Dave Bussan Speech at Denison University Phi Beta Kappa dinner

May 17, 2019

Graduation is not so much an ending as it is a beginning. As each and every one of you leave this hill that you’ve called home over the past four years taking classes and making friends… Oh, that’s not today, right? 

Tomorrow...? 

I’ve always wanted to use those lines. And since I retired from Denison at the conclusion of last semester, I’m pretty sure that this would be my last chance to do so.

Tomorrow you will become Denison alumni. I joined that group when I graduated from Denison in 1981 with a major in Cinema. I recall little of my own graduation other than it took place too early in the morning in the old Livingston Gym on a rainy day in late May. Our commencement speaker was an esteemed judge who shall remain nameless mainly because I don’t remember his name. However, I have a pretty good feeling that you won’t have any difficulty in recalling your college commencement speaker in years to come. I remember only one thing the judge said in his address to our class, and that was “in years to come you won’t remember a thing I say today.” Well, I guess I proved him wrong.

Herr Rettman, my high school German teacher for four years, once mused before giving our class an exam that if we were to receive a 50% on any assignment it would be considered a failing grade. He continued by stating that if we were to remember half of everything we learned throughout our lives we’d likely be considered geniuses.

Dave enjoying the sunset, as he does

Apparently, everything is relative.

I’m grateful to Dr. Lall for asking me to speak today. It’s truly an honor to be here standing before you. Congratulations on your accomplishments and I hope that you’ll bear with me as I meander through my prepared remarks.

When Dr. Lall asked me if I’d speak today I readily admitted that I wasn’t a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In fact, it would be stretching it just a tad to say that my Denison GPA just shy of a 3.25 made me a solid B+ student. To be honest, GPAs have little currency outside of academia. While they are certainly a marker of past classroom success, they are not necessarily a predictor of future successes. At least this is how I excuse my B+ tendencies. Your future successes will have to be earned in a variety of ways through work, play, family, and friends.

All of you have achieved so much. You’re not just outstanding in your major fields of study but also in your electives and General Education classes. For some of you, but not all, you’ve already made early career choices. While all of you will end up with at least one career you might want to consider exploring several fields before settling into the one that you think will be the most rewarding for you. Don’t forget, you get to define “rewarding” however you’d like.

I recently asked a dear friend of mine who is a Denison alum from 1985 and a member of Phi Beta Kappa what advice she would have liked to have received when she was graduating. Rebecca was a Psychology major with a Math minor. Having grown up in Ohio she eventually moved to Manhattan after working in Denison’s Admissions Office for a couple of years. Rebecca was always good with numbers and quickly found employment as a numbers cruncher. But she always enjoyed cooking. And Rebecca was a good cook. Well, she enjoyed cooking so much that she enrolled in night culinary school while keeping her day job. To make a long story just a bit shorter, she now works for the Food Network copywriting recipes. Apparently, celebrity chefs don’t necessarily measure ingredients when they’re cooking. It’s Rebecca’s job to make sure that these recipes are foolproof so that those of us at home who aren’t expert chefs can make dishes that closely approximate the ones seen on TV or written on the web. Rebecca’s advice is to not listen to others when leaving this hill but to follow your heart and passions. You can learn to be good at things you like to do. It just takes time. And just because you’re seemingly good at something doesn’t mean that you should make it your life’s work.

As time goes on you’ll find passions that you might never have considered. One must remain open to the possibilities. Passions don’t necessarily jump out at you or come easily. Passions are learned. One of my passions is baseball. I like all things baseball but I love the New York Mets. My passion for the Mets began in the fifth grade and has only intensified through the decades as I came to understand the nuances of the game better. I was never good at playing the game but through thousands of hours of watching baseball and reading about it I can no longer imagine a life or a world without this sport.

Earlier this week I received a text from a recent alum. In part he wrote, “I need to hear about how you cope with baseball failures. I’m not a child anymore, and the torture the Pirates have put me through is starting to wear on my poor heart. I’m interested in your coping mechanisms.” As you can see, sometimes passions lead to disappointment, too. But that’s OK. Because for that fan, when the Pirates do eventually win the World Series again his passion will have paid off handsomely. And then again, if they don’t, sometimes the process is its own reward.

My advisor in graduate film school once told our class that since the dawn of time there have been thousands of great artists but only a handful of great critics. He told us this to encourage us to take risks as filmmakers and not to listen to harsh criticism. If truth be told, all criticism in graduate school seemed harsh if not well intended. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to interpret my advisor’s words in another way. To me this now means that I should hold my own critical views close on a whole range of subjects as in the end my words are subjective and possibly not appreciated or even warranted by the party hearing them. And I’m not talking about filmmaking or art here. Criticism should be constructive or not at all.

I took a class in graduate school titled Film Now: Sex, Violence, and Exponential Nirvana. What I can say? It was the early 1980s. And I was in southern California. This was a seven-hour class of roughly 75 students where we viewed a feature-length film and then discussed it. On this particular Friday, yes, a seven-hour Friday afternoon class, the film screened was Sergei Eisenstein’s October. Don, our instructor asked for a show of hands as to who had seen this film before. I raised my hand as did most of the class. Then he asked of other Eisenstein films telling us to keep our hands up if we’d seen them. Potemkin? Strike? The General Line? Alexander Nevsky? Suffice it to say, that once he’d completed his litany of titles mine was the only hand still raised. He then asked me where I saw these films. Keep in mind home video was in its infancy and to see these films one had to view them on, well, film. I responded to his question by saying I’d seen them all as an undergraduate at Denison University. My alma mater prepared me well for graduate school. Keep in mind that my alma mater is soon to be yours, too.

I tell you this anecdote not only to give props to this college’s cinema department but as an example of something that can’t be taught, and that’s experience. You can’t watch a two-hour film in less than two hours. Like art, music, theatre, and dance, film has to be experienced. And that takes time. Knowledge is a wonderful thing to possess, though coupled with experience it’ll make life more enjoyable.

A couple of months ago I had a text conversation with a graduating senior and the subject of his college career came up. He suggested that friends of his have intimated that these past four years will be the best time of their lives. I immediately dissuaded him of this notion. Believe it or not, all of you are still being formed. I’m still being formed. If you do this life thing right, you won’t peak until you’re in your last decade.

There actually is something to this life-long learning thing. Experience along with knowledge and critical thinking make life more enjoyable with every passing year. The trick, as I stated earlier, is to remain open to the possibilities. Don’t stagnate; move forward. Reflect, but always move forward.

I’ve never been one to give graduating seniors too much advice, but since I almost have your undivided attention… well, here goes.

Follow your heart. Follow your heart while using your brain. Don’t feel compelled to do what others expect of you. Do what you expect of you. Try to live up to your own expectations. Have few regrets. Some are inevitable, but try to minimize their damage. You’re too young to be bored. Slow days last longer. Enjoy them. Celebrate their longness. Read a book. Listen to music. Take a walk. Or simply daydream.

If you can possibly avoid it, don’t go home to live after graduation. What you consider your home is now really your parents’ home. It’s a great place to visit but you don’t want to live there. And if your parents are anything like mine were, they’ll have questions. Seemingly innocuous dinner time questions such as “What did you do today?” or “How’s that job search coming?” take on greater significance than they did over Winter Break.
Believe me, I speak from experience.

Glenn and Dave in Vineyard Haven

OK, back to baseball for just a moment. Dan Quisenberry, a relief pitcher for the Kansas City Royals back in the 1980s was known for his witty quotes, my favorite being, “I’ve seen the future, and it’s much like the present, but only longer.” And while these words may seem amusing upon first hearing them, there’s more than a bit of truth underlying them. In a sense, all there is, is the future. The present is always fleeting and the past is always, well, in the past. Yesterday can’t be lived again. So, in essence, it’s the future where we think about living our lives.

Unfortunately, experience can’t be taught. But if it could, I'd teach you my past 38 years since graduating from Denison. And while college isn't the best four years of your life your record of achievement at Denison strongly suggests that you did college right. If you continue to learn and truly experience life, every day after tomorrow’s graduation will be better than the preceding one. Though impossibly fleeting, live in the moment.

Revel in it. Savor it. Give yourself license to be happy. Plan for the future by doing the right things today, tomorrow, and throughout the coming years. And if you do, I think you’ll agree with me, that it's a pretty good life.

Glenna Beckley’s story

I’m in Sierra Leone for two weeks to help document stories of people who have been affected by JSI’s program. 

Abubakar Kemoki with child health charts from WHO

It’s been very interesting thus far: I got out into a community about 3 hours north of Freetown to meet a clinical training officer who is improving the quality of care in remote health facilities by mentoring nurses and midwives to ensure they’re using the tools we’ve given them, like checklists and charts, to perform their jobs effectively. Many were trained years ago and have had little to no refresher training since.

Mental health nurse, Jennifer Duncan

I’ve also spoken with a mental health nurse, Jennifer, at the big national hospital here in Freetown. With the trauma of Ebola, and disasters like the mudslide last August (let alone 10 years of civil war the country is still recovering from), mental health is a huge concern. Until recently there were almost no mental health professionals in-country and now JSI is supporting their training—particularly as it related to Ebola survivors, but really, for anyone who needs it (because the skills are obviously transferable from one trauma to another). Jennifer was lovely and clearly passionate about the work.

Nothing, however, prepared me for Glenna.

Glenna Beckley is an Ebola survivor now working for an advocacy group that JSI supports (with USAID funding—thank goodness they still are able to fund this kind of work!), the Sierra Leone Association of Ebola Survivors. She is someone who has faced so many obstacles in her life, but is now working to help others. Here’s her story as she told it to me, somehow with a smile on her face.

Glenna telling me her story - somehow without tears

My mother was a nurse. She was working with Ebola patients, but started to feel poorly. So she came back home and got an Ebola test. The test came back negative, so we thought she was fine. The next morning she went back to the hospital—not to work, but to get medical attention—but was sent home because there weren’t enough beds there. My sisters and I took care of her. 

My mother died in my arms. I remember I was sitting on her bed, but my back was to her. She sat up and put her head on my shoulder. She then threw up blood over my shoulder into my hands, and as I turned around, she died. Then my elder sister also got sick, and my younger brother. 

Then I had to take my four-year-old daughter to the hospital. They gave her an Ebola test, but it takes 3 days for the results to come back. My daughter died before we even received those results. She died in my arms, and I was sick myself, so I just lay with her in the hospital bed until they took her body away. I couldn’t cry. I just thought I would die myself and it would all be over.

But I did not die. I was in the Ebola Treatment Unit for 9 days. We lost 5 family members and 4 of us survived. When I got home, I was the only one there and it was so painful. I hadn’t cried at all when everyone was dying. But once I got home, I couldn’t sleep; I would cry all night. I didn’t know what to do.

At times I thought it was all a bad dream and that I would soon wake up…

My job helps me cope. Every day I meet people who actually went through tougher times than I did—my story is small compared with theirs. Some women lost everything—their husbands and all their children. So, I take comfort in helping others.

When I asked Glenna for a specific example of someone she has helped (I am here to write it up, after all), she told me about meeting 5 siblings who had all been orphaned because of Ebola. The eldest had come to her office to register as a survivor (survivors get free health services—a program JSI is also involved with). She followed up with the kids, just as they were being thrown out of their house because they couldn’t pay the rent. The younger children were taken in by relatives, but they didn’t want the oldest girl who was 17 and an Ebola survivor. So Glenna brought the girl to live with her. That was two years ago, and the girl is about to graduate from high school. “I don’t know what she’ll do next, but at least I was able to help her a little bit,” Glenna said.

Coming back to the office this afternoon, my colleague Sam (you can read my interview with Sam here) told me that Glenna had gone to a conference in Guinea last year. Attendees were given a generous allowance to cover their costs and all had funds left over. Most spent that money on themselves. Glenna on the other hand bought things for the girl she was taking care of and spent none of it on herself.

It’s just been one of those days when I wonder at the accident of birth, of life—and what people do to keep going in the face of overwhelming sadness…

Musings on a Bike Path

Five years ago it was a dirt path running alongside the train tracks. A few people used it; not many. In 2013 Belmont won the battle to pave the path and create a useful space alongside the Alewife Brook Reservation.

These days, I’m back riding my bike. Along the way, I see a microcosm of our community.

I often see the same people, day after day—the group of 3 South Asian men (Indian? Bangladeshi?) walking slowly, heads bent toward each other in conversation. 

I pass the older cool cat who works at the hardware store, walking to work (sometimes running if it’s close to 8:30) or back again at the end of the day. Always rocking tunes on his Beats, always raising two fingers in a salute hello.

The Chinese couple walking their granddaughter; the wife often jogging out in front, her husband pushing the stroller. 

The Eastern European woman, whom I’ve noticed on the bus to Harvard Square as long as I’ve been on this commute (16 years) with her flaming red hair, always on the phone. Even walking the path she’s on the phone. In fact, I think I’ve only ever seen her NOT talking on her phone just once.

The South Asian elderly couple; she’s always 5 steps behind him. No conversation there, just exercise.

The parents on bikes with a child in the baby seat or pulled behind; the guys in a rush, aglow in bright spandex whizzing by.

Since several large apartment blocks and office buildings gave gone in, now we have more suits and tech geeks looking cool emerging from behind a fence, half way down the path.

Sunset over the Alewife Brook Reservation

On the ride home at night, some of the same folks and the families are out. Kids testing their biking skills, older siblings showing how it’s done, strutting their stuff.

And I’m the happy fool saying “good morning!” to anyone who catches my eye. Glad to be outside. Glad the bike path is there and well-used. Happy to be alive, particularly on a warm October morning.

A sleepy Sunday in Addis

It's a sleepy Sunday morning in Addis Ababa. 

I'm sitting in the restaurant (where it's a lot cooler than my room) working, looking out over the road.

Mum with baby on her back

On any other day at this hour the road is jammed with cars all honking at each other and people trying to walk up or down without getting side-swiped. Last year they made this road one way, though much of the time - particularly on a Saturday - no one pays attention and two or three rows of cars are all trying to get past each other.

This morning it is quiet.

boys enjoying each other's company

From my perch I've watched a man walking his two young daughters, the girls both in traditional Ethiopian white dresses with colorful bars up the front, a man and his boy bicycling by (never seen that here before!), teenage girls - and boys - walking hand-in-hand or arms draped around each other's shoulders down the street (I love that Ethiopian men are not afraid to hold hands, link arms, or generally touch each other without everyone worrying that they might be gay).

Well, there goes a car up the road the wrong way. And so it goes.

Woman and her load

A Visit to Stone & Thistle Farm

We live our lives, in our suburban house, going to work (ok, yes, to an interesting job that takes me very interesting places), engaging with friends, but generally stay in the little bubble we’ve created for ourselves.

This past week we visited friends who run a farm in the Catskill Mountains, outside Oneonta New York. It took us out of our lives in ways we’d never anticipated.

Stone and Thistle Farm is very much a working farm that produces free-range meats for sale. Our friends, Denise and Tom Warren—who left Brooklyn almost 20 years ago—run the farm themselves and have just one employee and a 16 year-old son still at home, Shane, who does the work of a man. Four people and about…

400 laying chickens

1100 broiler chickens

350 turkeys

100 pigs

150-200 sheep

40 cattle

30 goats

50 rabbits

5 guard dogs (and 2 new puppies—guard dogs in training)

And one house dog—Tony.

All I can say is that it’s a hell of a lot of work and I have nothing but admiration for their determination and drive to make it all work.

We first met when Denise and I worked at the design firm Corporate Annual Reports. I was 25, she 27—we were both young women taking Manhattan by storm and managing large corporate clients, from GTE to Nabisco. Denise and Tom had met at college and were soon married. They bought about 80 acres in the late 1980s and would retreat there on weekends. Somewhere along the line, Tom decided that law school was not for him… farming was. They made the move north in 1995 and, with a handful of sheep and goats, embarked on a new life.

Meat farming is no easy task. It’s a full-time job—that is 6am until 8pm, 365 days a year. Tom says, however, that the hardest part is business management. They make all their income during the 7-8 warmer months and almost nothing during the winter. And winters in upstate New York are cold, cold, cold (and heat is very expensive!). 

Ready for the slaughter

Stone & Thistle Farm sells meat. Each weekend they attend 5 different farmer’s markets, from Brooklyn NY to Oneonta. It’s a lot of work. Every Thursday Tom, Shane, and Susannah prepare about 80 chickens and 20 ducks for market—and by prepare I mean they kill them, remove the feathers, cut them into sellable pieces (breasts, thighs, etc.).  

They make sausage for sale—about 20 different varieties—and also sell eggs as well as bacon, ham, and steak, among other meats.

Shane assisting at the Oneonta Farmer's Market

There’s also a store they built about 10 years ago that works on the honor-system. People come and pick up the meat or eggs they want and leave what they owe at all times of day. Farmer’s markets make for long days—and long drives to and from Brooklyn every weekend, too (packing the coolers at 3 in the morning to head out by 4am).

Fable meals are served in the gorgeous kitchen addition.

But that’s not all. Denise brings her marketing acumen and ingenuity to create revenue. A fabulous cook, Denise now runs Fable, a farm to table dinner every other Saturday night and a brunch on alternating Sundays. The food is all local, the meat and many of the vegetables from their farm, and other foods from other neighbors farms—including the wine served. It’s all local. She also now has a corner of the house set up as a B&B and also a sweet cabin in a quiet setting down by the Kortright Creek. Both are available through airbnb.

Cleaning eggs - a daily task

The work never stops. We were glad to be there, after not seeing Denise and Tom for about 15 years (kids and farm-running getting in the way), to catch up on life, and to help out however we could.  We tried to be good guests and workers, assisting with everything from picking blueberries to helping clean dozens and dozens of eggs, picking beans and zucchini and digging up potatoes for dinner, to helping prepare the cabin for guests after the goats had ascended the porch to eat the flowers on display—what a mess!). 

It was a wonderful few days for us—and our old dog Bella, who is exhausted after charging through the new environment, challenging geese (who of course challenged her back), sniffing chicken guts, hiding with Tony under the house during a thunder storm, and relaxing (as is her usual mode). 

The best part, of course, was catching up with old friends. Despite lives that have gone in very different directions, finding the core friendship that can be picked up so easily even after so many years was the most fun. Denise and Tom’s lives are not easy, but they have wonderful friends nearby who look out for them, the most thoughtful, sweet son (who warmed to us after initial wariness!), and each other. Discovering all this was not what I’d planned when I suggested a brief visit—but we’re so glad we did.

Sunset over the farm