(upbeat music) - [Tom] This week on "Arizona Illustrated," connecting students and citizen scientists in the garden.

- Oh my God, that's broccoli.

- [Tom] Promoting food security across the globe from right here in Tucson.

- [Man] We try to find out what is it that people are doing are actually making them more resilient.

- [Tom] A virtual primer on Jewish mysticism.

- When you pick up a baby, you inhale the fragrance and that's the best word that I can use.

I would call that a mystical experience.

- And Muralist on Murals.

(upbeat music) Welcome to "Arizona Illustrated".

I'm Tom McNamara.

We're here on the mall at the University of Arizona which is typically bustling with tens of thousands of students having returned for the spring semester, but not this year.

U Arizona reports that just over 3,900 students have registered for in-person classes and they along with about four to 6,000 staff and faculty will test twice a week for COVID-19.

Now paired with wearing masks and social distancing, the administration hopes this will keep the campus community safe.

And now here's an update on Arizona's COVID-19 situation.

Arizona's COVID 19 diagnosis rate ranked the worst in the US just one week ago.

Yet weekly numbers recently released by Johns Hopkins University suggest a possible leveling off in new cases, deaths, test results and testing positivity.

Over the past week, nearly 180,000 additional Arizonans were vaccinated bringing the current total to nearly 300,000 or 0.51% of the state's population.

For information regarding vaccinations visit your local County or tribal website in Pima County, visit pima.gov.

In a time when virtual learning is the primary, if inadequate educational experience the University of Arizona's Community and School Gardening Program is creating some healthy and effective distance learning alternatives by connecting young students with citizen scientists in the garden.

(guitar music) - When I'm stressed out, when I'm feeling anxiety to get outside and get my hands in the dirt and garden, it's medicine, kids feel different.

Kids feel better.

Kids feel connected to their schools.

They feel connected to one another.

And so I think that there's a light bulb that goes on once you get kids out of the classroom, and you're not just learning because the teacher is telling you to learn but you're learning because the learning helps us do things and the garden is a great way to demonstrate that.

Hi, good morning, everybody.

Yeah, so here we are today at JB Wright Elementary School.

Earlier in the semester, we brought small groups of U of A of a students to this garden and we weeded untilled and planted.

And we're really excited to be here today to bring the kids out.

And the kids will all harvest produce that they get to take home.

The U of A Community and School Garden Program.

It's really a partnership.

It's not just the U of A, but it's Tucson Unified School District.

And then to me, the mission of our program is to use school gardens to connect students with their emotions and their feelings, to connect kids with the natural world, to connect kids with each other, to connect kids with food systems.

I think school gardens can do all those things.

- Oh my God, that's broccoli.

- We know that getting outside in general is very good for kids' brains.

It's good for figuring out problem solving.

It's good for all of this kind of experiential stuff that you can't really get in the same way in a classroom or from a book.

And from my perspective, also gardens are great because they're like living laboratories.

It's like great to use it as the lens for all of the science stuff you can talk about.

You can talk about with the garden, cause it's just a little mini ecosystem in your backyard.

The program I coordinate is called the SEEC Program, which stands for Supporting Environmental Education and Communities.

And my job is to go into schools around town and to provide environmental education and hands-on science learning directly to kids.

The idea is to give them the hands on experience, collecting data, doing the scientific method.

Learning the science isn't just something you read about in a book or facts memorize but it's something you do and it's could be fun.

(soft music) So what we're doing today, we're gonna review a little bit of what we talked about with flower anatomy.

And then we're going to go into pollination.

When COVID hit, everything went remote.

So I went two directions.

I would use Zoom and I would come into classes via Zoom.

Once a week, we would do a lot of nature journaling.

From week to week I'd be like, "go outside and find something that you think is cool.

Something you want to wonder about and bring it back."

So materials, all you need for today is a journal of some sort, something to write down your observations in.

Other days, I would do engaging things like one time I caught a toad and just held it up to the screen and just yelled about it and had kids ask any questions they want.

And meanwhile taught them about amphibians and what it means to be an amphibian in the desert.

So they come after rainstorms and they do all their breeding between May and kind of late summer.

And then they dig back underground.

The arm of my work also became this video series that I started on YouTube called "Science Will Save the World" in which I challenged myself to come up with an idea of something hands-on that kids could do at home with the materials available to them.

