Warhol’s ‘Headlines’ Brings Out the Headliners
• November 3, 2011

The pop artist was also a pop editor. Andy Warhol’s serious playfulness with the tabloid media, news and society makes newspaper editors smile with art lovers. Friends and admirers got a chance to do just that at a Oct. 5 trustee dinner for the National Gallery of Art exhibit, “Warhol: Headlines” in its East building. [gallery ids="100339,108683,108679,108675,108662,108671,108667" nav="thumbs"]

Jam-packed NOLA Visit Serves Up Many Lessons
• October 19, 2011

Four days in New Orleans to work the exhibitor booth, to attend some seminars and speeches, to take in the sights and sounds of this city along the Mighty Mississippi and to meet clients and a great, old friend, David Roffman, retired editor and publisher of The Georgetowner. Too much? Hey, it’s N’awlins, baby. “Laissez les bon temps roulez,” and let’s find the time to greet and to eat.

It was Mitchell Davis of Broadcast Interview Source, Inc. and the Yearbook of Experts, who invited Roffman to the combined journalists’ convention – the Radio, Television and Digital News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists – at the Sheraton on Canal Street. A Georgetown University alum, Davis worked for The Georgetowner more than 30 years ago as a photographer and was delighted that Roffman had given him a darkroom back then.

On Sept. 25, while others stopped to speak with us, Roffman drove into the city from the Gulf shores of Alabama, got his convention badge and met us in the hall, ready to work. But this was more a learning rather than selling show, packed with speakers, sessions, book signing, critiques and receptions. Our retired publisher could simply relax, enjoy the show and explore the city.

We listened to Soledad O’Brien of CNN explain her work in documentaries, balancing family life, while admonishing newbie journalists to solve problems for themselves and their bosses, creatively and without complaint. Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman, proudly showed off “60 Minutes,” advising writers and producers not to cover too much but to focus and tell a story.

During the RTDNA awards ceremony for Lara Logan of “60 Minutes” and Linda Ellerbee of Nickelodeon’s Nick News, the room fell silent after the video introduction for Logan showed a base in Afghanistan and then Tahrir Square in Cairo, site of her brutal rape. She looked away from the screen and then spoke about how the attack seemed easier to live with then than now. “I am the model of imperfection,” said Logan, who lightened the mood and talked about the New York office. “If you are looking to go corporate, this is not the place for you,” the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News said. “The same old offices have housed ‘60 Minutes’ for years. The diligent Logan said she strove for a good story at the end of the day and would ask herself: “How can I not f–k this up?”

On her recovery, Logan said she had felt “broken into one thousand pieces” but was “grateful for letters from people across America” and had expected more push back about the assault. “What we stand for as a Western society and America is free speech,” Logan said. “There is a war around the world against free speech. We are fighting for the survival of our civilization.”

Longtime TV news reporter and anchor Linda Ellerbee, now reporting the news to children with Nick News, showed she was a seasoned keynoter, tossing out such punch lines as “A journalist is an out-of-work reporter.” After double knee replacement on Sept. 15, she stood at the podium with her signature red Converse sneakers and admitted she could “get lost following a river.” Before she moved to her first TV reporting job, she was asked, “Have you ever done TV?” Ellerbee replied: “No, I’ve seen it.” Any job advice? “Don’t confuse change with motion.” “If you shove a microphone in someone’s face to convey tragedy, you’re a moral dwarf.” Her writing, she said, is the same for kids as when she wrote for the networks.  “I’ve morphed into some kind of raggedy-assed big bird,” Ellerbee said. “I love it. It’s good to laugh any time you can.”

Also available were training sessions on freelancing, videotaping, backpack journalism, Google, social media ethics, Facebook and journalism, transformational newspapers and narrative form in the age of tweets — not to mention the tour of post-Katrina levees or volunteering at the Second Harvest Food Bank. Was it too much? Of course, it was. And perfect to be in New Orleans, where print and electronic journalists and other media types were getting a handle on the changes all around them.

