NEWS + POLITICS + ENTERTAINMENT + FOOD / MAY 4, 2017 / ARKTIMES.COM
Jeff Nichols aims to fill the void left by the death of the Little Rock Film Festival with the Arkansas Cinema Society.
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Opening reception for: - Dawn Holder and Melissa Cowper-Smith: Traces Remain - Dani Ives: Portraits of Friends
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ARKANSAS TIMES
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COMMENT
It was Moses the Liberator who wrote in his book, Deuteronomy: “To me [Jehova] belongeth vengeance, and recompence, their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” This is one source for the old saying “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” The Apostle Paul advised the Romans: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.” Of course, the final authority, Jesus of Nazareth, advises: “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” This is advice Governor Hutchinson should follow, because by killing inmates of our state’s prisons, Hutchinson has wrested vengeance from the hands of God for distribution among the families of murder victims. According to God, Hutchinson does not have this authority. Unfortunately, according to primitive laws of man, Hutchinson has authority to avenge, while most of us do not. Certainly, Arkansas should not be in the killing business. English philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote, “Revenge is a wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” Hutchinson’s justice is wild, reckless and hasty, and there is no healing involved. Healing involves mercy, not blood lust. Gene Mason Jacksonville
From the web On an Arkansas Blog post about protests, by retired Judge Marion Humphrey and others, of the proposed extension of 12.4 mills in the Little Rock School District: We’ve got some bond daddies who need new yachts. This is all about greasing the coffers at the Chamber of Commerce. And keeping the black folk down. Let us not forget this is a bunch of old white guys who have never worked in education forcibly taking over a majority black school board for not getting with the privatization program. Paying Top Dollar for Legislators On the April 20 cover story, “The Little Rock Millage Question”: Great article. Fair and intelligent opinions. Everyone sounds “right.” 4
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ARKANSAS TIMES
Everyone agrees that repairs to the school buildings are long overdue. I keep hearing that a lot of people do not trust the governor’s choice for commissioner, Johnny Key, who seems to be hiding his future plans for the LRSD. I trust Sen. Joyce Elliott 100 percent. I am not qualified to know all the political games that are being played behind closed doors. I know she is passionate about all children getting a good education and I agree that taxation without representation is wrong. I have rarely
seen Arkansas government show a real interest in education, like it is not a priority. I will vote no May 9. ShineonLibby On an Arkansas Blog post about the state Legislature reconvening to consider changes to the state’s Arkansas Works program that would remove 60,000 people from the Medicaid rolls and require that people have jobs to get benefits: Oh what a wonderful thing, that
our legislators will show how compassionate they are by tossing 20 bucks in a hat while the reason they’re getting back together is to throw 60,000 poor Arkansans off the expanded Medicaid rolls. Meaning they, and possibly I, will have to go back to using animal drugs purchased at the local Farmers Co-op, or just live in misery or maybe die at home, without the ability to afford medical care and the medicine needed. Damn near as much fun as executing inmates! Why, it’s the home version of slow execution! Of course, in a crisis, most of these abandoned Arkansans will head for the emergency room to rack up bills they’ll never pay … but hey, let’s talk about that big tax cut the richest among us will get if Gov. Asa gets his way! Muffin, how’d you like to spend a month in Spain? Time to trade in the Jag for another new Jag! Maybe it’s time to hire a full-time guard to stand out by the gates? Maybe some new boobs, Muff? Wanna own a human, honey? DeathbyInches
On an Arkansas Blog post about state Sen. Trent Garner’s statement, written on Senate stationery, that the House should impeach Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen for joining an anti-death penalty demonstration outside the governor’s mansion: Garner is just another asshat who wouldn’t have said a damn thing if Judge Griffen had gone down to protest the protestors at the Governor’s Mansion. Even the state Supreme Court, not known for making correct legal decisions based on the U.S. Constitution, has agreed in the past that a judge has the same right to free speech as an idiot like Garner. It is just that Griffen is so much more intelligent than Garner. Of course, the state House is full of bigoted “Garners.” And never underestimate how bigoted the Republicans in this state are toward ANY minority. couldn’t be better I find Sen. Garner’s pushing a blatantly unconstitutional (First Amendment) and vague (due process) law through the legislature to be gross misconduct. At least the governor was wise enough to veto to end the folly of their ways. TuckerMax Don’t you love it when a freshmen legislator decides he knows everything? Screen name taken
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WEEK THAT WAS
Quote of the week “When you see a road that has water crossing it, turn around.” —Governor Hutchinson, offering advice to the public at a news conference Tuesday after surveying flood damage in Northeast Arkansas. At least seven people died in weekend storms that spawned at least five tornadoes and dumped 6 to 8 inches of rain in the northern half of the state.
In the wake of Death Week 2 A federal judge ordered an autopsy and preservation of tissue and blood samples in response to a motion from attorneys for Kenneth Williams, who want to determine if he suffered during his execution April 27. Williams was the last of four death row prisoners the state executed over eight days. Media witnesses observed Williams coughing, convulsing, lurching, jerking and making sounds that could be heard through a glass partition during his execution. Meanwhile, the Arkansas Medical Board, which has subpoena power, is investigating how the Arkansas Department of Correction obtained the drugs used in the executions. A state law shields information about the drugs from Freedom of Information Act inquiries. McKesson, a drug supplier, continues to pursue a lawsuit against the state after, as it says, the ADC obtained an execution drug under false pretenses.
Sticking it to the little guy Governor Hutchinson’s proposal to change the state’s Medicaid expansion appeared headed to approval by the legislature in a special session earlier this week. Now, the state will have to get federal approval; that approval seems likely. The changes would take anyone whose income is between 100 and 138 percent of the federal poverty level off Arkansas’s expanded Medicaid program, Arkansas Works, and force them onto a subsidized plan in the Affordable Care Act marketplace or onto an employer-sponsored plan. As a consequence, some 60,000 will likely have to pay more in premiums and cost-sharing, and a significant number of them are likely to lose coverage altogether. 6
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ARKANSAS TIMES
Our profile of Meagan Olsen, a 2017 Academic All-Star, was inadvertently omitted from last week’s issue of the Times. The profile, in All-Star style, follows:
MEAGAN OLSEN AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: FAYETTEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL: FAYETTEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: ANJANETTE OLSEN AND DAVID OLSEN COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS HONORS COLLEGE, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Fayetteville High School’s top student, with a perfect ACT score of 36, a 4.2 gradepoint average and the co-author of a paper on fractal self-assembly, is not just a bookworm. She’s a leader, her counselor Cindy Alley says, who shows “grit, motivation to succeed and a desire to help others.” She is also, Alley says, “a pure joy to be
around.” In her essay for the Arkansas Times, Meagan talked about how she came to understand “ternary counters,” a base-3 method of counting in
which only the digits 0, 1 and 2 are used. (Binary counters of 0 and 1 make up our computers’ “thinking”; as people with 10 fingers, we use base 10 to count.) Meagan, trying to make a “self-assembling ternary counter,” said she banged her head against “endless walls” for weeks. Then, just after 1 a.m., she woke up with the answer. It’s a wise child who gives credit where credit is due: “I understood,” she wrote, “my mother’s advice about taking a break whenever I was upset.” Meagan’s paper on fractal self-assembly was published in the 22nd International Conference on DNBA Computing and Molecular Programing. She no longer lets frustration prevent her from solving a problem; sometimes, she’ll just sleep on it. Meagan told the Times she plans to attend a small conference this summer and then take some needed downtime. She plans to use her degree from Fayetteville to pursue biomedical research.
OPINION
For the kids
E
arly voting is underway for the special election May 9 on extension of 12.4 property tax mills dedicated to debt of the Little Rock School District. It’s not a vote to increase the tax rate. But it IS a vote for more taxes — 14 more years of the tax, which currently produces more than $42 million a year. Since property tax assessments have risen 3 percent a year for the last 10 years, you could be looking down the line at authorizing $63 million or more a year for those 14 years, almost $900 million. The tax vote also perpetuates a silent tax for operations. As taxes rise, rather than devoting money to a building fund, the district can draw on the surplus, currently $31 million a year, to operate. A sophisticated campaign financed by business establishment leaders is pushing the tax increase. Odds favor approval. It’s just refinancing a mortgage, they say. (The bankruptcy courts are full of people who know that people facing declining income probably shouldn’t refinance their credit cards and mortgages.) The pro-tax campaign boils down to an implicit insult: If you are against the tax, you are against kids. Baker Kurrus, a former Little Rock School Board mem-
ber, a man most responsible for new elementary and middle schools in Northwest Little Rock and a successMAX ful interim superinBRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com tendent, has written a fact-heavy, dispassionate explanation of why he’ll vote Tuesday AGAINST the school tax. Don’t tell me Kurrus hates kids. He avoids the discord about the state takeover and removal of the majority black school board, a sore point with the predominant black voting bloc in the district. Kurrus argues that there’s been no comprehensive planning for the future of the Little Rock district and the other public school districts in Pulaski County, likely to be reshaped in years ahead. It is not the time, he writes, to pour $300 million into debt (counting interest charges). Nice buildings, desirable as they are, don’t equal good education, Kurrus also says. The Little Rock district has done well, but is being decimated by the continuing proliferation of charter schools encouraged by state Education Commissioner Johnny Key. Those charters take achiev-
Danger to health
T
his is another perilous week for repealing Obamthe 30 million Americans, in- acare entailed, cluding some 550,000 Arkansans, “Nobody knew whose health and financial conditions health care could form a nexus that torments their daily be so complicated.” existence. Private insurERNEST That does not overstate the impor- ance, which is DUMAS tance of the quick little session of the how Obamacare Arkansas Legislature called this week by arranges for people to pay for their mediGovernor Hutchinson and also of Con- cal care, is indeed complicated — and too gress’ haste to give President Trump expensive, as Trump and other mental something — anything — that he can giants have observed. claim fulfills his pledge to repeal “ObamIt’s no simpler, but let’s deal with acare,” the disparaging nickname that Arkansas’s part of this little political criwas supposed to sink the health care sis. Leave the spectacle over repealing reform known as the Patient Protection or thwarting Obamacare to another day and Affordable Care Act. after it is clearer what mess the president Nothing that passes in the Arkansas and a feckless Congress make of it. Legislature or the U.S. House of RepreArkansas is a shining example of sentatives will actually repeal the law, Obamacare’s success. Some 400,000 but lawmakers will undermine it in the Arkansans were insured under some feaguise of preserving popular features ture of Obamacare, dropping the share of while shifting the blame to somebody people who are uninsured under 9 perfor all the eventual harm. cent. The market and premiums remain As Trump remarked in February after stable in spite of the Republican-consomeone tried to explain to him what trolled state government’s efforts to keep
ing Little Rock students disproportion- of flight tell us that buildings aren’t the ately. Left behind, disproportionately, are root of Little Rock student loss. Despite economically disadvantaged students. crumbling walls, Central High was a The district is already pinched finan- magnet to diverse students thanks to its cially. Between the available millage over- curriculum and faculty. A brand-new age of at least $8 million a year, budget junior high failed to attract new students cuts and state facility support, Kurrus (until converted to a magnet) because of had a plan to build the new Southwest a predominantly poor and black student high school and to do critical building attendance zone. improvements as able until enrollment Little Rock is about to lose $37 million stabilized. in state desegregation aid and $10 milAccountable leadership is an issue. lion to $12 million more a year in losses Commissioner Key, the ultimate district to charter school expansions already boss under state control, won’t talk to the approved, with another national charter public or press. But he supports contin- operator lurking in the wings. In addiued charter school growth. He fought for tion to welcoming all charters, the state legislation that helped charter schools allows poorly performing charters to and hurt the Little Rock School District continue. “These are the simple facts, in the last legislative session. He’s given but none of this has been discussed in no hint of flexibility on a return of local public,” Kurrus says. control. He killed a state Board of EduI credit people on both sides with cation proposal to provide at least some being “for kids,” even if the tax camhope. paigners won’t extend similar courtesy With more charters, Kurrus says, Lit- to opponents. But, as Kurrus illustrates, tle Rock enrollment will decline (along a “yes” vote on $600 million to $900 milwith state dollars) and the district will lion in new taxes might lead to a fiscally bear a disproportionate share of students distressed school district disproportionwith special needs, students in poverty ately attended by at-risk students. It’s a and students who don’t speak English as blueprint for districtwide privatization of the sort pushed in the past by Key’s a first language. Michael Poore, named superintendent friends at the Walton Family Foundation. after Key fired Kurrus for opposing char- Experience in New Orleans and Memter school expansion, thinks new facili- phis tells us this would not be a solution ties will bring students back. Forty years “for all the kids.”
people uninsured. Unlike Social Security, Medicare or your employment insurance, signing up for an “affordable” insurance plan is daunting, but the legislature in 2013 blocked the use of $10 million in federal assistance or any other funding to help people find a suitable plan and calculate the tax credits that would help them enroll. Still, some 350,000 poor Arkansans enrolled in the Medicaid feature of Obamacare, the vast majority in private plans where premiums are paid by government. To prove his conservative and Trumpian bona fides, Hutchinson wants to boot 60,000 and probably many more off insurance, to save some taxes down the road and because he is sure that lots of these poor people are layabouts who don’t deserve medical care. Good medical care should be reserved for solid Americans who can afford it or at least can hold a steady job. Obamacare tries to make insurance affordable by offering subsidies in the form of tax credits to people whose incomes are between 138 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line. Studies showed that people below 138 percent of poverty could not afford any premium
payment and those above 400 percent could begin to handle premiums without help. Those below 138 percent of poverty would be treated through Medicaid. The legislature is adopting Hutchinson’s plan to cut off help at the poverty line, forcing people up to the 138 percent threshold to buy the same pricey policies as those above it, probably with no extra federal subsidy. Few will be able to do it. Federal law does not permit the state to lop people below 138 percent of poverty off Medicaid, but everyone is sure the Trump administration will OK it anyway, because it achieves the goal of leaving more people without insurance, demonstrating Obamacare’s “failure.” The major goal of health care reform was to get more people insured, including the unemployed, people with mental or physical disabilities and pre-existing conditions, young folks with marginal earning capacities and people in the jobless countryside without the skills or wherewithal to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Hutchinson is setting up a worthiness scale — a regular job, which is popular with people who think the poor are irresponsible and undeserving of society’s succor.