Hello, my friends, my name is Jessie.

This is penny.

And this is "Science Will Save the World".

This week we are building off what we talked about last week when we did flower anatomy.

So when I taught flower anatomy, I had them draw a picture of a flower parts along with me, while I built a model of a flower incidentally it was on my head and then I dissected a flower in front of the camera while also dissecting my own head.

So hopefully one of those modes stack.

You ready for it?

I'm so ready.

I was born ready to become a flower.

Oh my gosh.

Look at this.

Look at me.

I'm gorgeous.

(laughs) If you can do it in a fun exciting way that that is memorable too, I think that's like most of the challenge of communicating science.

It's straightish, that's exactly what I intended.

Hi friends.

My name is Jessie and I am here today in this garden to tell you about the science of food webs.

Very magical power.

One thing that's special about this program that maybe adds a layer to just garden education and having kids work out in gardens is that we also do teacher trainings and help with teacher professional development.

- This is our intro slide.

You can see it gives us instructions on how to use the Pear Deck.

- When the pandemic hit, we began to think about ways that we can support teachers who are jumping into just learning how to teach online.

I mean, everyone knows that that's a huge challenge.

So we created videos that stand alone, as well as videos that build into larger lessons that teach concepts like parts of a plant, how has he grows, et cetera.

Others like our leafcutter bees and our Mason bees nest in existing holes in softwood.

I am not a videographer.

I'm not a photographer, but I think that the pandemic has kind of made all of us think differently about the way that we do our jobs.

And I've learned so much about working with the community and working directly with folks and learning together with other people.

And that's something I'll take forward as an educator.

- One of the first things that we've noticed is that we have more teachers than ever attending our professional development trainings.

And that's because more than ever teachers are motivated to get students outside and use outside spaces to teach.

Today you guys are going to be harvesting some from the garden and the food that you harvest you get to take home with you today.

I've done this work for a while.

Watching kids grow things and pick things and eat things that they might not otherwise eat to see that excitement.

When you get a kid in the garden that grows something and to pick and to eat something that they grew and to see that light bulb go on, it's a powerful thing.

And I think that the need for this type of learning I think it's not going away.

- I think the bigger picture importance of the work I do is that I want to make science be a welcoming place for students of all backgrounds and all experiences.

I think science should be a place that's just about creativity and collaboration and curiosity.

And I think that the only way we're gonna be able to solve these big kind of environmental challenges of our day is to get people with all kinds of experiences in all kinds of ways of knowing and understanding and looking at a problem to be able to solve it.

(soft music) - For more on the University of Arizona's Community and School Garden Program, visit their website at schoolgardens.arizona.edu.

Most international agencies working on development projects around the world are based in major capitals like Washington, DC, London, Nairobi.

Then there's Tango International based right here in downtown Tucson.

(soft music) - People have asked me that why aren't we in Washington, DC, closer to the action.

There's a reason why we're in Tucson, because if you're in DC, all you do is go to one meeting after another.

You don't really get much accomplished.

Out here we actually get work done.

We actually can do analysis.

We can do report writing and we're much more productive.

I'm Tim Frankenberger.

I'm the president of Tango International.

We've been around for 20 years.

Our main objective is to provide technical assistance to non-governmental organizations and UN organizations that are involved in development.

Usually in Africa or Asia or Latin America.

We will design projects to help deal with poverty, we'll design projects to respond to disasters like a drought or a hurricane or flood.

We also set up monitoring and evaluation systems to try to determine whether these projects are making a difference.

We are also known in the world right now as one of the leaders in resilience measurement.

So by resilience, what we're talking about is people's ability to bounce back from various shocks are exposed to like these droughts or floods.

And those people that are better able to bounce back are much more resilient than those that can't.

And so we try to find out what is it that people are doing in terms of projects that are actually making them more resilient and then try to encourage more investment in those types of things.

People that have a lot of social capital.

And by that, what I mean is they help others and can rely on others when they need it.

That kind of trade is universally found in all of our studies as being important for allowing people to manage shocks.

Another thing that has a big effect is people's ability to save.

So savings groups that have been started up in these communities really make a difference in terms of having resources that you can get back on your feet with, particularly savings for women has been something that has really been an important contribution to being resilient, diversifying livelihoods.

