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A Prairie Home Companion Segment 1 for July 5, 2014
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BEAUTIFUL

It is so beautiful, Macalester College, July on the college green

Hydrangeas weeded, rose bushes, trees pruned, grass pristine.

After the tumult of spring semester, the exams, the term papers

On Dickens and Plato's Republic and the kinetic theory of the saturation of water vapors.

And then graduation anxiety,

And graduation and a night of insobriety,

And then the departure for a summer teaching English in Spain

Leaving behind this great yard between the Chapel and Old Main

This peaceful sweet-smelling

Paradise at Grand Avenue and Snelling

Where a girl walks out of Weyerhaeuser, in cargo pants and Birkenstocks,

Reading a book of poetry as she walks

Past a couple on the lawn, holding hands,

In the giddy early stage of their romance.

A guy speeds by on his bike, head phones on and his backpack. It

Holds a neon green jacket and a tennis racket

Outside Old Main, a girl with bright red hair and yoga clothes

Sits, legs extended, and touches her forehead to her toes.

Wind turbine is whirring like crazy in the Quad.

A jogger runs, singing along to his iPod.

On the tennis courts, the thwop of the volley, the squeak of shoes,

Boys and girls, 10-12, learning footwork, volleys, strokes and follow-throughs,

Bikes in the bike rack, helmets hanging on the handle bars, no locks.

People sitting at an umbrella table, eating lunch from a lunchbox.

An empty campus. One feels the disconnect

Gone is the cast of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht.

Gone.

Are the students who built an igloo on Kagin Lawn.

And outstanding student athletes like Izzi Speer, Will

Matsuda, Papa Diop, Eric Biggers, Dylan Saul

And Laura Avena who hit 1,000 "kills" in volleyball.

A few weeks ago they walked across this green:

Auburn Jimenez the cross-country champion who also

kicked three field goals to help Macalester beat Trinity

Bible 44-13-

We can feel their shadows on the wall:

Fulbright Scholarship Winners: Rebecca Galey, Ann

Huber, Charles Nesler, Jon Dahl,

And Sarah Rasmussen who will do research in Nepal.

Lucy Andrews-geology major, Women's Track and Field captain,

Who spoke at commencement, wrapped in

Her gown and stole, and spoke to Rachel, Renee, Jeremy, Johnny,

And Abigail Stowe-Thurston awarded a scholarship to

study languages in Azerbaijani.

And now the Class of 2014 is gone, gone, gone,

And we the tired, the old, the jaded, sit on their lawn

And listen to music from way back when

And imagine we are twenty again,

Single, anxious, in love with our own ideals,

Very ethereal,

And making three meals

A day of breakfast cereal.

Thanks to the college for letting us in.

On September 3rd, fall classes begin.

In just two months.

I was young once

And such a state I was in you'd

Not want it to be continued.