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COMMENT
The walkout As I understand it, many of the kids who walked out during the day of protest here in Arkansas will be facing suspension. This will not just be a few days off; they will receive zeros for any tests or assignments they miss. Unfortunately, standing on the right side of history has put them on the wrong side of their school’s administration. In some cases these failing g rades could hurt those st udents’ cha nces of getting into college. Yeah, well, this might be true if they want to go to a Bible College or some other school where evolution has yet to evolve. However, if they want to go to any of the more enlightened schools in the world — which is, by the way, round — it shouldn’t hurt their chances of getting accepted at all. In fact, if their college choice is in California I recommend they put this act of peaceful civil disobedience at the top of their resume. David Rose Hot Springs
us that way. All we can do is preserve it or deface it. By representing the industries that spend great sums of money to influence you instead of the common good, you are dishonoring your position. The awakening that has come from the election of Donald Trump and those who support him for their own selfish ends is going to change things, even in this third-world state, whose leaders seem to wear their ignorance like a badge of courage. I hope that you step aside gracefully when your turn is over, but it will be over, soon.
M ark and Suzanne E astburn Eureka Springs
Trump’s America The United States ha s a new relig ion ca lled A merica nism. The main g uy is Donald Trump, ably a ssisted by Paul Rya n a nd Mitch McConnell. Members are Republicans, but other faiths can join provided they pass the test on the holy document known as the Constitution. The 10 amendments to
“seeing between the lines: perspective and color”
Arkansas at the bottom Living in rural Carroll County now for over 30 years, my wife and I would like our state government officials to explain the following facts about the state that our family has made home. Out of 50 states and the the District of Columbia, Arkansas is rated: • 51st worst in the number of workers in low-income jobs. • 46th worst in poverty. • 49 t h worst i n st udent loa n defaults. • 48th worst in health of its citizens. • 47th worst in incarceration rate. • 41st worst in education. • 50th worst in hunger. Twenty percent of our state lives in poverty and 25 percent of our children live in poverty. Why? My own observations are that racism is systemic in our government and our economy. Poverty is accepted as the price we pay for living in an unforgiving landscape, but is actually a result of the callousness of government. Some of the world’s biggest companies call Arkansas home and yet they are infamous for keeping wages low and keeping hours of employees just low enough to not qualify for full benefits, and they are adamant about not allowing workers to organize. It is not natural beauty that makes a state great; it came to 4
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
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the Constitution have been reduced to just two: Make America Great and Keep America Great. Fervor for the Second Amendment resides in the hearts of those who practice Americanism. Back in the late 1700s, the framers thought it necessary to make sure groups of men could protect the community, so they wrote, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Those who practice Americanism maintain that, even though we have paid militiamen, we still must be ready for mythical invaders. Being ready requires weapons capable of killing many people with bullets that are lethal when striking any part of the body. Shotguns and rifles are unacceptable because they do not always kill with one shot. Failing to understand the Second Amendment eliminates any chance of joining Americanism. Another part of the test makes sure the taker understands that women have no control of their uteri and can be groped at appropriate times. The main guy often demonstrates the proper use of women. The basic tenet of Americanism is to restrict women’s right to things like health care and protection from discrimination, lest they become too powerful. Americanism wants to build a wall along the Southern border to protect us from brown people. Americanism desires that only educated white people enter the countr y. Practitioners of Americanism work hard to make sure that the top 1/10th of 1 percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Americanism proudly waves the flag, but with the third stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner in mind. That stanza reads: And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of f light or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. The bitterness expressed by Key in the third stanza is still expressed by those who practice Americanism
except when it creates a political disadvantage. R ichard Emmel Little Rock
From the web In response to an Arkansas Blog post about Governor Hutchinson’s moves to the far right spurred by his primary opponent, including boasts of cutting government and lying about Planned Parenthood: I first met Asa about 30 years ago. Thought he was a weak stick then and have thought he’s a weak stick ever since, although I will confess to having g iven him a couple of thumbs-up since he’s been governor. But as of March 15, 2018, he’s still a weak stick. And, Jan Morgan is bringing out that weak stick for many to see. By happen st a nce, I met a nd briefly chatted it up with the woman in Hot Springs the other day. So I can understand why Hutchinson is scared, almost-to-death, of her. She’s energized, friendly, easy on the eyes, very articulate, and not, in the least, shy about approaching people and telling them what she believes. If Morgan can find enough money to get on TV early and stay on, Asa has every reason to fear her. The hard right and the gunslingers (among others) will love her. No way in the world the likes of Jan Morgan can beat an incumbent governor? Why, sure. Get Asa to tell you about that. And while you have his attention, get him to tell you why a stable genius like Donald John Trump couldn’t win the Republican primary and then get himself elected president. Durango This is a great big steaming pile of a dog and pony show. The last cut brought a hundred newly created state positions of over 100K a year to all of his cronies who barely have a degree. You have highly educated people who have spent their entire lives earning advanced degrees so that for a short eight- to 10-year span, have the chance to lead their chosen field. Instead those people are getting the shaft and their opportunity has been stolen by anyone who has donated to the campaign. I’m sure that [Gov. Mike] Beebe was guilty of more than just placing Shane Broadway over ADHE, but I
sure can’t think of them now. Asa has placed cronies all over the state government that all of them promised to downsize and make more efficient. This ploy will dissolve as soon as the primary is over and the big money in Arkansas will prove they aren’t serious about making government better. This is unfuckingbelievable and disgusting. Clem Hooten In response to the Arkansas Blog post on the National Park Service grant to improve the historic Dreamland
STAY IN A N D RELAX, OR GO OUT A N D H AV E FUN .
Ballroom:
America is still around 50 years from now. Deathbyinches
I don’t even know this place, but I’m delighted when historic buildings get a new lease on life. The children of In response to an Arkansas Blog post, tomorrow will not be very impressed “Democratic Party weighs in on Wilkins’ by the buildings built today. Without bribery allegation. Poorly.”: ver y old buildings a round, your town’s got no WOW to it. Max, I am sure that Michael Gray It would already be a big treat to realizes that the Wilkins family go stand where Ella Fitzgerald, Louis can still turn out the black vote in Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, B.B. Jefferson County, and that is why he King and Ray Charles once appeared. was more than circumspect in his Fifty years from now the experience description of the wrongdoing. What will be out of this world ... assuming we have is the reverse of the plantation economy, where black sharecroppers used to tell poll workers which plantation they worked on, and then ask them how they were supposed to vote. Now, the prominent black dynasties in politics tell them how to vote, and the Wilkins dynasty is real. This is not illegal, but the result is still the same. It’s not illegal because poll workers are not involved. Bloc voting is nothing new unless people are being bribed. That is the key. Was Hank Wilkins bribed not only for his vote in the legislature, but also because he could deliver black votes for politicians? I think this is behind his constant battle with the black power structure in Jefferson County. plainjim
Uh, plainjim, the turning-outthe-vote phenomenon isn’t limited to blacks and black churches. I had a white voter ask me if she needed to vote on “all this other stuff” some years ago after she followed the suggestion (?) her preacher made on an issue. I don’t have any idea how ma ny ot hers showed up to follow that preacher’s dictates, but the situation does exist. And the turnout for that election was much higher than any I’d seen before. I still shake my head when I think about it. Bottom line, I guess, is that there are people who are willing to let others tell them how to vote. Why? Who knows? Ignorance, I suppose. Doigotta
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I think the Democratic Party needs a chairman who actually supports democratic causes. Voting present on important issues like the tax deduction for private school tuition doesn’t cut it. I don’t think anyone can do a good job serving simultaneously in the legislature and as state party chairman. Mr. Gray needs to choose one and let the other go. Eutychus arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
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WEEK THAT WAS
Tweet of the week “I believe that corporal punishment has no place in schools, even if it wasn’t painful to me. The idea that violence should be used against someone who was protesting violence as a means to discipline them is appalling. I hope that this is changed, in Greenbrier, and across the country.” — Wylie A. Greer, class of 2018, Greenbrier High School, after the administration told students who walked out to protest gun violence they had to choose between suspension or paddling. Greer chose paddling.
Legislative scandal deepens A federal prosecutor in Missouri dropped a political bombshell Friday during a bail hearing for Rusty Cranford, a former lobbyist in Arkansas and one-time employee of Preferred Family Healthcare, which makes millions in Medicaid reimbursements for mental health and other services provided by affiliates statewide. The prosecutor said Jefferson County Judge Henry Wilkins IV had told FBI agents he’d received $100,000 in bribes from Cranford while he was a state legislator and that Cranford had tried to get Wilkins and other recipients of money to lie about it. The prosecutor also has accused Cranford, but not charged him, with talking about putting a hit on a co-conspirator in an embezzlement scheme.
Legislature goes home The General Assembly completed its budget session within the 30 days allotted by the state Constitution and went home after adopting a budget for the year beginning July 1 of $5.6 billion, $173 million more than this year. The legislature generally rubberstamped a budget from Governor Hutchinson that set aside more than $60 million that he said he hopes can go to a future income tax cut and put about $15 million of general revenue into the state Department of Transportation. The growing budget belied an announcement by the governor two days later that he was committed to a more efficient state government. He announced a task force to study reducing the number of state departments from more than 40 to 20.
Legislature returns 6
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
The day after the regular session adjourned, the legislature returned for a three-day session on a grab bag of unrelated items, spurred primarily by a bill to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, who set reimbursement rates for pharmacists under the Medicaid-funded private insurance program. Retail druggists say the reimbursements have been so puny they’ve been losing money. The result is a first-ever state attempt at regulating the benefits managers, who contend the state has exceeded the limits of federal law. The legislature also passed a bill making it harder to protest dirty animal feeding operations, though sponsors insisted it wasn’t a back-door attempt to nullify the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s rejection of a new permit for the C & H Hog farm in the scenic Buffalo River watershed. The biggest news in one respect was a historic piece of legislation to give direct state taxpayer subsidies to K-12 private schools. Backers hotly objected to calling it a voucher bill, but the effect was the same. Those who put money in a savings account for K-12 education get a $10,000 per year tax deduction per couple for private
school payments, a direct transfer of state money. Backers of the bill are already talking about even broader use of tax money by private school parents. The bill will cost the state an estimated $5 million a year in lost revenue.
Students stand tall; also bend over Thousands of students in Arkansas took part in the National Walkout Day to demonstrate against gun violence. The Little Rock School District encouraged participation as a civic exercise. The majority of the Bentonville School Board grumped about the “political” exercise and promised students would be punished with detention if they walked out. Six hundred hit the streets anyway and face a mass detention after spring break. In Greenbrier, three students made headlines worldwide by walking out. The school district policy there says unauthorized absences are punishable by detention or corporal punishment, still favored in that Faulkner County district.
War Memorial in need A $160,000 study for the state Parks and Tourism Department concluded that War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock needs $17 million worth of maintenance and improvements to remain in “useful condition.” This figure does not include $10 million necessary to bring the stadium up to standards expected by the Southeastern Conference for televising its games. The University of Arkansas has promised one last game at War Memorial in the fall. The higher revenue possible on campus in Fayetteville clouds the prospects. The state owns the stadium, but the city owns the property and city officials reacted negatively to a consultant’s mention of an old idea to convert the adjacent War Memorial Golf Course into a private development with apartments, restaurants and other commercial uses. City Director Kathy Webb spoke for many in a Twitter post: “War Memorial can be our @ CityLittleRock Central Park. Not housing & private development. Let’s collaborate w/ state, zoo, soccer advocates, trail & fitness proponents and make it so. More green space not less.”
OPINION
Are you being served?
T
hese aren’t good times for confidence in public servants. A U.S. prosecutor in Missouri last week said that former legislator and current Jefferson County Judge Hank Wilkins had told the FBI he took $100,000 in bribes from a former powerhouse lobbyist, Rusty Cranford, who also doubled as a top executive of Preferred Family Healthcare, a Springdale-based nonprofit paid millions every year for mental health and other community-based services financed by Medicaid. Cranford also was accused of talking about hiring a hit man to kill another political consultant who’s an accused accomplice. Former Democratic state Rep. Eddie Cooper has pleaded guilty to being a player in the embezzlement as an employee of Preferred Healthcare. Add the names to those of former Republican Rep. Micah Neal and former Republican Sen. Jon Woods. Neal has pleaded guilty and Woods awaits trial on charges that they got kickbacks from state
General Improvement Fund money sent to a tiny Bible college in Springdale. That same indictment talked of efforts by Cran- MAX BRANTLEY ford to parcel off maxbrantley@arktimes.com some GIF money for one of his enterprises with legislative help. The Arkansas Times reported on other associations of lobbyist Cranford. Preferred Family Healthcare hired Sen. Linda Chesterfield as a “diversity consultant” in 2016. The previous year, she’d helped direct GIF money to one of Cranford’s affiliated agencies for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and gifts for the needy. State Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Berryville) asserted on Facebook that 2011 legislation that set a $100 annual fee on bail bondsmen went to a professional association that paid Cranford to be a lobbyist. He said a bipartisan group of legislators, including Wilkins, and Ballinger’s
Deja vu with Trump
F
or a couple of million Arkansawyers, this fabulous circus of Russians, Trump, Mueller and Stormy is approaching deja vu. The president, who had already lawyered up like no president and few potential criminal defendants in history, added a former independent counsel to his ever-changing legal team this week, prefiguring the great constitutional crisis that everyone knows is coming. Real Arkansawyers have been there, or close enough. They were in the eye of one of the half-dozen constitutional crises in American history when the country had to decide whether a president could or should be removed from office for having a sexual dalliance with a White House employee and then prevaricating about it publicly and under oath. The salacious stuff came after a fiveyear investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in a money-losing real-estate investment in 1978 on the White River that was pursued by two successive Republican independent counsels. More than a dozen Arkansawyers were charged with some violation of the law in the long investigation, although most had nothing to do with the Clintons. After the Clintons left the White House, the final Whitewater counsel acknowledged that in the inves-
tigation’s eight years they had found no illegalities by the Clintons in the land deal or any of the dozen or so other matters except the president’s prevarications about sex, which were the basis of impeachment articles for perjury and obstruction of justice. All of this tiresome history is ERNEST only prologue for DUMAS the Trump ordeal, which follows generally the same matrix as Whitewater: an investigation with political overtones into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election run by an independent counsel appointed by the Justice Department that veered into ancillary matters — fraudulent deeds by the president’s men who associated with the Russians and now, perhaps, by the president himself. And then, maybe, sex. Clinton’s and Trump’s ordeal differ so far in two ways: the length of the inquiries and the presidents’ handling of them. Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation approaches a year. The investigations by Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr into the old land deal and the suicide of the Clintons’ friend and White House lawyer, Vince Foster, had lasted more than four years when Starr found sex. In 1998,
Republican primary foe, Sen. Bryan King, worked to preserve the special assessment until it was repealed in 2017. In unrelated thievery, former Sen. Jake Files has pleaded guilty to taking a kickback from GIF money supposedly meant to help build a Fort Smith recreation facility. Rumors of more indictments continue to circulate, but no criminal charges are necessary to know the pork barr General Improvement Fund pork barreling program was abused. Tax money was spent to pay for turkey dinners, high school athletic warmups, fireworks, vacant houses and other junk in the name of “economic development.” This follows other recent scandals. The nursing home lobby bought friendly judges with campaign contributions, including at least one judge, now in prison, who took the contribution to mean he should reduce a nursing home negligence jury verdict by $4.2 million. The bagman for his money and the bankroller have not been charged. That bagman? Former Republican Sen. Gilbert Baker. He once drew a handsome retainer from a conservative political lobby while serv-
ing in the Senate. After he left, Republican Sen. Michael Lamoureux picked up the lobby’s paychecks. Lamoureux also feathered his nest by drawing pay from a telephone company while passing legislation that put money in the company’s pocket. And who can forget Republican Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, working for mattress and gambling machine sellers while looking after their interests in the legislature? Republican Rep. Andy Davis, a contender for House speaker, works for himself in the chamber, regularly handling legislation that affects his waste treatment plant business. It is it any wonder the “real” work is so often dispiriting? The legislature last week finished completion of a budget that shorted public schools millions of what the Supreme Court’s sufficiency standard demands while preserving money for an income tax cut and highway construction and handing out a taxpayer subsidy to parents of private school students. Hog and chicken manure producers got protection. ATV riders were given free rein to endanger themselves and others on public highways. Space prevents further recitations.
Starr and his men, including the FBI, were lying doggo, waiting for something to do, when Linda Tripp exposed her friend Monica Lewinsky, who boasted about having oral sex with the president. Starr beseeched Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, to let him expand his probe to White House sex and she agreed. Sex with an employee was not illegal, but Clinton might be induced to commit a crime by lying about it to FBI agents, a grand jury or a court and thus set himself up for a perjury charge or obstruction of justice. He bit. That is the mortal danger that Trump’s lawyers are trying to forestall. Knowing Trump’s propensity to lie about even the most trivial matters, they are trying to strike a deal with Mueller to sharply limit the matters they will ask Trump about when he is under oath — obviously, nothing about Trump finances or taxes or, to be perfectly safe, sex. Trump already has far exceeded the threshold for obstruction of justice established in the Clinton impeachment. His firing of the FBI director and attacks on Mueller, his staff, his own Justice Department appointees, his appointed FBI director and the FBI itself, all to halt or limit the Russian investigation, go well beyond Clinton’s quibbling about sex. Trump last week said the investigation was invalid because Democrats were involved. Everyone who has run or overseen the investigation — Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Mueller, James Comey, the recently fired Andrew McCabe and Trump’s FBI director Christopher Wray — are Republicans. The two men who ran the Whitewater investigation were Republicans as were their staffs (one of Starr’s assistants claimed to have voted for Democrats) as were five of the six other independent counsels Reno appointed to run investigations of administration controversies. Clinton complained about the breadth and length of the investigations but not much about their partisan taint. What if Mueller is another Starr and wades into the Stormy Daniels affair? Would he need to seek Rosenstein’s permission, and would it be given? As Deep Throat said, follow the money. The porn actress, who claims to have had sex with Trump often in 2006 and 2007, has been paid $130,000 by the Trump lawyer who handles his amorous affairs not to talk about the trysts that Trump says didn’t happen. To launder the bribe, Trump’s lawyer set up a Delaware company and created false names for Trump and Daniels and now threatens her with $20 million of damage claims if she talks. Fraud, perjury, obstruction of justice? Mueller may be too loyal a Republican to follow Starr’s precedent or Rosenstein and Sessions to let him. But someone else?
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arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
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MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
illary Clinton has been the target of gratuitously negative coverage from the national political press for as long as she’s been in public life. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, rumors of her impending criminal indictment were a regular feature of “Whitewater” coverage almost until that media-created pseudo-scandal fizzled out altogether. Two decades later, the decisive moment of Hillary’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign came on Oct. 29, 2016. Kevin Drum has helpfully reproduced The New York Times coverage of FBI Director James Comey’s spectacular blunder on his blog. The entire front page above the fold was devoted to accusatory headlines, along with a stern editorial on A18. “NEW EMAILS JOLT CLINTON CAMPAIGN IN RACE’S LAST DAYS,” read The Times’s lead story. Another article pondered the consequences of the FBI director’s inserting himself into the campaign. “With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation ‘Changes Everything,’” read a third. As, indeed it did. James Comey had completely flubbed the dub. The implied cover-up was imaginary. No new emails existed; only copies of old ones. No matter, Hillary’s polling numbers took a steep dive from which they never recovered. “Lock her up!” enraptured Trump supporters chanted. Subsequent analysis showed that the Clinton emails saga — much ado about very little, in the end — received more coverage in the national political press than all of Donald Trump’s Russian intrigues, sexual scandals, bankruptcies, fraud lawsuits and his veritable avalanche of falsehoods combined. And what was it about? A handful of messages discussing “Top Secret” intelligence that had already been published in, yes, The New York Times. But lock her up? It’s never going to happen. Not as long as the United States remains a nation of laws, admittedly an iffy proposition of late. There will be Trumps wearing orange jumpsuits or living in luxury Moscow condominiums before that day. They’ve been 25 years investigating the woman with nothing to show for it. That said, I’ve about concluded that it would nevertheless be a good thing for the Democratic Party if Hillary took a vow of silence regarding the 2016 election. She can’t seem to open her mouth about it without inserting
her foot. The Washington Post recently reported remarks she’d made to an audience in Mumbai, India. “ ‘I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,’ said Clinton. ‘And his whole campaign — ‘Make America Great Again’ — was looking backward. You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you GENE don’t like women, LYONS you know, getting jobs, you don’t want, you know, to see that IndianAmerican succeeding more than you are ...’ “At another point in the talk, Clinton, whose campaign slogan was ‘Stronger Together,’ said that married white women voted for Trump because of ‘ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.’ ” I posted my kneejerk response on Facebook: “For the love of God, just shut up.” Needless to say, this was not a popular view among some Clinton supporters. “How sexist of you to tell her to shut up,” one friend opined. “Maybe you should do it.’’ My age and race were mentioned unfavorably. But sexist? Nah. You come up to bat, you’d better be wearing a helmet. To many Democrats, it was another “basket of deplorables” — a tone-deaf blunder. Especially to Democrats running for election in “red” states. “Those are kind of fighting words for me, because I’m partial to Missouri voters” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told The Washington Post. And I don’t think that’s the way you should talk about any voter.” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown made similar noises. Indeed, while I yield to no man in my contempt for Trump, it’s simply foolish to say that the cool people in the best states were on your side, while backwoods bigots and spineless women mainly supported your opponent. Sure, many people voted their fear and resentment. But you’ll never win their support by shaming them. The average high school basketball coach knows better than to fire up the opposing team by insulting them. Next time, she should leave the insults to us professionals.
Hitting students
A
friend once joked that I love Arkansas so much that if they ever cut me open, they’ll find an Arkansas-shaped heart beating inside my chest. It’s true. With the exception of a year living in New Orleans, I’ve happily spent my entire life here. From Bono to Batesville. From Little Rock to Fayetteville. Arkansas may just be my one true love. But just as the state was beginning to show off her spring beauty last week, I was reminded of what a dark and imperfect place Arkansas can be. Jerusalem Greer, the mother of Greenbrier High School student, tweeted that her son and two other students received paddlings after choosing to participate in the nationwide, 17-minute long school walkout for victims of the Parkland, Fla., shooting. The school acknowledged that it offered a choice between “corporal punishment” and in-school suspension to the students. The students chose the former. The national media quickly ran with the story and Arkansas was once again viewed as a backward, ignorant place. Corporal punishment. That’s the term the law and the schools use to refer to paddlings, swats, licks and spankings. From now on, I refuse to use that term. Let’s be real. The truth is that school administrators and teachers are allowed to hit students in Arkansas as long as they act in substantial compliance with the school’s policy. No formal hearing is required. No due process. Simply put, grown men and women are hitting schoolchildren with wooden boards and the law allows it. Fortunately, some districts, such as Fayetteville and Little Rock, have banned the practice of spanking students, but across the state, schools like Greenbrier High still allow state employees to escort a student into the hall or office and, with a witness watching, strike a student on the buttocks. This is the same teacher and administrator that the legislature declares a mandated reporter if they know of a child who is being abused, and that includes suffering from a non-accidental physical injury from their parent or guardian. Anyone else see the problem? Now, I know the law says the spankings are OK when they are reasonable and moderate. But I remember and I imagine most of us who went to public school remember the bruises and whelps on our classmates after they were spanked by a particular coach or
teacher. I remember one teacher’s paddle had round holes cut throughout it. Rumor was she designed it that way so she could swing it faster and harder. Does that sound reasonable or moderate? Honestly, is there anything reasonable or moderate about adults being allowed to hit a child for participating in a peaceful demonstration at school? Public school teachers have one of the hardest jobs around. They are underpaid and overworked. They are expected to be teachers, parAUTUMN ents and guidance TOLBERT counselors. They often fund much of the learning in their classrooms, all the while being pressured to produce higher and higher test scores. And now it looks like we may make them take on the extra duty of being trained to respond to active shooters in schools. Despite my strong support for teachers, they should not be hitting children, with all we know about the links between behavior and punishment and violence. Before I had my daughters, I read somewhere that if I used physical force to discipline my child, I was taking the easy way out. Teaching children how to behave is hard and requires consistency and resolve. But we owe it to our kids to not just line them up against the wall and hit them. I want my daughters to do the right thing not out of fear of physical abuse or shame of being publicly humiliated. State Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock), arguably our best and most forward-thinking Arkansas legislator, sponsored a bill in 2017 to end the brutal practice of spankings in our schools. It did not even make it out of committee. We should all be ashamed. And we should all call our legislators and ask them to co-sponsor a bill in the 2019 General Assembly ending school spankings. And, until then, we should call our school boards until they change the policy at a local level. I do love Arkansas. I never want to live anywhere else. But as long as we keep allowing our school administrators and teachers to hit our children and until these forward-thinking young people who marched last week grow up and vote out our backward-thinking elected officials, my heart, Arkansasshaped or not, will continue to break a little bit every single day.
Agent Orange w/ The Atom Age
@ Four Quarter Bar
Sunday, April 01, 2018 • 8:00PM The Original Southern California Punk/Surf Power Trio, Agent Orange, is one of only a handful of bands who have been continually active since the earliest days of the West Coast Punk Scene.
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arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
9
PEARLS ABOUT SWINE
ARKANSAS TIMES
SHOP LOCAL
10
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
So-so
T
here was something about that NCAA Tournament draw that just had to make you nervous,
right? It wasn’t simply that Arkansas felt unjustly seeded with that No. 7 tag, because at least that was an arguably proper slotting for a team that wasted its one fleeting entry into the Top 25 in January and got swept by a mediocre LSU team after that. In fact, though Arkansas entered the field with a decent enough 23-11 record, eight of those losses at least came at the hands of fellow tourney-going teams. Even the Razorbacks’ loss to Mississippi State didn’t seem so terrible, considering that the Bulldogs are a strong NIT quarterfinalist now, with 24 wins to boot. Those dual chokings against a very average LSU squad, however, did some serious damage, as did the fact that of those 11 losses, the Hogs were beaten by double digits in nine of them, including a listless showing against Tennessee in the SEC Tournament semifinals. Then you had that feisty bunch from Butler, which 15 years ago was just a little backwater Indiana bunch that played its home games in a hangar-style gymnasium far more famous for its role in a Hollywood masterwork, “Hoosiers,” than anything else. They weren’t your typical No. 10 seed, but rather, a tourney regular that went to back-to-back championship games a few years before and resiliently survived an upwardly mobile coach’s departure to acquit itself well most of this season. The highlight of the Bulldogs’ up-and-down campaign was unquestionably the 101-point outburst it authored against then-unbeaten No. 1 Villanova in a January upset. And the geography was, well, just awful. Hoping Nashville or Dallas regionals would be welcoming, fickle Hog fans were told last Sunday that if they wanted to see their team get past the first weekend for the first time since before Clinton’s impeachment, it would have to be in the prestigious confines of Little Caesars Arena in opulent, scenic Detroit. Butler fans eagerly drove on up; Hog fans, it was evident from the broadcast, clearly preferred the big screens and beer specials available in their own neck of the woods (I’m not lashing out here, because that’s the approach I took, too). Everything unfolded as you should’ve expected. Arkansas did what it has done with shocking regularity in the Mike Anderson era, which is to say, it played an utterly lethargic and disinterested
first 10 minutes or so before coming to life. Butler was off and running with a 21-2 start, only to watch Arkansas attempt the same brand of oh-shit-thegame-already-started comeback it put together last spring against eventual national champion North Carolina. The Hogs enjoyed a nice 27-6 surge that didn’t seem to be the result of any one player d o i n g a ny t h i n g remarkably well, although Darious BEAU Hall delivered a big WILCOX dunk and some spark on defense and Daryl Macon accounted for eight points during the run. That single Razorback lead, 29-27, lasted all of 25 seconds. Butler settled back into a rhythm before halftime to retake a 5-point edge at the break, and the second half was an even bigger farce than the first few minutes. The Hogs didn’t get closer than that same 5-point margin the entire second half, and the last gasp was with eight full minutes left. By then, nobody on the team seemed energized enough to hoist the rest of the bunch onto their shoulders and try to make this more than a 24-hour stopover. It ended up 79-62 in Butler’s favor, and for the third time in four seasons, Arkansas was on a plane back home in time for spring break, a once-promising season scuttled by the same silly woes that befell the Hogs generally throughout the year: shoddy rebounding (Butler won on the glass by 20 and had four players produce more individual boards than any one player had for the Hogs) and a grossly inefficient offense. It is really, really hard to digest the so-so effort this team gave in 2017-18. There’s the anomaly of having six scholarship seniors, including two guys who topped the 1,000-point mark in only two years, on a squad in the one-and-done era, along with a once-in-a-decade type of freshman anchoring the youth movement. But that kid, Dan Gafford, looked like one in a 2-for-9 performance against Butler when he was starting to climb the draft projection boards, and the experience provided by those older guys ended up being a thoroughly mixed bag, what with Arlando Cook never finding his place in the lineup and Dustin Thomas fully losing his due to a lack of discipline just before the SEC Tournament. These are unsettling time for Hog fans, but we are, of course, accustomed to that.
THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
Goodbye to all that
T
his will be this Observer’s last LGBTQ friends; the shorter stories Observer column as a full- about army worms on the march in time employee of the mighty Blytheville and zombie Klanners on the Arkansas Times. But never fear, Dear lurch in Smackover; the dining reviews Reader. Through the miracle of and movie reviews and blog posts; the modern anonymity, The Observer’s letters of thanks to folks telling us how beat will go on in this space next week, much they liked something we’ve and the next, our streak unbroken, written and the letters of shamefaced hopefully forever and ever, amen. explanation to those who didn’t; the That’s the beauty of never having to emails and snail mails, the 1 million sign this sucker: The Observer can be Freedom of Information Act requests like James Bond and Tom Joad. We and 10 million reporter notebooks full can live forever. We can be all around of our hand-cramping scrawl. Like we in the dark. We can be everywhere. said: bone tired. You shouldn’t take from our exit While we probably won’t get a gold that there is a calamity looming; that watch, we’re calling it retirement after some Bad Moon is rising, or that this 15 years of faithful service instead tub is about to hit the iceberg that of capitulation or selling out. We’ve people have claimed was looming out done our time in the gravel pile, The of the darkness for us since virtually Observer has told the bedroom ceiling the moment we opened the doors way way down in the night, and can now back in the hippified and free-wheeling hand over the news pen to younger, days of 1974. The newspaper business more go-getting hands without shame. is in the crapper, but the important Maybe someday, we’ll even believe it. work will go on around here in The Mostly, though, we find that we’re Observer’s absence. Long may it be so. just thankful for the years we’ve spent This Observer is just tired, to tell you here. In those years, we have had the the truth. In preparation for blowing unique privilege of being part of this this popsicle stand, we recently spent city we love and this state we love, a Saturday cutting and pasting all our in a way that has made us feel fully contributions to The Observer into one plugged in to the heart of what it is that electronic file, so they could be printed makes Arkansas uniquely beautiful out and stashed under the bed in a and special and — at times — terrible fireproof box, thus dodging through among all the places in the world. We’d physical, dead-tree permanence had the joy of feeling truly present the heretofore unforeseen, wholly and accounted for, which is a skill a avoidable Trumpocalypse that’s sure lot of people never master until the to take down the internet soon and moment they wake up one day on their send us all back to the rotary phone death bed. It has been the pleasure of days if we’re lucky, tin cans and string this Arkansas boy’s life to bring home if not. Ever helpful, our computer says the bacon and fry it up in a pan for that since Sept. 16, 2004 (the earliest you, Dearest Reader. We hope there Observer by this writer in our online have been times we have accomplished archives, even though Yours Truly had the goal that gets every journalist been on the job two years by then), worth his or her salt out of bed in the we’ve contributed 235,436 words to morning: the dream of moving the The Observer column. That’s within needle one skinny degree in a positive spitting distance of eclipsing the word direction. count for “Ulysses.” That’s just our So, goodbye for now, friends. contributions to The Observer, mind Thanks for the memories. We hope you, not including all the cover stories you are still reading. We hope you keep about heinous murders and the arc reading. It’s important. And you are of the moral universe bending, slow important to your Old Pal. See you as Christmas, toward justice for our next week.
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11
BOOKS FROM THE ARKANSAS TIMES DOCUMENTING HATE
HAVE YOU BEEN THE VICTIM OF A HATE CRIME? The Arkansas Times has joined the nonprofit news organization ProPublica’s “Documenting Hate” project, a collaboration with newsrooms across the country to track hate incidents that might otherwise go unreported. The project aims to create a comprehensive database of where hate crimes are happening and what groups are being targeted. If you have an incident to report, submit it at arktimes. com/dochate. Information provided will not be shared with law enforcement or to anyone outside the group working on the project.
2nd Annual ALS Benefit Speakeasy Party! @ Four Quarter Bar
Thursday, March 29, 2018 • 7:00PM
We will be throwing our 2nd annual SPEAKEASY party to benefit ALS of AR Operation Speak Easier and BIKE & HIKE for ALS. Live jazz music with the Matt Treadway Trio, prohibition style cocktails, and a costume contest at 9pm. SpecialVIP tickets include upstairs buffet, one cocktail, and a séance with the ghost master - Paul Prater.
THE UNIQUE NEIGHBORHOODS OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS Full of interesting voices and colorful portraits of 17 Little Rock and North Little Rock neighborhoods, this book gives an intimate, block-by-block, native’s view of the place more than 250,000 Arkansans call home. Created from interviews with residents and largely written by writers who actually live in the neighborhoods they’re writing about, the book features over 90 full color photos by Little Rock photographer Brian Chilson.
Also Available: A HISTORY OF ARKANSAS A compilation of stories published in the Arkansas Times during our first twenty years. Each story examines a fragment of Arkansas’s unique history – giving a fresh insight into what makes us Arkansans. Well written and illustrated. This book will entertain and enlighten time and time again.
ALMANAC OF ARKANSAS HISTORY This unique book offers an offbeat view of the Natural State’s history that you haven’t seen before – with hundreds of colorful characters, pretty places, and distinctive novelties unique to Arkansas. Be informed, be entertained, amaze your friends with your new store of knowledge about the 25th state, the Wonder State, the Bear State, the Land of Opportunity.
Payment: CHECK OR CREDIT CARD Order by Mail: ARKANSAS TIMES BOOKS 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, STE. 200, LITTLE ROCK, AR, 72201 Phone: 501-375-2985 Fax: 501-375-3623 Email: ANITRA@ARKTIMES.COM Send _____ book(s) of The Unique Neighborhoods of Central Arkansas @ $19.95 Send _____ book(s) of A History Of Arkansas @ $10.95 Send _____ book(s) of Almanac Of Arkansas History @ $18.95 Shipping and handling $3 per book
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CANNABIZ
Votes challenged
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ulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen said last week he would likely issue an opinion Wednesday, after the Arkansas Times has gone to press, on whether to grant a preliminary injunction that would delay the awarding of licenses to cultivate medical marijuana. Griffen held a hearing Friday, March 16, on a complaint filed by Naturalis Health LLC alleging conflicts of interest on the part of commissioners and seeking the injunction. Naturalis was one of 95 applicants competing for just five potentially lucrative cultivation slots awarded in February. Griffen issued a temporary restraining order March 14 in response to Naturalis’ complaint, halting the commission’s plans to formally issue licenses that afternoon. At the March 16 hearing, Deputy Attorney General Monty Baugh, representing the commission, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration and the DFA’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Division, which serves as staff for the commissioners, noted that Naturalis scored 38th out of the many applicants, meaning that even if all five of the winners were somehow disqualified, Baugh said, Naturalis would still “have 37 people in front of them.” But Patrick Murphy, a partial owner in the company and in-house counsel for Naturalis, said he believed his company would score in the top five if independent experts graded the applications. The Naturalis complaint details a variety of alleged problems with how the five-member commission ranked applicants. It alleges undisclosed conflicts of interest between commissioners and two of the winning applicants. Commissioner Travis Story, an attorney, has done legal work for the Trulove family of Berryville, which owns winning applicant Osage Creek Cultivation LLC. Osage received Story’s second-highest score. Though ownership was redacted from applications, Story had to know he was reading Osage Creek’s application because of mention of “various Trulove related entities,” Murphy said. “If you were Story, it would be impossible to get it out of your mind when you see an entity bearing the name of your client, in the same county.” On cross-examination, Baugh asked Murphy whether throwing out the Osage Creek application would provide any relief to Naturalis, considering its low ranking. “Our relief is to throw out the entire process and give everybody a fair
shake. None of these numbers mean anything,” Murphy replied. Another commissioner, Dr. Carlos Roman, gave his highest score — far higher than any others he awarded — to Natural State Medicinals Cultivation. A partial owner of that company is Dr. Scott Michael Schlesinger. Naturalis’ complaint states the two men have an “extremely close personal and professional relationship,” with Roman regularly referring patients to Schlesinger’s practice. Baugh pointed out that their professional relationship would appear to work to the benefit of Schlesinger, rather than Roman. “I think it’s mutually beneficial,” Murphy said. The complaint also lists other alleged problems. Among them: • Commissioner Dr. Ronda HenryTillman used check marks instead of numbers on a part of a score sheet. She later added numbers. • A search of public records by the plaintiffs found a connection between several individuals associated with the top-scoring applicant, Natural State Medicinals, and “Arkansas corporations with revoked charters, as a result of past due franchise taxes.” • One applicant, Natural State Agronomics, seemingly did not meet the constitutionally mandated requirement to locate the entrance to its facility at least 3,000 feet from a school, daycare or church, which should have disqualified it from consideration. At the beginning of the hearing, the state asked Griffen to dismiss the suit based on a sovereign immunity defense. A recent ruling by the Arkansas Supreme Court broadly curtailed lawsuits against the state by declaring the legislature may not pass laws that waive sovereign immunity. But Griffen noted that medical marijuana was legalized by a nonlegislative process — the passage of an amendment by Arkansas voters in 2016 – and the law “explicitly contains provisions that contemplate that judicial review will occur” if there are issues with the Medical Marijuana Commission. “The Medical Marijuana Commission is a creature of the people, by a constitutional amendment,” Griffen said. “It begs credulity to ask a court to say that the people of Arkansas voted into law ... a provision that allows people to sue and then say the state cannot be sued.” Benji Hardy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network filed this report. arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
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Arkansas Reporter
THE
State case once halted segregation But Arkansas is turning the clock back. BY JOHN A. KIRK
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MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
Gould School District in 1965. In the 1964-65 school year, 10 years after the Brown decision, the district’s schools were still totally segregated. The district covered an area of 80 square miles and had a population of 3,000. Of these, 1,800 residents were black and 1,200 were white. Since Gould was the only town in the predominantly rural county, many of the district’s students attended school there. Gould maintained two segregated combined elementary and high schools just 10 blocks apart from each other. In 1964, 300 white students attended the combined Gould Schools and 580 black students attended the combined allblack Field Schools. In 1965, the Gould School District adopted a “freedom of choice” plan to remain eligible for federal aid after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Following passage of the act, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) threatened to remove federal funding from school districts that did not comply with the Brown decision. However, HEW failed to close the “freedom of choice” loophole. Like other such plans being adopted throughout the South at the time, Gould’s plan permitted students to choose a school on an annual basis. If a student did not choose a school, they were automatically assigned to the school they had previously attended. As was almost always the case under “freedom of choice” plans, in 1965 no white students in Gould chose to attend the black schools with inferior facilities. The Field Schools were repurposed buildings that had housed Japanese Americans in internment camps in the Arkansas Delta during World War II. Twenty-eight black students exercised their freedom of choice to attend the white Gould Schools. But they were refused entry on the grounds that there was not enough room for them. Freedom of choice, it seemed, actually meant no choice at all for black students. Some of the black students denied entry to the Gould Schools filed suit on the
STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE ARKANSAS PROJECT
panish philosopher and writer George Santayana once declared, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” How timely it is then, given the news that the Arkansas Department of Education is allowing more and more interdistrict school transfers, that we in Arkansas remember the approaching 50th anniversary of Raney v. Board of Education. The Raney case, originating in Gould (Lincoln County), was one of three heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in April and May 1968 that halted the segregationist school choice agenda in its tracks. Temporarily, at least. After the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954, a number of Southern states vowed a campaign of massive resistance to its implementation. This led to several confrontations between federal and state authorities, one of the most notable taking place at Central High School in September 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed federal troops to ensure that the Little Rock Nine could safely attend school under a courtapproved desegregation plan. Confrontations such as the one at Central High gave rise to less violent and more covert forms of resistance to school desegregation. In the 1960s, so-called “freedom of choice” plans gained popularity as a way of obstructing the meaningful integration of schools. The question about the legality of such plans came to a head in the Supreme Court’s 1968 term with three interrelated cases that raised similar issues: Green v. County School Board of New Kent County in Virginia; Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of Jackson, Tenn.; and Arthur Lee Raney v. Board of Education of the Gould School District in Arkansas. The Raney case had its origins in a “freedom of choice” plan adopted by the
GOULD’S HIGH SCHOOL FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS: Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee took these shots (front and back) of the high school in 1965.
grounds that they were being required to attend a segregated school, that the district provided inferior facilities for black students, and that the school board was still in effect “operating a racially segregated school system.” While the case was pending in the courts, plans were made to replace the Field Schools with new facilities in the hope that it would encourage black students to withdraw their lawsuit. The black students instead sought to prevent the construction of the new school facilities, arguing that any new school building should only be permitted on an integrated basis. In 1967, the school district made another concession by
allowing 85 black students to attend the Gould Schools. Despite this, over 85 percent of black students in the district attended segregated schools. The District Court of Eastern Arkansas ultimately dismissed the Raney suit on the grounds that the Gould School District had adopted a “freedom of choice” plan voluntarily, that HEW had approved the plan, and that some black students had already enrolled at the formerly white Gould Schools. These factors, the court said, “seem to indicate that this plan is more than a pretense or sham to meet the minimum requirements of the law.” The Appeals Court upheld the District Court’s ruling. The petitioners in the
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case then asked the Appeals Court to require the conversion of Gould Schools to a desegregated high school and Field Schools to a desegregated primary school. The Appeals Court rejected the request. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Raney case on appeal in 1968, along with the Green and Monroe cases. In the Raney case, the court came to three distinct conclusions. Firstly, the “freedom of choice” plan in operation in Gould was “inadequate to convert it to a unitary, non racial system.” Secondly, the plan for converting existing segregated schools into a desegregated high school and elementary school should be heard in the lower courts. Thirdly, the District Court’s initial dismissal of the case was improper, since the court had a duty “to insure (1) that a constitutionally acceptable plan is adopted, and (2) that it is operated in a constitutionally permissible fashion so that the goal of a desegregated, nonracially operated school system is rapidly and finally achieved.” Although the court stopped short of declaring “freedom of choice” plans unconstitutional, such plans quickly lost their popularity as schools faced a court that was increasingly determined not to allow school desegregation plans that merely pretended to desegregate while in fact maintaining the segregated status quo. Today’s school choice laws in Arkansas resemble the older, discredited “freedom of choice” plans by permitting student choice across school district lines in the same way that the “freedom of choice” plans once permitted student choice within school districts. As the “freedom of choice” cases in the 1960s clearly demonstrate, in Arkansas and throughout the South, the school choice agenda has invariably meant defending the choice of white students not to attend schools with black students, while denying the choice of black students to attend schools with white students. Never have the words “freedom” and “choice” been so brazenly misappropriated to mean their exact antithesis. School choice has been, remains, and likely always will be a one-way street to school segregation. John A. Kirk is the Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
THE
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BIG The Kids Are Alright PICTURE
Edition
Play at home! 1) While many school districts across the state encouraged participation in the 17-minute student walkout on March 14 to protest gun violence, other school districts in the state clearly flunked the pop quiz on this teaching moment about peaceful protest. Which of the following were consequences for brave students around the state who joined in the protests? A) Bentonville West High School student Summerlin Hutson was suspended for two days for distributing flyers about the protest. B) The Bentonville School Board voted that any student who left class to protest would be given detention, but several hundred students walked out anyway. C) Greenbrier High paddled three students who walked out, with word of the school administrators’ despicable retaliation against peaceful protestors soon being picked up by news outlets worldwide. D) All of the above. 2) The ACLU of Arkansas has condemned something planned for the junior and senior high schools in Magnolia (Columbia County) as “unproven, costly and intrusive.” What is it? A) The idea that adults bending over pre-teen and teenage girls and boys and spanking them with a wooden paddle to “discipline” them isn’t weird as hell. B) Clear Plexiglas bathroom stalls, to allow school administrators to monitor for “transgenders and such.” C) A staging of “Jason Rapert: The Musical.” D) A $300,000 project to install a “biometric surveillance system” consisting of more than 200 security cameras with infrared monitoring, motion detection and facial recognition technology, which the ACLU says will not only be vulnerable to hacking and abuse, but will monitor students at the school “like prisoners in a detention facility.” 3) Governor Hutchinson recently revealed a plan that he said will lead to a “transformation” of state government. What is it? A) Outsourcing all state government functions to sweatshops in Thailand. B) Thong Thursdays. C) Paddlings for employees who need discipline, harder paddlings for those who enjoy it. D) Cutting the existing number of state departments in half, to about 20. 4) The Arkansas Supreme Court recently made a ruling that likely didn’t sit well with the city of Jacksonville. What was it? A) It ruled that strip club buffets are a public health hazard. B) It declared the paddling of schoolchildren to be a “cruel, unusual, and super, super weird” form of punishment. C) It upheld a lower court ruling that said Jacksonville Police Chief Geoffery Herweg is ineligible to serve in that position because of a 2002 misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident. D) It awarded arch-rival Cabot all the clandestine brothels in the two cities’ recent divorce proceedings. 5) The prime suspect in a string of recent snatch-and-grab robberies of Little Rock area stores — including an incident in which police say a clerk at The Promenade at Chenal store was pepper-sprayed — will likely be easy to catch. Why are police confident they’ll have the suspect in custody soon? A) She stopped for selfies with the Easter Bunny on the way out of McCain Mall. B) Police say that after attempting to steal $470 in clothing from the Tommy Hilfiger store at the Outlets of Little Rock, she dropped her I.D. while fleeing. C) At a recent crime scene, she left behind a flyer for Greenbrier High’s upcoming “Official School Paddler for a Day!” raffle, which has been swamped with inquiries from online pervs. D) The suspect is Ivanka Trump, taking a break from the mass fleecing of the American public to pull a cross-country crime spree.
Answers: D, D, D, C, B
LISTEN UP
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THE ARKANSAS PRISON SCANDAL In the 1960s, Tom Murton attempted to reform Cummins prison farm, but lost his job after unearthing three skeletons on the grounds. BY COLIN WOODWARD
F
ifty years ago, on Jan. 29, 1968, Arkansas prison superintendent Tom Murton, with members of the press on hand, unearthed three skeletons buried at Cummins prison farm, located along the Arkansas River in Lincoln County. Murton, who had heard rumors of men buried near the levee, believed the decayed bones were those of prisoners murdered and dumped on the prison’s 16,000-acre grounds. Murton’s discovery of “Bodiesburg,” as it became known, made international news, embarrassed Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and infuriated conservative politicians. It also led to Murton’s firing and banishment from the field of prison management. His act of “grave robbery,” as some put it, led to an investigation, inspired a major Hollywood movie and became one of the most infamous moments in Arkansas history. But what exactly did Murton find, and how did it affect prison reform? For most of the 20th century, the Arkansas prison system, as one judge wrote in 1970, was a “dark and evil world.” When Rockefeller became governor in January 1967, he placed prison reform at the top of his reform agenda. In his inaugural address, he said Arkansas had the worst penitentiary in the country, and he called for “clearing up deplorable conditions within our prisons, our probation and parole systems.” At the time, Arkansas had only two male prisons. Cummins — the biggest — contained white and black adult inmates. Tucker, which was much smaller, housed only white prisoners, most of whom were under 30 years old. The third unit was the tiny women’s reformatory, located on the grounds at Cummins. Few women were incarcerated there, though some were serving time for offenses such as excessive drinking. Cummins and Tucker were working farms, modeled after the plantations of the Old South. Men toiled for no money, and the prisons were run for profit (some years they made money, others they didn’t). Altogether, there were fewer than 1,500 people in the Arkansas prison system, roughly one-tenth of the present-day number. What the prisons lacked in numbers, however, they made up for in cruelty. Shortly before Rockefeller entered office, Gov. Orval Faubus had begun a State Police investigation that uncovered systematic corruption and brutality at Tucker farm, where inmates and prison officials alike engaged in torture, beatings and bribery. Most notorious among the police findings was the “Tucker Telephone,” an old- fashioned crank phone found in a shoebox in the warden’s home at Tucker. The device was used to torture inmates by attaching a wire to a prisoner’s genitals. A particularly unfortunate inmate got a “long distance call” that sent electricity searing through his body. The experience was agonizing. In 1967, Arkansas was one of only three states — along with Louisi-
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TOM MURTON: He got national attention and upset Governor Rockefeller when he said bodies he dug up on the grounds of Cummins prison were murdered inmates.
UA LITTLE ROCK CENTER FOR ARKANSAS HISTORY AND CULTURE
ana and Mississippi — that still used the trusty system, whereby inmates themselves ran the prisons. Trusties were men you supposedly could trust, and to save money, politicians let inmates decide how the racially segregated barracks were run and how best to manage the crops growing on some of the nation’s best farm land. Prisoners worked as guards, checked in new inmates, issued mail, cooked food, raised livestock and provided medical care. Under the blazing Delta sun, longline riders armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns patrolled the grounds on horseback while rank men worked fields full of cotton, rice, soybeans and cucumbers. Men who didn’t work hard were punished like slaves. Should a rider shoot a man trying to escape, he was given a free pass out of the prison. A long leather strap was another instrument of terror. Because men were housed in barracks, rather than cells, they had little protection at night against roaming thieves and sexual predators. “Freeworld” employees were few in number at Tucker and Cummins. Wardens and superintendents ruled the prisons like plantations, where workers were always mindful of who was boss, while at the same time given surprising latitude. Trusties developed a hierarchy that had trusties at the top; do-pops (pronounced “doh” pops, so-called because they popped doors open for trusties) below them; and rank men at the bottom. Before 1967, few people knew the misery of daily life at Tucker and Cummins. Murton was thrust into the maelstrom, but he was up to the challenge. He was a penologist from California who was working on a doctoral degree in criminology at the University of California Berkeley when Rockefeller hired him. He was the first penologist ever to work at an Arkansas prison. Previously, Murton had worked in Alaska (where he was fired for giving controversial testimony about prisons there) and taught college in Illinois. The governor’s decision to hire him represented a break from the “old boy” system that had dominated Arkansas politics before then. In early 1967, Murton began his work at Tucker. He soon realized he could not take anything for granted at the prison: At one point, he wrote a memo to inmates asking that they not defecate on the floor. Murton’s task seemed impossible, but
over time he made progress. In addition to cleaning up sanitation, he abolished the use of the strap as punishment (banned by law but still used), bettered the men’s diet, cracked down on bribery and combated the problem of sexual assaults. Most important of all, Murton gained the trust of inmates. Murton had a blue-collar approach to reform. Clad in a work shirt and jeans, he believed in dealing with inmates honestly and in a straightforward manner. Murton had no illusions about who was running the prisons: It was the inmates. When confronted with the problem of disarming trusties, for example, he simply asked them to hand over their weapons. They did. Murton encountered the systematic abuses, violence and corruption at Tucker that the State Police had discovered in its 1966 report. But just as important as cleaning up the prisons for Murton was the task of changing people’s minds about what a modern penitentiary should be. Arkansans thought of the prisons as a dumping ground for criminals, nothing more. Men were supposed to do their time and help the prisons pay their way. Murton saw a total absence of rehabilitation efforts, education programs or vocational training. Murton defined reform as “a program that would enable [inmates] to survive with some dignity as human beings while they served their sentences.” Reform, Murton believed, was a constant irritant to the system, and his sarcastic sense of humor, unorthodox methods and sometimes abrasiveness brought him into conflict with administrators and politicians. In one year, Murton made improvements large and small at Tucker. In addition to defanging the trusty system, he let death row inmates paint their dreary cells and even started a prison band. When O.E. Bishop, superintendent of Cummins, retired in December 1967, Murton got his job. But Murton wanted to manage the entire state prison system, and he was under the impression that Rockefeller was going to put him in charge. In January 1968, Murton started work at Cummins, but his tenure at the state’s largest prison proved short-lived. A few weeks after beginning his job, he decided to make a dramatic move in the name of prison reform. An inmate informer named Reuben Johnson told him that there were bodies buried on the grounds at Cummins (within site of the guard
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prison reform. Murton’s fate was in the hands of the Board of Corrections, who had the power to fire prison officials. Murton wanted to stay at Cummins, where he could continue his reform efforts. But he had become a liability, and even his defenders saw that he was his own worst enemy. Few doubted Murton’s brilliance, earnestness and energy. What he lacked was diplomacy. The Board of Corrections fired Murton on March 7, 1968. The next day, Rockefeller held a press conference in which he called Murton a “loner,” adding that “when you work in government you cannot work as a loner.” Rockefeller said he “regretted a great deal when Tom Murton parted ways with Arkansas.” But Murton did not “part ways.” The Board of Corrections not only fired him, it ordered him to leave Cummins immediately. “Noise isn’t everything,” Rockefeller said of Murton at the press conference. “Action is the thing that is important.” It was Murton’s actions, though, that had landed him in trouble. Murton was too willing to act on his own authority, and that made him a political threat that Rockefeller could not tolerate. Murton never worked in prisons again. Rockefeller praised Murton’s replacement, Victor Urban, who had traveled with Murton from California to help with the prisons. In May 1968, the Arkansas Criminal Investigation Division issued a report on the skeletons. Murton, not surprisingly, was critical of it, which he saw as sloppy and lacking professional rigor. Rockefeller called it a “mishmash of information” that he could not act upon. Victor Urban didn’t last long, either. In October 1968, Cummins again entered national headlines when guards shot at scores of inmates who were protesting prison conditions. No men were killed in the shooting, but 24 were wounded. Associate Superintendent Gary Haydis, who had previously worked in California and had ordered the shooting, was charged with civil rights violations by a federal court, though he was later acquitted. In November 1968, Rockefeller appointed Bob Sarver as the first head of the Department of Correction. By then, Rockefeller had won a second term as governor. To win reelection, he had not taken any chances, going so far as to enlist the support of Johnny Cash, who played at a handful of Rockefeller rallies. Sarver had
UA LITTLE ROCK CENTER FOR ARKANSAS HISTORY AND CULTURE
towers). Murton had dug for bodies at Tucker but had had no luck finding anything. But with Johnson’s help, Murton’s diggers exhumed three skeletons. As shocking as the discovery was, Murton thought there might be as many as 200 bodies buried on the grounds. He wanted his men to keep digging. With media on hand as Murton dug, the discovery of skeletons generated instant national headlines. Murton was convinced the skeletons were of murdered men. Others weren’t so sure. Dr. Rodney F. Carlton, the first state medical examiner in Arkansas history, tried to determine who the skeletons were in life and how they died. Carlton discounted much of Reuben Johnson’s information; however, he did not rule out that the remains were those of prisoners. In the meantime, Carlton advised officials to have a pathologist on hand if more bodies were discovered. No more bodies were ever dug up at Cummins. And yet, Murton’s grisly discovery put Arkansas’s prisons in an ugly national, even international, spotlight. London papers The Times and Economist as well as the Bunte of Munich picked up the story. Cummins elicited uncomfortable comparisons to not only Southern plantations, but the concentration camps of World War II. In short, Murton had created for Rockefeller a public relations nightmare. In the face of a media storm, Rockefeller ordered Murton to stop digging. The issue turned into a legal and political battle. Murton said he had had permission from Rockefeller aides to dig up bodies. The Rockefeller administration denied having done so. Murton refused to back down from his claims that he had found the bodies of murdered men. Critics said he had found nothing more than a pauper’s grave that had been there for decades. Any rational person might have reasoned that in the nearly 70 years Cummins had operated under prisoner management, many men had died, whether violently or not. Obviously they had to have been buried somewhere, and it was likely prisoners would not have chosen to bury them far from where the men died. In the wait for a definite answer on the origin of the skeletons, Rockefeller did not want Murton to discover more. It was an election year, and Rockefeller didn’t want to lose control of
BOB SARVER: Murton’s replacement responded “What else is new?” when senators asked him about homosexuality, bribes and corruption in Arkansas prisons.
THE BARRACKS AT CUMMINS: Segregated by race.
dered. Snow, however, never published his findings. The mystery continued. In 1980, the film “Brubaker” was released. The movie starred Robert Redford as an Ohio prison reformer, a role based on Murton, who worked as a historical consultant to the film. Murton made no money from the movie, but it was profitable, garnered positive reviews and earned an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. In Arkansas, the film’s release again brought up the unpleasant 1968 scandal. The states were still struggling to achieve compliance with the Holt v. Sarver decision. In 1982, after a 10-year struggle, the Arkansas penitentiary became compliant with federal standards. Murton kept writing about the prisons and Arkansas, and with typical sarcasm. In 1985, he published the short book “Crime and Punishment in Arkansas: Adventures in Wonderland.” Murton died in 1990 in a small town in central Oklahoma. After his death, the journal “Social Justice” memorialized Murton as a “longstanding penal reformer who was never given enough of a chance to implement his bold ideas.” Since Murton’s death, Arkansas’s prison population has exploded, now numbering around 18,000 inmates. Conditions have improved dramatically since Murton’s time (in 1996, Cummins was certified by the American Correctional Association), but the prison industrial complex has its own problems, about which Murton no doubt would have an opinion were he alive today. So, who exactly were the men that Murton dug up in January 1968, and how exactly did they die? We will never know. What is certain is that were Cummins abandoned tomorrow, it would provide ample study for anthropologists and archeologists. As it stands, “Bodiesburg” will remain one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Arkansas prison system. It’s a story many Arkansans remember and some still don’t like hearing told. UA LITTLE ROCK CENTER FOR ARKANSAS HISTORY AND CULTURE
worked in prisons at West Virginia story, and whatever his accomplish- would be more than a decade before before moving to Arkansas, where he ments in reforming the prison, he the prisons were again deemed confaced the task of not only running the was skilled at using the media to help stitutional. penitentiary, but fighting the public him. In 1970, he appeared on TV’s The Holt v. Sarver decision seemed relations war that Murton had inten- popular “Dick Cavett Show,” where to vindicate Murton. But unable to find sified. he again recounted tales of corrup- a job in the prisons, Murton settled Murton had his revenge on Rock- tion and brutality at the prisons. He into academic jobs. He spent most of efeller and his administration. In 1969, had Cavett convinced that there were the 1970s at the University of Minnehe published “Accomplices to the many more bodies buried at Cummins. sota. In 1971, Murton was interviewed Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal,” Sarver also appeared on the show to by Playboy magazine. In the interview, which he co-wrote with Hollywood answer Murton’s accusations. And he had another opportunity to articuwriter Joe Hyams. The book was a though Sarver defended his and the late his vision of American prisons and detailed and scathing indictment of Rockefeller administration’s record, the need to reduce recidivism. The Rockefeller, state officials and the ene- he did not try to discredit Murton. In next year, he published “Inside Prison, mies of prison reform. Murton showed fact, he said Murton was fired because U.S.A.,” which was “Accomplices to the how he received more cooperation he was “too honest.” Crime” under a different title. from prisoners themselves — includBad news for Arkansas kept comBut what about the Cummins ing a dubious but likeable murderer ing. In February 1970, federal Judge J. skeletons? In April 1972, the Arkancalled “Chainsaw Jack” — than Rockefeller and state officials. Murton’s book argued that reform had to come from the inside out: Prison directors had to work with inmates honestly to better the system. Change could not come from the top down. Murton’s book sold well, though it had few fans among Arkansans. In addition to writing a best seller, Murton testified in 1969 before the U.S. Senate committee on juvenile delinquency. Arkansas at the time had no age limit for inmates — thus, boys as young as 14 could be thrown in with adult, hardened criminals. Before the Senate, Murton drew similarities between the modern-day prisons in Arkansas and the slave plantations. “While slavery was officially TANTAMOUNT TO SLAVERY: Arkansas prisoners working in the fields, with trusties as guards. abolished in the South over a century ago,” Murton said, “landholders quickly looked to the prisons for a cheap source of labor.” Smith Henley ruled in the second of sas Gazette reported that Dr. Clyde C. Murton again recounted the beatings two decisions in the landmark Holt v. Snow, a friend of medical examiner at Arkansas’s prisons, the buried bod- Sarver case (Holt was attorney Law- Carlton and a forensic anthropologist ies and the public indifference toward rence J. “Jack” Holt) that the Arkan- with the Civil Aeromedical Institute them. sas prison system was unconstitu- of Oklahoma City, said he had studSarver, too, testified before the Sen- tional. The prison, he ruled, violated ied the Cummins skeletons for a year. ate. He, however, fared worse than the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition Snow could only theorize about who Murton did before the committee. against “cruel and unusual punish- the men were and how and when they Sarver was dismissive of the stories ment” and the 14th Amendment’s right had died. Given the age of the bodof homosexuality, bribes, escapes and to equal protection. Henley called the ies, they were likely inmates who had corruption, saying, “What else is new?” prisons a “dark and evil world com- been buried generations before they Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who pletely alien to the free world … admin- were dug up. Snow said he could not was serving on the committee, was istered by criminals under unwritten determine what exactly the nature of surprised at Sarver’s dismissiveness of rules and customs completely foreign the cemetery was based on only three prison abuses. At the same time, Sarver to free world culture.” The Sarver deci- skeletons, but he kept working on the rejected the notion, put forth by Mur- sion, the Harvard Law Review noted, skeleton mystery. In 1976, at a meeting ton, that the same “headcrackers” were was the first where “an entire prison of the Arkansas Historical Association in charge at the prisons — that nothing system faces possible abolition on in Helena, Snow gave a paper in which had changed. constitutional grounds.” The state’s he challenged the idea that the bodies Murton persisted in telling his lawyers appealed the decision, but it unearthed at Cummins had been mur-
Colin Woodward is the author of “Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War,” published in 2014. A former Arkansas resident, he is writing a book on Johnny Cash and has been researching and writing about the Arkansas prison farms for six years. arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
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Arts Entertainment AND
PRESERVE ARKANSAS/DR. JODI BARNES
FINDING PERSONALITY IN THE PAST: Jerome Bias conducts a cooking demonstration last spring at the Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village.
Beyond the Big House A Q&A with furniture maker, culture educator Jerome Bias. BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
I
t’s been over 150 years since the 13th Amendment to abolish “slavery and involuntary servitude” in the United States was passed, but the fight to affirm the humanity of enslaved people in U.S. history is alive and well among historians, museum tour guides and textbook manufacturers. Count North Carolina furniture maker Jerome Bias among the many whose work helps us understand that the struggle and suffering endured by enslaved people in America didn’t constitute the whole of their existence, and that the traditions enslaved people brought with them from Africa informed much of what we’ve come to think of as Southern culture today. Bias comes to Arkansas for Preserve Arkansas’s “Behind the Big House,” a series of live demonstrations and lectures at the Historic Arkansas Museum March 23-24 that looks beyond the grand historic homes and plantations to the experiences of the enslaved people who maintained them. Can you talk a little bit about your work at the Stagville State Historic Site [in Durham, N.C.]? I was on the board at Historic Stagville. I was the treasurer, and I took on the challenge of how to increase the number of African-American visitors to our site. And that was in response to some evidence that African Americans were being missed? Statistically, for museums, especially for plantations and historic sites, you’ll find that African Americans make up a very small percentage of the local visitorship. I hesitate to ask you to conjecture 20
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on why that is. On the other hand, I suspect you’ve spent some time thinking about why that is. From our polling that we took in our visitorships, the response was, “Why do I want to come hear about suffering?” People were generally ashamed of the suffering and the experience that their ancestors had, and that’s the only vision or perception that they have of the enslaved population. What they aren’t seeing is that they were whole human beings. Was there a moment that called you to this line of work? Yes. I was shopping for a bed at Furnitureland South, a huge mall of a store. And I came across a bed that was made by a rather nice furniture company. And I was with my fiance at the time, my spouse-to-be — for the moment, at least. And we looked at it and looked at the little card and it was described as being made by Thomas Day, a free black cabinetmaker from Caswell County, N.C., and that he was the largest cabinetmaker in the state, and he was making furniture between 1820 and 1860, and that he made furniture for the governor, and that this was a copy of a bed that he made for the state attorney general. And I was just blown away. ’Cause I didn’t know that black folks did anything besides pick cotton and work in the kitchen. ’Cause that’s what I had been told. So I fell in love with this bed. And it cost $11,000. Oh, my God. That’s what I was sayin.’ And I was in school at the time, so I said, “You know, if we did this kind of stuff, I’m game to try it.” I’d never made anything before in my life. So I endeavored to
make a king-size, four-poster bed with a canopy. And that’s what my wife got for her wedding day present. Do you still have it? Yeah. I have the bed. I don’t have the wife. As you’ve studied these traditions, whether it was furniture or food, has there been anything that surprised you? Well, there are two things. The latest thing that surprised me was when I just did a weeklong expedition at Montpelier [President James Madison’s home
in Virginia]. We were digging through the slave quarters there, and I was really blown away by how individual these people were. They were buying their own dishes, and I would’ve expected plain white dishes, but by digging up the enslaved areas and the areas where the Madisons were dumping their trash, you could see that these were two different sets of dishes. These were not the Madisons’ dishes, and the Madisons were not buying these dishes for them. There were dishes of all kinds of colors — and they weren’t the cheapest things in the stores, either. And I was blown away that even though they were in crappy situa-
ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com
A&E NEWS tions, they were finding a way to celebrate life and enjoy life. The other thing was by doing this slave-dwelling project, we spent the night together as AfricanAmerican interpreters under the conditions that our ancestors did. We get up in the morning, and we’re in the heat cooking a meal, and it was interesting to watch the personalities come out, and it’s interesting to realize that these were not people who got up in the morning, worked all day, sunup to sundown, went home, got to bed, and got up and did the same thing all over again. They were not automatons. They were human beings. We were in one place and it was 102 degrees at night, with mosquitoes that were eating us up left and right. And humidity that was god-awful horrible. And the next morning it was 98 degrees, and the mosquitoes went away, thank God. But we didn’t sleep all night, and when we went to cook … well, green pea soup did not get spit out of peoples’ faces, but heads did spin, attitudes did get thrown and it was just ugly. I was embarrassed at first that this is what we did, that we performed like this, because these folks are professionals. But I realized that our goal was to recreate the experiences of our enslaved ancestors, and this is what happens when you get people who sit up all night tellin’ bad jokes ’cause it’s too hot and sticky to sleep and they have to get up and go to work the next day. Someone’s gonna bite someone’s head off.
THE LARGEST GRANT the University of Cen-
&
Present
Retracing Charles Portis’s
tral Arkansas’s Department of Film, Theatre and Creative Writing has received was awarded last week: $500,000, to be gifted in five yearly sums of $100,000. The grant is from the Bridges-Larson Foundation, a partnership between director, screenwriter and 2012 UCA Distinguished Alumnus James Bridges and actor and writer Jack Larson, and “will go directly to what was wished for by the foundation: to have a direct
In Arkansas
impact on the student,” said Mike Gunter, the department’s interim chair. Students have already begun using a portion of the first installment to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Tampa, Fla., this month, as well as the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. FOUR FINALIST CANDIDATES to become director of the School of Art at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will give public 30-minute presentations and take part in 30-minute Q&As when they visit campus for interviews this month and in April. The candidates are Syracuse University Art Education Professor James Rolling, Getty Foundation Senior Program Officer Elizabeth “Cassie” Mansfield, Pennsylvania State University College of Arts and Architecture Associate Dean for Research Andrew Schulz, and University of Texas at Austin Art Department Chair Jack Risley. The School of Art, created with a $120 million grant from the Walton Family Charitable Trust to be distrib-
BUS TOUR
Saturday, april 14 Departs Little Rock at 9 a.m. en route Readings From The Novel by Actress JoeY Lauren Adams and COMMENTARY by PORTIS EXPERT Jay Jennings. Historic Tours Courtesy of the Fort Smith National HISTORIC SITE Rangers. Music by SmokeY & The Mirror.
! T U O D L O S Part of the Oxford American ’s ongoing celebration “50 Years of True Grit ”
DETAILS at centralarkansastickets.com
uted over five years, will emphasize American art and art of the Americas, in concert with the nearby Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. “INTERSECTIONS,” A MONTH OF art programming from women artists at Fayetteville’s Stage Eighteen and Fenix on the Fayetteville square, benefits Brave Woman, a grassroots
includes entertainment, round-trip transportation, lunch, and adult beverages.
organization partnering with abuse survivors, as well as the Arkansas chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The work is to be displayed in conjunction with events led
You’re going to be cooking down here in Arkansas — specifically, things that would have been typical of the diets of enslaved peoples. Can you talk a little bit about what your plans are? The menu is not hard and fast yet, but what I’m looking at is doing one or two dishes that — oh, also when we talk about the food of African Americans, we use the word “soul food,” and it’s often
by Inverse Performance Art Festival, ArkansasStaged and Of Note/Trillium Salon Series. For details, see the Facebook page for NastyWomenNWA. SCREENWRITER AND PLAYWRIGHT Tony Kushner (“Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” “A Bright Room Called
Tickets on sale now! CentralArkansasTickets.com
Day”) will visit Hendrix College in Conway on Tuesday, April 10. Hendrix professor of politics Dr. Jay Barth will interview Kushner starting at 7:30 p.m. in the college’s Staples Auditorium. A reception and book signing in Mills Lobby and Library follows. Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies
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LIST
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK
ART PORTER MUSIC EDUCATION
THE
JAZZ HEIR: Violinist and mandolin player Lexington Porter joins the Clyde Pound Trio at The Ohio Club in Hot Springs this Thursday.
THURSDAY 3/22
LEXINGTON PORTER, CLYDE POUND TRIO
7 p.m. The Ohio Club. Hot Springs. Free.
This old gangster hangout on Bathhouse Row, est. 1905, hosts a free jazz show every Thursday night in the same halls trod by Al Jolson and Al Capone. This week, that concert features Lexington Porter, the grandson of the late Art Porter Sr. and the nephew of Art Porter Jr. — both Arkansas jazz virtuosos in their own right. Lexington has become known for coaxing sophisticated improvisations from two instruments we don’t often get to hear in a jazz context: violin and mandolin. Check out the footage of Porter from the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2017, in which I’d swear there’s a melodic reference to the theme from “Inspector Gadget” just after the two-minute mark. Porter is backed by the seasoned Clyde Pound Trio: Pound on keyboards, Byron Yancey on upright bass and Patrick Chan on drums. SS
THURSDAY 3/22
DAVID HIGGINBOTHAM
8 p.m. South on Main. $10.
THURSDAY 3/22
POTLUCK AND POISON IVY: LAGNIAPPE LOVE SHOW
7 p.m. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. $35.
For fans of “The Moth” storytelling series who find themselves thinking, “I could totally do this,” well, here’s your shot. The Potluck and Poison Ivy series is taking a break from its features on insightful poets and writers like Beth Ann Fennelly and Molly McCully Brown, instead holding an open mic of sorts wherein the bravest amongst us can throw their names into the StoryShare hat for a chance to
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tell an audience about that time when a disagreement over cake flour escalated to an altercation and, eventually, fisticuffs, upending what was otherwise a lovely Mason jar-lit backyard wedding. Arkansas Symphony Orchestra violinist Katherine Williamson, violist Ryan Mooney and cellist David Gerstein — the ARtriTrio — entertain. Get details and tickets at potluckandpoisonivy.org. SS
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There’s a great jazz tune by an upright bassist named Jay Leonhart titled “It’s Impossible to Sing and Play the Bass.” With dexterity and finesse that lends the song its irony, Leonhart details the many things that can go wrong when the rhythm section puts their mouths to a microphone: “You see, the bass is fretless, it’s not like a guitar/Bass, you spend your whole life wondering where the hell you are/ To remember lyrics, melodies, bass lines and chords/Is no less a miracle than the Lord’s.” The song came to mind thanks to jazz bassist/singer David Higginbotham’s new release “Blues on the Corner”; in addition to
Leonhart and Higginbotham’s rather obvious similarities, Higginbotham’s work with the Bob Boyd Sounds (and with Arkansas jazz wizards like Clyde Pound, Chris Parker, Joe Vick and Brian Brown) shares Leonhart’s penchant for sweet humor and hidden downbeats. With “Blues on the Corner,” he and jazz cohorts Chris Parker, Brandon Dorris and Paul Stivitts have mashed up original tunes with jazz standards — some to which Higginbotham has added lyrics — and an ultra-mellow cover of an undersung tune from fellow Arkansan Bob Dorough, “Love Came on Stealthy Fingers.” SS
IN BRIEF
THURSDAY 3/22
THURSDAY 3/22
FRIDAY 3/23
HEADCOLD, FISCAL SPLIFF, BROTHER ANDY AND HIS BIG DAMN MOUTH
‘ART MOVEMENT’
9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $5.
If Thursdays have become the new home for assigned-seating, highbrowleaning shows in Little Rock, consider this the antidote. Fiscal Spliff — a Russellville-bred rock outfit with occasionally frenetic passages and a freewheeling Southern rock guitar sound — performs, along
with Headcold, a Conway noise rock trio that mashes up punk aggression with a proggy sensibility for rhythm; and Brother Andy, the warped but nevertheless balls-to-the-wall, solid project from Andy Warr that covers the territory between hobo camps and coyote love songs. SS
5:30-8:30 p.m. Matt McLeod Fine Art Gallery, 108 W. Sixth St.
The elegant beauty last August, when they inof the dance and danc- vited artists to the dance ers has been a subject for studio to draw, paint and artists since Edgar Degas sculpt while dancers held took his pastels to the Pal- short poses. On Friday, ais Garnier. Now, thanks “Art Movement” celebrates to collaboration between art in motion with a perforBallet Arkansas and Matt mance by Ballet Arkansas McLeod Fine Art, dancers dancers at 6 p.m., an exhiin the flesh and on canvas bition of artworks by Emand in sculpture will com- ily Wood, Sarah Creasman, bine for “Art Movement,” Keegan Baker, Jude Harzer, at McLeod’s gallery, which Cindy Holmes, Kevin Kresconnects to Ballet Arkan- se, Harry Loucks, Jeremy sas’s studios at 520 Main Couch and McLeod, and a St. McLeod and Ballet Ar- painting demonstration by kansas directors Michael McLeod at 8 p.m. The exand Catherine Fothergill hibition will run through began work on the event April 30. LNP
FRIDAY 3/23
PLATINUM COMEDY TOUR
8 p.m. Verizon Arena. $52-$128.
BATESVILLE BAGPIPES: The Lyon College Pipe Band brings a ceilidh to Ron Robinson Theater as part of the Arkansas Sounds series.
FRIDAY 3/23
Collectively, this com- didn’t go out of your way to edy bill’s resume includes stream a stand-up set. They decades of HBO specials, and one-time host of BET’s film and televised prank Comic View Bruce Bruce calls. You didn’t get through (“the name so nice you have the “Friday” movies with- to say it twice”) appear at out seeing Mike Epps, Mi- Verizon Arena on a tour of chael Blackson and Rickey arenas across the southern Smiley, and chances are United States (plus Detroit). you’ve heard Earthquake’s SS voice work even if you
LYON COLLEGE PIPE BAND
7 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. $5.
Bagpipes are kind of a big deal in Batesville. The Presbyterian-affiliated Lyon College there is home to the annual Arkansas Scottish Festival, a four-day consortium of kilts, highland dancing and Celtic poetry complete with sheepdog demonstrations, a race called “The Kilted Mile” and a “Bonniest Knees Contest.” Straight outta Independence County come the musical fruits of that community, the Lyon College Pipe Band, and they’ll give a concert in downtown Little Rock featuring dancers, singers and a ceilidh band (think: contra dance, but with bagpipes and a keg of Brewdog) with guitars, accordions and uilleann pipes. Folks 15 and under get in free; reserve seats by clicking on the link at arkansassounds.org. SS
SATURDAY 3/24
SPOONFED TRIBE
9 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $8-$10.
Depending on how you look at it, Spoonfed Tribe plays either jazz with electric bass and louder drums or it plays free-meter rock with amelodic flute and saxophone. The Fort Worthbased group, formed in 1999, named its 2013 release “Weapons of Mass Percus-
sion,” a pretty good summation of its rhythm-forward, light-show-accompanied sound. It’s too early in the year to take mushrooms and dance barefoot in a field in the Ozarks at a granola festival, but you can certainly get a preview of that vibe at Stickyz this weekend. SS
Winston-Salem, N.C., singer-songwriter Caleb Caudle brings mellifluous ballads like “Carolina Ghost” to the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. DeCarcerate, a coalition dedicated to end mass incarceration in the state, screens the documentary “The Gathering,” Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library, 6 p.m. St. Clairsville, Ohio, quintet Down They Fall shares a bill at The Cavern in Russellville with locals Princeaus and Ginsu Wives, 8 p.m., $3-$5 suggested donation. Kamikaze Zombie plays a show with Rats at a Bar Grab at a Star, 8 p.m., The Sonic Temple, 4603 E. Broadway, NLR. Vermont-based folk duo Hungrytown plays a free show at the Faulkner County Library, 7 p.m. Brian Nahlen and Nick Devlin duet at Cajun’s Wharf for happy hour, 5:30 p.m., free, and later, LLC takes the stage, 9 p.m., $5. Grant Lyon, Brent Terhune and Todd Johnson form a triple feature at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12.
FRIDAY 3/23 Chris Cash brings his velvety vocals, loop station and percussive guitar back to South on Main, 9 p.m., $7. Eureka Springs-based Red Oak Ruse brings its brand of Ozark boogie to Four Quarter Bar, 8 p.m., $7. Texas country star Aaron Watson lands at the Rev Room in support of his latest, “Vaquero,” with opening sets from David Adam Byrnes and Bree Ogden, 8 p.m., $20. Dozens of women’s barbershop choruses from the Southern U.S. descend on Little Rock for the Sweet Adelines International competition and convention at Robinson Center Performance Hall, see sai25.org/2018contest for tickets and details. Gigi’s Soul Cafe & Lounge hosts “A Tribute to Whitney Houston and Luther Vandross,” 9:30 p.m., $20-$25. Group meditations, camping and live sets from Yuni Wa, Deep Sequence, Ryan Viser and more are on the lineup for Optica 7, a family-friendly festival at the Crystal Chill Campground, Forest Road, NLR, 5 p.m. Fri.-11 a.m. Sun., see opticafestivals.yapsody.com for tickets and details. Kentucky blues rock quartet Otis lands at Midtown Billiards for a late-night set. Dennis Carrow plays a set at Guillermo’s Coffee, Tea & Roastery, 6:30 p.m. Highway 124 entertains at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Silks Bar & Grill, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; The Pink Piano Show is in the Pops Lounge, 5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Nicnos performs at Kings Live Music in Conway, with an opening set from Edward Briggler, 8:30 p.m., $5. Bill “Bluesboy Jag” Jagitsch plays a solo set at the John Daly Steakhouse in Conway, 6 p.m., free. Howard & Skye duet at Markham Street Grill & Pub,
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 25
arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
23
THE
TO-DO
LIST
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK MARCUS PRICE
THE HANDSOME RAMBLER: Comedian, actor and podcast host Hannibal Buress lands in Little Rock for a show Monday night. FOR PUERTO RICO: The Salty Dogs (pictured) join Dazz & Brie and The Brian Nahlen Band for a benefit show at Four Quarter Bar Sunday evening.
MONDAY 3/26
HANNIBAL BURESS
8 p.m. Rev Room. $30.
SUNDAY 3/25
FUNDRAISER FOR PUERTO RICO
6 p.m. Four Quarter Bar. $10 suggested donation.
Hurricane Maria made land- sicians Showcase winners Dazz fall on the U.S. territory of Puerto & Brie, 2018 Central Arkansas Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, and accord- Music Awards winners The Salty ing to an ABC News report aired Dogs and 2018 Central Arkansas last Sunday, over 100,000 people Music Awards performers The are still without power and over Brian Nahlen Band. Donations 130,000 others have left the island. collected go to Puerto Ricans en So, Four Quarter’s going Farm Arkansas and to Ricky Martin’s Aid-style with a blockbuster line- Hurricane Relief. Indivisible Arup for a benefit this Sunday fea- kansas will be on location to regturing 2017 Arkansas Times Mu- ister new voters. SS
Lincoln Rice, even-keeled doctor of dental surgery and ride-or-die sex buddy to Ilana Glazer’s character on Comedy Central’s “Broad City,” offers ample grounds for adoring Hannibal Buress. Rice swooped in to save our protagonist’s ass on too many occasions to number, especially if you count the number of times, spoken or implied, when he’d placidly repeat a saving mantra for the forgetful or impaired roaming around in New York City: “PKW,” short for “phone, keys, wallet.” And, after last Saturday night, students at the Catholic-affiliated Loyola University in Chicago
have a newly reignited appreciation for the comedian’s un-Lincoln Riceish chutzpah, having demanded he return to the stage after the school cut his routine short, turning off Buress’ microphone as he waded into a joke about the history of child molestation in the Catholic church and put up a screenshot of all the topics on which the university asked he remain silent: “rape, sexual assault, race, sexual orientation/gender” and “illegal drugs.” I doubt the Rev Room has such stringent content restrictions, so check out Buress’ “Comedy Camisado” and “Hannibal Takes Edinburgh” on Netflix for a sample of what’s to come Monday night in the River Market. SS
TUESDAY 3/27
SOUND TEXTURES
performance of composer Eric Ewa- instruments, there’s a newly com- McGovern Freeney and Katherine zen’s enchanting 1999 piece “Down missioned piece on the program by Williamson on violin, Katherine Reyna River of Time,” the oboe gets front Charles Hawthorne enticingly called olds on viola and Ethan Young on cello. Aside from a handful of concertos and center treatment, played by ASO “Hero’s Ascent for Marimba,” to be Student and active military tickets are and a prominent role in tuning an or- oboist Lorraine Duso Kitts and fellow played by ASO principal percussionist $10, and as part of the ASO’s Canvas chestra to A440, the oboe often plays ASO musicians Kiril Laskarov, Algis Blake Taylor. Those works are preced- Festival, a display of visual art by locals second fiddle (pun intended) to the Staskevicius, Tatiana Kotcherguina, ed by a performance of Mendelssohn’s is up in the lobby for you to peruse afmore mellifluous MVPs of the orches- Stephen Feldman and Barron Weir. “String Quartet No. 3 in D Major” from ter you hit the cash bar, which opens at tral world: violins, flutes. Here, with a And, in another coup for underutilized the Rockefeller String Quartet: Trisha 5:30 p.m. SS
7 p.m. Great Hall, Clinton Presidential Center. $23.
24
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
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IN BRIEF, CONT. 8:30 p.m. East Nashville stomp blues duo Smooth Hound Smith takes the stage at Stickyz, 8 p.m., $10. DeFrance and Stephen Neeper & The Wild Hearts team up for a show at Smoke & Barrel Tavern in Fayetteville, 10 p.m., $5. The Mallett Brothers, Matthew McNeal and Dylan Earl share a rowdy countrified bill at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, 9 p.m., $7. Adam Tilly entertains for happy hour at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m., and later, the Brian Nahlen Band performs, 9 p.m., $5.
Preser ve a special moment
SATURDAY 3/24 Kyle Cook (Matchbox Twenty, New Left) plays a solo set at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. The Brian Nahlen Band brings tunes from “Cicada Moon” to Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Maxine’s hosts a whopper of a rock ’n’ roll show: Dazz & Brie, DeFrance and Stephen Neeper & The Wild Hearts, 9 p.m., $7. “The Voice” contestant Levelle Davison and jazz siren Bijoux join Rodney Block and The Real Music Lovers for a tribute to The Fugees and Lauryn Hill at White Water, 9 p.m., $10. Strange Brue lands at West End Smokehouse, 10 p.m., $7. Len Holten plays a set at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 7:30 p.m. Greg Madden plays a set for happy hour at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m.; catch RVS at 9 p.m., $5. Maria Hoskins reads from her book, “My Easter Story,” at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, 2 p.m. Club Sway hosts performances from Nicki Savage and Aurora Hiltrude and Natalia Calamity for “L’Ochenta: Lola’s 1980s Latin Bash,” 9 p.m. G-NERD, Dra’em and DJ King Britt from Memphis will be on hand for Art Night Out at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, with live music and art activities celebrating the reopening of its permanent collection galleries and the temporary exhibition “Soul of a Nation.” 6:30 p.m., $10.
MOTTA TIMES TWO: Black Mariah Theater plays an intimate show at Heights Corner Market Wednesday evening.
WEDNESDAY 3/28
BLACK MARIAH THEATER
7 p.m. Heights Corner Market. $5.
File this one under “twin sisters from Kansas City simmer down jazz standards, stirring frequently, until they are reduced by half.” (Is there a file for that?) Sophia Motta on guitar and vocals and Analiese Motta on drums are a smooth, slow burn of a noir act, and here’s a chance to see them on tour in an unusual and cozy venue. For fans of Erin McKeown, Smokey and Miho or Diana Krall. SS
in a commissioned painting by Carole Katchen. ckatchen@earthlink.net
(501) 617-4494
SUNDAY 3/25 Chicago-based metal quartet Fool’s Brew lands at Stickyz, with an opening set from Hell Camino, 7:30 p.m., $5.
MONDAY 3/26 The cast of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s “Mamma Mia!” gathers for cabaret performances at South on Main, 7 p.m., $25. Men’s barbershop chorus Acapella Rising performs (and recruits new singers) at Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Sherwood, 1402 Kiehl Ave., 6:30 p.m.
TUESDAY 3/27 Photographer Alec Soth discusses his portraiture work for “The Space Between Us,” 6 p.m., UA Little Rock Windgate Center of Art + Design, Room 101. Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies
arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
25
Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’
FIRST, A CORRECTION: What’s cooking last week was asleep at the stove when it used a national news release to report that Mimi’s Cafe would be serving St. Patrick’s Day specials. It did — but not in Little Rock. Mimi’s Little Rock location closed last year. Which we knew. And forgot. It’s the kind of error that makes us want a slug of Jameson’s. THE DOWNSTAIRS LOUNGE at Cache Restaurant, 425 President Clinton Ave., has gotten a makeover into a comfortable yet swank version of a sports bar, with four 50-inch TV screens that can combine into one or show four different programs at once and wider chairs in lounge groupings. The dining room has also gotten new carpeting and the chairs are being recovered, and the patios have gotten all new furniture more appropriate for outdoor seating. CORE BREWERY WAS temporarily zapped by an electrical permit snafu last week and could not open at 1214 Main St. in Little Rock as planned, but Christian Huisman, who’ll be running the show on the south side of the river, said the bar will open this Friday, March 23. The new Core will be similar in size to the Argenta Core in the front, but will also have a game room in back with ping-pong and baggo and a big loading dock door that can open in good weather. Core is partnering with Foghorn’s Express in Northwest Arkansas to provide the nosh. TWO FAMILIES IN the Mexican restaurant business in Northwest Arkansas are adding second locations. Ricky Cortes, who opened Azul Tequila Mexican Cuisine in Bentonville in 2013, will open a second Azul Tequila in Springdale. The restaurant, which will seat 220 — around 40 or so more seats than the Bentonville location, is under construction at 960 N. 45th St. and should be open by mid-May. The restaurant combines authentic and Tex-Mex cuisine. Mario Olivares, who opened El Pueblito in Bella Vista in 2013, opened a second El Pueblito at 300 E. Centerton Blvd. in Centerton in February. The menu includes not only Mexican dishes, but pizza and chicken nuggets for the niños. Both have applied for licenses to serve mixed drinks. THE FAYETTEVILLE FLYER, which recently published a list of brews it would like to see in Arkansas, is in luck: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery of Delaware, one of five breweries it named, announced this week that it will be distributed in Arkansas thanks to partners Arkansas Craft Distributors and O’Connor Distributing. A press release suggested pairings of its 60 Minute IPA with Arkansas’s signature food: cheese dip. 26
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
HUERTA HUEWER: Curried tomato sauce adds an Indian touch to the grilled and sliced bratwurst.
Wunderbar Wunderhaus
Eastern European cuisine comes to Conway.
L
et’s get right to the point: Wunderhaus provides an absolutely stellar, fun and delicious dining experience. Brother-and-sister team Auguste Forrester and Jacqueline Smith, along with their respective spouses, have carved a niche in downtown Conway, serving up Eastern European dishes out of an old gas station at the corner of Oak and Locust streets. The decor is simple yet homey, all of a piece with the ethos of the place itself, which includes cooking with locally sourced ingredients. Furnishings were put together
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from local flea markets and thrift stores. A hodgepodge of old chairs surrounds odd-shaped tables. The dinnerware, purchased through a neighboring church, once belonged to a former president of the University of Central Arkansas. It’s cozy without feeling crowded. The exposed ceilings give the impression of more space. “The decor is indicative of the way the business has come together,” Smith says. “The space that we’re in dictated what we could do. It’s a little gas station. But we wanted some warmth in here. There’s natural wood,
softer lighting.” Smith, who Forrester calls the brains behind the menu, was a server at the dearly departed Little Rock eatery Natchez. Wunderhaus buys its meats from Rabbitt Ridge Farms in Bee Branch, a family operation that raises “cattle and hogs the way your grandpa used to.” Herbs and vegetables come from New South Produce Cooperative and local farmers markets. The menu is a reflection of what’s in season, changing week to week. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to order the Herta Huewer ($10). Grilled, sliced bratwurst and caramelized onions are served in a sweet curry tomato sauce that is mouth-watering and spirit lifting. Adding an Indian touch to a German staple you’ve had a hundred times is inspired. The wine list is efficient and thoughtful. The beer list is solid — we tried a pair of rich Dunkels —
BELLY UP
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to accelerate your body’s internal processes. Wunderhaus 900 Locust St. Conway 501-358-6806 Wunderhausconway.com Quick bite Don’t sleep on the desserts. Smith says she’s not a fan of the “overly sweet,” and you can taste that in the pies. The Nutella pie ($7) is made with a good dose of cocoa powder to add a little bitterness to the sweet hazelnut spread. It’s topped with whipped cream and ganache. The crust is made of gluten-free cookies. If that wasn’t enough, the Baileys pie ($7) really stuns. It’s a simple mix of a Baileys reduction and cream cheese on top of a German shortbread crust. This was the favorite at our table despite stiff competition.
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though pricey for some of the bigger The Wild Rover ($21) was another imported bottles. Everything seemed winner. It’s a braised short rib with to pair nicely with the Vlad Poutine cabbage and a beautiful sauce of ($12). Instead of french fries, the green onion, celery and a touch of base of this version was made up of cream. It’s served on a bed of golden roasted (then griddled, then roasted rice and topped with a few clumps of again) potatoes. Slow-braised pulled feta. The rib was outstanding; tender, pork, with minimal seasoning, comes flavorful, and braised in red wine in hearty chunks. A beer, sharp ched- until it had a firm flavorful crust. dar, and cream sauce (that would It pulled off the bone nicely into be hard to do any better) as well as big, tasty chunks. The cabbage was brown onion gravy is served on top. chopped into little ribbons, nicely “The pigs we buy have a great diet cooked, but not overdone. Its bit of and to us they just taste better and crunch helped offset some of the we don’t have to do too much to it,” sticky softness of the rice and the Smith says. This was a table favorite richness of the meat. and hopefully one they can source As we finished off our beers and more often than not. the crowd dissipated, Forrester came The Mary Robinson ($22) was by to make sure everything was to our another inventive dish, an Irish- liking and invite us back for an event inspired take on chicken and dump- Wunderbus would be hosting as part lings. Everybody at our table that of Toad Suck Daze. You get the feelstuck a fork in raved about it. Think ing the owners take a great deal of of a really hearty chicken stew, with pride in what they’ve created here. chopped carrots and slow-cooked The atmosphere is inviting and the shredded chicken. The dumplings staff is well trained and knowledgewere hand-rolled, giving them a able. You may go for the food, and you dense consistency. Boring they were should, but that’s just part of it. You’ll not. A healthy dose of herbs and sea- leave feeling like you’ve just been soning gave them a great punch. It’s a part of someone else’s world where comforting, filling dish that could’ve everything inside is well thought out, easily fed two. crafted and curated.
Seafood Boils and Catering! Book your event today! 1619 REBSAMEN PARK RD. 501.838.3888 thefadedrose.com
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March
23 - Red Oak Ruse 24 - Brian Nahlen Band 25 - Fundraiser for Puerto Rico feat.Dazz&Brie,Brian Nahlen, Salty Dogs (6pm) 28 - Clay Parker,Jodi James,and Reece Sullivan (free show 7pm) 29 - ALS Speakeasy Party (tickets at centralarkansastickets.com) 30 - Guitar is Deadw/ The Federali’s 31 - The Good Time Ramblers Open until 2am every night! 415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
27
THEATER REVIEW
VOULEZ-VOUS: Erin Mosher plays Donna Sheridan in The Rep’s take on an ABBA-packed “Mamma Mia!”
‘Mamma Mia!’ charms Sophie steals the show. BY HEATHER STEADHAM
I
had tickets to the national tour of “Mamma Mia!” two years ago, but I was not excited to go. The protagonist, an ultra-chipper 20-year-old girl, wants her father to walk her down the aisle, but doesn’t know who he is, so she invites the three men it might be without letting her mom know what she’s doing? What was this — “The Parent Trap” set to the cheesy songs of Swedish pop group ABBA? But there is a reason why “Mamma Mia!” was the ninth-longest running show in Broadway history and one of only five musicals to have run for more than 10 years on the Great White Way. There is a reason why it has been seen by more than 54 million people in 38 productions in 14 languages in over 400 cities. And
28
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
there is a reason why I was glad to see it again Friday The Rep’s set designer for the show, James Youmans, night at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre: It is one of whose credits include “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the most charming musicals ever to be put on stage. the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and “West Side On the Greek island of Kalokairi, Sophie is getting Story” on Broadway, perfectly pulls the audience ready to marry her fiance, Sky. She has read her into the Mediterranean spirit with a proscenium mother’s old diary and discovered that her mother, arch painted like dappled water, a blue-backlit scrim Donna, dated Sam, Bill and Harry all around the time revealing tiny clay houses dotting a far-off horizon, Sophie was conceived. Sophie (who has never known and a thoughtfully constructed partial house complete the identity of her father) has coerced all three men with working fountain and flower vines cascading to come to the island, hoping to discover which one beneath a second-story veranda. Even the stage is actually her dad. Of course, she didn’t tell the men floor was painted to look like cobblestone. I’ve come why she was inviting them, and didn’t tell her mom to expect great sets from The Rep, and this one for that she was inviting them, so hilarity ensues — to a “Mamma Mia!” absolutely fit the bill. soundtrack of ABBA’s finest. A successful production of “Mamma Mia!” does not
happen without a strong choice for the young female lead, and here, too, The Rep nailed it. Sarah Daniels, a New York City-based actor and professional video gamer (yep, you read that right) who’s appeared as Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde” and Kate/Lucy in “Avenue Q” (one of my favorite musicals of all time), unquestionably shines as Sophie. Her voice is clear and lovely. Joyful, in fact. She is adorable and, just like “Mamma Mia!” itself, undeniably winning. A nother bright spot in the production: the dads. T.J Mannix, who played adventuring travel writer dad Bill Austin, was a charismatic bumbler who’d win anyone’s heart. Peter Simon Hilton, who played British banker Harry Bright, dazzled with his rockeraging-into-stodgy-adult comedy. Sam Carmichael, played by Cooper Grodin (who played the title role in the New National Tour of “Phantom of the Opera”) matched The Rep’s Donna (Erin Mosher) note for spectacularly powered note. A few of the dance numbers were outstanding. In “Lay All Your Love on Me,” the actors wear flippers and scuba masks and inner tubes as they cavort across the stage, even indulging in a kick-line at one point. It was one of the most well choreographed numbers in the play, and the chemistry between Sophie and Sky (played by Zane Phillips) sizzled. The other standout song, “Does Your Mother Know,” showcases the effervescence of actress April Nixon as Tanya (one of Donna’s friends) and the chemistry she has with Avery Royal (one of Sky’s compatriots) as Pepper. A couple of elements of the show
were lacking. The costumes were hitor-miss. When Tanya enters for the first time, she laments, “Why did I wear these stilettos?” The Rep, though, is an intimate performance space, and the sturdy heels of her shoes were visible to all. And when all of the ladies are gathered for Sophie’s bachelorette party (to the tune of “Voulez-Vous”), they’re dressed in shredded leggings, sparkly crop tops and skirts cut into ribbons, outfits better suited to a dance recital than a night on the town. But, when the costumes hit, they go out of the park. Sophie’s wedding dress is striking, and the three dads come out dressed in Ziggy Stardust-meets-Elvis-inspired regalia for the curtain call performance of “Waterloo.” Too, Erin Mosher as Donna lacked that certain something that really connects to audiences. Her vocals in “The Winner Takes It All” were astounding, her pitch is perfect and her powerful belt are practically unmatched, but she was just shy of wowing me with her acting, and the chemistry with her romantic lead (Grodin — as Sam, a bit stiffly) wasn’t quite there. Maybe I just happened to catch Mosher and Grodin on an off night, and as the show settles into its groove this pair will end up blowing everyone away. But luckily for The Rep, on opening night Sarah Daniels as young Sophie took over with great aplomb — delightful, magnetic and sweetly bewitching. The Rep’s production of “Mamma Mia!” is a must-see. If you don’t believe me, ask the two middle-aged men I saw bumping hips in the lobby after the show. Something tells me they’d say the same.
ARKANSAS TIMES
bike
LOCAL O
ur nation’s most notorious assassins gather on stage to violently pursue a twisted American Dream. By developing the characters of historic assassins out of the slim biographical information found, “Assassins” prompts us to consider their motivation, confronts pain in order to cauterize the decay and heal the sicknesses which lurk at the core of our society.
APRIL 6,7,8,13,14,15,20,21,22, 2018
DIRECTED BY ANDY HALL AND JAMIE SCOTT BLAKEY MUSIC DIRECTION BY JEANNIE SCOTT CROSS $20 ADULTS • $16 STUDENTS & SENIORS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT CURTAIN TIME IS 7:30 PM. SUNDAY AFTERNOON CURTAIN TIME IS 2:30 PM. Please arrive promptly. There will be no late admission. The House opens 30 minutes prior to curtain. Box office opens one hour before curtain time. For more information contact us at 501.374.3761 or www.weekendtheater.org OUR 25TH SEASON IS SPONSORED BY PIANO KRAFT
CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase tickets and flex passes.
1001 W. 7th St. • Little Rock, AR 72201 • 501-374-3761
MAMMA MIA! music and lyrics by BENNY ANDERSSON and BJÖRN ULVAEUS some songs with STIG ANDERSON | additional material by MARTIN KOCH book by CATHERINE JOHNSON | directed by JOHN MILLER-STEPHANY
ARKANSAS REPERTORY THEATRE PRESENTING SPONSOR
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MARCH 14 — APRIL 15 (501) 378-0405 | TheRep.org For suitability suggestions, visit the content information section of our website or call the Box Office.
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April Nixon (Tanya), Erin Mosher (Donna) and Alison Nusbaum (Rosie) in The Rep’s production of Mamma Mia!. Photo by John David PIttman.
THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION THAT’S ABBA-SOLUTELY FABULOUS — EXTENDED TO APRIL 15!
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Bus Trips Retracing Charles Portis’s True Grit in Arkansas
Four Quarter Bar 2nd Annual ALS Benefit Speakeasy Party
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Four Quarter Bar Agent Orange w/ The Atom Age
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The Weekend Theater Assassins 5th & Main Lions Uptown Downtown Market & Bazaar
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The Studio Theatre Bridge to Terabithia CALS Ron Robinson Theater MeToo: True Stories of Sexual Assault
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separated from “Southern food,” and there is no difference.
When we speak about these individuals now, we often say “enslaved people” instead of saying “slaves.” Does the language matter? Does it impact the way we see these people? For me, yes. So, we’re gonna be at the Brownlee kitchen. If I go into that space and just talk about statistics, whether they’re black or white, it’s pretty dry and no one really cares. Now, if I go into that space and start talking about personality — what someone’s like, what they didn’t like, whether she was a grumpy old lady, whether she came here and didn’t want to participate in being in the South and wanted to go back home to her mama — that’s a much more interesting story. So I find that the terminology of “the enslaved person” is useful. It’s much more cumbersome, yes, but it makes me slow down and use my words and better describe the person and the situation. It acknowledges that dual status; that, at the time, legally and the way this human being was treated, [it] was as an item. But this was also a person.
Right, like “soul food” is just a code word for describing who’s making it? Uh-huh. I’ve talked to some people who think “soul food” means it’s from Louisiana. Then you have white folks who say, “Oh, we’re just cooking Southern food,” and it’s like, “No, this is food that has been heavily influenced by Africans brought to this country.” So what I’m gonna do is cook a number of items that are either from cookbooks written by African Americans in the 19th century, or are coming over from Africa. So, I’m gonna do two dishes. One is gonna be a sweet potato pone. A version made in Kenya and a version that’s been made in my family since the 1800s. The other dish that I’m looking at is on the basis of where we get our collard greens from. Africans eat greens, and they were eating greens in whatever shape or form they could get their hands on because they didn’t want to starve. So, one thing they would eat would be sweet potato leaves. Sweet potatoes aren’t in seaJerome Bias’ talk, “Hearth, Kettle, son, so when I get down there, we’ll Spoon, and Larder: How the Tasks and get some collard greens and do it that Tools of an Enslaved Cook Give us a Winway, or some spinach if spinach is in dow into Who She Was as a Person,” is yet. I’m using whatever’s the local thing part of the Saturday lineup for “Behind you guys have this season. More than the Big House,” March 23-24 at the Hislikely, it’s gonna be a Liberian collard toric Arkansas Museum. See preserveargreens recipe. kansas.org for a full schedule and a link to register to attend.
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You won’t believe how soft this tanned, Arkansas buffalo hide is. Very durable, perfect for either a rug or even a bedspread. A friend has one in her ultra modern downtown tower condo. We have ours in our log cabin. It works in a surprising variety of home or office environments. $1,400 Buy Direct From the Farmer! Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 kaytee.wright@gmail.com
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Little Rock School District — I D E N T I T Y G U I D E L I N E S
MATH TEACHER
(Little Rock, AR): Teach Math at secondary sch. Bachelors in Math or Math Edu. +1 yr exp as Math tchr at mid or high sch. Mail res.: Lisa Academy, 21 Corporate Hill Dr. Little Rock, AR 72205, Attn: HR, Refer to Ad#EA
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)
is seeking an Assistant Professor – Neonatologist - in the Little Rock, AR,
metropolitan area. DUTIES: Teach medical students, residents, and fellows in the area of neonatology, including diagnosing and treating infants with breathing disorders, infections, birth defects or other conditions. Conduct clinical work and research in neonatology. Advise students and participate in faculty decision making on department committees. REQUIRES: Must have an MD or foreign equivalent. Must have completed three (3) years (36 months) of Residency in Pediatrics. Must have license to practice medicine or eligibility for license in Arkansas. Applicants should send resume and cover letter to Kinsey Carr, #1 Children’s Way, Little Rock, AR 72202, KDCarr@uams.edu. UAMS is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer of individuals with disabilities and protected veterans and is committed to excellence. arktimes.com MARCH 22, 2018
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Poetry, fiction and memoir readings, live in the big room at Stickyz Rock-N-Roll Chicken Shack.
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Kai C es y a H n e r Ka e n o t S e Jeanni leywine r a E e n i Carol be announced o more t
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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT TRACI BERRY AT TRACIBERRY@ARKTIMES.COM Pub or Perish is a related free event of the Arkansas Literary Festival. 32
MARCH 22, 2018
ARKANSAS TIMES
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