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Robert Devaney • January 13, 2012

Your sweet wait is over! On Thursday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m., Pie Sisters of Georgetown will open its doors at 3423 M St., N.W.

With ovens, coolers and counter ready for action, Allison, Cat and Erin Blakely will feed the town’s new taste for pies, sweet, creamy and fruity — and a savory one, too. “People are excited,” Allison said. “They have been so nice.”

Flavors include apple caramel crunch, pecan, key lime and banana, coconut or chocolate cream. The shop will sell pies in three sizes: the $4-“cuppie,” seven-inch ($14 to $16) and nine-inch ($35) pies, but return the glass plate for $5 off next purchase — which appears irresistible. There are chairs and tables in front of the shop with a coffee counter as well.

Bakers, businesswomen and parishioners of St. John’s Church, the Blakely sisters hail from Great Falls, Va., two having gone to Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington and also played college basketball. Allison worked at the State Department and finance section of NBC in New York; Erin at BCBG Max Azria. Cat still works at the State Department.

Already known around town for their pies for weddings and social and charitable events, the Blakely trio said they chose the site because of its closeness to Georgetown University and its visibility — you can’t miss it turning off Key Bridge from Virginia — and that “the location is not too small and not too big.” Erin added: “We’ve had Georgetown students contact us for part-time jobs.”

Pie Sisters of Georgetown is at 3423 M St., N.W., one of the shops along Regency Row: 202-338-PIES (7437) — www.PieSisters.com

Robert Devaney •

Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E — Georgetown, Burleith and Hillandale — will meet tonight, Jan. 3, 6:30 p.m., at Georgetown Visitation Prep, 35th Street and Volta Place, Main Building, Heritage Room, 2nd floor. Among the updates, a discussion of the government property, the West Power Plant on 29th Street, and its future use.

Below is the agenda (from the ANC website):

Approval of the Agenda

• Approval of the January 3, 2012, ANC 2E Public Meeting Agenda
Administrative

• Approval of November 28, 2011 Meeting Minutes

• Public Safety and Police Report

• Financial Report

• Transportation Report – O & P Street update

• Public Works Report

• Officers and areas of particular interest in 2012

• 2012 meeting dates

• Standing resolutions

• Security Trust Fund

Community Comment

New Business

•West Power Plant update – GSA plans and procedures for disposition (This item will come up before 7:00 p.m.)

•Friends of Volta Park designated as the official community representative for Volta Park

•GU Campus plan update

•Safeway traffic issue

Old Georgetown Board

PRIVATE PROJECTS:

1.SMD 01, 1738 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, OG 12-026 (HPA 12-053) Residence, 2-story rear addition, Concept – revised design

2.SMD 02, 1669 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, OG 12-071 (HPA 12-124) Commercial, Alterations to window, awning and blade sign for Macaron Bee, Permit – revised design

3.SMD 03, 3254 O Street, NW, OG 11-162 (HPA 11-255) Residence, Partial demolition, reconstruction of garage with enlarged footprint, Concept – revised design

4.SMD 03, 3254 O Street, NW, OG 12-083 (HPA 12-137) Residence, Alterations to rear of main house, remove chimney, Concept

5.SMD 03, 1432 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, OG 12-025 (HPA 12-041) Retail, Sign for “DC Jewelry Center”, rolling grille, Permit / Concept – revised design

6.SMD 03, 1510 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, OG 12-082 (HPA 12-136) Commercial, Alterations to storefront, sign scheme for “Luigi Parasmo Salon,” Permit

7.SMD 05, 3288 M Street, NW, OG 12-073 (HPA 12-126) Retail, Deck, Permit

8.SMD 05, 2810-12 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, OG 12-014 (HPA 12-014) Four Seasons Hotel – Eno Wine Bar, Rear addition with basement, window replacements, signs and awnings, Concept – revised design

No Review At This Time by ANC 2E: The following additional projects, which are on the upcoming November 3 agenda of the Old Georgetown Board, have not been added to the ANC meeting agenda for OGB-related design review and we do not propose to adopt a resolution on them at this time. If there are concerns about any of these projects, please contact the ANC office by Friday, December 30, 2010.

