Not to be Re Peted

What is it about human nature or maybe American nature that people seem to relish "the fall" from grace? I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Sure everyone loves the underdog. And yes, everyone loves a comeback. Noble reflections of our "better angels." But what about the dark side of human nature that emerges in the form of gleeful trashing, bashing, and criticizing someone everybody cheered while he was at the pinnacle of success? What is that about?

O.K. This is not a spiritually oriented blog post. Not a grief post. Not an educational theatre post. No. This is a

"I am a USC alum, spouse, and parent who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on four USC degrees, season tickets and Cardinal and Gold and a Pete Carroll fan who is mad as hell that people are trashing him" blog post.

Bruin fans, holier than thou Irish fans and all of you USC haters out there who are celebrating this chapter in the Trojan story can sign off now. I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to my Trojan family.

Yes. You.

What are you thinking? Pete Carroll brought something special to USC - not just to USC football - to the spirit of the school. Doesn't anybody remember the Ted Tollner days? No offense meant to someone who is no doubt a nice guy - but take a moment and remember what it was like before Pete. Pete is not without flaws. He is human and I was bummed to hear that he is rumored to have been through two divorces - but I'm not talking about Pete's private life. I am talking about the public one. The one that created "A Better LA." The one that found him after midnight walking the streets of South Central inspiring at risk youth and giving them his cell phone number. The Pete whose grin on and off the field made every Trojan swell with pride and whose enthusiasm was transmitted from the field all the way up to the top of the colosseum.
Pete Carroll's motto "Do it better than it has ever been done before" inspired me in my own work!

O.K. The athletic department of USC deserves to be punished for....something. Non-compliance. Even though I think the NCAA is over reaching in its penalties and is out and out wrong to demand that USC sever all ties with Reggie Bush - as if he never attended the school. If we are going to remove Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy then would somebody tell the folks at Heritage Hall to take out OJ Simpson's? O.K. He wasn't "convicted" in a criminal murder trial - but he did lose the civil trial. Why is his Heisman and Jersey still prominently displayed while we have to pretend Reggie Bush never even went to USC? Come on folks. This is nuts. Yes, I am mad at Bush and think he should have paid back the money. I am mad at Garrett for being arrogant. I am mad at the system - but how exactly do you expect to police those sports agents whose greed is really at the bottom of the whole mess? Somebody figure that one out. Shouldn't we be going after them?

Replacing Garrett with Haden is a stroke of genius. We all know that. A return to another glorious period in USC history -The Haden to McKay years. Who doesn't like Pat Haden? The article this morning in the Los Angeles Times Sports section has a great article about how Haden is motivated by "the dash." Anyone who knows me, knows that I believe that thinking about dying is not morbid. It is the ultimate motivator by which to navigate one's choices in life. Good boy, Pat.
But as far as I could ever tell, Pete lived by this rule too. How many lives has he touched? How many lives did he change?
I don't blame Pete Carroll for leaving USC and pursuing his dream of being an NFL coach. I am not a cynic. I do not believe he skipped town to avoid the "fall." There is no avoiding it in this 24-7 media age. Seattle ain't that far away. And Sark is just over there in Husky Stadium. Pete didn't run away. He just made a change in his life - just like Pat Haden is doing.

Pete Carroll deserves more from the Trojan Family. By diminishing his legacy, we are diminishing more than a football record. It reveals the darker side of human nature. Everybody loves a winner. And everybody loves to kick 'em when their down.

As for me, I remain a Trojan fan. And I am now a Seahawks fan. You go show 'em, Pete. Fight On!

Gidget at Fifty

I am a summer person. I am a beach person. I am a boat person. I am a sun person. I am a sand person. I am a water person. I am a ping pong playing person. I am a kayak person. I am beach chair on my back person. I am a I don't really care if sand gets in my car person. I am a dump all the beach toys at the front door and go into the house and take a hot shower after spending hours soaking in the sun and then barbecue burgers person. I am a salt on the face person. I am a sand in the shoes person. I am a sand on the floor person. I am a sand in the shower person.

