Closing Northern Vermont University (NVU) Lyndon Campus

Front page, above the fold, story in this weekend’s Caledonian Record. UVM Chancellor Jeb Spaulding called for closing the Lyndon campus (and some other places too) Needless to say the caused a hue and cry from alumni, students, and local business people. All duly reported on in the Record.
As a New Hampshire resident, the doings over the border in Vermont are only of academic interest. But they did publish some figures on NVU employment that makes me wonder. NVU Lyndon has nearly 1000 students. It also has 700 employees. That’s a pretty plump student faculty ratio. Only 43 employees are full time faculty. I have to wonder what the other 657 employees do, other than draw their pay. And, they pay their faculty peanuts. Assistant professors only make $50,518. A full professor makes $66,000. Electrical engineering pays a lot better than that.
Far as I am concerned, a student faculty ratio of 20 is about right. That would be 50 professors. Nobody else on the payroll. The students mow the grass, shovel the snow, sweep the halls, wash the dishes, and do all the janitorial chores. We did this at my old high school; it only took an hour a day of student time. No paper pushers or administrators at all. Faculty does necessary paperwork, mostly grading papers and writing report cards. Unnecessary paperwork (most of it) just goes into file 13.
Let’s see, 50 faculty at $66,000 each a year is $3.3 million. 1000 students paying $ 11,250 tuition is $11.25 million. You would think that they could make ends meet. Maybe even afford a couple of maintenance guys to fix stuff.

I filled the car up for $1.88 a gallon

Cheap, Cheap.  I was paying $2.80 not so long ago. 

"We are NOT running out of food." Say many Web posts.

Why do I have trouble believing that?  With most of the country out of work, we have to be loosing food production, food processing, and food distributing.  Most of us can see the empty shelves in the food stores.   I don't believe this is caused by panic buying.  This Corona virus thing has been going on for a month, plenty of time for the buying panic to die down and for the food supply chain to fill up the empty shelves.  The shelves are still empty which makes me think the food supply chain is breaking down. 
   The medics and the media are all in favor of keeping the country shut down forever, or at least until a vaccine becomes available, which the TV says will take a year, which is forever if you are an empty grocery shelf.  Hence the trickle of "We are NOT running out of food" Web posts. 

TurboTax recommends Adobe Acrobat

Me, I don't e-file my taxes.  E-file means the Infernal Revenue Service can feed your return straight into their computers for audit.  I know I won't be getting a refund, so I'm in no hurry to have the IRS computers scanning my returns.  I print out a paper copy and mail it in.  Turbo Tax kindly informs me that the IRS has been complaining about the scannability of forms printed by anything other than Adobe Reader.  Groovy.  Should IRS contact me and bitch that they cannot scan my paper 1040, my reply to them will be "Get a better scan program" and "I plan to hand scribe my return next year. Get used to it."

My lawn is melted out but the Cannon ski trails are still white

Spring is making an attempt up here.  It is in the forties temp wise.  My lawn is free of snow and the winter shocked grass is attempting to green up.  But the ski trails up on Cannon Mountain are still white.  This comes from all the snow making over the winter, combined with both skiers and snow grooming machines packing the trails down into ice.  They run the groomers ever night during ski season, I can see their lights running up and down the trails in the dark. 

We need some new pronouns

We need a unisex pronoun for cases where the person could be either male or female.  Right now I write "he/she".  This comes up in discussions of literature.  Say I am discussing the protagonist.  That's a $5 word that means hero or heroine.   Writing "he/she" seems sort of odd.  For that matter I find myself writing "him/her" more often than is good.  The new pronouns I want do not declare the person to be transgender, They just would be for use in cases where the person might be of either sex.

The Food Supply Chain is breaking down

Today I ran some errands.  First off, a dump run.  Stuff has been piling up for two weeks and I can smell the kitchen trash can.  It's time.  Two weeks ago the Franconia dump was on emergency Corona virus mode and they were only taking the big Pay-as-you-throw bags.  Which left me with a trunk still full of bottles and cans.  Today we have a new plan, we gave up on recycling.  I just pitched my pay-as-you-throw bag and all the bottles, cans, old magazines, and mixed paper into the industrial strength trash masher we have down at the dump.  And so my trunk is empty for the first time in two weeks. 
   Then a quick stop at Walmarts for a 40 can carton of canned catfood.  Place was not too busy.  The Dunkin donuts concession is not operating.  No glazed donuts for breakfast.  Maybe a quarter of the customer were wearing  face masks.  A guy asked me how I got my "1" license plate.  Turns out he is a constituent.  I gave him my card, told him I was standing for re-election.
  Then I did Shaws.  Again not too busy and a quarter of the customers wearing face masks.  They are running out of a lotta stuff.  I was seeing a lot of strange brands of stuff that I never saw before.  I'm thinking they sold out of the good old brands we all recognize and buy, and to fill the shelves they put out the strange branded stuff.  I'm thinking we all need to go back to work before we run out of food.