Nothing is a greater joy to me than to watch somebody we love succeed. My brother Evan graduated from the Perpich Center for the Arts yesterday along with the rest of the Class of 2005.

There were presentations from all five disciplines of the school: literature, dance, music, visual and media arts. All of the students are so amazingly talented and seeing a sampling of the outcome of their two years spent at the school was an awe inspiring treat to see. The highlight for me aside from seeing my brother receive his diploma was to watch the charismatic and wise Mr. Wesley Wallace from the Science faculty give his speech to the kids.

Mr. Wallace delivered his speech in the form of small nuggets of light hearted advice that summed up to a mantra for how to live to maximize happiness and live well. Starting from the everyday, "always recycle, because it is the right thing to do!" and, "learn how to enjoy to do the dishes!" He gradually moved his message forward using a simple graph showing a rising line labelled "material wealth" intersecting with a dead-flat line that read "happiness."

He further expounded on this concept with quotes from Kurt Vonnegut, moving on to Socrates, "an unexamined life is not worth living," and ending on the above slide of, "Got Ethics?" to much excitement and jubilalation from the crowd. I could not imagine a better final lesson from a teacher to send these kids to the next stage of their lives.

I, on the other hand, acted rather unethically during the graduation ceremony. There was an announcement that no photography or video recording of the precedings were allowed. It was stated that this was due for the, "safety of the performers during the ceremony." Indeed flashes can be dangerous and annoying but I felt this probably had to do more with the ability of the school to be able to sell you a DVD of the event later.

My father and I threw caution to the wind and we took pictures willy-nilly. It was quite dark in the Ted Mann Concert Hall so I had to crank the camera up to 3200 ISO in order to get anything decent. There is a bit of noise and banding in this image, but the preservation of the memory is what takes precedence.

My brother is the third student from the left. Way to go Evan!