Arkansas Times | June 2020

PANDEMIC HITS POULTRY WORKERS | CLARK DUKE | QUARANTINE HABITATS

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JUNE 2020

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SELF-PORTRAIT IN THE PANDEMIC: Haas High School senior Briseis Mulkey poses atop her Toyota FJ Cruiser for Kat Wilson’s Quarantine Habitats series.

FEATURES 20 OFF THE PANDEMIC RECORD

People tell us how their lives have changed, in confidence.

28 FEAR IN THE POULTRY PLANTS

Workers on the production lines feel unprotected from COVID-19.

By Alice Driver

4 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

9 THE FRONT

Q&A WITH CLARK DUKE The Inconsequential News Quiz: Emergency donut edition.

15 THE STAY-AT-HOME TO-DO LIST Learn about the Junction Bridge, mask-making and arts business from the comfort of your computer; Beaker Street with Clyde Clifford returns; curbside theater to order.

18 NEWS & POLITICS A tale of two guilty pleas.

By Ernie Dumas

46 CULTURE

Tara Stickley talks with photographer Kat Wilson about her Quarantine Habitat series.

56 CROSSWORD 58 THE OBSERVER

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THE FRONT Q&A

DEBUT DIVERTED:

COURTESY OF LIONSGATE

‘ARKANSAS’ DIRECTOR CLARK DUKE TALKS TIMING, BARBECUE AND THE FLAMING LIPS.

G

lenwood native Clark Duke’s directorial debut, “Arkansas,” came out on streaming platforms on his birthday, May 5. Based on a 2008 novel by John Brandon and written by Duke and Andrew Boonkrong, the film follows two drug runners, Kyle (played by Liam Hemsworth) and Swin (played by Duke), and paints a picture of organized crime in the South with deadpan dialogue and quiet absurdity, borrowing many of its brushstrokes from the likes of Charles Portis, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. It is, in Duke’s words, “definitely a bummer” that the film — with all its Southern noir sensibilities — never got a chance to ring across a receptive room at its corona-canceled South by Southwest debut, but its release on streaming platforms means, at least, that it has a fighting chance of finding that audience anyway.

Appropriately for a film named “Arkansas,” there’s a quote from Charles Portis — the “escape velocity” quote — at the beginning of the film. Is there some Portis in the movie, intentionally?

Oh, yeah. One hundred percent. Big Charles Portis fan. For sure, there’s a big influence. The Coen brothers were a big influence on me as well.

You can tell that they share and love that same

kind of wry, funny, dry tone that Portis had.

There’s some of that in Kyle and Swin’s dynamic, right? The sort of pair where, for every word one of them says, the other one has said 25?

Yeah. I always kind of described them as — to me, they kind of make one complete person if you combine the two of them. Like, one competent person. They fill in each other’s holes, which I thought was a cool dynamic. Like a “Butch and Sundance” kind of vibe. Or like “Once Upon a Time in the West.” That was a movie we referenced a lot on set — visually, and with the score and everything, too.

I want to ask you about the score. There’s this Wayne Coyne version of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” for one, that definitely belongs at a VFW in Arkansas. What kind of hand did you have in the music?

Well, I had all hands in the music. I picked all the songs. It was very important to me.

The filmmakers that I love, like Scorsese, like Tarantino, music is such a big part of those movies. I wanted it to be that way with this one.

It’s tricky when you don’t have a big budget.

So, The Flaming Lips actually covered all the

songs in the film, and that was not my original plan, because I didn’t think that kind of thing was possible, in my wildest dreams. But Liam [Hemsworth] is friends with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, and he put us in touch, and within a few days of talking to him over the phone for the first time, they were in downtown Hot Springs at 10 in the morning.

Whoa.

Yeah. Drove all night from Oklahoma. So that was pretty surreal. ... And that scene where he plays “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” that was always in the script, with the band playing it live, so I knew whoever the band was in that scene would be covering that song, but then once I heard that, I just loved what they did with it so much. It was so cool. It kind of gives the song a weird tension.

So after that, I just asked him, like, “You wanna cover all these songs?” Wildly enough, they said yes.

And then the score — you know, not the pop song covers, but the score underneath the film — was done by Devendra Banhart, who’s a really incredible musician, too, who I’ve been friends with for a long, long time. With him, I wanted to do what we called “jailhouse Morricone,” like do the “Once Upon a Time in the West” sort of spaghetti Western score.

ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 9

COURTESY OF LIONSGATE

‘JAILHOUSE MORRICONE: A poster for “Arkansas” announces a South by Southwest debut, thwarted by the global health crisis. Below, Clark Duke and Eden Brolin star in “Arkansas.”

So, there are definitely some Easter eggs in the film for Arkansans — I know I spotted Centerfold, I think, in Hot Springs.

Yup! Yup. [Laughs.]

And really enjoyed the line of dialogue that accompanied it. I know you shot there at the Arlington Hotel, Maxine’s and the Fordyce Bathhouse. How much of the movie was made in Arkansas, and what was the scouting process like?

I think you pretty much got all of them, the downtown area, Maxine’s and the bathhouse. I tried to shoot the whole movie in Arkansas, and was literally there scouting and the state called and told us that they couldn’t give us the tax credit.

For a small, independent film, that tax credit can be, you know, a third or a fourth of your budget. So we ended up moving most of the movie to Alabama, with just the stuff that you mentioned getting shot in Arkansas. But I did try!

The film commission was great, and have been lovely and supportive the whole time, but I think what happened with us is that they’ve got a certain amount of money to use toward that film tax credit every year, and “True Detective” had basically used all the money up.

‘AS LONG AS PEOPLE FIND THE MOVIE AND WATCH ... THAT’S ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS.’

COURTESY OF LIONSGATE

Were there things you had to do to make it feel like Arkansas?

Yeah, you know, I grew up in and around Hot Springs so, to be honest, the pictures in my head didn’t really look that much like Little Rock. Most of it is set in the more rural parts of the state, and I really kind of feel like a lot of the locations we found in Alabama kind of look more like what I had in my head. And so much of the movie is interior. It’s about the people talking. It’s not, like, a Terrence Malick movie, with like, these sweeping vista shots of Arkansas.

Alabama was close enough that it still felt like the world I had in my head.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

Do you still have family in this part of the state?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. My brother lives out here in LA with me, but everybody else is back in Arkansas. I mean, I slept at my mom’s house when we were shooting in Arkansas.

It was great. Everybody else stayed at the Arlington, and I just went home.

What sort of things do you hit up when you’re home?

I’m gonna eat at McClard’s. That’s my first stop. Barbecue might be the thing I miss most, to be honest. LA has so much great food, but you don’t find much good barbecue, and it’s just not the same.

Yeah. It doesn’t come with, like, a slab of white bread. Or a tamale.

They don’t even know about the white bread.

So I’m curious, because you’re from Arkansas, whether you were sort of the authority on the set, as far as what rings true for making the film seem like it takes place in this area?

I guess so. But, I mean, also, being the director, that’s already your job anyway.

But, yeah, and my brother is in the movie and was on set the whole time, so he was there to kind of bounce stuff off of, too.

How different does this movie launch look for you from your original SXSW plans?

It’s definitely a bummer. Being Southern, South By was kind of the festival I wanted to premiere at, and I was so excited that we got in, and we had such an awesome time slot. As a filmmaker, to get to debut your first movie there is such an honor. It seems like we skipped all the fun stuff, like South By and the premiere. I love going to theaters, and I wanted to see the movie in a theater, and never got to because they closed all the theaters.

So, yeah, it’s been rough. At the same time, I don’t think I can complain too much. These are such luxury problems.

There are people who are sick and dying, and everybody’s in the same boat, kind of locked in a house just like I am. ... But it’s shitty. I’ve been trying to get this movie made for, like, 10 years, which is something you’ve worked on for a third of your life, and worked on every day for the past two or three years. But as long as people find the movie and watch the movie, that’s all that really matters. ... Lionsgate has been great, and made a huge push to get it out there in a big way. It’s such a changing landscape right now with the way VOD is working. The way people are watching stuff, maybe more people will see it, ‘cause everybody’s trapped at home.

— Stephanie Smittle

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THE FRONT

INCONSEQUENTIAL NEWS QUIZ

EMERGENCY DONUT EDITION PLAY AT HOME, WHILE TRYING NOT TO CRY AGAIN TODAY.

2) Speaking of the law, a recent ruling by the Arkansas Court of Appeals was applauded by fans of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, which gives the press and public access to government-produced information and documents. What was the ruling?

A) Governor Hutchinson must hand over the secret recipe for his famous 11-Layer Buffalo Enchilada Nacho Dip to Arkansas Times Senior Editor Max Brantley in time for Max’s July 4th cookout.

B) North Little Rock officials broke the law when they discussed city business during lengthy “toilet conferences” from adjoining bathroom stalls.

C) Former White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders must reveal the contract she signed with Satan, giving the Dark Lord her immortal soul in exchange for leaving the White House without a federal indictment, congressional subpoena or tweet from Trump calling her a loser who he didn’t even really know that well.

D) The court ruled that citizens may take pictures of government documents with their cell phones, allowing them to forgo fees charged for photocopying.

3) Speaking of Satan and courtroom action, Satanic Temple founder Lucien Greaves, whose organization is in court fighting for the right to install an 8-foot bronze statue of the goat-headed demigod Baphomet on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds as a counter to Sen. Jason Rapert’s Ten Commandments Monument, recently released pages from a deposition transcript in the case on his Twitter feed.

Which of the following was a real detail from the testimony?

A) Satanic Temple members in good standing are allowed to call Satan by his real first name: Steve.

B) Greaves is an avid collector of My Little Pony toys.

12 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

C) A revamped design for the Baphomet statue will include a hidden camera and speaker in the chest, so Greaves can use a scary voice to quiz passing Republicans about the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

D) After Greaves told an attorney he wasn’t sure what “BDSM” stands for, the attorney said: “[J]ust guessing here, but: Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism?” To which Greaves replied: “I don’t think you’re guessing.”

4) Speaking of BDSM and what it means, the recent online real estate listing for a seemingly ordinary house in Van Buren raised a few eyebrows the other day.

What was different about the house?

A) In the listing, the real estate agent says the house is “50 shades of great!”

B) The house has a hidden doorway behind a bookcase, like something out of a “Scooby-Doo” TV episode.

C) Behind the secret door is a fully outfitted sin den, complete with a neon-lit bar, blood red walls, a stripper pole and several pieces of sturdy bondage furniture, including a human-sized cage and a large, X-shaped St. Andrew’s cross.

D) All of the above.

5) Speaking of stripper poles, in the listing for the house discussed above, what term did the agent who wrote the listing for the house use instead of “stripper pole”?

A) “Vertical harlot support.”

B) “College tuition attainment device.”

C) “Minimalist monkey bar.”

D) “Entertainment pole.”

6) Speaking of sticky ways to earn money, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recently talked to the co-owner of Hurts Donuts in downtown Little Rock about a new approach the shop is taking to weather the coronavirus epidemic. What is it?

A) It’s stopped putting holes in their donuts because people have enough deep, dark abysses to stare into right now.

B) Its best seller is currently a donut sterilized in 1,400-degree lard before being hermetically sealed in a lead-lined box.

C) It recently introduced a donut called The Trumpocalypse, which is a flavorless, undercooked lump of dough covered in thick orange icing and filled with nothing but hot air.

D) It’s started delivering donuts in the Hurts “Emergency Donut Vehicle,” a retrofitted ambulance that was previously used as a rolling billboard at parades and festivals.

ANSWERS: D, D, D, D, D, D

1) Jennifer Porter, 27, of Fort Smith, was arrested in early May after a chase in which Porter, behind the wheel of a heavyduty Dodge Ram 4x4 pickup, was caught on police dashcam video using the truck to demolish a Sebastian County sheriff’s SUV and batter three Arkansas State Police cruisers before being forced into a high-speed spinout and arrested. As seen in the video, what did the woman tell police as she was cuffed and stuffed?

A) “That Ram really lived up to its name, huh?”

B) “I had to run! Y’all were chasing me!”

C) “Better call Saul!”

D) “I didn’t intend on all this destruction.

I’m just going through a lotta crap.”

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JUNE 2020 13

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ARKANSAS TIMES

the

STAY AT HOME TO-DO LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

DEPARTMENT OF PARKS, HERITAGE AND TOURISM

SANDWICHING IN HISTORY TOUR: JUNCTION BRIDGE FRIDAY 6/5. ARKANSAS HISTORIC

PRESERVATION PROGRAM FACEBOOK PAGE. NOON. FREE. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s monthly noontime “Sandwiching in History” tour goes live on Facebook in June to give you a historian’s view of the Junction Bridge. Built on the site of our city’s namesake “petite roche,” the former railway bridge was constructed starting in 1872 as a connecting joint between the northern and southern Union Pacific lines. Converted to a pedestrian and cyclist bridge in 2008, it’s become a prominent feature of the Little Rock skyline, and remains a singular architectural feat for its 2 million-pound lift span. Catch the tour at facebook.com/arhistoricpreservation, and bring questions; the minds of AHPP will be on hand to answer your queries during the watch party. SS

LISTEN TO THE BEAKER STREET REVIVAL FRIDAY 6/5, 6/12, 6/19, 6/26. ARKANSAS ROCKS RADIO AFFILIATES. 9 P.M.-MIDNIGHT. FREE.

