LONDON Yes, London is a top city to visit in anybody’s book, and hearing English, even if it sounds funny, helps. Vertis and I have always enjoyed London. Of course, we can get carried away in the British Museum for hours on end, and if you have visited London, and have never been to the British Museum, you are no traveler. You are just a tourist. A traveler would be one who would venture down a dark alley in Florence following the smell of lasagna, and would certainly have been in the British Museum, which has a great collections of…loot. Uh loot? Well maybe I’m being a little severe in my description, but don’t ask the Greeks. Yes, the Greeks are pointing fingers and saying bad words about the Brits because as the British will tell you, “We saved one of the great treasure of ancient Greece from being destroyed.” If you haven’t guessed it by now, one of the great treasures of Greece are the Elgin Marbles, taken from the frieze of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin. That’s not quite the way the Greeks tell it, but one way or another the Elgin Marbles have ended up as the star attraction of the British Museum. So, on your London Bucket List put at the top, “See the Elgin Marbles.” If you are a Museum freak, like my brother-in-law, who reads every card description on every item in a museum, a trip to the British Museum will be your total trip, and you will need a service animal when you return home. However, just a couple of days in the various museums in the city will do most of us, and in those two days you will be exposed to some of the great collections of art and antiquities on earth, including the National Gallery, which is right off Trafalgar Square. There are more museums than I could list in this column including the Fan Museum and the Vagina Museum. Something for every taste. Okay, the total trip London is a lot more than a trip to the museums. On one of our first trips back in the early 80s I made a reservation to tour the Churchill War Rooms. Vertis didn’t like the sound of that tour so she spent her morning in Harrods Department Store. Harrods is the ultimate department store and not only will the ladies enjoy it, but I’ll guarantee you, it will be one of your top attractions, and the food court is enough to write home about. Harrods not only has almost every type of merchandise and food imaginable, it has a neat restaurant, and if you are a fan of former Princess Diana you can go to the lower floor where a memorial is set up to pay your respects. The son of the store owner was dating the Princess when she was killed in the tragic accident. But back to the Churchill War Rooms. During the Second World War, when the Germans started the bombing of London, the British Government decided to construct a series of underground bunkers to protect the heads of state and the War Council. They excavated a series of tunnels and rooms in the center of the City, and Cabinet meetings and other War related gatherings took place there. I was in a group of about 10 for one of the tours and after going down some 60 feet below one of the downtown parks we entered a series of tunnels with connecting rooms. Toward the middle of the tunnel system we entered one of the largest rooms, which I would estimate to be around 30 to 40 feet in diameter. This room is noted as the Map Room, which was one of the meeting rooms for Churchill’s Cabinet. It’s as if someone had just locked the door and left. Churchill’s pen and note pad were still there and the wall maps showing various European armies and Atlantic convoys were on the wall. I actually sat in Churchill’s chair. (That’s probable not allowed now.) It was a breathtaking piece of history still preserved intact. The tour guide made a chilling comment I still remember, “These men and women who gathered here did so thinking they were perfectly safe, but they weren’t. If one of the larger German bombs had made a direct hit, they would have all been killed. One of the other must dos, in addition to the British Museum, if you are a traveler, is to head for the West End, which is London’s Broadway plus the best shopping in the city. We always take in an English comedy and one of the many musicals. Only the English can get away with the over-the-top comic presentations, such as, currently, Only Fools and Horses. They also have a wide range of Broadway musicals including Hamilton, Momma Mia, and Back to the Future. The West End will be one of the highlights of your trip, and the tickets will be a lot less than on Broadway. When you are in the West End you are in the shopping Mecca of England. There are 80 flagship stores just on Oxford Street, and with that much shopping, quality restaurants are on every corner. If you like to poke around in a flea market or a bit more upscale, an antique market, visit Portobello Road in the Notting Hill District. This antique market area that stretches for several blocks is one of the best in the world, and there is something for everybody, if you will just dig deep enough. There are around a 1000 dealers and they carry everything from vintage fashion to folk art. Saturday is the big day when extra dealers come to display their wares, and it will be very crowded, but it’s busy nearly every day. I managed to find four full size Audubon Wildlife prints for only ten pounds ($15.00) apiece. They weren’t from the original print edition, but when I framed them, they looked great. One of my hobbies is collecting antique Arkansas-Gulf Coast maps, and of all the stores I know, the Map House in the Knightsbridge District of London is the best place to find them. You can visit the store, which just around the corner from Harrods Department Store, for a great selection of not only American maps but world maps. Its inventory of maps is the best I have ever encountered. We’ve stayed in everything from a bed and breakfast to the Capital Hotel. The B & B was fine with a full English breakfast, and the Capital Hotel is great and well located just a few blocks from Harrods, but the Capital will put a pretty good dent in your wallet. Of course, I’ve just scratched the surface of things to do in London, but that’s the real pleasure in visiting the city. With just a little research and poking around, you can uncover a world of great vacations pleasures. As with all travel to other countries, check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to learn if there are health notices in effect at your destination. Visit travel.state.gov for more information.

