Author Archive: Community Submission

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Tucson COVID Tales No. 30: “Cycling,” by Gloria Deo

November 19, 2020 |

Gloria Deo

Covid has provided a strange opportunity for reflection, which can be both therapeutic and confusing. I find myself exploring both of these characteristics in the music I’ve been making since. “Cycling,” released late last month, is an exploration of the way things change and the feelings that either go with that change or resist it. Habits are very hard to break, but if 2020 has taught me anything it is that we, as humans, are adaptable. We do change. We’ve changed the way we view community and politics and justice. This, despite the horrible moments of this year, is actually quite inspiring to me. I hope to be releasing more music throughout the remainder of this year and into next. “Cycling” and my full-length album are available on all platforms.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ctw5kY60C6wsTjKTzd_1Pe_3IYZxDVSg/view?usp=drive_web

Gloria Deo is a recent arrival in Tucson. Find her at https://gloriadeo.bandcamp.com or https://m.facebook.com/GloriaDeoMusic.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 29: Tending Your Garden and Going to Ground, by Nancy McCallion

November 5, 2020 |

NancyMcCallion. Photo by Kathleen Dreier Photography.

Two days before our annual St. Patrick’s Day gig and five days before Governor Ducey shut down the bars, I called and cancelled the show. Bodies were piling up in Italian churches with 53,000 coronavirus cases and more than 4800 deaths. President Trump was telling us that the virus was not as bad as the seasonal flu, while Anthony Fauci said it was ten times worse. A week after St. Patrick’s Day, I was lost in a cycle of toggling between the New York Times and the CDC website and arguing about the severity of the virus with nonbelievers on Facebook, while my husband, Danny, watched CNN dressed in the green sweatpants that would become his COVID uniform. I could feel a bout of depression coming on and recognized the futility of attaching factual links to posts by virus deniers, but I couldn’t seem to stop my senseless scrolling.

On April 1, I hit bottom. Adam Schlesinger, the great songwriter from Fountains of Wayne, died of COVID at the age of fifty-two. Danny and I spent the next few days listening to Fountains of Wayne and watching their live concert footage on YouTube. We learned a couple of their songs and recorded a tribute video. Schlesinger’s death brought the reality of COVID home for me in a way that facts and statistics could not. He was at a high point in his career, working on songs for movies, TV, and Broadway shows. It was a terrible loss and a sobering reminder of my own mortality.

The following week I began working on a new song, “Go to Ground,” as stories of lost wages and underpaid essential workers filled the news. I had the first line, “You never thought that at your age / you’d be working two jobs for minimum wage,” and I continued working from there. As the song evolved, I seemed to channel some of the self-effacing humor of Fountains of Wayne, who were brilliant at blending catchy melodies with sad but funny lyrics. One morning as I was working on the melody and guitar chords, Danny looked up from scrambling eggs and sang, “You used to think that at your age / you’d be playing guitar like Jimmy Page.” Danny makes a habit of bastardizing song lyrics for fun and usually elicits eyerolls from me and our daughter, but this was the perfect line to kick off the last verse.

Writing “Go to Ground” brought me out of my malaise. I already had a couple of songs I’d written in 2019, and I only needed a few more to complete an album length project. I received a timely email from local studio owner and engineer, Duncan Stitt, telling me about his newly remodeled studio with isolated rooms and a separate venting system to avoid recycling potentially contaminated air. I continued writing and recording in Duncan’s studio throughout the summer, and two weeks ago I sent off my master for CD duplication.

Throughout my life I have turned to songwriting and music to cope with both personal and collective sorrows. It’s hard not to fall into despair at the deaths of over a million people worldwide and the political and racial divides that tear us apart. I have found, as Voltaire wrote at the end of Candide, in this worst of all possible years, work “is the only way to render life supportable.” And so, I have opted to tend my own garden—aside from the occasional relapse on Facebook.

Nancy McCallion is a local singer-songwriter best known for her work with international touring act The Mollys in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since The Mollys disbanded, she has released four solo recordings. Her fifth and latest CD, Go to Ground, will be available in November, with a release party on the patio at Club Congress on November 24 at 7:00 pm. The CD is available for download and preorder here.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 28: Cheating the Pandemic, by In Theory

November 3, 2020 |

In Theory

We started writing “La Triche (The Cheat)” last year for our own enjoyment. We were rehearsing the Françoise Hardy song “Comment Te Dire Adieu,” and Paula began to improvise a spoken French verse about a certain famous orange with “tiny paws.” A longer song evolved from that first couple of lines, and Dan came up with a jaunty guitar part that complemented the irreverent lyrics. Initially we had no real intention of recording the song, let alone making a music video. We thought we might play it live at a few local venues, but like so many other performers, the pandemic put a stop to our live shows.

