April 24, 2021 / Modified apr 25, 2021 7:55 p.m.

Understanding walls: "The barrier that we create in our hearts must be broken to heal and grow".

Also on Arizona Spotlight: Remembering the first space shuttle launch, 40 years ago; the uncertain state of the film industry reflected at the 93rd annual Academy Awards; and the tale of a very silly man.

understanding walls arms crossed hero Students Hector and Karina with their creative writing teacher Caroline Fioramanti (middle), together at Pueblo High School in Tucson, Arizona.
courtesy Andrea Photography

Arizona Spotlight

April 22, 2021

NPR
(Download MP3)

Featured on the April 22nd, 2021 edition of ARIZONA SPOTLIGHT with host Mark McLemore:

  • What can “walls” represent, both directly and metaphorically? A conversation with a teacher and two students at Pueblo High School who recently completed a special project about walls, who tell how their own feelings have been transformed. Thanks to Lisa Falk at the Arizona State Museum, educator Marge Pellegrino, and Caroline Fioramanti’s class at Pueblo High School for their collaboration.

understanding walls conversation hero Students Hector and Karina with their creative writing teacher Caroline Fioramanti (middle), together at Pueblo High School in Tucson, Arizona.
courtesy Andrea Photography

  • Forty years ago this month, the NASA space shuttle Columbia launched for the first time. Listen to two University of Arizona professors share their thoughts about the triumph and tragedy of the space shuttle program. Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos co-edited Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight. It is a collection of striking space photographs paired with more than 80 poems that help illuminate the darkness of “the final frontier”, and document some of the most thrilling moments in the half-century history of space exploration..

beyond earth's edge hero "Beyond Earth's Edge" includes more than 80 poems, edited by Julie Swarstad Johnson & Christopher Cokinos.
courtesy University of Arizona Press

pluto hero VIEW LARGER Captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015, this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto combines blue, red, and infrared images. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Southwest Research Institute)
  • Film essayist Chris Dashiell looks ahead to this weekend’s 93rd annual Academy Awards, that will reflect artistic achievement in an industry struggling to come to terms with changing how it does business.
oscar awards spotlight The most powerful entity in Hollywood? Rows of Oscar statues awaiting to be deployed at the Academy Awards.
  • And, Literacy Connects presents a radio edition of “Stories That Soar!”. It's a Tucson non-profit that empowers students of all ages by bringing the stories they write to life, using the talents of professional actors and musicians. Listen to a story set to music, "The Silly Man", written by Minerva, a 5th grader at Sam Hughes Elementary.

stories that soar the silly man spotlight Paper cutouts used to illustrate the story song "The Silly Man", written by Minerva, a 5th grader.
courtesy of "Stories That Soar!"

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