The “lawns” of the National Mall are notoriously dustbowl-esque.

But for a few glorious months, several acres of grass were looking pretty swell. (They’re easy to find in the photograph above. Hint: look toward the top.) This spring, people were even spotted taking off their shoes and running around.

The reason? SafeLawns.org, a Maine-based nonprofit, was managing two roughly two-acre plots of land, using only organic products; meanwhile, the National Park Service had replanted and cultivated another plot of land.

Then sadly and abruptly, part of SafeLawns’ new lush carpet of green turned to a depressing brown mat. Employees at Safelawns discovered the change in May. The effects were traumatic for, well, some. Read the rest of this entry »

After Suse Lowenstein’s 21-year-old son was murdered by Libyans while flying in a plane over Scotland, she got to work on a sculpture. She wanted to depict the moment of utter anguish when you hear your loved one has been taken down by terrorists. The result—Dark Elegy—is a sculpture that has expanded over the years to include 76 figures in that moment, modeled after actual people, and stripped of race, class, religion, even clothes, because, as Lowenstein sees it: “None of that matters, we are all brought to the same level….It has nothing to do with nude women or naked ladies.”

The advisory commission on memorials, however, decided D.C. wasn’t quite ready for the larger-than-real sculptures “because some of the poses of the various figures create an opportunity for irreverent behavior by visitors,” which is what John G. Parsons, associate regional director for the National Park Services wrote to the Lowensteins—Suse and her husband, Peter—prior to the unanimous decision of the eight-member commission last week.

So now what?

Read the rest of this entry »

In April, thousands of cherry trees on the banks of the Potomac will open their petals.

Sponsored by Target.

As recently as two years ago, the former home of Carter G. Woodson, father of Black History Month, was a complete mess. Vagrants slept on the stoop and inside the 9th Street NW row house, then owned by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (which Woodson founded), and squatters lit fires inside at night to stay warm. Then the National Park Service acquired the Woodson home as a national historic site in 2005.

But the house is still boarded up, and save for posting a sign announcing its historical significance, the Park Service hasn’t done much with it. At a Feb. 28 meeting of the Shaw Main Streets group, an NPS representative told neighbors the plans were in the works and renovations can be expected by…2016.

Why take nearly a decade to renovate a smallish row house? Robert Parker, the NPS’ site manager for the Woodson home, says that the process of restoring a historic site is extremely complicated, and his agency needs to do planning and research first. “All of the studies will determine our progress and how the site will develop. We have to uncover some things to determine our direction….We just got the site in 2005, so we’re moving at warp speed.”

Shaw Main Streets Executive Director Alex Padro says neighbors are growing antsy, but he takes some comfort in the fact that the property is now only partially dilapidated.

“The community is certainly disappointed that we’re unlikely to see construction begin anytime soon,” Padro says, “but at least the property isn’t open to vagrants.”

A few weeks ago, dog walker Kelly Marshall led his seven dogs to an open field between 38th and 39th Streets NW in Glover Park. Though the field is officially a spur of Rock Creek Park and owned by the National Park Service (NPS), it’s a de facto dog park widely used by the army of walkers that service the Northwest quadrant. The drinking fountain in the park’s southwest corner, installed by the NPS, even features a ground-level water bowl so doggies can lap water along with their masters.

Marshall says that as he approached the park, two park rangers removing an old mattress from the woods stopped him. “Are you a dog walker?” the ranger asked, according to Marshall. “Because it’s illegal to run a business on federal land without a permit.”

The ranger told Marshall that he was not allowed to take the dogs into the park—leash or no leash. When Marshall asked how he could obtain a permit, the ranger told him that the NPS doesn’t issue them for dog walkers. Earlier that day, another walker who had his dogs off leash was threatened with the impoundment of his dogs.

“The things that people get harassed or ticketed for are for having dogs off leash,” says Marshall. “This is the first that I’ve ever heard of people harassed for having a business on federal land.”

NPS spokesman Bill Line says that the ranger was correct in his interpretation of the law. “If someone wants to operate a dog-walking business and make money off it…and you are using the park on a regular basis to walk the dogs, you’re coming pretty close to or crossing the line of constituting a business,” he says.

Since all the canine traffic could harm the park, the NPS has the authority to require a permit. “Many people who do walk dogs don’t pick up their dogs’ poop,” Line adds. “Is it fair to the next visitor to walk in that dog’s poop? Would you want to walk through that poop?”

Line says that permits can in fact be obtained by calling the NPS’ Office of Park Programs. Marshall, however, merely waited until the rangers loaded the mattress into their truck and then sauntered into the park. “I was like, whatever,” he says. “As soon as…they had left, I took the dogs off leash.”

Let the deer sexual revolution begin: National Park Service officials are floating the idea of using birth-control drugs to control the white-tailed deer population in Rock Creek Park.

The population problem has gotten so dire, says park superintendent Adrienne Coleman, that deer eating young trees has led to “bare spots” in the park. “When we have one resource that is damaging another resource, we somehow need to bring it into balance,” she said at a recent “public scoping meeting” held at the Rock Creek Nature Center.

Ken Ferebee, an NPS natural resource management specialist, says that contraception is “a preliminary alternative at this point.” If approved, the deer contraception would work much like human birth control?particularly the once-popular Norplant method. A doe would be trapped and sedated, then contraceptive sticks would be placed under the skin. The deer will be unable to conceive until the implant’s effects wear off.

While a “deer pill” could be a less invasive option, Ferebee says, “There’s no oral contraception that can be administered.”

While contraception is one of the more humane options on the table (other options include the use of fencing, poison, and sharpshooters) one animal-rights group is aginst putting Bambi on the pill. Bill Dallinger of Friends of Animals says people are the problem, not deer. “When free from human intervention, the deer population will stabilize,” Dallinger says. “White-tail deer have an interest in existing on their own terms.”

There are some crazy toilets at the National Zoo! In the women’s bathroom (near the prairie dogs) about a quarter of the toilets have no seats. Instead they have this trough-like protuberance that you are, apparently, supposed to squat over. Why is the Smithsonian Zoo pioneering avant-garde commode design?

The bathroom fixture in question is not a toilet, it’s a female urinal, according to Gray Uhl, the director of design for toilet titan American Standard. Says Uhl, “If you can imagine plumbing in the ’30s it was…really all men. What you are seeing is a male attempt at answering the issue of making women’s public restrooms more efficient.”

The first wave of urinals failed to catch on, perhaps because of their “alien” design. “It was not a successful product for us,” Uhl notes.

American Standard attempted to bring back the female urinal in the 1950s, under the brand name “Sanistand.” The loo at the zoo is one of just a handful of surviving Sanistands, according to Michael Korby, editor-in-chief at Urinal.net. Others can be found at universities and highway rest stops.

“They were put in a lot of public places; it seems like the government was trying to promote them,” says Korby. “People today like them for novelty reasons.”

Zoo spokesperson Peper Long says that the bathroom in question was built around 1956, and the urinals are a relic, destined to be replaced with modern, water-efficient toilets within the next five years. “I have absolutely no idea why they are there,” she says. —Sadie Dingfelder

Every Monday, the ‘Huh?’ Bub takes your questions. Got one?

Why is the Iwo Jima Memorial in Virginia? And why is there a copyright at the bottom of the statue? If copyrights are necessary for memorials, why don’t they all have them?

The “monumental” view of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol is why the National Parks Service decided on the Virginia location for the memorial, according to National Parks Service spokesman Bill Line, who notes that the memorial is actually called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial since it is dedicated to all Marines who have died since 1775. Moreover, before construction began on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, no national war memorials were located on the National Mall (the lone war memorial on the mall was the D.C. World War I Memorial) since war memorials were thought better suited to be placed close to Arlington National Cemetery.

Officially dedicated in 1954, the memorial is based on a photograph by the recently-deceased Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. Since the AP holds the copyright to the photograph as an “original work of art,” according to U.S. copyright law, the statue is considered a “derivative work” of the original. As a result, it is one of two monuments in the D.C. region with a copyright.

Monuments and memorials do not need copyrights, but if there is an inherent copyright issue at hand (like the Iwo Jima Memorial), or the memorial’s creator simply files the paperwork (as was the case with Korean War Veterans Memorial creator Frank Gaylord) a copyright will appear on the statue making it illegal for “Joe Blow or Suzy Creamcheese to take a picture of the statue …and sell it for cold, hard American cash,” Line says.

Every Monday, the ‘Huh?’ Bub takes your questions. Got one?

For the past six years, Hillcrest residents have donated their time to sprucing up Twining Park, a triangle park along Pennsylvania Avenue SE owned by the National Park Service. Near the end of May, the Park Service drops off about 50 flats of salvia, marigolds, black-eyed Susans, Shasta lilies, dahlias, and Canna lilies, and residents plant them.

Not this year. The flowers have yet to appear, and when Kathy Chamberlain, vice president of the Hillcrest Community Civic Association, called to find out why, she learned that there weren’t any. Someone was supposed to have ordered them in the fall, and he didn’t. So this past weekend, Chamberlain and a few neighbors dug into their own pockets and scoured the local nurseries for replacements, coming up with five flats of vincas, begonias, and petunias, a far cry from the usual haul. “It’s their park,” Chamberlain says. “They just fell down on the job without any explanation. I honestly don’t think we in Southeast get the attention that the parks on Capitol Hill get.”

Spokesperson Bill Line says the Park Service has no record of anyone calling to inquire about the flowers.

The flower beds are noticeably sparser than previous years, and if more plantings were made this late in the season, fewer would survive. Chamberlain says the neighborhood will probably make the switch to perennials this fall. “Even though they’re not as colorful, they’ll be more permanent and reduce the labor necessary for upkeep,” she says.

If you’re coming into town on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, there’s an overhead road sign marking the split between U.S. 50 East/Anacostia Freeway and U.S. 50 West/New York Avenue maybe a quarter-mile before the split. The problem is that the westbound sign reads “TO NEW YORK AVE.” in absolutely tiny type, much smaller than the rest of the sign. You can’t read it until you’re within a few dozen yards of the sign, and it’s like, what’s the point? New York Avenue should be listed on the sign, but why not make it readable—put it in the same type size as the rest of the sign? Absolutely maddening!

Rest assured, a new sign that depicts “To New York Ave.” the same size as the rest of the sign is coming soon, perhaps as soon as today.

The previous sign’s small typeface may have been a manufacturer’s mistake, according to National Park Service (NPS) spokesperson Bill Line, but it’s unclear exactly when the Park Service, which oversees the parkway, installed the sign.

But don’t think that the reason for the change is your complaints, according to Line. Instead, it is part of two-year-old effort by the Park Service to standardize the fonts on all NPS signs.

The new font, NPS Rawlinson, should make signs more legible than the previous NPS fonts—Clarendon and Highway Gothic—according to the March/April NPS newsletter. And the font promises to provide a “functional advantage of improved legibility [that] set them apart visually from the more common typeface varieties found on typical office computers. This distinctiveness, when applied across the many forms of media used by the NPS, contributed subtly but effectively to the team’s overall goal to ‘establish a unique organizational identity that could be expressed through the full range of communication materials used by the National Park Service.’”

Every Monday, the ‘Huh?’ Bub takes your questions. Got one?

Each time I head down to the Mall, I end up with a shoeful of pebbles and red eyes from dirt blowing in my eyes. I’ve also seen pebbles get caught in dog’s paws and provide an unnecessarily rough ride for people with disabilities. Why not just pave ’em?

People love the pebbled walkways, says National Parks Service Communications Officer Bill Line, who adds that pebbles are far more aesthetically pleasing than “unsightly” concrete sidewalks.

“I’ve been [a National Parks Service communications officer] for five years and I’ve heard numerous verbal compliments about how much people like the pebbled walkways,” he says, and in that time he has never encountered a request for pavement.

To change the look of the Mall by paving over the walkways would be committing blasphemy, he says.

“The reason we don’t pave the walkways is the same reason why we don’t go to the Black Hills and get rid of Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache or Abe Lincoln’s beard,” he adds.

Despite Line’s allegiance to the pebbled walkways, they’ve only been in place since 1975, when the National Parks Service laid them down in preparation for bicentennial celebrations.

In fact, the Mall didn’t begin to take its current shape until 1902, when the McMillan Commission, a Senate committee tasked with improving the “the entire park system of the District of Columbia,” submitted a report calling for the government to transform the Mall into a grand avenue in line with planner Pierre L’Enfant’s never-realized plans for the District. The Commission’s plan called for a European-style broad grass carpet running the entire length of the Mall grounds, bordered on each side by four rows of American elm trees, with public buildings bordering the whole.

Before that, the Mall had a sordid past as the military used the grounds for bivouacking and parading troops, slaughtering cattle, and producing arms. Later, the Mall was used as railroad depot, with tracks running north to south across the Mall.

Despite recent changes—including the addition of the National Museum of the American Indian and plans to add the National Museum of African-American History and Culture—Line says, “There are no pleas, no move afoot, and no discussion to pave the walkways.”

Every Monday, the ‘Huh?’ Bub takes your questions. Got one?