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Gary Tischler • March 11, 2015

For a man who had just gotten back from New York at two in the morning, and who was in the midst of starting up a new theater company just a little bit above from the ground up,  Ari Roth was remarkably chipper, succinct, eloquent and upbeat, as he addressed a hardy group of audience members who had gathered the morning of Feb. 19 at the George Town Club for the year’s first Cultural Leadership Breakfast, presented by the Georgetown Media Group.

There were no signs of a lack of sleep syndrome, no lack of ideas and debating points, no lack of charm, no lack of energy.   Soft-spoken and articulate, Roth was looking ahead to the future with a fistful of thoughts and ideas about not only the future of his new Mosaic Theater Company of D.C. but about his 18-year tenure as artistic director of Theater J—part of the D.C.  (Jewish Community Center) on 16th Street,  its accomplishments and the abrupt end of his stay there In December when he was fired for what the JCC’s chief executive Carole Sawatsky had called “insubordination.”  Roth himself at the time said he was “terminated abruptly.”

The firing was highly publicized in the press, which detailed battles that seemed to be as much about international politics and Israel as it was about theater and plays, including controversial offerings like “Return to Haifa” and the Voices of a Changing Middle East Festival, which the JCC had cancelled.

“I have never been through a divorce,” Roth said.  “But that’s what the experience of leaving Theater J felt like.  There’s shock. There’s the fact, there’s loss—leaving behind a great group of staff members who were caught in the middle, leaving behind, in a way, all the years there, and what we—all of the people who worked on the plays, our initiatives there and starting over.

“But you know, while things got a little acrimonious, I think it’s also an opportunity,” Roth said. “That’s what you do after a divorce, you move on.  They’re actively conducting a national search for a new artistic director. I’ve got an office at the Atlas Arts Center, where our new theater will be situated. We’re fund raising. We’re looking for new plays, which is why I was in New York, among other things.  I think both parties have moved on.  We’re dating.”

“I can tell you this—we will, I believe—be in a position to start our first season in November—we’re looking at new plays, including a play about Rwanda.  I’ve been spending a lot of time the past few months finding the meaning in what happened. 

“You know, I think there was a time there, when you felt as if you were in a play, a kind of participatory melodrama, you were a character in a drama, sort of a meta-play,” Roth said.

“It’s not that easy, leaving people and things behind—I was, as director of Theater J, part of an institution, informed by artistic vision, but also being part of collaboration.  All art is collaboration, even novels and poems have editors and publishers.”

Roth recalled that Theater J had had its beginning  in a small, small space in a home that offered 25 seats. At that time, Roth considered himself a playwright, wondering what his next play was going to be about.

“When Theater J expanded into the JCC with a much, much large theater, they offered me the job, and I saw a potential there.  But being that makes you someone different,” he added. “You’re part of a much large creative eco-system—the theater itself, the center, the city theater community and establishment and even nationally.” 

What Roth accomplished there—theater with a decided Jewish viewpoint coming from a rich Jewish culture—was often remarkable in the sense that many of the productions which were specifically Jewish found a universal audience.

Roth added things, coming from his own views and growth.  “It’s funny, that  the Voices of the Middle East Festival was originally called Voice of a Changing Israel festival, but I saw that so much was going on in the Middle East, and the city as well.  The focus enlarged, became expansive.  We, with the help of Andy Shalal, who is from Iraq, a Peace Café component, and increasingly, the plays started to include  elements that were not purely confined to Israel. That is the way things are. It’s reflective of a debate going on among Israel supporters in the United States, and in Israel itself.”

The Mosaic Theater Company is not going to be Theater J, he said.  “It will still have a Jewish viewpoint and component, but it will be much more international in scope, reflecting what is going on in the world, but also  it will be be concerned with our own surroundings—our neighborhoods,  and the changes there, 14th and U, Northeast, Anacostia, Dupont Circle and so on. 

“I was very curious for instance, about who complains about parking,”  he said. “People in Georgetown complain about the lack of parking, or in Dupont, but not in Northeast.” He talked about playwrights he met, and discussed their work, some of which will likely find its way into a Mosaic season, ready or not.  “Some things need to be done and nurtured right away,” he said of plays that may not be quite ready, but need to find expression in the performance.”

Mosaic will reflect, it’s likely, and will be a theatrical mosaic of many forms, of the great mix of interests, and shifting landscapes and cultural and creative impulses.  

And who knows? The divorce may yet turn out to be amicable and mutually beneficial.

