
Ozarks At Large

Senator John McCain was in Little Rock late last week, and he called President Obama's reaction to tension in Syria a failure of American leadership. Speaker of the Arkansas House Davy Carter wanted more time to explain the federally backed Medicaid expansion to constituents, so the vote was postponed until today. And Governor Mike Beebe speaks in favor of changes that are coming for some child welfare programs in the state.

Here are our ten clips from our montage dedicated to April Showers. Well, dedicated to rain at least…
- B.J. Thomas sings "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
- Hugh Grant and Andie Macdowell admit their mutual love at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
- Prince sings "Purple Rain."
- Bill Cosby with an early TV rendition of his famous Noah routine.
- Mahalia Jackson with the gospel great "Didn’t It Rain".
- Gene Kelly about to launch into the best three minutes ever recorded in a movie musical.
- Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst exchange a rainy kiss as Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson.
- Tom Hanks (as Forrest Gump) describes the many kinds of rain.
- Sam Neil tries to save kids from a hungry T. Rex in Jurassic Park.
- Audrey Hepburn finds the cat…and George Peppard…at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The Mancini notes should have given this away.
Apologies to: The Weather Girls, Andy’s escape in Shawshank Redemption, the bubbling skeletons in Poltergeist, the Eurythmics, John Wayne in the Quiet Man and all those movies with Notebook in the title. Maybe next time.
In case you need a spot to duck into in between April showers, local and regional art galleries and exhibition spaces will have plenty for you to soak up throughout the month, including exhibits at the Arts Center of the Ozarks, the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, the John Brown University art gallery, and elsewhere.

Christina Thomas visits Timothy Nutt, head of special collections for the University of Arkansas library. Nutt says that the library's collections are directly affected by the death of letter writing.



Forty years ago Jed Clampit left his day job to become a professional musician. Saturday night he performed live at KUAF for Mike Shirkey’s program, The Pickin’ Post. We hear one of the songs.
Latest Edition of Ozarks at Large
Friday, October 25, 2013
Ahead on this fundraising week edition of Ozarks, Michael Johnathon joins us in the studio, our weekly conversation with Michael Tilley of The City Wire and more.
If you secretly like Celine Dion or even Britney Spears, you may not be alone. Today, Wayne Bell of www.fayettevilleflyer.com talks about guilty pleasures.
Walmart lawyers will volunteer their time to help patients at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital with special education and Medicaid issues. The pro-bono corporate initiative is the first of its kind in the country.
Jacqueline Froelich revisits Harrison, where in 1998 she and writer David Zimmermann uncovered a terrible secret buried for almost a century: an angry white mob attacked black residents forcing them to flee. She talks with a local reconciliation task force as well as a black descendent--the first to come forward.
“Spiritual” by Charlie Haden
This weekend, the Fayetteville Roots Festival will not only host local and national artists but also offer a variety of organic food sourced from several local farms. One of these farms, the Sweden Creek Farm, will supply mushrooms to food vendors at the festival.
For more information about the Sweden Creek Farm, visit http://theold78s.com/swedencreekfarm. To take a video tour of the farm, click here.
“Farmer” by Bill Frisell
Make some art at the Art Center of the Ozarks in Springdale plus, “Who Carved the Tombstones: Tales of the Stone Carvers and Their Craft” by Abby Burnett at the Boone County Library today.