It must go back to my childhood in San Clemente.

I remember the euphoric feeling of waking up in the top bunk of my little bedroom in the trailer in Capistrano Shores and seeing the sun through the louvered windows. The trailer sat perched on a seawall that was mere yards away from the ocean. The pounding surf would at times crash up over the top of the trailer. The salt spray coated the windbreak. When I was a child, my father, who also was a beach person, loved to dig his feet into the sand. I remember seeing him wiggle his toes as he sat in a beach chair talking.

The happiest days of my childhood were spent at the trailer in San Clemente. Hands down.
I was always happy there.
Happy.
It was home.

I loved standing by the ocean's edge as the waves whooshed up over my feet. My feet sinking deeper into the muddy sand. I loved the sound of the receding wave as it rushed back to the sea over the smooth, glistening rocks that sometimes would line the shore.
I loved the sand crabs we would dig up and watch try to burrow their way back into the wet sand - making tiny round air holes as the buried themselves.
My father told me stories of the sand crabs. There was Johnny. Amos. Sandy. I seem to recall that Amos lived in Transilvania. Johnny had a crush on me. My father regaled me for hours with these stories and the sand crabs seemed like playmates to me.

My father taught me to surf fish in San Clemente. He taught me how to thread a worm on a hook, cast the line and watch for the little shudder at the end of the pole while I reeled in a fish attached to the other end.
He taught me to scale a fish and clean it.

I remember my parents sitting around the round, redwood umbrella table with gin and tonics laughing with the Kavanaghs or our next door neighbors, the Muirs.
I remember the sound of the the shuffle board discs being pushed from one end of the yard to the other. I remember my mother painting the numbers on the cement into the triangular shaped squares.

Sandcastles as a child evolved into body surfing, bikinis, and orange Ban de Soleil sun tan oil at sixteen. Tan skin. Blonde streaked hair. There was nothing to equal it.

It was in San Clemente where I learned to play ping pong.
The sound of the little hollow ball on a table and against a paddle was like music to my ears. Still is.

Eventually, the beach in front of the trailer eroded so that enormous boulders had to be brought in. It changed the landscape of the place and the access to the water. It became a bit threatening especially for children.
Our single-wide turquoise trailer eventually looked a bit run down and out dated compared to the palatial double wides. The furniture began to disintegrated from the salt air and the paint peeled.
All this after my father dropped dead after his last weekend at the trailer in August of 1981. Mother lost interest. I never did.

Everything changes.
Erosion is a natural course of nature.
But the sand and the salt still make me happy. My bikini has been replaced by the one piece hide all "miracle suit" which feels like a girdle when I pull it on and isn't miraculous enough to hide my thighs. I wear a visor to control the glare. I had to buy sunglass readers and I rarely dip into the water any more. Gidget is in her fifties.
But I still live for summer and feel sixteen when I plop myself down into my beach chair to soak in the rays. I don't feel sixteen when I try to get back up. But I play a pretty good game of ping pong if I do say so myself.

Road Trip

We set out for a ten day road trip to the far reaches of the state of Wyoming to visit our friend, Randy Hills, who moved there from civilization to live out his dream of a cowboy life on a ranch. I had some trepidation. First of all, we were traveling in a Volvo with California license plates through the least populated state in the country. A state best known to me for being red in more ways than one. Dick Cheney and Matthew Shepherd were the names most notoriously associated with Wyoming. But I set aside my uneasiness about our destination and focused on the anticipation of seeing our friend.

My history with road trips is a mixed bag. As I packed my suit case - obediently down sizing from the giant red one to the small red one, I recalled my childhood in the back seat of various vehicles. At ten, I took a trip in an Olds Mobile Tornado up through Zion, Bryce, Glacier, and eventually into Canada where we stayed in Banff and Jasper. I recall being bored out of my mind most of the time and I'm quite certain I was a pest to my parents. My father attempted to play games with me to pass the time. The scenery, while no doubt magnificent, was lost on me. This was in the days before cell phones, DVD players and ipods of course. That trip was the first and only trip my parents took me on without a friend. Perhaps an indication that while I was bored, they were driven crazy by my boredom.

As I prepared for our drive to Wyoming, I loaded up the little Playmate ice chest with drinks and snacks. I brought Dijon mustard, salami, and baguettes for making sandwiches on the road - a trick I learned from my mother during our driving trips through Europe. We jammed in folding beach chairs, two fishing poles, my water color paints, a backpack bulging with my laptop computer, books, and writing projects and a paddle ball set. We had the shoe bag, the toiletry bag, the overflow bag that contained beach towels and an NYU sweatshirt that was too thick for the smaller red suitcase and two pillows. Since we were going to be gone over the 4th of July, I brought my flag purse and a cute red, white, and blue outfit for the small town celebration we were to attend.

As we set out to pack the car, the first of my childhood road trip memories flooded me. Now I have been married twenty-eight years so I have learned that only one person can pack the car - and that is my husband. But I actually learned this lesson as a kid. It was the same in my family growing up. My father was the packer.

As we jammed the overflow bag into the trunk for our trip to Wyoming, I flashed on my father, bent over the trunks of countless cars, the vein in his forehead throbbing as he cursed and sighed. This was the case every day we packed the trunk through Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Six week driving trips with my parents, my friend Susie, and our friends, the Kavanaghs. Dad would get mad. Mom would sit silent in the front seat. Mad. And I would crawl into the back seat, a privileged child touring Europe for hours on end listening to my mother gasp as my father passed a car on a narrow sheep-filled road, or veered dangerously onto the right side in England, or furiously missed exiting the round - about while exasperatingly barking out instructions to my mother to "orientate the map." No Tom Tom GPS devices in those days.

As we drove off from our home in Long Beach to Lusk, Wyoming, memories of those driving trips flooded my mind. Mother refusing to get out of the car once we'd arrived at our long sought destination - a practice I never understood. It seemed the ultimate "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." Her adamant refusal to go over the Alps - the only way to get from where we were in Switzerland to Italy. I don't know how she thought we were going to get there - I just remember my father and Jack Kavanagh joking, "Frau Elsie Schhteeaming." Frau Elsie was always "Schhteeaming." And my father's vein was always pulsing.

Our own road trips with our children faired somewhat better...but not much. Two come to mind - both having left their respective scars on our children. The fifteen hour drive from the San Juan Islands on our son Brendan's 12th birthday with him scowling in the back seat of the car with promises from us of a "special dinner" once we reached 120 degree Redding.

The other, a drive down Highway 1 from the Rogue River in Oregon - after Steve slipped crossing a suspension bridge with a wagon full of suitcases that hit his head leaving him with a lump on his noggin, in a fowl mood, and silent all the way down the winding, scenic road, through the redwoods and through every town along the route with flashing "no vacancy" signs until we hit Oakland at 2:00 a.m.
Is it any wonder why I had some trepidation about this trip to Wyoming?

Our trip actually was very peaceful. Once the car was packed and we headed out - we began listening to Ted Kennedy's memoir, "True Compass." The seventeen CD audio book did not promote conversation but it proved most interesting and entertaining. As we drove through the desert to Vegas, I recalled my many childhood stays on the strip as my father worked the Vegas Directory. I remembered seeing my father, with his arm around Jack Benny, walking along the strip arranging a stage side table for the dinner show later that evening. I remembered Don Knotts refusing my request for an autograph. I remembered being wedged between Tiny Tim and Miss Vickie for a photograph with Susie. I remembered Susie always winning more tokens at Circus Circus than me and I remembered jumping off the high dive at the Riviera, the Tropicana, and the Sahara. I recalled a trip to the MGM Grand as a teenager and going to see Diana Ross with Mugs.

