Ozarks At Large

A “swabbing” drive will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday in the University of Arkansas Student Union. Donors at this event will be swabbed for blood type, this information will then go into the DKMS database, registering people to be potential donors in the future to patients undergoing treatment for various types of blood cancer. Ozarks at Large’s Christina Thomas spoke with organizers of the event, who said they would like to register 250 people on Thursday.

Ahead on Ozarks, a new series of bills designed to tighten ethics in state government are circulating at the state capitol and we’ll hear from some of the authors of the legislation. Plus a hike to see a stand of Ozark chinquapin trees…a species that’s hard to find these days.

Eco-preservationists, recreationists and scientists are collaborating on a project to save Kessler Mountain, a 387-acre forest southwest of Fayetteville, from urban development. We take a short expedition along a scenic escarpment to an ancient grove of chinkapin oak, with geoscientist Dr. David Stahle and grad student Allen Edmondson. They want the UofA to dedicate an outdoor natural laboratory on Kessler—similar to Harvard Forest and Duke Forest. To receive permission to explore Mount Kessler, contact Frank Sharp here. Web Exclusive: Sampling an Ancient Chinquapin Oak Forest on Mt. Kessler

Here is our out-of-this-world list of material that made up our space montage this morning. If you correctly identified them all, buy yourself a cold glass of Tang.

1. "Major Tom," as performed by David Bowie
2. Neil Armstrong lands on the moon.
3. Charlton Heston just before his space ship crashes into future earth. Spoiler alert: there are APES. This is the opening scene from the original Planet of the Apes
4. A commercial for Tang
5. HAL takes over in 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. The Shocking Blue with their biggest hit, "Venus"
7. A piece of the trailer for the disaster movie Armageddon. That's nativa Arkansan Billy Bob Thornton explaining "It's a meteor shower."
8. Pluto, the dog, barking in his 1952 cartoon, "Pluto's Party."
9. The worst bit of dialogue ever in a movie ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future.") from Plan 9 From Outer Space"
10. Holst's Mars from "The Planets"