F. King Alexander on Higher Education

LSU's Alexander Defends Tenure

Dayne Sherman  
November 3, 2013


LSU's Dr. F. King Alexander's Press Club speech on October 28, 2013. 

At 32:35 he gives a tremendous defense of tenure. I've never heard it defended any better. Link is below:

http://www.youtube.com/v/6o6E9kiYk0Y?version=3&autohide=1&autohide=1&feature=share&showinfo=1&autoplay=1&attribution_tag=qQ5XeBPKN6yXRPlp2w503A

Thank you for reading and watching.  

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker

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Mystery Solved: Crowdsourcing Louisiana Art

Please Help Me Identify These Paintings

Dayne Sherman
October 18, 2013
Revised October 27, 2013

The original post is below.  I was able to verify that it was done by the celebrated Louisiana wood turner and artist Chris Fry of Denham Springs, Louisiana, as of October 26, 2013, via phone call to Mr. Fry. He runs the Spoon Mill and is an award-winning artisan.

See articles and websites dedicated to Chris Fry below:

Spoon Mill - Home - www.spoonmill.com/

"Spoon making duo shared Louisiana recipes at New Orleans Jazz Fest"
http://www.nola.com/food/index.ssf/2012/05/spoon_making_duo_shared_louisi.html

Thanks to everyone who helped solve the mystery.

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I am a budding collector of Southern art, and I have added two pieces to my collection. Can someone help me identify the artist who created these two oil paintings?

The paintings are signed by "Christopher Fry." One was in a 1970 juried art show in Baton Rouge (subject, two bird dogs and pheasants, a Collection of Contemporary Southern Art Show certificate for "Chris Fry" on back), and the other is of a tree with flying geese or ducks. Both are great pieces with beautiful frames. One has a tag from Henry B. Elsas, a former frame shop on Baronne Street in New Orleans.

From my research, the Collection of Contemporary Southern Art Show was a traveling art show sponsored by Sears Company and local art guilds. The shows would travel to 40 cities and display local artists' works. The selections were juried, and a first-place winner was picked. Then the winning pieces would be displayed in Atlanta. See article here: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19640624&id=iG0fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RtUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=956%2C2305786

Send me any ideas at daynesherman@yahoo.com.

Thank you for reading.  

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

==============================

Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker

Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com

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My Shortest Column Ever

Throw Out the Bums, Not Women

Dayne Sherman

Column
Published in the Hammond, La., Daily Star
Updated October 13, 2013
Words: 200

I have a simple plan to solve the insanity in Washington. In fact, I can solve our legislative problems with one of my shortest columns ever.

Rather than getting rid of all 535 members of United States Congress as many have suggested, I’d rather see us throw all of the men out of Congress.

                                                           

Now, there are some sorry female members of Congress, but I’d rather not risk losing any of the good ones, and God knows women—for the most part—have more sense than men.

What about Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota)? She’s not far from taking up serpents on Sunday mornings. But she’s not running for reelection. Let her stay. We can use the comedy during these difficult times.

After we send the bums to the private sector, let’s have a constitutional amendment mandating at least 51 percent women in the House and Senate from now on. The country would be better for it. And the world, too.

That’s my approach to ending the madness.

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

==============================

Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker

Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com

Talk About the South Blog: http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/

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A Eulogy for My Father

Dayne Sherman

Eulogy
September 26, 2013
Words: 1,599

My father would have turned seventy-six years old today. He has been gone almost two years. This is the text of his eulogy, which I delivered at his memorial service in Baptist, a small community outside of Hammond where he was born and died.

Eulogy for Ronald Paul Sherman
December 17, 2011
Hammond, Louisiana

           

Thank you all for coming this afternoon. My father would have been pleased to see so many friends and relatives. Today I hope to celebrate and remember my father as I knew him. He was an unpretentious and humble man, and he might take umbrage over an event such as this one called in his honor. Those of you who knew him will have your own stories and memories, but these are my memories, or at least a few of them that I am willing to speak about in public.

