Tom - This week on Arizona Illustrated, the University of Arizona's iconic Steward Observatory turns 100 years old.

Thomas - I've also sort of become the historian because it's something I'm interested in, and I do love history.

Campus Avenue came all the way out to Steward Observatory and ran a ring around it.

There were tennis courts built where the psychology building is at the moment.

Tom - Poet Bojan Louis reads Poem V (five) as our collaboration with the Poetry Center continues.

Bojan - After years away, I came back to a ravine filled with dead pine needles, white skunk skeletons under the crisp winter moon.

Em - You're going to stretch your side body, your lats.

Tom - Our profile up Tucsonan Em Bowen recently won an Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Em - You could be a complete peace within yourself.

I feel very peaceful, but it doesn't mean that I'm not going to go out in the world and find friction.

Friction where other people are not finding it.

Tom - And the final installment of our three part series, Sierra Vistas Germany.

Angelika - All the restaurants in Tucson close.

So we have a lot of people coming from Tucson, Oro Valley Green Valley, Sahuarita So, you know, I guess three restaurants can make it well here.

Im becoming famous, Bobby.

(Scorching guitar solo by XIXA) Tom - Hello and welcome to another new episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Now, all summer long will be joining you from places where you and we can stay indoors and keep cool.

And it feels great in this place.

We're at the very unique Mini Time Machine museum of miniatures.

It's on Camp Lowell Drive in Tucson.

This museum has over 15,000 square feet of space in the permanent collection at the museum consists of over 500 dollhouses and room boxes filled with hundreds of miniature objects.

It was founded by Patricia and Walter Arnell, who moved to Tucson in 1979 and began amassing the collection.

You see here.

They wanted a permanent place to share their collection and love of miniatures with the southern Arizona community.

The museum is also part of the Museum's for All Initiative, where you present your snap or week card and you get a reduced admission price.

And they're also part of the Blue Star Museum initiative, whereby active duty military personnel and up to five family members get in free this summer.

The museums also host a rotation of exhibitions dedicated to the miniature art form.

Currently, long time elected official and artist Stephen Farley is exhibiting Dowdy Town.

Chapter three of the Agoraphobia Trilogy, where he merges memory and imagination to explore his childhood through miniatures.

Stephen - The world of politics is one that I feel lucky to have escaped.

I didn't realize I was creating a show when I started making these little tiny buildings.

I was just trying to figure out what to make of this pandemic thing like we all were.

It struck me that this is actually part three of a three part 40 year project I've been doing about my childhood and about my mother in particular.

And this became much bigger and much more important to me at that point.

Tom - You can see a full profile on this show on an upcoming episode of Arizona Illustrated, and the exhibition will be on display until January 28th, 2024.

Well, this year, the iconic Steward Observatory Dome on the University of Arizona campus celebrates its 100th birthday.

The observatory was built in 1923, thanks to the first-ever major grant scored by the University of Arizona.

And today, it's still stands and functions as testament to its original role.

For one of the best astronomy departments in the world.

(Crowd) Five, four, three, two, one.

[applause] (Thomas) What we're going to celebrate here on the weekend of April 22nd and 23rd in the year 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the official dedication of the Steward Observatory.

And I guess you could say thats our birthday, even though the telescope has been in operation more than a hundred years, it was sort of the day that everyone celebrated.

Well, I arrived at Steward Observatory 40 years ago as a 22 year old graduate student.

I received my Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1988.

I tend to have a talent for teaching and for telling stories.

I've also sort of become the historian because it's something I'm interested in.

I do love history.

So I went to Special Collections in the summertime and spent a couple of days there.

Reading through the papers of Andrew Ellicott Douglas.

Andrew Ellicott Douglas was the first faculty member with a degree in physics and astronomy to teach here at the University of Arizona.

And immediately he wanted a telescope.

So what did a guy do if he wanted to build a telescope?

He had to find a rich widow because that's how science was done in the late 19th and early 20th century through philanthropy.

So he met a very interesting woman.

Her name was Lavinia Steward.

Turns out Mrs.

Steward had been thinking about giving money in honor of her late husband to the university.

And she was an amateur astronomer.

She had her own telescope.

So in 1916, she donated the first major grant that the university ever scored.

They broke ground here in 1919 at the corner of Cherry Avenue and Second Street.

