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Field Trips and FOMO: Ten Months on the EOA Media Beat
If you have had the pleasure of reading our February blog post A New Face at the EOA, Alongside Older Ones, you know that I had the honor of taking over for the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas’s previous media editor, Michael Keckhaver (a.k.a. Sterno). Sterno left behind a legacy of nearly twenty years of work, including several brilliant images for our April Fool’s Day posts, not to mention the thousands of media to accompany the serious entries. In the February blog post, EOA editor Guy Lancaster wrote: “We’ll let Starr introduce herself and update everyone on EOA media happenings a little farther down the line, maybe when she finally realizes exactly what she’s gotten herself into.” As I have officially reached the ten-month mark here at the EOA, I’d say that time has come.
When I was brought onto the team, I was immediately excited at the thought of being a part of this project. While I had used the EOA before as a resource while studying at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, I was unfamiliar with much of the state’s unique history. In the office, I found myself bombarded with clever references, jokes, and nods to things that went far above my head. Yet here I was with the responsibility to help teach history through the visual medium alongside a team of highly knowledgeable professionals. This inexperience was accompanied by a shocking confession: I am not an Arkansan.
Although I have been in the state since 2019 and briefly lived in northwestern Arkansas during my early teen years, I was born and raised in eastern Oklahoma. This fact led to an intense case of FOMO (fear of missing out) and urgency to get to know everything I could about the twenty-fifth state.
The first step in this process was to learn the fundamentals. Luckily, there was a fantastic online resource at my fingertips. I spent time looking through the EOA’s Arkansas overview and time period entries as foundational texts; the EOA staff also supplied me with many books and links to their entry recommendations. Literary delights like Charlie May Simon’s memoir Straw in the Sun and Carolyn Gray LeMaster’s A Corner of the Tapestry: A History of the Jewish Experience in Arkansas, 1820s–1990s are among my favorite works for understanding some of the various communities and cultural experiences of Arkansans. That said, I still have a sizeable reading list (and a growing personal collection of Arkansas-related books, pictured in the header image of this post) and much, much more to learn.
After some studying, I started taking field trips. In March, I received a tour of Little Rock, where I took pictures while learning about the city’s historic neighborhoods, monuments, buildings, and eateries. Some of the most memorable spots from this trip include the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Historic Arkansas Museum, Cathedral of St. Andrew, Arkansas State Archives, and State Capitol building. While driving through the city, I picked up on a popular phrase used daily among our staff: “We have an entry on that!” With over 8,000 entries and more in the chamber, it is no wonder that has become our slogan.
While I am still far from calling myself an expert, I think I can properly describe myself as an Arkansas history and culture enthusiast. While the information both on our website and in other state resources appears endless, I enjoy the aspect of learning something new with every entry, picture, and blog post.
My favorite part of the job (just as my predecessor told me it would) has become my field trip days where I get to leave the office, with camera and notes in hand, and travel to gather media for our entries. Most recently, I have taken college tours, captured images of street signs, and hunted down a spot to buy (and photograph!) fried pickle spears. Perhaps in a later blog post I will share more about the basics of our media editing process and plans for the future.
Today, I will choose sentimentality. I had a professor who, like me, had moved to Arkansas as a young adult. He would often begin his semester introductions with something along the lines of “after all this time, I think I can finally start telling people that I’m from Arkansas.” While I am far from that point, I have begun looking forward to the day when I can say the same.
By Starr Carr, media editor of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas
