The leader of the "Free Hugs" movement is coming to Tucson tomorrow, and he hopes you'll be there waiting to get a hug. 

For the past seven years, Montreal-native Arié Moyal has been spending the holiday season traveling across the U.S. and Canada, spreading some much-needed love.

"Financial difficulties, family issues, seasonal affective disorder and social isolation make the holidays particularly stressful for many people, and sometimes the smallest things—like a hug—can make the biggest difference," Moyal said in a statement. “I want to inspire others to spread some joy, and to know that doing small things can make a big difference in their communities.”

“The act of hugging lays the biological and structure for connection to other people. We need that more today than ever before," he added.

This time around, Moyal, founder of "Hug Train," made 30 stops in a trip that was scheduled to take nearly one month. The trips are funded through donations from friends, a crowd-funding campaign, and money Moyal saves throughout the year. 

Moyal will be in town Tuesday, Dec. 29 at the Amtrak station downtown, 400 N. Toole Ave., from 6:45 p.m. to 7:35 p.m. His train will depart at 7:35 p.m., headed to California.

Here's a last minute reminder about Arizona's tax credit opportunities. You get to give money to some of your favorite causes and organizations, then get it all back—100 percent of it—at tax time if you owe enough in state income tax. The three tax credits I strongly recommend are for public schools, charitable organizations that help the working poor and foster-care organizations.

The time is drawing nigh. Most giving has to be done by Dec. 31 to qualify for this year's tax credits (though there's an exception with the public school giving). Since most organizations take credit cards online, there's still time—a few days—to make your donations. You can give $200 per person, $400 for a couple, to each of the three and get it all back at tax time if your total Arizona income tax bill is more than the amount you give. That's as much as $1,200 you can give to worthy organizations and get it back later.

Today I'll look a the public school tax credit. I'll post about the other two tomorrow.

Here are the rules about public school tax credits. You can give your money—$200 for an individual, $400 for a couple—to one school or split it up over a number of schools. Both district and charter schools qualify, and most of them make it easy by putting links to the information on their home web pages. The hitch is that the money has to go to extracurricular or character education programs. I don't like that restriction, but that's the way the law was written. Still, lots of important education and recreation happens in schools outside the classroom—sports, music, art, science, field trips, clubs. Especially in schools with lots of children from low income families, the donations can be the difference between the kids participating or being left out.

My recommendation is, if you haven't already picked out a school or schools for your tax credit dollars, go with a school with low income children since they always come out on the short end when it comes to giving. When family incomes are low, parents pay little or no state income tax, so they can't take advantage of the credit. Even if they pay some income taxes, they're living from day to day and week to week financially, which makes it difficult to give money now even if they know they'll get it back later. It's another of those rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer situations. Schools in well-off communities get lots of money, and schools in lower income communities get very little.

This is part three of a journal I’m keeping during my month working at a refugee camp in Greece. Part two, covering settling in at Camp Pikpa and starting work, is here.


Dec. 14: Reality sank in this morning. A very overqualified volunteer had gone back to her 9-5 job in the U.S., meaning the rest of us had to pick up the slack.

It was a lot of slack.

Several of us teamed up in the morning for around 45 minutes to take out and sort all of the trash and recycling, something she had done by herself. Another volunteer took on the nearly full-time job of washing dishes.

I spent the rest of the morning cutting out letters with an American volunteer. The letters were of the Latin alphabet and I drew their corresponding Arabic letter on each side of the letter. As we hoped, some of the children began playing with the letters and spelling their names! We can’t have much in the way of classes since we have such a fluctuating roster of children, but having kids leave Pikpa with a basic grasp of phonetics will be a big win if we can pull it off.

I spent the afternoon at Moria with two friends, although we didn’t do a whole lot. Situated in the hills above Mytilini, it offers an amazing view of the surrounding olive groves, with the Aegean Sea serving as a backdrop. Moria is run by the United Nations and has roughly 20 Non-Government Organizations floating around. There is often more need for help there than at Pikpa, but it is more difficult to be registered and approved. I headed over to the Olive Grove (where the non-Syrian and non-Iraqi refugees are sent) and did a bit of translating, but an Iranian-British woman was more enthusiastic and clearly more capable at this than myself, yelling orders and commanding respect as she marched through several lines of refugees.


