the next hours with my heart in the fight-or-flight dance, so a prescription of rising at 0′dark-30 to torture myself on a cross-trainer didn’t sound too bad.

One thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight days later, I still don’t like exercise, but if I go more than 48 hours without it, my symptoms return and I remember that Exercise Is My Friend.

Which brings me to cycling. After a steamy summer in the gym, the gorgeous fall weather calls like a siren and I pull out my bike and hit the roads for some of my “hard sweating” sessions. I’m not a professional by any stretch, riding only two or three times a week, 10 to 17 miles a time. My claim to fame is surviving the 35-mile section of the 2006 El Tour de Tucson on a mountain bike after only 12 days of training.

But even as an amateur, I know a few things:

• Motorists can be dangerous.

• Cyclists who fail to yell “On your left” when passing can be dangerous.

• Joggers refusing to exit the bike lane when cyclists are approaching can be dangerous.

• Bike shorts only look good on thin, muscular people.

I don’t think most motorists are intentionally dangerous around cyclists. They just don’t understand, for instance, why cyclists ride so close to the white line dividing the bike lane from the traffic lane.

I, too, wondered that before I started cycling. (Along with this: Why did a group of brightly spandexed cyclists always arrive at my favorite coffee shop two minutes before I drove there, buying up all the good pastry?)

But having spent a goodly number of hours in the saddle, I now know that Tucson’s bike lanes are frequently filled with tiny road debris – rocks, nails, shards of wood, small children’s’ toys – that motorists can’t see. That stuff is a bike wreck waiting to happen.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. Three-time Olympian Gord Fraser, one of Tucson’s most storied cyclists and a trainer with Carmichael Training Systems, knows what I say is true. (He didn’t go on the record about the bike shorts assessment, but I’m certain he agrees.)

“We tell cyclists to ride as far to the right as possible,” Fraser said. “But although Tucson is one of the best cities in the country for cyclists, there’s also lots of small debris motorists can’t generally see. In those cases a cyclist might have to leave the bike lane.”

Fraser advises cyclists to avoid the main thoroughfares as much as possible, stay as far right as is safe and signal motorists well in advance of turns.

But with the Tour coming up Nov. 22, the roads are packed with cyclists training for routes that are as long as 109 miles, so motorists are going to see blurs of spandex on every road en masse in the coming weeks. So Fraser – and folks like me just trying to follow doctor’s orders – urge motorists to take some extra care.

“Compared to other parts of the country, Tucson has very good relationships between cyclists and motorists,” Fraser said. “But motorists, hey, just be patient. It’s no big deal to give a cyclist a few more yards of space. Just take a breath and take the time to pass a cyclist safely. They aren’t there to aggravate you or get in the way. They’re just trying to get some exercise or get from point A to point B.”

Olson

I made light of a U.S. State Department warning last week about travel to Nogales, Son. A shootout Thursday that killed 10 underscored two key things about drug violence erupting there.

One: Yes, Nogales is getting nastier. Beheadings this year convinced me. Bloodbaths in Cananea or Agua Prieta have been easier to dismiss, because those Sonoran cities are farther away. Nogales is an easy hour down the road.

Two: This week’s running gunbattle played out three miles south of the international line. Not to minimize the problem, but most people looking for stuffed iguanas, huaraches or Retin-A probably don’t go more than three blocks into Mexico.

Though bad stuff is happening, it seems a bit removed from the border shopping corridor.

I’d say, get curios – but not too curious.

10 killed in Nogales, Son., shootout, police chase

Is Nogales safe? Carnage underscores travel alert

SAY IT AIN’T SO, O

For a private, dignified guy, Wildcat men’s basketball coach Lute Olson has made a public, undignified mess of his departure from the University of Arizona.

To add insult to injury, the story of his retirement was broken by Dick Vitale.

UA spent much of Thursday denying the report before Olson issued a statement that he’s bailing on the program for the second time in a year. This time for good.

Olson’s divorce, mysterious leave of absence, engagement announcement and other quirky behavior prove he’s a person, not a paragon. No shame in that. Parents of recruits may feel “betrayed,” and fans disappointed, but the program will be healthier with a committed coach.

Nothing will take away from his performance at UA. That’s for the ages. You could look it up.

