Arkansas Times - November 10, 2016

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NOVEMBER 10, 2016

3

COMMENT

From the web In response to the Nov. 3 cover story, “Hillary in Arkansas,” and the Arkansas Travelers campaigners that turned out for Bill and Hillary Clinton: You have to admire the dedication and energy of the older Traveler campaigners. No apathy in that bunch. I never got caught up in the Clinton conspiracy saga, but Arkansans love a good soap opera.

Apathy is what allows evil to take over and allows corruption in state government to spread. It is time for young people to pick up the torch and move Arkansas forward or they will wake up one day and find our current Arkansas government has taken all their basic human rights and civil rights away from them. I think maybe Hillary’s intelligence, strong views and a desire for personal privacy caused Arkansans from the early years to label her as aloof. She wasn’t going to hang over the fence with you and swap gossip about what is going on in town.

Hillary is not a wimp and that is a good thing for the country. After years of campaigning, the senior Travelers (76 & 84?) must see some honorable presidential quality in Hillary that makes them get out of their recliners and once again hit

the campaign trail for her.

ShineonLibby Good column. That said, I wouldn’t call the 1980 governor’s election the most startling outcome of the modern era in Arkansas, however. Many expected the outcome. The whole “Cubans and car tags” thing was talked about up and down this state, and don’t forget Ronald Reagan was on the ballot and he swept through the South. I knew of several Democrats at that time who were voting against Clinton and Carter. Wasn’t a surprise.

Poison Apple In response to an Arkansas Blog post about Pantsuit Nation, the Facebook group supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid: I’ve been reading the Pantsuit Nation stories for days and never get through them without shedding a tear or two. People (men and women) sharing personal stories and reasons why they cast their vote for Hillary ... and most are very compelling.

Anyone out there caught up in minutia, take a moment today and please read some of these real life stories of struggle, sacrifice and triumph. THIS

is the America I want to live in and these are the people I want to know.

To hell with the haters and the horrible place they want to take our country.

Today is the day to prove there are more of us than there are them. It’s time to take back our county and prove once more, love trumps hate every single time!

Mountaingirl In response to an Election Day post on voting in Pulaski County: It’s the greatest fear a conservative ever knows: democracy.

The idea that a black single mom making minimum wage has a vote that counts the same as a white, male, middle-aged NRA member is shocking to our white, male, middle-aged NRA-member ruling class.

Middle-aged white guys have fucked this country up beyond recognition by borrowing billions to prosecute wars while hollowing out the middle class and creating domestic terrorism, and even though I am one, I am ready for them to go away.

Paying Top Dollar for Legislators Paying Top Dollar for Legislators I have a feeling most Arkansas Republicans will be hiding at home so no one

can see their tears when the Drumpf is defeated. I personally can’t wait to see what hateful tirade [state Sen.] Jason Rapert unleashes on Twitter about how America has forsaken God, etc. I really hope that Clinton wins just so I can see all the losers whining on social media about the rigged election, etc. It will be an enjoyable evening.

ConwayMichael ConwayMichael … I expect to see a flood of gun-related posts, too, from our Elephant Friends. Probably lots of threats from local/state politicians threatening to shut down more programs/services, too, since the vote may not go their way.

Artificial Intelligence Well, up here in Carroll County I was denied the possibility of a paper ballot. I was told that paper ballots have been available to all early voting but today machines only. I went to the Eureka Springs courthouse and then called the County Clerk Jamie Correia in Berryville, who told me to quit watching the news about these machines ... .

I told her I have no television/broadcast or satellite, that I read reports on these matters on blogs like bradblog.

Hence I did not vote. This system is a complete sham. Criminals are still in charge! Best not to encourage them in any way.

Eureka Springs In response to an Arkansas Blog post about former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s comment that Republicans who don’t “come around” and vote for Trump should not ask him for his vote: “The ones that don’t come around, I’m gonna remember them.”

Attention non-Drumpf R’s! The grifter of many cheeseburgers and a man of yuuge political mojo (just ask him) has spoken, BUT he will take it all back if you will hire him for a gig, any gig. Daddy’s about to have an unemployed daughter to support. tsallenarng In response to a post on the Rock Candy blog about the five finalist architects vying for the Arkansas Arts Center renovation job: I know this phase is about architecture, not collection, but if there isn’t a promise to bring at least one painting of dogs playing poker, my checkbook remains closed.

Arbiter of All Things AOAT

4

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

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Code #27-51-301/403 • Bicycles must have a white headlight and a red tail light visible from 500 feet and have a bell or warning device for pedestrians.

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Cyclists must Cyclists should signal, rideobey on all traffic laws. Arkansas Uniform Vehicle Code the right side of the road, and #27-49-111 •yield traffic likeside Cycliststo must signal,normally ride on the right of the road and yield to traffic normally. any#27-51-301/403 other road vehicle. Code Code •#27-51-301/403 Bicycles must have a white headlight and a red tail light visible from 500 feet and have a bell device for pedestrians.

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arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

5

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week 2: “Hold placed on UA’s budget & amendment being prepared to remove equal funding as Women’s basketball budget. UA’s leadership out of touch.”

— Sen. Alan Clark (R-Hot Springs), taking to Twitter to express his own opinion on the protest. Several other Republican legislators also leaped at the chance to threaten the University of Arkansas’s budget over six young women registering their peaceful, conscientious dissent.

A shooting on East Eighth St. An alternative account emerged of the recent fatal police shooting of Roy Lee Richards, an African-American man in Little Rock. According to the Little Rock Police Department, Officer Dennis Hutchins arrived at a house on the 500 block of East Eighth Street to find Richards fighting with his uncle, Derrell Underwood; Richards retrieved a gun from his car and pointed it at Underwood, prompting Officer Hutchins to shoot Richards. The weapon was later found to be a pellet gun.

But when Black Lives Matter of Little Rock interviewed Underwood, he told a story at odds with LRPD’s account. Underwood said he’d called 911 asking for assistance with his nephew, who was drunk and acting belligerent.

Underwood said he subdued Richards 6

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

ONE LAST PUSH: Students from Central High holding signs on Chester and 15th streets on Election Day.

himself and released him when the cops arrived, then went inside his house and locked the door; he said he was standing in the hallway when Hutchins opened fire. “When Roy got shot, I was in the house. I didn’t hear the police say anything,” Underwood told a videographer for Black Lives Matter of Little Rock, which posted the video on YouTube.

The incident remains under investigation by police and prosecutors.

School closures on horizon Little Rock School District Superintendent Michael Poore announced additional LRSD budget cuts last week in anticipation of the approaching loss of desegregation payments from the state.

His plan includes the potential closures of three elementary schools with declining student populations — Carver Magnet, Franklin and Wilson — as well as closure of a pre-K in the old Woodruff Elementary building and the relocation of the Hamilton Learning Academy, an alternative school. Poore said he’d like to convert Carver Magnet to a pre-K center.

RIP Issue 7 Supporters of the initiated act to legalize medical marijuana were dealt a final blow by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which refused to rehear its earlier deci-

sion invalidating Issue 7 on the basis of technicalities in the signature-gathering process. That means votes cast for Issue 7 definitely won’t count — a bitter disappointment for the activists who’ve toiled

for years to get the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act on the ballot. As this paper went to press on Election Day, voters were weighing in on a rival medical marijuana proposal, Issue 6.

Big political money, by the numbers The UA’s annual poll of Arkansas voters, which was released a week before the election, provided a snapshot of Arkansan political sentiments — not just on candidates, but on issues, too. Of the 800 likely voters polled in late October:

53%

48%

…want no change to gun control laws (31 percent want stricter laws and 14 percent want looser restrictions).

…want more abortion restrictions (33 percent favor no change and 14 percent want easier access).

45% …said the seriousness of climate change is overestimated in the news (47 percent said the threat was correctly represented or generally underestimated).

50%

63%

…had an unfavorable opinion of health care reform (27 percent had a favorable opinion and 23 percent didn’t know).

…said Arkansas is “generally headed in the right direction.”

ILLUSTRATION BY BRYAN MOATS

“To be perfectly clear, my support is of our 14 tremendously strong young women, six who declared to kneel and eight who stood, and their ability to express themselves and support each other. I’m so proud of how they worked through a very difficult topic for them.”

— University of Arkansas women’s basketball coach Jimmy Dykes, explaining why he supports the six players who chose to take a knee during the pregame playing of the national anthem as a protest against the treatment of African Americans at the hands of police. Dykes said he personally believes people should stand during the anthem but that he fully supports his players’ right to voice their opinions.

BRIAN CHILSON

Quote of the Week 1:

OPINION

Can we get along?

T

he Times production deadline fell before polls closed this week, so I’ll look to the past and future.

First: Basketball, specifically the littlenoticed sport of women’s basketball at the University of Arkansas. Six members of the women’s team created a statewide furor last week by quietly kneeling and linking arms during the playing of the National Anthem before a crowd of 1,200.

They joined a national movement about police treatment of black people. One team member stood erect, hand over heart, but extended another hand to a kneeling teammate.

The fury hasn’t abated.

I stand for the National Anthem. I understand those who think there are better ways to make a point. But I have less patience with those who insist that differences of opinion must be reduced to contests, with punishment for losers.

Vituperation of the players was the

unsurprising dominant response. In a state in which only about one in every seven is black, there’s a lack of MAX understanding of BRANTLEY what it means to be maxbrantley@arktimes.com black — in school, driving or just walking down the street.

There were calls to revoke the players’ scholarships. Some wanted to fire Coach Jimmy Dykes and Athletic Director Jeff Long for defending the players’ First Amendment right to free speech at a public institution. Republican Reps.

Kim Hammer and Laurie Rushing and Sen. Alan Clark called for financial punishment of the UA for allowing the demonstration.

Jimmy Dykes stood 10 feet tall. His players have “strong, well-informed, educated opinions based on their real-life

Violent election

W

riting in the tranquility of elec- calling her a crimtion morning, after and before inal and “crooked the maelstrom, one must be Hillary,” the frestruck by the long campaign’s terrible quent yells at ralpeculiarities. But what stands out most lies became chants, is a level of viciousness and violence not “Hang the bitch.”

ERNEST seen in politics since the Civil War. They The Republican DUMAS were framed largely in mere words, but convention and now we will be lucky if the campaign Trump rallies broke into relentless chants did not foreshadow far worse — real acts of “Lock her up.” Delegates and Trump of individual and institutional savagery. advisers at the convention called for her Historians will quarrel about exactly to be shot by a firing squad or hanged when and why the natural partisanship and her body draped on the National of the American democracy began to lose Mall. Trump called the man who urged all sense of civility and turned to merci- that Clinton be hanged “my favorite vet, less defiance and hatred. Most people the king!” The media recorded frequent agree it followed the victory in 1992 of screams of “Kill the bitch.”

T-shirts and signs emblazoned with the Clintons, but was it retaliation for the investigations — Watergate, Iran-Contra, “Trump that Bitch” and occasionally “Kill HUD grant-rigging, Wedtech — that sub- the Bitch” blossomed at Trump and Mike verted the Republican administrations of Pence rallies and on the streets. VariaNixon and Reagan, or was it just some- tions of the violent themes appeared on thing about the cocky young couple from homemade and campaign signs in rural lowly Arkansas that drove the other side Arkansas and across the land. With no witless? Whatever, it reached its nadir in words by Clinton to support him, Trump the campaign of 2016. said Clinton planned to abolish the SecNo election in history recorded so ond Amendment and take people’s guns much talk of doing real or figurative harm and that, if she was elected, the only way to a candidate, mainly but not solely Hill- to stop her was for gun owners to take ary Clinton. After Donald Trump began matters into their own hands.

experiences, their real-life emotions. I am very, very proud of them. They know I have their back 100 percent. Because we do live in a country that is the land of the free and the home of the brave.” He added that he’d stand for the National Anthem and wished others would, too.

But he gets it.

Do we?

We had an election Tuesday in which Donald Trump, an admirer of authoritarian leaders around the world, at least came close to winning the presidency.

(God forbid that he did.) His followers beat a protester at a rally. He and his campaign rejected the findings of the Justice Department, FBI and multiple congressional investigations to insist, while offering no evidence, that Hillary Clinton was a law-breaker and should be jailed. There’s a Republican movement afoot to prevent a President Hillary Clinton from filling any openings on the U.S. Supreme Court. They also want to build walls and reject immigrants fleeing war.

Is the future of either a Trump or Clinton presidency a nation of warring camps? Arkansas has entered that realm. It is not possible for our U.S. Sens.

Tom Cotton and John Boozman to see a redeeming quality in Barack Obama,

though the majority of the American people do. Democrats in state government have been relegated to usefulstooge status. The Republican powers aren’t content with marginalizing dissenters, they want to punish them — take money away from maternal health care if it’s provided by Planned Parenthood; erect legal protection for discrimination against LGBT people; abolish a majority black Little Rock school board and fire a competent school leader because they were not politically correct in blood-red Arkansas.

Can we get along? Hillary Clinton had a record for doing so in the U.S. Senate.

But her pragmatism and political shapeshifting were a part of the Bernie Sanders movement (lefties can be intolerant, too). Still, a new study shows that women legislators are more successful at passing legislation than men.

So maybe, if Tuesday did bring a Hillary Clinton presidency, even the promised eternal investigation by Republican firebrands doesn’t necessarily mean she won’t find a way to get along. But where the Trump movement is hottest — and that would include Arkansas — I’m pessimistic. See the Razorback women’s basketball team.

The politics of personal destruction gress said that a President Hillary Clindidn’t begin when Trump and Clinton ton would not be allowed to govern, even squared off, but before the primaries, to fill judicial vacancies or her Cabinet. when the big gaggle of Republican can- Trump said a President Clinton would be didates turned on each other with a fury the illegitimate fruit of election crimes. rarely seen inside a party. It was not that The first female candidate for presiTrump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and the dent was the suffragist Victoria Woodrest just accused each other of saying hull, who ran with the Equal Rights Party and doing things they had never said or in 1872 even though she was ineligible. done — that is a staple of every campaign, Before the election, she was arrested and Democratic or Republican — but they charged with obscenity for publishing assailed each other’s character and said that the famous preacher Henry Ward they lacked human virtues.

Beecher was an adulterer. Sex is never It is not a coincidence that the peak far from any presidential campaign. of character assassination and threats of Here’s the irony. Preacher Beecher’s violence came in the first election where sister, the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe a female presidency was a realistic pros- (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”), wrote a novel pect. The internet is gorged with wild “My Wife and I” idealizing the role of the conspiracies, often with violent over- sexes in marriage a year before Woodtones and covering everything from the hull’s race and musing about a woman paternity of Hillary’s daughter to a vast president some day, since queens ran criminal operation in which Hillary had England. The husband pooh-poohed it. “[N]o woman that was not willing to directed the murders of scores of people in Arkansas and elsewhere who had be draggled through every kennel, and crossed her. The New York Times colum- slopped into every dirty pail of water, nist Frank Bruni wrote over the weekend like an old mop, would ever consent to about overhearing a conversation among run as a candidate. Why, it’s an ordeal fashionable women at the next table in that kills a man. It killed General Haran Ohio restaurant about all her murders. rison, and killed old Zack. What sort of They wanted to vote for a woman presi- a brazen tramp of a woman would it be dent, but couldn’t support one who had that could stand it, and come out of it murdered so many people. without being killed?”

