Jack Schnedler
Stories by Jack
Union wary of school with communist ties
posted: 06/26/2011 4:43 a.m. Discuss
Van Hawkins’ book Plowing New Ground: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union and Its Place in Delta History includes a topic not covered at the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum — the union’s wary on-and-off relationship with Commonwealth College, a Mena-based institution known for its communist inclinations.
Way ahead of its time
posted: 06/26/2011 4:19 a.m. Discuss
It’s an unlikely museum in a state where only 4 percent of workers belong to a labor union, and “socialism” is pretty much a dirty word.
Farkleberry Follies encore is a rich, ribald video romp
posted: 06/12/2011 5:12 a.m. Discuss
A dozen years after its final live performance, the Farkleberry Follies is taking a curtain call of sorts this week.
Would you believe? We have 175 top attractions in the state
posted: 06/05/2011 4:42 a.m. Comment 1
It would risk giving offense to kid around about the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which Arkansas and other states South and North are marking this year through 2015 with an array — grouches might call it a plethora — of events in an aptly serious vein.
Historian’s output truly encyclopedic
posted: 05/29/2011 3:33 a.m. Discuss
If all the entries Michael B. Dougan has written for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture were printed out and bound between hardcovers, the result would be a good-size book of 300 pages or so.
Taking a chance on Pecs - and winning
posted: 05/29/2011 3:04 a.m. Discuss
It requires a certain leap of faith to schedule three days of a European vacation in a city you’ve barely heard of.
ART: Vivid Delta visions
posted: 05/22/2011 3:40 a.m. Discuss
To the passing eye, there’s little in the landscape of the Arkansas Delta’s northeastern reaches to spark any burst of artistic creativity.
Arkansauce: Come ’n’ get it!
posted: 03/22/2011 4:09 a.m. Comment 1
To judge from average girth alone, it would be fair to conclude that Arkansans are world-class eaters — and quite likely a receptive audience for a magazine focused on the state’s food culture. That’s the premise of a lively new publication with a pun-flavored name: Arkansauce: The Journal of Arkansas Foodways.
Spring flings
posted: 03/20/2011 1:52 a.m. Discuss
As the calendar flips officially to spring today, festivals of the vernal variety are looming across Arkansas. A number of these popular annual events have to do with “the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la” — to swipe a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric. We’re talking tulips, magnolias, wildflowers and the like — which, as Nanki-Poo sings in The Mikado, “Breathe promise of merry sunshine, as we merrily dance and we sing. We welcome the hope that they bring, of a summer of roses and wine.”
From behind the wire
posted: 03/06/2011 4:51 a.m. Discuss
For Rosalie Gould, this is “as though I’m losing one of my children after 30 years.” For the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, this is a major acquisition advancing its mission to preserve records covering all facets of the state’s history.
Art: The play’s the thing
posted: 01/23/2011 2:56 a.m. Discuss
This winter’s jolliest art exhibition in the Little Rock area is on frolicsome display through Feb. 20 at the Arkansas Arts Center.
$600,000 match within Rep’s grasp
posted: 01/16/2011 3:29 a.m. Discuss
As its matching-grant finish line looms, Arkansas Repertory Theatre is racing full tilt to raise the remaining money in a $6 million capital fund drive nearly accomplished in the face of the Great Recession.
Rooms with a VIEW
posted: 12/26/2010 3:09 a.m. Discuss
One excellent reason to travel is the chance to gain fresh perspectives on the world and your place in it.
BOOKS Maps, facts, photos fill Arkansas atlas
posted: 12/19/2010 4:23 a.m. Discuss
Here’s a hot fact to help ward off winter’s official arrival on Tuesday: The highest temperature ever recorded in Arkansas was 120 degrees, in the Franklin County town of Ozark on Aug. 10, 1936.
Gizmo gifts
posted: 12/11/2010 4:10 a.m. Discuss
A half-century back, my seventh-grade class at Immanuel Lutheran School in St. Charles, Mo., learned that our teacher was giving his wife an ironing board for Christmas. That seemed pathetically unromantic, and Mr. Hartmann was the butt of our juvenile japery for several days.
Tour of historic homes helps church help others
posted: 11/28/2010 4:33 a.m. Discuss
Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church will bustle Dec. 5 with a lot more than the regular worship service and Sunday School classes.
This voting puts authors on the line
posted: 10/10/2010 3:54 a.m. Discuss
Karl Marx and Milton Friedman would be an odd couple indeed.
And the nominees are ...
posted: 10/10/2010 3:28 a.m. Discuss
These are the candidates in the 17 categories of the Writer Election 2010 being conducted by the Central Arkansas Library System. Winners’ names will be displayed on the remodeled top floor of the Main Library.
Carry the Rock delves into football, race issues
posted: 10/03/2010 4:28 a.m. Discuss
It’s reasonable to ask what Little Rock’s last public lynching — the horrendous hanging, riddling with gunfire and incineration of a black man in 1927 — conceivably has to do with the 2007 season of Central High School’s football team.
John William McDermott
posted: 09/12/2010 6:09 a.m. Discuss
A total solar eclipse lured John McDermott to Angkor for the first time in 1995. That led to Little Rock-born McDermott’s total photographic immersion in the fabled temples of Cambodia’s vanished Khmer Empire, which flourished from the ninth to 13th centuries.
Well worth a dime
posted: 09/05/2010 5:57 a.m. Discuss
Back when a dime had vastly more purchasing power, in the later years of the Great Depression, three trailers outfitted as photography studios roamed the state, taking pictures of Arkansans for that then princely sum.
POP NOTES Allan who? Sherman’s parodies (oy vey!) return
posted: 09/05/2010 4:49 a.m. Discuss
Unless you happen to be of a certain age, the news that all eight of Allan Sherman’s Warner Bros. albums have been reissued as CDs will likely leave you asking blankly: “Allan who?” The release date of Tuesday, the day before Rosh Hashana begins at sundown, is no mere coincidence.
Are Massengill photos hiding in your closet?
posted: 09/05/2010 4:30 a.m. Discuss
Maxine Payne hopes that one offshoot of the “Making Pictures: Three for a Dime” exhibition will be the discovery of more snapshots made by the Massengill family at the end of the 1930s.
Broken yet buoyant
posted: 08/22/2010 6:31 a.m. Discuss
There are so many personal accounts by victims of the genocidal Nazi onslaught against Europe’s Jews that it’s hard to find a publisher for yet another book on the subject. There are enough, in fact, that a project called Holocaust Memoir Digest has been created to summarize the most notable among them.
Russian Revelation
posted: 08/08/2010 5:12 a.m. Discuss
For anyone who traveled widely in the old Soviet Union, as wife Marcia and I did in the 1970s and ’80s, a visit to Russia in 2010 unfurls an array of flabbergasting changes.
MUSEUMS: Center visitors feel force of ‘Nature Unleashed’
posted: 07/18/2010 4:07 a.m. Discuss
It’s not quite like being in a hurricane. For one thing, there are no lashing torrents of rain.
Ex-Book Guy to look under covers for gems
posted: 07/04/2010 6:49 a.m. Discuss
When wizard appraiser Allan Stypeck first came to Little Rock with The Book Guys radio show a decade ago, he was dubious about finding literary treasures in central Arkansas.
‘Joanelle’ moved here to volunteer at Heifer
posted: 06/27/2010 6:10 a.m. Discuss
Seven years ago, Joan Leland moved halfway across the country to Arkansas after a lifetime in Massachusetts, just so she could start volunteering at Heifer Ranch.
RETROSPECTIVE Ill-starred ‘Pharaohs’ merits last-minute visit
posted: 06/20/2010 4:45 a.m. Discuss
It is well-known by now that the widely heralded “World of the Pharaohs” has turned into a financial and public-relations debacle for the Arkansas Arts Center.
BOOK REVIEW If not quite Proust-worthy, Little Rock memoir is a gem
posted: 05/09/2010 4:18 a.m. Discuss
A book-jacket blurb by the late Donald Harington lauds the “eidetic” memory of A. Cleveland Harrison, whose newly published memoir is titled A Little Rock Boyhood: Growing Up in the Great Depression.
Vets of Korean War in May spotlight here
posted: 05/02/2010 5:40 a.m. Discuss
This figures to be the month when a statewide initiative, described as “unparalleled and groundbreaking” by one of its organizers, registers more clearly on the radar screen of Arkansans.
Embracing our inner hillbilly
posted: 04/18/2010 6:46 a.m. Discuss
As they explore the Old State House Museum’s lively new exhibit, visitors will come upon a 1969 photograph of Orval Faubus posing with his second wife at Dogpatch USA in front of a statue of Gen. Jubilation T. Cornpone.
POP NOTES: ‘Vatican Rag,’ many more lively Lehrer oldies
posted: 04/11/2010 5:27 a.m. Discuss
Tom Lehrer turned 82 on Friday. Read no further if your reaction to that news is, “Tom who?” But if “Wow!” is your response, there’s all the more reason to celebrate, thanks to the release this week of The Tom Lehrer Collection.
One for the books
posted: 04/04/2010 5:13 a.m. Discuss
Doomsayers in this digital era are suggesting that the twilight of the printed word has begun to descend upon us, perhaps foreshadowing a new cultural Dark Age.
