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Gary Tischler • September 27, 2012

Fall, brisk, as normal as average but a little bit better, came to town, getting weather folks to shut up about storm fronts and severe weather warnings. The weather was acting like autumn weather does, full of change, a frisky optimism. That’s what it felt like in Washington: it was a fall signal without the dying leaves doing their much-heralded twirls to the ground. It was more like a beginning or, at least, a respite.

Because in Washington in the Year of Our Great Divide, 2012, it remains an election year marching irresolutely toward a resolution in November, a spell of good weather like this seemed over a weekend like a return to normalcy where we bless the average, everyday offerings of urban living. After all, there was baseball, the Nationals, and a star quarterback on the Washington Redskins who seemed to be fulfilling his promise right before our eyes.

And, as one local writer somewhat irreligiously put it to us, a panda cub had been born onto us. This event which had occurred the previous weekend put a certain buoyancy in the air, because we vividly remembered the female panda’s last cub, the remarkable Tai Shan who had left us for a preserve in China not that long ago, and who was still tremendously missed. With the announcement of the unexpected birth, instant memories of Tai Shan and his star power, and the thousands of stuffed panda toys that were sold upon his arrival came to mind. The newcomer, who appeared to be healthy, had no name yet, per Chinese tradition. Everyone referred to him as butter stick, which was about the size and description that fit the tiny cub, often referred to, rarely seen.

All this non-political news made the fall weekend special, the kind where you could start your Friday sitting at a Starbucks, or your local café, drink latte or regular, and watch the family of man drive by, run by and bike by, more often than not. You took a taste of normal into your life—the yard sale signs, the sales at Safeway—not so much at Whole Foods. On the other hand, it was between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So, Jewish food with its potato latkes, dumplings and soups appeared in the delis to our delight.

In the neighborhoods of our cities, there was no lacking for things to do: in Dupont Circle, they held a street fair on 17th Street which meant traffic troubles but brought out man and beast and fried chicken smells and local artisans and artists, a pause in the day of running from dry cleaner, to hardware store to grocery store. The new performance arts season with concerts, and plays and operas and dancing in abundance. Our park, by Adams Mill Road, along with the dog park, the soccer field and the basketball courts were busy.

Elsewhere, you could go to the National Mall and get your fill of books and writers, authors and bloggers and poets in the willing flesh for the annual National Book Festival. You could come to city’s annual Latino festival, with a festive parade of nations which opened your eyes wide to the diversity of the Hispanic world. This city, in weather like this, revealed itself in the way a body does to singer John Mayer — as a wonderland.

On Sunday, we bought sweet nothings at Heller’s Bakery and exercised our walking feet all over Mount Pleasant. I spent some time on the phone later with my son, who lives in Las Vegas, and we talked about things and memories we hadn’t talked of in some time, for no reason except that it seemed right. I think the weather made you feel safe to do things like that. And yet, sunlight, and a breezy wind which might incline you to dance or sing can be deceiving.

If you turned on your television, computer or whatever screen which feeds you like a succubus with information, those uninvited guests in your living room, your house or your phone were never far away. I mean, of course, those fine ladies and gentlemen running for elected office, who approved those ads not done by SuperPACs or other interests groups. I especially mean Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, who drop by with the regularly of an uncle looking for a free meal. On NBC News’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, something of a food fight threatened to break out among the round table participants as Republican strategist Bay Buchanan got into an argument with Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough, a conservative himself.

Later in the evening, CBS News’s “60 Minutes” had lengthy interviews with Romney and Obama (separately), which were revealing for not really revealing anything. Have to wait for the debates.

By then, the balloon of optimism in the air had burst. The Redskins, on a track to give up, oh, I don’t know, one thousand points this year, gave up another 30-plus and lost again to Cincinnati 38-31, and the Nationals, although still with a magic number of six, and owning a clinched playoff sport, managed to lose two of three to Milwaukee.

And the panda cub died. I was following scores on the net when I saw it, short and terse: “Panda Cub at the National Zoo Dies.”

