Arkansas Times - July 2, 2015 by Arkansas Times

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OVER THE RAINBOW With a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, LGBT marriage equality comes at last to Arkansas BY DAVID KOON

Photography by Nancy Nolan 2

JUNE 25, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 43 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $74 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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JULY 2, 2015

COMMENT

Not leading Supporters of justice were very pleased the Supreme Court helped advance equality and gay rights. However, some celebrants are applauding in the wrong directions. Many on Facebook, and surely elsewhere, are promoting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are not Supreme Court justices, as leaders who made this happen. Please research that Obama and Clinton opposed gay marriage until very recently. They opposed gay marriage when polls showed only a minority supported it, and supported it, only after heroic activists helped advance this issue and polls began showing majority support. Google the Gallup polling trends, and discover Hillary and Obama’s “evolving” support directly correlates with public opinion. An ABC News timeline of Obama’s “evolution” on gay marriage shows his poll-chasing clearly. In 2004, Obama said “marriage is between a man and a woman.” In 2010, Obama said, “I have been ... unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage.” In 2011, Obama’s communications director said, “The president has never favored same-sex marriage. He is against it.” According to a Washington Post timeline of Hillary’s “evolution,” she, too, flip-flopped like Obama. In January 2000, Hillary said, “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.” In 2002, Hillary was asked by “Hardball” host Chris Matthews if she thought New York should recognize gay marriage. Hillary unequivocally responded with a resounding, “No!” So exactly when did Hillary and Obama “evolve”? Another Washington Post article reports, “Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2012, and Clinton in 2013...” There you have it. These professional politicians did not lead this effort, but merely responded to public opinion. Newsflash: This is not leadership! The real leaders were the thousands of gay rights activists that helped legalize gay marriage in many states, which also raised 4

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

awareness. We all need to applaud gay marriage or any other beautiful success, but clapping intelligently will accelerate our progress much more effectively. Leadership identification is equally important. Please see that each one of us can be important leaders with great power to ripple ideas to friends and family and outward to all. Regardless of all this, hooray for the gays! May we all live happily ever after in loving justice and respect. Abel Tomlinson Fayetteville

Learning to hate We now know that Dylann Roof, the young man who murdered nine people in Charleston, S.C., last week, left behind a manifesto. And from it, we know that the killer’s Damascusroad conversion happened once he believed in the righteousness of the Passion of George Zimmerman, the Miami, Florida vigilante who gunned down a black teenager for wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles. But what informed his deadly opinions about the Trayvon Martin case? Where did his virulent racism, his born-again awakening about “white race” superiority come from? Was it voices inside his head? Or did he learn how to hate from others? His manifesto credits a group with the innocuous-sounding name of the Council of Conservative Citizens. With a name like that, it could almost be one of our local, holier-than-thou watchdog tea parties. Interestingly, the leader of this group, Earl P. Holt III, is a regular contributor to little Tommy Cotton and a gaggle of GOP presidential candidates now tripping over themselves to return his donations.

Where does a high school dropout like Dylann Roof go to learn how to be a bigot? Surely some intrepid journalist will soon connect the dots for us. Did he watch Fox News? Did he bathe regularly in Rush Limbaugh’s flying spittle, or listen to any of the other wingnuts polluting America’s airwaves? Did he follow some gilded evangelist beguiling his flock to shed their wealth and hate Muslims and embrace Christ’s love of Western civilization? What books did he read and what websites did he visit? When are we going to realize that the poison these hucksters peddle has deadly consequences? How many more innocents have to die? As is the case with most shooters who are a whiter shade of pale, there is a rush to blame whatever lurked within Dylann Roof on mental illness. But whatever sparked his evil rampage, whether it spontaneously erupted from within a rotten soul or was cultivated by others on the callous, careless fringes of our impolite society, would Dylann Roof be as infamous today without his Godblessed Second Amendment right? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Arthur Chu, in a recent Salon article, stated the obvious. A “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun. That, ironically, is bulletproof logic. John Ragland Hot Springs

Guns like autos A recent New York Times op-ed, “You’re Better Than This, Europe,” led me to thinking about one of the biggest and easiest ways to fix problems in the U.S.: deaths by guns. All it takes is will, legislation and overcoming the greed of the gun indus-

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try. We should treat guns like autos. Licensing guns and gun owners like autos and auto drivers would take a giant step, particularly with a requirement for liability insurance for guns and gun ownership. Is it irony or lunacy that we are far more restrictive and sane about autos than guns? Imagine if gun owners had to register their guns and themselves every year or three. I see the day when liability insurance companies would restrict ownership of weapons, so that far fewer crazies take out nine worshipers or 20 kids at school, and far fewer kids are killed in homes. Robert Johnston Little Rock

From the web In response to an Arkansas Blog item wondering if the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s society page will now feature profiles of same-sex marriages: They did publish extensive listings of all the couples who applied for marriage licenses in Pulaski County last year after Piazza’s ruling. To get on the one or two pages in the High Profile section on Sundays requires that you are somebody, know somebody, or have a lot of money (based on what I’ve heard and seen — not a confirmed fact). So depending on the number of weddings they may have a full-or-half page spread with multiple photos of the bride and groom, their families and the wedding party, or maybe just four to a page with big photos of the bride with more specific information about the wedding and reception than you find in the tiny notices buried elsewhere in that same section. Maybe we should take bets on when we think they’ll feature a gay wedding anywhere in the High Profile section. NeverVoteRepublican Whether the DoG decides to publish gay wedding announcements, I am sure, will depend on how much influence and money the people getting married have. Society pages have always been for the wealthy and influential, and about the only people who read them are wealthy and influential, or people who wanna be wealthy and influential. plainjim

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 25, 2015

BRIAN CHILSON

EYE ON ARKANSAS

THE COLORS OF EQUALITY: A view of the Main Street Bridge from North Little Rock on Saturday.

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case establishing marriage equality in all 50 states.

Relative moderation Neither Gov. Asa Hutchinson nor Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has been particularly friendly to LGBT people in the past, but both Republicans did the right thing following the Supreme Court’s Friday decision. They refused to flirt with noncompliance, as their counterparts did in some other South6 JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ern states. Rutledge said through a spokesperson on Friday that state employees must follow the new law of the land: “[I]n matters regarding civil marriage and the attendant rights, benefits, and obligations of civil marriages, same-sex couples should be treated exactly the same as opposite-sex couples.” And if county employees refuse to do their jobs on religious grounds? Not OK, said Hutchinson on Monday: “[C]ounty clerks under my interpretation do have a nondiscretionary function of issuing those marriage licenses.”

SCOTUS speaks! Same-sex marriage stole the show, but it was only one of several landmark rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court handed down this past week. First, there was King v. Burwell, the last-ditch effort by enemies of the Affordable Care Act to blow a hole in health care reform by yanking insurance subsidies from millions of Americans (including about 48,000 Arkansans). The plaintiffs’ entire case rested on a technical error in the language of the law, but the Court saw through the absurdity of that argument 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Kennedy joining their liberal colleagues to uphold the subsidies. Obamacare is here to stay, sounds like. Then, on Monday, the court ruled against three inmates on Oklahoma’s

death row who argued that that state’s choice of lethal injection drug amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment” — despite a botched execution using the drug last year. Although the legal situation is more complicated in Arkansas, this makes it more likely the decade-dormant death penalty could be resurrected here. Also on Monday, the court struck down a key part of President Obama’s environmental policy, effectively squashing tighter EPA regulations of mercury and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants. Arkansas was a part of that suit. And still more: A major fair housing policy in Texas was upheld, a victory in the fight against racial segregation. The justices allowed an Arizona policy to stand which aims to curb gerrymandering. All of these decisions were 5-4 except for King, with Kennedy casting the crucial vote.

Rebels without a cause Last week, as momentum grew to remove the Confederate flag and other symbols of the South’s slaveholding past from public places, the Fort Smith School Board took a unanimous vote to phase out the Rebel as mascot

of Southside High in the 2016-17 school year. “Dixie” will no longer be the high school’s fight song, beginning in the coming 2015-16 year. No more “Confederette” girls’ volleyball team, either. Lots of folks aren’t happy — including Wayne Haver, the school principal, who said, “It’s amazing one situation causes such a knee-jerk reaction across the nation.” He was referring, of course, to the racially motivated terrorist shooting in Charleston, S.C., which set off the current tremors of mass reckoning with Confederate iconography. Finally coming to terms with our racist past, 150 years after the Civil War ended? Quite the delayed knee jerk. The school board will take a final vote on the issue July 27.

Amazing Grace Meanwhile, in Charleston, at a funeral for victims of the shooting, President Obama himself delivered the eulogy for slain state Sen. Rev. Clementa Pinckney. Fine then. At its conclusion, unexpectedly, Obama broke into song, leading the surprised crowd in a refrain of “Amazing Grace.” His voice was, well, decent. His words, though — after the past week, they rang out. “May grace now lead them home,” the president said of the victims. “May God continue to shed His grace on the United States of America.”

OPINION

Justice denied by court delay

he Arkansas Supreme Court waited until 5:10 p.m. Friday to dump a three-sentence document that brought an ignominious end to its ignoble handling of the lawsuit that challenged the Arkansas ban on same-sex marriage. More than 13 months after it first put its hands on the case through a hurryup stay orchestrated by Justice Karen Baker of Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza’s marriage equality ruling, the Arkansas Supreme Court still had not decided the case. And it never will. The U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 5-4 ruling for a right to same-sex marriage made the Arkansas case moot, said the terse unsigned announcement. Still to be decided is an ethics complaint against the Arkansas Supreme Court for its delay, a procedural morass that two justices, Chief Justice Jim Hannah and Justice Paul Danielson, have said was nothing but a pretext for delay. Don’t be confused by the bureaucratic

fog. Confidential sources provided an outline of the case that you can read fully in this week’s Arkansas MAX Times. It’s simple: BRANTLEY Justices Karen maxbrantley@arktimes.com Baker, Jo Hart, Courtney Goodson and, after she joined the court Jan. 1, Rhonda Wood stymied completion of this case. They also were prepared to vote against marriage equality rather than anger voters, who added the ban to the Arkansas Constitution in 2004, or Republican politicians. Cowardly strategic delay may not be an ethics violation, but it is no less despicable. The case could have been decided. The Arkansas Supreme Court, then including Donald Corbin, who retired Jan. 1, and Special Justice Robert McCorkindale, sitting for the recused Cliff Hoofman, voted Oct. 9 not to delay the case and further

GOP delivered marriage, health

very word written in the vast collection of judicial opuses in the gay-marriage and Obamacare decisions last Thursday and Friday were penned by the Supreme Court’s five bitterly divided Republican justices. The four Democrats — two appointed by Bill Clinton and two by Barack Obama — helped form the majority in both cases, but they had not one thought to add to Chief Justice John Roberts’ logical treatise upholding fundable tax credits for people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act or Justice Anthony Kennedy’s passionate discourse giving same-sex couples equal rights to enjoy the fruits of marriage. Kennedy, you will recall, was put on the court by President Ronald Reagan and Roberts by George W. Bush. Republicans also delivered all five dissenting opinions. If that seems remarkable, it is

also logical. Both cases were Republican shows and the two issues have driven ERNEST the evolution DUMAS of Republican strategy in the Obama era. That will end with the 2016 elections and you won’t hear much of either issue ever again. The country’s thinking has moved leagues on both Obamacare and same-sex marriage so that for the first time a majority of Americans have a good opinion of the health reforms and 60 percent of them favor marriage equality. They discovered that the sky didn’t fall when the health law was implemented as all the ads had predicted and that the economy had actually taken a leap rather than fallen into a depression. Mike Huckabee will announce after the next natural disaster that it is

voted Oct. 23 to EXPEDITE it. Nov. 20, the justices voted 5-2 to uphold Piazza. The opinion was never issued. Justice Hart demanded time to write a dissent. Goodson, who voted in the majority, wouldn’t release her opinion until Hart filed a dissent. She never did. Compare this with federal District Judge Kristine Baker, who also heard oral arguments Nov. 20. Five days later, she issued a 45-page opinion striking down the ban. Come Jan. 1, Corbin was succeeded by Robin Wynne and Hoofman’s seat was taken by Wood, a Republican partisan with strong ties to anti-marriage Republican politicians. She demanded that McCorkindale get off the case. That debate ate up weeks, ultimately decided in early May by a court packed by Republican special justices picked by Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Seven weeks without a decision followed. Goodson, my sources say, voted with Piazza in May but with Hart, Baker and Wood against Piazza in the final unreleased opinion. She appears to have connived from the beginning to control — and delay — an opinion until either the U.S. Supreme Court took her off the hook or the working majority changed. Goodson, abetted by her husband, trial lawyer John Goodson, whose political

activities include loose talk about court work and financial involvement in court races, plans to run for chief justice in 2016 on Jim Hannah’s expected retirement. Perhaps then she’ll talk about how she was for marriage equality before she was against it. The future is bleak — a Supreme Court controlled by popular prejudice and corporate masters such as nursing home magnate Michael Morton, a heavy contributor to justices now running the court. Should Goodson rise to chief, the Republican governor will be able to appoint someone cut from the same cloth to fill Goodson’s associate justice seat for two years. Also: Circuit Judge Shawn Womack, a former Republican senator, might rise without opposition to retiring Justice Danielson’s seat. He’s on record favoring RE-criminalizing homosexual acts and preventing gay couples from adopting children. With Republican legislators encouraging resistance — on spurious religious grounds — to compliance with the rule of law, it’s hard to be optimistic about where the future Arkansas Supreme Court might come down should it be faced with a modern-day Orval Faubus who wishes to beat a Bible rather than uphold a constitutional duty to issue marriage licenses. That is, if it ever ruled at all. `

God’s punishment for legalizing gay marriages, but most people will cease to be offended at gay marriages. Let’s take them up in the order of the decisions. King v. Burwell, the Obamacare case, came about after a Republican lawyer plowing through the massive act found a phrase which, if read alone, could be interpreted to mean that the law did the opposite of what every member of Congress who voted on it, pro or con, and every interest group involved in drafting or fighting the law thought. That sentence could be read to mean that Obamacare prevented poor people from getting insurance rather than helped them. The tax subsidies for low-wage earners and the other major elements of Obamacare were borrowed from the Republican health bill of 1993-94, sponsored by, among others, several Republican senators who were still around in 2009 and helped craft the subsidies for low-income insurance buyers. The GOP leadership then told them they had to stop aiding the Democrats in an achievement that might rank with Medicare and Social Security. Drafting glitches are common in

every legislative body. Our own state Constitution has said for a century that the legislature can amend the Constitution without a vote of the people, but the courts said the drafters obviously were just careless with the wording and let it go. Every year, congressional writing glitches are fixed by “technical-correction” bills that are passed without ceremony, but the only technical corrections the majority will allow on the Affordable Care Act is repeal. Justice Roberts, joined by Kennedy and the four Democrats, said the court always gives deference to what a legislative body intended to do rather than give life to a vague phrase that does the opposite. He noted that the preamble to the act made insurance for everyone as the goal. For many in Congress the decision was a relief. Eight million Americans would have lost their insurance and seen tax increases as well, and the party had no unified approach for dealing with it. The trajectory of marriage equality is even more of a Republican story, insofar as partisan involvement can be measured. Democrats have been a passive force that simply followed CONTINUED ON PAGE 38 www.arktimes.com JULY 2, 2015

A week of ‘thunderbolts’ “And then sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.” —President Barack Obama

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resident Obama spoke those words last Friday immediately following the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring “that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.” But they could have also been spoken about the flurry of actions to remove the Confederate battle flag from public spaces across the South and the placing of all such symbols on the defensive. Or they could have been said about a Supreme Court decision one day earlier that cements the Affordable Care Act in the nation’s public policy landscape. It was a week of “thunderbolts” all fueled in ways large and small by Obama and his presidency. For decades, presidents and citizens alike have fought for a wholesale expansion of health care access in the United States. For decades, both black and white advocates have worked to remove the symbols that make many feel like foreigners in their native South and, in the eyes of many, foster ongoing race-based violence. And, for decades, gay and lesbian individuals have built a civil rights movement focused on weaving LGBT citizens into the American tapestry. In each case, to quote Obama, progress has shown itself “in small increments. Sometimes two steps forward, one step back, compelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens.” The president is correct that the ongoing engagement of rank-and-file citizens is vital for lasting social and political change. However, in his speech Friday, he undersold the role a president who is in step with “political time” (to employ a phrase used by scholar of presidential leadership Stephen Skowronek) can play in locking in such change. Obama was central to progress in each area, using a combination of presidential powers: the rhetorical power to create a fertile soil in which change can grow, power in the legislative arena, executive orders, and power over appointments (especially to the Supreme Court). Across the three topics, of course, the mix of powers employed by Obama in the pursuit of change has differed. On

LGBT rights, the president’s role has been multifaceted, employing rhetoric (especially his 2012 interview in JAY which he explained BARTH his final “evolution” on the topic); legislative efforts (especially ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in late 2010); key executive orders (including antidiscrimination measures for federal contractors); and court appointees who showed the smarts not to push Justice Anthony Kennedy too far or too fast on the issue. The messy battle over Obamacare shows how much influence a president can have in playing defense once legislative change is made, giving the measure time to become more popular and more consequential in people’s lives. On race, in addition to the appointment of an array of persons of color to high-level positions, Obama has been limited to symbolic and rhetorical power. While he and his family mark the personification of racial progress, as many have noted, he has most often not lived up to the promise shown in candidate Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” — delivered in March 2008 in the midst of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle — that still represents one of the most thoughtful contemporary analyses of race in America. But, in the aftermath of the horrific violence at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church and the “grace”-filled expressions afterward by family members of those killed, Obama’s unique position to talk about the persistence of racism in America was reignited and helped place pressure on state officials and corporate executives to act on symbols that many see as about hate rather than heritage. In all three areas, much work remains to be done. As Obama said in his interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast: “The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination” casts “a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.” (And, it is increasingly clear, that Obama intends to use his post-presidential years to focus on the challenges facing young black men, including the ongoing threat of gun violence.) Until states fully embrace Medicaid expansion (and, it will be years, as Arizona did not become part of the original Medicaid program until 1982), uninsured rates will be signifiCONTINUED ON PAGE 39

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Roberts, GOP wrong

ne entertaining aspect of recent dramatic Supreme Court rulings was learning that the Court’s high-minded intellectuals can be just as thin-skinned and spiteful as everybody else. Apparently, Justice Antonin Scalia was a law school Whiz Kid about 50 years and 50,000 cocktails ago, and finds it hard to accept that lesser minds are not obliged to agree with him. For his part, Chief Justice John Roberts turned political prognosticator in his dissent to Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision legitimizing gay marriage. “Stealing this issue from the people,” he wrote “will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.” Granted, if all you had to go by was the sky-is-falling rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates and their theological allies, you might think Roberts had a point. But he doesn’t, partly because the Supreme Court ruling won’t bring about dramatic social change at all. It merely affirms social changes that have already happened. But hold that thought, because political handicappers at the New York Times argue that same-sex unions could be the best thing that ever happened to the GOP. Not because millions of outraged religious conservatives will stampede to the ballot boxes, but because … well, here’s the headline: “As Left Wins Culture Battles, GOP Gains Opportunity to Pivot for 2016.” Former Bush speechwriter David Frum believes that the gay marriage fight is over. “Every once in a while,” he told reporter Jonathan Martin, “we bring down the curtain on the politics of a prior era. The stage is now cleared for the next generation of issues. And Republicans can say, ‘Whether you’re gay, black or a recent migrant to our country, we are going to welcome you as a fully cherished member of our coalition.’ ” Sure, Republicans could say that. If Republicans were in the habit of dealing with reality, that is. Frum, a Canadian Jew who became a U.S. citizen in 2007, may be forgiven a bit of wishful thinking. Ever since

getting pushed out of the American Enterprise Institute for saying Republicans were foolGENE ish not to negoLYONS tiate Obamacare with the White House, he’s been trying to persuade Republicans to act more like British Tories. But that’s not how today’s GOP rolls. On the party’s evangelical right, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was breathing smoke and fire. A Baptist preacher, Huckabee indulged in a bit of ecclesiastical wordplay, denying that the Supreme Court could do “something only the Supreme Being can do — redefine marriage.” He denounced the ruling as a “blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment,” and vowed to defy it. In this, Huckabee echoed Rev. Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who even before the Supreme Court ruling had vowed that “as a minister of the Gospel, I will not officiate over any same-sex unions or same-sex marriage ceremonies. I completely refuse.” Isn’t that brave of him? However, do you really suppose it’s possible that Floyd, Huckabee and the rest of the hyperventilating GOP candidates fail to understand that all churches have an absolute First Amendment right to their own beliefs and practices? They’re bravely refusing to perform ceremonies that nothing in this nor any imaginable Supreme Court decision would require of them. If your church refuses to sanctify same-sex marriages (as mine certainly does), that’s its unquestioned right. For that matter, the Catholic Church also refuses to marry previously divorced couples, or even admit them to communion — an absurdity to me, but not a political issue. Nothing in the Supreme Court ruling changes those things. It’s about marriage as a secular legal institution: two Americans entering into a contract with each other. Period.

