Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Baccalaureate 1
1 What to do When You Have the Power; In the Meantime, Remember to Skylark!
Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, June 1970 3
2 The Terrible Disease of Loneliness can be Cured!
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, May 26, 1974 19
3 Let the Killing Stop
Barnstable High School, Barnstable, Massachusetts, October 23, 1969
4 How to Make Money and Find Love!
Fredonia College, Fredonia, New York, May 20, 1978 53
5 Advice to Graduating Women (That All Men Should Know!)
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, May 15, 1999 67
6 How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't
Rice University, Houston, Texas, October 12, 2001 83
7 How Music Cures Our Ills (And There are Lots of Them)
Eastern Washington University, Spokane, Washington, April 17, 2004 91
8 What the "Ghost Dance" of the Native Americans and the French Painters Who Led the Cubist Movement Have in Common
The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, February 17, 1994 115
9 How I Learned from a Teacher What Artists Do
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, May 8, 1994 131
10 Don't Forget Where You Come From
Batter University, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 11, 1996 137
11 Why Social Justice does more than Art to Nourish the American Dream
State University of New York at Albany, May 20, 1972 143
12 How to be a Wise Guy or a Wise Girl
Southampton College, Southampton, New York, Jane 7, 1981 159
13 Why You Can't Stop Me from Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson
The Indiana Civil Liberties Union (now The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana), Indianapolis, Indiana, September 16, 2000 173
14 Don't Despair if You Never Went to College!.
On receiving the Cart Sandburg Award, Chicago, Illinois, October 12, 2001 185
15 How I Got My First Job as a Reporter and Learned to Write in a Simple, Direct Way, While not Getting a Degree in Anthropology
From An Unsentimenal Education: Writers and Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995 193
16 Somebody Should Have Told Me Not to Join a Fraternity
"If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Advice to the Class of '94 from Those Who Know Best," Cornell Magazine, May 1994 205
17 The Most Censored Writer of his Time Defends the First Amendment
"The Idea Killers," Playboy Magazine, January 1984 207
18 My Dog Likes Everybody, but Was Not Inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome or the Renaissance
"Why My Dog Is Not a Humanist," The Humanist, November/December 1992 217
Unstuck in Time-Quotes to Ponder 227