Growing up as an American girl, I was lucky enough to possess three historical American Girl dolls: Kirsten, the plucky Swedish frontier girl; Felicity, the plucky colonial; and Addy, the plucky escaped slave. I’m still waiting for American Girl to release “Amanda,” the disagreeable, middle-class ’90s girl who collects American Girl dolls.

If you think your daughter or adolescent female friend has that same doll-worthy charm, here’s her chance to become a plucky fashion model!

This November, the Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington will be hosting four American Girl fashion shows to benefit the society’s Children’s Vision Screening program. According to a press release, “The models do not have to be professionals, but girls with confidence and sparkle will make the show exciting for the audience.” Confident, sparkling girls will also excite by fitting the following “ideal” measurements:

• Girls must be either a size 10 or 6x
• Size 10 must be 54″ to 56″ in height, 28½” chest size and 24″ waist size
• Size 6x must be 48″ in height, 25¼” chest size and 22½” waist size

Auditions will be held on Thursday, Sept. 4, from 5 - 7 p.m. at Bethesda’s Imagination Stage. The casting call’s $25 fee includes a 5 x 7 inch photo and “a gift bag with snacks, water and a few surprises!” Modeling applications are available on-site, or by emailing americangirl@youreyes.org.

Commence the prepubescent chest measuring!

Photo by Jeff Sandquist

Last Spring we tracked Positive Nature’s struggle to keep its doors open. The non-profit, which provides tons of services for at-risk kids, was renting a building just blocks from the new Nationals Park. Within the last few years, it had become clear that Positive Nature was being priced out of the neighborhood. The area used to include a housing project. Now it has a Courtyard Marriott. You can read our previous reportage here, here, here, here, and here. If you feel like skipping all those links, here’s a quick summary: the non-profit owed thousands of dollars in property taxes, they held a rally and reached out for support, legislation was introduced before the D.C. Council, nothing much happened with the legislation, the non-profit sought out a new location.

Now comes the news that Positive Nature has found a new space through the Department of Parks And Recreation in what looks like a new partnership.

“We are so appreciative of all of the outpouring of care and support that so many people have extended to us in recent months, and we are privileged to have the opportunity to continue to provide services to the District’s children and families,” wrote Jennifer Murphy, the non-profit’s co-founder and co-executive director.

The new location: The TR Center at 3030 G Street SE.

We will of course be following up with a visit to the TR Center. Stay tuned.

The News & Observer reported last week on a study from the Journal of Marriage and Family, which found that stepdads and stand-in pappies often make better parents than married biological dads:

Mothers reported that stepfathers were more engaged, more cooperative and shared more responsibility than their biological counterparts did, according to the study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Lawrence Berger, the study’s lead author, cautioned that the findings applied only to “fragile families,” defined as low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.

Could this be good news for DC kids? (I’m thinking of the middle school misfits who lollygag around Jefferson and 7th, and occasionally interrupt my stoop reveries to ask if they can “get some peanut butter on that cracker.”) The numbers say it should be great news. In 2006, the most recent year for which the Census Bureau has data, 4,093 unmarried DC women gave birth to screaming new DC residents. Even if we dismiss half of those births as intentional (i.e., the offspring of well-off domestic partners)–and I suspect those numbers are laughably optimistic–that still leaves quite a few unwed moms and daddy-less kids, many of whom I’d place in the category of “low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.”

Unless one wants to contend that unwed, low-income dads have a tendency to stick around and act as good role models, here’s to the possibility that at least a few of DC’s single moms will cease to fret over the significance of a flesh and blood connection between their kids and the men who raise them. And why were at it, let’s hope that biological dads have enough pride to compete with the Prince Charmings who might usurp their roles at home.

Your moment of zen for the day, courtesy of the National Night Out celebration across the street:

I can’t help it. Every once in a while, I leave home or the office or wherever, and I get that nagging feeling of Shit, what have I left behind? What did I forget to do? In these moments, I admit, I occasionally think of Kevin McCallister. Then, I think of his mom—oh his poor, poor mom, Kate McCallister.

