June 2025

Highway 50 is calling.

Forty years ago, a team of mostly scientists produced a researched study of what the United States needed to do to turn around our decline in science literacy. While the U.S. was still leading in many areas of science, more and more of the university graduate science students were international students educated K–12 in other countries.

Foundational education as an RN with a BSN from South Dakota State University provided a broad understanding of how our bodies function. One of the lessons that was high lighted over the years was the need to pay attention to changes, e.g., my two sisters needed total knee replacement and so did I; my paternal grandfather had a massive stoke and died at the age of 61 years in 1948 from what? It was never diagnosed. My father thought that his dad, who was a farmer, was too stubborn to get regular check-ups from a physician and probably had heart problems in addition to his high blood pressure.

Cynthia Gonzalez, vice mayor of Cudahy, California, wants to know where LA’s street gangs are: “You guys are always tagging everything up, claiming [the] hood, and now that your hood’s being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you .... We’re out there fighting our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people and, like, where you at?”