I wrote my column this week in CityBeat about the city’s apparent requirement to tax each Segway that hits a Cincinnati street. Bad, bad idea.
I took a Segway of Ohio – Cincinnati tour Sunday with a friend and we both loved it – and learned a bit about the city.
Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory and Hamilton County Commission President David Pepper are celebrating the opening of the 2010 U.S. Census Cincinnati office with an amazing amount of fanfare.
Here’s the “Who” part of the press release sent out this morning. Note that the regulars are at the beginning, added by an ever-increasing amount of, well, relatively strange folks to be at a census office opening.
Mayor Mark Mallory, Hamilton County Board of Commissioners President David Pepper, Ohio Governor’s Regional Director Brewster Rhoads, Ohio State Representative Denise Driehaus, Director of the U. S. Census Bureau Detroit Region Dwight P. Dean, Cincinnati Local Census Office Manager George Conner, Reverend Doris Hoskins, Lebanon High School Color Guard, Cincinnati Public School of Creative and Performing Arts harpists and vocalist, and a host of Cincinnati and Hamilton County leaders and dignitaries…
Why night have the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, all the employees of Duke Energy, the Westwood Blue Devils 4th grade softball team, Larry Flynt and the ghosts of Marge Schott and Peanut Jim there, too?
It’s all happening at 2 p.m. today at the local census office, 801 Linn Street, 4th Floor, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203-1603 (map).
I agree the census is important and more important than past city leaders have made it. It just seems like a lot to do for an office of literal bean counters. Funny, too. Might have to go just to see the grand spectacle.
Originally uploaded by hjoew
In Memorial Grove at Cincinnati’s Eden Park there are trees planted in honor of each President of the United States after they leave office. The tree honoring President Richard M. Nixon had to be chopped down recently after, ironically, it was infested with bugs.
Two exceptions to presidential trees so far: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Why? Well, Bush’s tree is coming it just hasn’t been planted yet, I’m told. While Clinton never responded to a courtesy letter from the Cincinnati Park Board notifying him that it would be planted. Other presidents have acknowledged the plantings prior to their tree’s roots being sunk into the ground. But Clinton did not, so park officials never planted it.
Eventually, I’m told through a second-hand source, that a tree will be planted regardless. But, hey, President Clinton, can we get a little acknowledgment here? A letter, a phone call, a visit to town to turn the first shovel of dirt?
Spring is near
Originally uploaded by hjoew
The tree outside my apartment window is about to burst with spring
beauty. This makes me very happy.
