...although I wonder at the use of the word "infect" in "do not infect our institutions of higher learning with vocational training." I don't see a necessary conflict there (and indeed, aren't the professional schools such as law and medicine themselves forms of vocational training?). Among the many regrets I have when I consider my line-of-least-resistance progress through college, a period in which I lazily exploited my existing strengths and made little effort to cultivate new ones, is that I passed up the opportunity to learn the craft of traditional letterpress printing under William Everson, even though I had already formed a nascent interest in typography.

I remain grateful to my parents, both of whom felt bad about not having extended their own formal schooling past the end of high school, for imparting to their children something of their intellectual yearnings and, yes, their cultural pretensions: I don't think they really appreciated classical music, but they thought it was the sort of thing that was appreciated in the circles to which they aspired, and so we absorbed a great deal of it growing up—and it stuck to our ribs.

cordially,