Yearly Archives: 2014

Little Rock Look Back: Tom Prince – LR’s 67th Mayor

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Mayor PrinceFuture Little Rock Mayor Tom Prince was born on August 13, 1949.  After graduating high school in 1967 (where he was on the state championship golf team), he attended the United States Naval Academy.  He later received his law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and began practicing law in Little Rock.

In 1984 he ran for the City of Little Rock Board of Directors and was elected.  In January 1985, he was selected by his fellow City Directors to serve as Mayor of Little Rock.  He served as Mayor until January 1987.  During his term in office, Arkansas celebrated its Sesquicentennial. Mayor Prince oversaw the City’s participation in the celebratory activities.  As Mayor he was also a strong advocate for expanding the city’s involvement in quality of life issues through enhanced parks and arts while maintaining a commitment to public safety and public works issues. After the completion of his four year term on the City Board, he did not seek a second term.

City of Little Rock races are non-partisan.  After leaving office, he became involved in Democratic Party politics.  In 1992, he campaigned for Bill Clinton’s presidential bid in Iowa and other Midwest states.  When his law partner, Sheffield Nelson, ran for Governor in 1994 as a Republican, Prince resigned from his Democratic Party positions and worked on the Nelson campaign.  In 1997, he was elected chair of the Pulaski County Republican Committee.  In 1998, he ran for the United States Senate as a Republican.

In 1999, Prince experienced a family tragedy and took a sabbatical from practicing law. In 2000, he moved to St. Louis to become general counsel for a securities firm located there.  Following several years with the securities firm, he joined a St. Louis law firm in private practice.  He remained in private practice in St. Louis through 2012.

A St. Louis Business Journal profile of Prince in 2010 highlighted his interests in single action shooting and in horseback riding.

It takes Different Spokes at the Old State House

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spokes-small-wideDifferent Spokes is the newest exhibit at the Old State House Museum. The exhibit looks at the history of bicycling and places cycling in Arkansas within a worldwide historical context. Visitors will be able to view galleries of artifacts, historical pictures and video to learn the history of bicycles.

As cities and towns begin dedicated services and trails for cyclists, it’s important to note that the enthusiasm for bikes in Arkansas has roots that go back over 100 years,” said Old State House Museum Director Bill Gatewood. “The interest at the turn of the 20th century in bicycles was very similar to the one that we are seeing at the turn of the 21st century.”

While the exhibit mainly explores the technological advances of cycling in the past 130 years, Different Spokes also tells the story of competition, economics, and social life. The history of trail systems, cycling communities and history in Arkansas is explored in videos produced by the Old State House Museum. From an 1880 wooden bicycle built from white oak and agricultural implements to the world’s first carbon-fiber bicycles made by Brent Trimble of Berryville, Different Spokes contains artifacts that show this history from past to present. Gatewood says the Museum relied on contributions from the cycling community to present this story. The exhibit will remain on view to February 2016.

“I have not participated in any other exhibit that has had this kind of immediate response from the community,” Gatewood said. “The passion these people have for their pursuit is overwhelming, and I believe it will be reflected well in this exhibit.”

The Old State  House Museum is a division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

Special Tales from the South tonight!

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talesfromsouthTonight is the Tales from the South Music Hour!

It is a special Singer/Songwriter show featuring world-renowned musicians Tommy Stephenson and Phil Brown.  Additional music will be provided by Kevin Kerby and blues guitarist Mark Simpson.

Tonight’s Tales from the South takes place at the Joint in Argenta.

Tommy Stephenson is a world class keyboardist with 15 Gold & Platinum albums to his credit. He has recorded and toured the world with such artists as Tommy Bolin & Energy, Joe Walsh & Barnstorm, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Albert King, Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, B.B.King, Muddy Waters, Joe Cocker, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield , Rick Danko and most members of The Band, Gary Wright, Poco, Chuck Berry, Phil Brown, Big Momma Thornton, The Pointer Sisters and many more!

Phil Brown has been influenced by everyone from Marty Robbins & George Jones to the Beatles and the Kinks. After working as a roadie and a studio musician, he toured with Little Feat and started a career as a songwriter. Among the singers to sing his songs are Cher, Pat Benetar, Kim Carnes, Steve Perry, Lou Graham and Ace Freheley.

“Tales From the South” is a radio show created and produced by Paula Martin Morell, who is also the show’s host. The show is taped live. The night is a cross between a house concert and a reading/show, with incredible food and great company. Tickets must be purchased before the show, as shows are usually standing-room only.

Dinner is served from 5pm to 7pm, the show starts at 7pm.  Admission is $35 for dinner, and $20 for just the performance.

You MUST purchase your ticket before the show.

Previous episodes of “Tales from the South” air on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.  This program will air on August 28.

Visit Wilmot this Summer – At the Arkansas Arts Center

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Susan Paulsen, Wilmot, 2011, photograph, courtesy of the artist

Susan Paulsen, Wilmot, 2011, photograph, courtesy of the artist

The heat of summer has returned.  This is a good time to enjoy the cooling setting of a museum. Summer is also an appropriate time to journey to yesteryear, to a time and a place of a slower pace.

The Arkansas Arts Center is currently exhibiting Susan Paulsen: Wilmot

Wilmot is a little town in Ashley County, in southeast Arkansas. . . . A few years ago, Susan Paulsen set out to tell a kind of story, to chronicle a place in Arkansas through evocative photographs taken there over the course of many visits, in all seasons of the year. . . . Together, they form a picture of a place. For the artist, that place has a personal importance—part of her family comes from there, and for generations it has been a kind of homing place for them.

Through her photographs of this particular place, she wants, as she has said, to make a sort of poem about all such places; to find commonalities among these individuals and people in other places. Her goal, from the outset, has been to evoke all the Wilmots, wherever they might be. But still there is this town, these people. . .”  – From the essay by George T. M. Shackelford, Susan Paulsen: Wilmot.

The evocative visual poetry of Susan Paulsen: Wilmot comes to the Arkansas Arts Center in the form of more than 70 photographic prints and groupings of photographs that she took in Wilmot, Arkansas between 1995 and 2012. Most spectacularly, one large wall is covered by a grid of 90 photographs.

Susan Paulsen: Wilmot was organized by Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris. The images are coming home to Arkansas for their American debut. They will be on view in the Townsend Wolfe Gallery until September 28, 2014.

Red Octopus back with KOCT-O News this weekend and next

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Red Octopus Theater cast members Jason Willey, Sandy Baskin, David Weatherly and Krystal Berry are part of the KOCT-O 8 News Team in KOCT-O News!

Red Octopus Theater cast members Jason Willey, Sandy Baskin, David Weatherly and Krystal Berry are part of the KOCT-O 8 News Team in KOCT-O News!

KOCT-O News!, a new sketch comedy show by Red Octopus Theater, opened this week, continues tonight and plays next weekend August 14-16, 2014 at The PUBLIC Theatre, located at 616 Center Street, in downtown Little Rock, AR.  Doors will open at 7:30PM and the show will start at 8:00PM.  Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for senior citizens, military and students.  No reservations are accepted and there will be refreshments available.  The show is recommended for mature audiences.

Red Octopus Theater will take on politics, current events, social issues and entertainment (the important topic real people care about) in their end of summer original sketch comedy production, KOCT-O News!

News anchors Holly Newday (Sandy Baskin) and Brock Brockington (Jason Willey) will focus on local political mudslinging campaigns in “Now Who’s The One I Like?” as well as the 2016 Presidential race in, “If Only Hillary Wasn’t A Woman.”  Weather will be in the local forefront in “Maybe Ned Perme Is A God?” and local interest story “Is Hillcrest Better Than The Heights?” will be seen during the journalism themed comedy show.  In sports news, a recap of the World Cup comes in the form of “Soccer Players Are Really Pretty” and a special editorial concerning what the city limits of Little Rock should be, “Little Rock: Where Does It End?”

