(soft music) - Coming up next on this special literary edition of Arizona Horizon, a new book chronicles the travels of two friends as they make their way around the state.

Also tonight, a new book explores how childhood trauma and neglect can lead to a life of incarceration.

And will meet the authors of a children's series aimed at introducing younger readers to a very active grandma.

Those stories and more next on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

- [Announcer] Arizona Horizon is made possible by contributions from the friends of Arizona PBS, members of your public television station.

- Good evening and welcome to this special literary edition of Arizona Horizon.

I'm Ted Simons.

A new travel log follows two friends as they explore a number of Arizona locations on a road trip fueled by poetry, prose and photography.

The book is titled Arizona Friends Trips: Stories from the Road.

We recently welcomed co-author, Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, who wrote Arizona Friends Trips with her friend Julie Morrison.

Congratulations on the book.

- Thank you.

- That must've been a lot of fun to write.

- I didn't think it would get published.

I thought we just get to go on road trips.

- Yeah, why the title, Friend Trips?

- Playing with Friendship.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And you two are been friends for quite a while.

- Quite a while.

We were in the Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Academy together in 2012, and then began writing together in about, I think, '18-19, pre pandemic.

- How did this whole idea get started?

Or did it get started and all of a sudden you went, "Wait a minute.

I think we got something here."

- Julie came up with it.

She came to me and said, "Hey, we're both third generation Arizonans.

We love the state.

I do poetry.

You do pros and photography.

Let's do a book."

- [Ted] How did you decide where to go?

- I guess wherever we thought there was a story.

I think the only place neither of us had ever been, well, no, there were a few, but the little chapel, the holy dove on the 180 going to the canyon.

- Oh, wow.

- That was my, let's pull in.

The rest of them, we kind of planned.

- Okay, we got some photographs, and you've gone everywhere from Papago Park to the Grand Canyon.

I think the last sentence in the book is, "Where do you want to go next?"

That was probably the theme, wasn't it?

- We now have a list of 32 places we'd like to go.

- Oh my goodness, 32 more.

- Yeah.

- All right, let's look at some of the photos here.

The first one, I think is Hannagan Meadow.

And this is described as the favorite of your co-author, correct?

- Julie fell in love with Hannagan Meadow.

I had seen it, but not recently.

And it's just, it's one of the rare places, Ted, that you go only to go there.

You're not on the way to anywhere.

- Yeah.

- There's nothing much to do there except be there, but it is charming and exquisite.

- Yeah.

- Just a long drive from either direction.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

But enjoy it while you're there, right?

- Exactly.

- Lake Havasu, and from what I understand, Lake Havasu, you thought that might be a little, eh.

- Driving in and seeing all the little ticky-tacky beach front houses.

And then the kind of forced co-Jimmy Buffett, co-Old London, but the people go there to really love being by the water.

And by the time we left, we found the people so charming that we didn't mind the kitsch.

- Yeah.

Okay, all right.

In Winslow, Arizona, I mean, La Posada is almost synonymous with Winslow, isn't it?

- It, and has been.

My mother grew up in Winslow and they all called it the La Posada because they didn't realize the, but yes, it's such an exquisite piece.

And I first did a story when they were just starting to restore it and have been going back ever since.

- Yeah.

And have they restored it pretty well?

- Oh, it's beautiful.

And the vegetable plate at the Turquoise Room, I think about going to sleep sometimes.

- Really?

That good?

- It's that good.

- All right, let's keep it moving here as you were doing during your trip, Lee's Ferry.

- My favorite.

- That's your favorite.

Now why is that?

- [Lisa] I think because it's so stark and dramatic and of itself, and Emily, John D Lee's wife was so fiercely brave, gave birth twice there by herself.

- Wow.

- Just an amazing woman.

And you can still see where they walked and lived and yeah.

- Yeah, so that was your favorite, huh?

- Yeah, it kind of is.

- All right, South Rim, maybe your co-authors, - Julie hated it.

I am reverent about it.

Oh, really, different.

