OPINION | REX NELSON: Good times at ASU
It was quite the party on the Arkansas State University campus on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I was in the chancellor's box at the football stadium in Jo…
It was quite the party on the Arkansas State University campus on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I was in the chancellor's box at the football stadium in Jo…
The North Fork River begins in Missouri near the town of Mountain Grove. By the time it empties into the White River in Arkansas, it has covered 110 miles and …
I'm having lunch with Dan Daugherty, a longtime Little Rock public relations figure who retired to Norfork in Baxter County. We're at a place with the interest…
As 2024 begins, we find ourselves in a state that's doing well economically while being badly broken politically. A dark cloud hangs over our state Capitol.
A small sawmill was constructed in the pine woods of Lafayette County in the late 1860s. The mill later was purchased by Bodcaw Lumber Co. and grew into a mass…
In the first episode of the New Year, Rex talks innovation and entrepreneurship with Arthur Orduña, executive director of The Venture Center and long-time tech…
It was cold and spitting snow that day in December 1992 when the cab driver dropped me off at Maya Angelou's house in Winston-Salem, N.C. I was political edito…
Another year of traveling across and writing about Arkansas begins. Here are things I would like to see happen in our state in 2024:
Alden Burge began smoking turkeys in a smokehouse behind his home at Lewisville after moving to this southwest Arkansas town from Shreveport in 1953. At first,…
The pandemic year of 2020 was coming to an end, and Arthur Orduna was ready for a change. Orduna was living in New Jersey while working on new products and ser…
Entering the state from the south, I cross the border from Louisiana on what becomes Arkansas 53. I pull into the Lake Erling Country Store, having heard it ha…
It was hot on the day of my visit to Blanchard Springs Caverns, but cool deep beneath the earth. The visitors' center operated by the U.S. Forest Service was p…
During the decade I worked in the governor's office, the expenditures that were hardest to convince legislators to support were those having to do with researc…
More than a dozen years ago, I wrote a column headlined "Man on a mission" about the Arkansas Research Alliance.
My most vivid childhood memory is from 60 years ago tonight. I was four years old. The nation was still in shock from the assassination of President John F. Ke…
It's hard to comprehend that David Bazzel is 60. In our minds, he will always be "Arkansas' most eligible bachelor," the former University of Arkansas football…
The weather couldn't be better as Dr. Dean Kumpuris, Jane Rogers and I walk through the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden in downtown Little Rock's Riverfront Pa…
The day started early with breakfast at the Skillet Restaurant on the grounds of the Ozark Folk Center at Mountain View. It continued with interviews with peop…
When I was growing up in southwest Arkansas, the Christmas holidays meant more time for quail hunts. My father sold athletic supplies to high schools and colle…
This week, Rex sits down with Skip Rutherford, former Dean of the University of Arkansas' Clinton School of Public Service, to assess the past year and the fut…
Downtown Hot Springs was back in the news recently as business and civic leaders there continue to market the site of the former Majestic Hotel at the north en…
Tourism is the second-largest sector of the Arkansas economy (behind agriculture), and promises to become even more important to the state during the next seve…
Though I already knew the answer, I had to ask the question: "What on Earth were you thinking?"
It's a rainy Thursday night in Hot Springs, and Deluca's Pizza on Central Avenue is packed. Deluca's is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and I'm here to do a …
I'm sitting on the porch of a beautiful home on the banks of the Little Buffalo River in Newton County, visiting with one of the top dog trainers in the world.…
We're gathered on the square in downtown Osceola, and it feels like a pep rally. I'm here to research a story on the steel industry, but I also asked for a sma…
On this week's episode, Rex talks public service, leadership, and civic responsibility with Jennifer Cobb, the Senior Vice President and Executive Director of …
The crowd stretches more than 100 yards outside what once was a shirt factory on the edge of my mother's hometown of Des Arc. The sun is just beginning to set …
It was Arbor Day, and a ceremony was taking place on the University of Arkansas at Monticello campus. Students planted a bur oak as dozens of people watched.
I'm standing at the front door of the Trotter House in Monticello, wishing I had spent the night at this bed-and-breakfast inn rather than at a chain motel. Op…
Earlier this year, I wrote a column about a duck hunting trip to Grassy Lake in southwest Arkansas. I ended it by saying that "I would love to come back this s…
Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. It's a day to eat too much, watch football games and exchange stories with family members. It's also a day to r…
Sam Pittman is back for at least another season. It means that the athletic department at the University of Arkansas will save a lot of money. It also means th…
We've talked all year about the Big Four in Class 7A -- Fayetteville, Bryant, Conway and Bentonville.
It's a sunny Wednesday in October, the leaves are changing color, the square at Jasper is crowded with visitors, and I'm eating one of the best pizzas I've had…
Back in the summer of 2019, before the word "pandemic" was one we thought about on a daily basis, I wrote a column about a young couple trying to revitalize do…
On this week's episode, Rex sits down with Reed Green and Norm Berner of the Friends of Fourche Creek, a group dedicated to conservation and wetlands protectio…
The room was filled on a Wednesday morning last month at downtown Little Rock's Museum of Discovery. The occasion was a board meeting of the Downtown Little Ro…
I look back now and realize how silly I was to have picked Arkansas to beat Auburn. I wrote last week: "Is that win at Florida making us too confident?" The an…
It gets serious this week in high school football.
Neil Compton hailed from Bentonville, making him an outsider to the folks in Searcy and Newton counties.
At least for a few months, Bob Fisher is home.
They'll play another Battle of the Ravine in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon. In my family, the annual football game between Henderson State University and O…
We have a Razorback football victory to talk about for the first time in two months. Last Saturday's 39-36 win over Florida in The Swamp was a relief for Ar…
The regular season ended last Friday with several huge games across the state.
History is repeating itself in the Arkansas Ozarks. When a brave band of environmentalists began the fight decades ago to have the Buffalo River designated as …
Economic development officials in Mississippi County use the slogan "Cotton to Steel" when talking about the transformation of this northeast Arkansas county f…
This week, Rex chats with Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, about the institution's accomp…
In 1974, Mississippi County residents voted for a tax increase to pay for construction of Mississippi County Community College. The county still had a populati…
On a glorious Saturday in October, Razorback fans were able to forget all of their football woes. They could instead concentrate on basketball, treating a prac…