Page 4A • Sunday, May 15, 2011
Our view
Opinions
The Daily Citizen
‘Better off in the casket’
I
'm not usually one to make New Year's resolutions, but I made one this year that I felt would be doable: Overcome my fear of public speaking. I don't understand why public speaking has always been such an obstacle for me. I grew up on stage, singing and playing music with my family in front of hundreds of people. In one-on-one settings, or even small group settings, I'm rarely nervous when having conversations, regardless of who I’m speaking with. But put me behind a lectern and my legs turn to Jell-O, blood rushes to my face and I freeze like a deer in headlights. It's good to know that I'm not alone in this phobia. Some people list public speaking as their biggest fear — even ahead of death. Jerry Seinfeld once famously quipped, "This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” I have always admired powerful public speakers. I still remember being amazed as I listened to my hometown pastor deliver his sermon on Sunday mornings. I would listen in awe as he would seamlessly transition from drawing us in with his folksy tales, to making sure he had our attention during his fireand-brimstone messages (often pounding the pulpit for added emphasis), to kindly and warmly inviting attendees to come forward and accept salvation and forgiveness. As I grew older, I became interested in American history. The more I studied, the more I discovered that nearly every significant victory in our nation's history was preceded by an important speech emphasizing the need for change. I recognized the power that strong oratory has to change minds and win hearts. Nonetheless, the thought of even speaking in front of my classmates and peers — let alone the world — frightened me tremendously. Somehow, I made it out of high school without having to offer a public speech. I was not so lucky in college. Speech was a required course my freshman year, and our final exam was our presentation to the rest of the class at the end of the semester. Despite carefully selecting
JACOB BROWER
the right words to use, going through several drafts and practicing in front of my bedroom mirror, my carefullyplanned speech was marred by stutters, miscues and nervous coughs throughout a 10-minute presentation that felt like it lasted 10 hours. This year, I figured it was finally time to stop hiding and face my fear head-on. I made a resolution to overcome my fear of public speaking around New Year's, and finally built up the courage to ask the leadership of the Searcy Rotary Club, of which I am a member, to allow me to offer a speech during one of its weekly meetings. I was given my opportunity on Tuesday. I spoke about my experiences as the editor of The Daily Citizen, as well as the road I took that led me to White County. Many club members said I did well. Granted, they may have just been generous, but I appreciate the encouragement nonetheless. As usual, my legs turned to Jell-O, my voice quivered at times, and I inadvertently skipped over parts of my prepared text, while delivering portions that may have been better left on paper. But I felt good about the experience. Of all the bad speeches I have delivered over the years, this one was by far the best. I'm not ready to say that I've licked my battle with public speaking. No one would confuse my Tuesday speech with Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have A Dream.” But I feel good knowing that I at least made a fight of it this past week. If your group would like to have me as a speaker, I would be honored to have the opportunity. It would be a win/win. I would get some much-needed public speaking experience, and you may even learn a thing or two. Jacob Brower is the editor of The Daily Citizen. He can be reached at jbrower@ thedailycitizen.com, or (501) 268-8621.
STAFF VIEWS
Memory flood
I’ve written a couple of times about the floods of 1927 and 1937. I wasn’t around for ‘27 but my family told me stories about it that influenced my life. The 1937 flood I remember well, not just because it was said to be the second worst in history, but because of other things I have to associate with it. While there are higher water levels this year in some places, you must remember that a lot has been done to mitigate floods since those two monsters. At the height of the flooding in 1937, I had an abscess in my right ear that no doctor here or in Little Rock felt competent to handle. I was sent to a hospital in Memphis. My dad drove through all that water arriving at the old Harahan Bridge which then had both railroad traffic and auto traffic. The memories of a five-year-old still can be bidden back. I can see the bunching of lines of those cars approaching the bridge. The bridge supports had been washed away and replaced by longer supports, two-by-eights to two-by-12s, nailed and bolted together and we had to cross those to get on the bridge. We did it and crossed to the other side but not before I looked down into that swirling brown water and saw the tops of houses and trees cascading down the almost endless river. I didn’t get in anything deeper than a kiddie pool for 26 years, still scared to death of water. But
STATE VIEWS
What’s up with Fort Smith and its foster children?
I do not think for a minute that Fort Smith and Sebastian County are hotbeds of inordinately neglectful or abusive parents. Nonetheless, they tell me at the state Human Services Department that, for some reason, 15 percent of the active foster child cases in the state have been coming from that county alone. That’s second only to Pulaski County, which has more than three times the population. State officials say there are only 66 foster homes in Sebastian County to serve more than 700 foster care cases. They say that gap needs to be significantly narrowed to keep caseworkers from spending all day driving to West Memphis or someplace and getting even more behind in their work. A couple of months ago, two children, one pregnant, slept overnight in the DHS offices in downtown Fort Smith because, with 21 kids dumped on the office in one day, and with caseworkers in court all morning, and with shelters closed northward to the Missouri line, there simply was no option. Several months ago the state sent in Carol Bruner from Hope, area director for children’s services in several southwestern Arkansas counties. She reported she had never seen such a challenge. And she had been in charge of the region where the state took charge of the Alamo kids. Upon hearing about failings in foster care services in the county, I inquired of the state DHS central office in Little Rock. Expecting the usual bureaucratic resistance to negative news, I instead was expeditiously put in a room with Cecile Blucker, state director of Children and Family
JOHN BRUMMETT
Services who, it seemed, was anxious to talk. First, she acknowledged the agency was to blame for a lack of professionalism in an overworked 15-member staff in Fort Smith that has experienced a nearly two-thirds turnover rate since November. She said a half-dozen or more new staff members are being added and that the area director will now focus only on Sebastian and Franklin Counties after handing off Crawford, Johnson, Logan, Scott and Yell Counties to other adjoining jurisdictions. Blucker also has assigned a contract consultant to do a comparison of Sebastian and Garland Counties. She wants the study, due by July 1, to arrive at findings that might help explain why, in the case of these not horribly dissimilar counties in terms of population and demographics, Sebastian County has six times as many foster care cases. She already has some informed speculation: n The former staff in Fort Smith simply had not been closing files as expeditiously as it should have been closing them, leading to an abundance of two- and three-year cases when state policy is that it is in a child’s best interest that parental issues get resolved in 12 months. Blucker said she recently sat down
for an hour to talk about this with Mark Hewett, the Sebastian County juvenile judge. Hewett tells me they indeed had such a meeting, but wanted it made clear that he closes cases as soon as the state asks. “This problem has been building over, oh, years, I would say, and it seems to be reaching a critical stage,” the judge said. n Local police agencies in the Fort Smith area seem to call in local children’s services officials with a frequency exceeding that of police agencies in other counties. That conceivably could be vigilant and admirable, state officials acknowledge. But it is worthy of note, they say, that most of Sebastian County’s backlogged cases are Priority 2, meaning not emergencies owing to abuse or neglect, but matters of bad home environment. n The local provider community has simply not been as strong in providing foster care as in other areas because the faith-based community in and around Fort Smith has been emphasizing instead the recruitment of adoption families, which, while important and admirable, are not as urgently needed as are places to keep foster kids temporarily. The conclusion is that Sebastian County need not be, and surely is not by nature, a black hole for needy children; that there is plenty of blame or responsibility to go around; and that, in this case, a little publicity might be a good thing for kids and a community. Imagine that. John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.
ONLINE VIEWS
PERRIN JONES
that’s not the only reason I remember the flood. No. At the hospital, I was prepped for the doctor to lance the ear drum to drain the abscess. Nobody apparently thought of the little kid screaming as the doctor in a white coat poked a scalpel into the ear drum and didn’t stop screaming for a long time after as anything but bad-tempered and loud until the doctor realized I was screaming way too long. Other nurses joined in trying to determine what was wrong. The anesthetist, it seems, had never deadened the ear tissue and the operation had been done without any painkiller. Today, we would have sued, but the hospital did all it could in apologizing and it wasn’t a litigious time. It was also many years before I could get my hair cut by barbers in white coats. They were all treated to the same screaming fits. Finally, Claude Marsh took off his white coat and pulled me up on that kid’s board for a haircut. Perrin Jones is Editor Emeritus of The Daily Citizen.
Facebook Question of the Week This week, we asked our Facebook fans, “How have gas prices affected your summer vacation plans?” Some of their answers are published below.
We want to hear from you! Kendra Toler Thomason
Jules Rusinowski
Bradford
Pat Warner
Searcy
Searcy
“We were planning to take a mini multi-stop road trip, but with gas as high as it is, we aren’t going to be able to go.”
“Yes, we are going to stay in state now. We’ll be going to the Crator of Diamonds and to Heffer Internationals Farm.”
“If gas keeps climbing, my family will be at home playing in a little pool or under the water hose!”
Like us on Facebook to take part in future Questions of the Week!
facebook.com