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shoogharashk · 5 years ago

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20 February 3998

Today, after just over two days at sea and some on-the-job sailing training from Augmak and Isolt, we arrived in the tiny sea town of Marspeck on the north coast of Camden Rock. Augmak and Belfyr went to the market to resupply and left the five of us to regain our land legs and explore the town for the evening, telling us that we would set out for the destination of our choice in the morning.

As we disembarked, I could immediately see that this place was built for those closer to Thea or Pallabar’s size than to mine. While most of the population appeared to be halflings, we also spotted a wood-elf, who stood out among the rest of the crowd. He was burdened with a backpack that seemed at least twice his size, with pots and pans and other goods strapped to the outside. Forgetting myself for a moment, I rushed to his side to see if he needed assistance, but my appearance, as I should have expected, was quite startling to the man. He quickly realized that we were new in town, however, and introduced himself as Weedle, a traveling merchant. Weedle unrolled a blanket filled with his wares, and we were presented with a spread including apples, sausages, a saddle, and two swords. One was clearly quite aged and average-looking, but the other was clearly a masterwork item: a shortsword, pristine and gleaming, with runes faintly carved into the blade.

It was, alas, far out of the price range of even all of us combined. Or so I thought! I was feeling a bit hungry and the sausages were calling my name, so I purchased those, and when Weedle asked if we had anything to sell, I paused. While I had desperately wanted to keep the fine garnet we had picked up in Clever’s house for myself, it clearly had great value and it would not be right to withhold that from the group. Besides, we needed a proper appraisal on it, and Weedle did not seem the type to be an expert in that subject. I did, however, remember the collection of beetle carapaces, and pulled them out of my pack.

Weedle promptly fell over.

Several of us made to catch him, but it was too late - he crashed all the way to the ground! But he quickly stood back up, recovered from his shock, and told us that we could have the lot of it, the apples, the saddle, the old sword and even the one he had called the Mystic Sword, in exchange for those beetles. This was a far better deal than I had expected we would get for them, and we readily agreed. Throckmorton took the sword to try and attune to whatever properties the runes provided. And with that, Weedle packed up and wandered off, entranced by the carapaces, barely giving a second glance our way.

Pallabar went off to sell some of his spices in the town square, and the rest of us, unsure what else to do, followed. There, a local farmer started lamenting about his missing sheep and goats, and I could feel my frill raising slightly. I was not about to get accused of eating a farmer’s lost sheep and thrown in a small-town jail again, especially not in front of my new friends! Five times have been more than enough. I spotted a tavern, the “Schooner Or Later”, which was advertising a band called Mixed Herbs. I am, of course, never one to miss a musical performance, so I headed over and ducked my head through the door.

The room briefly grew quiet as I entered, but the mildly intoxicated crowd quickly adjusted and returned to its revelry. I ordered an ale, delivered in a small mug about the size of a coffee cup, and I was immediately captivated to see the Mixed Herbs warming up. They were two halflings - one holding a sort of lyra, and the other with something superficially resembling a bagpipe, but the bag appeared to be an entire goatskin, and the pipe was carved roughly from wood. It was one of the most interesting instruments I had ever seen and I absolutely had to learn more.

As I approached, however, I could see that the pipe player was distressed, and it was clearly not pre-performance jitters. He was tapping his hands anxiously on his instrument and it seemed that his mind was on another plane. My sudden appearance did not help his nerves, unfortunately, and he started to see me approach. I waved at the bartender to bring him an ale and introduced myself, showing my fiddle and assuring him I was a fellow man of the arts. This calmed him, and I had to ask what was upsetting him so.

He introduced himself as Garbo Sawgrass, and his partner as Talbot Duckweed. He said he was worried about his sister Cerita, who was supposed to arrive in this town a week ago and who always wrote to him regularly, but hadn’t done so and hadn’t been seen in town. The only place he had yet to ask was at the temple, but he was having a hard time bringing himself to ask after her there. I asked him why, and he said the temple was dedicated to a god of death, and to preparing the dead for the afterlife. “It worries me more,” he said, “that they will know somethin’, than that they won’t.”

Certainly understandable. I was immediately compelled to help my fellow artist, and told him that I would ask after his sister at the temple. Tipping back the rest of my ale, I alerted my companions of Garbo’s predicament, and they agreed to join me in checking at the temple. As we walked up the hill to the temple, there were stakes along the road, either carved or with notes attached, with well-wishings and prayers for the dead or lost at sea. The wooden doors were carved with the face of a male halfling and five stars around him. I opened the doors to find rows of pews, and a priest at the head of the room. An altar was surrounded by five busts of animals in profile - two birds, a dog, a cat, and a shark, all with menacing expressions. As the priest noticed us, he quickly closed the book he was reading and pushed it behind him on the altar.

“H-hello!” he said, seemingly startled to see us, though I have become largely used to giving a poor first impression. “My name is Brother Casper. Can...can I help you with anything? Are you here for anyone?”

“Actually, yes,” I replied. “We’re new in town, but I just met a new friend whose sister has gone missing. Young halfling lass called Cerita. She would have only just come into town last week. Have you seen her, or…” I paused, knowing the answer could be uncomfortable, but knew I had to press on, “have you had any...any deaths of strangers in town recently?”

Casper grew immediately and obviously tense. “I…no, no one, no deaths recently! Haven’t seen her, sorry!”

We all looked at each other. The priest was a bad liar. I stepped closer, and he tried to step back but the altar prevented him from getting far. “It’s ok, you can tell me. Where is she?”

Again, Casper hesitated, before fidgeting with the pages of the book behind him. “I...I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s not here!” He was far too nervous.

“We aren’t here to hurt you, Brother Casper, but I need to know where my friend’s sister is. I know you know.” Casper trembled for a moment, then bolted for the door. Unfortunately, we were all in the way, and I snatched him by the arm before he could get far. I was tired of his lies, and grabbed him by the shoulders. He was easy enough to lift off the ground. “Where. Is. She?”

Casper gasped, and started babbling, “She’s...I’m sorry, it’s too late.” “Where is she?”

“She’s...the book...the book is the key…” he said, his eyes darting to the book that he had left on the altar. “The book…” he murmured again before passing out cold.

Hadn’t quite expected the man to faint outright. I laid him down on the pew, and picked up the book. Quickly, it became clear that a compartment was cut out of the pages, and inside were five stones - one gold, one red, one orange, one black, and one blue. Five stones, it was clear, for five statues, each of which had an empty eye socket.

We took a moment to explore the back part of the temple, to look for any additional clues. The back room appeared to be a morgue, in which we found a poor fellow not too long gone. His throat had been cut. Casper had claimed no one had died here recently, confirming that he was definitely a lying liar who lies. A supply closet and a door outside were the only other exits. We would have to figure out the stones with no extra clues.

We looked more closely at the busts, and Hyla was able to provide some insight. From left to right, there was a bearded vulture, a jackal, a crow, a tiger, and a shark. Some of the colors seemed to be clear connections - blue for the shark, orange for the tiger, black for the crow. The others less so. Hyla, however, recalled that jackals had golden fur, and that bearded vultures were known to bathe in red clay. We slotted the stones into their corresponding statues, and the altar suddenly slid aside to reveal a small spiral staircase headed down. We quickly shackled the still-unconscious Casper, leaving Mr. Mugglesworth to keep an eye on him, and I headed straight down.

At the bottom of the stairs, in front of me was another altar and another set of statues, just like the room above. This room had a much more sinister feel however, which was not helped by the very unnaturally moving goat and ram to the left side of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cage against the wall holding two more sheep and a halfling woman laying unmoving on the floor. A second halfling in robes stood there and turned when he heard me approach.

This was not good. I immediately cast a spell, attempting to paralyze him, but I felt him resist it and yelled for the others to get down here NOW.

Throckmorton was the first down and he immediately rushed in to join me on the attack against the cleric. I turned to the goat, which appeared on closer examination to be very dead, but that wasn’t stopping it from attacking. Thea was next down the stairs, and the spell that flew from her fingers seemed to have an effect. The cleric and the goat seemed to shudder, and their movements became a little more awkward. Hyla went straight for the ram, with the fierce determination she reserved for crimes against nature. Pallabar brought up the rear with his crossbow.

The room turned to chaos. I managed a particularly good hit on the goat, and cleaved it in two. Hyla seemed to be handling the ram, so I turned my attention to the halfling. Throckmorton had been taking an attack-and-disengage strategy, alternating attacks with his sword and bolts of a strange necrotic energy with each retreat. Thea was sending her own energy bolts at him, and at one point a bright radiant flame erupted on him. In between, crossbow bolts shot between us at him, but he was skillfully evading many of our attacks. He seemed to shrug off the effects of most of my spells, but he was less successful at avoiding our blades.

He kept reaching out to touch us, and for the most part we were dodging - Thea’s initial spell seemed to be hampering his ability to reach us. I heard a clatter on the other side of the room, and saw suddenly that Hyla had lost both her swords to attacks from the ram, and had cast a spell to tangle it in vines. As I saw this, and briefly wondered if I should turn my attention to the ram, when my blood turned cold, and I realized that the halfling had his hand on my arm. Pain swept through me, and he smiled, a new energy seeming to wash over him. Realizing that Throckmorton was in the “retreat” phase of his attack pattern, and no one else was nearby, I could only think of one way to definitely get him away from me.

