Beyond - Life Along The Streetcar with Tom Heath

Life Along the Streetcar with Tom Heath from The Heath Team Nova Home Loans

On this week’s show, we’re going to speak with Daniela Diamente and Jannie Cox. They are the respective founders of El Groupo Cycling and Meet Me at Maynards and they’re going to talk about the Beyond Tucson program and how the tragedy of the January 8 shooting has led to a year round commitment for public health.

Today is November 27th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Our intro music is by Ryanhood and we exit with music from Leno, “Let’s Get Moving.”

Transcript (Unedited)

Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the old pueblo and you’re listening to KTD Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your Downtown Tucson community sponsored rock and roll radio station.

Today’s, november 27, 2022. My name is Tom Heath and you are listening to life along the streetcar. Each and every Sunday, I focus on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core. And we shed light on hidden gems everyone it should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on Downtownradio.org, also available on your iPhone or Android

by simply downloading our very own Downtown Radio Tucson app on the show. Our email address is [email protected]. You can interact with us on social media through Instagram and Facebook are the best there. And our podcasts are a lot of places you would find your podcast. And for any information about our show, about me, about events, and information on our book, you can head over to our website, lifelongthstreetcar.org. I hope you had a reflective Thanksgiving weekend and now we’re in the midst of this crazy holiday season here as we get closer to year end. And as a reminder, coming up here on Tuesday, just in two days, it’s Giving Tuesday. It’s a day of grassroots generosity and your donation is what it takes to sustain Downtown Radio’s ability to broadcast underground, off the grid local rock and roll from your downtown community radio station. As well as fabulous talk shows here on a Sunday. Your donations and support provide all the essential tools for our staff of 55

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Great experiment in the radio world and it’s doing quite well here, I think seven, eight years now. Well, other things doing well in our community. A couple of organizations, El Grupo, Meet Me At Maynards, these were founded by very dynamic and strong public healthminded individuals, danielle Diameter and Jani Cox. And I got to sit down with them recently because they are in the midst of a new project. It’s called Beyond Tucson, and it’s taking the tragedy that happened with the shooting of Gabriel Giffords on January 8, and it’s transformed it into a mission of public health.

So my name is Daniella Diameter, and I’m the executive director of beyond came into this role most exactly two years ago now, and during a pandemic that the goal was to beyond. Our mission is bringing people together to be healthy and get out and moving, and at a time when everyone was scared to get together and didn’t know how to be healthy. So it was an interesting time to come into this leadership role and help the organization figure out where they were going from there. Beyond started in response to the tragedy of January 8, 2011, and the Zoomerman family in particular, with a lot of community support, said, how do we prevent things like this happening? And it was about being healthy yearround, not just this one day. And so initially, it was a commemorative thing around that date, and then it grew into more programming. So in 2020, during the pandemic, I came on board. They said, all right, we got to kind of figure out what it is we’re doing and where we want to go from here. And that

was when I learned about Mediate Maynards needing a home. Of course, I already knew about Mediate Maynards because pretty much if you live in Tucson, I live in the downtown area, you know about it, and attended a handful of time over the years myself. But one of our board members, Julia Strange with TMC, is heavily committed to beyond and even more committed to Meet Me, and has been from the beginning. And so the idea came forward of Meet Me was really looking for a new home and would beyond be a good place for those two to merge. And so that’s when I met Jani and started now a great relationship with not only her as a board member and an activist for four beyond and Meet Me, but also taking on Meet Me as one of our core programs now, okay?

So I didn’t realize that they were merging in that way.

We merged. And so now beyond is like the parent organization, and Mimi is one of.

Our programs, and Mimi and maintenance. You’ve walked to the moon and back, haven’t you?

