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February 12, 2004

Vol 2 • No 4

School or scam? - Home is where the school is

Before last fall, the state's nose was firmly out of the business of educating Meredith O'Hara's three daughters.

George Bush calls for protection

Give George W. Bush credit. Who would have dreamed that he could get by with a political maneuver so brazen as putting Laurence Silberman in charge of an "independent" commission to investigate the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war? The country should be boiling with outrage but hardly a whimper was heard.

Fishing for a nature center

It's quite a fish story, the landing of the $5 million Central Arkansas Nature Center, an enterprise that's proved as hard to hold onto as a big, wiggling, slippery largemouth bass.

Can Evanescence beat Grammy jinx?

By winning Best New Artist in the Grammy Awards, you're invariably linked to a few other artists who were one-year wonders. Christopher Cross, Bruce Hornsby, Paula Cole, Marc Cohn, Arrested Development and Hootie and the Blowfish are among the musicians or groups who exploded onto the pop scene with huge-selling debut albums and were duly honored in the Grammys, but weren't able to follow up the sudden success.

One master's report

If only I'd been named a "master" to propound officially on whether the state legislature was up to court-ordered snuff in the public school reform it adopted over the last two contentious months. This would be my report to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Better than expected

In its final days, the Arkansas legislature did more to help education than most people expected. It raised teachers' salaries, consolidated 59 of the state's smallest school districts, provided $40 million for pre-kindergarten classes for poor children, ordered advanced courses to be taught in all schools by 2008, started a program to repair dilapidated buildings and required testing and tracking each student year-to-year.

18-inch pastorals

Out driving the other Sunday and came upon a pretty scene of cattle grazing in winter pasture. Couldn't account for the sudden feeling of pleasure and well-being. Thought about it a while and decided it must have been primal. Many generations of cave man are layered into this flesh and bone, and lots of guys who used up their lives chasing grub must have been gratified to find themselves wheeling unexpectedly into the presence of those hundred great docile repositories of walking sirloin. As if to say, Me and mine may never have to go hungry again.

Questions asked

It is the custom of Arkansas government to give unquestioning deference to corporate entreaties. I tend to be skeptical, maybe overly so.
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