It remains a good question.

In the final days, members of ConFollow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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Big talk

A

s the national political melodrama drew near its end, a sometime email correspondent in Texas worried about my safety. An uxorious older gentleman with a love of horses and a weakness for conspiracy theories, he was always puzzled and often angered by my apostasy.

“Being down there in Arkansas,” he warned, “you may not like the way Trump’s supporters respond if they’ve been reading your columns.”

I answered that while I’ve been making my views clear for decades, “I’ve never even had anybody speak to me rudely about it.”

The rural county I called home for the past nine years has no stoplights and lots more cows than people. It voted 2-to-1 for Mitt Romney in 2008, and doubtless favored Trump, too.

(Although not the African-American precincts around our place.) But it’s considered rude to argue about politics or religion. People just don’t do it. I had neighbors and friends I spoke with regularly whose political views I could only guess at.

Only a handful of people who agreed with my columns ever mentioned them.

Otherwise, well, I take good care of my animals, and while not real handy with a chainsaw, I’m very good at catching escaped horses and herding cows back home. Also, everybody likes my wife.

On balance, then, not a bad old boy for a transplanted Yankee.

My Texas correspondent nevertheless predicted rough times ahead.

“The peoples of the world,” he added, “ain’t going to go quietly into one world globalism.”

A chimerical fear, of course. Anybody with a lick of sense knows global government isn’t remotely possible.

Nation states are fragmenting all over the world. However, theological anticommunism has morphed into a generalized fear of The Other, symbolized

by Barack Obama and transferred to Hillary Clinton — probably the most lied-about American politician since FDR, or maybe Lincoln.

I urged him not to send his money to fight this imaginary threat.

But never fear, there’s a guy named Terry in Pennsylvania who’s keeping up the honor of crank emailers everywhere.

To hear him tell it, Terry — a teacher, coach and combat veteran, he says — is itching to give me a beating: “If you saw me in person … I would show you what a tough guy, real man, looks like. I train with weights 5 days

a week and martial arts 3 days a week. Also, a former Marine who has dodged enemy sniper fire.

GENE I could breathe LYONS on your scrawny ass and send you to the ground. You’re too scared to meet me in person without bringing law enforcement, that’s what women do. Big talk from a closet homo, in deep love with Bill Cosby Clinton.”

Um, scrawny? No. But of course, I’m never going to see Terry in person, because guys who send threatening emails … . Well, they send threatening emails. It goes with the territory.

Sure, there’s been a lot of that this election year. However, journalists who ought to know better are taking this exciting voter anger theme more seriously than they should. Obama’s the most popular president since Reagan, and for good reason. But if you promise to put people on national TV to vent, then vent they surely will.

That was my main reaction to a recent “60 Minutes” piece featuring treacly, but clever, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who gathered a carefully selected focus group that pronounced anathema on both presidential candidates.

Most blamed social media, if not all media, for their disillusionment. Well, yes. Certainly the anonymity and semianonymity of social media — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — have given the Terrys of the world an expansive space to vent.

I doubt the guy acts that way at work.

Along with that has gone a steep drop in the credibility of the “mainstream” media — something I’ve been writing about for 25 years — and a concomitant rise in “alternative” sources of misinformation and downright propaganda.

Walter Cronkite’s gone, and he’s never coming back.

Hence the first true “reality TV” presidential election in U.S. history, essentially produced and directed by cable TV news.

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi recently documented the cable networks’ “unprecedented profits.” CNN is expected to clear $1 billion, Fox News $1.67 billion and MSNBC $279.6 million from staging this degrading but exciting spectacle.

Any questions?

So far, however, it’s still just a TV show.

Selling kids short

A

young professional family told me this week they are thinking of leaving Arkansas because the state isn’t committed to education and opportunities for their kids. Another parent of a child with special needs told me she’s frustrated her school can’t afford the help her child needs to get her reading up to grade level. Another parent’s child isn’t allowed to bring textbooks home because the school doesn’t have enough of them, and can’t afford more.

Arkansas improved our school system dramatically in the past decade, but we still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, legislators just sent a dangerous message that they don’t care much for public education anymore.

We owe our progress to a bipartisan consensus that emerged to fix our unconstitutionally inadequate and unequal school system in the famous Lake View court case.

The Arkansas legislature agreed to conduct an annual review to determine the cost of providing an adequate education to our children, and to fund schools at those levels.

Arkansas funded the research-proven reforms recommended by the adequacy committee for over a decade. It boosted teacher quality and pay, revitalized curriculums, renovated schools, made AP classes the norm and more. The results poured in.

We moved up the national rankings, from 49th to 45th, up to 41st. We had the fastest improving test scores in the country.

This year the Bureau of Legislative Research found that schools need a 2.5 percent increase in 2018 and 2019 to keep pace with inflation, and a separate Special Education Task Force found our severely underfunded programs for kids with disabilities need a minimum of $20 million.

But the Legislature’s Education Committees have other ideas. The chair of the House Education Committee, Rep. Bruce Cozart (R-Hot Springs) first proposed an increase of only 0.71 percent in 2018 and zero percent in 2019, and completely eliminating the $20 million for special education.

The vote was split on party lines, for the first time in recent history, fracturing more than a decade of bipartisan support for improving schools. After Cozart’s cuts failed, he stewed to reporters that he wished he had made the adequacy recommendations illegally in secret.

Thankfully, Democratic leaders forced a compromise. The Senate Education Committee eventually approved an increase of just over 1 percent, a $4 million increase for special education and a small boost to minimum teacher salaries. That’s better than zero, but a far cry from what our students need. The partisanship of it is

alarming.

Cozart was nonchalant about the cuts, saying funding didn’t have much to do BILL with educational KOPSKY adequacy and claiming districts waste money. Districts should be held accountable, but Cozart never offered a specific example of waste he would eliminate to offset the tens of millions in cuts. Cozart’s view also contradicts the Lake View ruling that found a lack of funding was a leading cause of our educational deficiencies.

Tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy, are driving these attempts to cut education spending. More than $100 million in tax favors passed last session, and more than $100 million more are proposed for the coming session. Those tax breaks must be paid for by spending cuts elsewhere, including the needs of children and schools.

Funding is not the only area where our schools are under attack. Cozart is the same lawmaker who sponsored the legislation last session allowing school districts to be given to private charter corporations.

Arkansas is falling behind again after a decade of growth. Our lawmakers are taking their eyes off the consensus-based, proven reforms we know will help every student — quality teachers, expanding pre-K and afterschool/summer programs, helping children in poverty and adequate funding. Instead, these lawmakers are following billionaire school privatizers who want to bet our future on failed trickledown economics and the polarizing siren song of charter schools, resegregation, vouchers and other gimmicks.

The future of Arkansas depends on getting public education right. Nearly any economist will tell you a quality education system far outweighs tax cuts in sustaining economic growth and opportunity. Can’t Arkansas do better than 49th in economic, health and social well-being?

We need to demand that lawmakers return to the bipartisan track record of investing in the proven, consensus-based education reforms we know will help our students. It’s about a 2.5 percent increase to keep up with inflation this time, and another $20 million to help children with special needs. We need to stop gutting standards and privatizing schools.

Quality public education shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It shouldn’t even be a controversial one.

Bill Kopsky is executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel.

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Gator bites

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n a year where an unapologetic demagogue can sniff the U.S. presidency, I suppose the turbulence of the 2016 football season for Arkansas could’ve been anticipated, but by all benchmarks, the 31-10 win over Florida in Fayetteville was utterly weird.

I cannot recall a game, for instance, where so many players were laid prone with in-game injuries. This phenomenon disparately affected Florida, as the Gators’ stellar linebacker Jarrad Davis battled an ankle injury all day and was commonly seen limping off and onto the field until he was shelved for good late in the game. Alex Anzalone went out with a season-curtailing broken arm. A few defensive backs got their bells rung as the Hogs, stewing after that rout at Auburn, played their most physical game on both sides of the ball all season.

The brutality wasn’t the lone anomaly.

Jim McElwain, brought in by the Gators for his alleged play-calling acumen, seemed oddly uninterested in disproving the argument that the SEC East is by and large mediocre. Quarterback Luke Del Rio’s first pass of the day, a slant into traffic, was jarred into the air for Santos Ramirez to turn into an easy pick-six. His throws didn’t get substantially better from there, and frankly, it appeared that he would be yanked at some juncture so backup Austin Appleby could attempt a rescue.

Not only did Del Rio never leave the field — and thereby was permitted to throw another pick later and get sacked three times — he was rarely asked to employ a competent trio of tailbacks. Again, while the Hogs were destined to play better than they did two weeks earlier, if only because there was no alternative direction than upward, the Gators essentially acknowledged their limitations early. They had one run longer than 10 yards, and it didn’t come from shifty sophomore Jordan Scarlett, who had chewed up Missouri and Georgia the past two weeks to the tune of 194 combined yards. On this day, he hit season lows in attempts (five) and yards (15), impossible to project after Arkansas ceded a programworst 543 rushing yards just 14 days before.

Florida was so putrid offensively that almost half of its aggregate total yardage came in the fourth quarter against a cushiony pass defense. Even then, Del Rio was scattershot from the pocket and worse on the run. Coordinator Robb Smith had restored the luster of the defense and his own name in a matter of three hours, all necessary to snuff a quarter-century of SEC failures against the Gators. Nine straight wins for Florida over the Razor-

backs’ first 25 seasons in the conference were likely a calling card for Bret Bielema throughout the bye week: If BEAU Danny Ford (0-3), WILCOX Houston Nutt (0-3) and Bobby Petrino (0-2) couldn’t kill that ignominy, then the big guy would stand at the helm of the team that would.

And it was amazingly routine. But for Austin Allen’s worst throw of the season, a first-quarter interception that Duke Dawson had no issues snatching and returning for the Gators’ only touchdown, this would’ve been an even more emphatic rout.

Allen cast aside the errant toss to again be efficient (15 of 26 for 243 yards and a score to Drew Morgan), and took substantially less abuse in the pocket, too.

The day belonged to the tailbacks, though. Rawleigh Williams III continued a push for First-Team All-SEC honors by reeling off 148 yards on 26 carries, and for the fourth straight contest he had two productive receptions out of the backfield. He’s a shade behind Auburn battering ram Kamryn Pettway in the overall rushing rankings in the conference, but has outpaced him in receiving yards. If he can crank out 45 yards against LSU, he cracks the 1,000-yard mark in a year where many wondered just how assertive he could be after last year’s neck injury.

Williams’ unexpected consistency is starting to be matched by freshman Devwah Whaley’s jitterbugging and sprinting. The Beaumont, Texas, product had his best all-around game against a defense engineered to deny him lanes and free space to make downfield acceleration happen. With 14 carries for 66 yards, and two big catches for 69 more as a safety valve, the implementation of his hands and feet in the passing game is vital. Allen’s been savaged all year because of a porous line, so the best way to keep the pass rush at bay is to make the backs dual threats, and Whaley’s work there makes him a huge asset over the final month.

That damnable Auburn game has the initial appearance of being an aberration on the back end of an exhausting eightweek stretch, and the Hogs now stare down a modest remaining schedule. A third straight defeat of LSU would get the Hogs back in the rankings ahead of two road tilts at Starkville and Columbia, keeping the program in line for a nine- or 10-win season that will inevitably net longer looks from high-end prospects come January.

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Tomorrow

B

y the time you read this, let’s hope, it will be over. We put that “hope” in there to pour one out for our homies lost in The Battle of Hanging Chad in Election 2000, when over a hundred million votes and who would hold the most powerful office in the world came down to a handful of nimrods who couldn’t fully push a stylus through a piece of paper in Florida. We love the Redneck Rivera, Florida, but don’t screw this up for us this time. Seriously.

No matter how it all turns out, it’s done for another year. All the political signs on their way to be used as insulation for chicken coops as God intended, all the attack ads that made life like the world’s longest spookhouse henceforth seen only by political science students, all the polling places gone back to being schools and churches and quiet firehouses where the company Dalmatian sleeps on the seat of the ladder truck, waiting for the bell. The Observer can’t quite say good riddance to it all. Every four years, we get to experience the great spectacle of Americans actually caring for a moment about politics, as beautiful, in its way, as wildebeest migrations on the African savanna, or a capybara being slowly swallowed by an anaconda. Can you tell from that crack about the anaconda that The Observer is well and truly done with Election 2016?

Don’t let us bring you down, Dear Voter, especially when Dorito Mussolini just lost the presidential election, thus denying a hair-trigger demagogue with authoritarian fascist tendencies command of a $500 billion per year military, an electronic surveillance state that can know in 10 keystrokes or less what time you took a deuce this morning, and enough nukes to turn Earth into a lifeless cinder … we hope.

Outlook unclear, our Magic 8-Ball says, try again later. As we write this, it’s still all up to you, America. Hope you made the right decision.

If it goes the way we pray, this country (and probably the world) will have

done a rail grind on the edge of a very dark abyss. No matter who wins, we no longer get to smugly say, “It can’t happen here,” because it has happened here now. We further know that if a large portion of this country doesn’t do something to turn the ship away from the iceberg of enmity, it’s going to happen again and again until it happens all the way. And then you’ve got Hitler with access to surveillance satellites, drone warfare and stealth bombers.

This is assuming a lot, of course, writing this as The Observer is on the morning of Election Day, the sky outside our window as gray as a wool overcoat. It assumes that, as you read this, we are not all spending our first day in Orangemerica, the haters vindicated and jubilant; the chants for a beeyouteeful wahl ringing in the streets; the 10 percenters on the march under their confusing flourish of American and Confederate flags; the talk of Dorito’s political opponent being jailed or worse rising up from the haymows and little towns like a craven prayer; all the decent, hardworking, desperate people who supported him in the hope he will bring back their job on the factory floor not yet knowing they’ve been bamboozled by the best. From the safety or wreck of tomorrow, Dear Reader, witness The Observer’s fear this Election Day morning, as we sit here knowing the state we love will cleave to a sexist, racist, barely coherent Vladimir Putin fanboy by 15 percentage points or more.

Even if the vision visited upon us

by The Ghost of Election Day Future doesn’t come to pass, we worry strange creatures have been loosed from chaos to stalk the land for years, plotting and scheming until they find someone smarter, less rash, more polished, less flawed, but with all the same terrible marbles rolling around in his head.

But we’ll worry about that later. Right now, we’re thinking about Wednesday.

Good luck, America. We’ll see who you are tomorrow.

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

Toward a new Arkansas Arts Center

T

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

he spare budget and the complexity of the project was a common theme sounded last week by architectural firms selected as finalists in the search for designers for the renovated and expanded Arkansas Arts Center.

The Arts Center has estimated the hard construction budget at around $46 million, which includes the renovation of 90,000 square feet, 40,000 square feet of new construction and 35,000 square feet of landscaping. The city will provide around $35 million from a bond issue to be retired with proceeds from a 2-cent tax on hotel

rooms; the rest of the money for what is anticipated to be a $60 million project will be raised privately. A capital campaign for private funding is in a quiet phase — no private dollars have yet been pledged.