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his is the time for our end of second-quarter report for Arkansas athletics, and it’s a generally glowing one, certainly and refreshingly free of things like sex, lies and motorcycle accidents. And on that note we segue to the guy who changed the meaning of “BMFP” around here. Bobby Portis slipped inexplicably in the NBA draft, anywhere from five to seven picks down the projection board, and was passed over by teams in need of his blend of skills in favor of dubious selections without his resume. That said, the Chicago Bulls saw the prize at their beckoning at the 22nd pick, and grabbed the Little Rock Hall product with confidence. And while flurries of trades always accompany the occasion, it was clear quickly that Chicago’s brass saw fit to retain what it had chosen. Portis fits in nicely on a team that cultivated a winning pedigree under deposed Coach Tom Thibodeau. He’s so skilled offensively that he more or less looks like the complement to Joakim Noah at that end of the court, with marginally less athleticism but a far more reliable shooting stroke. The Bulls became a year-to-year defensive nightmare with the likes of Noah inside and Jimmy Butler on the perimeter, but Derrick Rose’s entirely unpredictable health meant that the offense was one of fits and starts. Butler has developed beautifully as the poor man’s Dwyane Wade, a sturdy and multifaceted two-guard, but when the Bulls needed post offense this year the results were decidedly mixed. Noah’s become an inexplicably terrible free throw shooter, Taj Gibson has essentially plateaued as a post scorer, and time isn’t on Pau Gasol’s side. Enter the SEC Player of the Year, a player whose frame is still maturing to catch up with an advanced and very natural game. Portis won’t likely follow up his collegiate apex with an AllRookie accolade in the NBA, but he will not be under that sort of pressure. If he’s capable of generating eight points and five rebounds per outing next year while making progressive month-tomonth advancement, he’s going to

excite Bulls fans who remember a raw University of Central Arkansas product who meshed well with BEAU their franchise WILCOX guard in the late 1980s en route to six titles in the next decade. That’s not to heap undue pressure on Portis to reach Scottie Pippen heights, but Chicago could do far worse than taking an energetic, skilled, hard-working small forward from the South again. It wasn’t in the cards for Michael Qualls to get that kind of fortuitous plunge. Instead, the other Hog early entry suffered a devastating knee injury in Phoenix, and days later his name went uncalled. Every pundit knew Qualls was taking a substantial risk by departing after his solid junior year anyway, but the blown ACL cemented the fact that he’d be looking for an employer. There is always a shine on these things, though. Qualls played his three years with considerable reckless abandon. He entered as a sleeper, three-star prospect with notoriety as an athlete that outstripped his basketball savvy. Arkansas fans saw him progress as a scorer, perimeter rebounder and defender, and crunch-time asset. Nevertheless, as he flung his body all over the hardwood of Bud Walton Arena and abroad, it was hard for anyone to imagine him maintaining that clean bill of health. Time to rehabilitate should serve two purposes. One is that Qualls may necessarily come back with a more measured way of doing things. He’s only just discovered that his body is not impervious to damage, and if the timing was terrible for that lesson, it at least should soak in. Second and perhaps most importantly, the time off permits the swingman from Shreveport, La., to find a niche that fits him later his year. He’s likely to start out somewhere in the D-League, whenever he does get his health back, but he could also be an instrumental plugin on a playoff team come next spring. Patrick Beverley had a less ceremoniCONTINUED ON PAGE 38

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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he Observer has been covering the fight for LGBT rights in this state a long time, sons and daughters. Before it was a thing. All the way back to the days when a sizable percentage of people were perfectly willing to use the word “fag” when speaking to a guy they knew for a fact was writing stuff down for the newspaper. That’s a long time ago, and thank God. As a reporter, The Observer has marched with LGBT folks, simultaneously trying to talk, walk, write, hold a recorder and avoid stepping in a pothole. I stood with them as the Evangelical masses streamed past into Huckabee’s Verizon Arena marriagepalooza some years back, the gay and lesbian kids there handing out little white stones inked with that famous Bible verse about what Ye Who Is Without Sin could do with them. Thankfully, none of the faithful felt sufficiently Christlike enough to lob them back. I stood in the cold wind up in Pleasant Plains as a line of people protested a school board member who took to Facebook to say that he hoped all fags would kill themselves, and that he would disown his children if they turned out to be gay. I’ve sat in American kitchens and living rooms, pictures of American families smiling down from the walls, and heard American children talk about being tormented until a gun or razor or handful of pills seemed preferable to living one more day. I’ve sat through hearings where the fundamental equality of adult people in that very room was debated. I’ve talked to Arkansans who have been beaten and abused, ridiculed and menaced, turned away from jobs, stores, restaurants, courthouses, schoolhouses and churchhouses, solely because they are LGBT. Last year, I talked to a woman who buried the ashes of dozens of men in her family cemetery down in Hot Springs after their families had refused even their bodies, solely because they had committed the sin of being gay and dying

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of AIDS. When I finished that story, I sat in my office alone, deep in the night, and wept like I haven’t since I was a child. For the dead. For her bravery. For the sheer ugliness and loveliness of these wretched creatures we are, so full of goodness and hate, all our loss and redemption tied up in the great Gordian knot of these flawed human hearts. So when the news came over the radio Friday that LGBT folks could finally be married all over this country, I had to wheel the Mobile Observatory to a curb downtown and sit there for a while before I could drive on. I am not gay. I am not lesbian or transgender. But I say this now with all my heart: I would be proud to be. As I have said before in this space and elsewhere, the bravest people I know, bar none, are LGBT. I know cops and firefighters. I know doctors and nurses. I know soldiers and men with the pale scars of many fistfights. But there are LGBT people I know who beat them all in the bravery department. Many of those same folks are my personal heroes. They are the ones who say: “I believe that my right to be the person I was born to be and to love who I want to love is worth any sacrifice, up to and including my life.” Is that not the very definition of bravery? I have come to believe that reporter years are like dog years. Doesn’t seem like jotting in a notebook would take so much out of you, but it does. As Indiana Jones said: It’s the mileage. That said, the soon-to-be 41-yearold who was all of 27 when he started covering LGBT rights in this state managed to get his shoes on and make the rounds of the parties Friday night. I saw many of those I’ve walked with before. We recalled the old days. I shook hands, hugged some, thanked most. A lot of us have grown up in this fight, one of them told me. And The Observer could only nod my graying head, swallow down that lump in my throat, and smile.

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425 West Capitol Ave. #300 Little Rock, AR 72201 501.375.3200 flake-kelley.com

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

Long road ahead The U.S. Supreme Court victory for marriage equality didn’t settle legal issues of discrimination against gay people in employment, housing or public accommodation. The New York Times detailed the fight this week. It won’t be easy. Congress has refused to add sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in employment rights law, though it has come close at times. The outlook is even worse in Arkansas. Gov. Asa Hutchinson refuses to endorse equal employment protection for LGBT people in Arkansas. He has endorsed legislation to give those who wish to discriminate a religious pretext to do so. A scattering of local governments have resisted legal discrimination in a variety of ways, notably Eureka Springs and Fayetteville, which will vote in September on a broad civil rights ordinance. Think the fear of discrimination is not real? The New York Times story recounts one Arkansas case that we’ve reported before: “[T]he Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged with enforcing federal law in the workplace, has determined that discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people amounts to illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and it is bringing or endorsing lawsuits under that provision. “That application of existing law is still being tested in court and is more established for transgender workers than for gay and lesbian workers. In the past two years, the agency has successfully pursued 223 cases involving gay or transgender people who faced workplace harassment or other discrimination, gaining settlements or court orders, said Chai R. Feldblum, one of the agency’s five commissioners. “Patricia Dawson of Pangburn, Ark., 46, hopes to join that list. Ms. Dawson, who grew up as Steven, had more than 15 years’ experience as an industrial electrician and had been a rising employee at H&H Electric, an industrial contractor, for four years when she informed her boss in 2012 that she was transitioning to female and had changed her name. “The boss, she said in a Title VII-based lawsuit brought by the

TIME TO GO: Confederate flags should be relegated to museums, said the NAACP’s Dale Charles.

The banned old flag Controversy swirls in Little Rock over Confederate flag. BY DAVID KOON

flag is, of course, just a piece of cloth. We are the ones who turn it into something more than cotton or polyester. Since the June 18 massacre at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, however, America has been doing some soul searching over the Confederate flag, the most enduring symbol of the Confederacy. Soon after the arrest of the alleged killer, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof, a website was found featuring a racist manifesto and multiple photos of Roof posing with his pistol and the Confederate battle flag. Within

the week, Alabama and other Southern states had furled the Confederate flags that flew over their Capitol grounds, and giant retailers like Walmart, Amazon and eBay said they would no longer sell items bearing the well-known image. In Arkansas, there is a growing call to remove the fourth and highest star in the center of the Arkansas state flag, which represents our membership in the Confederacy. In Central Arkansas, for now, a good bit of the controversy over the Confederate flag seems to have settled on the doorstep of Little Rock’s Arkansas Flag and Banner. The business is located

at 800 W. Ninth St. in Taborian Hall, whose storied Dreamland Ballroom once hosted some of America’s greatest African-American entertainers before urban renewal efforts and the construction of Interstate 630 destroyed most of the city’s black business district along Ninth. The Little Rock chapter of the NAACP held a protest there over the weekend, demanding that Arkansas Flag and Banner stop selling the flag. Dale Charles, the president of the Little Rock chapter of the NAACP, said the Confederate battle flag symbolized the fight to preserve slavery and should be consigned to the museums. “If you know [slavery was] wrong,” Charles said, “why would you want to continue to keep that as the symbol of your history? You should be ashamed of it and try to get rid of it.” Asked what he says to people who say the Confederate flag is about history, not hate, Charles said that the two ideas weren’t mutually exclusive. “History can be hate. History is hate in a lot of instances,” he said. “In this case, it is hate. It is about history. But it’s a dark history that should not be continued CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

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THE

BIG PICTURE

Haters gonna hate While right-thinking folks around the country celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, the most extreme conservative voices in Arkansas wallowed in rage and hyperbole. It wasn’t pretty. Clip and save. This sort of talk will only seem more reprehensible (and confounding) as time goes by.

Never giving in. I am dedicated to restoring religious liberty & states rights. I am standing in the gap — it is here I shall live or die. — Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) on Twitter. Rapert also released a 21-minute diatribe against the decision on YouTube, where he blamed the same-sex marriage decision on Marbury v. Madison, one of the foundational pieces of jurisprudence in the Court’s history. It was decided in 1803.

“The question this ruling raises is ‘What is a marriage, and what is a family?’ If marriage can be between two men, why can’t it be between three or five? What is the logical argument for limiting it to just two people? We’re eliminating the very definition of marriage, and in so doing we are redefining the family as well.” — Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council

“The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do — redefine marriage. I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. … “The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature’s God on marriage than it can the law of gravity. Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court. If accepted by Congress and this president, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.” — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness & unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Rom 1:18. — Rep. David Meeks (R-Greenbrier) on Twitter

“How long before a new Paul, he of the New Testament, will be writing blazing letters? Or a new Dietrich Bonhoeffer will arise to stir us? That pastor resisted another government’s decrees when Nazi Germany was supposed to be the Wave of the Future. “We can hardly wait for the appearance of such new prophets and old prophecies renewed. For political/legal defeats can lead to moral victories. It can free us to express our deepest, best, most resistant selves no matter what the dominant culture may try to impose on us. “Onward, Christian soldiers!” — The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page on June 30

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INSIDER, CONT. American Civil Liberties Union, told her to keep her plans secret and not to “rock the boat” with clients. “When her identity became obvious and gossip raged at the work site, she said, the boss said to her, ‘I’m sorry, Steve, you do great work, but you are too much of a distraction, and I am going to have to let you go.’ “Ms. Dawson said she was devastated by her treatment. ‘I love what I do; I get the greatest joy out of fixing things,’ she said in an interview. ‘Treating us as second-class citizens, it’s hurtful.’ ”

Wood responds On Monday, Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood tweeted, “Always remember … Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.” Was it a response to an article published online Sunday about the obstructionism in which she played a part in the state Supreme Court delay in deciding the same-sex marriage appeal (read it on page 20)? As that article recounts, sources say the case wound up undecided by the court, though a majority, including Wood, reportedly was prepared to overturn Judge Chris Piazza had the U.S. Supreme Court not overturned all state bans. Or maybe Wood isn’t happy that reader comment about that matter ranged into some who brought up Wood’s reliance on huge campaign contributions from nursing home magnate Michael Morton to power her election campaign; her ties to hometown political contribution bagman Gilbert Baker; and the continuing federal probe of activities by Baker, Morton and Baker’s old friend and former judicial colleague, Mike Maggio. Maggio is awaiting sentencing for confessing to taking campaign money in return for a favorable ruling in a nursing home case. We do not suggest Wood has any culpability in the Baker-Morton-Maggio mess. But no doubt you sometimes itch from associating with flea-bitten hounds. But if her unhappiness relates to multiple reliable reports on the state Supreme Court handling of the marriage case, there is a very simple solution: Open the record of votes and draft opinions resulting from deliberations on the case over more than eight months after the case was “expedited” but never decided. www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

At long last Marriage for all comes to Arkansas as the U.S. Supreme Court delivers a historic win for LGBT equality. BY DAVID KOON

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FINALLY WED: Earnie Matheson (left) and Tony Chiaro.

ing up in Oklahoma over 50 years ago, he never believed that someday America might recognize the rights of gay people like him. “Never did that ever occur to me,” he said. “But as a little kid at 8 years old, somehow in my mind, I kept thinking: There’s got to be some way for us. You know? We just had to go from there. And wait a long, long time.” Standing nearby at the same counter, largely unnoticed by the news crews, was Sarah Scanlon. An Arkansas native who has spent over 20 years now in the dogfight for LGBT equality all over the country, Scanlon never expected to settle in her home state, but two days after dropping into Arkansas on a lobbying mission some years back, she met the woman she calls the love of her life and stayed. She has married her wife, Barbara L’Eplattenier, twice now, once in California and once in Arkansas in May 2014, during the window between Piazza’s ruling and the stay. They have a 4-year-old daughter together. “Waking up and being able to have my daughter on my lap when I was reading SCOTUS Blog, and have that all come down and be really clear and no question whatsoever, my initial thought was two things,” she said. “One: just total joy. And then: This is going to give Sen. Jason Rapert something to talk about.” Scanlon was at the courthouse to retrieve birth certificates, so she could get added to L’Eplattenier’s benefits with the University of Arkansas System, just one of dozens of rights that hadn’t been afforded to them until the ruling came down. Scanlon was also there to finalize her minister’s credentials. She couldn’t stop smiling. Growing up gay in the South, Scanlon said, a lot of LGBT people of her generation came to believe that there were just certain things they’d never be able to do. “We could never have children. We could never get married. We could never be a family,” she said. “That’s all gone now. All those barriers are gone. We can get married. We have children. We do have families. There’s nothing that separates us from anybody

else in society.” We talked over the bad old days: The Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the years when the Republican Party used monster shouting about gay marriage to drive the evangelical base to the polls. Scanlon believes the Supreme Court ruling is a big step toward putting those days behind us. “It’s still going to be a wedge issue,” Scanlon said. “But fewer and fewer people are going to be offended by it and fewer and fewer people are going to be scared by it.” Upstairs, Matheson and Chiaro had found someone to marry them: Judge Piazza, whose ruling in May 2014 had set off four days of frenzied nuptials before the Arkansas Supreme Court issued a stay. Piazza, who normally does weddings only for friends and family, said that he decided to marry Matheson and Chiaro when they came to his chambers and he saw the look on their faces. It was a simple affair, held in Piazza’s small courtroom, the press looking on. The only difference between the Chiaro-Matheson wedding and any other was that when Piazza got to the part where an officiant might say “wife” or “husband,” he said “partner.” The Victorian turrets of the old stone courthouse did not collapse. No cracks appeared in the plaster. The rings, purchased long before in the hopes that the Supreme Court would make marriage for all the law of the land, were exchanged. Papers were signed, ready to be filed downstairs, and then it was all but done: the dream of years. Afterward, Piazza agreed to answer a few questions. To tell you how seriously he takes his job, he said it was the first time in his long career on the bench that he’d ever been interviewed while wearing his black judicial robe. He believes that, over time, the country will come to accept LGBT marriage. “America is a wonderful place,” Piazza said. “The Constitution of the United States was drafted by some brilliant people and if you go back and read it, some of their decisions and how they went about it and what they intended

BRIAN CHILSON

t took Earnie Matheson and Tony Chiaro 26 years to get to the courthouse. By the time they got there, they had grown old waiting. They were the first couple to show up at the Pulaski County Courthouse on Friday morning after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling upholding marriage as a fundamental right for all. Though LGBT people and their allies across the country had worried that the court might rule against same-sex marriage, or issue a half-measure that could take days or weeks to parse into something the states could act on, neither came to pass. In all but the hardest of hardline states, the clear language of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion forced the tired old hobby horse of “gay marriage” to evaporate like summer dew, until only marriage was left. The press had been waiting for the first couple to appear for a while when Chiaro and Matheson walked into the tiled hallway in not-quite-matching blue plaid shirts, ready to face the clerk who would present them with their marriage license. Last year, on the first Monday after the May 9 ruling by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, there had been a crush of joyful bodies. Over 500 same-sex couples would eventually be married statewide. On Friday morning, though, there were just Tony and Earnie. Matheson is 65, Chiaro 73. They’ve been together going on three decades. The big TV cameras scooped up the image of their hands jotting down vitals. Reporters on laptops click-clacked word of their arrival onto the Internet, which barely even existed when the two became a couple. “We’d talked about it and dreamed about it,” Matheson said. “We would always say, ‘Someday, some way, somewhere, we’ll have an opportunity to completely be married in the full sense.’ We could have went off to several places. But it meant so much to be married here.” License in hand and headed upstairs to try and find someone to marry them, Matheson said that when he was grow-

