Arkansas Times - August 25, 2016 by Arkansas Times

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TRAUMA DRAMA

The stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s system has saved lives, but recent blows have doctors worried BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

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COMMENT

LR education and Powerful People Bobby sat on the front row of my Life Science class of 35 students. He was a large young man and played tackle on the football team with obvious athletic talent and strength. However, Bobby could not read. He devoted all of his energy to disrupting the class. None of my tricks could end this madness. As I thought about a way to deal with Bobby, I remembered getting hit by a student prone to fighting. I had read about a teacher with the same problem who told the student, “If you want to fight, just hit me.” According to the article, the mortified student stopped fighting. My use of the ploy ended a student’s fighting as well, but only after I took a hard right to the jaw. I had to get control of the class, so I challenged Bobby to a race. If he won, the class was his. If I won, he would cooperate with me the rest of the year. I knew he was fast, so the race would not be short. Instead, we ran from one end of the football field to the other with the class watching. Two students were stationed at one end to start us and two at the other end to call the winner. The Lord was watching over me because somehow I won. Bobby kept his word, and I had no trouble from him the rest of the year. A few years later, I met Bobby in prison. During the summer, I worked for a copier company doing installations. I was at the prison to install equipment used to make Braille books. I could not drive my truck inside the prison, but the guard said I could use as many prisoners as I needed. When I went out into the yard to pick four men, there were Bobby and other former students calling my name. Bobby told me he was in prison for armed robbery of a service station. He worked with me that day and repeated over and over how he regretted his life of drugs and crime. The state paid over $800,000 to keep him in prison for his sentence. It was emphasized that calculators for my science class needed only to be simple, inexpensive ones costing less than $5. When I saw Victor using one that cost several hundred dollars with a UALR tag, I had to report it. Once Victor’s father arrived at the school, I was called to the office. As I shut the office door, I heard Victor’s dad ask his son if he had stolen the calculator. As soon as Victor said, “Yes,” the father’s clenched fist struck his son in the face, knocking 4

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

him to the floor. Using vulgar words out of place in a school, or anywhere for that matter, the father told Victor he was stupid. The father was not angry with his son for stealing a calculator, but for getting caught. I knew why Victor was such an angry young man and prone to striking out at anyone, including the teachers. Not too many years later, the paper reported that Victor had been shot by the police and died in a ditch. Victor wanted to succeed, but the deck was stacked against him, and violence

brought him to an early death. The Powerful People are content with warehousing criminals and ignoring increasing crime, as long as they have their club memberships, private schools and white neighborhoods. Since the federal government has given up on forcing integration in Little Rock, the PP are working hard to establish charter schools that have measured integration appeasing both the PP conscience and those seeking the best education for their children. Do the PP ever think

about the results of LR children going to school together in a beautiful village for 13 years? No! The PP prefer calculated student segregation that assures thousands of children will get what is left after the PP get what they want. Richard Emmel Little Rock

Wake up Wake up, Arkansas. You witnessed the tragic death of Sebastian County Deputy Bill Cooper, one more example of the “unraveling of America.” One only has to read the statewide daily newspaper to see the acceleration of the killing of people in Arkansas. All are tragic, but the most tragic of all are the first responders, be they law officers, EMS personnel or firefighters who are killed trying to serve the public good. Much is made of military men and women serving in foreign wars, and we can never do enough to thank them for the service they perform. I speak as a veteran, having stood my watch for nine years. But ask yourself, are not law officers standing between criminals or deranged nutcases, who are in many cases victims of drug addiction, not deserving more praise and financial support from cities, counties and the state? If you are waiting for the legislature to do something about this, you are whistling in the wind. One only has to hear the majority of legislators go on and on about the right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Constitution. Come on … this is not 1776, and what chance would a citizen bearing arms have against the U.S. Army or Marines? If you must support rapid-fire automatic weapons, get serious and let’s pull together to support employing greater numbers and better-paid law enforcement officers. Otherwise, the result will be armed neighborhood militias defending turf. There can be no doubt that there are bad law officers who sometimes abuse people, but the end of the game has not arrived. We as citizens can hold our law officers accountable. The deaths of unarmed citizens by law enforcement officers is tragic and we must put all our shoulders to the wheel — whites, blacks and browns — to see that accountability and heavy prices are paid by those few bad apples who abuse, or worse, kill others in circumstances in which their lives are not threatened. Henry Broach Little Rock

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EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week 1:

“Democracy is not convenient always.”

Quote of the Week 2:

“When it comes to some of these studies out of Chicago — there’s very little trust that I place or value I place on some of these studies that come out of one of the Democrat strongholds where the city is imploding.” — State Rep. Brandt Smith (R-Jonesboro), debating his opponent, Democrat Nate Looney, on the issue of pre-K education. Arguing in favor of boosted funding for early childhood education, Looney had cited a study from the University of Chicago that shows increased access to pre-K correlates with a drop in crime rates. (In addition to being one of the nation’s premier research institutions, the University of Chicago is known for birthing the school of freemarket economic thought underpinning conservative economic theories for decades.)

Naramore acquitted

Judge Wade Naramore of Hot Springs was acquitted on a negligent homicide charge in the 2015 death of his son, Thomas. The 18-month-old died after being left in a hot car last July when Naramore forgot the child was in the back seat. After an initial 10-2 split, the jury in the homicide trial was urged to keep deliberating by the presiding judge, and jurors eventually returned a not guilty verdict on Friday evening. It’s unclear if Naramore will try to return to the bench: He remains suspended with pay from 6

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

JON NICHOLS

— Washington County Election Commissioner Renee Oelschlaeger, explaining her refusal of a request to open an early voting center on the University of Arkansas campus. The other Republican member of the three-person commission, Bill Ackerman, also voted no; the lone Democrat, Max Deitchler, supported the proposal. The request drew support from thousands of students and staff at the university, but the Republican commissioners said ample polling stations exist off-campus.

EYES ON ARKANSAS: Jon Nichols, who titled his spider photograph on the Times’ Eye on Arkansas Flickr page as “Ready for my Closeup,” would like to know what species is looking at him.

his duty as a juvenile judge until the completion of an investigation by the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission.

Three contests for Little Rock leadership

Filing for municipal elections ended last week, with contested races shaping up for three seats on the 10-member Little Rock City Board. In West Little Rock’s Ward 4, incumbent Brad Cazort is not seeking re-election; running for his open seat are restaurateur Capi Peck (of Trio’s fame), real estate broker Jeff Yates and former Little Rock School District Superintendent Roy Brooks. Incumbent Gene Fortson, who holds one of the board’s three atlarge positions, has drawn two challengers in Clayton Johnson, a high school teacher, and Jason Ferguson, a pastor; Fortson will likely retain the support of the Little Rock business community. The perennial Joan Adcock, an at-large director who’s sat on the board for 24 years, is being challenged by Clinton School of Public Service grad Molly Miller. (The third at-large director, Dean Kumpuris, did not attract an opponent.)

Buzzkill

With one proposal to allow medical marijuana definitely to appear on the

November ballot and another competing proposal likely to qualify as well, Arkansas stands a good chance of ending its blanket prohibition on cannabis this year. Among those taking a stand against weed, however, is Arkansas Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe. “If you know a school, church, or

any other civic group that would like me to give a talk on the truth about ‘medical’ marijuana, message me,” he tweeted recently. “Compounds in marijuana have possible medicinal value,” Bledsoe acknowledged, but “calling a plant ‘medicine’ is a marketing ploy.”

The folly of drug-testing welfare recipients, by the numbers

As per legislation passed in 2015, the state Department of Workforce Services is now drug-screening new applicants for Temporary Aid for Dependent Families assistance, or welfare. There are about 2,000 Arkansans statewide who receive TANF. This month, the department released data showing results from the first four months of the program. Number flagged for potential drug use in the initial screening process

Monthly payout for a singleparent family of four

Number of families or individuals who have applied for TANF since the tests began Number required to take a drug test who refused, thus becoming temporarily ineligible for TANF benefits

Annual estimated cost of the testing program

Number who have actually been tested and failed

OPINION

Pay to play. Really?

he announcement that Bill Clinton will distance himself and foreign and corporate contributors from the Clinton Foundation if Hillary Clinton is elected president has, if anything, increased attention to the intersection of money and politics at the Foundation, along with the ongoing email controversy. The Foundation has raised millions for its work, including substantial sums from foreign governments and corporate executives with broad interest in U.S. policy, foreign and domestic. To critics, it’s pure “pay to play.” Money is being given to the Clinton Foundation — if not for explicit government action — for access to the Clintons and, it is presumed, fond remembrance. Appearances justify close inspection, even for those times when no Clinton held a public office but was merely planning ahead for one. Many critics think the only solution is to shut down the foundation. The time to end contributions and Bill Clinton’s rainmaking is now, not after November, they say. Conflict of interest alert: My daughter has a job at the Clinton Foundation. She works on sustainable agriculture

and health clinics in Africa. Close inspection of the intersection of money, charity and politics MAX is fair game. But BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com foundation critics would sound more sincere if they devoted equivalent passion to a political system that operates far more obviously and directly on the pay-to-play model. A key difference is the much rarer altruistic byproduct of the political version of the game. Do the Kochs put hundreds of millions into political campaign contributions to help small-plot soybean farmers in Malawi or to build clinics to distribute HIV medicine? No, they put in millions to cut their taxes, reduce government regulation of pollution-spewing businesses and elect like-minded representatives from the county courthouse to the White House. The Kochs are not alone. The big spenders can be found on all pages of the political ledger. Money is given and access is expected in return

Dollars and degrees

rkansas is about to fix the way it distributes taxes among its 33 public colleges so they will turn out more and better-prepared graduates and thus pep up the state’s moribund economy. The money will be delivered not so much based on a school’s enrollment as on factors like the share of its students who actually graduate and land good jobs. Governor Hutchinson is excited about it, the Higher Education Coordinating Board embraces it and the institutions themselves aren’t fighting it. Hutchinson says a high graduation rate (ours is about the lowest) and a larger quotient of college graduates in the population are critical to economic development. Every few months there is another, but old, key to unlocking growth. Low taxes are back again as the big key. It has been for 150 years, even when we had the lowest taxes by far of all the states, but also by far the lousiest economy. We never could get taxes quite low enough, although Gov. Marion Futrell in 1933 bankrupted the state trying. Here is a prediction that I hope is wrong. A new formula for distributing less and less money among the colleges will be a flop, at least in meeting the goal of more

graduates getting better-paying jobs. State funding for higher education has been nearly flat for 10 ERNEST years, which you DUMAS might note means that it is not just a Republican phenomenon. Mike Huckabee was the last governor who had any use for colleges, at least insofar as funding them. Even then, the emphasis was on funding the public schools, as it should have been and ought to be again. Remind me to get back to that. The state has been tinkering with funding formulas for two decades to give colleges incentives to keep more students in school until they graduate. Schools came up with mentoring programs and other tools, but nothing worked. Pressuring them by cutting their funding if they fail will not work either, although it might make them lighten up on grades and expectations. Kids drop out for many reasons, but the big ones are 1) high tuition and living costs (we raise tuition every year because state funding adjusted for inflation actually goes down), which includes raising the

— a meeting with a top aide, if not the politician herself; return phone calls; responses to letters; invitations to state dinners; sympathetic voting records; and so on. Lately, I’ve been interested in the expanded corruption of the pay-to-play system in Arkansas under the voterapproved “Ethics” Amendment of 2014. Legislative manipulation has adapted the amendment to 1) raise legislative pay substantially; 2) extend legislators’ term limits; and 3) make it almost impossible to sustain an ethics violation. A “mulligan” rule allows an erring legislator to correct violations before a penalty is imposed. But, defenders will say, the “ethics” amendment DID outlaw direct corporate contributions to political candidates. Big deal. The loophole is huge. Corporations still may give to PACs and political party committees, and they do so lavishly. Through those legal filters, the corporate money still reaches the candidates. Some of them even have PACs of their own to raise still more corporate money to give to like-minded colleagues. Pay to play? You betcha. Asa Hutchinson hasn’t completed a second full year as governor, but he’s

already raised almost $500,000 in a PAC that returns its corporate-sourced money to Republican Party committees and to dozens of Republican legislative candidates — $135,900 so far in 2016 with more to come in fall races. Does Hutchinson know and appreciate that his money came, just to name a random few, from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Walmart, the soft drink lobby (still aching to end the soda tax in Arkansas), the motion picture lobby, North Little Rock real estate developers and Tyson Foods? I’m betting he does. Or at least the right people in his camp do. Pay to play? You betcha. Conner Eldridge called Republican Senate opponent John Boozman’s hand on money this week. Boozman scoops millions from PACs and refuses to endorse legislation to close the Citizens United corporate finance loophole or require disclosure of contributors to dark money political operations. That’s not corrupt. But the Clinton Foundation? It must be shut down. Here’s one thing you’re not likely to find on finance reports by the Asa PAC or any of the organizations working to elect John Boozman or Donald Trump: a single dime of spending on a dose of HIV-fighting medicine.

lifetime debt burden each semester, and 2) students’ lack of mental and emotional preparation for college. Arkansas colleges have a high remediation rate to overcome the problems. Many drop out after a year of remediation. If you allocate funds based on graduation rates, you know which schools will fare best and which worst. The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, which attracts students from higher incomes and with better preparation, will do well. Schools that strive for minorities and struggling youngsters, like the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, will get fewer dollars. Then they will do even worse on graduation. Advocates of funding reform say they might make some allowance for needy kids in a few schools. The problem is not what colleges are doing but what is not happening in the public schools: a first-rate education for children from poor families. Arkansas has shifted from one assessment test to another trying to find one that will put our kids in a better light. We shouldn’t be surprised when better-looking scores do not produce better-educated kids. May I mention Huckabee favorably again? The governor who raised taxes and social spending more than any governor in Arkansas history presided over the final reform that was supposed to put

Arkansas on the path to match schools in the rest of the country. Thanks to Huckabee’s taxes, Arkansas funded its schools at a level judged to be “adequate” if not superb and the new law guaranteed that it would always be that way because schools would be funded every year at a suitable level based on what the rest of the country was doing and not on that year’s tax collections. If revenues fell short, programs that were not mandated by the Arkansas Constitution would be cut, not schools. The law and the settlement reached in the Supreme Court also said the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds earmarked each year to lift disadvantaged children would be spent exactly that way, not on band uniforms or anything else. Sadly, the law on both counts was almost immediately ignored. In clear violation of the law, school appropriations were based on revenue projections after each round of tax cuts, starting under Gov. Mike Beebe and continuing under Hutchinson. Programs with proven records of lifting poor kids, like pre-kindergarten education, still go unfunded. This winter, the governor will ask an eager legislature to cut taxes even more, the better to stimulate growth. The explanation will be that throwing money at education is a waste. Any bets on how that will work? arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

