The Show for June 30, 2026: Feeding a struggling Yuma, Mexican ceramics and more

The unemployment rate in Yuma County is in the double digits – higher than the rest of the state. The head of a food bank there on what that means for residents. Plus, we meet a local art collector who has traveled all over Mexico in search of rare ceramics.

Transcript

UNDERWRITER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit health care system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, we meet a passionate collector of Mexican ceramics, who says economic realities have made them harder to find.

BRODIE: And what a new ruling from the state Supreme Court on campaign finance disclosure means for the future.

GILGER: But first this morning, we turn to the area north of Sedona, where the Pocket Fire continues to grow and more communities are preparing to evacuate. The fire has spread rapidly in recent days as dry and windy conditions continue.

Yesterday alone, the fire jumped to more than 15,000 acres, and it is still zero percent contained. You’ve probably seen the photos or videos of smoke billowing out over the rim of Oak Creek Canyon, nearby one of our state’s most beloved destinations on fire. The smoke is billowing over Flagstaff. Roads are closed. The communities of Oak Creek Canyon, Kachina Village, Forest Highlands, and Pine Dell are under evacuation warnings.

For more on the fire spread and efforts to battle it, I’m joined now by John Truet, state fire manager at the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management. Thank you for joining us.

JOHN TRUET: Thank you for having me. Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so I gave the big-picture numbers there, 15,000 acres, 0% contained. Tell us first, John, just how bad is this?

JOHN TRUET: Being up here, we have our incident management team up here. And this piece of ground out here is the toughest piece of ground in the West to fight fire in, and it’s just very extreme conditions.

And then then you add on top of that, the long term drought, the dryness of the vegetation, and then the topper on all that was a very, very, very rare event of a three day extended Red Flag where we had 40 mile an hour to 50 mile an hour gusty winds. So that led to all the the spread of the fire.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So you’ve got these dry, windy conditions. We’ve had this notoriously dry spring, dry summer so far. Are we expecting anytime soon these conditions to to change? Is there any relief in sight in terms of the weather?

JOHN TRUET: The only relief is is that we we’ve dropped the wind velocities. Here on site on the fire itself, we have our our incident meteorologist, and he’s still looking out seven to 10 days out and still no signs of moisture from the monsoon. So we’re going to stay warm and dry.

LAUREN GILGER: Seven to 10 days. You’ve got more than 900 firefighters battling this blaze, personnel up there. Tell us about about what they’re trying to do. Like this is really rugged terrain, what tactics can they use in this area to try to start containing this fire?

JOHN TRUET: Yeah, we’ve used a matter some strategies in getting out in front of the fire, doing our our back burning out in front to take that fuel away from the the main fire, which has been very, very successful. We are on the offensive now to where the winds have died down, the fire is not pushing us around, we’re dictating it now. So we’re actually putting a little more what we call black in front of the the main fire, and we’re being very successful.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. Several communities are under the the set status. This is in the model of ready, set, go in terms of evacuations. They are one step from evacuation now. What do they need to be doing?

JOHN TRUET: To stay vigilant. Again, on the western or the eastern side of this fire, in the in the West Fork drainage area, we are being very successful in there. We’re we’re minimizing the fire spread as it is now. So we are reducing the threat to those communities, but the threat is not gone yet.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. How do you determine when it’s time for folks to leave in an evacuation scenario like this?

JOHN TRUET: We rely on our science of the fire as far as our our fire behavior analysts, our our IMET. We start determining this fire to the the spread of the fire, the velocity of the the winds, and actually the time it takes to evacuate that community, all those factors come into play. And what we do is we have a strategic line on a map we say if this fire meets that line, it’s time to time to go. So it’s a very pre-planned event.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you about the broader picture on this wildfire season, John. Is this just the beginning? As I mentioned, we’ve had this very dry spring, dry summer so far, lots of kind of kindle for fuel out there. Are we looking at lots of fires like this and worse?

JOHN TRUET: You know, historically, we would be on the down side, but typically late June, early July is the most extreme time of fire spread in Arizona. And unfortunately, it’s it’s the time of most of our fatalities have happened. So as time goes on, we’re still looking at in a severe state.

But as we go into July, hopefully, we’ll get some moisture in the air and we’ll start on the downward trend. But the Western states are are starting to pick up. You look at Utah, Colorado, all those fires, and unfortunately we had the fatality up in Utah, but they are they are just now starting their fire season. So it’s going to be a long fire season throughout the West.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, throughout the entire West. You mentioned the fatality of that firefighter, one from Arizona, three in total on the Utah-Colorado border fighting a fire there. Is there enough personnel to go around right now, John? Are folks going to end up in these dangerous situations more often?

