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COMMENT
Open letter to Rep. Bruce Cozart I read your response to the Arkansas Times’ request for comments about what happened in Charlottesville, Va. It is obvious that you are not well educated on the facts of history surrounding the Civil War. On the other hand, maybe you do know your history, and you are simply sympathetic to the cause of white supremacy. I hope your comments were made out of ignorance, and not out of bigotry, because ignorance can be cured. Certainly the Civil War was fought for economic reasons, as you said. However, slavery was the foundation upon which the Southern economy was built. I won’t go into detail on this matter, but the most superficial perusal of the facts (the actual facts, not “alternative facts”) shows that many people in the South, especially plantation-owning elites, believed that black people were put on this planet to serve white people. Just do a little research and you can find evidence that supports this. In other words, it wasn’t just about control of the cotton trade, or states’ rights. Mr. Cozart, you also said that monuments and memorials to the Confederacy are part of our history, which we shouldn’t be forced to forget. That’s interesting, because some people have been asking black Americans to forget their history for a long time. The armed rebellion in which the South took part to keep their slaves is part of our white Southern heritage, but it is also part of black heritage, too, just from a very different perspective. Regardless of what you may believe, those statues were not erected immediately after the war to commemorate the fallen heroes of a noble cause. Those Confederate monuments and memorials were purposely placed in highly visible public places during the era of Jim Crow as a reminder to blacks not to step out of line, and as a way of metaphorically giving the finger to the North. I agree we shouldn’t destroy such historical items, but there is a more appropriate way to display them, a way that does not insult an entire segment of our population. Please share this with fellow legislators who share your views, especially Sen. Jason Rapert. I would send the same message to him, but every time I ask Mr. Rapert to justify his position on matters of any sort he just accuses me of being a non-believer. R.L. Hutson Cabot 4
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From the web On the Aug. 31 cover story, “Kids in Isolation: locked away in Alexander” by David Ramsey:
the Department of Human Services’ youth correctional facilities. Why are there so many horror stories about foster care children and youth correctional facilities in Arkansas? Governor Hutchinson and DHS Director Cindy Gillespie appointed longtime executive staff employee Betty Guhman to be director of Youth Services in July 2016. But I keep reading articles about the Division of Youth Services having problems with staff, funding, abuse, resignations, contract disputes, outof-state for-profit vendors and a
The Arkansas government does not seem capable or interested in protecting the lives of children who are outside of the womb. I have been reading articles from other sources that report the same thing: The majority of Arkansas government has turned a blind eye to the neglect and lack of oversight in
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lack of oversight and transparency on the part of DHS and Director Guhman. My opinion is the Arkansas government does not believe in or want to fund rehabilitation programs for anyone. They are cheap about providing the mental and emotional health services that are needed for children that are locked up. They just continue to create mentally ill people that they will eventually lock up in prison. They do not care about human lives if it decreases the money in the general improvement fund. Does the state ever get back the funds that state legislators steal? Sen. Jake Files (R-Fort Smith) goes to work every day at the state Capitol and collects his paycheck. What kind of justice is that? I hate saying these terrible remarks about the state government, but I also get tired of hearing comments from pompous legislators wanting to erect Ten Commandments monuments while they ignore the needs of children in our state. Maybe Rep. Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville) or a church could go hang plaques on the walls of the youth correctional facilities that say “In God We Trust.” I bet that would impress the youth that are locked up. ShineonLibby On the Arkansas Blog reporting on Twitter posts criticizing Barack Obama for not going to New Orleans during Katrina and mistaking Condoleeza Rice for Michelle Obama:
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I’m proud that we conservatives not only invented fake news (“Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.”), but continue to improve it, as the “Obama at Katrina” meme shows. As Pontius Pilate said: “What is Truth?” Ivan the Republican
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I pine for a simpler time when we could come together and acknowledge that all the ills of NOS the world were Clinton’s fault. MEXICA ON LA YA NO S DE LOS ÍA MAYOR MENTADOS “[Poetry] is the lava of the imagination U INDOC whose eruption prevents an PÁG. 13 earthquake.” — Lord Byron. 9 1 CyberBiker g á
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On the Arkansas Blog posting on President Trump’s decision to overturn President Obama’s limitation on providing military surplus, like grenade launchers, to police forces: Though I can see how bayonets “could” have daily use in roadside
trash pickup, I fail to understand why the other items are necessary to quell dozens of WAND members at a vigil. Perhaps a local sheriff could have a good old boy hunting trip with his campaign contributors in a tracked armored vehicle with 50-caliber guns mounted on top. But nothing, nothing, happening in this country can justify its use at all, let alone daily. The thought of weaponized drones in the hands of the federal government in this country, let alone in the hands of the Barney Fifes, is enough to evacuate the bowels of most residents of 71909. Already, there are private companies on the sidelines eagerly waiting to customize former military drones with shotguns, grenade launchers, and bombs for local police. Are we saying that police are so incompetent that they need such weapons to do their job of protecting citizens? Many Americans already fear police. Do you think arming them like invading Stormtroopers is going to dial down that fear? What in this country can justify police having such a lethal arsenal against its own citizens? Jabberwocky
In response to an Arkansas Blog post about an article on Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards that asks the question whether Arkansas Democrats should support support pro-life candidates if they could win more seats: Hell No! Let them stay in the Republican Party where they belong. DeathbyInches DBI, you are wrong. I’ll take a social conservative Democrat like Mark Pryor or Blanche Lincoln over John Bozeman and Tom Cotton every time, and you should also. The same goes for Mike Ross, the Blue Dog Democrat whom many in the party abandoned in 2014. The party has to get back to its economic basis, livable wages for the working man, better health care for all. I hope our new party chairman can find a candidate such as John Bel Edwards to run for governor in Arkansas. I would become an active party member again. Philosophical purity will get a person nowhere in conservative Arkansas if they want to win. I have been preaching that for years.
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5
WEEK THAT WAS
“There is no way around it: DACA is an unlawful program that must be phased out.” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s statement in a June letter she and nine other state attorneys general sent to the Trump administration, threatening to sue President Trump unless he ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program by Sept. 5. On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that DACA would be phased out. There are an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 DACA participants in Arkansas, and about 800,000 nationwide, many of them with families of their own. No new DACA applications will be accepted, the Department of Homeland Security said. Those DACA recipients whose cards were set to expire before March 5, 2018, will be given a one-month window for a final renewal. Those recipients whose protections were set to expire after that date will not get to renew. They’ll simply lose their ability to work, their ability to legally drive and their guarantee of security from deportation.
New gun law takes effect, but …
Civil rights suit targets LRPD Chicago attorney Mike Laux has filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the family of a 46-yearold man killed by Little Rock Police Department officers last October. The lawsuit names the officer involved, LRPD Chief Kenton Buckner and the city of Little Rock as defendants. Roy Lee Richards, 46, of Little Rock was killed Oct. 25, 2016, after officers responded to a disturbance call at 514 E. Eighth St. When officers arrived, the report filed at the time said, they saw Richards chasing his uncle, Derrell Underwood, 53, with a “long gun.” LRPD Officer Dennis Hutchins shot Richards. According to the report, 6
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high-profile police shootings of black could last up to a month. citizens, including the December 2010 shooting of Eugene Ellison, a 67-yearold Navy veteran shot by LRPD Officer Donna Lesher in his apartment near The sweeping expansion of the intersection of Col. Glenn Road Arkansas’s concealed carry law passed and South University Avenue after by the legislature earlier this year an altercation with police, and Bobby became law Friday, but don’t start Moore, a 15-year-old shot in August packing heat to school just yet. The 2012 by LRPD Officer Josh Hastings permits required for “enhanced carry” after Hastings responded to reports of firearms in sensitive areas such as of someone breaking into cars at the college campuses aren’t yet available, Shadow Lakes apartment complex in and won’t be for some time. West Little Rock. The city paid out a Originally intended to cover colleges record $900,000 settlement and issued and universities only, House Bill 1249 a formal apology over the Ellison grew in scope and ambition to include shooting in May 2016. In April of this courthouses, bars, churches and the state year, a federal jury awarded $415,000 to Capitol, following heated public debate Moore’s family in their lawsuit against and intense lobbying by the National former LRPD officer Hastings. Laux Rifle Association. It creates a new class represented the families in both cases. of enhanced permit for concealed carry license holders who complete a separate mandatory training, the details of which will be determined by the State Police. The new law requires the State Police to Governor Hutchinson has design the training program within 90 authorized the deployment of 1,500 days of the law’s taking effect. Sponsor Arkansas National Guardsmen to Texas, Rep. Charlie Collins (R-Fayetteville) where they will assist with cleanup tweeted that he expects the training and recovery efforts in the wake of program to be in place by the first Hurricane Harvey. The deployment quarter of 2018.
Underwood told police that he and Richards had engaged in an argument that became a physical fight, with bystanders calling the police. The rifle turned out to be a pellet gun. In a press release, the family of Roy Richards said the police report filed at the time was “absolutely false,” saying that eyewitnesses and physical evidence refute the account. Laux has become something of a thorn in the side of the LRPD in recent years, filing civil rights lawsuits over
Arkansas National Guard in Houston
OPINION
Left behind
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rkansas is getting a lot of attention ing few of those for our very low unemployment benefits. Our povrate. If you look only at that num- erty rate has been ber (3.4 percent), you would think work- relatively stagers here were doing quite well — better nant. About one in than surrounding states and even the five Arkansans still ELEANOR nation as a whole. But that seemingly lives in poverty. WHEELER simple rate can hide some huge gaps in The poverty rate prosperity. for children actually ticked up 1 perIt’s a broad measure, so you have to cent from 2014 to 2015, to 27 percent, break that number down to get an accu- according to the most recent data. Even rate picture of how we’re really doing. though wages are going up overall for If you look more closely, you’ll see that Arkansans, we still lag behind national some appear to be living in an alternate median wages and most other states in Arkansas that is indeed thriving. Many our region. aren’t. In general, those who fared well durThe best predictors of which Arkan- ing the recession are doing even better sas you live in have to do with your age, now, and those who struggled the most education and race. are barely getting back to where they A low unemployment rate should started. lead to higher wages, a better job marYoung workers in Arkansas had a very ket and general economic success. But a hard time finding work during the receslot of people in Arkansas are watching sion. Workers at the beginning of their the unemployment rate fall while reap- career face more volatility during eco-
Tax sham
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his week begins another ritual everyone. The little tax hikes, according that has become the most cele- to the critics, would lead to stagnation, brated sham of modern times. We recession and joblessness. always look forward to it, because it will Perversely, the predictions of gains make our country richer and happier and slumps were wrong every time, and change all our lives for the better. after the big ReaWe call it tax reform. gan tax cut in 1981, Every one of us is for it, because each after his serial tax of us is entitled to our own notion of increases the next what it is. Congress, at least superficially six years, after in collaboration with President Trump, Bill Clinton’s tax begins work on a great tax overhaul, increase in 1993, ERNEST DUMAS hoping finally to register one nominal after George W. win in the first year of rigid Republican Bush’s three tax cuts, after Barack control of all branches of government. Obama’s tax cut in 2009 and after his In Little Rock, a legislative tax- tax increase in 2013. The same in Arkanreform committee is settling in to hire sas: The economy grew after Dale Bumone of the bidding consulting firms that pers’, Bill Clinton’s and Mike Huckais most likely to tell the committee what bee’s tax increases and slumped after it wants to hear: Reducing taxes on busi- Mike Beebe’s tax cuts, although the ness and the well-to-do people will rev national recession was hardly his fault. the Arkansas economy and produce But, hey, the theory of tax-cutsmore and better-paying jobs. equals-growth-sounds too good. It must Congress has been following the rit- work sometime. ual for 40 years, Arkansas for the last We call the process tax reform, half-dozen or so. Federal tax rates on not tax cuts, because reform suggests high incomes have gone down steadily, impartiality and the public interest. with occasional small upward bumps We will cut some taxes and raise othunder Reagan, the first Bush, Clinton ers to achieve fairness and rearrange and Obama. Each tax cut was going to the tax burden in ways that will cause create massive business investment, mil- corporations and rich people to invest lions of new jobs and higher wages for their spare money in more shifts, new
nomic dips, acting almost as a buffer to older workers, whose employment rates are steadier. Their unemployment rates spiked up to 19 percent, almost four times the rate of older workers at the time. Now, their unemployment is lower (8.8 percent), but still not good. Remarkably, young workers’ unemployment is still higher than the peak overall rate that Arkansas hit in the depth of the recession. Arkansans without a high school diploma are in a similar spot, with unemployment in their group at 7.1 percent. That’s more than triple the rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and again similar to recession-era statewide unemployment rates. The 13 percent of young people who don’t graduate high school are essentially entering a job market in permanent recession. African Americans also work in a seemingly alternate Arkansas economy, with an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent. While unemployment rates are going down across the board, there is still an unemployment gap for African Americans. The ratio between white and black unemployment rates in Arkansas is
actually higher now than it was in 2010, even though employment overall has greatly improved. Similarly, the national wage gap between white and black workers is wider now than it was in 2000. We know it is possible to be successful in Arkansas, because so many kids do grow up healthy and able to fulfill their ambitions. Smart policies can help our state to finally realize the untapped potential of so many Arkansans who have been left behind. Nutrition programs (like Community Eligibility and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) help kids go to school ready to learn and keep up with their peers instead of thinking about their next meal. Investments in quality pre-K have longstanding educational benefits for kids, and set them up for a lifetime of learning. Tax policies like a refundable state Earned Income Tax Credit will help balance our tax system that is too hard on low-income families. These are just a few examples of how we can create an economically vibrant state for everyone, because finding a rewarding career in Arkansas shouldn’t be left up to chance. Eleanor Wheeler is a
product lines and higher wages rather than executive bonuses or higher shareholder dividends. The great working force never fails to be gulled. From his early campaign days to this week, Trump has sometimes been specific about gargantuan tax cuts for the rich and sometimes vague, like last week. But he did assure working folks that cutting taxes for corporations and high incomes would ultimately mean higher wages for them. We don’t call it trickle-down economics anymore. A few Republicans are talking about another round of tax reform like Reagan’s in 1986, where Republicans like Jack Kemp and Democrats joined the White House in closing giant business tax loopholes while lowering some tax rates, which produced more revenue and sent the economy into a healthy whir for a few years. The loopholes, including the one that benefited land developers like Trump, were opened again in 1991. Trump went to Congress and lobbied to get it restored. Republicans are talking about changing the income tax code, mainly by lowering the top corporate rate of 35 percent, so corporations won’t plop trillions of dollars offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. They would bring the money home and invest in new product lines and jobs. George W. Bush proved that it doesn’t work that way. He slashed the tax rate to the bone for a period so that corpora-
tions could repatriate all that money and stimulate the economy. They brought more than $300 billion home, but nearly all of it went to stock buybacks, executive pay and shareholder dividends and little to new payrolls. You wouldn’t know it, but economists generally believe that slashing income tax rates does not stimulate growth or raise incomes, except for shareholders and executives. Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prizewinning economist: “The notion that changing tax rates is going to lead to a growth spurt is pure nonsense … . Growth is slow because labor-force growth is slow. It is only going to grow slower because of immigration restrictions. And we’re not investing in education and research, which is why productivity is slow.” Trump and his party know that this is nonsense. If you see to it that Trump and many of his friends pay no taxes and that the unfortunate ones who do pay them pay less, we will be a great country again. In Arkansas, the tax-reform strategy, at least by the governor, is to shave rich people’s and corporations’ taxes a little at a time, to avoid the sudden fiscal catastrophes that struck the Republican governors of Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma when they did it all at once. Education, health care and public safety will perish by grades.
