The following is an original production of AZPM News.

(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, meet a group dedicated to rescuing and rehoming Boston Terriers.

(Rebecca) They just want to be around their people.

They're clowns, they're just funny.

(Tom) A local theater provides support for the next generation of talent.

(Rachel) It's so child centered and the teachers, they're doing it for the love of helping the kids.

(Tom) See why this local tree's scent is in perfumes all around the globe.

(Jack) Sweet Acacia is one of the best species for our area.

(Tom) And our collaboration with the School of Art wins an Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Innovation.

(Rod) She carried a piece of every place she went with her.

When she hit Hopi, it all kind of came together.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, joining you from the brand new AZPM Newsroom here at the Baker Center for Public Media.

You know, every year millions of unwanted or feral cats and dogs are turned into shelters all across the United States, but there simply isn't room for all of them.

Here in Arizona, some local non-profits are trying to help specific breeds.

And we caught up with one of them right here in Tucson.

♪ JOYFUL MUSIC ♪ Oh, what a smile!

♪ JOYFUL MUSIC ♪ This is Cortez.

We love going for walks.

He enjoys meeting new people.

He's very social.

We're Courtney and Joe, and this is Nugget.

We were fostering with the rescue, and we got Nugget two years ago.

She's full of spirit and love, and she loves to cuddle.

This is Tika, and this is Priya, and there is no love more perfect than the love of a dog.

Hello, sweetheart.

(Rebecca) I am the president of Arizona Boston Terrier Rescue.

I drove up here from Scottsdale from the Phoenix area, and we're having our annual picnic.

Spring picnic is what we call it, and basically it's just a celebration of the dogs, of our volunteers, of our adopters, and just enjoying the breed.

Four, four, three, four.

Right here.

[ CHEERING ] We got a winner!

We do some fundraising here, so it's just a really fun event just to get together.

For the love of the dog, we bend over backwards for them.

The dogs are great.

They're awesome.

( Pam) Bella is a sweetheart.

She loves people.

She loves dogs.

She's just been a wonderful companion.

My name is Pam Marchbanks, and I am the Tucson Director, Arizona Boston Terrier Rescue.

I've just kind of always gravitated to that breed.

They're small.

I can handle them.

I can pick them up and love on them and yet, do a lot of things with them.

They're not fufu dogs at all.

This one can climb a mesquite tree if I let her.

She's after lizards or mice.

She's brought me gifts.

[ LAUGHS ] They are um, they're resilient little dogs.

We take in most dogs that have either been abandoned or abused or neglected.

A lot of people have economic issues and can no longer care for the dog.

Maybe the dog is too active for them and so they decide to surrender it.

We strive very hard not to judge anybody.

We just are happy that they reach out to us and give us the opportunity to rehome the dog into a better environment for the dog, and the people.

I am a foster for the rescue to take dogs that are either owner surrendered, or strays.

My husband and I keep them here when Pam calls and needs somebody to assist.

So that's what we do.

This is Rico.

He was one of our last fosters before our current one, and we failed.

We foster failed.

He just kind of fit right in with our group.

He's kind of our kind of crazy.

He's very energetic.

He's about two.

He had a lot of allergies when we first got him.

So, he was owner surrendered.

They were actually going to put him down, and I said, "absolutely not."

So when we got him, I got his diet all cleaned up and got him back on track and he's doing great, full of energy.

We told Pam we wanted to adopt him, but I always encourage people to foster because some people think that, you know, having a dog is easy and we know it's not.

It takes a lot of time and some people don't want to spend that much time but that's how a foster failed too.

We took them in because they were surrendered or abandoned, or you know.

And so then we, we decided to keep them at the end.

We'll say "We'll keep them.

You don't have to find a forever home."

This is Petunia, and she loves everyone.

Boston Terriers are very loving dogs and they just want to be around their people all the time and they're clowns.

They play a lot.

They love to play and they're just, they're just funny.

They snort.

They snore and they fart.

Their farts are really stinky.

( Producer) And yet you keep them?

And yet we keep them, yes, yes.

And you know, one of the reasons why I like the breed was that they didn't bark very much.

There's some barking, but generally they don't bark, and I kind of like that, you know?

I'm not a yippie dog kind of person, I guess.

(Pam) Rescue isn't something that you take necessarily for a month or two unless you're fostering.

It's a lifelong commitment for the dog and that's what we strive to do is place each dog in the proper environment for the home.

There are more breeds out there that definitely need fosters.

If there's somebody that likes pit bulls, or shepards, or something like that.

So we always try to encourage people to go to a rescue or go to the Humane Society.

Look there first before they go, "I'm going to a breeder."

because we have so much overbreeding right now.

