John Brummett, a columnist for Stephens Media, nails the absurdity of some of the candidates who seem to be atop the polls as leading GOP presidential candidates in his column written for Tuesday, April 19. His effort lampooning the candidacies of Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump appears in some of Central Arkansas Newspapers’ own weeklies this week and is available at arkansasnews.com, the website of the Arkansas News Bureau.
Brummett is a former Little Rock McClellan High School classmate. In fact, my criticism of the school newspaper 40-plus years ago likely is the reason I am in the business now. Basically, he told me to “put up or shut up” and here we are.
Check out John’s column. You’ll enjoy it.
The folks doing the publicity for Oxford American, because the deadline for applicants is rapidly approaching, recently sent this news release out:
Scholarships available for Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers
The Oxford American will offer five scholarships (including tuition, room, and board) for Arkansas college students to attend the inaugural Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers occurring June 21–26, 2011, at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain.
“These scholarships will allow the most promising young writers at Arkansas colleges to learn from some of the best writers and editors in the nation,” said Marc Smirnoff, editor of The Oxford American. “We are pleased to be able to extend this opportunity to our home-state students.”
The scholarships will be awarded to the five best student applications (as judged by the Summit’s Fiction and Creative Nonfiction admission boards) received from two- and four-year Arkansas colleges and universities. More information and guidelines are available at http://summit.oxfordamerican.org/scholarship-policy.
The Summit, a collaboration between The Oxford American magazine and Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, will offer participants the opportunity to improve their writing in a peaceful and stimulating environment. During the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers, literary professionals will challenge participants to sharpen and deepen their writing skills through daily writing classes, lecture sessions, and manuscript critiques. Distinguished faculty and guest lecturers will teach a number of workshop sessions that focus equally on short fiction and creative nonfiction. Publishing experts will lead innovative programming designed to hone the skills that increase a writer’s chance of being noticed by editors.
The Oxford American also promises a fun and unique experience featuring great Southern food and music presented by talented chefs and performers. Participants can enjoy the spectacular setting, including nature trails and recreational facilities at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute and nearby Petit Jean State Park.
Confirmed faculty members include David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker; Heidi Julavits, the co-founder and co-editor of The Believer; Wells Tower (recently named by The New Yorker as among the 20 best fiction writers under 40); Kevin Brockmeier (one of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists and winner of the O. Henry Award); Pico Iyer (praised by Time as “among the finest travel writers of his generation”); as well as Tom Franklin, Cristina Henríquez, Scott Huler, and Jay Jennings. Detailed biographical information about each faculty member is available online at http://summit.oxfordamerican.org.
Applications for admission to the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers will be accepted through May 1. The admissions committee will notify participants as they are selected, so it is possible that all available student slots will be filled before May 1. Those interested are encouraged to submit application materials as early as possible. Full application instructions and materials are available online at http://summit.oxfordamerican.org.
I had a great weekend with my children and their friends in Fort Worth. (Actually, we were in Arlington when I saw my daughters, Molly and Megan. We met them for dinner Saturday night at a steakhouse there.)
Patrick picked me up at Love Field in Dallas and then we headed for Cowtown. We grabbed a late supper at the original Fuzzy’s Taco Shop near Texas Christian University.
He and I messed around Friday. talking, walking his dogs and eating good food, including fried chicken, waffles, shredded sweet potatoes and collard greens at Buttons for lunch. On Friday night, we were joined by his girlfriend, Sarah, as we tried the Flying Fish location near TCU — several photos on the wall of fishermen and -women from Arkansas showing off their prize catches.
Saturday afternoon, the three of us sat in the bleachers at Lupton Stadium and watched the TCU Horned Frogs take on the Cal State-Fullerton Titans in a college baseball game featuring two nationally ranked teams. It was a great game, but the Titans turned a go-ahead-run on a close call at the plate in the top of the ninth inning into a full-blown five-run rally and then held on for an 8-4 win.
That seemed to start a trend because TCU, ranked No. 3 nationally entering that game, lost to CSU-F in the ninth again Sunday in the rubber game of the series. Then the Frogs repeated the trick Tuesday night against the visiting and much-more-lightly regarded Dallas Baptist University Patriots in a 4-3 loss. http://gofrogs.cstv.com/sports/m-basebl/recaps/030111aaa.html
At night, we stayed up late talking and watching movies. One was Robert Duvall’s latest, “Get Low,” also featuring Bill Murray, Lucas Black and Sissy Spacek. It’s based on a true story of a hermit in from Tennessee in the 1930s. Quite entertaining.
On Sunday morning, Patrick, Sarah and I met his longtime friend from high school, Andrew McKernon, for a great brunch at Taverna, an Italian restaurant in downtown Fort Worth.
I made some friends from Maumelle, Myron and Stephanie Putnam, waiting at Love for the flight back. Southwest had some trouble with a part in the windshield heater of our plane. After first trying to fix it, they moved us to a different gate and put us on a plane originally scheduled to go to Lubbock, Texas, and then Las Vegas, Nev. Lubbock was experiencing high winds at the time, so us Little Rock travelers replaced the Lubbock passengers and we arrived at Little Rock national Airport about an hour late. Then the plane went on to Las Vegas for the other folks.
I wrote a column published in Thursday’s North Little Rock Times and Sherwood Voice that expressed my frustration with rude shoppers encountered during the Christmas season. It was based on an outing to Park Plaza in Little Rock on Dec. 18.
Then I finished up my shopping Wednesday night by picking up a couple of things at Barnes & Noble Booksellers for my brother, Pat, and a couple of stocking stuffers for my wife, Nancy.
Wouldn’t you know it? I couldn’t have had a better time!
I wandered around amongst the frantic shoppers, knowing that I was done. I purchased the three items I needed and then held the door open for a young lady who was leaving the store at the same time. In return, she tried to hold the door from the entryway to the outside open for me, but didn’t quite hold it long enough.
We laughed about it, and had a pleasant conversation over our respective shoulders as we went our separate ways in the parking lot. By the time I reached my car, I realized that it had taken just that one enjoyable exchange with a stranger to put me in a much better frame of mind about the Christmas shopping experience.
Granted, it may have been that:
A. Officially I was finished shopping for the season;
B. I had been spending time in a book store, which usually calms me;
C. The brush with niceness really did cheer me; or
D. All of the above.
Whatever the answer, I was feeling better about my fellow human beings. And despite my reputation as an occasional grump, that had to be a good thing.
I’m not far along on Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” … Chapter 6 or something like that.
Though I had seen the book mentioned on a few websites, somehow I had managed to miss it until a couple of weeks ago. Nancy and I recently bought “Dragon Tattoo” and Jonathan Kellerman’s “Deception,” which looks at the darker side of prep schools and the college application process. I finished the latter first and now I’ve ventured into the first of Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.
Sometimes a book can start off strong and then fizzle, but so far, I understand what all the excitement is about —Larsson’s storytelling crackles with anticipation. Let’s face it, readers. When we find what we believe will be a new author we’re going to like, we get excited. So far, this story reads like a winner. There mystery, great characters (a crusading journalist and an exotic investigator) and a genuine desire to keep reading to find out what happens next.
There is a wistfulness in this case, though, once you realize that Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50 just before the aforementioned first book was published. It’s sad because he didn’t live to enjoy his success. But selfishly we lament the fact that we lost what may have been the wonder of the six additional books he planned in his story outline.
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals are coming back to Arkansas.
The five-member blues and rock band from Vermont, fronted by amazing vocalist Grace Potter, appeared at Fort Smith’s Riverfront Blues Festival in late June. The act, named one of the best new bands of 2010 by Rolling Stone magazine, returns to Judge Parker’s territory with a date at Neumeier’s Rib Room and Beer Garden on Garrison Avenue on Friday, Oct. 8.
Potter has appeared as a vocalist with the “Tonight Show” band a couple of times this summer on Jay Leno’s latest incarnation of his late-night TV program and the band appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the spring.
