(Photo of a Chicago PD piper by Jamie McCaffrey)
If you want to gauge the sorry state of higher education in the United States, this statistic tells you everything you need to know: there is only 1 college in the entire country that offers bagpiping as an undergraduate major.
That college is Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The instrumental performance Bachelor of Fine Arts program includes a bagpiping option. Standing alone in the breach is one man: Professor Andrew Carlisle. He teaches the bagpiping classes as well as supervises the three or so students majoring in that noble instrument at Carnegie Mellon. Carlisle teaches them in a designated bagpipe room, which is soundproofed for reasons that I do not understand.
-via Marilyn Terrell, who enjoys depressing me.