Tag Archives: Arkansas Humanities Council

“We Wanna Boogie” at Legacies & Lunch Today

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we_wanna_boogieRockabilly great Sonny Burgess, of Newport, Arkansas, and his band the Legendary Pacers are the topic of We Wanna Boogie, a new release from Butler Center Books by Marvin Schwartz, who will speak at Legacies & Lunch, the Butler Center’s monthly lecture series, on Wednesday, September 3, at noon in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street. Books will be available for purchase; Schwartz, Burgess, and band members Jim Aldridge, Fred Douglas, Bobby Crafford, and Kern Kennedy will sign copies after the talk.

In We Wanna Boogie, Burgess and his band members tell of their original recordings for Sun Records in the 1950s and their shows with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. Burgess, whose music evolved in the Silver Moon and other clubs around the Arkansas delta, has influenced rock and roll music internationally and has led the contemporary rockabilly revival in the U.S. and overseas. The book also tells the history of a once prominent and high spirited delta community of extensive agricultural wealth. Newport was home to numerous music clubs, which often housed both performances by national artists and illicit back-room gambling.

Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Attendees may bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided. For more information, contact 501-918-3033.

Butler Center Legacies & Lunch today at noon: Frank Sata

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legaciesEach month (usually the first Wednesday), the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies hosts “Legacies & Lunch”.  This month the program features Frank Sata discussing Unlikely Foundation: How WWII Internment in Arkansas Shaped a Family’s Life in Art and Architecture.  

Mr. Sata’s appearance is also presented in partnership with the Clinton School of Public Service’s speaker series.

sataAs a young boy, Frank Sata was one of thousands of Japanese Americans who spent time in Arkansas during World War II, imprisoned by their own country merely because of their ancestry. He was eight years old when his family was shipped from their home in California to Jerome, where one of two Arkansas internment camps for Japanese Americans was built by the War Relocation Authority. Mr. Sata’s father, J.T. Sata, was an accomplished artist who documented his family’s time in camps in Arkansas and Arizona in a series of remarkable oil paintings and charcoal drawings. Much of that art is currently on display in Concordia Hall of Butler Center Galleries, as part of Drawn In: New Art from WWII Camps at Rohwer and Jerome, and will remain in the Butler Center’s collection following the closing of the exhibition on August 23, 2014.

Mr. Sata, who lives in Pasadena, California, went on to become an architect. His own work was influenced by his experience of the World War II camps, his father’s art and photography, and famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s fascination with Asian architecture. He will discuss the internment experience, his father’s art, and the ways his work as an architect reflects his memories of his years in Arkansas.

Despite the sadness embedded in the injustice of the World War II camps, Mr. Sata says, “I have since developed a sense of comfort and place for Arkansas.” He says, “Sometimes words do not come easily for me to describe that special meaning, but he is an eloquent interpreter of the power of a harsh experience visited upon a country’s citizens by wartime frenzy and the healing power of creativity to overcome anger and bitterness.

Legacies & Lunch is sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided. For more information, visit www.butlercenter.org.

BLACKBIRDS film is one of the highlights of 2014 LR Film Festival on Friday

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LRFF2014 OpenFriday during the Little Rock Film Festival is a full day for film lovers.

The spotlight film today is the documentary The Night the Blackbirds Fell. Brian Campbell and Will Scott’s film looks at the strange occurrence that took place on New Year’s Eve, 2010. At midnight, thousands of blackbirds fall from the sky. Not far away, 100,000 drum fish wash up dead on the banks of the Arkansas River. Hazmat crews comb the region collecting the birds, while community members worry and wonder what happened. Mainstream media the world over generate curiosity and hysteria around the mysterious wildlife deaths, as internet “experts” declare it a sign of the apocalypse.

A talented but struggling college student, in search of a thesis project, stumbles into the falling blackbirds and inadvertently his thesis topic. He decides to find out just what the hell is going on. Is it the end times, a military experiment, natural gas fracking, or fireworks? Join him in a mysterious whodunnit “divine comedy” that integrates live interview footage into graphic novel style animation to learn what really happened; and beware of falling blackbirds. Produced with support from the Arkansas Humanities Council, Department of Arkansas Heritage, Inspired Media, and the UCA Foundation.

Among the other films screening today are:

Golden Rock Narrative contenders:

  • Big Significant Things (Bryan Reisberg)
  • Five Star (Keith Miller)
  • Fort Tilden (Sarah Violet Bliss & Charles Rodgers)
  • Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter (David & Nathan Zellner)
  • Little Accidents (Sarah Colangelo)

Golden Rock Documentary contenders:

  • Manny (Leon Gast and Ryan Moore)
  • The Notorious Mr. Bout (Tony Gerber & Maxim Pozdorovkin),

Other featured films:

  • Actress (Robert Greene)
  • Man Shot Dead (Taylor Feltner)
  • Manakaman (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez)
  • Ne Me Quitte Pas (Sabine Lubbe Bakker, Niels van Koevorden)
  • Rich Hill (Tracy Droz Tragos & Andrew Droz Palermo)

World Shorts

  • “Multifariousness” – “Sketch” by Stephen T. Barton, “X-RAY MAN” by Kerri Yost, “Breaking Night” by Yolonda Ross, “Yearbook” by Bernardo Britto, “MASTER MUSCLES” by Efrén Hernández, “Pity,” by John Pata and “One Armed Man” by Tim Guinee.
  • “Our Times” – “The Usual” by Dawn Higginbotham, “Families Are Forever” by Vivian Kleiman, “Confusion Through Sand” by Danny Madden, “Distance” by Aimee Long, “Little Black Fishes” by Azra Deniz Okyay, and “Broke” by Benham Jones
  • “Mental and Physical” – “By the Sea” by Robert Machoian, “LE PLONGEON” by Delphine Le Courtois, “Strike: The Greatest Bowling Story Ever Told” by Joey Daoud, “Insomniacs” by Charles Chintzer Lai, “Dog Food” by Brian Crano, “The Lipstick Stain” by Dagny Looper and “Into The Silent Sea” by Andrej Landin

There will also be a welcome reception for the filmmakers, as well other parties throughout the evening.

For more information, visit www.littlerockfilmfestival.org.  When attending events use the hashtag #LRFF2014 on social media posts.

Charlotte Schexnayder Brings Salt to Legacies & Lunch

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legaciesschexnayderCharlotte Tillar Schexnayder has been called a “salty old editor,” and she is indeed worth her salt. She will be interviewed about her life and work in the Arkansas Delta by David Stricklin, manager of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, at Legacies & Lunch on Wednesday, April 2, at noon in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street.

Schexnayder has been an influential voice in the life and politics of the Delta, a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, and a pioneer among women in the professions of politics and journalism. She and her husband, Melvin, owned the Dumas Clarion newspaper for many years. Schexnayder has served as president of every professional journalism organization she has joined, including the National Federation of Press Women and the National Newspaper Association, and she was the first female president of the Dumas Chamber of Commerce.

Copies of her memoir, Salty Old Editor, published by Butler Center Books in 2012, will be available for sale at the program or may be purchased from River Market Books & Gifts, 120 River Market Avenue, or online at http://www.uapress.com. Schexnayder will sign books after her program.

Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Programs are held from noon-1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month. Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided. For more information, contact 918-3033.

Lineup for April’s 11th Annual Arkansas Literary Festival Announced

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1359064160-litfest_logoAs winter drones on, a person’s fancy may turn to thoughts of spring. Or to a good book to read by candlelight to pass the time in winter.

In any way, a certain harbinger of warmer weather will be the presence in April of the 11th annual Arkansas Literary Festival.

Prestigious award-winners, big names, writers for television shows, journalists, and artists are among the diverse roster of presenters who will be providing sessions at the eleventh annual Arkansas Literary Festival, April 24-27, 2014. The Central Arkansas Library System‘s Main Library campus and many other Little Rock venues are the sites for a stimulating mix of sessions, panels, special events, performances, workshops, presentations, opportunities to meet authors, book sales, and book signings. Most events are free and open to the public.

The Arkansas Literary Festival, the premier gathering of readers and writers in Arkansas, will include more than 80 presenters including featured authors Catherine Coulter, who has more than seventy million books in print; Congressman John Lewis, one of the key figures in the civil rights movement; best-selling authors Mary Roach, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Curtis Sittenfeld, and artist/illustrator Kadir Nelson; musician Rhett Miller; and education expert David L. Kirp.

This year’s Festival authors have won an impressive number and variety of distinguished awards, including ten Emmy awards, multiple National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and grants, two Pulitzer Prizes, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the Genius Grant), the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Caldecott Honor, an NAACP Image Award, an Eisner Award, a Ford Foundation Fellowship, the American Book Award, the O. Henry Prize, recognition as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, and much more.

Their works have been included in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Bon Appétit, Glamour, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Slate, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post, among others.

