Arkansas Times | October 2023

ENDANGERED CEMETERIES | TOAST OF THE TOWN | FOIA WINNERS AND LOSERS

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FEATURES 30 GRAVE LOSSES

When burial law meets property rights, things get complicated.

By Brooke Nelson Alexander

37 TOAST OF THE TOWN Clinking glasses to the state's best pilsners, proseccos and pinot noirs.

38 MOCKTAIL CRAWL

Pettaway Coffee and other developments in the zero-proof scene. By Rhett Brinkley

42 MEAD ME IN PARAGOULD

A visit to Greene County's Juniper Tree Meadery.

By Stephanie Smittle

46 PATIO PARADISE

JAMIE KELTER DAVIS

City Park is helping to revive Fayetteville's love affair with eating and drinking outside.

By Brian Sorensen

48 THE WINNERS

The votes are in. See how your favorite bartenders and breweries fared in our annual readers poll.

9 THE FRONT

From the Farm: Despite brutal summer heat, tomatoes persist.

Aw, Snap!: Deep thoughts with Sen. Bryan King.

Q&A: With Sarah Bennings, the architect behind Central High’s expansion.

Big Pic: The victors and the vanquished of the 2023 special session.

YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT: Alt-rock giants Wilco play the Momentary in Bentonville this month.

17 THE TO-DO LIST

Filmland, Ashley McBryde at Robinson Center, Wilco at the Momentary, Whitfield Lovell at AMFA, K-Ming Chang at Hendrix College and more.

24 NEWS

How LEARNS vouchers function as de facto tax cuts for the rich.

By David Ramsey

61 SAVVY KIDS ON THE COVER: Nick Shoulders

by Nick Futch.

4 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

Teaching young minds to parse fact from fiction.

By Tricia Larson

64 CULTURE

A Q&A with Nick Shoulders about harnessing traditional country music to fight oppression.

By Daniel Grear

69 CANNABIZ

Why Stuttgart rejected a medical marijuana dispensary.

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THE FRONT FROM THE FARM

HOTHOUSE RAMBLE AND THE FALL TOMATO GAMBLE.

BY ALAN LEVERITT Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt has lived on his great-grandparents’ farm in North Pulaski County for 41 years. This is the latest in a series of columns about day-to-day life on the land where he raises heirloom tomatoes and other crops for local restaurants and the Hillcrest Farmers Market.

I

t was 103 degrees outside, and I was in the worst possible place: working inside the plastic-covered hoop house, ministering to the tomatoes.

A hoop house is just an unheated greenhouse, and on this August Sunday afternoon it was 112 degrees under the plastic.

I farm (and live) in the middle of nowhere, so on those 100-plus-degree days I would hang my clothes on a hook in the hoop house, wearing nothing more than a hat and a pair of heavy shoes for some protection against the fire ants. I was carrying a bag of 500 tomato clips when I suddenly found myself on one knee, dizzy and slightly nauseous.

I stumbled toward the door, and just as I got to the entrance, a 10-mile-an-hour breeze came swooping through the double doors, cooling my sweat-soaked body.

Never mind that it was a 100-degree breeze — I nearly shivered as it cooled every inch of me. If that breeze didn’t save my life, it certainly reminded me that I was still alive and sentient. I made for the air-conditioned sorting shed about 100 yards away and held my head under the faucet until I felt like a human being again.

This has been such a brutally hot summer.

I can still do five, maybe six hours out in the field and my young helper, William Johnson, can work all day in it if need be. But I have felt sorry for the farm hands, highway workers and roofers I see along the road. If this summer is the new normal, I wonder how we will get our work done.

I wish somehow I could develop the heat tolerance of one of my tomato vines. In midSeptember, after 10 weeks of near constant 100-plus degrees in the hoop house, most of my 285 vines are healthy and over 6 feet tall.

In August, I was actually afraid they were going to die from the heat. But now nights have fallen into the ’60s, sparking a flush of

HOOP DREAMS: In mid-September, after 10 weeks of near constant 100-plus degrees in the hoop house, most of the 285 vines were healthy and over 6 feet tall.

tiny yellow tomato flowers heralding a fall crop. The hoop house can protect tomatoes from light, killing frost going into fall with temperatures 5 to 10 degrees warmer inside than outside. It’s truly a Las Vegas gamble to bet on fall tomatoes in Arkansas, but my protected plants should live so long as outside temps are above 26 or 27 degrees.

Regardless of all my weather whining, this season has been the most productive in my 25 years of small farming. I was forced to convert my 96-foot-long hoop house to a hydroponic system after bacterial wilt killed all of my grafted heirloom tomatoes last season. I had grafted my vulnerable heirloom tomato seedlings to a wild rootstock that supposedly would protect them from nearly all soil disease including bacterial wilt. My losses were 100%.

One more reason to keep your day job.

I worked from November until March of this year to make the conversion using specially drilled plastic buckets, a sterile pearlite medium and an automatic watering system dispensing plant nutrients. Sometimes I feel more like a plumber than a farmer, but the proof is on the plate. These heirlooms taste just as good as my outdoor heirlooms, with twice the production.

For years I planted about 2,000 heads of butter lettuce in three hoop houses during the winter, enabling me to farm year-round and have some kind of revenue stream for repairs and supplies. Just like the tomatoes, the soil became infected with a disease targeting lettuces, rotting their stems. This is what happens when you don’t rotate your crops. This winter I am sprouting 600 lettuce seedlings, which I will plant two to a bucket

in the tomato hoop house after the tomatoes freeze. The other two smaller hoop houses will be planted with green and purple sugar snap peas, green onions, purple cabbage and Swiss chard. Outside, I will be planting mache (pronounced ‘mosh’) for the first time.

This is a type of salad green that Europeans can grow in the dead of snowy winter and has a delicious peppery quality reminiscent of arugula.

In November, I’ll start construction on my fourth hoop house, this one 48-by-28 feet and hydroponic from Day 1. I am also experimenting with conversion of four 120foot outside raised beds to hydroponics. The hoop houses provide early heirlooms, and with the addition of the new house next year, I’ll have enough for the early farmers markets as well as my restaurants, which take priority.

The outdoor, later hydroponic heirlooms will be planted side by side with tomatoes in the soil to give a last boost to production as the early hoop house tomatoes cease production.

All of this is going on while I’m growing red bell peppers, grapes, Ambrosia cantaloupes, watermelons, zucchini and whatever else I get interested in.

Big plans, but I’m definitely keeping the day job. ************ Postscript: One of the country’s most knowledgeable people on hydroponics happens to operate out of Rose Bud in White County. When I called an outfit in Canada for guidance and supplies, they sent me to Randy Platow at Greenhouse Solutions. Platow has mentored me. If you are interested in doing this on a small scale, text or call him at 501556-3032.

ARKTIMES.COM

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ARKANSAS TIMES

VOTE ROLLIN'

Sen. Bryan King, a Republican from Green Forest, pauses during a special session at the state Capitol in September. King stood firm on government transparency during committee discussions and Senate floor debates, but wasn't in the chamber when the final vote came up. Because the Senate "rolled the vote" and King wasn't there to register his opposition, he got counted as a "yes." King later sent a letter to clarify that he was a "no" on rolling back the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Photograph by Brian Chilson.

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THE FRONT Q&A

FIRST DRAFT

A Q&A WITH ARCHITECT SARAH BENNINGS.

What are some of the goals and dreams with this project? Central High School, the building, is beautiful.

But it’s extremely old. The science labs are exactly the same as they were almost 100 years ago. At the same time, their science department has excelled tremendously. They have tons of accolades and awards and scholarships that are given to those students. We just want to give them a space and a building that represents how amazing that department is. We’ve actually included a horticulture room, so that department can expand into ecology.

What inspired you to go into architecture? My father [Carl Menyhart] is an architect and still practices here in Little Rock. I grew up in the Quapaw Quarter just down the road. He restored an old house downtown, and my parents have always been very active in historic preservation and invigorating Little Rock’s downtown. Those values were instilled in me at a young age, and I’ve always considered myself pretty lucky in that I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do.

What other projects have you worked on? We worked with the Little Rock School District on the new Southwest High School. I was the project manager on that as well.

That was 400,000 square feet of new academic and athletic editions. I’ve worked on projects in Texas, and I cut my teeth on Heifer International’s headquarters downtown.

BRIAN CHILSON

Sarah Bennings took her first drafting class at Little Rock Central High School before earning a bachelor’s in architecture from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and a master’s in urban design from Washington University in St. Louis.

Today, she’s putting her expertise to work for her alma mater. A 1999 graduate of Central, Bennings is the project architect for a $60 million project by architecture firm Polk Stanley Wilcox that will add two new buildings to the school’s campus — a new science building and field house as well as outdoor space for students.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE? “The Shawshank Redemption” WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK? “Countdown 1945,” by Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE SONG? “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUILDING? The New York Times Building by architect Renzo Piano. It's a perfect balance of technicality and delicate transparency.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUILDING IN LITTLE ROCK? The Bank of America Building by architect Nolan Blass.

What is the process for a project like this? The first step for us, which is always the very most important step, is to gather information, ask questions and meet with all the user groups. We start to understand what the challenges are and what the big goals and dreams are, learn what’s working right now and what’s not working and how we can solve those problems. We go from really, really big picture and, in each phase, narrow in more and more. We start with big ideas and go into schematic design and layouts and end up with a set of construction documents.

On the athletic side, they only have one small gym for a school of over 2,200 students. This is going to give them much more flexibility for all of those athletic programs to thrive.

What does it mean to you to be leading this project? It’s just really exciting to be able to give my talents back to the institution that gave me a start. I took my very first drafting class at Central. Even though I knew that I loved architecture, that class was the first chance for me to really do architecture hands-on. It made me realize this is real, not just something I was interested in. It’s exciting to be able to come back and work with Principal Nancy Rousseau.

It’s an honor. My goal is that I’m representing the product of Central High in the best way possible and really LRSD and public education.

What have you learned from previous education projects? LRSD has been really an amazing client and such a pleasure to work with.

They want nothing short of the best for their kids and they’re not afraid to be innovative and do new things and think out of the box. As an architect, it’s not just work — it’s a lot of fun. We’re thinking out of the box. We’re not just creating beautiful, modern buildings for the city, but we hope we are making the lives of kids that much better.

— Griffin Coop ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 13

THE FRONT BIG PIC

SECRECY, GADFLIES AND SAUSAGE WINNERS AND LOSERS OF THE 2023 SPECIAL SESSION.

BY AUSTIN BAILEY AND BENJAMIN HARDY It began with a simple enough request.

Crusading blogger Matt Campbell of Blue Hog Report asked for some records, hoping to find out who’s been flying on the Arkansas State Police airplane with the governor and how much it was costing taxpayers. Flight logs for the ASP’s King Air were always open for public inspection in the past. This time, though, state police said no, claiming the safety of the governor and her family were at stake. Campbell threatened to sue.

Within months, Sanders called a special session to kneecap the beloved Arkansas Freedom of Information Act that’s been in place since 1967. Her proposed changes went way beyond security-related records to shield vast swaths of state government workings from public view. Think of the

saved time and efficiency if the state no longer had to gather up the records reporters are always snooping around for or let pesky citizens see what’s going on with their money, Sanders and her minions argued.

But when the session kicked off on the inauspicious date of Sept. 11, something unusual happened. State lawmakers hurled a stick in the spokes first thing, blocking rule changes needed to race Sanders’ priorities to the finish line within the three days allotted.

Little Rock progressives linked arms with conservative groups like Conduit News and Saline County Republicans, temporarily dropping the knives from each others’ throats to point them at legislators instead. Not a single person testified in

favor of Team Government Secrecy, other than high-level government employees and one security contractor Sanders had employed in the past.

Sanders and her team eventually backed off the worst of the proposals.

A weakened version passed, allowing the governor to fly around on the public dime with whomever she likes with zero citizen oversight or accountability but but dropping broader plans to change the law.

By Sept. 14, the Republican supermajority granted the third income tax cut in a year, banned COVID-19 vaccine requirements for government entities and set up a new savings account to stow away all the money Arkansas saves by shirking our responsibility to children and the poor.

Isn’t that special?

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14 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

STEPHANIE FLOWERS’ DOG Sen. Flowers (D-Pine Bluff) calls it like she sees it, and she saw early on that the special session was not going her way. Flowers tapped out Monday evening and wouldn’t return for the duration, telling colleagues she had other commitments. “I’m going home to my dog right now,” she announced on the Senate floor.

BLUE HOG/'LIL MATTY WITH THE RONA' The reason for the season, Blue Hog blogger Matt Campbell was everywhere and nowhere at the Capitol. While he didn’t attend any of the hearings in person, it was Campbell’s digging that prompted Sanders to try to gut the FOIA. The ever peevish Rep. David Ray (R-Maumelle) mocked Campbell later that week for dropping his lawsuit over the state police documents due to a case of COVID, tweeting "Sorry Lil Matty has the Rona. That's just really too bad. I'm sure it's real and not just a coincidence. ... Maybe if he'd worn a mask and gotten his 17th vaccine this could have been prevented." (Campbell said he may refile.)

LOSERS

ARKANSAS STATE POLICE People using the FOIA to access the governor’s travel expenses are just trying to embarrass her, State Police Director Mike Hagar said as he testified in support of the plan to hide Sanders’ past and future flights.

THE ARKANSAS PRESS ASSOCIATION Arkansas Press Association President and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Eliza Gaines nailed her argument for preserving the state’s transparency law. “This bill goes far beyond personal safety,” she told members of a Senate committee. “The additional modifications to FOIA have nothing to do with protecting human lives and everything to do with protecting state government from scrutiny.”

After this, though, the APA went over to the dark side and endorsed the final bill passed by the legislature. The governor can now hide public expenditures from the public with the Arkansas Press Association’s blessing.

BLAKE JOHNSON’S CONSTITUENTS Sen. Blake Johnson (R-Corning), chairman of the Senate committee hearing testimony on the FOIA bill, spent much of the session telling citizens why they were wrong and he was right to do the governor’s bidding. State Capitol Police and state troopers were present in unprecedented numbers, and Johnson finally gave them something to do when he called for FOIA-defending gadfly Jimmie Cavin to be shown the door.

TOSS-UP

SARAH SANDERS AND HER JET-SETTING FRIENDS Imagine minting your own golden ticket for unlimited free travel on the public dime, with no way for anybody to ever know who you took with you or how much it cost? Cha-ching!

At the same time, Sanders discovered that maybe her power to do whatever she likes is not unlimited after all.

The MAGA contingent who voted for Sanders in November 2022 smacked her hand in September over her bid to build a wall of secrecy around state government.

CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING

DAVID RAY/THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Ray, whose off-putting doublespeak endeared him to no one, pre-gamed BART HESTER the special session with a televised Bullying constituents, pledging fealty to appearance on “Capitol View,” where the governor over the voters, playing with he argued that all state government his phone instead of paying attention communications involving issues not during committee meetings, Arkansas’s yet decided — “pre-decisional,” he said new Senate President Pro Tempore — should be shielded from public view. showed beyond a shadow of a doubt BELOVED In his June, former Ray failed toNUMBER convince15: with odd word Razorback that he lacks the temperament for a and NFL quarterback Ryan Mallett died unexpectedly choice, and pre-decisional documents leadership position. at the age of 35. remain fair game for now.

SEN. CLARKE TUCKER Sen. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock) took the field in his usual position, pitching copious free legal analysis to his dimmer colleagues. The lone Democrat on a key committee that week (Stephanie Flowers had gone home to her dog), Tucker deftly led the bipartisan people’s coalition for FOIA toward a win, only to get tripped up by his own integrity at the end. Having said he’d vote for a bill focused solely on security, Tucker said he felt obligated to follow through.

