A Valley woman's dying wish was fulfilled this Mother's Day weekend, thanks to the Dream Foundation.

If any piece of classic American literature should be depicted on film with wildly decadent and boldly inventive style, it's "The Great Gatsby." After all, who was the character of Jay Gatsby himself if not a spinner of grandiose tales and a peddler of lavish dreams?

Finding good Mexican grub in this town is no problem; we could celebrate Cinco de Mayo once a week if pressed. But if you’re looking to do justice to this weekend’s other big almost-holiday, the Kentucky Derby, that’s a little more of a head scratcher. Here are three ways to indulge in the Southern spirit of the Run for the Roses, no big fancy hats required.

Valedictorians:

Mesa’s Red Mountain High School finished fourth overall in its first U.S. Academic Decathlon last week.

Early in the sleek sci-fi thriller "Oblivion," Tom Cruise, as a flyboy repairman living a removed, Jetsons-like existence above an invaded and deserted Earth, intones his home sickness.

Miles of stucco-coated strip malls and houses topped with red tiles roofs got you feeling a little ... homogenized? The Modern Phoenix Expo might be the cure for what ails you.

Just about everyone has them — family stories. Yours may be a sweet account of how Grandpa proposed to Gram, or only a whisper of something bad that happened that no one ever seems to want to talk about.

Everytime a baby with Down syndrome is born in Arizona, Virginia “Gina” Johnson knows about it.

Ahmed Alsoudani says that America is a dreamland. Yet, his complex paintings of violence and warfare are very much influenced by his upbringing.

It may not be as mainstream a form of expression these days as, say, Instagram, but poetry, that old-fashioned art of arranging language to create an emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm, is alive and well.

Walter Salles' "On the Road" was made with noble intentions, finely-crafted filmmaking and handsome casting, but, alas, it does not burn, burn, burn.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina's conservative Catholic church.

Mesa’s Red Mountain High School’s Academic Decathlon will make its big-stage debut next month at the national scholastic decathlon competition, after dominating the state finals last weekend.

Mesa's Red Mountain High School Academic Decathlon team won the state competition, held Friday and Saturday at ASU West. The team garnered 48,408 points after competing in 10 events: essay, speech and interview plus seven written tests focused on mathematics, science, economics, language and literature, music, art and social science.

Students at Mesa Westwood High School are getting a exposure to the art of spoken word thanks to Mesa Arts Center’s hosting of “Word Becomes Flesh,” a choreopoem performance that was held at the center last week and parts of which will be shown during spark! Mesa Festival of Creativity being held at the center March 16-17.

Sorry, but Nancy Pelosi is wrong. We do have a spending problem and the heart of the matter is our inability to control medical costs. Spending on health care now consumes an astonishing 18 percent of our total economic output. Rising Medicare and Medicaid costs are the main drivers of our national debt crisis. Yet health care costs continue to shoot up relentlessly.

It’s hard not to love the colorful and imaginative world of Eric Carle, portrayed beautifully in his numerous children’s books. Three of those books are the inspiration behind Mermaid Theatre Company of Nova Scotia’s magical production, which uses puppetry, live and computer generated animation to bring Carle’s characters to life. It is on stage Feb. 24 at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

Arizona is facing a literacy crisis and it begins in early childhood.

In the same vein of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Catcher in the Rye,” Rudolfo Anaya’s “Bless Me, Ultima” has evolved into one of the most widely beloved and challenged books of all time. In some high schools this best-selling Chicano novel is considered a mandatory reading. Other schools have banished the book for its use of profanity, references to witchcraft, and religious themes. For anyone with an open mind, “Bless Me, Ultima” is certainly an enriching read-through about acceptance, family, faith, culture, and independence. The charm of Anaya’s novel sadly doesn’t shine through this adaptation by Carl Franklin, which gets bogged down by wooden performance and insipid direction.