Cornell, as the song says, is High Above Cayuga’s Waters With Its Waves of Blue, Far above the Busy Humming of the Bustling Town-which town is of course Ithaca. The town is a pretty one, by the afore-mentioned lake, and the joint was JUMPING with all the Cornell grads and their families, their sisters, and their cousins, whom they reckon up by dozens-the liquor stores, as you may imagine, were PACKED.
We had a moving reunion with Oskar and Beatrice, and then a celebratory barbeque, followed by an excellent Indian dinner. Eating and drinking: we did a lot of it, and all good.
The next day we were able to secure a parking spot in College Town AND a table at a charming restaurant for brunch by dint of skipping the huge main graduation event and instead, sleeping late and then nipping in once everyone else had flocked to the football stadium. So while they broiled in the burning bleachers, we sipped our coffee in a lovely garden flanked by petunias, pansies and geraniums. In the shade.
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Then, a brisk walk straight up the side of a mountain onto campus (Beatrice and I in high heels), across a gorge with water foaming many feet below us, and into the luxurious Hotel School main building. There we engaged in the traditional pre-graduation ceremony of attiring the graduate. There is a particular garment which must be worn by those achieving their Masters, a sort of hood/strangulation/veil/handkerchief carrier device, cunningly appliquéd in velvet and satin. It must be worn JUST SO. Jacob remarked that had the geniuses who wrote the directions included a HEAD on the drawing of the body displaying the proper drapage, it would have been helpful. As it was, we despaired. So, we went over to the grand old gym where the Hotel School graduation was to take place (an ancient, wooden building, where I saw Aretha Franklin perform a hundred or so years ago) and Beatrice was able to enlist the aid of some professors--it took TWO Ph.D.’s to figure out the cursed thing! |
The keynote speech was succinct and good, a successful man from the business, who gave the graduates a simple and direct recipe for business success: establish goals and pursue them, stretch beyond the comfortable in your endeavours, listen to and trust your employees, and -- be honest. A good guy, a good--and SHORT--speech. Then, each graduate was called, each walked across the stage and shook hands with the dean, and we were done. We applauded the graduates and they filed out, to the other side of a huge red curtain which divided the enormous space in two, and when we joined them on the other side, what to our wondering gaze should appear but an endless white-clothed table stretching the length of the curtain, covered with rank upon rank of filled champagne glasses--backed up by smiling waiters brandishing bottles with which they endlessly filled endless glasses! And there were tables piled high with cheeses and cookies and fruits and breads! And all the families, so proud, so happy, clustering around their beloved children! And the cameras! There must have been a zillion dollars worth of cameras there! It was a splendid event, very well put together. How to feed a thousand hungry people in a very short time. Impressive! After sucking up as much champagne as possible, we teetered down the hill and had--more champagne, and lunch. After which, it was 4:30, and time for us to drive back to Washington, back through the beautiful mountains, back to summer.
Congratulations, dearest Beatrice!
Click on the delightful vision of champagne to see more pictures of this event
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