Monday night was another scary one for those of us here on Pinto Point in west Little Rock. It’s 11:30 p.m. and we’re still without power, but as best we can tell in the dark, there is no severe damage.
This will be the second time in 11 days for an extended loss of electrical power for those of us on the south side of the street. This time, though, our neighbors across the street are in the dark as well.
Thank God that we all apparently are OK, We know that some people were not as fortunate, in regard to damage to their homes and surroundings.
Nancy, Daisy (our Lhasa Apso) and I wound up in the closet when the tornado apparently was going over us. We had Ed Buckner of Channel 11 playing on 94.1 FM The Point on our battery-operated boombox, but we didn’t lose power until a few minutes later when Ed was telling us that powerful straight-line winds were blowing through downtown Little Rock.
Oh well, I hope the alarm goes off on my alarm clock in the morning.
An Air Evac Lifeteam medical helicopter based in Vilonia crashed near Scotland in Van Buren County, Ark., just before 4 a.m. Tuesday on its way to pick up a patient at Alread.
Pilot Kenneth Robertson, flight nurse Kenny Meyer Jr. and paramedic Gayla Gregory were killed.
Meyer had taken the shift to cover for a fellow team member whose wife delivered their baby Monday night, a few days earlier than expected.
Coverage is available at arkansasnews.com and lonokenews.net.
Polling experts say that families who have dumped their phone land lines and gone totally cellular in telephone usage are more difficult to read or reach.
My wife and I having become one of those families in the past year, I’m curious to see what that trend does to political polling.
The industry likes to say that pollsters can do a better job of predicting outcomes than ever before, but surprises in high-profile races during the past decade or so — presidential and otherwise — would make one wonder if such claims are part of a smoke screen.
If increased usage of cell phones is a reason, I’m willing to listen, but let’s see some results first.
It does make one wonder. What about all the assumptions by columnists and other pundits that Arkansas, after years of being a Republican-leaning state at the national level and in the Democratic column at the state and local levels, is about to become a bright shade of red by going almost totally Republican? Is such a conclusion a bit premature?
We’ll find out in about nine weeks on Election Day.
Wow! A new publisher comes in and decides to put her mark on a newspaper, and — voila! — an institution for one of our bordering counties and a former place of employment for me changes its personality.
Yes, the Benton Courier announced last week that it is now the Saline Courier.
I worked there for more than four years and I love the newspaper, the city of Benton and Saline County.
Publisher Terri Leifeste announced the change Aug. 9, saying the name would better reflect the newspaper’s coverage area, which she said was all of Saline County. She noted that the Courier had been known as the Saline Courier for a few years in the late 1800s.
That’s true, but it’s been the Benton Courier for 104 years. It will take a while to become accustomed to the new moniker. The old name has a sense of history and permanence, while the new one does give a feeling of expansion and potential for growth. But it is a sense of change and —for now at least — it’s an uncomfortable feeling.
I’m sure the reasoning is that the owners feel it will help sell the paper and its advertising in places other than Benton, but how will the change affect Benton residents? Some may not be happy.
Journalists in the area will be watching because we love newspapers. As for those of us who have worked there, and there are quite a few even here at our office, most of us love the Courier especially. We hope the change works.
Horizon Publishing, based in Marion, Ill., owns the newspaper.
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.
Kenny Guinn, the former governor of Nevada, died Thursday after a fall from the roof of his Las Vegas, Nev. He was 73.
Dema, his wife of 54 years, found him on the ground unconscious about 10:30 a.m. PDT Thursday. He was declared dead at a Las Vegas hospital just after 11 a.m.
Guinn was born in Aug. 24, 1936, in Garland, Ark., in Miller County. But his family moved to California when he was a child, eventually winding up in Exeter in the San Joaquin Valley.
He moved to Las Vegas for a teaching job and wound up as the Clark County superintendent of schools.
A moderate Republican noted for bringing people from both parties together, Guinn was governor from 1999 to 2007.
We received reports that a man robbed the US Bank branch at Park Plaza in Little Rock just after noon Tuesday. A suspect was chased by up to 11 Little Rock police and Arkansas State Police cars on Interstate 30 into North Little Rock.
North Little Rock police set up a road block on Riverfront Drive, so the suspect turned around and headed back toward Little Rock. Witnesses at NLR’s US Bank Building at Riverfront Plaza said the man stopped the pickup on the Maple Street bridge between Little Rock and NLR and jumped off.
The witnesses said the man landed on his back, but a police spokesman said he hit the water head first. The man was face down, officers said, when Pulaski County Sheriff’s Water Patrol officers recovered the body just after 1 p.m. Reportedly, he was dead from hitting the water, likely with a broken neck.
Check our website at pulaskinews.net soon for more details.
The word of shootings at Fort Hood, the huge Army base in Texas, is stunning.
The man military officials say they believe committed the fatal shootings before killing himself was an Army major, a doctor. He was a mental health professional, authorities said.
It is hard to believe. The number of dead was 12, at last report.
It’s so easy for us to recall the hundreds of times we splash through a puddle or slight rivulet of water as we drive through the streets to or from work.
Sometimes we should be slowing down to consider IF we should be driving through high water along the route. It doesn’t take but a few seconds for a stream to grow into a surging river — one that can overcome our vehicle and put us in harm’s way.
We’ve had a fatality in North Little Rock overnight. Let’s not add to the horror experienced by that family.
Be careful out there. It takes only seconds to be swept into danger.
Be careful if you have to go to downtown Little Rock or North Little Rock on Saturday morning — it’s the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and tens of thousands of people will be there to run, walk or cheer on breast cancer survivors and their supporters.
It’s the largest event of its kind in Arkansas. If you don’t need to go downtown early Saturday, avoid being in the area until 9:30 or 10 a.m. It’ll help with the traffic.
But after that, the Foodie Festival in downtown NLR is a great place to be.