ARKANSAS ARTS AND FASHION FORUM

Clyde Clifford, the station engineer-turned-DJ who carved out a home for the wild and weird on late-night radio for decades, is back on the air. The revival of Beaker Street is true to the show’s original spirit: live, unscripted and, as Clifford put it, a “true musical stream of consciousness, where not even the first song each week is preplanned.” Catch our conversation with Clifford at arktimes.com/rock-candy, and listen to the show online or on any of Arkansas Rocks’ affiliates: KLRG-FM, 94.5, in Little Rock; KAFN-FM, 99.3, in Benton; KWPS-FM, 99.7, in Hot Springs; KDEL-FM, 100.9, in Arkadelphia; KZYP-FM, 104.1, in Malvern; KXYK-FM, 106.9, in Gurdon; and KCMC-FM, 94.3, in Mountain Home. SS

FOLLOW ARKANSAS ARTS & FASHION FORUM’S MASK MAKING The Arkansas Arts & Fashion Forum is funneling energy into a series of online panels and projects — energy that, presumably, it had been mustering up all winter for its subsequently canceled spring 2020 runway events. AAFF has pivoted its efforts to a mask-making initiative, posting conversations about best mask-wearing practices and mask design along the way. Catch it at facebook.com/arkansasartsfashionforum. SS ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 15

the

STAY AT HOME

DAN SCHEIMAN

TO-DO LIST

2020 NATIVE PLANT MARKET SATURDAY 6/6, LITTLE ROCK AUDUBON CENTER. There’s one place in which an American nativism policy makes sense and xenophobia is to be lauded: the garden. If you like to watch things grow, especially those that are more likely to survive than fussy furrin-born flowers are, native plants are what you want. Audubon Arkansas hosts a native plant sale every year, and will this year as well, though in a socially distanced way to guard against transmission of the novel coronavirus. Here’s what to do to go native and feed Arkansas insects and birds and your own passion for plants: Go online at ar.audubon.org/onlinesale, where you will find plant lists by nursery and type along with photographs. You’ll be asked to choose a time at checkout for the June 6 pickup at Audubon Arkansas, 4500 Springer Blvd. Prices include tax; there is also a $3 pickup fee. Vendors include Pine Ridge Gardens, Grand Designs, Native Sun Nursery, Audubon and Grand Prairie Nursery. Do it quick; supplies are limited. LNP

JOIN CENTRAL HIGH NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE’S VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL NATIONAL

HISTORIC SITE FACEBOOK PAGE. FREE.

GET SAVVY ABOUT YOUR ART THURSDAYS 6/4, 6/11, 6/18, 6/25. ARKANSAS ARTS COUNCIL FACEBOOK PAGE. 1 P.M. FREE.

Artists of all stripes: The Arkansas Arts Council, a division of Arkansas Heritage, is hosting free talks every week about grants, professional development workshops and ways to connect to resources that may help you make a living with your craft. “As the economy begins to reopen,” the Arts Council says on its event page, “the Arkansas Arts Council is here to help artists and arts organizations create a stronger and more robust creative economy. The Arts Council understands the importance of arts-related businesses and organizations, which contribute millions to Arkansas’s overall economy and are instrumental to the state’s quality of life.” Find talks on the Events portion of the Arts Council’s Facebook page. SS 16 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

Knowing the name Ida B. Wells is one thing. Exploring how a woman born into slavery would break ground in the fields of investigative journalism and social work — and earn a posthumously awarded Pulitzer for it — is quite another. In May, Wells was the subject of the Central High School National Historic Site’s virtual book club, a project park guide Rebecca Hoffman dreamed up prepandemic and brought to life when in-person visits to the historic site became impossible. In keeping with the National Historic Site’s theme of studying women in the civil rights movement, the book club will explore Daisy Bates’ memoir, “The Long Shadow of Little Rock,” in June. Follow facebook.com/centralhighnps to get the download link for the book under discussion and jump into the conversation. SS

MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER

CONTRIBUTE TO MOSAIC TEMPLARS’ ‘COVID IN THE BLACK’ PROJECT DUST OFF YOUR LIBRARY CARD Don’t know about you, but my pandemic budget doesn’t have a “new comic books” category or a spot for that $160 kit from 23andMe. If you are in the same boat, you can jumpstart your genealogy project, rent “1917,” learn how to fix your damn bike tires or get your trashy suspense novel fix at your local Central Arkansas Library System branch online (closed for physical visits but available nonetheless) for free. When the Arkansas Times went to press, all CALS branches save for Brooks Library were offering curbside and telephone service. Get a library card online at cals.org/library-card-basics and browse the stacks at https://cals.bibliocommons.com.

Garland County residents: An enthusiastic staff at the Garland County Library has fired up its summer reading programs for kids and teens a bit early (and virtually); check that out at gclibrary.com/services/ src.html. SS

The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center is documenting the experiences of people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The coronavirus public health emergency is affecting almost every aspect of Arkansans’ lives,” the museum wrote in a press release, “and marks a turning point in the annals of history. As part of our mission to preserve, interpret and celebrate African American history and culture in Arkansas, we have started the ‘COVID in Black’ Project to collect stories and preserve documents, images and objects that tell the African American experience in Arkansas during COVID-19.” For Museum Director Christina Shutt and her staff, it’s about “making sure those stories don’t get silenced in the narrative. … We want to be able to get a snapshot for future researchers, future historians, so that when they look back, they’ll be able to see the perspectives of African Americans here in the state who have been affected by it.” So far, the museum has received tales from parents learning to navigate homeschooling (or “crisis schooling,” as Shutt called it), “graduation” photos from seniors whose commencement ceremonies were canceled and photos of people in their homemade masks, and they hope to collect much more.

To submit your objects, images or stories, email info@mosaictemplarscenter.com, or send your files to Mosaic Templars via Facebook Messenger. SS

SCHEDULE A PLAY FROM CURBSIDE THEATRE IN YOUR FRONT YARD MONDAY 6/15-TUESDAY 7/30. NORTHWEST ARKANSAS HOMES. DONATIONS. Northwest Arkansas theater pathfinders Michael Bell, Mischa Hutchings, Kholoud Sawaf, Laura Shatkus and Adrienne Dawes are putting together what they’re calling “a theatrical care package,” to be performed curbside at 30 households in Northwest Arkansas for free between June 15 and July 30.

“Given the need to adapt and change in the time of social distancing,” a press release states, “the play is performed on curbsides, facing your front door, outside of your kitchen window, or in your backyard — always observing the rules of social distancing — with the goal of making you laugh,

engaging your sense of wonder and bringing you hope in absurd times. Each performance will be customized and staged with your particular dwelling in mind through a pre-show consultation.” The piece is family-friendly, with a runtime of 30-45 minutes, and is created and performed under the ArkansasStaged umbrella, a Northwest Arkansas collective that seeks out under-heralded repertoire and unusual performance spaces. Reservations go up at curbsidetheatre.com in June; you can throw a few bucks toward the cause at curbsidetheatre.com/donate. SS ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 17

NEWS & POLITICS FORMER GOV. JIM GUY TUCKER: Pleaded guilty to a law that was no longer on the books, but his bid to have the plea nullified went nowhere. He was a Democrat, not a Republican.

FLYNN, GOV. TUCKER AND FEDERAL POLITICS JUSTICE IGNORES TRUMP’S MAN’S PLEA, BUT NOT FORMER DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR’S.

BY ERNEST DUMAS

18 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

ARKANSAS SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE

B

y effecting a pardon for convicted felon Michael Flynn two and a half years after he pled guilty to lying about contacting the Russians on behalf of Donald Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr ended any doubt about how he views the role of the Justice Department and its police force, the FBI. Contrary to the original act of Congress, Justice and the FBI are now to serve the president’s interests, not the country’s, much like the good old days of the KGB and the Gestapo, when they served as a dictator’s posse. Trump fired his Justice and FBI chiefs until he got the attorney general who agreed with him — the man who had twice used the Justice Department to try to salvage a Republican president.

When they were given the chance, the courts never let previous presidents get away with that, but America is in a bold new era. If they are given the chance, you can expect at least four of the five Federalist Society members of the Supreme Court to stand with Trump on Flynn’s pardon.

Barr saved Trump from the great political risk of pardoning Flynn before the election. After Nov. 3, Trump will pardon everyone who is in prison or facing it for having committed crimes to protect Trump during the investigation of Russian election tampering.

Congress authorized the president in the Judiciary Act of 1789 to appoint an attorney general to run a Department of Justice, but his sole service to presidents and executive agencies was to advise them what the law was when asked, not to save them from the law.

Here in remote Arkansas, there are better reasons to grasp both the perfidy and the gravity of what Bill Barr did. Arkansans are, or should be, uniquely knowledgeable about whether the federal courts can or should let a man go free after pleading guilty to a crime, which is what Barr did for Michael Flynn and Donald Trump — and obliquely, for Trump’s corrupt pal Roger Stone.

Some 15 years ago, Republican federal judges from Arkansas to the 8th Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court said the Arkansas governor — a Democrat — was stuck forever with his guilty plea in a bizarre case brought by a political hatchet man, although it turned out that the governor had been forced to plead guilty to violating a law that even the prosecutors ultimately admitted did not exist.

How will Bill Barr, the Justice Department — and perhaps the Supreme Court — square pardoning Trump’s man for pleading guilty to manifestly lying to protect his boss when the courts had ruled exactly the opposite in the Arkansas case? And when the Arkansas man was manifestly innocent? The Flynn case may never reach the Supreme Court, at least not before the election.

The Arkansas case I’m talking about, of course, is that of Jim Guy Tucker, who resigned as governor in 1996 after his convictions in baffling cases brought by Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater special prosecutor and acolyte of Bill Barr who was appointed by Republican federal judges to investigate young Bill and Hillary Clinton’s perfectly legal little land deal in Searcy County back in 1976. Tucker, of course, had nothing to do with the rival Clintons but got caught up in the special prosecutor’s search for someone who might be forced to give them some dirt on the new couple in the White House.

In case you have forgotten all that stuff, I’ll get back to it, but first a little memory refresher on Attorney General William Barr, who, before he is done, may make us feel better about Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who went to prison for 19 months for helping plan the Watergate break-in and perjuring himself to protect Nixon.

Like Donald Trump today, President George H.W. Bush was in a dilemma before the 1992 election because President Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, and five other officials faced criminal trials for their role in the illegal Iran-Contra arms deal. The special prosecutor, Republican Lawrence Walsh, had evidence that Weinberger had perjured himself about Bush’s role in the illegal arms sale to Iran. Bush’s attorney general — yes, Bill Barr — persuaded the president that he needed to pardon Weinberger and the others to prevent them from turning state’s evidence and detailing Bush’s role, in order to stay out of prison themselves. Bush pardoned them all and in his diary admitted that, yes, he had been fully aware of the arms deal.

At the same time, in the final days before the 1992 election, with Bill Clinton moving way ahead of Bush in the polls, a female White House staffer told her good friend Barr that it was terrible that President Bush was not looking good in the media while Clinton was getting a pass. She told him that they needed to get some national publicity about the Clintons’ suspected role (they had none) in helping an old friend with his little savings and loan business back in the early 1980s. Barr immediately pressured the Republican federal prosecutor in Little Rock, Chuck Banks, to publicly announce an investigation of the Clintons before the election. Banks refused to do his boss’ bidding and Bush went down to defeat. Barr would testify at congressional hearings that he really hadn’t put much pressure on Banks, just a friendly inquiry.

Neither Banks nor Barr ever forgot the other’s slight, but after Bush’s defeat Barr got a job representing Verizon and made a fortune. Barr’s solicitor general at Justice had been the Harding College alum Kenneth Starr, who thanks to Republican judges on the D.C. circuit pursued the Clintons for most of the next seven years and eventually got the president impeached for not being truthful about his liaisons with a young White House staffer.

It was Barr’s man Starr who, along with Barr’s recent assistant Rod Rosenstein and perhaps Brett Kavanaugh — whom Trump put on the Supreme Court last year — who rigged up the charges that Governor Tucker, a former prosecutor, attorney general, congressman and lieutenant governor, had conspired to cheat the federal government of $3.7 million in corporate income taxes by putting a Texas cable-television outfit through a sham bankruptcy in 1988 when he was a businessman.

Tucker demanded that the special prosecutor identify the section of the bankruptcy code that he had violated so he could defend himself.

Starr would not say and the Republican trial judge, Stephen M. Reasoner, would not order him to do so until Tucker’s actual trial, which was bizarre itself. The supposed reason for the denial was that the actual charge was conspiracy, not evasion. The IRS itself had found nothing amiss in the bankruptcy. Normal Justice Department procedures require that any tax charge must be given prior approval by the IRS, but Starr regarded himself as exempt from the requirement.

Facing prison and searching for a life-saving liver transplant, Tucker agreed to plead guilty and pay whatever the IRS said he owed. But when they went to the hearing to determine what Tucker owed, the provision that the special prosecutor identified turned out to have been repealed two years before the bankruptcy

by President Reagan’s 1986 tax-reform act.

Oops! Never mind, the Republicans on the 8th Circuit seemed to say, it was a minor and understandable goof. Once Tucker had pled guilty, it could never be undone. The judges erroneously described the sequence of events and rendered the federal post-conviction law (28 USC 2255) a nullity, at least in Tucker’s case. Tucker appealed to the Supreme Court, then controlled by the Federalist Society majority. It let the 8th Circuit’s rationale stand.

So why isn’t that the law that should govern Mike Flynn, whose lying is uncontroverted? Barr says Flynn’s lying just didn’t amount to much and that the FBI didn’t have a good enough reason to question him about his conversations with the Russians, which had been secretly recorded.

