El Charro, SEMA Lab

This week on Arizona Illustrated take a trip to the Gilded Age from a black perspective, The food will be black.

The art is black, but it's in a Victorian house El Charro Cafe celebrates its 100 years of continuous operation.

We just celebrated our 100 years.

And you know, this restaurant has been part of depressions, wars, recessions, prohibition.

Studying mindfulness at University of Arizona, similar to mission of the lab is two parts.

One is really try to understand what mindfulness is.

And the other part is can we enhance it?

And our dessert plant series continues with the iconic organ pipe cactus.

My favorite aspects of the organ pipe, it is considered to have one of the best tasting fruits of any of our native cacti Hello, happy New Year and welcome to another all new episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, if you've ever been to a play or a dance performance, in Tucson, you've likely seen the work of Ivy Wall, homemade.

She's a seamstress with a very impressive resume now working on her MFA in costume design and production at the University of Arizona.

And each year, she host an interactive art exhibit to show off her costumes to Tucson.

[Soft guitar music] (Ivy)I love mythology and I love thinking about how black people can be powerful or like royal or have their own mythical stories.

My name's Ivy Wahome.

I grew up in Kenya in a really small town, Nakuru, like 2 hours from the capital Nairobi.

[Soft guitar music] I am getting my MFA in costume design and production at the theater, film and Television Department of U of A.

First year of grad school.

All this stuff is from that time.

I don't like putting my work that I've made even.

It's even if it's a class work or it's just my own project, I don't like putting them in the closet to get dust.

I want to take them out and show them.

I'm in- between a textile designer artist installation.

Plus, I love creating spaces, and I always think about how people will walk into this space, what they want to see, how I guide them through it.

It's a story.

[Soft guitar music] The name of this show is Gilded in Black.

[Soft guitar music] This is a Queen Anne house, and it's sort of about the same time period of the costumes that I had researched during that time.

I wanted to make it like personalized it as if it's worn by someone from my background.

So that's why I put this show together.

[Classical music] I'm trying to keep it in the black realm.

The music will be black.

The food will be black.

The art is black.

But it's in a Victorian house.

[laughs] [Classical music] I can tell the people the story about how this was supposed to be this, but I flipped it.

It was after Black History Month.

There was a whole sales rack, African black fabric, so I got the whole bulk of one of them.

I figured, why not use that fabric and make a costume from the 18th century?

[Classical music] And using the word gilded.

It was for me, it was flipping it because Gilded Age, it's associated with families that were wealthy during that time.

I'm using the word gilded to say privileged or wealthy, but as a black person, so privileged to be black.

Wealthy to be black.

Blessed to be black.

[Classical music] They always mention these gods and I bring them up a lot because people don't know these names, but they know Zues and they know Athena and they know Venus.

One of my favorites is Elegua.

He's the first one with a black and red, and he's also outside in the garden.

To me, he's almost like a trickster God.

He comes in to check if you're doing something good, if you're doing something bad and he punishes you or he rewards you.

They all represent something.

They represent a day of the week.

They represent a color.

They represent a type of force.

If you want to pray to one of them, you have an offering that you give them.

You ask them for guidance to learn about our history, our culture.

That's one thing I want people to remember.

”Thank you, thank you ” I don't see a lot of black people in the arts.

I do a lot of Broadway shows with touring companies and we see actors and actresses.

But when you work backstage a lot, it's I rarely see a lot of black people.

They told me that I think since 1926 that they started the charter here in Tucson, that they have never had a black woman in the union.

Apart from being the first black woman in the union.

In Tucson, I'm usually either the only black person in my department or in my classes.

I always feel like it's me or one other.

So, yeah, it's hard.

I feel like it's better for me because then I get to create my own path.

Like, nobody's.

I'm not following anybody's footsteps, you know?

I'm just, like, doing what I like.

The way that I like.

[Laughs] [Guitar music, general hubbub] Did you know that Tucson is home to the nation's oldest Mexican restaurant and continuous operation by the same family?

As a forerunner to establishing Tucson as a city of gastronomy, El Toro Cafe celebrated their 100th anniversary.

And while they've stayed true to their roots, there ability to evolve shows why they've withstood the test of time.

Well, you are in our home.

This was the family home that wa built by my great grandfather.

