32 results for author: Denele Campbell

HUMBUG FANCY FOOD

Personal secret: I’m a purist when it comes to food. Simple basic food, unlike the horror I saw recently where someone wanted to dress up avocado with a coating. For god's sake, people, avocado needs nothing but salt! Take green beans. People go to a lot of trouble to serve green beans—green bean casserole, stir-fry green beans, battered and fried green beans. Well, what’s wrong with just plain green beans? A little salt, cook them tender, voila! Yum. Then there’s the simple chicken breast. Recipes abound for chicken breast stuffed with cheese, or sausage, or breading. Or for chicken breast coated in this or that, or draped in creamy ...

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Back when … well, whenever, things were better. Right? People loved each other more, spent more time with family. Life was simpler. Exactly when was that? Was it the 1950s, Back when the U. S. and Russia detonated nuclear weapons above ground, when milk tested positive for radiation? When school kids routinely practiced scuttling under their desks in case of a nuclear attack? When everyone smoked cigarettes? When women had to find a back alley abortionist to end an unwanted pregnancy and the only means of birth control were condoms and diaphragms? (Okay, plenty of people think this was a good thing because, you know, women who abort ...

THE VIOLENT END OF THE GILLILAND BOYS

In the completion of my recent book, Murrder in the County: 50 True Stories of the Old West, I discovered that three of the fifty murders profiled there were committed by members of the same family! Intrigued, I researched more about these folks and the result is now published under the title The Violent End of the Gilliland Boys. Fascinating and shocking, this story features more twists and turns than an Ozark’s dirt road. Christmas Day horse races 1872, Middle Fork Valley. Young Bud Gilliland waits, eager for another chance at his neighbor Newton Jones. Only this time, after two years of sparring, Newton gallops up in a cloud of dust, aims his ...

WHEN MACHINES REPLACE WORKERS

(Denele Campbell blogs from Arkansas. You can read more at www.denelecampbell.com) On March 11, 1811, hand loom weavers (the Luddites) swarmed the streets of Arnold, Nottingham in the dark of night. They broke into textile factories equipped with the latest technologies, smashed pieces of factory equipment and burned the mills. Over the next five years, the movement spread throughout England. Industrialists invested in safe rooms inside their factories to protect themselves from attack. The movement died in its tracks when the government stepped in with mass trials, with over thirty men ultimately executed or transported to penal colonies in ...

ON LEGALIZING DRUGS

(You can read more of Denele’s writing at www.denelecampbell.org) Americans must confront the reality that we are the market,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said this past Thursday. “We Americans must own this problem.”[1] Meeting with his Mexican counterpart, Tillerson acknowledged the role of American drug consumption in the proliferation of violent Mexican drug cartels. Citing the enormous demand for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana by Americans eager to get high, he argued that “drug trafficking had to be addressed as a ‘business model,” attacking cash flow, gun procurement, production and distribution.’” Oh, please. ...

WHERE ARE THE FRESH DEMOCRATS?

(Denele blogs from Arkansas. You can read more at www.denelecampbell.org.) If the Democratic Party wants to regain their proper place in American politics, that is, as the progressive, common man’s party, they have to move away from the faces and voices that have become tired and futile. They’ll also have to step up their game. Before the Democrats assembled to vote for their national leadership earlier this year, I sent an email to the head of the Democratic Party of Arkansas. I voiced my concern about a potential leadership win by Tom Perez or Keith Ellison. I urged the party to start a clean slate by bringing the relative newcomer, Pete ...

HIS FIGHT, OUR FIGHT

(Denele blogs from Arkansas. You can read more at DeneleCampbell.org.) According to the brief description that accompanied this photo that crossed my Facebook timeline the other day, the funeral of Pretty Boy Floyd drew the largest attendance of any such event in Oklahoma history. The image gives me goosebumps, almost puts a lump in my throat. It’s not the coffin—I can’t even discern where it is. It’s the people, backs straight, their attention focused entirely on the dead man. On what he represented. My dad sometimes talked about Pretty Boy Floyd although at the time of Floyd’s death, my dad was only seventeen. For him, like so ...

PART ll ….CHEMICALS AND AUTISM

(Denele Campbell blogs from Arkansas.) Despite compelling and well-documented scientific studies showing the strong link between certain chemicals and a slate of neurodevelopmental disabilities including autism, the EPA has for decades postponed any meaningful action to more strictly regulate (or ban) the culprits. In a recent publication, scientists stated: In 2006, we did a systematic review and identified five industrial chemicals as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. Since 2006, epidemiological studies have documented six additional developmental neurotoxicants—manganese, ...

MEDICAID AND THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Denele Campbell blogs from Arkansas. You can read more of her work at www.denelecampbell.org As of 2002, the majority of Medicaid beneficiaries (54%) were children under the age of six years. Contrary to the popular myth of aging slackers, drug addicts, and welfare queens sucking at the national teat, this majority of Medicaid provides healthcare to children and adolescents with limitation of activity due to chronic health conditions. Their numbers quadrupled from two percent in 1960 to over eight percent in 2012. This increase parallels the growth in manufacture and use of agricultural chemicals. One of the fastest growing patient groups ...

YES, GET OVER IT…..CONSTRUCTIVELY

(Denele Campbell blogs from Artkansas.) Yesterday I attended a town hall meeting sponsored by Rep. Steve Womack (Republican) of our 3rd Congressional District (Northwest Arkansas). The room would comfortably hold thirty people. Over 200 showed up. With the hallways and doorways and standing room thronged, half the people ended up standing outside in the parking lot for the 1.5 hour event. Womack could have taken charge of the situation by reconvening five blocks away in the much larger community center. He chose not to do so. He could have opened the meeting by immediately taking questions, but instead he spent at least twenty minutes talking ...