Upcoming cultural leadership breakfasts at the George Town Club  are March 13, Martin Wollesen, executive director of the Clarice Smith  Performing Arts Center; April 9, Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, and May 7, Steven Knapp, president of George Washington University.
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Linnea Kristiansson •

Former Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean was named to head Washington, D.C.’s Fire Department on March 2. He led the Seattle Fire Department for 10 years before he stepped down in December.

Mayor Bowser made the announcement at a press conference, where she said she emphasized the importance of appointing someone with a strong EMS background to the position.

“The safety and well-being of District residents is my top priority and FEMS is at the frontlines of this effort. Chief Dean is a proven, collaborative leader who led a department with an international reputation for its fire-based EMS performance. I am certain that he will work with our emergency first responders and the community to move the department forward in exciting ways,” said Mayor Bowser.

Dean will replace Eugene Jones, who last took over as interim chief. Jones took over the job from Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe, whose tenure was marked by complaints of poor service that endangered lives by firefighters and medical personnel. Bowser says Acting Assistant Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief Edward R. Mills III will serve as Interim Chief during the transition.

On Monday, Dean admitted to facing challenges in D.C. He told the crowd that he plans on spending the first six months of his new job learning how to do business in the District.

According to the Mayor’s office, “Dean has a proven track record of results. Under his leadership, Seattle and King County, Washington announced in 2014 that its overall cardiac arrest survival rate had reached an all- time high of 62 percent, up from 26 percent in 2002.”

Dean is also member of the International Association of Fire Chief’s Terrorism and Homeland Security Committee. He was chair of the Region 6, Homeland Security Administration and Policy Group and was selected for the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Master’s Program at the Naval Post Graduate School.

Peter Murray •

Smoke and power outages plagued Metrorail the weekend of Feb. 20, while on the H Street corridor, a flash fire ignited atop a streetcar during service simulation late Feb. 21.

Problems started for commuters Friday morning when the power went out at the L’Enfant Plaza station, leaving hundreds of commuters in near-pitch-black dark. The outage occurred around 8:45 a.m., and power was not restored fully until the early afternoon. The station remained open during the outage, but the entrance at 9th and D streets NW remained closed until the lights came back on. Metro said in a tweet that the outage was caused by a “commercial power problem.” Feb. 20 was the coldest day of the year so far, with temperatures reaching as low as 5 degrees at Reagan National Airport.

Then, smoke caused delays and evacuations at three Metro stations over the weekend. Woodley Park Station was taken out of service briefly after faulty brakes reportedly filled the station with smoke on the afternoon of Feb. 21. The station was evacuated, with commuters rushing to escape a potentially life-threatening situation akin to the one that occurred at the L’Enfant station on Jan. 12.

Smoke caused by faulty brakes was also reported at the L’Enfant station Sunday. A D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department spokesman confirmed the source of the cause in a statement on Feb. 22.

Fire struck a streetcar around 11:45 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 21. Officials said, “The sparks extinguished very quickly on their own and fire suppression was not required by the first responders on the scene.” No one was injured during the incident but Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a brief statement issued Sunday that D.C. Streetcar would not open to the public until “we know it’s safe, and not a moment sooner.” The as-of-yet not fully operational streetcar has had nine minor accidents since it began simulating service in Oct. 14, with the latest occurring in early January. No one has been harmed in any of the accidents.

Also on Sunday, smoke caused by an electrical arcing event in the third rail led emergency crews to the Foggy Bottom station around 6:30 p.m. A driver alerted authorities after noticing the smoke coming from the tunnel leading from Foggy Bottom to Rosslyn. Smoke did no reach surrounding stations, but officials instituted single-tracking by closing off the tunnel until 7:40 p.m.

A number of other smoke incidents have created problems on Metro in recent weeks, notably causing evacuations at the Dupont Circle and Court House stations in early February. However, Metro officials say that smoke incidents are on the decline, with 120 occurrences in 2012 to only 40 in 2014. There is no official count for 2015.

These safety problems for Metro come at a bad time, on the heels of reports by the Washington Post that Metro’s federally funded alarm system that contacts emergency response radio does not work properly in subway tunnels. Emergency response officials say Metro never notified them that about this critical flaw; they discovered it on their own in 2014 and pressured Metro to fix the problems to no avail. The radio defect held up D.C. firefighters’ rescue efforts at L’Enfant station when smoke killed one and injured more than 80 people on Jan. 12.

Peter Murray •

Glover Park Hardware owners Gina Schaefer and Marc Friedman announced on March 3 that the store is reopening at a new location at 2233 Wisconsin Ave. NW.

