Tom: This week on an all new Arizona Illustrated.

Learning chemistry from comic books.

Colleen: Chemistry is a language, and that's where I really realized the magic that was happening when I was getting fourth graders doing college level chemistry.

Tom: Celebrating 50 years of bonsai in Tucson.

Cynthia: Everybody has their own little place that they like to do their trimming.

And it's my time with myself.

Tom: Field Notes on Coral Beans.

A mysterious blimp hovers over Nogales.

David: And it hurts the retail merchants.

If it looks like you're traveling into a war zone and you're going to get spied on and surveilled and interrogated and searched.

Tom: And one place to cool off from the extreme Arizona heat.

Salvation Army Guy: We provide a place for people to come and to receive just some relief from the heat.

Tom: Hello and welcome to an all new episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, everything we see and do involves chemistry from the food we eat to the air we breathe.

But teaching this central science can be challenging.

Enter University of Arizona professor Colleen Kelley, who uses comic books and her imagination to try to get kids of all ages excited about the subject.

I truly believe everyone can learn chemistry.

It's very beautiful, actually.

And when you uncover the beauty and the mysticism and the patterns, it can be embraced by all.

I'm Dr. Colleen Kelley, and I'm an instructor and laboratory manager at the University of Arizona.

And I've created Kids Chemical Solutions, which is a series of comic books capturing early, eager learners ages 8 to 12 with chemistry comic books.

When I started this project, I made something that I thought would be fun and accessible for kids.

And what I discovered is that eight, nine and ten year olds were learning symbols.

So in my comic books I decided, let's make fun, cute characters and they can balance them instead of the symbols for the elements themselves.

The first characters were Poppy and Rey.

Poppy for polonium and Ray for radium.

Ray has this saying all through the comic books like Zero is our hero.

And that sticks when they know Zero is our hero.

So if cadmium is plus two and oxygens minus two, you can put those together and you get zero.

One of my favorite scenes is where Big Ox and Red and Rusty now are roadies for the heavy metals and Big Ox is star struck by Cobalt and they bump into each other and cobalt asks Big Ox to play a duet.

And he's like, Well, he's a little scared.

He's like, Just so you know, I don't play well on an empty stomach.

And Cobalt sings like, "Don't worry, man, I got you" and lifts up his hat and throws in two electrons.

And that that electron transfer is what really happens in the ionic compound Cobalt oxide.

Big ox eats them.

He's like, Somebody, get me some sunglasses.

Let's rock.

So when I first started writing these stories, the drawings were very crude.

I drew like boxes for them stick figures until I realized that I really needed help with the art.

And in walks Mack at that point.

Hey, Mac.

Oh, my gosh.

I first met Mackenzie Reagan when she was 13, and she goes by Mac.

And she was a budding artist.

And while she was in my class, we were working on some of these stories at the time.

They weren't comic books yet.

And I asked Mac if she could help me draw some of these a lot better than my box square figures.

All right.

Are you ready to make some characters?

I am so ready.

Okay, so I am going to surprise you.

All right?

Okay.

So we're going to make water.

Water, H2O.

But when I first think about developing a character, especially if it's a character that's a molecule like water, the first thing that I do is I draw it.

And there's something called a Lewis structure where I would have oxygen in the middle, then two bonds, which are lines and then two hydrogens flanking it.

And in that description, then I would go through that with Mac and say, What do you see?

So let's think about how we can connect this design to a seal.

So I'm seeing like flippers on the H's, maybe.

Oh, good, good.

And we have they have huge eyeballs.

Oh, that's so good.

Massive eyeballs.

So there we go.

That's our water molecule.

Little a little rough sketch of the water molecule.

So once I had the comics developed in script format, I realized that I need to test them on kids.

It was during the pandemic, so I did a schedule over Zoom.

But there is a definite bonus to that because I could record those.

Like I actually learned in more detail about like the atomic mass.

One.

Is that actually happening?

Could that happen?

Oh, this is such a good question, Danny.

So what I was looking for in these kids is their ability to speak chemistry.

Because chemistry is a language, and I could hear them be very fluent.

And then after the parentheses, it's a four.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And that's where I really realized the magic that was happening when I was getting fourth graders doing college level chemistry.

14 for the neutrons.

awesome, you guys very, very, very, very, very, very good.

Yes.

Hmm.

Still needs something.

Lady Papi, would you do the honor of sharing electrons with me?