Okay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Now who hates that?

- She went in a bad relationship and just never quite forgave it.

But I didn't feel great about two of them either.

So, you know, that's okay.

- That's amazing that something like that could stick because holy smokes, look at this, for goodness sakes.

- What's not to love?

- I know.

All right, Walnut Canyon.

- Didn't like it.

- Where is Walnut Canyon?

- Walnut Canyon is right outside Flagstaff.

And it's beautiful.

I mean, it's, you know, leftover properties and the craftsmanship is exquisite.

But Ted, I feel like you walk uphill in and out.

- Huh?

- I just, I did not have fun.

- Yeah, I hate when you're hiking down into something because you know, I've got to make the same trip the other direction.

- And it felt like up was so much.

- And it felt like you were making the same trip the whole way through.

Walnut Canyon, all right, got that.

Wupatki, do we have Wupatki up there?

There we go.

- Yes, that's my happy place.

And partly because of the unusual ball court, which Arizona doesn't usually have.

That's more of a Mexican and the blow hole, which is a geographic feature.

And air is always either rushing up out of the ground really, or down into it.

And it's cave systems and changes in weather pressure, but it feels like you're being whispered to from the past.

- Wow.

That must have been fantastic.

Now does that kind of stuff inspire photography and poetry and these sorts of things?

- If you're prone to that, yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Well, you're prone to that.

- I'm prone.

- Sometimes you go to places like this and it's a bit much, you can't really focus on the artistic.

You just gotta take it in and enjoy it.

Were you able to kind of separate a little bit and get that down.

- I think always, Arizona just has so much to wonder at.

- Yeah.

- And then you grab your pictures.

- Yes.

- You wonder and then you grab your pictures.

- What do you want people to take from this book?

- Actually, it's a little bit ongoing.

Julie and I, the book came out on February 11th and we dropped a brand new podcast that day, - Really?

- Celebrating Arizona.

So we get to continue to tell our stories every week.

And there wasn't a podcast celebrating Arizona.

There are niche podcasts about Arizona.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- But nothing that just says, Hey, where else are we gonna go?

So now there is.

- Well, congratulations again.

It sounds like a lot of fun to do.

Very rewarding, the book itself.

It's always great.

And when author sees their book, it's always fantastic.

- It's like seeing a new baby.

- Yeah.

Congratulations.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

(bright music) (gentle music) (horn blaring) (bright music) - [Announcer] Nearly 5 million people a year travel to Arizona from all over the world.

For a chance to peer into the sublime expanse of the Grand Canyon.

It's hard to imagine that any of them notice the giant Navajo sandstone slab jutting from the earth just outside the park's Eastern entrance at Milepost 268 on Highway 64.

A plaque was once affixed to this stone.

It honored the victims of one of the gravest air tragedies in American history.

(engine rumbling) On the morning of June 30th, 1956, TWA Flight two and United Airlines Flight 718 left Los Angeles within minutes of each other.

One was en route to Kansas City, the other for Chicago.

They would collide over the Grand Canyon.

Both airlines and the government would recover, identify, and return home as many of the victims as the rugged wilderness would yield.

67 of the TWA victims, 63 unidentified are buried in the citizen cemetery in Flagstaff.

Services were performed by Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Mormon clergymen.

29 unidentified victims from the United Flight were interred below a memorial in the Grand Canyon Cemetery on the South Rim.

(engine roaring) Public outcry from the accident resulted in the creation of the Federal Aviation Agency and a modernization of the country's air traffic control system.

Nobody knows what happened to the plaque that once paid tribute to the victims of Flight two and 718, but their deaths are honored by the safe arrival of the many tourists that fly to the Grand Canyon each and every day.

- A new book collects first person narratives of incarcerated men to explore how childhood trauma can lead to a life of incarceration.

The book is titled, Imprisoned Minds: Lost Boys, Trapped Men and Solutions From Within the Prison.

We recently spoke to the book's co-author, ASU Professor, Kevin Wright.

Congratulations on this book.

This is really something.

- Thank you.

Appreciate that.

This is a great work.

And you are the co-author here because your other author, we can't bring him into studio.

- That's right.

So Erik Maloney is incarcerated for life right now.

- Okay, the title is Imprisoned Minds.

Why that title?

- Yeah, so Imprisoned Minds to us, it's this mindset where you shut off other people in your life.

And so it starts very early on.

If as a kid you're experiencing abuse or neglect, you start to learn that people don't care about me.

And so you start to think, why should I care about other people?

And so you start acting in ways in which you shut off other people in your life.

You think about yourself and oftentimes that's outta survival, but the end result is that people start to give up on you.

You burn your bridges, you might get kicked outta school, have trouble at jobs.

And it's just this series of decisions that effectively makes you trapped.

- I thought it was interesting the idea that this trauma can set people on the wrong path - Sure.

- And that they will be looking for temporary relief.

- Yeah.

- And how that affects their entire mindset.

Talk to us about that.

- Yeah, so, you know, ideally you're doing healthy coping and so you're finding outlets or finding support that effectively addresses that trauma.

But here, those options aren't available or you don't have people believing in you or whatever.

And so you just seek this immediate gratification.

You seek out other people that maybe have that same mindset.

And it's a short term relief that, again, starts to put you on this long term pathway.

- Yeah, you both talked to six folks, incarcerated men, first person narratives.

Why were these six chosen?

- Yeah, so this is actually Erik.

And so Erik is incarcerated for life.

It's his idea to push this idea forward and write about this.

And he picked the guys.

And so they are incarcerated alongside him.

And he knows the good stories, he knows the people that have this mindset.

And so really it was his wisdom, his lived experience knowledge to say, okay, this story needs to be told.

We need this in the book.

- And again, committing crimes becomes habitual.

Did everyone have a similar story?

Were there similar strands within?

- I think so, and again, it's having this stuff happen early on and not having people that are there for you to care for you or give you another way of doing things.

And so the stories might be different, the actual things that happen, but there's a lot of people that are seeing people die right in front of them.

Or there's other people that are being abandoned by their parents who are caught up in addiction themselves.

And so the origins are the same.

And then the pathways, maybe they're a little bit different.

- Was Erik able to get out of these folks things that maybe you would not be able to get?

- Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And so if I go in there as a researcher from ASU and I start asking these questions, people are gonna be suspicious.

What are you gonna do with this information?

Who is this guy?

Why is he asking us these questions?

But Erik can break that down.

I mean, he knows these guys, he knows these stories, he knows the language.

And most importantly, he had a prison mindset himself, and he worked through that and got to the other side.

- How did he work through that?

- I think it was having opportunities on the inside.

And so for him, you know, a big part of that was just experiencing incarceration and starting to think about the decisions that he actually made.

I've selfishly hope it's our ASU presence and the ASU class.

That's how I met him.

I actually taught him on the inside.

But opportunities later in life that maybe he didn't have earlier on.

- The men that he talked to, were there light bulbs going off as he spoke to them?

Or are these men that may have been kind of correcting themselves in the meantime?

- You know, I don't know if there were light bulbs, but I know for sure that the guys said it was therapeutic, that they said, "I've never thought about this for years.

Nobody's ever asked me these questions."

And so Erik has said that these are therapeutic interviews when he is sitting down and talking to these guys.

- When we talk about, again, temporary relief becomes habitual crimes, becomes a problem and the cycle repeats.

How do you reverse the cycle?

I mean, obviously for Erik, it's you're in there and you're doing this, but for someone who's not quite there, or for a young person who has experienced trauma and abuse and these sorts of things, how do you change the path?

- Yeah, and so I love that you asked about the young people and the older people.

And so we talk about the lost boys and what's been so remarkable about this book is people that are school teachers that will read this book and they'll say, these are my kids.

Like I see this every single day.

And it's validating to them to know that maybe I could be the difference in this person's life in the work that I'm putting in.

