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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.
I received a pamphlet the other day in the mail from the Ave Maria School of Law. It was suggesting members of its faculty to be used as “experts” if we needed a quote from a legal professional for any story.
A part of a Catholic education complex built by Tom Monaghan, the Domino’s Pizza magnate who once owned the Detroit Tigers, Ave Maria School of Law is located near Naples, Florida.
I’m sure it is a fine law school, but the name strikes me as funny. Granted, my familiarity with the phrase is the beautiful song played at Christmas.
The faculty looks distinguished for the most part, but one member is the rejected Reagan Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, who received some flak during his nomination hearings for some inconsistent (and possibly racial) use of the poll tax as a young election worker.
His name on the faculty roster also seems a bit strange. I guess it’s a good thing I already have a lawyer (and have no plans to attend law school).
“Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War” offers a different view of President Abraham Lincoln that focuses on his struggle to meet the political and constitutional challenges of the Civil War.
The exhibit will be featured at the Arkansas Studies Institute Main Gallery at 401 President Clinton Ave., in Little Rock, AR 72201. It will be open free to the public from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday from Dec. 1 through Jan. 28, 2011.
For more information, call the Central Arkansas Library System at 501.918.3000.
According to the CALS website, the exhibition, organized thematically, explores how Lincoln used the Constitution to confront three intertwined crises of the war — the secession of Southern states, slavery and wartime civil liberties. The goal is to have visitors leave the exhibition with a more complete understanding of Abraham Lincoln as president and the Civil War as the nation’s gravest constitutional crisis.
Who knows where stardom or at least 15 minutes of fame is born?
According to a press release sent out recently by Los Angeles publicist Zig Gauthier, Pilgrim Films and Television Inc., the producers of “American Chopper” (TLC), “Dirty Jobs” (Discovery Channel), “The Ultimate Fighter” (Spike) and “Ghost Hunters” (Syfy) is seeking to cast “a company of fun, outgoing and even outrageous RV customizers-converters to appear in their own, unscripted TV series on a major cable network.”
The release states “the right company for this show custom-builds extreme motor homes, customizes existing RVs with extravagant accessories, or converts buses into RVs, outfitting them with high-end electronics and top-of-the-line add-ons.”
Gauthier then urges representatives of companies who believe they fit the bill and “make RV magic every day and deserve to be seen on TV,” to e-mail producers at RoadWarriorCasting@gmail.com with the company name, location, phone number, email address, company website and a brief reason why the company and crew would be a good fit for such a show.
They are encouraged to send photos or a link to photos of custom work and crew.
Zig Gauthier can be reached at (818) 478-4692. More information about Pilgrim Films and Television and their shows is available online at http://www.pilgrimfilms.tv.
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.
Toby Ziegler, the communications director for President Jed Bartlett on “The West Wing,” used to say, after listening to a boring explanation of a problem by someone else on the staff of the White House, “There’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”
That’s how anyone should feel if they spend anytime worrying about the crazy ramblings of Laura Schlesinger, the radio talk-show host who used the “n-word” a number of times while talking on the air to a caller who happened to be a black woman married to a what man.
1. You should consider the source. Schlesinger is an entertainer who developed a following by being rude, arrogant and in this case, low-class while mistreating her listeners.
2. She gets paid for her ratings. The more she attracted listeners by using these tactics, the more her producers could charge advertisers.
3. She allegedly apologized because what she did, she said, was wrong, but then told fellow lame-duck talk-show host Larry King that she was ending her show so she could practice freedom of speech. So that tells you all you need to know about her apologies or anything else she says.
4. Turn the radio off and tell yourself that you’re not going to waste 20 more minutes of your life on her ridiculous rants.
Of course, she shouldn’t have said what she did. But really, did we expect anything more from someone who gets paid for saying outrageous things?
The Dirty Dandies, the Fort Worth band led by my son, Patrick, played a set at the Aardvark near TCU in Fort Worth last week.
Here is a video of “Sarah Jane,” which Patrick wrote in 2009:
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.
Mike Dougherty's Blog 