(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, Elaine A.

Powers introduces us to reptiles through rhymes.

(Elaine) - So this is Myrtle.

She has a red foot tortoise.

My name is Myrtle.

I'm a tortoise, not a turtle.

Being properly identified is my biggest hurdle.

Artist Deb Montoya makes wind chimes from everyday objects.

(Deb) - I was disappointed with wind chimes I bought because they were on fishing line or string and so they would fall apart in the sun.

So I started making them with metal and chain and memory wire.

(Tom) Discover how tiny homes are being used to help marginalized communities.

(Cheering!)

(Monica) - The reason why we want to do this is like, hey, this is a housing program ran by transwomen for transwomen of color.

(Tom) Our collaboration with the Poetry Center continues with White Boots by William Pitt Root.

(William) - In the distance, sometimes a solitary figure projecting a small wedge of light would glide by my lines entrance.

(Tom) And therapist Kate Kincaid discusses working in the mental health field.

What's unique about my approach is working with queer people and queer and non-monogamous people.

And then also my focus on psychedelics.

(Tom) Hello and welcome to another all new episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

All summer long we're coming to you from cool places where you and we can beat the heat.

You know, those temperatures have absolutely soared so air conditioning, any air conditioning feels great.

Especially here at the W. Anne Gibson-Esmond Station Library near Vail.

With over 25 different locations, the Pima County Public Library System is a useful resource for Southern Arizonans to stay cool and out of the sun during the summer months, especially on days where excessive heat warnings are present.

Today at this library, the summer learning program is here with the Zoo To You: Habitats presentation.

Where kids ages 3 to 8 are discovering how animals survive in environments like the rainforest, savannah, even our local deserts.

For more summer programs in your area and learning opportunities for kids of all ages from the Pima County Library, check out the website library.pima.gov/summer.

And now we go to a story about a local author who, through rhymes and reptiles, gets kids and adults excited about science.

Elaine A.

Powers not only writes about science, but she lives it every day through the rescue that she operates right out of her home.

(Elaine) Hello.

I'm Elaine A.

Powers.

I always include the A in my name because some of you might remember that there was a national figure salon chain named Elaine Powers.

(TV Announcer) Elaine Powers.

Call.

All you have to say is help Elaine.

[static] (Elaine) I'm not involved in that at all.

[upbeat music] So I started doing iguana rescue in my house.

I was one of the few rescues that if somebody called and said, we have an iguana in danger, I would go and get it.

So I was on the speed dial for a lot of police departments and animal control facilities.

I have seven iguanas of four different species.

I have 11 tortoises of three different species.

I have two box turtles and a tegu.

This is a green iguana.

Her name is turquoise.

There we go.

Yeah.

My boy.

Now, blue is a Blue Caiman hybrid iguana.

And you can see he is shedding.

He's getting bigger.

This is a Sonoran Desert tortoise.

I got her through the state foster program.

You never want to take a Sonoran Desert tortoise out of the wild.

So this is Myrtle.

She is a red foot tortoise.

My name is Myrtle.

I'm a tortoise, not a turtle.

Being properly identified is my biggest hurdle.

Correct.

Names are important.

I'm sure you'll agree.

Let's look at the differences.

They're easy to see.

Some turtles swim and some live in the sea.

But that's a place tortoises never should be.

I took early retirement because I had a desire to write science based books.

I have written about 27 books that are out and published.

These books that you see here focus on plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert.

I really hope to educate children and the adults in their lives about real science, real issues, in a fun, entertaining way.

When I give talks, I now have a variety of tortoises and iguanas that I can introduce to the people I'm talking to.

I hope even if it's just a few kids, that I'm making an impact on their lives.

And showing them that science can be fun, you know, it doesn't have to be dull dry stuff.

We can eliminate my biggest hurdle if together we shout, Please don't call me turtle.

(Tom) Deb Montoya is a Tucson-based artist who draws on lived experiences and family ties to create these whimsical sculptures out of found objects.

And, you know, the finished products are not only visually appealing, but they also function as wind chimes, each with their own unique sound.

[♪ Soft piano music, wind chimes ♪ ] [Water splashing] (Deb) I grew up playing in my great aunts garden.

They lived through the Depression.

They didn't throw anything away.

They made things out of seashells, metal and glass until their gardens were magical.

So I grew up being influenced by that.

(Deb) I'm a local artist.

I make wind chimes, sun catchers and garden art.

I used to make jewelry.

So I kind of developed garden jewelry, is what I call it.

[♪ Soft music continues ♪ ] (Deb) I trained horses pretty much all my life.

Training horses put me through college, which I have a bachelor's degree in art.

Paid for by horses.

So when I graduated from college, the horses were making me the income.

So I stuck with that.

And it was only till about ten years ago that I started getting into my art work full time.

I was born and raised here and third generation.

My aunts were artists.

They had a photography studio down by the Fox Theater.

Took many family portraits.

People wanted them in color.

They would oil paint them.

My great uncle was a Western artist, Pete Martinez.

He had friends like Wieghorst and Ted DeGrazia.

[♪ Uplifting music ♪ ] I had an uncle that worked for the phone company and whenever he would come down the road, we'd run up, “Uncle Jack, can we get some wire?

” And so he would give us telephone wire.

And occasionally we get pipe cleaners.

We would make horses out of wire.

So I've been making wire horses since I can remember.

[♪ Upliftng music builds ] [Music ends] (Deb) This wind chime has the old rusty bits.

The beads are handmade in Ghana, Africa out of recycled bottles.

This piece in the background is actually an old step off of an antique buggy.

It's got chains on it.

It's got the bottom of a halter and rusty bells.

So it's all rust and glass and it has a nice sound to it.

So and this is the other style that I do.

It's more sparkly with the crystals in the brass.

(Deb) I like to try new things.

When I was going to these yard sales and estate sales, I would find vintage concrete animals.

If I could get them cheap enough, I could spend the time and repaint them and resell them.

And it worked out really good.

So whenever I find those that are at the sales, I'll purchase them.

When I get a kind of a block with my wire sculptures or with my wind chimes, then I'll switch to painting and that'll kind of refresh me a little bit.

[♪ Piano music , chimes ringing ] I was disappointed with wind chimes I bought because they were on fishing line or string, and so they would fall apart in the sun.

I started making them with metal and chain and memory wire.

[♪ Piano continues ♪ ] (Deb) People really like that I repurpose things.

I buy things that may be discarded and I turn it into art.

[♪ Piano continues ♪] This piece is actually the lid to a chick feeder that I found in a dump from the 1930s up in the mountains.

And so that implies chickens.

And it's got the the pony shoe, the cow, the horse, pig.

You got the cowboy.

And he works as long as the sun's up and it's got a cow bell at the bottom and it's got the whole farm going on [♪ Piano continues ♪] (Deb) People started liking them And so I started selling them and it kind of evolved into this business that I do at St. Philip's Plaza.

I also really love the camaraderie over there and the family relationships that you gain with all the different vendors.

[♪ Piano music, general hubbub] (Deb) Its just been a wonderful time over there.

[♪ Music ends, general hubbub fades] (Tom) In an effort to help close the widening economic gap, members of our community are finding creative ways to find affordable housing.

Now the Outlaw Project is a group focused specifically on finding tiny homes for trans women of color who are among those most affected by housing inequality.

In this ongoing series, producer Jon DeSoto introduces us to various tiny home communities that are providing unique solutions to those in need.

We have over 60 people here on Mother's Day helping to raise the framing of the house up.

It's been like a very communal effort to build these tiny homes.

The Outlaw Project is a nonprofit that works on the intersectionality of being trans, being a cis woman, being a sex worker, being a person who, with experience houselesness.

Why we're focused directly especially trans women of color for stable housing, because they're mostly directly impacted by housing disparities.

The rate of low income housing and the need of it is went up right after COVID.

And so a lot of landlords here in Arizona raise the rent, a lot of trans women and were directly impacted by that.

The reason why we want to do this is like, hey, this is a housing program, ran by trans women for a trans woman of color.

TC is a lifesaver.

When I had purchased this property, it was not the best property.

Monica needed help rehabbing the house.

And so I stepped in to to do what I could.

And through the process of working with her, we worked together to design and bring to life the housing that will house trans women of color.

So TCs is being a great ally in utilizing their access to the world in a way that I couldn't.

And helping me make this vision come true.

Well, I'm trans and means a lot to me to be able to contribute to my broader community.

Also enjoying working with other trans folks, other queer folk folks who are not traditionally in the trades, but feels like a true community gathering.

Today we're finishing up the roof and we are finishing sanding and essentially oiling and protecting the timbers themselves.

The beauty of this project is when we decided what kind of house we would build, we were building it with the idea of working and community in mind.

That helps not only on the financial end for us, it helps us keep costs low, but it also helps us come together as a community, build skills with folks who maybe want to build skills and also just spend time together.

This is very important to create a solution to address affordable housing like this because our community needs is there's a lot of programs that say like, you have to be sober to live here.

Those rules are there to decrease the impact on the community.

But if I have a safe place, we want to provide that.

And so there is no rent charge.

It is free.

When it's time for you to transition that we can work together to find you long term housing.

And all we want you to do is focus on yourself.

And folks are not going to come here for one or two nights or even one or two weeks.

This is really a place for people, for trans women of color in particular, to come and get their feet underneath them.

(Tom) And now we bring you something a little bit different for our show.

All summer long, Arizona Illustrated is teaming up with the Poetry Center to bring you poems written by local poets and then visualized by our team of producers.

This next poem, White Boots, is written and performed by William Pitt Root, who was Tucson's poet laureate from 1997 to 2002.

White Boots.

Ghost of the San Manuel Mine for James G. Davis from Rancho Linda Vista, in Oracle.

This poem was started as a letter.

To reply to Jim.

As you know, Jim, I did work underground in the same mine you've imagined in your studio half a mile down, taking wages enough to make it to California and Fool's gold enough to remind me I don't know much after all.

New guys like myself still thrilled by the dangers of fire or falling through the dark into a hole followed by 20 tons of dusty rumbling ore. We all try to stay alert each minute and for a week or two alert, we were.

Then habit made us careless as the rest, so we'd pocket our safety glasses, let dust mask dangle from our necks and sometimes catch each other, stepping out across open shafts without first snapping our lanyards to rusted cables overhead.

The buddy system wasn't much observed, so like the rest come break time, I'd kick back alone against the stone wall and light up, flickering my headlamp off so the dark expanded flooding gently through my eyes.

In the distance, sometimes, a solitary figure projecting a small wedge of light would glide by my lines entrance, tiny as a fly in a cheer of amber.

From where I watched invisible and isolate as a stone in outer space or inner space.

Just some guy.

Never saw old white boots in those days, but often thought how all those men just lost in the Sunshine Mine must have felt.

Poor bastards, who lived long enough to feel, long enough to lose everything in their minds but hope before their era was gone, long after their light.

You'd have to kill your light, to keep from igniting whatever gases might be seeping from walls.

So dark is where you'd be.

Whether by yourself or in the company of others.

In such a dark, I had no need of White Boots, my friend.

But looking at this image, startling, almost comic, you've drawn from the dark of blinding inks, and your own heart.

Familiar with disaster, I'm reminded now of how it is to live in, keep hold of the things that bind them to those gone.

How Gypsies when a loved one's dying will help one feeling stay just a little longer by turning a wooden chair upside down, to hold between them, on one leg alive, and the dying and another, until ready it falls free.

But the thing is, the clasp itself across that final distance.

How it allows those last things that need to be said, said.

That's how it's always seemed to me, with art I mean.

Whether it's paint on canvas or ink on a page.

It's the chance for what knows It must die in us to join what knows it will live forever.

And knowledge from such a common depth only survives in a light as shadow, as White Boots, imago, as a way.

Meanwhile, to stay in touch while the sun burns on.

(Tom) Now we bring you the second installment in our ongoing series where we get to know mental health professionals.

In this story, you'll meet Kate Kincaid, who specializes in relationship therapy among systematically marginalized communities and who practices ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which has been growing in popularity in recent years.

(Kate) When I was a teenager, my parents kind of forced me into therapy and I didn't really want to go, but I got a lot out of it.

And I was in school for pre-med and loved all my psych classes.

And so I made a switch and decided to go pursue my Masters of Counseling psychology.

I went to the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, which is a renowned institute for the Study of Sex and Gender.

I took a class called Abnormal Sexuality, and that's where I learned about non-monogamy and swinging and all these different things that people were practicing.

I've definitely seen a growing trend towards ethical non-monogamy.

There's a lot of research coming out on it being a legitimate relationship orientation.

People fall on the spectrum of monogamy and non-monogamy and a lot of people in between are kind of more fluid.

It's attractive too, because as the economy has changed and the world has changed post-pandemic, people feel the need to create strong communities and strong families and redefine what family is to them.

And I think ethical non-monogamy is a way that many people are doing that, because when you have more shared childcare, all those things like those are benefits to people, especially when we're all struggling under our current system.

What's unique about my approach is working with queer people and queer and non-monogamous people, and then also my focus on psychedelics, although that's also changing because there's a psychedelic boom going on and more and more people are interested in seeing the research coming out about how effective it is.

People are tired of the current tools that we have to treat depression and anxiety and especially treatment resistant depression where they've tried medications, they've tried different therapy modalities.

And so and even though these are old tools and ancient tools, it's new to Western psychotherapy.

It's super important to have a comfy, cozy space.

That's why we have the ketamine here at this house, because it feels a little bit less like a clinic.

I see many disparities in the psychology field.

It's like how hard it is for people to find a therapist.

There's a lot more people who need therapy than there are therapists available.

Not everyone has insurance, and those that do, its not covered by their insurance plan or they have super high deductible until it's covered.

And so that's really hard because it's a life saving treatment that people need.

Being a therapist has softened me.

It's made me see that everyone has very similar basic needs.

I can kind of like just have a lot more love and appreciation for all humans and their suffering.

And I do also see my work as being like a really important part of my life that it's not separate from my life completely.

I have my own therapist who is amazing and I also try to get out into nature.

A lot of my friends are therapists and so we support each other and holding each other accountable to having the balance in our lives.

(Tom) Before we go, here's a sneak peek at a few stories we're working on.

NASA created a funding program specifically to search for hazardous asteroids.

So we have a NASA grant that funds our observations, and it is part of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

So our goal is to reduce the uncertainty in our knowledge of where the near-Earth asteroids are as an act of planetary defense.

By being funded by NASA, We do fall under the under the auspices of the planetary defense officer.

What makes this job fun to me is being able to be part of the entire cycle of operations, from designing the equipment to building it, to testing it, to using it, to submitting the data.

I really believe in what I do, that there are rocks flying around in space and one day a big one will hit us.

It's inevitable.

And I don't lose sleep over it.

But I am glad there are people looking.

I can start a painting one year and it doesn't leave the studio for ten years.

I have this storage area in the studio.

It's basically a rest home for paintings that are waiting for me to get smart enough to be able to finish so I don't make a plan.

I do an underpainting.

Often that underpainting is cadmium yellow.

I like yellow.

It's so Tucson.

It's just sunshine.

It can be any non-verbal tickle of excitement in me that makes me, oh, I've got to kind of check that out.

(Tom) Thanks for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you next week with another all new episode.