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WEEK THAT WAS

Federal lawsuit challenges Arkansas Works

DHS sued over Rutledge FOIA A Democratic Party employee has filed a Freedom of Information Act 4

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

A lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the federal court of the District of Columbia challenging Arkansas’s work requirement for many Medicaid recipients. The suit, with three plaintiffs — Charles Gresham of Harrison and Cesar Ardon and Marisol Ardon of Siloam Springs — names Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Medicare/Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It was filed in the same court that has ruled a waiver the government allowed for a Kentucky work rule was illegal. This suit, too, wants to enjoin enforcement of the rule as a violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution. The National Health Law Program, Arkansas Legal Aid and the Southern Poverty Law Center have worked on the long-anticipated lawsuit. They argue that restrictions on medical coverage aren’t allowed by the Medicaid law. It is a health program, not a work program, they argue. Governor Hutchinson persuaded the feds to accept the work rule to make the Medicaid expansion more palatable to Republican legislators. It took effect in June. The work rule applies to people aged 30-49, but will add those aged 19-29 next year. Beneficiaries must work 80 hours a month, including volunteer activities or school. The work must be reported online. Failure to meet the requirement for three months in a calendar year locks a participant out of coverage for the rest of that calendar year. About 7,000 recipients failed to substantiate employment in the first month. A July report was expected Wednesday. The Arkansas Nonprofit News Network recently reported that Arkansas has already reduced Medicaid rolls by some 60,000, for reasons not entirely clear.

lawsuit to see Department of Human Services personnel records for Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. Reed Brewer, a spokesman for the Arkansas Democratic Party, filed the suit, with party attorney Chris Burks handling legal work. They had asked DHS for Rutledge’s records from her time as a staff attorney, but none had been produced in the time the law allowed. DHS claimed the information was not in the public interest. This revives an issue in Rutledge’s campaign for office four years ago.

The Arkansas Times’ extensive review of records supplied by DHS revealed the “do not rehire” note by a supervisor on records of her departure from the agency after about a year of work. Rutledge said at the time she thought this was perhaps a reference to her leaving without giving sufficient notice. Rutledge, who is up for re-election and facing Democrat Mike Lee, called the lawsuit “fake news” by “desperate Democrats.”

Debtors’ prison alleged

A legal group has filed a lawsuit on sentencing practices in White County District Judge Mark Derrick’s court that it says amount to unconstitutional debtors’ prison. Derrick ran for office in 2016 boasting of the high fines he’d impose and, according to the suit, jails people for failure to pay without assessing their ability to pay. According to a news release on the suit, Derrick “routinely sentences individuals for failure to pay twice as much jail time as those convicted of most serious misdemeanors; disregards state law requirement to offer or appoint a defense attorney; routinely orders the suspension of driver’s license for missed payments; requires a minimum of $100 monthly payments for court fees without an assessment of ability to pay, in violation of the 14th Amendment.” The group behind the lawsuit, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, worked with the ACLU on a similar case in Sherwood’s hot check court in Pulaski County. The case produced a settlement that included a number of changes in practices on handling cases in that court.

OPINION

Targeting teachers

he Hutchinson administration has riled the teachers union in the Little Rock School District. The Little Rock Education Association, which has represented teachers in bargaining for more than 50 years, called an emergency meeting last week to discuss danger signals from Education Commissioner Johnny Key. He’s the former Republican state senator named to run the state Department of Education by Republican Governor Hutchinson. He serves as the Little Rock “school board” since it was taken over by the state in 2015. Republicans, particularly the billionaires who now effectively control education policy, hate teachers unions. Little Rock is one of the last districts in the state with a union contract. The current contract ends Oct. 31. Will Key negotiate a new one? Teachers have doubts. The employee policy manual devel-

been an important check against incompetent and dishonest superintendents. But they have enemies. Teacher resistance was a key element in the defeat of Walton-backed and Hutchinson-supported legislation in 2015 that would have allowed oped by teachers a state takeover of the district for parceling MAX and administrators BRANTLEY out to private operators. Charterization still maxbrantley@arktimes.com last September still continues, if more slowly. hasn’t been signed by Key. Also telling was The challenge of LREA membership the sudden push by Key to dispute the coincidentally arose at the same time an LREA’s annual April filing of membership. anti-union teachers group that has enjoyed It must represent 50 percent of employees Walton funding was buying advertising in to be recognized as a bargaining agent. the newspaper of another union enemy, the A few weeks ago, Key’s office questioned Democrat-Gazette’s Walter Hussman, to the figures. Friday, the LREA submitted recruit teachers away from the AEA. new, audited figures. To add to teachers’ nervousness is talk Against the sweep of history, the treat- about putting a Walton-financed charter ment of teachers is insulting. In the racial high school in Northwest Little Rock. That turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s, the Arkan- site is promoted by a $237,000-a-year Walsas Education Association and Little Rock ton lobbyist for a high school of some sort teachers stood tall against the segrega- to serve upscale, white western Little Rock tionists. As a father of two graduates of (and coincidentally drive harm to Central the Little Rock schools, I’ve known many High School, its excellence long inconveLREA members. I knew them as people nient to the Waltons’ criticism of the Little who ignored time clocks, dug in their own Rock School District.) pockets for supplies and warmly embraced But the immediate concern is the children of every color and need. They’ve teacher contract. It was pared down sub-

Court politics

hen they say that confirming a Supreme Court justice is about the Constitution, they mean it’s about politics. It’s always about politics, at least in the modern era. Whether U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmable depends altogether on whether he meets the current political persuasions of his party, which are not necessarily those of 40 years ago or another decade from now. Kavanaugh does, so he will be confirmed and will take his seat on the Supreme Court in time to protect his sponsor, Donald Trump, from the legal jeopardy that he has brought on himself. The White House threw out lots of names of “conservative” judges as the potential justice, but none came as close as Kavanaugh to that promise for filling the vacancy left by the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan Republican who sometimes jumped the political traces and ruled that the Constitution really meant what it said. Arkansas Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton talked to Kavanaugh a few minutes and declared that he was a man dedicated to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. No he isn’t or, if he is, there’s no evidence of it one way or the other. He’s solidly in the camp of Donald Trump and the current Republican Party, for which he has been as loyal a servant as anyone in the legal

profession, with the possible exception of Rudy Giuliani. In the design of the founding fathers, the third branch is supposed to be above politics and the changing ERNEST DUMAS whims of voters and to interpret the Constitution and the laws of Congress without favor. The president, of course, appoints the judges and the popularly elected Senate confirms them, but the founders expected life tenure to insulate judges from their political sponsors. It did and it didn’t. Take Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, about which too much is now written and speculated. Abortion then was favored by evangelicals, even the Southern Baptist Convention, perhaps because the idea violated papal doctrine that God opposed birth control. Abortion was not on the Republican wavelength. Thus Roe v. Wade was a Republican decision, written by a Republican and produced by a Republican majority. Of the seven justices who delivered Roe, four were Republicans, one was a Catholic Democrat appointed by a Republican, and two were Democrats appointed by Democrats. The dissenting Democrat was Byron “Whizzer” White, who was appointed to the court

because he had led the National Football League in rushing for two years, was a corporate lawyer and had written the naval citation for his buddy John F. Kennedy’s wartime heroism on PT boat 109. Democrats are enraged that the Senate can’t get its hands on all of Kavanaugh’s writings in his various Republican government jobs, but who needs more? His writings in the seven-year snipe hunt to remove Bill Clinton from office are enough. Remember that Vincent Foster, the Hope boy who was depressed over the serial attacks on his integrity in the Wall Street Journal, spurned his sister’s pleas for him to see a psychiatrist, took his father’s antique pistol to Fort Marcy Park and shot himself in the head. When the news broke, Rush Limbaugh said the Clintons probably had him murdered because he must have known something bad on them. The federal park police, the FBI, the state medical examiner, the Department of Justice and two congressional committees investigated and separately concluded that every bit of evidence proved it was suicide. A Republican federal prosecutor, appointed as an independent counsel, investigated the suicide again and also the Clintons’ little 1977 land deal in Marion County and concluded suicide and no wrongdoing anywhere. Unhappy Republican judges in the District of Columbia removed him and appointed Kenneth Starr, who had lost his federal job when Clinton became president. Enter Brett Kavanaugh. He left his job

stantially during Baker Kurrus’ tenure as superintendent, before his firing by Key for resisting charter school proliferation. The union also took a pay cut and backed a district tax increase despite fears that it was a ploy to infuse millions in fixup money into the district in advance of privatization. For its cooperation, the union gets Hutchinson administration resistance. The people of the district? No hint from Hutchinson that we’ll ever get our school district back. Rejection of teachers stirred popular revolts in other states. Could it happen in Little Rock? Or Arkansas? Jared Henderson, the Democrat challenging Hutchinson, has outlined a specific way to make Arkansas a great place for teachers. It could be a hotter issue still in the mayor’s race in Little Rock. On the available record, Kurrus is the strongest friend of teachers in the race. If Little Rock is to prosper, it must have a cohesive public school district, not a crazyquilt of private schools operating with tax money. Teachers are the bedrock. If teachers aren’t valued, the schools and the community can’t expect respect either.

in a prestigious Republican law firm to pursue the Clintons for Starr. The presidential murder of a friend was too good a yarn for the Republicans to drop. It took Kavanaugh and his team, assisted again by the FBI, two years to meekly file a report that, OK, the Clintons didn’t kill their friend. Within days, the Monica Lewinsky story broke and Kavanaugh saw another chance. He rushed back to Starr’s staff to pursue the sex story and the chance to force Clinton to testify under oath about sex in the Paula Jones civil trial and set up the perjury trap that Trump now fears so much. Clinton fell into it. Kavanaugh insisted that Starr gather all the sordid sex events — oral sex, masturbation, the stained dress, the cigar — in his confidential impeachment report to the House of Representatives to excite the congressmen and reinforce their urge to impeach and remove the Democrat. Then he got cold feet. At the last minute, he advised Starr that the slimy details should not go into the report because Republican congressmen might leak them to the media, as he had been doing, and the political nature of the witch hunt would be transparent. The public would turn against the Starr team and for Clinton. The Republicans instantly leaked them to the media, with exactly the result Kavanaugh feared. Now Kavanaugh thinks the president should be protected from prosecution. A man of such sterling principle is perfect for the Supreme Court, no?

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Ad hominem

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verybody’s favorite logical fallacy Very little these days seems to be the ar- makes the Fox gumentum ad hominem. That’s News/Trumpist where you make a personal attack on crowd happier that somebody’s presumed motives instead a whine-fest about of engaging the substance of what they’ve “reverse racism.” GENE said. Sad to say, it’s as prevalent on the As the New YorkLYONS political left as the right. er’s Jelani Cobb In advanced circles, it’s now seen as observes, what makes Jeong’s comments legitimate to attack the gender, national- “reckless, inflammatory, [and] potentially ity or race of anybody you disagree with hurtful” isn’t that they hurt her antago— so long as that person doesn’t belong to nists. They do not. Rather, “the idea of a protected class of person, that is. Now reverse racism serves as a blunt instruThe New York Times has hired a young ment to facilitate the actual kind.” journalist who appears to have made a Exactly. See, because if everybody’s a career of the practice, sparking intense bigot, then nobody’s really at fault. People debate among journalists. who complain about racial injustice are Sarah Jeong is her name, a 30-year-old crybabies who should just shut up. Korean-American Harvard Law graduate But back to Jeong’s awful judgment. who’s allegedly a whiz at writing about What should really have given her new “tech” subjects. She wrote a recent Wash- employers pause is a deeply confused ington Post column — about “Pizzagate” piece she wrote in 2014 about Rolling and online harassment of women — that Stone’s University of Virginia gang-rape made sense, although too many sentences hoax. In it, she made light of all normal like the following badly needed editing: journalistic standards — you know, bor“The World Wide Web’s hyperlinking pro- ing stuff like who, what, where, when, tocol becomes a superpowered version and how — to express the passionate of the conspiracy theorist’s corkboard, belief that something terrible happened stringing together articles, posts, pictures to “Jackie,” the magazine’s only source without context or explanation, supply- for the discredited story. ing the paranoid mind with its bespoke Never mind that virtually every Wikipedia of horrors.” checkable fact in the article proved eluEven so, Jeong’s right: the internet sive. Writing after Rolling Stone had makes crazy people crazier. Like anybody already withdrawn its story (but before who gets online threats, I sometimes wish they paid out multimillion-dollar lawthe authorities could do something. But suit settlements), Jeong expressed impathen back in the bad old days, hate mes- tience for the very idea of fact-checking sages came via telephone and mail, which such an emotionally-satisfying tale. was worse. “The party that wasn’t on the fraterWhat’s made Jeong’s appointment con- nity calendar,” she complains. “The date troversial is her penchant for nasty tweets that wasn’t a fraternity brother. The about white people. Fellow Times col- wrong time of year for pledging. The umnist Bret Stephens compiled a few: “ more I see these ‘inconsistencies’ and ‘White men are bull—’; ‘#CancelWhite- ‘discrepancies’ touted as evidence of People’; ‘oh man it’s kind of sick how falsehood, the more convinced I am much joy I get out of being cruel to old that Jackie is not lying.” white men’ and ‘f— white women lol.’ ” Ah, but if there was no pledge party, Stephens defends her hiring, but says, how could Jackie have been gang-raped “We should call many of these tweets for as an initiation rite? If nobody named what they are: racist.” Jeong alibies that “Haven Monahan” existed, how could she was fighting fire with fire. “While he have been Jackie’s date? it was intended as satire,” she writes, “I Instead, Jeong based her passiondeeply regret that I mimicked the lan- ate belief upon a former suitemate’s guage of my harassers. These comments description of “funny, outgoing, friendly” were not aimed at a general audience, Jackie’s growing withdrawal and isolabecause general audiences do not engage tion during her freshman year. Read today, in harassment campaigns.” it’s a classic portrait of a young woman Racist or not, here’s something else falling into mental illness, far more comthey are: deeply stupid. Not because I’m mon on college campuses than gang rape. offended — for an old white man, I’ve got Something terrible happened to Jackie, thick skin — but because of what they tell all right, but the worst thing was Rolling me about Jeong’s bad judgment. They’re Stone. If I were hiring Sarah Jeong, I’d also a gift to her putative enemies. want to be sure she understands that.

