Thursday’s thumbs

Madison County Record earns accolades

It’s Thursday and another chance to fire off a few up or down thumbs about some of news developments in our neck of the woods and elsewhere:

Our fellow journalists over at the Madison County Record in Huntsville were awarded a prestigious honor from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University the other day. No, let’s rephrase that to be more accurate: The Madison County Record earned that prestigious honor. The 2021 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism recognized the newspaper’s “unflinching investigation” into attempts by the Huntsville School Board to cover up sexual assault allegations against some student basketball players. As the foundation noted, the staff of the newspaper pursued its coverage in the face of withering criticism from people in their community who really didn’t want anyone knowing what had happened. Congratulations are certainly in order for national recognition of the newspaper’s efforts, but it comes in second to the satisfaction the newspaper ought to feel for truly serving its community by revealing uncomfortable news that nonetheless needed to be revealed and dealt with.

Speaking of deserved recognition, some of it — and a big ol’ check — was handed out Wednesday to Kamisha Burlingame, a fourth-grade teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Bentonville. She was among 60 exceptional educators across the nation to receive the Milken Education Award, which comes with a $25,000 award. Why? It rewards teachers who inspire their students, the ones who engage young minds through creativity and transfer their enthusiasm for learning to their youthful charges. It is a sad thing if a student goes through 12 years of schooling and never has such an educator on their side. Many of us, though, can count one or two teachers in our lives as transformative, as people who worked hard to invest themselves in every student. They are worth $25,000 and more for the positive influence they have. Congratulations to Kamisha Burlingame.

People are quite attached to their smartphones these days. For a lot of folks, we get the sense if they were given a choice of going about their business for a week without wearing clothes or without access to their phones, they’d have to think about their choice pretty hard. But sometimes, giving up one’s phone ought to be the easy option. Take, for example, the woman at Olympic National Forest in Washington Tuesday. Having accidentally dropped her cellphone into the hole of a vault toilet — one that holds the waste in an underground chamber until it’s pumped out to tanker truck — the woman tried to retrieve it. She tied herself off with dog leashes, according to The Associated Press, to decrease the obvious risks. But the makeshift safety lines failed, and in she went — head first. If there’s anything positive in all this, it is, No. 1, that she was uninjured, and No. 2, that she was reunited with her foul phone and called 911 for rescue. Our primary question: If you dropped your phone into a vault toilet, would you even want it back? Maybe for tradein value, but certainly not for keeps.

The dedication of the folks involved with Next Step Homeless Services in Fort Smith finally paid off in terms of promising news for the future. At a recent meeting, city directors unanimously approved a rezoning for the organization’s housing project, designed to help homeless people transition to a more stable existence and progress toward independence. An earlier proposal, on land elsewhere, wasn’t well received, but they didn’t give up and revised their plans for a site on South Sixth Street that clearly city leaders felt more comfortable with. There’s still a lot of construction ahead, but the hope is the new project will make a great difference for people who can benefit from a helping hand and guidance toward more stable lives.