UA to ‘move quickly’ to find Olson successor

Gimino: Olson’s departure puts UA hoops at a crossroads

LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

A couple of weeks ago, UA officials complained that a dip in lottery revenue meant crumbling classrooms and other failing facilities might not get needed fixes. A state lawmaker echoed their concern. I won’t say with glee, exactly, but our Legislature does seem hostile to education.

Then lottery officials chime in, saying that though revenues are down 13 percent year-over-year, a record take is expected by the end of the fiscal year – June 30, 2009.

To all of the above: Stop it. You’re hurting Arizona.

Unless people get crystal-clear understandings of where we stand budgetwise, they are going to mistrust the lot of you.

The anomaly is a projected surge in revenue over the winter. A Citizen story this week wasn’t as clear as it could have been.

To all the spinmeisters on the public payroll: We’ll try to do better.

Will you?

Arizona Lottery surpassing revenue projections

DEATH ON WHEELS

Car crashes claim the lives of far too many people who at least know what they should do to stay (relatively) safe. The horror of an incident down the street from the newspaper plant is that while Billy Montoya never knew what hit him, his grandmother and another relative were helpless to save him as he darted into traffic on South Park Avenue.

Tuesday night, the 2-year-old spotted his grandmother across the street and ran to greet her.

“The child didn’t make it two steps into the street,” a police spokesman said. He died instantly.

And the pickup driver kept going.

If not immediately aware, the driver must know by now that someone was killed. It remains an unsolved hit and run.

To the driver: It may not be your fault. Do the right thing. Call the police.

Easy for me to say.

Pickup driver sought in hit-and-run death of boy, 2

WHAT TRIALS ARE FOR

Law officers who feel their lives are in danger are entitled to wield deadly force.

It will be up to a jury to decide whether Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett perceived such a threat in the January 2007 death of Francisco Dominguez Rivera, 22.

If he did, he will be acquitted. In the meantime, I’ll hold fire.

The penalty for illegal immigration is not instant execution. If you think it should be, America is wasted on you.

Threat to border agent at issue in immigrant-slaying retrial

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Friends of shooting victim Roy David Fierros, 17, built a shrine for him.

The State Department issued a warning about Nogales, Son., this week. Tensions between rival gangs are spurring gunfights in the streets. Be careful down there, and let someone know your travel plans.

Sounds like Tucson’s Park-and-Irvington intersection. And yeah, usually I tell a co-worker when I’m jaywalking across the street for dinner at Circle K.

Monday, a teenager was gunned down at another South Side locale – 12th and Drexel. As with many such shootings, the assailants apparently made little effort to get away. In some social circles, you expect to die young or go to prison.

A shrine quickly sprouted, complete with empty beer cans.

I don’t worry about random bullets. I’m protected by the “don’t mess with me” scowl painted on my face.

The hard part is getting it off.

Gunbattles, kidnappings prompt State Dept. warning about Nogales, Son.

Shrine at fatal shooting site spurs concern in neighborhood

AMNESTY, ANYONE? Online readers wonder when-oh-when Anne Denogean is going to get it through her head that they oppose only ILLEGAL immigration. Well, keep waiting, because if your issue really is the illegality of the action, your message has been hopelessly mangled by people who hate Mexicans.

It will always be a mystery to me why John McCain didn’t more forcefully make the case that finding out who’s in the country is more important than obsessing about punishment. It’s not like immigrant-haters are going to defect en masse to Barack Obama. McCain backed off on the very issue that earned my respect in 2006.

The best medicine for America’s economy would be our message to the world that we deal realistically with problems.

If I were president, I’d let illegal immigrants stay – but only if they moved in with a hard-up homeowner and started helping with the mortgage.

At this point, I figure America will take this issue head-on when hell freezes over. I hope I’m wrong.

Denogean: Anti-Hispanic rhetoric growing

Businesses want changes to employer sanction laws

NOTE TO GOD: What, you didn’t hear me complaining about the mosquitoes last week? I thought maybe that mini-cold snap was the answer to my prayers.

Nope. They’re still here.

Monday’s low of 38 degrees was so unexpected it didn’t quite register as cold. I thought my internal thermostat had gone flooey. It happens at my age.

The thermometer didn’t lie. And the mosquitoes? Apparently they went into suspended animation. Now they’re back – and whining almost as much as me.

Monday’s 38 degrees is coldest Oct. 13, daytime high is record low, too

TOUGH ENOUGH? Every governmental agency known to mankind is complaining about not having enough money. They might even be right. But it’s telling that when people think of security these days, they think of government jobs.

