Beyond headlines
The headline topping a small story in the back of a recent paper surely was intriguing enough to attract lots of readers. “Arkansas man steals six beers, tries to give back four.”
But it was the final two paragraphs about the misdemeanor arrest of 32-year-old John Brandon Harris of North Little Rock that I found most compelling.
He’d been charged with public intoxication and stealing a six-pack of beer from a Little Rock Walgreens one night last week then offering, in slurred words, to return four of them to the store manager.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, such sad accounts across the country. For me, this was was just yet another headline-making story of one man’s clearly troubled life and place in a society that scorns such behavior.
It’s invariably a case of tragedy and loss when a news account describes a man so relatively young being charged with public intoxication more than 40 times in the past decade. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that number over such a relatively brief period. Twenty times would seem enormous to me.
Yes, 10 years for anyone battling internal demons is a long time, my friends. As with all who continue to stumble into the same pit of despair and hopelessness without ever being able to find the pathway around it, the predictable cycle inevitably continues.
None of this man’s deeper background is revealed in the news account that noted Harris will face yet another judge this Wednesday. The latest judge will decide his guilt or innocence.
I’d like to believe someone will offer him the assistance he’ll need to find his way around the pit that awaits. I suspect others with compassionate and empathetic hearts already have done just that. But, of course, any altering of direction to lead around that same damning pit will be solely up to him since all meaningful change must begin from within our own hearts and spirits.
Godspeed and Merry Christmas in this season of universal good will, Mr. Harris. I feel certain many out here, including the one writing this, would be pulling for you.
Election consequence
For those poor folks who feel the need to pout, cry, whine, riot, weep, obstruct, loot or otherwise destroy because the 2016 election didn’t go to suit them, I’m reminded of President Barack Obama’s reported comment to former Virginia congressman and GOP House Whip Eric Cantor in a 2009 private meeting: “Elections have consequences.”
That came after the Democrats had won the White House and controlled Congress. For the hysterical among us, please take a deep breath and realize consequences are indeed the inevitable results of living in a free democratic republic rather than a dictatorship.
I find irony in the fact that many on the losing side who scream that the incoming administration supposedly will publicly wreak havoc and cause untold damage on America that further divides the nation are the only ones doing exactly that today.
Threat unchanged
Lest readers become confused by results coming out of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s (cough) results of the single hole drilled near one of the waste lagoons at C&H Hog Farms in the Buffalo National River watershed, please allow me to remind everyone.
This was but a single hole sunk at a cost to taxpayers of $75,000 specifically to determine if the large plume of suspected waste (detected by an electrical resistivity analysis in 2015) was indeed swine waste that had been leaking into what also appeared to be a fractured area beneath one corner of the lower lagoon.
Like many others, I’m waiting for experts who comprehend the technical jargon in the contractor’s findings to determine if the hole was sunk directly into the plume rather than near or above it.
When it comes to ensuring public transparency, I also vastly prefer plain spoken English, as in, “We dug into the questionable plume that started all this and discovered 1. hog waste, 2. wet clay, 3. Skippy’s Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter.”
Regardless of what the findings of this boring are interpreted to reveal, the potential threat to our sacred Buffalo from the continually spraying of millions of gallons of untreated hog waste onto a limited number of acres close to or adjoining a major tributary of the Buffalo remain more obvious, relevant and significant than ever.
Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.