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A R K A N S A S F E S T I VA L B A L L E T Rebecca M. Stalcup, artistic director, p r e s e n t s
The Adventures of
n Wonderlan i e c i d Al © Copyright Lyuba Bogan 2017.
N
May 19-21 Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre T I C K E T S > A r k a n s a s D a n c e . o r g 501-227-5320 • info@arkansasdance.org
MAY 9 • 6:30-8:30 P.M. • FREE ADMISSION
In World War II, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced to relocate to military camps. The film tells the story of the 16,000 men, women and children who were sent to Jerome and Rohwer in southeast Arkansas, one of the poorest and most racially segregated places in America. Sponsored by
MOVIES AT MACARTHUR 503 E. Ninth St., Little Rock • 501-376-4602 • arkmilitaryheritage.com 8
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
Wall Street Democrats
ever mind that at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., the president of the United States recently delivered what former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson described as “arguably the most hatefilled presidential communication in modern history.” Nor that Donald J. Trump’s old pals on MSNBC’s “The Morning Joe” are suggesting that the great man shows signs of senile dementia and needs a neurological workup. Gee, no kidding. Never mind, too, that U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has suggested (also on MSNBC) that people with pre-existing medical conditions are morally deficient and deserve to pay much higher health insurance premiums than rightliving specimens like himself. It’s tempting to observe that when you’ve said “Alabama Republican congressman,” you’ve said it all. Even so, like any proper Democrat, I find myself distracted by party infighting. Not that I’ve ever actually participated in a political campaign. However, readers may not be shocked to learn that I normally vote Democratic. Anyway, never mind my misgivings about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). When Bernie’s right, he’s right. He and fellow New England puritan Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are certainly correct about the dreadful optics of former President Barack Obama’s decision to accept a $400,000 fee for a one-hour speech to a Wall Street bank. Bernie thinks it’s “unfortunate,” while Warren pronounced herself “troubled.” Actually, it’s worse than that. Granted, the investment firm of Cantor Fitzgerald wasn’t among the major malefactors in the 2008 financial system collapse, and that it’s a health care conference that Obama will be addressing. Given Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, I’m confident he’ll have something interesting to say. But ordinary voters aren’t going to hear it. What’s more easily noticed is the conjunction of “Wall Street” and “$400,000.” Many will be tempted to think pretty much what they thought when Hillary Clinton accepted similarly preposterous speaking fees from Goldman Sachs before setting up to
run for president as the working family’s friend. To wit, that Lady Bountiful already had more GENE money than she LYONS knew what to do with, but no understanding of their everyday lives. I think people were wrong about Hillary’s lack of compassion, but it’s easy to see how they got the idea. It’s the sheer symbolism of the thing. Despite the fact that the Clintons have donated vast sums to charity, and that Bill Clinton has devoted his post-presidency to downright heroic efforts to alleviate Third World suffering (see Joe Conason’s book “Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton”), the message behind those Wall Street paydays proved hard to overcome. (It didn’t help that the establishment media has all but refused to cover the Clinton Foundation’s charitable enterprises except to hint at scandal where none has been shown to exist.) And then came “basket of deplorables.” But back to the equally unfortunate symbolism of Obama’s $400,000 speaking gig. Yes, Ronald Reagan once earned $2 million in 1989 dollars for a gig in Japan. (For which he was bitterly criticized.) And yes, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have both cashed in, big time. Nor do I begrudge Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama a nickel of their reported $60 million book deals. No more than I resent the outsized riches of Steph Curry or The Rolling Stones. One way or another, I figure they’ve earned it. Given their international celebrity and the fact that both Obamas had already written highly successful books, publishers competed to sign them. Ultimately, these are market decisions, paid for by the ticket- and book-buying public. You can read Obama’s presidential memoirs or not; it’s entirely your call. But with the Democratic Party struggling to redeem itself in the wake of Clinton’s loss, Obama’s Wall Street payday sends exactly the wrong signal at a very bad time.
An ideological canyon
I
f you’re troubled by the political division in America, two surveys of our youngest adults released in the last week indicate you haven’t seen anything yet. Both the latest iteration of an annual survey of first-year college students and the quarterly survey of Americans under 30 by the Harvard Institute of Politics highlight the depth of the political polarization in those just entering the electorate. Young people generally leave high school either unsure of their political beliefs or lacking the confidence to state them publicly. Thus, most often seek safe haven by calling themselves “middle of the road.” This is no longer the case among the youngest American voters; only 42 percent portray their views as moderate. In the more than half-century of the “American Freshman,” a yearly survey conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, never has an entering class of college students shown themselves to stake out a clear position on either the left or right of the political divide. One side of that divide is larger with those on the left outpacing those on the right by a 36-22 margin, suggesting that this future of progressivism will remain healthy well after Bernie Sanders’ exit from the political stage. However, the sharpening political division is an evermore-telling story for the future of the American democratic experiment that relies upon some level of compromise to solve the biggest challenges at any level of government. (Interestingly, much of the polarization is driven by gender; the survey also shows the largest gender gap in political ideology in its history with 41 percent of women deeming themselves “liberal” or “far left” with only 29 percent of their male classmates doing so.) The latest Harvard study of those 18-29 reiterates much of what is seen in the “American Freshman” survey — this generation of voters’ relative progressivism, the sharp gender divides and their polarized political views. Respondents are deeply aware of the costs of that division, including the fact that it has pushed them away from governmental service (on average, they say there’s only a 9 percent chance they’ll seek office before age 50) and has led them to believe that politics is no longer able to meet the nation’s most pressing needs by over a 2-to-1 margin. The bit of happy news in this flurry of survey data is that young vot-
ers are dedicated to doing what they can to fill the political divide; six in 10 say they want to work to “unite, JAY not further divide, BARTH America.” No matter how conscious this generation is of the costs of political division and their desire to remedy it, the Harvard survey shows this generation increasingly is cocooning itself: The survey asked young voters whether or not they have a “close relationship” with those from various backgrounds. Those on the left and those on the right differ sharply in whether they have a “close relationship” with individuals who are gun owners, military veterans of the most recent conflicts, religious evangelicals, Muslims or who are openly LGBTQ. The sorting is exactly along the lines would one suspect, suggesting the polarization that is an inherent part of contemporary American politics will likely be even more pronounced by the time my students begin to take control of the wheels of American democracy. *** The timing of my columns and the fact that so much else has been written about it led me to avoid arguably the story of the year in Arkansas: the state’s messy experiment with mass execution. Living in such a tightly interwoven state makes one aware of how battering the entire situation was for so many. Much energy has been expended on the behavior of one judge — Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen — but not nearly enough has been written about the exemplary work of another, federal District Judge Kristine Baker. From her dedication to thorough fact-finding in a multiday trial to her thoughtfully nuanced 101-page opinion that briefly stopped all the executions, Baker showed her work ethic, her smarts and her awareness of the stakes of the issue. Her dedication to the process did not end with the four executions. Instead, last week, she ordered that an autopsy be performed on the last man executed — Kenneth Williams — and blood and tissue samples be collected from him so that we might better understand the lethal injection regimen in use in the state. No matter how one feels about the death penalty, Baker showed herself to be an exemplary judge at a tough time.
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arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
9
Vote no on school tax
I
have never voted against a school tax in my life, but I will be voting against the debt service millage extension for the Little Rock School District. This is a financial matter, and it needs to be analyzed in financial terms. Thus far, there has been almost no financial analysis. Most of the proponents talk in general terms of providing new facilities for students, which is laudable and something we would all endorse. However, the matter needs to be assessed from a financial point of view. It would do no student any good if the bonds are issued and the school district is so strapped financially that it cannot provide the educational services necessary for its students. A vote for the measure is a vote to borrow the principal sum of $160 million at a time when the district faces great uncertainty. The borrowing adds about $8 million per year to the district’s debt service through 2033, and then adds about $22 million through 2041. Six more payments of $3.8 million are due, with the proposed bonds being fully retired in 2047. The total cost of this borrowing is roughly $560 million, or an increase of more than $257 million over the district’s current debt service obligations. After this borrowing, the district would owe about $346 million in bonded debt. The additional cost of this debt, by itself, is dangerous because the district has no operating cushion. Equally problematic is the almost certain loss of revenue the district will experience due to declining enrollment. Pulaski County now has over 9,300 charter school seats. eSTEM and LISA [Academy] were expanded by the State Board of Education on March 31, 2016. The district will lose about 1,250 students to these schools alone. The revenue impact will be a loss of over $8 million. The increased costs of the borrowing, combined with the revenue losses due to declining enrollment, put the future of the district at great risk. Nothing I have seen with respect to this proposal has discussed these realities. The Little Rock School District needs to do some detailed projections that take the enrollment losses into account. Rather than borrow now, the better approach would be to make a realistic assessment of the size and character of the district over the course of the same 30 years of the proposed bond repayment. The district can borrow, if necessary, after the budget is balanced and enrollment is
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stabilized. In the shorter term, the same revenues that would be spent on annual interest and fees could be BAKER spent on facilities KURRUS on a pay-as-yougo basis. This amount, plus the capital money the district already has or will receive, should be enough to build the Southwest Little Rock high school. Any shortage could be covered with second lien bonds. At the present time there is much uncertainty, and taking on a long-term obligation without a repayment plan would be imprudent. The district does have some serious facilities needs, but new school buildings have not, and will not, solve the district’s problems. Before the district takes on an enormous financial obligation, the State Board of Education, the commissioner of Education and the stakeholders/taxpayers need to develop a comprehensive and detailed long-term plan for educating our children. The commissioner supported the preparation of such a plan in late March of 2016. He then appointed a committee to prepare the plan. The committee has been meeting, but its plan has not been published. Therefore it is impossible to know if this millage extension is in line with the committee’s ideas. The reality is that charter schools are expanding, with more applications to be filed. This reality has not been discussed. The bond payments will be a priority. Whatever is left will be used to run the district. The educational program and the employees of the district would bear all of the cuts necessary to allow for the higher bond payments. This is not a prudent plan, or actually a plan of any kind. Without a realistic enrollment projection, a pro forma operating budget in the out years, and the comprehensive plan for educating all students that the commissioner said was necessary, there is no way to make a fully informed decision about this matter. Baker Kurrus is the former superintendent of the Little Rock School District. He was appointed by State Education Commissioner Johnny Key, but his contract was terminated after he warned about the expansion of charter schools. You can read his full statement on the Arkansas Blog, www.arktimes.com.
7 P.M. TUESDAY, MAY 16
THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
How high’s the water, Momma?
T
he Observer, who is lucky enough to live on the crest of a hill that will never see standing water unless the Good Lord decides to punish mankind with 40 days and 40 nights of deluge again, has watched with alarm as the folks up in North Arkansas have been inundated with rain in recent days. There’s reportedly more on the way tomorrow as we write this, another amorphous, colorful blob creeping its way across the map, soon to bear down, soon to give the weathermen their rare time to shine above the perfect hairdos and tight bods on the reporting side. Springtime in Arkansas is clearly the best time ever to be a Ned Perme. We’re beginning to wonder where the hell all that rain is gonna go. On Dr. Zuckerberg’s Fantabulous Electric Book of Countenances in recent days, we’ve seen photos of all manner of sodden happenings: cars and trucks swept from the road, a shirtless chap floating down one of the main drags up in Fayetteville astride a giant yellow ducky, the lovely one-lane suspension bridge at Beaver drowned to the point that the cables emerge directly from the river, the road deck completely submerged, and who knows what horrors beyond in the quaint little town the bridge connects to the world? The Observer owes a lot of our existence to floods, being that we are the crotchfruit of the crotchfruit of desperate sharecroppers once flushed out of the fields near England by the storied ‘27 Overflow, 90 years back to the year. Our dear, departed granddad said the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers eventually shook hands in the middle somewhere out in the Delta, forming the Great and Temporary Sea of Arkansas, with only a few bridges and the ancient lump of Crowley’s Ridge standing high enough to top the depths of the churning waters. Who knows who or where The Observer would be without that soggy excuse for a Biblical plague unto our people? In prison, maybe. Preaching, possibly. Maybe behind the wheel of a house-sized John Deere tractor, chewing our chaw and
thinking of the meatloaf and taters the Missus would have on the table when we tromped in dusty from the field, focused on trying to get the soybeans into the ground before the next fleck of raindrops on the windshield. Surely we wouldn’t be here in Little Rock, where our ancestors retreated for good as the Arkansas River rose up and swallowed their shacks and barns and corncribs, grandma’s chifforobe and brass bedstead, sending their mules and milk cow swimming for higher ground and the land buried in sand in which seeds could find no nourishment. So they came here, started roofing, and begat and begat until one of them, thank God, begat Yours Truly, for better or for worse. A child of floods, then. A scion of storms. Lord knows where we’d be without ’em, so much of life and existence turning — as The Observer has repeated here on occasion — to the most random and seemingly insignificant events of all sorts: geographical, criminal, astronomical, meteorological. But we digress. Bless you and keep you, Northlanders. Stay dry up there in coming days. Stay away from sagging old oaks, prone to keeling over and embracing mobile mansions in the middle of stormy nights. Know when to hold ’em and fold ’em while driving, too, not venturing into water flowing over the road no matter how much the guy at the car lot told you your Jeep or SUV or big swingin’ truck-nutted 4x4 makes you not only impervious to the elements, but to mortality itself. You wouldn’t be the first sucker who swam away from a rig like that, buddy. Just check YouTube. Above all, if you can stay warm and dry and undrowned, just remember to enjoy the rain. People have a love-hate relationship with it, of course, drencher of hairdos and killer of truck-nutted 4x4s, ruiner of outdoor birthday parties worldwide. Like the old-timers said, though, into every life a little rain must fall, and without it we would get none of the green, sweltering beauty that is Arkansas in the summertime. Yeah, the floods are no fun. But for that, we can stand a few days of rain.
