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With Lunar New Year beginning today, February 17, I’ve been digging through old boxes and bins at my parents’ house, searching for photos and videos of how my family has celebrated this holiday over the years.

Lunar New Year is one of the most significant celebrations in Chinese culture. It is a holiday dedicated to honoring the people who came before us—our ancestors and past loved ones—as well as a time to celebrate the fresh start and fortune of a new year in the lunisolar calendar.

In the year 2026, it is common to see people using personal phones with features that combine technology from the last one hundred years into a small hand-held device. These cellphones, smart watches, or hands-free technology allow you to talk to others, take pictures, do research, or navigate to locations you have never visited.

Nicolas Cage was in Little Rock last month.

I learned this fact from a recent short piece in AY Magazine noting that filming for the movie Best Pancakes in the Country, starring Cage, was starting to wrap up. Apparently, the action movie has exactly one setting,

The bronze statue of Icarus and Daedalus has been part of the Central Arkansas Library System’s art collection since 1967. It was created in 1965 by Philadelphia artist Evangelos Frudakis (1921–2019) and donated to CALS in 1967 by Raymond Rebsamen, a businessman active in downtown revitalization and a leader of the Urban Progress Association.

Since its beginnings, the Central Arkansas Library System has helped patrons with genealogical research. A donation from the Richard L. Butler family enhanced the collection and elevated the service to the community with the establishment in 1997 of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, now housed in the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library for Arkansas History &

As the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas heads into our twentieth anniversary year (the EOA debuted online in May 2006), we thought we’d share some numbers from the past year.

In 2025, the CALS EOA had a total of 2.3 million sessions, 2.3 million users engaged, and 3.4 million page views. That’s an average of about 200,000 sessions,

As I type these words, there is a button for the Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI “assistant,” lurking in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen—its rainbow color a bright contrast to everything else on my screen, just begging to be engaged.

Do you see it? Microsoft would be delighted for me to click on that and make some use of that feature,

A leaf found on the ground captures the imagination of a six-year-old, who examines the colors, the shape, the texture, and the touch. The nourishment of this leaf came from the tree as it transported water and minerals from its roots to the leaf. The leaf produces food for the tree through a process called photosynthesis.

A broken relationship and the death of a great-uncle led to my move from Little Rock to Chicago, Illinois. I didn’t last a year in the city.

My grandmother’s eldest sister needed someone to assist her in daily errands and routines. She also had a dental procedure scheduled, and her fear of dentists was the primary reason for my arrival in Chicago.

Wintertime is here, and with it comes chances for some fun (and free!) art experiences at CALS!

Upcoming Workshops and Activities

Make Your Mark: Art Journaling for Fun and for Life
January 17, 2026, 10 a.m. to noon
CALS Roberts Library, 401 President Clinton Ave.