RECIPES FROM LOCAL CHEFS | BOONEVILLE’S SOAP STARS | EDIBLE MEDICAL MARIJUANA
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DECEMBER 2020
A YEAR OF ASA SPINNIN’ AND GRINNIN’ THE BEST AND WORST OF ARKANSAS 2020. BY DAVID KOON
PLUS! SAVVYKIDS: FAMILY GIVING
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DECEMBER 2020
KARA BIBB
THE HOLIDAY MENU: Get cooking with recipes for stuffed meat pies and other holiday goodies from local chefs.
FEATURES 16 OUR ANNUAL BEST AND WORST
A terrible 2020 left much to be desired, but there were some high points, too. By David Koon
43 SPECIAL AD SECTION: GIVING BACK
32 CLEANING UP
A Booneville couple enjoys international success with their shave soap business. By Lindsey Millar
9 THE FRONT
The Inconsequential News Quiz: Our Long National Nightmare Edition
11 THE TO-DO LIST
Wrap up Christmas with paper from Black Paper Party, take “Refuge” in art and other suggestions.
4 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
How you can help area nonprofits and the people they serve.
12 NEWS & POLITICS
48 CULTURE
Q&A with poet Geffrey Davis.
65 CANNABIZ
By Ernest Dumas
By Stephanie Smittle.
By Griffin Coop
36 SAVVY KIDS
52 FOOD AND DRINK
74 THE OBSERVER
Donald Trump, a loser now and forever.
News & Notes: Garvan Gardens offers a daytime Holiday Lights. Feature: Get the family in the spirit of giving. A Real Go-Getter: UCA student Ryan Taneja.
Local chefs share favorite holiday recipes.
Edibles gaining market share.
By Rhett Brinkley ON THE COVER: Illustration by Phillip Rex Huddleston.
Tune in to AR PBS Sports for the 2020 2A-7A
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL STATE FINALS broadcast live on Arkansas PBS beginning Dec. 5
Arkansas PBS is proud to partner with the Arkansas Activities Association to broadcast the championship games statewide. Games will be available to watch online at myarkansaspbs.org/sports after broadcast. CLASS 7A — NOON, DEC. 5 CLASS 6A — 6:30 p.m., DEC. 5 CLASS 5A — NOON, DEC. 12 CLASS 2A — 6:30 p.m., DEC. 12 CLASS 4A — NOON, DEC. 19 CLASS 3A — 6:30 p.m., DEC. 19 Some weekend programming will be preempted during the broadcast of state championship games. An up-to-date schedule with options for email reminders and calendar syncing is available at myarkansaspbs.org/schedule. Text ARPBSSports to 313131 for updates delivered right to your phone. Photos from the games can be found at flickr.com/arkansaspbs Download the Engage Arkansas PBS App to follow scores, join the conversation and more.
myarkansaspbs.org/sports
PUBLISHER Alan Leveritt EDITOR Lindsey Millar CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mandy Keener
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Great Things Things Great Great Things Happening at LRSD LRSD Great Things Happening at Happening Happening at at LRSD LRSD
SENIOR EDITOR Max Brantley MANAGING EDITOR Leslie Newell Peacock ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Stephanie Smittle ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rhett Brinkley CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mara Leveritt PHOTOGRAPHER Brian Chilson
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2020-2021 SCHOOL SCHOOL YEAR YEAR 2020-2021 2020-2021 SCHOOL YEAR Take advantage of unique and innovative educational opportunities by enrolling Take advantage of unique and innovative educational opportunities by enrolling 2020-2021 SCHOOL YEAR in one of LRSD’s schoolsand during Open Enrollment, 30 - Dec. 11, 2020. Take advantage of unique innovative educationalNov. opportunities by enrolling in one of LRSD’s schoolsand during Open Enrollment, 30 - Dec. 11, 2020. Take advantage of unique innovative educationalNov. opportunities by enrolling You can of enroll your childduring in pre-Kindergarten Kindergarten, in one LRSD’s schools Open Enrollment,orNov. 30 - Dec. 11, sign 2020.up You can of enroll your childduring in pre-Kindergarten Kindergarten, in one LRSD’s schools Open Enrollment,orNov. 30 - Dec. 11, sign 2020.up for magnet transfer to a new school or Kindergarten, transfer from another Youacan enrollschool, your child in pre-Kindergarten sign up for a magnet school, transfer to a new school or transfer from another You can enroll your child in pre-Kindergarten Kindergarten, sign up districttransfer into thetoLRSD during this for a magnet school, a new school or period. transfer from another districttransfer into thetoLRSD during this for a magnet school, a new school or period. transfer from another district into the LRSD during this period. district into the LRSD during this period.
IT DIRECTOR Robert Curfman CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Jackson Gladden CONTROLLER Weldon Wilson BILLING/COLLECTIONS Charlotte Key PRODUCTION MANAGER Ira Hocut (1954-2009)
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How to to Register Register How to To register a student, How you can use the Register online student registration gateway at to Register To registration.lrsd.org register a student, How youorcan use the online student registration contact the student registration officesgateway below: at To register a student, you can use the online student registration gateway at contact theonline student registration officesgateway below: To registration.lrsd.org register a student, youor use the student registration registration.lrsd.org orcan contact the student registration offices below: at K-12 Students: LRSD Student Registration Office registration.lrsd.org or contact the student registration offices below: K-12 Students: Registration Office 501 ShermanLRSD St. (atStudent Capitol Ave.) • 447-2950 K-12 Students: LRSD Student Registration Office 501 ShermanLRSD St. (at Capitol Ave.) • 447-2950 K-12 Students: Registration Office 501 Sherman St. (atStudent Capitol Ave.) • 447-2950 Pre-K 501 Students: Geyer Center Sherman St. (atSprings CapitolEarly Ave.)Childhood • 447-2950 Pre-K Students: Springs Childhood Center 5240 Geyer Mabelvale Pike Early • 447-4800 Pre-K Students: Geyer Springs Early Childhood Center 5240 Geyer Mabelvale Pike Early • 447-4800 Students: Springs Childhood Center * Pre-K Dates subject to change visit LRSD.org forPike calendar Photos taken prior to 2020. 5240— Mabelvale • updates. 447-4800 * Dates subject to change visit LRSD.org forPike calendar Photos taken prior to 2020. 5240— Mabelvale • updates. 447-4800 * Dates subject to change — visit LRSD.org for calendar updates. Photos taken prior to 2020. * Dates subject to change — visit LRSD.org for calendar updates. Photos taken prior to 2020.
VOLUME 47 ISSUE 4 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each month by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $60 for one year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is $5, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $5.00 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially. ©2020 ARKANSAS TIMES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
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In response to the growing needs of our community, The BridgeWay has expanded its continuum of care for substance use disorders. The acute rehabilitation program will provide hope and recovery for adults struggling with substance use disorders. Led by Dr. Schay, and a Board Certified Psychiatrist and Addictionologist, the Substance Use Disorder Rehabilitation Program is for adults at risk of relapse. Rehabilitation requires the supportive structure of a 24-hour therapeutic environment. To learn more about our continuum of care for substance use disorders, call us at 1-800-245-0011. Physicians are on the medical staff of The BridgeWay Hospital but, with limited exceptions, are independent practitioners who are not employees or agents of The BridgeWay Hospital. The facility shall not be liable for actions or treatments provided by physicians.
8 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Dr. Schay
Medical Director Of Substance Use Disorders & Patriot Support Program
THE FRONT
INCONSEQUENTIAL NEWS QUIZ
OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE EDITION PLAY AT HOME, WHILE COUNTING THE SECONDS UNTIL TRUMP IS OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
2) Jeri Dianna Tarter, 69, of Jacksonville, was recently arrested by the FBI on charges she tried to hire a hitman, who turned out to be an FBI agent. According to investigators, who was granny allegedly trying to have whacked? A) A server at Golden Corral who refused to grant her a senior discount. B) God Almighty, for offing her favorite game show host, Alex Trebek. C) Every Democratic voter in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. D) Her former son-in-law, who is seeking custody of Tarter’s granddaughter. 3) Clayton M. Jackson, 34, recently pleaded guilty in federal court on several counts related to allegedly making threats to kill an FBI agent and an FBI public affairs officer. According to investigators, why were they so sure they had a rock-solid case against Jackson when he was arrested? A) At the time of the threats, Jackson — who blamed the two FBI employees for his parole being revoked — was an inmate at Arkansas’s
Tucker maximum security prison, and sent the threats to the Little Rock FBI office via monitored prison mail. B) When interviewed about the threats at the prison in March, Jackson readily told investigators that he had, in fact, made the threats and still planned to act upon them when released from the clink. C) During the same interview, Jackson allegedly offered to take a lie-detector test to prove that he was serious about his intention to kill the two FBI employees. D) All of the above. 4) Libertarian Ricky Dale Harrington — the sole candidate to oppose Republican Sen. Tom Cotton in the recent race for an Arkansas U.S. Senate seat — didn’t win, of course. But there was one surprising wrinkle to the outcome of the race. What was it? A) Soon after his win, Cotton shed his shoddy rubber skin-suit and declared himself the first openly Reptilian-American member of the U.S. Senate. B) Cotton won the “Old, Bitter Assholes Who Are Mad at the World” demographic by over 98 percent. C) After Jan. 20, 2021, Cotton’s pal Donald Trump won’t be president anymore. Let’s all take a moment to savor that again. Ummmmmmmmmmm, feels nice. D) By winning over 33 percent of the vote, Harrington broke the record for the best electoral performance by a Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in American history. 5) Hot Springs’ McClard’s Bar-B-Q Restaurant, a local favorite that’s been dishing up fine swine at 505 Albert Pike Road in the Spa City since 1928, recently introduced something that’s a first for the storied Arkansas restaurant. What is it? A) “Impossible Ribs,” which feature spicy tofu shaped around “bones” whittled out of hickory while pitmasters wait for actual meat to smoke. B) Every member of the waitstaff now carries a holstered water pistol full of barbecue sauce that can either be used defensively or to sauce up patrons’ plates. C) A heart specialist with a charged backpack defibrillator will now be on duty at the restaurant anytime it’s open. D) A mobile McClard’s barbecue trailer, which new co-owners of McClard’s have set up in the parking lot of West Little Rock’s Bone’s Chophouse. It’s the first-ever spin-off of the 90-plus-year-old restaurant. ANSWERS: D, D, D, D, D
1) In the weeks leading up to the general election, it was revealed that Charles “Bubba” Beckham III, a GOP candidate for Arkansas Senate District 12 near Magnolia, had been kicked out of the Mississippi School for Math and Science in 2000 after he and two other classmates dressed up in full Ku Klux Klan regalia for a Halloween costume event at the school. Which of the following is a real-life follow-up to that revelation? A) Dr. Eric Seymour, a physician who now lives in Washington state, was one of several of Beckham’s classmates who spoke out against Beckham, telling the Arkansas Times that despite Beckham’s youth in 2000, he believes the Klan dress-up incident was more than an immature joke. “Though we were young,” Seymour said, “I think they knew full well the implications of such, particularly that it’s a tactic of fear and intimidation.” B) Six of Beckham’s former classmates, including Seymour, bought a full-page ad in the Magnolia Banner News that warned area voters that Beckham had terrorised Black students at the school with his Klan stunt, and had “used derogatory names against Jewish students and students of color.” C) With a majority of voters in District 12 perhaps seeing Beckham’s pointy-hooded past as a plus, Beckham went on to win his race, unseating Democratic Sen. Bruce Maloch and winning over 56 percent of the vote. D) All of the above.
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 9
DECEMBER at Saracen Casino Resort
Saracen features 2,300 slot machines, a full range of 35+ table games including craps, roulette, baccarat, blackjack and more, a poker room, and a sportsbook featuring a 25-foot-wide television. Saracen has seven restaurants onsite, including our flagship, Red Oak Steakhouse. We feature an onsite microbrewery utilizing local ingredients in our beer.
Spend your New Year’s Eve at the State’s Newest Property New Year, New Destination! Saracen Casino Resort Along with music, there will be a balloon drop, countdown and countless other surprises. 1-530 exit 46 only 40 minutes from Little Rock.
SARACEN RESTAURANTS
The Saracen Casino Resort puts as much emphasis on cuisine as it does gaming, as is evident in the property’s extensive offerings. At the Red Oak Steakhouse, enjoy prime-grade beef and bison from the Quapaw herd alongside a carefully curated menu in the property’s flagship restaurant. Red Oak’s signature cuisine is presented in a class of its own, with Saracen’s focus on offering the best steaks in the South carefully managed from pasture to plate. Legends Sports Bar includes an in-house brewery, a 25-foot video wall, a live entertainment stage and a must-try menu. The Post has four unique venues offering everything from Saracen’s own Quapaw-roasted coffee and made-to-order donuts to a gourmet taqueria. Quapaw Kitchens redefines the buffet experience, bringing fine dining to an all-you-can-eat setting. Opening Soon!
The Q Club is a unique rewards system designed to reward you, our most valued guest. It’s free and easy to join. Simply go to the Q Club at your next visit, bring your ID, and get your Q Card to start earning rewards right away!
the TO-DO list BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE and LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK
WRAP YOUR GIFTS IN GOODS FROM BLACK PAPER PARTY BLACKPAPERPARTY.COM.
FREA BUCKLER
Ever notice how homogeneously white the elves and Santas and fireside families on your gift wrapping paper are? Jasmine Hudson, J’Aaron Merchant and Madia Willis noticed, and they did something about it. Enter Black Paper Party, an Arkansas-based wrapping paper company launched by three Black women to introduce more Black representation in wrapping paper imagery; “Coming from corporate retail,” Willis said in a press release, “we noticed a deficit of products featuring people of color, especially during the holidays, when a high percentage of money spent on holiday shopping is by Black Americans. We saw creating wrapping paper and holiday ornaments as a necessity.” Find it at blackpaperparty.com. SS
VISIT ‘REFUGE,’ VIRTUALLY OR INPERSON
THROUGH JANUARY 2021. 21C MUSEUM HOTEL BENTONVILLE, 21CMUSEUMHOTELS.COM/MUSEUM/ EXHIBIT/REFUGE/. FREE. Banished from evocative gallery showings in a winter that calls for hunkering down hardcore, art enthusiasts and politically minded thinkers should put 21c Museum’s new exhibit “Refuge” on their radar. With the help of detailed exhibition notes online, virtual visitors can see “Homeland Security,” former diplomat Jota Castro’s satirical critique of George W. Bush’s security strategy. Or the way Richard Mosse captured imagery of refugee camps in Greece and Turkey using heat-mapping technology. Or Yoan Capote’s “Isla,” which depicts the sea around Cuba as a tight grid of black fish hooks. In-person visitors not staying at the hotel will need to reserve a viewing time. To do that, visit 21cmuseumhotels.simplybook. me/v2 and click on the Bentonville location. SS
SEE BALLET ARKANSAS’S ‘WINTER WONDERLAND’
SATURDAY 12/12. 1-4 P.M. MAIN STREET, DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK. FREE; RSVP REQUIRED. Without its annual run of “Nutcracker” performances in Robinson Center, the state’s professional ballet company has taken to its Main Street environs to recreate scenes and stories from Tchaikovsky’s lush holiday classic. Partnering with the Arkansas Arts Center, dancers will perform against a backdrop of “Nutcracker” vignettes in a Saturday afternoon drive-through experience. It’s free, but you’ll need to RSVP at the “Winter Wonderland” link at balletarkansas.org. SS
ARKANSAS CRAFT GUILD CHRISTMAS SHOWCASE
FRIDAY 12/4-SUNDAY 12/6. STATE FAIRGROUNDS. $5.
As of this writing in mid-November, the Arkansas Craft Guild was still planning to hold its 42nd annual showcase of jewelry, clothing, ceramics, food, musical instruments, soaps and more by guild crafters. Hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. Shop free 9-10 a.m. Saturday. LNP ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 11
NEWS & POLITICS
NOW, PROSECUTION: Absent a pardon and a stacked Supreme Court.
LOSER!
THAT’S HOW DONALD TRUMP WILL FOREVER BE KNOWN. BY ERNEST DUMAS
12 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
A
s this is written, two weeks after the presidential election, the petrifying question of whether the defeat and banishment of America’s first psychopathic president would be even scarier than his original inauguration is pretty much settled. Come Jan. 20, there will be no more Trump presidency and no coup d’état assisted by either his Supreme Court, a beheaded military run by addled conspiracists or another freakish alignment in the electoral college. Joe Biden defeated Trump by a margin of nearly 6 million votes, the largest loss by a sitting president in history. The central trait of a psychopath is that he never admits error or losing and Trump will follow form. It will soon become apparent to nearly everyone but Trump and the narrow xenophobic and racist cult in his following that the old pussy grabber’s defeat had nothing to do with fraud by Democrats, socialists or child molesters but with the recognition by most Americans that he was, as Sen. Lindsey Graham once put it, “unfit to be president.” In his first three years and 10 months on the job, never once did the Gallup Poll show that even half of Americans approved of the job he was doing. A loser in school, the military draft, marriage, business and most of his initiatives as president, Donald Trump is now and forever a Loser. Declaring war, capitulating and then declaring victory worked every time for Trump, at least with his base, but that is over. As he often said about his opponents, reporters, former aides and Cabinet members, generals, prisoners of war and dead soldiers — perhaps prophetically, in hindsight — no one can love a loser.
