Arkansas Times - June 8, 2017

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‘Feed the poor’ didn’t make the top 10, but it’s on the mind of homeless advocates as Little Rock attempts to curtail public feedings

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COMMENT

Say ‘no’ I expect better from our elected officials than what we’ve seen. It’s unthinkable to me that the U.S. House of Representatives voted to end Medicaid as we know it. I’m counting on Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton to reject this bill, a betrayal of the people Congress is elected to represent.

The American Health Care Act would force 24 million people to lose insurance, more than half of them low-income Americans. And capping Medicaid would force states to ration care, shoulder more costs, and deny health coverage to many of those who need it most.

These are real people’s lives on the line.

The Senate needs to say “no” to any proposal that guts Medicaid and threatens the health care of millions of Americans.

Khatera Karzai Fayetteville

Beauregard statue based only on what he did before the Civil War, and not after.

That is why these monuments are so vital, because there is a discussion that has to be heard, where folks discuss things based on facts, not lies or hysteria or hurt little feelings.

I really cannot give a flying fuck about some easily offended idiot who doesn’t even know the basic facts about what is offending them. Facts should drive policy, not feelings or emotion.

When you explain to someone looking at the Beauregard statue that he fought FOR civil rights for blacks, then you have a vital

perspective that is missing. You can have a discussion, instead of throwing things down some Orwellian memory hole.

StevenE Mitch Landrieu, the Arkansas Times, liberals, et al., may think they’re being great social reformers, but removing the Confederate statues in New Orleans and other Southern cities is just another provocation in the escalation of a major civil conflict.

To the average person mass media may seem innocuous, but in the real world it’s a very powerful force that has the capacity

From the web In response to Max Brantley’s May 25 column, “Virgil, quick come see”: In my opinion, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s reasoning for removing certain statues was well presented in his speech. He knew he had some opposition to what he was doing. I also think the longtime gap between the war ending and the statue being erected is strange.

New Orleans has been through a lot of trauma over the years. I never paid attention to statues of Robert E. Lee. It doesn’t mean anything to me in the year 2017. I don’t feel a sentimental heart-wrenching bond to the Confederate flag and don’t particularly like pig and hogs. If you are a person who wants to worship the Confederate flag or Razorback pigs, I don’t really care. I am still an Arkansan and still a patriotic American, because cloth flags and Razorback pigs, etc., are material objects that don’t represent everything I am. I am not just one thing. I have always been more interested in World War II history. Jason Rapert’s Ten Commandments monument to himself means nothing to me, although some people of other religions are offended by it. Regardless of how you feel about New Orleans taking down statues, I think Landrieu’s speech was one of the best speeches I have ever heard.

ShineonLibby You are far too easily pleased by ignorant platitudes, Shin.

The problem with Mitch the Vandal is that he didn’t even address the fact, the historical, critical fact, that some of those ex-Confederates became important American advocates for civil and equal rights.

That was the pity of having him defile the 4

JUNE 8, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

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to shape people’s ideas, opinions, behaviors and political activities. Essentially, for around 60 years, America’s corrupted networks, Hollywood studios, entertainment companies and liberal academia and print media have been scripting a conflict over a false racial narrative with their programming, films and news, the issues of political correctness and now the election of Donald Trump.

So the real reason for driving this false racial narrative being scripted by mass media is actually an attack on the people of this country who celebrate Southern culture and heritage and are proud of being white. The Confederate monument angle and that they represent a horrible episode of slavery are just pretexts to provoke a civil conflict. Actually, the conflict has already begun in certain highoctane political localities such as Berkeley, Calif., where anti-fascist followers clashed violently with Trump supporters.

Landrieu and the Arkansas Times and millions of other liberals can incorrectly depict the purpose of erecting the Confederate monuments or what they represent to people to condemn their opponents who don’t delight in the defamation of Southern culture and heritage and white people if they want. But it’s nothing less than their own agenda of bigotry and hatred they so frequently accuse others of having. And it is an agenda of provocation that is leading to a very violent civil conflict in the greatest depression in U.S. history.

Thomas Pope In response to the June 2 Arkansas Blog post, “The Jason Rapert open line”: How much would you pay to live a week in a world where you didn’t have to read the names of Jason Rapert or Donald Trump?

How much have you got?

Silverback66 I’ve known meth heads (not personally but through random occurrences at jobs) that have fried their brains to the point that they only repeat certain words and actions over and over again until they’re either incapacitated or dead. Rapert is just like that, and to some extent, so are other conservatives, only they’re smoking shittier dope with less purity (thanks, “Breaking Bad”). He’ll be the same petty, short, angry, pathetic, latent coward that he is over and over again until he’s either out of office or out of existence. Time is a flat circle. nadaquehacer

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Jason Rapert is the 21st century version of Elmer Gantry, but I still think Burt Lancaster’s version was better.

Deathbyinches

arktimes.com JUNE 8, 2017

5

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the week “I’m more worried about what people pay for electricity in Paris, Arkansas, than I am the Paris climate accord, which would make them pay a lot more.

The United States will continue to lead the world in environmental protection and economic might without this lopsided deal.”

— U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s reaction to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, as reported by the Arkansas News Bureau. Cotton’s statement was typical of Arkansas Republicans. The U.S. joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not to participate in the agreement.

Potential candidates Paul Spencer, a longtime teacher at Catholic High School and pecan farmer in Scott, has announced interest in running as a Democrat for the 2nd District Congress seat now held

by Republican French Hill. Spencer, 50, was a founder of Regnat Populus, a group that led a campaign for ethics reform to limit the influence of special interest money in elections.

The reform passed, but was broadly circumvented by legislative workarounds.

Spencer has had little association with partisan politics over the years.

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JUNE 8, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Years ago, he once told the Arkansas Times, he often voted Republican.

But he’s left-leaning on most issues (a notable exception is his pro-life position as a practicing Catholic). He also once described himself as a “Berniecrat.” In the health context, this would translate to Medicare for all to achieve universal and portable coverage. Natashia Burch Hulsey, a retired Air Force photographer and co-owner of a vegan catering service, also said recently that she was considering an independent candidacy.

ID required Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore has made it harder for citizens to do business at City Hall.

You now have to present a photo ID to visit City Hall, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette first reported. That means it is harder to drop off a petition to run for city office than it is to vote for that office. (You may not be required to display a photo ID to vote.) If you do choose to display an ID to vote, it isn’t scanned for unspecified record retention, as the new City Hall system does.

If you don’t have a photo ID, the city manager will send an employee down to vet you. We do wonder what

entrance test will be required for those without photos. Better behave. They use machines to screen for guns at the Capitol and Courthouse, but no photo ID is required. Yet.

Duggars, again Disgraced reality star Josh Duggar wants in on a lawsuit filed by three of his sisters over release of information about his molestation case.

Police investigated whether Duggar had molested his sisters.

No charges were filed. But documents on the case were released to a celebrity publication, In Touch.

That drove Josh Duggar out of his position as a political operator for a religious organization.

The suit seeks cash damages.

Duggar’s intervention motion was filed by Travis Story, the Fayetteville lawyer who’s become something of the go-to representative for conservative religious figures and organizations, such as Eccelsia College, which is enmeshed in the legislative bribery case.

OPINION

Unequal

F

aced with a solid recommendation by a contractors. It failed panel of state employees to revoke the to provide requested MAX BRANTLEY charter of Covenant Keepers charter documentation for maxbrantley@arktimes.com school in Southwest Little Rock, the state credit card charges, Board of Education voted again last week including out-of-state trips. Its director, Valto forgive the school’s poor academic and erie Tatum, is paid a whopping $135,000, or financial record. better than $800 per student to run a 160-stuAgain, the state Board of Education dent school. No comparable school leader in accepted excuses it won’t tolerate from the Arkansas comes close.

Little Rock School District.

What’s the rub? Covenant Keepers has The board took over the Little Rock powerful friends. The Walton Family FounSchool District two years ago and won’t let dation provided cash infusion to fix its redgo, though 45 of its 48 schools exceed the ink-bathed books. The money was passed performance of Covenant Keepers and the through an opaque, unaccountable charter others are easily in its league academically. management corporation. Jess Askew, a tallCovenant Keepers, 9 years old this August, tower Little Rock lawyer who lawyers for has NEVER met proficiency standards. The Walton-supported school “choice” initiagrade 6-8 school showed about 28 percent of tives, pled the case for Covenant Keepers. its students meeting the standard in reading The head of the Office of Education Policy and 20 percent in math in the most recent at the University of Arkansas — a charter tests. It’s also been in a persistent financial school-promoting operation that owes its mess. existence and pay subsidies to the Waltons The school had a huge negative fund bal- — testified that Covenant Keepers was, well, ance, in part because it was in arrears to the doing a bit better and used the Little Rock state for taking money in excess of its 160-stu- School District as a whipping boy. She said dent enrollment. (You wouldn’t think count- Covenant Keepers in the most recent year of ing to 160 is high-order math.) Proper tax testing did as well as some nearby Little Rock forms weren’t in evidence for employees and district schools. Valerie Tatum said she’s

No longer leading

I

f you are among the great majority of Americans and even larger share of the global population who share a concern about the future in a heating world, President Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement left you furious or just deeply sad.

But there are two takeaways from the Trump retreat: one that is not nearly as worrisome and better for the mind and heart, but another that is less wholesome. Let’s leave the second for the end — an optional read for the strong of heart.

The first is that no one could have seriously expected Trump to embrace climate safety or any other legacy of President Obama and, anyway, sabotaging the climate accord may have little environmental impact. It will take four years for the country to extricate itself from the Paris accord and by then we probably will be back in it.

Meantime, the free market so beloved by Republicans will continue to drive power producers toward cleaner and less expensive ways to both generate and use electricity. And far from eliminating jobs in places like Arkansas, renewable energy and conservation will produce jobs, growth and consumer savings. It

is already happening, and to stop it Trump will have to do more than denounce Obama and the 194 other nations of the world that signed the ERNEST DUMAS accord. Arkansas’s big power producers are investing in solar, wind and gas generation and preparing to retire or retrofit the dirtiest coal-fired units in the country. Most of the states and cities and major industries are ahead of us. Appalachia and the Powder River Basin, the coal regions, will catch up.

Koch Industries, which bankrolled climate-denial propaganda and the defeats in 2012 and 2014 of Republican members of Congress who worried about global warming, will still own the whimpering party and Trump, but to little avail. Other major oil producers supported a global treaty once it was revealed that their own scientists far back in the last century had raised fears that carbon emissions were heating the world.

Since Jan. 20, Trump has been guided by a single impulse, to rebuke the black man whom he insisted for years was a fraudulent citizen

getting valuable support from the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, another charter school advocate underwritten by, yes, the Walton Family Foundation.

The excuse-making for Covenant Keepers on the state board was abundant. Diane Zook, who came prepared with a scripted Little Rock School District diatribe the last time someone asked for a little similar flexibility for Little Rock schools with similar poor and minority student bodies, said the charter school was headed in the “right direction.”

Brett Williamson, who famously declared angrily that he was “sick” of hearing about Little Rock, said it was unremarkable that the school might have screwed up tax forms. He, by the way, works in finance for the Murphy oil fortune (a source of charter school support over the years). Fitz Hill dismissed the shoddy credit card record-keeping and compared it favorably with his own. (This from a guy under whose tenure Arkansas Baptist College nearly collapsed, and still founders, from financial ills.) Charisse Dean, employed by a home-school-backing religious organization, almost seemed to be reading from prepared Covenant Keeper talking points. Susan Chambers, a Walmart employee, suggested that the tough report on financial records somehow boiled down to a personality clash with department officials.

The fix was in. Board member Jay Barth (a

Hendrix College professor and columnist for this paper), who noted the school’s repeated failure to deliver academically, threw in with the vote for maintaining the charter in return for a review of the school’s performance on the next round of testing.

The Walton family’s propaganda unit at the UA put the cherry on this hot mess sundae with a blog post declaring “… parents are CHOOSING to send their students to Covenant Keepers. And here at the OEP, we think that allowing parents to have a choice is good for kids and families, even if the school’s test scores are just the same.”

This is the new mantra of the Billionaire Boys Club school “choice” campaign. Choice is good, no matter how bad the school. The new theme is required because studies of charter and voucher schools have demonstrated little edge, sometime even damage, for alternatives to real public schools.

Covenant Keepers, in the best possible light, MIGHT be on a par with the worst Little Rock schools. Covenant Keepers remains in business. The Little Rock School District remains in state control.

Billionaires have the resources to play the long game. Their man is now governor and his appointees control the state Board of Education. That’s bad news for Little Rock schools. Charter schools? They never have to say they’re sorry. Even if they are.

and to wipe out his legacy — by taking away health insurance from the 24 million covered

by Obamacare, eliminating the taxes on the rich that extended the solvency of Medicare and Medicaid, removing the controls on Wall Street financial houses that drove us into the great recession, reversing EPA rules that protect air and water from industrial poisons, banning people seeking refuge from war and famine on our shores, halting the trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations that ganged up with the U.S. against poor communist China, and, yes, banning Muslims from six Persian Gulf and Red Sea nations from traveling to America.

