It’s been two years and eight months since the voters in Arkansas approved a constitutional amendment  that authorized Las Vegas style casinos in four counties.  Three of those casinos are now in operation.  In Pope County, however, ground has yet to be broken as issues over that county’s casino have been tied up with disputes and litigation.

One of the court cases has finally reached the Arkansas Supreme Court.  This case, when decided, may make other pending litigation moot.

In May 2019, the state body assigned authority over casino gaming by the amendment—the Arkansas Racing Commission (ARC)—opened a limited period for interested parties to submit applications to operate a casino in two of the four counties, Pope and Jefferson.  The other two licenses were to be issued to the Franchise holders of the existing greyhound racing track and gaming facility in Crittenden County and the horse racing track and gaming facility in Garland County. Five parties submitted applications in Pope County and one submitted an application in Jefferson County.  All of the Pope County applications were denied as incomplete on June 13, 2019, while the Jefferson County application was approved.

The court case hinges on one issue, support documents from county officials.

From the amendment:

The Arkansas Racing Commission shall require all casino applicants for a casino license in Pope County and Jefferson County to submit either a letter of support from the county judge or a resolution from the quorum court in the county where the proposed casino is to be located…

Amendment 100 was adopted by voters on November 6, 2018 and became effective on November 14, 2018.

On December 26, 2018, the ARC adopted for publication several draft  rules, including one that stated, “Letters of support and resolutions by the Quorum Court, required by these Rules and the Amendment, shall be dated after the effective date of the Amendment.”

On January 3, 2019, a revised draft  of the Casino Gaming Rules was published for comment which said, “All letters of support or resolutions by the Quorum Court, required by these Rules and the Amendment, shall be dated and signed by the County Judge, Quorum Court members, or Mayor holding office at the time of the submission of an application for a casino gaming license.”  The final rules adopted on February 21, 2019 were as published on January 3.

Act 371 of 2019 passed by the General Assembly on March 5, 2019, also requires that support documents from local officials for a casino be signed and dated by officials holding office at the time of the submission of an application for a casino license.

On December 28, 2018, Gulfside Casino Partnership provided the ARC a copy of Pope County Judge Jim Ed Gibson’s letter of December 21, 2018, which, in its entirety says, “If a license is issued for a casino in Pope County, Arkansas I give my support for Gulfside Casino Partnership.” Judge Gibson retired on December 31, 2018.  Gulfside was not yet an applicant for a casino license as, indeed, the rules for casino gaming had not yet been established and approved.

In a December 31, 2018 article by River Valley Now, Jim Ed Gibson was asked, “I think that’s why there was some debate about it, because people have said, well he’s saying “if”, so it’s not the letter that’s needed. So, I just wanted to get your perspective on what the intent was. So, it wasn’t necessarily meant as THE letter of support?“

Gibson replied, “No, it wasn’t.“

On March 26, the ARC issued a public notice establishing a casino application period from May 1 to May 30, 2019.

Gulfside submitted an application on May 17 that included the one-line letter of support from then retired Judge Gibson. The other four applicants applicants had no letters of support with their application.

The ARC denied all five applications on June 13 because none had the required letters of support.  Gulfside requested a hearing before the ARC which was held July 18, 2019.  On August 15, 2019, the ARC denied Gulfside’s appeal.  Gulfside filed a suit that same day in Pulaski County Circuit Court, appealing the decision under the Arkansas Administrative Procedures Act, challenging as unconstitutional the gaming rule and law that requires the support documents be from officials currently in office.  Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled in favor of Gulfside on March 24, 2020 and again, after the Arkansas Supreme Court sent the case back to him, on May 21, 2021.

The latter ruling has been appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court by the Arkansas Racing Commission and Cherokee Nation Businesses (CNB) both of whom submitted appellant briefs yesterday, July 12.

CNB has standing in this case because in August of 2019 they received a resolution of support from the Pope County quorum court and, later, a letter of support from the current Pope County Judge, Ben Cross.  CNB filed a motion to intervene on August 23, 2019.  Judge Fox denied CNB’s motion to intervene, which was unopposed by any of the parties to the case, on January 2, 2020.  CNB appealed the denial and, on February 4, 2021, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed Fox’s denial, vacating his March 24, 2020 orders in the case because CNB’s positions were not considered in his decision.

The appellant briefs submitted by the ARC and CNB hold that Gulfside is not a qualified applicant because they never have had a supporting document from Pope County officials holding office at the time of the application, as required by state law and casino gaming rules.  Judge Fox’s order declaring the law and rule unconstitutional was among those vacated in the Arkansas Supreme Court’s February 4th ruling.

Ignoring the state law and casino gaming rule on support documents from current officials, plain reading of Amendment 100 alone disqualifies Gulfside from having a license.

The amendment requires that all applicants for a casino license submit documents of support from the county judge or the quorum court.  Until it submitted it’s application, Gulfside was only a prospective applicant. Gulfside became an applicant only when, on May 17, it submitted its application, including the one-line letter from Judge Jim Ed Gibson, who had been out of office for four months and seventeen days.  Clearly, Judge Gibson was not the Pope County Judge when Gulfside officially became an applicant.

According to Amendment 100, “’Casino applicant’” is defined as any individual, corporation, partnership, association, trust, or other entity applying for a license to conduct casino gaming at a casino.”  Prior to May 17, 2019, Gulfside was not an applicant.

Gulfside’s case depends upon Judge Gibson’s letter, whether the state law and gaming rule are constitutional and the December 26, 2018, draft rule that said “Letters of support and resolutions by the Quorum Court, required by these Rules and the Amendment, shall be dated after the effective date of the Amendment.”

I don’t see how the Supreme Court can rule in any way that favors Gulfside.

Then, again, I didn’t see any way that Gulfside could be awarded a license to build and operate a casino in Pope County.  But, through a comedy of inept commission meetings and decisions where they didn’t follow their own gaming rules, a license was awarded to Gulfside and denied to CNB.

CNB’s appeal of the ARC’s license denial is one of several litigations that may be made moot by this Supreme Court case.

We got vaccinated because it was the right thing to do to get back to a new normal closer to what the old normal was.

Saturday, we were able to safely attend a large family gathering for the first time since the beginning of COVID. Last month, we took a trip to Colorado.

Things that used to be normal.
⁠
The vaccinations are FREE & SAFE.
⁠
COVID isn’t.

Besides the pain, misery, and grief associated with you and/or your family members getting the virus and getting sick,—and possibly being hospitalized and/or dying—for many there are going to be long term financial complications—bills beyond what insurance will pay, lost jobs from being sick so long, inability to work because of lingering COVID complications. COVID isn’t just about getting sick.
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We were vaccinated as soon as we could get an appointment after seniors became eligible. We didn’t wait around, so the delta variant wasn’t even a thing yet.

After self-isolating, social distancing, and masks for over a year, the cost for being able to get some normalcy was the just gas it took to drive, twice, to a nearby town—a round-trip distance of about 35 miles.  Considering all the gas we didn’t use that year of mostly staying home, the cost of the vaccinations was actually less than nothing.

Free & safe.

The people who are not getting vaccinated are a threat to that.  They provide the virus more opportunities for infection.  The more people who are infected, the more opportunities for the virus to mutate into strains that the current vaccines may not protect against.

Our state, Arkansas, has been making the COVID headlines nationally—in a less than positive way—in recent days.

• Arkansas reported more than 1,000 COVID-19 cases for the third straight day on Friday – The Hill
• Arkansas’s death march: The daily COVID-19 roundup – Arkansas Times
• Covid-19 cases surge in state with one of the lowest vaccination rates – CNN Health
• Arkansas, Nevada Among the States With Rising COVID, Delta Variant Cases – Newsweek

Vaccination—it’s the right thing to do.

It’s free.

…and, it’s safe!

We don’t have hot dogs often, but, when we do, we like them with hot dog relish.

I don’t know if it’s a local thing or not, but we haven’t been able to find it for months.  Not that we look every time we go to the store, but every time we look, there’s none on the shelves.

Since we haven’t been able to find any hot dog relish locally, a while back I ordered some from Amazon.   American Stockyard All In One Hot Dog Relish is not a brand I’ve seen before, but it sure is good!—and I ordered more. It just arrived today.

We also like to use hot dog relish on brats.

I sometimes watch a wide variety of YouTube videos.  Yesterday, the title of one caught my attention: Arkansas traffic-stop shootout caught by dashcam.

