Mercy Health used an innovative walking program to become one of the healthiest workplaces in the country.
Ozarks At Large
A roundup of events and news for the next few weeks include an alternative way to deliver a Valentine.


An administrative law judge with the Arkansas Public Service Commission on Friday ordered SWEPCO to proceed on its proposed plan to build a massive new power transmission line through portions of northwest Arkansas. Also, Governor Mike Beebe says that recent cost analyses of operating the state's Private Option expansion of Medicaid justifies the program's passage during last year's session of the state legislature. And the state Attorney General's office warns residents about rapid-refund tax providers.

Ahead on Ozarks, a conversation with young adult author An Na. Also, we learn what it takes to become a police officer.

We speak with An Na, author of A Step From Heaven, a book that was awarded the Michael L. Prince Award when it was published a decade ago. Critics and reviewers commended the book's characters for speaking like a child without being too precocious or condescending. The author will speak in Fayetteville later this month.
Latest Edition of Ozarks at Large
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Ahead on this edition of Weekend Ozarks, we visit the kitchen of Jen Lewis, take a spin in a state-run clinic that aids veterans in rural communities, and we meet a recovering opiate addict who has found hope with methadone.
The Fayetteville Farmer’s Market was voted the country’s favorite. Tomorrow the award is handed over.
Arkansan Tav Falco helped invent a sound that later became known as "psychobilly" in 1979 when he formed Tav Falco and the Panther Burns in Memphis. Although Falco currently resides in Vienna, Austria, he's bringing his blend of blues, punk and rockabilly to the Rogue on Dickson in Fayetteville tomorrow as he tours with his Unapproachable Panther Burns. Ozarks at Large's Katy Henriksen has this preview.
Union supporters and striking workers protested outside of Walmart's annual investors' conference in Bentonville, the drought slowly but surely improves in parts of Arkansas, and the creative economy adds jobs and revenue to the Northwest Arkansas economy.
"In Walked Bud" by Art Blakey
An Alabama law firm has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all Arkansas rice farmers against a chemical company that produces arsenic compounds and poultry integrators that mix the arsenic into their feed. The suit alleges the poultry litter, used as fertilizer, has poisoned Arkansas rice farms.
An outdoor education class that got its start as a college thesis more than ten years ago has a strong presence in a few Northwest Arkansas schools and is gaining attention nationally. Ozarks at Large's Christina Thomas hikes through the state park with students learning about the outdoors.
"Montreal" by Kaki King