In March we were both furloughed from our jobs in health care. We found ourselves with much more time on our hands and an even clearer picture of just how much our country’s leadership has failed us. We were inspired to finish “La Triche (The Cheat)” by adding more biting lyrics in the form of the spoken section, and we decided to record and release it as a single. 

Recording the song and filming the video were complicated by the limitations of the pandemic. We had to figure out a way to allow our drummer Thad to lay down his drum track in a safe setting, and we filmed his portion of the video masked and socially distanced. He wrote the drum part in a military march style that ties the guitar and lyrics together into a cohesive whole.

We wanted the video to be satirical, but also to reflect the difficulty of this year in a more serious way. In the later scenes it is revealed that we’re not in fact traveling around the country, but trapped at home during a pandemic. As is often the case with art, the adversity of this pandemic fueled us to shape this song that started out as a joke during a rehearsal into an acerbic political commentary.

In Theory, a Tucson trio, performs original tunes and covers in French and English, with a jazzy twist on pop. They are Paula Taylor (vocals, keyboard, oboe, clarinet), Daniel Taylor (guitar), and Thad Lannet (percussion). Visit them at https://intheoryband.wixsite.com/intheoryacoustic.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 27: Thinking of Coltrane in a Time of Virus, by Donivan Berube

October 29, 2020 |

When the Time of the Virus began, every headline might as well have come with a question mark. Reports were conflicting, information was ongoing, and change quickly became the only constant.

A year after my solo debut Endlessly Won’t Last for Long, I’m releasing my sophomore LP, Truth in Constant Change for Now, made over the course of quarantine. It was a tumultuous but inspired year, scored by constant waves of focus over obscurity, persistence over surrender. It felt quite natural then to “Coltrane” myself in the studio throughout that time. In the jazz giant’s composition of A Love Supreme, he reportedly locked himself in a small room until emerging with a complete work. The COVID closures became a similar allowance for uninterrupted coffee and music-making, only to surface for a daily bike ride on the Tucson Loop.

Themes grew to weave intimacy and isolation into a polyrhythmic heartsong of jazz chords and sudden redirection. If “love became the walls in which to quarantine us,” then “what got between us?” You can find some answers by listening to the first three tracks in the link below. You can preorder a copy of Truth in Constant Change for Now and hear other music here

Donivan Berube has traveled the world as a musician. He has worked as an English teacher in Peru, a librarian in Big Sur, a luthier in Arizona, and taken solo long-distance bicycle tours across the United States and Iceland. Visit him at https://www.donivanberube.com

Tucson COVID Tales No. 26: Nature and Art, by Gene Hall

October 21, 2020 |

As the campus closure approached in mid-March, I wasn’t sure how my job as an entomologist at the University of Arizona would be affected. Eventually, I was given “essential personnel” status and continued working on campus in a vacated, locked, dead-quiet building, but for months the majority of my work hours were still spent remotely at home, not knowing how long the shutdown would last.

A bit of a loner by nature, even I could feel the heaviness of imposed isolation. My routine is restricted to home and campus during the workweek, groceries on the weekends. My girlfriend lives in her own casa, we instigate social distancing when necessary based on our own social activities, and we’re grateful for when we’re together. Jimmy and Cesar, my canine companions, sustain me during these strange times. While necessary, wearing a mask hasn’t lessened the surreal feeling of the pandemic, each social experience is like attending a dangerous masquerade ball.

Works in Progress

Art, specifically painting, has helped me cope with the uncertainty caused by COVID concerns. It took a few weeks to regain my creative stride. Similar to other artists I know during this time, there were periods of stalled productivity when initially I thought isolation would provide more focus on my work. Galleries have been closed since March and show schedules delayed, so I’m painting without deadlines, which has pros and cons. The goal is to move forward, not allowing outside forces to sabotage the dedicated focus in the studio. 

Dragon Fruit

Nature is another essential element in my life. It has always fascinated and inspired me. Among my earliest memories are those of animals and plants outdoors, as well as drawing them from photos in books. We’re all part of nature, and humans represent one of millions of species inhabiting this planet. The incredible biodiversity on Earth is beautiful and enlightening, demonstrating the interconnectedness of all species, how fragile life can be, and the balance needed to maintain the world’s survival. The rampant greed and arrogance of our species doesn’t always agree with those concepts, a deeper discussion for another time.