Trump won’t be considered the Real President by many and, despite all the conjecture about his maintaining firm control of the Republican Party, he won’t be its nominee again in 2024. If he is half as smart as he says he is, he may avoid criminal sanctions with the help of his vice president and big Supreme Court majority and that is the best that he can hope for. He will need all his Supreme Court justices and appellate judges to also avoid civil penalties. A bunch of his female victims are still coming after him, Paula Corbin Jones-style. They have DNA. His years of business corruption and tax avoidance, already exposed by family members and accounting sources, will before long finally be in the hands of prosecutors. That is what will face him in the fading hours of Jan. 20 after he skips the inaugural gala at the Capitol. It ought to be much worse, but more about that in a moment. Trump’s manifold legal troubles are not what will wither his popularity with either his fanatical followers or the sizable segment of his voters who are just reflexive Republicans. Reflexive Democrats probably make up the same percentage of Biden’s voters. They just won’t vote for the other party. No matter how much trouble Biden will have achieving anything in a bitterly divided government or the level of Trump’s legal and financial troubles, the vanquished president’s vanishing support in the months and years after the inauguration will not be a politically driven phenomenon but a natural one, given who and what Trump is — his peculiar personality disorder, to put it kindly. When Trump forced his way into public life in the 1980s through the New York tabloids and celebrity publications like People, he wanted to be celebrated as one of America’s richest men, a risqué playboy who had his way with wives, models and glamorous dames. I followed his exploits in the New York papers with amazement at his bravado and amorality. He wanted the magazines that annually calculated the richest people to count his aging daddy’s vast wealth as his own. As The New York Times wrote several years ago after being given old Trump company records, Donald and each of his siblings, thanks to daddy’s manipulations, were millionaires by the time they were 8 years old. The celebrity thing took over his life, although his obsessive personality seemed to be almost a birthright. He became a protégé, as he sometimes said, of the famous crook and Joe McCarthy collaborator Roy Cohn, who lived in
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ARKANSAS TIMES
A PSYCHOPATH WITHOUT THE CUDGELS OF POWER BECOMES A DISMAL AND HARMLESS FLAKE. THAT IS THE ULTIMATE FUTURE OF TRUMP AND TRUMPISM. town. Cohn taught Donald that you never, never admit that you lost, lied, erred or that anyone was your superior. Trump’s only criticism of Bill Clinton, at least in the old days before his wife opposed Trump, was that Clinton ever admitted that he misled his family and the country about messing around with Monica Lewinsky. Cohn taught Trump that if you stick to your lie in the face of everything they will never get you. When Trump got the British GQ to run a big photo shoot of his naked Slovenian mistress, Melania, posing provocatively and handcuffed to his gold-inlaid briefcase on board the Trump private jet at New York’s LaGuardia airport, Trump said he arranged it to help the poor girl’s modeling career. GQ’s headline on the layout was “Sex at 30,000 Feet.” Melania had a link to the big photo spread on her webpage until the Hollywood Access tape surfaced during the 2016 campaign. You remember it. Sen. Ted Cruz’s super-PAC, trying to seize the lead from Trump, glamorized the photo spread with a link to it that invited viewers to “Meet Melania Trump, Your Next First Lady.” Cruz was trying to stem Trump’s growing popularity with Mormons. Trump struck back at “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” and warned that he would “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife, Heidi. Trump had already suggested that Cruz’s father had helped assassinate President Kennedy. Cruz called Trump “a sniveling coward” who was unfit for the presidency. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” became a daily tweet, Trump won the bout and Cruz, like Lindsey Graham, became one of Congress’s most absurd Trump toadies. Colossal and persistent lies, combined with power, always prevail — at least that was the theory credited to Hitler’s pal Joseph Goebbels, although there was never proof that he actually said it. Hitler himself talked about The Big Lie in “Mein Kampf,” though he credited Jews as the origin. It is the key to autocratic rule. The degree to which the public — Trump’s substantial share of it — bought all his lies or at
least a substantial share of them can only be a matter of conjecture. For most people, lying was just not a very big deal. Everyone lies. Trump did it proudly and with flair. Aside from his early dog whistles about a Black man being legally unfit for the presidency and dark-skinned Latinos and Arabs overrunning the country, Trump’s greatest political asset was calling people dirty names — loser, crook, pimp, trash, sleepy, creep, crazy, shithead, goofy, fraud, lowlife, phony, flake, total flunky. A class of Americans, including, strangely, evangelical Christians, like rough language like that, especially when it is applied to women. It is a sign of strength. Out of power, however, it becomes the nonsense of a loser, a demonstrative psychopath. Trump’s great luck when most of his screwy investment decisions began to turn sour was that his pursuit of celebrity paid off with his getting stardom in the “reality” TV show “The Apprentice,” in which he played a savvy businessman who followed the script and at the end barked “You’re fired” at some pretty contestant. He parlayed the fake role into a presidential campaign. Now, his only hope is to land a spot on Fox News or some rightwing conspiracy network, but it will be nothing like the candidacy or the presidency. A psychopath without the cudgels of power becomes a dismal and harmless flake. That is the ultimate future of Trump and Trumpism, along with whatever legal and financial troubles await the man from all the criminal and civil investigations of his deeds in and out of government. Those should include the crimes against the country that Congress and the hapless Democrats pursued either ineffectually or not at all. They include the crime that brought Trump’s impeachment — the third president in history to be impeached — and his acquittal by all but one Republican and the minority Democrats in the
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Senate. Using taxpayers’ money and a lawful appropriation to blackmail an allied government into helping his reelection is a crime and now must be tried in a court of law. The same is true of Trump’s earliest crime, using his power to thwart the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to undermine the American election in 2016. It was an open-and-shut case. The president fired James Comey, the FBI director, because Comey, a lifelong Republican, would neither swear the personal loyalty of the FBI to Trump or stop the investigation of efforts by Russian agents and Wikileaks to corrupt the election. The Republican special prosecutor who took over the investigation in spite of Trump’s protests ultimately said the investigation brought powerful proof of obstruction of justice by the White House. Trump admitted publicly and in a meeting with Russian officials and Kremlin journalists that he had halted the Russian investigation by canning the FBI director. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked an impeachment effort because it would be pointless given Trump’s iron control of the Senate, make Democrats look weak and maybe even embolden Trump. But it could be argued that the House’s inaction was a green light for the Trump administration to violate the law and democratic norms with total impunity. It may have led directly to the Ukrainian venture. If violations of the law are allowed to stand in these flagrant instances (and perhaps also violations of the emoluments clause), how can any president in the future ever be held responsible for criminal deeds? It is a vital moment for American democracy and the rule of law. Trump may be pardoned by Jan. 20, either by his own hand or a briefly tenured President Mike Pence. But at least it would be a tacit admission of responsibility and that the rule of law was still a basic principle.
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DECEMBER 2020 15
BEST AND WORST 2020!
THE HIGHS AND (MOSTLY) LOWS OF THE YEAR IN ARKANSAS. BY DAVID KOON
A
whole new (and hopefully much calmer) year is fast approaching, which means it’s time to rack ’em up and run the table on the Arkansas Times’ annual Best and Worst edition, our year-end salute to all the news that was fit to print — and some that probably wasn’t — that happened across our beautiful state during our most recent trip around the sun. We’ve been doing Best and Worst for a long while now, but for the life of us, we can’t quite remember a year that lasted half as long as 2020. In case you need a refresher on stuff you’ve blocked out from sheer exhaustion or abject horror: A plague swept the land this year, pushing the U.S. economy off a cliff and carrying away nearly a quarter-million Americans as of this writing, even as the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. failed and flubbed, blowing off mask requirements and standing in the way of damn near anything that might help, blaming everybody but himself and denying reality right up until he was defeated at the ballot box in November (silver linings!). Protests — and sometimes rioting — roiled the streets of many American cities this year as well, including Little Rock, as Black people and their allies called for more accountability following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The year ends with Trump on his way out and a vaccine on its way in, but just so 2020 doesn’t get you too excited, it also ends with the death of RBG and an election that saw Democrats in Arkansas and other red states failing to even come close to the heights projected by polling just days before the election. There were, of course, diamonds of hope and humor among the cat turds of 2020, folks doing good (and bad enough to make bad funny) in terrible circumstances. You’ll read more about that in the following pages, along with a lonely and fitting end for The Blue Light Rapist, a big loan for the Little Piglet Soap Co., a behind-bars crime spree connected to a celebrated murder, Huckabees denied, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton saying dumb stuff, a memorial for North Little Rock’s goose-chasin’ Good Boy, Republicans on the decent side of an argument for once, and more. It’s all here, so read it and weep. Or read it and laugh, if you’re too tired of crying to cry anymore. Either way, as surely as the clock ticks, the end of 2020 will be upon us soon, and good riddance to it. Our best to you, and ourselves, in the new year. Lord knows it can’t be any worse than this one. ILLUSTRATION BY PHILLIP REX HUDDLESTON
16 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
BEST RUSH
Following a December 2019 Facebook post in which officials with the North Little Rock Animal Shelter said dogs and cats would have to be euthanized if not adopted because there was nowhere to house excess animals during a much-needed resurfacing of part of the shelter’s floor, officials announced in January that animal lovers had answered the call, adopting 84 dogs and cats from the shelter in less than a month.
WORST NAP
Fort Smith Police arrested Dwaun Davis, 26, in January after investigators said he fell asleep while in the process of buying a phone at a MetroPCS store after allegedly robbing a Burger King restaurant across town. Called to the scene by a report of an armed man, officers said they found Davis snoozing inside the store, with around $3,000 in cash that had allegedly been taken during the robbery. He was arrested on several charges.
BEST RETIREMENT
Dick Antoine, who has appeared in costume as “The World’s Tallest Leprechaun” since 2003 at Hot Springs’ annual World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade, announced in January that he would hang up his Kelly green duds after 17 years, allowing KABZ-FM, 103.7 The Buzz morning host Roger Scott to take up the name.
WORST ‘PARTIALLY SMOOSHED’
A driver in his 90s miraculously escaped with only minor injuries in January after his car was hit by not one, but two passing freight trains after it stalled on the tracks south of Rixie Road in Rixey, with a tweet by the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office saying the car had been “partially smooshed under one of the trains.”
WORST LETTER OF THE LAW
WORST DAD
Doyle Ashcraft of Little Rock pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 70 years in prison in January in a 2018 case in which investigators said Ashcraft stabbed his wife, Marjorie Ashcraft, 35, to death at their Little Rock home before setting the house on fire in the middle of the night in an apparent attempt to both cover up the murder and kill the couple’s 14-year-old son, who was sleeping inside. Luckily, the boy awoke as the house filled with smoke and was able to get out through a window. Investigators later found that Doyle Ashcraft had disabled every smoke detector in the house.
Calling the requirement “absurd,” Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza bowed to Article 5 of the Arkansas State Constitution in January and ruled that Lawrence County District Judge Adam Weeks of Powhatan (Lawrence County) should be struck from the ballot as a candidate for Third Circuit Court, which covers Sharp, Jackson, Randolph and Lawrence counties, over a misdemeanor conviction related to running a fictitious license plate on Weeks’ car when Weeks was 18 years old. Article 5 forbids any candidate previously involved in an “infamous crime” — defined in the Article as “an act of deceit, fraud or false statement” — from running for any office of public trust. Nobody tell the legislature about that, OK? Might get awful lonely up at the Capitol.
WORST ADOPTIONS
Maricopa County, Ariz., Assessor Paul Petersen resigned in January following his 2019 arrest over what authorities said was a smuggling operation that allegedly paid over 70 women from the Marshall Islands to come to Arizona, Utah and Arkansas to give up their babies for adoption, a practice that has been forbidden by law since 2003. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 17
BRIAN CHILSON
WORST BIG HOUSE CRIME SPREE
BEST HARMONY
Retired attorney Beresford “Bere” Church of Little Rock died in January, decades after he helped integrate Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall in the early 1960s as a founder of the music appreciation group Modern Music of Little Rock. A longtime lover of jazz, Church and his group helped bring a number of high-profile African American acts to Robinson Auditorium, including a March 1963 show by the Count Basie Orchestra that saw black fans descend from the segregated balcony to mingle with whites in defiance of the law.
WORST DOG GONE
A compact car wound up bumper-down over a retaining wall at the El Dorado Home Depot in January after police said a dog who had been left in the car knocked it out of gear, sending the car rolling backward through the parking lot to an inevitable crash. No one, including the dog, was hurt in the incident.
WORST -30-
Home delivery of weekday and Saturday editions of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ended in Central Arkansas on Jan. 25, part of the paper’s cost-cutting shift to delivering news to subscribers on digital tablets supplied by the D-G. Sunday home delivery of old-fangled paper copies continues for now.
18 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Rebecca O’Donnell — who would plead guilty to murder in August before being sentenced to 43 years in prison in the June 2019 stabbing death of her friend, former Arkansas State Sen. Linda Collins at Collins’ home in Pocahontas (Randolph County) — managed to rack up even more charges in January while sitting in jail awaiting trial, with investigators saying O’Donnell spoke with at least four fellow inmates at the Jackson County Jail about arranging various crimes. Inmates at the jail told investigators that while incarcerated there, O’Donnell allegedly inquired about blowing up her own car to destroy any evidence inside, along with killing Collins’ ex-husband and his wife, a prosecutor involved in the murder case and Judge Harold Erwin of Randolph County. O’Donnell was sentenced to an additional seven years on those charges.
WORST CLUSTER
Eight tornadoes touched down in Arkansas on Jan. 13, with the strongest reaching speeds of 135 mph and destroying several structures in Logan County, including at least five homes.
WORST CLEARANCE SALE
Opened in 2008 with an appraised value of almost $80 million, West Little Rock’s Promenade at Chenal Shopping Center was sold in January for what a report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said was “$10 in cash and other unspecified considerations in lieu of foreclosure,” reflecting the continued weakening of interest in malls and shopping centers nationwide. No, that’s not a typo. Ten bucks.
WORST BULLET BRA
Candayce Tabron, 33, of Little Rock, was sentenced to seven years in prison in January after pleading guilty to charges related to a September 2018 drive-by shooting at the Little Rock residence of a woman she had quarreled with. After arresting Tabron at her home, investigators said a search of her person found that Tabron had a spent 9mm shell casing in her bra. According to police, it was later matched to another shell casing found at the scene of the drive-by.
BEST CHALLENGE
Defending his decision to keep allowing refugees to resettle in Northwest Arkansas through the end of 2020, Governor Hutchinson told a joint session of the Arkansas State Legislature’s House and Senate City, County and Local Affairs committees in January: “Each of you are leaders in your community. You’ve got a choice to make. You can create fear, or you can help resolve fear. I challenge you to help resolve fear.”
WORST ‘THE END’
Celebrated Arkansas novelist Charles Portis, whose narrow-but-beloved five-work bibliography includes such certified classics as 1979’s “Dog of the South” and 1968’s “True Grit” — the latter of which has made the jump to the silver screen not once, but twice — died at age 86 in Little Rock on Feb. 17 after living with Alzheimer’s disease for several years.
BRIAN CHILSON
BEST BEGINNING
“People do not give it credence that a fourteenyear-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” — Charles Portis, “True Grit” (1968)
BEST CLASSIC
WORST ‘GOING OUT OF BUSINESS’
RAO Video, a somewhat seedy but beloved anchor of Little Rock’s Main Street for over 40 years, announced it would close in January. Opened in 1977 by Robert “Bob” Oliver as a small storefront catering to the fledgling community of Central Arkansas home video customers, the store eventually moved to 609 Main St. and grew into one of the largest video stores in the South, outlasting even giants like Blockbuster. Despite the announcement, in November, the business remained open as Oliver continued to try to sell the Main Street property.
BEST ‘WESTERLIES’
There was high drama in the final moments of the Arkansas State Spelling Bee in February after judges determined that Garland County’s Thomas Sinclair, 10, had, in fact, correctly spelled the word “westerlies” — a word meaning westward-blowing winds — even though
judges had previously declared his spelling incorrect. The revised decision helped Thomas clinch the state Spelling Bee crown.
BEST 50
After having his “states visited” list stuck at 49 since the 1990s, 81-year-old Dan May of Georgia completed his quest to visit all 50 states with a trip to Little Rock in February, part of a spur-of-the-moment visit planned by his son Peter as a late Christmas gift. According to a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, stops on the father/son trip included the Clinton Presidential Center, Central High, Pinnacle Mountain State Park and a ride on the Rock Region Metro Streetcar.
WORST ACTIVE SHOOTER
Chaos reigned at a Forrest City Walmart just after 10:30 a.m. Feb. 10 after a gunman, later identified by police as Bobby Joe Gibbs of Forrest City, pulled a handgun and opened fire on Det. Eugene Watlington and Lt. Eric Varner
BRIAN CHILSON
Little Rock’s Lassis Inn, the humble, long-lived fish restaurant at 518 E. 27th St. near Roosevelt Road, was named by the prestigious James Beard Foundation in February as one of its “American Classics,” a designation established in 1998 that celebrates eateries “that have timeless appeal and are beloved regionally for quality food that reflects the character of its community.” Started in 1905 by Joe and Molassis Watson and moved in 1931 to the small blue building where the restaurant still resides, Lassis Inn has long been a hub for Little Rock’s African American community,
of the Forrest City Police Department, who had responded to a call about a man threatening someone inside the store. Both officers were wounded in the firefight, Watlington seriously, but thanks to them, no patrons or employees of the store were hurt. Gibbs was shot multiple times and died at the scene.
WORST FENDER BENDER
The Spoofer’s Stone, a large piece of limestone that had become a campus landmark at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville since being abandoned during the construction of Old Main in 1875, was smashed to pieces after a worker apparently backed into it with a construction vehicle in February. The stone — which gained prominence as a note-passing place for young couples during the days when romantic fraternization between men and women on campus was forbidden — was meticulously glued back together the following month by a stone carver brought in from Wisconsin. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 19
BRIAN CHILSON
BRIAN CHILSON
BEST DELIVERY
Governor Hutchinson announced in March that Arkansas liquor stores would be allowed to make home deliveries of booze to patrons bunkered up to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Tens of thousands of beleaguered and thirsty citizens have taken the governor up on his offer to date, though only residents of “wet” counties were eligible for a visit from the Friendly Neighborhood Hootch Delivery Wagon.
WORST SLIP
An unidentified Cabot woman in her 30s suffered numerous but not life-threatening injuries in March after slipping and falling over 50 feet from the lip of Bridal Veil Falls near Heber Springs, with Cleburne County Search and Rescue and the Cleburne County Sheriff’s Department called in to help bring her to safety.
BEST GUILTY
Mauricio Torres Sr., 50, of Bella Vista was convicted of battery and capital murder in March by a Bentonville jury in the March 2015 murder of his 6-year-old son, Mauricio “Isaiah” Torres, who died of an infection at a hospital the day after Torres used a stick to sexually assault the boy during a family camping trip to Missouri, part of what investigators said was a long pattern of abuse. The elder Torres had previously been convicted and sentenced to death in the case in 2016, but the conviction was overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Torres’ wife is serving life in prison after accepting a plea deal in the case.
20 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
BEST BOOZE
To help the state weather the coronavirus, Little Rock’s Rock Town Distillery turned a significant portion of the distillery’s output to making alcohol-based hand sanitizer in March after panic buying cleared Central Arkansas store shelves of much-needed disinfectants.
WORST MISTRIAL
The day after Mauricio Torres was found guilty in March, Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren was forced to declare a mistrial in the case when, during victim testimony for the sentencing phase in which prosecutors again planned to go for a death sentence, Torres’ 24-year-old stepson leaped from the witness box and tried to attack Torres at the defense table as the shocked jury looked on. A planned third trial for Torres scheduled for August was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
WORST DEATH FROM ABOVE
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission announced in March that helicopter-borne snipers had killed almost 700 feral hogs in East and Northeast Arkansas the previous month as part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to thin herds of the troublesome swine, whose ceaseless rooting and foraging for food often wreaks havoc on crops and gardens.
WORST FIRSTS
Governor Hutchinson announced March 11 that a patient at Pine Bluff’s Jefferson Regional Medical Center was the state’s first presumptive case of COVID-19 after a test administered by the Arkansas Department of Health came back positive. The disease would claim its first Arkansas life — a 59-year-old man from Sherwood who died at Baptist Health Medical Center in North Little Rock — in the early morning hours of March 24, with a 91-year-old Cleburne County man passing away later the same morning in Conway. By April 1, 10 Arkansans were dead, the beginning of a grim toll that grinds on. As of this writing, over 2,100 Arkansas residents have perished from the disease.
BEST CURFEW
In response to the growing threat of the coronavirus, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. imposed on March 16 a nightly midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew, part of a containment effort that would see much of the state’s commerce, education, industry and entertainment venues shuttered by the end of the month.
WORST ‘SHOOTING THE MESSENGER’
BRIAN CHILSON
Nice Guess.
In May, Arkansas Times Editor Lindsey Millar notified the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services of a vulnerability in the state’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance website that exposed the Social Security numbers and bank account and routing numbers of some 30,000 applicants. Millar was alerted to the flaw by a computer programmer applying for the assistance. The programmer, who had gained access to the site simply by altering the website’s URL, contacted the Times only after reaching out to two state agencies and getting nowhere. The state took the website offline shortly after the Times emailed the division. Rather than thank the programmer for acting as a whistleblower, Governor Hutchinson portrayed him as a likely criminal for looking where he wasn’t supposed to, which computer security experts told the Times was akin to “shooting the messenger.” In September, a state official told a legislative committee that the state had seen no evidence that any of the exposed information had been misused. An FBI investigation into the matter remains ongoing.
