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FOI unearths St. Vincent draft proposal for UAMS combine

Max Brantley — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:41:58 -0500

Joann Coleman, a civic activist who's been closely following the proposed UAMS-St. Vincent services merger, has unearthed yet another interesting document from her series of FOI inquiries. She detected from remarks by Chancellor Dan Rahn at UAMS that there were further documents indicating St. Vincent bargaining positions. She requested them. The UAMS lawyer said they didn't exist. She persisted.

Today, she got a response from University of Arkansas counsel Fred Harrison, Oops.Harrison said the UAMS lawyer didn't know about a proposed agreement drafted by St. Vincent's corporate attorney and sent to Chancellor Rahn.

It was written in May. It details some of the ways St. Vincent hopes to make a pot of money in fees from managing merged operations with UAMS (and also receive enhanced reimbursements under Medicare for treating patients as part of a teaching hospital.)

For now, here's what St. Vincent proposed in a first draft of a letter of intent on the combination. It's a small point, but I note with disapproval that it essentially calls for UAMS to agree to violate the state Freedom of Information Act by preventing UAMS from "unilaterally" releasing information about the agreement without first consulting St. Vincent and making a joint response.

It goes without saying that the stated objective of reducing costs means somebody will lose their job.

And remember when everybody disavowed the statement ascribed to St. Vincent doc Dean Kumpuris that something akin to a merge of the hospitals was the plan?

The Parties share a special and common commitment to patient care, biomedical research and the education of the next generation of healthcare providers. To that end, while the initial affiliation of SVHS and UAMS will consist of CHI providing certain shared services to UAMS, the Parties intend to fully integrate SVHS’s and UAMS’s facilities and services into a single network entity (the “Network Entity”).

Again the questions: Will a fully integrated medical institution managed by St. Vincent — and guided by church dictates — provide all the services provided by the public institution? Will the employees of that merged, publicly supported institution provide the same health care benefits and protection from discrimination that the public institution is mandated to provide?

Re fees: The proposal says this about what St. Vincent (or its owner, Catholic Health Initiatives, would get for letting UAMS students practice at the merged institution it manages:

In exchange for CHI providing the Shared Services to UAMS, UAMS will pay CHI fees in an amount to be mutually agreed upon by the Parties, including, Without limitation, a management fee that will take into account the revenue enhancement, cost savings, and capital savings that UAMS Will derive from CHI providing the Shared Services to UAMS.

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Who does the LR Chamber of Commerce represent?

Max Brantley — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:18:57 -0500

OK, I obsess some on Little Rock government's dependent relationship with the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. But their influence is enormous. And they represent, lobby for and advance points of view that are in the best interests of the corporate membership they represent. That is not always — rarely, in fact — in the interest of working stiffs.

So when the Chamber runs a secretive campaign for a half-billion-dollar city tax increase and gets a $20 million tip in return for a "technology park" designed in its image, I tend to want more disclosure, more accountability and better results than the city has ever demanded from the chamber in return for its co-dependency.

Another reminder came today of the reason why the Chamber is better off raising money from its members for its agenda and why the city should not — particularly because the Constitution seems to prohibit it — give taxpayer subsidies to the chamber.

Jay Chessir, traveling partner with Mayor Stodola on wine- and fancy food-fueled publicly financed junkets to Paris; architect of the secretive and law-dodging sales campaign, and ruling member and administrative officer for the secretive and colossally screwed up Technology Park Authority, sent an e-mail recently that found its way to my in box.

I thought you’d find this informative. Thanks.
Jay

This morning, Bruce Josten delivered the truth to our Board. More specifically, he delivered 10 Truths About America's Entitlement Programs, an important address about a very important topic — “…the urgent need to reform and modernize our entitlement programs”. With this speech, we hope to begin to get the facts out, to jump start the debate and ultimately, to pave the way for action on this critical issue.

I hope you’ll take a moment to learn the truth — the 10 truths — about America’s entitlement programs and join us in driving a national conversation, one that’s grounded in fact and leads to solutions.

Thank you,

Tom

Tom is Thomas Collamore, strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as mean and greedy and anti-people a lobby as you'll find in America today.

Truth to the Chamber is that something must halt the success of "entitlements," meaning the Social Security and Medicare programs that American people pay with payroll deductions and that have, in just a few generations, lifted huge numbers of the elderly out of poverty and medical deprivation. They'll tell you that it isn't a cut in these programs to hold them at current spending levels or tiny percentage increases. But you'll have to look hard for chamber support on limits on the percentage pay increases enjoyed by doctors, drug companies, medical companies, insurance companies and other enormous beneficiaries of "entitlements," something most civilized western countries treat as an obligation to their people. Changes are needed, to be sure, though you'll see in an inspection of the Chamber's talking points that it misrepresents the situation on Social Security particularly. This is the kind of thinking that runs the Chamber. And, by extension, Little Rock city government.

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The Body at White Water

Robert Bell — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Also, 'The New 22' at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, Opera in the Ozarks, Johnny Winter at Juanita's, Juicy J at Clear Channel Metroplex, Black Flack at The Phoenix in Fayetteville and Bow Wow Wow at Juanita's. by Robert Bell and Lindsey Millar

THURSDAY 6/20

'THE NEW 22'

6:30 p.m., MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. Free.

Back in January, when the Arkansas Literary Festival slate of authors was announced, perhaps you scanned it and seized onto "The New 22," featuring hotshot novelists David Abrams ("Fobbit") and Ben Fountain ("Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk") and marked it as a "must-attend." Then you noticed in the small print that, strangely, the event wasn't scheduled until two months after the literary festival. Well, two months has come and gone. The event's still a must-attend. I haven't read "Fobbit," but it was one of the best-reviewed books of last year. It's set in a military base in Baghdad ("fobbit" is slang for a soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by hanging at the base). Abrams draws on his experience as an active-duty Army journalist. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" is one of the best books I've read. Lots of other people agree. It won this year's National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award last year. It's about the surviving members of a group of Iraq War soldiers who've become minor celebrities after video of them in a firefight with insurgents goes viral. They've been sent home for a Victory Tour that culminates with an appearance at a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day. It's a darkly funny satire written with more style and insight than anything in recent memory. LM

THURSDAY 6/20

THE BODY

9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern.

The Body's been out on the road for a minute now, or, well more like several weeks to be accurate. The dudes also somehow made time to stop off at their buddies' studio Machines with Magnets to record three full-length albums, including one that's going to be released on the Thrill Jockey label, which is also home to Barn Owl, Guardian Alien, The Skull Defekts and many other totally badass artists, so good work guys! The Body's latest release, the EP "Master We Perish," is boss. I really dig how they go into some seriously Neurosis-esque territory for a sec on the last third of the nearly 10-minute closer "Worship." The whole thing is really killer though, and points to more great stuff to come. Oh yeah, for all of you The Body newbies, make sure to bring some earplugs. Openers Iron Tongue and Mothwind are gonna tenderize y'all. Should be a good'n. RB

FRIDAY 6/21

OPERA IN THE OZARKS

7:30 p.m. Inspiration Point. $20-$25.

Opera lovers of Arkansas, one of your favorite seasons has rolled around once more: Opera in the Ozarks. Situated at the stunning Inspiration Point near Eureka Springs, Opera in the Ozarks is an annual intensive month-long training program for aspiring opera professionals that culminates with a month of performances of some of the most beloved works in the world. There are typically three different productions each season. For 2013, audiences can enjoy Gaetano Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love," one of the most-performed operas ever written; "Madama Butterfly," Puccini's tale of love and betrayal, and Gilbert and Sullivan's comic classic "The Pirates of Penzance." The season kicks off Friday with "Madama Butterfly" and continues this week with "The Pirates of Penzance" on Saturday and "Elixir of Love" on Tuesday. The season runs through July 19. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. at Inspiration Point, with one-time performances of each opera at Bentonville's Arend Arts Center on June 30, July 7 and July 14. RB

FRIDAY 6/21

JOHNNY WINTER

9:30 p.m. Juanita's. $25 adv., $30 day of.

It's just not every day that you get a real-deal living legend playing in town. I mean, even if the blues isn't your jam, you've got to admit that Johnny Winter is a badass. For my money, Winter eclipsed most of his guitar-god peers in some pretty important ways. Neither Jeff Beck nor Eric Clapton came close to capturing the raw sound and emotion that Winter conjured from his instrument. His playing was fluid and sophisticated ("Be Careful with a Fool"), but could also be real nasty when called for ("Silver Train," "Fast Life Rider"). Winter's latest album is "Roots," which finds the guitar slinger teaming up with a who's-who of current blues virtuosos, including Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Warren Haynes, as well as his brother Edgar Winter and a host of others. As you might surmise from the title, it's a collection of blues classics, with tracks by T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and others. Critic Steve Leggett wrote of the album: "He sings here as well as he ever has and his guitar playing is powerful and brilliant, like it always is, and he's diving into songs and material that he's always emulated — the end result is a coherently shaped, explosive, vibrant, and joyous set of Winter at his best doing what he loves the best." Sounds awesome. Don't miss this one folks. Opening the show will be Steve Hester & DejaVooDoo, Low Society and Joecephus & The George Jonestown Massacre. RB

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FRIDAY 6/21

JUICY J

9 p.m. Clear Channel Metroplex. $30-$100.

It's been a good couple weeks for local fans of Memphis hip-hop legends Three 6 Mafia. Longtime affiliate Project Pat was in town last week, and now comes Juicy J, who, along with fellow Three 6 founder DJ Paul, is arguably one of the most important figures in Southern rap. Oh yeah, he also won an Academy Award for "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp." That was crazy. Anyways, Juicy J notched another hit with last summer's "Bandz a Make Her Dance" (feat. Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz and produced by Mike WiLL Made It) on Wiz Khalifa's Taylor Gang label. There's an album pending, "Stay Trippy," his third solo record. Its release date has moved around a bit, but it'll have tracks with Yelawolf, Young Jeezy and The Weeknd. Also on this bill, fellow Memphis rapper Young Dolph along with Lil Cam, Kronic and Beatking. RB

SATURDAY 6/22

BLACK FLAG

8 p.m. The Phoenix (formerly Rogue). $25 adv., $30 door.

To be honest, the more I think about this, the more I feel really conflicted about it. There might not be another band that was as important as Black Flag was in my own personal development as a very angry young man. "The First Four Years" and "Damaged" were just earth-shatteringly important records for me and no doubt for many thousands of other very angry young men as well. I still get ultra-pumped up hearing "Revenge" and "Thirsty and Miserable" and "Depression" even now, nearly two decades after I first heard them. I missed Black Flag in the band's heyday. Being anywhere from 1-8 years old at the time, I was not exactly ready to tear it up in ye olde moshe pitte. As such, I always had to endure these stories from the older punkers in Fayetteville about how they'd seen the band "back in '86 maaan." (In retrospect, at least a couple of these people were way too young to have gone to the show and were just lying). So the idea of Black Flag touring in 2013 and playing in Fayetteville is beyond weird. And when you consider the fact that another iteration of the band — called simply Flag — is also touring, well, it gets ... I don't know, it's just weird. Henry Rollins, in what I believe to be a wise and classy move, is staying out of all of this reunion business. In a 2011 interview, he told Nardwuar that "since Gregg Ginn has never paid any member of Black Flag a royalty, or given any member of Black Flag even a royalty statement, I think there's probably quite a bit of animosity between himself and some of the band members. There are some of these people who are owed money. If anything, they're at least owed an accounting. I mean that's just good principle." He's right. And maybe that's one reason why I'm unable to get excited about Black Flag in 2013. Ginn gets to cash in and call Flag "the 'fake' Flag band currently covering the songs of Black Flag in an embarrassingly weak 'mailing it in' fashion," all the while those guys and Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth and other bands that released albums on his SST Records are still owed money. Or at least an accounting. Ginn's other band, Good For You, opens. RB

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MONDAY 6/24

BOW WOW WOW, GENE LOVES JEZEBEL

8 p.m. Juanita's. $15 adv., $20 day of.

Everybody knows Bow Wow Wow's cover of the '60s garage rock nugget "I Want Candy," and rightfully so; it's a perfect slice of punky early '80s pop. But the band was much more than a one-hit wonder. There's "C30, C60, C90, Go," the ode to the beloved blank cassette ("Now I don't need no album rack / I carry my collection over my back") and "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" (Answer: Yes, Annabella Lwin, yes we do). And then you've got Gene Loves Jezebel, the undisputed masters of goth-lite guitar rock ("Desire" and "Jealous" were hits). For rockers of a certain vintage, this bill will be a ticket straight back to mascara-streaked early '80s pop heaven. The Big Dam Horns open the show. RB

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C'mon strike

Brian Chilson — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

A child prepares to bowl during a frame of mini bowling at Playtime Pizza in Little Rock. by Brian Chilson A child prepares to bowl during a frame of mini bowling at Playtime Pizza in Little Rock.

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GOP's new mascot

Tommy Durham — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Tommy Durham

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Naughty fun, great singing on the avenue

Robert Bell — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The singing, dancing, foul-mouthed, sex-having puppets of "Avenue Q" (and their human counterparts) put on a fun, sweet and funny show in the Arkansas Repertory Theatre's production of the smash-hit musical. by Robert Bell

At the center of "Avenue Q" are Princeton, a recent English grad, and Kate Monster, a kindergarten teaching assistant. Both are trying to find their way in the world of post-collegiate life, and are abetted by a menagerie of monsters, puppets, slackers and, of course, Gary Coleman.

The whole cast was incredibly solid, with great singing and some very impressive puppet work. Will Holly, who played Princeton and Rod, was particularly adept at making his puppets come alive with animated, inspired movement. He deftly switched between voice characterizations for the uptight closeted Republican and the wide-eyed young college grad who's trying to find his purpose in life. Kathleen Choe, who plays social worker Christmas Eve, is a fantastic singer and was hilarious as the nagging moral compass of the show. Really, there's not a weak link in this entire cast.

The choreography was also impressive, especially considering that at any time, several of the actors have not one but two puppets on their hands, or two of them are operating the same puppet. That it all came off so effortlessly is a testament to the hard work the cast put in preparing for this show.

"Avenue Q" is filled with memorable tunes — it didn't win three Tony Awards for nothing, after all. These will be stuck in your head for a while, so hopefully you'll like them. There were a few regional references worked into the script (Whole Hog Cafe and Pine Bluff, for example). That kind of thing can easily come off as corny, but in this case they all were legitimately funny.

The audience Wednesday night was, by this reviewer's eyeball estimate, about 70 percent close to or north of 70 years of age. For anyone remotely familiar with the musical that might sound like a recipe for, if not disaster, at least a couple of walk-outs, especially here in the Bible Belt. But the somewhat risque material caused no seats to be emptied. In fact, the mostly older crowd erupted loudly and often, frequently repeating particularly funny lines back to their friends and spouses. At the end of "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," a man behind me said to his wife, "It's true!" So there's that. On the other hand, "The Internet is for Porn" seemed slightly lost on much of the crowd. Perhaps their connection speeds need to be upgraded.

A couple of the naughty parts did fall flat, particularly one line delivered by Rod at the end of his song "Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada." It's super awkward — purposefully so, to illustrate how ridiculously uptight and closeted he is. But still, one woman in the row behind me did not look pleased.

However, for all but the wettest of wet blankets, The Rep's "Avenue Q" is a sure bet for a fun night out.

"Avenue Q" runs through June 30, with performances at 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $25-$50.

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Brad Simpson a 'protector' of films like 'World War Z,' 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'

Lindsey Millar — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

From the Children's Theatre to making $400 million movies, Little Rock native Brad Simpson has had quite a run. by Lindsey Millar

Last month, while in town for the Little Rock Film Festival, Hollywood producer and Little Rock native Brad Simpson politely declined to talk about the famously troubled production of "World War Z," the Brad Pitt-starring international zombie thriller that opens in theaters on Friday. During the four years Simpson worked as an executive producer on the film, he reportedly had to deal with a ballooning budget, escalating tension between Pitt and director Marc Forster, last minute rewrites and reshoots, sets filled with as many as 1,500 cast and crew and a Hungarian counterterrorism unit that seized weapons slated to be used in a climactic battle scene that Hungarian officials said weren't fully disarmed. Those details were revealed in the cover story of the June edition of Vanity Fair, which hit newsstands a few days before Simpson arrived in Little Rock.

"I can't say anything on the record about that stuff," Simpson said. "All I'll say is I'm really excited about 'World War Z.' The movie is really great."

Despite Hollywood's love of schadenfreude, his optimism might be well founded. Early reviews have been respectable to positive, though the film will need a strong opening weekend to make up its reported $400 million cost.

If it does prove successful, it'll be the latest in a remarkable run for Simpson, perhaps the least-known most successful Hollywood player from Arkansas.

Simpson grew up in the Quapaw Quarter. He spent a lot of time at the Territorial Restoration (now the Historic Arkansas Museum) and the Arkansas Arts Center's Children Theatre, where he did summer theater academy and was part of a production of "Lord of the Flies." He credits his time at the children's theater — and the advent of the consumer VCR — as what sparked his desire to work in film. "It showed me that there was something creative I could do on a bigger stage."

Simpson would've been in the 1991 graduating class of Little Rock Central, but his family moved to New York before his junior year.

It's hard to point to missteps in his CV after Arkansas: After college at Brown, he spent eight years producing for the New York-based independent production company Killer Films, where he worked on the likes of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Boys Don't Cry" and "Far from Heaven." A desire to make bigger movies sent him to L.A., where he ran Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way during the making of "The Departed" and "Blood Diamonds." But after three years of serving as an executive, he wanted to return to hands-on production. "I feel most happy when I'm on a set or moving towards production as opposed to when I'm sitting behind a desk talking about something that might happen or trying to figure out a deal," he said.

After Appian Way, he made a splash with the three "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movies based on the massively popular children's book franchise. The books and movies were such hits, Simpson said, because they're honest. "It's basically Larry David in middle school. They're honest about how ugly middle school is. Nobody looks back at middle school and says those were the best years of my life."

Simpson worked on the "Wimpy Kid" films with Nina Jacobson, a former production head at Disney, and last year became a partner in Jacobson's Color Force production company, home to "Hunger Games" franchise.

In a panel discussion at the film festival, moderator Courtney Pledger asked Simpson how he defines the often nebulous role of a producer.

"I believe the producer is someone who protects the movie, who's the guardian of the film," he said. "It often starts with finding the material or helping develop the material. Pulling together the cast and financing. Guarding the film through production and then taking it through post [production]. I think a real producer is putting a protective shield over the film, protecting it at times from the filmmaker, protecting it at times from the studio, and keeping the train going and thinking and worrying about the movie at all time. Their agenda should just be I want to get the best movie possible that's also the most responsible movie possible, meaning making the movie that will speak to an audience and making it for a responsible amount of money. You want to be able to do a next one and you want movies to do well."

Simpson and his wife, Jocelyn Hayes, who's a successful producer in her own right and was part of the film festival panel, met at Killer Films. Before they married and started having kids, their careers were well established. Hayes has produced "The Company," "Infamous," "Lola Versus" and the new indie thriller "The East." But scheduling has occasionally been a challenge. Navigating weather, massive amounts of money and actor availability pretty much mean that they have no control over their own schedules. Five weeks after Hayes gave birth to their second child, Simpson left to work on "World War Z." Soon after, Hayes, two kids in tow, went to New York to produce "Lola Versus." She kept the baby on set with her. Simpson flew in on weekends. After that, they were in Vancouver as a family during production of a "Wimpy Kid" film and then in Shreveport for "The East."

Simpson and Hayes said that when they're on location, they always like to pretend like they're living in whatever city they're shooting in. Rather than staying in a hotel, they rent a house and try to become locals. They said they guessed they'd live in Hillcrest if they were making a movie in Little Rock.

Good restaurants and general quality of life matter more than people realize in terms of determining a location for a production, Hayes said. With Arkansas's diversity of geography, they think Little Rock is primed to become a base for big productions. Plus, a lot of the Southern and Midwestern cities Little Rock might compete with are "shot out," said Hayes. "That means so many people have shot there that the locations become too familiar and the residents get really tired of production in their neighborhoods and stop saying yes."

Establishing Little Rock as a film hub is "all about making sure you're on Hollywood's radar and that the incentive is real and it'll stay in place," Simpson said. "Then if a couple of films have a good experience, it'll snowball."

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Scrapping the Fourth Amendment

Ernest Dumas — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

When the hunt for scandal produces only flaps, it is hard to recognize it when you're handed the real thing. by Ernest Dumas

When the hunt for scandal produces only flaps, it is hard to recognize it when you're handed the real thing.

After spending eight months trying to find someone in the Obama administration who acted traitorously in the attacks on the U.S. compound at Benghazi and then raking over the disclosure that agents in the IRS sometimes still carried out political agendas, Republicans got a long-needed assist from a private contractor with the National Security Agency named Edward J. Snowden. He gave the media troves of classified documents showing vast government surveillance of the communications of Americans at home and abroad and then fled to Hong Kong ahead of certain charges that he violated the Espionage Act and other laws.

The National Security Agency under Barack Obama had expanded on the work of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the openings in the Patriot Act and co-opted the personal electronic records held by communications and Internet companies. It did it to run down and thwart plots against the United States at home and abroad, and the president and his national security people have insisted that all the surveillance did exactly that. They can't tell us what and where because it's classified, you know.

The surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which says people and their "houses, papers and effects" are to be forever secure from the government, although in the age of technology and cross-border terrorism Congress and the courts have pretty much made its commands meaningless and the American people, by and large, have surrendered that right happily. Still, the president's approval ratings have slipped noticeably in the wake of Snowden's disclosure, a somewhat heartening sign.

The Fourth Amendment was written to thwart forever the kind of British acts that led to the American Revolution, the "general warrant" issued by the king, which directed general searches of people's homes and businesses to enforce the crown's needs for revenue and loyalty.

The universal surveillance of everyone's electronic communications (soon, will there be any other kind?) is the ultimate big government that was caricatured in novels like Brave New World, where the government knew what everyone was doing and saying. It is what you thought the tea partiers had in mind at their rallies and town-hall ravings, when they demanded that the government give them their freedoms back. They may have just meant the freedom to discriminate against certain kinds of people.

Instead, except for libertarians like Rand Paul, and presumably his papa, Ron, Republicans have been the biggest defenders of the president's and NSA's surveillance, if not necessarily of the president himself. Cheney said much of the surveillance program was developed in his office when he was vice president, and he called for Snowden to be tried as a traitor. And presumably executed. In Cheney's lexicon, a traitor is one who tells the American people the truth; a patriot is one who lies to them and even to the president, as he did often in the wake of 9/11.

Cheney was in the Nixon White House when it went after Daniel Ellsberg, a scholar for the Rand Corp., who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed government deception to lead the country to war in Vietnam. Ellsberg was being tried for violating the Espionage Act but the judge halted the trial after discoveries that the Nixon administration had broken into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to get records of his treatment and tapped his telephone without a warrant, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

While we're at it, let's mention that as an aide to Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, in 1975, Cheney recommended secret steps by the Justice Department and other facets of government to counter a New York Times story about the Navy tapping into Soviet undersea communications.

Like Snowden's revelations now, the American people had no right to know, even generally, what big parts of their government was doing.

As I said, the American people long ago got past the privacy thing, not only because of the fear bred by 9/11 and other crimes but because they have largely surrendered it already to credit-card, Internet and other companies. Government is going to develop a consuming need for your data, too, and you can imagine how some of it might be valid.

But the quest for the information and the use of it will not be spent on foiling terrorists. We may trust them to do that at the moment, but what is next? Bill Clinton was asked last week about whether Americans need some safeguards from abuse. Yes, he said, and the people running the secret programs need to be developing some protections to see that the government never uses the personal data mining for political, financial or personal advantage or punishment. We can be sure, can't we, that they will do that?

Clinton pointed out that the government couldn't get into the content of your communications without a warrant approved by the secret federal court set up to do that. That court is some fine protection. The chief justice selects them — nine are Republican judges (one in Little Rock), one a Democrat. Only the government gets to make its case, secretly, and we never know what the decisions were, the grounds, or the results. Figures are hard to come by, but as of the end of 2004, the FISA judges had given the government the warrants it wanted 18,761 times and rejected five. So, no need to worry.

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Where's on first

Doug Smith — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"The employee/nurse, who didn't want to comment when contacted afterward by a Kansas City newspaper, did enough to where the girl was breathing and awake upon leaving the baseball stadium." by Doug Smith

"The employee/nurse, who didn't want to comment when contacted afterward by a Kansas City newspaper, did enough to where the girl was breathing and awake upon leaving the baseball stadium."

The to where is a nonstandard, country way of talking, not approved for, and usually not seen in, the newspaper. Where denotes location, not condition. "The nurse did enough so that the girl was breathing and awake ... "

"N.Y.C. Mayor Sent Poisonous Letters." Not the sort of conduct you'd expect from a high public official. I wonder who he sent those toxic communications to. Bothersome journalists, perhaps.

But really, the mayor of New York didn't send poisonous letters to anybody. He received ("was sent") poisonous letters. Headline writing is a special kind of writing, and sometimes you can get by with assuming that a verb will be understood by the reader even if it's not spelled out. But when you end up with a head that literally says exactly the opposite of what you wanted to say, you'd better rewrite.

Another question: Whoever sent them, were those letters poisonous or poisoned? The two words don't always mean the same thing; a poisonous snake is different from a poisoned snake, and you'd better not forget it. In the case of the letters, I think either modifier would do. Poisonous is an adjective that means "full of or containing poison." Poisoned is the past tense of a verb that means "to put poison into or upon."

"Generally what happens is that, especially as horses are getting more and more lightly raced, they're still on the improve – more often, I think, now than they used to be." On the improve? "Improving" would be shorter and simpler.

"THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR – In this gory thriller by legendary director Vernon Sewell, a crazed etymologist dabbles in gruesome experiments that turn his beautiful daughter into a vampire beast with an insatiable lust for blood." Having done a little crazed etymological dabbling myself, and produced no vampire beasts, I'd bet the father in this movie is an entomologist.

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Huck beats Rick

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

We now know for sure that screwy right-wing ex-governors of Arkansas make more sense than screwy right-wing incumbent governors of Texas. Political scientists had so theorized for some time; the point was proved over the weekend.

An unusually bold and far-sighted Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher himself before he got into politics and commentary, called on churches to give up their tax-exempt status. "Freedom is more important than government financial favors," Huckabee said. The founders of the republic would agree entirely. They wisely labored to build a strong wall between church and state, for the good of both sides: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But the wall has been weakened by the granting of tax breaks to religious institutions. Huckabee's proposal would end a practice — tax favoritism for churches — that may already be unconstitutional and is certainly unfair. The founders never believed that the religious should enjoy government-granted privileges that were denied nonbelievers.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry believes it though. While Huckabee was speaking out for religious freedom, Perry was speaking out against it, defending a new law intended to protect Christmas celebrations and other religious observances in the public schools from legal challenges by non-Christians. "Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion," he said. But of course it does. Is the right to bear arms a requirement to bear arms? Perry may think so, but reasonable people don't. Does the right of assembly require that everyone attend all meetings? Is everything nor mandatory prohibited?

Perry was befuddled when he was running for president and his head hasn't cleared. Ordinarily, it takes a village to make Mike Huckabee sound reasonable.

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Wine, swine, history in Scott at Times Farm to Table Dinner

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Chef Brian Kearns to take food from Farm to Table. by Leslie Newell Peacock

Years ago, it might not have been so special to feast on pork that had but hours before been a happy critter rolling in the muddy pen out back of your plantation. Today, not so much; that pork you eat and the vegetables that go with it are most likely from a grocery store, and your plantation has been turned into a subdivision.

The Arkansas Times is going to re-create a little of those past foodways and the country air ambiance with its Farm to Table Dinner Party at the Scott Plantation Settlement on Saturday, June 29. L'ecole Culinaire-trained Country Club of Little Rock Chef Brian Kearns — winner of the Times' Heritage Hog Roast — will serve an all-Arkansas-sourced meal on the grounds amid historic buildings that have been restored to give a flavor of early Scott.

"This is such an exciting time of the year" for food-lovers, Kearns said, exulting in melons and stone fruits and tomatoes and delicious vegetables coming into season. The menu won't be all Arkansas — the wines will come from California, which is a good place to deviate from the locavore principle. Bonnie Montgomery will provide some downhome music, as well.

Diners will be greeted at 5:30 p.m. with a Piper Sonoma Brut champagne and "butlered" hors d'oeuvres to ward off hunger and thirst they'll work up by checking out such things as the first Bearskin Plantation home and the corn crib from the Dortch Plantation and the one-room schoolhouse from the Cottonwoods Plantation and so forth. At 6:30 p.m., dinner will be served family-style at a long table under a tent. First course: Carbon, goldies and annis noir tomatoes (grown by Times publisher and farmer Alan Leveritt) and feta made by Kent Walker tossed with watermelon, red onion and arugula from Scott Heritage Farm, which is right down the road from the Settlement. For this first course, the wine will be Buoncristiani's Triad Blanc (Napa, 2012), a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier and Chardonnay.

Next up: That most cherished of summertime dishes, ratatouille, prepared by Kearns with local eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes and onions. Blackbird's Arriviste rose (Napa, 2011) will be paired with the second course.

Scott Heritage has provided three Old Spot hogs for the main course, which Kearns will begin cooking late Friday night on site. Kearns won the Times' Heritage Roast by letting the hog be a hog. "I didn't try to mask the taste of the pig itself," he said, but accentuated its flavor with a barbecue rub of chili powder, cumin, sugar and salt. The pork will be served with an heirloom tomato jam and a corn, pea, onion and tomato succotash. A bold pinot noir from Renteria's Knittel Creek Vinyard (Carneras, 2009) will accompany it.

Finally, peaches from Barnhill Orchards in Lonoke will be served on a crostata (a "free-form tart," Kearns described it) with salted caramel ice cream. "I've already started buying ice cream from Loblolly," the small-batch creamery in Little Rock. The final wine: Reynolds Family Up To You white blend (Napa, 2009)

When the sun goes down, the mosquitos will come out for their own all-Arkansas meal, so dinner will be over by 8:30 p.m.

Tickets are $110 and may be purchased up until June 28 at http://atfarmtotable.eventbrite.com or by calling Kelly Lyles at the Arkansas Times at 375-2985.

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Exploring Big Island, where three rivers meet

Chris Staudinger — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The Big Island Circumnavigation Expedition took to a seldom-seen wilderness and exposed schoolchildren to the beauty and power of nature. by Chris Staudinger, Mark Peoples and John Ruskey

Several thousand white-beaked coots covered the water when we arrived at the landing at the silky cusp of nightfall. When we shoved off, they did too, with wings over the water that sounded like muffled firecrackers.

We left the two-mile harbor of Rosedale, Miss., like four fugitives, under a darkness occasionally broken by the sweep of towboat spotlights. Their propellers churned domes of mud up the narrow channel as they moved the fruits of the rich Delta earth onto riverbound barges. The owl hoots and insect choruses of the forest were covered by motor sounds, beeps, gurgles and men shouting. John and Mike kept near the woods, letting the rushes and bank weeds creak and scratch the bellies of our canoes. The ripply reflection of the towboats covered the water in yellows and reds.

When we made our quick turn up the Mississippi, all went still and dark. The narrow harbor channel expanded into an openness that rivals the ocean. A panorama of nothing but water surrounds you for miles in three directions. Nightfall widened the space even further, beyond the visible. The space absorbed the buzz behind us into motionlessness. And you never would have known that the force of several Niagara Falls was rolling in the water beneath the canoe. We paddled up the quiet river behind frosty breaths and looked for a sandy spot to make a quick camp.

Like a rock thrown in the water, the circumnavigation of Big Island had begun, perhaps the first circumnavigation by canoe since this area was abandoned by the Quapaw people.

Big Island

Big Island is the original Crossroads. It is perhaps the most dynamic mixing place in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, an expansive, watery no-man's-land carved out by the meeting of three rivers: the White, the Arkansas, and the Mississippi. It creates one of the largest roadless areas in the Mid-South. When any two bodies of water meet, worlds collide and new worlds are born. But Big Island is the unlikely spot where three big rivers come together. Its dirt tells the story of waters that have crossed paths, intertwined, braided, jumped banks, traded mouths, and swapped channels for thousands of years. The result is a labyrinth of water, sediment, and forest, once tangle-y and lawless enough to harbor gamblers, moonshiners, and river pirates. It saw the passage of peoples, from Quapaws to French Voyageurs, from Blue Coats to Red Coats, from pioneers to pilgrims. Today, it's rife with bears and bugs and great-grandfather trees that make it a perfect playground for adventurers and a perfect classroom for nature-starved kids.

John Ruskey and Mike Clark know firsthand the need for experiential learning. And they know Mother Nature's potential as a powerful teacher. Ruskey, the owner of Clarksdale-based Quapaw Canoe Co., has run an after-school apprenticeship program for 15 years. He lets the Mississippi River teach his "Mighty Quapaws" the lessons that their underserved neighborhoods might leave off. Clark, a veteran educator, began his career in a Chicago high school in the 1980s, where he bore witness to two decades of inner-city violence. After relocating to St. Louis, he found a sparkling-fresh classroom to teach in: the Mighty Mississippi.

Ruskey and Clark teamed up in 2002 with the Big River and Circumnavigation projects to get the feet of our next generation muddier. "Leave No Child on Shore" could be their credo. Their first collaboration was a 2,500-mile odyssey down the Missouri River in a dugout canoe. Since then, they've organized yearly expeditions around a chosen geographic landscape that would be broadcast into classrooms. With solar energy and satellite Internet, the environment and the classroom come together, and students can join the expedition as virtual voyageurs through photos, writings, water-quality samples, and GPS mapping from the field. The kids see their hometown river through a lens that beautifies it rather than demonizes it.

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The program is growing with new support this year from the nonprofit Lower Mississippi River Foundation and its partner organizations. Two hundred fifth- and sixth-graders from KIPP Delta College Preparatory School in Helena joined their colleagues from St. Ann Catholic School in St. Louis, which piloted the project. The students followed the four explorers, as well as an imaginary story-telling turtle named Toby, from camp to camp around the island. Two Mighty Quapaw apprentices from the KIPP Delta Collegiate High School, Oscar Donaby and Tristan Honeycutt, would meet us at Arkansas Post, midway through the circular journey around Big Island, and see for themselves what life on the river really looks like.

Up the Arkansas

We made sure to wait until daylight to reach the mouth of the Arkansas River. The crossing from one river into another is a visual journey not to be missed in darkness. The first thing you notice, as you enter the mouth, is the change of water colors. A swirling, dividing line forms between a turbulent line of curls, whirls, boils, and other slippery motions, like the collision of cloud systems.

Everything the Arkansas touches has a reddish tint. Its sand is fiery. Its clay is maroon. Its bluffs are like red curtains cascading from the green walls of the forest beyond. The silt in the water beneath us was carried there from the yellow plains, red hills, and rusty mountains of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, as was the ground in the banks beneath our feet.

In 2011, Ruskey saw an entire forest fall into the water here, as the river carved itself a new path behind Cat Island to its confluence with the Mississippi. You can see signs of these fallen forests everywhere along the bluffs of the Arkansas — a tornadic destruction of limbs and roots and falling rock. But the remarkable thing about these felled trees is the fact that the steep, cut banks exist in the first place. Most rivers have been hemmed in by levees, rock piles, or blankets of concrete, but the last 43 miles of the Arkansas River is a roller coaster of wild twists and turns. The river is free to be wild, and the dangling, muddy rootballs make that plain to see.

We paddled the first 22 miles along these banks, staring up at the ornate sand castles carved by wind and water. The abundance of wildlife surprised us: a healthy population of bald eagles, snowy egrets, great blue herons and marsh hawks. Herds of white-tailed deer thrive here; evidence of feral hogs is spread throughout Big Island. Packs of coyotes roam the island, and we saw tracks that seemed to be made by big cats, maybe the legendary red panther (cougar) that once claimed the top of the predator pyramid. This is bear country, but we only saw remnants of old bear dung. It was February, so perhaps they were still in hibernation. As we paddled through a steady, cold wind and showers of sleet and ice, big flocks of ducks congregated around every bend. Scaups erupted from every point and every marsh. It felt like an African safari.

Two juvenile bald eagles greeted us at the small inlet that would be our first base camp. We took refuge under a steep cut bank bordered with mature willows.

We took turns nursing the fire, exploring the terrain, and writing to the students. Several kids used the trip to explore sustainability, so we used the scene around us to show that humanity, even with technology, can survive more simply. Rainwater dripped from our shelter into bowls and replenished our freshwater supply. Solar panels charged the computers we typed on. Food scraps were buried in a hole that one day would foster new growth.

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After lunch that afternoon, we found a human on Big Island. We hadn't planned to see many until we picked up KIPP students Oscar and Tristan in Arkansas Post. He came slowly out of the gray haze, checking his nets, and a flock of mallards flew in formation over his head.

We walked over to greet him as he idled into the bay. In a deep Arkansas drawl, he yelled, "Y'all picked a fine day for camping!" and lumbered over the piles of catfish, carp, and buffalo that covered the hull of his boat. He wore full waders and a heavy rain slicker. We shook his hardened, wet hands, and he told us about how family fishing operations are disappearing because the work is so hard.

We discussed the health and future of the river and told him about our educational initiative and the importance of passing our stewardship of the rivers down to the next generation. He boasted, "I have a 16-year-old daughter who can clean 80 pounds of fish in five minutes!"

Arkansas Post

As we moved up the Arkansas, the water flow increased as the dam near Arkansas Post released more water with the rain runoff. Logging and water infrastructure operations along the river became more prevalent with protected wildlife areas in between. One sign said, "No Bear Hunting Past This Point." Islands of water hyacinth, an invasive species, floated down the river as we approached the dam. When the water got too shallow, we cordelled over the shoals in the spirit of the French fur trappers, dragging our canoes upstream by their lead lines.

One of the special things about the places where waters mix is that people often mix there too. Arkansas Post is the human result of the confluence of these three rivers. The Quapaw nation was formed when a group of Sioux broke away to follow the Mississippi River rather than paddle upriver toward the Great Plains. Their name literally means "Downstream People," and they eventually settled at the northern tip of Big Island, recognizing how special and strategically important the place was. The French did the same and established a trading post there in 1686 known as Arkansas Post, the oldest European settlement west of the river. Later, the Spanish came and eventually an American flag and finally us, perhaps the first time this island was paddled in a complete loop since the relocation of the gentle Downstream People in the 1830s.

We made our resupply camp at Arkansas Post, courtesy of John Fewkes, manager of the Quapaw Outpost in Helena. He called us in through the darkness with his ceremonial drum to the boat ramp below the dam. The KIPP Environmental Education class visited the park the next day. They dropped off Tristan, 16, and Oscar, 18, at the resupply camp. Their classmates said goodbye with looks that alternated between pity and jealousy.

The Crossing

We're not sure who first called Monday's paddle "the crossing," but as the day's progress gathered momentum, the two words gained a mysterious, biblical weight. "The crossing," everyone said in a lowered voice, anxious to see the different river that awaited us on the other side, anxious for downstream water. The gateway is a long navigation canal with two lock-and-dam structures that regulate water levels for towboats navigating between the Arkansas and the White. Our heads had to crane all the way back to take in the first lock. These megastructures are built for massive barges and hung above our canoes like concrete grizzly bears. Tristan's and Oscar's eyebrows lifted. "Cool."

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It seems silly that such a dominating structure would be operated by a doorbell. When Ruskey asked Tristan to pull the chain to notify the lockmaster, Tristan smirked. He jolted back a bit when the train-worthy horn rang out.

A man appeared on the top of the gates, a mixture of Wilson from "Home Improvement" and the Gatekeeper of Oz. He told us we couldn't pass because of barge traffic at the other end of the canal. We told him about the storms. We told him we needed to find a camp. He shook his head, grinning: "Those storms ain't coming till the morning." Clark and Ruskey were persistent. Then they threw the weight of 2,000 schoolkids on the lockmaster's shoulders. He said, "I'll check with the lockmaster at Number 2." He came back, and said, "Let me get my chambers emptied. Stay to the right." We stayed to the right and found at last the milky water of the White River.

Our storm camp was tucked comfortably between two hills in an otherwise flat floodplain, only five miles from the Mississippi River. We realized that after a week's worth of paddle strokes, we were only a short walk across a levee from our first storm camp near Owen's Lake. We staked down our tents and hunkered down for more rain. The wind howled, and the trees bent low. Lightning strobed across the sky. At the fire the next morning, curious about how urban newcomers would weather such a storm in the backcountry, we asked Tristan and Oscar how they slept. "Pretty good," one said. "Fine," said the other casually. And they went back to their breakfast.

Of all the things we explored on Big Island, the most mysterious might have been the teenage brain. It seemed that their faces and actions told the stories that they otherwise kept hidden. They took photos of each other in a rusted-out VW Bug. They joked when we found a weathered school bus that once served as a hunting camp. When they came across a fallen giant in the woods, they scanned the trunk from root to canopy. When we left the storm camp, Ruskey led us into a cavern of cypress knees and roots. Oscar's and Tristan's faces glowed, like they knew they had accomplished something. They had. Their paddle strokes smoothed out, and their canoes tracked straighter. When we came to the end of the White River and the trees opened up, they were amazed by the vastness of the Mississippi.

The Mississippi Toward Home

When we tell people about our canoe trips on the Mississippi, we get looks of worry and disapproval. We are told about dangerous riptides and dirty water, maelstroms and whirlpools. And the closer the person lives to the river, the dirtier the water, the stronger the riptides, and the more disapproving their faces become. We wish people told the other kinds of stories about the Big River — the tales of adventure and discovery — because that's what we see in the Mississippi. We see it as a godlike, vine-draped wilderness beyond any imagined national park. Its sandbars and islands are full of fossils, wildlife, wild people, and stories — stories like the wreck of the steamer Victor. In 1907, it sank in the northern region of Big Island. We visited the wreck, which stuck out of the muddy river bank like a dino-skeleton. Oscar and Tristan gazed in amazement.

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Through a virtual connection, thousands of kids also had the opportunity to feel the amazement of that old steamboat wreck. They realized that their rivers are not full of trash but full of wild worlds awaiting their discovery. With the circumnavigation project, schools didn't need a bus, permission slips, or insurance policies to connect kids with the environment. Their curiosity could be sparked with the touch of a smart phone. With that connection, a future generation of more responsible stewards of the environment seems like a downstream paddle.

This story originally appeared in the Memphis Flyer.

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It was a good week for reviving the fight over health care expansion

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

It was a bad week for Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, a joint endorsement, Arkansas's congressional delegation, ExxonMobil and ExxonMobil's credibility.

It was a good week for ...

REVIVING THE FIGHT OVER HEALTH CARE EXPANSION. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel approved a proposed referendum from Garland County Tea Partier Glenn Gallas and his group, Arkansans Against Big Government. Gallas hopes to undo expansion. His group needs to collect nearly 47,000 signatures in two months to make the ballot.

It was a bad week for ...

LT. GOV. MARK DARR. During a tour of the Mayflower oil spill, he told KUAR it appeared ExxonMobil had made the area better than it was before.

A JOINT ENDORSEMENT. Democratic candidate for governor Mike Ross and Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor John Burkhalter endorsed each other and pledged to work together should they get elected. Ross promised to create a "Governor's Cabinet for Economic Development" to work on job creation as one of his first actions as governor. He said he would name Burkhalter to chair the cabinet.

ARKANSAS'S CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION. Arkansas's Republican congressmen, Reps. Tom Cotton, Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin and Steve Womack, voted against a motion by Iraq war veteran Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) that would have added language to the National Defense Appropriation Act to give victims of sexual abuse more options in bringing their abusers to trial.

EXXONMOBIL. The state of Arkansas and the federal government jointly filed a civil lawsuit against subsidiaries of ExxonMobil seeking civil penalties and injunctive relief. Part of the lawsuit falls under the Arkansas Hazardous Waste Management Act. According to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), Exxon is storing illegal contaminants near Mayflower in fracking tanks at a site on Highway 36 operated by XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary. Teresa Marks, director of ADEQ, said that her agency is concerned that the contaminants are being stored for a duration longer than permitted for hazardous waste.

EXXONMOBIL'S CREDIBILITY. The oil giant claims that it shut down its Pegasus pipeline 16 minutes after it ruptured in Mayflower on March 29. That timeline is still under investigation, but even if ExxonMobil's contention is verified, it would still fall short of the 12 minutes a federally approved Emergency Response Plan required, according to documents posted by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). ClimateNews said the four-minute difference may have equated to 10,000 more barrels (some 420,000 gallons) being spilled.

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Immigration reform smart

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Arkansas may not be known for its high share of immigrants — they compose only 5 percent of the state's population — but immigrants have begun to play a larger role in both the economic and political landscape of our state.

Immigration reform smart

Immigrants keep Arkansas vibrant and competitive. For every dollar the state spent on services to immigrant households — including K-12 education, healthcare, and corrections — it received $7 in immigrant business revenue and tax contributions in 2010. The economic contribution of immigrants grew from $2.9 billion in 2004 to $3.9 billion in 2010. And this contribution is expected to grow further as immigrants and their children increase their share of the state's total population and workforce.

In recent years, one in four of America's new small business owners were immigrants. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by a first- or second-generation American. Immigration makes us more prosperous. We are a nation of values, founded on the idea that all people are created equal and that all people have rights, no matter where they come from or what they look like. Our immigration laws must reflect our values, not our fears. Passing immigration reform is not just the smart thing to do; it's the right thing to do.

Victor Rojas

De Queen

Good story on Oxford House

I frequently read your newspaper and have enjoyed many articles, but the story about Oxford House was the best that I've read for a long time. Leslie Peacock wrote a well-balanced, factual story. It appeared that she spent a lot of time to research this so thoroughly. I was happy to hear both sides of the issue.

Congratulations on having such a talented writer on your staff.

Alan Klak

Little Rock

From the web

In response to Jay Barth's column on Sen. Mark Pryor's political strategy:

"Provincialism" is too polite a word for Pryor's tactics. Pandering is closer, but still too mild. Long a mewling placater, after his vote against a vast majority of Arkansans' (and the country's — unlike Pryor, I do not suffer from provincialism) common sense support for background checks, he can no longer be considered merely some vague, lumpen milquetoast who's traded his father's name for a half-hearted career, but a corrupt manipulator dealing in lies without respect for his constituency or himself, turning his back on his responsibilities and the lives of innocent people and children he's sworn to represent, standing over their dead or grieving bodies facing away from Arkansas toward Washington to receive a check for his loyalty (or fear) from the NRA. Boozman and Griffin are only better because we expect worse from them, which they deliver in spades. When we earn and demand better, we may expect it returned to us. Until then, those paying for representation will continue to receive it. ... but that is not the way it is supposed to work, that is the corruption we need to fix, so let's vote these wretches out of office and build a better country.

Citizenjohn

I note with amusement the haranguing by the intellectual toads over Pryor's rightful vote against the supposed background check. Most of those that are howling about how a wonderful law was given short shrift have never read all 49 pages.

Pryor did absolutely right to vote against this excrement. Bloomberg and his millions should not have any say in Arkansas. The NRA is far more representative of Arkansas than Bloomberg and his paid bully pulpit.

There are values that are inherently Arkansan that cannot be shared with New York or California. The reverse is true, too.

That is part of the beauty of the nation and the 50 states, that while there is a foundation document that ties us together, we still have 50 different ways of doing things across this country. They aren't inherently bad simply because they are different. Respect the differences.

Steven E

In response to Max Brantley's column on attitudes at Boys State toward gay marriage:

It's always surprising to find that "believers" (of all three Abrahamic faiths BTW) are strict constructionists when it comes to Leviticus and homosexual relations, and, at the same time, overt "judicial activists" when it comes to individual and national failures to adhere to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.

Joe Quimby

In response to Gene Lyons' column on NSA phone monitoring:

Sorry boys, but Congress voted to legalize telephone data-mining in 2008. It's been common knowledge ever since. That's not the same as tapping phones, which requires a search warrant.

Aloysius

Submit letters to the Editor, Arkansas Times, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, AR 72203. We also accept letters via e-mail. The address is arktimes@arktimes.com. Please include name and hometown.

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Ark. Republicans spar with Planned Parenthood over healthcare guides

David Ramsey — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

With implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act's major provisions gearing up in Arkansas, the potential involvement of Planned Parenthood is stirring controversy among Republican lawmakers. by David Ramsey

With implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act's major provisions gearing up in Arkansas, the potential involvement of Planned Parenthood is stirring controversy among Republican lawmakers.

The ACA will make subsidized health insurance available to hundreds of thousands of Arkansans starting in January, with enrollment beginning in October. As part of the law, 642 outreach workers, known as "guides," will work in every county in the state to inform people that they're eligible for coverage and help them navigate the process of enrollment.

The Arkansas Insurance Department (AID) is contracting with various entities in the state — ranging from state agencies to private companies to local community organizations — to hire the guides (at around $12 an hour). Thirty groups applied and were certified by the Office of State Procurement as qualified vendors to provide the guides, including Planned Parenthood.

Among the many health services that Planned Parenthood provides is abortion, and Sen. David Sanders (R-Little Rock) and Rep. John Burris (R-Harrison) — who have been working closely with state health officials on implementation of the "private option" for Medicaid expansion passed last April — objected to contracting with the non-profit as a vendor for the guides.

"Any honest person has to acknowledge the obvious controversy that comes with an organization like that," Sanders said. In practice, the guides — who will be trained and licensed by AID, the Department of Higher Education, and the Association of Two-Year Colleges — are restricted to the task of helping eligible people sign up for insurance. Guides would not be funded to offer Planned Parenthood's regular healthcare services, just as guides hired by the Central Arkansas Library (a vendor that was awarded a contract without controversy) will not be shelving books. Nevertheless, Sanders said, "I see their involvement as completely unnecessary. It's a needless injection of controversy."

Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford decided to delay the contract for Planned Parenthood, even as he went forward with the other groups (of the 30 applicants, 23 have been awarded contracts; three have pending contracts; and three have dropped out). Bradford said that he wanted time to talk to Planned Parenthood and "make sure there was a clear scope of work," in the hopes of alleviating Republican concerns and establishing that the guide program had nothing to do with abortion.

In a phone interview last week, he said, "I don't foresee any problem ... I think we're going to get something worked out with them and we'll go through the process. It will be at a later time." Bradford acknowledged that the "emotion involved" explained the extra scrutiny for Planned Parenthood and the additional effort to "clearly define the scope of work."

Funding for 542 of the guides comes fully from a federal grant, while 100 will be funded through the Arkansas Department of Human Services, with the cost split between the state and the feds. The appropriation has already been approved, but it could theoretically be blocked by the Legislative Council in the interim between sessions.

"The issue is, do they have a population that needs to be served?" Bradford said of Planned Parenthood. "In my viewpoint they do. We need to have a clearer definition so we don't have any trouble from conservatives that they think it has anything whatsoever in any way to do with the abortion issue." Explaining the decision to hold off on a contract, Bradford said, "I'm worried that it will not be understood appropriately. Once it's made clear I can't imagine anybody having a problem with it."

However, in response to Bradford's comments — reported on the Times' Arkansas Blog — Republican lawmakers took to social media to object. Rep. David Meeks (R-Conway) tweeted that a contract with Planned Parenthood would be "unacceptable" and "I will continue to oppose ANY taxpayer funds going to Planned Parenthood." Others followed suit: Sen. Jim Hendren (R-Gravette) tweeted "Hiring 'navigators' and Planned Parenthood to help spend more of our Grandkid's money. #Obamacare #selfish" and Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) tweeted, "I have advised Ins. Comm. Bradford that if he pushes for funding of Planned Parenthood as navigators — all momentum will stop" and "I am sick and tired of taxpayer dollars being funneled to the number one abortion provider in our nation. It is wrong."

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Officials from Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which has locations in Fayetteville and Little Rock, along with Iowa, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, told the Times that they wanted to participate because the guides program "will increase access to the ACA and reduce the number of uninsured Arkansans. Planned Parenthood plays a critical role in reaching the families who need affordable health care the most." Tens of thousands of people have contact with the organization both at clinics and at outreach programs in the community — half of them are at or below the federal poverty level, and another 14 percent are between 100 and 200 percent of FPL. Planned Parenthood spends around $300,000 a year in uncompensated care here in Arkansas.

"For the guide program to work, we need people who are trusted advisors of diverse populations," Exchange Director Cynthia Crone said. "We know that there is a group that goes to Planned Parenthood that is uninsured, that is there — they could connect with them and we could get them insured. Our objective is to get as many people enrolled as we can."

"[Planned Parenthood] has a population, a lot of young people that are going to need to understand how to get this coverage," Bradford said. "I didn't want to get bogged down on a political, emotional issue when it does not apply to that. It's too important. We need to reach that population, it's too important a process."

Sanders countered that "there are plenty of other organizations that are serving the purpose that was intended for the guides program. [Planned Parenthood] just doesn't fit. People get healthcare services from a myriad of places. We have a number of programs that cater to the uninsured and the underinsured. I don't think finding [other groups] is a problem."

In practice, however, attracting vendors to participate in the guides program has proven difficult. The AID reached out to 7,000 organizations in an attempt to find vendors, including churches, health clinics, not-for-profits, libraries, rotary clubs, businesses and chambers of commerce. They held information and recruitment sessions and advertised across the state. All of that produced 30 applications, three of which were withdrawn.

Bradford met with Planned Parenthood's Legal and Public Policy director last Friday to discuss the possibility of additional language in a potential contract to make it as explicit as possible that guide activities won't be connected to abortion in any way. Bradford said that Planned Parenthood will "submit some more specific wording on what their mission would be."

However, Sanders said that attempts to tighten a potential contract amounted to "engaging it — literally injecting controversy into something that shouldn't be controversial." He warned that lawmakers would object to Planned Parenthood's involvement no matter how explicit the rules. "The legislature has a clear role to play in this," he said. "It's just not going to happen."

"My hope is that Planned Parenthood will realize that and withdraw," Sanders continued. "They obviously know who they are and they also know the controversy that they carry. I would think that if they're thinking of the greater good ... their involvement is unnecessary."

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Planned Parenthood has no plans to withdraw at this point, telling the Times, "We believe that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is a qualified contractor in the state of Arkansas. ... We will continue to provide information as best we can to move this process forward."

If the state refuses to contract with Planned Parenthood, it would face the potential for a legal challenge. "It would appear to raise viewpoint discrimination problems under the First Amendment," said Teresa Biener, law professor at the University of Arkansas Little Rock.

Sanders said that even if there was a constitutional issue, he did not think that Planned Parenthood would bring a lawsuit. "Would they really do that?" he asked. "That seems kind of silly." Asked about the legal question, Planned Parenthood responded, "We cannot speculate about the legal ramifications of a decision that may or may not be made. We are working to the best of our ability to provide any and all information needed so that we will be approved as a vendor."

By Monday, Bradford was a bit more cautious in his outlook. He said it was unclear whether AID would go forward with a contract with Planned Parenthood or not. "We haven't made any agreement at this stage," he said. "We'll see what they submit."

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Mixed welcome to The Fold

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Hits equal misses.

When the lowly burger went high end, when people started throwing around words like "artisanal" in reference to pizza, it was only a matter of time before folks turned the humble taco into something hip, trendy, and far beyond its traditional price point. After all, Little Rock boasts burgers topped with foie gras, pecorino and fig jam — and even one of our food trucks manages to haul around a wood-fired oven to cook their pizza. At its most basic and most beautiful, a taco is something simple eaten to soak up a few cheap beers — preferably, by this reviewer's lights, at a rickety table outside a truck or tucked away in the back of a Mexican mercado. So of course let's slap a veneer of hipster cool on that concept, triple the price of everything, and open in a converted auto garage in an upscale part of town. Thus, The Fold.

The Fold is an attractive dining space. The barely concealed grunge of the joint's auto-garage days has been brightened with paint and filled with comfortable booths overhung with old motorcycles. In lieu of flowers, each table has a cactus growing in an old beer can, a kitschy and whimsical touch that fits right in with a staff that, while courteous, doesn't take itself all that seriously. Navigating the tiny parking lot of the restaurant is a nightmare, but between the shaded patio and interior dining area, nothing else feels cramped or crowded.

Given that the Fold is staking its reputation as much on drinks as eats, we started off with a couple of cocktails and an order of guacamole ($6.50). Our first cocktail, the Sofo, was a delightful combination of gin, lime, and ginger beer with just a touch of fresh mint. This was quite a refreshing drink, well balanced in flavor and perfect for the warm evening. Our second drink wasn't nearly as successful, a blood orange and lime margarita that tasted of little more than the watered down ice. Granted, we didn't spring for one of the more expensive tequilas on the menu, but the mixer was the issue here, not the alcohol.

As for our guacamole starter, it was good and creamy, with a side of tasty seasoned chips. We didn't think the guacamole had been made fresh to order, however, as the color was darker, showing signs of being out in the air for a bit.

Since the Fold bills itself as a "botanas" or "snacks" restaurant, we ordered a selection of tacos ($9 for three) and a bowl of Ceviche Rosada ($12). Our first taco was the Cholula Pescada, an excellent fish taco topped with corn, mango and a tangy jalapeno vinaigrette. This taco was the highlight of the meal, with fish that was flavorful without being overpowering and toppings that worked well. The second taco, the Tejas, was a grilled steak taco with roasted peppers, avocado and Mexican crema. While not as complete a package as the fish, this was still a decent taco, with beef that was flavorful and tender — and much better than our final taco, the Pollo y Poblano, a chicken taco that had no discernible flavor to the meat at all and was helped not a bit by the strange mish-mash of mushrooms and cheese atop it.

If the tacos were a mixed bag of good and bad, the ceviche was just simply terrible. Good quality cubes of ahi tuna were completely destroyed by a cloying mixture of diced mango, orange slices, and avocado — a sugar-bomb of fruit that ruined any chance of actually tasting the fish. When done correctly, ceviche harnesses the acid of citrus to chemically cook fish or shrimp, imparting a sharp, bright flavor to the fish that doesn't overwhelm it, and is best accompanied by some fresh cilantro or perhaps some peppers. This bowl was more an overwrought fruit salad dotted with unfortunate chunks of fish and really put a damper on a meal that had been fairly successful at that point.

Given some time to work out some consistency issues with their tacos and drinks — and perhaps rethink their complete misfire of a ceviche — The Fold could become a hot spot in Riverdale for gourmet tacos. Unfortunately, with a price point well above both the quality and quantity of the food, we can't say that they're executing their menu well enough to join the ranks of the elite taco joints quite yet.

The Fold

3501 Old Cantrell Rd

916-9706

HOURS

11 a.m. until 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. until midight Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. Sunday.

OTHER INFO

Full bar, credit cards accepted.

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Bubblicious

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

When The Observer's beloved cat Scout came down with an infection recently, we were struck with two emotions. Sympathy, of course (poor kitty!), but also dread — because administering cat medicine is a shrieking, painful mess of a task liable not just to strain The Observer's relationship with our pet, but with our better half, a fanatic cat lover unimpressed with The Observer's tepid cat-wrangling skills.

When The Observer's beloved cat Scout came down with an infection recently, we were struck with two emotions. Sympathy, of course (poor kitty!), but also dread — because administering cat medicine is a shrieking, painful mess of a task liable not just to strain The Observer's relationship with our pet, but with our better half, a fanatic cat lover unimpressed with The Observer's tepid cat-wrangling skills.

Since cats don't much like to take medicine — and cats have claws with which to resist — it helps if the stuff is doctored up to be a little more palatable. A little bit of chicken or salmon flavoring helps, well, the medicine go down. Sadly our vet offered up bubble-gum-flavored antibiotics. Maybe that works on a human toddler — although come to think of it, The Observer's own childhood memories of gum-flavored dentistry suggest that anyone, man or beast, responds with disgust to the sweet pink ploy. In any case, if you were wondering, cats really don't like the taste of bubble gum. One whiff sent Scout to a state of hissing and writhing well above and beyond her standard resistance to unwanted medical care. The Observer hasn't tasted the medicine ourselves, but based on the odor, the medicine manufacturers really went overboard. The stuff brings a bubblicious sensory assault.

At press time, we have administered four of the 10 required doses. The Observer and our better half have matching scratches on our forearms for our trouble. Our new trick is to wrap Scout up in a towel, which helps a little. Since The Observer's role in the two-person operation is holding her, Scout has begun flashing her teeth and scrambling under the bed as soon as we approach. Cats have short memories, so this will pass in time, and Scout will return to purring affection. As long as we're not chewing bubble gum.

While we're on the subject of four-legged friends: The Observer and daughter were walking the dog last weekend, watching her lumber down the sidewalk, when the daughter asked out of the blue, "Do you ever think, 'Wow, I'm bipedal?' "

You know, we never do. But we were inordinately proud that our offspring was pondering the mysteries of our genus.

And speaking of the sometimes hazy line between man and beast: Motoring past the corner of 2nd and Cumberland Streets in front of Copper Grill near the River Market the other day, The Observer noticed that the bronze dancing couple that had stood atop a curving steel pedestal there — a welcome piece of public art, meant to beautify this dreary world — had gone A.W.O.L. We're sad to say that their disappearance is thanks to yet another attack on art in Little Rock.

Sculpture in Little Rock gets no respect. Bronzes worth $20,000 were taken from the Vogel Sculpture Garden in Riverfront Park last year, and some of the sculpture was vandalized the year before. A limestone sculpture in front of the Cox Creative Center of the Central Arkansas Library System was pushed over and badly wounded. Remember the pigs that were painted by various artists and placed around town? All defaced, stolen or removed before they could be damaged.

Moses Tucker Realty, which manages the 300 W. Third condos at 2nd and Cumberland, took down the dancing couple after seeing that someone had tried to saw if off the pedestal. Only a severed foot remains. The sculpture is being repaired.

One reason the sculptures are easy targets is their scale. The dancing couple was small — too small, The Observer once politely pointed that out to Jimmy Moses, who politely told us where to get off. The bronzes in the Vogel garden were small, too, easily wrested from their stands. Those who stole them did so to make a buck off the metals. The stone sculpture at the library — that was just pure dumb meanness. Pitiful.

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Respect yourself

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Announcing her candidacy for lieutenant governor, Dianne Curry said she considered running for the Second Congressional District seat and state auditor "before deciding lieutenant governor best fits her experience and abilities." Schools spend a lot of time these days teaching self-esteem — students like it better than facts and formulae — but apparently the teaching hasn't seeped upward to the Little Rock School Board, on which Curry sits. Anyone who thinks her experience and abilities are best suited for being lieutenant governor has serious S-E issues. We wrote once that the present lieutenant governor, Mark Darr, was likely the only person in Arkansas history who'd proved too light for the job. (That was after Darr sneaked into the governor's office while Gov. Beebe was away and signed a rather bad bill that Beebe hadn't planned to.) Serving responsibly as acting governor when the real one is out of town — that is, not signing bad bills — is about all the lieutenant governor has to do, other than preside over the state Senate when the legislature is in session a few weeks a year. It is not a fulltime job. Both Curry and John Burkhalter, a state highway commissioner who also announced for lieutenant governor, are admirably overqualified.

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In search of Little Rock's Cory Booker

Jay Barth — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

In his 2012 State of the City Address, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola claimed that his city has the potential to be "the next great American city in the South." While the mayor's phrasing was awkward, I thoroughly share the sentiment that Little Rock has potential to be a truly great city. From its distinctive topography that produces exceptional recreational opportunities to its commitment to the arts that shows the city's underlying creative culture, Little Rock has many of the key elements of any great city. For folks who are drawn to numbers, the urban guru Richard Florida notes that Little Rock has one of the highest percentage of "creative workers" — those who "engage in creative problem-solving, drawing on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems" — of any mid-size American city.

But, there are key barriers to Little Rock's achievement of "greatness." Most would point to the challenged public school system that continues to lose wealthier students to private schools (albeit at slower rates than other Southern cities) as a fundamental obstacle to the city's success. Just as important is a hydra-headed city government structure that creates confusion by combining a city manager with a sorta-strong mayor and adds to the mix three at-large representatives with ultimate power in city policymaking.

The biggest barrier to greatness, however, is the reinforcing forces of race and class that create two separate cities in the physical space that is Little Rock. That division, of course, has its roots in Jim Crow. Its modern day permanence has been shaped by a multi-lane slap of concrete that bifurcates the city, creating an African-American population that deeply distrusts those individuals and institutions with power. While that distrust is understandable, it provides a fundamental obstacle to Little Rock's becoming a city where everyone feels that they have a place at the table, an essential element in any forward-moving city.

As evidenced by his recent visibility on immigration reform and his leadership on planning for a "Creative Corridor" along Main Street, Stodola is genuine in his commitment to the city's progress. However, his life experience limits his ability to close the trust gap and create a unified city. This was shown tangibly in the 2011 sales tax election — the moment that Stodola would likely cite as his greatest accomplishment as mayor — where precincts south of I-630 (excepting the racially mixed Quapaw Quarter/SoMa area) emphatically rejected the proposal. No matter the fact that he will leave the city better than he found it, the current mayor will not be the transformational civic leader who leads Little Rock to greatness.

Instead, the fuel for Little Rock's becoming "the next great American city in the South" will likely come from a cadre of African-American leaders who combine two traits: authentic connection with the African-American community that can build trust between civic institutions and that community, and an awareness that the city can only move forward if bridges are built across lines of difference. One current model of this style of civic leadership is Newark's Cory Booker, who governs a decidedly more troubled city and now appears to be on his way to the U.S. Senate. Embracing diversity in its many forms and with an ability to work with business interests for essential economic development, Booker has made progress in rebranding a city most thought unsalvageable.

Younger African-Americans who came of age here, left for educational opportunities, and returned committed to creating a unified and progressive Little Rock populate the leadership of the city's nonprofit sector. However, they have not yet moved towards holding city government positions (other African-Americans with these bridge-building traits have focused instead on state legislative service). This has meant that older African-American civic leaders too often driven towards maintaining factionalism (the recent statements by City Director Erma Hendrix opposing bike lanes on South Main as being imposed by white folks on the black residents in the ward represent an extreme version of this style) continue to dominate Little Rock's African-American city leadership.

With three more about to be lighted by Entergy, bridges are the icons of this river city. The bridges that really matter, however, are those that can — and must — be built to link a deeply divided city. It is the next generation of leaders — of all races — who will determine if Little Rock becomes a "great American city."

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Let's have the surveillance state debate

Gene Lyons — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

One diverting aspect of The Guardian-inspired hullaballoo over NSA surveillance has been watching people bicker about it on Facebook. In the old Soviet Union, people walked in the woods or hid in the bathroom with the faucets running to whisper forbidden thoughts. Here in the USA, people post them online along with cute kitten videos and photos of Reuben sandwiches. by Gene Lyons

Recently, I advised my Facebook friend Theo Jordan how to conduct an intrigue without government spooks catching on. Have a third party buy a pre-paid cell phone anonymously, use it no more than twice, and then hide it in the backseat of a New York taxi. The Feds will go nuts tracking it over five boroughs, while you get busy digging holes. Theo, I should stipulate, is a dachshund with an active fantasy life. We've never actually met.

Meanwhile, some joker who hides behind the name of a character in a Henry James novel excoriates Democrats who haven't joined the Edward Snowden-Glenn Greenwald Chicken Little Brigade. "Watching all the Obots turn into good Germans would be funny," he writes "if it weren't so horrifying."

Achtung, "Lambert." You and Theo can use fake identities on Facebook, but The Shadow knows. Privacy in the 18th century sense vanished with the Internet, and it's never coming back. It's childish to think otherwise.

