The problem with the public part is that they’ve got to put the head of the state senate on their board of trustees.

Now it says here that “The structure of the Board of Trustees has changed several times,” so there may be hope for the school’s reputation in the future. For the present, Cornell gets hit up year after year with whatever grifter’s got that job, which really lowers the tone, trustee-wise.

I know what you’re saying. Ex-officio, big deal! Everyone knows that means shit.

Not everyone knows that. The name’s emblazoned very close to the tippytop of your list of venerables entrusted with the welfare of the university. It says Welcome to Cornell. Welcome to our Board of Trustees.

Here’s some background on Trustee Skelos.

What to do? Albany will always be a whoremarket.

UD presumes that up to now the process of adding the latest Albany name has been like a children’s party game wee UD used to play: Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Blindfolded, you pressed a piece of paper drawn to resemble a donkey’s tail onto where on the wall you figured the image of the rest of the donkey might have been affixed. Then you pulled off your blindfold and laughed at how far the tail was from its proper location. UD‘s figuring that the process of state senate trustee name entry at Cornell involves the blind pressing but not the laughter. She figures it’s like I’m sticking this ass on this page but I don’t want to see and I don’t want to know. It’s a leap in the dark, a leap of faithlessness, a leap of joylessness.

Since there’s apparently precedent for changing the composition of the BOT at Cornell, UD recommends a quick chat among themselves to that, uh, end.

Here she is in the Dolphin Discovery Zone, where she sits just above the Splash Zone (gotta protect the laptop) watching the little buggers leap curvaceously out of the pool. In the background another lot of them is doing some extracurricular not-on-command large white ball play.

In fact it’s all extracurricular sport these days at the Dolphin Discovery Zone, ever since “the staff decided” (says a guy a couple of rows down) “that it’s not nice to make the dolphins perform on command.” So the atmosphere is church-like, as we silently ponder the pods.

“Hey let’s see the ball in there! They want the ball!” An old coot one splash zone over breaks the silence. (The dolphins tossed the ball out of the pool.) Staff’s ignoring him. But he’s right. They want the ball. Just splashing around is (to quote Beyond the Fringe) not enough to keep the mind alive.

Well they’ve all lined up for their fish buffet, and it was fun watching them eat. Time for UD to re-enter the militarized zone.

Pretty much got the place to myself. Something about recent riots and current huge-gun-toting men in combat fatigues everywhere seems to have taken most people’s minds off of the planet’s marine life. (Pun about marines goes here.) So it’s just the dark massive sharks (housed on the evil creepy lowest level of the place, with menacing music piped in) and ol’ UD.

UD will make the obligatory travel snob statement here, since she can’t resist: Having visited the Sydney Aquarium, where the sharks are under, over, and around you in even greater profusion, she was thrilled but not peeing her pants at this display. More wonderful have been the profuse reefs, which remind UD that it’s been years since she’s snorkeled, and she misses it.

Without crowds (with nobody, basically – a few stragglers like myself), you can really hear all the hokey recorded animal sounds, and that’s fun too.

One of the guards escorted me up into the rain forest (I was today’s first customer) and insisted on showing me where the tamarin monkeys (reminded UD of the ill-fated Marc Hauser) hid in the mornings. Bird life up there is even more impressive than bird life in UD‘s own half acre.

A quiet city comes to life ten floors down from my room at the Hotel Monaco. My early morning view’s a mad swirl of architectural style and history: domed and steepled churches, repurposed factories, red brick row houses, skyscrapers.

Very quiet down there. A few buses. A few people. No need for helicopters to buzz a sleeping city.

Our wedding party was a little late breaking up; by the time an army attorney defending the 9/11 plotters dropped her at her hotel (did UD remember they were at Guantanamo awaiting a perennially delayed trial? she did not.), it was 10:30 (curfew’s at ten). UD crossed the threshold to her hotel without incident.

Baltimore’s unfazed, far as I can tell, by recent events. The restaurant where we had post-ceremony drinks, toasts, and insane amounts of food (standout dish: a dessert plank – a narrow piece of wood, practically the length of the table, on which perched a massive array of sweets – marmalade upside down cake, maple pudding, pecan pie) was packed.

I sat next to the instaminister (apparently you fill out a simple online form) who officiated at the event – a politician of local renown named Maggie McIntosh. She and her wife, whose Baltimore house is just down the street from John Waters’ place, invited UD to their Lewes house – a renovated church (having checked it out online before the wedding, UD spent some time last night attempting to wangle just such an invitation).

And what of UD‘s plans for today? I need to get back to DC pretty soon – but it occurs to me that this is probably just the morning to see – finally – the National Aquarium (half-price admission!)

… gets a positive mention in this current PMLA piece.

Start with this account of Shirley Willihnganz’s catastrophic tenure as provost at one of America’s most sordid universities, the University of Louisville.

Then read of the great reward she reaped:

Late last year, tax filings for 2012 revealed that the nonprofit [University of Louisville Foundation] had awarded University President James Ramsey $2.4 million in deferred compensation, along with $1.8 million for the school’s outgoing provost and $1.3 million to Ramsey’s chief of staff. These payments dwarfed the administrators’ reported salaries by up to 4,000%. Provost Shirley Willinhnganz, for example, earned $45,646 in base wages from the foundation in 2012 — a package that climbed to $1,925,108 when the deferred compensation was accounted for.

Now see this here foundation of ours, which manages the school’s big ol’ endowment, operated perfectly well – perfectly well – for years. That is, until some fucking newspaper started getting nosy.

The foundation operated in secret until 2008, when the Kentucky Supreme Court [ruled] that its records are public after a legal battle with [a] newspaper.

But that ain’t bad enough. Oh no. Now some U of L trustees up and wrote a letter to the state auditor asking him to audit us!

The nerve! Why if you just type LOUISVILLE in this blog’s search engine, you’ll see we’re as pure as the driven snow down here.

… sirens wailing, are heading up Charles (away from the waterfront) as I type.

And many helicopters buzzing overhead.

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

Even at their absolute best, the city’s leaders have to contend with the cumulative impact of past disadvantage. White flight means a smaller tax base and fewer resources for improvement; industrial collapse means fewer jobs; crack and violence means a generation of “missing” black men, in jail or in the ground; a culture of police violence means constant tension with the policed.

Routine urban madness as UD, boots on the ground, covers the length of Charles Street from Baltimore Penn Station. This comment came from a pretty well-dressed bum – light blue Ralph Laurenish clothes, though seriously askew – and he was addressing a young pregnant woman sitting on a sunny bench, lost in texting. It reminded UD of a moment long ago on the chic Boulevard Saint Germain, when an old man dressed in denims suddenly shouted at all of us Allons les capitalistes!

Charles, with its elegant old buildings and monuments, is rather subdued but entirely normal. Small groups of people in front of hotels and cafes chat among themselves, stopping to greet the police who walk up and down. UD assumes they’re all talking about the same thing.

I left Baltimore so young that little on this iconic street stirs much of anything; but the Peabody Institute and the Walters Art Museum certainly put me in mind of cultural outings with my mother (though she preferred to go to dog shows). The main thing I think of when I think of Baltimore is our large Jewish family. My mother’s mother (Fanny Kirson) had four sisters and a brother; my mother’s father came from almost as large a brood. His side of the family was full of major immigrant success stories – Aunt Bea (aka Bessye – here’s a photo that accompanied Baltimore Evening Sun coverage of her selection as 1971 Woman of the Year at her synagogue) got very rich selling pipe (I have no idea what that means; I was always simply told that she sold pipe); Uncle Harry was a bigshot doctor; my grandfather, Charlie Wasserman (scowling face here), was an engineer for Baltimore Gas and Electric.

Everyone was shocked when Harry’s daughter Caroline married Hubert, a First Nations person and a logger, and settled in way cold Temagami Canada. I think she’d been up there for summer camp when they met. We visited them once; they had a bunch of kids and seemed happy.

Having jammed my black leather backpack full of stuff (jacket, dress, shoes, umbrella, laptop), and having hidden the garbage bin from the dog, UD is off, on a partially sunny day, to Baltimore. She will walk to the Grosvenor metro station unless

1. she is stopped by a neighbor in a car who insists on driving her; or
2. she gets to Strathmore Avenue just in time to catch the Ride-On bus.

Amazingly, after chatting with the town maintenance man (subject: the spring weather, and how it’s ideal for outdoor work), and exchanging greetings with Barbara, editor of the venerable Garrett Park Bugle, for which, as you know, UD writes (Barbara was working in her vegetable garden) (which reminds UD that yesterday she bought an entirely inappropriate plant to replace a bush that got eaten by deer — a Mediterranean, or European, palm, which needs more sun and heat, she figures, than she can provide, though some websites claim the thing can survive her planting zone), amazingly, as she approached Strathmore, there it was, the Ride-On.

Her fellow passengers at ten AM on a Thursday ‘thesda morning were the usual dispirited lot; as she entered, UD threw them a grin which was unreciprocated. But the driver greeted UD enthusiastically; she took his hearty wishes for a great day with her as she stood on the train platform.

How great will it be, though? She’s going to riot-torn Baltimore.

“Thank you for still coming to our wedding,” Courtney emailed a few minutes ago.

Things are a little livelier on the Red Line train to Union Station. A bald bespectacled guy with three or four newspapers smiles while making his way through today’s atrocities; the guy sitting next to me texting looks (and smells) fantastic in his expensive suit.

Dupont Circle, doors opening on the right.

… wee UD lived for the first few years of her life. On this hilly street her brother when four or so crawled into a neighbor’s car, released the emergency brake, and drifted.

Our neighbors kept chickens. UD recalls watching one of them get its head chopped off.

I remember all four kids, home from school with the mumps, jumping together on our parents’ bed.

Fancy events were always at Haussner’s (enjoy the reporter’s hat).

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

This is all by way of beginning a series of posts on revisiting Baltimore — poor Baltimore, still shaking from the riots.

I’m about to pull myself together and get on a train. I’ll attend a wedding there today; and if things look calm, I’ll take a hotel for the night. I’ll blog with thoughts, scenes, memories.

Things seem to be calming down, but universities in Baltimore remain wary, with class cancellations and early closings. Some conferences have pulled out of the city. Baltimore, which has tried so hard to thrive, has had a terrible setback.

UD will be in the city tomorrow. She will take a look around and blog about it.

… the running of the university athletic program numbers is an annual display at once shocking and idiotic.

Cleveland State University’s numbers are typical: Almost no students attend the school’s games, but “[a]n estimated 89 percent ($9,361,508) of the athletics budget is paid for by CSU’s students.”

Men’s basketball, without a doubt the most popular CSU sports team, averaged an attendance of just 1,996 people at their home games in the 2014-15 season.

The Wolstein Center, their home arena, has a capacity of more than 13,000. The 2015 budget projected that the Wolstein Center would operate at a $917,000 deficit this year.

You and I know what the next step is at CSU. We’ve been following university sports for a long time, yes?

CSU will announce that they’ll spend 60 million dollars to expand the arena and add 30,000 seats.

… the gilt.

Johns Hopkins University has told students to stay inside buildings, due to reports of protesters near the university’s north Baltimore campus.

UD‘s grandfather, father, and uncle all graduated from Hopkins. Baltimore is where she was born and lived until the family moved to England for my father’s postdoc year. When we came back, we moved to Bethesda and stayed there; but most of UD‘s extended family remained in Baltimore.

UD plans to be in Baltimore for a wedding this Thursday, but is keeping an eye on the riots.

Well, that didn’t work. A judge just ruled that the mother of an eighteen-year-old pledge pummeled to death by a CUNY Baruch fraternity may indeed bring her suit.

In a myriad of sordid fraternity beating deaths, this one stands out for sheer brutality and moral depravity.

The world of sadomasochism to which UD has been introduced by her decision to cover fraternities on this blog has shocked and confused her. And she’s no shrinking violet. She’s read her de Sade and her Story of O. She’s thought about the subject. She’s been around.

But there’s no denying it: Many college fraternities house concentrations of just about the sickest people in American culture.