Jonet Leighton:  

Life I've now lived in California longer than anywhere else in my life. But I still tell people that I grew up in Oklahoma. Stayed in town after graduating from Norman High, going to OU. Halfway thru the BFA switched from Music to Drama - started onstage but quickly moved backstage. Married very briefly, broke my back just before graduating, so took a secretarial job at OU Journalism School for two years. Headed to Indiana for grad school - scene design and lighting in opera. Took the first job offered out of grad school and have been here ever since. Designer and Technical Director, Professor of Theatre Arts, Antelope Valley College, Lancaster, CA. 18 years have passed quickly. Lancaster is much like Norman, without the University influence. 60 miles north of LA, but a world away - much closer geographically and culturally to Edwards Air Force Base - seen "The Right Stuff"? Stealth bombers and fighters regularly fly overhead, and being in the High Desert we refer to Los Angeles as "down below". I've watched the area grow - mostly commuters who work in LA but can't afford to live there, so instead buy houses here that they barely have time to sleep in (the commute averages about 2 hours each way). Have seen the 750 seat Lancaster Performing Arts Center built (we even do shows there sometimes), as well as the standardized signs of civilization - a mall, with all the big name restaurants in a row on the outside ring (Red Lobster, Outback, etc.). Although between Lancaster and nearby Palmdale there's about 250,000 people in the Antelope Valley, for the most part everybody knows everybody - at least by six degrees of separation. Gave up on finding anyone my own age and married one of my students - hey, ...Expand for more