“THUNDER!” I shouted, and a loud boom shook the basement, sending him flying backwards into one of the statues. Throckmorton and Pallabar each got in another attack while he was distracted, and he fell to his knees. On the opposite side of the central altar, the ram suddenly collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and a dark energy seemed to seep out of the cleric’s eyes. We backed away slowly, but a moment later, he floated into the air, and the energy that had been coming from his eyes exploded outwards from him. I seemed to be the only one caught in that blast, but as the chilling necrotic energy struck me, I felt a strange presence, like someone looking into the heart of me. It lasted only a moment, and the cleric fell lifelessly to the floor.

Immediately I rushed over to him, and found a key in one pocket. The key unlocked the cell, and I rushed to see if Cerita was still with us. Though her pulse was weak, she was, and I stepped back to let Thea work on healing her and avoid frightening her right into the afterlife when she awoke.

Returning to the cleric, we found a couple of letters in another pocket and stashed them away for later, then headed up another set of stairs that led outside, herding the two terribly frightened but alive sheep ahead of us and supporting a weak, but now conscious Cerita.

At the top of the stairs, we were met by a crowd of townsfolk including a few guards. The boom of my last spell seemed to have carried all the way down into town. Garbo pushed his way through, shouting for Cerita, and raced over to embrace her and help her away from the ruckus. In the meantime, we had some explaining to do with the local authorities, but given the state of Cerita and the poor fellow in the morgue, it was clear that the head priest had been up to no good. Shouting within the chapel alerted us to the fact that Casper was awake, but Mr. Muggleworth, good kitty that he is, was sitting on him. The guards took him away for questioning, and I remembered the letters, bringing them out for examination.

They identified the other cleric as Torvin. The first expressed displeasure with him for failing to achieve the results that had been demanded of him, though it was unclear what exactly it was that he had been tasked with. The second, an unsent letter from Torvin in response, assured the other party that he was committed to achieving this goal, and that in fact he was very close and would have results soon. He assured the other person that he was still very interested in joining the Apocryphage, and would get the results they demanded. None of us had heard of the Apocryphage, but it certainly didn’t sound like the local needlepoint club.

This would be an investigation for later, though. For now, it was time to do the relaxing we had come to town for, so we returned to the Schooner Or Later. Garbo and Talbott, unburdened by the worry over Cerita, had a quite pleasant performance! Perhaps a bit technically rough, but that goat-bagpipe was fascinating to see in action!

We noticed at one point that Throckmorton had disappeared, and only met back up with him when we returned to the Winchester. He had returned to the temple to investigate further, and had learned that Kyper, the local godling worshipped at this temple, had been a priest that tended to the dead, and he had gained the ability to revive the recently-deceased with much greater ease than even seasoned clerics. Over time, he gained a substantial following, retired, and eventually passed away himself, but none of his followers developed the skills that he had.

Torvin had been contacted by an organization called the Apocryphage, who had told him that a mortal had been imbued with the ability to overcome death. He was to replicate this feat, and he was in significant trouble with them for failing as yet to do so. He had been responsible for recently replacing the statues in the chapel with the intimidating versions that we saw, and Casper, his subordinate, had been concerned about Torvin’s recent practices but didn’t see fit to question his superior.

This Apocryphage group seems to be after the same thing we have been tasked with -- the pursuit of eternal life. But they are seeking it in a very different way, through necromancy. They don’t seem like folk to tangle with, though I’d be surprised if this is the last we hear of them.

My, look at the time! I should properly have dated this the 21st, with how late it has gotten! We are now off to Greentide, with an eight-day journey at sea ahead of us. Until next time!

-NS

#episode 2

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tuckinpodcast-blog · 7 years ago

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EPISODE 5: EVERYONE WANTS TO BE CARY GRANT

LISTEN: SOUNDCLOUD / iTUNES / GOOGLE PLAY

NOTES: None of any real consequence, except that this week, I’m going to try and start some new features on the blog this week, including a movie and book recommendation and some extra information pertaining to episodes.

SOURCES: listed at end of transcript

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Jack, and this is Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This week, we're going to be talking about Cary Grant and his husband. I think I've mentioned before that I've been in love with Cary Grant for most of my life – the funny thing is that after I had to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in high school I thought he was Gregory Peck, but then I realized my mistake. I don't remember what I saw him in first or why I even ended up so fixated on him, but I very vividly remember watching Arsenic and Old Lace and just being completely captivated. Maybe I'm just sort of into tall, dark, and handsome, but for whatever reason, I collected information and little tidbits about him for forever. Like the bit about how he and Clark Gable would swap monogrammed presents if they didn't like what they had gotten, or that he had once been married to the girl from City Lights.

I really started this podcast for two reasons. The first one is that I'm totally and unbelievably in love with Montgomery Clift and when David Thomson talked garbage about him in The Whole Equation, I wanted to set the record straight, and I'll get to that in a future episode. The second reason is that, as I've talked about before, when I decided to get angry at David Thomson and write a massive rant on my personal tumblr, I mentioned that I had only recently learned that Cary Grant was gay. Someone replied to my post correcting me that he was actually bisexual, and kind of a shitty person. I'm not the type to accept things at face value, and I also like to look at famous people as real, complex people who might be twenty stories tall in our memory, but were really just actual human beings, out in the world making terrible decisions and drinking too much wine when they were supposed to do something important.

So, I went digging. I went digging and I didn't really stop. I read everything I could find about Cary Grant – I read the things that denied that he had same-sex relationships, I read the things that said he was exclusively gay, I read the things that said he was bisexual. I watched his movies – mostly for entertainment, but also as an excuse to try and peel back the persona. My favorite thing about Cary Grant has always been his face and the way he could contort it. He actually got his start as a tumbler and acrobat, and he's this very tall, gangly thing – but somehow, even with all the physical acting he did, it's still the way he expresses his emotions on his face that I like the best. It's pretty well-known that he put on the Cary Grant persona deliberately. He almost considered “Cary Grant” to be someone entirely different and apart from his real self.

At the end of all this digging, what did I come up with? As I'm sure you're not surprised to hear: the content of this podcast.

Cary Grant was born Archie Leach in Bristol on January 18, 1904. His parents, Elsie and Elias, were working-class, and dysfunctional as hell. When he was nine, Elias told Archie that his mother had gone away on holiday, then changed the story to say that she had died. He didn't find out until he was 31 that he had been lied to, and his father had in fact put Elsie away in a sanitarium. Eventually, Elias abandoned Archie and moved away to marry someone else and start a new family. Archie ran away from home at one point to join the Pender Troupe of acrobats, but when they found out that he was seriously underage, he was dragged back to school. At that point, he did a pretty good job of being a very poor student, until he was thrown out of school. He toured with the troupe full-time starting in 1918 at the age of fourteen.

I think here I'd like to pause and reflect on Grant's childhood. It's very clearly a messed up situation, with his father running off and the whole thing with his mother. It's been said that the way his mother was very standoffish and selective with her affection directly contributed to the way Grant handled his relationships with women in his adult life, and I think that's true. I also think that the kind of pain of a childhood like this really directly impacted his acting. I'm not terribly familiar with the things he did with Hitchcock in the 50's and 60's, but I am familiar with his screwball comedies of the late 30's and early 40's. That old line about depressed people being the funniest really rings true in this case.

So, in 1920, Archie gets on the RMS Olympic to come to America to tour with the Pender Troupe. There's been some biographers who claim that Dougie Fairbanks Sr and Mary Pickford were on the boat and took a shine to Archie, but accounts vary. He wouldn't star in any movies until 1930, and he wouldn't become really famous until about 1937. That's a lot of years touring – whether he was tumbling or acting in plays – between his arrival and his big break. So you know, what was he doing in that interrim?

Cary Grant met Orry Kelly – who went on to become a very famous costume designer – in 1925. Still Archie at the time, he was twenty-one, broke, and had nowhere to go. Orry-Kelly took Archie in, and so the rumor goes, they became romantically involved. In Cary Grant: A Biography, Marc Elliot talks about this relationship quite a bit, mentioning the drama and the arguing that went on. Elliot says that the two had a row at a party and the host sniffed and asked if everyone was just going to sit there and let this blatant homosexuality continue in front of them. In Kelly's lost autobiography, he mentions that he was annoyed with Archie's penchant for blonde women, but proudly said that Archie “always came home to me.” While I was researching this podcast, I also came across some information that pointed to Grant as being abusive towards Orry-Kelly. And the things that I came across were pretty shocking – Grant supposedly knocked Kelly out several times and threw Kelly out of a moving vehicle once. This isn't entirely out of character for Grant, I'll admit – it was well-known that he was abusive towards his wives, going so far as to fly into a blind rage and crash his car into Virginia Cherrill's parked one while she visited an ex of hers. But the things he did to his wives was well-documented. I had never heard of him acting this way towards Kelly, and even though I shouldn't be surprised and it didn't take all that much digging to find out about it, I wanted to take this moment to sort of talk about how domestic violence in queer relationships really is a problem that people don't like to talk about or look into. At least at the time, two men being in a relationship with one another – it's been said that physical violence was almost expected, just due to the nature of the times and the nature of the toxic masculinity of the time. There's a part of me that kind of just thinks that's a bullshit excuse for queer abusers, but if we go back to our Valentino episode and remember the way that the general public reacted to a man just being pretty, and even if we look at the pressures of traditional masculinity and how violence is a supposedly “masculine” trait – maybe, at least, back then, it's half bullshit excuse and half explanation. It might be an explanation, but it doesn't have to be forgiven. You can be expected to do something and still know that it's wrong. I don't want to come off as apologizing for Grant's behavior, because it was unacceptable then and it's unacceptable now, but at least we can look at the times and the environment and get a better picture of the entire situation.

Cary Grant was a very famous man, a very neurotic man, and I think also, a very lonely and scared man, but the fact remains that he was abusive towards his partners, and I'll admit that this has changed my overall picture of him and dimmed my crush on him – and there's a whole other discussion to be had about supporting people who were known to be abusers or even just not very nice people after they've been dead for a long time, you know, things that maybe weren't known or at least well-known while they were alive, or supporting someone's art versus condemning their personal behavior, but I think it's a thought for another time.

So, Archie and Kelly, despite their tumultuous relationship, are more or less together through 1932. When Archie goes to Hollywood in 1930, he stays with Kelly until he gets his feet under him. In 1931, he changes his name at the urging of Paramount studios. Archie Leach becomes Cary Grant – or I think maybe I should say, Cary Grant becomes the persona that Archie Leach could slip into comfortably, allowing him to kind of become someone else and minimize the anxiety that existing in the world gave him. In 1932, Cary Grant meets Randolph Scott, and the two move into a beautiful house by the beach together, known in the press and to their friends as “Bachelor Hall”.

As with Garbo and Dietrich, Randolph Scott was the polar opposite of Cary Grant. He was born into a well-off Virginian family and wanted for nothing when he was growing up. He went to private schools, had a large family, and went off to serve in the Army during World War 1. He returned home in 1919 after attending an officer's school in France, and went to Georgia Tech with dreams of becoming a football star. He transferred to the University of North Carolina after a back injury put his football dreams on hold, but he eventually dropped out of school altogether to go and work as an accountant at a textile firm where his father also worked.

It was around 1927 that he went to Hollywood. His father was friends with Howard Hughes, and sent Scott along with a letter to meet the millionaire. Hughes plays into our early Hollywood stories quite a bit, as I'm sure you've realized by now, and he eventually gave Scott a part in a romantic comedy. Scott did a lot of stage work as bit characters, and eventually got a deal at Paramount – where he met Cary Grant on the set of Hot Saturday. At this point, a lot of biographers start to differ. The two certainly did meet on the set of Hot Saturday, but Orry Kelly's autobiography itself points to Kelly being the one who introduced the two. They moved in together almost immediately, by some accounts to “save costs” and by others because they legitimately cared for one another.

The two would live together on and off for twelve years. Scott became a point of contention in Grant's first marriage – the one to Virginia Cherrill, of City Lights fame. Grant refused to move out of the house on the beach at first, and Cherrill was furious over it. The marriage itself was rushed and was basically the studios putting the squeeze on Grant to marry someone, anyone, lest the gossip columnist Heda Hopper call him “not normal” in another one of her rags. The marriage would last less than a year, when Cherrill would claim that Grant had no sexual interest in her whatsoever, and he was drunk and sullen throughout most of their time together. She also claimed that he hit her – and we've already talked about that a little bit in this episode, but I want to share with you a thought I had while I reading the Elliot biography of Grant.

So, let's pan back and look at Grant's life for a second. He was abandoned by his father, had a troubled relationship with his mother, and basically made his own way in the world without any real influences to base his life and actions on. The way he acted with Cherrill, flying into jealous rages and acting possessive, was, in my opinion, Grant's caricature of a straight man and how a husband was supposed to act. I'm going to talk a lot about the way that queer men internalize misogyny and homophobia in the Monty Clift episode, but I think this is a good jumping point. Again, this isn't an excuse for the way that Grant acted towards his wives and partners, but I think that it's interesting to look at the way that society shapes a person's perceptions. Grant acted like a jealous lunatic because he thought that's how a man should act. He should have known that it was wrong and he should have been better than that, but he didn't and he wasn't.

Getting back to the story, it's very interesting to me that a lot of the articles on Randolph Scott that I find cast doubts on a romantic relationship between him and Grant. Scott's son flat-out denied the rumors, and Bud Boetticher, who directed Scott in seven films over the course of his career, called them “bullshit”. Even Scott's biographer says that there's no evidence that Scott and Grant were ever romantically involved. But, when you go on over to source material on Grant, they're very much on the other side. And, now, I'm going to try and get a link up to a series of photographs that were shot of Grant and Scott at the Bachelor Hall – they document a sort of “day in the life” of the two men, swimming in their pool and running lines while Scott reclines in a chair and Grant lays with his head at Scott's feet. There's one of them in the kitchen together cooking, both of them wearing aprons. There's one of them just looking at each other lovingly.

So, maybe the rumors are true, and maybe they aren't. The pair lived together through at least one marriage each, until the studios finally pressured them into moving out in 1940. They made a movie together the same year – the only movie they would make together – called My Favorite Wife, and instead of choosing separate hotel suites for the location shots, they roomed together, raising more than just a few eyebrows. Most of the first-hand material I've found says that they weren't intimate partners, which – okay. Fine. Even Grant's daughter claims they weren't true, but adds that Grant liked to let the gay rumors fly, so that when he bagged a woman, they felt “special” – gross. Gross, and a little creepy. And honestly, not out of character for Grant, knowing what we know about him now. There are people who claim to have caught Scott and Grant holding hands in a semi-private moment late in their lives, and there are people who claim to have been involved with both of them in the menage-trois sense of the word.

So, where does this leave us? As with most early Hollywood queer stories: we're in gay limbo. Were they, weren't they. There's evidence that goes both ways. Is this just a story about two men who were very close, very good friends, but in American society, we can't view that as anything but gay? Marc Elliot posits that Grant's same-sex attraction goes back to his school days in England, when boys just messed around like that. Maybe it's that. I think I've done an okay job of explaining what a complicated man Cary Grant was – abandoned, neurotic, hypochondriac. He had an addict's personality – first with smoking and drinking, and then later in life, he micro-dosed with acid to keep his anxiety and depression in check. I personally think that Grant is one of the best examples of stars being, ultimately, human. He was deeply flawed and seriously insecure – famously, he sued Chevy Chase for calling him a “homo” in the 80's. Me, personally? I think Grant was a confused, lonely person who took solace from the people that gave it to him, no matter their gender. Regardless of the stories, the rumors and even the truth, what we're left with is: the story of Cary Grant. A man with a charming smile, a devastating personal life, and the acting chops to be named the number two actor of the twentieth century, sliding in right after Humphrey Bogart.

A quick aside before I leave you: I'm going to try and do something a little new starting this week, and that's posting up little blog entries on our tumblr called “Things We Missed This Week”. Basically, it's the parts of a story that ended up cut out of the episode for time or clarity's sake in blog post form so you can have a little extra information. There's a lot I didn't talk about on our last episode, and there's enough information about Cary Grant to fill several books, so I thought that maybe it would be a nice way to give you guys a better picture of what I'm talking about here. This week, I'm also going to start leaving book and movie recommendations on the blog so you guys can maybe get a chance to watch some of my favorites and we can open up some discourse there.

Thank you so much for listening to Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This episode was written, researched, edited and recorded by me, Jack Segreto. I wanna take a minute to pause here and give a special shout out to tumblr users amiddleearththemedbarinhogsmeade and detectivejoan for saying nice things about the podcast and blowing up my head a little bit. Thanks, folks. It really means a lot to me. You can find a transcript of this episode and all of our episodes, along with facts, photos, and recommendations, on our tumblr, tuckinpodcast.tumblr.com. You can also give us a like on Facebook at facebook.com/tuckinpodcast. We accept messages on both of those platforms, so feel free to shoot us any suggestions for show topics or comments you might have. We put out new episodes every Wednesday, and you can listen to us on SoundCloud, iTunes and Google Play, so don't forget to rate and subscribe to us! We'll be back next Wednesday to discuss Marlon Brando, gay rumors, and his impact on Hollywood masculinity. See you next time!

SOURCES:

Cary Grant: A Biography, Elliot, Marc ()

Cary Grant & Randolph Scott: A Gay Hollywood Romance

Inside Cary Grant’s Secret Life With Men

Was Cary Grant Secretly Gay?

Cary Grant & Randolph Scott: A Love Story

Wikipedia. You guys know I only use it for biographical facts and pertinent details, right?

#( TRANSCRIPTS & SHOW NOTES. )#( EPISODE 5. )#queer history #queer history podcast #hollywood history #hollywood history podcast #cary grant #orry kelly #randolph scott #new podcast #[ i'll get a few of the photos from the shoot mentioned in the episode up in just a hot one #they're g r e a t ]

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oselatra · 6 years ago

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Visionary Arkansans 2018

Inspired men and women who are making great things happen.

