[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!
Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.
In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.
I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.
In June of this year, in the heat of a summer festival in my neighborhood, I said, “I would love to visit Ireland” to a friend/editor of a lifestyle magazine sitting at the same table welcoming people to our church. Florida State would be playing Georgia Tech in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin at the end of August, and I wanted to be there with my husband. She heard my story and asked me if I wanted an assignment. I immediately said yes. I was speaking the experience into being.
Months of hustle ensued. Securing plane tickets, seats to the football game, hotel room nights, dinners, and excursions became my flow. Something rekindled in me during this process. Something dormant for a while. My I am was waking up. I was moving toward hope. I was building and creating. I was setting a goal and working every day toward meeting it. If a “no” — either spoken or silent — was received, I moved on. Excitement and energy built as pieces fell together. Piece by piece, helping hand by helping hand, the trip came into focus. The methodological lesson to this process — head toward joy — even and especially when there are a million reasons for it not to work out. Head toward joy. You will find the energy. Others will help you get where you want to be. Hustle magnifies and celebrates hustle.
It hit me that the trip was really happening when we arrived in Dublin. We got off the plane and gathered our bags. We walked to the Uber lot, and I noticed a huge sign/mural painted on the side of a multi-deck parking lot-looking building that read, “God is Love.” We were in Ireland. Dawn and drizzle sprinkled my face. I forgot to be tired. Our trip was beginning. It was the culmination of elbow grease and helping hands. Love was all around. Here is a travelogue/ Substack of our Ireland trip.
Our trip started with attending the Aer Lingus College Football classic in Dublin. This game was a big deal. Aviva Stadium was a sell-out, with 47,988 fans, including 28,406 international visitors. Of these, 25,909 were US visitors who stayed in Ireland for an average of seven nights, generating over $100,000M for the Irish economy. Georgia Tech defeated Florida State in a last-second win. Five million viewers watched the game on ESPN. I got to interview the Georgia Tech Head Football Coach before and after the trip. We discussed his deep roots at Georgia Tech, coaching philosophy, and love for Atlanta.
I want to end with a discussion of the importance of Awe. Jaw-dropping. Gobsmacking. Tear-jerking. Awe. Perhaps awe is the whole point of travel. Awe being when we step out of our everyday experience and pay the kind of attention that changes us and our world. From that space everything is possible. Imagination — the kind of imagination that creates new ways of being with one another — is possible. Change — the kind of change that is not possible until it is — is possible. Love — the kind of love built upon what we love in common — is possible.
