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For the last five years, graduation day has been as much a time for apprehension as for celebration.

Even now, with the Great Recession over, many recent graduates are still struggling to turn their high school and college diplomas into tickets for a better life. The unemployment rate for Americans under age 25 remains more than double the overall rate of 7.5 percent.

But experts are predicting this year's graduates — whether from high school, community college or a four-year college — should have better career launches than at any time since 2008. Companies expect to hire about 2.1 percent more college graduates from the Class of 2013, and will offer a higher overall starting salary of $44,928 — up 5.3 percent over last year, according to the spring survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

If you woke up this morning thinking, "I really need to hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer say the words 'noisily unwrapping her Twizzlers,'" have I got good news for you.

Margot Adler had a story on today's Morning Edition about Broadway audiences and whether they're getting ruder, given recent incidents involving the aforementioned Twizzlers, rude texting, talking, and other interruptions. She went to the TKTS line (where you wait for discount Broadway tickets) and asked some of the folks what they thought.

Some offered the usual explanations — say, that we're all used to sitting in our living rooms watching alone, and we don't remember what it's like to use our polite-company manners anymore. One speculated that as theater has gotten more casual (less dressy, drinks allowed), people's behavior has lost its polite formality.

Jan Simpson, the writer of one blog about Broadway, actually calls herself "old-fashioned" for wanting people to sit quietly while watching a show, which I can tell you caused the writer of one blog about popular culture to clutch her metaphorical pearls in horror at the thought that there's something modern about being a disruptive buffoon. Adler acknowledges that in fact, "in Shakespeare's time, they threw food on the stage." Of course, in Shakespeare's time, they died of various things we've cured, so let's not embrace that too eagerly.

What emerges is partly a generational issue setting younger audiences who want to tweet about the show while it's happening (mon dieu!) against older, perhaps more experienced audiences who take a less consumer-oriented and more art-patron-oriented approach to attendance. But surely, a person of any age is capable of doing without Twitter for a couple of hours. I can do without Twitter for a couple of hours, for example, and I've been known to tweet about people clipping their nails on the Metro.

It's a good thing, indeed, to avoid taking theater and making it a cloistered place for elites only (not that ticket prices don't get you a good part of the way there). But it's also a good thing to avoid giving free passes out of Rudeness Jail for everyone who simply prefers not to iron anything except cargo shorts.

Okay, okay, I don't really care if you wear cargo shorts. But the pockets should not be stuffed with things that beep, smoke, smell like garlic, or tempt you to whisper.

Deal?

The Senate voted Monday to approve its version of the farm bill, a massive spending measure that covers everything from food stamps to crop insurance and sets the nation's farm policy for the next five years.

The centerpiece of that policy is an expanded crop insurance program, designed to protect farmers from losses, that some say amounts to a highly subsidized gift to agribusiness. That debate is set to continue as the House plans to take up its version of the bill this month.

For farmer Scott Neufeld, crop insurance is an integral part of his family's business. When the wind whips through his farm in northwestern Oklahoma, the wheat sways and looks like a roiling ocean — those famous amber waves of grain.

"It's normal," says Neufeld, looking toward a tree blowing in the wind. "They're predicting storms today, so that wind you hear is pumping up the moisture for the storms."

Says Morales: "We have been waiting for things to change, like the laws. But we realize we cannot put our lives on hold."

They are among an estimated 36,000 binational, same-sex couples in the U.S., says Steve Ralls of Immigration Equality; nearly half of them have children. A recent effort by the advocacy group and others to include spousal sponsorship language in an immigration bill being considered by the Senate failed.

That has made the Supreme Court decision all the more consequential, Ralls said.

Unless the high court strikes down DOMA, or the Senate reconsiders what to include in its immigration bill, Morales will have to leave the country when she finishes her master's in nursing program at Georgetown University. Or she could join the ranks of those in the U.S. illegally.

That's not something the couple wants. They've contemplated a move to either Peru, where Morales has family, but also would not recognize their marriage, or to a country like Canada, where their marriage would be legal under federal law.

But relocation is not something that the almost relentlessly positive couple dwells on.

"We always say that everything happens for a reason," says Costello, who teaches English as a second language to elementary school children in a suburban Washington school district. "That's kind of our motto."

Their Story

The women joke that when they met in Washington at a mutual friend's party seven years ago it was love at first sight.

"These have been the happiest years of my life," Morales said in the sun room of Kelly's parents' home, where they have been living.

Morales was working in Miami when they met, employed as a bank IT project manager and in the country on a work visa. She moved to Washington to be with Costello, obtaining a student visa that allowed her to get an undergraduate degree in nursing from Georgetown, and pursue her master's degree.

"She's my best friend, she's the love of my life," Morales says of Costello. "We knew that we were going to be together forever — always together, we could do anything, and guided by God."

The women say they are sustained in times of vulnerability, including Morales' struggle with multiple sclerosis, by family and their strong Catholic faith. They attend Mass weekly at a nearby church, and a priest gave a blessing at their wedding.

They wear matching gold St. Christopher medals on necklaces, and pray together daily.

"We understand that the Catholic Church maybe still has to change a little bit more to love everybody, like people like us," Morales says. "But we have found support from the Catholic Church. Not everybody is against gay people."

Costello, who says she has become more devout since meeting Morales, adds: "As my Dad always says, we are all God's children."

The families of both women have embraced the couple, including Kelly's 83-year-old aunt, Deirdre Krouse.

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