Case Study in the Power of Collaboration: Planning Process for the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute

Systematic statewide support for the recruitment, development, and retention of quality leaders in schools and school districts was not a new idea in Kansas in late 2010, but at best it was at an elusive concept. Diverse groups had considered it among components of a long-range commitment to move Kansas education quality from good to great, but no plan for creating such a system was in place

Mental Health Reform Done Right

Zoellner writes about Rep. Tim Murphy’s bill that addresses the serious issues of mental health reform

Arizona and Gabrielle Giffords, Now

One year later, what did the shootings say about Arizona, a state celebrating its 100th birthday this year in the midst of an extended period of political rancor and economic sclerosis

Tribute to Charles Bowden

Zoellner shares his memories of Charles Bowden, an investigative journalist and author renowned for his writing on the American Southwest and for chronicling the border between the United States and Mexico, died Saturday at age 69

Making High-Speed Trains Work in the U.S.

This article looks into the possibility of developing High-speed train technology in the U.S

Gun Laws, Arizona and a Cowardly Mistake

This article focuses on Arizona\u27s failure to pass stricter gun laws after the reoccurnce of mass shootings

This is the Place

Anglo, Latino and indigenous cultures in the American Southwest have a tendency to mark or commemorate the spots where a person has died, either through oral legend or an actual physical marker. I have long been fascinated with the ceremonial aspects of this tradition and the particular psychological motivations for marking the scene of a violent passage. The problem took on a new dimension for me in an unexpected way in April of 2001 when I was working as a newspaper reporter at The Arizona Republic. An unhappy husband named Robert Fisher killed his wife and two children and then disappeared. His truck was found parked in a spot in a National Forest not far from a wilderness are called Hells Gate. The FBI considers him still a fugitive, but I was always convinced that he killed himself in those woods. And hence the fundamental problem of how one acknowledges the spot where a person has died when that spot cannot be located, and may not even exist. This thesis is an attempt to draw literary value from the gap in between these two very different mysteries: where did Robert Fisher go, and why do human beings feel a strange attachment to the places where human being were "last seen" in corporeal form. I made multiple trips to the National Forest near where Fisher was last seen, as well as two separate journeys into the Hells Gate wilderness itself, and wrote down my thoughts about the problem. I explored the tradition of erecting roadside crosses and other, more secular, forms of veneration at the spots of human disappearance. I cannot claim to have found any revolutionary insights on a question that tugs at one of the central mysteries of our existence - a simple question usually first asked in childhood: "what happened when we die" - but I have concluded that the asking of the question and the pilgrimages to these sites where, as I put it, "the where meets the nowhere", is one was of putting concrete expression to the ungraspable

At Oracle and Ina: The Context of the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting

In order to understand how Arizona grew as it did, it helps to take a deeper examination of how it has been packaged and sold to the rest of the world. European influence on Tucson began in 1692 when Jesuit missionaries followed the Santa Cruz River northward into a lonely northern frontier they called Pimeria Alta

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

This book is an account of the state of Arizona, seen through the lens of the Tucson shootings. On January 8, 2011, twenty-two-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a Tucson meet-and-greet held by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The incident left six people dead and eighteen injured, including Giffords, whom he shot in the head. The author, a fifth generation Arizonan and longtime friend of Giffords\u27s and a field organizer on her Congressional campaign, uses the tragedy as a jumping-off point to expose the fault lines in Arizona\u27s political and socioeconomic landscape that allowed this to happen. He discusses the harmful political rhetoric, the inept state government, the lingering effects of the housing market\u27s boom and bust, the proliferation and accessibility of guns, the lack of established communities, and the hysteria surrounding issues of race and immigration. He offers a revealing portrait of the Southwestern state at a critical moment in history, and as a symbol of the nation\u27s discontents and uncertainties. Ultimately, it is his rallying cry for a saner, more civil way of life.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/english_books/1013/thumbnail.jp

World\u27s Top Train Routes

Tom Zoellner boarded railroads globally for his book Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World—From the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief. Here, he shares six breathtaking rides