The firms — Allied Works, Shigeru Ban, Studio Gang, Thomas Phifer and Partners, and Snohetta — did not present schematics but talked about their projects; their strategies for creating sustainable, LEED-certified buildings; how they would connect the new arts center to MacArthur Park; and how they would work with the public to satisfy

COURTESY SNOHETTA

Dykers — as did most of the presentSNOHETTA IS AN INTERNATIONAL FIRM FOUNDED IN OSLO, Norway, ers after him — said the new building with offices around the globe, includneeds a core from which people could see all the Arts Center has to offer: art ing in Manhattan. Among the firm’s numerous projects are the San Franinstruction, a theater, the art galleries, a cisco MOMA expansion, the Lascaux IV notable collection of works on paper. It’s Caves Museum also important in France, the for museums to Alexandria have daylight, areas for conLibrary in Egypt templation — and the James Beard Public “palate cleansers” Market in Port— and a holistic land. Snohetta is feel, Dykers said. partnering with He (and the the Albrightarchitects who Knox Art Galfollowed) noted lery in Buffalo, BRINGING THE PUBLIC IN: Snohetta’s that landscapSFMOMA expansion created a glass-walled ing is cheaper N.Y., to plan for first floor to draw visitors in. than construcits expansion. tion and could Founder Craig Dykers focused on the firm’s be put to good use as connectivity.

Selection committee member Dean expansion of the SFMOMA, where the glass-walled first floor of the museum Kumpuris, whose focus as a member of welcomes the public into the museum. the city board has been Riverfront Park Dykers suggested it might be a good and the River Market district, posed thing to “loosen up” about where prothe question to all the architects how graming is located — for example, movthe new Arts Center could connect the two areas together. ing the Museum School to the Wolfe “Design for local, and global will folGallery and opening the walls with low,” Dykers said. glass so people could see what’s going That was echoed by the other archion inside; he noted that SFMOMA has held parties on its loading dock just to tects: If you build a great place that peoshake things up. ple want to come to, they will.

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NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

community desires for the project.

The Arts Center’s renovation challenges stem from how its physical plant has grown over the years, with eight additions surrounding the 1937 Museum of Fine Arts. The nature of construction over the years has led to numerous problems, including multiple roof levels, the HVAC system connection, lighting and other issues. The additions and split level design have also made for a confusing facility: The art galleries are separated by a gift shop, atrium and restaurant, and there’s no clear indication from the newer part of the building (the atrium, opened in 2000) to the Children’s Theatre and virtually invisible museum school. The Arts Center has also outgrown its storage and curatorial space and wants to increase

the museum school offerings.

All the finalists praised the Arts Center as a successful model for the future — combining visual arts, theater and the museum school — and said a new design would enhance the public’s awareness of the programs.

The winning firm will have to find a way to turn what is now a box with its back turned to Ninth Street into an inviting building that embraces MacArthur Park. Now, with entrances from 10th Street and the south side, the building feels plopped down in a park to which it has no connection.

Each firm sent principal architects to speak for half an hour and take questions from the committee. Here’s a rundown on each presentation:

SHIGERU BAN OF NEW YORK, Firm founder Shigeru Ban said it PARIS AND TOKYO counts among was a shame that the facade of the 1937 its projects the Aspen Museum of Art, WPA-built Museum of Fine Arts was the Centre Pompidou in Metz, France, buried in the building instead of being and the Oita Prefectural Art Museum visible from the park. in Japan, as well as the Unlike the other Cite Musicale on Ile firms, Shiguru Ban preSeguin, Paris, which sented conceptual drawis still under construcings of a future Arts Center, with a timber tion. The firm’s style is distinctive, employtruss entryway to a new ing wood in basketry atrium incorporating forms, such as the the 1937 facade, passagescreen that surrounds ways to a central core, a the Aspen Museum lightweight second story and woven and ribbed over the museum school, arches. and a tower addition to Zachary Moreadministrative offices land, senior architect and a rooftop cafe that with Shigeru Ban, first could remain open when noted problems it dis- BASKETMAKER: Shigeru the Arts Center is closed.

Ban’s design for the Aspen cerned at the Arts Cen- Art Museum created a Ban also suggested lowering the ceilings ter: Its multiple entries, basket-like cladding around a “disorienting” layout, a three-story glass-walled in the galleries, advice the difficulty of locat- building unlikely to be embraced. ing the Museum School The drawings need inti(which exists as various classrooms off mate spaces yes, but the temporary the open courtyards), the lack of a sepexhibits need the taller walls. Senior arate entry for staff, high-ceiling galarchitect Moreland assured City Direcleries at odds with the permanent coltor Dean Kumpuris that “great design,” lection of works on paper “extremely opening the Arts Center to the park challenging” to light, poorly placed and highlighted programming would loading docks and a walled-off feel bring people to the Arts Center from the River Market district. from the park.

COURTESY ASPEN ART MUSEUM

Five architectural firms present ideas on design, connectivity.

ALLIED WORKS, OF areas of focus and programPORTLAND AND NEW ming. Another addition, he Y O R K , designed the said, would “add to the chaos,” Clyfford Still Museum in and added that there would Denver, the National Music be “no easy answer” to solvCentre of Canada in Calgary, ing the Arts Center’s many INTRIGUING INTERIOR: The Clyfford the Museum of Arts and design drawbacks and “do Still Museum in Denver was designed Design in New York and the by finalist Allied Works. it in a way you can afford. …

Contemporary Art Museum St. If you had $130 million, you Louis, among other buildings. “We don’t have a could totally redo it,” but that’s not the budget. style,” founding principal Brad Cloepfil told the Instead, he said, you could create the feel of a audience. “We try to discover the possible ... this new building through landscaping. one will take some time. … What this requires is City Director Dean Kumpuris told Cloepfil the a relationship.” city has an “identity problem,” and wanted the Arts He said it will be necessary to “define the life Center and the River Market district to help resolve of this institution” now and in the future through that by creating a connection between them. “Are client engagement and meeting with stakeholdyou up to that task?” he asked. “Oh, of course,” Cleopers and the community. As part of that, Cloepfil fil said. He said iconic architecture alone is not the said the firm would “embed” itself in Little Rock, answer — he called the Daniel Liebeskind’s angular sending Mountain Home native and Allied Works expansion of the Denver Art Museum a failure — but architect Chris Brown back home. He added, to what goes inside. The Clyfford Still Museum is a “box laughter from the audience, that he expected he hidden by trees,” he said, but the experience of the would have to go to a lot of cocktail parties. “I know museum is the draw. Still, he said, the Arts Center is you want a beautiful piece of architecture. ... Let’s “introverted,” and a landscaping bridge to the street get this right.” would soften its edges. “You should feel like you’ve entered the museum when you step into the park.”

Cloepfil recommended the renovation should reflect the scale of the city, saying its space should Cloepfil said the firm would create a “digital feel like a “living room” as a metaphor for Little interface,” which he defined as “beyond a website,” Rock’s intimate feel. The design should also “be to engage and communicate with the community and offer transparency about the process. the amplifier of” the Arts Center’s three main

STUDIO GANG OF CHICAGO AND NEW YORK, founded by Jeanne Gang, has among other projects in its portfolio the Writers Theater in Glencoe, Ill., the Gaudi-like Aqua Tower in Chicago. The firm also won a design competition to create the new Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History.

Gang, a MacArthur Fellow, praised the multifaceted programming of the Arts Center and said the challenges of renovation it presents are exciting.

Gang showed the design of the Gilder Center, which she said the firm added to a museum that had not eight additions, as the Arts Center has, but 25. Their design both created a twisting canyon-like passageway along the mid-museum axis of W. 79th St. that was like “a destination in and of itself”; iconic design features that would make the Arts Center a destination for purely aesthetic purposes is a goal.

Gang said the research-oriented firm was hired by the European Union to assess visitor experience and the economic contribution of six cultural institutions. “We learned so much doing this and I want to bring that experience to bear on your project,” she said.

Challenges here: “Everything we see is very closed,” Gang said, with a perimeter that is 95 percent wall. “The design starts inside out.” She pointed to the open design of the Writers Theater, which features a glasswalled performance space and cladding of wooden ribbing on the second floor.

Gang’s PowerPoint presentation

included prelimiof the Arts Center’s nary sketches that location in MacArgave the Arts Centhur Park. “You have all the landter an entrance off the semi-circular scaping you could drive that runs in ever want ... that’s a the front of the good way to stretch Arts Center and the budget,” Gang the MacArthur said. The park Museum of Milialso offers a way for Arts Center tary History, a main programming to inner passage on a MOVING ART BEYOND THE BUILDING: Studio north-south axis, a Gang’s design of the Writers Theater in Glencoe, “spill outward” and place for “outdoor Ill., created multiple use spaces for performance make the mission and events. art-making” and a more visible. sculpture garden south of the building leading “Museums are also community centers” to a re-landscaped pond. She showed images rather than places for the elite, Gang said. of her firm’s renovation of the South Pond “The only thing wrong [here] is the facility is getting in the way.” and its surroundings at the Lincoln Park Zoo, which she said created a natural space THE NEXT STEP IN THE SELECTION PROCESS WILL BE “where animals visits to buildings, so the selection committee can “confirm what come voluntarily.” they heard in the presentation” and get a feel for the how the spaces The firm used recywork, Arts Center Director Todd Herman said. The committee won’t cled plastic milk botvisit all buildings by all five finalists but will go to those designed by tles for the walkway its top two choices. Herman said the Arts Center will not announce and prefabricated which architects have been selected for the site visits. He expects a firm to be chosen by early December. woven wood for an open-air pavilion.

Along with Kumpuris, committee members include Herman; It wouldn’t make Truman Tolefree, city Parks and Recreation director; Mary Ellen sense, given the Irons, Arts Center Board of Directors chairwoman; directors Isabel budget, to reclad Anthony, Van Tilbury and Chucki Bradbury; Bobby Tucker, Arkanthe entire building, sas Arts Center Foundation chair; Chauncey Holloman, small busiGang said, but that ness development coordinator for Little Rock; and Bobby Roberts, former Central Arkansas Library System director. does matter because COURTESY JACKIE JENNINGS

THOMAS PHIFER AND PARTNERS OF NEW YORK has designed buildings for the Clemson School of Architecture, the North Carolina Museum of Art expansion, the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Md., a gallery in the Corning Museum of Glass, the Warsaw Art Museum and Theater and the New York City Velodrome, among other projects. Presenters Gabriel Smith, Katie Bennett and Adam Ruffin all grew up in the South — Bennett is a native Arkansan — so they said they felt a connection.

They did not bring conceptual drawings because they said it wasn’t appropriate; they said they want to meet with the community and “learn your values.” They listed known priorities as connectivity, to keep the doors open while work is ongoing, to design “architecture that works” and to the budget, to “bring reality to the project.” They said Herman’s estimates of $250 to $275 a square foot for renovation and $400 a square foot for new construction was par — “but just barely” — for the region.

Smith said a centralized entry, understandable circulation from space to space (he said the layout is “ very difficult for a visitor to understand”) and a stand-alone expansion would give the renovated Arts Center a new identity, one to be defined by the community. The Phifer group also advocated for “unearthing” the 1937 building.

To City Director Dean Kumpuris’ question about synergy with the River Market district, Smith said perhaps a vertical element could be added, a “beacon.” But,

COURTESY CLYFFORD STILL

COURTESY LIGHT WHITE

LIGHT WHITE: Thomas Phifer’s design for the expansion of the Corning Glass Museum echoed the transparency of glass.

like the other firms, Phifer’s architects said that “powerful architecture” would provide a “psychological presence” that would be felt elsewhere.

Arts Center Director Todd Herman noted that the designs of the North Carolina Museum and Glenstone are “turned in,” with large expanses of windowless walls, and wondered how Phifer would “present a welcoming facade.” Smith laughed, and said, yes, some of their projects “have a surprise on the inside.” But he cited the Clemson architecture school as an example of an open building and the importance of landscaping to draw people in.

Committee member Bobby Tucker said it was important to him that Ninth Street be the entrance, but, as Smith asked, does that mean you drop people off and then drive around to the parking lots?

arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

13

The Kingdom of Norman Club owner and former Miss Gay America Norman Jones has been providing safe spaces for Arkansas’s LGBT community for 40 years. Love him or not, he has helped make being LGBT acceptable in Arkansas.

BY DAVID KOON

N

BULLIED: A teenage Norman Jones was bullied for being effeminate until he was made manager of the football and basketball teams.

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NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

orman Jones cannot let go.

Even at 70, Jones, who has run gay clubs in Arkansas for 40 years — including Little Rock’s Discovery, lovingly called just “Disco” by generations of young nocturnals, gay and straight — must be involved in nearly every decision made at Discovery and Triniti, Discovery’s sister club, both situated in a cavernous warehouse space on Jessie Road in Riverdale.

In the middle of our interview, for instance, on an afternoon when Discovery was a hive of activity as his most trusted employees prepared for another summer weekend, Jones excused himself after being told workmen were there to measure a window. Not install a window, mind you. Just to measure it. “I’ve got to handle this,” Jones said, then rushed off, his face set like a man about to do battle with fire.

Though he has been telling people for years that he will eventually retire to Florida and while away his days on a beach with the waves lapping at his toes, talk to Jones or anybody who is around him on a day-to-day basis and you’ll know the smart money is not on him breathing his last into a margarita straw in Fort Lauderdale. No, when he goes, it will likely be at Disco. And then, maybe, he will haunt the place, restored — if the universe is kind — to the fresh-faced drag queen beauty who

won the first Miss Gay America crown back in 1972. He speaks as wistfully as Norman Jones gets of wishing he could clone 25 copies of himself, so he could do everything without having to rely on others who might not do it his way. If home is the place where you feel most in control of your own time and destiny, Discovery surely is his home. Inside those walls, Norman Jones sees even the sparrow fall.

You don’t run clubs for 40 years, and especially LGBT clubs, without pissing people off, and Jones has surely pissed some people off. The first result when you Google “Norman Jones, Discovery” for instance, is a blog post by a group called “Fed Up Queers” from 2009, discussing what they call a “No To Norman!” protest — it would be the “first of many” the lone post states — apparently organized because Jones’ club Backstreet, now called Triniti, started charging a $15 door fee to patrons between the ages of 18 and 21.

So yeah, Jones has some haters. But any cross or catty word ever said about him must be balanced with the good: He is a man who fought prejudice in heels and a pageant gown decades before it was OK to be gay in America; who attended the first national gay pride march in Washington, D.C., helping carry the banner for Arkansas with friends who are now all dead; who bank-

The girl next door A native of the tiny town of Sparkman, Jones was born in a plank shack with no indoor plumbing in June 1946, the son of a sawmill worker. Eventually, the family moved to Malvern, where Jones’ father had taken a job at a Reynolds Metals Co. plant. When Jones was in the third grade, the family moved to Hot Springs. Picked on in school as a boy for his flamboyant mannerisms, Jones said he eventually gained some measure of relief from taunting when he became the manager for the football and basketball teams at Lakeside High School. “Everybody knew I was effeminate,” he said. “Back then, gay wasn’t a word that you used. It was, ‘somebody is a fag.’ But all of that stopped as soon as I became associated with the basketball and football team. I was protected by the coaches and I’ll never forget them for that. It made my high school life much easier.”

During his senior year in high school, Jones said, he started frequenting a local pool, where he soon found he was obsessed with staring at a handsome male lifeguard. Still without a concept of what it meant to be gay after growing up in a religious family where even mentioning sex was taboo, Jones said the feelings troubled and confused him.

But from that moment on, he knew he was different. He had several dalliances with male friends over the next few years, even as he continued to date girls from his family’s church.

After graduating from high school in 1964, Jones went on to Ouachita Bap-

tist University in Arkadelphia, but lacked focus and flunked out in his sophomore year. With the Vietnam War being fought, Jones feared being drafted into the Army, so he joined the Navy and was assigned to work as a dental technician at Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, D.C. While Jones had tentatively sampled some of the few gay-friendly bars in Arkansas at the time, it was in D.C. that Jones started experiencing gay life and nightlife that was different from anything he’d ever experienced in the South.

“We had a gay club here in Little Rock in the basement of the Grady Manning [Hotel],” he said. “It was dangerous.

You could be stopped on the street, especially if you were going into the bars. We had one here and one in Hot Springs, and you would be jeered at, people would get out of their cars and throw stuff at you. You’d be called ‘faggot’ and things. When I was in the military, that kind of thing didn’t happen in Washington, D.C.” After he got out of the military, Jones returned home to Hot Springs and took a job with the state in the Employment Security Division. But he soon found himself thirsting for the club life he’d known in D.C. Eventually, he found a bar frequented by gay men in Hot Springs, befriending several of the closeknit group of regulars there. He was taken under the wing of a friend named Charles, who performed in drag under the name Tuna Starr.

It was still a very dangerous time to be gay in Arkansas, a fact of which the local community was constantly reminded. Soon after he returned to Hot Springs, Jones said, a new gay-friendly club that opened near the Hot Springs airport was shot up by homophobes while the bar was full of patrons.

“We were sitting there one night, and all the windows were shot out,” he said. The shooters “were in Jeeps, and they drove around and around the club and they took shotguns and just shot all the windows out. Fortunately, the windows were way up and the walls were concrete block to the floor. All the glass started coming in on us. We had to wait until it was clear, but when we left, we never came back. It put those people out of business.”

In 1970, still being mentored by Tuna Starr, Jones started his drag career, doing perfor-

DIXIE KNIGHT

rolled, often out of his own pocket, some of the first outreach and financial assistance to Arkansans dying with AIDS. That’s all in addition to the fact that he has somehow — by sheer force of will — opened and kept alive clubs that served as some of the only safe spaces for LGBT people to congregate and socialize in the days when gay people were openly and proudly hated. These clubs continue to work as a crucial melting pot of gay and straight, now that attitudes have changed. While those who don’t like him might call him a control freak, an optimistic person might see it differently: He is a man who believes his mission in life is important enough to sweat every detail, even window measuring, and so he does.

NORMAN JONES: Jones started his drag career in 1970 as Norma Lou, but changed the name to Norma Kristie soon after. arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

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GREG SULLIVAN

MISS GAY AMERICA: Jones won the pageant in 1972.

BRIAN CHILSON

If he had to do it over again, he said, he wouldn’t have gone in the club business.

He would have stayed with the state, and would be retired by now, drawing a check for staying home like the rest of the old bureaucrats. Knowing Jones, however, you have to wonder just how true that is.

mances in Hot Springs. He was eventually approached by the owners of a local bar about entering a pageant to select Miss Gay Arkansas. Though Jones said modern drag has become more like performance art, with wild outfits and makeup that can be as intricate as having a portrait painted on your face, success in drag in his day was largely judged by one thing: How well can you carry off the illusion of being a woman? Always small-framed, it turned out Jones was particularly good at that illusion.

Performing under his then-stage name “Norma Lou,” Jones came in second in the Miss Gay Arkansas pageant, which was held at the Drummer’s Club, the gay-friendly establishment in the basement of the Grady Manning Hotel. A few months later, the organizers of Miss Gay Arkansas informed Jones — by then performing as “Norma Kristie,” with the “Kristie” taken from the name of a model in a Playboy magazine a friend was reading on the way to a pageant in Texas — that the reigning Miss Gay Arkansas would have to step down. They asked Jones if he would assume the title, and he accepted.

In June 1972, Jones, Starr and two friends traveled to Nashville, where

GENERAL MANAGER: Ken Brown, who has been with Discovery for 38 years, says when Jones retires, so will the nightclub.

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Jones was to compete for the title of the first Miss Gay America. With only $400 to make the trip, eat and rent rooms for the multiday event, the group soon ran out of money. They spent the two days leading up to the pageant surviving on crackers and tomato soup made from a bottle of ketchup lifted from the restaurant of their hotel. In his 2014 selfpublished autobiography, “My Life, My Pageant, My Crown,” Jones wrote that he was so sure he wouldn’t even come close to winning in Nashville that he didn’t prepare for the on-stage interview portion of the pageant, which was open only to finalists. After days of competition, however, the field was whittled down and Jones was the last queen standing, crowned as the first Miss Gay America (his interview question, by the way, was: “How do you think President Nixon is doing as president?” to which Jones began his reply with, “I think he’s doing a hell of a job!”)

“Going to that pageant and winning it was the best decision I’ve ever made,” Jones said. “Out of all these drag queens, here I was, a little country girl who sat back there in the corner, and they called out the winner and it was me. I said, ‘How in the hell did that happen?’ ” Fifteen years later, Jones said, he was in Indianapolis when he happened to run into one of the judges from the pageant, and finally got to ask the question — why had he won?

“He said, ‘You looked like the girl next door,’ ” Jones said. “ ‘You looked more like a girl than anybody up there, and that’s what the owner told us to look for.’ ”

drew in throngs of customers, gay and straight.

“It became very successful overnight, because it was the only bar left over there for gay people,” he said. “Nobody else was playing gay dance club music except for us, so people were lined up on Friday and Saturday night, gay and straight people both, to come in the club.

But it was straight people who understood they were coming into a mostly gay facility.” Though the clientele of his clubs was predominantly LGBT in the early days, Jones believes the allure of

gay dance clubs like Norma Kristie’s and Discovery brought straight and LGBT people into close proximity every weekend and greatly promoted gay acceptance into the American mainstream.

Relatively flush from his success in Hot Springs, Jones opened his second club, Discovery, in 1979. The first iteration, called “Discovery 1” by Jones and his longtime employees, was located in a former One-Eyed Jack’s restaurant at the corner of Asher and University avenues in Little Rock. Eventually overwhelmed by the headaches of trying to

run both Norma Kristie’s and Discovery, he closed the Hot Springs club the same year.

As Norma Kristie’s had been, Discovery was a hit with Little Rock clubgoers, attracting large, predominantly gay crowds on weekends. Out of room and offered a deal to lease more space, Jones moved Discovery to its current location, a 22,000-square-foot warehouse in Riverdale, in 1982.

Jones said that while problems at Discovery were minimal — tiffs, spats, a few months where local kids stood

AUTUMN, unfiltered.

Club kid During his reign as Miss Gay America, Jones traveled the country, doing drag shows and perfecting his performance — sometimes by way of painful rejection by audiences who disliked his stage presence. Jones eventually bought shares in and gained an ownership stake of the Miss Gay America pageant, which he would run for the next 30 years.

Visiting clubs as Miss Gay America, Jones got a feel for the idea that opening a club of his own in Hot Springs might not be a bad way to make a living. In 1975, he borrowed $15,000 from a Memphis investor and opened a club called Norma Kristie’s on Central Avenue, just across from the Arlington Hotel. It was the first true disco in Hot Springs, and the music and energy of the place soon

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outside a fence near the club has had to cultivate to thrive in and taunted the patrons until the club and drag pageant busiJones and some “rough cusness, he has a soft heart, and tomers” from the bar conwill bring his formidable will to bear to help those in need. vinced them to go away — regular police harassment was an “He would pay for whatissue starting out. In his book, ever they needed,” she said.

Jones writes of being raided “He would pay their rent. He while 200 people were in the was paying for medical care. club, with police forcing patrons He has the softest heart of anyup against the wall at gunpoint, one I’ve ever known. He would demanding I.D.s and taunting go to the hospitals. That’s just not his thing, but he did it. He his customers with homophobic slurs, which Jones believes overcame his fear of doctors was an attempt to evoke a vioand hospitals and how they treat gay people in general. lent response so officers could He would go up there and respond in kind.

In terms of keeping Discovmake them bathe them, and ery up and running, an equally if they wouldn’t bathe them, daunting problem was just gethe’d bathe them himself. He ting service and delivery peodid so much.” ple through the door of a place Just as important as the funds provided by HPWA, they knew catered to gays. “I Burks said, was that Discovcouldn’t get service technicians to come, air conditioning people, ery provided a place for people they barely wanted to deliver to be among friends when fear beer to me. I couldn’t get things and confusion about the disdone,” Jones said. “Because we ease was at its peak. As hapwere a gay club, people wouldn’t pened with gay-friendly clubs deal with us — beer distribuall over the country, Discovtors, alcohol distributors … they ery became a kind of stand-in support system for those with didn’t want to deliver. They just AIDS who had been left with treated us so differently. If a no one else. plumber had to come, we’d get charged double or triple what “He provided a place for everybody else was charged, people to go and mingle and because they didn’t want to get out of their houses. They come here.” knew there was something By the mid-1980s, Discovery seriously wrong. They knew was the biggest club in the state, they were dying. And when and served as a haven where gay you’re dying, to not have any people from all over could meet community or friends? The gay and mingle. Then AIDS came to bar is the community center.

Arkansas. Ken Brown started as It’s the only physically safe RUTH BURKS: Jones’ help was crucial to efforts to assist AIDS sufferers in the 1980s and ‘90s, the Hot a doorman at Discovery 1, and place they could be.”

Springs woman known for her work with patients says. has risen to the position of genBrown, who managed and eral manager. He has worked distributed the HWPA fund for Jones, who he calls a close from their job or something like that,” HPWA. It was one of the first groups for years, said Jones doesn’t friend, for 38 years. he said. “I had an office over there across in the state to provide direct financial help people “for the credit. He doesn’t like [the spotlight]. But he feels so lucky “It was a devastating time for us,” the street and they would drive up over help to people suffering and dying from the disease. Jones still gives 1 percent of Brown said. “We saw friends of ours who there, or they’d call me at home, because that he missed the disease. We lost so the proceeds from his clubs to the fund. were healthy, vibrant people one week, everybody had my number. They’d say: many of our friends.” and two or three weeks later, they were ‘We’ve had to move, we don’t have any “For some reason,” Brown said, “we Ruth Coker Burks, who worked as money for an apartment, we don’t have at death’s door. They didn’t know where hospice care and emotional support for were spared the disease, and we feel like to turn for help. They didn’t know what any money for food. And I’d just take hundreds of Arkansans dying with AIDS we were left for a reason,” he said. to do. [Organizers] were starting all of them personally — and I’m not saying in the 1980s and ’90s, remembers Jones he center of the universe at Disand HPWA as being crucial to helping covery and Triniti is Jones’ Forthese AIDS organizations, but it seemed anything about being a hero, at all — I’d like only certain ones could get help.” take them to load up on groceries for those suffering and dying in the early mica-topped desk, tucked into Jones remembers the early days of the them, pay their rent, help them pay their days of the epidemic. HPWA bankrolled an open nook just inside the office of epidemic as a time of fear. His friends utilities for them. The club was paying much of her work, she said, and Jones Triniti. Every decision made at the club, for that.” were dying, some of them left destitute allowed her to come into his clubs to with few exceptions, crosses that desk first. While Jones doesn’t seem to have after losing their jobs or being turned In 1984, Jones and a group of drag distribute condoms and talk to patrons about safer sex. She spoke glowingly of away by their families. “I can remember queens, several of whom would eventuslowed down a bit with age, his focus Jones, saying what you often hear about ally succumb to the disease themselves, guys driving up and their parents had still laser sharp when a problem arises, him: That underneath the hard shell he he does seem kind of tired of being in disowned them or they’d gotten fired started Helping People With AIDS, or

T

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ARKANSAS TIMES

charge. “Every time I walk through that door, it’s something,” he said. “With every step you take, it’s: ‘Let’s solve this!’

Sometimes, they don’t even let me get in the door.”

If he had to do it over again, he said, he wouldn’t have gone in the club business. He would have stayed with the state, and would be retired by now, drawing a check for staying home like the rest of the old bureaucrats. Knowing Jones, however, you have to wonder just how true that is. A life of elderly leisure with his feet up just isn’t … Norman.

Jones, who sold his stake in the Miss Gay America pageant a few years back along with two other clubs he owned in the area, said that Disco and Triniti are no longer “gay clubs.” They’re “alternative clubs” now, open to all, but often with more straight patrons than gay these days.

He said that’s a good thing for society, and a good sign of the acceptance of LGBT people. Acceptance, he said, is liberating.

“Any club you go in in Little Rock — even Electric Cowboy, the straightest place in the world, we call it Straightland — there are gay people there,” he said. “There are gay people everywhere you go. ... Every restaurant I go into, every club, there are always gay wait-

ers, gay people there. “In my business, say, and I’m going to We just had lunch at do everything I can to I’ve realized that I Loca Luna and there learn more about it.’ ” Ken Brown thinks was a whole table full have to try to learn of gay people there. and be accepting of that when Jones You probably work leaves, so will Discovery, but Jones said he with a gay person or everybody for their is willing to turn over two and don’t even beliefs, and their the reins to someone know it.” acknowledgements younger He tries, he said, to and more be accepting of every- about themselves, energetic for the right body, as he himself has but I have to be price, with the caveat: always wanted to be “You’re buying a job.” accepted. As transgen- understanding of “I make that one der issues have come myself before I can…” statement — you’re to the fore in recent buying a job — and all years, Jones said he has come around of a sudden, their whole countenance on trans rights, mostly from talking to changes,” he said. “Their face changes, trans people he trusts and trying to see and they say, ‘I think you’re probably their perspective. right. This may be more of a job than “In my business, I’ve realized that I I want to do. You’re here every day, or try to be here every day. You’re always have to try to learn and be accepting of everybody for their beliefs, and their running around talking to people. You’re acknowledgements about themselves, always doing something for the busibut I have to be understanding of myself ness.’ “ Running a club is harder these days. before I can,” he said. “That’s the reason I There are more options, and more avesay, ‘I’m still learning.’ I may say, ‘I’ve got a question about that,’ but once I have it nues to connect. For the cost of a six-pack explained to me where the person is comat the grocery store, Jones said, you can ing from, then I’ll say, ‘That sounds fine find someone on Grindr, invite him over, for you. I’m going to accept whatever you have a good time, and have two beers left

when you’re done. But his real product, Jones said, is socialization, something social media can’t provide. The beers are more expensive at Discovery, but that’s not really what you’re paying for.

“Socialization is not on social media,” he said. “It’s you and I talking.”

He realizes his blessings. Life, he said, has been like riding a carousel, and he’s glad he grabbed the brass ring the first time he went by, because you don’t make it around again for another shot. Part of that has just been about knowing himself and what he needs from himself and others. One of the few things Jones remembers from college, he said, is a line from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” “to see ourselves as others see us.” In his drag career, his personal life and business, he has tried to strive for that ideal.

“Others may not like me,” he said.

“Others may love me. But I have to consider how others see me. That’s one of my lessons. Today you see me in work clothes. Tomorrow you’ll see me all shined up like a new penny. You may see me different today than you will tomorrow. But if we could see ourselves each day as others see us, we’d all be much happier.”

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Refrain for the refugee Leyla McCalla Trio roared, softly.

