I practiced my commencement address at Agannis today, to get a sense of the acoustics and feel of the room.  Empty of bodies, it’s cavernous.  The delivery was fine, if weird without eye contact.  I scanned the empty chairs imagining them filled with students.  I keep tinkering with the speech, rearranging clauses, adding and subtracting words. A few days ago weighed in at a trim 962 words. New transitions and reinforcements of theme have brought it up to 1,017 words.  I wanted very much to keep it under a 1,000.  We’ll see.  I have 23.5 hours.

The theme?  I hate that question.  It’s about graduation, what else?  Not specific enough?  It’s about rejecting black-and-white answers and embracing gray area.  What does that mean?  You’ll have to hear the speech.