250: The Blog
250 is the Suite Number of the Governor’s Office at the Arkansas State Capitol. It also is the name of this blog, which will go beyond the press conferences and bill signings to offer a glimpse of the day-to-day life of Governor Asa Hutchinson.
Press Shop | 03.01.2019
John Clark talks blackberries, eats blackberries, raises blackberries, breeds new varieties of blackberries, and writes scientific papers about blackberries. He has even composed music for the guitar in honor of the blackberry and performed it in the middle of his blackberry patch. Through the years, his research has made the blackberry patch less bothersome and more fruitful with varieties of thornless blackberries with large and sweet fruit. Dr. Clark, a native of Mississippi, does all this work as a distinguished professor and leader of the blackberry breeding program of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. The program is...
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Press Shop | 07.11.2018
Old hands at the state capitol refer to the governor’s office simply as “250,” which is the office number for the governor’s suite on the second floor. Two-fifty is painted in gold at the top of the glass in the door that opens into the suite. Eighteen inches down, you can read the name – also painted in gold -- of the state’s highest-ranking elected official: Governor Asa Hutchinson, 46th governor of Arkansas. If you peer through the glass of 250, you will see Jennifer Siccardi, a lightning bolt of energy and happiness, seated...
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Press Shop | 02.08.2019
Governor Asa Hutchinson has met every president since Ronald Reagan, and he has the pictures to prove it. He has stood for photographs with Presidents Trump and Obama. In one framed photo on the west end of his office, Governor Hutchinson and Bill Clinton are shaking hands, and former Goverrnor Mike Huckabee is standing behind them. The fireplace mantel holds a photograph of the governor walking and chatting with Ronald Reagan down the West Colonnade at the White House. President Reagan appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Western District of...
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Press Shop | 02.06.2019
The nine from Gettysburg peered out the governor’s window at the sculpture of the Little Rock 9, the historic Central High School students frozen in 1957 on the north side of the state capitol. Their recent visit to Little Rock was one of several stops in Arkansas, a journey intended to broaden their perceptions about the South. Sixty-one years ago, this window opened up on a landscape far different than their view in 2019. From this office in 1957, the state’s 36th governor called up the Arkansas National Guard to protect Central High from the ruling federal intervention. The U...
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Press Shop | 02.04.2019
The news conference was the sort of political event that Governor Asa Hutchinson enjoys. He convened it in the historic Governor’s Conference Room, where every governor since 1915 has conducted state business and made big announcements. His big announcement was the details of legislation that delivers on one of his significant campaign pledges. Legislators and leaders from several state agencies filled the conference room. The interpreter from the Arkansas School for the Deaf was in place to the right of the lectern. Television cameras stood in strategic places. The governor’s staff was broadcasting the gathering live on...
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Press Shop | 01.09.2019
Richard Adcock’s co-workers at the state capitol tease him that his picture shows up in the newspaper more often than the governor’s. While that’s a stretch – he appeared only five times in 2018 – it is likely that his face appears in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette more often than any other employee of the Secretary of State’s office. In the 2010-2017 stretch, the paper featured Richard five times, including a full-blown story about his work at the capitol. That brings his grand total to 10 appearances in the state’s largest newspaper. It...
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Press Shop | 12.20.2018
The Christmas carols start at 9 a.m. on the second floor of the State Capitol rotunda, just down from the Governor’s Office. The riser for the choirs is erected northwest of the top-half of the 25-foot Christmas tree, which is anchored on the ground floor. Choirs sing straight through the lunch hour, all the way until 3 p.m. – 180 choirs at the rate of 18 a day, a new one every 20 minutes, for 10 days. The singers travel from the schools in Cutter Morning Star and Pocahontas, from Alma to Atkins to Batesville. This is a big day, the chance...
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Press Shop | 11.29.2018
Press Shop Note: On December 11 and December 12, the First Lady will host a Christmas Tea, and on December 18, the First Lady and the First Santa will host a Christmas Tea for children of all ages. Information about times, menu, entertainment and ticket purchase is at http://www.friendsofthemansion.org/ ***** At the Governor’s Mansion, things started to look a lot like Christmas on Halloween. That’s the day the Mansion staff, under the direction of Mansion Administrator Patty Shipp, broke out the decorations and commenced to deck the Grand Hall, not with boughs of holly but with trees...
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Press Shop | 11.20.2018
LITTLE ROCK – Neither the cameras nor the crowd ruffled the feathers of the guest of honor, which is saying something considering that she is a turkey with plenty of feathers to ruffle. Nellie the Turkey sat calmly in her red wagon on Monday to pose for pictures with Governor Asa Hutchinson, Agriculture Commissioner Wes Ward, her teenage owners, and more than sixty students, parents, and teachers from Atkins Elementary School. As Arkansas's honorary state turkey, Nellie was in town for the official proclamation of Arkansas Turkey Week. ...
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Press Shop | 08.31.2018
Brad Hill and his father, David, meet a lot of people who do the heavy lifting in life. The Hills are physical therapists. So when the heavy lifters’ heavy lift goes wrong, they visit the Hills. But the Hills have invented a device that they hope will reduce the number of heavy lifters who show up at their clinic. Their product is a wide vinyl strap with a handle on each end – a lifting handle. For simplicity and for marketing purposes, they combined the words lifting and handle to make Landle. “The problem of back injury is...
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