Jo and I spend the past weekend down in Little Rock participating in the Arkansas Craft Guild's Christmas Showcase. Attendance was down this year and so were our sales. Regardless, this was our last show until spring. (Yea!!!) It was also our last income until spring. (Boo! Hiss!)
It's purely coincidental that Jo's pots and my spoons ended up being featured on the show poster and had nothing to do with the fact she is co-chair of the show. (Hey, there's got to be some perks for an unpaid job that requires so much of her time and effort.)
A virtually empty hall waiting to be filled on Thursday afternoon. Jo is doing her part while I'm wandering around documenting the event.
We had to come in early on Saturday so Jo could attend a meeting so I wandered around the immediate vicinity of the Statehouse Convention Center and took some photos. (Now that I think back on it, Jo had meetings Friday and Sunday before the show opened and during set up on Thursday, too. Jo does meetings much better than I.)
I was standing in the middle of the Arkansas River and took this photo of a piece of the Little Rock skyline. Riverfront park is in the foreground. The convention center complex is partially under the Peabody Hotel and extends to the left in the photo.
The Arkansas River in downtown Little Rock. The city of North Little Rock is on the opposite bank. Like most twin cities arrangements, there is a great deal of friendly (and, sometimes, not so friendly) competition between Little Rock and North Little Rock. If you start referring to the entire metropolitan area as "Little Rock", a resident of North Little Rock will be quick to correct you. Likewise, residents of Little Rock call NLR "Dog Town" because in times past whenever Little Rock rounded up stray dogs, they were simply dumped across the river in North Little Rock.
Anyone familiar with the Arkansas River in Colorado or Kansas will not be impressed with the Arkansas here. Our locked and channelized version of the river turns it into nothing more than a big ditch. Being navigable by barge traffic helps the Arkansas economy, but it's ugly, nothing like my first exposure to the Arkansas River near Arkansas City, Kansas, where Jo's grandparents had a farm that was bordered on one side by the river. (Note: The farm is now the Chaplin Nature Center operated by the Wichita Audubon Society.)
While Little Rock my be the home of the Clinton Presidential Library and the convention center, North Little Rock has a fake river boat...
and a battered, old submarine -- plus the Alltel Arena, of course.
The Alltel Arena was the venue for a Hannah Montana performance Saturday evening. I must confess a total ignorance regarding Ms. Montana until someone explained her to me on Saturday. While the traffic jam created by her appearance may have hampered a few folks trying to get to our art fair, I seriously doubt that her pre-teen fans form a significant portion of our customer base.
(Note: I'm still working on getting the photos I took down in Little Rock culled, edited and uploaded. I'll post a link to the Picasa album when I finish.)
2 comments:
Wow, Little Rock has changed since I use to drive through there back in the early 80's. An Arkansas Navy. Nice pix's Marvin. I look forward to seeing some more.
Dave: Since losing their bid to have the Clinton Library built on the north side of the river, I think North Little Rock may be escalating their conflict with Little Rock. Hence, the NLR Navy.
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