This was previously an ostrich farm.

They settled on this location because it was off campus.

It was away from the lights of Main campus and in special collections here at the University of Arizona Library.

We have many photographs that Douglas took on the construction of the mount and the telescope structure.

He had prints of what the campus looked like, the construction process, pictures of individual astronomers who came to visit.

Aerial shots of campus.

And Campus Avenue came all the way up to Steward Observatory and ran a ring around it.

There were tennis courts built where the psychology building is at the moment.

I was able to read his correspondence.

It was really exciting to feel that connection, that we are a part of a continuation.

The telescope itself was a 36 inch Newtonian reflecting telescope.

The eyepiece was way at the top of the tube, so they built an elevator platform up in the dome.

And finally, April 23rd, 1923, the Steward Observatory is officially dedicated and accepted by the Regents of the state of Arizona.

When the Steward Observatory opened, it was primarily a research tool.

At the same time, the lobby was used as a classroom.

The original front door, which was closed in 1960 when the first additional buildings were built, is right here.

The National Observatory was founded on Kitt Peak in 1958, and the Steward 36 inch telescope was moved to Kitt Peak in 1963.

(Buell) Things really picked up in terms of the size of the facilities.

Starting in the sixties, the size of the department also started to grow.

Steward Observatory is the name of the research unit, not just this building and the telescope.

So today it includes the telescopes on Mount Lemmon and Mount Bigelow, the telescopes we have, including a radio telescope on Kitt Peak on Mount Graham and Mount Hopkins.

And what's wonderful is that while the Dome and Telescope started their history together, they both continue to be involved in research and education.

And the Dome now has the Ray White Jr. 21 inch telescope.

And it's still getting used.

[loud mechanical noise] (Thomas) The observatory building now is not only an educational center, but it's also an inspiration too, because it looks cool, at least locally has become iconic.

It's a symbol for from humble beginnings, great things can grow.

(Buell) In his dedication speech, Douglas gave us our vision and mission statement.

To me it is still very inspiring.

Even though he was the entire observatory at the time, he was anticipating there would be students, there would be other researchers in the future, women and men coming together to explore the universe and share what we learned with the public.

(Thomas) I sometimes wonder what it would be like if Professor Douglas could see us.

Would he have even conceived that what he started could have become such a large institution?

I would think he'd be proud.

I would hope he'd be proud of us.

That we continued his dream and continued the work that he felt was important.

Tom - Next, we bring you something a little different for our show all summer.

Arizona Illustrated is teaming up with the Poetry Center to bring you a series of poems written by local poets and then visualized by our team of producers here, Assistant Creative Writing and American Indian studies professor at the University of Arizona, and poet Bojan Louis reads Poem V (five).

Bojan - Each year, cool monsoons show up, hot with tention and startles the desert.

Many of my friends, addicts and recovering are soundless deserts.

A lightning struck tree beware of its falling ash.

The bright, ochre sun.

The Oodham knew an ancient sea receded, leaving the desert.

Shima saní says, “Listen ” presses a buck knife into my young hand.

Cut a yucca spike the bayonet end wont hurt like summer deserts.

[wind blowing] After years away, I came back to a ravine filled with dead pine needles, white skunk skeletons under the crisp winter moon, the high dry desert.

I love this odd man whose hometown burned to the ground.

Ash, Capitalism.

Where suffering is, accelerants devour a pine-coned desert.

[falling sand] “Why grow so high son?

” ‘Ama Saní asks Do not forget your loved ones.

Their dried veins or scars tended livestock or blind debt loquacious deserts.

[desert wind] Tom - Please stay tuned to Arizona Illustrated to see more of these poems in the coming weeks.

And we'll also be showing the series of poems on the big screen in conjunction with the Poetry Center at the Loft Cinema on Tuesday, July 18th at 5 p.m.. Now the event is free.

It's open to the public and we'd love to see you there.

In May, winners were announced for the 2023 Edward R. Murrow Excellence in Journalism Awards and Arizona Public Media won six awards.

Five of those came from this show, which means that this show singlehandedly won more Murrow awards than any other public media television station in the country.

We're proud of that and of this next story.

It's about Em Bowens experience going through multiple gender expressions.