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arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
7
Infantile Antifa
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all me unromantic, but I disliked a lot about the fabled Sixties the first time around. Some of the music was good, but otherwise 1968 was among the worst years in American life. The center nearly failed to hold. As if the Vietnam War were not bad enough, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy made it feel as if America’s democratic institutions might not survive. Eager for “revolution,” hothouse warriors in the Students for a Democratic Society and Weather Underground did everything possible to promote anarchy — from rioting to setting off bombs. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, pitched battles between street fighters and Chicago police brought chaos and a massive voter backlash. The most immediate result, brilliantly chronicled in historian Rick Perlstein’s book “Nixonland,” was the criminal presidency of Richard M. Nixon. So I found it heartening to see Perlstein take to Facebook to scold the latter-day anarchists of Antifa. There was nothing subtle or scholarly about it. “Stop destroying the left, you infantile [bleeps],” Perlstein wrote. In a subsequent post, the historian quoted an eyewitness account of Antifa goons assaulting KKK-style marchers at a “white power” demonstration in Berkeley, Calif., of all places. “ ‘Yesterday, at the anti-Alt-Right rally in Berkeley,’ Leighton Woodhouse wrote, ‘I watched groups of masked Antifa members in Black Bloc formation swarm individuals who were apparently antagonizing them, and pummel them with their fists, feet, and flagpoles. When the victims tried to escape, they were run down, and in at least one case, cut off by the Antifa mob and beaten down some more.” A similarly vivid account of Antifa bullying by photojournalist Mike Kessler appeared in The New Republic. The irony was that until the masked, black-clad social justice warriors appeared, the Berkeley crowd had decisively outnumbered, ridiculed and shamed “alt-right” marchers as the pathetic goobers that they are. Much as thousands of peaceful citizens on Boston Common had so outnumbered white supremacists a week earlier that they took off their little bedsheets and went home without even trying to harangue the crowd. That’s all that ever needs to happen. But I don’t even need to turn on Fox News to know that Sean Hannity and the rest of the merry band of Trump apolo8
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gists on right-wing media are playing up Antifa as the moral equivalent of Bolshevik revolutionaries. GENE Well-meaning LYONS journalists such as The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan and Atlantic Monthly’s Peter Beinart are certainly correct to argue that there’s no real comparison between left- and rightwing political violence in the United States. Beinart cites Anti-Defamation League statistics showing that 74 percent of politically motivated murders in the U.S. since 2007 were committed by right-wing extremists vs. 2 percent by leftists. The news media’s tendency to soft pedal the far-right motives of killers, from Timothy McVeigh to Dylann Roof, has long been an instance of willful blindness. Journalists on the left correctly fear that won’t be the case with Antifa. Also on Facebook, Lindsay Beyerstein explains that she’s covered many protests halfway sabotaged by Antifa antics: “I always thought of them as self-indulgent parasites because they’d show up at demonstrations organized by other people and capture the news cycle with petty property destruction.” But she predicts that if real “violence comes, the backlash is going to come down as hard against the entire left as it did against the alt-right after Charlottesville.” My late father taught me an oft-repeated expression I always took as the essence of Americanism. “You’re no better than anybody else,” he’d growl “and NOBODY’S BETTER THAN YOU.” There was more than a little Irish nationalism in what he said, but he definitely meant it. So do I. Most Americans do, too. Even under President Trump, the great majority remains deeply attached to the fundamental premises of democratic citizenship. They want to believe that we’re all in it together — America, that is — and they react against anybody threatening that belief. So that when Alabama segregationists attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators with clubs, tear gas and dogs, the majority sympathized with the victims — and brought about the end of Jim Crow. But after rioting tore Chicago apart in 1968, they went the other way. Hard. Nobody needs the help of Antifa militants and the idiot professors making excuses for them to reject the KKK. But let them start real trouble, and we’ll all end up wishing we’d never heard of them.
Kennedy’s last chance
I
t all goes back to over 200 years ago, was no standard to when a state legislative districting employ in deciding JAY map created by Massachusetts Gov. whether such a BARTH Elbridge Gerry was criticized for its sala- line had truly been mander shape that provided a partisan violated. However, Kennedy concluded, advantage for Gerry’s fellow Democratic- “If workable standards do emerge to meaRepublicans. The controversy over the sure these burdens, however, courts redistricting was key to Gerry’s defeat by should be prepared to order relief.” a Federalist opponent in the fall of 1812. Since the 2004 decision, advocates Now, with high-powered mapping soft- of reducing the role of partisanship in ware and gobs of data about voters, “ger- district-line drawing have gone down rymandering” is more vibrant than ever. two different paths. Seeing no remedy In just a few weeks, the U.S. Supreme from the courts, voting rights activists Court will consider the issue once again concerned about the anti-democratic in Gill v. Whitford, a case from Wiscon- ramifications of partisan (and incumsin. A lower court found that Wisconsin’s bent-protecting) districting plans have Republicans created an unconstitutional increasingly turned their attention to advantage for their party in state legisla- changing the redistricting process, with tive districting by “packing” Democrats a focus on creating truly independent into certain districts and then “cracking” commissions across the states. In Arkanother Democratic-leaning areas across sas, a state where direct democracy proother districts. vides an outlet for reform, the possibilThe Wisconsin case is vital for two ity of creating such a commission at the related reasons. It is almost assuredly the ballot box remains alive. last time Anthony Kennedy, the justice The second path has been a search for most engaged and most consequential on a standard that would make the Supreme the topic, will be on the court to consider Court — that is, Justice Kennedy — more whether it is an appropriate issue for comfortable with subjecting overwhelmjudges to decide. Moreover, the filings in ingly partisan gerrymandering subject the new case speak directly to Kennedy to equal protection analysis. The advoby providing him an objective standard cates who brought forward the Wisconto employ in determining whether a sin challenge argue that the redistrictstate has been driven too much by par- ing plan there violates a new, objective tisanship in district-line drawing. measure called the “efficiency gap.” The The Supreme Court has traditionally efficiency gap measures “wasted votes” viewed gerrymandering as a “political (those votes either unnecessary for a question” not appropriate for judicial district’s winner to win combined with remedy. After a slight majority on the those votes cast for losing candidates); Supreme Court ruled in a 1986 case that the more such wasted votes a party has such cases were not inherently political in a given state, the greater their disadquestions and that persistent partisan vantage in redistricting according to the districting might become an equal pro- efficiency gap. Critics of the measure tection issue, the federal courts failed argue that there will always be ineffiin the years that followed to establish ciencies in any system of representative a standard for determining unconstitu- democracy based on geography and ask tional inequities in such districting cases. how much inefficiency is too much. OthMost recently, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, a ers, however, believe that it is just the 2004 Pennsylvania case, a four-justice sort of objective measure that could be conservative plurality on the court said used in developing a judicial test. that no standard for judging the propriThe high court will hear Gill v. Whitety of line-drawing was available and ford on Oct. 3. The composition of the that the court should permanently deem Supreme Court has changed since the them political questions. 2004 Pennsylvania case, but the numAs has been typical for much of his bers on redistricting issues seem contime on the court, Kennedy was the stant, with Kennedy very much in the man in the middle. After chastising the middle. Whether the “efficiency gap” Pennsylvania legislators for crossing the passes the Kennedy taste test may deterline of what is appropriate in a healthy mine the direction of this fundamentally democracy, Kennedy agreed that there important area of the law and politics.
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9
PEARLS ABOUT SWINE
On to TCU
T
his opener was never endangered Horned Frogs, which always embody the by weather, never in doubt on the pin-back-the-ears approach. If Arkanscoreboard, and never remotely in- sas cannot keep Allen clean and allow teresting. But it happened, Arkansas is 1-0 him some degree (unlike Baylor, UNLV, and — chortle — Texas of pocket stability A&M), and the Hogs lost very little against Saturday evening, hapless Florida A&M in a 49-7 walloping then it may mean that may have been a sendoff to War Memo- that Cole Kelley rial Stadium. is playing out of BEAU That last sentence does have a caveat. necessity rather WILCOX Prized corner Ryan Pulley, arguably the than choice. most improved player from 2015 to 2016, Kelley, incidentally, is some kind took a shot to his shoulder and is now of man-horse combo. He didn’t get a done for 2017. It’s a big loss to be sure chance to really lengthen the field but but one that the Razorbacks may be the 6’7”, 270-pounder did scoot to the able to overcome with some slight per- sideline and flick a couple of Rattler sonnel shifts in the secondary. Fortu- defenders to the turf as if he were doing nately, Henré Toliver looks like he might a community theater sendup of Gulliver recover the form that made him a sud- flicking away Lilliputians. The redshirt den sensation in 2014 when he smoth- freshman has promise and he’s going ered Alabama’s Amari Cooper and did a to be popular like most backup quarnumber on other wideouts. His fumble terbacks are, but for different reasons, recovery for six was probably the most namely because he is such a physical dynamic play of a night that had a pau- curiosity with his sheer size being somecity of highlight-reel material. what offset by a functional set of legs. Tailbacks David Williams, Chase On the other side of the football, Hayden and Devwah Whaley all showed Arkansas looked very adept at employing out at times and it does indeed appear three down linemen. This move makes that Arkansas’s depth there will be just sense for numerous reasons, and we’ve fine in spite of Rawleigh Williams’ early applauded the decision here recently, retirement. Williams has a real spark- but it’s nice to see it in action. As vanilla plug mentality, like he is itching to get as the overall gameplan was, the only into the game just to show the younger reason Arkansas didn’t pitch a shutout guys that he can’t be discounted even was due to A&M desperately pulling off if he is a transfer with less acclaim. His a second-half fake punt to sustain its sole catching ability helps, too, and Hayden’s scoring drive. The defense, frankly, was got a bit of Alex Collins’ shiftiness in him. excellent and showed promise in two This was an opportunity to see a few long-suffering areas: form tackling and new faces at receiver and it’s no sur- lateral quickness. prise that Austin Allen was a little less TCU will be no easy task, but even than comfortable with them. Jonathan with a humdrum opener and PulNance made some nice catches on the ley’s absence, Arkansas still looks well perimeter and showed the ability to get equipped and prepped for the Frogs. yardage after the grab. Jarrod Barnes This will be an ultimate test of the new had one big reception. It’s hard to get defensive scheme because Kenny Hill, a read on them after this kind of game for all his faults, can drive a coordinabecause Allen hardly needed to throw tor mad with his quick feet and rocket much, and Dan Enos clearly didn’t want arm. But be not surprised if this ends him to, lest TCU get too much of a visual up being a game decided by tailbacks on what the Hogs will try to do in their because both squads have a stable of true home opener this coming weekend. them, and they’re all unique in what they The discouraging thing was that the bring to the field. Pearls still thinks the offensive line struggled again, largely at Hogs’ group is stronger up and down tackle, and Allen got walloped a couple of than the one that Patterson will deploy, times. This simply cannot be a theme two but honestly, it may be a thin margin years in a row, and if it is, OL coach Kurt in that comparison and on the scoreAnderson will be unemployed. Allen’s board. If Arkansas can jump out of the toughness and ability to escape bad situ- gates with the vigor and passion that was ations are laudable, but another year sus- understandably missing from a Thursday taining 40-plus sacks will not do, and it night dud off Markham, it will be able to will be the paramount concern this week hold off the Frogs behind a defense that as the team readied for Gary Patterson’s seems completely retooled.
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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
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he Observer, an office-bound her- though, so as not to look like a crank, is that mit until we were cast back into the we’re eat up with superstitions, a believer hustle of an open newsroom earlier in all manner of haints and hoodoos. It’s this year, had forgotten how much we’d likely the residue of being raised by our missed the camaraderie of being forced dear ol’ Pa, who believed in the dire coninto joining conversations with your col- sequences of everything from not holding leagues. Like the stealthy wampus cat, The your breath when passing a graveyard Observer is a solitary creature for the most to lighting three on a match. When The part, preferring silence and a good book Observer was a boy, we’d be out driving in to scintillating conversation any ol’ day. one of his rattling old work trucks, and if a We are, however, an opinionated cuss, and black cat even looked like he might cross when folks around us start honing their his path, Pa would lick a finger and shoot it own opinions on the social whetstone, we out, quick as a whip, to draw three X’s on can’t help but join in. On a recent, slow the windshield, then spit out the window Thursday, the late-August news doldrums through his circled thumb and forefinger having becalmed our little ship as they for good measure. The Observer still does have every year for the 15 years this Old that, too, much to Spouse’s chagrin. Gotta Salt as been aboard, folks in the newsroom eat them black-eyed peas on New Year’s got to talking about superstitions. Day, too. When the world falls under the With the exception of reporters who cold spell of Mercury in Retrograde, as it work the Jesus Beat, journalists in our has in recent weeks, The Observer blames experience are almost uniformly down on the hot little planet closest to the sun for hocus-pocus, grumpkins, snipe hunting, every calamity and miscommunication. hoodoo and the idea that the Fouke Mon- We believe in Full Moon Fever, too, imagster majestically tromps the backwaters ining the emergency rooms and drunk and bayous of Little River County, arm- tanks and complaints departments overin-arm with Maude Crawford. Overly flowing as the Great Cheese Wheel grows naive reporters don’t seem to last long in fat. Yours Truly wouldn’t touch a peacock this business, or at the very least get the feather with a three-meter boathook. No naivety beaten out of them in short order, leaving any candles on the birthday cake so superstitions among the scribbling un-extinguished, no singing during a meal, class are few and far between. Getting a and birds at the window are cause for pullbunch of reporters to admit they believe ing the covers over our head and staying in Things Unseen might be in control of the for the day. Found money must be immelevers of the universe is a big deal. diately spent on others to ward off bad. To that conversation, The Observer We’ve got a million of ’em, so many contributed our own worry that some- that we’ve been known to ponder on occaone whistling in the newsroom is a por- sion why. Control, we suppose, namely tent of destruction and printed misspell- the feeling that sometimes we ain’t got ings galore, a superstition we gained none, the cogs of The Great Machine early on in our career while reading spinning on in darkness, at times grindThe Arkansas Gazette Project interviews ing our best-laid plans to bitter crumbs in and learning that some old hand at The the process. And so, in lieu of any other Gazette — possibly the storied editor remedy, we wish on clovers and toss salt John Netherland Heiskell, though our over our shoulder into the devil’s eyes, memory fails us — would go absolutely huff the last bit of tidal air at the last stubape if he heard somebody whistling in born candle on the birthday cake, listen his workhouse. Our own storied editor, for lucky crickets in the house and owls Max Brantley, weighed in to admit to hooting doom in daylight. In this world mild triskadekaphobia, a tickle of worry where so much seems to be beyond our at the number 13. And so on, and so forth. reckoning, a little luck never hurt anyWhat The Observer didn’t tell them, body. Unless it’s bad luck, of course.
