Dr. Jay Worth Allen

I am not, by training, a proper historian, but I will play the part in the following discourse. I am an artist who also writes and teaches. My lovely bride Diana and I met at a music store - we married three weeks later. An image momentarily frozen in time pictures me beaming, a judge staring wide-eyed into space and Diana looking at me with a little bit of concern.  That was a few years ago (two spent in europe) and somewhere around 5840 mornings of Diana sitting across a breakfast table watching me drink coffee, eat corn flakes and smile at her pretty face - there's usually a bead of milk dripping down my chin. When we first met Diana said she thought, "Either he's in want of good sense or a genius."  She is fond of quoting Syrus, Maxims when describing me, "Non pote non sapere qui se stultum intellgit" (A man must have some wit to know he’s a fool).  I do love her. My formal schooling consisted of: piano lessons beginning at age five, wood winds at age eleven, grade school, high school (I graduated at age sixteen), Memphis College of Art, North Texas State, Southwestern & Dallas Seminaries, Oxford, UK. Realizing the process of testing out of classes early in my educational career, I did so at every available occasion.  My school time was cut in half.  Majors: printmaking, painting, music & theology; minor: ancient history, English literature.