HELENA — First and always, it’s the music.

The sustaining memory from the annual blues festival over the weekend will be of sitting mesmerized amid a gentle cooling breeze on the Mississippi River levee late Thursday night. Fayetteville’s Cate Brothers, Ernie and Earl and their band mates, flawlessly dished out a quintessentially Arkansas musical stew of blues and mellifluous soul and mild rock and maybe a hint of country.

Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival officials recently presented Southern Bancorp with a special biscuit platter for their generous donation as the Primary Sponsor of the 2009 AB&HF.

The last payday lender operating a store in Arkansas closed its doors this summer, but Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said that hasn’t stopped predatory lenders from continuing to target Arkansans.

Though it hasn’t filed any lawsuits against them yet, the attorney general’s office has sent about 30 warning letters to so-called payday lenders who have either loaned or offered to loan money to Arkansas residents over the Internet.

Southern Bancorp provided $200,000 grant to help build the B.B. King Museum.

The AT&T* Learning Center at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center will be dedicated on Labor Day, Monday, September 7, 2009. The legendary B.B. King will be on hand to join in welcoming local officials, dignitaries, and museum supporters from the Delta and beyond. The day will begin with live music and a music workshop for young people will be held following the ceremony. The Learning Center is the fulfillment of a dream made possible by a $500,000 grant from AT&T*.

Customers who walk into the Bank of Trumann Wednesday will be greeted by the same familiar faces of the bankers they have come to know and trust. However, the name will have changed.

As of Sept. 30, Bank of Trumann officially merged with Southern Bancorp.

Southern Bancorp, which is headquartered in Arkadelphia, is the largest Rural Development Bank in the United States. Southern Bancorp president and CEO Phillip Baldwin was on hand Wednesday to share with the Trumann Lions Club what being a rural development bank is all about.

Rural America is vast and undefined—a land of corn and soybeans, John Deere, Andy Griffith, and romantic notions of the past. In the last century, a great migration of Americans left the family farm for better-paying jobs in urban communities where industrialization offered a higher standard of living. Continued mechanization of farming reduced job opportunities for rural workers. Fields once farmed by 100 workers are now farmed by one. Foreign competition ensures low commodities pricing while the cost of diesel fuel and fertilizer skyrocket. Somewhere in all of this change, people gave up and the family farm disappeared, taking with it the underlying reason for rural America to exist. Businesses closed, banks sold, churches boarded up, and buildings were abandoned. Rural America changed from a land of family farms and related businesses to a “fly-over zone.”

Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in partnership with Philander Smith College and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to host an educational symposium “Speaking the Truth on Social Issues and Politics in the 21st Century” on Thursday, September 24 and Friday, September 25, 2009 at Philander Smith College in the Harry R. Kendall Science and Health Mission Center located at One Trudie Kibbe Reed Dr. in Little Rock. There is no fee for the conference, but reservations are required by September 15th. Registration forms are available at www.nps.gov/chsc.

At the Council on Foundations Rural Philanthropy Conference, held in Little Rock Arkansas July 13-15, rural mission investing was a topic integrated both into an economic development track and we also had a breakfast on the topic that drew 25 people at 7:30 in the morning (it was already hot). Founder’s Circle Member Annie E. Casey, and new Leader’s Circle member Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation spoke about their experiences in using MRIs and PRIs in rural areas (Maine and Arkansas were featured examples), in vehicles ranging from CDFI lending institutions to venture capital.

Admission rates for the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival, Oct. 8-10, have been cut in half, Munnie Jordan, the festival executive director, announced Thursday.