This morning, walking Roxie on our route through International Friendship Park, the sun lower in the sky than yesterday, I stopped to talk with what appeared to be the supervisor of a construction crew, since he gestured while everyone else worked. The man had a chartreuse vest, unlike the others, who wore chartreuse t-shirts, dirtied by the plywood forms they lifted and carried.
You know something is heavy when strong men compress when they pick it up.
It was a comfortably cool morning, sunny. When the man stopped gesturing and everyone else was moving, I approached. I wanted to compliment him on their work.
They had carefully dug a trench about three feet wide, four feet deep, and thirty yards long. The work was tricky because the trench was curved, serpentine.
In each section of the curve they built a rectangular plywood form, about 18 inches wide and as deep as the trench. The forms get filled with concrete. When the dirt is back in, the bench will be about two feet above ground, topped with granite slabs.
One of the things Trent taught me was how to evaluate and appreciate concrete work. The plinths the crew built were straight and solid, with perfectly smooth exterior walls that revealed the quality of the concrete and the work that built them.
As the supervisor and I spoke, six big black SUVs with flashing red and blue lights went by.
The man glanced at them. “There goes our possible future Vice President.”
Kamala Harris! I thought, excitement rising. Wait. No, she’s the current Vice President. Tim Walz?
“Really?” I asked.
The man tipped his head. “He lives right over there.”
I didn’t know J.D. Vance lived in Cincinnati. Back at the condo building, thanks to a conversation with Fred at the front desk, now I know what street Vance lives on.
I didn’t like the “childless cat ladies” comment, being a childless dog woman. But I’m more bothered by his assumption that—because I don’t have children—I’m less invested in the future of this country. It’s demeaning.
The movie Aliens made me feel the same way. Why does Ripley need to be protecting a child to be brave and fierce?
I liked the first Alien movie better.
Roxie
Yesterday, when I got into the elevator, Ken and Sandy were already there. Ken said he sees me outside all the time, walking my dog. Sandy said, “She’s doing so well. You didn’t get her as a puppy, did you?”
I shook my head. “She was eight. She had been… mistreated.”
They congratulated me on my work with her and I said we had both worked hard.
Sometimes, when I see Roxie asleep on the floor, stretched out, nose extended, tail at peace, I think my heart might burst with how much I love her.
Correction
Joe Landwehr was not the insightful force behind the University of Cincinnati’s early acquisition of UC.edu. That honor goes to a group of students from the business school, with Steve Howard submitting the registration. Details at the very bottom, from Steve.
Chewing the Cud of Good
Thankful for understanding that everyone has a good reason for believing what they believe.
Correction Details
I [Steve Howard] saw your blog entry “Braggin’ on Joe Landwehr” regarding the domain name uc.edu. It was nice of you to ‘brag on’ Joe. He did a lot for UC, but, it was not his foresight that got uc.edu for the University. The uc.edu domain name was originally registered by student workers at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business Administration (CBA). The College had an AT&T 3B2 and a couple of AT&T 3B1 systems that were all running unix and connected via the UUCP nework. This was a dialup store-and-forward network used to transfer e-mail and usenet groups throughout the world. The CBA used the “PC Pursuit” service to avoid long-distance charges and dialup into other UUCP systems throughout the country to exchange traffic. The UUCP network used a complex routing that required users to know how systems were connected together and to route through every system along the way. The newly invented domain name system offered a way to avoid the complex routing knowledge by simply using a domain name. There were published “maps” of network connections that were used to generate route maps for each domain name. An online search will reveal many of these maps. For example, if you look at the UUCP map found at https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mail.maps/c/EpiaJaMlf_Y for “uc.edu” you will find the map entry for uccba which was the true original “uc.edu” unix host. The College of Business registered the uc.edu domain name in 1987 and had been using it for a year or two when it was approached by Joe Landwehr who worked for the University of Cincinnati Computing Center (UCCC). A meeting was held and the College of Business agreed to give the uc.edu domain to the University and UCCC as long as the domain entries for uccba and ucqais were kept active by UCCC. Joe did a lot of great things for the University. But, it wasn’t his foresight that registered/created uc.edu, he just asked to have it made available for use by the entire University. How do I know this? I originally registered uc.edu while I was a student worker at the College of Business Administration.