“Oh, no,” I yelled aloud, and I’m sure it was part of a collective sigh. No one knows exactly what happened. Today, it was learned that the cub had a liver problem. The mother behaved perfectly as she is wont to do as a mother. The cub with no name was gone. “It was devastating,” the director of the National Zoo said.

It was the week of anticipation, free and clear, that made this news so hard to bear. It’s not that we knew the little cub intimately or had even had a glimpse of him. We knew it already. He would have been the second coming of Tai Shan, the panda rock star spreading magnetism and stardust around like he had done with such ease.

It’s hard because pandas are endangered, because the mother had a number of failed pregnancies and because Pandas have difficulty breeding and reproducing. It’s hard because they are also, no other word for it, enchanting. We all remember the triumphant Tai Shan making his debut in front of a hardened press corps at the National Zoo, a group of journalists who were turned into instant blubber. He was a performer whether trying to navigate a tree branch in front of a crowd or diving into his birthday cake. He was a boost, a gift, a boon for the National Zoo in monetary ways, but also a boost for all of us in this city, and everyone who visited the city. The last time I saw him, he was clambering up a hill, his bottom fur sporting pink frosting after he sat in his birthday cake.

That’s what was dancing before our eyes when the announcement of the new cub came. And that’s what disappeared like a stone when the news of his passing came.

Fall, though remained, the air still bright as the next Sunday, the next good news. In my front yard, a black squirrel who lived among the three houses around us, suddenly turned around, looked at me and stood up. Not once, but three times. I mention this because it was a rare thing. Squirrels in this neighborhood run from people unlike the squirrels on Capitol Hill, who have picked up the habit of begging for nuts and treats the way the politicians they live among troll for votes.

At a time like this, you take comfort in what presents itself, however modest.

Robert Devaney • September 26, 2012

Georgetown’s oldest Baptist church community continued its 150th anniversary celebrations Sept. 15 on Dumbarton Street in front of the First Baptist Church, Georgetown and in adjacent Rose Park. The festivities included food, music, dancing, a book and clothing sale, as well as a prayer table and games in the park. The Baptist church at 2624 Dumbarton Street, N.W., is one of Georgetown’s historic black churches and welcomed the entire neighborhood to its Saturday street fair. The church will continue the celebration with a 150th Anniversary Prayer Breakfast on Sept. 29 — and an anniversary ball in October.
Its 12th pastor, Rev. Robert Pines, arrived at 2006. Pines — who went to Georgetown Washington University and Dunbar High School — says he feels like he is back in his old neighborhood.

Here is an excerpt from a summary on church history:

First Baptist Church, Georgetown was founded October 5, 1862 by the Reverend Sandy Alexander, a former slave. (Alexander also founded Jerusalem Baptist Church which is located at 26th & P Streets, N.W.) Before the formal organization of the church, Collins Williams, a licensed preacher from Fredericksburg, Va., and his wife Betsey had led religious meetings in Georgetown in private residences on 27th and P Streets, 27th and N Streets, and then at his own home. Williams donated a small piece of land at 29th and O Streets to be used for a church.

In 1856, Rev. Alexander came to Georgetown to start a Baptist church but found only two Baptists in the community. However, he was soon able to find many converts and built up a large congregation that was greatly expanded by the arrival of a group from the Shiloh Church of Fredericksburg. This congregation erected a small frame structure known as the “Ark” on the land donated by Collins Williams at 29th and O Streets. The building was soon found to be too small, and a committee of Brothers, Henry Lucas, William Wormley and William T. Brown selected the present site at 27th and Dumbarton Streets for the new building.

Rev. Alexander embarked on a trip north and solicited $300 for the new building while the members were able to negotiate a loan for another $300. The cornerstone for the church was laid in 1882. The male members of the church dug foundations at night, while the women cooked hot suppers. The cost of the stone foundations was $800 which exhausted the building fund so for a time the building stood incomplete. Finally, Rev. Alexander himself took over the responsibility of seeing that the building was completed. When the trustees went to make the church’s first payment on the note, the receipt was made out to the First African Baptist Church. Trustee William T. Brown refused to accept this receipt insisting that he represented the First Baptist Church. The receipt was torn up and another one, correctly worded, was written. Brother Brown had objected to the congregation being robbed of the honor of being the first church of the Baptist denomination in Georgetown.