BEST CONSUMER DREAMS COME TRUE
Satanic Temple co-founder and spokesman Lucien Greaves, whose organization is fighting in court for the right to install an 8-foot bronze statue of the goat-headed demigod Baphomet on the Capitol grounds after the state opened the door to religious displays there with the installation of a Ten Commandments “monument” in June 2017, released pages from a transcript of a deposition in the case in May on Twitter, highlighting an exchange between Greaves and an attorney with the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office. In the exchange, after Greaves told the attorney he wasn’t sure what “BDSM” stood for, the attorney said: “[J]ust guessing here, but: Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism?” To which Greaves replied: “I don’t think you’re guessing.”
WORST MINISTER
John Alexander McLean, 59, a former Little Rock Presbyterian minister, was sentenced to 21 months in the federal hoosegow in March related to allegedly helping former North Little Rock sports memorabilia and vintage photography tycoon John Rogers sell phony sports memorabilia to 10 separate victims in 2016 and 2017. McLean, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in October 2019, had asked the judge for a probation-only sentence. Rogers, who formerly owned North Little Rock’s Sports Card Plus and the Rogers Photo Archive, the latter of which purchased a reported 80 million vintage photos from struggling newspapers all over America and some overseas, is serving a 12-year stretch in federal prison.
BEST CONVICTION
In March, a federal jury in Little Rock convicted Eric Scott Kindley, 52, of two counts of sexual assault and one count of possessing a firearm in furtherance of sexual assault after hearing testimony from multiple women who said that between 2014 and 2017, Kindley had sexually assaulted them while transporting them cross-country as inmates. Kindley’s one-man, California-based private prisoner transport company had previously contracted with jails nationwide to transport suspects who were arrested on out-of-state warrants, with prosecutors saying he was often allowed to transport handcuffed and shackled women alone for hundreds or thousands of miles during the 15 years he ran the company. Kindley faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
BRIAN CHILSON
BEST GUESS
After years of rumor, gossip and innuendo that the opening of a Central Arkansas Costco location was on the cusp of being announced, Costco — a bulk-quantity warehouse store open to members only — announced that it would, in fact, for realsies, break ground on its first Arkansas location, having purchased a 32-acre site near the intersection of Chenal Parkway and Kirk Road in West Little Rock.
BEST NICK OF TIME
FBI agents arrested Eric Scott Kindley in Stockton, Calif. in June 2018, the day after he signed up to be an Uber driver. Agents — who were already onto Kindley by then and were secretly monitoring his cellphone — later testified they moved to apprehend Kindley after he made internet searches about Uber drivers having sex with their passengers.
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 21
WORST SURPRISE
State Rep. Reginald Murdock (D-Marianna) announced on April Fool’s Day that he was the first member of the Legislature to test positive for COVID-19, one week after he had convened with other House members at UA Little Rock’s basketball arena, a venue chosen to allow lawmakers to socially distance in the stands. Murdock, who was asymptomatic at the time of his diagnosis, had asked his doctor to test him out of an abundance of caution because of his frequent meetings with constituents. A second legislator, State Rep. Vivian Flowers (D-Pine Bluff), also tested positive later the same day. Thankfully, both have since recovered, with no apparent ill-effects.
BRIAN CHILSON
BEST ‘TRESPASSER’
BEST REVIEW
In June, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. announced the makeup of a nine-member commission — including lawyers, a sociologist, a retired cop and the dean emeritus of the local law school — that Scott said will oversee a review of the practices and internal workings of the Little Rock Police Department. The move comes after years of police shootings of Black suspects by LRPD officers, cases that have mostly come up light on cops being disciplined or criminally charged when investigated by the LRPD, but which have enraged already grief stricken families and cost the city a bundle in civil court.
22 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
BEST PROTESTS
On June 1, the day after Little Rock’s first mass protest at the Capitol over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, 35 people blocked traffic by standing and lying down in the crosswalks at Broadway and Third Street near downtown, some of them holding paper tombstones bearing the names of African Americans killed by police. Little Rock police would arrest 28 protestors for blocking the intersection, but protesters were undeterred. Protests followed at the Capitol in defiance of an 8 p.m. curfew set by the city and continued in Little Rock for much of the summer.
David Walter, 31, of Mabelvale, was arrested in April for misdemeanor criminal trespassing at the Pulaski County Regional Detention Center, which wouldn’t be all that weird except Walter was an inmate at the jail at the time. According to deputies, Walter had previously asked for an ambulance to be called for an unspecified issue, but when the ambulance arrived, he refused to leave with paramedics. After some arguing, Walter was returned to the jail and booked for causing a disturbance and refusing to leave the jail.
WORST ‘CHECK PLEASE’
The owners of Brown’s Country Store and Restaurant, a Saline County home-cookin’ staple with a famous 100-foot-long buffet that offered a little something for everyone, announced that the restaurant would close in April after 47 years of dishing up all-you-caneat, stick-to-your-ribs Southern fare beside Interstate 30 in Benton.
BEST BANGERS
Seeking a moratorium on evictions and a rent freeze after tens of thousands of Arkansans were laid off or furloughed from their jobs due to the economic slowdown related to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 30 protesters showed up at the gates of the Governor’s Mansion on May 1 to bang pots and wave signs, hoping for relief.
BEST COSTNER
Kevin Costner, a beloved Hollywood movie star who starred in “The Bodyguard,” “The Untouchables,” “JFK,” “Bull Durham” and “Dances With Wolves” — the last of which won him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture — said during a June interview on Sirius XM Radio that he plans to build a museum in Hot Springs to display memorabilia from his film career. Costner told host Storme Warren that he decided on Hot Springs as the location for the museum after visiting the Spa City. “I went there and kind of really dug it, the history of it,” Costner told Warren. “It’s kind of like a little Switzerland.” We don’t quite get a “Switzerland” vibe from Hot Springs, but OK. Costner’s only previously known connection to the state was that his band, Modern West, played a gig in El Dorado in July 2016.
BEST SAYING ‘NO’ TO THE WEALTHY
Public health prevailed over big dollars in April, when a federal judge in Pensacola, Fla., refused to issue an injunction sought by 14 beachfront property owners — including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet — after they sued Florida’s Walton County over beach closures designed to help slow the spread of COVID-19. The Huckabees built a $3 million beachfront mansion near Destin, Fla., after moving there in 2010. Attorneys for the Huckabees argued that a county order closing the beaches between the waterline and their homes was an unconstitutional seizure of private property.
WORST GONE WITH THE WIND
Around 500 Central Arkansas workers got a pink slip just as the pandemic got rolling after LM Wind Power announced in April that it would close its vast windmill-blade manufacturing plant near the Port of Little Rock, which it opened in 2008. LM Wind Power said the closure was due to a global move to windmill blades that were longer than the 204-foot blades the factory could produce.
WORST MOVE
After 70 years in El Dorado, Murphy Oil Corp. announced in May that it would close headquarters there and move Murphy HQ to Houston, citing cost-cutting required by the nosedive in crude oil prices. Officials with Murphy said they planned to keep paying for the El Dorado Promise, a program started in 2007 that provides free college tuition to any child who attends a high school in the El Dorado School District.
BEST GOOD RIDDANCE
Robert Todd Burmingham, 54, a former St. Francis County farm worker who struck terror in the hearts of East Arkansas residents during what investigators said was a two-year spree as the “Blue Light Rapist,” died May 13 at Little Rock’s UAMS Medical Center from COVID-19, which he contracted in prison while serving a life sentence. Burmingham, who prosecutors said used a flashing blue light to pull over women at night before sexually assaulting them, was arrested and convicted in the rapes of two women in 1997, receiving 80 years, with investigators saying he was suspected in assaults reported by at least two other motorists. He was sentenced to an additional term of life in prison after a 2000 conviction for the rape of a Wynne woman in her home. Passed in 2017, “Shannon’s Law,” which makes it illegal for anyone other than law enforcement officers to possess flashing blue lights, was named for one of Burmingham’s victims.
WORST HAND-ME-DOWN
After police pulled over James Homan, 40, of Mabelvale in May on Little Rock’s Mabelvale Pike, officers said, he not only admitted the vehicle he was driving was stolen, he also claimed he had stolen it from another man who stole it from the original owner. A check of records showed that the vehicle had, in fact, been reported stolen by a resident of Saline County. Perhaps proving the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right, Homan was booked on one count of theft by receiving.
BEST ‘LOTTA CRAP’
Police arrested Jennifer Porter, 27, of Fort Smith in May after a high-speed chase in which Porter allegedly demolish a Sebastian County sheriff’s SUV and damage three Arkansas State Police cruisers as they tried to stop the heavy-duty Ram 4x4 pickup she was driving. After police forced the truck into a spin, Porter was arrested, with police saying that while being transported to jail, she allegedly told officers: “I didn’t intend on all this destruction. I’m just going through a lotta crap.” We feel your pain, sister.
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DECEMBER 2020 23
BEST PUBLIC ART
Following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 and the nationwide protests that began soon after, artists in Little Rock channeled their grief and hope for a better tomorrow into a series of colorful murals — including a large memorial to Floyd by artists Jose Hernandez and Jermaine Gibson — that now cover nearly every surface of a concrete train underpass on Seventh Street a few blocks from the state Capitol. Though there had been murals there before, the site has since blossomed into a block-long feast for the eyes, with much of the artwork celebrating cooperation, Black leaders, civil rights heroes and victims of police shootings.
BRIAN CHILSON
WORST NEAR-GHOSTING WHILE GHOSTHUNTING
BEST WINNER
Eddie Sutton, who coached the University of Arkansas basketball team between 1974 and 1985, turning the Razorbacks into a nationally espected powerhouse with a 260-75 record during his time as Head Hog, died in Tulsa on May 23 at the age of 84.
BEST FREE
Willie May Harris, now 72 years old and blind, was released from an Arkansas prison at Wrightsville on June 5, 34 years after she was convicted of killing her husband, Clyde Harris, in what she said was an accidental shooting as she tried to fend off her abusive spouse. Convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1985, she was granted clemency in March by Governor Hutchinson, and plans to live with her daughter in Dallas.
24 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Mark Galloway, 31, of Mountain Home, was arrested at a Little Rock motel off 65th Street in June after investigators said he stabbed a 30-year-old friend during an argument over whether they should continue looking for ghosts in a local cemetery. A woman who was with the two men told police that Galloway wanted to continue their paranormal adventures but the victim didn’t, and when the victim started to drive away from the cemetery, Galloway allegedly stabbed him. Galloway was arrested on one count of first-degree battery. The victim was expected to make a full recovery.
WORST ‘NO QUARTER’
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, regrettably of Arkansas, stirred controversy June 1 when he posted unabashedly authoritarian tweets that encouraged federal officials to use military troops against civilians involved in protests and rioting rocking most major American cities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. “Anarchy, rioting, and looting needs to end tonight. If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let’s see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they’re facing off with the 101st Airborne Division. We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction,” Cotton wrote, followed by another tweet that said: “And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” As critics pointed out, Cotton — famously a military man — would know that “no quarter” is military shorthand for executing prisoners.
WORST SNAKE OIL
In June, attorneys for convicted felon, televangelist and bucket-o-food pitchman Jim Bakker — yes, THAT Jim Bakker — issued a press release condemning an effort by the office of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge to get information about Bakker’s church as part of an investigation by other states into Bakker’s hawking of “Silver Solution,” a phony cure-all that goes for up to $5 per fluid ounce. “Experts” appearing on Bakker’s show have claimed that, among other things, taking Silver Solution can cure COVID-19. The state of Missouri, where Bakker parks his medicine wagon, sued him and his production company in March over the product.
BEST MASKING
BRIAN CHILSON
After weeks of hemming, hawing and foot-dragging as coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths in the state spiraled out of control, on July 16 Governor Hutchinson announced a statewide mask ordinance. The order allowed municipalities to write misdemeanor tickets of up to $500 for those who repeatedly flouted wearing a mask in public, with kids under 10 and those with a medical condition that keeps them from wearing a mask excluded. Enforcement of the order, however, was sparse to nil. By the day Hutchinson announced his mask order, the state had passed 31,000 total cases, with 341 Arkansans dead.
BEST REC ROOM
An online real estate listing placed in spring for a seemingly ordinary house in Van Buren raised a few eyebrows when eagle-eyed house-hunters noticed that among the photos depicting the home’s spacious living area and beautiful exterior were images of a hidden door, behind which lurked a fully outfitted sin den with blood red walls, a neon-lit bar and several pieces of sturdy bondage furniture, including a human-sized cage and a large, X-shaped St. Andrew’s cross.
BEST ‘ENTERTAINMENT’ DEVICE
The secret room in that Van Buren home also included a well-anchored stripper pole, which the listing referred to as an “entertainment pole.”
BEST GUILTY
Former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs pathologist Robert Morris Levy, 53, of Fayetteville pleaded guilty in June to involuntary manslaughter related to a 2014 case in which investigators said Levy misdiagnosed a U.S. Air Force veteran with cancer, then lied to say a second pathologist backed up his diagnosis. According to prosecutors, the veteran died after five months of cancer treatments for cancer he did not have.
WORST ‘EVEN WORSE ...’
Tragically, investigators said the 2014 death was one of three cases in which Levy, who claimed to have problems with substance abuse, issued a misdiagnosis that led to a patient’s death. The cases were uncovered during a Department of Veterans Affairs review of Levy’s work that was ordered after he was arrested for drunk driving in 2018. Investigators conducting that review reported that they found over 3,000 errors in cases Levy had been called on to diagnose, including 30 cases in which patients with serious health issues had been misdiagnosed by Levy.
BEST UNLOCKED
Walmart announced in June that it would stop keeping “multicultural hair care and beauty products” — AKA: hair care products marketed specifically to Black people — in locked cases in some of their stores, following online complaints by activists in Denver who questioned why products marketed largely to Blacks at their local Walmart needed an extra layer of security against shoplifting.
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BEST HOLDS BARRED
Saying he was responding to the concerns of Little Rock protesters in the wake of the death of George Floyd, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. announced June 17 that he had signed an executive order barring Little Rock Police Department officers from using or training new recruits in the use of neck restraints to control uncooperative suspects. As termed in the order, “neck restraints” are “defensive actions or techniques that can affect a person’s trachea, or interrupt the person’s breathing... [or a] vascular compression hold which compresses the carotid artery, [or] other vascular arteries on the side of an individual’s neck, and may cause unconsciousness.”
BRIAN CHILSON
BEST MISSED APPOINTMENT
BEST PARTICIPATION TROPHY REVOCATION
Just in time for Juneteenth, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott announced on the evening of June 18 that the Confederate Memorial statue in front of the city’s MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History would be permanently removed. Scott said of the removal of the memorial, which had been donated to the city in 1911 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans: “Our parks belong to every resident of Little Rock, who support them with their tax dollars. It is our intent to ensure our parks are inclusive and welcoming for all. This statue was divisive and in opposition to this administration’s internal why — to unite Little Rock.” Scott said the statue would be put in storage until a suitable place to display it can be found. Hey, mayor, might we suggest the bottom of the Arkansas River?
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Future for America, a church near Bonnerdale in Hot Spring County, caused some consternation and head scratching in June after publishing a full-page ad in Nashville’s The Tennessean newspaper that predicted “Islam” would detonate a nuclear bomb in Nashville, Tenn., on July 18, and that Donald Trump would be the last president of the United States. The ad, which also directed readers to a website chock-full of loonery, led The Tennessean to issue three things: an apology to local Muslims, a $14,000 donation (the value of the ad) to the Nashville-based American Muslim Advisory Council, and its advertising manager a termination letter. Lo and behold, July 18 came and went with no Big Bang in Nashville. As for Trump being the last president of the U.S., the election of Joe Biden in November would seem to preclude that, but there’s still time for Agent Orange to do something nuts, we suppose.
WORST CHEAP
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the group that works to end the scourge of drunk driving that claims the lives of up to 10,000 Americans per year, announced in June that it was pulling out of the state, with leaders saying Arkansas’s too-cheap fee requirement for DUI violators had forced the organization’s operations in the state to run in the red for the past decade. According to Arkansas law, those convicted of DUI must attend a program produced by an organization like MADD, during which they hear from victims who have lost loved ones to drunk driving. The law also says organizations can collect a paltry $10 from each participant, which MADD officials claim has caused their Arkansas chapter to run at a total loss of over $150,000 since 2012. Speaking with local media at the time of the state pullout, leaders with MADD said Arkansas state legislators repeatedly rebuffed their attempts to up the fee.
WORST YEEZY
In August, the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office certified that hip-hop artist, clothing mogul, mentally ill person and fervent Donald Trump supporter Kanye West got his paperwork in just in time to be certified as a presidential candidate for the Arkansas ballot in November. Breaking news: He did not win.
WORST ‘ENTERTAINMENT’
On July 1, the city of Little Rock snuck out a Request for Proposals (an invitation for companies to issue a bid to provide a service) for a venue to provide “golf entertainment” to the citizens of Little Rock. Critics quickly sniffed out the RFP as yet another attempt by some city leaders to lure a location of the Top Golf bar and grill chain to Little Rock. That would have been hunky dory, except the location the city proposed for said alleged “entertainment” was 18 acres of publicly owned parkland formerly occupied by the War Memorial Golf Course, with construction requiring the bulldozing of an irreplaceable grove of old-growth pines on a knoll overlooking Interstate 630 and busy University Avenue. Luckily, citizens of Little Rock (including the author of this article) — knowing that public land was no place for a privately-owned golf-and-beer venue with massive, 100-plus-foot catch fences — let the mayor have it on social media.
BEST ‘NOT INTERESTED’
When envelopes containing responses to the city’s RFP for “golf entertainment” were opened in August, the only response received was from a local roofing company, who said it was “not interested.” Us either, at least not in War Memorial Park. Still, stay frosty, citizens. Developers — and elected officials happy to slop private troughs with public treasure — never sleep.
BEST BIG BOX
Just as a wave of COVID-19-related layoffs and furloughs were washing over Central Arkansas, Amazon delivered the state some good news in July, announcing that a massive five-story, 3.3 million-square-foot building under construction near the Port of Little Rock will be the first Amazon order-fulfillment center in the state, employing at least 1,000 workers.
WORST ‘PROTECTION’
Ganell Tubbs, 41, of Little Rock, was arrested by the FBI in July after investigators alleged she bilked the federal Paycheck Protection Program — which issued billions in loans to help businesses struggling to meet payroll due to the COVID-19 pandemic — for almost $2 million. The office of U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland alleged that Tubbs claimed on forms that her company, Suga Girls Customs, paid out over $1.3 million in benefits and wages to its employees in the first three months of 2020. Tubbs allegedly received a federal loan for $1,518,887 in May. Investigators say she later received an additional $414,375 loan to help support payroll at her other venture: Little Piglet Soap Co.
WORST ADJECTIVE
Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, no stranger to saying dumb stuff, sparked his umpteenth firestorm of criticism in July after he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that slavery had been a “necessary evil.” “As the Founding Fathers said,” Cotton opined, “it was the necessary evil upon which the Union was built, but the Union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.” After a furor arose about his comments, Cotton — that bold, stick-to-his-guns man of unshakable character — quickly accused others of mischaracterizing his statement. Not a lot of ways to spin putting “necessary” before “evil” when talking about using violence and murder to keep human beings in chains as slave labor, but whatever helps you sleep at night, senator.
BEST DOGPATCH
Bass Pro Shops announced in early August that founder Johnny Morris was the mystery buyer in June of the dilapidated former Dogpatch U.S.A. theme park in Newton County near Harrison for $1.1 million. Locals hope the Missouri-based sporting goods mogul will have the clout, connections and cash to bring back a Heckuvah Day to the overgrown property, which closed as a hillbilly-themed amusement park in 1993 after years of declining attendance. The park has sat largely vacant ever since. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
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BRIAN CHILSON
BEST GREEN
WORST RELEASE
On Aug. 5, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons released Milton “Rusty” Cranford, 59, the former Arkansas health care executive and lobbyist sentenced to seven years in prison in November 2019 for bribing several Arkansas legislators related to the Preferred Family Healthcare corruption case. Cranford’s attorneys had argued that due to his age and medical issues, he was particularly vulnerable to a potential prison outbreak of the coronavirus. He will reportedly serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest.
