I’ve written about Blake Henley and the Fighting Yellowjacket Marching Band in this column previously. You’ll also find considerable space dedicated to them in last week’s newspaper as well as …
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By Steve Watkins
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3/23/22
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In journalism school, they teach us to avoid them at all costs.
Avoid cliches like the plague, the professors say.
But there’s just no better descriptor for what I heard that night.
It …
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By Steve Watkins
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3/15/22
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Political candidates from across the state and county kicked off the election season with speeches and handshakes Saturday as residents in the Fox community raised more than $5,000 for their park and …
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By Steve Watkins
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3/8/22
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From all indications, we are now slowly leaving the COVID era in a wake of experiences we never imagined. We’ve lost friends and loved ones, adapted in every way conceivable – education, …
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By Steve Watkins
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3/8/22
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Occasionally, you get to witness something that reveals so much truth about a person, or a situation, or circumstance that all you can really do is sort of stand there and be in awe. It happened last …
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By Steve Watkins
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3/8/22
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(This week’s column is an excerpt from my book, The King of Highbanks Road, chapter titled Country Folk.)
There were two kinds of people in the Highbanks Road community: all the ones who …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/22/22
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When he said it, you could have heard a pin drop, and it changed my political views forever.
It was Day 1 of my dream job, the thing I’d aspired to since I was 14 years old, and suddenly I felt …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/15/22
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Quorum Court members authorized expenditures last week that will enhance Stone County’s presence in the cyber world.
Last month the court approved an allocation of some $2,400 for computer …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/15/22
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Welcome to this special birthday edition of The Flatlander.
This week we celebrate the 56th birthday/anniversaries of the Toyota Corolla, Doritos, Superbowl LVI, and yours truly.
To recognize …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/8/22
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Judi Munn learned long ago that her life need not be lived in some predictable series of boxes, confined to a social structure that defined success.It’s a lesson she learned as a Peace Corps …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/8/22
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Sometime around the middle of August back in 2020, I asked Leader Editor Lori Freeze what she’d think about me writing a weekly column. I’d already somehow fallen into the weekly routine of …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/1/22
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Anyone who has Wayne Harlan’s contact information can shoot him a text or fire off a quick e-mail at 3:30 in the morning and have a reply by 4. That’s when Harlan’s day begins. …
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By Steve Watkins
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2/1/22
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Midlife.
It’s a word I’ve been thinking on lately.
Some television documentary used it a few nights ago describing my generation. Truth is, unless I live to 112, I’m well past midlife …
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By Steve Watkins
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1/25/22
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The Stone County Quorum Court did some budget housecleaning last week, establishing funding for some projects approved in 2021, but set for funding this year, and County Judge Stacey Avey gave an …
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By Steve Watkins
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1/19/22
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Happy upcoming birthday, Stone County. You don’t look a day past 140!April 21 begins Stone County's sesquicentennial year, and residents are planning a yearlong celebration here in Stone County …
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By Steve Watkins
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1/18/22
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In the 1960s, David Wolper took a simple concept and created a successful television show that ran in different forms for decades. The documentary series Biography had a simple and thought-provoking …
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By Steve Watkins
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1/11/22
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One of the truths about the news business and telling stories is that the story sometimes sneaks its way into our own lives.
I’ve become friends with countless interviewees over the years. I …
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By Steve Watkins
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1/4/22
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Of 2021, some have noted how quickly it passed, yet seemed to drag on forever.
Such are the complex feelings of a politically divided society, living through a pandemic in a time when there is no …
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By Steve Watkins
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12/21/21
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It started with an educated idea and a printer on a coffee table.
Just two years later Zack Stewart is refining a business model that capitalizes on discovering needs through the power of social …
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By Steve Watkins
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12/21/21
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As we wrap up our Christmas shopping and attend to our last-minute holiday to-do lists here in the Ozarks, a rural-Arkansas sister community is just figuring out what tomorrow looks like.
It is my …
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By Steve Watkins
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12/14/21
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