A better question: What happens if, as the founders feared, Americans ever discover that the Rule of Law has become only a political game?

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JUNE 2020 19

LIFE WITH COVID19, CONFIDENTIALLY Back in 2012, when the Arkansas Times introduced its “LR Confidential” annual issue, it was a simpler time.

Then, it was people spilling on stories from the workplace. A pawnbroker talked about a guy pawning his prosthetic eye. A bikini waxer told us what a Brazilian was. A defense lawyer confessed to being a better actor than researcher. A nanny said her family didn’t believe in immunizations. Today, it’s a different world.

The novel coronavirus dominates our thinking, and the on-the-job stories all have a common theme: COVID-19 has changed us and worries have replaced the weird. Now, war stories come from doctors and nurses. A teacher broods about the education her students are getting. A sex worker takes to the worldwide web, the internet their new, less lucrative stage. A restaurant worker is concerned about both his health and his customers, and urges a bit more respect. In exchange for their candor, all who talked to reporters or wrote themselves were granted anonymity.

20 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

ECONOMICS TEACHER

I

haven’t worn real pants since March. I haven’t worn makeup since March 12. For my situation, I decided early on I was going to stay home and not go out. Because I’m teaching economics, we were talking about COVID in China from early on.

I’m trying to keep a structure in my day. Without it, people can go crazy. I think teachers were at a little bit of an advantage with the unstructured time thing in a way that other adults were not because we have summers free. I get up and clean my house every day because I’m a germ freak. I get in the online learning management system my school is using and basically stay in it all day. I check for alerts, see if there are tests I need to unlock. I message students based on their individual work and what I’ve reviewed.

I’m trying to at least show them that their teachers are still here, they’re still available to help.

My students have been very good at reaching out, but not with content questions. They are always technical questions about the learning management system. I’m pretty much tech support and a counselor.

I don’t expect any parent to replace me because what I do for your kids is so much more than just a tutorial. I plan meaningful activities.

I sponsor clubs. I leave every single lunch I have open so my kids know they can ask questions or work on stuff. That support structure is gone.

As much as I can call them or Google Hangout with them, I can’t consistently be in their lives as much as they need it socially, academically and emotionally.

We get attached to these kids in ways I can’t explain. I’m not a parent yet, so for more than a decade, these kids have been my children. I’ve had kids be murdered. I’ve had kids be murderers. I’ve had kids experience every horrible thing imaginable. It’s something that sews itself onto your soul. For teachers to not be with their kids, it hurts. I cry. I worry.

One of the biggest changes has been how I approach communication. It’s now, “I hope you’re well. I’m just checking in.” Not, “Why haven’t you been doing your work?” which is what I would have done in the past, very automatically. My mindset was there’s no excuse for this in the beginning, but then I was like, “Oh my God, what is wrong with me?” after I started finding out my kids’ different situations.

We put this equitable expectation on kids. But life isn’t equitable. I can’t expect a student who is the oldest in the home and is taking care of the children in his home to sign into the learning management system and do economics.

I’ve had a couple of parents who have really humbled themselves — because I wouldn’t want to say it to a stranger — and have told me, “I called Comcast for their free internet deal, but I didn’t qualify.” Or they said they called and found out you have to put $100 deposit down or you had to buy equipment. And they couldn’t

do that. I had another parent say, “Look I called the internet companies and I can’t afford it. I really want my kids to work on this, but we don’t have a way. We’ve tried through their phones, but it’s just hard.” No kid should be doing their schoolwork through their phone. That’s just impossible.

The equity of access is an issue that goes beyond my district. I think all the districts in Central Arkansas have done a lot to solve the device problem. But the internet problem is something the districts really can’t help with. The state HAS to invest in it. It’s 2020. The internet is a utility at this point. We have to have one-to-one devices and internet access for every child.

What I’m doing is not teaching. The economics course in the learning management system is nothing I would ever do. It has an extremely hard, high level of vocabulary. I have a mixed

WE PUT THIS EQUITABLE EXPECTATION ON KIDS. BUT LIFE ISN’T EQUITABLE.

group of students [from different grades and ability levels] and some of them need me there with them. I feel like I’m completely ineffective in educating them. I spend my day unlocking tests and messaging with my students. Instruction-wise, this is worthless. The kids are getting nothing but credit it out of it.

We also have Google Classroom that we can use. For the first couple of weeks, I was using Google Classroom, and I felt like I was still de-

livering instruction. It’s completely your blank slate. I can create whatever I want in there, post whatever I want, have the kids do discussions.

There’s multiple ways for them to submit their learning and multiple ways to communicate them. I could pull the correct readings for each kid based on their reading levels.

But with our learning management system, kids are working at a self pace. That eliminates my ability to say, “We’re going to Zoom about this topic at 3 p.m. on such and such day.”

They’re all working on different chapters, so I can help them just one-on-one instead of helping them amid the class, which I would prefer and I think they would prefer. They’re missing socialization.

My district said it moved to the learning management system to ensure that kids were receiving at least the baseline instruction. I understand the equity idea: You have to provide something that’s the same for everyone, so you can ensure everyone got the same access. When you do that, you’re looking at that group of students that’s one homogeneous group that all have the same needs, all have the same background, all have the same capabilities, and that is just not reality. I have kids who read on a firstor second-grade level. The kids who need by far the most help in my course are the furthest behind. A lot of them are really trying.

If I have to follow CDC guidelines and space desks, I can get maybe 8-10 kids in my class, and then I have to trust that all of those kids are going to wash their hands, that they’re going to wear a mask, that they’re going to follow protocols that kids really cannot be trusted to follow. I’m happy to be the person not making the decision.

This is my career. This is my sole income. People outside of teaching don’t realize. We work every day, every hour. Every day of my life is devoted to teaching. The idea of being forced into a situation where I have to choose to not go back, I really fear that. I have a pre-existing condition, so for me personally, there is a risk. I also have a 75-year-old father and that’s it. We’re each other’s only family. If I choose to go back to school in an environment I consider unsafe, I won’t be able to see my father.

Without expansive COVID testing, I don’t think that school can safely happen. If I become sick, I need to know very quickly if this is what I have, so I can get out of work and not spread it to the elderly person who works near me or the person with diabetes down the hall. There are just too many risks.

My district is making the master schedule as usual with the normal class sizes. I understand, until they’re told otherwise, they will act as things are going ahead as usual. But we need to know something sooner rather than later.

Let’s say we go back to school in some manner and then we immediately have to go back out because the virus returns. I need to be prepared ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 21

for that. I need to spend my summer recording my lectures and coming up with my content. Elementary teachers would need even more time because they’re teaching multiple subjects.

Part of me thinks that this is a really good time to think about what we value about education. Clearly it had no impact on anyone’s life to not do standardized testing this year. We need to look for different markers and approaches.

We need more teachers and more facility space.

We’ve been decreasing both things for so long.

In the past, I had a class of almost 40 middle

school students with four adults in the room. It was my highest needs class.

That can’t exist now. But with that kind of class, if you lessened it to 10 or 12, I could do wonders! I know it’s a pipe dream, but if we invested in hiring more teachers and finding more space, I think we could not only actually return to a slightly normal school environment, but we could also help these kids get on grade-level, get the services they need and get the social/ emotional stuff worked out. When it’s a class of 30, I’ve never been able to provide what they

need. And I’m certainly not providing that in the learning management system.

If I had children and had the capability to stay home next year, I would want to know sooner rather than later what the plan is for next year.

I think it’s going to be too chaotic. I don’t think big districts will be able to turn on the dime like we need to in the fall. I’m also really scared.

Imagine elementary schools and trying to get them to wear masks or not touch anything.

— As told to Lindsey Millar

EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTOR

W

hen I get to work, I go pick up scrubs out of the scrub machine. I change into them. I hang my clothes up separately on hooks. I wipe every surface down. I wipe everything I have on me down: pens, watch, nametag, stethoscope. I go into every room in the ER wearing an N95 mask, a cloth mask, a head covering, gloves and eye protection.

When I’m done for the day, I lose the scrubs, wash my hands and arms. I re-alcohol my watch, my pens, my keys — anything you’d touch. When I get home, I put my shoes right outside the door. Right inside the door, I change into sandals, then I put my clothes in the washing machine, and then I go take a kind of triple shower. I also bought these car wipes that are anti-bacterial that have a little alcohol in them, too. I wipe my seats down before I let my kids in the car. The normal day, which was usually 13 hours, is now 14.

Still, I think the likelihood of me getting 22 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

COVID-19 is nearly 100 percent. I also wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve already had it and didn’t have symptoms or had minor symptoms. If you work in an ER, we’re going to be exposed to it so constantly that we’re highly likely to get it. I’ve never been tested for it and neither have most of the people I work with. I think they should probably be testing all of us weekly, but we don’t have the tests to do it weekly. Ideally, if you had a rapid test, you could test people as they show up to work.

The whole thing has been handled poorly from the start. Mainly, something like this needs to be run by the federal government, and they’ve done nothing. They’ve done literally nothing. They’ve done no contact tracing.

They didn’t try and put out any push for getting earlier testing. Unlike South Korea, which has done an amazing job at testing, contact tracing and controlling the disaster, we still don’t have easy access to testing. We run out of swabs, still. They don’t give out N95s to everybody who

deals with patients in the ER at the beginning of the shift, only if there’s a code and you have to intubate somebody.

If you ask the hospitals, “how much PPE do you have,” they’ll give you a number of days, but that’s based on not giving them out to everyone at the beginning of the day. They’re not going to tell you the exact numbers they have.

They’ll say they’re in reasonable shape. Or, “We have a 15- or 30-day supply.” But if they were using the PPE the way they were pre-COVID, they probably have a three-day supply.

The CDC guidelines started out with what their normal guidelines were, which was full PPE protection, and within two weeks — and this is all political — they went down from that to “Maybe wear pants and hold your breath.”

Most of the doctors are buying their own N95s or even the PAPRs, the powered air respirators.

They’re what you use at Level 3 and 4 biolabs.

They have filters and there’s forced air that goes through a filter and filters out all the viruses.

Several folks have bought those. But those are $1,500 to $2,000, if you can find them.

It’s challenging to find N95s and most of what you can find are made in China. They’re not the 3M masks, in terms of quality. I’ve had some luck sourcing those myself. I’ve probably spent $2,000 myself, mostly on masks that I give out to my providers. I’ve also been giving out cloth masks to protect the N95s.

Before this, you never put on an N95 mask and kept it. For a while, I was reusing them every three days and leaving them in a bag. Now, I’m using products I bought online, filter replacements and things. But most of the docs I know have acquired their own. The nurses are in the worst shape. There’s not enough.

The hospitals are following CDC guidelines to the T. My hospital means well. There’s no way in hell Arkansas ranks as a priority in the country in terms of equipment. There’s no way you could get the number of N95s to operate [as we did] pre-February.

The masks don’t work if you don’t have a proper fit. They do fit-testing to see if it seals.

But I don’t run into too many hospitals that have more than one brand of N95 and up to two sizes. If neither one of those works, you just fail your fit test and you’re not supposed to go in the room, but you’re going to anyway, because it’s your job. I see people in stores all the time, like a little kid wearing an adult N95. That’s just silly.

It’s not doing much.

We got everybody in my hospital fit tested.

The fit tests, weirdly enough, are where you can get a N95 mask, because they have to give you one to wear for the test and they can’t put it back in the box. We’ve discussed giving everyone three N95s because, in theory, every 72 hours the viral load is so low that you should be able to reuse it. But they’re being real tight with the N95s because it’s hard to get them. It shouldn’t be. They’re not hard to manufacture.

It’s not rocket science.

The cloth masks offer very little protection, but they extend the life of N95s. If you’re in a room and someone has the coronavirus, or anything — Ebola — you can then clean the cloth mask and lengthen the life of the N95s.

Mask cleaning is something you’d usually never think of doing. It’s like going into a biohazard site and saying, “Hey, let’s grab that stuff and reuse it. It just has a little blood with HIV on it; we can just wash it off.” That’s what we’re down to.

I’ve had several patients that were positive.

Intubation is the most aerosolizing thing you can do and that’s when you’re head to toe in covering. Even with eye protection, when I had to intubate someone who was positive, the house supervisor was like, “Here, use this face shield, too.”

We’ve had several docs who have had it, and we’ve had several who have had to be quarantined. A lot of hospitals have a COVID floor.

That’s where most of the PPE is, as it should be.

They have doctors and nurses who volunteer to work the entire week there. They isolate themselves and that’s what they do for a week.

Acuity [severity of patients’ illnesses and the level of medical attention they require] is up, even though our numbers are down in the emergency department. It feels like I’ve had much sicker patients recently. I’ve intubated at least every other shift. I’ve seen a number of heart cases. They don’t always get tested, and they don’t often live. People that just kind of may have been feeling a little bad or felt like they had allergies and just died. I’m pretty sure those people aren’t tested for it. Mainly because they don’t fit the criteria, but unless the family wants an investigation on the autopsy, we don’t do a lot of testing after someone passes. It’s hard to know. It could be the virus. There’s a percentage in China where the first complaint is cardiac and not fever or shortness of breath and weird hypoxia.

The limited studies I’ve read is that in some autopsies they’ve done, they’ve found fibrosis in the bronchials — fibrotic tissues or fibroblast growth. Then there’s a small subset that just gets clots everywhere. They’ll be on anticoagulation and then they’ll still just start clotting all over the place. It’s happening at much higher rates than usual, even though it’s still rare.