There is a third Baptist church in Georgetown thanks to Rev. Sandy Alexander. It is the Alexander Memorial Baptist Church, founded in the first years of the 20th century, at 2709 N St., N.W.

Also, we should recall that it is the 150th anniversary of the D.C. Emancipation Act, signed into law in April 1862, followed by the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

For more information, visit FBCGT.org

Article updated Sept. 26 to include mention of Alexander Memorial Baptist Church on N Street in Georgetown.
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Phoebe Lett • September 24, 2012

In the midst of what is inarguably the worst week of the Romney campaign, the name of our historic district has peppering the articles extolling the debt of the Romney campaign. Tuesday night the National Review Online reported the $20 million loan taken by the Romney camp from the Bank of Georgetown. Confirmed by a senior campaign official, the loan addressed the problem of pre-nomination Federal Election Commission rules.

As the primary election donation dollars supporting Romney began to dry up, the Romney campaign found themselves an opportunity to borrow quick cash from the Bank of Georgetown. The official and unofficial expenses of the Republican National Convention itself totaled to over $55 million, and though the Romney campaign continued to boastfully out fund President Obama, the presumed nominee took advantage of the line of credit it held at the Bank of Georgetown.

“We took advantage of the law as it exists to secure this line of credit,” a senior Romney aide said in an exclusive National Review Online interview. “We realized that we could collateralize this debt with $20 million of general election funds that were already sitting in our bank account.”

While Romney has now paid back $9 million of the loan, the news of the federal election report depicting the campaign in a debt of $15 million comes after the slight lead in fundraising by the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s re-election campaign. Last month, Romney raised $111.6 million, coming just under Obama’s $114 million.

As the official nominee, Romney will now undoubtedly have little difficulty allaying doubts about the financial status of his campaign for election. Yet as headlines spell out doom and the need for a re-boot on the campaign, perhaps the Romney campaign may find itself returning to our neighborhood bank once more.

Casey obrien •

Georgetown women were treated to a little pampering Thursday afternoon, Sept. 20, all in promotion for Fox’s new fall show, “The Mindy Project.” “Mindy’s Mobile Makeovers” was set up at Washington Harbour on K Street from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., providing free blowouts and manicures in a mobile salon vehicle.

Bearing the slogan, “For everyone whose life is a work in progress,” the mobile unit held a salon chair for hair, and two stations for “Mindy-cures,” given by nail polish technicians, using the O.P.I. brand. The polishes for manicures were custom-limited editions, inspired by Mindy Kaling herself. Free coffee mugs and pink scrubs with “Mindy” in sparkling lettering (the character is a doctor) were given to those in the long line.

The mobile makeover unit is making its East Coast tour, with a separate tour on the West Coast. Tomorrow, the vehicle will make a stop in Philadelphia, followed by stops in New York and Boston on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Emmy Award-nominated actress and author Mindy Kaling, best known as Kelly Kapoor on NBC’s “The Office,” created, wrote, executively produces and stars in the series. “The Mindy Project.” chronicles the life of Mindy Lahiri, M.D., struggling to balance her personal life and successful career. The show premieres Sept. 25, at 9:30 p.m. on Fox.
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Georgetowner •

Music and Dance Around the World Benefit Concert

September 22nd, 2012 at 06:00 PM | $30 | Event Website

The Rainbow of Hope for the Street Children of Bolivia is hoisting a benefit concert entitled Music and Dance from Around the World on Saturday, September 22, 2012 at the Ellington Theatre (3500 R Street, NW) in Washington, DC – Tickets are only $30 and $45 and parking is FREE! All ticket holders will be entered in a raffle for a chance to win an IPad3 and a Mamani Mamani painting.

