Last Friday, I had the opportunity to have lunch with our District 1 State Senator Julie Slama. The Governmental Affairs Committee from Nebraska City Tourism and Commerce arranged for the senator to visit Nebraska City and sit down with a group of city leaders and the media to talk about the most-recent legislative session in Lincoln and also a look ahead at what’s coming up next year.
A growing emphasis on STEM has emerged within the educational sector over the last decade or more. Schools and students have put forth extraordinary effort into fostering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in curriculums and through personal pursuits. Although there are many proponents of STEM classes and careers, many people feel that creative endeavors, namely arts education, have been largely pushed aside in favor of STEM. But as evidence that arts-based learning has a positive effect on all aspects of education continues to mount - including improving students' test scores on the SAT as well as in math and science - many educators are reintroducing art in schools. For example, prior to 2017, Mann Elementary School in Detroit had not offered art classes in 20 years. By 2017, some art and music classes had been restored. Students in Lebanon, Penn. also are learning the importance of the arts through the STEAM concept. First implemented by the Rhode Island School of Design, the "A" in STEAM stands for "Arts." STEAM encourages students to think not only analytically but creatively, essentially blending the best of math and science with the arts. A recent study from PayScale.com even notes that graduates obtaining art degrees from certain schools can expect healthy returns on their educational investments. This furthers the push for a reintroduction of arts education, as it indicates that a career in the arts can be a potentially lucrative pursuit.
It is very difficult for me to toss anything I think my family would appreciate seeing. I guess I inherited that trait from my grandmother because my mother tossed everything that wasn’t nailed down!
It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in the ER, but some stories stay with me. One such story belongs to a woman in her early 30s. After a year of trying to conceive, she was finally pregnant. Then she started spotting. When she developed severe pain, and almost fainted while putting their toddler to bed, her husband brought her to the emergency room.
I always enjoy visiting with Nebraskans and seeing the exciting developments happening across our state. As part of a recent state work period, I had the chance to spend the day in Hastings and participate in a series of business tours. In this week’s column, I’d like to tell you a little bit about what I saw that day.
Two hundred forty-six years ago, our Founding Fathers bravely defied the most powerful nation on earth and put pen to paper to assert an eternal, self-evident truth: All men are created equal. We are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights that no government can justly take away. This recognition is what makes our country so unique. What unites us as Americans is neither religion, ancestry, nor language. Rather, it’s our shared commitment to the truth of equal human dignity. Every Independence Day, we honor the men and women who started the great American experiment all those years ago. And we celebrate the triumph of the principles we hold dear. America is at its best when we honor our founding principles; our greatest suffering and division have come from neglecting them.
Nehemiah 8:10 Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” ESV
On May 3, 2022, a court employee leaked a draft opinion in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson to the media. This draft opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, stated that the majority of the Supreme Court voted not only to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion but to completely overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Leaking this draft opinion of Dobbs was an absolutely unprecedented attack on the Supreme Court as an institution. The confidentiality of draft opinions is of the utmost necessity, and breaking that confidentiality is (at best) an undermining of our federal institutions. Even though this leak was abhorrent, proabortion activists cheered because they knew that it would lead to the intimidation of our Supreme Court justices.
The story that used to make the rounds about small towns is that you could get a wrong phone number and not even know the person that answered – and still talk for an hour! Well, that isn’t just for small towns, I found out last week. It went like this: Mark had given me the numbers I would need to call the Nebraska Senators and members of Congress concerning my feelings on gun control.
For the past few months, I’ve been fielding questions about the baby formula crisis. Make no mistake, the shortage of baby formula is indeed a crisis.