We walked over to the graduation to see part of the procession. I was struck with how BIG Vanderbilt is - or maybe what a small liberal arts college these Colleges are. Vanderbilt has to have a Jumbotron on the Quad! The music was shaping up to be splendid, but we left before the faculty procession; I wanted to stay for the headgear, always the highlight of regalia, but Father has a funeral.

Click and send money to the Chaplaincy. Father Baker promises to have a more integrated click-and-give function up soon!

*At the brunch he threw for graduating students, people kept asking how I knew Father. The simple answer is that all four of our parents knew each other at Vanderbilt - I don't remember not knowing Father.

Here's the board's own position on the closure. Note the wishful thinking in the last paragraph about keeping a doctoral program open. How do you do that without a faculty?

Captain Yips points out a lo-how-the-mighty-are-fallen moment in the affair:

Considering Seabury-Western's collapse, it's worth noting that the Seabury Board thinks that they need $18.7 million, and that this goal "significantly exceeded Seabury’s fundraising capabilities."

It's not a small amount, to be sure, but in the fundraising and nonprofit worlds $18.7 mil is relative chicken feed. There was a time that a more confident and assertive Episcopal Church could have raised that money (in 1890 dollars) over lunch at the millionaire's table at the Chicago Club, from some guys named Field, Armour, Pullman, Shedd, Higginbotham, and Swift - and for this purpose, the older version of TEC would have had a seat at that table. Some of the millionaires were, to be sure, scoundrels, but they were civic minded scoundrels, and the amount needed would have barely dented their resources. Northwestern University's top student charity fundraiser, Dance Marathon, pulls in $700,000 every year. That Seabury doesn't even consider the effort is an interesting marker on the road to collapse.

Really. They didn't try to raise a little less than $20 million to save an institution in Chicago? Admittedly, the alumni/ae of seminaries are seldom sources of large contributions, but whatever happened to all those rich Episcopalians?

The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.

The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.

via Cronaca

Be sure to scroll down for the bumpersticker, too.

via Instapundit

Any idea that mean Ivy League patriarchalists ambushed a nice woman who didn't know the setting is off.

*My own damn fault - I helped my parents' yard lad get the rototiller down from and back up into his truck. Too heavy, I guess, because a few hours later the knee started to swell up again.

Ick! Monstrous freshwater rays and their dinner plate-sized babies.

It's good to be home.

oh - I wasn't sleepless at 3:24 a.m. as the time stamp on this entry would have it, but was dazed enough at 9:24 p.m. that I didn't reset the time zone for my computer.