Reproductive rights come up a lot during election season and not all politicians have great things to say. Esty shop owner Sarah Palatnik decided to make a statement about anti-feminist politicians and make periods better, all with a pair of underpants.  

Introducing Bloody Marys: Underpants made of leak-proof, moisture-wicking, absorbent, anti-bacterial fabric with attachable heat packs, to make periods more comfortable and eco friendly. But those super-cool features are not the main draw of Palatnik's underwear line. That would be the Blood Dumpsters:

What’s a Blood Dumpster?! Just a U.S. politician who has tried in the past or who is currently trying to pass legislation that hinders women’s reproductive rights, and in so doing has had his or her face wind up in the crotch of a pair of Bloody Mary undies, for YOU to bleed all over! As a bonus, $3 of every Bloody Marys sale goes to a Planned Parenthood located in the state governed by your chosen Blood Dumpster. Have fun, look cute, and be totally badass on your period with Bloody Marys!

Hey Amigos,

I'm pretty bad at goodbyes so I'll just cut to the chase: I'm no longer able to write the Into the Mild feature for Tucson Weekly. I've enjoyed writing it immensely and hope that you enjoyed reading it, but my time is simply stretched too thin to continue. I'm currently working, writing two books, looking for permanent work in the United States, dealing with banking issues, and trying to maintain a social life. I'm juggling all of this with very limited internet access. Writing for Tucson Weekly is a luxury that I can't squeeze into my schedule anymore.

I'm now using the lion's share of my writing time writing two books. The first will be a collection of short stories from my time exploring the world alone and the new perspective it puts on life's struggles. The other will be about working for grassroots charity groups, with sections on my stint living at refugee camps, my time in the Real Life SuperHero community, and the experience of working for several small organizations in the global south. I hope to have both books published sometime in 2017. I'll also post stories and photos on my personal site, IntoTheMild.co, from time to time.

I owe many thanks to former TW editor Irene Messina for writing an article about a charity project I used to run (found here) and then allowing me to cut my teeth by writing the “Hero of the Week” column, despite my having zero training, experience, or skill in writing. I'm also extremely grateful to Chelo Grubb and the other current staff at Tucson Weekly for giving me another opportunity to share stories with TW, this time personal accounts of exorcisms and life at refugee camps. I hope that my stories added a unique flavor to TW and hope to someday, when life has slowed to a sprint, write for Tucson Weekly again.


May all your dreams come true,
Jason

Looks like Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller has an opponent in the August GOP primary.

John Winchester, the Arizona state director for Christians United for Israel and an outreach director for the AZ Center for Judaic Studies at the UA, told the Weekly today that he thinks it’s time for Miller to go because “she’s a problem.”

“Ally facilitates conflict,” the Tucson native said. “A lot of people are asking me, ‘Why are you running against another Republican?’ Well, she’s irrelevant. She’s preaches low taxes, but taxes are projected to go up for the next three years. She preaches about wasteful spending, but she doesn’t have any influence there. We need someone who can influence the county.”

Miller won a four-way GOP primary with 38 percent of the vote in 2012 and then went on to win District 1—a heavily Republican district that includes the Catalina Foothills, Marana and Oro Valley—in the general election.

Since her election, Miller has feuded with her fellow supervisors, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and her own District 1 staff, where she has lost two chiefs of staff and numerous other employees in just four years. She has frequently voted against county’s economic development efforts that are supported by the local business community, including a plan to move a road to help Raytheon, the county’s largest private employer.

You've read the list, now check them out. From the brasserie to the barbecue and with flavors from across the globe, here are just some of the 100 Essential Dishes we picked for 2016.

 

Did we miss any?

A delightful and funny film starring Catherine Frot as the title character, a rich woman in 1920’s France who likes to sing for her music club.

Problem is, she’s pretty terrible. Her horrible voice is seen as daring by some, and she takes her show on the road to the alternate horror and pleasure of audiences. Some see her as an embarrassment, while others see her as a hero to freedom seeking individuals everywhere.

Director Xavier Giannoli has made a sweet, humorous, beautiful ode to free spirits. It’s early in the film year, but it needs to be remembered months from now as a contender for Best Foreign Film, not to mention consideration in the costume, art direction and cinematography categories.

On top of being funny and enjoyable, it’s a true treat to look at. Frot is an absolute gem in the film, as are Andre Marcon as the critic Georges Dumont and Michel Fau as his anarchist sidekick, Atos Pezzini. 

Yes, Tucson, it's finally time—Time to fill out your Best of Tucson® Ballot.

You'll notice some new categories, you'll miss some old ones. So it goes.

Everything is pretty much the same, with one major exception: We're only accepting nominations for local institutions. We've been back and forth on this issue, but it all comes down to celebrating Tucson.

