Steve Teske News Today

As towns across rural Arkansas continue to bleed population, the most obvious victims often are the churches. I recently saw an online plea for funds to help keep up a Presbyterian church building at Helena, a once-beautiful city on the banks of the Mississippi River that has been losing residents for decades.

It was cold and spitting snow that day in December 1992 when the cab driver dropped me off at Maya Angelous house in Winston-Salem, N.C. I was political editor of this newspaper and was taking a short break from writing and editing stories about Bill Clinton, who had been elected president a month earlier.

A small fire was reported Monday evening in the former Fair Oaks Middle School, 416 S. 10th St. The building was also previously the temporary home of Duncombe

T he new Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is receiving rave reviews across the country. Forbes described it as "Americas most inviting art museum." In the process, the place where its housed--Little Rocks MacArthur Park--is welcoming visitors who otherwise wouldnt have set foot in this part of town.

An overheated electrical motor smoked up part of a building at Iowa Central Community College Wednesday evening. The problem at the REC Center was reported at

I love old houses. I know a city is a good place to live when its residents work hard to preserve and restore historic properties. However, Ive never fallen in love with a house quite like Mark Camp has fallen for the Packet House.

Some of the richest farmland in America surrounds Eudora, the Chicot County town that was the subject of last Sundays column. That column focused on the crime problems that likely will speed up population losses that have beset Eudora for the past 40 years. Dozens of small towns across the Arkansas Delta find themselves in the same boat.

I’m leaving Historic Washington State Park in Hempstead County for a meeting at Arkadelphia in Clark County, but I have some time to kill. Rather than taking Interstate 30 out of Hope, I get on U.S. 67 and explore Nevada County, which is between Hempstead and Clark counties.

The area around Kingsland in Cleveland County was a desperately poor part of Arkansas in February 1932 when J.R. Cash was born to Ray and Carrie Cash.