On Friday, I did four school classroom "Skype" visits, in four time zones, in four hours...It can happen!

Once, when we had to go to western Iowa, I cried because I really wanted to go to northern Vermont. About two weeks, 2,000 miles, and two countries later, we (truly)  "accidentally" wandered into Vermont, and not just that, to the town of Stowe and the exact inn that had made me want to go there so desperately in the first place.   It can happen! 

If you've seen the current Atlanta Magazine, you might have seen the story of a young Tibetan teenage monk, Sherub Tenzin, who always prayed he would meet the Dalai Lama.  Considering all the horrid things that happened to him trying to escape from persecution to safety; imagine walking across a large gorge on a swinging bridge—with no sides—in the dark, with armed guards at each end, and worrying his squishy-sounding shoes would give him away (they were filled with blood from the leeches stuck to his soles), and did I say there was a raging river beneath him?...He was probably more likely to meet western cowboy bootmaker Tony Lama!  But he finally got where he was going, actually met the Dalai Lama, and ended up coming to Emory University in Atlanta where he studies science so he can return to his country to teach.  He would be the first to say, "Hey, it can happen!"

On a less dramatic note, I attended a recent lifetime achievement award ceremony for famed American sculptress Glenna Goodacre.  If you think you don't know her, well, you know her work:  among hundreds of other things, she created and carved the Women's Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC, and out of about 125 professional entries, was selected to create and sculpt the lovely Sacajewea coin.  In college, she got a D in sculpture from a professor who advised her to find something else to do.  Discouraged, she drew for ten years before turning back to sculpture.  Still in the years when women were second class citizens, she had a hard time getting gallery showings of just her work.  (She could exhibit if a male artist also exhibited.)  Did I say she just won a lifetime achievement award?  If you could see her work, much of it enormous and elaborate and always exquisite, well, you'd just know:  It can happen!

And don't forget it!