Living In Pink Celebrates Its Cause . . . and Life
• October 17, 2011

With smart, strong women in the Fairmont Washington Hotel ballroom, the fight against breast cancer was on during Living in Pink’s eighth annual luncheon and boutique, Sept. 23. ABC7/WJLA-TV anchorman Greta Kreuz introduced the awardees and speakers. Presentation of the Living in Pink Award was awarded posthumously to Thomas J. Sanzaro, M.D., and accepted by Mrs. Kathy Sanzaro with remarks by Colette Magnant, M.D. The Noel Soderberg-Evans Award was presented to Christine Teal, M.D., by Jack Evans, Ward 2 councilman. Guest speaker was Pamela Peeke, M.D., M.P.H. Founded in 2004 by two-time breast cancer survivor and mother of four, Michele Conley, Living in Pink is set to help find a cure for breast cancer so that the next generation of women will not have to endure the emotional and physical pain of breast cancer surgery and treatment. [gallery ids="100322,108099,108097" nav="thumbs"]

GBA Says Farewell to Summer on Annual Boat Ride
• October 13, 2011

The popular annual boat ride on the Potomac River, hosted by the Georgetown Business Association, brings business leaders, residents, colleagues and friends together for easy-going river sightseeing. The Sept. 21 trip, organized by the GBA’s Sue Hamilton, left Washington Harbour to view the monuments as well as Key Bridge. Captain Al Slaughter, who with his brother Eric owns Capital Yacht Charters, took the helm of the company’s Harbour Belle. D.C. councilman-at-large Vincent Orange greeted the group and went along for the ride. Food was provided by Chadwick’s Restaurant, drinks by Rhino Bar and desserts by Serendipity3 D.C. – and GBA logo cookies from Toute Sweets.

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9/11: A Once and Future Unity
• October 7, 2011

The crisp, blue Tuesday morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was deadline day for the Georgetowner newspaper. As editor-in-chief at the time I was wondering which feature should become the cover story and considered them all less than compelling. I mused: I wish something more interesting would come along to cover. Be careful what you wish for, I know now too well. Leaving home early for the office, I had not seen the morning TV news and did not know what I had just happened at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. At the office I saw and heard the hellish news of deaths that has never really gone away. Some staffers were trying to finish work on the issue, while others were out viewing the smoke of the Pentagon and hearing helicopters and fighter jets above. Most just felt stunned and unbelieving.

Publisher Sonya Bernhardt was arranging advertising page positions, and editor David Roffman stared at his computer, still typing, recalling that huge mass of smoke he saw when coming over Key Bridge. We, the stunned and unbelieving, did not know quite what else to do. I shook my head and went outside. After high noon, I wandered toward Halcyon House which has a panorama of the Potomac and where you can see the Pentagon over in Arlington. Smoke still puffed into the azure sky. I looked down on M Street nearby, where the flag was flying in Francis Scott Key Park. This Star-Spangled Banner was flying as defiantly as its original had 187 years earlier in the face of a foreign menace. As neighbors John Dreyfuss and Chris Murray looked from the railing with me, I held up the camera and took the cover shot for the week. Hell of a way to make deadline.

Weeks and months after 9/11, the Georgetowner wrote headlines like “Terrorism Hits Home” and “A New Age Begins.” Sincere, fresh respect for firefighters, police officers and other first responders erupted, even as the anthrax threat spread. We were in a new world together. Everyone pitched in with a unity of stories on local and business news, interviews, commentary and advice. Experts, such as former national security advisor Robert McFarlane and historian Fred Hubig, gave their take on our newfound world of terrorism. Along with others, contributors like Dorree Lynn (Jack Evans and Bill Starrels included) and photographers Patrick Ryan and Neshan Naltchayan were on the scene – and still are. Still others have departed, like longtime editor and publisher David Roffman who has retired to the Gulf Coast and former associate publisher Victoria Michael, who runs a thriving public relations business. (I left the newspaper for public relations and editorial consulting but still write for it as an editor, too.)

Ten years ago, those singular evil acts welded an inseparability for all of us here, in the city and nation and, perhaps, through the world. Lives have been lost, then and since, as have new lives arrived to validate new hope. We know exactly where we were then – hearts ache for those who died – and since, what shall we say? That such a unity fades like the smoke we saw?

