Arkansas Times - November 22, 2018

NEWS + POLITICS + ENTERTAINMENT + FOOD /

NOVEMBER 22, 2018 / ARKTIMES.COM

LOCKED OUT Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirement has cut insurance for 12,277 people and counting, including workers like Nannette Ruelle

By Benjamin Hardy

Arkansas Nonprofit News Network

GO VOTE NOW

CULINARY ARTS AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE

GO VOTE NOW

VOTE NOW THRU DEC.11 at ARKTIMES.COM/FOOD

2019

Arkansas Times will present the 38th edition of our Readers Choice Restaurants awards in our January 31, 2019 issue.

February 5th is our awards celebration party for the statewide winners, presented by our hosts and sponsors UA Pulaski Tech Culinary Institute, Ben E. Keith Foods, Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits and Glazer’s Beer and Beverage.

Food, drink, interesting people and Ted Ludwig Jazz Trio will provide the entertainment.

For more information contact phyllis@arktimes.com

ARKTIMES.COM/FOOD 2

NOVEMBER 8, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

RIVERDALE 10 VIP CINEMA ARKANSAS’S SOURCE FOR NEWS, POLITICS & ENTERTAINMENT 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 @ArkTimes

arktimes

arkansastimes

oldarktimes

youtube.com/c/arktimes

W: arktimes.com E: arktimes@arktimes.com

PUBLISHER Alan Leveritt EDITOR Lindsey Millar SENIOR EDITOR Max Brantley MANAGING EDITOR Leslie Newell Peacock

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

2600 CANTRELL RD 5 0 1 . 2 9 6.9 955 | R I V E R DA LE1 0.CO M

Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

ELECTRIC RECLINER SEATS AND RESERVED SEATING

SHOW TIMES: WED, NOV 21 – THU, NOV 29 11 AM SHOW TIMES WED-SUN

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET WIDOWS PG | 11:00 1:45 4:15 6:45 9:15 R | 11:00 1:45 4:15 6:45 9:15 CREED II THE GRINCH PG-13 | 10:45 1:30 4:15 6:45 9:30 PG | 10:45 12:45 2:45 4:45 7:00 9:05 ROBIN HOOD INSTANT FAMILY PG-13 | 11:00 1:45 4:15 PG-13 | 11:15 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:30 GREEN BOOK A STAR IS BORN PG-13 | 10:45 1:30 4:15 6:45 9:30 R | 6:45 9:30 THE FRONT RUNNER R | 11:00 1:45 4:15 6:45 9:15 A CHRISTMAS FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES STORY OF GRINDELWALD (1983) 11-27 7PM PG-13 | 10:45 1:30 4:15 6:50 9:30 ANTIQUITIES BOY ERASED 11-26 7 AND 9:15 R | 11:15 2:00 4:25 7:00 9:25

NOW TWO CONVENIENT LOCATIONS LITTLE ROCK • NORTH LITTLE ROCK Every Day

175ML 175ML 175ML 175ML 750ML 1.5L 750ML 30PK

FULL FOOD MENU • SERVING BEER & WINE TICKETS & GIFT CARDS AVAILABLE ONLINE AT OUR WEBSITE LUXURY LEATHER ELECTRIC RECLINERS WITH TABLES IN ALL AUDITORIUMS RESERVED SEATING • TICKET KIOSK IN LOBBY FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE 2019 FREE POPCORN TUB IS HERE: GET FREE POPCORN ON WEDNESDAYS

JACK DANIELS BLACK EFFEN VODKA AVIÓN TEQUILA SILVER JÄGERMEISTER LIQUEUR MACALLAN EDITION NO. 2 & 3 WOODBRIDGE ROBERT MONDAVI STELLA ROSA WINE BUDWEISER, COORS LITE, MILLER LITE

$43.99 $34.99 $79.99 $38.99 $99.99 $12.99 $12.99 $24.99

SALE!

$38.99 $27.99 $68.99 $32.99 $76.99 $8.99 $8.99 $21.99

ALL CRAFT BEER 10% OFF EVERY DAY! • WE GLADLY MATCH ANY LOCAL ADS

HURRY IN! THIS SALE EXPIRES NOVEMBER 28, 2018

MIX AND MATCH 6PK CRAFT BEERS AT OUR BROADWAY LOCATION. COME SEE US!

LITTLE ROCK: 10TH & MAIN • 501.374.0410 | NORTH LITTLE ROCK: 860 EAST BROADWAY • 501.374.2405 HOURS: LR • 8AM-10PM MON-THUR, UNTIL MIDNIGHT FRI SAT • 8AM-12AM FRI-SAT • NLR • MON-SAT 8AM-12PM

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mara Leveritt COPY EDITOR Jim Harris ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Stephanie Smittle CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mandy Keener EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR Katie Hassell

PRICED TO BUY

PHOTOGRAPHER Brian Chilson DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL STRATEGY Jordan Little ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Mike Spain DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Phyllis A. Britton ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Brooke Wallace, Lee Major, Nathan Stamp ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Hannah Peacock ADVERTISING TRAFFIC MANAGER Roland R. Gladden

The Wine People

WINES OF THE WEEK.

ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Larissa Gudino IT DIRECTOR Robert Curfman CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Anitra Hickman CONTROLLER Weldon Wilson BILLING/COLLECTIONS Linda Phillips OFFICE MANAGER/ACCOUNTS PAYABLE Kelly Jones PRODUCTION MANAGER Ira Hocut (1954-2009)

COVER PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN CHILSON

association of alternative newsmedia

CABERNET SAUVIGNON Stag’s Leap Artemis $62.19 Mount Veeder $37.99 Frei Brothers $26.99

MERLOT Chateau St. Michelle Cold Creek Vineyards $30.49 Forces of Nature $23.19 Francis Coppola $16.19

CHAMPAGNE Moet & Chandon Nectar Imperial $65.29 Piper-Heidsieck $42.69 Mumm Napa Brut Prestige $28.99

VOLUME 45, NUMBER 12

ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $150 for one year.

For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current singlecopy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

©2018 ARKANSAS TIMES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP

FOR SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE CALL: (501) 375-2985

EDWARDS WINE SPECIALS!

Meiomi Pinot Noir $22.49 Louis M. Martini Cabernet Sauvignon $17.99 La Marca Prosecco $15.99 Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay $15.29 Dreaming Tree Pinot Noir $13.99 Menage a Trois Luscious Pinot Noir $12.99

Edwards is fully stocked with your favorite wines at LOW prices.

7507 CANTRELL RD • 501-614-3477 • WWW.EDWARDSFOODGIANT.COM

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

3

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Tweet of the week

“ B ei ng po or i n A mer ica i s a personal choice, unless there are mitigating circumstances. A homeless man can go to school, get a job driving a truck making $70k per year and in 20 years become a millionaire.

In America you can work hard and change your future — if you choose.”

— Rep. Stephen Meeks (R-Greenbrier, @RepStephen Meeks) Nov. 17. The tweet received overwhelming critical attention on Twitter and beyond, and Meeks’ Wikipedia page was updated to read “Meeks’s solution to the homelessness crisis in America is for the homeless to drive trucks until they become millionaires.” On Nov. 18, Meeks apologized “to anyone I offended” for what he described as a “poorly worded tweet expressing my belief in the American dream.”

End to coal burning planned

Under a settlement agreement filed in federal court, Entergy Arkansas will quit burning coal at its White Bluff plant by the end of 2028, its Independence plant by the end of 2030 and will shutter its remaining operating plant at Lake Catherine by the end of 2027.

The Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association filed both the suit and the settlement of the suit last week. The plaintiffs notified Entergy in writing in January and February of their intent to sue Entergy for violation of the Clean Air Act.

Budget unveiled

Governor Hutchinson unveiled his proposed $5.75 billion budget for the next fiscal year. It would increase state spending by more than $129 million, or nearly 2 percent. Hutchinson’s budget proposal emphasizes the broad strokes of his campaign promises: tax cuts, reduction in some agency spending; a teacher pay increase; a $29 million “rainy day” fund aside; and a reduction 4

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

in the governor’s “quick action closing fund” to aid economic development projects, an expenditure that has drawn some criticism in the past.

He proposes a $4,000 increase in minimum starting teacher pay over four years, to $36,000. This will cost $60 million over four years. He also said he’d suggest putting $24 million into the state match for teacher retirement, as law requires, assuring teachers of a sound retirement system.

There has been concern a mong teachers about a state retreat from the defined benefit retirement system.

He said he’d add $1.1 million to base funding of the Ag riculture Department and $1.5 million to that for UAMS. The State Police would get an additional $2.3 million to add 24 troopers. Another $900,000 would go to a new crime lab in Lowell. More money would add to the number of probation and parole officers.

Hutchinson said he anticipated a $38 million reduction in revenue t ha nks to a ta x cut g iven to Oaklawn and Southland under the casino expansion amendment. He said this will not result in a cut in services, but will mean a reduction in surplus accounts.

He proposes $111 million for tax cuts over the next two years, the biggest cut to come from a reduction in the top income tax rate from 6.9 to 6.5 percent in 2020 and further reductions to 6.3 percent in 2021 that he said would make Arkansas an economic magnet. He said he’d like to see it reduced to 5.9 percent in four years.

He anticipates an increase in revenue from internet sales taxes, r e ceip t of wh ic h w i l l r e q u i r e legislative action to implement a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

He anticipates a “restricted reserve” fund of $127 million.

He o f f e r e d n o s p e c i f ic s on increased spending for highways, as sought by the road construction lobby. He has said he was committed to providing more money, but offered no specifics.

LRSD teacher contract approved

The Little Rock School District a nd t he Lit t le Rock Educat ion Association came to terms on a new professional negotiated agreement the day before a Nov. 14 deadline. The

new agreement preserves some due process protections for Little Rock teachers. The district and the local teachers union had been prepared to sign a new contract in October, but Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who acts as the school board for the LRSD while it remains under state cont rol, rejected t he dea l and demanded that the agreement include approval of seeking a waiver of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act in the 22 schools in the LRSD that received a “D” or “F” grade on the state’s accountability grading system.

The fair dismissal law, which applies to all public school teachers in the state, sets forth due process rights for teachers in employment. Key said the district needed to waive the law to quickly root out bad teachers from the underperforming schools, but when pressed could only cite one example of a teacher in the LRSD who hadn’t been fired expediently because of the fair dismissal law (the teacher was eventually fired, Key said). The new agreement doesn’t provide all LRSD teachers with the full protections of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, but it does prevent them from being summarily fired.

OPINION

A real mayor

B

aker Kurrus is trying to brand himself as an agent for change as mayor of Little Rock, but labors under a handicap.

He’s a 64-year-old white man.

Frank Scott Jr., the ticket leader in the first round of voting, is undeniably a change of pace. He is only 34 and he’s also black.

We’ve never had a black elected mayor. And the Little Rock Board of Directors does resemble bingo night at the Shady Acres Retirement Home.

The current mayor is 69. The 10 directors’ ages average 68 and that’s only because Ken Richardson, 52, and Lance Hines, 50, knock the average down considerably.

Bike around town with Baker and you won’t doubt his physical fitness.

He’s fit in other ways.

He’s run multimillion-dollar busi-

MAX BRANTLEY

nesses, including maxbrantley@arktimes.com the Little Rock School District. He’s already put an eye to the $265 million city budget and can tell you the city is in trouble, spending more than it is taking in over the long haul. Come a recession and we could be in a world of hurt.

When Kurrus talks accountability, he’s believable. He made difficult cuts in the bloated school district. A good place to start in the city is the well-intentioned but poorly monitored millions poured into youth programs through churches and nonprofits.

Kurrus said an important thing last week about the nature of the job. The city has operated under the presumption that when we changed the government form to enhance the mayor’s power, we didn’t enhance it that much.

Much was left to the discretion of the

Clean air news

A

mid the biblical fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising seas that beset the heating Earth, the old blue orb occasionally absorbs some good news that suggests it may still harbor some hope for a sustainable future.

Traveling for three weeks around the vast Sahara Desert, in Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, for the second time in a year, I was struck by the burgeoning wind and solar farms and the growing transmission structures — what else can be done with a blazing desert?

— that portend the day that much of Africa and perhaps Europe and western Asia will live with renewable energy and leave carbon to the cyclical pursuits that God intended for it.

But my point is more parochial. On my arriving back home, the prints carried the news that Entergy Arkansas, the biggest energy producer and distributor in the state, had filed a settlement in federal district court in which it agreed to stop burning coal at its White Bluff and Independence power plants, Arkansas’s two biggest

ERNEST DUMAS contributors to climate change and atmospheric poisoning. It will be achieved no later than 10 years for one and 12 years for the other as the utility converts to renewable energy sources, principally solar and wind, and perhaps to more natural gas-charged boilers. It also will mothball an inefficient old gas plant near Malvern that emits 208,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.

The settlement ended a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club of Arkansas and the National Parks Conservation Association. The suit was not so much about global warming, at least directly, but about poisoning the national forests and parks, which gave the federal courts jurisdiction. All the greenhouse gases pumped from Independence’s and White Bluff’s smokestacks — more than 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur and nitrous oxide each year — filtered not just through the forests of Eastern Arkansas and the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys, but also into the air that people breathed. No one could calcu-

city manager. ful, things about the disclosure of abuKurrus has read the law. He finds sive police practices in reporting by The no delegation of, for example, power Washington Post. He wants them investo hire and fire the police chief to the tigated, beginning with the currently city manager, who instead is to serve preferred internal review. Internal “at the direction of the mayor.” review has failed so far to create a trustThat’s an important distinction and worthy culture in the police department.

Kurrus intends to seize on it, begin- Scott wants an external review agency, a ning with the selection of a successor Justice Department investigation even. to Kenton Buckner as police chief. He’d Scott also blasted the Fraternal Order build some consensus around desires of of Police for a recent racist Facebook the public and of the city board, where post. Kurrus urged the FOP to take a six-vote majority is still required for it down (which it did), but stopped almost everything, including ratifica- short of castigating an organization tion of mayoral appointments. that wields too much influence. It’s a The city is thirsting for that kind of majority white force that shuns Little leadership. And you need not be under Rock as home and gets city-provided 40 to deliver it. Scott, too, is a business- cars to drive home to white-flight subman (banker) and followed up Kurrus’ urbs. Community policing? They are announcement of a brawny mayor’s more like occupiers. office by one-upping him. He declared I know Kurrus can get tough he’d lead the transition of Little Rock when the situation demands. He government to mayor-council. It would stood up to Johnny Key and Goverrequire a vote, but even broaching the nor Hutchinson’s efforts to destroy subject is a gust of change. the Little Rock School District with Kurrus is more cautious, saying he’d charter schools. He lost his job for be fine with a change in government if it. I think he’ll stand up to the FOP it was the popular will. when required. Hell, most of them He’s also said appropriate, but care- don’t live in Little Rock, anyway.

late the increased incidence of respiratory diseases like asthma, emphysema and cancer.

Back in the 1970s, the state Public Service Commission allowed the utility to build the plants without scrubbers, expensive units that would scrub out a lot of the poisons, but the costs of the units would be passed along to customers. The state figured the costs outweighed the health issues and let them go. The rising concern in the 1980s about the harm of “acid rain” on people and the hardwood forests changed the equation and, under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency, the states that burned the hard coal of Appalachia reversed the acid-rain threats. In Arkansas, which burned soft Wyoming coal, we persevered.

Then came along the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s big initiative to address climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Owing to Independence, White Bluff and two new merchant coal plants in Mississippi and Hempstead counties that had opened only recently — without state approval — Arkansas looked like it had farther to go than almost any state to meet its goal. Most states were halting plans for new coal plants and shuttering others, But that has changed dramatically,

in spite of President Trump’s declared intention to withdraw from the global climate treaty, scuttle the Clean Power Plan and other environmental safeguards imposed by the government over the past 40 years, and reinvigorate the coal industry. Entergy has moved swiftly to convert to renewable and cheap energy sources, buying a big gas unit at El Dorado and bargaining for solar and wind power. Arkansas will be close to complying with the Clean Power Plan in 2030 and people will be healthier and richer for it.

The bad news keeps coming from Washington. Trump had to oust his EPA director, Scott Pruitt, when his self-enrichment schemes outraged even congressional Republicans, but last week Trump let it be known that he would replace Pruitt with Andrew R. Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist and climate denier whose goal is to scrap environmental safeguards and make the coal industry great again.

Wheeler’s goals are no different from Pruitt’s and Trump’s, to set all polluting industries free of government tethers, but he is circumspect and smarter than the reckless Pruitt.

Nevertheless, given the good news, the gospels may yet be proven right, that the meek, not the arrogant, shall inherit the good earth. But it will be close.

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

5

Moms Demand, get results

F

TIX AVAILABLE @

NOVEMBER 29 - DECEMBER 16 MUSIC & LYRICS BY CAROL HALL BOOK BY LARRY L. KING & PETER MASTERSON

#TSTChristmasStory

@studiotheatrelr studiotheatrelr.com 320 W. 7TH STREET- DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK

SUPPORT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM Help the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network continue to do the sort of in-depth investigative reporting that other media in Arkansas can’t afford to do. ANNN only pursues stories that have a potential to bring about change on topics that matter to Arkansans, like health care and public corruption.

From Nov. 1 until Dec. 31 all donations to the ANNN will be doubled!

Learn more and donate today at arknews.org

6

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

or too long, Arkansas lawmak- w e k n o c k e d o n ers have been beholden to the over 3,000 doors gun lobby, and gun-violence a n d m a d e o v e r EVE JORGENSEN prevention policies that are proven 8,000 phone calls. Guest Columnist to save lives have been ignored. The We proved time Arkansas chapter of Moms Demand and again that we would show up, Action for Gun Sense in America is sometimes with our kids in tow, to working to change that. do whatever her campaign needed.

We are a grassroots movement The people who worked on her camof volunteers from all walks of life paign were astonished by the support, committed to ending gun violence passion and energy our volunteers and saving lives. Our state chapter brought to the table. has grown quickly since its founding I spent time campaigning for many in 2014. Before the 2017 legislative of our gun-sense candidates this year, session, there were only a handful of and one of the things that struck me active volunteers in the state, but we was how eager the voters I talked to now have hundreds of determined were for solutions to gun violence. I volunteers across Arkansas. talked to people who were sick and This year, we dedicated ourselves tired of worrying about how safe to electing candidates that pledged their kids were at school and heartto support common-sense gun laws broken every time they read about when elected. Gun-sense candidates the gun violence that kills roughly ran across the state, and seven were 96 Americans every day. When I told elected to serve in the state House of them there were candidates running Representatives: Tippi McCullough, in our state who were committed to Andrew Collins, Charles Blake, Jamie taking action to save lives, they supScott, Denise Garner, Nicole Clowney ported those candidates with their and Megan Godfrey. Each of these votes. candidates made gun safety a central Our advocacy experience and part of their campaigns. Andrew Col- organizational skills proved to be lins sent out mailers touting his gun- crucial in pushing these campaigns sense candidate distinction. Denise to victory. Our volunteers showed Garner made gun violence preven- up day after day to talk to voters tion a top priority of her campaign; about gun-violence prevention and she even campaigned with us in our the importance of voting. Whereas red Moms Demand Action T-shirts. candidates once may have felt like In 2017, after the legislature they could not talk about gun-sense passed laws allowing concealed positions, now candidates are winguns in places like bars and sport- ning because of these positions. In ing events and forcing guns on electing gun-sense candidates, voters college campuses — including the in Arkansas sent a clear message: We University of Arkansas, where she want leaders who will put the safety teaches — Nicole Clowney founded of our communities first.

Fayetteville’s Moms Demand Action Moms Demand Action is excited chapter. Under her leadership, the that we have leaders in the House Fayetteville Moms Demand Action who will advocate for gun-violencegroup quickly became one of the prevention policies. Their elections most active in the state and Clowney show that even in a state like Arkanbecame one of our most dedicated sas, with deep ties to the NRA, slowly volunteer leaders. but surely we’re changing the culture Denise Garner, a fellow gun-sense around gun-violence prevention in candidate, defeated Rep. Charlie Col- our state. And we are just getting lins (R-Fayetteville), a four-term started. Text READY to 64433 to incumbent and sponsor of some of join us! the most dangerous gun bills we’ve seen in recent years. She beat him Eve Jorgensen is the volunteer by a staggering 11 percent. Start- leader with the Arkansas chapter of ing this summer in Garner’s district Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense of roughly 18,000 to 20,000 voters, in America.

2018: Complicated

T

he last two election cycles redefined Arkansas politics. In 2014, the three distinguishing elements of Arkansas’s politics — provincialism, personalism and populism — with roots back to the Sid McMath era of the middle of the 20th century, died simultaneously as a Tom Cotton-style Republicanism roared into dominance in the state. In 2016, Donald Trump’s ascendency with white rural voters in the state, lacking any other answers to their economic and social frustrations, cemented even further the GOP advantage in Arkansas.

This year’s elections, on the other hand, while not fundamentally changing any of the truths about the politics of the state established by the previous two cycles, did suggest that the future of the state’s politics appears a tad more complicated.

In the “more of the same” category, Arkansas’s Democrats lost two additional state legislative seats from rural districts in 2018. Democratic Party of Arkansas leader Michael John Gray (D-Augusta) and state Rep. Scott Baltz (D-Pocahontas) ceded the final two mostly white, rural districts in the state to their Republican challengers in razor-thin races. However, in the “this feels different” category, Democrats evened out those loses with two victories in Northwest Arkansas as Denise Garner (D-Fayetteville) and Megan Godfrey (D-Springdale) both beat incumbents. Garner’s victory over Rep. Charlie Collins (R-Fayetteville) was commanding, while Godfrey’s close win in the heavily Latino district in the heart of Springdale was more unexpected. Across Republican-held districts in Northwest Arkansas and western and northern Pulaski County, several other Democratic candidates ran strong races that got them within spitting distance of wins.

These new Democratic successes (and near-successes) were driven by the combination of a backlash to Trump in the electorates of true suburbs and highquality candidates — mostly self-activated by their angst about the outcome of the 2016 elections — who ran campaigns that combined effective progressive messaging with strong field operations. Continued reaction to a Trump-dominated GOP nationally could get Democrats a few more legislative seats in the near future, and continued transformation in the Bella Vista-Fayetteville corridor could begin to move the needle in the 3rd Congressional District generally.

However, a wall has shown itself

to the power of JAY demographic BARTH change to produce statewide wins: Many of the areas typically called “suburbs” in Arkansas are instead “exurbs.” This distinction is a vital one in the Trump era. These areas continue to identify as small towns detached emotionally from their metropolitan areas, unlike the quickly diversifying suburbs that have rejected Trump from Orange County to Philadelphia. For instance, Democrat Clarke Tucker ran up very good numbers in the urbanized/ suburbanized parts of Pulaski County, but hit a red wall when his campaign crossed the county line into the exurbs of Saline and Faulkner counties. That sent U.S. Rep. French Hill back to Washington for two years.

Much about the future of the state’s politics will be determined by those who draw legislative and congressional district lines. Assuming that GOPdominated political bodies draw these districts following the 2020 census, the creation of districts that dilute suburban areas with exurban and rural voters and are thus secure from Democratic intrusion will be the norm for much of the next decade. However, a state constitutional amendment that would shift the responsibility for drawing district lines to an independent commission is being readied for the gathering of petition signatures. Signs are quite positive that it will pass if it gets to the 2020 ballot and it would create a fairer playing field for the redistricting process. Of course, in Arkansas, that pathway to the ballot is often a tricky one for citizen initiatives.

Moreover, as long as Arkansas remains a state where civic participation, including at the ballot box, remains exceptionally low, Arkansas’s Democrats will remain moribund. In 2018, Arkansas had the third lowest turnout in the nation with just at four in 10 eligible voters participating. While national turnout soared over a dozen points higher than the last midterm election in 2014, Arkansas’s turnout only barely exceeded its percentage four years ago. Among other efforts at enhanced civic engagement in the state, there needs to be a sustained voter registration effort in Arkansas to register tens of thousands of currently disenfranchised voters and then activate them when elections arrive, educating and aiding them in the new voter identification requirements now in place.

THIS BLACK FRIDAY

OPT OUTSIDE

The day after Thanksgiving, join park interpreters for an alternative to Black Friday … Green Friday.

Guided hikes and interactive programs will be offered throughout the day at participating locations. Or, enjoy a schedule-free day of outdoor play with friends and family at any of our 52 parks.

Visit ArkansasStateParks.com/events for more info.

Share your photos using #OPTOUTSIDE to be a part of this nationwide movement.

ArkansasStateParks.com

#OptOutside #ARStateParks #GreenFriday

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

7

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE

Hope and despair

T

Merlon Devine Tuesday Dec. 4 8PM

Join us for an evening of jazz with Merlon Devine. Intriguing, soulful, innovative and soothing describe the urban contemporary jazz styled music Merlon is known for. His latest single “The Platform” is currently being played on national and international stations!

Show starts at 8 pm. Purchase $15 tickets in advance or pay $20 at the door. Tickets do not guarantee a reserved seat. To reserve a table, please call (501) 244-9660.

1304 MAIN STREET LITTLE ROCK, AR 72202 501-244-9660

8

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

GET TICKETS AT CENTRALARKANSASTICKETS.COM

he weekend before Thanksgiving row, 88-85 loss, which brought Arkansas Razorback athlet- was tough to swallow ics more despair on the gridiron and but representative of hope on the hardwood. We’ll take what we the program’s ascent can in this trying 2018, eh? since the Greenwood On Saturday, the football Hogs were native was charged BEAU stunted by the Mississippi State Bulldogs with pulling it out of WILCOX in Starkville. The first half was looking like a lengthy and erratic it would play out as a massive rout, but run under multiple coaches since Gary Arkansas, as it did against LSU, survived a Blair left for Texas A&M many moons ago. punchless first quarter and built some mild Mike Anderson’s group had sustained momentum at the end of the half when such a painful opening-game defeat, surConnor Limpert, who had uncharacter- rendering a tying three to Texas and sucistically hooked a field goal try earlier, got cumbing in overtime, that it was hard to the Hogs on the board with a three-pointer fathom how the Hogs would fare against to narrow the margin to 17-3 at the break. the Hoosiers, who are in their second seaWith the Razorbacks getting the opening son under Archie Miller. It was an imprespossession of the second half, it certainly sive and resilient effort at both ends for appeared that Arkansas was in line to forge Daniel Gafford, who despite again having a bit of a comeback after breaking through. free throw struggles, displayed his otherAnd that opening drive was going worldly skills with a 12-for-15 performance splendidly all the way up to the point from the floor that included the usual array when LaMichael Pettway was flagged of dunks but also demonstrated his midfor offensive pass interference on a play range shooting touch and his improving that would have set the Hogs up inside stamina and foul awareness en route to a the Mississippi State five-yard line. Instead career-high 27 points. He was backed by the rarely flagged infraction — and let’s be Isaiah Joe and Mason Jones again, both real here, in this case it was an arguable in double digits, and the latter of whom non-call — pushed Arkansas back, Limpert was fouled on a rebound attempt under made another mid-range field goal, and the the Indy basket with 2.5 seconds left. He Bulldogs turned angry from there. Quar- made the critical go-ahead free throw and terback Nick Fitzgerald, objectively a bad then purposely and perfectly clanked the passer thus far in his senior year, overcame second one, forcing the Hoosiers to corsome off-target tosses earlier in the game ral the rebound and attempt a nearly fulland threw four TDs in his swan song at court heave that was well wide of the mark.

