Arkansas Times - February 2, 2017

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CENTRAL HIGH A history of school desegregation in Arkansas.

By John A. Kirk

FEBRUARY 10

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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

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.

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3

COMMENT

More of the same Authoritarian? C’mon, folks. The extremes of both sides are completely drowning out the bipartisan middle’s take (that maybe I’m just naive enough to still claim exists).

I’ve been very concerned about the breadth of executive branch power over the past 16 years and this all seems to be a continuation. With George W. Bush’s White House counsel torture memos and Obama’s unprecedented use of the 1917 Espionage Act against nine whistleblowers and skirting congressional obstructionism with reliance on wide-ranging executive orders, some truly terrible precedents have been set for the future. And yes, they set up entirely too well for the current fellow in office, who’s not too big on “process.”

This is why we’ve got to hold leaders within our chosen political parties accountable and not be so shortsighted about important principles. We should certainly always stand up for free speech and government transparency. Am I right, or am I right?

Jeff B. Woodmansee Associate Professor UA Little Rock Bowen School of Law

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ful state senators was trying to get a law passed requiring a cursive writing class at some grade. This would be great for the future learning and production of our youth. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)

Spicolihog

Regarding the post about recess in elementary schools, I agree wholeheartedly.

However, I believe one of our wonder-

Our state has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the country. So, let’s make it easier for the sugar peddlers to feed

In response to the Jan. 30 Arkansas Blog post, “Gov. Hutchinson’s scam to slip giveaway for soda industry into military retirement tax exemption bill”:

DINE-IN, CARRY OUT AND FULL CATERING

Thank you for this always-interesting feature, Arkansas Times!

I would like to clarify a claim made

by Marion Humphrey Jr. in regard to how many Rock Region METRO student 31-day passes eSTEM distributes to its students. The eSTEM CFO, Mark Milhollen, told me that eSTEM has roughly 100 students using these passes as of Jan. 27. With a current enrollment of 1,462, 100 students is 7 percent of the student population at eSTEM. Our public transit system is serving students of a variety of ages every weekday, taking them to educational opportunities throughout the county. Whatever your beliefs on charter schools, it makes great sense for as many students who are able, whether they are public school students (including traditional public school students and charter school students) or private school students, to make use of our community’s existing public transportation resources. With more investment, our system could reach even more area students, helping to reduce traffic congestion and giving parents and other caregivers an opportunity to let a professional driver get their students to school with 4

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

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More of Asa and crew’s corporate welfare. Make the corporations earn their money honestly, and not rely on taxpayers to make a profit.

Sound Policy Ah, the incredible honesty of Republican lawmakers. Now they’ve got one of America’s greatest scammers in the White House (remind me: how many bankruptcies did Obama go through before getting elected? How many divorces?), they have a true professional to emulate. peterjkraus Always spineless Asa, always!

What a crock of stinking doodoo, brought to us by those self-professed small-government, fiscally conservative, lying liars with R after their names!

I choose to call them “Teapublibans.”

RYD

From the web In response to last week’s cover story, “Big Ideas for Arkansas”:

the beast.

And blending one bill with another that has nothing to do with one another is pathetic and dishonest. This is another example of our elected officials not giving a crap about our military and pathetically sliding a crappy bill underneath their sacrifice. yapperjohn

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In response to the Jan. 30 Arkansas Blog post “Remove two LR high schools from ‘academic distress’ list, Education Dept. recommends”: And so it continues. LRSD with 48 schools has 6 (12 percent) declared academically deficient and get taken over while a state-sponsored charter school in Little Rock has never passed the requirement (100 percent fail) and they give it another 13 years of uneducating people.

How many other charters and private schools are getting a Republican Board of Education free pass? couldn’t be better Time for Johnny Key to leave LRSD alone and to return the district to local control. He had little or nothing to do with LRSD’s improvements, so his usefulness is questionable anyway.

Jake da Snake What happens to Michael Poore if the district is returned to local control?

Does he have a contract that guarantees him a certain term as superintendent? I watched him when he was superintendent in Bentonville, and he served creditably. I thought he was crazy when he gave up that position to take the Little Rock one. Time will tell whether he will

ARKANSAS TIMES

survive or not. plainjim In response to the Jan. 30 Arkansas Blog post “Bentley’s bill restricting use of food stamps passes House”: Are they going to give grocery store owners’ tax breaks or pay them for the expense of making all these changes?

Will there be blind studies to show the results of this action?

Maxifer

explore

LOCAL

I am really not as naive as the following comment might make me appear, and far be it from me to defend a woman who would threaten to use her elected position to take a game warden’s job for giving her husband a ticket, but removing public funds from the purchase of foods that are clearly unhealthy is not a terrible idea. Such an action would not correct the problem of poverty-induced obesity, but at least the action would diminish the enablement a bit. The people of limited disposable funds do not have to eat for satiation; they just do so out of habit, and no small amount of susceptibility to advertising. The amount of sugar added to everything from children’s cereals to salad dressings is huge, disappointing, and entirely intentional. Putting a bit of economic pressure on the decision process as to what to buy and eat would help.

The major transgressors, such as sugary soft drinks, are very easy to identify. If Asa is trying to slip through additional support for the soft drink industry, I just cannot imagine how any decent human being could be part of such an action and how anyone could sleep at night. deadseasquirrel You know, Mary does not not exactly fit the profile of someone who has been eating healthy, and she has all the money she needs to do so. The poor people she has targeted have to try to eat enough bulk to make them feel sated, whether healthy or not, so as to just get through the night and live another day. The smugness and condescension on these dictatorial legislators continues to dismay me.

Remember, she is the one who threatened a game warden with his job when he ticketed her husband. Why do we elect these kinds of people in Arkansas, when there are so many more people who could do a better job? plainjim She wrote this bill from the back of her rainbow-farting unicorn, so, you know it’s grounded in reality. dimplasm

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5

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the week “We’re going to use the veterans to do some hard things because it gives us cover.”

— Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Hindsville), complaining on the House floor about the inclusion of a $6 million tax cut on the wholesale tax on soft drink syrup paid for by a tax hike on unemployment benefits and digital downloads in a bill promoted by Governor Hutchinson that also creates a tax exemption for military retirement pay. The military exemption would affect 29,000 military retirees, while reducing general revenue by $13.4 million in 2019. That loss of revenue would be entirely offset by an increase in the tax on candy and soft drinks. The bill was likely to be considered in the Senate earlier this week and was expected to advance.

Ledge: Please sue us Governor Hutchinson signed into law a ban on dilation and evacuation abortion after 12 weeks gestation, the safest procedure in the second trimester (used in 95 percent of all second-trimester abortions in the United States), hours after it cleared the General Assembly.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Andy Mayberry (R-Hensley), the president of Arkansas Right to Life, was based on National Right to Life Committee legislation. It has an exception for the life of the mother, but none for rape 6

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

or incest. Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said legal action would be forthcoming.

The World Health Organization and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend dilation and evacuation as the safest abortion procedure for women more than 12 or 13 weeks pregnant. Mayberry referred to the medical procedure as “dismemberment.”

million in tobacco settlement funds to reduce the waiting list, he estimated the list would be reduced by 500 to 900 people.

DHS spokesperson Amy Webb told the Arkansas Times that those numbers still stand. The money will serve “a minimum of 500,” she said, “but if they have less complex needs, we think we can serve up to 900. ... It just depends on individual needs.”

New law will reduce waitlist

Distressed no more

Hundreds of Arkansas families who have been waiting years for state assistance in caring for developmentally disabled children or adults will soon be able to access those services, thanks to a bill signed into law by Governor Hutchinson.

HB 1033 will use a portion of Arkansas’s tobacco settlement proceeds to expand the Alternative Community Services Waiver Program, which provides home- and community-based services to individuals with developmental disabilities. Around 3,000 families are on the waiting list to receive waiver services. In September, when the governor announced his intention to use $8.5

The Arkansas Department of Education has recommended that J.A. Fair High School and McClellan High School in the Little Rock School District be removed from the list of campuses the state deems to be in academic distress.

Eight other schools and the Blytheville School District were also on the list of distressed campuses recommended for removal. The list included one area charter school, Little Rock Preparatory Academy Elementary; Jacksonville Middle School; and several schools in Pine Bluff.

Academic distress is determined by student performance on standardized

tests. If less than 49.5 percent of the student body meets proficiency standards in math and literacy for three years, a school is considered distressed.

Should the state Board of Education follow the recommendation from ADE (which it typically does in regards to academic distress designations) three campuses in the Little Rock district would be left on the distressed list: Hall High and two middle schools, Cloverdale and Henderson. The state board will take up the recommendations at its next meeting, which is scheduled for Feb. 9.

The district was taken over by the state board in January 2015 because six schools (out of 48 campuses total at that time) were in academic distress. Baseline Elementary was removed from the distressed list previously.

Vote delayed Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore announced that the LRSD is delaying the millage election that it had scheduled for March 14. No new election date was announced, though Poore emphasized in a statement that the postponement is temporary.

OPINION

Renters not helped

I

f you are hoping to see new laws that notice to leave is improve rights for people who rent considered a crime homes or apartments in Arkansas, you — a provision that is will find disappointing two bills proposed unique to Arkansas. so far this legislative session — SB 25, by Every other state Sen. Blake Johnson (R-Corning), and uses civil evictions, ELEANOR HB 1166, by Rep. Laurie Rushing (R-Hot meaning landlords WHEELER Springs). Even if both bills become stat- cannot threaten ute, Arkansas would still have the worst tenants with fines and jail time over late landlord tenant laws in the country. Re- rent.

The second bill, HB 1166, attempts to maining on premises after failing to pay rent on time would still be a crime, and address the other major shortcoming in landlords would still be allowed to rent tenant rights: standards of habitability. out dilapidated and dangerous houses Under existing law, Arkansas landlords with no legal repercussions. are under practically no legal obligaThere are two major flaws in Arkan- tion to maintain the condition of their sas’s landlord-tenant law; each of the pro- rental properties. All other states require posed bills takes aim at one of them and a landlord to make repairs, and virtually misses. First, Arkansas law allows crimi- all require a landlord to offer and maintain nal evictions in which tenants can be jailed fit and habitable premises. HB 1166 adds a for not paying rent on time. SB 25 does minimal list of maintenance requirements improve the “failure to vacate” statute so that must be met by landlords, but it is by that tenants don’t have to pay all of what no means adequate or comparable to the standards of all other states. their landlord alleges they owe before going to trial, and it lessens the chances of HB 1166 requires air conditioning and jail time. However, it does not change the heat (but only if it was already there at fact that being a day late on rent means a the beginning of the lease); electricity, tenant forfeits his lease, or that remaining water and sewage that are up to code (but in the home 11 days after a landlord gives only based on the codes as they stood

Vindictive

I

s it a only a personality disorder, a contractors. deeper character flaw, or just an inseHe embarked cure ego, this obsession of President on his march to the Trump with settling scores with his pre- presidency in 2011 decessor, Barack Obama, and critics of by jumping to the all stripes? It dominated the two-month head of the illegitERNEST interregnum, intensified during his first imacy movement DUMAS week of real power, and now looks like — the premise that the way it is going to be always with the Obama was not the bona fide president new leader of the free world. because he was an African-born MusTrump announced last week that he lim, despite the evidence of both his would deploy the Justice Department, short- and long-form birth certificates the FBI and other instruments of gov- and the next-day hospital birth notices in ernment to expose massive voter fraud Hawaiian newspapers. The issue dogged that he said caused him to lose the popu- Trump throughout his campaign until lar vote by nearly 3 million. He hastily finally, seven weeks before the election, signed executive orders in his first days he said he still doubted Obama’s Amerundoing anything he could find in the ican birth and, to still the clamor, the Obama years that could be overturned next day told reporters curtly: “President instantly without waiting upon an act Barack Obama was born in the United of Congress, so as to eliminate any evi- States. Period.” It was a humiliating dence that the man he had implored moment, aggravated by Obama’s usual Americans to despise had ever been blithe response: “I was pretty confident a diligent president. One remarkable about where I was born.” exception: He’s keeping Obama’s order Trump’s actual election might have protecting gay and transgender work- made all that bygones, but some media ers from discrimination by government kept reporting Hillary Clinton’s popular-

when the building was constructed); and walls topped with a functioning roof. A residence lacking these requirements could hardly be considered a residence at all. Again, this bill lacks real teeth. Unlike every other state, Arkansas tenants would still have no legal authority to withhold or deduct rent because of black mold, bed-bug infestations, no floor, exterior doors that don’t lock or other major code violations.