Swing and miss

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n my view, God invented baseball to Indeed, a 1993 provide a sanctuary from the fallen Post profile of Hillworld of politics. I believe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve missed ary quoted childtwo televised Red Sox games this year. To hood friends sayme, the seven-month Major League season ing that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been a is the sporting equivalent of, say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Downton walking encyclopeGENE Abbeyâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a complex, seemingly endless dia of Mickey ManLYONS narrative filled with surprising events and tle and Roger Maris unforgettable characters. lore â&#x20AC;&#x201D; this before word went out among the My earliest specific baseball memory Washington press clique that shaming her is racing into the bathroom where the as the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Biggest Liar was the solemn old man was shaving to tell him that the duty of every ambitious pundit. Giantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Bobby Thompson had hit a miracNow normal human beings take a perulous ninth-inning home run to defeat sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s word about these things. But our the Brooklyn Dodgers in the finale of a esteemed political press corps, as Bob three-game playoff. At first, Dad thought Somerby points out in a series of witherIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d imagined it. That was 1951, for those of ingly funny blog posts on this solemn topic, you keeping score at home. However there isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t populated by normal people. Informaare older home movies of me imitating the tion and facts, he writes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;no longer play a Dodgersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Howie Schultz at age 3. role in our discourse â&#x20AC;Ś Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s narrative all the It follows that baseball is both too way down! The children select a preferred important and too trivial to lie about. Even group tale. Then, they all start reciting.â&#x20AC;? if your name is Hillary Clinton. But hold And so they have on the topic of Hillary that thought. Clinton, baseball fan. The fun began in 1999, Some years ago, I overheard my wife when the then-first lady was contemplatexplain to a bossy woman friend why she ing running for the U.S. Senate from New allowed me to watch ballgames on TV. York. She made the mistake of going on It went something like this: the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Today Showâ&#x20AC;? and telling Katie Couric â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, if I told him he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d always been a Yankees fan. The host objected. Wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t she a Chicado it anyway. He doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell me what I can watch on TV. Also, my daddy was a goan and a Cubs fan? â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am a Cubs fan,â&#x20AC;? Clinton said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But I baseball coach, so sometimes we watch games together. Do I ever get tired of it? needed an American League team ... so as Sure. But there are a lot worse habits a man a young girl, I became very interested and can have. When Geneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s watching baseball, enamored of the Yankees.â&#x20AC;? heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sober and heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not out in Without bothering to check his own some titty bar with the boys.â&#x20AC;? newspaperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reporting on this critical issue, Sorry, fellows, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taken. Having a Washington Post â&#x20AC;&#x153;Styleâ&#x20AC;? reporter wrote, spent her childhood riding in school buses â&#x20AC;&#x153;a sleepy-eyed nation collectively hurledâ&#x20AC;? all over Arkansas and Oklahoma with wise- at the surprising claim. The New York cracking teenaged baseball players, Dianeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Timesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Kit Seelye dubbed it â&#x20AC;&#x153;a classic Clinoften the woman laughing when the oth- tonian gesture.â&#x20AC;? ers are gasping for breath. And they were off to the races on In that she somewhat resembles, the Sunday shows. Famous baseball fan believe it or not, Democratic presidential George Will denounced what he called a nominee Hillary Clinton. According to â&#x20AC;&#x153;Clintonian lie, which is say, an optional everybody who knew Hillary as a child, lie and an embroidered lie.â&#x20AC;? He used the she was a passionate baseball fan. Her own word â&#x20AC;&#x153;mendacity.â&#x20AC;? Jonathan Yardley father, a former Penn State football player, pronounced it â&#x20AC;&#x153;a magnificent example of taught her early how not to swing like a girl. Clintonian vulgarity.â&#x20AC;? Ever obliging team At a 1994 White House picnic celebrat- player Doris Kearns Goodwin used the ing Ken Burnsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; documentary series â&#x20AC;&#x153;Base- word â&#x20AC;&#x153;sacrilege.â&#x20AC;? ball,â&#x20AC;? Hillary surprised onlookers by stepAnd so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gone throughout Hillary ping into the batting cage and smacking a Clintonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public life. To my knowledge couple of pitches. The Washington Post not one of these elaborately offended puncovered the event, mentioning in passing dits has ever admitted error on this trivial, that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d always been a Chicago Cubs but telling theme. As recently as July 2016, and New York Yankees fan â&#x20AC;&#x201D; like many New York Times columnist Gail Collins Chicagoans for whom hating the cross- cited the troubling claim as evidence that town White Sox means loving their rivals. Hillary Clinton is opaque and unknowable. (Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basically how I came to the Red Examined closely, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing how Sox. As a National League kid in New Jer- many Hillary-the-liar claims follow a simisey, Yankee-hating was in my DNA. Also, lar pattern. And they wonder why sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ted Williams.) iffy about holding press conferences.

The real targets

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between immigration policy and the challenges facing blacks, there was little in the way of specific policy proJAY posals to back up BARTH Trump’s appeals. Second, and more telling, the appeals were made to nearly all-white audiences in almost entirely white communities. No matter the challenges created by Trump’s anemic standing with voters of color in a rapidly diversifying nation, the bigger electoral problem facing Trump, as a GOP standard bearer, is his relatively poor showing among more affluent, welleducated white voters. Among others, a central challenge with that group is that his campaign contradicts an accepted norm of American life: equality as a fundamental American value. As shown by a series of political psychologists, led by Tali Mendelberg, implicit race-based appeals still have the power to move large numbers of white voters by activating hidden racial stereotypes. But, once these voters become aware of what’s going on, those same voters recoil and rebel against those violating this “norm of equality.” The perception that Trump’s campaign is partly fueled by racial and ethnic resentment (not traditional racism, but a “new racism” driven by a sense that racial and ethnic minorities are gaining societal advantages of which they are undeserving) has become baked into the cake of Campaign 2016. From Trump’s own rhetoric to epithets spouted by his followers at rallies to new evidence this week of key Trump staffers sharing racist posts on social media, race-based politics has come to define Trumpism. (As I was writing this over a slice of pizza, I overheard a man tell his date: “I don’t like [Hillary] that much, but she’s normal … . She’s not a racist.”) Because they know that voters of color and white voters who take pride in the norm of equality alike will react, the Clinton campaign has made every effort to point out these linkages. Trump adviser Conway is smart enough to know that racial resentment has carried the Trump campaign as far as it can. Thus, the dramatically different speeches from Trump last week. Now, a man who has shown so little message discipline must keep it up across the closing 10 weeks of the campaign. Even if that occurs, we do not know the answer to this key question: Can enough of the damage with white voters who typically vote Republican be undone to allow them to take a risk on Trump?

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olitical analysts have spent recent days asking whether Donald Trump’s outreach for African-American support last week at consecutive night rallies in Michigan and Virginia will produce electoral benefit with voters who, according to a raft of surveys, are rejecting him at rates matched only by the poor showing of Barry Goldwater in 1964 after Goldwater’s high-profile opposition to the Civil Rights Act. Those analysts are asking the wrong question, however. The real target of Trump’s comments is not African-American voters at all, but, instead, upscale white voters with whom he also continues to perform poorly. On one level, Trump’s appeal was nothing new. For several cycles before Barack Obama’s candidacies cemented again African Americans’ connection to the Democratic Party, Republican presidential candidates occasionally made overtures to blacks, arguing that they should “come home” to the GOP. In July 2004, for instance, President George W. Bush appeared before the National Urban League and asked these questions: “Does the Democrat Party take AfricanAmerican voters for granted?” and “Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party?” Bush then went on to list an array of issues, arguing his stance would benefit the black community, punctuating each with: “Take a look at my agenda!” While Bush’s inroads were limited nationally, the 16 percent of the African-American vote he gained in the pivotal state of Ohio (partly through targeted mail emphasizing Bush’s support for a constitutional amendment to protect “traditional marriage”) was vital to sewing up his re-election. Coming in the immediate aftermath of the overhaul of his campaign leadership, Trump’s move was directed by Kellyanne Conway, a veteran of past GOP campaigns. Being Trump, the appeal was made in a decidedly more hamhanded (and factually inaccurate) manner than those by previous Republicans. Trump asked of African-Americans in Dimondale, Mich., Friday evening: “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” In addition to its inelegance, there were two key differences from the outreach of Bush and other GOP presidential candidates. First, aside from an appeal for more charter school access and an odd linkage

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AUGUST 25, 2016

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ur three-part game-by-game prediction series now behind us, Pearls moves into a breakdown of what the Arkansas football team’s identity will presumably be in all facets of the game for 2016. Space and time constraints prohibit this from being the sort of long-winded fluff you’ll find on magazine racks and what-not, but we’ll try to encapsulate the key issues facing the team now so you can look back later and guffaw openly at how badly off-target this piece was. Offense: The first year of the Dan Enos experiment was an unqualified success, even if the Hogs struggled to put up points in crippling losses to Toledo and Texas Tech early in the year. Brandon Allen’s deliberate maturation hit light speed over the final six weeks, Alex Collins ran off into the sunset with the best of his three 1,000-yard seasons, and Hunter Henry powered his way to the Mackey Award as the nation’s best tight-end. They’re all gone, obviously, and yet the general feeling is that the Hogs’ rebuilt offensive line and overhauled backfield can’t possibly fail because of two reasons: The Enos offense is built on being quick off the snap and unpredictable in form, and the Hogs’ returning slew of pass-catchers may be the strongest one ever in Fayetteville (you’ll recall that when Joe Adams, Jarius Wright and Greg Childs returned as seniors in 2011, Childs was coming off a major patella tear and D.J. Williams had left a void at tight end). Whether Austin Allen can replicate the ball-security numbers his older brother had over 2014-15 (50 touchdown passes against only 13 picks) could be immaterial if he can simply be durable and smart with the football when it matters most. That’s where senior tight end Jeremy Sprinkle, who actually outpaced Henry with six touchdown grabs last fall, and the tough-as-nails slot receiver Drew Morgan will help most. With Keon Hatcher and Cody Hollister returning from foot injuries and looking strong, and with products like Jamario Bell and Cheyenne O’Grady on the rise, there shouldn’t be a shortage of targets for Allen to rely upon. Kody Walker and Rawleigh Williams provide toughness at tailback; true freshmen Devwah Whaley and T.J. Hammonds look the part as electric breakaway guys already. With proven commodities like Dominique Reed able to stretch the field, it’s up to Frank Ragnow and Dan Skipper to anchor the line and give Allen time to locate the deep threat. Defense: Robb Smith’s unit was not

nearly as intimidating in its second iteration as its first. The absences of lineman Darius Philon and Trey BEAU Flowers were WILCOX substantially felt throughout the season because the Hogs lacked consistency pressuring the quarterback, and that exposed tackling and speed deficiencies on the back side. But Dre Greenlaw was an impact player from the outset, and comes back as a leaner and even more confident sophomore ready to guide a group of touted linebackers along with senior Brooks Ellis. That unit’s been underwhelming for a while, but the expectation now is that upstarts like De’jon Harris, Alexy Jean-Baptiste and the reinstated and rejuvenated Randy Ramsey will push for time on the field. The line may be the best it has been under Bret Bielema, with Deatrich Wise, Tevin Beanum and Jeremiah Ledbetter bringing back 60 percent of the team’s 2015 sack total. Freshman McTelvin Agim should be a bona fide homegrown star, and newcomer Briston Guidry could even end up being the team’s best force against the run. The glut of talent there isn’t quite the same in the secondary, but the defensive backs who are returning have all been competent, if understated. Henri Toliver has had big moments the past two seasons, and D.J. Dean and Jared Collins have shown resiliency enough to bounce back from getting torched to make some plays. What may loom largest here is the development of Santos Ramirez and Josh Liddell, both of whom are athletic and fierce enough to create disruption in center field for quarterbacks who might get too frisky. It’s often said that it’s a bad sign when your leading tacklers are defensive backs, but if this tandem can instead lead the team in pass breakups and fumbles forced, then the results should be encouraging. Special Teams: Toby Baker was unexpectedly solid punting the ball last fall, and comes back as a senior looking like a Ray Guy Award candidate: He had no punts blocked last fall, permitted few returns of any consequence, and landed more than half of his boots inside the 20. Conversely, Cole Hedlund had a memorably shaky go-around as the placekicker, and Adam McFain, who was pretty good for a few games in 2014 after John Henson faltered, could pressure him if Hedlund’s first few boots are unsteady.

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he Observer gets letters from folks, either directly or through the grapevine. Recently, somebody forwarded us one written by a former schoolteacher, writing to her granddaughter, who is a new student at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs. The letter details a recent road trip through Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, and particularly those encounters spurred by her decision to wear a different Clinton for President T-shirt every day of her trip, and to spread the good word about Hillary any time somebody commented on her shirt. The letter is a real gem, but we can’t run the whole thing because of space. An abbreviated version follows: Dear S______, Enclosed, you will find a pair of sea turtle earrings. I bought these for you on St. George. I want to tell you of my adventures traveling through the Deep South wearing my Clinton T-shirts. Before the trip, I decided to take with me all my Clinton T-shirts and campaign pins. My plan was to wear a T-shirt each day and see what happened … . You will remember Journeys of St. George, the place where we sign up for boat trips and shelling excursions. We went into Journeys to arrange for a shelling trip to West Pass later in the week. The late-middle-aged man at the desk complimented me on my Clinton shirt and I gave him a pin. We visited for a while, and I reminded him that I had known Jenny who founded the business in the early 1980s. She ran a one-woman business with her mongrel dog named “Namaste.” Once we had settled on the date and time for the trip, he said, “You’ll be with Captain Jessie. Now, he’s a bit of a Trumper.” I said that wouldn’t be a problem. On the day of the trip, Jessie met us at the dock. Of course, I had on a Clinton T-shirt. Jessie said to me that the owner had said I had known Jenny and that

I knew Hillary personally. I explained both circumstances, and he said, “Well, I’m sort of independent, but I will vote for the best man or woman for the job.” I told him that was a good policy. Jessie is about 35, a good old boy, and chewed tobacco all day, spitting out the juice into an empty Coke cup. We stopped in the bay for the girls to watch the mama and baby dolphins play around the boat. We had a good day shelling. At the end of the day, as we got off the boat, Jessie said he’d keep an open mind. I said to him, “Jessie, I taught high school English for 25 years. Do you remember the girl who always sat at the front of the class? She always did her homework. She always had her hand up when the teacher asked a question.” Jessie nodded yes. I said, “That’s Hillary Clinton.” He laughed and said, “I hated her.” Then I said, “Do you remember the boy who sat in the back and was always cutting up and causing trouble? The class clown?” Jessie said, “That was me.” To which I said, “No, that was Donald Trump.” He looked startled. I finished by saying, “Now, which one of those students do you want to have his or her finger on the nuclear button?” He said, “Not Donald Trump … ” So, if I had to write an essay on how I spent my summer vacation, I would entitle it “Witnessing for Hillary, or How I Risked My Life Traveling Through the Deep South to Help Elect the First Woman President.” Of course, you remember that Hillary and Bill Clinton were the reason Arkansas created the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences (now ASMSA) and that I was the first teacher hired to develop the school and design the curriculum. It is so gratifying to me that you, my most beloved granddaughter, are beginning your studies at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in the very year that we elect Hillary Clinton as President of the United States. Much love …

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AUGUST 25, 2016

Arkansas Reporter

THE

‘This is not your grandfather’s America’ A Q&A with LRPD chief Kenton Buckner.

ince Little Rock Police Department Chief Kenton Buckner took the reins of the LRPD from outgoing Chief Stuart Thomas in June 2014, Arkansas Times has made it a point to check in with him for periodic chats about law enforcement, crime trends, challenges facing the LRPD and the road ahead. What follows is an excerpt of a long conversation with Buckner conducted in mid-August, with topics including the shooting of police officers in Dallas, whether the decision to kill Dallas cop-killer Micah Johnson with a robot carrying a bomb respected the rule of law, his thoughts on residency requirements for LRPD officers and why many of his officers choose to live outside the city, community policing, mass incarceration, juvenile justice, assault rifles and gun control, and the $900,000 settlement the city of Little Rock paid in the 2010 police shooting of Eugene Ellison, who was killed in his apartment after an altercation with two off-duty cops. For a longer version of this Q&A, find it at arktimes.com/buckner2016. Residency requirements have come up again, of course. Are you a supporter of residency requirements for police officers in the city of Little Rock? I’m a supporter of residency incentives. I’m not in favor of residential requirements. As a police chief, I do not think that I should have the right to tell a man or a woman where to raise their family. I do not think I should have that right. The common reasons given for the officers choosing to live in other parts of Central Arkansas are the cost of living in Little Rock, when you look at what a house would cost them in a comparable nice community of Little 12

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Rock vs. in Maumelle or in one of these other communities, there’s a significant difference. That affects your quality of life. There are many officers that don’t have a lot of faith in the public school system in Little Rock. The other part of it is that maybe they feel like the crime [rate] is too high in Little Rock, and they don’t want to live here. But that’s their choice, and they have a right to do that. And this notion that you don’t care about Little Rock because you don’t live here? Then why are you risking your life in Little Rock if you don’t care about Little Rock? There are many other occupations that someone could have other than law enforcement, but they choose to do law enforcement. To say that “because you don’t live in Little Rock” to imply that they don’t care about the city, I think, is just false and it supports a narrative that someone is trying to have for the residency requirement. I do see some pros to having a residency incentive. I think that, as a police officer, I truly believe that, yes, you are less likely to mistreat someone if you live next door to them. You’re less likely to do something unprofessional if you know that neighbor because you live in that particular area. I think you’re more likely to have a stronger, more trusting relationship if you’re familiar with one another. So I think that there are certainly some benefits to having an officer live in our city, but I would rather see something like a car given to an officer living in the city, some kind of pay incentive to maybe help with closing costs or something with a home, or some kind of financing incentives or something to purchase a home, and then give them the decision as to whether or not they choose to live here or not. But to require them to live in Little Rock? I would just not be in favor of that.

