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Archive for January 20th, 2010

Jan 20

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Shedding Some Light

From Sherri Jackson of The Cenla Light, we learn:

Mayor Jacques Roy participated in the (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) parade but didn’t attend the program. Sykes said an apparent mix-up resulted in Roy’s name not being on the program. Several people, including the Rev. Joe S. Green, tried to get Roy to come in to the program, but he didn’t come.

I didn’t attend the parade or the prayer breakfast, but my sources say that Ms. Jackson’s reporting is, well, a little light, if you will. The Mayor didn’t attend the program, because he wasn’t on the program. Simple as that. It would have been inappropriate to wedge himself into a program, and even though many people were offended by the exclusion, including at least one person on the program who threatened to leave, the event was about honoring the life’s work of Martin Luther King, Jr., not about politics.

At least it should have been.

Jan 20

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Freshmen Can’t Graduate

This is my blatantly self-promoting, braggadocios, and sarcastic speech to the Alexandria Senior High Freshman Academy awards ceremony (Academy Awards, yeah):

Good morning.

I want to thank the faculty for the opportunity to speak with all of you about the importance of education and the journey that you are all now embarking on together.

I know it’s still a little early, so I’ll try not to put ALL of you to sleep.

When the late, great novelist David Foster Wallace, who wrote an amazing book called Infinite Jest, was asked to deliver a commencement address at Kenyon College, he began with a funny little parable:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the heck is water?”

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