JOHN TRUET: Well, it’s it’s not really the shortage, it’s just the again, just realizing extreme conditions. This is actually the start of the remembrance week for our fallen firefighters. And you look at every time that we have a fatality, it’s an overwhelming event with the weather. So we just need to stay vigilant on on keeping our eye on the weather and the fire spread. We are always going to run into shortages. Nationally, we’re on preparedness level 4. That’s when you really start to get to the national coordination of moving troops and firefighters around the whole nation.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. We’ll leave it there. John Truet, state fire manager at the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, joining us with the latest on the Pocket Fire burning near Oak Creek Canyon. John, thank you for coming on, appreciate it.

JOHN TRUET: All right. Thank you.

BRODIE: The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld a voter-approved law aimed at helping residents know who is spending money on political campaigns, but it wasn’t a total win for supporters.

Voters approved Prop 211, also known as the Voters’ Right to Know Act, in 2022 with 72% of the vote. It generally requires groups that spend more than $50,000 on statewide races, less on other elections, to publicly disclose the names of anyone who’s given at least $5,000. Critics, including the Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, argued the law violates free speech protections. The courts, though, have disagreed.

With me now to discuss the ruling and what comes next is Jerod MacDonald-Evoy with the Arizona Mirror, who’s written about this. Jerod, good morning.

JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY: Good morning.

BRODIE: So how big of a of a win is it for the folks who are backing the the Voters’ Right to Know Act?

MACDONALD-EVOY: I would say this is a pretty big win for them. They’ve they’ve seemed pretty happy about this, that the court largely upheld the law and said it is constitutional and that it can stand on its own legs.

BRODIE: And I mentioned that there were some groups who argued that the law sort of infringed on their free speech protections. What exactly was their argument in that regard?

MACDONALD-EVOY: Correct. So the case that was heard by the Arizona Supreme Court was brought by, as you said, the Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. And they argued that two anonymous donors that were part of this suit were concerned that their their speech was going to be chilled or harmed by this act by them having their identities exposed and connected to this campaign spending kind of in this.

The main argument that was made during oral arguments a few months ago was that in light of this kind of hyper-partisan environment we’re in and in light of kind of the political violence that that this would create a chilling effect on people who may want to donate to maybe more controversial causes or or causes such as that, and not want to advocate for certain causes knowing that their their identities may be exposed. And that was kind of the crux of some of their their main arguments here towards the end of this case.

BRODIE: And what did the justices say about that?

MACDONALD-EVOY: The justices found that there was some some cause of belief that that their, that that both CAP and FEC had some some legitimate threats that that to them and that there was some belief that they said that media spending like this is a form of expressive speech and making donations is a form of expressive speech. They also cited Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United that said that corporate spending is even considered now a form of speech.

However, they they did find, the majority found that that was not overruled by the Arizona state’s Constitution, which seems to to favor this idea of election transparency and transparency in elections and that it didn’t exactly, you know, conflict with the state’s own version of the First Amendment, which is the speech freely clause, which offers some kind of protections for for people within the state for their First Amendment beliefs and their kind of ability to speak truth to power.

BRODIE: The court, though, is allowing part of this case to go back to the lower courts. What exactly is that?

MACDONALD-EVOY: Correct. And it has to do with that particular issue. The only, the only thing that the courts kind of felt that the lower courts maybe erred on was not allowing for arguments to be heard on that particular issue, whether or not these having people’s donations exposed could cause a chilling effect on one’s ability to speak on this issue under the Arizona speech freely clause.

That is part of the opinion that both sides, those who dissented and the majority opinion on the court, agreed was something that the lower courts needed to allow there to be arguments for and sent that back to the lower courts.

Everything else, the other arguments in regards to the constitutionality of this measure were all upheld. But they felt that this part needed to be argued in a lower court and felt that needed its time in court to be heard.

BRODIE: Right, which is not to say necessarily that they that that the critics or the challengers will necessarily win, just that they have the chance to make their arguments.

MACDONALD-EVOY: Correct. And we’re not sure exactly when this will be happening yet. But, CAP and FEC will now have their time to argue that that these donations did have and will have essentially, or this act will have essentially a chilling effect on their speech.

And it seems, though, that according to the majority opinion, there still seems to be a belief, though, that the speech freely act may still not be as impacted by this given the state Constitution’s strong favorability towards election transparency. They cited how the state was back in 1917, very early in the state’s statehood, was already passing laws to expose kind of expose the ways that money was influencing politics.

BRODIE: How has the law worked so far? I mean, it’s been almost four years since voters overwhelmingly approved it. Like has it increased transparency in who’s spending what on whom?

MACDONALD-EVOY: It has increased some transparency in some areas. Voters may have noticed on certain campaign signages ...