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Arkansas Reporter
THE
After midazolam Officials ponder a way forward on the death penalty, now that the state’s supply of a key drug has expired. BY DAVID KOON
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eral, so there’s not any pending dates that have to be set,” he said. “Clearly when the drugs, midazolam or the others, expire, we’ll have to look for other sources of it. We will see what the availability will be. The fact that we’re able to maintain the confidentiality of it, we’re able to prove the efficacy of it in terms of that it worked as it was designed to
BRIAN CHILSON
S
omewhere, in a cabinet or refrigerator inside a building owned by the Arkansas Department of Correction, the state’s stockpiled supply of midazolam sits, expired as of May 1. The looming expiration date of the state’s supply of the drug — the first injection of the state’s three-drug protocol used to execute condemned inmates, and normally used to induce sedation and short-term amnesia for routine procedures like colonoscopies — was the reason for Arkansas’s mad dash to execute eight men by the end of April. (Four were executed.) Defense attorneys argued that the rush added to the risk of error in using the controversial sedative, which has figured in a number of botched or problematic executions in other states. Drugmakers and suppliers have refused to supply prison systems with the drug for fear of the bad press over its use in executions, so it’s going to undoubtedly be a problem for the ADC to find more. Now that Arkansas’s 12-year hiatus on executions has been broken with the deaths of Jack Jones, Kenneth Williams, Ledell Lee and Marcel Williams, and state polls top 60 percent in support for executions, it seems the political wind is blowing in the direction of continuing the death penalty in Arkansas. The issue is, how? At a press conference April 28, the day after the execution of Kenneth Williams — a quadruple killer who witnesses said convulsed for up to 20 seconds and made sounds loud enough to be heard through the glass between the witness room and the execution chamber as the deadly drugs were administered — Governor Hutchinson said that the state will have to look at options down the road with regard to obtaining a new supply of execution drugs. “I don’t have any further names that have been sent over by the attorney gen-
general’s office came to me two years ago, and they said, ‘We are having difficulty getting a barbiturate that is suitable for execution.’ … It was impossible to get the pentobarbital. That’s essentially the same drugs they use to put animals to sleep. It’s very effective. Georgia is still using it, and they have some way to obtain that. I don’t know where or how. The Department of Correction said they couldn’t get those drugs.” House looked to the midazolamincluded protocol used by Oklahoma while drafting the legislation. He said the midazolam executions that have gone awry — including the April 2014 execution of Oklahoman Clayton Lockett, who writhed and groaned in apparent pain for 43 minutes before dying of a heart attack — were the result of IV misplacement.
HOUSE: Says death penalty has broad support among Arkansans as long as its “neither cruel nor unusual.”
do, may open up avenues in which we can procure the drugs.” Hutchinson said that he hasn’t asked ADC officials to begin the hunt for a new supply of the drug, but added that he sees no need to change the three-drug cocktail. “Once you have a protocol that has worked, that has been affirmed by the courts, I absolutely do not see any need to change that protocol.” Rep. Doug House (R-North Little Rock) helped draft the legislation that approved the state’s three-drug protocol. “The Department of Correction, the governor’s office and the attorney
House said that lethal injection continues to be the preferred method of execution because other methods can leave the inmate’s body in a state that can be unpleasant and traumatic for ADC staff to deal with. “Electrocution essentially fries the body,” House said. “The Department of Correction people that have to administer the penalty had to deal with that body, as does the family that receives it. … With the firing squad, seven or five or nine .30 caliber rounds hitting the chest cavity will essentially cut a body in half. It’s extremely traumatic on the torso and a very unpleasant task for the
Department of Corrections. It’s a traumatic task for them as well as returning the body to the families.” House said that he has studied alternative methods, like asphyxiation with nitrogen or argon gas, and said they aren’t good alternatives. “If we’re going to have the death penalty, let’s do it as painless, quickly, efficiently and cleanly as possible, considering the other alternatives,” he said. “We also discussed hanging. There are hundreds of years of experience that hanging can take as long as 20 to 40 minutes before death ensues even if you snap the neck. We’re not familiar enough with asphyxiation. … Gas chamber, that too can also be rather traumatic and take a long time and be relatively painful. That was not an alternative.” House noted that, as written, state law on executions allows the electric chair to be used as a fallback method if the state is unable to procure the execution drugs, or if any part of the lethal injection protocol is met with an insurmountable court challenge. He said the death penalty has broad support by Arkansans, and he doesn’t believe the citizens of the state will be troubled by the method used, as long as it’s “neither cruel nor unusual. Electrocution is neither of those things.” “I think there would be revulsion if it inflicted a lot of unnecessary pain — we’re not dealing with that with electrocution — or if it was unnecessarily slow or unusual,” he added. Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson (R-Little Rock) chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that while he struggles with the death penalty, he supports it as a punishment in particularly heinous cases, including the cases of the four men executed in April. The state’s electric chair, he said, is in the ADC museum, “which is probably its rightful place.” “I don’t think there’s any question that our current method is far more humane than either the firing squad or the electric chair,” he said. “If we have this much [legal] trouble using lethal injection, I don’t think there’s any way we could ever succeed in using a firing squad or the electric chair.” While polls show support for alternative execution methods — 38 percent of respondents in a recent Hendrix College/Talk Business poll said they would support bringing back public hangings — Hutchinson said those methods would
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likely be struck down in the courts. “I know people get frustrated and start talking about alternatives,” he said. “But realistically, I don’t think there are any alternatives. I think this is the only method, and we’re going to have to find a way to make it work. … I think either we’re able to locate the drugs or we compound it ourselves, or we don’t have any more executions. I don’t think the courts will let us, and I personally don’t support using the electric chair, firing squad, public hangings or anything else.” Asked about recent reports that the Florida Department of Corrections is stockpiling the sedative atomidate as a possible substitute for midazolam in its execution protocol, Hutchinson said that changing the protocol to use a new drug would be a long process that would have to be approved again by the courts. “I think that would have to be an effort made by the Department of Correction: Come to the Legislature, have us approve that in the law, and then it would have to be tested by the courts again,” he said. “The difficulty of getting [the drugs] would still exist, I assume. Florida may be able to get their hands on it now, because it hasn’t been the subject of a lot of protest and controversy, but at some point it will be, and we’ll have the same difficulty in obtaining that drug as we do the current drug.” Hutchinson said he’s confident the inmates executed with the midazolam protocol in Arkansas felt no pain as they died. He said he believes it will be a while before the next execution is scheduled, so the state will have time to figure out what to do — whether to try to find more midazolam, have a barbiturate compounded, or an alternative drug. “I think if we can find [midazolam] in the marketplace, that would obviously be the easiest,” he said. “But if after a few years there are executions in the pipeline and we’re unable to find it, maybe we consider compounding. I don’t think we rush to do anything right now.” Meantime, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker has ordered the state medical examiner to perform an autopsy on the body of Kenneth Williams and preserve tissue samples. His attorneys argue that he was tortured to death in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and inhumane punishment.
THE
BIG
Inconsequential News Quiz: GORSUCK! EDITION
PICTURE
! e m o h t a y a Pl
1) Seen above is a virtual rendering of an edifice that a local organization hopes will soon grace West Sixth Street in Little Rock. What is it? A) Jerry’s Discount Funeral Home (Styrofoam Coffins Our Specialty!). B) Trump University School of Architecturing. C) North American HQ for Granny Pecker’s Old Fashioned Butt Plugs™. D) The state GOP headquarters, to be called the Rockefeller Republican Center. 2) A group in Northwest Arkansas devoted to science education is raising funds to move an item that is the sixth largest of its kind in North America to the Bentonville area. What is it? A) Massive, 4-inch titmouse. B) One of Ronald Reagan’s surgically removed bunions. C) A giant refracting telescope, donated by Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College. D) A walk-through model of the human colon, which will be used to prepare newly elected legislators for the next session of the Arkansas General Assembly. 3) During a press conference in which he announced he was calling for ethics investigations of the entire state Supreme Court, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and several members of her staff over the court’s decision to remove him from all death penalty cases, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen made a few surprising claims about a Good Friday protest at the Governor’s Mansion that featured people holding anti-death penalty signs and Griffen tied to a cot, much like an executed inmate on a gurney. What were they? A) That Griffen carries a folding cot with him everywhere he goes, due to narcolepsy. B) That he was actually camped out in hopes of getting tickets to Gubernerfest, a weekend-long reggae/ska jam band concert scheduled to be held on the Governor’s Mansion grounds this July. C) That his presence at the Governor’s Mansion had nothing to do with the state’s plan to execute eight men, that he and members of his church were only there to acknowledge the similar role Governor Hutchinson shares with Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, and that Griffen was showing solidarity with the dead Jesus when he lay on the cot. D) That he tripped and fell on the cot while walking by and was quickly tied down against his will by rogue Boy Scouts. 4) In other judge-related news, the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission recently issued a letter of admonishment to Circuit Judge William “Bill” Pearson, whose jurisdiction includes Pope, Johnson and Franklin counties, after he pleaded guilty to two charges related to a January incident. What did Pearson do to get in hot water? A) Blew through a DWI checkpoint near Clarksville while driving drunk, then led police on a short chase before being arrested. B) Announced in court that he was “freeballin’ it” under his robe. C) Insists on pronouncing the name of new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as “Gorsuck.” D) Blew off bench trials at least four times to serve as a judge on NBC’s “The Voice.”
Answers: D,C,C,A
LISTEN UP
arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
13
For the love of movies Native son Jeff Nichols has a plan to make Arkansas a cinema paradise for film lovers of all stripes. BY LINDSEY MILLAR
FILMMAKER NICHOLS: Says he was inspired to create the Arkansas Cinema Society by the help given him by the Austin Film Society.
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J
eff Nichols hasn’t lived in Arkansas in more than a dozen years, but the acclaimed filmmaker remains deeply connected to his home state. He visits family and friends in Little Rock regularly, and set and shot two of his five films, “Shotgun Stories” and “Mud,” here. His likely next one, “Alien Nation” — about “two intelligent species crashing together and trying to make it work,” he says — takes place in Arkansas, at least in the version of the script he’s working on now. So it’s not entirely surprising that Nichols is behind the Arkansas Cinema Society, a new initiative aimed at helping foster Arkansas’s film culture. Nichols, who has lived in Austin, Texas, since 2002, wants to model the new venture on the Austin Film Society, founded in 1985 by Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused,” “Boyhood”). The AFS hosts regular screenings, provides grants to filmmakers and teaches people how to make movies. When Nichols first got to Austin as a fledgling filmmaker with no money, a slim resume and a lot of ideas, the AFS was where he found his community. Today, it’s where he meets up-and-coming filmmakers like Kat Candler, on whose 2014 film “Hellion” Nichols served as executive producer, and it’s where he sees screenings of films he’d otherwise miss. Nichols calls the AFS a “magnet” for people who are interested in “production or film theory or just watching movies.” The goal is for the Arkansas Cinema Society to be the same sort of hub. The kickoff event will come Aug. 24-26, with a couple of well-known filmmakers coming to Little Rock’s Ron Robinson Theater and the screening of some of their movies. “The goal would be that they show a film that inspired them during the day and talk about it, and in the evening show one of their films. And possibly have midnight screenings, whether they attend it or not,” Nichols said, adding that
BRIAN CHILSON
arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
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For the love of movies, cont.
he would moderate discussions with the filmmakers, whose names he’s not ready to reveal. Then, beginning in September, the ASC will host monthly screenings at Ron Robinson. Depending on the audience and the ASC’s budget, the screenings will later become twice monthly and then weekly. Perhaps around the holidays, Nichols will lead the first of three seminars on filmmaking — one each on writing, directing and editing. Nichols has had some practice. He recently did a master class at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and he’s dropped in a few times to a class on his film “Mud,” which is being taught at the University of Texas this semester. HELPING BRING THE ASC to reality is another filmmaker and Little Rock native, Kathryn Tucker. After working for several years as an assistant director on the likes of “Glee,” “This Is 40” and “Oblivion,” she moved back to Little Rock in 2012, and later met filmmaking brothers Josh and Miles Miller. She agreed to produce their feature debut, “All the Birds Have Flown South.” She and that film’s cinematographer, Gabe Mayhan, started dating and later married. They have a son who is nearly 2 years old. Tucker also produced the feature adaptation of Daniel Campbell’s “Antiquities,” with Mayhan again serving as cinematographer. The formation of the ACS grew out of a meeting between Nichols and Tucker when Nichols was in town in November for a screening of his latest film, “Loving,” to benefit the Tiger Foundation of Little Rock Central High School, where he and Tucker were classmates. The conversation got around to what a shame it was that the Little Rock Film Festival called it quits in 2015. When Tucker mentioned there was interest in reviving the festival, Nichols suggested instead that they go for a year-round model. Tucker is leading the ASC on the ground as executive director of the newly established 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Nichols is chairman of the board, for which Tucker and Nichols recruited an all-star membership that includes former Gov. Mike Beebe, Mary Steenburgen, local writer and television creator Graham Gordy, producer Jayme
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Lemons and Yellow Rocket Concepts creative director Amber Brewer. Brent and Craig Renaud, the acclaimed documentary filmmakers who co-founded the Little Rock Film Festival, cited their busy professional schedule as a reason for shuttering the fest after nine years. Because of their workload, they didn’t have the time needed to raise money or manage the logistics of the fest. How will an organization led by two working filmmakers avoid the same fate? “I’m going to see it through no matter what that takes,” Tucker said. “We’re building this thing slowly and laying a really good foundation. We’ve also got so many people on our board who aren’t going to let it fail.” Nichols stressed the importance of community involvement and running lean. “I hope that Kathryn and I aren’t the engine for this thing. Or a better way to put it is, we build the engine, but the fuel is the community, and it will just sit there not running if the community doesn’t respond. If they don’t, we’ll move on and go do something else. But it’s on our shoulders to build something that runs on not much gas.” For budget reasons, Nichols doesn’t want to see the ACS start a traditional film festival. “When you throw a big event, it’s like throwing a big party. You’ve got to bring in a lot of people from out of town, and you’ve got to pay for their airfare, and you’ve got to pay to put them up in a hotel, and you’ve got to get cars to take them places, and you’ve got to have places to do multiple screenings, and you’ve got to sell tickets and have to have an infrastructure to sell tickets, and you have to have a big party and pay for catering and do the decorations. You have to do all this shit, which has nothing to do with getting as many people together to watch a movie.” A model to grow toward might be Ebertfest in Champaign, Ill. Founded by the late film critic Roger Ebert, the fest does no counterprogramming and isn’t competitive. It’s a tightly curated event. When the critic was alive, it was “Roger Ebert saying, ‘Hey, take a look at these films,’ ” said Nichols, who screened “Shotgun Stories” there in 2007. He and Tucker say the August kickoff event could grow into a version of Ebertfest down the road.
