Check out this article about one of my writing mentors, Rosemary Graham, and I.  Rosemary you rock!  I'm so lucky to have found you.  If I had one wish for that genie in the magic lamp, it would be that teachers everywhere would be honored for the work they do for students, rather than blamed for failures that are too often the result of difficult social and financial circumstances. 

The Craft of Mentorship-By Ben Peterson

Washington Nugget: Huge piece of gold up for bid--SF Gate


Yes, there’s still gold in them hills, still speculators and miners, still a few who get rich quick on the strength of luck, or divine intervention.  One hundred and sixty-three years ago, another gold strike created a migratory frenzy that opened the west and laid bare a wagon and then a railroad track across the continent.  It was the hope of instant riches that first drove the mostly young men and a few women to California.  They would come, find their fortunes, return to New York, to France, to China with new futures defined by their effort instead of by the social standing of their fathers.  A great many never returned.  Some died in route; others, only momentarily disillusioned by their failure to find that lucky strike, that motherlode, settled into the satisfying work of cultivation, and up grew the farms and ranches of the San Joaquin valley.  Long after alluvial, or river gold, had been snatched, people kept coming to California, lured by the audacious optimism that still, even in these horrid economic circumstances seems to rise from the very earth.