Benito Lubazibwa Working for economic mobility.

Benito Lubazibwa wants to do more than encourage African-American entrepreneurship, though that is the primary focus of his own startup, Remix Ideas. "Integrating capital with humanity" is what the native of Tanzania and University of Central Arkansas alumnus says is the ultimate goal: to make Little Rock a more connected, integrated place to live, to break down barriers not just to capital — an entrepreneur's biggest challenge — but between people.

That's what Remix's Night Market in the Bernice Garden has been able to achieve on a small scale. The Night Market's slogan is "One City, One Love," and serves as both a platform for startups — 40 vendors were at the September event — and a place to mingle, listen to music, dine and dance. Nearly all the vendors were women, a fact that pleased Lubazibwa mightily, and established businesses on Main Street indirectly benefited. The event, which Lubazibwa and chief creative officer Angel Burt organized, featured not just African-American women starting out in business, but food trucks featuring the cuisine of many nationalities: Venezuelan, Mexican, Colombian and African. It also had a broader mission than to help create business: It also created jobs. The men setting up and taking down the market were hired intentionally from the ranks of SoMa's homeless population, and Lubazibwa said they were eager, excellent employees who not only showed up on time, but early. They were paid $15 an hour and given T-shirts identifying them with the Night Market. "I told people, the people you have been serving, dancing with, those are the people you call homeless. I call them freedom fighters — they have to fight against whatever is holding them back," Lubazibwa said.

Remix has been in business for a year, working with financing partner Communities Unlimited Inc., which provides microloans, and Innovate Arkansas, an initiative of Winrock International. It hosts the "Remix Pitch Challenge," awarding $1,000 to the winning startup pitch, and will hold a "Celebration of Startups" networking and pitch challenge party from 5-10 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, 201 E. Broadway in North Little Rock. (Tickets are $10.)

Remix seeks to inspire would-be entrepreneurs with its radio show "Remix Ideas." Creative officer Burt interviews business people on the half-hour show on KABF-FM, 88.3, which airs at 11:30 a.m. Wednesdays.

Remix has also worked out discounts for use of co-working spaces at the Little Rock Technology Park and the Innovation Hub. Remix clients will be able to use space at the tech park, at 417 Main St., for $50 a month, and at the Hub for $40 a month.

Remix has several workshops and events lined up for 2019, including a 12-week Startups Business Academy, beginning in February, for people who have the ideas, but not the know-how, on running a business. "Eighty percent of startups fail," Lubazibwa said. The business academy will be practical, showing people how to test their ideas. "You don't buy a car without driving it," he said. "You test drive."

Remix will also hold three pitch challenges and the Ideas Weekend festival July 25-27.

Lubazibwa is also working to introduce the Impactor card, which for $10 will give card holders discounts at participating businesses. It's similar to the Partners Card that the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences issues to support cancer research, but instead of two weeks, the Impactor Card will be good for a year. Several businesses have signed on to the idea already, including Remix Ideas' most high-profile success story, Kontiki African Restaurant; and Pyramid Art Books and Custom Framing. Garbo Hearne, who owns Pyramid, said she was impressed with Lubazibwa's energy and his ideas for Little Rock. Lubazibwa said the card would be a "win-win" for customers, giving them a break, and businesses, who would see more customers.

Lubazibwa said he worked in Africa after graduating from UCA in 2001, but realized that Arkansas was as much in need of the same "ecosystem" — a favorite word of startup promoters — to address similar barriers to economic success as were the places in Africa he worked.

It was his parents who instilled in him the notion that the important thing in life was to help others. "They believe that you are judged not by your harvest, but by the seed you are planting. ... That's been in my life since the beginning."

The next movement among people of color will be an economic movement, Lubazibwa believes. "Martin Luther King did an excellent job on civil rights. Now it's time for this generation to fight for economic mobility," not just for African Americans, but "women, Latinos, everybody." He believes Remix is part of that movement.

For information on Remix workshops and events, go to remixideas.com.

— Leslie Newell Peacock

Brandon Markin A curious and roving eye.

Brandon Markin's approach to photography and life are the same: "You get one go-round and so you might as well try it all and put yourself into situations that make you uncomfortable and just deal with that. ... I look at photography as an extension of who I am as a person and a way to document my learning experience as I go through life."

That deep curiosity shines through in a scan of his online portfolios on Instagram (@bnikram) and brandonmarkin.com. There you'll find a tender black-and-white portrait of a young black man holding a diaper-clad baby who regards the camera with a blank wonder, while her father, eyes downcast and with the hint of a grin, plays with her impossibly small baby fingers. It's captioned "From a front porch in Helena. Talking boxing with TJ." Another black-and-white image from January is all light and shadow, a big band of men in cowboy hats on a stage, with beams of light emanating from spotlights out into a sparse crowd on the dance floor, dark shapes huddled tight. It's titled "Quinceañera de Juliana."

Like everyone else's Instagram page, Markin also includes pictures of his family. His wife and frequent muse, Mariella, is a student at the Clinton School of Public Service. The family traveled to Bocas del Toro, an island chain province of Panama, over the summer while Mariella did her required service project, so you'll also find pictures such as one Markin captioned "Girl in Bahia Honda, Panama with her dolls. Life is sweet and fleeting." It's of a small girl in a white dress standing in front of a giant window, looking warily outside the frame and clutching her dolls tightly to her chest.

Markin, 43, of North Little Rock, prefers analog film photography. "I've always been drawn to that process," he said, though he didn't start young. "It wasn't until I was well into adulthood [that] I had the resources to pursue that." Why film? "Part of it is nostalgia. We're nostalgic creatures. Photography is the nostalgic medium. What you're doing, in a way, is stopping time. You're capturing light from a moment that will never be repeated again." You also learn to appreciate motion, he said. "When most people do digital photography, that obsession with perfection means, if they're shooting something with low light, they'll try to stop the motion. But if you're doing it with film, that motion turns into a beautiful thing, with waves and streaks and such."

He's part of noted photographer Rita Henry's Blue-Eyed Knockers collective in Little Rock. The group gets together regularly at Henry's Stifft Station studio to hang out and process film. Through that group and under his own initiative, he's done a number of projects: pics of political protest, of the dilapidated Hotel Pines in Pine Bluff, of the Kanis Bash, where skateboarders and punk and hardcore bands gather at the Kanis Park skate bowl.

Markin makes a living as a photographer, which means he shoots products, events and magazine portraits with a digital camera. But he's committed to continuing his art photography. He has a solo retrospective coming in November 2019 at the William F. Laman Library in North Little Rock. He dreams of traveling through Central and South America on a photo project (Mariella is from Ecuador, so he's traveled to South America before). He met Adger Cowans, the famed fine art photographer, at a talk at Hearne Fine Art earlier this year and asked him for advice. "He said, 'Do what you do and don't worry about where the money is going to come from. If you're true to your spirit and vision, it may take a while, but the money will come.' " For now, Markin is content to keep on keeping on. "Any day that I can be walking around with the camera taking photographs and doing what I love, that's a win for me."

—Lindsey Millar

Jared Henderson Lost the battle, but sees hope for Democrats in the longer political struggle.

First, a bit of news for the politicos for whom it's already time to begin worrying over elections in 2020: Count Jared Henderson of Little Rock out as a candidate for the U.S. Senate or Congress. But don't take that as a sign that his political fire is dwindling. Yes, as the Democratic nominee for governor, he got walloped by Governor Hutchinson in November. (Henderson got 31.7 percent of the vote, while Hutchinson secured 65.4 percent.) That's a big gap, but Hutchinson was a popular incumbent; no one gave Henderson much of a shot to defeat him, particularly considering Henderson had little to no name recognition.

After 10 months of hard campaigning, meeting and greeting and stump-speaking across the state, Henderson may be beat up a bit, but at 40, with a decorated resume and a Clintonesque gift for making policy relatable, he has the look of a star prospect for Arkansas Democrats.

So what's next? He hasn't charted a path yet, but says he plans to "stay engaged in politics." He won't run against U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton or U.S. Rep. French Hill, not because he doesn't think they're beatable in two years, but because he's got a young family and isn't ready to spend 60 percent of his time in Washington, D.C.

After getting two advanced degrees from Harvard, in business administration and public administration, Henderson worked for NASA and for McKinsey & Co., the worldwide consulting firm. He returned to Arkansas to lead the state branch of Teach for America, with a plan to eventually get into politics. "But I was perpetually six or 10 years away until Donald Trump got elected," he said. "When that happened, especially as a new father, I said, 'We've got to get a good, competent, compassionate, inclusive party back in the state,' and the fastest way is just to get in and do it. And, yeah, we may continue to get thumped for a while, but there's not a faster way to make progress."

Why make the political leap into a race for the highest statewide office? Why not start in city hall or in the state legislature? "Whether it's right or wrong, in politics, as long as you're a credible and competent candidate, voters fit you into the box in which you're introduced. ... In politics, I think you have to take risks," Henderson said.

He concedes that he made some first-time-candidate mistakes. "I didn't really start to understand and build an operation that could raise significant amounts of money until June or July, but once we did, I actually started raising significant amounts of money, especially since I was going against someone that no one thought was beatable. If I had been able to start that a year earlier, we would've had enough money to introduce myself to the rest of the state. Would that have won it for us? Probably not. But would that have gotten me another 10 points? Very plausible."

For Democrats to succeed down the road, the party must invest in infrastructure and continue to improve on candidate recruitment, he said.

"My campaign built a field organization that really reached pretty far, but could've gone so much farther. We're rebuilding data systems as a party, so we know which doors to knock on and which voters to engage. As we rebuild that over the next 10 years, you could imagine that compressing some of the margins even more. It's going to take more money than we had. It's going to take a party infrastructure that brings more people in. It's going to take contesting every race."

If Democrats can make improvements, Republicans might help their cause, Henderson said, noting as markers Oklahoma, which recently elected a Democratic congressman, and Kansas, which elected a Democratic governor.

"I don't want the economy to teeter for anyone's political fortune," Henderson said. "But sooner or later it'll turn. I was running this year because I wanted to win and I believed there was a hell of a good argument to win. And I lost. Let the Republicans go do what they say they're going to do in the next few years. Let them cut another $180 million in taxes. Let them ignore that we have the sixth-highest prison population in the world. Let them kick the can on highway funding. We'll see if they follow through with this raise on teachers, but even if they do, it's not going to be enough. This profession is bleeding."

Henderson would like to continue to advocate for issues on which he campaigned. "Education, teenage pregnancy and rural economic development — those are things I'm passionate about and things I believe are really fundamental for building a better future for the whole state, and they're areas that are way under-resourced. You can also speak to them in conservative values. I can talk to my conservative family members on why these things matter and I can get them to nod their heads."

— Lindsey Millar

Lorenzo Lewis Mental health care advocate.

Lorenzo Lewis says his narrow escape from the school-to-prison pipeline was a testament to the importance of equipping marginalized men of color with coping skills and resources to manage their mental health. That's why in 2016 Lewis founded the Confess Project; its mission is to bring mental health and emotional awareness education to men and boys of color.

Lewis was born while his mother was incarcerated. He said behavior and anxiety issues in his early childhood led to his two-month stay at a juvenile facility in Pulaski County at age 10. He wasn't encouraged to talk about his feelings or trauma and almost re-entered the juvenile system at age 17.

"Emotionally, I wasn't validated as a young man," Lewis said. He was told that God heals everything, "but [that's] not practically looking at what helps and digging into the issue." The Confess Project advocates for psychological therapy and medication management. "Some of these different tools that you need to understand, through the process of healing and growing, [are] really important to getting on the right track. And I think those were not the things that were pushed in front of me."

The Confess Project offers monthly empowering sessions, community forums on social and emotional issues; 90-minute workshops for marginalized men and boys ages 10-40 on character education, academic improvement and life skills; and the Confess College Tour, which travels to different campuses with a curriculum focused on mental health education, prevention techniques and open dialogue.

The Confess Project also travels to barbershops in the South and Midwest as part of its "Beyond the Shop" series to meet men and boys where they are. Lewis said the "Beyond the Shop" model is intended to initiate conversations that spread further into the communities the nonprofit serves.

"The model of 'Beyond the Shop' is really meant to let this conversation start here, but blossom into our communities, into our homes, into our families, to help our children, to better our relationships," Lewis said. "So that's why it's called 'Beyond the Shop,' to say that it starts here but it revolutionizes throughout the places we live, work and play in."

Confess Project facilitators provide pamphlets on counseling services at the "Beyond the Shop" meetings. Lewis said that these efforts come full circle when he learns of someone who attended a session and went on to begin counseling, or quit smoking, or otherwise take better care of themselves.

"That is why we do what we do. ... I think it's the ultimate feeling as a founder of this organization," he said. "You intend for that to happen, but you don't always see it happen as rapidly, so when you see that happen, it really gives you a lot of satisfaction. At that point, you know that they have a larger chance of transforming their life, more than what they had before."

The Confess Project also trains barbers to become mental health advocates. Lewis said it intends to train 700 barbers next year through webinars, online video training and follow-ups.

Healing is at the root of what the Confess Project does. The curriculum guides men and boys through three archetypes of masculinity: provider, protector and priest. Lewis said once men and boys are able to identify the harmful constraints and pressures of these archetypes, they're able to gain perspective on the unhealthy behaviors they engender.

"Once you get men to understand that, I think they will begin to live a better quality of life," Lewis said. "We also ask, what is the speed of healing? But we let them know that time to heal and grow is different. ...

"A lot of the conversation is about manhood. It's mental health, but it's also about manhood. We have to dig deep into identity, and social skills, and building relationships. A lot of stuff comes up about divorce, and girls, and domestic violence, and child support. You're really dealing with men from the things that affect men."

According to Lewis, the Confess Project is built on the testimony and storytelling of facilitators with stories like his — stories like those of the men and boys in the barbershops and college campuses and community spaces they visit. Lewis said the resonance is crucial to the fulfillment of the organization's mission.

"I think it's important, because it allows them to really see the bigger picture," he said. "It allows them to see accelerated growth, and it's also just transparent, because it's someone who looks like them and comes from the same neighborhood, or went to the same high school as them, may have had failing grades just like them. ... Our facilitators and staff with the Confess Project all harness stories of power. ... It's a mixture of guys from different walks of life and professions who can relate to our key mission that helps us develop a bigger narrative."

— Rebekah Hall

Project REACH How a team of Arkansans hopes to change the criminal justice system.

Dr. Nickolas Zaller, Dr. Femina Varghese and Ben Udochi were recently awarded a three-year, $350,000 fellowship through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program. The fellowship will allow the team to conduct a telehealth pilot study that provides behavioral health counseling in the West Memphis area for people on probation or parole.

Zaller, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, said the project came to fruition after discussions with Varghese and Udochi, the assistant director of substance use treatment with Arkansas Community Correction, about the capacity of telehealth medicine to reach people in isolated areas.

"We hear all the time that we live in a rural state, [that] we have all these access issues in terms of health care in general," Zaller said. "I feel that we underutilize the potential with things we have, like telehealth and telemedicine, to reach more people in rural areas."

According to Zaller, the pilot study will take place at the local office of Arkansas Community Correction, which oversees parolees and probationers, who are required to report there. If they fail to show up for a meeting with their probation or parole officer, a warrant is issued for their arrest.

"The idea was that is an opportunity," Zaller said. "They're already in the office. We've identified individuals who are struggling. Can we then provide some additional services while they're there?"

According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation of data from a 2016 federal Bureau of Justice Statistics survey, one in 44 Arkansans is under some form of correctional supervision, one of the highest rates in the nation. Zaller said this high rate could in part be attributed to the fact that Arkansas lacks adequate treatment capacity for folks with mental health or substance use issues.

"We haven't invested, it's just plain and simple," Zaller said. "We have not invested in that capacity. We haven't prioritized it, we haven't invested, and this is the consequence."

Zaller and Udochi said the team decided on West Memphis for the pilot study because of its proximity to more rural areas of the state, as the RWJF fellowship focuses specifically on health care in rural America. Udochi said individuals on parole or probation living in rural areas face unique challenges to accessing necessary services.

"Some of the rural areas, they don't have the necessary services rightly available in their location," Udochi said. "Second to that is the transportation issue. So they have to travel a long distance to get the services they need. The hope is that with telehealth services, we can see how beneficial those services can be in alleviating some of those problems in those areas."

Varghese, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, will supervise her Ph.D. students who will provide the telehealth counseling. Zaller said he, Varghese and Udochi intentionally designed the pilot study to involve students in hopes of generating future interest in the criminal justice field.

"We wanted to do something where we could help these parolees in critical areas and provide our students with some wonderful training, as they're interested in this area, and when they graduate they could continue the work in this area, whether it's part of their practice or pro bono," Varghese said. "It would be sustainable to two different roles."

According to the research team, the pilot study will compare two different groups. Each group will receive a six-session intervention. One group will receive only the treatment that the Community Correction department assigns to it based on its assessment and no telehealth counseling. The other group will also get the Community Correction treatment assigned to it, but that will be augmented by the telehealth counseling conducted by Varghese and her students.

Zaller, Varghese and Udochi will follow the progress of participants over a period of about six months to observe "overall substance use behaviors," Zaller said. The team will then compare the outcomes of the two groups using standardized assessment tools, such as the Addiction Severity Index, and by conducting pre- and post-study interviews with both the Community Correction officers and the individuals who received treatment.

Zaller, Varghese and Udochi said the pilot study would be considered successful if participants respond well to the telehealth counseling and the ACC decides to expand the study to collect more information from different Community Correction locations in the state. But expanding the study would require funding from the state, and Zaller said such funding could be difficult to come by because of attitudes about criminal justice and punishment. According to Zaller, a main emphasis of the fellowship is also to change the cultural narrative surrounding criminal justice and incarceration by becoming public health leaders in the community.