Address

Ellington Theatre 3500 R Street, NW

Letelier Theater CAN Film Screenings

September 21st, 2012 at 06:30 PM | $10 | info@nuclearhotseat.com | Tel: 818-353-8399 | Event Website

Coalition Against Nukes Film Screenings

Fri, September 21, 2012, 6:30 PM – 10:30 PM

As part of the three day rally in Washington, DC, Coalition Against Nukes is sponsoring film screenings of ‘Atomic States of America’ and ‘Radioactivists’ followed by a discussion.

Address

Letelier Theater, 3251 Prospect Street NW

Project Santaranta: Building Dreams

September 22nd, 2012 at 11:00 AM | Free entrance | Event Website

Photo Exhibition of Eric Lloyd Wright’s only work in Europe at the Embassy of Finland.

The exhibit will be on display at the Embassy of Finland, Saturdays and Sundays, September 22-30 throughout Architecture Week 2012.
Address

3301 Massachusetts Avenue, NW

Washington Nationals 4th Annual Pups in the Park

September 22nd, 2012 at 01:05 AM | $22 – Owner Ticket $8 – Dog Ticket | katherine.mitchell@nationals.com | Tel: 202.640.7649 | Event Website

$22 – Owner Ticket (Outfield Reserved section 140-143, access to the Picnic Area Pup Zone)
$8 – Dog Ticket (proceeds benefit the Washington Humane Society)
All those with tickets purchased for Pups in the Park must enter through the RIGHT FIELD GATE. Upon entering the gate you must drop off a signed waiver form for your dog’s up-to-date shots and vaccinations.
Tickets must be purchased in advance; subject to availability

Address

Nationals Park located at 1500 South Capitol Street SE, directly off the Navy Yard-Green Line Metro stop. For Parking information, please visit www.nationals.com/waytogo

Symposium, NSLM Polo Cup, and Exhibition

September 22nd, 2012 at 03:00 PM | jsheeehan@nsl.org | Tel: 540-687-6542 | Event Website

The National Sporting Library and Museum will host two major events on the weekend of September 22 and 23, 2012. The first will be a Symposium held on Saturday in the Founders’ Room of the Library from 3:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. The second will be a Polo Cup Match and Luncheon fundraiser on Sunday that will take place at the Virginia International Polo Club in Upperville, Virginia.

Address

The National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia International Polo Club in Upperville, Virginia.

Reflections: Photo Sale and Fundraiser for Clean Water

September 23rd, 2012 at 05:00 PM | erica@benevolentmedia.org | Tel: 2026817681 | Event Website

Join us for “Reflections,” a photo sale and fundraiser to celebrate clean water and river conservation.

Proceeds from the evening will benefit Potomac Riverkeeper.

The event will include light snacks, fresh tonics, music and raffle giveaways, plus a special photo sale, featuring the work of photographers dedicated to using their craft to inspire people to care about our natural water resources.

Address

Patagonia, 1048 Wisconsin Ave. NW

FREE lecture: The Maestro Myth?: The Conductor and the Orchestra

September 24th, 2012 at 03:00 PM | 16:30 | jtanner@arlingtonphilharmonic.org | Tel: 703-910-5161 | Event Website

Have you ever wondered about the role of the conductor? A. Scott Wood will give you an inside look, explaining the history, psychology and purpose of the conductor. The program is jointly sponsored by the Arlington Learning in Retirement Institute and the Arlington County Public Library. ALRI is also affiliated with George Mason University and the Arlington Public Schools Adult Education Program.

Address

Arlington Central Library, 1015 N Quincy Ave, Arlington VA 22201

Gary Tischler •

Everybody’s always giving awards. No big deal.

In the case of the 27th Annual Mayor’s Arts Awards Ceremonies at the historic Lincoln Theatre—a half-a-breath away from Ben’s Chili Bowl and its muraled side walls—that’s not true. They are and were a big deal—the breadth and depth of the Washington community’s emerging cultural world were on display and showered with accolades. In fact, the Mayor’s Arts Award is the highest honor in the arts conferred by the District of Columbia.

