Sunday, November 23, 2008
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
An evaluation of the run-off candidates for mayor of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The election is Tuesday the 25th, and early voting is under way. Though not today: The courthouse is closed.
Brick never makes endorsements. Still, comments I’ve avoided should be made. The incumbent Dan Coody wants a third four-year term and faces [...]
My Beloved and I celebrated the first cool weekend in months with a brief, tame adventure: to see the progress of the Fayetteville trails by bicycle. Lengths are now connected that weren’t before. We hit only a few incomplete patches along the Scull Creek and Gordon Long paths.
Makes you wonder about Springdale. Maybe others can [...]
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The story of the June 14, 1986, croquet match played by former Arkansas Attorney General Steve Clark was so memorable to me I did not bother to check the facts when I summarized it last week. I had documents, I kept them in a file — a real manila paper folder, not an icon on [...]
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Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
The race for mayor of Fayetteville seems to have a full roster although the filing period is Aug. 6-26. A surprise candidate or two would be welcome, especially if they’re capable sorts. All of the announced candidates could be competent. While this is no endorsement — though a pooh-bah I do [...]
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Coincidences are happy flukes, I say, maybe rarely signs of a higher significance. My Beloved, true to our tomayto-tomahto nature, calls nearly all of them synchronicities. It was over the weekend when MB had a cartoon light bulb flash over her head: We need a cell-phone tower in the yard, collect rent and escape the [...]
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We’ve had a finch feeder — the kind with slits for tiny niger seed — in the yard for years, and, until Saturday, the thistle (what niger had been called) was so rarely sampled that it grew mold. To prevent another violation of the Washington County Health Department restaurant regs (Section 8H, fly-by, not Section [...]
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This tale is in honor of Robert Benchley, on account of the day. For those of you who don’t know much about him, Benchley’s nickname in his Hollywood days was Dick Cheney.
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Saturday I rushed into the yard for some early spring gardening. My neighbor had been out two [...]
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Things are tough all over so what am I doing, about to criticize non-profits I favor? The endeavors — literature, fine art, serious music — are the sorts of things that keep me rooted here, but some of their staff members could use some free advice, for what it’s worth.
1. The literary bimonthly Oxford American, [...]
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Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
In the last couple of weeks, American politics took a big turn — all of it, from national to state to local.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gave a speech to explain how he has devoted his life to acting on inclusive feelings of love and harmony while following the ministry of [...]
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
This is a “found poem.” That’s like “found art,” where the artist roots around an alley or someplace and puts what he finds into some kind of combination. Here are lines — spelling, capitalization and punctuation intact — found:
In My Inbox,
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