At my conferral, I was seated next to Brega Mary Webb, the oldest among us PhD scholars at 81 years of age. After she asked me what I planned to do next, she said she would pursue a study of medieval book shrines. I thought of our academic journeys: unique, fraught with detours and dead-ends, culminating finally in this ceremony. There had been loss and heartbreak, days of death and dying. Amidst the onslaught of the years, every word read and written was a saving grace. Both of us know, in our own way, this: fill the days with inquiry—ask questions of books and people, of sky and earth and of all creatures, of the known and unknown—and each day will arrive like a blessing, replete with wonder, possibility, and, yes, even eternity.





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