This Side of Seven: 30 Years, and Finally This spring, two former law enforcement officers met privately with Gov. Asa Hutchinson at his office inside the state Capitol. Both made the same request: Set Lowana Carroll free. They weren’t the first to make the request, and Hutchinson wasn’t the first governor to hear it.…
This Side of Seven: And The Winner Is … Anybody up for a road trip to Fargo? On June 25, the National Federation of Press Women will hold its annual communications conference in North Dakota. I’m invited because I was a part of a team effort at the Department of Human Services that…
This Side of Seven: Puppy Love “I’ve got a surprise.” Our 20-year-old daughter was coming home from Fayetteville with her boyfriend, and that is how she prefaced her arrival. I mean, there are certainly more alarming things she could have said. “I have something to tell you,” or, “We need to talk,” come…
This Side of Seven: The Test In school, tests are scheduled. You know what to study, you strive to understand the material, you know when you’ll be tested, and then you get the chance to show off (hopefully) how much you have learned. In life, tests are often pop quizzes. For example,…
This Side of Seven: Defying the Odds This spring, Dylan Johnston will graduate from Harding University. But unlike many of his classmates, he will enter the workforce with no college debt. He has paid for his car in full. And at the age of 22, he no longer pays rent; he pays a mortgage.…
This Side of Seven: There’s No Place Like Home My dad, Joel, had a side hustle long before there was such a term. As a teacher at the local tech college, he had his summers off. So he and another teacher, Dan Richter, decided to build homes. Starting in 1975, P&R Construction built…
This Side of Seven: Arkansas’ First School Shooter As I sit down to write this, authorities in Michigan are sifting through the death and emotional wreckage caused by another school shooting. Four students were killed and another seven students were injured at Oxford High School, north of Detroit. For many Arkansans, hearing…
This Side of Seven: Southern Heroes One Saturday last summer, my wife, Mary Carol, and I went antiquing in Hot Springs. This was about the same time that statues erected to memorialize or glamorize Southern military leaders and the Confederacy were coming down across the nation in the wake of the death of George…
This Side of Seven: The Final Say If, during the course of this pandemic, you have given thought to a world without you in it, you are not alone. Death has been all around us these past 18 months. There are the daily and running COVID-19 death tallies. There are the masks,…
This Side of Seven: Hitting the Right Notes It was the spring of 1986, and there was an intense battle taking place inside New Richmond High School’s Little Theater. Director Mary Finley was agonizing over the casting of several key roles in her planned production of Fiddler on the Roof, including the male…
