Three flat black marble slabs lie on the pavement in front of a long pier out to the Atlantic.  On each, many names are inscribed.  Between the slabs, smaller slabs quote poetry, or they quote prose.  This one quotes Gibran:

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun.

And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides,

That it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Restless tides is nice, but UD‘s with Leopold Bloom.

Plenty to see and hear and feel yet.

CONDOMS COMING TO CAMPUS IN HUNDREDS

University of Maine student newspaper

[University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim] Calhoun pointing to the amount of income UConn men’s basketball generates for the university exemplifies a capitalist society: The market defines the worth.

Got it, baby? Can we make it even simpler?

At a university, market value = worth.

Okay?

So shut up about Calhoun.

… Archibald MacLeish.

“Poetry is the art of understanding what it is to be alive…

You don’t write as a writer, you write as a man – a man with a certain hard-earned skill in the use of words, a particular, and particularly naked, consciousness of human life, of the human tragedy and triumph – a man who is moved by human life, who cannot take it for granted.

… I began to understand… by teaching a course in which I tried to find out for myself what poetry is, what it really is. I began to understand that it is a part of a process which extends beyond poetry but which is most apparent in poetry, of trying to see human experience, trying to see “the world.” The world being what a man feels about the world. … [Y]ou are laboring at your art not only to make works of art but to make sense of your life – those dark and bewildering moments of experience. And to make sense of it not only for yourself. [Works of art] are steps in an attempt to stop time in terms of time so that it may be seen… If you have succeeded at all you have become part … of the consciousness of your time.”

SOS is always screaming that at you. Your writing is you. It is extremely revelatory.

Good writers realize this and learn how to control the effect they make. Whatever sort of SOB you may in reality be, you have to learn how to control your prose so as to come across as the sort of person your reader will — let’s say you’re writing a polemical piece — agree with.

Poor writers, like the sap below, cannot help revealing themselves in ways damaging to their argument. Let’s see how they do this.

A former trustee at the University of Connecticut wishes to come to the defense of the university’s basketball coach, the highest-paid public employee in the state, and a motherfucker.

How to do this?

Well, not this way.

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

“I have read and heard with irritation [Lordy, lordy. Just how many times has ol’ SOS told you that emotion is the enemy of argumentation? First sentence! I’m irritated! And who talks like this? What’s the tone? From the very, very start, what’s the tone? Queen Victoria, that’s the tone. Pompous. Vaguely bullying. Way to step up to the plate.] the attacks on the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun and his reaction to quizzing about his income, his university-approved outside income opportunities, and a suggestion that he take a cut in salary to aid the university in its current financial crisis.

I would like to provide my perspective on Jim Calhoun and his relationship and importance to the university. [Drop this sentence. Totally unnecessary, and somehow adds to the sense of irritable self-importance.]

During the 1990s, Jim Calhoun was one of the five most valuable individuals in bringing interest to the university and in raising awareness of the value of the university to the state’s economy. [Cruel of the newspaper to run this without edits. Individual is a deadly word, labored and impersonal. And note the vagueness of the repeated word value, and the empty word interest. This is inhuman prose. This is a stiff bureaucrat.] In particular, the successes Coach Calhoun directed on the court have played a pivotal role in the state’s providing $2 billion support to rebuild the University of Connecticut, both physically and academically.

Jim Calhoun is also in the first tier of individuals I’ve known during the past 20 years who have given the most significant portion of their time and resources, including their money, back to UConn. [Individuals again. And it doesn’t matter how much money you give back. It matters how much money you’re overpaid. This is the Massa Saban approach to university life: Give obscene compensation to coaches and then, when the shit hits the fan and they give a little back to save their ass, praise the coach as a great benefactor.] While facing repeated health issues of his own, there has never been a “no” in Jim Calhoun’s vocabulary [Never been a “no.” Writing like this gives everyone health issues. And note the Queen for a Day form of defense here: You bastards are going after a sick man! Yet Calhoun looked mighty strong the other day, when he said no with very little effort to a reporter. No, I won’t return a penny of my compensation to the state. No No. No. Said no a whole lot. Definitely has the word in his vocabulary.] concerning his support of the health center, the cardiology center, the fight against cancer and the battle to overcome autism. [Note the absolutely dead trite language. Battle to overcome autism. Of course, this is about clueless self-importance, too. The writer actually thinks you’re stupid enough to take out your hankie at this point and demand a salary increase for Calhoun.]