So by that, what means not just doing farming but maybe you've got another part-time job in the city or you've got a relative, that's got a part-time job in the city that can make up for income shortfalls when your farming's not doing well or a drought wipes out your crops, that can make a big difference in helping people manage these shocks.

(upbeat music) We're working in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia.

And then as we go down, we're in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria.

And then in Asia, we work a lot in Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Nepal.

We have worked Pakistan in the past.

Thailand do a lot of work in the Philippines.

We're in Honduras, we're in Guatemala, Colombia.

So we're pretty spread out.

(instrumental music) A lot of the paradigms about competition between people and the survival of the fittest kind of approach, whether you're talking about businesses or competitors for resources, that's kind of been the model that capitalism has always been based on.

And what we're finding is that where you find collaboration and synergy between people working with each other, that's usually where you're gonna be more resilient to these climate changes, to these market changes that can have a negative effect.

And so this collaborative development is what we think is the big difference that we're finding that would work here as well.

So in United States, you have this division between everybody along political lines, and that has only made it worse in terms of being able to have healthy communities or being able to take care of the environment which you're living so the environment can take care of you later.

(soft music) I've been at this now for...

I'm getting old now.

So I've been at this for about 40 years.

I actually think I got the best job in the world.

I get to go to all these different neat places.

I get to meet all these wonderful people.

The work that we do is not only challenging, but rewarding if we actually have a positive result coming out of our studies.

So I don't really think of it as work.

I kind of think it is, this is what I do, so I can't imagine not doing it actually.

- (speaks in foreign language) - And I think a lot of the people that work here feel the same way.

I don't think they think of this as a job.

I think they think of this as a, something they feel proud of, that they actually are contributing.

And I think those are the best kinds of jobs you could possibly have.

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Each week, Rabbi Sandy Seltzer guides his students at the Jewish History Museum in Tucson into the world of Jewish mysticism.

It's one of the few Jewish mysticism classes in the US taught by a rabbi.

So enter the world of Kabbalah and Zohar with Rabbi Seltzer and his students.

(dramatic music) - Well, the Torah resembles a beautiful woman who was hidden in a secluded chamber of her palace and who has a secret lover.

When he comes to her, she begins from behind the curtain to speak words and keeping with his understanding until very slowly insight comes to him only when he is become familiar with her, that she revealed herself to him face to face and speak to him of all her hidden secrets in all her hidden ways, which have been in her heart from the beginning.

Such an individual is then called hatan Torah, a bride room of the Torah to whom she discloses all her secrets concealing nothing.

What do you make of this?

- A sexual metaphor comes in a bride and bridegroom to say that it is approached to the outer limit of intimacy and together-- - It's more than a sexual metaphor.

It's even more than that.

He's comparing the Torah to a flirtatious woman.

Well, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio actually as part of a very Orthodox family.

So my exposure to Judaism was very traditional.

As a late teenager, I attended Hebrew-speaking camps where we did everything in Hebrew.

When I was 19, I enlisted in the army and while stationed in France, I decided to make my first visit to Israel.

And so we're on this boat about to enter Israel at Dawn on a given day.

And I remembered a prayer that I had learned when I was a kid.

(speaks in Hebrew) Blessed are you Oh God who renewest your presence in Zion.

Tears came to my eyes because what I had prayed was act was now actualized.

The reality of Israel, historically, biblically contemporaneously was no longer theoretical.

It was experiential.

And once something is experiential, it's unforgettable.

If there was any experience that overwhelmed me and moved me to become a rabbi, it was that.

I became more interested in aspects of the Jewish faith, et cetera.

They were not Orthodox and ultimately made a decision to become a reform rabbi.

Reform engages in the most liberal interpretation of the Jewish traditions, Jewish practice, Jewish rituals, et cetera.

For me, it was the most expressive way of doing what I wanted to do.

It was the most open.

When I worked for our national reform movement, it was my responsibility to run two summer adult study programs.

And among the faculty, were two professors and they taught mysticism.

And I said, "wow, where have I been all my life?"

It became part of my very being.

And when the opportunity came to teach it here in Tucson, first at Temple Emanu-El, and then at the Jewish Museum, I really jumped at the opportunity.

This is what the book looks like.

