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www.arkbestrealty.com

Jen McRealtorArkBest Realty, Inc.

c 501.867.5309f 501.867.5502

arkbestrealty.com

We have more than two decades of experience in exceeding expectations.

We can’t build a Falcon.But we can help build relationships.

Dassault Falcon is a paragon of excellence in design, engineering, and customer satisfaction. Likewise, Apple holds the same standards for its products and retail stores. Similar to how the introduction of the Falcon 7X defined the future of business jets, the iPad revolutionized mobile computing.

In 2001, Apple wanted to create an environment focused on the customer experience. As a result, the Apple Store established a new paradigm for customer service, training, and support at a retail store.

A few years ago, Apple realized the opportunity to extend that same support to businesses and introduced the Business Team, which is dedicated to ensuring the needs of local business leaders are met by providing services uniquely tailored to companies of all sizes.

You keep kitchens running.We keep teams connected.

86 • EQUINOX 2013 • 87

Kesha StovallBushelsAdobe Illustrator and InDesign / 4’ x 3’

Kesha StovallHigh-CottonAdobe Illustrator and InDesign / 4’ x 3’

Ian ParkAbstract Platterceramic / 14” x 14” x 1.5”

Ian ParkHere for the Cakeceramic / 3” x 2.5” x 6.75”

Chloé DeatonPeapodbasswood, copper, and exotic wood base / 17” x 6” x 10”

Morgan Hill Firestartersoft maple and Plasti Dip*

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Sally Nixon Illustration from The Inevitiability of Spiders and Fliespen and watercolor / 9” x 20”

93

Michelle Canulla34wood carving and mixed media sculpture / 12” x 4” x 8”

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Morgan Hill Circle of Good and Evilglulam beams and latex paint*

95

Sally Nixon Illustration from The Inevitiability of Spiders and Fliespen and watercolor / 9” x 20”

97

Chris CottonBut, I’m a Mermaid.oil on canvas / 24” x 48”

96

L.K. SukanyLarge Canvas Figure Studyoil, acrylic, and charcoal on canvas layers / 57” x 74”

98

Jordan Gribble Even the Rain Casts Shadows so theWaves Cast Their Doubt to the Skywatercolor on paper / 20” x 16”

99

Hannah MayCrackle Teapotsoda fired porcelain*

100

Hannah May Teasetsoda fired porcelain*

101

Linda HollowayGerald’s Memory Containerbasswood, carved, turned, chased, repousse, copper, steel, brass, and India ink / 16.5” x 2” x 2”

102

Linda HollowayGlossie’s Memory Containerbasswood, carved, turned, copper, brass, and India ink / 13.5” x 5” x 4”

103

Logan HunterAlicegraphite, white chalk on toned paper / 16” x 20”

104

Logan HunterAnnagraphite on paper / 18” x 24”

105

Kendalyn MckisickThe Birdsoil, ink, colored pencil and acrylic on canvas / 24” x 36”

106

Morgan HillDouble-Finger Turtle Ringwenge, sterling silver and taxidermy turtle*

Shannon L. Bowers Involutionlimestone / 16” x 12”

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*Dimensions were not available at press time.

32 • EQUINOX 2013 • 33

First, accept that you will cry. You won’t be able to help it. A solid shot to the nose causes the eyes to instantly tear up. This is something they choose to omit in action movies—Bruce Willis would look silly delivering a catchphrase while dabbing at his cheeks—but life is not an action movie, and your tears are not necessarily a reflection of your masculinity. Though you will cry involuntarily, you should, if possible, avoid

outright sobbing. It is important to preserve some semblance of dignity in even the most igno-minious of circumstances.

Though you have been punched, there will be little pain—at least at first. What you will ex-perience is the white light and roaring hiss of momentary sensory overload, as if a professional photographer’s giant, hand-held flash has detonated squarely in front of your face. In fact, time will begin to feel like a series of individual photographs, each moment slightly disconnected from the moment before or the moment to come. You will now have two options: You can fall down, or you can attempt to remain on your feet. Let us examine both.

Option A: Fall down. This will almost certainly be your body’s default response. As men-tioned, your brain is having a difficult time of it right now. If you fall down, you have a better chance of avoiding further distress by curling up and covering your vital regions. However, some atavistic part of you knows that falling and covering is akin to showing your belly to an alpha dog. If that sounds unacceptable to your animal brain, you might choose to go with—

Option B: Try to remain standing. Who does this punk think he is? Nobody punches you in the face and gets away with it. You’re a warrior; you’re goddamn Rocky Balboa. You can dish it out just as well as you can take it. Never mind the fact that your hands aren’t really responding to orders and your legs are so wobbly you might as well be trying to stand on a trampoline full of bouncing children. Never mind the fact that you have no idea how to fight. None of that shit matters. It’s on now, motherfucker.

Please. Are you crazy? Just fall down already.

philip sherrod

When You Are Punched in the Face

FICTION

34 • EQUINOX 2013 • 35

Once you slide into the front seat, you should keep the driver’s side door open so the car’s interior light doesn’t go out. You’ll need the light to examine the damage to your face. You’ll be expecting to see a hideous monstrosity staring back at you from the mirror in the visor—your nose twisted at an unnatural angle, your lips split open like overripe fruit—but you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you still look like you, which is to say, desirable. There is only a thin trickle of blood from your nose (not the torrent you expected) and a small knot under your right eye. The knot will become a full-blown shiner by the time you wake up tomorrow, but for now, it’s not too bad.

The pain will still be a problem, though.You’ll want to take the edge off it, so dig into the glovebox and find the whiskey flask

disguised as a cell phone. Knock back a large swig. The resultant smooth warmth in your empty stomach will be a nice counterpoint to the jagged fire in your face. Have another drink. And another. At some point, you’ll realize you need to stop the blood flow, so start feeling around the floorboards for a towel, a napkin, something. Nothing. You’ve always taken pride in keep-ing the Camaro pristine, inside and out. Maybe something fell down the cracks around the seats. Something did. Lodged between the passenger seat and the door is a pair of blue cotton panties.

Honestly, man—a pair of panties? Do you even know whose they are? Oh, well. They’ll have to do.

Slumped in your seat, slightly buzzed, head tilted back, discarded underpants pressed to your bloody, throbbing nose, you will—not for the first time—seriously wonder if maybe you’re getting too old for this shit.

Right now, you’ll be wishing you had a buddy to call up. You’d tell him the story of your evening, and, together, you’d laugh at the absurdi-ty of it all. After a while, though, you’d get real. You’d talk about things that matter. About women.

See, buddy, you’d say, I just don’t know how to be good. It’s the forbid-den fruit thing. I can’t say no. I’ve always been like that.

I hear ya, man, he’d say.But I’m not getting any younger, you’d continue. My twenties are

way back in the rearview now. How much longer can I keep this up? I feel something creep in on me sometimes, and it’s like I’ve got a worm in my belly, just slithering around down there, making me sick and nervous.

Gettin’ old can be harsh, he’d say.

The resultant smooth warmth in your empty stomach will be a nice counterpoint to the jagged fire in your face.

}Once you are on the ground, you should raise one arm to shield your face—your beautiful,

precious face—and use the other to guard your groin—your beautiful, precious groin. You will be expecting another attack, and you will be surprised when said attack does not materialize. Use the sudden cessation of violence to shake your head vigorously and attempt to get your wits about you. The white light will begin to resolve into proper vision (though still blurred by tears, of course), and the roaring in your ears will dissipate until there will actually seem to be too little sound, as though you are hearing the world through earmuffs.

You will begin to be aware of dozens of sharp points digging into your skin. The ground is not as complete a refuge from pain as you had hoped.

You will now remember where you are: You are in the gravel parking lot across the street from the club where you were supposed to meet Trish for a drink. She hadn’t shown up, and you were walking back to your car. Could this assault upon your person have something to do with that? Could this be Trish’s Larry? Larry the Assistant Regional Something-or-Other? Really, if anyone were to punch you in the face, you would have expected it to be Kyla’s Frank, who is apparently a drunk, or Ginny’s Patrick, who was a wrestler in high school.

You will take a moment to peer furtively past your upraised arm at your assailant. You have never seen a picture of Larry (who wants an image of the other man in his head?), but in the ugly yellow light of the parking lot’s lone sodium lamp, this fellow certainly looks the part of an Assistant Regional Something-or-Other. You can see the softness around his middle and in his face, and his wiry red hair has begun an exodus to the sides of his head. The sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, and his purple tie has been pulled loose. You will notice that, as he looks down on you, his eyes are wide and his lips are pursed into a little “o.” He is pressing the knuckles of his punching hand into his thigh. It will dawn on you that you are the first person this man has ever punched. Of all the petty offenses life has no doubt committed against this sad, invisible cubicle-dweller, the one for which you are responsible was the only one he deemed worthy of violent retribution.

The delayed pain from the man’s punch will now begin to fill your entire face. It will feel as though there is a small army of arsonists underneath your skin, setting gasoline fires behind your eyes, in your nose, and down your throat. Through the earmuffs, you will hear him shout something about staying the hell away from his woman. He will try to say it like a tough guy, but you’ll think it comes out just a little too shrill.

After Larry or whoever turns and stalks away, you will no doubt want to try to get up off the gravel and stagger to your car. Good news: Your legs have begun to feel more solid, and your Camaro is only a few yards away.

BROCHURE DESIGN EXAMPLE

Case Description — Lighthouse for the Blind

Part of Strategic Communications Plan

[Written February 17, 2014]

by Spencer Campbell

Each morning in Arkansas, close to 93,000 men, women and children who are blind or visually

impaired wake up, brush their teeth, comb their hair and get dressed for the day —not unlike

their peers who help comprise the rest of the state’s population of nearly 3 million. Unlike the

other 97 percent, however, only 3 in 10 blind or visually impaired working adults will be heading

to work after their morning routine, a disturbing number when juxtaposed with a national

unemployment rate of 6.6 percent and statewide unemployment at 7.5 percent. Further, the

unemployment figures for the blind or visually impaired are not trending or showing signs of

progress, unlike the spike in 2008 and subsequent decline in national unemployment rates;

rather, Americans with disabilities, historically, have experienced a devastating lack of progress

in finding gainful employment. Equipped (or perhaps burdened) with this knowledge, Rev. Jeff

Smith, a blind Methodist preacher and Arkansas School for the Blind alumnus, laid the

foundation for what would become Arkansas Lighthouse for the Blind, a 501(c)3 non-profit

organization which offers employment opportunities to working-age Arkansans who are blind or

visually impaired.

Helen Keller arrived in Little Rock in 1940 to dedicate a small workshop behind the Arkansas

School for the Blind, which would serve as the first manufacturing operation for Arkansas

Lighthouse for the Blind (ALB). The operation soon outgrew the small workshop, and ALB moved

to its current location in the manufacturing district in southwest Little Rock. ALB is one of more

than 600 manufacturing operations within the AbilityOne network, which employs Americans with

disabilities who provide quality products and services to federal agencies.

More than seven decades after production began, ALB’s operation employs 80 blind or visually

impaired Arkansans who manufacture, among other goods, apparel T-shirts for the U.S. Army,

Navy and Coast Guard; textiles such as military equipment belts and bandoleer pouches; and

assorted paper products, including the new eco-friendly notebooks for office-product distributors

such as General Services Administration (GSA). Total sales in 2012 topped $6.4 million, and ALB

issued $909,018 in wages for blind or visually impaired

Arkansans. But employees receive more than a livable wage at ALB: blind or visually impaired

employees of ALB are seizing the opportunity to improve their quality of life and to achieve the

independence that’s so elusive to 70 percent of their peers.

ALB operates independently, without the aid of federal funding or the renown of household-name

organizations such as World Services for the Blind (formerly Lions World Services for the Blind).

Although ALB’s operating budget is sustained through donations by corporate philanthropists,

memorial gifts and private donors, the demand for the operation’s output comes almost entirely

from GSA and other federal agencies. Thus, budget cuts resulting from sequestration and a

volatile political climate have forced the organization into a tight spot. With a bleak forecast for

any kind of meaningful change in Washington, ALB would be prudent to focus on marketing their

goods—as well as the benefits ALB provides to the community—to private companies with

similar needs to GSA.