Joy Poole, the retired deputy state librarian for the New Mexico State Library and co-founder of the Santa Fe Trail Association, examines the challenges, exploits, and adventures of three 19^th-century merchants who made the trip from Independence or Kansas City, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the Santa Fe Trail.

In a discussion of his book Mount Washington Cemetery: In Search of Lost Time, local historian Bruce Mathews spotlights the contributions of those buried in the historic cemetery – including mountain man Jim Bridger and newspaper mogul William Rockhill Nelson – and examines efforts to preserve its historically significant landmarks.

Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College and an authority on racial issues in the U.S., looks anew at the challenges she addressed in her bestselling book on the psychology of racism, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?. Two decades later, we still are struggling to understand what racism is, how it impacts us all, and what we can do about it.

Nationwide, we’ve built cities we can’t afford. Kansas City is among them, able to budget just 10 percent of recommended street maintenance in 2019 and hitting a similar financial wall on sewers and water lines.