It’s always easy to point out the winners, the big names represented in lifetime achievement awards, but there’s something larger at work here. Elected officials and the people who run institutions, including the D.C. Commission on the Arts, headed by Judith Terra, all referred to the arts, and how important the arts were to the community, and the state goal of mayors, city councils, commissions, and boards of trustees to reach out and make Washington, D.C., a world-class city in terms of its culture and the arts.

You can get a sense of that movement toward achieving the goal by the variety of groups and individuals present as nominees, participants, achievers and honorees—plus the oft-repeated fact that the arts, like tourists, generate several billion dollars in revenue for the city and make the non-profits a profit-generating engine. Rather than being dissed and first on the list of cuts in a budget, the arts should be perceived as bottom-line enhancing.

An avid hand dance aficionado, Mayor Vincent Gray, former Mayor Anthony Williams and Councilman Jack Evans explained the economic advantages fueled by the arts and how they helped forge a cultural identity for this city that was beginning to rival the likes of New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Happy to be out of office after two successful terms by all appearances, Mayor Williams was one of the city’s great boosters and supporters in the arts. Williams received a special award for “Visionary Leadership.”

Washington is special in its arts identity in the sense that it doesn’t really have such a thing but rather offers a multi-faceted and rich face to the world. You could see it, for instance, in the variety of strong entrants in the Excellence in Artistic Discipline category, in which you had the growing and world-recognized D.C. Jazz Festival, headed by Charlie Fishman; the Embassy Series, Jerome Barry’s unique endeavor in cultural bridge building through music; Step Afrika!, the homegrown dance group that engages the bodies, minds and creativity of young people; The Phillips Collection, the city’s unique collection sparked by the interests and passions of Duncan Phillips and the Thomas Circles Singer. Here is where home-grown and international jazz meets international classical music in embassies, the choral arts, youth emerging in dance and impressionist and modern art on an inviting and original stage. Step Afrika! earned a Mayor’s Award.

Awardee Melvin Deal of African Heritage Dancers and Drummers has instructed and inspired young people in Ward 7 and 8 in African dance and music for more than 30 years and has thus become an example to the community at large, including Step Afrika! and other institutions.

Founder of the American Film Institute, George Stevens, Jr., also founded and produces the Kennedy Center Honors and is the son of the famed Oscar-winning film director George (“Shane,” “A Place in the Sun”) Stevens. A noted director and playwright himself, Stevens was a pioneering presence for the arts in many ways for the Washington community. Instead of settling in New York or Los Angeles, he decided to make his life in Georgetown and Washington and, by his presence, helped pioneer and form the institutions and atmosphere of a world-class cultural center.

Stevens and Deal received lifetime achievement awards.

Other awards included a special award for attorney Paul Jorgensen and awards for Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education (Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop); Outstanding Emerging Artists (the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra); Excellence in Service to the Arts (Atlas Performing Arts Center); Innovation in the Arts (Art Enables). The Mayor’s Arts Award for teaching went to Kenneth Dickerson, Roosevelt Senior High School, performing arts; Koye Oyediji, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, language arts and Jennifer Sonkin, Caesar Chavez Public Charter School, visual arts.

The awards were hosted by WUSA’s J.C. Hayward, herself something of a Washington institution.

Gary Tischler • September 21, 2012

You walk out the door.

The sky is blue.

Just as blue.

And because today is Tuesday, September 11, you remember that blue sky, because you’ve seen it on another Tuesday, on another September 11, blue skies, nothing but blue skies.

You remember the day, where you lived and live still, what you did, how the day went, what happened that day, and how the world has changed since, going right along to now.

All you’ve got is your own memories, it’s all everyone has. Human history is full of tragedy, losses too great to take in, violence that continues to defy the imagination, murder most foul, nature most rampantly destructive, but somehow 9/11 seems a unique event, not in terms of scale or numbers, but in terms of its singularity and its transformative power.

I came to the United States from Germany as a ten-year-old in 1952 and was plunked into a northern Ohio steel town, the Midwest, as opposed to the Wild West. I tell everybody that my first childhood memory is of American tanks coming into my hometown of Munich, a city 50 percent of which had been destroyed in bombing raids, including an apartment house next door to where I lived. In World War II, 3,000 dead was a normal day, civilians or otherwise. It hardly registered in the annals of the time, except of course to those who lost their homes and lives and friends and relatives. Death by destruction, fire and explosion were common place in cities like Munich or Berlin.

