Non-story of the week

Much ado about an arts center

THERE comes a time in this strange business of reporting and commenting on the news of the day when everybody in town seems to be talking about what isn’t news but only rumor, speculation, the usual free-floating scuttlebutt . . . until, strangely enough, it all morphs into a real news story. Only it’s a story about there being no there there, to borrow a line from Gertrude Stein about Oakland, and folks need to know that, too. If only to see how these things get started and how they need to end—with all the loose ends tied up and the non-news seen for what it was.

The subject of this non-story that became a different kind of story was the future of the Arkansas Arts Center in downtown Little Rock, and how it might be moved across the river and into the trees along North Little Rock’s riverfront—thanks to an additional 1-percent local sales tax to support a “cultural center or museum.” But it turned out there was nothing to all the talk except talk. That’s the straight scoop from North Little Rock’s straightforward mayor, Joe Smith, and from folks at the arts center itself.

But all that didn’t keep Little Rock’s possessive—and excitable—mayor, Mark Stodola, from acting as if somebody was trying to make off with Little Rock’s city hall, or at least its arts center, and hijack it to North Little Rock.

Here was the mayor’s indignant over-reaction to this non-news story:

“The arts center is a tremendous cultural asset of the city. It’s an icon of the city as much as the Old Mill is an icon of North Little Rock, and I certainly wouldn’t pretend to steal the Old Mill. We just don’t do things like that to each other. There used to be an agreement before I was mayor that the two cities would not try to steal each other’s assets and businesses and things like that. Then I get to be mayor and the first thing I know is my good friend [former North Little Rock mayor] Pat Hays wants the State Fair, and now my dear friend [Joe Smith] wants the arts center.”

Oh, please, Mr. Mayor, spare us. Why talk about the friendly competition between these twin cities as if it were an act of piracy? Everybody on both sides of the river must be happy by now with how well the Travs’ still new little gem of a baseball park fits into North Little Rock’s riverside attractions, where it was relocated after their old home at Winder Field slowly crumbled under them.

North Little Rock’s attractive Verizon Arena, which opened in 1999, is impressive, too, and surely folks in Little Rock don’t begrudge its location any more than the good folk north of the river begrudge Little Rock the Clinton Library, which was once a subject of spirited competition between the two cities. For what helps one city helps the other. Just as the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock is complemented, not threatened, by Crystal Bridges at Bentonville in Northwest Arkansas.

Both of the Little Rocks, north and south, are really one community united, not divided, by the river that runs through their common metropolis.

As for comparing the arts center with the Old Mill . . . that’s like comparing apples and—what? Not even oranges but . . . well, your guess is as good as ours. Not even kiwi fruit or mangoes but something in a wholly other category in terms of history or local color. Like a picturesque creek or hill. The mayor’s misplaced metaphor isn’t really worth thinking about. Better to ignore it and move on; we all make silly comparisons sometimes. And the mayor’s was one of the sillier.

IF THE MAYOR (or anybody else) is looking for a way to handle competition, nobody was better at it than a president of the United States named Ronald Reagan— remember him? Back in his heyday, can you believe it, Japan, Inc., was being hailed as the world’s next economic super-power and this country’s next great rival. Confident and convivial as ever, The Gipper proceeded to pay a friendly call on Tokyo, where he charmed all by telling the Japanese one of their own folk tales, which is as apropos as ever to any instance of economic competition, including that between the twin cities of Central Arkansas:

“There’s a legend in Japan about two villages separated by a river, and on moonlight nights a man from one town would come out and sing. And his voice would resound farther and farther, floating out across the river until it reached the other town. Meanwhile, the people of the second town decided to compete. They looked for a singer who could surpass the excellence of the man across the river. And then it happened that one night another voice was heard, and the second was fully as rich as the first. And when the original singer heard it, he realized he was faced with a strong rival, and he sang and sang at the top of his voice. And the singing grew more and more beautiful as each singer found depths to his talent that he hadn’t known were there.

“Well, Japan and America are like those singers. We each seek great achievements, and the standards we set for each other are marks of excellence. And yet we do not exhaust ourselves in the contest, but rather, pursue our respective goals as friends and allies.”

That’s how leaders who are fair and far-sighted talk—and lead.

Copy to The Hon. Mark Stodola, City Hall, Little Rock, Ark.