Wishing women well

I watched an interview with a young Cleveland woman competing in an invention contest at Wal-Mart. If she wins, thousands of Wal-Marts will be marketing her product.  It's a "table shade," and she has a patent.  She was quite excited about the opportunity.  I wonder how many corporate giants offer prizes for inventions.

Yesterday I was chatting with the woman who cleans the lobby and women’s restroom at the local hotel.  While she cleaned the floors and I used the stall, we discussed the early starting date for schools.  I asked about her children.  “My boy is getting his Master’s degree in Chicago, and my daughter will be a junior in college in Toledo,” she said.  I don’t know why she’s cleaning restrooms with that “pay it forward” genealogy, maybe she just wants some extra spending money for Christmas, or maybe she’s writing a novel about how people are treated in service jobs.

Although I don’t remember her name (many people we meet at Lakeside we see only a week or two in the summer), but we took a number of art classes together within the last decade, I recognized her coming into a lecture yesterday. I remembered our chats after class and how sweet and encouraging she always was.   Her husband was leading her and she had that recognizable shuffle of dementia.  So sad.  But his loving care and attention was even sweeter.  Another friend we’ve known perhaps 20 years and who is still doing things alone also has Alzheimer’s, according to her husband. Very talented and active in community affairs, her bright sparkling personality will be (is) missed.

I got my summer LAS News from the U. of I. today.  Interesting story about Christina Brodbeck, one of the 3 U. of I. students who developed YouTube. They sold it in 2006 to Google for $1.65 billion in stock.  Now in her early 30s she is an “angel investor” and has invested in 22 start ups. She came to the U. of I. to study history (AB ‘0l, History) and also studied Russian.  She picked up a book on HTML and taught herself web design.  Later she got an advanced degree in multimedia design at San Francisco State University.