Forgot about this when we were discussing Alabama: Buy a Meter. One in four households in Hale County is not connected to a municipal water system and do not have access to clean water. The people behind Project M worked with Rural Studio and HERO Housing Resource Center and started this campaign to raise awareness and funds to help the residents in Hale County.
The project was started on July 2, 2007. I heard about it later that month and donated $50 to the project. Now, a little over a year later, they have reached about 30% of the goal ($127,500) - and unfortunately I cannot find any info or updates on the project (you can still contribute here).
Now looking back at the project, I’m baffled that this kind of problem was not addressed by the local government, and I wonder if it would’ve been more effective if the effort was spent on, say, getting signatures for a petition to the county governance, or making the campaign about how tax money is spent and budget distributed. Of course, this is easy for me, sitting in my living room, to say, but I also wish that some sort of newsletter or blog was set up, so that donors can keep up with the project and help spread the word.
We’re on our 4th state and so far, all the names of the states can be traced back to the Native Americans (you know the people who used to roam on this great land until the Europeans came and…). So what happened to the Native Americans? I know the history ain’t pretty but we weren’t sure exactly what happened. We consulted with the all-knowing Google and we found out about the Indian Removal Act (1830). Apparently around early 19th century, Americans were hungry for land, and the president at the time, Andrew Jackson, did what any good American President would do - he past a law and ethnically cleansed the Native American tribes by ordering them to move west. In total, the Jackson administration moved thousands of Native Americans and opening up 25 million acres of lands to white settlement and to slavery. And for that achievement, Andrew Jackson gets to have his pretty face on our twenty dollar bill.
In its Brown v. Board of Education decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that state laws that established segregated schools are unconstitutional. On September 4, 1957, nine black students tried to enter the Little Rock Central High School - they are known today as the Little Rock Nine. Then governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the entrance of the nine young students. Three weeks later, the nine finally got into the school, escorted by units of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, ordered by good ol’ Dwight.
Sometimes, you just can’t leave it to the States to handle things. Heaven forbid that John McCain were to win in November, you can be sure he, or Palin, will appoint some Supreme Court judge and overturn Roe v. Wade, and leave the decision up to the State. The same will happen to affirmative action and gay marriage, and the conservatives of America will keep their goodol’Americantradition alive.
Incidentally, while the Little Rock Nine were entering the high school, protestors outside the school chanted “Two, four, six, eight…We ain’t gonna integrate!” You can disagree with the 1960s skin heads, but you must admit that it’s quite a clever chant - far more catchier than their modern day counterpart’s “Drill baby, Drill!”
Before we go any further with Arkansas, let’s established one thing first: Arkansas is pronounced as Arkan-saw, and not ar-Kansas. This pronunciation is not to be taken lightly: it has been made into a law by the state legislature in 1881.
Whereas, confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings.
Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final “s” silent, the “a” in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of “a” in “man” and the sounding of the terminal “s” is an innovation to be discouraged.
It’ll be a while before we can have a dog of our own, so for now, we’re perfectly content just looking. Video above is a clip from an upcoming Valentino documentary, via Scout Holiday.
The dutch oven is the official cooking vessel of Arkansas. I’ve never seen one of these in person, only time I’ve witnessed one in action was on tv, the Food Network I think. Arkansans (or Arkansawyers) take this heritage pretty seriously.
What can come out of this big metal pot? Arkansan dishes include corn-bread, baked stuffed wild duck, stewed chicken, candied sweets, and jelly pie. My stomach’s growling just imagining all this.
They appreared in the spring of 1991, suddenly and in great numbers, like dandelions colonizing a meadow: thousands of green bumper stickers with white letters reading “Speak Up for Decency.” It was not long before a response emerged: thousands of yellow bumper stickers, designed according to the same template, but this time reading “Speak Up for Liberty.” Soon you found as many of these on the road as you did of the originals. Car for car there were probably a few more Decency supporters in the city, but sticker for sticker the two were running at a dead heat, since some cars sported multiple Liberty stickers — it wasn’t remarkable to see as many as a dozen papered across the back of a van — while most the cars with Decency stickers featured only one. (State by State, pg. 36)
I’ve done quite a bit of searching on the web and can’t find a single image of these bumper stickers. If you any of you out there has an image of one, please let us know!
