Joseph Meadows leans against the wall in one of the lofts he’s renovated above his bar, MoJo’s Ivory House Dueling Piano Bar in downtown Fort Smith and at only twenty-eight, talks about his long history in construction.

Ten years ago Warren Long was laying brick every weekday.  “I had a world of trouble back then,” he says, remembering the bone-tired weariness that dogged his steps every waking hour.

In a backwoods studio in Osage, Arkansas, long before the sun rises, glass blower Ed Pennebaker mixes one-hundred-twenty pounds of silica, potash, lime and cobalt oxide.

If there is a missing piece in Corliss Williamson’s almost prefect puzzle of awards, it’s a coaching championship.

Temple Skelton Moore drives her red convertible along a country road in Prairie Grove, and waves at a neighbor in a pickup headed the other way.

He wears large round golden bells pinned inside his coat, so you can hear him jingling as he approaches. Clad in furry red and white, his big black boots sounding against the tile floor, he enters the room and bellows, “Ho, Ho, Ho,” and the crowd goes wild.

In the early 1980s, when Jay Strongwater was still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, he took a length of twine, a handful of wooden beads, and created a necklace for his mother.

“ALL ABOARRRRD!!” The robust call goes out every Sunday evening, immediately followed by the bellowing train whistle and the opening strains of the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” ...

Seth Plattner belongs in New York City.  He knew it long before he moved, when he was still a boy in Fort Smith.