GPN’s self-titled June album has been getting a lot of press with good reviews. They opened their set on the sweltering evening of June 25 at the blues festival with “Hot Summer Nights” from that CD and sizzled from that point.
The weather for the October appearance should be much more agreeable.
It may not be as important, culturally, as the question, “Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?” but it’s close:
Where were you 33 years ago when you heard that Elvis Presley died?
It was Aug. 16, 1977. I was working for the Courier-Index, a weekly newspaper in Marianna, Ark., under the tutelage of Editor-Publisher Marvin Caldwell. My high school friend, John Brummett, before making a two-day swing through the Arkansas Delta for a series he was writing for the grand, old Arkansas Gazette, called to see if I wanted to go raise some hell in Memphis.
So when Billy Wilkes, the young man who ran the office for his father’s vending-machine business next door, came walking in to tell us, “Elvis just died,” Brummett was waiting for me to finish writing a caption for a photo I just took from a family reunion. Then we were scheduled to head for Memphis. I think most of the watering holes for visitors were located in the Overton Square area in 1977.
Almost to a person, we in the Courier newsroom said something like, “You’re kidding!?!” Then Wilkes explained that they found Presley in his bathroom at Graceland and rushed him to Baptist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a heart attack. He was 42.
Brummett and I went on to Memphis as planned. We crossed Elvis Presley Boulevard well west of Graceland, but we could see the huge crowd gathering down the road in front of the rock ‘n’ roll king’s mansion. We decided that we would go to Overton Square as planned, but spent most of the night drinking a little and talking a lot, like most of Memphis, about Elvis and his influence.
John was not the big Presley fan that I was, but he still had his share of memories of various events and songs. I think we made it back to my house in Moro, Ark., about 4:30 the next morning.
The next few days were strange, as a local television station in Memphis — it seems like it was Channel 5, but I can’t remember now — broadcast almost everything that happened related to Presley’s death.
First there were the huge crowds that gathered en masse in front of the house, writing on the stone fence that surrounded the front part of Presley’s property. Then the guy plowed into the crowd the next day, killing two people. Next came the bedlam that ensued when the Presley family announced that they would allow mourners to line up outside in preparation for filing through the house to view Presley’s body. I don’t remember any more how many people passed by to pay their respects, but it was easily in the thousands.
Finally, it came time for the funeral procession to take the body from Graceland to a nearby cemetery where Elvis’ mother, Gladys Presley, was buried. Traffic was stopped for miles around as thousands gathered to see the procession of hearse, family and celebrity friends such as former co-star/girlfriend Ann-Margret.
It should have been over, but it wasn’t. A small group of idiots — what else do you call celebrity grave robbers — tried to steal Presley’s body from the cemetery. That act led to the eventual decision for the family to move the remains of the singer and his mother back to Graceland, where they rest to this day. Going past those graves and others in the family is the final part of the Graceland tour.
I was a fan of the music and the man in the early days. From reading about him in the past three decades, I’m not sure how likeable he was in his later years. But then, if we had lived his life, we might have taken a strange path, too.
I read a blog that asked if Mel Gibson’s latest tirade directed at his girlfriend and filled with expletives and racial slurs would keep people from going to see his movies. Good question.
It is easy to say that I’m fed up with his behavior and his rants about different ethnicities. I can say that I have no plans to go see a Mel Gibson movie and help him make more money.
But if he happens to be in a movie that also features someone whose work I respect, I might go see it.
For instance, he is reportedly soon to be in a movie produced by Jodie Foster. Even if I am boycotting Mel Gibson, I happen to be a big fan of Jodie Foster. So, who knows. I’ll have to decide when I know more about that project.
Mike Dougherty is managing editor of Stephens Media’s Central Arkansas Newspapers, which includes The North Little Rock Times, Maumelle Monitor, Sherwood Voice, Jacksonville Patriot, Cabot Star-Herald, Lonoke Democrat and Carlisle Independent.
He is a baseball fanatic and loves reading, writing, movies and music, especially John Fogerty and the blues.
