Arizona Illustrated

Puppetry has its roots in folklore, religion and magic. The first puppets on the North American continent were part of the ceremonial rituals of Native Americans. The 20th century brought ethnic puppeteers to the US. Their performance styles and designs influenced the permanent vocabulary of puppet theatre. Lisa Aimee Sturz, the founder of the Red Herring Puppets is a puppeteer who lives in Tucson. She welcomes us into the world of puppets. The Vail Unified School District is trying to recruit and retain more teachers by working with developers to provide affordable housing opportunities for educators in the district. They say finding affordable housing is a struggle for new instructors and they are the first school district in Arizona to try and remedy this with providing tiny homes. The district owns a 14-acre lot with room for 24 tiny houses. The cost for educators to buy the 400-square-foot homes in the district range from about $60,000 to $70,000, and they offer a renting option, too. This new community is aimed at remedying that so teachers may find a place to stay within their budget more easily. Vail School District students from Cienega High School also helped build these tiny homes through a building-trades program. Join Jesus Robles of DUST Architects as he takes you on a poetic journey to one of his favorite places in Arizona, The San Rafael Valley. A place where time seems to move slowly and one’s perception of light and land is transformed. TC Tolbert is a nationally certified EMT, and often identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, dancer, and poet. S/he holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and is the author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press, 2014), five chapbooks of poetry, and is coeditor with Trace Peterson of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2013). Tolbert is the recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Award. In 2019, s/he was the guest editor for Poem-a-Day in January and was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Tolbert is currently the poet laureate of Tucson, Arizona, where s/he lives.