Tough conversations

or decades, public opinion in the dinary change United States regarding abortion i n a t t i t u d e s has been remarkably steady. Ac- h a s o c c u r r e d . JAY cording to the Pew Research Center’s As social sciBARTH regular polling on the issue, since the ence research mid-1990s a slight majority of Americans — including some of my own — has have stated that they believe that abor- clearly shown, as straight Americans tions should be legal in “all” or “most” came to realize that they had friends cases. Around 40 percent of Americans and family members who are LGBTQ, surveyed have responded that the pro- fear and prejudice was reduced and cedure should be illegal in the major- they became more inclined to extend ity of circumstances. Despite dramatic greater civil rights protection to gays changes in the nation’s demographics and lesbians. Persons telling others and in the nature of abortion (with the who they truly are has created massive rise of medical abortions and decrease in social change. Or, as President Barack surgical procedures), the nation remains Obama said more elegantly regarding at an impasse on the legality of abortion. the Obergefell marriage equality rulOf course, there will never be consensus ing: “[I]t is a consequence of the countin the country on such an emotionally less small acts of courage of millions and ethically fraught issue. But, is there of people across decades who stood up, anything that might truly jolt opinion on who came out, who talked to parents abortion rights in the U.S.? — parents who loved their children no One potential game-changer on matter what.” attitudes regarding abortion is a clear All evidence is that stories about the change in its legal status. At moments decision to have an abortion has that same when there have been indications that potential to create significant shifts in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that created opinion on this issue about which there a right to abortion in most circumstances has been such deadlock. And, this past across the nation, seemed likely to be weekend, at the first stop on the Rise overturned, support for abortion rights Up for Roe tour in New York, a 10-city has ticked slightly up in public opinion national tour to raise awareness about surveys on the topic. One can imagine the risk to abortion rights in the courts, an that an actual overturn of a constitu- emphasis was placed on the importance tional right to abortion, which would of women telling their stories about their mean an outlaw of the procedure in most own abortions to shift the conversation cases in an estimated 33 states, would from an abstract one to a deeply personal result in a clear shift in opinion toward one. As writer Lauren Duca put it, “1 in 4 its legality. women will have an abortion by the time However, while it is quite likely they are 45. We need to share real stories that Trump appointments to the U.S. and talk about it.” Supreme Court will shift the court’s perThis effort to personalize the story spective on the issue, the more likely of abortion in America harks back to result in the coming few years will be a the #ShoutYourAbortion social media redefining on whether intrusive regula- hashtag from several years back. Howtions of the practice at the state level con- ever, as the effective LGBTQ “coming stitute an “undue burden” to women’s out” movement showed, rather than access to abortion rather than an out- “shouting” about such matters to the and-out overturn of Roe. While this will world, it is the quiet conversations with significantly impact women’s access to friends and family members that have abortion, particularly in the most rural the even greater power to move opinions. and most conservative states, it will not Many women, understandably, will be the dramatic overturn of Roe that ask, “Why should I have to talk about might produce a true backlash. something so personal and, in some cases, For truly fundamental and sustained so painful to promote a right that should shifts on attitudes toward abortion be fundamental?” On one level, they are to occur, a different force for change correct, and there is certainly no duty for must enter the stage. The model for pro-choice women to come out about this change is what has occurred over their abortions. But, if they do, it has the past two generations on LGBTQ the potential to change the conversation issues, the topic about which extraor- about abortion in America.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

t’s hard to call any SEC schedule “favorable,” to be sure, but Chad Morris’ first hand of 12 games at the helm of the Arkansas football program this fall will be roughly the equivalent of a full house: The Razorbacks draw conference titans Alabama and LSU in Fayetteville, their only true road games are in Auburn, Ala.; Fort Collins, Co.; Starkville, Miss.; and Columbia, S.C.; and they won’t be drawing the presumed best of the East Division. That’s why we’re taking a cautiously but firmly positive angle on this team. I won’t say “bullish” because anytime there is a coaching change that drastically alters the style of play from a team that went 11-14 the past two seasons, you don’t suddenly find yourself thinking a national contender is in your backyard unless you’ve been, um, lysergically affected. Nevertheless, Pearls has pegged the Hogs to be a solid 4-2, 1-2 team after the first half of 2018, and we think the third trio of games in the dozen is where the team can really stretch its metaphorical legs. Ole Miss at Little Rock, Oct. 13: It is likely that, despite Hugh Freeze’s catastrophic and humiliating fall from grace, Matt Luke will keep the Rebels playing at a feverish pace. The trouble is, for as talented as the skill players in Oxford are, the lines aren’t quite up to snuff after a lot of the program’s best guys in the trenches recently ended up doing constructive things like huffing dope through gas masks on Snapchat or entering MMA because the NFL no longer found a place for serial domestic abusers. Arkansas, in all seriousness, is a more disciplined on-field experiment than the Rebel Shark Bears, and the Hogs play their best game in their Central Arkansas digs in years, rekindling the idea that maybe they should get at least another game there every season. Chase Hayden has a particularly fun day for the Hogs, throwing a TD pass on a trick play, running for another score and even throwing in a receiving touchdown to set a Razorback mark for versatility. Arkansas 41, Ole Miss 27. Tulsa at Fayetteville, Oct. 20: What you need to know about the Golden Hurricane is that they won 10 games under Philip Montgomery in 2016 and he was on a few radars for bigger programs as a result, and then

they sagged to 2-10 last fall and Montgomery no longer looks quite like the wunderkind he was when he was BEAU WILCOX leading Art Briles’ Baylor offense a few short seasons ago. Tulsa gets to play three Arkansas foes in nonconference play this year — including the Hogs, Arkansas State and UCA — but after vanquishing the first two of those, the Hurricane stand no chance against a Razorback squad with burgeoning confidence on both sides of the ball. A swarming Hog defense makes the homecoming experience a grand one, with linebacker Dre Greenlaw winning the Crip Hall Award for a fumble recovery he carries to paydirt in the opening few minutes and a couple of big sacks later. The Hog offense plays it close to the vest in its last nonconference outing and advances to 6-2, 2-2 with a big rout. Arkansas 48, Tulsa 13. Vanderbilt at Fayetteville, Oct. 27: Is it ever “fun” to play Vandy? Not hardly. Derek Mason may be a modest 18-31 with zero bowl wins or winning seasons after five oneyear terms in Nashville, but this is always a well-coached bunch, and Kyle Shurmur is easily the program’s best quarterbacking prospect since Jay Cutler was flinging it around in the mid-aughts. The 6-4 senior is coming off a fine 2017 campaign (26 touchdowns, obliterating a school record, against only 10 interceptions) and he’s going to have found some capable targets by this point in the season. The Commodores accordingly push the Hogs hard, because the Razorback bye week has still not occurred, and though it ends well, it also turns into the most exhausting game the team plays all season. Ty Storey’s late scoring toss to Cheyenne O’Grady on a throwback play cements a hard-earned seventh victory. Arkansas 30, Vanderbilt 24. You’re reading this all correctly: We’ve got the Hogs 7-0 against everyone outside the state of Alabama three-quarters of the way in. Yeah, it’s gutsy, or in another word, stupid. But tell me you’re not convinced this team will be demonstrably better than its prior couple of iterations and I’ll call you an unjustified cynic. I guess we’ll be even, then, huh?

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Back to school

reetings students, parents and assembled faculty! It’s that time again. Time to peel off the cockleburs and brush the dandelion floaties out of your hair, time to say your goodbyes to the kind folks at the Cajun Sno trailer for another year, pick off the last of the summer ticks and reacquaint yourself with shoes. Summer is winding down like a clock, as it should, as it must before California manages to burn flat to the ground and Arkansas melts into a puck of skull-studded slag glass under the punishing sun. The kids, kindergarten to college, are headed back to school. For parents, it’s a joyful time for sure. We’re probably supposed to say it’s bittersweet or some such nonsense, but being a parent lo these past 18.5 years, we’ll just cut the bullshit and say joyful. For those whose kids are too young to stay home by themselves, the end of summer means an extended end to workday-long daycare, which — and we haven’t done any research on this, though we’re sure it’s true — is more expensive than having your children frozen in cryostasis for three months by Elon Musk. For those whose kids are old enough to stay home by themselves during the summer: no more staggering in from the office to find the cabinets have been cleaned out as if by a horde of starving refugees, your beloved children clinging to your pant leg the moment you walk in the door, crying: “But mommmm, there’s nuttin to eeeeeeat!” Junior was always prone to eating not only everything in the house that could be prepared by microwave or toaster, but also the one ingredient we needed to make whatever we’d planned to cook for dinner that night — a can of chili beans, a jar of mushrooms, every speck of black pepper in the house — thus requiring our 10,000th run of July to Kroger up in Hillcrest, to loop and loop in the shimmering heat looking for a parking slot in the smallest and worst-designed parking lot in the known world, scowling and being scowled at by all the other people whose children ate everything in their respective houses, even the 4-year-old can of water chestnuts they bought for that recipe inspired by Pinterest. All The

Observer wants to do after work in the doldrums of summer is come in, strip down to our boxers and Tony Sopranograde undershirt, have a drink with ice in it and eat whatever we were going to make with those mushrooms, damn it. So, yeah: The end of summer is a joyful time. You can admit it, too, if you want. No shame! Still, it’s a strange one for Yours Truly this year, being that Spouse and I are sending Junior off to college. We say “off to college” because that’s what you say, but it’s not really “off,” just across town, where he will be a Donaghey Scholar at UA Little Rock. It happens to be the alma mater of his dear old Ma and Pa, who met by literally running into each other as Future Spouse was walking out of a men’s restroom in Stabler Hall, having ducked into the wrong pissoir after a particularly harrowing class. Meeting a woman coming out of the men’s john was intriguing enough that, all these years later, here we are, as is Junior. There’s exciting times ahead, kids! School projects and science fairs, figuring out locker combinations and macaroni art, Halloween projects and Thanksgiving projects and construction paper Santa Clausi galore. By this time next year, maybe Junior will have bumped into his own lovely lass coming out of the wrong crapper. Or lad. We’re cool with whatever floats his boat. But no matter the case, here we all are again, parents, buying notebooks and school clothes, getting them haircuts and school physicals, taking one last photo before putting them on the big yeller bus. In the grand scheme of things, sending your kids off to school is one of the most optimistic things you can do short of having them in the first place, a tacit nod to the idea that no matter how screwed up and Trumpified the present seems to be, time is on the side of these youngsters and, if they’re going to create a better future with Medicare for All and less war, cheap college and free daycare, Social Security and really great nursing homes for all of us old farts, they’re going to need an education. As for The Observer, though, we’ll just be happy to eat our water chestnuts in peace.

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COURTESY HARRISON DAILY TIMES

GREASING THE WHEELS OF GOVERNMENT: Rusty Cranford, speaking in Harrison in 2014, was a powerful lobbyist who always had a scheme.