When life becomes overwhelming, nature and art have always been my salvation, anchors for when I’m set adrift. While my art generally contains natural elements (for me it’s unavoidable), during the pandemic it’s become increasingly more grounded in and informed by nature. To quote David Hockney’s appreciation of Chinese art, “They say you need three things for paintings: the hand, the eye, and the heart. Two won’t do.”

My first COVID-period painting was a spirit animal, a bird of the family Corvidae, an unintentional play on words. I continue to produce a body of work inspired by the wonderment of nature while experiencing the beautiful, at times harsh and deadly, world around us.

Corvidae

We’re probably going to be in this wretched pandemic a while longer. Enjoy life and have a bit of fun.

Gene Hall is an entomologist and curator at the University of Arizona.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 25: Keeping the Music Alive, by Gary Mackender

October 16, 2020 |

I’ve kept a spiral monthly calendar going since the late 1970s, and still have them all stashed away. The last several years have kept me quite busy—my 2019 calendar was chock full of gigs, and the 2020 spiral was looking the same. That book is around here somewhere, but I think it was last seen around March 15th. I somehow managed to go out with a bang since my last gig, on March 14th, was with Nancy McCallion, Danny Krieger, Heather Hardy, and Karl Hoffmann.

Then all jobs disappeared overnight in mid-March, including my standing gigs: a regular Sunday afternoon slot at Borderlands Brewing Company going on five years, along with first Wednesdays at Public Brewhouse, both with Kevin Pakulis; my once or twice a month Meet Me at Maynard’s gig with the Determined Luddites; and scattered work with Don Armstrong. And my band had a standing third Wednesday at Public and a fresh deal with the Hop Shop in Metal Arts Village for a monthly Tuesday residency to begin late March. Strange times, indeed.

I’ve been most fortunate to work with the musicians mentioned above who have developed their own sounds and original material. And my band, the Carnivaleros, has managed to survive (going on 19 years), performing mostly my songs as well. Despite the pandemic, I’ve managed to see these friends for short periods with a couple of live stream events with Don at Petie Ronstadt’s studio, a gig at 17th Street Market with the Luddites, and a session with Kevin at Duncan Stitt’s recording studio, which he’s decked out near total isolation for each player. I’m hesitant to venture out in public much more at this point, however. Thinking about how to navigate new musical realities has been an ongoing challenge, and with the daily political horror show that we’ve seen in 2020, I’ve been reticent to bring out the trumpets and market any new work. 

I will say that after March 14th a series of songs that I had just started to track in my studio blasted into full gear. I managed to solicit various musicians in town (primarily Karl Hoffmann, Connor Gallaher, Billy Yates, Cristina Williams, and Katherine Byrnes) and the Kansas City area (both Kelley J Hunt and Kelly E Hunt, along with brother Greg Mackender) to contribute to the project, and am happy to say that my 7th release is now pressed for your listening pleasure. It’s appropriately titled Waiting For the Big One, and the video below is the first track, called “Life I’ve Led.”

While being on stage satisfies my extrovert side, the other creative half of my life belongs to the visual arts. As a lifelong ambivert, the scales have been tipping quite heavily to the introvert side since March. Being both an avid reader and a visual artist who definitely likes to work alone, it’s been a relatively smooth transition to hole up all day. My wife is now working from home, and we’ve come close to developing a routine that works for us both. I am fortunate that my music and art studio is within walking distance—most of my days are spent there anyway. I made a wee video just for this COVID episode with work mostly produced this year.

Stay safe, be smart, be kind, vote.

Gary Mackender is a Tucson artist and musician. Find his tunes at www carnivaleros.com, and his visual work at www.garymackender.com

Tucson COVID Tales No. 24: Art and Solace, by Lex Gjurasic

October 14, 2020 |

As a child, I spent weeks at a time hospitalized with lung disease. Through spells of sickness, I took solace in my imagination, drawing and redrawing hundreds of versions of the same subject—each act of repetition pulling me deeper into a realm where sickness could not find me.

