Mexican Dance! Danza Mexicana ! by Jane St. Clair The elder prays for all the people who are crossing the desert today, that they might not die from the heat and their thirst. No more deaths on the desert, the elder prays. Then the drums begin and the dancers march into the room, single file. […]

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John Dillinger was Public Enemy No. 1 when he was captured by police in Tucson, Arizona. He thought the small Old West town would make an easy place to hide — he never believed the police would get him there

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If I could offer you just one word to describe the way desert spring comes to the Sonora, the word would be “soft.” Spring walks into the desert on soft feet so quietly that you cannot hear her footsteps approaching. Sometimes she touches you as a soft warmth that brushes against your face like the memory of a lover’s caress. Desert spring enters soft here the Sonora, as soft as clouds scudding by in a nonthreatening sky.

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Look closely at the staircase at the Hotel Gadsden in Douglas, AZ. You’ll find a chip in Step #7 – made by none other than the outlaw and liberator Pancho Villa. In 1916 Villa and his horse stormed into the town of Douglas and then he rode his animal up these stairs, making the chip you can still see today.

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Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I really love his word “deliberately.”

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I didn’t know mountains have individual spirits, and that, as the Chinese say, some are charming enough to attract dragons. I also didn’t know mountains are always dancing with the clouds and the sky — complicated dances more tango than waltz, more grande ballet than two-step.

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Superior, Arizona looks like a movie set from the 1950s. It’s perfect for a science fiction movie in which something terrible just happened!

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Those who say it is wrong to put Our Lady of Guadalupe on things like cups and jewelry– don’t understand it. Southwestern people like to keep Our Lady of Guadalupe near them all the time the way you hang up pictures of people you love.

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Arizona desert snow is rare . I have forgotten the sound of snow because even rain is rare in the desert. I have forgotten how snow can transform the Arizona mountains into some icy moonscape that belongs in a galaxy far, far away, and I have forgotten how snow settles into spaces I ordinarily overlook,

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The other day I found out that Europeans are crazy about tumbleweeds from Arizona. They’ll pay $25 for a small one and $50 for a big one — as long as they are genuine Arizona tumbleweeds. So –today at the Tucson Mall I saw a great big humongous tumbleweed nestled next to a potted plant in front of Sears and about to roll into the parking lot, it was just like finding $50 cash! I couldn’t let it go tumbling to waste! I am also selling jeans worn in Arizona and totillas made for cowboys to eat in Arizona.