It's about time somebody sticks up for the present

One of those "nostalgic" e-mails landed in my in-box a few days ago. You may know what I'm talking about — it's one of those things that gets forwarded from friend to friend to friend, such that it circles the globe about once every 17 days or so. Indeed, I'm pretty sure this e-mail — or one very similar to it — has been sent to me about two or three times before.

This particular version included still photos from vintage TV shows like "The Little Rascals" and "Batman," followed by a diatribe about how different things "used to be." The article laments the rise of video games and Prozac, while remembering mothers who used to cut chicken and chop eggs on the same cutting board with nobody getting food poisoning; and remembering that "we didn't act up at the neighbor's house, because if we did, we got our butt spanked there, and then we got butt spanked again when we got home."

The overriding intent of the piece was to laud the way things were in the past, with the obvious insinuation that the present just doesn't hold a candle to it. Indeed, one recipient along the way added the editorial comment, "I agree, this was America's best, and today its worst."

Now, there's nothing wrong with looking back on the past with fond memories.

But it's about time somebody sticks up for the present.

Sure, it's different. It's worse in some ways, but it's better in others. And those who dare to take off their nostalgic glasses will see a world that has a whole lot of good things going for it.

After all, today we live in a world where a woman and an African-American can be viable candidates for president of the United States.

We live in a world where we can place a phone call to our friends and loved ones from virtually any spot in the country.

We live in a world where, for the first time, citizens are finding ways to use less energy and recycle more.

We live in a world where, with a microwave, you can cook dinner in a matter of seconds. And with a dishwasher, you can clean up with the push of a button — giving you more time to spend with your family.

We live in a world where little girls can play baseball and little boys can dance and cook, if that's what it is they want to do.

We live in a world where we can pause, record and rewind live television.

We live in a world where doctors can actually grow new human organs, restore your sight with surgery and, in some cases, eliminate cancer.

We live in a world with Google, where you can find a dozen causes for lower back pain, or a complete list of every movie Seth Rogan has appeared in, with only a few clicks of the keyboard and mouse.

We live in a world where if you don't like what's on television, you can go to the video store and rent every episode of your favorite oldies — or simply download them off the Internet.

We live in a world where you can be a doctor or a teacher or an editor or a lawyer or an executive or a scientist, no matter if you're white or black or male or female or Chinese or Indian or Christian or Muslim.

We live in a world where our cars can tell us when we're lost, parallel park themselves, and play movies for the kids in the backseat.

We live in a world where, with e-mail, it only takes about 3 seconds to send a tirade to all your friends about how terrible the world has become.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a little nostalgia. In fact, it can be healthy. After all, you'll never know where you are unless you first know where you've been.

But what I take issue with is the idea that any one period in time can be universally better than any other period of time. Such comparisons are futile. Time is ever-moving, and the world we live in is always in motion. Things change, sometimes for the worse, but just as often for the better. And when you add it all together, all you can say is that there's good and bad that comes with every age.

We can take pride in our past, but we can also be happy with our present. And as for the future, we will always have hope.

Celebrating our community by remembering its past

The Sunday, April 27, edition of the Courier News includes a very special section. We call it "Snapshots." Essentially, it's a collection of stories and photographs intended to celebrate our community by remembering its past.

The idea was inspired by a presentation given by Mary Gay Shipley, of That Bookstore in Blytheville fame. In the presentation, Mary Gay makes the case that Blytheville, Arkansas, is truly a special place, with a distinctive history and a unique heritage. She calls her presentation, "We've a story to tell."

Indeed, we do. We have MANY stories to tell. But "Snapshots" is not intended to tell them all. If you're looking for a comprehensive account of the community's history, you'll have to look elsewhere. Instead, we've tried to provide a readers a collection of snapshots of our area's rich and storied past.

In addition to the printed edition, we've also created a multi-media presentation. The video is below. We you hope you like it, and we hope our readers come to understand, as we do, that our community, with its rich history and a promising future, is something worth celebrating.

At long last, a visit to Alabama

My number now stands at 31.

That's 31, as in the number of U.S. states I have set foot in.

I picked up No. 31 on a trip last week. It seems strange to me that No. 31 was Alabama, seeing as how I only live two states away. Indeed, I had been in every state that borders Alabama, and had even been within a handful of miles of the state on several occasions. But I had never set foot there.

But that changed last week during a trip I took with my dad, a trip we dubbed the "Magical History Tour 5."

The Magical History Tours started several years ago when my dad was still a full-time high school history teacher. He took a van load of Iowa teenagers on a trip to historical sites on the East Coast, places like Washington, D.C., Monticello and Gettysburg. On the third trip, he took two van loads, and drafted me, another fan of American history, as the second driver. It was a good time, but my dad and I found that we were often disappointed that our stops at certain sites were cut short in the name of maintaining the interest of a collection of 17-year-olds.

So that spawned MHT 4, which was basically the same trip, minus the kids. It was just my dad and me, and we had a great time. So, a year or so ago, we decided to do it again, only instead of heading east, we would head south. And MHT 5 was born.

It was a good trip. We saw Vicksburg, and traveled part of the Natchez Trace. We saw the antebellum homes of Natchez, then headed south toward New Orleans. We stopped to take a picture of the more-famous Oak Alley Plantation, then toured the more-interesting Laura Plantation. We headed into the Crescent City, found our French Quarter hotel, and soaked in the ambiance of that historic city. We toured the National World War II museum, and took a tour of the city, including a visit to the Katrina-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward.

Out of New Orleans, we headed east, and saw more hurricane destruction along Highway 90 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We made it to Mobile just in time to climb all over the USS Alabama. Then we headed up into Georgia, stopping in Plains to see where Jimmy Carter came from, then heading over to Andersonville, to see the site of the infamous Civil War prison camp. We headed north, visiting FDR's Little White House in Warm Springs, and then finished our tour with a stop at the Chickamauga Battlefield and Lookout Mountain at Chattanooga.


The journey was enjoyable for two reasons. First, I liked seeing the historical sites. Most were places I had never been before, just things I had read about in books. It's always fun to see the real thing. But second, and more importantly, the trip was enjoyable because I got to spend time with my father. Like previous Magical History Tours, my favorite part was not the different spots we visited; it was the time in between stops — riding in the car, sitting in restaurants and just spending quality time with my dad. When you live two states away from your father, and only see him a few times a year, you learn to treasure moments like these.

So perhaps it's time to start thinking about MHT 6. Maybe we could go to New England. After all, states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Vermont are all still among my "haven't visited" list. Or perhaps we should head West, to places like California, Nevada, Montana or Wyoming, also states in which I've never set foot.

Whatever the destination, I'm sure it would be a good time. And I can't wait to build on my 31.

Community comes to life with sidewalk chalk

Looking for a cheap way to entertain a couple of young children for a couple of hours on a warm Sunday afternoon?

I have two words: Sidewalk chalk.

I speak from experience. Those two magical words kept 8-year-old Katie and 5-year-old Drew busy for the better part of Sunday evening. They were so busy creating their driveway masterpiece, that I pretty much had to drag them in for a bath as the sun fell below the horizon.

In case you don't know, sidewalk chalk is available at pretty much any of the retailers around here. It's usually sold in a bucket, or some similar plastic contraption. And it's cheap. I recommend buying mass quantities. You won't regret it.

On Sunday though, Katie and Drew set out to bring the community of Blytheville to our Armorel neighborhood by recreating the city in our driveway, in chalk. The specific area of focus was the East Main street area, which apparently they see as the heart of the community. And as children of the commercial age, that's probably about right.

Katie's part was the most detailed. Her drawing was appropriately labeled, "Bly-ville," which makes perfect sense to me. After all, who ever heard of a silent "the"?

Her drawing started with Sonic. Just past a curve, and on the other side of the road, she labeled buildings as "McDonald's," "Pizza Inn," "beer and wine store," "Holiday Inn," "gas" and "gas." Across from this area was one square labeled "car wash," and another named "elacapoco." She then drew a wide swath of roadways, to represent Interstate 55, complete with on- and off-ramps. On the other side of her interstate, she had additional squares to represent such things as "Wal-Mart," "$ Tree," "game store," "Lowe's," "Zaxby's" and "D's."

Oddly enough, she somehow managed to forget one of our family's personal favorites, "Starbucks." And when I say "our family's personal favorites," I mean, "my wife's personal favorites." Seriously, when Starbucks first opened, we gave some serious thought to seeing if they offered direct deposit. Anyway, I pointed out the omission to Katie, and she quickly squeezed it in between "Holiday Inn" and the first "gas."

Drew's version of Blytheville was adjacent to Katie's. His version was closer to what some might refer to as "abstract." True to his form, Drew didn't see any need to limit himself to the petty constraints of "reality." In Drew's Blytheville, roads went every which way, curving back and forth, over and under each other, forming a complex conundrum of knotted roadways.

I asked him why he made it this way, and he said, "cuz that's the way I wanted it to be." Good enough for me.

Perhaps I am no more than a proud father, but I am quite fond of these two divergent visions of Blytheville, both which were properly accessorized with Matchbox cars, of course. Thanks to these two young artists, for a couple of days I no longer had to waste precious gas money to see the town of Blytheville. Through the magic of sidewalk chalk, I could see Blytheville by simply walking 20 feet into my driveway.

At least I could until last night's rain washed it all away. That's the way it goes with sidewalk chalk. Oh well. Maybe next time they'll create their own version of Disney World in the driveway. I can't wait to see it.

There's reason to feel good in Blytheville today

"This is the one we've been waiting for."

That one phrase might best express the sentiment from last week's announcement that Aviation Repair Technologies will bring a $20 million aircraft maintenance and repair facility to the Arkansas Aeroplex.

Indeed, it is something the community has been waiting for. Whether or not it is truly "the one" can be debated, but there can be little doubt that there are many good reasons to feel good about this news.

For starters, it's the jobs. ART officials say they'll have more than 300 employees within three years. A second phase will bring that number to around 440. And they're not just jobs. They're good jobs. We're talking $20-an-hour jobs.

All this makes the ART announcement about the biggest economic development news in north Mississippi County is at least a decade. The only comparable project county-wide the past few years has been Denso, which brought its auto-parts plant to Osceola several years ago.

But it's not just the jobs — the good jobs — that's good news. Another reason to feel good about the ART project is that it's not steel. Not that there's anything wrong with steel, mind you. After all, you can't be upset with an industry that already provides so many jobs and such wide-ranging support for this area.

But from a long-term economic standpoint, it's always good to have a diverse industrial base in a community. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. The aerospace industry is seen statewide as an area for economic growth, and with ART, it's good to see Blytheville get a piece of that action, expanding the local industrial offerings.

The ART announcement was also good because it came at the right time. The whole country has had a case of the economic doldrums the past few months. Across the country, it's been a housing slump and a stock market stagnation. At home, its been the announced closure of Milwaukee Electric Tool and the apparent near-miss on a new large-scale steel operation out of Ohio.

In other words, we needed something good to happen. And that's what the news on ART has been — something to feel good about, to provide a jump start to continued community growth.

But most of all, word of ART coming is good because it will be so nice to finally see the Arkansas Aeroplex come back to life, in a large-scale way.

After all, who in Blytheville has not had a conversation that featured such phrases as "It's such a shame to see all those buildings go to waste," or "Why can't they get something in there?"

Indeed, a drive through the Aeroplex has been depressing for some time. Though there have been numerous success stories (several hundred people are already employed on property), the overall impression left by the abundance of empty, deteriorating buildings has been cause for heartache for many.

But there's a happy end to the story. With the arrival of ART, once again, airplanes will be flying in and out of Blytheville on a regular basis. The company plans to occupy all but one of the hangers at the Aeroplex. And because ART is establishing its corporate headquarters here, we can assume that additional facility upgrades are in order.

The hope here is that ART's arrival can fuel a greater upgrade to the overall appearance of the Aeroplex. Surely there are other buildings that can be cleaned up, security fences that can be removed, structures that can be razed and green areas that can be better maintained. It's no doubt easier said than done, and of course cost is a major obstacle; but perhaps the recent good news can inject new energy into these projects.

But the bottom line is that Blytheville has a reason to feel good right now. Though there is obviously much work to be done, there are enough things happening all over town — from a Main Street resurgence, to new housing developments, to restaurants that have yet to wear off their newness — to suggest our community is on the upswing.

But the greatest sign occurred last week when officials announced that Aviation Repair Technologies would be landing at the Arkansas Aeroplex.

This is the one we've been waiting for.