Ted DeGrazia once took a pile of his paintings up a mountain near Tucson. Then he burned them because he thought taxes were unfair. That’s a Western thing — to not much love the government.

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The Tucson Museum of Miniatures has a Southern mansion from 1860 where Scarlett first encounters her Rhett. A Great Gatsby house preparing for a wedding. A tenement building from the 1940s with a sailor saying good-bye to his sweet heart. And an Old Dutch kitchen from the 1600s. There are 500 of them,

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The historic Canoa Ranch tells not only the wealthy Manning’s story but also the stories of the Mexican families and cowboys who lived out here. These were the people who did the dangerous work of ranchiot cruel county. The Pima Park District is preserving their homes and lifestyles as well as the owner’s.

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If you want find fairies in the Sonoran Desert, the best place for your observations is near a Baja Fairy Duster bush. These plants make little red dusters that fairies do collect to tidy up their homes and spark joy. It is best when you wait near your Fairy Duster

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The St. Therese Prayer was a popular Christmas gift in 2018. But which Therese wrote it?

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I could picture the Wells Fargo wagon a’coming down the street, and all of Mayer’s townspeople gathering at the Big Bug station – wondering if they got salmon from Seattle, a box of sugar maple or a cross-cut saw—the way we wonder what’s in the Amazon box on the porch. I could also picture the ladies of Mayer in their long dresses and corsets, living in the dust and heat of the Wild West.

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I bet St. Lawrence was full of wonder at the inside of an orange pepper, the beauty of a purple eggplant or the splendor of an orange pumpkin with beautiful yellow ribs. As sensitive and sweet as he was, I bet he felt bad about taking the life of any vegetable. No doubt he’d apologize to a cabbage before he cut into it.

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I watch his beautiful glowing eyes and his muscular tawny body, and something about the Tucson jaguar is bright and burning. The Aztecs, who had elite Jaguar Knights, believed something similar about the jaguar too. They believed the jaguar gave fire to humankind.

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This week I tried to find the oleander and Boy Scouts story in old newspapers. I couldn’t find it. That bothered me because I had by now heard this story many times over the years. The storyteller always told it with great drama and a catch in their voice.

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As you walk around Old Tucson, you get deja vue because you have indeed seen this landscape and these buildings all before – in productions like Tombstone, Hombre, Bonanza, Gunfight at OK Corral, and many more.

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