This spring, quarantining with my family, first subconsciously and then consciously, I found myself reaching for the same comfort—the comfort of repetition—that I had decades earlier. Like the confines of a hospital room in Seattle, my world shrank to the size of my studio. Through the meditative and soothing process of creating, the uncertainty of living in a country ravaged by a novel virus dissipated. I disappeared into other worlds—amalgamations of imagery existing somewhere between memory and imagination.

The result, Flower Mounds, is a cohesive series of verdant, undulating, biomorphic work. The series is an expression of my own exuberance for life and a love letter to the natural world, borne of a coping mechanism from early adolescence. Flower Mounds offers an escape into soft, surreal landscapes: a safe place to land.

Flower Mounds incorporates a wide breadth of unconventional materials, using only what I had already at home—including everything from sample house paint to mortar to Styrofoam. My commitment to the safety of quarantine unwavering, I began hand-making paper when my supply of other viable surfaces dwindled. To do this, I used, among other tools, a plastic kiddie pool. On delicate paper, I painted rolling hills carpeted with flowers.

In Flower Mounds I have painted the soft green mountains in the Land of Enchantment, the desolate Sonoran Desert bathed in its warm, soapy hues, and the fireworks show that is a Californian Super Bloom, a veritable explosion of glowing orange.

That joie de vivre manifested in Flower Mounds connects deeply to ritual, to nature, to the Queer virtue of radical happiness, and to celebration as a sacred act of grieving.

Lex Gjurasic is a Tucson artist. Visit her at http://www.lexgjurasic.com

Tucson COVID Tales No. 23: Teaching English on the Flat Screen, by Jennifer Makowsky

October 6, 2020 |

Not long before the pandemic hit, one of my students, Amir, walked over to me after class, holding out an Autozone advertisement for sun shades. “Teacher, what’s this?”

I took the ad. “It’s called a sun shade. It’s to make shade in your car.”

“Shade?”

I pointed out the window to a tree that cast a shadow across the front of the school. “Shade is the dark under the tree.” 

He gave me a bewildered look, so I squinted up at the overhead lights. “It’s too bright,” I said, grabbing a notebook and holding it over my head to block the light. Once the light was out of my eyes, I gave an overexaggerated sigh of relief. “Like in Tucson, we need shade because the sun is so bright and hot.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

My job as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language requires that I speak slowly and clearly, punctuate my words with hand gestures, and pantomime different language concepts. Before COVID, I spent a lot of time drawing pictures on the classroom whiteboard, showing students photographs, and miming actions. It wasn’t unusual for me to fall to the floor to convey “faint,” stagger around to express “dizzy,” and imitate the Charlie Brown walk of dejection to suggest “sad.”

REP Classroom, Pima Community College.

Where I teach adult English learners at Pima Community College’s Refugee Education Program (REP), the levels of English range from very beginning to advanced. One of the levels I teach is so basic that some students in the class do not know how to read in their native languages. A few have spent the majority of their lives in refugee camps and have never been to school. When we met face to face before COVID, I relied on body language and gestures to communicate with students. I think they had gotten used to me acting like a demented mime. 

Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly all the three-dimensional classroom interactions were reduced to one-dimensional exchanges on a flat screen. Like teachers everywhere, the teachers in REP scrambled to figure out how we were going to teach from home. Most of our students do not have laptops or iPads, and several have limited computer skills. Nearly all, however, have smartphones. And nearly all of the students use WhatsApp in order to communicate with their family and friends back home in their native countries. When we still had a physical classroom, students often talked to family members before class started, using WhatsApp video chat. I’d often walk into the classroom and find a student holding the phone up and telling me to say hello. Suddenly a student’s mother or husband in the Congo or Syria was in my Pima classroom, waving. I never anticipated I’d be using WhatsApp to communicate with my students right here in Tucson. But here we are.

In the months since we left the brick-and-mortar building, I have been taking photos of things around the house, making homework packets, recording audio pronunciation practice, and filming my son acting out various verbs. My fellow teachers have been filming themselves baking, cooking, and helping to set up internet access for their students. We’ve been striving to keep students connected and engaged. When we had a classroom, we played games like Concentration and running dictation, went on scavenger hunts around the neighborhood, received visits from professionals in the community, and took field trips to the library and local businesses. Now I meet students through WhatsApp chat. My former laughter-filled classroom has been reduced to my laptop and phone in the silent guest room at the back of my house.

