I can’t believe that the 2026 Hues Graduation issue is almost set to go to the printer. It’s Sunday night and I have four more articles to write. While it’s a lot, it’s not as much as it seems because I have transcribed the interviews and I know what the articles will be about. But it is always a panic meeting a drop-dead deadline.

I can’t believe it is graduation week for many of the Madison area’s high schools. I started working on this special issue the first week of April and two months later, it’s almost ready to be printed and distributed. While I had three regular issues of The Hues to publish in the meanwhile and a lot of financial work to do, the constant focus on the graduation issue has made like go by pretty quickly, just as life seems to go by pretty quickly. I’ve been to so many events, I haven’t been able to keep track of them all. And you run into people and think, ‘When did they grow up to be an adult? Or ‘My aren’t we all starting to show our age.’ It’s like seeing the cycle of life up close and at full throttle.

While it isn’t perfect, I view The Hues Graduation issue as a community celebration. I received lists of students to profile from UW-Madison, specifically the PEOPLE Program, Edgewood University and Edgewood College. It was such an amazing coincidence this year that a graduate from Madison College and one from Edgewood University were both from Honduras and knew each other in passing. That has never happened before. I thank Goodson Vue from PEOPLE, Dr. Jimmy Cheffin Jr. from Madison College and Richard Sims and Alex Okelue from Edgewood University for the referrals.