There’s still a lot of the basic description of the

I FEEL LIKE I’VE HAD MUCH SICKER PATIENTS LATELY.

disease we still don’t have. Even rare diseases we have a much better picture of. Everything is so reactive. The treatment, a lot of it has come down to, when death is imminent, you do what you can.

I’ve been in contact with some docs in other parts of the country on different treatment methods. Turning people upside down and putting them on nasal canal oxygen — that’s new.

That’s definitely something we haven’t been doing before but seems to keep people off the vent. I haven’t had any firsthand dealings with that, but that’s become common. The critical care treatment, a lot of times, is to keep them off the ventilator as long as you can. Then you

put them on the ventilator and hope they come off it.

The hydroxychloroquine hasn’t shown, from what I’ve seen, any benefit when they’ve actually tested it. I’m sure there’ve been millions and millions of doses taken for no reason. Remdesivir has shortened people’s time on the vent, but we don’t know what the ultimate mortality difference is or if there’s an end result in quality of life difference, but it’s at least something.

Everyone is fatigued. You can see it even in the ER. People are letting their guard down a little bit. Everyone is still wearing a mask in every room, but I have noticed that the patients have quit wearing a mask, and our volume on certain days will pop back up quite a bit. You can kind of see these waves of self-isolation fatigue.

Also, people are waiting too long to go to the ER than they should. It’s understandable, but man, it’s much easier when you catch someone earlier when they’re having a stroke or heart attack or trauma. But then there’s the ones who are less urgent who are showing up again. Through early March, our numbers really bottomed out, but we’ve had several days in May where we were back to our pre-COVID census.

My hospital has been laying off/furloughing nurses and techs. Only when there’s a crunch is care affected. But it’s almost impossible to predict when that’s going to happen. So far it hasn’t been all that negative, as far as the effect on care. But if the numbers pick up and they don’t backfill all the furloughed positions, there will be some serious waits and there will be negative outcomes.

Hospitals are in dire straits. Smaller hospitals especially. If they don’t do something drastic, there’s going to be a lot of small hospitals close. We pay more for elective surgery than saving lives. We pay people more for setting a broken bone than intubation by almost an order of magnitude. In general, the way we reimburse medicine is messed up and a source of some of the problems.

I’m a little surprised we haven’t gone to a country that’s gotten this right and begged, borrowed, pleaded. Singapore, Hong Kong — I think Somalia even has a better testing regimen than we do. We’re still doing maybe 20 percent of the tests we need to do every day before we get to the point where we can talk about contact tracing. Those tests are going to have to get rapid.

Arkansas’s numbers are relatively low because we’re sparsely populated and not well traveled. I don’t think we’re lucky. We’re just in a geographically good position. We do have a lot of the comorbidities, but we just haven’t had as much exposure. But those crowded Walmarts are going to kill people.

I think we’re probably going to have cases through July for sure, possibly August. It depends on how people react. Then it’s going to come back with the flu, and that’s going to be a disaster.

Hopefully we have good testing by then.

— As told to Lindsey Millar ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 23

SEX WORKER/CONTENT CREATOR

C

ontent creator is probably the best way to explain what I do. I make pornography.

So, a sex worker, in general, I guess, but the terminology’s kinda weird, because so many people, when you say sex worker, especially white middle-aged people, they think you mean a prostitute exclusively.

My weekly schedule is pretty all-encompassing, but most mornings when I wake up, I do promotional stuff — and mostly via Twitter.

That basically involves other sex workers and content creators posting your stuff on their pages, and in return, you do the same for them, and it’s kind of in an organized fashion. So, there’s that, and occasionally posting on other forums, like Reddit and Discord and stuff like that, just to advertise, basically. My approach right now is making as much high quality [video] as I can for as little money as possible, because I would like to maximize my profit and cast as wide a net as I can at the moment.

With COVID, I went from making the most money I’d ever made — when I was working in strip clubs — to making nothing, and having to build everything from the ground up online. As far as the videos go, my best friend and I actually just made a home office, which we’re really, really excited about. We have this little bed with pink satin sheets on it, and then really cute decor. And all of our storage is there and it’s very artfully done, so we can just go pluck our sex toys and use them.

Tr i p o d s w i t h good lighting.

And a lot of our outfits are purchased for us by our subscribers. You like to reward people, 24 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

and we’ll make them private stuff if they give us gifts. We do that mostly through Amazon Wishlist, which is a really popular way of gifting and treating content creators well, from a buyer’s perspective. Just a sweet little thing to do. They can also buy you sex toys that way, which is really great, because you get exactly what you want, it ships really fast, and you don’t have to fuckin’ pay for it. And then it also makes money for you.

It’s kind of exhausting sometimes, but what work isn’t? And you have a lot of agency. We do everything on our iPhones, which maybe is a little tacky, but I feel like that’s the appeal of the venue that we’re both working through. A lot of people are kind of over pornography that is high, high quality and super professionalized. I feel like with [platforms like] OnlyFans — that’s the platform I use to sell my stuff — you’re paying, in part, for a connection with the person who’s making this content. You know what I mean?

[Video work] is brand new for me. … I’d been working in Hot Springs at a strip club, and it was a pretty abusive situation all around, and so my friend and I went, “OK, we gotta go,” and we started at Visions [Cabaret] and simultaneously made [accounts on] OnlyFans, just because we were like, “Hey, this could be extra money.” And then the pandemic struck. My last day was March 11, I think. I’d been working for two months straight without a break — like, 40 hours a week in a club, which is not normal at all. I was going to give myself the weekend off.

And then COVID got bad, and I was like, “Fuck, I should be making as much money as I possibly can right now, but I was just like, “I’m gonna honor the fact that I don’t want to go in right now.”

My friend went and danced [out of state] that weekend, and she said that the men who came in were absolutely disgusting. Like, worse than they normally are, because it was the ones who obviously don’t give two shits about public health. She said it was a really gross and unfortunate experience.

That Thursday and Friday is when I realized that it was starting to get bad in Arkansas, and personally, I’d basically use it as a tactic, to be like, “Oh, like, don’t try to make out with me.”

I have ground rules, but they obviously depend on how much money somebody is willing to put up, up front. I really like doing private parties.

Me and my best friend will just go as the strippers at nice parties, which is always really fun, but typically does involve doing more — well, they’re called extras — little sexy stuff with people, for tips, basically. We’ve both been called over to give a dude a backrub for like 30 min-

utes at his hotel, and get $100 and then leave, you know. People are weird. It kind of runs the gamut.

If I had to take a guess, maybe 20 to 30 percent of my fans at OnlyFans are women, or femme-identified. Women there pay a lot more than they do in real life, at clubs, which typically involves going with their partner, or a group of guy friends, and girls are notoriously bad tippers at the strip clubs! It sucks!

But with my timing, I really wasn’t doing a lot of stuff in person when I realized it wasn’t a great situation. Essentially, lockdown began a week after I started on this [online] platform, which was weird. I feel like a lot of people made these intuitive professional jumps like that.

People just felt like there was something in the air, like before it got bad, and were like, “What the fuck? I need stability.” What’s it called?

Like, a universal subconsciousness. It’s popping off right now, I feel like!

In the long run, the work that I do now is much less exhausting and could be much more sustainable, if I could get a bigger base. But at the club, especially during racing season in Hot Springs, I was making like $7K, $8K a month?

And I’m now making about $3K a month. I would say this month I’ll be making half of what I was making stripping, basically. I texted all my regulars after I started doing video work, and was just like “Hey, just so you know, I make this extra stuff now.” … A lot of them were just like, “Oh, that’s cool,” and didn’t join, but some folks did. I know one of the regulars to Visions, and we were just kicking it this entire time, and I was like, “Hey, I make porn.” And he was like, “That’s fucking so hot,” and he’d come back in and be like, “Oh, I watched this video.” He’s one of my absolute best customers now.

I’d made a couple of [in-person] bookings, but they’ve fallen through, for various reasons.

Men are being hella wild right now, but they’re always being wild. I have a lot less in-person stuff because I mostly planned that stuff while I was dancing. So just losing that market has affected it, I guess.

It is a bit nerve-racking, because at the clubs anywhere, you’re getting people from so many different places. And you can’t wear a mask when your appearance is your selling point, you know? You know how they can’t incentivize people to join certain scientific studies because if they’re offering too much money, it’s impossible to say no? That’s kind of how I feel about it, because I’m like, “Fuck, that was so much money, and so much security.” And I really miss that. So I don’t know what kind of safety precautions I’ll be taking. Something to brainstorm with my pals about.

— As told to Stephanie Smittle

CRITICAL CARE NURSE

I

stood on my front porch in my socks, stripping off my scrubs, when a neighbor family of five rounded the corner on their evening walk. I’ve taken to wearing shorts and tank tops under my uniforms so I can bag contaminated clothing before entering my home. As I stumbled to tug off a pant leg, I called out, “Just taking off my hospital clothes.” They all smiled, and one called back, “Thank you for your service.” It was the first time I had heard this phrase regarding the work I’ve done for over a decade. It felt bewildering — isn’t that what people say to soldiers?

I am now frequently asked, “Are you on the front lines?” It’s the first time I’ve had to grapple with the meaning of this concept. When life began to change, somehow I forgot everything I knew about health and science, and held a subconscious belief that all of this would be over in a few weeks. I remember telling my best friend in another state that I was worried about the social implications for families if schools closed.

She said that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. An hour later my phone was ringing with the district message about the LRSD temporary closure.

My first thought was to send my children as far away from me as possible. As a critical care nurse, I knew that if there was a pandemic in Arkansas, I would be involved. I pictured working a few weeks in a war-like scenario and then being able to reunite with my family. It became quickly apparent that what we were in for was nothing like that. If I had followed my initial instinct to separate from my girls, it would have stretched on indefinitely over months — unclear, confusing and painful. At the same time, I remain vigilant. I constantly carry the knowledge that there may come a time that I must isolate from them. For the first few weeks, I surveyed all the other parents every time I went to work. “Are you separating from your little ones?” “How are you keeping them safe?”

None of us had done this before, but somehow it felt safer to think collectively. We all shared our decontamination measures — the strips, the scrub downs, the sprays on our shoes. One co-worker told us she had undressed in the parking garage and drove home in her underwear so that her scrubs would not touch her car.

The first few weeks it seemed that policies changed every hour. We felt the implications of riding a wave that no institution in the United States was prepared for. But as we rode it, I saw nursing at its best. I saw nurses protecting each other even before a policy was in place to protect them. I saw knowledge chains form, research being shared. Every week, I continue to watch new and seasoned nurses alike step

into caring for COVID-19 patients without a single moment of hesitation — mask up, zip into suits, pull shields over their eyes, cover their hair and sweat out a shift with all the intensity and quality they always give. Everyone on my team is quicker to say “I love you.” If one of us is on the COVID floor, we know. We are texting our love and support.

Even months into this, global knowledge of the virus is so constantly changing. It can have so many different faces. As nurses, that leaves us feeling vulnerable. What if we fail to test because it is presenting in a yet unfamiliar form, leaving us exposed without proper protection?

Early on, we did not have rapid testing. We quarantined potentials as positives for days awaiting test results, leaving the patients, families and providers alike in a trying limbo.

But it is not just the virus itself that has changed our day to day in health care. The restrictions we have had to impose have led to quieter hospitals — fewer patients, no visitors, reductions in staff. Employees have faced furloughs. Closed units or low census may mean practicing in an area outside of our usual comfort zone. Families are facing separation from their critically ill loved ones no matter what they are admitted for. I feel their pain through the phone. I try to tell them little things so they know I’m paying close attention and providing good care: “I washed and braided her hair, she was wrinkling her brow and so I adjusted this medication and now she is more restful.” I can tell them all the labs, the radiology results, but how can they trust I am truly watching their loved one the way that they would? I had to guide a family through deciding to transition to end-of-life care over the phone. How can we walk this deep road together without our eyes meeting, without looking together at the suffering of their loved one before us, without our arms to wrap around one another?

And yet, despite all these changes, much of what I do feels the same. I’ve always seen people go far before their time. I’ve always witnessed suffering and seen nurses’ strength.

There is something almost confusing about hearing people say “thank you for your service” when we simply go in and do the work we’ve always done: tend to the sick, bear witness to suffering and attempt to bring a balm of healing whether to the moment of death or the season of recovery.

Back home, my clothes double-bagged and

ready for the wash, my hair scrubbed with chlorhexidine soap, I prepare for another stretch of days single-parenting and homeschooling kids. I don’t have any time to process. My sink is piled with dishes and I definitely have not made any sourdough bread. My mind turns to the others in my life who I consider much further out on the front lines than me: my sister who lives in the hardest-hit county in Michigan, where the number of deaths outnumber Arkansas’s number of cases. Her friend, who has lost two family members to COVID and is home alone with her positive diagnosis. My brother and his wife, who brought a newborn baby into the world during quarantine and now must face the anxiety of early parenthood in the climate of a global pandemic. My friend who is fighting to keep her small business afloat.

My granny in her assisted living facility who I am afraid will turn 100 alone. A dear friend’s family of five, who cannot seem to get anyone to give them answers about why their unemployment is not yet processed. The list could go on. We all carry a piece. We are all on the front lines. I can promise you that we nurses are not going to stop toeing the line and giving our all for you. I trust you will continue to do your part. Perhaps we can all make it lighter on one another and ultimately look to everyone in our community and say, “Thank you for your service.”

NONE OF US HAD DONE THIS BEFORE, BUT SOMEHOW IT FELT SAFER TO THINK COLLECTIVELY. ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 25

RESTAURANT SERVER

N

ow I’m basically a carhop instead of a waiter, which in some ways is easier, and in some ways more of a pain in the ass. We don’t have to watch stupid sports anymore.