With Tucker’s vote, along with a single Democratic “yes” on the House side from Mark Perry of Jacksonville, Sanders was able to crow that her government secrecy bill had bipartisan support.

ARKTIMES.COM

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FILMLAND

FRIDAY 10/6-SATURDAY 10/7, FRIDAY 10/13-TUESDAY 10/17.

ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, CALS RON ROBINSON THEATER. Expanded beyond its original dates, Arkansas Cinema Society’s Filmland covers two weekends this year. On Oct. 6-7, the festival spotlights nearly two dozen student and professional shorts as well as three features by rising Natural State filmmakers. On Oct. 13-17, Filmland presents a collection of higher-profile movies snagged from the independent film festival circuit. Though the full lineup for the second weekend wasn’t released when the Arkansas Times went to press, the Sunday, Oct. 15, showing of “The Bikeriders,” Little Rock native and ACS co-founder Jeff Nichols’ new feature-length, makes Filmland a no-brainer, especially because Nichols will be onsite for a Q&A. Starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, “The Bikeriders” follows the tumultuous ascent of a fictional ’60s Chicago-area motorcycle gang as it evolves from a neighborhood club to something far more dangerous.

After its opening at the Telluride Film Festival in late August, a critic from The Wall Street Journal called it “the finest movie about motorcycle culture I’ve ever seen.”

Also on the program is actor Michael Shannon’s harrowing directorial debut, “Eric LaRue,” which casts Judy Greer in the role of Janice LaRue, a mother trying to make sense of her place in the world and her community after her son shoots and kills three of his high school classmates. God is presented as the answer by her husband and religious leaders, but Janice remains skeptical. The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is “a work of thoughtful intelligence and restraint,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. A Q&A with Shannon will follow its screening on Saturday, Oct. 14. DG ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 17

‘WHITFIELD LOVELL: PASSAGES’ FRIDAY 10/27-SUNDAY 1/14.

ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. FREE.

“Together,” the inclusivity-minded premiere exhibition of the newly reopened Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, closed last month, and frankly I’m a little sad about it. After a few visits, I grew attached to several pieces, and I looked forward to the revelations that came from seeing them again after time away. Lovely as it was, though, the show lacked a certain coherence: Its themes of diversity and connectedness were a bit vague and broad, and it collected the stylistically varied work of dozens of unrelated artists.

In contrast, “Passages,” which will replace “Together” in the Harriet and Warren Stephens Family Gallery, has a singular focus: MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Whitfield Lovell. Raised in the Bronx, Lovell is best known for his drawings of Black Americans, which are made on paper or salvaged wooden boards and are often based on photographs of individuals from the early 20th century whose identities are lost to history. “Passages” will include many such portraits, along with two of Lovell’s immersive installations, “Deep River” and “Visitation: The Richmond Project.” The latter is inspired by the Jackson Ward neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, a thriving Black entrepreneurial community that was once thought of as the “Harlem of the South.” Though “Passages” — like the AMFA in general — is free, admission to Lovell’s artist talk, hosted at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 26, is $20 for nonmembers. DG

ARKANSAS TIMES FILM SERIES: ‘WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE’

Wes Craven’s 1984 classic “Nightmare on Elm Street” launched a string of sequels helmed by different directors. While Chuck Russell’s 1987 entry “Dream Warriors” was strong, the films were mediocre on the whole, with teenager-slaying Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) shedding more and more of his menacing aura until he became a quip-slinging source of comic relief.

In 1994, Craven took the reins again and attempted to rejuvenate the franchise with a meta offering darker than the original. “New Nightmare” takes place in a universe in which the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies exist. Heather Langenkamp stars once again, but this time she’s playing herself, 10 years after taking on the role of Nancy Thompson in the first and third films. Despite transitioning to working in television and leading a domestic life with her husband and child, Langenkamp can’t escape the spirit of Krueger, who seems to be clawing his way into the real world. Frightening dreams and frequent phone calls from an obsessive fan cause her to seek out Craven (also played by himself), who’s been writing a new “Nightmare” installment inspired by his own demonic visions. OJ/DG 18 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

IMDB

TUESDAY 10/17. RIVERDALE 10 VIP CINEMA. 7 P.M. $11.75-$13.75.

CENTRAL ARKANSAS PRIDE FEST AND PARADE

SATURDAY 10/21. ARGENTA ARTS DISTRICT, NORTH LITTLE ROCK. NOON. FREE; DONATIONS ACCEPTED.

LIH TRANS

In a year of ill-informed legislative attacks on drag shows, routine bathroom usage by transgender people and books with even the slightest hint of LGBTQ+ content, the queer community needs a break. In addition to yet-to-be announced Arkansas entertainers, 2023’s Central Arkansas Pride (Year 11!) boasts appearances by Esera Tuaolo (former NFL player turned gay activist after coming out in 2002), drag queen Latrice Royale (seen on season four of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and season one and four of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars”) and singers Nicole McCloud, Scarlett Santana and John Levengood. If you don’t get your fill from the parade and fest — where you’ll find vendors, food trucks, adult beverages and a family zone — there’s also a ticketed brunch event the next day from 11 a.m.-1 p.m at the Clinton Presidential Library. The $50 price tag is a bit steep, but a meet and greet with Tuaolo and McCloud, catering from 42 Bar and Table, and an open bar are included. DG

JEFFREY LEWIS & THE VOLTAGE Anti-folk singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis rambles so charmingly that even his song titles tell stories. His first official record, the scrappy and diaristic collection that introduced the world to his sing-talk tendencies in 2001, contains tracks such as “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” and “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane.” I’m just now discovering Lewis, so I can’t claim to be an authority, but he strikes me as the kind of musician whose work gets more idiosyncratic the closer you look, traversing topics far beyond the neurotic confines of his mind. (He has an obscure tune that I can only find live videos of called something like “The History of Punk on the Lower East Side of NYC 1950-1975,” which is about exactly what you think.) As strange and off-the-cuff as he seems, critical outlets like The New York Times warn that you should take him seriously: “Lewis’s shaky, semispoken delivery and his band’s ragged instrumentation give his music an air of tossed-off amateurism that obscures his tight, careful songwriting.”

DG

KATIE KAUSS

SUNDAY 10/15. WHITE WATER TAVERN. 7 P.M. $12-$16.

ASHLEY MCBRYDE

SUNDAY 10/15. ROBINSON CENTER. 7:30 P.M. $29-$291.

Seeing as how the 2023 Country Music Association Awards recently nominated Mammoth Spring native Ashley McBryde for Female Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year and Music Video of the Year, you could argue that this is her year. If you peek into the past, however, you’ll realize that this kind of prestigious attention is old hat for McBryde, who’s been noticed by the CMAs since she won New Artist of the Year in 2019. “The Devil I Know,” McBryde’s fourth major label album, came out in September, so it’s too fresh to be considered by the bigwigs giving out accolades, but we’re happy to confirm its greatness. Between “Learned to Lie,” a soberingly sincere ballad about reckoning with the unfortunate tendencies she inherited from her family, and the title track, which alternates between stadium strums and peppy claps, the record is a stellar mix of sentiment and badassery. McBryde’s show at Robinson Center, featuring an opening performance by Fort Smith’s JD Clayton, will be her first time playing in Little Rock since 2021. DG ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 19

WILCO

PETER CROSBY

FRIDAY 10/27. THE MOMENTARY, BENTONVILLE. 7:30 P.M. $59.

K-MING CHANG

Jeff Tweedy, the bandleader behind alt-rock giants Wilco, has thought so much about songwriting that he penned a book on the subject: “How to Write One Song.” If anyone’s qualified to pontificate about the subject, it’s Tweedy, who’s served as a principal songwriter on over 20 albums across the various projects of his career. “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” which received a perfect rating from Pitchfork and was included in Rolling Stone’s 500 Best Albums of All Time, is considered by many to be the group’s magnum opus, thanks in large part to Tweedy, whose poetic couplets nimbly toe the line between cryptic and legible, like the best lyrics do. When Tweedy sings “His jaw’s been broken / His bandage is wrapped too tight / His fangs have been pulled / And I really want to see tonight,” on “Poor Places,” my favorite Wilco tune ever, I have no idea what he means, and yet I also do, somewhere deep within. I don’t know if that effect can be taught, but it sure as hell is what the songwriter in me would like to learn to do one day. Side note: If you’re already in Bentonville for the weekend, consider sticking around another day to see Wu-Tang Clan, who play at the Momentary the next night. DG

THURSDAY 10/19. REVES RECITAL HALL, HENDRIX COLLEGE, CONWAY. 7:30 P.M. FREE.

ARKANSAS TINY DESK CONTEST 2023

When K-Ming Chang was chosen as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees in 2020, she was 22, seven years younger than the four other young fiction writers being celebrated. She wrote her debut novel, “Bestiary,” during her sophomore year at Sarah Lawrence College. The New York Times declared it was “full of magic realism that reaches down your throat, grabs hold of your guts and forces a slow reckoning with what it means to be a foreigner, a native, a mother, a daughter,” defying any expectations that 20-somethings only write thinly veiled autobiographies. Age shouldn’t be a competition, but you can’t help but wonder about those who emerge early. Are they wired differently or is their success just a flash in the pan?

Chang clearly isn’t in the latter category. In the three years since “Bestiary” came out, she’s published “Bone House,” a chapbook billed as a queer Taiwanese-American retelling of “Wuthering Heights,” as well as “Gods of Want,” a short story collection that won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. By the time she appears at Hendrix, she’ll be days away from the release of her second novel, “Organ Meats” (advance copies will be on sale at the reading), with a novella called “Cecilia” coming in 2024. DG

Since 2014, NPR Music has invited musicians to upload homey video performances to YouTube for consideration in their annual Tiny Desk Contest, the winner of which gets the opportunity to appear on the revered Tiny Desk series. In 2023 alone, nearly 6,000 artists applied. Though none of this year’s 40 entries from Arkansas were awarded the top prize, NPR affiliate Little Rock Public Radio (a recent rebrand of KUAR and KLRE) concocted a way to honor our state’s applicants: Arkansas Tiny Desk Contest 2023. In partnership with KUAF-FM 91.3 Fayetteville and KASU-FM 91.9 Jonesboro, all of Arkansas’s submissions were reevaluated by a panel of statewide judges, whose job was to narrow the pool down to their top three favorites. Spanning folk, pop and R&B, the selected artists — Common Roots from Fayetteville, Lead Pipe Conservatory Band from Harrison and Ethel Tamara featuring Concrete Rose from Helena-West Helena — represent a wide swath of our state’s musical talent. El Sur and Smashed N’ Stacked will be slinging baleadas and burgers onsite, and VIP ticket holders will get first dibs on Lost Forty Brewing’s Tiny Desk Sessions, a new sour beer debuting at the event before it’s available at its Little Rock taproom. DG

20 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

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THIS IS RICH VOUCHERS FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL TUITION CUT WEALTHY FAMILIES' TAX BURDEN.

BY DAVID RAMSEY

I

magine a Little Rock family, the Joneses, who are doing very well for themselves.

They’re not quite in the top 1% in the state by income, but they’re closer than you might think. Mr. Jones is an associate dean at UAMS and Mrs. Jones is a lawyer — their combined income is around $300,000.

They have two kids and own a beautiful house in the Heights. Life is good.

Both kids go to Episcopal Collegiate School, where the tuition is $15,010 for their daughter, in elementary school, and $17,900 for their son, in sixth grade. Those are fixed costs in their family budget. Every year, they spend $32,910 on tuition, not to mention other expenses related to the private school. That leaves them with a little less money to save, invest or spend on other stuff. For example, they’re eager to remodel their kitchen.

Luckily for the Joneses, they are about to get a big monetary boost, thanks to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. One of the more dramatic material impacts of her new education law, Arkansas LEARNS, will be to shift taxpayer money into the pockets of rich families.

In a couple of years, LEARNS will gift the Joneses nearly $14,000 per year. The payments are called vouchers and they have to be used for private school tuition and expenses. But because that’s already a fixed cost for the Joneses, the net result will wind up being a major windfall for their

24 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

NEWS & POLITICS

ENTITLED: Thanks to the Arkansas LEARNS Act, families who already pay tuition to private schools like Episcopal Collegiate in Little Rock will be getting a new government perk.

bank account.

For the Joneses — and for taxpayers, and the state budget — it amounts to the same thing as a juicy tax cut. Or a generous welfare check. This healthy boost to their after-tax disposable income, funded by the state’s taxpayers, is so generous that it’s roughly equal to the entire amount of annual state income tax the Joneses owe.

LEARNS is an education bill, but look closely and there is a hidden monetary bonus for the wealthy: For the Joneses, it is as if their state income tax liability was zeroed out to nothing. This is their reward for being wealthy enough to already send their kids to one of the state’s fanciest private schools. Families like the Joneses are arguably the law’s biggest winners.

Happily, they might just be able to get around to that kitchen renovation a little sooner.

NO SLIDING SCALE In the 2025-26 school year, when the law is fully phased in, all K-12 students in Arkansas will be eligible to apply for the LEARNS vouchers. That includes students already attending private school (or new students who would have gone to private school even without the vouchers), and such students will likely make up a large portion of voucher recipients. The vouchers will pay up to around $6,994 to cover the cost of private school tuition and certain

other expenses in the 2025-26 school year, with the voucher amount likely rising incrementally in future years. (Funding is not unlimited and priority will be given to certain applicants.)

When policymakers design a benefit program (or what is sometimes called a welfare program), they can choose to target those benefits for lower-income people who are more in need. A targeted program tries to get more bang for its buck by putting its spending power exclusively toward providing benefits for certain people.

For example, the government could try to determine people’s incomes, and then only provide the benefit to those below a certain line. This approach is called means testing, and conservatives often want more of it if there’s going to be any sort of benefit program at all.

Another approach is a universal program that provides benefits to everyone. You could think of the Medicaid expansion program as an example of a targeted benefit — only low-income people qualify for the benefit. Public education is an example of a universal benefit — everyone gets the benefit regardless of income.

Universal programs can still be targeted, if policymakers do the equivalent of means testing on the tax side; a universal child tax credit, for example, that sends a check to every family could be paid for by a progressive tax designed to tax wealthier

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families the same amount they would have gotten from the benefit.

Arkansas LEARNS is a universal program that did not create any new corresponding “means testing” on the tax side. Because it involves significant sums of money for a good that many families would purchase with or without a subsidy (private school tuition), the law’s design amounts to a windfall for families who can already afford private school.

Year

36th

26 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

NO TESTING Not all private school families are rich, and some rich families choose public schools. Be that as it may, it seems safe to assume that families who can afford thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in annual tuition tend to be better off.

LEARNS was sold as a lifeline for poor families stuck in failing public schools.

But because the law is structured to offer the benefit to families already enrolled in private schools (or to high-income families who would have enrolled their students in private school for kindergarten even without the law), it could turn out that many or most of the applicants for vouchers have relatively higher incomes.

In Arizona, the first state to offer vouchers to all students as a universal program, 78% of students who applied in the first year had not been enrolled in the public school system. Smaller voucher programs in New Hampshire and Wisconsin have had similar results. The figure in Arizona has fallen in the program’s second year, after an aggressive marketing campaign, but remains at around half of the participants.

Arkansas’s new program is likely to see its share of nonpublic school students increase as the program opens up applications to all private school students in its third year.

Private school families might be more likely to take advantage of vouchers for a number of reasons. Those already enrolled in private schools are far more likely to be aware of the options and application process than those outside the private school system (simply acting in their own economic interest, presumably all or nearly all private school families will apply).

Public school families may be reluctant to make a change if their children are already comfortable with their current schools.

And even with the vouchers, private school tuition may be out of reach for many families.

