Smart talk
Contents
8 UA rejects
The original singing Montana n By now, everybody knows that the song Miss Arkansas, Alyse Eady, sings and yodels through a ventriloquist’s dummy is called “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” and they may know that it was made famous by Patsy Montana. How much they know about Patsy Montana, we’re not sure. First of all, she was an Arkansan, too. According to The Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, and other sources, she was born Ruby Blevins in 1912 outside Hot Springs. Later in life, she stuck an “e” on the end of Ruby, and later still, after she’d begun singing professionally, she adopted the stage name of Patsy Montana. She got it from Monte Montana, who’d been a star of silent Western movies and a champion roper, and with whom she’d worked early in her career. She herself appeared in one of Gene Autry’s Westerns. The Country Music Encyclopedia says Patsy Montana was “one of the most popular acts in country music throughout the 1930’s and 40’s — and the first solo female country music star.” With “I Want to be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” released in 1935, she became the first woman to have a record that sold a million copies. She died in 1996 at her home in San Jacinto, Calif.
higher ed study UA chancellor says the reform recommended in a new report commissioned by the Department of Higher Education includes is a “very bad idea.” — By Doug Smith
10 Tainted
A petition from a Death Row inmate to the Supreme Court includes evidence that the DNA analysis used to convict was faulty, and the prosecution knew it. — By Mara Leveritt
18 Showcase Rex MONTANA: Country music’s first female star.
Union colonel says shape up
Majored in frugality
n This being the Civil War sesquicentennial, a lot of attention will be paid to that great conflict. At a recent exhibit in Little Rock, we were impressed by a proclamation issued by R.R. Livingston, a colonel in the 1st Nebraska Cavalry and the commander of the District of Northeast Arkansas, at Batesville on Christmas Day, 1863. “I shall expect the full support of all good men in restoring peace to your desolated district. The hearty cooperation of law and order loving citizens in suppressing lawless bands, by information as well as by appealing to the erring, is essential to your own safety, and is demanded.” Peace on earth or else.
n U.S. News and World Report has compiled a list of the “10 most-loved” colleges and universities, measuring love by the percentage of a school’s alumni that contribute money to their alma mater. The obscure (to us) Webb Institute of Glen Cove, N.Y., topped the list, with 71 percent of its grads giving money back to their school. Carleton College of Northfield, Minn., was second, with 61 percent. Princeton was third at 60 percent. But what really caught our eye was the school at the bottom of the list. Of 1,283 schools that participated in the survey, the one with the lowest percentage of alumni giving back was the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith — 0.1 percent.
LIVINGSTON: Talked turkey.
Tyrannosaurus Chicken wins the first Arkansas Times Showcase semifinal; second contest is Thursday. — By John Tarpley
DEPARTMENTS 3 The Insider 4 Smart Talk 5 The Observer 6 Letters 7 Orval 8-15 News 16 Opinion 18 Arts & Entertainment 28 Dining 45 Crossword/ Tom Tomorrow 46 Lancaster
Words VOLUME 37, NUMBER 22
n Time to bring in a relief picture: Mary Catherine McSpadden of Mountain View saw this item in the Jan. 19 Arkansas Times — “CLIFF LEE. The star baseball picture bought a nice old house for fix-up in an established part of Little Rock, passed up New York (and an additional $30 million) for a better quality of family life in Philadelphia and gave $1 million to Arkansas Children’s Hospital.” MaryMac (as teammates call her) writes: “If Cliff Lee is a star baseball picture, that thing in the square accompanying the article must be a pitcher of said picture.” n The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed Endangered Species Act protection for the sheepnose and the spectaclecase, two freshwater-mussels found 4 FEBRUARY 2, 2010 • ARKANSAS TIMES
Doug S mith doug@arktimes.com
in rivers in a small number of states (including Arkansas, in the case of the spectaclecase). I enjoy the exotic names of the creatures on the endangered species lists. They’re even more reason to keep the species around. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission list of endangered species includes the Arkansas Fatmucket, the Magazine Mountain Shagreen, and the Pallid Sturgeon. I like to think that one day a biologist will step up and shout “Wait! That sturgeon’s not endangered, it’s just pallid.” Then he’ll take it off to a tanning
parlor, being careful that it doesn’t come out looking like John Boehner. n My concern for the pallid sturgeon may have to do with my fondness for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting “On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door … ” Incidentally, the Baltimore Sun has just reported that “the mysterious Poe toaster” failed to show up at Poe’s grave to celebrate the poet’s birthday for the second year in a row. Imposters have flitted by, but a cemetery attendant told the Sun, “I could tell just by looking at them that were not the real Poe toaster.” n I’d rather be a Poe toaster than a Post Toastie.
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