Yesterday my wife dropped my binoculars, knocking them out of whack. Before I figured out how to fix them I priced a new pair on Amazon. This morning, Facebook sent me an advert for Chinese-made Bushnells costing far less than the originals. By tomorrow, they'll be back to selling me patent medicines somehow involving pretty women with preposterously large breasts. They don't know that I suffer from maladies their "weird secrets" purport to cure, but they definitely know my age and gender.

MasterCard recently shut me down because their computer algorithm correctly deduced that a guy who spends most of his money buying cattle feed in Arkansas probably wasn't buying a huge HDTV in Mexico City. Amazon knows that I've read all the Henning Mankell "Kurt Wallender" novels and thinks I may have a thing for Scandinavian murder mysteries.

OK, enough. Here's the thing: The good news is that the most dramatic "revelations" in the Snowden-Greenwald stories turn out upon further review to be somewhere between greatly exaggerated and entirely false. Yes, NSA vacuums up telephone "metadata" and sifts it for suspicious patterns. USA Today revealed that in 2006. There was a big political fight about it, which the libertarian side lost. But no, they aren't listening to your calls, and when the histrionic Mr. Snowden says he could have eavesdropped on anybody in the USA, he leaves out that doing so would have landed him in Federal prison, where he probably belongs.

As the New Yorker's Jeff Toobin asks, "What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications."

Secondly, NSA has no direct "PRISM" link into the servers of Google, Yahoo, and the rest. Upon detecting suspicious activity, it must seek a search warrant, whereupon the companies isolate the information sought and deliver it to an electronic "lockbox" for collection. The Guardian simply got this wrong, and was very slow correcting itself, while Greenwald himself made characteristically shrill attacks on everybody who questioned it.

It's the difference between me leaving, say, my tax return in the mailbox and FBI agents covertly turning my home and office upside down in my absence. Day and night, legally speaking.

Anyway, let's think this through. The New York Times' estimable James Risen was absolutely correct on "Meet the Press." "We haven't had a full national debate about the creation of a massive surveillance state and surveillance infrastructure that if we had some radical change in our politics could lead to a police state."

However, the genie won't fit back in the bottle. Like nuclear weapons, computer technology is here to stay. What with Al Qaeda posting articles on its website teaching freelance jihadists like the Tsarnaev brothers to "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," and Chinese hackers stealing industrial and military secrets by the truckload, unilateral electronic disarmament would be folly. An unmonitored Internet would be a conspiracist's playground.

For once, Thomas Friedman may be right: All that might be necessary to provoke a fear-based authoritarian political response in the US would be a couple of mass casualty terror strikes on the 9/11 scale.

So let's definitely have that debate. Always mindful, however, of two things: First, the great enemy isn't methodology but lawlessness. When J. Edgar Hoover targeted Martin Luther King, he used not NSA computers but tape recorders the size of electric typewriters.

Two, cyber warfare beats the other kind hands down.

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Companion and The Evangelicals at Juanita's

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Also, Rodney Block at the Joint.

THURSDAY 6/20

Juanita's has some buzz-y indie rock, with Brooklyn pop outfit Companion and psychedelic Oklahomans The Evangelicals. Locals Ten Sentences opens the show, 9 p.m., and hey, it's $3! It's going to be a "'90s Throwback Concert" at The Joint, with Rodney Block & The Real Music Lovers, 8:30 p.m., $10-$15. Pop singer/songwriter Shining Rae is back in town for an all-ages show. She'll be showcasing new material, Downtown Music Hall, 7 p.m., $11. Singer/songwriter Daniel Amedee might be from New Orleans, but his sound is "more King Crimson than King Oliver, more Mars Volta than Mardi Gras." Also on the bill: Gold Beneath the Highway and James Rose, Maxine's, 8 p.m., free.

FRIDAY 6/21

Bluesboy Jag & the Juke Joint Zombies bring the dobros, Delta blues and cigar-box guitars to The Tavern Sports Grill, 7 p.m., free. If something a little heavier and mosh-ier is what your ears are looking for, check out A Darkend Era, The Order of Elijah, Buried With Rome and Abandon the Artifice, Downtown Music Hall, 8 p.m., $5. Texas native Ryan Cabrera brings some pop-flavored singer/songwriter fare to Stickyz, with Jason Castro and Deleasa, 9 p.m., $12 adv., $15 day of. Down in Spa City, The Foul Play Cabaret has what's sure to be an eyebrow-raising evening of buxom burlesque, Maxine's, 8 p.m., $10 adv., $12 door.

SATURDAY 6/22

Arkansas natives Canopy Climbers perform at an album release show for their album "Miles." Openers are Midwest Caravan, Knox Hamilton and Futuro Boots, all-ages, Revolution, 9 p.m., $6. Or maybe some ska/punk from down under is more what you're in the market for. In that case, check out The Resignators at the 8-Bit Taproom (it's below the Professor Bowl), all-ages, 10 p.m., $5. Up in Fayetteville, critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Slaid Cleaves performs at 324 Ballroom, 8 p.m., $20. Discovery Nightclub hosts "Summer Glow," a glow-stick, orb and hoop party, with Big Brown, Kichen, Danny Enzo, g-force, Dominique Sanchez & The Disco Dolls and more, 9 p.m.-5 a.m., $10.

SUNDAY 6/23

Old Crow Medicine Show brings its bluegrass/old-timey/folk/rock hybrid to Fayetteville's Arkansas Music Pavilion for a weather-related makeup concert, 6 p.m., $32-$47.

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Review: The Dig at Stickyz, June 12

Robert Bell — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:34:00 -0500

The Dig draws from the Brooklyn rock talent base that brought us bands like The Strokes and The Walkmen. After the dot-com bubble jacked up real estate prices on most every square inch of Manhattan real estate, penniless East Village hipsters countered by hopping the East River and setting up shop in the lofty warehouses of Williamsburg.

These concrete fortresses became the experimental grounds for much of the rangy tones and dreamy effects that now characterize contemporary indie rock. The Dig emerged from the thick of the indie cluster in 2010 with the release of their first album "Electric Toys." While the raw and sporadic guitar buzz of this initial effort lodged the band firmly within the indie fold, 2012’s "Midnight Flowers" signaled a distinctive departure and moved the group toward developing its own measured style and character. At Stickyz, fans and first-timers were treated to a cumulative sampling, including tracks from The Dig’s newest EP, "Tired Hearts."

The band’s progression shows a willful diminution from raw, physical buzz to a more nuanced soulfulness signaled and carried, part-and-parcel, in lyrical streams unabashedly born from pain. One cannot listen to The Dig without self-reflection. “I Already Forgot Everything You Said” showcased the vocal talents of singer/bassist, Emile Mosseri. Mosseri has an almost childlike sound that blends magically with weightier lyrical content. The effect is a juxtaposition of levity and gravity every bit as overwhelming and transcendent as a Richard Serra sculpture.

Here’s a lyric: “When you think of all the things that I said to you / They wouldn’t cut to the bone if they weren’t true / You can keep ‘em locked away inside your head / But I already forgot everything you said.”

With a head full of data, what do you hold on to, and what do you let slide? It’s a worthy contemplation, as we scurry into the thick of the Information Age. Are you hanging on, or moving on?

More recent songs suggest the band is moving forward into new musical territories. These tracks deliciously highlight the same refined, somber themes that define the group, but with poppier, groovier accompaniment. “How Can You Trust a Feeling” features a raw descending guitar riff that absolutely howls when played live, and “Without Your Love” is supported by a catchy surf rock beat.

It’s remarkably refreshing to occasionally catch a band like this. And some of us, perhaps, need bands like The Dig more than others. The crowd wasn’t rioting or bouncing off the walls, and sometimes a calm and collective sea of blank faces can actually be a surprising and uplifting source of fun and encouragement in the same way you might suspect hanging with a group of Zen masters might be kind of awesome. These aren’t the cool kids. These are the people the cool kids know are way cooler.

— Mark Holland

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Win a pair of tickets to see Johnny Winter at Juanita's

Robert Bell — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:38:22 -0500

UPDATE: Congrats to Rock Candy reader Michael McSwain, who won our drawing for two tickets to see Johnny Winter at Juanita's Friday.

Hey there, how about this: you and a buddy get to go see Johnny Winter June 21 at Juanita's PLUS get to go to the meet-n-greet before the show and maybe get your picture made with the blues guitar legend. Sound cool? Well your old pals here at the Times are going to be giving away just such a prize.

All you need to do is send an email to robertbell at arktimes dot com with JOHNNY WINTER in the subject line. Send it in by noon on June 19. I'll draw names later that afternoon and announce the winner here on Rock Candy.

Good luck!

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Conway copes with monkey escape

Max Brantley — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:44:58 -0500

Twitter has been lit up today with tales of an 'escape artist' macaque monkey that let itself out of a Conway vet's office last night and put a succesful chase in motion.

Log Cabin Democrat reports.

Should we note that the Arkansas legislature got into the monkey regulation business this year?

Here's the police report.

A friend of animals comments:

It says they took two tries to tranquilize the monkey which could be because the animal was scared and had adrenaline running through its veins. That often happens in situations like this where the first tranquilization doesn’t take. That’s not great for the animal.

Also, the report says the animals crawled onto one of the officers. These officers had no idea the kind-of real danger they were in. Most people think pet monkeys are cute and fun and don’t understand that they are wild animals. Here this monkey is in a situation where it’s being circled and someone is trying to capture it and it’s stressed. It could easily turn on one of those officers and really do some damage by clawing and biting.

Also, the officer was told to go to the hospital but this report doesn’t say the officer was recommended to be tested for any type of zoonotic disease. He may have just gone to the hospital and said “a monkey bit me.” He should be tested for the B virus because almost every macaque monkey carries the B virus. Period. And there’s no telling whether-or-not these healthcare professionals knew he was bitten by a macaque.

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Tony Soprano is dead

Max Brantley — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:03:47 -0500

Damn. From CNN:

James Gandolfini, 51, who won three Emmys for his portrayal of Tony Sprano on "The Sopranos", has died, according to HBO.

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