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FARGO - Lauren Ware's time at the University of Arizona is coming to an end.

The former Bismarck Century standout entered the NCAA Transfer Portal according to multiple reports. Ware missed the entire 2022-23 season after having surgery on her right patellar tendon in November.

Arizona had a rash of departures Wednesday night, with three other players besides Ware entering the transfer portal. Wildcats head coach Adia Barnes said of Ware after she was injured "she's our best defensive player, one of our smartest players and best communicator. It was a big loss for us."

Ware came to Tucson after a tremendous high school career at Century. The 6-5 forward helped lead the Patriots to back to back state championships in 2018 and 2019, along with being named North Dakota Gatorade Player of the Year. Ware averaged 17 points and 11 rebounds in her junior season when Century beat Devils Lake 69-61.

Ware was set to go for a three-peat the following season, but tore her left ACL during the summer, causing her to miss her senior season.

Her return to the court came in November of 2021 and she made an immediate impact for the Wildcats. She scored 12 points in her third collegiate game against USC.

Ware played in 27 games during her freshman season, averaging 4 points a game as she helped lead Arizona to the national championship game. She told WDAY Sports that April: "I wanted to be able to go to a place to make an impact right away and be able to contribute to the team."

She was set to have a larger role for the 2021-22 season, but ironically the year got derailed by a home state team. Early in a game against North Dakota State in December of 2021, Ware went up for a rebound and came down wrong.

Initially Ware was thought to have a dislocated kneecap. It turned out it was a torn patellar tendon. Ware opted to rehab the injury and returned to the lineup after nearly a month. She reached double figures in two of her last three games and was poised for a monster junior season before the injury happened again.

Ware came to Arizona to play both basketball and volleyball, she did play volleyball in the spring of 2022, but then decided to focus on basketball.

She was ranked the 13th highest recruit in the country coming out of high school and chose Arizona over offers from Texas, UCLA, Minnesota and Tennessee.

Ware will have three years of eligibility remaining for whichever school she ends up transferring to.

Jonathan Landeen made a promise back in 1994 when he bought The Tucson Cork from philanthropist Bill Hillenbrand.

“He said please don’t ever give it back to me,” Landeen recalled this week. “And I never did.”

On Saturday, March 25, Landeen will preside one last time over the dining room of Jonathan’s Cork steakhouse, a throwback to Tucson’s fine dining heydays that included cowboy steakhouses alongside the white-tablecloth ambiance of The Tack Room.

On Monday, March 27, Glenn and Sally Murphy will take over the historic restaurant that has been operating at 6320 E. Tanque Verde Road since 1966, when a Phoenix restaurateur brought the Cork & Cleaver to Tucson’s then remote east side. A few years later, the restaurant became a national chain.

The Murphys will be only the fourth owners of the restaurant, which despite name changes has always been fondly referred to by regulars as The Cork.

“The Cork is a tradition that is pretty special to the east side,” said the 73-year-old Landeen. “The Cork isn’t me, even though it is. It’s the people who dine here. It was that way when I bought it.”

That sentiment resonates with the Murphys, who said they plan to keep the restaurant pretty much as is, from the staff to the menu staples. The name will change; the couple is going through the city’s sign permitting process to rechristen it The Cork Tucson. Possibly by fall they will add a few more sides to the menu and prop up the salad offerings.

But Glenn Murphy, who operated the Backstage next door to the restaurant in the early 2000s and has owned and run dozens of restaurants and bars in the U.S. and his native Perth, Australia, said he also will bring the restaurant into the 21st century with more computer enhanced operations that will include taking orders on digital devices instead of handwriting them as they have done since the beginning.

“We’re taking on a legacy restaurant and people get scared that we’re going to change everything. But one of the reasons we bought this place is it’s good. We’re not going to change anything,” said Murphy, who trained as a chef with the Hilton Hotel culinary program when he was a teen and has spent years as a restaurant consultant.

Landeen has been flirting with retiring for several years. During the pandemic, he said, he cut back his role in the restaurant and spent some time traveling and taking care of his wife, Colette. At one time, he considered selling the restaurant to his staff, although that plan never materialized.

Murphy said he and his wife, a native of Bisbee and former KVOA TV anchor who went by her maiden name Sally Shamrell, had wanted to get back into Tucson’s restaurant business when they moved back to town from Los Angeles at the beginning of the pandemic. The couple, who owned the short-lived Aussie Cantina at 1118 E. Sixth St. near the University of Arizona in 2013-14, set their sights on a legacy restaurant, a place that was well-established with deep culinary and community roots. When they heard last October that Landeen was interested in selling, Murphy said he felt like he had stumbled onto the perfect situation.

“I looked at this and I thought this is exactly what I’m looking for,” said Murphy.

The restaurant is open from 3 to 9 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays and until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; it’s closed on Sundays.

“I was born there but my family left when I was around 3,” Eden recalled from her home in Los Angeles. “I remember our house was right next door to an empty lot with a horse on it, but that’s about all. Then we moved to El Paso, Texas, to live with my grandma and grandpa, and my mother remarried before we relocated to California. I love San Francisco, but I’ve always felt Tucson was my home and have been back over the years. Even as a little girl growing up, I knew that’s where I was from.”

Eden’s mother was born in El Paso and later moved to Tucson, but then the Depression hit.

“My grandfather was a contractor — a builder,” she said. “He moved to Tucson because he was building a high school, which I think is still there. But after the Depression, it was probably for financial reasons that we left for Texas.”

Growing up in San Francisco, young Barbara had dreams of becoming a singer, spending two years at the local Conservatory of Music and taking singing engagements with bands around the Bay Area. But after moving to LA in the early 1950s, her stunning beauty, charm, and talent inevitably led to Hollywood.

Best known for her role as the magical genie in the popular NBC 60s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie,” Eden has delighted fans of the series with appearances at TV conventions and Hollywood autograph shows for decades. On March 31, she will present “On the Magic Carpet” in Newton, North Carolina, followed by an appearance in Clearwater, Florida, on April 2 (see barbaraeden.com for details).

“I’ll be interviewed on stage, show clips of my film and TV career, and take lots of audience questions,” Eden explained. And while some actors who became closely associated with one standout role occasionally distanced themselves from that character, Eden never did.

“Why would I want to step away from it?” she asked. “I’m lucky to have very polite fans and have loved meeting them over the years in so many cities.”

Even before she soared to fame with “Jeannie” during the second half of the 60s, Eden was traveling the country a decade earlier promoting her first regular starring role in the late 50s TV series “How to Marry a Millionaire.” Based on the successful 1953 movie of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable, Eden played the ditzy blonde Grable character, Loco, which led to her returning in her mid-20s to Tucson for the first time since childhood.

“I was under contract to 20th Century Fox and we were on tour promoting the show,” she explained. “One of the stops was at a theater in Tucson. In fact, I was there more recently, and the theater manager had a photo of the three of us (Eden, Merry Anders, and Lori Nelson) that was still in his office.”

While always most closely associated with “I Dream of Jeannie,” Eden’s entertainment career has been extensive and broad with over 25 film roles, appearances in numerous TV movies and series, and a vast stage career that includes touring major U.S. cities, including Tucson in the beloved play, “Love Letters,” first performing it with “Jeannie” co-star Larry Hagman.

“It’s beautifully written and has this wonderful arc from childhood to death as you follow the two characters who are life-long friends,” said Eden. “I have done that with Hal Linden and Barry Bostwick as well as Larry. It’s funny, sad and has everything in it and is a joy to perform.”

Eden is also an author, releasing her best-selling autobiography “Jeannie Out of the Bottle“ in 2012. Two years ago, she also published her first children’s book, “Barbara and the Djinn,” which perhaps not surprisingly features a young girl named Barbara and yes, a genie.

“The little girl is the protagonist and magically travels to different places and meets different people learning what is most important in life, which is kindness and understanding,” she explained. “I’ve loved to read ever since I was 3 or 4 when my mother and aunt would read to me. I thought how sad that children today just look at their phones and computers, so I wanted to give them a book to hold that can take them on an adventure using their imagination.”

While she has no plans for more books, don’t be surprised to see Eden appearing on stage again.

“I don’t have any dates, but I’d love to do ‘Love Letters’ again,” she says. “It’s gratifying that people still want to see me perform and hear me talk about my career.”

Last year on this date the high was 85 degrees and the low was 44. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 62 degrees and the low was 36. One hundred years ago the high was 82 degrees and the low was 46.

March 23

Last year on this date the high was 75 degrees and the low was 50. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 50 degrees, the low was 37 and there was one tenth of an inch of rain. One hundred years ago the high was 76 degrees and the low was 31.

March 22

Last year on this date the high was 74 degrees and the low was 43. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 64 degrees, the low was 39 and there was 1 tenth of an inch of rain. One hundred years ago the high was 68 degrees and the low was 28.

March 21

Last year on this date the high was 68 degrees, the low was 47 and there was 3 hundredths of an inch of rain. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 61 degrees, the low was 45 and there was 1 hundredth of an inch of rain. One hundred years ago the high was 72 degrees and the low was 50.

March 20

Today should be partly sunny with a high near 74 degrees and some light wind is expected throughout the day. Tonight should be mostly cloudy with a low around 52 degrees. Yesterday's high was 73 degrees and the low was 42.

Last year on this date the high was 71 degrees and the low was 50. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 72 degrees and the low was 48. One hundred years ago the high was 81 degrees and the low was 53.

The record high for March 20 is 94 degrees, set in 2017. The record low is 29 degrees, set in 1903.

March 19

Today should be partly sunny with a slight breeze and a high near 72 degrees. Tonight should be mostly cloudy with a low around 49 degrees. Yesterday's high was 73 degrees and the low was 42.

Last year on this date the high was 85 degrees and the low was 46. Fifty years ago on this date the high was 74 degrees and the low was 42. One hundred years ago the high was 73 degrees and the low was 32.

The record high for March 19 is 95 degrees, set in 1907. The record low is 22 degrees, set in 1897.

March 18

Johanna Eubank is a digital producer for the Arizona Daily Star and tucson.com. She has been with the Star in various capacities since 1991.

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Vincent Pinto is a Patagonia, Arizona resident with a background in wildlife biology, environmental studies, and ethnobotany.

He and his wife Claudia own a nature sanctuary that specializes in education and eco-adventures, but Pinto also recently completed a documentary project where he did most of the wildlife filming and other work such as writing the script and narrating.

The project is called "Biodiversity in the Heart of the Sky Islands" and it is premiering in Patagonia and Tucson, Arizona.

"Sky Island refers to an isolated mountain that's forested or wooded that's separated from nearby ranges by intervening 'seas of deserts or grasslands,'" Pinto says.

A collection of forty-three such mountain islands have been identified in Sonora, Mexico as well as Arizona and New Mexico to the north.

"Overall, this beautiful film is an ongoing and exciting natural history lesson, touching upon and sometimes delving deeply into the rarely seen worlds of various native flora and fauna," he adds.

Together, these Sky Islands are home to thousands of plants and animals species, including the largest representation of reptiles in North America.

"And we're at 32 degrees latitude, which makes us subtropical, so we have a lot of things going for us. We're also a meeting place where the Rocky Mountains, the Sonoran Desert and other areas come together to lend us different species."

However, Pinto is concerned about the long-term prospect of these special places since most of the land is not officially protected as wilderness, so threats are being created by industrial mining, overgrazing, overpopulation and overuse of water.

"Overuse of this and that, and collectively, that's what death by a thousand cuts is. We are at a great risk of fulfilling the prophecy of, oh, we're just a desert," he says.

Pinto's film is benefiting Patagonia Area Regional Alliance, PARA, which is a non-profit preservation group where he is a board member.

In addition to the showing at the Tin Shed Theater in Patagonia on Friday March 24th, and Tucson on Sunday March 26th at the Loft Theatre, Pinto plans to screen the film in other cities such as Nogales.

He also hopes to make it available on streaming services or for sale for entertainment or educational purposes.

"Our goal is to protect our region’s water and all other natural assets for future generations."

Vincent Pinto