[TEMPORARY INTERRUPTION]

I think voters have begun to notice that on certain campaign signs or certain campaign ads the certain notices have been added to those ... that campaign media. Things that will say how much out of state money is contributing to those ads or even the specific group that has contributed the most money to those ads.

Those are all functions of this act that are contributing to additional transparency for voters to understand who and how is exactly contributing to these campaigns and these campaign media spending that is trying to influence their voters.

BRODIE: Sure, interesting. All right. That is Jerod MacDonald-Evoy with the Arizona Mirror. Jerod, thanks so much.

MACDONALD-EVOY: No problem. Thank you.

BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, we’ll hear from members of a longtime LGBTQ+ group on the state of Pride celebrations in 2026.

BRODIE: But first, Yuma’s unemployment rate is higher than the rest of the state. In March, it stood at 11% and it’s up to nearly 14% in April. The state’s unemployment rate, by way of comparison, is under 5%.

Earlier, I spoke about this and what it means with Andy Robinson, president and CEO of the Yuma Community Food Bank. And we started with why it is that the unemployment rate in Yuma is so much higher than it is in the rest of the state.

ANDY ROBINSON: Well, I don’t know if I have every answer. But I think some of the things that we do see here in Yuma is because we are such an agricultural based area that we do have a lot of migrants that come in and out, and that does cause some of our employment to probably spike at times.

And we also just, probably a little bit lower economic opportunities out here with the border and things like that. It just does affect, it feels like, our county more so than others, that the swings are a little more dramatic.

So when prices go up and businesses are making hard decisions on maybe cutting back or not hiring as much, I think in Yuma it’s affected a little bit more, and we feel it a little bit at a higher level.

BRODIE: So maybe some of the same factors as being felt elsewhere, they’re just felt more more strongly in the Yuma area?

ROBINSON: Correct. I think it’s I think it’s a similar situation, other than maybe the produce, the agricultural things like that, because that that is one thing that a lot of the other areas in the state don’t have all the time in such a large swing from from summer to winter. But I think all the same other economic issues that the state is realizing, I just think that we we reflect it a lot harder in our area.

BRODIE: And so what does that mean for you at the at the Yuma Community Food Bank?

ROBINSON: Well, obviously the demand is high. I mean, we’re trying to help people fill some of the gaps. When bills go up and expenses go up, they’re having to make hard decisions on do I go buy food, or do I buy gas to go to the my job, or do I pay the electric bill, or do I pay rent?

And so here at the food bank, we’re seeing a lot of people come in and we’re helping them out on the food side of it as much as we possibly can to give them some hope and some breathing room, hopefully, from that point when all these other things are maybe working against them a little bit.

BRODIE: How has demand changed maybe over the last let’s say maybe six months or so?

ROBINSON: The demands have been high. Ever since some of the changes with SNAP and stuff like that. One of our zip codes that we service, 85364, is the highest SNAP recipient in the state, percentage wise.

So we definitely have seen some things happen with SNAP changes, reductions, some ideas like that, that we’ve definitely seen an increase on demand over last year.

BRODIE: And are you finding that when people come in — it sounds like you’re having more people come in — but are they also needing more from you, especially if they’re part of the 11% or so of the population that doesn’t have a job?

ROBINSON: Yeah, I would say they would we try and give out equal amounts obviously when they come in. Most we can give out once a month. And then if the people need more, then they come in and we can give them a different type of food that we’ve purchased or purchase the food that’s been donated.

But if it’s food for that’s earmarked from like DES and things like that, we can only really give that out once a month. And so any other food that we can give out and help out with, that’s going to ... come out of kind of a different fund.

BRODIE: OK. So what does that mean in terms of your supplies if, you know, folks in your community maybe have have greater need and there are more of them? Like what does that mean for what you have on the shelves?

ROBINSON: We’re very fortunate, Mark, that we have a lot of community participation, both volunteers as well as funding. We get a lot from our local businesses, some of our corporate sponsors, generous funding from other people as well, and we’re able to provide.

We’re not having an issue of running out, thank goodness, because of the generosity of our community and some of the funding that we are applying for and getting.

BRODIE: What are you looking for in the coming months? As SNAP continues to be sort of in flux, and the unemployment rate is what it is, and the economy is what it is. What do the next couple of months maybe look like for you?

ROBINSON: It’s definitely an increase. I mean, we’re seeing double-digit increase on people coming in that we didn’t have over last year. So we’re just preparing for that. We’re trying to buy more where we can, really directing every fund that we can, being very efficient in in the money that we do have to make sure it’s going into food, so we’re ready for any influxes that happen.

