I thought there was a way to do it too. I seem to remember a conversation about attributes and how you could enter the value once and have it show up in a number of locations.
I THOUGHT I had it with a field looking at the value of the attribute, but that attribute has to be in a block and the field can not be in the same block. Might work if the attribute was nested, but then you can't enter the value unless you explode it.
Thanks though, Kate.