The Border Patrol, the Corrections Department, the military and teaching jobs – all may seem safer than the bottom-line driven private sector

The Citizen reported this week that retail workers top the list of state health care patients. People employed full time, in the private sector, providing a useful service – and poor enough to qualify for indigent health care.

If we all work for the government, who makes the wealth?

Retail workers top list of state health care patients

Tucson unemployment hits 5.6% vs. 3.8% in Sept. ’07

Three UA dean positions to be filled despite hiring freeze

Napolitano Web site seeks budget ideas

SWIFT JUSTICE: Thursday’s shooting on East Adams Street didn’t turn into one of those legal, publicly funded perpetual motion machines. A resident saw two men at the door, one with gun drawn. The resident got his own gun and killed them both.

No, I don’t advocate Wild West vigilante action. But according to reports, the resident had a firm case for self-defense. And the deceased gentlemen won’t burden the legal system.

I’m no lover of guns, but the reports of this case do seem to indicate cost-effective justice aided by individual action.

The alleged assailants were stopped. And the taxpayers dodged a bullet.

Police: 2 killed in home invasion may be tied to previous tenant

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Smith

I don’t want 200 people dying in my backyard every year, no matter what their immigration status.

If filling a few cattle troughs with water can save lives, I say do it. Especially since the county calculates it’s cheaper to provide desert water stations than to haul corpses out of the desert.

Two questions, though, for Pima County, which voted to approve the funds this week:

• Don’t you guys do a budget in the spring that’s supposed to take care of this stuff?

• And why do you want to give those poor people mosquito-borne West Nile disease?

The county does tell us to drain standing water. I did. Those little bloodsuckers are still swarming.

County OKs $25,000 grant for desert water stations

ABOUT THAT BORDER: Citizen columnist Anne Denogean pointed out Friday that our two presidential candidates haven’t had much to say about immigration.

Why should they? It brings out a lot of ugly emotions. At this point, John McCain and Barack Obama have no reason to bring up anything divisive.

McCain had my admiration two years ago when he clearly wanted realistic immigration reform more than he wanted to be president.

Now both candidates ignore it as a campaign issue. I don’t figure they’ll bring it up after the election, either.

They both leave southern Arizona to cope as well as it can. The view is different from Washington, D.C.

Denogean: When will candidates talk about immigration?

Study: Nearly all recent McCain ads negative

LOTTO LOVE: Do hard economic times make people smarter?

Maybe, given plummeting lottery revenues that are putting maintenance at the University of Arizona at risk.

Tight paychecks may be sharpening math skills of Arizona consumers: Fewer are playing a game they can’t win.

Then again, it’s also possible that lawmakers just want an excuse to stick it to state universities. Them fellas don’t cotton much to book learnin’.

Shrinking lottery revenues delay $68 million in UA repairs

MIXED MESSAGE: I’ve been learning more about Tucson Unified School District lately, due to my quest to become a certified high school teacher.

Brand-new Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen is bound to bring new energy to the sprawling district, which espouses excellence but often settles for average.

Fagen, at just 34, seems committed to raising that bar, through “reculturing” – building on strengths, steadily and realistically.

But meanwhile, this giant bureaucracy, which affects the lives of 60,000 students directly and many others, including parents and teachers, has difficulty recruiting school board candidates to set the policies the superintendent is supposed to follow.

There’s good stuff happening in TUSD schools. I hope she’s the leader who can pull the pieces together.

TUSD boss: You’ll see a new school district

RUSH TO JUDGMENT: The story of an 18-year-old Tucsonan, a good kid who apparently died as a result of binge drinking at college, has many online comments condemning his intelligence, blaming parents for dumb partying choices and in general pointing the blame at Johnny Smith.

Of course this young man made bad choices. But how many others of us did that at 18?

Mercy seemed called for here, not a round of condemnation.

Plenty of people were kind and thoughtful in their comments.

Thanks for that.

People make mistakes, sometimes fatal ones. Personal responsibility matters.

But so does compassion, respect and sorrow.

Bye, Johnny.

We hardly knew ye.

Pressure to drink killed Desert View grad, cousin says

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Probable Tucson Fire Department chief, Patrick Kelly

Are we bailed out yet? I keep counting zeroes, lopping them off and arriving at the same conclusion: $700 billion – 700 followed by nine zeroes – divided by 300 million Americans means every man, woman and child in the United States is supposed to fork over $2,333 to avert bank collapse and a long, deep depression.

