Arkansas Times - April 6, 2017

NEWS/POLITICS/ENTERTAINMENT/FOOD | APRIL 6, 2017 | ARKTIMES.COM

KILLING SPREE Inside Arkansas’s flawed plan to kill eight men in 11 days

BY JACOB ROSENBERG

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COMMENT

Against mass executions I would like to add my voice to those expressing horror about our planned Arkansas April executions beginning on Easter Monday. As a physician, I am particularly troubled by the rush to execute eight people because execution drugs, medications meant for healing, are going to expire and Arkansas won’t be able to get more of them because pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to let us have them for the purposes of killing. I also think it’s extremely important for everyone to understand that the drug combination is all but guaranteed to cause torture of these humans. Whatever we think of the death penalty and the crimes that these individuals committed, this is not the way for civilized humans to treat each other. Please contact Governor Hutchinson and ask him to stay all of the executions.

Lucy Sauer Little Rock

or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help,” he said.

“If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.”

The world needs Christians to witness God’s mercy through service to the poorest, the sick (and) those who have abandoned their homelands in search of a better future for themselves and their families, he said.

ShineOnLibby From the web in response to Gene Lyons’ March 30 column, “Never his fault”: I think the Affordable Care Act was the crowning achievement of Obama’s presidency. I think the Trump repeal

plan was extremely flawed.

That said, Gene Lyons’ attack on every single thing Trump has done makes this opinion laughable. Lyons is a sore loser — why, not everybody who read his columns voted the way he wanted — and now he sounds, in this column and others on this subject, like a petulant child.

Ask yourself, looking at Hillary Clinton’s record, would she have been a better president? Based on what? Her policy in Libya? It was so disgusting, yet no one ever wants to discuss it, least of all, Gene Lyons.

Where is the unbiased intelligence?

He is so willing to bash Trump, yet his undying love for Clinton, etc., is disturbing. How about a deep look at her — never happened during the election year, won’t happen now. I believe, based on

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Bow to the NRA Apparently the NRA, the SEC and the evangelical churches pretty much own Arkansas. The legislative message from this session? Guns for everyone anywhere and any place (oops, except for the Razorback Temple of worship). Free speech and assembly? We don’t need no stinkin’ protest and assembly. Campus cops? We don’t need no stinkin’ campus cops. What do they know? All our problems will be solved by more guns, more religion, more executions and more corporate influence.

Anything else is just “fake news.” Ease your mind and just lock and load.

Bill Russell Maumelle

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From the web In response to last week’s cover story, “Suffer the immigrants”: Ours is a country of immigrants, but what part of “illegal immigrants” do people not understand? As with any time that we intentionally break the law there is always the possibility of getting caught and of facing the consequences. jimsmpsonar Fear is a terrible thing to live with.

Thank you for making people more informed by publishing articles like this one. Knowledge is power. I will repeat what Pope Francis said from the CS Newsletter: “It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee 4

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her Republican hawk record, we would be at war with Iran now. Sorry, ANYTHING would be better than that. Let’s wait and see.

Investigator of both sides @investigator of both sides: Shouldn’t we all, including Mr. Lyons, focus our attention on the president we have and not the one we don’t? While it is difficult to imagine Ms. Clinton not being a better president than Mr. Trump based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s pointless to speculate about it. We’ve got plenty of serious, actual issues that need solutions now.

Buckdog For anyone who has had to deal with a chronic liar as a co-worker, client, boss or spouse, the challenge is always at what point do you find a way to terminate the toxic relationship.

Bow ties are back in style In response to an Arkansas Blog report that Rep. Kim Hendren’s attempt to ban Howard Zinn’s books from the public schools had increased interest in his book “A People’s History of the United States”: I have to admit the first thing I did upon hearing Hendren’s ban attempt was to see if my local library had the book. They do. Seems I wasn’t the only one interested either.

It would have been nice if Hendren was as curious. Don’t even try to read it? Just try to ban it out of hand? Bright fellow. Very bright and curious fellow indeed, “curious” being used in more than one sense of the word.

Doigotta Reminds of some years ago when William Manchester’s two-volume history “The Glory and the Dream” was controversial in the Conway schools. It made people want to read Manchester’s good works just to see what the controversy was about. That’s what usually happens.

The Postal Service at one time banned “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” from being sent in the mail. The book was passed on from family to family until covers were worn off.

Cato

Correction: A letter to the editor in the March 27 issue of the Times was edited inaccurately. The letter, from Mike Watts, should have read that House Bill 1405 “would also reduce the maximum compensation per employee subject to unemployment taxes from $12,000 per year to $10,000.”

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WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week: “Where I’m from, the God I serve does not tell me that I have a fundamental right to carry a gun. … Go to hell with your guns. I’m voting for the damn bill. I don’t want to.”

— State Sen. Stephanie Flowers (D-Pine Bluff ), unhappily endorsing a narrow exemption from the new “enhanced carry” statute allowing concealed weapons to be brought onto Arkansas college campuses and other places. The exemption bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Beebe), at least allows handguns to be banned from college athletic events.

It passed the legislature at the urging of the Southestern Conference, despite opposition from the National Rifle Association. Flowers directed her frustrated remarks at NRA darling Sen. Trent Garner (R-El Dorado), who opposed the exemption and spoke passionately on the “God-given” right to carry a gun.

Session wraps up On Monday, the 2017 regular session of the legislature finally came to an end (barring any surprises between now and formal adjournment in May).

Among the worst of the last-minute actions was passage of House Bill 1742, which will put a stop to class-action lawsuits under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act — bad news for Arkansas consumers, good news for the unscrupulous businesses that prey on them. Then there’s Senate Bill 550, which enhances criminal penalties for “mass picketing,” a term defined broadly enough to include peaceful protests.

Still, be thankful that some of the most awful bills of 2017 were blocked in the last weeks of the session. A renewed 6

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attempt to create a pilot program to establish a school voucher system failed in the House on a 43-50 vote. An antitransgender “bathroom bill” by Sen. Linda Collins-Smith (R-Pocahontas) never made it out of a Senate committee, and neither did a more modest (but still objectionable) measure by Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Hindsville). Though other FOIA exemptions passed, the worst of them did not; that would be a bill by Sen. Bart Hester (R-Cave Springs) to exempt from the Freedom of Information Act any communications between an attorney and a public client. A kooky measure

by Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) urging Congress to propose a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was defeated in the House, 50-25.

Also defeated, though, were two decent tax measures. The House refused to reconsider a proposal by Rep. Dan Douglas (R-Bentonville) to give voters the option of approving a higher gas tax to pay for much-needed road repairs. And on Monday, shortly before adjourning, it voted down legislation aimed at making internet-based vendors collect sales taxes. State revenue — who needs it?

Public hearing set on 30 Crossing The board of Metroplan, Central Arkansas’s regional transportation authority, voted to hold a public hearing on the controversial proposal to expand a seven-mile stretch of Interstate 30 in Little Rock and North Little Rock. The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department’s 30 Crossing project — which would pour several additional lanes of concrete through the downtown area — would require the Metroplan board to amend its federally mandated longrange transportation planning document. Metroplan Executive Director Tab Townsell said the significance of the $650 million project demanded a hearing. “If we are the ultimate decision- makers, we should be the ones who hear directly from the public,” Townsell said.

The winds of change on climate Ted Thomas, chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, gained some national attention for remarks at a meeting of state elec-

tricity regulators in which he criticized climate policy inaction from the White House and Congress. A former Republican legislator, Thomas was appointed to the PSC by Governor Hutchinson and has been critical of Obama-era regulations — but like many energy insiders, he knows President Trump’s talk of bringing back coal jobs makes no sense. “I think that carbon emissions are correlated with global temperature increase, and humans are causing enough of it that it’s a public policy problem,” Thomas told The Atlantic in a follow-up interview.

Searching for a millionaire A winning $177 million lottery ticket in the multistate MegaMillions drawing was sold at a Valero gas station in Stuttgart, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery confirmed over the weekend.

The prize is payable as a lump sum of $107 million, although state and federal taxes will knock off almost $50 million from that amount. As of Tuesday, no winner had stepped forward to claim the jackpot. He or she has 180 days to do so.

OPINION

Internet looting continues

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he 2017 legislative session concluded without passage of a bill to encourage internet merchants to collect and remit taxes on sales in Arkansas, though internet giant Amazon has begun doing so voluntarily.

It’s a pity. A Koch-funded lobby spooked many legislators into believing this amounted to a tax increase, though purchasers legally are already obligated to pay the tax. The problem is that federal case law, which may be changing, holds that merchants without physical operations in Arkansas are not legally required to collect it.

In time, that will change, Governor Hutchinson said. He noted, too, that internet commerce had devastated Main Street commerce and battered tax collections. It’s ironic that legisla-

tors, who get paid fat salaries and expenses thanks to local tax collections, are happy to let people take MAX their business out BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com of state to internet merchants with offices in states where they DO have to collect the taxes.

I have a further axe to grind. Little Rock City Directors joined the chorus supporting internet tax legislation, but their voices came way too late and were out of tune then.

City Director Dean Kumpuris, among others, lamented to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter that sales tax collections in Little Rock in 2016 had

Race to kill

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rkansas and its governor are reaping a whirlwind of nasty publicity around the world for their haste to kill eight condemned men before the secret cache of a narcotic that will help kill them reaches its expiration date. They are to die two a day this month until the last one is dispatched to his grave.

America will soon end its long ambivalence about executing people by stopping the killings altogether, by practice if not by statute or judicial decree. The fatuous legal and medical arguments for a decade now about which cocktail of pharmaceutical horrors might render a person’s death something short of “cruel” — the constitutional standard for legally taking someone’s life — may be the death penalty’s last stand.

Death is still on the books in 32 states, though several never employ it, and in only a handful of civilized nations. The vast majority of executions now occur in communist China and three big Muslim countries (Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia) that follow the Koran’s and Old Testament’s eye-for-an-eye policy in human relations rather than Jesus’ and the U.S. Constitution’s. Of course, Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch would say that just as the founders didn’t really intend “cruel” punishment to include killing, God didn’t really mean it when he said you should forgive and not kill people. The scribes just didn’t take

careful notes.

Arkansas has always had a public-relations problem, often for its way of dispatching ERNEST criminals. It made DUMAS headlines around the world in 1967 when a prison superintendent dug up old graves he said were murdered inmates. When an official report a year later said the bones were from a pauper’s cemetery that predated the prison, the world had moved on to other horrors.

When Bill Clinton rushed home from the presidential campaign in 1992 for the execution of brain-damaged Rickey Ray Rector (Rector had reserved his last meal’s slice of pecan pie to eat the next morning), the botched 50-minute execution seemed to horrify the nation. They stabbed his arms many times to find a good vein while he groaned and writhed in pain. The media and Clinton’s critics suggested that the heartless politician returned home to glory in the fellow’s execution.

Governor Hutchinson, who set eight executions in 11 days, perhaps to satisfy his party’s attorney general, is looking pretty heartless, too, though he’s handling it with a modicum of dignity. If the Arkansas spectacle — even the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, for a change, plans to cover the killings in

dropped from the year before. He blamed it all on the nasty old internet.

If only it were that simple.

Kumpuris and others choose to overlook Little Rock’s generally tepid growth against many others in the region.

If the internet is the villain, wouldn’t it reflect everywhere? But state sales tax collections rose from $2.05 billion in 2015 to $2.14 billion in 2016. In Pulaski County, collection of the countywide sales tax rose from $84 million to $88.8 million. Collections in Cabot rose from $8.6 million to $9.1 million. They rose in Maumelle from $2.4 million to $2.5 million. They rose in Benton from $15.4 million to $16.8 million. They rose in Conway from $24 million to $24.2 million. Bryant held steady at $13 million.

Mayor Mark Stodola boasted during his State of the City speech about population growth in the metropolitan area. Alas, that growth is coming more from Saline, Faulkner and Lonoke counties than it is coming from Little Rock. Where the main Bryant exit once featured a dairy bar as its primary commercial option, there’s now a sprawling shopping center with

brands that once could be found only in Little Rock.

And still city directors want to blame money problems on the internet. It also seems content to further decimate downtown neighborhoods so people can get home to those suburban cities faster on a wider concrete gulch of a freeway. For decades, it has contributed to the degradation of the city school district — even today many of the directors won’t stand up for local control. The schools are an important factor in the movement to the suburbs.

The internet is a problem on revenue, sure. But an internet sales tax won’t solve what ails Little Rock.

What if a day comes when an internet tax is collected? When the people who live in Sheridan, Lonoke, Cabot, Ward, Benton, Bryant, Conway, Greenbrier, Vilonia, Maumelle, Jacksonville and North Little Rock go home at night after work in Little Rock and log on to the internet to buy stuff, the taxes won’t accrue to Little Rock’s benefit.

They’ll stay where the buyers live.

Policymaking that builds the city, not the suburbs, is a smarter course.

detail — actually moves the country closer to ending capital punishment, I suspect that Hutchinson will be pleased, if secretly.

The attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, probably not. She has fought from before her election to get on with executions and fought the release of the identities of the suppliers and makers of the lethal drugs, none of whom want the public to know their medicines are used to kill. The medical scientist who invented midazolam, the expiring drug in Arkansas’s killing cocktail, is desperate to stop his invention from being used to kill rather than heal.

You wonder if Rutledge would be so eager to execute if her grandpa, Leslie Rutledge, who was imprisoned for killing neighbor Joe Beel and mortally wounding his brother Frank, had been sentenced to death in 1952. Rutledge spent some time at the Cummins unit for the shootings — he took his rifle to prison and was a long-line rider — and at other times for bootlegging whiskey. What separates men on death row from other killers and rapists is usually their victims. The Beel brothers must not have been leading lights in the Hutchinson Mountain community.

Governors like Hutchinson (no relation to the mountain) face a moral predicament.

While polls show most Arkansans favor the death penalty, we citizens don’t have a direct role in a man’s death. The governor sets execution dates and with a stroke of his pen can commute a man’s sentence to life in prison and perhaps save him from perdition.

When Orval E. Faubus was waiting for Winthrop Rockefeller to come take his office in January 1967, we asked him what his worst days had been. Executions, he said. He was sick with anxiety and remorse each time, but he thought he had asked for the job and it was his duty. Each time he had to preside over an execution, Gov. Sid McMath was visited the night before by his biggest supporter, industrialist Witt Stephens, who pleaded with him all night to pick up the phone and call off the execution, leaving only when the call came at dawn that the man was dead.

Rockefeller was different. Defeated for re-election, his last official act was to commute the sentences of all 15 men on Death Row to life in prison. His words were the most earnest ever delivered by a governor: “What earthly mortal has the omnipotence to say who among us shall live and who shall die? I do not. Moreover, in that the law grants me authority to set aside the death penalty, I cannot and will not turn my back on lifelong Christian teachings and beliefs, merely to let history run its course on a fallible and failing theory of punitive justice.”

The happiest man on the planet was Dale Bumpers, who took office the next week. He was relieved that his predecessor’s moral courage relieved him of ever having to face the terrible dilemma.

I like to think that Hutchinson is hoping for some such deus ex machina, a court order perhaps. Maybe not.

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Tribal loathing

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o many people, politics is essentially tribal, an Us vs. Them struggle between cartoon enemies.

Check out reader comments to a recent Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times expressing empathy for loyal Trump voters in Oklahoma who stand to lose their health insurance, senior centers, job-training programs, etc., should the president’s draconian budget proposal be enacted. (Fat chance, but hold that thought.)

“Some of the loyalty,” Kristof wrote, “seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots.” Offended readers denounced what one called “Kristof’s continuing delusional campaign that Trump voters need to be understood.”

Another thought “dumb bigots” an understatement: “Our country is being held hostage by resentful coal miners who are never going to get their black lung disease-causing jobs back. It’s being held hostage by undereducated, evidently opioid-addicted, underemployed white men across the Rust Belt … [and] by mean-spirited Religious Right fanatics who want to impose Christian Sharia law on the rest of us.”

Elsewhere, pundit Frank Rich contributed an essay to New York magazine entitled “No Sympathy for the Hillbilly.” The flamboyantly embittered scribe thinks it “a fool’s errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day.” Precisely which Democrats empathize with Klansmen isn’t clear, but Rich’s personal animus couldn’t be clearer. “If we are free to loathe Trump,” he concludes, “we are free to loathe his most loyal voters, who have put the rest of us at risk.”

Or, as Joseph Conrad wrote in a different context, “Exterminate all the brutes.”

My problem with this tribal loathing is twofold: First, bedrock Americanism as explained to me by my working-stiff New Jersey father. “You’re no better than anybody else,” the old man would growl, “and NOBODY’S BETTER THAN YOU.” If he stressed the last bit in reaction to the “Irish need not apply” signs of his youth, he also meant the first part. Me, too.

Second, my experience of living most of my adult life in Arkansas, an historically “blue” state recently turned

deepest “red” without changing its essential character very much at all. How Bill Clinton hapGENE pened was that LYONS after 1968, when the state narrowly gave George Wallace (a cornpone Trump) its electoral votes, Democratic moderate Dale Bumpers saw that the hardcore segregationist vote was about one third. The old order was on life-support.

Stressing economic progress and social tolerance, Bumpers laid the political foundation for several Democratic governors to come: David Pryor, Clinton, Jim Guy Tucker and Mike Beebe.

Even Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee — installed by legalistic coup during independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s farcical “Whitewater” investigation — governed as a moderate.

Progress was palpable. When Bumpers took office in 1970, per capita income in Arkansas was 43 percent of the national average; today it’s 82 percent and rising. If it’s far from paradise, local patriotism here runs very strong.

(Go Hogs!) It’s tempting to observe that Arkansans finally got rich enough to turn Republican. The GOP ran the table in 2014, electing former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson governor and taking control of the General Assembly.

Did the election of a black president help seal the deal? No doubt, but only at the margins. Trump won 61 percent of the state’s presidential vote in 2016. But if the state legislature has recently devoted itself to largely symbolic absurdities involving guns and public bathrooms, neither has it fundamentally altered the state’s political culture. Governor Hutchinson has resisted the Trump administration’s attack on Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion; even far-right Sen. Tom Cotton vigorously opposed the Trump-Ryan Obamacare repeal.

Very broadly then, the center appears to be holding. And while I yield to no man in my visceral contempt for Donald J. Trump, I’ll be very surprised if Congress enacts his anti-community budget cuts. Trashing cartoon liberals is one thing; shutting down Meals on Wheels is quite another.

As for cartoon conservatives, Democrats should keep in mind that bringing even 5 percent of them back around would constitute a revolution.

Trump’s purge

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s is typical, President Trump has tweeted about any number of subjects in recent days.

They ranged from advising former NSA head Michael Flynn that he should seek immunity for testimony related to the Trump/Russia case to personal insults directed toward “Meet the Press” host Chuck “Sleepy Eyes” Todd. Among the most interesting was a flurry related to the inability of House Republicans to provide Trump the votes necessary to push the “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act across the finish line week before last.

In a series of tweets, Trump trashed the Freedom Caucus as a group: “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” Trump then picked out individual members — including the chair of the group, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) — for targeted attacks, suggesting that Trump and his supporters would be coming after them in 2018.

The Trump promise of retribution at the ballot box was reminiscent of another president’s communications via a different, still relatively young media format that he dominated the way Trump does Twitter. In the first months of his second term in office, Franklin Roosevelt had seen defeat upon defeat for his legislative priorities despite his party’s dominance of both houses of Congress. While the most high profile of these losses was his misguided “court-packing” plan in 1937, Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda was regularly undermined by conservative — largely Southern — senators and representatives.

In June 1938, Roosevelt went after this group of Democrats in one of his radio “Fireside Chats,” a thoughtful analysis of the importance of political parties following through on the promises they had made voters (a bit different than the 140 character wordbombs transmitted by Trump). FDR argued, using typical Rooseveltian phrasings: “You and I all know that progress may be blocked by outspoken reactionaries, but we also know that progress can be blocked by those who say yes to a progressive objective, but who always find some reason to oppose any specific proposal to gain that objective. I call that type of candidate a ‘yes, but’ fellow.”

F DR d id n’t stop with this leng t hy radio address. Instead he invested major time and political JAY capital throughBARTH out the remainder of the summer and fall campaigning for the opponents of those Democrats insufficiently loyal to the New Deal. In almost all cases he failed to deny the renominations of these incumbents. The almost total failure of the FDR “purge” marked the real end of the New Deal-era, dramatically weakening Roosevelt as a domestic leader and creating permanent opponents within his party’s ranks. It was only the arrival of war that revitalized Roosevelt’s presidency, by turning attention wholly to global affairs.

It is yet to be seen if Trump follows these tweeted words with actions. He would be wise to learn from the lesson of FDR and resist that temptation. Much has changed in how American politics has operated across the last eight decades, of course, but the charge that “outsiders” are sticking their nose into the decisions best made by locals in western North Carolina (which Meadows has represented three terms) is one that tends to work well in fending off such attacks in districts where members’ personal bonds with primary voters are decidedly deeper than with even the most popular of presidents. And, as an analysis from FiveThirtyEight.com last week points out, while Freedom Caucus members represent overwhelmingly GOP districts, that doesn’t mean that they are particularly Trump-friendly districts. Examining results from last spring’s Republican primaries, only six of 32 Freedom Caucus members represent districts where Trump received a majority of the vote in the primary; in a number of districts he trailed Ted Cruz badly in primary voting. Moving to the general election, all but five of 32 Freedom Caucus members outperformed Trump in their districts.

All signs are that Donald Trump’s GOP is going to have plenty of trouble in the 2018 cycle. He is ill-advised to create more difficulties by trying to carry out a purge that will almost inevitably fail and leave him even more weakened in the second half of his first term.

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9

Hutchinson’s Pinto moment

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APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

he Ford Motor Co. brought the Pinto to America’s highways, even though it knew the car had serious safety problems. Indeed, Pinto after Pinto burst into flames in rear-end collisions, causing severe injuries and deaths. Ford’s lack of moral and economic judgment brought shame to the company’s brand for decades.

We’re having our Pinto moment here in Arkansas. Our governor has decided to use midazolam during lethal injection, a drug that has failed spectacularly in execution after execution. Governor Hutchinson plans to administer this unreliable drug to eight men at a speed no state has ever come close to attempting: four days with two executions each, spread across 11 days: April 17, 20, 24, and 27.

Why the race to execute eight people before the month is out? On April 30, the state’s supply of midazolam will expire.

This is a drug that has fallen short so many times that some states won’t allow it in their lethal injection protocols. But Governor Hutchinson doesn’t want this failed drug to go to waste. Instead, he is setting up Arkansas for disaster.

Midazolam has been the culprit in many botched executions. Ohio executed Dennis McGuire with the drug in January 2014. Strapped to a gurney, McGuire gasped, snorted, and choked for almost half an hour. In April that year, Oklahoma injected midazolam into Clayton Lockett. Three minutes after the prison declared Lockett unconscious, and after they administered the drugs that cause excruciating pain, Lockett breathed heavily, clenched his teeth and strained to lift his head while writhing on the gurney.

A few months later in Arizona, Joseph Wood gasped, snorted, and gulped for air for almost two hours. Last year, Alabama used midazolam on Ronald Bert Smith Jr. He was declared unconscious but then clenched his fists and tried to raise his head.

After their problems with midazolam, Arizona and Oklahoma put their executions on hold. A federal court in Ohio ruled that executions can’t go forward using midazolam. Florida, an early adopter of midazolam, has stopped using it.

When states like Florida started using midazolam in lethal injection, they did so only because sodium thiopental was no longer available. For years, lethal injection began with a large dose of sodium thiopental to put the prisoner in a coma-like state before the administration of the next two

drugs, which cause excruciating pain as they kill. The maker of sodium thiopental ceased manufacture of RITA the drug following SKLAR production problems. States tried other drugs as replacements, including midazolam. But this drug was never up to the task of producing a deep, coma-like state to block the pain of the drugs to come.

On top of midazolam’s failure rate, the assembly-line pace required by the governor’s plan will put great pressure on the staff involved in the executions, heightening the chance that this already risky drug protocol will go wrong. Oklahoma is a case in point — the state had been planning to execute a second man, Charles Warner, on the same night as Clayton Lockett. But from the start, Lockett’s execution went horribly wrong. Prison staff couldn’t place his IV, trying at least 16 times before placing it in his groin. Later in the procedure, the IV popped out, and when the supervising doctor attempted to put it back in, he punctured Lockett’s artery. The result was, according to the warden, “a bloody mess,” and the governor had to postpone the second execution of the night.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety later concluded that the stress of planning two executions in a day had caused the prison staff to make the mistakes that botched Lockett’s execution.

Because of Lockett, Oklahoma no longer allows two executions to be scheduled for the same day. In fact, the state now requires a minimum of a week between executions. If Governor Hutchinson were following Oklahoma’s model, the eight executions he has compressed into 11 days would take a minimum of eight weeks.

The governor’s pace is so extreme that we don’t need to speculate about whether one of the executions will be a botch. The question is just, “Which one?”

Governor Hutchinson must face the truth about midazolam and its track record of cruelty. He can stop this Pinto moment by calling off the 11 days of death and letting a failed drug expire in the trash can, where it belongs.

Rita Sklar is the executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, a founding member of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

7 P.M. TUESDAY, APRIL 18

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

$ 8 . 50

8 in 11

T

he state of Arkansas is planning on killing eight men soon, one right after the other, in 11 days.

They are doing this to punish them for having killed people. The Observer used to be very much a capital punishment believer. But then, we sat through a death penalty trial, start to finish: the trial of Curtis Lavelle Vance, for the October 2008 rape and homicide of KATV, Channel 7 anchor Anne Pressly.

Homicide is the cleanest of words you could call that crime. Murder is somewhat better. Slaughter is closest.

The Observer, who still turns over the horrendous details in the wee hours, will not linger over them here, except to say that sitting through that trial exposed Yours Truly to the clearest evidence yet that, if reduced to our worst and greediest impulses, human beings can absolutely be no better than a tiger or crocodile — some beast crouching in shadow, waiting for a moment of inattention or vulnerability. The Observer, who drinks occasionally and only uses The Hard Stuff medicinally, downed two full fifth bottles of good bourbon over the course of that trial, one brimming tumbler at a time, deep down in the night.

If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was surely Curtis Vance. But the thing that flipped our switch was this: Over the course of that long trial, we saw the prosecutors and defense attorneys honorably going about their jobs, and the judge, and the bailiffs, and the court reporter. We saw the jurors filing in and out of their box, listening attentively, taking notes. We saw the other reporters, doing their bit for the First Amendment. We saw the woodpaneled courtroom and the state seal, the flags of state and country. We heard the clack of the gavel and the “all rise,” and rose, and we sat when told to. And what The Observer realized over those horrible, exhausting weeks — what managed to flip our switch on capital punishment — is the most obvious: That the reason the court system exists — all the “may I approach” and flowing robes,

the careful transcription and gavel clack — is to try to drain the passion and anger out of some of the most passionate, angry things human beings can get up to. Theft. Rape. Assault. Creeping by night into the house of a sleeping woman, seeing her there and allowing the ancient and animalistic part of you to hold sway instead of empathy and love for another human being.

Left to its own devices, what family wouldn’t seize that man by torchlight? What parents wouldn’t tear him limb from limb, alive and screaming?

But if our society were to allow that, it would stain us all. And so we give him to the prosecutors, jurors and judges in stately robes, appoint him an attorney and read him his rights. We do all this to remove from bloody doings the rage that could make us no better than him, or the rough beasts from which we seek to set ourselves apart.

But then, after those weeks of trial, after all that care, after all that pomp and ceremony, the slow fitting together of a puzzle that shows the face of Lady Justice unshadowed by doubt, after our society had proven yet again that we are no bloodthirsty mob bristling with pitchforks and torches, the state turned around and proposed to do to Curtis Vance the most mob-like thing imaginable, which is to say: Now that we have proven we are more than vigilantes bent on drowning our rage in moonlit blood, we will kill him.

Vance was not sentenced to death.

Instead, he rots in prison for the rest of his life, where he should be. The Observer’s mind changed on the death penalty the exact moment when the prosecutors, whom we’d seen do their jobs with so much resolve and honor, pivoted away from the search for truth and justice untainted by rage and asked the jury to exact an eye-for-an-eye revenge.

You don’t have to agree. Different strokes for different folks and all. But doesn’t that all seem a little absurd to you, my friend?

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11

Arkansas Reporter

THE

Upping the game against CWD Game and Fish creates research division.

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

guard against CWD, collecting samples from elk since 1997 and in deer since 2003, making it illegal to transport intact carcasses into the state and taking other steps. When the positive result came back, the agency dusted off a 2006 response plan it hoped it would never need, updated it and, after consulting with national experts, decided to establish a new section at the agency: The Research, Evaluation and Compliance

I

n mid-January 2016, to the delight of visitors to the Ponca Elk Education Center, a healthy-looking whitetailed doe started bedding down in the interpretive garden outside. “When I would walk into work, she was lying there under a sweet gum tree just looking at me,” Mary Ann Hicks, manager of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission facility, said.

It wasn’t unusual to see a deer in the garden, which had gone to seed and had plenty of cover. The deer in Ponca, in the Boxley Valley of Newton County, have become used to their human neighbors, feeding in their gardens and sometimes visiting the center, Hicks said.

“We thought it was kind of cool,” Hicks said. “It had happened before.”

But by the end of January, Hicks noticed the deer had lost a lot of weight.

“It started walking around on the boardwalks and would look in the window at us. It was really weird,” she said. It was also leaving a lot of scat around the center, and the scat did not look normal.

A worker at the center called Hicks on Jan. 29 to tell her that the deer was standing in the creek, drooling, its legs splayed in a wide stance. Game and Fish biologists were summoned, and “by the time they got there, it was standing in the creek with that wide stance, holding its mouth in the water and urinating at the same time,” Hicks said.

The biologists wondered if the doe was suffering from bluetongue, a viral disease. Neither they nor the staff at the education center knew that an elk killed a couple of months earlier at Pruitt was infected with the state’s first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD); the results from a lab test in Wisconsin had not yet come back to Arkansas.

The doe was found dead a few days later along the creek. Biologists took bits of her brain stem and surrounding lymph nodes and hauled off the carcass.

12

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

A SICK DOE: Deer infected with CWD salivate copiously.

They told Hicks to bag up all the scat she could find, which she did.

In February 2016, the Wisconsin lab confirmed that the elk harvested the previous winter was infected with CWD, a fatal, infectious neurodegenerative illness caused by a misfolded protein called a prion. The deer that died in the creek behind the Elk Education Center was the state’s second animal confirmed with CWD. Since then, 206 deer and six elk have tested positive for CWD. A fatal disease once thought of as a Western illness was now in Arkansas, the first state in the Southeast to detect it.

Some people blame the elk imported into the state in the 1980s for bringing CWD here. But no one really knows how the disease was transmitted. “The point is, now we have it,” Game and Fish deer biologist Cory Gray said. “Now we’re going to address it. … We tell people, we need to stay with the science.”

