14th Street NW, June 4

I had checked in on Hart ever since the book dumping. It always seemed like a rough place to learn let alone feel safe. Yesterday afternoon, I attended the middle school's art auction of student works. At least for a few hours, the auction seemed like a great big victory for the struggling school.

Parents showed up. Students behaved. The kid who'd recently been shot stopped by with a new toy—a wooden cane. Even the teacher who'd left mid-year made a surprise visit. If all that weren't cause to celebrate, the marching band got through a slowed-down version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" with its dignity intact.

The students took their art and the auction seriously. Dozens of paintings and photographs hung in Hart's first-floor hallways with the artists standing nearby to explain their work. Some of the parents acted liked super agents—not quite Ari Gold from "Entourage" but close.

"You gonna bid on my daughter's art?"

"I'm a journalist, I have to be objective."

Twenty minutes later, the mom was back at me.

"There's still time to bid!"

That was Cer' Cia Wallace's mom. The 7th grader stood beaming next to a framed photograph of the waterfront she called "Sunset." In her explanatory essay, Wallace wrote: "This photograph is about love....The photograph experiences all that is good [in] the world." Meaning: sunsets, the waterfront, spindly tree branches, flowers, and a couple.

Wallace says that before she took the shot, she overheard the couple talking about marriage.

"I hope she said yes," Wallace says.

Wallace thought they were in love. I point out that the woman has her back turned to the man. I feel like such a killjoy. "I think she's probably saying 'maybe let's wait' or 'not right now,'" Wallace explains.

Either way, Wallace is still hopeful. So much of the art was aspirational—a refuge from whatever chaos swirled around them. There were tributes to John Cena (marker, magazine clippings), 18-wheelers, and Martin Luther King Jr. (the artist rendered his face like stained glass—which worked), and a portrait of Santana Moss in a Redskins throwback jersey entitled "The Santana Moss Project."

Some reflected on the city's troubles. There was an anti-drug collage. And there was a painting that touched on the city's epidemic AIDS rate. Tiana, an 8th grader, made a tribute to Keith Haring with painted Oompa-Loompa like-figures with X's on their bellies under a caption that read "Silence =Death." Tiana wrote of the tribute: "When I do art I like to convey a message and express myself. It makes me feel good and free." Someone needs to get Tiana to the Corcoran.

And then there's Maurice Carter Jr.'s crazy-detailed, pencil-and-paint drawing of an upright dog clutching a scowling cat. He likes his art, he wrote, because: "I did not get disturbed by anyone else."

Turns out, D.C. Council agrees. Officially giving the green light to medical marijuana in District yesterday, the Council also added new language potentially doubling the legal limits for personal possession. WaPo reports:

The bill, which now goes to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), originally restricted chronically ill patients with a doctors’ recommendation to no more than two ounces of marijuana in a 30-day period. But the council approved an amendment giving the Fenty administration the authority to set the possession limit at four ounces a month if it decides the need exists.

Four ounces? Per month? Wow. We're talking about a serious chronic condition here. Even my fiendish college girlfriend couldn't smoke that much. Still no word whether the D.C. law covers chronic conditions such as writer's block.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the medical marijuana capital of America, the city government has ordered 439 pot shops to close, according to the L.A. Times. By comparison, D.C. law will allow for just five to eight locations.

In other news: WJLA-TV reports that a drunk driver crashed his car into the Mt. Pleasant library yesterday at "great speed."

The Examiner notes that "at least seven different youths who were supposed to be monitored by D.C.'s juvenile justice agency have now been accused of murder, including the alleged killers of school principal Brian Betts."

In the world of art, porny painter Pablo Picasso's 1932 "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" sold for a record $106.5 million. Channeling Jon Lovitz....He's Picasso!

In sports, the Caps-slaying Montreal Canadiens lose to freaking Pittsburgh, 2-0. The Pens' Marc-Andre Fleury blocks everything his hometown Habs fire at him. French-Canadian goalies always win in Montreal. (See: Martin Brodeur.) Maybe Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau should have gone back to Jose Theodore in Game Six. Oof.

The National Weather Service predicts sunny and warm temperatures today with low humidity (for once).

"Before the Thanksgiving Break, I attended a DCPS workshop on Phonemic Awareness. It was actually a pretty good workshop that I found useful and wanted to share....This workshop was really interesting, because a lot of the teachers that were attending taught higher level elementary, middle or high school. Most of these teachers were a bit in the dark about how to teach reading, since most of that happens in the younger years. Unfortunately, a lot of older children really need help with the basics even as they get older."

Frozen Tropics has big ANC news: "Commissioner Wilhelmina Lawson has resigned from her seat in Trinidad. Lawson represented the southwestern portion of Trinidad, and all of the Capital City Market."

Rebuilding Place In The Urban Space considers safety/crime on public transit. The post has the usual thorough rundown of links, articles, and cites an interesting study.

The Heights Life has info on how to become a block captain for Columbia Heights' neighborhood watch program.

In Bloom wants Vegetate to move to their neighborhood: "Wouldn't it be great if they could relocate to Bloomingdale? The big yellow building on the corner of First Street NW and Seaton Place NW is just crying out for a restaurant to occupy the ground-floor space."

The 42 has the scoop on a cheap art sale that benefits an area nonprofit.

*follow me on twitter.

Now the bad stuff, the really bad stuff. The AP is going after him for using its photo of Obama in his poster:

"The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

'The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,' the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement."

And there's been a new critique making the rounds. The critique is that he's a plagiarist. Artist Mark Vallen lobbed the missive a while ago. But it's starting to pop up now.

Vallen writes:

"Plagiarism is the deliberate passing off of someone else's work as your own, and Shepard Fairey may be unfamiliar with the term – but not the act. This article is not about the innocent absorption of visual ideas that later materialize unconsciously in an artist's work, we do after all live in a maelstrom of images and we can't help but be affected by them. Nor am I referring to an artist's direct influences – which artist can claim not to have been inspired by techniques or styles employed by others? What I am concerned with is the brazen, intentional copying of already existing artworks created by others – sometimes duplicating the originals without alteration – and then deceiving people by pawning off the counterfeit works as original creations."

Vallen goes on to get personal:

"Perhaps the most important falsehood concerning Fairey's behavior is that it is motivated by some grand theory of aesthetics or weighty political philosophy – but I'm afraid the only scheme at work is the one intended to make Fairey wealthy and famous. Some have, for whatever reason, imagined Fairey to be a progressive political figure, a perception certainly cultivated by the artist; but it's also not impossible to view Fairey's work as right-wing in essence, since it largely ransacks leftist history and imagery while the artist laughs all the way to the bank."