Advertisin' signs that con you
Into thinkin' you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

Don't know why, but so it goes.

The Times featured excerpts from a number of commencement speakers. I found this quote from John Lewis to be exceptional:

Sometimes I hear some young people say nothing has changed. I feel like saying, come and walk in my shoes. In 1956, at the age of 16, being so inspired by Dr. King along with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins, we went to the little library in Pike County, Alabama, a public library in the little town of Troy trying to get library cards, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds.

I never went back to that library until July 5, 1998. By that time I was a member of Congress, and I went there for a book signing of my book. Hundreds of blacks and white citizens showed up. I signed many books. In the end, they gave me a library card. It says something about the distance we’ve come and the progress we’ve made in laying down the burden of race.

“If you’re not dreadfully concerned with how you’re going to turn out,” he put it, “you’ll probably turn out fine.”

From a Samuel Freedman article here;my only question for this kid is who was advising him on different college options.  GW is a great school, but it’s a great, expensive school and surely this kid could have gotten into one of the better state schools, e.g., Michigan or Wisconsin.

Great article here

One striking quote:

In 49 out of 50 states, the average annual cost of day care for a 4-year-old in an urban area is more than the average annual public college tuition.

The other striking statistic — one that strikes close to home — 35% of kids eligible for Headstart in Pennsylvania are not enrolled.

“FENAME”=’Broad’ OR “FENAME” =’Market’ OR “FENAME” = ‘Roosevelt’ OR “FENAME”=’Cottman’ OR “FENAME”=’Lehigh’ OR “FENAME” = ‘Lancaster’ OR “FENAME”=’Elmwood’ OR “FENAME”=’Ridge’

“No one I know is placing any blame on the university for how they have done things,” Mr. Williams said. “I don’t think we should be blamed for not kicking him out for odd behavior, because if you went by that, there would be people kicked out every day. No one could have predicted what he did.” Student quoted in NYT article here. A thoughtful understanding…let’s see if the adults can match it.

restrictive clause: clause that shapes the meaning of a noun/clause/
non-restrictive clause: can be deleted without shaping the independent clause

commas for non-restrictive, none for restrictive.

“There is nothing more arresting than a disciplined course of instruction,” he said abruptly.

I must have rolled my eyes or grimaced, because he shook his head, stood up and shoved the thing — an impressive two inches thick — into my hands.

“I’m serious. Is there anything more glorious than a professor? Forget about his molding the minds, the future of a nation — a dubious assertion; there’s little you can do when they tend to emerge from the womb predestined for Grand Theft Auto Vice City. No. What I mean is, a professor is the only person on earth with the power to put a veritable frame around life — not the whole thing, God no — simply a fragment of it, a small wedge. He organizes the unorganizable. Nimbly partitions it into modern and postmodern, renaissance, baroque, primitivism, imperialism and so on. Splice that up with Research Papers, Vacation, Midterms. All that order — simply divine. The symmetry of a semester course. Consider the word themselves: the seminar, the tutorial, the advanced whatever workshop accessible only to seniors, to graduate fellows, to doctoral candidates, the practicum — what a marvelous word: practicum! You think me crazy. Consider a Kandinsky. Utterly muddled, put a frame around it, voila — looks rather quaint above the fireplace. And so it is with the curriculum. That celestial, sweet set of instructions, culminating in the scary wonder of the Final Exam. And what is the Final Exam? A test of one’s deepest understanding of giant concepts. No wonder so many adults long to return to university, to all those deadlines — aahh, that’s structure! Scaffolding to which we may cling! Even if it is arbitrary, without it, we’re lost, wholly incapable of separating the Romantic from the Victorian and our sad, bewildering lives…

I told Dad he’d lost his mind. He laughed.

“One day you’ll see,” he said with a wink. “And remember. Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids, because, trust me, there will always be some clown sitting in the back — somewhere by the radiator — who will raise his fat, flipper-like hand, and complain, ‘no, no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ ”
Pessl, Marisha. Special Topics in Calamity Physics. New York: Viking, 2006, pp.11-12.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones.  These require that the author shall

12.  Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13.  Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14.  Eschew surplusage.
15.  Not omit necessary details.
16.  Avoid slovenliness of form.
17.  Use good grammar.
18.  Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Twain, Mark. “Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” In Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays, 1891-1910, edited by Louis J. Budd. New York: Library of America, 1992, 181-182.