Dear Mahatma: Please pass along to whoever decided to prune the crape myrtles along Interstate 630 that there's no need to top them. This practice, crape murder, destroys their natural shape and beauty. It also encourages home owners to follow suit. -- Crape Myrtle Fan
Dear Fan: As you wished, we passed along your comments to Mark Headley, chief engineer for District 6 of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
He responded with a vigorous defense, acknowledging the agency has been accused of crape murder in the past.
On the other hand, he said, the Highway Department has verified with horticultural experts that the pruning is in accordance with acceptable practices. If it were not acceptable, he said, the practice would be stopped.
Next week: What to do about powdery mildew.
Dear Mahatma: Sometimes I don't understand the vanity plates in your column. Like the one with BAM in it. Is it me? -- Off the Deep End
Dear Deep: It's not necessarily you. Sometimes vanity plates are a puzzle. Sometimes we know the answer, and other times the answer lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Right. That made no sense.
Making little sense is the vanity plate seen downtown the other day -- MELMAC. Our mamas had melmac dinnerware, popular in the 1940s through the 1960s. Made from melamine resin, which sounds yucky, it was cheap and hard to break. We can only deduce that the vanity plate indicates a collector.
Folks will collect darn near anything, won't they?
Now, regarding the twin plates BLKBTTY and BAMDLAM, they reference a rock song covered by a 1970s group known as Ram Jam. The members of Ram Jam, like everyone else in the 1970s, had extremely bad haircuts.
The song is titled "Black Betty." It has a refrain that goes like this: "Whoa, Black Betty (bam-da-lam)."
Repeat refrain. Repeatedly. Shakespeare this ain't, but the song can be heard on classic rock radio stations in this town.
Shall we now discuss potholes? Several readers have said to The Mahatma: Yikes!
Some of the worst potholes are in his town, North Little Rock. McCain Boulevard between JFK Boulevard and 47th Street is, as one reader said, a slalom course. But much less fun.
Could be worse. This could be Cleveland. Or Buffalo. Or Boston.
To their credit, the city's street maintenance people have filled up potholes on North Hills Boulevard between McCain and the on-ramp to Interstate 40. And they were bad, bad, bad.
We have it on good authority, an eyewitness account, that the public works folks in Little Rock are filling potholes on Chenal Boulevard in both directions, and doing so lickety-split.
The Mahatma also saw last week crews filling potholes on Interstate 30 around Arkadelphia.
So the fixes are on. In the meantime, any reader who has a candidate for the title of Most Horribly Egregiously Awful Pothole may nominate to the email below.
Metro on 03/21/2015