Having said all that, this virtual time with my students has allowed me to connect with them in a different way. When I’m not talking to students on the phone or using chat in WhatsApp, I use the feature that allows me to video call students. I was hesitant at first because it almost felt invasive, but students welcomed me into their lives. When we video chat, I am transported to their apartments and houses and have come to know different family members. Students have answered my video calls at their jobs, from the hospital, the grocery store, from bed half-asleep, and even from the car wash. Once, Amir, who is a Lyft driver, tried to practice his English with me while driving. Naturally, I told him we better hang up before he had an accident. I forgot to ask him if he ever bought that sunshade.

Recently, when my mother was admitted to the hospital, my students flooded the class chat with pictures of hearts and sentiments like “May God heal your mother.” Amir sent a picture of the artificial flowers he keeps in his car to make it look nice for his customers along with a note that read: “I present these flowers to you for your mother.” 

The threat of the pandemic has forced me to reach behind the scenes into students’ lives and has offered them more of a glimpse into mine. It’s given us a connection we might not have otherwise known. Yesterday, as I was video chatting with my student Sam, he laughed after I clapped out the syllables to difficult. “You always did that in class and it helped,” he said, imitating me clapping. “I hope we can continue this.”

A lump rose in my throat. His comment not only reminded me of how much I miss my students, but it had also pinpointed the feeling my students offer me—the feeling of being seen and appreciated. It’s one of the many reasons I love my job. Even outside the 3D classroom, Sam had remembered the clapping habit, and it had helped him. He wanted to continue it. Maybe things on the flat screen aren’t so bad after all.

Jennifer Makowsky is a writer, educator, and University of Arizona alum. She is an East Coaster by birth and Tucsonan by heart.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 22: Empty School, by Renee Downing

September 28, 2020 |

In the time of the virus
the rainless summer
the unchanging days 
Absence sloshes through the halls
clocks tick to themselves
lights flicker unseen  

The children long scattered
to their trailers
their bunker apartments
their crowded shared rooms
Sunk into their phones, glass-eyed,
Look up for a moment
A glimpse and then gone,
waving goodbye, waving so long  

Renee Downing has lived in Tucson for nearly 50 years. She works at a school—which is empty.

Tucson COVID Tales No. 21: Trying to Make Do, by Jesse Schaefer

September 25, 2020 |

I was one of the first to arrive. L waited in the van, irritated at the very idea of risking a staff meeting, distanced or not. One by one we cautiously appeared on the patio, exchanging air hugs. Seating choices were gauged for safety, to the extent anyone could guess what that might actually mean. Distance, remember, distance. One or two people had to be reminded to back up, their smiles wilting into recognition that an automatic way of being was now on hold.

I knew it would be especially hard for M, who had already been nicknamed the “superspreader.” The reassurance of touch and impromptu massage for most of us was a daily affair, since restaurant work is a physically grinding machine. Separation in this group felt starkly unnatural.

Management handed out packets that had been prepared to deal with the DES, along with final pay plus a generous bonus. The three owners took turns speaking, three of my dearest friends. Tears fell, voices quaked. Dreams and money had been arrested and turned into smoke by something like a meteor. How to even fathom the catastrophe?

There was applause and the obligatory exchange of optimistic notes to try to cheer ourselves as we departed. I got back in the van and said, “Well, that could’ve been worse. Christ, I really do feel for the people who don’t have anyone, though, and are going to have to go through this alone.”

Two months later we would be calling it quits. But as for those early days, they were marked by attempts at orientation on uncertain ground. The DES proved to be the unrelenting migraine that Arizona politicians had designed it to be, second only to Mississippi in the stinginess of its unemployment benefits, with a gauntlet of bureaucratic hurdles to receive them. It felt like being deposited in a Kafka novel. The antique system relied on faxes as its preferred medium of communication, with time requirements that were so constricted they could only be intended by design to try to set up the applicant for failure. A letter would show up falsely claiming that I had been rehired by my employer and demand a faxed explanation from me by the next day. “Good thing I hadn’t been staying at L’s house when it arrived,” I thought in between curses.

Bartenders, servers, and cooks rallied though, we looked out for each other. Good phone numbers were DM’d around, inside dope from friends with contacts in the DES shared. An acquaintance from previous activist work got me in touch with a politician’s office. The shambling buggy was at least moving. Once I got my hands on a magic number and got through, the individuals working at the department proved nothing other than pleasant and helpful. Imagining them speaking to me buried at the foot of a mountain of faxes, I felt for them all. 