Starkville, and within the blink of an eye Anderson’s team has a busy week ahead the final was 52-6, by far the worst perfor- with games bracketing Thanksgiving Day mance in a season filled with bad games. against Montana State and UT-Arlington.

It certainly doesn’t augur well for the This win largely offset the disappointment finale at Missouri, which earned its sev- lingering from the Texas defeat, and set enth win by routing Tennessee and again the team up for a positive stretch ahead. is closing the year strong after a rough start Meanwhile, Neighbors’ squad, in SEC play. Worse yet, after Kelly Bryant trounced by the Sun Devils so badly a year had visited Fayetteville earlier and seemed ago in a trip to Tempe, had a genuine and to be a possible incoming transfer after the completely acceptable “moral victory.”

Hogs routed Tulsa on homecoming, the Alexis Tolefree continued a strong start former Clemson quarterback got to see with 22 points and Chelsea Dungee had a very ugly side of the state of Arkansas 20. Impressively, after the nip-and-tuck football in his official visit to Mississippi nature of the first half appeared to be wanState. It may have been a devastating loss ing after halftime when the visitors built if it convinces Bryant to join a more stable, a short double-digit lead, the Hogs fought consistently winning program rather that back to make it one-possession game in come to Fayetteville. the end.

At least things turned around for Hog Neighbors has had to inherit a group fans quickly, though. The basketball teams light on depth and augment it. And as were locked in nip-and-tuck battles in the with Morris, he’s managed to excel on new Hardwood Showcase on Sunday, the recruiting side, which is a considerable and the men came away with a nail-biter accomplishment in itself given the shape against formerly unbeaten Indiana, 73-72. of things. But it would appear he’s got a Later that night, the women took the floor team that is poised and able to make big against Top 25 Arizona State, and Mike strides in the affable coach’s second year, Neighbors’ young but rapidly improv- and Morris assuredly will want to see his ing group acquitted itself well in a nar- 2019 group to mirror that advancement.

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Thankful

I

t’s that time of year again, when we are supposed to turn a bit inward to find and count our blessings. They change year by year, of course, sometimes meager, sometimes bountiful, but even the blackhearted cynic that is The Observer believes all of us have something to be thankful for if we really think about it. It’s one of the best things about humanity: our capacity to see a faint sparkle of daylight even when life has mired us at the darkest bottom of the deep blue sea.

The Observer’s cup of thankfulness currently runneth over, even though we’re edging onto the back nine of life. We’re a morose son of a pistol most of the time, instantly distrustful of the irredeemably joyous, but we’ve always had the ability to unplug from our troubles — real and imagined — and think of how others have got it worse than we do, and count the things for which we have to be thankful.

The Observer, for instance, is thankful that our back has finally settled down to its standard ache instead of the screwdriverin-the-spine agony that afflicted us every time we sat or stood, lay down or walked, sneezed or coughed, throughout much of September and the whole of October. We can see how people get their lives turned ass-up by opioid goofballs when chained to a nagging, inescapable pain like that. Had we not reported some years back on the double misery of chronic sufferers who wound up hooked on pills, we might have been tempted. Luckily, good ol’ brown liquor before bed and some rudimentary yoga stretches imposed on us by Spouse saw us through and helped us get some sleep until the radioactive ouch generator in our lower back gave up the ghost.

For now.

We’re thankful for democracy, which saw voters deliver enough souls to Congress come January to put a check on the orange lunatic in the White House, he who appears to honestly think that some good ol’ elbow grease with a yard rake and 50 bajillion lawn and leaf bags are all California needs to stop wildfires the size of Rhode Island after seven unbroken years of drought have turned the state into a tinderbox; he who recently called U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “Adam Schitt” like a particularly dim and unimaginative play-

ground bully, even though historians are always scribbling down notes for posterity; he who said that he was much, much too busy to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Veterans Day, even though he spends more time on social media than your average Kardashian; he who thinks trade wars are good and easy to win even as soybeans rot in great heaps outside packed American silos. But never fear, Arkansas soybean farmers! We’re sure Arkansas’s recently re-elected Republican lineup in the U.S. House will stand up to Big Orange and give you something to be thankful for on the trade front! Eventually. If not, them damn snooty Democrats you seem to hate worse than pigweed will give it the ol’ college try. You’re welcome.

We’re thankful for brown beans for Sunday dinner in the fall, especially with a little ham, a skillet of cornbread and a splash from the jar of pickled peppers, a flavor that takes us back home as surely as Proust’s fancy-ass little cookies. We’re also thankful for our beloved Spouse, who reports she may have to take up sleeping in the yard in a tent every Sunday night if Yours Truly doesn’t get some of those carbon-packed, fart-defeating tighty-whiteys we’ve seen advertised in the classier magazines.

And, of course, we’re thankful for you, my friend. Yes, you, sitting reading this, perhaps with furrowed brow, given that we just served up the image of Yours Truly sleeping, bean-besotted and Dutch-ovening our long-suffering Spouse. While there have been times when we have succumbed to the temptation to write more for ourselves than FYI, we usually manage to keep our eyes on the prize: to deliver something of value to the folks who take the time to read this in coffee shops or their easy chair, in bed before lights out or waiting in line for a bagel. What a gift it is to know that you’re reading these words right now, wherever you are, whoever you are, and that you still care. So thanks. You keep reading ’em and we’ll keep writing ’em, as long as the Good Lord is willing to let the both of us keep on. As for now: The Observer smiles upon you, and bestows blessings to you and yours for the happiest of Thanksgivings.

11200 W. Markham 501-223-3120 www.colonialwineshop.com facebook.com/colonialwines SCOTCH –WHISKEY – VODKA – TEQUILA

Glenlivet 12yo Single Malt Scotch Everyday $89.99 $68.98 Woodford Reserve Bourbon Everyday $69.99 $59.98 360 Organic Vodka Everyday $24.99 $19.99

1800 Silver & Reposado Tequila Everyday $45.99 $34.98

CONNOISSEUR SELECTION (750 mL) Cragganmore 12yo Single Malt Scotch Everyday $64.99 $54.99 Monkey Shoulder Blended Scotch Everyday $34.99 $27.98 Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon Everyday $28.99 $23.98

11/21–11

/27/18

Chateau St Jean – All Varieties Everyday $13.99 $9.98

Bogle 2015 California Essential Red Everyday $12.99 $9.99

WINE SELECTION (750 mL) Nikolaihof Wachau 2017 Muskateller Everyday $45.99 $31.98

Chateau Lamouroux 2014 Graves Rouge and 2015 Graves Blanc Everyday $26.99 $19.98 Chateau Lamouroux 2016 Rosé Everyday $23.99 $17.98 Schramsberg Mirabelle Brut Everyday $34.99 $24.98

Rock Town Bourbon Cream Liqueur Everyday $25.99 $21.98

3L BOX WINE SELECTION

Black Box All Varieties Everyday $21.99 $17.97

Banfi 2017 San Angelo Pinot Grigio Everyday $17.99 $12.97

BEST LIQUOR STORE

3FOR THURSDAY – Purchase 3 or more of any 750ml spirits, receive 15% off *unless otherwise discounted or on sale.

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

9

WHEN ARKANSAS WORKS DOESN’T

Red tape and a confusing website cut off health insurance for thousands of working people

BY BENJAMIN HARDY ARKANSAS NONPROFIT NEWS NETWORK

10

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

FULL STEAM AHEAD: Governor Hutchinson says the work requirement balances compassion with common sense while saving taxpayers money.

insurance program for low-income adults — for not reporting their work hours. Thousands more will likely join them in December. The rule, which began for the first subset of beneficiaries in June, requires able-bodied adults under age 50 to report at least 80 hours of “work activities” each month.

(In 2018, the requirement applied only to those ages 30-49, but it will begin including 19- to 29-year-olds in 2019.)

Those who don’t comply for any three months in a calendar year are kicked off Arkansas Works and locked out until the new year begins.

Ruelle’s attempts to reach DHS were unsuccessful in part because the agency only allows people to report their work hours through a website, rather than by fax, phone or mail. This online-only requirement is unlike any other reporting required by DHS. The agency places no such restriction on the way beneficiaries submit other information, such as a change of address — just their work hours.

DHS first sends Arkansas Works recipients who must meet the work requirement a letter directing them to https://access.arkansas.gov. As of Nov. 16, that URL sent users to a general DHS landing page containing information about voter registration, not health insurance. From the landing page, a beneficiary must navigate a series of menus to reach a login page, where he or she is prompted to create a new account. (Doing so requires an active email address.) Then, the user must locate a unique “reference number” contained on the letter from DHS “to link your online account to your healthcare coverage.” Only then can the beneficiary enter work hours.

Ruelle said she tried to follow this process but ran into problems there, too.

“You set up passwords and stuff, and the passwords won’t work. … It would tell you your user ID was invalid and then it would tell you your password’s invalid.”

“I tried to call them to help me go through all that stuff, and I couldn’t ever get a response,” she said.

DHS spokeswoman Marci Manley said local offices have resources on hand to help beneficiaries report their hours.

“We have computers and kiosks available, and a staff person can offer one-on-one assistance,” she said.

BRIAN CHILSON

N

annette Ruelle is watching three numbers tick downward as the year comes to a close. The first is the number of doses left in her Advair inhaler, which she normally uses three times a day to control her asthma. As of Nov. 17, she had 35 remaining. The second is the number of pills in her bottle of Gabapentin, which her doctor told her to take three times daily for chronic neuropathic pain in her feet and ankles.

She had three as of Nov. 17.

The third is the number of days left until she can refill those prescriptions: 44. She was kicked off her Arkansas Works health insurance in September and will be locked out until Jan. 1.

Ruelle, 38, lost her coverage at the end of August due to Arkansas’s new requirement that certain Medicaid beneficiaries report their work hours to the state. For the past two-and-a-half months, she’s been carefully rationing both her medications, allowing herself a Gabapentin only when the nerve pain becomes so bad she fears she won’t be able to do her job. Ruelle works 25-35 hours a week at a chain restaurant in Little Rock, where she makes $9 an hour.

“It’s some serious stuff. They’re just playing around with people’s lives, and I don’t think it’s fair,” she said in a recent interview. “What if I wake up one morning and I can’t even function because my feet are hurting and I have nothing left?”

Ruelle said she first recalled hearing about the requirement in May, when she was working a minimum wage job at a different restaurant. The instructions on the notice she received from the state Department of Human Services were confusing, but she tried to do what the letter demanded.

“What happened was that I got my information and I tried to fax it to them.

The fax wouldn’t go through, so I tried calling them, and I never got an answer on the phone. I went up there and they were out of the office,” she said.

When she got no reply after leaving voicemails and visiting her local DHS office, Ruelle said, she gave up. “I just quit trying, because you can only try so many times before it’s like, ‘OK, you’re closing the door in my face.’ ” Over the last three months, DHS has removed 12,277 people from Arkansas Works — the state’s Medicaid-funded

REPORTING REQUIRED: DHS Director Cindy Gillespie has overseen the agency’s rollout of the new work rule

The Arkansas experiment

Arkansas is the first state to implement a work requirement in its Medicaid program. Kentucky attempted to launch a similar rule earlier this year, but a federal judge in the District of Columbia sided with a group of plaintiffs and blocked the policy in June before it went into effect. A lawsuit challenging Arkansas’s work requirement is now before the same judge, but a ruling isn’t expected until 2019.

Governor Hutchinson, who received permission from the Trump administration in March to implement the work requirement, has said the “commonsense” policy is saving taxpayers money and incentivizing Arkansas Works beneficiaries to move up the economic ladder. He’s pointed to an unemployment rate near record lows as evidence jobs are available for anyone willing to work.

Beneficiaries also get some credit for other activities, like school, volunteering

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

11

BRIAN CHILSON

‘I CAN’T WORK IF I CAN’T EVEN MOVE’: Nannette Ruelle has been rationing medication for neuropathic pain in her feet and ankles since her insurance was cut off in September. She’s locked out of Arkansas Works until Jan. 1.

12

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

or searching for jobs. The state Department of Workforce Services operates dozens of centers statewide that stand ready to help people find employment or training, Hutchinson says.

The governor has also noted the broad exemptions built into the program. Anyone with a dependent child in the house is exempt from reporting, as are full-time students and certain people with high-end medical needs, among other categories. DHS also automatically exempts people whose incomes were at least $680 per month when they first applied for Arkansas Works, under the assumption they’re working enough already. The requirement applies only to the “Medicaid expansion” population under Obamacare, thus excluding anyone receiving federal disability payments (Supplemental Security Income, or SSI) and those in other “traditional” Medicaid categories.

In September, when the work requirement first began cutting people from the Medicaid rolls, Hutchinson listed reasons why people might not be reporting. “One, they could have … obtained other insurance coverage,” he said. “Or it could be that they moved away out of state without notifying DHS. Or it could be that they simply don’t want to be part of the workforce.

They’re able-bodied, but … they don’t desire to do it.”

To Ruelle, though, losing health coverage only makes it harder to participate in the workforce.

“When I work, I stand, you know?

I stand on my feet for hours a day,” she said. “I don’t like taking medicine, period, but facts are facts: I need to be out of pain in order to work. I can’t work if I can’t even move.” Her asthma, meanwhile, gets worse when the weather turns cold; she starts wheezing when she goes without the Advair inhaler for too long, she said.

Ruelle signed up for Arkansas Works insurance soon after she was released from prison in January 2017. She’d been serving time for a drug offense. “I went to prison over bad choices in my life. I got mixed up with the wrong crowd, got into using narcotics and drinking heavily and stuff like that, and I paid the price for it,” she said.

Now, Ruelle said, she’s four years sober and determined to stay that way.

“I’m really trying, I really am. I work a 12-step program. I have sponsees [people she sponsors]. And I don’t mess up, because I don’t need them looking at me and saying, ‘Oh, it’s OK to mess up and stuff.’ … No, I’m trying to save my life. I’m doing the things I need to do

in order to keep my life stable.” Originally from the Pine Bluff area, she’s now intent on starting fresh in a new town.