BRIAN CHILSON
KATHRYN TUCKER: The executive director of the Arkansas Cinema Society.
arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
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For the love of movies, cont. But don’t look only for indie movie fare at it or at ACS screenings throughout the year. “I’m not simply a guy who loves European arthouse films,” Nichols said. “Movies are fun. They’re amazing and they can open your mind and they can be a blast to experience in a room with other people, and I want the programming to reflect that. For every Cassavetes series, you have one that’s a Sam Raimi (“The Evil Dead,” “Spider-Man”).” Tucker echoed a similar sentiment. “I feel like a lot of film nerds — a term I use lovingly because I’m one of them — who program film festivals, show things that are way too obscure for our audience. They want to show the beauty of these crazy Japanese films and these terrible horror films, and they say, ‘If only people would just see these, they’d see how awesome they are.’ But a lot of people don’t.” She said she thought a lot of people either wanted to see how “Spider-Man” was made, or they want to see films getting buzz at festivals. Though Nichols and Tucker want the ACS to grow responsibly, they have grand visions for the nonprofit. Most immediately, they hope to partner with and help promote all existing film festivals and screenings throughout the state. They encourage anyone with ideas for partnerships or anything else to connect via arkansascinemasociety.org. “If you’re from Arkansas and you’re into movies, that’s awesome. All ships rise, is my philosophy. That’s how it’s been in my film career,” Nichols said. Once the ACS has made some strides on fundraising, Nichols said, he wants to start a grant program modeled on one at the Austin Film Society. “If you can prove that you’ve been to a film festival with a film [or been accepted to a festival], we’ll give you a grant to help out with travel. Even after it’s done. I remember with ‘Shotgun Stories,’ I was so broke. [The AFS] gave me something, I can’t remember
exactly what, maybe it was $250, but it was a chunk that really helped. You don’t have to put a committee together to judge. It’s, ‘Cool, you made something. Cool, you got it into a film festival. Let us help you.’ ” Down the road, he said, he’d like to create another grant program modeled on the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund, where a panel would review submissions for support of creative material or productions in process. “That’s later down the road because that’s more complicated,” Nichols acknowledged. “And you have to raise a certain amount of money just for that.” Another dream: working with single-screen theaters in smaller towns throughout Arkansas. “How amazing would it be if we could help those places out?” Nichols asked. “If we could help them stay open or improve their screening capabilities. Maybe in exchange for that, we get to show a movie there once a month or once in a while. Admittedly, this is coming from a guy who has made movies that typically play in one or two places and people have to drive to see them.” Even more far out would be following the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Rolling Roadshow model, where the ACS would have a massive inflatable screen and a cinema-grade projector to take on the road throughout the state, Nichols said. Nichols calls the demolition of the Cinema 150 on South University Avenue in 2015 “a travesty.” “It my dream world, you’d flash down the road 15 years, and we’d have a single screen dome theater, with Arkansas Cinema Society offices in it, a restaurant, maybe one of John [Beachboard]’s breweries.” (Beachboard is a longtime friend and Lost Forty co-owner.) Tucker might know a real estate guy. Her father, Rett Tucker, of the development and real estate firm Moses Tucker, is a member of the ACS board.
IN A SCENE: Nichols, here with Joel Edgerton on the set of “Loving,” will teach classes on writing, editing and directing films as part of the Arkansas Cinema Society. arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
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Arts Entertainment
DIEDERIK GROOTKERK
AND
A DIFFERENT PART OF YOUR BRAIN: Former artistic director of Deutsche Grammophon Michael Fine returns to Arkansas for the world premiere of his double violin concerto, to be played by ASO concertmasters Andrew Irvin and Kiril Laskarov.
A river out the window
M
Talking violins, multiple myeloma and birdsong with Michael Fine. BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
ichael Fine, the first and only American to have been named artistic director in Deutsche Grammophon’s 118-year history, rotated his laptop 180 degrees, showing me the Rhine River just outside his window. “It’s called the ‘Maas’ here,” he said, speaking via Skype from his South Holland apartment in Rotterdam. “It goes all the way to Switzerland, and the sort of harp-like thing is the bridge. It’s a delta,
and this is the navigable channel in the river.” His voice is low and mellifluous, and his speech is measured. He demurred — pursing his lips sideways and covering his face with his hands — when I began my interview by listing a few of his accolades: He’s a seven-time Grammy Award winner. He’s produced much-heralded recordings of Cecilia Bartoli, Anne Sophie-Mutter, Andrea Bocelli, Bryn Terfel, Renaud Capucon, Myung-Whun Chung,
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Advance Tickets On Sale Now at riverfestarkansas.com! 20
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
A&E NEWS LITTLE ROCK NATIVE and New York City resident Alvin Irby is the founder of Barbershop Books, a nonprofit literary organization that seeks to “leverage the cultural significance of barbershops in black communities to increase boys’ access to culturally relevant, age appropriate, and gender responsive children’s books and to increase out-of-school time reading among young black boys,” as its website states. This week, the National Book Foundation announced Barbershop Books as the winner of its Innovations in Reading Prize, to be accompanied by a $10,000 award, which Irby plans to use to fund reading spaces in Little Rock barbershops. Irby, who will
Sumi Jo, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. He’s been acknowledged with an award for the Advancement of Women in Music, the 2015 International Classical Music Award for Best Recording in Contemporary Music, the Echo Klassik 2012 Prize, the BBC Music Magazine’s 2015 “Premiere” Award and others. Then, as if those laurels weren’t enough to rest on, he began composing just four years ago, at the behest of his wife and colleague, Tammy, after she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. The modern suspension bridge to which he’d gestured, nicknamed “The Swan,” was part of a scene that inspired the first movement in Fine’s first complete composition, “Quartet Moments I: The River by Window.” He returns to Arkansas to collaborate with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of his double violin concerto, to be played by ASO concertmasters Andrew Irvin and Kiril Laskarov under the baton of maestro Phillip Mann, 7 p.m. Thursday, May 4, at Calvary Baptist Church, 5700 Cantrell Road, the last in the orchestra’s 2016-17 Intimate Neighborhood Concert series. Because you’ve divided your long career between playing clarinet, orchestral artistic planning, classical recording production, you’re probably one of only a handful of people on the planet that understand the creation of orchestral music in such depth — from its inception to the end result. Has anything occurred to you retroactively about that process, now that you’ve added “composer” to that list? That’s actually a very good question. Last week, I was playing clarinet in a festival orchestra in Korea, playing music by a contemporary composer, and I thought, ‘Why is he writing music we can’t play? I understand, as a composer, because that’s what’s in his head. That’s what he wants to say. I make composing mistakes that, as a recording producer or as a musician, I
appear at the Foundation’s Why Reading Matters conference June 15 on Long Island, dedicated the prize “to the many barbers across America who make time each day to inspire young black boys to say three words, ‘I’m a reader.’ ” SHANNON PURSER, WHO earned a Screen Actors Guild Award and two Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of Barb Holland on the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” was announced as a guest for this year’s Spa-Con, Sept. 2224 at the Hot Springs Convention Center. Purser is currently playing Ethel Muggs on the CW series “Riverdale” and will appear
in Season 2 of “Stranger Things,” to drop sometime in October. For convention passes or more information about Spa-Con 2017, visit spa-con.org. THE CITY OF Little Rock and the Downtown Little Rock Partnership unveiled three pianos last Friday as part of its public Play Me Pianos Project. The instruments were donated by Richard Deutsch of Piano Kraft and painted by art students at eStem, Horace Mann Arts & Sciences Magnet Middle School and the Episcopal Collegiate School, and will be located at Capitol and Main, the River Market and on the 200 block of Main Street. The
pianos will be out in good weather. THE LITTLE ROCK Convention and Visitors Bureau announced the 2017 lineup for its free, family-friendly Movies in the Park series, to kick off with a screening of “La La Land” Wednesday, June 7. Other movies to be screened are: “Maleficent,” June 14; “The Karate Kid,” June 21; “Creed,” June 28; “Daddy’s Home,” July 5; “Finding Dory,” July 12; “Captain America: The First Avenger,” July 19; and “The Magnificent Seven,” July 26. All movies begin at sundown, and the LRCVB invites visitors to bring leashed pets, picnics, blankets and folding chairs. Glass containers are prohibited.
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A RIVER OUT THE WINDOW, CONT. would immediately catch and say, ‘What’s wrong with that guy?’ I was talking about it with a very good French composer, a friend of mine named Nicolas Bacri, and he said, “It’s a different part of your brain.” It’s a completely different part of your physical, emotional, musical makeup. … So, I guess all the different things I do — they all inform each other. I always tell myself that if I’d just been a clarinet player, I’d be a better clarinet player. If I’d just been an orchestra planner, I’d be a better one. But, it didn’t work out that way. It’s too late to change it. So all of these things are part of the puzzle of music for me, and I’m happy to have the opportunity and privilege to explore all these aspects, sometimes at the same time.
In an interview last year with our own Ann Nicholson on “Arts Scene” [KUAR-FM, 89.1], you said, “I like recording in a funny way because of the falseness of it. Music is really not meant to be talked about to be recorded, it’s meant to happen in time as a memory that can be fleeting or that lingers. It’s like the Keats “[Ode on a] Grecian Urn.” Does the fleeting nature of live performance mean that a composer should have patience with unfolding ideas? Before recorded music, I think people listened in a more serious way. That might be the only time you’d hear the piece, and you were more aware of form, for example. … The way people listen to music right now — I mean, who sits down for an hour and just listens to a piece of music? The phone rings. You go get a snack. It’s sort of going in the background. … Then there’s mindful listen22
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
KELLY HICKS
Maybe it’s lamentable that you stay busy enough that you couldn’t have, say, written a book about how all of those things link up, especially given the state of arts funding, and how orchestras and opera companies really need to understand how their whole machine works in order to fund themselves properly. Interesting that you say that. I was just thinking about major figures — talents so far beyond me — who were doing all of those same things. I mean, Mahler was also the greatest conductor of his time. He was a summer composer, and as the director of the Vienna court opera, the imperial opera at that time, I think he probably planned the seasons as well. He was also a pianist. So, at an exalted level, there were people who did this. But, just like in baseball now, it’s an age of specialization.
LE BRUN: Kiril Laskarov, in his 18th season as Concertmaster of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, will play the “Le Brun,” a famous Stradivarius violin fashioned in 1712.
ing, where you are aware that it’s fleeting, that the moment won’t come again. There’s a beautiful garden near my home. I went there yesterday, the first warm day. You realize that the way it looks at that moment is passing. There’s something wistful about it, something poignant, but it’s also the way our lives are. The same with music — it has to happen in time. It has to be fleeting, but you have to give the listener a chance to catch on. There’s a practical side to composing, and I’m getting there. I only started a few years ago. Which is remarkable! I’d bet there are a lot of people who assume you’ve
been composing all this time, but you took this on, in part, at your wife’s behest. My wife was diagnosed with a disease called multiple myeloma, and the leading center for the care of multiple myeloma is in Little Rock. So, here’s a puzzle for you. My wife’s diagnosed with multiple myeloma here in Rotterdam. Holland is a country where everyone’s insured, and it turns out that Rotterdam has one of the leading multiple myeloma centers in Europe. In fact, the guy who runs it is a rival, if you will, of Dr. Garth Morgan in Little Rock. … In any case, the first night I was in Little Rock, I had dinner
with Philip [Mann] and with a gentleman from the board of directors, Dr. [Richard] Wheeler, who’s also on the faculty at the medical center. Philip knows my wife, and knows what the situation is, so he brought the subject around. So I asked, “Is there any chance I could meet Dr. Morgan, even for five minutes?” The next day, I got up and put a tie on and sat by the phone at the Capital Hotel. At 11 o’clock, the phone rang, and Philip and Dr. Wheeler were kind enough to take me to the hospital, warning me, you know, ‘you may only get to shake hands.’ I had an hour with Dr. Morgan — at no charge — and at the end of a long discussion, I
said, “What are the three most important things I can do?” I called my wife up. Her doctor bristled a little that we’d asked somebody else, but it was OK. When I came back, I found that we had a meeting with the head of the department and they accepted Dr. Morgan’s recommendations. Interestingly enough, he recommended a particular kind of scan — they’d told my wife she was in remission — it turns out this test revealed a tiny knot of cancer. It’s under control, and now the other patients here are getting the test. So, I wrote a piece for strings. I sent it to Philip Mann. He decided to program it in Arkansas. By chance, I find out that a leading researcher in the field is in Little Rock. I have dinner with a guy on the hospital faculty, who arranges a meeting with this doctor. I take the information back here, and now other patients are benefiting. So, maybe that’s why I wrote the piece. I wonder why you chose to begin with something so demandingly economic and exacting as the string quartet? Well, it’s not because I’m a clarinet player, for sure. My grandfather wanted me to be a violinist. I wasn’t. For me, string sound is at the heart of my work as a recording producer. It’s really the key to everything I do. We’re filigree, the winds and brass, sitting around doing nothing for a lot of the time, not doing music. The string section is the heart of the orchestra, and the string quartet is the heart of the string section. I actually feel much more comfortable writing for strings than for my own instrument. It just works, somehow. Although I have to tell you, I think the most beautiful music in the world is birdsong. No question. And this I wouldn’t even try to copy. Well, lots of writers come pretty close. Bartoli’s rendition of Ravel’s “Vocalise [etude en forme] de Habanera,” for one. I love Cecilia. We know each other. But it’s still not birds. You’ve worked with an extensive list of stunning artists, and because we tend to take for granted what’s in our own backyard, I think maybe a lot of people here in Arkansas don’t realize that their very own symphony has a place on a list next to names like the Vienna Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic. You could work with anybody you wanted to. Why do you keep coming back to Arkansas? Well — and I mean this very genuinely — I’ve heard Philip work now with the London Symphony, with the Busan
Philharmonic in South Korea, and he’s a fine musician. He found things in my music that I didn’t know were there. He made my music more beautiful to me. I can’t think of a higher compliment as a composer. Because this is a world premiere, the audience will go in knowing very little about this double concerto. We know it will be played by Drew Irvin and by Kiril Laskarov, the latter of whom will play on a 300-year-old Stradivarius. How early did you know that the concerto would be played on
the Le Brun? And did that affect anything about what you wrote? It was already written, and when I came to Arkansas last year, Kiril had just borrowed the Strad; Philip went to New Mexico and brought it back from the secret lender. I wrote the piece as a kind of response to two famous double violin concertos — the Bach, of course, the most famous, and Malcolm Arnold’s, which I recorded years ago. It has a section I really like, sort of a pastoral F major thing in the middle that’s pretty, and there are moments that sound a little Russian, but the inspiration is really an old-fashioned
concerto grosso. My music is not terribly profound or challenging; it’s meant to be enjoyed. It’s not avant-garde. If I wanted to be a famous composer, I’d start my avant-garde period. Maybe when I’m 80. For this concert, the premiere of Fine’s double violin concerto will be bookended by Bach’s “Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor” and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” suite. Tickets are available at arkansassymphony.org or by calling 501-666-1761.
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THE
TO-DO
LIST
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
THURSDAY 5/4
POSTMODERN JUKEBOX
Neil Gaiman’s cultural imprint is vast — he’s responsible for “The Sandman” comic series, “Coraline,” “American Gods” and a growing list of Tori Amos lyrical references. He’s also the one whose tweet helped propel jazz pianist Scott Bradlee’s basement videos into widespread YouTube fame. Bradlee’s project, a series in which he and his friends recorded hot jazzstyled covers of tunes like Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” and Rihanna’s “Only Girl,” came to be known as Postmodern Jukebox. (There was a brief period when Bradlee donned a powdered wig and decided to call the ensemble “Thomas Jefferson and His Ragtime Orchestra,” but, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed). The videos got more popular and slightly fancier, and Bradlee scored an interview with the Village Voice in which, as he recalls on PMJ’s website, he “used a bunch of big words to communicate the importance of combining Nickelback with Motown.” A “grandpa style” take on Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” landed 100,000 views overnight, and soon nothing was off limits: “Call Me Maybe,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Fancy” (Iggy Azalea, not Reba McEntire, unfortunately). It might be the vintage revivalists’ take on Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” that cemented the band’s social media fame, thanks to some good timing and the cleverness of Kate Davis’ vocal delivery and virtuosity on the upright bass. And, as Bradlee continues, the group “went from performing for a camera in [Bradlee’s] living room to performing sold out shows on four continents ... . [We’ve] introduced the world to more than 40 world class talents, many that have gone on to headline tours of their own” and, an accomplishment he notes he’s especially proud of, “we’ve stayed independent and found success [on] our own path without major label support or corporate sponsors, allowing our fans to remain our single biggest influence.” 26
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
JERRY SHULMAN
7:30 p.m. Clear Channel Metroplex. $25-$30.
BACKSTAGE IS ONSTAGE: Chicago’s Manual Cinema creates “Lula del Rey” with projectors, live actors and shadow puppets Thursday, May 4, as part of the Walton Arts Center’s “Artosphere: Arkansas’s Arts & Nature Festival,” through Saturday, May 20.
THURSDAY 5/4-SATURDAY 5/20
ARTOSPHERE: ARKANSAS’S ARTS AND NATURE FESTIVAL
Various times. Northwest Arkansas. Free-$40.
As evidenced by last Saturday’s list of weather cancellations in Central Arkansas, festivals and nature are in a serious and often complicated long-term relationship. For the eighth year in a row, the Walton Arts Center’s Artosphere is honoring that symbiosis with a series of events through Saturday, May 20, at various venues in Northwest Arkansas. This year’s celebration kicks off with the Arkansas debut of “Lula del Rey,” a story told through shadow puppets from Chicago performance collective Manual Cinema, 7 p.m. Thursday, May 4, Walton Arts Center, $10. There’s “Opus Cactus,” an acrobatic, illusionist performance from Arizona-based dance company
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Momix, 7 p.m. Sunday, May 7, $15. The renowned Dover Quartet performs “An Evening of Beethoven,” 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 9, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, $10, and works from Mozart, Britten and Richard Danielpour for “Live at Crystal Bridges,” 4 p.m. Saturday, May 13, $25, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. Lots of events are free, including “Trail Mix,” in which musicians The Bike Zoo Butterflies, Squonk Opera, Claire Lynch, The Séamus Egan Project, Rozenbridge, The Crumbs, Melody Pond and others will line the Razorback Regional Greenway Saturday, May 13, to provide entertainment for pedestrians and cyclists participating in Bike Bentonville’s annual Square 2 Square ride. The festival marks the opening of concurrent art installations: Diane Burko’s climate change
awareness project “Glacial Shifts, Changing Perspectives” and Livvy Pierce’s typographic design study, “Things I Am Learning in My Twenties,” which takes literary phrases and spells them out on city walls along Dickson Street in live moss. Third Coast Percussion’s presentation of John Luther Adams’ “Inuksuit” — written for between nine to 99 performers and which The New York Times called the “ultimate environmental piece” — calls for percussionists to be recruited from the local community, 6 p.m. Friday, May 19, at Fayetteville’s Botanical Garden of the Ozarks. There’s an Artosphere app to keep up with everything going on, available for free on Google Play for Android devices and on the Apple Store for iPhones. For more details and a full schedule, download the app or visit waltonartscenter.org.
IN BRIEF
THURSDAY 5/4
THURSDAY 5/4
MCCRARY SISTERS
formed with The Winans and Andrae Crouch, and Regina toured and recorded with a born-again Bob Dylan from Remember that scene from “O Brother, Where Art Thou” 1979-1985. In 2015, the Sisters released “Let’s Go,” featuring right before the saving flood? When our hero convicts Ulysses the current members of the Everett McGill, Pete Hogwallop Fairfield Four on “Don’t Let and Delmar O’Donnell are starNobody Turn You Around,” a ing down three nooses intended song their father had recorded for their three necks, with in 1947. “I see us as a bridge between old school and new freshly dug graves just beyond? LET’S GO: The McCrary Sisters bring hymns and harmonies school [gospel],” Regina told Those gravediggers are part to South on Main as part of Oxford American’s Archetypes & of a 90-year-old Nashville Troubadours series, 8 p.m., $25-$40. The Tennessean in 2015. gospel legend: The Fairfield “You’ve got to understand Four. The Four’s revolving cast where the music has been to included longtime tenor Reverknow where to take it.” Folend Samuel McCrary and, later, bass orah Dianne, Regina Avonette and lowing two sold-out Easter Gospel Isaac “Dickie” Freeman, and when Alfreda Antoinette — to sing harmony. Brunches in Nashville at the CounT-Bone Burnett’s soundtrack for the That arrangement stuck, and the sibtry Music Hall of Fame, the polished ling quartet informed its 2010 debut, movie went gangbusters with audiquartet brings its revival tent sound to ences, Freeman was asked to record “Our Journey,” with all the experience Little Rock for this concert, the final a solo album. He asked McCrary’s they’d accrued, in their hometown show in Oxford American’s Archefour daughters — Beverly Ann, Debchurch and otherwise. Ann had pertypes & Troubadours series. 8 p.m. South on Main. $25$40.
FRIDAY 5/5
DAZZ & BRIE
9 p.m. Stickyz. $10.
Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. In fact, it’s not even widely celebrated in Mexico, as it is here in the States. That said, there’s really no good reason why you should feel obligated to brave the lines at
the tequila bars and the frozen margarita machines on their busiest day of the year, especially if you’ve yet to catch Dazzmin Murry, Kabrelyn Gabrielle Boyce and the duo’s nimble backing band, The Emotionalz: Gavin Le’nard on lead guitar, Kamille Shaw on bass, Hope Dixon on vocals and Darius Blanton alternating with
SATURDAY 5/6
DYLAN EARL
9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern.
Stylistically (and let’s not fool ourselves — country music still has everything to do with style), Dylan Earl has taken things formerly relegated to the Aaron Tippin-and-Travis Trittcirca-1992 vault and breathed new life into them: the mullet-mustache combo, music videos with lots of neon signs and pantomimed arguments, reverb. He’s anything but insincere in his musical approach, though: The cover of Dwight Yoakam’s “1000 Miles” on Earl’s 2016 Play-Yah Records release “Yee Haw from Arkansas” borders on hero worship, and Earl’s got the vocal chops to do it justice. What’s more, he injects a
YEE HAW FROM ARKANSAS: Lake Charles native Dylan Earl and his band The Reasons Why bring “twangcore” to the White Water Tavern, with May the Peace of the Sea Be With You and Isaac Alexander, 9:30 p.m.
welcome streak of pathos and goofiness into his video work. (I’d bet Travis Tritt never smeared lipstick (“One More Time”) or cake (“Blessing in Disguise”)
Arts & the Park continues in downtown Hot Springs with workshops, demonstrations, craft beer, live jazz and bluegrass sets through Sunday, see hotspringsarts.org for a full schedule. The 25th year for the Bazaar of Tabriz, the Arkansas Arts Center’s silent auction and celebration, kicks off with a 6 p.m. “Auction in the City,” $50, and culminates in a black-tie gala Saturday with music from The Midtown Men, 6 p.m., $750. “Disney on Ice: Worlds of Enchantment” kicks off at Verizon Arena, with performances 7 p.m. Thu.-Sun., 11 a.m. Sat., 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun., $16-$61. The Arkansas Travelers take on the Tulsa Drillers at Dickey-Stephens Park, 7:10 p.m. Thu.-Fri., $7-$13. Comedian Vince Morris brings his Comedy Central-certified set to the Little Rock Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse reprises “The Game,” a three-comic faceoff, 8 p.m. Rogue Planet shares a bill with Bourgeois Mystics at Vino’s, 8:30 p.m., $7. Atlanta rockers Gunpowder Gray join self-described “new band of old dudes” Los Tirones and Memphis’ Hosoi Bros for a show at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m.
FRIDAY 5/5
Main Street Food Truck Fridays are in full swing at the corner of Capitol and Main, 10:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Toad Suck Daze family festival kicks off in Conway, with carnival rides, live music, a 5K and 10K and the Tour de Toad bike ride, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun., free. The Fantastic Cinema & Craft Beer Festival continues with screenMurry on drums and keys. The group ings of short films by Arkansas filmmakers at won our 2017 Arkansas Times Musi- the Ron Robinson Theater, 5 p.m., $10, see fancians Showcase, and you should come tasticcinema.com for details. Fiddler Bill Thursee why. Joshua Asante — guitarist, man provides the music and artists provide the exhibition at the “Evening of Art and Music” photographer, poet and voice of Velvet at Art Group Gallery, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Kente and Amasa Hines — opens the Center, 5-8 p.m. Ben Byers plays at Cajun’s, show, paring the soul he lends to his 5:30 p.m., followed by Rock Candy, 9 p.m., expansive ensemble projects down $5. In Hot Springs, Jacob Flores brings his to its essence. fluid finger-style guitar set to Oaklawn’s Pops Lounge, 6 p.m., and Mister Lucky performs in Silks Bar & Grill for the late crowd, 10 p.m., free. The Wild Wines tasting and food pairing gala benefits the Little Rock Zoo’s education on his face in front of a camera.) Earl’s program, 7 p.m. Fri., Little Rock Zoo; 7 p.m. Sat., got serious range and tenderness; the War Memorial Stadium, $150. Old Dominion, kind of baritone that’s custom-built for the quintet crowned as Best New Group by pairing with pedal steel and sticky VFW the Academy of Country Music in 2016, takes dance floors. His Lake Charles twang the stage at Clear Channel Metroplex, 8 p.m., shines on heartbreak tunes like “Morn- $25-$129. Maxine’s in Hot Springs hosts a hipings With Me,” the opener of his debut hop night featuring Giorgio Vuitto, Last Sayso, Ueno Rhymes and Table of Mahogany, 9 p.m. EP: “Does she live with another? Does Dark wave duo She Wants Revenge performs he look just like me? Does he honor her at Revolution Room, 9 p.m., $20. If it’s been a side of the bed where she woke up on while since you’ve heard the arresting work of mornings with me?” Fingers crossed Adam Faucett, check him out with his band Dylan Earl is this guy’s real name, but The Tall Grass at the White Water Tavern, with even if it’s not, it’s pitch-perfect for the Fayetteville’s Youth Pastor, 9 p.m. Four Quarter twin careers he seems to have chosen: Bar celebrates Cinco de Mayo with one-man country music and leather tooling. May funk band Henry & the Invisibles, 10 p.m. Just the Peace of the Sea Be With You and over the state line, Memphis in May kicks off, featuring performances from Snoop Dogg, Isaac Alexander open the show. Kings of Leon, Ludacris, Sturgill Simpson, Drive-By Truckers, Ani DiFranco, Death Cab Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies
arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
27
THE
TO-DO
LIST
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
SUNDAY 5/7
‘THE WIZ’
7 p.m. Revolution Room. $15.
Little Rock has its fair share of freefloating vocal talent — people like Emanuel “Tiko” Brooks, Genine LaTrice Perez and Bijoux who, in addition to performing with their own ensembles, have made time to bring the characters from Charlie Smalls’ 1975 “super soul
musical” to life on the stage at the Rev Room under the direction of drummer Cliff Aaron. With some help from costume designer Lisa Moragne, the cast is back for an early Sunday revival of the adapted show, which filled the house at the Rev Room earlier this year. Chrisshaundra Olyssa Pullom plays Dorothy, the role Diana Ross wanted so badly
she forced a famous checkmate with Motown Records’ Berry Gordy; Keith Savage is The Cowardly Lion; Brooks is the Tin Man; Perez is Glenda the Good Witch; Juain Young is The Wizard; Katrice Newbill, known to some as Butterfly, is Evillene; Bijoux, who will undoubtedly steal the show with “The Feeling We Once Had,” is Aunt
Em; and the operatic soprano LaSheena Gordon is Miss One. If you’re looking to catch some musical theater in a lessthan-likely venue from a host of local, polished actor-singers accustomed to performing with live bands and connecting with a crowd, bring the kids (or grandkids, or nieces and nephews) to this one.
NOMAD: Nuevo flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook gives a concert at University of Central Arkansas’s Reynolds Performance Hall 6:30 p.m. Sunday, May 7, $30-$50.
SUNDAY 5/7
JESSE COOK
ALLEN CLARK
6:30 p.m. Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas. $30-$50.
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ARKANSAS TIMES
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When superstar nuevo flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook was a boy growing up in Paris and Barcelona, his parents played recordings of Manitas de Plata, a musician who moved Pablo Picasso to exclaim, “That man is of greater worth than I am!” Those recordings made a lasting impression, and when Cook’s parents separated, he spent time jamming with his dad’s new neighbor in Arles, France — fortuitously, Nicolas Reyes of the Gipsy Kings. Had he been born earlier, he might have encountered more resistance from flamenco traditionalists, defensive about the integrity of the genre. As it was, though, so-called “fusion” music was already en vogue in the barrios of France’s
Camargue region and elsewhere, where flamenco melodies and technical approaches were being mixed with rhythmic patterns from rumba, salsa, bossa nova, tango and blues music. If you’re a PBS viewer, you’ve perhaps caught glimpses of Cook’s concert special “Jesse Cook: Live at the Bathurst Theatre,” which the station is showing as part of its pledge drive — and which, we hope, is indicative of the frenetic energy Cook and his percussionforward ensemble will bring to Reynolds Performance Hall. For the uninitiated, check out “Mario Takes a Walk” on YouTube or the notably un-bland track “Shake” from Cook’s blandly titled “One World.” For Cook superfans who did all their spring cleaning to the sounds of “The Blue Guitar Sessions,” a $125 ticket will score you a meet-and-greet with the man himself.
IN BRIEF for Cutie and Soundgarden as part of the Beale Street Music Festival, $50-$115.
SATURDAY 5/6
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NATE BURRELL
SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER: Guitarist and songwriter Lilly Hiatt lands at the White Water Tavern, with Daniel Markham and John Calvin Abney, 9 p.m.
TUESDAY 5/9
LILLY HIATT, JOHN CALVIN ABNEY, DANIEL MARKHAM
9 p.m. White Water Tavern.
In the video for Lilly Hiatt’s “Get This Right,” a deceptively breezy anthem from her 2015 release, “Royal Blue,” the band members move in and out of frame, seemingly too self-aware to be at ease posing for the video camera, but comfortable enough with each other to clown about it. They’re seen receiving instruction about what to do in the next take, setting up Christmas lights and glittery fringe curtains in a warehouse filled with dusty wood palettes, plywood and, inexplicably, dozens of vintage typewriters. It’s a video about making a video, and somewhere in the lines Hiatt repeats on the chorus — “Are we ever gonna get this right?” — is a metaphor for the whole cinematic process, and probably for Hiatt’s artistic development itself. Her father is John Hiatt, a brilliant but always-a-bridesmaid songwriter who started cranking out songs for Nashville’s Tree-Music Publishing Co. for $25 a week when he
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The Little Rock Farmers’ Market reopens for the season in the River Market pavilions, with free parking for market patrons at designated lots, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. It’s Kevin Delaney Day at the Museum of Discovery, and the television star performs science demos and meets fans, 10 a.m. Czech cinema lands at Riverdale 10 Cinema for “Czech That Film,” noon, free, reservations on Eventbrite required. The Cons of Formant bring songs from their latest, “Tributaries,” to King’s Live Music in Conway, with an opening set from Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, 8:30 p.m., $5. A tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Rev Room benefits the Arkansas Freedom Fund, a group that provides support to local veterans, 8:30 p.m., $10. Jam House Collective brings its sound to Discovery Nightclub with a live show from Groove Think, Open Fields and The Rios, 9 p.m., $10. Circus sideshow-inspired rockers Randall Shreve and the Devilles perform at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, with Big Red Flag, 9 p.m., $8. Club Sway holds its monthly open stage night, Club Camp, 9 p.m. Chattanooga pop outfit The Mailboxes share a bill with Tiffany Lee at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Saxophonist/ vocalist Pamela K. Ward brings her party set to Cajun’s, 9 p.m., $5. Duke Stigall, O.T. Ray Vizza and Osyrus Bolly take the mike in the back room at Vino’s, 9 p.m., $7. The P-47s rock at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m. Blues on the River features live sets from TK Soul, Mr. Pokey, Nellie Travis, Theodis Ealey, Will P, Urban Mystic, Mo B, Akeem Kemp Band and more, First Security Amphitheater, $30-$40.
FRIENDSHIP BY THE BOTTLE.
SUNDAY 5/7 was 18. His songs have been admired and covered by Bob Dylan, Buddy Guy, Nick Lowe, Iggy Pop, Ry Cooder, Willie Nelson, Keith Urban and Paula Abdul, and evidently, he once gave Lilly some advice that “Royal Blue” seems to indicate she followed: “I played him some songs I was trying to write,” she said in a press release. “He said, ‘These are really good, but it sounds like you’re trying to do something different. You don’t have to come up with [a] special chord or anything. Why don’t you just be you?’ That was simple advice, but good advice.” She’s joined by John Calvin Abney, a Tulsa songwriter who put aside his gigs as a sideman for Samantha Crain and John Moreland to flesh out his own clever, introspective songs, as he did on 2016’s “Far Cries and Close Calls.” Also on the bill: Daniel Markham from the Denton, Texas, scene, an admittedly R.E.M.-influenced songwriter whose own tunes are too interesting and fully formed for him to have stayed behind the scenes as a sideman for Charlie Shafter and Amanda Shires.
Guitarist and songwriter Hieronymous Bogs performs his mysticism-infused set at Faulkner County Library, 2 p.m. Cellist Wilson Vanderslice is featured in the Arkansas Symphony Youth Ensemble’s “side-by-side” concert,” which finishes with the ASO joining the ranks for works from Elgar and Respighi, 6 p.m., Robinson Center, $15. Comedians Amber Glaze and Big Dre host “Roast Battle League: Part Trois,” a cutthroat comedy roast, at The Loony Bin, 7 p.m., $10-$15.
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TUESDAY 5/9 The Architecture and Design Network presents “The Modernist Legacy of Noland Blass” at the Arkansas Arts Center, 6 p.m., reception 5:30 p.m. “Time of Fear,” a documentary about the thousands of Japanese Americans uprooted to internment camps in Arkansas during World War II, screens at the MacArthur Museum of Military History, 6:30 p.m., free. UK pop duo Fenech-Soler (minus the “Soler” now, but the name stuck) lands at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $8-$10. Motherfunkship rings in the summer break at Bear’s Den Pizza in Conway, 11 p.m. Esse Purse Museum opens an exhibition of paintings, “Take Your Purse With You: The Reimagined Work of Katherine Strause,” $10.
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29
Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’
KENT WALKER ARTISAN Cheese, 323 S. Cross St., which closed last month, will reopen in June as Southern Table. Margie Raimondo of Raimondo Winery bought the business in its entirety from Walker, including his cheese recipes, and she has already started making cheese. Raimondo, who grew up in an Italian family making cheese and also made cheese during a year she spent in Italy, said cheese-making “is just a natural extension of wine making; I understand the process of fermentation.” Southern Table will have both a retail and nosh side; on the retail side will be Raimondo’s own gourmet jams, jellies and spreads along with her Italian wines. On the restaurant side she’ll offer antipasti of cheese, smoked meats, bread, nuts, olives and other nibbles, along with hers and others’ wines and local beers. Southern Table, which will seat 50 to 60, will have a Southern look: She’s remodeling the property with natural wood and ship lathe. It will be hung with artworks from the private collection of Al Hodge, senior vice president of Arkansas Capital Corp. Southern Table will be a place to stop before dinner, “a shared food experience,” with hours from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (tentatively). BIG ORANGE, THE hamburger restaurant operated by Yellow Rocket Concepts, will open in the Pinnacle Hills Promenade Outdoor Mall in Rogers in late fall. It will be Yellow Rocket’s third Big Orange, joining the restaurant in the Promenade on Chenal and the Midtowne shopping center. A news release said Big Orange Northwest will have an expanded menu of small plates and starter dishes, “hyper-local” food, house-made desserts and spiked milkshakes in what Yellow Rocket is calling a 5,200-square-foot “farmhouse atmosphere.” Like the Little Rock Big Oranges (but unlike a farmhouse), it will have a full bar with specialty drinks. “It will also host annual beer, wine and spirit dinners as well as pop-up bar dinner experiences,” the news release said. Other Yellow Rocket restaurants are ZAZA’s Fine Salad and Wood-Oven Pizza, Local Lime, Heights Taco & Tamale Co. and Lost Forty Brewing. FRIED CHICKEN WITH plenty of sides is coming to downtown: The Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen chain, which has 10 locations in the Little Rock metro area (including Jacksonville and Bryant), will add an eatery at 824 S. Broadway, according to a plumbing permit on file with the city. The new location is the former site of Backyard Burgers, just north of the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center and south of the Shell service station on the west side of Broadway. 30
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
A LOAD: The BBQ Spud is filled with chopped brisket, sour cream, bacon bits, chives and butter.
Who’s your Daddy? The Fat one, in Conway, for good barbecue.
T
his reviewer can’t think of a culinary option I approach with more anticipation than a plate of good barbecue. So it was a happy sight, the discovery of the newest outlet of the Russellville-based Fat Daddy’s BarB-Que, at the corner of Court and Oak streets in Conway’s Old Town district. Located in a former Napa Auto Parts store, Fat Daddy’s has a comfortable dining room with an open layout of wooden tables ringed with several television monitors. There are no booths, but a full bar with high-top tables, separated from the dining room, provides a more casual dining experience. Appetizer
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options include fried chicken wings ($8.99), fried pickles ($6.99), onion rings ($6.99), BBQ nachos ($7.99), a smoked quesadilla ($7.99) and several other standards. Not wanting to fill up before the main event, however, we decided to dive straight into the good stuff. We chose the Fat Daddy pulled pork sandwich ($7.99), the mama bear of three size options, midway between the quarter-pound Fat Boy sandwich and the half-pound Grand Pappy. Sauces also come in three varieties, in squeeze bottles labeled “sweet,” “hot” and “mixed — sweet and heat.” I found a little of the hot satisfied my love of spice with a
nice, tangy taste of vinegar. The mixed, however, was more than enough tang for most, with a bit more smoky taste. Each sandwich came with a choice of two sides; we went for the hand-breaded onion rings and sauteed vegetables. The Fat Daddy came piled high with smoky, but tender, pulled pork that could have been shredded a bit finer. The large chunks quickly became a knife and fork operation. The onion rings were crisp, with the batter — lightly spiced and with a bit of a pepper zing — clinging nicely to the ring. We enjoyed the vegetables, an unexpected option for a barbecue place. They were sauteed in butter and well seasoned. We give both sides high marks. On our next trip to Fat Daddy’s, we opted for a half rack of the St. Louisstyle ribs ($9.99), a barbecued baked potato and a medium beef brisket sandwich ($6.99). The brisket sandwich was a winner, the meat tender and juicy, with a hint of smoke. Note: It seemed a bit smaller than the medium pulled
BELLY UP
May
5 - Cinco De Mayo party w/ Henry and the Invisibles 6 - The P47’s 12 - P.U.S.H. 13 - Black River Pearl 18 - Ballast Point launch party 19 - Legends in Argenta pre-party w/ Mountain Sprout 20 - The Creek Rocks (full band)
Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com
Open until 2am every night! 415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com
SERVING UP FUN, FOOD AND FABULOUS LIVE ENTERTAINMENT SINCE 1967.
WINNER: The chopped brisket sandwich, with onion rings and sauteed vegetables.
NOW – MAY 27 pork sandwich from our previous visit. Again, a little finer chopping would help on the brisket. The BBQ spud was huge, heavier than a softball and filled with butter, sour cream, chives and more of that flavorful brisket. The potato was cooked well, so that it broke apart nicely. Though not listed as an entree, it could easily satisfy even a hearty appetite. The brisket was slightly drier than our companion would have liked, but with the addition of a little sauce she proclaimed it quite good. The St. Louis ribs were the real winner of our second trip. Smoked with a dry rub that offered a wonderful flavor, the very tender ribs had a crisp seal and peeled easily from the bone. The rub was spicy, but not overpowering. Overall, we found that Fat Daddy’s offers a nice “won’t break the bank” option to the lengthy list of barbecue restaurants in Conway. It offers several pricier options we might try when our wallet is a little thicker — including center cut Omaha steaks and wine
by the bottle or glass or local Flyway and Diamond Bear beers, which are available in addition to the usual beer options. If you’ve got your mouth set for good barbecue and not a lot of cash in your wallet, Fat Daddy’s your man.
MAY 30 – JULY 8
murrysdp.com
562-3131
Fat Daddy’s Bar-B-Que
1004 W. Oak St. Conway 501-358-6363 @fatdaddysconway
Quick bite Daily specials include hamburgers (Monday), barbecued burritos (Tuesday and Thursday), all you can eat ribs (Tuesday dinner), barbecued flatbread (Friday) and St. Louis-style ribs (Saturday). Hours 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Other info Beer and wine, credit cards accepted
Little Rock’s Most Award-Winning Restaurant 1619 REBSAMEN RD. 501.663.9734 thefadedrose.com arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
31
MOVIE REVIEW
LEVITATION: Thanks to an imaginative story and honest performances from Jacob Latimore and Seychelle Gabriel, “Sleight” rises above its low-budget production scale.
Cheap tricks J.D. Dillard’s thriller goes bigger than its budget. BY SAM EIFLING
N
ot often anymore do you get a maybe superhero, maybe sci-fi teen flick without any pre-existing tie-ins to ’80s cartoons or ’90s graphic novels or whatever Nickelodeon is up to since Kenan & Kel left. But here comes “Sleight,” a tiny-budget pic with just enough verve and imagination to pass as a big-studio movie with big-studio-movie themes, right here on the shoulder season of what will soon become a deluge of attempted blockbusters. Its entire budget was approximately what Disney spent on every 15 seconds of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” and yet if you want a tidy hero tale with a big heart and almost a complete lack of pretense, there are worse ways to spend a night at the movies. Your small cast starts with Bo (Jacob Latimore), a 20ish Los Angeles street magician who excels at, yes, sleight of hand — card tricks, as well as other tricks that seem to defy science. He manages to make a ring hover and spin above his palm, for instance, and earns
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a tip as well as a phone number from its cute owner, a student named Holly (Seychelle Gabriel). Bo’s main gig is taking care of his little sister (Storm Reid); his side hustles are the magic by day and low-level street dealing by night, handing out coke and molly mostly from his sedan. Both are, in their way, honest livings, even if one requires fooling people and the other requires ducking the cops. Trouble comes when Bo’s ostensible street boss, Angelo (Dulé Hill), wants to pull the kid in deeper to the drug business at a moment when Bo is ready to get the hell out. He makes a bad choice, and events degrade from there. Writer/director J.D. Dillard doesn’t let us in on the source of Bo’s abilities, even as we observe early that the kid has some sort of janky, DIY, batterypowered implant in his shoulder. We’ve seen enough superhero movies by the year 2017 to know strange powers come in many forms, with varying degrees of plausibility, and all of them require
a certain suspension of disbelief, right up to the notion that billionaire Bruce Wayne can possibly do enough crunches to step up to a brawl against Superman. In “Sleight,” the question of how hangs open for nearly the 90-minute run time. When the source of Bo’s abilities comes to light, it will require a generous donation of your credulity to stay on board. The movie has other plot holes you’ll be happier ignoring, like Bo’s inability, even as a master pickpocket, to scrape together money in an emergency. Overall, though, you’ve got to hand it the ultra-low-budget Blumhouse Productions (cheapskate masterminds of the “Paranormal Activity” series and, more laudably, “Get Out”) for cranking out a tight, charismatic drama on a production budget of just a quarter-million bucks. One big reason why: Even if the movie feels, overall, like a top-rank student film, the performances mostly hold up, especially Latimore’s. He’s solid as the promising student who descended into this skeezy scene, never oversharing, holding Bo together as a kid of genuine appeal and yet genuine mystery. Like the rest of the film, he’s doing an admirable lot with very little. No wasted moves, or money, here.
ALSO IN THE ARTS “The Dingdong.” Mark Shanahan’s adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s French farce “Le Dindon.” A TheatreSquared production. 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through June 4. $15-$45. Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600.
National Drawing Invitational Retrospective,” works from the permanent collection, “In the Blood.” The Weekend Theater’s through Sept. 24. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 production of Suzan Lori-Parks’ adaptaa.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372tion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scar4000. let Letter.” 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, JonesSun., through May 21. $12-$16. 1001 W. 7th boro: “2017 Senior Exhibition,” Bradbury St. 501-374-3761. Museum, through May 12. Noon-5 p.m. “Rough Night at the Remo Room.” The Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567. Main Thing’s two-act musical comedy. 8 ARTS & SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHp.m. Fri.-Sat., through June 17. $24. The EAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St., Pine Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., MAJOR VENUES Bluff: “Rhythm, Rhymes and Young ArtNLR. 501-372-0210. ists of the Delta,” opens with reception ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur “Rapunzel.” Keith Smith’s adaptation of 5-8 p.m. May 4, performance by Pine Bluff the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. 7 p.m. Fri., 2 Park: “The Modernist Legacy of Noland Middle School 7 p.m., show through July p.m. Sat.-Sun., through May 12. $10-$12.50. Blass,” panel discussion by Gordon DuckTHE RICHARDS GROUP JOB #: CCR-17-0053 CLIENT: Choctaw Casino8;&“Live@5,” Resort music by Milt Jackson, 5-7 p.m. Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theater. worth, Callie Williams and Mason Toms of TRIM: 9.25" x 8.375" LIVE: N/A BLEED: N/A May 5; “Resilience,” printmaking by Emma 9th and Commerce, MacArthur Park. 501the architect’s work, reception 5:30 p.m., COLORS: CMYK DESCRIPTION: Arkansas Times_This Spring, Your Ears Amos, Vivian Browne, Camille Billops, Mar372-4000. talk 6 p.m. May 9; “Drawing on History: FOR QUESTIONS CALL: Todd Gutmann 214-891-3519
THEATER
FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS
SISTER
SAWYER
THREE DOG
NIGHT
BROWN
MAY 26
garet Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Samella Lewis, and Rosalind Jeffries, through July 8. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “The American Red Cross in Arkansas,” artifacts covering 100 years, through July 1; “Bruce Jackson: Cummins Prison Farm,” photographs, West Gallery, through May 27, “The American Dream Deferred: Japanese American Incarceration in WWII Arkansas,” objects from the internment camps, Concordia Gallery, through June 24. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the
HAZEL
JUNE 9
JUNE 30
Purchase CenterStage tickets at ticketmaster.com
GILLEY’S MAY LINEUP MAY 3 MAY 4 MAY 5 MAY 6 MAY 10 MAY 11 MAY 12 MAY 13
| LARRY B. | MICHAEL BRINSON | BACK IN BLACK | HONEYGIRL | LARRY B. | WHIPPER SNAPPER | ALL MY ROWDY FRIENDS | ALL MY ROWDY FRIENDS
MAY 17 MAY 18 MAY 19 MAY 20 MAY 24 MAY 25 MAY 26 MAY 27
| LARRY B. | BACK ROADS | LARRY B. & THE CRADLE ROCKERS | ROCKIN HORSE REBELLION | LARRY B. | LIBBY STARKS & BANDIT BAND | SWAN SONG | RICOCHET
arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
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ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT. civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER: “Xtreme Bugs,” animatronic insects, through July 23; permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6. CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “Roy Lichtenstein in Focus,” five large works, through July; “Pioneering Directors of African Cinema,” movies, through May 29; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479418-5700. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “Take Your Purse With You: The Reimagined Work of Katherine Strause,” paintings, May 9-Aug. 27; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Gloria Garfinkel: Vibrancy of Form,” etchings, painted aluminum and oil on canvas, through June 18; “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad,” through May 28. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-784-2787. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: “The Great War: Arkansas in World War I,” study gallery; “Paintings by Glenda McCune,” through May 7; “Modern Mythology: Luke Amran Knox and Grace Mikell Ramsey,” mixed media sculpture and paintings, through May 7; “All of Arkansas: Arkansas Made, County by County”; “A Diamond in the Rough: 75 Years of Historic Arkansas Museum.” Ticketed tours of renovated and replicated 19th century structures from original city, guided Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. (Galleries free.) 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: Permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 683-3593. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: “Cabinet of Curiosities: Treasures from the University of Arkansas Museum Collection”; “True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley,” musical instruments, through 2017; “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 3249685. SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St., El Dorado: “5X5 Art Dash,” fundraiser, 5-6 p.m. May 5, $55, tickets limited to 55, 34
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
reserve at 870-862-5474; “Silent Interludes,” paintings and drawings by Maria Botti Villegas, opens with reception 6-8 p.m. May 6, show through May. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 870-862-5474. TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165, England: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $4 for adults, $3 for ages 6-12, $14 for family. 961-9442. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “From the Studio: UA Little Rock Art Students” and “A Sense of Place: Paintings by Chancellor Andrew Rogerson,” highlights of the student competitive and 12 paintings by Rogerson, May 8-31, Gallery I; “Capstone Exhibition,” through May 8; “BFA Senior Exhibition,” through May 25. 569-8977. WALTON ARTS CENTER, Fayetteville: “Glacial Shifts, Changing Perspectives,” large-scale paintings and photographs documenting glacial melt by Diane Burko, opens with reception 5-7 p.m. May 4, show
through Sept. 30, Joy Pratt Markham Gallery. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, noon-4 p.m. Sat. 479-443-5600. CALL FOR ENTRIES ARKANSAS MOBILE PHONEOGRAPHERS is accepting smart phone photograph entries for its fourth annual “Explore Arkansas” exhibit, to be held June 16-July 14 at the Innovation Hub in Argenta. Categories are people, places and things; up to three photos may be entered. Judges include Former Green Bay Packers tight end D.J. Williams, Arkansas Times photographer Brian Chilson and commercial photographer Jason Crader. Register to enter through @ArkMoPhs on Instgram, Twitter or Facebook. Deadline for entries is May 8. RETAIL GALLERIES ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 N. Main St.: “FACES: Paintings by Stephano,” through May 15. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2
NOW TWO CONVENIENT LOCATIONS LITTLE ROCK • NORTH LITTLE ROCK Every Day
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175ML ABSOLUT VODKA $31.99 $27.99 175ML TULLAMORE IRISH WHISKEY $42.99 $37.99 175ML SAILOR JERRY RUM $22.99 $20.99 175ML BEEFEATER GIN $31.99 $25.99 175ML COURVOISIER VS $57.99 $49.99 750ML JACOB’S CREEK WINE $6.99 $4.99 750ML KIM CRAWFORD SAUVIGNON BLANC $14.99 $12.99 30PK FRIO LIGHT $15.99 $14.99 HURRY IN! THIS SALE EXPIRES MAY 10, 2017
ALL CRAFT BEER10% OFF EVERY DAY! JOIN US FOR FOOD TRUCK WEDNESDAY WITH S&J MOBILE KITCHEN 11AM-7PM. WINE TASTING TOO! COME SEE US! • WE GLADLY MATCH ANY LOCAL ADS WEDNESDAY IS WINE DAY 15% OFF WINE CASE DISCOUNTS EVERY DAY!
LITTLE ROCK: 10TH & MAIN • 501.374.0410 | NORTH LITTLE ROCK: 860 EAST BROADWAY • 501.374.2405 HOURS: LR • 8AM-10PM MON-THUR • 8AM-12PM FRI-SAT •NLR • MON-SAT 8AM-12PM
presents…
Clive Carroll Thursday May 18 7:30 p.m. The Joint
Clive’s debut album, Sixth Sense, was deemed by 301 Main Street English guitar legend John North Little Rock Renborn as “a milestone in the journey of the Tickets $25 steel-string guitar.” Available at the door or online at www.argentaartsacousticmusic.com or www.centralarkansastickets.com
p.m. Sat. 258-8991. ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 610 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Sheliah Halderman, landscapes and florals; Amaryllis J. Ball, expressionist paintings. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Sat., noon-6 p.m. Sun. 623-6401. ART GROUP GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center: “An Evening of Art and Music,” art and music by Bill Thurman, 5-8 p.m. May 5. 690-2193. BOSWELL-MOUROT, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: 664-0030. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8205 Cantrell Road: “The Making of an Artist: Creative Inspirations,” an exhibition of paintings by Jeffery Nodelman, through May 6. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. CORE BREWERY, 411 Main St., NLR: “Downtown Throw Down,” fighting-themed work by members of the Latino Project, through May 13. COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “Little Golden Books,” from the collection of Jon Hughes. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 918-3093. DRAWL GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by regional and Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 2407446. FAYETTEVILLE UNDERGROUND, 101 W. Mountain St., Suite 222: 10 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-8 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 479-871-2772. GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: Work by William McNamara, Tyler Arnold, Amy Edgington, EMILE, Kimberly Kwee, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone, Mary Ann Stafford, Cedric Watson, C.B. Williams, Gino Hollander, Siri Hollander and jewelry by Rae Ann Bayless. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 360, 900 S. Rodney Parham Road: New work by Jason Blanchard, Matthew Castellano, Everett Gee and Jay King. GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Thoroughbred paintings by Bob Snider and Trey McCarley. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 318-4278. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., North Little Rock: “Spring Exhibition,” including works by Alan Gerson, Jed Jackson, Dale Nichols. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787. GOOD WEATHER GALLERY, 4400 Edgemere St., NLR: “Citrus on Pico,” work by Amy Garofano, through May 20, by appointment only. 680-3763. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “With Feeling,” works on paper and wood by Louise Madumbwa, through May 20; “Beyond Magic: Black Women Artists Master Non-Traditional Media,” through May 20. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822. JUSTUS FINE ART GALLERY, 827 A Central Ave., Hot Springs: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.Sat. 321-2335. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 225-6257. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “Twenty,” works by Neal Harrington and Tammy Harrington, through May 12. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 687-1061. LEGACY FINE ART, 804 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Blown glass chandeliers by Ed
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MAKE MOM’S DAY! Find something unique for every “mom” in your life this Mother’s Day, when you shop these favorite local retailers.
