The whole package is worth a skim for any train lover or New York expat, but the artistic reconceptions are particularly wonderful, the audio visual package on subway preachers lets you meet the people you never really want to stop and listen to, and this profile should reassure the next Metro general manager that while his or her job might be hard, Jay Walder's is probably worse.

The view that Dowd's so worried about. (Lydia DePillis)

If you cracked open the New York Times op-ed page this morning, you would have found a rare and welcome sight: Discussion of a local historic site, Fort Stevens, where President Abraham Lincoln came out to observe a battle in 1864 (the Confederate forces were repelled, and Lincoln came out unscathed).

The point of the column's placement on this coveted journalistic real estate, though, was less clear. Columnist Maureen Dowd–who now lives in Georgetown–grew up a few blocks away from the site, and she starts out reminiscing about how her brother smoked his first cigarette there as a kid. Recently, she toured the site with the Civil War Preservation Trust, which is worried that a new five-story, mixed-use building next to the historic Emory Methodist Church will obscure views to the East.

That potential problem has been extensively hashed out with the Historic Preservation Office, and discussed before the Board of Zoning Adjustment, which granted several variances for the project's height and density back in February. Emory made concessions in its design to the battlefield's historic nature, and will be incorporating an interpretive center into the facility, which includes 67 units of senior housing, 19 units of affordable rental housing, and 24 units of transitional housing for families–all in all, an exciting project for that strip of Georgia Avenue. The Office of Planning is for it, the local ANC is for it, and it will allow more people to appreciate the place where Abraham Lincoln once stood.

Dowd gives Emory's Pastor Joseph Daniels a chance to say his piece about the project. But then, she disregards all those painstaking plans, and falls back onto a vague homage to the War and its significance.

"Still, in a day and age when people don’t remember what happened last year, we’ve got to be careful to protect our history," she writes, before throwing out a few tidbits about the engagement. "Afterward, General Early drawled that he may not have taken Washington from the Yankees, but 'we’ve scared Abe Lincoln like hell,'" she finishes, with a quote taken from the National Park Service's battle summary.

So, Dowd, since you grew up here and all, what do you think should happen to this site? Should the church be able to build its addition? Or should the view of the rising sun over the battlefield really not be obstructed? Did you actually forge an opinion after your jaunt around the park?

Or was this just a vehicle for indulging in nostalgia for a childhood long past?

The original credit was set to expire on Nov. 30. Last week, we learned that the new version of the credit will extend to some current homeowners looking for their next purchase, and that it would apply to all contracts entered by the end of April, and closing before July 1 (via Wall Street Journal).

The Department of Energy has been getting some great publicity—definitely on this blog—this month for its gigantic Solar Decathlon competition sprawled across the National Mall. But as DOE officials were shaking hands, making announcements, and touring various homes, someone in their department managed to leak an important, internal document to the New York Times.

Yesterday, the newspaper broke the story that many products given the Energy Star label may very well be undeserving of the distinction, according to an internal audit.

The Department is allowing companies to self-inspect and certify some of their own products. And it is not monitoring whether companies that improperly labeled products are correcting their practices.

This is, of course, a problem for several reasons: Under the stimulus bill, consumers are getting tax credits for purchasing green products. (I wrote about one example of this, white roof paint, a few months back.) And the federal government is currently spending tons of money retrofitting old public buildings to be more energy efficient–I'm assuming, with some of these inaccurately represented "green" products.

To be fair, some products are under the proper review. Others not so much: The Times story also notes that the DOE promised in 2007  that it "would conduct 'retail assessments' to ensure that all the products carrying the Energy Star logo deserved them, it is still not doing so for windows, doors, skylights, water heaters and solid-state lighting."

Image by Sun Dazed, Flickr Creative Common

This summer, I was treated to a delicious meal of—are you ready for this?—brussels sprouts, glazed salmon, veggie potpie with chard, collared greens, turnip greens, mustard greens, onion, and a pizza dough crust; an egg souffle with mushrooms and onions; and a seasoned risotto boiled in an onion stock.

A ton–yes. But not when you live with roughly 20 people.

I was visiting Maitri House, a Takoma Park intentional community, for an eventual article on the logistics of creating this type of co-op–which, as it turns out, may be happening more and more often these days!

