That ‘Bebee’ blunder

Mike Masterson


This unanticipated “ouchie” literally did leave a mark the other day at the unveiling of that magnificent, 15,000-pound sandstone monument leading to the new U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith.
Although the mistake has been repaired, the onlookers had to have gasped, perhaps even chortled, to see Governor Beeebe’s … hmm … better make that Bebe’s, er, Bebee’s, no, no … Gov. Mike Beebe’s name prominently misspelled as “Bebee” in the etched stone.
Gosh knows, I’ve nary a flamingo’s leg to stand on when it comes to errors in my own attempts at writing this personal opinion column. I have plenty of examples of “uh-ohs” over 43 years. Thankfully, I formerly had Meredith Oakley to keep me in line and today have editor Brenda Looper of the Voices page to hold mine to a minimum.
This embarrassing oversight made headlines of its own with a news story by ace reporter Bill Bowden. And I’ve just gotta say it’s remarkable to me that someone didn’t catch the governor’s misspelled name well before the unveiling ceremony.
But the stone sat placed and covered for a couple of days before its big day, so I can see how it’s reasonable that no one caught the error until, gasp, that moment when it was revealed to the state.
Yet have no fear. Just like repairing mistakes on a computer, the Beebe blunder was sandblasted and repaired. And the many thousands of future visitors who didn’t read Bowden’s story (or today’s column way back in November of 2013) will never know the governor’s surname once was spelled “Bebee” on the handsome marker dedicated to the Marshals Service and the 225 souls who lost their lives in service to that hallowed agency.

Times for hogs

The New York Times has taken interest in the ongoing battle over that hog factory permitted in the Buffalo National River watershed.
Veteran correspondent John Eligon from the paper’s Kansas City bureau arrived in the Ozarks last week to conduct interviews and experience the magnificent beauty of this river for the first time. We chatted a while beforehand and I felt good when we hung up that he’d do this national story justice on behalf of the people of Arkansas and the nation.
Although the Times has published stories on health and environmental pitfalls associated with factory animal operations such as the one permitted by our state for up to 6,500 swine at Mount Judea, I believe Eligon will present his news story correctly and fairly.
But I also suspect that if his take on this is that there are many questions over the way the state approved it and the potential for contamination it presents is real, then correspondent Eligon also will be wrongly accused of being anti-farmer and against hog farms. That’s become the preferred argument: the crimson oinker (as opposed to the infamous red herring).
I can already hear the predictable refrain the factory’s supplier and buyer Cargill Inc. and the factory’s local family of operators might offer: “It’s those anti-farmers and radical environmental alarmists upset over this good, beleaguered family farm that jumped through every hoop the state demanded of them to acquire their permit. Why, this farm won’t ever contaminate the Buffalo! That kind of talk is just more ignorant fearmongering.”
This reporter seems pretty sharp to me. I believe he’ll quickly see that no one who’s opposed to this hog farm is the slightest bit anti-farmer or even that radical, except toward protecting a sacred national treasure. They simply believe, as do I (a loudmouthed non-radical) that this is the worst possible location for Arkansas’ first mega-waste-generating hog factory approved to operate under the state’s new general permit.
And I truly mean the bar-none, absolute worst location.
The people most concerned about this location range from geoscientists to former governors and federal officials to those who enjoy this magical stream. Thanks to the recent Waterkeepers seven-city Arkansas tour, hundreds of citizens have been educated firsthand about the devastation that massive corporate hog operations like this one have wrought in the once-pristine rivers of other states such as North Carolina, not to mention steadily eliminating traditional family farms.
I also believe Eligon will see what so many others have in questioning what appears to be preferential, streamlined treatment by the state in permitting this factory. The deed was done in a few months, without requiring Cargill or the factory owners to conduct advance tests to see how water flows through the subsurface karst or to do baseline water-quality studies.
Good grief, my friends, even the director of the state’s permitting agency, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) says she didn’t know the factory had been permitted until after the fact; neither did the staff of the agency’s local office in nearby Jasper. Say what?
Anyway, welcome to Arkansas, correspondent Eligon. Enjoy the incredible majesty of the country’s first National River and all the good folks of our state.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.