I read the news and it usually breaks my heart. Today seems to be a particularly bad day. They've found another body at the fallen bridge site in Minneapolis, the Utah miners are still underground and we haven't heard from them, people are murdering other people, and out country is obsessed with the spiraling downfall of young female idols.

But there is good: E.g. Barbara Morgan's flight into space aboard Endeavor, as I mentioned yesterday.

I wasn't quite ten when Challenger exploded, nine seconds after lift off.

My elementary school had a really active Young Astronauts program, and one of our teachers was even a possibility to be the teacher in space. Our school kept track of how the Teacher in Space program was progressing, and so the whole school was watching the morning Challenger went up. I have heard that it didn't take long before the jokes started circulating at other schools. I was nineteen-years-old before I heard my first and only joke related to Challenger -- there were no jokes at my school.

Unlike the rest of my school mates, I was home sick, asleep when it happened. When I awoke, my mother (in one of her moments of kindness) took me into her bedroom and told me what had happened. I ended up over at my grandmother's that evening, where Dan Rather was reporting on the incident, showing the footage of the exploding shuttle over and over. I watched it once. It took me two decades before I could watch it again, and even now it troubles me.

Part of the reason we were so excited about a teacher going into space was because a lot of us were dreamers. There were several of my classmates who were in high school and thought they were going to grow up to be astronauts. Some of my classmates went to Space Camp. So many of us believed anything was possible. Christa McAuliffe was evidence of this. If NASA was going to send a female teacher into space they might send anyone. (Don't forget this is just about two years after the first woman space walk.) NASA didn't choose a politician, or Michael Jackson, or Stephen Spielberg, or Ray Bradbury (not that he would have gone, but oh, but wouldn't he have had the words to discuss it), or some millionaire -- they chose a teacher.

And the alternate teacher who was chosen was from Idaho. Idaho who is known only for their potatoes, and racist subcultures. We can claim few artists or celebrities as our own. Many came here, and loved it, and stayed (e.g. Hemingway), but we had very little to put us on the map. We were hicks; but here, one of our very own teachers was an alternate. Ah, now this was something.

After Challenger exploded, our school had bake sales and sold gliders to raise money so NASA could build a new shuttle. And we waited for it to be built so we could go back into space with baited breath. And we did go back into space.

And now Barbara Morgan, an Idahoan, a female, a school teacher, has gone into the sky. Not someone rich or famous.

And I still believe, it's taken decades, but I still can't help but believe that if they'll send a teacher from Idaho they might just send any civilian. Bradbury may have had it right -- people of other professions will be needed in the stars, perhaps even an archaeologist, not that I'd go, mind you.

And this is the take home message for all of us -- if there's something we really want, it may take decades, but if we persist and don't lose faith, we may end up where we dreamed of being all along.