And so for the lost boys, for the young kids, I think there's a prevention component to this where people are investing in them, especially if they're going through difficult things.

The other end is the trapped men, right?

The guys that are incarcerated right now.

And that's a little bit different story.

That's about empowering those guys to really see a different future for themselves.

So it's not me going in, it's not a behavioral health specialist going in, it's helping those guys understand for themselves how they can be the ones to break free from that imprisoned mind.

- And this idea of an imprisoned mind and breaking free of that, how does that, or does it fly in the face of accepted practice, of accepted ideas regarding incarceration, how you get there, how you don't become a repeat offender?

- Yeah, and so, you know, we have these theories and ideas in criminology of why people get in there.

And what's so different about this is these are their stories being told to somebody else who's incarcerated and it just hits differently.

And to give you an example, you know, there are times when I have to put this book down because the trauma that people are experiencing is so intense.

And on the academic side we might say, this is the presence of noxious stimuli or some sterilized, you know, term or phrase.

And it hits differently when you read this.

And so we're hopeful that our readers see the people behind these experiences when they're reading the book.

- And in this day and age, we hear a lot about you can't coddle criminals and you're forgetting about the feeling of the victims.

There's a victim for every person that's incarcerated.

What do you say to them?

- I would say victims want this.

I would say victims want a different system.

And so when you talk to victims, most of them want one of two things, or both things actually.

They want people to be held accountable and they want whatever happened to them or their loved ones to never happen again to anybody else.

And so if we look at our current system now, we're basically just locking people away for many years, just to rot essentially.

And so are they being held accountable in any way?

Are they giving back to their society?

Are they, you know, making it so this won't happen to anybody else.

I think the victims actually would want a different system where people are empowered and that they leave the system better than their arrival.

- Well it's a fascinating book.

It really is, Imprisoned Minds.

And again, Kevin Wright and Erik Maloney.

Kevin's here, Erik's where he always is.

And it's good, congratulations on this.

It must be quite rewarding to get this done.

- It is.

I appreciate that, thank you.

- Thank you.

(bright music) A new book series looks to close the generational gap between young readers and their grandparents.

The series is called The Adventures of Grandma McBee.

And the latest installment in this series is titled, Grandma McBee, How Slow Can She Be?

We sat down with the authors of the series, Judy Danko Basham, and Jacquie Kennedy Dudo.

Who is Grandma McBee?

- Well, you know what, Grandma McBee is a little bit of my mom that passed about five years ago, and her grandmother.

- My grandmother, she lives on a farm in Iowa.

She is 98 years old and she is still living on her own and doing the things throughout her day.

- And in the book, Grandma McBee, she moves around, she always has a smile.

- Absolutely, hundred percent.

- When you're writing for younger readers, that's big, isn't it?

Because there's a lot of drawing, there's a lot of illustration in here.

- You know what, believe it or not, the children, they've been inspired by Grandma McBee.

They've shown a lot of kindness and empathy when I go out and we do storytelling and they have just loved her and just are infatuated by her.

- [Ted] And the idea is she may use a walker here, but she goes wherever she wants to go.

- Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

So with the series, we're gonna actually see her progress in her aging.

So right now she's using a walker, but eventually, you know, we're gonna see her get into a fender bender and a couple of books.

And then she decides to give up her keys, and so she's no longer driving, and kind of seeing that journey.

- What kind of car is she driving right now?

- Well, I'll tell you, it's a red Volkswagen Beetle.

- Yes, it's cherry red, isn't it?

- Cherry red Volkswagen Beetle.

- And her adventures are kind of everyday adventures, going to the hair salon, these sorts of things.

- Yeah, going to the hair salon, going to the doctor.

The next book is a Grandma McBee Comes to Visit Me and she flies to the sky.

- [Ted] Yes, all right, so we know who she was inspired by, but what inspired you guys to write this series?

- Good question.

So when my mom passed away, I had the pleasure to work at a retirement center, and they taught me the importance of life and to embrace life in every day.

