Congratulations to you who are about to become graduates of the College of Saint Rose. You worked hard and accomplished a lot but none of us ever gets there alone. And as a parent myself, I would like you to congratulate your ‘rentals for co-signing those student loans and for standing with you the whole time along with your siblings, your other relatives, guardians and friends. We never get there without friends, teachers, and mentors along the way.

Many of you are education majors. How many are education majors? Raise your hand. My interest in art came because it was considered the right of every American at one time in this country, in communities big and small and in places of wealth and in places of poverty and I grew up with a lot of poverty, that every student would have art and music from kindergarten through high school. This has changed a great deal, especially the recent emphasis on the three R’s and teaching for testing and making sure that SAT scores go up and other scores are the units of measure by which we assess whether or not someone has learned something. But there is always the fourth R, art, if it hadn’t been … Before I was physically disabled, I was learning disabled, but in the 40’s and 50’s nobody knew anything about dyslexia. We were just dumb and lazy and a shirker and a malingerer. Every person needs the opportunity to feel special. I’ve never learned the multiplication tables. I can’t add 6 and 7, literally, without using the spots on dominoes to assist me. I have many deficits, but I have art and music. I look down at the orchestra here, and I was in band and orchestra all the way through school. I played the saxophone and I had art. Everyone needs a chance to feel special and I hope that those of you who are going into education and those of you who are fine arts majors that you will do what you can to make sure that institutions recognize the need for those who learn differently and those who have other ways to show their commitment to the material in the course through extra credit art projects, which is how I got through school. If I couldn’t remember the names and dates of the Lewis and Clark trail I would make a 20-foot-long mural of the Lewis and Clark trail and schlep it in instead.

At any rate, I hope that as you go on out into the world that you will take some of your experiences in education and push for greater commitment to the arts. I congratulate you on what you’ve accomplished, but I hope you enjoyed the process. The process getting there may not have been half the fun, but it’s a hell of a lot more important. I hope you continue to have a joy of learning, learning doesn’t stop here. I hope you have passion about your chosen field. It’s not too late. If you don’t have passion about your chosen field right now, rethink it. Really, because life is too short to spend most of the hours of the week doing something you don’t enjoy. One of the greatest indictments of the capitalist system, where we do not have to work on collective farms or work through propaganda for our government is that we have the right to choose what it is we do. And we ought to be passionate about it, and it ought to bring us pleasure. The vast majority of Americans say they get no pleasure from what they do for a living. There’s something really wrong with that.

And those of you who are taking the hair/shirt route, those people who are the art majors here, I would like to say something to the parents of the art majors. This is probably not what you had in mind, you know? You hope maybe, I don’t know, medical school, maybe a degree in law. I want to tell you that a life in art could be a wonderful life, it can be so fulfilling. Artists live better at near poverty level income than yuppie bond traders do at a much larger income. That’s because we learned a long time ago that if you don’t try to make up on the weekend for how deadeningly boring what you do all week long is and also if you’re not trying to make payments on a BMW, you can do a lot of other stuff.
So anyhow, I congratulate you all. I hope you go out into the world as bright eyed and bushy tailed as you are today with great passion, with great enthusiasm, and you can change yourself and change the world in the process. My hearty congratulations.

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