The travel ban was a specific rebuke of Obama, who had said nice things about Muslims in general, although the ban itself is utterly pointless. It bans travel only from six countries where Trump has no luxury resorts and that have produced no U.S. terrorists — not one. All the 9/11 terrorists were from countries where Trump has resorts and other business interests.

The six banned countries have not caused the death or injury of a single person on U.S. soil, while the states of South Carolina and New York, homes of Dylann Roof and Timothy McVeigh, raised right-wing terrorists who killed 177 and injured 685 citizens.

Nothing Trump does seems to have much direct effect beyond the political points for having ceremonially revoked Obama’s gains, and the same may be true of revoking the Paris

agreement. The immediate fear was that other big polluting nations, chiefly China, India and the European Union, would renege on their obligations if the U.S. were off the hook. But they rather jovially renewed their commitments. China has made such massive strides in solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric generation that the antiquated transmission system built for its coal plants can’t distribute all the power. It is taking over the global solar-cell market from the United States. Let ’em have all those jobs, Trump says, while we reinvigorate Appalachian coal.

Which brings us to the depressing takeaway from Trump’s climate retreat. It is a retreat — real, not just ceremonial — from the United States’ position as the leader not only of the free world, but of the planet. The president had already signaled the retreat by surrendering leadership on trade to China, on security to Europe, Russia and China and on human rights to Middle East dictators. An op-ed piece by his two top advisers in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal explaining the climate retreat spelled out why we are withdrawing as world leader. Hence, the United States will deal with every nation on the planet solely on the basis that Trump ran his businesses — what we can get from you, not what we can do for you or with you.

The United States had a good run, a full century.

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

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7

Weakness

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ARKANSAS TIMES

f cosmic justice prevails, Donald J. Trump could live to see the Atlantic Ocean roll through his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort from the sea to the Intracoastal Waterway. His children almost certainly will.

The plush country club is built upon what geologists call a barrier beach — essentially a sandbar between the ocean and the bay. Already, water pools on parts of the property during coastal storms and extreme high tides, as sea levels driven by global warming rise a bit every year.

Within 30 years, climatologists estimate, Mar-a-Lago could be vulnerable to flooding as many as 210 days a year. It’s a growing problem across South Florida.

Even mighty Donald cannot command the sea.

Perhaps he might get around to appointing somebody to head FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which he hasn’t otherwise done — too busy conducting a one-sided Twitter feud with the mayor of London. He’s also named no U.S. attorneys, and only a small handful of ambassadors.

Evidently, Trump thought sophisticates were laughing at him in Europe and became determined to make them pay the price in symbolic gestures. Them and Barack Obama, whose negotiation of the Paris climate agreement was rightly seen as the diplomatic high-point of his presidency — not because it bound the United States to what Trump falsely called a “draconian” regulatory regime, but because China, India and other developing countries agreed to participate for the first time.

Why falsely? Because everything in the Paris Agreement is strictly voluntary. There are no penalties and no enforcement mechanisms in the agreement whatsoever. Each nation remains free to set its own goals for greenhouse gas abatement and to change them at any time.

So if Trump had merely chosen to cancel Obama’s Clean Power Plan to please Koch Industries and other industrial polluters, all he had to do was say so. Issue an executive order countermanding President Obama’s and bingo, it’s done.

Sure, China’s free to build all the coalfired electrical plants it wants, although it’s canceled more than 100 of the damn things. But then, contrary to Trump, so was the United States free to do so,

although hardly anybody wants to.

Hillary Clinton may have GENE been smug and LYONS impolitic when she said during the campaign that her climate policies would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” But it’s going to happen anyway.

Coal’s too expensive and dirty, a 20th century technology that pollutes the air and fouls the water. Natural gas and solar are winning in the marketplace everywhere but Wyoming and West Virginia.

So it follows that no, the Paris Agreement isn’t up for renegotiation.

Nor was it imposed by France, merely negotiated there. Anyway, what would Trump demand? The same free hand he’s already got? That $100 billion Green Climate Fund that Trump railed against actually contains $10.3 billion — a comparative pittance. Nor does America’s share come out of anti-terror funds.

“Meanwhile, the earth is still warming,” Politico’s Michael Grunwald, “the polar ice caps are still melting, and the seas are still rising, heedless of the inspiring words committed to paper in Paris, and just as heedless of a noisy American politician’s decision to reject them. ... Trump can call global warming a hoax, but 2014 was nevertheless the hottest year on record, until it was displaced by 2015, which was overtaken by 2016.”

And if 2017 were to come in a little cooler, industry-funded denialists would call the science disproved. Because if tomorrow’s cooler than today, there will be no summer. It’s the climatological equivalent of “creation science,” based upon the screwball belief that researchers worldwide have concocted a conspiratorial hoax. “The concept of global warming,” Trump tweeted in 2012, “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.”

Which is ultimately what this is all about: an attack on expertise by a politician who basically ran against sophistication. An assault on diplomacy by a leader who has defiantly abdicated his role “leader of the free world.”

In short, Trump’s actions have gained him nothing while weakening the United States in what he mistakenly sees as a show of strength.

Unifying

7 P.M. TUESDAY, JUNE 20

BY AUTUMN TOLBERT

A

fter months of constant headshaking and wondering how bad things will get, I’ll take a gleam of hope anywhere I can find it.

On Sunday it came from a group of pop stars at the One Love Manchester concert in Manchester, England.

The show, hosted by Ariana Grande, a child actress turned pop singer partial to ponytails and stiletto heels, was a fundraiser and response to the bombing at Grande’s May concert in Manchester that killed 22 adults and children and injured over 100 more. Despite another terror attack on Saturday night that killed seven in London, 50,000 people showed up to hear Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry, Take That and Liam Gallagher, among others. I turned it on because half of Twitter seemed to be watching, and I had a rare Sunday afternoon home alone with no children or husband.

The theme of the concert — of not giving in to fear — is one we need to hear right now. Social media is full of folks who refuse to acknowledge that terrorists who identify as radicalized Muslims do not represent the rest of the Muslims just as the radicalized Christian terrorists do not represent all of those who practice the Christian faith. The voices that seem to be amplified the most are those of hate.

We have elected officials calling for an end to due process for those Muslims suspected of terrorist acts. I’ve seen multiple “Christians” argue we should torture the friends and family members of suspected Islamic terrorists. I’m so disgusted I don’t even know what to say sometimes.

The grace and compassion showed by this group of pop stars was in sharp contrast with the petty, politicized statements from President Trump on Twitter in which he criticized the mayor of London, doubled down on his talk of a travel ban, and showed he either is completely unin-

formed about England’s gun laws or is deliberately ignorAUTUMN ing them in an TOLBERT attempt to win points with the NRA crowd. We find ourselves in a situation in which, as one of my good friends pointed out, the bar is so low right now that any act of decency or effort to unite instead of divide seems heroic.

For me, at least, there is another layer to all of this. Since last year, just being a woman can feel like a political act. In the past week, a planned all-female showing of the “Wonder Woman” movie in Texas seemed to draw more outrage than the all-male panel of senators deciding the fate of our health care; journalist Megyn Kelley was accused of needing a “pill” after she questioned Vladimir Putin about a Trump/Russia connection; and I was told I needed to “simmer down” by a male attorney while discuss ing a court case.

Sigh. Right now, as women fight for more positions of power and leadership, we are faced with the reality that we dare not be too strong or too compassionate. Seeing a group of female singers taking compassion and strength to the extreme was exactly what I needed.

I imagine some will find those like me so moved by all of this to be naive or silly or overly sentimental. I don’t care. This concert was a way to show the rest of the world that there are those who want to come together without fear and without hate. Since we no longer have a president willing or able to try to be a unifying force in the world, it just might take a rainy Sunday afternoon watching a group of pop stars on a stage halfway across the world to make us feel better.

We find ourselves in a situation in which, as one of my good friends pointed out, the bar is so low right now that any act of decency or effort to unite instead of divide seems heroic.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

BY BEAU WILCOX

T

here are consequences to playing baseball for days on end, well into the wee hours, in stormy weather and chaotic circumstances. Arkansas learned that in the hardest of ways.

The Hogs’ unexpectedly brilliant 2017 baseball season came to an agonizing end Monday night, 3-2, the third and last one-run game with the Fayetteville Regional’s second seed, Missouri State.

Around 18 hours before, amid rain delays and pitching changes en masse, the Hogs had forced the win-or-stay-home finale by riding out an 11-10 storm against the Bears, who managed to win the entire damn regional on the strength of three one-run victories, the first of the walkoff variety against Oklahoma State in the Friday afternoon opener.

The Bears, in short, are incalculably resilient, and worthy of their berth in the Super Regional. Arkansas’s offensive engine started to shimmy a bit in the final weeks and especially so in this four-team field, which was surprising because Oral Roberts, along with the aforesaid Bears and Cowboys, didn’t exactly come into this postseason with a reputation for having big-game, shutdown arms. This was ostensibly an offense-heavy slate, but even in the seventh and final game of the extended weekend, the Bears and Hogs struggled to reach five combined runs.

What is unfortunate for Arkansas is that the standings will show this was, by percentage, the best of Dave Van Horn’s illustrious tenure. And one more win would’ve matched his 2012 apex of 46 victories, and launched the Hogs into the Supers with momentum. But despite a yeoman pitching effort by Kacey Murphy, starting on consecutive days but sporting vitality and command belying his purported fatigue, and a terrific bullpen effort, the Hogs’ only offense Monday came on a Jared Gates line-drive homer and a wild pitch two innings later that allowed Gates to scamper home.

Regrettably, the runner behind him was stranded 90 feet from a tie ballgame.

As expected, Baum was electric despite the long day and night and morning that the fans had already experienced. The Hogs had seized some serious momentum when Evan Lee fanned the last Bear at 3:10 a.m. on Monday, even if the whole roster was likely exhausted to the point of mild hallucinations. Conditions had calmed and Murphy’s effort was one that facilitated budding momentum when the team came to the plate.

The problem, as it was at various times from about mid-April BEAU WILCOX onward, is that the Razorbacks weren’t quite getting the same production from their experienced nucleus of Grant Koch, Carson Shaddy and Luke Bonfield. Yes, Chad Spanberger had a boffo SEC Tournament and then managed to produce again in the Regional.

But on Monday night, getting out of a couple of early deficits hinged on the likes of Gates and Jake Arledge producing big moments, and, to be fair, those guys are not quite wired for those. Bonfield struck out in a couple of critical moments through the weekend; Koch had a terrible slump to end his otherwise fine sophomore campaign, and a big passed ball in the 5-4 loss on Saturday that thrust the Hogs into desperation mode.

Those self-inflicted wounds, ultimately, were the ones that cost the team dearly throughout the latter half of the year. The Saturday loss to LSU at Baum, where Arkansas blew an 8-1 lead late, was an amalgam of Cannon Chadwick losing control on the mound and gaffes in the field. Similarly, an error by Gates on a routine play in the SEC championship game facilitated the Tigers’ three-run burst that carried them to the win. There were a few occasions where the Razorbacks simply faltered in most phases and lost accordingly, but the retrospective on 2017 will reveal this difficult truth: Of the Hogs’ 19 total losses, 12 of those came by a three-run margin or less.

The draft will again deprive the Hogs of some of their potential top returning talent, but yet again, Van Horn has a nucleus around which to construct another contender. As Andrew Benintendi broke out from a promising but understated freshman season to become a Golden Spikes winner as a sophomore, there is a distinct possibility that someone like Lee, Gates or Eric Cole will flourish in 2018. The staff will be excellent again.

And with another year of Wes Johnson’s guidance, the young arms will continue to prosper.

As with the basketball program, which rounded a corner in 2016-17 after a disappointing previous year, only to suffer a stinging curtailment of the postseason, this is one sport where stability and leadership means sustained success is very much attainable.

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

The body electric

A

t the gym, The Observer understands the utopian optimization of surveillance. Each day, The Observer goes and thinks back to videos consumed on how to move the arm (locked at the elbow) to locate the muscle, and then we do our three sets of 12. Then, like the scientist with his rat, we record the data.

Though in other parts of life, The Observer freaks out a bit about the constant uploading of the self to the cloud, still we think how nice it would be to have a theoretically benevolent electronic overlord biologically monitoring all of our movements. It could track The Observer’s exact flailings and calculate their burn, their productivity and their production. It would weigh this against The Observer’s eating and give a clean regression of whether or not we are, or not, a fatty. Our little ombudsman. Can knowledge eradicate the sin of sloth?

More importantly: Wouldn’t it be nice, sometimes, to not have a body?

By uploading, The Observer can put the most basic human annoyances of the body’s needs into a system. For example, The Observer keeps a log of our exercise in a phone application that is combined with a food diary.

To track the food, The Observer takes photos of the bar codes of items (for example, sandwich: photo of Swiss cheese code, photo of turkey code) to create nutrient and caloric tabulations. Throughout the day, The Observer will check the caloric count, from which is subtracted calories burned by the exercise The Observer logs, to see whether we’re in spitting distance of our goals. Or, The Observer will slide over to a section titled “Macros” that — via pie chart — lets us know if we are consuming the proper percentages. As in, is our diet 20 percent protein? All of this

satisfies the part of The Observer that grew up playing video games and enjoys the setting of goals and making of lists.