I mention this not in sorrow or anger, but rather to give 9/11 its scale and exceptionality. In terms of numbers, it was small, but it was seen by millions. In terms of impact in these our full-communication modern times, it was huge. In contemporary times, it was the kind of destructive event, caused by a suicidal, fanatical enemy, we had never seen before. Our hearts and minds refused at first to accept it and to understand it, because, in some ways, it was unknowable. In spite of all that’s happened since, it remains a mystery, a black hole in our national experience.

On a clear blue day, like this current Tuesday, I boarded a 42 bus from Columbia Road to see a photography exhibition on disappearing spaces and places. I had no cell phone, and I forgot my camera. I had not turned on my computer that morning, a break of ritual I sometimes think about to this day. It was a Tuesday, with no worries.

At Farragut Square near the White House, the streets suddenly seemed fuller than usual, and almost everybody in the street was talking into a cell phone. I got off the bus there and heard only fragments of phrases as people rushed out of buildings. I asked a policeman near the White House what was up. “Two planes hit the World Trade Center, another just hit the Pentagon, and there may be one heading this way,” he told me in such a non-committal manner, as if reporting a street closing. He pointed to the White House as to where “heading this way” was.

It took me a few moments to take this in because he had no details, and for a second I tried to picture a jet plane crashing into Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn’t do it. Instead, I started watching people, including attendees at a religious business conference who dropped to their knees on the sidewalk, murmuring prayers for their brethren in New York.

I wandered around, ran into some of my peers in the critics and arts community who also appeared not to know much. I headed toward the Mayflower looking for a phone, hoping for quarters and found people hailing cabs or gathered around a television set, gasping and frozen in awe as one of the towers pancaked to the ground under the shocked gaze of Katie Couric.

The day is a kind of blur for me—I heard a man selling newspapers yelling about “them bastards” and declaring a love of country and a prayer for the safety of President Bush, who was at some point reading a story about a goat to school children in Florida. I called the Georgetowner, and I called home, and I wondered what my mother in Arizona was thinking watching this, or how my son was seeing this in Las Vegas.

Eventually, because there was nothing else to do, as crowds formed to walk home on Connecticut Avenue or Wisconsin Avenue toward Bethesda and Chevy Chase, I joined lines waiting for a 42 bus home. I heard a woman in the hotel say that she was going home to a changed world. I heard a rumor at a CVS about bombs at the State Department, and on a radio, there was talk of a plane crash in a field in Pennsylvania.

We all watched in awe that day and night, all those images of dust and inferno, of the mayor of New York saying that some 300 firemen, policemen and emergency workers had been killed, an impossible number to take in. And he talked about New York going on, and about thousands of body bags and there was a video of a second plane crashing into the second tower and disappearing, into a roar of flames. There were images, later of bodies flying from buildings, unforgettable, our common nightmare and loss.

That was that day: it’s what I remember more vividly than the tanks in Munich because nothing in this world of ours where images, videos, texts and electronic messages invade our daily lives as commonplaces, nothing like this had ever been experienced so vastly and viscerally.

It has been 11 years now, another blue sky. Osama bin Laden is at last dead and ingloriously so. There have been sporadic other attacks in other nations, but Al Qaeda in numbers and size has dwindled under the shadow of constant raids and drones.

There is no victory, of course. President Bush stood tall on a pile of rubble which I instantly recognized as the kind of the rubble in Munich in its grotesque twists of steel and cement. We struck at the Taliban in Afghanistan, eventually, in 2003 invaded Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was captured, I was in Las Vegas, headed for Sun City, Ariz., with my son for a last visit, as it turned out, with my mother. She had for some time now forgotten the immediate present in America and returned occasionally to bombing raids, roundups, the things she didn’t know or remember in the war.

Here in our Adams Morgan neighborhood, I remember a girl sitting on steps across the street lighting a candle on the night of 9/11. Neighbors gathered together a few days later spontaneously and met at the lot where the market sets up shop on Saturdays. We all lit up candles and sang songs from the 1960s like “We Shall Overcome,” families, children, homeowners, renters, bankers, cops and street people alike raising their voices. People from all over the neighborhood signed their names in sorrow to a wall of commemoration and lamentation.

I remember the anthrax scare, and Haz Mat units coming to our neighborhood in their sci-fi outfits. I remember talking to the firemen in Georgetown who had been one of the first on the scene at the Pentagon and their talk of the unbelievable destruction, the smoke, the choking dust and the smell of burnt human flesh.

I remember to this day the photograph that graced our cover the first week, taken by editor Robert Devaney, a fuzzy blur of a shot of smoke coming from the Pentagon. My first reaction to it was that it was blurred a little, my second and lasting one that it captured the moment, confusion and shock, the kind of picture you should not be seeing from where it was taken at Halcyon House on Prospect Street in Georgetown. We had four covers about 9/11 that year, interrupted only by the death of George Harrison, the Beatle of peace, oh, my sweet lord. We talked to firemen and security specialists — and Mayor Anthony Williams who had handled himself with grace and strength in the onrush of events. I remember his talking about not expecting to be a mayor of Washington, D.C., in wartime, and the difficulties of the adjustment and the different qualities of leadership needed for the task.

Time went on, as did the war on Iraq. Disasters have struck with regularity—tsunamis in Indonesia, a horrible earthquake in Haiti, the disaster in Japan, Katrina, and sometimes I thought of James Taylor’s lyrics, coming unbidden—“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.” But 9/11 remained in the memory. Saddam Hussein is gone, and so is bin Laden. President Barack Obama is locked in a bitter election campaign against GOP standard bearer Mitt Romney after becoming the first black president in the history of the United States, a singular moment also. We are in the midst of a floundering, struggling economy which has not yet come to a safe place.

So many Tuesdays since –570 plus—not all of them framed by blue skies. The Middle East from where the attack came is now in more turmoil than ever, an Arab spring in which almost every country trembles in fury and loss and fear. The political maps have been rearranged, while we remain in Afghanistan.

There were commemorations Tuesday, and the reading of names once again went out into the clean, sad air. But there was a recessional quality to the events this day—a kind of thing we say about grief and loss in America, the effort to get past things.

On this Tuesday morning, I walked out onto the street under a blue sky as bright as another blue sky 11 years ago. Getting past it, but never getting over it.

Robert Devaney •

Sept. 18, at 10:30 a.m., in front of Hyde-Addison Elementary School, Mayor Vincent Gray, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, District Department of Transportation Director Terry Bellamy and local business and community leaders will mark the completion of the O and P Streets Rehabilitation Project, which refurbished historic portions of the streets on the west side of Georgetown.

After a few remarks, Gray, DDOT and community leaders will cut a ceremonial ribbon. Hyde-Addison Elementary School is at 3219 O Street, N.W.

According to DDOT, the $11.8-million, 18-month rehabilitation project made key repairs on O and P Streets, N.W., between Wisconsin Avenue and 37th Street to preserve the roadways’ structural and historical integrity. Using refurbished and new materials, a uniform surface has been restored to the once greatly deteriorated streets that feature picturesque stone pavers and original streetcar tracks. In addition to reconstructing the roadway and sidewalks, according to DDOT, the restoration process included utility upgrades; significant underground infrastructure work; and safety and aesthetic enhancements at street level – including streetlight and drainage improvements and installation of crosswalks, curb ramps, tree boxes and tree rails and the planting of new trees.

