The issue: Shaw residents are infuriated by delays at the National Park Service (NPS). They want the agency to hurry up and develop three vacant, rundown properties in the neighborhood, including the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historical Site. Is NPS doing all it can?

No: Irate resident Ray Milefsky writes on the Shaw listserv: "You, the Park Service, are dissing the Shaw community and the City by keeping these buildings as magnets for vagrancy, trash, and criminal activity...We are fed up and angered at being told to look for the pie-in-the-sky when all we can smell is the defecation at your doorstep in OUR neighborhood."

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Ask Jesse Rauch if the beloved, now bereaved, Screen on the Green has a shot at resurrection and you'll get a resounding, "Yes we can!"

"We will have Screen on the Green this summer," Rauch said in an interview with Washington City Paper. "And if we don’t, we’re gonna have 16,000 people with DVD players and iPhones sitting on the mall, in a flash mob or something. We’ll find a way."

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I went to Meridian Hill Park on Easter for a story about the federal government's War on Pickup Soccer. Or something like that.

I lived in Mount Pleasant for 15 years, and used to bring doughnuts and bread and coffee and the newspaper there on weekends, because it was nearby and because in the spring Meridian Hill is by a far sight the most beautiful DC park I've ever been to.

But I pretty much stopped visiting since moving to Petworth in 2002.

Yet Sunday's visit confirmed all my happy memories of the park's fabulousity, and then some. The big revelation: All over the place on the top level, all sorts of wannabe circus performers were practicing their off-beat tricks.

Unicyclists. Acrobats. Even tightrope walkers!

Tightrope walkers? How long has this been going on at Meridian Hill?

And what does that say about DC? (True story: I didn't see ANYBODY in the park reading a legal brief or lobbying on behalf of military contractors.)

Eventually, somebody will speak up and say: Stop Messing With The National Mall. In recent years, we've had to endure the WWII memorial monstrosity (it's memorial as clip art!). Now comes the news that the National Park Service has issued a planning document which calls for the removal of the U.S. Capitol's reflecting pool and the obliteration of the Sylvan Theater. These are not pieces on a game board!

The reflecting pool would be replaced by some other kind of water entertainment. I'm guess a fountain. What else could it be? A Michael Phelps Memorial Bong? The Sylvan would be replaced with a bigger entertainment center or something. You know the new one will be tagged with all manner of corporate crap. Red Bull will finally get a presence on the National Mall. Thank G-d.

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WTOP reports that 3.8 million feet trampled the National Mall during Obama's inauguration. That's what you get when you want an inauguration for the people! The National Park Service plans on assessing the potential damage in the coming days:

"A bond has been set aside for the National Park Service to refurbish the National Mall. The National Park Service will determine how much it will take from the bond once it assesses the condition of the Mall.

Once the turf itself is inspected, officials say it's likely some portions of the Mall will be sectioned off for months.

'The point will be to fence it off with snow fencing for three, four, five months, to allow that turf to regenerate, to regrow, to water it, to reseed it and to make it look as good as we possibly can,' Line says.

One saving grace for the Mall is that the inauguration took place in the middle of the winter - when the grass really isn't growing at all.

'We have to look at what damage there could be into the spring and the summer, when people are going to expect it to look green,' Line says"

It seems like a lot of the Mall will be closed off until summer. Just a guess. The Mall looked pretty trashed in certain sections. At least that's what I saw.

Watch out, drug-sniffing dogs: You've got some competition.

According to an MSNBC.com article posted this morning, a turtle fitted with a GPS device meandered into a remote area of Rock Creek Park and led a National Park Service employee to a marijuana-growing operation.

A National Park Service employee was tracking a turtle with the gadget for research when the turtle wandered into a small marijuana field in a remote part of Rock Creek Park.

U.S. Park police were called and surveillance was set up to monitor the area. Police discovered a man taking care of about 10 marijuana plants in the field.

U.S. Park police and Montgomery County police arrested Isiah Johnson, 19, in Chevy Chase Wednesday.

Nice work, little turtle. I bet Mr. Johnson wasn't expecting to be caught like that.