I know that this story is true.

I've never believed in measuring one's worth by the size of his or her bank account. I prefer to look at distance traveled.

We are the "can do" country. We adjust to situations better than any people in the history of the world... We adjust to change.

Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

My cousin just died. He was only 19. He got stung by a bee - the natural enemy of a tightrope walker.

Music is important. It says things you heart can't say any other way, and in a language everyone speaks. Music crosses borders, turns smiles into frowns, and vice versa. These observations are shared with a hope: that, when schools cut back on music classes, they really think about what they're doing - and don't take music for granted.

Start-ups like UniversityNow, a network of low-cost, online colleges, allows students to work at their own pace and pay a few hundred dollars a month for a degree.