FLIMFLAM MAN Lobbyist Rusty Cranford stood at the middle of a web of public corruption. BY DAVID RAMSEY ARKANSAS NONPROFIT NEWS NETWORK

n Feb. 21, 2018, federal agents arrested longtime Arkansas lobbyist Milton “Rusty” Cranford at a residence in Bentonville where he was staying. They found $17,700 in $100 bills in a black backpack and multiple bottles of pills for which he did not have a prescription, including Xanax, Ambien and Hydrocodone. Cranford was asked whether there were any weapons in the home and he showed agents a Bond Arms Defender, a .45-caliber derringer-style pistol in a box in the closet. The government would later allege that Cranford planned to hire an old family friend to murder a

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ARKANSAS TIMES

witness who was cooperating in a federal corruption case against him. “This motherfucker right here,” Cranford had told the family friend, a felon who was acting as a confidential informant for the FBI and recording the conversations. “He’s in Philadelphia. He’s in South Jersey.” Cranford then whispered: “He needs to go away. He needs to be gone.” According to the informant, Cranford then made a gunshooting gesture with his hand. Before his downfall, Cranford had been an executive at one of the largest Medicaid providers in the region, and a powerful lobbyist who helped bankroll countless political campaigns in

Arkansas and influenced state policies that remain in place today. During the recorded conversations, he complained that he was being railroaded by the feds: “So those comments have been made that, ‘There’s no way he could have accomplished all this shit without being dirty.’ Well fuck that. Show me where I’m dirty. I mean, yeah, have I wrote a hell of a lot of — have I paid a hell of a lot of politicians? I sure have over the years. A shitload of money. But I’ve wrote them all checks, so there’s a paper trail of everything I wrote. If motherfuckers tryin’ to buy somebody, they ain’t going to write ’em a check for it.”

THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM Cranford was a well-known presence at the state Capitol for around 20 years. He was a smoky-voiced hustler, a country rogue in a rumpled suit. He was as persistent and tenacious as a pawnshop broker closing a sale. He worked hard, and he was always working — always working you — whether you knew it or not. He’d lean in, perspiring with possibility, and tell you: “OK, bub, this is how it’s gonna be.” Cranford was at the center of a web of state corruption uncovered by federal investigators. More than a halfdozen former legislators and lobbyists have been criminally charged, and a cloud hangs over numerous others. Cranford was charged in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of bribery. In June, he pleaded guilty to one count of bribery; he is now awaiting sentencing in Greene County Jail in Missouri.

Cranford had endless schemes, a finger in every money pie he could find. But his big ticket was Preferred Family Healthcare, the nonprofit formerly known as Alternative Opportunities, where he occupied a murky role as both a top executive on staff and an outside consultant engaged in clandestine lobbying. (This article will refer to the nonprofit as AO/PFH; the name changed after a merger in 2015.) The Springfield, Mo., based conglomerate operates in five states and in more than 40 sites across Arkansas, providing behavioral health services such as treatment and counseling for mental health and substance abuse, as well as aiding people with developmental disabilities and other services. That might not sound like an obvious target for graft, but the Medicaid program in Arkansas has a $7.6 billion budget. For Cranford and company, this proved a tempting pot. Cranford, with the help of crooked lawmakers, swallowed up millions of dollars in taxpayer money for AO/ PFH and other clients, then pocketed some of that money for himself and his co-conspirators. Each new filing from federal prosecutors has exposed more details on the rot in Little Rock: Grubby backroom deals greased with cash. Lawmakers hooked up with World Series tickets and overpaid jobs. Four-digit tabs at Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse in West Little Rock. Mysterious wire transfers, surreptitious meetings with cash-stuffed envelopes, sham contracts to hide the flow of money. At various times over the last five years, Arkansas’s government was taken hostage by a criminal enterprise. By 2014, Cranford realized that the FBI was keeping an eye on him and he began to take steps to cover his tracks. It was too late. The first domino to fall came in

This story is based upon court filings in nine state and federal corruption cases and interviews with more than 30 current and former lawmakers, state officials, lobbyists and associates of Rusty Cranford. Cranford, through his attorney, declined to comment.

MUGSHOT: When Cranford was arrested earlier this year in Bentonville, federal agents found a pistol, $17,000 of cash in a black bag and multiple bottles of pills for which he didn’t have a prescription.

June 2017, when an accountant at AO/ PFH pleaded guilty to a $2 million embezzlement scheme, among other charges; later that year he committed suicide at his family farm outside of Springfield. A series of pleas and indictments on federal corruption charges followed: Donald Andrew Jones, a Pennsylvania lobbyist who advocated for AO/PFH in Congress; Eddie Wayne Cooper, a former Democratic state legislator from Melbourne, lobbyist, and AO/PFH executive; three other former Arkansas lawmakers; and finally Cranford himself. Cranford is now presumably cooperating with federal investigators. Most assume that more indictments and pleas are to come. “Fuck, Arkansas, man, they puttin’ the hammer on probably 20 people up there,” Cranford said during one of the conversations secretly recorded by federal investigators. “But their words to my attorney was ... ‘He holds the keys to the kingdom.’ That was the words they used. That I hold the keys to the kingdom.”

SANTA IS COMING In December 2013, shortly after a bought-off legislator helped AO/PFH secure a million-dollar state grant, Tom Goss, then the chief financial officer for the nonprofit, wrote to Cranford: “awesome on the mill.” Cranford responded: “Thanks brother.” “Santa is coming,” Goss wrote.

Cranford wrote back: “I need Santa.” This was how they talked, like thieves celebrating a score over highballs at a strip joint. They hustled after public money with a pulpy frat-boy zeal. They were getting rich, and they were relentless. They were winning. They were enjoying themselves. Goss and two other top executives — his wife, the former Chief Operating Officer Bontiea Goss, and former Chief Executive Officer Marilyn Nolan — were fired from AO/PFH earlier this year after federal court filings implicated them in the corruption scandal (they were unnamed, but identifiable based upon the descriptions). They have not been charged and deny wrongdoing. A fourth top executive was put on administrative leave the day after an Arkansas Times reporter asked about apparent references to him in Cranford’s plea. AO/PFH spokesman Reginald McElhannon has said that the nonprofit was a victim of rogue employees and has repeatedly maintained that AO/PFH has cleaned house. However, citing credible allegations of Medicaid fraud, the state announced in June that it was ending Medicaid reimbursements and terminating all state contracts with the nonprofit. The loss of public funding leaves the future of AO/PFH’s 45 Arkansas service sites in limbo; their sale or closure would affect hundreds of employees and thousands of patients. Cranford, who first joined AO/ PFH in 2007, was eventually named executive vice president, in charge of the nonprofit’s operations in Arkansas. He took a circuitous route to the

arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

HUNGRY: Former Rep. Micah Neal asked fellow Springdale legislator Jon Woods how he could find extra cash.

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position. His mother was a prominent figure in the Democratic Party in the Texarkana area; Cranford started to make his own political connections in Central Arkansas as a fundraising staffer, state president and national officer for the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) in the 1990s. He registered as a lobbyist in 2000 and by 2002 had left the Jaycees to pursue lobbying full time. He was always a big talker, but he started as a very small fish. His first few clients were substance abuse treatment providers and providers of alternative medicine, such as acupuncture. His lobbying business brought in $13,000 before expenses in 2002 and $30,000 in 2003. Associates from the time remember him having constant money trouble — bouncing checks, grousing for extra money from clients and stiffing bills. He filed for bankruptcy twice in 2004, and again in 2005. That didn’t stop him from boasting

even back then that he was a major player at the Capitol — one client recalled overhearing Cranford on the phone growling that he was at a meeting in the governor’s office. He was sitting in his car. Cranford had grit, and eventually he started to deliver on his grandiose claims. His shtick wasn’t for everyone, but he had a grimy charisma, a gift for indulging the impulses of the powerful. The ones that liked him called him “Cowboy.” He started signing up more clients, and carved out a niche working for behavioral health providers, a sector that was beginning to take in impressive revenues in the state. He managed to parlay his association with one of his lobbying clients, Dayspring, into a top management position on staff. When AO/PFH acquired Dayspring in 2007, they acquired Cranford, too. Cranford’s powerful position with the behemoth AO/PFH always raised eyebrows: He was a lobbyist,

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BRIAN CHILSON

of thousands of dollars in bribes to legislators. The more public money that AO/PFH brought in, the more money would wind up in the pockets of Cranford and his co-conspirators. According to court filings, revenues were diverted toward extravagant personal spending with the nonprofit’s corporate credit card, premium tickets to sporting events on AO/PFH’s dime, payments to private companies owned by AO/ PFH executives and a series of direct cash kickbacks. Millions of dollars changed hands in illicit schemes. All that grease and toil to INSIDE MAN: Former state Sen. Jon Woods was one of Cranford’s most reliable operators at the Capitol. pile up public money was not to provide better services, but to line their own pockets. a political moneyman, not a health PFH’s total revenues came from Their goal, according to Cranford’s care administrator. Cranford’s ally state agencies funded with taxpayer plea: “[T]o increase the Charity’s Cooper, the former state representamoney. Executives at the top of AO/ total receipts so they had more funds tive, meanwhile, was brought aboard PFH were rewarded handsomely with available from which to embezzle AO/PFH in 2009, while he was still salaries between $400,000 and nearly and steal.” in the legislature (Cooper also joined $1 million. Cranford’s lobbying firm after his To keep the band playing, Cranterm was up). Cooper chaired the ford and his co-conspirators underPublic Health, Welfare and Labor took elaborate efforts to influence committee, but he was no one’s idea lawmakers and state policymakers in of a policy wonk. Capitol observers ways that would help AO/PFH’s botassumed he was put in place, at a sixtom line. Cranford soaked up grant figure salary, for his political connecmoney and doggedly fought efforts by tions. These moves fit a pattern for state officials to implement oversight Cranford was short, loud and AO/PFH. The nonprofit, heavily relior changes to the Medicaid payment crude. Crusty Rusty, sneered his eneant on revenues from the Arkansas system. He said he was protecting mies. He was a good ol’ boy, not a government, stacked its roster with kids who needed care; critics argued blueblood. He smoked pack after pack former state officials. that he was gaming the system to of cigarettes and spoke in a froggy Whatever they were doing, it overcharge the state and keep the croak from the back of his throat, like was working: Business was boommoney rolling in. a hillbilly pirate, sparking endless ing, especially in Arkansas. AO/PFH’s AO/PFH funds were poured into impressions at the Capitol. annual Medicaid reimbursements in improper lobbying, campaign conIn court, Cranford’s own defense the state topped $30 million, and AO/ tributions and political advocacy, attorney described him as “an unapolPFH was taking in tens of millions according to court filings. Cranford ogetic and avid gambler.” He was a more in state contracts and grants. and other executives conspired to “seven star” member of the Horseshoe Revenues soared, and totaled more conceal these activities, which broke Casino in Shreveport, La., and former than $800 million across five states IRS rules and requirements regardstate Rep. Cooper told federal invesbetween 2009 and 2016, much of ing tax-exempt charitable organizatigators that he had seen Cranford that thanks to Medicaid. According tions. And they went further than win and lose hundreds of thousands to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, that, according to Cranford’s plea, as of dollars on individual bets. Cooper an astonishing one quarter of AO/ top executives engineered hundreds also told them that he had frequently

NEW BUBBA FOR OUR TEAM

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ARKANSAS TIMES

witnessed Cranford buying cocaine from a dealer known as “Uncle C.” Cranford told another associate that he would “hit the streets of Texarkana” to buy hydrocodone. Cranford himself didn’t drink, according to multiple associates, even if his antics sometimes fooled observers into assuming he was drunk. But he was happy to cavort and oblige lawmakers who did. He was a relic of the state’s old booze-and-bubbas politics, when lobbyists held court into the wee hours, more comfortable in a bar than a boardroom. Cranford may not have been the subject of “top lobbyist” profiles of top-tier, big-name movers and shakers, but in more recent years, he started pulling significant weight. The bigger lobbyists cast a wide net; Cranford zeroed in on a few foot soldiers and worked them hard. He contacted then-Rep. Hank Wilkins (D-Pine Bluff) by telephone 344 times from February 2013 to December 2013 alone. Wilkins was a pastor; Cranford joined his church. He bought lunch for the Public Health committee that his buddy Cooper chaired. He stayed up past closing time to shoot the breeze and then was back the next morning for testimony from state officials, in the back row feeding questions to his allies by text message. Somewhere along the line, he reckoned that he could exert significantly more power if the lawmakers doling out public money were cut in on the paydays. There was always more juice if you knew who to squeeze. According to government court filings, Cranford coordinated paying bribes to at least four sitting legislators, in addition to favors granted to Cooper at the end of his term in the House. Along with cash, checks and wire transfers, they were treated to other goodies. Cranford and his coconspirators, for example, paid for a hotel stay in St. Louis and luxury box seats and tickets to the 2013 World Series for two lawmakers, former Sen. Jon Woods (R-Springdale) and Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson (R-Little Rock). Woods, who was found guilty by a jury on federal corruption charges in May, was one of Cranford’s most reliable operators in the legislature, and he received multiple cash pay-