Of course, these bills could still be amended to outlaw criminal evictions and include the habitability standards employed by every other state. But bills that include language to protect renters have come up before in the Arkansas Legislature and have either been shot down or weakened by landlord-friendly amendments. For example, the Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act became law in 2007 after many attempts — but only after the legislature threw out the pro-tenant positions and kept the provisions that were good for landlords. That is thanks to interest groups representing landlords, realtors and insurance companies who benefit from the imbalance in the law.

There’s another shadow of hope for tenant rights in Arkansas from the judicial branch. In 2015, a circuit judge overturned the current statute for criminal evictions in Pulaski County in a case involving a tenant who was accused of owing $22,000 in

back rent. She would have had to pay the alleged debt before being heard in court, according the law at the time. The tenant, understandably, did not have those funds and was denied her constitutional right to trial. The judge ruled the criminal eviction statute was in violation of both federal and state constitutions, holding that it was unconstitutional in five different ways — but the ruling only applied to Pulaski County.

Circuit courts in at least three Arkansas counties later found the criminal eviction law to be unconstitutional, and many district courts don’t bother to enforce it.

SB 25 would actually be a step backward in counties where criminal evictions are either formally or informally renounced by the judicial branch, because landlords in those counties would again be urging courts to hear failure-to-vacate cases, due to the statute change. We can hope for incremental progress in other circuit courts or wait for a ruling by the state Supreme Court. We could also hold our breath for stronger legislation from our representatives at the Capitol, but that would mean legislators standing up to some heavyweight lobby groups.

vote margin until it reached 2,865,000.

Then came the inaugural and the media’s usual reporting of crowd sizes, already a Trump obsession, and the side-by-side images of Trump’s crowd and Obama’s multitude in 2009. Washington and the teeming Maryland and Virginia suburbs are massive Democratic havens. No one but Trump expected a similar horde in cold, wet Washington for a Republican inaugural. But he insisted he had history’s biggest crowd and that he would have won the popular vote big if 3 to 5 million people had not voted illegally, all for Clinton.

So the massive criminal investigation will begin as soon as Jeff Sessions is confirmed and sworn in as attorney general.

Where he and the FBI will begin is hard to say, because no one has pointed to any evidence of illegal voting except for the people who are registered in two or more states, like two members of the president’s family, his press secretary, treasury secretary and chief political adviser and the Arkansas attorney general. What could go wrong?

Trump may have missed the last big voting-fraud scandal, in 2007. Having been at the center of it, Arkansans remember it. It didn’t turn out well for

the GOP. President George W. Bush’s Justice Department fired eight Republican U.S. attorneys, seven of them because they had disobeyed directives from Bush’s attorney general to find and prosecute Democratic vote fraud and the eighth, Arkansas’s Bud Cummins, because the White House wanted to give his job to White House political operative Tim Griffin as a launching pad for a political career in Arkansas (congressman and now lieutenant governor).

Cummins, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign in Arkansas, was OK with his own firing, but he became a fierce critic of his old bosses for putting politics above principle and the law. I’m sure Bud will warn Trump about what he is getting into.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales became a laughingstock when he said a variant of “I don’t recall” 64 times in congressional hearings on the firings. He fell on his sword for Bush and resigned.

Federal prosecutors were given a blanket directive in 2002 to hunt down Democrats and prosecute them for voting fraud. Nothing happened, even after Bush passed along rumors he had heard about fraud in a half-dozen states.

Eleanor Wheeler is a senior policy analyst for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

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don’t know about you, but I’m all Trumped-out.

The whole country is learning how exhausting it can be to live with a seriously mentally ill person: the constant feeling of apprehension and unease over what kind of manipulative, delusional nonsense is coming next. The uncertainty about how to react. Definitely remove all weapons and secure potentially dangerous drugs. Will calling the police make things better, or worse? Is it too early to seek order of commitment? Or too late?

If the judge denies it, then what?

If the analogy makes you angry, tough.

You and that scrofulous twit Steve Bannon can both take a hike. He’s the Trump apparatchik who says the press should keep its mouth shut. I’ve been hearing from knuckleheads like him as long as I’ve written this column. Fat chance.

Because crazy people tend to be cunning and tireless, it’s important to take reality breaks. So this is a column about my 6-year-old orange tabby, Albert, the most unusual cat I’ve known. Albert’s had major life adjustments to make over the past year, and he’s handled them with creativity and aplomb.

A little background: Albert came to us at age 12 weeks. He’d spent his infancy on a farmhouse porch surrounded by dogs and free-range chickens. So when our aggressive 110-pound Great Pyrenees Maggie stuck her muzzle in his face, he jumped on her head. She thought it was the best thing that ever happened, and adopted the kitten for life.

Hence Albert’s first nickname: The Orange Dog. Besides spending most of his time among dogs, he appointed himself my personal companion, following me everywhere on our farm. He’d sit on fence posts and let Mount Nebo, the Tennessee walking horse, nuzzle him. He treated adult cows like furniture, but sniffed noses with curious calves under the fence.

One time he climbed in with the chickens and got into a standoff with the rooster — they glared at each other like Mexican prizefighters.

He showed no interest in birds after that.

Most doglike of all, Albert normally obeyed when called. I’d put the big dogs up every night, holler his name, and pick out his orange eyes with a flashlight as he came hustling for bedtime duty. As long as it was covered by a blanket, he’d lie on my chest purring. If not, no way.

Did I think he was a pervert?

After we adopted another tiny orange tabby abandoned along our road, Albert

learned to let himself into the bathroom towel closet for kitten-free napping. You’d hear the soft thump of GENE the spring-loaded LYONS door as he came and went. Otherwise, he and young Martin tussled playfully like the Pink Panther and Kato, the martial arts houseboy.

His second nickname: Inspector Clouseau.

Another time he took my side in a fight with his adoptive mother. I was furious with Maggie for bullying Diane’s elderly basset hound. Albert arched his back, pinned his ears and stalked the dog with a clear intent to thrash her — all 10 pounds of him. She slunk away until I nailed her with a weathered cow’s thighbone she carried around.

Message delivered; crisis averted.

Soon enough, Albert had eradicated mice from the feed room. He began traveling to the neighbor’s hay barn about a half mile away in search of rodents to kill. He’d sometimes stay gone overnight, which worried me for fear of coyotes.

Sometimes the dogs and I would walk over there to fetch him. He’d run to us, rub-a-dub on everybody’s legs and then follow us home. We must have made a comical sight: three guard dogs, two basset hounds and a creamsicle-colored tomcat parading across a cow pasture.

Then last spring I took a pratfall from a horse, breaking three ribs and buggering up my hip. I was in serious pain for six weeks. Albert dramatically changed his habits. No more cross-country expeditions. He stayed indoors day and night comforting me. He even appeared to recognize the theme music to Boston Red Sox broadcasts. After I became mobile again, he resumed prowling.

Last October, we moved back to Little Rock. I worried about how Albert would adapt, although our back gate opens on the Arkansas School for the Blind campus, and there’s a steep, wooded ravine behind it. I needn’t have worried. Like many older neighborhoods — our “new” house is 100 years old — Hillcrest has a lot of rats. These smug city rodents have never met an experienced country cat. There’s a new sheriff in town. He carries their freshly slain corpses over a rock wall like a small leopard, leaving them for the dogs to admire.

Hence Albert’s new nickname: The Sheriff.

Beware of ‘helpers’

W

henever something bad happens, I, like probably many of you, remember Fred Rogers’ quote about what his mother told him about the helpers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

This weekend, I encountered a new type of “helper.” After Donald Trump’s disaster of an executive order that resulted in green card and visa holders being detained and already approved refugees being denied entry into the United States, I posted on social media about the harmful effects. Next thing I know, I’m in a debate with a former high school classmate about immigration and refugees. He accused my church pastor of spreading lies and expressed support of Trump’s actions. I encouraged him to check out Canopy NWA, a local nonprofit that helps refugees settle into communities in Northwest Arkansas, to learn more on the extensive vetting process.

After a few minutes, he responded that he had shared information on Canopy with some “watchdog agencies looking for any place that might be willing to hide illegal immigrants.”

He went on to say he did this so that the unnamed watchdog groups could “help” the immigrants go through the process to become legal. What a crock.

Unless he is woefully ignorant of the ways of the world, he was not acting with a helping heart. Rather, I suppose he imagined helping set up a raid on undocumented people hidden somewhere in a back room or attic.

In reality, this nonprofit is registered with Arkansas’s secretary of state. Local business owners, clergy and U.S. military veterans serve on its board. The group is in regular contact with 3rd District Congressman Steve Womack and Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman. It is not a shadow group at all. But if it had been an organization that harbored undocumented individuals in back rooms and in attics as Miep and Jan Gies hid Anne Frank and her family, this “helper” would have put real lives at risk. Lives of men and women and children and teenag-

ers who face real dangers back in places like El Salvador and parts of Mexico and other countries AUTUMN around the world TOLBERT where cartels and religious extremists rule.

What is most frightening is my former classmate is not your stereotypical anti-immigration poster boy.

He isn’t, like another schoolmate did, posting photos of himself with a flag emblazoned with the words “White Power Klu Klux Klan.” No, he is a churchgoer and owns his own business. He attended college. He seems to be rather affluent and travels often.

He is a nice guy. This is not the downon-his-luck, out-of-work, angry, bluecollar Trump supporter the news loves to profile. He is the guy next door, a family man and a prime example of how extreme viewpoints have been normalized over the past year.

As many have pointed out on social media, if you ever wondered how you would have responded when the Nazis came to power, look at how you are responding now. These refugees and immigrants are not being sent to concentration camps, but many of the women and girls face rape and forced marriages. The men face violence and conscription into the cartels. And if they are LGBT, many of them face death.

Some believe that those of us who marched last weekend for refugees and immigrants are overreacting and being hysterical. If that has crossed your mind or is your opinion, sit down and talk with a refugee. Sit down and talk with an immigrant. Hear what they faced before leaving their homeland to come to the United States.

Hear what their children faced if they did not come here. Now imagine what you would do if you faced those same horrific circumstances. For those of you who are already friends with refugees and immigrants, both documented and undocumented, guard them and keep them safe, but, please, as it continues to get scarier and scarier out there, watch out for some of the “helpers.”

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Skeptical about Anderson

onsider yourselves lucky, Hog fans. Most teams that manage to play about five quality minutes out of 80 in a two-game week don’t end up fortunate enough to forge a split like Arkansas did in its latest two road games.

The Razorbacks’ listless five-day stretch started late Tuesday night in Nashville, and it was garish for the first 35 minutes to say the least. Vanderbilt, a team that still toted around a losing record even after upsetting Florida the prior Saturday, dogged the Hogs solidly and led 58-43 late in the contest, seemingly well in command given Arkansas’s gross offensive ineptitude to that point.

After a 30-30 first half, and being knotted at 43 without about 13 minutes left, the game tilted thoroughly toward the undermanned Commodores over the next several minutes. It wasn’t that the host’s 15-0 run was particularly dominant, but that the Hogs were downright atrocious from Daryl Macon’s three with 13:19 left until his free throw with 5:55 on the clock.

And so a team that got whitewashed for more than seven minutes then, naturally, poured in 28 over that final 5:55 to eke out a 71-70 win, which Macon cemented with three free throws after he was fouled on a would-be game-winning 22-footer from the top of the key with 1.6 ticks remaining. Macon wasn’t all that great on the whole, but he continued his propensity to be an assassin from the stripe, going 7 for 7 and coolly flexing his shooting arm toward the sparse crowd after Vandy’s last-ditch 40-footer glanced off the rim.

