Column

Still watching out for the SOBs

Editor’s note: This essay first appeared Dec. 28, 2008, on The City Wire. It continues to be an appropriate note to begin a new year. It’s just another day, really….

We don’t want to screw this up

This growing consensus among the citizenry that we might consider more Walk and less Talk with respect to additions and enhancements to our regional quality-of-place assets is both welcome and…

Random Redux

Editor’s note: What follows is an essay originally posted Feb. 1, 2009. Please accept our apology for the repeat. Tilley didn’t have time for anything new as he was competing…

12,000

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate … we can not consecrate … we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,…

The new hospital CEO says …

Folks in the Fort Smith area are so hospitable that they’re likely to forgive Melody Trimble for never having visited Graceland. That Trimble readily admitted — “I drove through but…

A compassionate pause

The Fort Smith board of directors on Tuesday (Dec. 1) faces an appeal of a Fort Smith Planning Commission approval of the Community Rescue Mission’s 3,300-square foot dormitory-style housing for…

Condolences and gratitude

Let’s first note the recent passing of Birnie Pryor, a kind and successful Fort Smith businessman who was a lifelong supporter of downtown Fort Smith. He was 73. Birnie was…

Billy says …

Billy, an old college friend, has taken to renewing our past chats via e-mail. He’s found some measure of amusement watching us folks in the Fort Smith area debate and…

Remembering Raymond and the others

Editor’s note: This essay was first published in November 2002 when I was the business editor of the Times Record. A version of that essay can be found here.) This…

Happy Birthday to You!

We re-started this thing called The City Wire a year ago Nov. 3. By way of reminder, let’s revisit a few points from the simple vision we expressed almost 12…

Lines of optimism

There is a fine line between naivety and optimism. Let’s walk the line. The line walked here is that we have more reasons to be optimistic about the future of…

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…