This handstamped
coordinates necklace from Bella Vita Jewelry is the perfect gift for mom or your graduate this spring! Add any design charm or a stone embellishment. Choose the geocoordinates of any location in the world when you order and they do the rest!
Give your
mom this Kimono — hand painted in India with a gorgeous floral design. This is one of many patterns available, so stop in Cynthia East Fabrics today to browse the entire selection of gifts!
Pay tribute
BUY IT!
7TH STREET SALON 7TH STREET TATTOO AND PIERCING 814 W. Seventh St. 372.6722 7thstreetsalon.com BELLA VITA JEWELRY Inside the Lafayette Building 523 S. Louisiana St., Ste. 175 479.200.1824 bellavitajewelry.net BOX TURTLE 2616 Kavanaugh Blvd. 661.1167 shopboxturtle.com
Find the featured items at the following locations:
COLONIAL WINE AND SPIRITS 11200 W. Markham St. 223.3120 colonialwineshop.com
MURRY’S DINNER PLAYHOUSE 6323 Colonel Glenn Rd. 562.3131 murrysdp.com
CYNTHIA EAST FABRICS 1523 Rebsamen Park Rd. 663.0460 cynthiaeastfabrics.com
STIFFT STATION GIFTS 3009 W Markham St. 725.0209 stifftstationgifts.com
THE DIET CENTER 4910 Kavanaugh Blvd. 663.9482 dietcentercentralarkansas.com
TANGLEWOOD DRUGSTORE 6815 Cantrell Rd. 664.4444 tanglewooddrug.com
EDWARDS FOOD GIANT 7507 Cantrell Rd. 614.3477 other locations statewide edwardsfoodgiant.com
to your mom with a special tattoo this Mother’s Day – or take her to get one herself — at 7th Street Tattoo and Piercing! If she’s not interested in body art, pamper her with a new hairstyle from 7th Street Salon.
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(501) 663-9482 dietcentercentralarkansas.com
ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com MAY 4 2017 35 arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017 35
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Have a
summer wedding coming up? Whether you’re the bride or the mother of the bride, now is the time to get in shape for the BIG DAY! Call The Diet Center and ask how they can help you get into the dress of your dreams.
Treat mom
to dinner and a show at Murry’s Dinner Playhouse to see the comedy Southern Fried Funeral. Call Murry’s to reserve your tickets today! 501-562-3131
When you’re
shopping for an off-beat mama, find plenty of unique gift ideas this Mother’s Day at Stifft Station Gifts.
Celebrate Mom now taking custom orders for mother’s day
Mother’s Day is May 14.
Stop in today!
523 S. Louisiana St. (In the Lafayette building) • 501.396.9146 • www.bellavitajewelry.net 36 4, 2017 TIMES ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT 36MAY MAY 4, 2017ARKANSAS ARKANSAS TIMES
M-F 10-6 • SAT 10-5 2616 KAVANAUGH BLVD. LITTLE ROCK 501.661.1167 • WWW.SHOPBOXTURTLE.COM
BEST GIFT SHOP
Colonial Wine and Spirits
Brunch Berry Spritzer 4 – 6 Fresh Blackberries 1 Sugar Cube 1 Dash of Angostura Bitters 1/2 Ounce Lemon Juice 1/2 Ounce Cointreau Brut Sparkling Wine – Roederer Anderson Valley (suggested)
Preparation In a shaker, muddle the berries, sugar cube, and bitters. Add lemon juice and Cointreau to the berry mixture and shake. Strain into a Collins glass of ice. Top with Sparkling Wine. Garnish: 2 Berries on a pick. Variation: Use berries that are in season, like strawberries, blackberries or rapsberries.
Mother’s Day starts at
Edwards Food Giant! This May 14th get everything you need to celebrate MOM. From flowers to a Mother’s Day Brunch – Edwards Food Giant has all you need!
It’s tea
time at Tanglewood!! Spend S d time ti with ith mom over tea t this thi Mother’s M th ’ Day D with ith the th Burton + Burton Tea Set available at Tanglewood. Mom’s favorite scent – Claire Burke Electric Fragrance Warmer set. Pick up a favorite for Mom this Mother’s Day at Tanglewood Drug.
FFrom The Community. For The Community. Send your
momma a message this Mother’s Day with Morse Code Jewelry from Box Turtle.
DELIVERY AVAILABLE COMPETITIVE PRICES GOOD NEIGHBOR PHARMACY MOST INSURANCE ACCEPTED GIFTS • GREETING CARDS VITAMINS & HERBAL PRODUCTS VACCINATIONS AVAILABLE
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Bolts and bolts of fine fabrics IN STOCK to make your style fly. 1523 Rebsamen Park Rd | Riverdale Design District | Little Rock Like Us Phone 501-663-0460 | 10:00 - 5:30 Mon - Sat | cynthiaeastfabrics.com ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com MAY 4 2017 37 arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017 37
ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT.
Friday, May 12
UPCOMING EVENTS ON CentralArkansasTickets.com Little Rock Zoo
MAY
WILD WINES RESERVE ROOM EVENT
5
War Memorial Stadium
MAY
WILD WINES GRAND TASTING
6
JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle, Jackson-
St. Joseph Center-Lettuce Grow Spring Event
12
The Joint
MAY
AAMS presents Clive Carroll
18
The Joint
JUN
15
AAMS presents Justin St. Pierre
JUN
Four Points by Sheraton
24
2017 Women’s Power Breakfast Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets - and more!
LOCAL TICKETS, One Place
MAY 4, 2017
OTHER MUSEUMS
ville: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501-241-1943. MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibition of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427. MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, 202 SW O St., Bentonville: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-273-2456. PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, Scott, U.S. Hwy. 165 and state Hwy. 161: Permanent exhibits on historic agriculture. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $4 adults, $3 children. 961-1409. POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St., Pottsville: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “On Fields Far Away: Our Community During the Great War,” through Sept. 23. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479621-1154. SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT, Scott: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections. org.
St. Joseph Center of Arkansas
MAY
38
Pennington, paintings by Carole Katchen. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri. 762-0840. LOCAL COLOUR GALLERY, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Artists collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. M2 GALLERY, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center, 11525 Cantrell Road: “M2X,” 10-year anniversary exhibit of works by gallery artists Jason Twiggy Lott, Neal Harrington, Steve Adair, Robin Tucker, Catherine Nugent, Lisa Krannichfeld, Ike Garlington, Matt Coburn, Cathy Burns, V.L. Cox and others. 944-7155. MATTHEWS FINE ART GALLERY, 909 North St.: Paintings by Pat and Tracee Matthews, glass by James Hayes, jewelry by Christie Young, knives by Tom Gwenn, kinetic sculpture by Mark White. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 831-6200. MATT McLEOD FINE ART, 108 W. 6th St.: Paintings by Angela Davis Johnson, sculpture by Bryan Massey Jr., photographs by John David Pittman, multimedia work by David Clemons. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 725-8508. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Outside the Lines,” graphic work by Nikki Dawes, Kirk Montgomery, Dusty Higgins and Ron Wolfe, through May. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 379-9101. RIALTO GALLERY, 215 E. Broadway, Morrilton: “Art for the Birds III,” through May 8, reception 6-8 p.m. May 6. 477-9955.
ARKANSAS TIMES
From your goin’ out friends at
ABANDONED PUPPY This little guy has come up to our farm looking for a home. Very friendly and very frightened. We have five large dogs and they will not accept him. He is about 30 to 40 lbs and looks to be six to eight months old. He is male. Call Kaytee at 501-607-3100 or kaytee.wright@gmail.com.
BAXTER LAND COMPANY
ARKANSAS TIMES
(DESHA COUNTY)
TWO PERMANENT POSITIONS FOR FISH FARMWORKER AND LABORER Grade & move hybrid catfish from pond to pond, monitor oxygen levels, harvest eggs, place fish in troughs; feed & monitor fry & fingerlings, & harvesting mature fish; repair & maintain fish farm equipment. Report to farm owners/managers as needed. Position requires some unsupervised night duties involving 600 acres of ponds. Three months’ experience in farm labor required. To apply, mail resume to Baxter Land Company, 2710 Highway 1 North, Watson, AR 71674.
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS FOR MEDICAL SCIENCES (UAMS) IS SEEKING AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR – NEONATOLOGIST IN LITTLE ROCK, AR. DUTIES: Teach medical students, residents and fellows in the area of neonatology, including diagnosing and treating infants with breathing disorders, infections, birth defects or other conditions. Conduct clinical work and research in neonatology. Advise students and participate in faculty decision making on department committees. REQUIRMENTS: Must have an MD or foreign equivalent. Must have completed three (3) years (36 months) of Residency in Pediatrics. Must have license to practice medicine or eligibility for license in Arkansas. Applicants should send resume and cover letter to: Jeremy Ruff, #1 Children’s Way, Little Rock, AR 72202, JBRuff@ uams.edu. UAMS is an inclusive Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer of individuals with disabilities and protected veterans and is committed to excellence.
MARKETPLACE May 5, 6, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20 and 21 $16 Adult $12 Student/Senior
TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985
7:30pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday 2:30pm Sunday For more information contact us at 501.374.3761 or www. weekendtheater.org
Our 24th Season Is Sponsored By Piano Kraft
1001 W. 7th St. Little Rock, AR 72201
❤ ADOPTION ❤
Child Psychologist & Successful Executive yearn for First Baby to Love & Cherish Forever. Expenses Paid. Abby & Jeff.
1-800-966-3065
SAFETY & HEALTH ADMINISTRATOR
Little Rock Wastewater desires the services of a dynamic safety professional. The successful candidate will have an extensive background in safety and will be able to update the current program and bring innovative solutions while working closely with staff.Details on qualifications, duties, and responsibilities can be found at www.lrwu.com. Generous time off and benefit package. Deadline to apply is Friday 05/19/17. Equal Opportunity Employer
FOR SALE 2008 Volkswagen Passat 2.0T $5,900. This is a super clean Sedan, One Owner, 140K, Title Status: Clear, New Tires, A/C Climate controls in the front and the rear; CD player - FM/AM Radio, Power Windows; Power Locks; Power Steering; Keyless Entry; Alarm; Daytime Running Lights; Dual Air Bags Front Head and Sides; Active Belts; All Wheel ABS. For more information call or text (501) 259-1209.
PASTURED OLD BREED PORK Our hogs are a cross between Large Black and Berkshire, old 19th century breeds. They are raised on our pasture and forage in the forest that adjoins our fields. They are never confined like industrial hogs. We do not use any kind of routine antibiotics. Our hogs live ARKANSAS GRASS were FED LAMB like they meant to. PRICE LIST FRESH RAW HAM $7 lb.
PORK LOIN $8 lb
HAM BREAKFAST STEAKS $7 lb
BREAKFAST SAUSAGE $9 lb
We offer first quality one-year-old lamb raised on our farm in North Pulaski County. Our meat is free of steroids or any other chemicals. The only time we use antibiotics is if the animal has been injured which is extremely rare. All meat is USDA inspected.
PORK STEAKS $10 lb PRICE LIST: RIB ROAST TESTICLES contains about eight ribs (lamb chops) $17 lb.
$10 lb
WHOLE LEG OF LAMBPORK BUTTS TANNED SHEEPSKINS, $10 lb SHOULDER (about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb.
(bone in, cook this slow, like a pot roast. Meat falls off the bone). $11 lb.
HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS, $5 lb
$100-$150
(Our sheepskins are tanned in a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery that has specialized in sheepskins for generations.)
PORK TENDERLOIN BONELESS LOIN $12 lb TENDERLOIN $8 lb
$20 lb
LAMB BRATWURST LINK SAUSAGE
(one-lb package) $10 lb
NECKBONES
(for stew or soup) $5 lb
sip LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES
PORK BRATWURST $10 One pound package
You can pick up your meat at our farm off Hwy 107 in North Pulaski County (about 25 miles north of downtown Little Rock) or we can meet you in downtown Little Rock weekdays. All meat is aged and then frozen.
SPARE RIBS $9 lb BABYBACK RIBS $12 lb
India Blue F a r m
12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com
12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
39
M AY 1 3 T H R U 2 0 • M AY 1 1 I S S U E
I
n the May 11 issue, we will announce mouthwatering taco specials from 20 of your favorite local
ARKANSAS TIMES WILL PROMOTE AND EXPLAIN THE
FIVE COMMANDMENTS OF TACO WEEK TO OUR READERS
restaurants. Check out that issue for all of the details,
1. Specials are good lunch or dinner, but get to
and prepare your taste buds for Taco Week: May 13-20!
2. There will be a wait, we’ve been promoting
I
the restaurant early – they will run out. this Taco Week for over a month.
f you are a restaurant with a to-die-for taco, give us a
3. Tip generously, you’re getting a great deal so
call 501.492.3994 or email phyllis@arktimes.com.
4. Buy a beverage, preferably the special or go
show your appreciation to the server. for a good ole’ cold beer.
5. The week will fly by, stay updated with ark-
times.com, Eat Arkansas, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and post about your experiences.
FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1959!
www.arktimes.com • 201 E. MARKHAM, SUITE 200 • LITTLE ROCK • (501) 375-2985 40
MAY 4, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES