… brings its best minds to bear on the most important problem in the world:

How can we continue tailgating jest the way we like it?

Recall that in recent years at the University of Georgia (Our Library: Your Pissoir) the drunken mayhem, and the filth left behind on campus after the mayhem, has gotten to to the point where the administration has begun to notice. Given how much money the school makes on tailgaters, it needs to strike a delicate balance between encouraging alcoholics to play on campus, and keeping library personnel, the day after, from finding oceans of piss in the entryways.

Here are some thoughts about the problem, from a comment thread to this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Squirrels are amazing. Yesterday, I threw a large number of nuts out on my deck for them. I don’t like squirrels, and I would not do this in temperate weather, but I’ve taken pity on them with all this snow.

In minutes, they’d organized an entire social, economic, and spiritual system around the manna. A production line of squirrels captured, gnawed, whittled, and then sped off with each pecan. At the bottom of the deck, squirrels with ribbons in their hair danced around a branch on which they’d drawn a crude image of a pecan. Directly against my sliding glass doors, a neat line of squirrels bowed and scraped in gestures of propitiation.

Today it’s flat-out war. Among themselves, as to which forms of propitiation are truly genuine and effective, and with other groups of squirrels, attracted to the bounty.

Blogging America: The New Public Sphere, by Aaron Barlow

Good summary here of the fearful trip to the bottom the Washington Post is taking, lashed to its for-profit mate.

The wretched of the earth are restless.

[Princeton music professor Milton] Babbitt, whose father and brother were mathematicians, also taught in the mathematics department at Princeton during World War II. While his mathematical approach was a signature of his own compositions, as a teacher he embraced a wide range of subject matter, focusing on areas such as jazz and popular music, in addition to abstract modern compositions.

The composer Milton Babbitt has died, at 94. Princeton’s long review of his life describes a man of immense intellectual and artistic range.

Philomel.

When the Trees Spoke

So the trees spoke, finally, under the weight of wet snow.
The townsfolk had waited forever. They wanted to know
Everything: How the oak could grow so early, so late,
Though smoked and shivered under waves of great
Weather. How the chokeberry bush evaded its fate
And breathed, both petal and stem unbroke.
What kept the dogwood off the lightning stroke
And kept the wavering willow immaculate?

The trees sighed, a condescension. How to evoke
For these yokels the specific, sickening freight
Of nature? Creak. Crack. Croak. Our branches hate
The cold you fancy a long white cloak…
The joy our limbs are given to know
Is to give out, under the weight of snow,
And fall to a ground without climate.

… though coughing up a storm. Her cold has moved from head to chest, so she’s hacking like mad.

And speaking of storms, there’s an ice storm headed this way, so Les UDs are preparing for loss of power, and for life in the Legacy Hotel, once again.

UD’s problems are meager, however, compared to those of her sister’s husband’s daughter (this is her other sister, not the Morrissey freak), who, with her young twin daughters, was due to be flown out of Cairo this morning. This woman’s husband – a graduate of George Washington University medical school, and a military doctor – has been stationed in Egypt; but he has also lately been flying to Djibouti, and he was in Djibouti when the protests broke out.

GW, the Washington Post reports, has a number of current students in Cairo, one of whom talked to the campus paper:

Cory Ellis, who is in his first year of GWU’s Middle East studies graduate program, told the GWU student newspaper, the Hatchet, that he went to some of the protests, camera in hand. Although Ellis watched the riots from a safe distance, he was temporarily incapacitated by tear gas, according to the Hatchet.

“I didn’t come to Egypt to take classes. I can take classes at GW. I went 5,000 miles away from home to experience another part of the world and immerse myself in the culture,” Ellis told the Hatchet. “I major in international affairs, so I want to experience international affairs. I didn’t want to let the chance to witness history slip by me.”

Here’s an account of another GW student there.

This is UD’s sister writing. UD is home, without internet connection. She does have power, so she’s back from the hotel, but there is no connection. She’s also got a cold, so she’s in no mood to go slutting after a hotspot.

A thousand pardons. She will return soon.

… but, to be fair, there’s one place in the university where direct contact between student and instructor still thrives — and will always thrive.

It will thrive as long as the mythic name of Bobby Knight continues to be part of our national lexicon. University coaches from Kansas to Iowa to Texas to Oregon to Florida to your state! will always be out there demonstrating how nothing motivates a player like a direct kick in the ass, or a workout so sadistic it puts everyone in the hospital.

Idaho’s education superintendent wants to mandate a number of online courses for all high school students in the state. Resistance to the idea has propelled his proposal into a national story.

This is from a letter to the editor of an Idaho newspaper, about introducing online high schools:

I had a very positive high school experience, because I had excellent teachers who inspired me to love subjects. I remember fondly government classes with Mr. Schiess and Mrs. Wolf, art with Mrs. Burgie, English with Mr. Wakefield. These teachers made a difference in my life.

How do you get that online? No interaction with the teacher, no discussions in class, no new friends from group assignments. As far as education goes, getting high quality teachers is far, far, far more important than getting fancy computers to take online classes on.

Please, Mr. Luna, don’t take away the humanity of education.

At an education hearing:

Pat Bollar, a teacher in Minidoka County, said that in her career, she has seen “self-interested institutions” develop programs, all touting claims of enhanced learning.

“As these innovations come and go, my years have taught me that some things remain the same,” Bollar said, dubbing education as “a direct contact with teachers and students in the classrooms.”

… Boys.

So, UD pulls her curtains aside to let in the thin light of another snowy day… She snuggles deeper into her bed coverings…

She hunkers down, in other words, at her ‘thesdan hotel, for another three days — until the Potomac Electric Power Company restores power to her Garrett Park house.

Two pieces of good news, however: The weekend rate on our trendy room is way low; and Butch, the Garrett Park maintenance person, tells Mr UD: “Don’t worry about the [vast] tree in your yard. The town will take care of it.”

UD has covered lots of stories like this over the years. A grant-getter teams up with someone who controls campus money.

The guy who used to run Florida A & M University’s Federal Credit Union teamed up with the guy who used to run FAMU’s Institute on Urban Policy and Commerce, and they did some commerce of their own, stealing $134,000 from a federal grant.

Records showed withdrawals corresponding with every deposit to a micro loan account during a period between 2002 and 2008. These withdrawals were then deposited in Telfair’s personal account.

Took every penny.

Background on Joseph Kubacki here.

Kubacki is a son of the late Reading Mayor John C. Kubacki, who was indicted on extortion charges by a federal grand jury in 1964, the last year of his first mayoral term.

John Kubacki was convicted along with reputed Reading mobster Abe Minker of extorting $10,000 from parking meter vendors who were told they should pay up or lose their city contracts.

Let’s start here, with a post I began yesterday afternoon. A post interrupted by a power outage:

A massive branch just fell —- but so neatly! so completely! onto our front yard. A nice clean horizontal fall onto rapidly building snow. It took no wires down with it, and after its loud crash lies calm and black atop the white. Kind of like this, only no longer attached to the tree.

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

Okay, back to the present.

Watching, out of our front windows, as the power disappeared, was exciting, beautiful, a light show.

A sound and light show, because as street and house lights flickered and flashed silver and blue against the bright white night, you could hear, all over town, massive trees creaking and cracking under the weight of snow. Huge, high, many-branched branches came crashing down in pillowy clouds.

After each crash, in the quiet of no traffic and no people, the old trees of Garrett Park again spoke, as in a children’s tale.

Now – almost noon – there’s still no power in Garrett Park, and I’ve settled into a local hotel to do my work.