A whirlwind week

Continuing on with my ongoing travels for the National League of Cities, I had the opportunity to attend the Arkansas Municipal League annual meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hot Springs is a very nice city of around 35,000 people. It is very historic and they have done a great job of keeping the historic downtown intact. When they say "hot" springs they really mean it. There was a spring in the park and we put our hands in it and it was like boiling water. We had lunch at the Arlington Hotel which is an old hotel that has quite a history. Apparently, Al Capone and his henchmen would stay in Hot Springs years ago.

The convention center is very large of the size of the city and it hosted the meeting very well. I saw a lot of my good friends at the conference. Tommy Baker, an alderman in Arkansas was just elected to the state assembly. I also saw Tommy Swaim and his wife Judy. The league director, Don Zimmerman, let us have his car for the afternoon and we got to see a little bit of the countryside. It is a lot like West Virginia.

I got to have dinner with Benny Petrus, the new Speaker of the House in Arkansas. He is a very nice guy and gave me an insight into some of the political issues in Arkansas. Also got to meet Governor Mike Huckebee. He is a possible presidential contender. He recently lost over a hundred pounds. He didn't give me any diet tips, but he did say I could buy his book. His speech was very positive and it appears that Arkansas is having a good budget year.

We went to a concert by country star, Blake Shelton on our last night in Hot Springs. It was a great show and we had great seats. The seats were so good that I didn't hear again for about 6 hours.

So much for Hot Springs, I have to be on my way to Vancouver, British Columbia.