I never expected it to mushroom into what it has become at this point.

It's been so rewarding meeting people all over the community, making lifelong friends and of course the dogs.

I can tell you the dog's name before I can remember the people's names.

This is Panda.

She's 11 years old and adopted from Arizona Boston Terrier Rescue.

This is Paloma.

She's actually being trained to be my service dog.

This is Oliver.

He's a Frenchton So he's a half French Bulldog and half Boston Terrier.

He was surrendered because his owner ended up in a hospital, and we're just giving him foster home until he finds his forever home.

Her name is Lucy Lulu.

Boston Terrier Rescue people rescued me.

(Pam) Thank you all for coming, for being a part of our rescue, for loving our kids.

♪ JOYFUL MUSIC ♪ Boston Terriers!

[ CHEERING ] You know, every confident performer starts somewhere with that first line, that first rehearsal or someone who believes in them.

Well the Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre has created a space for young performers to take that first big step.

[ AUDIENCE CLAPPING ] (Zachary) So, Lendl, would you actually start off stage and then Gail is gonna call for you a bunch of times and then you'll come on out.

Lendl!

Lendl!

Lendl!

Gail, what's wrong?

You okay?

(John) There's so many points where we have to just do things that have such a high risk of failure and embarrassment and we have to do that.

It's so many different times in so many different ways and in such a safe environment where it's okay to fail and be embarrassed and I think that has really, really helped me in lots of areas of my life.

[ GROUP VOCAL EXERCISES ] (Annika) Scoundrel and Scamp were really focused in bringing the next generation of artists to our theater and so we wanna provide a space for them to grow and foster in that.

(Zachary) Schools are losing access to arts funding and we are seeing arts funding being stripped across the country.

It's really important that theater becomes a space where we can have open conversations, where the actors on stage, whether they be students or adults, can say and speak what those characters are feeling and the audience doesn't have an opportunity to jump in and react but rather they have to sit with what is being said on stage.

What led us to enroll my child here at Scoundrel and the Scamp and in theater classes was that one of the teachers from Scoundrel and the Scamp taught a theater class at her school and she just heated up, she loved it so much.

Piper, we have to go, we have to get help.

(Alexandra) I love teaching kids, I love allowing them to show their best selves and their creativity and to show who they are deep down inside.

Right, I'm gonna put another emotion inside my body to feel something else, good job.

So we have two different types of youth classes.

The first one's a general acting and theater arts class so it gives them that- those foundational skills that they need to start acting, whether that be improvisation, physical movements, vocabulary, we like to start them there and then they move up into Scamp Company.

And Scamp Company is really the youth theater ensemble so we want them to feel very connected in their group, connected to their arts and for them to continue to grow as actors.

(Alexandra) Do we like this version?

Okay, we don't like this version.

So with devising, what's really cool about it is that I ask them what their certain song is or certain movie or certain foods that they like, depending on what grades they are.

And when they answered that, then I just tell them to take that inspiration from whatever song, movie, food and write a play about it.

And then we go from there.

(John) One of the funnest things we do is we do a lot of improv games, which are really hard and sometimes don't go very well.

They're useful in developing skills like how to improvise for an interview or something.

So I really enjoy those.

They go from the very first stage of being cast in their play and doing their audition to rehearsing to finally doing the tech with us on our stage with all the lights and costumes and props.

And then we bring an audience in and they get to perform for everyone.

Telling stories is one of the oldest human things that we do.

Stories bring together community and really our goal was we wanted to create a space for community to share stories.

(John) All the teachers, all the students are really kind of just really excited to help you and support you.

(Rachel) It's so child centered and the teachers, it's just so clear like they're doing it for the love of helping the kids learn and there's just not ego.

It's like a home, a theater home that they can like grow in their skills from when they're little to when they're teens.

(Elizabeth) It is so important for young people to have adults, a community of adults that they can trust, that they see modeling the way they want to be in the world, to have guides to help them navigate the hard times that we're in.

♪ SOFT UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ (Tom) That last story was produced by our former student employee, Mohim Jahongirova who's from Uzbekistan and is now making her way back to her home country to become a famous news anchor there.

So thanks Mohim.

The Sonoran Desert is home to thousands of native plants that can be used in different settings around the home.

And today we focus on a tough, reliable tree that also produces a sweet, delicate smell that's inspired perfumes in other parts of the world.

♪ SOFT PIANO ♪ (Jack) My name is Jack Dash.

I'm the gardens manager here at Tohono Chul And we are in our performance garden area.

And behind me here, you'll see a tree called Sweet Acacia.