GAME AND FISH had taken steps to

Division. Game and Fish asked Gray to manage the division and in January hired the agency’s first wildlife veterinarian, Dr. Jenn Ballard, a North Little Rock native who also holds a Ph.D. in veterinary and biomedical science with an emphasis in population health.

“If there is one good thing that comes out of CWD,” Gray said, “it is that we created this new division.” CWD won’t be its only research, but for now it’s the major focus.

Chronic wasting disease first turned up in 1965 in a research facility in Colorado, where sheep infected with scrapie (a neurodegenerative disease) were being kept along with mule deer. The researchers couldn’t keep the deer alive; it’s thought the prions shed by the sheep had mutated into a form infectious to the mule deer. The CWD prion affects reindeer as well as mule deer, elk and white-tailed deer.

A random harvest last year of 266 deer from a test area roughly 20 miles long and 10 miles wide in Newton

County found that 62 deer — 23 percent — had CWD. When Gray got the results from that harvest, “it was not a happy day,” he said.

“You spend your whole career managing a resource and investing so much of yourself in that resource, and the commission has implemented regulations … to prevent [CWD transmission].

And now we’ve detected it. It’s a punch in the gut.”

A BRAIN INFECTED with the disease looks like Swiss cheese, riddled with small holes. Other prion diseases include mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), scrapie (in sheep), Creutzfeld-Jakob (a human variant) and kuru (also a human variant, known from a New Guinea tribe whose members ate the brains of their ancestors).

Prions are scary things: The mad cow outbreak in the 1990s in the United Kingdom was linked to human deaths from Creutzfeld-Jakob; scientists suggested the disease was transmitted by the consumption of tainted beef. The European Union and the United States banned the import of British beef, and Great Britain eventually ordered the slaughter of millions of cows and bulls.

Since then, there have been four cases of humans dying from the human variant of mad cow in the United States.

The prion that causes CWD cannot be cooked away or otherwise destroyed.

Once it’s in the environment, via excrement or urine from infected animals, it’s there forever. Game and Fish disposes its infected tissue samples in an incinerator that heats to 1,700 degrees F. But because you can’t burn up a prion, ashes from the incinerator are placed in metal containers before being disposed of in landfills.

Which begs the question: If you eat a deer infected with CWD, do you risk getting a prion disease?

It’s possible, the Centers for Disease Control says, but undetected as of yet. For now, Gray said, Game and Fish encourages hunters not to consume their venison until samples from the deer or elk come back negative. “That’s a personal choice,” Gray said. “We try to provide a rapid turnaround” for results, usually seven days.

THE NEW GAME and Fish research division will also employ a director, a

Tune in to our “Week In Review” podcast each Friday.

Available on iTunes & arktimes.com

“human dimensions specialist” to do outreach to the public and social surveys, a biostatistician and research biologists.

In 2016, Gray and other Game and Fish staff focused on work to determine disease prevalence and location. They set up stations across the state during modern gun season last year to take samples of harvested animals, and also sampled road kill and “targeted animals” — any animal exhibiting symptoms of the disease. Taxidermists statewide helped with the sampling.

The epicenter of the disease is in Newton County. The CWD Management Zone also includes Boone, Carroll, Johnson, Logan, Madison, Marion, Pope, Searcy and Yell counties.

(Inclusion in the zone does not mean that CWD-infected animals have been found; it means that part of the county falls within a 10-mile radius of a diseased animal.) Bag limits within certain zones have been liberalized to reduce the population of possibly infected deer, and Game and Fish has made it illegal to transport deer or elk carcasses out of the CWD Zone except for antlers, cleaned skulls, deboned meat, cleaned teeth, hides or finished taxidermied products.

Starting Jan. 1 of this year, Game and Fish made it unlawful statewide to use natural scents or lures containing deer and elk urine or other biofluids.

All elk harvested statewide must be checked so that samples may be taken for CWD testing.

The research division is now gearing up to take genetic samples of elk and deer, both to create a database and to see the relationship between the individual CWD-positive animals. Western state biologists are studying elk DNA to see if they can identify resistant genes.

The division is also partnering with UA Little Rock to survey Arkansas hunters to see if they’ve changed their hunting practices, whether they’re willing to have their animals tested, how far they’re willing to drive to do that, and so forth.

Game and Fish is hoping to partner with the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission to be able to use its laboratories to speed up testing.

“This is really where conservation is moving in the future,” Dr. Ballard said: Agencies are “recognizing the role that veterinarians play alongside biologists.”

Inconsequential News Quiz:

THE

BIG

BLAH, BLAH, BL AH EDITION

PICTURE

Play at home!

1) As emotions ran high during a March 31 debate in the state Senate over expanding the right to the concealed carry of a handgun, Sen. Trent Garner (R-El Dorado) snapped at Sen. Will Bond (D-Little Rock), but later apologized. Why did Garner say he’d raised his voice?

A) The trembling crystalline snowflake of Garner’s sense of self was on the verge of shattering at the thought of not being able to carry his Glock to Razorback games.

B) Really, really, really needed to pee, but Sen. Jim Hendren (R-Sulphur Spring) wouldn’t give him a hall pass.

C) While serving in the Middle East, he sometimes had to “bark” at Afghanis to get his point across.

D) “I, like all Republicans, know that the only way to get a Democrat to listen is either by yelling or sweet and tender whispers in the quick of the dark.”

2) A recent report from Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project slammed Arkansas for the state’s plan to execute eight death row inmates over a 11-day period in April. Which of the following is a real impairment, disability or mitigating factor at least one of the eight men scheduled to be executed suffers from, according to the Harvard report?

A) One has an I.Q. of 70.

B) One is a paranoid schizophrenic and regularly sees his dead father and ghostly dogs walking around inside the prison.

C) One was represented at trial by an attorney who was allegedly drunk.

D) One had a total defense budget — including attorney’s fees, travel costs for witnesses, lodging and food — of $6,641.95 during his original trial.

E) One, as noted by the Arkansas Supreme Court in a decision in which it ruled he had received “grossly inadequate counsel,” had a post-conviction attorney with a substance-abuse problem who rambled incoherently during court proceedings, including “repeatedly interjecting ‘blah, blah, blah,’ into his statements.”

F) All of the above.

3) The U.S. Army is considering bringing a hazardous substance into Arkansas by truck, where it can be safely incinerated. What is it?

A) 635,000 gallons of “Corpulence,” former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s failed signature cologne.

B) 250,000 gallons of wastewater generated from the neutralizing of mustard gas munitions at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.

C) Three shipping containers full of decommissioned New Orleans Saints jock straps.

D) 62 overflowing, slightly pulsating Porta Potties from January’s Insane Clown Posse show in San Antonio.

4) Two police officers in Crossett were fired for a March 13 incident in which investigators say they did something they shouldn’t have. What did they do?

A) Fired their department-issued shotguns at a “UFO” that turned out to be the mayor’s satellite dish.

B) Their entire anti-drug presentation at an elementary school consisted of screening 2004’s “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”

C) Snuck the department’s K9 dog down to Hutting for a rendezvous with a very cute schnauzer she met on the internet.

D) Were caught on surveillance video climbing through the window of a school in the middle of the night, with investigators saying they each stole one carton of milk from the cafeteria.

5) On March 31, a reptile-related incident at the Jacksonville Walmart required a trip to the hospital.

According to investigators, what happened?

A) While trying on hats, Sen. Jason Rapert’s lifelike rubber mask slipped, revealing him to be a lizard man from the planet Alpha Epsilon 7.

B) A man brought his defanged pet copperhead on a shopping trip, and it bit him with its remaining teeth.

C) I Can’t Believe It’s Not Chicken Nuggets turned out to be 100 percent iguana meat.

D) Godzilla went nuts and busted up the joint when he realized they were out of XXXXXXXXXXLT boxer briefs.

Answers: C, F, B, D, B

LISTEN UP

arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

13

I

f Arkansas goes through with its plan to kill eight men, two a day, over 11 days in April, it will make history. No state has killed

so many death row inmates so quickly since the U.S. Supreme

Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The men to be killed —

Bruce Ward, Kenneth Williams, Jack Harold Jones, Jason McGehee, Stacey Johnson, Don Williamson Davis, Marcel Williams and Ledell Lee — were all sentenced before 2000. The reason for the rush now has nothing to do with the horrific details of their cases. It is because of the method Arkansas will use to kill them.

The supply of one of the pharmaceuticals used in Arkansas’s three-drug lethal injection protocol is set to expire at the end of the month.

Governor Hutchinson wants to kill the inmates before the drug itself dies. Never mind that prison staff will be charged with taking two lives, back to back, four times in under two weeks. Never mind that the drug itself may well be ineffective

14

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

at anesthetizing a person against the otherwise excruciating pain of the fatal injection.

THE PROCEDURE The execution chamber at the Arkansas Department of Correction’s Cummins Unit is a small room with a gurney and white walls. On

April 17, 20, 24 and 27, the executions will begin at 7 p.m. There will be two each night.

Executioners in Arkansas are called the “IV Team” in the few documents the state makes public concerning executions. They are supposed to be a cadre of volunteers, each of whom must have a license or certification as an EMT, nurse, physician or physician’s assistant and at least two years of experience in their field. This is the state’s protocol, despite the American Medical Association’s guidelines that a physician should not participate in executions. However, we cannot ask members of the IV Team why they would volunteer to kill someone, because Arkansas law ensures the executioners’ identities are not public information.

Before the execution, the IV Team will check the contents of the “Injection Drug Box” to guarantee that everything is prepared. The condemned inmate will be waiting to die in a spartan Cummins holding cell, after traveling about a half-mile from death row at the Varner SuperMax, passing over the sprawling farmland on which prisoners work.

When all is set, the inmate will enter the execution chamber, where the gurney will be positioned so the IV Team can see his face and his “infusion sites.” He will be strapped down, and the IV Team

outwardly unresponsive, giving the illusion of peaceful repose. Then comes the third drug, two syringes of 120 milliequivalents of potassium chloride. The final drug, if the inmate was not sedated by the midazolam, will feel like a hot poker crawling through the veins toward the heart before it causes cardiac arrest and death.

Midazolam has not always worked: The possibility of a protracted death while conscious is very real. Prisoners gasped for breath for extended periods when midazolam was used in certain executions in Alabama, Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma. Midazolam is an anti-anxiety drug, not an anesthetic. States have only turned to midazolam within the past five years, as drug manufacturers refused to sell them pharmaceuticals for the purpose of killing inmates. With more effective sedatives such as sodium thiopental effectively unavailable, midazolam has now been used in 20 U.S. executions since 2013.

One of those times was in Arizona in 2014, when a death row inmate named Joe Wood writhed in pain for two hours as he died under ineffective sedation.

“His mouth closed and it opened wide again.

His head lurched back and his mouth closed. It opened again and again and then it was Joe Wood

constantly gasping and gulping and struggling to breathe for almost two hours,” Dale Baich, a defense attorney for Wood, said. “It was unforgettable.” This led to a ban on midazolam in lethal injections in Arizona. Florida and Kentucky have moved away from the drug, too.

The Arkansas dates are scheduled when they are because the state’s midazolam supply expires at the end of this month. This is the paradoxical logic of Governor Hutchinson’s decision to set the executions so closely together: We need to hurry up to use an ineffective drug before we cannot use it at all.

Hutchinson has taken a conciliatory tone, as if his hand had been forced, telling state media, “I would love to have those extended over a period of multiple months and years, but that’s not the circumstances that I find myself in.” This is baffling, Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Cent e r, said, because Hutchinson can extend the period over multiple months and years —

BRIAN CHILSON

will begin its work. They will use the materials in the Injection Drug Box to puncture his arms.

Two IV bags will be set up. The tubing will be cleared of air and made ready for use. They will initiate flow of the IV, then double-check to make sure that the rate of flow is uninterrupted. They will wait for the signal from the warden.

Once that signal is given, the IV Team will begin to kill the inmate.

To do this, they will administer two syringes of 250 milligrams of midazolam to sedate the prisoner and wait five minutes. A supervisor (either a Department of Correction deputy director or a designee) will check that the inmate is unconscious. We do not know how he will determine consciousness. In other states, this has meant pinching the prisoner or checking their eyelids.

It will be crucial, though, that the man is actually insensate. If he is not, what happens next would be grisly.

The IV Team will administer the second drug, vecuronium bromide, two syringes of 50 milligrams each, to paralyze the man. If not properly sedated by the midazolam, the inmate will feel as if he is being painfully suffocated — but because the paralytic agent has stopped his movements, he will remain

‘NO CLEAN WAY’ TO KILL: Jerry Givens (right), a former correctional officer, doubts the IV Team personnel are actually volunteering.

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signatory of the letter and a former correctional officer in Virginia who performed 62 executions. “There’s a syringe, and you’re dealing with blood.”

This is even more troubling because both Thompson and Givens have serious doubts that those on the IV Team are actually volunteering. “When the boss asks you to do something, you’re going to do it,” Thompson said.

Thompson also noted that just being a correction officer is already extremely stressful. “And then, out of that environment, you ask a group of people to do a dauntingly stressful task,” he said.

Arkansas is asking this team, he continued, “to do it serially, eight times, in the shortest period of time in recent history in the country, under a circumstance where a drug is still being tried out and has recently been a part of botched execution[s].”

“It creates a scenario that is unimaginable in its stress potential,” Thompson said. “Doing it that frequently, under that amount of stress, raises the likelihood that something may not go right, having nothing to do with whether or not the team of professionals are as well-trained as any other team.”

Givens prognosticated in a more blunt fashion: “You’ll probably have eight mistakes.”

BRIAN CHILSON

he has that power. The only thing stopping him, it seems, is that the state would not be able to use its current supply of midazolam. Instead, it would have to go through the difficult task of finding another sedative in killing these men.

Hutchinson, and his office, declined to comment for this story.

“Under the law, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why you would carry out eight executions in [11] days,” Dunham said. “The only justification is that they’re going to run out of the drugs.”

Even worse, Dunham said, Hutchinson’s schedule is “an intentional decision to create a significant risk.”

The hasty schedule could increase the risk that the midazolam will be ineffective, especially considering the Department of Correction staff could be ill prepared. The state’s last execution was 12 years ago, in 2005. Wendy Kelley, the department’s director, has never presided over an execution. Those with experience in executions say that even with training, and under perfect circumstances, it would be hard to prepare for such a grueling string of lethal injections.

“I don’t think people understand there’s a lot more to it [for Department of Correction staff] than just giving people a shot and then they go to sleep,” said Deb Sallings, a longtime capital defense attorney in Arkansas. “It’s hugely stressful, even for one execution.”

This is why 25 former correction officials urged Hutchinson to reconsider his execution dates in a March 28 letter. “We are gravely concerned that by rushing to complete these executions in April, the state of Arkansas is needlessly exacerbating the strain and stress placed on these officers,” the letter said.

Among the signatories is Frank Thompson. Thompson was an employee of Arkansas’s Department of Correction for 10 years before moving to Oregon.

During his interview to work for Oregon’s department, he was asked if he supported the death penalty. Thompson said yes, and on his arrival, the department put him to the test. Oregon had just passed a law changing its method of execution, and the protocols needed to be written for the state’s first execution in over three decades and its first ever by lethal injection. Thompson was tasked with developing all the details of how Oregon would kill.

“Well, that exposed me to the whole question of capital punishment at a level that was intensely personal,” he said. If not for this experience, Thompson noted, he would have likely continued supporting the death penalty. The specifics changed his opinion. He now advocates

FIGHTING: Lawyers John Williams (above) and Jeff Rosenzweig say Arkansas’s execution method constitutes cruel and inhumane punishment.

against the death penalty, emphasizing the harm it can cause prison staff.

“It is almost impossible to take the life of another human being without the people who are doing so losing some of their humanity,” he said. “It is also impossible to ask people to take the life of a human

being without one person being started on the road to post-traumatic stress disorder at some level. And the more repetitive that task is, the more cumulative that stress becomes.”

“There’s no clean way [with lethal injection],” said Jerry Givens, another

** Midazolam has never been successfully used as a sedative for a double execution, let alone the four Arkansas will conduct between April 17 and April 27.

When Oklahoma attempted a double execution in 2014 using the drug, the first of the two men to be executed, Clayton Lockett, died horrifically.

From the beginning, executioners struggled to find a vein for the IV. Eventually, they located one in Lockett’s groin.

They then administered midazolam and determined Lockett unconscious, but at some point, the IV became dislodged.

This meant that a portion of the dose of the sedative, as well as the next two drugs in the protocol, went into the inmate’s tissue instead of his bloodstream. Lockett woke up. He said “the drugs aren’t working” and struggled through a slow death. The other execution, of Charles Warner, was postponed.

Lockett’s death provides a harrowing case study in the many ways that something could go wrong here in Arkansas.

Although the IV was not administered properly, an autopsy determined that the amount of midazolam that entered his bloodstream should have rendered him unconscious nonetheless, which implies

the drug may not effectively stop the pain of the subsequent injections. A consciousness check was performed, implying that these checks do not always actually determine whether an inmate is fully sedated. Worst of all, a report released by the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety after the execution found that the hastiness of officials in attempting to perform a double execution played a part in the misadministration of the IV. It recommended that “executions … not be scheduled within seven calendar days of each other.”

There’s also a chance that such a traumatic death could occur and we just would not see it. It was only because of the poor placement of the IV that Lockett’s agony was clear. If properly administered, the second drug in the three-drug protocol — the paralytic — would have hidden much of Lockett’s pain from an outside observer.

“Once that paralytic has been administered — once it’s on board — everything’s going to look fine; no matter what the reality is,” Berkeley’s McCracken said.

This paralytic element, defense attorney Baich said, has caused many to not question lethal injection. “In the ’80s and ’90s, reporters would write, ‘Prisoner made his last statement, the process began, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.’ And what we know is that’s not what was going on. What was happening was a very brutal act,” Baich said.

THE LAW It was John Williams’ second day as a federal public defender in September 2015 when Governor Hutchinson originally set execution dates for most of these prisoners. (Williams is a former reporter for the Arkansas Times.) At that time, they were scheduled to be spaced out over a longer period but still organized as double executions. But a circuit judge stayed the executions and the state appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Williams and other attorneys knew midazolam’s spotty history and argued that the midazolam procedure — with its possibility of resulting in extreme pain — constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

“Even though the death penalty may be legal, you can’t carry it out in a way that tortures someone. Certain methods are unacceptable,” Williams said.

Whether midazolam was unacceptable was addressed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision from earlier in 2015, Glossip v. Gross. In the Glossip decision, the court affirmed, 5-4, a lower court ruling that prisoners were unable to prove that

THE CONDEMNED: (From upper left, clockwise) Bruce Ward, Kenneth Williams, Jack Jones, Jason McGehee, Stacey Johnson, Don Davis, Marcel Williams and Ledell Lee.

the use of midazolam constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution,” the logic of “holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of essentially all risk of pain [during executions] would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether.” The relevant language from Glossip going forward was that the method of execution can cause no “unnecessary pain or suffering,” Dunham said, and prisoners — at least by the majority’s standards — had not proved the three-drug midazolam protocol caused this. This is why Arkansas promises, in all caps, on the one document describing the lethal injection procedure it makes public, “EVERY EFFORT WILL BE EXTENDED TO THE CONDEMNED INMATE TO ENSURE THAT NO UNNECESSARY PAIN OR SUFFERING IS INFLICTED

BY THE IV PROCEDURE.” This did not mean Glossip approved midazolam for executions; it simply said there was not yet enough evidence to rule out its use. Williams and other defense lawyers, in a post-Glossip argument, attempted to prove that the facts had changed and that midazolam was now provable as causing “unnecessary pain or suffering” in Arkansas.

** Glossip follows a long history of challenges to the death penalty concerning whether a particular method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, a number of

court challenges to the death penalty culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, which said that Georgia’s death penalty statute violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” because it gave juries complete sentencing discretion, which led to arbitrary outcomes for the convicted. Because other states had similar execution schemes that could lead to arbitrary outcomes, the ruling led to a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S. It was short-lived. States adapted their statutes, creating guidelines for juries and judges in capital cases. In 1976, the court’s Gregg v. Georgia decision reinstated the death penalty in Florida, Georgia and Texas, and said the death penalty itself did not violate the Eighth Amendment.

After this intense battle, proponents of capital punishment needed a “method that would look humane, and here comes lethal injection,” said Deborah Denno, a professor at New York’s Fordham University Law School who studies the history of the death penalty. The idea was that lethal injection would showcase a medicinal version of killing. “With lethal injection somebody would look like they’re going to sleep,” she said. “People didn’t realize what the drugs were doing.”

When the use of lethal injection began, there was talk of broadcasting the executions on television as an act of transparency. The procedure, it was thought, would allow proponents to show that capital punishment was not gruesome.

This was all in the wake of killing prisoners with an electric chair.

“The problem is [that] electrocution is such a hideous way of killing someone that lethal injection seemed much more

civil,” said Jeff Rosenzweig, a defense attorney for multiple Arkansas death row inmates. “But, as it turns out, the paralytics and stuff were just masking the agony.”

There is no reason to use a paralytic during an execution, other than to stop viewers from seeing a dying inmate’s movements. It does not contribute medically to the ending of life. It is allowed, the states argue, because it helps the process and the prisoner keep their dignity.

“It was all about looks,” Denno said.

** The solution presented by Justice Alito was that prisoners, if they can prove the current method of execution is torturous, must choose a better way to be killed.

“Under Glossip, they said if you don’t like what the state has chosen, you have to pick another one,” said Rosenzweig. “We had to plead something that would likely cause a death and is commercially available. “So we did: firing squad.”

But Arkansas law does not allow firing squads as a method of execution. In 2016, the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected the defense attorneys’ idea of a firing squad and other methods and lifted the stay on the executions. A majority of the state’s justices held that the prisoners failed to prove that “the current method of execution presents a risk that is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering” and that “there are known, feasible, readily implemented, and available alternatives that significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.” The decision did not say whether midazolam was torturous. It simply said other methods were not available. It did not meet arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

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** State laws purposefully help keep many of the details of how the Department of Correction administers and prepares for lethal injection hidden from the public — especially the history of the drugs it is using.

In April 2015, the Arkansas legislature passed a law that created a Freedom of Information Act exemption for information about where death penalty drugs come from, their manufacturers or how the state buys them. This was after, in 2013, the Department of Correction had promised the prisoners “the packag18

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

ing slips, package inserts, and box labels received from the supplier.” Attorneys included this contradiction in their challenge to the executions in 2015.

But the Arkansas Supreme Court said that this was not a legitimate complaint because those specific items — packages and labels — could be made public, just “so long as the identification of the seller, supplier, or testing laboratory is redacted and maintained as confidential.” In other words, the information prisoners wanted.

turer — perhaps promising not to sell to a state to be used in executions — but then sell to Arkansas nonetheless. In doing so, the supplier may well have disobeyed its contract with the manufacturer, but no one else knows.

Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Merritt admitted as much at a hearing before Judge Wendell Griffen on Oct. 27, 2015, concerning the law. She said, “the supplier has a contract with the manufacturer of the FDA-approved

Furonda Brasfield, the coalition’s executive director, said the compressed execution schedule has shocked the public into action.

“I think that outrage has caused individuals to be more active than maybe they were in the past,” Brasfield said.

Sometimes people can forget about the death penalty, said Rev. Steve Copley, board chair of Faith Voices Arkansas and the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

“Humans, we do daily life. Life goes by on a day-to-day basis. Arkansas has not had an execution since 2005. So, you know we’re nearly 12 years. And, even though folks are opposed to the death penalty, you know, life continues to happen,” he said. “I think any execution being scheduled right now would have caused a reaction, but eight of those in 10 days, after 12 years without an execution, I think just really pushed people’s sensitivities.”

It means, Deb Sallings, said, “You can’t ignore what we’re fixing to do, whether you believe in it or not. It’s reopening the debate, because we’re now faced with it.

We didn’t have to think about it for 12 years in Arkansas.”

The result has been packed town hall meetings, a vigil in front of the Governor’s Mansion and national media attention.

**

BRIAN CHILSON

the second prong. The reason: Arkansas’s statute only allows one method of execution by law — lethal injection (with a backup of electrocution if lethal injection is not available).

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed this up well in a dissent when the court decided to not hear a similar case in which an Alabama prisoner had asked to be killed by firing squad and was denied. She wrote, “Under this view [in Glossip], even if a prisoner can prove that the State plans to kill him in an intolerably cruel manner, and even if he can prove that there is a feasible alternative, all a State has to do to execute him through an unconstitutional method is to pass a statute declining to authorize any alternative method.”

In deciding whether a method of killing an inmate is torturous, it seems that appearances matter more than the inmate’s actual experience. What legislators approve as methods of execution largely has to do with what the public can stomach, Dunham said. Lethal injection fits the bill. “The American public thinks all the other methods of execution are cruel and unusual punishment. And that’s whether it is firing squad, electric chair, lethal gas, hanging or beheading,” he said.

“The use of lethal injection has a kind of synthetic civility to it,” Dunham said.

“It has the appearance of a peaceful passing, and that gives the public comfort.”

“Other [methods of execution] would be better [for prisoners]. Firing squad would be better,” Williams, the defense attorney, said. “And people are shocked when you propose that as an alternative.

And [defense] attorneys wouldn’t do that if Glossip didn’t make them do it.” But the optics have overridden actual suffering in the case of administering the death penalty. “If the death penalty is something that our society wants to be carrying out, we should acknowledge its brutality,” he said.

FURONDA BRASFIELD: The Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty director says the public is shocked by the execution schedule.

The state wants to keep the sellers secret because if it were known where the drugs were coming from, manufacturers — who don’t want their products used for lethal injections — could stop supplying them to middleman suppliers. Denno said in her research into the death penalty that this decision by manufacturers is both practical and moral.

Drug companies just do not want to be “intertwined in this dirty mess that is the death penalty,” she said.

Arkansas’s secrecy law therefore facilitates a loophole in which a middleman supplier can buy a drug from a manufac-

drug that is currently in the ADC’s possession whereby the supplier is contractually not supposed to be selling drugs to state departments of correction for use at execution. This supplier did anyway in an effort to aid the State.” By keeping the supplier secret, the state is able to buy drugs for its executions that the manufacturer did not want used to kill.

THE COMMUNITY The Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has been fighting capital punishment in the state since 1977.

There is still a possibility that Arkansas could stop some of these executions.

Five of the eight men who are headed to the execution chamber have asked for the governor to grant them clemency.

During the last two weeks of March, prisoners or their attorneys made their cases before the Arkansas Parole Board, a panel of gubernatorial appointees, at the Varner SuperMax facility. In a small room — the inmate and his lawyer sitting at a folding table that faces the parole board’s folding table, about two feet away — prisoners expounded on the ways they have changed, who they are as people, and why they should be granted mercy. They drew on large files created by their lawyers.

Stacey Johnson insisted on his innocence and questions DNA evidence used against him at trial. James McGehee was young, only 20, when he committed his crime; his request for clemency argued that “science now understands that a twenty-year-old is more like a juvenile than an adult.” Kenneth Williams passionately told the board he found God in prison. He became a minister, he said, and has written often about his harrowing journey to faith.

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also cannot agree with your having life in prison.”

Heath’s comments cut to the heart of how clemency works: The board has to make a decision on life in prison or death.

On the morning of March 31, they heard that Jason McGehee has had only one citation for misbehavior (covering a light bulb) during 19 years on death row and that he helped other inmates as a mentor. In the afternoon, though, they heard about the devastation he wrought on the family of John Melbourne Jr., whose picture was set on the lectern facing the board. Melbourne’s family desperately wants to see McGehee’s death after years of waiting.

“I’m just asking y’all to let this course go through,” said John Melbourne Sr., the victim’s father. “He hasn’t changed.

He knew very much what he was doing.”

However, the board only makes recommendations; the final decision regarding clemency is up to the governor. It is not expected that Hutchinson will commute any of the eight men’s sentences, despite the reputation he has acquired for moderation within his party. Inevitably, that presents a comparison with Arkansas’s most famous Republican moderate — Winthrop Rockefeller — who in 1970 commuted the sentences of all 15 inmates then on death row before leaving office.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, came back to Arkansas in 1992 during his run for president to execute Ricky Ray Rector, who had brain damage. Clinton wanted to look tough on crime.

Beyond Hutchinson, the last chance may be a flurry of legal challenges, both state and federal.

One, by Bruce Ward’s lawyers, cites his mental incompetence, claiming he “is a diagnosed schizophrenic with no rational understanding of his death sentence and impending execution.”

Another challenges the clemency hearings, which were carried out fewer than 30 days before the execution, evidently in violation of state law.

Others repeat claims that the state’s schedule puts extra stress on Department of Correction employees, that the schedule only increases the likelihood of midazolam failing to fully sedate an inmate, and that when Arkansas kills these men it will be cruel and unusual.

The only other question left is who will watch. The state requires that “no fewer than 6 and no more than 12 respectable citizens” view the executions. As of now, it is unclear if the Arkansas Department of Correction has recruited enough citizens. This is probably because it is easier to view the death penalty from afar.

Up close, it can be gruesome.

FOA-P U ULA N S D KI A T TI EC O H N

and stained my soul,” Williams wrote in a statement included in his clemency packet. He said he knows he is in prison, not among the “preferred, but among society’s waste places. Four concrete walls surround me; a steal [sic] door keeps me confined to an 8 X 10 casket.”

Yet, there in that box, he found change.

“Inside of me, within the darkness, a small flicker of light sprung forth. Perhaps, I believe it was triggered from a dormant seed of hope, long placed inside of me by someone who cared enough about me. Perhaps they saw something in me worth saving, something I couldn’t yet see myself.”

Williams wrote a letter of apology to the community that he mailed to the Pine Bluff Commercial. In it, he admitted to other killings he had committed and not been convicted of. He asked forgiveness from the community. He wrote, “Once we determine that we have made a grave mistake, we always say, ‘If I could go back in time, I would make this different.’ The thing is, we can’t go back, what is done, is done.”

Each morning of the clemency hearings, after each prisoner made his case, the parole board headed back to Little Rock. In the afternoons, at the offices of the Arkansas Parole Board, prosecutors and victims’ families made their cases.

And theirs were filled with details, too, that they say have been forgotten in these death penalty cases.

Ledell Lee hit Debra Reese 36 times with a wooden tire tool that her husband had given her for protection and then he strangled her to death. Bruce Ward killed and raped a woman working behind the counter in a convenience store. Jason McGehee led a group that kidnapped, tortured and murdered a 15-year-old boy with special needs. Kenneth Williams — at that point already given life without parole for a capital murder — escaped prison by hiding in a hog-slop tank that he gained access to on a religious call.

Once out of prison, he killed a former warden of Cummins who lived near the prison and then another man in Missouri.

Stacey Johnson killed and raped Carol Heath as her 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, watched from the closet. In a letter presented to the clemency board on March 24, Ashley wrote, “Stacey Johnson brutally beat, raped, and slit my mother’s throat with both of her young children in the home. There was blood everywhere.”

