The Speech I Gave at the Launch — Now in Your Hands

There are speeches you prepare, and there are speeches you arrive at. The remarks I gave on the evening of the book launch were closer to the second kind. I had pages of notes. I used very few of them. What came out instead was something I had been turning over for years — about my father, about the long road from the village to the rooms I now sit in, and about the quiet, unglamorous discipline that carried me between the two.

Several people who were there asked if I could share the speech in full. Others who could not attend wrote to ask the same. So I have written it down — as faithfully as I can remember it — and posted it on the site.

It is not long. But it is, I think, the closest thing to a personal preface for From Rural Roots to National Impact that I have put into words. If you have already read the book, the speech may help you see the spine running through it. If you have not yet read the book, the speech is a fair place to begin.

You can read it here.

Whether you were in the room that evening or are meeting these ideas for the first time, thank you for the time and the attention. The work continues — and the conversations that follow it are, in the end, the part that matters.

— Julius