To take the example of the Joneses and Episcopal, while the family will get a spectacular deal from LEARNS vouchers, they’ll still pay at least $18,000 out of pocket, which is likely prohibitively expensive for lower-income families. Roughly two-thirds of the schools receiving vouchers this year

currently charge tuition of more than $7,000 for at least some students, according to information from the state compiled by the nonprofit news outlet Arkansas Advocate, with rate increases potentially coming as the program expands. At least 19 of the schools charge more than $9,000.

“We are definitely concerned that families with lower incomes will be sidelined by the [voucher] program and that wealthier families whose children were already in private schools stand to benefit the most,” said Olivia Gardner, director of education policy for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She pointed out that in Arizona, the average voucher is about $7,000, while the average cost of private school tuition in the state is now around $10,000.

For whatever reason, unlike Arizona, the Arkansas Department of Education is not tracking whether students participating in the voucher program came from public schools or private schools. Without such tracking, it will be difficult to determine what’s really happening in Arkansas. One piece of data: Thus far, just 1% of voucher applicants this year — around 50 students in the entire state — are using the vouchers to leave F-rated public schools for private schools.

For those families who do move from public school to private school using a voucher, the benefit for them will be whatever they value about a private school education as opposed to what their children were getting in public schools. But they will not get the financial benefit that accrues to private school families. They are replacing a good — public school education — that was free. They don’t get the boost to their bank accounts. That’s only available to families wealthy enough to send their kids to private school even without the LEARNS voucher.

A DE FACTO TAX CUT When evaluating what a new government policy does, it’s easy to get lost in the flows of money in and out of the system — in this case, making a pit stop with third-party vendors for good measure (an outside company called ClassWallet is being paid by the state to handle the payment system).

If you look at the way the state lays it out in a budget proposal, something labeled as a monetary benefit might wind up having the same final result as something labeled as a tax cut for all involved (likewise, a benefit cut can turn out to be functionally equivalent to a tax hike). Sometimes people get distracted by gross revenues or gross costs and miss what the actual net result is for the government or for taxpayers.

Let’s look again at the Joneses, our family

in the Heights. Remember, that $32,910 in tuition is locked in as a fixed annual expense. Once the LEARNS vouchers are available for their kids, that cost will be slashed, and suddenly they’ll have a lot more to spend on other stuff. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll say the vouchers are $7,000 per kid, just a bit more than what the actual voucher will likely be in 2025-26, and likely a bit less than it will be in future years.

Now, instead of spending nearly $33,000 on tuition for their two kids, they’ll spend just under $19,000. This is a good deal for the Joneses! They have $14,000 more in after-tax disposable income than they would without LEARNS. If the Joneses make $300,000 a year in net taxable income, that would be equivalent to reducing their taxes by a whopping 4.67% If you’re keeping score at home, under current state law, their state income tax liability is about $13,950 — so the Joneses wind up making out roughly as well from LEARNS as they would if they didn’t have to pay any state income tax at all.

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OR: A STIMULUS PACKAGE If you prefer, you can think of the LEARNS benefits as welfare payments, which is literally what they are.

Imagine if the state simply sent stimulus checks of nearly $7,000 per kid to all parents of private school students in the state (or doled out the checks first-come, first-served to families who applied).

Under LEARNS, for comparison: A school invoices a parent, the government pays a vendor, and the vendor pays the school. Under this hypothetical policy, the government would pay the parent, who would then pay the school. Follow the money: The structure would be different, but this would functionally be the very same policy we have now with LEARNS. Indeed, if you want to help private school parents with tuition, it might even be a more efficient way to do so.

LEARNS backers want to tell a story about helping families in need. They’re not going to say, “Let’s hand out stimulus checks to rich families like candy!” But that’s what LEARNS does.

You might say that LEARNS vouchers are not the same as a stimulus check because they must be spent on private school or other designated expenses. You can’t go buy a new designer dress with the vouchers.

But because this is a cash benefit to pay for an item that certain families were going to pay for no matter what, it’s really no different than sending them checks. Cash is fungible. By applying the vouchers, they’ll have $14,000 more in their bank accounts, and they can do whatever they want with that money.

ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 27

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ARKANSAS TIMES

State lawmakers may have concluded that universality was the best or smoothest or fairest way to implement this program, but for families already willing and able to pay for private school, it’s not a policy that has any impact on the education their children receive. It’s just a big, fat boost to their bank accounts.

WILL TUITION RISE? While families like the Joneses will make out well either way, private schools may take a piece of their windfall if they raise tuition in response to the law. By doing so, they could access more state funds while still keeping families’ out-of-pocket costs lower. If a school raised tuition by $2,000 per student, for example, it could tell parents that if they get vouchers, they’ll still come out roughly $5,000 per student ahead.

Some private schools in Florida and Iowa, for example, have raised tuition this year in response to new voucher programs, justifying the increases by pointing to the new public money available for parents.

If schools with tuitions above the voucher amount raise their rates, that will make the windfall for the Joneses and similar families a bit smaller. But it will also mean that private schools are soaking up additional money from the public — schools that many lower-income families won’t be able to afford even with the help of vouchers.

“Iowa is … already seeing private school tuition increase upwards of 30-40% according to local news reports,” Gardner said. “Over time what we are likely to see is that the families who were already able to pay for private school tuition will still be able to do so, at a subsidized price, and the families with low incomes, who were supposed to be the priority, will be left out.”

MORE HELP FOR THE RICH Imagine if Gov. Sanders had proposed a policy like one of those described above: stimulus checks of nearly $7,000 per kid for all private school families or a massive special tax cut just for private school families. Even in deep-red Arkansas, it probably would have been politically dead in the water. It would be hard to sell the public on handing out giant welfare checks to rich families or slashing the taxes specifically of people who can already afford private school.

But all of this is in fact happening in the background of LEARNS. Almost certainly some well-off families, depending on their circumstances, will even wind up getting more back in vouchers than what they're paying in state income and local property

taxes combined.

The LEARNS windfall for rich families won’t show up in any “tax” column in the state budget. We won’t get official budget projections with a breakdown of how much each income group is gaining from this new state benefit. And so the debate over LEARNS mostly proceeded without much discussion of the massive movement of taxpayer money to the pockets of wealthy families.

Voucher proponents might argue private school families deserve a break since the state-and-local-funded public schools don’t have to educate their children. This would be a version of the grumbles you occasionally hear from childless homeowners frustrated with property taxes. Public education has long been considered a public good — a fundamental service open to all and funded by taxpayers, even those who don’t have children themselves or those who opt to instead pay for a bespoke educational experience for their kids. Increasingly, many in the conservative movement don’t see it that way.

But putting the underlying ideological questions aside, the fact remains that the policy shift implemented by LEARNS amounts to large stimulus checks being sent to a subset of taxpayers who almost certainly lean wealthy. In the case of families that would use private schools anyway, this represents a significant new cost to the state — a cost that these families used to pay themselves and will now be borne by all taxpayers.

Ever since Republicans took full political control in Arkansas, they have been focused on cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations. For example, if the Joneses’ net taxable income is $300,000, tax cuts enacted in 2019 and 2022 have now slashed the Joneses’ taxes by more than $5,000 per year. By comparison, a family making $50,000 has seen their annual tax bill go down by less than $400 over the same period. (Someone making $1 million a year, meanwhile, got an annual tax cut of more than $19,000.)

Two more tax cuts this year, one in April and the other in September's special session, slashed the top rate even further, saving the Joneses around another $1,450 on annual taxes in future years. These cuts again skew heavily toward high-income Arkansans.

In addition to all of its changes to the education system in the state, LEARNS is a continuation of this trend, leaving many wealthy families with yet more money in their pockets. In Arkansas, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the Joneses.

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MEMORIAM: Wanda Lewis, 75, visits a grave at Center Point cemetery near Scott.

ONE FAMILY'S STRUGGLE TO KEEP ACCESS TO THE BURIAL PLOTS OF THEIR ANCESTORS.

BY BROOKE NELSON ALEXANDER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON 30 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

W

hen Wanda Lewis and her family visit Center Point cemetery near Scott, a locked neighborhood gate now blocks their path.

It stands across the road that Lewis, 75, and her two brothers have traveled for decades to see the gravesites of their father, grandmother and other members of Scott’s Black sharecropping community dating back to the 1800s.

The family burial plot sits on the banks of one of several oxbow lakes snaking through the landscape near Scott, a small community that sits just southeast across the Arkansas River from Little Rock. Lewis first came upon the gate in 2012, as developers were building houses on the old farmland nearby. At the time, she felt “disappointed [and] angry,” she said.

“Our relatives are dead. What’s the harm in going to pay respects to them?”

But the family adjusted, and for the past decade, they’ve requested the gate’s code from the neighborhood’s residents each time they visit Center Point.

But as new homes have continued to sprout up, the tension between Lewis’ family and developers has escalated.

Today, the family worries about the fate of their ancestral burial grounds: A new landowner has bought a lot that includes the cemetery and plans to build a house on the property, restricting their access.

It’s a well-known yet unsettling truth among historical preservationists in Arkansas: Centuries-old cemeteries across the state are increasingly endangered — and even destroyed — by development and farming practices.

Almost two dozen cemeteries in Arkansas were listed as endangered and another 27 were destroyed between 2000 and 2011, according to a website created by a volunteer group that compiled information on Arkansas cemeteries.

Preservationists believe those numbers could now be in the hundreds.

Black burial grounds are the most vulnerable to expanding development, according to preservationists, because many were never registered and therefore are not protected by state burial law. Preserving these cemeteries is now a race against time, with archeologists hearing dozens more stories every year about threatened gravesites.

For family members, “It adds grief

twice,” said Carla Coleman, chairperson of the Black History Commission of Arkansas. “You grieve when they’re buried and you lose them, and then you grieve again when a cemetery is destroyed, or you can’t get to it.”

‘THIS LAND HOLDS A LOT OF MEMORIES’ Lewis grew up near the spot where her father is now buried, but back then, her name was Wanda Johnson. Along with her eight siblings, including 82-year-old RL and 76-year-old Charles Johnson, she picked cotton on a 51-acre piece of land her family had farmed for years — though they never owned it.

According to family lore, the Johnsons settled in Scott after their grandfather, Louis, clashed with bankers in Helena over farm debts. He loaded his family and belongings into a wagon and stole away to Scott overnight, eventually finding work as a sharecropper. (Disclosure: My husband’s family owns land in Scott, and I first met the Johnsons through his grandmother. His great-great uncle, George Alexander, managed, rented and eventually owned farmland where the Johnsons were sharecroppers, though George never owned the parcel of land on which Center Point sits.)

The Johnson siblings’ father, Louis “Fritz” Johnson, grew up to be a sharecropper like his father. “Our dad was a hardworking man, and he took care of his family,” Lewis said. She remembers him as a leader in Scott’s sharecropping community. Rain or shine, “if he got up to go to work, everybody else did, too,” she said. “He could have been the mayor.”

He also had bigger aspirations for his family and talked of opening an auto repair shop. “He had dreams for all of us,” Lewis said. But one day in 1959, Fritz was repairing the hydraulic system on a farm truck when the vehicle fell on top of him and killed him.

Their mother, Easter, was left to raise Lewis and her eight siblings on her own.

“It was terrible. It was awful,” Lewis said. “You don’t understand that kind of loss until you’re an adult.”

The family buried Fritz at Center Point, which was in a wooded area on land near Horseshoe Lake owned by a white family named the Brysons. Several other members of the sharecropping

community buried their relatives there as well. The oldest headstone dates to 1875, long before official state recordkeeping of cemeteries.

Over the years, the Johnson siblings grew up and moved away. They started careers, joined the Army, got married and started families. But they maintained emotional ties to the cemetery in Scott and returned every Memorial Day to visit their father’s grave, go fishing in the lake and host a fish fry. “This land holds a lot of memories,” Lewis said.

Center Point cemetery remained undocumented throughout this time.

In 2014, as developers began building houses around the cemetery, Lewis called John House, a retired archeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey, to conduct a survey of the site.

The Johnson family believed that some of the new residential development had been built over unmarked Center Point graves already, and they hoped that finally documenting the cemetery in this manner would prevent further damage.

“We thought we were getting ahead of it,” Lewis said. “We didn’t know there was anything else that we were supposed to do.”

But when the family drove out to Center Point for their annual Memorial Day gathering this year, they found a patch of land about a dozen yards from the headstones had been cleared and appeared to be prepared for construction.

Concerned that the new development could encroach upon their family’s cemetery, Lewis arranged to meet an archeologist from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program at Scott’s post office in June. When Lewis arrived, she was surprised to see that the archeologist had brought along someone else — a man who turned out to be the property’s new owner, John Williams. The Johnson family hadn’t realized the land had been sold.

Williams, who is white, had purchased the property two years earlier, and told Lewis that he planned to build a house on the land. He now owned the graveyard, he said, because it was on his private property.

“I was caught totally off guard and taken aback,” Lewis said. She called RL and Charles, as well as another woman

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with a relative buried at Center Point, who joined the gathering at the post office.

The group drove to the cemetery together, but the conversation soon broke down over a discussion about clearing and burning brush to improve access to the plot. Williams was open to clearing vegetation but bristled at the suggestion of starting a fire on his property. He told the Johnsons that they needed to call him and request access to the property from here on out. Each time the family wanted to visit the cemetery, it would have to be on a scheduled basis. If they entered the property without his permission, he would call the police.

This threat, along with the claim that he owned the cemetery, caused Lewis’ temper to boil over. “How does it feel to own some dead bodies?” she asked him.

In an interview, Williams confirmed the basic outline of events as described

by Lewis. He said he was under the impression that the purpose of the meeting that day was simply to give the Johnsons and the archeologist access to the property and cemetery — not to figure out a plan to protect Center Point from development, which is how Lewis saw the meeting.

(Jessica Cogburn, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program archeologist who arranged the meeting, did not respond to questions, and an official with the program declined to comment.)

Williams said he believes the Johnsons should have the right to visit their family plot, but he wants to know whenever they access it. That’s in part due to concerns about recent thefts, he said, as well as liability: The land contains hazards such as snakes and overgrown vegetation.

Ultimately, a lawyer advised him that “this is private land,” Williams said. “And from a legal aspect, it's been noted that no one can come in and tell us what to do with our private property.”

Lewis was dismayed that Williams wanted to dictate the terms by which her family accessed the cemetery; at any point, he could decide that they couldn’t visit their father’s gravesite. On top of that, their argument had been so fierce that she worried there would be further trouble if she contacted Williams again, even to ask for his permission to visit the cemetery.

Instead, she called Carla Coleman, the Black History Commission chair, whom she had met during the process of surveying Center Point back in 2014. “[Wanda] was yelling. She was very upset,” Coleman said. “I could hear trauma in her voice. I had never seen or heard that side of her.”

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Lewis pleaded with Coleman to help her save the cemetery.

‘A WORD-OF-MOUTH AGREEMENT’ The conflict over Center Point raises complicated questions about land ownership and access. Should families have the right to visit their dead regardless of property laws? What grounds should landowners have to regulate access to a cemetery found on their land?

Access to a cemetery can be granted through an easement, which allows people to enter and cross private property for a specific purpose, such as installing or maintaining utility lines. Such an easement would attach to the land and transfer with the property upon sale, legally requiring a new landowner to grant access. But because the Bryson family allowed the sharecropping community to establish Center Point on their land without a written contract or deed, the cemetery was never documented in county land records.

That’s the case with many 19th century graveyards and is particularly true for historical Black cemeteries, whose occupants were enslaved people or sharecroppers who did not own the land to begin with. Instead, white landowners would often allow the Black community to use a piece of land to build a church and cemetery.

“It was a word-of-mouth agreement and a handshake, and I guess they thought they didn’t have to put anything down and record it,” Coleman said.

Without a recorded agreement, a family would need to negotiate with the landowner or petition a court for an easement to access the property where their cemetery is located. That requires hiring a lawyer and costs time and money that many families don’t have.

Arkansas burial law can help to uphold access for families, but only to a certain point. For example, it is illegal to physically enclose a cemetery by constructing a gate or fence without allowing reasonable access.

Yet the law does not apply to burial plots that contain fewer than six grave markers, have not been used for at least 25 years and have not had an access road for at least 30 years. This could disqualify many small historical cemeteries like Center Point, where only five headstones can be located (though the Johnsons believe at least 22 people are buried there), the last burial occurred in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and there is no direct access road.

That leaves family members to rely on the generosity of landowners to visit the

A QUESTION OF ACCESS: Wanda Lewis walks the grounds at Center Point cemetery with her husband and her brothers, RL and Charles Johnson (top left). The family visited with a police escort in case of trouble (bottom left). A locked neighborhood gate has blocked the road leading to the cemetery since 2012 (top right).

gravesites of their loved ones. “For African American cemeteries in general, there’s racial injustice,” said Melissa Zabecki, a state archeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey. “Landowners are almost always white. It’s a social problem, as far as not letting someone have access.”

UNTOLD LOSSES The Johnsons’ story is only one of many.

“The encroachment of cemeteries by development is a common thing,” Zabecki said. “Cemeteries are generally under threat.”

But determining exactly how many cemeteries are endangered by development is challenging, because many are undocumented. By law, modern-day cemeteries with recent interments must be registered with the county judge and the Arkansas Department of Health. However, historical cemeteries that were created before the department was established, and have not had a new interment in decades, often remain unrecorded.

Until recently, another such site was Macedonia Cemetery, the ancestral burial grounds of Sherwood resident George Wilson, an amateur family historian. Like the Johnson siblings, Wilson’s parents were sharecroppers in Scott, and a few years ago he rediscovered Macedonia Cemetery

on private land in Lonoke County. When he approached the landowner, she agreed to deed him the plot of land containing the cemetery. Wilson received the deed this August, and Macedonia is now listed in the Arkansas Register of Historic Places.

But not just any century-old cemetery can qualify for the register; it must be considered of historical significance to be eligible. Wilson was able to get his cemetery listed by spending years gathering research about the people who were buried there. He found that many of the cemetery’s occupants were part of a massive exodus of African Americans from South Carolina to Arkansas in the late 19th century, which The New York Times reported on at the time. Smaller cemeteries, like Center Point, are less likely to qualify for the register.

If a cemetery is not officially registered, it can be difficult for developers or farmers to know that it even exists before purchasing the land. The deeds for the properties containing both Center Point and Macedonia label the land as ‘agricultural,’ making no mention of the century-old graveyards.

Part of the issue is that many historical graveyards are not easily visible to the public eye. Headstones can be removed or damaged over time by weather or

vandalism. Many historical Black or indigenous burial grounds are especially hard to locate. Rather than large headstones, many graves were marked with a pile of stones or a pipe or metal piece fashioned into the shape of a cross.

Enslaved people were often buried with no markers at all.

If families want to document their unregistered cemeteries in some way, they must take it upon themselves to contact an archeologist to conduct a survey, as House did for the Johnsons. In cases where headstones are missing or graves are unmarked, archeologists rely on oral histories from the families to record the site. But because many Black families moved away from the rural South in the last century as part of the Great Migration, their historical cemeteries were abandoned and forgotten. As a result, there’s likely a significant disparity between the number of historical Black and white cemeteries that have been recorded.

Archeological surveys have another downside: They are not public records. A title survey could reveal the existence of historical cemeteries to future landowners if surveyors had access to the state archeological database. But archeologists say that these records are kept private — and exempt from the state Freedom of ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 33

NO RECORDS: The oldest headstone at Center Point cemetery dates to 1875, long before official state record-keeping of cemeteries.

Information Act — due to security concerns over possible looting. “It’s really, really frustrating that there is no mechanism in place to have cemeteries be known far and wide,” Zabecki said.

Williams pointed this out as well. He was aware there were a handful of headstones on the property before he purchased it, but a survey of the land done by the previous owners made no mention of Center Point.

When he asked the archeologist from the Arkansas Heritage Preservation Program about this, she told him that archeological records regarding the cemetery, which might have included House’s 2014 survey, were not available to the public.

‘TIME IS MONEY’ There’s another reason why old burial plots remain undocumented, experts say: Landowners may keep quiet about the existence of an undocumented, historical cemetery on their property — and then remove it.

It’s easy to see why landowners might 34 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

prefer to not report a cemetery or burial ground that is uncovered. Discovering graves could interfere with plans for development or bring farming to a halt.

“They do not want that hiccup.

Because time is money,” said Tamela Tenpenny-Lewis, president and cofounder of the group Preservation of African American Cemeteries. Modifying a major development project could require changing architectural designs, renegotiating with contractors or even transferring ownership of land. “You’re looking at millions and millions and millions of dollars and time. And they are not interested in a cemetery that has been sitting there for a hundred years.”

In many cases, the graves are moved and reinterred. But experts say that in countless other scenarios, historical cemeteries have been discreetly destroyed or bulldozed by farmers or developers. Archeologists recall finding headstones in ditches; advocates like Coleman have spoken with families whose cemeteries were flooded by farmers

irrigating their fields.

House, the retired archeologist, has heard rumors of similar cases for years. “It is not unheard of for farmers in this part of Arkansas to quietly remove gravestones at the edge of old cemeteries and begin cultivating over the graves,” he wrote in an email to Lewis, Coleman and a handful of state archeologists discussing the development near Center Point.

Williams himself says he has no plans to disturb the cemetery. “We're leaving the space all around our house because we don't want neighbors. I never plan to put any sort of building structure over where their gravesites are,” he said.

Desecrating burial grounds is a Class D felony that could theoretically result in a prison sentence of up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 on the first offense. But the experts interviewed for this story said they did not know of anyone being charged for violating these laws, despite hearing numerous stories about graves being removed, damaged or

destroyed.

The law also offers an exemption for “landowners or agricultural tenants as a consequence of agricultural activity or any other activity unless the landowner or agricultural tenant knowingly desecrates or knowingly allows desecration of a cemetery or burial site.” This gives developers or farmers leeway to claim that they didn’t know or weren’t aware that there was a cemetery on their property after removing it.

Zabecki said archeologists’ only interest in historical cemeteries is to document, preserve and study them — not to interfere with landowners.

“Anybody that thinks that there is something that could be historically important on their property goes on the defense because they think that if there’s something significant, their land will be taken away. But that is not often the case,” Zabecki said.

*** In August, a gravel road was built leading back to the property near Center Point, and it appears that construction is moving forward. The Johnsons have spoken with a lawyer and are now seeking an easement that would allow them to visit the graveyard without needing to contact Williams or request a gate code, possibly by building a separate road. They also hope to record the cemetery in a more official way to keep it protected long after they are gone.

“We’ll probably have to get ourselves some money to get this taken care of,” Lewis said. “And we shouldn’t have to.

It should be the law,” RL, her brother, added.

Williams said he believes the cemetery should be preserved but “at the end of the day, there’s no state purview” over the land. “I'm just trying to make it right and do the right things in regards to [the cemetery]. And it's getting real unfortunate

now,” Williams said.

Advocates such as Coleman say state burial laws need to ensure access to small family cemeteries like Center Point and impose more significant penalties on landowners who block access, disturb or destroy burial grounds. “There needs to be more teeth in the law,” Coleman said.

Archeologists also say the state should create a publicly available database of recorded cemeteries to help notify landowners of any historical gravesites on their property.

“These cemeteries are the only tangible marker on the landscape of some of these communities that exists,” House said. “The history of those communities is of national importance. It’s a very significant part of American history.”

At Center Point cemetery, the Johnsons say that a family’s story is at stake. “All of that history that we lived, that’s what made us who we are,” Lewis said. “It’s like we never existed if they just take that away.”

ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 35

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ARKANSAS TIMES EDITORS AND READERS RAISE A GLASS TO THEIR FAVORITE BEERS, BARS AND BOOZE.

FROM

the delicate designs the Arkansas Valley’s Spiro people carved into conch shell drinking cups to the notorious hatchet-wielding tactics of Eureka Springs temperance crusader Carrie Nation, The Natural State has a long and contentious relationship with booze. And if the results of our annual Toast of the Town poll are a reliable barometer, the drinking scene in Arkansas is alive and well, with options for every slice of the drinking demographic — sports bars blaring the Razorback football game on high-definition flatscreen TVs, family-friendly beer gardens where the kids can scamper about, boozy brunches, inventive bartenders, bespoke wine lists and locally distilled single malt cognac.

If Carrie Nation were here today, perhaps she’d clink glasses with food editor Rhett Brinkley. Mocktails are having a moment, so Brinkley flips the script with a tour of Central Arkansas’s alcohol-free cocktail landscape. Stephanie Smittle peeks into the brew kettles at Juniper Tree Meadery in Paragould to see how the honey wine’s made. Might this throwback favorite of the ancients be making a comeback? Brian Sorensen lauds the arrival of Fayetteville’s trailside patio at City Park, where sporty types can steer their fancy bikes off the paths for a glass or two. Read on for this triple shot, plus the list of winners and finalists in our annual readers poll.

ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 37

RHETT BRINKLEY

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT BERRY: Cypress Social's most popular mocktail is a puree of Luxardo cherries and strawberries mixed with lime and soda water.

NOTHING MOCK ABOUT THEM’

ZERO-PROOF COCKTAILS TREND UPWARD IN CENTRAL ARKANSAS.

BY RHETT BRINKLEY

ONE

doesn’t have to drink booze to derive pleasure from an expertly crafted beverage served in elegant glassware and garnished with colorful corkscrew-shaped fruit peels or floating wheels of citrus. Cocktails — whether they’re loaded with hooch or alcohol-free — are a vibe.

More Central Arkansas restaurants have nonalcoholic sections on their cocktail menus than you might imagine. These aren’t the Shirley Temples and virgin strawberry daiquiris my teenage friends and I used to order from Chili’s in the late ’90s when we wanted to feel grown up.

Today’s no-proof cocktails feature freshly

38 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

squeezed juices and complex house-made syrups, and bartenders craft them with nuance. So, whether you’re planning a sober October, having a beverage before prom, taking a night off after a crushing hangover or living a life of sobriety, you can still get a really good cocktail in Little Rock sans booze.

WHY THE ZERO-PROOF MOMENTUM?

A recent Gallup poll found that the overall drinking rate in the U.S. has been generally steady in recent decades, with older Americans more likely to drink and younger adults drinking less. On TikTok, the hashtag #mocktail has more than 1

billion views.

Some of the local bartenders I spoke with think people are seeking healthier habits as we’re coming out of the pandemic.

“I think a lot of people coped with alcohol heavier during lockdown, and now the pendulum is swinging the other direction into sobriety and sober curiosity,” Little Rock bartender Courtney Stowers said.

Cypress Social’s bar manager, Rob Roy Armstrong, said he created its mocktail menu for Dry January a few years ago, and when February rolled around he decided to keep the booze-free alternatives yearround. This year, Cypress Social won Best Mocktail in the Arkansas Times Toast of the

Town poll.

Armstrong said mocktails generated more revenue than he imagined, and that come prom season they’re popular among high school age kids. Arkansas Times reporter Mary Hennigan will often order from the mocktail menu and ask the bartender to add a shot because she finds the mocktail ingredients more appealing.

Armstrong said that’s not unusual; some of his customers even order mocktails as shot chasers.

Still, without the bitter bite of the booze component, mocktails have gained a reputation for being sweet, fruity drinks that lack complexity. Part of the challenge for bartenders is creating drinks that can appeal to both drinkers and nondrinkers.

What I’ve found drinking mocktails all over town is that bartenders aim to strike a balance between sweet and savory elements.

It’s more than simply omitting alcohol from a cocktail recipe, said Raduno bartender Erica McCoy. “We're starting to [see] kombucha or different healthy probiotics,” McCoy said. She recommended I try the Puttin’ Down Roots mocktail at Raduno, which features plantain syrup, lime and muddled mint. When I stopped by the restaurant for lunch one afternoon, the mint wasn't available, so the bartender substituted basil. It was unlike any flavor combination I’ve ever tried, and I'd give the palate sensation a perfect 10/10.

The cocktail menu at Ciao Baci features a zero-proof category and bar manager Merrick Fagan said the word “mocktail” is omitted by design.

“I call them zero-proof cocktails,” Fagan said. “There’s nothing mock or imitating about them.”

Fagan said that’s part of the reason for the growth of the modern boozefree drink menu. “More bartenders are taking nonalcoholic drinks seriously as a category and putting care and thought into them like we would into our alcoholic offerings,” he said.

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Little Rock’s aspiring go-to spot for mocktails, though, is Pettaway Coffee, which opened in June in the Pettaway Square small business district at 406 E. 21st St. It’s a coffee shop, but Pettaway Square developer Michael Orndorff wants it to be a full-on “mocktail bar” in

arktimes.com ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 39

MOCKTAIL BAR: Pettaway Coffee has six mocktails on the menu and a growing selection of nonalcoholic beer and wine.

40 OCTOBER 2023 40 OCTOBER 2023

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BRIAN CHILSON

BRIAN CHILSON

CHEERS: Natalie Martin serves up Raduno's Puttin' Down Roots mocktail with plantain syrup.

"MORE BARTENDERS ARE TAKING NONALCOHOLIC DRINKS SERIOUSLY AS A CATEGORY AND PUTTING CARE AND THOUGHT INTO THEM LIKE WE WOULD INTO OUR ALCOHOLIC OFFERINGS."

the afternoons and early evenings.

Orndorff said that after participating in Dry January in 2022 he decided to keep the momentum going. Now approaching two years of sobriety, he wanted to give Little Rock residents more options for taking the night off or quitting altogether.

In addition to six mocktails on the menu, the shop has a growing selection of nonalcoholic beer and wine. Orndorff said he hopes to have the widest selection in town, and the shop will offer monthlong deals on its alcohol-free offerings for Sober October and Dry January.

“It might be super small and negligible and barely talked about, but we’re gonna try,” he said.

Pettaway Coffee does offer regular beer and wine, and Orndorff said there have been a handful of instances when booze-seeking customers have accidentally ordered drinks from the menu despite being designated “N/A Cocktails.”

Orndorff said when he started looking around for alcohol-free options, there were more restaurants in town offering them than he realized. Still, he said, “Nobody was really trying to wear it, like: ‘This is our thing and we’re going to make a big deal out of it.’”

“Has it paid off?” he asked rhetorically. “Not necessarily, but we’re sticking to it, and we’re going to keep making it our thing.”

ARKANSAS TIMES MOCKTAIL CRAWL 2023

COMPLEXITY: Creating a mocktail is more than simply omitting alcohol from a cocktail recipe, Raduno bartender Erica McCoy said.

THE MANGOLORIAN FROM BROOD & BARLEY

A blend of mango, lime, cilantro and grapefruit soda, the Mangolorian from Brood & Barley is more than a timely, “Star Wars”-themed name. Created by former Brood & Barley bartender Autumn Deal, the grapefruit and subtle mango flavors are offset by a pleasant spiciness, and I enjoyed switching between the salt rim and a Tajin-inspired “Joe-jin” rim made by Brood & Barley chef Joey.

THE SIESTA FROM PETTAWAY COFFEE

This colorful pink cocktail with “alternative tequila” has fresh grapefruit and lime juices, and it rivals some of the best Palomas I’ve had. I found it impossible to drink slowly.

PUTTIN’ DOWN ROOTS FROM RADUNO BRICK OVEN & BARROOM

I’d probably choke on my Diet Coke if someone told me a mocktail of plantain syrup, basil (it’s usually served with mint) and lime with soda water would be one of my favorite drinks of 2023, and yet here we are.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT BERRY AT CYPRESS SOCIAL

Move over, Shirley Temple. There’s a reason why this mocktail is one of Cypress Social’s most popular, and it makes sense why someone might order one as a chaser. A puree of Luxardo cherries and strawberries mixed with lime and soda water would’ve blown my mind as a teen wishing I were old enough to drink. If I worked behind the bar at Cypress Social, these could be habit-forming.

BRIAN CHILSON

BY THE POOL COOLER AT CIAO BACI

By the time this issue hits stands, Ciao Baci’s fall menu will be out, and bar manager Merrick Fagan said this zero-proof cocktail might be gone for the season. A refreshing carbonated drink with hints of coconut and cucumber, it was the perfect post-work, no-proof cocktail on Ciao Baci’s lovely Hillcrest patio. No pool necessary.

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OCTOBER 2023 41 OCTOBER 2023 41

MEADMAKERS: Lynn and Deondra Childers stand behind the bar at Juniper Tree Meadery.

HIVE MIND IF THE DEMAND FOR JUNIPER TREE’S HONEY WINE IS ANY INDICATION, ARKANSAS HAS THE NEED FOR MEAD. STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

42 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

OCTOBER

BEST LATE NIGHT SPOT

HONEY WINE: Bottles on the honeycomb shelves at Juniper Tree run the dry-to-sweet gamut.

ON

a September afternoon just cool enough to hint at autumn, meadmaker Lynn Childers was sitting in his taproom in Greene County in Northeast Arkansas, chronicling the ancient legend behind his Pictavian Ale. The ale is a gluten-free, grain-free carbonated concoction Childers serves up at Juniper Tree Meadery, situated on 6.2 pastoral acres in a small white building with a honeycomb mural adorning its eastern wall. First opened in December 2021, it now serves an ambitious portfolio of meads to locals in nearby Paragould, to visitors passing through on U.S. Route 412 and to various retail locations across the state.

For the uninitiated, mead is a drink made by fermenting honey. Hailed as humanity’s first foray into making alcoholic beverages, mead predates both beer and wine. Though it’s fallen in and out of style countless times, the honey wine, as it’s sometimes called, has experienced a resurgence of popularity in recent years as an alternative for drinkers averse to the gluten in beer or the tannins in wine.

Childers has recounted the Pictavian ale tale dutifully many times at the behest of friends, patrons and his own mother (who doesn’t drink, but loves the origin story anyway). And even though it’s probably

the hundredth telling, he recited it with equal parts precision and enthusiasm, stopping before and after to check on a batch of brown beer he was concocting on the porch, simmering away at 152 degrees in a heavy-duty Blichmann brew kettle — and bound, eventually, for the beer tent at a day festival in Paragould. Dragging an industrial-scale spatula through the boiling barley mash, Childers clarified that the beer is actually a “braggot,” a hybrid between beer and mead. These days, brewers are likely to do as Childers does, adding the honey after the boil so as not to rob the final beverage of any of the honey’s floral aromas and flavors. The last batch of this brew, Childers reported, tasted a little like pecan pie.

Back to the Pictavian legend, though.

Evidently, it was all the rage in the early Middle Ages for each geographic area in the British Isles to develop its own mead recipe based on what botanicals, spices and honeys were native to the region.

(Like a hyper-local dialect, but with booze!) The most trendy and coveted was the mead made by the Picts, early inhabitants of Scotland known otherwise for their awesome military prowess, their fierce refusal to be assimilated by the Roman Empire and for tattooing themselves in blue ink. It’s worth a visit to Juniper Tree to get the delightfully gory

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BREWING A BRAGGOT: A beer-mead hybrid simmers away at Juniper Tree Meadery.

MORE THAN MEAD: Hops infuse some of the meadery's beer-leaning concoctions.

SUNSET ON THE BEEHIVE: Juniper Tree is situated on 6.2 pastoral acres outside of Paragould.

44 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

details straight from Childers’ lips, but it begins with a ruthless attempt by the Vikings to obtain the coveted Pict ale recipe and ends with a blood-soaked plea bargain that goes awry and (spoiler alert) the permanent extinction of the precious mead recipe, which historians now believe contained ergot, a psychoactive fungus with hallucinogenic effects. (TL;DR: The Picts were probably tripping balls.)

There’s no LSD to be found in Childers’ imagined version of the ale, though he’s fond of leaning in mischievously after telling the tale — the listener halfway through their Pictavian pint by the time it's over — and asking how they feel.

Like the Pictavian ale tale, modern-day meadmaking is a hybrid of historical fact and culinary imagination, and Childers seems uncommonly well-suited for the task.

A realtor and a former Baptist pastor with a master's degree in biology, he’s as fascinated with the historical nuances of the Holy Bible as he is with Norse mythology or the ecology of honeybee populations.

Ninety percent of what Juniper Tree produces is made with local honey supplied by an apiary called Arkansas Wildflower Honey, boasting an unfiltered blend of clover, tupelo and roses. Between making runs to distribute Juniper Tree’s mead to around 20 Arkansas retail spots, Lynn drives to nearby Brookland and picks up honey a hundred gallons at a time in 5-gallon buckets that weigh 60 pounds each. It’s enough to last the meadery about a month.

“They've got beehives all over Northeast Arkansas,” Childers said, “which means the bees are free range.

They just get into anything and everything — the dandelions in your yard, the soybean fields, the cotton fields.” As for the other 10%, Lynn Childers and his wife, Deondra, use a clover honey from the Great Plains of North and South Dakota for their Traditional Sweet mead, and they’ll import some orange blossom honey from Mexico this winter for a small holiday batch of sparkling champagne-like mead.

Agriculture depends heavily on insect pollination, Juniper Tree’s website says, “in which the honeybee stands supreme. … Mead helps create awareness of the plight of a declining bee population.” And selling it, the meadery says, “incentivizes beekeepers to maintain productive apiaries.”

Using local honey, Deondra Childers said, is important to the mission. More importantly, it’s going over big in the mead world. Juniper Tree’s Traditional NTS — “That stands for ‘not too sweet,’ ” Deondra said — won a silver medal last year at the Valkyries Horn Mead Competition, an annual Minnesota-based contest founded in 2019 to acknowledge the rock stars of meadmaking in both commercial and amateur divisions.

Elsewhere on the taproom menu, there’s plenty for drinkers who typically steer clear of mead’s notorious sweetness. There’s the ghost pepper-infused Currant Distress, fermented with goji berries and black currants; the dry and smoky Lapsang Souchong, aged with charred oak staves; and the Angry Earl mead, brewed with Earl Grey tea, sage and rainbow peppercorns.

On an earlier visit on a Friday evening in late August, though, it was all about Juniper Tree’s sweet mead

slushie, an icy delight that seemed to be livening up conversation among a large group of women sitting around a table framed by the meadery’s signature honeycomb floor tile and light fixtures.

Only a few inches away, on the other side of three pairs of French doors, the meadery’s array of fermenting equipment was arranged tightly, economizing every square foot of workspace available.

Demand is so high the Childerses have recruited their four children to help out, and they’re selling “every single bottle [Lynn] can make as soon as [he] makes it” to about 20 package stores in the state, plus the Wiederkehr Village winery in the Arkansas River Valley, the owners of which are friends with Lynn and Deondra.

Hearing the pair talk about their winery connections and about their locally beloved Muskipye — mead blended with Arkansas grapes — it seems a wonder they opted to make mead and not, say, leap into the alreadyestablished Arkansas wine industry.

But, Lynn said, “the economics of that didn't make sense when we looked at it.” The families running the wineries in the River Valley, he said, “have owned hundreds of acres since the 1800s. Their muscadine vineyards have been planted for over a century, and you can buy their bottles for about seven, eight dollars. It would be a total losing proposition.”

Northeast Arkansas’s conservative politics notwithstanding, all signs point to meadmaking being a sound business decision. (Perched on the shelves at Juniper Tree is a small placard that reads, “I love Jesus but I drink a little,” a fitting slogan for a meadery operating in a solid red county where the Church of Christaffiliated Crowley’s Ridge College holds sway.) Lynn and Deondra plan to start construction in 2024 on a production facility that will double as a wedding and event venue with fire pits arranged around a picturesque pond, an elegant barrel room lined with casks of honey wine, a small-scale muscadine vineyard for ambiance, and some beehives and wildflower gardens to educate visitors about the importance of fostering local apiaries. Asked why they’d take on such an ambitious project in their retirement years, Deondra said meadmaking has become Lynn’s passion. “He gets to play mad scientist and tinker and create recipes. We’re working harder than we’ve ever worked. But we’re having more fun.”

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ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 45

BRIAN SORENSEN

AL FRE SCO, TRAILSIDE

CITY PARK RECALLS FAYETTEVILLE’S PAST PATIO GLORY.

BY BRIAN SORENSEN

PATIO

drinking, historically, is peak Fayetteville.

Sipping margaritas at Jose’s on Dickson Street during warm summer months, or “Party on the Patio” at nearby Powerhouse Seafood on Thursday nights would be in the patio hall of fame if there were one.

Unfortunately, both are now relics of past glory.

There are a few notable open-air outfits in town. Sassy’s Red House on College Avenue has a massive deck for dining, and Feed & Folly near the downtown square has a cool rooftop bar with clear views of the Boston Mountains. They’re great and all, but it doesn’t seem like Fayetteville features the same abundance of patios that it did in years past.

A big step toward rekindling the city’s love affair with eating and drinking outside was taken when City Park opened

46 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

in July. Located at 1332 N. Leverett Ave., the outdoor restaurant and bar is just a few blocks from the University of Arkansas campus.

Once used by AT&T to store utility trucks, owners Lewis Chase and brothers Matt and Mikey Sutton have transformed both the form and function of the property so people can grab a bite to eat, enjoy a beer or mixed drink and hang out with friends for a while. The three partners also own and operate Feed & Folly, which opened in 2020.

The gates of City Park opened to a crowd on its first night despite the stifling summer heat, and they haven’t stopped showing up since. And with university classes and Razorback football both in full swing, City Park is poised to stay busy.

“Opening in the middle of July wasn’t our original plan, since it’s the hottest

'SIT BACK AND CHILL': Fayetteville's City Park opened in July just a few blocks from the University of Arkansas campus.

time of the year,” Mikey Sutton said.

“But people have been coming out and enjoying the space. It’s proving that we weren’t too crazy thinking everybody wanted an outdoor spot in Fayetteville.”

Given the property’s original use, City Park looks different from most other bars or restaurants in Fayetteville.

A long cinder block building houses the kitchen, storerooms and restroom facilities. All customer areas are open air. A large metal awning attached to the main structure provides shelter. A series of wooden pergolas and another large metal shelter cover the rest of the space.

Seating is a mix of couches, tables and chairs to accommodate groups of various sizes. A shipping container was converted into a bar for walkup service and sits opposite the main building.

Staff walk around to help replenish drinks during busy times, but food orders are made using smartphones and QR codes assigned to each numbered table. Patrons place their orders online, and food is delivered when ready. You can order a taco at a time, spaced 30 minutes apart if you wish. It’s up to you.

“We are trying to make City Park a comfortable place to hang out,” Sutton said. “That’s our theory behind the QR code. We don’t have waitstaff in each section repeatedly asking if you need something. A lot of people feel hurried in that situation. We have it set up so you can order whenever you’re ready and sit back and chill.”

In an era of inflation, the prices on City Park’s menu stand out. A smashburger with cheese runs $6.50, and nachos and quesadillas cost $7.99 each. The most expensive items on the menu are listed at $8.99.

Affordability extends to the bar, where $10 buys a bucket filled with ice and five cans of America’s new favorite beer, Modelo.

“We want to offer the cheapest price point possible while still putting out a quality product,” Sutton said. “We love craft beer and especially local craft beer;

WMA Autumn Programming at 4:30 pm in the Hundley-Shell Theater

Pradip Malde, Photographer, Documentarian, & Artist Artist’s Talk, Oct 4 Erin Reed, Journalist & Transgender Rights Activist Political Landscape & LGBTQIA Oct 9 Chase Travaille, Sculptor Artist’s Talk, Oct 19 Jess T. Dugan, Portrait Photographer & Educator Artist’s Talk, Oct 25 Melissa Wilkinson, Artist & Educator Artist’s Talk, Nov 14

Exhibitions on view through Nov 11: From Where Loss Comes, photography by Pradip Malde on view through Dec 12: Exquisite Corpse, collaged ceramic and 2D vessels by Chase Travaille Sauvage Visage, watercolor and ink wash paintings by Melissa Wilkinson Every Breath We Drew, photography by Jess T. Dugan

Melissa Wilkinson, Vans, 2021

Free and open to all | Tue-Sat 12-5 p.m. windgatemuseum.org

DRIVERS PLEASE BE AWARE, IT’S ARKANSAS STATE LAW: USE OF BICYCLES OR ANIMALS

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

OVERTAKING A BICYCLE

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

Beginning in 2019 with the “Idaho Stop” law, cyclists may treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs.

AND CYCLISTS, PLEASE REMEMBER...

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

ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 47

@ CITYPARKFAYETTEVILLE

BRIAN SORENSEN

BRIAN SORENSEN

OPEN AIR: At City Park, a shipping container was converted into a bar for walkup service (left) and the Garden Taco (below) features roasted cauliflower. adorned with crisp radishes.

"IT’S PROVING THAT WE WEREN’T TOO CRAZY THINKING EVERYBODY WANTED AN OUTDOOR SPOT IN FAYETTEVILLE." 48 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

but at the same time, if we can offer you a cheaper option we are more than willing to do that, too.”

So far, City Park has been popular with families. It makes sense, given all the room for children to toddle about. “I’m getting older, and most of my friends have kids now,” Sutton said. “I don’t have any children, but if I want to hang out with my friends, it’s something that has to be considered. Where can we go? Who can accommodate kids? So we are trying to make it family friendly as much as possible. It’s something we really want for City Park.”

Sutton thinks City Park’s proximity to the Razorback Greenway gives it an advantage, too. The regional trail extends from Fayetteville to Bella Vista, and runs alongside the property’s eastern edge, though accessing City Park from the trail — or vice versa — is difficult right now due to a creek running between the two. Sutton said a bridge will be installed as a part of phase two renovations at City Park, which will also include full restoration of the adjacent section of creek. All of the construction debris will be cleared and space will be designated for creekside seating. “I use the trail a lot,” Sutton said, “and personally, I’m looking for a place where I can be outside when I stop for something to eat.”

Phase two plans also call for adding 100 additional seats (there are currently 270) and lawn games in an area now covered with gravel. A vintage travel trailer is being converted into a food truck that will serve barbecue and drinks in the backyard space.

“We wanted to make sure we could service the area up front before expanding,” he said. They’ve already reached capacity on at least one particularly beautiful Friday over the summer, and had to turn people away. “We see that as a good sign and we are ready to move ahead.”

The feedback so far has been positive. Sutton said the biggest complaints he hears have been related to parking, a testament to the spot’s popularity. Overflow options are not obvious, but side street parking is available. And the trail connector should take some pressure off parking when it opens.

Patios made for entertaining are a part of Fayetteville’s DNA. Here’s hoping spots like City Park are part of its future.

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OCTOBER 2023 49

THE RESULTS OF OUR ANNUAL READERS POLL ON BEER, BARS AND BOOZE. BARS Best Bar Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: The Hillcrest Fountain, White Water Tavern, Lucky Lou’s, Rocktown Distillery Best New Bar Winner: Sterling Market Finalists: Park Grill, The Island (North Little Rock), Don’s Southern Social (Hot Springs), Revival (Benton) Best Bartender Winner: David Timberlake (The Pantry) Finalists: Hollee Russo (Four Quarter Bar), Kolleen Elbert (The Hillcrest Fountain), Pat McCrackin (Four Quarter Bar), Bubba Bramlette (Four Quarter Bar), Emily Fenton (White Water Tavern) Best Bar for Nondrinkers to Tag Along Winner (TIE): Brood & Barley (North Little Rock) and Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: Fassler Hall, Pettaway Coffee, White Water Tavern Best Neighborhood Bar Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: Lucky Lou’s, Ciao Baci, The Hillcrest Fountain, White Water Tavern Best Bar to Bring Your Kids Winner: Hill Station Finalists: Camp Taco, Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, Fassler Hall, El Sur Best Drinking Brunch Winner: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: The Fold: Botanas & Bar, Lost Forty, Four Quarter Bar, Fassler Hall

50 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

Best Patio or Deck for Drinking Winner: Hill Station Finalists: Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, Petit & Keet, Brave New Restaurant, 42 Bar & Table Best Hotel Bar Winner: Capital Hotel Bar & Grill Finalists: AC Hotel and Lounge, WXYZ Bar at Aloft Hotel, The Lobby at The Arlington Hotel (Hot Springs), Agasi 7 Rooftop Bar & Kitchen Best Theater Bar Winner: The Joint (North Little Rock) Finalists: Foster’s at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Movie Tavern, Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, The Studio Theatre (Lobby Bar) Best Bar for Pool, Darts or Shuffleboard Winner: The Hillcrest Fountain Finalists: Midtown Billiards, Pizza D’Action, Zack’s Place, White Water Tavern Best Dive Bar Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: Grumpy’s Too Neighborhood Bar & Grill, Midtown Billiards, Town Pump, Pizza D’Action Best Pickup Bar Winner: The Hillcrest Fountain Finalists: Willy D’s, Dust Bowl Lanes, Pizza D’Action, Midtown Billiards Best Bar for Live Music Winner: White Water Tavern Finalists: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock), Revolution Music Room, Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, Vino’s Brewpub

Best Gay Bar Winner: 610 Center Finalists: Chaps (North Little Rock), Discovery, Club Sway, Triniti Best Wine Bar Winner: Crush Wine Bar Finalists: By the Glass, Red Oak Steakhouse (Pine Bluff), Ciao Baci, Petit & Keet Best Bar for Food Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: Brood & Barley, Capital Hotel Bar & Grill, Ciao Baci, The Pantry Best Happy Hour Winner: Brood & Barley (North Little Rock) Finalists: The Fold: Botanas & Bar, The Hillcrest Fountain, Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom, White Water Tavern Best Sports Bar Winner: Brewski’s Pub & Grub Finalists: Grumpy’s, Prospect Bar and Grill, Legends Sports Bar at Saracen Casino Resort (Pine Bluff), Skinny J’s (North Little Rock) Best Bar to Take Your Dog Winner: Bark Bar Finalists: Fassler Hall, Lucky Lou’s, Hill Station, The Rail Yard BEERS Best Arkansas Beer Winner: Flyway Bluewing Finalists: Lost Forty Love Honey Bock, Ozark Beer Co. Lager, Lost Forty 2nd Rodeo, New Province Space Suit

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Best Arkansas Pale Ale Winner: Ozark Beer Co. American Pale Ale Finalists: Vino’s Firehouse Pale Ale, Diamond Bear Pale Ale, Lost Forty Pale Ale, Preston Rose Heritage Pale Ale

Best Arkansas Distillery Winner: Rock Town Distillery Finalists: Crystal Ridge Distillery (Hot Springs), Delta Dirt Distillery (Helena-West Helena), Fox Trail Distillery (Rogers), Postmaster Spirits (Newport)

Best Arkansas Seltzer Winner: Core Scarlet Letter Finalists: Lost Forty Punchy, Diamond Hard Sparkling Seltzer, Ozark Hard Water, Norfork Brewing Hard Seltzers

Best National Distillery Winner: Tito’s Finalists: Buffalo Trace, Cathead, Maker’s Mark, Woodford Reserve

Best Arkansas Pilsner Winner: Brood & Barley Proper Pils Finalists: Ozark Pilsner, Gotahold Traditions, Lost Forty Bare Bones, Norfork Brewing Woodsman Pilsner Best Arkansas IPA Winner: Flyway Early Bird IPA Finalists: Lost Forty Rock Hound, Lost Forty Trash Panda, Ozark Beer Co. IPA, Superior Bathhouse Brewery Space Force Best Arkansas Lager Winner: Ozark Beer Co. Ozark Lager Finalists: Lost Forty 2nd Rodeo, Norfork Brewing Company EZ Ryder Lager, Stone’s Throw Amadeus Vienna Lager, Diamond Bear Blu Golden Lager Best Arkansas Seasonal Beer Winner: Lost Forty Blackberry Bramble Wheat Finalists: Gotahold Brewing Funky Soul Saison, Lost Forty The Hunter Oktoberfest, Ozark Beer Co. BDCS, Stone’s Throw Brewing Ich Bin Ein Berliner Weisse BREWERIES AND DISTILLERIES Best Arkansas Brewery Winner: Flyway Brewing (North Little Rock) Finalists: Lost Forty Brewing, Vino’s Brew Pub, Superior Bathhouse Brewery (Hot Springs), Diamond Bear Brewing Company (North Little Rock) Best New Arkansas Brewery Winner: Origami Sake (Hot Springs) Finalists: Burks Brothers Brewing (Bryant), Point Remove Brewing Company (Morrilton), New Province Brewing Company (Rogers), Mad Rooster Beer Company (Fayetteville) Best National Brewery Winner: Dogfish Head Brewery Finalists: Lagunitas Brewing Company, New Belgium Brewing Company, SweetWater Brewing Company, Trillium Brewing 52 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

Best Brewpub Winner: Flyway Brewing (North Little Rock) Finalists: Vino’s Brew Pub, SQZBX Pizza (Hot Springs), Stone’s Throw Brewing, Superior Bathhouse Brewery (Hot Springs) DRINKS Best Martini Winner: The Pantry Finalists: Brood & Barley, Ciao Baci, Capital Bar, Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Best Margarita Winner: The Fold: Botanas & Bar Finalists: Baja Grill, Casa Mañana, El Sur, Heights Taco & Tamale Co. Best Cocktail List Winner: Brood & Barley (North Little Rock) Finalists: Ciao Baci, El Sur, The Pantry, Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Best Mocktail Winner: Cypress Social (North Little Rock) Finalists: Brood & Barley, Ciao Baci, Pettaway Coffee, Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom

RESTAURANTS, LIQUOR STORES AND GROCERY STORES Best Beer Selection (Liquor Store) Winner: Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: 107 Liquor (Sherwood), Bullard’s Liquors, Firewater Liquor Store (North Little Rock), Sullivant’s Liquor Store Best Wine Selection (Liquor Store) Winner: Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: 107 Liquor (Sherwood), Bullard’s Liquors, Heights Fine Wines & Spirits, O’Looney’s Wine & Liquor Best Wine List (Bar or Restaurant) Winner: Crush Wine Bar Finalists: Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse, Red Oak Steakhouse (Saracen Casino Resort, Pine Bluff), Ristorante Capeo (North Little Rock), Sonny Williams’ Steak Room Best Beer Selection (Grocery Store) Winner: Kroger Finalists: Edwards Cash Saver, Trader Joe’s, Stratton’s Market, Whole Foods Best Wine Selection (Grocery Store) Winner: Trader Joe’s Finalists: Edwards Food Giant, Kroger, Stratton’s Market, Whole Foods Best Liquor Store Delivery Winner: Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: 107 Liquor, Legacy Wine and Spirits, O’Looney’s Wine & Liquor, Springhill Wine and Spirits Best Liquor Store Winner: Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: 107 Liquor (Sherwood), Bullard’s Liquors, Lake Liquor (Maumelle), Markham Street Liquor

Coldest Beer Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: Fassler Hall, The Hillcrest Fountain, White Water Tavern, Zack’s Place

Best Drive-Thru/Curbside Winner: Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: Firewater (North Little Rock), Highway 10 Wine & Spirits, Popatop, Sullivant’s Liquor Store

Best Bloody Mary Winner: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock) Finalists: The Fold, Marty’s Place (North Little Rock), Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom, Red Door

Best Beer Selection (Bar or Restaurant) Winner: Flying Saucer Finalists: Fassler Hall, The Hillcrest Fountain, Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom, Reno’s Argenta Cafe

Best Mimosa Winner: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: 42 Bar & Table, Best Cafe (Hot Springs), Brood & Barley, Flora Jean’s

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OCTOBER

WINE DOWN

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Drink Pairing:

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Join us as we wine down at our favorite spots. These carefully crafted wine specials are available October 1 -15. Cheers!

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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Special Advertising Section of the Arkansas Times

DON'T MISS THIS!

ALL IN

ON THE ALL ARKANSAS CRAFT BEER, WINE & SPIRITS FESTIVAL. Meet the All Arkansas Craft Beer, Wine & Spirits Festival — our first festival exclusively dedicated to beverages from the diamond state.

Join us for an amazing night in Argenta Plaza Friday, October 6 benefiting the Argenta Arts District, with 25+ beverage vendors and the biggest 360 video booth on earth documenting the party antics. We’ll have performances from a ridiculously talented house band — Amy Garland (pictured, at right), Bart Angel, Jeff Coleman, Mike Nelson and Nick Devlin — featuring performances from Shannon Boshears, Amy & Mandy McBryde, Adam Faucett, Jess Hoggard, Emily Fenton (pictured, at left), Isaac Alexander, John Lefler, Jason Hale and Mark Currey. Big thanks to our sponsors Bet Saracen, Edward’s Food Giant and Charlotte Potts State Farm. Grab your tickets at centralarkansastickets.com, and sample delights from the following breweries, wineries, distilleries and more:

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OCTOBER 2023 55

SPONSORED BY VISIT HOT SPRINGS FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS, VISIT HSDFI.ORG

OPENING NIGHT GALA RELENTLESS RIDE Directed by Adam Harbottle and Brian Hill | USA ARKANSAS STATE PREMIERE Friday, October 6th, 7:00PM Oaklawn Event Center

This year’s 32nd edition of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, presented by Oaklawn, kicks off with “Relentless Ride,” the gripping tale of the 2021 Arkansas High Country Race. With more ups-and-downs than the stock market and 1,000 miles of terrain to cover, the AHCR is about as brutal as they come. In fact, the bike race might be the ultimate mental and physical endurance test. Arkansasbased filmmakers Adam Harbottle and Brian Hill follow a diverse group of determined riders attempting to complete the 2021 race as they battle through exhaustion, pain, driving rain, and, most debilitating of all, self-doubt.

The racers are all in pursuit of the same goal: to finish the race before it finishes them.

Along the way, the riders will discover new truths about themselves, the beautiful but sometimes cruel Arkansas landscape, and about how sometimes the most solitary of journeys can lead to powerful new bonds with those who are going through the same trials that you are. At turns dramatic, inspiring, and even absurdly funny, “Relentless Ride” is about a lot more than a bike race.

The Opening Night presentation of “Relentless Ride” dovetails with the 2023 Arkansas High Country Race, which is hosted by the City of Hot Springs for the second consecutive year. More than 70 competing cyclists will cross the starting line on October 7th , the morning following the Opening Night gala celebration at Oaklawn.

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CENTERPIECE

THE MISSION Directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss Wednesday, October 11th, 7:30PM | Cinema 1 In 2018, while attempting to contact one of the world’s most isolated Indigenous peoples on remote North Sentinel Island, the young American missionary John Chau was met by a barrage of arrows. The event made headlines across the world. But soon after, the story faded from view. Chau’s actions and the tragic consequences of his mission, however, raised many unsettling questions and unresolved issues. Refusing to tie up their film with tidy answers, Emmy®-winning filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine (“Boys State,” “The Overnighters”), piece together the story-behindthe-story and bring new perspective to what happened and why. Following the screening of “The Mission”, Peter Debruge, Chief Film Critic, Variety, will be in conversation with Producer Will Cohen and film participant Dan Everett.

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Stay. Dine. Relax. Enjoy.

CLOSING NIGHT GALA

GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT Directed by Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster | USA Saturday, October 14th, 7:00PM | Cinema 1 This imaginative and creative documentary explores the life and work of celebrated American poet Nikki Giovanni. On the cusp of her 80th birthday, Giovanni reflects on her more than fifty-year career writing acclaimed poetry exploring race, sexism, and classism and the concurrent social movements that served as inspiration. Interweaving compelling archival footage, intimate interviews, and stirring poetry readings, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” is an extraordinary biographical documentary that mirrors the lyrical, creative mastery of its namesake.

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FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS, VISIT HSDFI.ORG

SOUTHERN STORY TELLERS SCREENING & PANEL This year’s Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival Honorary Chair, Mary Steenburgen, will be a key participant in the “Southern Storytellers’ Screening and Panel,” taking place on Friday, October 13 at 7:30PM. Moderator Courtney Pledger, CEO of Arkansas PBS, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Craig Renaud will join Steenburgen for an in depth conversation about the new three-part docuseries from PBS. “Southern Storytellers” traverses the American South, from the mountains of Appalachia to the Gulf of Mexico, to reveal a vivid patchwork of stories that celebrate the resilience and joy of Southern people—and the magnitude of gifts from the region’s writers.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE

Excluding the Opening Night Gala at the Oaklawn Event Center, all screenings will take place at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa on the second floor.

Friday, Oct 6th 6:15PM Champagne Toast at the Oaklawn Event Center 7:00PM Opening Night Gala: “Relentless Ride” at the Oaklawn Event Center 9:00PM Party at the Oaklawn Event Center Saturday, Oct 7th 9:00AM Wellness Series Hike & Mountaintop Meditation at the Arlington Hotel front steps 10:30AM “Story & Pictures By” Cinema 1 11:00AM “Shorts Program: Flora & Fauna” Cinema 2 1:00PM “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” Cinema 1 2:00PM “Brother Horse” Cinema 2 4:00PM “Black Barbie: A Documentary” Cinema 1 4:30PM “The People v. Profits” Cinema 2 7:00PM “Let the Canary Sing” Cinema 1 7:30PM “Art For Everybody” Cinema 2 9:00PM Party at ESQ Realty Group Sunday, Oct 8th 9:00AM Wellness Series: Yoga on the Rooftop of the Arlington 10:30AM “Shorts Program: On the Edge” Cinema 1 11:00AM “Your Fat Friend” Cinema 2 1:00PM “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture” Cinema 1 1:30PM “Shorts Program: The Natural State” Cinema 2 3:00PM “A Town Called Victoria” Cinema 1 4:30PM “All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars” Cinema 2 7:00PM “The Tuba Thieves” Cinema 2 7:30PM “Between Life & Death” Cinema 1 9:00PM Party at Deluca’s Pizza Sponsored by MSNBC Films 58 OCTOBER 2023

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Monday, Oct 9th 11:00AM “The Gullspång Miracle” Cinema 1 1:30PM “Rather” Cinema 1 4:00PM “Shorts Program: Comrades” Cinema 1 6:00PM “Hollywoodgate” Cinema 2 8:00PM Career Achievement Award Presentation & Retrospective Shorts Block Cinema 1 9:00PM Party at Superior Bathhouse Brewery Sponsored by ESPN Films Tuesday, Oct 10th 9:00AM “Educational Program: Going Varsity in Mariachi” Cinema 1 12:30PM “Shorts Program: The Work of Art” Cinema 1 3:30PM “One With the Whale” Cinema 1 6:00PM Impact Award Presentation followed by “King Coal” Cinema 1 8:00PM “True Stories: A Live Storytelling Event” Cinema 2 9:00PM Party at Splash Wine Bar Wednesday, Oct 11th 9:00AM “Educational Program: JessZilla” Cinema 1 11:00AM Emerging Filmmakers Program presented by Arkansas PBS Cinema 1 11:00AM “Songs of Earth” Cinema 2 1:30PM “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” Cinema 2 2:45PM “The Pigeon Tunnel” Cinema 1 4:00PM “Shorts Program: Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk” Cinema 2 5:00PM “Secret Screening” Cinema 1 7:00PM “Hummingbirds” Cinema 2 7:30PM Centerpiece Screening: “The Mission” Cinema 1 9:00PM Party at Whittington Place Sponsored

by NatGeo Documentary Films

Thursday, Oct 12th 11:00AM “La Lucha” Cinema 1 11:30AM “Between the Rains” Cinema 2 1:30PM “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood“ Cinema 1 2:00PM “Silver Dollar Road” Cinema 2 4:00PM “Razing Liberty Square” Cinema 1 5:00PM “Open Heart” Cinema 2 7:00PM “A Song Film by Kishi Bashi: Omoiyari” Cinema 1 7:30PM “Bad Press” Cinema 2 9:00PM Party at The Rooftop at The Waters Hotel Friday, Oct 13th 11:00AM “Q” Cinema 2 11:30AM “Shorts Program: The Ties That Bind” Cinema 1 1:00PM “Dusty & Stones” Cinema 2 2:00PM “The Echo” Cinema 1 3:00PM “Sex with Sue” Cinema 2 4:30PM “Nathan-ism” Cinema 1 5:00PM “Stamped From the Beginning” Cinema 2 7:30PM Southern Storytellers Screening and Panel Cinema 1 9:00PM Party at The Gangster Museum of America Saturday, Oct 14th 10:30AM “A Disturbance in the Force” Cinema 1 11:00AM “It’s Only Life After All” Cinema 2 12:30PM “The Hidden Power of Purpose” Cinema 1 1:30PM “Four Daughters” Cinema 2 3:00PM “A Thousand Pines” Cinema 1 4:00PM “Thank You Very Much” Cinema 2 7:00PM Closing Night Gala: “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” Cinema 1 9:00PM Party at The Arlington Resort Hotel Venetian Room

FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS, VISIT HSDFI.ORG

“Baseball Behind Barbed Wire”

THE NATURAL STATE FILM SECTION The Natural State is a new film section, sponsored by Sigma Supply, that spotlights features and shorts focused on the environment, outdoor adventure, and athletic achievement, as well as the fascinating stories and extraordinary people of Arkansas.

“A Thousand Pines”

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The HSDFF Filmmaker Forum, sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is a new two-day filmmaker/industry conference and convening launching on October 9 and 10, 2023 during this year’s film festival.

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The Filmmaker Forum offers dynamic programming focused on the art, craft and business of documentary storytelling. The Forum aims to become a major annual convening of filmmakers and industry leaders from throughout the South and mid-South regions and from across the U.S. With a focus on public media, as well as a wider lens on the nonfiction ecosystem as a whole, the gathering will include keynotes, panels, workshops, oneon-one meetings with executives, and offer a multitude of opportunities for filmmakers to connect and foster community. Free to Arkansas filmmakers. More information can be found at: https://hsdfi.org/filmmaker-forum/ ARKTIMES.COM

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FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS, VISIT HSDFI.ORG

2023 HONORARY CHAIR

Mary Steenburgen is an Academy Award® and Golden Globe winning actress best known for her work in the films “Melvin and Howard,” “Parenthood,” Mary Steenburgen “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Philadelphia,” “Stepbrothers,” and “Book Club” and television shows “Justified,” “Orange is the New Black,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Last Man on Earth.” Most recently, Steenburgen starred for two seasons as Maggie Clarke in NBC’s musical television sensation “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”.

Steenburgen stars in Focus Features “Book Club: The Next Chapter” opposite Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, and Candice Bergen, which was released in theaters by Focus Features on May 12th, 2023.

In addition to starring in the film, Steenburgen (along with Troy Verges and Caitlyn Smith) wrote “Anywhere With You” for the end credits of the film and she and her three co-stars recorded the vocals.

Mary is a songwriter for Universal Music Publishing Group. Along with co-writers Troy Verges and Caitlyn Smith, Mary wrote the acclaimed song “This Is Christmas” for HBO’s “Holiday Harmony” and “Northstar” for Roku’s original film “Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas”.

Mary was shortlisted for an Academy Award® for Best Original Song for “Glasgow (No Place Like Home)”, featured in the film Wild Rose. “Glasgow” received the Critics’ Choice Award and the Hollywood Critics Association Award for Best Original Song.

Steenburgen, will be a key participant in the “Southern Storytellers’ Screening and Panel,” taking place on Friday, October 13 at 7:30PM.

BOX OFFICE INFO

The easiest and best way to purchase tickets for the festival is to visit hsdfi.org and follow the link to our festival Eventive site. Tickets may be purchased on our website up to 15 minutes prior to showtime. Afterwards, tickets must be purchased in-person at the Box Office.

2023 BRENT RENAUD CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

In a relatively short time, Hopinka has produced a truly distinctive and remarkable body of work in the documentary field. His work has played at many festivals around the world, as well as being a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and Prospect.5 in 2021. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. He is the recipient of the Infinity Award in Sky Hopinka Art from the International Center and the Alpert Award for Film/Video. In the fall of 2022, Hopinka received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work as a visual artist and filmmaker. Sky Hopinka will be in attendance for the award presentation on Monday, Oct 9th 8:00 PM before the Sky Hopinka Retrospective Shorts Program.

2023 IMPACT AWARD

Diane Becker is an Academy Award®-winning, Emmy®-nominated producer and the co-founder of Fishbowl Films. “Navalny” won both the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded a BAFTA, PGA, DuPont, and the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature. Film credits include: “Manhunt,” “The Final Year,” “Legion of Brothers,” “If I Leave Here Tomorrow,” “Belushi,” and the Emmy®-nominated “Tina.”

Docuseries credits: “Five Came Back,” “Trial by Media,” and “Equal.” Fishbowl Films won a Peabody Award in 2019 for “Inventing Tomorrow” (POV) and Diane and Diane Becker co-founder Melanie Miller were awarded the 2020 Sundance Institute/Amazon Producer’s Award for Non-Fiction for “Whirlybird.” “King Coal” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and she served as an Executive Producer on “Maestra” (Tribeca) and “Hollywoodgate” (Venice/Telluride). Diane is a 2023 recipient of the Dear Producer Award and was a Sundance Documentary Creative Producing Fellow. She is a graduate of the American Film Institute and is a member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA), the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA), the Television Academy, and the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Diane Becker will be in attendance for the awards presentation on Tuesday, October 10th at 6:00 PM before the screening of King Coal.

2023 IMPACT AWARD

Shane Boris is an Academy Award®-winning and three-time Academy Award®nominated producer and writer working on films that push the boundaries of conventional form in order to tell timeless and cinematic stories. His films include: the Academy Award®-winning and BAFTA-winning “Navalny” (CNN/Warner Bros.), the Academy Award®-nominated and Peabody Award-winning “Fire of Love” (Nat Geo/Neon), the Emmy®-nominated “The Last Cruise” (HBO), the Indie Spirit Award-nominated “Stray” (Magnolia/Hulu), the Academy Award®nominated and Peabody Award-winning “The Edge of Democracy” (Netflix), and Shane Boris the Sundance Award-winning “All These Sleepless Nights” (The Orchard). His latest films, “King Coal” (POV) and “Hollywoodgate,” premiered at Sundance 2023 and Venice/Telluride 2023, respectively. His films have premiered at festivals around the world such as Sundance, Venice and Telluride. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the Vanguard Producing Award.

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HSDFF BOX OFFICE • October 6th: 3pm - 7:30pm at the Oaklawn Event Center • October 7th - 14th: 9am - 8:00pm at the Arlington Resort Hotel on the 2nd floor 60 OCTOBER 2023

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SAVVY

CULTIVATING CRITICAL THINKERS PARENTING IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION (AND MISINFORMATION, AND DISINFORMATION).

BY TRICIA LARSON

I

f ever there was a time when young thinkers needed the ability to parse fact from fiction, or to think critically about the source of information as they learn it, 2023 is it. And in a year when Arkansas’s librarians are fending off book bans, and an executive order from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders restricts what topics can be taught in classrooms, the battle over information has hit especially close to home. The ability to think critically is more essential than ever.

While schools play an important role in developing children’s critical thinking skills, changing educational policies are impacting teachers’ ability to spend the time needed to develop it. This means parents have a greater responsibility to ensure their children learn and practice critical thinking outside the classroom.

Shelley Smith, a teacher of more than 30 years in the Ozark Mountain communities of Mountain Home and Leslie, has taught children in art, Spanish, English and journalism.

She defines critical thinking as the ability to consider situations and problems from a variety of viewpoints and to analyze them objectively.

Tim Eubanks, a science and computer programming teacher and 35-year veteran of Arkansas public schools, said critical thinking is empowering. “We all face problems, big and small, every day,“ he said. “Being able to approach a

problem using logic, seeing cost-benefit, risks, accounting for limitations, and multiple solutions leads to confidence and success.”

Eubanks said students need to be encouraged to look at learning from multiple angles. They also need to know they are in a safe environment where mistakes are OK. “Once a problem is identified or defined, students need resources: time to think, time to research, time to try out their ideas. Lots of time,” Eubanks said. “Allowing students to identify their own problem to solve adds meaning and relevance.”

Both Smith and Eubanks are concerned about shifts in education that hinder their ability to foster these skills in their students. Eubanks says the focus on standardized test scores means little time is left for meaningful exercises in critical thinking.

“In the classroom, time for independent thought and student-driven activities is limited,” Eubanks said.

According to Smith, education is becoming more “pre-packaged,” and policymakers are eliminating opportunities for students to learn about different cultures and points of view.

“When it becomes a single set of facts with no room to question or analyze, we’re killing critical thinking,” Smith said.

As classroom policies and priorities change, the teachers say parents must step up and help

their children become critical thinkers.

“Parents are crucial,” Smith said. “They set the tone for being curious learners long before teachers are in the picture.”

While critical thinking contributes to success in the classroom, both educators believe it is increasingly needed to help children comprehend all the information — and misinformation — they see, hear and read outside of school.

“Children need to play outside, read books, ask questions and go to museums and interesting places where they can see a variety of people, art and ideas,” Smith said.

Smith used to take art students on yearly trips to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. She said the impact it had on her rural students was immense. “The experience was so important to them,” she said. “They saw things they had never seen before.”

Smith said the students would talk about the trip for days. “The ability to consider viewpoints different than what they are used to is crucial,” she said. “Creativity and critical thinking go hand in hand.”

Visiting museums and other free public spaces are opportunities for learning that parents can recreate. Another low-cost option is reading. Eubanks stressed the importance of parents reading with and to their children. “Parents need to read to their children and children need to see their parents read,” he said.

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HOW CAN PARENTS HELP THEIR KIDS DEVELOP THESE KEY SKILLS? Encourage curiosity: Nurture your child's natural curiosity by creating an environment where questions are welcomed and exploration is encouraged. Be patient and provide thoughtful answers to their questions.

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Model critical thinking: Demonstrate critical thinking in your daily life. Share your thought process when making decisions or solving problems, and discuss your reasoning with your child.

Read and discuss: Read together and talk about what you’ve read.

Encourage analysis of characters in books or arguments made on news programs or in news articles.

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Play brain-boosting games: Board games, puzzles and strategy games challenge children’s minds and promote problem-solving and critical thinking.

Teach media literacy: In the digital age, teach your child to evaluate the credibility of sources and discern fact from fiction in media content.

Support decision-making: Involve your child in age-appropriate decision-making processes.

Encourage them to think about the consequences of their choices and consider different options.

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Foster creativity: Celebrate learning and encourage artistic expression through activities like drawing, writing and imaginative play.

Reflect and evaluate: Encourage your child to reflect on their experiences and evaluate their own thought processes. Help them understand the importance of learning from their mistakes and that it’s OK to adjust their thinking when necessary.

Provide encouragement: Be patient and supportive. Recognize your child’s efforts and growth as a critical thinker.

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NICK FUTCH

CULTURE

RECLAIMING COUNTRY A Q&A WITH NICK SHOULDERS.

BY DANIEL GREAR 64 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

COUNTRY AS RESISTANCE: Nick Shoulders says he’s trying to “force a conversation” about a genre that’s become “attached to a very specific sociopolitical agenda.”

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B

efore Nick Shoulders became the lilting folkster he is today, confidently peddling a trademark melding of heart-on-sleeve progressive politics with traditions plucked from the early 20th century, he spent his teenage years in Fayetteville playing “in the scariest bands possible.” Like the choices of so many adolescents, it was rebellious behavior, a response to feeling embarrassed by his rural-rooted family’s affinity for old-fashioned country music. “Not everyone thinks yodeling is sick, it turns out,” he told us with a hearty laugh.

But heavy music also spoke to him because of its political edge. “That reaction and that hostility to systems of oppression I found so inspiring and galvanizing in punk and metal music,” he said. Once he realized the same forms of protest were an essential part of traditional folk, however, he embraced it. “I was yelling that stuff in my hardcore bands and I just happen to be yodeling it now,” he said matter-of-factly.

Since the late 2010s, he’s been releasing records under his own name, starting with the “Lonely Like Me” EP and his debut full-length album, “Okay, Crawdad,” both of which were performed “straight to tape” with a group of musicians he assembled while living in New Orleans. Then, the pandemic pushed him back to the Ozarks, where he made the stripped back, mostly solo “Home on the Rage,” his sophomore LP. “All Bad,” which came out via Gar Hole Records on Sept. 8, signals Shoulders’ return to a rowdy, full-band approach. Recorded with his band at Mashed Potato Studios, the New Orleans shotgun house where “Lonely Like Me” and “Okay, Crawdad” were tracked, as well as Homestead Recording in Fayetteville, the creation site of “Home on the Rage,” Shoulders describes his third full-length as “a good balance between that upland echoing whooping holler that we’re trying to capture and also that sweaty lowland dance feel.”

Though Shoulders has been firmly based in Fayetteville since 2020, we spoke with him over the phone in Casper, Wyoming, where he was

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NICK FUTCH

“wandering the alleys in the shade” on day 45 of a 57-stop tour. From there, he reflected on his origins, his new album and how the ancient mouth bow can be used as a resistance tool.

MUSICAL INHERITANCE: Though Shoulders’ distinct sound has been cultivated intentionally over the years, much of it stems from the traditional singing styles of his Arkansas and Louisiana ancestors.

"THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY, PAINFULLY HONEST AND PERSONAL RECLAMATION PROJECT ON HOW TO REORIENT A CONVERSATION ABOUT A GENRE THAT REPRESENTS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE AGAINST SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION AND NOT THE SOUNDTRACK TO EMPIRE.”

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You have an extremely distinct style. I would categorize your music as folk, and yet you don’t really sound like any other contemporary folk artist I can think of. Is your way of singing and playing instinctive, or is it something you developed intentionally?

I think nature and nurture are pitched against each other a little bit in this instance. That vocal singing tradition and vibrato and the pitch of the whistling is something that I feel that I bodily inherited from South Arkansas and North Louisiana as well as from Appalachia and my Ozark family. It lives in me. I also got lucky enough to have access to a ton of woods and intact green space. I learned how to project my voice doing owl calls. So, in a sense, the style is really deeply a product of the Arkansas landscape and is inextricable from blue cave water and canebrakes. But it’s also something I’ve taken a lot of time to cultivate and understand that has not come naturally. I’ve had to really figure out how to lean into and understand the singing that I was passed down and heard all my life.

