Any commencement speech fans out there? I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who said something along the lines of why save the best for last. Vonnegut is missed as he was one of the few honest souls who say the truth even when it offends established myths. A 1990 speech of his is below; I'm sure it will offend sensibilities. My favorites though are varied, Anna Quindlens's 'I show up I listen I try to laugh.' Another favorite is Mary Schmich's 'Wear sunscreen' link at bottom. David Foster Wallace's Kenyon 2005 is another top pick. Trouble is many of these are now copyrighted so you'll have to search on your own. At bottom are several links that help. Enjoy.
"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"" DFW [profound words]
KV: 1990 and yet much still applies to America today.
"The title of my speech, " I told the Class of 1990, "is 'Do Not Be Cynical About the American Experiment, since it has only now begun.'"
"I said that I was often asked to speak about censorship, since my book Slaughterhouse-Five was so often tossed out of school libraries, (This is because it is on a list of supposedly dangerous books which has been circulating since 1972 or so. No new books are ever added.) "I have received letters from readers in the Soviet Union" I said, "who were told years ago that my books were being burned up over here." It (That happened only in Drake, North Dakota.) "I replied to them that censorship is mostly a rural problem," I went on. "The same communities used to burn people when I was a boy. I feel that we are finally getting somewhere.
"It was mostly black people who were being burned. The most extraordinary change in this country since I was a boy is the decline in racism. Believe me, it could very easily be brought back to full strength again by demagogues. As of this very moment anyway we are fairly good at judging people for what they are rather than for how closely they resemble ourselves and our relatives. We are in fact better at doing that than any other country. In most other countries people wouldn't even consider doing that.
"Who brought about this admirable change in our attitudes? The oppressed and denigrated minorities themselves, With guts and great dignity which they coupled with the promises of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
"Is censorship on the rise? You would certainly think so, since it has been in the news so much. But I believe it to be a disease which has been around for a long, long time, like Alzheimer's disease, but which has only recently been identified as a disease and treated. What is new isn't censorship but the fact that it is now recognized as being sickening to our pluralistic democracy, and a lot of good people are trying to do something about it.
"The United States of America had human slavery for almost one hundred years before that custom was recognized as a social disease and people began to fight it. Imagine that. Wasn't that a match for Auschwitz? What a beacon of liberty we were to the rest of the world when it was perfectly acceptable here to own other human beings and treat them as we treated cattle. Who told you we were a beacon of liberty from the very beginning? Why would they lie like that?
"Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd. It was as though he had an infected growth on the end of his nose the size of a walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK. I mentioned this one time at the University of Virginia, of which Jefferson was not only the founder but the sublime architect. A history professor explained to me afterward that Jefferson could not free his slaves until he and they were very old because they were mortgaged and he was broke.
"Imagine that! It used to be legal in this beacon of liberty to hock human beings, maybe even a baby. What a shame that when you find yourself short of cash nowadays you can't take the cleaning lady down to the pawnshop anymore along with your saxophone.
"Now then: Boston and Philadelphia both claim to be the cradle of liberty. Which city is correct? Neither one. Liberty is only now being born in the United States. It wasn't born in 1776. Slavery was legal. Even white women were powerless, essentially the property of their father or husband or closest male relative, or maybe a judge or lawyer. Liberty was only conceived in Boston or Philadelphia. Boston or Philadelphia was the motel of liberty, so to speak.
"Now then: The gestation period for a 'possum is twelve days. The gestation period for an Indian elephant is twenty-two months. The gestation period for American liberty, friends and neighbors, turns out to be two hundred years and more!
"Only in my own lifetime has there been serious talk of giving women and racial minorities anything like economic, legal, and social equality. Let liberty be born at last, and let its lusty birth cries be heard in Kingston and in every other city and town and village and hamlet in this vast and wealthy nation, not in Jefferson's time but in the time of the youngest people here this afternoon. Somewhere I heard a baby cry. It should cry for joy.
"Hooray for the Class of 1990 and those who helped them make America stronger by becoming educated citizens.
"I thank you for your attention ...." (pp 83,84 excerpt From 'Fates worse than Death', Kurt Vonnegut 1991)
Ralph Ellison's words remind me of the response to Michelle Obama's recent commencement address. Honest words scare the weak. "I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied"
Wear Sunscreen: Advice like youth probably just wasted on the young - Chicago Tribune
Good stuff:
Brain Pickings
Commencement Speeches The Humanity Initiative
Reinventing the Secular Sermon Remarkable Commencement Addresses by Nora Ephron David Foster Wallace Ira Glass and More Brain Pickings
"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"" DFW [profound words]
KV: 1990 and yet much still applies to America today.
"The title of my speech, " I told the Class of 1990, "is 'Do Not Be Cynical About the American Experiment, since it has only now begun.'"
"I said that I was often asked to speak about censorship, since my book Slaughterhouse-Five was so often tossed out of school libraries, (This is because it is on a list of supposedly dangerous books which has been circulating since 1972 or so. No new books are ever added.) "I have received letters from readers in the Soviet Union" I said, "who were told years ago that my books were being burned up over here." It (That happened only in Drake, North Dakota.) "I replied to them that censorship is mostly a rural problem," I went on. "The same communities used to burn people when I was a boy. I feel that we are finally getting somewhere.
"It was mostly black people who were being burned. The most extraordinary change in this country since I was a boy is the decline in racism. Believe me, it could very easily be brought back to full strength again by demagogues. As of this very moment anyway we are fairly good at judging people for what they are rather than for how closely they resemble ourselves and our relatives. We are in fact better at doing that than any other country. In most other countries people wouldn't even consider doing that.
"Who brought about this admirable change in our attitudes? The oppressed and denigrated minorities themselves, With guts and great dignity which they coupled with the promises of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
"Is censorship on the rise? You would certainly think so, since it has been in the news so much. But I believe it to be a disease which has been around for a long, long time, like Alzheimer's disease, but which has only recently been identified as a disease and treated. What is new isn't censorship but the fact that it is now recognized as being sickening to our pluralistic democracy, and a lot of good people are trying to do something about it.
"The United States of America had human slavery for almost one hundred years before that custom was recognized as a social disease and people began to fight it. Imagine that. Wasn't that a match for Auschwitz? What a beacon of liberty we were to the rest of the world when it was perfectly acceptable here to own other human beings and treat them as we treated cattle. Who told you we were a beacon of liberty from the very beginning? Why would they lie like that?
"Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd. It was as though he had an infected growth on the end of his nose the size of a walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK. I mentioned this one time at the University of Virginia, of which Jefferson was not only the founder but the sublime architect. A history professor explained to me afterward that Jefferson could not free his slaves until he and they were very old because they were mortgaged and he was broke.
"Imagine that! It used to be legal in this beacon of liberty to hock human beings, maybe even a baby. What a shame that when you find yourself short of cash nowadays you can't take the cleaning lady down to the pawnshop anymore along with your saxophone.
"Now then: Boston and Philadelphia both claim to be the cradle of liberty. Which city is correct? Neither one. Liberty is only now being born in the United States. It wasn't born in 1776. Slavery was legal. Even white women were powerless, essentially the property of their father or husband or closest male relative, or maybe a judge or lawyer. Liberty was only conceived in Boston or Philadelphia. Boston or Philadelphia was the motel of liberty, so to speak.
"Now then: The gestation period for a 'possum is twelve days. The gestation period for an Indian elephant is twenty-two months. The gestation period for American liberty, friends and neighbors, turns out to be two hundred years and more!
"Only in my own lifetime has there been serious talk of giving women and racial minorities anything like economic, legal, and social equality. Let liberty be born at last, and let its lusty birth cries be heard in Kingston and in every other city and town and village and hamlet in this vast and wealthy nation, not in Jefferson's time but in the time of the youngest people here this afternoon. Somewhere I heard a baby cry. It should cry for joy.
"Hooray for the Class of 1990 and those who helped them make America stronger by becoming educated citizens.
"I thank you for your attention ...." (pp 83,84 excerpt From 'Fates worse than Death', Kurt Vonnegut 1991)
Ralph Ellison's words remind me of the response to Michelle Obama's recent commencement address. Honest words scare the weak. "I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied"
Wear Sunscreen: Advice like youth probably just wasted on the young - Chicago Tribune
Good stuff:
Brain Pickings
Commencement Speeches The Humanity Initiative
Reinventing the Secular Sermon Remarkable Commencement Addresses by Nora Ephron David Foster Wallace Ira Glass and More Brain Pickings