I can see it. The phony Main Street vs. Wall Street dichotomy ignores the reality that we all live in the same economy, one that depends on paper retaining an agreed-upon value. Wouldn’t matter if it were gold: That, too, has an agreed-upon value. The only really safe investment may be guns and ammo, which is what’s left when the social contract falls apart.

You want to see that soufflé collapse? I don’t.

Still, when the dust settles, I want my piece of the pie. If that turns out to be 6 square feet of overpriced real estate in downtown Detroit – I’ll take it.

Az delegation wants changes before backing huge bailout

Congress OKs historic bailout bill by big margin

BE AFRAID: What planet do University of Arizona faculty members live on? They spoke Wednesday of a “climate of fear” surrounding the admittedly scary-sounding UA Transformation Plan.

A proposal from UA President Robert N. Shelton and the provost calls for drastically cutting administrative costs by centralizing business and administrative processes among colleges and departments.

Most academic units have their own business and administrative staff, according to Tucson Citizen coverage of Wednesday’s meeting.

Professor Ute Lotz Heumann spoke against such consolidations, citing his experience in Germany.

“I believe that you will find within five years, if you have these centralized units, faculty will be doing their own work,” he said.

Well, yeah. And plenty of professionals have found themselves doing clerical work to deal with cost-cutting. Even at the Citizen.

You want to know about fear, work for an afternoon newspaper.

UA faculty: Reorganization effort creating ‘climate of fear’

LIFE IN THE BIKE LANE: Two fatal bicycling collisions, one that killed a 14-year-old boy, were in the news this week. Kevin Barajas-Robinson was hit on his way to school by an Amphitheater Public Schools bus. His mother seeks $15 million from the Amphi district.

The bus driver wasn’t cited in that case, and neither was the driver of a Saturn in the Sept. 27 death of George Goode, 46, on North First Avenue.

Bicyclists might as well assume they’re invisible, even when they have the right of way. In a collision with a car, let alone a school bus, the bike riders will always lose.

It’s not fair. It’s physics.

No charges for school bus driver who killed bicyclist

No citations anticipated for driver who hit, killed bicyclist Saturday

A HEARTBEAT AWAY? Vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin had at it in a debate Thursday and, as with John McCain and Barack Obama, no embarrassing gaffes gave the mainstream media anything to cackle about.

Dignified debates may not make for sizzling TV, but along with newscasters offering (some) post-event fact-checking, viewers get information along with the party politics and prattling pundits.

I’ll take either slate, if we can just move up the inauguration.

Palin, Biden spar on Iraq, economic crisis

FUN AT THE FIREHOUSE: Sigh. The city fire chief heads a big bureaucracy, so I guess it matters how he feels about the rights of transgender people. But before I read this week’s article, it never occurred to me to question a firefighter’s sexuality.

Like, someone’s about to save my life and I’ll worry whether their plumbing is original equipment?

I call 911, I’ll take what I get. And trust he or she is the best person for the job.

Fire chief finalists queried on attitude toward gays, minorities

New city fire chief says he wants a big challenge

Judy can be reached at 573-4608 or jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Edward Grijalva says prison saved his life.

Drug addiction cost Tucsonan Edward Grijalva his freedom and landed him in a prison cell 12 years ago. But in the four walls of the small cell, Grijalva finally found freedom from addiction.

“Prison saved my life. It pointed me in another direction. I saw what could become of my life and I don’t ever want to go back there,” he said.

Today, Grijalva, 59, is a licensed drug counselor and coordinator of special population services for Compass Health Care, developing and running programs that meet the cultural needs of Native Americans and Spanish-only speakers.

He recently was selected as the Arizona “recovery delegate” to “The Recovery Project,” a national awareness project sponsored by the A&E cable network along with several federal agencies and nonprofit organizations.

This week, Grijalva will travel to New York City and, on Saturday, will join with thousands of other people in recovery, their families and advocates to form a human chain across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The chain is to be a living symbol of recovery.

Grijalva, a native Tucsonan, was raised as part of a large family in Barrio Sovaco on Tucson’s West Side.

Grijalva describes his upbringing as normal. His mother cared for Grijalva and his six brothers and two sisters. His father drank “but he always went to work,” Grijalva said.

The first turn for the worse in Grijalva’s life came when he dropped out of high school after only a few weeks. He was a bright student but told himself and others that he didn’t have the clothes that other kids had and “those sorts of excuses.”

