Columns

To commemorate this season of graduation, allow me to share this letter written to advice columnist Ann Landers.

Both stories appeared in the same position on the front page of the daily newspaper. The headline sizes were about the same, the impact of the stories nearly identical.

So it takes no degree in journalism to determine that editors believed each story to be almost equal in “weight” with the other. After all, any story at the top of a front page of an American newspaper is deemed to be important simply by geography.

Yet these two stories were hardly identical, hardly equal and hardly of the same importance.

Here are your typical preparations during Derby Week: Complete your wardrobe for the day, study the listings of horses that are in the newspaper, identify which one Calvin Borel is riding (that would be Revolutionary) or which one Todd Pletcher is training (that would be 25 percent of the projected field), wait until Saturday to see which horse looks nicest in the paddock or has the most emotional storyline, place your wager.

If you’ve ever run a marathon, thought about running a marathon or watched someone you love run one, you understand the pain. You see those faces and those strides mere yards from the finish line. You see happiness and even tears struggling past unrelenting physical torment. You sense the adrenalin that is coursing, grasp that the last possible bits of energy are being summoned. Joy is rising and overtaking pain. The finish line is the joy line. The finish is the ecstasy after the agony.