My father, known as “Ronnie” to everyone, was born in Hammond during the Great Depression, and he lived his whole life in Tangipahoa Parish. He was the youngest child in a very large family of eleven children. Much of his early childhood always seemed sketchy to me. Dad’s father was a farmer, and he died when my dad was very young, perhaps under five or six years old. My father’s mother was a really tough lady who was in poor health for a long time, and she died when my father was in his late teens. The family lived in houses not far from downtown Hammond, and they raised a garden and kept chickens and hogs for food in the backyard to get throughout the Depression and World War II years. Dad picked strawberries for money, and he hunted rabbits with his two dogs, Tippy, a Chihuahua, and Gracie, a Greyhound, which must have been the strangest-looking pair of hunting dogs in Southern history.

The Great Depression brought hard times to Hammond. In the Vindicator newspaper during the weeks around the time my father was born in 1937, there was an advertisement offering land for sale in Tangipahoa Parish suitable for dairying and tung oil farming. The cost: four dollars an acre. 

The newspaper ran a glowing article about the brand new Strawberry Stadium built at Southeastern Louisiana College, as it was called back then, through President Roosevelt’s WPA program. Dad’s older brother, my Uncle Harry, told me he had worked on the stadium as a ten-year-old boy doing manual labor, pushing a wheelbarrow full of wet concrete up zigzagged planks to build the structure, which still stands today 74 years later, and I’m sure extra money was needed to take care of the new baby in the house.

Dad was a mischievous boy and he continued to be so all of his life. He more than once told me about going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans as a child and using a long lady’s hatpin to stick somebody ahead of him in the crowd just to see a big fight break out. Likewise, he accidentally shot a neighbor with a .22 rifle, the neighbor referred to only as “The Cajun.” Well, he was never really called “The Cajun” in the story, but I don’t care to use the real word in this particular setting. Regardless, the Frenchman made a complete recovery and Dad didn’t have to go to prison. If these stories aren’t totally true, Dad rarely let the bare facts get in the way of a good story.

After eight years of Catholic school, my father started working full-time as a dump truck driver at fourteen-year-old, even though he didn’t have a driver’s license.

He loved mechanic work and running bull dozers and backhoes, and he really liked operating cherry pickers and cranes. He was a proud union member, but he was probably the happiest when he was working on a car in our driveway, and the greasier he got, the better he enjoyed it.

No matter what he was doing for work, he always spent time with his buddies, most of them Italians, doing what he called “bumming around.” Basically, just hanging out and fixing cars. If I had to say his life had a theme, it would be just “bumming around.” No agenda. No plan. No worries. And no deadlines. Bumming around and enjoying himself is what he did.

As a result of making time to bum around, my father always had great friends and a close-knit extended family. When I was a kid, there was little surprise one morning when I awoke to see a stranger sleeping on the couch. The “stranger” was somebody my father had bailed out of the parish jail the night before, an old friend in trouble and needing help.

There were some distinctive things about my father. He liked to keep his hair cut as short as peach fuzz. He enjoyed deep fried soft shell crabs and oysters. His answer to almost any personal problem was to go wash your face with a towel drenched in warm water. He woke up every morning at about four-thirty and rarely missed the six o’clock Swap Shop on WFPR. He liked scrambling quarterbacks, CB radios, truck stop cafes, and watching Antiques Roadshow on PBS. Beside his bed, he did not keep a handgun for self-defense. Instead, he had a big can of wasp and hornet spray that he swore could blind an intruder as far away as the other end of the house.

My father could get riled up occasionally, and nothing was more dangerous to public safety than messing with his mailbox. The maddest I’ve ever seen him was when someone beat our mailbox with a baseball bat when I was a kid, and it was a good thing he never found the person who did it.

He never wanted much. He said he wished to be cremated, and I suspect he did this just to save the family some cash. He was satisfied driving old beat-up Ford trucks and drinking coffee from his own pot and eating honey buns most days for breakfast. He was a humble man in every way, and he came into the world poor and left it just the same. But in a country where greed seems to be the current pastime, I can say with confidence that he never cheated anyone out of a dollar, and he didn’t have a greedy bone in his body.

One of my favorite teachers used to say that when an old person dies, a library is lost forever. This was certainly true with my father. To say that he was an authority on the Hammond area would not be an overstatement. And he knew about all kinds of different things from how to rebuild carburetors to when to plant okra, and if he didn’t know the answer to your question, he’d tell you a line about something or other and hope you were happy with that instead.

Dad loved to talk about the weather. More than once I’ve heard the phone ring, and he’d say, “Hello. Where are you?” And then a moment or two would pass, and I’d be thinking he was talking to a friend. Then he’d say, “What’s the weather like there?” After a few follow-up questions, he’d always say, “No, podner, I don’t want none of that today.” Dad was talking to a telemarketer, and he’d just hi-jacked the phone call for a weather report in Oklahoma City.

He could be a hardheaded man, and it was frustrating at times. The last day he was home from the hospital in mid-November, my sister, Melissa, was horrified to see him lighting a cigarette inside the house while on oxygen. She told him that it was dangerous, so he just took the little nose piece off his face and draped the plastic line over his walker and smoked anyway.

Dad loved his grandkids, and he had special names for each of them: Tristen was “Poodle Doodle,” Parker was “Scooter,” and my son Nate was simply “The Boy.”

He was a tough man, growing up where he did and how he did. When I look at his illnesses, and I can count at least fifteen deadly medical conditions that he fought ranging from lung cancer to stomach bleeding to staph infection to name only three, he made it as long as he did out of general toughness and the desire to hang in there as long as he could.

During my father’s prolonged illness, which started three years ago next month, he had perhaps thirty different hospital stays and countless calls to 911. A few lines from “The Great Litany” of the Book of Common Prayer have given me a measure of comfort during the time. The petitioner asks to be delivered from the following: “From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared.” Today, most of us would like to suffer very little and die suddenly in our sleep.

My father was in a long, slow decline, and at least we were able to try to look after him when he would let us. We saw the end coming well in advance, but it doesn’t make it any easier to face now. At least it allowed us to try to say good-bye a little at a time over the past few years, and for this I am thankful. Still, it is a reminder to be prepared for death and be careful to say our good-byes and make our peace God and one another while we have the opportunity.

Please join me in committing this man to a merciful God, committing this father, grandfather, husband, uncle, cousin, neighbor, and friend to the Lord’s grace.

Ronnie Sherman, my father, will be deeply missed. He is already deeply missed as a member of my family and this community. And thank you for being here today to help me remember his life.

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker

Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com

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Guest Column by Dr. James D. Kirylo

We Have a Leadership Crisis in Baton Rouge

By Dr. James D. Kirylo
August 16, 2013
Guest Column - 700 words

This speech in no way reflects the views of Southeastern Louisiana University or its management.


On behalf of the faculty senate, a grand welcome to the 2013 Convocation!  Also, as a great way to commence this new academic year, I hope you will all join us at the annual Alumni picnic located in the Twelve Oaks on Friendship Circle following this convocation. 

It is an honor and privilege to be standing before all of you this morning.    When I mentioned to my wife what my role would be at this event, and that I would be speaking, she squirmed a little and said “Oh, oh.”  Perhaps some of you might be saying the same thing to yourselves.  Anyone who knows me knows that I attempt to live my life to be as honest, authentic, and sensitive as possible, making every effort to speak truth to power, truth to justice.

And the truth is, Dr. Crain is making every good effort to lead this university through waters that are hurricane rough, paddling with only one oar—not two—in a continuous sea of darkness, somehow fending off wave after wave with seemingly no forecast of calm.  Clearly, the ride has been rough.  As Hammond City Councilperson, Mike Williams, recently stated, “I know Dr. Crain and I know that this pains him.” 

Certainly, we will come out of these difficult days, but it won’t happen unless more of us rise up out of our slumber of silence.  Mayor Foster is absolutely right, “As goes the university, so goes the city of Hammond.” 

Of course, there is an elephant in the room.  A big one.  And that is this: we have leadership crisis in Baton Rouge.  While we are starving higher education and going down, most states are reinvesting in higher education, including our neighboring states of Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas, adding fiscal resources to higher education.  Yup, we have a leadership crisis in Baton Rouge.

It has been said that if given lemons, we ought to make lemonade.  That’s a nice thought, a positive spin on things.  The problem, now, is the lemons are dried out, and the lemonade has been all drunk up.  No more lemonade can be made. 

Well, perhaps we ought to look at things as a glass half full, instead of half empty.  A nice thought, too.  But, that is problematic, as well, because there is no more water in the glass.  To be sure, we have a leadership crisis in Baton Rouge.

These draconian cuts to Southeastern have placed an incredible financial burden on students, have created unsustainable hardships on faculty, and staff—on families, and soon—if not already—the business community in Hammond and surrounding area will share the pain.  To put it another way, if Southeastern goes away, no more new chicken places will be coming to town, and most of the others will close down.  Bye-bye Starbucks, hello vacant lot.  Yes, we have a leadership crisis in Baton Rouge.

But, there is a light.  And that light is all of you, is me, is Dr. Crain. Collectively, we can right this ship, by—as one insightful thinker at Southeastern puts it—“Standing up, speaking up, and not shutting up” so much so to move Baton Rouge to assert leadership that rightly funds higher education in the state of Louisiana, that rightly supports Presidents of Universities, like Dr. Crain, and that rightly supports students in elevating their possibilities to make a better Louisiana.

Some in here may be thinking, odd introductory remarks for an-opening-academic-year convocation.  Perhaps, but I don’t think so, simply because the urgency of the times demands it.  Contrary to Jack Nicholson’s iconic line in the motion picture, A Few Good Men, I suspect this audience can handle the truth.

As I introduce Dr. Crain, I am reminded of the words of Victor Hugo, the great French writer who wrote, “Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”  Indeed, the President of Southeastern Louisiana University continues to strongly move forward, despite the fragility of the circumstances.  It is my great honor to introduce Dr. John Crain.

***Used with permission.

Blogger Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

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Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
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Sage of Tangipahoa Parish speaks bravely

Profiles in Real Courage

Dayne Sherman

Column
August 11, 2013
Published in the Daily Star and elsewhere.
Words: 550
 

After Hurricane Katrina, a wise man appeared in Tangipahoa Parish. His name is C.B. Forgotston, and he stands alone as the most important commentator on Louisiana politics writing today.

I’ve met Mr. Forgotston face-to-face only one time. It was at St. Vincent de Paul. We were both dropping off items. Through Twitter and other venues, however, Forgotston is always quick to answer my many questions. He serves as the Bayou Socrates never taking a fee for his advice and analysis.

Even during the rare moments when I disagree with his positions, I appreciate his perspective and his courage.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from him is what I like to call the “The Forgotston Equilibrium.” It’s a flawless economic principle. Each time tuition is raised, Governor Bobby Jindal and his lapdog legislators cut higher education funding by an equal or greater amount.

For this economic theory, Forgotston should win the Nobel Prize just like Milton Friedman, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.

In other words, “The Forgotston Equilibrium” explains why Louisiana universities can’t possibly tax students into prosperity.

Raising tuition is a lose-lose game, and with the advent of a burgeoning community college system charging far lower tuition, the demise of universities will continue unabated into the foreseeable future.

Remember the $250 million construction engorgement passed during the last legislative session that will build community colleges in every crack and corner of Louisiana? Between misguided community college competition and higher university tuition, I predict that every university in Louisiana with the exception of LSU and perhaps Tech and ULL will start dropping 400-500 students a year until the entire student body can fit into a janitorial closet.

Louisiana higher education is being systematically destroyed. The culprit is not a lack of tax revenues. No, it’s a matter of priorities. These priorities come from the governor and our elected representatives.