WORST DODGED JUSTICE
Steve Branch, 66, of Austin (Lonoke County) killed himself Aug. 3 a few hours after Arkansas State Police showed up at his house to question him and request a DNA sample. The State Police had connected Branch to the May 1996 sexual assault and murder of Jessica Baggen of Sitka, Alaska, who was abducted, raped and killed the day after her 17th birthday. During questioning, Branch refused to submit a DNA sample, and apparently committed suicide soon after the troopers left. A DNA sample taken at autopsy later conclusively connected Branch to evidence collected from Baggen’s body and at the crime scene.
WORST GRUDGE THAT PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN LET GO FIVE YEARS AGO Joseph Allen Stroud, 79, of Bentonville was arrested in August after a hidden camera set up in a cemetery near Pea Ridge by loved ones of the late Fred Allen McKinney caught video of a disguised person, who investigators later alleged was Stroud, putting a dead animal carcass on McKinney’s grave. Since May, McKinney’s family told police, 16 animal carcasses had been left on the grave, including one that stained the headstone so badly that it will have to be replaced. According to McKinney’s family, Stroud and McKinney had been neighbors until McKinney’s death in August 2015. Stroud was charged with misdemeanor harassment and one felony count of defacing objects of public respect.
WORST IMPAIRED
Kimberly Rogers, a bus driver for the Bryant School District, was charged with DUI in August after a frightening accident in which investigators said Rogers crashed the school bus she was driving into a ditch while 11 children were aboard. Luckily, no injuries were reported. Investigators later tested Rogers and allegedly confirmed she was under the influence of prescription drugs. She was charged with DUI and 11 counts of endangering children, among other charges.
WORST WEAPON
In September, Andrea Michelle Barfield, 47, of Little Rock, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the September 2019 death of Anastacia Brewer, 62, who died the day after being found brutally beaten in a North Little Rock alley. Barfield’s weapon in the assault, investigators said, was an unopened can of tomato soup, which was found by detectives at the crime scene covered in blood and hair. Barfield was sentenced to 12 years in prison. 28 DECEMBER 2020
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In August, officials with the state reported that in the 21 days leading up to Aug. 4, Arkansas medical cannabis dispensaries exceeded $600,000 per day in total sales, selling just over 1,400 pounds of The Kind-Kind to Arkansans who hold a state-issued card that allows them to legally purchase and use medical marijuana. According to the Arkansas Department of Health, as of this writing, over 93,000 Arkansas residents have been approved for a medical marijuana card, with the state on track to break 100,000 cardholders by the end of the year.
WORST BALLSY
Dominique Duyanh Chu, 24, of Springdale was arrested Sept. 1, accused in what several Northwest Arkansas police departments said was a pattern of nighttime thefts from squad cars parked at the homes of police officers. Officers with agencies including the Rogers Police Department, Bella Vista Police Department and the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office reported patrol car break-ins during the months-long string of break-ins, with investigators saying the culprit made off with a load of police-issue gear, including two AR-15 rifles and magazines, police jackets and bulletproof vests.
BEST HOMECOMING
In September, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported the story of Deana Osborne, 46, who moved into a Little Rock apartment in July after spending over 25 years living on the streets of Little Rock. Osborne told D-G reporter Ginny Monk that she first experienced homelessness after being unexpectedly dropped off by her father in front of a Salvation Army shelter in Little Rock on her 18th birthday, and had never had a home of her own since then.
WORST BZZZZZZZZZZZZ
WORST RHETORIC
BEST WIN
BEST JOB WELL DONE
BEST BACKUP
WORST FINAL BELL
University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service Dean Emeritus Skip Rutherford, dean since the school opened in 2004, announced in September that he would retire. During Rutherford’s time at the helm, the school brought a bevy of iconic figures to speak in Little Rock and graduated scores of Clinton School students who went on to better their communities in ways big and small.
WORST FOUR-DIGIT
The state reached a grim milestone on Sept. 15, with Governor Hutchinson telling reporters that Arkansas had lost a total of 1,003 residents to COVID-19 as of that day’s briefing at the state Capitol.
Critics scourged Arkansas House of Representatives District 86 candidate John La Tour for promoting violence against protestors in September after the Republican made — and later deleted — a Facebook post that said: “Antifa and BLM are now saying they are coming to the country. I wonder what the bag limit is and where I can purchase riot-idot [sic] hunting license.” As shocking as it might be to some, given the white-hot rhetoric (and Federal Goon Squad tear gas) spewed toward Black Lives Matter protesters by the GOP’s Big Orange Party Head in the fall, among the harshest critics of La Tour’s beyond-reckless “BLM hunting” comments were members of his own party, with Arkansas Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb telling the Democrat-Gazette that La Tour’s comments were inappropriate and did not reflect the views of the GOP, Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Womack calling La Tour’s words inflammatory and unacceptable, and Governor Hutchinson issuing a statement condemning La Tour’s post, adding: “No citizen, candidate or public official should be suggesting or even alluding to violence and threats.”
La Tour’s opponent in the race for District 86, Democratic incumbent Nicole Clowney, who said she was outraged by her opponent’s comments, would go on to — electorally, and in a completely metaphorical sense — open up a family-sized can of Whoop Ass on La Tour in November, raking in over 70 percent of the 11,800 votes cast in the district, which includes portions of Washington County. The Atkins School District announced Sept. 29 that District Superintendent Jody Jenkins had passed away due to complications from COVID-19. Jenkins had been superintendent of the Atkins district since 2019. “He loved the community, he loved his school, and he adored all of the students,” a release from the district said.
BEST REMOVAL
The Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism announced in September that it had removed items bearing the Confederate Battle Flag from the Historic Washington State Park gift shop in Hempstead County and issued an apology following social media posts by a Little Rock resident that showed numerous Confederate-flag-themed items being sold there, including 3-by-5 foot rebel flags, small flags on sticks, shot glasses, insulating can koozies and more.
BEST SCARES
The Downtown Little Rock Partnership and the Little Rock Zoo made the best of Halloween celebrations put on hold by COVID-19 in October by hosting Shadows at Sixth, which saw a parking deck at Sixth and Scott streets in Little Rock temporarily converted into a spooky drive-through experience not unlike a haunted house. The event ran nightly from Oct. 9-31, helping Central Arkansas families find a little safe fun during a Halloween season in which events like parties, hayrides and trick-or-treating were drastically scaled back.
BEST DRIVE-IN
BRIAN CHILSON
Arkansas-based retail behemoth Walmart announced in September that it was launching a pilot (or should that be “pilot-less”?) program to use unmanned flying drones to deliver orders to homes from a Walmart store in Fayetteville, N.C. The announcement followed similar moves to develop dronebased airborne delivery systems by online rival Amazon.
The experience of watching a movie from the comfort of your Studebaker returned to Central Arkansas for the first time in decades in August after MP Outdoor Cinema opened a 200-car drive-in theater on an industrial lot at 6700 Allied Way in Little Rock. Showing family favorites and classics including “Jurassic Park,” “Dirty Dancing,” “Men in Black” and others, the drive-in has been a hit with movie fans kept away from traditional theaters by the pandemic.
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BRIAN CHILSON
BEST BIG WIN
Democracy was on full display as Arkansas voters turned out in force for Election 2020 in November, with many casting their ballots early or by mail weeks before to protect themselves from COVID-19. Arkansas, as had been predicted since roughly the turn of this century, voted to give its six electoral votes to the Republican candidate, President Trump, with Trump carrying the state by 28 points. It wasn’t enough to offset Biden wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — the latter two of which hadn’t gone blue since a fella from Arkansas ran for president in 1992. After nervous days of vote counting, in which Biden slowly overtook Big Orange as Trump lied through his teeth about fraud, major networks called the election for Biden on Nov. 7, leading to literal dancing in the streets of majority-Democratic cities all across this land.
WORST DISAPPOINTMENT
State Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock), a former teacher who polls had shown neck and neck with incumbent Republican Rep. French Hill in the race for Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District, inadvertently gave Arkansas Democrats a harsh lesson on the foolishness of trusting any poll except the one taken in the voting booth on Election Day, losing her race by over 11 points.
BEST GOOD BOY
Officials with the North Little Rock Parks and Recreation department announced they will place a memorial at the Burns Park Golf Course for Shep, an 8-year-old mixed-breed dog who had to be put to sleep in October after cancer was discovered in his liver. Since 2014, Shep had been an ever-vigilant defender of Dogtown, trucked in by NLR Parks and Rec to chase off flocks of Canada geese from the city’s soccer fields, North Shore Riverwalk, Burns Park Golf Course and other facilities before the birds could mar citizens’ good times with their plentiful droppings. 30 DECEMBER 2020
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WORST ANIMAL
The White County Sheriff’s Office announced in October the arrest of Jeremy Lemons, 42, of Searcy on three counts of animal cruelty after someone called police to report that Lemons had allegedly set three small kittens on fire, killing two of them and burning the tail of the other.
WORST RECORD
Officials with the state reported a record 42 deaths from COVID-19 on Nov. 17, breaking the previous toll of 33 deaths reported in a single day Nov. 1. On Nov. 17, the state announced the total number of deaths had reached 2,225, with no apparent end in sight until we all line up for a vaccine at some point, hopefully next year.
BEST LOSS
Libertarian Ricky Dale Harrington of Pine Bluff, the sole candidate left to challenge birthday-cake-loving authoritarian U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton after Cotton’s Democratic opponent unexpectedly dropped out of the race in November 2019, won over 33 percent of the vote in November, making Harrington the best-performing Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate in American history. Harrington’s bid broke a record that had previously been held by Libertarian Joe Miller of Alaska, whose unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 2016 garnered just over 29 percent of the vote.
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BEST RESIGNATION
Lang Holland resigned as chief of police in Marshall (Searcy County) one day after Holland — apparently apoplectic that President Trump was losing the race for president — posted angry screeds on social media calling for violence against Democrats. “Death to all Marxist Democrats,” Holland wrote in one post on the social media platform Parler. “Take no prisoners and leave no survivors.” In another post, Holland encouraged Trump supporters to assault “Democrat bastards,” writing: “When you see one in public get in their face do not give them peace. Throw water on them at restaurants. Push them off sidewalks. Never let them forget they are traitors and have no right to live in this Republic after what they have done.”
BEST ‘SOMETIMES WHEN GOD CLOSES A DOOR, HE OPENS A SUNROOF’
Holland resigned from the position he’d held for two years a few hours after major news networks officially called the 2020 presidential race for Democratic candidate — and now President-Elect — Joe Biden.
artist Carole Carole Katchen bybyartist Katchen
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ROD AND MANDY LOVAN: Their Stirling Soap Co. thrives in downtown Booneville with 99 percent of its revenue coming from online customers.
A Stirling Startup Story A niche business finds worldwide success in Booneville. BY LINDSEY MILLAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW MARTIN
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T
o explain the niche in which Booneville’s Stirling Soap Co. is one of the world’s leading names, first, a detour down memory lane: I learned to shave on a plug-in electric razor, a hand-me-down that smelled of burned hair and Old Spice. It struggled with my peach fuzz mustache and made a lot of noise. I graduated to the Mach 3 or whatever Gillette was peddling in the ’90s when I was in high school. Sometime around 2013, I was sold, probably from a podcast ad, on Harry’s significantly cheaper subscription service. For nearly all that time, I put shaving in the same category as brushing my teeth: a boring if crucial part of my hygiene routine that I did without thinking about it. Then my friend Ben got evangelical about wet shaving. At a dudes’ weekend last year, he went so far as to bring everyone samples of shave soap and shaving brushes and give a demonstration of the process. He showed us how a glob of shave soap, sometimes called “shaving butter” because of its consistency, goes into the bottom of a shaving bowl, which often looks like a squat coffee cup. Then he demonstrated how you wet the shaving brush, which resembles a large makeup brush and is made of synthetic hair or sometimes badger or horse hair, and swirl it in the bowl to create a thick lather. Next, you use the shaving brush to apply lather to your face. Unlike regular soap, shave soap is not for cleaning; it’s for moisturising and making your face slick for the razor. Here’s the point in the demonstration where everyone in our crew was initially skeptical: True wet shaving adherents don’t use a modern, multiblade cartridge razor. Instead, they typically opt for a double-edged safety razor, which you fit with a single, disposable razor blade that can cut on either side. This is the razor of your grandfather’s generation, popularized by King Camp Gillette around the turn of the 20th century and later provided to every American soldier in World War I. It’s heavy, often chrome plated with a convex blade guard on top and twist handles on the bottom that release the blade guard to change the razor. Ben promised us we had nothing to fear. He said he hadn’t cut himself and guaranteed that the shave was smoother and better for your complexion. It was
a convincing performance; most of our nineman crew converted to wet shaving. I’ve never shaved every day, and I don’t plan on changing my ways, but taking 10 minutes twice a week for a wet shave has become one of the small joys of monotonous pandemic time. Ben’s wet shaving sermon included gifts of sample pucks of Stirling shave soap. And that’s how I found my way in March to Logan County to visit with Rod and Mandy Lovan, whose thriving small business is remaking downtown Booneville thanks to far-flung customers. *** Booneville peaked in the early 20th century about the time the safety razor did. It was where the railroad crews working the Rock Island line from Little Rock to Oklahoma swapped out and where thousands of people came to quarantine and seek treatment at the Arkansas State Tuberculosis Sanatorium. These days, technically the biggest thing going in Booneville is Rockline Industries, producer of wet wipes and coffee filters, but it employs far fewer than the 800 the town’s Cargill Meat Processing plant did before it was destroyed in a series of ammonia-fueled explosions on Easter Sunday in 2008. But downtown, where you can see evidence of distant prosperity in the historic building stock, the Lovans are the prime movers and shakers. They own five historic buildings, including two that house Stirling Soap Co., which they opened in this location in 2019, and three designated
for Stirling Coffee Co., a new venture made possible by the success of the soap company. And the Lovans have grander visions. Theirs is a story that rural Arkansas is longing to tell: They employ 15 at the soap company, do 99 percent of their sales online, and have seen growth in revenue every year that they’ve been in business. They hope to follow a similar trajectory with the coffee roastery, where they already have three employees. The Lovans met in the Army and married while Rod was still on active duty. After his third tour of Iraq, they took a late honeymoon to Scotland. One day, at the William Wallace Monument overlooking the town of Stirling, with sheep grazing the grassy hillsides, they started talking about charting a slower, more natural way of life. They could raise sheep for meat and tallow to make soap. Back at home in Texas, in a rental house with no land for sheep, the idea still sounded like something to aspire to, so the Lovans decided to get started. They watched all the soapmaking videos they could find on YouTube and read all the books they could order on Amazon. They bought tallow and coconut oil and essential oils and stored them under their kitchen table. They spent weekends shrink-wrapping plastic around the bath soap they made in pots in their kitchen. They built up a large inventory and got a booth at Trade Days, a sprawling monthly flea market in Canton, Texas. They sold maybe six bars of soap, total. “It was a massive failure,” Rod said. “More people asked us directions to the bathroom than about our soap.” So they went back to the drawing board. Rod, who’s barrel-chested, clean shaven on face and head and looks a bit like the actor Dean Norris (Hank from “Breaking Bad”), had gotten into wet shaving after his last tour of duty and paid $20 for a puck of shaving soap that was made using lanolin. “It was terrible,” he said. But the Lovans also realized that, rather than competing with thousands of soap makers selling their wares at farmers markets across the country, they could focus on a growing niche. They fine-tuned a recipe and process, and Rod peddled their shave soap on online forums and subreddits and YouTube channels. When Stirling launched in 2012, it was one of only a handful of artisan shaving soap manufacturers. Today, the market is flooded, according to the Lovans. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
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If you think of wet shaving in terms of the beer industry, where craft beer was an esoteric, rounding error in the broader market 20 years ago but now constitutes a quarter of the market, Rod hopes that 10 years from now Stirling will be seen as the Sam Adams of wet shaving, an early leader that emerged as one of the industry’s top players.
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MORE THAN SHAVE SOAP: Stirling also produces bar soap, liquid body soap, shampoo bars, pre-shave oil, post-shave balm, aftershave splash, beard oil, beard balm, body lotion, body butter, hand sanitizer, eau de toilettes and more. If you think of wet shaving in terms of the beer industry, where craft beer was an esoteric, rounding error in the broader market 20 years ago but now constitutes a quarter of the market, Rod hopes that 10 years from now Stirling will be seen as the Sam Adams of wet shaving, an early leader that emerged as one of the industry’s top players. There aren’t readily available figures for what the size of the traditional wet shaving market represents relative to the whole, which San Francisco-based Grand View Research valued at $11.2 billion in 2018, but it’s clearly growing. In May, Gillette introduced a line of King C. Gillette traditional wet shaving products that you can buy in Walgreen’s. Rod grew up in Subiaco. He and Mandy moved to Booneville in 2014 to be close to Rod’s sister, who married a guy from there, and Rod’s mother, who moved there after retiring as a teacher. Rod and Mandy own 21 acres just outside of town with plenty of room for their three young sons to roam (Mandy was pregnant with the youngest in March). They keep sheep on 5 of their acres, though despite their initial vision, Stirling’s tallow doesn’t come from their sheep; it’s from a supplier of beef tallow in Pennsylvania. “When we moved here from Texas, our entire company fit on our 6 by 12 utility trailer and the back of our pick-up truck,” Mandy said. “A really high volume day then would have been 15-20 orders. Now we’re doing upward of 80 orders a day plus our retail customers. We’ve always had international customers, but we have international wholesalers now that sell through their retail and ecommerce locations and retailers all over the country who sell in their retail locations.” You can buy Stirling products from resellers in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom. Rod said he expected to add distribution to Malaysia, Norway and more countries in the European Union soon. At $13.60 for a 5.8-ounce puck, which comes in nearly 50 different scents, shave soap represents the largest chunk of revenue for Stirling. But that’s just a small piece of the company’s product line. At stirlingsoap.com, you’ll also find bar soap, liquid body soap, shampoo bars, pre-shave oil, post-shave balm, aftershave splash, beard oil, beard balm, body lotion, body butter, alum blocks, hand sanitizer and eau de toilettes. The Lovans recently bought an industrial sewing machine to make canvas and leather dopp kits. They sell all the necessary tools for wet shaving — razors, razor blades, razor stands, shaving bowls, shaving brushes — all of which they have made for them to sell. They have visions of opening a CNC milling operation where they would make their own razors. Unlike the soap you buy in the grocery store, Stirling’s still has natural glycerine in it. “If you’ve ever heard the term ‘squeaky clean,’ that’s where it actually originates from,” Rod said. “When you move
from a commercial soap that’s made from detergents and doesn’t have the glycerine in it, you are stripping your skin. For a lot of people that’s where they’re going to get the dry, itchy feelings. With our soap, not having the sulfates [in commercial soap] and having the natural glycerine, your skin isn’t going to feel as dry.” Ben, my friend who has gone deep down the rabbit hole of wet shaving culture, said Stirling stands out for three reasons: In the community, it’s universally regarded as being in the top tier for shave soap that’s among the slickest and most protective. The price point is perhaps unrivaled. And the customer service, which the Lovans usually handle personally, is excellent. In their early days in Booneville, the Lovans considered moving elsewhere. But even with providing an average wage that’s near Arkansas’s median wage of $15.84 and a benefits package, the cost of business is attractively low and they’ve become invested in preserving the historic downtown. It was after growing the business at their home property that the Lovans decided to move the operation, including production and shipping, downtown. “We’re here for the long haul,” Rod said. They’re trying to make the soap business as autonomous as possible. They each have journeyman apprentices who handle the production and plan to hire apprentices for each of those journeymen in turn. The Lovans have confidence that the soap business will continue to grow, but they think the addition of the coffee roastery will provide more financial stability. “The market is extremely saturated,” Rod conceded. “The only thing that gives us confidence is our soap company and the ability we have to kind of leverage our current customer base. We see your morning shave and your morning coffee as being very symbiotic.” The Lovans are working with an importer to bring in coffee beans, which they’re roasting in Booneville. They just launched a monthly coffee subscription plan. The midterm vision is to partner with University of Arkansas soil scientists to offer farmers in coffee-rich countries like Honduras, Ethiopia and Kenya value-added consultation in exchange for a sales relationship. They hope to be able to leverage those relationships “as a way to work directly with individual farms so that the origins of our beans are 100% traceable, which will allow quite a few perks for us, not the least of which is to be able to make sure that the farmers and the workers themselves are receiving a living wage on their coffee,” Rod said. The coffee also fits in the vision for a slower life filled with high quality, natural goodness the Lovans dreamed up in Scotland on their honeymoon. “You only have so many cups of coffee in your lifetime,” Mandy said. “You should want it to be a good one.” In Little Rock, the Historic Arkansas Museum gift store sells Stirling products. Check stirlingsoap.com for more retail locations throughout the state or order online. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
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A SEASON OF GIVING AT PCSSD
T
he holidays are a time of giving to those we love, but more importantly, to those in
need. Although the holiday season may look a little different this year thanks to COVID-19, the spirit of giving is still strong within the Pulaski County Special School District. PCSSD takes time to get into the holiday spirit each year by giving back to our PCSSD families. The Giving Tree is an annual special project sponsored by the Equity and Pupil Service information about the families, such as age, grade, Department to spread some holiday cheer across gender, clothing size, and a special toy or item. our central Arkansas community. The department Each family, along with their needs, are put on has been granting holiday wishes for our district a tree at Central Office. Departments are asked families for more than a decade! to “adopt” a family for the holiday season. This “At PCSSD, we understand the importance includes both gifts and necessities for the children, of giving back to our community and assisting as well as other needs the family may have. families whenever and however we can,” said Dr. “PCSSD Central Office employees continue to John McCraney, coordinator of equity initiative and mentoring. “Needs during the holiday season, especially as we all navigate COVID-19, may vary from family to family. We want to make sure we are
show their kind hearts each holiday season,” said Dr. McCraney.”This program has been successful for more than a decade now because of our general Central Office staff. We look forward to continuing
assisting families in ways they need help.” the Giving Tree as an opportunity to give back. Annually, the Equity and Pupil Service We will also continue to find new initiatives and Department identifies six schools within the programs to support our families, especially as we District. Administrators at those schools select all navigate through this COVID-19 pandemic.” one family to be “adopted” by a Central Office At PCSSD, we hope you have a wonderful, healthy, department. School administrators provide basic and safe holiday season!
