It was a smart move on the part of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau to be one of the sponsors of last night’s taping of the NBC “Holiday on Ice” special at the Verizon Arena in North Little Rock. Right there next to the ice was a banner promoting the website www.LittleRock.com. It will be seen [...]

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I’ve written about Memphis before. It’s a city where I spent a lot of time in my job with the Delta Regional Authority and a city I’ve always enjoyed visiting. It’s a city blessed with that great location on the Mississippi River and a fascinating history. It also has been a city cursed in recent decades [...]

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In an earlier post, I mentioned the breakfast I shared with Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough, the president of Philander Smith College. During the course of our breakfast conversation, Dr. Kimbrough talked about his upbringing in Atlanta and the effect that the Atlanta University Center has had on that city. The Atlanta University Center consists of historically black [...]

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It was with great delight that I picked up Saturday’s Wall Street Journal and found a half-page spread on Eureka Springs. The article appeared in a special section on retirement planning and living. Eureka Springs simply could not have received better publicity than this. This article will be read by exactly the kind of people the town should be [...]

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Saturday was a marvelous day for football. The weather was more like what you would expect to find in late September rather than the middle of November. In case you’ve forgotten, it can get awfully cold in Fayetteville for a night game in the middle of November. This past Saturday night, however, I never put my [...]

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In late September, I wrote a column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about what the Arkansas Arts Center means to our state. I referred to the opening of the “World of the Pharaohs” exhibition as a high-water mark in the 50-year history of what’s now the arts center. This exhibition was brought to Little Rock by Warren and Harriet [...]

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There was a time when tourism promoters in Arkansas would refer to it as the “flaming fall review,” the changing of the colors in the Ouachita Mountains, the Ozark Mountains and other parts of the state. A sure sign of autumn in Arkansas is seeing the charter buses filled with retired people from places like Texas and Oklahoma, [...]

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No one denies that the continued growth of the institutions of higher education that call this area home is key to the future of Little Rock and Central Arkansas. In Pulaski County, however, the conversation too often ends after discussing the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and [...]

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Finally, the University of Arkansas didn’t let us down in an SEC game. We had hopped aboard the bandwagon and picked the Hogs against both Georgia and Ole Miss. That was a mistake. For some reason, we picked Arkansas again against South Carolina. This time, the Razorbacks came through. The Ol’ Ball Coach just ain’t what he used [...]

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God bless Henry Allen of the Washington Post. We don’t normally editorially endorse physical violence at Southern Fried, but the story of Henry Allen’s fight in the Post newsroom a week ago is the best story we’ve read all week. Here’s what happened on that final Friday in October: Veteran features editor Herny Allen punched one of [...]

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