I’m devastated by Johann Zietsman’s decision to leave as the city of Mesa’s arts and culture director for a similar position in Calgary.

Zietsman brought people to Main Street in downtown Mesa by proposing and then guiding into existence MacFest.

He recognized that Mesa isn’t and probably will never be a high end arts city. So he opened downtown sidewalks to artists and craftsmen every Saturday from mid-October through April and gave everyday people a reason to come downtown.

He thought outside the box that is known as the Mesa Arts Center. What will Mesa do without him?

Friday night in Mesa was not like Friday night in Mesa.

People were everywhere. They were at the Mesa Arts Center watching free performances inside and out. They were crowding into the restaurants. They were winding through the SunDust Gallery for its grand opening at 48 W. Main St.

They were walking up and down Main St. sizing up row after row of motorcycles whose riders had responded in droves to the invitation to bring their bikes downtown.

Rob Schultz, assistant director for art and education at the Mesa Arts Center, said as the evening wound down that he was so gratified by the size of the crowds that he had taken a short stroll from his home base at the MAC to find a place to sit down at Main and Macdonald just to take it all in.

Mayor Scott Smith, seen with wife, Kim, at the SunDust Gallery, recalled that when he was elected mayor last year, downtown stakeholders were not only not working together, they were often working against each other.

He has since pushed hard to encourage an events-oriented downtown and a community-oriented Mesa Arts Center. He was smiling on Friday night.

A beaming Tom Verploegen, executive director of the Downtown Mesa Association, said he’s now convinced that a lot of simultaneous small activities will make the downtown come alive as opposed to an occasional epic event that saps everybody’s energy.

Who or what brought about critical mass?

The downtown merchants for one.

They’ve been organizing what they call 2nd Friday in Downtown Mesa events. Motorcycles on Main was their event and it was a roaring success in more ways than one.

Downtown became noisy and not just with the roar of the bikes but with the music from bands stationed along Main where various businesses were open for action.
It will be noisy in October, too, when the 2nd Friday (Oct. 9 ) theme is Octoberfest, with plans calling for five beer gardens and a polka line stretching along Main from Country Club to Center and back again.

Congratulations to 2nd Friday chairwoman Suzanne Woodford of OneOhOne Gallery and her group.

Credit also goes to the Mesa Arts Center.

We caught some of the Sister Cities Concert inside the impressive Ikeda Theater. And we caught “Flam Chen’s acrobatics and daring use of fire act” on what’s called the shadow walk–the outdoors walkway between the theaters and the arts center at the MAC. The act is from another world and not to be missed if you get the chance.

And there was so much going on in the other theaters.

Congrats to Johann Zietsman, the city’s arts and culture director, for making it the people’s art center. I learned that night that the alliance between the MAC and the Mesa Sister Cities group was struck at a super bowl party hosted by Ron and Joanie Newth. (Joanie News was on the Mesa City Council several years ago.)

The eclectic SunDust Gallery created its own noise through email invitations and a classy addition to a downtown. I wish owner Ron Floyd all the best.

It should be clear that the arts for the people hold the key to creating a vibrant downtown, but there is no single holder of the arts key.

The keys are held by the private galleries, in addition to the Mesa Arts Center and the MACFest where artists and craftsmen line Main beginning at Center on Saturday mornings to display and sell their work. The MacFest season opens Oct. 3 and runs through April 24.

And even the churches, such as First United Methodist Church at Center and 1st Ave., which is eager to show off its choir and music talent under the direction of Jeff Harris, Westwood High School’s music director for 30 years and director of the Sonoran Desert Chorale. (Full disclosure: I’m a member at FUMC.)

The truth of the matter is we didn’t get very far down Main on Friday night. There was just so much to take in that we couldn’t take it all in.

But we left knowing another truth: On Friday night Sept. 11, there was energy on Main St. in downtown Mesa. And the energy drew the people. And if the downtown businesses and the city put their backs into it, it will happen again and again.

My wife, Pam, shot this picture on Monday at Coon Bluff park along the Salt River. It is one of many such pictures that she could have shot.

Coon Bluff is one of three Tonto National Forest parks that hug the river just a few miles north of the Route 202 and Power Road exchange in Mesa.

Anyone who has driven or biked on Power Road north from Mesa where it changes into the Bush Highway knows this is one of the most beautiful drives or bikeways in the Sonoran Desert.

Anyone who has turned off the Bush Highway to enter Coon Bluff has discovered a serene riparian retreat that is the equal of any such natural sanctuary in the Southwest. For my wife and me, it makes living in Mesa or the East Valley special.

Red Mountain towers above. Eagles, herons and egrets feed in the curving river. Kayakers play on the river. Fishermen and their children fish the river. Feral horses drink in it. Orioles, cardinals and flycatchers cruise in and out of the tall shade trees that line the river banks. And warblers and verdins flitter about in the nearby mesquite woods.

Unfortunately, some lazy pigs have found this wonderful place and show their disrespect for it and the rest of us by littering it.

So what can be done about it?

First, the Forest Service should include on the passes that users purchase a plea for users to carry out what they carry in.

Second, signs should be posted at park entrances warning that litterers will be prosecuted.

Third, there should be a telephone number those who see the pigs littering can use to report them and their license plate number.

Fourth, it wouldn’t hurt to see rangers make their presence known more often. I have never seen a ranger walk through the area.

It used to be said that you know you are having a bad day when the switchboard advises that Mike Wallace from 60 minutes is holding for you.
In today’s world, that power has shifted to SNL. Ask Sarah Palin. Or ask Michael Crow.
Saturday Night Live’s take-no-prisoners shot at ASU for not conferring an honorary degree on President Barack Obama is becoming viral.
I saw it on Greta Susteren’s show on Fox News while at the gym Monday night. Fox is not in the habit of plugging an NBC program; so this was out of the ordinary.
And there are now several places online where the SNL segment has been posted followed by a legion of scathing comments aimed at ASU’s decision.
Initially, I thought this would all blow over, but I’m now convinced the damage to ASU’s reputation runs deep and that ASU President Crow knows it.
I watched last week’s graduation ceremonies on ASU-TV on Cox cable and got more looks at Crow than commercial TV gave him. Through all of it, Crow looked like a man in pain. There was no heart in his remarks. The self-confidence and commanding presence that he once brought to so many meetings in the newsroom were nowhere to be seen.
When CNN was doing its post-mortem on the speech, David Gergen characterized Obama’s ASU honorary degree references as a rare and welcome display of presidential humor.
Initially, I bought into that point of view. But now it’s clear that this presidential humor bites, and like an Arizona Gila monster doesn’t let go. Witness Obama’s subsequent reference to ASU’s decision in his commencement address at Notre Dame.
I don’t know what can or should be done about this lapse in judgment and public relations disaster, but it has damaged years of work Crow has put into improving ASU’s reputation.
And that’s a shame.

I was ratted out…by my own wife…on Facebook.

This tale of snichery begins on Wednesday when I had a free lunch.

I went to Joe’s Real Barbecue in downtown Gilbert on customer appreciation day.

I got in line with several hundred other people at 11:51 a.m., shook owner Joe Johnston’s hand as he worked a very long line and thanked him for the free lunch, one of 6,000 that he had prepared for the free lunch and dinner day.

About five minutes later, the line passed by Mrs. Joe who handed me a coupon for a buy-one, get-one-free breakfast at Joe’s Farm Grill.

By 12:27 p.m., I was in the restaurant door. In a minute or so I was handed a bulging pulled pork sandwich on a plate with beans and coleslaw.

By 12:38 p.m. I had eaten everything on my plate, watched a swarm of young mothers feeding their toddlers and was heading for the exit.

Why did I do it?

Well, because I could.

I’m no longer the editor of the Tribune. That means I’m no longer covered by the Tribune’s strict code of ethics, which prohibits journalists from accepting gifts and free lunches.

And what a better place to get a free lunch than at Joe’s in downtown Gilbert.

Free at last.

Or am I?

I still occasionally write for the Tribune, and my editor is Le Templar who led the newsroom group that developed the code and became the go-to guy when ethical questions came up in the newsroom.

Maybe he wouldn’t approve.

Oh, well, I’ll just keep my mouth shut. If I don’t say anything it won’t be an issue.

“Honey,” my wife asked later Wednesday evening. “How long did you stand in line at Joe’s?”

I gave her the times that I had written down in my reporter’s notebook.

“And where did the line go to?”

I told her, even drew her a map.

She had pressed the send key before it occurred to me to ask why she wanted to know.

“Jess Harter was asking on Facebook,” she explained, referring to the Trib’s eating out reporter.

Oh, no!

Jess blogs about everything. Everyone in the newsroom and East Valley will know I got a free lunch.

I have only a hazy understanding of how my wife got into sharing her deepest secrets AND mine with Jess because I don’t do Facebook.

But it has something to do with newsroom office manager CJ Coppola and my wife being friends and CJ and Jess are friends and now for reasons that reveal much about the tell-all-no-matter-how-irrelevant age we live in, my daughter in Baltimore and my son in Claremont, CA. are pretty much up to speed on the East Valley restaurant scene.

Anyway, my goose is cooked. So I’ll just do what politicians do and apologize for an error in judgment and promise not to do it again. (Wait. Scratch that last part.)

If you have read this far, you are also a victim of this age of blogs that don’t shed light, but often shed heat.

I’m not going to shed heat, but I will share an opinion.

Joe Johnston and Mrs. Joe have to be the coolest people in the East Valley.

A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I went to the downtown Gilbert park to look at that huge marble or granite ball that floats on water and decided to try Joe’s new place, the Liberty Market, which is just caty corner from the barbecue restaurant.

A lady was cleaning nearby tables and my wife asked if she would give ours a once over.

“Do you ever see Joe?” my wife asked the help.

“Yes, I go home with him every night. I’m Mrs. Joe,” the table busser replied.

Doesn’t that tell you something about the Johnstons?

The best known and probably the most successful restaurateurs in all of Gilbert and she’s cleaning tables on a Saturday and he’s working behind the coffee bar.

They, as much as anybody, have made downtown Gilbert one of my favorite happening places.

Try not to laugh. A few months ago I would have laughed, too.

But that was before the park, before the Paul Bunyan-sized bowling ball that floats on water, before the Liberty Market opened, and before I got my free lunch.

I’ll have more to say about Gilbert’s town center in a future column. You’ll just have to wait.

Or you can read Jess Harter’s blog.

I received a call this morning at home from a woman who identified herself as Shelly.

She also identified herself as an advocate for the Valley Interfaith Project and wanted to know what I thought of the state budget meeting that I had attended at Red Mountain United Methodist Church 10 days ago.

My answer was not what Shelly was looking for.

First some background:  The meeting was entitled “Legislative District 19/Accountability Session.”

The meeting announcement flyer said that State Sen. Chuck Gray, House Speaker Kirk Adams, and State Rep. Richard Crandall had indicated they would attend.

Hosts were the Valley Interfaith Project and the Mesa Education Association.

My wife, who is an MEA member, asked me if I wanted to go.  Well, I live in District 19, and I may be a retired journalist, but I still can’t resist taking a ringside seat to a political head-butting contest.

And this had all the makings of one.  The three invited Mesa Republican lawmakers are conservative and the hosts are not.

The hosts wanted a 1 cent temporary sales tax increase and used the Bible to lobby for one.  And the two panelists (Adams was a no-show) didn’t get voted into office on a platform of raising taxes.

In one respect, I was disappointed.  The crowd of a couple hundred people was polite, and the two lawmakers (Adams was a no-show) were respectful, complimentary, and skilled at politely saying “no way.”

Well, I wasn’t really disappointed because I appreciate civility.  I saw so little of it in recent years from the flame-throwers particularly on the right who blamed “the liberal media” and me for illegal immigration and for all the other demons under their beds.

I told Shelly what bothered me was the way the host pastors used the Bible and sermonettes to call on the lawmakers to support a tax increase.

Basically, the argument was this.  Jesus advocated social justice.  State belt-tightening is leading to social injustice because the less fortunate, particularly groups of children, are losing government support programs.

So, we get into one of those what-Jesus-would-have-done-on-state-tax-policy discussions that can go on forever.

But Shelly made the mistake of asking for it.  So I gave her my take on the argument:

Jesus would not have asked Rome to confiscate people’s property through higher taxes to take care of “the least of these.”  We all know that Jesus tried to avoid a confrontation with political authorities through his famous “Render unto Caesar…” statement.

For one thing, when you increase taxes, you risk pushing more people, including families, who are on the margins into the less fortunante category, requiring yet more taxes to help yet more people in need.

For another, you get no credit at the end of the day.  I can’t very well tell Saint Peter that I deserve to be in heaven because I acted on my Christian faith by giving a large chunk of my paycheck to the less fortunate.

“Wait a minute,” he’ll say.  “You didn’t give anything.  That money was taken out of your paycheck by the government.  It doesn’t count when you are forced to give.”

But that’s exactly what the pastors were doing, as I saw it:  “Let’s bring about social justice by forcing all those other people to pay for it.”

One more thought and I’ll shut up.  There is that separation of church and state idea.  It’s a good idea because it protects religion.

What happens when the walls come down?  Somebody gets hurt, that’s what happens; and it’s never the government.  Look at Wall Street and look at Detroit.

The altar call came that night as meeting leaders asked those in attendance to stand up if they support a sales tax increase, I was one of the few who stayed in the pew.

I give at church–maybe not as much as I should, but at least it’s voluntary.

(Disclosure:  The writer is a United Methodist Church member.)

The Mesa Historical Museum would close its Lehi facility by October, and its popular spring baseball exhibit would move to the downtown Mesa area and housed at what is now the Arizona Museum for Youth, under a plan presented Thursday to the City Council.

The plan is driven by financial problems that both museums face and that led to the history museum’s seeking city assistance.

Johann Zietsman, Mesa arts and cultural director, crafted and presented the plan to Council, explaining that his goal was to protect and work with the collections of both museums to create a new model for museums.

He said history museums throughout the country are on hard times and the city will “rethink” how it presents its history to the public.

For instance, Zietsman said that pieces of the history museum’s collections could show up in city buildings and possibly malls and other high traffic areas.

Zietsman said history museum director Lisa Anderson would be put on the city’s payroll, in part funded by revenues currently generated by the museum.

The plan was generally praised by Council members as important to the city’s quality of life and received a strong endorsement from Mayor Scott Smith.

Smith said if the plan was simply a bailout, he wouldn’t support it.

He added, “I wholeheartedly support this change in direction and vision.”
Smith said the city was the downtown’s largest landowner and had a vested interest in consolidating cultural offerings, such as the Cactus League exhibit, downtown.

He and Vice Mayor Kyle Jones spoke of the changes Zietsman outlined in broad terms as enhancing the quality of life in Mesa and the draw to the downtown.

“We want Cactus League visitors to experience downtown,” Smith said.

Smith did offer the Arizona Youth Museum a critical assessment of the museum’s branding and marketing.

Since running for mayor, he said he has become familiar with the institution, but suspects that the general population is neither aware of it or understands its purpose.

“The first question is what do they do?” Smith said.  “There is not a broad understanding of what they do there.”

Presumably that question now falls to Zietsman as he reshapes the downtown museum landscape.

(Full disclosure:  The writer was invited to join the Mesa Historical Museum board shortly before these developments.  New board members are not seated until June.)

U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake doesn’t find much on which to agree with President Barack Obama, but the East Valley Republican on Thursday applauded Obama’s loosening of travel restrictions to Cuba.

For years, Flake was a lonely voice in Congress for opening travel between the United States and Cuba.  Flake made no headway under former President Bush, whose administration made it even more difficult for Cuban Americans to visit family members still in Cuba or send them gifts and staples.

But Flake told an East Valley crowd of business and political leaders Thursday morning that he was “impressed” with how Obama handled the politically active Cuban-American community in Florida during the presidential campaign and with the first step the Democrat President took to ease travel between the US and Cuba.

Flake said he hopes the next step is to lift the travel ban completely.  Americans should be able to travel without government restrictions, the former director of the Goldwater Institute, said.

Let’s just call the election for John Lewis and figure out what it means for Gilbert.

Given Lewis’s 2-1 vote margin over Don Skousen in Tuesday’s municipal election, that seems the reasonable thing to do even though it won’t be official until the May runoff.

So the real question is what kind of mayor will Lewis be?

One easy answer is that he’ll bring a fresh perspective to town hall and a sharp contrast in style to defeated Mayor Steve Berman.

Berman who took pride in his salesmanship abilities was a fast talker.  In conversations in which I was involved he not only talked fast he did all the talking.

He also wore his passion for Gilbert on his sleeve.  Trouble is the passion easily turned to confrontation whether it was the auto mall war with Chandler or with state lawmakers and county islanders over fire service.

Confrontational political leaders make for good newspaper copy.  I can vouch for that.

But low-key finesse will get you farther in the long run and create relationships that enable the kind of collaboration with bordering communities and constituency groups that are essential in these challenging economic times.

I found out just how different in style Lewis is from either Berman or Skousen when Lewis and I broke bread earlier this week.

For one thing, he’s a low-key listener.

Journalists are supposed to be the listeners.  They are supposed to be asking the politicians the questions.

But Lewis turned on the quiet charm first with questions about my family and second about policy matters involving economic development issues and the relationship between small businesses and town government and the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce and the mayor.

I did more talking than I should have, but I listened long enough to find out that we shared a common concern that the town needed to turn up the heat on economic development to bring more and better paying jobs to the area.

He told me to his chagrin an acquaintance from Phoenix who is involved in economic development said it would never occur to his organization to pitch Gilbert.  The town’s image as a sleepy and insular (my paraphrase, not Lewis’s words) bedroom community is so strong.  And it’s also not viewed as business friendly.

Lewis also observed that the town’s web site didn’t “sell” the town.  He said there may be a need for a separate site to acquaint potential employers with just how much Gilbert has going for it.

He referred me to his campaign Web site http://johnlewisformayor.com/planofaction/ where Lewis outlines his 10 top priorities and a 90-day plan, assuming his election.

One that stood out: “Set a deadline of 90 days to prepare a Strategic Direction Plan for attracting sustainable medium-large business operations to Gilbert. This plan will be created, discussed and agreed to by (with input from local business leaders).”

Another called for seeking out CEOs who have retired to Gilbert to get their help in how the town can do more to encourage small business development.

Lewis doesn’t have experience in government.  But on Tuesday he showed he could put a campaign together.

He is also demonstrating that he’s an accomplished listener who is asking the right questions.  And that will take him a long way.

“This institution belongs to the city,” Mesa Community College President Shouan Pan emphasized as he set the stage for a lunch-time brainstorming session Thursday with Mesa activists.

That’s what Pan said. But what does that mean and does he mean what he said?

In exchange for a lasagna lunch, Pan and other college leaders wanted members of what is known as MCC’s Commission on Excellence in Education to talk about their expectations of MCC as members of the Mesa community and in general comment on the vision of its future that the college has been developing.

I don’t think MCC got their lasagna’s worth, except from one table—a table that I was not at.

Former vice mayor Claudia Walters said her table urged the college to “raise the expectations of Mesa.” She said MCC is the “best kept secret” in the community and needs to strengthen its public relations effort. Twitter it, she said.

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