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11
Arkansas Reporter
THE
DERMOTT JUVENILE TREATMENT CENTER: A runaway from here ended up in isolation at a juvenile correctional facility.
Locked away Critics raise concerns about confining kids alone in Dermott juvenile facilities. Part two of a two-part series. BY DAVID RAMSEY
A
round four months ago, Benjamin letter to DYS Director Betty Guhman Knuckles’ 16-year-old son tried to and expressed concern about the use escape from the Dermott Juve- and oversight of isolation at DYS facilinile Treatment Center. As punishment, ties. Tanner described children being he was driven up the road to the nearby confined at the correctional facility in Dermott Juvenile Correctional Facility cells for “indeterminate periods with illfor 18-21-year-olds and placed alone in defined supports and services.” a single-cell unit. He remained confined In one extreme case last year, a 17-yearthere for more than 24 hours. old youth at Dermott was confined in iso“It’s supposed to be a treatment cen- lation for 23-24 hours per day for a period ter,” Knuckles said. “As far as I’m con- totaling more than 90 days, according to cerned, my son is not in treatment. He’s records examined by Disability Rights in jail. That’s the bottom line, he’s just Arkansas, an advocacy group that makes locked up. I’m the one who turned him regular observations at the juvenile lockin to the police. I was trying to save my ups. More typically, youths would spend son. I regret it every day. Now all I’ve a day or a few days confined, according done is turn him into more of a crimi- to DRA observers, let out only to shower nal. He ain’t done nothing but learned and use the bathroom. to be locked up.” The practice of confining someone The two facilities at Dermott are alone to a cell or room has many names among eight juvenile lockup facilities — isolation, room confinement, segregaoverseen by the Arkansas Department tion, seclusion, restrictive housing, soliof Human Services’ Division of Youth tary confinement — and definitions can Services, all of which are intended to be vary. Tanner’s letter noted the definition rehabilitative rather than punitive. Scott of isolation used by a toolkit developed Tanner, state juvenile ombudsman at by the Council of Juvenile Correctional the Arkansas Public Defender Commis- Administrators: “any time a youth is sion, noted the practice in Dermott that physically and/or socially isolated for Knuckles’ son experienced in a recent punishment or administrative purposes.”
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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
Youth advocates say the use of isolation the frequency and duration of isolation. in juvenile facilities should be strictly They said that while youths at Dermott limited, arguing that the practice is may “perhaps” have been confined for counterproductive, disrupts education days at a time without adequate services and therapy services that facilities are previously, that is not the practice now. required to provide, and can potentially The DYS relies on American Correcbe dangerous. According to federal data, tional Association protocols for the facilmore than half of suicides in such facili- ities it oversees. ACA standards limit ties occur while youths are isolated in a room confinement for juveniles to five room. “It has a detrimental effect on a days, stating that “the time a juvenile youth’s treatment, education, physical spends in disciplinary confinement is health and mental health,” DRA execu- proportionate to the offense committed,” tive director Tom Masseau said. and establish parameters for adminisThe two facilities at Dermott, along trative review. The DYS does not have with five other juvenile lockup facilities, an official policy on isolation. A policy were abruptly turned over to direct state was drafted more than two years ago, control in January after efforts by the but, despite urging from youth advostate to contract them out to a new ven- cates, it has never been promulgated. dor were blocked in the legislature late The lack of an official policy has caused last year. The governor announced in confusion and inconsistent practices at August that the state would solicit con- facilities, Masseau said. tractors and they would be placed back Nevertheless, that draft policy — in private control as soon as next July. which discourages isolation lasting lonThe Arkansas Juvenile Assessment ger than four hours but leaves open the and Treatment Center, the eighth and possibility of confinement lasting up to largest facility, is run by a for-profit five days — is used as a set of guidelines company. Tanner’s letter, as well as by which the DYS expects facilities to emails he sent throughout the sum- abide. Though there is still no timemer, also raised concerns about room line to promulgate it, on Aug. 18, Amy confinement at that facility. The com- Webb, chief communications officer munications were acquired from the at the DHS, wrote in an email, “DYS is Public Defender Commission by a Free- making the [draft policy] standard at dom of Information Act request; Tan- all facilities.” ner declined to comment for this story. In his letter to Guhman, Tanner The Arkansas Nonprofit News Network called for data tracking — in line with previously reported on the practice of national standards for juvenile justice room confinement at AJATC, which — to ensure best practices around the typically occurs in a building described use of isolation and enable more intenby one youth as “like the prison.” sive monitoring and review. The DYS Since the Arkansas Nonprofit News does not track aggregate data on room Network first asked DYS officials about confinement and was unable to provide isolation in May, the division has made information about how often the pracefforts to streamline practices and stan- tice has been used at Dermott, but DRA dards around room confinement at all observers said it has been fairly common. facilities, state officials said. The practice of moving kids who “We can’t deny that things in the past commit infractions at the Dermott have been done, behaviors and man- Treatment Center to the correctional agement practices that had we been facility in order to confine them in sinmore involved in the day-to-day run- gle-cell units there raised an additional ning probably wouldn’t have continued,” red flag, Masseau said: the placement said DHS spokeswoman Brandi Hinkle. of younger youths at a facility man“Since we have taken over seven of the dated by the state to house 18-21-yearfacilities, it’s been very eye-opening.” olds. Asked whether this was a concern, According to DRA, the practices they Webb wrote, “Determined on a caseobserved at Dermott continued after by-case basis.” the DYS took over the facilities. But In some cases, a room where an older DYS officials said that the division has resident normally sleeps has been used established clearer protocols at Dermott as a cell to put a younger child in isoover the last few months in order to limit lation. DRA observers have seen older
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youths with their bedding dragged into a common area, where they sleep for the duration of the younger child’s stay in isolation. Meanwhile, isolation has also been used for the 18-21-year-old youths at the correctional facility; in that case, they would typically be confined to their regularly assigned rooms. At one DRA observation this year, several younger children were confined in isolation in rooms at the correctional facility, and the lights in these rooms were turned out in the middle of the day so that the children were confined in darkness. Staffers told DRA observers that the children were napping, but the observers could see them through the slit in the door, staring back at them in the dark, wide awake. Asked about such a practice, Webb said that while it “perhaps” happened in the past, it was not happening now. “We are not OK with that approach,” she said. Before the DYS takeover in January, the nonprofit South Arkansas Youth Services ran the facilities at Dermott. Last year, one youth was placed into room confinement for a period totaling more than 90 days. The youth, who had a disability, did not receive educational instruction or programming, according to a letter sent by DRA in August 2016. According to logs pulled by DRA, the youth was isolated for 23-24 hours per day; some days he got recreation time out of the cell, some days he did not. In a response letter, South Arkansas Youth Services defended the practice of room confinement and disputed the accuracy of DRA’s information. “He was identified as being violent,” said Marq Golden, the DYS assistant director for residential programs. “They made several attempts where they tried to move him back and he was still identified as violent. They provided him services [while confined at the correctional facility].” While Masseau said that a situation involving near total isolation over three months was an outlier, DRA staffers both this year and in previous years have observed room confinement at Dermott lasting for significant periods of time. Youths put into isolation would often sleep in the cell overnight, Masseau said, sometimes for multiple nights. “We’ve seen them up there for as little as a few hours, but the usual is going to
THE
Inconsequential News Quiz:
BIG Tonight there’s gonna PICTURE
be a jailbreak edition
Play at the football game, buck-naked. 1) Police were recently summoned to the North Little Rock Animal Shelter after a crime was reported. What was the crime? A) A rag-tag group of schnauzers, golden retrievers and poodles secretly dug a 120-foot-long tunnel under a wall and then scurried to freedom during shift change. B) Someone cut a fence and smashed through a wall to break out a pit bull that a judge had ordered euthanized because of the city ordinance prohibiting the breed. C) A surly French bulldog wouldn’t quit playing his harmonica after lights out. D) A Doberman pinscher pulled a shiv on a guard and demanded to be flown to the nearest squeaky toy factory. 2) At 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16, people plan to assemble on the steps of the state Capitol for a group photo. Why? A) They believe they’ve been called by God to mow down the Ten Commandments monument with their Dodge Darts if the state manages to get it put back in place. B) They’re members of Arkansas’s Chubby Nudists League. C) They’re all people who have been blocked from the Facebook or Twitter accounts of the notoriously block-happy Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway). D) They’re a group of diehard Trump supporters who are convinced they’ll be abducted by aliens. Illegal aliens. 3) Police recently pulled over and arrested a 22-year-old man exiting from Interstate 630 onto University Avenue in Little Rock. Why was the man arrested? A) He was driving a golf cart. B) His van was made entirely of weed. C) He failed to comply with an officer’s demand that he not be homeless. D) No reason, really. The cop was just feeling a bit lonely. 4) The Baxter County Quorum Court’s personnel committee recently voted on an item that would make Baxter County the last county in Arkansas to approve something the other 74 counties in the state have long since handled. What would the vote do? A) Make telling “Game of Thrones” spoilers to those who haven’t seen the latest episode a crime punishable by death. B) Outlaw incest between aunts and nephews, which would totally cover the buck-nekkid foolishness Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow got up to in the recent “Game of Thrones” season finale, just before the Night King’s zombie dragon knocked down The Wall! C) Also, Sansa and Ayra killed Littlefinger! D) Make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a paid holiday. 5) Fans attending a recent high school football game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock were shocked to see a man “streaking” bare-assed across the field, with police in hot pursuit. What, according to police, was unique about the incident? A) The man was former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, making a desperate attempt to regain President Trump’s love. B) The perpetrator had previously been arrested and charged in a similar incident in Helena. C) He was naked because he’d foolishly forgotten to wear his stretchy pants before transforming into The Incredible Hulk. D) He was caught after he tripped on his penis.
ANSWERS: B, C, A, D, B
LISTEN UP
CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
13
Stemming seeds
The medical pot industry is budding, but doctors are declining to OK forms for users. By Leslie Newell Peacock
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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
E
rich Laufer has cancer, but he considers himself a lucky man. He was able to get a doctor, Dr. Dane Flippin of Jonesboro, to certify for the state Department of
Health that he has a medical condition that makes him eligible for medical marijuana. The $250 he was charged by the consenting to sign the form. doctor wasn’t off-putting. Laufer, who By signing, doctors verify they are moved to Arkansas from Wisconsin licensed as medical doctors or osteobecause of the state’s legalization of paths and that their patient has one medical marijuana, said he’d taken far or more of the 18 qualifying medical more expensive drugs to treat the back conditions listed on the form. The pain and leg spasms his cancer causes. form is not a prescription, nor does But, according to people who con- it require the doctor to recommend tacted the Arkansas Times and medi- medical marijuana as be appropriate cal marijuana supporter Melissa Fults, for the condition, though an earlier the $250 fee — which is the standard version of the form would have. (The charge — is just too much, given that legislature amended that language out.) the patient must also pay $50 to the Doctors do not have to have had a prestate to obtain a Medical Marijuana vious relationship with a patient seekRegistry Identification card based on ing certification, but must review the the information provided by the doc- patient’s records to be able to attest to tor, and recertification must be done the fact that the patient has a qualifyyearly, if not more frequently. Even if ing condition. Qualifying diagnoses are they can afford the fee, it’s not a cer- cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, Hepatainty they can find a doctor who’ll titis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis agree to sign the form. (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Tourette’s synNancy Young, 51, of Hot Springs is drome, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colione of those people having difficulty tis, PTSD, severe arthritis, fibromyalgia, on both counts. She’s on disability for Alzheimer’s disease, cachexia (wastpost-traumatic stress disorder and ing), peripheral neuropathy, intracother medical problems. Her psychiatrist in Little Rock would not sign the Medical Marijuana Physician Written Certification form; his group, Psychiatric Associates of Arkansas, had voted not to sign. Here’s why: “Medical marijuana is baloney,” Psychiatric Associates’ Dr. Richard Owings said. “And the people who advocate for it know that.” The medical group’s Facebook page includes a link to a Reuters Health story that says there’s little evidence that marijuana alleviates pain or helps with PTSD. Not surprisingly, Fults and users of marijuana who’ve gotten relief would disagree that medical marijuana is “baloney,” and want more doctors to help their patients obtain the drug by
table pain that does not respond to ordinary medications or treatments for more than six months, severe nausea, seizures and severe and persistent muscle spasm, such as those characteristic of multiple sclerosis and others. With the exception of Owings and another doctor who would only speak on condition of anonymity, doctors who aren’t signing the forms aren’t taking calls from the press inquiring why, either. Most specialists in rheumatology, ophthalmology, gastroenterology and cancer contacted by the Times declined to comment. One oncologist told the Times he was going to be extremely careful, that it would not be a first course of treatment, and that’s all he wanted to say besides, “Good luck with your story.” The doctor who asked his name not be used said the forms were tantamount to giving a prescription for a substance that he says doctors have little experience with. “I don’t want to be monitored by the government,” the doctor said. “Also, we have so much to deal with as it is, with regulations, I don’t want to add a headache to everyday busy life.” The doctor acknowledged that marijuana may alleviate nausea and stimulate appetite in patients who might otherwise waste, but said there are “better treatments with a scientific basis.”