Today, in our historic neighborhood and nation’s capital, the Georgetown Media Group boasts young, smart writers, editors, designers and marketers – interns, too. Through all the changes, its publisher Sonya Bernhardt never stops working for improvement along with another who has never stopped: stalwart writer Gary Tischler, whose words have their own soulful unity. These two exemplify perseverance.

If September 11 is to become a day united by purposeful service, we know something about that. Just remember to wish carefully.

Georgetown Waterfront Park, Years in the Making, Opens
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The completed transformation of Georgetown’s land along the Potomac River was celebrated with an official National Park Service ceremony Sept. 13 at Wisconsin Avenue and K Street. Friends and volunteers came together to salute the completion of Georgetown Waterfront Park and to honor former Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.), the park’s most influential advocate and longtime 34th Street resident, who is gravely ill.

The $24-million, 9.5-acre park was a project of the National Park Service, the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park and the District of Columbia government. The park was designed by Wallace Roberts & Todd of Philadelphia and completes 225 miles of parkland along the Potomac River’s shoreline, stretching from Mount Vernon, Va., north to Cumberland, Md. It is the largest park to be created in D.C. since Constitution Gardens was completed on the National Mall in 1976. Construction began in 2006.

Once the land of old Georgetown’s wharves and factories, the riverside had deteriorated into parking lots and empty land. In 1985, the District of Columbia transferred the waterfront land to the National Park Service. In the late 1990s, the Georgetown Waterfront Commission made the final, long push for completion, bringing together volunteers, residents, the rowing community, local leaders and the National Park Service as it highlighted the Potomac’s signature sport: rowing.

The park features pathways, granite artwork that tells the story of Georgetown as a port, a labyrinth, a bio-engineered river edge along with the newest and most popular attractions: a pergola, fountain and river stairs.

At the ceremony, Rock Creek Park Superintendent Tara Morrison greeted the crowd as it faced the Potomac, Roosevelt Island and the Kennedy Center and boats, helicopters and airplanes passed by.

“This is a grand day,” announced Robert vom Eigen, president of the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, who thanked all those working for years to change unused industrial lots into parkland, now part of the Park Service.

“No one would have loved more to be here front row and center,” said WETA president and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller of her father, Sen. Percy, whose picture is on a park plaque. Revealing that he is ill at Sibley Hospital, Rockefeller choked up as she said, “He would be thrilled to see this magnificent setting. It is his fondest and last best work.”

On behalf of the District, Ward 2 councilman Jack Evans thanked the three most responsible for the final push to get the park done: Ann Satterthwaite, Robert vom Eigen and Grace Bateman.

Paraphrasing Frederick Douglass’s thoughts on visitors to the nation’s capital, Robert Stanton of the Park Service said, “When they visit Washington, D.C., they would be at home. For those who visit Georgetown Waterfront Park, they will be home as well.”

Afterwards, hometown architects Hugh Jacobsen and Arthur Cotton Moore, sitting together at the House of Sweden reception for the park after the ceremony, approved of the new work. Pleased to see parkland and businesses side by side, Moore joked, “Hugh and I are going down those steps [at the river] tomorrow in our swimming suits.”

Sculptor John Dreyfuss, also trained as an architect, summed up Georgetown’s newest creation: “It is a triumph.”

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20 Years of Bob Schieffer’s ‘Face the Nation’
• October 6, 2011

Bob Schieffer’s 20 years as anchor of CBS News’s “Face the Nation” — which premiered November 1954 — was applauded Sept. 21 at the St. Regis with politicians, journalists and other Washington types enjoying the warmth (or humidity), food and bipartisanship. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) was in the room along with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Old and new media moved freely — from familiar Posties, ThomsonReuters editors to Media Bistro. [gallery ids="100321,108092,108095" nav="thumbs"]

Pie Sisters Coming to M Street’s Regency Row at Key Bridge
• October 3, 2011

Well, my little cupcakes, make some room. Pie Sisters – a.k.a. O’B.Sweet – will open its much-anticipated first store at 3423 M St. in early November.

Bakers and businesswomen Alli, Cat and Erin Blakely, who hail from Great Falls, Va., and are parishioners of St. John’s Church on O Street, are known for their pies for weddings and social and charitable events. They and their baking talents, a lifelong family affair, have been pitched as a “reality” show on a cable network. The sisters said they chose the site because of its closeness to Georgetown University and its visibility – you can’t miss it turning off Key Bridge from Virginia – and that “the location is not too small and not too big.”

