Tag: Arkansas

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Italian Cream Cheese Cake

I could have entitled this article some Betty Sugg stories.

Working for the Government

I worked for the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) for around six and half years stationed at the local health unit – most folks simply called it the County Health Department – in Crawford County, Arkansas. Crawford County is just across the Arkansas River from Ft. Smith and part of the county shares a border with Oklahoma. I was County Sanitarian, aka Health Inspector, the whole time I was there. Yeah, I inspected restaurants, but the duties of a County Sanitarian are much broader than that.

With the retirement of the other sanitarian, about a year and a half into my stint, I became Administrator of the local health unit. The ADH used a matrix system of management, one supervisor for your professional duties, and a different supervisor for your administrative responsibilities.  Essentially I was the office manager supervising administratively the nursing, clerical, sanitarian staff and other folks who traveled around to the various local health units.

A Co-worker

In an earlier article I made a passing reference to Italian cream cheese cake. This started my musings on a former co-worker, Continue reading “Italian Cream Cheese Cake”

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A Profligate, A Wastrel, A Dissipater


At times Señora is such a spendthrift.  She is attempting to convince me that I have maximized the utility of this particular pair of Sperry boat shoes.

Puts me in mind of a picture that was most likely put in the trash years ago.  I had a t-shirt commemorating Arkansas Razorback basketball that I wore for years when I jogged – in Arkansas.  It got to the point that there was no cotton left in the t-shirt. Just the base polyester weave, making it entirely see-through.  A picture was taken of me as I very reluctantly placed it ever so gently in the kitchen trash can.  I was thinking it still had a few more jogging miles in it.

Truth is I have a couple of other pairs of boat shoes that I purchased as I thought perhaps these were a little tacky to wear most places, nearly as bad as wearing a pair of house shoes to the supermarket.   Don’t tell Señora, but I did put them in the trash can today.  For some reason it had become almost impossible to keep rocks and dirt out of them.

And so they went.

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Strange Bedfellows

We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day this third Monday of January , the 17th, which started me thinking about an anecdote I have been telling for years.

In the fall of 1983, much against the desires and better judgment of my now ex-spouse, I weaseled – and weasel is the operative word – my way back into her abode after a very long separation.  I don’t remember exactly how long this particular separation had been, probably somewhere around 18 months. While we stayed together, more or less,  for another dozen years, the marriage had been a tumultuous relationship nearly from day one.  At one point in my life I spent a lot of time ruminating Continue reading “Strange Bedfellows”

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The South Will Rise Again?

Last time I went backpacking in rural Missouri, the American flag was everywhere.  Unfortunately I have come to view the flying of our national flag more an expression of nationalism than of patriotism.  And that scares me.

Last weekend I went backpacking in very rural Arkansas.  I say rural.  In order to get to the trail-head, I went down several small, paved, county roads, and finally turned on a dirt county road which I followed for miles before turning onto a forest service road.  I was officially in the boonies.

I had not noticed driving there Continue reading “The South Will Rise Again?”

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Oops

I went backpacking this weekend in Arkansas, down close to the Buffalo National River. This is a wonderful and beautiful area.  If you ever get the chance to visit there, do so.

I am driving there to meet my son and one of my brothers who are trekking with me.  I get a little south of Harrison, Arkansas and I realize that I need gas.  At this point I am getting very close to being in very rural Arkansas.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I lived in Arkansas for fourteen years, and I found many things to love about it. However, some of its reputation is deserved.

I pull into a run-down looking convenience store.  Sitting in front of the store is this snaggletooth woman somewhere between 40 and 65 years of age.  She is smoking a Continue reading “Oops”

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Against Football

against footballI heard the book, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond, being discussed on NPR:  It prompted the following comments.

I was never a huge football fan, but I did follow the Cowboys and OU football. The Cowboys I first became enamored with when we lived in New Jersey and they were a new NFL expansion team. Dallas was close to Oklahoma, and Oklahoma was one of the few touchstones I had in my young life as a rolling stone. It is difficult to live in Oklahoma and not root for the Sooners, or at least the OSU Cowboys.

Another reason that I feigned a large interest in football was because it was the manly thing to do. All my male peers seemed to love the game and to have something to discuss with them a basic knowledge of football current and past events was needed.

I had a brief decade in Arkansas where I was able to grow a little moss, and I became interested in Razorback sports. If you know nothing else about Arkansas know that they are Razorback crazy. You see the red hog everywhere you go in the state.

The winds of time changed, Continue reading “Against Football”

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Pit Bull Owners

On the back of some whomping big SUV, all across the back window was this:   If it ain’t PIT (then a outline drawing of a pit bull’s head)  It ain’t SHIT.

Rightly or wrongly pit bulls have been maligned.  I really do not understand why anyone would want one.  It is not my idea of a good pet.  Most of the stories you read or hear about dogs attacking/killing humans are pit bulls.

The bill board on the back of this vehicle pretty details the attitude of the owners of animals, in your face and not caring about other folks.  I am hoping it was the husband’s vehicle, because there was a sweet young thing driving it.   Sad part is it had Arkansas tags.  I do not see this sort of thing as helping the state’s image, which is already not the best.

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Obama, The Messiah, I don’t think so

I’ve never voted for a Republican, and I am having a hard time getting excited about Obama.  The media is fueling some of that lack of excitement.  They love to show Obama with some sort of halo around his head.  I do not believe him to be the Messiah or a saint.

I also got so tired of the depiction of Hillary as a bumpkin from Arkansas.  She is not a bumpkin nor is she from Arkansas.  If they were not doing that, they were painting her as a shrewish old woman.

Obviously, he has managed to woo the media and Clinton has managed to alienate them.  Or maybe it is as Paul Krugman suggests, racism is declining, but not misogyny.

I really wonder if having news 24×7 on multiple medias is really doing us a service.   Especially when they use such broad strokes.

Number 5 has been used in a multitude of news stories.

And now Michelle…

 

And the broad strokes to paint the Clintons as hillbillies. Well I know hillbillies and they are not hillbillies…to paraphrase someone.

Click on cartoon to see larger image 

Credit: Pat Oliphant