Archive for February, 2008

Vigilance Tapped for DOH Post. (Yes, That’s His Name.)

How's this name for a city department head? Dr. Pierre Vigilance will take over the health department, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced today.
Vigilance comes from the Baltimore County, Maryland, heath department, where he's been director since 2005. He holds an M.D. and master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins, and he has D.C. ties, [...]

The Stadium’s Biggest Losers

While writing my story this week on the influence of Nationals Park on the surrounding neighborhood, I focused a lot of time on a non-profit called Positive Nature. The non-profit runs an after-school program that includes tutoring, sports, art and movement therapy, and a lot of one-on-one stuff for at-risk kids. I spent several days [...]

Our Morning Roundup

A Bloomingdale blogger has a crazy idea that the whole neighborhood could pitch in and buy a cool building. Maybe it could work.
Catholics are just as crazy as Radiohead fans.  People are looking for tickets to the papal mass on craigslist.
Like the rest of the press in Washington, we think David Simon is a genius. [...]

When a Happy Meal Isn’t.

How To Leave A Historic Home

While working on this story on the Nationals stadium, I had the pleasure of finding and interviewing Kenneth Wyban. For a time, Wyban was the media's go-to-guy when they needed a stadium victim. He was one of the people whose homes had to be demolished to make way for the ballpark. He was in the [...]

Are We Not Men? We Are AskRomeo!

In this week's Show & Tell, I profile Jae Ellis (pictured) and Allen Bickoff, childhood friends who overcame broken engagements, college sexual dry spells, and crippling "nice guy syndrome" to become Reston's resident romance experts. Ellis and Bickoff are co-founders of AskRomeo.com, a dating and relationship advice outfit that helps (so far, only heterosexual) men [...]

Schools Form Needs Schoolin’

Perhaps too often I've been an advocate of lax grammatical standards in the format-busting medium of the Web, but my kids still need to learn how to spell. That's why we want to send them to a better school by means of the Out-of-Boundary application process. Well, if you're going to be grading my kids, [...]

4400 Block of MacArthur Blvd. NW, February 26

More Info on Poplar Point Development

Yesterday, we posted some comments on our website from Ward 8 residents stating their positions on the soccer stadium proposed for Poplar Point. From what I've heard, local leaders seem to be lining up behind the stadium, while regular residents are a bit more skeptical. Back in September, local non-profit One DC released results [...]

DPW–All Over It, Kinda

Over the past six months or so, the city's Department of Public Works has missed my recycling pickup five or six times. That's not a disaster, just an inconvenience. Crap piles up outside my house, each time we finish a bottle of milk, I get a little more nervous, the dead-tree version of the newspaper [...]

LNS Casting Party Tonight At Park

Will someone please attend this and report back? I think I will get stoned if I go. Someone on LNS just posted a link all about how I am a whore. Someone else said I have a "level of fascination with this site that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with." Believe me, I am [...]

Thanks to Him, John Brown’s Body Lied A-Mouldering In Its Grave

While writing for this week's issue about the football misfortunes at J.E.B. Stuart High, I mentioned that the fellow who gave the Falls Church school its name had put his West Point training to work killing Indians and fighting on the losing side in the Civil War.
I neglected to point out a career highlight, that, [...]

Flat Rat, 17th and U

Morning Roundup

*How does she do it? DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee wins another round against school activists, the Washington Post reports. Earlier this month, a group sued to have access to her budget before it is submitted to the D.C. Council. The judgment: denied!
*And speaking of mavericks, who always seem to get their way, Barack Obama is [...]

Show #6: Tallahassee, Florida

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
“How goes the academic rat race?” I inquired of my host in Tallahassee, Florida. This generous, learned gentleman, a classics professor at Florida State University, had opened his hearth and home to my bandmates and I. We were discussing the politics of professorship as we stood ordering breakfast at the [...]