The old location at 2251 Wisconsin Ave. closed on Jan. 15, after Schaefer says lease negotiations fell apart when the space’s landlord made a “last-minute” decision to lease the location to another tenant.

Schaefer and Friedman are hoping to open the new store, housed in the same building as Einstein Bagels (and only a few doors down from the old store), sometime in April. They said in a press release, “We love our Glover Park Community and we were committed to reopening in this neighborhood.”

Jeff Malet •

Smithsonian American Art Museum opens its doors to the Chinatown and the D.C. community in celebration of the 2015 Lunar New Year, the Year of the Sheep, with an afternoon of fun, featuring craft activities with the Confucius Institute, a reading corner with the D.C. Public Library, puppet performances by the Shaanxi Folk Arts Group, calligraphy demonstrations by John Wang, traditional dance performances by the Fairfax Chinese Dance Troupe and much more. [gallery ids="101992,135327,135357,135332,135336,135341,135345,135350,135356" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The Academy Awards Show is a little like Good Old Reliable Nathan from “Guys and Dolls”:

They’re good (partly), old (going back to the 1920s) and, for sure, reliable. At the Oscars, all manners of sins are forgiven—sins of shamelessness, sins of foot-in-mouth-disease, sins of fashion (extremely unforgivable among the unforgiving fashion critics), sins of omission (where are the many missing nominations for “Selma” and the one for Clint Eastwood?), and just your usual run-of-the-mill sins, entirely particular to Hollywood, that enclave of look-at-me, self-absorption, wretched excess, accompanied by hordes of media minions, given to mind-blowing displays of both buttering up and cutting up (and down).

Yet, amid the sometimes unbearably tedious length of the proceedings, things happen. Drama breaks out. Tears, some of them genuine amid the sea of actors, flow. Surprises occur, although perhaps not where they’re expected. The deserving get rewarded (good for you, Julianne Moore; you go, J.K. Simmons) and sometimes people say just the right thing (Simmons, again, the ad pitchman and television character actor who won the supporting award for “Whiplash,” telling viewers to call their parents), and sometimes not (Sean Penn, on announcing the three-time winner Alejandro Inarritu, saying, “Who gave that S.O.B. a green card?).

The favored front-runners pretty much won: Eddy Redmayne for Best Actor, playing Stephen Hawking; Moore for “Still Alice,” playing a woman suffering from dementia; “Birdman” for Best Picture, Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actress and Simmons for Best Supporting Actor.

What didn’t happen was almost as interesting—“American Sniper,” which has been getting critical praise (and some damnation, too), and big box office, got hardly anything, and omitted Eastwood again from a Best Director nomination, even though he showed up. “Boyhood,” which had critics swooning as only the smitten can, got little except for Arquette’s nod. The evening seemed to be a triumph of the fact-driven, small, and slightly independent film—witness “Whiplash” and “The Grand Hotel Budapest,” which won a number of awards, letting us see faces we ordinarily do not get to see in People Magazine.

Host Neil Patrick Harris was smooth, but also a little underwhelming, even when he stripped down to his skivvies and revealed himself to be quite buff. There is a little bit of disconnect there, but that might have something to do with the fact that the whole ABC night—counting a 90-minute red carpet show amounted to more than four and a half hours.

Just when you’re feeling a little dizzy, up came Arquette, getting Meryl Streep and other actresses to jump out of their seats advocating for equal pay and women’s rights. Just when you think nothing can move you, country star Tim McGraw singing ailing Glen Campbell’s moving “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” to an audience stunned into silence. Tears erupted also when John Legend and Common sang and rapped “Glory,” the song from “Selma.”

And who knew that Lady Gaga could be such a Broadway star, running through a medley of songs from “The Sound of Music” on the occasion of the film version’s 50th anniversary? Actually, Tony Bennett probably knew.

Those nice surprises and those moving movements almost always make the Oscars, if not relevant, worthwhile.

Georgetowner •

[UPDATE] On Wednesday, Feb. 25, just before 10:40 a.m. smoke poured out of the Steve Madden building at 3109 M St. NW in Georgetown. The building also houses BrandLink D.C., the Wink boutique and the Ury salon and spa.

An official from D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department on the scene said that the fire was spreading within the walls. It is believed that the insulation burned due to some sort of electrical issue. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

“Everyone was able to make it out,” the official said. “No one is injured at this time.”

Firefighters had the fire put out by 11:20 a.m. and began reopening M Street, but a portion remained closed to traffic.

BrandLink D.C. posted on its Facebook page that, even though it experienced smoke damage, ”We are happy to report that everyone is safe and sound.” The event and marketing firm will be working from a temporary office space throughout this week.

