Brick

Guardian Angels of Mercy II: Around 3:30 p.m. Mon­day 7 Jan­u­ary 2013, I’m dri­ving my wife and our two dogs in the Prius north on I-540 for cof­fee at a new place then a dog-walk. We’re a mile south of “Guardian Angels of Mercy I,” north of Ful­bright Express­way (mall exit), after the bend and …

The Tibetans — ter­ri­ers not peo­ple — Mani and Hop­per needed a vig­or­ous walk today. The humans’ leash sched­ules inter­sected once: me and morn­ing. I aimed my Prius, Kar-L, toward Wil­son Park. It’s empty, maybe not too odd going toward noon on a July Sat­ur­day, but to the west we saw an inline roller-skater and …

I am not mak­ing this up. Nor did I touch the dog or his pos­ses­sions. He did this. Our 4-year Tibetan ter­rier Mani, whom we’ve had three years, loves Hop­per, the stray young adult TT we adopted last Thanks­giv­ing week. Insep­a­ra­ble. They can quar­rel over toys, though. Mani is the alpha although Hop­per has 10 pounds …

There really was a hawk in our yard, I told My Beloved. She was out of town so this was on the phone. She believed me enough. After all, she’s the one who spot­ted the high nest this past spring, in an old oak in the back yard of the home next door. We occa­sion­ally …

Copy­right 2011 Ben S. Pol­lock The strongest pro­posal before the Arkansas Gen­eral Assem­bly to reap­por­tion the state’s four con­gres­sional dis­tricts involves a seri­ous attempt to ger­ry­man­der. The ques­tion before the body is what does the amphibi­ous ger­ry­man­der eat? House­flies — and votes. The aim is to divide the state into four roughly equal pop­u­la­tions. My North­west …

Attend­ing the musi­cal wake of Bruce D. Walker on Sun­day brought up a lot of sad­ness in the midst of so many cheer­ful tunes by local song­sters. Stand­ing in sev­eral of the eight cor­ners of George’s Majes­tic Lounge (front bar/stage and gar­den bar/stage) I saw danc­ing and clap­ping and heard hoots and whoops. Embrac­ing the …

Ear­lier this month the cable tele­vi­sion provider Cox Com­mu­ni­ca­tions changed the access to the com­mu­nity and gov­ern­ment access chan­nels here in North­west Arkansas. They sent a let­ter to cus­tomers (click for a PDF), and press releases to the news out­lets. They’d say changed the loca­tion, but what they did is limit the access. The show-off …

What hap­pens when a blog­ger, colum­nist or occa­sional writer daw­dles is the the topic either gets away, gets old or gets stolen. Hats off to col­league John Brum­mett. As of Nov. 2, Arkansas has three fresh amend­ments to the Arkansas Con­sti­tu­tion. That will make the 88th Amend­ment, 89th Amend­ment and 90th Amend­ment. I am bound …

A month ago, the Wal­ton Fam­ily Foun­da­tion offered money to Fayetteville’s Wal­ton Arts Cen­ter if it would build a sec­ond, larger audi­to­rium 35 miles north in Ben­tonville, rather than enlarge itself into a com­plex a la Lin­coln Cen­ter, with an accent. The idea had merit in some ways — the growth of the north­ern part …