Tonight we hosted a retirement party for one of the art professors on our stage. We were sort of the victims of past success. About 7-8 years ago, a professor had her retirement party on stage and it fired the imagination of the art professor. But this woman has had a 40 year history with the school which is no insignificant thing so when she asked us to host it back in August, we found a date we were dark for Nutcracker and penciled her in.

There were a lot of other art professors and some of her former students getting up to talk about how she impacted their lives and what the experience of taking her class meant to them. One woman had sustained an injury that prevented her from continuing her work in healthcare and she went back to school to study art and ended up winning some awards thanks to what she learned.

And the best part of it all was that the governor was sitting there the whole time. The retiring professor (who is not at all retiring personality-wise) was a long time friend and supporter of the governor since before either of them moved here. She supported him when he started running for office nearly 45 years ago and stood behind him on his first run at governor this past year. I knew he was coming, but I expected him to be in and off to another event. Instead, he stayed the entire night, got up, spoke about the value of the artist in society, signed his first proclamation as governor commending her and sat right back down.

The night unfolded essentially just as I had it should in my post yesterday when I advised talking about the value of the arts over and over again in front of decision makers or get them to talk about you. I have never had something I suggested in a post manifest itself so quickly and without so little effort on my part. Though it will likely still be hard going from this point forward, I will take the gift.