… 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).

This morning, for the first time, my ancient Florida memories revived. I was walking up Margaret Street at six, on my way to Yankee Freedom’s trip to the Dry Tortugas.

Key West is eerie at six. The sky is blue velvet, and in the silence the palms clatter to a strange life, human-feeling. Their long trunks and massive heads whisper to the houses, and the houses whisper back.

Streetlamps shed a thin light, and as you pass the island cemetery the stacked coffins glimmer.

It was the scent and the feel of the air that revived my memory of waking up early in Florida campsites – the same warm salty wind, the same velvet sky. Or maybe I’m remembering the wildness of the palms against the subdued start of day.

… in need of your UD fix… UD‘s been away all day on her Extreme Seasickness Adventure, and she will be called away again any minute to have dessert at El Sibony with friends. But until then she will share with you another narrative of her Key West day.

Oops. There’s the call. Back in a bit.

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon handed hundreds of millions of dollars over to money managers who pocketed it.

… for Dean in Charge of Placing Thieving Professors on Leave With Pay. It has so many of them.

USF has only just gotten rid of the bicycle thief professor; now at UF there’s the NASA funds thief professor.

The FBI searched the offices of a University of Florida scientist Wednesday who is accused along with his family of taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegally obtained government funds” from the nation’s space agency.

Court documents filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee describe a criminal and civil investigation into “fraudulent” invoices that resulted in funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to professor Samim Anghaie, 59, his wife, Sousan, 54, and their two adult sons.

Federal officials would not talk about the details of their investigation, which UF reacted to by placing Anghaie on leave with pay. He could not be reached for comment.

Also working the case are agents of NASA’s Office of Inspector General.

Perhaps the university system should consider building a holding pen on one of its campuses.

… Key West evening,
I looked for a cab
near Duval, and
found a pink one
stopped at an
intersection.

The guy didn’t have any passengers, but he didn’t see me. I tapped on his window. He was talking on the phone.

He nodded me in.

The conversation on the phone was intimate and urgent. He drove distractedly.

I gave him my address. He nodded again, staggered down Duval, and kept talking.

Then he put the phone down and said to me:

“She wants me back, but I’m still under the restraining order she took out on me. I’m tellin’ her I don’t want to go jail. I know what that’s like. It’s the roommate’s fault. A real bitch that one. I fixed her. I have a friend at the housing office and they’re out of compliance. She don’t know it but she’s getting thrown out. Ha ha.”

The phone rang again. “Honey, what if you change your mind? I don’t want to go to jail.”

the end

Once she got her mask properly tightened, UD began the calm slow kick and arms-to-the-body stillness of snorkeling around The Danger. These weren’t the massive rounded coral reefs of Cozumel, teeming with fish, but they had their moments, and UD encountered a flock of cuttlefish.  She’d have called them elephant fish, because when they stare right in your face, the way these stared in UD‘s face, they look like flimsy little elephants.

PBS did a special about them because they’re “one of the brainiest, most bizarre animals in the ocean.”

The water was warm and shallow (pretty warm; UD wore a wetsuit), and the views, when you lifted your head from the water, were all light green waves and light green islands.  She could see around her because for the first time she had on a prescription mask.

Later, when she, as feared, lowered herself into a bobbing kayak with her partner already in it, UD handily slipped into her seat in the back, where she took charge of steering.

She steered pretty well, only once drifting into mangrove roots.

And she saw many varieties of that shag, or cormorant, that Elizabeth Bishop described in Cape Breton.

It was so quiet where they paddled.  The quiet, and the prehistoric pelicans, made you feel as though you’d fallen out of time into some antechamber of existence.

Back on board, we gathered to watch the famous Key West sunset, just the opposite of the soft ponderous Rehoboth dusk.  Here, the sun, a trembling bronze, all but hurled itself down into the horizon.

end of part three

This is from a customer review of El Siboney, an excellent Cuban restaurant steps from UD‘s apartment.  Doesn’t look like much on the outside, but as she started her afternoon walk in search of food, she peeked in.  Hopping.  Clearly the place to be.  So she sat down and had some grilled mahi-mahi and was very happy.  And she ordered two more plates to go.

“Are you the captain?”

UD leaned over the marina railing and greeted a leathery guy in a fishing boat.  She had ten minutes to kill before her boat, thrillingly named The Danger, set sail.

