This story was broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered on 6/3/2011, and was originally published on Turnstyle News..

A lot has changed since the 80’s. Or so I’m told. I wasn’t born until 1991 – the same year Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. I’m 19 now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people joke that Magic Johnson discovered the cure to AIDS…money.

Katherine Hood knows the same joke. She’s a senior at UC Berkeley and has grown up knowing about the disease her whole life. Regardless of the jokes, we both know HIV is still deadly serious. “I think it’s interesting because while I don’t think it’s the same sort of death sentence mentality,” says Hood, “To me if I actually stop and think about it, it still seems like a horrifying thought.”

Hood and lots of kids we talked to say their school Sex Ed classes were pretty good. Thanks to my school’s health classes, I had seen a condom by the 7th grade and knew what it was for. My mom even bought me a book called Deal With It. I remember my friends coming over after school to giggle about stick figure illustrations of sexual positions.

You would expect the biggest explosion in all of humanity’s history to be remembered with an explosion of ceremony. However, this is the first year, since the end of World War II in 1945, that the U. S. has sent a representative to join in commemorating the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Japan.

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan - the horrific event that killed 60,000 - 80,000 people in the first two months of the bombing. Friday, August, 6, marked the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan - where 90,000 - 166,000 people lost their lives in the first two months.

Some say that the significance of this event is lost on today’s youth in America, and that many of them couldn’t tell you why August 6th is important, while in Hiroshima, people are reminded of the bombings constanty. In an article from The Globe and Mail, 23-year-old Kaori Sasaki, from Hiroshima, says, “In Tokyo and other cities, they are passive and they never think about real things in the world such as war. But here, it’s in front of our eyes. Everybody has relatives who suffered from the atomic bombing. So we really think about how to change the world. We like ‘love and peace, love and peace.’” Read more...

This past Saturday, the Oakland Parks and Recreation department celebrated its 100 year anniversary at DeFremery Park. I work at DeFremery Pool, right behind the park, so we were also part of the celebration. We opened the pool for six hours for free, offered a variety of games all day, and had me in a dunk tank.

In the hours and days that followed Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s deadly spree at Columbine High the nation, stunned by the seeming randomness of the massacre, sought answers. Why had two boys gone from geeks to gunmen? Could this happen at my kid’s school? What drove their violent impulses? Could the shocking music of Marilyn Manson or the ultra-bloody first person shooters the boys enjoyed have been the catalyst of their rage?

It’s been 41 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and now, new images of that night that have been released.