Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and family friend of the Wilkins, delivered a rousing keynote address this morning as the culmination of faculty meetings. His extraordinary, powerful address, illuminated repeatedly with classical pieces on a Steinway grand, leaves us transformed.

We contribute to the world best when we remember Rule # 6 (Stop taking yourself so goddam seriously,) recognize that we are inventing the rules by which we live, and replace "downward spiral thinking" with possibility. We sang Happy Birthday like you've never heard it before, and also polished off Mozart's Ode to Joy in German. This was a very good day!

Speaking of the art of possibility, yesterday's faculty meetings looked like a page from MacWorld, as every teacher brought her wireless i-Book, and discovered some of the new technological capabilities we have as teachers.

Here in the Development Office, we are taking the technology that enables me to rant at you without knowing any HTML and are creating web pages that are customized for our various constituencies. We then e-mail links to these pages. The faculty will receive their first pages in a few minutes from now. Virtually every current parent has an e-mail address, so parents will receive links to customized pages spontaneously starting next week. This is The Art of Possibility. (That is also the name of Ben Zander's book, which will be on the shelves next month. Look for it!)