But taking that skill set into the world, I began to notice people responding to it and really loving it. I also noticed a huge deficit of what made country music compelling to me. So I’ve been taking my family’s vocal style — which is rooted in pre-microphone, pre-country-music-industry singing — and applying it to the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s early records of the genre when people were still drawing from playing styles outside of a commercial context.

We are very purposely trying to claim being a country band because that marketing — and that notion of country music as just being rural music — is attached to a very specific sociopolitical agenda. By attaching ourselves to the roots of country music and to the dance-driven and community-driven side of the genre that gets ignored, we’re trying to force a conversation.

What is country music? Where does it come from? And why does it represent what it does to the average listener today?

Because so much of your sound is borrowed from the past and has a certain stylized quality, do you ever think of what you do as putting on a type of persona?

The Western side of country and Western, the idea that it’s a theatrical role, the cowboy singers in the ’30s from, like, suburban Cincinnati being a good example — it really feels like we’re avoiding that aspect in a very purposeful way. I think the world needs entertainment and entertainers and people who are just filling a role or a persona, but for me this is an incredibly, painfully honest and personal reclamation project

on how to reorient a conversation about a genre that represents an act of resistance against systems of oppression and not the soundtrack to empire. That very purposeful reclamation makes it so that it’s impossible to feel like a role for me because it hurts.

Speaking of that idea of fighting oppression through music, I’ve noticed that your lyrics tend to gesture in the direction of society rather than the self. Not that you don’t ever get introspective, but your approach seems less confessional than a lot of other contemporary songwriters. Is that how you see it?

I would like to think that on this record there’s places to get a little bit of both. “Long Spring” is about climate grief and watching the natural world that raised me wither and disintegrate. I think that grief and that pain is personal. I try to voice that and still look outward and be like, “Hey, my suffering, my pain, my loneliness, my heartbreak is not contained to my own experience.” It’s intertwined with the material conditions that I live in with society and the culture that forms these opinions. I could write songs about jealousy, but I’m kind of too wrapped up in thinking about why I live in a patriarchal culture where jealousy is so intertwined in my emotions. At this very moment, I don’t feel important compared to what needs to be said.

Tell me about the writing process for “All Bad.” Every one of these albums is kind of like lightning captured in a bottle. They’re very representative of a specific time and place that we were operating and creating in. This album was definitely written from the front seat of the tour van, rattling down the highways, dodging semi trucks and watching all the crops wither. It was a writing process that had the benefit of some space — one of the blessings of getting COVID during a blizzard is that you get a chance to sit down and put like 10 songs to paper that have just been floating around in your head — but it was largely just something that we were cobbling together on the road.

How is this record different from your previous releases?

It’s stylistically, lyrically and thematically just sort of the next record that we didn’t get to have after “Okay, Crawdad,” because that was put out and then suddenly we were in lockdown. A lot of our ascendence happened in the vacuum of COVID, where we weren’t really benefiting or touring off of the music that was now suddenly being played all over the world. And “Home on the Rage” was definitely the quiet folk solo effort that I thought fit the times.

The defining factor on this record is that we’ve had time. We’ve had years to play together.

We’ve had a lot of grim and empowering experiences on the road. I think I finally understand

so much more about the value of our craft and what it takes to be the embodiment of a folk tradition and to try to carry that weight. It feels like we finally have the space and time and skill set to deliver something that’s truly representative of what we’re trying to accomplish. And that’s different than putting out a straight-to-tape, live, living room record from a shotgun house in New Orleans that’s supposed to sound exactly like you do in some dancehall.

What song on “All Bad” are you the most proud of?

That’s a tough question. I feel a personal love and affection for “Up the Ouachita,” just being a funny little chance to dig into formative genres and also aspects of family history. My greatgreat-grandpa got shot in a cattle drive in North Louisiana and South Arkansas. He got buried in the woods outside Mar Rouge, Louisiana, and his daughter — my great-grandmother — didn’t know that he wasn’t just a deadbeat dad that ran off until she was like 55 years old. I just learned that fun fact and have also poured a lot of time into studying and practicing Cajun and South Louisiana-adjacent music, so I felt compelled to make this weird nod to Cajun music and also to this family background that had this sort of bizarre, violent tale attached to it.

Unlike the full-band arrangements that make up most of the album, the song “Arkansaw Troubler” is performed almost exclusively on the mouth bow, with no vocals.

How do you understand it fitting into the album as a whole?

When I was a little kid, I shot arrows and built bows in the woods with my friends. Eventually, I set that bow on my cheek and started whacking it with the arrow and got sounds out of it. Little did I know, I was participating in the world’s oldest stringed instrument. The mouth bow is something we see in cave paintings that is apparently tens of thousands of years old, if not older.

We’re making a purposeful decision to tap into this thing that has continuity back to the Stone Age, back to the Pleistocene. Having this thread that connects country and folk music today to our oldest expressions of sound is really empowering because it makes those genres sit on a continuum and an arc of history that’s able to be seen. So it’s not just us trapped in the experience of the post-industrial South. Our effort to make honky-tonk and 1940s shuffle country more approachable is the exact same effort I’m trying to make by putting the oldest stringed instrument in front of people while playing a fiddle tune from the American South. It might seem incongruent but the sentiment is the same. These threads to the pre-commercialized version of the music we’re playing are important to not let die because they’re truly our most potent tools of resistance.

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CANNABIZ

NO THANKS: Residents of Stuttgart, including civic and business leaders, sent letters to the state Medical Marijuana Commission to oppose a proposed dispensary in the Southeast Arkansas town.

’NOT A I GOOD MATCH FOR DUCKS’ STUTTGART SAYS NO TO A MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY.

BY GRIFFIN COOP PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

t appears the Rice and Duck Capital of the World won’t be adding cannabis to its nickname anytime soon.

Residents of Stuttgart, including civic and business leaders, rose up in opposition in August when a medical marijuana dispensary asked state regulators for permission to move to the Southeast Arkansas town.

Greenlight Helena, a dispensary in Helena-West Helena, asked the state Medical Marijuana Commission for approval to move to a location on U.S. Highway 63, a stone’s throw from Mack’s Prairie Wings, the well-known 120,000-square-foot sporting goods store that caters to hunters. Commission Chair James Miller said at the board’s August meeting that he had become aware that people in Stuttgart would like to have time to send letters about the proposed move and the commission obliged. Miller did not say at the time whether he anticipated the letters would favor or oppose the move, but the answer became clear when responses began to roll in.

The commission and staff received more than 30 letters, including comments from Arkansas County Judge

Thomas Best, Stuttgart Alderman David Leech, Riceland Foods President and CEO Jason Brancel, elected officials in the nearby town of Almyra, and many residents of Stuttgart.

None of the letters supported the move, commission spokesman Scott Hardin said.

Leech, like many residents, cited concerns about crime and the local economy. Leech said in his letter that Stuttgart has a hard time filling jobs as it is, especially those that require a commercial driver's license in the trucking-heavy grain industry.

Leech, who led the city’s economic development efforts for five years, said the city’s need for labor is so bad that about 75% of the town’s workers drive in from out of town. One local manufacturer has decided to move some production to Mexico, he said.

Crime was also a concern of Leech's and many of the residents who submitted letters to the commission.

Many of the letters suggested that locating a dispensary in Stuttgart could make crime worse, though none of them made a direct connection about why that would be.

Leech said he believes some people ARKTIMES.COM

OCTOBER 2023 69

need medical marijuana, like cancer patients, but said his community is already well-served by the dispensaries in Pine Bluff, less than 40 miles away.

“We don’t have the people for any more problems. Pine Bluff has the law enforcement to take care of it and they were serving our community anyway.” Leech said the local police department, like employers around the city, struggles to fill vacancies.

Leech said, “This is not a good match for ducks, rice or for our town.”

Arkansas County Judge Thomas Best also sent a letter to the commission opposing the dispensary’s relocation. Reached by phone at his office in DeWitt recently, Best told the Arkansas Times that a potential dispensary is “just something we don’t need.” Best said he believes medical marijuana can be helpful to some people, but said he also had concerns about its impact on local employment.

“If someone is able to get this, and they may need it, that’s going to nullify them driving any heavy equipment or anything that requires a [commercial driver's license],” he said.

Brancel, the president and CEO of Riceland Foods, the second largest employer in Arkansas County, also cited existing problems in filling jobs in his opposition letter to the commission.

“I cannot express to you enough the difficulty we have filling our open positions in our manufacturing facilities in Stuttgart,” he wrote.

Brancel said there are many forces that hinder the Stuttgart workforce but said it was the belief of his and his leadership team that “a marijuana dispensary located in the shadow of our manufacturing operations in Stuttgart will place yet another burden on our efforts to find a ready workforce.”

Other decision-makers in Stuttgart have been silent on the issue. Stuttgart Mayor Norma Strabala, who did not submit a letter to the commission, said she had no comment when reached by phone. Bethany Hildebrand, the president and CEO of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce, said her organization had not taken a position because it has “members on both sides of the issue.”

The letters seemed to be effective, though.

Ultimately, Greenlight Helena asked the commission to withdraw its request to move to Stuttgart.

“It appears that there are strong present objections from the populace and business lobby of the city of Stuttgart to locate a dispensary for the benefit of patients in and near Stuttgart,” Greenlight Helena’s attorney, Michael Goswami, said in his email to the commission. “The lack of support was a surprise to my client, and we are hopeful that Stuttgart will recognize that this was a wonderful opportunity to create jobs and tax revenue in Stuttgart as the Arkansas cannabis market continues to mature.”

Bill Paschall, executive director of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, said his 70 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

organization considers dispensary locations to be a community decision. Still, he pushed back on some of the arguments made against the industry. Paschall said his organization has not heard concerns from law enforcement around the state that cannabis businesses are contributing to crime. Employers had trouble recruiting workers for some positions before marijuana became legal in Arkansas, he said.

“I’m not one that buys that medical marijuana in Arkansas is having a contributing influence to the job market,” he said.

RICE CAPITAL: The president and CEO of Riceland Foods cited concerns filling open positions in his letter opposing the dispensary.

"PINE BLUFF HAS THE LAW ENFORCEMENT TO TAKE CARE OF IT AND THEY WERE SERVING OUR COMMUNITY ANYWAY."

OPTING OUT While Stuttgart residents took to writing letters to oppose the proposed dispensary, it’s not their only recourse. The state constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2016 to legalize medical marijuana allows cities and counties to opt out of allowing cannabis businesses in their communities.

Little Rock attorney David Couch, who wrote the amendment, said he put the provision into the amendment so that communities wouldn’t feel that cannabis businesses are being forced upon them.

The amendment allows for a referendum to be placed on the ballot in a county by collecting the signatures of 15% of the people who voted in the circuit clerk’s race in the most recent general election. Cities can also hold a referendum, with signatures of at least 15% of the people who voted for mayor in the most recent general election, if the city has a law in place that allows for initiatives and referendums.

Howard County, in Southwest Arkansas, is the only community to use the provision so far.

After a resident gathered enough signatures, the measure to restrict cannabis businesses from opening within the county advanced to the ballot in November 2018. It passed with the majority in favor of prohibiting cannabis businesses.

The provision is referred to by the cannabis industry as “opting out.” A study by the cannabis website Leafly last year found, however, that community opt-outs might not accomplish what residents think. Rather than closing the gates to marijuana, the study suggests communities are keeping the cannabis trade on the streets rather than in regulated retail stores.

Leech, the Stuttgart alderman and former economic developer, said he was aware of the opt-out referendum option, but doesn’t think it would pass.

Even if Stuttgart were to pass an opt-out measure, it may be immaterial. Paschall said Greenlight Helena’s decision to withdraw its request is evidence that the state’s cannabis industry doesn’t want to locate in communities that don’t want it.

“It’s not good for business,” he said. “No one in the industry is trying to force themselves on a community.”

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THE OBSERVER

BFFS

(BEST FRENEMIES FOREVER)

T

he regular denizens of the Arkansas Capitol are of a few different species, and each stakes out its own territory. Dapper Capitol staffers clack along marble hallways, hurried and with official government documents in hand. Cadres of slick professional lobbyists lurk strategically in doorways, ready to catch a receptive ear. The legislators themselves spend a lot of time holed up behind doors guarded by serious men and women in red and gold jackets.

The Observer is more interested lately in the characters who reliably show up to speak their mind to lawmakers and keep a running tally on governmental misdeeds. They make a small and eclectic crew: forced birth to pro-choice, gunpacking to gun-grabbing, atheist and Biblethumping, deepest blue to fieriest red.

Our spectrum-spanning, self-appointed defenders of democracy pass untold hours under the dome, trudging polished stairways now worn from more than 100 years of echoing footsteps.

It’s been a while since the Observer gazed upon the limestone edifice at 500 Woodlane and felt any swell of hope or civic pride. Even if you’re one to go misty-eyed for golden doors and all the patriotic hoopla, romance fades quickly amid the drudgery of hours-long committee meetings.

Excitement flares occasionally when, say, Capitol Police escort a livewire citizen to the door, or the Wednesday lunch crowd makes a rush to the basement for the catfish special at 500 Grill. For the most part, though, watching our government at work offers only niche appeal.

Imagine volunteering for extra jury duty or 74 OCTOBER 2023

ARKANSAS TIMES

hanging out at the DMV for fun. It’s an odd duck who spends his free time making sure no elected official disrespects Robert’s Rules of Order.

The Observer has long admired the commitment of the diehards, who file in for session after session, be they regular, fiscal or extraordinary. These usual suspects know each other on sight, but rarely mix and mingle. After all, the left and the right live in a state of mutual incomprehension these days, with one group's vision of social progress adding up to the other's dystopia.

All that changed for three days in September, though, and it was glorious. For one magical stint, foes became friends, briefly united against their common enemy: state government.

Lefty Blue Hog blogger Matt Campbell may have launched the whole flap over public access to public expenditure records with those pesky requests for the governor’s expenses.

But defender of Lady Liberty Paul Calvert, whose business card identifies him as a “conversationalist, real estate investor and 2nd Amendment advocate,” came in with an assist, flexing on elected officials’ ploy to shield public records from the public.

House and Senate galleries teemed with a kumbaya crew of chattering progressives and receptive conservatives, suddenly giddy to make each others’ acquaintance. People who will likely never agree on kids’ library books or bathroom bills or critical race theory all agree on this: Passed by a Republican in 1967 and a thorn in the side of administrations of both parties since then, Arkansas’s tried and true Freedom of Information Act is the handiest tool either side has going.

And so, gun rights activist Rob Steinbuch and conservative gadfly Jimmie Cavin compared notes with rumpled community organizers.

Clean-cut Americans for Prosperity and pretty anchors from Conduit News mingled with purple-haired reproductive rights goddess types. A Mom for Liberty borrowed a Young Democrat’s phone cord to charge her vape!

Lifelong Republicans said Senate President Pro Tem Bart Hester was on their shit list, while outspoken Democrat Stephanie Flowers was making lots of sense. “She’s usually the nutty one,” a Pulaski County Republican said, but admitted Flowers’ insistence that lawmakers and the public get a minute or two to read proposed legislation before senators voted on it was spot on.

New friendships were forged, phone numbers were exchanged, plots were hatched to build coalitions that might last longer than three days. And who knows? Maybe it will work out.

Ignore the hubbub of clean guys in pressed suits loitering outside the double doors of the House to pounce on lawmakers coming off the floor. They’re lobbyists, and they make good money hanging out in those marble halls. The Observer only has eyes for the self-appointed everyman, clocking in on his own time to check and balance.

It remains to be seen whether the wary distance these Capitol regulars kept for years will be replaced by a brotherhood forged in battle. Maybe everyone will forget each other’s names by next time, or at least pretend to. But who knows? Maybe the real treasure of the September 2023 extraordinary session was the friends we made along the way.

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