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

VARI-COLORED SONGS: Free Feral (left) and Leyla McCalla, two-thirds of the Leyla McCalla Trio at South on Main Thursday night as part of Oxford American's "Archetypes and Troubadours" concert series.

W

ith a critically acclaimed musical tribute to the poems of Langston Hughes and a successful stint with the Carolina Chocolate Drops in her rearview mirror, multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla brought her trio — McCalla, violist Free Feral and banjo player Daniel Tremblay — to South on Main as part of the Oxford American’s “Archetypes & Troubadours” series last Thursday, a final date in the United States before leaving to spend the rest of the year 20

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

performing in Switzerland, Belgium and France.

An adopted child of New Orleans born to Haitian human rights activists in New York, McCalla relies on Haitian and French Creole culture in much of the work on her 2016 release, “A Day for the Hunter, A Day For the Prey.” The trio began that title track from a complete state of quiet, broken suddenly by McCalla’s tapping a one-note rhythm on the cello as if it were a hammered dulcimer, with the bow acting as ham-

mer, then joined by Feral on viola typing out that same rhythm, then by Tremblay on the banjo. They didn’t strum, they struck, using the strings percussively in unison, like they were communicating a message in Morse code.

Tremblay, being two strings up over his colleagues, allowed the banjo to resonate bell-like overtones — harmonics, as they’re often called. It was a running rhythm, a migratory rhythm, the musical equivalent of the tale of Haitian independence as told by McCalla, who

related to the audience before diving in: “It’s a song about packing everything up and moving your family to a new place, and all the decisions that go into that.”

Earlier this year — and offstage, where she wasn’t quite so beholden to the rules of decorum governing the length of one’s stage patter — she’d talked about the song in a bit more depth. “I wrote the song thinking about Haitian boat people, refugees who travel by boat from Haiti to the United States, and the vulnerability

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and desperation of that position,” she told NPR. “Even though that’s a specific source of inspiration, we’re seeing the same struggle with the Syrians heading to Greece, and we’ve been seeing it all over the world for a long time.”

McCalla wore a long bronze dress that allowed free movement of her tattooed arms, toned from cello playing and from being the mother of a 2-yearold. With the ease and calm that comes from, as Smart Girls’ Alexa Peters put it, McCalla’s routine of “self-care, which revolves around yoga, cooking (this winter it was all cornbread and roasted vegetables), and writing songs,” she led the trio through a host of songs so delicate as to require complete trust between the musicians, with no room for rhythmical uncertainty or sloppy bowing.

They followed “Day for the Hunter” with “Les plats sont tous mis sur la table,” a number written by the famous French Louisiana fiddler Canray Fontenot and recorded a few years before he died, with McCalla quipping a translation of the lyrics: “Where can I find a do-nothing job? Where can I find a woman who’s hungry when I’m hungry?” With a slow build, they presented “Heart of Gold,” “Girl” and “Latibonit” with arrangements true to their versions on McCalla’s two albums.

“Salangadou,” though, which McCalla recorded as a duet with New Orleans singer Sarah Quintana, took on an impossibly crushing sense of longing with Free Feral as the duet partner. “A lot of the songs on the album are about being disenfranchised or powerless,

and ‘Salangadou’ is about a mother whose child is missing. There’s nothing more powerless than the feeling you have when your child’s missing,” she said.

Their “Love Again Blues,” with an air of elegance that’d go over better in Alice Tully Hall than in Ground Zero, announced blues music’s kinship to early acoustic country music.

They covered the calypso hit “Money Is King” by Growling Tiger (a.k.a. Neville Marcano), switching a lyric here and there to offer a not-so-subtle commentary on the election cycle. There was an easy bounce to “Changing Tide” that belied its devastating lyrics, an homage to McCalla’s time in New Orleans postKatrina when, she says, she was “falling in love with a place that’s so fragile, ecologically.” Then, “Blue Runner,” which is about chasing a “blue runner” snake out of the room, and sounded like exactly that, a sort of Louisiana equivalent of “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

McCalla channeled a teacher’s touch for “Fey-O,” instructing us to sing one sort of “Fey-O” in response to this, another kind of “Fey-O” in response to that, getting us into the groove before affirming, “You nailed it.” Then, like the crowd at a Bobby McFerrin concert, the audience was momentarily in possession of that lovely, fleeting high that comes from being pitched musical softballs from teammates with far higher batting averages than your own.

And, because the venue’s sound engineer understands how to amplify each of those sounds sensitively and crisply, the musical personality of each instrument came through in technicolor; we heard quiets, louds, approaches, retreats, the heavy lean of each sustained note, the sharpness of each staccato note.

About 23 hours before the show, as the Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory

played on a television and Young Gods of America reminded a Wednesday night audience what a punk rock show should feel like, I’d stood in a bar singing McCalla’s praises to a friend, having only ever heard the studio versions of her work, and fervently, if pessimistically, hoping the audience Thursday night would be rapt enough to allow the silences between notes to speak, to give the kind of attention that’s broken only when the rattle of the cocktail shaker’s in order. It was just so, and by necessity — McCalla’s music has all the vibrancy characteristic of the Cajun music whose history it borrows from, but none of the trumpets or party favors. Although I have no doubts the trio could seriously get down with a barn dance or a bonfire if the occasion called for it, the dance floor need not be cleared for the show they’re offering now. In fact, if you’ve positioned yourself in front of one-toomany maxed-out speakers without earplugs in your day, you may just have to lean in a little to catch everything.

After 14 numbers, an announcement from McCalla that she’d be selling merch over near the door and that “even if you don’t want to buy anything, stopping by for a hug is … totally an option,” the group attempted to ease off into the wings once, eventually approaching the skirt of the stage for an encore. McCalla thanked the crowd and the venue graciously and asked, “How could we not come back, with people standing and cheering? I have dreams like that.” I expect it’s a dream that will come to feel more and more familiar for her, particularly as they take this quiet distillation to Fribourg and Paris (where McCalla is especially beloved) and where it’s imaginable that audiences might, as this one did, consider it a non-necessity for a performance to rise to feverish pitch.

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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

LITTLE ROCK DRUMMER Joe Cripps, formerly of Gunbunnies and the Grammy Award-winning Brave Combo, was still missing when the Arkansas Times went to press this week. Anyone with information is asked to contact Little Rock Police Det. Jacob Pasman at 501-404-3040.

ARTIST THOM HALL, architect Reese Rowland, writer and folk historian Freda Cruse Hardison and graphic artist Max Elbo are the winners of the 2017 Governor’s Arts Awards, sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council. Hall, the enamel and figurative artist who was the registrar for the Arkansas Arts Center for 40 years before retiring, is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award. Rowland was named the Individual Artist Award winner; Cruse, of Mountain View, won the Folklife Award; and Elbo, of Eureka Springs, won the Judges Recognition Award. A panel of arts professionals chooses the winners of the awards, sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council. Other winners are Sam and Barbara Tobias of Mena, Arts Community Development Award; Art Porter Music Education Inc., Arts in Education Award; Wright, Lindsey and Jennings, Corporate Sponsorship of the Arts Award; and Johnelle Hunt of Rogers, Patron Award.

You can see Hall’s enamel works at the Arkansas Arts Center in the exhibition “Glass Fantasies.” See the Heifer International World Headquarters and the Arkansas Studies Institute as examples of Rowland’s work. If you’re in Mountain View, stop by the Stone County Historical Society to see Hardison’s Mountain Music Project, 100 photos and interviews. And if you happen to have the poster made for David Bowie & The Spiders performance at Detroit’s Fisher Theater in 1972 or Canned Heat at the Grande Ballroom, you’ve got work by Elbo.

THE MORTIMER AND Mimi Levitt Foundation, an organization that supports exposure to performing arts through the creation of “third spaces” — places where communities gather outside of the home or workplace — is offering grants allowing up to 15 nonprofits in cities with populations less than 400,000 to launch their own free outdoor Levitt Amp Music Series in 2017. The Argenta Arts Foundation has submitted its proposal for consideration, up at grant.levittamp. org for an online public vote. The 25 finalists will be selected by way of that vote, which ends Nov. 21, at which point the Levitt Foundation will narrow those finalists to 15 or fewer recipients.

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BY OMAYA JONES, LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THROUGH 12/24

DAVID MUDRINICH, ‘CONNECTING WITH THE LAND’ Cantrell Gallery

David Mudrinich, a talented artist so shy his only online touts are his Arkansas Tech University faculty page and his Arkansas Arts Council page, is exhibiting drawings and paintings in his first Cantrell Gallery solo show. Mudrinich, who’s shown work locally at Arkansas Capital Corp. Group’s office gallery in the River Market dis-

trict, is known for his fine lines and love of beehives as subject matter. In the Cantrell exhibition, he’ll show his series on apiaries he’s found in abandoned places, which he says show a “regeneration of purpose in what was once an active place.” The show, the notice of which went astray in our Google mail, opened last week. After the New Year, the gallery will move its operation into the single storefront at 8208 Cantrell Road; the owners will announce details of a sale soon. LNP

PULLED AND PRESSED: Vito Acconci’s “3 Flags for 1 space and 6 regions,” in the Fort Smith Regional Arts Center’s exhibition of mid-century American printmaking.

THURSDAY 11/10-SUNDAY 11/13

‘BUYER & CELLAR’

7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. The Studio Theater. $15-$20.

You know those antiqueand-craft meccas where they make the whole thing seem like a little village, with quaint, curtained shop windows in cream and country blue? Well, Barbra Streisand has one of those in the basement of the barn at her coastal home in Malibu, photographed in great detail in her coffee-table book “My Passion for Design.” The underground menagerie of French chaise lounges, vintage custom shoes and porcelain dolls sparked playwright Jonathan Tolins’ imagination, so he decided to write a oneman play about an out-ofwork actor who finds himself as the only employee in Babs’ personal antique mall.

Little Rock actor William Moon stars as Alex More and plays several other roles, too, in what he calls “the most unconventional rehearsal process I have had to date. ...

Having to memorize nearly two hours’ worth of dialogue verbatim is a challenge in and of itself, but having to play six different characters that 22

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interact with each other adds another challenge to the mix.

With most shows, most of the work is done at the theater, but this is the first show where I can honestly say I have spent more time with it at home. It’s been a thrilling and somewhat surreal experience getting these characters on their feet after having spent so much time with them on my own.” According to Moon, the play works for Streisand devotees as well as for those of us whose ability to recite the lyrics of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” extends no further than the song’s title. “To quote Alex More, the character I play in ‘Buyer & Cellar,’ ” Moon says, “ ‘When I started this job, I was not that big a Barbra queen,’ but I’ve certainly learned a lot about her since. Even though the play centers on Barbra, Alex takes the audience on a journey through the eyes of someone who has little knowledge of her beforehand, and by the end practically becomes obsessed with her.” There are no assigned seats for this show, and the adjacent Lobby Bar will be open before and after the show, and during intermission. SS Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

‘WOUNDERBREAD KIDS’: Stitched and drawn work by Kimberly Kwee at the Historic Arkansas Museum.

FRIDAY 11/11

‘PULLED, PRESSED AND SCREENED: IMPORTANT AMERICAN PRINTS’ Fort Smith Regional Art Museum Reception 5 p.m., $5 nonmembers

The RAM opens an exhibition of 51 American prints by such masters as Milton Avery, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Richard Estes in this survey of midcentury and later abstract, political and Pop printmaking. The exhibition, on loan from Syracuse University Art Galleries, which has

an extensive collection that surveys the history of printmaking, runs through Jan. 5. Also on exhibit at the RAM: a 20-year overview of paintings by Fort Smith artist Jason Sacran, who has won numerous awards for his figurative and plein air work. LNP

FRIDAY 11/11

2ND FRIDAY ART NIGHT

5-8 p.m. Various venues downtown.

Diversity is the name of the game for November’s downtown gallery walk: Wood-fired ceramics; drawings that include fabrics; paintings; quilts; mariachi music … find them all at the participating venues. Among the offerings: Kimberly Kwee (drawings incorporating thread and fabric) and David Scott Smith (offbeat ceramic sculptures) at the Historic Arkansas Museum; “B Sides at the ACCG,” drawings by Robert Bean and sculpture

by Michael Warwick, at Arkansas Capital Corp.;

“Chronicas de lo Efimero,” paintings by Maria Botti Villegas, at the Cox Creative Center; “Landscapes/ Dreamscapes,” work by Jeanie Lockeby Hursley and Dominique Simmons, at McLeod Fine Art; and “Little Golden Books,” “Fired Up: Arkansas Wood-Fired Ceramics,” and the Studio Art Quilt Association in the Butler Center Galleries. Mariachi America will perform at the Old State House, where Stone’s Throw craft beer will be served, and Nick Devlin and Brian Nahlen will perform at HAM. Bella Vita, Udelko Mobile Clothing Boutique and Loblolly Hot Chocolate Bar join the fun this month at the Lafayette Building. LNP

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 11/10

DANCING EARTH: The indigenous people’s ensemble will perform Nov. 12 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in conjunction with the museum’s “The Art of American Dance.”

TRIPLE ROW SOUND: Dikki Du (Troy Carrier), a third-generation zydeco accordionist, brings his five-piece troupe to White Water Tavern 9:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 11, $7.

THURSDAY 11/10- SATURDAY 11/12

FRIDAY 11/11

THOMAS DEFRANTZ, SLIPPAGE, DANCING EARTH

DIKKI DU AND THE ZYDECO KREWE

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville Various events

“The Art of American Dance,” an exhibition organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts, features 90 works by artists ranging from portrait artist John Singer Sargent to music-making costume artist Nick Cave. In conjunction with the exhibition, Crystal Bridges is bringing in Thomas DeFrantz, a Duke University professor of dance and African and African-American Studies, and a dancer from DeFrantz’s interdisciplinary dance and technology collective Slippage to give a gallery talk on art and contemporary dance at 1 p.m. Thursday. That will be followed at 8 p.m. Friday — the museum’s

fifth anniversary — with an interactive SLIPPAGE performance, “FastDANCEPast,” inspired by work in the exhibition and using green-screen technology.

DeFrantz will also talk about dance history references in the performance. At 6:30 p.m., before the performance, the museum’s “artinfusion” members will be able to dance with DeFrantz and SLIPPAGE performers. All three DeFrantz events are free. At 1 p.m. Saturday, Rulan Tangen and the Bay Area indigenous people’s dance ensemble Dancing Earth will talk about works in the museum’s permanent collection that focus on dance, culture and the environment, and at 8 p.m., Dancing Earth, SLIPPAGE, Tulsa Modern Movement and Alice Bloch will dance at the evening’s Art Night Out party celebrating the museum’s anniversary ($20). LNP

SATURDAY 11/12

FARM IN THE CITY

10 a.m. Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. Free.

The words “colony collapse disorder” tend to elicit furrowed brows from agriculturalists and beekeepers, and probably from any civilian who understands the degree to which our food supply depends on the specific work bee colonies do to pollinate plants that we eat: cucumbers, apples, squash, pumpkins — the list goes on and on.

To help children better understand the work by bees and people alike that goes into keeping the grocery store shelves full, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center hosts “Farm in the City” in collaboration with University of Arkan-

sas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service, Arkansas 4-H and the Little Rock Zoo. The program highlights the contributions of African-Americans to Arkansas farming — including a local beekeeper — and lets participants interact with “animal ambassadors” from the Little Rock Zoo’s Arkansas Heritage Farm, a program launched earlier this year that features wild turkeys, Blackberry sheep and a dwarf miniature horse. (Petting is encouraged.) Arkansas 4-H holds classroom activities inside the museum, and speakers from the cooperative extension service will present programming specific to farming in Arkansas. Do your best to forget that scene in “My Girl” and come check this out. SS

9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern. $7.

There’s a supermoon on the rise, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and Little Rock gets two certified zydeco throwdowns in the same week. Just a few days before a show from Marcella Simien (daughter of the Grammy-winning zydeco player Terrance Simien), third-generation zydeco musician Dikki Du (Troy Carrier) comes through with his Krewe, a five-piece troupe with washboard and squeezebox. Troy’s the son of Roy Carrier (yet another Grammy-award winning zydeco player), and learned to play washboard in his father’s club in Lawtell, La., the Offshore Lounge, which took its name from the offshore drilling work that Roy did to support his family, eventually earning enough surplus to buy the club. After learning the ropes there, Dikki took off on tour with C.J. Chenier (the son of — you’ll never guess — another Grammy-winning zydeco player) and played drums on tour with his brother Chubby Carrier through the ’90s. Apparently not the type to rest on his family laurels, Dikki went on zydeco sabbatical and taught himself how to play the triplerow accordion, as he says on his website.

“The big dream was to have your own zydeco band. Years ago, I said, ‘Hell, I’m not gonna have a band, I don’t even know how to play accordion.’ ... I just stayed in a room and played the accordion for a whole year. I just went away from music because I really wanted it, but it took a whole year to learn it.” That was over a dozen years ago; it’s probably safe to say Dikki’s found his Du. SS

Dogtown Film Series screens “2001: A Space Odyssey” at Argenta Community Theater, 7 p.m., $5. U.K. a cappella octet Voces8 performs its crystalline arrangements at the University of Central Arkansas’s Reynolds Performance Hall, Conway, 7:30 p.m., $27-$40.

Alex Medellin of Denver brings his soulinspired dance cut project Late Night Radio to Stickyz with Flamingosis, 9 p.m., $7-$10. Linda Williams Palmer signs copies of her book “Champion Trees of Arkansas” at Drawl Southern Contemporary Art, 6 p.m., free. The Junior League of Little Rock hosts its annual Holiday House bazaar in the Statehouse Convention Center, noon Thu., 9 a.m. Fri.-Sat., $10-$250.

Mayor Mark Stodola is part of a free panel discussion, “The Robinson Center: Honoring the Past — Anticipating the Future,” Robinson Center, 6 p.m. The sneaker-clad folks at Go! Running encourage runners to dress in light-reflective gear for the Run Bright Night Run starting at 1819 N. Grant St., 6 p.m. Folk duo Byrd & Street play a free show at the Faulkner County Library, 7 p.m. Self-described “large drunk man” Mark Poolos does stand-up at the Loony Bin, 7:30 Wed.-Thu., $8; 7:30 and 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $12. Raising Grey plays its last show of 2016 at Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5.

FRIDAY 11/11 Jucifer, Tempus Terror and Crankbait inaugurate the new stage at Vino’s, $8. Regalia Handmade Clothing from Eureka Springs moves the artwork aside at Cantrell Gallery, 6-8 p.m. (also 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat.) Screenwriter Graham Gordy and Hendrix professor Alex Vernon host a discussion following an opening night screening of Ang Lee’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Riverdale VIP Cinema, 7 p.m., free. Two-time Arkansas State Old-Time Fiddle Champion Emily Phillips joins this year’s runner-up, Everett Elam, at The Undercroft in the basement-turnedbrewery below Christ Episcopal Church, 8 p.m., $10. Jeff Coleman and the Feeders play at Conway’s Live at T.C.’s, 9 p.m. Parkview Magnet School for the Arts students bring the stories of prominent Arkansans to life at Mount Holly’s 22nd annual “Tales of the Crypt,” 5:30 p.m., donations. Texas songwriter Ian Moore performs at Fayetteville’s Smoke and Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., $10. The Joint’s comedy troupe The Main Thing gives its first post-election performance of “Electile Dysfunction,” 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. through Nov. 19, $22. Emergent Arts in Hot Springs opens its 5th annual Dia de los Muertos art exhibition, 5-8 p.m., with procession to Low Key Arts afterward for an After(life) Party. Folk collective Calliope Musicals shares a bill with Bravo Max and Beat Bums at Maxine’s, Hot Springs, 9 p.m. Katmandu take the stage at Cajun’s, 9 p.m., $5. The UALR Trojans face off against North Texas at the Jack Stephens Center, 6:30 p.m. Ryan Sauders plays a free show at The Tavern Sports Bar & Grill, 7:30 p.m.

SATURDAY 11/12 Brother Andy and His Big Damn Mouth

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SATURDAY 11/12

22nd ANNUAL HOLIDAY SHOW AND SALE

Reception 7-10 p.m. Gallery 26.

Yes, the Halloween pumpkin has barely begun to rot and it’s time to shop for Christmas.

An annual stop for art lovers is

BY OMAYA JONES, LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE

SATURDAY 11/12 Gallery 26’s annual artspalooza, which features paintings, jewelry, pottery, photographs and handmade ornaments by more than 50 Arkansas artists. There will be live music at the opening; the show runs through Jan. 14. LNP

‘DIA DE LOS MUERTOS’

Reception 6-8 p.m. William F. Laman Public Library, NLR.

The Latino Art Project, formed to showcase the history of Latino culture through art exhibitions and outreach in Central Arkansas, will present a Day of the Dead show at the main branch of the Laman Library. The Latin American “Dia de los Muertos” holiday is part

of an ancient tradition in which people honor their deceased ancestors with visits to graves, graveside feasts and the construction of altars.

The exhibition will include work inspired by the tradition by Luis Atilano, Lery Atilano, Anthony Samuel Lopez, Luis Saldaña, Maricela Aviña, Klint Williams, Michelle Pierson, Oliveri Perez and Sabrina Zarco. The show runs through Jan. 6. LNP

SUNDAY 11/13

ARKANSAS SYMPHONY YOUTH ORCHESTRA FALL CONCERT

3 p.m. Albert Pike Masonic Center. $10-$20.

That Greek-column-lined gargantuan you drive past on Scott Street between Seventh and Eighth streets is the Albert Pike Masonic Center, dedicated in 1924 and co-designed by George Mann, the architect for the Arlington Hotel and the

state Capitol. Up until 2014, it was pretty much hermetically sealed to the public eye, so performances in the space since then have been tinged with an extra bit of excitement — the feeling of decades of secrecy unfurled. This Sunday, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s auditioned youth ensemble plays a fall concert in the monolith’s magnificent theater with a “greatest hits” sort of program that

seems perfectly engineered to cement the young players’ affinity for orchestral music: Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” the lively March movement from Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges” and “Poem for Orchestra” by Arkansas’s own William Grant Still. A trio of dancers from Ballet Arkansas will join the orchestra for Debussy’s orchestration of Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies”— a set of three pieces for

solo piano that have made appearances in a Lana Del Rey song and too many films to count — and a larger group of Ballet Arkansas artists interpret Ravel’s “Bolero,” originally commissioned as a ballet. If you’ve got a young one in the house who might be inspired by hearing people her own age playing works whose beauty has earned them a home in concert halls for eons, take her along. SS

TUESDAY 11/15

ARKANSAS TIMES FILM SERIES PRESENTS: ‘MEEK’S CUTOFF’

7 p.m. Riverdale 10 Cinema. $8.

ADRIFT ON THE OREGON TRAIL: Fed up with inaction from the men in charge, Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) leverages a flintlock rifle for the sake of the group’s survival in Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff,” Film Quotes Film’s November pick for the Arkansas Times Film Series, 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, Riverdale 10 Cinema, $8.

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Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010) is shot in what is known as the Academy ratio, a now nearly obsolete aspect ratio that had its heyday from 1932 to 1952, but it shares little else in common with the classic Hollywood Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks. Instead of the competent and macho men forging a new destiny as they head west, the men of “Meek’s Cutoff” are filled with doubt about their journey. Based on a true account, the film tells the story of a group of settlers headed to Oregon who split from the main party and soon believe they’re lost. The families find themselves in need of food and water, and fear the possibility that they’re being stalked by Indians. Reichardt focuses mostly on the women of the party (including characters played by Michelle Williams and Zoe Kazan), forced to look on passively as the men make decisions that could imperil them all. Like those women, the camera is often removed from the main action, the image frequently obscured by a stray object or blade of grass. Along with September’s screening of “Cleo from 5 to 7” and October’s screening of “Persepolis,” the Arkansas Times Film Series closes out the year by highlighting works written and directed by women and about women. Keep an eye out on series curator filmquotesfilm’s Soundcloud page for a podcast discussion of “Meek’s Cutoff.” OJ

IN BRIEF, CONT.

TUESDAY 11/15

MARCELLA & HER LOVERS

9 p.m., the White Water Tavern. $5

Like many zydeco musicians, Marcella Simien comes to the genre by way of family ties; her father, Terrance Simien, was a descendant of one of the first Creole families to settle in Louisiana’s St. Landry Parish, and was among the reasons for the creation of an entirely new Grammy Award category: “Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album,” an accolade his group Terrance Simien and The Zydeco Experience scored for themselves in 2008. She’s since moved to Memphis, where she went to art school and by way of a pseudonym,

Fille Catatonique, and developed what’s now her signature blend of Memphis soul and Louisiana zydeco. In performance, Marcella Simien is earthy, occasionally barefoot, using a bent knee to keep her stay grounded while she throws her head back for a big belty note, then just as easily switching into a sort of guttural tremolo. Though her rendition of straightforwardly soul numbers like “I’d Rather Go Blind” would settle any bets about her gifts as a strictly-vocals frontwoman, Simien’s most in possession of an easy freedom of motion when she’s wearing her accordion, matching the ebb and flow of those endlessly stretching origami folds with her hips. SS

join Denver trio The Yawpers and Four on the Floor, Maxine’s, 9 p.m. Porter Fund Literary Prize recipient Sandy Longhorn (“The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths”) and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Renee Emerson (“Threshing Floor”) sign books and talk poetry at 3 p.m., followed by Nell Lyford signing her book “Heaven’s Missing Wing,” Wordsworth Books & Co., free. Acoustic duo Melody Pond (formerly The Sisters Sweet) spins tunes at Fayetteville’s Smoke and Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., free, and across town, George’s hosts Groovement, Vintage Pistol, Calliope Musicals and Spoonfed Tribe, 8:30 p.m., $10. UCA’s African Student Association holds the 1st annual “African Gala” in the Student Center Ballroom, Conway, 6 p.m.

Vino’s hosts a hefty rock show with Red Devil Lies, Trepid and Stays in Vegas, 8:30 p.m., $7. Brian Nahlen Band brings tunes from his new release, “Cicada Moon,” to Cajun’s, 9 p.m., $5. Meshugga Klezmer Band plays Eastern European folk music at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Andy Tanas plays a free show at Markham Street Grill & Pub, 8:30 p.m. Club Sway holds its official drag contest “Fresh Fish Season 3,” 9 p.m. The UALR Trojans men’s basketball team takes on the CBC Mustangs in the Jack Stephens Center, 3 p.m. Oklahoma City’s Don’t Make Ghosts lands at the White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m.

Chicago blues rockers The Steepwater Band join deFrance at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $7.

MONDAY 11/14

WOMEN OF WAR COME HOME: The MacArthur Museum of Military History hosts a screening of JulieHera DeStefano's documentary "Journey to Normal," a collection of eight veteran women's stories about life after deployment to Afghanistan., 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 15, free.

WEDNESDAY 11/16

‘JOURNEY TO NORMAL: WOMEN OF WAR COME HOME’ 6:30 p.m. MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. Free.

In March 2016, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved final plans from military branches to open combat positions to women, lifting restrictions on the potential range of assignments women can take on in war. On Oct. 26, 10 women graduated from the U.S. Army’s Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course in Fort Benning, Ga., the first women to do so.

Although the conversations about equal opportunity for women’s military training and advancement are far from over, the “Journey to Normal” project and accompanying film focuses on what happens when those women become veterans, specifically women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inspired by hearing a young veteran mother on “The Oprah

Winfrey Show” in 2009 explain the difficulty of making a sandwich for her child after losing an arm in battle, JulieHera DeStefano put a film crew together, got on a plane and interviewed over 100 women in northeastern Afghanistan and even more in the U.S., compiling stories of their service and of their subsequent re-entry into American society. Since its release in the spring of 2015, the project’s launched an online archive of the full interviews created for the film and new interviews from women who have added their stories, created a web portal for women veterans to connect with each other for support, and formed outreach programs for employers and behavioral health professionals to increase understanding of how best to treat veterans returning from combat. The MacArthur Museum screens DeStefano’s film and will provide popcorn and beverages. SS

Ashville, N.C., band Bask comes to The Parlor in North Little Rock for an intimate show with Iron Tongue, 7 p.m., free. Margaret Brodkin gives a lecture, “Sandboxes to Ballot Boxes: Creating a Local Children’s Movement,” at Sturgis Hall, Clinton School of Public Service, noon, free. The UALR women’s basketball team goes up against the University of the Ozarks’ team, 6:30 p.m., Jack Stephens Center. The Arkansas Studies Institute hosts a free beginner’s genealogy class, “Finding Family Facts,” 3:30 p.m.

TUESDAY 11/15 Vino’s Brewpub Cinema hosts a screening of “Billy Jack,” 7 p.m., free. Bear’s Den hosts a free show with Gibberish Style Oinkery, 10 p.m. Swamp-soul hybrid Marcella & Her Lovers takes the stage at White Water, 9 p.m., $5.

WEDNESDAY 11/16 Actor and activist Crystal Mercer hosts the “Words and Curds” writer’s series at Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, featuring readings from Jane V. Blunschi, Claudia Cerna, Houston Hughes and Doug Shields, 6:30 p.m., free.

Nickolas Zaller gives a lecture, “Incarceration in Arkansas: A Public Health Crisis and A Call to Action,” at Sturgis Hall, noon, free.

Nashville string band The Howlin’ Brothers plays a session at South on Main, 8:30 p.m., $10. Christine DeMeo plays a free show at Tavern Sports Bar & Grill, 7:30 p.m.

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

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ALSO IN THE ARTS All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please email the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.

ARTS

THEATER

“Buyer and Cellar.” A one-man play by Jonathan Tolins. The Studio Theatre, Nov. 10-12, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 13, 2:30 p.m., $15-$20. 320 W. 7th St. thestudiotheatre-lr.org.

“The Crucible.” Directed by Paul Barnes. Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through Nov. 13: Wed., Thu., Sun., 7 p.m.; Fri., Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., $20$45. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. therep.org.

Mount Holly’s 22nd Annual Tales of the Crypt.

Students from Parkview Arts-Science Magnet High School recreate the lives of Arkansans buried at the historic Mount Holly Cemetery. Mount Holly Cemetery, Fri., Nov. 11, 5:30 p.m., donations. 1200 Broadway. mounthollycemetery.com.

“The Wiz.” Directed by Danette Scott Perry and Leah Thomas. The Weekend Theater, through Nov. 13: Fri., Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m., $16-$20. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. weekendtheater.org.

ONGOING ART EXHIBITS

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Little Dreams in Glass and Metal: Enameling in America, 1920 to Present,” 121 artworks by 90 artists, and “Glass Fantasies,” retrospective of work by Thom Hall with 40 enamels, both through December. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000.

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: Studio Art Quilts Associates show, through December; “Fired Up: Arkansas Wood-Fired Ceramics,” work by Stephen Driver, Jim and Barbara Larkin, Fletcher Larkin, Beth Lambert, Logan Hunter and Hannah May, through Jan. 28; “Little Golden Books,” private collection, through Dec. 3. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790.

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “The Fourth of July and Other Things,” paintings by Diana L. Shearon, through December.

9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-noon Fri., all day Sun. 375-2342.

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

Sat. 664-0880.

GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: Work by William McNamara, Tyler Arnold, Amy Edgington, EMILE, Kimberly Kwee, Greg Lahti, Mary Ann Stafford, Cedric Watson, C.B. Williams, Gino Hollander, Siri Hollander and jewelry by Rae Ann Bayless. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211.

GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 211 Center St.: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211.

GOOD WEATHER GALLERY, 4400 Edgemere St., NLR: “Death of a Salesman,” Elliott Earls, through Nov. 19.

GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “Best of the South,” through Nov. 12. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 6642787.

HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Two Fronts,” multimedia drawings by Alfred Conteh. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822.

HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St. “Heinbockel, Nolley and Peterson: Personal Rituals,” watercolors by Amanda Heinbockel, fiber art by Marianne Nolley and mixed media by Brianna Peterson, through Dec. 4; 26

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ARKANSAS TIMES

“Walter Arnold and David Malcolm Rose: Modern Ruins,” constructions from Rose’s “The Lost Highway,” photographs by Arnold, through Nov. 11; “Tiny Treasures: Miniatures from the Permanent Collection,” through Jan. 9; “Hugo and Gayne Preller’s House of Light,” historic photographs, through Jan. 3. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Still Life,” paintings by Louis Beck, through November, giclee giveaway 7 p.m.

Nov. 17. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006.

M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: Work by Marcus McAllister, Richard Sutton, R.F. Walker and Eric Freeman. Noon-5 p.m. Mon., 10 a.m.5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 225-6257.

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.

MCLEOD FINE ART GALLERY, 108 W. 6th St.: “Landscapes/Dreamscapes: At the Crossroads of Observation and Memory,” drawings, pastels and paintings by Jeannie Lockeby Hursley and Dominique Simmons. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 725-8508.

MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Rorschach’s Buddy,” ink paintings by Diane Harper. 7 a.m.6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 379-9101.

ROCK CITY WERKS, 413 Main St., NLR: Work

by Michelle Moore, Debby Hinson, Doug Gorrell, Sheree King, Kimberly Leonard Bingman, Theresa Cates, Vickie Hendrix Siebenmorgen, Ed Pennebaker, Nancy McGraw, Hannah & May pottery. 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 258-8991.

THEA FOUNDATION, 401 Main St.: “Habitats: Bentonville,” photographs by Kat Wilson, part of The Art Department series, through November. 379-9512.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK, 2801 S. University: “UALR Faculty Biennial,” work by Win Bruhl, Kevin Cates, David Clemons, Tom Clifton, Rico Cuatlacuatl, Brad Cushman, Tim Garth, Sofia Gonzalez, Mia Hall, Kerry Hartman, Heidi Hogden, Joli Livaudais, Eric Mantle, Carey Roberson, Aj Smith, David Smith, Marjorie Williams-Smith and Rachel Smith, through Nov. 28, Gallery I; “How to Paint Good,” work by Eric Mantle, through Nov. 23, Maners/Pappas Gallery. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 569-8977.

BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467.

BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “The Art of American Dance,” 90 works spanning the years 1830 to now, through Jan. 16; “Shaking Hands and Kissing Babies,” campaign advertising artifacts, through Jan. 9; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700.

CONWAY UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS: “Senior BA/BFA Exhibition,” work by 11 seniors, through Dec. 1, Baum Gallery, 2-4 p.m. Nov. 20. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Wed. and Fri., 10 a.m.7 p.m. Thu. 450-5793.

FAYETTEVILLE FAYETTEVILLE UNDERGROUND, 101 Mountain St.: “Artists of Northwest Arkansas,” annual juried show, awards presentation 5:30 p.m.-8 p.m. Nov. 17 at the gallery. 479-4398641.

STUDIO 545, 545 Center St.: New watercolors

by William McNamara, through Nov. 27. 479527-9842. davidmckeearchitect@gmail.com.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS: “ABOUT FACE,” CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

OUT IN ARKANSAS

Wigs and watermelons How a drag queen’s performance led to allegations of racism.

BY SETH ELI BARLOW

T

he Central Arkansas Pride Festival is typically a unified celebration of the region’s LGBT community.

So, when a group of Black Lives Matter protestors interrupted the event in October to publicly denounce Little Rock’s Club Sway, many of those in attendance were left bewildered. The protest, however, was the culmination of a 10-month conflict over accusations of cultural appropriation, racism and transphobia against the venue.

Since it first coined the term “#GlitterRock,” Club Sway has developed a statewide reputation for its come-asyou-are willingness to embrace any kind of eccentricity that graces its dance floor, but recently that reputation has been overshadowed by a schism regarding inclusiveness and racial sensitivity.

Sway’s troubles began last year, after Queen Anthony James Gerard, one of the club’s headlining drag queens, was coming off the high of a great weekend: solid performances at the club and, more importantly, solid tips. She decided to treat herself to a new wig, and there was no changing her mind when a lace front box braid caught her eye. “It was right there on the mannequin head and I was obsessed,” Queen said in a recent interview. “It made me feel fabulous, it made me feel beautiful. It was one of those things where you see it and you just have to have it.”

Outside of drag, Queen identifies as a cisgender gay white man. The pronoun her indicates Queen speaking in the drag character.

A short time later, in September 2015, Queen posted a photo of herself on Instagram wearing the wig. Queen’s outfit was inspired by the character Noxeema Jackson from the cult film “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” in which Wesley Snipes plays a drag queen and refers to himself as an “ebony enchantress,” a phrase Queen used as a hashtag for the photo.

The allusion, however, was lost on social media.

In January, Savannah Rayne, a gender nonconforming youth activist at the Center for Artistic Revolution (CAR), pointed out Queen’s box braid photo on Facebook. Rayne says that in a private exchange, Queen called her an “it” as a transphobic slur.

“People would send me these articles [on social media] about why it was so offensive for me to wear these braids,” Queen said. “I wanted to create a performance that spoke to that.”

The resulting performance, which took place in late April, was an homage to the comedian Leo Anthony Gallagher, whose shtick was busting open watermelons with a large mallet. Queen wrote the words “racism,” “transphobia” and “ageism” on the watermelons before smashing and eating them. The symbolism was spelled out explicitly with a spoken statement before and after the performance, though only a partial video of the event seems to exist, and it doesn’t include the artist’s statement.

Performance art, of course, is overly reliant upon context, and social media outrage is often dependent upon a lack of context. When Club Sway posted the partial video to Facebook with the title “A Message to Queen’s Haters,” the anger over Queen’s performance spread from the performer to the venue that was now viewed as supporting her.

“The watermelons weren’t well thought out,” Queen admitted, “but it really hurt me that my art was being interpreted this way that was the total opposite of how I meant it.”

A protest of the club was organized via Facebook, though it was later canceled after an individual not associated with the staff or management of Club Sway threatened violence against anyone who protested. Rayne, in a public Facebook post, stated that her issues with Club Sway were that it “mimics black culture, use black language, and exploit black people, but I don’t hear yall yelling black lives matter, or justice for [black

ZACHARY MILLER

PROTESTING DURING PRIDE DAY: Black Lives Matter members who objected to a white drag queen’s performance in a lace front box braid wig at Club Sway made their stand known in the Pride parade.

communities].”

In an attempt to quell the furor, Jason Wiest, one of the co-owners of Club Sway, released a statement on July 3 crafted with the help of the Human Rights Campaign. The statement acknowledged the accusations and apologized for “any unintended ill will” that may have been caused.

The controversy didn’t go away.

Rayne and another activist approached the leadership of Central Arkansas Pride, of which Club Sway is a presenting sponsor. They threatened to approach other Pride sponsors about the allegations surrounding Club Sway in hopes of convincing those companies to revoke their sponsorship of the festival.

Hoping to broker a deal between the two groups, the leadership of Pride arranged a meeting in late July between the activists, Rae Nelson, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters of Little Rock and Jose Gutierrez, the executive director of the Center for Artistic Revolution (CAR); along with Sway’s ownership; Queen; and a neutral third party moderator. Queen made a direct apology to Rayne, but the activists made two demands of Club Sway: voluntary abstention from the 2016 Little Rock Pride celebration and a reissued public apology that was more sincere and that named specific groups who were offended.

“We weren’t going to sit out Pride,” Wiest said. “We celebrate pride 364 days of the year, and it was important for us to be there.” Sway did agree to reissue an apology, even agreeing to let the activists read the apology before it was made public. The activists countered that in order for Sway to participate in Pride,

the public apology must be read from the festival stage in October, and all of Sway’s employees and owners must attend racial sensitivity classes provided by CAR. “We went to that meeting to resolve [this issue], so we weren’t going to read a statement three months after the fact,” Wiest said. The entire staff of Sway agreed to take classes, except for the club’s second co-owner Marcus Pinkney, who is himself black. The activists deemed this unacceptable and informed Sway that their next step would be direct action.

The activists gained the support of the Little Rock chapter of Black Lives Matter and began to organize a protest centered on October’s Pride celebration. Black Lives Matter had already registered to walk in the parade, and they chose to march directly in front of Club Sway’s float, holding signs urging bystanders to boycott the club. Later, during the entertainment portion of the festival, Black Lives Matter protestors took the stage at the end of a dance performance by a group from CAR. Though the protestors had CAR’s permission to use part of their allotted stage time, festival staff was unaware of the planned protest, and volunteers quickly rushed the stage attempting to physically drag the protestors away.

A video of the protest shows Nelson announcing to the crowd that the protestors “have three demands” before her microphone is shut off. As the crowd began to chant “let them speak,” the microphone was turned back on and the crowd chanted back and forth with the protestors, affirming that black lives, black queer lives and black trans lives matter.

The crowd seemed to turn on the protesters, however, when one of them began speaking about Sway. “Club Sway has perpetuated nothing but violence against black people, as well as taken from our culture, and just completely disregarded everything we had to say,” a protestor can be heard saying over a chorus of boos from the crowd. The microphone was cut off again before the protestors could finish listing their demands.

The protestors were then escorted from the stage by festival staff and police.

“As soon as we were off the stage, we were surrounded by police officers,” Nelson said. One of the officers brandished a Taser at the protestors. “It was very traumatizing … to have a police officer in my face treating us like we’re the aggressors.”

Zachary Miller, one of the protestors and another founding member of Black Lives Matter of Little Rock, said he didn’t think there had been any change in the culture of Club Sway, though he believes the protest was successful in bringing to light issues that LGBT persons of color face in Little Rock.

“If at any time [Sway] had accepted accountability and, you know, done the training, we could have solved this,” Miller said. The Black Lives Matter chapter is leading a boycott of the club until its list of demands is met, including anti-racism classes for all staff, performers and owners; a personal apology to Rayne; a public apology; and a donation, made to local organizations, equivalent to the money that Club Sway has earned from the appropriation of black culture.

Wiest said that, as of yet, the protest has had no impact on business. arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

27

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

LOBLOLLY CREAMERY, NOW located in The Green Corner Store at 1423 S. Main St., is moving into the adjacent storefront, the former home of StudioMain, and will be open for business sometime in January, marketing director Elizabeth Strandberg said.

The new Loblolly store will offer baked goods and “stronger coffee” as well as 30 flavors of ice cream, and will seat 50. The creamery is “going for a whole new look,” Strandberg said. All pastries will be made in house. People will be welcome to come in, drink coffee, read and meet with friends. Ordering ice cream is not required, so it will be possible to patronize Loblolly frequently without too much weight gain.

A NEWLY CREATED Arkansas Food Hall of Fame, announced last week by Governor Hutchinson and Department of Arkansas Heritage Director Stacy Hurst, will honor Arkansas-owned restaurants that have been in business for 25 years or longer. The honorees will be inducted at an event next spring.

A 13-member committee will make the final decisions on the three restaurants to be inducted this year. The committee will also give awards to chefs and food-themed events. A People’s Choice Award will be made strictly on the votes of the public. (Nominations by the public were due Nov. 9.)

Members of the committee are Paul S. Austin, executive director of the Arkansas Humanities Council; Evette Brady, who was chef and owner of Restaurant 1620; C.C. Culpepper, creative officer at the Mangan Holcomb ad agency; historian Tom Dillard; archivist Tim Nutt; food writers Cindy Grisham and Kat Robinson; Montine McNulty, head of the Arkansas Hospitality Association; chef Tim Morton; columnist Rex Nelson; Mosaic Templars Cultural Center Director Christina Shutt; Arkansas State Archives Director Lisa Speer; and Hurst.

Three restaurants will be inducted yearly.

The Arkansas Times predicts Jones Bar-B-Q, in business for more than a century in Marianna, will be among the three inducted next year.

LILLY’S DIM SUM THEN SOME, which opened first as a takeout booth in the River Market in 2002 before becoming a restaurant in West Little Rock, and its sister breakfast eatery B-Side have closed. Owner Nancy Tesmer announced her decision, prompted by a need to move back to Chicago to take care of family, last week. Tesmer and City Director Kathy Webb opened the 28

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

OZARK HUEVOS: Farmer’s Table’s poached egg dish comes with blue corn tortilla chips, organic pinto beans, Sriracha aioli and a cilantro cream sauce.

Heartbreakers’ brunch Breakfast heals at Farmer’s Table Cafe.

T

he end of a romance has been known to cause some folks to lose their appetite. Those folks were not eating at Farmer’s Table, a wonderful, cozy little farm-to-table restaurant in Fayetteville situated in what used to be a home, complete with crown molding and creaky wooden floors. The tables are covered in a vibrant mish-mash of unmatched tablecloths. There’s a patio, too, which is perfect for late-morning brunches in the early fall. This is where we found ourselves a couple of weeks ago, seated next to a couple who looked like they were maybe not having as great a time as we were.

Breaking up is tough. And sometimes, when you know there’s a strong possibility for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, you choose to do it in a public place. So it was for one poor young lad

Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

on this fine autumn day. As his soonto-be ex handed him a letter that began “Dear Sweetheart” (it was hard not to peek), we ordered coffee and Chai tea.

Both were wonderful.

By the time Poor Lad had finished reading the letter, we had ordered, helped along the way with knowledgeable recommendations from our very kind server. We tried to hide in our coffee cup as he slowly and silently put his head to the table in anguish.

He left it there for some time, raising it only when the server came back to place a hearty breakfast plate in front of the breaker-upper. “Man, she’s still going to eat?” we thought. And eat she did. As she did not see fit to place an order for her former beau, our man left in a huff. The heartbreaker barely batted an eye, delved as she was into

her brunch bliss of potatoes and eggs.

With his mopey departure, the mood lightened, and continued to do so as our table was topped with all we had ordered. The Benny on a Biscuit ($11) was a highlight, an order that will be tough not to repeat upon return visits.

