Emails about libraries, mascots and time in the pool
Lorenzo Vizcarra shares my love of libraries.
He wrote to me after reading my column about the 70th anniversary of Harmon Library in south Phoenix, where he grew up. He could see the library from his house on Pima Street.
From 1958 to 1963, he and his friends went to the library in the summer because no one’s house had air conditioning.
They took their stamp collections, read, and researched topics of interest to them with help from librarians.
“Thinking back,” Vizcarra wrote, “you can say that me and some of my friends were sort of the nerds in the lowincome barrio.”
Based on the emails I received about my column that my alma mater, Thunderbird High, is doing away with its longtime mascot, a Native American chief in full headdress, not many people shared my opinion.
“You are wrong, and you are taking away something from our youth!” wrote Terri Cederholm, who graduated in 1984, a year after me.
I also heard from former students, teachers and school board member Susan Maland, thanking me for my support of the change.
Paula Cullison raised concerns about the mascot when she was president of the Thunderbird Association of Parents in 1989.
“It’s so sad that it has taken over 30 years (a whole generation) for the change to be made,” she wrote.
In response to my column about how I was exercising less these days, Amy Maynard, a former personal trainer, suggested swimming in the morning before breakfast.
Amy starts with 10 laps and adds more until she’s doing 50 laps a day.
“I then float for a bit and pretend I’m somewhere in the Caribbean,” Amy wrote.
I’ll try it. I’m good at floating.