~Monday~ Today will probably go down as “Black Monday” or “06/08/09. Never Forget.” or something like that at my place of employment—NC State University.
For weeks a saga has been playing out around the abuse of power by our ex-governor, Mike Easley, and the hiring of his wife, Mary Easley by NC State University. The headlines have read like this:
- Mary Easley defends 88% pay increase
- UNC chief says Mary Easley’s raise under review
- UNC Board of Governors approves pay raise for first lady
- (Mike) Easley campaign paid for vehicle feds are investing
- Former Gov. Easley took private flights
- NC State provost resigns over Easley hiring
- Board of Elections steps up (Mike) Easley investigation
- NC State board chairman resigns
- FBI subpoenas (Mike) Easley’s travel records
- Former governor issues statement about investigation
- NC State chancellor calls for Mary Easley’s resignation
- Feds subpoena Mary Easley’s job records
- Jordan picked to lead NC State board
- Second Easley appointee resigns
- Mary Easley not resigning from NC State
- State auditor subpoenaed for Mary Easley records
- Money removed for seminars run by Mary Easley
- NC State trustee asks for review of ex-provost’s salary
Today, all in the course of the morning, these four items came out in the media:
- Ex-provost’s pay package larger than disclosed
- NC State chancellor resigns
- (Mike) Easley involved in wife’s hiring
- NC State fires Mary Easley
It’s hard to describe the way this went down. It was like everybody was waiting for the next thing that could possibly happen, and then—Bam!—something did. People were getting email alerts from the news outlets (e.g., wral.com, newsobserver.com) and updates were coming in over Twitter, it was just wild.
And just when we thought it had all come to a head with the chancellor resigning, the one-two punch comes in that Mary Easley has been fired! What was surprising about that was that all of the top brass had strongly recommended and requested that she resign, and she (with her lawyer) kept saying, “I’m not resigning.”
Tonight was our long-anticipated Salon III meeting, since we hadn’t gotten together since the middle of March. Once again we “managed to live up to our own hype,” (thank you, Anna, for that) and had a quick-witted, side-splitting, hare-brained night.
We had two agendas for the evening: The Homosexual Agenda and The Straight Agenda.
The homosexual agenda consisted of:
- Tell Salon about the Ning & Tina – my story about demonstrating a Ning to an HR person and inadvertently choosing a section of it that had this picture in it, to which the HR lady said, “I could’ve went all day without seeing that,” to which I replied, “Me, too, girl.” Thence forth, we referenced that picture with the code words, “Snicker Breasts.”
- Recruit two new people into the “lifestyle” – I had actually had this item done early in the day, as it’s a recurring item on the homosexual agenda.
- Denigrate 4 heterosexual marriages – same with this one; busy, busy, busy!
- Show Chinese condoms with Anna’s – the was a box of condoms I found on the back of my commode each night in the hotel in Shanghai. Anna had a purple condom lollipop from The Condom Project (more below, on the straight agenda)
- Ask Sarah about 1st meeting her father-in-law – I will not elaborate here on this one; let’s just say it was a great story.
- Show the Easley bowel movement chart – about a week or so ago when all those news stories kept coming out about the Easley’s, I joked to the Salon that “they’re now reporting every bowel movement made by the Easley’s.” One of the reasons that we know all the deliciously dirty details of this saga is that everything is public record, because that’s how it is for state employees. I noted that people’s water bills are public record, too, and that I’d looked up the Easley’s water usage records to see how often they were “going” and superimposed a graph of their usage on the public timeline of events. This is what it looked like:
and the straight agenda consisted of:
- Update on summer activities – We didn’t formally do this; the information just came out over the course of the evening.
- Toilet report from Argentina – Kim gave us a synopsis of her recent trip to Argentina, including a toilet report, which is a reference back to my toilet report (included in my PowerPoint presentation) about the toilet situations I encountered while in China last October.
- Photos of The Condom Project – Anna had recently seen this at a conference that she attended. They created condom art pins, made figures out of condoms, and even had a tasting station, at which to taste lube.
We had lots of great conversation about an incredibly diverse set of topics, which is what we like to think we do best. Here are some topics that come to mind and/or some “soundbites” that I remember:
- For whom does one journal? When you journal, are you stepping outside of yourself looking back at your day, or are you reimmersing yourself and living it again? Is it an “open book” or “a book on a shelf just higher than your tallest child?”
- Having a partner with different schedules, both literally and figuratively, and how that works.
- After Anna’s condom project report, “Let’s call her anacondom.”
- The implications of the leadership shake-up at NCSU.
- Kim’s employment situation.
- Sarah’s monumental distraction, which she couldn’t articulate orally, but wrote on a blank page of The Homosexual Agenda notepad: “Snicker Boobs hanging OUT!”
Oh, we talked about so many things. That’s all I’m going to capture. Fellow Salonaires, if you have more to add, please use the “Leave a comment” link below and speak up.