1996 – The Shipyard Project

There are so many stories from this amazing project and so much good that has come from it including how much I was able to learn, from the people of Portsmouth and from the Yard workers themselves: the man that told me when he worked on a boat he often though he was in an amphitheater because of the docking system; the teacher who told us she finally learned that she could begin something without knowing how it ended; from the conflict between the environmentalists and the Yard and the rediscovery on my part that purity or the requirement for absoluteness makes compromise impossible; that we could make public mistakes and fix them and people could accept that and move on; that about 500 workers getting a free lunch could watch dance and that I had the courage and voice to make them do that; that the man who ran the crane maintenance system would become a star in the production and to this day stays in touch via Facebook…. Endless stories. Beautiful stories. So many people participated in honoring their city, their yard, their community by involving themselves.