The new school year.

Besides working on the darkroom and attending a baby shower this weekend (yeah, I know, it's a rock-n-roll lifestyle), I also decided to suck up to the parent institution and attend freshman convocation. A pretty hip author and jazz musician was the motivational speaker du jour (and no, he never lived in a van down by the river).

One thing that struck me, in his advice for how to succeed in college, was his anecdote about seeing Laurence Fishburne doing Shakespeare in Central Park. Apparently, he blew a line and, rather than flubbing or ad-libbing, he back up a step, put his head down, recovered his line, and then stepped back in a just attacked it, and hit the next several lines extra hard. This was his advice on how to fail gracefully.

Another thing that struck me was seeing what a visually impaired man did with his PDA. At first, I thought he was just doing what the professor in front of me was doing: playing solitaire through the president's speech. This guy was sitting one section over from me, so I saw him come in with white cane, but noted that he could see a bit. Later, I saw him with his PDA about 2 inches from his face--we're talking seriously near-sighted. But during the concert, I saw him stand up, snap a picture of the band, and then sit back down. I mean, a blind cat with a camera is gonna catch your eye, right? So I do a double-take, and see him studying the picture really intently. Was he using his PDA to see? Is this a totally un-designed feature that Sony and Palm and all the others didn't anticipate?

Of course, being the shy guy I am, I didn't run up to him and ask. But I'm really curious.