He hung out with other dropouts, smoked and sold pot and started experimenting with hallucinogens.

“I took the easy way out and I paid with many years of pain and suffering for a stupid decision,” Grijalva said.

At age 19, he was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he drove a truck as part of a U.S. Army infantry company and developed a heroin habit. White heroin was cheap at 50 cents a gram and provided a respite from the chaos.

When Grijalva returned to Tucson after a 13-month tour, he continued using drugs and descended further into the violent world of dealing, graduating from pot to heroin and cocaine.

One one occasion, in the early 1970s, he and three others were kidnapped by a group of men who ambushed them at a stash house on the edge of town.

The men came in quickly, beat them and threw a large, plastic waterbed over their victims. After being blindfolded and hogtied, Grijalva and the others were taken outside as their captors repeatedly fired off guns.

“We didn’t know if they were killing us off one by one . . . They locked us inside a U-Haul in the middle of nowhere. It was pitch black inside. Fortunately, somebody had left a shovel in there. We punched a hole in the roof and were able to get out that way. But that’s the price.”

He gave as good as he got. In an unrelated incident in 1981, Grijalva was arrested for armed kidnapping after he retaliated against someone who stole a load of drugs from him. The court reduced the charge and gave him a choice between prison and treatment.

“None of my friends had ever been to treatment. I never heard you could get treatment for drugs and alcohol. That was kind of foreign to me. Some of it was cultural. The culture I came from was, ‘You mean you’re just going to talk about it and you’re going to get well?’ What’s up with that?”

He chose treatment and stayed clean for 15 years. He earned his general educational development (GED) certificate, took some college-level courses and became a drug counselor, eventually running a couple of programs and his own private practice. He married for a second time and had two children (he has six, in all) with his second wife.

But Grijalva fell into a deep depression and relapsed when the marriage fell apart in the mid-’90s. He attempted suicide several times and ended up hospitalized, unable to care for himself.

He began transporting and selling large quantities of drugs and was again arrested. In 1997, he was sentenced to two years in prison.

Rather than lay the blame elsewhere, Grijalva used the time to reflect upon his own actions. He had, in effect, abandoned his family. He knew that without the love and guidance of responsible parents, his young children were at risk of becoming the next generation of addicts.

His wife, who didn’t want to be named in this story, had drug and legal problems of her own.

She relapsed just before he did and was incarcerated on a minor drug charge.

“I had to decide what was to become of my life,” Grijalva said. “I had so many opportunities in my life and I never took advantage of them. I had no one to blame for my predicament.”

After being released from prison in 1999, Grijalva set about figuring out how to raise his children as a single father.

He was out no more than two months when he received a call alerting him that his estranged wife had been in a near-fatal car accident, suffering a broken neck and crushed pelvis. After her release from the hospital, she was unable to even put on her own socks and would require 24-hour care.

He decided it was time to get past the resentment and bitterness and do what was best for his family. His wife came home. Grijalva dressed her, bathed her and did anything else she needed for her recovery.

He also had to support the family. The only place that would hire him was Son Life Chapel, which gave him a job as a janitor. Eventually, an old colleague gave Grijalva the opportunity to run the detoxification unit at Compass, which opened the door to his current position.

This October, Grijalva and his wife, who manages a medical clinic, will celebrate 23 years of marriage. Grijalva said all his children are doing well. The two youngest, the ones still at home when their parents went to prison, are now college students. They don’t drink or use drugs.

Grijalva, who credits God with the blessing of his recovery, said he wants his story to be a source of hope to other people battling addiction and alcoholism.

“We want to highlight that recovery is possible, that there is hope and you have the potential for your life to change but you have to make decisions that are not easy to make.”

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.

Edward Grijalva (left) chats with Brian Mattson, a recovering alcoholic who has been in treatment for about a month at Compass Behavioral Health Care.

Brandon Williams

The cost of health care lurks at the edge of our minds if we’re healthy. It can bankrupt us if we’re sick. And the people getting the most expensive care may not be aware of it at all.

You can budget around some things. Catastrophic health care? Fuhgeddabout it.

An indigent gentleman named Felipe Perez, 71, who was believed to be homeless and living near Mammoth, has been at University Medical Center since January. He was struck by a car. Before you get your knickers in a twist about illegal immigrants, you should know that his citizenship status is not clear.

The bed-bound Perez, nicknamed “Yuma,” has brain damage, leg paralysis and cannot care for himself.

UMC is suing Pima County for the cost of care. Counties historically have borne that burden, but, in recent decades, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System – Arizona’s alternative to Medicaid – has shifted the cost to the state.

AHCCCS won’t cover the care because the hospital can’t prove he’s a U.S. citizen. Mexico won’t take him because the hospital can’t prove he’s a Mexican citizen.

Pima County says UMC failed in its “discharge planning obligations” – in other words, it didn’t find an appropriate way to hand him off to a cheaper level of care.

Count on these situations to grow more common as baby boomers grow feeble. We hope someone will be around to help with basic needs, but middle-class nest eggs don’t stand a chance against the cost of acute care.

Better keep your sense of Yuma.

UMC sues Pima County for help with indigent patient’s $800,000 tab

LUTEGATE: Is Lute Olson bulletproof? His messy divorce, staff troubles and rumors about his health, all amid a mysterious leave of absence, didn’t torpedo the University of Arizona’s men’s basketball program.

The NCAA is in a league of its own. These folks can inflict major pain on college programs suspected of funneling funds to amateur athletes.

Lute has drawn scrutiny because a letter to boosters soliciting donations for the Arizona Cactus Classic, a prestigious high school basketball tournament, went out from his office, over his electronic signature.

The letter indicated some fine athletes would be coming to town, athletes who otherwise might never see our city.

Jim Livengood, UA’s athletic director, reported the Level 2 infraction to the NCAA in July.

Lute says he never saw the letter.

But if he didn’t send it, who did?

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The NCAA, however, does.

Olson on NCAA probe: Donation letter sent in error

DO THE MATH – OK, the science. It took Citizen online readers about six comments to link low scores on a state science test to racial discrimination.

There’s a much more logical explanation why only a third of the county’s high school students passed the new Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards science test.

My hypothesis: Passing the test is not a graduation requirement, so motivation may be an issue. The same thing happened when students took reading, writing and math tests without the high-stakes graduation issue in play.

My other hypothesis: Math phobia limits a lot of people from going further in science. People who get past calculus have a built-in advantage in science – and may be less likely to settle for a job that pays $34,000 a year.

I never thought teachers were underpaid until I started trying to become one.

AIMS science test baffles majority of county’s students

Jury decides ex-teacher hit by school bus in ’06 is due $4.5M

THINK B4 U TXT: How dumb can you get? This dumb: A 22-year-old counselor stands accused of sending lewd text messages to a teen camper at Arts for All, a summer program at 2520 N. Oracle Road.

The 16-year-old girl, described as “cognitively delayed,” texted Kevyn Christopher Ell Ashley back, police said. They purportedly shared images of their genitals.

Maybe Ashley can argue that he’s cognitively delayed, too. He may have a case.

Counselor accused of sending lewd text messages to camper

TRIAL – AND ERROR? A 5-year-old kid ends up dead, and the toughest sentence anyone will serve comes out to 10 years.

The case of Brandon Williams, an autistic boy subjected to “torture” in the eyes of Superior Court Judge Hector Campoy, brought out the difficulties of protecting children from parents who are – at the least – wholly unfit to be parents.

Brandon’s mother, Diane Marsh, is described as mildly retarded. She was convicted of negligent homicide after blaming most of the abuse on her housemate, Flower Tompson.

Marsh was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison. After her trial, jurors were not available to explain their decision to convict on the homicide charge, instead of a murder count.

Tompson signed a plea deal and also will serve 10 years.

Campoy has dealt with child welfare for years and knows how often marginal people end up with kids they can’t handle. In this case, county agencies may also have dropped the ball. Marsh had already lost custody of two children, and injuries to Brandon were noted soon before his death.

With her kids gone, Marsh may not be in a position to hurt a child again.

We can hope.

Dad, grandma furious at no life terms in boy’s death

Judge: Autistic’s mom to serve 10 years for ‘torture of her vulnerable child’

Contact Judy Carlock at 573-4608 or at jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com.

Ex-'Land Girl' <strong>Doris Atkinson Brady</strong>

During World War II, the United Kingdom desperately needed every able-bodied person to contribute to the war effort. It was the only country to draft women along with men.

Three Tucsonans – Doris Atkinson Brady, Betty Edwards and Joan Fiske, all natives of England – recently were honored by the British government with badges for their participation in the Women’s Land Army. The Land Army was a force of 80,000 young women, “Land Girls,” who took the place of the men in the farms and fields during World War II.

It was dirty, physical work, but the women, many of whom were still in their teens or early 20s, signed up without complaint.

“You knew you had to go and everyone was willing to do it,” Brady, 85, said.

The Land Army was first established during World War I to prevent a looming famine and dismantled when the men came home.

In the buildup to World War II, the government realized it faced a shortage of 100,000 farmhands if the country was to meet its food production goals.

In 1939, the Land Army was re-established. Recruiting posters featured fresh-faced women doing farming tasks and promised “healthy, happy work.” The labor of the Land Army women prevented bread rationing and, by some accounts, an all-out famine.

The United States, following the UK’s cue, established a similar program during the first world war and revived it in 1943, sending 3 million women out to American farms.

The women, who – as you can imagine – were initially viewed with some derision by the farming community, worked in every aspect of agriculture from milking cows and digging ditches to tending sheep. They castrated pigs and killed rats. The women cleaned out countless stables, chicken coops and pig pens.

“We called it ‘shoveling sugar,’ ” Brady said, with a twinkle in her eye. “We were very proper.”

Fiske, 84, has the most detailed memories of her time as a Land Girl, right down to the description of the uniform. It was tan britches, wool knee stockings, a green wool pullover worn over a shirt and topped by a wool peacoat. The women also were issued sturdy shoes, work boots and bib overalls. To shield them from the sun, they wore tan felt hats.

Fiske was assigned to lodge and work at a farm with a friend, also named Joan. They were known as Little Joan and Big Joan, said Fiske, who stood about 5 feet 2 inches as a young woman.

She planted potatoes, sorted potatoes by size, hoed beet fields and harvested crops. During harvesting and haymaking time, the girls worked sunrise to sunset. On one particularly warm day, Fiske recalled, they stored their lunches (probably the standard bread and cheese) in a shady spot and kept a 2-gallon crock of pear cider cooling in the ditch near the field.

They worked on a farm owned by a “gentleman farmer” and lived in the foreman’s cottage with the foreman and his wife and two children.

“He was kind of a hardnose. He wasn’t too thrilled about having us in his home,” Fiske said.

The accommodations were stark. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. The girls shared a double bed and bathed at a washstand with a bowl and pitcher of water brought in from an outside pump. If they wanted a full bath, “we’d go down to the river with a bar of soap and a towel or ride our bikes to the public baths in town,” Fiske said.

Her living conditions were quite different from those of Brady, who lived on the grounds of a mansion in a stable that was converted into a hostel with cots for 22 girls.

It had a dining room where hearty meals, stews and hash, were served. Her group was sent to different locations as needed.

Fiske said the work was hard but “we were never too tired to go to a local bar or a barn dance” afterward.

Edwards, 82, said she was responsible for cleaning the pig pens and milking 14 cows on the farm where she was stationed. She enjoyed the work, except when the cows swished their dirty tails in her face.

“Cows have personalities, you know,” she said.

One favorite named Bluebelle would let the other cows out of the gated area and into the meadows by pushing her horns – in several breeds, female cattle have horns – under the crossbars of the gate and lifting it up to release the latch.

Brady said the Land Girls excelled at their tasks, dispelling notions that they couldn’t do a man’s work.

“Oh, yeah. We thought we were better,” she said, joking.

Brady, Edwards and Fiske eventually married American servicemen and moved to the United States, where they raised their families.

After the war, Winston Churchill vetoed the inclusion of the Land Army in the demobilization grants to women who served in the military, according to Nicola Tyrer’s 1996 history, “They Fought in the Fields: The Women’s Land Army.” Thirty years after the war, Tyrer wrote, the Land Army was denied permission to march in a World War II remembrance procession.

Recently, the British government announced it would award service badges to the Land Girls and members of the Women’s Timber Corps, who provided wood for the war effort. Brady, Edwards and Fiske received their badges this summer.

“We didn’t get the benefits that the other services got,” Brady said. “I think that’s why we got this medal.”

She said the acknowledgement is nice, and long overdue.

The sad thing, Brady said, is that many of the former Land Girls died without knowing of it.

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.

Doris Atkinson Brady displays her Women's Land Army badge (right) and a certificate signed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

ABOVE: Joan Fiske, in her 'Land Girl' uniform, served from April 1942 to June 1945. BELOW: Fiske with her late husband, Jim