I have already forgotten what year we did that, but yes, we walked to the moon and back, and the community really gathered around that. It was really terrific. I’m Jani Cox. I am retired from a long career at Chronomette Health Network, and I founded Mimi at Maynards along with Randy Aceta in 2009. But it started in 2008. My husband and I were driving down Cascade Boulevard on our way out to dinner in Colorado Springs, and it was 25 degrees, there was no moon, and the wind was blowing, and there were literally hundreds of people walking and running down this sidewalk in the pitch dark. There were strollers dogs. And I said to him, what on earth are those people doing outside? He said, oh, it doesn’t matter the weather, it’s Tuesday night. Those are the Jack Quinn runners. And I said, take me there. So the next morning we went in and they told us how it happened. And I met the people and just flat out copied it in Tucson. It was easy.

And it’s been 13 years now, and up through COVID, it never missed a Monday.

We didn’t meet in person, obviously, but we didn’t miss a Monday. People could check in every Monday, just like they always did. Yes. And we kept the prizes, the raffle prizes going, and it doesn’t the photos and everything kept happening Monday.

Every seven years or so, Christmas falls on that day, which we still are out there.

Oh, yeah. It doesn’t matter what the day it is. It’s been a great ride, I have to say.

If you’re not familiar with this and you’re downtown, you get a little freaked out because all of a sudden you hear a bunch of people yelling Get out. If you don’t understand the context, it might be correct.

Yeah, well, we’ve surprised several people because I don’t know if we do it anymore. But it used to be that we would have all the new people stand up when we make announcements. And so everybody would stand up and we’d say, well, tell them. What do we do on Monday nights? And everybody would look at them and say, Get out. And some people would just be shocked. But then it’s followed by get out and get moving. Get out and support your community. Get out with your friends and family. And so then they all love it and they embrace it. But it is meant to be a little shocking to begin with.

And it works beautifully in this idea of beyond. We see this in Tucson, probably in other parts of the country, but I don’t do a show there. We see this in Tucson, where something tragic leads to something very wonderful and embracing in a community. You mentioned the Zimmerman family and their son Gabe was a very active runner. And it kind of makes sense that healing for them comes in getting out and enjoying that which you so much love.

Yeah. And they’ve also been really tied to looking at the science behind what makes us a healthier community, healthier individuals and a healthier community. And that’s what we try to stay true to. So we have four pillars. One is moving your body, so what you get through Meet me getting out and walking. But one is connecting what you also get through Meet me. And another one is engaging with nature and recognizing the power of just being out in nature for our mental health as well as our physical health. And then, nourish, your body, just understanding nutrition in a different way, in a more holistic way. And so we try to touch on those in all our different programs. So through MeetMe, we’ve got just a consistent base of people, hundreds of people that come every Monday and Wednesday. And then we have a monthly hike where we get people out and we focus on beginner hikers. So we have anywhere from 15 to 25 people. New people come out once a month. We do them in different places around Tucson.

So engage people in nature, helping them understand how to hydrate and going on a hike that’s attainable for them. Initial hike maybe somewhere in, like, the maybe two mile range. And then I started Beyond Bikes program with kids in the schools, and I looked at our demographics and who we were reaching. It was kind of missing this targeted younger population. And so we’re working with two specific schools for being underresourced lowincome families and approaching those four pillars through bikes. So how do you talk to kids about, hey, you shouldn’t have too much sugar? Well, if you get on a bike and you’re riding, you’re talking about fuel in your body, you can then have a different conversation than if you’re in the classroom pointing your finger at them, you know, about what you should and shouldn’t eat. It’s been a cool evolution to look at how we take, like you said, this tragedy, and then go, well, how do we have a healthier community? How do we build other individuals and then apply

that and all the science behind it to what we’re doing?

So the youth activities, that’s a newer component of what you’re doing. I know. There’s Damian Alexander’s on the board. He’s with El Grupo. Are they connected?

Not el groupo. I’m one of the co founders of El grubo. My husband and I started that, so I ran that for 15 years. Yeah, so I ran 13 years and then stepped down. We took a year traveling, which ended in the pandemic, and so I knew I wanted to change something. I still volunteer with Elgrapo and hugely supportive of it, but I looked at what we were doing with beyond when I came on and said, okay, there’s something missing. Obviously, I’m drawn to young people and devices and the power that they have to transform lives and thought, wow, well, we could really apply this mission through this thing. And what’s not happening in the community of, like, we don’t need to reinvent a wheel unintended. Right. You’ve got different programming happening in the county. Elderbo is incredibly powerful program, and it’s all after school programming. So I looked at, well, how do you reach kids that can’t get to something like that? You look at schools. So we’re working with a Mago Day Middle School downtown

and with Change Maker High School, which is at like 22nd in Columbus, small charter school models where they kind of a flexible curriculum where we’ve been able to purchase bicycles through grant funds and now they have bicycles that are theirs, the school. And we come in and help the teachers run programming. So it becomes a selfsustaining thing where they’re able to use the bicycles in in a science project they have going on at high school. And we’re going to go down to the wash and we’re going to check things out. It’s been awesome to see these kind of toughlooking high schoolers completely just be joyful on a bike and be like, I haven’t done this in years and I know there’s so many trees in this neighborhood or just exploring themselves and feeling good about themselves. I think whether or not they ride bikes for the rest of their lives, it’s going to transform how they look at bicycles and being active.

That was Danielle with diamente. She was joined by Jani Cox. We’re talking about Beyond Tucson and we’ll be back to the second half of that interview to find out some of their up and coming events. My name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to life along the Streetcar on Downtown Radio 99 One FM and available for streaming on Downtownradio.org.

Greetings and salutations, downtown radio listeners. Haley O’Dave, your unfrozen caveman DJ, here to spread the good word about the Scrambled Sunrise rock mix happening every weekday morning from seven to 09:00 A.m. Right here on downtown radio from the earliest days of Psych punk and new wave to 80s college rock, 90s alternative and the ongoing wave of 21st century indie rock. It’s all right here on the Scrambled Sunrise. So tune in via 99 One FM if you’re in the greater downtown area or streaming worldwide via Downtownradio.org.

We are back and I do hope you check out the Scrambled Sunrise tomorrow morning with Paleo Dave. And tomorrow you might also be able to take a look at the Meet Me at Mayors, which we are in the midst of a conversation with Danielle Diameter and Jenny Cox. Danielle is the executive director beyond Tucson. Janie Cox had started and founded Meet Me at Mayors, which is now a program of Beyond Tucson. And we’re going to jump back into the second half of that interview talking about some upcoming events and ways to connect and get involved.

So where are we going with beyond? What’s up and coming and what are some of the things we can help get the word out about?

Yeah, so I think we’re still in this place as a renovation of for several years. People just saw us as this annual event in January right. And not knowing. So it’s really these programs that now we’ve developed through taking on MeetMe and making it part of our thing. The hiking program and then the biking, trying to stabilize those and then grow them. So eventually looking at what other schools can we branch out to? Having so many people come to hikes that we have to have multiple and multiple levels. We already have three different levels of hikes. But really just getting people out and with the MeetMe, I mean, it’s such a strong program already. It’s just making sure that it continues constantly, looking at that next generation while keeping your attendance up, making sure there’s new people coming out and families and that sort of thing. And so bridging the gap in between, potentially between the Mago Day students and then their families coming out to meet me. They’re right downtown

looking at those ideas of how do we create more community around our program.

And the MeetMe has expanded because originally it was Meet Me at Mayors, but you mentioned a Wednesday walk as well, correct?

Well, we actually started our second walk on Wednesdays and we had it up at Lancantata, but over the years, it became more and more restrictive to do anything on the ground at Lancantata until it finally really got to be to the point we knew we needed a new home. So they invited us, embraced us at St. Phillips, and we’ve been there since we left LAN Quintana in 2016, I think, in the summer. And that fall we came to St. Phillip. So that walk is ten years old this year, and it’s a smaller event. It’s always been smaller than meet me at Maynards. I think people really embrace the idea that downtown, they see so much and there are entertainment venues and restaurants, and there’s more to see downtown in terms of the excitement, I guess, for meet me at Maynards. But meet.

Me.

Wednesdays is a more serene experience where you walk the loop at the end of the day, and it’s usually pretty quiet, and you look at the cactus and the mountains and it’s more of an outdoor experience. We’ve had the same challenges that any business or organization has had since COVID Of course, our attendance dropped off considerably during COVID because we couldn’t meet in person. But we’ve struggled a little bit with bringing people back postcobid. That’s changing. It’s getting better and better, but we still aren’t back to our precovid crowds that we have.

It really is, I mean, is what it sounds like. You get together as a group and then you take not a guided walk, but a prescribed walk.

It’s a prescribed walk. We have walk guides. Or you can just follow people in front of you, except that over the years, people have devised their own routes. So it’s a little dangerous to follow the person part of you because they may have a totally different idea about where they’re going to walk tonight, but it’s just a delightful walk around downtown. And you can put the guide on your phone or you can pick up a paper guide at the start to lead you around. And it’s about two and a half miles now. It used to be four, and now we’ve centralized it more in downtown, and it’s just a delightful walk. And there’s so much to see. There’s history. There are new things as you and I know, going on downtown. Brand new things popping up everywhere. And they get to be the first to see it or hear about it.

Because you see things differently when you’re walking right, than in your car or whatever. So it’s like just getting out and experiencing our downtown. I think there’s stigma around downtown and sometimes in terms of like it still.

Is a little bit, but it’s too bad.

The more we activate it, the less there’s more that people get out and use spaces, the less and there’s graffiti that you don’t want or people in areas that you don’t want them. So it’s a way to activate downtown.

And from another perspective, people who don’t come to meet me at Maynards and don’t experience downtown and say, oh, there’s nowhere to park. Well, if you are a mainnards person, you know exactly where the parking is and you know that there’s plenty of it. It’s just a matter that you might not be able to park within 20ft of the business you’re going to enter. But there are more than enough parking places downtown for anyone who wants to be there. And you never have to walk more than maybe a block or two.

Yeah, I think that’s part of the urban experience as well.

Absolutely.

Seeing the things that you wouldn’t normally see that there’s so many. I know. I just found that you do mural walks and there’s so many hidden murals that when you’re just walking around, you see them on a fence or the back of the house.

And there are so many new ones. I have a new little tour that’s all new murals. Well, there are a few of my favorite old ones that I can’t resist, but I have a new little tour for Main Earth that’s almost all brand new murals. And there’s probably 15 of them. And you don’t have to go very far to see them all. And they’re beautiful and they’re interesting and some are very historic.

Yeah. Tucson has just got a beautiful arts arts community.

Oh, it does.

And connecting all of this with education, arts, exercise, health. And you’ve mentioned the science behind it. So it’s not just people that enjoy it. There’s actual studies going on on how to do this.

Yeah, well, just stay on top of the science study out there. Right? So the bicycle program that we run in the middle school and high school is based off of outright foundation, is a branch of specialized and they’ve done a wealth of studies on the impact of bicychool writing on middle school students, particularly on ADHD and focused in the classroom and grades in school and all kind of emotional, social emotional. Wellbeing, and so it’s using that data go, this is more than just moving in bodies. Right? It’s about kids entire holistic, health and wellbeing being able to focus in the classroom. Yeah, using information like that. And then we do a weekly newsletter through MeetMe and it’s always giving these every week we have a different health tip they put out there based on one of the pillars. So hey, did you know and just stay on top of different studies. So that’s really my focus of like, stay on top of the current knowledge and science and health and wellbeing, of two minutes after

eating, if you can walk for two minutes after eat dinner, your risk for diabetes falls by like 90%. So just looking at those things is like, all the more reason to come out and walk with us and meet me. Right? So it brings us back of like, how do you engage people in different ways and just get them information that’s really usable.

So what are some upcoming events? Where do they tie in? Obviously, Monday they can meet or Wednesday.

They can meet Monday, every Wednesday.

And then the first Saturday of the month is our beyond hike. And so Saturday, December 3 would be the hike, which is going to be here near downtown in Painted Hills, newer Trail network just off of Angle. And we’ve got an option for a level one beginner hike. It’s just a two mile out and back. We’ve got a longer three plus mile hike as well. And then Saturday afternoons, if you get up early, it’s just get out and move. It would be a great way to burn off the Thanksgiving calories and just set good routines for moving into holiday season, of being outside, getting that fresh air. Yes, for moving and digestion, but also for mental health. You get so stressed out about things and sometimes just a breath in fresh air can change that.

Are their pet policies?

Are they welcome pens on the Trail network? So in terms of the hiking, we always give people that information of whether or not those are allowed on a leash or not. And the hike I went to last month, we had 22 people and I think we had four dogs on leashes and they were all trained to be there. So it was totally fine. And that was allowed on a leash. So sometimes that’s part of people’s comfort.

So just keep track of the instructions for that particular height.

Exactly.

And then where do people find all this information? What’s the website? How do people get a hold of you?

All our info is on beyond website. So Beyondtucson.org and that’s the home for all the Meet me information as well, the check in. If you haven’t been in a while to meet me and you’re looking for the Meet me page, it’s at beyond tucuson.org. If you ask about events, I think we had this great event here in October. It was the second annual year, and we’d love to do more events like it. We partnered with the U of a Fed fox School of Music. And we had a musical murals walk. And they had quartets and quintets from the school around different murals.

They had choirs, they had three opera singers. And we ran opera on the sidewalk. It was spectacular.

We had over 700 people come out for it.

I totally missed it. I misread the information. I thought it was a November event. And someone told me they were going to that. And I’m like, what do you mean, it’s in the month? And they said, no, it’s tonight.

Well, it was pretty wonderful, actually. And if people need another reason to get out and walk, I think it’s the first Monday we’re going to have.

Mural tours the last night of the month.

Oh, the last Monday of the month, we’ll have mural tours.

So that’ll be the Monday after Thanksgiving. So a guided mural tour of like, let’s go around and see these different murals. So be a great time for somebody new to go and check out a route and see downtown a different way and all the art that’s there.

Yeah, what a way to work off a few Thanksgiving calories. Maybe we’ll see you in the downtown area taking a walk. Thank you to Danielle diameter and Jenny Cox for spending some time in what I know is very busy schedules making things happen here in Tucson. My name is Tom Heath. You are listening to life along the streetcar on downtown radio 99.1 FM. And we’re also available for streaming on downtown radio.org.

You’re listening to ktdt, tucson, Arizona, 99 one FM, downtown radio. I’m brother mock host of a show called radio club crawl that airs every Tuesday at 03:00 p.m.. We try to focus on most of the bands that are coming through Tucson, and we give you a tasty taste of their music. You want to check out what’s happening around Tucson, check out radio club crawl Tuesdays, 03:00 p.m., right here on ktdt, tucson, Arizona, 99.1 FM, downtown radio.

Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening.

Bye bye.

Enjoy your evening. Enjoy your afternoon. Thank you again to Danielle diameter, Jenny Cox for joining us today. Lots happening here as we roll into December, so stay in touch with us on facebook, instagram, and our webpage lifelongstreetcar for upcoming events and shows today. Stay tuned right now for words and work with Ted Proski, followed by ty Logan heavy mental at the top of the hour. And remember, Tuesday’s, giving Tuesday. So head over to downtownradio.org, hit that little button there to donate a few dollars and help out the cause here for all volunteer downtown radio station. Our topic today was about getting out and getting moving. So we’re going to leave you with a single from Leno earlier this year. The song is going to do what it tells you to do. It’s like get moving. Let’s get moving. My name is Tom Heath. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.