Special events for adults during the Festival include a cocktail reception with the authors, a writing workshop with Catherine Coulter, a concert by Rhett Miller, and a presentation by an art historian which includes an Artists Buffet. Panels and sessions include genres and topics such as chocolate, lucid dreaming, graphic novels, the war in Iraq, short stories, Arkansas food, murder mysteries, football, dinosaurs, and gangsters.

Children’s special events include a storytime on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion, a treasure hunt, a play based on The Little Engine That Could, and a Lego exhibit. Festival sessions for children will take place at both the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library and Learning Center, 4800 10th Street, and the Youth Services Department at the Main Library, 100 Rock Street.

At Level 4, the Main Library’s teen center, special events for teens include a robotics demonstration and a panel on comic book conventions.

Through the Writers In The Schools (WITS) initiative, the Festival will provide presentations by several authors for Pulaski county elementary, middle, and senior high schools and area colleges.

Support for the Literary Festival is provided by sponsors including Central Arkansas Library System; Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries (FOCAL); Arkansas Humanities Council; Department of Arkansas Heritage; Fred K. Darragh Jr. Foundation; Mosaic Templars Cultural Center; ProSmart Printing; KUAR FM 89.1; Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau; Arkansas Democrat Gazette; Sync; Arkansas Life; William J. Clinton Presidential Center; Oxford American; Landers FIAT of Benton; MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History; Arkansas Times; Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP; University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service; Historic Arkansas Museum ; Christ Church, Little Rock’s Downtown Episcopal Church; Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center; Arkansas Library Association; Goss Management Company, LLC; Henderson State University; Hendrix College Project Pericles Program; Pulaski Technical College; Arkansas Arts Center; River’s Edge Media; Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre; Rockefeller Elementary School; Gibbs Elementary School; Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center; Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow; Arkansas Governor’s Mansion; Hendrix College Creative Writing; University of Arkansas at Little Rock English Department; University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Rhetoric and Writing; Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing/Hearne Fine Art; Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack; Literacy Action of Central Arkansas; National Park Service Central High School National Historic Site; Tales from the South; and Power 92 Jams. The Arkansas Literary Festival is supported in part by funds from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author! Author!, a cocktail reception with the authors, will be Friday, April 25, at 8 p.m.; tickets are $25 in advance, and $40 at the door, and go on sale at ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org beginning Tuesday, April 1. Author! Author! tickets will also be available for purchase at the Main Library and River Market Books & Gifts, 120 River Market Avenue.

The Arkansas Literary Festival is a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. The Festival’s mission is to encourage the development of a more literate populace. A group of dedicated volunteers assists Festival Coordinator Brad Mooy with planning the Festival. Jay Jennings is the 2014 Festival Chair. Other committee chairs include Katherine Whitworth, Talent Committee; Lisa Donovan, Youth Programs; and Amy Bradley-Hole, Moderators.

For more information about the 2014 Arkansas Literary Festival, visit ArkansasLiteraryFestival.org, or contact Brad Mooy at bmooy@cals.org or 501-918-3098. For information on volunteering at the Festival, contact Angela Delaney atadelaney@cals.org or 501-918-3095.

Legacies & Lunch: Lessons from an Old School

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legaciesThis month, the Butler Center’s Legacies & Lunch series not only looks at a chapter in Arkansas history, but it explores the challenges of researching and writing history.
Grace Blagdon and David Ware will discuss the Brinkley Academy, a major part of African American educational history in Arkansas. Blagdon, whose father was the school’s principal, will share what she has learned from surviving students. Ware, historian of the Arkansas State Capitol, will touch on the challenges he and Blagdon faced in creating an exhibit, Old School: Remembering the Brinkley Academy, from the school’s few remaining historical materials.
Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council.
This month, Legacies & Lunch moves to a new location.  With the opening of the new CALS Ron Robinson Theater in the Arcade Building, the program will take place there.  It is easily accessible from the Main Library’s parking lot. Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.

The program is held from noon-1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month.

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.

Legacies & Lunch Looks at Slavery in Arkansas

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legaciesSlave resistance in Arkansas is the topic of Legacies & Lunch in January. Kelly Houston Jones, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arkansas, will present “A Rough, Saucy Set of Hands to Manage,” a discussion of her research on slavery in Arkansas.

This work was the lead essay in the Spring 2012 issue of Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Making extensive use of legal documents and carefully reading oral histories, Jones sought “to recover the slave point of view in examining explicit resistance.” She concludes that “slaves’ resistance in Arkansas seems to have had more to do with making their lives a little easier than with a continuing, self conscious effort to undermine the slave regime.”

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.