Face paint and a broken arm.

[bigger picture if you click]

… that La Kid performed with James Taylor at the Kennedy Center tonight. Also with Mavis Staples. Her chorus sang along with the two of them to a Hey Jude / Let It Be medley in honor of Paul McCartney.

Most of the chorus stood on the stage, but La Kid was part of a smaller group that walked from the rear of the hall down the aisles, distributing flash lights to audience members (Flash lights? This seems odd. But that’s what she told us she was going to do.) Then she walked up to the stage and joined everyone as they waved their hands in the air and did that endless

Na. Na-na. Nananana. Nananana. He-ey Jude…

Maybe they turned the concert hall lights down for this? A thousand points of light?

A strange professor there has died.

Tom Trusky had obsessions — among them, the work of outsider artist James Charles Castle, about whom he wrote a biography. Here’s an announcement of a recent Castle retrospective. His work has become extremely pricey.

Boise State assumed Trusky – a man of exceedingly modest ways – left nothing of value. It was very wrong. He left the university a gift.

[T]he contents of his U.S. Bank safe-deposit box …left Trusky associates reeling. Named as his personal representative in his will, [his friend Cort] Conley was staggered to open the box and find a dozen books by acclaimed artist-bookmaker James Castle.

“I knew he had some of Castle’s work, but when I went through it, I was blown away by how many drawings he had,” [another friend] said. “I don’t think you can buy a Castle drawing today for less than $5,000.”

Greg Kucera, who sells Castle’s work at his Seattle gallery, says individual drawings have sold there for $5,000 to $20,000. The books in Trusky’s safe deposit box collectively contain hundreds of drawings…

His will stipulates that their recipient can never sell the books, which BSU almost lost to the Portland Art Museum by waiting until the final day to meet a legal deadline for accepting them.

Two of his students speak in the article’s comment thread.

Professor Trusky’s most valuable legacy to the university lives in the hearts and minds of his students. No one demanded more–or excited us more–in exposing us to the written word, with all its beauty and power.

My enduring image of him: seeing him careening through a turn at 10th and Grove on his bike, hands crossed behind his back.

… is amply compensated.

He’s Number 12 on the highest paid American university presidents list. (Scroll down.)

Great work, President Joel!

University Diaries has been covering executive bonuses at Duke University. Earlier posts are here, here, and here.

From a comment thread about the Duke bonuses in the Duke newspaper:

Dr [Victor] Dzau is a director of four major corporations (sample Pepsi) earning more than $1 million in fees each year in addition to his Duke salary and his bonus. When you consider the boards meet regularly (usually 10 or 12 times a year) in distant cities, … this [is] an undue diversion of his attention.

The experts agree. From a recent New York Times article about university presidents and chancellors sitting on corporate boards:

Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, an independent research firm focusing on corporate governance, [says], “it is just physically impossible to do the work necessary to be a good director” [when you sit on many boards]. The Corporate Library estimates that board members must invest 240 hours a year, including meetings and preparation, to do the work properly. But it can become a full-time job if the company runs into trouble.

Charles M. Elson, a corporate governance specialist at the University of Delaware, is highly critical of university presidents who serve on several boards… “If you see a university president on multiple boards, that’s a problem,” he says. “There is no way you can do the job. Someone has got short shrift.”

… [There is now] a movement to limit the number of boards each president serves. In the University of California system, for example, the Board of Regents voted in January to restrict board membership for its chancellors to three.

Raymond D. Cotton, a partner at the Washington law firm Mintz Levin who specializes in presidential contracts and has represented about 250 institutions, says he recommends to universities that they write into contracts that the president can serve on a maximum of two boards.

Duke is rewarding Dzau for not being on campus.

Here’s some important background on the Duke Bonuses.

Kudos to Professor Amy Laura Hall, spearheading the effort to make sure these men get every penny coming to them. And then some.

UD‘s kid will perform in the Kennedy Center Honors tonight (it’ll be broadcast on December 28).

During yesterday’s rehearsal, she watched Steve Tyler perform some Beatles songs (her group will also sing Beatles songs). I wasn’t supposed to blog about Tyler, because the honorees (Paul McCartney, in this case) aren’t supposed to know in advance who’s performing their songs.

But UD‘s sister just sent her this article, which reveals that McCartney asked for Tyler. So I’m not giving anything away.

There are two other performers with whom La Kid performs tonight — and those names I’ll continue to keep to myself.

‘A plasma-screen sports infrastructure and a covered-wagon academic budget.’

Oklahoma is a very backward state.

The OU Board of Regents approved raises for all nine assistant football coaches Oct. 28. …Kevin Wilson and Brent Venables received a $45,000 raise, increasing their salaries to $440,000 and $430,000 respectively.

Less than two weeks later, during his State of the University address to the Faculty Senate on Monday, OU President David Boren warned … department heads to prepare for a 5-percent budget cut…

[T]his situation highlights the strange reality that football coaches making six figures a year can get a pay raise during a time when the already-weak state budget is experiencing a $400 million shortfall …

Strange brew, OU. Killing what’s inside of you.

Ah, the good old days.

… these two YouTubes from Duke should help motivate you to dig into your pockets.

Please see this post for background. And remember: Nothing you can give could ever be enough; but whatever you can give will help.

… and what are they paying her for?

Results like this, I guess: Rensselaer Polytechnic University is ranked tenth in the nation for worst professors.

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I’ve been reading through the RPI Rate My Professors pages. The school has quite a few legendarily bad professors – professors known by all, for decades, to be insulting, lazy, incomprehensible.

My favorite comment from among many negative appraisals of professors there:

This professor does not like people or questions.

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To be fair, I doubt President Jackson knows about any of this. Too busy on corporate boards.

… gets a wonderful write-up from Christopher Hitchens.

… everyone – but everyone – hates the idea of changing local laws to close the bars at midnight.

In an editorial, Southern Miss students make the argument:

There is no reason to believe that closing bars at midnight instead of 2 a.m. will curtail violence. In fact, the effect could be worse for public safety.

The extra two hours gives people who may consume alcoholic beverages earlier in the night time to sober up. But many people who drink will not stop at 10 p.m.; for many, that’s the time they start. Closing at midnight will only mean that there will be more impaired drivers on the road at a time when traffic is already heavier.

UD isn’t sure why the students don’t take the obvious next step: Why close the bars of Hattiesburg at all? If it’s safer for them to stay open until 2, it’s even safer for them never to close.

An ESPN writer goes on to share further thoughts.

[W]hy are so many schools spending so much on facilities anyway? Why are we paying coaches millions and millions when their not-so-distant predecessors earned far less? Who is benefiting from the self-driven rise in costs? And how? We’re still playing the same schools. The players still are not paid (wink, wink). The concession stands still charge way too much for a soda.

How is all this money making any part of the college sports experience better?

If we were talking about professional sports it would be one thing. Pro salaries may be obscene, but teams spend their own money. But we’re often talking about public money in collegiate sports. As that NCAA report reveals, even when the athletic department is supposedly self-funded, programs still needed a median of $10 million in institutional subsidies to cover their costs last year.