CANADIAN HIKING A few years back Vertis and I took a getaway week vacation, and went on a trip to the Northern Canadian Rockies. It was a break from the Dog Days of August. A week of cool, clear days where we hiked through evergreen forests to glacial lakes high among snow covered peaks. Sometimes we were above the tree line. It was a vacation to remember. I ran across my notes, and decided that it was a week worth sharing. An early morning flight from Little Rock connected us in Denver with non-stop service to Calgary, Canada, and our rent-a-car put us in Banff National Park and our hotel Chateau Lake Louise by 3:00 p.m. Amazing! I still can't believe you can go from the hills of Arkansas to the heart of the Canadian Rockies that quickly. As we settled into days of sightseeing and hiking the first absolutely, unbelievable sight was looking across blue Lake Louise with a mountain glacier as a backdrop. Honestly, that was one of the top natural sights that we have ever encountered. A first impression of the Canadian Rockies was one of wildlife in abundance, since ground squirrels ran in and out of restaurants, and elk grazed on the lawns. The natural habitat also looked very promising with numerous streams and small lakes formed by natural rock slides. However, everything was not as it seems. A short visit with a local resident was very informative. He pointed out that the mountains really never have summer, just a brief spring and then by our Labor Day, fall rolls in, and suddenly it's winter again. In many of the high mountain areas, snow is on the ground 9 months a year. In the winter squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, and bears hibernate, and most of the birds head south. The streams freeze solid, as do most of the shallow lakes. He mentioned that many of these mountain areas have six straight weeks of below zero weather. With this in mind, our hiking and observing wildlife took on a new meaning. However, since it was late summer, our hiking in the high country and driving in various wilderness areas, resulted in numerous wildlife sightings. Elk were on the road, in town, on the golf course, and just about everywhere. In fact, according to a Canadian wildlife biologist, there are too many elk in the Banff and Jasper National Parks. Here's the problem. Elk love to browse on young aspen shoots, and with a small herd that is not a problem, but as the herd grows, the aspen become over browsed and eventually die. Since this area is a national park, hunting is not allowed. Only predators can keep the elk in check, and the elk's natural enemies are wolf packs and grizzly bears. However, the bear's diet is 80% vegetarian; so only the 4 or 5 wolf packs in the park hold down the huge elk population. A wolf pack kills an elk an average of one every four days. This natural attrition puts the wolf kill well below the number needed to keep the herd in balance. In fact, the elk have figured out the best way to keep from being eaten by a wolf pack is to hang around the golf courses or graze along the roads. The wolf packs stay away from any contact with humans. Well, so much for the elk. On our first hike in the area around Lake Louise we saw a black bear with cubs, numerous mountain goats, and some mountain sheep. The sheep were so tame that, when we slowed down, as we drove back to the hotel, they stuck their heads in the open car window looking for food. There were signs everywhere to not approach the animals and not feed them, but most of the tourists we observed ignored these signs. We stopped for a small herd of mountain goats, which were on the highway begging for a handout. They had been fed by tourists so much that they stayed right in the road until you stopped. We didn't see any grizzlies on out hikes, possibly because Vertis wore a little bell on her shoe, which announced our movements. According to the locals, you don't want to surprise a grizzly. The week we were there, a few miles west of us, two timber company employees walked upon a large grizzly and her cub. One suffered a sweeping paw wound that literally scalped him. They barely survived. I asked one of the workers in the hotel if bells on shoes helped, and he said Park Officials had found bells in the bear dropping. I think he was kidding, but I’m not sure. After a few days, we moved to Jasper National Park three hours’ drive north, where we went on our longest hike. We started in a glacial valley at the foot of Angel Glacier, and worked our way through thick evergreen forests up to the high mountain meadows, and then higher, crossing the tree line to a rocky ridge where we were pelted by an August snowfall. Wow! It what a shock! We had been sweating in Arkansas’s heat a week back, and now we were standing on a rocky ledge in a little snow flurry. We were grinning from ear to ear. On this hike, wildlife sightings were very sparse, since we were in the high country, mostly marmots, ground squirrels, and a few ravens. We did pass one area the bears had worked over looking for ground squirrels. Dirt and large rocks were scattered everywhere During this hike and on several other occasions, I checked the streams and small lakes for fish. In the shallow streams and lakes, you can see every pebble on the lake or stream bed. The water is unbelievably clear. Much to my surprise, I never saw one fish or any other aquatic life for that matter. There are some great fishing lakes in the lower Canadian Rockies, but many of the streams and lakes in the high country are seasonal with flowing water only during the warmest part of the year. Around Thanksgiving, they freeze solid and don't thaw until sometime after the 1st of May. Clear water that you can drink, but with almost no marine life. That's an overview of a great week in the Canadian High Country. The beauty was spectacular. The weather was cool and crisp, almost like a late November day in the Ozarks. We sat by a fire one night and awoke to a heavy frost the next morning. I enjoyed the hiking and seeing the big name wildlife. However, I'll bet, acre for acre, the average land and water in Arkansas has 10 times the amount of wildlife you will find in the beautiful, Canadian National Parks. Arkansas' warm weather and plenty of rain produces an unbelievable variety of plants and animals. We may not have elk in our back yards, (unless you live along the Buffalo River) but we've got plenty of wildlife. That vacation week gave us an appreciation of the Natural State and our abundant wildlife, and while we're at it, let's be sure we don't lose it.

