Keep Hazel Street
Editor, The Commercial:
City Council — keep the name Hazel Street.
If you are going to change the name of one of our streets in Pine Bluff please pick one that is not named after a tree.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Around 1890, Pine Bluff had no system of naming new streets. Many were the surname of the first family building a home. Judge Joseph Bocage felt our rapidly growing town needed a naming plan that would systemize the naming for future growth.
His suggestion was to keep Main Street but all streets west would be named after trees and the streets east would be named after states. The streets crossing Main Street would become East or West Avenue using numbers.
The only streets keeping their original names, besides Main, would be Pullen, Barraque, and Front Street. The river eventually took Front Street, but Pullen and Barraque were named after early prominent men in the development of Pine Bluff.
The brilliance of his idea was the ease in finding an address. For example if you were looking for 1015 Laurel Street you would know it would be between 9th and 11th West Avenue. You would find 308 Georgia in the vicinity of East 3rd Avenue.
The then-governing body of the rapidly growing city of Pine Bluff voted in the affirmative for Judge Bocage’s suggestion. It has served us well the past 100 plus years. I know of no other city that has a street system for finding addresses as Pine Bluff. Please keep this in mind when you vote.
Jacquelyn Stuart,
Pine Bluff,
Author of Oasis: A History of Trinity Episcopal Church and former church historiographer.
Legacy of liars
Editor, The Commercial:
The worst pathological liar this country was credulous and gullible enough to make president. He told us he’d nominate justices that would overturn Roe v Wade. We knew by then that Trump was a prolific liar and didn’t believe that.
His nominees all lied to key congresspersons and to those who questioned them under oath at their confirmation hearings. They said it was stare decisis or “settled law ” they’d not change.
We believed they’d not blatantly lie under oath to the nation. The TRUE statement Trump had made concerning them, rare as it was for him, we were afraid to believe — and now we have several proven liars on the Supreme Court for lifetime terms!
What next will they see fit to deprive Americans of due to their politicization, and the influence of their religions and gun lobbies? They lied to us under oath and may do it again without compunction.
Asa Hutchinson could save us a lot of wasted time and “jaw-jacking” by his “Schools Safety Commission.” Simply tell the NRA and the rest of the gun worshipers to tell us what they’d please allow. Then perhaps negotiate a deal with them to pay a large share of the funeral costs of the ongoing mass shooting victims as they occur.
We have a $1.6 billion “surplus” in revenue. He wants a tax cut. It would be prudent to retain that money to support the legions of unplanned and ultimately often unwanted, unsupported kids he and his cohort are requiring to be carried to term and delivered. It will likely be needed for prisons where too many of them will go.
Most “pro life” advocates neither practice the scriptures they say they believe nor do the legislative advocates of it know diddly about the medical aspects of gestation, or biological aberrations that can occur!
They are more than willing to “bind upon others burdens they would not themselves bear.” The 23rd chapter of Matthew pretty clearly deals with them.
Karl Hansen,
Hensley