At the hearing, Carol Heath’s sister and son spoke passionately about the need for execution, to allow closure for their family. Yet Ashley admitted she felt conflicted about the execution of Johnson. Her letter said, “I cannot agree with the choice of you being executed, but I

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eople always hatthe crowd. (Still, not even Frank ed Blink from day Zappa, that demigod of rock ’n’ one. From day one, roll comedy, could write neat, Blink had to fight for every fan stupid and subversive koans we won over.” that can unfold into grand That’s lead singer Mark comic narrative like “she left Hoppus, matter-of-factly and me roses by the stairs/surprises without resentment, in an let me know she cares” or, the interview last summer with total lyrics from a new one: “I wanna see some naked dudes/ Sirius XM’s Jenny Eliscu. And that’s why I built this pool.”) it’s undeniable, their late ’90s twerp-rock shtick was — and The most notable change still is — easy to dismiss, and between the Blink-182 of then probably easier to outright hate. and the Blink-182 of now is the absence of co-founder They were always too nasal, too Veteran pop-punk trio Blink-182 made its case at sugar-rushed, irredeemably (and, now, UFO Researcher of Verizon Friday night. apolitical, and, live, way too the Year 2016) Tom Delonge. eager to annoy the crowd with Another progenitor and all-star banter about who and what of ’90s pop-punk, Matt Skiba

BY JT TARPLEY they fellated before the show: of Alkaline Trio, has taken his their road crew, each other’s place and can be credited with dads, their own uncles, fammuch of the band’s sonic matuily pets, et al. ration. His lower register takes Admittedly, this writer the place of Delonge’s adenoiwent into this concert armed dal SoCal squeak. Skiba doesn’t with a lot of teenage nostaltry to imitate Delonge in tone gia and an armor of tempered but does an incredible job of expectations. I had no idea being respectful to Delonge’s that for the last year, since peculiar syllabic emphases and the release of “California,” signature twists of articulation some of the country’s elite (“microhooks,” maybe?) in the musical writers (Jon Caraway that only someone who has manica, Amanda Petrusich, been fully absorbing the minuKelefa Sanneh) have taken to tia of the music for decades can the pages of ivory-towered pull off.

Maybe Blink-182 emerging publications like The New York Times and The New as old masters of the genre isn’t Yorker to engage in some the most surprising thing that serious critical re-evaluacould happen — after all, we tion and reconsideration of are in a time when Hoppus is the band and, surprise! The openly Libertarian and adjanew wisdom says that these cently Christian, DeLonge is idiots are timeless. And their exchanging emails about flying show Friday night at Verizon saucers with John Podesta and TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS AND JACKET: Blink-182 took the stage Friday night with a new frontman, churning Arena made that exact case drummer Travis Barker is still out the effortless, goofball pop for which they’re known. making the case at 41 that he’s to a crowd of 4,200 people — with John Bonham and Keith a motley mix of people who were picked on in junior high, their bulMoon in the short list of rock drumrare balance between radio-friendly and less gear than you’ll find on stage at lies and at least one Juggalo in full face dad-hated. So, with the band a quarWhite Water or Stickyz on any given ming elites. Musically, Blink-182 is still paint. ter century into its career, how did the night. The band also didn’t need to evolving while staying true to the original rules. Like The Beastie Boys before As far as the music is concerned, I architects of teenage idiot anthems like hide behind its signature between-song them, Blink-182 is becoming an exemdon’t want to say that pop-punk isn’t “Dumpweed” and “Dick Lips” translate shock-jock pot-shots, either. Turns out plar of how even the crudest doofuses without its own tactical musical algotheir music to the stage? With shocking they don’t work blue anymore, instead rithms that you can chart out for maxican transform and age gracefully, cregrace and as masterfully as you’ll find in chugging through their set like old pros mum catchiness, but by the band’s third all of the genre. (I know, right?) only to stop a couple times to make wiseatively, and with that essential ability to album, “Enema of the State,” the trio Blink-182 didn’t need to hide behind cracks that wouldn’t be out of place in look back on their former idiot selves of brash man-children had mastered with empathy, acceptance and virtuous a spectacle show. They took to the stage a Jim Gaffigan set. A joke about peothe ability to summon punky blasts of with a humble skeleton set-up: drums, ple from Missouri being kind of ugly, … self-love (huh, huh, huh). two amps and a couple of rugs, in total effortless, goofball pop that struck a “God bless ’em,” was an easy hit with 20

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ROCK CANDY

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

A&E NEWS HOUSE BILL 2179, transmitted to the governor’s office Tuesday morning, marks a win for champions of Arkansas’s rich musical heritage, albeit a strictly symbolic one.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chris Richey (D-Helena/West Helena), designates “portions of various state highways” to honor one of the state’s chief assets and cultural exports, its music — namely that of Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, Louis Jordan and Sister Rosetta Tharpe — and calls for signs to be posted by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to announce the designations, though it does not provide any funding to do so.

BRYAN FRAZIER, LONGTIME assistant station manager at 100,000-watt community radio station KABF-FM, 88.3, “The Voice of the People,” gave notice of his departure from KABF in a Facebook post Sunday morning. Frazier thanked colleagues, including Program Director John Cain and Station Manager Wade Rathke, and told us he’s turning his attention to his new role as owner-operator of the Capitol View Studio at 120 S. Cross St. and its nonprofit partner project, the Arkansas Music and Arts Foundation, whose operations Frazier will oversee. For more information about AMAF, and about Capitol View Studio’s grand opening on April 15, visit capitolviewstudio.com.

DESIGNER KORTO MOMOLU, star of “Project Runway,” who has been involved with the Timmons Arts Foundation’s annual Designer’s Choice Fashion Preview since its inception 10 years ago, announced at the event’s 10th anniversary Saturday evening that this would be her last year at DCFP. TAF Executive Director Theresa TimmonsShamberger told us that Saturday’s event raised over $21,000 toward the nonprofit’s five-week Cultivating the Arts Youth Summer Camp, a program designed to provide arts immersion at no cost to children from underserved communities. For more information, visit timmonsartsfoundation.org.

THE HOUSE OF ART Poetry Festival takes place throughout the month of April in celebration of National Poetry Month.

Open mic poetry sessions will be held at 8 p.m. every Friday in April at The House of Art, 108 E. Fourth St. in Argenta. A poetry gala will take place at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 15, at the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, 100 Main St., $20, and on April 22, visit the “Poetry in the Park” session at the River Market History Pavilion, 3 p.m. For a full schedule of events, visit The House of Art on Facebook or email poetrysavesliveslr@gmail.com.

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COMPASS: Sierra Hull’s 2016 release “Weighted Mind” is the prodigy fiddler’s third album, but probably her first real statement as a musician. She plays at South on Main 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 6, $17-$25.

THURSDAY 4/6

SIERRA HULL

7:30 p.m. South on Main. $17-$25.

The phrase “child star” brings to mind a list of unsavory adjectives and associations, for which we can undoubtedly thank Macaulay Culkin and the seemingly endless stream of YouTube clips with captions like “9-year-old shocks all judges!” and “You won’t believe it until this kid starts playing!” That said, I’d dare anyone to listen to the mandolin work on Sierra Hull’s 2016 release, “Weighted Mind,” and apply any of those qualifiers. She’d played the White House and Carnegie Hall by the time she was 16, so her prodigy was undoubtedly well established, but it evidently took a few years for Hull’s sense of self to catch up to what her fingers were doing. “She plays the mandolin with a degree of refined elegance and freedom that few have achieved,” Bela Fleck says on Hull’s website. (He should know; the Grammy-decorated banjoist produced Hull’s latest album, and lent his banjo to the task.) “And now her vocals and songwriting have matured to the level of her virtuosity.” It was fellow child prodigy Alison Krauss, a mentor of Hull’s, who encouraged her to talk with Fleck after Hull became disillusioned with the way the songs slated for “Weighted Mind” sounded when they were recorded.

“Sierra did well in music very fast and very young,” Krauss said. “Sometimes when that happens, people don’t want you to change. It’s, ‘We know you as this, and now you’re scaring us.’ ” If tunes like the title track and “The In-Between” are Hull’s way of scaring us, I’m game for a big fright at South on Main on Thursday night. She experiments with chord structure as if she’s a sage jazz player rather than one raised on bluegrass, and there’s a mathematical delicacy and complexity between her mandolin and Fleck’s banjo that reminds me more of Antonio Vivaldi than it does Bill Monroe.

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FRIDAY 4/7

TANK

9:30 p.m. Revolution. $40-$50.

Whether or not you’re a fan of R&B crooner Tank, you’ve got to give him credit for letting you know exactly what you’re in for: His August 2010 single was titled, aptly, “Sex Music,” and the single’s cover traded in the usual shots of Tank’s impossibly broad shoulders (note: before music intervened, Tank was headed for a football career) for what appears to be a glass pane obscured by

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SEX, LOVE & PAIN: R&B crooner Tank pays a visit to the Rev Room 9:30 p.m.

Friday, April 7, with sets from Rodney Block and Tawanna Campbell and the Onestone Reggae Band, $40-$50.

droplets of steam, backlit in red.

(Lest his authority on the subject of steam be in question, Tank authored a sex column for Vibe magazine titled “Three Tips to Keep It Steamy in the Bedroom.”

Spoiler: It involves a reference to Cold Stone Creamery.) The former Ginuwine background vocalist contributed to the score for “Dreamgirls,” and produced hits for Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Hudson. He also made waves

on BET’s Instagram page by responding to rapper Ja Rule’s criticism of the network’s use of the hashtag #BlackBoyJoy and on his own social media profile by offering an agonized version of his hit “Please Don’t Go” — rewritten to beg Barack and Michelle Obama not to leave the White House. Tickets are available on eventbrite.com or at Ugly Mike’s Record Shop, 4710 W. 12th St.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 4/6

FRIDAY 4/7

‘SANDWICHING IN HISTORY’ TOUR: DIBRELL HOUSE Noon. 1500 Spring St. Free.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s “Sandwiching in History” tours give local denizens a peek into buildings of historical or architectural interest, and this one’s an oddball. First off, the Dibrell House’s myriad, steeply pitched towers and turrets are squarely in the “more is more” camp. There are

seven porches, including an ostentatious wraparound on the lower level. A massive clock-tower-like gable announces itself proudly, and the asymmetrical exterior is cluttered with octagons and arches of various sizes. It’s bizarro on the inside as well: Evidently, the doctor who co-founded the precursor to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, J.A. Dibrell, had a penchant for all things Machine Age. He and his wife, Lallie Reardon, bought the Queen Anne-

style house before it had been completed and outfitted it with walnut woodwork and mosaic parquet floors. Dibrell’s love of bells and whistles inspired him to install then-groundbreaking accoutrements like central heating, doorbells and a rudimentary burglar alarm, and the house, now a chief testament to the rich history of the Quapaw Quarter, became known as the “gadget house.”

SATURDAY 4/8

LOCAL H

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

When Local H front man Scott Lucas sings at Stickyz on Saturday night, he’ll be doing so on a vocal cord that was popped back into place after a violent mugging he suffered after a show in Moscow in 2013. This should tell us a couple of things: 1. Lucas is a force (and frankly, if I were his mugger, I’d find it a little worrisome that his band’s repertoire includes a track called “I Saw What You Did and I Know Who You Are.”) 2. Local H did not stop making music after that “Eddie Vedder” song! If that last part is news to you, check out the 2008 album “12 Angry Months,” Lucas’ calendar-formatted breakup songs; the group’s sinister cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”; and its latest effort, “Hey, Killer,” which preceded the return of original drummer Joe Daniels for a handful of shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band’s 1996 breakout “As Good As Dead.” Even if it’s been a while, you will probably still know all the words to “Bound for the Floor” (although, if you’re like me, you probably got it via some mixtape your friend’s cool older brother made but didn’t annotate, so you always thought it was called “Copacetic.”) They’re joined by Recognizer, a rock trio-turned-quartet that made it to the Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase with formidable bass from one of the band’s two Mike Mullens. (OK, guitarist/vocalist Mike spells it “Mullins,” but still.)

“A Murder of Crows: The End Hate Collection,” an installation by V.L. Cox, opens with a reception from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Fayetteville Underground, 101 W. Mountain St. If you’re out and about for the Hillcrest Shop ’n’ Sip, stop by and catch bluegrass virtuosos Runaway Planet at River Rock Realty Co., 6 p.m. Esse Purse Museum & Store, 1510 Main St., hosts a runway show of designs by Arkansas Fashion School students, 6-8 p.m., $25. It’s opening day for baseball season, and the Arkansas Travelers face off against the Corpus Christi Hooks at DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 6:10 p.m.

Sat., $7-$13. Jim Hathaway and The Fried Pies play a show at the White Water Tavern for the benefit of Compassion Works for All, 8 p.m. Sean Fresh croons with The Nastyfresh Crew at Stickyz, with opening sets from Brae Leni & The Evergreen Groove Machine, Ron G. and Bri Ailene, 9 p.m., $10. Maxine’s in Hot Springs hosts the “All American Freakshow Peepshow,” billed as “Arkansas’s oddest vaudeville variety show,” 9 p.m., $10. Country rocker Whitey Morgan and his band The 78s return to Revolution with tunes like “Waylon’s Still the King,” 9 p.m., $20-$75. Louisville, Ky., comedian Tim Kidd visits Arkansas for a weekend at the Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.Sat., $8-$12.

FRIDAY 4/7

GUIT WITH IT: “Guit-steel” picker Junior Brown picks at Four Quarter Bar in Argenta, 9 p.m. Saturday, April 8, $25-$30.

SATURDAY 4/8

JUNIOR BROWN

9 p.m. Four Quarter Bar, Argenta. $25-$30.

“Old Yeller” is the name of the 1957 Disney film about a boy and his dog in 1860s Texas, and it’s the name of Fred Gipson’s Newbery Honorwinning book that inspired the film.

It’s also, though, the name of Junior Brown’s first “guit-steel,” the idea for which, he told Conan O’Brien, came to him in a dream he had in 1985.

“Old Yeller” (as well as its successor, “Big Red”) is a hybrid double-neck the country singer invented to allow him to shift quickly between lap steel and lead guitar in the same song. If you’ve seen any band within the last 10 years that billed itself as “rockabilly,” it would likely count Junior Brown among its influences. His style incorporates humor (see: the “Better Call Saul” theme he recorded for the

show’s Blu-ray reissue) and his sound careens between Western swing and surf, maybe because he grew up loving classic country music in an age where Chubby Checker and The Four Seasons were the rage. His love for honky-tonk in the early 1960s, he confessed on his website, “was like a secret friend I carried around, being careful not to tell anyone (especially girls) about my love for it because I thought they would laugh at me.”

Fortunately, he hung around long enough for country music to fall back into favor (and out again, and back in), and his red-hot picking style (with red-hot suits to match) has made him an elder statesman at Austin spots like the Continental Club and Broken Spoke. Guit with it, as Junior says, and dig this show at Four Quarter Bar, a place that seems tailor-made for tunes like “Venom Wearin’ Denim” and “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead.”

Paintings by Justin Sacran and John P. Lasater go on exhibit at Justus Fine Art, 827 A Central Ave., Hot Springs, Gallery Walk reception 5-9 p.m. Eggshibition 2017, a benefit for Youth Home, features live music from Rodney Block, an auction led by KTHV, Ch. 11, news anchor Craig O’Neill and artist-designed eggs, including a hand-blown glass egg from James Hayes, 6 p.m., UA Little Rock’s Jack Stephens Center, $50-$75.

Father-son duo The Electric Rag Band brings blues-tinged country to Four Quarter Bar in Argenta, 10 p.m., $7. Bluesman Trey Johnson performs at King’s Live Music in Conway with an opening set from Justin Teale Morgan, 8 p.m., $5. Brian Nahlen and Nick Devlin join forces for a free show at Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m.

The Martyrs and the P-47s share a bill at Vino’s, 9 p.m., $5. Brother Andy & His Big Damn Mouth and Fiscal Spliff share a bill at White Water, 9:30 p.m. Cajun’s Wharf hosts Resurrection, a Journey tribute band, 9 p.m., $5. Fayetteville’s Smoke and Barrel Tavern is home to the nomination party for this year’s Black Apple Awards, with music from Molasses Disaster and The Chads, 10 p.m.

SATURDAY 4/8

Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase winners Dazz & Brie present “Kachella: Music & Arts Birthday Festival” at South

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arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

23

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SATURDAY 4/8-SUNDAY 4/9

BEETHOVEN AND BLUE JEANS

7:30 p.m. Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. Robinson Center. $14-$67.

Classical music desperately wants you to believe it is not stodgy. Orchestras are eschewing the word “classical” altogether in favor of the word “orchestral” or “symphonic,” and any symphony outreach coordinator worth his salt probably knows the value of programming a few pop-up concerts, flash mobs or divebar takeovers. There’s good reason to loosen up a little. A quick Google search for “boot-cut yoga dress pants” returns over 21 million results and the Hawaiianborn “Casual Friday” spread its Dockers-

shaped tentacles across the whole workweek long ago. The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra has been doing the dresseddown thing for a while now, although it’s as symbolic as it is literal. For this concert, the 400 block between Broadway and Spring streets will be blocked off before the concert for a Beer & Brats Street Party (5:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday), featuring edibles, locally brewed beer and music from the Episcopal Collegiate School Steel Band. The program features a Beethoven work appropriate for the ASO’s first “Beethoven and Blue Jeans” at Robinson Center since its renovation, “Consecration of the House,” originally

written to mark the opening of the Josefstadt Theatre in Vienna. Following that is a gateway drug of a violin concerto, Max Bruch’s “Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor.” It was Bruch’s “Like a Virgin” — so popular during its day that the composer could hardly stand to hear it by the time he died in 1920. Finally, there’s Sibelius’ “Symphony No. 2,” famously inspired by a trip to Italy that Sibelius took after receiving a letter from Baron Axel Carpelan that began with the following words: “You have been sitting at home for quite a while, Mr. Sibelius, it is high time for you to travel. You will spend the late autumn and the winter in Italy, a

country where one learns cantabile, balance and harmony, plasticity and symmetry of lines, a country where everything is beautiful — even the ugly.” Oh, and this concert marks the beginning of the ASO’s participation in Orchestras Feeding America, an initiative to collect food from concert patrons for use in hunger relief programs — Arkansas Foodbank, in this case. For a pair of free tickets for an upcoming ASO concert bring 12 or more items from the following list: peanut butter, cereal, 100 percent juice, canned soup, canned fruit or vegetables, boxed meals, or canned meat, fish or poultry.

‘THE INVISIBLE WAR:’ Lt. Elle Helmer pauses at the Vietnam War Memorial in Cinedigm/Docurama’s investigative documentary about rape among the ranks of the U.S. military, to be screened at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 11, free admission.

TUESDAY 4/11

‘THE INVISIBLE WAR’

6:30 p.m. MacArthur Museum of Military History. Free.

In May 2013, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) introduced a bill to address sexual assault and rape in the military, specifically to change the rules to allow a sexual assault victim to report to a JAG prosecutor rather than requiring that report to

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ARKANSAS TIMES

be filed with the soldier’s own commanding officer, and to prevent commanders from being able to overturn a verdict after it was rendered. She and her colleagues — U.S. Reps. Niki Tsongas and Jackie Speier and Sens.

Claire McCaskill and Barbara Boxer — were inspired to take action, she said, by “The Invisible War,” the Peabody and Emmy award-winning expose on

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rape culture in the military screened at this session of “Movies at MacArthur.” Its impact was intense and immediate. Two days after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saw the film, he handed down a directive that required sexual assault cases to be handled at the rank of colonel or higher. “There are some works of writing or painting, speech or film

that do more than just stand as great works of art,” Jonathan Hahn said of the film, writing for Los Angeles Review of Books. “They change things. They put before us something fundamentally wrong with the world — with the society we take for granted, with the institutions on which we depend and that in turn depend on us — and demand change.”

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If you or anyone in your household subscribes to a home and garden magazine of any kind, chances are it has featured succulents on the cover sometime in the last year. The waxy, sometimes fractal-patterned plants are So Hot Right Now. The “plant lab” tine

of Electric Ghost’s mission (the SoMa minimalists also do home decor and custom screen printing) is throwing a potyour-own party. The event poster notes that Electric Ghost will serve “wine, lavender lemonade, hot tea bar and snax,” and your $25 ticket gets you a primer on succulents, a plant to pot and take home and instructions for how not to kill it when you get there.

Closing Date: 3.3.17

SUCCULENT PARTY

6:30 p.m. Electric Ghost Screen Printing. $25.

Publication: Arkansas Times

WEDNESDAY 4/12

on Main, featuring performances from DJ IKe, PRINT Rah Howard, John Willis, Sarah Stricklin, Hope Dixon, Samarra Samone, Sean Fresh, Gavin Le’nard and Dazz & Brie and the Emotionalz, 9 p.m., $10. The Black Arts & Economics Festival begins at noon at the Better Community Development Empowerment Center, 3604 W. 12th St., free. The Ron Robinson Theater screens “Dead Poet’s Society,” 1 p.m., $5. Matt Treadway Jazz plays a free show at Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, 6 p.m.

Singer/songwriter Tom Neilson brings tunes like “Immense Expense is Mainly in Defense” to a social justice-focused concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, 1818 Reservoir Road, 6 p.m., $10-$15. New Orleans loop pedal duo Roar returns to Maxine’s, with opening sets from Turtle Rush and The Rios, 9 p.m., $7. Duo Woodson Lateral joins up with Kevin Kerby for a show at White Water, 9 p.m. West End welcomes dance tunes from Lypstick Hand Grenade, 10 p.m., $7. John Neal Rock and Roll, Katie J. and Michael Leonard Witham play Discovery Nightclub, 9 p.m., $10.

SUNDAY 4/9

JOSHUA ASANTE

The Arkansas Travelers take on the San Antonio Missions at Dickey-Stephens Park, 2:10 p.m. Sun., 7:10 p.m. Mon. and 11 a.m.

Tue., $7-$13. NYC “guitar freakout” quartet Cellular Chaos takes the stage for a free show at Maxine’s, 9 p.m.

EVEN THE WISE: Amasa Hines plays this Wednesday’s “Sessions” concert at South on Main, curated this month by guitarist Judson Spillyards, 8 p.m., $10.

WEDNESDAY 4/12

AMASA HINES

8 p.m. South on Main. $10.

This five-piece has given us a hypnotic set of songs recorded live on Audiotree, a handful of sweaty, inspiring live shows and “All the World There Is,” nine tracks of fluid interplay that probably satisfy some scientifically established standard for neural pleasure and stimulation — the way The Police’s “Synchronicity” or Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” does. Saxophonist and keyboard player Norman Williamson and guitarist Judson Spillyards (and auxiliary trumpeter Walter Henderson, when

he’s sitting in) paint with bold, sparse brushstrokes, and the engine room (bassist Ryan Hitt and drummer Josh Spillyards) seems ever-conscious of leaving enough space in the groove to let it breathe. The result is buoyant and rollicking, a sound that’s earthy enough to loosen the hips and shoulders but malleable enough to allow for the ethereal wax and wane of guitarist/vocalist Joshua Asante’s odes and warnings. This show is part of the venue’s “Sessions” series, curated in April by Amasa Hines (and Funkanites) guitarist Judson Spillyards.

TUESDAY 4/11 Ron Robinson screens “The Next Big Thing,” a documentary about the high-stakes art market, 6 p.m. Tue.-Wed., $5. Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s final River Rhapsodies concert, “Airs & Dances,” features the work of Shostakovich, Ravel and Theofanidis, 7 p.m., Clinton Presidential Center, $10-$23.

DeFrance brings its Southern rock to Bear’s Den Pizza, Conway, 10 p.m. The Arkansas Arts Center opens “Drawing on History: National Drawing Invitational Retrospective.”

WEDNESDAY 4/12 ASO musicians play a free, informal “informance” at the Capital Hotel, 5:15 p.m. Jazz in the Park resumes with Ramona Smith, a powerful soul belter who cut her teeth with the Johnny Otis Revue, 6 p.m., free. Greg “Big Papa” Binns brings his mix of blues to Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro, 6 p.m. Touring comedian Tracy Smith’s opening night at the Loony Bin is preceded by a faceoff among local comics Josh Ogle, Amber Glaze, Larry Clayton, Jared Lowry, Geoffrey Eggleston, Topher Shaw, Matt DeCample and Aaron Sarlo for a spot in the World Series of Comedy, 7:30 p.m., $8. Miami masters of the loop pedal Magic City Hippies play a show at the Rev Room, 8 p.m., $10.

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25

ALSO IN THE ARTS

THEATER

“Bad Seed.” The Weekend Theater’s production of Maxwell Anderson and William March’s thriller. 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. through April 15. $12-$16.

1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761.

“Rough Night at the Remo Room.” The Main Thing’s two-act musical comedy. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. through June 17. $24. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0210.

“Jar the Floor.” Arkansas Repertory Theater’s production of Cheryl West’s drama. 7 p.m. Wed.-Thu. and Sun., 8 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. through April 16.

601 Main St. 501-378-0405. $30-$65.

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Junior Brown

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APR

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16th Annual Ozark Foothills FilmFest

The Joint: Argenta Arts Acoustic Music Series presents

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Arkansas Times Bus Trips

APR

Arkansas Times Blues Bus to the Clarksdale, MS Juke Joint Festival

22 APR

Four Quarter Bar

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ARKANSAS TIMES

From your goin’ out friends at

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Studio Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s classic. 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. through April 9. $15-$20. 320 W. 7th St. 501-374-2615.

“Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents the Lieber and Stoller tribute. 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., dinner at 6 p.m., 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. through April 29. $15-$37. 6323 Colonel Glenn Rd. 501-562-3131.

“Intimate Apparel.” TheaterSquared’s production of Lynn Nottage’s drama.

7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun. through April 16. $15-$45. 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. Theatre2. org.

“And Then There Were None.” Pocket Community Theater’s production of Agatha Christie’s musical thriller. 7:30 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. through April 9. $5-$10. 170 Ravine St., Hot Springs. 501623-8585.

FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS MAJOR VENUES ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Drawing on History: National Drawing Invitational Retrospective,” works from the permanent collection, April 11-Sept. 24; “Ansel Adams: Early Works”; “Herman Maril: The Strong Forms of Our Experience” and “Seeing the Essence: William E. Davis,” photographs, all through April 16. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000.

ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St., Pine Bluff: “Resilience,” printmaking

by Emma Amos, Vivian Browne, Camille Billops, Margaret Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Samella Lewis, and Rosalind Jeffries, through July 8; “Bayou Bartholomew: In Focus,” juried photography exhibition, through April 22; “Dinosaurs: Fossils Exposed,” through April 22. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375.

ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 Main St., Springdale: “Senior High Art Competition,” work by students in four counties, through April 14. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479751-5441.

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Bruce Jackson: Cummins Prison Farm,” photographs, West Gallery, through May 27, “The American Dream

Deferred: Japanese American Incarceration in WWII Arkansas,” objects from the internment camps, Concordia Gallery, through June 24. 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mon.-Sat. 320-5790.

CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957.

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER: Permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6.

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “Border Cantos: Sight and Sound Explorations from the MexicanAmerican Border,” collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican American sculptor and composer Guillermo Galindo, through April 24; “Roy Lichtenstein in Focus,” five large works, through July; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479418-5700.

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “An Evening of Style,” runway show of designs by Arkansas Fashion School students, 6-8 p.m. April 6, $25; “Reflections: Images and Objects from African American Women, 1891-1987,” through April; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022.

FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Heartbreak in Peanuts,” digital photographs of Peanuts comic strips, through April 16. 11 a.m.6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-7842787.

HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: Opening reception for “Paintings by Glenda McCune,” through May 7; “Modern Mythology: Luke Amran Knox and Grace Mikell Ramsey,” mixed media sculpture and paintings, through May 7; “All of Arkansas: Arkansas Made, County by County”; “A Diamond in the Rough: 75 Years of Historic Arkansas Museum.” Ticketed tours of renovated and replicated 19th century structures from original city, guided Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. (Galleries free.) 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 3249351.

MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602.

MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: Permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Sat. 683-3593.

MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Magnificent Me,” exhibit on the human body, through April 23. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

The Invisible War The Invisible War is a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military. Today, a female

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Michael Stewart Allen (Macbeth) in Macbeth. Photo by John David Pittman.

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for justice. It also features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military and government officials that reveal the long-hidden history of military rape, and what can be done to bring about change. The film is a call for our civilian and military leadership to listen. And to act.

Lieutenant Elle Helmer at the Vietnam War Memorial, US Marine Corps, from THE INVISIBLE WAR, a Cinedigm/Docurama Films release.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

27

MOVIE REVIEW

centralarkansastickets.com

A ‘MAJOR’ MISS: Rupert Sanders’ remake of the 1995 anime cult classic is already facing a backlash from online geek culture communities for its identity crisis.

‘Ghost’ glitch Big-budget remake whitewashes an anime classic.

BY SAM EIFLING

W PARTY WITH A HEART Girls’ Night Out Dance Party

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Arvest Bank, Arkansas Times, Ben E. Keith Foods, The Property Group, E.Leigh’s, Bailey Family Foundation, Inviting Arkansas, Legacy Termite & Pest Control, MADDOX, Kiewit Infrastructure, 107 Liquor, Allegra Marketing 28

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

ith any luck, we’ve got to be coming to the end of the white-as-default era in cinema, and when we look back years from now, we’ll see “Ghost in the Shell” as a death knell. Not because it wasn’t an exciting piece of cinema — you want pretty colors and flashing lights, you know where to come — but because a big-ticket live-action remake of a beloved 1995 anime with a built-in fan base just got utterly smoked on opening weekend by none other than “The Boss Baby.”

A $20 million opening ain’t bomb territory, but it wasn’t what was forecast or certainly hoped for when Paramount and Dreamworks laid out $110 million plus a bloated ad budget to put the likes of Scarlett Johansson in the lead role. The shorthand for “Ghost in the Shell” is sexy cyberpunk Japanese Robocop; she plays an agent who goes

by Major, whose brain a robotics company salvaged after a fatal accident and dropped into an experimental rad robot

body. We’re in the future in urban Japan, where everyone is dabbling in various cybernetic enhancements, invisibility cloaks and holography have gone mainstream and the question “are you human?” is more practical than philosophical.

Major’s one hell of an anti-terrorism weapon. She can shoot and fight and jack into networks of all sorts, and has a partner, a frosty-haired bruiser named Batou (Pilou Asbæk). Things go sideways when a robotics executive is assassinated by a shady hacker sort who goes by Kuze (Michael Pitt). Major sets out to find and stop him while fighting the gnawing sense that she’s experiencing some sort of residual memories that keep appearing to her as glitches in her surroundings.

On its own merits, “Ghost in the Shell” might arrive as one of those slinky, stylish sci-fi flicks that get a devoted cult following … if not for the fact that it already did. Twenty years ago. The first

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A COMEDY-DRAM A THAT WILL TUG A YOUR HEARTSTR T INGS

BY CHERYL L. WEST | DIRECTED BY GILBERT MCCAULEY

MARCH 29 — APRIL 16

(501) 378-0405 | TheRep.org

ARKANSAS REPERTORY THEATRE arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

Maya Jackson (Vennie), Shannon Lamb (MayDee), CeCelia Antoinette (MaDear) and Joy Lynn Jacobs (Lola) in The Rep’s production of Jar the Floor. Photo by John David Pittman.

thing one might set about doing, were one in the position to make an otherwise faithful update to beloved source material, is not piss off the fan base.

And yet, they did, knowing full well that fans of the original were expecting to see an actor of Japanese descent play a character that is, in effect, a Japanese brain inside a Japanese android.

This isn’t a case of overlooking Major’s provenance as a Japanese girl — put it this way (mild spoiler): When she does manage to find her mother, the woman

looks nothing like how you’d imagine Scarlett Johansson’s mom. Instead it’s a case of a studio swapping in an A-list white actress on the assumption that moviegoers are more excited to see a familiar white face than someone who has been in fewer “Avengers” films.

This, it turns out, is the wrong move.

Domestically, movie audiences contain more people of color than the country at large. Internationally, the standard-issue white stars aren’t towing box offices the way they used to. And the rise of geek culture online — where the fates of movies are thrashed out for months before their release — has made fealty to source material all the more important to a film’s credibility.

Director Rupert Sanders has taken harsher criticism for “Ghost in the Shell” than merely retrograde casting or whitewashing: This live-action version, glossy and visually seductive though it is, falls somewhere shy of a true emotional resonance, or a fully inhabited vision of the future. But the easiest thing to ding this remake for is talking past the people who made it a hit in the first place, by assuming they wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t care, about the details of identity. Which is weird, considering this film is literally about ripping the brain out of a beatingheart human body and dropping it into a synthetic new form. If anyone was going to care that you built the story around the wrong brain, it was “Ghost in the Shell” fans. Slowly, failure by failure, studios will get the picture.

29

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

HOW MANY COFFEE shops can downtown Little Rock support? We’ll find out this summer when yet another new shop, Nexus Coffee and Creative, opens at 301B President Clinton Ave., next door to the departing Ten Thousand Villages and across from Revolution.

Amy Moorehead of Little Rock, the owner of the coffee shop, has posted a video on the business’ Facebook page saying Nexus will be a family-owned-andoperated coffee and co-working space with a mission to promote entrepreneurship.

Recently, Blue Sail Coffee Roasters opened in the street level entrance to the Little Rock Technology Park at 417 Main St. Zeteo Coffee, which like Blue Sail originated in Conway, is continuing the competition by opening in the former Clinton Museum Store space at 610 President Clinton Ave. (Blue Sail locations in Conway are at 1028 Front St. and on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas; Zeteo’s Conway coffee shop is at 911 Oak St.) Both Zeteo and Blue Sail are socially conscious: Blue Sail partners with Long Miles Coffee Project, which works with coffee growers in Burundi, and Zeteo pledges 5 percent of its profits to the clean water project Living Water International. With longtime coffee brewer Andina Cafe on Third Street and Starbucks in the Little Rock Marriott, there will be five specialty coffeehouses within walking distance of the Arkansas Times’ office. Expect hyper-buzzed reporting.

THE “COLD BEER” call will ring out at Dickey-Stephens Park, not for the Travs but for Food and Foam Fest, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Friday, April 14. The 20th annual fundraiser for the Arthritis Foundation of Arkansas will feature 380 craft beers, plus food from Vino’s, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Mellow Mushroom and Kent Walker Artisan Cheese.

Tickets are $20 for designated drivers, $40 for general admission and $65 for VIPs. Regular folks will get a souvenir cup and unlimited food and drink; VIPs will also get a T-shirt, early admission and access to specialty beers. The event includes an auction of various items, including a fold-up Traveler Beer Co. bike.

ALL SPIRITS WILL be lifted at the 19th annual Wine & Food Festival at Wildwood Park for the Arts, 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Friday, April 21. The Bistro in Bryant, Blue Cake Co., Bonefish Grill, Boulevard Bread Co., Bravo Cucina Italiana, Chenal Country Club, Cocoa Belle Chocolates, Lulu’s Latin Rotisserie and Grill, Nothing Bundt Cakes, So Restaurant and Bar, Trio’s, Diamond Bear Brewery and Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits will supply the edible and drinkables.

Tickets are $65.

30

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

DECADENT TREAT: House-cured bacon and duck fat go into Quaker Jacks, a modified version of Cracker Jack.

High Waters New Hot Springs boutique hotel restaurant wows with food — and prices.

T

he food at The Avenue, the new restaurant on the ground floor of the super-chic, 62-room, boutique Waters Hotel in Hot Springs, is really good. And it’s really, really expensive — as in how-did-you-possibly-think-thiswas-a-fair-price expensive. There must be a formula for restaurant menu math based on ingredient cost, labor, rent, etc., but Chef Casey Copeland (most recently of So Restaurant-Bar in Hillcrest) and the owners of the restaurant need to revisit their ciphering.

As is our custom, we will list the price next to each item we tried, and we won’t spend any more time blasting The Avenue for the numbers you’ll see inside the parentheses. But the prices are just crazy as in “$19 for four scallops” crazy.

The Avenue is very cool space. We plopped on two of the six comfy, blue-

Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

fabric bar stools to watch the second half of the Kentucky-North Carolina game.

There are a few bar tables in that part of the space, and the main dining room features a full-length banquette and a few other free-standing tables, for total seating of about 50. The walls feature 1940s and ’50s black-and-white pictures of people strolling along “the Avenue.”

And the floors are a gray hardwood.

With all its hard surfaces, we imagine the place gets loud when it’s crowded, but it wasn’t early Sunday evening.

We started with two of the “Snapps,” or appetizers. The Almond Gremolata ($8) is a smallish pile of finely diced almonds mixed with parsley and an accompanying smear of sweetened, whipped mascarpone, served with toast slices. Very, very tasty — particularly in combination.

We also really enjoyed the Quacker Jacks ($10), a modified, much-improved version of Cracker Jack, with housecured bacon and duck fat adding serious decadence to the usual caramel-andpeanut infused popcorn. Two of us could have used two orders, but we resisted.

The Avenue takes an interesting approach to entrees — only six small plates ($15 to $21) and four “shareables”: a sausage plate ($26); a half chicken ($35; it is free range and all); paella ($65); and an 18-ounce dry-aged (for 30 days) bone-in ribeye ($78).

Since there were just two of us, we stuck with the small plates. The Lamb Agnolotti Dal Plin ($17) essentially wastes the lamb. There’s just a tiny bit of it on the nine pieces of pasta that resemble ravioli bottoms. The sauce reminded us of hoisin, but it’s described as “truffle brown butter” on the menu.

It overwhelmed the lamb dots, which could have been pork or beef or even maybe chicken; we would never have known the difference.

The shredded duck on the duck confit tacos ($15 for three small ones) also

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was a bit overwhelmed by the sauce, carrot and purple cabbage, but still the tacos were tasty.

The menu we were presented at The Avenue is new and not the one that was posted online. The old menu showed a single seared scallop for $14, and the new one offers four nice-size scallops

The Avenue

At the Waters Hotel 340 Central Ave. Hot Springs 501-625-3850

Quick bite The Avenue has an impressive wine list, with lots of higher-end selections available, even by the glass — and while the food prices shocked us, the wine prices are reasonable. A $9 glass of Frank Family Chardonnay, generously poured, was quite a deal. The cocktail list is also impressive, with many complex combinations, often featuring herbs and/or flowers as garnish. Each is $10, also a decent price.

Hours 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 4 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Other info Credit cards accepted, full bar.

for $19. They were tender, perfectly seared and artfully served with some crisp lavash-style cracker pieces and garnish.

Only four desserts are offered, and the only table of diners in the bar had nabbed the last piece of Grandma’s Chocolate Pie ($9). Chef Copeland informed us he had already begun making chocolate bundt cakes, and he was kind enough to serve us two small ones ($6 — best deal of the night) even though they weren’t yet on the menu.

They were moist, very chocolate-forward and paired nicely with the pool of vanilla cream.

We also opted for the Croquembouche ($12), 10 tallish, cylindrical pastries filled with either chocolate, pineapple or vanilla cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. They were a bit doughy — but we had no trouble scarfing them all down.

As much as we enjoyed the food and the overall dining experience and atmosphere at The Avenue, with those prices we doubt we’ll be back.

Little Rock’s Most Award-Winning Restaurant 1619 REBSAMEN RD. 501.663.9734 thefadedrose.com

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7 - Electric Rag Band 8 - Junior Brown 14 - Elysian Feel 15 - Josh Green 20 - Lagunitas 420 Waldo release party w/ Chris DeClerk 21 - Youth Pastor 22 - Weakness for Blondes 24 - The Supersuckers

Open until 2am every night!

415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

31

APRIL 14

THE 2ND FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH 5-8 PM

�nd Friday Cinema presents

DRIVERS PLEASE BE AWARE, IT’S ARKANSAS STATE LAW:

USE OF BICYCLES OR ANIMALS

Every person riding a bicycle or an animal, or driving any animal drawing a vehicle upon a highway, shall have all the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions of this act which by their nature can have no applicability.

OVERTAKING A BICYCLE

“Sergeant York”

300 East Third St. • 501-375-3333 coppergrillandgrocery.com

TOGETHER Artist Panel Discussion, 6:30 pm WITH MIA HALL, JOLI LIVAUDAIS, AND CAREY ROBERSON

The driver of a motor vehicle overtaking a bicycle proceeding in the same direction on a roadway shall exercise due care and pass to the left at a safe distance of not less than three feet (3’) and shall not again drive to the right side of the roadway until safely clear of the overtaken bicycle.

300 W. Markham St.

and a remembrance of Arkansas’s own heroes, in honor of the World War I Centennial commemoration

www.oldstatehouse.com

Join Joi oin in Uss

F r i d ay A5p-r8i l , 1 4 t h

$15

BELLA VITA EARRING PARTY

Girls night out! Design your own pair of earrings, we’ll teach how to make them or just make them for you! Each ticket includes one pair of earrings, a loblolly treat bag, and refreshments. Make extra pairs of earrings for $10 a pair.

Reserve your spot now, 501.396.9146 or info@bellavitajewelry.net.

Walk-ins and kids welcome!

COME IN AND SEE US! 108 W 6th St., Suite A (501) 725-8508 www.mattmcleod.com

CURATED BY ROBERT BEAN 200 RIVER MARKET AVE. STE 400 501.374.9247 WWW.ARCAPITAL.COM

523 S. Louisiana

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Opening reception for

AND CYCLISTS, PLEASE REMEMBER...

Your bike is a vehicle on the road just like any other vehicle and you must also obey traffic laws— use turning and slowing hand signals, ride on right and yield to traffic as if driving. Be sure to establish eye contact with drivers. Remain visible and predictable at all times.

The Great War: Arkansas in World War I with live music by Delta Brass Combo.

These venues will be open late.

There’s plenty of parking and a FREE TROLLEY to each of the locations.

Don’t miss it – lots of fun!

Free parking at 3rd & Cumberland Free street parking all over downtown and behind the River Market (Paid parking available for modest fee.)

32

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

FREE TROLLEY RIDES!

ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT. 7050.

OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: “Cabinet of Curiosities: Treasures from the University of Arkansas Museum Collection”; “True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley,” musical instruments, through 2017; “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685.

SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St., El Dorado: “Inside and Out,” watercolors and oils by Sandy Bennett, through April 27. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 870-862-5474.

TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165, England: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and mu-

seum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $4 for adults, $3 for ages 6-12, $14 for family. 961-9442.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Student Competitive,” Zina AlShukri juror, through April 30, Gallery I, Fine Arts Building; “Binding Communities: Cuba’s Ediciones Vigia and the Art of the Book and Entrepreneurism,” 71 artists books created by the Cuban publishing house, through April 19, with student presentations 3 p.m. April 6; scholar-led tour 5 p.m. April 12; closing reception with filmmaker Dr. Juanamaria Cordones Cook 4:30 p.m. April 14; and other events, Ottenheimer Library, email esfinzer@ualr.edu for workshop information. 569-8977.

WALTON ARTS CENTER, 495 W. Dick-

son St., Fayetteville: “The Fabric of Nature,” mixed media by Andrea Packard, through April 24, Joy Pratt Markham Gallery. Noon-2 p.m. daily, one hour before performances in the Arts Center.

479-443-5600.

RETAIL GALLERIES, OTHER EXHIBIT SPACES ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 N. Main St. “Dancers,” paintings by John Gaudin, portion of proceeds from sales goes to Christen Pitts dance program at North Little Rock High School, Argenta ArtWalk. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. 258-8991.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

Transforming Life Academy will hold a public hearing on its intended application to start an open enrollment public charter school to commence the 2018 academic year in the South End Community of Little Rock. All interested parties are encouraged to attend on April 24, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. at The Willie Hinton Center, 3805 W. 12th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Neighborhood Programs facility does not constitute endorsement of the beliefs, viewpoints, policies or affiliations of the user by the Administration staff.

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arktimes.com2/22/17 APRIL 6,11:01 2017 AM33

MAJOR

ADVERTISEMENT

ARORA Celebrates National Donate Life Month with 3rd “Function @ the Junction” The annual bridge party and fun walk promotes organ and tissue donor registration in a family-friendly setting.

In celebration of National Donate Life Month, the Arkansas Regional Organ Recovery Agency (ARORA) will host its third annual “Function @ the Junction” Bridge Party and Fun Walk on Thursday, April 13th from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., in downtown Little Rock. The public is invited, and admission to the event is free. ARORA will also celebrate the organization’s 30th Anniversary that evening.

Heather and Pool Boy from the morning show at radio station Alice 107.7 will host. The bridge party will feature live entertainment from two popular acts that performed last year: the cover band Mayday by Midnight and Mariachi America.

Also returning to this year’s F@J are free refreshments, and a variety of popular local food trucks that will sell their specialty dishes. New this year are a Flyway Brewery beer garden, De Wafelbakkers pancake-eating contest, and a scavenger hunt, sponsored

by Steve Landers Toyota, with a $250 cash prize awarded to the winner.

ARORA Director of Communications Audrey Coleman said that although F@J is designed to be fun and festive, ARORA hopes that attendees also will learn about how they can pledge to become a hero by registering to become and organ, tissue and eye donor. “We will have opportunities for on-site donor registration, and ARORA staff will be available to answer questions anyone might have about donation,” she said.

“This is a family-friendly event and we invite everyone to come down to the Library grounds,” Coleman said. “We will even have a kids’ zone with bounce houses and activities for the little ones.

We also encourage everyone to show their support for donation by wearing blue and green in recognition of our colors,” she said.

The event will again culminate in a fun-walk across the Junction Bridge, from Little Rock to North Little Rock and back. This year, walkers will be able to walk in honor of a donor or in support of someone on the waiting list for an organ.

Heather and Pool Boy, along with donor family members, will lead participants across the Junction Bridge to North Little Rock, where families of organ and tissue donors, recipients and ARORA staff and volunteers will hold a brief observance in honor of those who have given the gift of life.

For more information, contact ARORA at 501.907.9150 or arora.org.

34

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

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GREEN UP!

From your garden to your kitchen and closet—here are ideas for ways to fill your life with locally sourced ideas for going green and freshening eshening up this spring.

Spring is Sp

the perfect perf time to perfect your you hosting game!

You already know Eggshells Kitchen Co. Egg has you covered on kitchen kitch tools, but they have fun and unique cookbooks, too. coo

Shop Cynthia East

for these awesome recycled totes

by Malia Designs. Not only will you be friendly to the environment, you’ll help support a socially responsible, Fair Trade brand that designs and sells handbags and accessories, handcrafted in Cambodia, whose sales go to help fight human trafficking.

