The following is an original production of AZPM News.

(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, see how spring traditions from around the world are being practiced in Tucson through a beautiful Ukrainian art.

(Juliana) If the art of the Pysanky would be lost, that would mean that the other traditional art forms would be lost as well.

(Tom) To the Persian tradition of Nowruz.

(Saideh) Well, Nowruz is special every year, no matter what is going on.

(Tom) Meet a Iranian artist separated from her family, but that hasn't stopped her from creating.

(Negar) I wonder sometimes if it was a dream came true and it was a curse.

(Tom) We'll show you a particularly hardy desert plant.

(Adam) If you're looking for an evergreen plant, a Desert Spoon Sotol is a great choice.

(Tom) And I'll sit down with neuroscientist, Dr.

Leslie Tolbert.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, joining you from our new home here at the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

And first up, we are gonna introduce you to a beautiful centuries old Ukrainian tradition decorating Easter eggs by using wax, flame, and vivid dyes.

And you'll see how a master artist and his apprentice are keeping the tradition alive one delicate line at a time.

(Ihor) People look at it and they say, oh, how do you paint those eggs?

There is no painting involved at all.

It is a classical batik process.

(Juliana) It's a very intricately and patiently drawn egg.

with traditional or non-traditional designs.

The word pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word pysaty, to write.

[music playing] You write with a stylus that delivers molten beeswax onto the surface of the egg, protecting the egg at every stage of the color that you want to achieve at the end.

[music playing] My mother used to do them, and I was watching her do it, and oddly enough, when I did my first pysanky, she stopped.

The tradition had been passed on.

[music playing] The tool that we used to apply is called kistka, which in Ukrainian means a bone.

In the design of the egg, two things happen, symmetry and the evenness of the wax line.

[music playing] Whatever you want to be white, the beeswax melts very fast and cools very fast after you have applied it on the egg.

Now that white part of the egg is sealed forever.

Any egg that you look at will have, say, four to five colors on it.

You have to go from light to dark because a light color will not cover a dark dye.

The shell changes color, but the wax has protected the white.

So now you coat the design that you want to remain yellow, dip it in the orange, hide the orange, red, hide the red, and then the final dye is your final dye that the naked shell will accept.

In this case, it's black.

So now at the end of the process, you have an egg covered with wax.

So you apply the wax with heat, and now you take the wax off with heat as well, and your pattern just appears.

It's therapeutic and it's creative.

Once you are involved in the world of the egg, the rest of the world is gone.

[music playing] (Juliana) After Christianity was adopted in Ukraine in 988, the pagan symbolism of the drawing of the eggs was adopted into Christian symbols.

And so during Holy Week, traditionally, that would be the time where the women would sit down and would draw pysanky.

(Ihor) Because when you do a pysanky, it is a concept that you put on an egg.

It's an idea, a gift for someone.

(Juliana) And then they would be given to friends, family.

(Ihor) For the young people, especially young girls, will give it to potential husband.

(Juliana) It was just a symbol of friendship.

I cannot believe how it's possible, but I still have my very first pysanky that I ever drew.

[music playing] So wherever one would travel in the world and go into a Ukrainian community or a Ukrainian home, you would have the same types of things.

You would have the embroideries.

You would have the pysanky.

You would have the traditional foods.

But it was very important at that point to preserve much of the Ukrainian culture because it was being destroyed in Ukraine by the Soviet oppression.

If the art of the pysanky would be lost, that would mean that the other traditional art forms would be lost as well.

(Ihor) The Folk Alliance incorporates a number of folk arts.

I applied with Becky for our craftsmanship and art in the pysanky.

We had a little table showing her work, a couple of mine.

And people were very interested in and had never seen anything like this.

My name is Rebecca Lennon.

I go by Becky, and I'm a music teacher.

I was playing with the Swedish folk dancers at a European festival in town.

And I saw, first of all, all the cross-stitch.

And then I saw the eggs, and I thought the eggs were really beautiful.

And Ihor was explaining to me how the eggs were done.

(Ihor) She took it to heart, not being Ukrainian.

And her art, in fact, has gone beyond just the Ukrainian classical design, but into a beautiful creative art form.

And she really, I think, became Ukrainian.

My time, obviously, slowly, is moving away, and hers is moving in, and I hope she will be the one who carries the torch.

[music playing] (Becky) As a teacher, a little girl came in who had been adopted from Ukraine, and I thought she was such a neat kid.

A very determined, very strong girl.

I got to know her a little bit more.

I started looking online for other Ukrainian orphans.

We have three boys, no girls, so we adopted a little girl from Ukraine.

She was 13 years old.

We brought her to America, and I wanted to make sure she did not lose her culture.

When I was living in Ukraine, adopting the girls, I took pictures of many patterns and artwork that I saw.

Those are what I use in my eggs.

About a year after I got her, I went to the very first pysanky class that Ihor was holding, and I really enjoyed it.

Well, I'm always enjoying listening to what he has to say to improve what I'm working on, and he shows me the eggs so I can see what I need to do to improve them.

(Ihor) Very, very fine work.

And their eyes, when they see the wax coming off and seeing the beauty of that egg that they have created that is marvelous.

(Becky) The most fun thing is taking off the wax and seeing all the brilliant colors looking back at you.

(Juliana) The more you push the Ukrainians and you forbid things from them, the more of an underground appears and takes over, and then the arts and the culture become even stronger.

(Ihor) The survival of the Ukrainian "me", the identity, is critical for that legacy to continue and the Ukrainian nation to really thrive as it has in the past.

It's a very rich culture.

Now we'll show you another spring tradition.

This one from Iran being practiced here in Southern Arizona.

The smell of hyacinth flowers welcomes a new year for Persians all around the world.

AZPM reporter, Noor Haghighi, shares with us her family's celebration of Nowruz.

[ Persian santoor ] Persian New Year.

Nowruz.

New day.

Nowruz means many things to us.

I mean, individually and collectively as Iranians.

It's a renewal of the year.

It's end of winter and the start of spring.

I always look forward to setting the Haft-sin.

It signifies Nowruz for me.

So the Haft-sin is a very Persian customary tradition for Nowruz.

[ Persian santoor ] Objects that are decorated on the table start with the letter "sin" which is the "s" sound in the Persian alphabet.

Lentil sprouts, "sabzeh," rebirth.

Hyacinth, "sonbol."

It represents the fragrance of spring.

Apple, "sib," it represents beauty and health.

Garlic, "sir," is for protection.

Sumac, "somaq," it represents energy.

[ Persian santoor ] Vinegar, "serkeh," it represents patience.

Oleaster fruit, "senjed."

It represents love and fire.

After setting these initial seven "s" items, every family decorates their table according to their family.

They color eggs like as they do in Easter, you know.

And they do it differently.

Every family does it differently.

This year we did watercolor on the eggs and calligraphy of certain poems that is about the Nowruz and the spring.

This one says, "Bar chehreh-ye gol, nasim-e Nowruz khosh hast."

It means literally "On the face of the flower, the breeze of Nowruz is delightful.

Nowruz reminds me of my childhood.

I remember that our parents would, few days before Nowruz, we would go shopping and buy new clothes, new shoes.

Everything was new.

We looked forward to 12, 13 days of freedom from school.

So that was really top- -of-the-line.

Yeah.

But you had to do homework still.

Even with that, it was happy and joyful, visiting the elders in our family.

And then people came to our house.

As a child, we were looking forward to seeing the elders in the family because they would give you money as a gift, you know.

And we would actually, we had like a hidden competition between me and my sisters: Who's going to get more money during the Nowruz.

Well, Nowruz is special every year, no matter what is going on.

But this year around the world, Nowruz is not being celebrated as joyfully as the previous years because there are so many mournful families.

But I celebrate it because I want to pass on the tradition to Noor, hoping that once she has her own family, she will do the same as we do here in our home.

Next up, we meet Iranian artist, Negar Nazari, who doesn't know when she'll hold her husband again or sit with her family at a table.

Yet she rises every day to make her art because she believes that art deepens our understanding of what it means to be human.

♪ SOFT PIANO MUSIC ♪ (Ali) When you're looking at the historical relationship between Iran and the United States to understand it from the point of view that it's highly political in charge and that you know have a society in Iran that even today, it's very Western leaning.

♪ SOFT PIANO MUSIC CONTINUES ♪ (Negar) I'm from Iran.

Iran is a religious country.

No exception for artists, so we couldn't have that freedom an artist should have.

And after I graduated, I just quit painting.

Eventually, I start to go back to the realm of art.

I applied, I just put myself in an adventure.

I had no idea.

(Nicole) To make the decision to come to grad school, that's already, you know, a big life choice.

But added to those difficulties was the real uncertainty of making that decision, leaving your family and your homeland and your language and your culture to come to a place you've never been before.

In the movements of making those decisions, it was a precipice and it meant maybe not going back.

(Ali) Both the Americans and the Iranians tend to look at that relationship through a political lens.

And if you frame it, you know, for instance, from an Iranian perspective in 1953 and the coup against the Nationalist Prime Minister at the time, Dr.

Mohammad Mosaddegh in alliance with the British, then the villain of the peace is the United States and Britain, obviously.

The period after 1953, there's actually a very strong state to state relationship between obviously the Shah and the United States.

I think many on the left and many in the Islamist side of things certainly felt very let down by the United States.

They saw the United States as basically their saviour, their salvation against the imperialism of-f-f-f Britain and Russia.

and they basically understood the coup in 1953 as being a betrayal of that faith that they put in the United States.

If you frame it from 1979, as many Americans do, then the villain of the peace is Iran.

And basically in 1979, it comes into full-blooded, if you will, fruition with the revolution.

Obviously, the seizure of the American embassy on the 4th of November basically seals the divorce.

(Negar) It's exactly a year and three months now, and I can't believe it.

I thought I could understand it for a day, and now I'm here a year and three months after.

We were waiting for my husband to come.

Trump became the president and signed the executive order of travel ban.

We put Iran under the sanction of entering the United States.

So now, like there's no hope for my husband.

We were friends before we get married, and like in total, we've been together 18 years.

So it's like most of my life was beside him, and now we're separated.

And it's like the worst nightmare ever.

(Nicole) A letter written to a loved one, how that can be politicized, how that can be weaponized by the state.

(Negar) I couldn't focus on any other subject.

I decided to write, like, every day, a letter.

The idea was to actually post it to Iran, because, because of the sanction, there is no posting to Iran, so it's going to return.

The idea was trying to insist of sending these letters.

Yeah, I find a way to send to my family, and even the journey of this letter just going and turn back, is kind of part of the process.

(Nicole) Just trying to be with the people you love, or to be in close proximity to them, and thinking backwards, you know, like around what detention represents, or what being arrested by ICE.

The things we take for granted, like touch and connection, she's looking at how that transaction is imposed by the state on both sides.

(Negar) The last day I was leaving Iran, my husband bought me a salt and pepper shaker.

They are so tiny.

And I decided to choose them as, like, the last thing he bought me, and the last thing he touches and gives to me.

I, um, take that salt and pepper shaker and use it, like, transform it to the lighthouse.

So there's, like, lighthouse in Iran, lighthouse in the United States, and we're communicating through lights, sending signals.

And then suddenly the lighthouse that's representing me is broken.

(Nicole) What art making is, it's like, you know, kind of close observation.

Sometimes those really small things, like a salt and pepper shaker, that can tell us a lot, maybe, about who we are and how, you know, how we are.

(Negar) An audience stands in front of it and just stares for a moment and says, "Ah."

I can feel like I created something that means something for somebody else.

I don't know what difficulties they've been through.

[ CROWD CHANTING ] Freedom for Iran!

[ CROWD CHANTING ] Freedom for Iran!

[ CROWD CHANTING ] Down with dictator!

[ CROWD CHANTING ] Down with dictator!

(Ali) Basically, the only way this is going to be solved is if the Islamic Revolution comes to an end.

And once it does that, actually, a lot of things can happen.

And if you want a solution for the future, you can only do it by broadening the lens.

If you can't see the wood for the trees, you have no hope of settling this.

(Negar) After you die, uh, Angel asks you, "Do you have any wounds?"

And if you say no, they're going to tell you, "No?

So you mean nothing ha- nothing worth it to fight for?"

And it just moved me so deep.

I feel like all of these wounds are showing how hard I fight for our love, for our better situation, for our dream.

I wonder sometimes if it was a dream came true, or it was a curse that, like, out of nowhere happens to me.

Well, here's one of the most dependable desert plants for your yard.

It's the Desert Spoon, and it's a tough one.

It can brave sub-freezing temperatures, high heat, and low water availability.

[ BIRDS CHIRPING ] (Adam) My name is Adam Farrell Wartman.

I'm the director of horticulture here at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

And I'm standing next to Dasylirion Wheeleri otherwise known as Sotol or Desert Spoon.

Desert Spoon is one of the most rock-solid plants you can put in your landscape.

It can take the most direct sun.

It can take radiating heat off of a building.

So it's a fantastic plant to add to xeriscape desert landscape, especially if you don't want to be paying too much attention to your space.

You can see it is gorgeous in structure.

It can hold a large space all by itself.

It does have these very barbed, strappy leaves.

It is a monocot, so part of the grass group of plants.

It puts out a terrific inflorescence, a really big flower stock that can get up to 15 feet high.

And it can do that annually as a mature plant.

It tops off at about 6 to 8 feet high, but they can also be as short as 3 feet.

They grow this gorgeous skirt.

At least, I think it's a gorgeous skirt.

But the reason why this plant has a skirt like that is that dead material actually protects the base of the plant from direct sunlight and produces, almost, a mulch underneath.

So it mulches itself, so it retains more water when you keep the skirt on it.

The other benefit to the skirt is it provides shelter for beneficial insects.

I know a lot of lepidoptera— a lot of moths and a lot of butterflies— they create their chrysalis or cocoons on the inside of that skirt.

So when you cut that off, you've taken away that habitat.

We advise people to leave the skirts on the plant.

It's only an aesthetic choice to take it off.

The Sotol here is part of the asparagus family of plants, asparagaceae.

And that includes both the asparagus you buy in the store.

It also includes very familiar plants to us like the agave.

But this is a different genus than the agave.

This plant has lots of uses from the native peoples of the region.

One of the uses is to distill it, and the liquor that's created is called Sotol, and it's the northern cousin of tequila or mezcal, because this plant grows in farther northern areas than agave do.

And the leaves being so strappy and fibrous were actually stripped of their spines on the edges and used to make baskets and rugs.

One of the common names for this plant is desert spoon, and the reason for that name is the space where the leaf attaches to the stem just has a spoon-like shape.

Commonly can be used in a floral arrangement.

They gather a bunch of them together, the leaf upside down, kind of, and they create the semblance of a dried flower with those spoon shapes.

If you're looking for an evergreen plant that is very structural and can hold the whole space by itself, but it's also really tough and can take all types of conditions and needs very little care on your part, the Desert S poon, Sotol, is a great choice.

Leslie Tolbert spent most of her career studying neuroscience and the mysteries of the brain, which makes her frank discussion about a recent Alzheimer's diagnosis all the more interesting.

I was lucky enough to sit down with her for our newest episode of Speaking Personally.

The subject matter fascinated you did your now husband, Paul, did you sort of feed each other with this excitement about this wonderful new area that's no cinch, neurosciences.

We got to know each other because of our excitement about this new field and we learned that we each have different areas of expertise that meant that we were sort of complementary if the two of us discussed a problem we got further than either one of us did individually, also just the thrill of the adventure, doing it with someone who then became a life partner, doesn't get more fun than that.

Yeah, is it I imagine it's fascinating step-by-step as a scientist every step could lead to a new discovery and the next step and the next step, is that often overshadowed by a greater goal?

I think the step-by-step way we're going to understand our brains, in in full but, every year there are hundreds of new findings in neuroscience that change just a little bit the way you look at how we how our brains work.

(Tom) Be sure to watch my full interview with Leslie Tolbert on YouTube or listen to it on our new Speaking Personally podcast.

For more information, go to azpm.org/speakingpersonally (gentle music) Thank you for joining us for Arizona Illustrated from here at our new home, for Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

We'll see you again next week.