ABOUT PCSSD Pulaski County Special School District spans more than 600 square miles in central Arkansas and requires highly skilled and passionate personnel to adapt educational policies and personalization to 25 schools. Every school is accredited by the Arkansas State Board of Education. PCSSD has served schools across Pulaski County since July 1927.
pcssd.org
PCSSD is committed to creating a nationally recognized school district that assures that all students achieve at their maximum potential through collaborative, supportive and continuous efforts of all stakeholders.
501.234.2000 36 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Spirit of Giving pg 38 | A Real Go-Getter pg 40
ALL HAIL THE
QuaranKing
PHOTO BY BRIAN CHILSON
Ryan Taneja is committed to community.
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 37
Getting the family into the SPIRIT OF GIVING BY KATHERINE WYRICK
T
he holidays are a great time to get into the spirit of giving, and it’s never too early to encourage an appreciation for volunteering in kids. Not only does it teach tolerance, kindness, respect for others and leadership skills, volunteering at an early age can create positive life behaviors. According to the national service program AmeriCorps, kids who volunteer are “50% less likely to abuse drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or engage in destructive behavior.” While many on-site volunteer opportunities have been suspended because of the pandemic, the need for help is greater than ever, and kids can take part in making that happen. Here are some safe ways the family can involved this season:
BE A SECRET SANTA Even in the midst of the restrictions that come with COVID-19, Methodist Family Health remains committed to its mission of providing care to those in need. This means making sure the kids and teens in their programs have gifts to open on Christmas morning. Methodist Family Health anticipates the need will be even greater this year because of the financial hardships many families are facing. This Christmas, there are several easy ways to be a Secret Santa. New this year are digital wish lists and virtual gift-giving: You can select a client online, see what items they would like, purchase and ship directly to Methodist Family Health. To see the wish lists and ways to shop online, visit MethodistFamily.org/MFHSecretSanta.html. If, however, you’d like for the nonprofit to do the shopping for you, donate to the Christmas Gift Fund at MethodistFamily.org/donate. If you prefer to shop for just the right gifts yourself, Methodist Family Health will accept them at its facility (with all health and safety protocols in place). The deadline is Dec. 11 so ho-ho-hop to it! (Gift wrapping help may also be needed.) For more information, contact Amy Shores, director of pastoral care, at ashores@methodistfamily.org or 501-733-7870.
MAKE HOLIDAY CARDS Although CareLink is not able to accept volunteers at the moment, there are still ways to contribute. Meredith Hale, director of development, said that when the agency is able to welcome volunteers back, “our greatest need will be with Meals on Wheels. That need will be greater whenever we bring them back because we don’t know just how many volunteers will feel comfortable when that time comes.” In the meantime, families can make cards for CareLink to deliver to home care clients or meals recipients. “Something as simple as a handwritten card for an older neighbor or loved one makes such a difference,” Hale said. “Another thing families can do that has nothing to do with CareLink specifically but helps seniors is to reach out to older neighbors or 38 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
family members and see if they need help. With winter approaching, mowing the grass is almost done for a few months, but someone might still need help with yardwork.” Hale also noted that she’s seeing an increased demand among older people for cleaning supplies, general personal care items (like toothbrushes, toothpaste, incontinence supplies, etc.) and even help purchasing groceries. “These are some items that people can donate if that’s the route they prefer to take! They would be used by our Urgent Needs program as the requests come in,” she said.
DECORATE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE The annual Gingerbread Extravaganza that benefits Treatment Homes will be held virtually this year on Dec. 13. The event will include the Holiday Coloring Contest, the Gingerbread House Decorating Contest and the sales of the gingerbread house kits. Check treatmenthomes.org for details.
ADOPT A FAMILY AND STUFF STOCKINGS Ben Goodwin, executive director of Our House, said that during this time, “The best things kids can do to help right now are off-site. ... For example, The National Charity League, a mother/daughter volunteer club, made masks and Halloween gift bags. In the past, scout troops and school groups have helped us. ... A class at Forest Park [Elementary School] created a small business and donated the proceeds. That’s a classic way for kids to help a nonprofit.” One enterprising kid, now a young adult, started a garden at age 12 and, until he graduated from high school, sold his produce at a farmers market and donated the proceeds to Our House. As for offering help during the holidays, Goodwin said, “The thing that helps us most around the holidays is our in-kind donation drives for family Christmas presents and things we need in our programs: ... Our Adopt-aFamily program means a lot to our families, and this year it’s particularly important to give families a sense of normalcy.” The Adopt-A-Family program fulfills wish lists for 200 families receiving services from Our House with gifts of $100 per individual family member ($400 for a family of four, for example). Families’ wish lists are now available. All gifts must be returned to Our House by Dec. 19. (Adopt-AFamily items focus on families’ “want” items.) Contact Jaela at jaela.hilliard@ourhouseshelter.org or at 501-374-7383, ext. 181, for more information or to be assigned a family. Other ways to help: * Our House’s Stocking Stuffer program. You can have a significant impact by fulfilling the wish list of a stocking. Each stocking includes high priority needs as well as holiday gifts. Stockings are available in $50, $100, $250 and $500 increments and are available at Our House’s Resale Store at 4653 JFK Blvd. or by email request. Drop off the wish list items that you purchase during one of the Holiday Drop Off dates (masks required).
Contact Kailey at kailey.broadway@ourhouseshelter.org or at 501-3747383, ext. 214, for more information or to receive a stocking. * Our House’s Winter Needs Drive. This program helps the nonprofit meet its year-round needs campus-wide as well as providing essential items to clients like linens, coats, socks and more. You can participate for as little as $5. Contact Jaela at jaela.hilliard@ourhouseshelter.org or at 501-374-7383, ext. 181, for more information. * You can also provide a warm meal to shelter residents this holiday season. Providers plan, purchase, prepare and serve meals to the shelter residents. It could cost as little as $150. Contact Sharon at meals@ ourhouseshelter.org or at 501-374-7383, ext. 153, for more information. For donation drop-off dates and more information visit: ourhouseshelter.org/holidays.
KNIT A SNOWMAN HAT AND GIVE TOYS Though its junior volunteering program has been put on hold under further notice, Arkansas Children’s Hospital still has a number of ways to get involved: * On Friday, Dec. 11, drop off toys and donations at one of 10 statewide locations and tune in to the Festival of Stars Radiothon from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. on KLAL-FM,107.7 (Alice); KURB-FM, 98.5; or your local Cumulus station to hear stories from families whose lives have been impacted by ACH. To make a donation to the radiothon, call 501-907-5437 (KIDS) or 1-888-771-5437 (KIDS). Find more information at archildrens.org/festival. * Knitting for Noggins. Knit or crochet hats for children of all ages through the Knitting for Noggins program. A tiny snowman hat would be so sweet for this season! (Find that pattern and others on the ACH website.) * Shop wish lists. Shop ACH’s Wish List on Amazon and Registries for Good at Walmart and have gifts sent directly, or use ACH’s shopping list to purchase toys at your favorite stores. For more information, go to archildrens.org/support-us/ volunteer-engagement/donatingtoys-and-gifts or contact Rhonda McBain at mcbainra@ archildrens.org or 501-364-1473 or Emily Mitchell at mitchellem@ archildrens.org or 501-364-1476. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Arkansas Children’s COVID-19 safety guidelines will be followed at all curbside drop-off locations. ACH asks that you stay in your vehicle and wear a mask during donation drop off.
STOP THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 Wear your mask in any PCSSD building or bus Follow physical distancing practices whenever possible Stay home if you do not feel well Avoid large group activities
SAVVY kids PUBLISHER BROOKE WALLACE | brooke@arktimes.com
EDITOR KATHERINE WYRICK | katherinewyrick@arktimes.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE LESA THOMAS ART DIRECTOR KATIE HASSELL ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 39
A REAL GO-GETTER ...
AND GIVER
A Benton teenager is committed to community. BY KATHERINE WYRICK PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
W
hile many of us have experienced weight gain and felt a need to withdraw during the pandemic, 19-year-old Ryan Taneja, a freshman in the University of Central Arkansas’s Honors College, has chosen a different path — and laced up his running shoes to follow it. Early on in quarantine, Ryan decided to prioritize his health. His reasons were two-fold. He wanted to be able to keep up with his young niece and set a good example for her, and he wanted to be able to fight for the causes he cares about and give back to the community he loves. “It was also an important time for me to reflect,” Ryan said. “To figure out who I was and how I needed to change. ... I’ve always worked to disprove any limitations others put on me, whether it’s being the big kid or a minority.” With the support of his close-knit family, he committed to a rigorous exercise program and healthy eating, allowing himself the occasional ice cream sandwich or one of his mom’s home-cooked Indian meals. Thanks to diet and his running program, he lost 60 pounds. But this driven, enterprising teen hit the ground running in other respects: “COVID robbed [high school] seniors of so many moments,” Ryan said, “and I was like, ‘I’m not giving up without a fight.’ ” He petitioned Benton High School to hold a socially distant graduation and got one. (He graduated summa cum laude.) He also rented a Tesla for his best friend, Savannah Crotts, for their senior parade so they could have a stylish send-off. Then came what might be called Ryan’s crowning achievement. As a response to proms and graduations being canceled nationwide, Sonic and Instagram hosted a search to crown a QuaranKing and QuaranQueen, asking entrants to get prom-ready and share their photos. “I entered at the last minute,” Ryan said, laughing. “I just thought it would be fun for us to have a little prom at Sonic, because Savannah and I would go there every week to eat cheddar peppers and just chill out and vibe. It was kind of our hangout.” He decorated their cars, put on his prom best, and surprised her. ”Next thing you know, a couple of days later we were both finalists,” he said. Soon after, with family and community rallying around them, Ryan won the national title of QuaranKing and $25,000 towards his dream car, and Savannah became a QuaranQueen finalist. His mom woke him up with the news: “Good morning, King!” What started out as a lark (and maybe a way to get a life-time supply of cheddar peppers?) became a way for Ryan to better the community at large. He used the publicity to help a population in dire need: victims of domestic violence. His initiative, called “The Mini Taneja Purple Initiative,” named after his mom, partners with local businesses to raise funds for Saline County Safe Haven. “I was raised by women and have the utmost respect for them. … I knew I wanted to do something to empower women,” Ryan said. The fundraiser couldn’t have come at a better time, as domestic violence is on the rise due to the pandemic. “We all have points in our life when we struggle, but it’s up to us as individuals and as a community to lift each other up,” he said. Ryan comes by his generosity of spirit naturally and sees giving back as both a personal responsibility and a mission. Both of his parents were civicminded and involved in Benton. His late father housed and fed Katrina 40 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
RYAN WAS PARTICIPATING IN NO-SHAVE NOVEMBER TO RAISE MONEY FOR HIS INITIATIVE WHEN THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN, HENCE THE SCRUFFINESS.
victims when the Red Cross could not, and his mom has always lent a hand to women in crisis. “I have an amazing family. ... When they immigrated from India and became citizens, they always gave, even when they didn’t necessarily have the means to do so.” His nickname for his mom is “Rosie,” as in “Rosie the Riveter.” “My mom is a force to be reckoned with,” he said with admiration in his voice. “She may be short, but she’s a short woman with a lot of power!” He also calls her his rock and best friend. Ryan, who belonged to over 20 clubs in high school, is equally active at college. At UCA, he joined a fraternity, in part to help grow his initiatives, but also to upend the frat guy stereotype. He quickly became philanthropy chair at Phi Gamma Delta and got involved in many other clubs. “I want to make an impact in multiple areas and reach a diverse group of people. ... I hope to be a role model for minorities and men,” he said. Asked what he would tell his peers about getting involved in community service, he was quick to answer: “I always say, ‘It just takes one.’ My family taught me that. You don’t have to do all the things. … It’s about the impact you make on one person. … You can’t eat an elephant in one bite. You have to take one small bite at a time.” And that’s just what he’s doing — with a Limeade on the side.
Heartache Christmas
If your children or family are having behavioral or emotional problems around COVID-19, call Methodist Family Health today. • Inpatient, outpatient, school-based and residential treatment • Available statewide for children 3-17 • Most health insurance accepted • Telehealth or in-person with all health and safety protocols • Call 501-803-3388 for Admissions and After-hours
MethodistFamily.org • Info@MethodistFamily.org
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 41
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ARKANSAS TIMES
Special Advertising Section
GIVING BACK
Support Those Who Help Support Others
“Giving Back” is our special focus section to raise awareness about a variety of Arkansas nonprofits and the services they provide to our community. Our goal is to provide readers with a better understanding of each organization in the hope that they will be inspired to get involved through donations, volunteerism and more. Here are some of our amazing organizations that are in need of your help more than ever because of the pandemic that has affected so many fundraising opportunities this year. ARKANSAS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL | METHODIST FAMILY HEALTH CARELINK | CENTERS FOR YOUTH AND FAMILIES THE LITTLE ROCK ZOO | COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS OF ARKANSAS
NATIONAL DAY OF GIVING HISTORY
In 2012, the Day of Giving was founded to bring focus to the charitable season in the wake of the commercialized Black Friday and Cyber Monday. More commonly referred to as #GivingTuesday, National Day of Giving harnesses the power of social media to give back around the world and throughout the year. We started our #GivingBack section years ago to put nonprofits at the forefront during the holiday season. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 43
GIVING BACK ARKANSAS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
THE LITTLE ROCK ZOO
Anne Wallace, president
Susan E. Altrui, executive director, president and CEO
Established: 1967, the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Auxiliary is a Central Arkansas volunteer group that now boasts nearly 550 members who give their time, talent and treasure to support the hospital through many fundraising efforts.
Established: 1926
Mission: The Auxiliary, a member of the Arkansas Hospital Auxiliary Association, has been a mainstay at ACH for more than 50 years. Through their steadfast support of the life-saving work happening every day at ACH, members of the Auxiliary give our young patients a healthier tomorrow. For the past five years, the Auxiliary has gifted more than $1 million annually to ACH — last year alone, its gift topped $1.5 million! The impact of the Auxiliary can be felt throughout the 29-block hospital campus.
Fundraisers: Wild Wines Wine Festival and Zoo Brew
Fundraisers: a la Carte, ACHiever Program, Holiday Card Project, Miracle Ball, Playaway Gift Shop, and Race for a Healthier Tomorrow . Giving Opportunities: The wide variety of programs and departments who benefit from the Auxiliary’s hard work and generosity include: Child maltreatment programs at the David M. Clark Center for Safe and Healthy Children; the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute; the Comfort Foods program, which provides hot meals free-of-charge to families staying with their sick child in the hospital; the Good Mourning program, which provides grief support to bereaved children and families; and the Palliative Care program, which provides assistance to the families of patients with serious or life-limiting illnesses or conditions.
Mission: To inspire people to value and conserve the natural world.
Giving Opportunities: Becoming a Zoo member, joining the Wild Club and giving to the animals from their holiday wish. All can be done online at www.littlerockzoo.com. The Zoo 1 Zoo Dr. Little Rock, AR 72205 501-371-4589 littlerockzoo.com
In addition, funds raised by the Auxiliary support emergency and trauma services, outdoor-space improvement on the hospital campus and the social work family fund at ACH. 1 Children’s Way, Slot 661, Little Rock, AR 72202 501-364-1476, ARchildrens.org/Auxiliary
CARELINK
CENTERS FOR YOUTH AND FAMILIES
Luke Mattingly, CEO/president
Melissa Dawson, president and CEO
Established: 1979
Established: 1884
Mission: To provide resources that help older people and their families overcome the challenges of aging.
Mission: The Centers is committed to meeting the unique and evolving needs of the people and communities it serves by providing comprehensive, integrated care that promotes physical, emotional and social wellness.
