Category Archives: Lecture

EXPECTATIONS on Tuesday night at “Tales from the South”

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talesfromsouthThe Tuesday, November 19 edition of  ”Tales from the South” is Expectations. It will feature stories by Bill Worthen, Jennifer Winningham, and Roger Poole. Music is by Brad Williams and blues guitarist Mark Simpson

“Tales From the South” is a radio show created and produced by 2013 Governor’s Arts Award recipient Paula Martin Morell, who is also the show’s host. The show is taped live on Tuesday. 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.

“Tales from the South” is a showcase of writers reading their own true stories. While the show itself is unrehearsed, the literary memoirs have been worked on for weeks leading up to the readings. Stories range from funny to touching, from everyday occurrences to life-altering tragedies.

The program takes place at Starving Artist Café.  Dinner is served from 5pm to 6:30pm, the show starts at 7pm.  Admission is $7.50, not including dinner.

You MUST purchase your ticket before the show

Previous episodes of “Tales from the South” air on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.  Tonight’s episode will air on December 5.

Bryant Huddleston Is Featured at Philander’s Bless the Mic

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pschuddlestonEntertainment television producer and Arkansas native Bryant Huddleston is the guest speaker for the next installment of Philander Smith College’s Bless The Mic Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14.

A 1990 graduate of Sloan-Hendrix High School in Imboden, Ark., Huddleston began his broadcast career in Fayetteville at KHOG-TV before moving to KAIT-TV in Jonesboro as the station’s weekend news anchor and senior reporter. In 1998, Huddleston left Arkansas for Los Angeles and began producing news, specials, and live red carpet events for the E! Network. He joined NBC’s Access Hollywood in 2004 where he spent eight years covering the world’s biggest celebrities. Most recently Huddleston wrote and produced content to help launch the BRAVO network’s new series Property Envy.

Last May, a firestorm arose when Huddleston’s scheduled appearance as Sloan-Hendrix High School’s commencement speaker was abruptly canceled. A single father and ardent advocate for equality and adoption rights for LGBT citizens, Huddleston holds a bachelor’s degree in communications/broadcast news from Arkansas State University.

Free and open to the public, all lectures are held in the M.L. Harris Auditorium. Tickets are not required; seating is first-come, first-serve. For more information, call 501-370-5354.

Wilbur Mills Focus of Legacies & Lunch Today

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native arkansas exhibitionKay C. Goss, will discuss the complicated life and times of Congressman Wilbur D. Mills.   Goss is an educator and long-time aide to President Clinton in the Governor’s Office and at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, will discuss her biography of Arkansas’s longest-serving congressman, Mr. Chairman: The Life and Legacy of Wilbur D. Mills.

The book covers the entirety of Mills’s life (1909-1992), including his work on fiscal issues and his relationships with the eight presidents under whom he worked. Goss’s work also delves into Mills’s personal battle with alcoholism, his successful recovery, and his legacy of supporting substance abuse treatment.

Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. The program is held from noon-1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month in the Main Library’s Darragh Center. Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS). It was founded in 1997 to promote the study and appreciation of Arkansas history and culture. The Butler Center’s research collections, art galleries, and offices are located in the Arkansas Studies Institute building at 401 President Clinton Ave. on the campus of the CALS Main Library.

For more information, call 918-3086.

Evenings with History Continues Tonight: Moira Maguire

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moiraThe Evenings with History series, sponsored by the UALR History Institute kicks off the 2013-2014 series tonight.  This year’s series will focus on how the study and writing of history is done.

The six sessions of the 2013-2014 Evenings with History series will be on the first Tuesday of October, November, and December of 2013 and February, March, and April of 2014.

They are held at the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street in Little Rock. Historic Arkansas’s downtown location and the museum’s adjacent parking lot at Third and Cumberland make the sessions convenient and pleasant to attend.

Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

An individual subscription to the series, at $50 annually, includes admission to all six lectures.

Tonight, Moira Maguire discusses “From Kerry Babies to Precarious Childhood:  The Evolution of Research Agenda”

Dr. Maguire’s presentation traces the evolution of one research agenda, from the graduate student essay that formed the basis of a doctoral dissertation to the commissioned research project that led ultimately to the publication of her new book, Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland. Focusing on issues such as unwed motherhood, neglected and abused children, adoption, and family dysfunction and pointing up the gap between the rhetoric of government and the Catholic church and their policies, her study addresses questions at the forefront of public discourse in Ireland. Producing such a relevant work means that “doing” history also may inform public policy. Her talk will show how her research has figured in the work of two Irish commissions examining the treatment of women and children in state-run institutions in the first half of the twentieth century.

Dr. Maguire came to UALR in 2003. After receiving her Ph.D. from American University in Washing, D.C., she spent six years engaged in teaching and research at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. She is in charge of the department’s assessment program. Her book, Cherished Equally? Precarious Childhood in Independent Ireland, is under contract with Manchester University Press.

Corporate sponsors for the 2013-2014 season include Friday, Eldredge, & Clark; Union Pacific Railroad; Wright, Lindsey, and Jennings; and the Teaching American History Program of the Little Rock School District.

Support and gifts in kind are provided by the UALR Ottenheimer Library; Historic Arkansas Museum, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; UALR Public Radio—KUAR-KLRE; UALR public television; and Grapevine Spirits.

Tales from the South Tomorrow: Kat Robinson

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The first Tuesday of each month, Tales from the South features one person sharing their life story. They call it Tin Roof Project.  November features Kat Robinson. The program will be Tuesday, November 5.

Music is by the Salty Dogs and blues guitarist Mark Simpson.

Kat Robinson is a food and travel writer based in Little Rock.  She travels Arkansas and the South searching for good stories, tall tales and the next great little restaurant.

In addition to Tie Dye Travels, Kat writes and blogs all about pie in the state of Arkansas — at ArkansasPie.com.  Her first book, Arkansas Pie, was released in November 2012 via History Press.

Kat previously wrote  Eat Arkansas, the blog for food loversfor the Arkansas Times.   She has written for Arkansas Wild, Serious Eats,  Sync Weekly, 2njoy Magazine, Deep South Magazine, GreenZine, Savvy Kids, Lonely Planet, Little Rock Family Magazine, Living in Arkansas, the Arkansas Times, Forbes Travel Guide, USA Today and Cat Fancy and appeared on KARN Newsradio’s The Dave Elswick’s Show.

Before starting her writing career in 2007, Kat produced and wrote for several Arkansas-based television and radio outlets, including an eight year stint producing Today’s THV This Morning.
Kat lives with her daughter Hunter in her hometown of Little Rock, AR.

“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 on Tuesday. 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.

“Tales from the South” is a showcase of writers reading their own true stories. While the show itself is unrehearsed, the literary memoirs have been worked on for weeks leading up to the readings. Stories range from funny to touching, from everyday occurrences to life-altering tragedies.

The program takes place at Starving Artist Café.  Dinner is served from 5pm to 6:30pm, the show starts at 7pm.  Admission is $7.50, not including dinner.

You MUST purchase your ticket before the show

Previous episodes of “Tales from the South” air on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.

UALR Rhetoric & Writing featured Tuesday at Tales from the South

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talesfromsouthTomorrow night’s edition of  ”Tales from the South” is UALR Rhetoric and Writing Show I – featuring Holland Colclasure, Jasmine Williams, Roger Doyne. Music is by Amy Garland and blues guitarist Mark Simpson.

“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 on Tuesday. 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.

“Tales from the South” is a showcase of writers reading their own true stories. While the show itself is unrehearsed, the literary memoirs have been worked on for weeks leading up to the readings. Stories range from funny to touching, from everyday occurrences to life-altering tragedies.

The program takes place at Starving Artist Café.  Dinner is served from 5pm to 6:30pm, the show starts at 7pm.  Admission is $7.50, not including dinner.

You MUST purchase your ticket before the show

Previous episodes of “Tales from the South” air on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.  Tonight’s episode will air on October 3.

New theater in Arcade Building to be named for Ron Robinson

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Ron Robinson TheaterLast week the Central Arkansas Library System announced that the new theater in the Arcade Building would be named in honor of Ron Robinson.

If Arkansas was included in a piece of music or a film, Ron Robinson wanted it represented in his collection. The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) will house and begin to catalog Robinson’s vast collection of sheet music, film posters, and other memorabilia connecting those industries with Arkansas’s history and culture.

The Ron Robinson Theater in the Arcade Building on the Main Library campus, the newest performance space in the River Market district will bear Robinson’s name. Programming in the 325-seat multi-purpose event venue will be designed for all ages and will include films, music performances, plays, readings, lectures, speakers, and children’s activities. Equipped with a state-of-the-art projection system for films and a separate sound system for spoken word and music, the theater will receive the highest rating from the Digital Cinema Institute.

The Ron Robinson Collection includes a large number of pieces of sheet music of songs about Arkansas or with the state’s name in the song’s title, containing everything from Tin Pan Alley tunes describing the state to hits by Arkansas musicians such as Patsy Montana and the Browns to would-be state songs. The collection also includes a number of vintage recordings-including Edison disks of the “Arkansas Traveler”-and other materials depicting the state’s music. It will include Robinson’s huge collection of Arkansas-related movie posters, from which the Butler Center co-produced with him an exhibition last year called “Ark in the Dark,” as well as a vast number of pieces of Arkansas political memorabilia.

A native of Little Rock, Robinson has been an avid collector of all things Arkansas for the past fifty years. He is past chairman and chief executive officer of Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, a full-service advertising, marketing, and public relations firm. He has served on numerous boards and committees including the Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries (FOCAL), Arthritis Foundation, United Way,American Red Cross Public Information Committee, Arkansas Arts Center, and Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Other organizations using the theater space include the Clinton School for Public Service and the Little Rock Film Festival. As with other CALS meeting space, the theater may be used by the public, based on availability.

Little Rock voters approved a bond issue in 2012 that provided funding for the Arcade Building. Through a public-private partnership between CALS, Clinton-Commerce LLC (which includes Moses Tucker Real Estate), and Monroe Cache, retail stores, offices, and a restaurant will fill the Arcade Building, a three-story, 60,000 square foot structure.