We're celebrating our people who make our city great. We're celebrating Tucson's best. We're celebrating Tucson.

Go vote. This write-in, vote-for-who-ever-you-want round of balloting will close on May 15. Then, we'll compile a list of your top 5 (local) nominations, and create a finalists ballot to determine the winners.

As always: You're required to fill in something for 30 categories for your ballot to count. If you don't have an opinion, leave the space blank. 

Any questions?

Here's the latest twist on abortion legislation at the Arizona statehouse: The FDA today updated its protocols for the use of Mifepristone, the so-called abortion pill.

And right now, Gov. Doug Ducey has a bill on his desk that would force doctors to prescribe the pill under an older protocol that requires women to take a higher dose than necessary and bans its use past seven weeks of pregnancy.

On Monday, Republicans in the Arizona Legislature passed HB 1324, which requires doctors to use an FDA protocol that dates back to 2000, when the drug was first approved.

Locking in the outdated FDA protocols has been an ongoing campaign by anti-abortion lawmakers as well as the Arizona Center for Policy, the Christian conservative lobbying group that has frequently pushed legislation to restrict abortion and gay rights. As the Weekly explained in the past when a similar bill passed but was blocked by the courts:

[The older FDA protocol] required a higher dosage of the medication than is commonly used today and restricted its use to seven weeks into a pregnancy. In the 14 years since the drug has been in use in the United States, physicians have developed what's called "evidence-based protocols," which have shown that the medication is safe to use through the first nine weeks of pregnancy at a lower dosage.

Reverting to the original FDA protocols would restrict the use of the drug during those additional two weeks and require that patients make an additional visit to the doctor—a requirement that can be particularly onerous for women in rural Arizona who must travel to a metropolitan area to have an abortion.

Here's something different.

Imagine a fully staged production of the Shrek in musical form, complete with costumes and sets and lights. OK, that's easy enough. But when I say fully staged, I mean that the stage will be full of all kinds of students, including those from the deaf and blind community.

Not only will there be a full-voiced, full-sighted Shrek singing and dancing his way into our hearts, but shadowing that Shrek will be a hearing-impaired actor performing the same character in American Sign Language. This shadowing technique will be extended to most of the characters, and blind students will be in on the staging and singing as well.

This unique theater event will be given life by Arts Express, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to providing arts education and family entertainment,” says Karen F. Wiese, Executive Director. This is the third year they have done a musical. Last year it was Beauty and The Beast, and the first was Big River. These productions are a central feature of their Arts Express Building careACTOR program.

“We've seen some incredible things happen,” says Weise.

A question. When I went to the University of California, tuition was pretty cheap, about $100 a year, which is about $800 in today's dollars. Actually, that was a registration fee, meaning the U.C. system didn't actually charge tuition. California's system of state colleges cost even less, and city colleges, what we call community colleges here, cost nothing. During the same time, California was in the top ten in K-12 per student spending. How was the state able to be so generous with its education back then compared to today? Were tax revenues, and tax rates, that much higher? This is a genuine question. I don't know the answer.

This isn't a new question for me, or a new source of wonder that we put so little value on educating our children that we keep cutting state funding for public higher education. But it arose today because of an article about some trouble our ex-Governor Janet Napolitano, now University of California president, is in. The U.C. system has been admitting out-of-state students who have lower qualifications than some California students who are being rejected, according to a state auditor's report.

It shouldn't be that way. The first duty of a state's college system is to educate its own students. Out-of-staters come second. But the reason is obvious. Resident tuition and fees come to $12,240 a year. In a world where earning a college degree is increasingly important, that's a prohibitively high cost, leading to the crippling debt our college students face. But as high as that is, nonresident tuition is three times higher: $37,000 a year. When the university system is cash strapped, it should be no surprise that it courts as many out-of-state high rollers as it can.

Some California legislators are Shocked! Shocked! that the universities are giving preference to out-of-state students. They're not nearly so shocked that their funding cuts have put the university on the horns of a dilemma: cut educational services and standards or figure out new sources of income, like, say, adding students who pay three times the too-high tuition paid by residents.

Alright, everybody, listen up. The Red Cross has put out a call asking for help filling their "significant need" for donations of O negative blood.

As you may remember from your 5th grade science class, O negative blood is the "universal donor" that can be transfused into patients with any blood type. The Red Cross needs to keep a lot on hand—and they need a lot of help to make that happen, as fewer than 7 percent of people in the U.S. have O negative blood.

The Red Cross must collect approximately 14,000 blood and platelet donations every day for the patients at about 2,600 hospitals and transfusion centers nationwide. Blood and platelets are needed to respond to patient emergencies, including accident and burn victims, heart surgery and organ transplant patients, and those receiving treatment for leukemia, cancer or sickle cell disease.