A flippant labeling of Arizona’s Native Americans as drunks on the CBS sitcom “Mike and Molly” makes light of an issue that has long plagued the Native American communities of the state.

In early March, the television show aired an episode in which Mike’s mother, played by actress Rondi Reed, confronted her daughter-in-law, Melissa McCarthy’s Molly, about a suggested move to Arizona.

“Who the hell said I’m moving to Arizona,” Reed’s character said. “You ever been to Arizona? It’s just a furnace full of drunk Indians.”

The episode comment was followed by a faithful laugh track, but later triggered outrage from Arizona’s Native American tribes.

“This is 2013,” said Erny Zah, the director of communications for the Navajo Nation’s president and vice president. “I thought for the most part we were past a lot of these offensive slurs, not only against Native Americans, but also to all minorities in the world… ‘Mike and Molly’ is a nationally syndicated TV show on one of the big three networks…and this comment made it through to that level.”

Photo by Bill Morrow, Flickr

In the next month, roughly 6,000 undergrads, 200 Ph.D. students, 900 master degree students, will graduate among 29 individual ceremonies in Tucson.

With these thousands of soon-to-be graduates comes masses of family and friends coming to Tucson over the course of one short weekend next month for spring commencement ceremonies at the University of Arizona.

Local businesses, hotels, and property owners also prepare for one last busy weekend of business before the long, slow summer months.

Last May, 18,000 people attended the 2012 University of Arizona spring commencement ceremony.  “We had to turn away tons of people,” said Mary Venezia, assistant director of strategic initiatives at the University of Arizona.

Venezia works along with a committee on the yearlong process of planning a graduation for thousands of students and families.

Plans for this year’s commencement took a big turn when the planning committee changed the school’s usual venue from the McKale Center to Arizona Stadium.

With a bigger venue comes bigger expenses.  “We have a lot of first time costs this year, like paying someone to build a stage,” said Venezia about the customized stage needed for the ceremony held in the stadium for the first time since 1972.

 

Just east of Downtown Tucson a Rattlesnake Bridge, which was designed by Simon Donovan, won an award for the nation’s best road project from the Federal Highway Administration. This bridge demonstrates the creativity Tucson has with combining city projects and public art.

Arizona is filled with little knickknacks that make it a unique state. Art is incorporated everywhere in Arizona. When new walkways, parks or buildings are built art projects are added to the construction. Organizations also bring communities together during rough times, to add art murals in memory or in light of an issue.

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<p><iframe src=”http://batchgeo.com/map/b1bcc876c5447bf8ed5506bb9988cce0″ frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”550″ style=”border:1px solid #aaa;border-radius:10px;”></iframe></p><p><small>View <a href=”http://batchgeo.com/map/b1bcc876c5447bf8ed5506bb9988cce0″>Public Art in Tucson</a> in a full screen map</small></p>
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If you’ve ever wished your business had an office dog, comfy love seats to brainstorm in or big screen TVs for presentations, sharing a workspace may be the answer for you.

It’s no secret that startup communities are expanding across the country. As a major source of net job growth in our economy, startups no longer solely belong to tech wizards in the Bay area. The success of startups and entrepreneurs alike is starting to depend more and more upon co-working spaces, also popping up all over the country. Tech reporting giant Mashable even has a designated category on their site for co-working spaces.

Entrepreneurs are using co-working spaces to save money and to take the next step in growing their businesses Alex Gurevich, creative director and co-owner of web-design firm Graphic Fusion, is also one of the co-founders of Spoke 6, a co-working space in Tucson. Gurevich insists that Spoke 6 did not start out to be a co-working space, but rather more of a place where like-minded people could come together and help propel each other towards their business goals.