Just now and in your comments previously, the Little Rock School District has come up as one of the reasons why you say officers might not want to live in Little Rock. Some people, including [Arkansas Times Senior Editor] Max Brantley, have accused you of kind of throwing the Little Rock School District under the bus with all that. Is that a fair criticism? Are you putting too much blame on the Little Rock School District? So I want to make sure I understand your question correctly. Are you asking me, do I feel as if I’m throwing the

to live in the city, what the hell am I supposed to say? How do you think it makes me feel when people say, “I don’t want to live in Little Rock, because the crime is too high?” Is that throwing me under the bus? It’s the damn truth! We have problems with crime. So would I be thrown under the bus if someone said that? No! Sometimes the truth is painful. That doesn’t make it bad. That doesn’t make it a bad thing. We know we have challenges with our school system. We know we have problems with crime. So anyone who would say, “You’re throwing the school system under the bus,” I challenge them to give me an intelligent example of where I’ve thrown them

CHIEF BUCKNER: In response to calls to require LRPD officers to live in Little Rock so they would be part of the community, he says they have a right to live where they choose.

Little Rock school system under the bus by publicly saying that my officers list that as one of the reasons my officers give that they choose not to live in the city? I think I’m telling the truth. That’s one of the reasons they give. It is what it is. Do you want me to make up another reason? No, don’t make up another reason. Exactly! If they’re saying that’s one of the primary reasons they choose not

under the bus. They’re dealing with the same challenging circumstances and dynamics that I have to deal with in the city as it relates to crime. I would love for your editor to give me an example of how I’ve thrown them under the bus. I’d love to hear that. An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette study into your officers found that of 160 black officers on the force, 99 of those, or 62 percent, live

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in the city of Little Rock. Of 354 white officers, only 75, or 21 percent, live in the city of Little Rock. Why is there a difference there? To ask me why white officers, a higher percentage, live outside the city vs. why a lower percentage of AfricanAmericans choose to leave the city? I wouldn’t be able to give you a definitive answer on that. I think that’s going to be different for every household and every officer that chose to do so. The rock that you’ll have thrown to you is, “Well, this is a part of white flight!” Again, when Chief David Brown talked in Dallas, [he] said, “You’re putting too many things on police.” So now, we

THE

BIG PICTURE

Striking gold A chat with Olympic gold medalist Jeff Henderson

McAlmont native and Sylvan Hills High School and Stillman College grad Jeff Henderson, 27, brought home Olympic gold in the long jump for the United States and Arkansas on Aug. 13, with a leap of 8.38 meters (27.5 feet, nearly twice as far as a kangaroo can jump), besting South Africa’s Luvo Manyonga by a single centimeter. The effort was slightly off Henderson’s personal best of 28 feet. We spoke to him at Little Rock City Hall, after his return from the games in Rio de Janeiro. Going into the Olympics, what was your training like? Was it more rigorous than usual? It wasn’t really rigorous. We were really just keeping the same thing from the trials to the games, and not changing too much during that time. It was just fine-tuning in between that time. There’s not much changing we do around that time, just eating right, getting massages, making sure your body is good and your mind is good. What was it like competing on the world stage like that? It’s not really that different. It’s athletes you’re competing against, it’s just against [those from all over] the world. The crowd, of course, is much bigger. But you’re an athlete and you focus on one thing. You focus on what you have to do in your event and you’ll probably do pretty well. How did you get into track and field and the long jump in particular? I got into it when I was 15 or 16 years old. I started sprinting first, and then I got into jumping. I wanted to do less running because I never liked running at all, and I still don’t. But then I got into jumping and got farther and farther into it, and it became something easy to do. You won by one centimeter. What’s it like knowing the difference between gold and silver was that small? A win is a win, no matter what. That’s in any sport. It feels surreal, but it happens in basketball, track. A win is a win.

want the police department, the police chief, to stop white flight. Look how many things you’re asking me to do. I’m a very confident individual. I can do a lot of things. Come on. You expect me to do that? You can’t stop it. I wouldn’t even call it white flight, because there are a number of African-American officers that live outside the city. As to why the percentage is higher with white officers vs. black officers, you’d have to

What was it like being on the medal stand, hearing the national anthem and knowing you’d brought home a gold medal for America? It felt really good. I was one of the first gold medalists in track and field. I won the 999th gold medal [in summer Olympics for the U.S.]. So to bring it back home here to Arkansas and the United States, it feels like I’m dreaming. I’m walking in a dream right now. It feels good. We understand that your mother has been ill, and wasn’t able to be there with you in Rio. [Editor’s note: Henderson’s mother has had Alzheimer’s disease for over a decade.] The medal is for my mom. Hands down for my mom. I’m a mother’s boy, and she raised me when I was young — took me to all these sports events and Little League. So for her to go down and me to leave for the Olympics — it was definitely for her. We’ve heard you’ve been trying out for the Kansas City Chiefs football team. I’m going back to [training] camp probably next week. They told me I could get some time off if I’d go back, so I’ll be headed back to the Chiefs here very, very soon. The coaches there all love me. They’ve all showed their support and let me do the Olympics. But I’m ready to get back and help the team.

BRIAN CHILSON

What was your impression of Rio outside the Olympic venue? Of course, every city, every country has a good area and a bad area. The part that we were in was pretty protected by the USOC [U.S. Olympic Committee] and the IOC [International Olympic Committee]. We were protected very well, but of course if you go off of track anywhere, it’s not safe. Other than that, it was a good environment, a good venue. I liked it.

Do you think you’ll be competing in the Olympics again in 2020? I’m definitely going back in 2020 to defend the title.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

The Arkansas Times is launching its third annual Women Entrepreneurs issue in October, and we want to know who you think we should feature. Here is what to keep in mind: • Your nominee must be a woman who started her own business or took over a business and is still the owner/operator. • She must be an Arkansan. • She must be in business currently and have at least one year in business by the time of your nomination. • We welcome nominees who are LGBTQ. • She must fit in one of these industry categories: food, professions (teachers, doctors, attorneys, financial advisors, etc.), nontraditional, retail and design, and two new categories - trailblazers (women who do not have their own business but have led their profession to success – pastors, teachers, CEOs, writers, etc.), and those women entrepreneurs outside of Pulaski County.

NOMINEES WILL BE ACCEPTED UNTIL SEPTEMBER 2, 2016. Submit your nominee and her contact info to Kelly Lyles, kelly@arktimes.com and we will announce those selected in September. A panel of judges will determine the finalists and they will be announced by industries in the following issues:

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AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

ask each one of those families why they chose to live outside the city. Can officers who live in Cabot or Benton, who have very little contact with communities of color in their recreational life, effectively deal with communities of color in their professional life? That’s a great question. I think that they can. Do I think that there are some instances to where if you’ve grown up in a community where black and brown was not around you, will you misinterpret something? Very much so. As an African American who understands our culture, as you can see, I’m an animated person. I’m also loud, to where if me and another brother are standing somewhere and we’re talking, we’re just chewing the fat, but we may be loud and animated in doing so. Someone may perceive that as threatening, or [get the idea] that you’re going to do something to me. You may overreact or underreact given the circumstances, because you’re uncomfortable in that situation. We try to do our best to make sure our officers are ready for those moments. That they’re comfortable in the areas they’re working. We encourage you to get out of their car and engage the people. Not just the criminals that you’re having to deal with, but also the citizens. They’re the 90 percenters in the community. The vast majority of people in the community, they support the police. They’re not trying to do something to hurt you. But it’s very easy to become jaded, because when you go into an area, all you see is the negative in what we’re dealing with. But there are a lot of positive things going on. If you get out of your car and engage the community, you’ll see that people respect you, people appreciate what you’re doing. But you have to be intentional about that. That’s not going to accidentally happen. But to answer your question bluntly: Do I think that could be a challenge for an officer who has never been around black and brown people? Certainly I do. I really do think that could be a challenge. But that’s why we do implicit bias training, that’s why we do cultural diversity training, that’s why we do de-escalation training, that’s why we try to get our young people in the academy to bond to where you have black, white, Hispanic and Asians who have different backgrounds so you can see those kinds of things. That’s why we bring in outside instructors who are non-police, to talk about some of these sensitive issues with our classes, so they’re aware of all the diversities of the things you’re going to be expected to deal with when you hit the street. One of that

is there’s no secret that many of the times we’re having issues in the community, it involves black and brown communities. So you very much need to get comfortable with dealing with people who don’t look like you. I wanted to talk about Dallas. Is there a “Before Dallas” and “After Dallas” now? Has it changed the way that police departments and your police department do business? I think so. That’s another great question. Columbine was a moment for law enforcement. Pre-Columbine, we would set up a perimeter and wait for our [S.W.A.T.] folks to get there, and then we would make entry. PostColumbine, the first three or four officers on the scene, you go in and you engage the individual who is causing the problems in there. Pre-Dallas, I think that we kind of took protesting as kind of nonchalant. You stand on your post, you do what you’re supposed to do, respect the First Amendment to allow people to protest, make sure you’re protecting them, make sure it’s a planned event. Those kind of things. Post-Dallas, I think we have to do a better job of monitoring intelligence of any threats that may be on that event. I think you have to be able to take positions in that venue that give you kind of a 360-degree view of what’s going on so that someone can’t be above you or in private locations. I think we have to look at that. I think, equipment-wise, we have to wear equipment now. Several of the past [few] active shooters we’ve had where officers have been killed, assault rifles have been the weapon of choice. On the street, we carry a handgun, and a handgun vs. an assault rifle equals a dead police officer. So we have to be prepared to address those individuals when that threat comes. This takes me back to the question that we commonly hear: “Well, you all are militarizing yourselves! You look like an occupying force. Why are you driving that armored vehicle up to this house in a residential area?” No one has told the crooks to put down these military-style weapons. Have you ever seen what an assault rifle will do to a police car? It goes straight through it. You seen what an assault rifle does to a normal police vest? It goes straight through it. So there’s a reason [for] some of this force, like we talked earlier in our conversation, or this different equipment we have to have: Because the people who want to harm police or harm others, they’re using equipment

that, with the equipment we have right now, it’s an unfair situation for us. So we have to kind of pivot, make decisions to kind of protect ourselves, and then move from there. But throughout all this, the one thing that we can’t do is allow ourselves to distance ourselves from the community. That one individual who was responsible for the Dallas shooting, he’s an individual. The vast majority of the people, Black Lives Matter folks included, who were protesting that day, were nonviolent. They were compliant, they were in almost a celebratory moment in some instances with the Dallas police. So let’s not broadbrush Black Lives Matter. Let’s not broad-brush protesters. Because we wouldn’t want our profession broadbrushed. Is there a danger of police getting that post-Dallas mindset about protesters and going into every situation as if it’s going to be some kind of threat? There is a danger of that. Of thinking that the sky is falling or potentially everyone is trying to harm you. But I think if you have a true connection with the community, you’ll see that the vast majority of the community respects and appreciates you. If you look at the outpouring of support that occurred as a result of Baton Rouge, as a result of Dallas, and the things that people were bringing to our divisions, to give officers food and pastries and things, and walking up to us in public and in restaurants, in Kroger or at the dry cleaners, to say, “Thank you for what you’re doing.” Those are the things that you also have to put in your mental Rolodex, to say, “This is the majority.” They represent the majority of the people. So don’t allow yourself to take this one individual who was mentally disturbed, who had a weapon, and did some egregious things, don’t allow yourself to think that represents the community. It does not. That’s why it’s an extreme situation. We don’t see that that often. We hope that we don’t continue to see those things, but as we have more media, 24-hour cycles, we have social media, we’re starting to be more aware of officers who are injured or killed in the line of duty. So that’s where we have to kind of stay on top of things that are going on across the country, look at our operational procedures as we go about planning and preparing for incidents [like Dallas], close the gaps as much as we possibly can, stay connected to the community in doing so, and then the only other

thing you can do is pray. You know, I’ve got a credit card in my pocket, and I could go to Academy Sports today and buy an AR-15 that will turn a vest or police car into Swiss cheese. Should I be able to do that? Do you support a ban on assault weapons for civilians? I support the Second Amendment. I support responsible gun ownership, including a rifle, because there are a lot of responsible gun owners who have a rifle who have no intention of hurting anyone. They only want to protect themselves, or they want to go do some kind of sport shooting. Do I think that we need to have reasonable measures in place to make sure that individuals who have a mental illness don’t have the opportunity to get a weapon? If we have someone on a watch list and we believe we have tangible evidence that this person is a threat to the community, they should not be able to

lege-educated [community], Ivy League degrees, they were slaughtered in broad daylight. From that incident nothing happened. When you see something like that happen, with that demographic [but] an upper-echelon to middle-class white community was not able to move that needle as a result of that incident — that tells me, and it sounds maybe gray, but I doubt if we’ll see any kind of significant legislation or movement where we feel that we’ve done more to protect people from that happening again. If we allowed it to happen at Sandy Hook and nothing happened? If it had been 20 black or brown kids or something like that? We’re having a conversation where we’re having 2,500, 3,000 shootings in Chicago. Rubber stamped. But we didn’t even respond to [Sandy Hook]. Those families are still trying to get something done. And what has happened? Are you aware of anything significant that’s happened since then?

‘No one has told the crooks to put down these military-style weapons. Have you ever seen what an assault rifle will do to a police car? It goes straight through it. You seen what an assault rifle does to a normal police vest? It goes straight through it.’ buy a weapon. I think there are enough rules on the books currently, that if we were just able to better enforce those, we could probably close some of those gaps. But we have this kind of red and blue divided conversation about something that’s not taking us anywhere. I think that in order for us to truly have a sensible, intelligent conversation about it, I think we’re going to have to sit down and say, “What’s best for safety for our country?” rather than taking our political stances behind these lines. But the one thing that I will tell you, when you talk pre- and post-Sandy Hook. What I learned from Sandy Hook is that Chicago and other cities like it — Milwaukee, St. Louis, Little Rock, Memphis — who have a high number of deaths every year, so we’re used to seeing black and brown, particularly young people, killed. We’ve become numb to that. What Sandy Hook taught me is that, you had 20 kids, and I think six administrators there who were killed. They come from a wealthy, col-

Not that I know of. When it can happen to that community, and the needle not move? I don’t expect the needle to move. I wonder myself. Orlando was 50-plus people mowed down with an assault rifle, and people went back to their lives the next day, it seemed like. I don’t know what it’s going to take. During the Dallas shooting standoff, after Micah Johnson shot the officers, the Dallas Police Department sent in a robot with a pound of C-4 explosive attached to its arm and, without telling him apparently — without warning him with “we’re sending in a bomb if you don’t come out” — and blew him up after 45 minutes of negotiation. Nobody is going to shed a bitter tear over a guy who killed six cops, I don’t think, but it did set off some questions about due process. This is a guy who is holed up 45

minutes after he’s done this shooting, and he’s not shooting anymore, and they send in the bomb. I don’t know if it’s true about him not shooting anymore. I think there were some shots fired during the negotiation. [Editor’s note: Buckner is correct. Dallas Police Chief David Brown said that after negotiations with Johnson broke down, there was an additional exchange of gunfire.] Was sending in a robot with a bomb the right call? It’s apparently the first time a suspect has been killed by a robot in American history. Quote me on this: This is no longer your grandfather’s America. Extreme measures require extreme responses. He forced them into a situation where they gave him an opportunity to surrender. He had shown he was capable and committed to carrying out very grave, violent behavior. So an extreme response was required. I think [Dallas Police Chief] David Brown did a great job of bringing that to an end without anyone else getting hurt. You could say that about almost any hostage situation, though. You could say that about almost any standoff. There’s always a possibility that an officer could get hurt. Are you going to start issuing hand grenades to officers? I don’t think you’ll see an extreme jump to that, to say that we’ll end every incident now with C-4. I think that it’s safe to say that C-4 is on your tool belt now that we’ve seen that. I think it’s safe to say that C-4 going forward is an option if you’ve had similar circumstances. Again, let’s make sure that we shape this the right way. This is a man who ambushed a crowd, particularly police. And then, once he’s cornered, and given an opportunity to give himself up, you refuse to do so. At points you’re laughing, and almost playing with the officers, showing that you have no intentions of giving up. So my question to you is, if your son is one of the people that I have at the other end of the hallway that’s making sure that guy can’t come out of that room, how much confidence would you have in my decision-making if I was to tell your son and seven other officers, “OK, he’s not giving up. We’re going to have to make entry?” What chief would send a team into a room with a man sitting, waiting for you, who has already killed six police officers? He put David Brown’s back against the wall. So David had to make a tough decision. And in this business, if you can’t make tough decisions, get out of the seat. arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

BRIAN CHILSON

AT UAMS: RN trauma coordinator Terry Collins and surgeon Dr. Ron Robertson say the trauma patient load has tripled since the system was implemented.

