November 1999

"Tis almost the season Date: 11/5/99 Category: News Page: B2 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON Davy Browning, an employee of Jennings Osborne's, sits atop a part of the state Capitol on Thursday afternoon as he and his brother Michael string lights for the annual Capitol lights display scheduled to be turned on Dec. 4.

A light that shines From Fordyce to Rison Date: 11/8/99 Category: Editorial Page: B4 IT WAS Johann von Goethe who wrote that being noble, helpful and good is what sets people apart from other creatures. It certainly would separate a politician from that breed. For now, the mayor of Fordyce, William Lyon, stands alone. He used some political muscle to help a neighboring town when he didn't have to lift a finger. If he keeps this up, he'll give politicians a good name. Christopher Vallance, son of David and Mary Vallance, died in a car accident in Rison at an intersection where wrecks are common. A blinking caution light could be their son's legacy, the Vallances said. It may spare another life, and some other parents' grieving. They'd raised $3,000, but found that you just can't buy a traffic light and hang it. First you have to run through rules, traffic studies and bureaucratic frustrations. Just a few miles to the southwest down U.S. 79, the Fordyce mayor was removed from this quest. These folks can't vote in Fordyce. Why get involved? But reading about the Vallances' plight caused the mayor to ask around about a discarded caution signal in his town. After some dead ends, the light was found in storage. The mayor had to use his persistence--and position--to get there. Mayor Lyon made the traffic light a gift to Rison. At the small ceremony, David and Mary Vallance looked on, not believing their eyes. The traffic signal now has the green light for installation. "I just think if we had more people like Mayor William," David Vallance said, "the world would be in better shape." We do, too. There's a billboard from the Jennings Osborne family on Cantrell Road in Little Rock that begs everybody to commit a random act of kindness. Mayor Lyon's gesture more than qualifies. He not only brought a traffic light to a neighboring town, he created a beacon for neighborly compassion.

Capitol lists attractions for holidays Date: 1 1/16/99 Category: News Page: B2 NOEL E. OMAN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE In 1949, Oneta Hayden was a 10-year-old girl from the Fulton County community of Mitchell, which isn't on the map anymore, convalescing from polio when state officials asked her to turn on the Christmas holiday lights adorning the state Capitol. Fifty years later, the Raytown, Mo., resident will do it again. "The best I can remember is it wasn't a big deal then like it is now," Hayden said Monday. "But being from a small town, I was surprised they chose me. "I feel like it was a real honor then, and I feel it's a real honor now." Secretary of State Sharon Priest announced Hayden's role and other highlights of the Capitol holiday season Monday at a news conference. She was flanked by two of the 18 carousel horses to be displayed during the season and the Capitol's version of Santa Claus, longtime Capitol employee Rodney Worthington. The Capitol's holiday season begins at 5 p.m. Dec. 1 when the Christmas tree, a 35-foot eastern red cedar, is to be lighted. This year's tree was donated by Joseph Masty Jr. of North Little Rock, Priest said. At 5 p.m. Dec. 4, Hayden will turn on the state Capitol lights, donated by holiday lighting connoisseur Jennings Osborne of Little Rock and his family. The lighting ceremony, which will include Disney characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, will be preceded by the annual Little Rock Christmas parade. The festivities associated with the state Capitol during the holiday season also includes singing performances of 104 choirs, beginning with the England Elementary Cub Chorale at 10 a.m. on Dec. 3 and ending with the CHILD Home Choir of North Little Rock at 1:30 p.m. OnDec. 17. Also part of the season is the Capitol's 11th annual arts and craft show, featuring wares of 60 exhibitors on display and on sale Dec. 3-5. New exhibits will be part of the Capitol holiday season this year, Priest said. "We want people to keep coming back." About 50,000 people are expected to roam, sing in or sell in the Capitol this season, Priest said. That figure is just a little less than half of the 110,000 people who visit the Capitol annually. The carousel horses replace a holiday train display that has been situated on the first floor in the rotunda for the past few seasons. The horses were part of a carousel that operated at the War Memorial Park midway in Little Rock from the 1940s. The horses themselves were built in the 1920s. A nonprofit group has raised $250,000 to restore them. Another $1.75 million will be needed for the horses to be ridden again in a new park pavilion. Another exhibit will feature presidential Christmas cards from the 1930s to the 1990s, part of a collection belonging to Guy Pestino of Little Rock. The collection was started by Pestino's aunt who worked in the White House greeting department from the Kennedy administration to the Bush administration. Another exhibit will display a private collection of Santa Claus dolls. A Nativity will be part of the Capitol again. Priest has allowed a private organization to display the Nativity on the north side of the Capitol since 1997. No other requests to display religious themes have been made, Priest said. On Dec. 7, veterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor will be honored in a ceremony at 5 p.m. Much of the information distributed at Priest's news conference can be found at her offce's World Wide Web site, including a schedule of choir performances and Santa appearances and a trivia quiz. The Web site address is: http: llwww. so sweb . state. ar. us/ index.html

Holiday season at state Capitol begins Dec. Date: 1 1/16/99 Category: NWAnews Page: B3 NOEL E. OMAN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE *NW EDITION* In 1949, Oneta Hayden was a 10-year-old girl from the Fulton County community of Mitchell, which isn't on the map anymore, convalescing from polio when state officials asked her to turn on the Christmas holiday lights adorning the state Capitol. Fifty years later, the Raytown, Mo., resident will do it again. "The best I can remember is it wasn't a big deal then like it is now," Hayden said Monday. "But being from a small town, I was surprised they chose me. "I feel like it was a real honor then, and I feel it's a real honor now." Secretary of State Sharon Priest announced Hayden's role and other highlights of the Capitol holiday season Monday at a news conference. She was flanked by two of the 18 carousel horses to be displayed during the season and the Capitol's version of Santa Claus, longtime Capitol employee Rodney Worthington. The Capitol's holiday season begins at 5 p.m. Dec. 1 when the Christmas tree, a 35-foot eastern red cedar, is to be lighted. This year's tree was donated by Joseph Masty Jr. of North Little Rock, Priest said. At 5 p.m. Dec. 4, Hayden will turn on the state Capitol lights, donated by holiday lighting connoisseur Jennings Osborne of Little Rock and his family. The lighting ceremony, which will include Disney characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, will be preceded by the annual Little Rock Christmas parade. The festivities associated with the state Capitol during the holiday season also includes singing performances of 104 choirs, beginning with the England Elementary Cub Chorale at 10 a.m. on Dec. 3 and ending with the CHILD Home Choir of North Little Rock at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 17. Also part of the season is the Capitol's 11th annual arts and craft show, featuring wares of 60 exhibitors on display and on sale Dec. 3-5. New exhibits will be part of the Capitol holiday season this year, Priest said. "We want people to keep coming back." About 50,000 people are expected to roam, sing in or sell in the Capitol this season, Priest said. That figure is just a little less than half of the 110,000 people who visit the Capitol annually. The carousel horses replace a holiday train display that has been situated on the first floor in the rotunda for the past few seasons. The horses were part of a carousel that operated at the War Memorial Park midway in Little Rock from the 1940s. The horses themselves were built in the 1920s. A nonprofit group has raised $250,000 to restore them. Another $1.75 million will be needed for the horses to be ridden again in a new park pavilion. Another exhibit will feature presidential Christmas cards from the 1930s to the 1990s, part of a collection belonging to Guy Pestino of Little Rock. The collection was started by Pestino's aunt who worked in the White House greeting department from the Kennedy administration to the Bush administration. Another exhibit will display a private collection of Santa Claus dolls. A Nativity will be part of the Capitol again. Priest has allowed a private organization to display the Nativity on the north side of the Capitol since 1997. No other requests to display religious themes have been made, Priest said. On Dec. 7, veterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor will be honored in a ceremony at 5 p.m Much of the information distributed at Priest's news conference can be found at her offce's World Wide Web site, including a schedule of choir performances and Santa appearances and a trivia quiz. The Web site address is: http: //www. so sweb. state . ar. us/ index.html

