It’s around this time every year that the noise in Arkadelphia quietens as hundreds of college students leave town for the summer. We appreciate the commerce our revolving door of students provide for the local economy, but we also look forward to the peace and quiet. It sounds like that won’t be happening this year. The past several days we’ve seen pictures on social media from friends who’ve captured the Brood XIX cicadas that are expected to be making some noise this spring. The good news for Arkansas is that it will play host to only the 13-year cicada rather than the double-emergence of it and the 17-year Brood XIII. The double-emergence will happen in northern states, such as Illinois, where it’s really going to be loud. Still, the 13-year cicada in Arkansas will have some company this spring from other cicada species, so we can probably forget about that sans-college-kids peace and quiet we had been longing for.
There are 13 petition drives currently under way in Arkansas. That quantity of citizen-led petitions tells us something is askew at our state Capitol. Among these is a pair of petitions titled the Arkansas Government Disclosure Amendment and Arkansas Government Disclosure Act. We’ve been volun-told that it’s our duty as a news publisher to spearhead the local effort to collect signatures. We and our print counterpart at The Southern Standard each have petitions, and we’ll do what we’re able to aid in this vital endeavor.
This week last year we reported that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders paid a visit to Gum Springs in support of Veolia’s upcoming expansion. In the days and weeks after Sanders’s visit, the plant drew statewide attention when a massive kiln made a weeklong trek along South Arkansas highways to be delivered to its final destination. CLICK HERE to read the story about the governor’s visit.
We took a chance late Sunday to further emulate our friend and mentor Mike McNeill at magnoliareporter.com, who hosts a Storm Watch Party on social media when the weather turns sketchy. And we’re glad we did: our Facebook followers communicated very well any severe weather, storm damage, power outages and other weather-related events — and it was happening in real time and on a hyper-local level. We’ll definitely continue these.
A little late to write about this, but it’s worth documenting that we saw the Capital One-sponsored blimp featuring NBA great Charles Barkley’s likeness. We put eyes on this airship on Sunday, April 21, as we crossed the Ouachita River bridge headed southeast on Highway 7/8. It appeared as though it was just over the tree-line of the rice fields, possibly over Clear Lake, when in reality it was flying west over the Manchester community. We know this because a friend posted a great video she had taken from directly beneath the blimp. We last saw it as we passed Dalark, and it looked as though it might be flying over the Clark/Dallas county line. We do know that the “Chuck Blimp” — at speeds of 35 mph — flew from Nashville, Tennessee, to Phoenix, Arizona, during the NCAA March Madness. Why it was flying westwardly in South Arkansas a few weeks later, we don’t know. But we saw it!
A human life is worth more than $40,000.
We had a phone call last week from a publisher in Orlando, Florida, who came across our website and wanted to talk shop about being an online-only publication. We talked for several minutes about the content we publish and where we source our news. After 26 volumes, he is considering ditching his print product for a digital one. We will offer him more trade secrets in exchange for room and board and a pair of Disney World tickets.
Joel Phelps is publisher and editor of arkadelphian.com. Opinions expressed in this column are his own. Contact him at editor@arkadelphian.com.
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