The description explains:  “Dramatic dashcam video shows a sheriff’s deputy in a shootout following a traffic stop in Arkansas. About 40 shots were fired during the shootout Sunday. The suspect was later caught and faces attempted murder and other charges. (Nov. 15) — The Associated Press”

After watching the video, I wondered what had happened to the shooter, Luis Cobos-Cenobio, after he was arrested.  Given the length of time since the incident, I figured he had been convicted and sentenced by now.  I didn’t expect what actually happened.

On August 27, 2019, while still being held for the November 11, 2018 incident on an attempted capital murder charge, Cobos-Cenobio was apparently strangled by another prisoner.

Even with vaccines available, the delta variant is having a growing impact in Arkansas.  For the 3rd day in a row, new cases today topped 1000.  There were 1,155 new cases reported today.  Active cases jumped by 673 to 6,605.  There are 497 Covid patients hospitalized, up 16, with 81 on ventilators…… We were supposed to be past this!¹

Last summer, things looked pretty bleak.  Covid cases were rising and a surge was around the corner.

The future only had a couple of options.

1. Stay the course with social distancing, masks and, if needed, lockdowns and quarantines, or
2. Open everything back up and let nature—and Covid-19—take it’s course.  Get the economy and life back on track and let the population achieve herd immunity through infection.

There was the possibility, the potential, for the development of a vaccine. However, historically, vaccine development is a long, complex process with standardized procedures that often takes ten to fifteen years.² The likelihood of creating a vaccine that could be used in the near term appeared slim, though governments around the world promised miracles.

Covid-19 (aka SARS-COV-2) is related to other coronaviruses that cause diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Scientists have been studying these to develop vaccines against them for many years before SARS-COV-2 was discovered.  This helped accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines.³

Three phases of clinical trials are required after a vaccine has been developed.   While these are normally done one at a time in sequence, because of the seriousness of the pandemic, the phases were overlapped to be able to more quickly make the vaccines available if they proved to be safe and effective.  No trial phases were skipped.  The trials included tens of thousands of volunteers with no serious safety concerns shown after more than 8 weeks following vaccination.⁴

Emergency Use Authorization

On February 4, 2020, the HHS Secretary (Alex Azar) determined “that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19” and later declared “that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs and biological products during the COVID-19 pandemic, pursuant to section 564 of the FD&C Act, effective March 27, 2020.”^5,6

The timing of this declaration makes it clear that the federal government was aware early on of the seriousness of the pandemic that was then just beginning to spread.

Since the previous fastest drug from start to distribution—the mumps vaccine—took four years to develop, it’s natural that there would be some apprehension over the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine.  The pandemic, however, spurred unprecedented global cooperation for vaccine research and development, building on the previous coronavirus vaccine research.  Dr. Eric J. Yager, an associate professor of microbiology at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Albany, NY, explained that scientists had been studying coronaviruses for over 50 years and had existing data on the structure, genome, and life cycle of this type of virus. “Research on these viruses established the importance of the viral spike (S) protein in viral attachment, fusion, and entry, and identified the S proteins as a target for the development of antibody therapies and vaccines,” he said, and, “Early efforts by scientists at Oxford University to create an adenovirus-based vaccine against MERS provided the necessary experimental experience and groundwork to develop an adenovirus vaccine for COVID-19.”

There are plenty of authoritative, legitimate sources of information on Covid-19 and the vaccines.  I simply do not understand how people can rely on sources that spread misinformation and outright lies.

Time and technology came together to produce multiple Covid-19 vaccines.  At no other time in human history has the conditions existed that have resulted in these 21st-century scientific miracles.

1. KARK. (2021, July 09). COVID-19 in Arkansas: Third day of more than 1,000 new cases, active case count tops figure from a year ago. Retrieved July 9, 2021, from https://www.kark.com/news/health/coronavirus/covid-19-in-arkansas-third-day-of-more-than-1000-new-cases-active-case-count-tops-figure-from-a-year-ago/
2. Vaccine Development, Testing, and Regulation. (2019). Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation
3. Developing covid-19 vaccines. (2021, March 25). Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/distributing/steps-ensure-safety.html
4. ibid.
5. Commissioner, FDA, Office of the. (Content current as of: 07/07/2021.). Emergency use authorization. Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/emergency-use-authorization
6. “The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) authority allows FDA to help strengthen the nation’s public health protections against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats including infectious diseases, by facilitating the availability and use of medical countermeasures (MCMs) needed during public health emergencies.”
7. Solis-Moreira, J. (2020, December 15). COVID-19 vaccine: How was it developed so fast? Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-did-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-quickly#Funding-for-COVID-19-vaccine-research

I like taking photos of flowers.  I am by no means a botanist or expert on plants, just an amateur photographer who likes to share some of my photos online.  It’s nice to be able to provide accurate information such as the name of plants that are the subject of a photo.

I found over the years that it was often difficult to identify plants that I had taken pictures of.  Sure, there are online sources that can be referenced, but they all required browsing images of flowers trying to find one that looked close.  I was usually successful, but it still took time, sometimes a lot of time for a single photo.

In 2018, Karen came across an app on the iPhone called PictureThis  (also available on Google Play). It was amazingly good at finding matches for the plants we saw along the trail, usually offering up several options for what it might be when we snapped an image into the app.  It’s even better now.

However, I never thought to use it for pictures that I had already taken until quite a while later.  It’s really easy to pull a photo from the pictures on the phone and the app identifies the plant really fast.

But what about photos that aren’t on the phone?

The picture above was taken on August 23, 2004 using a Kodak Easyshare DX4530 5.0 mp digital camera (there is one currently available on eBay for $12.99).

I opened the file for the image on my desktop computer and snapped a photo of the image displayed on my screen.  I then pulled that into PictureThis and, in short order, had this result:

The plant is called golden crownbeard (verbesina encelioides)

Verbesina encelioides is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. The species is native to many parts of the United States and Mexico. It is naturalized in other parts of North America, the Middle East, Spain, Argentina, Australia and the Pacific islands. Common names include golden crownbeard, gold weed, wild sunflower, cowpen daisy, butter daisy, crown-beard, American dogweed and South African daisy. [Wikipedia]

The app is available in both a free and pay version.  We find that the free version does everything we need for it to do.

We have plenty of electronic devices connected to the internet.  We each have a computer, iPhone, Kindle, and iPad.

Karen uses a laptop and I normally use a dual-screen desktop PC—though, to be accurate, my computer is mounted under the desktop.

Our computers are our main interface with the online world.  When away from the computer, though, we can do just about everything we want to online with our phones—and the phones have apps that aren’t available on the computers. They also have pretty good cameras.  On our recent trip to Colorado, all of our photos were taken using the phones, even though I did have a digital SLR camera with us—I never took it out of its protective case.

The Kindles, of course, only have one function, reading—and that could be done using any of the other devices, but I prefer the Kindle Paperwhite. For reading, it’s kind of like Goldilocks and The 3 Bears—it’s just right.

Out iPads have been relegated to mainly serving as devices for streaming videos when we’re using the treadmill or traveling, though much of the time we download TV shows and movies for later viewing.

Then, of course, we have TVs that are connected for streaming.

And, since I can’t take my desktop with us when we travel, I have a small, older laptop.  I used it once on our trip to Colorado.

Oh, and we have a recent model iPod that we bought for playing music in the camper.

We embraced digital technology years ago, long before we entered the ranks of seniors.

Video by Joey Helms
David Attenborough impersonation voiceover by Rick Whelan

Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico, June 13, 2021

On our way to Manitou Springs, we took a small side excursion as we were running a tad early for checking in.  We normally try to get in some walks during a long driving day.  This walk was different from most that find along our way.

We took the 1-mile trail around the rim. It’s paved and a bit steep in places. We were glad we went the direction we did as it worked out that the longest steepest grade of the loop trail was downhill for us.

The National Monument, located in northeastern New Mexico, protects and interprets an extinct cinder cone volcano and is part of the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. A paved road spirals gradually around the volcano and visitors can drive up to a parking lot at the rim of the extinct volcano. Hiking trails circle the rim as well as lead down into the mouth of the volcano. The monument was designated on August 9, 1916, and is administered by the National Park Service. The volcano is located 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north of the village of Capulin.

The parking lot at the top is small.  If it’s full, the rangers at the visitor center place each new parties wanting to go up on a waitlist and call when parking spots open up.

Rocky mountain raspberry (aka delicious raspberry, boulder raspberry, snowy bramble; botanical name rubus deliciosus)