Deconstructing the Taco: The History and Lore of a Beloved Food with Gregory McNamee

Cochise College Benson Center 1025 S. Highway 90, Benson, AZ, United States

The foods of Arizona speak to the many cultures, native and newcomer, that make up our state. Consider the taco, that favorite treat, a staple of Mexican and Mexican American cooking and an old standby on an Arizonan’s plate. The corn in the tortilla comes from Mexico, the cheese from the Sahara, the lettuce from […]

FREE

Writers of The Purple Sage with Jim Turner

Cochise College Benson Center 1025 S. Highway 90, Benson, AZ, United States

This presentation covers five Arizona novelists: Zane Grey spent his honeymoon at the Grand Canyon and went on to be one of the first and most famous Western writers of all time; Harold Bell Wright came to Tucson with lung problems and became a bestseller from 1900 to 1930. University of Arizona writing professor Richard […]

FREE

For the Love of Turquoise with Carrie Calisay Cannon

Cochise College Downtown Center 2600 E Wilcox Dr, Sierra Vista

Turquoise has a long standing tradition amongst Native cultures of the Southwest, holding special significance and profound meanings to specific individual tribes. Even before the more contemporary tradition of combining silver with turquoise, cultures throughout the southwest used turquoise in necklaces, earrings, mosaics, fetishes, medicine pouches, and made bracelets of basketry stems lacquered with piñon […]

FREE

Desert Rats, River Runners, and Canyon Crawlers: Four Arizona Explorers with Gregory McNamee

Cochise College Downtown Center 2600 E Wilcox Dr, Sierra Vista

Francisco Garcés, a Franciscan friar, arrived in what is now Arizona in 1768. Assigned to the church at San Xavier del Bac south of present-day Tucson, he traveled widely throughout Arizona and California, charting overland routes that later travelers would follow. Near where Garcés would meet his death in 1781, an American soldier named Joseph […]

FREE

Saviors and Saints on the Arizona Frontier with Jan Cleere

Cochise College Downtown Center 2600 E Wilcox Dr, Sierra Vista

Health care in early Arizona was hardly reliable and frequently nonexistent. Often, settlers were on their own when tragedy struck with women taking on the responsibility for the well-being of their families. And if women were considered incapable of earning the title “Doctor,” they could certainly save souls. Meet a handful of women who influenced […]

FREE

Archaeology’s Deep Time Perspective on Environment and Sustainability with Al Dart

Cochise College Benson Center 1025 S. Highway 90, Benson, AZ, United States

The deep time perspective that archaeology, geology, and related disciplines provide about natural hazards, environmental change, and societal development is often ignored when societies today make decisions affecting social sustainability and human safety. Studies of ancient peoples and natural events can help modern society deal with problems of environmental and social change, overpopulation, and sustainability. […]

FREE

Seeing the Desert with Gregory McNamee

Cochise College Benson Center 1025 S. Highway 90, Benson, AZ, United States

  Most Arizonans are not originally from Arizona, and most come from places that are far greener and milder of climate than our desert. For many of us, it takes a shift of eye and of attitude to appreciate this hot, dry place—but once it gets into one’s soul, there’s nowhere like it. This talk […]

FREE

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