The old folks have been troublesome in the time of COVID. Questions that I thought would be answered with an obvious “no,” such as “Is getting a haircut or a manicure worth potentially dying for?” “Is walking into a Costco in the evening, after thousands of bodies have been through the store, to buy a mediocre pizza worth the possibility of grave sickness or death?” In the case of my maddening parents, the answer was a startling “Yes, what fine ideas!”

Fury management and exasperation have been a major component of my days. If only my folks were telling me lies in retaliation for my parade of anxiety-inducing fuckups over the years. It quickly became obvious that being an angry scold wasn’t going to work. Dropping the stick, I looked for an enticing carrot to dangle. “You know, Costco delivers. In fact, most grocery stores do curbside pickup or delivery.” The deadpan response was, “No, I need to pick my own meat and vegetables.”

The stupidity of that answer puzzled me, because the man who said it was not stupid. I couldn’t tell if I was now staring at somebody in a declined mental state that had just snuck past me at some point, or at a person who had arrived at some enviable pacific attitude toward his allotted time on earth. But the horrible death! How could that be an exit to treat nonchalantly? Alone, face down, lungs drowning in a hospital bed.

I called J, my oldest friend in the world, to complain. He and his wife had been weathering the worst of it in a tiny Brooklyn apartment. J was convinced he was just getting over it (and has since been tested and indeed was). “Yes, I see ‘corral your boomers’ is trending on Twitter,” he said. It became apparent that shopping trips and the like were not seen as drudgery for many cooped-up seniors, but instead were looked forward to as exciting social outings.

I could sympathize to some degree as the months pushed forward. There have been fleeting moments of communal monkey yearning in me to disappear into a crowd at a concert or ballgame, choices that have thankfully been taken away for now. I’ve had to back off with my anger. What was once me shouting has now been worn down into a disappointed shaking of the head. Like some parent of an obstinate drug addict who refuses to come to Jesus, I don’t want to know. I just hope they get away with it.

L and I could no longer avoid the need to break up. Even with grownup consensus, all the usual feelings of sadness and failure attended the coda. Showers and laundry loads became less frequent. The recycling bin swelled. I missed her dog, and when I could bracket out our regular cycle of arguments, I missed her too. The dark tide kept rolling into shore. A friend’s father died from the virus. Then the murder of George Floyd happened. Then the predictable spike in Arizona cases appeared. The Catalinas wouldn’t stop burning. The monsoon flirted, but took her love elsewhere. We might all be done with 2020, but it isn’t done with us. There is no cryogenic chamber to climb into. 

I wake up at 5:00 and drink down my daily medicine with a pint of water, then tend to a couple of ailing, heatstroked plants in the yard. The bats are at their hunt’s end, and soon the hummingbirds will be emerging from their torpor. By 5:30 I’m on my bike heading to the Santa Cruz. Through the dirt of the vacant lot, over the split crags of gray asphalt, offering a texture like Godzilla’s back, I make my way to Cushing and the freeway. Cutting a careful diagonal over the orderly menace of the trolley tracks, I pedal onto the bridge. The glass and steel of the headquarters of Caterpillar, those leaders in modified wilderness, are starting to warm into a coppery bloom in the dawn light.

Thinking Haydukeish thoughts, I head to the river path. There are fewer souls down here than I would expect, but I know by 6:00 the number will jarringly double. I glide past Desert Survivors. If bars and restaurants are going extinct, maybe I should go to work in a nursery? Surely it would make me a calmer and gentler person? I keep an eye out for wildlife—a friend had told me about some owl sightings in the last few days. The misery box of Pima County Jail looms on the right. I reflect on the horror of the place under normal circumstances, but now with COVID permeating, I feel a tinge of nausea.

I lob an imaginary bundle of dynamite à la For A Few Dollars More at a cell block wall. Just thought you ladies and gentlemen could use some fresh air. Ahead, trotting down a wash, the ashen gold of a coyote flickers. I pull over to admire it. Canis latrans, deity, survivor, ancient one. Our petite canid that never crossed the land bridge out in the Eurasian diaspora with his cousins. A true native that makes a mockery of government eradication attempts decade after decade. Ambling toward the water, head low, scanning for rodents, it offers me some kind of shape of resilience.

“I don’t know if American humans will turn out to be as talented as you, coyote,” I say to myself. A thousand things can still go wrong. I tip my hat in thanks for its appearance and continue on the sinuous desert path, with Auden’s line “uncertain and afraid” suddenly flaring into my consciousness.

Jesse Schaefer is an out-of-work bartender.