So it's a very nostalgic kind of feeling.. We just celebrated our 100 years We had customers that came throu here, that ate here as children.

And, you know, this restaurant has been part of depressions, wars, recessions prohibition.

My parents lived here in Tucson.

So we were raised with my aunt as a grandmother type.

In Spanish that's Tia Abuela.

She was closer than an aunt, but not the grandma.

Monica did something that women shouldn't have done and weren't supposed to do and that endured all that she endured for 50 year And the stories are legendary about her, you know, having no money and going out and grabbing food and coming back and selling it and surviving against all the odds.

Tia Monica would go to the market and buy stuff on credit and she'd get whatever was local and whatever the indigenous people were bringing to the markets and she'd go and cook for her friends and family and then go back the next day, pay off the tab and get grocerie for the next service.

She was just a wonderful person that was very involved socially.

My aunt was there for on Broadway for over 40 years, and it wasn't until urban renewal happened in the downtown sector that my aunt was grandfathered and came back to this property and she was in her late eighties and they moved her and we were notified that she was having trouble with the move.

They asked us if we could come to Tucson and look at the family property and try to decide what we wanted to do to sell it, to get it read The restaurant wasn't going to be left to me, it was going to be left to my mom and my aunt.

She was going to come back to just kind of seal up the business affairs and give away the keys.

And they decided when she got here that she just simply couldn't do it.

She fell in love with the business again.

[Carlotta] “Come in ” The families that work in our kitchens some of them, when I took over the restaurant, were here when my aunt had the restaurant, and they were my teachers.

I was their sous chef.

She gathered up recipes.

She figured out how to make them in bulk.

And she opened the restaurant again.

I quickly established a sense of force.

She was running the store by herself with my father.

So raising a family and doing that and just moving back from California like they did, two young boys, was tough to do.

There wasn't a lot of capital to fund babysitters or daycare.

So, you know, we we came here after school and spent our time here, did our homework in a little office, makeshift office, and then went home at night when the restaurant closed.

We did that for about through college, like 25 years, school, proms, I mean, everything that could happen happened here.

Finally, they graduated from the university.

everyone kind of goes and does their own thing.

and then they came back and decided that we needed to do more with the restaurant.

What I've always wanted to help my mom do, which no one helped Monica do, was to truly make it.

And when I really got serious about it when was when after I had gone away and worked somewhere else and said, you know, I really think we can do somethi because we have something that I think people like.

Our thing is Tucson style Sonora Mexican food.

That's what it is.

And I wanted to do a business with that.

I wanted to make that a business for them that would pay back all those years of hard work.

You have the heart for it, but then you really have to put a new brain to it.

That's when the restaurant really took on a growth spurt of the last 25 years.

So everything we've ever done has had to have a story to it.

But we've been able to also find people that want to be part of that family.

So I was very open minded to the process when I came in.

You know, people put trust in you like they're your family now letting myself and my ego kind of go and learning like, okay, well, they've been doing this a long time.

Maybe there's a different way, really made me grow as a person and as a chef.

Charro Steak is our take on a traditional steakhouse.

We really, really kind of looked at what a traditional steakhouse was going to offer, and then we said, What's Charro about that?

So we grill all of our all of our steaks and seafood and chicken is all grilled on mesquite and sourced from the Sonoran Desert.

The Monica, our newest project, the story is it's our hundredth year.

We wanted to have something that was like this open kitchen, like one your famous aunt or your most favorite aunt or your favorite nana would have that it was always open.

I have a partner named Don Guerra, who is the new James Beard winner in this area.

And it was just through past friendship of working together him as a vendor and me as a customer that we felt comfortable enough to create something new.

And it was just really fun to work with the family and having their experience of being restaurateurs and me with the bread and the baking was just, you know, a really meaningful match.

And today, you know, it's really a celebration what we can do together.

That “something new ”.

Not only was one of the best decisions I've ever made its long-lasting, and it's on a corner, which was very important to all of us, its across the street from The Flin property.

Tia Monica was kind of a visionary at the time, making up these plates because there was no such thing as a mexican restaurant back then.

It was just a restaurant.

There was a period in food whenever they said, you've got to be very specific, and you have to be very authentic.

Well, really, if you want to be authentic, restaurants back then gave you everything.

So we do breakfast, we do lunch, brunch, dinner.

Because she was always open.

That particular business of The Monica is so modern that it's like the future of but it is in reality, thanking the past.

I also carry with me my legacy that was given to me and that was to be of service.

And that's what our calling in life is.

And that's been a key to our growth and our longevity to carry on the story, the heritage, the culture, the traditions that customers still want.

El Charro means something to a lot more people than it does just to us.

El Charro to me, means community Longstanding history of this family doing that.

Expansion of new concepts and really an inclusion of the total community, friendly people, and tasty food.

can science make us happier?

That's what the summer lab at the UofA Center for Consciousness Studies is trying to find out they're using various tools and methods to get a better grasp of mindfulness meditation and to make it more accessible to beginners.

(Jay) I was actually a neuroscience student when I was an undergrad.

And I actually went to a science meeting that had 30,000 neuroscientists at it.

The Dalai Lama gave a speech and he spoke on the benefits of mindfulness and the power of mindfulness.

And he also spoke on the power of neuroscience to reach inside of the brain with tools to understand the human self, the human identity, the human consciousness, and then to change it.

(Dalai Lama) Firstly, we should know the reality.

Then on the basis of that reality, how much can change?

(Jay) And I started meditating every day after that, and my life radically changed.

(Shinzen) Take a moment to stretch up and settle in.

The bulk of any human being's potential for personal happiness depends on focus factors.

Focus factors are trainable.

If we can modernize and accelerate these trainings with technology.

Oh, boy.

The phrase this changes, everything comes to mind.

Some traditions call it open presence.

Some people call it choiceless awareness, but we like to call it see, hear, feel.

And that's what we're converging towards here.

(lab student) There should be this nice line of electrons.

Yeah.

In order to get this centered, we want to find out where to put the c z electrode, which is, like, right on top.

(Jay) SEMA LAB is a psychology and neuroscience lab, and SEMA stands for Science Enhanced Mindful Awareness.

The mission of the lab is two parts.

One is really try to understand what mindfulness is.

And the other part is once we know what we're talking about, can we enhance it?

(Shinzen) If someone asks me what is mindfulness?

There are all states of fluidity in perception, fluidity in expression.

There are states of tranquility nowness, Connection.

You learn truths about the relationship between sensory experience, suffering, fulfillment, insight, positive behavior change.

I call it focus training in the service of personal happiness, broadly considered.

Transcend sense versus nonsense.

(Jay) Okay, so who is Shinzen Young?

That's a hard question for me because he's been a lot of things in my life.

I think first and foremost, a deep friend, mentor, and early on in my practice he was my teacher.

But Shinzen is a very well known American mindfulness teacher.

He's regarded as one of the first guard of mindfulness teachers who went to Asia, to East Asia back in the fifties and sixties, learned the practices and then brought them back to the United States.

Shinzen is sort of setting apart from the rest of the teachers and in being sort of extremely scientifically oriented towards his practice.

(Shinzen) Treating the sub personalities as though they were family members.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

(Maria) Our lab really aims to combine both ancient wisdom and experiential wisdom with modern science techniques, asking some of these deep questions about what are the patterns in the mind, what's happening in the body when these patterns get exhibited?

And how can we create interventions?

(Jay) We also use a lot of tools like neuro imaging, to try to measure the networks and try to measure when a person is actually going through a training platform like mindfulness training.

Can we measure that?

What does that look like?

(Maria) We're really interested in physiologic data and what's happening in the body.

One of those things is what's happening with the heart rate.

How is the heart rate synching to the breath?

How is the brain and the vagus nerve and the organs all working in resonance?

Right now we're trying to do meditation plus.

So we're looking at how we can teach young people who are really naive to meditation to see if they can learn it a bit faster.

So we're training them, the unified mindfulness techniques.

(Jay) You can use sound waves that are very high frequencies.

You can focus that into the brain and you can modulate the brain function.

(Maria) So we're seeing if by modulating that with high frequency sound, we can actually get them to start to be present a little bit faster, get them to develop the skills of mindfulness a little bit faster.

What I'm really hoping to do is create supportive structures to integrate happiness and well-being into people's lives and into their everyday experience.

You know, it would be so nice to inspire joy.

(Shinzen) We could say we have not just science validated, but science informed, focused training in the service of happiness, broadly considered.

That's what we want to produce at scale.

(Jay) What is most important to me, both in the lab and in my personal life, is trying to align.

How can we use these tools to help people?

Can we really understand what a happy human being is, not just the state of happiness, but what does it look like to flourish or thrive?

That's sort of the reason we all sign up to be scientists, honestly, is use science to better people's lives.

(Shinzen) Keep your fingers crossed because we can't predict the future.

But so far, so good.

there are hundreds of plants that can thrive in our Sonoran Desert urban areas, and many of those come from all around the world.

But many of our local native plants can be an excellent choice for city landscapes.

And one of those is the organ pipe.

Cactus even has a national monument named after it in southwest Pima County.

Given the right care and conditions, this impressive plant will thrive (Jack) My name is Jack Dash, and I am a horticulturist at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

This is an organ pipe cactus.

Organ pipes occur in southwestern Arizona and Organ Pipe National Monument and on the Tohono O'odham Reservation.

And they become a little bit more common as you go into coastal Sonora.

They are in the Cactus family, so they're kind of a distant relative of things like saguaro.

But they're a fantastic landscaping plant because they're going to grow significantly faster than a Saguaro will.

So within just a few years, you can have a pretty nice looking specimen.

Organ pipe cactus or Stenocereus thurberi is a really great garden plant for a number of reasons.

One, it's incredibly drought tolerant and incredibly heat tolerant.

So it will thrive in really tough locations where other plants might not be able to make it.

Additionally, when it blooms, the flowers are really beautiful, their evening blooming like a lot of cactus flowers.

And in fact the primary pollinators are bats.

Additionally, the primary seed dispersers are bats.

So you'll get bats, but also birds and other wildlife that will visit the fruit and spread the seeds around.

And one of my favorite aspects of the Oregon pipe, it is considered to have one of the best tasting fruits of any of our native cacti.

The Oregon pipe fruits have been harvested for, you know, as long as oral history goes back by indigenous people like the O'odham or Seri, in Sonora.

That's nice because they're not quite as high up on the plant as they would be on a saguaro.

And again, they're fantastic.

You just have to clean the spines off and then you're eating that interior sort of pith and seeds and it's really tasty.

Organ pipe cacti can be a touch cold sensitive.

It's their limiting factor and why they don't occur further north.

However, it's really a great thing for urban areas because we are going to tend to have sort of a heat island effect.

There's going to be lots of reflected heat.

If you are in a colder area of town, say you're near a wash where there might be cold air drainage, then plant the organ pipe near a source of reflected heat like pavers, a sidewalk, a wall.

Any of those things will help to mitigate any potential damage that might come from frost.

Oftentimes, if they do get some frost damage, you'll get some dieback on the tips at which point they'll rebranch and just continue growing.

So because cacti are slow growing, people often make the mistake of planting them too close together or too close to a walkway.

This is ultimately, you know, easily going to get 6 to 8 feet wide and could get even a little bit wider.

So you do want to ensure that you leave ample space for the plant to grow to its full size.

The last thing you want to do is invest, you know, a decade into growing out a beautiful specimen cacti and then have to start cutting off arms.

And that really goes for any landscaping plant.

Make sure that you are aware of what the mature size will be so that you can plant it in an appropriate space and allow it to achieve optimal growth.

Actually, there's a house on Broadway that has a cutout in the roof because it has a saguaro growing through it.

I highly recommend that people start with species that are native to this area.

You will be amazed by the biodiversity.

In fact, the Sonoran Desert is considered generally the wettest desert on the planet, and we have an incredible diversity of plant, animal, insect and even fungal and bacterial species here in the Sonoran Desert.

So you have a massive selection of plants to choose from.

Great way to think about it is that there are nearly 4000 plants native to Arizona.

And, you know, around half of those are found just in Pima County alone.

So you are absolutely not limited in your plant selection.

before we go, here's a sneak peek at a story we're working on this is, to me, one of the most protected, well kept secrets of my life that I enjoy just escaping from Main Street and looking at the horizon the sky's gorgeous.

It's beautiful.

It's such an incredible resource with wonderful people.

I don't have enough words thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you next week for another all new episode.