Why write more when my home page
will distract you from the real me.
E-mail me here: (written out to reduce spam) ben(at-sign)benpollock(dot)com
Holidays and Holy Days I’d like to thank the governor, the honorable Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for giving my colleagues in Arkansas state government and me Friday off, well, outside of first-responders and the like. Holiday? Actually, that was Thursday, Christmas, making this 26th of December similar to the day after Thanksgiving. That’s Black Friday, not […]
Top Ten Reasons the University of Arkansas Doesn’t Need to Find Places on Campus to Nail 500 Copies of One Translation of the Ten Commandments Editor’s Note by Ben Pollock, Local 965 vice president News item: “U of A Rolls Out Ten Commandments Displays,” Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Oct. 16, 2025, also reported by various local, […]
An Editor’s Note I don’t know when I began being paranoid about job security. I’d like to think it was working for newspaper editor John R. Starr from 1985 to his retirement in 1992, because if you just read his caustic columns, who could blame me. It’s likely to be my nature, from childhood. After […]
An Editor’s Note It’s incredible that no wag by now has given our era a name that sticks, goes viral. The announcements and actions coming out of Washington this year — with no sign of slowing — qualify for uniqueness. We came close in 2017-2021 to a singular name, but no go. Maybe that’s because […]
An Editor’s Note President Trump soon will sign a huge cut to federal public broadcast funding, which got congressional approval July 18, as The Associated Press reported, “Congress Approves Trump’s $9 Billion Cut to Public Broadcasting and Foreign Aid.” Of that, about $1.1 billion was earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that in turn […]
This frescoe at Pompeii shows a parrot pulling a chariot driven by a cricket. Credit Library of Congress
2 of 2. See 1. One of the most disturbing bits about President Trump’s rapid destaffing and defunding of federal agencies and programs is the silence. What about cable news channels and social media, they won’t shut up about it, you ask. What about the growing street protests and overflowing town hall meetings, whether Republican […]