As we passed through the red rock between Vegas and St. George, and on through Salt Lake City and across the border into Wyoming, I marveled at the variations in the landscape. Lusk is prairie land. Wide open spaces. Brilliant blue sky, white clouds and purple wild flowers. After arriving at Randy's ranch, where we met his animals- Darrel Bob the dog, Lavinia Rose the cat, three horses - one a Palomino named Cotton, and one remaining chicken that produced two eggs daily, I realized I'd brought the wrong clothes. It was cool and began to rain. In fact the rain wiped out the plan for the Independence Day community celebration. My cute red, white, and blue outfit on the 4th was replaced with jeans. The shoe bag proved to be unnecessary as I only needed my close toed athletic shoes - and could have left all the flip flops and sandals in Long Beach. And my computer never made it out of the back pack since we had no and I mean no connectivity. My iphone was completely worthless. AT&T deserves its bad reputation for reception. But, I soon let go of everything that seemed necessary to my existence and began to lose myself in the vastness of the place.

We visited South Dakota - Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, a monument in progress that honors the legacy of Native Americans. Caught up in the moment, I bought numerous hand-made scarves, purses, and jewelry from an Indian woman who seemed quite pleased we'd come along. We drove the Needles Highway where spires of granite rock tower over head like a cathedral. We drove to a town called Thermopolis where there are natural mineral hot springs. After adjusting to the rotten egg smell of sulfar, we soaked in the pools and playfully slid down a water slide several times.
Steve attempted fly fishing along the river as I sat and wrote in my journal. We drove on to Cody, Wyoming - a seven hour drive from Lusk, where the landscape became even more breathtaking. The Tetons looming against the green meadows, lakes and red rock - we wound our way along the lower loop of Yellowstone National Park. We joined the throngs at Old Faithful and watched it erupt with steam - a site that I nearly missed as I headed off to the bathroom. We sat on the road as a herd of buffalo slowly crossed. We jumped out of the car to take a picture of a Grizzly Bear and marveled at the antler-adorned elk. Antlers seemed to be the decorative choice in these parts. Again, caught up in the moment, I pondered antler hooks for our closet - Steve refused. He said he would not hang antler hooks in our beach house any more than he would decorate a ranch with seashells. I got mad.

We spent a day at the Bill Cody Ranch where Steve, after dutifully buying a $54.00 can of bear spray, set off to fish and I set off to paint. Randy joined me after a run, reading in the sunny meadow where I attempted to paint the towering red rock, green pine trees, and golden field in front of me. I hadn't taken up a brush for eight years. Never trained as an artist, the very act of looking and trying to see color, line, texture, and shape I find to be a meditative process. While my finished product remains in a sketch book and the various water color smudges remain on my white shirt, the peaceful relaxation of the day remains in my memory.

Steve returned to the ranch after fishing all day having caught one trout, his can of bear spray still happily unused. The cook at the ranch prepared the trout for us along with delicious beef steaks and buffalo burgers. All in all, it was a perfect day. Randy and I played paddle ball where we broke our previous record of 100 and discovered a ping pong table in the game room where we took up the only "sport" I am actually good at.

The road trip flew by - and the scenery impressed itself upon my mind. Like the ocean, the wide, open spaces of Wyoming provide an openness of spirit. I emptied myself into it and felt the peace it brings. The people, rugged individualists who must contend with extreme weather conditions - are part of the landscape. They are authentic folk who wear cowboy boots and hats not for fashion but as a matter of practicality. They lasso cattle, tip their hats and say "Howdy, Ma'am." The wranglers all look like they are out of some Western movie - handsome and tanned with dirt and manure on their spurs. This still is the "wild west."

Once back at Randy's ranch, I used his land line to call our daughter, Gillian in New York City. She'd been chasing us for days needing a notarized lease application for an apartment she is moving to in the east village. "Boy, you and Dad really pulled the disappearing act," she exclaimed when we finally made contact.

Yup. Yippee -Yi-Ay. We sure did.

As we headed back to Long Beach, Steve, nursing the blisters on his heels from the cowboy boots he'd bought at a boot store in Cody and worn on a walk down Silver Springs Road to break them in - and his cowboy hat perched on top of the pile of stuff in our back seat, now haphazardly thrown in for the ride home, we listened to the rest of "True Compass." I finally began to get reception on my iphone and the landscape became full of signs, cement, and outlets.

Wyoming may be a red state but it most certainly is a beautiful one. Our road trip had the flavor of true "Americana" - vacationers of every shape and size on their own road trips - making their own memories - nursing their own blisters and packing their own trunks. I thought back to the road trips of my childhood and those of our children's and smiled. Those stories become part of family lore. They are the stories we tell over and over and with each telling, the memories grow fonder and fonder. As we unpacked the car I looked at the few treasures we'd brought home as souvenirs. The Bill Cody coffee mugs. The Wyoming picture book that will no doubt end up on the bookshelf along with countless others. The barbecue sauce and buffalo sausage sticks and the woven scarves I'd bought from the Indian woman. They do look a tad out of place in our beach house. But it doesn't matter. Each thing carries a piece of the memory from our road trip.

My only regret - I just wish I had those antler hooks for my closet.

An All Consuming Life

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.” George Bernard Shaw

Someone once told me (I think it was my therapist) that I have a fear of being consumed by my passions.

I think this is true.

I have just returned from a week-long training sponsored by ISTA - the International Schools Theatre Association - on teaching the two- year International Baccalaureate Theatre Diploma Curriculum. Dangerous stuff. As I sat at El Torito last night with my husband, I looked him in the eye and said, "I think I may have done it again. This new job has the potential to completely consume me." And he said, " Yes, I know." And then he added, "It is what you were put on this earth to do."

I think this is true.

I have little evidence to support a counter argument considering my history. Anyone who knows me would see right through my protestations. I am at times, bursting at the gills with creative energy. The thing about a program like the IB Theatre is that it is challenging, demanding, creative, rigorously assessed at an international level - and completely open-ended. Therein lies the danger.

It would seem that my life as a theatre educator includes having a constant battle with myself to set limits and boundaries. I remember my therapist once asking me, "What would happen if you just allowed yourself the freedom to completely immerse yourself?" She said she thought I was afraid I would dive in so deeply that I might not come back up.

I think this is true.

But this time, I'm fifty-one. My kids are launched. My husband, frankly, prefers it when I am creatively engaged - the balance in our relationship is right when it's like that. My boredom is his curse. Not that I've often been bored. But it is a fact that when I am creatively inspired and my mind is pressed against something intellectually and artistically stimulating, I thrive. When I thrive, I am happy. When I'm happy, he is happy.

I think this is true.

So here I am. My heart quickens. My mind races. Ideas surge through me like an electrical current. Yes. Each class has its creative demands - but the truth is I love designing courses. I love putting together a syllabus. I love mapping out a plan. I love scheduling. I love sticking to a schedule when the schedule is planned right. It is evidence of my experience. I can look at a script and know almost to the hour how long it will take me to rehearse. I love it when I follow my instincts and I especially love it when my instincts are right.

I love my doubts. Doubt is a familiar companion with each new production and each new class. Each has its own set of personalities and challenges. But now, at fifty-one, I know that each problem will be solved one way or the other.

I know this is true.

How much luckier can a person be? I get to work in my craft - I get to play in the messy, unformed world of creativity every single day - I get to bring my artistic vision to life for an audience- I get to nurture and mold young lives - I get to think and work hard at something that is unquestionably fulfilling and worth my time and effort - I get to build - I get to risk - I get to collaborate - I get to grow - I get to contextualize - I get to learn - I get to begin again. And I get paid to do it.

People speak of something called "retirement." Here's my problem. Every time I "retire" from the theatre, I am lured back. I have had a love-hate relationship with it my entire life from the time I first stepped on to the stage at eleven-years-old. It is the dragon that must be slayed. The beast that must be tamed. It is, what Jungians call the tension. Now, after forty years in the theatre, I am choosing it. Up till now, it has always felt like it chose me - and thus, had the power to consume me. Maybe this time, we can at last be at peace with each other.

I hope this is true.

Creative Overload

How did it get this way? To even get my fingers onto the keyboard of my laptop computer, I had to pile up paper, mail, calendars, cards, and CD's and then shove the pile to one side of my desk in order to create a small enough space on which to set my laptop. In the pile are two wedding invitations, an order form for my son's graduation pictures, a health insurance re-enrollment form, a photo copy of an article on early parent loss, three school calendars, my personal calendar, and an empty gift bag with red and yellow tissue paper. To the left of my desk, perched on a wooden TV tray I set up in desperation to catch some of the creative overflow - is a stack ( over one foot high) of drafts of that play I was attempting to write, five journals and notebooks. At my feet, there are three canvas bags. One is full of my memoir class materials. The other full of my theatre class materials for my new job, and another is crammed full of stuff from the desk of my classroom from the job I just finished. On the floor, there is a Nordstrom bag full of VHS tapes of all my past productions, three crates full of books and files and a backpack that frankly I'm afraid to look in.
On the counter to the right of my desk is a pile of six binders - each with vital information about various classes I have taught or will be teaching. A red binder contains the script of the musical I plan to direct next spring. And then there is the stack of manila file folders for every hand out I've ever created for every drama class I've ever taught. Twenty-one years worth of hand outs.
Not to mention the dividers designed to keep me organized, stuffed with unopened mail, bills that are calling out for my attention, expired coupons, a roll of ribbon from an abandoned wrapping job and two inspirational CD's on leadership.

And let's not even talk about the garage. Well o.k. let's. White file boxes transferred from my classroom, to the trunk of my car and then neatly stacked in front of the freezer so that I can't open it, filled with - yes you guessed it - more teaching files.
And the giant box of Tri-School Theatre show sweatshirtsI have preserved and took out of storage so that someone could make a quilt sits in the middle of the garage floor. Unopened.
I've gone bloowey.

SOS. I'm officially drowning in my creative endeavors. "Uncle." I'm hollering "uncle!"

This morning in the OC Register there is an article about a service that "de-clutters" and helps home owners get organized. I almost picked up the phone but it was 6:30 on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately I don't have time to dig into any of it because I leave Monday for the IB Training in Florida where I will no doubt begin filling more notebooks and files for my IB Theatre classes starting in the fall.

I have to be "o.k." with living with stacks right now because there is a domino affect. Before I can move the stacks from my desk area and garage at home, somebody has to clean out the office I'm moving into at my new school. I just finished doing this in my former classroom. Labeled all the filing cabinets, made sure there was a departmental handbook and a monthly "at a glance" task document so that things could run smoothly next year.
The irony is that I am actually an extremely organized person. But too much is just too much.

The playwriting class put me on tilt. I will admit it. Draft after draft after draft ....and I haven't yet gotten the opening right. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I have to start over.
I have lost some appetite for the project and have even questioned its value. Clearly I need a break from that project for a while. Maybe after I get back from Florida and have some down time, I will have a clearer head and will be re-inspired.
For now, the stack of scenes will just have to stay put.

My email has gone unanswered. My daughter's two boxes of summer clothes sit waiting to be shipped to NYC. I've dropped more than a few balls in my personal life. At some point I have to take time to get my life back together. Today, I have to remember pick up my dry cleaning and do my laundry for this trip.

Egg on Toast

The other morning, I had a head ache. There was only one thing I wanted. Egg on toast. I went downstairs to the kitchen, dug through my pots and pans and found the small sauce pan. I filled it with water and put two eggs in it. I turned on the fire and waited until the water just began to boil. Then I set the timer for three minutes and thought of Mother.

Egg on toast was my mother's remedy for anything. Egg on toast. Not soft boiled egg on toast. Just egg on toast. As I stood in the kitchen waiting for my eggs to boil, I put two pieces of wheat bread into the toaster. I could see my mother's arthritic hands. I could see her open the bread bag. I could see the plate - always a small one sitting waiting to be of service. Egg on toast doesn't take up a lot of space on the plate so a large, dinner size is just too big. Egg on toast served on a dinner plate does not taste as good as on a little plate. Egg on toast is best, frankly, with white toast. That's what I grew up with - but I fix mine on wheat toast. The texture isn't quite right, but it's my bow to healthy eating.

Once the timer went off, my mother would pour the water out of the pot and then she would scoop the egg out with a large spoon and run cold water over it to cool it. Then she took a knife, and with a clean, sharp hit to the side would crack the egg and scoop out the somewhat runny yoke and white with the knife onto a buttered piece of toast. She repeated this move with the second egg. Then she would kind of chop up the egg - so that it spread over the entire piece of toast. But here is what made the meal so delectable.

After both eggs were dumped onto their respective pieces of toast, she salt and peppered them liberally. Then with the knife and a fork would lift one of the pieces of toast onto the other to make it a double decker. Then, she cut the two pieces into bite sized squares. This is the only way I can eat egg on toast. Cut up.

Now my daughter, to whom I passed this family breakfast recipe, eats her egg on toast differently. A rebel, she does not stack the toast, nor does she cut them into bite size pieces. She cuts one bite at a time from a whole piece of toast. I think she is missing out but you know how the younger generation is.

I'm heading down now to fix egg on toast for breakfast.

Three Questions

I've heard a lot of graduation speeches in my life. I can't remember a word of any of them, though I could probably sum up their content by inserting a few platitudes, jokes, and lofty words of wisdom. I can't remember ever thinking, "I'd like to hear that graduation speech again!" until Friday, when I sat in a sea of cardinal and gold, listening to the president of USC, Steven B. Sample speak to the class of 2010.

His speech was short. His words were simple. His message profound. His lesson lasting. He asked three direct questions. How do you feel about money? How do you feel about children? How do you feel about God?

As he spoke, it was impossible not to reflect on my own set of beliefs. I'd never made the connection between these questions and the choices I have made in my life.

Sample did not offer any pat answer to the questions. He did not preach any self righteous judgement about how one should answer the questions. He simply suggested that if one is able to answer for one's self each of these questions, they will lead to greater self knowledge. Like a compass, these questions have the power to lead one in a direction that can truly benefit human kind. At the same time, if one is able to answer these questions, it is likely they will feel more fulfilled in the choices they make in their lives.

It was especially surprising to hear the president of secular institution address the question of God. Whether one is a believer, agnostic, or atheist, it makes complete sense to know what one believes rather than to avoid the question altogether. And that, in my estimation, was the brilliance of his speech.

Any one who knows me, knows that Rilke is my favorite sage. Many of my students have received from me copies of Letters to a Young Poet for a graduation present, book marked at the page where Rilke says, "Live the questions."

In his speech, Steven B. Sample, imprinted on the memories of thousands of people sitting and standing outside Doheny Library on the grounds of the University of Southern California three simple questions that when asked force each person to confront the choices they have made and will make in the future.

I have only begun to examine my own answers to these questions. Three questions that will for the rest of my life, serve as my compass. I am grateful that my son will never forget the words of the speech delivered on the occasion of his commencement. Those words proved that his education was worth every cent we paid. Fight On!