Patti Smith at Wesleyan 2016
My daughter graduated with degrees in mathematics and computer science from Wesleyan University in 2016. She's now a senior software engineer at Meta, well married, with a healthy and happy first baby, our first grandchild. Can you tell I'm proud? I'll never forget her graduation ceremony. Sitting in the audience, I was nervously flipping through the program, not paying much attention to anything in particular. Time passed slowly, as more and more parents and loved ones filled the chairs facing the stage in front of the beautiful Wesleyan library. Eventually, things got under way. And then ... that voice! I recognized it instantly as that of a musical hero of mine, the venerable Patti Smith. Not more than a few words into her talk, I knew it was her. What more fitting a way to mark my daughter's college graduation than with the spoken words of this particular poet extraordinaire: - I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair
And my sleeping, it was bro...