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JULY 2, 2015

for the future, you’ll understand that this was an evolving document.” Piazza said he’d lived with his decision to overturn the state ban on samesex marriage for over a year. He spoke of the barbs that have been leveled at him for that decision, including by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “There’s been a lot of criticism,” he said. “There has been some editorial writing against me. People running for president of the United States have been particularly hostile toward this concept. But the truth of the matter is, I know in my church we have a loving community. We believe that love is the answer to society’s problems. I don’t feel it’s exceptional what I did in this case.” In reaching his original decision, he said he had the opportunity to go back and study the case law on equality, including the infamous Dred Scott decision from 1856. Though the Supreme Court majority opinion in that case furthered the cause of slavery, Piazza said he’d been moved by a dissent in Dred Scott, in which Justice John McLean wrote: “A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man; and he is destined to an endless existence.” “What I realized,” Piazza said, “is that there had been voices in our country, from its inception, who have spoken up against injustice. And sometimes it takes a little bit of courage to make that pronouncement.”

makes perfect. Eddy-McCain, who married his husband, Gary, in New York in 2012, said he was at home Friday morning when the word came. “I screamed, ‘Gary! We won!’ ” Eddy-McCain said. “He ran in and hugged me and we couldn’t talk. We were crying. I didn’t know how I would feel once it was definitely decided. But all I can say is that I thank God, because I believe heaven is on the side of justice. I believe the bells of heaven are ringing today. ... Now, my marriage, mine and Gary’s marriage, is recognized in the state of Arkansas that I love so much.” Asked what he makes of voices from the right using Biblical scripture to decry the marriage equality ruling, Eddy-McCain said Christians like Huckabee and Rapert are ignoring the central message of their own faith: that God is love.

lesbian couple was Cheryl Maples. On July 1, 2013, less than a month after the Supreme Court’s landmark United States v. Windsor decision struck down parts of the Defense of Marriage Act, Maples filed suit against the state of Arkansas on behalf of a group of LGBT plaintiffs challenging the state ban on same-sex marriage. She would later say that she filed the suit in honor of her lesbian daughter. Though there were times during the process when the ailing Maples was too weak to stand and address the court, it was her lawsuit that led Piazza to his decision to strike down the state ban on same-sex marriage. Maples and her clients were still waiting for a decision on the appeal of Piazza’s ruling from an almost comically foot-dragging Arkansas Supreme Court when the U.S. Supreme Court ruling came down last week. Maples looked frail as she sat there in her chair, but also luminously happy. She’s had a long career as an attorney, but the fight for same-sex marriage is the work she’ll be most remembered for, and she knows it. She said Kennedy’s opinion had moved her to tears. Maples said that she was disappointed but not surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court managed to rule before the Arkansas Supreme Court. She said that while the Arkansas Supreme Court claimed the case is resolved, there are still issues to be addressed, such as whether or not the wildly successful 2004 referendum to make gay marriage illegal did, in fact, alter the due process and equal protection clauses of the state’s bill of rights, as has been claimed. “The due process and equal protection clauses are supposed to be inalienable,” she said. “That should never be able to happen again. Those inalienable rights include the right to bear arms, freedom of religion, things that people are really concerned about. So this is a dangerous precedent and really needs to be addressed

“It’s still going to be a wedge issue,” Scanlon said. “But fewer and fewer people are going to be offended by it and fewer and fewer people are going to be scared by it.”

GOD IS LOVE A few hours later found another couple being married in the rotunda of the Pulaski County Courthouse, one of a handful who showed up on Friday. Presiding over the wedding was Pastor Randy Eddy-McCain of Open Door Community Church in Sherwood. Last year, during the four-day window when same-sex marriage was legal in Arkansas, Eddy-McCain performed over 100 weddings. He’s said he’s got the ceremony pretty much down pat. Practice

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

“That’s what we’re told in the scriptures, and I believe that,” he said. “It says that those who love are in God, and God is in them. I know, from personal experience with my husband, that we love each other. We have improved each other’s lives. We’re there for each other. We’re there when the other is sick. We pay our bills together. We have a home together. We have a son together and grandchildren, and we have love. I sense God in our marriage so strongly. So I don’t know what God they’re talking about, but the God I serve and the God I know stands for love. And Gary and I love each other.” Looking on from a nearby wheelchair as Eddy-McCain married a young

BR I A N CH I L SO N

I AM THE AEA

iggott, Arkansas is widely known as the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and it’s where both the Trail of Tears and the Southwest Trail tracked history through northeast Arkansas. Maybe not as well-known but certainly as significant is the contribution Sue Smith made to the community as an educator. After a 31-year career teaching French and world history at Piggott High School, Sue retired in 2001 to start her second career volunteering for her community. “I live in Batesville now, and I’m able to volunteer at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, and as a docent, I can still have contact with students. I also volunteer with various community activities in Batesville.” These inspirations for lifelong learning and to impart knowledge to students of all ages are what kept Sue in the classroom. “I enjoyed opening up the world to my students,” she said. “That little spark when an ‘a-ha’ moment occurred was priceless. I also loved the extracurricular activities—Quiz Bowl coach, Beta Club sponsor, French Club sponsor, decorating for prom—I wore a lot

of hats! Every other year I led a group of students to Europe, and that brought my foreign language and world history together well.” Sue’s commitment to education extends to her participation in the Arkansas Education Association. For almost five decades, she’s been a member—31 as an active member and 13 since she retired. Today, she serves as president of the AEA-Retired. “I became a member of the AEA and stay a member now because it’s the professional thing to do,” Sue said. “A former president of the National Education Association once noted that she has chalk dust on her soul. I think I do, too, and so does the AEA.” Sue also notes membership in the AEA includes legal, professional, economic and social benefits for both career and retired members. “The AEA lobbies for children, employees and retirees. It’s our voice at the legislature when we are busy teaching or doing our educational support jobs,” she said. “There is security in numbers, and through the AEA, there are opportunities for staff development. It’s important to me to keep up with what is happening in Arkansas and the nation in education.”

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JUNE 25, 2015

by the Arkansas Supreme Court.” Maples said she believed it was fear that caused the state’s elected Supreme Court justices to avoid a ruling in the case; specifically, the fear that a ruling in support of same-sex marriage would lead to punishment by the voters on Election Day. It’s stands as proof that the state needs another system for selecting the judiciary, Maples said. Maples said the next fight would be against LGBT discrimination. Like several people I talked with, she noted that in Arkansas, LGBT people can still be summarily fired from their jobs or kicked out of rental housing based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. She believes the great strides that have been made in only a few years show that full equality can happen. “In just a very few years, there has been this huge change in attitude,” she said. “The majority of Americans now are in favor of rights for the LGBT community. Just a very short time ago, it was not that way. The next generation that’s coming up cannot see why it should be a problem. So there’s major change that’s taking place. Unless you instill that hatred and that fear in children, it doesn’t matter. Maybe this generation is so into computers that they haven’t been listening to Mom and Dad, but they missed the hatred chapter. So things are rapidly changing.” Maples cried as she talked about her happiness over the Supreme Court ruling. She admitted she’d been crying off and on all day. It’s been really something, she said. It’s all wrapped up. “This is the civil rights issue of our time,” she said. “Not my time, because my time is probably in the 1960s. But their time. The young peoples’ time. I’m so proud to have been a part of this. So proud. I can’t tell you how proud.” BACK CORNER NO MORE There were parties in the evening of the day marriage equality came to Arkansas, awash in happiness and rainbows, where every beer and shot was served with a chaser of glee. At a party thrown by several LGBT groups at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack in the River Market district, longtime Conway activist John Schenck was almost the first through the door. He’d

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ARKANSAS TIMES

heard the news about the Supreme Court ruling at 9:02 a.m., he said, and he and his partner, Robert Loyd, were at the Faulkner County Courthouse by 9:05. They were likely the first samesex couple married in Arkansas after the decision. Angela Shelby and Linda Myers, plaintiffs in the state lawsuit to strike down the ban, were both circulating at Stickyz, too, decked out in matching “Married, Y’all” T-shirts and bearing permanent, unshakable grins. They said they were already starting to see the impact of the SCOTUS ruling. “When we were parked in the parking lot,” Myers said, “we were looking out our front window and a couple came by, two women, and they held hands and they kissed. They did that in the middle of public. That was when it hit me, I guess.” “We haven’t seen that before here in Little Rock,” Shelby said. “Such a quick change,” Myers said. “It gave me chills to see that.” At a nearby table were Sandy BidwellSmith and Lisa Smith. Now in their 60s, the two women met while serving in the armed forces, both stationed at North Little Rock’s Camp Robinson. They’ve been together for 13 years, and were married in Bidwell-Smith’s home state of New York in August 2013. “We got a little tired of waiting,” Bidwell-Smith said. “[Lisa is] a very pessimistic person and figured it would never happen here in our lifetimes. So I said, ‘Let’s go home.’ ’’ A native of Little Rock, Lisa Smith said that when she was growing up, she never believed she’d see same-sex marriage legalized in the state. “Not in Arkansas,” she said. “I guess it’s because I’ve always been in the back corner, my whole life. Hush-hush. Being in the military, you had to keep it under the table or you get kicked out … I had a few incidents where they’d come right out and ask me if I was a lesbian. I had to tell them no, because if I said yes, I was gone. During Desert Storm, there were a couple of them who wanted to press the issue and, thank goodness, my commander said, ‘Leave her alone.’ ” Sandy Bidwell-Smith said that she hopes the Supreme Court ruling will be “the opening of a grand, brand-new world.” Asked if she felt different now

that her marriage was legal in Arkansas, she said not one damn bit. “We’ve been together 13 years,” she said. “The only thing it’s going to change is we can file our taxes together, we can do our burial plans together, everything we were denied, we now have. So, do we feel different? No, we feel equal.” “When I go to the hospital and they say, ‘Who are you?’ ” Lisa Smith said, “now I can say, ‘This is my wife.’ ” Also at the party was Jack Melvin, who works in human resources in Little Rock. Growing up in Blytheville, Melvin said that when he was in his teens and 20s, being gay was “the unspoken.” The only person he even suspected was gay was a woman who owned a local liquor store. Melvin said that the acceptance of LGBT people will take time, even though the country is further along now in that regard than he ever thought it would be. While older Americans have a reputation for being resistant to change, he said many of them deserve credit for their willingness to bend. “My parents knew [I was gay] from the time I was 28, and they were OK with it,” he said. “They never questioned it. It was just a part of me. And because of that, since that day, I’ve always thought, ‘If it’s OK with my parents, who mean the most to me of anybody in the world, then it’s got to be OK. If my parents can accept me, you can accept me or get out of my life ….’ It’s a generational thing, but even within each generation there’s understanding.” A half-mile away at Lost Forty, the Stonewall Democratic Caucus of Arkansas was hosting its own celebration, tables festooned with “Just Married” balloons. Stonewall president Tippi McCullough was there with her spouse, Barbara Mariani. McCullough — who was fired from the Catholic Mount St. Mary Academy in October 2013, less than 30 minutes after marrying Mariani in New Mexico — knows better than almost anybody that employment and housing protections for LGBT people have to be the next step. Even so, McCullough said, losing her job over getting married didn’t discourage her from the fight for marriage equality. “As a matter of fact, it just sealed our bond even more and made us understand what it meant even more,”

‘WE FEEL EQUAL’: Sandy Bidwell-Smith (left) and Lisa Smith.

that loved everyone and didn’t use the Bible as a weapon, or use certain parts of it to target people.” Frazier-Henson came out of the closet at 19, around the time of the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo., in October 1998. She said that her biggest fear when she came out was violence, and that she wouldn’t be able to realize the dream of marriage and a family. “That was the reality that I was facing in Southeast Arkansas,” she said. “It was a very intolerant place. It was scary. Within my own immediate family, it wasn’t a very safe place to be. I felt like all those hopes and dreams were non-existent. But as I got older, I thought, ‘No. Why aren’t we fighting for this?’ ” When she heard Cheryl Maples was filing a lawsuit, Frazier-Henson and her partner called Maples to offer her support and were later added as plaintiffs. As a social worker who often talks to young adults, she said she believes America will soon come to grips with LGBT rights.

“We’re becoming more tolerant, even if it doesn’t always seem so,” she said. “I see it every day. The next generation is a lot more tolerant. It’s good to see that the kids are able to figure it out for themselves. Even if they grew up in a very bigoted, small-minded community, they’re able to see the bigger picture.” During the party, Frazier-Henson was using her phone to keep up with friends getting married all over, including a couple being married in San Antonio. She said she had always known that the day would come when LGBT people could legally marry all over the U.S., though she didn’t expect it to come so soon. There’s surely still work to be done in the future. But for one Friday night in America, Angelia Frazier-Henson was content to exhale and just let the present wash over her. “Today, I’m a little bit closer to being a full citizen,” she said. “That’s a relief. I’m not all the way there yet, because if I change jobs, I have to worry about it, and until I’m a homeowner I have to worry about it. But I’m closer. And every step we take is monumental.”

BRIAN CHILSON

she said. “Today, once again, I’m feeling all those same feelings. While it’s the same, it’s a lot different. Every time, it just becomes more meaningful. Barbara and I would feel this way about each other anyway, but when you’re recognized along with everybody else in Arkansas and the United States, it’s important.” As a storm rolled in over the city skyline, turning umbrellas inside out and leaving everybody coming in looking drowned, Angelia Frazier-Henson walked up. Along with her wife, Kathy Henson, Frazier-Henson was a plaintiff in both the state case and a named plaintiff in the lawsuit over the validity of the “window marriages” performed between Piazza’s ruling and the stay. Frazier-Henson has another interesting distinction: As a girl, she was a member of a Baptist Church in Pine Bluff pastored by a young preacher named Mike Huckabee. “I knew a different man,” FrazierHenson said. “Politics changes people, especially money. … The Christ I was taught to believe in by Mike Huckabee and my church family is a loving God

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JULY 2, 2015

Delay, delay and then a change of heart A timeline of the Arkansas Supreme Court and the same-sex marriage case. BY MAX BRANTLEY

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

SWING VOTES: Justices Rhonda Wood (left) and Courtney Goodson. Goodson initially wrote a majority opinion upholding Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza. But after the election of Wood, she changed her vote and wrote an opinion reversing Piazza. It was never delivered because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

he Arkansas Supreme Court’s 13-month involvement with the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the state ban on same-sex marriage ended with a quiet footnote at 5:10 p.m. Friday, June 26: a brief order saying the case was moot because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage was a national right. Court deliberations are secret by custom. But information has come to me from a variety of sources that now provides a window on what transpired in sometimes confusing and acrimonious internal debates. My information reveals that the court voted 5-2 Nov. 20, 2014, in favor of upholding Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza’s decision last May. Then, with two different justices, the court voted June 10 this year to reverse Piazza. Justice Courtney Goodson wrote majority draft opinions in both cases, despite the change of direction. The second opinion, authorized barely more than two weeks ago, was withheld

pending the U.S. Supreme Court decision and would have been released only if Justice Anthony Kennedy had swung a different direction and produced a U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting state marriage bans. An investigation continues by the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission of a complaint by Tippi McCullough of the Stonewall Democrats that the decision in the case was delayed to such an extent that it amounted to unethical behavior. The complaint followed public remarks in court papers by Chief Justice Jim Hannah and Justice Paul Danielson that they believed actions by other justices were pretexts to delay the decision. It will be difficult to prove malicious delay. The Supreme Court’s procedures are arcane and, though not set in written rules, include long-followed custom on scheduling and decision-making that offer ample excuses for how the court managed to not deliver a ruling in a case originally decided more than seven months ago. The Judicial Discipline investigation may ultimately provide some formal insight into handling of a case that has left the court in disrepute with many lawyers. As one veteran judge said to me (not for quote for fear of retribution from justices with a reputation for vindictiveness that employees in the Justice Building have commented on): “I do not know of any other case where our Supreme Court has acted so cowardly. Trial judges are called upon every day to make decisions that anger some people and we do it. This group abdicated their responsibility to decide the case before them.” Here’s the timeline that I’ve been able to piece together: JULY 1, 2013: Cheryl Maples files a lawsuit for a group of plaintiffs challenging the state marriage bans in both statute and, by voter amendment, the Arkansas Constitution. The case is assigned to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza. Shortly afterward, a separate federal lawsuit was filed by Jack Wagoner on behalf of different plaintiffs. MAY 9, 2014: Judge Piazza, in

a sweeping ruling, strikes down the Arkansas ban. He does not stay his order. In the following week, some 500 same-sex couples are married in Arkansas. MAY 15, 2014: The state begins the appeal of Piazza’s ruling. MAY 16, 2014: After initially refusing to stay Piazza’s ruling, the state Supreme Court issues a stay. My sources have previously said that Justice Karen Baker rounded up four votes to override the earlier decision by Justice Donald Corbin not to issue an immediate stay, in part because Piazza had not yet issued his mandate in the case. She will continue as a leader of resistance to the Piazza ruling. SEPT. 10, 2014: Justice Cliff Hoofman, serving out an unexpired term by appointment by Gov. Mike Beebe, recuses from hearing the appeal. He’d had a discussion that touched on the case with Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway), an outspoken foe of same-sex marriage who was stirring up legislative retribution for judges who supported same-sex marriage. This recusal will be a critical event. At that time, there is a 4-3 sentiment on the court to NOT rule on the case until it was known if the U.S. Supreme Court would take up developing differences in federal court marriage cases around the country. OCT. 2, 2014: Beebe appoints retired Circuit Judge Robert McCorkindale of Harrison to replace Hoofman. OCT. 9, 2014: The Supreme Court denies the state’s request to delay the case until the U.S. Supreme Court could be heard from. McCorkindale provides a critical vote against delay. OCT. 23, 2014: The Supreme Court grants the plaintiffs’ motion to expedite the case. Only Justice Jo Hart is recorded as a dissent. Justices Karen Baker and Goodson also oppose expediting the case, but do not want to be recorded publicly as having dissented. Supreme Court procedure assigns all cases on a rotating basis to each of the seven justices, with that justice known

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JULY 2, 2015

as the “main.” Goodson is the “main” on the marriage case. That means she will write the opinion in the case if she votes on the prevailing side. If not, the job of being the “main” will fall to the next justice in line on the rotating schedule. Goodson and others want to follow the normal docketing procedure. That would have delayed completion of briefing and oral arguments into 2015. NOV. 20, 2014: Oral arguments are held before the Supreme Court. The court meets in conference afterward and voted 5-2 to uphold Piazza. Hart and Baker were the dissenters. Goodson voted to affirm — with Hannah, Danielson, Corbin and McCorkindale — and thus control the majority opinion. Goodson prepares an opinion and circulates it early in December. Justices discuss it Dec. 17 and that leads to a revised opinion that addresses some relatively minor legal points. It is circulated. Hart says she wants to file a dissent. She also argues that, under court procedure, she should have as long to prepare her dissent as Goodson had to prepare her majority opinion. Goodson had taken more than three weeks. A similar time period will push completion of a dissent into 2015, when the court makeup will change. Robin Wynne will take the retiring Corbin’s seat and, more critically, Rhonda Wood will assume the seat held by Hoofman, whose vote in the marriage case was given over to McCorkindale. Hart never produces a dissent. Corbin argues that the majority opinion should be issued with a note that a dissent was to follow. Goodson refuses to issue the opinion. She says she might wish to respond to points in Hart’s dissent. So it was that the year ends without a decision, but not before some acrimonious discussions. Hart — well known for a sharp tongue and authoritarian bearing reflecting her military background — particularly aims at Corbin, who’d been pushing to get the opinion out before he left the court. JAN. 1, 2015: A new court is seated. New Justice Wood aggressively pushes to replace McCorkindale on the case. She mentions the possibility of a third-party legal action challenging McCorkindale’s authority to vote. At one point there’s a vote of the six justices, not includ-

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ARKANSAS TIMES

ing McCorkindale or Wood, that splits 3-3 on who should hear the case, with Hannah, Danielson and Wynne saying the justice appointed to the case by the governor should complete it and Goodson, Baker and Hart saying it should be Wood. Finally, a new political player breaks the logjam. JAN. 16, 2015: The U.S. Supreme Court announces it will decide the samesex marriage issue. JAN. 23, 2015: New Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge files a motion asking that Wood hear the case rather than McCorkindale. Rutledge is a marriage foe. Wood, though judges run as nonpartisans, has historic Republican ties, including using marriage foe Mike Huckbee as campaigner for her through robocalls. Rutledge, who once clerked for Justice Hart and worked in her election campaign, also wanted a new round of oral arguments. At this point, court procedure had come into play in ways not publicly evident. By custom, Goodson wasn’t scheduled to present to the conference of justices, now including at least Wynne as a new member, on her marriage case until February. The arrival of a new request in the case further pushed that presentation back. FEB. 5, 2015: An unsigned court order asks for arguments on the state’s motion. The responses include an initial disagreement among plaintiffs’ lawyers on whether the appointed or new justice should hear the case. APRIL 2, 2015: The Supreme Court rules, with Danielson expressly dissenting, that the question of who should hear the case will become a separate case all to its own, with a new briefing schedule. APRIL 8, 2015: Justices Hannah and Danielson recuse from the separate case on the question of which justices should hear the case. They say the new case is only a delaying tactic. Writes Danielson: “I cannot be complicit in machinations which have the effect of depriving justice to any party before this court.” Their disqualification will alter the outcome of the case.

