Marlon Weems notes that his grandfather fought in WWI. Two of his uncles fought against fascism in WWII and then fought in the Korean War.
His parents would go to the Arkansas state capitol in Little Rock in the late 1960s to march for civil rights. For doing this, they were beaten by Arkansas State Police and his pregnant mother knocked down the capitol steps.
He writes, "I have been thinking about these things a lot lately."
"I think about how all of them—my grandfather, my uncles, my parents—put their lives on the line for this country, each giving in the best way they knew how. They did these things for a nation that did not acknowledge their humanity. As much as I love and miss them all, I’m glad they aren’t around today. If they were, they’d want me to explain a few things."
Why has nobody talked about Little Rock, AR straight-up demolishing the I-30 Cloverleaf Interchange, freeing up blocks of walkable, streetcar-accessible parcels downtown? (April 2019 vs. December 2023)
As a part of my year-end file organizing, I finally migrated some older photo edits that pre-date a 're-branding' of my photography business around 2018. I care much less about keeping consistency in my photo watermarks so I'm excited to start sharing these photos here.
Here's a shot from the summit of Pinnacle Mountain outside Little Rock, AR captured March 2017. I've previously dedicated this one to the "Arkansas Doesn't Have Mountains" crowd.
Here's Mark Jacob criticizing the Times' downplaying of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' lectern scandal, where her office spent $19,000 on a lectern with little accounting of where that money went. The issue here isn't just this one bit of wasteful spending, but a pattern of abuse throughout.
Mark Jacob is a former editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.
So, apparently, this #Lithium project didn't pan out because the brine was so corrosive, it destroyed the equipment used to process it. YIKES! #Exxon is planning on using a similar process (closed loop extraction) in #Arkansas.
General Motors looks to California for its next lithium supply
The US automaker is investing in closed-loop extraction from the Salton Sea.
Jonathan M. Gitlin - 7/2/2021,
"CTR's Hell's Kitchen project will extract lithium salts from geothermal brine in the Salton Sea. By using heat from the brine to power the processing, it hopes to produce 15,000 tons of lithium carbonate and 49.9 MW of energy in 2023."
I just came across a piece about #LithiumMining in #Arkansas using a method touted to be "greener". Like I'm always saying, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Also, #ExxonLied then -- who's to say they aren't now?!
Some questions about the plan to mine lithium in south Arkansas
By Sam Watson
November 14, 2023
"What are the environmental impacts here? This question is difficult to answer at this point. Normal lithium extraction is quite #environmentally damaging; it often involves treating brine containing lithium with sulfuric acid and letting the liquid evaporate in open pools, leaving lithium behind. #Exxon stated that they’d use something called 'direct lithium extraction.' There are several versions of this process, but we don’t yet know what Exxon will use. All of them have different environmental impacts, some more severe than others. The key here will be regulation and monitoring, but we have serious concerns here. The Division of Environmental Quality may not have capacity for this kind of continuous monitoring and the state’s friendliness to #OilAndGas makes us worried that upfront regulations to protect the #environment and people of south Arkansas will be lacking at best."
Remembering John F. Kennedy's assassination and how the announcement of his death was received in my junior high school in small-town south Arkansas…. The remembrance is in two parts, part 2 following part 1.
Here's Heather Cox Richardson on the racist fury of some white Southerners at JFK's and RFK's support for civil rights for African-Americans, a rage that forms the backdrop to JFK's assassination. As she notes, on the day of the assassination, the Dallas paper published an ugly editorial attacking JFK for supporting "Communist inspired racial riots."