The Great Renaming Game Lately it seems Americans have decided that we must try to erase the recognition of anyone, who at any time in their life, was involved in any of what we consider today as an evil part of history. We seem to be striving to remove the names and or statutes of certain persons based on any association with standards that today we consider unacceptable. Of course, we are being selective and judgmental. First, we are judging these people by today’s standards, and we are using that scale to decide whether a person deserves to be remembered or honored. We have a laser focus on just certain parts of that person’s life that must meet today’s standards, while we conveniently ignore the rest of his or hers accomplishments. It seems, we are trying to remove from sight the name or anything relating to the memory of anyone or anything that is connected to or even remotely involved in the treatment of various ethnic groups. Let me elaborate. It all started with removing Confederate Monuments, and then quickly spread to all Confederate Statues. Of course, then it turned to removing the names of local schools and even colleges, which were named for any persons of history who, according to our standards today, were on the wrong side of history in any part of their life. But it hasn’t stopped there. It has spread to street signs and buildings and even to the renaming of college dorms, dining halls and to the mascots of athletic teams. Well, let’s look a little deeper into the removal movement, and why not go back to the some of the first settlers in North America. How about the folks who came over on the Mayflower? Okay? Well, it seems they didn’t arrive at a vast uninhabited wilderness. North America was inhabited by an estimated 15 to 20 million indigenous people, and during the next 250 years, their land was taken from them, and the ones who weren’t killed or died from disease brought over by the Europeans, were put in reservations. But we seem to ignore most of these atrocities, because trying to erase the memory of them would require the removal of thousands more of names and statutes that had anything to do with it. In other words almost all of our counties former citizens were part of the treatment given to these people. And now, we think to quit using the name “Redskins” is a way to reconcile history. Who are we kidding? Yes, this country has a checkered past and slavery was part of it. Of course slavery is detestable, but 43 men who signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. I guess the name changers want to hunt down all the streets, buildings, and memorials that honor these folks and change their names? But the list keep growing. Now George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are coming into play, since slavery is connected to the “Father of our Country,” Washington, and mistreatment of American Indians is being pinned on Lincoln. Are we going to try and change the names of, say Lee County in Arkansas or the state of Washington? So where do we go from there? Yes, forming the Confederacy was terrible, but eleven southern states joined up and a horrible Civil War resulted. It seems, from actual history, nearly every able-bodied white man in the South between 17 and 70 participated in some way in the insurrection. Of course, after the War, some of these men contributed greatly to thousands of admirable causes such as the building of colleges and schools. Their names are on buildings and schools from coast to coast. Are we going to try and remove every name that has any tie to slavery or the treatment of indigenous peoples? Of course, as we do this we conveniently ignore the sins of the present. It seems we are grading sin. That’s right and what we are saying is that we are going to put some sins of the past on a list, and forget others, and on top of that we are going to completely ignore any sins of the present. When we start making a list of our countries past sins and conveniently leave out certain sins and concentrate on others, we are on a slippery slope. Who is the judge as to what sins are especially grievous, and what sins are just the price our country paid for the progress as a nation? We justify renaming a grade school named after someone who, reflecting on his or her place in history, at one time was part of something that while commonplace in that person’s lifetime, is today considered a black mark on his or her character. It seems we have a thumb on the scales of justice when we currently judge someone such as William Fulbright. We point to his political stance at a time in history, which today is a black mark, and we ignore his other legacy and accomplishments. We are doing the same thing with Lincoln, Washington, and Andrew Jackson. If you examine almost all of our historically figures back to Columbus, we could easily find fault, based on today’s standards of conduct on every one of them. Even Columbus has already come under fire and his statue has been defaced because of his treatment