My runaway mind Date: 1 1/17/99 Category: Editorial Page: B12 PAUL GREENBERG It happened again just the other day, during the heat wave. There are days, like in the kind of November that makes you want to turn on the air-conditioning, when the Southern mind finally has it, and just goes walking out the door to do its own thing, think its own thoughts, lose its own way. Occasionally it sends back postcards with snippy remarks, as if to even old scores. The last one dealt with Martha Stewart. There's no telling what will set a mind off. Too much coffee is my theory. It seems the mind has had it with the Martha Stewart syndrome. She's the pluperfect homemaker/designer/twit who recommended that homeowners leave precisely an inch of snow on their lawn when shoveling. That way, they can achieve the kind of perfection she recommends inside and out, from top to bottom. Or was it precisely a quarter of an inch? Obsessive minds want to know. Call it the science of exterior decorating. Of course in these snowless climes we have to make do with fallen foliage. I can hardly wait these fall evenings to get home and arrange all the pin oak leaves on the lawn, in the car, in the house, in everybody's hair, in perfect parallel lines. North to South. Simply use a compass and rearrange daily. The suggestion about an even level of the white stuffwas maddeningly typical of Ms. Perfect Homemaker. But even if her devotees wanted to follow that advice, where would they find the snow in these latitudes? Who besides Jennings Osborne could afford to import a quarter-inch of snow to manicure every little inch of the law? Jennings has better sense. He'd rather buy barbecue for all, thank goodness. Messy, juicy barbecue running with sauce and accompanied by baked beans and slaw--all of it one big, delicious stain waiting to happen. Martha Stewart would be horrified. I would be delighted. So would my mind. A culture that pays the slightest attention to Martha Stewart is rotten to the perfectly decorated core, but here I've gone and obsessed about her for whole paragraphs--a chunk of run-on prose big enough to choke a good-sized horse. Or at least my errant mind has. It has, as they say, a mind of its own. I disclaim any responsibility for it on mixed-up days like this, when it should be cold and blustery, and instead Little Rock feels like Nassau in the Bahamas. Nor is my mind finished with Martha Stewart. It has just begun to obsess. As someone with an abundance of sense and no pretensions once summed up the matter: "Slapping Martha Stewart around . . . it's a good thing." Reading her words of wisdom and condescension leaves one with an irresistible impulse (isn't that a defense in this court?) to find a four-wheel-drive vehicle, head up to her perfectly trimmed lawn in Connecticut or wherever, with its precise quarter-inch of snow, and cut some good-sized doughnuts in it. But not without first rolling her perfectly sculpted trees. Here on this tropical November morn, I should be doing my best to sound as dignified as David Broder, bless his heart, but my mind is stuck in S. J. Perelman mode. The last time it obsessed like this was after seeing some French film that was supposed to elevate my ordinarily bourgeois sensibilities. It may have been Jules et Jim, a True Masterpiece of the Cinematic Art, so magnificently understated that you felt as if you were watching it in your sleep, or maybe under water. Or maybe it was an Ingmar Bergman film that consisted entirely of interlocking couples sitting around talking for hours, for days, maybe years . . . in Swedish. One of them always has a beard. Walking out of that little art movie theater in Columbia, Mo., back in college, or maybe out of the old Thalia on the Upper West Side when November was still what November should be, sighing a deep Gallic sigh and slipping on overcoats with everybody else who was supposed to be Deeply Moved and Forever Changed, I was beset by a, yes, irresistible impulse. I realized I had to get to the nearest bowling alley as soon as possible and start filling up on pepperoni pi~~~. Preferably washed down with some nationally distributed, totally pasteurized beer without a trace of charming local character. A Bud, maybe, or was it Schlitz back then? Anyway, I never wanted to hear about Jules et Jim again. They could go drown for all I cared, which is pretty much what happens in the film--in a typical example of French lakeside driving. If only they had taken Martha Stewart with them. Where is my mind? I could've sworn I had it a moment ago. Here it should be hard at work deciphering the latest presidential debate between A1 Gore and Bill Bradley. Talk about a Jules et Jim moment; either one could have played a title role in that delicate ballet, especially the ponderous Bradley. Or maybe he's out of an Ingmar Bergman talkie. As for the vice president, aka Poor A1, he's been positively caffeinated of late. He'd have to be toned down to fit the languorous pace of a Truffaut film, the kind that goes on for a millennium or two without anything of consequence actually happening. Or is that the Clinton administration? Meanwhile, wandering delirious somewhere out there in the November heat, like an out-ofbody Woody Allen, my mind keeps sending back uninhibited questions, as if it had been reading too many newspaper headlines. Questions like: Why did everybody wait for the state Senate to do something about Nick Wilson, as if simple decency had been delegated to elected of ficials? Isn't it everybody's job? Why didn't the whole state volunteer to help the guy empty his desk? Why did a whole state just sit around, shrug its shoulders, and act as if blatant political corruption was somebody else's business? What would Martha Stewart have done? Cover everything with a quarter-inch of spin? And why does my careening mind, whenever its gets out of its cage, sound eerily like the paper's correspondent from the avant-garde, Werner Trieschmann, only without the talent? Is it because the news has merged with the theater of the absurd? Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Trip the light fantastic Date: 11/30/99 Category: News Page: B1 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BENJAMIN KRAIN Mike Browning strings lights down a 1 OO-foot pole on what will be a giant Christmas tree on the state Capitol grounds. Workers were preparing two trees, part of a light display sponsored by Jennings Osborne, which will illuminate the state Capitol on Saturday night after the annual Christmas Parade through downtown Little Rock.

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