There would be no miracle flourish against Oklahoma State in the pitiful excuse for a Big 12-SEC “challenge” on Saturday, though. And here’s where this columnist’s long-standing skepticism over Mike Anderson creeps in, yet again. There’s no question that even in a softer-than-usual conference, winning a road game is something that you grow to appreciate. Arkansas beat Tennessee in Knoxville, and the Vols came back two weeks later to vanquish Kentucky there. The Hogs put away Vandy after the Commodores presumably got some swagger from their own road win in Gainesville. Beating Texas A&M, even in hideous fashion, carries great meaning for a program that had not won in College Station since the two schools were Southwest Conference rivals.

But Arkansas should have extracted some momentum from these victories, right? There BEAU should have been WILCOX a sense of urgency to not only represent the conference well on Saturday in Stillwater, but a profound desire to show that this fourgame winning streak wasn’t fluky, but an indicator of a team on the rise.

As they often have done under Anderson’s watch, though, the Hogs came out of the tunnel zombified and disinterested, and that led to the Cowboys — a team not far removed from a six-game losing streak, mind you — blowing the doors off the Hogs from tipoff to terminus, 99-71. Yes, the rout was actually two points worse than the one Kentucky leveled on the Razorbacks.

Yes, it happened at the hands of a foe that rated as one of the worst defensive teams in its conference.

The Hogs were down 14-2 by the time the afternoon cocktail had been stirred, and that deficit mushroomed progressively over a first half that easily ranks among the worst 20 minutes of basketball you will ever have the misfortune of watching. OSU did whatever it wanted to offensively, rolling up 59 points in a manner that looked less like an intraconference grudge match and more like one of those godforsaken Rock ’N’ Jock celebrity washout farces that MTV got a lot of mileage out of back in the 1990s. Hell, for all I know, Dan Cortese and Michael Rapaport might’ve teamed up for the last 15 or so points of that half, because I was well into midday log-sawing on the couch after the Cowboys pushed the lead to around 20.

This is the State of the Disunion in Fayetteville right now, folks. When the Hogs want to play hard, they do, and they’re capable of being a second-tier type of program that could nudge their way into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, which after two full decades of failing to get there sounds pretty damned appealing, huh? As it stands, though, they’re also erratic, maddening and disturbingly detached from a sideline that offers a lot of grimaces from Anderson and clipboard shuffling from his support staff, but not much else.

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Dispatches

A

deputy Observer and friends recently made the trek to D.C. for the Women’s March on Washington, the hugely attended event that bigly showed up the sparse turnout for the inauguration of Dorito Mussolini, his best stab at alternative facts be damned.

Sad! Here is a little of what our friend Observed while helping kick open the door on a new age of patriotism and protest.

Keeping with our 2017 resolution here at the Observatory to Always Be Observing, and considering how the worm has turned as of late, it was decided that attending the women’s march in Little Rock would not be enough. We needed to go to the source to have our voices heard and our bodies seen along with a near half-million others in Washington, D.C. Having a junior high-era friend from back home in Benton County offer to put us up — despite his Republican leanings — sealed the deal.

As two of our party of three were D.C. virgins, we wanted to be prepared.

Multiple bandanas were packed after the internet told us to have them at the ready in case of tear gas attack. We also had lots of snacks. Other than the act of driving a Prius through rural middle Tennessee, we were incognito as to our ultimate intentions at our nation’s capital.

So we decided to remedy that with some automotive shoe polish sloganeering. But after a couple of fruitless stops, we concluded that 21st century radicals don’t use shoe polish anymore to tell it like it is.

Then, we noticed a van in the parking lot, its windows chock-full of messages in chalk — and just the kind of messages we’d hoped to put on our windows. Turns out it was a van full of nasty women also headed to the march who were more than pleased to lend us their chalk. A couple pumping gas nearby saw what was going on, and joined in the conversation. Turns out they were headed to the march, too. Then, another woman who wasn’t marching came over to thank us for doing so. Other cars honked their horns in support and gave the thumbs-up.

Soon, more than a dozen were gathered in solidarity. Photos were taken. It was its own mini-march right there off

the interstate in Lexington, Va. Warm feelings and camaraderie in that most American, and often most dangerous, of places: the anonymous convenience store parking lot.

When we got to D.C., the march itself was such a mass of humanity that it was easy to lose one’s sense of perspective.

With most all other landmarks hidden by the sea of people, the Washington Monument was our North Star. But most everyone was unfailingly polite. There were lots of “excuse me” and “I’m sorry” words heard, with very few police or security seen. We thought we saw a couple of security types once, but couldn’t be sure. Either way, they were too busy scrolling through their phones to do any nightstick-bashing.

Every once in a while, there would be an exhilarating cheer that would begin eerily in the distance and roll through the crowd, and we’d whoop it up, too.

Even while sitting on the front steps of the National Archives sharing a can of smoked oysters, we paused our snacking for a big shared ‘WHOOOO!’ when it came around.

We didn’t realize until well after it was all over that those cheers were for the likes of speakers Angela Davis or Gloria Steinem, not merely because the march and its participants were awesome, as we thought. Jumbotrons? A stage? Celebrities? We saw none and needed none. That must have been where all the security was.

Something we didn’t know we needed until we saw it at the march? A merrygo-round, offering rides for $3.50 a pop.

Although it was ostensibly to amuse the many children on hand for the event, lots of adults took their turns as well, still holding their protest signs as the carousel marched them around in circles, surrounded by the frozen painted smiles of undulating fiberglass horses, with tinkling lullabies providing the demented soundtrack. Just another surreal scene in a surreal day, protesting a surreal situation in a surreal time.

From the Chief: Hang in there, deputy Observer. Something tells Yours Truly it’s only gonna get more surreal from here.

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arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

11

Arkansas Reporter

THE

A weekend of protests Actions against women, immigrants bring people to the Capitol.

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

12

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

I

t’s clear evidence of local widespread shock and disgust at the actions of President Trump in his first 10 days in office that in less than 24 hours, and just a day after people rallied at the state Capitol in support of reproductive rights, nearly a thousand people showed up again Sunday for a spur-of-the moment protest of his immigration ban.

Trump’s executive order banning entry into the United States of people from seven Muslim nations left students, professors, professionals and families with legal tourist visas and green cards, and even some American citizens, stranded in airports, and produced massive protest demonstrations at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and in Washington and Boston.

Several leaders at University of Arkansas System campuses made statements expressing their concern. On Monday, University of Arkansas Chancellor Joe Steinmetz said “well over 100” people on campus who hold study, tourist and work visas were affected by the ban, including students and faculty, and that two students had to return to Iran from Frankfurt, Germany, where they were stopped from continuing on their return to Fayetteville. “The international students and scholars who choose Arkansas as their academic home away from home are a valuable part of our community,” Steinmetz said in a statement.

In a letter to chancellors, UA System President Dr. Donald Bobbitt wrote, “It is in the true spirit of what institutions of higher learning can offer culturally and intellectually to honor and respect contributions from everyone, including those from the seven countries immediately impacted by the executive order.”

He said the administration was “gathering all relative information from our campus and the extent of the effect this will have on students, faculty and staff at our institutions.”

law-abiding citizens of both the United States and other nations. While modest inconveniences are acceptable in order to keep our homeland safe, blocking U.S. green-card holders, students and professors possessing proper visas, and those extraordinary men and women who have aided us in our global war on terror is not acceptable.”

Sophia Said, director of the Interfaith Center in Little Rock, Christy Hendrickson Marquis and City Director Kathy Webb organized Sunday’s protest the

CONTACT ARKANSAS’S CONGRESSIONAL STAFF: And do it “again and again and again,” ACLU director Rita Sklar told the crowd gathered at Sunday’s rally.

There are 55 UA Little Rock students from countries covered under the ban, according to a spokesman. Chancellor Andrew Rogerson said Tuesday that the campus was monitoring the situation. “Our international students, faculty, researchers, and employees are an integral part of the UA Little Rock community, and we are here to support all of our community,” Rogerson said in a statement. “Our institution is committed to the richness of diversity and the global perspective that international students, faculty, and staff bring to us.”

Also expressing concern was 2nd District Congressman French Hill, a Republican, who criticized the implementation of Trump’s ban: “The design and implementation appear unreasonable and have unintended consequences for

evening before, getting the word out through social media. The crowd, gathering at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, continued to grow as participants sent images and messages from the speakers through Twitter and Facebook.

Said, the emcee, said she asked herself Saturday night if people would have the energy to stage one more protest of the president’s policies, this one to protect the U.S. from “terrorists,” like the two American citizens in Chicago and the Iraqi interpreter who worked with the U.S military for a decade, each detained over the weekend. She concluded that people cared, and she had to act.

After invocations by Said and Episcopal priest Susan Sims Smith, executive director at the Interfaith Center, former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Anna-

belle Clinton Imber Tuck spoke as a member of Temple B’nai Israel, saying, “As Jews we know the impact of religious profiling.” A young Arkansas woman who described herself as a “Muslim, a lawyer and a patriot” and a graduate of Central High School lamented the fact that soldiers — “heroes” — were being prohibited from entering the country under Trump’s ill-conceived executive order. A Syrian immigrant who is a physician in Little Rock noted the desperation of refugees who have drowned attempting to flee the war-torn country; his own brother was killed by a sniper and his sister was forced to leave her home because of the bombing. A woman whose husband emigrated to the U.S. from Syria is now a cardiologist at the Veterans Administration hospital, healing American vets, she told the crowd.

Interspersed between the speeches was the call and response: Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like.

Rita Sklar, the executive director of the Arkansas ACLU, was nearly in tears as she addressed the group, telling them of the legal work the organization had done in the past 24 hours to stop Trump’s order. She asked the group that if they know people being detained, to go online to acluarkansas.org and fill out a complaint. She also told the crowd that democracy also looks like contacting Arkansas’s congressional staff no matter what you think their reaction will be, and to do it “again and again and again.”

“I am the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, and today, until the end of this trouble, I am Muslim with all of you,” Sklar declared.

Rep. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock) told the gathering that “What President Trump did was against the law … and breaks faith with the American spirit. ... The American dream is not restricted to people born in American, and if you love this nation, you are a patriot no matter where you were born.”

Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock) injected a darker note into the talks, saying she was thinking about her own ancestry: “Do not forget that the very DNA of this country is the separation of families who look like mine.” So, she warned, we should not be caught by surprise at such hateful actions as those of Trump’s, but must instead be always prepared to fight them.

Saturday’s event, organized by the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Jus-

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tice, drew several hundred people to hear speakers make a wide-ranging case for abortion rights, transgender rights and the Affordable Care Act. Elliott told Saturday’s crowd that her colleagues — “not one of them a doctor” — had voted to criminalize women’s health care without regard to them, their families or their physicians. She was referring to a bill from state Rep. Andy Mayberry (R-Hensley) signed Friday by Governor Hutchinson, prohibiting the use of dilation and evacuation as a method of abortion for women starting at 12 weeks pregnant. It is the second measure in two years to punish women for their choice to abort. Two years ago, a bill that required doctors to use an outmoded protocol for a medical abortion was passed by lawmakers who knew that what they were doing would require women to undergo a more painful procedure to terminate an unwanted, or wanted but untenable, pregnancy.

Fortunately, the FDA ditched the older, more painful drug protocol the legislation wanted to force doctors to abide by.

Dilation and evacuation is the safest procedure doctors use for what is a legal medical procedure protected under the U.S. Constitution. That leaves women who discover at 12 weeks or more they are pregnant and wish to have an abortion with only option, apparently: delivery, in a hospital, which presents a greater health risk to women. The ACLU has promised to sue, noting that the law causes an undue burden on women to express a constitutional right.

Speakers also addressed barriers to transgender men who need gynecological care, sexual assault on campus and the need for quicker action and support of those who are assaulted and the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, including free access to contraceptives, and the impact that’s had on reducing the need for abortion. Camille Richoux, who is seeking a master’s degree at UAMS’ College of Public Health and is insured under the ACA, noted that the law Congress is now seeking to repeal has meant that people no longer need to file for bankruptcy because of medical bills, that because of the act, Americans no longer need to be rich to get good health care.

