To those grousing about this morning’s helicopters hovering over Mount Pleasant: 1) Give it up; 2) You live in a city, remember?; 3) Hundreds of people lost their homes, ya know?

There was enough whining on the Shepherd Park listserv that WJLA’s Managing Editor Dan Patrick had to respond. He wrote:

WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 has been getting complaints about “our helicopter” hovering over the scene of the Mount Pleasant fire this morning after a posting on a email group. I can assure you, due to flight restrictions post 9/11, our helicopter can come no closer than the northern portion of the Beltway in Montgomery County. We were not over the scene this morning, causing the noise issues for these residents. The only helicopters that would be allowed in the that airspace would be MPD’s helicopter or the United State’s Park Police helicopter.

And the response from a swell Shepherd Park citizen:

My sincere apologies to WJLA Channel 8. The helicopter hovering above Shepherd Park this morning was indeed a news helicopter, not military or police, but what looked like an ‘8′ was revealed to be a ‘6′ after the helicopter passed closer to my home. There is no Channel 6 in the DC area, but whoever they were need to be grounded, fined, and jailed.

Priceless.

Raccoon problems, which we’ve reported on before, apparently persist in Shepherd Park. Discussion on a neighborhood list has recently explored how to keep the critters from feasting on garbage:

Writes one poster:

Currently, a racoon is having his dinner out of my neighbors trash can. It is seldom with a lid and often trash is placed beside it, rather than in it.

If we keep feeding these animals, they will continue to come back. The family will come to feed also and we will suddenly wake up and be surprised that we are overrun with raccoons, rats and the like.

It is really not that hard to put the trash in the container and shut the lid!

This has been going on for over a year and nothing changes, why?

Among the responses:

Rocks can help. So can finking out your neighbor:

Even with the lid on the can a raccoon is still able to get inside. My husband found that out the hard way when he took trash out one night. When he opened the lid, a raccoon looked up at him and then jumped out and ran away. What we have started doing is to put a heavy rock on top so that they can’t open it. But if your neighbor’s trash can is in the alley with the trash beside it you can call 202-727-1000 and say that you want to make a complaint regarding loose trash. But you would have to make sure that the government can get there before it is picked up so that they can see it and give your neighbor a ticket. Enough tickets might get them to keep their area cleaner.

There’s a great future in plastics. And elastics. And Lysol:

Any future upgrade of the Supercans in D.C. needs to incorporate a heavier grade of plastic & a quick-release latch on the front of the cans.

Another short-term solution is to purchase the appropriate length elastic tie-down strap. Stretch the strap from the handle on the rear of the can across the top & secure it to the aluminum upload bar on the front of the can.

Keep the contents sprayed with Lysol aerosol to cover the smell of food products.

More dispatches on the Shepherd Park message board about life with raccoons.

My neighbor and I captured 3 raccoons in a trap and released them about 5 miles or so in Rock Creek park.. There was a set of five that was noticed. We live on 1600 block of Roxanna Rd

And:

I had a party Saturday evening (7900 block 13th St). We had lots of people talking, music, etc. in the house and backyard. My front door was open and glass screen door closed. I was at the front door talking with 3 other people when I saw a very large raccoon, on my front porch, looking into the house through the glass. I screamed and it ran. Not sure if it was rabid but it did not have a problem coming that close to humans that were making a lot of noise.

A hapless cat isn’t the only animal to pop up on Shepherd Park’s message board.

Reports one poster:

I came face to face (fact to snout?) with a raccoon in my back yard last evening. A neighbor with whom I spoke moments later said she had already called animal control, though she’s clearly too young to be the senior mentioned to Sharon. The creature eventually scurried away. Is there anything else one should do if in the presence of a raccoon?

Among the responses:

My friend scared off a raccoon in her attic using rags soaked in ammonia and dog urine.? I have seen a raccoon in my driveway twice in the past few months, so I’m going to try it.? I’ll tell you if it works outside.

And:

We put moth crystals in the eaves or our attic in the fall to deter raccoons. Moth balls do not work as well as cyrstals since raccoons can manipulate the balls. But better moth balls than nothing.

The first poster responds:

will have to try that as the little bugger nipped at my ankle tonight on my deck. no broken skin or anything, but not a good sign. be on the lookout, folks.

The one constant on the neighborhood message boards—besides bickering—is cat sightings. There are so many missing cats!

But this one—from Shepherd Park’s board today—just rises above:

Please be on the lookout for a cat with a can stuck on his head! My husband saw him this morning around 7AM on Geranium Street near 14th Street. He wasn’t able to remove the can. I went looking for the cat but couldn’t find him. Animal Control has been notified and is sending a crew out.

I wonder how Animal Control will get the can off the cat’s head.

UPDATE
From the message board:

The can has been removed.

It appears that the cat was trying to eat some leftover pet food that was in the can. The folks at Animal Control were very responsive to the several calls I made, but they were trying to remove a raccoon from a senior’s home. When I got close I could see the cat’s ear so I figure a firm tug would do the trick and it did. I don’t know if the kitty has a home, but he is free now.

Shepherd Park residents are so upset with this summer’s mosquitos, they’re compiling a list of addresses where the nasty things have taken over. On the neighborhood’s message board, the poster-in-charge wrote: “OK folks, it’s amazing what itching will motivate people to do.”

The poster then provided a list of “Affected areas” as provided by residents:

1400 Leegate
7500 16th
West Beach and Yorktown
1400 Juniper
7800 14th
1300 Locust
1600 Jonquil
7500 Alaska
1300 Iris
7500 14th (x2)
1800 Plymouth
1400 Geranium (x2)
7300 12th
7500 12th
600 Nicholson
1400 Floral
800 Fern
7900 Orchid
1400 Jonquil
1400 Locust
1400 Hemlock
Northgate and Primrose
1600 Primrose
Jonquil and Morningside
1200 Holly (x3)
1300 Roxanna

We should be able to add to this list. And if anyone can offer safe abatement procedures aside from draping these blocks with mosquito nets, then please post away!

Novelists are generally cautioned not to directly engage with the critics who give them a bad review—it only encourages bad blood down the line, the thinking goes. Tova Reich, the Chevy Chase author of My Holocaust, has taken this advice: She’s indirectly engaged with a critic.

Responding to David Margolick’s takedown of her book in the New York Times Book Review, she wrote a letter to the editor assuming the voice of one of My Holocaust’s characters, Lipman Krakowski. The gist: Margolick didn’t get the satire. “For this I came to America?” Reich’s imaginary amanuensis writes. “To hear some little Jewish ayatollah boxer deliver a little Jewish fatwa against a writer, telling her what she can and cannot write because of how it looks to the goyim?”

Reich writes from Chevy Chase, while Krakowski writes from Wheaton. (Lesson: If you’re going to call in imaginary people for backup, make sure he’s on the same Metro line. Me, I have a seven-foot-tall, muscle-bound wingman named Spiro who lives in Rosslyn.) But Reich has some actual people taking her side. The Book Review’s letters section includes a defense from a Washingtonian, Judith Plotz, and Shmuel Herzfeld, rabbi of Ohev Sholom—The National Synagogue in Shepherd Park. Even though Reich’s salvo is considered bad form, it did bump My Holocaust higher up my nightstand pile. As Walter Kirn wrote in the New York Times Book Review in 2001, “Either books are worth fighting over or they’re not—and if they’re not, why read them in the first place?”

Sent out today on the Shepherd Park message board is a boast that its block party ain’t going to be no beer-sippin’, hot-dog-munchin’ affair. And, kids, you can probably forget about the moon bounce:

Shepherd Park friends,

Here is one more email inviting you to our inaugural block party this Sunday. It’s not your typical neighborhood block party with hamburgers and hot dogs.—we’re closing down an entire downtown street, having five restaurants participate (Jackie’s, Mayorga, Addis Ababa, Tiramisu and Moorenko’s), a platform stage (with performances by eight bands, poets, a fashion show), lots of activities for children (puppets, face painting, games), and dozens of arts, crafts and other items for sale.

What’s so wrong with hot dogs and hamburgers?

shepherdpark
An internet debate on political signs continues continues as Terri, who complained earlier about an unwanted sign that materialized in her yard, reconsiders: “I guess I was too hasty,” she writes. “It was probably an innocent error. It’s just that I have never wanted to have a sign of any sort in my yard.”

“No, I don’t think you were hasty,” gg6409 counters. “Yours was not the only yard. It happened to my neighbor and a couple other folks I heard from. My neighbor is an elderly woman and was not happy about it.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday weekday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

shepherdpark
Fourth District Commander Hilton B. Burton recently announced on his message board that during the next three weeks, each PSA (Police Service Area) will be conducting regular meetings. At the meetings, his officers hope to gather intel and feedback on how best to implement a 100-day plan to combat crime. Burton went on to ask: “If you or any of your neighbors have any suggestions they would like to see included in the final plan please let your PSA official or me know.” Poster S. Miller took the opportunity to offer up the following: Officers should get out of their cruisers “once a day for a few minutes” and talk to residents to “ask about community public safety matters.”

Since this may be a new concept, we offer up some conversation starters for cops looking to make that ground-level connection with their constituents:

• “Boy, those Skins could sure use some help in the offseason, huh?”
• “Man, doesn’t feel much like winter around here, huh?”
• “I’ll tell you—rents aren’t getting any lower in this city, huh?”
• With all the [murders, robberies, burglaries, loitering] in this area lately, you could use a substation, huh?”
• “You grow up around here?”

Every Tuesday Monday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

shepherdpark

“I don’t know who Muriel Bowser is,” Terri writes, “but she has just lost my vote.” Terri’s beef’s got nothing to do with stadiums, safety, or schools: She returned home from a shopping trip to find that a sign for Bowser (reportedly a potential candidate for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s vacated Council seat) had taken root in her yard. “The sign is going in the trash,” the irate Terri says, “and I will vote for anyone but her.” But Dodie defends the “considerate and savvy” Bowser, posting an apologetic note Bowser had left on a Takoma list after the same thing happened there—which suggests that unwanted campaign signs may simply be part of the District’s streetscape.

Every Tuesday and Thursday Friday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

Brookland
Brookland resident Courtney knows that it’s hard to find a cat-sitter—and it’s even harder to find a cat-sitter who is willing and able to wield little teeny-tiny insulin needles and inject them into a squirming kitty twice a day. “We are going away soon and though we have someone coming to stay with our cats, we need someone who knows how to give a shot two times a day to our diabetic cat—every 12 hours to be exact.” Courtney writes. “I was wondering if anyone out there is a vet or vet tech and would be up to doing shots, as shots freak out the person staying with them…Thanks!!”

shepherdpark
So much for diggin’ the scene with a gangster lean. It seems one man’s leisurely cruise through Shepherd Park is apparently another man’s menacing case of the neighborhood. Aja posts “Burgundy Cadillac with Tinted Windows is prowling the neighborhood.311 contacted.”

TakomaDC
In the annals of Takoma diversity: For a personal project, neighbor Judy enlists the help of some of Takoma Park’s finest amateur translators. “Any linguistics in the neighborhood?” she asks. “[I]‘m looking for the translation of:
* gift
* clarity
* freedom
in as many languages as possible, including sanskrit, but not french and spanish.” Rich tells Judy to look online, as he did, to find out that “freedom” in Sanskrit is svatantra. Yet Seth cautions against using the Web for accurate translations. “In Hebrew, freedom = he-rut ????, gift = ma-ta-na ????, clarity = be-hee-rut ?????? You have to be careful with dictionaries and machine translation. You might get word senses and cases or declensions other than what you want.” Pamela steps up with Swahili: “gift is zawadi; clarity is ubayana (my dictionary says clarification); freedom is uhuru.” Steve chimes in with the Italian translations, another Steve offers up German and Latin, Simone provides Portuguese translation, and Rich comes through, again, with Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Russian, and Yiddish.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

shepherdpark
When Shepherd Park resident Mari’s van was stolen from in front of her home last Thursday, she was worried that she may never see the candy-apple-red Dodge Caravan with the soccer ball and “terrific kid” bumper stickers ever again. Although frustrated by the police’s handling of her stolen vehicle, a couple of days after the van was taken, she and her husband received a couple of good tips. First: a sighting. “Neighbors spotted our van tearing through the neighborhood,” Mari writes. “It was parked in one neighbor’s yard for part of the day, then disappeared - either the thieves came back, or a new set of thieves took it.” Even with that information, the police still couldn’t recover the van. “These sightings were reported to the police as early as 11:30, only minutes after the van was stolen, but as far as I know no one was sent to follow up at that time - when the thieves were apparantly hanging out enjoying Shepherd Park.” Maybe the second lead will be more helpful: “Two casette tapes of ours were found in a neighbor’s yard. These thieves do not like Old School.”

AdamsMorgan
In trying to figure out the mystery of a black sootlike material that covered Adams Morgan last week, one neighborhood resident suggests that perhaps the dark dust on Ellington Bridge could be the result of a recent sandblasting to remove dirt and graffiti from the structure. Naturally, this post, devolves into a free-for-all on private school kids. Martymoo comments that a little grime is a small price to pay for the removal of a tag on the bridge that read “Grand Old Pedophiles.” He says the graffito “made me want to puke” and he blames the nauseating bit of vandalization on kids from “Maret/Sidwell/GDS” who “are taught that ‘self-expression trumps civility.’” Rich responds, “You mean it took kids from three different schools to paint that slogan? Man, the kids these days are slacking.” But Kiltumper says private schools and thinky grafitti that uses big words simply go hand-in-hand. “Yeah, exclusive ($$$) upper-NW prep schools are known breeding grounds for strong anti-establishment/anti-conservative sentiment.…I wonder if any St. Albans kids were involved too.….”

columbia_heights
A holiday greeting from Columbia Heights resident Halya:

Mary Krismas every 1
Mary Krismas to the boys and girls
To the people of the world
To the saints and the sinners
the people who take blood thinners
The sick and the healthy
the poor and the wealthy
The prosperous and the weak
The tender and the meek
We been through a lot this year
But we still got good cheer
How about a beer
Just don’t drive
You might hit a deer

I think the funnest part about Krismas is getting new tunes
Jamming and whamming and banging and clanging
slipping and sliding and gripping and gliding
that’s the roll in the rock
when your ship hits the dock
when your goose leaves his flock
You say tick tock
what time is it?
It’s Krisma yo
time to go
and rest a spell - take the time to smell

don’t worry about the world
the world will take care of itself
It always has
It always will
You sipping on egg nog with rum, or rum with coke
won’t make a difference - that ain’t no joke
The world won’t end—we’ll all be here
next year
It’s what I’ve been trying to tell ya
Being that I’m Halya.
Think of Mary.

Mary Krismas.
What would she say if she were here?
Merry Christmas to ya’ll
Have a happy next year.

Every Tuesday and Thursday Friday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

shepherdpark
In the days following Halloween, Shepherd Parksters decide to swap some stories of tricking and treating around the neighborhood. TPJohnson, who cites giving candy to some Walter Reed staffers as a highlight of the night, repeats a common complaint of candy-givers: too many kids in street clothes. “I asked one little guy where was his costume, and what he was supposed to be, and he told me “a grownup!” Mark reports that he had 51 kids, and one adult, come by for candy­-a 21 percent increase over the previous year. Christine cops to being that one big person asking for sweets at Mark’s house. The sole tricking incident is reported by Caryn. “Only one bit of ‘weirdness’—I had my boombox playing on the front porch with scary sounds and music. It was outside, but plugged in indoors with cord running under the door. I heard some commotion and noticed the cord was pulled taut. I opened the door to see some young boys sprinting across Jonquil toward Shepherd Elementary and the boombox was out of place.” But, she says, there was “[n]o harm done.”

TakomaDC
Why bother Verizon with a request for a couple of phone books when you can just bug your neighbors for ’em? “Help! I am desperately searching for 2 copies of the White Pages for DC. Does anyone have a copy (or two!) they’d be willing to let me have or at least borrow for about 2 weeks?” asks Wendy, presuming that Takoma residents are a more reliable and speedy source of the books than our region’s premier supplier of communications services. Or maybe she’s just thinks that her fellow neighbors would be less likely to brand her as a weirdo when she explains her intentions. “I need them for a magic trick and can return them to you!”

Brookland
In an epic thread about veterinarians, Brookland residents debate the merits of various veterinarians—particularly the head pet docs at Hyattsville Animal Hospital versus those at the Brentwood Animal Hospital. The vet at Hyatsville is praised as “caring” and “compassionate” but also way too slow and old-fashioned. The doc at Brentwood, based on animal owners’ experiences, is technologically advanced and prompt, but has a lesser bedside manner. Amid the kudos and complaints, Lorie says she typically felt rushed at Brentwood and thought the doc didn’t listen to her. And, while the staff was likeable and informed about animals, their knowledge of world geography left much to be desired. “[W]e did really like [the] staff (although one of his vet techs was sure our Norwegian Elkhounds were from ‘Norwegia’).”

Every Tuesday and Thursday Friday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

CSNA U Street
CCDogpark suggests that, rather than letting kiddies have the final dip in municipal pools, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation should close out the pool season with a dog swim. “Other towns are generating large sums of money every fall with season ending canine swim events on the weekend before the pools are closed and drained for the season,” the dog lover writes. “You need to have an outdoor, municipal, fenced, pool with a zero-depth end and/or a baby pool for small breeds.” CCDogPark says the event should be a fundraiser to benefit a cause important to the city and dog owners alike—which automatically excludes anything benefiting children, right?

TakomaDC
For almost a week, Takoma DC residents have been trying to help Carolivia figure out how to crack open the delicious black walnuts that are apparently plentiful up near the D.C./MD line. Suggestions have ranged from expensive, specialized crackers to a vise. On Sunday, Carolivia thanked her neighbors for their suggestions and announced that she was attempting to do some online shopping for a nutcracker designed specifically to smash tough nuts. But she hadn’t yet heard the simple solution offered up by Lea. “I don’t know if this alternative has been mentioned: placing the black walnuts in the street or your driveway and running over them with the tires of your car. I was told about this option when I was living in the mountains of Virginia.”

Shepherd Park
Instead of using a cutesy pseudonym, Washington Post reporter Henri Cauvin adds his byline to a listserv post that reveals he is looking for a framer to fancy up a very special piece of work. For, um, a friend, maybe? “Looking for suggestions for reasonably priced places in the area to re-frame a couple of posters and to do a commemorative engraving of newspaper article,” Cauvin writes.