We take a look at the week in numbers. There was a first place for Arkansas golf, more cases of the flu and slightly more expensive gas in Arkansas.

For the first Wednesday of the new year, we get a rundown of live music to be seen during the next few days, from folk and country in Bentonville to gypsy and world fusion in Fayetteville.

We continue our series of conversations about diversity with Niketa Reed, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas. As football playoffs dominate the January sports calendar, we consider some of the mascots that have (and still do) offend people.

For much of her young life, Itto Outini, a native of Morocco, was homeless, illiterate -- and blind. Today she is a Fulbright Scholar enrolled at the University of Arkansas who, along with her white walking cane, carries an altruistic vision.

Our Militant Grammarian, Katherine Shurlds, is back in 2018 with another list of words some of us might not always use correctly. How badly are we floundering? Or are we floundering? The Militant Grammarian will tell us.

Pastor Clint Schnekloth is back to finish his list of suggested books for winter. This time he concentrates on new, and old, fantasy. His recommendations include: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey , the second edition of The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, Kevin Hearne’s Plague of Giants , and Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich.

A Tuesday roundup: fundraising continues as the opening of Arkansas Children's Hospital Northwest approaches, a New York company comes to north Arkansas, and the Razorbacks are nationally ranked in men's basketball.

The Siloam Springs Museum opened in its first home on June 20, 1971. The museum moved to its present-day location in 1972 and today, plans to renovate the approximately 4,100 square-foot space are progressing. In late November, about $370,000 was approved for the project, which will add about 400 square feet to the building.

The evolution of the 1960s free speech movement has taken an extreme turn, says University of Arkansas associate law professor Danielle Weatherby. She's coauthored a forthcoming Florida Law Review article titled "Speech Narcisissm," which examines impairment of free speech along a spectrum, from the shunning of political correctness by the Trump administration to university student exceptionalism.

Becca Martin Brown , features editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is looking forward to 2018. In a conversation recorded at our annual holiday show last month she delivered more than a dozen reasons the new year is anticipated by many people.