“I like to be the mate.”  He had that Hemingway thing going — bristly beard, red face, squishy sweaty white hat.

“It says you take novices out.  That right?”

“We love first-timers.  Haven’t developed bad habits.”

“You’d show me how to fish?”

“Yup.  Last week a little kid caught a shark.”

“How big.”

“Eight feet.”

“You wouldn’t be telling me a… a…”

“Fish story?”

He leaned back in the cabin and came out with a photo album.

“You’d help me reel it in, right?  Looks a bit on the heavy side.”

“Sure.”

“How much is it to go out?”

“If you charter the boat for yourself, eight hundred dollars.  But you’d want to do a split charter.  That’s much less.

“Thanks.  Enjoy your trip.  Beautiful day to go fishing.”

“It’s freezing.”

“What?”

“Cold day for Key West.”

UD laughed and went to join her fellow kayakers.

UD made friends with the fifteen or so people on her outing, all of them desperate escapees from places like Thunder Bay, Ontario and Duluth, Minnesota.

She liked Bess, the only woman on the crew, immediately. She’d already seen Bess – twentyish, looking like Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc – in a little harbor shop where UD had gone to get something to drink before the trip. In front of UD in line, Bess had insisted that the cashier put a twenty dollar bill from the register into the tip jar.

“Do it! Do it! I promise people will give you higher tips. When they see the twenty… It’s psychological… They’ll give more.”

“Or they’ll steal the twenty,” said UD.

Bess was one of those pushy oblivious women — much like UD — whom UD privately saw as the future of the female race. Odd, out there, genial under a vast array of unsettling conditions, Bess was perfect for the job of standing up in a kayak under mangrove trees and barking away at people about birds who make nests out of their own shit.

Or something. I wasn’t really listening. I was gazing at Bess, standing up in a boat like George Washington on the Delaware.

At one point in her talk Bess got carried away about the blight of human beings upon earth’s delicate ecosystems.

“I hate to get all morbid with you, but it’d be better if we were all dead.”

end of part two

… to criticize the Bobby Knight of Connecticut.   Throw a chair at her!

UD will now relate the events of yesterday in a series of sentences and paragraphs organized in terms of beginning, middle, and end.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

“I’d be too scared to do that.”

The wife of the retired dermatologist (they’re renting the apartment next to UD‘s) sat poolside watching UD emerge from her morning swim.  UD‘s neighbor had been thinking about UD ‘s plans for the day.  “So you’re going snorkeling.  And kayaking too.   When I was younger, maybe.  But when you get old you only think about what could go wrong.”

UD pulled some water out of her hair and decided it was time to get a cut and color somewhere in Key West.

Then she decided it wouldn’t be in the free, free as the wind spirit of Key West to do that.

“Oh, snorkeling is for sissies.”

UD immediately felt guilty for saying this, so she covered it over with a big fake laugh.

“How long will you be on the sailboat?”

“Five hours.”

“See… I’d worry about getting sick way out on the ocean or whatever…”

UD had focused on only one thing to worry about.  One teeny teeny very particular thing:  Getting from the boat to the kayak.  Doing that while not falling into the water.  Doing that while not capsizing the kayak, into which her partner would already have settled her butt.  Everything else seemed doable.

“How do you manage to do laps in that thing?” asked UD‘s neighbor, pointing to their rather small pool.

“I do small little breast stroky movements… It seems to work.”

“We bought all these bottles of wine and we’re not going to be able to finish them before we go.  Will you come over tomorrow night and have some wine with us?”

“Of course!  Thanks.  I won’t be able to put away too much of it, but I’d be glad to have some with you.”

On her walk to the marina, UD reflected, as she so often did, upon Gore Vidal‘s words of wisdom: “It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.”  It is not enough to spend the day on the ocean snorkeling and kayaking.  Others must be afraid to do so.  It is not enough to be walking on a palm-lined street on yet another day of full sun, mild wind, and temperatures in the high seventies.  Others must endure hailstorms.

She took Elizabeth Street, her favorite among the sunny sumptuous streets of Key West, and she smiled and paused when she got to her favorite Key West house.

At the dock, she paid for the outing. The woman in the kiosk also reserved a trip for UD on Thursday to the Dry Tortugas.

UD loves the name Dry Tortugas. For some reason, it always reminds her of how, when they were kids, she and her siblings used to say Tough Noogies.

end of part one