“I’m trying to set a foundation here in Little Rock,” she said.

But she’s worried about what happens when her prescriptions run out. “I mean, I’ve thought about this, and it’s steadily going off in my brain. I’m having to function with a smile on my face in pain, but I do it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. …

I love my customers, I love making them smile, and I get to do that. It’s part of my job, customer courtesy, and when you’re in pain, it’s really hard to smile. It really is.”

Ruelle’s job offers health insurance to supervisors but not to lower-level staff, she said. She’s talked to an independent insurance agent who’s arranged for her to get insurance on Jan. 1, either by reenrolling in Arkansas Works or by enrolling in the health insurance marketplace, where she would pay a small premium.

Until then, she’ll keep working as best she can.

“I mean, I gotta pay bills, so I work,” she said. “I have to pay rent.”

Disconnected, disenrolled

Most people on Arkansas Works were likely working long before the state’s requirement came along. An analysis released last December by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a national health policy research nonprofit, found that about 60 percent of working-age, able-bodied adults on Medicaid worked full time or part time. Most of those in the remaining 40 percent said they were in school, retired, taking care of a family member or too ill or disabled to work — situations that would likely make someone eligible for an exemption under Arkansas’s rules.

But DHS numbers show that among people required to report work activities last month, only about one in nine complied.

In October, the work requirement applied to 69,041 people, according to the most recent DHS report. The vast majority, 55,388, did not have to report anything, either because they received an exemption or because the department had income information on file that made the agency assume they were working enough hours. (The fact that many workers are automatically deemed exempt from reporting may add to confusion about who exactly is required to report.) Just 1,525, or about 2 percent of the total, satisfied the rule by actually logging on to DHS website and reporting 80 hours of work activities. That left 12,128 people who didn’t meet the reporting

requirement that month. Of those, 3,815 had reached their third month of noncompliance and had their cases closed.

National health policy advocates have expressed alarm over such figures. On Nov. 8, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), a nonpartisan federal advisory panel, sent a letter to Medicaid officials in the Trump administration calling for a “pause in disenrollments” in Arkansas. The fact that so few people were reporting work hours suggested the policy “may not be structured in a way that provides individuals an opportunity to succeed, with high

stakes for beneficiaries who fail,” commission chair Penny Thompson wrote.

One way to interpret the low reporting rate is that many beneficiaries aren’t motivated to keep their insurance. Another is that many people, such as Ruelle, simply aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do.

Robert Smith, 48, got a letter in late October telling him he’d be cut off on the first of the month. “They said I hadn’t completed my 80 hours. I didn’t even know I was supposed to complete 80 hours,” he said in a recent interview.

Smith, who lives in Benton, said he’s now only able to work intermittently

ANNUAL HOLIDAY SHOW OPENING RECEPTION NOVEMBER 29 • 6-9 PM

Anais Dassé Jeff Horton Dennis McCann Connie McCann Jason McCann Keith Runkle Cynthia Kresse Kathy Bay Andy Huss Michael Warrick Diana Ashley Delita Martin Kyle Boswell Melissa Cowper-Smith Eleanor Dickinson Alice Andrews Matthew Lopas David Bailin Ray Parker Louis Watts

Kellie Lehr Elizabeth Weber Yelena Petroukhina Laura Carenbauer Brad Cushnan Susan Goss Danny Broadway Donala Jordan Luis Garcia Nerey Donnelle Williams Susan Chambers John Sykes Eugen Tenander Gayle Batson Sheila Cotton Nancy Wilson Robin Hazard Hamid Ebrahimifar Marleen De Bock Carla Davis

SHOW RUNS THROUGH JANUARY 5 5 8 1 5 K AV A N A U G H B LV D • L I T I L E R O C K , A R 7 2 2 0 7 ( 5 0 1 ) 6 6 4 . 0 0 3 0 • W W W. B O S W E L L M O U R O T. C O M

because of chronic back problems and a torn rotator cuff. He currently works part time hauling trash, despite the pain in his back and shoulder. “It’s pretty tough. You just gotta bear it and do what you gotta do,” he said.

Smith has also been diagnosed with abnormally low testosterone levels, he said, and for the past 17 years has received regular injections of the hormone from a doctor. Arkansas Works covered those injections. The insurance wasn’t perfect — it didn’t cover his X-rays after a recent fall, he said — but he’s not happy about losing it over a requirement he only just heard about.

“I didn’t even know nothing about it until it was too late. And, I mean, how are you supposed to work if your back’s messed up? Do I have to go and volunteer 80 hours somewhere? I don’t understand what they’re wanting,” Smith said.

To policymakers who might ask why he was only holding down a part-time cash job, Smith said he’d point out to them that he worked hard for decades.

“You know, my kids are raised. I don’t owe nobody, nobody owes me nothing, so I took the last year and a half off just for me,” Smith said. “Because I’ve been killing myself all my life.” Still, he said, “I have no problem taking a job that I’m capable of doing without tearing my shoulder or messing my back up more.”

In its Nov. 8 letter, the federal commission criticized Arkansas’s insistence that beneficiaries use the web portal to report hours, considering the state has one of the lowest levels of internet connectivity in the nation. (Census data compiled by the Urban Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, show about 18 percent of households lacked home internet access in 2016, including no access through a cell phone.)

Yet DHS has made many of its educational resources available only online or through social media, the letter noted.

DHS Director Cindy Gillespie has said the web portal is a means of pushing beneficiaries to gain computer literacy skills. “We need to help them get an email [address] and learn how to deal in that world, or they will never be successful,” she said in March. However, DHS has devoted no additional resources to teaching beneficiaries those skills. Gillespie also acknowledged at the time that online-only reporting would help the agency save money. “If you implement it in the old-fashioned way of, ‘Come into our county office,’ we would have to hire so many people,” she said.

DHS insists it’s doing everything it can to keep people informed. It contracts with the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care to operate a call center. It regularly arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

13

14

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Holes in the system

Even some beneficiaries who are well equipped to navigate the work requirement say it has disrupted their lives.

Kadie Campbell, 38, is a resident of rural Washington County and a graduate student at the University of Arkansas; she’s on track to receive a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at the end of this semester. She’s been on Arkansas Works for a couple of years, she said, and until October she was enrolled in a Blue Cross plan.

Campbell is considered a “full-time equivalent” student by the university.

DHS says full-time students are exempt from the work requirement. But Campbell soon found she isn’t considered “fulltime” by DHS, because she only spends three credit hours each week in a classroom. Her final semester of grad school is spent mostly in the field: She interns at a women’s prison, which she visits three days a week to conduct interviews with inmates, typically for five to six hours each day. She usually spends another 15-20 hours per week at home, reviewing videos from her interviews, doing paperwork and studying. She has to log at least 300 hours over the course of the semester, she said.

When DHS notified Campbell she’d have to begin meeting the work requirement in July, she first tried to claim the student exemption. “I put in that I’m full time — and for graduate students, this is full time — but their system doesn’t recognize that,” she said in a recent interview. “There’s not a distinction between undergrad and graduate work.”

So, she pieced together a plan. DHS counts every college credit hour for 2.5 “work activity hours,” meaning the threehour class would give Campbell just 7.5 hours each week to count toward the work requirement. “I talked to my adviser and the professor, and we decided that the hours spent in the prison can be counted as volunteer work, but the hours I spend outside the prison doesn’t count for anything,” she said. (Each volunteer hour equals one “work activity hour” in the system.)

Manley, DHS spokeswoman, said a grad student’s internship hours would likely have to be entered in a separate education category. Such time might be considered “occupational training,” which comes with its own time multiplier.

Campbell said she didn’t realize that was an option. She was simply following the rules regarding “college and university” hours on DHS materials.

Over the summer, Campbell picked up a part-time job at the Fayetteville Public Library working 16-20 hours per week.

That wasn’t initially because of the work rule, she said; she needed the money. But she decided to keep working eight hours a week at the library even after the semester began, just to make sure she met the monthly requirement.

Though she found the work rules frustrating, Campbell studied them carefully.

She knew she’d lose her insurance only after three months of noncompliance. She wouldn’t reach the requisite 80 hours per month in July or August, but she figured she’d be fine once the semester began.

“It was, I think, Sept. 28 that I got a notice from Blue Cross Blue Shield that my insurance was taken from me,” Campbell said. She was shocked. She’d been told she had until Oct. 5 to report her hours for September and had been waiting until she got her check from the library at the end of the month.

She called Blue Cross, which confirmed her insurance had been turned off due to the work requirement. She

called DHS, which told her to call her county office. She called the Washington County DHS, which referred her back to the state. Eventually, she spoke to a supervisor in Little Rock who looked at her information and confirmed she only had two months of noncompliance and should not have lost coverage.

“She said it’s set up automatically so that if you haven’t entered anything by the 27th or 28th … the system automatically kicks you out,” Campbell recalled.

“She just kept saying, ‘The system is new, and we’re trying to work out kinks, and there are people with problems.’ ” The DHS employee told Campbell she could immediately re-enroll but that she’d initially be covered through fee-for-service Medicaid, rather than Blue Cross.

“And I’m like, well, that’s great, but my mental health counselor doesn’t take Medicaid,” Campbell said. She was told she should be able to re-enroll in Blue BRITTANY WULF

sends mail to beneficiaries informing them of their status (perhaps to excess — many complain of receiving a torrent of redundant and often contradictory letters from DHS). It has established a “registered reporter” process, which allows third parties to relay information from beneficiaries who have trouble reporting through the web portal.

Most registered reporters are insurance brokers, agents or others affiliated with the private insurance world.

Insurance carriers have an incentive to keep Arkansas Works beneficiaries enrolled because of Arkansas’s unique public-private approach to Medicaid expansion, in which the government pays for the cost of private insurance for most beneficiaries. The plans are provided by the state’s three health insurance marketplace carriers: Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, Ambetter of Arkansas and QualChoice. (Both Ruelle and Smith were enrolled in Blue Cross plans.) In other words, when beneficiaries get kicked off Arkansas Works, the companies stand to lose money.

Max Greenwood, a spokeswoman for Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest carrier, wrote in an email that the carrier has designated “close to 200” employees as registered reporters. “We have made close to 10,000 telephone calls, sent approximately 115,000 letters, approximately 10,000 texts and about 27,000 emails in hopes of reaching impacted members,” she added. Blue Cross has also reached out to providers and pharmacists to offer their patients assistance with reporting.

Still, Blue Cross has seen 6,857 members disenrolled due to the work requirement as of Nov. 15, Greenwood said. She said it’s “fair to say that there is still a significant number [of beneficiaries] that are unaware they are subject to the requirement.”

A spokesperson for Ambetter, the second-largest carrier in the state, said by email it had also “implemented a robust outreach plan for both members and providers.” Ambetter has had 4,259 members disenrolled because of the work requirement as of Nov. 13. The spokesperson added that “members report that internet access, computer literacy and lack of transportation are their greatest challenges to meeting the work requirement.”

It’s unclear how effective these outreach efforts have been. The Medicaid commission letter noted that DHS was unable to provide data on how many beneficiaries had been helped by registered reporters.

FOLLOWED RULES, STILL CUT OFF: Graduate student Kadie Campbell still isn’t sure why her Blue Cross coverage ended in September.

mbre

Name/No

ITH

JOHN L SM

Número e Number/

de Medicare

-MK72 1EG4-TE5 derecho a

Medicar

(PART A) HOSPITAL(PART B) MEDICAL

on Entitled to/C

star Coverage

ieza

a emp ts/Cobertur

03-01-2016 03-01-2016

ANNU ELEC AL TION

The Time is NOW!

PER

OCT. 1

IOD

5 - DE

Take the first step to get the right healthcare coverage. WellCare can help you understand your Medicare options. We have Medicare Advantage plans that offer $0 or low monthly plan premiums and co-payments.

C. 7

Call today 1-877-285-8132 (TTY 711) | 8 a.m. - 8 p.m. | 7 days a week

JOIN US at a Medicare meeting in the neighborhood to learn more!

JACKSONVILLE More from your Medicare Barnhill Steak & Buffet 500 GREGORY ST Nov 28 2:00 PM

NORTH LITTLE ROCK More from your Medicare IHOP 4225 WARDEN RD Dec 4 10:00 AM

ARKADELPHIA More from your Medicare Western Sizzlin 106 WP MALONE DR Nov 27 2:00 PM

WellCare Health Plans, Inc., is an HMO, PPO, PFFS plan with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in our plans depends on contract renewal. This information is not a complete description of benefits. Call 1-877-699-3552 (TTY: 711) for more information. For accommodations of persons with special needs at meetings call 1-877-699-3552 (TTY: 711). WellCare Health Plans Inc. complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex. ATTENTION: If you speak a language other than English, language assistance services, free of charge, are available to you. Call 1-877-374-4056 (TTY: 711). ATENCIÓN: si habla español, tiene a su disposición servicios gratuitos de asistencia lingüística. Llame al 1-877-374-4056 (TTY: 711). 㽷㎞᧶Ⱁ㨫㌷ ∎䞷僐浣₼㠖᧨㌷♾ⅴ⏜彊䘁㈦崭岏㚃┸㦜╨ᇭ嵚咃榊 1-877-374-4056 (TTY: 711)ᇭ Y0070_WCM_14904E_M CMS Accepted 09012018 J1136180_WC_ENG_Y0070_WCM_14904E_NA_WE_ADV_ARAT_RD_11-22-18_9.25x5.5_BA.indd 1

© WellCare 2018 NA9WCMADV14904E_ 0000 11/12/2018 8:24:23 AM

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

15

BENJAMIN HARDY

COUNTDOWN: Ruelle shows off her two asthma inhalers on Nov. 11. Since that date, she’s used two more doses of Advair and now has 35 left.