Injecting a little levity into the weekend rallies was a sign reading, “If I have to keep protesting Trump, like every single weekend, when will I have time to go to Oaklawn?”

Inconsequential News Quiz: BIG Alternative facts edition THE

PICTURE

complete 1.5 million citizens will RIOD! this quiz at home … PE

1) Hunter Hatcher, outreach coordinator for State Treasurer Dennis Milligan, recently got himself in hot water over something he posted on social media. What was the issue?

A) An inauguration day Facebook post in which Hatcher said that because of Trump, “gay jokes are back on ya bunch of homos.”

B) A post during the Jan. 21 Women’s March in Little Rock in which Hatcher wondered “if all these women are at the Capitol, who’s making lunch?”

C) A Jan. 1 post in which Hatcher said: “Equality? Don’t get equal, get to cooking woman. Get equal on your own time.”

D) All of the above. Upside: Hatcher may soon have more time to browse Facebook and work on his own ramen noodle cooking technique. He resigned from the treasurer’s office, and the Arkansas Army National Guard, in which he serves, should eventually return his computer and phone.

2) Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was appointed to a position in the White House the day before the inauguration of Donald Trump. What’s the job?

That simply is no t true. She is also the depu ty lawn part y organizer, the as sistant to the deputy’s deputy , and of course the sheriff of N ot tingham.

A) Assistant robe and hood ironer for Steve Bannon.

B) Deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary.

C) Wrangler of the weeping, misshapen child that lives inside Donald Trump.

D) Lincoln Bedroom urine mopper.

3) Speaking of Mike Huckabee, financial backers of a product Huckabee shilled for may be in deep legal trouble, with attorneys in Missouri saying a class-action lawsuit could net hundreds of millions in damages. What was the Huckster pushing?

A) Trump Spam: Still Terrible, but in a Golden Can! B) A Christian-themed flop movie called “The Last Ounce of Courage,” for which Huckabee recorded a robocall that appeared to be a survey but was actually an advertisement. Lawyers say the robocall, which allegedly went out to around 2 million landlines in September 2012, ran afoul of a law against using prerecorded messages to sell products without getting consent from the person being called. Those who break the law can reportedly be liable for up to $1,500 in damages per call.

C) Mike Huckabee’s Stuff Your Ignorant Gob Buffet in Branson, Mo. D) Huckabee’s new book: “I’m With Stupid: How Buying This Book Full of Short-Sighted, Un-Christian Horseshit Can Save America.”

4) More details are coming out by the day about shady payments from the state’s General Improvement Fund, the pork trough controlled by state legislators. Which of the following is a real payment provided from the GIF? A) $40,000 for “Ozone Therapy,” a quack medicine technique.

B) $121,646 for “The Committee to Lure Sen. Jason Rapert Into a Large Cardboard Box With Prepaid Postage to Antarctica LLC.” C) $3,244 to pay for new letterhead following the designation of Rep. Kim Hendren (R-Gravette) as the official state dinosaur.

D) $80,000 to pay for a big-game hunter to keep a tranquilizer gun trained on the neck of Sen. Bart Hester (RCave) at all times during the legislative session.

5) There was an interesting development during preparations for the Arkansas Inaugural Gala in Washington, D.C., the state’s contribution to the slate of balls surrounding the inauguration of Donald Trump.

What happened?

A) Organizers found that Trump’s inaugural concert had totally exhausted the D.C. area’s supply of ZZ Top cover bands, Holiday Inn lounge regulars, subway buskers, Toby Keiths and teenagers who kinda know how to play the opening riff from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

B) On his Facebook page, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin posted what Homeland Security called “a credible threat” to drop a deuce in the punchbowl.

C) The gala had to be canceled, organizers said, because they didn’t sell a single ticket.

D) Attendees’ worst fears were finally realized when outgoing President Barack Obama snuck into their homes back in Arkansas, personally confisree cated their guns and married them off to gay Actually, they sold th people while they were in D.C. n tickets. And you Answers: D, B, B, A, C

LISTEN UP

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arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

13

ARKANSAS REPORTER

BRIAN CHILSON

A

PUSHING EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNT: Rep. Jim Dotson.

School choice bill draws criticism from superintends, governor HB 1222 creates education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships to pay for private schools and other education costs.

BY IBBY CAPUTO Arkansas Nonprofit News Network

14

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Follow Ibby Caputo: @ibbycaputo

bill that would establish education savings accounts in Arkansas is breaking new ground in school choice legislation, according to its sponsor. But critics — including the state’s influential school superintendent association — say it could pose major fiscal problems for Arkansas if passed in its current form.

House Bill 1222, filed by Rep. Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville), combines two tactics used by lawmakers in other states who favor school choice: the creation of a savings account to be used at a parent’s discretion to fund private school and other education costs, and the use of a tax-credit scholarship in which individuals and corporations can donate to a nonprofit organization that provides money to parents seeking a private or home school education for their children.

“This is the first time that those two models have been blended into one program,” Dotson said. “We will be the first in the nation where education savings accounts are funded through a tax credit.”

In Arkansas, the largest portion of the cost of a public school student’s education is covered by what’s called “foundation funding” — a mixture of state general revenue and local property taxes that the state collects and then remits to local school districts. The legislature has established foundation funding at $6,646 per student. When a student leaves a public school for a private school, the foundation funding does not follow the student. The student’s former public school district does not receive foundation funding for that student the next year.

HB 1222 would not directly divert public education funding to private schools, as some voucher programs in other states have done. Instead, dollars that would have otherwise entered state general revenue in the form of income tax would be diverted to the nonprofits administering the education savings accounts. Those nonprofits would then be able to transfer an amount of money equivalent to foundation funding for each academic year into an eligible student’s account.

“There are no state dollars tied to it,” Dotson said. “There is no actual check written from the state because it’s revenue that was never collected.”

But while the state may not pay for the savings accounts directly, the money will be offset by tax credits. Contributors to the nonprofits that administer the savings accounts would receive an income tax credit from the state of

BRIAN CHILSON

Arkansas equal to their donation. The donation would also qualify for a federal income tax deduction.

A legislative impact statement released by the Department of Finance and Administration found the bill would lead to a $10 million reduction in state general revenue from July 2017 to June 2018. “For subsequent years the total impact is unknown. The bill provides a growth mechanism that is unclear,” according to the impact statement.

Rep. Bruce Cozart (R-Hot Springs), who chairs the House Education Committee, said he has concerns about where the money would come from and how much the program could grow each year. “When you give tax credits, you lose general income, your general revenue goes down,” Cozart said.

“I’m a choice person,” he said, “but I don’t want to take it away from public schools … and put it in private schools.”

Critics of the bill say the education savings accounts are a voucher program.

School vouchers use state money to fund scholarships that pay for students to attend private school.

“It’s a voucher bill that’s thinly disguised as a savings account,” said Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock), who vicechairs the Senate Education Committee.

“You can call it whatever you want, but if the effect is we’re taking money out of the public school coffers to be used for private reasons, then you know it is a voucher.”

Parents could use the money in the education savings account to fund tuition at a private school as well as for other education expenses, including uniforms, books, tutoring services,

‘IT’S A VOUCHER BILL’: Says Sen. Joyce Elliott of HB 1222.

transportation, examination fees and even college, since unused money in a savings account would carry over to the next year.

There’s a $10 million cap on the program in the first year, which means, if it is fully funded by contributors’ donations, about 1,500 students selected by a lottery could participate in 2017. The lottery is weighted for students who receive free or reduced-price meals under the National School Lunch Act. “It’s absolutely not a voucher program,” said Sen. Bart Hester (R-Cave Springs), a co-sponsor of the bill. “It’s not taking one dollar away from public schools.”

Supporters point to a working paper recently released by the Department

of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas that found the bill could result in a small financial benefit to the state overall in its first year. That would be the case only if a majority of education savings account students are drawn from the existing public school population. Otherwise, the paper projected the program would have a negative impact on state revenue. In addition, the paper only looks at the first year of the program, when there is a $10 million cap on tax credits.

The program has the potential to expand dramatically in the second year because there is no financial cap set after the first year and because the bill says all students on the waiting list must be funded, in addition to the students who

received accounts in the first year.

Currently, about 30,000 students attend private school in Arkansas. Richard Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, which represents school superintendents, said he worries that all of those students will apply for education savings accounts and those who aren’t funded this year will be added to a waiting list to be funded next year.

“The second year, all bets are off.

The state will be losing money, period,” Abernathy said. “I would just about bet everything that 30,000 kids will be applying for that because they already attend private schools. Why wouldn’t they apply for that?”

Governor Hutchinson also expressed concerns about the bill. “I’ve always been in support of parents and students having choice in education,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “As for this particular piece of legislation, I am concerned that the use of tax credits will have a significant, negative impact on the budget.”

“It’s still a great bill,” Dotson said, “The program is supposed to be designed to grow slowly over time.” Dotson said in other states with similar programs, there has been only a little growth in the first year or two. “The vast majority of people stay in their public schools.”

Benji Hardy contributed to this report.

This reporting is courtesy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.

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TURNED AWAY: A scene from the 1957 attempt to desegregate North Little Rock High School.

16

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

BEYOND LITTLE ROCK A history of school desegregation in Arkansas.

BY JOHN A. KIRK

BUTLER CENTER FOR ARKANSAS STUDIES

T

he events surrounding the desegregation of Central High School in 1957 have placed Little Rock at the heart of the state’s narrative about school desegregation. Sixty years later, following many decades of legal struggles, and the more recent state takeover of the Little Rock School District, the state capital remains in the spotlight. Yet while the Little Rock story is quite rightly considered important, it is part of a much larger and more complex story of school desegregation in Arkansas. By understanding that story, we can learn more about the politics of school desegregation both in Little Rock and in Arkansas.

At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education school desegregation decision, Arkansas had 423 school districts.

Of these, 184 districts contained only white students, 11 contained only black students, and 228 contained both white and black students. A good deal of the early moves toward school desegregation in the state was in Northwest Arkansas, which had a much smaller black population than Southeast Arkansas.

The first school district to deseg-

regate was Charleston, in Franklin County, where on Aug. 23, 1954, barely two months after the Brown decision, 14 black students were admitted to its formerly all-white elementary and high school. Previously, the black students had been bused on a daily 40-mile round trip to black schools in Fort Smith. Desegregation was sold as a cost-cutting measure, but still proved difficult to achieve. The leadership of local attorney and future governor Dale Bumpers smoothed the process considerably. The district consciously avoided publicity.

There was more publicity surrounding Fayetteville, the next district to desegregate. Four days after Brown, Fayetteville announced it would allow its nine black high school students to attend classes with whites in the fall. Like Charleston, Fayetteville had bused its black students to segregated schools in Fort Smith, and also in Hot Springs, round trips of 120 and 300 miles, at a cost of $5,000 a year.

School superintendent Wayne White informed the press that “segregation was a luxury we could no longer afford.”

Neither Charleston nor Fayetteville encountered any difficulties in deseg-

regating their schools.

The story was quite different when Sheridan, in South Central Arkansas, decided to follow suit. Days after the Brown decision the school board voted to desegregate. This was also presented as a cost-cutting measure: Sheridan spent $4,000 a year busing black students to a segregated school in an adjoining county. Immediately, school patrons filed a petition in protest. The school board backed down and most members resigned. Even more drastic action followed. One of the largest employers of black families in Sheridan, who was also their landlord, told his black employees that they would have to move out of the county or he would burn their homes down. They left. By getting rid of its black population, Sheridan ended talk of school desegregation and cut its busing expenses. No other school districts sought to desegregate in 1954.

The following summer, Hoxie, in Northeast Arkansas, announced it would desegregate as a cost-cutting measure, because it was the law and because it was “morally right in the sight of God.” Twenty-one black students attended the previously all-white

arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

17

BEYOND LITTLE ROCK - A history of school desegregation in Arkansas.

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, CABOT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

‘MORALLY RIGHT IN THE SIGHT OF GOD’: That’s one of the reasons the Hoxie School District gave for integrating its schools.

The photo shows the eighth-grade girls’ Glee Club for the 1956 Hoxie High School.

high school in 1955. However, when Life magazine ran a feature story about the success of school desegregation there, it caused segregationists from all over the state to descend on the town. Foremost among them was Jim Johnson, head of the recently founded Associated Citizens’ Councils of Arkansas, an organization dedicated to resisting school desegregation in the state. Yet, despite much intimidation, the school board stood strong and the courts backed them. Hoxie schools stayed desegregated. The same year, Bentonville allowed its one black student, Carl Stewart, to enroll at Bentonville High School. The school district had previously paid for a private tutor.

Not until a year later did the news of desegregation become public.

Amid growing state and regional opposition to school desegregation, only one school district attempted to desegregate in 1956. Hot Springs allowed six black students to study with four white students in a high school auto mechanics class. A subsequent suggestion to extend those arrangements to other classes met with opposition.

The following year, in 1957, school desegregation in Arkansas was dominated by the headlines in Little Rock.

Almost unnoticed, just a week before Little Rock unsuccessfully attempted 18

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

to desegregate, Van Buren peacefully admitted 23 black students into its high school under court order. However, in 1958, after segregationists in Little Rock had stirred up trouble, the climate had changed in Van Buren, too.

White students began to physically intimidate black students. As in Hoxie, school board officials took a stand, the courts backed them, and after a temporary period of disruption the school continued on a desegregated basis.

Events in Little Rock caused problems in yet more districts that had already desegregated. Charleston began to encounter protests, which it weathered. Progress in Fayetteville’s school desegregation plan slowed.

When Ozark attempted to admit three black students into its high school in 1957, white students copied their peers at Little Rock’s Central High and harassed them. Desegregation at Ozark stuttered off and on for the next two years before the district finally reinstated the busing of black students to segregated schools outside the district.

Elsewhere in 1957, one black student was admitted to Fort Smith’s DuVal Elementary School without trouble, and six black students were turned away from North Little Rock High School.

Although Little Rock high schools reopened on a token desegregated basis

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, CABOT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

in August 1959, after closing to avoid desegregation in 1958, the upheavals in the capital city slowed school desegregation across the state. In 1959, Pulaski County Special School District desegregated one school on the Little Rock Air Force Base under threat of losing federal money, and Gosnell, in Mississippi County, followed suit with its school on Blytheville Air Force Base in 1962. The same year, Mansfield stopped busing its students on a 60-mile round trip north to Fort Smith and enrolled 14 black students into previously allwhite schools. Between 1960 and 1963, Dollarway School District between White Hall and Pine Bluff implemented a desegregation plan under court order. In 1963, school desegregation was extended in Hot Springs when it admitted five black students into previously all-white schools.

Coming up to a decade after the Brown decision, only 13 school districts out of the state’s 228 biracial districts had implemented desegregation.

It took decisive federal government intervention to speed things up with

NOT

the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act permitted the Justice Department to file suit against recalcitrant school districts and prompted the Office of Education to draw up more stringent guidelines for school desegregation. Although it continued to allow so-called “freedom of choice” plans for voluntary desegregation, which had proved little more than a stalling tactic, it insisted that those plans should now be measured by “the extent to which Negro or other minority group students have in fact transferred from segregated schools.”

The message was clear: The time for foot-dragging and delay was over. The courts, emboldened by the new developments, began to take a stronger stand in enforcing school desegregation.

The impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on school desegregation in Arkansas was dramatic. By 1966, only 36 districts out of 228 had not begun to implement a desegregation plan. Of those 36 districts, only 12 declared that they had no intention to desegregate.

The period of rapid desegregation in

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the mid-1960s came at a cost to black Twelve lost years of school desegregacommunities. Too often, school desegtion had taken their toll. School adminregation was achieved in Arkansas by istrators had been busy with school simply closing black schools and firing building programs to make sure that black teachers, a bittersweet price to newly redesigned and soon to be desegpay to give black students access to betregated school systems would perpetuter facilities that had been hoarded in ate racial discrimination by mirroring white schools. The question of desegsegregated residential patterns. The regating teaching faculties was only culture of resistance in school districts, considered after the 1964 Civil Rights and the mantra that the best desegAct passed. The first successful suit for regation was the least desegregation, faculty desegregation in Arkansas was had become firmly entrenched. A masin Morrilton School District in 1966. sive expansion in private schools and It took over a decade after the white flight would soon exacerbate Brown decision for Arkansas to take these problems. The early pattern of school desegregation seriously. Of the school desegregation in Arkansas still districts that did desegregate before continues to profoundly influence the 1964, in many instances it took direct state’s approach to education today. federal pressure to achieve any results.

In other instances, desegregation took John A. Kirk is the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of Hisplace only because it was in the school tory and director of the Joel E. Anderdistrict’s financial interests. A relison Institute on Race and Ethnicity ance on voluntarism to get Arkansas at UALR. A longer and footnoted verto desegregate its schools in any subsion of this article can be found in the stantial way was an abject failure.

Autumn 2011 volume of the Arkansas Even by 1966, after the pendulum 3.5” x 2.5” | Maximum Font Size: 30 pt Historical Quarterly. had swung toward school desegregation, there was still a long way to go.

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19

Arts Entertainment AND

BEYOND BATWING: The Thea Foundation displays “The Thrill of It All” through the month on February.

Warriors Michael Schaeffer’s collection captures queens-in-transition.

BY SETH BARLOW

A

young man looks into the mirror. His brows are heavy with makeup, his eyeliner swept back — beyond cat eye, beyond bat wing. His eyelids flutter down, revealing dappled glitter. He’s shirtless with a baseball cap sitting backward on his head. On his neck is a cascade of jewels.

It’s a stolen moment in the chaos of a nightclub green room captured on canvas by artist Michael Schaeffer.

The painting, part of an exhibition titled “The Thrill of it All,” is on display as the latest installment in the Thea Foundation’s The Art Department series.

Schaeffer, 37, is a New York-to-Little Rock transplant twice over. He first came to Arkansas at age 13, when his family moved to Hot Springs from Long Island. The second was in 2008, when he returned to Hot Springs. He eventually 20

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

moved to Little Rock. Schaeffer credits his time in New York for giving him his first taste of the arts. Schaeffer mentions an aunt, “who, at the time, was a CBGB punk who introduced me to things like The Clash, [Elvis] Costello and [David] Bowie along with the New York art scene of the ’80s. My mother and I would take the train into the city and just spend a day walking around or visiting museums.

1980s New York was truly a phenomenal time to grow up.”

For some, a move as drastic as from New York to Arkansas might seem to stymie a budding interest in art, but for Schaeffer it was the opposite. In Hot Springs, he soon found himself immersed in the local punk rock scene and the revitalization of the city’s downtown cor-

ridor with art galleries. “The beauty of this scene was you were free to do what you wanted,” Schaeffer said. “Being in Arkansas gave me some sort of freedom to explore ideas and try things … some good, some not so good. Hot Springs was my laboratory, and even after I moved back to New York, I would still test things in Arkansas.”

Schaeffer found himself back in New York after high school. Looking for nightlife in which he felt comfortable, he began exploring gay bars. Before he found them, “I never found where I fit. Everywhere was too cool, or they just weren’t the people I wanted to be around. But there [in gay bars] you could feel free to be and do what you wanted.”

After moving to Little Rock, Schaeffer found himself drawn to the latenight scene of downtown Little Rock’s Club Sway. Sway is known for its performance-art-focused drag shows and Warholian-themed parties, and Schaeffer became enamored with the performances given by the club’s resident drag queens. After the June 2016 hate crime that left 49 people dead at the Pulse night club in Orlando, Schaeffer directed his attention to the beauty and strength he found in the performers. “Walking into Sway was like finding the art scene I had been looking for in Little Rock,” Schaeffer said.

While he enjoyed their performances, he was most drawn to the aspects of the performance that the audience didn’t see: the transformational moments when each of the performers was dressing, crossing the line from simple Arkansas man to larger-than-life diva. “In that moment, they’re neither character, in a sense.” Schaeffer said. The queens’ interaction was intimate, like they were family, helping one another to dress and prepare. “After I was able to actually go up and visit the green room, that’s when I really found the passion and drive for this series. I just thought it was a shame that [these performers] are right here in our community and no one knows.”

Schaeffer spent several weekends in the green room photographing the queens throughout the night.

“Eventually,” he said, “we had a kind of dance. They knew what I was doing and I knew what they were doing.” On a single night, he took over 300 photos. From the photos, he made simple line

drawings of his favorites, tinkering with them until he narrowed them down to approximately 30 pieces. Most of the finished paintings are more than 3 feet wide and tall. “For me, bigger is always better and these were the biggest canvases I could get in my car,” Schaeffer said. He had originally painted several of the portraits on small canvases, hoping to create a more intimate portrayal, but later decided to switch to the larger format. “These aren’t subtle people or subtle artists, so why represent them in this very subtle way?”

The paintings combine bright colors and dark lines to give the subjects an appearance that is both washed-out and drenched in color. Schaeffer often puts up to 14 layers of diluted paint on the canvas to make it appear wet to the touch.

While he was shooting in the green room, Schaeffer wrote down things he heard — phrases, inside jokes and encouragement between the queens.

Though he had originally planned to use them as titles for the portraits, he decided instead to make them paintings in their own right. Paintings like “Killer Queen,” “Fresh Start” and “Warriors” are presented in vivid color on stark white backgrounds.

Though a political statement was never his goal, Schaeffer acknowledges the way the change in political climate has affected the way people view the paintings. “I just want people to acknowledge the beauty in this community that they may not realize is there,” he says. “I’m just trying to showcase my family, people that I’ve grown close to and that I love. You know, if these were paintings of straight women in our community, no one would think I’m taking a stance or being political. That’s very interesting to me.”

“The Thrill of It All” opens at Thea Foundation, 401 Main St., North Little Rock, with a reception at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $10. There will be heavy hors d’oeuvres, an open beer and wine bar, and the chance to win an original work by Schaeffer. The exhibition will be on display through February. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. For more information, visit theasartdepartment.com, call 379-9512 or email stacey@theafoundation.org.

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

A&E NEWS NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION rights to Arkansas filmmaker Amman Abbasi’s debut feature “Dayveon” have sold to distribution company FilmRise after a Jan. 19 premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The son of Pakistani immigrants, Abbasi got his start with Arkansas documentary filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud, working as a cameraman, and landed on Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” last summer. “Dayveon,” which Abbasi wrote, directed and produced, is about a 13-year-old boy (Devin Blackmon) growing up in a small town in Arkansas who joins a gang after the death of his older brother. The film was executive produced by another Arkansas native, writer/director David Gordon Green.

The film will be screened in Little Rock at the Ron Robinson Theater at 7 p.m. Feb. 3 and is headed to the Berlin Film Festival; national release should be in spring.

“LISTENING FOR THE Country: The Shape of Daddy’s Hurt,” Zandria F. Robinson’s essay from the Oxford American Magazine’s 2016 Southern Music Issue, is a finalist for a 2017 National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category. Robinson is the author of “This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South” and the forthcoming “Soul Power.” The essay, a meditation on the music Robinson’s late father loved, marks the 14th time the magazine has received a nomination for the National Magazine Award. Oxford American joined the likes of The New Yorker, National Geographic, Rolling Stone and The Paris Review when it won for General Excellence in 2016.

Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement” and of Arkansas Times’ “Children in Crisis” special investigation on the state’s child welfare system, also received a nomination. Joyce’s essay for the Huffington Post, “Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream,” examines sexual harassment and hostility in the U.S. National Park Service, and is up for a National Magazine Award, known as an Ellie, in the Public Interest category. The award winners will be announced in a ceremony in New York City on Feb. 7.

BRYAN BORLAND, FOUNDER and publisher at Little Rock’s Sibling Rivalry Press, has received the Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the American Library Association, one of many Stonewall Book Awards “given annually to English-language works of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience.” The awards will be presented in Chicago in June at the ALA’s annual conference.

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21

THE

TO-DO

LIST

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK, AARON SARLO AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THURSDAY 2/2

ARKANSAS TIMES MUSICIANS SHOWCASE ROUND 2

THIRTEEN.ORG

8 p.m. Stickyz. $5.

THROUGH MY EYES: Civil rights activist Ruby Bridges speaks at Harding University Thursday evening as part of a lecture series from the school’s American Studies Institute, 7:30 p.m., Benson Auditorium.

RUBY BRIDGES

7:30 p.m. Benson Auditorium, Harding University. Free.

Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With” was painted in 1964, but its subject matter is arguably still the problem we all live with. The oil painting came as a shock to conservative fans of Rockwell’s after his departure from the Saturday Evening Post, and it hung in a hallway outside the Oval Office for a time at then-President Barack Obama’s request. The work depicts a 6-year-old black girl in profile against a wall splattered with a racial slur and the remains of a tomato that someone hurled. She’s being escorted into an all-white elementary school by four U.S. marshals whose heads tower above, out of the frame.

The girl in the painting is Ruby Bridges, and despite some hesitation on the part of her father, her parents answered a FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

THURSDAY 2/2

THE SHOOK TWINS

THURSDAY 2/2

22

Thursdays are for expanding your musical horizons, because you know you’re gonna run straight back to your comfort zone come the weekend. The Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase kicked off last week; DeFrance took the win with a performance the band has polished after the course of about 200 live shows last year. This week’s Round 2 is going to be tough to beat: Audiences will have the rare pleasure of hearing some heavy metal before 9 p.m. (in metal time, that’s, like, noon) with Mortalus — the only straight-up metal band in this year’s showcase — a solid thrash quartet that cites one of the most sinister half-hours of music ever recorded among its influences, Slayer’s “Reign

request from the NAACP to participate in the desegregation of the New Orleans public school system in 1960. Tensions were high: Parents pulled their white children out of school. Ruby’s family became the target of threats from members of the community. Teachers refused to teach, and Ruby was taught as a classroom of one for over a year by a teacher from Boston, Barbara Henry.

Bridges — now Ruby Bridges Hall — has been telling her story ever since, and her life became the subject of a children’s book, a Disney TV movie and eventually, Bridges Hall’s own autobiography, “Through My Eyes.” She gives the year’s final talk in Harding University’s American Studies Institute Distinguished Lecture Series, which has included lectures from President George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice. SS

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in Blood.” Following that is Fayetteville’s Youth Pastor — formed from the ranks of Comfortable Brother, which was formed from the ranks of Don’t Stop Please — who caught our attention with some trippy double keyboard effects and dreamy vocals on a video for a song called “Sweet Summer Livin’.” Then, it’s Solo Jaxon, whose work with producer Idle Kid (see: “Keep Up”) as part of the Young Gods of America collective has been a staple of the ever-lit Fireroom shows. Finally, there’s “girl gang” Dazz & Brie, a duo whose super-synched harmonies and laments on the cost of a college degree have earned them a small legion of fans in Little Rock in mere months. (And that’s to say nothing of the glitter-clad blazers and the flute solos.) Next week: John McAteer and the Gentlemen Firesnakes, The Inner Party, Age of Man and Rah Howard. SS

8 p.m. South on Main. $24-$34.

The third of four shows in the 201617 South on Main Americana Concert Series looks to be an interesting one.

The Shook Twins (identical twins Laurie and Katelyn Shook) are stopping by South on Main as part of their latest tour, and they are bringing their bandies Kyle Volkman and Niko Daoussis with them to play the band’s eclectic brand of folk-pop. Based in Portland, Ore., The Shook Twins write and perform songs that are from the storytelling camp of songwriting, each telling a tale that draws heavily from personal life experience. These songs include stories about being potters’ daughters and that time they befriended a chicken that they named Rose (earning the twins their first ever Rootsy™ award nomination.) The Shook Twins’ live set features a plethora of instruments, including guitar, upright bass, mandolin, glocken-

spiel and banjo. If banjos and mandolins aren’t your flavor, these guys also have an experimental side to their live show, incorporating “face drum (beatbox),” ambient vocal loops and “their signature golden EGG,” which, if I understand it correctly, will grant you one wish if you rub it correctly. All kidding aside, songwriters Laurie and Katelyn write lovely songs that stick with you long after you’ve put away your phone.

Interesting tidbit: The twins were born and raised in tiny Sandpoint, Idaho — a damn-near Canadian border town with a population of 7,000 and an unemployment rate that hovers around 20 percent.

This sort of environment for a childhood would be a near-perfect mulch for any aspiring songwriter of the Americana genre, and it served the twins well.

From their beauteous vocal harmonies, to their down-to-Earth songs, to their expansive instrumentation, The Shook Twins show looks like it will be well worth the ticket price. AS

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 2/2

FRIDAY 2/3

HANDMADE MOMENTS

9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $8.

Longtime listeners of Little Rock’s excellent Shoog Radio will have heard Handmade Moments before, as their fantastic song “All I Wanted” is a staple on the show. That would be Central Arkansas fans’ primary source for hearing the band, as Handmade Moments hasn’t played ’round these parts in almost a year. Well, primary may be a stretch. Handmade Moments (a sort of saxophone-infused Ameri-

cana jazz fusion, like Shaky Graves minus the country-fried millennial angst) is kinda literally everywhere these days. The duo formed in the wake of the excellent Conway band, Don’t Stop Please, and wasted almost zero time writing and performing new material. Handmade Moments, essentially, lives on the road, has toured all the way down to South America and back, plays venues across the U.S., and is a frequent guest on radio shows across the land. Handmade Moments is legitimately great.

I suppose there is a story behind the band’s lackluster name, but whatever it might be, the name woefully belies the talent and love that shines out of every Handmade Moments song.

The group’s at the White Water Tavern this Friday night (with touring buddies, Rainbow Girls — gah! Can’t anybody name a band anymore?) and at King’s in Conway on Saturday. I wouldn’t miss either show because it might be another year before you have the chance to see them again. AS

FRIDAY 2/3

FRIDAY 2/3

DAMIN SPRITZER

Arkansas filmmaker Amman Abbasi’s “Dayveon” is headed to the Berlin Film Festival, but not before it gets a hometown screening at the Ron Robinson Theater, 7 p.m., $20 suggested donation.

The Uh Huhs share a bill with Fayetteville’s The Chads and Sad Palomino at Pizza D’Action, 9 p.m., before heading to Maxine’s in Hot Springs on Saturday night, 9 p.m. Trey Johnson and Jason Willmon bring the stompbox blues to South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Conway rockers American Lions take the picturesque stage at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m. Almost Infamous holds down the dance tunes at Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. Pamela K Ward and the Last Call Orchestra Band perform for Oaklawn Park’s winners (and losers!) at Silk’s Bar & Grill in Hot Springs, 10 p.m., free.

Psychedelic Velocity plays at Markham Street Grill & Pub, 8:30 p.m. High & Dry takes the stage at TC’s Midtown Grill, 9 p.m. If you got some Mac Lipglass for Christmas — or if you just want to be in on the party — sign up for Club Sway’s Club Camp open stage night, 9 p.m.

Christine DeMeo plays a free show at The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m.

8 p.m. Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church. Free.

SATURDAY 2/4 MIKE ITASHIKI

According to an interview with Huffington Post contributor J.R. Rosenberg, Damin Spritzer asked for one thing for her 16th birthday: “to be taken to the beach to walk in the November storms.” By that time, the organist was already well-acquainted with the feeling of being at the epicenter of a surround-sound tempest, but it was typically one of her own making. She was featured on Pipedreams, a nationally syndicated radio show that’s been championing organ music for almost as long as Spritzer’s been alive, and won her first scholarship from the American Guild of Organists when she was in high school. What’s more, she seems hellbent against allowing us to neatly cordon off the genre as stodgy church music — Spritzer collaborates with the harp and the trombone, she makes a point of performing music by living composers, and she designed (and performs) a kid-friendly organ recital to show off the instrument’s range to the under-10 crowd. Plus: She does it all in heels. For this concert, Spritzer performs works from a composer she’s studied and lectured on for years, Rene Louis Becker, as well as Arthur Wills, Larry King (no, not that one — the longtime music director at lower Manhattan’s Trinity Church), Henri Dallier and Leonce de Saint-Martin. SS

DJ Robe Flax accompanies the New Belgium Launch Party at The Joint in North Little Rock, 6 p.m., $15. Eula Biss, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and author of “On Immunity: An Inoculation,” speaks at Hendrix College’s Reves Recital Hall, Conway, 7:30 p.m., free.

Slide guitarist Steve Hester performs at King’s Live Music, Conway, 8:30 p.m., $5. Detroit comic Mike Stanley appears at the Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m.

Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12. UA Little Rock’s Trojans women’s basketball team faces off against the Appalachian State Mountaineers, 6:30 p.m., Jack Stephens Center. Compagnie Herve Koubi, a French-Algerian dance troupe, brings its blend of capoeira, martial arts and contemporary dance to the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville for one night only, 7 p.m., $10. In observance of the holiday, Central Arkansas Library System screens “Groundhog Day” at the Terry Library, 2 p.m., free.

PIPE DREAMS: Renowned pipe organist Damin Spritzer lends her lyrical toccata to a program featuring works from 20th century composers Ernest MacMillan, Rene Louis Becker, Larry King and Henri Dallier, 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church, free.

Butterfly, Bijoux, Tim Anthony, Dee Davis, Tawanna Campbell-Berry, DJ G-Force and other special guests join The Rodney Block Collective to pay tribute to Bob Marley, Lauryn Hill, Burning Spear and The Fugees for “The Miseducation of Rodney Block,” South on Main, 9:30 p.m., $15. Loxley brings a high-octane, leatherclad heavy rock show to Stickyz, 9 p.m., $7.

The Little Rock Folk Club presents Four Shillings Short, a Celtic duo that incor-

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arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

23

THE

TO-DO

LIST

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK, AARON SARLO AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE

SATURDAY 2/4

TUESDAY 2/7

BLACK HISTORY COMMISSION SYMPOSIUM

‘BLOOD BROTHER’

9 a.m. check-in, symposium 10 a.m., Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

TOO OLD TO FIGHT: The Salty Dogs turn Four Quarter Bar into a honky-tonk Saturday night, 10 p.m., $7.

SATURDAY 2/4

SALTY DOGS

10 p.m. Four Quarter Bar.

Depending on where you’re coming from, a salty dog is either the narrator in a Flatt & Scruggs song, a gin cocktail with grapefruit juice or a honky-tonk quartet from Little Rock. Brent LaBeau, Nick Devlin, Brad Williams and Bart Angel have been making music together since 2003, and their effortless swing

shows it. LaBeau and Angel are squarely in the pocket, Devlin’s guitar riffs manage to rock out without ever straying from a straight two-step feel, and Williams’ twang is Dwight Yoakam-level lonesome. (And, like his stage demeanor, unpretentious. I guess when you’ve been making barroom country with the same gentlemen for nearly 15 years, you don’t need to put on any airs.) SS

SATURDAY 2/4

LAST DANCE: THE HOUSE OF AVALON

9 p.m. Club Sway.

Here’s the bad news: The members of House of Avalon — devisers of some of the weirdest, loveliest, grittiest parties to go down in #glitterrock — are moving. They’re taking their giant hair, D.I.Y. costume aesthetic and fantastically sculpted eyebrows to rarer air; namely, to go spread the House of Avalon gospel in L.A. The HOA crew constituted four of “100 Intriguing LGBTs 24

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

to Look Out for in 2017” on a list from gay culture website Unicorn Booty, and they’re headed westward to make good on that sense of promise. “We have accomplished so much in these last four years and the community is built and stable,” HOA’s Hunter Crenshaw told me. “It’s time for us to watch it flourish and focus on our personal goals! I’m excited to see what our family does with Glitterrock.” The good news? They’re gonna throw one hell of a going-away party this Saturday night. SS Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

A panel that includes historians, teachers and former Philander Smith president and one-time candidate for governor Dr. R.J. Hampton will discuss African Americans in politics at this free symposium, “Black Political Engagement in Arkansas,” sponsored by the Black History Commission and the Arkansas State Archives. Professors Dr. John Graves of Henderson State University and Dr. Cherisse Jones-Branch of Arkansas State University and Hot Springs writer and teacher Elmer Beard will join Hampton in talking about African-American women and the Republican Party in the 1960s; 19th century legislator John Gray Lucas; African-American activists; and Hampton’s political career.

Register by going to events.archives@ arkansas.gov or call 682-6900. Lunch will be provided. Teachers can earn up to four professional development hours. LNP

6 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. $5.

With little advance hype, “Blood Brother” — Steve Hoover’s film about a young American man’s move to India and subsequent work with children infected with HIV — won both the

TUESDAY 2/7

CAPITAL HOTEL INFORMANCE

5:15 p.m. The Capital Hotel. Free.

Here’s to the art of the informance, reinforcing for us the idea that classical music wasn’t meant to live in the vacuum of a concert hall or an amphitheater for well-heeled patrons. Typically characterized by shorter pieces peppered with a little context from the musicians, the informance is a little less formal and a little less expensive than attending a symphony concert proper and, in this case, it’s during happy hour.

Shortly after Tuesday’s quitting-time whistle blows, the members of the Quapaw Quartet — Charlotte Crosmer and Eric Hayward on violin, David Gerstein on cello and Ryan Mooney on viola — present works from Novacek, Webern, Shostakovich, Debussy, Dvorak, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn at the Capital Hotel for this free concert. SS

OUTER SOUNDS: The Toos kick off some time in Arkansas with locals Rath and Daughters of Triton for a Wednesday show at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m.

WEDNESDAY 2/8

THE TOOS, DAUGHTERS OF TRITON, RATH 9 p.m. White Water Tavern.

The word “gaslight” has been on the tongues of pundits and protestors alike the last week or so, since someone bought the URL alternativefacts. com and redirected it to a Psychology Today article defining the term.

IN BRIEF

Grand Jury Prize and the Audience award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and earned a standing ovation so insistent that the filmmakers had to ask the audience to sit so that things could move along. It’s been lauded for its unflinching scenes of dramatic depiction of Rocky Braat’s altruism and simultaneously criticized for its

subtext of a “white savior” brand of evangelical Christianity, which makes the prospect of spending this Tuesday night at Ron Robinson Theater all the more tempting; when viewers label a protagonist a “narcissist” and “an angel” by turns, that story begs to be watched. SS

porates over 30 Renaissance and North Indian instruments into their performance, 7:30 p.m., Hibernia Irish Tavern, $8-$15.

Hayes Carll sideman Travis Linville is a soloist in his own right, and he brings his Oklahoma-born folk to the White Water Tavern with Jesse Aycock and Lauren Barth, 9 p.m., $7. The Rev Room holds its 10th annual Bob Marley Birthday Bash, 8 p.m., $15. Stone’s Throw Brewing holds the Big Red Ball Homebrew Contest to benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas, Next Level Events, 7 p.m., $25$40. Fayetteville’s Nature & Madness joins Gravedancer at Smoke & Barrel, 10 p.m., $5. The Martyrs, Death Before Breakfast and Jeremiah James Baker make up an eclectic Saturday night bill at Vino’s, 9 p.m.

The UA Little Rock’s Trojans women’s basketball team takes on the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, 4 p.m., followed by a game between the corresponding men’s teams, 6 p.m., Jack Stephens Center. Funk-tinged folk duo Handmade Moments reprise their shared bill with Santa Barbara’s The Rainbow Girls at King’s Live Music, Conway, 8:30 p.m., $5. Rob & Tyndall play a free show at Markham Street Grill & Pub, 8:30 p.m. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band returns to Arkansas for a show at the Walton Arts Center, Fayetteville, 8 p.m., $35-$65.

Jackson, Miss., Southern rock band Framing the Red plays at TC’s Midtown Grill in Conway, 9 p.m. Ryan Saunders and Brian Mullen face off battle-of-the-bandsstyle at the Discovery Nightclub Music Competition, 9 p.m., $10. Country rocker Eric Church visits the Arkansas chapter of his so-called “Church Choir” fan base at Verizon Arena, 8 p.m., $18-$85.

SUNDAY 2/5 If you’re looking to pregame for the Super Bowl with some live music, Stephen Neeper and John Neal are teaming up for a show at Prospect Sports Bar & Grill in the Heights, 1 p.m.

TUESDAY 2/7

It’s been on the tongues of The Toos, too, by way of “Gaslight,” the opening track to the Missouri band’s laidback Jan. 13 release, “Outer Sounds:” “But we’ve lived in the gaslight so long that our minds have almost gone/We keep ourselves up on a fence, wrap ourselves in common sense/But only time will tell.” I could tell you how “Stay With Me” channels Tom Petty B-sides in the best way, or how engineer Lennon Bone managed to shine up the band’s sound without detracting from

the lower-fi charm they sported on their 2013 debut — but just go hear them for yourself. They’re joined by the triumvirate of badass women who make up Daughters of Triton and by Rath, a one-man project from Jeremy Brasher that makes me want to dig out my long-lost leather spike bracelets, and which was most accurately described by drummer Bryan Baker of Underclaire: “It sounds like if Trent Reznor did the soundtrack to ‘Labyrinth.’ ” SS

Hudson Falcons have been playing what they call “working-class rock and roll” since the ’90s, and they bring that sound to the White Water Tavern with Fiscal Spliff and William Blackart, 9 p.m., $7. Riverdale 10 Cinema screens the 1986 classic “Top Gun,” 7 p.m., $8.50. Stuart Baer plays for the dinner crowd at Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro, 6 p.m.

WEDNESDAY 2/8 Art Porter Sr. is honored with “For the Love of Art” at Cajun’s Wharf, featuring performances from Minors in Music, Mentors in Music, Tonya Leeks & Co. and Sounds So Good, 7 p.m.

Ryan Saunders plays a free show at The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m. Massachusetts pop rocker Brad Byrd makes a stop at King’s Live Music, Conway, 8 p.m., free.

North Little Rock 501-945-8010 Russellville 479-890-2550 Little Rock 501-455-8500 Conway 501-329-5010

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arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

25

MOVIE REVIEW

GETTING RICH SLOW: The biopic “Becoming Warren Buffett” traces the billionaire’s self-examined life.

Gum for sale HBO’s ‘Becoming Warren Buffett’ profiles the Oracle of Omaha.

BY SAM EIFLING

T

ake a few steps away from the news churn right now — dominated as it is by an impulsive, pessimistic, misanthropic collector of bankruptcies — and steep in 90 minutes of “Becoming Warren Buffett.” The documentary (on the HBO GO service) explores the life and philosophies of arguably the greatest capitalist in American history, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a company valued as of this writing at more than $400 billion. If you’re inclined to take a dim view of billionaires these days, for one perfectly valid reason or another, Buffett

26

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

and this amiable profile will calm you for a spell. If a guy like Buffett can be worth something like $74 billion, even after giving away tens of billions more to become one of the most generous philanthropists in history, maybe the American experiment still has life left.

Directors Peter W. Kunhardt (“Living With Lincoln”) and Brian Oakes (“Jim: The James Foley Story”) depict Buffett — now 86, and mentally as spry as a deer — as one of the world’s unassuming geniuses, which isn’t much of a surprise. In fact, nothing about this film is much of a surprise: Buffett, revered

for decades as the Oracle of Omaha, has made his vast fortune not through financial pyrotechnics. Instead, he obsessively hustled and saved from the time he was delivering newspapers and selling gum door-to-door in Nebraska.

Then, he waited for compound interest — the eighth wonder of the world, as he puts it — to work its magic.

He also reads obsessively, digests stacks of information about companies (and in the ’50s, those were, literally, stacks), buys only when he’s ready, and then waits with the patience of a redwood for the returns. “I like to sit and think,” he says. “And I spend a lot of time doing that.” Also: “If you’re emotional about investment, you’re not going to do well,” Buffett says. “You may have all these feelings about the stock — the stock has no feelings about you.”

Riveting, right? Actually, Buffett does suffer blind spots in the form of everyday human matters, as many a solitary numerical genius have before.

In this, narratively, we still find relatively little tension (it’s a good thing Buffett is quippy and full of homespun wisdom, ’cause he’s the epitome of low drama), but we do see, over his decades of self-examination and dedication to improvement, a human life emerge that is not merely rich. It is also full.

Says Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman, who has known Buffet since 1959. “One of the reasons Warren is successful is, he’s brutal in appraising his own past. He wants to identify misthinkings and avoid them in the future.” That is the ore of a purposeful person, and one who can adapt. For one: Buffett’s relationship with Susan, his late wife and sweetheart since forever, was able to endure even after she tired of Omaha and moved for good to San Francisco. Unlike his Republican congressman father, Buffett made a career of rejecting dogma — leading him to conclusions you can only call progressive and feminist. He credits his success to having been born male in America. He figures the odds of that for women in 1930 were one in 80.

Winning the “ovarian lottery,” he says.

For these and about a dozen other reasons, Buffett comes off as inestimably likable, a hard thing to do in a documentary that doesn’t stoop to fawning.

Yet, here it is. He is the champion of the ultimate get-rich-slow scheme. He spent decades sorting through the chaos of the American economy and distilling from it an elegant, profitable order.

The contrast with another prominent billionaire could not be more stark, or more refreshing.

ALSO IN THE ARTS p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., through Feb. 18. 6323 Colonel Glenn Road.

501-562-3131. $15-$37.

“Detroit.” TheatreSquared’s performance of Lisa D’Amour’s Obie Award-winning social critique. 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through Feb. 26. Walton Arts Center’s Studio Theater, 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479443-5600. $10-$40.

Theater

“Sister Act.” Arkansas Repertory Theater’s production of Bill & Cheri Steinkellner’s musical, 7 p.m. Wed.-Thu. and Sun., 8 p.m. Fri.Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through March 5. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. $30-$65.

“The Laughable Legend of Fancybeard the Bully Pirate.” Keith Smith’s comedic lesson in leadership. 7 p.m. Fri., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through Feb. 19. Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. $12.50.

“Naked People With Their Clothes On.” The Main Thing’s first comedy revue of the year. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., through March 25. 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0210. $24.

“The Nerd.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents the Larry Shue comedy. 7:30 p.m. Tue.Sat., dinner at 6 p.m., 12:45 p.m. and 6:45

VISUAL ARTS, HISTORY EXHIBITS MAJOR VENUES ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Resilient Communities: Disaster Recovery as Modern Urbanism,” Architecture and Design Network lecture by Steve Luoni, recep-

tion 5:30 p.m., talk 6 p.m. Feb. 7; “Herman Maril: The Strong Forms of Our Experience,” “Ansel Adams: Early Works,” “Seeing the Essence: William E. Davis,” photographs, all through April 16, talk by Tom Fischer of the Savannah College of Art and Design at Adams, 5:30 p.m. Feb. 2 ($10 nonmembers). 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000.

ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, Jonesboro: “Delta National Small Prints Exhibition,” 50 prints by 50 artists from across the U.S. and abroad; “NurtureNature,” ceramic sculpture

by Bradley Sabin; “Local Color,” work by Matt E. Ball, Mihaela Savu, Beth Snodgrass and Nancy Zimmer,” all through Feb. 26.

Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870972-2567.

ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.,

TESLA

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FEBRUARY 24 | 8pm

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Pine Bluff: “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.

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “The American Dream Deferred: Japanese American Incarceration in WWII Arkansas,” objects from the internment camps, through June 24; “Arkansas Committee Scholars Exhibition,” work by Beverly Buys, Maxine Payne and Robin Miller-Bookhout, through Feb. 10; “Once Was Lost,” photographs by Richard Leo Johnson, through March 18. 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 CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

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arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2017 PM27 1/27/172, 3:14

Dining

WHAT’S COOKIN’

STONE’S THROW BREWING fans will be able to nosh daily on panini sandwiches, salads and soups from a “satellite kitchen” supplied by Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, the businesses announced last week.