of indigenous people. Are we ready to start renaming “Columbus” towns? It seems we are proclaiming a self-righteousness, which ignores the sins of the present and condemns the sins of the past, and that begs the question. Do we have present day sins? Certainly! We condemn someone who lived 150 years ago and support erasing him or her from the history books without giving any consideration to that person’s full life. I guess, we believe that it’s okay to spend millions of dollars to rename every street, school, and remove every monument because of the involvement of that person in a practice we find abhorrent today, without any regard to the sins of the present or the full measure of that person’s life. We conveniently ignore the continued discrimination of women, who certainly don’t have equal rights. We protest the insignificant name of a school and ignore the homeless, let a terrible percentage of our population suffered from inadequate housing, and we let children go hungry while we push to take down a meaningless sign. Well, it is time to put history back in the books and quit trying to erase anything that today we find abhorrent. It is impossible for us to reconstruct the lives of these men and women who we condemn today, without a thorough investigation of their lives, and of course that is what we are doing today as we nitpick a stand these people took or a cause they supported. Of course, trying to erase history is as old as mankind. The pharaohs of Egypt were guilty of chiseling out the name of former pharaohs, and isn’t that what we are doing today when we change the name of Jackson Street to Porcupine Avenue?

Lose Power? Well, did you lose electrical power at your residence this past year? We did out on Calion Road here in El Dorado when a big limb fell across several electric power lines during a thunderstorm, and for about 12 hours we were running around with flashlights and Coleman Lanterns to see by. I will say one thing: it makes you appreciate the electrical grid when the when the lights come back on. But our lights going out is just about par for the course. Power outages in El Dorado’s residential neighbors, and in our fair state, are just routine, and if you didn’t have at least one or two power outages during the year, consider yourself lucky. Of course, if you happen to be on the end of the transmission line, where your house is all by itself, you might find yourself without power for days, or when the remnants of a tropical storm just happen to roar up from the Gulf, with winds at 40 to 50 miles per hour, all bets are off along with a whole lot of folk’s lights. A storm track of twenty miles wide is guaranteed to turn off thousands of the lights. But if the mother of all outages, an ice storm, socks it to the state, lights go out for hundreds of thousands, and it may take weeks to restore power to everyone. It seems we are just content to put up with the regular power outages as part of living in Arkansas, and that means get ready with flashlights by our bedsides and a Coleman Lantern in the kitchen to help see to cook breakfast. That is unless you have an electric stove. Yes, we can continue to do just that, and put up with having our power go out somewhere in the state every time a thunderstorm passes through…but we don’t have to. It’s a choice we make when we don’t insist our utilities be put underground. I’m not exactly sure where Arkansas falls when it comes to putting our electrical grid underground, but I would be willing to bet it’s down toward the bottom of the rankings. Here’s what we need to do, and the example just happens to be in El Dorado. Power is almost never off in downtown El Dorado, and it didn’t go off during the last big February freeze or, even a few years back when we had an ice storm. Of course, we weren’t just lucky. Back in the 1960s a Downtown Business Development District was formed to try and reverse the exodus of businesses from our downtown. They failed in their primary focus, but one thing they did was highly successful. They put all utilities underground. The central core of downtown El Dorado has underground utilities, and since the late 60s our lights have stayed on. Pictures taken before the utilities were put underground show a maze of wires, poles, and electrical equipment. Not only were the poles and wires an eyesore, they were just as venerable to outages as any place in the city. Of course, the sight of light poles, wires, and transformer boxes take away from a town, and the hundreds of chopped off trees contribute another negative. Just how much curb appeal do you think a maze of poles and wires give to a street, downtown, or a residence? Well, of course it’s a minus and a big one. Underground utilities are an important part of the reason El Dorado’s downtown has been recognized by the National Main Street program as one of the Nation’s top Downtowns. Just think of the money saved by not pruning our downtown trees, and then consider the downtown businesses who didn’t lose power and kept right on making sales. Underground utilities pay for themselves. However, as soon as you drive away from the center of town all those wires are right up there in the trees, and power outages are just waiting to happen. That’s when the tree choppers descend on the residential areas of town like a swarm of giant locusts, and tree after tree is mutilated. They were working down Madison Avenue, in El Dorado, one of the premier residential streets in town, this last week, and as the residents looked on in horror, tree after tree was chopped off dropping the curb appeal of the street down like a rock. Of course, a heavily pruned tree takes pruning as a challenge to grow, and grow they do. So in about five years, the tree choppers will be back. A big pin oak can easily have a life of over a hundred years, which means it will be whacked some 20+ times. I’m not a math genius, but I can see thousands and thousands of wasted dollars from pruning. Multiple that by a thousand plus towns in our state, and we’re talking about a huge amount of money. But it’s not just the money that is spent to prune the trees, which might be a threat to the electrical lines under their limbs, it’s the loss of income from individuals and stores that are part of the shutdown when power is lost. How much money do hundreds of stores, banks, and restaurants lose when their power goes out? It’s easily in the millions of dollars. Add that to the loss of income when workers can’t come to work, and then plug in the unsightly poles, chopped off trees, and maze of lines, and it easy to say we can’t afford to keep the overhead lines. Surely there is a better way to keep our power on. Yes, there is, but the mindset in the legislature and the companies who generate the power in our state say it costs too much to put electrical utilities underground. I haven’t taken the time to add up the cost every time we have a power outage, but it must easily be in the millions of dollars in lost sales, income, and cost to repair the downed lines. The “It cost too much,” rings hollow when compared to the loss of services and the cost to perpetually trim hundreds of trees, again, again, again, again, again, and I guess forever. Is that what the power companies are telling us? That rings hollow when you consider the example of Downtown El Dorado. Putting the electrical services underground was easily done, and it has paid for itself many times over. It seems to me that our legislature should set up a statewide plan to gradually mandate our electrical utilities be put underground. The money saved by not having to trim a street tree every five years would easily to pay for underground electrical service on that street. Every street or highway that has underground utilities saves the state, town, and individuals thousands of dollars every time power is lost. With the millions of trees lining the streets and highways in our state, it certainly makes sense to have a plan to gradually put all electrical services underground. Of course, it would save multi-thousands of trees along the way from being telephone poles, and make the Natural State look a lot more natural.

A Mississippi Getaway When Vertis and I started talking about a long weekend getaway trip, several Mississippi towns became part of the conversation. We quickly narrowed it down; first to Greenwood, and then we added Vicksburg. Greenwood is really an undiscovered southern gem less than a three hour drive from El Dorado. The Viking Corporation (Think kitchen appliances) is primarily responsible for giving Greenwood a “Worth a Journey” title. Of course, Vicksburg, with its Civil War battlefield along with several exceptional historic Bed and Breakfast accommodations was a good reason to make it the second stop on our trip. The drive from El Dorado to our first stop on the trip, which was Greenwood, starts out on Highway 82 and ends on Highway 82. As you drive east from El Dorado passing through Crossett and Lake Village, you approach one of the truly unsung features of North America, the Delta of the Mississippi River. The Delta varies in width along its route to as wide as 70 miles as its widest. It is 200 miles long. As you drive across the miles and miles of almost tabletop flat, very fertile land, it’s hard to visualize the land was once part of an inland flooded area caused by melting glaciers, which released torrents of water south down the Mississippi Embayment. These glacial waters were carrying soil debris, which formed the Delta. That debris is called alluvium, and that is the soil that makes up the Delta. The definition of alluvium is “Loose unconsolidated soil.” Greenwood is on the eastern edge of the Delta, and our destination there was the Alluvium Hotel. Well, the reason Greenwood and the Alluvium Hotel are destinations is because of the extraordinary amenities the Hotel and the nearby buildings offer. I’ll start with the hotel itself. Just imagine an exceptionally high quality hotel encased in an old building attached to one of the best southern restaurants I have ever enjoyed. But first the hotel. The rooms, amenities, and bedding are all first class. When I opened the closet in the hotel, and hanging there was a robe for me to wear, I knew I was in an extremely high quality establishment. But the hotel itself, while it is exceptional, has more to offer, and if a full spa is a feature you enjoy, the Alluvium has a great one. It a full service SPA with massages etc. However, there’s more. The connection to the next door Glardina’s Restaurant is a rather small, but very special little bar. There is something neat about this little bar that draws you in to sip something before you walk another 15 feet into the foyer of the Restaurant. The restaurant has developed a concept that I have never seen in a restaurant. The story is, the restaurant was active during prohibition, and instead of just having tables placed in the dining area the restaurant enclosed each table with its own private room. The restaurant has a hallway running through the center of the restaurant ending at the kitchen, and on either side down the hallway there are totally enclosed rooms. The entrance to each room is covered by a curtain, which is closed during your visit so during the meal you never see anyone but your server. I guess, if you are someone who doesn’t want to be bothered, or during Prohibition a customer who might want to sip something illegal, Glardina’s would fit your bill. It certainly does give you a special feeling when you sit down not just at your own table, but in your private room. I guess if you were going to propose to your future wife, it would be the perfect spot. Vertis and I, from our living a dozen years on the Gulf coast, have developed a discerning taste for fresh, high quality Gulf seafood. Over the years, outside of New Orleans, we have found the best, and freshest seafood very difficult to find. However, Glardina’s fills the bill, but there is more to the restaurant than fresh seafood. The restaurant founder was an immigrant from Sicily. Some of his original recipes are still on the menu, but we didn’t try those. Our first course was fresh Gulf oysters prepared three ways. They were great! However, the entree was what we were waiting for. We ordered a large, grilled pompano. To me, for a restaurant away from the coast to offer not just fresh Gulf seafood, but pompano, the top of my fish food chain, is remarkable. But there’s more, and it’s just across the street, which is the home of the Viking Cooking School. Viking Corporation, which owns the hotel, restaurant, and cooking school along with a stove appliance manufacturing facility is a key player in the Greenwood economy. The Cooking School has been called the most enjoyable school on earth, and the store that goes with it has every kitchen item you can imagine. I noted eight of my Facebook friends have given it a thumbs up. The Viking Cooking School attracts cooking enthusiasts from all over the Country, and I’m aware of an El Dorado couple, who attended the school, and were so impressed they considered opening a similar cooking school in El Dorado. Of course, the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce would probably say I’m selling Greenwood short, and point out The Museum of the Delta etc. However, outside of admiring how they didn’t chop off their crepe myrtle and checking out some of the best small southern town historical residential architecture, we ran out of time to completely take in Greenwood. The next morning it was on to Vicksburg. The center of town is on the low ridges and hills of loess. Of course, as any geologist will tell you, loess is windblown dirt and sand from the delta. These features were formed when the area was a barren desert. Yes, at one time after the glacial age up north, the area was a dessert. Okay enough geology! The town is probable the most noted historical town in the state, and as any history buff will tell you, when the siege of Vicksburg by Northern troops ended on the Fourth of July with the surrender of the Confederate forces, it was a major turning point in the Civil War. For years, many of the citizens of Vicksburg refused to celebrate the Fourth of July. The battlefield, with many of the trenches still intact as well as the gun emplacements along the ridge overlooking the Mississippi River are still visible. The battlefield park has numerous monuments to the various regiments from states whose troops fought in the siege. That combination makes for a great history tour. We stayed at a historic pre-Civil War Bed and Breakfast, the Corner House, which overlooks the Mississippi River. The authentic décor of the interior gives you the feel of stepping back in time, and the courtyard, which has the largest crepe myrtle tree I have ever seen, amplifies the feel. The Corner House has an outstanding breakfast to go with our quality room. That stay wrapped up our Mississippi getaway, and three and a half hours later we pulled into our driveway on Calion Road.

Solving the Border Disaster It seems to me, we are trying to solve our immigration problems on the border by not going to the root of the problem. After all a 20 foot wall just creates demand for 22 foot ladders. We lived in South Texas off and on for 12 years, and crossed the border countless times. I even floated the Rio Grande River, and watched as Mexicans floated a refrigerator across from the USA to Mexico. Believe me the border can’t be closed. Oh, you can make it more difficult, but the job is just too big, even for a country as rich as America. But even if we could dedicate a trillion dollars and build a 30 foot electrified fence from coast to coast, it would be a horrible waste of money, and it wouldn’t stop illegal immigration. But there is a way to solve the problem that is becoming a bigger every day, and to do it we must attack the reasons why thousands upon thousands of migrants are flocking to our southern border. Why are families so desperate that they are willing to separate children from their parents to get into our country? The majority of these migrants are from Central America, and if we look closely at those countries, I think we can understand why parents would resort to such drastic measures. To understand why families would abandon their homes and land and desperately walk hundreds of miles through dangerous drug gang infested areas, with little hope of actually getting into our country, requires an understanding of why they are so desperate. They are willing to breakup their family hoping at least their children will get into the United States. What would make families go to such extremes? Guatemala is one of the key countries whose residents are fleeing. To understand why, we must look closely at these migrants, and how a good percentage of them make their living. Very simply put many of the thousands of Guatemala citizens who are flooding our borders are simple small plot farmers. Their key crop is corn. However, for the past three years there has been an extreme drought in Central America caused by Global Warming, and the corn crop has almost completely failed. These families are desperate beyond our understanding. They are facing starvation, and even though it is only a glimmer of hope to enter our Country, they will walk hundreds of miles to the border, and let their children cross knowing the children have a better chance of being allowed to stay in America. These migrants are different from the ones in the past, who were mainly from Mexico. These are true refugees desperately trying to escape bone-wrenching poverty. They don’t want to flee their county, but because there aren’t sufficient resources in the various Central American countries, they turn to the United States. If 20 foot or 30 foot fences aren’t the way to solve the problem, how do we return to a time some 50 years ago when the border had very little in the way of preventing migrants from entering our country, and we didn’t have thousands of them flooding the border, so what is the difference? We lived within an hour and a half drive from the border and frequently drove down, crossed and re-crossed multiple times. The border didn’t have long lines, and it was safe and orderly. If we want the border to return to a 60s era border; what do we need to do? This is my suggestion: don’t spend another nickel on the border wall. That is truly money wasted, but go to the root of the problem. Help the Central American countries whose farmers are starving during a time of unprecedented drought, and you will remove a big part of the reason for them to go through hell just to send their kids across the border. Of course, that will take an unprecedented amount of direct foreign aid, which would be focused on these desperate, starving families. If the billions already spent to build the border wall, had been sent directly to help the starving Central American farmers, we would have greatly reduced the unmitigated disaster we have today. Of course, we need to do more than just feed hungry farmers for a season. We must have an aid program in place until the drought conditions subside. We should have the funds for this proposed aid program after leaving the military mess in Afghanistan, which has cost our country an estimated two trillion dollars. That follows the Viet Nam War, which costs only God knows how much. Those forays were horrible investments. Viet Nam is communist, and the Taliban controls a large swath of Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars were spent, and we have nothing to show for it. Just think, if those dollars had been spent to directly help struggling people in Central America and Southeast Asia, how much better would our world be today. But we must do more to secure the border than just give aid to Central American countries. During this time, when America’s economy is recovering from the pandemic, and jobs are readily available, the draw to come to the USA pulls thousands of desperate migrants to the border. They know, if they can cross, they can easily get a job, and that is the case right now. So, we need more than an aid package. We should tighten the job market available, because it would take thousands of new government workers to properly document the able bodied men and women who come by the hundreds of thousands to take the jobs available in the USA. There is only one way to make those jobs available only to fully documented migrants. We have laws on the books, which penalize companies that hire illegal immigrants, but enforcement is spotty and fines are minimal. The solution is very simple; greatly increase the fines the companies must pay if they hire an undocumented worker, make the fine mandatory, and funnel the collected money into the aid package. If our country will take this two prong approach to our immigration problem, the border will return to its 60s status, because the starving Central American farmers won’t be so desperate that they will leave their country and homes to attempt to enter our country, and companies will stop hiring undocumented workers because of the stiff fines. Let’s quit wasting money on useless walls, which won’t solve the problem, and on foreign wars. This country has the resources to help starving people, and we have the military might to protect our country and our allies. Hopefully, we will learn from useless walls and disastrous foreign wars, how to do a better job protecting our citizens, and responding to hunger in the world. We can do it properly, as we did with the Marshal Plan at the end of World War Two. When I watched on TV, as someone dropped at three-year old child from the top of a wall 15 feet to be caught by someone on the other side, I was encouraged to write this column.

Breaking Out, A New Orleans Getaway Last week we finally broke out from a year of almost hibernation and headed for New Orleans. We were fully vaccinated, and bored out-of-our minds after staying almost locked up in either our house or office for 14 months. The regular 6 hour drive from El Dorado went without a hitch, but this time, instead of cutting across thru Farmerville to Monroe, we drove straight to Ruston on a greatly improved four lane highway, a joint undertaking by Arkansas and Louisiana to make 167 South four lanes from Little Rock to Interstate 20. Louisiana has finished their part and Arkansas is not far behind. It took 15 minutes longer, but the easy four lane driving made up for the loss time. We checked into the Windsor Court Hotel at 1:30, put our bag in the room, and walked down a very quiet Canal Street to Bourbon Street. I remarked to Vertis that New Orleans seemed different with noticeably fewer people on the street. Bourbon was still loud, but certainly not as lively as pre-pandemic Bourbon Street usually is. Most of the bars and restaurants were open, but with very few customers. Our standard pick for the top restaurant in the city is in the second block off Canal on Bourbon Street and in another five minutes, we had walked the block and a half down Bourbon and had stepped into the foyer of Galatoire’s Restaurant. That’s when I could really tell New Orleans was “lite”. The restaurant was almost empty. Normally, most of the lunch hour diners would still be there, but as we stood and waited to be seated, it was obvious the restaurant was still suffering from the COVID-19 restrictions. But after we were seated, and when the waiter put the short loaf of warm French bread and soft butter on the table, we smiled. It was as if we had really broken out of our isolation. It had been a year since we had been to New Orleans and that loaf of bread was an exclamation mark that made us know we were back. That’s when I knew the food wasn’t going to suffer from the virus. We split an Oysters Rockefeller, wishing we both had one, and then, when our waitress said they had fresh caught pompano, we both had the pompano sautéed with crab meat on top. It was a great way to start the trip, and as we sat there smiling and started our meal, I can tell you, that after being cooped up with COVID-19 restrictions for a year, we needed the break, and we were in the best mood since the pandemic hit. Late that afternoon we went downstairs to the Winsor Court Hotel’s Polo Lounge on the third floor, and it was almost empty. We had decided not to have two over-the-top meals in one day, but to have a cheese tray and something to drink in the Lounge. I’ve had a number of cheese trays in hotels before, but this one clearly set a record, which will be hard to match. It was easy to see that New Orleans hadn’t loosened up the COVID-19 restrictions, and it was almost like our initial lockout earlier in the year. Some stores and restaurants were not only masked with social distancing, but still closed. The hotel required masks in every part of the hotel beside your room, and they were shorthanded in service personnel. I talked with the concierge, and he just shook his head, “We can’t find anyone to hire.” It seems jobs are waiting for people who want to work in New Orleans, but no takers. I told him we’re seeing the same thing in Arkansas. The next morning we decided to get a little exercise by walking to the World War II Museum, which is only a half dozen blocks down Magazine Street. We had been there before, but not to some of the newer additions. We ended the museum tour with a walk through the Road to Tokyo exhibit. It was a very emotional experience. The setting was as if you were walking through bombed out villages in a jungles setting, and with the constant video and sound it made for a literally breathtaking experience. We were both emotionally drained. I still can’t believe how realistic the setting was, with everything such as “last letters” from men to died fighting on the beaches. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at a great typical New Orleans restaurant called Peche Seafood Grill, and had a super lunch. Vertis had a fried oyster salad, and I had soft-shell crab. It was a great lunch and actually rivaled Galatoire’s. That night we went to Restaurant August considered one of the top restaurants in the city, and we were disappointed. No, it wasn’t bad, the others were just better. The next day was our last day in New Orleans, and after an early lunch of shrimp, oysters, and gumbo at the Palace Restaurant on Canal Street, we walked over to the River Walk area, which has a great view of the very busy boat and barge trafficked Mississippi River. It’s connected to the Hilton Hotel. We wanted to do a little shopping in the adjacent Mall. I like to pick off discounted Tommy Bahama shirts from Nordstrom’s “The Rack” and Vertis always heads for the Niemen Marcus closeout store. In this Mall-like setting on the river there are 86 shops and restaurants…at least that is what the promo said, but I would estimate between 25% and 30% were closed, and the foot traffic was extremely low. It was rather depressing to walk by store after store without a single shopper inside. Niemen’s was permanently closed, and I decided there were enough old Tommy Bahama shirts in my closet at home. Next came the movie, French Exit, which, after Phillip gave it an 87, I was anxious to see it. Well, if you like Michel Pfeiffer, you will give the flick at least a 95, but you have to just doze into never-never land as the séances and black cat scenes play out, and echoes from a dead former husband liven up the script. Michael Pfeiffer is breathtaking as a gorgeous red-haired, almost chain smoking demure former socialite, who moves gracefully through the surreal film. After her husband dies and she is without income, she ends up selling what’s left and moving into her friend’s apartment in Paris, where strange things happen, as she gives away her money like its tainted. This is not a movie for 13 year olds, but a stunning presentation crafted to intrigue, and of course, when Michel makes her French Exit, you wonder…….. After the movie, we walked a few blocks to the Warehouse District to another one of our favorite restaurants, Grand Isle. The restaurant is about as heavy in Louisiana seafood as you can get. Vertis had a shrimp salad, which was loaded with as many tasty shrimp as you can put on a plate, and I had, of course, the soft-shell crab again plus a delightful salad. Now, we’re ready to ride out the rest of the pandemic.