War IS Politics

Today we woke to a couple of Trustees carrying ladders into the church back doors.  We’re parked out by the cemetery, remember? Tom and Paul were cleaning a filter in one of the video projectors in the worship center.  So I went in to say hi to the folks and met them, and Angel, the Day Care Director, and discovered no one knew we had been given permission to park for a couple of nights.

But when we told them the Administrator, Ella, had done so all was fine.  Even with Pastor Moss, who called us later on to check out everything.  In fact, they arranged to hook us up to their city water, and wanted to give us electricity but our 50 AMP cord apparently overloaded their outdoor circuit breaker even without any inside coach load so we left that go.  NICE PEOPLE here in Arkansas!  And indeed, everywhere we’ve been these many weeks.

To all our Tea Party and otherwise Republican friends, an apology. We had not thought we’d spend any time at the President Clinton Presidential Library while in Little Rock.  In fact, we had told our host Vicki Crockett while with her that we would not simply because for all the good he’d done politically for what he believed in, he had done worse to the office of the presidency itself on the personal level.  But today, we had to go. Why?

First, because one of our current hosts, Angel, the director of the Primrose UMC Day Care, asked us to tell her about the Chihully Glass display there for she could not get to see it. Second because Mona’s friend Nan said we should, and third because, no matter what you may think of Bill Clinton or his agendas politically he pretty much could get his agendas done and America did grow economically, and in the respect of the world, during his watch. Two things that have not happened since.

This was the first ever Presidential Library we have visited.  Perhaps they are all blatant sales pitches for the positive things their namesake has done.  But I think if Hillary decides to run for president in 2016 the Dems could probably get all they need to promote her campaign within these four very BIG walls and three floors.

And while it was addressed, his only extra marital affair mentioned in the library was the one that ended in impeachment, and acquittal. I had heard that there were limo tours available around the capital city where guides pointed out all the places he’d been accused of acting out affairs since he’d been Attorney General and Governor (4 terms) in Little Rock. However the Library docent I asked said he’d honestly never heard of such a tour.  However if one was organized, and wouldn’t be shut down by the Clintons, it would be a doozy!

In addition to seeing a presidential limo, lots of books (it IS a library) and stuff piled on stuff (nicely displayed) of Bill’s eight years in the White House 

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There is that wonderful Chihully Glass exhibit scattered interestingly all about the place (see more on Facebook!)

  

A short lunch back at the River Front Food Court that Vicki had shown us was followed by a brief visit to the Arkansas History Museum to take in the stories of Arkansas Indians before they were herded west to Oklahoma on the infamous 1839 ‘Trail of Tears”. It is such an oft repeated story I can’t believe any American over 18 doesn’t know it, but sadly , MANY do not. 

The Indians of America’s southeast were in the way of white pioneers, gold hunters and businessmen.  And no matter how friendly, or educated, or even Christian they were, they were finally, by order of President Jackson and the Supreme Court, move OUT.  In Arkansas the Caddo and Quapaw were two of the most numerous tribes in Arkansas who joined the better known Cherokee, and others, on the Trail of Tears.

Mona was ready to sit out the third museum of the day (yes, the library was, of course, also a museum) but she found parts of this one interesting anyway. MacArthur Park is laid out on the grounds of the old Little Rock Arsenal. 

Founded in the 1830’s to supply soldiers on the frontier, surrendered by the small US Army contingent at the beginning of the Civil War two weeks before Charleston’s Fort Sumter was fired on, it is perhaps most well known as the place General Douglass MacArthur was born into his parent’s army family when dad was stationed here as commander.  He was born in today’s last surviving building, called the Tower House.

Inside are exhibits in detail of the Civil War in Little Rock, The JEEP, and the Japanese units who were made up in 1944 from volunteers from the two American-Japanese internment camps in Arkansas. These units won many awards, just as the Tuskegee, Alabama, Airmen did for all Black Americans, when they were allowed to show what non-whites could do in the military when given the chance (more pics of ALL on Facebook).

But THE display of importance to Little Rock, and the curator’s of this museum was the MacArthur story. Particularly their telling of the long row between President Truman and General MacArthur during the Korean War that ended the General’s career- Facebook! 

We concluded the afternoon with a short hop to a food store and on the way decided to visit a local library north of Primrose UMC and near the Kroger’s in Southwest Little Rock. Its called the ‘Dee Brown Library’, but the name didn’t hit either of us till we pulled up in front of it and saw the very good sculpting of a smiling man with a pencil in his hand. 

Dee Brown! The author of ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’, THE definitive history, to date, of the Indian Wars of the nineteenth Century in the west, as well as other major works.  Dee grew up in Little Rock, and came back home to live later in life.

It was like a Grateful Dead fan walking into a pizza shop in Topeka for a slice and discovering that Gerry Garcia had been born in the flat over the ovens!

-Ken