Yes, we’re talking about the 1990 film Home Alone here. The scene that always come to mind—I can see it now—is the one where Kate and her husband Peter are on the plane to Paris. They’re sitting in first class, if I remember correctly, while the rest of the annoying younger cousins all blab away in coach. Then, Kate suddenly feels pangs of anxiety. Something is wrong. She considers all the possibilities. Did she leave the garage door open?

Yes, her husband tells her, that is it.

No, no, no, she thinks. It’s something else. And then she sits up straight in her seat, upon realizing the truth (that it’s her kid, she left behind).

Well, well, well–everyone thought that story was so far-fetched at the time. Now, here comes a report that is both reminiscent of Home Alone in its setting and its turn of events.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli couple going on a European vacation remembered to take their duty-free shopping and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport, police said Monday.

The couple and their five children were late for a charter flight to Paris Sunday and made a mad dash to the gate. In the confusion, their daughter got lost.

Oh god, and here’s the worst part:

Rosenfeld said the parents were unaware they had boarded the aircraft with only four children instead of five until they were informed by cabin staff after 40 minutes in the air.

On Friday, Youth Today broke the story that Roque Gerald, the new head of the embattled D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, had sex with a patient during a counseling session in 1989 and was subsequently sued. The case was eventually settled after appeals reaching all the way to Virginia’s supreme court.

(For the record, LL is personally embarrassed that the scoop eluded him, seeing as the first item in a Google search for “Roque Gerald” brings up a summary of the suit. That’s not to to take away from Youth Today, who are totally fuego.)

Gerald has either refused to comment to the press or has been unavailable to comment on the matter, but yesterday morning, Gerald sent out an e-mail to CFSA staff responding to the revelations. “I have not made any public comments,” he wrote, “but my personal statement to you is the following. Twenty years ago, I made an error that I recognized, regretted, and admitted immediately. I have continued to regret it ever since. That one-time lapse was a painful lesson, but it strengthened my commitment to the high standards I lived before and have upheld every day since.”

“Nothing will erase my regret over the past,” he continued, “but I was very relieved that it will not undermine support for CFSA at this critical time.”

The full e-mail is after the jump. —Jason Cherkis and Mike DeBonis

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Sharlynn E. Bobo, head of the embattled Child and Family Services Agency, has resigned tonight, according to a mayoral press release. She’s being replaced by Dr. Roque Gerald, head of CFSA’s Office of Clinical Practice and a former deputy director of the agency.

About the only surprising thing about this move is that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty didn’t call a press conference to announce it. Then again, that’s not so surprising either, considering the uncomfortable questions that have surrounded the agency’s performance in the wake of the Banita Jacks tragedy, the June 25 death of 6-month-old Isiah Garcia, and this week’s death of a 5-month-old boy. There have been numerous reports this week of massive backlogs among CFSA caseworkers, and Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells grilled Bobo at a hearing Monday, hours after the death of the 5-month old.

“I have a loss of confidence in the leadership of the agency,” he said, as quoted in the Examiner, “but I don’t believe there is a very deep bench at the agency and that there’s not a likely person to step up who’s been identified.” (Fenty’s vote of confidence in Bobo, in the same article: “I would not keep anyone in a cabinet position if I did not think that they were the best person to do the job.”)

Yep, LL is going to say a press release issued at 9:44 p.m. might have been the smart way to handle this one. You can read it after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Turn on Channel 13 for some real entertainment: Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is now in the midst of sharply questioning Millicent Williams, the executive director-designate of the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. who is at the center of a recent power grab by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

For more on the background behind the grab, read this and this. The Post followed up this morning as well.

Gray’s questioning is at a hearing called by Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells to discuss recent changes at the CYITC, which was rocked last month by changes initiated when Fenty replaced two high-profile board members, resulting in the appointment of Williams, who had been a Fenty aide.

Board member Winifred Carson-Smith, a council appointee, expressed deep concerns about the process leading to Williams’ selection, saying she voted against Williams’ appointment because “I felt that the process was corrupt.”

“This was foisted upon us,” she said later, “there’s no other way to put it.”

Williams, it came out in the hearing, was not interviewed by the full CYITC board before her appointment. Nor had she even discussed her employment contract with the board, even though she is currently scheduled to start on July 14.

Asked Gray of Williams, “Next Monday, you’re slated to show up and you don’t even know what your salary is?

Williams, to Gray’s questioning, clearly indicated some discomfort with the nature of her appointment. “I don’t know if I’d call it transparency….it probably should have gone through a full review process.”

Williams was left to twist alone under Gray’s questioning, seeing as board chair and mayoral appointee Lisa Simpson failed to show up for the hearing, even though she appeared on a draft witness list today.

UPDATE, 7:45 P.M.: Simpson and her mayorally appointed colleagues didn’t show up due to “conflicts that prevented them from attending the hearing today,” says Fenty spokesperson Dena Iverson.

Fenty Child Is a Girl: Bruce DePuyt just got it out of Hizzoner on NewsChannel 8’s NewsTalk this afternoon: The child that he and wife Michelle Cross Fenty are expecting this fall will be the couple’s first girl. And, no, he won’t be taking a break come birthtime.

A local Girl Scouts troop is speaking out against major Nationals advertiser ExxonMobil. According to a press release from The Coalition to Strike Out Exxon:

The Washington Nationals ballpark is the first stadium to be LEED Silver Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council … Yet the Nationals continue to accept millions of advertising dollars from Exxon, by far one of the world’s biggest contributors to global warming.

The Girl Scouts have joined the campaign to prevent Nationals Park from being renamed in Exxon’s honor. In the process, the scouts will fulfill every girl’s dream: Getting to wear a polar bear outfit. This Sunday, June 29, the girls will bear up to raise awareness about the Nats funder:

Sunday is “Nats Conversion Day,” when the first 10,000 fans that bring in any old MLB merchandise can trade it in for a brand-new Nats Curly W cap courtesy of ExxonMobil. The girl scouts will don polar bear suits and hold up signs about ExxonMobil and global warming as people enter the stadium.

Photo by mape s

DCist’s Photo of the Day today is an ultrasound of poster Chris Klimek’s friend’s triple fetuses in her double uteri. You have been warned.

Writes Klimek: “Sorry, Flickr users, today’s Photo of the Day comes from a local whose achievement in the field of biological, if not photographic, excellence dusts all y’all suckers.”

Hey, I’m not a Flickr user, but could I have an apology, too? I could argue as to why your friend’s three pre-babies don’t qualify as an “achievement in biological excellence” (whatever that means), but I’m too busy praying to God that He never bless me with what you refer to as the “miracle of creation.”

I don’t want to see one fetus in one uterus. By my calculations, seeing your friend’s three fetuses in her two uteri is between five and six times as unsettling. Next time, please stick to things that can survive outside the womb.

For this week’s S&T, I spoke to Bill Duggan, owner of Adams Morgan anagram bar Madam’s Organ. Since 2000, Duggan’s been sparring with the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration over the issue of occupancy in his bar: ABRA said he was limited to 99 patrons, the number of seats on his restaurant license’s certificate of occupancy; Duggan contested that he could pack up to 393 patrons in, his fire marshall approved capacity. Earlier this month, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in Duggan’s favor.

This isn’t the first time that Duggan has dealt with issues of occupancy. For the past decade, Duggan and Madam’s Organ have organized a beach trip for area kids to Dewey Beach, Delaware. Each year, Duggan takes 20 to 40 District kiddies, along with 10 to 15 adult volunteers, for a weekend of bonfiring, crab-hunting, and beach-housing.

Dewey Beach didn’t always like that. “The second year of the trip, I was arrested for disorderly conduct,” says Duggan. “I made sure to tell the local [authorities] that the kids were coming, and they said it would be fine. They said ‘Hey, this is 1999, not 1969.’”

But Duggan says the beach cops were ready and waiting to kill the party. “Sure enough, there they were, hiding in the bushes, waiting for us,” he says. “They didn’t like having a bunch of black kids on the beach … The beach cop, he was like the leader of the Aryan nation: starched shirt, blonde hair, white eyebrows. He kicked us off the beach.”

That’s where Duggan’s pint-sized occupancy issue comes in: “Technically, the permit said only 25 kids at the bonfire at one time. And we had 35. But they were coming and going! Some were playing on the beach, others were at the house; they weren’t all at the bonfire at one time.”

But unlike the D.C. Court of Appeals, the beach cops didn’t buy Duggan’s maneuvering. “They put me in the paddywaggon,” says Duggan. “I said, ‘Fine, but the kids are coming with me.’”

After a brief lock-up and some negotiation, Duggan was released to continue spearheading the kiddie beach adventure. According to Duggan, the experience didn’t put a damper on the kids’ summer trip. “Oh, they loved it,” he says. “They kept shouting, ‘Mr. Duggan! You got locked up!’”

Photo by Charles Steck

The mayor’s office just issued a press release announcing that Hizzoner’s wife, Michelle Cross Fenty, is expecting the couple’s third child in late fall. Baby Fenty will join 8-year-old twins Andrew and Matthew. Mom, according to the release, “says she is feeling great and is looking forward to meeting the newest addition to the family.”

So, will youngest Fenty be attending D.C. Public Schools? (Just kidding, Mr. Mayor. Sort of.)

Millicent Williams, who had been head of Serve DC, the mayoral volunteerism concern, will be the new executive director of the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp., sources tell LL.

The appointment of a mayoral insider by the nonprofit’s board marks the culmination of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s move to assert more control over CYITC, which, since its establishment in 1999, has been charged with supporting youth services by pooling public and private money and issuing grants. Why might Fenty want more control? Most of the organization’s money has been provided by the District government—according to the organization’s 2006 tax return, it received $18.8 million in government funds and less than $4 million from other sources.

Last Thursday, in a move that set tongues wagging, Fenty replaced the high-powered chair and vice-chair of the board: The chair was none other than Federal City Council CEO John W. Hill, head of the organization that speaks for the city’s business and political elites. The vice chair was Diane Bernstein, long active in child welfare causes and—with her husband, businessman Norman Bernstein—a well-regarded philanthropist.

Both Hill and Bernstein had been on the CYITC board since the corporation’s founding in 1999; their terms had expired late last year, but had stayed on pending their successors’ appointments. With their departure, the board’s taking a steep hit in prestige, with top business and policy leaders giving way to lower-profile folks with closer ties to the mayoral administration.

The timing of the power move was somewhat suspicious, considering that the CYITC’s executive director, Greg Roberts, recently announced he’ll be leaving next month to take a job with the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.

Replacing Hill and Bernstein, who had been on the board are Clark Ray, the director of the Department of Parks and Recreation, and Lisa Simpson, a program manager with AARP. Late last year, Fenty also appointed his deputy mayor for education, Victor Reinoso, to the board, as well as James Carter, an analyst who works on youth issues for the mayor’s office. Three other members of the seven-member CYITC board are appointed by the D.C. Council.

Last week, the board voted Simpson as its new chair, with Carter as secretary, according to CYITC spokesperson Ellen London.

At Hart Middle School, the eight-graders went through their graduation rehearsal today. The rest of the day was spent on fighting and just hanging out. A bunch of cops–more than a half dozen–were stationed a half block away. Earlier today, there had been a huge off-campus fight.

When I asked the cops about the ruckus, they just muttered something about gangs as if it were the most boring subject in the world.

By 1 p.m., a few kids chose to kill the rest of the afternoon by sitting on Hart’s front steps. Best putdown overheard: “You are the dumbest kid that’s graduating.” The kid didn’t have much of a response. He actually seemed to agree with his friend’s assessment.