Auntie Em’s cutting edge commencement address 2024

Two years ago when Uncle Henry addressed the Class of 2022, covid was on the wane, but mass shootings were on the rise. Whatever peace there was in the world was shattered when Russia invaded Ukraine. Inflation was out of control. The price of gas was at an all-time high…and Will Smith walked onstage at the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock across the face!

Could things get any worse? Say hello to 2024, a stormy year that trumps 2022.

Underneath my academic gown I am neither wearing Prada nor Gucci. My knees are shaking in a homespun muslin dress of my own making.  Atop my head, instead of the shapeless black straw hat I wore when I arrived in America from Germany as a young woman, I am wearing a black mortar board. My shoes of a million steps are worn and needing of repair. The only prized possession I have is the needlepoint purse I got on my wedding day. It contains a coin Henry put in it so I’d have some money of my own.

With no resume to speak of and no credentials of any kind, what can a simple woman have to say to you on this memorable day?  All I can do is reach deep down inside and talk to you from my heart, a heart that aches because you’re about to enter a greatly divided world.

Your college education is supposed to have prepared you to take on the world. But how is that possible when the world of today is not the same world of tomorrow and the world of tomorrow is not nearly the same as the world of next week, next month, or next year?

Gone are the days when a college graduate marched off into a world very much like the world their parents lived in. Don’t get me wrong, there were the usual generational gaps, but by and large most people were all on the same page and using the same script past generations had lived by.

Nothing is the same as it used to be. And that’s a good thing because it was often our sameness and our stubbornness to grow that divided us and pitted us against each other in the first place.

You are graduating into a dangerously divided world where you are forced, in many cases, to take a side just to fit in. Biden or Trump. Pro-choice of Pro-life. Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israel. Open borders or a  wall.  Traditional marriage or same sex. Carnivore or vegan. And on and on and on. Where the wheel of division will stop, nobody knows.

I say, enough. I say we need to heed the words of Socrates when he said “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

You will be awarded a diploma today, a piece of paper that says you satisfactorily completed all the required course work to earn a degree that tells the world you are educated.

I say, bullshit. Yes, I said it and not because I want to diminish your accomplishments, but because I want to be honest with you in a world where honesty is in short supply. A college degree is a just piece of paper, while learning is a part of the pie called knowledge and knowledge over time can result in wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson wrote “Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it.”

The world desperately needs wise people who know what to do next and who are skillful enough to see it through. And I would hasten to add that in addition to virtue, we need people who have the courage to do it.

To do it. What is it? Is it what one side wants to do, or is it what the other side wants to do? That’s the problem with wisdom, it isn’t necessarily one side over the other.

It’s like that coin I have in my purse. It has two sides. When you flip a coin you are asked to call heads or tails and where it lands determines who the winner is. That’s how we often make decisions that greatly impact the world. A flip of the coin.

Well I’m here to tell you that we’ve got it all wrong. We’ve forgotten that a coin has three sides, not two. We fail to recognize or acknowledge the importance of a coins edge, that band of metal in between the head and tail of a coin.

The world has always been one side over the other. One side right, the other side wrong. That’s what happens when you don’t take the edge into account. There is no right or wrong on the edge because the edge is reserved for thinking.

Problem is that kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally. It needs to be learned. It needs to be taught in schools. If that doesn’t happen the edge will continue to separate us, and the edge will grow wider and wider making it less likely we will ever think together again.

In truth, the edge is meant to seamlessly join different ways of thinking together. While your book learning days are over, your life learning days are about to begin. Instead of just choosing a side, think about how those sides came to be, who said one side was right and the other side was wrong, what difference do those differences make to all of us on planet earth, why people have come to one conclusion over another, and what can we do to stop the madness.

Your diploma is light, but the burden the older generation has put on your shoulders is heavy. The graduates of the class of 1929 did not cause the great depression, but those graduates had to find a way to end it. The graduates of the class of 1941 did not start World War II, but they had to risk their lives to bring peace back to the world. You, the graduates of the class of 2024 did not divide the world we live it, but you will be expected to bring it together.

You are not responsible for the world you are about to inherit, but future generations will hold you accountable for what you did and didn’t do to shape the world they will grow up in.

I’m reminded of a Chinese proverb that said “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

That says a lot about your college education. You’ve forgotten much of what you were taught in class. You remember some of what you were shown by example, but in the end, it’s all about involvement in both the actual of doing something and in the study of the past, that you will eventually be able to say, “I understand.”

I beseech you, members of the Class of 2024, to consider the edge before you choose a side. We’re all in this complicated mess we call life together. We need each other more than ever. We need you to make a difference.

Class dismissed. End of lecture. Celebrate your life. The yellow brick road awaits you. Walk proudly into your future!

Christmas 2005- A look back

The Halloween From Hell

What’s not to like about Halloween?   When I was a kid I thought it had to have been a big mistake.  My little mind couldn’t fathom why adults, who made sure you ate all your vegetables, did your homework, took out the garbage, washed behind your ears and got 46 hours of sleep a night, would encourage you to dress up in some outrageous costume and go door-to-door begging for candy…and then be allowed to eat as much of it as you wanted!
Although the mixed message I got as a kid, didn’t make any sense, I never questioned the superior adult wisdom at the time because why would I risk ruining a good thing.
And while most of my Halloweens were uneventful, there was one Halloween from Hell that haunts me to this very day. 
I was ten and I couldn’t decide whether to go out as a hobo or a ghost.  My choices were limited because my frugal father didn’t want to spend two bucks on a store-bought costume made out of material he said was less durable than Kleenex. I flipped a coin that Halloween night long ago, and the ghost costume won.
My mother, who had elevated worrying to an art form, had heard the weather was going to be particularly cold and rainy on Halloween.  So before I donned my well-ironed sheet,
I had to put on a pair of thermal underwear, sweatpants that were two sizes too big for me, three bulky sweaters, and a snowsuit.
When I was all finished dressing, I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.  Worse than the way I looked was the fact I could barely move.  I was so constricted that my joints were inoperable.  I had to hop down the stairs.  I couldn’t even bend over to pick up my trick-or-treat bag. 
My mother opened the front door and noticed it was drizzling. Not missing a beat,she sprang to the hall closet and before I knew what was happening she was stuffing me into my bright yellow rain slicker and buckling me into a pair of 40-pound rubber boots.
“Have fun,” she said as she ushered me out the door.
Not only couldn’t I move, I couldn’t see because the small holes I was supposed to look out of had shifted, thereby greatly limiting my field of vision.  It took me over fifteen minutes to make it to my first house which was less than 50 feet away. 
Even though I did make a few attempts to hurl myself on the stoop, there was no way I would make it up to the top step.  I had to wait for a bunch of kids to do the dirty work for me.  A group of five kids in store-bought costumes rumbled past me at the bottom of the stoop and rang the doorbell.
“Trick or treat,” they all screamed in unison.
I screamed it too, hoping my ghost-like voice would be heard by my next-door neighbor.  I knew I had failed to get her attention when the kids rang out in a chorus of ‘thank-you’ and heard the door click shut and then saw the porch light go off.
I had my work cut out for me if I expected to fill my bag with candy.  That’s when I decided I would only go to houses that had no stoops or porches. 
I was pleased with my decision, and after an hour of trick-or-treating I had an apple, a bag of popcorn, a cracked lollipop and a cupcake. 
Meanwhile, most of my friends had already gone home to empty their trick-or-treat bags and were out again hitting many of the same homes for a second time. Still, I held my reserve and like a  good trooper marched forward into the fray.  And then it happened.  I had to go to the bathroom. I calculated my rate of speed and the distance I had to travel to get back home and realized I would be 27 years old by the time I made it to the bathroom.   I opted to hold it in and hop like hell from house to house, which I did to the amusement of my neighbors.
With my trick-or-treat bag “under-flowing” and my bladder “over-flowing,” I began my urgent retreat home.
Perhaps I didn’t see it because I was looking at the world through a sheet, but I failed to notice a wide crack on the sidewalk.. 
As fast as you could say “Jack-o-lantern,” I was down on the ground in a heap. I looked like a speed bump. All my goodies were strewn about like the fallout from a piñata.  Little feet passed me by in quick succession. My muffled cries were drowned out by the now howling wind. 
My brief life passed before my eyes.  I thought it was all over until I heard the pitter-patter of soft footsteps coming up from behind me.
“I’m saved,” I cried out.
I lifted my head to see who my savior was and came face-to-face with a basset hound that must have had garlic for lunch owing to the odious smell of his hot breath. The hound proceeded to lick my face with reckless abandon before he devoured my soggy cupcake. 
And then…the coup-de-grace.  The little overweight dog lifted his leg and peed all over me.\
I started to laugh.  And it was my laughter that saved me because a passing adult heard me and stood me upright.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I answered.  “I Couldn’t be better.  It’s Halloween and I just love Halloween!”
The following year, my father broke down and bought me a store-bought Superman costume.  The elastic strap on the mask broke before I got to the end of my driveway and the cape got caught on a sticker bush.
I made a quick retreat to the house and came out dressed like a hobo.

Curtain going up on the YBR…again.

While I am not the longest-running show at Marist, the curtain just went up on what I think is my 42nd semester, I am at that proverbial fork in the road. Do I take the traditional academic path and teach from a text? Do I finally resign myself into believing that the students are mainly (if not only) interested in how this course will pay off with a nice job upon graduation?

Having seen how other instructors are teaching the “same” course, (Introduction to Communication), i.e. as a primer in mass media, with an emphasis on communication in the marketplace, I wonder if I am out in left field because the catalog description of the course makes no mention of mass media:

“This course surveys the theories of communication relevant to all contexts – from conversations between friends and family to presidential town halls on the Internet. It introduces students to essential concepts and fundamental theories that describe the process, function, nature, and effects of communication.“

I spent…and am still spending since I’m still working, over 50 years in mass media and education…and I can tell you this, many, many of the people I worked for and with don’t know diddly-squat about real communication. Many of those people communicated like six-year-olds!

The world of today is filled with electronic gadgets and apps to facilitate communication. The only problem? We still suck at communicating. The students in my class think they believe they know what they want from a college course. I fear they don’t.

The world doesn’t necessarily need more mass media professionals. We need people who believe they have the power to make a difference in the world by using communication as a tool to build a better and kinder world, not as a weapon of mass destruction where we continue to fight with each other over one issue after another.

I want to take the fork in the road where a student can open themselves up to understanding that life is much more than a high-paying job with fringe benefits. I want to provide them with an environment that is safe…safe for questions and wonderment.

Because I believe in the power of story…told in all formats, I wanted to show them the movie, Arrival (a movie that is considered to be one of the best on communication), but after watching it, I don’t think it will work in an 8 am class. It won’t work (in my opinion) because to really understand it you need to have traveled some distance on the Yellow Brick Road. Fortunately, I have some other movies in my academic arsenal I will use.

After some educational soul-searching, I have decided to take the road less traveled in teaching communication for one very simple reason: There just might be one student who needs to be encouraged to believe that they are very important and that the world needs them…and communication will be the key they use to open up doors for us all.

Now you see it. Now you don’t. Total control of everything on the YBR. Will there be consequences?

I like gadgets, but I love tricky gadgets. I should start calling my cell phone “Merlin” because it is magical. It does just about everything. I am intrigued by the “lens” tool. You take a picture of a flower you’ve never seen before and instantly learn what the flower is called, where it grows, etc. Amazing.

The photo erase tool is also as amazing, but in a different way. I took the top picture of a woman who was setting up for a celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of LaVang at the Carmelite Shrine where I work. I then used the magic eraser tool available on my phone. The woman in the orange dress is…gone.

The revised picture is real…isn’t it? If I trash the other photo with the woman in it, the real photo (a truthful photo), all that will remain is the photo without the woman.

We can debate the use of such a tool until the proverbial cows come home, but that’s not what I’m really talking about. I’m talking about how we can magically erase things from our memory to suit other purposes. Instead of dealing with things as they really were/are, we can alter the reality to better suit our (agenda-driven) narrative.

People on the left and far left do it. People on the right and far right do it. And they often do it to change the narrative that works for them as they tell/sell their story to “their” followers.

Sometimes that which gets erased is not always the same “sticking point” that gets erased in another “version” of the story.

Our ability to render different realities is not something new. You never needed an app to change a part or parts of the “truth.” It’s human nature. Honestly admitting that we do it is not human nature.

Until we all admit we are “guilty” of altering reality, we will have people out there who believe Donald Trump was denied the presidency and that Joe Biden had no idea whatsoever what his son was doing.

Until we take a deep breath and are willing to look at things as they really are…or at least admit that we tend to overlook things that “ruin” our story, we will never walk the yellow brick road…together.