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We're edging into that season when a lot of people, under normal circumstances, would be celebrating landmark events with their friends and extended family. Birthdays. Weddings. Anniversaries. Graduations. Festivals and national holidays. People want to go camping, cottaging, picnicking, boating, swimming, hiking or travelling. Now they can't. Not really, anyway.
People are finding ways to adapt, using drive-bys and window visits and relying on whatever technology they may have access to in order to get together-at-a-distance with those they don't live with. But the power of human touch is totally absent - it's sort of like an out-of-body experience!
I do have some thoughts about graduations, though. Back in the day, our high school graduation ceremonies were not held in June - they occurred in November and were called "commencement". Not everyone actually made it back to their high school for commencement, of course. Some were working or attending university in some far-flung location, or perhaps they were estranged from their family and wanted to permanently sever ties with their home town, or perhaps for whatever reason, returning for the actual ceremony was not practical or desirable.
When I was about six, my sister came home for commencement and I had just had my tonsils out. But since commencement was kind of a big deal back then, the whole family attended, with me wrapped up in a blanket and held on someone's lap or maybe bedded down on a seat between two family members. I was pretty groggy through most of it - I could hear the proceedings but not see them.
When my high school graduation rolled around, it was actually my mother who was ill. My dad still attended, but the rest of the family had long since flown the coop and were living elsewhere.
After completing my undergrad work at Carleton, it turned out to be me who opted out of attending graduation (and this one WAS in the spring) even though I was still living in Ottawa. To be honest, I would have been tempted if we had gotten to have our ceremonies on the lawn of the National Arts Centre, as the previous year's graduates had done. Or, for that matter, on the Carleton campus itself, where it's typically done now. But for whatever reason, the ceremonies were held that year at the Nepean Sportsplex, which didn't strike me as a very exciting location, if I even knew where it was back then!
Nor did I go back to Western after earning my library degree. I finished all my academic stuff in mid-December and mid-snowstorm. In those days, and maybe still today, students on the trimester system did not have their own ceremony in December or January (and of course travel can be pretty miserable then too). So my official graduation date (and the one indicated on my degree too) was not until the following May. The question of going back then to officially receive it was, let's say, purely academic.
In any case, maybe we'll see a return to marking graduations in the fall again, at least with this year's group? Meanwhile, most of the summer celebrations we look forward to will not happen this year. As a famous anchorman used to say, "That's not news, but that too is reality."
Or if we're lucky, virtual reality.
People are finding ways to adapt, using drive-bys and window visits and relying on whatever technology they may have access to in order to get together-at-a-distance with those they don't live with. But the power of human touch is totally absent - it's sort of like an out-of-body experience!
I do have some thoughts about graduations, though. Back in the day, our high school graduation ceremonies were not held in June - they occurred in November and were called "commencement". Not everyone actually made it back to their high school for commencement, of course. Some were working or attending university in some far-flung location, or perhaps they were estranged from their family and wanted to permanently sever ties with their home town, or perhaps for whatever reason, returning for the actual ceremony was not practical or desirable.
When I was about six, my sister came home for commencement and I had just had my tonsils out. But since commencement was kind of a big deal back then, the whole family attended, with me wrapped up in a blanket and held on someone's lap or maybe bedded down on a seat between two family members. I was pretty groggy through most of it - I could hear the proceedings but not see them.
When my high school graduation rolled around, it was actually my mother who was ill. My dad still attended, but the rest of the family had long since flown the coop and were living elsewhere.
After completing my undergrad work at Carleton, it turned out to be me who opted out of attending graduation (and this one WAS in the spring) even though I was still living in Ottawa. To be honest, I would have been tempted if we had gotten to have our ceremonies on the lawn of the National Arts Centre, as the previous year's graduates had done. Or, for that matter, on the Carleton campus itself, where it's typically done now. But for whatever reason, the ceremonies were held that year at the Nepean Sportsplex, which didn't strike me as a very exciting location, if I even knew where it was back then!
Nor did I go back to Western after earning my library degree. I finished all my academic stuff in mid-December and mid-snowstorm. In those days, and maybe still today, students on the trimester system did not have their own ceremony in December or January (and of course travel can be pretty miserable then too). So my official graduation date (and the one indicated on my degree too) was not until the following May. The question of going back then to officially receive it was, let's say, purely academic.
In any case, maybe we'll see a return to marking graduations in the fall again, at least with this year's group? Meanwhile, most of the summer celebrations we look forward to will not happen this year. As a famous anchorman used to say, "That's not news, but that too is reality."
Or if we're lucky, virtual reality.