“Their product is irresistible,” said Richard Levy, the new shop’s landlord and managing principal of the Levy Group, a real estate investment and property management company, which runs Regency Row on M Street at Key Bridge. “These three very energetic sisters convinced me. They have a lot of business savvy.”

Construction of the pie shop is underway, and it is expected to open before Thanksgiving, according to Levy. Another new business, a small eatery, is planned for next door.

As for that cable show, Erin Blakely said, “We put that on hold. It’s still possible. We want to get the store open.”

The sisters sell pies in three sizes, the hand-held “cuppie,” seven-inch and nine-inch, and flavors include apple caramel crunch, pecan, key lime and banana, coconut or chocolate cream. They will also be offering gluten-free pies for the first time. The big pie can cost up to $35, but return the glass plate for $5 off next purchase – which appears inevitable. Georgetown surely has a sweet tooth.

“The manager at Revolution Cycles is psyched,” Levy said. “She loves pies.”

Visit PieSisters.com for more information.

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Accused of Wanting to ‘Bomb Georgetown,’ Muth Stays in Jail
• September 26, 2011

It’s never a good thing, especially in our post-9/11 world, to be accused of threatening to “kill all Americans” and “bomb Georgetown.” So continues the weird tale of the alleged killer of Viola Drath, who lived on Q Street.

Albrecht Gero Muth, 47, charged with the second-degree murder of his 91-year-old wife Viola Drath, was ordered to remain in prison by D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald Fisher during a Sept. 9 hearing. Muth’s next hearing is set for Nov. 18.

There was “ample circumstantial evidence” which connected Muth to Drath’s Aug. 11 death, reported The Washington Post, which also cited the judge’s observation that Muth held “prior animosity toward his wife of 22 years and would benefit financially from her death.” The judge also concluded the the murder suspect was dangerous and likely a flight risk. Muth was arrested Aug. 16 by Metropolitan Police.

Muth protested during the hearing, claiming that he was a officer in the Iraqi Army and that his imprisonment was a violation of the Geneva Convention. The Embassy of Iraq has stated that Muth is in no way associated with any governmental agencies of Iraq.

Then, a new twist was revealed, as reported in the Washington Post: “The new allegations against Muth came from James Wilson, one of the lead homicide detectives investigating the case. Wilson said that Drath spoke with a lawyer about having Muth removed from her will about nine months before her death. She also solicited help from various people to have Muth deported because he repeatedly threatened and abused her and had threatened to ‘kill all Americans,’ Wilson said. In April, Wilson said, Drath told a witness that her husband had planned to ‘bomb Georgetown.'”

During the hearing, Muth’s defense lawyer Dana Page argued that there was no hard evidence against her client. The motives of witnesses were questioned as well as those of neighbors who had heard of domestic abuse and did not call police.

Between Rain Drops, Fashion’s Night Out Parties On
• September 22, 2011

The show went on Sept. 8 despite the seemingly endless rain. Fashion’s Night Out in Georgetown involved businesses up and down Wisconsin Avenue and east and west along M Street. From Urban Chic down to M29, from a book signing at Appalachian Spring to fashion shows at Betsey Johnson and at the Latham Hotel, and over to the PNC parking lot for a photo booth and the Georgetowner office for a model shoot by Patrick Ryan, fashion fun-seekers checked out the scene. Dean & Deluca offered food and wine along with a deejay, and L2 Lounge was the place for the pre-party to kick off the night.

Started two years ago in New York, Fashion’s Night Out came to Georgetown last year with the help of the Georgetown Business Improvement District and other businesses. The Georgetown BID took the lead again this year. The co-hosts involved some favorite, fashionable usual suspects: Mary Amons, Annie Lou Bayly, Katherine Boyle, Kelly Collis, Marie Coleman, Rachel Cothran, Jeff Dufour, Lynda Erkiletian, Angie Goff, Walter Grio, Philippa Hughes, Samy K, Svetlana Legetic, Kate Michael, Sarah Schaffer, Janice Wallace, Andre Wells and Paul Wharton.

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