Adra Williams • September 19, 2012

Brides gathered at the Madison on Sept. 10 to piece together their dream wedding at the Wedding Salon. Larger-than-life centerpieces, destination weddings, unique venues and more were on site for excited brides to weigh some of D.C.’s hottest options. Gaithersburg bridal shop P. Lawrence dressed some of the models on site to highlight the latest in trends. Many brides were already saying “yes to the dress,” as they pranced around with cocktails. The popular Charm City Cakes was also there along with Cake Panache wooing guests with yummy samples. The Wedding Salon was an amazing display in beautiful surroundings, but the icing on the wedding cake was the gift bag almost too heavy to carry out the door. Products, wedding magazines, samples — everything a girl needs to get excited about getting married. Now, if only they had grooms on display . . . [gallery ids="100980,131770,131745,131763,131752,131759" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

If you hear anybody telling you—as people are wont to do these days—that the book is dying, people are not reading books—and magazines and newspapers—any more, just say—or tweet or text some version of “Oh, yeah?” or “Seriously?”

Because it’s that time of year, it’s time for the 12th annual National Book Festival Saturday and Sunday where tons of writers—who write books of all sorts—will be on hand at the National Mall to sign books, talk, press the flesh, and perhaps more importantly, thousands (an estimated 200,000 people are expected) will be on hand to wander among an assortment of pavilions catering to adult and young readers, parents and kids, students and teachers. It’s hard to get a kindle or a nook book autographed.

The festival, a legacy of former first lady Laura Bush and held by the Library of Congress, gets bigger in terms of attendance and participating writers and authors every year. Tourists and readers flock to it, it’s like a bookish folk life festival, a rock festival with pages. Words ring out into the air, spoken by writers reading from their works, as well as the words of poets which have a special weight and lightness all at once.

As usual, there will be a Pavilion of the States—although this year only on Saturday—in which the 50 states and various non-states, including D.C. will show off their literary wares of writers, fiction, poems, children’s books and their own particular historic works, all home-grown.

The Washington Post is sponsoring “Let’s Read America” pavilions, along with Wells Fargo, AT&T, PBS Kids, Lego Duplo and Scholastic Inc., and, as always, the Digital Bookmobile returns, making the festival one of the most family friendly events you’re likely to encounter.

The sponsoring Library of Congress has its own pavilion, of course, where opportunities abound to explore the country’s oldest federal cultural institution, where you can scour research on your very own family history.

Primarily, though the National Book Festival is about the country’s passion and love for reading and books, which is to say there’ll be all sorts of authors on hand in person at various categories of pavilions: Family; Children; Teens and Children; Poetry and Prose; History and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy and the accompanying and growing category of graphic novels; Fiction and Mystery and Contemporary life.

For the adults, in the Contemporary Life Section, you’ll find the likes of New York Times writer, historian of the present and accessible seer and prophet of the future Thomas Friedman; Lisa Scottoline, a popular mystery writer talks and writes about motherhood; Douglas Brinkley now in the news with his controversial biography of “Cronkite” and Congressman John Lewis, among others.

In the poetry and prose pavilion there’s award winning local students reading poetry out loud; former Washington Postie and author of a books on Ernest Hemingway and Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara Paul Hendrickson, former poet laureate Philip Levine, novelist Jeffrey (“Middlesex”) Eugenides, novelist T.C. Boyle, who has written 23 books, including his latest “San Miguel” and Thomas Mallon, whose latest historical novel is called simply “Watergate.” and is as fine an act of alchemy and fictionalization as you’ll find with the real life protagonists of the scandal that ousted Nixon from the presidency taking center stage.

In the Fiction and Mystery pavilion, you’ll find Stephen Carter, who’s imagined what might happen if Lincoln had survived his assassination attempt in “The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln”; Steven Millhauser, the novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize for the wonderful “Martin Dressler: The Tale of of an American Dreamer”; crime novelist Patricia Cornwell and Geraldine Brooks among many others.

In the History and Biography pavilion, you’ll find the ambitious Robert Caro still busy on telling the story of the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson; David Maraniss, who chronicled the early life of Barack Obama; Sally Bedell Smith who’s taking on the current Queen Elizabeth; Walter Isaacson, who’s written about Steven Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.

For a complete listing of authors and activities, including children and family activities and pavilions as well as daily events and signings, you should go to the National Book Festival web site or check out twitter, facebook and all the usual digital suspects And buy a book.

For more information and to see featured authors, visit the Library of Congress’s website