All will be rounded out when the news team at KOCT-O News, channel 8, talks about the pressing issues: Celebrities, Summer Blockbusters and the Clooney Report, live coverage of what George Clooney is doing currently, at this moment, now.

There may not be Peabodys or Regional Emmys adorning the set, but there will be “soft hitting news!”  Blazers, ties and sock puppet field reporters are in store for audiences in the newest sketch comedy show from Arkansas’s oldest comedy troupe.  So join Red Octopus Theater for KOCT-O News! and their coverage of all the important stuff you didn’t need to know.

The cast features Sandy Baskin, Krystal Berry, Alli Clark, Michael Goodbar, Brittany Sparkles, David Weatherly and Jason Willey with special correspondent, Luke Rowlan. Performances are open to all ages, but recommended for mature audiences because of adult language and situations.  No reservations are needed, first come, first sit.

For more information please contact Red Octopus Theater at (501) 291-3896, or RedOctopusTheater@gmail.com.

To contact The PUBLIC Theatre, call 374-PLAY.

 

Second Friday Cinema – September 30, 1955

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OSH MovieTonight at the Old State House’s “Second Friday Cinema” September 30, 1955.  The screening starts at 5pm.

Starring Richard Thomas and future Oscar winner Lisa Blount, the film is about an Arkansas teen’s fascination with his film idol James Dean, and his reaction to the news of Dean’s death in a car wreck. The movie, set in 1950s small-town Arkansas, was written and directed by Arkansan James Bridges.  It was filmed in and around Conway.  At the time much of downtown Conway and the campus of UCA were largely unchanged since the 1950s.

September 30, 1955 is one of Bridges’s more personal films and is in contrast with his more well-known films which include The China Syndrome, Urban Cowboy and Bright Lights, Big City.  The tagline sums it up with: In twenty-four hours, a nice college kid named Jimmy J. robbed a liquor store, got drunk, held a séance, crawled through a cemetery, raided lovers’ lane, dropped the Homecoming Queen, and went to jail. It happened on September 30, 1955, the day that shook up a generation!

Others in the cast include future Oscar nominees Tom Hulce (before Animal House), Susan Tyrrell and Dennis Quaid.  Tom Bonner’s voice is heard as a radio announcer.

Ben Fry, general manager of KLRE/KUAR and coordinator of the film minor at UALR, will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening.

Little Rock Look Back: Nixon Resigns

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Nixon with Mills

Forty years ago today, Richard M. Nixon resigned as the President of the United States.  Five months earlier, in a press conference in Little Rock, Congressman Wilbur Mills predicted that Nixon would resign.  Mills, still chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, predicted that the resignation might be prompted by errors in his tax returns.  As part of investigations into Nixon resulting from Watergate, the President’s taxes were being reviewed by Congress.

Nixon had been the first Republican President since the Reconstruction era to win Arkansas and gain the state’s electoral votes in 1972.  The 1968 election cycle had seen third-party candidate George Wallace win the state’s votes though Nixon handily won that election too.

Little Rock weighed prominently in Nixon’s earlier career.  He was Vice President when Eisenhower sent the troops into Little Rock to ensure the Little Rock Nine would desegregate Central High School.  In a 1960 Presidential debate, he and Senator Kennedy were asked whether they would have sent in the troops.  Kennedy begrudgingly said that he would have, though he would have wished the situation were different.  Nixon did not really answer the question, but instead used it as an opportunity to point out that Senator Johnson, as Kennedy’s running mate, had actively opposed civil rights legislation at the time.

There are many other connections between Nixon and Little Rock.  During his Presidency he both relied up and clashed with Arkansas’ legislative giants: Mills, Senator J. William Fulbright and Senator John L. McClellan.  Hillary Clinton served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee as it investigated Nixon.  It would be during Bill Clinton’s presidency that Nixon died.