BRIAN CHILSON

ments from Cranford in 2013 (the total amount is not known). Prosecutors also presented evidence of more creative strategies that Cranford and his co-conspirators used to buy off Woods. After Woods helped deliver $400,000 in state grant money to an entity connected to Cranford, he emailed him, “Wanted you to see the good news.” Cranford replied, “You did great bubba.” Four months later, Cranford got Woods’ fiancée a $70,000 job with AO/PFH affiliate Dayspring (when she left the position, her replacement was hired for half the salary). Once her hire was arranged, AO/ PFH’s Tom Goss wrote Cranford, “Senator is taken care of. He is new bubba for our team.” Some of Woods’ colleagues noticed that he was enjoying a lifestyle that seemed lavish for a legislator whose only other employment was a bit of consulting work. In 2013, former Rep. Micah Neal (R-Springdale) was impressed by Woods’ Little Rock apartment, which was decorated with high-priced sports memorabilia, including items autographed by Pete Rose and Michael Jordan. Neal was hard up for money at the time. He asked Woods how he was scoring cash. According to Neal, who pleaded guilty in January 2017, that’s when Woods let him know about kickback schemes he had worked out, including a deal by which Cranford would cut them in on 20 percent of any public grant monies sent to entities of Cranford’s choosing. In October, according to Neal, as reward for directing such funds, Woods handed off $20,000 in cash from Cranford to Neal. Former Rep. Wilkins also received cash kickbacks for pursuing favorable legislation for Cranford and his clients, according to his own guilty plea in April. Most of the bribes — more than $80,000 — were hidden as donations to St. James United Methodist Church in Pine Bluff, where Wilkins was a pastor. Between 2010 and 2016, lobbying firms associated with Cranford made at least 29 deposits, between $1,000 and $5,000, into a discretionary account at the church that Wilkins controlled. Cranford

also gave Wilkins envelopes containing around $5,000 in cash on multiple occasions. AO/PFH deposited $30,000 into the church discretionary account in December 2013. That same month, Wilkins wrote checks to himself from the account for more than $7,000 and paid more than $10,000 toward the balance on his personal Discover credit card. By 2014, Cranford realized that he was being investigated by the FBI. According to Wilkins, Cranford arranged a meeting, saying that he would need to continue the payments to the church discretionary account even after Wilkins left the legislature — which CranCOLLECTION PLATE: Former legislator Hank Wilkins admitted to accepting ford did, through at least bribes in a guilty plea. January 2016. According to Wilkins, Cranford said that he needed to make it “look like I wasn’t paying you.” Cranford 2013, according to the federal inforIn response to the insinuations in told Wilkins to display a plaque on mation, Cranford pushed Tom Goss Cranford’s plea, Hutchinson’s attorthe wall of the church to state that to hire Hutchinson as an attorney ney, Tim Dudley, stated, “It clearly Cranford had donated money for a because having a senator on the paymischaracterizes Mr. Hutchinson’s church bookshelf. roll could be beneficial in advancwork as a practicing attorney and Asked by auditors in 2015 about ing their agenda in the legislature. part-time legislator. Mr. Hutchinson the $30,000 payment from AO/PFH Hutchinson was put on retainer in has done nothing illegal or unethical.” to Wilkins’ discretionary account, April 2013 at $7,500 a month, which It is not against the law for a legisTom Goss said it was a “donation to a was bumped up to $9,000 a month by lator to vote on bills that might impact youth summer program in Pine Bluff, May 2014. Later that year, Hutchina person or company that same legUnited Methodist Church. That’s son’s uncle, Asa Hutchinson, was islator works for as a private attorabout it.” elected governor. ney. However, ethics watchdogs have Hutchinson to date has not been long warned that lawmakers who also charged and denies wrongdoing. work as private attorneys could be It is not in dispute that Hutchinmotivated to take actions in the legson was paid by AO/PFH and other islature that happen to help their payCranford clients, but such payments ing clients. Even if it’s not a bribe occupy a gray area in the state’s ethunder the law, the incentives could ics laws: fees ostensibly for private work in the same direction. legal work, paid to a legislator who Hutchinson had something of just so happens to also advocate for a reputation for just this sort of that client’s interests in the legislaarrangement: He participated in ture. According to the federal inforlegislative action, for example, that mation, the arrangement between benefited a mattress merchant and Between 2012 and 2017, according Cranford and Hutchinson was a quid a maker of gambling machines, both to Cranford’s plea, a person identified pro quo: “Cranford offered and gave, clients. His legal work was on the up as Senator A — acknowledged by his directly and indirectly, cash; checks, and up and separate from his legislaattorney to be Jeremy Hutchinson — wire transfers; retainers; attortive activities, Hutchinson said, but received more than $500,000 from ney’s fees; and professional refercritics snickered that retainer fees Cranford, his lobbying firms, AO/PFH rals to [Hutchinson] in exchange for might be buying help at the Capitol. and other Cranford clients (Cran[Hutchinson] taking favorable legisHutchinson wasn’t the only lawyer ford himself directly gave Hutchinlative action on behalf” of Cranford at the Capitol who blurred the lines. son around $15,000 in cash). In early and his clients. Former Senate President Pro Tem

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LAWYER UP: Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson says attorney retainer fees paid to him by AO/PFH and other Cranford clients were above board. He has not been charged.

Michael Lamoureux (R-Russellville), for example, passed legislation benefiting rural telephone companies that also paid him as a private attorney. Jerry Walsh, former executive director at South Arkansas Youth Services, another Cranford client, pleaded guilty to a federal corruption charge in July. According to the federal information, Cranford arranged for more than $120,000 to be paid in ostensible legal fees to an unnamed senator to help SAYS at the legislature. The senator described resembles Lamoureux, although this has not been definitively confirmed. According to Walsh, both Lamoureux and Hutchinson were employed by SAYS as attorneys. Lamoureux — who left the Senate to serve as Governor Hutchinson’s chief of staff from 2014 until May 2016 — said he has done nothing wrong, telling the Arkansas Times after Walsh’s plea was announced, “Neither legal fees nor campaign contributions have ever influenced my behavior as a public official.” Whatever the arrangement was, Cranford got a cut: According to Walsh’s plea, Cranford and his lobbying firm received more than $130,000 in unauthorized payments. Walsh also gave Cranford’s son sham jobs at SAYS, despite the fact that he failed a background check. He was not expected to do any work, according to Walsh’s plea, but was paid more than $130,000 between 2013 and 2016.

IT’S DONE DARLING Legislators on Cranford’s payroll were utility players. In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in purported legal fees, the federal information filed along with Cranford’s plea alleges that Senator A [Hutchinson]’s services included “holding up agency budgets; request-

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ARKANSAS TIMES

ing legislative audits; sponsoring, filing and voting for legislative bills; and influencing the award of [General Improvement Fund] funds to [AO/ PFH] and Cranford clients.” Cranford’s most significant victories often can’t be traced to a particular piece of legislation, or a grant with a paper trail. If he wanted to fight against changes to Medicaid reimbursements, new rules for how patients were assessed, or policies for state oversight, the heavy lifting typically happened in backroom negotiations with executive branch officials. They would water down rules, delay new policies that could impact their bottom line, dicker and squeeze over any new regulation. Their foot soldiers in the General Assembly had the power to block agency decisions in the legislative review process. State officials knew it, so they would try to hammer out negotiated agreements rather than fight a battle they couldn’t win against powerful lobbyists at the Capitol. There is no public record of such horse-trading. Cranford might threaten to run a bill that would

make life difficult for state regulators in order to win policy concessions. These were technical changes, deep in the weeds. Millions of dollars were at stake, but more often than not, even most legislators were unaware of what was happening. In addition to manipulating the rules to increase revenues from the Medicaid pot, Cranford was likely also aiming to shield the nonprofit from oversight to hide overbilling schemes. An arrest affidavit by the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit alleged that another former AO/PFH executive, Robin Raveendran, engineered a multimilliondollar overbilling scheme from 2014 through 2017, and that Raveendran and Cranford worked hand-in-hand to manipulate the legislative process to block state regulators from disrupting the scheme. But Cranford’s specialty was a more straightforward quid pro quo: the GIF giveaway. Cranford proved highly effective at gathering money from the General Improvement Fund — the now-defunct system that allowed individual legislators to allot

surplus money from the state’s general revenue to pet projects of their choosing. According to an analysis by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, subsidiaries of AO/PFH received more in GIF money between 2013 and 2017 than any other entity in the state. A good portion of this may have been legal, if greasy, arm-twisting and influence peddling. But in at least some cases, lawmakers were receiving a cut for directing grant money to AO/PFH and other Cranford clients. The circle of kickbacks typically gave Cranford a cut, as well. Act 791, for example, sponsored by Woods, enabled a $1 million grant for AO/PFH, for which Woods and Hutchinson sent letters of support. Woods also sent a letter of support for South Arkansas Youth Services to receive hundreds of thousands more. When AO/PFH was approved for the full $1 million requested, Cranford forwarded the approval to COO Bontiea Goss: “We are 100 percent funded in one lump sum. … It’s done darling, Money on way.” On the same day that AO/PFH received the $1

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million check, AO/PFH sent Cran- Pennsylvania lobbyist, D.A. Jones, to ford’s lobbying firm, Cranford Coali- advocate for the nonprofit in Washtion, a check for $187,175. ington, D.C., for which he was paid The bubbas on Cranford’s team $973,807 from 2011 to 2016. Jones in had their hands in a wide range of turn paid $264,000 in kickbacks to activities. A jury heard testimony at Cranford and Cooper. This was their Woods’ trial that Woods and Neal tried formula: They would take in more unsuccessfully to send $4.7 million in public money, hand out exorbitant state grants and other public-interest contracts, and then skim their own loans to relocate Pro-1, a private com- personal cut. More taxpayer money pany that repackaged and sold ther- meant more to skim. mostats imported from China, from While there was subterfuge Springfield, Mo., to Northwest Arkan- involved, Cranford’s behavior ultisas. Turns out Tom and Bontiea Goss mately suggests a man who believed had an ownership stake in the com- he could get away with anything. One pany. Hutchinson, meanwhile, helped of the improper uses of AO/PFH’s another Cranford client, Teach For funds described in the federal inforAmerica, secure a $3 million grant mation involved simply paying rent (Democratic gubernatorial candidate to Cranford for out-of-state properJared Henderson was the executive ties he owned, supposedly for “execdirector of the Arkansas branch of utive leadership.” Cranford ended TFA at the time). TFA is not accused of up taking in more than $50,000 over wrongdoing, but the federal informa- an 18-month period for his vacation tion implies that Hutchinson went to house in Florida. During the same bat for that Cranford client in return period, the Cranford Coalition was for tens of thousands of dollars in pur- paid nearly $200,000 for “training,” ported legal fees that AO/PFH and as well as thousands more in lease two other Cranford clients were pay- payments for a house Cranford owned ing him at the time. The grant money in Texas and another he owned in for TFA came from the discretionary Arkansas. funds of Governor Hutchinson, JerEven if they didn’t take outright emy Hutchinson’s uncle. bribes, legislators benefited from the nonprofit’s largesse as well. Between March 26, 2013, and Jan. 6, 2016, Cranford made 54 transactions at Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse in Little Rock with the nonprofit’s credit card. He racked up bills totaling more than $15,000. The credit card was also used for The various pleas and indictments thousands of dollars in fundraisers describe a dizzying array of kickback for candidates for the legislature and schemes to enrich Cranford and statewide office at Sims Bar-B-Que, the other key players. According to Cajun’s Wharf, the Capital Hotel and Cranford’s plea, an AO/PFH exec- elsewhere. utive identified as Person 1 — who At other times, they would hide matches the description of CFO Tom such spending using Cranford’s lobGoss — greased the wheels for AO/ bying firm: When Cooper, then a repPFH to dole out a massive contract to resentative, asked in 2010 to be paid Cranford’s lobbying firm for “consult- back for a $500 contribution check ing” in exchange for Cranford kicking to a political candidate and a $2,851 back cash his way. Between 2013 and tab at a Texarkana restaurant (includ2017, under Person 1’s direction, the ing more than 100 alcoholic beverage nonprofit paid the Cranford Coali- orders), Goss told Cranford, “that one tion nearly $3 million. Cranford then is going to be tough to pay out of [AO/ paid kickbacks to Person 1 totaling PFH].” He arranged for Cranford to $613,600, in cash and checks. Every- send AO/PFH a phony bill from the one wins. Cranford Coalition to conceal the payCranford used his position at AO/ ment to Cooper. PFH to command a similar scheme, Because AO/PFH operated as a landing a “consulting” contract for the 501(c)(3) charity, it was exempt from

arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

HE NEEDS TO BE GONE By 2017, AO/PFH’s leadership had been informed that the nonprofit was the subject of a federal inves-

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

federal income taxes and was prohibited from making contributions to political campaigns. According to court filings, Cranford and other AO/ PFH executives flouted that prohibition for years, using Cranford’s lobbying firm to route tens of thousands of dollars in clandestine campaign contributions, which would then be reimbursed via AO/PFH funds. “Welcome to campaign season,” Cranford wrote to Tom Goss in 2012, attaching nine checks totaling $7,000 sent from the Cranford Coalition to the campaigns of incumbent Arkansas legislators. “The YEAR of The Greed is what it is called! … This is contributions well spent.” AO/PFH executives likewise attempted to conceal the lobbying activities that Cranford and D.A. Jones were doing on the nonprofit’s behalf, according to court filings, in order to dodge certain limits and reporting requirements on lobbying that the IRS imposes for 501(c)(3) organizations. In the federal information on Cranford, prosecutors describe what appear to be smoking-gun emails on the slapdash efforts to conceal lobbying activity and political contributions behind phony “consulting” and “training” arrangements. AO/ PFH CEO Marilyn Nolan at one point wrote to Cranford, “Do not — and I repeat — do not — put lobbying on another invoice — just put consultation or training and development.” She also became alarmed when an AO/PFH staffer asked how to expense reimbursement payments for campaign contributions Cranford had made. “We cannot call contribution. … I do not like her inferring contribution,” Nolan wrote to the Gosses, flagging the problem. “Rusty told me he thought you were calling consultation.” “I told her consult and training,” Tom Goss replied. “Will send again.”

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK: Former Senate President Michael Lamoureux was paid as an attorney by SAYS. He denies any wrongdoing.

tigation. On June 2, 2017, Cranford signed a settlement agreement terminating his contract. As part of the settlement, AO/PFH forgave a $35,000 debt (Cranford failed to reimburse AO/PFH after a Missouri state senator returned an unlawful campaign contribution that Cranford had made on the nonprofit’s behalf); repaid him $165,000 for personal expenditures that he described as “reasonable legal fees and expenses … on matters subject to company advancement”; and paid him a final settlement of $400,000. According to Cranford’s attorneys, the feds undertook a “relentless pursuit of Mr. Cranford,” trying again and again over a period of years to get him to cooperate. “That pressure has continued to escalate,” his attorney Nathan Garrett told a judge in March 2018, when Cranford initially pleaded not guilty. “They have sought his cooperation repeatedly. Each time upping the ante. Each time suggesting that Mr. Cranford’s situation is worse than it was the last time.”

When his co-conspirator Jones pleaded guilty in December, Cranford knew that the noose was tightening. He complained to an old family friend that Jones had “cut himself a deal” and was a “snitching motherfucker.” Unfortunately for Cranford, this old acquaintance, who had known Cranford’s father and Cranford in his youth, was a confidential FBI informant who was secretly recording his conversations with Cranford. The informant was referred to in court as Person A, or “Uncle X.” Cranford was aware of his criminal background: Uncle X had prior felony convictions for aggravated robbery, assault and aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon, among other charges, and had been under suspicion for murder. The feds paid him $3,000 and $17,800 in relocation expenses for providing information on Cranford. During rambling conversations with Uncle X, Cranford said that the feds believed he had significant political clout. He boasted that a few years prior, he had managed to arrange an

early release from prison for an old high school buddy who was locked up on a murder charge, after Cranford was hired by the family to help. “I got a motherfucker that killed somebody … just got him out of prison,” Cranford told Uncle X. “He killed a boy in Fouke, Arkansas … about seven years ago … wrapped him up in a … rug, and threw him in Mercer Bayou down there in Fouke.” According to Uncle X, in January 2018, Cranford told him that he had a job for him. He said there was a lot of money in it, and he “would like it.” Uncle X asked if he would need a “piece.” Cranford said he would provide him with a gun. They met at Uncle X’s house and Cranford confided that he was worried that Jones would testify against him. “He needs to be gone,” Cranford told him. The sound of Cranford flipping through cash is audible toward the end of the recording as the two arranged to meet again. According to Uncle X, Cranford gave him $500 as an initial down payment on a planned

agreement to murder Jones. When Cranford was arrested, in addition to the 45-caliber pistol, prescription pills and $17,700 in cash, federal agents found two loan request forms for $10,000 from the cash value of his life insurance policy. Later investigation revealed that the pistol had been illegally purchased by someone with a felony conviction in the fall of 2013. He gave Cranford the gun later that year, around Christmas (the man who gave him the gun is now incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for an unrelated crime). Prosecutors would later argue that it is “very well-suited for use as a murder weapon” because it is easy to conceal, powerful, and does not leave spent shell casings. Cranford was charged in the Western District of Missouri, and the government argued that Cranford should be held without bail, contending that he had tried to hire Uncle X to murder D.A. Jones (no charge has been filed in the alleged plot). They also alleged that he had previously attempted to tamper with witnesses — Jones and Wilkins — and, when those efforts were unsuccessful, exhibited signs of preparing to flee, including growing out and dyeing his hair. Previously, Cranford’s hair was gray, short, spikey and gelled. Upon his arrest, his hair was dark, and coiffed in the fashion of Rod Stewart. Garrett, his defense attorney, said that Cranford had always dyed his hair. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Mohlhenrich responded, “You know, maybe Mr. Cranford was having a bad hair day on the day he was arrested … but the government would suggest there is a change in his appearance.” Garrett told the court that Uncle X was unreliable and that it was unrealistic to imagine that such a pathetic character (Uncle X told Cranford that he had no car and had to hitchhike to the grocery store) would be hired to murder a lobbyist in the Philadelphia area. Garrett argued that Cranford’s shady activity wasn’t evidence that he was behaving unusually or was a flight risk — he was just a shady character. Rusty being Rusty. “He has not hidden the fact that he is a man who commonly deals in cash,” Garrett explained to the judge. “$17,000 is nothing unusual.” “I would venture to guess,” Garrett

argued, “that we could back a semitruck up to this courthouse and fill it full of [currency transaction reports] and suspicious activity reports over the years of Mr. Cranford.” On March 29, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Rush denied bail for Cranford, concluding that Cranford was a flight risk and that the allegations of witness tampering and murder for hire were credible. By June, Cranford had enough and pleaded guilty to bribery. No date has yet been set for sentencing, and he remains in the Greene County Jail. AO/PFH continued to receive millions of dollars from Arkansas taxpayers for months after the Jones plea revealed the extent of the toplevel corruption. In late June, three weeks after Cranford pleaded guilty, Raveendran was arrested and the state finally pulled the plug. “We had received assurances that they had cleaned house,” Governor Hutchinson said at the time, explaining why it took more than six months to take action. On his recorded conversations with Uncle X, Cranford complained that if you Googled his name, he was “in the fucking paper every other week. … I really thought that I was gonna … end the year with my being one of the top three stories in the state of Arkansas. That’s how fucking much publicity I don’t want, I’ve got.” The story isn’t over yet. “While Raveendran was a key leader of this scheme … the State does not believe he acted alone,” the arrest warrant for Raveendran stated. An investigation into Cranford, his associates, and “the connections with several Medicaid providers” is ongoing, according to the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which acted on a tip from federal investigators. Meanwhile, the feds are mum, but speculation runs high that their own investigation continues apace. “Unfortunately,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said at a press conference announcing Raveendran’s arrest, “this is a very large, tangled web.” This reporting is courtesy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an independent, nonpartisan project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans. Find out more

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arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

Arts Entertainment AND

THE EAR OF THE BEHOLDER A Q&A with Christine Donahue.

BRIAN CHILSON

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THE GLASS IS HALF FULL: Soprano Christine Donahue portrays fellow Pennsylvania native Florence Foster Jenkins in Opera in the Rock’s “Souvenir.”

compilation of performances ings of pity or vicarious embarrass- Friday, Aug. 17, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, by soprano Florence Foster ment, though, know this: Foster Jen- Aug. 19, at The Studio Theatre as a Jenkins issued by Sony in kins was an absolute darling of the production of Opera in the Rock. We 1992 — “The Glory (????) of socialite scene of early 20th century spoke with Donahue ahead of those the Human Voice” — opens with “Der New York. Her annual recitals at the performances. Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Her- Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Grand Ballroom zen,” the beastly crowning jewel of were among the most coveted tickets You hail from the Wilkes-Barre Mozart’s 1791 masterpiece “The Magic in town. Her self-designed costumes area, the same part of PennsylvaFlute.” Those who master the so-called featured elaborate angel wings and nia as Florence Foster Jenkins her“Queen of the Night” aria can build expansive fans made of bird feathers. self, and have been portraying her entire careers out of singing the role. She booked a solo recital at Carnegie in “Souvenir” for years now. When In the hands of a few — Diana Damrau, Hall in 1944 and sold it out weeks in we last spoke about this play, there Sumi Jo, Lucia Popp, Natalie Dessay — advance. was a movie soon to be released — it is a rapturous, coloratura marriage This weekend, Christine Donahue “Florence Foster Jenkins,” starring of melody and athleticism, raging to — an operatic soprano who’s made her Meryl Streep in the title role. I prea near-inhuman F6 and demanding name singing Puccini, Verdi and Doni- sume you’ve seen the movie, yes? freakish vocal facility. In the hands zetti (and yes, Mozart’s “Queen of the What’s your review? of Jenkins, it is, well, perhaps what a Night”) with the likes of New York Oh, I saw it, like, seven or eight cat might sound like, were it to tumble City Opera, Cleveland Opera, Hous- times! I thought Meryl Streep was slowly down a flight of several hun- ton Grand Opera and the Hong Kong really charming and delightful as dred stairs. Opera — portrays Foster Jenkins in Florence, and what I loved about the Should listening to it rouse feel- a play called “Souvenir,” at 7:30 p.m. movie is that she doesn’t come off as 20

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

a silly goose. She’s just a delight to be around, and you kind of don’t mind that she doesn’t sing well. There was one thing that I wasn’t happy about in the movie, and that was one line where she says, “You know, I used to teach piano in Philly,” instead of saying “Wilkes-Barre, PA.” That kind of bothered me — that they decided nobody would know where Wilkes-Barre was, so they turned it into Philadelphia. I will tell you this: The people who saw the movie and saw the play said that they preferred the play. I don’t know why; maybe because it focuses on the relationship between Florence and her accompanist, Cosme McMoon, which is not a huge part of the movie, really. There’s a newspaper article in Wilkes-Barre’s The Times Leader from 2015, when you performed this in Pennsylvania, which interviews a room of teenagers after they’ve heard a recording of Florence. Some say they’d be honest with her if they were asked for their opinion on her singing voice. Another says, “I’d sugarcoat it.” It reminded me a little of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” We’re forced to ask whether Florence knows she’s bad. And does she know that we know? And do we really know?! I know! Exactly. I wonder that myself. You see the reaction in the movie, and you can see the reaction from the accompanist in the play. She literally does think that she sounds great, and there is another line in the play that says, “What matters most is the music you hear in your head.” And when you get to the end of the play, that line kind of comes back. Is Florence Foster Jenkins an empathetic character? Are we meant to feel pity? Or empathy? Or wonder? Or some combination of both? I don’t want to feel pity for her. And I don’t think that she is deserving of pity. I think you need to just kind of love on her. Does that sound weird? I think she’s to be enjoyed for what she is. She’s such a positive person. She sees the glass as half full, always. Cosme talks about this in the play, saying, “It was amazing for me to watch CONTINUED ON PAGE 31

ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com

A&E NEWS FORMER CRANFORD JOHNSON ROBINSON WOODS (CJRW) CEO Ron Robinson, 75, for whom the CALS Ron Robinson Theater was named, died Tuesday. Robinson’s collection of sheet music, film posters, and other memorabilia of those industries forms a portion of the Arkansas music history programming at the 325-seat venue. “If Arkansas was included in a piece of music or a film,” the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ website reads, “Ron Robinson wanted it represented in his collection.”

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THE BEST-KNOWN ALBUM by Conway County’s finest saxophone stylist, Monk Higgins, has been reissued. Higgins’ classic “Extra Soul Perception” has been re-pressed on LP vinyl for the first time since its release some 50 years ago by Real Gone Music. The release is limited to 1,000 copies and comes in translucent blue; “ESP” is also being reissued on CD. The Menifee native recorded sessions with Bobby “Blue” Bland, the Chi-Lites, Etta James, Muddy Waters and others, but it’s his solo career that has caught the ear of crate diggers: The beats from Monk Higgins records have been sampled hundreds of times. Higgins died in 1986. MICHAEL HIBBLEN, author and news director for UA Little Rock Public Radio, KUAR-FM, 89.1, will speak about his book “Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 21, in the Diamond Room at the Department of Arkansas Heritage, 1100 North St., as part of the “Pen to Podium: Arkansas Historical Writers’ Lecture Series.” Hibblen, who’s been researching the railroad and recording the oral histories of its former employees since 1988, will detail its history and the impact its closure in 1980 had on the communities it connected. The lecture is free to attend; a 6:30 p.m. reception precedes the talk. OPERA IN THE ROCK announced its 2018-19 season, the company’s fifth season and first for new Executive Director Kate Sain and new Artistic Director Louis Menendez. Gian Carlo Menotti’s “The Telephone” (1946), Liam Wade’s “Part of the Act” (2012) and Igor Stravinsky’s “Mavra” will be performed Nov. 9 and “Part of the Act” and “Mavra” will be performed Nov. 11, both days at The Studio Theater; OITR’s gala “Opera on the Rocks” is set for March 2 at the Junior League Ballroom ; and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” goes up at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre May 17 and 19. For more, see oitr.org.

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arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

THE TO-DO LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

THURSDAY 8/16

BILL EVANS 7:30 p.m. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. $25.

THROUGH SATURDAY 8/18

SUNSET ON KALEIDOSCOPE: Forrest Goodluck,

KALEIDOSCOPE FILM FESTIVAL

Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,”

5 p.m. Thu., 5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m. Sat. Argenta Community Theater, Argenta Gallery, South on Main. $6-$100.

The days left in the 2018 Kaleidoscope Film Festival are waning, but there’s still time to catch some gems of LGBTQ cinema from the Film Society of Little Rock before the champagne corks pop on closing night. Catch “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” a block of military shorts presented by Here TV, 5 p.m. Thursday; Gabe Silverman & Fiona Dawson’s “Transmilitary,” the 2018 SXSW Audience Award-winning tale of four transgender people serving in the United States military, 6:30 p.m. Thursday; “Fashion and the Moving Image,” an artfashion collaboration from Michael Shaeffer and Andrea Bolen, 5 p.m. Friday; an adults-only block of short films, “Red Band Shorts,” 6 p.m. Friday; Bertrand Mandico’s mysticism-laden arthouse fantasy “The Wild Boys,” 7:30 p.m. Friday; a SaturGAY morning cartoon block (with a free bowl of cereal for audience members!), 11 a.m. Saturday; the annual Drag Queen Brunch at South on Main with Roxy Starrlite, DJ Joseph and your newly crowned Miss Gay Arkansas, Chloe Jacobs, 11 a.m. Saturday; Daisy Asquith’s queer film archive “Queerama,” noon Saturday; Yen Tan’s drama “1985,” 2 p.m. Saturday; Drew Lint’s dark tale of obsession “M/M,” 4:30 p.m. Saturday; and the closing night film, Desiree Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” the Sundance-acclaimed tale of a young woman in gay conversion therapy based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth. See kaleidoscopefilmfestival.com for screening details and passes. SS

Sasha Lane and Chloe Grace Moretz star in Desiree among the final films to be screened at this year’s Kaleidoscope Film Festival.

Every assumption I made based on Bill Evans’ promotional photo — a grinning, bespectacled picker perched in the center of a bevy of banjos as if it were his menagerie of oddball pets — was confirmed after coming across a video called “Bill Evans Tells the History of the Banjo in 14 Minutes.” Wielding an early West African specimen called an akonting for the preface and landing on a slick Canadian electric oddity from Allan Beardsell, Evans gleefully guides the listener through 250 years of the instrument’s personality, noting the ways in which the Senegambia lute-like predecessors took on the stylings of the Europeans who’d appropriated them in post-colonial eras. Dude is a living encyclopedia of the banjo’s complicated musical-cultural history, and his ethnomusicology propers are matched by his proficiency; check out his sweet tribute to Glen Campbell, in which Evans plays the late guitarist’s Jimmy Webb tune “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” on a YouTube video made after hours in a college dorm in North Carolina during a banjo conference. SS

FRIDAY 8/17

BRICK FIELDS 8:30 p.m. Pizza D Bar & Grill. Free.

Rachel Fields is one of a handful of Arkansas vocalists who consistently name Sister Rosetta Tharpe as an influence — and makes good on it. The Prairie Grove-based powerhouse has a habit of dropping jaws when it’s her turn at the mic with vocal project Divas on Fire, and takes center stage with Brick Fields, a blues gospel project helmed by her and her husband, Larry Brick. Fields plays flute and guitar, but it’s her internal instrument that’s gonna shake the embers from the cigarette ends and the darts loose from the dartboard at Pizza D Friday night. For fans of Susan Tedeschi, Bonnie Raitt and hair-raising blues. SS

FIELDS ON FIRE: Brick Fields plays a free show at Pizza D Bar & Grill.

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 8/16 Boy Named Banjo makes good on its namesake with three-part harmony and string band sounds at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $8-$10. The Arkansas Travelers cap off a fourgame series against the Tulsa Drillers at Dickey-Stephens Park, with a fireworks show after Friday night’s game, 7:10 p.m. Thu.-Fri., $7-$13. Michigander Whitey Morgan takes “Honky Tonk Hell” and other new rockers to the Rev Room, 8:30 p.m., $20-$75. Comedian and actor Shaun Jones goes for laughs at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12. Tribute artists Scott Bruce and Abbey Road perform at Fort Smith’s ArcBest Performing Arts Center for “Beatles vs. Elvis: A Musical Showdown,” 7 p.m., $25-$45, see fortsmithconventioncenter.org for details. The Bottle Rockets play a free show at El Dorado’s Griffin Restaurant, 8 p.m. An after-party for the Rally for Religious Liberty kicks off at Vino’s, with music from Spirit Cuntz and Crankbait, 7 p.m., $7. Monsterboy and The Mad Deadly share a bill at the White Water Tavern, 8:30 p.m. Maxine’s in Hot Springs hosts a show from string band Sad Daddy, 9 p.m., $5.

EYE CANDY: Carroll Cloar’s “Piece of Fallen Sky” is part of “The Best of the South,” up at Greg Thompson Fine Art for Third Friday Argenta Artwalk.

FRIDAY 8/17

ARGENTA ART WALK 5-8 p.m. Downtown North Little Rock.

Greg Thompson Fine Art at 429 Main St. opens tors are Rachel Worthen, Adrienne Taylor, Lily Ryall, a new exhibition Friday for after-hour art walkers on Adams Pryor, Jon Hodges, Rita Henry, Susan Crisp, Main Street in Argenta: “The Best of the South,” his Ann Bryan, Cindy Adams and Darrell Adams. The Thea annual show of work by noted regional and Arkansas Foundation, 401 Main, continues its exhibition “Carartists, this year including Carroll Cloar, Dale Nich- men Alexandria Thompson: The Mind Unveiled,” part ols, Mark Blaney, Arless Day, William Dunlap, Charles of its The Art Department series of shows of emerging Harrington, Pinkney Herbert, Richard Jolley, Dolores artists. Argenta Gallery, 413 Main, opens “Fashion and Justus, John Harlan Norris, Sammy Peters, Edward the Moving Image + 1681,” artwork by Michael ShaefRice, Kendall Stallings, Glennray Tutor and Donald fer and garment design by Shaeffer and Andrea Bolen, Roller Wilson. The Blue-Eyed Knocker Photo Club in conjunction with the Kaleidoscope Film Festival. speaks in “The Language of Silver” for its exhibition Barry Thomas will be painting in his studio at 711 Main of 36 black-and-white photographs at the Argenta St. and the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub at 201 E. branch of the Laman Library at 420 Main; contribu- Broadway will host its Popup Art Market. LNP

SATURDAY 8/18

TATIANA RYCKMAN 6:30 p.m. 421 Main St., North Little Rock. Donations.

“I Don’t Think of You (Until I a few weeks after a global tragedy,” Do)” — a pocket-sized testament one canticle reads. “The disconnect from a genderless narrator to some of between the grocery store and war the stranger corners and characteris- rendering everything meaningless. tics of love — is the latest from author What is senseless about killing when and Awst Press Editor Tatiana Ryck- meat is on sale?” All-consuming love man, and an interview with Ryckman can require a touch of hubris, or mayfrom Split Lip Magazine does much be even lunacy, and it’s that sense of to illuminate its bent. “My feeling for mania that may challenge and prod you was like the feeling everyone has audience members when Ryckman

reads at the Argenta Reading Series this week. “The best I’ve learned to do is admit I’m an asshole,” Ryckman continued, in that interview. “Which is to say, to be frank with myself about my human flaws. This is a gift I tried to share with the narrator.” Seth Pennington, author of “Tertulia” and editor-in-chief at Sibling Rivalry Press, opens the evening. SS

Pluck, yeah: Clusterpluck takes “Yakisoba Breakdown” and other string band jams to the stage at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $8. Tranquilo, Fred and Celestials play a rock show at the White Water Tavern in support of KABF-FM, 88.3, 9 p.m. Night in the Woods 4 features music from Yuni Wa, Klubhouse, Johnny Vine and more at Vino’s, 6 p.m., $8. Young professionals: Wine and dine for the benefit of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation at Little Rock Taste of the Finest, with music from Mayday by Midnight, 6 p.m., Statehouse Convention Center, $75. Nine-piece tribute ensemble Bricks in the Wall brings “The Sight and Sound of Pink Floyd” to the Rev Room, 9 p.m., $20. Richie Johnson entertains for happy hour at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, and later, catch vocalist Nikki Parish, 9 p.m., $5. The Eureka Springs Bluegrass Festival, 4 p.m. Fri., 1 p.m. Sat., features sets from The Crumbs, Runaway Planet, Chatham County Line and more, Basin Spring Park, free. Bluesboy Jag and Mudhead team up for a set at Bar Louie, 8 p.m. This ain’t no disco; Fort Worth country singer David Adam Byrnes performs at Stickyz, with Tyler Kincheloe and Chris Stillman, 8:30 p.m., $10. Mothwind, Witchsister and Czarus share a rock show at Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $5. Elsewhere in Hot Springs, The Big Dam Horns get loud at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Silks Bar & Grill, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., free. Sad Daddy brings mountain music to Kings Live Music in Conway, with Caleb Martin, 8:30 p.m., $5. Zac Stad takes the stage at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 7:30

Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

CONTINUED ON PAGE 25 arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

THE TO-DO LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE, LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK, LINDSEY MILLAR AND OMAYA JONES

MATTHEW SCHMIDT

WEDNESDAY 8/22

ARKANSAS WOMEN’S HALL OF FAME HONOR SERIES 7:30 p.m. South on Main. $12 adv., $15 d.o.s.

On Aug. 30, former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Imber Tuck, pioneering composer Florence Price, actor Mary Steenburgen and others will be inducted into the fourth class of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame. As a ramp up to the induction ceremony, the AWHOF has been hosting a series of concerts (the first one was Aug. 15) to celebrate talented Arkansas women. And what a showcase this is! For a reasonable cover charge, you get Dazz & Brie, the dynamic rock ’n’ soul duo that won Best Live Performer at the inaugural Central Arkansas Music Awards earlier this

year; decorated soul performer Ramona Smith; high school phenom Jamee McAdoo, a spoken word poet; singer/songwriter Amy Garland Angel, Little Rock’s honky-tonk queen; Bijoux, a powerful soul singer who draws heavily from a wide range of genres; and Stephanie Smittle, the Arkansas Times’ entertainment editor who also happens to be the most versatile vocalist in town: On a given week, you might hear her big voice doing sacred chant at a downtown Episcopal Church, throwback metal with Iron Tongue, opera on special occasions and her own delightful jazz-flecked folk-pop. LM

TUESDAY 8/21

‘THE RED SHOES’ 7 p.m. Riverdale 10 Cinema. $9. #SAVETHEREP: Actor, dancer and filmmaker Eric Mann returns to Arkansas Repertory Theatre for a screening of three of his short films — “The Hafiz Project,” “Storytellers” and “Without A Mirror.”

MONDAY 8/20

SHORT FILM SCREENING WITH ERIC MANN 7 p.m. Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Pay-what-you-can.

Count Little Rock-born, New York-based actor/ dancer/filmmaker/yogi/podcaster Eric Mann among those who are showing up for The Rep. As part of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s fundraising efforts after its suspension of operations in April, multihyphenate Mann returns home for a special screening of three of his films: “The Hafiz Project,” a visualization of the poems of 14th century Sufi master Hafiz; “Storytellers,” a docu-series of intimate interviews with storytellers; and “Without a Mirror,” a true story filmed in Little Rock that shows the process of Elizabeth Whitaker, blind since birth, learning the craft of ballet from Arkansas dancer and educator Lauren McCarty Horak. “I was so lucky to grow up in a community that has a thriving theatre scene and to have a second home at The Rep, and the other amazing theatres in Little Rock,” Mann said in a press release. “The Rep is my home, and it opened up my world. They say it’s not the place that makes the experience, but the people. And it’s the people at The Rep, the audiences, the donors, the volunteers, the actors, the musicians, the creatives, the technicians, and everyone else who comes together for something bigger than ourselves that make an experience. … The Rep gave me the foundation to create and share stories.” After the films, Mann, Horak, Whitaker and Alicia Albright of Broadway’s “Frozen” and “Wicked” take the stage for a talkback session. A reception in the theater’s lobby follows. All proceeds benefit The Rep’s revitalization campaign. SS 24

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

“We had all been told for ten years to go out films they’d seen only to inevitably realize they and die for freedom and democracy,” Director Mi- were films by The Archers, the name Powell and chael Powell said in his memoir, “A Life in Movies,” Pressburger gave their production company. As “and now that the war was over, ‘The Red Shoes’ The Archers, Powell and Pressburger produced told us to go out and die for art.” The influence 24 films between 1939-72. Based on the fairy tale “The Red Shoes” has had on the people who saw by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Red Shoes” it either in its original theatrical run or later, dur- tells the story of a group of people within a ballet ing the heyday of films on television when it was company that travels Europe performing various screened in black and white, is undeniable. Gene shows. There’s Moira Shearer as ballerina Victoria Kelly is said to have screened the film for his col- Page, who lives to dance. When asked by company laborators 15 times before shooting “An American director Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), why in Paris.” Martin Scorsese, whose father took him she wants to dance, her response is: “Why do you to see the film when young Martin was 9 years old, want to live?” It’s just the answer he was looking has said that its use of color — red, in particular — for; “The Red Shoes” explores the drive to make has influenced every movie he’s ever made. It was art and the sacrifices artists make for their craft. a film that a whole generation of filmmakers would Digitally restored in an effort led by Scorsese and talk about — along with other films by Powell and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker (PowEmeric Pressburger — in a time before home video. ell’s wife) in 2009, we screen the 1948 drama as Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, Steven Spielberg; part of the Arkansas Times Film Series, a collabothey would gather around and start describing ration with Film Quotes Film. OJ

‘GO OUT AND DIE FOR ART’: Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer star in “The Red Shoes,” next up in the Arkansas Times Film Series.

IN BRIEF, CONT. p.m., free. Andy Tanas plays a free show at Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m.

SATURDAY 8/18 WEDNESDAY 8/22MONDAY 8/26

FAYETTEVILLE ROOTS FESTIVAL

Various times. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville), George’s Majestic Lounge, The Hive (Bentonville), Tri Cycle Farms. $5-$199.

The bad news: If you don’t already have a festival pass for Fayetteville Roots Fest’s mainstage musical lineup, you’re out of luck. What started as a one-day festival in 2010 has blossomed in breadth and popularity, and ticketholders have already grabbed up the multiday and singleday passes to hear Gillian Welch, Mavis Staples, Turnpike Troubadours, Flaco Jimenez, et al. The good news? There’s still a ton of peripheral hedonism to be had, mostly through the festival’s new culinary component, wherein a panoply of fancy dishes is laid out by some of the best chefs in the region (and beyond). There’s a five-course dinner at The Hive at 21C Museum Hotel; the Tri Cycle Farms Jamboree, a Sunday afternoon family festival with music by The Wild Rivers & Adam Cox; and a Saturday daytime festival called Roots Food & Spirits, with guided foraging walks, brewery tastings, lectures and food demonstrations. Also still on the table: tickets for a Saturday night concert from The Shook Twins and The War and Treaty at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and throwdowns of the latenight and happy hour varieties at George’s Majestic Lounge on bustling Dickson Street, with sets from Earl & Them, Arkansauce, Charley Crockett, American Aquarium, John Fullbright and The Charlie Hunter Trio. For tickets, see therootsfest.org. SS

Whoa Dakota brings fiery pop to Stickyz, 9 p.m., $10. The Shannon Boshears Band performs at Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5, or come before dinner and catch Brian Nahlen and Nick Devlin, 5:30 p.m. Vocalists Bijoux and Tawanna Campbell pay homage to Anita Baker at South on Main, 9 p.m., $15. “Apocalips” at Club Sway makes the end of the world look fabulous, 9 p.m., or catch the “Le Girls Bare Necessi-Tease” drag festivities at Discovery Nightclub, 9 p.m. Kadela takes its sitar-infused EDM to the stage at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase finalist and crowd favorite Sabine Valley takes the stage at Vino’s, with Steezy St., 7:30 p.m., $7. Howard & Skye perform at Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m. Sad Daddy descends on White Water Tavern with banjo strings, harmony and medicine show humor, 8:30 p.m., $10. The Susan Erwin Pink Piano Show rolls into Kings, with Joseph Neville, 8:30 p.m., $5. Sing drinking songs with fellow bellowers and songbirds at Stone’s Throw Brewing for Little Rock “Brew” Sing, noon, free. West Bound Revival entertains at West End Smokehouse, 10 p.m., $7. Rising country star and De Queen native Charlie Farley takes “Drinks and Dreams” and others to the stage at the Rev Room, 8:30 p.m., $15. Phil McGarrah and Runnin on Empty boogie at Jimmy Doyle’s Country Club, 7 p.m.

he Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame (AWHF) is in its fourth year honoring the achievements and preserving the history of pioneering women from Arkansas.

oin us August 22nd at South on Main in Little Rock for our concert series in honor of the women being inducted. A portion of the proceeds goes to AWHF.

Featuring: DAZZ & BRIE RAMONA SMITH JAMEE MCADOO (POET) AMY GARLAND ANGEL BIJOUX STEPHANIE SMITTLE MANY THANKS TO Bonnie Montgomery, Genine LaTrice Perez, Charlotte Taylor, Karen Hayes (poet), Cheryl Candysoul Humphrey, Kate Spencer and LaSheena Gordon for their August 15th performances for this wonderful cause. Get tickets at www.eventbrite.com/e/ar-womens-hall-of-fame-concert-2-tickets-48860801974 Tickets to induction ceremony on August 30th at arwomenshalloffame.com $12 in advance, $15 at the door for concerts.

www.arwomenshalloffame.com

OPERA IN THE ROCK PRESENTS

MONDAY 8/20 The Uh Huhs make a much-pined-for return to the White Water Tavern, 8:30 p.m. Vino’s hosts a Christian heavymusic bill with sets from Emery, Oh Sleeper, Limbs and Rough Start, 6:30 p.m., $20.

TUESDAY 8/21 Producer and composer Yuni Wa performs at Stickyz, with Way Away, Shoplift and Brother Bera, 8:30 p.m., $6. At the White Water Tavern, Skyline Drive and Mothwind share a bill with Tranquilo and Michael Hall, 8:30 p.m. Stone’s Throw Brewing hosts a Back to School Adult Spelling Bee, 6:30 p.m. Hibernia Irish Tavern hosts Brain Trust with Michael Brown, benefiting the Arkansas Abortion Support Network, 8 p.m., $10.

WEDNESDAY 8/22 Ronel Williams, Patrick Nolan, Charles Nicholas Moore and Adam Hogg team up for a stand-up comedy showcase at the White Water Tavern, 7:30 p.m., $5.

FRI, AUG 17, 7:30PM • SUN, AUG 19, 2:30PM AT THE STUDIO THEATRE • 320 W 7TH STREET • LITTLE ROCK Get tickets at centralarkansastickets.com Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

TOMAS BOHM, the owner of The Pantry and The Pantry Crest, has sold District Fare, his Hillcrest sandwich shop at 2807 Kavanaugh Blvd., to Little Rock restaurateur Daniel Bryant. More big news: To run the deli, Bryant has hired Brandon Brown, who owned and operated Hillcrest Artisan Meats in the same location from 2014 until 2017, when Brown sold to Bohm. At least for now, it will continue to be called District Fare. Don’t look for the name to return to H.A.M., Brown said. The hours, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., also remain the same, but may expand. Brown has only been on the job for a little more than a week, but already he’s switched up the sandwich menu, adding several H.A.M. favorites and eliminating several in the District Fare lineup. Look for burgers at some point. He’s also greatly expanded the meat cabinet, with hanger steaks, ribeyes and his popular sausages. He plans to expand District Fare’s grocery options; a wide variety of jams, sauces, condiments and treats were a hallmark of H.A.M. Brown said he’s especially excited to take advantage of District Fare’s meat curing cabinet. Already he’s filled it with duck prosciutto, duck ham and bresaola. He said the cured meats would be more competitively priced than they were under the previous ownership. Brown and his wife, Tara ProtivaBrown, sold to Bohm to spend more time with their children and take a break. Brown did that and worked for a while at kBird. What drew him back? The creative freedom Bryant offered, and another opportunity to work with meat, he said. Brown had been attached to another project of Bryant’s: the family friendly restaurant he and Doug Martin plan to build on the corner of Kavanaugh and Beechwood Street in the former home of Helmich Auto Service garage. That restaurant is a long time out. Down the road at District Fare, look for Brown to test burger and sandwich recipes for the future restaurant, Bryant said. CHRISTIAN DOMINGO, the owner of Kontiki African Restaurant, says he is painting and fixing up a storefront in the Village Shopping Center at the southeast corner of University and Asher for the new location restaurant, formerly in Alexander. Domingo, from Sierra Leone, has gotten many positive reviews for such African dishes as peanut butter soup, Jollof rice and stew, fried plantains and more. Asked when he might reopen, Domingo would only say, “It won’t be too long.” The restaurant has applied for a license to serve alcohol. 26

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BAG SOME CRAB: The seafood is served up simmering in plastic bags at Juicy.

Juicy Seafood really is

choose seasoning (Cajun, lemon pepper, garlic butter or the “Shake Sauce” combination of all three). Three: Choose either a mild, medium or hot spice level. We ordered up two of the comBib up and enjoy the combos. bos and were provided plastic bibs and gloves, discovering why they call et’s just lay it on the line: bringing the good news that it was the place Juicy Seafood. The combos “Juicy Seafood” is a weird happy hour. Juicy Seafood has a full are presented hot and steaming, jumname for a restaurant. bar and offers several tropical and bled together, inside plastic bags atop We think of juicy steaks, beach-themed drink selections. Our round metal trays and simmering in juicy burgers, juicy fruit. Even, alas, dining partner ordered the Coconut their own spiced-up juices. Bibbed the ill-fated Juicy Couture. But juicy Pineapple Margarita ($5 during happy and gloved, we tore open our respecseafood? It gives us pause. hour) and reported that it “tasted like tive bags and got to work. Located in Little Rock’s Pleasant vacation.” We ordered the Mountain Our dining partner feasted on the Ridge West complex and housed in Berry Crush ($6.15 during happy hour), Shrimp With No Heads & Crab Legs the former Johnny Carino’s building, which was light and refreshing, with combo ($27), with garlic butter and Juicy Seafood aims for the seafood- just the right touch of Chambord. medium-spiced. The deveined shrimp dining niche between fast-food and The server made a friendly and wel- were plump, meaty and flavorful, and high-end. The atmosphere is relaxed come offer to explain the menu for the combo included corn on the cob, and welcoming, the decor is nautical first-timers. The ordering process has two small boiled potatoes and slices and the staff is exceptionally friendly. three steps: One, choose your seafood. of savory sausage. Any suspicion of pretense was gone Juicy offers crab legs, crawfish, oysters, Our table also enjoyed the Clams once the hostess seated us and added clams, mussels, lobsters and shrimp & Mussels combo ($23), which we a sheet of butcher paper to cover our (either “with heads” or kindly “with ordered spicy hot with the Shake table. no heads”). You can order a “combo” Sauce. Sometimes clams and musOur server was with us quickly, of corn, sausage and potatoes. Two, sels are more work than the reward

Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

BELLY UP

Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com

Juicy Seafood 11600 Pleasant Ridge Road Little Rock 353-1370 facebook.com/ JuicySeafoodLtRock

heaping helping of spice and leave us in a momentary coughing fit. Aside from the steamed-in-a-bag option, Juicy Seafood doesn’t really offer much else in the way of main dishes. There are four varieties of wings available ($5.50 for six, $9.50 Quick bite for 12) along with a small array of salJuicy Seafood has a small list of ads ($9.99 each). appetizers, ranging $10-$12 (shrimp, oyster, catfish, soft shell crab) along with A return trip to Juicy Seafood for a market-priced offering of oysters on lunch was a bit of a disappointment. the half shell. The lunch menu is limited, with a smaller number of steamed-in-a-bag Hours options offered in lunch-sized por11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through tions ($8-$12), wings, and a collection Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. of chicken, catfish and seafood baskets ($7-$10). We ordered the Fried Other info Oyster Basket with sweet potato fries Happy hour is 4-7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with 40 percent off most ($10) and received a rather bland cocktails. pile of lukewarm brown and orange food. The flavors were uninspired and saved only by a side of cocktail sauce. Lunch is bargain-priced, but nothing to write home about, although the service was again notable for its friendliness. We’d recommend sticking with the steamed combo options is worth, but these were tender, not for lunch if you have the time and a rubbery bite in the bunch (although, appropriate wardrobe. as always, there were a few that didn’t Juicy Seafood’s main event centeropen up during the steaming). We piece is delicious and makes a visit enjoyed the Shake Sauce combo of fla- well worth it. Roll up your sleeves, voring, but would probably dial down don the plastic protection, apologize the spice level next time: Sometimes to your dining partner in advance, and a bite would inadvertently include a just dive right in.

BARGAINS AT LUNCH: Like fried oysters and sweet potato fries.

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serving better than bar food all night long Aug 17 - ClusterPluck 18 - Kadela 24 - Jamie Lou and the Hullaballo 25 - Greasy Tree 29 - Will Stewart (8pm) 31 - Polyester Robot Special show Sept 16 - The Steve’N’Seagulls (Centralarkansastickets.com)

Check-out the bands at Fourquarterbar.com Open until 2am every night!

415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

MOVIE REVIEW

Please join us for an exciting evening as Community Health Centers of Arkansas recognizes honorees Senator John Boozman, Muskie Harris, Delta Dental of Arkansas and Forevercare, at our inaugural masked ball. Proceeds from this benefit formal will help support the Franklin Community Health Complex. Tickets may be purchased thru Eventbrite. Event details to follow.

UNMASKING

HEALTHCARE

DoubleTree bV Hilton Hotel-downtown 424 west Markham Street. little Rock. Arkansas For more information please contact Mia Stark at 501-374-2148 or email mstark@chc-ar.org

Kkkomedy ‘Blackkklansman’ delves deep, even as it entertains. BY GUY LANCASTER

BETTER THAN RUNWAY.

ARKTIMES.COM 28

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

ne day, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an undercover detective and the first African American hired by the Colorado Springs Police Department, decides to call up the Ku Klux Klan in response to an advertisement the organization placed in the local newspaper. After proving his bona fides with a hilarious diatribe leveled against all non-Aryan populations, Ron is invited to a membership meeting. Because he obviously can’t show up in person, he enlists the help of Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to play the racist Christian to Ron’s sweet-talking Cyrano. And were this movie not based upon a true story, we might be tempted decry such obvious symbolism, so rife with literary dichotomies. The paradoxes woven into Spike Lee’s “Blackkklansman,” though, run as deep as those underlying the American experiment itself. Just what kind of movie is “Blackkklansman”? Well, Spike Lee gives us plenty to laugh about with his fish-out-

of-water black detective suddenly finding himself a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but the comedic elements never dilute the aura of menace surrounding the project of white supremacy. Likewise, while “Blackkklansman” bears all the trappings of an odd-couple, buddycop film, it remains forever conscious of the fact that police departments constitute a microcosm of larger power relationships in society as a whole. The movie remains committed to both the conventions of genre and the necessity of interrogating the wider world. The result is a hilarious, thrilling story that entertains splendidly while constructing a rich thematic tapestry that will provide hours and days of contemplation afterward. There is a lot going on in “Blackkklansman.” For example, Lee interrogates the practice of “passing.” Over the telephone, Ron hides his race, passing as white, but he also hides his occupation from Patrice (Laura Harrier), his girlfriend and the president of the Colorado College black student union, who

presents…

Bill Evans Thursday August 16 7:30 p.m. The Joint

301 Main Street North Little Rock

Tickets $25

An internationally recognized five-string banjo life force, Bill bridges traditional and contemporary sounds and styles to create fresh new music.

Available at the door or online at www.argentaacoustic.com INFILTRATORS: Adam Driver (left) and John David Washington play cops who manage to get inside the KKK.

views all cops as the vanguard of racist It has long been a staple of middleoppression. Meanwhile, his partner, Flip, class, middle-path white rhetoric to see is allowed entrance to white spaces only proclamations of black power as racist by concealing his Jewish heritage. The in their own right. In 1992, Bill Clinmovie opens with a clip of “Gone With ton even compared black artist Sista the Wind” and draws its own stylistic Souljah to former KKK Grand Wizard inspiration from the black cinema of the David Duke for her criticisms of white 1970s, exploring how white supremacy supremacist culture. Lee rather audahas been both romanticized and repudi- ciously dares his viewers to endorse this ated on film. And, through character con- pairing, to draw equivalencies between trasts like the one between Patrice and Black Power’s lament over the historiKlan wife Connie Hendrickson (played cal reality of atrocity and White Power’s by Little Rock native Ashlie Atkinson) it demand for the historical privilege of asks how these representations reflect — violence, domination and oppression. and are reflections of — attitudes toward To see these as comparable is to misunwomen and their own role in various derstand their respective origins and — movements. functionally, at least — to endorse white But in what constitutes the thematic supremacy. climax of the movie, Lee flips back and The Klan calls itself the Invisible forth between a KKK initiation ceremony Empire, but as philosopher Charles W. and a meeting of the local black student Mills has argued, white supremacy itself union. The Klan ceremony includes a ser- constitutes our unrecognized founding mon on Christian virtue and the purity of political tradition. In other words, the the white race, followed by a viewing of Klan is, ironically, the most visible manithe 1915 film that inspired the Klan itself, festation of what all too often remains “The Birth of a Nation.” The black student invisible. Our heroes in “Blackkklansmeeting, meanwhile, features the elderly man” may wrap up this one case, but Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) nar- at the end they stand staring into the rating his eyewitness story of the brutal darkness with guns drawn against the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in savage ghosts who haunt this land. Be Waco, Texas. Each gathering ends with they clad in white hoods or three-piece the respective shouts of “White Power!” suits, the Klan is riding again, and we or “Black Power!” have to be ready for it. arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

ALSO IN THE ARTS

UPCOMING EVENTS La Terraza Rum & Lounge National Rum Day!

AUG

The Studio Theatre Opera In The Rock presents SOUVENIR: a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins

AUG

17 & 19

Turner-Ledbetter House QQA Summer Suppers: Turner-Ledbetter House

AUG

Albert Pike Masonic Center Dames, Dems and Drinks

AUG

Curran Hall Preservation Conversations: Quapaw Treaty of 1818

SEPT

The Studio Theatre The Legend of Georgia McBride

23 24 6-16

CALS Darragh Center Preservation Conversations: The Adaptive Imagineering of Main Street, Little Rock

SEPT

Community Theatre of Little Rock Mel Brooks’ The Producers

SEPT

14-30

Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets and more!

Arkansas Times new local ticketing site! If you’re a non-profit, freestanding venue or business selling tickets thru eventbrite or another national seller – call us 501.492.3994 – we’re local, independent and offer a marketing package!

LOCAL TICKETS, ONE PLACE 30

AUGUST 16, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

THEATER

“Birthday From Hell.” The Main Thing’s summer production, a two-act “Fertle Family” comedy. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., through Aug. 31. $24. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0205. “Grease.” Murry’s Dinner Theater takes on the ’70s-by-way-of-the-’50s stage musical. 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., dinner at 6 p.m.; 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., through Aug. 25. $15-$37. 6323 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. “Once.” TheaterSquared puts up the Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova love story. 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through Sept. 23. $5-$50. Walton Arts Center’s Studio Theater, 495 W. Dickson St. 479-443-5600.

FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS

MAJOR VENUES

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Robert Baines: Living Treasure and Fabulous Follies,” jewelry, through Oct. 7; “Delta Through the Decades Deux: Selections from the Collection,” through Nov. 4; “Through Our Eyes,” works by students, through Nov. 11; 60th annual “Delta Exhibition,” works by artists from Arkansas and contiguous states, through Aug. 26. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ARTS & SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Small but Mighty,” works from the permanent collection, through Oct. 27; “UAPB & ASC: Five Decades of Collaboration,” work by Tarrence Corbin, Earnest Davidson, Fred Schmidt, Dr. William Detmers and others from UA Pine Bluff in the ASC permanent collection, through Nov. 3; “Imaginate,” STEAM exhibit in the International Paper Gallery. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 870536-3375.

ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 S. Main St., Springdale: “Our Natural State,” photography by Gary Cawood, Beverly Conley, Mike Disfarmer, Jim Dow, Rebecca Drolen, Ron Evans, Matthew Genitempo, Don House, Tim Hursley, Kris Johnson, Margaret LeJeune, Maxine Payne, Donna Pinckley, Sabine Schmidt, Jim Simmons, Alec Soth and Geoff Winningham, closes Aug. 17, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479-7515441. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER, 1200 President Clinton Ave.: Permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6. 374-4242. CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe & Contemporary Art,” through Sept. 3; “The Garden,” works from the collection, through Oct. 8; “How Do You Figure?” figurative work, closes Aug. 20; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700. DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St., Helena/West Helena: “Over Here and There: the Sons and Daughters of Arkansas’s Delta at War,” commemorating the centennial of World War I. 870338-4350. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “You May Kiss the Bride,” vintage wedding dresses and accessories, closes Aug. 19; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022.

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A&E CONT. this woman who was always so positive about everything. I wanted some of that to rub off on me.” She was doing what she wanted to do, and that makes us happy. You’ve spent a long time in the opera world at a high level and, of course, have found your own voice. But before we do that, we’re all imitating singers we think are great. You can hear it in young singers, for example — or sometimes not so young — when they use vibrato, but one that’s clearly a manufactured vibrato. And in a way, it’s kind of odd that we’re meant to feel such shame about that. Is there sort of a broader lesson here about vulnerability and confidence, or am I making too much of what’s really just a comedy? Florence makes reference to this when she says, “You may find this hard to believe, but when I was a young woman, my singing was actively discouraged.” I love that she opens that with “You may find this hard to believe ... .” Exactly! Because she does find it hard to believe. Then there’s another point where she takes him to task, and she says, “Well, this is worse than I thought. When I was younger, I had my own doubts and I allowed other people’s opinions to stand in the way of my own musical progression. I was afraid that I was going to look foolish; can you imagine? And there were people who should have been my support, but they sensed my fear and used it to silence my voice.” That’s beautiful. I know, and [she says] that “It was only after much internal struggle that I was able to break free from this.” There’s another point where she says, “I have known doubt, and I have known the dark night of the soul, and it was music that brought me out of that.” There are so many moments in this play in which the lines are so touching and so honest and so truthful, and the age that I am now, I’m looking backward more than I’m looking forward. Whatever career I had is basically behind me. I think the line that I love the most is “I wish we could live in the music forever.” See centralarkansastickets.com for tickets and details.

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

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PRIVACYSTAR LITTLE ROCK, AR POSITION: PRODUCT MANAGER RESPONSIBILITIES: Manage product design, development, marketing & reporting for First Orion mobile & data products & services. Create detailed product specifications & requirements that detail key features & functionality necessary to deliver best in class solutions to our customers & partners. Create, develop & manage product timelines & expectations. Apply strong business & analytical skills. Communicate w/ business owners & engineering resources to create & refine product strategy & requirements. Create, develop, & manage product test plans in accordance w/ product roadmaps & schedules. Manage & administrate internal development resource & external international resources as needed & partners for specific project needs & objectives. EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, AND SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: M.S. in Management Information Systems or closely related field. Must have Working knowledge of Database technology (including MS SQL Server, SQL Lite, Oracle and Microsoft Access) and of Web technology (including HTML, XML and CSS). To apply, Reference Job #00500 in e-mail resume to careers@privacystar.com.

METROPOLITAN HOUSING ALLIANCE BOARD VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT The Little Rock Housing Authority, doing business as, Metropolitan Housing Alliance, will have vacant positions on the Board of Commissioners September 30, 2018. This is a volunteer position, no compensation is provided. Term of Office is 5 years. Regular and Special meetings are held alternately during midday and evenings. QUALIFICATIONS: • Ability to contribute to the Alliance to achieve the mission & goals • Ability to carry out duties as Commissioner, if appointed INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS MUST: 1. Submit a letter addressed to the Board of Commissioners expressing a desire to be considered. 2. Submit a resume, limited to 3 pages. Your letter of interest and resume are to be mailed to: Metropolitan Housing Alliance 100 South Arch Street Little Rock, AR 72201 or emailed to: imckinney@mhapha.org

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS AUGUST 20, 2018 For additional information about MHA log onto www.mhapha.org or contact Rodney Forte, Executive Director, at 501-340-4821.

In the Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas Probate Division. In the matter of the Estate of Florence P. McCraw, deceased. No. 60PR-181640. Name of decedent, Florence P. McCraw Last known address 917 Healey St North Little Rock AR 72114. Date of death: April 27, 2013. On August 9, 2018 an affidavit for collection of small estate by distribute was filed with respect to the estate of Florence P. McCraw, deceased, with the clerk of the probate division of the circuit court of Pulaski County, Arkansas, under Ark. Code Ann. § 28-41-101. The legal description of the real property listed in the affidavit is as follows: 917 Healey North Little Rock AR. Lot 25 Block 3 Greenlea Sub Pulaski County AR. All persons having claims against the estate must exhibit them, properly verified, to the distributee or his or her attorney within three (3) months from the date of the first publication of this notices or they shall be forever barred and precluded from any benefit of the estate. The name, mailing address, and telephone number of the distribute or distributee’s attorney is: Rickey McCraw, 6714 Wayne Dr. North Little Rock, AR. Telephone number (501) 993-1091. This notice first published in August 16th, 2018 by the Arkansas Times. arktimes.com AUGUST 16, 2018

IT’S THE PARTY TO THE PARTY! 6 . T C O

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ARKANSAS TIMES