Fundraisers: End of Year Giving, Kendra Scott Gives Back Shopping Night 5-7 p.m Dec. 2 (there will be a virtual code for that day), Virtual Kickboxing Class launching in January for men and women 50+ (need to raise $2,000). Giving Opportunities: Outside of the Meals on Wheels program, which always needs funding, some programs that could really use community support are the Urgent Needs Fund, Fitness & Wellness (timely for kickboxing class) and CareLink’s Greatest Need Fund. About us: CareLink, Central Arkansas’s Area Agency on Aging, has been working hard for 41 years to make sure our seniors have the tools they need to stay safely in their homes, as well as giving their family members peace of mind in knowing their older loved ones are cared for by trained caregivers and/or through our services. Don’t let aging be an obstacle. Let CareLink help make the golden years the best years. CareLink P.O. Box 5988 North Little Rock, AR 72119 501-372-5300 CareLink.org
44 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Fundraisers: Bunny Run 10K, 5K and One Mile Fun Run both virtual and in-person at The Centers’ Southeast Arkansas Residential Center in Monticello, April 3, 2021; the Evolve Gala honoring Greg Hatcher, April 16-17, 2021, Rusty Tractor Winery; 2nd Annual Emerging Leaders BrunchFest, May 22, 2021; Heifer Village featuring area brunch restaurants; 31st Annual Centers Classic Golf Tournament, Oct. 11, 2021, Pleasant Valley Country Club. Giving Opportunities: • $250 for CFYF birthday parties. Everyone deserves a happy birthday. CFYF program staff celebrate each and every one of our kids throughout the year. • $50 will provide a welcome bag given to kids to help provide comfort when they arrive at CFYF. This includes games, stuffed animals and more. • Fulfill a Christmas wish list for a child at CFYF. • Give $100 and we will send you 10 holiday cards with artwork by a child who lived at The Centers. Centers for Youth & Families 5800 W. 10th St, Suite 101 501-666-9436 CFYF.org
Special Advertising Section
THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT:
FINDING WAYS TO GIVE BACK
T
his year has presented many unique challenges, and as we search for a sense of normalcy during the holidays, Arkansas Children’s encourages families to make giving back part of their holiday traditions. Arkansas Children’s offers many ways to give back, and there are kids in the hospital who need your support. “We depend so heavily on community support throughout the year through our in-kind donation program, which makes such a difference in the patient and family experience,” says Halley Hamon, volunteer engagement programs manager. “Toys, books and other items help normalize what can be a challenging experience for kids, especially in an environment with so many unknowns like the COVID-19 pandemic. Most importantly, these gifts allow kids to do what they do best: play. We are so grateful for the many champions for children across our state!”
Kendryck, age 4
FESTIVAL OF STARS TOY AND DONATION DRIVE & RADIOTHON During this season you and your family can take part in the Festival of Stars Toy and Donation Drive & Radiothon, helping us to collect new and unused items for kids of all ages. From teethers and pacifiers and board books for our littlest patients to video games, advanced arts and crafts and electronics for our teens, we need all types of donations! On Friday, December 11 from 6 a.m.-6 p.m., swing by Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) at 6 Children’s Way in Little Rock for curbside, contactless drop off of your donations. Our team will unload your car, and we just ask that you wear a cloth face mask during your drop off. There will also be drop-off locations around the state. “Generously donated items through Festival of Stars help make the holidays merry and bright for patients and families in our hospitals,” Hamon said. “These items are also used throughout the year for birthday parties and other special occasions that may occur during hospitalization, so donations through this event are vital in creating joy and magic for our patients year-round.” View the full wish list, or shop online Amazon wish lists at archildrens.org/festival. VOLUNTEER WITH THE ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AUXILIARY If you’re looking to get involved with ACH’s mission longer-term, consider joining the ACH Auxiliary. The Auxiliary is comprised of nearly 550 volunteer members who give their time, talent and treasure to support the hospital. Their impact is felt through work providing hot meals to families staying with their sick children, the Good Mourning program, which provides grief support to bereaved children and families and more. “Despite COVID-19, the members of the ACH Auxiliary know and understand that childhood illness does not stop for a pandemic,” says Vanessa Delgadillo, philanthropy executive director. “They have been a mainstay at ACH for more than 50 years, and the pandemic has not changed their role of championing our mission. Through their steadfast support of the life-saving work happening every day at ACH, members of the Auxiliary give our young patients a healthier tomorrow. That is now true, more than ever!” Despite not being able to gather in person, the Auxiliary has moved forward with virtual events, including the annual 5K, Race for a Healthier Tomorrow, and the upcoming Miracle Ball. To join, call (501) 364-1476, email delgadillova@archildrens.org, or visit archildrens.org/auxiliary.
METHODIST FAMILY HEALTH
Andy Altom, MBA, CEO and president Established: 1899, as the Arkansas Methodist Orphanage Mission: To provide the best possible care to those who need our help. Fundraisers: Get Up & Give, Bright Night, Southern Silks, Share the Light, Compassion Fund, Spiritual Life Center Campaign. Giving Opportunities: Online at methodistfamily.org; by texting GIVE to 501-8812258; by visiting paypal.com/fundraiser/hub and searching for Methodist Family Health Foundation; by calling 501-906-4201 to make a secure contribution with debit or credit card; by mailing cash or check donation to Methodist Family Health Foundation, P.O. Box 56050, Little Rock, AR 72215-6050; or by making a contribution at church, noting MFH on your check or offering envelope.
Heartache Christmas
If your children or family are having behavioral or emotional problems around COVID-19, call Methodist Family Health today. • Inpatient, outpatient, school-based and residential treatment
About us: Methodist Family Health manages the Methodist Children’s Home, Methodist Behavioral Hospital, Methodist Counseling Clinics and Arkansas CARES (Center for Addictions Research, Education and Services). Methodist Family Health also offers levels of care ranging from the most restrictive service level (acute psychiatric hospital care) to the least restrictive service level (outpatient counseling) as well as all intermediate residential levels of care. Methodist Family Health, 1600 Aldersgate Rd., Little Rock, AR 72205 501-661-0720, methodistfamily.org
COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS OF ARKANSAS LaShannon Spencer, CEO
• Available statewide for children 3-17
Established: 1985
• Most health insurance accepted
Mission: To advocate for and facilitate the success of health centers and promote access to health care in Arkansas.
• Telehealth or in-person with all health and safety protocols • Call 501-803-3388 for Admissions and After-hours
MethodistFamily.org • Info@MethodistFamily.org 46 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Special Advertising Section
Giving Opportunities: Contributions from Community Health Centers of Arkansas’s family of donors (individuals, foundations, corporations and institutions) support the provision of high-quality health care to thousands of low-income uninsured men and women each year. Online donation capabilities coming soon! Community Health Centers of Arkansas 119 S Izard St, Little Rock, AR 72201 501-374-8225 chc-ar.org
home holidays for the
CareLink has been caring for
CENTER Yourself Around Giving This Holiday Season
older people and their family
YOU CAN HELP CHILDREN IN YOUR COMMUNITY WITH YOUR GIFT TO CENTERS FOR YOUTH AND FAMILIES!
caregivers since 1979.
• $100 will fulfill a Christmas wish list for a child at The Centers.
Support for Central Arkansas’s Area Agency on Aging helps
• $250 for birthday parties for children who live at Centers for Youth and Families. CFYF program staff celebrate each and every one of our kids throughout the year.
your aging loved ones ring in the new year from the comfort of
• $50 will provide a welcome bag given to kids to help provide comfort when they arrive at CFYF. This includes games, stuffed animals and more.
their homes.
Give Today: www.TheCentersAR.com/501-666-9436/Venmo@TheCentersArkansas
501.372.5300 | CareLink.org
Remember…wear a mask Arkansas! It’s all about protecting your family and friends.
N
early 240,000 Arkansans received care at more than 140 CHC sites last year. CHCs take pride in expanding access to the best possible care, all while being held to a higher quality standard. CHCs advance a model of coordinated, comprehensive, “whole person” care, including medical, dental, and behavioral health. Our 10 member CHCs are ready to serve you, especially Arkansas’s most vulnerable and hard-to-reach. Come see us! • 1st Choice Healthcare • Boston Mountain Rural Health Center • CABUN Rural Health Services • Community Clinic • East Arkansas Family Health Center • Jefferson Comprehensive Care System • Lee County Cooperative Clinic • Mainline Health Systems • Mid-Delta Health Systems • River Valley Primary Care Services
Promoting improved health care outcomes for all Arkansans. Learn more at chc-ar.org
Special Advertising Section
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 47
CULTURE
MUSICIAN, POET: And now a parent, pondering the dangers of being Black in America.
HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS
PRAYER, PRAISE, PROBLEM
A Q&A WITH GEFFREY DAVIS BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
G
effrey Davis, an Arkansas poet whose work grapples with fatherhood, fishing and the safety of Black lives in America, was awarded in September the Porter Prize, presented annually to an Arkansas-connected writer. Davis teaches at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, is poetry editor for the Iron Horse Literary Review and is the author of two full-length poetry collections. We corresponded with Davis over email about his latest, “Night Angler,” a 96-page wonder that manages to make a poem about evasive trout feel as if it belongs next to an elegiac verse for Tamir Rice or, as in “Pillow Kombat with the Ultimate Sleep Fighter,” alongside a meditation on Davis’ life as a new parent. There’s a lot of music to the poetry in “Night Angler,” of course, the lyrical kind and the rhythmical kind. But there’s also literal, actual music in a few of the poems: your son’s first word as a “human note.” There are references to harmony and grace notes and minor keys and the memory of bass thumping from a “burgundy hooptie” you and your friends drove around in as teenagers, which gets linked to the more recent memory of the murder of Jordan Davis in a gas station parking lot in Florida. It made me wonder
48 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
what your relationship is to music. Do you, as the poem “The Fidelity of Music” suggests, play guitar? Yes, I do play guitar. In fact I started playing (self-taught) around the same time I started seriously writing poems — so, nearly 20 years ago, off and on — but, beyond some oh-sorare jam sessions with musician friends, that sound-making has stayed very private. There’s also, of course, the musical throughline of the tune “You Are My Sunshine,” which appears in the book across a wide spectrum of tones and situations. Why this song, and what about it made you think it would be right for weaving through this book? “You Are My Sunshine” is one of the only songs I can remember my mother singing — as a lullaby of sorts, but sometimes more casually — and from a young age, it resonated and stayed with me. I think it might have something to do with its emotional shading, both direct and complex: a double admission of joy and sorrow (“you make me happy when skies are gray”), a bluesy proof of love (“you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you”), a sensitivity to presence and absence (“please, don’t take your sunshine away”), all layering and loading the prayer/praise/problem of (I
almost wrote “the poem”) the song’s core: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” I think that’s some of why the song’s dynamic seemed to stay available and audible during the writing and revising of my book. One of the more remarkable things you’re able to do in this collection is to find ways to talk about water and waterways that feel new, even though water and rivers are among the oldest and most reliable of metaphors for poets to tap into. How do you manage to skirt cliche in your own work? And how do you teach your students at the UA to find new grooves on poetic turf that is already so well-traveled? It was other writers who first demonstrated ways into new resonance over that old ground, perhaps starting with Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” (which has some real yucky moments, as well as some real singing). I often tell beginning writers (like I must still tell myself) to mark how you feel when a writer moves you (where at in your body do you feel moved), and to claim that resonance and your part in being available to it; and then, as a writer, risk trying to do that to yourself — make yourself available to the changing of your own mind/heart.
*** Excerpts from Geffrey Davis’ “Night Angler,” courtesy of BOA Editions, Ltd. The Night Angler —for J A headlamp guides me through October cornfields, along the slender crossties of bridges bulky in waders, I sidestep thick brier, patches of poison ivy, all the way to the river’s edge, where I kill the lamp, and soon the moon’s blue albedo is enough to enter water with dreamfish prowling the currents. I begin casting toward the far, cloaked bank: all ear, all fixed on the grim swish of my streamer threshing back and forth—a mad bat parting night air. In time I will lead my own boy into the precision of this contraction inside the throat this animal alarum in the dark. When my first cast conjures nothing— no monster trout panicking the line— I slide further into the river’s cold, send more barbed asking through deep shadow. I labor long to lure a sudden swallow—: the wilderness of hunger pulsing on the other end of these hands. *** Pillow Kombat with the Ultimate Sleep Fighter Those who say they “sleep like a baby” haven’t got one. —found fortune cookie proverb Like in a video game, size does nothing to decide advantage:—my demure son throws his demure weight around our family bed with resolve, and so I revolve inside discomfort’s orbit, the planet of my sleepiness demoted, dwarfed—unstudied! Just as I reach my parental threshold of self-denial, just as I go to reinstate the matter of physics—energy and force—he executes his special move: a combo of lovey words struck half-consciously across the dark, launching me into another vain-cycle search for deep space shut-eye. Then his favorite toy sheep tucked between my folded arms (FINISH HIM!). Then the fresh delicacy of his foot plopped upon my forehead (FATALITY). ***
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Self-Portrait as a Dead Black Boy I. at thirteen for a whole dark season I was lethal with my pellet gun murdering minor things that wandered into yard stalking the thin woods between our house & the highway— I picked off any bird squirrel rabbit snake I could track if I had two surprised seconds to explain the meaning of my hands my instincts would have been to show you the weapon to turn hoping you could see gentleness poised behind the risk—: so when Tamir Rice was shot X times: the toy pistol he carried couldn’t have killed anything big or small even if he’d tried:— but of course as the story goes that math’s all wrong II. the law among my friends growing up: whoever’s car had the best sound—assuming they wasn’t in trouble with they mamma—drove we rode the wheels off of TT’s grandma’s burgundy hooptie because of how the bass from its speakers trembled the tips of our hair & slapped our young bodies alive with a beat—: so when Jordan Davis was shot X times: his legs & lungs & aorta pierced—a citizen who hated the rattle that black folks can make when they make it out the house:— all around America’s trespass music fell even now a different mood than mine hits my ears like rain
in my thirties now I buy sneakers that don’t slip off my feet & feel older for the fit on the way home from getting new pairs we stop at a local farmer’s market & before exiting the vehicle my boy & I change into our fresh kicks to feel godly while walking aisles of shining produce & hand-crafted candles—: so when Philando Castile was shot X times: a bullet searing through each year of his little girl’s life in the back seat I can’t see his shoes in the documentary of this dying but his body slides in & out of his safety belt as cop keeps weapon trained:—a dark star stopping the open question of his window V. sometimes a sleeplessness blesses you: in our shared family bed I lie awake & hear the steady sonata of my wife & son’s unconscious breath turning our room into this shore with a mid-night tidal music I wouldn’t want to live without—: so when Eric Garner was denied air for X seconds: the song & kin of his lungs flattened above the city’s dirty sidewalk :—let us pray
III.
VI.
I made it to twenty-eight without owning a gun & then my son burst onto the scene with thousands of miles between me & my tribe—so I learned it took just hours to return loaded & licensed to conceal a new danger however as soon as I felt that dark
on occasion I weep while watching the living
weight tucked against my torso I realized the mistake—how few & unsafe the scenarios with me pointing this threat at another threat to survive—: so now on my knees I’m preparing my heart to receive the next shots until a new divinity forbids one more black body be burned down according to an imagination that feeds its godliness with fear as seen through smoke
50 DECEMBER 2020
IV.
ARKANSAS TIMES
brown X of my hand move across the page: swift & controlled & sometimes remaining perfectly still—: so I’ve written this poem out in longhand in the best cursive I can manage under light that bends into something soft enough to call healthy none of which can keep me alive no matter the grace
SUPPORT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM Donations to the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network matched to year’s end. BY LINDSEY MILLAR
This year, the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network has fulfilled its mission to report on stories that matter to Arkansans. Among the highlights: *A critical look at the pandemic’s toll on Arkansas teachers. *The stories of Arkansas poultry workers facing COVID-19 on the job. *An investigation into Arkansas’s unique criminal eviction law in a partnership with ProPublica. This is slow, steady journalism, reporting that’s not beholden to the news cycle. It takes time and expertise to produce. I founded ANNN in 2016 because I knew from experience that, aside from the largest news operations in the country, like The New York Times and NPR, most newsrooms lack the resources to do sustained reporting on complicated topics. ANNN is able to hire writers, editors and photographers thanks to funding from grants and donations. Its reporting is then distributed for free among some 20 media outlets statewide, including radio and TV stations, newspapers and websites. The Arkansas Times publishes all of ANNN’s reporting. There’s never been a better time to support ANNN’s work. Through the end of the year, all tax-deductible donations will be matched dollar for dollar, thanks to the NewsMatch fundraising program. New recurring monthly donations will also be matched at their 12-month value. We are also pleased to announce the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network now has its first dedicated staffer. In October, Benjamin Hardy became editor of ANNN. Hardy was a longtime editor at the Arkansas Times, where he broke the Justin Harris rehoming story and steered a subsequent child welfare reporting project that helped prompt major reforms of state policy. He’s an expert on Arkansas health care policy and deeply knowledgeable on politics and government. He was a 2018 Association of Health Care Journalists fellow, and in 2019 he was a research reporting fellow at ProPublica. He’s also been the most frequent ANNN contributor and a key partner behind the scenes in developing the nonprofit. In past years, ANNN has produced important stories on Rusty Cranford, a former lobbyist at the center of a massive corruption scandal in the state legislature; Arkansas’s juvenile justice system; and the state’s work requirement for Medicaid recipients. Help us continue this important work. Contribute to ANNN at arknews.org or by sending a check to the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, P.O. Box 250746, Little Rock, 72225-0746. Donations are tax-deductible.
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ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 51
FOOD & DRINK
THE HOLIDAY TABLE CHEFS OFFER FAVORITE RECIPES.
BRIAN CHILSON
BY RHETT BRINKLEY
FOR A MEDITERRANEAN TOUCH: Make hummus with butternut squash.
52 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
T
he holiday season looks different this year. Because of the pandemic, many people won’t be celebrating with as many friends and family as they have in the past. For many of us, staying home has brought an opportunity to spend more time in the kitchen. This might be the holiday season you finally try that seitan roast, or a recipe for pumpkin brulee, or a spiced (and spiked) cider. We’ve reached out to some local chefs for recipes our readers can try this holiday season, so we can continue to eat our feelings into the new year.
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JEFFREY OWEN OF CIAO BACI Jeffrey Owen wanted to put an appetizer on Ciao Baci’s November menu that was approachable, vegetarian and keto-friendly and also reminiscent of the holidays. The Mediterranian spices in his Butternut Squash Hummus served with warm toasty pita or apple slices would be a welcome addition to any holiday spread. Owen and Ciao Baci were kind enough to share the recipe with Arkansas Times readers.
Located in the Wyndham Hotel 2 Riverfront Place, North Little Rock, AR (501)374-8081
Little Rock's Original Brew Pub
30 YEARS on the CORNER at 7th and CHESTER
Butternut Squash Hummus 2 small or 1 large butternut squash seeded and roasted 1 T. tahini 1 tsp. cumin 1 tsp. lemon juice ¼ cup olive oil Salt to taste
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Puree peeled, roasted squash in a food processor with tahini, cumin, lemon juice and salt. Slowly add olive oil until smooth and creamy. Pepitas Dukkah: ½ cup pumpkin seeds ¼ cup coriander seeds ¼ cup fennel seeds ¼ cup sesame seeds
SSteakhouse Steakhouse teakhouse RIVERFRONT
Serving Dinner Serving Dinner5 pm - 9:30 pm Monday-Thursday Friday & Saturday pm - pm 10 pm Serving Dinner Monday-Thursday 5 pm - 59:30 OPEN FOR DINE-IN Toast seeds until nutty and aromatic. Let cool. pm 9:30 pm Friday & Monday-Thursday Saturday 5 pm 5- Friday, 10 -pm Pulse seeds in a spice grinder or mortar and Hours: Thursday, Saturday Friday & Saturday 5 pm 10 pm pestle until coarsely ground. Use as garnish. 5:00pm-8:30pm Serve with toasted pita and apple slices.
www.Riverfront-Steakhouse.com www.Riverfront-Steakhouse.com
www.Riverfront-Steakhouse.com www.Riverfront-Steakhouse.com
Located in the Wyndham Hotel 2 Riverfront Place, North Little Rock, AR 501 375 7825 ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 53
in the Wyndham 2 Riverfront Place, NorthLittle Little Rock, Rock, AR 375375 7825 Located in Located the Wyndham Hotel Hotel 2 Riverfront Place, North AR501 501 7825
KARA BIBB OF BOULEVARD BREAD CO.
