"Open the doors and let the lookers make their connections.”

Sounds like the curator of drawings at the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock believes her visitors are kind of smart.

Phaedra Siebert could be talking about the whole city instead of the Paul Signac watercolor exhibition she was discussing with a small group the day I visited this charming center of innovative exhibitions, continuous classes and world-class collections of works on paper and contemporary fine craft.

Connections for making, and musing, for texting instant, on-site reactions home and for reconsidering childhood concepts are all over this city.

Three days in Little Rock rocked my recollections of school desegregation and renewed my zeal to plant more herbs and vegetables.

Drew me to some new Native American understandings and reminded me of pleasures found in neighborhoods.

Fortunately I ate some grand meals and had a lot of fun along the way too; vacations shouldn’t be totally enlightening should they?

Little Rock details hadn’t been hanging in my mind as a “gotta go some day” desire, but now that I’ve been, I know plenty of reasons this is a visiting place.

One of them made me really proud to be an American, in a strange sort of way, thanks to the National Park Service. They tell the story of Central High School in 1957 when nine students assigned to attend the all-black Dunbar High opted instead for the education available at Central.

It’s the thoughtful way the Park Service tells this painful, emotional U. S. history that made me proud; they put you on the street corners and sidewalks and take you in the school where classes are under way today.

How’s that for living history?

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford didn’t get the message that Sept. 4, 1957 day about waiting at home and she went to the corner of Park and Daisy Bates streets, expecting the other eight schoolmates but finding only angry mobs and National Guardsmen.

I stood on that corner too, the handsome school in sight, with an outstanding National Park Service guide. Nobody spit on me.

When Park Ranger Christian Davin told my little group that Elizabeth’s dress was soaking wet with spit by the time she got away, a lovely well-dressed young woman perhaps in her twenties declared, “I’d never let anyone spit on me.”

Hmm, I thought. Ever been all alone in an angry crowd? And just a kid?