If you follow my blog, you may suspect (correctly) that I have been too busy to keep it up the way I would like. Sometimes, however, others say all that needs to be said, as is the case with President Obama and the speech he delivered at the University of Michigan commencement ceremonies yesterday. So, rather than bore you with my own feeble attempts to pontificate or entertain, I am posting a link to the President's address, which really says it all. I will make every effort to write again very soon for my readers (who bear a resemblance to the Marines, in that you are not only proud, but also few). P.S. - Please excuse the transcription's misspelling of "genteel." I'm sure the President did not mean it the way it came out.
During my junior year in high school, I sat in the back of our auditorium listening to our drama teacher, Ruth Bair, attempt to persuade a large group of students to try out for the school play. With me, at least, she was successful. I auditioned for a part in Archibald MacLeish's "JB," a modern day drama based on the Book of Job. All I garnered that time was a walk-on part; better roles awaited me my senior year. But Mrs. Bair's little speech was enough to get me in the game. And the experience of performing in the school plays was the highlight of my high school years. What she said that I remember is this: "If you don't extend yourself, you haven't lived." Some memory of biology class made me think that this was both literally and figuratively true, though I'm not sure about the literal part, and it's only the figurative that matters to me. But through the years and decades that followed, whenever I was unsure about participatin
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