Finis

All six hundred and fifty-someodd of them walked up, gathered their wits, shook hands with dignitaries and took their dipolomas to their seats. Tonight's two-hour ceremony was long, boring and ultimately rewarding to watch some of my favorite students make the transition from adolescence to adulthood with the moving of a tassel. How difficult to have one's worst year of his career and some of the most rewarding students...and yet I walked away with a sense of relief that the summer awaits. Class of 2007, many of you had better wake up, grow up and understand just what is required of you if you want to succeed as adults; those of you off to university or work who have their heads on straight, you are destined for a journey of ups and downs but one of challenge and success.

I continue to be amazed at the sheer power and intensity of the Live In Dublin set from Bruce and his seventeen-piece band. Timeless music delivered with the energy of a man who should be thirty years younger. A die-hard fan knows when the music is good when the seemingly old-fashioned folk songs rival the depth and emotional intensity as the Bruce-penned classics.

What's in store for the next several weeks? Hopefully an establishment of routine for the adults; I'd like to read a little bit in my back yard with my son playing and my babies sleeping. I'm looking forward to my brother and his family visiting in just a couple weeks. Camping.

The wheels continue to come off for the Bush Administration as a series of further setbacks show just how defunct and rudderless the current president is. Monday's no-confidence on the attorney general, the "war czar's" casting doubt on presidential decisions regarding the troop surge, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs resigning, the reports from Iraq, Russia and Europe that U.S. image and foreign policy is being dictated by hard-line warmongers from the Vice President's office. Scooter Libby's sentencing. Listening to David Broder today sickened me. This columnist, spouting that Libby was too harshly sentenced, believes that the root of the conviction is apparently an over-zealous special prosecutor. And yet, what ultimately this case focusses on is the Bush Administration's straw-man argument for war and the length to which it will punish those who disagree, albeit from a position of moral and factual strength. This political party that seized control of the government six and a half years ago on the premise of ethical superiority, is simply just another putsch with propaganda as weapon. What will the legacy of the GOP/Bush domination of the federal government in the first decade of the twenty-first century? Let's assess: health care? Immigration? Productive foreign policy? Productive domestic policy? Lessening of middle- and working class stress?

Ends and Beginnings

June 8th; always an awkward time upon the calendar. Tomorrow's the last official day of school, an arbitrary day for so many people important to me and yet just another work day for the most. The passage of time and its rites can only be important when others recognize it; just how many will stop tomorrow by first pour to raise their glasses and see to it how many others have just reached adulthood?
Tonight I gave the keynote address for the graduating class of 2007 - of an 8th grade class. So important and yet so fleeting. To stress over an event that lasted, in reality, one hundred seventy seconds and though for some, it may be part of the most important day of their lives.

I proceeded to join a family member and get royalty pissed. That's how I marked the day.

Tomorrow I finish cleaning my classroom and mark another year of victories and defeats. This year was a bad one; so many failures and lack of achievements that when one sees a young individual simply doing something normal, you celebrate in that you didn't completely fail in your vocation of 'saving the world'. What helps?

Bruce's new album was released on Tuesday, a day before the first anniversary of my last seeing him. The discs and concert footage are incredible. Just stellar and yet so deficient, as for something like Bruce pouring his heart out for an audience, a copy of such event lacks so much. And still, I find myself loving the material like he wrote it, lived it, like I lived it, like it's a part of my blood. William C. Williams' thesis holds sturdy with this new 'Live In Dublin' as Bruce as storyteller delivers two hours of life lived by those that only the written word can remember. This Dublin release is as Whitmanesque as Bruce can get - stories that neither originated nor cease with his telling - timeless tales of forgotten yet timeless souls who have captured the essence of living, fictional or not. The immigrants, lovers, fighters and resilient livers of life spring to superhuman size in songs that pass onto listeners exactly the spark of the human condition. For the naysayers who criticize this latest (and the previous release) as something subpar for the Springsteen canon, one only needs to listen how Bruce's own material loses itself among the other songs, many of them centuries old. A man relaying his insecurities and dreams of raising newborn babies, the faithful seeking redemption, lovers searching for forgiveness; this live release is the most satisfying, most complete, purest Bruce we've seen in nearly a decade. His 'Devils and Dust' merely a precursor, as he was preparing himself for this album and tour. 'The Rising' was an album that captured, like Don DeLillo's latest novel, the feelings of a wounded and bleeding nation; 'Dublin' captures up a people whose sole goal over the centuries is simply that of survival. In a sense, 'Dublin' engulfs not only 'Devils' but 'The Rising' and most of his best work.

As I watch my students collect their hard-earned diplomas and enter adulthood, I hope and pray for those such as myself that they helped, even in some small sense, prepare those young minds and souls for the vast and hard world that awaits.