Kate Lord Brown, over at What Kate Did Next, posted the above YouTube video. I’m hoping she won’t mind me stealing it from her blog. What Katy Did and What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge were among my most-loved books when I was a kid, which is what first drew me to Kate’s blog. If you are an aspiring writer, it has wonderful tips, hints, and links, and is extremely well-written, which is what has kept me going back there.
According to urban legend, the late, oh-so-great Kurt Vonnegut gave Wear Sunscreen as a commencement speech at MIT in 1997. In fact, it was written by a female columnist with the Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmich, where it was published that same year. (I know this because commencement speeches — or, as they are known here in Canada, convocation speeches — are part of my stock-in-trade.)
Kurt Vonnegut was one of the great American writers. If you haven’t read Slaughterhouse-Five, you haven’t lived, IMHO. It’s as good as — some would say better than — that other great anti-war classic, Catch-22.
Anyhoo, that’s all beside the point. Which is, if you’re one of those people who has a hard job coming up with serious resolutions for each new year, this Sunscreen, the musical single released in 1999 and credited to Baz Luhrman, may provide inspiration.