Now that we're all vaccinated, I was able to work with Olivia Grant.

I've known Olivia since she's been born, so I'm friends with her mom, and she saw the comic books because I brought them over to the house, and she's kind of looking at them.

And I thought, well, third grades, a little young, but let's see.

And her mom, Stephanie, called me and said, Olivia wants to know more.

Right.

And the two mean the copper has a two plus charge.

So I came up there with some props.

I brought a big shower curtain, that's a periodic table, and we laid it out on the ground and I said, Olivia, let's play Twister.

What?

What is that quality?

Yeah, it's phosphorous.

Phosphorus did.

I'd like for the students who are reading these comics to recognize that not one comic book is set in a laboratory and that science transcends the laboratory.

Chemistry is everywhere, and that really is the message.

And I want them to realize that the chemistry starts here in your brain with your imagination.

Should we give a messy swimmer bun to all those swimmers out there?

Yeah.

Who live in water and love water.

I really think this project is about raising the bar and learning, but also lowering the bar to accessibility so that students and anybody in the entire world can learn chemistry through this platform.

This is my life's work, and I know that.

And I can keep going until chemistry becomes normal.

Because this is what I'm meant to do.

Tom: It's wonderful to be able to find your passion, whether it's chemistry or bonsai.

Now, the ancient art of bonsai involves growing miniature trees in pots to mimic the shape of fully grown trees.

The Tucson Bonsai Society started here in 1972 and thanks to some very dedicated members, is still growing after 50 years.

[Automotive sounds] My name is Stephen Ross.

I'm an automotive technician her at Klipper Automotive.

I've been in the automotive industry for over 29 years.

That's all I've ever done.

From electrical diagnosis and AC to putting the engine bac on this side for a timing chain.

But we do.

We do it all.

[Mellow music] I bought one bonsai.

And then over the course of a couple of years, it took on a life of its own I think there might be 60, 70 trees back here.

Here we have is my favorite tree in the garden.

It is about a 45 year old bald cypress from a swamp in Louisiana that our founder, David Meyer, he started styling an working with it in the nineties at a workshop and it's survived dieback and termites and it looks like, you know, a 100 year old massive tree.

[Water sounds] He likes a lot of water.

So in that sense, a couple times he gets a big drink, but he's happy to be here.

Does he have a name?

No, I don't name the trees.

But he's definitely the king of my yard for sure.

I discovered the Tucson Bonsai Society during the pandemic.

Something came over me and I bought a bonsai tree.

And then I started researching how to take care of it and found the group.

And they weren't meeting because of the pandemic.

But I was able to follow them and get help from some members.

And when they started re-meeting again a little over a year ago, I was able to join at that time.

They tend to be low maintenance, although I know you'll really maintain your plants.

So, that's more that comment more aimed toward landscape use.

Also benefits for wildlife and pollinators.

And then you know another thing [Mellow music] Cynthia Martin, vice president of the Tucson Bonsai Society.

The special connection with the trees is a wonderful question because it's the time that you're with yourself and we talk about this a lot.

Some people play music, some people drink wine.

Some people drink coffee.

Everybody has their own little place that they like to do their trimming.

And it's my time with myself, and I usually play music.

You also have to think because every clip has a purpose and there's the rules of the traditional bonsai artistry of style, balance, and also where you cut promotes a limb to grow in a certain way.

You can't just go clip, clip, clip.

You've got to go, "Now there is where's the next bud There's two leaves below it.

I'm going to cut it halfway here They all have a reason for a snip.

We have the Sonoran Desert coming in from the south and the Chihuahua Desert coming in from the east, the Rocky Mountains from the north and this real cool tropical influence from the south as well.

It's all mixing up here.

And so we have more species than most places could ever dream of having.

The first time I went to my meeting I brought one of my cuttings and they taught me how to plant it and how to wire it and how to cut it and how to keep it alive.

Not only is it a community, it is a learning experience.

Female trees normally are blossoming trees.

They'll have flowers.

and some are little tiny flowers and some are little tiny flowers.

But the way that we present them is in a round pot an oval pot that doesn't have any hard lines and it accentuates a female tree.

And in the male you can see that this is not glazed.

These pots are perfect for an old, older tree, male tree, 15 year old olive, because he has a personality.

And you don't want to take away from the beauty of what he's offering with a pot that's too showy.

[Water sounds] There is a term that us bonsai artists use amongst ourselves is we are bonsai nuts and we say it proudly.

Well, when people usually hear I do bonsai after knowing me in the automotive industry.

It gets a couple of chuckles because it's just so very different.

But yeah, it's truly my passion Beyond here.

It's my little piece of heaven.

Now that I've been at it.

I couldn't give it up.

[Mellow music] Tom: Just like the plants in our previous story.

The coral bean grows in the Sonoran Desert, but nothing like the tropics, where the tree can reach 30 feet high.

Here, it's more like a shrub of dried sticks until spring when beautiful red flowers bloom.

Producer David Fenster recently came across one in bloom and shares that with us in our ongoing series Field Notes.

It's early June and I'm in Molino Canyon and it's a super windy day.

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to use this area as a restroom, a catch, a glimpse of something bright red out of the corner of my eye.

And it is not this discarded sports drink.

It's an Erythrina flabelliformis flower also known as the Coral Bean.

I'm feeling the indescribable rush of excitement that I only get when I'm seeing a flower in bloom out in the wild that I know about but have never seen before.

The Coral Bean looks like a bunch of dead sticks for sometimes nine months a year.

And then in the spring it explodes into these wild blossoms.

After that, it leafs out and sometimes only has leaves for a few months out of the year.

I call my friend Robert, who I know is also a big fan of the Coral Bean, and we decided to meet at the herbarium which is like a library for plant specimens.

As we walk in the lobby, we see a journal with the Coral Bean on the cover.

It's a species which in the Sonoran Desert itself is stunted, or bonsaied by nature into little shrubs, and that, as you go south, becomes a real big tree found throughout the tropics of Mexico.

You shouldn't eat the beans because they're very toxic.

There are some caterpillars that bore into the beans and eat them.

Maybe somebody should study just how toxic these beans are.

The Mexican name is Chilicote and this is an Indigenous word.

In other parts of Mexico, they're called Colorine.

When somebody is finished talking or when somebody is finished telling a story, they'll say Colorine colorado este cuento se acabado.

Little Red Bean.

This story has ended.

Colorine colorado este cuento se acabado.

Nogales is a binational community that straddles the US-Mexico border, and its residents are used to surveillance along that international boundary.

But a recent addition to the skyline is causing some concern.

An Aerostat Surveillance Blimp has been spotted flying over Nogales, Arizona, and its purpose has not been explained to local law enforcement.

[eerie music] (Carolina) [translated from Spanish] It's as if I feel like I'm inside of a globe.

(David) It was a total surprise.

There was no advance warning.

Just one day it was hanging outside my window of the sheriff's office.

(Eduardo) [translated from Spanish] I would like to know what it is exactly.

(news anchor) A watchful eye in the sky, putting some southern Arizona residents on edge.

(other news anchor) Officials in Nogales say they were blindsided by a new Border Patrol blimp that's up in the air to give 24 hour surveillance of the area.

In a statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the aerostat will provide constant surveillance of the border.

(David) There's a series of these blimps along the southwest border.

They have different purposes.

There's one over Sierra Vista that has a radar platform on it to detect low flying aircraft.

This particular one here has a video platform.

The County Board of Supervisors wasn't told about it.

There was no pre briefing in the law enforcement world.

And then it got worse.

As I found out more, I found out it was a video surveillance platform.

It is anchored on the north east side of the city of Nogales, right in the middle of residential communities.

And it's not right along the border.

And to me and it's an affront, this kind of new tendency of the federal government to spy on Americans, you know, like I. I don't like it at all.

(Carolina) [translated from Spanish] I'm speaking to you now as a resident, a resident of this neighborhood.

I asked my neighbor, have you seen the blimp we have there?

And she said that she thought it was Border Patrol.

I asked, do you know how long it will be there, when they will take it away or what?

And she said, Well, who knows?

We don't know.

We used to walk over there around the house.

We would go around over there.

We walked.

We walked over here and came back and that's it.

But we don't do this anymore.

I feel unsafe going over there.

(David) This was not previously a federal facility.

This land behind us, I don't know the story on the land, but I think it's owned by a private landowner and I would guess it's being leased for this purpose to the federal government.

Typically, if there's a new program or a new major event coming along, say, a new federal task force, a new building being constructed, there's a lot of lead time.

There's preparation for the transitions.

And a lot of it would be for damage control from the perspective of the federal government.

You don't want to blindside the locals about you know, (Carolina) [translated from Spanish] I was taking a shower and I looked out the back window, the red lights were directed into my bedroom.

I said, What is this?

And I ran for a towel because I was in full view.

(David) It's up on a hill and the areas that it looks into, it drops off into different neighborhoods.

The neighbor of Nogalitos, the neighborhood of Royal Road, the Patagonia Highway, which is and there's a Rancho Granada neighborhood right here.

For appearances that's what it would be surveilling.

It's like at a distance from Mexico.

And if the intent was actually to spy on the Republic of Mexico, I don't know what the Mexican government would think of that concept.

And it hurts the retail merchants.

If it looks like you're traveling into a war zone and you're going to get spied on and surveilled and interrogated and searched, so I do what I can to push against that and just to promote freedom in our community.

(Eduardo) [translated from Spanish] I have lived here for about 15 years.

We think the blimp is to watch over the area for security.

(David) Our crime statistics here, violent crime and property crime is lower than the average for the state of Arizona, lower than Tucson, lower than Phoenix.

We're a very safe community, but if they want to participate with the law enforcement community to, you know, purportedly keep everybody safe.

I would hope to have access to that video footage that they're getting, but it hasn't been offered to me.

That's kind of a slap in the face to me, an expression of distrust to local law enforcement, (Eduardo) [translated from Spanish] There are people who support this and others who don't.

Mostly because it's only some meters away from our houses and we don't know what will happen.

To have something that's there spying or keeping tabs on the area has its repercussions.

(David) I feel like we're turning into a complete surveillance state and a police state along the border here.

My family has been in this area since the 1800s, and this kind of border hype, unfortunately, is not a new thing.

It comes in cycles.

But that hype serves the political interests of certain people.

I know there's already tower surveillance, airborne platforms, the blimp, ground mounted monitoring, you know, motion sensing things.

I don't know what comes next.

I guess whatever a vendor can sell to the federal government under some sort of a crisis argument.

(Carolina) [translated from Spanish] We want to know know what it is and if they're going to take it away, if it will be there permanently.

And why is it there?

Well, also, it's worrisome if you feel like you can't speak freely.

(Eduardo) [translated from Spanish] I like to know what exactly it is that they are doing.

And we would feel calmer with that information Tom: As temperatures continue to rise across the country, so do heat related deaths.

Last year in Arizona, there were 552 such deaths, disproportionately affecting poor people and people of color.

Now, during the hottest summer months, a patchwork of local organizations comes together to at least provide residents with a place just to cool off.

BRENT: We all know Arizona heat, especially in Tucson.

Once it gets above that 100 degree mark, it doesn't matter what the temperature is, it's pretty hot.

So we provide a place for people to come and to receive just some relief from the heat.

Cooling centers have been going on for years and years.

We don't want people to be outside.

It's still 100 degrees when it's 100 degrees, even in the shade.

ANTHONY: I'm homeless, so I'm usually outside just by myself, hanging out, trying to find shade or somewhere to rest.

So when I get the chance to get to here, to be here, I definitely get here.

The summer has been pretty rough just from the start.

I have like pretty-- had to go to the emergency room because how hot, you know it got here.

BRENT: They line up outside, it's first come, first serve.

People were lining up when I came in this morning.

They're able to talk with our caseworkers if they're available.

They--they're able to watch movies, have a snack, have a meal and just hang out.

There's also some beds for them to take a nap.

Instead of sleeping on the concrete, they have a bed to sleep in.

And granted, those are limited.

But it's still something that they take turns in doing.

ANTHONY: I take advantage of it because of the fact that you get-- they give you water here.

That's ice cold water which allows you to cool down.

Plus, you get to be indoors and it's for a good period of time.

You get a bad shower like clean clothes.

Laundry takes a big effect on, you know, just one visit here can go a long way for somebody.

BRENT: They're very happy that we're here because if we if they didn't have us, they don't know where else they would go.

There's other organizations that are maybe doing this, but they've they've chosen to come here because this is where they feel at home and feel welcome.

Being able to provide water, to provide food for those who need it.

I mean, it's something that we have found that it's not just a Christmas thing.

It's not just a summer thing.

It's just it's a Salvation Army thing.

Just to provide help for people-- those who are in need.

That relief gives them a little bit of hope for for tomorrow.

We have compiled a list of resources on places to cool down and ways to stay safe from extreme temperatures.

You'll find it with this story on our website.

Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you next week for an all new episode.