It’s all the minutiae, the little details of doing things, you know. The bleaching of all the pens. People are really funny about touching the pen, but it’s like, “I also just touched your credit card or the container I just handed you.”

I see people coming in with their masks around their necks a lot.

The crazy thing is, the people that are the least concerned are the ones that come into the restaurant to pay. And they aren’t wearing masks. It’s insane to me. I’d say about 40 percent of people seem very concerned and the rest seem very flippant about the whole thing. I don’t think people should be allowed to come into the restaurant at all. I think it should be strictly curbside.

I think restaurants should be taking employees’ temperatures whether they open up or not. Even as I’m saying it, it sounds extreme, but it’s really not, considering what’s going on.

I feel safe enough doing the curbside thing or else I wouldn’t be doing it. I wouldn’t feel safe opening the dining room at any percentage at this point. A lot of people have thanked me [for working]. People seem to understand that it’s a pain in the ass for everyone. People have been really generous with tips for the most part.

I worked the last Friday before the shit really hit the fan [March 13]. There were cases here, bigger cities were closing down. After work, we rolled out to Pizza D’s — as stupid as that is. We got there and they were checking people’s temperatures at the door. Pizza D’s, of all places, was on the up-andup with it. We didn’t stay long, we just had a couple of drinks, but there were a bunch of people there. And I was running into people I hadn’t seen in a long time. One girl I talked to had moved back because her college shut down, so she came home to live with her parents. And I

hoping to get a seat.” I said, “Well, our dining room’s not open.” They asked me if I know anywhere where dining rooms are open. I said, “No, I don’t go anywhere but here and home.” Why would I know what other restaurants are doing? But also, you’re so eager to go sit in a dining room — I wouldn’t even want

to right now. I’d be too freaked out. It doesn’t

seem responsible. I know people get antsy and

get cabin fever, but everything I’m seeing and talked to several other people that came everything I’ve heard is there’s definitely gonna back because all this shit was going on. I start- be more of this. A second wave. And people ared wearing a mask the next week. I feel like I en’t being cautious enough. If you give them an was the first one at my job wearing a mask. I got inch, they’ll take a mile. weird looks for the first week or two. Or people What I fear is that we’re going to move too thinking they’re funny doing the number where quickly, we’ll see a lot more cases popping they stick their hands up like I’m going to hold up. It’ll be one step forward and two steps back them up because my mask is a bandana. I never again. I feel like people weren’t being careful enough from the get-go. They’re just not taking it seriously enough.

I heard a story, before all this went down, about this mom and her young daughter going into a coffee shop. The mom was going to pay and looked over just in time to see her little girl lick a whole stack of like 10 cookies that were there on display and the mom was like, “Uh, we’ll take those cookies, too,” and she bought all the cookies. Shit, are buffets gonna be a thing anymore? It’s hard to imagine that ever being acceptable again.

Early on, before we went to curbside, a bar regular was sitting in here complaining about the news coverage and said, “I just figure people that come here are different.”

I was like, “What do you mean, like ignorant?”

He was like, “No, I mean we’re made of stronger stuff.”

It’s not hurting anybody to not go out to eat. I know that it’s probably not going to work for some restaurants, and it may mean that some of them have to shut down. really watched the news before and I’ve actually And that’s a bummer, but safety-wise, you kind been watching the news lately. I’m saving a lot of have a responsibility to look out for the health of money not going to the bar. and safety of your customers. Or you should The new small talk is people asking, “Y’all feel like that’s your responsibility as a business hanging in there? Y’all ready to open back up?” owner. Especially in restaurants. It’s the same or “When are y’all opening back up?” as not wanting to serve bad food or give poor Monday night [when restaurants were al- service. You don’t want to potentially get your lowed to open for indoor dining] I had a cou- customers sick or not provide a sanitary enough ple of dudes pull up and I asked them what the environment. name was on the order and they said, “We were — As told to Rhett Brinkley

YOU KIND OF HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO LOOK OUT FOR THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS.

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‘I DIDN’T FEEL THAT IT WAS SAFE’: Tim quit his job at Simmons Foods in May.

28 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

POULTRY PLANT WORKERS SAY COMPANIES SHOULD DO MORE TO KEEP THEM SAFE FROM CORONAVIRUS.

MATT WHITE

BY ALICE DRIVER ARKANSAS NONPROFIT NEWS NETWORK

THE CHICKENS ARE KILLED SO CLOSE TO HER that the blood splatters on her face. “They give us face masks, but they only give us one a day,” she said. “But they are live animals, and there is blood.” Though her face mask is quickly soaked, she must continue with her shift.

She does not want to wear the same bloody mask all day, so she has taken to saving old masks to reuse. Every day when she gets home after her shift, she cleans her masks: “I pour a bit of hot water on them and vinegar so that the bacteria die. Then I hang them out to dry. They are thin and dry quickly, and the next day I take them back [to work].”

“Carmen” has worked at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Dardanelle for more than a decade. Like the other workers interviewed for this story, she spoke to a reporter on the condition that her real name not be used. Carmen came to the U.S. from Central America after witnessing the murder of a family member. Today, she makes $13 an hour, and she worries about contracting the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. While most Americans are self-quarantined, Carmen spends her days on a line where the other workers are so close she described them as “stuck together.”

As of May 20, the Arkansas Department of Health had identified 107 cases of people testing positive for COVID-19 in poultry plants or facilities that service the poultry industry; on May 21, the agency reported that of 33 new cases in Yell County, a number had occurred among a group traveling together to vaccinate poultry. At least one poultry worker in the state had died of the virus, ADH public information officer Danyelle McNeill confirmed. “There have been fewer than five deaths,” she wrote in an email. (Due to privacy concerns, the agency will not release an exact number of deaths within a given group unless that figure is five or greater.)

By the end of April, COVID-19 had killed more than 20 meatpacking and food-processing workers around the country, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The report did not include any deaths in Arkansas.) The pandemic has forced meat-processing plants across the U.S. to close. Tyson’s largest pork-producing facility was among them; the Waterloo, Iowa, plant suspended operations from April 22 to May 6 after nearly 200 of its approximately 2,800 workers tested positive for the virus. The closures have raised fears of supply shortages, prompting President Trump to issue an executive order on April 28 declaring meat-processing and poultry-proARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 29

MATT WHITE

SIMMONS FOODS: In Van Buren.

30 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

cessing facilities to be “critical infrastructure” and giving them more latitude to stay open even in the face of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Arkansas is one of the largest poultry producers in the country, but none of its 33 major meat-processing plants had closed as of May 21. Springdale-based Tyson, the world’s second-largest producer of chicken, beef and pork, insists it is taking sufficient precautions in the wake of the Waterloo plant closure. In March, Tyson announced that it would relax punitive attendance policies and begin paying for workers’ COVID-19 testing. The company takes workers’ temperatures before every shift and has installed workstation dividers on production lines. It has promised to pay $120 million in “thank you” bonuses to frontline workers and truckers. Tyson has also mounted a massive PR campaign, buying a full-page ad that ran April 26 in The New York Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and other newspapers to warn of meat shortages.

The CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have issued COVID-19 guidelines for meat and poultry processors. But many Arkansas poultry workers fear it is only a matter of time before the virus sweeps through their workplaces. In April, the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network spoke to several workers who raised questions about whether their employers were focused on maintaining production at the cost of worker safety.

They described crowded conditions and a lack of communication from management about COVID-19 cases. When ANNN interviewed the same workers several weeks later, they said their plants had instituted a few changes, but they still had little confidence they were being kept safe.

In May, Carmen said managers at her plant had informed her that two individuals who work in her area had tested positive for coronavirus but refused to tell workers the names of the people. “I could get infected, you could get infected, because we don’t know, God forbid,” Carmen said. “They should say, ‘Hey, this person has coronavirus,’ but, no, they don’t say it.”

On April 22, organizers with Venceremos, a worker-led organization that advocates for the rights of poultry workers in Arkansas, brought a petition signed by more than 170 Tyson workers to one of the company’s plants in Springdale. They demanded better benefits for workers, including full paid sick leave, and greater transparency about known cases of the virus.

Since then, Tyson has announced that workers sickened with COVID-19 will receive shortterm disability wages equivalent to 90 percent of their normal pay, rather than the lower rate offered previously.

Magaly Licolli, the co-founder of Venceremos, said Tyson needs to do more, including restructuring its workstations to allow for more social distancing. “We know production will decrease in volume, but that’s how they could truly show they care for their team members more than for profits,” she wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, state health officials say they

MANY ARKANSAS POULTRY WORKERS FEAR IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THE VIRUS SWEEPS THROUGH THEIR WORKPLACES.

now hold meat processors to different standards from other factories because of the president’s recent executive order. Dr. Richard McMullen, the state environmental health director at ADH, said that workers in other industries — even other types of food-processing plants — are typically sent home to self-quarantine if they have been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus.

“In the case of meat and poultry workers, they are considered to be critical infrastructure workers, and they are allowed to continue to work in a facility provided that special precautions are taken and they have continued to be symptom-free,” McMullen said. “We want to protect them and maintain food production.” *** Until early May, “Tim” worked in maintenance at a Simmons Foods plant in Van Buren, where he made $21 an hour. In an April interview, he described an environment in which social distancing was little more than a talking point. “We’re all nervous as soon as we clock in,” he said. “We’re in a little hallway that is 3½ to 4 feet wide and we’re standing 6 to 8 inches from each other.”

After clocking in, Tim said, he would head to the floor, where he’d see line workers standing elbow to elbow. Common areas were similarly crowded. “They send us all to break at the same time. The lunchroom is packed,” he said. Tim said the plant added water to the hand soap in its restrooms, potentially diluting one of the most effective tools against the spread of the coronavirus.

When ANNN reached out to Tim again in May, he said he had just quit his job at Simmons. “You know, I got kids, and I didn’t feel that it was safe to continue working in that type of environment,” he said.

Although the plant was now screening its employees’ temperatures each day, Tim felt Simmons was taking few other serious precautions. The plant had mandated that all workers wear masks, Tim said, but each worker was limited to one mask per week. “I mean, working at a chicken processing plant, you’re getting chicken juice on you — flour, breader, all kinds of nasty stuff. … They were having us wear the same hairnets, beard nets and gloves for a week, and earplugs, which was really unsanitary, I thought,” he said.

Workers were still tightly packed on production lines, he said, because spacing them out would cause line production to slow. Tim said he wasn’t aware of anyone testing positive for coronavirus at his former plant, but he didn’t believe workers would be informed if cases appeared. “They don’t care about anybody as long as they make their money,” he said.

“We’re not essential. We’re expendable, and that is the truth,” he said.

Simmons COO David Jackson said in a statement that Simmons was “working diligently every single day to evaluate ongoing efforts, make improvements following evolving CDC and ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 31

OSHA guidance, and ensure our facilities have adequate PPE [protective personal equipment], hand sanitizing solution and other necessary supplies.”

Jackson said the company has expanded common areas and installed protective barriers between workstations. He emphasized Simmons’ provision of “affordable and convenient health care” to employees.

Any worker who has been in close contact with a COVID-19-positive worker would be notified and required to quarantine, Jackson said.

However, he did not respond directly to the question of how the company determines which employees would be notified if a co-worker is infected with the virus at a Simmons Foods plant. “Our protocol is to do all we can to protect the health and safety of our team members while they are at work. It’s also important that we protect the privacy of team members, therefore we do not announce confirmed cases,” he wrote.

The Arkansas Department of Health, which only reports numbers in congregate settings if they exceed five, had not included Simmons in its infection numbers as of May 20.

McMullen, the state health official, said the agency’s contact tracing team reaches out to anyone known to have been in contact with an infected person, based on an interview with the person. But, aside from the patient interview, “we do kind of rely on that facility to be able to identify who that worker has worked next to,” he said.

Employers are not required to inform every worker in a facility if someone tests positive for the coronavirus. Even if a person who tested positive shared a restroom or a break room with everyone else in the building, an employer might choose to only notify those workers who were stationed near the person.

“People have a right to know if they’ve been potentially exposed, and you would expect them to be notified. But if it’s a worker on an adjacent line that doesn’t have a lot of contact, that person doesn’t necessarily need to know about some other person’s personal health,” McMullen said. *** “José,” who is originally from Mexico, has worked for Tyson for years, first in Springdale and later in Rogers. He makes $14 an hour working on a line that processes chicken into chicken fingers.

In April, José said that Tyson checked the temperature of workers as they entered the plant each day, but that once he reached the line where he worked, social distancing was impossible. “The workstations are marked, and you can’t move the machines so that people are farther apart,” he said. José said he had heard of COVID-19 cases at his plant but feared management was “keeping such information from the workers,” prompting him to take his safety into his own hands and ask for unpaid leave.

“I asked if I could stay at home because they 32 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

“I AM ALWAYS AFRAID HERE BECAUSE THEY DON’T TELL THE TRUTH. THERE ARE SICK, INFECTED PEOPLE HERE, AND THEY DON’T TELL US.”

aren’t taking appropriate security measures to protect us,” he explained.

By May, José was back at work. He reported that the plant had installed plastic dividers in the lunchroom area and on some production lines and provided masks to employees. He said there were many places where social distancing was not happening, however, such as in restrooms and in hallways when clocking in.

The company had told employees that one worker had tested positive for COVID-19, José said, “but it is impossible that there is only one case because that person was working for several days until symptoms appeared.” After management confirmed the existence of the case to workers, he added, “They never closed the line. They never washed it. They never tested the other people who were there.”