KARA BIBB
Kara Bibb is one of Little Rock’s most recognizable baristas. Not only has she been preparing tasty and eye-catching coffee drinks at Boulevard Bread Co. for the last 14 years, she also brings an infectious energy and enthusiasm to the market along with a sharp sense of humor and knack for puns and wordplay. Outside of work, in the comfort of her own kitchen, she bakes. If you follow Bibb on social media you know that she’s spent quarantine time baking stunning creations like the “Focaccia where I want ya,” a loaf decorated with vegetables to resemble a garden. She’s also been making tarts, pies and galettes as well. Bibb is currently competing in The Greatest Baker online baking contest. In the South, people generally think of hand pies as being filled with fruit or meat, Bibb said. But she thinks that the hand pie is a perfect vessel for savory Thanksgiving leftovers. Try hers.
HAND PIES: Great recipe for leftovers.
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ARKANSAS TIMES
Thanksgiving Leftovers Hand Pies (Makes 10-12)
BRIAN CHILSON
Filling You can put anything into your hand pies, but it’s a perfect vessel for Thanksgiving leftovers! For this recipe I used the dark meat from a rotisserie chicken, cubed and roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries, sauteed and fresh green onions and goat cheese. I mixed everything together except for the cheese. You don’t want your filling to be too wet. Hand pie dough 2½ cups (320 grams) all-purpose flour 1 tsp. kosher salt 2 sticks (227 grams) cold and cubed unsalted butter 1 large egg lightly beaten 4-6 T. ice water Directions: In a food processor, pulse together flour and salt. Add cold butter cubes and pulse for 10 seconds. Mixture will resemble coarse corn meal with some small pebbles of butter. Move mixture to large mixing bowl. Add beaten egg and stir into mixture with a spoon. Next, add a tablespoon of ice water at a time, while shaping mixture into a dough ball with your hands. It will seem too crumbly but keep at it! Once dough ball is formed, place on a lightly floured surface. Cut into two pieces, preferably with a bench knife. Form each half into round disc. about 5-inches wide and 1-inch thick. Add flour to work surface as necessary. Smooth out any cracks around outside (a bench knife works great here or just use your hands). Plastic wrap each disc and refrigerate for 1-2 hours. Prep your filling. Remove first disc from refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. Place dough onto a lightly floured surface. Dust your rolling pin and hands with flour. Roll your dough by starting from the center and working outward in all directions. Dough should be around ⅛-inch thick and about 12-inches in diameter. Cut into 5-inch circles using a bowl or cookie cutter (a little bigger than 5 inches is OK). Spoon filling onto one half of each circle and sprinkle with cheese. Leave ¼ -inch space of crust around the edge of the circle. Paint a little egg wash on edge of dough to help when closing. Fold over the other half and press ends together with fingers. Use a fork to pinch together. You may want to flour the tines as you go. Lay each pocket onto a lined baking sheet. Slit two small lines in center with knife. Using a small pastry brush, apply egg wash onto top and sides of pie. Refrigerate first batch while you repeat this process with your second pie disc. Refrigerate second batch while you preheat oven to 425 F. Bake at 425 F. on the parchment paper lined baking trays for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for at least 10 minutes. Serve with cranberry sauce, sour cream, gravy, chutney or anything that makes you happy!
BAKED FRUIT COMPOTE: A vegan recipe by Meredith Coleman.
MEREDITH COLEMAN OF MEME’S TWISTED POTATO Meredith Coleman owns and operates the vegan restaurant MeMe’s Twisted Potato in a building that used to be her mother’s beauty salon on Asher Avenue. When Meredith was a little girl, she’d hang out in the kitchen with her mother and vegetarian grandmother while they cooked. Meredith started baking at 4. A holiday staple in the Coleman family is a vegan fruit compote pie that Coleman learned from her grandmother. MeMe’s Vegan Baked Fruit Compote Pie 1 can (28 ounces) pear halves in heavy syrup 1 can (28 ounces) peach halves in heavy syrup 1 can (20 ounces) pineapple chunks in juice ½ cup dried apricots ½ cup dried prunes ½ cup dried cherries or raisins ½ cup dried plums 2 T. packed brown sugar ¼ cup brandy if desired ½ tsp. bitters (bitters bring out fruit flavor) ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg ½ tsp. ground cloves ½ cup slivered almonds, if desired 1 cup crushed graham crackers (enough to spread over the top of the pie) Directions: Heat oven to 375 F. Drain canned fruit, reserving syrup and juice; mix syrup and juice. Cut pears and peaches into bite-size pieces. Layer canned and dried fruit in a 3-quart casserole or 13 x 9 x 2-inch rectangular baking dish. Mix brown sugar, bitters and brandy and pour over fruit. Pour reserved juice mixture over fruit just until fruit is covered and discard remaining juice mixture. Sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg, almonds and crushed graham crackers over fruit. Bake uncovered for about 45 minutes or until bubbly. Serve warm or cool.
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 55
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APPLE CRISP OR CRUMBLE: By either name, it tastes as sweet.
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RHETT BRINKLEY
At Cupids you can find something for every mood!
CASH ASHLEY OF RADUNO This is a recipe for Apple Crisp, though some would say “crumble,” which my mom used to make for us at holiday time growing up. My mom always said “crisp,” so I still say that. I’ve revamped it over the years, and this iteration is my current fave. Apple Crisp
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56 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
10 Granny Smith apples cored and diced. I like ½-inch chunks, but this is just a personal preference. I also leave the skin on, but some folks prefer no apple skin. 1 cup white sugar 1 lemon seeded and juiced ½ tablespoon salt After cutting, toss the apples in the sugar and lemon juice/zest, then let sit for 20-30 minutes. While your fruit is macerating, make your topping. Topping: 2 cups brown sugar 2 ½ cups old-fashioned oats 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Directions: Mix the topping ingredients together in a bowl and add 1 cup cold and cubed butter. By hand, rub the butter into your topping mixture. When it’s completely incorporated, it will resemble wet sand. After your topping is made, set oven to 375 degrees F. Taste your fruit mixture. If the sweetness is to your liking, proceed. If not, add some more sugar, and let it macerate a bit longer. Once your fruit mixture and topping are ready, get the pan you are going to cook it in. Put all of your fruit mixture into a dish. Scrape every bit of juice from the bowl into the dish! Then put your topping on the fruit and spread it out evenly. Cover your dish with aluminum foil, then put in the oven for 20 minutes. At 20 minutes, remove the foil and set another 20-minute timer. Cook until topping is golden brown and fruit mixture is bubbling around the edges. Serve by itself or topped with ice cream, which is certainly my preferred way of eating it. This recipe can easily be halved or doubled. The recipe provided is for a large pan at home. Definitely family sized!
SCOTT MCGEHEE
SWEET POTATOES AND MORE: Tradition with a twist of Armagnac. SCOTT MCGEHEE OF YELLOW ROCKET CONCEPTS
Scott McGehee’s family’s Christmas morning breakfast tradition goes back generations. The centerpiece is a Southern-fried quail served with thick sliced bacon, homemade sausage, smoked ham, cheese and pepper grits, slow cooked eggs, white and wild rice, biscuits, gravy, fresh squeezed orange juice and lots of dark coffee (for starters). McGehee said part of the tradition is rubbing a little quail on babies’ gums so that later in life they can say that they had Southern-fried quail every Christmas morning since they were born. When McGehee was a kid, his family would go out at 3 a.m. and hunt for the quail and bring them back to his great-grandmother, although he said that tradition has faded. This season, McGehee wanted to make something that would incorporate commodities grown in Arkansas. Here’s the recipe: Arkansas Pureed Sweet Potato, Fresh Pear, Armagnac and Toasted Pecans Serves 12-14 people 2½-3 quarts peeled and cubed sweet potato (about 7 medium sweet potatoes) 1 stick of salted butter ½ cup dark brown sugar 2 T. salt ¼ tsp. ground cinnamon ½ cup Armagnac or Cognac 1 T. white wine vinegar 2 cups cream 5-6 ripe pears Directions: Bake sweet potatoes at 350 degrees F., skin on, for about an hour, until just cooked through. Set aside and let cool for about 30 minutes to an hour. Peel sweet potatoes with your hands and a paring knife where necessary to remove skin. Cut into rough 1 x 1-inch cubes and put into a large pot. In a separate saute pan, melt the butter, add sugar, salt, cinnamon and cook on medium heat, stirring to incorporate for about 1 minute. Away from the heat, making sure there are no people close to the stove (and keeping your own face away from the pan best you can), add the liquor to the sugar and butter mixture. BE
VERY CAREFUL WHEN COOKING ALCOHOL. Carefully return the saute pan to the heat and ignite the liquor to flame. Once most of the alcohol has burned off, add 2 cups of cream to the mixture. Bring the cream to a simmer and immediately add the mixture to the sweet potatoes along with the white wine vinegar. Cook on low heat, scraping the bottom often with a plastic or wooden spatula to make sure all of the sweet potato is soft and cooked through. Remove from heat and smash thoroughly with a potato masher, or for a smoother puree (my preference), force it through a potato ricer. Peel, core and dice the pears into bite size pieces. A little fresh lemon juice will keep the pears from browning as you complete this task. Gently fold pear bits into the warm sweet potato puree. Transfer the puree into a baking/serving dish. If you like, garnish with toasted pecans. I like to toss pecans in a saute pan with a little melted butter and salt until they start to brown a little on the edges. Serve immediately, or cover and keep in a warming oven, or cover and refrigerate for reheating later. PRO TIP: A little drizzle of melted butter, a large spring of fresh rosemary, fresh cracked pepper and pomegranate seeds can jazz up the presentation!
ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 57
Special Advertising Section
Art By Carole Katchen
NEIGHBORHOOD DINING GUIDE
Sometimes we choose where to eat based on LOCATION! Just mention any part of town and tons of restaurants come to mind. Here’s a tidy list of standouts in Central Arkansas and beyond, including favorites in the Heights/Hillcrest/Riverdale, Downtown/SoMa, West Little Rock, North Little Rock, Hot Springs, Pine Bluff and Des Arc. HEIGHTS/HILLCREST/RIVERDALE
BAJA GRILL Located in the heart of the Heights (and now Benton) and considered one of the state’s most popular eateries, Baja Grill’s neighborhood-friendly ambiance and chef creations make this a go-to hot spot in Central Arkansas. Each menu item is made from scratch — even the Baja seasoning of fresh herbs and spices. The award-winning menu, best described as “Mexi-Cali,” has just a touch of Southern fusion and flair. It also offers a full bar featuring sangrias, margaritas with fresh homemade mixes, and other clever cocktails (including nonalcoholic choices.) 5923 Kavanaugh Blvd., 501-722-8920. 224 W South St., Benton, 501-680-7109. 58 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
BRAVE NEW RESTAURANT We provide a casual, warm environment, delicious food and excellent service at a reasonable cost. It is our goal to make every meal a celebration of food and to always keep an edge of new in our work. The first step toward delicious food is to use the freshest and highest quality ingredients, and you can count on us in this regard. With a constant rotation of fresh, flavorful specials, Brave New will keep you coming back for more. Come enjoy favorites like Atlantic Salmon, locally raised chicken and grilled New York Strip steaks on our heated patio overlooking the Arkansas River. 2300 Cottondale Lane, 501-663-2677.
KEMURI Kemuri is the most creative restaurant to hit the Little Rock scene in decades. It’s not just a sushi lover’s paradise, but a full-scale restaurant serving exciting and delicious dishes of the sort you would expect to find in New York, Tokyo and LA. Located in the Hillcrest business district, Kemuri specializes in providing guests the ultimate dining experience. The restaurant has a party room that seats 60, great patios and an amazing brunch on Sunday. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd., 501-660-4100.
EAT LOCAL. EAT OFTEN. EAT LOCAL. EAT OFTEN.
Ben E. Keith Foods Mid-South 路 1 Ben E. Keith Way 路 North Little Rock, AR 路 72117 路 501-978-5000 ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 59
ROCK N ROLL SUSHI
NOW OFFERING DINE-IN AS WELL AS TAKE OUT!
THE FADED ROSE Ed David, a New Orleans native, his wife, Laurie, and their son, Zac, have been serving great New Orleans cuisine since 1982 in a casual and friendly atmosphere. They are widely known for their steaks and Creole and Cajun dishes. They blend their own spices, cut their own steaks and make their own sauces, right down to the housemade mayo. They have gladly served Arkansans and guests from around the world for almost 40 years and invite you to come try The Rose tonight. 1619 Rebsamen Park Road, 501-663-9734.
DOWNTOWN/SOMA
LITTLE ROCK’S MOST AWARD-WINNING RESTAURANT 1619 Rebsamen Rd. 501.663.9734 • thefadedrose.com
Happy to be serving you in Arkansas!
SOUL FISH CAFE 306 Main St, Little Rock AR 72201 • 501-396-9175 • soulfishcafe.com Serving southern classics, po’ boys & tacos, plus beer & wine, in a casual setting.
THE PATIO IS OPEN! Available for delivery on Bitesqad and we have curbside pickup, too.
60 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
Special Advertising Section
BIG WHISKEY’S Big Whiskey’s has been serving Little Rock for almost 12 years. Since day one in 2009, we have strived to offer great food, from burgers, salads and wraps to fresh salmon and hand-cut steaks. Our ever-changing bar menu always includes a great selection of drafts and wines, as well as one of the largest varieties of bourbons and whiskeys you’ll find. All of this keeps locals and tourists coming back for business lunches, events downtown and on Game Day, and we don’t see that stopping any time soon. 225 E. Markham St., 501-324-2449. CACHE RESTAURANT This one-of-a-kind fine-dining venue set in the heart of the River Market district is the perfect place for corporate events, private romantic dinners or simply for people who love to have memorable meals. There’s an outdoor patio upstairs and dining with a view. 425 President Clinton Ave., 501-850-0265. DOE’S EAT PLACE What has become a Little Rock landmark of national renown, Doe’s Eat Place has its origins in the unlikeliest of models — a no-frills diner deep in the Delta. But then nothing about Doe’s is quite what one would expect from a worldclass steakhouse — except fabulous steaks, that is. Another favorite: tamales, from Doe’s sister restaurant, The Tamale Factory in Woodruff County. 1023 W. Markham St., 501-376-1195.
DOE’S EAT PLACE
MIDTOWN BILLIARDS Celebrating 80 years! This late-night favorite has been operating since 1940, serving hamburgers, ham sandwiches, turkey, spam and egg, grilled cheese and BLTs. Midtown’s hamburger has been voted “Best Hamburger in Arkansas.” The Burger Challenge is back by appointment on Sundays, because you need the Good Lord’s help to eat it! Happiest Hours 3-5 p.m. (special discount drinks) and Happy Hour 5-8 p.m. 1316 Main St., 501-372-9990.
Open 4 pm Mon, Thurs, Fri Open 11am Sat and Sun Closed Tuesday and Wednesday
(501) 324-2449 • bigwhiskeyslittlerock.com 225 E Markham, Little Rock
SIMS BBQ If you’re looking for mouth-watering, savory BBQ, look no further than Sims. The secret is in the sauce! It is a perfect blend of sweet meat with a little bit of tang. A crowd favorite among locals are the pork ribs, served as a sandwich ($8.80) or by the slab ($29.05). The weekday lunch special includes a sandwich, chips and drinks for $10.55. When the smoke-pit smell meets you from the road, you won’t want to pass it up. Open for to-go orders only; walk-in or call ahead. 2415 Broadway, 501-372-6868. 7601 Geyer Springs Rd., 501-562-8844. 1307 John Barrow Rd., 501-224-2057. SOUL FISH CAFE Experience bona fide Southern goodness in the heart of downtown. You’ll find something for everyone, from fried catfish to roasted chicken, and 18 different sides and our award-winning caramel pecan pie. The patio is kid- and petfriendly. Bitesquad delivers. We cater, too. 306 Main St., 501-396-9175. ROCK N ROLL SUSHI We’re proud to be Little Rock’s original American-style sushi and hibachi restaurant founded on great food and rock ’n’ roll music. Our flavors are big, bold and loud. Experience the sushi you love with the music you love with the ones you love. 12800 Chenal Parkway, 501-312-4241. 1224 Main St., 501-313-4241. VINO’S BREWPUB Vino’s, Little Rock’s original brewpub, serves handcrafted ales, pizza and calzones, and is Arkansas’s premier alternative entertainment venue. The patio is open! 923 W. Seventh St., 501-375-8466.
THE BEST SUSHI IN ARKANSAS!
Party Room available for the holidays! Gift Certificates (See website for special promotion).
Online Ordering. Curbside Pick-up. Dining Room Open – Call for Reservations.
BEST SUSHI
2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. Little Rock, AR 72205 • (501) 660-4100 • KemuriRestaurant.com Special Advertising Section
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DECEMBER 2020 61
Come find out for yourself why it’s worth a trip to Des Arc!
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BUFFALO WILD WINGS It’s the Great American Sports Bar where fans Now Open the 1st Sunday of Every Month 11:30 - 2pm meet up, let loose and bond over saucy wings, Open Thursday 5 - 8:30 pm • Friday - Saturday 5 - 9 pm ”Where Hospitality BEST BUFFET Open for Private Parties by Appointment flavorful food, spirited drinks and celebrated Meets Delicious” Open for Private Parties Appointment AROUND THEbySTATE 101 E. Curran Street, Des Arc, AR • 870-256-3311 moments. The neighborhood favorite boasts an “White River Princess” awesome lunch lineup starting at $5.99, $3-$5 101 E. Curran Street, Des Arc, AR • 870-256-3311 happy hours from 2-6 p.m. and 9 p.m.-midnight weekdays, BOGO Tuesdays, 65-cent Boneless Wings Thursdays and $5 game-day specials Open for Private Parties by Appointment Thu.-Mon. The rotating tap list and cus01 E. Curran Street, Des Arc, AR • 870-256-3311 tom-crafted cocktails pair well with new menu additions like beer-battered chicken sandwiches and tenders. Also new: free-to-play Picks and Props game on Buffalo Wild Wings’ app. Win huge prizes with just a few taps; all you have to do is check in to compete every week at Buffalo Wild Wings. So, don’t spend your season on the couch. Clear your schedule and get to Buffalo Wild Wings. 14800 Cantrell Road, 501-868-5299. 4600 Silver Creek Drive, Sherwood, 501-8195299. “White River Princess”
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BIG SIMS ORDER SHOWN HERE. 2415 BROADWAY ST., LITTLE ROCK • (501) 372-6868 MON-THURS 11AM-9PM • FRI-SAT 11AM-9PM 1307 JOHN BARROW RD., LITTLE ROCK (501) 224-2057 MON-THURS 11AM-9PM • FRI-SAT 11AM-10PM
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Lunch: Wed- Fri 11am-2pm Dinner: Wed-Thur 5-9pm Fri & Sat 5-10pm Closed Mon-Tues 62 DECEMBER 2020
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FULL BAR AND PRIVATE PARTY ROOM 1023 West Markham Downtown Little Rock 501-376-1195 • www.doeseatplacelr.com
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Special Advertising Section
FOUR QUARTER BAR This Argenta favorite doesn’t serve your average bar food. The menu features locally sourced pork, handmade sauces and famous hand-pattied burgers along with weekly specials that you won’t find anywhere else. Even better, the kitchen is open until 1:30 a.m. every night. Four Quarter also offers a great selection of rotating craft beer on draft. With great live music, a hidden patio, shuffleboard and dominoes, Four Quarter Bar has it all. 415 Main St., North Little Rock, 501-313-4704. BENIHANA At Benihana, it’s not just a meal, it’s an experience. Enjoy teppanyaki favorites like Hibachi Steak, Chicken and Shrimp,as well as sushi and sashimi. Watch as we slice and dice, preparing a meal that will dazzle your eyes as well taste buds, whether you choose mouth-watering steak, tender chicken or succulent seafood. You can also enjoy sushi prepared by a talented sushi chef and indulge in a specialty cocktail. 2 Riverfront place, North Little Rock 501-374-8081. RIVERFRONT STEAKHOUSE Prime steaks in a relaxed atmosphere are the draw to this longtime favorite. An excellent choice for business or romantic dinners for two. 2 Riverfront Place, North Little Rock 501-3757825.
AY OLID ER H OM THE D R O S FR ER MEAT T BUTCH E S BE UND TH ARO TATE! S
HOT SPRINGS
SQZBX An accordion-decorated restaurant located in historic downtown Hot Springs, SQZBX brews craft beer on-site and creates some of the best pizza in town. The founders, two polka musicians, also opened the solar-powered radio station next door and won a historic preservation award for the work restoring the buildings containing the radio station and restaurant. 236 Ouachita Ave., Hot Springs, 501-609-0609.
SINCE 1981
DON’S MEAT MARKET L E W “QUALITY TELLS, QUALITY SELLS” BEST BUTCHER AROUND THE STATE
EVERYTHING IS CUT TO YOUR SPECIFICATION, AND WE’RE BIG ON CUSTOMER SERVICE!
3911 CENTRAL AVE. • HOT SPRINGS • (501) 525-2487
TACO MAMA / TACO MAMA SIDE TOWN Hot Springs’ premiere Mexican restaurant offers a culinary experience for every taste, from green chile cheeseburgers with potato-wrapped, cream cheese-filled jalapenos to classic Mexican fare. The menu also includes an assortment of health-conscious and diet-friendly plates. Saturday brunch features favorites like Shane’s Special, two jalapeno corn cakes topped with carnitas and poached eggs. Taco Mama: 1209 Malvern Ave., 501-624-6262. Taco Mama Side Town: 510 Ouachita Ave., Hot Springs, 501-781-3102.
DES ARC
DONDIE’S WHITE RIVER PRINCESS Setting is everything at Dondie’s White River Princess on the White River. Enjoy the view along with a wide variety of menu items, including an all-you-can-eat buffet featuring catfish, crawfish, ribs, seafood and chicken. Open for dinner Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and for lunch the first Sunday of the month. 203 E. Curran St., Des Arc, 870-256-3311.
PINE BLUFF
SARACEN RESTAURANTS The Saracen Casino Resort puts as much emphasis on cuisine as it does gaming, as is evident in the property’s extensive offerings. At the Red Oak Steakhouse, enjoy prime-grade beef and bison from the Quapaw herd alongside a carefully curated menu in the property’s flagship restaurant. Red Oak’s signature cuisine is presented in a class of its own, with Saracen’s focus on offering the best steaks in the South carefully managed from pasture to plate. Legends Sports Bar includes an in-house brewery, a 25-foot video wall, a live entertainment stage and a must-try menu. The Post has four unique venues offering everything from Saracen’s own Quapaw-roasted coffee and made-to-order donuts to a gourmet taqueria. Quapaw Kitchens redefines the buffet experience, bringing fine dining to an all-you-can-eat setting. Saracen Casino Resort, 1 Saracen Resort Drive, Pine Bluff, 870-686-9001.
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DECEMBER 2020 63
IT’S THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARKANSAS TIMES READERS CHOICE AWARDS
Since 1981, the Arkansas Times has asked its readers to vote for the best restaurants in the state. Amid the pandemic, supporting local restaurants and their ingenuity is more important than ever. Winner and finalist posters will be delivered the end of January.
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CANNABIZ
NO PIPE NEEDED: Edibles claiming larger part of medical marijuana sales.
EDIBLE ARKANSAS
THERE ARE MANY ALTERNATIVES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS AVERSE TO SMOKING. BY GRIFFIN COOP
A
rkansas’s medical marijuana patients aren’t just blowing smoke: Many are using the wide variety of edible products created by the state’s cultivators and made available at the state’s 31 open dispensaries. From gummies to chocolates to hard candies, edible products provide an alternative for patients who don’t want to smoke. While dispensaries say marijuana flower is still the product in highest demand, one dispensary reports edibles account for as much as 15% of sales. Another dispensary says edibles are about 10% of overall sales and gummies account for three-quarters of those sales. The gummy candies don’t resemble the brightly colored bears and worms on convenience store shelves because of a state law prohibiting products that would appeal to children, such as candies in the shape of an “animal, vehicle, person or character.” Instead, gummies come in muted colors, like brown and black, that don’t match their fruit flavors, like strawberry and lemon. Another benefit: They offer a low-cost alternative to flower. “The gummies are the most cost-effective [product] as a general rule,” said David Lawson, general manager of The Source in Bentonville. “They were also the first [medical marijuana forms] available [in Arkansas]. They are the most widely available. The gummies are definitely the winner.” The state also prohibits the sale of cookies and brownies. “What you do see on the market is a round gummy that’s black that has different flavors,” Medical Marijuana spokesman Scott Hardin said. “But the gummy itself is not anything that would resemble a product on the market.” The state’s Alcohol Beverage Control has not issued a single citation for products that don’t meet state law, Hardin said. In addition to being cost-effective, gummies tend to stay in stock, unlike flower, which has been in short supply this year, according to reports from dispensaries. “The edibles tend to stay in stock pretty well,” said Blake Harris, budtender at Suite 443 in Hot Springs. “We might run out of a flavor of gummies, but they usually get put back in stock pretty quick. The flower seems to be the real issue with trying to keep it in stock.” Dispensaries also sell chocolates that come in a variety of flavors that sound like the offerings of a high-end chocolatier. According to industry sources ARKANSASTIMES.COM
DECEMBER 2020 65
VARIETY: Go ready-made with gummies or cook up your own cannabis eats.
Weedmaps and Leafly, Arkansas dispensaries sell chocolate edibles in such flavors as hazelnut espresso, chili sea salt and coconut caramel. The chocolates are shaped differently from chocolate products on the general market, often coming in triangular pieces of “chocolate bark.” “What you are going to see is a chocolate that in no way resembles a commercially available product,” Hardin said. Other products on the market include hard candies, tinctures (oral drops), chews, capsules and oils, such as Rick Simpson Oil. Named for its creator, Rick Simpson Oil (or RSO as it’s sometimes called) is a cannabis concentrate that comes in a syringe containing as much as 900mg of oil, according to Jarrett McFarlin, general manager at Custom Cannabis in Alexander. In 2003, Simpson created the oil for use in a strict 12-week regimen, according to Leafly, but McFarlin says RSO can also be a cost-effective way to use cannabis. “Rick Simpson Oil is phenomenal,” McFarlin said. “In my opinion, it is the best bang for your buck when talking about edible forms of cannabis.” While dispensaries in other states offer bottled cannabis soda and tea, there are no cannabis drinks on the Arkansas market. The commission’s regulations do not explicitly forbid cannabis drinks, but the regulations do include language about processors combining cannabis with “caffeine or other chemical that may increase carcinogenicity or cardiac effects.” “I think they are most likely going to run into that appeal to children if they try to make sodas,” Lawson said. “The drinks that I’m familiar with in this industry, it will be very difficult for those to be allowed in Arkansas.” McFarlin is still hopeful a cannabis drink could be in Arkansas’s future. “It’s going to be 66 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
something that I expect to come along pretty soon.” In the meantime, McFarlin says patients looking for a beverage can purchase tinctures in a dropper bottle and mix those with a beverage on their own. Cooking The commission’s rules prohibit cultivators from processing cannabis into common baked goods like cookies and brownies, but there is nothing stopping patients from purchasing flower and baking with it on their own. Dispensaries offer advice to customers who want to give cooking a chance, but it can be a little tricky. Cooking with flower requires decarboxylation, a process in which the cannabis is heated to a certain temperature to activate the THC so that it can be absorbed by the body, according to Weedmaps. Failing to heat the flower enough will produce less than the flower’s maximum effects, while heating it too much can degrade the product. “I recommend that they decarboxylate their flower for usually at least 45 minutes beforehand,” McFarlin said. “What that does is it converts the THC molecule into a more bioavailable form so the body can absorb it.” So, patients need to cook their flower for a while before they start baking or otherwise cooking food that will contain cannabis. Machines that make the process a little easier are available for purchase at some dispensaries, other local stores and on the internet. “Once it’s ‘decarbed,’ technically, you can eat it straight, but what I recommend is [to] use it in a coconut oil or a butter,” McFarlin said. “Any type of cooking oil works well.” And it’s all perfectly legal under Arkansas law.
“I think one reason that you see flower still driving this market is that ... there is absolutely nothing prohibiting a patient from taking it home and turning it into a candy or a cookie or a brownie,” Hardin said. Patients who want to take an easier route can purchase cannabis-infused grapeseed cooking oil at dispensaries and cook with that. Patients can also find edibles that meet their dietary concerns. Some gummies are made with a honey base, rather than gelatin, which is an animal product. “We have a large variety in multiple flavors of vegan gummies,” McFarlin said. “Osage Creek Cultivation produces a wide array of vegan gummies.” Take it slow Dispensary employees have consistent and clear advice when it comes to using edibles: Take it slow. Because of the way edibles are absorbed by the body, it takes 15 minutes to an hour for a user to feel the effects, Lawson said. Dispensaries advise patients to eat only a little bit of a dose at first, then wait to see if they feel the effects. If not, they advise eating a little more. McFarlin says some patients only wait 10-15 minutes after taking an edible, then take two more doses and risk becoming overmedicated. “That’s the worst thing you can do,” McFarlin said. “That’s not how it works.” Lawson says patients should take it slow because there is no way to reverse the process other than to wait for the effects to wear off. “We recommend a half dose to begin with, because you can always try more,” Lawson said. “You can never go back. You’re just going to have to wait it out if you, unfortunately, try too much.”
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FRASIER FIR scents & potions
1. FAUX HER Soft, cozy and super fashionable: What’s not to love about this Faux Fur Pom Pom women’s beret? Follow us on Facebook for Daily “Finds.” Rhea Drug, 501-664-4117, rheadrugstore.com 2. MORE THAN BOOKS Find gifts out of the ordinary, like fun tea towel, ceramics, necklaces, hats and cutting boards, in the Galleries at Library Square in the Roberts Library. Central Arkansas Library System, cals.org 3. ARTFUL GIVING Delight your friends and family and brighten their walls and lives with a gift of art. You can find these gorgeous abstract watercolors by Ashley A. Saer at Box Turtle and other mindfully curated and artisan-sourced goods for your home, wardrobe and loved ones. Box Turtle, 501-661-1167, Shopboxturtle.com 4. T TIME Get your Midtown T-shirt and celebrate 80 years of Arkansas’s original bar in downtown Little Rock! $20 ($25 for extra large). Follow Midtown on Facebook for all the latest live streams and happenings at Midtown. Midtown Billiards, 1316 S. Main Street, 501-372-9990 5. COZY UP TO CHRISTMAS Stuff the stockings with these goodies from WordsWorth! It’s the season to put on your nightshirt, snuggle up by the fire with a cup of tea and enjoy a good book. WordsWorth Books, 501-663-9198, Wordsworthbookstore.com
WE DO IT ALL
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le! Now Availab Keep it Local! The Arkansas Times Coloring Book, created by the Arkansas Times and the 28 Arkansas artists represented in these pages. Bringing these Arkansas scenes to life with color and imagination is a great way to beat the social isolation blues! Each purchase goes to support our local artists as well as the writers, editors, photographers and designers who bring you the Arkansas Times magazine every month and arktimes.com every day. Support like yours has enabled the Times to publish independent, Arkansas-centric journalism for 47 years. These are difficult times, but together we will push past this.
To order online or for more information:
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Special Advertising Section
1.SHOWTIME Visit the gallery’s new location in SoMA, where the established and emerging collector will find fine art by local, national and international artists. Its annual holiday showcase is 4-9 p.m. Nov. 28. Call 501-454-6969 to reserve your time slot. Boswell Mourot Fine Art Gallery, 501-664-0030, boswellmourot.com 2. LOOK GOOD IN THE SNOW Hit the slopes this season with ski wear from Obermeyer and Black Yak. At Ozark Outdoor Supply, meet your downhill needs with style. Ozark Outdoor Supply, 501-664-4832, Ozarkoutdoor.com
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Special Advertising Section
1. GAME TIME Have fun with the entire family this holiday season with the Table Topics game, a great way to start conversations. Choose from categories like best things ever, grandparents, happiness, inspiring women and more. Cynthia East Fabrics, 501-299-9199, cynthiaeastfabrics.com 2. ROLL ON Sushi as a gift is awesome! Come grab your gift card today at our SoMa or Chenal locations. Rock N Roll Sushi, 501-900-ROCK (7265) and 501-313-4241, rocknrollsushi.com 3. LOVER GIRL Shop Cupids for the Christmas boudoir: She’ll love Elegant Moments’ red teddy, Honey Dust’s Kissable Body Powder, Naturals massage oil, Chocolate Tease foreplay game, World Intimates’ corset and boyshort set, Dreamgirl’s sheer thigh highs and lace top, and Leg Avenue’s velvet and floral lace starburst teddy. Cupids now has a store downtown at 117 E. Markham St., and 5400 JFK Blvd, NLR 501-753-3353, shopcupids.com for online shopping, and 8 stores across Arkansas. 4. CHEERS! Get into the hometown Christmas spirit with Rock Town’s crafted vodkas, bourbons and more. The tasting room is open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. (midnight on Friday and Saturday). Rock Town Distillery, 501-907-5244, rocktowndistillery.com
MARKETPLACE Winter special. Two nights for the price of one!
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THE OBSERVER
T
A HARD RAIN’S GONNA FALL
o bask a bit longer in the hours after the first moment we glimpsed light after they called the election for decency on Saturday, four very long days after the vote and after four very long years that proved why that vote was do-or-die, The Observer, Spouse and Junior went out for a long family drive to look at the fall colors and just sorta breathe full, deep breaths for the first time in years. The Observer, if you’ve paid attention in these pages over the last decade or two, is a car nut of some renown. From the first moment someone put a set of keys in our hand, we have always been in love with driving — earlier, really, sitting up in the yards-wide naugahyde back seat of our mother’s ivy green Pontiac Bonneville, windows down, wind in our hair. America, for better or for worse, isn’t really purple mountains’ majesties and fruited plains. Those are the things you see from the window of the car, truck, bus or train. America is the highway. It’s seeing the USA in your Chevrolet. It’s the Joads in their rickety truck on The Mother Road. It’s platinum-blonde Suzanne Somers in her ’57 T-Bird in “American Graffiti,” a stoplight goddess, as elusive as a unicorn. It’s even Vin Diesel growling through lines thick as axle grease in “The Fast and the Furious” before putting the hammer down and turning liquified dinosaurs into tire smoke. Though we’d never want to be a trucker, a cabbie or even Richard Petty — we love driving too much to ever spoil it by making it a job — long hours of motorvatin’ with Baby beside me at the wheel and no particular place to go (RIP Chuck Berry) has always been The Observer’s happy place and refuge. Given that, we’ve worn the tires off the family automobiles over the last four years of Trump and Trumpism, the ideology where the cruelty toward people of empathy and compassion like The Observer, Junior and Spouse is absolutely the point. We’ve driven all over this state and all over our region, ranging as far as Mena, El Dorado, Eureka Springs and Memphis 74 DECEMBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
on aimless backroad day jaunts, putting sometimes as much as 20,000 miles a year on The Mobile Observatory. That’s a crazy amount of miles, given that both Spouse and Yours Truly have a commute of less than 15 minutes from The Observatory to downtown. But that’s what it took some of those years, trying to clear our head with asphalt therapy on days when the blue fog of disappointment over the cruelty, stupidity and arrogance of this administration left us completely worn out, the days when the helplessness of the moment had left Yours Truly feeling wrung out as an old shop towel, dried stiff on a hook. You see, like Spouse and Junior, The Observer is one of those poor bastards cursed to care about politics and what politicians are doing to screw us all over and drive us all apart. We despise no one but the mean, the egotistical, the power-hungry and those who’d rather die than admit fault or failure, which describes our thankfully-soon-to-be-former president to a T. Given that, we feel right now as if we spent the last 48 months on a careening minecart straight outta “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” the cart we’re in not only brakeless but also on fire and filled with rats. Metaphors are never as close to a feeling as you think they’re gonna be, but here’s another one: We told someone on Saturday that it is as if, on Election Night 2016, someone tied an engine block to The Observer’s ankle and dumped us overboard. On Saturday morning, when the race was called, the tether snapped. We were not prepared for how good that felt. A top three happiest moment of our life for sure, made happier by the fact that Junior and Spouse were feeling the same. We motored west to Ferndale on Saturday, out near the crossroads there and the Presbyterian camp at Ferncliff, where the faithful convene to seek enlightenment in nature. The roads are beautiful out that way: winding, tunnelling at times through trees that crowd the shoulders of the highway as if they’re determined to take it back the minute we’re not using it any more. Which, of course, they are. After three days
stuck in the house, including a day or two of near total dread, we found that fall color now covered the hills like frozen puffs of orange, red and yellow powder, the road disappearing around bends and swooping through low places and over hills. The fall, that time of ghosts and shutting down, when the trees put on one final gala before going to sleep until another spring, has always been The Observer’s favorite time of the year. We slowed down to keep the moment there, savored. Junior had plugged his phone into the futuristic Entertainment Hub of the Mobile Observatory by then, and as we drove, he pushed a virtual button and out of the speakers came the perfect song for one of the most perfect moments of The Observer’s life: Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” the tune that goes “Oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son?/ Oh where have you been, my darling young one?” It was, his Old Man reminded Junior past a lump in our throat, a song we used to sing for him as a sleeping babe in his father’s nervous arms. Now it’s a song that will now be associated forever with that one pristine moment there winding through the hills, when Yours Truly, Spouse and Junior were as happy as our little three-ring family unit has ever been collectively and simultaneously. The Observer would have said that moment was second in collective family happiness to the moment Junior was born, but he generally seemed pretty pissed about that at the time, pushed from his warm, snug apartment into this cold old world with only two young fools and a bunch of old folks to care for him. Dylan sang. The road rolled on. We took a hand off the wheel — always 10 and 2, because driving, as Milner says in “American Graffiti,” is serious business — and covered Spouse’s hand with our own. Then we rounded the curve, heading toward whatever comes next, the graying old Driver thinking of all the things our blue-eyed son has seen and will see, as he stumbles on the side of 12 misty mountains, as he walks and he crawls on six crooked highways.
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90 days no payments!
2
No application fee. Apply online today! It’s easy. MEMBERSHIP AVAILABLE TO ALL ARKANSANS. MILITARY/GOVERNMENT AFFILIATION NOT REQUIRED.
800.456.3000 | afcu.org/wow 1. Annual Percentage Rate (APR). Offer subject to change without notice; credit criteria applies. Based on 36-month term and below 70% loan to value. This offer is only valid for auto loans not currently financed with Arkansas Federal Credit Union. Membership with Arkansas Federal is required for this offer. Full coverage insurance with a maximum deductible of $1,000 is required on all Auto Loans. Borrower is responsible for adding Arkansas Federal as a lien holder. 2. Interest continues to accrue during the deferred payment and credit score determines rate. First payments may be due up to 90 days from the date of the signed contract. Federally insured by NCUA. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
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