I had a meeting last night that went from 6:30 until 8:45. Ack! Fortunately, snacks happened to be provided at this meeting, otherwise, I would have had to leave early. Seriously. B/c of the location, I have to go straight after work. But no more! The next meeting we will start to meet in a more central location, with no squaredancing in the background. I won't miss the calls in the background, let me tell you. Last night we were discussing the financial report and the squaredancers were dancing to "Elvira". It was so hard to concentrate while that songs was on. Anyway, I ramble.

As I'm sure you know by now, reporter Chris Hedges was booed off the stage at the Rockford College commencement. I didn't realize that Rockford was where Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, graduated from college. In this interview on Alternet, he discusses what he witnessed at the commencement:

"As I gave my talk and I looked out on the crowd, I was essentially witnessing things that I had witnessed in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina or in squares in Belgrade or anywhere else. Crowds, especially crowds that become hunting packs are very frightening. People chanted the kind of cliches and aphorisms and jingoes that are handed to you by the state. "God Bless America" or people were chanting "send him to France" – this kind of stuff and that kind of contagion leads ultimately to tyranny, it's very dangerous and it has to be stopped.



"I've seen it in effect and take over countries. But of course, it breaks my heart when I see it in my country. That's essentially what I was looking at was in some ways a mirror of what I was trying to speak about. And I think I managed to touch upon it somewhat when I talked upon this notion of comradeship as a suppression of self awareness and self-possession to sort of follow along, locked in the embrace of a nation, or of a group, or of a national group unthinkingly, blindly. And there is a kind of undeniable euphoria in that. And that's what I was looking at."