Fourth
Dear Go Fourthers:
Dorothy and I had an interesting weekend: we spent Saturday at the
opening of the Reynolds Center (http://americanart.si.edu/reynolds_center),
which is the new donor’s name over the doors of the National Portrait
Gallery and the National Museum of American Art. Perhaps that is how we
can save the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library — we can promise a major
donor that his name will be paired with King’s, or maybe Tony Williams
can be persuaded that if he saves it we’ll rename it the Williams-King
Central Library. Afterwards, we went to the Smithsonian Folklife
Festival on the Mall (http://folklife.si.edu),
where we listened to a Ukrainian Canadian cowboy band, and then went to
the hear the Latino Chicago band that played polkas, sung in Spanish.
After years of celebrating the purity of obscure and isolated cultures,
it appeared for awhile that the Folklife Festival was promoting the
opposite message, which has been unfashionable for a generation — that
we’re all in one big melting pot that results in a gloriously mixed
amalgam.
On Sunday, Dorothy and I went chasing petition circulators for the
slots initiative again. The professional, out-of-state petition
circulators didn’t begin to appear in town until Wednesday or so, and
there still aren’t many, although we expect a deluge of them this
week. We went to a dozen prime locations, and located circulators in
only three places — one at the O Street Giant, one at the Columbia
Road Giant, and two at the Alabama Avenue Safeway. All four were
professional petitioners from out of state, and not one of them was
accompanied by a DC resident. By law, only DC residents can circulate
initiative petitions, although the Board of Elections has ruled that
people from out of state can “assist” the DC circulators. Of course,
by the time the petitions are turned in, they’ll bear the names of DC
residents as their official circulators, and it will be nearly
impossible to prove the fraud. I’m asking again: if you are approached
by professional, out-of-town petition circulators with the slots
initiative petitions, and if they are working without a DC resident, or
if their DC resident “witness” doesn’t stay close enough to see
and hear what is going on between you and them, write an E-mail to the
DC Board of Elections and Ethics with all the details of where and when
it happened, and send a copy of your E-mail to us. We’ll need all the
evidence we can gather.
I hope you’ve been following the Washington Post’s reporting
and editorializing on how the city council is subverting and undermining
the open meetings legislation proposed by Kathy Patterson and Vincent
Orange. Orange hasn’t been able to get the legislation through his
committee because two consecutive meetings have been boycotted by
Councilmembers Mendelson, Schwartz, and Graham. While Mendelson and
Schwartz seem proud to prefer making secret deals in closed rooms to
doing the public’s business in public, Graham seems to have been
shamed into supporting the legislation by the exposure of his helping to
block it (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001505.html).
The first requirement for clean government is that it be open
government, that politicians do their deliberations and deal-making in
full view of the people whose business they are conducting. That's
something our councilmembers should remember and celebrate this Fourth
of July.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Disaster Preparedness a Disaster in the
District
David De Seve, ddeseve@verizon.net
I am a DC resident who commutes outside the city daily and have done
so for nearly ten years. My longest one-way commute to date has probably
been no more than an hour. However, that record was broken by hours on
Tuesday, June 27. That evening I left work around 5:20 p.m. and arrived
at DC around 5:50 p.m. via the Roosevelt Bridge. I arrived from the
south in order to pick someone up at the Kennedy Center. From there we
were only to drive about three miles to my house off of Scott Circle.
This normally takes ten to fifteen minutes. This night it took me nearly
three hours. Most of us can walk that distance in about forty five
minutes!
In that frustrating crawl across town I did not see one police
officer nor one traffic cop at any of the dozens of intersections that I
spent the evening inching through. Their lack of presence certainly
contributed to the complete disregard for driving laws that ensued. For
example, I would be the fourth car back from the light and would have to
wait through six or seven cycles before I could cross, as crossing
traffic disregarded their red lights cycle after cycle. Also, at one
point I watched in disgust as it took an ambulance about twenty minutes
to move one block. God help the passenger who took that ride. There was
just no way it could get by. At 6:30 p.m., traffic only got worse as fed
up drivers began parking in rush hour lanes, probably so that they could
sit this one out over a stiff drink. The post mortem on this
pseudo-disaster has it that traffic light outages across town (14th
Street, 9th Street, etc.) caused congestion to spread to all exits from
the city on the south side. In any case, if this is any indication of
how our mayor and our police chief will manage a true disaster, we are
in serious trouble. When the mayor declared a state of emergency, at the
very least street parking should have been suspended and police should
have been manning all intersections along routes out of the city.
###############
Flooding and Park Closings
James Treworgy, jamietre@yahoo.com
Tilden Street/Park Road is an important east-west crossing. I
certainly do not expect miracles in terms of getting all the roads open
again following the deluge. However, is it too much to ask that DPW or
the Park Service put up a piece of plywood with the words “Park
Crossing Closed” spray painted onto it, at Connecticut Avenue and
Tilden on the west side, and Park Road and Klingle on the east side? I,
like a dozen others at that moment, and probably thousands of other
motorists over the last couple days, drove down Tilden Street to simply
turn around and drive back. This further snarled the disaster that is
Connecticut Avenue around those parts, as we tried to find a way across
the park, as well as wasting our time and gasoline. This would have
taken about ten minutes and ten bucks to deal with, yet apparently it
never occurred to anyone that this might be useful information while you’re
still on Connecticut Avenue.
###############
Stealth Hardware Store
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
After way too long, a True Value hardware store has finally opened in
Tenleytown inside the old Hechingers/Sears building on Wisconsin at
Albemarle, NW. Don’t be surprised if you can’t find it easily. It’s
buried underneath the Container Store in the parking garage. Nice
location for those who drive there, and the store seems to have most of
the essential things you need that don’t require a Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Maybe they’ll even put up a sign outside so folks will know they are
there.
###############
Zoning Commission Give
Cool Reception to Ballpark Garage-Condo Scheme
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062700023.html?nav=rss_politics:
“The city’s chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi, is analyzing
whether he can certify the money available for the city’s parking
plan.” Can you believe this? Just a few months after Gandhi — while
Cropp read along with him the financing provisions of the stadium to
show that there was enough money in the budget to cover the stadium
costs — boldly claimed the project had more than enough money
available via the approved legislation to cover any and all overruns,
the CFO is busy concocting a way to approve spending millions on parking
overruns above and beyond the supposedly hard cap on ballpark costs. The
DC council claimed that the cap was rock-solid, and the only way to
prove that is to disallow this runaway spending that was only supposed
to be an issue at the RFK Stadium site (remember that late-inning deceit
from the Brigade?) and unnecessary at the current site, lest every word
about standing firm on a real spending cap be put to the lie.
“Herbert S. Miller, president of Western Development, which
proposed the plan to mix aboveground parking among condominiums and
shops, has said the California Public Employees’ Retirement System
will finance the $300 million tab.” So once again, it’s only the
District who’s putting its money where its mouth is on the financing
side, while the developers again dodge making the direct payments
towards the ballpark. Having escaped the call for developers to directly
finance parts of the ballpark project from their own pockets in exchange
for the future revenue that developers will yield from the project, this
ever-resourceful friend of the Brigade put his efforts and resources
into finding someone else to finance the noncompetitive purchase of what
is likely the most profitable part of the city’s portion of the
ballpark land, from whose development the city was entitled to receive
all revenue (which was sold to the DC Council as the main way to pay
back the city‘s hundreds of millions of dollars in ballpark
investment). It’s time for the council to end Miller’s gravy train
as it relates to the ballpark.
From http://www.washingtontimes.com/sports/20060627-122531-6600r.htm:
“‘I’m a little concerned,’ commission member Greg Jeffries said.
‘How much time was put into this plan? It has to be five days or seven
days. It just does not seem like it’s fully developed.’ Indeed, city
officials finalized the concept just last Friday, after intense talks
with Western. Members were not impressed, particularly with renderings
of the garages that appeared to show that cars would be visible from
inside the stadium. ‘Having exposed garages is not what we want to
see,’ said member Michael Turnbull, Architect of the Capitol. ‘We
have this fear that we’re going to build this temporary thing for 50
years that’s not going to look good.’ An architect for Western said
facades and a special screen would be constructed to make the garages
largely invisible from the outside. Members said they were worried the
screen would still allow for unattractive views of cars inside the
garages.” What’s the use to the city of having developers associated
with this project who are endlessly resourceful, clever, and
conscientious when it comes to their end of the project (the condos,
retail, and its associated underground parking), but so woefully
careless when it comes to the city’s end of the bargain that they’d
offer a slapped-together joke of a parking "solution" that not
only involves the sell-off of the prime piece of land from which the
city is entitled to keep all revenue generated there but doesn’t
achieve the hoped-for goal of improving the ballpark vistas by sinking
all parking below-ground. Instead, this "solution" consists of
scores of condos beyond the outfield fences along with the same looming
parking garages with another cheap ballpark feature: a cut-rate screen
that will be the joke of the major leagues as it is at the home of the
Florida Marlins. Hey, maybe they can show movies on the screen from the
inside so the cars parked there can feel like they’re at a drive-in!