The Urban Outfitters building, next to the Steve Madden building, is also closed because of damages because of the fire.

[February 25, 2014] Smoke poured out of the Steve Madden building at 3109 M St. NW in Georgetown just before 10:40 a.m. Feb. 25.

An official on the scene said that the fire burned within the walls. It is believed that the insulation burned due to some sort of electrical issue.

“Everyone was able to make it out,” the official said. “No one is injured at this time.”

There are serious traffic delays at the scene.
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Robert Devaney • March 8, 2015

The scene: Gaston Hall in the Healy Building at Georgetown University; a Nov. 12 lecture hosted by the Georgetown McDonough Global Social Enterprise Initiative in partnership with Bank of America. On stage: Georgetown University President John DeGioia; Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan; McDonough Business School dean David Thomas; student Ammu Menon.

Also on stage — and the main attraction — was a global activist, talking about social enterprise and advocacy, as if he were a rock star. Oh, wait, he is a rock star. He is Bono.

The program handed out at Gaston Hall proclaimed it thus: while it showed time, place and sponsors, but front and center appears one simple word, “Bono.”

The lead singer for the Irish rock band U2 was also in D.C. to meet Vice President Joe Biden and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. Bono’s fight against AIDS and extreme poverty is legend. While his well-executed Gaston Hall speech informed and entertained, it went beyond its goals to charm, convince and claim students, professors and politicians.

Musician and activist Bono began by waving back to the student crowd, giving a shout-out to DeGioia’s son, J.T., who is learning the chords of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”

“At this lectern or podium, I am oddly comfortable,” Bono smiled. “Welcome to Pop Culture 101. … What am I doing in Healy Hall? I could be on my third pint at the Tombs.”

Becoming sympatico with the audience, Bono congratulated the crowd for re-electing President Barack Obama and was glad that all were now free from “the tyranny of negative ads.” He added, “I’d like to hear an attack ad on malaria.”

Acting as if a Hoya, Bono dumped on Syracuse and Duke universities and their mascots, “a fruit” and “the devil.” To wit, he concluded, “God is a Catholic.”

Bono pronounced AIDS the huge disease but said the “biggest is extreme poverty.” He called this fight a transformative element for the college-aged generation.

For this activist, the 21st century really began in 2011 with the protests of the Arab Spring along with the advent of mobile phones and other digital devices, saying the pyramid of power has flipped. “There are millions of levers of power,” said the rocker, who added that today is analogous to the rise of punk rock in the late 1970s taking on progressive rock. Bono then joked that the audience had never heard anyone link the Arab Spring with the punk band, the Clash.

Cuts in the budget can hurt, he cautioned: “Don’t let an economic recession become a moral recession.”

Bono focused on sub-Saharan Africa, talking about the success of Rwanda in reducing AIDS, thanks to American support. He talked about the dark side of expansion, as al Qaeda controls part of Mali, citing the three extremes of our times: poverty, climate and ideology.

As “an evidence-based activist,” Bono said the heart was not the most important aspect of action; it is justice. “You want data. I got data.” He mentioned the Asian Tigers — even the Celtic Tiger — but added the African Lion. “Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “We need Africa to become an economic power.”

Bono said he could just imagine the headline: “Rock Star Preaches Capitalism.”

Asking the students for a drum roll, Bono paused to reveal a force of change: “Enter the nerd . . . it’s the era of the Afro nerd.” And another huge obstacle in the developing world? Corruption. But again with digital mobile activists—and websites like IPaidaBribe.com—it is becoming harder to do so without someone knowing.

Bono turned to the work on foreign aid by political and business leaders, thanking those sitting in front of him, such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, the younger Barbara Bush (because of President George W. Bush’s substantial aid to Africa) among others, such as Irish Ambassador Michael Collins and singer Andrea Coor.

Still, in a politico mood, Bono jumped into a quite good imitation of Bill Clinton to the roars of laugher from the audience. “He’s more a rock star that I am,” Bono said.

As for the Jesuit tradition, he offered founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola, warrior and priest, as the exemplar for “the conversion of the heart” and service to others.

“That’s what I’m hoping happens here at Georgetown with you,” Bono said. “Because when you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed. You see something that you can’t un-see.”

It looks like Georgetown Business School picked a perfect keynote speaker to pump up its Global Social Enterprise Initiative, which “aims to prepare current and future leaders to make responsible management decisions that yield both economic and social value.”

Now, that is wide awake in America.

Robert Devaney • March 5, 2015

Legendary Washington newsman Arnaud de Borchgrave, former editor-in-chief of the Washington Times and top foreign correspondent for Newsweek for 30 years, died Feb. 15 at the age of 88 of cancer.

Known around town and the world for his access to international leaders as well as for a stylish, high-profile manner, de Borchgrave was one of the last of the great, on-the-scene, hands-on journalists who were actually where he said he was. He personified and lived the life of the foreign correspondent at Newsweek magazine and later put his charismatic and journalistic stamp on a young Washington Times.

He was born in Belgium on Oct. 26, 1926. During World War II, his father, Count Baudouin de Borchgrave d’Altena, was director of military intelligence for the exiled Belgium government. His mother, Audrey Townshend, was the daughter of a British general. De Borchgrave escaped the Nazi invasion of southern France only to return with Canadian forces at Juno Beach during D-Day in 1944.

In 1949, de Borchgrave worked for the United Press news agency and succeeded Walter Cronkite — later the managing editor and lead anchor for CBS News — as its Belgium bureau chief. By 1951, de Borchgrave was head of the Paris bureau for Newsweek in Paris and later hired his successor, Ben Bradlee, who would go to become executive editor of the Washington Post.

The list of places and persons de Borchgrave reported on is a long one and included leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Syria and wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Known for his foreign reporting, de Borchgrave was also known for the advantage of his sartorial style, his expense accounts and his seemingly perpetual tan.

A few quotes by de Borchgrave in a Newsweek feature in 2012 tell the tale:

— “I saw this in Morocco once. I had a Chesterfield coat with a black velvet collar. Looked like a diplomat. Nasser was coming in his yacht to Casablanca and getting together with all these Arab heads of state, and the media was dressed, as you know, how the media dresses. I was dressed like an ambassador. And I managed to get in with the ambassadors. I did that over and over again.”

— “Reporting always came first. For example, Newsweek had me on the lecture tour after each major scoop. They would bring me back to talk to the advertisers. But I remember once having a deal with Juan Carlos of Spain. I said, ‘Newsweek is about to put me on a big lecture tour of the states. What if something happens to Franco and you become king?’ So we organized a little code. The message that he would send me was, ‘Charlie is on his way to Rome and wants to see you.’ That meant Franco is sick and dying. I was in Seattle when I got it. I canceled the rest of the tour. The Newsweek business team was furious. They’d invested a lot of money. But I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to get the biggest scoop—the first interview with the new king of Spain.’ Which I did.”

— “I lived extremely well. I traveled a lot. In those days we always traveled first-class. Was never questioned. We stayed in five-star hotels. Never questioned. If we had to stay in one place for several days or weeks, we could get a suite. Never questioned. I never had an expense account questioned in the whole 30 years I worked at Newsweek.”

In 1985, de Borchgrave, who had never worked at a newspaper, became the editor-in-chief of the then three-year-old Washington Times and quickly put it on the map, going up against the city’s biggest paper, the Washington Post, which at the time owned Newsweek.

Owned by the Unification Church and its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Washington Times was a conservative voice in the nation’s capital during the Reagan years. Nevertheless, de Borchgrave denied that Moon or the church directly influenced editorial policy at the newspaper. De Borchgrave left the Times in 1991.

“Arnaud was an extraordinary man,” Wesley Pruden, told the Washington Times, where Pruden succeeded de Borchgrave as editor-in-chief until his retirement in 2008. “He came to us when we were struggling against considerable hostility to establish a second newspaper in Washington, and overnight he gave the Times identity, purpose and credibility. His friends teased Arnaud that he was ‘a legend in his own mind,’ but we were all in awe of his enormous self-confidence and his intrepid and relentless pursuit of the story. He leaves us a true legend in his own times.”

Indeed, the headline of a specially printed fake edition of the Washington Times in 1996 did read, “A legend in his own mind,” accompanied by a front page photo of de Borchgrave wearing military fatigues. It is for a 70th birthday party for de Borchgrave at the Washington Times headquarters on New York Avenue. The party was attended by Bradlee, who knew de Borchgrave from his Newsweek years — it is the only time that Bradlee is known to have come to the Times offices.

In 1998, De Borchgrave went on to work for United Press International and stayed on as a columnist until his death. He was also director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

De Borchgrave’s survivors include his wife of 45 years, Alexandra Villard De Borchgrave; a daughter by his second wife (Eileen Ritschel), Trisha de Borchgrave; a sister; a two granddaughters. A son by his first wife (Dorothy Solon), Arnaud de Borchgrave, Jr., died in 2011.