Smart talk
Contents That other anniversary n Subscribers to the Arkansas History Listserv have been wondering if, with all the hoorah about the Civil War sesquicentennial this year if anyone remembers that Arkansas will turn 175 on June 15. Forget, hell! The Old State House Museum celebrates Arkansas’s statehood every year, this year on June 11, the Saturday before the anniversary. There will be a living history event; theme and hours are still being worked out. OSHMA — the Old State House Museum Associates — will celebrate as well, by throwing a fund-raiser from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. June 15 in the 1885 House of Representatives Chamber. There will be heavy hors d’oeuvres, libations, and a silent auction of Arkansas products, including an Arkansas flag to be painted by artist Pat Matthews during the event. Tickets are $75. Listserv subscribers have noted that the state’s sesquicentennial in 1986 got a lot of attention, with a special issue of license plates and a celebration in War Memorial Stadium, where a giant plywood stage in the shape of the state was erected at the 50-yard line. Just 25 years after Arkansas became a state, it seceded from the Union, and it is that anniversary that is getting all the attention this year.
Political extremists
HAS IT COVERED: The latest cover of National Geographic features an illustration of a historically recreated Machu Picchu, the famed Incan site in Peru. The University of Arkansas reports that the foundation of the design came courtesy of researchers at its Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST), who spent time in 2005 and 2009 scanning Machu Picchu with high-resolution laser scanning instruments, which generated the first hi-res 3D data on the ruins. For a better visualization of the CAST researchers’work, check out the 3D fly-over video of Machu Picchu on National Geographic’s iPad edition.
n The spring issue of Intelligence Report, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center, included two Arkansans on a list of 23 “right-wing extremists” who ran for public office in America last year. Five of the candidates were elected, including one of the Arkansans. State Rep. Loy Mauch, RBismarck, is serving his first term in the legislature. Intelligence Report identified him as a “Neo-Confederate, white nationalist.” The other Arkansan on the list, Billy Roper of Russellville, received 49 votes running as a write-in candidate for governor. Intelligence Report calls him a “White supremacist, neoNazi.”
10 Marianna mistrial Did race play a role in a jury’s refusal to convict Curtis Vance on rape charges? — By David Koon
16 Film feast
Batesville plays host to the Ozark Foothills FilmFest, which offers a strong lineup in its 10th anniversary. — By Lindsey Millar
36 Treasure troves
An insider’s guide to the best antique malls in Central Arkansas. — By Arkansas Times Staff
DEPARTMENTS 3 The Insider 4 Smart Talk 5 The Observer 6 Letters 7 Orval 8-20 News 22 Opinion 25 Arts & Entertainment 45 Dining 53 Crossword/ Tom Tomorrow 54 Lancaster
Words VOLUME 37, NUMBER 29
n A former newspaperman writes concerning an Arkansas Times columnist: “Please stop [redacted] from contributing to the nauseating trend of turning nouns into verbs. In today’s blog he says, ‘One of Dabbs’ first official acts, by the way, was firing the human resources employee who’d backgrounded her about Bryant salary law.’ A few months back, he said The New York Times had ‘frontpaged’ an article on a certain subject. Is that our old city editor rolling over in his grave I hear?” To some people, seeing a noun become a verb is as horrifying as seeing Lon Chaney Jr. become The Wolfman. Yet this semantic transformation occurs frequently, and has been doing so for a long time, whereas The Wolfman appears only under a full moon. (Someone is trying to tell me 4 MARCH 23, 2011 • ARKANSAS TIMES
Doug S mith doug@arktimes.com
there are newer and better wolfmen than Lon Jr. Newer, maybe.) Furthermore, condemnation of the practice is not so easy to find as it once was. Some of my usage books raise no objection at all, and others issue only mild warnings against excess. Garner’s Modern American Usage says, “Although some writers enjoy referring to fast-tracking budgets, tasking committees, and mainstreaming children, be wary of these innovations. They reek of jargon.” Even Theodore Bernstein, whose
“The Careful Writer” was published in 1977, stopped well short of nausea, and Bernstein was picky. “As to the conditions under which nouns become acceptable verbs, the answer is not clear-cut. There are writers (and, of course, speakers) who delight in novelty ... They are the ones who would elevator themselves to their penthouses ... The writer who has respect for the language will treat such antics with disdain. But he will not close his mind to the possibility that there is a continuing need for new words either to express succinctly new situations or to express old situations that otherwise require the expenditure of too much verbal effort.” I adopt the old legislator’s position. “Some of my friends are for this bill and some of my friends are against it. I stand with my friends.”
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