I am hunkered down at our family camp in Maine, avoiding the sweltering temperatures baking the country’s interior. The environmental demons we have created through our insatiable thirst for fossil fuel energy are exacting their vengeance on our abuse of mother nature. My family is, indeed, fortunate to have a rustic cabin refuge on the shores of a clean Maine lake. I revel in the fact that I often must ask what day it is and rarely know whether the former president has collected another indictment.

My mother is an educator, and I have observed her impact on countless lives. Most of my career as a physician has centered on the medical education of resident physicians. My second daughter has a master’s degree in education. Until recently, she was a second-grade teacher within an economically challenged area. My mother and daughter are the heroines in this editorial, since the resident student material I molded had already been appropriately shaped by teachers of children.