Our primary recourse as citizens is to let our “representatives” know that they are not representing us with their pork barrel projects, often called NGOs, obese consulting contracts, and state money spent on local boondoggles.

Let the politicians know that their choices make them anathema, and in 2015 they will be thrown out of office like a big old snake that has slithered inside the house through the kitchen door: swiftly and with plenty of malice.

I find it ludicrous when local leaders run around like hound dogs covered in red ants and can’t quite figure out how to stop the cuts to higher education and other essential state services.

Haven’t these nitwits read C.B. Forgotston’s recent columns?

Here’s how to stop the bleeding in higher education and elsewhere. Stand up, speak up, and don’t shut up.

Of course, this takes backbone. In Hammond, my hometown, a newly evolved subspecies of human invertebrate is leading much of the political and business community. How disgraceful.

In a world of hacks, charlatans, suck-ups, higher education bureaucrats, political appointees, and fawning politicians, it’s nice that we have C.B. Forgotston telling it like it is. At least Hammond has one resident with a fully formed adult spine.

Louisiana and Hammond need people like Forgotston now more than ever.

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. He covers the South like kudzu and promises that he never burned Atlanta. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website is daynesherman.com.

==============================
Dayne Sherman, Writer & Speaker
Web & Social Media: http://daynesherman.com/
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Guest Column by Dr. James D. Kirylo

Truth, Love, and Partisanism

 

By Dr. James D. Kirylo
July 3, 2013
Guest Column - 450 words


Last week, Robert Mann, a professor at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication, wrote a provocative column in The Times-Picayune.  Titled Louisiana is Walling off School Children From Each Other, Mann challenges the direction of the Louisiana school reform effort.

 

Among other facts, he asserts that 40 percent of the state’s voucher students scored at or above grade level last spring, that 80 schools in the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD) were plagued with allegations of mismanagement, wasteful spending and millions in lost or stolen property, and that the New Orleans’ RSD schools, mostly charters, were the worst performing in the city.  In short, Mann calls out the so-called reformers, making clear that their effort to systematically dismantle public schools is not working, not good for Louisiana, and ultimately undermines the common good.

 

Evidently, Senator Conrad Appel (R-Metairie) took exception to Mann’s piece, provoking him to strike back with a rather long diatribe in a post on his Facebook page.  In more ways than one, Mann brilliantly did his job as a columnist.  Appel was defensive, divisive, and ideological, injecting partisan politics, essentially proclaiming how the Republican Party is saving public education in Louisiana. 

 

Nowhere in his column did Mann mention political party, the left, the right, Republican, Democrat or Independent.  He simply presented a critical point of view that is clearly necessary in the overall conversation regarding the direction of public education in Louisiana.  

 

As for Appel, instead of thoughtfully considering Mann’s assertions as a prompt for constructive reflection, he pounced, taking Mann’s commentary personal, attacking the left, the Democrats, unions, and then somehow thinking he hit a home run with the proclamation, “Out of sheer love of our state, we Republicans have taken on the campaign to free our people from ignorance…Petty attacks by people who seek to destroy what is noble and good will be met with truth.”

 

“Truth” is a funny word and so is “love.”  Evidently, Mann doesn’t speak the truth, nor does he love the state of Louisiana.  Heck, the Democrats, those on the left, and even union people don’t speak the truth or love this state.  But the Republicans do!  The kind of political posturing that Appel injects is incredibly destructive, leaves no room for dialogue, and is an obvious manifestation of the axiom, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

 

According to a recently published Bloomberg report, Louisiana has been rated the most miserable state in 2013.  The list goes on and on as to why we were graced with that not-so-flattering label.  Clearly, the partisan divide has exacerbated that misery. Perhaps Senator Appel should meditate on the misery he's caused before his next missive is written.

 

James D. Kirylo is the author of the book Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, and can be reached at jkirylo@yahoo.com.

Reprinted with permission.  
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Blogger Dayne Sherman lives in Ponchatoula and is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel. His website at daynesherman.com.
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