Not that it’s really about production. The hope is to be happy. Which is simple to say, but so inherently biological — and personal — that you have to figure out how your brain chemistry ticks and tocks until it hits joy. Some people really want to go all robot, go past their humanity to felicity. The Observer shares this dream only sometimes, mainly when finding the body disappointing. Or, after being grumpy all day and then running for 10 minutes and feeling calm sweep over us almost immediately.

A recent essay in the magazine n+1 talks about “transhumanism.” The idea is that there will be a singularity where we, as humans, merge with technology to become “posthuman: immortal, limitless, changed beyond recognition.”

Generally, The Observer is fearful of such talk, having watched the Edward Snowden documentaries and seen Facebook rants after someone reads “1984.” Also, it’s mostly touted by strange Silicon Valley-types like Peter Thiel (who, no joke, talks about transfusing blood from the young to live longer). The Observer has no twinkle in our eye about living to 120.

But, the essay reminds us all that these ideas about transhumanism “are a secular outgrowth of Christian eschatology.” What happens after we die? Well, what if technology lets us be born again? Born better ... that’s something every Bible reader can understand. If The Observer goes to the gym every day, tracks the food every day, and is persistent, can The Observer be born better, too? It’s a nice thought to be able to hack happy, but probably just a thought.

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

Victims of predatory foster parent sue former DHS employees Lawsuit says DHS staffers knew about abuse, did nothing.

BY BENJAMIN HARDY ARKANSAS NONPROFIT NEWS NETWORK

S

even sexual assault victims of former Arkansas foster parent Clarence “Charlie” Garretson filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging negligence and due process violations on the part of several former employees of the Arkansas Department of Human Services as well as their assailant’s wife, Lisa Garretson.

The suit was filed in Fort Smith less than a week after Clarence Garretson was sentenced to life in federal prison for assaulting a series of minors in his care, most of them foster children placed in the Garretson household by DHS — the agency responsible for Arkansas’s foster care system — between 1998 and 2004.

DHS placed some 35 children in the home over that period, and prosecutors have said there is evidence that at least 14 of them were sexually abused by Garretson. At Garretson’s sentencing hearing May 31, one victim — who is also one of the plaintiffs in the civil suit — told the court that she had repeatedly attempted to inform DHS authorities of the abuse, which began when she was 11.

“Arkansas DHS put me and many others in the hands of a monster,” she said at the hearing. U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes, who presided 12

JUNE 8, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

over the hearing, commented that the case constituted an “extreme failure on the part of the Department of Human Services” and said of Lisa Garretson, “if she didn’t know what was going on, she should have known.” Holmes was also assigned the civil suit filed Monday.

The plaintiffs’ allegations of DHS negligence go further. Their suit alleges that DHS approved the Garretsons to be foster parents despite DHS substantiating a report one year earlier that Clarence Garretson had sexually assaulted two children at knifepoint.

The lawsuit names as defendants former DHS Director Kurt Knickrehm, who headed the agency from 1999 to 2005, and Richard Weiss, who served as interim director for six months in 1998. The other six DHS defendants are Debbie Williams, Nikkole Hurst, Carol Gillis, Patsy Chase and Robbie McKay, all of whom allegedly served as caseworkers for one or more of the children abused

by Garretson, and Dick Pickarts, the DHS director of Logan County at the time of the abuse, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint alleges that the DHS caseworkers and the county

who reported Garretson’s actions in 2016 was herself the child of a teenage victim of Garretson more than a decade earlier, who became pregnant by “a relative of the Garretsons” while she was living in the household as a foster child from 2000 to 2004.

(How the minor daughter came to be in Garretson’s company in 2014 is not made clear.)

The complaint alleges negligence on the part of those defendants with CLARENCE GARRETSON: DHS put minors in his care; now he will serve a life sentence for molesting them. direct contact with the former foster children — director “obtained actual knowledge” Williams, Pickarts, Hurst, that at least one of the children in Gillis, Chase, McKay and Lisa Garthe Garretson home was sexually retson — stating that each “had reaassaulted, but took no action. sonable cause to suspect that Charlie A long-haul truck driver, Garretwas sexually abusing children” and son would take children on cross- “had a duty to report such abuse.” country trips, sexually assault them Each “willfully and knowingly failed in the cab of his truck and coerce to report such abuse,” which violated them into silence afterward, accordan Arkansas statute requiring fosing to federal prosecutors. DHS ter parents and DHS employees to revoked the foster home’s license “immediately notify the Child Abuse in 2004 — yet Garretson was not Hotline if he or she has reasonable charged with a crime until he raped cause to suspect that a child has been another child in 2014. That victim subjected to child maltreatment.” reported the abuse to her mother in In addition to negligence, the 2016, leading to an FBI investigation complaint also states two separate that uncovered the pattern of earlier causes of action against all defenassaults that occurred when the Gardants, including former DHS Direcretsons operated their foster home a tor Knickrehm and former interim decade earlier. director Weiss. The first is a fedGarretson pleaded guilty in Octoeral civil rights claim. Because foster ber to five counts of interstate transchildren are in the custody of DHS, portation of a minor with intent to which has “the fundamental duty to engage in criminal sexual activity. ensure that each foster child is in an In exchange, federal prosecutors appropriate placement and confirm dropped six additional counts and that each foster child … is safe and agreed to not prosecute Lisa Garhealthy,” the agency’s failure to do retson. so constituted a violation of the chilMany of the facts of the crimidren’s “fundamental rights to physinal case against Clarence Garretcal safety and to be free from the son remain unknown to the public infliction of unnecessary pain.” The because key court documents are complaint states that the defendants under seal. The civil suit filed Mondemonstrated “a pervasive pattern day includes a detail that was not of indifference” to the victims and stated in the criminal case: The minor their due process rights. The second

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claim is based on a federal statute that allows minor victims of certain federal crimes (or those who were minors at the time the crime was committed) to seek civil remedies.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages that include the costs of medical expenses, pain and suffering, mental anguish and legal fees, along with punitive damages. An amount is not specified in the complaint.

The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial.

DHS itself is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and the agency typically does not comment on litigation. Confidentiality laws prohibit DHS from commenting on individual foster care cases, meaning the agency cannot publicly refute specific allegations of misconduct.

When asked about the Garretson case in October, DHS spokeswoman Amy Webb said, “This is a tragic situation, and DHS would never intentionally put a child in harm’s way.

Sadly, there are people who prey upon children and may try to use the foster system to do so. When that happens today, we act swiftly to ensure youth in foster care are in safe homes.

“The system for vetting foster families is much stronger and more thorough today than it was 20 years ago. ... We conduct state and federal background checks, child maltreatment checks, home studies, and training. We also do re-evaluations of homes annually and new background and maltreatment checks every two years. In addition, we have a more sophisticated computer system. We also now have a system in place that automatically notifies [the DHS division responsible for foster care] when there is a call into the child abuse hotline that includes an allegation against a foster parent.”

As of Monday night, attempts to reach two of the named defendants for comment were unsuccessful.

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

THE

BIG PICTURE

Inconsequential News Quiz: Slim Chocolate Strikes Again Edition Play at home, while petting your chijuahha chiwajha TINY DOG!

1) An Arkansas Department of Correction employee told police he was robbed in Little Rock on May 30 after pulling over to “relieve himself,” with armed robbers taking his uniforms, shoes, wallet and car. Where did the victim saying he was going when he was robbed?

A) To a Little Rock hotel, where he said he was planning to meet a woman he met online whom he knew only as “Slim Chocolate.”

B) To hang out behind the Zip-E-Mart in Prothro Junction, where he hoped to score the ADC a new supply of the execution drug midazolam.

C) “To hell, if I don’t change my ways.”

D) To his second job as a stripper dressed as a prison guard.

2) Bentonville retail behemoth Walmart recently announced it is testing a new idea in Arkansas and New Jersey that it hopes will improve the experience of customers. What is it?

A) Building a series of squalid shacks behind all stores so associates never have to leave.

B) Having Walmart employees deliver packages ordered online on their way home from work.

C) “Hunger Games”-style combat in the housewares section to determine what customers get the first crack at Memorial Day weekend and Black Friday deals.

D) “All You Can Eat Outdated Cole Slaw Thursdays” with shoppers encouraged to bring their own spoon or ladle.

3) To mark the National Spelling Bee, Google.com recently published a list of the most often misspelled words in each of the 50 states. What, according to Google, was Arkansas’s most often misspelled word?

A) Bootylicious B) Libtard C) Covfefe D) Chihuahua 4) Suggestions are pouring in to Governor Hutchinson’s “My Idea” website, myidea.arkansas.gov, which allows Arkansans to suggest improvements to Arkansas state government. Which of the following is a real suggestion recently sent to the site?

A) “No tort reform. Further, do whatever you can to get rid of Rapert. Wow. What an idiot.”

B) “I don’t care how you do it, just do it. Final goal: Get rid of Rapert.”

C) “Get Rapert out of there and stop listening to him!”

D) “Ignore Rapert.”

E) “Ignore Rapert. Please, I beg you!”

F) “Tying Jason Rapert, Bart Hester, Bob Ballinger and Charlie Collins to a 25-foot-tall inflatable dildo and setting them out to sea.”

G) All of the above.

5) Speaking of Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway), he recently posted and later deleted (and later reposted) a post on social media after commenters took him to task over it. What was the tweet about?

A) An announcement that he and “God” had completed a draft of his book: “The Bible Part II: Homophobic Boogaloo.”

B) A video in which Rapert got so caught up in his latest Facebook Live rant that he set the cruise control and started digging for his Precise Concordance of the New Testament in the backseat of his Ford while going 70 mph on the freeway.

C) A post that defined several terms, including racist, bigot, fascist, Islamophobe and Nazi, as “a person who wins an argument with a Liberal” — which, of course, would seem to suggest that Bro. Rapert believes racism, bigotry, fascism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism don’t exist outside the imagination of dastardly liberals.

D) A tearful confession that his planned Ten Commandments monument on the state Capitol lawn will, in fact, cost the taxpayers of Arkansas a “metric shitheap” of cash in lawyer’s fees before it’s ultimately ordered removed by the courts.

Answers: A, B, D, G, C

LISTEN UP

arktimes.com JUNE 8, 2017

13

SALVATION: The homeless get breakfast at the Salvation Army.

Loaves and fishes A proposed ordinance would limit

From a purely

the ability of charities to feed

civic standpoint — from a keepingyour-constituency-from-hating-yourguts standpoint — the issue of homelessness is so thorny for a politician it almost makes you pity them. Almost.

There is no right answer to be had, no one-size-fits-all solution big enough to stretch over the issue, bristling as it is with handy petards ready to hoist both those deemed insufficiently business-oriented and those seen as insufficiently compassionate. No matter what decision a city official makes

the homeless in LR city parks.

Opponents say it’s about keeping the poor out of sight, out of mind.

BY DAVID KOON

14

JUNE 8, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

with regard to homelessness, somebody, somewhere, is going to think that person either a bleeding-heart dope or a heartless bastard for making it.

Still, there are insufficient answers, and then there are the willfully tonedeaf ones. That seems to be the case with Little Rock’s recent attempt to regulate mass feedings of the homeless in city parks, via a surprise ordinance that seemed so punitive and downright mean that it gave even

BRIAN CHILSON

some reliable business-first folks around town pause for thought.

Dropped on city directors at the tail end of a City Board agenda meeting May 9, the ordinance as originally written would have prohibited feeding meals to more than 25 people in a city park without securing a “Large Group Feeding Permit” from the city at least 30 days before the event, with groups not allowed to serve meals in the same park more than twice a year. Though certain restrictions in the ordinance have been softened after public outcry, the original draft required each group to put down a $500 refundable security deposit “to cover the cost of repairing any damage to the hardscape, furnishings and landscape” in the park where the feeding occurred, with the deposit potentially forfeited if the group failed to pick up trash following their event. If the group wanted police protection for the event, the draft ordinance stated, it had to hire off-duty police officers at its own cost.

In addition, the ordinance gave the city manager’s office the ability to summarily cancel a feeding event in a city park at any time, postponing it for up to 15 days if City Hall determined the event should not proceed because of “weather, public health conditions, public safety conditions, or because of an intervening event that was not foreseen at the time the large group feeding application was filed.”

Attempts to reach City Manager Bruce Moore, who brought up the ordinance, were unsuccessful before press time.

Groups serving the homeless fed large groups under the Broadway Bridge on a monthly basis for over a decade until the bridge was closed for construction in September 2016.

It appears the ordinance was tailored to preserve the aesthetics of Riverfront Park and has outraged those who work with the homeless. In the process, it has managed to shove one of Little Rock’s most enduring elephants in the room back into the rotunda of City Hall.

At a May 16 City Board meeting — one packed with homeless people and their supporters, who streamed in directly from a protest picnic hosted by homeless advocacy groups at the front of City Hall — Vice Mayor Kathy Webb and City Director Dean Kumpuris moved to table the ordinance (by then somewhat defanged,

with the required security deposit dropped from $500 to $100 and other concessions) for 45 days and empanel a commission of city employees, homeless advocates and business leaders to study the issue and look for solutions. Members of the committee include representatives from River Market district businesses, the Arkansas Homeless Coalition, the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, area faith leaders, the Little Rock Police Department, the Clinton Presidential Center, two representatives who are homeless and others.

The move to table and study passed by a vote of 9-1, with Director Ken Richardson voting against.

While the talking cure hasn’t managed to budge the issue of homelessness in Little Rock much in the past, as some on the City Board pointed out, at least people are discussing it again. Given that homelessness is so easy for city leaders and workaday folks to ignore, maybe that’s progress.

Crazy at best

One of the

oddest things about the draft feeding ordinance was that nobody, even city directors, who will vote to kill or pass an amended version in mid-July once the committee’s recommendations are made, seems to have known that it was coming.

“I don’t know of any director that knew that was coming down,” Capi Peck, Ward 4 city director, said.

“Bruce Moore passed that ordinance out to us at the very end of the agenda meeting. We normally get a packet of information with what’s going to be in the agenda meeting. That was not included. It was passed out literally five minutes before we recessed. We were all taken aback. I did later find out that this was something that the city attorney had been working on and researching for a couple of years.”

Peck said her initial reaction to the ordinance was that it was “awful,” and not something she or any board member could get behind. While Peck said she believes the city does more for the homeless than it gets credit for — she points to the Jericho Way homeless day resource center at 33rd Street and Springer Boulevard, noting that Jericho served over 10,000 meals to the homeless and provided over 10,000 shuttle rides to the facility last year — she believes the attempt

to float an ordinance restricting compassionate feeding of the poor gave the city an unneeded black eye.

While Peck said she was initially in favor of voting down the ordinance as it was originally presented, she said the establishment of a committee to study the issue was a step in the right direction.

“I was appalled, and I think most of us [on the City Board] were absolutely appalled,” she said. “With that being said, we do have a lot of work COME to do in that respect.

TOGETHER: Maybe this wasn’t A protest a bad thing that it picnic on the came out this way. steps of City It brings it out into Hall before the City Board the public arena. discussed the Let’s not react, let’s feeding restricdo something positions. tive about it.”

Ward 2 Director Richardson, the lone board member to vote against tabling the ordinance and forming a committee to discuss it, said he is still questioning why city leaders thought the ordinance was necessary. “Nobody has presented to me a rationale for us doing this,” he said. “The notion of us trying to penalize or criminalize people trying to help the least of us doesn’t make any sense at all. I don’t think it’s a good or fair representation of the city I represent and the city I grew up in. It’s just not the image that we want to have.”

Like Peck, Richardson said the ordinance seemed to have “dropped out of the blue” at the end of the May 9 agenda meeting. Also like Peck, Richardson was taken aback by the seeming mean-spiritedness of the proposed ordinance. He believes the city has bigger fish to fry than trying to curtail compassionate feedings. “I thought the ordinance and the idea — let’s say this so I don’t hurt anybody’s feelings — I thought both of those didn’t make sense,” he said. “I won’t say it was idiotic, but it was crazy to me in terms of the issues that are pressing before us right now. … It just came out of the blue. It’s crazy, at best, if I had to have a word to describe it.

That’s at best.”

Webb, who represents Ward 3, said she was surprised when she saw the language of the ordinance, which she has heard came in response

arktimes.com JUNE 8, 2017

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JUNE 8, 2017

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BRIAN CHILSON

to “numerous complaints” about the downtown homeless, including reports of panhandling. She said she wished the city had handled the issue differently, including giving the board advance notice that an antifeeding ordinance was being considered.

“I wish somebody would have said, ‘Look, we’re getting all these complaints. This is something we need to talk about.’ ” Webb said. “We could have gotten some folks together to talk about it so we could have done what we’re doing now, rather than have this ordinance, which — I don’t think people are really mean — but I think the ordinance sounds very mean-spirited, even though other cities have done this. I don’t like surprises, and to a lot of people this was a surprise.”

While Webb said she understands the call to have simply voted the original ordinance down, FOOD FOR THE she believes HUNGRY: Volunteer Margaret Faulkner forming the serves breakfast at committee the Salvation Army. to study the problem, look at solut ion s found by other cities, and make suggestions is a better approach to an issue that isn’t going away.

“We don’t talk much anymore,” she said. “We’ve got people who get their news from one source, and people who get their news from another, and whatever either one of them says is true. We don’t discuss. … I think we have to talk about hard issues and give folks a chance to say, ‘I know this is what you think, but this is the reality.’ ” Webb said that while the time for the committee to make recommendations is tight — it will present its report at the agenda meeting July 11, with a vote on the possibly amended ordinance on July 18 — she believes its members can move the ball on the issue. She said her ultimate goal is reaching voluntary agreements between advocates, business owners and the city so the board doesn’t have to put in place an ordinance to regulate feedings. She would like to see the committee stay on for the foreseeable future, to try to find longterm solutions.

“One of the things that’s exciting about [the committee] is that we have people at the table with differences of opinion,” she said. “It gives us an opportunity. … We’ve got a starting point here. … In my mind, if we can work together and have more collaboration on this, we can talk about, ‘OK, we can work together on tiny houses, we can work together on mental health services, we can work together on more effective job training.’ When we talk about homelessness, there’s not one solution for everything. But when we can provide these additional services that can get at the core of what’s an underlying issue for many people, we can drastically reduce the number of people who are homeless, and help people.”

Food is life Though he was

asked by the Arkansas Homeless

Coalition to serve as one of their representatives on the committee to study the ordinance and the issue, Aaron Reddin, founder of the mobile homeless outreach charity The Van, declined. He’s got better things to do with his time than talk, he said, including — until the crankcase seal on his tractor blew a few days back — bush-hogging an overgrown, 5-acre plot he recently secured behind The Van’s headquarters on Faulkner Lake Road in North Little Rock. When it’s cleared and the stumps pulled, Reddin plans to plow the acreage into turn rows and plant the whole thing in vegetables — beans, potatoes, corn and tomatoes — which he said he will then give away to whomever the hell he pleases, preferably in a Little Rock city park.

Lean and bearded, a former Marine who carries a megaphone around in his cluttered and mudsplattered 4-wheel-drive truck, Reddin has been helping the homeless all over the state for 12 years now, working 80-hour weeks at times to fulfill a near-monastic calling to bring help, food, clothing and services directly to those who need it most. Like many local homeless advocates, Reddin was incensed by the anti-feeding ordi-

nance, and incensed again when the City Board voted to table and study the issue instead of voting to kill it altogether. Reddin said he has yet to hear a rationale that justifies hindering the feeding of hungry people in city parks.

“These city parks are maintained by city sales tax dollars,” he said. “Every homeless person in this town spends money in this town. They pay tax.

They don’t have the luxury of going on Amazon and ordering shit. Everything they buy, they pay taxes on. So they have just as much right to be there as anyone else. Food is life. To tell folks they can’t share food one with another, it’s just absurd.”

Reddin said he sees the homeless feeding ordinance as the latest move in a longstanding effort by the city to push the homeless out of sight, out of mind — and away from the downtown areas where tourists and visitors congregate. He sees the location of Jericho Way — which is miles from the downtown core, closes at 4:30 p.m., and isn’t open on weekends — as indicative of that effort, along with a series of recent evictions of homeless camps, which Reddin said have stepped up drastically since the first of the year.

Several city leaders have disagreed that the placement of Jericho Way was part of a calculated effort to draw the homeless out of downtown.

But, Reddin said, “You take Jericho Way and you put it three miles from downtown? And then your argument against feeding in the parks is ‘well, we’ve got Jericho Way’? They don’t serve supper. That’s not a bash on Jericho Way. They’re doing a great job, and I’m glad that it’s there. But we’ve got folks all over. Southwest, West Little Rock. You don’t want them all in one place, why have one resource center? Do multiple small ones around town.”

Reddin is skeptical that the committee studying the issue can find real solutions in only 45 days. He said if the ordinance is approved in any form, it will undoubtedly curtail the advocacy and outreach work by his group and others. “We try and make sure we have food in the van when we’re out,” he said. “We may have two or three people walk up when we pull up, or we may have 15 or 20. … Say I pull into MacArthur Park to help one person who has called in distress, and the next thing I know, 26

The committee

to study the homeless feeding ordinance held its first meeting at 7:30 a.m. May 23 at the Willie L. Hinton Neighborhood Resource Center on 12th Street. Fifteen coffeestoked and fresh-scrubbed people met in a sparse, high-ceilinged room, untouched boxes of bagels and pastries growing stale on a nearby table.

Though it was mostly a getting-toknow-you session with introductions all around, the conversation did eventually plunge into the red meat of the issue, with crosstalk often veering away from feeding to adjacent concerns about homelessness, from panhandling to mental illness to addiction. At one point, assistant City Manager James Jones, who serves as the facilitator of the committee, spoke up to say that the city Parks and Recreation Department has employees who sweep through Riv-

BRIAN CHILSON

people show up. You’re going to write get to the shelters or the churches me a ticket for giving out some food?” that have food. There’s people who The ACLU of Arkansas has come would starve to death if it wasn’t for out in opposition to the feeding ordithe kindness of the folks at the misnance, saying it would lead to litigasion down here and The Van.” tion, and Reddin said he’ll be meetUsually confined to a wheelchair ing shortly with a lawyer who has by painful blood clots in his legs, offered to help Reddin’s group fight Gray said he believes the city’s recent the ordinance in court for free if need efforts to evict people from homeless be. Whatever the case, he plans on camps and the proposed ordinance pushing back against the idea that he to limit group feeding in the city can’t distribute food to friends who parks are part of a conscious effort happen to be homeless. to push the homeless away from the “There’s enough of us that we’re River Market area where tourists going to keep sharing food,” Reddin congregate. said. “They can write all the tickets “The old saying is, ‘out of sight, out they want, they can pass all the ordiof mind,’ ” Gray said. “They just don’t nances they want. It’s unconstituwant to have to look at us. I don’t tional and blatantly discriminatory. think that’s right. I’m trying to figure If that’s the Little Rock they want to out a way to get the public to realize have, then they can have that at City we’re human, too. Ya’ll got your fancy Hall. The rest of us are going to fight houses and cars and all this. But we for the people that really make this just want to survive. There’s a lot city what it is, which is a great city of times that people aren’t able to that cares about people.” go way across town to these homeClark Gray, who said he has been homeless on t he streets of Little Rock for over three years, agrees that many in Little Rock care about the homeless. Standing in front of City Hall, eating a dripping ice cream cone at the protest picnic the night the City Board voted to table the homeless feeding ordinance, Gray said there are numerous groups, including Reddin’s The Van, that work hard to better the lives of homeless people. But, he said, there are other people who seem to see right through him.

“There’s a lot of people who will shrug their shoulders at us, stick their noses up at us,” he said. “All we’re trying to do AARON REDDIN: Says feedis survive. There’s less shelters or to a place ings will go on regardless of a lot of people out what the city does. where we can eat.” here with health problems, like me.

I’ll probably end up dying in these streets because I don’t have a way to

erfront Park every morning before dawn, “collecting numerous syringes [and] needles,” including from the playg round area. At that, committee member Father Fred Ball, the pastor of San Damiano Ecumenical Catholic Church,

The perception

asked the obvious. “That’s important, safety,” Ball said. “But I wonder how syringes found in the wee hours of the night tie to the feedings?”

Jim Garrett, an advocate for the homeless from St. James United Methodist Church who leads one of the groups that used to feed under the Broadway Bridge and serves dinner to the homeless and working poor twice a month at churches near Little Rock’s Union Station and in Southwest Little Rock, asked much the same thing: Why was the connection being made between feeding people and drug abuse?

“Well,” Jones said, “there’s the perception. Real or not, the perception is there, whether it’s true or not.”

“We’re there one hour, two times a month,” Garrett said. “We’re being considerate. We don’t allow drug dealers or drug users. I’m insulted by that. We’re not responsible for those parks the other 23 hours a day.

If you’re going to take that kind of stance, I don’t see where we can possibly go with this.”

While all present agreed they wanted to find a solution so that feeding the needy could continue, the meeting often spun away from the topic of filling hungry bellies and toward the negative effects of homelessness. One issue that came up was the urge to move the homeless away from tourist-heavy areas around Riverfront Park and the Broadway Bridge.

“A basic human need is survival and food,” said Alan Sims, Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau vice president for sales and services. “So if you’re feeding, it’s an attractant.

They’re going to be attracted there.

Why can’t we balance? Why can’t we attract them? It doesn’t have to be in a park. It doesn’t have to be where our children are. It doesn’t have to be where there are safety issues and visitor issues. Why can’t we attract them someplace else? I hope this group can find that. We want to feed and we want a great city. We can have both.”

Parks and Recreation Director Truman Tolefree said the ordinance is about providing structure so that feeding in city parks doesn’t become what he termed a “free-for-all.”

“We have employees who are out there in cars at all times of the day,” Tolefree said. “They work structured hours. If we don’t know when groups are showing up, if we don’t

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OUT OF THE WAY: The city’s day resource center, Jericho Way, is too far from the homeless, city critics say.

believe that. Is it a fact? I can’t say that I have actual documentation to back that up.”

The LRCVB’s Sims said he is also optimistic that the committee can reach a solution. He said everybody on the committee agrees the feedings are a good thing, but a balance must be struck between what’s good for the homeless and what’s good for the city. Visitors to Little Rock, he said, serve as temporary taxpayers, spending money in local businesses.

Because of that, he said, visitor perception of the city is a big concern.

“We want visitors to leave here and talk about how clean and great our city is and what wonderful generous and friendly people we have here,” he said. “The old cliché ‘perception is reality’ very much applies. It goes back to what we started with: There’s got to be a way that we can all do what we need to.”

Sims said he’s heard the arguments that every city has an issue with the homeless, but “that doesn’t justify having an issue. We’ve got to be able to provide services for the homeless, be compassionate to the homeless, but also do that in consideration of the experience that our visitors have coming to the city. We need to balance all those.”

Sims said he and the LRCVB are convinced that feeding the homeless needs to continue (his comments at the committee meeting about food possibly being used as an “attractant,” he said, were misunderstood), and he added that the area near Riverfront Park is “very much part of a visitor zone for Little Rock” and probably shouldn’t be used for mass feedings for that reason.

“Our convention center is right downtown, our primary hotels are right downtown, and they’re all adjacent to the park,” he said. “To be a guest in the hotel and look out the window and there’s a large mass feeding going on right outside your hotel room, I’m questioning whether that’s the image or the perception that we want. Would there not be a better place that might be more conducive to the feeding?”

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know when they’re feeding or where they’re feeding, or that kind of thing, we may have another activity planned.

So we need to be able to have some kind of structure when people are coming to feed in the park.”

After the meeting, Garrett, whose church has been holding large group feedings of the homeless in Little Rock for almost 10 years, said he felt a little more hopeful that the committee might be able to provide some solutions to the issue. He saw room for compromise, he said.

“In talking to [Vice Mayor] Webb,” Garrett said, “I think there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t have the answer, but I feel that somewhere there’s room to compromise.

But it’s got to be a pretty limited compromise. If we’re talking about feeding, it’s going to have to be in the downtown area somewhere. That’s where the homeless people are.

They’re on foot. They can’t come to us. They can traverse maybe a mile or so, but that’s their area.”

Father Ball and Garrett said they fail to see a direct correlation between problems like panhandling and drug abuse downtown and feedings in city parks. Both said they see it as their duty to continue to help find ways to get food to Little Rock’s homeless.

“We weren’t asked to do this. We were told to do this,” Garrett said. “It’s not one of the Ten Commandments, but maybe it’s No. 11: to take care of the least and the widows and the poor.”

Reached after the meeting, Jones said the committee is off to a productive start and will work toward consensus and a recommendation that everyone on the committee can support. “Working together, we can come to some kind of consensus and agree that there is a solution that everybody can be a part of and accept,” he said.

Asked whether he believes there is a direct correlation between feeding in Riverfront Park and needles found in the park, Jones repeated that the perception of a link is there.

“Are there facts to support that?

I don’t know. There’s a perception that there is,” he said. “There are a lot of homeless people who do sleep in the park. … There are some people who think that when the feedings take place, they’re going to stay where they’re fed, and they’ll stay there until the next day. That is a perception of citizens that call us all the time. They

A ONE-HOUR FAMILY-FRIENDLY PRODUCTION TOURING THROUGHOUT ARKANSAS! arktimes.com JUNE 8, 2017

19

Arts Entertainment AND

Do you feel like part of the reason abortion itself keeps getting shoved into the shadows and the backrooms of conversation is because we won’t even say those words?

One hundred percent. Somewhere down the line, people ceded the conversation — about abortion, about the uterus, about all of it — and gave somebody else the moral high ground. I mean, the fact that we say the term “pro-life” about people who execute abortion doctors and who never care about the rights of a pregnant person: Shame on us. It is, in large part, why we’re doing this.

To bust the shame, to bust the stigma. … In Arkansas, we have a trans man on our tour, Ian Harvey, who is going to talk about his uterus extensively. We have trans women on our tour. We have women of color. We have cis women.

We have everybody who has to deal with this experience talking about it in 20

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their minds, or may not know that abortion options are very different for people with deep wallets, can you talk a little bit about the economic factor here? Specifically, how does restricting access to abortion screw over poor women exclusively?

Well, I think that there’s never been a world without abortion. There just hasn’t. In a perfect world, you could reduce it. Like, isn’t it better to have dental health care than to have to go have your teeth yanked out? How about if we are preventative in all of our care? I don’t know why we indulge people when they say, “We want to reduce abortion, and the way that we want to do that is to reduce access to affordable birth control.” It’s like, what are you talking about? That’s not even real. So, people of privilege are often the ones talking about abortion. They’ll even frame it in things like, “Well, you just get in your car and — ” Hold up. Not everyone has a car. Not everyone is on some route where you can take the bus. Not everybody can take off a day or two of work because they have to go back a second or third time because of a waiting period.

Not everybody can afford to travel to another state if they can’t get the care they need somewhere close. Or child care. Over 60 percent of people who have an abortion have more than one kid, and it’s an economic decision for their family. … As we’re seeing, people are not equating the economics with access to birth control. Even people who are on “our side” are saying things like, “We can’t have ‘wedge issues,’ that’s where we need to compromise.” Well, I’m not a wedge issue. I’m a person. And I can’t be sort-of-pregnant, so I shouldn’t have sort-of-options.

On the ‘Vagical Mystery Tour’ ‘The Daily Show’ writer Lizz Winstead is showing up for repro rights.

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

‘DON’T MESS WITH ACCESS’: Lady Parts Justice League founder Lizz Winstead (“The Daily Show”) and her team are on tour, blending comedy and reproductive rights activism.

MINDY TUCKER

T

he Lady Parts Justice League is a self-described “coven of hilarious badass feminists who use humor and pop culture to expose the haters fighting against reproductive rights.”

Their business is cracking jokes in the name of reproductive justice, but they are unfailingly serious about it. Ahead of the League’s appearance at Vino’s Saturday, June 10, as part of its “Vagical Mystery Tour,” I spoke with co-founder (and co-writer for “The Daily Show”) Lizz Winstead. On the other end of the line, I heard a familiar voice, a signifier of unseen activity and motion — that slightly broken robot script, the one you’ve heard saying “Welcome to Comcast, home of Xfinity.” Instead, this one says, “Welcome to Lady Parts Justice League. If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at any time.”

The name “lady parts,” we should say, isn’t a way of equating womanhood with vaginas, as any of the trans tour members will attest, but a direct reference to an incident that happened in June 2012 on the state House floor in Michigan, when Democratic Rep. Lisa Brown was banned from the floor for using the word “vagina” when arguing against a transvaginal ultrasound bill.

Republican House leaders, when asked what she should have said instead, suggested “lady parts.”

Our conversation follows:

solidarity. … I think it’s important for the reproductive landscape to be represented … and to repeat over and over again that those who are creating this legislation — people who cannot even

say the word “vagina” — think they are entitled to control it legislatively.

For people who don’t have reproductive rights issues at the forefront of

In an interview with Time magazine in 2015, you pointed out that it’s common for us to be TOTALLY shocked and wave our hands in the air, like, “ ‘How did THIS guy get into the Senate? He’s awful!’ And that happens because we didn’t see his or her (OK, mostly his) trajectory. Well, because they were on the school board, and then the city council, and then the state legislature, and you never knew it.” What have you seen elsewhere that’s effective in helping women stay hip to what’s behind

A&E NEWS VIOLINIST AND CONDUCTOR Geoffrey Robson, associate conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra since 2008, was awarded the first Respighi Prize for Conducting this week, bestowed by the Chamber Orchestra of New York to honor the legacy of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” was part of last November’s “Return to Robinson” concert, the ASO’s first in the renovated Robinson Center. As the winner, Robson will make his Carnegie Hall debut at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 8, conducting the Chamber Orchestra of New York in works by Mozart and Haydn.

“QUARRY,” the eight-episode series based on the work of author Max Allan Collins and co-created by Michael Fuller and Little Rock native Graham Gordy, will not return to Cinemax for a second season. Fuller announced the end of the series in a statement on his blog, saying “By virtually every metric (ratings, critical response) the show succeeded in all the ways a show needs to for a second season, but, as the erstwhile Head Ball Coach of my beloved Gamecocks was fond of saying, ‘it is what it is.’ TV’s tough and life is tougher, and like the titular character of the show,

the series itself was ultimately the victim of a system that is relentlessly unforgiving. ... A Memphis-BBQ-platter sized thanks is due to our wonderful cast and crew who made our writing better than it had any business being, and to Max Allan Collins himself, who trusted us with a character he’s lived with for 40 years: Thank you, sir. I hope we didn’t mess it up too badly.” Season 1 of “Quarry” is available on iTunes, VUDU, MaxGO, Amazon and other streaming platforms.

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS’S THEATERSQUARED announced the lineup for its New Play Festival to run June 16-25. Plays to be performed include Pulitzer Prize finalist Lisa D’Amour’s “The Furies”; Rick Ehrstin’s “Comet Town”; Barbara Hammond’s “Visible From Four States”; Mona Mansour’s “We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War”; and John Walch’s “Transatlantic.” For tickets, call 479-443-5600 or go online at arknewplayfest.com; they’re discounted to $5 for SNAP benefit recipients and people under 30 courtesy of the company’s “Lights Up! For Access” program. The New Play Festival is funded by a $25,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

those names on the city, county and state election ballots?

Well, I do think that these Indivisible groups are working, and I think this is the first time we’ve actually seen people talking about midterms — people who I know, people who are good people but they didn’t care about midterms. They didn’t understand it. Now we’re seeing people look at who’s on their school board, who’s on their city council, who’s running for mayor. It’s fascinating that a woman needs to be asked multiple times to run for office, and apparently a guy who’s, like, scratching his balls, is like, “Yeah, can I finish scratching my balls?

Yeah, I’ll run the country.” Honestly, men just do it. They don’t ask if they’re good enough, or if they have all the skills.

It’s like anything else. You can’t have all the skills to govern. You can have some skills, and you can have a passion, but to learn how to govern, you have to get to know the people you’re gonna govern. You can be no better advocate than if you literally start listening and talking to people and sharing what their needs are. … We’re seeing people do that because their needs are not being met, and they’re saying, “Where can I step in?”

Right. Midterms are where it’s at.

Yes. If your issues are repro stuff, or LGBTQ stuff, or gun stuff, or prison stuff, or voting stuff, those things are state ledge-driven. Also, for somebody new to politics, you can win some of those races. You can go door-to-door. A lot of times those are the races that are lost by 50, 100, 300 votes. And for us, it means that people have gotten hip even on local levels of government to not talk about the hot-button issues so they won’t be perceived as an extremist. So it’s important to check out somebody’s LinkedIn page. What church do they go to? Is it a church that’s loving and kind, or are they CONTINUED ON PAGE 23

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MOVIE REVIEW

A WAR TO END ALL WARS: Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) takes on Ares, the god of war, in the record-breaking “Wonder Woman.”

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Patty Jenkins’ ‘Wonder Woman’ shoots the moon.

BY SAM EIFLING

Y

ears from now, or even weeks, people will look back on “Wonder Woman” and ask themselves whether the movie was really up to the fanfare. There was the $100 million opening, a box-office record for a woman director (that’d be Patty Jenkins, 14 years after her only other noteworthy feature, “Monster”). Also, the 93 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an echelon usually reserved for Best Picture contenders (“La La Land,” coincidentally, hit the same mark among critics). Are people really bowled over by this “Wonder Woman” film? Or are they applauding in relief, that given every opportunity for this movie to be campy crud, it turned out to be not only watchable, but a legitimately textured piece of pop cinema?

The answer’s a bit of both, but I suspect that on rewatching we’ll appreciate it not for being one of the greatest films of the year, but for kicking in the persistent notion that geek culture belongs first to white men, second to anyone else.

Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, is the most magnetic lead so far in the DC cinematic universe, as anyone who watched “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” could tell. (That inert lump of moody CGI felt so tendentious it already feels dated and faded — the dubstep remix of superhero movies.)

In her own starring spot, Israeli model and actress Gadot plays Diana a century before the men Bat- and Super-, a prodigy apart on the shrouded, Amazons-only island Themyscira. The first dude who shows up on this mythological, out-oftime island is Chris Pine, as a British spy crash-landing a stolen German plane into the open ocean. Diana cliff-dives down

to save his sinking ass, then Germans in pursuit show up for a bloody beach fight.

If you were looking for a better illustration of how men muck up a good thing, well, there ya go.

Odd couple united, Pine and Gadot work up a bit of chemistry. Pine’s not long for the spry side of 40, but those baby blues make him look like a perpetual 24-yearold. And Gadot, as the naive, idealistic martial-artist princess, gives off a vibe of a college freshman who’s just realizing that the War on Drugs might have some modest drawbacks. When she hears tell of the Great War, she decides it must be the work of Ares, the Greek god of war.

She conscripts the spy to deliver her to the front, where she intends to find and slay the god, and end the war. She does this matter-of-factly. Her certitude in the face of trench warfare gives the film a light fish-out-of-water sensibility, albeit one where the ingenue rushes, thighs and arms flashing, into the teeth of German machine-gun fire.

It would’ve been all too easy for Jenkins to slide into the traps of genre, given that she’s straddling a whole pile of them — the sword-and-sandals classic epic; the period-piece war drama; the buddy comedy (Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner and Eugene Brave Rock play the ragtag gang of wartime fixers that help them to the front); and romantic comedy — to an unexpectedly touching effect. Oh, and superhero films, which we’re used to being ludicrously overstuffed. “Wonder Woman” is trying to do a lot here, but its title character and the production at large are fiercely idealistic. Diana is wading sword-first into the world of men to slay their demons for them. Jenkins can, no doubt, relate.

ALSO IN THE ARTS

ON THE ‘VAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR’, CONT. a fire-and-brimstone church that points fingers? Who does this person work for?

What have they said on Twitter or Facebook? Or you can go to local extremist organizations and see who they’ve invited to speak. A lot of times, those speeches are videotaped, and it might be on the website for Arkansas Right to Life, or the National Organization of, um … People-You’ve-Blocked-onFacebook. So, we all have to be a little but sleuthy, but it really does pay off. …

A politician will only move if they see that their inaction will lose them a seat.

So we have to show them by being bodies out in front, that yes, the decisions they make matter, and they’re gonna matter for me when I go vote.

It’s hard for me to fathom how difficult it is to be an abortion provider in Arkansas — to have not taken an easier road somewhere in medical school, and to know that every day when you show up to do your job, there are going to be protestors there. Do you know anything about your plans with the clinics while you’re here?

It’s kind of a two-pronged thing. So for us, we’re doing a comedy show, and then we’re having a talkback with a provider or a clinic escort. I’ll have a conversation with them after the show so they can talk directly with your community about what they need. The biggest thing for us is that we know from experience – and we’ve done this in Jackson, Miss., we’ve done it in Montgomery, Ala. – we have relationships with the activists and the clinics and what we know is that there are people doing excellent work. Sometimes, we’re small but mighty, but we need some folks to step in and help out. Through our comedy, by getting two or three hundred people gathered in a room to have a really good time, people can sign up to be a liaison to the clinic, or to help get the coffers for the abortion fund going, or to volunteer for the hotline.

It helps you guys grow the community.

People sign up, they get screened, and they can carry on the work long after we’re gone.

“Lady Parts Justice League: Vagical Mystery Tour,” featuring Lizz Winstead, Ian Harvey (“Transparent”), Joyelle Johnson and Alex English (“Night Train with Wyatt Cenac”), lands in Little Rock on Saturday, June 10, 7:30 p.m., $15. Tickets are available at Eventbrite or at vagicalmysterytour.com.

‘EXPERIENCE: ISOLATION; REASON’: One of Sammy Peters’ paintings at the Butler Center.

Art outbreak 2nd Friday features Peters, Holl Collection, LGBTQ work; Delta Exhibition opens.

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

S

ammy Peters, Arkansas’s venerated abstract expressionist, has been creating large-scale geometrical works for more than 50 years. Visitors to the Butler Center galleries will see an exhibition of his paintings from the early 1960s to the present as “Sammy Peters: Then and Now,” opens Friday, June 9, 2nd Friday Art Night.

The after-hours gallery walk, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., also offers up an opportunity to see the works of many Arkansas artists in one place, in “Gordon and Wenonah Fay Hall: Collecting a Legacy,” at the Historic Arkansas Museum. That show will include paintings and photographs by Elsie and Louis Freund, Doug Stowe, Sally Williams, William E. Davis, Sheila Parsons, Jorge and Maria Villegas, Henri Linton and others.

From the start, Peters has worked in layers of lines and stripes and fat, scumbling strokes that only partly cover the colors and forms that lie beneath. The resulting palette is at times murky and mysterious, as if Peters was trying to find a new color we’ve yet to recognize. Thanks to their strong geometry, the pictures hold together; though abstract, the forms allow the viewer to create a narrative about what is going on. Peters’ titles hint at what the artist is working out with the CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THURSDAY 6/8

WOOLLY HOLLOW ANNUAL FUN DAY

11 a.m. Woolly Hollow State Park, 82 Woolly Hollow Road, Greenbrier. Free.

First, let’s just all admit that the title of this event sends the mind reeling. (Woolly Hollow Annual Fun Day? What the hell else are people doing at Woolly Hollow State Park the rest of the year? And if we can only have one

fun day a year at Woolly Hollow, why must it be on a Thursday?) That said, schools are out for summer vacation, and if your family has a hiatus before summer camps or summer jobs kick in, go check out this state park. It’s 370 acres a few miles off of U.S. Highway 65 just past Greenbrier, and it served as a research site for land management and soil erosion studies in the 1920s-30s.

In fact, thanks to Woolly Hollow, and

the work that U.S. Soil Conservation Service founder Hugh Bennett and his team did there, some of the techniques the SCS tried out during the Dust Bowl years turned into standard agricultural practice: crop rotation and terracing, for example. The staff will likely spare your kids the history lesson, though, in favor of activities like “sack races, watermelon-seed-spitting, bubble-gumblowing and wheelbarrow races,” as

listed in a press release. You can catch crappie, bass, bream and catfish there, and between noon and 7 p.m., swimming and paddle-boating are free. If you’d prefer to check out the park by moonlight, there’s a “Full Moon Kayak Tour” on Lake Bennett that starts at sunset Friday, June 9, for which you’ll need to bring $5 for admission, your kayak and a headlamp or light device, and register by calling 501-679-2098.

FRIDAY 6/9

JOHN PAUL KEITH 9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern.

In an interview with New York Public Radio in 2013, John Paul Keith was asked about the title of his 2013 record, “Memphis Circa 3am.” It was recorded under the direction of the late, great Roland Janes, a house guitarist at Sun Records for Jerry Lewis and Billy Lee Riley in the 1950s.

“You’ve heard Roland Janes play guitar your whole life,” Keith said. “You just didn’t know it.”

That jump-and-jolt sound is all over “Memphis Circa 3am,” particularly the opener, “You Really Ought To Be With Me” and “True Hard Money.”

Though either track could have been a B-side to “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On,” Keith’s act is homage, but it’s not retro for the sake of retro.

He’s a sharp lyricist and the founder and author of New Memphis Beat, a blog he launched last March to explore the “the resurgent art of analog recording” and the future of musicmaking in a town whose legacy includes giants like Sun, Stax, Royal and Ardent.

'MAMA WHO BORE ME:' Seven young men and women bring Duncan Sheik's vivid, confrontational score to the stage for The Studio Theatre's production of "Spring Awakening."

THURSDAY 6/8-SUNDAY 6/26

‘SPRING AWAKENING’

7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m.

Sun., The Studio Theatre, $20$25.

The Broadway musical that launched the careers of “Glee” stars Lea Michele, Jenna Ushkowitz and Jonathan Groff has been picked up as the next play in The Studio Theatre’s season, a fittingly edgy predecessor to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” slated for August.

“Spring Awakening” is an unlikely

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mash-up of pop rock and an 1891 tale of adolescent sexuality from German playwright Frank Wedekind, and it made a hell of a splash when it debuted in 2007. There’s something unsettling and raw about teenagers grappling with questions of suicide and consent in late-19th century Germany when it’s communicated with 21st century lingo.

By the time the original cast performed as part of the 2007 Tony Awards ceremony (moments before it would be announced as the win-

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ner of Best Musical that year), much of the ceremony’s audience knew “Awakening” composer Duncan Sheik’s numbers by heart. With the backing band right there on stage as part of the cast, its young stars — Groff and Michele among them — leapt on and off of school chairs for “Mama Who Bore Me” and “The Bitch of Living” with just as much angst as that year’s “Icky Thump” from The White Stripes, covering their mouths conspicuously for the more profanity-laden bits of a num-

ber called “Totally Fucked” instead of relying on the bleep censor to do it. It’s a story of a bunch of kids developing violent anger they don’t know how to manage and sexual desires (and body parts) they don’t know what to do with, framed by a supporting cast of adults terrified by all the blossoming — and the blood.

For this production, Rachel Caffey stars as Wendla and Payton Justice as Melchior. The music will be directed by Bob Bidewell, and Justin A. Pike directs.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 6/8

SATURDAY 6/10

CHARLIE VIRGO, OSYRUS BOLLY

ISAAC BREKKEN

9 p.m. South on Main.

'VILLE MENTALITY': Multiplatinum rapper J. Cole brings a pivotal new album to the Clear Channel Metroplex as part of his "4 Your Eyez Only" world tour.

FRIDAY 6/9

J. COLE

8 p.m. Clear Channel Metroplex. $35.

About 35 minutes into a 48-minute documentary that aired on HBO in midApril, self-taught piano player, Dreamville Records co-founder and multiplatinum rapper J. Cole pays a visit to his father’s hometown: Jonesboro. Outside the E. Boone Watson Community Center, Cole shoots hoops with his dad and gets a history lesson on St. Paul Baptist Church — “the oldest black church in Jonesboro,” his father says — and on a movement called “Respect,” in which about 250 black parents petitioned the Jonesboro school board to begin hiring more teachers and administrators of color. The film marks a departure for Cole, putting him behind the camera instead of in front of its lens, literally (he co-directs with Scott Lazer) and metaphorically. “I felt like it would be

mad powerful for black people to see black people talking to each other,” he told The New York Times on April 14.

“And you see a rapper who’s considered one of the biggest in the game, just listening.” J. Cole’s never really gone for caricaturizing himself, but “For Your Eyez Only,” vibrates on a slower, more domestic frequency than its dynamic predecessor, “2014 Forest Hills Drive,” named after the address of Cole’s childhood home in Fayetteville, N.C. (He’s rapping about folding clothes this time instead of watching porn for sex tutorials, for example.) When J. Cole comes to the Metroplex Friday, he comes with a message sharpened into focus from his new roles as a husband and father, and by a lot of time spent “just listening” to people in places like Ferguson, Mo., about what it means to be black in the South in the year 2017.

Shaun Hartman describes his music alternatively as “punk rock Frank Sinatra” and “neo-swing,” and that gives you a fair idea of what to expect at this South on Main show on Saturday night.

Think less Squirrel Nut Zippers neo-swing, though, and more Big Bad Voodoo Daddy with pathos and ska guitars standing in for those muted trumpets. It’s twisted detective music; hyper and electric, even as the lyrics take a turn for the dark — “I just knew you would be so pleased if I smile with all my teeth and let you watch me bleed/but now I’m over it/ Is it worth a damn? I’m fuckin’ over it/Is it even relevant?” He shares the bill with Osyrus Bolly, a seasoned spoken word poet (Foreign Tongues Poetry Troupe) who’s been making art in Little Rock for over a decade.

His 2015 “holiday” release “‘Tis the Season to Be Bolly” vacillated between showcasing his downtuned, densely constructed rhymes (“Syrup Sandwich Manifesto”) and his pinot noir croon (“Spin Me Round”).

For some context, check out his YouTube series, “Bolly Speaks,” in which he riffs on everything from Kendrick Lamar to the continuing erasure of Native American identities.

SATURDAY 6/10

OPEN STUDIOS LITTLE ROCK

10 a.m. Various studios. Free.

In the ultimate antidote to detachment between art and its receiver, a group of painters, potters, violinmakers, actors and even a Scottish country dance instructor will participate in Little Rock’s Arts + Culture Commission’s first-ever Open Studios exhibition, inviting you into their homes and studios to see what exactly it is they do and

where they do it. Here’s the easiest way to build an art tour of your own design: First, stop by the Welcome Booth in the Creative Corridor at 108 W. Sixth St., in front of the Matt McLeod Fine Art gallery Saturday morning. There, you can grab some complimentary doughnuts and coffee while you choose some studios to visit, two of which will be right there in front of you: McLeod’s sunny gallery and the adjacent Arkansas Repertory Theatre Education Annex. As

you drift around the route, you’ll know you’re in the right place when you see the Open Studios sign displayed outside.

There are some artists participating who weren’t able to open their physical studios this time around, but will set up in an alternative space at the West Central Community Center at 8616 Colonel Glenn Road. If you want a sneak peek, visit littlerock.gov and download the Open Studios map.

The Arkansas Travelers take on the Tulsa Drillers at Dickey-Stephens Park, 7:10 p.m.

Thu.-Fri., $7-$13. Chris DeClerk accompanies the takeover by Founders Brewing Co. of Grand Rapids, Mich., at Four Quarter Bar, 8 p.m., free. Josh McClane and Ozzy Jackson fire up their best “You look like” jokes for a comedy set in the back room at Vino’s, 9 p.m., $7. Bluesman John C. Craig performs at the White Water Tavern, 8:30 p.m. Brian Nahlen and Nick Devlin perform for the happy hour crowd at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by a set from CVS, 9 p.m., $5. Esse Purse Museum’s “Stories of Empowerment” features a talk from Oxford American editor Eliza Borné and Our House Re-entry Program Coordinator Rachael Borné, 5 p.m., $15-$25.

Comedian Dante brings his impersonations and monologues to The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m.

Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12.

FRIDAY 6/9 Central Arkansas Pride hosts the Ride with Pride Trolley Party, 7:30 p.m., $35-$50.

Country superstar and Buck Commander co-owner Luke Bryan lands at Verizon Arena on his “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day” tour, 7 p.m., $35-$75. The Arkansas Shakespeare Theater presents “Love’s Labour’s Lost” on the lawn in front of University of Central Arkansas’s McAlister Hall, 7:30 p.m., $15 suggested donation. Landrest celebrates the release of its seventh album with a show at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, with sets from Turtle Rush and Psyche Kaleidoscopes, 8:30 p.m. Brick Fields performs at The Big Chill in Hot Springs, with an opening set from Dan Smith, 9 p.m. Stephen Neeper & The Wild Hearts headline the after-party for the Little Rock Tattoo Show at Revolution, with Zakk & Big Papa Binns, 9 p.m., $10. Opal Agafia and The Sweet Nothings bring their Ozark mountain soul to Four Quarter Bar, Argenta, 10 p.m., $8. Almost Infamous holds down the happy hour at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m., free, or come a little later for an uptempo country set from Riverbilly with special guest Trey Lyons, 9 p.m., $5. The Akeem Kemp Band brings its tight, supercharged blues set to Kings Live Music in Conway, 8:30 p.m., $5. Sensory 2 performs at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Silks Bar & Grill in Hot Springs, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., free.

Duo Howard and Skye perform at Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m., free. The North Little Rock Community Concert Band performs works by Curnow, Vaughan Williams and Holst for a concert titled “Fanfares, Flourishes and Friends,” 7:30 p.m., Lakewood Village canopy, free. A Year and a Day takes the stage at Thirst N’ Howl, 8:30 p.m., $5. Cadron Creek Outfitters in Greenbrier is home to the Flux Festival, featuring performances from The Talking Liberties, Yuni Wa, Jamie Lou & The Hullabalou, as well as workshops in yoga, fire safety, battle gaming (LARPing) and more, through Sunday, $50-$60.

SATURDAY 6/10 Longtime country rock ambassadors Mu-

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

SATURDAY 6/10

SATURDAY 6/10

FUNK FEST

Final Fantasy! Banana clips!), there’s Funk Fest. Bell Biv Devoe, SWV, En Vogue and “OK, party people in the house, you’re about to witness something you’ve never witnessed before — yes, it’s the original human beatbox, Doug E. Fresh.” DJ Traci Steele hosts with comedian JJ and DJ Dr. Doom, and you can nab tickets at Ugly Mike’s Records, Uncle T’s Food Mart or at funkfesttour.com.

5 p.m. First Security Amphitheater. $42-$127.

Plenty of new jack swing pioneers are still swinging, so if the Morris Day and The Time show at Riverfest left you spinning “Poison” and “I Want Her” on Spotify (or better yet, on YouTube, where you can let Keith Sweat’s asymmetrical baggy sweater usher in a litany of free association memories. Slouch socks with heels!

ESCAPE TONES

mixed-time magic with a Roland and a Nord on a double keyboard stand. Their February 2016 EP “ETEP” is a wordless myriad; “Clockwork Jade” sounds like Dave Brubeck w rote a score for a chill, free-roam video game, and “Street Magic” is a straight dose of cityscape prismed through a windshield spattered with fat raindrops — while the late great Bob Parlocha is reeling off detailed liner notes from memory, maybe.

8:30 p.m. Kings Live Music, Conway. $5.

With the closing of The Afterthought at the corner of Kavanaugh and Beechwood, you may be getting antsy for some instrumental jazz that’s cooler than the other side of the pillow. So check out this little trio from Fort Smith. Logan Dooly hangs lowkey but steady on the bass, and percussionist Jeremy Trobaugh follows suit, allowing keyboardist Nick McFarland to spin some

SATURDAY 6/10

SHARON NEEDLES

8 p.m. Club Sway. $25-$30.

“Once upon a time there was a little dead girl dug up from the corn fields of Newton, Iowa. She was discovered by a much more gorgeous,

blacker, beautiful, famous drag queen, and her career took off. ...You better burn, witch!” That’s the intro to the opening track on Sharon Needles’ debut album “PG-13,” spoken by RuPaul, the aforementioned discoverer of Needle’s “stupid genius” (Nee-

dles’ words). The video for the song features Needles parading through the streets in her signature ghoulish threads with her crew to a club, bashing a bouncer over the head with a bottle of booze when he tries to enforce the dictums outlined on a

metal sign that reads “No Fats, No Fems, No Freaks.” Halloween is coming a little early this year, and here’s hoping the self-described “PBR princess” trots out any of the following: the slow jam “Dead Dandelion,” her take on Peg Bundy, fake blood.

SUNDAY 6/11

AVERY SUNSHINE

DEREK BLANKS

7 p.m. Revolution. $35.

‘COME DO NOTHING’: Pianist and vocalist Avery Sunshine lands at the Rev Room Sunday evening with her band, The Trustees, featuring her husband, Dana “Big Dane” Johnson, on guitar.

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Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson are fans of Avery Sunshine, and you very well might be, too, after you hear her lay down the law in “Come Do Nothing,” a tight number in two keys peppered with references to looking up an ex’s new lover on Facebook, or “Used Car,” an ode to second marriages. In “The Ice Cream Song,” she plays keys with one hand and narrates/orchestrates with the other, listing all the things she’d give up for the love of a good partner in life — as she confesses later in the session, her husband and guitarist Dana “Big Dane” Johnson. As evidenced in her most recent video, a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, she’s got poise in spades, and she’s so in command of her craft that she puts the audience at ease, too.

If Jill Scott or Cecile McLorin Salvant are on your frequently playeds, check out this early Sunday show.

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Publication: Arkansas Times

The first thing you’ll probably hear about Sweet Crude is that the band sings in both English and Louisiana French.

At a house party in their native New Orleans, the bandmembers are filmed performing “Super Vilaine” in a space barely big enough to fit the seven of them — over half of whom play drums at some point during the song, including multiple toms and a cone stack that

looks like a set of antique blossom bells.

The song swings back and forth between languages, and between anthemic stadium-style choruses and verses in English, giving their bilingual mission statement in two lines: “With our tongues cut in two, we’re gonna do what we can do.” Check them out now, before you have to pay a lot more to see them in a far less intimate setting. The inimitable Dazz & Brie open the show with their endlessly capable backing band, The Emotionalz.

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SWEET CRUDE

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

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TUESDAY 6/13

lehead play a rare show at Four Quarter Bar, 9 p.m., $8. Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass headline the after-party for the Little Rock Tattoo Show at Revolution, with Dylan Earl and Candler A. Wilkinson, 9 p.m., $10. The House of Art in Argenta hosts a block party, 108 E. 4th St., 11 a.m., free. Butterfly & Irie Soul perform at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $5. Barrett Baber plays at Dugan’s Pub, 7 p.m. Jonesboro’s Greasy Tree brings a dirty blues-based sound to Smoke and Barrel Tavern in Fayetteville, with DeFrance, 10 p.m., $5. Pianist Happiefingerz tickles the ivories at Dogtown Sound, 7 p.m. Lypstick Hand Grenade performs at Thirst N’ Howl, 8:30 p.m., $5.

Momandpop and Paul Morphis play for Kidstock at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library, 12:45 p.m., free. Rob & Tyndall play a happy hour set at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by the Donna Massey Band, 9 p.m., $5.

The Bree Ogden Band performs at Prospect Sports Bar, 7 p.m. Louisiana country star Frank Foster brings his “red wings and six strings” to George’s Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville, 9 p.m., $15-$17. The Black History Commission of Arkansas and the Arkansas State Archives lead a symposium titled “Jim Crow Goes to War: Race Relations in World War I Arkansas” at the Multi-Agency Complex Building on the Capitol Mall, 10 a.m., free, register by emailing events.archives@arkansas.gov.

The Little Rock Wind Symphony performs “A Stars and Stripes Celebration,” the symphony’s 21st annual Flag Day salute, 7 p.m., MacArthur Park. Shana Bryant, Amber Glaze, Ashley Wright Ihler, Kayla Esmond and Summer Vega go for laughs at The Loony Bin for “Nasty Women, Vol. II,” 7:30 p.m., $10.

MONDAY 6/12 The Hot Springs Concert Band presents an evening of movie tunes from composer John Williams, 6:30 p.m., Whittington Park, free.

TUESDAY 6/13 'WE CAN DO THIS ALL NIGHT': Milwaukee's GGOOLLDD spin their hazy, bassheavy dance tunes at Stickyz Wednesday night.

WEDNESDAY 6/14

GGOOLLDD

8 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $8.

Singer Margaret Butler wasn’t always a singer — for a while, as the bio section on her website details, she was living as a starving art school graduate in Portland, Ore., where she lived on pumpkins her friends stole for her from The Home Depot. “You saute them down and add lots of black pepper and curry

powder and soy sauce,” she recalled.

She ended up writing a song called “Gold” with some music-minded comrades, decided to name the band after that song (with the letters doubled, lest it be relegated to the unGoogle-able), and started churning out breathy, pulsating dance tracks like “Dance Through the Winter” and “Undercovers.” Go for Butler’s glittery superhero capes, stay for the bass drops.

BR549 co-founder Chuck Mead honkytonks at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $10.

The Ron Robinson Theater screens the 1944 Bela Lugosi film “One Body Too Many” as part of its Terror Tuesday series, 6 p.m., $2.

Austin-based songwriter Danny Santos lands in Conway for a set at the Faulkner County Library, 7 p.m., free. MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History screens the HBO documentary “Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery,” 6:30 p.m., free. The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center hosts the Drain Smart Meet the Artists Celebration, 6 p.m., donations accepted. Riverdale 10 Cinema hosts a screening of the 1981 film “Stripes,” 7 p.m., $8.50.

WEDNESDAY 6/14 “Maleficent” goes up on the big screen in the First Security Amphitheater as part of the Movies in the Park series, dusk, free.

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Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

SCOTT HANAYIK AND Ryan Brown, co-owners of The Tavern Sports Grill, are opening a new restaurant July 17 in Benton that Hanayik says will be a place where people go to “see and be seen.” Agave Grill will feature “Mexican-American fusion” cuisine — that is, it will have Mexican dishes like handmade pork tamales, enchiladas, “street tacos,” fajitas and tortas; American favorites like ribeye and New York strip steaks, ahi tuna and salmon; and the fused: You’ll be able to order a hamburger made with taco seasoning, queso and avocado, for example, or a steak rubbed with ancho chili. The chef will be Mindy Mitchell, formerly of Honey Pies and the Marriott and a graduate of Pulaski Tech’s culinary school. Hanayik said there will be a fusion of comfort and sophistication as well: Come in your shorts and T-shirt and enjoy fine dining in an upscale atmosphere.

Hanayik said he intends to prove people wrong that the location, 17324 I-30 — once the location of Café Santa Fe and, later, Patron — is snakebit. “I laugh” when people tell him that, Hanayik said, and respond that “when there’s a line out the front door, and you’re in it, you’re not allowed to come in.” After the remodel, Hanayik said, he expects to be able to seat 120 inside and 40 to 50 outside on the covered patio, “which you cannot find in Saline County.” The bar will be the focal point. Brown is a Saline County native; he and Hanayik believe it’s time Benton had good, local food of the sort that Little Rock has.

TANGIBLE EVIDENCE THAT Fassler Hall will come true: The long-awaited German-style beer hall whose owner, the McNellie Group, announced last year would open at 307 E. Capitol Ave., has filed for a plumbing permit from the city. Fassler Hall’s address is the old Paragon Printing building. Next door, at 315 E. Capitol, the former American Legion Building, McNellie plans to build the Dust Bowl Lanes and Lounge, a bowling alley and bar.

THE FOOD TRUCK La Vaquera has moved into a bricks-and-mortar spot at 10308 Chicot Road, where it serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas and specials from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The restaurant has applied for a license from the state Alcohol Beverage Control Board to sell mixed drinks.

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CHARRED MISO SALMON: Petit & Keet prepares a good piece of fish.

Surefire success At Petit & Keet in WLR.

I

n the fickle and risky restaurant game, there are few sure things. But the safest bet in recent memory is that Petit & Keet will be fantastic and super successful. How could it not be?

Louis Petit came to Little Rock to serve as maître d’ at Restaurant Jacques and Suzanne, which defined fine dining in Central Arkansas when it opened in 1975. He later founded and ran Cafe Prego before moving to the Florida Gulf Coast to operate successful restaurants with his sons.

Jim Keet and Gerald Hamra got the Wendy’s franchise for Arkansas the same year J&S opened, and four decades later Keet’s restaurant resume has continued

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to grow, most recently with a burgeoning Taziki’s empire. Like Petit, his sons are in the trenches, providing all the dayto-day support the dads need.

Other factors that pointed to surefire success: 1) moving into the former Restaurant 1620 space, the beloved capital of West Little Rock fine dining for decades; 2) the general dearth of great places to eat out that way (save for Table 28 and the Pantry); and 3) the employment of local design guru Garry Mertins, who transformed the space to assume precisely the “polished casual” term both Petit and Keet have used to describe their vision.

Whether Petit & Keet will go down

as these two Arkansas culinary legends’ crowning achievement remains to be seen, but it’s hard to imagine a better first couple of weeks by all measures: the size of the crowds, the quality of drinks, food, service and overall experience.

We called on a Friday in search of a Saturday dinner reservation for two — early, late or in between; we didn’t care.

Sorry, we were told, every spot is taken.

But, don’t despair, the reservationist told us. All seats in the bar area and the patio are first-come, first-serve. So we were at the bar at 4:45 and it filled up around us fairly quickly.

The first things we noticed in perusing the drinks menu were the broad scope and the reasonable prices. We adore Frank Family Chardonnay; we’ve paid $52 and $46 for a bottle at two of Little Rock’s finest restaurants; it’s $41 at P&K. Several of the specialty cocktails are $7, at least $3-$5 less than at most places. We chose the Cherry Limeade Mule, and it made our Sonic cherry limeade fan very happy with the perfect blend of sweet, pucker and fizz,

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garnished with lime and brandied cherries.

There’s not much you can do to an avocado to make us not like it. And dredging it in panko crumbs, frying it to a nice gooeyness and topping it with some shredded crab ceviche is one fabulous treatment. The dish ($12) was crunchy, creamy and not greasy; the citrus dressing was sweet and bright; the minced crab was a bonus because the avocado can certainly stand on its own. We were instantly drawn to the braised pork cheek (also $12), which essentially eats like pork pot roast — tender and flavorful with a rich juice perfect for dipping with the accompany sourdough. The fresh parsley springs were a nice touch; our only suggestion would be a bit more salt.

The eight entrees range from $18 to $29 — how many nice places in Little Rock don’t have a $30-plus entree?

— and are a balanced bunch with two steaks, salmon, shrimp, pasta, pork chop and a rice hoecake with succotash.

We went for the charred miso salmon ($19.50), Southern-style barbecued shrimp and rice grits ($21) and the Maine lobster roll ($20) from the four-item “handhelds” section.

The salmon was the least-fishy, whitest and non-overly-rich salmon we’ve

FABULOUS: Panko-breaded avocado.

Petit & Keet

1620 Market St. 319-7675

Quick bite The bar at Petit & Keet is sure to become a favorite watering hole for many, and the same menu is served there that’s featured in the main dining room. It’s got a great vibe and plenty of TVs with no-sound sports featured.

Hours 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the dining room, 4 p.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday in the bar.

Other info Full bar, reservations required for the dining room.

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had in Little Rock; the miso glaze was a buttered-up version that softened the soy sauce’s impact. The broccolini and shiitake mushrooms were perfect accompaniments.

The menu description of the shrimp and grits sounded like the classic New Orleans version that features tons of butter and a nice zip of heat provided by pepper and other Cajun seasonings. This one was similar, but the heat was replaced by a bit of sweet, not quite as pleasing.

However, the seven shrimp were plump and cooked perfectly. The accompanying rice grits were a bit boring.

The lobster roll features a nice challah bun with a trough about an inch wide running from end to end of the 6- or 7-inch roll. The trough is stuffed with lobster salad that thankfully is predominantly lobster with not much filler. Like the other sandwiches, it’s served with a cup of perfectly crisp shoestring fries.

We were told dessert remains “a work in progress,” but there were two options — a thick, gooey chocolate cake and a round, light, not overly sweet cheesecake drizzled with stewed strawberries and blueberries in a thin sauce ($7 each). Both were decent, but we do hope for and expect more and better dessert choices in time.

Those who remember this spot as it looked as 1620 may be surprised at the dramatic redesign. There are now several floor-to-ceiling garage-door style windows all around. The double front doors open into a comfortably appointed foyer featuring a plus sofa and modern chairs pairing with the restaurant’s color scheme of charcoal gray with red accents.

Those who remember 1620 will, however, recognize the two-level, rather circular floorplan of the main dining room; but, again, the new color scheme offers a sophisticated but less formal feel. There is a bar tucked into the backside of the dining room. It’s the wine bar. The main bar area is through the doorway to the right, and once there, you’re in a more casual but very high-end gathering spot.

This space is light and bright.

Reclaimed wood accents, polished concrete floors, Edison-style bulbs and similar steampunk-esque light fixtures adorn the space, along with metal accents and pops of red. The covered patio is enclosed with open weave horizontal fencing and features nice furniture well beyond the typical plastic or metal patio chairs.

A long, family-style high-top bar table allows for sitting and chatting with strangers alongside the main bar if that’s what you’re wanting. We predict this no-reservations, lively spot will soon be “the” spot in West Little Rock.

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ALSO IN THE ARTS

UPCOMING EVENTS ON CentralArkansasTickets.com Laman Library – Argenta Branch

JUN

12

What Works? by Artist INC

Boulevard Bistro

JUN

Dinner

14 JUN

The Joint

JUN

Four Quarter Bar

AAMS presents Justin St. Pierre

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Black Oak Arkansas w/ Framing the Red

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ARKANSAS TIMES

From your goin’ out friends at

work, with an equally abstract grammar: Thursday night (free to members, $15 “Experience: isolation; reason,” for exam- to nonmembers) with a lecture by juror ple, is four panels of pink/ochre/red set Betsy Bradley, director of the Mississippi upon black horizontal lines. But don’t Museum of Art. Bradley will announced get too carried away with the reason the prize winners. bit; just enjoy the experience of getting Bradley selected 73 works by 57 artto see the artist’s work, especially as it’s ists, including Larry Wade Hampton, presented through time.

Jim Volkert, Gene Sparling, Zeek Tay“Sammy Peters: Then and Now” trav- lor, Robin Parker, Robyn Horn, Daniel els here from the Memphis College of Mark Cassity, Cindy Arsaga, David Bailin, Art and was earlier on exhibit at the Uni- Dennis McCann, Jason McCann and versity of Arkansas at Fort Smith. It will many others. remain at the Butler Center through Aug. The show officially opens Friday.

26.

“Nasty Women,” paintings, phoGordon and Wenonah Fay Holl tographs and multimedia work by 35 started collecting in the 1940s from their women artists put on by Henderson closest friends; their collection eventu- State University during Women’s Hisally numbered into the hundreds. HAM tory Month in February, is coming to the received the artworks and objects when University of Arkansas at Little Rock on Wenonah Fay Holl died in 2011. The Wednesday, June 14. The show — the show closes Feb. 4, 2018. title refers to President Trump’s characAlso part of 2nd Friday will be the terization of Hillary Clinton — deals with pop-up Antigallery at Sway, 419 Louisi- the misogyny brought to the fore with ana St., where “Out of the Gallery, Back the election of Trump, who also claimed Into Life” will feature work by LGBTQ he could grab women by the genitals artists and allies and drag performances and they would readily accede because (through 9 p.m.). Arkansas Capital Corp., he’s such a hotshot. Among the artists 200 River Market Ave., is showing the showing work are Joli Livaudais, Zina Arkansas Society of Printmakers exhi- Al-Shukri, Melissa Cowper-Smith, Norbition “Print Make!”; the Cox Creative wood Creech, Mia Hall, Diane Harper, Center, 120 River Market Ave., is show- Robyn Horn, Catherine Nugent, Kat Wiling “Kaleidoscope,” work by Sandra son and many others whose talents have Marsden; Matt McLeod Fine Art fea- made their names well known. tures “Just the Way Things Are,” work by Jeremy Couch; Bella Vita Jewelry, 523 S. Etchings and paintings by Brad Louisiana St., features Boggy Creek Bee- Cushman, gallery director at UALR, go hives; and the Old State House Museum on exhibit this week at Boswell-Moufeatures “Cabinet of Curiosities: Trea- rot Fine Art, 5818 Kavanaugh Blvd. A sures from the University of Arkansas reception for the show, “Though False Museum Collection” and “True Faith, Intended True,” will be held from 6 p.m.

True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 9.

Stilley. The rubber-wheeled trolley will be running to get people from point A to In North Little Rock, the William F. point B and so forth.

Laman Public Library is exhibiting the Arkansas League of Artists’ “Members The Arkansas Arts Center opens Show,” and will host a reception from 6 the 59th annual “Delta Exhibition” on p.m. to 8 p.m.

Theater

“Godspell.” Arkansas Repertory Theater’s “Murder at the Howard Johnson’s.” Pocket Community Theater’s production of production of Stephen Schwartz’s musical, Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark’s suspense in collaboration with 2 Ring Circus. 7 p.m. comedy. 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun., Wed.-Thu. and Sun., 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 through June 11. $5-$10. 170 Ravine St., p.m. Sat.-Sun., through June 25. $30-$65.

Hot Springs. 501-623-8585.

601 Main St. 501-378-0405.

“Rough Night at the Remo Room.” The “It Happened at the Nunastery.” Jubilus Dinner Theater’s annual comedy producMain Thing’s two-act musical comedy. 8 tion. 6 p.m. dinner, 7:30 curtain time Fri.p.m. Fri.-Sat., through June 17. $24. The Sat. through June 10. $8-$20. Our Lady of Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., Good Counsel Gym, 1321 S. Van Buren St. NLR. 501-372-0210.

501-661-1756.

“Southern Crossroads.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents the Depression-era “Steel Magnolias.” Five Star Dinner Theatre’s production of Robert Harling’s comrevue. 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., dinner at 6 p.m., edy. 6 p.m. dinner, 7 p.m. curtain time, 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 through June 16. $18-$44. 701 Central a.m. and 5:30 p.m., through July 8. $15-$37.

Ave., Hot Springs. 501-318-1600.

6323 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3131.

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HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATOR

Little Rock Wastewater has the referenced vacancy that will provide general support for Human Resources.

Requirements include Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university in a business-related area of study and 6-7 years of experience in compensation analysis, recruiting, interviewing, job analysis, and/or general areas of Human Resources.

Certification is preferred (PHR, SPHR, SPHR-CM). Deadline to apply Friday 06/23/17. Visit www.lrwu.com for the detailed job posting and to print off an employment application.

ARKANSAS TIMES

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TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

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

Little Rock Schools - Summer Food Service Program The Little Rock School District Child Nutrition Department is participating in the Summer Food Service Program. Meals will be provided to all children (18 and under) without charge and are the same for all children regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability and there will be no discrimination in the course of the meal service. Meals will be provided at the sites and times as follows.

SCHOOL LOCATION Bale Elementary Brady Elementary Carver Elementary Chicot Elementary Cloverdale Middle David O Dodd Elementary Hall High Henderson Middle J A Fair High School Mabelvale Elementary Mabelvale Middle School McDermott Elementary Otter Creek Elementary Parkview High School Wakefield Elementary Washington Elementary Watson Elementary Williams Magnet Elementary

ADDRESS 6201 W. 32nd St. 7915 W Markham St 2100 Eat 6th St. 11100 Chicot Road 6300 Hinkson Rd. 6423 Stagecoach Rd. 6700 "H" Street 401 John Barrow Rd. 13420 David O Dodd 9401 Mabelvale Cutoff 10811 Mabelvale West 1200 Reservoir Rd. 16000 Otter Creek Pkwy.

2501 John Barrow Rd. 75 Westminister Dr. 2700 S. Main St. 7000 Valley Drive 7301 Evergreen

Days of the Week Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Thurs Mon-Fri Mon-Fri Mon-Fri

Program Beginning 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/07/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17 06/05/17

Program Ending 07/14/17 06/30/17 06/30/17 06/30/17 06/23/17 07/27/17 06/23/17 07/27/17 06/20/17 06/23/17 07/13/17 06/30/17 06/30/17 06/27/17 07/12/17 07/27/17 07/27/17 06/30/17

BREAKFAST Beginning Ending 7:30 9:15 7:30 8:30 7:30 8:30 7:30 8:30 8:30 9:30 7:30 9:00 8:30 9:30 7:30 9:10 7:30 9:15 9:00 9:30 8:00 9:30 7:30 8:30 7:15 8:30 7:30 9:00 8:00 9:00 7:30 9:10 7:30 9:10 7:00 8:30

LUNCH Beginning Ending 11:00 12:30 11:00 12:30 11:30 12:30 11:30 12:30 11:30 12:30 11:00 12:30 12:30 1:30 11:00 12:45 12:00 1:15 11:00 11:30 11:00 12:30 11:00 12:30 11:00 12:30 10:45 12:00 11:00 12:15 11:15 12:45 11:15 12:45 11:15 12:30

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination against its customers, employees, and applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, age, disability, sex, gender identity, religion, reprisal and, where applicable, political beliefs, marital status, familial or parental status, sexual orientation, or if all or part of the individuals income is derived from any public assistance program, or protected genetic information in employment or in any program or activity cond ucted or funded by the Department. (Not all prohibited bases will apply to all programs and/or employment activities.)

If you wish to file a Civil Rights program complaint of discrimination, complete the USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form, found online at http://www.ascr.usda.gov/complaint_filing-cust.html, or at any USDA office, or call (866) 632-9992 to request the form. You may also write a letter containing all of the information requested in the form. Send your completed complaint form or letter to us by mail at U.S. Department of Agriculture, Director, Office of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, by fax (202) 690-7442 or email at program.intake@usda.gov. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have speech disabilities and wish to file either an EEO or program complaint please contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339 or (800) 845-6136 (in Spanish).

Persons with disabilities, who wish to file a program complaint, please see information above on how to contact us by mail directly or by email. If you require alternat ive means of communication for program information (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) please contact USDA’S TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD).

USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

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