...And there WAS light

I make this God/Dad joke just about every time I find my students sitting in the dark. It always feels empowering.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Asher Perlman (@asherperlman)

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs6OGo8OSu5/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Moving on

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Our Space (@theourspace)

Greer Stadium

Good times here. Fond memories.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lost Ballparks (@lostballparks)

Dr. Hanks

Actor Tom Hanks has told graduates from Harvard University in the US that "truth is sacred" and urged them to fight to defend it.

The two-time Oscar winner was the main speaker at the prestigious institution's commencement ceremony for students completing degrees.

He received an honorary arts degree himself.

"The truth to some is no longer empirical," he told an audience of more than 9,000 people.

"It's no longer based on data nor common sense, nor even common decency."

Telling the truth is no longer the benchmark for public service, he said.

"Truth is now considered malleable, by opinion, by zero sum end games."

Hanks also told the graduates they had a choice to be one of "one of three types of Americans, those who embrace liberty and freedom for all, those who won't, or those who are indifferent".

But he said that the responsibility to uphold the truth belonged to everyone.

"The effort is optional. But the truth, the truth is sacred. Unalterable. Chiselled into the stone and the foundation of our republic."

The 66-year-old's speech was not without its lighter moments as he joked about his lack of academic credentials.

"I don't know much about Latin, I have no real passion for enzymes and public global policy is something I scan in the newspaper just before I do the Wordle," he said, referring to the popular web-based game.

Hanks asked graduates not to be "embittered" by the fact he was receiving a degree "without having done a lick of work, without having spent any time in class, without once walking into that library".

But he made a "damn good living playing someone who did", he added, referring to the fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, whom he played in the films The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and Inferno.

"It's the way of the world, kids," he said as his audience laughed.

Hanks, who was one of six people to receive honorary degrees on Thursday, was also given a Harvard volleyball in reference to one of his best-known roles in the film Cast Away.

bbc

If I can't bring my dog...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by snoopy (@snooopyloverss)

Yeats [the best lack all conviction etc.]

 

Doesn’t help

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr_KyESuTA3/?igshid=NzJjY2FjNWJiZg==

Not funny

https://www.instagram.com/p/CryIkQNsIQz/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Hash

I never tire of revisiting WJ's philosophical self-reproach. All truth-seekers should reflect on it, continually,

"I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be epoch-machend at last, and a title of honor to my children! Childish idiot—as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!"

— The Letters of William James, Vol. II by William James
https://a.co/6o4BA3Q