Sweet Acacia or vachellia farnesiana is a species that can be found from the borderlands of Arizona and Sonora, east through Texas and down south into Mexico.

And not only is this a tree that's native to this part of the Americas, but because of the incredible fragrance of its blossoms, it has actually been cultivated in Europe since the 1500s and is a frequently used ingredient in perfumes.

And so that name, Sweet Acacia, is a reflection of the incredible smell of those blossoms that are sort of a gold globe in the springtime.

The dense canopy makes this an ideal plant for bringing birds and other wildlife into your backyards.

And those fragrant blossoms are excellent at attracting butterflies, bees, and other insect pollinators in the Southwest.

So this is a drought-tolerant tree that can grow completely fine on its own, near roadsides or on rocky slopes, close to the Arizona-Sonora border.

But in a yard, if you provide additional water in the warm months, you're gonna see a faster growth rate and a more lush canopy that will create a denser shade for your yard.

This plant has many fine horticultural qualities.

One of those is that it is evergreen.

So unlike many of our desert trees that will drop their leaves in the winter, this plant retains foliage throughout all of the seasons, providing good shade throughout the year.

Additionally, it's one of our faster-growing native plants.

It can reach heights of 25 or even 30 feet with a beautiful umbrella-shaped canopy.

Like many other members of the bean family, Fabaceae, this plant hosts nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root system that take our atmospheric nitrogen that we all breathe every day and converts it into a plant-available form.

So this plant really in many ways is its own fertilizer factory, and other plants will do well when planted in the vicinity of it.

Like so many of our native trees, this plant does have fairly vicious thorns, but what you'll notice on mature Sweet Acacias is that the older bark and the lower trunk has no thorns on it.

This is a tree that you could walk up and hug.

Now, because of its ultimate size and its wide canopy, it's ideal to plant this species a good ways from a house or a structure where you aren't gonna have to do any unsightly pruning to prevent it from blocking solar panels or creating a hazard for roofs.

If you're looking for a large tree that will create an excellent shade canopy in your yard, Sweet Acacia is one of the best species for our area.

With increasing temperatures, we are seeing drought stress on these trees when planted in areas with lots of reflected heat, like parking lots, but in an average urban yard here in Tucson, it's gonna do really well for you if you can provide supplemental water during the hottest months of the year.

Each year, the Radio Television Digital News Association recognizes excellence in broadcast journalism with Edward R. Murrow Awards.

This year, our station won eight regional awards and our show won six, including this next story in an Algerian-born jeweler who moved to the Southwest to discover herself.

This effort was recognized for excellence in innovation because of our partnership with Nicole Antebi's animation class at the University of Arizona School of Art.

They did the excellent animations for this story, so thanks to the students and everyone else who worked on the story.

♪ SERENE PIANO MUSIC ♪ (Julia) To where the jewelry of Eveli is to feel the spirit of the earth, to be held by the rawness of the stone, bone, gold, and silver, to acknowledge our own spirit.

(Mark) Eveli is the connection to Charles Loloma, who's one of the most important Hopi artist, period.

She has a spiritual connection with her artwork, her jewelry, and her sculpture.

(Julia) To wear the jewelry of Eveli is to be seen and touched by beauty, to receive the honesty of an artist's heart.

I was born in Algeria, North Africa.

I grew up in a lot of isolation when I think of my childhood.

It's like a huge empty space.

You don't have any toys as a kid.

You're just on your own out there playing with rocks and lizards and snakes.

But of course I was surrounded by Berber culture.

In the house all the rugs and all the blankets, Moroccan weavings.

The implements in the kitchen were all glass and copper.

My parents were not of the high class.

I was considered to be French because my parents sort of French and Spanish descent, but I never felt really French.

I was very affected by listening to the muezzin five times a day calling for prayer.

For me, that was one of the greatest mystical and spiritual moments that I had in life.

All of my life, for some reason, I've always had teachers take me under their wings.

Going to France with a high school teacher because I was already 18, so I was okay.

I would be going to university receiving scholarships.

I did not feel at home in Europe, and I became very ill.

When I came back to living state, I remember saying, "from now on, I'm gonna live on vacation."

The first thing I did is start painting, embroidering, making puppets.

As I was recovering, I would listen to temple music, you know, with the big boom, you know, and... [LAUGHS] It kind of put me in a different state of mind, and this big voice came through me, telling me I had to go to North America.

I immediately went to the American Alliance.

Somebody was selling a ticket to San Francisco.

Even though I was scared to death, I could not help myself, I had to go.

I was starting to look for Indian people.

Somebody invited me to go to a concert at the Fillmore.

I saw a group of people.

They were talking about a Native American resisting the draft.

You know, it was still Vietnam War.

They said that there would be a trial at the federal building.

I went there, I pressed the button to get the elevator, and this huge elevator came up with two big doors opened up.

It was filled with all the Native people from the Southwest in their ceremonial regalia.

Just stood there.

My mouth dropped, and I thought, "wow."

And so I stepped into the elevator.

They made room for me, and they immediately started talking.

And the people who communicated with me were people from Hopi.

were people from Hopi.

And then we went through the whole trial.

At the end of the day, they told me, "Well, you want to come with us at the Intertribal House in Berkeley?"

It was in a big room.

I was the only non-Indian in the whole group.

After we ate, they started drumming and dancing.

So here I am among all of them, dancing with them.

All of a sudden, I get, through my whole body, I felt like.

I was like, blissful and thinking, "Oh my God, I finally got home."

[LAUGHS] They left me an address, and a couple of months later, the same thing happened to me like when I was in Paris, telling me, "It's time to go to Hopi," took off for the reservation.

I said, "I came to see the bean dance."

And I thought after the bean dance that I would leave, and they said, "No, you can sit there if you want to."

So, okay.

This man came and sat right next to me.

He immediately started talking with me.

Well, I didn't know who Loloma was, but that was Loloma.

So he told me, "Would you like to learn how to make jewelry?"

I said, "Of course, of course I do."

That's how I started to make jewelry eventually.

(Mark) Now that Charles is gone and he can't contradict them, everybody claims to have apprenticed with him.

Truthfully, only two, maybe three people did, Verma and her sisters Sherry and Eveli.

(Julia) You could see her influence with Loloma, but then she also influenced him.

(Eveli) It is very essential for our own health and happiness, mental happiness, to find beauty, see beauty, and create beauty.

And I found that through making jewelry and working with stones.

This piece she brought in for me to sell.

It's a snake design.

As you see, I have another snake on.

And it was like, I don't want to make money off it.

I want to keep it forever.

This ring the Hopi mesas just reminds me of being up at Hopi.

(Eveli) I'm working in Loloma style and I use exactly the same material that he was using.

Parallel to that, I was doing a lot of bone work.

So this is like a steak bone, this is a lid, inside there is an empty space.

The first thing we did together was a piece from one of her clients.

A piece of inlay had fallen out and she asked me, "Is this is something you can fix?"

I quickly realized, "Here's the teacher right in front of me."

It was really exciting, kind of getting a peek into her process.

Then the book started looming.

(Lisa) So this book is a manual for her life.

She's showing it to people and saying, "This is how I've lived."

(Rod) She carried a piece of every place she went with her.

When she hit Hopi, it all kind of came together.

(Eveli) Hopi and yoga have been the ground of survival for me as an unmarried woman and as a forever foreigner wherever I am.

Hopi really reconnected me to Earth.

Yoga connected me with the reverence we need to have in everything we do.

Traditionally, before you do a yoga class, you offer it.

And at Hopi, everything you do, you offer.

This is the state of mind in which I created my jewelry.

They were all offerings, every one of them.

I spent a week photographing two or 300 pieces of her works.

She never repeated a single piece.

And every piece had this incredible respect for the materials.

(Lisa) Other jewelers would say, "why are you using that piece of turquoise?

It's mottled or it's cloudy or it's not good quality.

It's not valuable."

She was finding the strengths in their imperfections to tell the story because they looked like clouds or they looked like dappled pools of water and reflections coming off the water.

In formal jewelry, people always use the best quality material, which is fine.

But I was using the stones as pigments.

So I was interested in all the different hues and the different inclusions and really weird stuff that was happening in the stone.

(Mark) Eveli didn't find her artistic vision just to jewelry.

It was about sculpture, drawing.

It was about her approach to life.

(Mark) Eveli did some bronzes, and she's not known for this, and they really kind of represent Eveli.

She says "life's a journey to the center of who you are, and discovering your link to infinity, and how you relate to everything else."

Community is very important to her.

She, at 83, gets together with friends all the time.

She bikes, she hikes, she teaches yoga twice a week.

I wanna be Eveli when I grow up.

[LAUGHS] The significance starts on a void, and it will end on a void.

And the void will circulate throughout, using open passages from one page to the other.

Through these passages, the immense being of the universe, and ceasingly breathes with the deep vibration of tubas, resounding in infinite harmony.

Through these corridors of never-ending life, the great force at work attracts and pulls all living things, giving birth, shaping our lives, and taking us away.

♪ SERENE PIANO MUSIC ♪ (Tom) To see a full list of Arizona Illustrated's six Edward R. Murrow winning segments, just head to azpm.org/Murrow Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you again next week.