Cross in December or January. Until then, her counselor has agreed to see her pro bono, which she’s thankful for. (“As a clinical mental health graduate student interning at a women’s prison, it’s pretty important that I have my own counseling,” she added.)

Manley said the work requirement shouldn’t trigger a closure before the last day of the month. Asked by email whether beneficiaries have been accidentally disenrolled after only two months of noncompliance with the work requirement, she replied that “no known instances of this have occurred.”

However, Campbell provided a screenshot of the Access Arkansas portal showing that she’d been noncompliant for just two months as of November, along with letters from Blue Cross notifying her that her plan would be closed at the end of September.

“I really don’t understand why things happened. I just know that they did,” Campbell said. “I think that it’s messed up and it’s wrong and my coverage was taken from me unfairly. I have met every requirement and I have actually gone above and beyond.”

She also wonders if other low-income Arkansans are falling through the cracks.

“I have the luxury of being able sit around on the phone for as long as it takes to get ahold of somebody — and being eloquent enough to explain my situation,” Campbell said. “I’m savvy with a computer system. I’m working diligently to become a productive member of society. … If I’m getting screwed, then how many other people are?”

16

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Others losing coverage

The Arkansas Works program was shrinking well before the work requirement. Enrollment on Jan. 1 was 286,000.

By Nov. 1, it had slipped to 246,000. Of the 40,000 who left Arkansas Works over that 10-month span, only about 12,000 cases were closed due to the work requirement, leaving 26,000 whose coverage ended for other reasons.

Governor Hutchinson has attributed the reduction to a strengthening economy and improved efforts at DHS to scrub the rolls of those no longer eligible for Arkansas Works. That group include workers making too much money to qualify for the program — for a one-person household, the monthly income threshold is $1,397 — along with people who have moved out of state, inmates at correctional facilities and seniors who have become eligible for Medicare. But it also includes cases closed for what might be called technical compliance issues, such as not responding to a DHS request for information quickly enough.

Two people interviewed for this story thought they had lost coverage due to the work requirement, but an inspection of letters sent from DHS revealed they’d been cut off because of a missing paperwork issue. DHS said it could not comment on individual cases, but its most recent report showed that almost 4,200 cases were closed in October alone because the beneficiary “failed to return requested information.” (People whose cases were closed for reasons other than

the work requirement are not subject to the lockout period and may re-apply for coverage. However, if people think they were kicked off due to the work requirement, they may also assume they’re locked out.)

Kevin De Liban, an attorney for Legal Aid of Arkansas, is among the lawyers representing nine plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit seeking to undo the state’s work requirement. (The National Health Law Program and the Southern Poverty Law Center are also working on the suit.) DeLiban said Legal Aid has seen an increase in people kicked off for failing to provide DHS with verification of income or other household information within 10 days of receiving notice, as the agency requires.

“In many cases they did, it just wasn’t processed in time. Or maybe they provided it on day 11 or 12, but their case was already set to be closed,” De Liban said.

“It’s immensely confusing, because it’s more and more administrative hoops to jump through and figure out. … Some people might have reported [work hours], or might not have, but then they get kicked off in the meantime for something other than the [work] requirement.

“And so it’s, if they don’t get you through the work requirements, they might get you through the verification procedures or the returned mail,” he said. “At least from our clients’ perspective, it seems like the state is trying to make it as hard as possible for people to retain coverage.”

The cost of labor

In September, when the work requirement first began locking people out of coverage, Hutchinson said cutting off beneficiaries was not the policy’s goal.

“We’d like to see them all in compliance,” he said at the time.

The governor noted that he’s long defended Medicaid expansion from fellow Republicans in the state legislature who want to dismantle the program entirely. “I fought hard to maintain Arkansas Works, despite odds against it, despite enormous criticism,” Hutchinson said. The work requirement represents a “proper balance,” he said, between “providing assistance to those who need it, and … the value of work and responsibility.”

Hutchinson cited data showing many Arkansas Works enrollees had recently found employment, some of them assisted by the state Department of Workforce Services. At dozens of workforce centers around the state, DWS staff help clients search for jobs, prepare resumes, obtain scholarships and more.

Out of 21,841 Arkansas Works beneficiaries referred to DWS due to the work

requirement, 1,366 have sought help at a workforce center as of Nov. 14, DWS spokesman Steve Guntharp said in an email. Some 2,887 people subject to the work requirement have found fulltime employment since the requirement started. (That’s with or without DWS assistance; the number was derived from the state’s New Hire Registry, Guntharp explained.)

It’s not clear what job gains can be attributed to the work requirement, because the working poor commonly cycle in and out of employment. Guntharp said DWS doesn’t ask clients whether the requirement motivated them to seek work or whether they were looking for a job anyway. Workforce centers haven’t seen a major rise in casework recently, he confirmed, and DWS hasn’t hired additional staff.

In its Nov. 8 letter calling for a pause in disenrollments, the Medicaid commission criticized Arkansas for not collecting better information on whether the state’s work supports are meeting people’s needs. “[D]ata currently are not being reported on the extent to which beneficiaries are accessing such services, what services they are asking or qualified for, which barriers may exist for their use of these services, and whether services are being delivered,” the letter said.

The Department of Workforce Services would not allow a reporter access to a workforce center to interview clients or staff, citing privacy concerns.

When asked to be connected with Arkansas Works success stories, the agency emailed profiles of two individuals, Julia Bunch of Harrison and Jeff Snyder of Rogers, along with signed consent forms.

Snyder’s profile said he sought help from the Rogers Workforce Center after being unemployed for nine months and searching unsuccessfully for jobs. With the help of a workforce specialist, Snyder, who had recently earned his associate’s degree, found a new job Aug. 8 making $17.64 an hour. “I now work with a great company — in a job that I actually would not have gotten without the help from DWS,” he was quoted as saying.

The profile did not say whether Snyder reported being motivated by the work requirement. Moreover, this reporter could not independently confirm the details provided by DWS. The agency said it could not provide contact information for Snyder or Bunch because of confidentiality laws. Other attempts to contact either beneficiary for an interview were not successful.

Whether motivated by the work requirement or not, some beneficiaries

This reporting is made possible in part by a yearlong fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by The Commonwealth Fund. It is published here courtesy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an independent, nonpartisan project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans. Find out more at arknews.org.

THE

BIG

Inconsequential News Quiz:

Personal choices edition

Play in your federal prison cell!

PICTURE

1) Recently, State Rep. Stephen Meeks (R-Greenbrier) tweeted a controversial statement about those living in poverty and then deleted it, issuing an apology for the statement the next day. What did he say?

A) That “being poor in America is a personal choice.”

B) That all a homeless man needs to do to get out of poverty is go to school and “get a job driving a truck making $70K per year.”

C) That if a homeless man follows that advice, he can be a millionaire in 20 years.

D) All of the above.

2) According to the most recent U.S. Census data, what percentage of the citizens in Faulkner County, where Meeks’ district is located, are “choosing” to live in poverty?

A) Eleventeen bajillion percent.

B) No idea, but Meeks said poor people sure are fun to chase in a dune buggy with a horn that plays “Dixie.”

C) 16 percent, well above the national average.

D) Unknown, given that a resident of rural Faulkner County ate the census taker with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

3) Disgraced former Arkansas state Sen. Jon Woods (R-Springdale), who is serving an 18-year federal prison sentence on charges relating to the Ecclesia College kickback scheme, was one of 79 inmates who wrote to President Trump offering to do something in exchange for lessened prison time. What did Woods and his compatriots in the Ironbar Hotel offer to do?

A) Take CNN reporter Jim Acosta out behind the White House dumpsters and give him “a Pine Bluff conga lesson.”

B) Protect Donald Trump Jr. from getting sold for cigarettes and Butterfinger bars when Mueller inevitably sends him up the river.

C) Volunteered to help build Trump’s long-promised border wall.

D) Offered to wrangle the herd of specially bred yellow sewer rats that provide the hair for Trump’s wigs.

4) Woods’ name and signature were featured prominently on the first page of the letter to Trump, along with the names of five other inmates. Which of the following were among Woods’ front-page cosigners?

A) Two murderers B) Two major drug traffickers.

C) A former cop convicted on federal civil rights charges related to the torture of a black man by a racist mob that bent two of the victim’s fingers back until they snapped, stomped on his face and head, cut all his clothing off with a knife and shoved an ink pen into both the man’s ears until his eardrums ruptured.

D) All of the above. Good to see Woods is making friends in the joint.

5) Police say a 13-year-old boy recently pulled off a crime that was a little impressive. What, according to police, did the boy do?

A) After the boy posted a racist, anti-Semitic rant on YouTube, President Trump nominated him to be U.S.

agriculture secretary.

B) He snuck into the local strip club by sitting on a friend’s shoulders while wearing a long trench coat, a fedora and a fake mustache.

C) He allegedly stole a Pepsi delivery truck on the campus of UA Little Rock and drove to Bryant, apparently without damaging the truck.

D) He promised to assist Jon Woods in his cunning plan that would see 79 federal inmates scurry to freedom in Mexico the moment they set foot near the border.

Answers: D, C, C, D, C

are undoubtedly finding better-paying jobs, considering the strong economy.

But not all jobs come with insurance, and making more money often means losing eligibility for Arkansas Works.

Joe Thompson, the CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, a nonpartisan health policy center in Little Rock, said any measurement of the work requirement must take into account both income and health outcomes. “It’s not just getting a better job. … It’s a two-step process,” he said. “You want [the beneficiary] to get a better job that has insurance or buy insurance on the individual marketplace. So success needs to be not just, ‘Are they working?’ but, ‘Are they being successful in moving up that socioeconomic ladder and maintaining health insurance coverage?’ ” Arkansas Works beneficiaries interviewed for this story — including some not mentioned by name above — expressed mixed feelings about the concept of a work requirement. A few said they felt it was a good idea in principle but believed the state was executing it poorly. All complained that the onlineonly reporting mechanism was flawed.

Many, like Nannette Ruelle, expressed anger and indignation that Arkansas was rescinding health coverage for its poorest citizens, many of whom depend on it for their day-to-day health needs.

“This was put in place to help us, and it helped us for like a short period of time, and then it was like … whoever the caseworker is didn’t do their part,” Ruelle said. “They’re getting paid to do their job, but they’re not even doing it.”

Dealing with DHS, she said, makes one feel “like you’re just a number on a sheet of paper. That’s exactly how they treat you.” It fills her with the same sense of powerlessness she had when she was incarcerated. “If that were the case, why didn’t I just stay in prison?

“I served my time, and I’m … a resident of the United States of America, Little Rock, Arkansas,” Ruelle said. “I’m a resident here, and I pay my taxes, which helps pay them, so I would expect something in return. I’m paying you, so I need some help back.”

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

17

Arts Entertainment BRIAN CHILSON

AND

STRINGS UNDER FIRE: Multiinstrumentalist Rachel Ammons specializes in mudstomp, psychedelta and electric cactus.

CACTUS QUEEN Rachel Ammons talks cacti acoustics, korma and craft.

R

BY LINDSEY MILLAR

achel Ammons is half of the beloved “psychedelta” duo Tyrannosaurus Chicken and one-quarter of the internationally in-demand Ben Miller Band, which mixes folk, blues, bluegrass, country and other odds and ends to make what the band calls “Mudstomp.” Ammons sings and plays violin, cello, guitar and electric cactus. “Smilin’ ” Bob Lewis, her godfather and Tyrannosaurus Chicken bandmate, is a luthier who keeps a shop in the back of Musicians

18

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Exchange in Van Buren. Ammons apprenticed under him for years, and the electric cactus was her doing.

“I was messing with a cactus at a friend’s house and noticed that the different spines made different tones.

Not only that but some of the intervals were actually on a musical scale,” she explained. “I started with some combinations of 3 or4 notes, almost arpeggios that sounded kinda classical. It blew me away. The connection makes sense, though, if you look at the link between math, biology and

music.” She put a pickup on the cactus and likes to run it through effects pedals. She thinks it sounds just like a “kalimba mixed with a guitar.”

What are you working on?

I’ve started work on a collection of songs to be released as a solo EP to offer to people as incentive to donate to a fund for my father, who has lost both legs due to hospitalborne infection and was then paralyzed from the waist down by a later surgical error. I want to renovate my parents’ bathroom and other areas of the house to get his standard of living back up to a more acceptable level. My mother, a disabled cancer survivor herself, is his sole caretaker and it’s really difficult for her. She does it all with a smile and the love between them is an inspiration, but I’d like to be able to make their basic situation more tenable.

Where is your favorite local spot to gather inspiration?

I like to go to any place that’s deserted or run down. I feel like I can connect with the people who used to go there more than I can in a place with more life; it’s like I can feel the ghosts of activity more easily through the quiet. I like the wind stirring tall dead weeds; old playground equipment that kids have scratched and scrawled words on, charged with the emotion they had right then; cracked pads of concrete that you can’t even tell what they were used for in the middle of a forest clearing — stuff like that. Allsopp Park in Little Rock is pretty, too.

Name three can’t-live-without locally made eats or drinks.

My favorite drink in Little Rock right now is the Aviation at Raduno.

Over in Fort Smith there is a place

BRIAN CHILSON

called R&R Curry that has the best lamb shahi korma I’ve ever eaten.

It started out as a to-go-only service on the side of a gas station, but now it has a dedicated restaurant space. The people running it are really nice as well. I crave it. In Van Buren there is a place called J.C.’s BBQ that makes the most amazing mushroom Swiss burger in the world. Go and get one. Tell ’em I sent ya! They sauté the mushrooms with a sort of barbecuesauce concoction that’s magical.

When I got back from tour recently and didn’t have any groceries, but couldn’t shop because I knew I was leaving again soon, I got one of those three days in a row. They’re that good.

Where do you go to find unique handmade crafts and gifts?

My friend Jennifer Perren does sculpture, paintings and drawings.