That evening at Pikpa was fun, with a traditional Irish band coming to play for the children. The parents joined in and even let their guard down as they clapped enthusiastically to the beat. As I started dancing, a young Afghani man grabbed my hand and began dancing with me. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time as holding hands with other men is seen as a sign of friendship in many Arab countries (save your angry comment, I’m fully aware that few Afghanis are ethnically Arab). We danced nonsensically for a couple of songs before I left for the nightly job of preparing meals to be sent to Moria. Unfortunately, he flirted uncomfortably with me over the next week and generally begged for my attention. This (and similar incidents that tend to find me) is clearly karma for the times I've been friend-zoned and still went for the girl.

Here's another logic-based decision from Superintendent Diane Douglas' Department of Education. Tucson will keep its teacher Certification office which, according to a media release, was scheduled to be shut down.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas today announced that the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) will maintain its Certification office in Tucson so that it can continue to serve current and future educators in southern Arizona. Prior to the Superintendent’s arrival at ADE in January, the office was scheduled to be permanently closed at the end of this year.

“My goal as Superintendent is to increase the support our Department is providing to educators in all parts of our state, so it made no sense to me that we would stop providing critical certification services to educators in southern Arizona communities,” said Superintendent Douglas. “Our more rural areas already have unique challenges, so doing something to help simplify the educator certification process for them was an easy decision.”

The move comes as part of Superintendent Douglas’ proposal to provide enhanced services to rural communities, which was outlined in her AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait! Plan.

The message here is, the war waged by the Department of Education against TUSD in particular and the Tucson area in general is over, or at the very least, a cease fire order is in place. The rest of the state government may still hate "liberal Tucson," and the last two superintendents, Horne and Huppenthal, may have used their antipathy toward TUSD to further their careers (both of their careers have gone down in flames, I'm happy to say), but Douglas is doing what she can to create a level playing field across the state.

I'm poised and ready to slam Douglas when she makes policy decisions that I think are bad for Arizona's school children. Given the ideological divide separating us, I'm sure that time will come. But to this point, I continue to see her as someone who is using whatever power she has—which isn't much, since the legislature and the State Board of Education control educational policy and the budget, not the superintendent—to advocate for schools, teachers and students as best she can.

Well, happy Friday everybody. As I said yesterday, we're shutting down the blog for a couple days to spend time with our family, friends and cats. We'll be back in business on Monday. 

If you're looking for something to do this weekend, hop on down to Casa Video. Their new bar is finished (Grand Opening on Saturday), their popcorn is still free and these are the Top 10 most in-demand movies of the week: 

1. Ted 2

2. Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation

3. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Sorry, Range readers: We're taking a few days off from blogging. We're going to spend the next four days bundled up, drinking some hot chocolate and reading books. We'll be back to business on Monday. Until then, you'll just have to satisfy your Weekly reading (and hate commenting) with the stories from the print edition:

Get started with this year's Local Heroes cover story, where you'll learn the stories of six incredible Tucsonans. If you're looking for something to love, hop over to Heather's food and music year-in-review pieces. Not sick of the Star Wars hype yet? Bob Grimm loved it and he'll tell you why in a spoiler-free review. 

Need more? Sorry. Check back tomorrow for Casa Video's weekly Top 10. We'll see you on Monday.

Until then, here's a video of some bengal cats fighting over an exercise wheel. 

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to get a mean case of the meat sweats. That's because Tucson's newest dining and drinking addition, Brother John's Beer, Bourbon & BBQ (1801 N. Stone Ave.), is now open and serving up all things smoked meats. 

Well, maybe this is a tad pre-emptive, as Brother John's doesn't officially open until 6 p.m. on Dec. 23. After that, you can visit the restaurant from 11 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Monday through Wednesday from 11 a.m. until midnight (kitchen closes at 11 p.m.) and Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 2 a.m. (kitchen closes at midnight).

In a previous interview with Brother John's owner and namesake John Aldecoa and his team, Aldecoa spoke about the adaptive reuse of the historic Wildcat House space. After renovating the well-loved watering hole, Aldecoa enlisted chefs Nate Eckhaus and Patrick Vezino to craft a barbecue program that focused on cooking "slow and low," never sacrificing quality for speed. Eckhaus worked under famed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, while Vezino worked with Mike Mills (partner in Meyer's Blue Smoke) to hone his barbecue skills.

The resulting menu offers slow cooked brisket, baby back ribs, St. Louis ribs, smoked chicken, pulled pork, pork belly and turkey breast, along with the occasional short rib special when the specialty cut can be sourced locally. Of course, no barbecue menu would be complete without sides, and Brother John's has most bases covered, offering potato salad, collard greens with bacon, tangy burnt end beans, mashed potatoes, jalapeño corn bread, mac and cheese and more.


The restaurant will soon also have a 2,400 square-foot beer garden, though construction on this part of the restaurant is not yet finished. The bar offers 48 draft beers, over 100 bottled beers, cocktails and 150 different whiskeys, including a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve 15 year—for you hype whiskey snobs. Brother John's also offers several local craft brewers including Dragoon Brewing Company, Barrio Brewing Co., Sentinel Peak Brewing, Nimbus Brewing Company, Ten Fifty‐Five Brewing, Borderlands Brewing Company and Iron John's Brewing Company.

For more information on Brother John's, visit the restaurant's website.

Senate President Andy Biggs must be trolling for attention from the national media. He must miss the days when Jon Stewart called Arizona "the meth lab of democracy" and showed TUSD Board member Michael Hicks warning us about the use of burritos as a propaganda tool by the Mexican American Studies program. Seems like Biggs is looking for a little love—or at least some attention—from new Daily Show host Trevor Noah.

How else can you explain Biggs elevating State Senator Sylvia Allen to the position of chair of the Senate Education Committee to replace Kelli Ward who's off fighting McCain for his senate seat? Can you think of a better subject for national hilarity? She declared that the earth is 6,000 years old, and when another Republican senator tried to shush her, she repeated it. She believes the government is poisoning us with chem-trails from airplanes (Quote from her Facebook page: "I have watched the chem-trails move out until the entire sky is covered with flimsy, thin cloud cover. It is not the regular exhaust coming from the plane it is something they are spraying. It is there in plain sight. What is it they are leaving behind that covers the sky?"). She said it would be great if going to church were mandatory, though to be fair, she used this as an example of something she'd like to see, not something she was proposing as law. And her high school diploma is the end of her formal education.

The story writes itself, doesn't it? The only problem will be coming up with a punchline strong enough to top the facts. But I trust the Daily Show writers and the writers on late night talk shows to rise to the challenge.

Like all things David O. Russell, Joy is a lot of fun. He crams as much as he can into each scene—personalities, conflict, set dressing—and if you cut anything, you’d have to cut a lot. Better to keep his style and the excess than be stuck with a compromise.

His unique rhythm thrives in the real life rags-to-riches story of a single mother who became a home shopping dynamo. Russell’s muse, Jennifer Lawrence, shines (when doesn’t she?) as Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop, among other household devices. Her personal and professional struggles conspire against her and she realizes the only way out is up.

There’s more good work from Robert De Niro—whom Russell used to great effect in Silver Linings Playbook—and frequent collaborator Bradley Cooper, but this is all about one of the best tag teams around, Russell and his leading lady.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is giving Arizona $25 million to improve the quality of drinking water and wastewater facilities.

The funds are given to the state's Water Infrastructure Finance Authority, which will then disperse the money to several projects in smaller and more economically marginalized communities that will tackle those three issues, while also promoting sustainability.

WIFA anticipates allocating $915,000 to Buckskin Sanitary District, located along the Colorado River near Parker, Arizona. WIFA has previously used EPA funds to provide approximately $4.3 million in loans and $65,000 in technical assistance to the district to improve and expand wastewater service and eliminate failing septic systems. With the newest three-year WIFA design loan the District will design plans for further expansion of its collection and treatment services. When construction is complete on this phase of the project, an additional 1,762 people will have sewer service and the failing septic systems will be eliminated. 

When it comes to wastewater infrastructure, the money will be used to support public and private water systems for treatment, distribution, and storage. It also goes to fund wastewater projects that would build or improve treatment plants, sewer collection systems, water reuse facilities and stormwater facilities, an EPA press release said. 

Overall, the EPA has awarded Arizona a total of $615 million since the state's Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund programs were created one in 1988 and the other in 1996. Those funds are used for various water quality projects like pollution control and watershed restoration, according to the EPA.

Learn more about the loans here.