Riff Raff

The veteran I remember

This week we are to remember the military men and women who served this country — especially those who saw combat and those for whom combat was the last thing…

Miss Ada said it could be like this

The discussion of how Arkansas Republicans swept the 2014 election cycle will be woefully incomplete if not wholly inaccurate if it does not include in the opening paragraph this name:…

Guess who’s coming to dinner

Some or all members of the Fort Smith Board of Directors often gather at a restaurant following their regularly scheduled voting meetings. The media has not received advanced notice of…

Analysis of the analysis

It was September 2013 when the Fort Smith Board of Directors encouraged city staff to do more to incorporate compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles into the city fleet. At the…

Do stuff

Comes now Kaitlin Stephens serving as a timely example to students returning to school: Do stuff. Do a lot of stuff. Do a lot of different stuff. Do a lot…

Alien-piloted comet may soon destroy Wal-Mart

Like those deranged cult leaders who every so often convince a handful of shaved-head nitwits that the world will end via some cosmic oddity or the loyalty-blinded Razorback fan who…

Mayor Corleone?

With Fort Smith city government looking like Petrino’s face the day after his skirt chasing motorcycle trek, some are calling for a new form of municipal governance. Fort Smith has…

Discouraged and disappointed

One may admire the perseverance of Fort Smith City Directors Kevin Settle and Mike Lorenz in their effort to quash any discussion of how the city handles its legal needs,…

Losing our faith

There are important issues facing America and Arkansas but our two candidates for United States Senate appear to be more concerned with throwing each other under the church bus. The…

Reflecting, already

The back and forth advertisements from Arkansas gubernatorial hopefuls Asa Hutchinson and Mike Ross often elicit an emotion a more disciplined journalist would not reveal. And that emotion is this:…

Economic stability. Now what?

The corpus of the Fort Smith regional economy is not a fully recovered patient but we should pause to take note of recent positive developments. The developments may offer even…

Just don’t call him a Savior

A simple and smart-alecky assessment could be that singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson ran out of beer before he ran out of herb and converted an empty Bud can into a bong…

Isbell the AMP and You

He dang sure shouldn’t be, but Jason Isbell was an afterthought on the promo stuff announcing a July 7 concert at the AMP in Northwest Arkansas. Isbell would probably be…

The upcoming other side of history

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The odds are that Arkansas legislators supporting an effort to reinforce…

A fortunate son

A lot has changed in Mom’s world. The world in 1949, the year of her birth, was a crazy place. Europe was rebuilding its continental economy, the Soviets were rattling…

A message for Sen. Boozman

A heartfelt message to you, U.S. Sen. John Boozman, is to go away. Just for a few months. And not because we don’t want you around; it’s because we’d like…

A recycled essay on Earth Day

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…

Comprehensive coverage conundrum

There was a recent meeting of the steering committee that is part of this $340,000 comprehensive planning study by the city of Fort Smith to figure out something about something…

The SOB watch continues

It’s just another day, really. Another week. Another month. Another year, one hopes, above the daisies and dirt. But this calendar shift comes with an unavoidable remembrance that, honestly, best…

Water whirled

In case you were wondering, we checked and are confident that the concepts and planning and budgeting for this on-again, off-again water park at Ben Geren Regional Park were not…