“It all goes so fast. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it, every every minute?”
“No. The saints and poets maybe – they do some.”

Those are lines from Emily and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. I was privileged to play Emily under Helen Manning’s direction when I was a senior.

I wish Helen Manning were here. She was my theatre mentor at Albion, lifelong supporter and Friend. I owe her more than I could ever say. Good profs are like that.

I have been able to do a lot of things, almost none of them what I started out to do! My path has been determined by saying YES to opportunities presented. Life in the arts is like that: you create and you create many opportunities for yourself, but you also must be ready to seize opportunities that others offer you – to say YES. That’s how most of these credits of mine happened.

I said YES to Albion because my dad and sister came to Albion .... and I came because I thought I’d be able to take fencing! – Never happened...

But YES, coming was the right thing to do: Albion nourished my intellectual and artistic gifts and affirmed that it was all right to say YES to them and to follow my heart. In profs like Helen Manning, John Hart, Tony Taffs, Mary Packer who taught modern dance – not fencing!, Albion exposed me to the power of the arts to transform.

In the 4th century BC, Plato banned most arts from his ideal Republic because he understood how dangerous they are: they speak to the heart.
I love it that almost 2400 years later, a man named Vaclev Havel wrote poetry of all things, and plays of all things, out of his convictions that YES things must change;
and of all things they proclaimed him the first President of their Republic! - the Czech Republic - because he, an artist, had understood and spoken to the needs in their hearts under a repressive regime and he belonged to be (that's a Cornish phrase!) their leader.