Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, March 16, 2013.]

Somewhere in that “‘Job Jar’” is a slip of paper that reads Draw collar. Or Prooflook.

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All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

“Art by cell phone”

At the Picasso exhibition: Oscar’s Day No. 208.

On joining a museum

Elaine and I had never considered a membership in the Art Institute of Chicago. We live at a great distance, and we visit just a few times a year. But as a helpful fellow at the ticket counter pointed out yesterday, just two visits a year would recoup the cost. A membership for one gets us admission for two, along with a magazine, a 10% discount on purchases, safe passage to the Member Lounge (with free coffee and tea), and, yes, a totebag. We have promised not to fight over the totebag.

There are some great things at the AIC now. Among them: an enormous Picasso exhibition, an exhibition of Chicago immigrant and migrant experience in art (with a woodcut by Elaine’s great-uncle Aaron Bohrod), Irving Penn’s chewing-gum-on-pavement photographs, and work inspired by or made in collaboration with poets (Frank O’Hara and Larry Rivers FTW). And the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine art is back.


[Kylix (Wine Cup). Greek, Athens. Attributed to the Workshop of Nikosthenes. 530/520 B.C. Terracotta, decorated in the black-figure technique. Anonymous loan.]


[Pablo Picasso, White Owl on Red Ground. Vallauris, March 25, 1957. Red earthenware clay, decoration in engobes, knife engraved. Private collection.]

An unexpected benefit of membership: running into a old friend and colleague—in the Member Lounge.

Perhaps you too should join a museum.

A related post
Word of the day: apotropaic

[Descriptions verbatim from the AIC information cards.]

Overheard

“I think you could laser-focus it a little more.”

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

A very short film about paper

Le papier a un grand avenir [Paper has a great future].

Teenagers with moose, also plural

[“Des Moines, Iowa High School Teen Agers.” Photograph by George Skadding. November 1947. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Hummingbird Nest Cam

My daughter Rachel gave me the link. I tuned in today by chance, around 4:45 p.m. (PDT), and saw Phoebe feeding her babies. So cute. Add as many o’s to so as you like.

Which will it be: instant calm, or unexpected excitement? There’s only one way to find out: Hummingbird Nest Cam. Either way, the hummingbirds are sooooooo cute.

Thank you, Rachel.

Goodbye, Google Reader

I just went to check my RSS feeds and learned that Google Reader will soon be shutting down:

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

Now what? Feedly?

7:27 p.m.: Yes, I think it’ll be Feedly.

10:02 p.m.: 12,000+ Orange Crate Art subscribers use Google Reader. What’s next for you?

[Where did I go when I “went” to check my RSS feeds?]

Domestic comedy

Staring down the sink:

“Habemus dishes.”

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All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Adjunct teaching and health insurance

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has prompted the Internal Revenue Service to think about the hours of work that go into adjunct teaching. The IRS estimate: three hours for every credit-hour. Thus a three-credit class would count as nine hours of work per week. Four courses would put an instructor over the thirty-hour week that qualifies for health insurance:

Although the rules are still in the making, Maria Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, a national advocacy group for adjuncts, said what the IRS had proposed so far seems promising.

“I think the IRS is on the right track in recognizing that adjunct faculty constitute a unique category of worker in terms of how their work is currently recognized and compensated,” Ms. Maisto wrote in an e-mail. “It is helpful that the IRS is recognizing that there is a lack of uniformity in the way that adjunct work hours are currently calculated and how adjuncts are treated. This seems to be a huge step forward in the government's education about the true nature of contingent academic work.”

But even as the IRS is working to provide colleges with the guidelines they have sought from the agency, a few institutions have made pre-emptive moves by cutting back the number of hours adjuncts are allowed to work—among them, Youngstown State University, Stark State College, and the Community College of Allegheny County, where at least 200 adjuncts face a newly instituted cap on the number of courses they can teach.

IRS Says Colleges Must Be “Reasonable” When Calculating Adjuncts’ Work Hours (Chronicle of Higher Education)

What these schools and others are doing reminds me of the corporate strategy of giving employees thirty-nine hours a week to keep the work “part-time” (without health insurance). I’ll say it again: the exploitation of adjunct labor is the shame and scandal of American higher education.

*

April 23, 2012: The Chronicle of Higher Education continues to follow the story: Colleges Are Slashing Adjuncts’ Hours to Skirt New Rules on Health-Insurance Eligibility.

A related post
The Adjunct Project