Phoenix, Dubai and other heat dreams
On the ground in Phoenix, and sometimes green sprouts arise even amid the ugliness of the cityscape and thuggingness of the politics. A woman on a walker watched me struggle into CVS; on the way out, she said, "I've been praying for you." It keeps me aloft. Tuesday night saw an overflow crowd at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore for the launch of my new mystery/suspense novel, The Pain Nurse. Today I was on KJZZ with Steve Goldstein, where my friend Grady Gammage and I reprised our good cop/bad cop routine with Phoenix in the interrogation room (guess who plays bad cop).
I got to read the Arizona Republic on blessed, relaxing paper this morning, a welcome break from the Information Center. Today's Phoenix Laff Riot is Mayor Phil Gordon concluding some kind of economic partnership with Dubai. It's hard to know where to begin with what's wrong with this deeply unserious distraction. For one thing, rhetoric about solar power, sustainability, etc. is a joke considering Phoenix is a basket case in all categories. It let solar research and enterprise get away after the 1950s and now has nothing to offer the Mideast kingdom, other than a model of worst practices. Meanwhile, Dubai is in a deep recession, partly caused by overbuilding. So the benefit is, what…?
7