She fixed another friend’s lamp and turned it into a surrealist art piece. It was formerly a lady holding a basket but one of the arms broke off, and she replaced the arm with a huge tentacle and made the basket contain some strange tentacles as well. I’d love to have a piece by her. I’m a longtime fan of artist and designer Erin Lorenzen. I would love to be styled by her for the stage. I’d also love to be styled by local makeup artist Jessica Humerick. One could argue that a face of makeup isn’t really an “item” because we wash it off at the end of the day, but I would say that what Humerick does with makeup is just as much a craft as a piece of pottery.

What craft fair do you most look forward to and why?

The Arkansas Cornbread Festival in Little Rock because I love cornbread and free samples, and it’s just a great festival and one of the few I’ve gotten to go to while not playing.

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

A&E NEWS

TENTACULAR: Jennifer Perren’s lamp redo (above). The mushroom Swiss burger at J.C.’s BBQ in Van Buren.

Name a local artist/musician who deserves more recognition.

Epiphany Morrow, aka Big Piph.

Not only is he making meaningful music, he’s doing good work in the community, and I especially like his advocacy for disadvantaged kids.

What’s your favorite art/music venue or event?

King Biscuit in Helena-West Helena holds a special place in my heart.

It’s been going on for several decades,

and the people who put it on are fantastic. We have some friends down there at a place called Thrive. They help local entrepreneurs with design, grant-writing, marketing and launching their own businesses. They have really helped bring life and development to the area. They also use the downstairs as an art gallery and are involved in everything they can that brings love, light and inspiration to the community and beyond. The music featured is always Delta, more modern blues ... and Tyrannosaurus Chicken always gets a spot.

Correction

This feature comes from our sister publication Arkansas Made, on newsstands soon and at arkansas-made.com.

In last week’s entertainment feature — a holiday gift guide from Arkansas Times staffers — we incorrectly reported the location of a 65-foot Christmas tree. The tree has been erected at the corner of Capitol and Main Streets, not on the Capitol lawn.

The Arkansas Arts Center will close in November 2019 for a massive renovation, now estimated at nearly $100 million, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a presence. In a clever collaboration with the Central Arkansas Library System, 3D objects from the Arts Center’s permanent collection will be exhibited at CALS Main Library, its branches and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The arrangement, which the Arts Center announced last Thursday, chose the new sites for the works based on the theme and ambiance of the destinations. For example, Judy Onofrio’s “Just Pretending,” a large found-object sculpture of a mermaid that was long exhibited in the atrium of the Arts Center, is aptly going to a place where children will see it: the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library. Peter Grieve’s tin sculpture of a man on a donkey, “Sancho,” will go to the Max Milam Library in Perry County as a reflection of the county’s agricultural history. The Arts Center’s paintings and drawings will be placed in a secure facility with light and temperature controls. See the Arkansas Times’ Rock Candy blog for a slideshow of featured works and their CALS destinations.

M2 Gallery, situated for 12 years in the Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center, has made the move to 1300 Main St. in the hopping SoMa neighborhood and will hold its grand (re) opening from 5-8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 30. The opening will be a blast, as artist Jay Sage will apply gunpowder to a painting and ignite it. The gallery is located in a large space on the bottom floor of the building previously owned by the Oxford American magazine and once occupied by Juanita’s restaurant. The opening exhibition will feature works

by Ryder Richards, Jeaneen Barnhart, Ladawna Whiteside, Bryan Frazier, Robin Tucker, John Allison, Neal Harrington, Warren Criswell, Steve Adair, Lisa Krannichfeld, Catherine Nugent, Cathy Burns, Sherrie Shepherd and others. The space will also feature an area dedicated to works on paper, both in flat files and bins; the photography studio of Ashley Murphy; and custom framing. The gallery will also be available for rent for special events. Regular hours will be 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but the gallery will have extended hours during the holidays. Mac Murphy is gallery director. See m2lr.com for details.

Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

19

TO-DO

LIST

JACOB ROSENBERG, STEPHANIE SMITTLE JOAN MARCUS

THE

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE, REBEKAH HALL AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

BY DAVID KOON, LINDSEY MILLAR, LESLIE NEWELLL PEACOCK,

BYTHROUGH 11/25

‘LOVE NEVER DIES’

7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Robinson Performance Hall. $33-$87.

Fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic musical “The Phantom of the Opera” will be able to step back into the star-crossed drama of Christine Daae and the illusive Phantom in the musical’s sequel, the aggressively titled “Love Never Dies.” The sequel picks up 10 years after the Phantom’s disappearance from the Paris Opera House and finds him in his new home among the freak shows and carnival rides of New York’s Coney Island. Christine is now a world-renowned soprano thanks to the Phantom’s overbearing tutelage, and she accepts an invitation to perform at a New York opera house because the drinking and gambling problems of her husband, Raoul (wow, the original musical really buried the lead on these troubling habits), have left the couple and their young son, Gustave, financially crippled. Upon Christine’s arrival in New York, the Phantom takes this as his final opportunity to woo Christine, and he lures Christine and her son away from the esteem of Manhattan and into the glittering underbelly of Coney Island. This is the musical’s first North American tour, and it’s directed by Simon Phillips, of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical.” Tickets can be purchased at ticketmaster.com, by calling 501-244-8800, or by visiting the Robinson Performance Hall Box Office. RH

‘PHANTOM,’ THE SEQUEL: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Love Never Dies” is up at the Robinson Performance Hall through Sunday evening.

BLOCK FRIDAY: Rodney Block releases “Fantastic Beatz” with a celebration featuring Bijoux, Tony Terry and DJ AJB Showtime at Rev Room on Friday night.

FRIDAY 11/23

BLOCK FRIDAY

9 p.m. Rev Room. $20.

‘DENN-WARREN’: Louise Mandumbwa, a Botswana-born artist, will give a talk about her work, including this acrylic on panel, at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 24, at Hearne Fine Art. The talk, a companion to Mandumbwa’s exhibition “On Being and Becoming: Works on Glass and Paper” at Hearne, will focus on migration, belonging and displacement.

20

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Rodney Block, the crowned monarch of trumpet grooves, has a new album, and he’s calling in some serious reserves to celebrate its release. R&B crooner Tony Terry steams up the windows, jazz/soul vocalist Bijoux commands the room (and leads the singalong), and DJ AJB Showtime spins beats. Block’s latest, “Fantastic Beatz,” will be on hand for purchase, too, so gift your friends and fam some future house music and call your Black Friday shopping done. Need to shore up that retail decision? Head

Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

to Rodney Block’s Facebook page and check out a preview of Bijoux in the studio with producer Eugene Whitmore, reviewing progress on a tune called “Next Level Love.” Then, check the list of artists who performed on it alongside Bijoux, Whitmore and The Rodney Block Collective: Damarcus Pettus, Ky Whitmore, Adrian Tillman, Dre Franklin, Jonathan Burks, Joel ‘Jammin JC and Quincy “Qnote” Watson – the latter of whom you can catch at South on Main this same evening. SS

IN BRIEF

Not-QuiteHoliday Film Fest

FRIDAY 11/23

POST-THANKSGIVING TWANG: Dylan Earl returns to Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack on Friday night, with May the Peace of the Sea Be With You.

FRIDAY 11/23

DYLAN EARL & THE REASONS WHY

The Main Thing continues its holiday comedy “A Fertle Holiday” at The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse, 8 p.m.

Fri.-Sat. through Jan. 12, $24. At Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, “Elf” kicks off a run, 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., $25-$37.

Comedian Steve Poggi lands at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Fri., 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Sat., $12.

Monsterboy plays a set at Dugan’s Pub, 9 p.m. Synrg Band and DJ Nick Hud perform at the Doubletree Little Rock for the Little Black Dress & R&B Party, 8 p.m., $15-$30. Weakness for Blondes turns up the volume at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Bluesboy Jag & The Juke Joint Zombies perform at Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m., free. Steve Boyster kicks off the weekend with a happy hour set at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m., free, or come later and catch White Chocolate, 9 p.m., $5. The Going Jessies take the stage at Kings Live Music in Conway, with an opening set from Brandon Riley, 8:30 p.m., $5. Hwy. 124 kicks off a set at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming in Hot Springs, 10:30 p.m., free. Also in Hot Springs, Kentucky rockers Waterbird join Laith and Nick Flora for a concert at Maxine’s, 9 p.m. The Body takes its trademark noise metal to the stage at George’s Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville, 8 p.m., $8-$10. Also in Fayetteville, the Canada Royal Winnipeg Ballet stages “The Nutcracker” at the Walton Arts Center, 7 p.m. Fri.Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., $19-$52.

9 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $10.

SATURDAY 11/24

Dylan Earl sings country music without the saccharine sheen that seems unshakeable in much of the genre’s current pop offerings. Earl’s honest, honeyed baritone, coupled with the warm stylings of The Reasons Why, result in tunes reminiscent of dance halls, humid night drives on dirt roads and dances in the kitchen to the radio. Before he began his solo career in 2014, Earl co-founded and toured with swamp rock band Swampbird. Earl and The Reasons Why have toured Earl’s debut LP, “New Country To Be,” across the United States, and they’ve even made appearances in Canada, the U.K. and parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia. They’ll be stopping in Little Rock next, and the cowboy hats and belt buckles favored

by The Reasons Why will make them easy to spot at Stickyz on Friday night. Earl’s signature mustache and mullet combination will also be hard to miss. Tickets are $10 for some true boot scootin’. RH

Rocktown Revival takes the stage at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 7 p.m., $5.

Chucky Waggs and the Company of Raggs kick off a post-holiday set at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Danny Tate performs at Thirst N’ Howl Bar & Grill, 8:30 p.m., $6. Lucky Rooster performs at Kings in Conway, with an opening set from Cullum Dootson, 8:30 p.m., $5. Holiday music, craft booths, food trucks, face painting and Christmas carolers fill the Argenta Arts District for the tree lighting and Northern Lights Festival in North Little Rock, 5-7 p.m., free. Dirty Fuss plays a late-night set at Midtown Billiards, 2 a.m. Rodney Block and Dee Davis give a free concert for “A Jazzy Holiday at Starbucks,” 11:30 a.m., 2815 Cantrell Road. Ozark Folkways in Winslow hosts “Merry Makerspace on the Mountain,” 9 a.m.-4 p.m., see ozarkfolkways.org for full schedule. In Fayetteville, Mouton joins The Chads and Jess Harp & The Harp Breakers at Smoke & Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., $5. YK entertains at Empire for Get That Bag Saturday, 9 p.m. Morty Russell, north Louisiana songwriter, radio personality and grandson of Leon Russell, lands at El Dorado’s

FRIDAY 11/23

FUNKANITES

9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern. $10.

’Tis the season for brass and woodwinds — lots of them — and I can’t think of any better place to add to your post-Thanksgiving revelry than an hour or two in this beloved dive bar listening to funk at its most thoughtful.

Core members from Amasa Hines make up the Funkanites, but the evening isn’t entirely without that frontman; Joshua Asante spins records at Friday night’s show, too. Head to YouTube and check out the Funkanites’ “Light in the Dark” for an idea of how the ensemble can float through a dreamy nineminute groove with commendable patience and cohesion. SS

CONTINUED ON PAGE 25

6:30 p.m. • $5 Ron Robinson Theater

Library Square, 100 Rock St.

Home Alone (PG) Tuesday • Nov. 27

Edward Sissorhands (PG-13) Tuesday • Dec. 4

Trading Places (R) Tuesday • Dec.11

Love Actually (R) Thursday Dec. 13

Die Hard (R)

Tuesday • Dec. 18

Gremlins (PG-13)

Thursday • Dec. 20 The Not-Quite-Holiday Film Fest is sponsored by 106.7 The Ride and The Point 94.1.

Big Jingle Family Matinee Elf

(PG)

Sat. • Dec. 1 • noon • $5

ages 12 & under free

CALS.ORG

MORE THAN MORE PRINT. THAN PRINT. ARKTIMES.COM

Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

21

THE

TO-DO

LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE, REBEKAH HALL AND BY STEPHANIE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK LESLIE NEWELLSMITTLE PEACOCK

FRIDAY 11/23

TRAP JAZZ GIANTS

10 p.m. South on Main. $10-$15.

TRAP + JAZZ: QNote and Philli Moo perform their hybrid compositions at South on Main Friday night.

To equate trap with low art and jazz with high art is, no doubt, to miss the point of both sounds entirely. Each has been a medium for conveying struggle and celebration, adversity and elation, power and powerlessness. At their intersection, though, is what producer/pianist Quincy Watson (known to some as QNote) and saxophonist Phillip Mouton (known to some as Philli Moo, a student of the late, great Clark Terry) call “a hybrid — a cultural bridge between the old and the new of hip-hop and jazz with a rich Southern roots feel.” For a primer, check out the preview track at the download link here: iamtrapjazz.com. SS

SATURDAY 11/24

THINK BIG SHOP SMALL

10 a.m.-3 p.m. 300 and 400 blocks of President Clinton Ave.

The Big Box stores aren’t selling mimosas, which is one good reason you shop at this second annual pop-up shopping event in the River Market district. Another good reason is that it’s Small Business Saturday. Not only will there be mimosas, there will be 60-plus Arkansas vendors, beer and wine in that mimosa tent, and music by violinist Mike Walters. Lining the blocks will be crafts and fine art for sale along with foods and stocking stuffers, and the retail shops and restaurants along Clinton will be taking part, too. LNP

SATURDAY 11/24

HOLIDAY ART MARKET

3-6 p.m. Boulevard Bread Co. 1920 N. Grant St.

Once you’ve exhausted all the opportunities in the River Market district, head for the hills. Boulevard Bread Co.’s Heights location will be taken over by local artists and vendors, including printmakers Danielle Napolitano, Allie Thompson and Miranda Young, ceramicist Beth Lambert, jewelry-maker Bang Up Betty, illustrator Katie McBride, Crying Weasel Vintage, vinyl records from Control (see the A&E feature from Nov. 15 at arktimes.com) and more. Boulevard will offer happy hour drink specials to shoppers. Connect with your fellow Arkansans instead of Jeff Bezos for a merrier holiday season. LNP

‘KILLER QUEEN’: Artwork by Daniella Napolitano is available for sale at Boulevard Bread Co., which is hosting Saturday’s Holiday Art Market.

