Recalling the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts

Let me tell you about a dream I had last night--no doubt inspired by this artistically-fulfilling summer I'm having. I was my seventeen-year-old self leafing through a book of poetry in a classroom at Mercyhurst college. It was a sunny afternoon sometime during my five-week enrollment in the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts. In the book I found a poem that directly spoke to the project I'm working on now--a poem that I actually only found two months ago. It was a moment of two realities coming together at a critical place in my past. All at once I was overjoyed--yet at peace. I woke up, made coffee, and recalled that the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, actually none of the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence, are in existence any more at any college in Pennsylvania. The program was terminated in 2009. I won't get into the politics of it here; I just want to note how successful it was. I can't name a single alum from PGSA not doing something amazing right now in the Arts or Sciences. The creative and problem-solving skills taught there served the students well. It's a loss to our state--to our nation--that that incubator for high school students with merit (not money) is no longer with us. As issues of money and art swirl in my head these days, I post this with the hope that a few of you PGSA alumni might post a short tale about an important/critical moment from your time there. Bittersweet nostalgia? Perhaps. Or maybe we'll have the schools back someday soon. Cheers.