Tag: Butler Banner Winter 2024

The recent Academy Awards celebration put me in mind of the many movies filmed in—or made about—Arkansas, if only because while the state has sent forth a number of talented people who have been nominated for—and won—Oscars, the state itself has generally not been significantly represented on Oscar night.

Billy Bob Thornton received an Oscar for Sling Blade,

I’m just starting to recover from the three busy days I spent in the Research Room of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art late last year.

When I applied for the 2023 David Stricklin Fellowship, I listed about fifty collections that seemed likely to have something to do with my research topic: the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas (and eastern Oklahoma).

Some years back, my wife read about the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, which translates literally as “Christmas book flood” and entails giving and receiving new books on Christmas Eve. She liked the idea of this, and so each year we go to our local independently owned bookstore a few days before Christmas and try to find a book for each other.

The neighborhood surrounding what now is Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior High School has historically been predominantly Black. Until the early twentieth century, when restricted additions began being developed in Little Rock, the city’s neighborhoods were not rigidly segregated by race, but certain areas such as the “East End,” the “South End,” and the neighborhood around Dunbar always were more Black than white.

When posed with the question of an Arkansas-related blog post topic for Valentine’s Day, the rural community of Romance in White County came to mind. As you may know, the town of Romance gets quite a bit of attention during the Valentine month of February, with the local post office being the hot spot.

Even long after its conclusion, the Civil War has remained a central theme in discussions surrounding the politics of remembrance, with its familiar tropes persisting to this day. While each period has seen its own debate over the legacy of the Civil War, the issue took on unprecedented prominence in 2019 amidst the wave of Black Lives Matter protests.

In the fall of 2022, CALS community liaison Jessica McDaniel and community outreach archivist Danielle Afsordeh met to discuss McDaniel’s vision for a Black Family Expo. The idea for the expo came from McDaniel’s own family history. Her grandmother’s butter churn was proudly displayed in her mother’s home, as a reminder of her family’s history in the South and the legacy of her ancestors.

An early friend of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Bob Cowie, founder of Cowie Wine Cellars, once admonished me for saying something to the effect of Arkansans should only drink Arkansas wines. At the time, early in my tenure at the EOA, I had embraced a somewhat patriotic fervor when it comes to the state,

Happy New Year!

Wow – I have so many things to tell you about! I know that your time and attention are valuable, so I’ll touch only on the high spots.

Our new building-mates have settled in well. Mini-Main is in full swing – you can browse, pick up holds,

Throughout the Central Arkansas Library System, you’ll see art nearly everywhere you look: in galleries, on the walls, and in progress. CALS offers exhibition galleries in the Roberts Library and elsewhere. It also actively collects and exhibits works by artists working and living in Arkansas and has a permanent collection of art that it displays throughout the buildings and grounds of its various libraries.