22

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

SATURDAY 11/24

COLOUR DESIGN, R.I.O.T.S., SCRAP RAT, SA SOLO ACT

9 p.m. White Water Tavern.

As far as I’m concerned, this lineup is a primo chance to catch up on local bands you might have missed out on thus far, and it’s eclectic as hell. SA Solo Act is one of the fiercest and most thrilling rappers in the city right now; I dare you to listen to her “Free Thought” on Soundcloud and not decree it the most cutthroat, poetic takedown of Trumpian gaslighting you’ve heard in any medium this year.

Colour Design’s sprawling, layered guitar is punctuated by percussion and by vocalist Shawn Hood’s urgency and vitality, and if you’ve yet to hear it live, let this be the remedy. R.I.O.T.S. is both skate punkwith-precision and an extended exercise in acronyms (Really It’s Only Ten Songs, R.I.O.T.S. Is Over Trump’s Shit, Ramen Is Our Treasured Sustenance).

Scrap Rat is new to me; let’s check it out. SS

IN BRIEF, CONT. Griffin Restaurant in the Murphy Arts District for two sets, 11:30 a.m., 7 p.m., free. Kassi Moe entertains at Core Public House’s SoMa location, 7 p.m., and at Core’s Argenta location, Christopher Fulmer performs, 7 p.m. DJ Nick Hud and Memphis band PC provide accompaniment for the “Noir: All Black Affair,” Little Rock Marriott, 8 p.m., $25-$55. Jay Holmes and Cripple Creek play sets at Rodney’s Handlebar & Grill, 8 p.m., $5.

SATURDAY 11/24

PJ MORTON

7 p.m. Rev Room. $35-$40.

PJ Morton and his six-piece band are bringing the artist’s contemporary Southernstyle soul music to the Rev Room in a show that Offbeat magazine says will have audiences “twerkin’ for Jesus.” The newborn king comes into play with the recent release of Morton’s Christmas album, “Christmas with PJ Morton.” But you don’t have to get down with the little child of Bethlehem to get down with Morton’s New Orleans bounce and reggae tunes. You may have caught him in his 15-piece “Tiny Desk Concert,” or seen his live cover of the Bee Gee’s “How Deep Is Your Love” with West Memphis native YEBBA. Morton is also the keyboardist for Maroon Five, and he was nominated for two Grammys last year for his self-produced solo album, “Gumbo.” The soulful Grace Weber, who’s worked with Chance the Rapper and Kanye West on Chance’s “Coloring Book,” is opening. Tickets are available at arkansaslivemusic.com. RH

SUNDAY 11/25 South on Main hosts a Sunday Soul Brunch with vinyl spinning from Control Little Rock, doors open at 10 a.m., music at 11 a.m. The Stardust Big Band entertains at the Crystal Ballroom in Hot Springs’ Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, 3 p.m., $10. Sharon Turrentine gives a holiday concert at Garvan Woodland Gardens’ Anthony Chapel in Hot Springs, 4 p.m.

MONDAY 11/26 Daniel Campbell and Graham Gordy’s film “Antiquities” screens at Riverdale 10 Cinema, 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m.

TUESDAY 11/27 ‘GUMBO’: R&B crooner PJ Morton returns to Little Rock with his six-piece band for a show at the Rev Room.

SATURDAY 11/24

EARL AND THEM

9 p.m. Cajun’s Wharf.

From within the ranks of The Cate Brothers — the Fayetteville twins who dominated mid-South dance clubs in the ’70s and ’80s — comes Earl and Them, a quartet made up of frontman/blues guitarist Earl Cate; fellow guitar guru Jason Davis; Terry Cagle, a drummer and singer whose mannerisms and style bear a damned-near-uncanny resemblance to those of his uncle, Levon Helm; and John Davies, one of the most lyrical, inventive bass players in the state. Cajun’s Wharf is familiar territory for Earl and Them, and wallflowers tend not to remain so, particularly when the rhythm section (and the Play De Do you ordered from the bar) kicks in. SS

2018 NORTHERN LIGHTS FESTIVAL IN NORTH LITTLE ROCK NOVEMBER 24 • 5-7PM • FREE TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY

Join us for a tree lighting ceremony with a tree across from the Argenta Community Theater at 405 Main Street and dozens of additional live trees lining both sides of Main Street from the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce at 100 Main Street to 7th Street.

Organized by City of North Little Rock, Argenta Arts District, Argenta Community Theater, North Little Rock Chamber and North Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Meet costumed cast members from the production of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol now showing at the Argenta Community Theater!

Northern Ireland vocal trio The Priests give a concert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 7:30 p.m., $40.

University of Chicago Law School professor Justin Driver gives a talk, “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for America’s Constitutional Rights,” at the Clinton School of Public Service, 6 p.m., free. Stone’s Throw Brewing hosts a pre-holiday Uno Night, 6 p.m., free. Jade Cicada and Detox Unit take synth electronica and chillpop tunes to George’s Majestic Lounge, 8 p.m., $20. The Village Chorale gives a holiday concert at Anthony Chapel at Garvan Woodland Gardens, 6:30 p.m. “A Christmas Story” screens at Riverdale 10 Cinema, 7 p.m., $9.

WEDNESDAY 11/28 KABF-FM, 88.3, hosts a benefit show in honor of KABF voice Big Griff, 7:30 p.m., White Water Tavern. Author Joy Moore gives a talk on her book “The Power of Presence” at the Clinton School of Public Service, noon, free.

Filmmaker/photographer Matika Wilbur is spotlighted at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where docushorts from her “Project 562” — a documentation of over 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States — are screened as part of the “Native Voices” series, 7 p.m., free.

Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

23

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

Dos Rocas Beer and Tacos at 1220 S. Main St., the Latin street food purveyor cooked up by the principals at The Root Cafe, opened for dinner service last week but will now move to a regular lunch and dinner schedule of 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. (It will not be open on Thursday —Thanksgiving — or Friday, Nov. 23, but will be open Saturday.)

Co-owner Jack Sundell said Dos Rocas will be open for Sundays “in the very near future, but not yet.” Along with tacos, the menu includes Central and South American specialties. Dos Rocas has Arkansas craft beers on tap, including locally hard-to-find suds from Prestonrose Farm and Brewing Co. in Paris and Gravity BrewWorks in Big Flat.

In keeping with the Latin theme, the bar stocks tequila, mezcals and rums and has a south-of-the-border cocktail menu of caipirinhas, margaritas, mohitos, palomas and more. You can also get boozy flights, like four rums or four agaves. Dos Rocas also has a pool table, a couple of TVs for game-watching and “casual, comfortable seating,” Sundell said.

Contrary to rumor, Live Life Chill is not closed. Service manager Lindsey McFadin called the Times on Friday to say a rumor the bar had closed was killing business; by 3 p.m. that day, no one had been in. The Times, too, had heard the rumor about the bar, located in the erstwhile Revolution Taco and Tequila Lounge space at the corner of Cantrell and President Clinton Avenue.

What has changed, McFadin said, is that the bar is now only open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Live Life Chill is owned by Kim Rivers of Conway.

McFadin said Conway restaurant John Daly’s Steakhouse, which has closed, no longer has a connection to Live Life Chill; the sole employee who left Daly’s for Live Life Chill has not been associated with the Little Rock restaurant for a while, she said. (However, Daly’s CEO Sam McFadin, who has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is her half-brother.)

Lindsey McFadin said the reason for the cutback in operating days was because of slow winter business. Live Life Chill opened in August.

Pizza D’Action, on the other hand, which has been around for four decades, will close at the end of the year, general manager Vince Zakrewski told employees last week. The eatery at 2919 W. Markham St. put up a sign several months ago saying it was changing its name, but that didn’t happen. What business will errant cars run into now?

24

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

SPICING UP THE RIVER MARKET: Platnum’s barbecued pork, black-eyed peas and much more.

Good as gold

Platnum the hottest new thing in BBQ.

W

hen we talk barbecue and Central Arkansas, we’re usually talking about Sims and Whole Hog (though we know that some would add in White Pig Inn, Corky’s, Lindsey’s, H.B.’s and the newly revived Shack). Regulars to the River Market’s Ottenheimer Hall know of another lessheralded contender into the pantheon: Platnum BBQ (that’s right, no “i” in the name), open since 2017 and run by the husband-and-wife team of Angia and Kevin Cox, has a menu to rival any other ’cue joint in the area. Tucked in the southeast corner of Ottenheimer Hall, Platnum has a massive menu that includes breakfast, lunch, grab-andgo items, dessert and catering options, along with a handful of rotating daily specials.

Though the rustic Renaissance Feststyle turkey legs were tempting, we opted for the pulled pork plate ($7.95),

Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

a culinary yardstick against which any restaurant with “BBQ” in its title must measure itself. The shoulder was endlessly tender and, we suspect, brined in advance. Salt is, as any barbecue master will tell you, paramount to unlocking pork’s rich heft, and Platnum’s version of the Southern staple managed to let the salt permeate well past the caramelized ends and into each tender shred without being detectable. The barbecue sauce we’d asked for on the side got lost in the shuffle, and it was just as well — totally unnecessary. It’s got to be daunting to serve pulled pork in a town dominated by Whole Hog Cafe’s deserved ubiquity, and Platnum makes it look easy.

Others in our party went farther afield of the core barbecue offerings: the smoked Cajun sausage ($6.95) and smoked half chicken special ($8.95).

When handled poorly, smoked sausage can take on a dry, rubbery texture, but

Platnum’s deftly handled the combination of spices in the juicy links, and the result was a consistency that allowed for a deeply satisfying slice of knife through casing. The chicken, dry-rubbed generously with a sweet-heat mix, was among the best we’ve had in town. It was so juicy the rub and chicken juice made a delightful sauce for dipping.

Each dish came accompanied by two sides. A favorite was the pile of boiled and diced red potatoes, which were soft, buttery and covered in a peppery blend of dried spices. The potato side was a refreshingly mild counterpart to another: a bold mix of black-eyed peas and sliced okra.

Too often, meat-and-three spots aim for an unoffensive middle ground when it comes to the Scoville heat scale; not so at Platnum. The okra-pea mashup was unabashedly peppery; it’s for anyone who keeps a bottle of hot sauce in her bag. Though we didn’t mind the absence

BELLY UP

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

of a hunk of cornbread or roll to temper the meal, it should be noted that it came sans such; perhaps Platnum offers it upon request? Ditto on the heat in the collard greens. They look like every collards you’ve ordered cafeteria-style, tender and with little bits of ham, but they have a toothsome bite that sticks around for a while. Platnum didn’t choose for its logo a wild hog on fire for nothing. A side of macaroni and cheese — the real thing, none of that powdered cheese nonsense — helped temper the heat of the dish. Same for the candied yams, sweet circles of the bright orange root that we give thanks for at Thanksgiving. The yams weren’t drowned in thick sticky syrup, but were simply bathed in whatever brown sugar concoction Platnum devises.

This is a barbecue place, yes, but it’s more than that. Platnum’s ribs, pulled pork and brisket are joined by po’boys, pork chops, chicken-fried chicken, corn on the cobb, and a breakfast menu that includes eggs, pancakes, waffles, breakfast burritos and more.

Though the shrimp and fish platter ($11.95) was a little pricier than most of the other plates, it was well worth it. Experience has taught us that catfish establishments can be fickle when it comes to quality. On this Monday, at least, the fillets at Platnum ranked among the best we’ve had anywhere in town — freshly fried, lightly battered, spiced perfectly. The crispy, golden fried shrimps were done just right, too, but we could have used one or two more. The plate comes with two sides; traditionalists that we are, we got the fries. (They’re of the

Platnum BBQ

400 President Clinton Ave. 246-9277 platnumbbq.com

Quick bite

If spicy isn’t your thing, order the mac and cheese and whatever else the proprietors recommend. Otherwise, leave your personal jalapeno sauce at home. You can also buy meat by the pound; there’s a large cold case full of pork, turkey, ham, meatloaf, bacon, chicken leg quarters, sausage and brisket.

Friday Nov. 23 10PM

TRAP JAZZ GIANTS

Trap Jazz Giants present Black Excellence Friday at South on Main! Trap Jazz is a new genre of music birthed out of the original art forms of contemporary and Jazz standards with a baseline and core of traditional Hip-Hop. Show begins at 10 pm. Advance tickets for $10, or $15 cover at the door. Tickets do not guarantee a reserved seat. Please call South on Main to reserve a table at (501) 244-9660.

1304 Main Street Little Rock, AR 72202 Get tickets at centralarkansastickets.com 501-244-9660

Hours

7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. weekdays, 7 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Other info

Catering offered with 24-hour notice.

No alcohol.

classic, cafeteria-issue, crinkle-cut variety.) We’ll be back to try the catfish or shrimp po’boy after Thanksgiving.

We also highly recommend the chicken and dumplings ($8.95), and we also recommend that you eat that dish in the River Market instead of trying to haul it home. It’s on the runny side, served generously, and doesn’t want to be carried down the avenue in a takeout box. It wants, instead, to please you with tender, pulled chicken in a spicy broth yummed up with celery and carrots and with marble-sized dumplings that aren’t raw on the inside. The dish isn’t marred by cornstarch in the broth, either; it’s on the soupy side, but delicious.

Seafood Boils and Catering!

Book your event today!

1619 REBSAMEN PARK RD. 501.838.3888 thefadedrose.com

serving better than bar food all night long November

PLATINUM AT PLATNUM: The fried catfish is some of the best in town.

22 - Four Quarter Bar 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Potluck (7pm) 23 - Weakness for Blondes 24 - Chucky Waggs and His Company of Rags 30 - Groovement

December 1 - Deltaphonic 7 - Mike Dillon w/ POPE 8 - Angie Clements’Toys for Tots Xmas Party w/ CosmOcean 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 NOVEMBER 22, 2018

25

The gift giving season has begun! Shop these local retailers and check out their favorites to make sure you’re ready for the holidays!

Holiday !

GIFT GUIDE

Also, don’t forget to shop Small Business Saturday on November 24!

Find locally sourced, hand-crafted gifts like these at the 40th Annual Arkansas Craft Guild Christmas Showcase, November 30 through December 2!

With artist like: Sage Holland, Ed Alexander, Linda Odom and Suzi Dennis.

Rhea Drug will keep you

and warm

with these gifts: tartan-print accessories that are perfect for cold weather and jewelry for a touch of sparkle!

These items from Rock Town Distillery make

perfect gifts and stocking stuffers! And don’t forget distillery tours are great presents!

‘Tis the season to shop Little Rock’s independent bookstore for books, literary gifts, gift certificates and more!

Shop with us on Small Business Saturday For all your Handmade, local, and fair trade gift Needs

November 24th 9 am - 4 pm coffee • mimosas • donuts • Pop Up Artists • 523 S. Louisiana (In the Lafayette building)

www.bellavitajewelry.net 26

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES ARKANSAS TIMES

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

Free gift-wrapping available.

STOP IN TODAY!

stylish

Tours twicetimes a day Toursand andtastings tastings held three day at 2pm, 4pm, and 7pm.and 4pm tuesdayathrough sunday at 2pm 1201 MAIN Street, Little Rock, AR 72202 1201 MAIN Street, Little ARtastings 72202 and tastings held twice a day ToursRock, and h copy of Arkansas Back Stories: Quirks, Characters, 501.907.5244 501.907.5244 HAND Rice and Curiosities of the Natural State by Joe David PRODUCT OF ARKANSAS tuesday through sunday at 2pm and tuesday 4pm through sund

Show some home state pride: head to Wordsworth and pick up a Tours

or It’s All Done Gone: Arkansas Photographs from the Farm Security Administration Collection, 1935-1943

by Patsy G. Watkins.

PRODUCT OF ARKANSAS

PleaseEnjoy Enjoy Responsibly Please Responsibly

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

WWW.ROC

1201 MAIN Street, Little Rock, AR 72202 1201 MAIN Street, Litt 501.907.5244 H A N D C R 501.907.5 AFTED PRODUCT OF ARKANSAS UNITED STATES Please Enjoy Responsibly

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OF AMERICA

Please Enjoy Resp

W W W. R O C KTO W N D I S T I L L E R Y. CO M

Arkansas’s largest selection of Bourbons and Whiskeys! This week the Colonial has

spotlight is on Colonial’s Single Malt Japanese Whiskys:, Nikka Coffey Grain Whisky , Sensei Whiskey, The Yamazaki Single Malt Japanese Whisky, and Nikka Taketsuru Purel Malt Whisky.

PRODUCT OF ARKANSAS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Tours and tastings held twic Tours and tastings held twice a day tuesday sunday at 2pm tuesday through sunday at 2pm and through 4pm 1201 Street, Little Rock, A 1201 MAIN Street, Little Rock, ARMAIN 72202 501.907.5244 501.907.5244 PRODUCT OF ARKANSAS HAND CRAFTED UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Please Enjoy Responsibly

Please Enjoy Responsibly

W W W. R O C KTO W N D I S T I L L E R Y. CO M

CALL OR COME BY AND GET YOUR HOLIDAY ORDERS PLACED TODAY

675 AMITY ROAD • CONWAY 14800 CANTRELL ROAD • LITTLE ROCK 4600 SILVERCREEK DRIVE • SHERWOOD ©2018 BUFFALO WILD WINGS, INC. BWW2018-0103459

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT arktimes.com arktimes.com NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 22, 22, 2018 2018 27

Imported O’Mara’s Irish Country Cream gift box! Each box comes with a bottle of Edwards Food Giant has a

O’Mara’s as well an O’Mara’s Irish Country Cream glass.

BUY IT!

Find the featured items at the following locations: Arkansas Craft Guild Christmas Showcase

Arkansas State Fairgrounds Nov. 30: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Dec. 1: 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Dec. 2: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Bella Vita Jewelry

523 South Louisiana inside the Lafayette Building | 396.9146 bellavitajewelry.net 28

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES ARKANSAS TIMES

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

Buffalo Wild Wings

14800 Cantrell Rd., Little Rock, 868.5279 675 Amity Rd., Conway, 205.1940 4600 Silvercreek Dr., Sherwood, 819.0192 buffalowildwings.com

Colonial Wines & Spirits

11200 W Markham St. | 223.3120 colonialwineshop.com

Edwards Food Giant

7507 Cantrell Rd. | 614.3477 other locations statewide edwardsfoodgiant.com

Rhea Drug Store

2801 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663.4131

Rock Town Distillery

1201 Main St. | 907.5244 rocktowndistillery.com

Warehouse Liquor Market

1007 Main St. | 374.0410 860 E Broadway St, NLR | 374.2405

WordsWorth Books & Co. 5920 R St. 663.9198 wordsworthbookstore.com

UPCOMING EVENTS NOV

South on Main Trap Jazz Giants

NOV

Old Chicago - Conway Robin Brooks Charitable Dinner

23 29 NOV

29 NOV 30 DEC 1, 7-9, 13-15 NOV 29, 30 DEC 1, 2, 6-9, 13-16

Lava & Dalmatian Jasper diffuser bracelet set for Pick up your own

Small Business Saturday, November 24th.

SHOP LOCAL!

DEC

South on Main Repeal Day Bash with Dizzy 7

DEC

South on Main John Neal

DEC

South on Main Rodney Block Christmas Show

DEC

14

South on Main Dazz & Brie with Heart Society

DEC

Old Chicago - Conway Winter Brewers Dinner

7

8

Warehouse Liquor.

The Studio Theatre A Christmas Story - The Musical South on Main Merlon Devine

5

Grey Goose (750 ml) is $24.99 and John Jameson (750 ml) is $17.99 at

The Weekend Theater Steel Magnolias

DEC

4

positive energy & playfulness at Bella Vita Jewelry! And don’t forget to shop

The Joint - Steve Davison and Friends CD Release Party, with Opening Act The Dozier Hill Band

20

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

Arkansas Times 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!

A Traditional Pharmacy

with eclectic Gifts.

Since 1922

2801 KAVANAUGH, LITTLE ROCK • 501.663.4131

LOCAL TICKETS, ONE PLACE ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT arktimes.com arktimes.com NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 22, 22, 2018 2018 29

MOVIE REVIEW

Thirty days, or else ‘Widows’ makes heist films feel tense again.

BY SAM EIFLING

N

othing against the “Ocean’s” franchise — the ska cover band of ensemble crime flicks; chipper, sharp-suited fun you can nod your head to. But if you dig on heist movies, get thee to see “Widows,” which prefers a hard stare in the mirror over any sort of winking smirk. Director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) gives you a Chicago crime pic that feels more rousing, and with higher stakes. Small as it seems, the twist of letting our protagonists steel themselves for their first-ever job means “Widows” avoids many of the genre’s traps, the foremost of which is simple weariness.

We start this gritty drama in bed.

Veronica (Viola Davis) and Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) are married and in love. We cut to some kind of heist gone awry, Neeson driving a van full of dudes, bullets flying, cops in pursuit. The four-man crew make 30

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

it to a warehouse where another van awaits, and as the crooks make the switch, and open the garage door, a phalanx of cops outside rains bullets on them. There’s an explosion; everyone is charcoal. Soon after, a gangster named Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) shows up at Veronica’s door to say her prolific thief of a late husband hit him for $2 million in that final job and the debt is now hers to pay off. Thirty days, or else. And you know it’s legit because Manning’s brother, Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya, of “Get Out”), is a sleepy-eyed enforcer with liquid nitrogen in his veins.

It happens that this particular heavy, Manning, is running for an alderman seat long controlled by one family. His slick scion of an opponent, Jim Mulligan (Colin Farrell) would all but inherit the seat from his bitter old machine politician father (Robert DuVall, as the aging dad you don’t want). The younger Mulligan has the name and the knack for politics, but

DUE UPON RECEIPT: Michelle Rodriguez, Viola Davis and Elizabeth Debicki claw their way to paying off their late husbands’ collective debt in “Widows.”

it’s not yet clear that he has the stomach or the instincts. While serving on a transit commission he managed to accumulate $5 million in overcharges that dog his campaign, and it’s that kind of kickback that has Manning eyeing the seat as well. Once you get into office, he figures, you get a piece of absolutely everybody’s action.

This is the vice Veronica’s caught in: pinched between a gangster who wants to be a politician and a city where the politicians have to be gangsters. So she enlists other wives of the incinerated crew, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez, whom you know from the “Fast & Furious” franchise, “Lost”) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki, whom you probably don’t know, but soon will), informing them they’re all dead if they don’t come up with the cash.

Fortunately, to this end, Harry left behind one item that may point to a job big enough to cover the debt and leave them all with something left over. The glaring problem here is that none of them have experience as thieves, and prison and getting shot are both real things that happen when you try to steal a few million bucks.

Written by McQueen and “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn, the script leans aerodynamic, given to speed

without much romance. The leads all are grieving; the fun of watching them claw their way toward the job is seeing how, in tight spaces, they make the mundane tasks of a heist feel tense again. Let’s say you needed to acquire, oh, three Glocks, knowing you were going to use them in a crime. How would you do that? Or a random blueprint of a building you wanted to rob. You got an idea of how to track down the identity of a single, specific room in Chicago? Like, seriously, pretend your life depends on it.

Held against the gold standards for gangster films, McQueen is blazing something different from Guy Ritchie’s quips and quick cuts or Martin Scorsese’s East Coast male mafiosos. There are sly jokes (a plastic shopping bag heavy with Glocks counts) and quietly virtuoso visuals, like the steady shot on a hoodmounted cam of a jarringly short drive to Jim Mulligan’s posh manse.

Or being planted in a basketball gym where Jatemme is staring down a couple of hoods, his cold cobra eyes bugging as the camera circles around them and the tension cranks up like a loaded catapult. This is gripping, fresh crime noir, and damn fine cinema, to boot.

ABANDONED PUPPY ARKANSAS TIMES This little guy has come up to our farm looking for a home.

Very friendly and very frightened.

He is about 30 to 40 lbs.

Call Kaytee at 501-607-3100 or kaytee.wright@gmail.com

One of a Kind Arkansas Buffalo Rug

MARKETPLACE

TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.492.3974 OR EMAIL LUIS@ARKTIMES.COM

MARSHALL & MARSHALL CLEANING SERVICES RESIDENTIAL - COMMERCIAL - FREE ESTIMATE 501-833-8297

Y

X

Conway, AR

Sr. Software Engineer (#JR005210) Apply online w/ job code above

www.acxiom.com

EEO/AA/W/M/Disability/Vet

NOTICE OF SERVICE OF PROCESS BY PUBLICATION STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA WILKES COUNTY IN THE DISTRICT COURT Complaint For Distribution of The Parties’ Martial & Divisible Property & Absolute Divorce Julie Mitchell (Plaintiff ) v. Mitch Mitchell (Defendant), 18 CVD 688; To Mitch Mitchell: Take notice that a pleading seeking relief against you has been filed in the aboveentitled action; 18 CVD 688. The nature of the relief being sought as follows: 1. Plaintiff be awarded an absolute divorce from Defendant severing the bonds of matrimony.

2. That Plaintiff be awarded an inequitable distribution of the parties’ marital property.

3. For any other relief that the Court deem just and proper.

You won’t believe how soft this tanned, Arkansas buffalo hide is. Very durable, perfect for either a rug or even a bedspread. A friend has one in her ultra modern downtown tower condo. We have ours in our log cabin. It works in a surprising variety of home or office environments. $1,400 Buy Direct From the Farmer!

Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 kaytee.wright@gmail.com

You are required to make defense to such pleading not later than January, 7th (this changes depending on the first publication date) 2019 and upon your failure to do so the party seeking service against you will apply to the court for the relief sought.

This, the 22 Day of November, 2018.

R. BLAKE CHEEK Attorney for Plaintiff NC State Bar No. 47645 The Law Office of R. Blake Cheek, P.L.L.C. 210 West Main Street Elkin, NC 28621 Telephone (336) 258-2788 Facsimile (336) 835-6248

Magna IV Color Imaging, is seeking a Senior Programmer to work in the Little Rock metropolitan area. National Telecommuting: position also allows the employee to reside anywhere in the U.S. and perform work exclusively from the worker’s home. DUTIES: Develop, support & extend web storefronts powered by Pageflex & PrestaShop; Build Studio templates for customizable or static items & general site maintenance; Site skinning, report building & database implementation; Collaborate w/ departments to streamline workflow b/t systems; Assist w/ Mindfire Campaigns in building html pages for cross-media projects.

REQUIRES: B.S. in Computer Science or closely-related field w/ 5 years’ exp. w/ JQuery, Ajax, mongodb, AngularJS, NodeJS or Linux, and eCommerce platforms, including 2 years’ exp. or edu. equivalent with Html, CSS, JavaScript, C#, SQL, MySQL, .Net, PHP, object-oriented programming or related programming. Alternative education and exp: M.S. in Computer Science or closely-related field w/ 2 years’ exp. w/ JQuery, Ajax, mongodb, AngularJS, NodeJS or Linux, and eCommerce platforms, Html, CSS, JavaScript, C#, SQL, MySQL, .Net, PHP, object-oriented programming or related programming. To apply, email resume to: MAGNA IV, ATTN: Autumn Williams at autumn@magna4.net (ref. Job M4 #1241). arktimes.com NOVEMBER 22, 2018

31

32

NOVEMBER 22, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES