Thomas Wentzel and Cynthia Meier’s Homepage

Quilting, Cartooning, Photos, and More

Tom and Cindy live and work in sunny and scenic Tucson, Arizona

Cindy works as a Division Dean of Pima College Adult Education. PCAE is part of the Community Campus at Pima Community College.

Cindy writes poems sometimes. Here’s one about our lemon tree.

Cindy is also an actor and director. In 2004, she and Joseph McGrath spearheaded the formation of The Rogue Theatre. In September 2004 she directed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in conjunction with Tucson Art Theatre. The Rogue Theatre went on to present a three-show inaugural season of its own in 2005-2006. The season began with a production of Jean Genet’s The Balcony in October 2005, continued with Wallace Shawn’s The Fever in January 2006, and wound up with Cindy’s new faithful adptation of James Joyce’s short story The Dead in late March 2006. The three-show 2006-2007 season began with an original adaptation of John Keats’ epic poem, Endymion, continued with Jean Genet’s The Maids and concludes with Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan. Joseph McGrath serves as Artistic Director and Cindy as Managing Director of The Rogue Theatre. Many more details about The Rogue Theatre and its past and future productions are available at its website.

In January and February of 2004 Cindy appeared in Arizona Theatre Company’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire . (Click here for photos from the production.)

Cindy is one of the founders of Bloodhut Productions.

Cindy enjoys constructing large puppets for theatrical performances and other purposes.

Cindy is a quilter. Click here for a photo index of quilts she has made over the years.

Tom currently works as a Scientific Programmer in the Data Management and Analysis Center of the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), part of the National Solar Observatory. The National Solar Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, for the benefit of the astronomical community. GONG is a community-based program to conduct a detailed study of solar internal structure and dynamics using helioseismology. In order to exploit this new technique, GONG has developed a six-station network of extremely sensitive, and stable velocity imagers located around the Earth to obtain nearly continuous observations of the Sun’s “five-minute” oscillations, or pulsations. One of Tom’s recent tasks has been programming the remapping of solar images of the magnetic flux in the photosphere into a Mercator-like map projection. These remapped images are assembled into “synoptic maps” which are automatically generated once an hour using the most recent data to have arrived from the six GONG sites over the Internet. The clever system to gather near-real-time images from the sites was built by his supervisor, John Bolding. He is also working on porting existing pipeline code from Sun to LINUX.

Tom worked from 2003 to 2005 as a computer and database consultant. He provided computer support for Prescott College Tucson Center and other organizations. He developed MS Access relational databases, conducted trainings in MS Office products, installed software and hardware, and performed personalized software consulting for Windows and Mac users. He also designed and built the Website for The Rogue Theatre using Macromedia Dreamweaver.

During this time Tom volunteered at the Tucson Conservation Office of The Nature Conservancy in Arizona, where he assisted the Technology and Information Systems Operations Manager, the Volunteer Coordinator and members of the Science Team with MS Access programming support, database development, database quality control, MS Office technical support, electronic library citation documentation and filing, and GIS mapping projects. He is currently completing a MS Access database to house hydrology data for Nature Conservancy wells, stream flow monitoring stations, and precipitation stations across Arizona.

From 1998 to 2003, Tom worked as the Senior Data Manager for the Arizona Smokers’ Helpline and Arizona Tobacco Education and Prevention Program (TEPP) Internet Services, and was first a staff member, then an Academic Professional at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health. Reports, posters, and presentations he authored or co-authored can be found at the AZteppdata.org Website. From 1995 to 2000, he worked for the Arizona Cancer Center on the Evaluation Team of the Full Court Press Project, dedicated to reducing teen tobacco use in Tucson.

The Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health and the Arizona Cancer Center are part of the Arizona Health Sciences Center at the University of Arizona.

From Fall 1990 to Summer 1991, Tom drew a serialized comic strip called "Roy A., Inc." for the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper at the University of Arizona. Click here to see the newly-scanned "Roy A., Inc." archives.

From Fall 1991 to Spring 1998, Tom drew editorial cartoons and a comic strip called "Boxed In" for the Arizona Daily Wildcat. In recent years, his editorial cartoon usually appeared on Mondays, and his comic strip usually appeared on Wednesdays, during the spring and fall semesters. Back issues can be accessed through the Wildcat archives, which contain graphic images back to January 1996. Click here to see samples of Tom’s Wildcat cartooning. Click here to see all the anti-tobacco cartooning that Tom drew for the Arizona Daily Wildcat. These images have been scanned at high resolution to be large and clean. Click here to access archives of Tom’s cartoons as scanned by the Daily Wildcat. (Tom apologizes for the low resolution of some of these scans. That’s how the Wildcat scanned them.) In the archives, you’ll see the file names of the comics. Click on the file name to see one. Files beginning with the letters BI are "Boxed In" comic strips, and those beginning with ED are editorial cartoons. The date the cartoon was published follows, in year-month-day format. So, ed980126.gif would be the editorial cartoon printed on January 26, 1998.

In search of the wild Blue Book

In January 2002, Tom joined the Sons of Orpheus Male Choir of Tucson, a community-based choral organization which provides a unique opportunity for men to sing selections from the rich repertoire written for men’s voices. Check out their web site for a schedule of upcoming programs, a listing of their repertoire, member bios, great group photos (more photos by Gary Smyth are here), past newsletters, choir history, and CD availability.

From 2003 to 2005, Tom served as the Bass Section Leader and the Financial Secretary, and served on the Executive Committee. He was profiled in the April 2005 newsletter.

Sons of Orpheus outside Mahler Hall, in Dobbiaco, Italy as part of the 7th annual Alta Pusteria Choir Festival, June 26, 2004. Tom is on the upper left. Photo by Gary Smyth. (Click on photo to enlarge, and link to Gary’s photo site.)

Send Tom Wentzel e-mail

Click on Robert and Valerie to visit Robert’s Web site. Send Robert Wentzel e-mail Send Valerie Hunter e-mail