I do not curse; so from time to time, I too blanch when Jim expresses his competitiveness and passion in his interaction with his players. [Things are going from worse to worser. We might be able to consider the writer a human being like ourselves, despite his robotic prose, if he cursed. But he doesn’t. Or he feels it’s a clever move to tell us he doesn’t. Interaction goes beautifully with individual in this man’s utterly unreal and unfeeling world.] I have many friends, but I dare say that their friendship and loyalty to me does not exceed the loyalty, friendship, respect and love that is evident from the players who have experienced Jim’s rants as well as his genuine caring. [Just because the Connecticut team is composed of masochists doesn’t mean I should admire their sadist.] From Clifford Robinson to Donyell Marshall to Kevin Ollie to Ray Allen to Rip Hamilton to Caron Butler to Emeka Okafor and all the rest of Huskies from the Calhoun era: Each of their lives and careers have benefited from the contact and mentoring from their coach.

During my tenure as chairman of the board of trustees at UConn, it was vividly clear to me that, from a straight dollar vantage point, Jim Calhoun more than meets the test of value given for dollars received, apart from his giving of his time and money. The investment in Jim Calhoun by the university has been repaid to UConn, and the entire state, many times over.

In 1986, no one believed that Connecticut could become one of the truly elite college basketball programs in the country. The pride that an entire state now possesses because of UConn’s basketball success is priceless. And the entertainment value provided by the Huskies is priceless. [To be sure, every citizen swells with pride because one of its university teams wins games. Also because the team’s coach has been reprimanded by the governor and is the object of hostile legislation from state representatives.]

The national spotlight that basketball success has been able to shine on the words Connecticut and UConn is also priceless. [Well, I suspect Calhoun’s cost will be able to be reckoned. Let’s see what the legislature has to say about it.]

The UConn Athletic Department recently signed important, budget-assisting 10-year agreements with outside contractors in the apparel/footwear (Nike) and corporate partner programs (IMG). Does anyone doubt that the presence of Jim Calhoun as our Hall of Fame, two-time national championship coach played a pivotal role in the desire of those companies to align themselves with UConn athletics? [We can take pride in these commercial arrangements!]

Jim Calhoun has given back and will continue to give back to the University of Connecticut, always providing that “giving” in his own private style. [Quotation marks around “giving” just right, as Calhoun gives the state the finger in his own private style.]”

First rain since I got here.

The march of marvelous days becomes a bit unnerving.  When does the overcast start?  A raindrop?

Hemingway’s house — really Pauline Hemingway’s house — isn’t a calm retreat; it’s too much in the center of Key West, with cars and motorbikes and airplanes audible.  But it’s an expansive, palmy compound that, like Faulkner’s house in Mississippi, does convey something of the writer. 

What it conveys, accurately enough, is his mordancy.  There’s an irony in the air which feels excessive, studied. 

Even maybe spiritless, like our rather robotic tour guide — a standard-issue Key West male, sixtyish, slender, in loose-fitting clothes with cigarettes and dollar bills (tip prompts) sticking out of pockets.  His sun-stained eyes had white circles around them where his sunglasses went.  “Folks tragically Hemingway died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound manic depressive here’s photos of  all his ex-wives on the wall behind me.”  Arranged in order of abandonment.

Polydactyl cats lay unconscious atop poolside tables.  “There’s forty-four of them here.  About half of each litter have six or even seven toes.”  The guide shook a bag of dry food at them and they wandered over to get their pictures taken.  Those with extra digits had an odd splayed walk.  “This one’s Archibald MacLeish, and that’s Gertrude Stein.” 

The cat cemetery, with slabs for Frank Sinatra and Zsa Zsa Gabor, was … I dunno.  Put it together with the fountain made from a urinal and lots of other clever stuff — a cat named Mr. Bette Davis — and it’s trop camp pour moi, dearies.  At some point I start seeing all those too-too characters in Fitzgerald stories who seem to have skipped right over being human beings.

On Feb. 16, [Carnegie Mellon’s investment manager] visited the offices of the Westridge fund in Greenwich and Jersey City, New Jersey, to try to locate the school’s money. In Greenwich, he was met by attorney Maxine Sleeper, who told Kennedy that her firm, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP represented the firm, though not Greenwood or Walsh [directors of the firm, arrested for misappropriation], according to the complaint.

When [the investment manager] asked Ms. Sleeper who was in charge, she said the answer was “tricky.”

… of being are here on United Street. The

Normal pleasures of the sun’s kingdom
The hedonistic body basks within
And takes for granted — summer on the skin,
Sleep without break, the moderate taste of tea
In a dry mouth.

The sweets are here, on this street, on a winter morning in Key West.

It’s Saturday, and behind the little brown house next door, a man holding a lopper stands on a tin roof. From her second floor apartment, UD watches him.

Inside the house, a little girl sings in Spanish, and the man sings with her. He whistles with his birds.

All over Key West people are lopping twice-blooming flowers.

Through UD‘s unscreened door sweet air enters and curls around a ceiling fan. Below her, in the garden, water trickles from a tub into a pool.

Tiny white airships take to the blue overhead.

The leaves of the palms stir.