Customers at Stone’s Throw, at Ninth and Rock streets, will be able to order from the Kent Walker food truck at the bar and the food will be delivered to the table on one bill with your suds. Theron Cash, managing partner at Stone’s Throw, said the service will be an improvement over the bar’s previous arrangement with food trucks: “We were at the mercy of the trucks’ availability and that was causing customers to make their dining plans elsewhere,” Cash said in a news release. “This new project with the Kent Walker’s team provides a great menu along with the reliability patrons expect.”

The Kent Walker at Stone’s Throw venture begins this week.

The menu will evolve, the press release said, to include brunch items on weekends, cheese dip and a new beer cheese soup Kent Walker introduced at Sunday’s fundraiser for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Family, Soup Sunday.

PANINIS & COMPANY, a sandwich and salad supplier created by Taziki’s owner Jim Keet, is now providing I Love Juice Bar in the Midtowne Shopping Center with eat in or take out meals. The sandwiches use Boar’s Head brand meats and cheeses; vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free paninis will be on the menu as well. All will be made to order, rather than preprepared. I Love Juice Bar offers a vegetarian, glutenfree juices and smoothies. Its creations use both fruits and vegetables.

PANCAKE LOVERS TAKE note: The new IHOP being built at the corner of Markham and University, which is replacing an old IHOP, will open April 3. The new restaurant will seat 164 people in one large dining room.

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FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

STELLAR SHANK: Even better than the schnitzel, thanks to a marinade of apple cider vinegar, burgundy wine and spices and fall-off-thebone tenderness.

Steinhaus stellar Good drink, good grub at Hot Springs beer hall.

J

ust when you think you know about all there is to know about where to eat in Central Arkansas, you stumble on a German beer hall buried in the heart of Hot Springs. Take the stairs down from Spencer’s Corner on Central Avenue downtown and you’re carried off to the Old World, where food, drink and music are done well with no fuss.

Steinhaus is cavernous, with stone walls, a brick ceiling and archways lit by candlelight. The atmosphere had us in the mood for a Weihenstephaner Dunkelweizen, a dark wheat beer with hints of fruit and caramel. It’s a full-bodied brew that took us instantly back to a long-ago trip to Deutschland. An accordion player and trombonist stomped and shouted Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

their way through German classics (and covers of American standards like “Sweet Caroline”), giving us the distinct feeling we were somewhere else.

Heavy beer almost requires an appetizer. We can recommend the Kraut Cakes ($7.50). A mixture of ground pork and beef was combined with sauerkraut, spices and cream cheese, then rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. The patties were substantial and meaty with a tangy flavor from the sauerkraut. The creamy horseradish dipping sauce added umph to the dish.

Steinhaus’ menu has something for everyone. There are sandwiches, brat plates and many kinds of schnitzel. We picked the Rahm Schnitzel with pork ($15.25; you can also get chicken). The

pork was pounded to a thin sheet, breaded in a perfectly seasoned cornmeal and flour mixture, and fried to a light brown. The accompanying lemon caper beurre blanc sauce, served in a little gravy boat, was sheer heaven. The rich, buttery flavor was cut by the tartness of the lemon and salty capers. But nothing covered up the outstanding flavor of the pork. Don’t be shy — pour the gravy over your schnitzel and dig in!

The Rahm Schnitzel came with two sides. We ordered a potato pancake and Brussels sprouts. The former was about what you would expect and done well — shredded potatoes and green onion mixed with seasonings, formed into a patty and fried. It was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. The Brussels sprouts were cooked so they still had some crunch.

They came smothered in a béchamel sauce, which is not noted on the menu, so if you are hoping for a simple green side to offset the rich entree, ask them to hold the béchamel.

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The German Bone-In Shank may have even topped the schnitzel ($14.50).

The pork shank was marinated in apple cider vinegar, burgundy wine and spices

Steinhaus Keller

801 Central Ave., Suite 15 Hot Springs 501-624-7866

QUICK BITE Whether you’re looking for a pilsner, a kolsch, a kristallweizen, a weissbier, a schwarzbier, a dunkel, a beckbier, a radler, a trappistbier, a lambic, a heffesweizen or a weizenboc, Steinhaus Keller has you covered. Our suggestion: Pick the one that’s hardest to pronounce and roll the dice. Bring a few friends. This place is huge and can accommodate big parties with relative ease.

HOURS 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

OTHER INFO Credit cards accepted, full bar.

for the perfect fall-off-the-bone tenderness. The magic was in the marinade: rich and flavorful, sweet and tangy with earthy notes from herbs. It went well with the spaetzle we ordered. The side of crunchy carrot salad would have been refreshing if it had not been just a bit too sweet. The blend of spices and brown sugar dressing gave it a flavor we can best describe as “Christmasy.”

The Weihenstephaner also makes a great dessert. We stayed awhile to finish our beers and listen to the musicians stomp and shout over the hum of the accordion and the harrumphs of the trombone. Steinhaus has an unconventional atmosphere that invites chatter and general merriment. It’s boisterous without being annoying, and great for big groups. Our tall beers finally drained, we ventured back into the cold, looking forward to spring when we can enjoy a drink in the restaurant’s biergarten. A lot of downtown Hot Springs can tend toward the touristy or even gimmicky.

Steinhaus Keller is anything but.

THE ARKANSAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PRESENTS

FEB. 11 & 12, 2017 ROBINSON CENTER

arktimes.com FEBRUARY 2, 2017

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ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT.

THE SECRET GARDEN: AAF NIGHT AT THE THEATER Feb 23, 2017 from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM

ARGENTA ARTS FOUNDATION

The Argenta Arts Foundation invites you to our Annual Fundraiser at the Argenta Community Theater on February 23, 2017 for a preview night of The Secret Garden (a musical).

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FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily.

374-1957.

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER: “Ladies and Gentlemen … the Beatles!” Records, photographs, tour artifacts, videos, instruments, recording booth for sing-along with Ringo Starr, from the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE, through April 2. 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: American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-4185700.

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “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. 9169022.

HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: “A Diamond in the Rough: 75 Years of Historic Arkansas Museum”; “Eclectic Color: Diverse Colors for a Diverse World,” portraits

by Rex Deloney, through March 5; Kimberly Kwee, multimedia drawings, and David Scott Smith, ceramics, through Feb. 5; 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. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351.

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.

OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: “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.

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. 396-7050.

REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave., Fort Smith: “Liv Fjellsol: Art Says,” representational works on paper accompanied by poems and other writings, through April 2. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479784-2787.

SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St., El Dorado: “Brotherhood: Jason Sacran and John P. Lasater IV, Feb. 2-March 29.

Reception 5-7 p.m. Feb. 2, landscape workshop Feb. 2-3.

TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165, England: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 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: “Sigh-Fi,” installations by Hartmut Austen, Aaron Jones, Lap Le, Anne Libby, Sondra Perry, Martine Sims and Tan Zich,” curated by Haynes Riley, Gallery I, through March 3; “I wish I would have hugged them more,” digital images by Carey Roberson,

Maners/Pappas Gallery, through Feb. 26; “Burlesque Show,” wood sculpture by Bruce Reed, Gallery III, through Feb. 26. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat., 2-5 p.m.

Sun. 569-8977.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, Fayetteville: “True Neutral Human,” sculpture by Rhode Island artist Taylor Baldwin, through Feb. 19, Fine Arts Center Gallery. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Fri., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 479-575-7987.

RETAIL GALLERIES, OTHER EXHIBIT SPACES ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 N. Main St. Art in all media by gallery members Sue Henley, Dee Schulten, Suzanne Brugner, Ed Pennebaker and others. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. 258-8991.

ARKANSAS CAPITAL CORP., 200 River Market Ave., Suite 400: “Subtle and Bold,” work

by Susan Chambers and Sofia Gonzalez, by appointment. 374-9247.

BARRY THOMAS FINE ART AND STUDIOS, 711A Main St., NLR: Works by impressionist artist Thomas.

BOSWELL-MOUROT, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Arkansas Artists of Spectrum,” works by Delita Martin, Dennis McCann, Anais Dasse, Keith Runcke, Jeff Horton and Kyle Boswell, through Feb. 4. 664-0030.

CANTRELL GALLERY, 8205 Cantrell Road: Work by regional and Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335.

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “The Watercolor Series of Kuhl Brown,” through March 31. 375-2342.

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

CORE BREWING, 411 Main St., NLR: “Eye of the Beholder,” Latino Art Project exhibit of work by Luis Atilano, Luis Saldaña, Martin Flores, Carla Ramos, Susana Casillas, Matt Teravest, Toni Arnone, Hannah Hinojosa, Becky Botos, Chris James, and Vickie Hendrix-Siebenmorgen, through March 12. 3-9 p.m. Mon.-Wed., 3-11 p.m. Thu.-Fri., noon11 p.m. Sat., noon-9 p.m. Sun. DRAWL GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Southern contemporary art. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 240-7446.

GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: “World View,” mixed media by Hanna Hinojosa, and “Satirical Specs,” visual commentary on culture and society, both through March 1; also 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. Mon.-Fri., 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.

GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “William Dunlap, Landscape and Variable: Recent Works,” through Feb. 11.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787.

HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Intimate Spaces and Places,” new works on paper and canvas by Henri Linton Sr., through March 11. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822.

JUSTUS FINE ART GALLERY, 827 A Central Ave., Hot Springs: “Landscape Love,” paintings by Dolores Justus, opens with Hot Springs Gallery Walk reception 5-9 p.m. Feb. 3, show through February. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Wed.-Sat. 321-2335.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Landscapes,” paintings by Louis Beck. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006.

ARKANSAS TIMES

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Elementary Special Education Teacher. (Maumelle, AR and client sites). Teaching Emotionally Behavior Disorder students in grades K-3 (Elementary). Teaching and implementing behavior implementation plan (BIP) and functional behavior analysis (FBA).

Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Education or Special Education required. GA Educator Certificate FLD 805 required. Mail resume to Global Teachers Solutions LLC, 11901 Crystal Hill Road, Maumelle, AR 72113

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Musicians Showcase Semifinals: Round Two Patrick Donohue Argenta Arts Foundation

The Secret Garden: AAF Night at the Theater Easterseals

2017 Easterseals Arkansas Fashion Event Wolfe Street Foundation

Watch Party and Banquet for the 89th Academy Awards United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas

UCP’s Putt Putt Pub Crawl

Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Pulaski County

Hope Wins!

Buffalo River Watershed Alliance

Sing Out for the Buffalo ACANSA Arts Festival

Fundraiser featuring Nora Jane Struthers and Joe Overton Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets!

MICHEL LEIDERMANN, President (Minority Business - AR State Vendor) mleidermann@gmail.com • Mobile: (501) 993-3572

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DON’T BLINK, MY FRIEND

AND EMBR ACE THE FEAR .

HEARTS N BROKE

M IN D S N B LO W

Round 2!

Jan

Feb

Thursday, February 2!

All ages welcome! | $5 over 21. $10 under 21!

Feb

Feb

Feb

Mar

26

2

9

16

23

2

ROUND 1

ROUND 2

ROUND 3

ROUND 4

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF DON’T DO ANYTHING AWESOME

FINAL!

Your Round 2 musical get-to-its:

MORTALUS 8PM

All semi-final nights are held at Stickyz.

Yet, the final event (March 2. Or, two weeks and a day later) is at The Rev Room.

YOUTH PASTOR 9PM

Round 3

Feb. 9

8PM John McAteer & the Gentlemen Firesnakes 9PM Inner Party 10PM Age of Man 11PM Rah Howard Vidoe and updates at

SOLO JA XON 10PM

Round 4

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Final

March 2

8PM November Juliet

From Round 1 DeFrance

9PM Cosmocean

From Round 2 ?

10PM The Martyrs

From Round 3 ?

11PM Brae Leni & the Evergreen Groove Machine

From Round 4 ?

arktimes.com/showcase17

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Feb. 16

DAZZ & BRIE 11PM