Good to hear that you got all the graduation "i's " and "t's" dossed and crotted. It is one of those, thought-provoking , send them out into the cold cruel world kind of experiences that reminds us how educating isn't too far removed from parenting in one respect. I found your whole account of the event more than a bit nostalgic - and I'm gonna go back to the whole education milieu before I sign off here.
Just finished our swing through southernmost Ontario to touch base with both of our families for the holiday season. For my lsbh It was a poignant reminder of just how things change as parents grow old. Sometimes the " Golden Age" moniker can be quite ironic.
Interesting to see just how much the price of gas affects everyday life down thataway. No surprise, though. My in-laws live in Kingsville, Ontario. It's a satellite community of Windsor, Ontario which is just across the bridge from Detroit. Windsorites, who toiled for the big three automakers in Canada, or who commuted across the Detroit River on the Ambassador Bridge every weekday to work for those same auto companies stateside comprised the bulk of the population for multiple generations. The whole economic superstructure was, in a big way, spawned by and predicated upon low fuel prices.
It was decade upon decade of boom times up until the price of crude took off. Major cracks started to appear in the foundation of the North American auto industry in the last quarter of the 20th century. Nowhere did this become more apparent than in the lower Great Lakes area, where I grew up. This was the epicenter of the proverbial land of milk and honey and the queen bee clearly lived in Detroit. In my pre-teen and early teen years those trips to Motown a couple of times a year were akin to a jaunt to The Emerald City. 
Interestingly enough, even though Detroit has slipped well and sadly below it's past glory, the Ambassador Bridge is still the busiest one along the Canada-U.S. border. Plans are afoot even now, to build a second bridge to ease the traffic situation for the bridge and tunnel.
So, this time when I took my dad-in-law to that frozen-in-time barbershop of his that I mentioned a few months back I was reminded how this area gave birth to and economically, and psychologically hitched its hat and coattails to the auto industry for at least a century. The regulars were there rambling rapturously on about how, now that gas has gotten back to " where it should be " we can get back to driving "real comfortable cars". "Clamp teeth firmly on tongue", my inner voice ordered.
Anyhow, once we got back from no Wi-Fi land I looked back at my hastily assembled entry from just before I left and realized that I should have been more precise about which part of the educational spectrum I was talking about vis-a-vis the homework thing. I'm talking strictly about the grade school/high school arena.
Post-secondary is another galaxy completely. My salad days student experiences are really my only frame of reference, in that regard. There were plenty of fellow students, I remember, who definitely took the " I'm here for a good time, not a long time " approach to their academic lives and who trod regularly on the path of least resistance.
'Tis true that I would have been a constant hiker on that path except that I had to pay the freight for any post-secondary education I chose, so that changed my motivational ground rules significantly. Slaving whenever possible for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company meant that in the off hours from my post secondary educational pursuits, I wasn't free to be a regular on the stoner and beer-blast circuits - although I, initially at least, tried to keep in touch, shall we say. Also. I was only a year into undergrad when I met my LSBH - lets hear a major round of applause for the fortunate intervening hand of fate on that one!!
As an educator I've not ever had to deal with post-secondary students who are there on their parents tab, and may feel that its party-hearty time whenever there is a break in the action. My daughter's teaching tales from the university trenches make it sound like their kind has not gone extinct and won't be doing so anytime soon.
BTW, as I'm writing this I'm listening to " The Art of McCartney " a recent tribute album to Paul McCartney and it's pretty darn good. Artists who've covered his work on it run the gamut. Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Billy Joel, Smokey Robinson, Yusuf Islam ( aka Cat Stevens ) B.B. King, Willie Nelson and a wackload more. 
The most intriguing inclusion on this collection, for me, has to be Dion - yes!, the fifties heartthrob who gave us " The Wanderer " and "Run Around Sue" and then returned in a most classy way in the 60's with " Abraham, Martin and John " has stuff on this 42 song compilation. It does point up just how superlative and almost unparalleled Mr. Paul is as a songsmith and how those in the industry revere him - Far out! Well, since I've managed to steer things into the musical realm let's finish off with some more of the same. I was thumbing through the local newspaper - The Owen Sound Sun Times - and came across a most enjoyable little article by a former United Church Minister from this area. " All hail the king of this season's instruments" went the title and that made me curious. It kept my eye because in the first paragraph he was recalling an occasion of musical wonder he experienced at a Christmas themed musical performance in the Metropolitan United Church in London Ontario a number of years back. In high school I was in the orchestra and we played there a couple of times that I remember for the same reason. This church had ( and may still have ) an absolutely awesome pipe organ. To be in a concert where a full orchestra and a pipe organ combine their decibels can be, as the author of the article so simply and eloquently put it
" Bombastic. Thrilling "
I've been fortunate enough to be there to experience that gut-shaking feeling when this instrument is in the hands of an artist and I agree with him absolutely that " nothing beats the king of instruments at full throttle."
We are, as we blog, watching the yuletide come in here, with anticipation, too. I've got my Santa #+$* together , as they say, and am ready and eager for the opportunity to have daughter, son and assorted other relatives together for a short but sweet time.
Catch ya later, and have a good Christmas.
Don
All images sourced from Google Images
Fig. 1 - www.zerofiltered.com
Fig. 2 - www.peterwerbe.com
Fig. 3 - www. nytimes.com
Fig. 4 - www. cadillaccountryclub.com
Fig. 5 - cupidjazmine.blogspot.fi
Fig. 6 - exetermagazine.com
Fig. 7 - www.1051 rocks.com
Fig. 8 - theartofmccartney.com
Fig. 9 - commons.wikipedia.org
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