Congratulations seniors, the Newport High School, state of Oregon sesquicentennial class of 2009, a special rock and roll class. You really did make it. A few minutes from now, you\u2019ll walk out into the world with a diploma and embark on a new journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where will you go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What will you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who will you become?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will you have fulfilled your unique promise when I write about you 20 years from now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of you already know the answer to these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of you haven\u2019t considered them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May I offer a little help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May I humbly suggest a path to follow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So begins Robert Frost\u2019s poem The Road Not Taken<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In it, the poet looks back on his youth and his decision to take the road less traveled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He tells us how it made the crucial difference in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frost created a powerful and indelible metaphor for life with the image of the road not taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But really, have many Americans truly traveled the road not taken?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look where we are today. So many of your predecessors took the road to the seas of plastic in our oceans, melting glaciers, a ten trillion dollar national debt, two million Americans behind bars, a million homeless, school shootings, 50 million without health insurance, two wars with no end in sight, Wall Street avarice, and the imminent mass extinction of species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So seniors, other graduates before you may have believed they were taking the road not taken. They did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, you need to remake Frost\u2019s metaphor for the future into something vastly more powerful if Oregon and America are to survive and prosper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me offer changes to the road not taken metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How about the road not yet built?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The road not yet conceived?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The road not yet dreamed of? The road you must make in a way that no other American generation has ever tried to make before? How about building the roads of Martin Luther King and Rachel Carson, of Tom McCall and Harvey Milk, of George Washington and Emily Dickinson, of Susan B Anthony and Muhammad Ali, and of Elvis Presley before he became obese, drowned in Las Vegas, and died taking a dump on an upholstered toilet in Graceland while eating a ham sandwich?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seniors, build this new road for yourselves, your state, your country, your world, your children\u2019s children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engineer it like no other road in American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hack it out with a machete if you have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when you build this new road, take it, travel it. Inspire others to follow it. I have no doubt this road will, to quote a horribly underappreciated American rock band\u2014CREED\u2014it will, the Newport High School class of 2009, it will\u2026it will, this new road will\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take you higher!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Congratulations seniors, the Newport High School, state of Oregon sesquicentennial class of 2009, a special rock and roll class. You really did make it. A few minutes from now, you\u2019ll walk out into the world with a diploma and embark on a new journey. And then what? Where will you go? What will you do? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10105,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions\/10105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}