Author: Michael Tilley

Recently received a letter from the Leadership Fort Smith Alumni Association requesting nominations for the 2010 Jack White Leadership Fort Smith Award. “Our Jack White Leadership Fort Smith Award recognizes…

Chili, sex and silence

Like a good pot of chili on a cool and damp fall day, the following collection of sentences, punctuation and bad grammar contains several ingredients. We hope it satisfies without…

Parts to play

Officials with the city of Fort Smith and Sebastian County are now publicly committed to develop what we hope is a fiscally and physically responsible plan for the expansion and…

Foolish support of Capitalism

What follows is an expression of frustration resulting from my instinctual convictions related to capitalism. Which is to say I’m getting a little unnerved about all these smarty-pants who have…

Looking for a new Peter

It’s only fitting that the first meeting with Peter Lewis was at a restaurant. This young man was full of confidence, handsome, had just recently spent months traveling Europe, and…

Our character test

We now find in our recent Fort Smith municipal history two unfortunate incidents resulting in an ugly racial undercurrent to our governance discussions. There is the episode in which a…

Testing the experiment

Editor’s Note: This essay was written by Michael Tilley in September 2002 as a reflection on the first anniversary of the 9/11 horror. Link here for its 2007 publication. The…

Stepping back

Sandwiched between the recent recollections of national basketball championships and the great nationally-televised football event with Texas comes an artful 44-year reunion between John Bell Jr. and the University of…

We don’t have time for this

In less than a month, he’s reminded a black man that he serves but one “master,” and has labeled as thieves the approximately 900 employees of the city of Fort…

Thankful, but frustrated

A note from Tilley to Kind Readers: Please pardon the repeating of an essay that first appeared in this space Dec. 3, 2008. It was my intent to capture the…

Defeating Sylvester McMonkey McBean

Let’s talk about racism. In case you haven’t heard, the U.S. now has a black president. The top four favorite male sports stars in the U.S. are black. The top…

We (Greedy Capitalists) shall overcome

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.”— H.L. Mencken Recently toured several of the fine museums in Chicago. The city of…

Broadcast this

The Fort Smith Board of Directors began live telecasts of their voting meetings at their July 21 meeting. Those interested in watching the sausage being made can tune to cable…

Top 5 business/economy story — No. 4: Economic development changes

Editor’s note: With the days, weeks and months seemingly passing faster than ever, it can be difficult to remember what happened yesterday much less the past six months. To that…

Let’s get geeky

Editor’s note: This column first was first published Feb 1, 2004, by the fine folks at the Times Record. However, the first clean link to the paper with this column…

It’s about time

Most folks who speak during meetings of the Fort Smith board of directors talk much and say little. Including the members of the board. Especially members of the board. David…

You read it here first

The City Wire was able to obtain an advance copy of the more than 1-inch thick document outlining Fort Smith City Administrator Dennis Kelly’s proposed changes to city government policies,…

To-Do list(?)

In this space last week we asked the question, “What now? As a region, as a people and as a collection of cities, What-Fricking-Now? What are the collective goals of…

What now?

During a March 2000 speech at the University of Ozarks in Clarksville, popular English author, science historian and television producer James Burke told the crowd that in matters big and…