It won the regional Murrow for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

So congrats to producer Cáit NíSíomón, Videographers John DeSoto and Nate Huffman and editor Mya Long.

[Em] My name is Em my pronouns, are they and them I'm a movement coach, teacher and a stand up comedian.

Next thing I want you to do.

We're going to stay in this position, you're going to reach over to one side.

You're going to stretch your side body, your lats.

We are given stories that are told about our bodies.

And I think strangely, training for me and personal training and like working with people in their bodies is less about like how many squats you can do and more about how can you unwind those old stories that do not serve you and your existence on this planet and your your capacity to feel joy and do the things that you want And how can you tell news stories, you know, inhabit the body from that space that there is inherent knowledge there waiting for you?

And especially people who are told that their bodies are expendable, that their bodies are not worthwhile or don't have as much value or just people who are just kind of asked to not be at home in their bodies and like, that's just what that's supposed to be good enough for them surviving, supposed to be good enough.

My gender identity and what I seem to face on a daily basis, my gender in general is the idea of coherency and like, do these things fit to make a complete person?

Like, Does it match?

And I find that often it does not.

I've learned recently that it does match.

It's just he doesn't have to match.

Lately, I've had to now go back through all these years of my life and all these different points and contend with the fact that I was always kind of out of myself.

And it's kind of sad, actually.

There's a grief of life, I was so uncomfortable and I didn't have language for it.

And this is not to say the discomfort is stopped because when you're someone who you don't fit into the hegemony, right, you're not white.

You're not of a certain socioeconomic setting.

You're not able bodied when you're not one of those things, you're always going to be at odds with things like you could be a complete peace within yourself.

I feel very peaceful, but it doesn't mean that I'm not going to go out in the world and find friction.

Friction where other people are not finding it.

So you might have seen in the advertising for the show that this is an all female lineup, and I'm here to tell you that it's false Look, I am here in here and I can legally show you my nipple But let me tell you is the same nipple I had when I had breast that the same one so that's all about...

Stand up for me is is very much me taking these stock points of these things that I'm like, I don't know how to make sense of this moment.

This is a hard moment or this is a confusing moment or this is a ridiculous moment.

And then I write jokes through it, but I do not make fun of my queerness or my transness And I really try to when I tell jokes to stay within my lane.

Like, I find that the reason that comedy is helpful and therapeutic to me is that I'm speaking only and exclusively from my own experience about my own experience, because that's all I know.

What is enough?

How much do we have to hurt or rejoice for it to mean something rather does meaning run along an ever changing continuum ?

Or are we all arrested to a simple formula that determines whether we can rightfully feel what is present in our infallible hearts?

I think that a part of my power as a human being is that I've gone from different cycles of expressions So I think when I was more like feminine, sis, apparent female, like I was yelled out out the window people, you know, cross boundaries with me frequently.

And then when I was like a butch like queer person or like really more like androgynous looking people ignored me, which that was something I didn't realize was happening.

And now, as a masculine appearing white person, it's like super entertaining to be approached differently now.

I was like, OK, maybe it's really hard being a white man, but now I have this proof that there is there is a problem here.

You know, I have a lot more choice without anyone questioning me like, there's this.

This is inherent respect and there's a lot less labor that I have to do to make it through the world, and it is much more easeful to be than my previous experiences.

When I was more feminine or daring, no one called me sister They were always like young twelve year old child, why are you at the brewery by yourself?

Where is your parents?

My medical transition was like, I mean, honestly, my voice dropped.

Other than that, it wasn't it was not super interesting.

Like, my personality didn't drastically change.

I was still myself.

I didn't realize that everything was so boring and normal.

Like, I was just like, Oh, this is this is pretty uninteresting.

I wasn't doing that kind of like documentation recounting the history of my transition.

But then I'm in front of a seventh grade classroom.

I'm in front of a full class of like people doing like weightlifting stuff, right coaching.

I'm on a stage and I there was just one point where I realized I was like, Wow, for someone who wanted to be really private I am literally transitioning in front of people.

And I got to say, when you're in a seventh grade classroom.

Everyone's going through puberty, the boys are the girls are.

I am, I'm going through my second puberty, but like, we're all going through it and it's really funny.

So I don't think my experience is that unique.

I think everyone better get prepared for it because it's going to happen to you.

Your hormones are going to shift.

So I'm a language person.

I have an MFA in creative writing.

I've always been into languages and the specificity of language.

So they them is a pronoun choice that I think encapsulates the most to me.

I don't think it's enough, but it is.

It's good enough for now, I believe a multiplicity of truths.

I believe that truth can be happening simultaneously.

I believe that I can have be having different emotions in my body all at once.

one doesn't cancel out the other.

I think the more that you start to think that way, that there isn't this left and right, this binary thing with western rational way of thinking, it kind of like breaks the spell.

A lot of the ways that we speak to children, especially in early grades and even beyond that are in these very gendered formats.

And it leaves little space for children to be as they truly are.

It not only makes trans kids or gender creative children safer, but it also ensures that all other children are allowed to like the things that they like without fear of retribution or being made fun, they get to be their whole selves to.

They don't know all the answers, like I don't know how to make people comfortable with people who are different than them, I don't know how to ease things within our systems of oppression that we live in.

But I do think that the biggest thing I'm learning is that there's this interesting dichotomy between one's own individual work and really being honest with oneself and one's family and one's history.

And then also being responsible to an answering to your community.

That's why I think the multiplicity thing is so important, because I think you can acknowledge what's going really well for you, simultaneously acknowledging things that are also difficult and hard to.

And I think you have to be able to do both those things to honor your own experience, but also recognize your own power so that you can use it to work from your privilege to counteract systems of oppression.

Tom - Next up, the final installment in our series Sierra Vistas Germany.

Where we explore the peculiar fact that this relatively small town has not one or two but three German restaurants.

In this piece, owner Angelika Gloyd discusses her close relationship with her customers and what keeps them coming back.

(Angelika Gloyd) My name is Angelika Gloyd, and I'm the owner business owner of Angelikas German Imports, formerly known as the Guten Appetit Deli.

What brought me to Sierra Vista originally is my first husband.

He was military.

That's what brought me to the States altogether.

And we lived in a suburb of Chicago for a while.

Sierra Vista just grows on you.

And I'm growing with Sierra Vista.

Actually, the German restaurants in Sierra Vista are very popular.

All the restaurants in Tucson closed.

So we have a lot of people coming from Tucson, Oro Valley, Green Valley, Sahuarita.

So, you know, I guess three restaurants can make it well here.

And then me, I'm also a market only market from Phenix to El Paso.

We have deli items like knockwrasut, bratwurst to purchase or ham baloney, German style ham, baloney, bauernschinken, Which is really popular, So it's some of the for me, not so popular items, but the customers love them.

Blood and tongue and head cheese.

So yeah, we have a lot of influx for buying all the German groceries.

Gosh, we opened in 2004 as the Guten Appetit Deli, and for medical reasons we had to close In 2009, I was gone for about a year and then re-opened out in Hereford next to a bar.

2011, We had the big fire.

So then I actually came back to my original place, which the former owners had enlarged into two units.

My customers are just always there.

We just love each other.

We become friends, we become close.

It's really tough for me when I lose customers.

I just lost another one last week and it's just devastating to me because I get so close with my customers.

Some of them move away and you lose the customers, and losing a customer to death, unfortunately, is really devastating.

It's hard.

Yeah it makes me cry.

Sorry.

It's not a job.

It's a passion.

I've always wanted my own business.

I've worked in retail for many, many years.

As a six year old.

I sat on the cashier lap in Germany and she let me punch in the numbers for the groceries.

And I think back then already something happened, you know, and it just kind of instilled in me that I want to be there with people.

I want to work with people.

And for people.

I mean, what bigger compliment can you really get than somebody to come in and say, Oh my God, this is just like my grandma used to make it, You know?

I mean, that special.

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

Julio - I spent a lot of my career studying these curious and unorthodox deposits called Packrat Middens.

Packrat middens were not something that people knew they could extract information about past environments, secrets of the past.

Until about 1960.

The first thing you've got to do is dissolve the urine, and the urine is water soluble.

Ian - When I go out and someone compliments like a piece Ive made and they're like, Oh, I really like your shirt.

I thank you.

I made this.

And they're like, What?

You made that!

Announcer - This is all about embracing the imperfections that come with turning an idea into a physical product.

So you are witnessing history tonight.

Tom - Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

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