Yesterday, the New York Times wrote about co-ops forming off Craigslist in Brooklyn. It may have stumbled upon a trend here.  Either people are establishing more intentional communities, or they're definitely documenting them more on the internet! Here's what the Times says:

Are their numbers surging? Hard to tell, though people who study more traditional “intentional communities” — that is, any group of individuals living together with shared values, as in a commune or collective — say that they are demonstrably on the rise. Laird Schaub, executive secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, said his nonprofit’s database has swelled from 614 communities in 2005 to more than 1,300 this year.

Traffic to the site is up 25 percent in the last year, Mr. Schaub continued, to an average of 2,000 visits a day. As to why that should be so, Mr. Schaub pointed to what he called “an ever-increasing level of dissatisfaction with traditional lifestyle choices, because there’s too much alienation and lack of connectedness. Humans are inherently social animals, yet we don’t particularly know how to get along with one another.”

Another month, another round of housing numbers. Today's big news is that new home sales were up 11 percent nationally in June over the previous month's numbers. Let's keep thing in perspective though:

The good news:

• "Sales of new homes in the United States posted their largest monthly gain in nearly eight years in June..." (The New York Times)

• A government program is working! "The uptick in new home sales was a pleasant surprise and probably reflects the impact of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit, which expires in November..." (The Washington Post)

• "The figures were the latest evidence that a three-year slump in the country’s housing market was leveling off as prices fell back and some builders and buyers began to step tentatively back into the market." (The New York Times)

The bad news:

• Sales rose in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. But sales fell in the South. The Washington DC region is included within the South. (The Washington Post)

• There are still too many homes available for sale for real competitiveness in the market: "The number of completed new homes for sale, which is also dropping, however, fell to 128,000—in a "normal" market, this figure would be below 100,000. In other words, inventory is still too high." (IHS Global Insight)

• Selling a house is still not a cinch! "Although the market for new homes is improving, selling a new home has never been harder. The median time that a new home sits on the market before selling rose to an all-time high of 11.8 months.  The number is rising because builders must cover their costs, and do not have the option of selling homes at "fire sale" prices." (IHS Global Insight)

•  "Sales of new homes were still down 21 percent from June 2008..." (New York Times) 

Image by Meknit, Flickr Creative Commons

The piece is a nice little roundup of what's already established and what's to come in the area. So, in case you're wondering where actual life exists in that abyss of cranes, construction materials, and exhaust from New York Avenue, here's a nice list compiled from the article:

• In 2001, the area became home to XM Satellite Radio.
• The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms moved in, with 1,500 employees, in September 2007.

And on the way...

• Major offices of the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and National Public Radio...The Justice Department said it had agreed to a 15-year lease, starting in 2010, for 521,000 square feet to house 2,000 criminal division employees in a proposed 12-story office building.
• Constitution Square, a project that will include a Harris Teeter supermarket (see what I mean, there's always one around the corner!), a 440-unit rental apartment building and a 204-room Hilton Garden Hotel.

My problem with the area has always been/will continue to be its name. NoMa...NoBlah if you ask me!!!

Anyway. What the New York Times failed to do in its piece was dig up the original name for this section of D.C.: Swampoodle! Every city in the nation is desperate to mimic this New York-ism of naming neighborhoods according to street directions. Most recently, Esquire dug up a guy, who, at least, was having a bit of fun with the trend.

"When I get to Austin, I begin asking people who a good person to speak with might be. It seems like no matter who I ask, I get the same answer: John Kelso. He's a columnist at the Austin American-Statesman and some kind of hometown hero.

I track Kelso down the next day near his office and he agrees to have some coffee with me. When we get into his car, I notice several Hawaiian shirts from the cleaners in the backseat.

On the way over to a nearby coffee shop I ask about the neighborhood. He tells me that South Congress Avenue (where we're driving) used to be a real blue-collar area but that they started redeveloping it in the mid-eighties, and now it's got so many trendy and expensive stores that the people decided to rename it SoCo. "So I put in my column that since they're running off all the prostitutes on the streets for the remodels, instead of calling it SoCo they should call it NoMoHo." We both laugh at that, and he tells me that for some reason the name never took off."

Photo by JamesCalder