NEW ARKANSAN: Erich Laufer, shown here with wife Angela and daughter Acelyn, moved to Bull Shoals so he could legally treat his cancer pain. arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
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Most of the doctors who are certifying patients are family practice and general practice doctors, and many of them are in Northwest Arkansas, though a list on the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association website and infor-
Hale Post, D.O., who, thanks to videos with insurance companies can’t bill on Facebook and the cannabis indus- for the visit, since marijuana is still try website and through public rela- illegal. The federal Drug Enforcement tions firm outreach, is perhaps the Agency classifies it as a Schedule 1 illebest known doctor in Arkansas who gal substance, along with heroin and advocates for marijuana and will sign other drugs.
A native of Mountain Home, Post said she did not use pot growing up; she believed it to be a gateway drug. “I was totally against it.” But she began to be “passionate” about the drug because of benefits she believes it offers for the
LECTURER ON MARIJUANA: Dr. Tammy Hale Post has made several videos on topics related to medical marijuna, including the one shown here in a capture from her Facebook page: jobs that will be created by the industry.
mation supplied by patients shows willing doctors cast all over Arkansas. There is one doctor in each of the following cities: Little Rock, Benton, Van Buren, Crossett, Jonesboro, Paragould, Blytheville, Ashdown, Eureka Springs, Bentonville, Fort Smith, Fayetteville and Mountain Home. Springdale has three. (The concentration in Northwest Arkansas likely reflects the retirement community there, though a cynic might wonder if it’s in anticipation of a number of University of Arkansas students beginning to complain of pain or stomach woes.) That does not mean that there are only 16 doctors certifying patients in Arkansas, but few physicians are openly advertising that they will sign the certification forms. As of Sept. 2, 863 applications for cards had been approved, according to the health department, which at one point said it expected 30,000. Fults, who works with the Drug Policy Education Group and describes herself as a “62-year-old grandma goat farmer,” is distressed by the lack of participation by the state’s physicians. “We worked so hard trying not to label people as pot doctors,” but that’s what has happened, she said. Fults figures some doctors are worried about not being reimbursed by insurance for the service, but suggests those that are could sign the forms during physicals and other checkups, which insurance will cover. “Say you are my doctor and have been for the last 10 years, you know everything about my medical history. … So if you won’t write a certificate, I have to get a copy of my medical records, and then go to someone I know nothing about, never met and won’t see again until next year. To me that creates a problem, because you have a relationship with your doctor. You will not have a relationship with Dr. Tammy.” Fults was referring to Dr. Tammy 16
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‘So many patients have told me so many stories about how it’s changed the quality of their lives.’ DR. TAMMY HALE POST
certifications for the state’s medical marijuana cards. Post charges $287 to patients who come to her seeking verification of their eligible illnesses. She gives a discount to veterans and low-income patients. Unlike many doctors, Post’s practice is all cash. Doctors affiliated
“I think a lot of doctors don’t understand” that by signing the form they are neither prescribing marijuana nor advocating its use, Post said. The Springdale doctor, who is writing a book on medical marijuana, noted that the plant has been used “since the dawn of time” as a medicine.
treatment of seizures. “My father had a brain tumor that caused a seizure disorder. … He would have 300 [seizures] a day; his life was controlled by them.” His medicines not only did not control the seizures, she said, their side effect was bone cancer. He died when she was 19. She doesn’t know if it could have helped her father, but it spurred her to study the plant. Medical marijuana is not without its risks, she said, because it can cause mood changes, “but it should not be demonized. … I have become a real advocate. … I really believe we should look at this — or at least be open-minded.” Post said she has signed over 200 forms. Her patients know it works, she said, because they have been using marijuana. “So many patients have told me so many stories about how it’s changed the quality of their lives.” She believes marijuana extracts have “huge potential” for pain, depression and Alzheimer’s. (Depression is not a qualifying condition, but the Drug Policy Education Group would like that illness, along with anxiety, autism, Lupus,
anorexia, migraines, Parkinson’s and others, added to the list.) Dr. Archie Hearne, a family medicine doctor in Little Rock who will certify patients with qualifying diagnoses, supports the use of medical marijuana “under limited circumstances.” He said he has talked to colleagues in California and asked if the availability of marijuana had changed people’s behavior. “They say things are no different than from before. There are people who use pot and people who don’t.” But Hearne says the system is not perfect. He questions some of the clinical indicators on the list, like HIV. “HIV can be asymptomatic,” he said, so what would the medical marijuana be treating? He said marijuana’s appetite stimulation would be contraindicated in people with diabetes, and that people with pulmonary disease must not smoke the drug. Too, he said, “I don’t know that it’s a great analgesic,” though it may help conditions related to pain, like anxiety. “Whoever is deciding to put [those illnesses] on the list has taken it on themselves” to define them as conditions that can be helped by marijuana, he said. Hearne would like to see Little Rock pass an ordinance that would ban the use of marijuana in public, though state law already prohibits its use in “any public place where an individual could reasonably be expected to be observed by others.” Restricting its use to a private residence and away from children would keep young people from being influenced, mentally and physically, he said. (A study in the scientific journal Substance Abuse and Misuse that compared results of school-age health surveys from before and after the legalization of recreational marijuana found no difference in marijuana use, but children were more aware of the ease of access to the drug.) Another concern of Hearne’s is dosage. Dispensaries “are going to provide a quantity of marijuana” subject to no scientific evaluation as to efficacy, though the state law does require testing for amounts of cannabinoids in the products. “Any drug I give you has been studied, approved, its pharmacology is well defined, and I know exactly how much to use. There’s a science as to quantity. It’s a big issue with me,” he said. Hearne has signed 15 or so forms, he said. He expects that once the state actually begins to issue the cards — one month before the medical marijuana dispensaries open, likely in
spring 2018 — he’ll see 10 requests a week. Medicinal marijuana can be prepared in a variety of ways. CBD, or cannabidiol, is the agent that acts on seizures and anxiety disorders, pharmacist Josh Winningham said. Extracts containing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) are used for pain. CBD does not cause euphoria; THC does. It is, as Post put it, “catnip for humans,” acting on the brain’s cannabinoid receptors. Dispensaries will be required to affiliate with pharmacists. Winningham, who is based in Cabot and has the OK of his employer to move into medical marijuana consulting, said he is already working with applicants for dispensary licenses. He’ll train dispensary staff in what forms of medical marijuana are best for what conditions. If someone who has never used cannabis comes to a dispensary, or is taking other medications, the staff should consult with their pharmacist, Winningham said. Dispensary applicants get extra merit points for having a working relationship with a pharmacist at the time of application. So far, the Alcohol Control Board has received five applications for licensure by dispensaries
and two by growers, Department of Finance and Administration spokesman Scott Hardin said last week. Up to 32 dispensary licenses will be issued, four in each of the eight regions created by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission. Application deadline for both dispensaries and growers is Sept. 18. Hardin said the state Freedom of Information Act exempts the applications from public release until after the commission has reviewed and voted on the licenses to be awarded. “There are disease states that [marijuana] is effective for,” Winningham said. “The research is hard to come by because it’s a Schedule 1, but you can find evidence that it does have health benefits. Coming from a science background, I was able to find stuff that showed to me the efficacy of the program. I am excited about the program. A lot of people are going to get a lot of benefit, those that have run out of traditional options.” ***
E
rich Laufer, 33, formerly of Fond du Lac, Wis., and now living in Bull Shoals, was born with a rare condition called
myxopapillary ependymoma, or spinal tumors. When he was in his teens, the tumors began to swell. He recalls sitting at a football game and suddenly getting hit with intense pain and the loss of sensation in his legs. “I had to crawl to the emergency room,” he said. He had surgery, but 10 years later, the tumors came back. He had more surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. This time, the treatment reduced, but did not eliminate, the tumors. “The hospital had me on morphine and oxycontin. I came out of that hospital and two months later I was addicted to those pills. I quit cold turkey — a bad idea. I was puking and shaking. It’s a terrible way of life, to take a pill to cure pain.” The drugs made him “high as a kite” and constipated. They killed his appetite and quality of life. Laufer reached out to an old friend from high school. He told him he didn’t want to be high; he just wanted relief from his leg and back spasms. “So I started self-medicating.” First he bought marijuana. Then his mother, a gardener, started growing plants in her basement for him. “She took the risk. It was a game changer. I didn’t have to deal with people in the street.” DR. ARCHIE HEARNE: He has certain concerns, but will certify patients if his review of their medical records indicates eligibility.
But Laufer didn’t want to put his family — he has a wife and two little girls — in jeopardy, and he wanted to set a good example for his children, and he began considering a move to a state where he could obtain marijuana legally. When he learned that Arkansas had legalized medicinal marijuana, “I said, ‘What? You gotta be kidding me.’ ” Arkansas was perfect: Laufer’s grandmother owned a home at Bull Shoals that the family could move into. Laufer and family came to Arkansas a month ago. Laufer got his certification from Arkansas Progressive Medicine in Jonesboro, Dr. Dane Flippin’s practice; he found Flippin on marijuanadoctors. com. Laufer had his records sent to Flippin from the Wisconsin cancer center where he’d been treated, got an Arkansas driver’s license and went to his appointment. He showed Flippin a video of his leg spasms. “I told him I’d been on pretty much every painkiller under the sun and I had found the perfect medicine for me and this is it.” arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
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Laufer said he’d paid $500 a month for one drug, so the $250 charge was fine with him. “I understand it’s a business. I don’t think [the office visit] was overly priced.” ***
T
hat marijuana can let people stop using opioids is one reason Dr. Roger Tilley of Benton is agreeing to sign the certification forms. “I feel like if it’s available for these people that are in pain and it’s another treatment modality they can use, I’d much rather they use something like this than the hydrocodones or oxycodones they’re starting to use.” Tilley, 63, said the number of forms he’d signed were “in the double digits.” He said he tells people who come to him with the forms that he does not want to take them away from their regular doctors, but he will work with them on medical marijuana certification. Most of the people who’ve come to him have lumbar disease — back pain caused by degenerative discs, etc., Tilley said. He’s also seen some veterans with PTSD. (Veterans Administration hospitals are not allowing their doctors, who are federal employees, to certify their patients.) “So far, everybody seems to be legit,” he said. “I don’t use the stuff,” Tilley, who has been in practice in Benton since 1980, said. “But we allow alcohol, and marijuana has some benefit medically for patients. The way the trend is going, it’s probably going to be legal [nationally].” He also thinks access to doctors will increase. The forms require doctors to indicate how long the certification for a card is good: Patients must be recertified after 12 months, but doctors can require recertification after months or weeks. Hearne said he’s signed some for three months only. If some-
WILL TRAIN DISPENSARY WORKERS: Pharmacist Josh Winningham is already working with dispensary applicants.
one has nausea, he said, it could go away; there’s no need for a 12-month card. “When we limit, we are actually practicing a little medicine,” he noted, since the doctor is making a decision on how long the patient may need his registry card. The doctor who would only speak to the Times anonymously believes the state should shoulder the burden of certification. “The state should be the ones to review our charts and make the deci-
sion so we don’t have the liability. That makes more sense. It’s not a standard treatment.” As far as the state is concerned, Kevin O’Dwyer, counsel for the Arkansas Medical Board, doctors incur no liability by signing the forms. He said he could not speak for the DEA, however. Nancy Young, the woman with PTSD whose psychiatrist wouldn’t sign a certification, said that because she doesn’t have the financial ability to pay a doctor $250 for a visit and
the state is not yet issuing cards, she’s not in a hurry. She’ll try again when “everything gets set up.” Growers will have to build and outfit their facilities and it takes at least three months to grow a flowering marijuana plant, and none of that can start until after the state awards licenses, which would be October at the earliest. The cards will be issued one month before medical marijuana becomes available, according to the health department, and will be good for a year, or whatever term was indicated on the form by the certifying physician, at issuance. Another would-be card holder, who would only identify himself as “Mike” and who lives in Conway, said a Little Rock doctor who treats his rheumatoid arthritis had declined to sign the certification form, and the Conway doctor who is signing forms — Dr. Betsy Hendricks — required a $100 deposit; he feared he might pay the $100 and then get turned down for the certification. (Hendricks had not returned a call for comment by press time.) Mike gets infusion therapy every six weeks for his RA and is looking at a knee replacement “in the not-toodistant future, and I’m sure that as the pain gets worse, they’re going to say, ‘Take this, take that.’ I don’t want to run the risk of getting addicted to the opioids, so I would be more likely to suffer than to take the heavy-duty painkillers.” But he’s not sure medical marijuana is the answer. “I’m kind of the opinion that it may not do any good. … But if it makes you feel better, you shouldn’t risk going to jail for it.” And that’s really why he would think about getting a card. “Being bullheaded, I want the card and I want to carry it around with me and say ‘nanny nanny’ to a society that has long allowed an intoxicant like alcohol but has denied people the use of cannabis.
ARKANSAS PROGRESSIVE MEDICINE
Beat The RUSH! Get Your Card Early! Saturday Appointments Available MarijuanaDoctorOfArkansas.com (479) 321-3645 18
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ARKANSAS TIMES
is a new medical cannabis evaluation and service clinic in Jonesboro opened by Dr. Dane Flippin, a Jonesboro native with over 20 years of patient evaluation experience. “My experience as a family practice doctor and having dealt with many of the qualifying diagnoses over the past 20 years makes me the perfect person to enter into this new world of treatment” — Dr. Dane Flippin
1000 East Matthews, Suite E • Jonesboro, Arkansas, AR 72401 (870) 520-6007 • Arkansasprogressivemedicine.net
REPORTER, CONT.