APRIL 14, 2015: Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, appoints three solid Republicans to decide who should hear the separate case — Betty Dickey, Shawn Womack and Brett Watson. Hannah, Danielson and Wood had recused. MAY 7, 2015: With three Hutchinson appointees on board, the Supreme Court rules, in an opinion by Baker, that Wood, not McCorkindale, should decide the marriage case. Supporters of Hannah saw the language as an almost personal rebuke of Hannah’s position that separation of powers dictate that the governor’s appointee should complete the case. The opinion gratuitously mentions a statement issued by the court’s thencommunications director, Stephanie Harris, about a point in the case. Harris had been guided by Hannah in the statement.

PIAZZA: He ruled Arkansas’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in May 2014.

BRIAN CHILSON

to be released only in the event of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against same-sex marriage.

Harris will eventually be fired (the euphemism was that her job was eliminated) at the instigation of some of the same justices who’d blocked the chief’s choice of a new Supreme Court clerk months before. The court membership is fixed, but no decision is forthcoming. By contrast, federal Judge Kristine Baker, who heard oral arguments Nov. 20, the same day as the Arkansas Supreme Court, produces a long and carefully reasoned decision in support of same-sex marriage only five days later. Goodson remains the “main” justice on the Arkansas marriage case. The Court, for once passing up a delaying tactic, decides not to hear any more oral arguments. JUNE 10, 2015: The Arkansas Supreme Court quietly notes, without publishing the news in its customary weekly “syllabus,” that the marriage case

has been “submitted.” This is a term of court art. It means a case has been completed. Briefing and arguments had been completed (there’d been no change in either of these fundamental elements since Nov. 20, 2014, in this case). It meant the Court had voted and an opinion was in the works, generally to be released in a couple of weeks. And how did the court vote? The court voted to reverse Chris Piazza. The decision remained Goodson’s to write because she voted with the majority, after having voted with the majority to uphold Piazza in November. I have two different versions of this vote — 4-3 or 5-2. Danielson and Hannah remained in support of Piazza’s ruling. The question mark concerns Robin Wynne. Goodson, Baker, Hart and Wood were in the majority. An opinion was prepared. But it was

JUNE 26, 2015: At 9 a.m., Justice Anthony Kennedy begins reading his historic opinion affirming a right to same-sex marriage. At 5:10 p.m., after the close of normal business, and eight hours after the U.S. Supreme Court opinion is released, the Arkansas Supreme Court issues an unsigned three-sentence order dismissing the appeal of Piazza’s decision as moot. Nothing remained to be decided, the court said. Supporters of equal rights have reason to be grateful. Though the details of the adverse opinion reached by the Arkansas Supreme Court in the second opinion aren’t fully known, it didn’t take the broad view of the Arkansas Constitution’s declaration of rights taken by Piazza and upheld in the original decision of the court. The Supreme Court’s failure to rule, along with Goodson’s change of position, leads naturally to speculation that Goodson hoped never to have to rule. Rather she hoped, first, for delay and then salvation by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a path with risks. The U.S. court had options other than a strict up or down decision, such as by allowing state marriage bans but forbidding them from denying marital rights to those legally married in other states, as Arkansas did. And even a negative vote wouldn’t have answered the question about those married in the week after the Piazza ruling. Reluctance to take on tough issues is not uncommon among elected judges. Goodson plans to run for chief justice in 2016 on Hannah’s expected retirement. Her husband, John Goodson, is a powerful trial lawyer with deep political tentacles in judicial and other races. He boasts of his political influence and knowledge of court workings. He was, incidentally, widely rumored to have been upset as a University of Arkansas Board of Trustees member when the UA System moved ahead with partnership insurance coverage immediately after Piazza’s ruling, a decision stopped when the Supreme Court stepped in with a stay.

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JULY 2, 2015

Arts Entertainment AND

Reading in the Rock Summer book picks from locals.

ere are the novels, memoirs, short-story collections and poetry books our favorite local writers and editors are reading this summer:

ELIZA BORNE Interim editor of the Oxford American Sally Mann is best known for the photo project “Immediate Family,” a series documenting her family’s isolated life in the Virginia hills, starring her three young children. The beautiful photographs occasionally feature Mann’s kids in the nude — a fact that caused an uproar when the pictures were published in 1992. Mann unpacks this controversy and much more in her new memoir, “Hold Still,” my favorite book I’ve read so far this summer. The memoir was born 24

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ARKANSAS TIMES

Among them is “The Briefcase,” about a prisoner in a war-torn country who escapes, adopts the identity of a missing physics professor, and spends his exile trying to demonstrate that the sun revolves around the earth. It is a story that displays remarkable compression, force and agility, and is also one of the very few I’ve read that would fit just as snugly into Kafka’s oeuvre as it would into Amy Hempel’s or Joy Williams’.

when Mann decided to research the lives of her forebears, and as she writes in the prologue, “I secretly hoped I’d find a payload of Southern gothic” in their personal histories. Indeed she did — luckily for us — and the resulting brick of a book (nearly 500 pages that I never wanted to end) is an absorbing reflection on art, nature, home, marriage, parenthood, race relations and family ties. Mann’s own story and that of her kin is endlessly fascinating, though it’s her voice — as vital as her photographs — that makes this book such an excellent read. KEVIN BROCKMEIER Author The most pleasurable reading hours of my year have been marked by two recent story collections, each of them boasting at least one story I would number among my all-time favorites. First there is César Aira’s “The Musical Brain and Other Stories.” Aira, famous for the luxuriance of both his imagination and his publication schedule, has seen 13 of his 80-some books translated into English, but this is the first collection of his shorter work. “Acts of Charity,” the foremost of the stories in my affections, might be most fruitfully read as a parable of the artistic life. It recounts the tale of several generations of priests who, one by one, forego helping their fellow man in order to create the most opulent possible home for their successors, thereby (at least theoretically) freeing them to live a life wholeheartedly devoted to charity, and it strikes a mood of delighted — even nutty — cynicism that is unique to Aira’s work. Next there is Rebecca Makkai’s “Music for Wartime,” her first collection, stories from which were chosen (by Salman Rushdie, Alice Sebold, Richard Russo and Geraldine Brooks) for an unprecedented four consecutive editions of “The Best American Short Stories.”

NICKOLE BROWN Poet My wife calls me a nostalgia machine. “It’s what oils your parts,” she says, teasing me about how strangely I ache for the past, how sometimes I miss something before it’s even gone. This, of course, is what drives me to forgotten snapshots in antique stores; it’s what I can’t quit contemplating — the slippery and fragmented nature of memory, something I never could quite articulate, at least not until now, having read Rick Barot’s third book of poetry, “Chord.” These new poems, while various in subject matter, are all seemingly born from a world tenaciously observed, from a practice of looking closely in a way that both reaches for what has gone before and remembers that the present will soon pass, too. You might imagine this makes for a melancholy read, but instead, these poems crackle with the language of deep attention, making his observations of even the mundane seem like prayer. Barot is also brilliantly adept at taking abstract

thought and giving it flesh. Consider “Particle and Wave,” showing that “memory can be particle, // that it is a certain justice / carried in time, the shape of it // exact in mind, long after the faded / fact.” GRAHAM GORDY Screenwriter, creator of “Quarry” I got into writing because I thought it was the best excuse to read for a living, but the intensity to which I’ve had to research lately has made me steal moments of what I’ve come to describe as “useless reading.” It’s been very revealing to see what reading I choose when it’s serving no other purpose. A lot of people who go into filmmaking want to be Spielberg; I just want to be Schulberg. I’ve found myself indulging any spare time in two of my favorite novels, “What Makes Sammy Run” and “The Disenchanted,” and two of my favorite screenplays, “On the Waterfront” and “A Face in the Crowd.” “A Face in the Crowd” was a first love, and “What Makes Sammy Run” deserves all the credit it’s been given, but the unsung hero here is “The Disenchanted.” Based on a young Schulberg’s own experiences of writing a screenplay with (another favorite novelist) F. Scott Fitzgerald at the nadir of Fitzgerald’s career, it’s about disillusionment, both of a young man when faced with the demise of someone he’s idolized, and of the entire Jazz Age and the literature and artists that were born from it. The book is funny, heartbreaking and expertly crafted, and Budd Schulberg is, as ever, a pro. Years back, my friend Matt White gave me a copy of Frank Stanford’s “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.” I didn’t know what to make of it, but I couldn’t help but feel that Stanford’s mouth and heart were bigger than mine could ever be. Unconventional. Tortured. Utterly false at times, utterly fearless at others. As if James Merrill had wallowed in a creek bed. And he was writing about all these places I know. With “What About This: The Collected Poems of Frank Stanford,” I still don’t know entirely what to make of him. I’m not sure Stanford knew what to make of himself, but I’m glad a lot more people will be punched in their guts and dragged out into the sunlight like I was to try to gauge his mass and power.

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A&E NEWS JESSICA JACOBS Poet Set free from the semester’s constraints of required reading, I’ve begun writing poems again, which means seeking out others’ poetry to inspire me. So far, I’ve found two new collections that do just that. Matthew Olzmann’s “Mezzanines” is like happily wandering a Hollywood studio lot where doors open to everything from a gas station in Detroit to long-dead sailors swabbing the deck of a sunken ship. Here, a stroll through the Housewares section becomes a meditation on race, and Mountain Dew becomes a symbol for enduring love — powerful proof that nothing is too weird or quotidian to be worthy of our attention. Andrea Cohen’s “Furs Not Mine” showcases a magician of a different sort. Writing about her mother’s death, it is not so much her mother Cohen wrangles onto the page but, perhaps more impressively, the amorphous weight of grief itself. Her tools for this are unexpected: sly humor, a touch of surrealism, and deceptively simple language, which again and again transform into elegies staggering in their impact. At first, I was obsessed with how she did it, but with a performance this masterful, by the end I was simply thankful to have witnessed it. JAY JENNINGS Writer I like to coordinate my summer reading with my summer journeys, so for a first-ever trip to Minnesota over solstice weekend, I took along J.F. Powers’ novel set there, “Morte D’Urban.” Powers is mainly a shortstory writer, highly praised but neglected, though this novel, his first, won the National Book Award in 1963. The book is about Father Urban, an ambitious Catholic priest in a downat-heels order, the fictional Order of St. Clement, who is transferred from its Chicago office to a rural Minnesota retreat. The fish-out-of-water comedy here, low and high in abundance, is both Catholic and catholic, as his satiric targets are the universal ones of pride, social climbing and institutional bumbling, and his sentences are well-wrought structures, unlike the domicile of the Clementines: “The wall had been yanked out like a tooth, the gap crudely plastered over, and

now, presumably, was expected to heal itself.” Father Urban courts wealthy benefactors, including one who builds a nine-hole golf course at the retreat, leading to a match that becomes a hilarious psychological battleground. A later putatively comic scene turns suddenly heart-racing and serious — Mary Gordon has called it “one of the most memorable and quietly horrible in modern fiction” — and Father Urban has to make a decision on which you feel the state of his soul depends. ROD LORENZEN Publisher of Butler Center Books In 1917, years after World War I started, President Woodrow Wilson finally caved in on pacifism and his fellow Americans jumped at long last into the “war to end all wars.” The reverberations were felt all the way back to our part of the world, and the state of Arkansas was in many ways changed forever. Those days are now chronicled in a masterful collection of 12 essays, “To Can the Kaiser: Arkansas and the Great War,” edited by Michael D. Polston and Guy Lancaster. (Butler Center Books, 2015). Though little has been written about Arkansas during this period, more than 70,000 Arkansans served in the armed forces. On the home front, the war also expanded the role of women and delivered Arkansas products to global markets. On the eve of the 100th anniversary of U.S. participation in WWI, it’s nice to find a book that gives an authoritative and rare glimpse into an important part of our history. And, since I’m not getting any base-

ball this season on my cheap cable package, I decided to visit an old friend, Roger Kahn, author of a classic book called “The Boys of Summer” (Harper & Row, 1972). It’s about the mid-’50s’ Brooklyn Dodgers and their killer lineup, featuring the likes of Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider. Also included is an Ozarks farm boy named Elwin “Preacher” Roe of Viola, Ark., who was known to throw an illegal pitch now and then and tells you how to do it without getting caught. For this book, Kahn sought out and interviewed Dodger players from that team years later. The resulting profiles, including a great one on Roe, put you as close to being on the field as you can get, except for the smell of pine tar and seeing guys spit “chew.” TRENTON LEE STEWART Novelist “The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks” was the first novel I read by Donald Harington, and it remains my favorite. A hilarious, bawdy and affecting saga that calls to mind both “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Catch22,” the book only slyly pretends to be a history of the development of domestic architecture in Stay More, the fictional hamlet that serves as the setting for most of Harington’s novels. Its real concern is the intermingling (in all possible senses of that word) of several generations of families well known to readers of Harington’s other Stay More novels. Though TAOTAO (as Harington abbreviated the title) was obviously inspired by Garcia Marquez’s novel — some fans have referred to it as “One Hundred Years of Hillbilly Solitude” — it reminded me of “Catch-22” in its ceaseless inventive cleverness. You might even get a little worn out by all the wordplay and joking. But as with “Catch-22,” at the end of the book you will stop laughing just in time to feel genuinely moved.

AT 7 P.M. THURSDAY, JULY 16, the Arkansas Times, the Central Arkansas Library System and the Ron Robinson Theater will host a special screening of Little Rock director Mark Thiedeman’s “Sacred Hearts, Holy Souls” to benefit Out in Arkansas, the Times’ coming LGBT publication. Tickets are $25. A coming-of-age story about a gay teenager at a Catholic boarding school, “Sacred Hearts” has been widely praised: It won the Charles B. Pierce Award for Best Film Made in Arkansas at the 2014 Little Rock Film Festival, and Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette called it one of last year’s best releases. Filmmaker magazine has called Thiedeman “a star,” and The Hollywood Reporter said he was a director to watch. Following the screening, Hendrix College professor and Arkansas Times columnist Jay Barth will host a panel discussion with Thiedeman and local LGBT leaders about the fight for equality in Arkansas post-Obergefell. A reception in the theater lobby will follow with complimentary drinks and light appetizers. Out in Arkansas will be a daily online publication focused on the LGBT community in Arkansas. To donate to the Times’ startup publication or for more information, visit arktimes.com/ outinark. To purchase advance tickets, call Kelly Lyles at the Arkansas Times at 501-492-3979. THE FILM SOCIETY OF LITTLE ROCK has announced the first-ever Kaleidoscope LGBT Film Festival, to be held July 30-Aug. 2 at the Studio Theatre in downtown Little Rock. The festival will include screenings of 10 features and over 30 shorts, plus filmmaker panels and parties. Festival passes, $30, are available at filmsocietylr.com, as are a limited number of VIP All Access passes, for $100. Individual tickets will be on sale as well, $8. The festival will present awards, including the Cheryl Maples Rainbow Award (to the film that “best represents the courage and struggle for equality”) and the Center for Artistic Revolution (CAR) Student Film Prize, the winner of which will receive $500 and a copy of Final Draft screenwriting software. The lineup will include films that have screened at Outfest in Los Angeles, Framiline in San Francisco, Toronto Inside Out and elsewhere.

www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND WILL STEPHENSON

THURSDAY 7/2

ONE MORE TIME: A TRIBUTE TO DAFT PUNK 9 p.m. Revolution. $10-$15.

One thing about bands that only perform in costume is that the conceit adds a very real element of ontological ambiguity to the whole live experience. When you go see the rapper MF DOOM, for instance — who has worn a mask in pub-

lic since his emergence as a solo artist in the mid-’90s — how can you be sure it’s actually him on stage? As it turns out, you can’t be sure. A few years ago, the rapper was forced to admit, after a number of controversial and disappointing live shows, that he’d been sending imitators in DOOM masks to perform in his place. So what does

this mean for Daft Punk, who not only wear robot helmets and gloves, but also rarely utilize vocals that aren’t mechanically processed? Among other things, it means that a “tribute to Daft Punk” has the potential to be not only enjoyable for fans of the band, but essentially identical, if less expensive, to an actual Daft Punk concert. What

I always admired about Daft Punk, anyway, was their taste: At their best, they repurposed sounds and rhythms from the ash-heap of pop history — from soft rock, blue-eyed soul and ’80s boogie — and created new contexts for them. It’s a trick that imposters could pull off just as well — so long as they have the right masks. WS

leave you feeling angry for reasons you can’t clearly articulate. In addition to its very good, pummeling April cassette EP “Awkward Tape,” the band has released split singles in recent months with like-minded local colleagues Rad Rad Riot and Nouns. Like Jawbreaker or Rancid, Headcold is

capable of growling and singing well simultaneously, and of transforming minor personal grievances into a kind of bleak, operatic despair that can make you feel less alone. Friday night the band will share a bill with Little Rock’s I Was Afraid, whose members are similarly minded but with an arguably less

immediate, more cerebral approach to songwriting. The band’s January LP “Endless Ecstasy” was drenched in emo affect and grunge guitar pedals that gave the whole thing a grim, desolate pallor. It’s a world I probably couldn’t spend too much time in, but it’s well worth it for a night. WS

FRIDAY 7/3

I WAS AFRAID, HEADCOLD 7 p.m. Vino’s. $5.

Conway punk band Headcold is punishing, relentlessly unhappy and great. The group is expert at naming punk rock songs — e.g. “Ignorant Moral Compass,” “Delete the Internet,” “This Is a Rat’s Nest” — and will

SATURDAY 07/04-10/5

‘WARHOL’S NATURE’

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. $4.

