<p>Hey northeastmom,
Double congratulations on the GT purchase and your 3,000th post!</p>
<p>Listen, can anyone get to the weather-marmots for me? I need some help with weather. A tall order, I know. I’ve got a college graduation for S#1 this weekend, with outdoor events on both Saturday and Sunday, and I’m looking at weather predicted to be maybe 90 and humid with scattered thunderstorms on Saturday and maybe 80 and humid on Sunday. I really can’t deal with this with an entourage of 10 in tow!</p>
<p>momof3sons, Thank you. I did not even realize that I hit 3,000 mark. I haven’t paid attention to my post #s for a couple of years, so thanks for observing my 3,000th post.</p>
<p>Back from my college reunion. WHAT A GAS. </p>
<p>The way Brown does graduation & reunion is ALL AT ONCE. It is so fun to mix it up with those seniors! (That way, at your 25th reunion you can make connections with people who can push your wheelchair one day when it’s their 25th and your 50th!) </p>
<p>Here’s the part that made me cry.</p>
<p>So there are these gates, the Van Wickle gates, that are only opened two times each year, and you are only to pass through them two times in four years. Once, you march through them into the Brown campus, when you arrive as a freshman.</p>
<p>Then, at your graduation, you march out of them, back into the world again when you are done. </p>
<p>But here’s the cool part. The graduation parade is led by the very oldest alumni who have made it back for reunion. With their canes, wheelchairs, walkers, etc. So right up front will be the one or two people from the 75th reunion-- there, dammit, and still kicking!- then, behind them, the 70th reunion alumni, the 65th, and so forth. Each group walking behind their respective class banner. Each group a little larger and the really big representation for those reunion years that are multiples of 25.</p>
<p>As each group of alumni proceeds through the Van Wickle gates, they part, half to the left, and half to the right, and line the two sides of the street. Then they turn and clap for the class marching behind them, who walk past their elders and, once they are beyond them, also part left and right to line the two sides of the street. So it goes with every class, getting younger all the time, making their way past the oldest alumni who are clapping and cheering for them as they walk by, and then taking their own places along the parade route to clap in turn for the younger people walking behind them.</p>
<p>Finally, after the 5th reunion class, the 2007 grads file through the gates and are cheered thunderously along the route by all the alumni who have come before them… the oldest ones are the ages of their great-grandparents, then further on the grandparents, then the parents, then the near-peers… Like viewing a human life in reverse. The whole parade route is lined with these cheering alumni. Lots of tears! The kids are over the moon but also sad to be leaving. Very beautiful! </p>
<p>Then the trustees and professors in their fancy robes follow behind the graduates-- and they get lots cheering & love from all their decades worth of ex-students as they pass. </p>
<p>THEN the very oldest alumni rejoin the parade, taking their place behind the professors. They now get to march past all the younger alumni further along the route, and so the whole parade unfolds the other way and now the younger alumni get to cheer for their elders who cheered for them already.</p>
<p>It is a beautiful tradition, a moment of feeling unity and kinship with all the other people who are there; whether you know them or not you are all a part of it. A huge emotional high!</p>
<p>GO BROWN!!</p>
<p>momof3–just have them blow the T-storms to us here in the Ohio Valley. We need the rain! (Tho we have graduations here too this weekend…oopsie.)</p>
<p>Great BROWN graduation tradition! OK, if I could go back to school, that’s where I’d want to go, just for the grad parade.</p>
<p>SBmom-that sounds so cool! I’ll bet even the 75 year reunion alumni get an adrenaline rush of sorts which helps them make it through what sounds like a long parade!</p>
<p>SBMom. I had a similar experience for my 25th. Made me cry, marching down the road at the head of the parade (25thers are the head) and seeing the entire graduating class in their costumes at the end of the parade ground, waiting to join in at the tail. Yeah, Princeton does costumes…</p>
<p>Anyway, just seeing how the school has changed and how it has endured. I am so glad you had a good time.</p>
<p>Did everyone tell you OMG you look incredible? ;)</p>
<p>SBMom…thanks for the anecdotal account. I am a total sap. My daughter goes to Brown. I know about the tradition with the Van Wickle Gate…passing through upon entering Brown and then they open again when you graduate to pass through. I was not there on the day my D’s class matriculated on their first day of school (was after the orientation and drop off days) but just seeing her PHOTOS of going through the gate made me cry. I guess I will again next year at this time when she and others pass through them and also all the alumni classeson graduation day!</p>
<p>Actually, this reminds me of another experience at Brown. When I took my D to ADOCH (A Day on College Hill) which is a two day open house event for accepted students in April of senior year…all these students were out hanging out on the college green on what was a glorious warm sunny first spring like day. As each small group of newly accepted students (high school seniors) came out of Faunce House after registering for the two day event and being led by a student to their host dorms…all the current students on the green would erupt into applause and cheering, welcoming these accepted students to Brown, in a spontaneous way…as they walked along the path of the green, throughout the afternoon. It also made me tear up.</p>
<p>Awwww…I want to be plenty-nine years younger so I can go to Brown. What a wonderful tradition.</p>
<p>Alu, Yep. Good feedback. Such a lift! I stuck with the Eurotrash alumni as much as possible; they are the most courtly. :)</p>
<p>Jeez – when I went to my 25th reunion, I had to sleep in the smelly dorm on bad beds and drink warm beer. Granted – it took me right back to the college days, but I could have gone for one of those glorious parades…</p>
<p>Haha. Princeton was markedly short on Eurotrash. Somehow 4 years in a New Jersey suburb just did NOT appeal to that crowd:).</p>
<p>pulling my people up from page 2…</p>
<p>SB, it sounds like you had a great time hanging with the eurotrash (you know I am holding and shaking my head). What am I going to do with you??</p>
<p>Wow, I got emotional reading about the ceremony at the gates. I guess you could take all of us, because they would have slammed and locked them vowing to never let us go through them again.</p>
<p>“Inability to have a good time with eurotrash” would probably be one of the clinical signals of being dead. :)</p>
<p>Anyone else up early for drop off at the SAT 2s? TSFS should get a real butt-kicking, since I don’t think he did squat to prepare. My parting words: “if it’s all greek to you, cancel the scores!”</p>
<p>ARRRRRRRGH!</p>
<p>SBMom, haha… so how did it go today with the SATIIs? Will he be canceling? </p>
<p>S called earlier this evening ready to burst (for the first time in months, I might add) because he scored a 179/180 on his last practice LSAT before the real deal a week from Monday. (He said not to tell anyone, but I say virtual people in a bar don’t count, right?). Actually, I don’t care what score he eventually gets but I would pay good money to hear that kind of excitement in his voice again. It’s been a long, hard winter/spring for that kid, and for us by proxy. Hope your TSFS did well enough not to cancel! :)</p>
<p>I need a beer!</p>
<p>You can get from Abilene to San Francisco, but your bags can’t.</p>
<p>You can get from Sacramento to Washington, DC, but if you have to stop in Chicago, its going to take you 15 hours.</p>
<p>My week from hell. </p>
<p>The only redeeming factor was a truly spectacular Vietnamese Restaurant in Sacramento called Lemongrass. Warm sticky rice with home made coconut ice cream and fresh mango was topped off a great meal.</p>
<p>momof2, He did not cancel them. We’ll see if that was the right move!</p>
<p>LFWB, a gastronome can always find redeeming good meals on even the worst of days! Sounds yummy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Congratulations! Your first step!</p></li>
<li><p>Next step is the Completely Irresponsible Fun Car. WashMom L-O-V-E-S the Miata I bought for her on the occasion of her *0th birthday. She tells everyone, “I love it. You should buy one now.”</p></li>
<li><p>I know you’re a girl and everything, but that description of the new car was totally inadequate. Give us some details!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>good to hear, SBmom!</p>
<p>Yikes on the lost bags and the layover in Chicago, LF dad! Hopefully, your weekend will outshine the week!</p>
<p>Our family is always amazed at the serendipitous meals we find on the road. I don’t think we could do better if we had travel director guiding us to “good eats.” We aren’t real picky, but we do like good food, and even when the rest of the day is a wash, (or maybe because the rest of the day was a wash) we almost always manage to find a small banquet in the local cuisine. Never fails to redeem the day. :)</p>
<p>(And by “small banquet” I might mean the best handmade pizza in the world, or the best smoked salmon and good bread picked up at the local grocery and eaten in the park under redwoods.)</p>
<p>And this being SA, I have to admit that sometimes finding that the local establishment has a liquor license redeems the day. ;)</p>