Tags: Instagram

Quiet, please, there’s a lady on stage.

I’ve always liked Celine Dion’s songs more than I’ve liked Celine Dion.

I’m not sure what it was: too slick, too produced, too perfect.

Then she started cancelling shows claiming she had a rare and mysterious disease. Since 2020 she’s been silent. No new songs, no new shows. Nothing. But…

Not.

Any.

More.

Her performance last Friday at the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, where she belted out Hymne à l’amour, was stunning in its own right.

But when you think how terribly sick she’s been, and still is, those four minutes singing in the rain became a global event.

It used to be that people asked: “Where were you when..?” and they would follow with some tragedy or assassination. The only good-news-version I’ve heard is: “Where were you when the astronauts landed on the moon?” But it’s not far-fetched, even when Ms. Dion’s 15-seconds of fame have already stretched to 40 years, for us to ask: “Where were you when Celine Dion sang in Paris?”

Read on…

It’s Speech Season

Instagram is jammed with shots of proud parents and their mortarboarded kids, degrees in hand (surely the most expensive paper on earth). Critical to this life passage is the convocation speech. Most of them are forgotten the second their words leave the speaker’s lips. A few, like Steve Jobs’, and Gloria Steinem’s, and Barack Obama’s, live on.

Here are three worthies from this year: The ahhhhmazing Jacinda Ardern at Harvard; Scott Galloway with advice to grads and lifers alike; and Elizabeth Bonker at Rollins College. Bonker, who lives with non-speaking autism and communicates solely by typing, urges her fellow graduates to use their voices to serve others.

Meanwhile………

RamsayWrites

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