Derek Burleson, a public relations manager at Tyson, said the company’s top priority is its employees’ health and well-being. In an email to ANNN he wrote, “We will not ask anyone to work in our plants unless we are confident it is safe. We will not hesitate to idle plants to enhance health and safety measures, conduct deep cleaning and sanitizing and protect our team members.” Burleson said Tyson had implemented social-distancing measures throughout its facilities and had staggered its shift start times to prevent large congregations of workers at the entrance to plants. *** “María,” who fled El Salvador as a teen, has worked for just shy of two decades at Tyson in Springdale. She has held several jobs at the plant, including breading chicken and cutting bruised or rotten pieces off the birds, and makes $13.35 an hour.

“The truth is I am very scared … I don’t feel safe and that is why I haven’t gone to work,” she said in an April interview. She told management at the time that she had nobody to care for her children that week and needed to stay at home. In reality, she did have childcare available but wanted the days off to protect herself and her family in the hope that the plant would improve its efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus by the time she returned.

When Maria was interviewed for this story again in May, she had been back at Tyson for two weeks and still felt anxious. “I am always afraid here because they don’t tell the truth.

There are sick, infected people here, and they don’t tell us,” she said.

María said management at her plant had told workers of a few cases of the coronavirus, but she felt sure there were more cases than had been acknowledged. Because she felt the lunchroom was crowded and not being disinfected properly, she decided to eat lunch in her car every day.

Like the other workers interviewed for this story, she feared retaliation for speaking to a reporter. “They made me sign a contract that said that if you have problems, that you have to talk to management, never with the media. People

BRYAN MOATS

NO ARKANSAS PLANTS CLOSED: But Tyson, which had to close its Waterloo, Iowa, plant because of an outbreak, has had at least 46 workers at its Arkansas plants test positive for the coronavirus.

ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 33

are afraid they will be fired,” she said.

Burleson denied this. “It’s not true that we have a policy requiring team members sign contracts indicating they will be terminated for speaking to media,” he said.

Licolli, the worker advocate, said Tyson was not testing workers widely enough and not sharing information about known cases. “The biggest concern right now is that the company is suppressing the information of how many workers are already sick,” she wrote in an email.

“We want Tyson to be transparent and to follow the recommendations under the CDC guidance that says workers must be notified and areas should be shut down [for] deep cleaning, and to allow workers to come back to work once it’s safe,” Licolli said.

Burleson said the company would not publicly release numbers of cases at its facilities “due to the ever-changing nature of the situation.”

“If there is a confirmed case at one of our locations, as part of our protocol and in collaboration with health officials, we notify anyone who has been in close contact with the person. We also inform team members who have not been exposed and provide information to our supervisors so they can help answer questions,” he wrote.

As of May 20, the Arkansas Department of Health reported that 46 Tyson employees in Arkansas had tested positive for COVID-19. *** McMullen, the health department official, said Trump’s April 28 executive order changed the state agency’s approach to COVID-19 cases in poultry plants. Because meat processors are now considered “critical infrastructure,” even workers who have had sustained, direct exposure to a COVID-19-positive person may be told to continue to work.

Burleson said Tyson had not changed its policies regarding plant closures as a result of the critical-infrastructure designation. “From the start, Tyson has followed the CDC and OSHA guidance and risk assessments as they have evolved to determine which team members to isolate from the workplace and when to return them to work,” he said.

Jackson, the Simmons executive, said the company requires quarantine “for any team members who have been in close contact with another team member who has tested positive.”

Burleson said Tyson had boosted pay for quarantined workers. “All employees who have tested positive will remain on sick leave until they have satisfied official health requirements outlined by the CDC for return to work, and we have increased short-term disability coverage to 90% of normal pay until June 30 to encourage team members to stay home when they are sick,” he wrote. Previously, short-term disability only provided 20 hours’ worth of pay out of a 40-hour work week.

The increase followed public pressure, including the campaign organized by Vencere34 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

mos. But, Licolli said, “they won’t necessarily inform this to workers, so I know many of them don’t know about this.” Both María and José told the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network they thought Tyson was still providing disability pay equivalent to just 50 percent of a typical work week. ***

BECAUSE MEAT PROCESSORS ARE NOW CONSIDERED “CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE,” EVEN WORKERS WHO HAVE HAD SUSTAINED, DIRECT EXPOSURE TO A COVID-19-POSITIVE PERSON MAY BE TOLD TO CONTINUE TO WORK.

Workers at meat-processing plants across the state are often immigrants and often undocumented. Immigrants who work in poultry processing in Arkansas are primarily from Mexico and Central America, but also include the Marshallese and the Burmese. A 2018 investigation of the meat-processing industry by Bloomberg Businessweek found that about a third of meat-industry workers were foreign-born noncitizens.

“Ler Pwe Paw,” a refugee from Myanmar, has worked in sanitation at Tyson in Clarksville for three years alongside several members of his family. He is one of some 300 Burmese refugees who settled in Clarksville, many of whom work at Tyson. Ler Pwe Paw and his family are Karen, an ethnic minority that has faced military attacks and forced labor and have had homes and crops destroyed in Myanmar. He came to the U.S. in 2012 with his parents, fleeing ethnic persecution.

Ler Pwe Paw said that Tyson was providing masks and checking temperatures, but that social distancing still proved a challenge. “I don’t want to get coronavirus, and I’m scared — I don’t want that,” he said, adding that he was more worried about his father, who is almost 70 and also works at Tyson. Ler Pwe Paw makes $12.75 an hour, and overall, he said, “It is a good job.”

McMullen said immigrant workers may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because of discrimination, poverty, a lack of health insurance and other factors. “Some of these people might be undocumented, and in that case some of them might be fearful to come forward. … They may be very sensitive to losing a paycheck,” he said. McMullen said he was concerned that some immigrants might feel the need to keep coming to work even if they didn’t feel well.

José has thought about quitting, but he has children and his job options are limited with so many businesses closed. Everyone he works with is scared, he said. The same day management confirmed a worker in the plant had tested positive for COVID-19, he said, “they told us that we could stay home but we wouldn’t be paid. They said we would only be paid if we got sick from the virus. It is like making fun of us and saying, ‘Get sick, and I will pay you.’ People have no other choice.”

This story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. It’s also courtesy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.

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FOOD & DRINK OPEN FOR BUSINESS: The Bernice Garden Farmers Market requires masks and social distancing.

TO MARKET, TO MARKET FARMERS SELLING AGAIN.

BY UA FAYETTEVILLE, TIMES STAFF

ARKANSAS COUNTY FARMERS’ MARKET DEWITT Opens June 1 7 a.m.-sold out Mon., Wed.; 4 -7 p.m. Fri., last Sat. of month Open for delivery and drive-by, working on implementing guidelines for limited customer interaction.

ARKANSAS COUNTY FARMERS MARKET STUTTGART

Opens June 1 7 a.m.-sold out Tue., Thu., Sat.

ARKANSAS LOCAL FOOD NETWORK LITTLE ROCK Open online, register as customer Order Sat.-Wed. in advance for Sat. pickup.

Pickup at Christ Episcopal Church and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church.

ASU REGIONAL FARMERS MARKET JONESBORO 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat., noon-5:30 p.m. Tue. Open with safety measures and modifications in place.

36 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

Farmers markets around Arkansas have responded to the coronavirus pandemic in a number of ways, including going to online ordering and curbside pickup, limiting numbers at vendor booths and implementing other measures so farmers and buyers can safely buy and sell.

With an assist from the University of Arkansas’s Division of Agricultural Cooperative Extension, we’ve compiled information on some of the many markets in Arkansas. For more information on locations and business hours, visit the markets’ Facebook pages.

BEEBE FARMERS MARKET BEEBE 4-7 p.m. Thu. Use Facebook page to contact vendor for pre-order and drive-thru pick up.

BELLA VISTA FARMERS MARKET BELLA VISTA Closed BENTONVILLE FARMERS MARKET BENTONVILLE 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. Open for drive-thru.

BERNICE GARDEN FARMERS MARKET LITTLE ROCK 11 a.m. -1 p.m. Sun. Customers must stand 6 feet apart and wear masks/bandanas, one person at a time at each vendor.

CABOT FARMERS MARKET CABOT 8 a.m.-noon Sat. Open for drive-thru, pre-ordering encouraged.

CHARLESTON FARMERS MARKET CHARLESTON Closed indefinitely CLARK COUNTY FARMERS MARKET ARKADELPHIA Opening TBA CONWAY FARMERS MARKET CONWAY 7 a.m.-noon Sat. CROSS COUNTY FARMERS MARKET WYNNE Opens June 1 7-11 a.m.

Following social distancing practices and as much “hands off” transaction practice as possible.

DARDANELLE FARMERS MARKET DARDANELLE Closed

Stay safe, stay strong, stay always a Rocket!

Congratulations to the Catholic High School Class of 2020 (Our 90th Graduating Class)

“Remember the Lord in all that you do, and He will show you the right way.”

Proverbs 3:6

s CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS

6300 Father Tribou St., Little Rock, Arkansas 72205

(501) 664-3939 • www.lrchs.org 38 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

YEARS STRONG

DTR MARKET ROGERS Opens June 6 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. See market guidelines on Facebook for safety measures that will be implemented.

EUREKA SPRINGS FARMERS MARKET EUREKA SPRINGS

8 a.m.-1 p.m. Thu. Vendors use a drop-box or noncash payment so shoppers are asked to bring small bills. Vendors will have hand sanitizer available, shoppers are encouraged to stand 6 feet apart.

FARMERS MARKET AT MAD EL DORADO Opening TBA FAYETTEVILLE FARMERS MARKET FAYETTEVILLE 7-8 a.m. (seniors only) and 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. Pre-order available for pick-up and delivery.

FISHTOWN FARMERS MARKET LONOKE Opening June 20, details to come FORT SMITH FARMERS MARKET FORT SMITH

7 a.m.-noon Sat. Open for socially distanced walk-up. Shoppers are encouraged to wash hands, wear masks and stand 6 feet apart.

GATEWAY FARMERS MARKET TEXARKANA

7 a.m.-noon Tue., Thu., Sat. Open for walk-up with guidelines. Lines will be marked in 6-ft. increments, vendors will wear masks, and public restrooms are closed.

The Catholic High School Difference Integrity • Duty • Faith

Now Accepting Applications For The

2020-2021 School Year Learn more about the Catholic High tradition of achievement and how 90 years of brotherhood can change lives at LRCHS.org.

GREEN MARKET OF HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE Closed indefinitely.

HARRISON FARMERS MARKET HARRISON Tentatively opening in June 7 a.m.-noon Sat., 3-6 p.m. Tue. HOT SPRINGS FARMERS AND ARTISANS MARKET HOT SPRINGS 7 a.m.-noon Sat. Open for food vendors only. Individuals should follow designated pedestrian areas, wear masks, sanitize hands and maintain 6 feet of distance.

Items will be bagged for shoppers.

HOWARD COUNTY FARMERS MARKET NASHVILLE

3-7 p.m. Mon., 7-11 a.m. Sat. Drive-thru only.

6300 Father Tribou St. | Little Rock, AR (501) 664-3939 | LRCHS.org

ARKANSASTIMES.COM

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BRIAN CHILSON

BARNHILL STRAWBERRIES: Sold at Cabot Farmers Market, Fishtown Farmers Market (Lonoke), the Bernice Farmers Garden and at its Lonoke farm.

HILLCREST FARMERS MARKET Opening TBA Will space vendors and shoppers.

JACKSONVILLE FARMERS MARKET JACKSONVILLE 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. JASPER FARMERS MARKET JASPER 9 a.m.-noon Wed., 3-6 p.m. Fri. Food vendors only. Vendors will be at least 10 feet apart and will have masks and sanitizer on the tables.

JOHNSON COUNTY COMMUNITY FARMERS MARKET CLARKSVILLE Order online at foothillsmarket.locallygrown.net.

LITTLE ROCK FARMERS MARKET LITTLE ROCK Opening TBA Encouraging shoppers to order directly from vendors.

MAIN STREET SEARCY FARMERS MARKET SEARCY 8 a.m.-noon Sat. Open under ADH guidelines.

ME AND MCGEHEE NORTH LITTLE ROCK

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sun. Shoppers must wear masks.

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NANA’S ORGANIX FARMERS MARKET NORTH LITTLE ROCK 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. Curbside pick-up or delivery.

PARAGOULD FARMERS MARKET PARAGOULD Closed Encouraging shoppers to order directly from vendors.

PIGGOTT FARMERS MARKET PIGGOTT

7 a.m.-1 p.m. Fri. POPE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET RUSSELLVILLE

4-7 p.m. Tue., 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat.

RUSSELLVILLE COMMUNITY MARKET RUSSELLVILLE Order online at russellville.locallygrown.net from noon Fri. until 10 p.m. Sun., pick-up 4-8 p.m.

Tue. Workers wear masks and gloves to bring deliveries to cars. Market encourages people to pay with exact change or personal check. If they must use a card to pay, market cleans credit card device with Lysol wipes in between customers.

SARACEN LANDING FARMERS MARKET PINE BLUFF

Opens June 3

SHERIDAN FARMERS MARKET SHERIDAN

8 a.m.-noon, Sat.

SILOAM SPRINGS FARMERS MARKET SILOAM SPRINGS Order online at siloamsprings.locallygrown.net for pick-up 9-11 a.m. Sat. SPRINGDALE FARMERS’ MARKET AT THE JONES CENTER SPRINGDALE Order online at springdale.locallygrown.net for pick-up Sat. morning.