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Stifft Station Gifts has a gift for every green thumb on your list (even if one of them is you)! Come see our gardenthemed goodies and earth-friendly finds.

Bring a Garden to your Garden.

Lovely outdoor fabrics for your patio or pool always in stock.

Like 1523 Rebsamen Park Rd | Riverdale Design District | Little Rock Us Phone 501-663-0460 | 10:00 - 5:30 Mon - Sat | cynthiaeastfabrics.com

36 APRIL 6, 2017 ARKANSAS TIMES 36 APRIL 6, 2017 ARKANSAS TIMES

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

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Look your

freshest for spring with a new ‘do or a new tattoo from 7th Street Tattoo & Piercing and 7th Street Salon.

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7TH STREET SALON 7TH STREET TATTOO AND PIERCING 814 W. Seventh St. 372.6722 7thstreetsalon.com CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER 1200 President Clinton Ave. 374.4242 clintonfoundation.org CYNTHIA EAST FABRICS 1523 Rebsamen Park Rd. 663.0460 cynthiaeastfabrics.com

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Find the featured items at the following locations:

THE DIET CENTER 4910 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663.9482 dietcentercentralarkansas.com DOUBLETREE 424 W. Markham St. 372.4371 doubletreelr.com EDWARDS FOOD GIANT 7507 Cantrell Rd. 614.3477 other locations statewide edwardsfoodgiant.com

RHEA DRUG STORE 2801 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663.4131 STIFFT STATION GIFTS 3009 W Markham St. 725.0209 stifftstationgifts.com TANGLEWOOD DRUGSTORE 6815 Cantrell Rd. 664.4444 tanglewooddrug.com

The Clinton Museum Store,

conveniently located in the lobby of the Clinton Presidential Center, offers a diverse selection of unique memorabilia and gifts, including hand-made art and jewelry crafted from recycled materials.

Check out the earth friendly goods section at www.ClintonMuseumStore.com.

Brighten Up Your Kitchen This Spring!

EGGSHELLS KITCHEN CO. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd., Suite K 664.6900 eggshellskitchencompany.com

664-6900 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd., Suite K • eggshellskitchencompany.com

A Presidential Experience

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ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT. ARKANSAS CAPITAL CORP., 200 River Market Ave., Suite 400: “Subtle and Bold,” work by Susan Chambers and Sofia Gonzalez, by appointment only. 3749247.

ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 610 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Sheliah Halderman, landscapes and florals; Amaryllis J. Ball, expressionist paintings. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. Sun. 623-6401.

BOSWELL-MOUROT, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Works by Delita Martin, Elizabeth Weber, Anais Dasse, Kyle Boswell, Jeff Horton, Dennis McCann and Keith Runkle. 664-0030.

CANTRELL GALLERY, 8205 Cantrell Road: “The Making of an Artist: Creative Inspirations,” an exhibition of paintings by Jeffery Nodelman. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335.

CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880.

COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “Hub Crafted,” works in paint, clay, print, sculpture and digital technology by youth makers from the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 918-3093.

DRAWL GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by regional and Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 240-7446.

FAYETTEVILLE UNDERGROUND, 101 W. Mountain St., Suite 222: “A Murder of Crows: The End Hate Collection,” installation by V.L. Cox, reception 5-9 p.m.

April 6, show through April 30. 10 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-8 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 479-871-2772.

GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: “Sleep Studies,” mixed media paintings

by Kasten McClellan Searles, through April; work by William McNamara, Tyler Arnold, Amy Edgington, EMILE, Kimberly Kwee, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone, Mary Ann Stafford, Cedric Watson, C.B. Williams, Gino Hollander, Siri Hollander and jewelry by Rae Ann Bayless. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211.

GALLERY 360, 900 S. Rodney Parham Road: Third annual “IceBox,” work by Layet Johnson, Gillian Stewart, Stacy Williams, Matthew Castellano, Sulac, Woozle, Emily Parker, Tea Jackson, Ike Plumlee and Emily Clair Brown.

GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Thoroughbred paintings by Bob Snider and Trey McCarley. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 318-4278.

GOOD WEATHER GALLERY, 4400 Edgemere St., NLR: “Wicker and Diapers,” installation by Dylan Spaysky, through April 8. By appointment only. 680-3763.

GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., North Little Rock: “22nd Anniversary Exhibition,” works by Carroll Cloar, Clementine Hunter, Ida Kohlmeyer, William Dunlap, Charles Harrington, Henri Linton, Robyn Horn, Richard Jolley, Dolores Justus, Sammy Peters, John Harlan Norris, Edward Rice, Kendall Stallings, Glenray Tutor, Donald Roller Wilson and others, through April 8.10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787.

JUSTUS FINE ART GALLERY, 827 A Central Ave., Hot Springs: “Brotherhood,” paintings by Jason Sacran and John P. Lasater, receptions 5-9 p.m. April 7, Gallery Walk, and 4-6 p.m. April 28, show through April. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 321-2335.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Spring Flowers,” paintings by 38

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Louis Beck, through April, giclee giveaway 7 p.m. April 20. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006.

LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: 2017 “Small Works on Paper,” through April 28. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 225-6257.

LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “Delta in Blue,” photographs by Beverly Buys, through April 13.

9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 687-1061.

LEGACY FINE ART, 804 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Blown glass chandeliers by Ed Pennington, paintings by Carole Katchen.

8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri. 762-0840.

LOCAL COLOUR GALLERY, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Artists collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Sat. 265-0422.

M2 GALLERY, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center, 11525 Cantrell Road: “M2-X,” 10-year anniversary exhibit of works by gallery artists Jason Twiggy Lott, Neal Harrington, Steve Adair, Robin Tucker, Catherine Nugent, Lisa Krannichfeld, Ike Garlington, Matt Coburn, Cathy Burns, V.L. Cox and others. 944-7155.

MATTHEWS FINE ART GALLERY, 909 North St.: Paintings by Pat and Tracee Matthews, glass by James Hayes, jewelry

by Christie Young, knives by Tom Gwenn, kinetic sculpture by Mark White. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 831-6200.

MATT McLEOD FINE ART, 108 W. 6th St.: Paintings by McLeod and work in all media by Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 725-8508.

MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Outside the Lines,” graphic work by Nikki Dawes, Kirk Montgomerym, Dusty Higgins and Ron Wolfe, through May. 7 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mon.-Sat. 379-9101.

Other museums JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle, Jacksonville: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m.

Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501-241-1943.

MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibition of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427.

MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, 202 SW O St., Bentonville: 9 a.m.5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-273-2456.

PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, Scott, U.S. Hwy. 165 and state Hwy. 161: Permanent exhibits on historic agriculture. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $4 adults, $3 children. 961-1409.

POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St., Pottsville: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369.

ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “On Fields Far Away: Our Community During the Great War,” through Sept. 23. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479621-1154.

SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT, Scott: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Fri.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections.org.

ARKANSAS TIMES

bike

LOCAL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS ANNOUNCEMENT

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

OVERVIEW The State of Arkansas, Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Intergovernmental Services (DFA/IGS) is pleased to announce the availability of grant funds from the Family Violence Prevention Services Act (FVPSA).

AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS ANNOUNCEMENT OVERVIEW The State of Arkansas, Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Intergovernmental Services (DFA-IGS) is pleased to announce the availability of grant funds from the STOP VAWA program.

Applicants are encouraged to read this entire Application Packet thoroughly before preparing and submitting an application. The Request for Proposals (RFP) is open to all applicants meeting eligibility requirements

Applicants are encouraged to read this entire Application Packet thoroughly before preparing and submitting an application. The Request for Proposals is open to all applicants meeting eligibility requirements (see Eligibility section).

Applications will be submitted via DFAIGS’ new grants management system, called IGS Connect. All submitted applications must be complete and include all required information and documentation. Applications received with missing information may not be reviewed. Applications are due at 11:59 p.m. on May 15, 2017.

Applications will be submitted via DFAIGS’ new grant management system, called IGS Connect. All submitted applications must be complete and include all required information and documentation. Applications received with missing information may not be reviewed. Applications are due at 11:59 p.m. on May 15, 2017.

AWARD PERIOD Awards will be made for a twelve (12) month period from October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Awards will be eligible for a one-year continuation dependent upon available funds and the previous year’s performance.

APPLICATION DEADLINE Applications must be received via IGS Connect by 11:59 p.m., May 15, 2017.

AWARD PERIOD Awards will be made for a twelve (12) month period of October 1, 2017, through September 30, 2018. Awards will be eligible for a one (1) year continuation dependent upon the availability of funds and the previous year’s performance.

APPLICATION DEADLINE Applications must be submitted by 11:59p.m., May 15, 2017.

Applicants can access IGS Connect at https://igsconnect.arkansas.gov. An agency may only submit one application per proposed project. The application is subject to public review by State Executive Order 12372; therefore, applicants must complete SF-424 and submit it with the application.

Please direct all inquiries concerning this RFP to: IGS.Contact@dfa.arkansas.gov.

All questions will be answered within 24 hours and posted to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document weekly.

The FAQ document can be found at this link: http://www.dfa.arkansas.gov/office/intergovernmentalServices/grants/ pages/rfp.aspx

Applicants can access IGS Connect at https://igsconnect.arkansas.gov. An agency may only submit one application per proposed project. The application is subject to public review by State Executive Order 12372; therefore, applicants must complete SF-424 and submit it with the application.

Please direct all inquiries concerning this Request For Proposal to Email: IGS.Contact@dfa.arkansas.gov. All questions will be answered within 24 hours and posted to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document weekly. The FAQ document can be found at this link: http://www.dfa.arkansas.gov/offices/ intergovernmentalServices/grants/ Pages/rfp.aspx

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

Elementary School Special Education Teacher (Maumelle, AR and client sites) Develop IEP’s in Enrich online for Elementary School students, conduct and attend IEP meetings, and assess the level of performance. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Education or Special Education required. Must possess valid SC Special Education certification.

Mail resume to Global Teachers Solutions LLC, Attn: HR, 11901 Crystal Hill Road, Maumelle, AR 72113

LAWN CARE WORKERS needed in Little Rock. Salary based on experience. For more information call Ricky at 501-590-3051 or 501-297-4484

By Maxwell Anderson Based on the novel by William March March 31 April 1, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 2017 Directed by Tommie Tinker

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS ANNOUNCEMENT OVERVIEW The State of Arkansas, Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Intergovernmental Services (DFA-IGS) is pleased to announce the availability of grant funds from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) program.

Applicants are encouraged to read this entire Application Packet thoroughly before preparing and submitting an application. The Request for Proposals is open to all entities meeting eligibility requirements (see Eligibility section).

Applications will be submitted via DFA-IGS’ new grant management system, called IGS Connect. All submitted applications must be complete and include all of the required information and documentation. Applications received with missing information may not be reviewed.

Applications are due at 11:59 p.m. on May 15, 2017.

AWARD PERIOD Awards will be made for a twelve (12) month period from October 1, 2017, through September 30, 2018. Awards will be eligible for a one (1) year continuation that is dependent upon available funds and the previous year’s performance.

APPLICATION DEADLINE Applications must be received via IGS Connect by 11:59 p.m., May 15, 2017.

Applicants can access IGS Connect at https://igsconnect.arkansas.gov. An agency may only submit one application per proposed project. The application is subject to public review by State Executive Order 12372; therefore, applicants must complete SF-424 and submit it with the application.

Please direct all inquiries concerning this Request For Proposals to: IGS.Contact@ dfa.arkansas.gov. All questions will be answered within 24 hours and posted to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document weekly. The FAQ document can be found at this link: http://www. dfa.arkansas.gov/offices/intergovernmentalServices/grants/Pages/rfp.aspx

For more information contact us at 501.374.3761 or www. weekendtheater.org

+ + + + + + + + CONNORS STATE COLLEGE

BULL SALE

100 Head, All Breeds

APR. 13, 1 PM Warner, OK (918) 557-4560

1001 W. 7th St. Little Rock, AR 72201

In The Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas Hon. Richard N. Moore, Jr. – 15th Division 6th Circuit 60DR-12-5989 OCSE/State of Arkansas V Eric Wilson Shamone Benson

WARNING ORDER YOU ARE WARNED TO APPEAR IN this court within thirty days to answer the complaint of the defendant.

Failure to answer within 30 days could result in judgment against assignor.

www.cattleinmotion.com

+ + + + + + + +

Our hogs are a cross between Large Black and Berkshire, old 19th century breeds. They are raised on our pasture and forage in the forest that adjoins our fields. They are never confined like industrial hogs. We do not use any kind of routine antibiotics. Our hogs live ARKANSAS GRASS were FED LAMB like they meant to.

PRICE LIST FRESH RAW HAM $7 lb.

PORK LOIN $8 lb

HAM BREAKFAST STEAKS $7 lb

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE $9 lb

We offer first quality one-year-old lamb raised on our farm in North Pulaski County. Our meat is free of steroids or any other chemicals. The only time we use antibiotics is if the animal has been injured which is extremely rare. All meat is USDA inspected.

Larry Crane, Circuit Clerk

PORK BRATWURST $10 One pound package

You can pick up your meat at our farm off Hwy 107 in North Pulaski County (about 25 miles north of downtown Little Rock) or we can meet you in downtown Little Rock weekdays.

All meat is aged and then frozen.

PORK STEAKS $10 lb PRICE LIST: RIB ROAST TESTICLES contains about eight ribs (lamb chops) $17 lb.

$10 lb

WHOLE LEG OF LAMBPORK BUTTS TANNED SHEEPSKINS, $10 lb SHOULDER (bone in, cook this slow, like a pot roast. Meat falls off the bone). $11 lb.

HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS, $5 lb

$100-$150

(Our sheepskins are tanned in a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery that has specialized in sheepskins for generations.)

PORK TENDERLOIN BONELESS LOIN $12 lb TENDERLOIN $8 lb

$20 lb

Eric Wilson 5001 W 65th St, Apt. C103 Little Rock, AR 72209

ARKANSAS TIMES

PASTURED OLD BREED PORK

(about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb.

Date: 23-MAR-2017

sip LOCAL

LAMB BRATWURST LINK SAUSAGE

(one-lb package) $10 lb

NECKBONES

(for stew or soup) $5 lb

SPARE RIBS $9 lb BABYBACK RIBS $12 lb

India Blue F a r m

12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com

12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com arktimes.com APRIL 6, 2017

39

THURSDAY

Benefiting

MAY 4 | 6-9pm

Argenta Arts District

presents

Available for purchase

river market pavilionS

Food Available for Purchase from

Join the fun as Don Julio, the world’s first ultra-premium tequila, presents •

Thursday, May 4 at the Little Rock River Market for the first annual Margarita Festival

•

It’s a salute to the perfection of a great margarita

•

Sample takes on the classic cocktail from the city’s best bartenders and VOTE for your favorites and crown one margarita best of the fest

Partner Sponsor 40

APRIL 6, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Competing Bars & Restaurants Agave Grill Big Whiskey Bleu Monkey Boulevard Bistro Cache Restaurant Cajun’s Wharf Copper Grill Ernie Biggs Loca Luna O’Looney’s & Loblolly The Pizzeria Revolution Taco and Tequila Bar Samantha’s Taco Mama Trio’s

Photobooth Sponsor

Wristband Sponsor

Loca Luna Taco Mama

Latin Salsa tunes & Jimmy Buffett standards from Club 27 Little Rock Salsa

TICKETS Current Ticket Price: $30 Ticket price includes 15 three-ounce Margarita Samples. Frio Beer For Sale.

centralarkansastickets.com

Tickets are limited. Purchase early.

Club 27

Music Sponsor

AN ES ARKANSAS TIM EVENT