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NOTES SUICIDE LINK TO ISOLATION: Tom Masseau, director of Disability Rights Arkansas, is also concerned about putting younger kids in facilities for ages 18-21.
be between one night and four nights,” isville, has placed shackled youths outhe said. “If it happens on a Friday, they doors for hours at a time, regardless almost always keep them over the week- of weather, as punishment for severe end up there.” Youths given this punish- misbehaviors. Webb said that “placing ment have typically been in the room restraints on youth and placing them the entire time, with little to no services outdoors … is unacceptable and that provided, let out only to use the rest- was made very clear to staff back in room or shower (and not necessarily March. That is one of the things we let out to shower every day). learned was happening once we took Webb said that this description of room over the day-to-day operations, and it confinement “perhaps” happened previ- is not an approach or technique that we ously, but is not happening currently. The approve.” Webb added that the DYS DYS has now implemented an approach, prefers alternative de-escalation intershe said, in which staff members at Der- ventions rather than using mechanical mott call on-call DYS staffers at the central restraints at all, and next month the divioffice to notify them of the decision to use sion will commence training all staff on room confinement. safer crisis intervention and behavior “Our staff has been told not to simply management techniques. say OK, but to have a more substantive Facilities may also remove a youth discussion about this decision to ensure from the site to be temporarily placed it is not being done out of anger or irri- for a few days in one of five county-run tation and to ensure youth are confined juvenile detention centers with which for the shortest amount of time possible the state has agreements — a practice to address the issue,” Webb said. referred to as a “timeout.” In that case, Webb said that DYS facilities, includ- the youth could be confined to a cell at ing Dermott, should now be following the one of the JDCs, which operate under draft policy in terms of what services are a standard that allows room confineprovided to youths who are put in room ment for up to 23 hours per day if the confinement. Following ACA protocols, youth is deemed a safety or security risk. the draft policy states, “Residents must Golden said that JDCs should follow be afforded living conditions and privi- the same expectations that the DYS had leges as the general population.” Asked for its own facilities in terms of room specifically about what sorts of educa- confinement and noted that the DYS tion, therapy, recreation or other services Quality Assurance team does conduct youths in room confinement receive at some oversight, but added, “We have Dermott, the DYS did not provide any agreements with them, but we don’t additional information. necessarily tell them exactly what they Room confinement on site has have to do.” been much rarer at facilities other According to Tanner’s Aug. 23 letter, than AJATC and the two at Dermott, there were 11 youths housed in JDCs according to DRA observers, likely due to behavioral timeouts. The stratbecause most lack highly secure sin- egy of using JDCs to separate youths gle-cell rooms. However, they may use who commit behavioral infractions mechanical restraints in response to comes with pitfalls, Tanner wrote. major infractions. According to DRA “Youth placed in isolation, especially observers, at least one facility, at Lew- in a county detention center, can be CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
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REPORTER, CONT. subjected to revocation of privileges additional training and development such as reduced family visitation and for staff toward policies and principles limited access to educational program- regarding the use of isolation. ming and clinical services,” he wrote. In the interim, Tanner wrote, “DYS “Youth placed in detention centers in must improve its monitoring and Arkansas can also be subject or witness accountability when youth are removed to pepper spray.” Youth subjected to from the general population.” He proJDC timeouts also tend to end up having posed that any removal for disciplinary longer stays at the DYS treatment cen- purposes, especially from a school setters, Tanner wrote. “All of those iden- ting, should be approved by the DYS; tified consequences are counter to the that each individual case of separation interests of the youth we serve, to the from the general population should be communities to which they will return, monitored, including the reasons for the and to the taxpayers of Arkansas.” removal, its duration and what interIn a 2015 report, the Council of ventions were attempted; that the diviJuvenile Correctional Administrators sion needed to better assess and monitor advised that “isolating youths … as a the conditions of rooms or cells where consequence for negative behavior children were confined in isolation; and undermines the rehabilitative goals of that the division needed to analyze data youth corrections.” In his letter, Tanner on room confinement to identify patnoted that the CJCA report “summa- terns and ensure best practices. rizes research demonstrating that isola“These practices must be governed tion … actually has negative public safety by strong policy and effective monitorconsequences, does not reduce violence ing,” Tanner wrote. “We, as a state, are and likely increases recidivism.” In failing at both.” addition to better data tracking, Tanner suggested a number of strategies This reporting is courtesy of the to reduce the use of isolation, including Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an developing clearer policies for the use independent, nonpartisan news project and monitoring of the practice, devel- dedicated to producing journalism that oping alternative behavior management matters to Arkansans. Find out more at options and responses, and conducting arknews.org.
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Pig & Swig preview Join us for a celebration of hog and hooch Sept. 21. Make plans to join the Arkansas Times at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, for Pig & Swig, an event centered around two of life’s finest pleasures: sippin’ whiskey and fine swine. The event, which benefits the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, will be held in the country-in-the-city setting of the Heifer Project Pavilion and Urban Farm, at 1 World Ave. near the Clinton Presidential Center. Admission gets you tastings of liquid gold from presenting sponsor Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, plus George Dickel Tennessee Whisky, I.W. Harper bourbon and Johnnie Walker Scotch. Guinness beer and wine by the glass will also be available for purchase. Ben E. Keith Foods is a sponsor, and Colonial Wine & Spirits is presenting a free photo booth at the event. Another event sponsor, Rock City Harley- Davidson, will be bringing a different kind of hog to Pig & Swig, with the latest HarleyDavidson motorcycles on display, along with experts to answer questions about how to choose and buy the best bike for you. The Electric 5 will provide live music, and a Pig & Swig wristband gets you into the after-party at Ernie Biggs, 307 President Clinton Ave. Limited early-bird tickets are $35 and available at centralarkansastickets. com. Hit the Pig & Swig Facebook events page for more information. In addition to whiskey tastings and good times, attendees can enjoy porkbased delicacies from over a dozen of Central Arkansas’s finest restaurants: Capital Bar and Grill will be dishing
up a whiskey-flamed pork belly, and a black-eyed pea and bacon casserole. Southern Table will be serving locally sourced bell peppers and sweet Italian pork sausage, topped with a scratchmade garlic mustard. Pasta Jack’s will be saying, “That’s amore!” with penne pasta topped with sausage Alfredo. The Pizzeria will be offering old-fashioned glazed meatballs, and Whole Hog North Little Rock will show its mastery of smoked hog with barbecue pulledpork sliders. The Cafe at Heifer will sweeten the pot with candied bacon sourced from the Grass Roots Farmer’s Cooperative, paired with house-made pimiento cheese crostini. B-Side Bistro is bringing breakfast with its baconwrapped French toast, and Rebel Kettle Brewing Co., known for its hearty sausages, will be serving its housemade boudin with homemade mustard. Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro will be ladling up samples of its white bean and ham soup with corn and potatoes, a sneak peek at a dish the restaurant hope to debut on their menu this fall, and Samantha’s Tap Room and Wood Grill will be serving a cheese polenta with Coursey’s bacon from St. Joe (Searcy County). @ the Corner is cooking up savory barbecue crepes. Still hungry? There will also be dishes from @ the Corner, South on Main, Forty Two and Four Quarter Bar and more. Pig & Swig promises to be a fine, greasy-fingered night under the stars, full of food, fun and libation. Buy tickets now; tickets will go to $45 before the event.
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Arts Entertainment AND
SEEK AND FIND: Pine Bluff native Sally Nixon, whose work has been featured in Vice, Bust, Cosmopolitan and Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter, makes her book debut with “Houseplants and Hot Sauce.”
‘Where’s Waldo’ for grown-ups Illustrator Sally Nixon makes her debut with a seek-and-find-book for adults. BY KATY HENRIKSEN
W
hen Sally Nixon challenged herself to post an illustration a day for an entire year to Instagram, she had no idea that it would lead to a book project with a publishing house she’d long
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admired, or that she’d find her focus in drawing everyday twentysomething women doing everyday things. That’s exactly what happened, though, when Chronicle Books took notice of the Little Rock illustrator’s work —
featured on Vice, Bust, Cosmopolitan she didn’t have the luxury with and on Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter “Houseplants.” With three months — and approached her for a potential to turn in 20 two-page illustrations, project. “I was super surprised,” Nixon she sketched out roughs of all scenes, said. “I have books from Chronicle, blocking out the spaces, then adding and I had a list of publishers I wanted characters — outlining them first, to approach but hadn’t, so when they then coloring each in. “What about did, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, yes.’ ” if I have three girls taking a selfie and The result is “Houseplants and a couple of girls drawing on the wall, Hot Sauce,” out Sept. 12, a depiction and I start filling the space in with of 20 elaborate scenes that follow a all these people?” she posited. “And normal weekend of twentysomething then there’s the girl who forgot her Jane in which the reader is asked to tampon, so there’s this girl passing a find items including “a jackalope,” tampon under the stall.” “thirteen to-go cups of coffee,” “seven Nixon, a details-obsessed red jello shots” and a “tiny, wellillustrator who always knew she dressed dog,” among many other items wanted to draw, said the first scene for a whimsical grown-up take on that came together (and also Nixon’s the elaborately illustrated “Where’s favorite) was of Jane shopping in Waldo” books Nixon obsessed over a plant store. The striking image, as a child. “When I was a kid, I was brimming with foliage and brick, always drawn to images with lots ended up on the cover. “There was going on,” Nixon said. “I remember a lot of potential for detail with all there was this “Nutcracker” version the bricks and plants,” she says. “It of “Where’s Waldo,” and I couldn’t was a dream.” wait for Christmas to come because Asked about how she knows she’s I was obsessed with this book. I love actually finished with a scene, Nixon images like that, so I wanted to create said, “I don’t know that I ever feel one.” completely finished with anything, Visually stunning and brimming but deadlines are good for that. They with details, the majority of the scenes can really push you to not baby your depict composite — though not actual artwork so much. No one’s going to — places Nixon frequents, the exception being two scenes at beloved Little Rock music venue The White Water Tavern, in which Jane attends a raucous show where the band is donning wolf masks, and the women’s bathroom, complete with “Smash the patriarchy” graffiti, comes to life. (She admits that the scene’s starting point, which she recalls was a girl throwing up in the trash can, is something she’s witnessed herself.) “I’ve been in there when it’s crazy full of people, so I feel like it’s a pretty accurate depiction,” she said. “It was based on how I see it.” Although she usually likes to focus on one illustration at a time, WHERE ARE THE JELLO SHOTS? That’s what you’ll look for in Nixon’s new book.
ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com
A&E NEWS see this tiny detail that’s glaring to me. You have to learn to let it go. “It’s always been my dream to have a book for people to buy,” the Pine Bluff native, who’s loved to draw since she was 6, said. “When I was a kid that’s always what I did. I don’t remember ever not drawing. It’s just always what I’ve done.” Nixon credits Instagram for the rise of popularity in illustration. “People are more aware of it now,” she said. “I didn’t even know what illustration was until high school, and now people follow illustrators on Instagram like they’re celebrities.” Although she notes she’s an avid fan of children’s illustrator Maurice Sendak (she’s even named her chihuahua-dachshund mix after him), she said it was somewhere during her illustration-a-day project that drawing specifically for the children’s market grew old for her. That’s when she discovered her love of portraying everyday twentysomething women. Although “Houseplants and Hot Sauce” portrays men, the focal point remains real, candid ladies. “Having it available on Amazon and in bookstores is pretty crazy. I can’t wait to go to a bookstore and see it on the shelf,” Nixon said. With the book form, she feels she’s absolutely found her path. “It’s always been my dream. Now that I’ve done one, I think it’s well suited for me and how I work.” Fans won’t have to wait long for a follow-up, as Nixon’s already hard at work on another Chronicle Books illustration project (not of her own devising) that takes on famous female friendships like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. “I want to do lots more books, for sure,” she gushed. It seems this female, Sendak-for-grown-ups is onto something. To keep up with Sally Nixon on Instagram, follow @sallustration. “Houseplants and Hot Sauce” is available for pre-order at chroniclebooks.com, and is available for direct order after its release Sept. 12.
THE BIG EMPTY Kraft cheese plant south of the Bentonville square that Walton heirs Tom and Steuart Walton are making into a multidisciplinary, Mass MoCA-style contemporary art venue, has a name — The Momentary — and a director from the Netherlands, Lieven Bertels. The Walton brothers announced plans for the endeavor, at 514 SE E St., last year, and the new name and hiring last week. The 110,000-square-foot building will be transformed by Chicago architecture firm Wheeler Kearns starting next year. The building will keep its industrial look, and is expected to include galleries, studio space, a black box theater, an amphitheater, a studio kitchen, cafe, bar and indoor and outdoor public spaces. A 2020 opening date is the goal, according to sister institution Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Alice Walton (aunt to The Momentary’s founders). Bertels, a musicologist and the former CEO and cultural director of the LeeuwardenFrisian 2018 European Capital of Culture, will start work this month. He’ll be responsible for all activities related to the Momentary, including planning and development for the facility as well as artistic direction and day-to-day operations,” the news release from Crystal Bridges said. The European Union designates a city every year to be the Capital of Culture; that city then offers a year-round schedule of visual and performing arts, including installations that make use of the landscape, such as a water embassy. That should give people an idea of what to expect from Bertels and Bentonville two years hence. THE MAKERS OF HBO’s “True Detective” evidently have decided a plot based in the South is a potential sweet spot. After a heralded first season set in Louisiana and starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, the show’s second season, set in L.A., bombed with audiences and critics. Despite that reception, the show has been cleared for a third season, a mystery that “will deepen over decades and play out in three separate time periods” in Northwest Arkansas, according to USA Today. Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight,” “House of Cards”) has been announced as the lead, playing a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas named Wayne Hays. Little Rock writer Graham Gordy (“Rectify,” “Quarry”) will be working on the season, and creator Nic Pizzolatto, who went to graduate school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, will direct and act as the show’s primary writer.
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THE
TO-DO
LIST
BY DAVID KOON, JACOB ROSENBERG, LESLIE PEACOCK AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE
THURSDAY 9/7
RIVERBOTTOM DEBUTANTE, WAY AWAY, SPERO 9 p.m. White Water Tavern.
‘ESCAPE VELOCITY’: Trumpeter and bandleader Theo Croker opens Oxford American’s Jazz Series with a concert at South on Main on Thursday night.
THURSDAY 9/7
THEO CROKER QUINTET
Riverbottom Debutante sounds pretty much like its name. It’s rock for the bar, with the gruff singing of Mitchell Crisp and a sprinkle of slow rock-a-billy. It’s the beauty of Southern music (debutante) floated down to the grimy bed of the Arkansas River (riverbottom). Like Southern Culture on the Skids before it, the band toes the line between goofy and earnest while doing a pastiche of the Southern female singer, lamenting in verse. The band can play real fast and you can move around. It will be joined by Way Away, the new project headed by Thom Asewicz,
formerly of the delightfully dreampop band Sea Nanners. Does Way Away also bring the hazy, floating feeling evoked by the best of Sea Nanners? Well, we’re going to have to find out together. There will also be Spero, the solo act of Correne Spero, who plays in the bands DOT (Daughters of Triton) and SPERO and was once a member of the Beastie Boys-like all-girl New York band Northern State. Of Little Rock, she told the Arkansas Times in July, “I just felt so welcomed here. I felt like the town really reached its arms around me and kind of gave me a big hug.” Thus, I deem this an official Little Rock show, full of Little Rock bands, at Little Rock’s classic bar. Should be one of those great three-band White Water nights. JR
8 p.m. South on Main. $30-$44.
There are some people who are skilled at playing jazz and some people that can speak eloquently about jazz, and they are not always the same people. Theo Croker can do both. In an essay introducing a 100-track, three-volume guest playlist the trumpeter did for Tidal, he sheds light on some gems he curated from living (all under 40) artists like jazz harpist Brandee Younger and pianist Sullivan Fortner: “The neoclassical, hardcore, traditionalist movement, spearheaded by Wynton Marsalis in the early ’90s, put the focus on the early innovators of jazz,” he wrote, “bringing those [mostly dead] artists much overdue recognition for their incomparable contributions to the music, but it clouded the main spirit of innovation that they represented, which was almost always to move forward and stay relevant with the times. To tie in society and social situations that directly involved the people.” Croker is the grandson of trumpeter Doc Cheatham (Adolphis Anthony Cheatham, whose nickname “Doc” is all that’s left of his family’s hopes that he’d become a pharmacist), and the son of a farmer and civil rights activist, William Henry Croker, and I spoke with him ahead of his appearance at South on Main, the opening concert for this year’s Oxford American Jazz Series. He and his quintet — Michael King on keys, Eric Wheeler on bass, Anthony Ware on tenor saxophone and Kush Abadey on drums — will likely draw heavily from Croker’s third and latest album, “Escape Velocity.” The 2016 release is 15 tracks of seamless sound with Croker’s trumpet at the center, accented with spoken mantras (“Raise Your Vibration”), instrumental social commentary (“We Can’t Breathe”) and a reinvented rendition of “Love From the Sun” from jazz icon and longtime mentor to Croker, Dee Dee Bridgewater. SS
FRIDAY 9/8
2ND FRIDAY ART NIGHT
5-8 p.m., downtown Little Rock galleries.
The September harvest season ushers in a bounty of art forms — including circus acts, 19th century portraiture and artworks by LGBTQ artists — for downtown’s monthly after-hours gallery walk. This month there’s something new: Watch for pop-up shops and performances along President Clinton Avenue, Second Street and Main Street. At the Old State House Museum (300 W. Markham), Arkansas Circus Arts will hoop it up; the Historic Arkansas Museum (200 E. Third) reveals its “Hidden Treasures,” works purchased with funds raised at its annual gala, and throws in live music from Michael Carenbauer and Bill Huntington as well as Flyway Brewing suds for good measure; and the
Butler Center (401 President Clinton Ave.) opens “Modern Ink,” a group show by artists who use ink to draw, paint and printmake. The Cox Creative Center will feature a show of work by local artists hosted by the organizers of the ACANSA Contemporary Arts Festival, coming Sept. 20-24 to schools and arts venues in Little Rock and North Little Rock. On the south side of 2nd Friday Art Night, find McLeod Gallery (108 W. Sixth St.), which is showing geometric prints and drawings by Marianne Fairbanks, and Bella Vita (523 S. Louisiana St.), which is featuring cocktail recipes and bouquets by Kim Doughty. Club Sway (412 S. Louisiana) goes guerilla with its pop-up Antigallery, a multidisciplinary art event that runs to 9 p.m. River Market district eateries Nexus Coffee, which has art on the walls, and the Copper Grill are also 2nd Friday participants. LNP
FRIDAY 9/8
‘SURFACE OF THE SKY’ BY BLAKE TYSON
6 p.m. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 100 S. Rock St. Free.
Marimbas are the most underrated instrument. If you’ve never seen one played, it involves between two and four mallets — often four with two held per hand, the first between the thumb and the index finger, and the second couched between the ring finger and the pinky — which hit a piano-like layout of wooden keys attached to pipes, gliding in a hypnotizing see-saw motion. The sound has depth and nos26
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talgia; the marimba is wistful. But most likely you’ve only seen a nervous middle school percussion student sweat over one during a recital. That’s a mistake! You can remedy it, though. Marimbas, and the wider array of percussive idiophones (things you hit and they vibrate to make music) including vibraphones and the glockenspiel, will be on display during “Surface of the Sky” by Blake Tyson. A professor of percussion
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at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Tyson’s musical piece will be accompanied by a video component. It is “inspired by the actions and achievements of the Little Rock Nine” and precedes the majority of programming that will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Central High. Keep an eye out in the To-Do list for more about the events commemorating the anniversary. JR
IN BRIEF
THURSDAY 9/7
FRIDAY 9/8
RWAKE AND NEUROSIS CONCERT FILMS DOUBLE FEATURE
7 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. Free.
In November 1930, Thomas Wolfe wrote a letter to a man named Alfred S. Dashiell. He wrote lovingly and bombastically of “the whole intolerable memory of America,” saying he’d rather live “ten years more of life there … than a hundred years of shitty ex-patriotism,” wracked by the recollection of his home country’s “violence, savagery, immensity, beauty, ugliness and glory.” Wolfe wasn’t exactly much for literary reticence. And, if you find yourself a Rwake fan (and in these parts, they are many), you’ll probably hear some of that same nostalgic fervor, probably even a couple of those same words. The nascent Rwake made big music, music that lent itself to grandeur, like Wolfe’s writing. Maybe that’s why the band borrowed a fragment from Wolfe’s first novel for the title of its live album, “A Stone, A Leaf, An Unfound Door.” After a relentless wash of guitars and demonspeak that opens the record (“It Was Beautiful, But Now It’s Sour”), vocalist Christopher (C.T.) Terry announces the next number, saying, “This is off our second album,” and it comes seemingly from nowhere, inexplicably human and conversational in the context of the prior 11 minutes of sound. So continues the remainder, four total
tracks recorded at the Maryland Deathfest in 2012 by Noah Gary, Surachai Sutthisasanakul and Brad Boatright with a clarity rarely afforded to live metal shows. So says David Hall, the guy who created the trippy, modified film version of the concert, and who partnered with Terry on the Wolfe-inspired title, as Hall told metal blog Invisible Oranges in 2013: “Both Rwake and Wolfe use imagery from the Southern American landscape to create lush vistas of art. I have a real affinity for Southern writers and often read Faulkner, Steinberg, Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy while listening to Rwake, and the band just seems to be the perfect soundtrack for Southern writing … almost a frontier, “Pilgrim’s Progress” kind of vibe, and not just because the authors and the band are from the South, but because they all take inspiration from the physical, spiritual and metaphorical landscape they come from.” A screening of “A Stone, A Leaf, An Unfound Door” precedes “A Sun That Never Sets,” a concert film that blends live footage and harrowing imagery with the seventh studio album from Neurosis, a California band that has earned godlike status among fans of sludge and doom with its surgical precision and unapologetic middle finger to the idea of genre. (“A Sun That Never Sets,” by all measures a metal record, is often described by noting its stripped-down folk and classic country influence, for example). SS
“Backpack Full of Cash,” a film exploring the privatization of education in America and its impact, screens at Philander Smith College’s M.L. Harris Fine Arts Building and Auditorium, 6:30 p.m., free. Rex Nelson moderates a conversation about crime in Little Rock with Mayor Mark Stodola, City Manager Bruce Moore and Police Chief Kenton Buckner, 7 p.m., Ron Robinson Theater, free. Bluegrassinspired trio Fumblebuckers brings tunes from their June release, “Hungover and Layin’ Around,” to Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. Brian Nahlen and Nick Devlin entertain for happy hour at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by a set from Charlotte Taylor, 9 p.m., $5. Speaking of Cajun, John “The Ragin’ Cajun” Morgan returns for a stand-up comedy set at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $10-$15.
FRIDAY 9/8 Natalie Canerday and Werner Trieschmann take the stage at Hendrix College’s Cabe Theatre for a reading of “The Immortal Katie Stewart,” 7 p.m., free. Dangerous Idiots, Spirit Cuntz and Way Away share a bill at Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $5. The Shannon Boshears Band takes the stage at King’s Live Music in Conway, with an opening set from Christine DeMeo, 8:30 p.m., $5. Katmandu takes the stage at Thirst N’ Howl Bar & Grill, 8:30 p.m., $5. Australian country singersongwriter Matt Ward joins Bonnie Montgomery for a show at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Kentucky songwriter Chris Knight brings his character-driven tales to Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $17-$20. Pamela K. Ward & The Last Call Orchestra perform at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Silks Bar & Grill, Hot Springs, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., free.
SATURDAY 9/9
ARKANSAS SOUNDS: Members of Arkansas sludge rockers band Rwake reunite to perform as part of a double feature of concert films at the Ron Robinson Theater on Friday evening.
Comedian Kyle Kinane brings his stand-up to Vino’s, with Raj Suresh, 8 p.m., $20. Russellville rockers and Edgefest regulars From Day One take the stage at the Rev Room with songs from their latest, “The Witch,” 8 p.m., $10. The Central Arkansas Astronomical Society hosts a Star Party at Pinnacle Mountain State Park, 8 p.m., free. Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase champions Dazz & Brie join fellow contenders Youth Pastor for a night at White Water, 9 p.m. Ben & Adam duet at Cajun’s for happy hour, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by the Ghost Town Blues Band, 9 p.m., $5. SingerCONTINUED ON PAGE 29
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THE
TO-DO
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BY DAVID KOON, JACOB ROSENBERG, LESLIE PEACOCK AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE
IN THE NORTHWEST CORNER: The ninth year of the Fayetteville Film Festival includes screenings of Amman Abbasi’s “Dayveon” (pictured) and a selection of over 40 narrative, animated and documentary short films.
TUESDAY 9/12-SATURDAY 9/16
FAYETTEVILLE FILM FESTIVAL
in the Woods”), where the offerings really shine is in the area of short films, with 40 narrative and documentary shorts on deck from filmmakers around the world. Though Arkansas’s greatest and best-known contributions to world cinema Highlights from the schedule include a Q&A with Ted Chalmers, who was inmay well remain “The Legend of Boggy Creek” (bad), “Mud” (better) and “Sling volved in the sales and distribution of a laundry list of horror and sci-fi features, Blade” (better still) for the foreseeable future, the state’s cup of opportunities including “Escape from New York,” “Evil Dead 2,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to enjoy cinema has truly runneth over in recent years, from the revitalized Hot and “Hellraiser”; a high school filmmakers’ workshop and film showcase; a block Springs Documentary Film Festival, to director Jeff Nichols’ Arkansas Cinema So- of solid documentary features; a screening of international animated shorts; and a ciety to the women-focused offerings of the Bentonville Film Festival. Included group of shorts focused on the LGBTQ experience. Tickets range from $15 for a on the state’s list of great film fests must be the Fayetteville Film Festival, now day pass to $40 for VIP all-access. For more information and a full schedule, visit in its ninth year. While this year’s festival will feature four feature-length narra- the festival website at fayettevillefilmfest.org. DK tive films (“American Folk,” “Dayveon,” “All the Birds Have Flown South,” “Door
Various times. Downtown Fayetteville. Free-$40.
WEDNESDAY 9/13
DAME$, DEM$ & DRINK$: RUN, SISTER, RUN!
5:30 p.m. Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, North Little Rock. $75.
In the Arkansas Times’ June interview with Lizz Winstead, the co-creator of “The Daily Show” (and then on tour with her reproductive rights comedy show “The Vagical Mystery Tour”), Winstead remarked how difficult it could be to convince women to run for office. “Honestly, men just do it. They don’t ask if they’re good enough, or if they have all the skills. It’s like anything else. You can’t have all the skills to govern. You can have some skills, and you can have a passion, but to learn how to govern, you have to get to know the people you’re gonna govern. You can be no better advocate than if you literally start listening and talking to people and sharing what their needs are.” Joyce Elliott
does it. Susan Inman does it. Maureen Skinner does it, and Tippi McCullough. Still, only around 20 percent of Arkansas representatives are women, which means that roughly 80 percent of the people making decisions about abortion procedures will never have one, and that’s to say nothing of the ways in which women as legislators could inform and steer parliamentary conversations about a myriad of other issues: gun laws, education, criminal justice. In the spirit of encouraging women to run for office — and funding those who have already decided to — the Progressive Arkansas Women PAC is celebrating the 97th anniversary of women winning the right to vote with the fundraiser, its second annual. If your pockets are deep enough to throw some money toward dethroning a Jason Rapert or a Bart Hester in favor of a progressive woman candidate, this one’s for you. SS
WEDNESDAY 9/13
JAZZ IN THE PARK: DIZZY 7
6 p.m. History Pavilion, Riverfront Park. Free.
Dizzy 7, a big band-inspired project fronted by a polished crooner, Craig Wilson, is next on the lineup of free jazz concerts in the History Pavilion, a structure tucked away in Riverfront Park just west of the First Security Amphitheater. The lawn in front of the pavilion is dotted with huge boulders, 28
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ARKANSAS TIMES
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perfect for perching on, which might prove a tad unnecessary, as perching is not the first activity that comes to mind with the septet’s renditions of Benny Goodman’s “Jersey Bounce” or “Copacabana.” Swinging? Jitterbugging? Lindy hopping? Much more likely, even when Dizzy takes on a staunchly un-Big Band number like Steely Dan’s “Josie” (RIP, Walter Becker) or Van Morrison’s “Domino.” SS
IN BRIEF, CONT.
CW: CD: AD: AE: PM:
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PBS NewsHour special correspondent Nick Schifrin gives a talk on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence, “Unwrapping the Russian Riddle,” noon, Clinton School of Public Service, free. If that doesn’t leave you feeling sufficiently dystopian, catch Today is the Day, Copsodomy and Crankbait, who are sharing a heavy music bill at Vino’s, 7 p.m., $10.
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MONDAY 9/11
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Saxophonist/vocalist Michael Eubanks performs at Hawgz Blues Cafe, 5524 J.F.K. Blvd., 5:30 p.m. Sun., 7:30 p.m. Tue., no cover.
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Closing Date: 5/26/17
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SUNDAY 9/10
PURSUING OUR DREAM SINCE 1876.
QC:
songwriter Willi Carlisle takes the stage at the Town Pump, 9 p.m., $5-$10. Opal Agafia & the Sweet Nothings brings their mountain music to Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m. The Clinton School of Public Service’s Sturgis Hall is home to the Little Rock Paper Airplane Festival, with age-based contests in distance and hang time, 10 a.m., $20-$25, call 683-5239 to register. Nashville Americana duo The Roosevelts land at Stickyz, 8 p.m., $8-$10. Foul Play Cabaret puts on a show at Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $10-$15. Bluesboy Jag & the Juke Joint Zombies return to South on Main, 9 p.m., $5.
TUESDAY 9/12
‘SPARROW FALLS’: The dark, desert-bound music that David Eugene Edwards (top) creates with Wovenhand fills the White Water Tavern on Wednesday, with performances from Salt Lake City’s Subrosa (bottom) and locals Colour Design.
WEDNESDAY 9/13
WOVENHAND, SUBROSA 8 p.m. White Water Tavern. $12.
Wovenhand’s now-hallowed 2004 release “Consider the Birds” sounds less like it emerged, as it did, from postcard-perfect Denver and more like it sprung from a darker corner of the state, maybe the dry, endless plains of the San Luis Valley, far south of all those lovely snowcaps. Its sinister opener, “Sparrow Falls,” belongs on a mixtape next to Bonnie Montgomery’s “Take Me Or Leave Me”; either track could be a slice of the mental soundtrack cycling through the mind of a cash-laden fugitive with dried blood under his fingernails, winding through the desert in a stolen car. It sits on a weird, wobbly line that con-
nects Steve Roach’s tumbleweed landscapes with the S&M-tinged drama of Christian Death or “Boys for Pele”-era Tori Amos. Fans need not to expect that sound from the Wovenhand that put out last year’s “Star Treatment,” though — David Eugene Edwards is still dark, manic, unhinged, but there’s less Spaghetti Western/Sergio Leone and more “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The band is joined by Salt Lake City’s SubRosa, which is every bit a match for Wovenhand’s creepy factor but with all the dreaminess that electric violins and ethereal vocals from Rebecca Vernon, Sarah Pendleton and Kim Pack afford. And, just as this bill was looking like it couldn’t be any more boss, Colour Design was announced as a local opener. SS
The accomplished 75-voice Saint Mark Baptist Sanctuary Choir puts on a concert of gospel music at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 4106 JFK Blvd., 7 p.m., free. The UA Little Rock Trojans women’s soccer team takes on the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Golden Lions, 7 p.m., Coleman Sports & Recreation Complex. Dallas thrash metal quintet Power Trip headlines the night at Vino’s, with sets from Terminal Nation, Napalm Christ and I Was Afraid, 7 p.m., $12. The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History screens Eric Christiansen’s documentary “Searching for Home: Coming Back From War,” 6:30 p.m., free. Riverdale 10 Cinema screens Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 mob masterpiece “The Godfather,” 7 p.m., $8.50.
WEDNESDAY 9/13 Crystal C. Mercer and Samarra Samone continue the “Sessions” series at South on Main, curated by Genine Perez, 8 p.m., $10. Twoman California rock band Cloudship pulls into port at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $5.
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“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” The Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of the play based on Carson McCullers’ Book. 7 p.m. Wed., Thu., Sun.; 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 2 p.m. Sun., through Sept. 10. $45-$48. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. “Fun Home.” TheaterSquared’s production of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, adapted as a musical by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori. 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through Sept. 17. $10-$47. Walton Arts Center’s Studio Theater, 495 W. Dickson St. 479-443-5600.
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“The Sunshine Boys.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents Neil Simon’s Vaudevillian comedy. 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., dinner at 6 p.m.; 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., through Sept. 23. $15-$37. 6323 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3131.
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“Dork Reunion.” The Main Thing’s fall musical comedy, a flashback to the Fertle Family’s high school days. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., through Nov. 18. $24. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0205.
WHOLE HOG ROAST
F
FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS MAJOR VENUES ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: Feed Your Mind Friday with Robert Bean, discussing exhibition “Personal Spaces,” noon-1 p.m. Sept. 8; “Will Counts: The Central High Photographs,” marking the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Central, through Oct. 22; “Drawing on History: National Drawing Invitational Retrospective,” works from the permanent collection, through Sept. 24. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, Jonesboro: “2017 Faculty Biennial”; “Vivid Life,” memorial exhibition of works by Roger Carlisle; “World Upside Down,” works by Shelley Gipson; “The Catastrophe of the Present,” works by Claudia Salamanca; “Wild Things,” works by Cara Sullivan, Bradbury Art Museum, through Sept. 29. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat.; 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567. ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 Main St., Springdale: “Sensory Iconoclast,” paintings by chefs, through Sept. 10, a dinner prepared by painters, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479-751-5441. ARTS & SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St., Pine Bluff: “Resilience: Works from the Permanent Collection by AfricanAmerican women.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375.
SUNRDAAIYN, OOCRTS. H1 INE
BENEFITING ARGENTA ARTS DISTRICT
AT
TICK ETS
$15/$20 DAY OF
T I C K E T S AVA I L A B L E A T
Judges are Barbecue Experts
A M ATEUR TE A MS
EN TRY
Amateur teams supply two sides
$75
Edwards Food Giant offers a 20% off pork butt purchases
EN TRY
$500
PROFE S SION A L TE A MS Includes whole hog. Side dishes provided by Ben E Keith. Winner receives a $1,000 cash prize.
1ST, 2ND, AND 3RD PLACE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE A TROPHY.
the ARGENTA PLAZA
NOW ACCEPTING COMPETITORS IN BOTH AMATEUR & PROFESSIONAL TEAMS
PROFESSIONAL TEAMS NEXT LEVEL KITCHEN, HOT SPRINGS
SMOKIN’ BROS BBQ, MISSOURI
FLYWAY BREWING FOUR QUARTER BAR @ THE CORNER
Teams provide their own cooking source: charcoal, wood, or gas. Pits can be provided if requested but must be assembled by the team.
Event site is open on Saturday and Sunday mornings for set-up and prep. · JOIN IN! · JOIN IN! · JOIN IN! · JOIN IN! ·
THANK YOU TO ALL THE TEAMS THAT HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS. WE WELCOME YOU BACK AND INVITE NEW TEAMS TO JOIN IN THE FUN! With questions or to enter, email Phyllis Britton at phyllis@arktimes.com or call 501-492-3994
DOORS - 1:00 FOOD - 2:00 WINNERS ANNOUNCED AT 3:00 EVENT CLOSES AT 5:00
BEER & WINE GAR DEN
GATED AREA SELLING BEER & WINE ($5 EACH)
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 38 arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
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Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’
WHOLE HOG Cafe gets even fatter at the barbecue eatery’s new West Little Rock location at 14524 Cantrell Road, in the Pinnacle Station Retail Center: It will offer its prize-winning wings, french fries and local brews when it opens Thursday. The new storefront, formerly The Main Cheese, has what it takes to serve up Whole Hog’s wings, namely a deep fat fryer and hood with fire suppression. The wings, the winner of the 2013 Memphis in May competition, are prepared with a dry rub, smoked, rubbed again and deep fried “and we toss in your choice of sauce,” said Chris Maines, co-owner of four Whole Hog restaurants in Little Rock and Benton. The sauce Whole Hog used in the wing competition won first place, Maines added. All of Whole Hog’s regular offerings — pulled pork, ribs, sausages, chicken and brisket — we be available in new location, which will seat 96. Maines said the restaurant is aiming to have a selection of local brews from each of the many smallbatch breweries in Little Rock and North Little Rock. Wine will be on the menu, too. Hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. FOOD TRUCK FRIDAYS return to Main Street and Capitol Avenue starting Sept. 8. Trucks will serve between 10:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The Little Rock Downtown Partnership production runs through Oct. 27 with the exception of Oct. 6, when the downtown boosters prepare for the 2017 Main Street Food Truck Festival on Oct. 7. Find updates on participating food trucks at mainstreetfoodtrucks.com.
September is Feeding America’s HUNGER ACTION MONTH, and you’ll see the color orange to denote the campaign — including at Big Orange. The burger palace is participating Sept. 11-15 by selling orange T-shirts and other items to support the work of the Arkansas Foodbank. 32
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ARKANSAS TIMES
BRAND NEW: The redone La Hacienda on Cantrell Road.
La Ha forever The newly spiffed-up Mexican favorite still warms hearts, bellies. The way some friends and Arkansas Times staffers carried on in the wake of La Hacienda shutting down in December 2016 you’d have thought a close friend was in a coma. The Mexican food stalwart, located in Little Rock since 1990 and on Cantrell Road in an old Pizza Hut since 1996, was due for an update. But rather than a touch-up, owner Ignacio Alvarez took down most of the building and started again. When the redone restaurant reopened more than six months later, the celebrations among our crew were rapturous. But does La Ha, as its devotees call it, deserve all the adoration? Probably. Especially if you highly value speed and cost. It’s hard to think of any other restaurant in Little Rock with food as good and plentiful as La Hacienda’s where you can be in and out in 30 minutes for 10 bucks or less. The formula is not the standard Tex-Mex ubiquitous in the region, nor is it the authentic Mexican food that’s become more prevalent and celebrated in these parts in the past decade. It’s somewhere in between. Maybe a kind of re-Mexicanized Tex-Mex, as former Times staffer Benjamin Hardy once suggested. That means the food is fresher and more flavorful than your typical Tex-Mex, but there’s no cabeza or cactus anywhere on the menu. Instead, the voluminous menu has your standard Tex-Mex offerings — burritos, chalupas, a chimichangas, enchiladas, fajitas, quesadillas, tamales and tacos — many of which are available as vegetarian options or in combo meals, Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas
which are a buck or two cheaper at lunch. The unsalted straight-from-the-fryer corn chips remain addictive. We know that La Ha regulars have their favorites among the three salsa varieties — a piquant verde, a standard mild salsa and a warm tomato and onion-y one — the restaurant provides complimentary, though our friend, a La Hacienda regular, says she’s noticed that now sometimes servers only bring two, but will bring the third if asked. We could take or leave the tomato ones, but would eat the green by the bucketful. Because of our love for the verde salsa, we usually skip the white cheese dip ($4.99 for small, $7.99 for a soupbowl-sized large), though our friend the regular says that mixing the green salsa with cheese dip elevates both. Another appetizer often ignored that we like: the shrimp cocktail ($8.99), a sort of cold seafood stew served in a goblet with Mexican-style saltines and avocado. For entrees, we’re fond of the Camarones Veracruz ($9.99 for lunch, $13.99 at dinner), slightly spicy shrimp grilled with peppers and onions and topped with pico de gallo. Flour tortillas are standard; we prefer the corn, which are available by request. The Carne Asada a la Diabla con Queso ($9.99 for lunch, $12.99 for dinner) is another standout for hungry eaters. It’s grilled meat (your pick of steak or chicken) stir-fried with peppers and onions and chorizo and covered in queso. How can you go wrong there?
BELLY UP
Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com
Little Rock’s Most Award-Winning Restaurant 1619 REBSAMEN RD. 501.663.9734 thefadedrose.com
serving better than bar food all night long A STANDOUT: The slightly spicy Camarones Veracruz.
La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant 3024 Cantrell Road 661-0600 Quick bite Street-style tacos, once only available off-menu, now have a prominent place among other standard offerings. The two tacos dish (beef, chicken or guacamole) for just $3.99 gives you a cheap option for a small lunch or after-work snack, and you can always eat enough free chips to be more than full. Also, the Margaritas seems to be bigger and stronger than ever before. Hours 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Other info Full bar. Credit cards accepted.
For one of our recent dining companions, the litmus test for a TexMex restaurant is its fajitas ($7.99 for lunch, $10 for dinner). La Hacienda largely succeeded in that respect, with strips of toothsome and flavorful chicken. An accompanying side of guacamole didn’t do much for him. Another, slightly off-beat suggestion for the not-so-adventurous diner: the Milanesa Steak ($9.99 for lunch or $12.99 for dinner), a breaded chicken breast or sirloin steak that’s a lot like schnitzel. Just about everything comes with Mexican rice and refried beans topped with shredded cheese. The latter, so often an afterthought, is so good we often order it as a side. The updated restaurant sure is spiffy. An interior wall that used to
Sept
8 - The GreatWhiskey Rendezvous 9 - OpalAgafia and the Sweet Nothings 14 - The Creek Rocks (6-8pm free) 15 - Groovement 16 - Legends of AR after party w/ Freeverse 21 - The Creek Rocks (6-8pm free) 22 - MotherFunkShip 23 - The Good Time Ramblers Open until 2am every night! 415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com
bifurcate the restaurant is gone, which opens up the space — and also makes it a bit louder. The booths, adorned with engravings of hacienda-style scenes and (of course) razorbacks, are polyurethane shiny. Much of the art looks new. The fluorescent lights may be a tad too bright. There are new jazzy circular booths in the corners and there’s even a small bar near the east entrance. But, man, have they jammed in the seats. We went for an early lunch and were fine, but we can imagine at peak busy times the place could feel cramped. Speaking of peak busy-ness, our friend the regular notes that a waitlist has become common at peak serving times, something she didn’t remember seeing in years of dining at La Hacienda.
7th street hair salon
Call to make your appointment today! Walk-Ins Welcome!
501-374-3541 | www.7thstreetsalon.com arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
33
MOVIE REVIEW ALL CORSETS, NO CATHARSIS: Despite a gifted cast and a well-timed box-office debut, Justin Chadwick’s period drama falls short of its promise.
