Pie Source
Dear Pie Eaters:
Sarah Livingston recommends a pie source in response to my plea from
a few issues back. Be sure to take a note of its address below. Does
anyone else have a suggestion for good bakery or restaurant pies? After
all, the last Sholl’s Colonial Cafeteria closed a dozen years ago,
cutting off the last reliable supplier of rhubarb pie; and I haven’t
had gooseberry pie for decades. If old-fashioned diners can come back to
popularity from the edge of extinction, can’t old-fashioned pies
undergo the same resurgence?
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Since the council is back in session, it’s time to open nominations
for the stupidest bill proposed in the city council this year. Have you
spotted a worthy nominee yet?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Bellamy was brought into the DC Department of Transportation for his
background in municipal operations. He shook up the Transportation
Operations Administration. This got him promoted to Deputy Director. As
Deputy he was out of his league, dealing with large federally funded
capital improvements and long range regional planning and policy matters
that nothing in his career had prepared him for. He responded by taking
the approach that it wasn’t his responsibility to know any of that and
he’d simply fire or demote anyone that caused him personal
embarrassment. He created a climate of fear and distrust between
planners and engineers, and drove out the best and brightest from both
groups.
Well, he has no one to blame but himself for the snow removal
operations failure last week. DDOT is directly responsible for snow
removal operations on the national highway system, including the 3rd
Street Tunnel, New York Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, 16th Street, and
Canal Road — all the biggest choke points in last week’s horribly
mismanaged event. Bellamy is supposed to be the operations guru; he
personally reorganized DDOT operations since last year and hand-picked
his top operations managers, James Cheeks and Gloria Jeff. Bellamy is
ultimately responsible for snow removal operations and last weeks’
utter failure on the national highway system. He must not be retained as
DDOT Director and should be removed altogether.
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Have you tried Chatman’s D’Vine Bakery and Cafe at 1239 9th
Street, NW (http://chatmansbakerycafe.com)?
People rave about the sweet potato pie and the key lime cheesecake. In
fact, just before Thanksgiving, Debra Chatman had to interrupt a
conversation with me to take a call from a woman in West Virginia who
wanted to order pies for her feast! She’s only been open about two
years and is in the still lightly traveled 9th Street corridor near
where the new hotel is going in, but word is spreading and you know what
that means — her baked goods taste good!
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Dorothy Brizill’s Double Standard
Patrick Mara, pat.mara@gmail.com
In the January 26 edition of themail, Dorothy Brizill criticized my
candidacy in the special election for at-large council because, if
successful, I will be required to vacate the Ward One seat on the State
Board of Education, which will then need to be filled in a special
election. While this is true, there is a troubling element to Brizill’s
critique: a double standard. I have checked archives of themail
carefully. In 2006, when Councilmembers Adrian Fenty (Ward 4) and Vince
Gray (Ward 7) ran for mayor and council chair respectively, Brizill did
not criticize either for risking a special election. As we now know,
both won and both of their council seats were filled through special
elections. In 2010, when Councilmember Kwame Brown (At-Large) ran for
council chair, not a word of concern from Brizill about the potential
for special election. Brizill is holding me to a standard that she didn’t
apply to Fenty, Gray, or Kwame Brown. This should trouble any objective
thinker.
To be fair, Brizill cites our current budgetary crunch as one of the
reasons for her concern. But budgeting is not done after-the-fact, it is
done with foresight. If Brizill’s concern about funding special
elections was consistent over the years — if Brizill had sought to
save the District from the scourge of special elections in the past —
perhaps the rules for special elections or funding for them would be
different today. But that is not the case. My position on this is clear:
Democracy does not have a price tag. We should be smart and restrained
when spending tax dollars, but saving relatively small amounts of money
at the expense of voters and those who seek office is not the place to
begin cutting.
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In response to my January 26 posting in themail, Patrick Mara alleges
that I used a double standard when criticizing his candidacy for an
at-large council seat in the April 26 special election. He mistakenly
argues that I never expressed any concern about the cost of special
elections in the past, because I have not written about the issue in
themail. But my civic activism, specifically my involvement with
election matters, is not limited to what I write in themail. For nearly
twenty years, I have closely monitored the conduct and cost of elections
in the District. I have consistently expressed concerns about both the
low voter turnout and the high costs of special elections. (In the
well-funded and hotly contested race to replace Fenty as Ward 4
councilmember in May 2007, only 14.15 percent of eligible voters cast a
vote. In the special election in August 2007 to fill the vacant Ward 1
Board of Education seat, the turnout was less than 1 percent.) Most
recently I testified on January 19 before both the council and the DC
Board of Elections about the cost and planning for the April 26 special
election.
Mara argues that the special election that would have to be held in
Ward 1, if he is successful in the April 26 special election, is no
different from the special elections that were held in 2007 to fill the
Ward 4 council seat vacated by Adrian Fenty when he was elected mayor or
to fill the Ward 7 council seat vacated by Vincent Gray when he was
elected the city council chairman. But there was one important
difference. When Adrian Fenty ran for mayor in 2006, he had been the
Ward 4 councilmember since 2000. When Vincent Gray ran for council
chairman in 2006, he had been the Ward 7 councilmember since 2004. Even
Kwame Brown served as an at-large councilmember for six years prior to
being a candidate for council chairman in 2010. Mara, on the other hand,
registered to run for an at-large council seat seventeen days after
being sworn in as a member of the State Board of Education, and before
he had attended even a single monthly meeting of the Board.
Mara knew that his decision to run could cost a cash-strapped
District as much as $250,000 for a special election, should he win and
resign his State Board of Education seat, but he states that his “position
on this is clear: democracy does not have a price tag.” Apparently,
neither does blind ambition.
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Smart Growth, Hate Speech, and Puritanism;
Really?
Tom Grahame, tgrahame@mindspring.com
Gary, don’t go off the deep end on us. I’m just starting to read
a book of all the letters of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a bit of a
hero to me, and someone whose intelligence and bipartisanship at least
98 percent of US Senators could usefully emulate. He had a suspicion of
an authoritarian instinct he thought he saw in the far left wing of the
Democratic party. I think you might have had this in mind when you wrote
“San Francisco, Boston, and Us.” [themail, January 26]
But try to be a bit more understanding of Smart Growth, and don’t
confuse it with anti-free speech campus codes, or with Puritan New
England. There are legitimate reasons to like Smart Growth without being
an authoritarian. First, we are a society that spends huge amounts of
money on oil. When the price goes up, the country goes into recession
— and then we get lost jobs and higher government deficits at all
levels. This scenario has played out in 1974, 1979/80, and 2008 (the
Great Recession we are in had other, larger causes than just $140/barrel
oil, but when oil hit $140/barrel, people lost many tens of billions of
spending power, and it was an important contributor to where we now find
ourselves). It would be good, from the perspective of anyone in the US,
to reduce our oil consumption. If people live closer to work and don’t
drive cars to work, that is a good thing.
Secondly, not everyone on this blog would call themselves an
environmentalist, and there are many different meanings to the word in
any case, but another good reason to like smart growth is that
increasing suburbanization where forests and farms used to be really
does reduce and harm the natural world. If you would like, I can expound
on that in another E-mail — just ask. A third reason to like Smart
Growth is that society spends fewer resources on building and
maintaining roads and bridges, and at the individual level, on lost time
due to traffic jams, which as we can see by looking around us, can’t
really be dealt with by government — except by efforts like Smart
Growth.
Where you go off the tracks, Gary, is that smart growth does not
compel anyone to not live where they don’t want to. You said that New
Urbanism prevents “the diffusion of Americans out into the exurbs
where they will live as they please rather than following all the
rituals and requirements that the New England mind knows are best.”
Please, Gary, you really do know better than that. If you want to live
in the exurbs, nobody will stop you. A more likely interpretation of the
Smart Growth wars is that suburban developers need sewers and roads to
be build, by governments at taxpayer expense. To do that, they curry
favor with local suburban boards, usually with PAC money, just as
developers do in the District. It helps them get their way when Smart
Growthers can be portrayed as authoritarian enemies of the people.
There are very legitimate criticisms of how Smart Growth is carried
out in DC. These criticisms have to do with destroying the fabrics of
neighborhoods, and of running roughshod over established comprehensive
plans and zoning laws and regulations, for starters. To the extent that
Smart Growth advocates cut corners and evade established procedures for
democratically determining land use decisions, then I begin to agree
with an authoritarian critique. But it seems to me that most city
governments turn to strong-arming projects they want — whether it is
baseball stadiums or anything else that PAC money contributors want.
Does the name Peter Nickles ring a bell? Do you confuse him with Cotton
Mather? It isn’t a return to Puritanism, it is in large part just same
old, same old: money talks.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Smart Meter Education Workshop, January 31
Herbert H. Jones, III, info@opc-dc.gov
Pepco has begun installing “smart meters,” at the premises of
every electric customer in the District of Columbia. The Company
anticipates that all of the new meters will be installed by December
2011. To assist DC consumers in the transition from traditional analog
meters to the new “smart meters,” the Office of the People’s
Counsel will continue to partnering with government agencies and
community organizations to present “Smart Meter Education Workshops.”
At the Smart Meter Education Workshops consumer will learn what to do
to prepare for the meter exchange; how to alert PEPCO that someone in
your home has special medical needs; the steps of the meter installation
process; and about proposed changes to rates, bills, and services. The
DC Office of the People’s Counsel and Ward Five Councilmember Harry
Thomas, Jr., will sponsor the next workshop on Monday, January 31, 6:30
p.m.-8:30 p.m., at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center, 1100 Michigan
Avenue, NE.
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Prof. Maurice Jackson Lecture on Anthony
Benezet: Quaker Abolitionist, February 1
George Williams, George.Williams2@dc.gov
On Tuesday, February 1, the DC Public Library presents Dr. Maurice
Jackson, associate professor of History at Georgetown University and
author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of
Atlantic Abolitionism, for a Black History Month lecture. Jackson
will chronicle the contributions of Anthony Benezet, the
eighteenth-century Quaker leader who challenged slavery by educating
black children. His lecture will be followed by a performance of the
Sidwell Friends Chamber Chorus. The event will begin at 6:30 p.m., and
be held at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, located at 901
G Street, NW. For a complete listing of the Library events, visit http://dclibrary.org/calendar.
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DC for Democracy Candidate Forum, February 3
Daniel Wedderburn, danielwedderburn@cs.com
The candidate forum for the at-large council special election has
been rescheduled for Thursday, February 3, at 6:00-8:30 p.m. at One
Judiciary Square, 441 4th Street, NW.
The following eight candidates were invited and are confirmed to
attend: Sekou Biddle, Joshua Lopez, Patrick Mara, Stanley Mayes, Vincent
Orange, Alan Page, Jacque Patterson, and Bryan Weaver.
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Hollywood Modern: Film Design of the 1930’s,
February 5-March 8
Tara Miller, tmiller@nbm.org
The National Building Museum is proud to partner with the American
Film Institute Silver Theater and Cultural Center (AFI) in presenting
the film series Hollywood Modern: Film Design of the 1930’s, a
month-long festival highlighting the eclectic — and occasionally over
the top — modernist set designs seen in ten classic films of the era. Washington
Post film critic Ann Hornaday and National Building Museum curator
Deborah Sorensen will introduce the series before the screening of the
first movie, Grand Hotel, on February 5.
All films are screened at the AFI Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville
Road, Silver Spring, MD. Tickets can only be purchased through the AFI
web site (http://www.afi.com/silver/new/default.aspx)
or box office. NBM Members receive the AFI member rate by showing their
NBM Membership card.
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MOMIE’s TLC Black History Event for the
Whole Family, February 13
Ingrid Drake, ingridnatasha@yahoo.com
On Sunday, February 13, from 5:00-7:30 p.m., MOMIE’s TLC is having
its annual Opening Gala for the Children’s Gallery of Black History at
All Souls Church (1500 Harvard Street, NW). There will be food,
entertainment, and children’s activities. You and your family will
also get a tour of the Children’s Gallery of Black History, which
features interactive exhibits on the Association for the Study of
African American Life and History’s theme of Standing Up for Justice
During Civil War. The Gallery features child-friendly empowering
exhibits on the lives of Captain Mbaye Diagne, Rwanda; Emmanuel Jal,
Sudan; Elizabeth Keckley, US Civil War; Robert Smalls, US Civil War; Lt.
Alexander Augusta, US Civil War; Mridula Sarabhai, India-Pakistan; Eliza
Burton “Lyda” Conley, Native People’s Liberation Struggle; Sonia
Umanzor, local leader from El Salvador.
At the Gala, MOMIE’s TLC will also present its 2011 Black History
Awards to filmmaker Haile Gerima, 2011 Winner of the Funmilayo
Ransome-Kuti African Self Determination Award, and Sylvia Robinson,
Founder of the Emergence Arts Collective, 2011 Winner of the A. Philip
Randolph Organizing for Empowerment Award.
Tickets are available at the door for $15/individual or $25/family.
Business sponsorship is also available. For more information call
545-1919 or E-mail ingridnatasha@yahoo.com
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