So some of you are panicking right now and saying, "Oh wait, does this mean I have to buy this book and figure it all out?"

A lot of people are under the misapprehension that Kabbalah refers to a book.

It does not.

The word Kabbalah literally means to accept or to welcome to become a part of.

The Kabbalists, they said, "we have found the ways and means to understand the divine and to experience God regularly daily."

Now the word Zohar means radiance.

And this is the Book of Radiance.

This compendia of material edited in the 13th century.

And so if you immerse yourself in this compendium you will become radiant.

(speaks in Hebrew) You will shine like the radiance of the sky.

So that's how it all came about.

I want to see something real and Judaism doesn't give me that particular revelation.

And that is one of the basic reasons as we shall see why the Kabbalists came up with what they did.

Tucson, maybe the only place in the United States, where courses in Zohar are taught by rabbis under synagogue hospices.

I get into the material and I like to convey that excitement and meaning to those in the class.

If we were reading the telephone book, I would get excited.

Look at this name, John Smith, that's a marvelous name, John Smith.

Somehow as a teacher, that's the way I teach.

I hope that it will transform their lives in ways that they could not have imagined.

The knowledgeable will be as radiant as the brightness of the firmament.

So the Kabbalists, because they studied the Zohar, the Book of Radiance, became as illuminated as the beauty of the heavens.

And so all of you, hopefully.

(phone ringing) All of you by virtue of entering the mysterious... (phone ringing) Hello, goodbye.

By entering the mysterious world of the Zohar will become as radiant as the firmament.

(phone ringing) Would I consider myself a mystic.

It's an interesting question.

I will consider myself a mystic to the extent that I believe that there is another dimension of reality above and beyond what we see in front of us.

When you pick up a baby, you inhale the fragrance and that's the best word that I can use.

The fragrance of that infant, it's transformative.

I would call that a mystical experience.

Religion to be really profound and meaningful has to encompass the emotional.

It can not...

The intellectual is there and the intellectual is important, but you have to transcend it unless you are really emotionally involved.

It loses its power.

(soft music) - For more on the class, "Entering the World of the Jewish Mystic" led by Rabbi Sandy Seltzer visit the Jewish History Museum website at jewishhistorymuseum.org.

At last count, there are well over 80 murals aluminating the walls of Tucson.

Vibrant, thought-provoking, gorgeous, but those are my words.

We wondered what some of our local muralists might say.

So here's the first installment of our occasional series "Muralist on Murals."

- When you asked what my favorite mural was like, I just couldn't not pick this one.

I don't think we use airbrush to its capacity anymore.

This really speaks to that era.

I think in the 90s, especially in Tucson where we were a little obsessed with California.

I don't know too much about it, but I do know who painted it.

David Miller, Harold Gabitzsch were our teachers at Tucson High.

They had a lot of murals around town, especially bars for some reason.

I think they maybe got paid to do the mural in drinks.

I am related to David Miller, he's my father.

But both of them are my art teachers in high school.

The way I learned how to paint, especially painting murals was from Harold Gabitzsch and his commercial art class.

(soft music) My name is Alison Miller.

I'm a muralist.

I'm from Tucson, Arizona.

And I run a organization called Alley Cat Murals where we facilitate community opportunities to paint.

Maybe our most notable work is a long Speedway.

I have a stingray mural, we did with the Desert Museum.

Bentley's, we did an E.T.

mural for them.

If my favorite mural has been graffitied, I'll reach out to the wall's owner and offer my services.

This is just been with all of us for so long, especially when you get off the highway and you're trying to come into town.

It's one of the first to see.

It has no real story that I'm aware of.

I just I'm all about black representation.

Growing up in this town, back in the 90s, there wasn't a lot of black kids in my class.

My mom was the only black person I knew for a really long time.

Seeing a mural, so prominent so large, was just a really exciting spark for me as a kid.

It's painted by someone named L. It features all of these historic, I'd say historic characters from Fourth Avenue Street Fair.

And I remember some of these characters from when I would go to the Street Fair when I was a kid.

I'm very nostalgic to zone in and this is definitely something I grew up with and really feel protective over.

(upbeat music) - Thank you for joining us here on "Arizona Illustrated".

I'm Tom McNamara.

See you next week.

(upbeat music)