Nuggetology

.....Well, it’s that time of the year when newspapers such as the New York Times collect and preserve the nuggets of wisdom dispensed at commencement speeches around the country. Here's some of that nuggetry:

Messages of Exhortation, Counsel and Congratulation:

Jessica Lange
Actress
Sarah Lawrence College

We are living in an America that in the last seven and a half years has waged an unnecessary war, established prison camps, condoned torture, employed corporate armies, eliminated the right of habeas corpus, practiced extraordinary rendition. And believe me, this is only a partial list.
…
Gavin Newsom
Mayor of San Francisco
San Francisco State University

What is the secret of all success? Winston Churchill, he said it was moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm….

Allen Weinstein
Archivist of the United States
Southern Methodist University

Begin with the Salem witchcraft trials of the 1690s. Move forward to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early Republic, and from there to the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Turn then to the arbitrary political arrests of the First and Second World Wars, the many abuses of the cold war McCarthy era, and from there to the civil liberties climate in our own time. Find your conscience and hold it close.

One of the pivotal connective links from earliest repressive efforts to the present time is the pushback each received from opponents at the time: a phenomenon that the late scholar and United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called the “self-corrective” forces at work within American society.

These forces make difficult any and all efforts to create a thoroughly repressive climate of opinion, even during wars and pre- or post-war red scares. You will not find similar self-corrective societies in great numbers in our time. There are precious few and none as obsessively self-corrective as ours.
…
Bill Nye
Science educator
Harvey Mudd College

When you’re a little over six months into your 31st year, we will probably be over 12 billion — and on our way to 15 billion — humans on earth. Keep in mind also that half of the world’s people have never made a phone call. Their lives are agrarian and rural. Nevertheless, they know our culture and have seen what science and organized technology can do.

I’ve traveled a little, in India, China and Africa. People are walking less and driving more; we’re putting more cars on the road every week. Put roughly: if everyone on earth were to consume, drive, and especially use energy at the prodigious rate that each of us does here in the United States, we would need two more Earths. We don’t have two more Earths. We barely have one.

Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court justice
High Point University

…Most of us would do well to solve our own problems. Often, as most of us know, the real battle is conquering ourselves….

Let me first confess that I am no good at telling people what to think or how to live their lives. As those of us who take responsibility for our lives, and don’t blame others, know only so well, life has a way of humbling, if not humiliating us.

James Fallows
Author
Ursinus College

In the end, we are our habits, so take time developing good ones….

Get in the habit of being happy. We all have problems which we can’t control; what we can control is how we look at them. Get in the habit of being excited. It’s a great big world, with no excuse for being bored. It’s fun to have feuds and enemies — I’ve had my share — but break the habit of nursing grudges.

Here’s one tip: Always write angry letters to your enemies, but never mail them. ... Take every chance to tell your spouse, when you have one, and your children that you love them. When in doubt, phone your mom.
…
Rita Moreno
Actress
Mills College

…I am constantly saddened and dismayed by the way in which we have come to torture the English language. ... College students who use the term “he goes” in place of “he says” and whose sentences are riddled with “you know?” and who cannot complete a sentence without inserting the word “like” at least three times. ... My advice: Stop it this minute.
…
Sandra Day O’Connor
Former Supreme Court justice
Gettysburg College

The only job offer I received in the private sector on my graduation from Stanford Law School many years ago was a job as a legal secretary. So I started my own practice, sharing a small office with another lawyer and a shopping center in a suburb of Phoenix.

Other people who had offices in the small shopping mall repaired TVs, cleaned clothes or sold groceries. It was not a high rent district. I got walk-in business. People came in to see me about grocery bills they couldn’t collect, landlord-tenant problems and other every day matters not usually considered by the United States Supreme Court.

But I always did the very best I could with what I had. I learned about how the law affects the average citizen, and how a lawyer can help solve day-to-day problems.…

P.S.: Re Fogeys, listen up!: Stay in the know. Be hip.

My young friend Jason, evidently overcome with pity over my manifest fogeytude (his email was entitled, "Stay in the know—be hip"), sent me a list of more contemporary artists/songs. Here's four on his list, all videos. I especially liked the first one. Some kind of New York band. Never heard of 'em.

MGMT - "Time To Pretend" Music Video
Autolux - Turnstile Blues
Portishead - Machine Gun: Video
CSS - Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex

Jason also listed videos from these bands: Datarock, Cold War Kids, M.I.A. (the Brit), Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Spoon, Deathcab for Cutie, Band of Horses, M83, and Placebo.

A reader likes Jason's list, but adds: ...where's The Arcade Fire? They're surely amongst the most important bands of the decade and only a very small number of bands can try to come close to that crisp orchestral sound (+ they're fantastic live). Listen to Rebellion, Intervention or Haiti and you'll know what I'm talking about.