The women’s eight in the rowing (797.123) competition took place earlier today. The US team won the gold—I will now go through my six-degrees-of-separation connection to the team. My office window in Pittsburgh (Wait, why do I have an office in Pittsburgh? What about the Dewey Editorial Office at LC [where I am today] or my office at OCLC? Answer: I have offices in all three places, but I actually reside in Pittsburgh) faces the Allegheny River, and I get to watch the rowers go by as I dream about Dewey. My daughter Shannon rowed in high school and during her first year of college, so I’ve spent many hours on the shores of the Allegheny and elsewhere watching rowing competitions. As it turns out, one of the alternates on the US women’s eight, Amanda Polk, also rowed on a high school team in Pittsburgh, so I’m sure that I must have seen her zipping by on the Allegheny during Dewey reveries of the past.
Congratulations, too, to our neighbors to the north (the Canadian women's eight team took the silver) and to the Netherlands team, who took the bronze.
A quick postscript from Michael Panzer, our lead Dewey Olympics correspondent: The German men’s eight won gold yesterday . . . this event is of some importance to German sports in general (somewhat like handball :-) [Dear blog readers, Joan back here for a minute—this is an inside Dewey joke that I'll leave to Michael to explain in the near future . . . stay tuned]), so it was great they could win so decisively after 24 years. I also rowed in high school for several years (mostly to satisfy my requirement for an individual sport, and I loathe athletics / track and field), but as German school sport goes, there are usually no competitive events between schools. We rowed on the Rhine (mostly), but the Allegheny sounds more scenic!
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