January 2009 Archives

In early January I wrote a blog entry that video from PCC's Community Education Series Ranching in Southern Arizona and Echoes of the Desert Rails: Railroads in Southern Arizona were added to our podcast series in iTunes U. Videos of the presentations from those events are also now available as QuickTime streaming video.

John "Buck" Ryberg delighted the audience by performing "Cool Water" and "Man Walks Among Us" on November 7, 2008, at Ranching in Southern Arizona.

Videos of the presentations from Ranching in Southern Arizona:

Diana Hadley: "300 Years of Ranching in Southern Arizona." Diana Hadley is Head of the Office of Ethnohistorical Research/Documentary Relations of the Southwest at the Arizona State Museum and a local rancher.

Casey Dennis: "The Riggs Family and Its Involvement in Cattle Ranching in Southeastern Arizona." Casey Dennis is a rancher and a descendant of the Riggs family, a ranching family with more than 130 years of cattle ranching in southeastern Arizona.

Videos of the presentations from Echoes of the Desert Rail: Railroads in Southern Arizona on October 23, 2008:

Bill Kalt, a lifelong educator and author of Tucson Was a Railroad Town, presented "A History of the Railroad in Tucson."

Richard Dick, railroad historian and committee member of the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum, presented "Echos of Southern Arizona Railroads: Railroad Development - 1880 to Present."

Download a PDF of the announcement

download the flyer [PDF]

Pima Community College Community Education Lecture Series' next event is National Heritage Areas: Celebrating Heritage and Empowering Communities. The event features Vanessa Bechtol, Programs Manager, Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance. Ms. Bechtol will speak about ranching traditions, mining booms and busts, desert farming and local foods, settlement and military history and the unique cultures of the Santa Cruz Valley.

When & Where: 6:30 p.m., Thursday, January 22nd at the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, 1288 West River Road. The event is free and there is ample parking at TCCC.

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Jack Weadock began working for the Arizona Daily Star in 1923. Over the years he worked as the sports editor, news reporter, city editor, managing editor, executive editor, and assistant publisher to William R. Mathews. Mathews wrote: "These various duties gave him unusually good oppor­tunity to talk with old-timers and learn about the pioneer days in Arizona of the 19th century." Weadock's weekly "Desert Notebook" column appeared on Mondays in the Star and it was from these columns that Dust of the Desert was published by D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc. in 1936. It was re-printed by Arizona Silouettes in 1963.

Through Our Parents' Eyes is able to provide a digital version of Dust of the Desert with the permission of Jack Weadock's daughter, Virginia Weadock Barleycorn.

As you've read before, Pima Community College's Community Campus conducts free lectures "about the peoples, history, cultures and places of Southern Arizona" through its Community Education Lecture Series. Thanks to Dr. Jana Koii, President of PCC's Community Campus, and Anne Warner, Advanced Program Coordinator, (not to mention the Community Campus' media services staff) we are receiving DVDs of these lectures.

Here are the new tracks added to Through Our Parents' Eyes on iTunes U.

• Buck Ryberg of the Desert Sons performing Cool Water and Man Walks Among Us
• Bill Kalt and Richard Dick's histories of the railroad in Tucson
• Diana Hadley's lecture on 300 years of ranching in Southern Arizona
• Casey Dennis lecture about the Riggs family and its involvement in cattle Ranching in Southern Arizona

If you have iTunes installed on your computer, follow this link to open iTunes and go to the UA's Through Our Parents' Eyes iTunes U site. Once there, you can click on GET MOVIE to download individual videos or click on SUBSCRIBE to being a podcast subscription.

The LTC's media services unit will take these videos and encode them for QuickTime streaming making them available from links on webpages.

BTW, I you don't currently have iTunes on your computer I highly recommend that you download and install it. The only caveat is that you have a relatively recent computer and a highspeed Internet connection. Download Apple's free iTunes. Need help understanding any of this? Send an email.