I Decline All Further Invitations to Speak Until a Later Time

I've done a lot of speaking today and yesterday. Yesterday evening I went to a UNA (United Nations Somethingorother) meeting with Ms. Kvitka and spoke on the Model United Nations program. We've got good ideas for things to do for MUN, and we also made some excellent connections with various other education groups. The demographics of the meeting were fascinating; about 60% of the attending people were elderly women. The women who ran the meeting must have been at least 70 years old and had a walker. After talking for quite some time and orchestrating the event, she apologized to us because apparently she wasn't up to her usual par: she had been speaking at some conference in California and had caught some laryngitis (I would have never guessed). I hope I'm like that when I'm 70.

On a more recent note, I spoke today at the quarterly meeting of the board of directors of the Oregon Council for the Humanities. The meeting was held at Catlin-Gable school. Luckily, I only had to go for an hour and a half or so, during which I received lunch. I spoke personally for about 7-10 minutes, as did two other recipients of the grant. We discussed our project and gave suggestions for the council on the program itself. Despite the fact that I initially didn't want to go, I actually enjoyed it. That was fine and dandy, but the most interesting thing occurred as I was leaving. My mom had dropped me off and then left for the duration of the meeting, and then she came to pick me at the end. She arrived at Catlin-Gable right as we were about to start leaving, and she talked to some people as the luncheon was finishing. I hadn't seen her yet, and I was talking to the executive director about Soviet military expenditures and public speaking. Apparently, however, the headmistriss of Catlin-Gable went up to my mom and wanted to know if there was anything they could possibly do to get me to come to their school. Later on, she basically suggested that they would be willing give me a free ride there. For those of you who don't know, admission to Catlin-Gable's "Upper School" (high school) is $17,350 per year. It's probably the best (or at least most prestigous) private school in the area. There's no way I'm going of course. It's a little too far away and is way too small (250 students in the "Upper School"), but the offer was still a little interesting. They're so rich that all of their students get laptop computers, their 50-acre campus has a wifi network throughout, and (according to my knowledge) their campus is either brand new or entirely remodeled. And the new campus is really, really nice.