We know that the summer came early here in Arizona. It got hotter earlier in March, and saw a lot of spikes with electric bills and things. But we know that July and August and September are the highest ones. So we know that these people are going to, our neighbors and the people, our clients, are going to come in are going to have even more of a need in the next few months. So we’re just trying to be prepared so we’re ready to help them out when we can.

BRODIE: What does it look like for the people that you’re serving when social safety nets come with a work requirement in an area that has a relatively high unemployment rate?

ROBINSON: Well, I’m going to tell you, Mark. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Yuma County actually has a waiver for that that work requirement. So luckily, we were able to work with Arizona Food Bank Network, as well of our state officials to apply for a waiver.

It didn’t come till March. So a lot of people were affected at the beginning of the year. But the issue is the communication. A lot of these people fell off DES and they have to reapply, but they don’t have to work. They don’t have a work requirement, I should say, for to receive SNAP here in Yuma.

Yuma’s the only county I believe in the state of Arizona that has this because of our high unemployment rate. But a lot of the people who fell off at the beginning of the year haven’t been communicated or the backlog from DES is so long for them to get on that they still haven’t received SNAP benefits yet.

We’re trying to pass the word out to people to go ahead and reapply, so they may be able to get some of these benefits that they’ve lost.

BRODIE: So in theory, there are people out in your community who maybe don’t need quite as much from you, but just don’t know it?

ROBINSON: Possible. It’s very possible. I mean, we don’t have all the numbers, and we don’t know who’s qualifying and who’s not. We we don’t do SNAP here. We support the people, but most of our clients obviously get SNAP or used to get SNAP, some type of a benefit from that point.

BRODIE: Do you have reason to believe that either the unemployment rate or the demand for food from from your food bank will go down anytime soon?

ROBINSON: I don’t. I really don’t, not with everything that’s going on. I think it’s actually just going to keep ramping up as things — unless the economy really turns around and employment changes and things like that happen right away. I think there’s always going to be a need, and I don’t see it going down. I probably I would love to see it stabilize and, you know, but we’re going to see where that goes with the numbers.

BRODIE: All right. That is Andy Robinson, president and CEO of Yuma Community Food Bank. Andy, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

ROBINSON: Thanks, Mark.

GILGER: Kathleen Vanesian has been collecting ceramics from all over Mexico for 45 years. The retired collector and art critic has traveled all over the country finding particular pieces from certain artists from sometimes remote communities, amassing an incredible and varied collection of pottery that packs her Phoenix home.

But today that landscape has changed in Mexico where many younger people have taken jobs working to harvest large-scale monocultures like avocados or strawberries, and ceramics, once the lifeblood of these communities, has begun to diminish. The New York Times documented the phenomenon recently in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

To Vanesian, it’s a loss of not just art, but culture. She came into our studios recently to talk to me more about it, beginning with what drew her to this kind of art.

KATHLEEN VANESIAN: I think as a kid, I was born and raised in San Diego, about a 15-minute drive from the Mexican border. And so Mexico was always on my radar. It was a part of my cultural landscape. My parents, when people would come into town, they would take their visitors to Tijuana. And at that time, you still actually could get a lot of interesting things in Tijuana. So that’s probably where it started.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so something you’ve kind of always been aware of and liked.

VANESIAN: Exactly.

GILGER: So you’ve been doing this collecting for a lot of years. And it sounds like it has taken you all over Mexico to do it.

VANESIAN: It has. It has.

GILGER: Talk a little bit about the places you’ve traveled to find some of the pieces in your collection.

VANESIAN: Well, I’ve been to probably 15 or 20 of the different Mexican states. Michoacán, Jalisco, Guanajuato is a big ceramics place. And it’s not just ceramics that I collect. It’s other types of folk art, too. Sculptures in wood, textiles, all sorts of things, whatever I like. Whatever I like. Whatever appeals to me.

GILGER: What are some of your favorites in that?

VANESIAN: Let’s see. I love the pottery of Tzintzuntzan, which is a very simple, it has a cream background, a cream glaze, and then different designs usually related to fishing on the lake, like the butterfly nets of Lake Pátzcuaro where they they catch whitefish. But there are all sorts of forms of ceramics coming from there.

GILGER: Let me ask you this because one of the things that I think you’re getting at here with talking about the the way that each village has its own distinct type of pottery, right, is that the pottery, this kind of folk art tradition from this country, but really from anywhere, says a lot about the place and its history, right?

VANESIAN: Exactly. Exactly. This goes back to pre-Columbian times. This is not something that came with the Spanish conquest. This this goes way, way, way back. For example, in Jalisco, the town of Tonalá goes back 3,000 years.

GILGER: Wow.

VANESIAN: And their pottery tradition.

GILGER: Right. So these are traditions that are passed from family to family for not just generations, but it sounds like sometimes millennia.

VANESIAN: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then new forms crop up like the devil statues from Ocumicho, Michoacán.

GILGER: OK. So you’ve surrounded yourself with this in your home. You clearly love this type of work and have traveled to collect it throughout your life. I want to ask you about the state of the industry today.

As we saw in this recent piece from The New York Times, there’s intense pressures on a lot of these regions kind of driven by industrial agriculture, cash crops, avocados, strawberries, things like that that are sort of drawing young people away from these traditional trades and into fields where they can, you know, make a reliable paycheck essentially, pull people out of poverty.

And, you know, it sounds like it’s a very nuanced situation where there’s good and bad on both sides. But what was your reaction to this?

VANESIAN: Well, actually, that whole change started to occur in the early ’90s.

GILGER: So you’ve seen this happen.

VANESIAN: I’ve seen this happen, and that’s with the introduction of NAFTA, where a lot of people from the different towns and villages would go up to the border to, you know, Arizona, California, wherever there was a maquiladora.

GILGER: Right. So when NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, passed in the early ’90s, this fundamentally changed the economy there.

VANESIAN: It sure did.

GILGER: That’s interesting. So how much of that do you think has to do with those kind of broader economic changes that have come to that country and to those regions?

VANESIAN: I’m sure it has everything to do with that. And that agribusiness now is astounding.

GILGER: So what do you think that’s doing or has done already to these kind of beautiful pieces, the long history of ceramics that you have collected for so long in Mexico?

VANESIAN: They’re being gentrified. You know, slick designs, oh and those horrible colors that you will now see coming out of Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, purple and neon orange and lime green, those are not traditional colors. And then of course, everyone’s madly in love with Frida Kahlo, so.

GILGER: Yes.

VANESIAN: If I ever see another Frida Kahlo image, The only Frida Kahlo image that I actually have in my collection, it’s a series of little sculptures by Josefina Aguilar from Ocotlán, Oaxaca. And she has taken imagery from the photographs and made little sculptures and painted them.

GILGER: So you think that the the industry is changing because of all of these kind of various factors. Can you still find those kinds of really original pieces that you would go and seek out back in the day?

VANESIAN: Yes, you can. You can.

GILGER: How do you do it?

VANESIAN: Find out where and when the concursos are, the big fairs. Also, there are holiday fairs where people will bring their stuff in to a big fair market, and you still can get great stuff.

GILGER: So let me ask you lastly, Kathleen, just about I guess why you love this. Like why you’ve spent so much time and energy tracking down these pieces and caring about this industry and watching sort of the up and downs and the changes of it. What is really special about it to you?

VANESIAN: I just love the the honesty. The people who create these things are going to create them whether people buy their pieces or not. They will come in from a day in the fields, and they will come and work their magic. And nothing’s thought they’re going to do it, no matter what. It won’t matter whether NAFTA is involved or industrialization or anything like that.

GILGER: Yeah, all of those things.

VANESIAN: All of those things.

GILGER: Yeah. All right. Well, you’ve surrounded yourself with it. That’s pretty cool. Kathleen Vanesian, a retired collector and art critic, joining us to talk about Mexican pottery. Kathleen, thank you so much for coming in, I really appreciate it.

VANESIAN: Thank you for having me.

GILGER: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. The news on the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs, Lakes Mead and Powell, has been not great for a while now. But a new concept paper offers an idea for one way to start to protect the system if the seven basin states and federal government agree to do it.

John Berggren is regional policy manager for Western Resource Advocates, where he heads the group’s Colorado River policy work. He joins me and, John, you’re advocating for the use of something called a flexible conservation pool. What exactly is that?

JOHN BERGGREN: So that refers to this idea that, can we find a way to incentivize or encourage water users throughout the Colorado River basin to conserve water? And then when they do conserve that water, store it in a separate account in one of the large reservoirs, in this case Lake Powell or Lake Mead. And if you store that conserved water in a separate account, you can actually do some pretty creative things with it that you couldn’t do otherwise.

And so there is a current program in the Lower Basin called intentionally created surplus, which is one of these conservation programs where Lower Basin users can conserve water and it is stored in Lake Mead, but it’s not this key term that we talk about in the paper, which is operationally neutral.

In other words, current, the way the current system works is when Lower Basin users conserve water, it becomes part of the system, it becomes part of Lake Mead to determine Lake Mead operations, and therefore how much of this intentionally created surplus water there is impacts those Lake Mead operations.

Our suggestion is if you make that what’s called operationally neutral, then the conserved water doesn’t impact those reservoir operations, and if you do that and that’s the case, then you can kind of move and store this water in pretty creative ways.

BRODIE: Is the advantage of making it operationally neutral an idea of maybe there’s more incentive to do it because, for example, if Lakes Mead or Powell have a certain amount of water in them, then that has certain implications, pardon the pun, up or down stream? Does keeping it operationally neutral sort of incentivize more conservation because it doesn’t mean, you know, for example, more or less water coming to the Lower Basin states?

BERGGREN: Yeah, so what it really does is it provides more flexibility in managing the system. So like I said right now, it’s pretty hard to or there’s pretty set rules, there are set rules for how conserved water is managed. But what we’re saying is if you make it more flexible, and you you make it operationally neutral, and therefore it doesn’t matter where it’s stored, then depending on that year’s conditions, depending on that year’s needs, you can move the water around without impacting Upper to Lower Basin water deliveries, without impacting Lake Mead operations or Lower Basin shortages or or impacting things happening upstream of Lake Powell.

BRODIE: So, in your paper, you use the analogies of a savings account and a checking account. I wonder if this sort of separate account that you're talking about is almost like if you're saving up for something, like you're, you know, saving up money for a down payment on a house, you might put money into a a third type of account. Is that kind of what you're talking about when you would take this water that is being conserved and put it in Lake Mead or or Lake Powell but not sort of as part of the overall pot there?

BERGGREN: Yeah, so exactly. So, you could put it into a separate account where it wouldn't be part of your checking account, which is your day-to-day budget, and your day-to-day, this is how much water we, this is how much money we have to spend.

This is a separate account that doesn't impact that decision. But what the separate account does is depending if we need that down payment for a house, depending if we need a new car or some big fix on our house, we have the flexibility to pay for it without dipping into that checking account.

BRODIE: How politically palatable might this be for the the seven Colorado River basin states, which haven't really been able to agree on a whole lot recently?

BERGGREN: Yeah, it's a good question. You know, this is not necessarily a new concept, and we're not the only ones talking about it. There are other folks talking about it, and and what we're really hoping is this type of flexibility really gets into the narrative around the basin states negotiations to demonstrate that there are tools, there are things available, there are policies on the table that people have proposed that could really help alleviate the the the stresses on the system.

And so, we don't want to wade into the politics by any mean, but rather show, OK, here's a tool that if we had in place this year, it'd be pretty effective at helping us protect Powell with a lot of these other political consequences.

BRODIE: So, assuming that the states were to go ahead and do this, how would you suggest they manage sort of the withdrawals from that special account? Because I could see a situation where, you know, an Upper Basin state, for example, puts water into it and a Lower Basin state really needs it, that may be not going over so well, or vice versa.

BERGGREN: Yeah, you'd have to work out there are a lot of details to work out for sure, and you would need agreement, you know, between the states and the and the feds. But it would be it would be similar to how for Lower Basin states, it'd be similar how the Intentionally Created Surplus works — where users can contribute to this pool and depending on system conditions and and various components, they can get that water back in future years.

What we're less focused on is how the water gets in and gets out, but rather, while the water's in there, let's be really smart with it.

BRODIE: So listening to you describe this, I’m struck by, it seems like it kind of accomplishes the goal that almost everybody is agreeing on, something that pretty much every water user understands has to happen, which is using less of the water from the Colorado River.

But instead of it almost seems like it’s more of the carrot approach, like there’s this incentive to say, "OK, look, we know we have to conserve water, we have to use less water, instead of just making it sort of punitive, why don’t we put it into this this separate account, into this pool, so that if we needed it at some point, it’s there as opposed to just taking it away."

BERGGREN: So that’s a really important point, and I’m glad you brought it up because I want to make clear that this tool that we’re talking about is not a silver bullet, and it’s not the only tool. It’s definitely one of the tools in the toolkit.

And when I say that, I mean, in addition to this concept of an operationally neutral conservation pool, you also need other things to help use less water, so maybe more of the stick that you’re talking about.

BRODIE: I wonder if you might be able to give us sort of an example of how this would work in practice for folks who are maybe understanding the conceptual idea of it, but not sure sort of logistically how it would work.

Let’s say that the states and the feds agreed to this and put it into place. How might it work in terms of putting water into it and then maybe deciding at some point, OK, we should use some of that water that’s been stashed away for purpose X?

BERGGREN: Sure. So, you know, this year’s a great example. There’s over 3 million acre feet of Lower Basin intentionally created surplus currently in Lake Mead, but it’s part of the calculation for Lake Mead, and so you can’t take it out without impacting Lake Mead operations or Lower Basin shortages.

If it were operationally neutral, and then we had a year like this where Lake Powell is getting incredibly low, we could “move” some of that Lower Basin intentionally created surplus, there’s up to over 3 million acre feet, let’s say we move a million acre feet.

We do that by reducing releases out of Lake Powell upstream, and then on paper, that in essence moves that water from Mead to Powell. And so now you account for it in Powell, because you released a million acre foot less out of Powell, now that water is considered in Powell. But again, it’s operationally neutral, so it doesn’t impact Powell operations, it doesn’t impact compact delivery obligations, it doesn’t impact any of that.

Same thing if you wanted to move it back down to Mead, you just release an extra million acre feet out of Powell, but act like you didn’t do it so the water will physically move, but on paper you account for it in a separate way.

So it’s a little trick, it’s a little confusing, a little counter intuitive, because you’re not physically, you know, piping water from Lake Mead upstream to Powell, but you’re you’re playing with the releases, and you’re you’re doing a bit of accounting to move this water around and provide the benefits where where it’s most needed.

BRODIE: All right. That is John Berggren, regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates. John, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

BERGGREN: Thank you, Mark.

BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Well, it’s the last day of June, which means it’s the last day of Pride month, when members of the LGBTQ+ community celebrate out in the open. And, for decades, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence has been central to those celebrations.

The Sisters are committed to community service. They also dress up in outrageous, nun-inspired garb and use humor and joy to battle bigotry.

But, these days, a few members of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sisters told me, it’s harder than ever to get new members to join them. They’re down to just 10 members today.

I spoke more about it with Sister Jinger Breadmann and Sister Mimosa Romero, and they told me the original organization started in San Francisco on Easter Sunday, 1979.

SISTER JINGER BREADMANN: AIDS was becoming an epidemic. No one was caring for people suffering from it. There wasn’t any research. There wasn’t any funding. There was nothing.

And they decided they were going to do something. And one of them had a bunch of habits from “Sound of Music,” and they donned them.

SISTER MIMOSA ROMERO: To add to that, I will add, is they were also protesting the Castro clone. Have you heard that term before?

GILGER: No.

ROMERO: I don’t know if anyone uses it, but in the Castro district, it was in the early state of like the ’80s where there was this conflict of masculinity and infighting because they wanted a men to look “men,” like the leather men. Like masculine leather hat, boots and that.

And then said, “Screw that. There are other ways to look like a man. There are other ways to exist.” And then, add what Sister Jinger just said, “Let’s put on the nuns. Let’s go do something weird and get crazy.”

BREADMANN: From there, you know, they spread worldwide.

GILGER: Right. And worldwide for real. Like this has been happening for several decades. Let’s talk about the relevance of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence today, right? Like I think we’ve seen support for LGBTQ+ issues a very big and pretty quick cultural shift in how the country at least looks at the LGBTQ+ community.

But it does look in current polling like that’s starting to backslide. What does this look like today? What do you hear today?

ROMERO: It’s a little quiet. What do you think?

BREADMANN: I would agree with quiet because I think everybody’s kind of on eggshells. You don’t want to be noticed too much because then you will be a target.

ROMERO: And there’s also a lot of mistrust. Like for example, in Pride, there’s tension with law enforcement, but there’s also mistrust everywhere. And because there’s so much polarization, the places where people can go are smaller and smaller.

So it’s getting compressed, I would say. And I would probably need another 3 hours to make sense of what that means, but that’s what it feels like to me.

GILGER: Right, and we’re seeing Phoenix Pride file for bankruptcy, right? And it’s Pride Month, like it’s a difficult time for these organizations, it sounds like.

BREADMANN: I haven’t seen it like this since in my youth.

ROMERO: Ooh. Girl.

BREADMANN: Yeah, a long time ago. Decades ago.

GILGER: In terms of how you think you’re viewed from the outside world? Like threats, things like that?

BREADMANN: Yes. Yes. There was a point in my life where I accepted myself, my friends accepted me, and then I realized that certain parts of society was accepting, and then it allowed me to expand and grow and flourish.

And in these times, I feel like you’re regressing a little bit. You want to pull it back a little. You want to not stand out. But I’m grateful for the Sisters because it forces you to stand out. You stand out, you stand up.

GILGER: But so, I mean, that goes to the point of the Sisters, right? This organization was founded to sort of be over the top.

ROMERO: Girl, yeah yeah. To do that, yeah yeah.

GILGER: To be out there and to be funny, right? Make people laugh a little?

ROMERO: Good call. Look at her. She’s on it. We need to have her.

GILGER: Do we need that today more you think than than ever?

BREADMANN: I think so because it’s if if the Sisters were to go, you’d lose the history, you’d lose examples. I mean, there are so many examples of Sisters doing wonderful things.

For me personally, I do enjoy the mask part of it because it gives me courage that I didn’t have as my secular self. Public speaking was not within my forte at all. And here I am sitting talking to you on a microphone.

ROMERO: Girl’s growing up.

BREADMANN: Back in my youth, I’d go to a couple drag shows and stuff, was never any good. But dark car to get there, dark car back, never public transit. And as a Sister, it’s like, I’ve done public transit. When the the trains first came into town, we were on them.

I have no problem driving around in full daylight. I made it here no problem. It doesn’t even phase me if I get the looks and stuff because it’s like I put this on, I’m meant to be seen.

GILGER: But this does seem like a time in which it’s harder to get people to join the Sisters, right? Like you said you’re down to 10 members. It used to be upwards of 40, you said?

BREADMANN: Yes. Yes.

ROMERO: A lot of people don’t know the kind of work it takes to do this because people might view it as, “Yeah, do whatever you want to do, paint your face, wear your jewels, do your thing.”

But there’s actually work to do it. You have to go through over at minimum of 6 months of work and develop a community project. And there’s a lot of commitment to do it. This is an effort, it’s a work, it’s a calling.

BREADMANN: I will correct you on one thing, though. You said 6 months, it’s a minimum of a year.

ROMERO: Oh, I lied. See? It’s happening.

GILGER: A year to get in, wow.

BREADMANN: Because it’s two months is an aspirant, four months is a postulant, six months is a novice.

GILGER: Right. There’s a whole process to become a sister. Wow. I think that’s fascinating, though.

What did you each, as you went through that process, what did you like about it? Like, how did you come up with this new version of yourself when you came through it?

ROMERO: Ooh. Yeah, you go first, JB.

BREADMANN: Well, I had really good examples. And I was just fascinated with how they look across quad because they weren’t drag queens.

GILGER: Right. It’s different.

BREADMANN: There was something more, and I just thought that that was great, a way to give back to the community, have a creative outflow, and uh it just seemed fun and, you know, every now and then it’s like there’s nothing wrong with, you know, throwing on a dress and running around acting crazy. It’s kind of fun.

But it just, it sounded like a vocation to me. And next thing you know, I started on the path and here I am today.

GILGER: That’s so fascinating you referred to it as a vocation because you you’ve adopted all of this Catholic imagery but also like literal processes, like this is similar to what a a sister in the church would go through in a way.

BREADMANN: Well, yes. It it has been modeled after their commitment to the order.

GILGER: OK. What about you, Sister Mimosa? Tell us about your process.

ROMERO: It was just I something I didn’t know I could do. I did When I grew up, when I was looking at these individuals, I didn’t think of myself as someone who could do that, and I didn’t think of myself as someone who could be out. As Sister Jinger was talking about earlier.

It was in the ’80s — ooh, I’m dating myself! F-g was still being used. I mean, that’s a word that was tossed around on movies, television. It still is, in some cases. It was normal. So that’s the era. And I say that with pride because I own it back.

So you couldn’t be out. I was so scared of that being in high school. I didn’t come out in high school. It wasn’t until towards that, what could I explode and be?

I didn’t think I could help others along the journey, especially with all this nunsense. So that’s what brought me to it, to see if I could add or do something better for those around me.

GILGER: OK, so I have to ask you because I think one of the things, if people hear the phrase Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they’re going to think of that Dodgers controversy in 2023, just a few years ago, where the Sisters were uninvited and then reinvited to the Pride Night. And because some Catholics will say this is offensive or demeaning to real nuns. What do you two say to that?

BREADMANN: I disagree on that completely because we don’t do this to dishonor them. We do this for the exact opposite reason. We do this to honor them, but we add glitter and jewels and glamour and color because we want to be even more joyous than a choir of nuns.

And, you know, I really like the new Pope. But I don’t think all Catholics have that view. I know in the past, very far past, yes, there were times when the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence did attack the Catholic church and the Pope.

But that was then. Being able to dress up in outlandish outfits to scare away the evil is right up my alley, and it just — I don’t know — just the whole process just brings me joy.

GILGER: Do you think it says something about the power of satire?

BREADMANN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you have to be able to laugh at yourself first. And, you know, sitting there in front of the mirror, if you can’t laugh, I mean, it it is a shame your audience can’t see us because it’s, we look ridiculous —

GILGER: They can see you on the website. Yeah. Yeah.

ROMERO: Or some questionable Google searches, perhaps.

BREADMANN: Yeah, that’s true. But yeah, it’s just for me, it’s just been a joyous experience. And if I can help, as Mimosa said, spread that within the community, that’s what I plan to do probably until the day I die.

GILGER: All right. Sister Jinger Breadmann, Sister Mimosa Romero, thank you both so much for being here.

BREADMANN: Oh, thank you.

ROMERO: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

GILGER: Thank you for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.