Springing forth
posted: 03/21/2010 5:55 a.m. Discuss
Some of us newspaper types are hypocrites when it comes to festivals. We give them a lot of printed coverage, but we’re personally inclined to be fest-averse. We have them down as too crowded, too sweaty, too down-home for our rarified tastes.
BOOK REVIEW Fictional wartime tales give flavor of state history
posted: 02/14/2010 3:49 a.m. Discuss
Over Arkansas’ 174 years as a state, from the Mexican War to today’s conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, myriad Arkansans have gone into combat while their families back home provided loving support.
Prefab love notes aid the tongue-tied
posted: 02/09/2010 12:45 a.m. Discuss
For guys, especially, it can be tough to speak of love.
Paris perennials
posted: 01/24/2010 4:56 a.m. Discuss
As always, Napoleon’s Tomb lay irresistibly in wait to lure this history-addled American in Paris. On a recent 28th visit to the French capital, I returned yet again to gaze upon the grandiose sarcophagus of the emperor who conquered much of Europe two centuries ago.
McKinnon to spark Create Little Rock
posted: 01/24/2010 3:26 a.m. Discuss
Film actor, screenwriter, director and producer Ray McKinnon is set to take on yet another role Thursday as featured speaker for the unveiling of Create Little Rock, a program devised by the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce “to retain, develop and attract a talented, creative and competitive work force” here.
BOOK REVIEW Students go Beyond Central
posted: 01/10/2010 3:06 a.m. Discuss
Five decades after the Central High School desegregation crisis that for a while branded Little Rock as a sinkhole of racial intolerance, a new book created by today’s Central students filters memories of those tempestuous times through a 21st-century prism.
Permanent collections are the bedrock of museums in central Arkansas
posted: 11/15/2009 3:14 a.m. Discuss
In football terms, special exhibits are the glamorous quarterbacks of the museum world. They’re the ballyhooed stars, sweeping into town for a temporary stay and grabbing the headlines, as with the exemplary “World of the Pharaohs” show now in the limelight at the Arkansas Arts Center.
Recipes, ballad spice book for state’s ‘Rhubarbarians’
posted: 10/25/2009 5:15 a.m. Discuss
It’s almost impossible to grow rhubarb in central Arkansas. So how to explain the Little Rock provenance of a jovial book packed with 50 recipes employing this tart and sometimes disrespected vegetable?
Downtown then and now
posted: 10/18/2009 7:03 a.m. Discuss
Main Street in so many places across Arkansas, as elsewhere in America, is no longer the vital heart of the community — although there are happy exceptions to that sad fact of the evolving urban landscape.
Buehler pulling strings for Power of the Purse
posted: 10/18/2009 4:04 a.m. Discuss
Lisa Buehler, serving her third straight year as chairman of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas’ Power of the Purse luncheon, exemplifies that organization’s avowed mission “to promote philanthropy among women and to help women and girls achieve their full potential.”
Arthur's: Steak at any price
posted: 09/03/2009 4:44 a.m. Discuss
The printed menu at Arthur's Prime Steakhouse highlights in bold red type "Japanese Kobe - the ultimate beef experience... (upon availability - by the ounce, market price)."
The scoop on ice cream
posted: 08/23/2009 6:16 a.m. Discuss
In Stanley Kubrick's marvelously mad movie classic, Dr. Strangelove, Sterling Hayden's delusional Gen. Jack D. Ripper sincerely believes that part of the Communist Cold War conspiracy against America involves fluoridation.
'56 saw Little Rock face tough choices: 28 flavors
posted: 08/23/2009 3:59 a.m. Discuss
The most familiar icecream chain of post-World War II America arrived in central Arkansas in August 1956. That's when Howard Johnson brought its 28 flavors to a new restaurant and motor lodge on University Avenue just south of Asher Avenue, along what was then the recently completed New Benton Highway.
Ciao sets table for frugal or flush
posted: 08/13/2009 5:06 a.m. Discuss
One dish chalked on the lunchtime specials board at Ciao Italian Restaurant could induce sticker shock - or an assumption that the posted price is a typographical error.
Union taps tastily into the tapas trend
posted: 07/30/2009 5:58 a.m. Discuss
A tapas place like the new Union Restaurant on Old Cantrell Road is a promising venue for dithering diners who have a hard time deciding what to order.
CHEAP EATS: Tasty Cafe@Heifer portions could feed a village
posted: 07/16/2009 4:52 a.m. Discuss
A dash of whimsy seasons the menu of Cafe@Heifer in Murphy Keller Education Center, the museum of recently opened Heifer Village on the far eastern fringe of Little Rock's River Market District.