… before the trash bigtime sports has hauled into the American university literalized itself.

… and, as always, it’s based on greed and invidiousness rather than a sense of duty to the institution.

The university’s president refuses a pay cut, because “My compensation ranks 93 out of 151 public universities for which we have data for faculty and presidents,” Fogel said. “I think that should be well understood…”

Et alors? And if he were 151st? Why is a university president keeping score of this? Are his children in tatters? The man’s been rewarding other administrators, too, even as he’s cutting lecturers and stripping the school of other goods.

The governor has taken note of Fogel’s score-keeping ways.

… While state lawmakers, including Gov. Jim Douglas, have agreed to a 5 percent cut in salary due to tough economic times, Fogel refuses.

Douglas commented on Fogel’s refusal to take a pay cut Thursday in Montpelier. “I think I did the right thing. My team did. The judiciary did. It’s important to make some tough decisions in challenging times. I don’t want to tell him what to do, but I’m sure he’ll look at all the options,” Douglas said Thursday.

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

Update: Far as UD can make out, Fogel’s salary is around $500,000 (I assume this doesn’t include the many perks university presidents get).

President Fogel needs to make an effort to think about his compensation in the same terms he’s asked his students to adopt by way of thinking about their lives. Do not follow the crowd. Do not judge your worth in extrinsic terms; try thinking in intrinsic terms. Do not be a cynic, as Oscar Wilde said, who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And so on and so on.

I would ask President Fogel to think about the actuality of what he and his university have been telling students – teaching students – for generations.

Dennis Kozlowski, Kenneth Lay… and now Stephen Walsh presents a university with a very special problem. How to blast his name off a building?

A University at Buffalo alumnus who has contributed to the college’s athletics department and is a member of the UB Foundation board has been charged with misappropriating more than $500 million in client investments.

… [Stephen] Walsh, a 1966 graduate of UB, is listed among its “Donors of Distinction.” In 2001, he pledged $250,000 to the UB athletics department. Later, the basketball office complex inside Alumni Arena was named after Walsh.

When asked about his involvement with UB, the university released a statement: “Mr. Walsh has been an inactive member of our foundation board since March 2004. Furthermore, we have a policy that prohibits investing funds with any member of our foundation board.”

There’s an internet cafe much closer to UD‘s apartment, but Sippin’ (part of a Key West chain) has couches and psychedelic paintings.  She’ll settle in, try not to listen to the wimpy Donovanesque music, and write to you.

Yet another warm clear breezy day for UD‘s walk here.  What do they do for rain in KW?

“Most of the plants are succulents,” Liz, a new friend, explained to UD yesterday.

Liz took Dramamine and sailed through the long violent trip to and from the Dry Tortugas.   Macho, pill-averse UD doesn’t do things like that, so she took an inside seat, pressed her eyes shut like one in deep prayer, and sweated like mad as the boat flew up and smacked the water like a mofo.  For hours.

She opened her eyes only to glance at the flat barf bag awaiting her vomit.  But while others vomited, UD refrained.  Barely.

The island’s surreal.  Reminded UD of North Africa, which she’s never visited, but dedicated readers know UD has a thing for Tunisia and wants to go someday.  Stark sun over a ruined fort on a beach.  Camus territory.

Local delicacies too, that you won’t find in Tunis.  A homemade boat used by Cuban refugees, for instance, lies on the strand.

UD skipped the guided tour of the fort and went right to the beach. The water was a wild mix of blue and green, and the sand was like coarse salt. She snorkeled the calm, shallow inlet, and though, as usual, the views were only so-so, she loved feeling part of the drift of the sea.

Then she went back to shore, stripped off her snorkel gear, strapped on simple goggles, and swam for a long time in the same warm clear water. Even her weak eyes marveled at the enormous brick fort that loomed up whenever she took a breath.

Official statement from the University of New Mexico board of trustees in response to the faculty no-confidence vote in regard to President David Schmidly.

We admit we were all bit piddly
When we voted to hire Dave Schmidly.
But who knew that he’d stink?
He looks good when you drink.
And now it’s too late to do diddly.

An emeritus professor of geography brings us up to the present in a letter to the editor of the Daily Egyptian:

Things at SIUC have come to a sorry pass, with multiple changes in top leadership over just a few years, plagiarism charges being bandied about and now, with SIUC proceeding full speed ahead with the “Saluki Way” super athletic facility on the south end of campus while the Carbondale City Council pledges $1 million each year for 20 years without a referendum to gauge public opinion. And almost half of Saluki Way will be paid for by SIUC students, whether they are “fans” or not…

Sure, the quotation marks around fans are weird. Otherwise, this summary of things at America’s most benighted university is terrific, with appropriate emphasis on the crowning idiocy of Saluki Way (which also doesn’t need quotation marks).