
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.
Katy Henriksen gives us a preview of this evening's Sunday Symphony and Community Cinema event at the Fayetteville Public Library.
"The Red Violin" by Joshua Bell
Pluto was discovered 83 years ago on Monday, but it has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet. Ozarks at Large's Christina Thomas speaks with Robert Beauford, a doctoral student in space and planetary sciences at the University of Arkansas about how and why Pluto was downgraded.
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.
"Major Tom," as performed by David Bowie
Neil Armstrong lands on the moon.
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
A commercial for Tang
HAL takes over in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Shocking Blue with their biggest hit, "Venus"
A piece of the trailer for the disaster movie Armageddon. That's nativa Arkansan Billy Bob Thornton explaining "It's a meteor shower."
Pluto, the dog, barking in his 1952 cartoon, "Pluto's Party."
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"
Holst's Mars from "The Planets"
"Pluto" by Clare and the Reasons
The Arkansas Legislature moves forward with a voter ID bill, the city of Fort Smith gets ready for some new fire equipment, and Bill Halter speaks out against changes to the lottery scholarship.
"Meteor" by The Bird and the Bee
Michael Tilley from The City Wire talks about strong homes sales in northwest Arkansas so far in 2013...and the murky future of an aquatic park in Sebastian County.