And so I decided to write this book and I asked my best friend, Jacquie, will you write this book with me?

And we realized that there is not enough children's books that talk about our aging population.

So we thought that it would be great to teach about kindness and empathy and understanding for our growing population, for our seniors.

- Was it difficult to write a children's book?

- You know, it had its struggles, but for us, we work with children every day.

We teach early childhood classes, I work with high school students.

Judy works with the college students who are all engaging with children.

And so for us it was a lot of, okay, what do we know about children and applying our knowledge in early childhood.

- And as far as the illustrations are concerned, obviously, with kids books, very important.

- Very important, yes.

Jacquie, you wanna go ahead and talk about our new illustrator.

- Oh, you have a new illustrator.

- Yes, we do.

- Yes.

So with the first book, we went with an illustrator through our publisher, and it was a very interesting process for us.

It was a lot about the details because we know that children, they zone in on those pictures and the pictures tell the whole story.

And we just felt like there were some inconsistencies.

And so we started hunting around for a new illustrator and we found a new illustrator, Jason, who is going to be doing all the illustrations for our second book.

And we're very excited to merge his design with our vision.

- And again, what we're talking about here is a way, this sounds like perfect bedtime reading.

- Absolutely, - Yeah, this would be perfect.

But a way to teach kids empathy, understanding, the whole bit.

- And you know what, it's not just necessarily teaching empathy and understanding for our senior population, but it's really to bring in for kindness for all.

So that's just the point of teaching.

You know, we're molding the next generation and that's really important to, Jacquie and I.

We read children's books every single day and we realize that there's not enough books to teach about our elders and our growing population.

- [Ted] How do you do that though, how do you teach without teaching?

You know what I mean?

Because kids, they're pretty wise.

They know when they're being forced to learn something.

- Oh yeah, you know, I think it just really comes down to those genuine experiences, you know, having those open conversations.

And one of the things that we include in our book are discussion questions at the back that get parents talking with their children, because it goes much more beyond just what's written on the pages.

- What kind of reaction have you had so far to Grandma McBee.

- The children absolutely love her.

I dress up as her.

- You do?

- I do, I go out and I dress up in the community and I have done several events in our community talking about the importance of kindness.

And you know what I say, "The best gift is free, and that shows kindness in our hearts."

- [Ted] And reaction from the kids, obviously.

What about moms and dads?

- You know, the parents really gravitate towards it.

I've noticed a lot of parents who they say, oh my gosh, this is even a great message for my grandchildren to learn.

So even grandparents are seeing it and saying, "Wow, I need to buy a copy of this book.

so I can share it with my grandchildren."

And I think that too, gives them a legacy of something that they're leaving behind to their grandchildren.

- So yeah, please.

- Oh, and also to piggyback on that, it also inspires our aging population that they can still do so much.

- Yes.

- Grandma McBee, you know, her knees are weak as they cross the street.

And she might be a little bit forgetful, but you know what, doesn't matter our age, we just need to make sure that we keep on going.

- So, real quickly, what's next for Grandma McBee?

- Well, she is gonna fly through the sky and then she's gonna go and visit her grandchild.

And then eventually, she's gonna get into our fender bender.

And we're just gonna continue to see that progression of aging to help them understand it starts out just moving a little bit slower, but eventually it is gonna, you know, take a toll.

But they can still do things and they still wanna be a part of those memorable moments of their children and grandchildren - And we have seven books written.

- Oh my goodness, you've already got 'em written.

- Yeah.

- Yes, we do.

It's a process, this has been a four year long process and we're very private and we just had our grandma McBee doll patented, so she's all ready to go.

- And she's always got a smile on her face.

- Always.

- As you both should and do.

And congratulations.

It's great stuff.

And best of luck to you.

- And we do wanna say that Grandma McBee says, "Life's an adventure, take it slow."

- All right, take it slow.

- Thank you.

- I'll take that under consideration.

Good to have you both here.

(bright music) And that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

You have a great evening.

(soft music)