Trauma system takes a hit Doctors worry about impact of canceled contract with educational arm, loss of funds. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

n 2009, nearly one in three deaths from traumatic injury

in Arkansas may have been preventable. A scientific study by a panel of trauma experts, studying trauma

cases from that year, found that 9 percent of the deaths were

“frankly preventable,” and another 21 percent were “possibly preventable.” Arkansas’s preventable mortality rate was the worst in the nation, the American Medical Society reported at that time. Patients were bleeding to death before they could get to a hospital, or improperly intubated, or transported to a facility that did not have the expertise to treat them. There were all manner of problems because, unlike every other state in the union, Arkansas had no coordinated statewide system to get the injured to the right place quickly. 16

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The year 2009 was a watershed in trauma care in Arkansas, thanks to the creation of the Arkansas Trauma System of integrated medical care throughout the state. Since then, the study, which compared 2009 trauma patient data to 2013 data, found that preventable deaths had been cut nearly in half, to 16 percent.

An informal analysis by a committee of medical professionals of more recent data suggests the rate could be down to 14 percent, Dr. Charles Mabry, a Pine Bluff surgeon and one of the leaders in the trauma system startup, said. Reporting in June to colleagues on the Governor’s Trauma Advisory Council, which has been crucial to the implementation of the system, Mabry credited the improvement in survival rates to ongoing education, rather than “gizmos or gadgets.” He judged the education portion of the system to be responsible for 90 percent of the improvement in the reduction of preventable deaths. But the trauma system’s delivery of that education — the Arkansas Trauma Education and Research Foundation — no longer exists. The Trauma Section of the Arkansas Department of Health canceled its nearly $1.2 million contract with ATERF in May, saying it had not worked with ADH to correct its billing practices.

Trauma professionals are also unhappy that this year the system will not receive unspent dollars that since 2009 have been carried over from the previous year’s budget. They say those funds have been used to meet unanticipated needs and develop new programs successful at saving lives.

TAMMY ALEXANDER: Credits the trauma system’s change in where patients are taken for her survival of an automobile accident.

A TRAUMA SYSTEM IS A CLASSIC example of the whole being made into something greater than the sum of its parts. With the creation of the trauma system, the state’s dozens of existing hospitals were bound into a network in which each is identified by level of medical expertise, staffing and equipment. Information and coordination are at the heart of the system, which includes a “dashboard” that provides real-time information on availability and capacity at area hospitals, a call center that relays dashboard information to emergency transport personnel, a registry that keeps data on all patients treated in the system, and year-round education for medical professionals, including paramedics, first responders, doctors and trauma nurses. The last state in the nation to implement a trauma system, Arkansas is now recognized nationally, doctors say, for the improvements it’s made in patient care. Today, 64 hospitals in Arkansas are trauma-designated, up from a mere 37 in 2012, though lower than the 70 participating in 2014. Tammy Alexander is one of those people who before Arkansas changed the way it provided trauma care would almost certainly have died of the injuries she suffered March 15. On that day, Alexander, 56, a psychotherapist at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in North Little Rock, was headed home to Beebe on U.S. Highway 67-167 when a southbound SUV lost control and barreled through the cables dividing the highway, hitting her head-on. (The driver of the SUV said he’d lost control when an ember from his cigarette went into his eye). The impact spun Alexander’s car into the barrier cables “and they acted like a sling shot,” she said, sending her back across both northbound lanes of traffic and into trees along the side of

BRIAN CHILSON

***

the road. When the car came to a stop, she tried to get out, “but nothing in my body would move.” Alexander looked down at her arm and saw bones and flesh. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s why I can’t get out of the door.’ ” Someone — she doesn’t know who — called 911 and ambulances with two paramedics arrived quickly on the scene. One of them crawled into the car from the back window, stabilized Alexander’s head and neck, and kept her conscious by talking and asking questions about her family; she even prayed with her. When rescuers using the Jaws of Life came to extricate Alexander from the car, she guided them away from Alexander’s shattered left arm. It took

an hour to pry the car open; Alexander was then airlifted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The helicopter got her to a waiting trauma team at the hospital in six minutes, “and once I landed, there was a flurry of activity,” she said, as the trauma team took over. She was conscious but her blood pressure was bottoming out; an ultrasound machine indicated she was bleeding internally. Surgeons went to work opening her up to stop the bleeding and tending to the compound fracture of the arm and broken femur. She spent five days in the intensive care unit and another six in a trauma step-down room, and she’s since had to have bone grafts. “There are bones out there on 67-167 that came

out of my arm,” she said good-naturedly. Alexander credited the trauma system — and divine providence — for the fact that she is alive today. And, she is not just alive: She is walking and working two days a week. Terry Collins, a registered nurse and director of trauma services for the College of Medicine at UAMS, said before the new trauma rules were put into place, Alexander would have been taken to the closest hospital — North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville, which operates at the lowest level in the trauma system “where they don’t have surgeons in house 24/7 or the ability to go to interventional radiology and stop the bleeding. She very likely would have died before she got transferred [to UAMS]. And that’s what we saw before the trauma system: People bled to death.” “Patients have such tremendous reserves, they can bleed out without looking sick,” Texarkana surgeon and trauma system leader Dr. Jim Booker said. Now, trauma-designated hospitals have what is called a massive transfusion protocol to identify such patients and intercede early, and trauma personnel have begun to reintroduce the use of tourniquets to first responders, including police. The ability to train lay people in the use of tourniquets “is on our bucket list,” Collins said. The carryforward funds could have been used to take tourniquets off the list. *** SINCE THE IMPLEMENTATION of the trauma system, the number of patients requiring hospital care because of injury coming to UAMS has increased from around 700 a year to 2,300. In response, UAMS has increased its trauma surgical team from two — Dr. John Cone and Dr. Ron Robertson — arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

‘They didn’t give up on me. They watched me 24/7, around the clock. … They saved me.’ — Gary Worsham, injured by falling steel beams

*** THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT’S Trauma Section oversees the business of the system, such as budgeting and grantmaking, maintaining the Trauma Registry and oversight of the trauma communications center. The 24-member (two ex-officio) Governor’s Trauma Advisory Council, whose members include representatives from the Trauma Nurses Society, the Arkansas Medical Society, the American College of Surgeons, the Arkansas Ambulance Association and other groups, as well as legislative appointments, provides the expertise and advises the department on how the various components of the system can better function. Mabry, the chairman of the Quality 18

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CODED TWICE AT UAMS: But Gary Worsham, who suffered internal organ damage, a fractured pelvis, a shattered kneecap and broken left leg, survived, thanks to the trauma team. Today, he can walk using a walker.

Improvement/Trauma Regional Advisory Council committee of the trauma council, reported the good news about the reduction in preventable trauma deaths to the council at its last meeting on June 21. By doing so, he underscored fears that the department’s decision to cancel its contract with ATERF could undermine the impressive progress made these past several years. Mabry’s report also followed a decision by Booker, the Texarkana surgeon, to quit consulting with the Trauma Section. In a June 16 letter to Arkansas Department of Health Director Dr. Nathaniel Smith, Booker said he was stepping down because of changes the department was making to the trauma system. “The education process within the state has been completely halted with no backup plan,” Booker wrote. “In this scenario, we will be unable to enforce the educational requirements for hospital designation.” He described the changes as “penny-wise and pound foolish.” Booker was also unhappy, he wrote Smith, that his opinion on not continuing the ATERF contract had not been sought and, more troubling, that ADH staff had been instructed not to inform him of the cancellation of the contract. The health department’s contract with ATERF, which dated to 2012, was supposed to run through the 2017 fiscal year (which began July 1, 2016). ATERF, a nonprofit, has provided dozens of classes yearly across Arkansas since 2012 as part of the trauma system’s strategy to improve outcomes. State subsidies allowed ATERF to offer the classes for as little as $100 to $150. When offered directly from the American College of Surgeons, the same classes could cost as much as $1,400. Just as impor-

BRIAN CHILSON

to seven, and two more doctors will be hired soon. That worked well for Gary Worsham, who on Feb. 23 found himself underneath 6,000 pounds of steel in the form of 10 I-beams. They collapsed on Worsham, 53, early one morning while he was working at AFCO Steel in Little Rock. His co-workers were on break, so he wasn’t discovered until he’d been lying beneath the beams for around 20 minutes. “Everybody thought I was dead,” Worsham said. Worsham was rushed to UAMS, where his trauma score — a measure of the severity of injury — was a skyhigh 41. (By comparison, Alexander’s was 17; at 75, you don’t survive.) Worsham said he was “swollen as a pig” when he arrived at the ER. The trauma team went to work to stop the bleeding from his jumbled and crushed organs; “I coded twice,” meaning his heart stopped, Worsham said, “and they didn’t give up on me.” Besides his internal injuries, he also had a fractured pelvis, a shattered kneecap and a broken left leg. Worsham said he was on an artificial respirator for a month. “They didn’t give up on me,” Worsham kept repeating. “They watched me 24/7, around the clock. … They saved me. Now I’m on the walker, but I can move. My insides are kind of moved around, but I am alive and I thank God for that.”

tantly, ATERF has taken the classes to hospitals around the state rather than require personnel to come to Little Rock, which has increased class attendance dramatically, according to trauma surgeon Robertson. The beauty of ATERF’s involvement, doctors say, is that it has been able to modify regular courses to fit the particular needs of Arkansas. For instance, when Trauma Registry data showed that paramedics in one part of the state were having problems successfully intubating patients, ATERF sent a teaching team with airway mannequins to correct the problem. At the June trauma council meeting, where he was thanked for his service to the trauma system, Booker’s voice

cracked with emotion as he told his colleagues that it was “incredibly distressing that changes are being made by the finance department that will affect trauma outcomes. The people making the decisions don’t have a clue on the clinical impact. ... These changes will increase preventable deaths. These changes will cause Arkansans to die.” Without state funding, ATERF is now defunct. The health agency says it owes the state money, and has asked Legislative Audit for a study. Former ATERF officers say the nonprofit also has unpaid bills. There have been grumblings about ATERF for several years, including criticism of the nonprofit’s choice of swanky

Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri for conferences, and its alcohol bills from meetings. Former ATERF director Claudia Parks-Miller simultaneously acted as the nonprofit’s lawyer, which meant she signed checks to herself for legal services rendered. But Dennis Robertson, who took over the day-to-day running of ATERF from an ailing Parks-Miller in January, said vendor fees rather than state dollars picked up the bar tabs. Dr. Booker said he believed that some at the health department thought ATERF was paying doctors (including himself) too much to teach the classes. But, he said, teaching required doctors to leave their offices, which cost them money, to spend time out in the state. “Who else wants to go to Crossett, Arkansas?” he asked. “There are just so many [doctors] who want to do it.” ADH general counsel Robert Brech attended the June trauma council meeting to explain the health department’s problems with the ATERF contract. ATERF, which had been paid by the department since 2012 under a fee-for-service arrangement, declined in February to provide receipts for expenses to the health department when requested. ADH maintains that ATERF’s pay should have been “reimbursement for actual expenses … . There is no doubt,” Brech told the Trauma Advisory Council members. When Parks-Miller argued in February that the nonprofit’s fee-for-service contract did not require it to provide receipts that detailed its expenses, Brech informed her that the health department would not pay any invoices until the receipts were turned over. “Well, right the next day, they delivered $90,000 worth of invoices to the health depart-

ment,” he told the trauma council. The department did not pay the invoices. Brech acknowledged that the department shouldered some of the blame for the improper reimbursement of ATERF in the past. “Since the department did not ask for receipts, the department is at fault. … We should have been asking for receipts at the beginning.” But, he added, ATERF “was making quite a profit off these classes.” The organization, after three years, “had a half mil-

tions. He is also Dr. Ron Robertson’s brother.) When the health department canceled the contract with ATERF, the nonprofit could not recoup the $125,000 it paid earlier in May to put on a trauma education update conference in Rogers, Robertson said, and in total, ATERF was out $314,000 for services performed. ATERF has trained 3,500 medical professionals since 2012, Dennis Robertson said, addressing shortcomings

‘The people making the decisions don’t have a clue on the clinical impact. ... These changes will increase preventable deaths. These changes will cause Arkansans to die.’ — Dr. James O. Booker lion cash in the bank.” ATERF’s most recent tax form, for the tax year ending June 2014, reported $768,687 in net assets. But it has virtually no money in the bank now, Dennis Robertson said. The 990 form was a “snapshot in time,” Robertson said, that did not reflect outstanding debt that was paid off after the form was filed. ATERF hired him, Robertson said, to build up the corpus of the nonprofit as a cushion against unanticipated debt and to be able to one day provide education without state funding. (Robertson was an aide to U.S. Sen. David Pryor and a former lobbyist for the Arkansas Electric Cooperatives and former head of Pinnacle Business Solu-

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trauma doctors in Arkansas had identified. The nonprofit had been budgeted to receive $1,152,033 in fiscal year 2017. The money will still go to education, said Brech and Greg Brown, the health department’s branch chief of trauma, public health preparedness and EMS since January, but they had no specifics. Brown told the Trauma Advisory Council that rumors that he “hated education” were wrong, and that the health department was “totally committed” to renewing training. “How that will look going forward, we’ll see,” and that “local people giving local education,” such as occurred through ATERF, “you can’t argue with that.”

