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Pomp & Circumstance

By Jeremy Rosenberg
May 12, 2010
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commencement.jpg

Cue the orchestra, or at least the iTunes and P.A.It's graduation -- cap-and-gown -- time across Southern California and beyond, with college and university academic years coming to an end and the schools bestowing degrees.LMU already held its graduation ceremony, with Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick delivering the commencement address.The Boston Globe carried this reportand the speech is available from LMU online here.Otis, meanwhile, commenced with remarks by the great artist Alison Saar.
Barry Obama's Occidental College commencement speaker is New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Quotable Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be addressing Pomona. So will, briefly, Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne. And, apparently, protesters. NASA leader Charles F. Bolden, Jr. will be at Caltech.

USC gives retiring longtime president Steven Samplethe last word.

And UCLA's College of Letters and Science has signed up Gustavo Arellano.
Arellano writes the !Ask a Mexican column (motto: "Loving the
Reconquista since 1492") for the OC Weekly and other alt papers.

According to an Arellano post, at least one woman is particularly disappointed by his Bruin selection. (Caution: Adult language.)

And how could KCET.org not mention the May 1, 2010 scheduled Pepperdine Frank R. Seaver
College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences commencement speaker and
recipient of an honorary doctorate? That's right, meet Dr. Huell Howser.
Related: Slate from a year or so ago, a piece subtitled, "Politicians make lousy commencement speakers. Hire a celebrity instead."

Disclosure: TTLA's blogger has written for four of the sites /
institutions linked to above (Boston.com, OC weekly, LMU.edu, and USC).Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user KidMoxie. It was
used under Creative Commons license.

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