ST. JOSEPH FARM STAND NORTH LITTLE ROCK

Order online at stjosephcenter.square.site for Fri. afternoon pick-up.

THE MARKET AT MCCRORY MCCRORY Opens June 13 8 a.m.-noon second Sat. VAN BUREN “OUR FARMERS MARKET” VAN BUREN Opening TBA 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Wed. and Sat. Following all CDC guidelines and encourage pre-ordering but will accommodate drive-up customers as much as possible.

VILONIA FARMERS MARKET VILONIA 8 a.m.-noon Thu. and Sat. WESTOVER HILLS FARMERS MARKET LITTLE ROCK Closed Encouraging customers to order directly from vendors.

WHITE WATER TAVERN MARKET LITTLE ROCK 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. One person at a booth at a time, those in line asked to keep safe distance away from other shoppers.

EAT LOCAL

Enjoy these favorite local restaurants and check out what they’re offering for to-go, pick-up and delivery!

Doe’s Place, Hideaway Pizza, Baja Grill in Benton, Brave New Restaurant, Petit & Keet and Taziki’s locations are now open with 30 percent seating capacity including their patio areas. Please remember to follow these restaurants’ guidelines. Wear your masks! đ&#x;˜ƒ Call or check restaurants’ social media for updates and changes.

Need to update your customers?

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SEE WHAT’S COOKIN’

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DRIVE THRU WINDOW AVAILABLE! Place Your Order And Come See Us Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-8pm

BAJA GRILL | THE HEIGHTS 5923 Kavanaugh Blvd • 501.722.8920 BAJA GRILL | DOWNTOWN BENTON Dining Room Now Open 224 W. South Street • 501.680.7109 EatBajaGrill.com

By the Benton location, can you put “ Dining Room Now Open

MISSING YOUR FAVORITE, FRIENDLY SERVERS??

We’re still here inside and curbside working safely, sanitarily and sometimes sanely to keep your Trio’s fix coming!

Check out our simple, no-hassle online takeout ordering system!

Look for discount beer and wine specials

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKES...ARE IN! 42 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

8201 Cantrell Road Little Rock Pavilion in the Park 501.221.3330 | www.TriosRestaurant.com

CURBSI DE, DELI VERY, DI NEI N, OUTDOORSEATI NG

p e t i t a n d k e e t . c o m 5 01 3 1 9 7 6 7 5

Open for curbside, carryout and delivery!

Family packs, lunch specials and regular menu are available.

Open from 11am to 2:45pm and 5pm to 10pm every day.

“Stay blessed and stay safe” – Sami Lal and team

of India Star✺ 301 N Shackleford Rd. Little Rock, AR 72211 501-227-9900 lrstarofindia.com

CURBSI DEPI CKUP ,DELI VERY,DI NEI N atal l6l oc at i onsi nCent r alAr kans as DRI VETHRUAVAI LABLE att heHWY10/ T ayl orLoop,Gat eway/ Bas sPr o, andConwayLoc at i ons Downl oadt heT az i ki ' sApporpl ac eyouror deratT az i ki s . c om ARKANSASTIMES.COM

JUNE 2020 43

NOW OFFERING CURBSIDE TAKEOUT AND DELIVERY! TUESDAY - SUNDAY 11AM - 8PM Missing your farm-to-table fix?

TRY THE ROOT’S FARM-TO-TAKEOUT! NOW OFFERING LOCAL GROCERIES! Stop by the Root and pick up farm-fresh groceries from the farmers and producers we buy from: eggs, meat, spring mix, strawberries, and more!

The Root is now offering curbside takeout and delivery

(501) 313-5413

Curbside pickup food & beer (501) 246-5094

1220 S. Main St. Downtown Little Rock www.mockingbirdlr.com @mockingbirdbarandtacos

44 JUNE 2020

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HOURS OF OPERATION: Tuesday - Sunday 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Groceries available all day Breakfast available 8 - 11 am Lunch available 11 am - 2 pm Dinner available 5 - 8 pm

GIVE US A CALL TO PLACE YOUR ORDER: (501) 414-0423 Thank you, Little Rock, for your amazing support and generosity thus far!!

We will all get through this!

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FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM FOR DAILY UPDATES!

CALL FOR CURBSIDE PICK UP OR DELIVERY AND SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RESTAURANTS.

PATIO WEATHER IS HERE!

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JUNE 2020 45

CULTURE

KAT WILSON

PORTRAYING THE SELF: Art instructor Eve Smith poses with her art supplies and pieces of inspiration.

‘BE THE LIGHT’: Of his 2017 work,”Illumination,” Adewumi said, “If you want to be big, or you want to be the light, you’re the only person stopping yourself.”

46 JUNE 2020

ARKANSAS TIMES

THRONES FOR THE STOIC KAT WILSON’S QUARANTINE HABITATS REFRAME SELF-PORTRAITURE AND IDENTITY.

BY TARA STICKLEY

S

elf-portraits were rare before the Renaissance, that notorious period of burgeoning humanism that renewed the belief that self-discovery was a worthwhile pursuit. Before that time, artists were generally considered to be mere craftsmen, and anyone not of royal descent, in possession of extreme wealth, or essential to the religious narrative was considered unworthy of having their likeness made. In the wake of the Renaissance, artists began painting their own reflections, partly in order to elevate their social standing nearer to those who, for so long, had been the only ones to possess images of themselves.

Since then, self-portraiture has been tied to the power of self-invention.

The access and aesthetics have evolved through technological and social revolutions, but self-portraiture remains a potent way to explore identity, role play, and affirm or defy expectations about who one should be. The effervescent art of Kat Wilson is at play with this history and mode of portraying the self.

Wilson was born in Fort Smith and is based in Fayetteville, where she is heading a sprawling interactive artwork from the quarantine. Her Quarantine Habitats project extends the invitation to anyone with a camera to view themselves in a new light through the composition of a self-portrait in an intimate space. Wilson’s prompt for the project is this: “If someone saw your photo a hundred years from now, what would they know about you and about this time from seeing your habitat?” In this period of isolation and reflection, Wilson invites us to understand ourselves more deeply through an art form whose history spans the virtuosity of the Renaissance-era trailblazers, like Raphael and Parmigianino, and the contoured selfies of Instagram. ****

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‘DOUBLESIDED’: As this piece suggests, Adewumi, now a resident of rural Arkansas, maintains a connection to his native Nigeria through his art.

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A SENSE OF PLACE: Shannon, a writer and yoga instructor, poses with her children in Fort Smith.

Little Rock School District 2020 ViPS Award Nominees & Winners*

The composition of your Quarantine Habitats portraits includes a triangular configuration, dramatic lighting and a heroic stance. In your TED Talk, you spoke about the single, dramatic source of light in Caravaggio’s work and the iconography of Renaissance paintings. Why did you choose these elements as the essential facets of Habitats?

I struggled a lot in the late ’90s/early 2000s when I was in undergrad — everybody was such brats about photography, like trying to always diss it and say it wasn’t art. … My painter guy friends that are older (and still seduce their students, you know what I’m saying?) … none of my painter guy friends congratulated me when I got into Crystal Bridges [Museum of American Art]. They just totally write off my photographic work. … I was like, “I’m going to elevate photography so much that you will never be able to say that to me again.” ...

The iconography really comes from how everyone says people look at art for 8 seconds. … I wanted people to look at my work. I wanted them to study it and [to] want to get to know the sitters. Then the lighting — in art history, you know, that’s the first thing we learn about Caravaggio — his dramatic lighting and just how beautiful it is. And I just knew it would translate well in photography.

Are you preparing for an exhibition, or online show, right now?

The big thing I had going on was the Selfie Throne. I had several Selfie Thrones. I’m about to do one for 21c [Museum Hotel in Bentonville] for Gay Pride … and everything’s been canceled.

Selfie Thrones is what I really was working on before quarantine. … It’s a lot like Habitats. It’s like Habitats’ sister that wants to party.

In your artist statement, you say you’re seeking to help participants “renegotiate their sense of place during a complicated time.” How does self-portraiture play into a renegotiation of one’s sense of place?

You know how you feel when you go through your stuff and you haven’t seen it in forever? … You know, like an incense you smell, and it takes you back to your college dorm? I just felt like going through our stuff and thinking about our life before … would kind of be like therapy. It could also be painful, but at least you’re working through it. It’s just like revisiting your life.

Natasha Fennell First Church of the Nazarene Anna Kay Frueauff * Gandolfo’s Deli – Mukesh Patel Agnolia Gay Geyer Springs Baptist Church * Lou Graham Kristopher Guy * Latonya Hall Hardy Funeral Home, Inc Allison and Jeff Hatfield Karen Ryall * Mary Jo Heye * 2020 Jane Mendel Award Highland Valley UMC Brandon Hill Sylvia Amsler Hillcrest Merchants Association Dr. FranSha Anderson * Historic Arkansas Museum Anthony Smith Agency Dr. Natalia Hodge, Orthodontist Arkansas Arts Center * Darlene Hogancamp Peter Astifan William Hogg Keeling Baker * Tamela Holmes * Josh Bazyk Tonya Hooks * Katena Berkley Bob Hope Anthony Blackwell * Amy Howard Adam Bowles Judith Humphries Melissa Brown Immanuel Baptist Church * Eric Bryant * Emma Jackson Kim Burleson Josepa Jackson * Kelly Calkins Tanya James Cammack Village Police * Bess Kerby Debbie Capps Chicot Counselor Care Team Chiquita Lasiter Sybil Leeper * Ann Childs * Little Rock Rotary Club 99 * Christ Episcopal Church Nell Matthews * Debbie Coates Edna McEwen Cost Plus Furniture Alison Metzler Dash Heating & Air Scott Morgan Norman Dednam Kaleah Murry * Matthew Diffey * Sophie Navin Craig Easter * Sara Norwood Patrica Farnsworth *

Salute! www.ViPSLRSD.org

*

Operation Warm Project - * Firefighter Local 34 / Entergy Sara Norwood Otter Creek Assembly of God Otter Creek Community Church Tiffany Payan Andre Pendleton State Farm Donna Phillips Doris Rigsby Kathy Robinson Rockefeller ECC PTA Jennifer Ronnel Sanctuary of Praise Church Lori Schaffhauser Second Baptist Church (on Bowman Road) Holly Shields * Sonic (Cantrell at Riverdale) St. John Missionary Baptist Garrick St. Pierre * Doris Starlard LaTerkia Sullivan The Mercy Church Devynne Thomas Sam Triplett * Verizon Digital Promise Dr. Wendy Ward Joe Welch Michael White Victor Williams Keena Williams * Bettye Williamson Joyce Willingham Judy Wilson-Murray Perrylyn Wilson-Robinson Myia Woods Amber Wright Anthony Wyrick Steven Young

Volunteers in Public Schools

447-ViPS

*

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JUNE 2020 49

COMPOSED: Debbie Moulton (left) poses in a shawl in her Fort Smith home. Coloradan Frank Kraus (right), poses with beer cans and bottles, providing a literal example of the triangular composition Wilson encourages her Quarantine Habitats participants to use.

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JUNE 2020 51

HABITATS MAKE ME FEEL NOT ALONE.

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SURROUNDED BY STUFF: Jennifer Lowrey poses with her family, human and otherwise.

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Sort of like establishing a personal history through the objects in your home?

Yeah, it’s working though that, as painful or glorious as it is. It’s also an art project [that’s] keeping people busy. … This is a lonely time — even if you have a family — in a lot of ways.

People are dying alone because they won’t let families in [the hospitals]. My wife and I were scared to death because we were told by our midwife that we might not be able to let me in the room when she’s giving birth. Luckily, we’re in a birthing center, so I will [be able to go] as of now. Can you imagine giving birth alone? ...

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We’re dying alone; we’re suffering alone, and Habitats make me feel not alone. Everyday I get one, and I get to see inside somebody’s quarantine — inside their home and their life, and it definitely makes me feel not alone.

Can you talk about the evolution of the Habitats project to #SelfieThrones to the Quarantine Habitats self-portraiture? Was it organic?

I see Habitats as thrones; I always have in a lot of ways. Thrones with objects, and we sit stoic and proud. … I want my sitters to sit stoically. … [Photographer of Appalachian families] Shelby Lee Adams, in his photos, people don’t necessarily look proud of who they are, and they’re mostly people with lower incomes. My Habitats aren’t all lower-income people — most of the lower-income people are my family members. The stoicness comes from “we’re proud of our stuff; we’re proud of who we are.”

In the Renaissance, only God, Mary, kings and queens got their portraits done. So I just wanted to elevate the portraiture [of Habitats] in that way.

I’d been planning my next move for the 20-year anniversary of the first Habitats in 2024, then all of the sudden it felt like the world was ending. … I’m completely freaked out, and I immediately was like, “everybody’s going to be quarantined?”

Everybody just needs to make Quarantine Habitats. I think the same day my wife came by and said, “You know you’ve got to do something for everybody; you’ve got to entertain everybody somehow,” and I was like, “already got it!” And here we are.

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SIGN OF CORONAVIRUS TIMES: Fayetteville artist Olivia Trimble poses with her sign-making tools, fonts and flora.

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A traditional Pharmacy with Eclectic Gifts Serving Little Rock since 1922 2801 Kavanaugh Little Rock 501.663.4131

You’ve said that it’s harder to be a woman in the art world and that women need to wear emotional armor in the current cultural climate.

Part of the emotional suit of armor in the Warrior Women series was something you called the “revenge titty.” Why was that part of the iconography of the series?

My “revenge titty” was really spurred by … how it felt during the Kavanaugh trial … and then there were all of these rape cases that were getting quashed here … and I’m sick of sitting there being a Southern girl who’s been so sweet all these years … about my opinion .. and when all of that dropped, I was like “I’m not doing it anymore. Why don’t you guys join me, and let’s talk about what we’ve gone through because of being a woman.” And so, I just wanted to hear women’s stories and let them get it out. And why put a titty out? Remember in “Braveheart” when they all pull up their kilts and they’re about to go to battle? To me, it’s intimidation before battle.

“Look what I got. Let’s do this. Tits out. Let’s fight.”

What’s the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait?

At this moment, I think selfies and self-portraits are the same. The self-portrait just seems more momentous than the selfie because of a long history of exclusion in art and the lack of resources in photography. Once only the chemist and chemistry-curious artists were able to take self-portraits. The first self-portrait/ selfie was taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist, and oddly enough, he was extremely handsome. Yes, Kodak invented the roll film in the late 1800s, making photography more accessible, but still, there were money constraints, and the logistics were much harder on a bulky sealed box. Perhaps the selfie is the technological offspring of the self-portrait.

Selfies’ inclusivity, user-friendliness, effortless output, access to a broader audience (a larger audience than any art opening could provide) has given the “selfie” the ol’ pop-culture complex.

Photography itself has been the central bearer of historical narrative over the past 180 or so years.

How will the selfie add to history with so many records of so many moments? Awwww — the “selfie” so young, it just got its first tattoo. The old “self-portrait” carries a leather case and smells like pipe tobacco.

Find the full version of this interview at arktimes. com.

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JUNE 2020 55

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TURN, TURN, TURN

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Royce Ferguson, 34, is an American living in London, currently between jobs. He says one perk of residing in Europe is that the international edition of The New York Times prints both the Saturday and Sunday puzzles on Saturday, “enabling a regular Saturday crossword binge.” He got the idea for this puzzle while on holiday in Switzerland, a nation known for its 47-Acrosses. This is Royce’s crossword debut. — W.S.

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BY ROYCE FERGUSON / EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ

No. 0503

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ACROSS 33 1 1969 hit for Neil Diamond 6 Big dipper?

40 41 42 43 44 9 Event at a convention center 47 48 13 Southern bread 17 Risk maker 51 52 19 What a plastic bag might come with, nowadays 56 57 20 Comics mutant 21 Specks of dust 61 22 Ad label in red and white 24 What Santa does before Christmas 67 68 69 70 71 26 They do dos 77 78 27 Tempe sch.

28 Invites out for 82 83 84 29 [Let it stand] 30 Pop singer Ora 87 31 Heats 90 91 92 93 33 Bête noire 34 Italian pal 95 96 35 Burning 40 Some of the American heartland 102 103 104 105 106 44 Belief in Buddhism and Hinduism 45 Certain make-your-own-entree 109 110 station 47 With 86-Across, fixation problem 112 113 suggested by this puzzle’s theme 48 One hanging around the yard 116 117 50 Statement that may precede ‘‘Wish me luck!’’

51 Per ____ 95 It fits a big frame, for short 4 Who said: ‘‘No good movie is too long. No bad movie is 52 Arc on a musical score 97 1990s Nickelodeon show short enough’’ about a preteen boy 53 Go back (on) 5 Dos más uno 98 Former Saudi king 55 British ending 6 Worth mentioning 102 Peninsula with seven 56 Conventional countries 7 Subsidiary of CVS Health 59 Deal with 106 Hosp. area 8 Races in place 60 Suffix with block 107 What torcedores can 9 Ken Griffey Jr. or Ichiro skillfully do Suzuki 61 China’s Zhou ____ 109 Hierarchical systems, so 10 Short winter days?

62 Hound to speak 11 Alan who directed ‘‘All the 64 Some bolt holders President’s Men’’ 111 It may spit venom 67 Arroz ____ cubana (Cuban-style 112 News items often written 12 Any nonzero number raised rice) in advance to the power of zero 70 Demerit 113 Beget 13 Florida county named for a 72 Once-ubiquitous electronics president 114 Nasdaq, e.g.: Abbr. outlets 14 Los Angeles’s ____ College 115 Things that can bounce 77 A hot one can burn you of Art and Design 116 Bone connected to the 78 Stars in western movies, e.g.

15 Where talk is cheep? wrist 80 ‘‘That’s my foot!!!’’

16 This: Sp. 117 Founding member of the 81 Son of George and Jane Jetson U.N. Security Council, for 18 Way to run someone out of short town, idiomatically 82 Verbal concession 118 Humanities dept.

21 Heavy defeat 84 Start to pay attention 119 Like the entire 290-page 23 QB-protecting group, for 86 See 47-Across Georges Perec novel ‘‘A short 87 Sea that Jesus is said to have Void,’’ curiously enough 25 Cousin of cream cheese walked on 31 Not outstanding 88 Beloved members of the family DOWN 32 Aware 89 Having a fix 1 Bygone kings 33 German city on the Weser 90 South American barbecue 2 Attended 34 Try to see if anyone is 91 Rather eccentric home, maybe 3 Nail-polish brand 94 D.C. types 36 Adversary 56 JUNE 2020

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37 Island famous for its nightlife 38 Was livid 39 Slowly disappear 40 Orgs. running drives for school supplies 41 Little piggy 42 Sullivan who taught Helen Keller 43 Temper 44 Enlist again 46 Early king of Athens, in Greek myth 48 Magical rides 49 No longer working: Abbr.

52 Sedate state 54 State 57 Gerontologist’s study 58 The driving force behind this puzzle?

63 Cheerfulness: Var. 65 Nonbinary pronoun 66 A dip, or a series of steps 67 Spanish girlfriend 68 Things once tossed in the Trevi Fountain 69 It stops at Union and Penn Stations 71 Understand 73 Agnus ____ (prayers) 74 Banned aid?

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75 Lead-in to Aid 76‘ ‘Auld Lang ____’’ 78 Gambler’s alternative to Las Vegas, NV, or Atlantic City, NJ 79 One with special I.T. privileges 83 Throwing away 85 Pond critter 86 Latin version of the Bible 89 Doesn’t give a hoot, colloquially 92 Applebee’s competitor 93 Kitchen gadgets 94 System of government 96 ____ dog 97 Loading areas 98 Championship 99 Texas A&M athlete 100 Lugs 101 Add oil and vinegar to, say 102 Bit of chemistry 103 Legal cover?

104 Plugging away 105 Testing stage 107 Ratchet (up) 108 Command to a dog 110 Buckeyes’ sch.

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WE SPEAK SPANISH. DO YOU NEED HELP? Our sister paper El Latino is Arkansas’s only weekly – audited Spanish language newspaper.

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JUNE 2020 57

THE OBSERVER

ORDER UP

S

tuck as we are inside the hermetically sealed bubble of The Observatory, The Observer has been thinking a lot about restaurants recently. Mostly it’s about which ones of them we’re going to make a pig of ourselves in once the Invisible Enemy is vanquished and we can all get back to some semblance of normal. And, yeah, we know that might be awhile.

Your Old Pal reviewed restaurants for 16 years for the mighty Arkansas Times, including one joint situated aboard a floating barge on the North Little Rock side of the river where the food was vastly improved once the place sank maybe two months after we did our best to enjoy a meal there. Mostly, we did all the dives, catfish places, burger joints and greasy spoons.

The more well-heeled folks always snatched up the white-tablecloth places with steaks, shrimp cocktails, wine lists and drinks with little umbrellas in ’em.

Given that, we’ve learned a thing or three about Arkansas restaurants, even if we’ve never donned a single hairnet nor spent one moment in a restaurant kitchen: 1) The quality of the food at a restaurant is almost always directly correlated to the number of dishes it has on the menu. It’s entirely possible to do 10 dishes to a uniform level of deliciousness. It is absolutely impossible to do 35 dishes with the same uniform level of deliciousness.

The best place we ever reviewed in this mortal life — the late, great Georgetown One Stop on the White River — was so pure of mission that there was no menu. The waitress simply asked: 58 JUNE 2020

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“Y’all ready for some fish?” and that was what you got, served with raw onion and pickled green tomatoes, in portions so big it felt like you needed a double-wide wheelbarrow to haul you outta there when you were done. And the Lord saw that it was good, and smiled upon it.

2) A good eatery springs for good, solid silverware, coffee cups and plates. Not the Grand Duchess Pattern with the gold ivy leaves, but definitely stuff with some weight to it. It’s worth it, and people notice. Cloth napkins, however, are usually overkill. Also, when The Observer was reviewing, unless it was a barbecue shack or soul food joint where that “church dinner” feel was kind of part of the atmosphere, if somebody brought a paper plate or a plastic fork to our table at a sit-down restaurant, that was written in our mental “CONS” column with a fat black magic marker, and it took a bean-pot full of “PROS” to make up for it. Not only is throwaway cutlery cheap, it’s wasteful and insulting.

Hire a dishwasher, pal.

3) Re the waitstaff: Don’t call us “Hon,” “Shug,” “Honey,” “Darling” or any of the other stuff that might weasel a few extra bucks outta the horny truckers just off the interstate. It’s not 1958 and you are not Flo from the TV show “Alice.” Be professional. NOTE: Actual truck stop waitresses who look like they’ve been slinging hash since “Alice” was on the air are exempt.

The Observer will gladly kiss their grits. They’ve earned it.

4) The ambiance of an old-timey joint where the walls are hung with antique political bumper stickers, old license plates and photos

of fish caught from a local river back in 1963 cannot be faked, and it’s just embarrassing when people try.

5) The tip for the waiter who comes up and asks, “Everything tasting OK?” immediately after The Observer has just taken a big bite of mashed potatoes and gravy instantly goes from 20 percent to 10 percent.

6) Catfish places in the boondocks are always delicious. For great barbecue, though, you usually gotta go to town. Not always, but usually.

7) Burgers from places that only offer picnic tables for seating are also uniformly good.

Bonus points if the menu is a pegboard surrounded by colored light bulbs and looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1968. If the only way to order is either by phone or through a tiny sliding window with a screen, we’ll be there so often that we’ll know the fry cook on a first-name basis.

8) At breakfast, we need both the strawberry jam AND the grape jelly. And we’re judging your biscuits on heft, temperature and moistness.

Harshly.

9) Buffets never don’t suck. The question, as always, is how much terribleness are you willing to accept in exchange for a potentially infinite amount of food for one money?

10) We prefer no music at all, but if you must play music, any song that includes the word “Jesus” is a sure-fire way to make The Observer put a cigarette butt in our tater salad and walk. And no, we don’t care if it’s Sunday. If you love the Lord that much, why ain’t you in church?

A CALL FOR ARKANSAS ILLUSTRATORS, ARTISTS AND CREATIVE FOLKS: Please help us get the word out and forward this to your artist and illustrator friends and colleagues.

The Arkansas Times wants to join with artists in an effort that will make money for both of us during the tough economic times inflicted on us by the COVID-19 crisis. Our idea: to collaborate on The Arkansas Coloring Book. It won’t make either of us rich, but it will make a tiny bit of money and give artists some publicity.

Why a coloring book? Because we’re staying home more and bored. Because we need to distract our kids. Because for adults, coloring can be a form of meditation. Some adults will not want to stay within the lines. (Those will mostly be Arkansas Times readers.) And 100 years from now, people will look back at the vintage books they find in the attic and exclaim, “Main Street looked like that?!” Or “I wonder where that sculpture was?!”

Or “Weren’t these artists fantastic!” Or “I wonder why Granny didn’t stay in the lines?”

HERE’S HOW IT WILL WORK:

The Arkansas Coloring Book will be Arkansas-themed. You decide the subject of the illustration you want to submit. Make it in black and white so an adult or kid can color it. You can make it a single illustration, a cartoon panel, a scenic location, a local landmark, it’s up to you. You can relate it to the quarantine if you like. But in some way connect and represent your hometown or an Arkansas theme. The Arkansas Times staff will select the illustrations for the book, which will include 30 drawings.

We will promote The Arkansas Coloring Book on arktimes.com (700,000 unique monthly visitors), in our publications (the Arkansas Times magazine, Savvy Kids magazine, Arkansas Wild and Bike Arkansas), on Facebook (50,000-plus followers) and Instagram. Lots of promotion, in other words.

We will split revenue (minus hard expenses) 50-50 between the Arkansas Times and the artists. Several Arkansas-owned bookstores and gift shops have expressed an interest in the book and in those cases, we will split the wholesale price. We will publish in July and send you a check monthly for your share. We think we can sell the book as a fundraiser for about $30 but we are still working on the pricing.

In these tough times, we’ve seen the many ways people have reached out to help those who are struggling economically. We believe that includes local, independent journalism and Arkansas artists helping to create this unique piece of Arkansiana.

TAKE PART IN THE ARKANSAS COLORING BOOK, COMING IN JULY

HOW TO ENTER:

Please email your illustration (black and white only) in an EPS or PDF file to mandykeener@arktimes.com.

ENTRY DEADLINE IS 5 P.M. FRIDAY, JUNE 30TH. The book will feature your illustration on a 8-by-10-inch page.

Please provide the name you would like to have as credit, plus your website, twitter handle, Instagram handle and anything else you would like to include for folks to reach you. Please also send a three- or four-sentence sentence bio of yourself along with a photo if possible for our contributor page. Be sure and include your address so we can mail you the monthly check.

MANY THANKS! 501. 492.3994 arkansastimes.com

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