Mabry, though he sounded the alarm about the need for continued education, and credited ATERF for supplying “the needed resources, staff and ramp-up capability” in his report to the Trauma Advisory Council, said he expects the state will now send education grants directly to hospitals. The American College of Surgeons will continue to offer classes as it always has. ATERF supporters have known the nonprofit was in trouble with agency finance personnel since the beginning of the year, when former trauma chiefs at the health department published a statement warning that the agency, after an internal review, was reinterpreting the way the ATERF contract should have been handled. ATERF maintains it was the health department’s idea that the nonprofit should be compensated in a fee-for-service arrangement. The statement, put out by Brown’s predecessor at the health department, Bill Temple, and thenTrauma Section Chief Renee Joiner, who has also left the health department, said, “The contract was administered as fee-for-service contract for the entire 4 1⁄2 years [it was maintained]. ATERF submitted invoices, was paid the negotiated price for a course and the contract was renewed four times over four years under this fee-for-service administration. ATERF delivered 231 courses and fee for service invoices were submitted to the Health Department for each course. The Health Department paid every invoice without question or indication of a problem over the 4 1/2 years.” What changed? Dr. Todd Maxson, the head of trauma care at Arkansas Children’s Hospital,

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intimated that some of the state agency’s problems with the trauma system — and perhaps the legislature’s as well — have to do with the fact that a small core of health professionals has been involved so deeply, serving on the state trauma council and Arkansas’s seven regional trauma councils, consulting with the health department and teaching classes. “There are always going to be people who don’t like [the system] because it moves their cheese in some way,” Maxson added. Maxson said that thanks to ATERF, “We have cut preventable mortality in this state in half. To reel back in the control of that, the system, to redirect the money, to eliminate an effective education plan, I just think it’s a travesty.” Maxson acknowledged that he was paid by ATERF to teach, but said that he took vacation days from work to do so, and that he was paid less to teach than he would have been paid at work. If ATERF has done something illegal, Maxson said, he would support “any recourse necessary.” But, he said, the department should have consulted with the state’s trauma care experts, and had a substitute educational plan in place before ending its contract with ATERF. He said medical personnel will still be able to take classes offered by the American College of Surgeons, but that they will be fewer, more expensive and less accessible, since most will be offered in Little Rock. Maxson also quit consulting with the Trauma Section in June. He said he did so because of his new duties as head of the hospital’s Burn Center. *** THE TRAUMA SYSTEM leadership expected to receive $4.5 million in carry-forward funds to add to the $19.2 million trauma budget for the 2017 fiscal year that began July 1. But the legislature reduced the sum to $3.7 million, and, thanks to an amendment by Sen. Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View), none of the unspent dollars will carry over to the trauma system. They will instead be used to purchase longacting contraceptives for state health clinics and on health agency programs related to stroke and heart attacks, programs the agency advocated for. In an interview, Irvin, who serves on the Joint Budget Committee of the legislature, said she “really did her homework” before deciding to move the carry-forward funds out of the 20

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ARKANSAS TIMES

trauma budget and into to the health department. The system should not expect to be able to use its unspent dollars when “it’s hard to find new funding for new programs,” Irvin said. Mabry and others at the June trauma council meeting told Brown they would have liked to have had a heads-up from the health department so they could have explained to the legislature the importance of the carryforward funds before the decision was made to send them elsewhere. But Irvin, who is married to a doctor, said trauma leadership had the opportunity to come before the legislature. Maxson “never once appeared before the public health committee,” she said.

TODD MAXSON: The Arkansas Children’s Hospital doctor would like to make hospital participation in the trauma system a requirement.

‘There are always going to be people who don’t like [the trauma system] because it moves their cheese in some way.’ — Dr. Todd Maxson Though Brech and Brown declined to discuss the ATERF situation with a reporter, they did discuss trauma system funding. Brech said the health department’s budget of $53 million has been flat since 2001, adjusting for inflation. Moving the unspent trauma budget funds into the department’s general budget will make up for that somewhat. Brown added that the trauma council members, while professing surprise at the loss of the dollars, had known since May, because “we didn’t allow them to budget it.” Brown said the trauma budget had allocated $165,000 for special evidence-based projects that would previously have come out of carry-forward money. “I think members of the [trauma council] understand” how funding works, Brown said. “I think the [trauma council] needs to understand that’s not their money that they would have forever,” Brech said of the unspent funds. *** ANOTHER SUGGESTION OF pullback in the trauma system is the fact that there are six fewer hospitals in the trauma system than there were two years ago. Out of Arkansas’s 76 hospitals, 64 are designated. (Designation is volun-

tary; some hospitals have never been part of the system.) But 33 of the 64 are deficient in meeting trauma system requirements, according to health department spokeswoman Marisha DiCarlo, and in danger of losing their designation. The legislation that created the trauma system prevents the public from knowing which hospitals have deficiencies. But the health department has published a list of designated hospitals periodically, however, so changes can be tracked. The number of hospitals designated as Level I, the highest, has increased thanks to the addition of out-of-state participants in Memphis and Springfield, Mo. Level I hospitals are required to have a number of trauma specialists on duty at all times, including neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons, and also have a general surgery residency program. They include UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and the Regional Medical Center (The Med) in Memphis, and CoxHealth and Mercy Hospital in Springfield. In-state Level I hospitals are funded at $1 million a year; out-ofstate hospitals are compensated based on the number of Arkansas patients they care for. The number of Level II hospitals — comprehensive trauma centers required to have trauma-trained surgical staff — has fluctuated between four and five: Today, Baptist Health Medical

Center, CHI St. Vincent in Hot Springs, CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, Mercy Hospital in Springfield and Washington Regional in Fayetteville are Level II. In-state Level II hospitals will receive around $500,000 in 2017. But several hospitals have slipped in designation. Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff has downgraded from II to III (requiring only “consistent general surgical coverage,” according to a health department publication). Chicot Memorial Medical System, a Level III in 2015, is now a Level IV, the designation for community hospitals without consistent surgical service but with providers who know how to evaluate, stabilize and rapidly transfer patients. Magnolia Regional Medical Center, once a III, is also now a IV. Level III hospitals receive around $120,000 and Level IV around $25,000. Johnson Regional Medical Center, a Level III in 2012, is no longer part of the system, which means that Clarksville is without a trauma-designated hospital. Level IV hospitals in Arkadelphia, Walnut Ridge and Ashdown, have also dropped out of the system. It’s important that all patients have “ready access” to a trauma-designated hospital, trauma surgeon Ron Robertson said, “but as the system develops, you’ll find that the [geographic] need

for everybody to be a trauma center goes away.” But, he added, “What you hope drives [the decision to leave the system] is data-based evidence” that the service is redundant. Meeting surgeon requirements may get harder: Robertson, who has taught Advanced Trauma Life Support classes to thousands of Arkansas doctors, said about half the state’s 71 general surgeons are getting ready to retire in the next few years without replacements coming to fill their spots. “We could find ourselves with a shortage,” he said. Already there is a shortage of neurosurgeons; Jefferson Regional dropped to a Level III because it could not hire a neurosurgeon to be on call, Robertson said. Arkansas Children’s Hospital trauma chief Maxson said the hospital designation is “moving in the wrong direction.” “In some ways, that’s OK” that some hospitals have decided to withdraw from the trauma system,” Maxson said, if there was redundancy in delivery and dollars are tight. But, he added, communities need to know if their hospitals “have chosen not to meet Arkansas standards,” as a matter of public health. Ideally, however, Maxson said, “I think a trauma designation ought to be mandatory.” Or, he said, if not, nondesignated hospitals should not be allowed to accept trauma patients, which is how Ohio and Oregon handle their systems. Health department section chief Brown, however, said that just because a hospital is not designated doesn’t mean it offers poor or subpar care.

has been able to see a CT scan taken of the patient before he’s even on the road to UAMS. There’s a blood bank waiting. It is a sign of UAMS’ commitment to its trauma care that it keeps an operating room — its main “profit center,” Robertson said — empty so there will be no waiting when it is needed. Asked if he was concerned that the legislature thinks the trauma system is funded well enough, Robertson said he had concerns. “I get it: $20 million is a lot of money,” Robertson said, “and a lot of projects I’m sure people believe are equally as

A DIGITAL TIMER HANGS ON the wall of one of UAMS’ trauma emergency rooms. Robertson uses it to make sure he’s hitting all his goals: By three minutes, his patient should have vitals taken, blood drawn, be ready for a chest X-ray; by “seven, eight or nine minutes” Robertson should have seen the X-ray “and we’re going to the operating room or the CT scanner down the hall. By 10 minutes, I am ready to make a definitive diagnosis.” A map above the clock shows where all members of the trauma team should be standing. But before the clock starts at the ER, the medic has called the charge nurse to inform her of the incoming patient’s injuries and the charge nurse has assembled the trauma team of doctors and nurses and technicians. Sometimes, thanks to the relatively new Trauma Imagery Repository, the doctor

“Sixteen percent mortality is not acceptable for those of us that live and breathe this, who know the patients by name, that take care of these patients,” Collins said. “This trauma family wakes up every day and knows our job is to save lives, and we’re blessed, I believe, that we have the opportunity to save lives. It’s also a responsibility and a challenge to be the best that we can be, and to continue that work we have done to drive down our preventable mortality rate. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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important as the trauma system. But I don’t think you’ll find something as labored over or as scientifically tested as rigorously as we have” to show that the system saves lives. Saving lives also equates to saving money: Since most trauma patients are young, keeping them alive and able to work is a plus for the economy. With ATERF dismantled and the carry-forward funds diverted to other uses, Ron Robertson and Terry Collins worry the trauma system could lose ground rather than keep hammering away at preventable mortality.

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AUGUST 25, 2016

Arts Entertainment AND

PITTARD: Her third novel forces the reader to question the reliability of the narrators.

Listen to her Hannah Pittard will read from her novel ‘Listen to Me’ at Oxford American Annex. BY MATT BAKER

hen Hannah Pittard (“Reunion,” “The Fates Will Find Their Way”) joins Kevin Brockmeier for a reading at the Oxford American Annex next Tuesday, it’ll be 22

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Pittard’s first time in front of an Arkansas audience. The Georgia native recently published her third novel, “Listen to Me,” a road trip story featuring a childless couple and their dog as they make their

annual trip to the husband’s family in Virginia. Seems straightforward enough. Been there, done that, right? Nope, not quite. Like a good horror tale, they stumble from the get-go, take unsafe exits, and Pittard forces the reader to question the reliability of two narrators, and to admit whose story we find more credible. Mark and Maggie appear to be a typical upper middle-class couple approaching the sunrise of middle age; financially sound and educated — overall, content. From the beginning, though, there’s tension; they oversleep (of all things!) and now they’re running late. The Chicago interstates continue to clog, and they argue about who is doing what in their departure preparations. Frustrated sighs resonate throughout the opening chapters, and though Pittard leaves them off the page, she writes so well we can hear them in our own heads. Something is off between Mark and Maggie: Not only is Maggie dealing with the emotional aftereffects of having been mugged recently, but both are beginning to secretly question the durability of their marriage. Pittard lets us into the headspace of both characters; we simultaneously know what each is thinking while they’re sitting a foot apart, locked in a car, their destination hundreds of miles away. Mark thinks Maggie is a wimp for allowing the mugging to so adversely impact her life, and Maggie thinks Mark has sexual desires for another woman. If it wasn’t for their loveable dog, Gerome, who provides a needed distraction and mutual focus, it’s possible this road trip would never happen. Once they finally get out of Chicago and pass through Gary, Ind., Maggie ponders the horrifying fate of those who live there. “Gary wasn’t just a place to die. It was, as far as she was concerned, a place to be killed. It was a place to hate your life.” Put simply, “Bad things happened in Gary.” On the surface, it’s the complete opposite of Maggie and Mark’s life, but because of her assault, Maggie now seems more acutely sensitive to the psychological impact of violence for which, from the interstate, Gary is a

towering representation — rusted, inoperable machinery, a community deluged in brutality and overwhelming helplessness; a clear symbol of what’s not supposed to happen to people like her. After Gary, they begin their diagonal cut through Indiana and first learn about the violent storms in their direct path. (What’s a road trip without bad weather?) It’s at this point in the novel that I got the first whiff of a possible Patricia Highsmith plot, and began to think we were headed straight for an invisible crime scene; that one of the characters — although I couldn’t decide which — was manipulating all of us and would, ultimately lead us all overboard. As the story continued, closely confined to the moving car, I kept visualizing myself as the omniscient helicopter shot in the opening of “The Shining,” awaiting their inevitable plunge from the rainsoaked roads. In fact, at the midpoint of “Listen to Me,” Pittard briefly halts the novel and asks the reader to consider this very viewpoint. “And now a pause ... jump skyward. ... Move higher, higher, until you have attained the perfect perspective, the better perspective. ... Look down. Can you see it? Can you see the automobile?” It’s precisely those Highsmith and Kubrick elements that make this novel so captivating. Pittard’s “Listen to Me” refuses to follow a single set of genre rules, and there’s great freedom that arises from that choice. The chapters are perfectly paced, and the writing is nimble and easy to absorb, and Pittard, thankfully, allows the characters to tell the story. I spoke to Pittard recently about the novel, and asked her how “Listen to Me” compares to her other two books. “This book is exactly what I wanted it to be, every word, every sentence,” she said. Those are words worth keeping in mind when confronted with the novel’s startling conclusion. Maybe the road trip to Virginia is, after all, exactly what Maggie and Mark needed it to be. Pittard joins Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Kevin Brockmeier (“A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip,” “The Brief History of the Dead,” “Things That Fall From the Sky”) for readings and conversation at the Oxford American Annex 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 30. Admission is free.

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A&E NEWS BRYAN HEMBREE AND JERRMY Gawthrop, the masterminds behind the Fayetteville Roots Festival, have done it again. With surprise announcements like this week’s addition of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas to headliner Gregory Alan Isakov’s set and a lineup that sprawls across south Fayetteville and includes Old Crow Medicine Show, Birds of Chicago, The Milk Carton Kids and The Shook Twins, ticket sales have been strong. As the Times went to press, all mainstage passes for Friday and Saturday were sold out, but tickets remained available at fayettevilleroots.com for Sunday’s mainstage show (Shovels and Rope, John Moreland, Hayes Carll), as well as for Friday and Saturday’s late-night shows at George’s Majestic Lounge, which feature Amasa Hines, Samantha Fish, and Amy Helm with Earl & Them. Get tickets and more info at fayettevilleroots.com.

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AMY LEE, THE LITTLE Rock-born lead singer for Evanescence, told her Facebook fans last December that she was “angry enough to write Evanescence’s heaviest album” after artistic disagreements with “the suits” at her former record company, but you’d never know it from “Dream Too Much,” the children’s album Lee just released, inspired by her 2-year-old son, Jack, and studded with covers of familiar songs like “Rubber Duckie,” “Hello Goodbye” and “Goodnight My Love.” What started as a gift to her father in the form of studio time blossomed into a family affair, and the tracks are laden with ukelele, dobro and banjo from Amy’s father, John Lee; guitar, bass and harmonica from her uncle Tom, and harmonies from her sisters Carrie and Lori Lee.

Book & lyrics by Eric Idle | Music by John Du Prez & Eric Idle

AUGUST 31 — OCTOBER 2

The cast of Spamalot. Photo by John David Pittman.

“MERCE,” A CAMPY MUSICAL comedy webseries starring Charles Sanchez, former musical director at Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, has been selected for September’s Official Latino Short Film Festival in New York, following screenings at Brooklyn Web Fest and Austin WebFest. Now in the fundraising phase for its second season, “Merce” tells the story of a single, gay, HIV-positive man living in Manhattan. “I wanted to show something opposite, something that reflected my own attitudes and life,” Sanchez said. “As a culture, we’re suffering from major PTSD from the AIDS crisis of the early ’80s and ’90s. The images of ravaged, sick and dying men and women were so vivid that they echo in our collective consciousness. When we hear HIV, those images come up, no matter how long ago they were.” All eight episodes are up at mercetv. com.

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arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THURSDAY 8/25

STONEWALL DEMOCRATS’ ‘DONKEYS AND DRINKS’ 5 p.m. Club Sway

When Club Sway owner Jason Wiest talked with the Arkansas Times in 2014, back when he was working as a speechwriter for Gov. Mike Beebe’s administration, he talked about some of the barriers to progress in the area of LGBT

rights in Central Arkansas, noting that “there are not a lot of things to do or organizations or ways to get involved that are not nightlife related.” Club Sway has since gained some ground on that challenge, hosting parties like last month’s standing-room-only “A Moment in HERstory,” a watch party for Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Conven-

tion that transitioned immediately into a live drag show featuring a king and queen miming to the audio track from a “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” sketch, in which Donald Trump (played by Fallon) makes a phone call to Hillary Clinton (played by herself). This Thursday marks another step in Wiest’s quest to further connect the gay nightlife crowd with the politics that affect their

lives: the first of a series of events in which Wiest says “LGBTQIA Arkansans will be able to listen to elected officials, candidates for public office and political figures discuss issues important to the gay community in a gay space.” U.S. Senate candidate Conner Eldridge headlines the first installment of this happyhour speaker series, to be continued the fourth Thursday of every month.

FRIDAY 8/26-SUNDAY 8/28

‘THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK:’ A READING

C. BILL MILES

7:30 p.m. Fri-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. The Studio Theater. Free-$16.

NEON BLUEBIRD FLIES THE NEST: Amy Helm returns to her famous father’s home state Thursday with tunes from her debut solo album, “Didn’t It Rain,” and her touring band The Handsome Strangers in tow, South on Main, 8 p.m., Aug 25, $28-$38.

THURSDAY 8/25

AMY HELM & THE HANDSOME STRANGERS

8 p.m. South on Main. $28-$38.

At 44 years old, Amy Helm — daughter of The Band’s Levon Helm and musician Libby Titus — released her debut solo album, “Didn’t It Rain.” Named after a song made famous by 24

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Arkansas’s own Sister Rosetta Tharpe and recorded in “The Barn,” in Woodstock, N.Y., “Didn’t It Rain” was a long time coming. Helm, after all, had been performing in folk group Ollabelle for over a decade, collaborating with her father for 2007’s “Dirt Farmer,” a stellar collection of traditional tunes pro-

duced by Amy and recorded after her father’s recovery from throat cancer. Her Arkansas connections are deep, and she told us she’s thrilled to be revisiting a place that, for her, “always felt like home, like I was totally loved. It always felt like we laughed a lot as soon as we got down there.”

Were it not for Miep Gies, one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide Anne Frank, her family and four other Jews from Nazi persecution during World War II, Anne Frank’s diary — then called “Het Achterhuis,” or “the back-room,” referring to the “secret annex” of the Opekta building in which the Franks hid, might never have been recovered. After being held at gunpoint during the eventual arrest of the Jewish families hiding at 263 Prinsengracht — and only escaping arrest herself because she was from the same city as the officer sent to interrogate her — she retrieved Anne’s diaries and tucked them away in her desk drawer, later relaying them to Anne’s father. Those documents were published and, in 1955, became “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Despite winning a Tony, a Pulitzer and a New York Critic’s Circle Award, the play received criticism over the years for overly sentimentalizing what was, at root, a dark and tragic set of documents, and for underemphasizing the Jewish elements of Frank’s original diary. So, in 1997, Wendy Kesselman offered a revision of that play that ends on a notably darker tone than the 1955 version and, as critic Greg Evans wrote, “at least partially reasserts the historic Anne’s darker vision as well as the diary’s overt Jewishness.” The readings this weekend are a fundraiser for Community Theater of Little Rock and are presented as a “reader’s theater” with no costumes or staging. Matthew Mentgen directs and Isabelle Marchese reads the part of Anne Frank. Other cast members include Ryan Whitfield as Otto Frank, Erin Martinez as Edith Frank and Jennifer Lamb as Miep.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 8/25

MONDAY 8/29

MEREDITH WALKER

6 p.m. Sturgis Hall. Free.

CADRON VALLEY SLUDGE: Los Angeles’ -(16)- cap off Liverfest, a weekend of noise rock, campfires, swimming and heavy metal at Cadron Creek Outfitters, featuring sets from Adam Faucett, Sumokem, Seahag, Iron Tongue, I Was Afraid, Hexxus, Full of Hell, The Body and more, 7 p.m. Friday to midnight Sunday, $15.

FRIDAY 8/26-SUNDAY 8/28

LIVERFEST

7 p.m. Fri., 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun., Cadron Creek Outfitters, $15-$25.

For the fifth year in a row, a bunch of hard rockers and metalheads are heading out to the woods to prove that Mountain Sprout fans aren’t the only folks who like to camp and play disc golf. From Friday evening to Sunday evening, the Cadron Valley — longtime home to psychedelic “Flux Fests” galore — will instead be home to sludgy sounds (and possibly sludgy grounds, if we get more rain) from an exceedingly heavy lineup. On Friday, Throne of Pestilence opens, followed by sets from

Amonkst the Trees, Seahag, Ozark Shaman, Head Creaps and Sumokem, with a campground “after show” from Attagirl and Jeremiah James Baker. Saturday’s lineup includes Weed Needles, Construction of Light, Colour Design, Terminus, Criminal Slang, I Was Afraid, Iron Tongue, Full of Hell, The Body and Madman Morgan, with an afterparty set from Adam Faucett. Sunday’s lineup includes sets from Auric, Apothecary, Crankbait, Hexxus, Seahag and -(16)-, with a fireworks display to end the weekend. Bring earplugs. (And full disclosure, I sing in Iron Tongue).

If you ran across the story earlier this week of how Harley Quinn, the 17-year-old daughter of film director Kevin Smith (“Dogma,” “Mallrats,” “Clerks”), was the object of a vitriolic and incoherent Twitter tirade from an online bully, you saw a prime example of the ways in which young women are bombarded with messages that discourage them from moving confidently in the world. Former “Saturday Night Live” producer Meredith Walker, in partnership with Amy Poehler (star of “Parks And Recreation,” co-producer of “Broad City,” author of “Yes, Please,” co-founder of comedy troupe “Upright Citizen’s Brigade”) is the co-founder of and spokesperson for “Smart Girls,” an online organization that seeks to counteract destructive messaging aimed at girls — and boys, and women and men, too, for that matter — by replacing it with the idea that girls can “change the world by being themselves.” Smart Girls is a collection of stories, poems and discussions that reinforce the idea that intelligence is cool, that existing and creating freely does not require permission from another person, that “fitting in” is highly overrated and that earnest participation in the world trumps armchair critique every damn time.

TUESDAY 8/30

FIDELIS STRING QUARTET WITH NORMAN BOEHM

7:30 p.m. Staples Auditorium, Hendrix College. Free.

If you hang around the Trieschmann Fine Arts Building at Hendrix College long enough, you’ll likely spot a man in a gray T-shirt and jeans passing through, a man so unassuming he often is mistaken for a member of the college’s diligent landscaping

crew. That’d be Eastman School of Music graduate Dr. Norman Boehm, a marvelously sensitive pianist with a knack for improvisation (he ended up a concert at UALR last fall by riffing on themes provided by the audience) and for distilling massive orchestral pieces (Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” for example) down to solo piano reductions without losing texture or grandeur. He unearths emotionally intense pieces from the early 20th century,

especially from inventive composers who don’t tend to get much mainstream play, such as Nikolai Kapustin, John Ireland, Erich Korngold, Sir Edgar Elgar or Alexander Scriabin. For this concert, Boehm’s joined by Houston chamber music group The Fidelis Quartet for Schumann’s Piano Quintet, and in the second half of the program, for a piano quintet Boehm wrote, as he told us, “in late classical style, just for fun.”

The legendary Craig Horton, who played guitar for Little Walter, Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, headlines a show at The Big Chill, Hot Springs, $5. Film critic Philip Martin leads “Behind the Theme: The Cult Following of Spamalot,” The Rep, 6 p.m., free-$5. Rapper Gift of Gab emcees at Stickyz, with an opening set from Landon Wordswell, 9 p.m., $10-$15. Sichan Siv, author of “Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America,” leads a discussion, 6 p.m., Sturgis Hall, Clinton School of Public Service, free. Bluesboy Jag plays at The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass share a bill with Iron Tongue and William Blackart at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m.

FRIDAY 8/26 Houston-born Americana legend Robert Earl Keen takes the stage at the Rev Room, with an opening set from Matt Stell, 8:30 p.m., $25-$30. The Weekend Theater closes out its run of “The Library,” 7:30 p.m. (also 7:30 p.m. Saturday). Local Americana favorites Good Time Ramblers kick off the weekend at South on Main, 10 p.m., $10.

SATURDAY 8/27 Reed Turchi & The Caterwauls bring their blues-inspired boogie to South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. The Arkansas State Archives hosts a half-day symposium, “Arkansas’s Homerun: Major League Training in Hot Springs,” featuring Larry Foley’s documentary “The First Boys of Spring” and a presentation by Don Duren, author of “Boiling Out at the Springs: A History of Major League Baseball Training at Hot Springs, Arkansas,” Historic Arkansas Museum, 9 a.m., free. In continuation of that theme, the men of Fun City Chorus stage “Boys of Baseball,” a musical history of baseball spring training in Hot Springs, Hot Springs Convention Center, 7 p.m., $25. Jeremy Sloan and Brad Birchfield present “Snakes of Arkansas” at Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 2 p.m., free. Amy Helm continues her Arkansas run at George’s Majestic Lounge with Earl & Them as part of Fayetteville Roots Fest, 8 p.m., $28-$38. Texas’ Hayes Carll brings his wry songwriting to the Rev Room, with Rob Baird, 9 p.m., $20.

SUNDAY 8/28 Arkansas NAACP co-hosts “March on Arkansas: Where Are We Now? 53 Years Beyond MLK” on the steps of the state Capitol, 6 p.m., donations accepted. The UALR Trojans women’s soccer team plays a match against the University of Memphis’ Tigers, Coleman Recreation Complex, 7 p.m. arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

AFTER DARK All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please email the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.

www.littlerocksalsa.com. Some Guy Named Robb. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Stephen Neeper and the Wild Hearts. Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. 415 Main Street, NLR. 501-313-4704. fourquarterbar.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com. Tyler Kinchen & The Right Pieces. Kings Live Music, 8:30 p.m., $5. 1020 Front St., No. 102, Conway. kingslivemusic.com. Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W. Capitol Ave.

THURSDAY, AUG. 25

MUSIC

COMEDY

Collin Moulton. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $8. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. loonybincomedy.com. Lyrics and Laughs. Featuring Stand-Up Comics Samuel Grubb, The Kleitch Twins, and T. Davis, with live Music by Sean Fresh & The Nasty Fresh Crew. The Joint, 8:30 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointargenta.com.

COMEDY

JILLIAN CLARK

Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass, Iron Tongue. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. Amy Helm and the Handsome Strangers. South on Main, 8 p.m., $28-$38. 1304 Main St. 501-2449660. oxfordamerican.org. Bluesboy Jag. The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. thetavernsportsgrill.com. Brian Mullen. Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, 6 p.m., free. 17711 Chenal Parkway. 501-821-1144. yayasar. com. Brian Ramsey. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Craig Horton. The Big Chill, $5. 910 Higdon Ferry Road, Hot Springs. thebigchillhotsprings.com. Drageoke. Hosted by Queen Anthony James Gerard: a drag show followed by karaoke. Sway, 8 p.m. 412 Louisiana. clubsway.com. Gift of Gab. With Landon Wordswell. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $10-$15. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Mister Lucky. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Open Jam. Thirst n’ Howl, 8 p.m. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. Renshaw Davies. Maxine’s, 9 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxineslive.com. RockUsaurus. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

ROCKINGHAM COUNTY ROCKER: American Aquarium’s frontman BJ Barham brings songs from his debut solo album, inspired by his native North Carolina, to the White Water Tavern Saturday with Joshua Black Wilkins, Aug. 27, 9:30 p.m., $15.

Vino’s Brewpub Cinema: “The H Man.” Vino’s, 7 p.m., free. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. vinosbrewpub.com.

BOOKS

“From the Killing Fields to the White House: The American Dream in First Person.” A talk from Sichan Siv, author of “Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America.” Sturgis Hall, 6 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

KIDS

Garden Club. A project of the Faulkner County Urban Farm Project. Ages 7 and up or with supervision. Faulkner County Library, 3:30 p.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www. fcl.org.

FRIDAY, AUG. 26

MUSIC

7 Toed Pete. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, 10 p.m., $7. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. westendsmokehouse.net. All In Fridays. Envy. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317. Ben Byers. Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, 6 p.m., free. 17711

NOW TWO CONVENIENT LOCATIONS LITTLE ROCK • NORTH LITTLE ROCK

EVENTS

ArkiePub Trivia. Stone’s Throw, 6:30 p.m., free. 402 E. 9th St. 501-244-9154. stonesthrowbeer. com. Donkeys and Drinks. A conversation with U.S. Senate candidate Conner Eldridge. Sway, 5 p.m. 412 Louisiana St.

FILM 26

AUGUST 25, 2016

Chenal Parkway. 501-821-1144. yayasar.com. Black River Pearl. Midtown Billiards, 2 a.m., $5. 1316 Main St. 501-372-9990. midtownar.com. Buh Jones Band. Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m., free. 11321 W. Markham St. 501-2242010. markhamstreetpub.com. Chris Henry. The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. thetavernsportsgrill.com. Good Time Ramblers. South on Main, 10 p.m., $10. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain. com. Kingsdown. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $7-$10. 107 River Market Ave. 501-3727707. stickyz.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Ramona & The Soul Rhythms. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Robert Earl Keen. With Matt Stell. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $25-$30. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. Rodney Block Collective: Live Music Lounge. Zin Urban Wine & Beer Bar, 9 p.m., $10. 300 River Market Ave. 501-442-0649. www.zinlr.com. Salsa Dancing. Clear Channel Metroplex, 9 p.m., $5-$10. 10800 Col. Glenn Road. 501-217-5113.

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LITTLE ROCK: 10TH & MAIN • 501.374.0410 | NORTH LITTLE ROCK: 860 EAST BROADWAY • 501.374.2405 HOURS: LR • 8AM-10PM MON-THUR • 8AM-12PM FRI-SAT •NLR • MON-SAT 8AM-12PM ARKANSAS TIMES

Chad Prather & Cowboy Bill Martin. Argenta Community Theater, 8 p.m., $20-$35. 405 Main St., NLR. 501-353-1443. argentacommunitytheater.com. Collin Moulton. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. loonybincomedy.com. “Forever Hold Your Peace.” By comedy trio The Main Thing. The Joint, through Sept. 2: 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointargenta.com.

DANCE

Ballroom dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 8-11 p.m., $7-$13. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501221-7568. www.blsdance.org. Contra dance. Park Hill Presbyterian Church, 7:30 p.m., $5. 3520 JFK Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org.

EVENTS

LGBTQ/SGL weekly meeting. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 501-244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. First Presbyterian Church, 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St. Mullet Madness. Next Level Events, 7 p.m., $40. 1400 W. Markham St. 501-376-9746. mulletmadness.net.

SATURDAY, AUG. 27

MUSIC

Amy Helm with Earl & Them. Part of Fayetteville Roots Fest. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8 p.m., $28-$38. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. georgesmajesticlounge.com. Andy Tanas. Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m., free. 11321 W. Markham St. 501-224-2010. markhamstreetpub.com. BJ Barham. With Joshua Black Wilkins. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $15. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. “Boys of Baseball.” A musical by Fun City Chorus featuring songs and stories depicting the history of baseball spring training in Hot Springs. Hot Springs Convention Center, 7 p.m., $15-$25. 134 Convention Blvd., Hot Springs. 501-321-2027. funcitychorus.org. Brown Soul Shoes. Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. 415 Main Street, NLR. 501-313-4704. fourquarterbar.com. Clark Buehling. A concert from an expert in “minstrel style” fretless banjo. Ozark Folk Center State Park, 2 and 7 p.m., $12-$20. 1032 Park Ave., Mountain View. ozarkfolkcenter.com.

DANCE

Foul Play Cabaret. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $10-$15. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxineslive.com.

EVENTS

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BOOKS

“A Game of Inches.” A book signing with author Webb Hubbell. WordsWorth Books & Co., 1 p.m., free. 5920 R St. 501-663-9198. wordsworthar.com.

NOT EASY.

CLASSES

Summit on Inclusion and Diversity. With Start Here Little Rock. Sturgis Hall, 10 a.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

KIDS

“Snakes of Arkansas.” A demonstration from local reptile enthusiasts Jeremy Sloan and Brad Birchfield. The Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 2 p.m., free. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www. centralarkansasnaturecenter.com.

SUNDAY, AUG. 28

MUSIC

’68. With Levels and Mismanage. Vino’s, 6 p.m., $13-$15. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. vinosbrewpub.com. Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

EVENTS

Bernice Garden Farmer’s Market. Bernice Garden, 10 a.m. 1401 S. Main St. www.thebernicegarden.org. “March-On Arkansas.” A convention organized by Arkansas NAACP, Original Kingfest and College of Aspiring Artists, examining race relations 53 years after the March on Washington, state Capitol, 6 p.m., free-$10. 501-324-8900. arkleg.state.ar.us.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. NWA Naturals. DickeyStephens Park, Aug. 28, 6:10 p.m.; Aug. 29, 7:10 p.m., $7-$13. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-6641555. milb.com. UALR Trojans vs. Memphis Tigers. UALR, 7 p.m. 2801 S. University Ave. 501-569-8977. lrtrojans.com.

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.

Payment: CHECK OR CREDIT CARD Order by Mail: ARKANSAS TIMES BOOKS 201 E. MARKHAM ST., 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

ALSO AVAILABLE

Send _______ book(s) of Almanac Of Arkansas History @ $18.95 Shipping and handling $3 per book Name ____________________________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________________________ City, State, Zip _______________________________________________________

✁

Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell and Cedar Hill Roads. Gawddaughter: Chapter 3. With Xana Frost. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. clubsway.com. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 8 a.m.-noon. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. NWA Naturals. DickeyStephens Park, Aug. 27, 7:10 p.m.; Aug. 28, 6:10 p.m.; Aug. 29, 7:10 p.m., $7-$13. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. milb.com. “Arkansas’s Homerun: Major League Training in Hot Springs”. A half-day symposium featuring a screening of Larry Foley’s documentary, “The First Boys of Spring,” and a presentation by Don Duren, author of “Boiling Out at the Springs: A History of Major League Baseball Training at Hot Springs, Arkansas.” Historic Arkansas Museum, 9 a.m., free. 200 E. 3rd St. 501-682-6900. historicarkansas.org.

✁

COMEDY

Collin Moulton. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. loonybincomedy.com. “Forever Hold Your Peace.” By comedy trio The Main Thing. The Joint, through Sept. 2: 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointargenta.com.

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavilions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

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Freeverse. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $6. 107 River Market Ave. 501-3727707. stickyz.com. Hayes Carll. With Rob Baird. Revolution, 9 p.m., $20. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. Jana Kramer. Downtown El Dorado, 7 p.m. Main Street and Northwest Avenue, El Dorado. 870862-4747. mainstreeteldorado.org. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. Legends of Arkansas Trolley Party. With music from Brown Soul Shoes. Four Quarter Bar, 8 p.m., $35. 415 Main St., NLR. 501-313-4704. legendsofarkansas.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Matthew Huff. Kings Live Music, 8:30 p.m., $5. 1020 Front St., No. 102, Conway. kingslivemusic.com. Mojo Depot. The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. thetavernsportsgrill.com. Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org. Psychedelic Velocity. Midtown Billiards, 2 a.m., $5. 1316 Main St. 501-372-9990. midtownar.com. Special 20. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, 10 p.m., $7. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. westendsmokehouse.net. Stuart Baer Blues Band. Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, 6 p.m., free. 17711 Chenal Parkway. 501-821-1144. yayasar.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com. The Woodpeckers. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf. com.

Phone ____________________________________________________________ Visa, MC, AMEX, Disc # __________________________________ Exp. Date __________ arktimes.com

AUGUST 25, 2016

CENTERSTAGE UPCOMING EVENTS

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AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

AFTER DARK, CONT.

MONDAY, AUG. 29

MUSIC

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

EVENTS

Trivia Night. Damgoode Pies, 8 p.m., free. 500 President Clinton Ave., 72201. 501-664-2239. damgoodepies.com.

LECTURES

Meredith Walker. A talk from the executive director and co-creator of Amy Poehler’s “Smart Girls.” Sturgis Hall, 6 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. NWA Naturals. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $7-$13. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. milb.com. Herm Edwards. A visit from ESPN pro football analyst. Embassy Suites, 11:50 a.m., $25$35. 11301 Financial Centre. 501-312-9000. lrtouchdown.com.

TUESDAY, AUG. 30

MUSIC

Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com. DeFrance. Bear’s Den Pizza, 10:30 p.m., free. 235 Farris Road, Conway. 501-328-5556. bearsdenpizza.net. Fidelis String Quartet with Norman Boehm. Featuring Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet. Hendrix College, 7:30 p.m., free. 1600 Washington Ave., Conway. hendrix.edu/events. Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 322 President Clinton Blvd. 501-244-9550. willydspianobar.com/prost-2. Karaoke Tuesdays. On the patio. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 7:30 p.m., free. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Midwest Caravan, Landrest. With Jeremy Brasher and Stephanie Smittle. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. Trey Johnson. Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro, 6 p.m., free. 200 River Market Ave. 501-375-3500. dizzysgypsybistro.net.

COMEDY

“Punch Line” Stand-Up Comedy. Hosted by Brett Ihler. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavilions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/ stores/littlerock.

CLASSES

Garden Sketch Hour. Through Aug.. Faulkner County Library, free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501327-7482. fcurbanfarmproject.org.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 31

MUSIC

Blake Goodwin. Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro, 6 p.m., free. 200 River Market Ave. 501-375-3500. dizzysgypsybistro.net. Charles Woods. South on Main, 8:30 p.m., $5. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com. Gaelic Storm. Revolution, 8 p.m., $15. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom. com. Hot Springs Jazz Fest. Featuring Jazz Night at the Ohio Club, a Rodney Block Block Party, a classical.jazz concert at Five-Star Theater, a Saturday lineup of “Jazz in the Streets,” a Sunday Jazz Mass and a tea dance with Stardust Big Band. Downtown Hot Springs, Aug. 31-Sept. 4, free-$35. hsjazzsociety.org. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. MUSE Ultra Lounge, 8:30 p.m., free. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-6398. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $8. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Marvin Todd. The Loony Bin, Aug. 31-Sept. 3, 7:30 p.m., $8; Sept. 2-3, 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

Little Rock Bop Club. Beginning dance lessons for ages 10 and older. Singles welcome. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 7 p.m., $4 for members, $7 for guests. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www.littlerockbopclub.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show. Kollective Coffee & Tea, 7 p.m., free. 110 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive. com/shows.html.

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Offer for two “1 for $2” Gift Certificates good for any Natural American Spirit cigarette product (excludes RYO pouches and 150g tins). Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Offer and website restricted to U.S. smokers 21 years of age and older. Limit one offer per person per 12 month period. Offer void in MA and where prohibited. Other restrictions may apply. Offer expires 06/30/17.

ARTS

THEATER

“All the Way.” TheaterSquared’s production of Robert Schenkkan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, through Sept. 18: Wed.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Sun., 2 p.m., $15-$45. 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. waltonartscenter.org. “Behind the Theme:” The Cult Following of “Spamalot.” A discussion led by film critic Philip Martin. Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Thu., Aug. 25, 6 p.m., free-$5. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. therep.org. “The Library.” A play by Scott Z. Burns, directed by CONTINUED ON PAGE 31 arktimes.com

Arkansas Times 08-25-16.indd 1

AUGUST 25, 2016

8/10/16 1:43 PM

Hey, do this!

SEPTEMBER

OXFORD AMERICAN AND SOUTH ON MAIN present these excellent shows in September

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

JOHN FULLBRIGHT [ARCHETYPES & TROUBADOURS SERIES] 8:00 PM—The Oxford American magazine is excited to welcome John Fullbright to the South on Main stage! This concert is the first of four shows in our 2016-2017 Archetypes & Troubadours Series. Doors open at 6:00 PM, with dinner and drinks available for purchase at that time.

AUG 30 - OCT 8

SEPTEMBER 22, 2016

Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN. Come for dinner and a show, and enjoy hymns and hilarity at this gospel musical comedy. For reservations, visit www.murrysdp.com.

SULLIVAN FORTNER TRIO [JAZZ SERIES] 8:00 PM—The Oxford American magazine is excited to welcome the Sullivan Fortner Trio to the South on Main stage! This concert is the first of four shows in our 2016-2017 Jazz Series. Doors open at 6:00 PM, with dinner and drinks available for purchase at that time.

SEPT 8 - OCT 20

THE 15TH ANNUAL OFF THE BEATEN PATH STUDIO TOUR takes place in Mountain View. Artists open up their private studios to the public from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sunday. It’s a free, self-guided driving tour. A map is available online at www. offthebeatenpathstudiotour.com.

SEPT 17

THE SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS perform live at the Four Quarter Bar at 415 Main Street in North Little Rock at 10:30 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $35. For more info, call 501-3134704. n The Museum of Discovery hosts its annual all-day tinkering event from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. with more than 40 hands-on activities throughout the museum and outdoor on the streets.

ARTSFEST X: CONWAY MARKS THE SPOT. This annual citywide arts event includes an array of speakers, artists lectures, exhibits, music, theatrical performances, video projection and more. Events happening on UCA and Hendrix campuses, parks, restaurants and galleries including the Baum Gallery, City Hall, Simon Hall, etc. Go to Artsinconway.org or Artsinconway. org/artsfest

SEPT 23

Attend the second annual PRESIDENTS SCHOLARSHIP GALA at Philander Smith College on at 7 p.m. for dinner, dancing, and an evening of scholarship. For ticket and sponsorship information, contact Sericia Cole at scole@philander.edu.

AUGUST 25, 2016

MacArthur Military Museum hosts the LR MEPS 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY at 11:30 a.m.

ARKANSAS TIMES

Arkansas Times sponsors BOURBON MONTH at Colonial Wine and Spirits. Come mix and mingle with Phil Brandon of Rock Town Distillery and our own Michael Roberts of the Eat Arkansas food blog. n JOHN FULLBRIGHT performs at South on Main as part of the Oxford American’s Archetypes &Troubadours series. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the show starts at 8 p.m. For tickets and more info, visit www.southonmain.com.

Join us at RESTORE & AFTER 2016 for music, cocktails and art from local artists and creative DIYers. Bank of the Ozarks is the presenting sponsor for this year’s event hosted by Habitat Young Professionals. ReStore & After benefits Habitat for Humanity of Central Arkansas. For tickets and more info, visit www.habitatcentralar.org/restore2016. n The annual ZOO BREW takes place at the Little Rock Zoo from 6-9 p.m. with food and craft beer from local vendors. For tickets and more info, visit www.littlerockzoo. com. n Argenta Acoustic Music Series at The Joint on Main Street presents ANTOINE DUFOR at 7:30.

SEPT 21

MacArthur Military Museum screens CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1 at 6:30 p.m. as part of its free “Movies at MacArthur.” Popcorn and beverages provided. For more information about the hotline, visit www. veteranscrisisline.net.

SEPT 18

Verizon Arena hosts WWE LIVE. Tickets are $18-$103 and available through Ticketmaster at www. ticketmaster.com or at the box office.

AROUND TOWN RIVERDALE 10 hosts the classic Easy Rider on Tuesday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8. Enjoy the relaxing leather recliners and a beer or glass of wine at the only theater in town that lets you order a drink. For current showings, visit www.riverdale10.com. MIDTOWN BILLIARDS hosts a community Fish Fry on Sunday September 4 at 5:30 p.m. Sundays are Karaoke Night from 5-7 p.m. Pool League begins September 6 and takes place on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. September 12 is the Stein Hoist

SEPT 29-30, OCT 1

FUN!

SEPT 8

SEPT 15

THE DIXIE CHICKS return to Verizon Arena. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $53.50-$119 and available through Ticketmaster at www.ticketmaster. com or at the box office.

SEPT 22 - OCT 1

SEPT 6

The Arkansas Repertory Theatre presents MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT. The Broadway smash musical opens on Sept. 2 and runs through Oct. 2. For more info, tickets and special events, visit www. therep.org. Lost Forty Beer Night with Arkansas Times Sept. 1 at 6 p.m.

SEPT 9

The Baum Gallery on the campus of UCA presents its fall season of exhibitions with art installations by DAWN HOLDER, LANGDON GRAVES and DANIELLE RIEDE. There is also the work of David Graeve on display Sept. 23-Oct. 7 and a video installation by Adam Hogan, Sept. 23-24. For a full schedule and gallery hours, visit www.uca.edu/art/baum.

SEPT 16-18

AUG 31 - OCT 2

Food, Music, Entertainment and everything else that’s

The Parkview drama program presents DR. FRANKENSTEIN’S CREEPY CRAWLY CREATION CONVENTION written and directed by Cooper Sikes and Harrison Wyrick. The production takes place at MacArthur Military Museum. For more info, visit www.parkviewtheatre.com.

SEPT 30

SEPT 21-25

Now in its 3rd year, ACANSA ARTS FESTIVAL is a celebration of arts in Arkansas with live music and productions, exhibits, workshops and more along the Arkansas River. Tickets are on sale now with VIP passes available. Arkansas Times sponsors the Edward R. Murrow discussion and reception on Thursday, Sept. 22 at Samantha’s Tap Room. Tickets are $50 and include the performance and admission to the discussion and reception. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.acansaartsfestival.org.

John Fullbright

SEPT 16

Hip hop icon SIR MIX-A-LOT performs live at Choctaw Casino in Pocola, OK, at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $25 and are available online at www. choctawcasinos.com.

SEPT 22

THE CROWN SHOP IS CELEBRATING 45 years at the Rodney Parham location. Stop by from 5-7 p.m. for special sales, snacks, giveaways and free gift with purchase n THE SULLIVAN FORTNER TRIO performs live at South on Main as part of the Oxford American’s Jazz series. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. For tickets and more info, visit www.southonmain.com. n THE NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND plays Reynolds Performance Hall at 7:30 p.m. as part of the UCA Public Appearances series. Tickets are $30-$40 and available online at uca.edu/publicappearances where you can find a full schedule of events.

Competition sponsored by Samuel Adams. The winner will head to Boston to compete nationally. Join us for Monday Night Football drink specials beginning September 19.

VINO’S is known for some of the best beer and pizza in town and for its legendary punk and rock ‘n roll shows. For a full schedule, visit www.vinosbrewpub.com.

CAJUN’S WHARF has a full month of music with performances on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Take in dinner and a show in a scenic spot on the Arkansas River. It’s still the best place in town for a happy hour drink on the deck.

MAYDAY BY MIDNIGHT has several September dates. Here’s your chance to catch this party band at these venues: Downstream Casino on August 27; Cajun’s Wharf September 1; Baker Street September 9, Sam’s Town Casino September 15-17, Choctaw Casino September 24, Skinny J’s September 25 and Oaklawn September 30. To book them for your event, visit www.maydaybymidnight.com.

REBEL KETTLE launches a new small batch brew every Thursday night. Enjoy the cold craft beer from the fun beer garden.

Wolfe Street Foundation has two upcoming fundraising events. THE 21ST ANNUAL GOLF CLASSIC will be held at Maumelle Country Club at 8 a.m. A four-person team is $600, and lunch is provided. HOWLING AT THE WOLFE takes place at the Wolfe Street Center at 1015 S. Lousiana Street from 7-10 p.m. Admission is $25 with live music, food trucks and tours of the facility. Wolfe Street Foundation is Arkansas’s largest nonprofit resource dedicated to helping people with alcoholism and addiction. To learn more, visit www.wolfestreet.org.

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HOT IN HOT SPRINGS ON OUR HOT SPRINGS HAPPENINGS CALENDAR. PAGE 39

AFTER DARK, CONT. Liz Clarke Butler. The Weekend Theater, through Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m., $12-$16. 1001 W. 7th St. 501374-3761. weekendtheater.org. Spamalot. Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through Oct. 1: Wed., Thu., Sun., 7 p.m.; Fri., Sat., 8 p.m., $30-$55. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. therep.org.

NEW IN THE GALLERIES

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Renoir and Fashion,” lecture by Gloria Groom of the Art Institute of Chicago, Aug. 25: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. lecture, 5-9 p.m. galleries and restaurant open; “Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies,” abstract paintings and watercolors, through Oct. 16; “Cut, Pieced and Stitched: Denim Drawings by Jim Arendt,” through Oct. 23; 58th annual “Delta Exhibition,” through Aug. 28; Renoir’s “Madame Henriot,” loan from the Columbus Museum of Art, through Sept. 11; WilliamAdolphe Bouguereau’s “Admiration,” loan from the San Antonio Museum of Art. 9 a.m.5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ARKANSAS STATE HOSPITAL, 305 S. Palm St.: “Creative Expressions,” show and sale of work by patients, 7-9 p.m. Aug. 18 in the lobby, all proceeds go directly to the artists, hors d’oeuvres and jazz by Recovery. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Impersonating the Impressionists,” paintings by Louis Beck, through August, drawing for free giclee 7 p.m. Aug. 18. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “In the Spirit of Creativity,” paintings by Anne and Dan Thornhill, opens with reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 19, Argenta ArtWalk, show through Sept. 10. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 687-1061. MATT MCLEOD FINE ART GALLERY, 108 W. 6th St.: “The Human Experience,” work by Angela Davis Johnson, Dominique Simmons, Harry Loucks, Jeremy Couch, Jude Harzer, Wayne Salge, Kathy Strause, Bryan Massey, Cindy Holmes, Jeff Waddle, Ryan Schmidt, Sage Holland, Tom Holland and Matt McLeod, reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 18. 725-8508.

NEW IN THE MUSEUMS

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “The Art of Handbags,” contemporary purses by Rhode Island artist Kent Stetson,

through Sept. 25, open house 4-6 p.m. Aug. 25, closing reception Sept. 22; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022.

CALL FOR ENTRIES

The Arkansas Arts Center is accepting entries for a temporary art installation to accompany Fountain Fest, the Arts Center Contemporaries’ fundraiser set for Oct. 13. The winning design, which must be completed by the fundraiser, will be displayed in or around the Carrie Remmel Dickinson Fountain at the front entrance to the Arts Center. The artist will receive a $1,500 prize. Deadline to enter is Sept. 2; go to arkansasartscenter.org/fountain-fest and click on the link to enter a design. Wildwood Park for the Arts invites printmakers to submit works with a theme of nature for the February 2017 “Nature in Print” exhibit. Deadline to submit proposals online is Dec. 1. Find more information at wildwoodpark.org/ art. The Thea Foundation has opened registration for students, teachers, families and community groups wishing to take part in Thea Paves the Way, the annual sidewalk chalk event at the Clinton Presidential Center. This year’s event will run from 8 a.m. to noon Sept. 10; school groups may compete for art supply gift certificates. Participants will get to visit the presidential library free of charge. To register, go to theafoundation.org.

ONGOING GALLERY EXHIBITS

ARGENTA GALLERY/ROCK CITY WERKS, 413 Main St., NLR: Paintings, jewelry, pottery and glass. 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 258-8991. BOSWELL MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New large pastels by Cynthia Kresse, blown glass buckets by Kyle Boswell. 664-0030. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Arkansas League of Artists,” juried show, through Oct. 22; “From the Vault,” work from the Central Arkansas Library’s permanent collection, including works by Win Bruhl, Evan Lindquist, Shep Miers, Gene Hatfield, Ray Khoo and Jerry Phillips, through Oct. 22; “School’s Out: An Exhibition of Student Work,” organized by Arkansas Art Educators, through CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

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AUGUST 25, 2016

MOVIE REVIEW

AFTER DARK, CONT.

STOP-MOTION SURREALITY: Young Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson of “Game of Thrones”) plays his elaborate origami figures to life with a shamisen in Laika Studios’ stunning fourth animated film.

A new animation king ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ solidifies Laika’s status as an unsung hero. BY SAM EIFLING

isney, Pixar and Dreamworks cast a big shadow, so it’s easy to miss fellow American animation shop Laika, the studio founded in 2005 by Nike overlord Phil Knight. Its work, though, has been steadily some of the best in the business this decade. Three Laika films in six years — “Coraline,” “The Boxtrolls,” and “ParaNorman” — have been nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature (as was 2005’s “Corpse Bride”). Just out, “Kubo and the Two Strings,” a thorough delight of a film, will be next, and may just earn Laika’s first Academy Award. The fable-flavored tale, built from a blend of stop-motion practical effects and computer animation, lives on the screen as a brilliant, mesmerizing achievement in family filmmaking. The richness emerges from some canny stylistic choices by director Travis Knight (yep, Phil’s kid). His work and the script by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler (an animator on previous Laika features) wisely build the story around 32

AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

what the animators can do best — in this case, an ability by Kubo to magically create fantastical origami. The paper looks real enough in stray sheets or folded into samurai and birds and temples, and it blurs the lines between what exists in three dimensions in a studio somewhere and what’s merely drawn on a hard drive. The overall effect pulls you into a dreamlike realm that feels eerily tangible, which, along with several fantastic voice performances, shades a world that appears fully formed and deeply immersive. Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson, a.k.a. Rickon Stark from “Game of Thrones”) is a young storyteller and, quite casually, a budding mystic who lives with his mother in a seaside cave at the edge of a village in Japan. He lives knowing that his grandfather, the Moon King, snatched out his eye as a babe, killed his father and cast out his mother and him — and that he cannot dawdle outside till dark, lest the moon find him again. Each day he busks for coins, playing his

origami creations to life with his guitar; each night he sprints home to cook and care for his mother, who in her few lucid moments recounts epic tales for him in the same nested, discursive spirit of Scheherazade. Night does fall on Kubo, eventually, and he has to flee on a quest for three pieces of armor he needs to fight back against the Moon King. His mother out of the picture, he finds himself in the hands of two misfit guardians: Monkey (Charlize Theron, exquisitely), a stern but fierce guide, and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey, distinctly), a cursed exsamurai with a memory like a sieve and the body of a giant bug, like something out of an early draft of “The Tick.” All of them are extremely awesome at fighting. This comes in handy when the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) and Kubo’s aunts (both Rooney Mara) eventually close in. The persistently surreal settings and characters and gorgeous animation foster a willingness to suspend deeper explanations for the sake of a quick telling. This is not to say “Kubo” rushes; no, if anything, it distinguishes itself by indulging in moments of unforced conversation (over an impromptu sushi dinner on a sailing ship, for instance) that give the story room to breathe, in a style more befitting of literature than of the frantic, antic careening of most cartoons. In ways sweeping and barely perceptible, “Kubo” exists in an emotional world that will swallow you, happily.

Aug. 27; “Culture Shock: Shine Your Rubies, Hide Your Diamonds,” work by women’s artist collective, including Melissa Cowper-Smith, Melissa Gill, Tammy Harrington, Dawn Holder, Jessie Hornbrook, Holly Laws, Sandra Luckett, Morgan Page and Rachel Trusty, through Aug. 27, Concordia Hall. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8206 Cantrell Road: “Stop the Presses!” painting, photography, graphic work and ceramics by staff of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, including John Deering, Cary Jenkins, Benjamin Krain, John Sykes Jr., Celia Storey, Ron Wolfe, Nikki Dawes and Kirk Montgomery, through Sept. 3. 11 a.m.5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “Last Glimpses of Authentic Polaroid Art,” photography by Brandon Markin, Darrell Adams, Lynn Frost, Rachel Worthen and Rita Henry, through Sept. 30. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-noon Fri., 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Sun. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “The Medium is the Message,” work by Laura Fanning, through August. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 918-3093. DRAWL SOUTHERN CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Drawings, paintings, photographs by regional artists. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 680-1871. GALLERY 221, 221 W. 2nd St.: “Drawing on the Edge,” work by advanced art students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, through Aug. 30. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “In Memoriam,” collages by Amy Edgington, hand-colored photographs by David Rackley, through Sept. 10. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 6648996. GALLERY 360, 900 S. Rodney Parham Road: “Chicana Goddess in the Bosque: Walking with the Ancestors,” art quilts and mixed media by Sabrina Zarco, through Aug. 20. 663-2222. GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 211 Center St.: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “Glennray Tutor — Solo Exhibition,” magical realism paintings, through Sept. 10. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 6642787. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “AfriCOBRA NOW: Works on Paper” featuring Akili Ron Anderson, Kevin Cole, Adger Cowans, Michael D. Harris, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Moyo Okediji, James Phillips, Frank Smith and Nelson Stevens, through Sept. 3, artists reception 5:30-8 p.m. Sept. 9, tours and discussion 3-5 p.m. Sept. 10. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St. “Walter Arnold and David Malcolm Rose: Modern Ruins,” constructions from Rose’s “The Lost Highway,” photographs by Arnold; “Tiny Treasures: Miniatures from the Permanent Collection,” through Nov. 6; “A Diamond in the Rough; 75 Years of Historic Arkansas Museum,” through February 2017; “Sally Nixon,” illustrations, through Sept. 4; “Hugo and Gayne Preller’s House of Light,” historic photographs, through October. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: Tim West, drawings and paintings; Diana Hausam, photographs; Nathan Beatty, paintings 2005-2012; MATTHEWS FINE ART GALLERY, 909 North St.: Paintings by Pat and Tracee Matthews, glass by James Hayes, jewelry by Christie Young, knives by Tom Gwenn, kinetic sculpture by Mark White. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 8316200.

MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Morning Stroll Surprise,” photographs by Carey Roberson, through mid-September. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 379-9101. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: Work by Jeff McKay, C.J. Ellis, TWIN, Amy Hill-Imler, Ellen Hobgood; new glass by James Hayes and ceramics by Kelly Edwards. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 753-5227. ST. JAMES UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, 321 Pleasant Valley Drive: Susie Henley, paintings, through Sept. 5. THEA FOUNDATION, 401 Main St., NLR: The Art Department presents “Curiosity Revealed,” found object sculpture, video by Sandra Sell, through August. 9 a.m.-noon and 1-5 Mon.-Fri. 379-9512. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Pop Up Exhibition: Works from the Permanent Exhibition” by Zina Al-Shukri, Robyn Horn, Benjamin Deaton, Neal Harrington, Al Allen and Jayden Moore, through Sept. 2. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., after Labor Day also 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. Sun. BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467. BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “American Made: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum,” 115 objects including quilts, carvings, signs, samplers, weathervanes and more, through Sept. 19; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700. EL DORADO SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St.: “Abstract Expressions,” paintings by Danny Hobbs, through Sept. 1, Lobby Gallery. Reception is 6 p.m. Aug. 20. 870-862-5474. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “The Art of Transcendence,” RAM annual invitational, through Oct. 16. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-784-2787. HELENA DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St.: “Small Works on Paper,” traveling exhibition

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of the Arkansas Arts Council, through August. 870-338-4350. HOT SPRINGS JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 A Central Ave.: “Water Works,” paintings with a water theme by Mike Elsass, Matthew Hasty, Dolores Justus, Gerri Much, Laura Raborn, Tony Saladino and Rebecca Thompson, through August. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 501-321-2335. LEGACY GALLERY, 804 Central Ave.: Paintings by Carole Katchen. 501-762-0840. JASPER NELMS GALLERY, 107 Church St.: Work by Don Kitz, Don Nelms, Pamla Klenczar, Scott Baldassari and others. 870-446-5477. MOUNTAIN HOME ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY-MOUNTAIN HOME, 1600 S. College St.: Equine-themed drawings and paintings by Samantha Sherry, through August, Vada Sheid Community Development Center. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 870-508-6109. PERRYVILLE SUDS GALLERY, Courthouse Square: Paintings by Dottie Morrissey, Alma Gipson, Al Garrett Jr., Phyllis Loftin, Alene Otts, Mauretta Frantz, Raylene Finkbeiner, Kathy Williams and Evelyn Garrett. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri, noon-4 p.m. Sat. 501-766-7584. PINE BLUFF ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Here. African American Art from the Permanent Collection,” through Oct. 15. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375. YELLVILLE PALETTE ART LEAGUE, 300 Hwy. 62 W: Work by area artists. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 870656-2057.

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HISTORY, SCIENCE MUSEUM EXHIBITS

ARKANSAS INLAND MARITIME MUSEUM, North Little Rock: The USS Razorback submarine tours. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 371-8320. ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUM, Camp Robinson: Artifacts on military history, Camp Robinson and its predecessor, Camp Pike, also a gift shop. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Fri., audio tour available at no cost. 212-5215. CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

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AUGUST 25, 2016

OUT IN ARKANSAS

Miss Major shines brightly At the Kaleidoscope LGBT Film Festival. BY SETH ELI BARLOW

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AUGUST 25, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

f it’s possible to distill the four days of programing that constituted the Kaleidoscope LGBT Film Festival’s second year into a single film it would be Annalise Ophelian’s documentary “Major!,” whose subject and star, the 75-yearold Miss Major GriffinGracey, became the festival’s highlight and biggest celebrity. “Major!” tells the story of Miss Major’s 40-year career of fighting for the rights of transgender women of color. On Saturday, the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, Central Arkansas Pride and the Human Rights Campaign presented her with the Kaleidoscope Humanitarian Award. “We choose Miss Major to receive the Kaleidoscope Humanitarian Award because she has dedicated her life to fighting for members of society that have too often been too easily ignored,” Tony Taylor, executive director of the Film Society of Little Rock, said. Throughout her career, acceptance and visibility for trans women have been two separate but intertwined goals for Miss Major. She’s spent decades preaching that no one will ever accept a community that doesn’t stand up, step out and demand its own acceptance. The film chronicles her woman-by-woman fight to increase the visibility of trans communities around the nation. She was a patron of the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, when a police raid ignited what would become known as the Stonewall Riots, the first and most important event in the movement for LGBTQ equality. The infamous Attica Prison, where she served a brief stint after the riot, is where she says her radicalization began. Her activism began on the streets, helping women evade the cops and giving them whatever she could — food, money, a

place to sleep or a shoulder to cry on. In the 1960s and ’70s, trans women were confined to dark corners and alleys, pushed almost beyond the periphery of society. “Now I meet with [trans] women in organizations who are fully dressed, and know that that is how they left the house, that they did that without fear of coming to work in a dress,” Miss Major says of the progress she’s seen in her lifetime. She’s quick to add, however, that it isn’t enough. This is a point Miss Major echoed throughout the weekend when asked about the current crop of visible transgendered characters on televisions and the rise in trans visibility in popular media. “Having Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine just sent the world reeling,” she said, “but the sad thing was that they acted like that was the first transgendered woman to ever exist.” In delivery is both deadpan and pleading, she said, “We’re not new to here, but we’re just new to their acceptance. We’ve been here since before the Bible. Thanks for finally noticing.” Throughout the film, as interviews are conducted with a steady parade of women who refer to Miss Major as “mother” or “grandmother,” it becomes obvious that for them, Miss Major is not only an activist or an achiever, but a deliverer, both of family and of hope. Miss Major spoke highly of the trans women she met here. “Here there’s a wonderful integrating of the girls in Little Rock, but the problem is the area, and the people make it hard to subsist.” In the film, Miss Major says her goal is to have trans women unite and to remind people that they’re “still fuckin’ here.” It’s a cause she plans to keep fighting for, one woman at a time.

AFTER DARK, CONT. ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME MUSEUM, Verizon Arena, NLR: 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 663-4328. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: Renovated and replicated 19th century structures from original city, guided tours Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: Permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 683-3610. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Wiggle Worms,” science program for pre-K children 10 -10:30 a.m. every Tue. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: “We Make Our Own Choices: Staff Favorites from the Old State House Museum Collection,” “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685. WITT STEPHENS JR. CENTRAL ARKANSAS NATURE CENTER, Riverfront Park: Exhibits on fishing and hunting and the state Game and Fish Commission. 907-0636. BENTONVILLE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, 202 SW O St.: 1930s sandpainting tapestry by Navajo medicine man Hosteen Klah, from the collection of Dr. Howard and Catherine Cockrill, through December. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-273-2456. CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK MUSEUM, Main Street: Displays on Native American cultures, steam-

boats, the railroad and local history. www.calicorockmuseum.com. ENGLAND TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $3 for adults, $2 for ages 6-12. 961-9442. JACKSONVILLE JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501241-1943. MORRILTON MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibit of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501727-5427. Pine Bluff ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Exploring the Frontier: Arkansas 1540-1840,” Arkansas Discovery Network hands-on exhibition; “Heritage Detectives: Discovering Arkansas’ Hidden Heritage.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375. Pottsville POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St.: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. Rogers ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “Let Us Pray: Rogers’ Early Churches.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tue., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-621-1154.

MURROW

BY JOSEPH VITALE

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND AND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD • 6 PM AT THE REP “BLACK BOX” TICKETS $20 GENERAL ADMISSION, $10 STUDENTS

Joseph Menino stars as journalist Edward R. Murrow, MURROW delivers a biographical look at an icon and pioneer of American broadcast journalism and also a powerful, stinging indictment of the contemporary corporate-media complex. More at acansaartsfestival.org or 501.663.2287

Post MURROW show interview with John Kirk at Samantha’s Tap Room 9-9:30 p.m. ACANSA Arts Festival encourages public appreciation of the arts, showcases and increases awareness of the arts in the region and enriches the cultural vitality of Arkansas.