Good morning. 
Sunday in Whitewater will see morning showers followed by a thunderstorm this afternoon, and a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 55m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1854, the first railroad reaches Madison: “On this date the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Kelly Meyerhofer reports Former UW chancellor paid $135,000 to work on ‘community building,’ new degree program:
Bob Meyer, who retired as chancellor of UW-Stout in August 2019, worked as a System consultant from late 2019 through March 2021, according to a contract obtained under the state’s public records law. Former System president Ray Cross hired him at 40% of his chancellor pay, or about $8,445 monthly.
….
The contract’s lack of any specific assignments stuck out to Judith Wilde, a George Mason University professor who has written extensively about college leaders and the “golden parachutes” they receive after leaving the job. She reviewed Meyer’s contract at the State Journal’s request.
“There’s nothing here that indicates a deliverable,” she said. “If this were a true consultant position, as I have worked as a consultant for universities, there’s always a report or something specifically due at the end. This certainly doesn’t list anything like that.”
….
Meyer is the latest example of a UW administrator earning six figures after stepping down.
Cross was hired as a full-time consultant for three months last year. A contract required him, among other assignments, to submit a written plan on how to increase diversity of students and staff at each UW campus. Cross didn’t write the report, instead providing “verbal recommendations” and shifting his focus to COVID-19 testing. He earned about $125,000.
The System also agreed to pay former UW-Whitewater Chancellor Beverly Kopper at her chancellor’s salary over an eight-month period in 2019 — about $162,000 — while she prepared to return to a full teaching schedule in fall 2019.
Under a work plan Kopper submitted to the System, she committed to preparing syllabi, lesson plans and a report during that time. The State Journal requested those materials but a UW-Whitewater records custodian said the university had no records in its possession.
(Emphasis added.)
Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein report Russell Moore’s departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s leadership prompts questions over its future:
Prominent Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, who blasted former president Donald Trump and his evangelical fans, announced Tuesday that he will be leaving the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention where he has been the president of its policy arm since 2013.
Moore’s departure from the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) follows other high-profile exits from the denomination, including popular Bible teacher Beth Moore (no relation) and Black pastors. Some evangelicals are wondering what their departures signal about the direction of the convention, which has included louder voices on the far right in recent years.
….
Moore was an early critic of Trump and accused other evangelical leaders of “normalizing an awful candidate.” When other Southern Baptist leaders met with the then-presidential candidate at Trump Tower in 2016, Moore suggested they had “drunk the Kool-Aid.”
The first howls of a wolf pup in the Northwoods of Minnesota: