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Gary Tischler • November 10, 2014

Even unto the last days of the District of Columbia’s race for mayor, there had been buzz — vague and misty, but still — that this could be a tight race, that there remained an unsettled atmosphere and that there was a chance — slim, but still — that Independent challenger David Catania might pull off an upset.

Part of the reason that prospect even existed at the late hour was that Catania had, like favorite Muriel Bowser, hustled in the hustings, knocking on doors. According to some polls, early in the fall, he had cut Bowser’s early double-digit lead down to singles, although his momentum appeared to have stalled.

Still during the last days of the campaign, there was that little buzz in the media — vague and misty, but still — although none of it was coming from the Bowser campaign, or Bowser herself, who looked serene and confident when we talked to her just a few days before the election.

At that time, we asked her how it felt after all the effort—she won the D.C. Democratic Primary handily over Mayor Vincent Gray, and Tommy Wells, Jack Evans and Vincent Orange back in April and kept up a efficiently organized, low-key, non-confrontational, four-debate campaign — she was in a campaign considered by some to be competitive.

She considered that. “Is it?” she asked.

The guess here is she knew something, because Bowser swamped Catania, the now former at-large District Councilmember of considerable achievement right from the get-go, jumping out to a 20-point lead and never looking back, right up to the moment where she danced to the Alicia Keys’s song “Girl On Fire” at her victory party at the renovated Howard Theatre.

The result: Bowser, 80,824 votes, or 55.0 percent; David Catania, 52,800 or 36 percent; and 10,616 votes (7.2 percent) for Independent former at-large District Councilmember and four-time mayoral candidate Carl Schwartz.

Bowser, at the victory party, and at the National Press Club the following day, stated that she had “a clear mandate” for a “fresh start” and that the status quo would not be enough. As in her campaign, she stuck to grand themes and provided few policy details.

There were few surprises in the D.C. election as a whole, but there will be three more new council members. They include Elissa Silverman, (economics expert and former “Loose Lips” columnist) who finished behind incumbent Anita Bonds in the crowded (at least 17 candidates, most of them newly minted Independents) race to fill two council at-large seats, including the one abandoned by Catania. In Ward 1, there’s Brianne K. Nadeau, who unseated incumbent Jim Graham in the Democratic Primary in April, and in Ward 6, there’s Charles Allen, who took over the seat of Tommy Wells, who had to give up his seat to run for mayor and lost in the Democratic primary. Allen was Wells’s chief of staff.

Winning re-election were Mary Cheh in Ward Three and Kenyon McDuffie in Ward 5.

In the first-ever race for District of Columbia Attorney General (formerly an appointed position), veteran D.C. lawyer Karl Racine won easily, a bitter pill to swallow for Adams Morgan lawyer Paul Zukerberg, who had almost solely led the campaign to get the measure to make the attorney general be an elected office. Zukerberg, undermanned and under financed, finished fifth.

Eleanor Holmes Norton easily won re-election to her post as D.C. Delegate (non-voting) to the House of Representatives.

Initiative 71—legalization of marijuana—also won easily—with only the one precinct in the District opposing. Of course, given that Congress messes with D.C. legislation, budgets and laws routinely—especially with the GOP roll-over in the mid-term elections, this is not entirely a done deal, depending on what GOP lawmakers do.

Georgetowner •

Georgetown Visitation 44th Annual Esprit de Noel

November 7th, 2014 at 11:00 AM | Free | wardt@aol.com | [Event Website]http://www.visi.org/support/esprit-de-noel-christmas-bazaar/index.aspx

Please join us for holiday shopping with tons of vendors, festive decorations, tasty treats, community, and fun:

Unique Boutique Shops for Everyone on Your List • Free Admission & Parking •
Snackery, Bake Shop, Food Trucks and Holiday Snacks! • Open to the Public!

Friday, November 7th

11a.m. – 9 p.m.

Saturday, November 8th

10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Address

1524 Thirty-Fifth St. NW • Washington DC 20007

Metro Cooking DC

November 8th, 2014 at 10:00 AM | $24.50-500 | kl.krause@ejkrause.com | Tel: 301-841-2400 | [Event Website](http://www.metrocookingdc.com/tickets/)

The 9th annual MetroCooking DC will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center November 8-9, 2014. The two-day consumer event will include cooking demos and book signings by Food Network stars, Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri, along with a host of star speakers offering hands-on workshops and tastings, cooking demos by local James Beard chefs, beer, wine and spirits tastings, a grand tasting pavilion, and more!

Buy your tickets today!

Address

801 Mt Vernon Pl NW, Washington, DC 20001

Fall Harvest Tea and Tour

November 8th, 2014 at 01:00 PM | 25.00-30.00 | info@tudorplace.org | Tel: 202-965-0400 | [Event Website](http://www.tudorplace.org/)

Location: Meet at 1670

Enjoy a traditional Victorian tea complete with tea sandwiches, scones, delicious desserts and historic tea blends in the beautiful 1870s Victorian Dower House. Then join docents to “stroll into the past,” on a guided tour through the 1816 National Historic Landmark mansion.

Members: $25

Nonmembers: $30

Address

1644 31st Street NW Washington, D.C. 20007

Yoga at Georgetown Library

November 9th, 2014 at 01:30 PM | Free | geoyogarsvp@gmail.com | Tel: 202-727-0232 | [Event Website](http://dclibrary.org/georgetown)

Take an Om Break at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library. Join the Georgetown Neighborhood Library for a variety of yoga classes taught by teachers from Yoga Activist.

To RSVP for any or all classes send an email with the class(es) you’re interested in registering for. The first 30 RSVPs will be registered and the remaining RSVPs will be placed on a waiting list. Please RSVP to Georgetown Yoga at the email below.

Address

3260 R Street NW

City Tap House And The Washington Capitals Rock the Red To Benefit Foundation 4 Heroes

November 9th, 2014 at 05:00 PM | $20 | heather@heatherfreeman.com | Tel: (202) 733-5333 | [Event Website](http://www.citytaphousedc.com/)

City Tap House is partnering with The Washington Capitals to host a fundraiser benefiting Foundation 4 Heroes. Hockey fans are encouraged to stop by to meet John Carlson, Karl Alzner and Troy Brouwer of The Washington Capitals who will be bartending throughout the two-hour event. There is a $20 entrance fee with entitles guests to a complimentary beverage with 100% of the proceeds benefiting Foundation 4 Heroes. Tickets can be purchased at: http://tap-house- dc.ticketleap.com/heroes-rock-red/

Address

City Tap House; 901 9th Street NW

Come Write In!

November 10th, 2014 at 07:30 PM | julia.strusienski@dc.gov | [Event Website](http://dclibrary.org/georgetown)

It’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and the library is supporting participants by hosting weekly Come Write In! sessions, during which we guarantee a quiet, encouraging space for writers to work.

The sessions will take place Monday evenings from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Second Floor Nonfiction Reading Room, where writers will find reserved tables, a small display of relevant books, and the free wifi and tabletop charging stations that are always available for use.
Address

Georgetown Neighborhood Library; 3260 R St. NW

US Navy Memorial Veterans Day Program

November 11th, 2014 at 12:00 PM | Free | mweber@navymemorial.org | Tel: 202-737-2300 | [Event Website](http://www.navymemorial.org/)

The United States Navy Memorial will honor Veterans Day with its special “Authors on Deck” book lecture series, followed by a commemorative wreath laying ceremony and a literary reading by the Veterans Writing Project. Author Patrick K. O’Donnell will present his latest work, First SEALs (Da Capo Press, 2014), in which he brings to light the untold story of World War II’s first special operations combat swimmers- precursors of today’s US Navy SEALs.

Address

United States Navy Memorial; Naval Heritage Center; 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Horton’s Kids “Give Thanks & Give Back”

November 11th, 2014 at 06:30 PM | $150 | sveta@hortonskids.org | Tel: 202-544-5033 | [Event Website](http://www.hortonskids.org/give-thanks-give-back/)

Enjoy entertainment, hors d’oeuvres, cocktails & a short film showcasing the children’s stories. All proceeds will help Horton’s Kids eliminate the wait list of children. Horton’s Kids mission is to empower at-risk children & prepare them for successful lives through educational opportunities & comprehensive programs. Horton’s Kids believes that every child can succeed & envisions a community in which all children graduate from high school ready for college, career & life.

Address

The Hamilton Live; 600 14th Street NW

John Cage’s “Theater Piece”

November 13th, 2014 at 07:30 PM | Free | [Event Website](http://www.arcturustheater.com/johncage.html)

It is a kaleidoscope of simultaneous performances capturing the playful indeterminacy Cage was so brilliant at conveying. Theatre Piece was John Cage’s 1960 reworking and variation of an untitled performance he organized at Black Mountain College in 1952, known in the annals of art history as being the first “Happening” and for challenging notions of the boundaries of theater.

Address

Georgetown Neighborhood Library; 3260 R Street, NW

Georgetowner •

Georgetown University student Daniel Milzman was sentenced Monday to one year and a day plus three years of supervised release, for possession of a deadly poison. Milzman was arrested in March after ricin was found in the desk drawer of his McCarthy Hall dorm room.

To see past coverage, click on links:

Update: Georgetown Student Pleads Guilty Ricin Possesion

FBI Takes Over Ricin Case at Georgetown University

Student Arrested Possessions Ricin

Robert Devaney • November 7, 2014

The District of Columbia is about to elect its seventh mayor in the era of the Home Run Act, which is celebrating its 40th year.

For those who live on the west side of Georgetown and usually vote at Duke Ellington High School, be aware that — because of construction at Ellington — the polling place on Nov. 4 has moved to the Georgetown Public Library at 3260 R St., NW. Those on the east side of Georgetown will vote at their usual spot: Christ Church at 31st and O Streets, NW.

While there are races for D.C. Delegate, Attorney General and District Council, the big one is the mayoral campaign. Be aware that The Georgetowner has endorsed the Democratic candidate Muriel Bowser.
See the following profiles of the three major candidates by political observer and writer Gary Tischler.

Carol Schwartz

Muriel Bowser

David Catania

Gary Tischler • November 6, 2014

Watching the stately, almost state, funeral at the National Cathedral for the Washington Post legend and newspaper giant Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was to realize just what a multi-faceted life he led, almost redefining the definition of the phrase “full life.”

It was a ceremony and celebration of a life which was at once a kind of world, certainly national, and fully American but also a life that was purely, dense and layered, intimate, familial and familiar life.

All of those strands seemed to be weaving themselves together on national television—on C-SPAN, to be specific—as we watched. Here was the coffin with a white rose on top. Here were the Episcopal rituals, the march to and from of church officials and acolytes, the sometimes unsteady walks to the place where speakers spoke and memorialized, the voices, the hymns, prayers and passages from the bible, and poems and quotes and jokes, and fond memories. The high and the more or less mighty—Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry—were in the pews, mixed in with newspaper guys and gals, the family, the many children, the Georgetown neighbors, the peers and people who write about such things as the passing of legends, and record them for future books and next-day or instant stories.

It seemed a lot like the funeral of Bradlee’s former boss, Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, at which Bradlee delivered a eulogy, tapping the casket as he proceeded to the podium. Dignitaries gathered in 2001 in large numbers, as if heeding the call that went out to the world, coming from far and wide. But in some ways, it was not. It was a little closer and more focused—this was about family, two of them. There was the family of one man and his marriages, the children grown older, remembering intimate, funny, triumphant moments of fathers and sons, and there was the family of the profession.

If Bradlee with his life-affirming, arms-wide-open charm and blunt humor was a certain kind of personality, he was and will be remembered by some of us—including the stars of the newspaper that he nurtured, cattled-prodded, pushed and shoved with grit and imagination into national prominence—as an editor. He was THE editor, managing and otherwise, at once singular and of a type. Nobody who made their lives around stories and words, and worked on newspapers or magazines and who lived in this city and in the nation, did not at one time or another aspire to or wished it to have worked for the paper and the man. We all envied the Posties a little, even as we might have disparaged them publicly. They reflected the virtues of their boss which included a respect for the craft of stringing words together into stories, or as he liked to call them “good yarns.”

If Bradlee, and by extension the Post itself, were a kind of hallmark of newspapers and newspaper work, in this setting, the celebration of Bradlee’s life also often seemed like a kind of mass mourning of the continued diminishment and newspapers and newspaper work in general in the digital age. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, who bought out the Graham family to acquire the Post was there, like a reminder of today’s realities.

But Bradlee stories—affectionally and sometimes politely told, and sometimes not—reminded journalists who listened and watched of just how crucial editors can be, not only to the fates of entire newspapers but to the work of writers.

There can be only one Bradlee—that life, that look, tragedy and romance, affairs of the heart and national security affairs, the downfall of a president—but there have always been better than good editors whose presence and style affected the people who worked for them. Some had biographies written about them, most are unsung in the long run.

I worked for a city editor named Mike Nickel at the Daily Review, in Hayward, Calif., in the East Bay near Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, in the 1970s. Contrary to rumor, Ben Bradlee did not invent the New Journalism, a style of writing and reporting that was immediate and personal which he encouraged in his great invention of the Style section. It was already being done in California at Rolling Stone and newspapers in the Bay Area. Nickel did not have an ounce of the charisma Ben Bradlee had, nor that sense of his own worth and importance but he had a way with writers—he was a small, thin man who always let you know when you screwed up, in great detail, but also followed almost every tongue or note-lashing with words of praise for your other efforts. He suspected that I was plotting to get four-letter words into the paper, which was not exactly true, but I, and everyone else at the paper, knew he had my back and whatever else was worth protecting.

Editors like Bradlee are once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. Good and great and excellent men and editors are a vanishing breed. These are the times we live in.

Here’s to Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, the best of the breed. And drink a cup of kindness, too, to the Mike Nickels of our shrinking profession.

Gary Tischler •

Sitting at Qualia Coffee, a smallish and relatively new coffee shop on Georgia Avenue in the D.C., neighborhood of Petworth, you realize just how much Washington, D.C., has changed and is continuing to change. In some ways, this is the eye of the change storm or at least an emblematic illustration of what was going on the city, with the election of a new mayor only days away.

Muriel E. Bowser, who remains the favorite in a three-way race for mayor, the Ward 4 councilmember, who won the Democratic Primary going away, has changed quite a bit, too, since she was first elected to the District Council when Adrian Fenty was elected Mayor of Washington, D.C., in 2008.  

“Washington’s changed have changed a lot, and the change has been swift,” she said as we sat on a soft couch in the crowded coffee shop in Petworth, which is experiencing an influx of new, younger residents,  part of the millennial generation explosion that’s going on in D.C. neighborhoods.

She declined an offer of coffee from an assistant. “I’ve had too much already today,” she said.   She has become during the course of a hectic, combative primary campaign and a drawn out general election campaign, a confident, strong campaigner and politician, who — when push came to shove — managed to hold her own in the four debates that were held and in the much more frequent primary candidate forum encounters.

In the end, she emerged victorious over incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray, Councilmembers Jack Evans, Tommy Wells and Vincent Orange as well as Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal. She will have run the table if she wins Nov. 4 in the general election.  Polls to date have shown her initially with a double-digit lead over Independent David Catania, who had to give up his at-large Council seat to run, while Carol Schwartz, also an independent trailed in third.  That lead, according to other polls dwindled early in October, while a more recent poll saw her on the rise again.

The atmosphere remains unsettled, with voters not entirely happy with the choices, as the electorate changes with changing times. 

We offered that this was the first time that the general election gives the appearance of being competitive—an assertion to which she offered some skepticism,  when asked, and replied, “Is it?”

 “It’s certainly been long,” Bowser said. “That’s one of the things that’s different.  But we’re doing extremely well, I think. We’re strong across the city, and it’s been certainly an interesting process. That can be a challenge.”

“But you know what the upside to all this is?” she asked. “You get to talk to the people face to face, who live here, not just in my ward, but all over the city. You see that everyone has the same worries and concerns all over the city, but in different ways, with different priorities.  Everyone is concerned about jobs, about housing, job training, our schools.  There has been considerable anxiety across the wards about the fast pace of growth. We’ve got to make sure that people who want to stay here, can afford to stay here, and that means more affordable house, more planning with affordable housing as a component.”

Bowser has followed the Fenty approach to electioneering—she knocked on every door in her Ward 4 election, and she’s followed a similar face-to-face contact pattern in the general and primary elections.   She stays in touch with Fenty and presumably has learned from him.  “We still talk by phone regularly,” she said.

These days, she brings confidence into any room—you could see it during the primary forums, when she’s greeting people on the move, or in the recent debates.   You could see it sitting next to her at the coffee shop.  “I have what you might call an extrovert-introvert personality, depending on the situation,” she said. “The extrovert part has a lot of energy.”

“When I was elected to the City Council, I felt that I came from one of the most diverse ward in the city,” she continued. “That’s given me the experience of being able to deal with all kinds of people. We had everything—black, white, men and women, young and old, gay and straight.  I think I’m the best candidate to deal with all of the people in the city.”

Bowser grew up in a big family—five and she was the youngest—went to Catholic school, worked for an insurance company and later got her master’s degree in public policy at American University. She became active in her ward and served on the advisory neighborhood commission.  Fenty hand-picked her to run for his council spot.  She ended up wanting to be  in public service,  said said, “not to be a back-slappping politician, but to help people, to facilitate change. I thought politics and government is where you could accomplish the most.”  She came naturally to politics. Her father Joe, a Democrat and activist, was an neighborhood commissioner, a community watchdog and is now 79.

She is a neighborhood person, in the sense that she’s kept her ties, her friends and family, close to her and stirred by the lives of people in neighborhoods.   “I still have the same friends from high school,” she said. “When you’re running for office that’s a good thing to have.”

“When you’re talking about ‘One City’ [Mayor Gray’s motto for uniting D.C.], that’s not a simple concept,” Bowser said. “This is a city of neighborhoods. They have an identity, and it’s not just about color or party. It’s about jobs, safety, the services, schools, where and how you live.  ‘One City’ means everybody has a chance to have the same services from government, and that’s good government.”

Gary Tischler •

We saw and talked with Independent candidate for mayor David Catania almost a month ago in his campaign headquarters conference room on Connecticut Avenue. 

He had a cold.

But he was also upbeat.  Polls then were showing a tightening in the mayoral campaign, some shift in direction.   

The cold didn’t stop him from talking, sometimes in great detail on issues, policy, on the city he loves, about his mother, and about why he decided to run.

We sat at a long table, framed by a chalkboard behind on which were scribbled, in thick intense writing phrases like: “In It To Win It”; “Good News”; “Next 34 days”; “Backing the Winner”  and “Let’s Make History.”

This race has been a long campaign to decide who will head the local government of the nation’s capital. Things shift all the time and change, against a backdrop of a shifting, changing skyline and demographics in the city.  Cranes are up, and business in some way is booming and neighborhoods are changing dramatically right in front of people’s eyes.

“Issues,” Catania said, “aren’t simple, not to us as people running for office, not to the people who have to decide whom to vote for, who are trying to understand the issues.”

“There was a time I wasn’t even  sure I wanted to stay on the council—I was so depressed about what was happening—the scandals, the pay-for-play, Thomas, Brown and Brown, and the Gray’s campaign being under a cloud, the evident corruption. But then, a friend said, you’d be perfect for heading the education committee, and that’s what got me motivated again, and we accomplished a lot.” 

He can make history should he win and outdistance Democratic Primary winner Muriel Bowser. Catania would become the city’s first white mayor, first openly gay mayor and first mayor not to be a Democrat.

But, of course, that’s exactly why his race is such an uphill battle—because he’s not a Democrat,  to an extent because he’s not black, although being gay these days may not be much of a handicap anymore.  “That’s true, but there’s still  a residual thing among older voters, I think,  but it is amazing how much things have changed.” One of his singular achievements, and there have been many, is to push for passage of D.C. gay marriage equality law.

Catania was first elected to a District Council at-large seat in 1997, and has been there ever since winning re-elections handily.  In order to run for mayor, however, he had to give up what was a very effective base of power.   He had probably anticipated that incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray might be his opponent, but that didn’t materialize and made it a very different race.

He isn’t sanguine about the future or full of happy talk.  “The growth, sure, that’s great, but you have to manage it and make sure that everybody shares in it,” Catania said. “But that’s not it.  There’s potential trouble, because we’re actually in a recession here because of the federal government job cuts which will affect tax revenue and reverberate.”

“Issues aren’t simple,” he repeated.  “Let’s look for instance at education resources.  Theoretically, all our schools receive the same amount of money from the government.  But there’s an inherent inequality here, because the better schools also have additional resources from active PTAs, from involved parents, and that creates a gap which we have to take into account.”

Catania’s education initiatives have been numerous, and includes, notably, passing legislation to approve $80 million for schools serving at-risk students, an example of talk and policy moved into action.

He is something of a wonk, an intense one at that.  If you want to know more about the issues and you want to know more about David Catania, check out his little campaign book—“David Catania’s Vision to Secure Our City’s Future”—a slick, costly booklet. It not only details all of his approaches to the issues of running this city but is also filled with color photographs with endorsements from regular citizens.  It’s an impressive piece of work, and it reflects how he talks and thinks.

Well, almost.

He has a reputation.  There has always been this talk about him: he’s a hot head, he’s arrogant, he holds grudges.  “Does not play well with others” could be in there, too. One opponent went so far as to suggest that he’s never gone to a Nationals game because he opposed the ballpark funding.

“I know, I know,” Catania said.  “I admit I have a temper. But some of that, well, I’ll admit I’m not very patient. But I like to think that most of it is honest passion and concern.”

That day, he was passionate about two things—talking about his mother Audrey Catania—”she spent her days and nights, working on a small family business. She raised me as a single mother and made sure I got an education.  She had street smarts. She was strong and smart.”

Audrey Catania died of cancer in 1990.

“What I’m really glad about is the contact with people, the voters, the residents and citizens of this city,” he said. “You’re out all the time, door to door, and it’s been an amazing experience. This is about transactions. This is where you find out about what concerns people in the city. There’s both optimism, for instance, about the school system, and what hasn’t been done.  People want to hear you. They open their doors. They invite you in. They feed you.  At this level, it’s about trust.  And I don’t think that the people of this city want to go back to business as usual. They want to see things change.”

We saw Catania again on a recent Sunday, at the Dupont Circle market,  surrounded by campaign workers with blue t-shirts and signs.  He stood talking with a woman intently. It looked like a Catania conversation, focused, and he could go on forever.  
       

Gary Tischler •

Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 opera “La Boheme” is — like “Carmen” or “Madame Butterfly” — one of the opera world’s old reliables, often performed, popular, somewhat like “Romeo and Juliet” or “Twelfth Night” in a Shakespeare repertoire. It’s the opera for people who don’t like opera, but perhaps more important, for people who do like opera, especially familiar ones.

It’s a stirringly romantic work, with familiar duets, arias, set pieces, with orchestral music that invites swooning and a plot that invites sniffling. Truth be told, no matter how much some might long for darker, edgier, more difficult work, “La Boheme” reaches across the aisles of a varied audience — young to old patrons — because it works.

That was the case for the Washington National Opera’s production, which had a stellar, young cast, whose members found their voices as the proceedings went along, with WNO music director Philippe Auguin conducting. It remains the same old story—although pushed forward into post-World War I Paris, so beloved by the Lost Generation and Woody Allen both. World War I seems to be in fashion these days—the brown helmets of the trenches were afoot in the Folger’s production of “Julius Caesar,” also.

But the characters are still the same young Bohemians, a group of four would-be writers, philosophers, composers, poets, starving to the point where Rodolfo, the young hero of the piece, throws his manuscript into a stove just to keep warm. It’s mad, and sad, and every now and then, they run off gladly, gaily to the Latin Quarter and to take in the festive atmosphere of outdoor dining in gay, or not so gay, Paree.

The romance(s) are always the key to the opera, but it’s also a kind of soaring, gorgeously composed opera about the Bohemians as a group—when they fall in love and out of love, the rest feel the resultant hurts, confusions and emotional earthquakes.

It takes its sweet time getting going, as Rodolfo (Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu) meets the fragile, sweet Mimi (American soprano Corinne Winters), searching for a candlelight after the four Bohemian compadres have managed, however badly, to heat the high-ceilinged garret and win yet another battle with the landlord. Mimi is suffering from consumption and hasn’t very much life left in her, but Rodolfo warms her with his ardent courtship. Meanwhile, Marcello (American baritone John Chest) is in frustrating pursuit of the high-flying Musetta (American soprano Alyson Cambridge), who attracts rich suitors like a magnet.

The lovers—but not the friends—come together, split up, the two swains singing achingly of their predicaments. Eventually, as the winter snow falls beautifully on stage, they all gather together with Rodolfo, stricken with love and impending loss as he sees Mimi fading away. In that elongated scene leading to her passing — not as long as the “La Traviata” death scene — the group comes together, with Musetta showing her mettle, John Bloom, as Colline, coming forth with a full-throated and surprising solo, and both Pirgu and Winters finding their voices and their emotions in tandem. In their singing, their placement on the stage, the Bohemians become a group, gathering around the dying Mimi, offering gifts, succor, food and shared grief, not to mention beautiful music.

Most of the singers are new to the WNO—they sang with great clarity and strength after a slow start—and by the time Mimi’s hand dropped lifelessly, you could hear sniffling begin here and there, to the right of me, to the left of me and behind me.

It’s almost useless to argue with an opera like this. It has Puccini’s natural emotional and musical will rolling over everything, Italian temperament warming up the cold rooms, and freezing hands and grieving hearts.

“La Boheme” is double cast. Check the Kennedy Center and WNO website for casts and times. It runs through Nov. 15.

Anders Kristofer Ohm • November 3, 2014

Since being decommissioned in 2011, the C&O Canal barge, the Georgetown, has sat atop cement blocks in the canal between 33rd and Thomas Jefferson Streets. Due to cuts in the National Park Service budget, the C&O Canal National Park was unable to afford repairs for the mule-pulled barge that once took visitors along the canal. The walls, locks, and towpath are also in need of constant upkeep.

Georgetown Heritage is being set up as a nonprofit group of citizens and businesses dedicated to promoting and presenting the history of Georgetown. In an effort to preserve the history of this neighborhood, the group’s first priority is to preserve the one-mile stretch of the C&O Canal that runs through Georgetown.

The non-profit will seek to help raise funds to repair the deterioration of the canal and to purchase a new canal boat to replace the old canal boat that has rotted beyond repair. One of the group’s first sponsors will be the Georgetown Business Improvement District, which shares the group’s goals for the canal and new barge.

The group says it will also work with the park service to create an operational plan to preserve the canal and towpath for years to come. Its website is Georgetown Heritage.org, and It is still in the planning stage. More information will be available in late November.