Unfortunately, the current "solution" offered by the schemers
is even more comical.
“We believe the proposal is reasonable and doable,” said DCSEC’s
Mark Tuohey, whose group has ultimate oversight of the stadium project.
"But the back-up plan is essential because we must have the stadium
and parking available when this opens in ‘08." Actually, you do
NOT have to have the parking available by then if it means sticking the
city with an unacceptable scenario for decades to come! This renewed
saber-rattling from the DCSEC, the mayor’s office, and the Lerners
that everything must be up and operational, or else, is being used to
justify lax environmental study at the site, an abandonment of the
promise to make the ballpark the first certified green stadium, and
monstrous parking garages looming in the ballpark’s sightlines. Thanks
to the midnight-hour knee-buckle by the DC council that got this
boondoggle through without a single worthwhile concession from Major
League Baseball, it is true that the city has opened itself up to
financial penalties with each missed deadline. However, all of the
penalties could be more than adequately covered by money already
generated via MLB’s return to DC (in the $40 million range at last
tally), so the notion that the city is once again out of options is not
true. Let’s get real here: it’s going to take everything going
absolutely perfectly for this slow-starting project to be online by
opening day 2008. It is more important for the city to get things right
from the start and sufficiently address each and every transportation,
parking, and environmental concern in order to avoid this project’s
becoming a white elephant and costing the city untold sums of money in
the long run, even if the opening of all facets of the ballpark project
experience a degree of delay. With no ballpark spending and with maximum
stadium revenues guaranteed it, the Lerner group has no such concerns.
Therefore, their desire to clutter the ballpark vistas with parking
garages in the name of speed and cover up land that could be used to
maximize revenue from the ballpark project cannot take precedence over
the city’s obligation to maximize the ballpark project’s appeal and
profitability. If the city is going to build this palace with no
significant financial help from MLB, the Lerner group, or the
developers, it must proceed in a way that is to the best interest of the
city and not a handful of private concerns, especially when those
concerns have consistently proffered ballpark design options to are to
the detriment of the project’s overall appeal and profitability from
the city’s side.
“Marion Barry said the plan goes against a council rule prohibiting
money from the sale of ballpark land to be used for stadium
construction.” Of course, legislation from the DC council also
required the city to seek a new site if the costs of the infrastructure,
parking, and land for the current site exceeded $165 million, which was
addressed by the Brigade by unilaterally moving huge portions of those
costs outside of the cap, only to have the DC council, including Barry,
agree to such a plan in its midnight knee-buckle. It would be nice if
the council could actually stick to its guns this time.
From http://www.washtimes.com/sports/20060628-121908-8648r.htm:
“Turnbull said he was skeptical of plans to extend pedestrian ramps in
the ballpark above the surrounding streets to allow for a view of the
capitol and noted that no other building in the city offered such a
feature. ‘If you’re going to do that, it needs to not just be stuck
out over the street.’” This raises a whole other point: how pathetic
has this design process gotten? For all the untold millions spent on
design consultants by the DC government, how can one significant design
problem after another keep occurring from the supposed ballpark experts
at HOK? It doesn’t help that the city’s point man for so long on the
process — the DCSEC’s Mark Tuohey — has no experience in this
field, and the current crop of designers appear to still have serious
“continuity issues,” as it were, this late into the process. None of
this bodes well for the final product, which continues to get
value-engineered to death. How a cut-rate greenhouse of a ballpark could
be allowed to be so expensive and fully funded by a governmental entity
to the unprecedented “blank check” degree that it has speaks ill of
all involved.
###############
Thanks, We Needed to Have This Explained
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net
There’s a brochure from the Department of Public Works describing
“SWEEP,” the Solid Waste Education and Enforcement Program, which
includes this marvelous bit of information: “illegal dumping is
against the law”! Well, I guess that clears things up.
###############
Volunteers of the Year
Karen Ostlie, kostlie@juno.com
Thanks to those of you that came to the American Red Cross annual
volunteer recognition last Thursday evening. It was said to have been
the best one so far. Our Volunteers of the Year award went to Samuel
Jordan and Robert Poubelle. Eager to continue volunteering as a health
and safety instructor, Robert Poubelle came to the DC office of the
American Red Cross to have his instructor authorization extended in
October of 2005 from the West Central Michigan Chapter. During this past
year Robert has taken additional training to become certified as a sport
safety training instructor and a CPR/AED for the professional rescuer
instructor. During his time with the DC office, Robert has taught about
eight health and safety classes training about seventy people in the DC
community in life saving skills. Robert has exhibited exceptional
professionalism in his teaching as well as volunteering for a number of
special events. We wish we had more like him.
Samuel Jordan came to the American Red Cross two years ago in April
of 2004. He had enrolled in the African American HIV education and
prevention instructor course to enhance his facilitation skills and
knowledge in HIV education to take back to his organization and staff at
Health Care Now, where he is the Executive Director. Sam’s goal is to
help educate as much of the community in HIV awareness as possible. He’s
doing this through the American Red Cross HIV starter facts program,
where he has taught about one hundred fifty people this past year, and
through Health Care Now, where he’s taught hundreds of people HIV
prevention and education skills. As part of Health Care Now, the
Department of Education, and the American Red Cross, Sam holds HIV
education sessions in the junior high and high schools of ward 4, 5, 7
& 8 in an effort to encourage safer behavior among our youth. He is
about to open his second facility, Brook Land Manor in northeast DC, in
an effort to continue his mission of educating the community in
awareness of HIV.
This is the first year that we had so many active volunteers working
with the DC office in health and safety. They have done a phenomenal job
this year, and the Red Cross thanks them very much for making this a
great year.
###############
Payment of traffic citations via the web works without a hitch. So
does driver’s license renewal, as long as there is no reason to have
to appear in person (e.g., a new photo). Trash and recycle collection
usually work as advertised, though the crews could perhaps use more
training on which is which. (In particular, trash guys will leave some
boxes for the recycle guys, who won’t collect what they consider
“dirty” stuff.)
###############
Favors Before the Election Is Over
Patricia Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
I certainly am having second thoughts about two prominent candidates,
Councilmembers Fenty and Gray. Councilmember Gray attempted to dole out
a grant to his favored publisher and the election hasn’t even taken
place. It seems that if you are in the newspaper business and write a
favorable article about Gray, you stand a good chance of being rewarded.
That’s what happened a few weeks ago. Denise Rolark is right when she
maintains that there are some defunct publishers who could have used the
grants before being forced to shut down. If Mr. Gray is willing to hand
out favors before he is even elected, how many will be given if he is?
Councilmember Fenty seems to be going down the same road. He made
sure that the recreation processing fee for his sons’ basketball was
rescinded. He made no effort, however, to withdraw fees that other
organizations paid to use the facilities. There were other organizations
that had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with the fees. I
am concerned that Councilmember Fenty would take action for his sons’
group, but took no position on the groups in the rest of the city.
I believe that candidates must take responsibility for campaign
actions as well. It is an indication of how his/her administration will
be conducted. A few weeks ago, someone in my neighborhood had a Fenty
party and his campaign people removed the opposition signs in the area
and threw them in the street. Neighbors retrieved them and put them back
up. A little while later they were removed a second time and taken away.
This past Thursday, a repeat performance. This is very disappointing.
###############
I was pretty impressed when Adrian Fenty came to my house to
campaign. And I was even more impressed that he could present a campaign
theme that meant something to me: accountability. So it is with great
disappointment that I watch the way in which Mr. Fenty fails to hold
himself or his staff accountable. As reported on WTOP (http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=833697),
Mr. Sinclair Skinner, who works in Fenty’s campaign, ignored a debt to
the city of over $17,000. He never replied to a letter sent to his home
on May 30 demanding payment, and only decided to pay this debt because
the director of the District’s Office of Property Management contacted
Mr. Fenty. In short, Mr. Skinner tried to avoid accountability for the
debt, and Mr. Fenty is now avoiding accountability about his staff
choices. If Mr. Fenty continues to employ Skinner, what does this
portend for his staff selections if he is elected mayor? It may surprise
you, Mr. Fenty, but many of the people in DC whom you would like to
represent as mayor hold themselves accountable for their obligations
without pleas to our employers and publicity in the media. I hoped that
you could be trusted to bring accountability through your campaign, but
you clearly do not. In a city where personal relationships often trumped
poor job performance, I had hoped you would be a breath of fresh air,
but you clearly are not. The bargain is simple: keep Skinner, lose my
vote.
###############
Defending Eric Marshall
Christopher Dyer, chris at christopherdyer.com
I was saddened to read a recent post in themail attacking Eric
Marshall. I would like to think that as a city we’ve evolved to the
point where the politics of the personal is abandoned and that
candidates running for elected office focus more on presenting realistic
solutions to the problems we are facing.
Eric Marshall is a good man and a rising star in the field of
electoral politics. I had the pleasure of observing Eric and the
American Cancer Society effectively partner with Smoke Free DC to
convince the city council to pass legislation that will literally save
the lives of thousands of DC residents. Eric brought a degree of
professionalism and polish to the campaign and worked tirelessly with
hundreds of volunteers to get this legislation passed. For those of you
who don’t know, taking on big tobacco and the Restaurant Association
of Metropolitan Washington isn’t an easy task, and Eric helped
energize and focus an effort that failed the first time it was attempted
in 2003.
As for Kathy Patterson not being visible in Ward 3. I have heard that
at least three of the candidates who are running to replace her have
yard signs supporting her and I have not heard one candidate in Ward 3
come out and publicly support Vincent Gray. More importantly, Kathy has
been spending time visiting every ward and trying to make this a city
wide campaign and her positive vision for the future will hopefully
resonate with voters and she will be elected chair of the council. I
would love to see the themail continue to be used as a resource for
proposing the positive visions of the future and not as a sounding board
for candidates to launch negative and inaccurate attacks on the people
working for other candidates.
###############
Off Base Criticism
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
Jonathan Rees’ criticism of the way that Kathy Patterson’s
campaign for chairperson of the city council is being run by Eric
Marshall is way off base. Yes, it’s true that many voters in northwest
DC do not realize that Kathy is no longer running for her current seat
as a Ward 3 councilperson, It’s also true that only a few of those
that I have talked with as I collected petition signatures for Kathy in
AU/Spring Valley can even name more than one of those who would fill her
spot in Ward 3.
Kathy’s campaign seems to be well run to me, and I’ve conducted a
few of my own. It’s well laid out for the long run. Too many campaigns
get started too early and waste a lot of time and money. The voters are
smarter than Rees suggests. Kathy is clearly head and shoulders in
capability and performance over her competitor, Vincent Gray.
Over the next few weeks, voters across the District will get all the
information they need to make the right decision, for the right reasons,
on who should be the city council chairman, as Eric Marshall continues
to use a well organized volunteer staff and well managed campaign to get
Kathy Patterson elected.
###############
Patterson Is Running District-Wide
Bob Summersgill, bob at summersgill dot net
If Kathy Patterson were to focus her District-wide campaign on Ward
3, as Jonathan Rees argues in his latest ad hominem attack, her
campaign manager, Eric Marshall, really would be incompetent. Instead of
focusing on her home base, Kathy Patterson is running an aggressive and
well organized campaign for council chairman, reaching out to people and
areas where she is less well known. Her legislative accomplishments in
the Judiciary and Education committees are well known to her Ward 3
constituents and by those of us who follow local politics, but less well
known to most of the city more concerned about their family, work, and
the weather.
Rees, who poses as dozens of people to harass and intimidate good
people, see http://aliases.wordpress.com/,
should not be given platforms such as themail to spew his ill-informed
attacks.
[As I’ve written before, I’ve received many messages from people
attacking Jonathan Rees and demanding that he be banned from themail,
mostly because he makes a practice of sending pseudonymous or anonymous
E-mails attacking other people. However, except for Bob Summergill’s
message above, all of these E-mails have been send to themail
pseudonymously or anonymously, or with the request that they not be
published, which tends to undercut the strength of their argument. —
Gary Imhoff]
###############
WASA and Palisades
Kathy Patterson, Councilmember Ward 3, kpatterson@dccouncil.us
On the specific Water and Sewer Administration/DC Department of
Transportation issue that Alma Gates wrote about in themail [June 28],
my staff and I have been pressing the agencies on this issue for several
years, with the result that funds were allocated to improve WASA
capacity in the Palisades. According to WASA general manager Jerry
Johnson in conversation with me last week, the work described in the
E-mail below will begin early next year. In addition, I recommended to
Councilmember Schwartz that she hold a public roundtable on WASA’s
actions — what has and what has not been done to date. Finally, we
have been working with the new Department of the Environment, urging
them to be active and early participants in major construction, to
address capacity concerns and environmental impacts at the front end.
This E-mail is from a member of the WASA staff: “WASA has taken the
reports of flash flooding on Macomb very seriously. In November 2004,
WASA met with residents to obtain more information. Residents indicated
that there had been reports of flooding in the area for many years. In
December 2004, WASA made a commitment to review the report of a resident’s
engineer, take steps to investigate the capacity of the sewer, assess
the need for a physical inspection of the interior of the pipes,
identify recommendation for improvements if warranted. This information
was shared with DDOT. These activities were completed in the spring of
2005.
“Apart from significant development in the area which I understand
has been controversial in the community, our records indicate that
street grading and drainage were an issue, and that the existing trunk
sewer may not have had sufficient capacity. In January of 2006, WASA
Chief Engineer John Dunn wrote to Ms. Caroline Quandt about the plan to
design and construct a relief sewer parallel to the existing sewer and
other miscellaneous improvements. DC WASA has a project in its Capital
Improvement Program to design and construct a storm sewer to ensure that
the storm sewer will meet WASA design standards (15-year storm). The
budget for this project is $3.4 million. The design of the project is
underway.” He adds: “in addition to the WASA storm sewer
installation project, DDOT has agreed to design and construct road and
alley grading improvements that will also help rectify the localized
flooding situation. WASA is currently coordinating with DDOT on this
project.”
###############
I am very sympathetic to Ms. Quandt’s situation [themail, June 28],
but I feel the question must be asked. Why didn’t she have any
insurance? Clearly she has been aware of the potential threat to her
home for some time now, as she has been trying to get reparations made
to prevent exactly the disaster that occurred. I’m not trying to
displace blame from the city agencies for their failings, but rather
hoping to understand the whole story. Unless the necessary insurance
(flood?) was simply not available to her from any underwriter, I can’t
understand a homeowner would expose herself to this kind of risk, when
the threat was apparently well known.
###############
Flood Damage
Jonathan Lieber, address removed by request
Please, please, please tell me that Caroline Quandt was lacking
insurance for her house because no insurance agency would give it to her
due to the danger of the location, and not because she decided not to
purchase insurance on a disaster “she could foresee.” Yes, the city
is remiss in failing to adequately prepare the land for development, but
isn’t Ms. Quandt at least partially responsible for failing to
adequately prepare herself? A sad story indeed.
###############
Thank you for running the piece on the Quandt home. The was one small
error in your posting — DOH is Department of Health/Environmental
Health Administration [the correction has been made in the online
version]. Caroline Quandt did have homeowner’s insurance, but did not
have flood insurance, which is extremely expensive and — as we have
seen in New Orleans — does not ensure that payment will be made to
homeowners in case of damage.
The Palisades Citizens Association. has established the Caroline
Quandt Recovery Fund, which can be contacted at PO Box 40603, Palisades
Station, Washington, DC 20016.
###############
So Ed is happy that the zone system gave him and his friends a $15
cab ride that lasted 35 minutes [themail, June 28]. Would Ed be happy
earning that hourly rate after deducting expenses, the company take and
the time involved to get to the next fare? I think not.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS AND CLASSES
National Building Museum Event, July 8
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org
Saturday, July 8, 1:00-2:00 p.m. The film The Case Study House
Program, 1945-1966: An Anecdotal History and Commentary, produced by The
Museum of Contemporary Art in LA (1989, 58 minutes), documents the
designs for thirty-six experimental modern prototypes for housing
commissioned by the magazine Arts and Architecture in response to
the housing shortage following World War II. Some of the most important
architects of the Southern California region were involved in this
project, including Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames. Free.
Registration not required. At the National Building Museum, 401 F
Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line.
###############
Esther Productions Free Screenwriting and
Poetry Workshops for District Youth
Afrika Abney, aashawarrior@aol.com
Youths aged eleven through fifteen who live in underserved
communities in Wards 1, 2, and 8 are being treated to eight weeks of
free courses in screenwriting and poetry from June 26-August 11, 10-11
a.m. The workshops are being held at the Emergence Community Arts
Collective on Euclid Street, NW and Johenning Baptist Church Community
Center on Ninth Street, SE. Registration is required, but plenty of
space is still available. Award-winning writers Nigel Parkinson, Jr.,
and Bomani Armah lead the workshops. Each has received wide recognition
for his artistic accomplishments, and both live in the District of
Columbia.
In addition to learning how to write a screenplay using their own
personal experiences, participants in the workshop will see at least one
of their works produced for television. Participants in the poetry
classes will have their writings published this fall in a chapbook and
will be provided the opportunity to perform their works in several
venues throughout the District. Several professional fiction writers and
poets also will give community readings throughout the eight weeks as
part of the program.
The workshops are sponsored by Esther Productions, Inc., a
two-year-old nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, that is
dedicated to serving the social, cultural, and economic needs of
underserved or at-risk communities. Esther Productions, Inc., offers a
variety of programs including management-training seminars for
individuals and emerging companies and The National Daughter-Daddy
Reunion Tour. Its Summer Literary Series 2006 is funded through generous
grants and contributions from the DC Sports and Entertainment
Commission, the Greater Shaw Community Development Corporation, and Kojo
Nnamdi of WAMU-FM radio. For more information or to register, call
Esther Productions, Inc. at 232-0780.
###############
This August, more than thirty-five Washington cultural institutions
will team up to offer a brimming menu of exhibits, performances, talks,
and films as part of Cultural Tourism DC’s first annual Culture Cool.
Taking place inside air-conditioned venues such as theaters, museums,
and historic sites, the event neatly dispels the myth that nothing
happens in Washington during its most trying summer month. For a
complete list of all fifty-one programs, check the schedule at http://www.CulturalTourismDC.org
or call 661-7581. Admission prices vary by program, and most are either
free or inexpensive.
In preparing for Culture Cool, Cultural Tourism DC asked its member
institutions — more than 185 museums, theaters, cultural groups, and
historic sites across the capital — to contribute programs that
fulfilled one requirement: reflect what “cool” means to their
organizations. The result is unexpected, with as many interpretations as
there are participants. The showcase includes everything from intriguing
exhibits and cutting-edge performances to handheld fans and gourmet ice
cream provided by event sponsor Giffords Ice Cream and Candy Company.
Though Metro most often sponsors programs such as Culture Cool, it is
also a participant this time. WMATA Art in Transit Program Manager
Michael McBride will lead a walking and riding tour, Art on Line: the
Story Behind the Artwork at Metro Stations (August 5 and 19), revealing
stories behind the Metrorail system’s works of art. Most participants
have interpreted Culture Cool’s theme in original ways that reflect
their institution’s authentic character. The Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR) Museum hosts Obsolete, Odd, and Absolutely Ooky Stuff
from the DAR Museum Vaults, an exhibit showcasing amusing treasures such
as a glass dachshund drinking vessel, a pudding cap, and a snuffbox made
from a ram’s head (exhibit open through September 2). The Washington
DC Jewish Community Center (DCJCC) presents a screening of Awesome: I
F***in Shot That, a film about fifty Beastie Boys fans who were given
video cameras at a sold-out Beastie Boys show at Madison Square Garden
-- a recipe for reinventing the concert film (August 14). And Ford’s
Theater‘s Open House and Snow Day (August 26) celebrates the beginning
of its new season by making it snow on Tenth Street. The sneak peek
continues inside the historic playhouse with demonstrations, tours, and
more. Several organizations contribute guided tours that offer
surprising viewpoints on the nation’s capital. Washington Walks offers
Moveable Feast: A Taste of DC (August 5 and 19), a three-hour
nibble-and-nosh fest of DC that includes stops in air-conditioned
venues. Boat lovers can beat the heat with DC’s Waterfront History by
Sail (August 6 and 13), an evening sail on the National Maritime
Heritage Foundation’s two-masted schooner, American Spirit. The
National Cathedral offers A Cool Climb at the Cathedral weekdays in
August. Adventurous spirits climb up cold stone stairwells and
balconies, then pop onto a ledge for a breathtaking view of the city --
and a quick pat on a gargoyle’s nose.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every
Wednesday and Sunday. To subscribe, to change E-mail addresses, or to
switch between HTML and plain text versions of themail, use the
subscription form at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/subscribe.htm.
To unsubscribe, send an E-mail message to themail@dcwatch.com
with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. Archives of past messages
are available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should also be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com,
and should be about life, government, or politics in the District of
Columbia in one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to
be printed, and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief
paragraphs would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can
be put into each mailing.