… a very, very cold day.

...UD sat on her back deck with Mr UD moments ago, watching the incredibly clear full moon go through its shadow and its blue and pink and vanishing pearly cap as it eclipsed. We never get skies like this in Garrett Park! We didn’t have to go to Strathmore!

And we’ll go out there again in about a half hour to watch the moon’s red deepen. UD will add another layer to her already ridiculous get-up and she’ll lie next to Mr UD on their loungers and they will silently pass the binoculars back and forth.

William Blake?

The New York Times.

The poetry of tonight’s lunar eclipse.

UD will be out there – probably on the darkish hill in front of the Strathmore Concert Hall (which her uncle, you recall, insisted on building despite UD‘s repeated suggestions that he not). “Dark skies are always a plus, but your backyard or city street will work just fine.” The only things UD will bring are her binoculars and Mr UD.

East Carolina’s classy football program – its larger athletic program – is beginning to piss off a generous alumnus. He shares his contempt for the deficit-ridden, student-soaking institution in a letter to the campus newspaper.

For it is Sackler, Sackler, emblazoned on our faculty
But now it looks as though they got the dough through smack-dependency.

Yes it was Sackler, Sackler long before the o.d.s came.
But now the name has come to sound like scum — it’s a bad bad name.

UPDATE: Soak the state!

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

“The [University of Connecticut’s $40 million athletic] deficit was plugged with $30 million in institutional support and $8.5 million from student fees.

UConn football remains the department’s most expensive team to operate at more than $15.7 million last year. Also, ticket sales for the one-win team in 2018 totaled $2.4 million vs. $3.3 million in 2017.

That resulted in a $8.7 million deficit for the football team.

As of Aug. 2018, the football program’s attendance at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in East Hartford has declined by more than 48 percent since it peaked in 2008 when it averaged 39,331 fans per game, according to the NCAA.

UConn men’s basketball lost $5 million, while women’s basketball lost $3 million. It cost $11 million to operate the men’s basketball team and $7.8 million to manage the women’s program, the statement said.

UConn athletics spent nearly $17 million on scholarships and $14.4 million for staff and administrative support.

The athletic department also spent $17 million on salaries for coaches.”

The authors said they were particularly struck by the fact that the number of [opioid-maker] marketing interactions with doctors — such as frequent free meals — was more strongly associated with overdose deaths than the amount spent.

“Each meal seems to be associated with more and more prescriptions,” Dr. [Scott] Hadland said.

With Title-Game Prices Plummeting more than 90 Percent, Should College Football be Worried?

It has allowed – continues to allow – an insular, ignorant sect, whose members are taught to fear and ignore anyone and anything outside the sect, to thrive within its borders. It has done this because these people represent a monolithic voting bloc.

Now political cynicism has led directly to New York’s largest measles outbreak.

The majesty of final words.

Don’t tell me they’re too high — that’s simply not true.

If someone has to die, it’s them and not you.

Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my charade!

‘Prescription blizzard deep and dense and so white’

This is the sort of poetry that I write.

This is the vast catastrophe that I have made!

[chorus]

More people killed by my little pill

Than traffic fatalities – right, sir!

More people thrilled by taking my pill

Before they all say goodnight, sir!

Med schools across the nation bear our great name

Philanthropy removes all sense of shame

As we distribute heroin — the highest grade!

Southwest Airlines assures its passengers that, faced with a very nasty situation, they did all they could to spread the problem around.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Learn the difference between diffuse and defuse.

If you’re an academic, it’s an evil grad student/research assistant; if you’re a magazine editor, it’s a trusted freelancer — but whoever the ghostly awful person who plagiarized and then put the product under your innocent name, the important thing, when you’re caught red-handed, is to find someone to blame it on.

But social media users were already posting previous instances of plagiarism by the [Ukrainian] Vogue editor…

BTW: Nice move, international-relations-wise, to be a Ukrainian who rips off a Russian. I mean, who needs independence?

In the city of Solidarity, people come together in an ultimately losing battle for the life of their assassinated mayor.

O powerful western fallen star! 
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! 
O great star disappear’d—

… tell.