Beowulf Alley Theatre Celebrates with "Noche de Los Muertos"

August 19-23, Beowulf Alley Theatre treated the community to a preview workshop for a new play by Tucsonan and award-winning playwright, Gavin Kayer. The play, "Noche de Los Muertos" will be fully mounted November 1-16. Set in a provincial village in the Sonoran Desert in the 1920's, Noche explores the power of rites and rituals that influence thought to the point of irrationality.

Dance for Tucson

Dance infusion hosted an afternoon of performances and dance lessons with a buffet supper, silent auction and plenty of birthday cake on August 23.

Official Birthday Cake

Hotel Congress' pastry chefs proudly displayed the city's official birthday cake on August 17, moments before a hundred or so celebrants turned it into a handful of crumbs. Historian Ken Scoville told tales of our early history.

Ceremony of Tucson's Five Flags

Flags of the Tohono O'odham and Yaqui Nations, Territorial Spain, Mexico, the United States, the Confederacy and Arizona represent the military and cultural heritage of our city at an August 20 flag raising ceremony at the Presidio.

51 Birthday Babies!

Fifty-one new Tucsonans born on August 20,2008 received a certificate with a reproduction of the proclamation of the Presidio. Volunteers Dave and Norma Fisher delivered them along with a certificate good for a native tree from Trees for Tucson.

Scenes from the Gala

The Raizk family has posted their pictures from the August 16 Birthday Gala on Flicker. They'll give you a great sense of being there if you missed it. Each table had it's own birthday cake!

Flag Raising, Plus !

We couldn't have blogged it better ourselves! The "City of Tucson" MySpace page has lots of great photos from August 20 Flag Raising event celebrating the founding of the Presidio. Enjoy!

Free Pima Air and Space Museum

Today the Pima Air and Space Museum was offering free admission to Tucson residents in celebration of Tucson's birthday! The kids and I raced over there after school to just make the last admission time. (It looked like we weren't the only ones trying to beat the clock...) Then the fun began! The younger kids and I had never been to the museum before. What a sight! We were really impressed at the amount of aircraft and spacecraft they had on display. Equally impressive were the types of hands-on displays for the kids. Even my two year old daughter was excited and kept commenting about "loving the cool planes". The only bad part was that we ran out of time to see everything as thoroughly as my 7 year-old (and I) would have liked. We have vowed to return when we have more time to really check things out! What a great museum we have right here in Tucson, and what a great way to celebrate Tucson's birthday!

--BT

Doubletree Cookie Give-away

According to Doubletree Hotel staff, a steady stream of folks celebrated the August 20 establishment of the Presidio de San Agustin de Tucson with free chocolate chip cookies!

The Haunted Antique Mall Celebrates the Past

The Haunted Antique Mall is celebrating Tucson's birthday! They had very tasty cookies (or "cakies", technically) on a festively decorated table. My boys kept coming back for more!! (Well, they would have if I would have let them...) Also for our perusal were some scrolls with interesting historical facts about Tucson. This was perfect for my 7-year old who is a big history buff! The most exciting part for my boys were the ghost stories. Also on the table were some books describing haunted buildings in our area. We found the section on the Antique Mall and read up! We then went searching the store for ghosts, hitting as many of the "affected" spots as possible. Much to the boys' dismay we had no supernatural encounters, but they sure did spook themselves! We had a good time, and I had to promise to bring them back so they could keep searching for ghosts!

--BT

Tucson's Birthday at Villa Maria

Villa Maria residents celebrated the Birthday by dressing up in historic costumes August 19, and by learning how generations of Tucsonans gardened and harvested food with Native Seeds/Search on August 12. See the video at our MySpace page!

Historical Highlights

Residents of Atria Bel Court Gardens enjoyed a presentation of Tucson's historical highlights given by Celebrando el Pueblo de Tucson on August 19.

Certificates for Birthday Babies

Babies born in Tucson hospitals and birthing centers on August 20 will receive a special certificate with their names, birthdate and a replica of the August 20, 1775 proclamation of the Presidio del Tucson.