A failed tragedy ‘Tulip Fever’ may have left its potential on the cutting room floor. BY GUY LANCASTER
N
ovelist William Dean Howells once quipped that “what the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.” Not for us is the full experience of catharsis, that purgation of emotion through the witness of a tragic hero undergoing complete destruction, step by step. No, we must have some redemption at the end. We apparently also want period piece-costume dramas with plenty of nudity, because nothing speaks to our sense of cultural refinement like historically accurate ruffs and corsets falling away to reveal anachronistically unblemished flesh. So, although it’s set in 17th century Amsterdam, “Tulip Fever” proves itself a quintessentially American film. Former orphan Sophia (Alicia Vikander) is wife to businessman Cornelius Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz), an older man whose sole purpose in wedding her is to breed an heir. Every night, he empties his bladder in the nearby chamberpot and then crawls next to Sophia, telling her that his “little soldier” is ready for her attentions. One day, like all Dutch men of wealth, he hires an artist to paint their portrait. Predictably enough, Sophia is soon
stricken with lust for the young and virile painter Jan van Loos (Dane DeHaan), and they begin seeing each other (a lot of each other) every chance they can. In the meantime, Sophia’s maid Maria (Holliday Grainger) finds herself pregnant. As it turns out, her intended husband vanished after he made a small fortune in the tulip craze then gripping Amsterdam, which also ensnares young Jan, who starts betting on the tulip market with the aim of earning enough that he and Sophia can escape together for a life in the East Indies. Everyone is gripped by a fever. As Sophia’s affair begins to unravel not only her own life but also those near and dear to her, the complex machinations she undertakes in a desperate bid to pursue this life of passion (and save her trusted maid from disgrace) hint at something darkly Shakespearean. Unfortunately, however, “Tulip Fever” lacks the confidence to commit to its tragic potential. At the very moment its characters stand in the blinding light of ruin and revelation, with death the only escape, the movie rather prudishly pulls back from the brink in the worst possible way — namely,
SEPTEMBER 17 | ROBINSON PERFORMANCE HALL WITH SPECIAL GUEST GREYHOUNDS | BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT TICKETMASTER.COM OR CALL (800) 745-3000
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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
a title card that reads “Eight Years Later.” It’s redemption by epilogue. A failed tragedy may, of course, still be a decent movie — but not this one. The plot just lurches forward on demand, without the characters ever being established enough to give meaning to their actions. Sophia and Jan fly into each other’s arms without explanation or preamble, as if struck by the goddess Aphrodite or by a screenwriting maxim which holds that the young wife of an older and richer man must be in want of a sufficiently penniless artist. The ridiculous demands of the story leave everybody speaking in cliches, thus wasting a wonderfully fine cast. Even Judi Dench, playing the abbess of a nearby convent, struggles to endow her occasional appearance with any real vitality. All that said, “Tulip Fever” shows evidence of a better movie, perhaps one hiding on the cutting room floor or in the original source material (a novel by Deborah Moggach). There is no cinematic tension, no question of “will they or won’t they” in the improbable affair between Sophia and Jan. Once that is well underway, though, and everyone begins betting big on the future, “Tulip Fever” proves itself genuinely engaging — even hinting at some depth in the character of Cornelius, for one — as people are forced to reconcile their deeds with their souls, their dreams with the lives being destroyed. However, like the tulip craze that serves as the thematic crutch for this story, the movie quickly falls apart. Perhaps with “Tulip Fever,” the costume drama bubble has officially burst.
Don’t Miss the Arkansas times Cash Bus!
SA CAN A e th tival! t of s Par rts Fe A
presents…
Andrew York Thursday September 21 7:30 p.m. The Joint
A GRAMMY winner and one of today’s best loved composers for classical 301 Main Street guitar, York has inspired a North Little Rock worldwide following as an international performer. Tickets $25 Available at the door or online at www.argentaartsacousticmusic.com or www.centralarkansastickets.com
Johnny Cash Heritage Festival October 21st Featuring: Buddy Jewell Joanne Cash & Tommy Cash Roseanne Cash Kris Kristofferson
$109
Ticket includes: Round-trip transportation General admission ticket Adult beverages & Box Lunch provided by Boulevard Along for the ride.... Jason Lee Hale provides tunes & fun! Bus departs at 9 a.m. Meet at Old Ray Winder Field/UAMS Parking lot
centralarkansastickets.com arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
35
stylesheet
FALL = FOOTBALL + FUN! We’ve already kicked off, and it’s going to be a festive fall season. Make guests stand up and cheer for your tailgate and watch party style.
Vibrant colors that add artistry to any room. Bolts & bolts of fabulous fabrics IN STOCK!
1523 Rebsamen Park Rd | Riverdale Design District | Little Rock, Arkansas Ph 501.663.0460 | 10:00–5:30 Mon - Fri; 10:00–4:00 Sat | cynthiaeastfabrics.com
The RIGHT KNIFE for the job 2 Pc Prep Set $99.99
Hosting
a Razorback watch party at your place? We’ve got the finishing touches you need to be game day ready! Find these and more at Cynthia East!
Burlap
home accents from Stifft Station Gifts are a great way to bring fall and football fever together!
(501) 687-1331 • 4310 Landers Road, NLR • M-F 8-5 Sat. 9-5 www.krebsbrothers.com
Grill it up and Serve it up
with Gourmet Grillware from Krebs Brothers this tailgate season! Woo Pig Sooie!
Colonial’s Game Day Lemonade! Ingredients: 12 cups Bacardi Light Rum 1-12oz can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed 1 teaspoon hot sauce (Cholula or similar) Lemon wheels from one lemon Mix together rum, lemonade concentrate, and hot sauce in a large container. Add club soda right before serving, mixing well. Float the lemon wheels in the container. Serve over ice.
COLONIAL WINE & SPIRITS 36
SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
Wear your team colors and welcome
friends in style with Hog gear from Rhea Drug Store.
BUY IT!
Find the featured items at the following locations: COLONIAL WINES & SPIRITS
11200 W Markham St. 223.3120 colonialwineshop.com
CYNTHIA EAST FABRICS
1523 Rebsamen Park Rd. 663.0460 cynthiaeastfabrics.com
Edwards Food Giant makes all of their own sausage in-house? That guarantees that there are absolutely NO FILLERS in Edwards’ sausage, just 100% pork butts and seasoning! What sausages will you choose to grill for your tailgate crowd? Get to Edwards today for the best meat—they are the Meat Experts!
EDWARDS FOOD GIANT
7507 Cantrell Rd. 614.3477 other locations statewide edwardsfoodgiant.com
KREBS BROTHERS RESTAURANT SUPPLY
4310 Landers Rd. NLR 687.1331 krebsbrothers.com
RHEA DRUG STORE
2801 Kavanaugh Blvd. 663.4131
STIFFT STATION GIFTS
3009 W Markham St. 725.0209 stifftstationgifts.com
TAILGATE HOG-STYLE!
Rhea Drug Store
A Traditional Pharmacy
with eclectic Gifts. Since 1922
2801 Kavanaugh Little Rock 501.663.4131
WEEKEND PASSES ON SALE NOW AT SPA-CON.ORG arktimes.com SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
37
ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT.
UPCOMING EVENTS Arkansas Arts Center Terry House Community Gallery
SEP
14
Lucie’s Place Turns Five!
SEP
14-17, 21-24
The Studio Theatre
The Studio Theatre Presents “Fun Home” The Weekend Theater
SEP
15-30
Little Brother
North Shore River Walk
SEP
Legends of Arkansas 5th Annual “All-Arkansas Music and Art Festival”
16
The Joint
SEP
AAMS presents Andrew York
21
Embassy Suites Hotel
21
Habitat for Humanity of Central Arkansas ReStore & After 2017
SEP
Heifer Urban Farm Pavilion
SEP
Statehouse Convention Center
SEP
Pig & Swig Pork & Bourbon Event
21
140th Anniversary President’s Scholarship Gala
29
Arkansas Times Bus Trips
SEP
Arkansas Times “MAD” Bus to ZZ Top!
29
Arkansas Times Bus Trips
SEP
Arkansas Times “MAD” Bus to Brad Paisley!
30
Argenta Farmers Market grounds
OCT
Whole Hog Roast
1
King Biscuit Blues Festival
OCT
4
Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets - and more! Arkansas Times new local ticketing site! If you’re a non-profit, freestanding venue or business selling tickets thru eventbrite or another national seller - call us 501.492.3994 - we’re local, independent and offer a marketing package!
LOCAL TICKETS, One Place 38
SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
From your goin’ out friends at
BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Modern Ink,” work by Carmen Alexandria, Robert Bean, Daniel Broening, Diane Harper, Neal Harrington and Steve Rockwell, opens with reception 5-8 p.m. Sept. 8, 2nd Friday Art Night, “The Art of Injustice,” Paul Faris’ photographs of Japanese incarceration at Rohwer; “Jim Nelson: Abstraction and Color.” 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. 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.: “Art of Africa: One Continent, Limitless Vision,” pieces from the Clinton Presidential Center’s archives as well as from President Clinton’s own personal collection, through Feb. 12; permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6, President Clinton’s birthday. 374-4242. CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “Not to Scale: Highlights from the Fly’s Eye Dome Archive,” drawings and models of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, through March 2018; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “The Power of Plastics: Reshaping Midcentury Fashion,” plastic handbags from Anita Davis’ collection, through Jan. 7; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART
,
MUSEUM 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Carlos Luna,” mixed-media on wood, paintings and Jacquard tapestries, through Sept. 18. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-784-2787.
cated 19th century structures from original city, guided Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. (Galleries free.) 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MACARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK: Pop-up art exhibits on Main Street, Second Street and President Clinton Avenue for 2nd Friday Art Night, 5-8 p.m. Sept. 8. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: “Not Forgotten: An Arkansas Family Album,” photographs by Nina Robinson; permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 683-3593. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Human Plus,” low and high-tech tools that extend human abilities, through Sept. 10; also interactive science exhibits. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: Arkansas Circus Arts, 5-8 p.m. Sept. 8, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Cabinet of Curiosities: Treasures from the University of Arkansas Museum Collection”; “True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley,” musical instruments, through 2017; “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685. SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St., El Dorado: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 870-862-5474. SWAY’S ANTIGALLERY, 412 Louisiana St.: Multidiscipinary art event featuring works of LGBTQ artists and allies, 5-9 p.m. Sept. 7 and Sept. 8, 2nd Friday Art Night.
HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. 3rd St.: “Hidden Treasure: Selected Gala Hwy. 165, England: Major prehistoric Fund Purchases,” including portraiture Indian site with visitors’ center and by Henry Byrd, work by Thomas Hart museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., Benton, watercolors by Jacob Semiatin noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $4 for and more, Sept. 8-Jan. 8, reception 5-8 adults, $3 for ages 6-12, $14 for family. p.m. Sept. 8, 2nd Friday Art Night, with 961-9442. live music by Michael Carenbauer and Bill UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT Huntington and beer by Flyway Brewing; LITTLE ROCK, 2801 S. University Ave.: “Danny Campbell and Winston Taylor,” an “Peri Schwartz: The Artist’s Studio,” exhibition of Campbell’s found-object through Oct. 17, Fine Arts Building sculpture and Taylor’s ceramic vessels Gallery I, artist lecture 6:30 p.m. Sept. through Nov. 5; “No-Type. Identity of Us,” 22, Room 181; “Heidi Hogden: Uncertain photographs by members of the No-Type Terrain,” through Oct. 1, Maners/Pappas photography club at UALR, through Gallery; “Layet Johnson: AugustOct. 8; “Gordon and Wenonah Fay Holl: Collecting a Legacy,” through Feb. 4, 2018. September,” through Oct. 1, Gallery III. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 569-8977. Ticketed tours of renovated and repli-
ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH LITTLE ROCK, AR POSITION: CHIEF EPIDEMIOLOGIST/PUBLIC HEALTH EVALUATOR
grow Grow LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF PULASKI COUNTY, ARKANSAS PROBATE DIVISION In the Matter of the Estate of Donna S Williams, Deceased. No. 60PR-17-1697 Name of decedent Donna S Williams Last known address 10305 Nash Lane Mabelvale, AR 72103 Date of death 09/06/2011 On August 23, 2017, an affidavit for collection of small estate by distributee was filed with respect to the estate of Donna S Williams, deceased, with the clerk of the probate division of the circuit court of Pulaski County, Arkansas, under Ark. Code Ann. £ 28-41-101. The legal description of the real property listed in the affidavit is as follows: Part of the Southeast Quarter of Southwest Quarter, Section 3, Township 1 South, Range 13 West, Pulaski County, Arkansas, more particularly described as follows: Beginning 549 feet North of the Southwest Corner of said Southeast Quarter of Southwest Quarter; thence North 78 feet; thence East 560 feet; thence South 78 feet; thence West 560 feet to the point of beginning. All persons having claims against the estate must exhibit them, properly verified, to the distributee or his or her attorney with three (3) months from the date of the first publication of this notice or they shall be forever barred and precluded from any benefit of the estate. The name, mailing address, and telephone number of the distributee is: Jonna Williams, PO Box. 251122, Little Rock, AR 72225, (501) 425-8757. This notice first published in August 31st, 2017 and September 7th, 2017.
Responsibilities: Evaluate chronic disease programs for cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, nutrition, physical activity and obesity prevention and control; Evaluate quality improvement strategies in healthcare settings; Provide oversight for chronic disease evaluation, epidemiology, and surveillance; Monitor program performance for short-, intermediate-, and long-term intervention outcomes in population and healthcare settings; Inform programs and policy directions; Evaluate program compliance to meet funding requirements; Ensure accountability to those with fiscal oversight; Assist with writing grant applications, reports and peer-reviewed publications.
ARKANSAS TIMES
MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985
Education and experience requirements: Master’s degree in Public Health and/or Doctor of Public Health, plus 4 years of demonstrated chronic disease program evaluation experience (2 of which must have been supervisory). To apply, mail C.V to ATTN: Dr. A. Balamurugan, AR Dept. of Health, 4815 W. Markham, Slot 6, Little Rock, AR 72205 (reference Job ADH#5806).
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sip LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES
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National Endowment for the Arts
2017 Big Read
Kick-off Event Featuring Luis Alberto Urrea
Award-winning author, Into the Beautiful North 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 19 Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall Other events scheduled through Friday, Nov. 3. Visit ualr.at/bigread or contact Carol Macheak at cimacheak@ualr.edu or 501.569.8809. Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Presented in partnership with The Mexican Consulate, Little Rock School District, El Zocalo Immigrant Resource Center, The Clinton Center, Central Arkansas Library System, and UA-Pulaski Technical College. Contributors for the author kick-off event include the UA Little Rock William G. Cooper Jr. Honors Program in English, Arkansas Humanities Council, Ottenheimer Library, Division of Student Affairs, World Languages Department, Donaghey Scholars Program, History Department, Anthropology/Sociology Department, as well as KLRE/KUAR. 40
SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES