University of Chicago: Class of 2009

by Mark Silva

"Obama eats here,'' read the printed words on the backs of the T-shirts at the University Market on South 57th Street in Chicago, home of the Arrabiata, capocolla, pepperoni, soppressata and provolone on a roll that will make the forehead sweat.

When's the last time the president of the United States actually ate here? "I believe it's when he was five,'' jokes the sandwich maker behind the counter in the back of the market.

An exaggeration, certainly, for here in Hyde Park, next door to the Medici Bakery and around the corner from the University of Chicago lab school where Obama's girls started, the president has had plenty to eat on the leafy streets that ring the university. His house is just up the street.

But we are not here today for Obama.

We are here for a commencement. The 498th Convocation of the University of Chicago is playing out this weekend.

We already have sat through part of it, on Friday, when our son, Dylan Michael Silva, walked for his Master of Arts degree in International Relations. It was sunny in the quadrangle, and we got burned a little. But we aren't complaining. This morning, it is raining, and we will return to the quadrangle to see our son walk for his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. That's right, two in four years. So let it rain. We're sitting in the clouds.

The commencement speaker, a noted research biologist who has found a link between genetics and breast cancer and received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant for her work, is telling these graduates this weekend about the importance of service to one's community. She also is dispensing a joke here and there, such as the one about this being the neighborhood of "one of the most dangerous domestic terrorists.'' We assume that would be Bill Ayers, neighbor of Obama and radical Weatherman from the 1960s turned professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The joke rolls off her lips, and across the ears of a crowd that is hearing really only one thing today: The name of the son or the daughter crossing the stage at the 498th Convocation of one of the greatest universities in the world.

Ours is walking twice - so you'll forgive us if we haven't been posting much in these e-pages or slow in moving comments about all that controversy about the president and his rivals, the weatherman and all other matters political. Today, we aren't complaining.. We don't need a weatherman to know which we our flag is flying.