Big Grass Bluegrass Festival coming to Paragould July 19-21

PARAGOULD — KASUFM, the public media service of Arkansas State University, in conjunction with the Collins Theatre Foundation, will present the fourth annual Big Grass Bluegrass Festival at Collins Theatre, 120 W Emerson St. in downtown Paragould.

The festival will consist of three concerts. At 7 p.m. Friday, July 19, the first concert will feature the Punches Family and the Dillards.

Bruce and Bobette Punches and their adult children have been performing a mixture of bluegrass, gospel and country music across America for the past 15 years. The ensemble has performed in KASU’s Bluegrass Monday concert series and on multiple television programs.

The Dillards are best known for portraying the characters “The Darlings” on the “Andy Griffith Show” in the 1960s.

In repeated appearances in the series, the group introduced numerous, now-classic songs, such as “Dooley,” “There Is a Time,” and “Ebo Walker” to audiences who had never heard bluegrass music. The band also produced numerous influential albums throughout the 1960s, blending bluegrass

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with other styles of American music.

The second concert will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 20. This concert will be a showcase of musical talent from around the state.

Pam Setser is a 2024 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council’s Governor’s Award for Folklife. She has been a regular performer in Mountain View, throughout the Ozarks, and across America since she was a child. Setser and her band recently performed at the Station Inn, the top venue for bluegrass music in America.

Casey Penn is a two-time nominee for the Arkansas Country Music Award for Bluegrass Artist of the Year.

This Mountain Fever Records recording artist has had multiple songs on the Bluegrass Today and Bluegrass Unlimited charts.

Sylamore Special received the 2024 Arkansas Country Music Awards for Bluegrass Artist of the Year and Inspirational Artist of the Year. Comprised of young musicians from the Mountain View area, the ensemble has gained a reputation as one of the top bluegrass acts in the region.

The final concert will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 20, and will feature No Time Flatt and Dailey and Vincent.

No Time Flatt is a winner of multiple Tennessee Music Awards including Entertainer of the Year and Bluegrass Band of the Year. This quintet performs original songs, bluegrass standards, and their unique, acoustic arrangements of songs from many different styles of music.

Grand Old Opry members Dailey and Vincent have received over a dozen International Bluegrass Music Association awards including being named Vocal Group of the Year seven times. The group is featured on their weekly TV program on RFDTV. Their style is described as all-American music with country, bluegrass and gospel.

Tickets and more information about the festival are available at collinstheatre.com/bluegrass.

Proceeds from the festival will benefit the continued upkeep and maintenance of the 99-year-old historic Collins Theatre which is the home for KASU-FM’s Bluegrass Monday concert series typically held on the fourth Monday night of each month. This month, the festival will replace the July Bluegrass Monday concert.

Additional information is available from Marty Scarbrough, KASU program director, at mscarbro@astate.edu or 870-972-2367 and on the Big Grass Bluegrass Festival Facebook page. ***

Beryl brings tornadoes, rain to Arkansas, most row crops unscathed

LITTLE ROCK —Beryl, which existed as everything from an Atlantic hurricane to a tropical depression, brought high winds and rainfall to large swaths of Arkansas this week, but left the vast majority of the state’s row crops intact.

Hurricane Beryl caused significant damage in the Caribbean as a Category 5

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hurricane during the first several days of July. It continued west and north, making landfall in Texas as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday. As the storm system moved inland, it was downgraded to a tropical depression.

The National Weather Service in Little Rock reported record rainfall amounts, including: Batesville: 4.51? beating the previous record of 2.42” set in 2021 Harrison: 2.33” beating the previous record of 1.72” set in 1905 North Little Rock: 2.87” beating the previous record of 0.90” set in 2014 Little Rock: 2.56” beating the previous record of 1.74” set in 1956 Other areas of the state saw even higher amounts of rainfall, including 8 inches in Grant County, 5.36 inches in Heber Springs, 6.6 inches in Conway County and 7.31 inches in Ferndale.

The weather system also spawned numerous tornadoes in areas of Arkansas and northern Louisiana, along with large numbers of attendant warnings (NWS Shreveport issued 67 tornado warnings, averaging about 8 per hour).

As of July 12, the service has confirmed five tornadoes in Arkansas on July 8-9, including: Stephens in Ouachita County, Arkansas, EF1, 2.33-mile path, 50 yards wide, ended in Nevada County Pine Grove tornado, Dallas County, EF1, 3.23-mile path, 75 yards wide Double Wells tornado, Jefferson County, EF1, 2.5-mile path, 75 yards wide. Went from Rison to White Hall Pine Bluff Arsenal tornado, Jefferson County, EF0, 5.79mile path, 75 yards wide.

Went from White Hall to Sherrill Western White County, EF1 While the NWS hasn’t completed its tornado investigations, one twister was captured on camera near Gin City, in Lafayette County.

Lafayette County extension staff chair Jerri Dew said she was told by local utility officials that the twister tore up five light poles, but nothing else but croplands.

“We were just blessed,” Dew said. “We had two tornadoes come up just to the west of us. I don’t know what kind of damage there was.”

While many areas of the state suffered damage to structures, reports of row crop damage throughout the state appear minor.

Matthew Davis, Jackson County extension staff chair, said that while the White River rose significantly in his area as compared to previous levels, damage appeared to be limited to “blown levees and slow drainage on some fields.”

“Overall, no wind damage is to be noted,” Davis said. “We are seeing farmers just trying to manage water on field and get it off as the waterways will allow. A few fields in the Departee Creek watershed were underwater after the rain, but we expect the water to continue to drain into the later part of the week.”

Kevin Lawson, Faulkner County extension agriculture agent, said crop damage appeared to be minimal in his area as well.

“The Arkansas River is still really low so everything flowed out pretty fast,” Lawson said. “There are a few beans in low-lying areas that had some water stand on them, but all in all I don't think much damage occurred from this one.”

Wheat harvest beats the clock:

Arkansas wheat growers were also fortunate enough to complete most of their harvest before Beryl came ashore. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Monday that as of July 7, 99 percent of the state’s 135,000 acres of winter wheat had been harvested.

Jason Kelley, extension wheat and feed grains agronomist for the Division of Agriculture, said 2024 was a “fairly decent growing season” for winter wheat in Arkansas. The crop saw a dramatic drop in acreage from the previous year, when growers planted 230,000 acres of wheat.

“The biggest difference in growers’ experience was from north to south,” Kelley said.

“Growers in the southern half of the state saw a lot of rainfall from March until May — the northern half saw a lot less of that, and wheat tends to prefer dryer conditions.”

As a result, he said, growers in the northeastern portion of the state have been seeing better yields per acre.

Overall, the wheat harvest for most growers ran seven to 10 days ahead of schedule, with significant gains in the final weeks of the growing season.

“We had some foliar disease pressure — septoria — which is fairly common in wheat, and is usually worse in wet weather,” Kelley said. “In

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general, disease pressure was higher than in past years.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.

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Repeat sex offender from

Michigan sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for sexual offenses against a child

LITTLE ROCK—Jeremy Robert Ward, a registered sex offender from Michigan, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison on Thursday.

Jonathan D. Ross, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, announced the sentence, which was handed down by Chief United States District Judge Kristine G.

Baker.

Ward was previously convicted in 2013 in Michigan of three counts of possession of child sexual abusive material and one count of accosting a child for an immoral purpose.

Ward met the 12-year-old minor victim online in September 2022 when he added her to his Snapchat account. He exchanged messages with the victim for approximately three weeks before traveling to Arkansas from his home in Michigan to meet her. On October 15, 2022, he met her face-to-face when he met her in his pickup truck while she was riding her bike near her neighborhood in Bryant. During her encounter with Ward, the victim began surreptitiously recording a portion of her exchange with him. On the video, Ward told her, “I was hoping to take you home” and “I just wish she [her mom] would let you go, especially since I drove all the way down here.”

Ward also told the minor victim that she must “think I’m gonna kidnap you or something,” to which she replied, “You probably are about to at this point.” He later asked if she knew of any “private spots,” in an attempt to find a more secluded place to be with her.

Around the same time, using an application on her cell phone, her father noticed she was outside of the established boundary where she was permitted to be. Her parents went to her location, and her father found the minor victim laying in the grass with Ward, whose pants were around his ankles. Ward then fled into the woods.

The minor victim testified at trial that while she was in the field with Ward, he attempted to commit sexual acts with her. Subsequent investigation revealed that the victim and Ward communicated through video messages, some of which Ward recorded on his phone. The recorded video messages were recovered from Ward’s phone and included video and still images of the nude minor victim in the shower.

After a three-day trial that concluded on January 24, 2024, a federal jury found Ward, 33, of Marine City, Michigan, guilty on all nine counts for which he was indicted: one count of interstate travel with the purpose of enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity with a minor, six counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, one count of receipt of child pornography, and one count of travel with the purpose to engage in illicit sexual activity with a minor.

Judge Baker also sentenced Ward to a lifetime of supervised release.

The investigation was conducted by the Bryant Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Kristin Bryant and Amanda Fields.

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