Starting from the bottom, what you’ve got is a soft and lumpy (in a good way) biscuit, topped with sliced ham or sauteed greens (the menu recommends choosing both, which we did), poached eggs from a free-range chicken, and a homemade hollandaise.

We went out on a bit of a limb with this one as we’re not huge Benedict fans. The hollandaise, when excessively applied, can be a bit much, but that wasn’t the case here. There was just enough. It was creamy with a hint of lemon to make it tart. We don’t usually do greens with breakfast, but these, too, were a hit and gave a nice balance to the dish. The eggs were nicely poached, with firm whites and oozy yolks. But one of the true unexpected surprises was the side of potatoes. They were crusty (again, in a good way), toasty orange and actually took some effort to bite into. We’re guessing they were rolled in flour and cooked in cast-iron. The

BELLY UP

R T PA R T Y COLLAGE A

/

W O R K S H O P ` S U N D AY, NOVEMBER 20

In Memory of Amy Edgington

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

COLLAGE ART

by Arkansas Artists

NOVEMBER 11 – DECEMBER 16 OPENING RECEPTION Thurs, Nov 17, 6 pm ` Free Admission Music by The Rolling Blackouts Poetry Reading by Sandy Longhorn

20919 DENNY ROAD • LITTLE ROCK • 72223 W I L D W O O D P A R K . O R G • 5 0 1 . 8 2 1. 7 2 7 5

DEC

CRUSTY POTATOES: Crispy outside, but soft inside, a wonderful surprise.

crispy, well-seasoned outside gave way to a mushy middle. This is an A-plus side dish.

We also were pleased with the Ozark Huevos ($9). Local non-GMO corn tortillas are placed on the bottom of a shallow bowl to serve as a bed for stewed organic pinto beans, two over-easy eggs (we upgraded to over-medium), organic tomato chili sauce, cilantro, chopped onions, Sriracha aioli and a cilantro cream sauce. We opted to add chorizo for $1.50. Blue corn tortilla chips are added as a topper.

Simply put, it’s everything you love about breakfast food and Mexicaninspired dishes. The eggs, chorizo and beans — which have a quite meaty flavor from being stewed in beef broth — are warm and comforting. The tomato chili sauce is a perfect combination of a house red enchilada sauce and chili gravy. The toppings are perfectly picked.

The fresh cilantro and onions deliver a nice, fresh flavor and the sauces are complementary. The Sriracha aioli and cilantro cream sauces are used sparingly and provide a nice cool kick to an otherwise warm plate. We can do without the chips, but who’s counting?

It’s too bad that our poor young lad didn’t get breakfast before his hopes of

true love were dashed. It might have softened the blow.

2-4

38th Annual Arkansas Craft Guild Christmas Showcase

Tickets available on

Arkansas Craft Guild

The Farmer’s Table Cafe 1079 S. School Ave. Fayetteville 479-966-4125 thefarmerstablecafe.com

QUICK BITE We’d be remiss to not recommend the pancake. The War Eagle Pancake ($3) was the perfect thing to finish everything off, sort of a breakfast dessert, if you will. It’s huge, but not off-puttingly so. One is enough for two diners to split as a side. The griddle gives it a nice, golden-brown crust. It’s thick, but not dense, with buttery, pillowy edges.

It’s fluffy, and where most diner-style pancakes can turn into a chore to eat, this one is almost bready and utterly delightful. The organic maple syrup that comes with it is sweet, rich and runny and has a depth of flavor you won’t find in most eateries. Log Cabin, it ain’t.

HOURS 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

OTHER INFO Credit cards accepted. Full bar.

WHAT’S COOKIN’, CONT. business but when they split, Tesmer took over the restaurant. Lilly’s Dim Sum introduced excellent food into the Little Rock dining scene, including cold sesame noodles, its magnificent mochi balls and other excellent Asian dishes.

TOURS OF LOCAL CRAFT BREW pubs in Little Rock and North Little Rock are being offered by the Arkan-

sas Brews Cruise, a franchise of the national Brews Cruise Inc. Owner/operator Trey Moore said the tours, which began Nov. 3, include learning about the brewing process as well as tastings.

Tours run Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; tickets are $59 per person or $30 for designated drivers. To book a tour, go to arkansasbrewscruise.com. You can also arrange for a private tour.

WORK DOWNTOWN? TRY SNAP FITNESS.

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VICTORY BUILDING • 1401 W. CAPITOL • 501-246-8266 arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

29

MOVIE REVIEW

CURMUDGEON: Rolf Lassgard’s performance as “Ove” earned him a Best Actor Award at the 2016 Seattle International Film Festival.

Suicide, interrupted ‘A Man Called Ove’ a comedy in the ancient Greek sense.

BY GUY LANCASTER

I

once asked a Swedish friend to recommend some Swedish-language comedies for me to watch. “Swedish language comedies?” Henrik said.

“Let me think about this.” A few days later, I received an email from him with some tentative suggestions and went to the library to check them out. The first, “Together,” opens with a woman leaving her abusive husband and moving with her two children into a commune. Their presence naturally causes some disruptions in the workings of this hothouse of leftists, none of which are really laughout-loud funny. The second, “As It Is in Heaven,” is the story of an orchestra conductor who, suffering health problems, retreats to his childhood home in Norrland, where he ends up struggling to lead a small choir while also confronting memories of terrible bullying during his youth — oh, and he dies in the end.

(That’s not a spoiler — this is a Swedish movie, after all.)

As moving as both films were, they were not comedies as we understand that word but more meditations upon identity and mortality. However, the 30

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

newest release to arrive here from Sweden, “A Man Called Ove,” offers a somewhat different experience. Rolf Lassgård plays the titular Ove, an old widower who is the terror of his neighborhood, going out every morning to do his “rounds” — making sure that the neighborhood association rules are being followed to the letter and that no bicycles are parked where not permitted, for example. In general, he is a tyrant to everyone he meets, a taciturn giant who mutters to himself about the world being run by “idiots.” Even when he goes to visit the grave of his recently departed wife, Sonja, he spends much of his time complaining about the cost of flowers these days. So when he loses his job as a railroad engineer, Ove finds himself lacking the last bit of meaning his life offered. He dresses in his finest suit and hangs a noose in the living room.

Before he can kick the chair from beneath his feet, however, he sees through his front window someone attempting, very badly, to back a trailer into a lot across the street. Unable to withstand such a gross display of incom-

AFTER DARK, CONT. petence, he rushes out to take charge, thus inserting himself into the life of Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), a pregnant Iranian woman moving into the neighborhood with her husband, Patrick (Tobias Almborg), and their two children. As his life becomes entangled in theirs, more people come to him for help, interrupting his every suicide attempt with some new request or other. Indeed, he goes back to the grave of his wife time and again to apologize for making her wait on him — if he can just get all these idiots sorted out, he could join her like he had planned long ago.

But as we follow this story, we also get glimpses into Ove’s past: the death of his parents, his work cleaning out railroad cars, and the day he met Sonja, a young woman studying to be a teacher.

As Ove reveals more of his past, especially the tragedy which befell Sonja, we understand how he came to be this way.

Writer/director Hannes Holm offers a comedic experience far different from lighter American fare, making the laughter so much sweeter by contrast to the tears wrung from the viewer. This is no simple tale of a grumpy geezer warming up to young people. It is a comedy in the more traditional sense of that word: a tale that highlights man’s foibles.

After all, comedy runs closely parallel to tragedy; the defining difference between “Othello” and “Much Ado About Nothing” is how they end. Aristotle emphasized the experience of catharsis in tragedy, but “A Man Called Ove” offers a similar cleansing experience, with sadness and hilarity enough to leave the viewer feeling joyfully drained by the time the credits roll (not unlike last year’s “Inside Out”). So it turns out that there is such a thing as a Swedish comedy, but instead of cheap laughs and easy distraction, “A Man Called Ove” offers, instead, a renewed outlook on the whole experience of living.

work by Philip Guston, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Rashid Johnson, Mary Reid Kelley, Arnold Kemp, Amy Pleasant and Carrie Mae Weems, through Dec. 4, Fine Arts Gallery, lecture by Pleasant 5:30 p.m. Dec. 8, Hillside Auditorium. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Fri., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 479-575-7987.

HOT SPRINGS ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: Paintings by Polly Cook and Patrick Cunningham and photographs by Jim Pafford. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 655-0604.

EMERGENT ARTS, 341-A Whittington Ave.: Dia de los Muertos art exhibition, through Nov. 26.

GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.: Sculpture by Rod Moorhead, watercolors by Doyle Young, glass ornaments by James Hayes. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 318-42728 GARLAND COUNTY COMMUNITY LIBRARY, 1427 Malvern St.: “Macros and Minis,” large and miniature paintings, through Nov. 26.

JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 A Central Ave.: “Cantos from the New Pantheon,” paintings by Randall Good, through November. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Wed.-Sat. 321-2335.

JONESBORO ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, Bradbury Art Museum: “Vicinity,” printmaking by John Knudsen, through Nov. 16; “Embellish,” paintings, fiber art and sculpture by Liz Whitney Quisgard, through Dec. 9; “Tools for Thought: Jewelry,” miniature sculptures by Kiff Slemmons, through Dec. 9. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567.

PERRYVILLE SUDS GALLERY, Courthouse Square: Paintings

by Dottie Morrissey, Alma Gipson, Al Garrett Jr., Phyllis Loftin, Alene Otts, Mauretta Frantz, Raylene Finkbeiner, Kathy Williams and Evelyn Garrett. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri, noon-4 p.m.

Sat. 501-766-7584.

YELLVILLE PALETTE ART LEAGUE, 300 Hwy. 62 W: Work by area artists. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 870-656-2057.

ONGOING MUSEUM EXHIBITS

ARKANSAS INLAND MARITIME MUSEUM, North Little Rock: The USS Razorback submarine, WWII tug the Hoga tours. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 371-8320.

ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUM, Camp Robinson: Artifacts on military history, Camp Robinson and its predecessor, Camp Pike, also a gift shop. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Fri., audio tour available at no cost. 212-5215.

ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME MUSEUM, Verizon Arena, NLR: 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Mon.-Sat. 663-4328.

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

PANAMERICAN CONSULTING, INC. Interpretation and Written Translations (Spanish – Portuguese - French) Latino Cultural and Linguistic Training

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

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER: “Ladies and Gentlemen … the Beatles!” Records, photographs, tour artifacts, videos, instruments, recording booth for sing-along with Ringo Starr, from the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE, through April 2. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6.

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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.

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We offer first quality one-year-old lamb raised on our farm

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TESTICLES lb other chemicals. The only time we use $10 antibiotics is if the

PRICE LIST:

LEG OF LAMB has been injured which isHEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS lb $10 RIB ROAST lb animal extremely rare., $5TESTICLES All meat is contains about eight ribs (about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb. (lamb chops) $17 lb. , HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS, $5 lb TANNED SHEEPSKINS USDA inspected.

SHOULDER LEG OF LAMB $100-$150 TANNED SHEEPSKINS,

(about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb. $100-$150 (bone cook this slow, like a pot roast.

(Our sheepskins are on tanned in farm Wein, offer first quality one-year-old lamb raised our (Our sheepskins are tanned in You can up your farm inahas North SHOULDERoff Hwy 107 Meat falls offpick the bone). $11 lb. meat at our a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery (bone in, cook this slow,tannery like Quaker Town, Pa. that that has specialized in sheepin North Pulaski County.

Our meat is steroids or any a potfree roast. Meatof falls off the Pulaski (about 25 miles north downtown skinsfor forLittle generations.)

BONELESS LOINCounty $8 lb specialized sheep-skins generations.) bone).of $11 lb.in other chemicals.

The only time we use antibiotics is if the BONELESS LOIN $8 lb Rock) or$20we Little Rock weekdays.

TENDERLOIN lb can meet you in downtown

animal beenand injured is extremely TENDERLOIN $20 lb rare. All meat is LAMB BRATWURST All meathas is aged thenwhich frozen.

LAMB BRATWURST USDA inspected.

LINK SAUSAGE LINK SAUSAGE (one-lb package) $10 lb

(one-lb package) $10 lb

India

(for stew or soup) $5 lb

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You can pick up your meat at our farm off Hwy 107 in North NECKBONES Blue PRICE 12407 Davis Ranch Rd.LIST: | Cabot, AR 72023 Pulaski County (about 25 miles north of downtown Little 12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 Rock) or we can meet youalan@arktimes.com in downtown Little Rock weekdays.

RIB ROAST TESTICLES $10 lb alan@arktimes.com All meat is aged and then frozen. contains about eight ribs (lamb chops) $17 lb.

HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS, $5 lb

PRICE LIST:

OF LAMB TANNED SHEEPSKINS, Little Rock Schools – At Risk AfterLEG School Meal Service Program/Power Snack

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DOT SAP Evaluations Christopher Gerhart, LLC

(501) 478-0182

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ARKANSAS TIMES

MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination against

(about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb. its customers, employees, and applicants for employment on the bases of RIB ROAST TESTICLES $10 lb $100-$150 Little Rock School District’s Child Nutrition Department is a participant in the After School At Risk Meal Service race, color, national origin, age, disability, sex, gender identity, religion, contains about eight ribs and, where applicable, political beliefs, marital status, familial or Program, which offers Supper/Power Snack at all locations listed below and /or PM Snack at some locations.

Meals (Our sheepskins are tanned (lamb chops) $17 lb.

HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS,reprisal $5 lbin SHOULDER parental status, sexual orientation, or if all or part of the individuals income will be provided to all children (18 and under) without charge and are the same for all children regardless of race, a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery

is derived from any public assistance program, or protected genetic informa(bone in, cook this slow, like color, national origin, sex, age or disability and thereLEG willOF beLAMB no discrimination in the course of the has mealspecialized service. Meals sheepin employment or in any program or activity conducted or funded by that a pot roast.

Meat falls off the TANNED SHEEPSKINS, in tion the Department. (Not all prohibited bases will apply to all programs and/or will be provided at the sites and times as follows: (about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb. skins for generations.) employment activities.) bone). $11 lb.

$100-$150

SHOULDERLOIN $8 lb BONELESS

(bone in, cook this slow, like a pot roast. Meat falls off the TENDERLOIN $20 lb bone). $11 lb.

LAMB BRATWURST BONELESS LOIN $8 lb LINK SAUSAGE (one-lb package) $10 lb TENDERLOIN $20 lb

India NECKBONES Blue LAMB BRATWURST LINK SAUSAGE India 12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 CallNECKBONES Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 Blue alan@arktimes.com (for stew or soup) $5 lb (one-lb package) $10 lb (for stew or soup) $5 lb

If you wish to file a Civil Rights program complaint of discrimination, complete

(Our sheepskins are tanned in Program Discrimination Complaint Form, found online at http:// the USDA www.ascr.usda.gov/complaint_filing-cust.html, or at any USDA office, or call a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery (866) 632-9992 to request the form. You may also write a letter containing that has specialized in sheepall of the information requested in the form. Send your completed complaint skins for generations.) form or letter to us by mail at U.S. Department of Agriculture, Director, Of-

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fice of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, by fax (202) 690-7442 or email at program.intake@usda.gov.

Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have speech disabilities and wish to file either an EEO or program complaint please contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339 or (800) 845-6136 (in Spanish).

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

arktimes.com

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

31

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32

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES