Papa's girl
This morning we will be on our way home from Atlanta, where yesterday we proudly attended the commencement ceremony, Kristen receiving her bachelor's degree from Emory University.
Keynote speaker for the graduation was Salman Rushdie, an author whose fiction is exquisite with intricate detail. Midnight's Children, a long novel following and interweaving the lives of several people, strangers to each other, all born, with special almost occult powers, simultaneous with the independence and partition of British India into Pakistan and India at midnight August 15, 1947, is one of my most gripping books ever. Rushdie's talk in the Emory quadrangle yesterday morning, prodding the graduates and jabbing sharply at the world's ignorance, prejudice and stupidity, was caustic perfection for the commencement address at this private multicultural institution of excellence and intellectual freedom. Parts of his speech had me shaking uncontrollably with laughter. I hope it will be available online for download. A member of Emory faculty for the past decade or so, Rushdie said that in common with the graduates he also was completing the Emory chapter of his life, and returning home. Like his life as a whole, Sir Salman (the queen knighted him years ago) is fascinating, unconventional, extraordinary, anything but run of the mill. His courses must have been a riotous challenge. Rushdie could make me wish I had been young enough to be his student.
One thing rattled me yesterday. After the graduation ceremony, we got on a university shuttle bus with Kristen, to ride to her dorm where her car was garaged. As I made my way toward the back of the crowded bus, a young woman leapt up and offered me her seat. I wasn’t wearing white collar and black shirt moving down the aisle bestowing blessings with the sign of the cross like a pious old prelate, so reckon it was unusual to see such an antiquated old man on the bus. Her kind gesture brought to mind Jesus’ words in our Sunday gospel about the agape’ love and charity that is not a feeling but courtesy, thoughtfulness, generosity, lovingkindness. Thanking her, I declined and moved on toward the seat next to Linda in the back of the bus.
Thinking back to my own college days, I am so proud of my girl, and happy for her. She majored in economics, the thought and memory of which still makes me shudder from my own econ courses at the University of Florida and the University of Michigan. The theorems, math, formulas, graphs, trends, factors to factor in, factor, factor out and analyze blew me away then and now. I am no economist or economic theorist. Kristen's minor was religion, which I loved hearing about and getting involved in with her as much as possible.
Thinking back to my own college days, I am so proud of my girl, and happy for her. She majored in economics, the thought and memory of which still makes me shudder from my own econ courses at the University of Florida and the University of Michigan. The theorems, math, formulas, graphs, trends, factors to factor in, factor, factor out and analyze blew me away then and now. I am no economist or economic theorist. Kristen's minor was religion, which I loved hearing about and getting involved in with her as much as possible.
We pray, after breakfast, more coffee, and negotiating the nation's worst traffic, all to be home early afternoon.
TW+