"A lot of it is a cultural shift," Zaller said. "What do we see as the big picture? What sort of society do we want to live in? Right now, we've chosen a society totally dominated by fear. ... And unless we change that narrative, and unless people understand that there are a lot of structural factors that relate to crime, including violent crime, we have to understand that it's not all the same. We have to really start thinking carefully about what it is that we're punishing people for."

—Rebekah Hall

Steve Arrison The Hot Springs promoter wants to see hordes in hot water.

Here's what Steve Arrison envisions: lots of people pouring into Hot Springs, biking in, hauling kayaks in, driving in for the World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade. Bunking in the new hotels, soaking up the craft suds, enjoying the thermal waters. And he wants an improved quality of life for the residents of the Spa City. Thanks to the internet, Arrison said, "people can live anywhere." Why not Hot Springs?

Arrison, 62, has worked as the CEO of Visit Hot Springs, the city's convention and visitor's bureau, for 20 years. In that time, he's seen gaming join the racetrack at Oaklawn Park, the reopening of once-struggling Magic Springs Theme and Water Park in 2000 thanks to a local bond issue, the expansion of the convention center and the opening of the Embassy Suites Hotel. He was part of the group that worked on the Hot Springs Historic Baseball Trail. The latest big thing that has Hot Springs promoters licking their chops: Oaklawn's $100 million expansion that will bring a high-rise hotel with 200 rooms, an event center and a bigger gaming area.

Arrison is quick to say he wasn't alone, or even the prime mover, in bringing such new investments to Hot Springs. He's part of a team, and he was reluctant to have the Arkansas Times single him out.

But he would take credit for the Northwoods project, the multimillion-dollar bike-trail development taking place on 2,000 hilly Ouachita Mountain acres just west of downtown. The property was made off-limits to the public after 9/11 because its four lakes supplied drinking water to the city. The city opened the land after it discontinued use of three of the lakes, and in 2016 Arrison — who said he didn't even know the property existed — visited. He was struck by its beauty and had the notion that it would be a good place to build bike trails. Hot Springs already attracts the cycling public with several bike trails, both rugged and easy.

After a visit to Bentonville, where the Walton Family Foundation has invested $74 million on mountain bike trails and the bike trail system that connects Bentonville to Bella Vista and Fayetteville, Arrison made a pitch for Walton money for the Northwoods trail. He was successful: The Walton Family Foundation matched Visit Hot Springs' contribution of $680,000 and phase one was launched. The city dedicated the trail's first 14 miles in November; eventually, Northwoods will have 44 miles of mountain bike trail, complete with angled berms, dirt ramps and tricky turns. Arrison wants to see the lakes become kayaker destinations.

Arrison is also looking forward to the day when the Southwest Bike Trail from Pulaski County to Garland County becomes a reality, but that will be many years from now. He's not going anywhere, however: "I hope to be in this job six or seven years from now. I love what I do."

Next on Arrison's plate is the development of the city's five acres at Park and Central avenues, where the Majestic Hotel once stood. The University of Arkansas's Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and Kansas State University are in charge of the "visioning process" for the site. Arrison's vision involves Hot Springs' reason for being: the thermal waters. He'd like to see outdoor thermal pools, where people could relax in the toasty 143-degree F. (on average) water.

The Majestic property is a "real pivotal piece" to Hot Springs' development, so it's important to "get it right." He thinks a public-private partnership is likely.

—Leslie Newell Peacock

Stacey McAdoo Transformative teacher.

Long before Stacey McAdoo was a communications teacher at Little Rock's Central High School — let alone the 2019 Arkansas Teacher of the Year — she was a poet. In the mid-'90s, having just graduated from Hall High School, she and her future husband, Leron, began self-publishing a magazine intended to serve as a platform for fellow creatives, especially people of color. They put out a call for submissions, cut-and-pasted together their book by hand and were soon running off copies at a 24-hour Kinkos. They dubbed it "The Writeous."

"When you talk about underrepresented people, one of the things we are underrepresented in is media, and the ability to tell our story," McAdoo said. "A lot of poets wanted to have a place to share their voice, and we filled that niche."

"Fast forward: When I became an educator, I took that same concept and brought it to the classroom," she said. "So I am now the founder and sponsor of the Writeous Poetry Club ... and the Writeous has transformed from a magazine to a youth-oriented poetry collective."

Since McAdoo started the club in 2002 — her first year at Central and her first year teaching — at least 50 students have participated each year, writing and performing original material at open mics, concerts and on "The Writeous Hour," a radio show she co-produces on local station KWCP-FM, 98.9. Kids learn new skills, build creative projects of their own and travel to other cities. "We also do workshops around Arkansas and the country, teaching other people, other youth, how to use and find their voice," she said. (Leron, who's better known around town as the multitalented performer, writer and artist Ron Mc, remains an integral part of "The Writeous.")

The state's teacher of the year is a product of the Little Rock School District. McAdoo grew up in Southwest Little Rock, where she attended Baseline Elementary and Cloverdale Elementary, then went on to Henderson Middle School and Hall. McAdoo received a B.A. in professional and technical writing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Though she always knew she wanted to be a teacher, she brushed those thoughts aside after graduating. The teaching profession was losing the esteem it had once enjoyed in society, McAdoo said; the message she received from her peers and community was that the classroom wasn't the place for her. Instead, she found a comfortable job at Alltel as an administrative assistant and started a family.

Then, her brother died in a car accident, "and I realized then that life was too short for me to not do what I felt I was supposed to do," McAdoo said. "I quit my job, cut my hair off, and enrolled in ... a master's program [at UA Monticello]." As a first-year teacher, she said, she saw a drop in both pay and health benefits compared to her secretarial job at Alltel.

McAdoo arrived at Central the same year as its principal, Nancy Rousseau. She's been teaching communications at the school ever since. She's also taught AVID, or Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness program for students who are typically the first in their families to go to college since 2007. "I'm their teacher 9th-12th grade," she said. The purpose of AVID is to equip students with the "soft skills" they need to navigate adult life and "discover the hidden curriculum" in college and beyond. "We, as in society, basically operate from a middle-class white person's perspective, and we assume everyone's experience matches that," she said.

As Teacher of the Year, McAdoo will receive a $14,000 award sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation. Beginning in July 2019, she'll spend a sabbatical year of service traveling the state and the nation, speaking with teachers and doing professional development. McAdoo will also have a nonvoting seat on the state Board of Education — the body that took over the Little Rock School District in 2015 and has controlled it for the last four years.

McAdoo said she "has a lot of thoughts" about education policy and the LRSD, but she's not yet sure how she'll leverage her newfound status. "I'm just looking and trying to see where my place is," she said. Was she surprised to be selected for the honor? McAdoo laughed. "In light of who I am, and in light of today's climate — yeah, it's real interesting!" she said.

In general, McAdoo isn't shy about expressing her views. Sixteen years ago, as a newly minted teacher, she was skeptical of the emphasis placed on standardized testing by No Child Left Behind, the federal education law. She recalls saying as much to Rousseau during her first interview. Today, she said, "I still think standardized testing is — the word I want to use is 'wack.' ... Because there's no standard child. The whole premise of testing students to whatever this norm is, it's ridiculous." In her classroom, she said, "I close my door and I've done what I thought was best for the children. I teach pretty much the way I wish I had been taught — and/or the way that I think my biological children need." (She and Ron have a daughter who's now a senior at Central and a son who attends Tennessee State University; her daughter is an accomplished poet in her own right.)

Though she's proud of her work in the classroom, McAdoo considers the Writeous Poetry Club her "most valuable contribution ... to society" because it takes a group of kids and "helps validate them as thinkers."

"My platform as Teacher of the Year is using passion and poetry to close the opportunity gap," she said. "You have a core group of students, for the most part from inner-city Little Rock ... spending their time sitting around writing and re-writing and practicing. That's how you transform not just education, but a city."

— Benjamin Hardy

Chrissy Chatham Defender of potential.

When Chrissy Chatham took the helm as CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas in 2015, she didn't exactly know what she was getting into. The secondhand store Savers, which provided a significant amount of funding for the nonprofit, closed both its locations in Little Rock and North Little Rock in 2017, a major setback to the operations of BBBSCA. But Chatham said her vision of growth for the organization has remained the same since she became CEO.

"I've been hopeful the entire three years," she said. "My tendency is to be more resilient and optimistic. We've had several blows over the three years that could have caused some serious changes, but at the end of the day, it's an opportunity to grow, it's an opportunity to build and make this organization true to what it is and get down to the basics. So many nonprofits end up doing more than they're supposed to do, and when you don't have that ability to do more, you get really good at what you're supposed to do."

Big Brothers Big Sisters' mission is to provide at-risk children one-on-one relationships with adults. According to Chatham, the Central Arkansas chapter has 89 children matched with mentors. But there is a disparity in the number of boys waiting for adult mentors — 127 boys are in the process of becoming Little Brothers; 50 are waiting for mentors. At the moment, there are only 19 men going through the necessary background checks and interviews required to be a Big Brother. The reverse is true for girls: There are 42 girls in the process of becoming Little Sisters, and 60 women in the process of becoming Big Sisters. The organization needs more male volunteers and more young girls.

Chatham said the continued investment in the matches is an investment in the future. "I think mentors are valuable and incredibly undervalued in our community," she said. "Every single person has had somebody, whether they realize it or not, to help them through a situation, or a period, or their entire life. ... This is one solution to help our community get better. We've got a lot of crime and we've got a lot of problems with the school system, and we can point to all kinds of things that are wrong. But we have to invest in our youngest populations and set them up for success for that long-term goal of having a successful community."

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America handed down new brand positioning in October, complete with a new logo. Chatham said the new branding is an effort to expand the organization's impact and to "defend the potential" of every child. The new logo of BBBS America features a lowercase "b" in white, which the organization's website said represents Littles and their families. The logo is completed by a green curve that creates an uppercase "B," which represents the Bigs who strengthen the relationships among themselves, their Littles and their families.

A new video for the organization says, "We are not saviors. We are allies." It's a sentiment that Chatham said she's inspired by.

"I love the idea that we're not saviors, we're defenders," she said. "And it's true, we're not saviors. ... [These are] kids who just have an opportunity and have a chance, we just need to open the door for them."

Opening that door isn't nearly as much of a time commitment as people think, according to Chatham. The community-based mentorship program requires Bigs to spend time with their Littles for a minimum of two hours, at least twice a month — just 48 hours per year. Chatham said another common misunderstanding about the organization is what the definition of a good mentor is.

"You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be present," she said. "And, in fact, people who have less than perfect backgrounds are generally going to be fantastic mentors."

When Bigs draw on their own life experiences to help shape the futures of the Littles they mentor, this helps the Littles realize they can do and be more, Chatham said.

"It's not the mentor's role or job to create potential," Chatham said. "It's there. It's our job to defend it, and to make sure it's able to grow, and to light that fire within the kids."

— Rebekah Hall

Kim Lane Empowering entrepreneurs.

Those who think that studying poetry in high school is a waste of time for those whose future is in business should meet Kim Lane.

Lane, 27, who speaks (and thinks) nearly as fast as the speed of sound, rattled off the Edgar Lee Masters poem that inspired her in her teenage years to make her own happiness and success in the working world, part of which is "Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. ... Life without meaning is torture."

Did this reporter know, Lane asked during an interview at a coffee shop in Conway, where she is the CEO of startup promoter The Conductor, that "85 percent of people hate their jobs?" She was determined that would not be her fate.

Lane's path to The Conductor was a complicated one, a route that took the Hendrix College writing major to work as an advertising writer, then a freelance writer of listicals for a national online publication, then an editor for a local online publication about business (she was also an intern at the Arkansas Times). After a visit to the first Arkansas Challenge startup contest in Northwest Arkansas, she "fell in love with the whole entrepreneurial thing." On she went to the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, where she oversaw its One Million Cups entrepreneur meetups created by the Ewing Marian Kauffman Foundation. She was so successful that Kauffman asked her to be a regional organizer. She became an organizer for the Global Entrepreneurship Network after she brought Global Entrepreneurship Week to Arkansas. For the network, she's traveled to places as far-flung as Africa and Istanbul to help create community among entrepreneurs.

People have been starting businesses for eons, so why the need for The Conductor's mentorships, guidance and access to funding? Because the economy has changed. She cited Kauffman vice president Victor Hwang's comparison of the industrial age economy to today's: It was once the case that the entrepreneur created a widget and the factory that turned it out. Lane likened it to row crop farming, with one plant dominating and weeds — new ideas — being removed. In today's technological world, she said, there is more opportunity for entrepreneurs to act on their own, "and by the way, weeds are good now." Today's job creation is "more about embracing the beauty of everybody's ideas," Lane said.

Some of those ideas are coming from students. The Conductor, which Lane and "Chief Catalyst" Jeff Standridge got up and running with help from partner Startup Junkie Consulting of Fayetteville, partners with the University of Central Arkansas. UCA offers the free Makerspace, complete with 3D printers and other fabrication tools, on its campus, and Lane said it's always full. The space will grow — and continue to be free — when the Conway Corp. utility creates the Arnold Innovation Center in what is now City Hall at 1201 W. Oak St. "It's going to be groundbreaking," Lane said, and credited the collaboration of the Conway Chamber of Commerce, City Hall, Acxiom, Conway Corp. and other sponsors for "moving the needle" of entrepreneurship in Conway and Faulkner County and reducing barriers to business ideas from minorities and women.

Lane said she works "at the intersection of life coaching and entrepreneurship," helping people see that they can act on their dreams, and "see their life a different way." She advises not just people who have ideas but people who only know they want a job that will make them happy.

— Leslie Newell Peacock

Drs. Yu-Po Chan, Edmund Wilson and Po-Hao Adam Huang Spaceflight cubed.

Hold your hands in front of you and form a pair of square brackets with your fingers and thumbs, your palms a few inches apart. That's about the size and shape of the device that will be Arkansas's first satellite. If all goes well, a tiny cube packed with scientific instruments soon will be gathering atmospheric data as competently as satellites thousands of times larger and more costly, according to Dr. Yu-Po Chan of UA Little Rock.

"We are planning in the long run to have a constellation of these satellites ... flying in formation," Chan said. "This would be Arkansas's very first with our name on it. Many other states bigger than us have already launched, so we are catching up, basically."

Chan, the chair of UA Little Rock's systems engineering department, is among a trio of Arkansas researchers working to design CubeSats, a class of miniaturized, low-cost "nanosatellites." His collaborators are Dr. Po-Hao Adam Huang, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UA Fayetteville, and Dr. Edmund Wilson, a chemistry professor at Harding University in Searcy. Their first CubeSat model, ArkSat-1, is being designed by Huang. It should be delivered to NASA by the end of 2019 and launched in early 2020.

CubeSats aren't novel in themselves — NASA's most recent mission to Mars experimentally deployed a pair of the devices near the red planet — but the Arkansas team has a number of original research goals and design innovations. Many nanosatellites don't have a propulsion system. The ones that do typically use a pressurized aerosol propellant, such as freon. But Huang came up with a different fuel: water.

"Our technique is basically using small, micro-channels to contain the water," Huang said. "We open those valves, and it will evaporate. ... It becomes a gas, and we use it as a propellant."

In October, Chan received a $24,900 grant from NASA to develop a different CubeSat project. Called SAMSAT ("solar and atmospheric measuring satellite"), it will eventually map the presence of water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere above Arkansas. Chan will then compare that information to data collected by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, or GOES-16, which is one of two weather orbiters operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

GOES weighs in at over 3 tons, according to NASA's website — about the weight of a Hummer H2. SAMSAT will probably weigh around 3 pounds.

"We are using the big satellite's data to validate that what we see is accurate," Chan said. "We're talking about billions of dollars in the big satellite, thousands of dollars in these small satellites." The team hopes to prove a CubeSat "can do the same job at monitoring the atmosphere as the big, big bird," he said.

The team also hopes SAMSAT can do a better job at collecting data than some of its cousins because it will be more nimble. That's where Huang's propulsion system comes in. "CubeSats generally don't have a way to maneuver," Huang said. Because they can reorient themselves only a few degrees per second, it's difficult for their instruments to gather data on a small patch of atmosphere as the craft zips through low earth orbit at thousands of miles per hour. "With our design, we can rotate 90 degrees on the order of five to 10 seconds. ... That may be kind of slow on Earth, compared to a car, but it's really fast for a spacecraft."

The job of measuring the atmosphere's composition falls to the team's third member, Wilson. Scientists determine the composition of a gas by examining the behavior of light that has passed through it, a technique called spectroscopy. But most spectrometers are too large to fit comfortably inside a CubeSat, Wilson said.

"I've been able to find a spectrometer that is about the size of a joint in your finger. It's about 1 inch by a half inch by a half inch ... so it may be exactly what we need for our mission," he said. In addition to demonstrating the utility of their technological innovations, the team hopes to gather unique data on the atmosphere above Arkansas, establishing a baseline that could be of use for climate science in the future.

The long-term goal, Chan said, is to deliver a proof of concept that could yield funding for further research. "We're trying to catch a big fish — a multiyear, much larger grant," he said. "It could be beneficial for industry, including manufacturing."

And beyond. Wilson and Huang said they have hopes that their innovations could have application to NASA as it contemplates exploring the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in the coming decades. "Our overall goal is to be able to have a mission to some other solar system body, like Titan," Wilson said.

— Benjamin Hardy

Brian Mitchell History detective.

As the 100th anniversary of the massacre of African Americans at Elaine approaches, first-year graduate students in Dr. Brian Mitchell's public history class at UA Little Rock are filling in gaps in the story of what was one of the most deadly race riots in America.

In September 1919, after one of several meetings black farmers held with representatives of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union, a white deputy spying on the meeting was fatally shot. Acting at the urging of the Phillips County sheriff, a mob of whites roamed the county, killing hundreds — some estimates are as high as 800 — of black residents. Five whites were killed, but only African Americans were arrested and jailed.

Twelve black men were quickly found guilty of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. They were imprisoned while their appeals in two famous cases traveled to the state and U.S. supreme courts. Their convictions were overturned, and they were sentenced to time served and released. But fearing they'd be lynched, all 12 fled the state, along with hundreds of other African Americans from Elaine who feared for their lives.

Mitchell has guided his public history students in the search to find out what happened to those 12 men. He did the legwork over the summer to provide them with public records — census records, city directories, vital records and newspaper accounts. They've been able to track down six of the 12 so far, and locate most of the graves of those six.

As part of the class, the students will write biographies of the men for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies' Encyclopedia of Arkansas. They are also raising funds to place markers on their graves, a project UA Little Rock is doing in collaboration with the National Park Service and other agencies and with the help of private individuals.

Mitchell said that one of the "more interesting aspects" of the class' work on Elaine is to "reassess the role of black World War I veterans." One of the hundreds of men killed by the posse was a veteran who'd been home in Arkansas for just a few months. Returning veteran farmers were "looking for fair compensation, and rather than deal with them fairly, it was easier to kill them," Mitchell said.

UA Little Rock's drama department will use Mitchell's class' research to write and produce a play. "There are such rich characters" in the Elaine story, Mitchell said. "There was one guy who became a gangster in Illinois," Mitchell said.

A previous class worked to transcribe the death certificates of African Americans killed in the race massacre and created a database. The database has been provided to the Arkansas State Archives for public use.

Future projects for Mitchell's first-year grad students include research into West Rock, the African-American community once situated at the base of Cantrell Hill, as a way to learn about redlining, the real estate practice of segregating blacks in certain neighborhoods. He's interested, too, in more study of the tragedy at the Wrightsville boys' so-called "industrial school," which was in fact a prison, where 21 boys locked in a dorm perished in a fire in 1959. He has turned over to the Butler Center records he has on what so-called offenses the boys committed to be sent to Wrightsville.

Mitchell, 50, a Louisiana native who came to Arkansas after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, has been a professor at UA Little Rock for four years (he was an adjunct earlier in his move to Little Rock, and later an investigator with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Metroplan researcher). Mitchell wants to give his students the opportunity to collaborate more with the community, doing joint projects with state and federal agencies and other history-minded groups "to open up an avenue of employment" for those who choose not to pursue doctoral degrees. He said the public history program's success in finding jobs for its graduates, including archival work and museum exhibition, is nearly 100 percent. In fact, the program doesn't accept more students than it thinks will be able to find jobs. The program has "given a level of visibility to the school," Mitchell said. "When I say it's an excellent program, I mean it's an excellent program."

—Leslie Newell Peacock

Jen Gerber Multifaceted creative.

Jen Gerber's first time on a film set was for a small acting role in a country music video in Nashville, Tenn. Gerber, who goes by Jen, said being on the set that day changed her life. "I realized in that moment it was everything I wanted out of theater, which was storytelling [and] a collaborative creation process, but I really didn't want to be an actor," she said.

She's been busy since. She earned an master's of fine arts degree in writing and directing at Columbia University in New York and served as the creative director at The School of Creative and Performing Arts in Los Angeles and New York for six years. She previously worked as an assistant professor at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and now teaches a film production class at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts.

In her spare time, she's directed a film — "The Revival" — that has been screened in Los Angeles and abroad.

Now the accomplished writer, director and professor is the executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, a job that keeps her busy yearround. This year's festival, in October, screened 127 films — up from the 2017 festival's 84 films — and its audiences are growing as well. Gerber said she plans to continue the festival's growth by adding more education and outreach opportunities, such this year's inaugural Emerging Voices Filmmaking Retreat for new voices in nonfiction filmmaking and the Emerging Filmmakers workshops for middle and high school students.

These outreach programs, as well as events such as a guided walking tour of Hot Springs given by Matt Green, the subject of the documentary "The World Before Your Feet" and a "walker" who's walking every street and path in New York City, help audiences connect with the documentaries in a larger way, Gerber said.

"I want to do much, much more of that next year to create more of an interactive experience," she said. "Because what's the difference between watching the film at home and watching it at the festival? It's that you get that extra connection to enhance the experience."

With the rising popularity of documentaries such as box-office hits "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and "RBG," Gerber said she's excited about the future of the genre and her involvement in it.

"I think I've become the director of this festival at the right time for the genre because documentary is becoming so mainstream," she said. "It's always been around, it's not in any way new, but I feel right now people are hungry for the truth. ... It's been a new time for documentaries in terms of the audience desire for them and also just creatively. They've become very well told stories. And they always have been, but I think right now we're really seeing different ways that documentary filmmakers are elevating the storytelling within their films."

Though she hasn't made a documentary film, Gerber said she's inspired by the intensive research conducted by documentarians on the subjects of their films. She's now writing a script for a new project: "Crash Reel," about a female demolition derby driver.

"You get to walk in someone else's shoes," Gerber said. "I don't anticipate that I'll ever drive in a derby, but through film, your curiosity can lead you anywhere. I was at a derby and had this idea, and it's started a path now for me of asking questions, getting to know a world, and daydreaming my own ideas into that world."

Gerber is also working on a more autobiographical project titled "Pretty Near Perfect" that's loosely based on her time as a teenage beauty queen living in Hot Springs. For other female filmmakers and storytellers who are looking to break into the industry, Gerber encourages them to find a great mentor and support system, a role she happily served for her former UCA students, some of whom go on to be hired on Gerber's own projects.

"I want to support them, I want to help them grow their resume, and they're really good at what they do," she said. "I've watched them grow beyond what I taught them, so when it comes to any project that I do, I start by hiring this group of young women that I worked with here in Arkansas."

—Rebekah Hall

Jerrmy Gawthrop and Bryan and Bernice Hembree They form the engine that makes the Fayetteville Roots Festival go.

This is a story about three friends with complementary talents who started a music and food festival that's grown into an event that has no rival in Arkansas — but still, its founders insist, remains humble.

More than a decade ago, Fayetteville's Bryan and Bernice Hembree, the husband-and-wife musical duo who perform as Smokey & The Mirror, befriended Fayetteville restaurateur Jerrmy Gawthrop. Gawthrop, in turn, regularly asked them to play at his restaurant Greenhouse Grille. (At the time, the Hembrees were performing as part of a trio called 3 Penny Acre. Gawthrop and his business partner, Clayton Suttle, sold Greenhouse Grille to the Arsaga family earlier this year; they still own two Wood Stone Pizza restaurants).

In 2010, the Hembrees were asked by three musical groups they'd met on the road for help booking a show in Fayetteville on the same weekend. That was the impetus for getting with Gawthrop to put on a one-day Fayetteville Roots Festival at Greenhouse Grille on a Sunday — brunch paired with 10 bands. About 160 people showed up. There was a morning slate of music and an hour break, which was to be followed by an afternoon lineup. During that hour, a water main near Greenhouse Grille ruptured. "During that geyser that was happening, we had musicians putting sandbags in front of Greenhouse Grille," Bryan Hembree remembered. Luckily, George's Majestic Lounge was free that day and welcomed the waterlogged fest.

Near-catastrophe aside, the trio realized they had a winning concept on their hands. Thanks to some underwriting support from a fan from the first event, the Roots Festival was able to book Texas singer/songwriter legend Guy Clark and, in turn, secure the Walton Arts Center as a venue. From there, the festival, held annually in August, has grown exponentially.

This year's event featured the likes of Mavis Staples, Booker T. Jones (of Booker T & the M.G.'s), Gillian Welch, the Del McCoury Band and John Moreland. In addition to the main stage at the Fayetteville Town Center, the festival extended to the Fayetteville Public Library and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Brightwater Culinary School in Bentonville. Food had always been a major component of the festival, but the Hembrees said this year it reached equal footing with the addition of a special Saturday Roots, Food & Spirit event with dozens of guest chefs from around the region and country. Among both free and ticketed events, organizers estimated 7,500 people attended the five-day festival this year. Tickets now regularly sell out before the music lineup is announced (early-bird tickets for the fest, scheduled for Aug. 22-25, 2019, went on sale Dec. 5).

Community buy-in came early on in the festival's run, Gawthrop said. "We started doing things and people jumped on board, like, 'How can we help? I wanna volunteer.' " This year, upward of 100 sponsors supported the fest and some 200 volunteers helped out.

The festival now has a year-round headquarters and an administrative assistant, but Gawthrop and the Hembrees continue to run it amid all their other commitments: In addition to two restaurants, Gawthrop and his wife have three kids with another one on the way. Bryan does ACT-prep work for the University of Arkansas and Bernice works in music education; they also stay busy recording and touring as Smokey & The Mirror and are part of a collaborative album project with Danish folk-rockers The Sentimentals. So, how do they swing it all? "The three of us have a really good working relationship," Bryan Hembree said. "Like now, it's hot and heavy on my shoulders for the booking. Other times Jerrmy is busy with procurement of food and chefs. Or Bernice is working on the educational outreach. It's a true kind of partnership tag team."

Gawthrop added, "It can be a lot. Being able to ask for help and organizing your people are key. Thankfully, we've got a great community where people really want to help — sponsors, local bars, chefs. They want this thing to be here. They're proud of it. People refer to this as 'our festival.' It's a beautiful thing."

— Lindsey Millar

Visionary Arkansans 2018

#Visionary Arkansans 2018

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