<i> A look at noteworthy addresses in the Southland.</i>

Multicultural Tapestry “I thank you for inviting me. . . . I came here in ’79. . . . I have seen what Occidental has done . . . in the years following ’79. Occidental was . . . absolutely--I am sorry to say this because I don’t mean to suggest anything . . . Occidental was absolutely white when I was here. Nice people, mind you!

“Occidental had the wisdom and the courage to invite Dr. (John B.) Slaughter as president. Men and women graduates, I will remind you of this: Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. You cannot be consistently kind or fair or just or generous or merciful--without courage. So I am amazed and happy and excited to be here, to see this multicultural look.

“What excites me--so much that I am overcome with emotion--is the possibility of all these colors being woven equally into the tapestry which is these yet-to-be united states.”

Time “Men and women, you have paid for the time ahead. You have been paid for as well--by time. Whether your ancestors came from Ireland in the 1840s or ‘50s, trying to escape the potato blight, or if they came from Eastern Europe, trying to escape the pogroms. Or from Asia in the 1850s to build this country, unable legally to bring their mates for eight decades. Or whether they came from South America, trying to find a place that would hold all of the people, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations. Or whether they came from Africa, unwilling, lying spoon fashion, back to belly, in the filthy hatches of slave ships. And in their own and each others’ excrement. They have paid for you already. . . . They have loved you without any possibility of ever knowing what you would look like, what names you would have, what mad personalities you would foist upon the world. They have loved you because they have stayed alive and kept in the face of heartless and godless times, some grace.

“It seems to me very clear . . . it is upon you, then to go out and pay for someone who is yet to come.”

Looking Ahead Today: Chung Won-Shik, prime minister of South Korea, will speak about “The New Dynamism in Northeast Asia and the Prospects for Unification of the Korean Peninsula” at noon at the J.W. Marriott Hotel. Sponsored by the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. Call (213) 628-2333.

Monday: Chien-Shien Wang, minister of finance, Taiwan, will speak to the Asia Society, at noon at the Sheraton Grande Hotel. Call (213) 624-0945.

Announcements concerning prominent speakers in Los Angeles should be sent to Speaking Up, c/o Times researcher Michael Meyers, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053