Andy Warhol’s pop images of the natural world, from his “Flowers” series from the 1960s to his floating inflatable and interactive installation “Clouds,” go on exhibit on Independence Day at Crystal Bridges. If you go on opening day and want to see a connection to the birth of our nation, check out Warhol’s “Self-Portrait,” part of his Fright Wig series of photographs of the artist overlain with camouflage — here a red, white and blue version of the silkscreen. It’s a patriotic match with Jasper Johns’ “Flag,” in which he’s painted a silk American flag with encaustic paints and mounted it on canvas. The new acquisition debuted on Flag Day in June at the museum. To enhance the Warhol mood, a Spotify playlist will feature music from the 1960s and ’70s, including tracks by the Velvet Underground. The works in “Warhol’s Nature” come from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa. LNP

"FLOWERS": A new Andy Warhol exhibit opens at Crystal Bridges Saturday.

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 7/2

SATURDAY 7/4

32ND ANNUAL POPS ON THE RIVER

Noon-10 p.m. First Security Amphitheater. Free.

The boom of timpani and whistle of rockets again mark Independence Day on the river, as the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra performs patriotic tunes as a

prelude to the 9:30 p.m. fireworks show. The day kicks off at noon when food and crafts vendors will set up in Riverfront Park (members of the military will receive discount coupons) and the annual Classic Cars show and competition returns. The music starts at 5:30 p.m.; also starting then is the opportu-

nity to record a video message to the troops at the Salute the Troops tent. The audience and judges will vote in The Oh Say Can You Sing competition of five finalists to determine who sings the National Anthem with the Symphony. To reserve a seat at the amphitheater, go to eventbrite.com. LNP

WEDNESDAY 7/8-SUNDAY 7/12

AMERICAN TAEKWONDO ASSOCIATION WORLD EXPO Statehouse Convention Center.

LOW-HANGING FRUIT: Brooklyn's Lushes plays at Stickyz with The Casual Pleasures and The Uh Huhs at 8 p.m. Sunday, $5.

SUNDAY 7/5

LUSHES

8 p.m. Stickyz. $5.

Lushes is a Brooklyn duo that sometimes makes misfit noise rock and other times slow, open-ended, chin-scratching indie rock of the sort that used to be called — kind of pretentiously — postrock. The duo released an album last year called “What Am I Doing” and have a new one on the way in October called “Service Industry,” which sounds both scarier and more professional. The new record was recorded and mixed by Aaron Mullan, who’s been working with Sonic Youth since “Daydream Nation,” and his contributions are, if not evident, inferred.

Singer-guitarist James Ardery hails from Louisville, Ky., where he created a music festival called Cropped Out. The band Slint, which recorded music from roughly 1986 to 1991, was also based in Louisville, and it has been mentioned as a sonic precedent in just about everything written about Lushes I can find — for reasons not purely geographical. Like Slint, Lushes’ records seem to portend doom and veer unpredictably from engine-grinding distortion to lonesome, buoyant tunefulness. The bands also share an aura of understated mystery. “As much as I hate it, anonymity is the name of the game,” Ardery said in the only interview I found with the band online. “And yes, there is a game.” WS

Eternal Grand Master Haeng Ung Lee, better known as H.U., was born in Northeast China during World War II, after which his family returned to their home in Korea. He began studying martial arts seriously after the war, and had earned his black belt by 1954, just a year before the term “Taekwondo” was officially designated (by committee) to represent the various extant strands of Korean martial arts — the name could be very loosely translated to mean “The Way of the Hand and Foot.” In Korea, Lee opened a school near a U.S. Air Force base, where he befriended an American named Richard Reed. It was Reed who inspired Lee’s move to the U.S., where he opened a school in Omaha, Neb., and in 1969 founded the American Taekwondo Association. In 1977, Lee relocated the headquarters of the ATA (now called ATA International) to Little Rock, where he claimed the pine trees reminded him of those he’d grown up with in South Korea. It’s been based here ever since, one of the largest taekwondo associations in the world, though Lee himself died of cancer in 2000. He was promoted to 10th degree black belt posthumously and given his impressive (and vaguely ominous) title “Eternal Grand Master.” The association brings tens of thousands of visitors to its convention in Little Rock every year and is also constructing a new $13 million, 6,500 square-foot world headquarters here in town, featuring a museum and training center. WS

Comedian Daniel Dugar is at the Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m., $7 (and at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $10). Philadelphia metal band Hound plays at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. Austin funk and soul group Mingo Fishtrap plays at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $10. Seth Walker is at Juanita’s at 9 p.m., $5.

FRIDAY 7/3 Nashville’s Whoa Dakota plays at the Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. Local garage punk band The Uh Huhs plays at White Water with Foxglove, 9:30 p.m., $5. Mothwind is at Stickyz with Stephen Neeper and The Wild Hearts and Becoming Elephants, 9 p.m., $5.

SATURDAY 7/4 The Charlie Daniels Band plays at Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater at 8 p.m., $54.99. Walmart AMP hosts its first-ever Fireworks Spectacular, featuring music by the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, 8 p.m., $5-$10. Drummers in the House, a showcase of the “region’s best drummers,” is at Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $10. Austin blues singer Carolyn Wonderland plays at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $5.

SUNDAY 7/5 Al White performs at Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, 4 p.m. The Dangerous Idiots play a block party hosted by Little Rock for Bernie Sanders, with food and music, on the 700 block of Booker Street, 5 p.m.

TUESDAY 7/7 Vino’s presents a screening of “In Cold Blood” at 7:30 p.m., free. StandUp Tuesday, hosted by comedian Adam Hogg, is at The Joint in Argenta, 8 p.m., $5. Austin band Whiskey Shivers plays at White Water with Big Still River, 9 p.m.

WEDNESDAY 7/8 There’s a free Brown Bag Lunch Lecture on Washington (Hempstead County), the Civil War capital of Arkansas, at the Old State House Museum, noon. The Arkansas Travelers play the Midland RockHounds at DickeyStephens Park, through July 10, 7:30 p.m., $6-$12. The Brenda & Ellis Band (Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase winners in 1999) plays at South on Main as part of Local Live, 7:30 p.m., free. “Despicable Me” screens at First Security Amphitheater as part of Movies in the Park, 8:30 p.m., free. Natural Child plays at The Lightbulb Club in Fayetteville with Pagiins, 9 p.m.

www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

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.

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., $4 members, $5 non-members 3520 J.F.K. Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org. “Salsa Night.” Begins with a one-hour salsa lesson. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

THURSDAY, JULY 2

MUSIC

Arkansas River Blues Society Thursday Jam. Revolution, 7 p.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/ new. Chris Long. Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, 6 p.m. 1515 E. 4th St. 501-301-4963. www.kentwalkercheese.com. Hound, The Wandering, Pockets, Hunter Donaldson. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. “Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. 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. Mayday by Midnight (headliner), Chris DeClerk (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Mingo Fishtrap. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $10. 107 River Market Ave. 501372-7707. www.stickyz.com. One More Time: A Tribute to Daft Punk. Revolution, 9 p.m., $10-$15. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. 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. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7-9 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505. Seth Walker. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $5. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

Daniel Dugar. The Loony Bin, through July 4, 7:30 p.m.; $7. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com. Stand-up Comedy Showcase. Featuring Katrina Coleman, Richard Douglas Jones and more. The Joint, $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-3720205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

Hillcrest Shop & Sip. Shops and restaurants offer discounts, later hours and live music. Hillcrest, first Thursday of every month, 5 p.m. 501-6663600. www.hillcrestmerchants.com.

FRIDAY, JULY 3

MUSIC 28 JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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 244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. LGBTQ/SGL Youth and Young Adult Group, 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

MUSIC

PRAY FOR ME: Austin’s Whiskey Shivers plays at the White Water Tavern with Big Still River at 9 p.m. Tuesday.

All In Fridays. Club Elevations. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317. I Was Afraid, Headcold. Vino’s, 7 p.m., $5. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Michael Myczkowiak. Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, 7 p.m. 1515 E. 4th St. 501-301-4963. www.kentwalkercheese.com. Mothwind, Stephen Neeper & The Wild Hearts, Becoming Elephants. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Nerd Eye Blind (headliner), Alex Summerlin (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Route 66. Agora Conference and Special Event Center, 6:30 p.m., $5. 705 E. Siebenmorgan, Conway. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m.,

free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com. The Uh Huhs, Foxglove. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www. whitewatertavern.com. Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W Capitol Ave. Whoa Dakota. Afterthought Bistro and Bar, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

COMEDY

“HOGNADO!” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Daniel Dugar. The Loony Bin, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-2285555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

Ballroom Dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m.

Carolyn Wonderland. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Drummers in the House. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $10. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. 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. K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-492-9802. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.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. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. W. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com. Trey Johnson. Another Round Pub, 7 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501-313-2612. www.anotherroundpub.com.

COMEDY

“HOGNADO!” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Daniel Dugar. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

32nd Annual Pops on the River. First Security Amphitheater, noon, free. 400 President Clinton Ave. Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell and Cedar Hill Roads. Fireworks Spectucular. Featuring the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas. Walmart AMP, 8 p.m., $5-$10. 5079 W. Northgate Road, Rogers. 479443-5600. www.arkansasmusicpavilion.com. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 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. Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, through Oct. 31: 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.

SUNDAY, JULY 5

MUSIC

Al White. Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, 4 p.m. 1515 E. 4th St. 501-301-4963. www.kentwalkercheese.com. Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Karaoke. Shorty Small’s, 6-9 p.m. 1475 Hogan Lane, Conway. 501-764-0604. www.shortysmalls.com. Karaoke with DJ Sara. Hardrider Bar & Grill, 7 p.m., free. 6613 John Harden Drive, Cabot. 501-982-1939 ‎. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Lushes, The Casual Pleasures, The Uh Huhs. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com. The Charlie Daniels Band. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, 8 p.m., $54.99. 1701 E. Grand Ave., Hot Springs.

EVENTS

Artist for Recovery. A secular recovery group for people with addictions. Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. 1601 S. Louisiana. Little Rock for Bernie Sanders Block Party. With food, drinks and music by The Dangerous Idiots. On the 700 block of S. Booker Street. 5 p.m.

MONDAY, JULY 6

MUSIC

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.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. Two Cow Garage. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $7. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

TUESDAY, JULY 7

MUSIC

Gil Franklin & Friends. Holiday Inn, North Little Rock, first Tuesday, Wednesday of every month. 120 W. Pershing Blvd., NLR. 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. Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Whiskey Shivers, Big Still River. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

All American Food & Great Place to Party On The Patio!

COMEDY

Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

“Latin Night.” Juanita’s, 7:30 p.m., $7. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

EVENTS

Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd. com/stores/littlerock.

FILM

“In Cold Blood.” Vino’s, 7:30 p.m., free. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. The Brenda & Ellis Band. South on Main, 7:30 p.m., free. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com. Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com. Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Gil Franklin & Friends. Holiday Inn, North Little Rock, first Tuesday, Wednesday of every month. 120 W. Pershing Blvd., NLR. 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. Natural Child, Pagiins. The Lightbulb Club, 9 p.m. 21 N. Block Ave., Fayetteville. 479-444-6100. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. Rick McKean. Another Round Pub, 6 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501-313-2612. www.anotherroundpub.com.

SONNY DOES MORE THAN STEAK!

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Free Valet Parking In The River Market District • 501.324.2999

s o n n y w i l l i a m s s t e a k ro o m . c o m www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

MUSIC REVIEW

AFTER DARK, CONT. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

‘TED TOO MANY’: Amanda Seyfried and Mark Wahlberg star.

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 & Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www.littlerockbopclub.

EVENTS

Unbearable

American Taekwondo Association World Expo 2015. Statehouse Convention Center, July 8-12. 7 Statehouse Plaza.

‘Ted 2’ can’t sort itself out.

Movies in the Park: “Despicable Me.” First Security Amphitheater, 8:30 p.m. 400 President Clinton Ave.

BY HEATHER STEADHAM

f you are an adolescent male or a consumer of so massive a quantity of pot that your brain cells are no longer functioning properly, “Ted 2” is for you. “Ted 2” begins with a living teddy bear, Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), marrying his true love, Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). Immediately, I realized that maybe I should’ve seen “Ted 1” first. I mean, how did this buxom blonde fall for a stuffed animal who says things like, “I’m going to go 50 Shades of Bear on you tonight”? What was this constant referral to “thunder buddies for life”? I figured I’d sort it out later in the movie, but I never did, and it didn’t really matter, because the movie can’t even sort itself out. Is it a tasteless, raunchy sex farce? Because Ted has no male parts, he can’t produce a baby to save his flailing marriage to Tami-Lynn (which is too realistically portrayed, with its arguments too painful to be considered funny). They try increasingly desperate measures, from asking “Flash Gordon” actor Sam Jones to donate his sperm to trying to steal some from Tom Brady (whose member glows majestically when they lift the sheet on his sleeping body). They go to Ted’s friend John (Mark Wahlberg) for a donation and, through a mishap, knock over a shelf and become covered in donations unused because they contain sickle cell (“You’re covered in rejected black guy sperm,” Ted tells John. “You look like a Kardashian.”). But none of the sperm even matters: Because of excessive drug use, Tami-Lynn is infertile, and in a last-ditch attempt, she and Ted turn to adoption. It’s through the filing of adoption paperwork that they discover the driving force behind the rest of the 30

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

movie: They cannot adopt because Ted does not have legal status as a person. While they’ve flown under the radar thus far, they have now drawn attention to themselves and may, from here on out, experience legal difficulties. So is it a raunchy courtroom farce? Ted and John are too poor to afford a lawyer, so they get pro bono representation from Sam (Amanda Seyfried). At first Ted and John are wary of a recent law school graduate, but once she takes a hit off a bong right there in her law office (medicinal, for “migraines”), Ted and John are all in. Sam is inducted into her clients’ world (where “Tuesday nights [they] get fucked up and throw apples at joggers”) and her clients fumble their way around her world, where Ted sings soul music to relate to a black judge and declares, “I’m standing up for me, and I’m standing up for the homos.” Obviously, they lose the case. Maybe it’s a raunchy buddy comedy? Ted, John and Sam take off cross-country to seek an audience with a civil rights attorney (Morgan Freeman). The only bong Sam brings with her is one shaped like a penis; Ted can’t help but indulge, and John can’t help but post a photo of it, #myamazingsummer. Initially Freeman refuses to represent them, proclaiming, “The important thing about being human is making a contribution to society.” And “Ted 2” certainly does not do that. “Ted 2” is not a buddy comedy, not a farce, not a deep reflection on personhood. It is, as this reviewer’s companion called it, a “weed movie.” I wasn’t in the right frame of mind that night to appreciate it and, at the age of 41, I’m afraid I never will be.

FILM

LECTURES

Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: Washington, Arkansas. Old State House Museum, noon. 300 W. Markham St. 501-324-9685. www.oldstatehouse.com.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show. Maxine’s, 7 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive.com/shows. html.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Midland. Dickey-Stephens Park, July 8-10, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

NEW GALLERY EXHIBITS, EVENTS

New shows in bold-face type.

BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “Warhol’s Nature,” from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, July 4-Oct. 5, $4; “Keynote Lecture: John Morris,” talk on fishing by the founder of Bass Pro Shops, 7 p.m. July 8, $10 ($8 members); “American Encounters: The Simple Pleasures of Still Life,” 10 still life paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries from the High Museum, the Terra Foundation, the Louvre and the Crystal Bridges collection, through Sept. 14; “Fish Stories: Early Images of American Game Fish,” 20 color plates based on the original watercolors by sporting artist Samuel Kilbourne, through Sept. 21; American masterworks spanning four centuries. 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. HOT SPRINGS ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: “In Perfect Balance — Art in Motion,” kinetic mobiles by Gerald Lee Delavan, reception 5-9 p.m. July 3, Gallery Walk. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 501-625-3001. HOT SPRINGS FINE ARTS CENTER, 626 Central Ave.: “Airwaves,” through Aug. 1, open 5-9 p.m. July 3, Gallery Walk. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., open until 9 p.m. every 1st and 3rd Fri. 501-624-0489.

JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 Central Ave.: New paintings by Taimur Cleary, Dolores Justus and Emily Wood, through July, open 5-9 p.m. July 3, Gallery Walk. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 501772-3627. YELLVILLE P.A.L. FINE ART GALLERY, 300 Hwy. 62: “Celebrate America,” July 6-31, reception 4-6 p.m. July 10. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-noon Sat. 870-656-2057.

CALL FOR ENTRIES The Arkansas Arts Council is accepting applications from performing, literary or visual artist who would like to join the Arts in Education Artist Roster. Call Cynthia Haas at 324-9769 or email Cynthia@arkansasheritage.org for more information. Deadline is July 10. The Arkansas Arts Council is seeking submissions for the juried “2016 Small Works on Paper Exhibition.” Juror Kati Toivanen of the University of Missouri-Kansas City will select entries and purchase award winners. The show travels to 10 venues across the state. Deadline to enter is July 24. Entry forms are available at www.arkansasarts.org or by calling 501-3249766; for more information call Cheri Leffew at 501-324-9767.

CONTINUING GALLERY EXHIBITS ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 A-B Main St., NLR: “The Mom Series,” photographs by Lali Khalid, “A” side, through July 10. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 225-5600. ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “54th Young Artists Exhibition,” art by Arkansas students grades K-12, through July 26. 9 a.m.5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ART GROUP GALLERY, Pleasant Ridge Town Center, 11525 Cantrell Road: “grow garden grow,” ceramics by Karen Hamilton, also work by gallery members. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-6 p.m. Sun. 690-2193. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “State Youth Art Show 2015: An Exhibition by Arkansas Art Educators”; “Human Faces & Landscapes: Paintings by Sui Hoe Khoo,” Butler Center West Gallery, through July 25; “White River Memoirs,” artwork collected by canoist and photographer Chris Engholm along the White, Concordia Hall, through July 25. 9 a.m.6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8206 Cantrell Road: “The Quiet Hours,” paintings by John Wooldridge, through July 10; also paintings by Carol Cumbo Roberts and David Mudrinich. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. 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. GALLERY 221, 221 W. 2nd St.: “ZEITGEIST,” work by David Bailin, Guy Bell, Elizabeth Bogard, Taimur Cleary, Amy Edgington, Tracy Hamlin, Kimberly Kwee, Mathew Lopas, Brian Madden, Victorial Gomez Mayol, Kasten Searles, Kat Wilson and Craig Wynn, through July 4. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New work by Robert Bean and Stephen Cefalo, through July 11. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 664-8996. GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 2nd and Center: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St.,

NLR: “Magic Realism,” works by Glennray Tutor, John Hartley, Richard Jolley and others. 664-2787. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St.: “Heather Condren and Miranda Young,” repurposed books by Condren, linocuts and ceramics by Young,” through Aug. 9; “(Everyday) Interpretations: Cindy Arsaga, Joe Morzuch and Adam Posnak,” through Aug. 9; “Suggin Territory: The Marvelous World of Folklorist Josephine Graham,” through Nov. 29. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “The Wild Ones,” July exhibition, free giclee drawing 7 p.m. July 16. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: “Spirited: Prohibition in America,” through Aug. 7. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 758-1720. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: Illustrations and cartoons by Kory Sanders. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 7581720. LOCAL COLOUR, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Rotating work by 27 artists in collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: “Mikesell and EMILE,” new paintings by Michelle Mikesell and Jennifer Freeman; also work by V.L. Cox, Bryan Frazier, Spencer Zahm and others. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 2256257. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Summer Savories,” work by Jennifer Freeman, Diane Harper and Endia Price. 960-9524. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: Paula Jones, new paintings; Jim Goshorn, new sculpture; also sculpture by Joe Martin, paintings by Amy Hill-Imler, Theresa Cates and Patrick Cunningham, ornaments by D. Wharton, landscapes by James Ellis, raku by Kelly Edwards and other works. 753-5227. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. STEPHANO’S FINE ART, 1813 N. Grant St.: New work by Jennifer Wilson, Mike Gaines, Maryam Moeeni, Ken Davis, John Kushmaul and Gene Brack. 563-4218. 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 21c MUSEUM HOTEL, 200 NE A St.: “Duke Riley: See You at the Finish Line,” sculpture, and “Blue: Matter, Mood and Melancholy,” photographs and paintings. 479-286-6500. THE PRESSROOM, 121 W. Central Ave.: TRUCK/ART: “Structural Defiance: Ba’aler Abstraction,” new work by Louis Watts, in the parking lot behind the coffee shop. CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK ARTISAN COOPERATIVE, 105 Main St.: Paintings, photographs, jewelry, fiber art, wood, ceramics and other crafts. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. calicorocket.org/artists. CONWAY ART ON THE GREEN, Littleton Park, 1100 Bob Courtway: Paintings by Kristen Abbott, Eldridge Bagley, Nina Ruth Baker, Elizabeth Bogard, Steve Griffith, William M. McClanahan, Mary Lynn Nelson, Sheila Parsons and others. 501-499-3177. HARRISON ARTISTS OF THE OZARKS, 124½ N. Willow St.: Work by Amelia Renkel, Ann Graffy, Christy Dillard, Helen McAllister, Sandy Williams and D. Savannah George. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Thu.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. 870-429-1683.

WARHOL WITH DAISIES: Andy Warhol is posed in front of his silkscreen of flowers in this William John Kennedy photograph, part of “Warhol’s Nature,” works by the pop artist of the natural world, opening Saturday, July 4, at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The exhibit, from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Penn., runs through Oct. 5.

HEBER SPRINGS BOTTLE TREE GALLERY, 514 Main St.: New silver collection by Mary Allison; also work by George Wittenberg, Judy Shumann, Priscilla Humay, April Shurgar, Julie Caswell, Jan Cobb, Johnathan Harris, Antzee Magruder, Ann Aldinger, Sondra Seaton and Bill and Gloria Garrison. 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 501-590-8840. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Selections from the Permanent Collection,” through Sept. 6; “Dawn Holder: Several Collections of Commemorative Plates,” mixed media by Dawn Holder, through July 19. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479784-2787. HELENA DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St.: “The Arkansas Delta Duo: The Art of Tim Jacob and the Art of Norwood Creech,” paintings, through Aug. 22. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 870-338-4350. HOT SPRINGS HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK CULTURAL CENTER, Ozark Bathhouse: “Arkansas Champion Trees: An Artist’s Journey,” colored pencil drawings by Linda Williams Palmer, through August. Noon-5 p.m. Fri.-Sun. 501-620-6715. JONESBORO ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, Bradbury Gallery: “Spring 2015 Senior Exhibition,” work by Sylvia M. Clemmons, Noel Miller, Penny Jo Pausch and Shawn Wright. Noon to 5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567. 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.

NEW MUSEUM EVENT

ROGERS ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “Fun and Games,” the history of golf, roller skating, bowling, tennis and swimming in Rogers; “Rebels, Federals and Bushwackers,” through Dec. 6; “IMAGINE: A NEW Rogers Historical Museum,” conceptual designs of new exhibition areas to be built. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon., Wed.-Sun., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tue. 4796210-1154.

CONTINUING 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. 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. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER, 1200 President Clinton Ave.: “Dinosaurs Around the World,” animatronic dinosaurs, free with admission, through Oct. 18; permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $7 adults; $5 college students, seniors, retired military; $3 ages 6-17. 370-8000. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “Pinafores, Purses and Pigtails,” vintage girls’ purses, toys, photos and more, through Sept. 20; “What’s Inside: A History of Women and Handbags, 1900-1999,” vintage

purses and other women’s accessories. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sun., $8-$10. 916-9022. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: Historic tavern, refurbished 19th century structures from original city, permanent exhibits on the Bowie knife and Arkansas’s Native American tribes (“We Walk in Two Worlds”), also changing exhibits. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 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. 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. NORTH LITTLE ROCK HISTORY COMMISSION, 506 Main St., NLR: “Give Our Regards to Broadway,” photographic history of the bridge, also photos by Greg Davis. 371-0755. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham: “Different Strokes,” the history of bicycling and places cycling in Arkansas, featuring artifacts, historical pictures and video, through February 2016. 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. CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK MUSEUM, Main Street: Displays on Native American cultures, steamboats, 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. www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

Dining

Information in our restaurant capsules reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of readers who think we are in error.

B Breakfast L Lunch D Dinner $ Inexpensive (under $8/person) $$ Moderate ($8-$20/person) $$$ Expensive (over $20/person) CC Accepts credit cards

WHAT’S COOKIN’ The Clean Eatery, the food truck purveyor of healthy food for the fit (or would-be fit), is now open in Stratton’s Market, where it is serving grab-and-go lunches. Items on the menu this week, which is the soft opening for the lunch business, include the Cuban sandwich, Thai peanut rice bowl, fish tacos and gluten-free chicken and waffles. The Clean Eatery at Stratton’s is also offering pre-ordered family meals for four, including a bottle of wine, on Friday nights for $65. The Clean Eatery, which caters Crossfit gyms, specializes in meal programs designed (and delivered) to meet people’s personal nutritional needs. For $125, it will prepare three meals a day for five days; for $165 it will prepare four meals a day. Meals can be doubled for an additional $65, and there is a kid’s option as well. At Stratton’s, Clean Eatery is also selling deli meats, cheeses and produce, from local sellers as often as possible. Owner Ryan Merritt-McGehee said he plans to teach cooking classes and hold chef’s table dinners, with wine matched to food. Joining Merritt-McGehee as chef is Amanda Ivy, late of Yellow Rocket Concepts. For Friday night family meals or other meal plans, call Merritt-McGehee at 501-2595491. Clean Eatery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; Stratton’s Market hours are 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. BACK IN LATE APRIL, GREG SEATON Jr., owner of the storied North Little Rock barbecue joint The White Pig Inn, bought the defunct Hardin’s Market in Scott at auction. With renovations of the space at 15235 U.S. Highway 165 ongoing, Seaton said he hoped to open a new restaurant there, to be called Seaton’s Scott Place, in mid- to late-July. The interior will be significantly changed from the Hardin’s Market days, Seaton said. He’ll be open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Seaton said the menu at the new restaurant will feature his family’s famous pit barbecue, but also some new fare. “We’ll have a similar menu to what we have here at White Pig, but we’re also adding some items,” Seaton said. “We’re going to do hand-pattied burgers, hand-breaded chicken, steaks on Friday and Saturday night, and fish.” ACADIA, THE WHITE-TABLECLOTH restaurant at 3000 Kavanaugh that has served American cuisine and fine wine for the past 16 years, is closing. Owner James Hale announced on the restaurant’s Facebook page that June 30 was to be its last day and thanked patrons for their support. Acadia opened in July 1999, succeeding a health-food restaurant and adding decks for outdoor dining. Hale’s Facebook post did not say why he was closing the restaurant. 32

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ARKANSAS TIMES

HEALTHY FARE: The tuna sandwich is mayonnaise-free.

Fresh for less Price, ingredients distinguish new eatery.

place that calls itself “Fresh” has a lot to live up to, and when we talked to owner Phillip Naylor before the restaurant opened June 1, he was well aware of it. Naylor was inspired by the deli sandwiches he grew up eating, and hoped that his new restaurant in the former OW Pizza location near the Capitol would become a hot spot for people looking for a quick lunch made with great ingredients. After eating there a couple of times, we’re happy to say that Naylor and the Fresh team show a lot of promise — and they are living up to the name. The space has been scrubbed clean and remodeled nicely, with a small dining area in front of a walk-up counter, along with outdoor covered patio seating. It’s a simple, attractive space with chalkboard menus and large glass containers of lemon water and tea, and we felt immediately at home. The staff was knowledgeable and friendly, not to mention obviously excited about the food they were serving. That sort of enthusiasm always puts a smile on our face. The menu is perfect lunchtime fare: sandwiches, soups, pizzas and pre-made salads and a make-your-own salad bar. Don’t let that lead you to believe the food is boring, though, because all that we tried was made to order with a unique twist. Everything on the menu is under $10, a

price point that is doubly attractive given the ample portion sizes and tasty food. Fans of having a salad for a meal should go for the Cobb Salad ($8.25), a massive mix of fresh lettuce, chopped eggs, bacon, blue cheese, avocado and roasted chicken. This salad is so huge that two of us shared one and still couldn’t finish it — although we certainly gave it our best shot. The shredded roast chicken was a particularly nice touch, as it was still warm and made a nice contrast with the cold lettuce and creamy avocado. Our biggest issue with ordering a Cobb is usually overcooked eggs with gray yolks, so we were particularly pleased with the bright yellow we saw when we tucked in to this one. That tasty roast chicken is also available in sandwich form, and given how moist and tender it was on our salad, we can’t wait to get back and eat it again between two slices of bread. It’s one of the best bites of chicken we’ve had in the city, which we realize is a bold statement given that Gus’s is just a few miles away. But fried chicken is one thing, and this lean roasted version is quite another — it’s the sort of thing we don’t feel guilty about overindulging in. Perhaps the most unique item on the menu is the tuna salad sandwich ($6.99), and it was with this dish that Fresh

really won us over. This is not a mayoheavy tuna salad like you usually see — in fact, there’s no mayonnaise used at all. Instead, we were treated to a mix of tuna, black olives and herbs served on pillowy soft sourdough bread. The flavors were bright and clean, and the tuna was piled so high on the sandwich that we found the price to be a bargain. Even better, each sandwich at Fresh comes with the option of one trip through the salad bar, making this a healthy and inexpensive option for lunch. Given the building’s former life as a pizza restaurant (and with the ovens still in the kitchen), we were not surprised to see pizza on the menu. What did surprise us was how good they are. We ordered a simple 6-inch cheese pizza ($5.99), and were very pleased that Fresh offers a choice of red sauce, pesto or olive oil on each pie. We went with the pesto, and were pleased again with how bright and tasty the sauce was. The crust is crispy and firm, but still light enough to not be overbearing. Fresh is only open for lunch right now, but on our last visit, staff mentioned that it is expanding into dinner hours this month. It also serves breakfast — including a tasty-looking breakfast pizza that we’re dying to get back and try, and has plans for a Saturday brunch menu once full hours take effect. With dinner hours will come an expanded menu, and since lunch was such a winner, we expect that everything served up for suppertime will also be delicious. Fresh sets itself up as a healthy, inexpensive place to eat, and they get high marks from us for executing that plan very well. It’s a unique place to eat: quick, tasty — and yes, quite fresh.

Fresh: An Urban Eatery 1706 W. Third St. 319-7021

QUICK BITE As part of the ongoing renovation of the former OW Pizza building, Fresh is planning a market space to sell produce. The market isn’t open yet, but by the looks of things, it should be very soon. HOURS 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday; will open for dinner later this month. OTHER INFO No alcohol, all credit cards.

THE EVERYDAY SOMMELIER

BELLY UP Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

1515 CAFE This bustling, business-suit filled breakfast and lunch spot, just across from the state Capitol, features old-fashioned, buffetstyle home cookin’ for a song. Inexpensive lunch entrées, too. 1515 W 7th St. No alcohol. $-$$. 501-376-1434. L Wed.-Fri., D Mon-Sat. 4 SQUARE CAFE AND GIFTS Vegetarian salads, soups, wraps and paninis and a broad selection of smoothies in an Arkansas products gift shop. 405 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-244-2622. BLD Mon.-Sat., L Sun. ANOTHER ROUND PUB Tasty pub grub. 12111 W. Markham. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-313-2612. D Mon.-Thu., LD Fri.-Sun. APPLE SPICE JUNCTION A chain sandwich and salad spot with sit-down lunch space and a vibrant box lunch catering business. With a wide range of options and quick service. Order online via applespice.com. 2000 S. University Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-663-7008. L Mon.-Fri. (10 a.m.-3 p.m.). ARKANSAS BURGER CO. Good burgers, fries and shakes, plus salads and other entrees. Try the cheese dip. 7410 Cantrell Road. Beer and wine, CC. $-$$. 501-663-0600. LD Tue.-Sat. BELLWOOD DINER Traditional breakfasts and plate lunch specials are the norm at this lostin-time hole in the wall. 3815 MacArthur Drive. NLR. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-753-1012. BL Mon.-Fri. THE BLIND PIG Tasty bar food, including Zweigle’s brand hot dogs. 6015 Chenonceau Blvd. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-868-8194. D Wed-Fri., LD Sat. BONEFISH GRILL A half-dozen or more types of fresh fish filets are offered daily at this upscale chain. 11525 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-228-0356. D Mon.-Fri., LD Sat-Sun. BONEHEADS GRILLED FISH AND PIRI PIRI CHICKEN Fast-casual chain specializing in grilled fish, roasted chicken and an African pepper sauce. 17711 Chenal Parkway. Beer and wine, CC. $-$$. 501-821-1300. LD daily. BRAVE NEW RESTAURANT Chef/owner Peter Brave was doing “farm to table” before most of us knew the term. His focus is on fresh, highquality ingredients prepared elegantly but simply. Ordering the fish special is never a bad choice. His chocolate crème brulee sets the pace. 2300 Cottondale Lane. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-2677. LD Mon.-Sat. BRAY GOURMET DELI AND CATERING Turkey spreads in four flavors — original, jalapeno, Cajun and dill — and the homemade pimiento cheese are the signature items at Chris Bray’s delicatessen, which serves sandwiches, wraps, soups, stuffed potatoes and salads, and sells the turkey spreads to go. 323 Center St. Suite 150. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-353-1045. BL Mon.-Fri. BUFFALO WILD WINGS A sports bar on steroids with numerous humongous TVs and a menu full of thirst-inducing items. The wings, which can be slathered with one of 14 sauces, are the starring attraction and will undoubtedly have fans. 14800 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-868-5279. LD daily. BY THE GLASS A broad but not ridiculously

large wine list is studded with interesting, diverse selections, and prices are uniformly reasonable. The food focus is on high-end items that pair well with wine — olives, hummus, cheese, bread, and some meats and sausages. Happy hour daily from 4-6 p.m. 5713 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-663-9463. D Mon.-Sat. CAFE BRUNELLE Coffee shop and cafe serving sweets, tasty sandwiches and Loblolly ice cream. 17819 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-448-2687. BLD daily. CAFE@HEIFER Serving fresh pastries, omelets, soups, salads, sandwiches and pizzas. Located inside Heifer Village. 1 World Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-907-8801. BL Mon.-Fri. CAPITAL BAR AND GRILL Big hearty sandwiches, daily lunch specials and fine evening dining all rolled up into one at this landing spot downtown. Surprisingly inexpensive with a great bar staff and a good selection of unique desserts. 111 Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-370-7013. LD daily. CAPITOL BISTRO Serving breakfast and lunch items, including quiche, sandwiches, coffees and the like. 1401 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-371-9575. BL Mon.-Fri. CATCH BAR AND GRILL Fish, shrimp, chicken and burgers, live music, drinks, flat screens TVs, pool tables and V.I.P room. 1407 John Barrow Road. Full bar. 501-224-1615. CATERING TO YOU Painstakingly prepared entrees and great appetizers in this gourmetto-go location, attached to a gift shop. Caters everything from family dinners to weddings and large corporate events. 8121 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-614-9030. Serving meals to go: LD Mon.-Sat. CIAO BACI The focus is on fine dining in this casually elegant Hillcrest bungalow, though excellent tapas are out of this world. The treeshaded, light-strung deck is a popular destination. 605 N. Beechwood St. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-603-0238. D Mon.-Sat. CRAZEE’S COOL CAFE Good burgers, daily plate specials and bar food amid pool tables and TVs. 7626 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-221-9696. LD Mon.-Sat. CUPCAKE FACTORY About a dozen cupcake varieties daily, plus pies, whole or by-the-slice, cake balls, brownies and other dessert bars. 18104 Kanis Road. No alcohol, all CC. 501-8219913. L Mon.-Fri. CUPCAKES ON KAVANAUGH Gourmet cupcakes and coffee, indoor seating. 5625 Kavanaugh Blvd. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-664-2253. LD Mon.-Sat. DEMPSEY BAKERY Bakery with sit down area, serving coffee and specializing in gluten-, nutand soy-free baked goods. 323 Cross St. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-375-2257. Serving BL Tue.-Sat. DOE’S EAT PLACE A skid-row dive turned power brokers’ watering hole with huge steaks, great tamales and broiled shrimp, and killer burgers at lunch. 1023 W. Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-376-1195. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat. DOUBLETREE PLAZA BAR & GRILL The lobby restaurant in the Doubletree is elegantly comfortable, but you’ll find no airs put on at

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JULY 2, 2015

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. heaping breakfast and lunch buffets. 424 W. Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-372-4371. BLD daily. EJ’S EATS AND DRINKS The friendly neighborhood hoagie shop downtown serves at a handful of tables and by delivery. The sandwiches are generous, the soup homemade and the salads cold. Vegetarians can craft any number of acceptable meals from the flexible menu. The housemade potato chips are da bomb. 523 Center St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-666-3700. LD Mon.-Fri., BR Sun. FILIBUSTER’S BISTRO & LOUNGE Sandwiches, salads in the Legacy Hotel. 625 W. Capitol Ave. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-374-0100. D Mon.-Fri. FIVE GUYS BURGERS & FRIES Nationwide burger chain with emphasis on freshly made fries and patties. 2923 Lakewood Village Drive. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-246-5295. LD daily. 13000 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-225-1100. LD daily. FLYING FISH The fried seafood is fresh and crunchy and there are plenty of raw, boiled and grilled offerings, too. The hamburgers are a hit, too. It’s counter service; wander on through the screen door and you’ll find a slick team of cooks and servers doing a creditable job of serving big crowds. 511 President Clinton Ave. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-375-3474. LD daily. GOOD FOOD BY FERNEAU Lunch offers a choice of ordering the gluten-free, sugarfree, healthy-yet-tasty-and-not-boring fare. On Friday and Saturday nights chef Ferneau stretches out a bit with about four entrees that still stay true to the “healthy” concept but do step outside the no-gluten, no-sugar box. 521 Main Street. NLR. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-7254219. L Mon.-Fri., D Fri.-Sat. THE GRAND CAFE Typical hotel restaurant fare. 925 S. University Ave. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-5020. BD daily. GREEN LEAF GRILL Cafeteria on the ground floor of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield building has healthy entrees. 601 S. Gaines. No alcohol, CC. 501-378-2521. GRUMPY’S TOO Music venue and sports bar with lots of TVs, pub grub and regular drink specials. 1801 Green Mountain Drive. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-225-3768. D Mon.-Sat. GUS’S WORLD FAMOUS FRIED CHICKEN The best fried chicken in town. Go for chicken and waffles on Sundays. 300 President Clinton Ave. Beer, CC. $-$$. 501-372-2211. LD daily. 400 N. Bowman. Beer. $-$$. 501-400-8745. LD daily. HERITAGE GRILLE STEAK AND FIN Upscale dining inside the Little Rock Marriott. Excellent surf and turf options. 3 Statehouse Plaza. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-399-8000. LD daily. HOMER’S Great vegetables, huge yeast rolls and killer cobblers. Follow the mobs. 2001 E. Roosevelt Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-374-1400. BL Mon.-Fri. 9700 N Rodney Parham. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-6637. BLD Mon.-Sat., BL Sun. IRA’S PARK HILL GRILL Inventive and toothsome fine dining in a casual setting. 3812 JFK Blvd. NLR. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-771-6900. L Tue.-Fri., Sun.; D Tue.-Sat. IRONHORSE SALOON Bar and grill offering juicy hamburgers and cheeseburgers. 9125 Mann Road. Full bar, all CC. $. 501-562-4464. LD daily. J. GUMBO’S Fast-casual Cajun fare served, primarily, in a bowl. Better than expected. 12911 Cantrell Road. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-916-9635. LD daily. JERKY’S SPICY CHICKEN AND MORE Jerk chicken, Southern fried chicken, Southern fried jerk chicken, along with burgers, sandwiches, 34

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ARKANSAS TIMES

salads. 2501 Arch St. No alcohol. 501-246-3096. JIMMY’S SERIOUS SANDWICHES Consistently fine sandwiches, side orders and desserts for 30 years. Chicken salad’s among the best in town, and there are fun specialty sandwiches such as Thai One On and The Garden. Get there early for lunch. 5116 W. Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-6663354. LD Mon.-Fri., L Sat. JOUBERT’S TAVERN Local beer and wine haunt that serves Polish sausage and other bar foods. 7303 Kanis Road. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-6649953. D Mon.-Sat. K. HALL AND SONS Neighborhood grocery store with excellent lunch counter. The cheeseburger is hard to beat. 1900 Wright Ave. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-372-1513. BLD Mon.-Sat. (closes at 6 p.m.), BL Sun. KILWINS Ice cream, candies, fudge and sweets galore made in-house and packaged for eatit-now or eat-it-later. 415 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-379-9865. LD daily. LAZY PETE’S FISH AND SHRIMP Southern and Cajun pub grub. 200 N. Bowman Road. Full bar, CC. $$. 501-680-2660. LD daily. LE POPS Delicious, homemade iced lollies (or popsicles, for those who aren’t afraid of the trademark.) 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd. Ste. J. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-313-9558. LD daily. LOBLOLLY CREAMERY Small batch artisan ice cream and sweet treats company that operates a soda fountain inside The Green Corner Store. 1423 Main St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-3969609. LD Mon.-Sat., L Sun. LOCA LUNA Grilled meats, seafood and pasta dishes that never stray far from country roots, whether Italian, Spanish or Arkie. “Gourmet plate lunches” are good, as is Sunday brunch. 3519 Old Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-4666. BR Sun., LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat. LOST FORTY BREWING Brewery and brewpub from the folks behind Big Orange, Local Lime and ZAZA. 501 Byrd St. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-319-7335. LD Wed.-Sun. LOVE FISH MARKET Part fish market, part restaurant. Offering fresh fish to prepare at home or fried catfish and a variety of sides. 1401 John Barrow Road. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-224-0202. LD Mon.-Sat. LULAV A MODERN EATERY Bistro-style menu of American favorites broken down by expensive to affordable plates, and strong wine list, also group-priced to your liking. Great filet. Don’t miss the chicken and waffles. 220 W. 6th St. Full bar, CC. $$$. 501-374-5100. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat. THE MAIN CHEESE A restaurant devoted to grilled cheese. 14524 Cantrell Road. Beer and wine. $-$$. 501-367-8082. LD Mon.-Sat. MILFORD TRACK Healthy and tasty are the key words at this deli/grill that serves breakfast and lunch. Hot entrees change daily and there are soups, sandwiches, salads and killer desserts. Bread is baked in-house, and there are several veggie options. 10809 Executive Center Drive, Searcy Building. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-223-2257. BL Mon.-Fri., L Sat. MOORE 2 U Deli sandwiches, salads, fruit bowls, burgers, fish, chili dogs, and chicken and waffles. 5405 Geyer Springs Road. No alcohol. 501-562-1200. NEXT BISTRO AND BAR Live music, on the outdoor patio in nice weather, bar with specialty drinks like cheesecake shots, strawberry fizz martinis. No cover. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-6398. ONE ELEVEN AT THE CAPITAL Inventive fine dining restaurant helmed by Jöel Attunes, a James Beard award-winning chef. 111

Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 370-7011. BD daily, L Mon.-Fri, BR Sun. THE OYSTER BAR Gumbo, red beans and rice (all you can eat on Mondays), peel-andeat shrimp, oysters on the half shell, addictive po’ boys. Killer jukebox. 3003 W. Markham St. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-666-7100. LD Mon.-Sat. OZARK COUNTRY RESTAURANT A longstanding favorite with many Little Rock residents, the eatery specializes in big country breakfasts and pancakes plus sandwiches and several meat-and-two options for lunch and dinner. Try the pancakes and don’t leave without some sort of smoked meat. 202 Keightley Drive. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-663-7319. BL daily. PANERA BREAD This bakery/cafe serves freshly baked breads, bagels and pastries every morning as well as a full line of espresso beverages. Panera also offers a full menu of sandwiches, hand-tossed salads and hearty soups. 314 S. University. 501-664-6878. BLD daily. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-227-0222. BLD daily. 1050 Ellis Ave. Conway. 501-764-1623 10701 Kanis Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-954-7773. BLD daily. PLAYTIME PIZZA Tons of fun isn’t rained out by lackluster eats at this $11 million, 65,000-squarefoot kidtopia near the Rave Colonel Glenn 18 theater. While the buffet is only so-so, features like indoor mini-golf, laser tag, go karts, arcade games and bumper cars make it a winner for both kids and adults. 600 Colonel Glenn Plaza Loop. All CC. $-$$. 501-227-7529. D Mon.-Wed., LD Thu.-Sun. POTBELLY SANDWICH SHOP Tasty, affordable sandwiches from fast-casual chain. 314 S University Ave. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-6604441. LD daily. PURPLE COW DINER 1950s fare — cheeseburgers, chili dogs, thick milk shakes — in a ‘50s setting at today’s prices. 8026 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-221-3555. LD daily, BR Sat.-Sun. 11602 Chenal Pkwy. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-4433. LD daily, BR Sat.-Sun. 1419 Higden Ferry Road. Hot Springs. Beer, all CC. $$. 501-625-7999. LD daily, B Sun. THE RELAY STATION This grill offers a short menu, which includes chicken strips, french fries, hamburgers, jalapeno poppers and cheese sticks. 12225 Stagecoach Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-455-9919. LD daily. THE ROOT CAFE Homey, local foods-focused cafe. With tasty burgers, homemade bratwurst, banh mi and a number of vegan and veggie options. Breakfast and Sunday brunch, too. 1500 S. Main St. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-414-0423. BL Tue.-Sat., BR Sun. SALUT BISTRO This bistro/late-night hangout does upscale tapas. 1501 N. University. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-660-4200. L Mon.-Fri., D Tue.-Sat. SANDY’S HOMEPLACE CAFE Specializing in home-style buffet, with two meats and seven vegetables to choose from. It’s all-you-can-eat. 1710 E 15th St. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-3753216. L Mon.-Fri. SATCHEMO’S BAR AND GRILL Pulled pork egg rolls, chicken fries and a “butter” burger star. 1900 W. Third St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-725-4657. L Mon.-Wed., LD Thu.-Sun. SCALLIONS Reliably good food, great desserts, pleasant atmosphere, able servers — a solid lunch spot. 5110 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-666-6468. BL Mon.-Sat. SCOOP DOG 5508 John F. Kennedy Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, No CC. 501-753-5407. LD daily. SHAKE’S FROZEN CUSTARD Frozen custards, concretes, sundaes. 12011 Westhaven Drive.

No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-224-0150. LD daily. SHIPLEY DO-NUTS With locations just about everywhere in Central Arkansas, it’s hard to miss Shipley’s. Their signature smooth glazed doughnuts and dozen or so varieties of fills are well known. 14810 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-664-5353. B daily. SHORTY SMALL’S Land of big, juicy burgers, massive cheese logs, smoky barbecue platters and the signature onion loaf. 11100 N. Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-3344. LD daily. SLIM CHICKENS Chicken tenders and wings served fast. Better than the Colonel. 4500 W. Markham. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-9070111. LD daily. 301 N. Shackleford Road. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 954-9999. LD daily. SONNY WILLIAMS’ STEAK ROOM Steaks, chicken and seafood in a wonderful setting in the River Market. Steak gets pricey, though. Menu is seasonal, changes every few months. 500 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-324-2999. D Mon.-Sat. SOUTH ON MAIN Fine, innovative takes on Southern fare in a casual, but well-appointed setting. 1304 Main St. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-244-9660. L Mon.-Fri., D Tue.-Sat. STAGECOACH GROCERY AND DELI Fine po’ boys and muffalettas — and cheap. 6024 Stagecoach Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-455-7676. BLD Mon.-Fri., BL Sat.-Sun. TABLE 28 Excellent fine dining with lots of creative flourishes. Branch out and try the Crispy Squid Filet and Quail Bird Lollipops. 1501 Merrill Drive. Full bar, CC. $$$-$$$$. 501-2242828. D Mon.-Sat. TERRI-LYNN’S BBQ AND DELICATESSEN High-quality meats served on large sandwiches and good tamales served with chili or without (the better bargain). 10102 N. Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-227-6371. L Tue.-Fri., LD Sat. (close at 5pm). WEST END SMOKEHOUSE AND TAVERN Its primary focus is a sports bar with 50-plus TVs, but the dinner entrees (grilled chicken, steaks and such) are plentiful and the bar food is upper quality. 215 N. Shackleford. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-7665. L Fri.-Sun., D daily. WHICH WICH AT CHENAL Sandwiches in three sizes, plus cookies and milkshakes, online or faxed (501-312-9435) ordering available. Also at 2607 McCain Blvd., 501-771-9424, fax 501-771-4329. 12800 Chenal Parkway, Suite 10. No alcohol. 312-9424. WING LOVERS The name says it all. 4411 W 12th St. $-$$. 501-663-3166. LD Mon.-Sat. WINGSTOP It’s all about wings. The joint features 10 flavors of chicken flappers for almost any palate, including mild, hot, Cajun and atomic, as well as specialty flavors like lemon pepper, teriyaki, Garlic parmesan and Hawaiian. 11321 W. Markham St. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-224-9464. LD daily.

ASIAN

A.W. LIN’S ASIAN CUISINE Excellent panAsian with wonderful service. 17717 Chenal Parkway H101. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-8215398. LD daily. BIG ON TOKYO Serviceable fried rice, teriyaki chicken and sushi. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-375-6200. BLD Mon.-Sat. CHINA PLUS BUFFET Large Chinese buffet. 6211 Colonel Glenn Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-562-1688. LD daily. CHINESE KITCHEN Good Chinese takeout. Try the Cantonese press duck. 11401 N. Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-2242100. LD Tue.-Sun.

ANNOUNCING THE 2015 ARKANAS TIMES WHOLE HOG ROAST benefiting

Argenta Arts District

WHOLE HOG Amateur Teams are considered individuals, not connected to any particular restaurant, food truck or catering companies. Amateur teams will be preparing at least 30 pounds of any part of a hog (butt, ribs, etc). Edwards Food Giant is offering 20% discount on meat purchases. Entry fee: $150

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29

Argenta Farmers Market Events Grounds 5 until 9 PM Arkansas Times and the Argenta Arts District are now accepting both AMATEUR and PROFESSIONAL TEAMS to compete in our 3rd annual Whole Hog Roast

BEER & WINE GARDEN

Gated festival area selling beer & wine ($5 each)

Professional Teams are considered restaurants, catering companies and food trucks. Professional teams will be preparing a whole hog from Ben E. Keith Company Entry fee: $500 and includes the whole hog, pick up by Aug. 26

ONL PLEASE V

A winner will be chosen from each of the two categories. TICKET HOLDERS WILL CAST ALL THE VOTES VIA “TOKENS” (TWO PROVIDED TO EACH TICKET HOLDER) AND TOKENS, ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FOR SALE. THE AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL TEAM THAT HAS THE MOST VOTES IS THE OFFICIAL WINNER – IN EACH CATEGORY.

TROPHIES WILL BE AWARDED. CELEBRATIONS WILL BE HAPPENING! EVENT SPECIFICS:

COOKING AREA IS AVAILABLE ANYTIME SATURDAY MORNING OR FRIDAY EVENING COOKING AREA SHOULD BE SET UP SO THAT WHEN THE DOORS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, ATTENDEES CAN VIEW THE INDIVIDUAL COOKING AREAS AND BE READY TO SERVE BY 6:00. EACH TEAM MUST PROVIDE TWO (2) SIDE DISHES TO FEED 50 PEOPLE EACH. 10 TEAM MAXIMUM WHICH INCLUDES GUESTS.

www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. HANAROO SUSHI BAR One of the few spots in downtown Little Rock to serve sushi. With an expansive menu, featuring largely Japanese fare. Try the popular Tuna Tatari bento box. 205 W. Capitol Ave. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-301-7900. L Mon.-Fri., D Mon.-Sat. KBIRD Delicious, authentic Thai. 600 N. Tyler. No alcohol, CC. $$-$$$. 501-352-3549. LD Mon.-Fri. MIKE’S CAFE VIETNAMESE Cheap Vietnamese that could use some more spice, typically. The pho is good. 5501 Asher Ave. Beer, CC. $-$$. 501-5621515. LD daily. MR. CHEN’S ASIAN SUPERMARKET AND RESTAURANT A combination Asian restaurant and grocery with cheap, tasty and exotic offerings. 3901 S. University Ave. $. 501-562-7900. LD daily. NEW CHINA A burgeoning line of massive buffets, with hibachi grill, sushi, mounds of Chinese food and soft serve ice cream. 4617 John F. Kennedy Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-8988. LD daily. 2104 Harkrider. Conway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-764-1888. LD Mon.-Sun. OISHI HIBACHI AND THAI CUISINE Tasty Thai and hibachi from the Chi family. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-603-0080. LD daily. PHO THANH MY It says “Vietnamese noodle soup” on the sign out front, and that’s what you should order. The pho comes in outrageously large portions with bean sprouts and fresh herbs. Traditional pork dishes, spring rolls and bubble tea also available. 302 N. Shackleford Road. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-312-7498. LD daily. ROYAL BUFFET A big buffet of Chinese fare, with other Asian tastes as well. 109 E. Pershing. NLR. Beer, all CC. 501-753-8885. LD daily. SEKISUI Fresh-tasting sushi chain with fun hibachi grill and an overwhelming assortment of traditional entrees. Nice wine selection, also serves sake and specialty drinks. 219 N. Shackleford Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-2217070. LD daily. SHOGUN JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE The chefs will dazzle you, as will the variety of tasty stir-fry combinations and the sushi bar. Usually crowded at night. 2815 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-666-7070. D daily. THREE FOLD NOODLES AND DUMPLING CO. Authentic Chinese noodles, buns and dumplings. With vegetarian options. 215 Center St. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-3721739. LD Mon.-Fri. TOKYO HOUSE Defying stereotypes, this Japanese buffet serves up a broad range of fresh, slightly exotic fare — grilled calamari, octopus salad, dozens of varieties of fresh sushi — as well as more standard shrimp and steak options. 11 Shackleford Drive. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-219-4286. LD daily. WASABI Downtown sushi and Japanese cuisine. For lunch, there’s quick and hearty sushi samplers. 101 Main St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-374-0777. L Mon.-Fri., D Mon.-Sat.

BARBECUE

CHIP’S BARBECUE Tasty, if a little pricey, barbecue piled high on sandwiches generously doused with the original tangy sauce or one of five other sauces. Better known for the incredible family recipe pies and cheesecakes, which come tall and wide. 9801 W. Markham St. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-225-4346. LD Mon.-Sat.

CATFISH

SWEET SOUL Southern classics by the proprietors of the late, great Haystack Cafe in Ferndale: Chicken fried steak (just about perfect), catfish, 36

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ARKANSAS TIMES

collards, cornbread, black-eyed peas and fried chicken. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. 501-374-7685. L Mon.-Fri.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ANATOLIA RESTAURANT Middle of the road Mediterranean fare. 315 N. Bowman Road. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-219-9090. LD Mon.-Sat. CREGEEN’S IRISH PUB Irish-themed pub with a large selection of on-tap and bottled British beers and ales, an Irish inspired menu and lots of nooks and crannies to meet in. Specialties include fish ‘n’ chips and Guinness beef stew. Live music on weekends and $5 cover on Saturdays, special brunch on Sunday. 301 Main St. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-376-7468. LD daily. ISTANBUL MEDITERRANEAN RESTAURANT This Turkish eatery offers decent kebabs and great starters. The red pepper hummus is a winner. So are Cigar Pastries. Possibly the best Turkish coffee in Central Arkansas. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-223-9332. LD daily. KEBAB HOUSE Turkish style doners and kebabs and a sampling of Tunisian cuisine. Only place in Little Rock to serve Lahmijun (Turkish pizza). 11321 W Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. LD Mon.-Sat. LAYLA’S GYROS AND PIZZERIA Delicious Mediterranean fare — gyros, falafel, shawarma, kabobs, hummus and babaganush — that has a devoted following. All meat is slaughtered according to Islamic dietary law. 9501 N Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-2277272. LD daily (close 5 p.m. on Sun.) 6100 Stones Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-8226. LD Mon.-Sat. L E O ’ S G R E E K C A S T L E Wonderful Mediterranean food — gyro sandwiches or platters, falafel and tabouleh — plus dependable hamburgers, ham sandwiches, steak platters and BLTs. Breakfast offerings are expanded with gyro meat, pitas and triple berry pancakes. 2925 Kavanaugh Blvd. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-6667414. BLD Mon.-Sat., BL Sun. (close at 4 p.m.). LITTLE GREEK Fast casual chain with excellent Greek food. 11525 Cantrell Road. Beer, all CC. $$. LD daily. MUSE ULTRA LOUNGE Mediterranean food and drinks. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. 501-663-6398. D Mon.-Sat. MYLO COFFEE CO. Bakery with a vast assortment of hand-made pastries, house roasted coffee and an ice cream counter. Soups and sandwiches, too. 2715 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer, CC. $-$$. 501-747-1880. BLD Tue.-Sun. ROSALIA’S BAKERY Brazilian bakery owned by the folks over at Bossa Nova, next door. Sweet and savory treats, including yucca cheese balls, empanadas and macarons. Many gluten-free options. 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-319-7035. BLD Mon.-Sat. (closes 6 p.m.), BL Sun. SILVEK’S EUROPEAN BAKERY Fine pastries, chocolate creations, breads and cakes done in the classical European style. Drop by for a whole cake or a slice or any of the dozens of single serving treats in the big case. 1900 Polk St. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-661-9699. BLD daily.

ITALIAN

CAFE PREGO Dependable entrees of pasta, pork, seafood, steak and the like, plus great sauces, fresh mixed greens and delicious dressings, crisp-crunchy-cold gazpacho and tempting desserts in a comfy bistro setting. Little Rock standard for 18 years. 5510 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-5355. LD Mon.- Fri, D Sat.

CIAO ITALIAN RESTAURANT Don’t forget about this casual yet elegant bistro tucked into a downtown storefront. The fine pasta and seafood dishes, ambiance and overall charm combine to make it a relaxing, enjoyable, affordable choice. 405 W. Seventh St. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-372-0238. L Mon.-Fri., D Thu.-Sat. GRADY’S PIZZA AND SUBS Pizza features a pleasing blend of cheeses rather than straight mozzarella. The grinder is a classic, the chef’s salad huge and tasty. 6801 W. 12th St., Suite C. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-663-1918. LD daily. IRIANA’S PIZZA Unbelievably generous handtossed New York style pizza with unmatched zest. Good salads, too; grinders are great, particularly the Italian sausage. 201 E. Markham St. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-374-3656. LD Mon.-Sat. MELLOW MUSHROOM Popular high-end pizza chain. 16103 Chenal Pkwy. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-379-9157. LD daily. PIERRE’S GOURMET PIZZA CO. EXPRESS KITCHEN Chef/owner Michael Ayers has reinvented his pizzeria, once located on JFK in North Little Rock, as the first RV entry into mobile food truck scene. With a broad menu of pizza, calzones, salads and subs. 760 C Edgewood Drive. No alcohol, No CC. $$. 501-410-0377. L Mon.-Fri. PIRO BRICK OVEN AND BARROOM The South Main neighborhood’s renaissance continues with Piro, an upscale pizza joint that also features sandwiches and unique appetizers (think roasted bone marrow). 1318 S. Main St. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-374-7476. LD Tue.-Sat., L Sun. THE PIZZERIA AT TERRY’S FINER FOODS Tasty Neapolitan-style pizza and calzones from the people who used to run the Santa Lucia food truck. 5018 Kavanaugh. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-551-1388. Tue.-Sat. ROMANO’S MACARONI GRILL A chain restaurant with a large menu of pasta, chicken, beef, fish, unusual dishes like Italian nachos, and special dishes with a corporate bent. 11100 W Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-2213150. LD daily. U.S. PIZZA Crispy thin-crust pizzas, frosty beers and heaping salads drowned in creamy dressing. 2710 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-2198. LD daily. 5524 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-664-7071. LD daily. 9300 N. Rodney Parham Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-224-6300. LD daily. 3307 Fair Park Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-565-6580. LD daily. 650 Edgewood Drive. Maumelle. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-851-0880. LD daily. 3324 Pike Avenue. NLR. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-758-5997. LD daily. 4001 McCain Park Drive. NLR. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-753-2900. LD daily. ZAFFINO’S BY NORI A high-quality Italian dining experience. Pastas, entrees (don’t miss the veal marsala) and salads are all outstanding. 2001 E. Kiehl Ave. NLR. Beer and wine, all CC. 501-834-7530. D Tue.-Sat.

LATINO

BAJA GRILL Food truck turned brick-and-mortar taco joint that serves a unique Mexi-Cali style menu full of tacos, burritos and quesadillas. 5923 Kavanaugh Blvd. CC. $-$$. 501-722-8920. LD Mon.-Sat. CANON GRILL Tex-Mex, pasta, sandwiches and salads. Creative appetizers come in huge quantities, and the varied main-course menu rarely disappoints, though it’s not as spicy as competitors’. 2811 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar,

all CC. $$. 501-664-2068. LD daily. CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL Burritos, burrito bowls, tacos and salads are the four main courses of choice — and there are four meats and several other options for filling them. Sizes are uniformly massive, quality is uniformly strong, and prices are uniformly low. 11525 Cantrell Road. All CC. $-$$. 501-221-0018. LD daily. CILANTRO’S GRILL The guac, made tableside, margaritas and desserts standout at this affordably priced traditional Mex spot. 2629 Lakewood Village Plaza. NLR. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-812-0040. LD daily. COTIJA’S A branch off the famed La Hacienda family tree downtown, with a massive menu of tasty lunch and dinner specials, the familiar white cheese dip and sweet red and fieryhot green salsas, and friendly service. 406 S. Louisiana St. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-244-0733. L Mon.-Fri. EL CHICO Hearty, standard Mexican served in huge portions. 8409 Interstate 30. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-562-3762. LD daily. FONDA MEXICAN CUISINE Authentic Mex in a neighborhood not known for that. The guisado (Mexican stew) is excellent. 400 N. Bowman Road. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-3134120. LD Tue.-Sun. HEIGHTS TACO & TAMALE CO. Throwback Southern-style tamales, taco plates, enchiladas and more, all doused with a generous helping of cheese and chili. Hits just the right balance between nostalgia and fresh flavors. 5805 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-313-4848. LD daily. LA HERRADURA Traditional Mexican fare. 8414 Geyer Springs Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-565-6063. LD Tue.-Sun. LAS MARGARITAS Sparse offerings at this taco truck. No chicken, for instance. Try the veggie quesadilla. 7308 Baseline Road. No alcohol, No CC. $. LD Tue.-Thu. LA REGIONAL A full-service grocery store catering to SWLR’s Latino community, its small grill in a corner became so popular that the store added a full-service restaurant on the east end of the building. The menu offers a whirlwind trip through Latin America, with delicacies from all across the Spanish-speaking world. Bring your Spanish/English dictionary. 7414 Baseline Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-565-4440. BLD daily. LAS AMERICAS Guatemalan and Mexican fare. Try the hearty tamales wrapped in banana leaves. 8622 Chicot Road. $-$$. 501-565-0266. BLD Mon.-Sat. LOS TORITOS MEXICAN RESTAURANT Mexican fare in East End. 1022 Angel Court. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-261-7823. LD daily. RIVIERIA MAYA Tasty, cheap Mexican food. Try the Enchiladas con Chorizo. Lunch special fajitas are fantastic. 801 Fair Park Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 663-4800. LD daily. SENOR TEQUILA Cheap, serviceable Tex-Mex, and maybe the best margarita in town. 2000 S. University Ave. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-6604413. LD daily. TAQUERIA KARINA AND CAFE A real Mexican neighborhood cantina from the owners, to freshly baked pan dulce, to Mexicanbottled Cokes, to first-rate guacamole, to inexpensive tacos, burritos, quesadillas and a broad selection of Mexican-style seafood. 5309 W. 65th St. Beer, No CC. $. 501-562-3951. BLD daily. TAQUERIA SAMANTHA II Stand-out taco truck fare, with meat options standard and exotic. 7521 Geyer Springs Road. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-744-0680. BLD daily.

Gourmet. Your Way. All Day.

300 Third Tower • 501-375-3333 coppergrillandgrocery.com

GYPSY BISTRO 200 S. RIVER MARKET AVE, STE. 150 • 501.375.3500 DIZZYSGYPSYBISTRO.NET

Join us in Exploring the Acoustics of the 1836 House of Representatives Chamber 5-8 p.m.

JULY 10

ART | FUNCTION | CRAFT The Life and Work of Arkansas Living Treasures

YEAR OF ARKANSAS BEER continues with Saddlebock Brewery (Springdale, AR)

THE 2ND FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH 5-8 PM

GRAND OPENING

GALLERY 221 & ART STUDIOS 221 FEATURED ARTIST EXHIBIT

JOIN US TO

FOR BEAUTY OF THE EARTH CELEBRATE! BY MARY ANN STAFFORD “FROM 5-8PMTHE WEST” BY MARY  Fine Art ANN STAFFORD

 Cocktails & Wine  Hor d’oeuvres

300 West Markham Street • Little Rock OldStateHouse.com

Violet Hensley from Kat Wilson's Habitat series

200 E. Third Street Little Rock, AR 72201 HistoricArkansas.org A museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage

FROM Pyramid Place THE ART 2nd & Center St COLLECTORS GALLERY (501) 801-0211 “HOT SEAT” BY Join Us 5-8pm CATHERINE RODGERS ♦ Fine Art ♦ Cocktails & Wine ♦ Hors d’oeuvres ♦ Pyramid Place • 2nd & Center St • (501) 801-0211

DIFFERENT LANDSCAPES

AN EXHIBITION OF ARTWORKS BY GREG LAHTI, BRENNAN PLUNKETT, STEVE PLUNKETT, AND ROBERT BEAN

FREE TROLLEY RIDES!

200 RIVER MARKET AVE., STE 400 501.374.9247 • WWW.ARCAPITAL.COM ROBERT BEAN, CURATOR • MARGIE RAIMONDO, CATERER.

These venues will be open late. There’s plenty of parking and a FREE TROLLEY to each of the locations.

2015

August 14 September 11 October 9 November 13 December 11

Don’t miss it – lots of fun! Free parking at 3rd & Cumberland Free street parking all over downtown and behind the River Market (Paid parking available for modest fee.)

www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

DUMAS, CONT. changing public attitudes. Obama and the Clintons have come around only the past three years. A little history. A right-wing legislator in California put an initiated act — Proposition 6 — on the ballot in 1977 to ban gays and lesbians from teaching or working in California schools and also anyone who favored letting them teach. When Gov. Ronald Reagan, who had a gay son, came out against the proposition, gay Republicans formed an organization — Log Cabin Republicans — to fight the proposition. Voters defeated the initiative, the first victory for the fledgling gay-rights movement. The Log Cabin Republicans became a national organization. Their premise was that Abraham Lincoln founded the Republican Party on the philosophies of liberty and equality and it was the party of inclusiveness. When the movement embraced the strategy of having homosexuals live openly and “outing” closet homosexuals in prominent places, one of the first targets was Terry Dolan, the head of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), which was having a huge impact on the conservative movement by exploiting a loophole in the federal campaign law allowing independent groups to make political attacks on behalf of Republican candidates without exposing them. Dolan, who had attacked gays and lesbians, never acknowledged being gay, but founded an activist group of gay

and lesbian Republicans and died of AIDS complications in 1986. You know the recent history: the gay “scandals” involving Republican members of Congress; the outing, voluntary and otherwise, of gay and lesbian children of prominent Republicans like Dick Cheney, Phyllis Schlafly and Alan Keyes; the steady conversion of prominent Republicans like National Chairman Ken Mehlman and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio who said marriage equality aligned with Republican ideals. Then there were the big guns of the war: Ted Olson and Anthony Kennedy. Olson, the Republican superlawyer who was Reagan’s counsel in Iran-Contra, was the man who persuaded the Supreme Court to make George W. Bush president in 2000 and became his solicitor general and who filed the California lawsuit that forced the marriage issue onto the national agenda and to the Supreme Court for the first time. Kennedy, Reagan’s other favorite lawyer, was the justice who delivered all four gay-rights victories, striking down anti-gay laws in Colorado (1996) and all state sodomy laws (2003) and then the two cases (2013 and 2015) that forced governments to recognize same-sex marriages. If it cares to, and I think the day will come, the GOP can claim universal health insurance and gay marriages as Republican fait accompli.

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE, CONT. ous exit from the Razorbacks a few seasons ago, and had to toil overseas a bit, but teams saw his court savvy and embraced it and he now is entrenched in Houston as the point guard of choice. Qualls may get the benefits of this misfortune much quicker than he anticipated. Lastly on the prospectus from spring 2015, Arkansas baseball fizzled out in two close ones in Omaha, Neb., but again the way the tournament unfolded had to be encouraging. The same Virginia team that the Hogs battled in the opening game at TD Ameritrade Park ended up snatching the crown despite teetering on the brink of elimination twice in Nebraska and basically for weeks before that. The Cavaliers’ status as national power without a trophy to support it is now over, against long odds, and if Dave Van Horn has a message going into 2016, it’s 38

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

that his squad could have very easily been in that position. The departure of Andrew Benintendi leaves a hole, but it’s one that recruiting generally fills: Arkansas has regularly found steady, mobile outfielders from abroad. The pitching situation appears considerably better now, even with Trey Killian electing to sign his pro contract. No one could have predicted Benintendi’s meteoric rise from slap-happy freshman to being the first recipient of the major national player of the year award for the university in any of the three major sports. That’s why Hog fans continue to flock to Baum Stadium in record numbers, this year sporting the second-highest attendance in the country. Van Horn has built something very steady and reliable, and it is that kind of model that his gridiron and court contemporaries want to emulate.

THE BANNED OLD FLAG, CONT. and should not be celebrated. History belongs in museums. Not out on cars, and not out on state capitol grounds.” In speaking about the controversy, Charles noted a terrible coincidence. In 1957, six women and three men integrated Little Rock’s Central High School. The same number, six women and three men, died in Charleston. Charles said that while Walmart, eBay, Amazon and others have the right to continue selling the flag, their move to stop selling it is a hopeful sign. “They have the right,” he said. “But somebody made the decision to say, ‘I will no longer continue to make a profit, like the South did off of slaves, with something that is inhumane, that is wrong, that dehumanized a group of people.’ ” Asked if the Little Rock NAACP will continue its campaign to get Flag and Banner to stop selling the flag, Charles said that while he didn’t want to telegraph its next move, last week’s press conference was “the first step.” Sericia Cole, director of the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock, said she believes it’s time to consign the Confederate battle flag to museums, where it can be put into the context of history. Speaking for herself and not on behalf of the museum, Cole said that the flag is a symbol that still has power, especially for African Americans. When she sees a Confederate flag on a car or on a flagpole, it doesn’t bring to mind history. Her first reaction is that the person who is displaying it would not want to talk to an African American. “I know there are some people who say that it’s just a symbol,” she said. “But symbolism has a great effect on our psyche. It creates a visceral reaction for people, a palpable reaction, and those reactions are usually negative for African Americans.” Cole said that after an event like the murders in Charleston, it’s important for the nation to begin to talk about the issues at hand. While African Americans have been largely silent until now about their feelings about the Confederate flag, Cole said, “if you really listen to them, you know it’s more than just a piece of cloth. It symbolizes something hateful and hurtful and painful in history. We’re trying to move forward. If we’re trying to move forward, let’s move forward with symbols that are more positive and indicative of our desire to be in solidarity with one another as Americans.” Speaking before the NAACP protest, Arkansas Flag and Banner owner Kerry McCoy said that before the controversy over the flag, sales of Confederate flags and associated items were “not even 1

percent of 1 percent of their sales,” with its biggest seller being Confederate flag bikinis. Since the flag started coming down, however, McCoy said she had sold more Confederate flags than she had in the past 10 years. She believes that most of the sales are just about people wanting what seems forbidden. “We’ve had several people call and say, ‘I don’t even care about the Confederate flag, but when somebody tells me I can’t have it, I want one. I’m just buying it to put in a closet,’ ” she said. “As soon as you say you can’t have it, everybody wants it. It’s crazy, but that’s just human nature.” McCoy said that those trying to see the flag banned were ignoring the real issue. In the photos of killer Dylann Storm Roof, she notes, he’s got a gun in one hand and a flag in the other. “It’s not the flag that killed those people. It’s the gun that killed them,” she said. “If we want to talk about something, we need to talk about the gun that killed those people. How does a nut end up with a gun? I don’t know the answer.” While McCoy says she thinks it’s fine for large retailers like Walmart and Amazon to take a stand and stop selling Confederate flag items, Arkansas Flag and Banner is a small business and a specialty store. Selling items that can’t be purchased elsewhere is what specialty stores do, she said. “I specialize in a certain product line,” she said. “This is my product line. … I’m not here for censorship. I’m not a politician, and I’m not here to judge. I also sell the gay pride flag. I get plenty of hate mail about the gay pride flag. I can’t judge anybody.” In addition to the familiar Confederate battle flag, Arkansas Flag and Banner also sells a half-dozen historic flags related to the Civil War, including the Bonnie Blue Flag, the campaign headquarters flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee; and the first, second and third national flags that flew over the Confederacy during its existence. McCoy says that she tries to steer those seeking the Confederate battle flag to other, more historic flags. She says that while she hates that the Confederate flag has been adopted by hate groups and has become a symbol of racism, the flag also serves as a reminder of those who perished in the Civil War. “That flag is a symbol of our history, and if you don’t remember history, everybody knows it will repeat itself,” she said. “You don’t want to go back to making the same mistakes as before. But we can remember the thousands of people in the South and in the North who gave their lives for their flags.”

BARTH, CONT. cant in many parts of the country. And, the continued discrimination allowed against LGBT individuals in the workplace, housing and other aspects of public life through the absence of comprehensive federal legislation means that, in many places, gays and lesbians literally can be married one day and fired the next. The generational dynamics on all three issues, however, indicate that the youngest voters are most supportive of the president’s perspective, boding well for the possibility of more progress. From his WTF interview to his

extraordinary Friday eulogy of Pastor Clementa Pinckney and the others killed at Mother Emanuel, it is hard to remember a week in which a president controlled the tenor and content of the news cycles across a variety of topics as did Obama. It shows how, six-and-a-half years into his administration, it is now Obama’s America in ways large and small. Elections have consequences, although those consequences often take years to percolate. Then they arrive like a thunderbolt.

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That’s why Bloomberg View’s Jonathan Bernstein is right and Justice Roberts is wrong about same-sex marriage causing long-lasting social resentment. Marriage, he writes, is “a done deal,” and the issue will soon be relegated to “history books alongside questions of whether women should vote or alcohol should be prohibited.” Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision invalidating miscegenation laws, was accepted almost immediately. Bernstein points out that in states such as Massachusetts and Iowa, where same-sex unions have been legal for years, they’re no longer controversial. Because it’s really none of your business, is it, who loves whom? And

it has zero effect on you personally. So grow up and get over it. In time, as Bernstein says, most people will. Shorter term, however, millions of aggrieved GOP voters appear to have gotten the First Amendment upsidedown. They won’t easily be dissuaded. Feeling besieged by the mainstream culture, they’re encouraged by the Huckabees, Cruzes and Santorums of the world to believe that they’re being persecuted because they can’t make everybody else march to their drumbeat. The Republicans’ problem is that to most Americans, that’s the antithesis of religious liberty, and a surefire political loser.

Responsibilities: Oversee design, development, and implementation of Mega-Capital projects for pipe manufacturer. Analyze customer requests and product design specifications. Design, develop, test, and evaluate up-gradation and improvement projects of internal and external customer requirements. Determine and oversee quality and inventory control, logistics and material flow, cost analysis and project coordination. Prepare cost benefit analysis indicating minimum payback period of the project and Return on Investment (ROI). Evaluate vendors’ credentials and capability and prepare techno-commercial bid comparisons. Assist commercial department in negotiations and procurement process. Inspection of materials and ensure proper installation as per engineering drawing and specification within the time frame and cost.

Education, experience and special requirements: MBAFinance and Bachelor Degree in Engineering or equivalent is required, Plus two years related experience in Project, Product and Supplier Development (involving engineering design, budgeting and cost analysis, product development, planning and scheduling and project execution). Must know AutoCAD design software, SAP/ERP, and MS Project software. To apply, mail resume to: Welspun Pipes, Inc., 9301 Frazier Pike, Little Rock, Arkansas 72206, Attn: Scott Carnes.

GRAPHIC ARTIST WANTED

PART TIME POSITION Arkansas Times is looking for a graphic artist with experience designing print ads. Applicant must have experience building ads using Adobe’s Creative Suite Software. 15 to 20 hours per week.

Email resume to weldon@arktimes.com

HEIFER INTERNATIONAL PR SR. SPECIALIST LITTLE ROCK, AR Responsible for expanding media relationships, cultivating thought leadership, & creating campaigns that inspire individual & community action to end poverty. Strong writing & pitch skills req., as demonstrated by samples or portfolio. Bach+5yrs exp. req. Apply at

WWW.HEIFER.ORG/ CAREERS. Heifer International is AA/EOE.

www.arktimes.com

JULY 2, 2015

FEATURING A SPECIAL SCREENING OF “SACRED HEART’S HOLY SOULS” AND A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH LEADING MEMBERS OF THE LGBT COMMUNITY. CALS/RON ROBINSON THEATER AND ARKANSAS TIMES PRESENT A FUNDRAISING EVENT FOR OUT IN ARKANSAS, ARKANSAS TIMES’ COMING LGBT PUBLICATION.

7 P.M. THURSDAY, JULY 16

RON ROBINSON THEATER 100 RIVER MARKET AVE LIGHT APPETIZERS AND BEER AND WINE WILL BE SERVED.

$25

FOR TICKETS, CALL KELLY LYLES 492-3979.

JULY 2, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES