my friend janine sent this for my baby sister's graduation message and 
i read it and wanted to share it. i had lunch with a lovely family today
that included a brilliant 2 yr old who sucked me into his little world. i 
had breakfast with davey d - not 2, but brilliant and also with a world to
go into. my family is in their world right now, preparing for the end of 
their childrens' college days. my only duty is to smile. 

tony kushner says:

"This May I sense hope in the air, and urgency, and as has so often been
the recent case, terrible danger, and so the urgent need of the world is
about to snatch you, ready or not, from this most beautiful brick and
stony womb and begin its demanding: HELP! HELP! HELP! The world is
melting, the world is darkening, there is injustice everywhere, there is
artificial scarcity everywhere, there is desperate human need, poverty
and untreated illness and exploitation everywhere, there is ignorance
everywhere, not native to the species but cruelly enforced, there is
joylessness and hatred of the body and slavery masked as freedom and
community disintegrating, everywhere, racism, everywhere, sexism,
everywhere, homophobia, everywhere, everywhere the world is in need of
repair. Fix it, solve these things, you need only the tools you have
learned here, even if you didn't pay as much attention as you should,
even if you're a mess and broke and facing a future of economic terror -
who isn't, who doesn't? HELP! HELP! HELP! The world is calling, heal the
world and in the process heal yourself, find the human in yourself by
finding the citizen, the activist, the hero. Down with the boodle-minded
misadventurers, after them, you know where they are, I figured this
speech should be nonpartisan in case there are any, you know,
Republicans in the audience but even if you are Republican, after them,
down with the boodle-minded misadventurers, up with the Republic. Duty
calls, the world calls, get active! No summer vacation, no rest for you,
we have been waiting too long for you, we need your contribution too
desperately, and if they tell you your contribution is meaningless, if
they tell you the fix is in and there's no contribution to be made, if
they tell you to contribute by shopping your credit card into
exhaustion, if they tell you to surrender the brilliant, dazzling
confusion your education should have engendered in you, to exchange that
quicksilver polyphony for dull monotone certainties, productive only of
aggression borne of boredom and violence borne of fear borne of
stupidity, they're lying, don't trust them, get rid of them, you know
who they are and where they are to be found and they'll all be happier
back on the ranch in Crawfordsville."
        
--Tony Kushner, Columbia College Class Day, 2004