… an artist who’s a close family friend.

He just got a Guggenheim!

One is Donald Roberts, her brother-in-law. This film features his voice instruction.

Another is a close friend of the family, the artist Paul Laffoley. This film features Paul explaining his work.

Oh how this sort of thing makes UD homesick.

Contents of gift bags at a fundraiser for the Washington Humane Society.

A card for $1,000 off a Cartier purchase of $5,000 or more, Shiseido lip gloss, gourmet tea, lotion, Luna bars, a bottle of SmartWater, dog treats, and a slew of gift cards. Guests grabbed pink-and-blue outfits printed with “I shop at Tysons Galleria” for their dogs…

From the University of Maryland Student Government president:

After one of the longest meetings that I have attended, the Senate amended the Post-Tenure Review policy nearly 10 times before rejecting the final version. Faculty members of the Senate called this a direct “assault” on tenure and echoed each other on how terrible this proposal was.

The faculty members of the Senate should be absolutely ashamed of how this debate went. For whatever reason, the Senate limits their meetings to an hour and 45 minutes, which was extended to two hours 15 minutes at one point during the meeting. As soon as the clock hits 5:00 or in this case, 5:30 the Senate is automatically adjourned. Myself and the President of the Graduate Student Government (GSG) were next in line when one of the Senators motioned for a vote. This took place after hearing not a single other perspective to their endless barrage of hate for this proposal and after not hearing a single student speak on the value of this proposal.

The truth is that the student body, undergraduates and graduates, were united in support of the new Post-Tenure Review process. Professors, tenured or not, should be accountable to the taxpayers of Maryland and face consequences if they are grossly underperforming.

Some of the debate was also disgusting in suggesting that faculty are not “employees” but rather above the system because they are academics. When, in reality, they are accountable to the taxpayers of Maryland who sign their checks just as anyone who works for the University and is a member of the community would be.

Everyone seemed to get overly fixated on the salary-reduction aspect of the proposal, which only happens if a professor repeatedly fails, even after composing for them a development plan to avoid any reduction from happening.

Real objections, as in what this would mean to administer the process, like that of Professor Karol Soltan from BSOS were hushed by overly antagonistic and personal decrees of any idea of salary reduction even for “deadbeat” professors. Professors who would be in violation and subject to a salary reduction are professors that are an embarrassment to our University and our community and weigh departments down.

The faculty Senators should be ashamed of how they behaved yesterday and the Senate should amend their by-laws to allow for healthier debate and time divided equally among differing viewpoints.

*************************

Update: Mr UD speaks, in response to a question a commenter on this thread asked:

We already have of course annual review of all faculty for merit increases. The proposal claimed that the new form of post-tenure review could be just blended in, but when you considered the actual detail of how it would be implemented, it began to look like we would need two committees doing very similar evaluations every year, or we would have to seriously compromise on the way both tasks are done.

The key point in any case is that we already have post-tenure review, every five years (a lot of reporting misses this rather crucial point). It is apparently not implemented in some (many? I don’t know) departments. But in mine, for example, it is implemented. And every five years one can do a far more serious and long term review. So for those departments like mine the proposed change would increase administrative cost, and lower the quality of the review.

Given the great variety of departments and other units that we have, that any large university has, it is very unlikely that one system will work well everywhere. Through the debate I became convinced that the system we have is not implemented across the board, because it is hard to implement in small departments (I am in a large one), so the solution is to allow a number of systems of post-tenure review, different ones for different units. It would have been very difficult to amend the proposal we were considering in the way that would incorporate what I think is the necessary diversity. So I voted against it.

K

… With Bryant Gumbel interviewed me yesterday about the Florida State scandal.

In the works for UD: Color commentary at the next Auburn v. Alabama game.

… makes contact with Morrissey at his Philadelphia concert. The photo ran in the Philadelphia City Paper.

What can UD tell you about the friend she’s known for almost thirty years now that he’s a very big deal?

He was the best man at her wedding. He gave a glorious toast.

He and Mr UD go way back. Both sons of Harvard professors, the two lads lived only a couple of blocks away from one another in Cambridge, and they were among the first to attend Charles Merrill’s Commonwealth School in Boston. (Mr UD loves to tell the story of Merrill one afternoon awkwardly announcing that the kids were going to have a guest speaker that day, a poet… Uh… the headmaster’s brother… Guy named James Merrill…)

Both went to Harvard, where they remained close friends. Both moved to Washington, Peter to work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Karol to work at the University of Maryland.

Over the years, Mr UD has accompanied Peter to Kurdistan, Baghdad, and East Timor to work with him on political issues.

Les UDs have spent many moody, meditative New Years in Vermont with Peter (he has long had a house there), his family, and other friends.

Peter is a loyal and loving friend.

He has an excellent sense of humor. UD once made him laugh so hard he almost lost it. Les UDs and Peter and Peter’s girlfriend were driving back from kayaking in Virginia somewhere. Peter was at the wheel. UD, notorious for being unable to tell even a simple joke correctly, was trying to tell the first of these two jokes. It all went terribly wrong, and became far more obscene than necessary, in her hands.

Somehow the total ineptitude of UD‘s telling, and the desperate obscenity of her version, sent Peter into such a spin that he almost lost control of the car.

*******************************

Peter has the driven, complex, difficult personality you’d expect with his high-powered background, his politically active and ambitious family, and the legacy of his world-historical father. In fact it looks as though the Number One diplomat in Afghanistan (Peter will be the second in command) didn’t want him appointed.

“Galbraith is a much stronger personality, he’s a bigger name, from a bigger country and he is going to carry more weight [than the Norwegian at the head of the UN team,” one diplomatic] official said.

Yeah, I guess he’s a strong personality. Sure. Very strong.

***********************

Update: UD doesn’t have any pictures of herself with Peter on this computer, so she’ll run this one instead. He’s standing somewhere nearby.

Les UDs visited Peter when he was the American ambassador to Croatia, and they spent a day yachting and eating excellent food on various islands with Croatia’s then-president, Franjo Tudjman. In this photo, La Kid, showing a good deal of sense (Tudjman was an unsavory character), is hiding her face rather than be photographed with him. UD has no such reservations, and smiles, as you see, broadly.

The Columbia News Service thinks so.

From an article by Danielle Friedman about the advantages and disadvantages of Gmail’s chat function:

For Margaret Soltan, an English professor at George Washington University, Gchat is wonderful for connecting with students outside of class.

Over the years, the tech-savvy teacher has accumulated dozens of students on her Gchat list, and she chats with them frequently. While not all realize that she can “see” them until she pings them for the first time — which, to be sure, can catch some off guard — she occasionally uses the tool to coordinate conferences or discuss letters of recommendation when time is tight. It’s convenient, she says.

Soltan also likes perusing students’ status messages. “They give me a little window” into them, she says. “They are like little mini-diaries of student life.”

Sometimes Soltan takes her observations a step further: When she spots a misspelling, she isn’t shy about pointing it out. “I’ll Gchat them and say, ‘Revise your message!’” she says, laughing. She tells them she’s joking a few seconds later — but they’re usually apologetic and a little embarrassed.

“I suppose you’re vulnerable to this kind of thing,” Soltan says. “Your crazy English professor bursts in and tells you to fix your spelling error!”

… about an old friend of Les UDs.

… In addition to increasing its own civilian component, the administration seeks better coordination among the many other governments and international and nongovernmental agencies operating in Afghanistan, often with different rules and objectives. The strategy proposals include a strengthening of the United Nations as a clearinghouse and overall coordinator of nonmilitary efforts, including the appointment of veteran U.S. diplomat Peter W. Galbraith as deputy to Norwegian Kai Eide, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

… Galbraith served in senior U.S. and U.N. positions in the Balkans, East Timor and other conflict areas. Sharply critical of Bush administration policy in Iraq, he resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 and served as an adviser to Iraq’s Kurdish regional government.

Faithful readers know that Mr UD worked with Peter in East Timor and in Kurdistan.

Attention has shifted to its medical school, but George Washington University’s basketball program, as a Washington Times columnist points out, also looks a bit gruesome close up.

… wherever she lived growing up in Maryland, UD can recall her parents laughing at the state song, authored during the Civil War by a secessionist.

Sen. Jennie Forehand was attending a conference of Southern lawmakers some years ago when Maryland, My Maryland, the state song, began playing at a ceremony.

An impassioned Confederate-era poem set to the tune of O Tannenbaum, the song takes a particularly exclamatory turn at the end: “She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb – Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come! Maryland! My Maryland!”

“People were laughing at it,” said Forehand, a Montgomery County Democrat, “They were asking, ‘What in the world is this all about?'”

Forehand told the story yesterday as she tried to persuade lawmakers to change their tune about the state song. The Senate hearing was packed with Confederate re-enactors, amateur historians, teachers and a seventh-grader who said she loves the state song, which taught her the meaning of “despot.”

For more than 50 years, lawmakers have periodically tried to dethrone Maryland, My Maryland, written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall and codified as the state song in 1939. Randall, 22 at the time, penned the lyrics after learning that his former college roommate had been killed in a Pratt Street riot between Confederate sympathizers and Union soldiers from Massachusetts, the history goes.

Many of those testifying yesterday said they were present seven years ago, the last time Forehand unsuccessfully tried to do away with Randall’s words. She wants to replace them with a more pacifist version written in 1894 by John T. White, an Allegany County teacher.

“I feel like a victim’s family who has to show up again and again for parole hearings,” Linda Atwell, a history buff who lives in Frederick County, told the committee.

Hyattsville resident William F. Fronck said Forehand’s motives were “an insidious spiritual virus called political correctness.”

Fronck and others argued that the song is a history lesson that should not be wiped away. Some called attempts to sanitize the lyrics a “Stalinist” revision of past events.

“This song is our history,” said self-described historian and author Daniel Toomey, who brought along an original copy of the Randall poem.

But opponents of the song said it misrepresents Maryland – “The Free State” – and unfairly portrays only one side of the Civil War.

“It’s a bitter and abusive diatribe written to incite revenge,” said William Moulden, a teacher who lives near Annapolis.

Respected state archivist Edward C. Papenfuse wants to see the song go. “While Randall deserves recognition as a Maryland poet, he was decidedly partisan and bitter, a strong advocate of slavery and secession,” he wrote in a letter to Forehand…

CURRENT FIRST STANZA:

The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

[The despot is Abraham Lincoln.]

FIRST STANZA OF PROPOSED STATE SONG

We dedicate our song to thee,
Maryland, my Maryland,
The home of light and liberty,
Maryland, my Maryland.
We love thy streams and wooded hills,
Thy mountains with their gushing rills,
Thy scenes — our heart with rapture fills —
Maryland, my Maryland.

********************

Here’s something clever. How about instead of wooded hills you simply switch the first letters of gushing rills?

We love thy streams and rushing gills,
Thy mountains with their gushing rills…

UD readers interested in thinking about

What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need? What should such citizens know, believe, and do? What institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship? How do individuals learn civic skills, habits, values, dispositions, and knowledge?

and/or interested in meeting the sort of person who would marry UD, might want to attend the tuition-free Summer Institute for Civic Studies at Tufts University, from July 13 – 24. Mr UD is one of the three organizers.

This page offers a framing statement.

UD leaves very soon for the next leg of her year-long sabbatical from George Washington University: Key West, Florida.

When we last saw her, UD was living in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in an apartment overlooking the Atlantic. Cold winter weather meant the town was largely deserted. She had trouble finding convenience stores whose doors weren’t locked.

But there were quiet cafes, quiet walks along beaches, visits from friends, and long hours for writing and thinking. She loved the sunrises and sunsets and the placid change of skies from morning to noon to night. Cargo ships and contrails reminded her of a world in transit. She herself had gone gloriously aground.

Now she goes to a subtropical island in high season. Although her apartment’s near the quiet end of Duval Street (It’s 2:28 AM and the place is hopping.), she’s about to enter an all-night party. (A pink cab just drifted by the live cam.) Key West is warm and awake and UD‘s ready for that.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times featured a small Key West house and its owner. The article gave UD a sense of daily life there.

For Murphy Davis, getting away means leaving the front door to his Key West cottage open — not just unlocked, but flung wide open. Tropical breezes blow through the house, bearing leaves from sapodilla trees, hibiscus petals, even sand. The presence of these elemental bits of nature is a sign that he is truly at home.

… “One of my favorite things about being in Key West is the physical environment,” said Mr. Davis, seated barefoot in a blue canvas chair on his front porch, a glass of iced tea in hand. “I like the sand on my floor. I don’t understand people who close up their houses and crank up the A.C.”

In these cold winter months, Key West beckons to him. “I have always considered Key West my second home,” said Mr. Davis, 52, who first became enamored of the island as a child.

He vividly recalls a fishing trip with his grandparents when he was 8 years old. “We left freezing Long Island, and in one day it was hot,” Mr. Davis said. “That was magical to me.” Even today he can point out the booth where he sat with them at Pepe’s Cafe, the oldest restaurant on the island. Mr. Davis first bought property here in 1997, with his partner at the time, along with the playwright Terrence McNally; they had identical side-by-side cottages on an idyllic lane

… The cottage, on the corner of two quiet lanes, is enveloped by lush foliage. Its one-and-a-half-story design is typical of the island’s smaller residences, as are the original louvered windows.

… A typical morning begins on the back deck, where Mr. Davis drinks coffee and spends time reading scripts — usually on a futon that has been draped with an Indonesian sarong. “I’m partial to futons because as a young actor I was a futon salesman in New York City,” he said with a laugh.

He gardens, goes to the local movie theater, and mingles with friends who include actors, writers, massage therapists and the park ranger who works at the entrance to the local beach. Cooking for small dinner parties, where guests flow easily through the house, inside and out, is another ritual.

Mr. Davis relishes his time alone here. Long afternoons include trips to the beach, to swim and read. He has no car and says he would not consider owning one. Instead, he prefers to travel by bicycle, in thrall to the sea air, the tropical foliage and multicultural spirit of Key West, a city of 25,000 permanent residents.

His travels by bicycle have brought him closer to the distinctive architecture of the 4.5-mile-long island, particularly the historic district, which contains 3,000 wooden structures, many with two-story porches and Victorian and Queen Anne architecture.

Leaving soon for lunch at a Georgetown restaurant to mark UD‘s sister’s birthday and Valentine’s Day.

The restaurant has veiled tables.

Posting will be rather light today.

… said Mr UD this morning, irritably. “Key West is obviously one of those places where excellent tea is easy to find.”

“Well, but they probably won’t have Marco Polo,” whimpered UD.

“You like black fruit teas, right? This will be a chance to explore new ones.”

Fine. UD won’t devote an entire suitcase to tea canisters.

And it’s true that she’s looking forward to sitting in internet cafes and exploring new teas.

She leaves in a few days.