1.SMD 02, 1522 33rd Street, NW, OG 12-068 (HPA 12-121) Residence, Replacement rear fence, Permit

2.SMD 02, 1615 34th Street, NW, OG 12-058 (HPA 12-097) Residence, Replace rear fence, Permit

3.SMD 02, 1675 35th Street, NW, OG 12-081 (HPA 12-135) Residence, Rear additions and alterations to side, new window wells on front, Permit – revised design

4.SMD 03, 1513 33rd Street, NW, OG 11-285 (HPA 11-495) Residence, Alterations, dormers, partial demolition, Permit

5.SMD 03, 1525 34th Street, NW, OG 12-079 (HPA 12-133) Residence, Relocation of front door to side, alterations, Permit

6.SMD 03, 1408, -10, -12 36th Street, NW, OG 12—85 (HPA 12-139) Residences, Door surround, transom, window casing, Permit

7.SMD 03, 3240 P Street, NW, OG 12-061 (HPA 12-106) Commercial, Alterations to glass roof at rear yard, Permit / concept

8.SMD 05, 1050 31st Street, NW, OG 12-076 (HPA 12-130) Office building to hotel, Alterations, Permit

9.SMD 05, 1037 33rd Street, NW, OG 12-074 (HPA 12-127) Commercial, Sign scheme for “Flor,” Concept – options

10.SMD 05, 3067 M Street, NW, OG 12-072 (HPA 12-125) Alterations to storefront, sign and banner for “Rag & Bone,” Permit – revised design

11.SMD 05, 1059 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW, OG 12-078 (HPA 12-132) Residence, Alterations to front and rear, deck, fence, Permit – revised design

12.SMD 06, 1248 30th Street, NW, OG 12-069 (HPA 12-122) Residence, Alterations to garage, Permit

13.SMD 06, 1235 31st Street, NW (also known as 1231-35 31st St, NW), OG 12-080 (HPA 12-134) Residence, Alterations and conservatory addition at rear, Permit

14.SMD 06, 3043 N Street, NW, OG 12-055 (HPA 12-093) Residence, Replacement brick garden wall at rear, Permit

15.SMD 06, 3130 O Street, NW, OG 12-056 (HPA 12-094) Church Parsonage, Replacement tin roof, Permit

16.SMD 06, 3127 P Street, NW, OG 12-077 (HPA 12-131) Residence, Alterations to front yard and light fixtures on side, Permit – revised design

17.SMD 06, 2624 Dumbarton Street, NW, OG 12-062 (HPA 12-107) Church, Handicapped access ramp, Concept

18.SMD 06, 2908 Dumbarton Street, NW, OG 12-084 (HPA 12-138) Residence, 2-story rear addition, Permit

19.SMD 06, 1329 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, OG 12-054 (HPA 12-??) Retail, Sign scheme for “Comfort One Shoes” and “Mephisto”, awnings, Permit

20.SMD 07, 1601 28th Street, NW, OG 12-057 (HPA 12-096) Residence, New opening for garage door at basement of historic house, Permit

21.SMD 07, 2823 Q Street, NW, OG 12-075 (HPA 12-128) Residence, Rear alterations, Permit

22.SMD 07, 2516 East Place, NW, OG 12-067 (HPA 12-120) Residence, Alterations to rear, retractable awning, shutters, Permit

Gary Tischler •

At last.

Our long national nightmare is finally over.

No, we’re not talking about Watergate or the Redskins’ football season.

We’re talking about the endless debates, rise and falls, and media obsession with the political events leading up to the Republican race to “win” the Iowa caucuses, the first actual voting event in the grinding road to the presidential nomination.

It’s over.

Mitt Romney, the other Mormon candidate, squeaked out an eight-vote win over Rick Santorum, the surging ex-Pennsylvania senator and darling of the Christian right.

And now, it’s on to New Hampshire, where Romney, who has yet to get more than 25 percent in preference polls or this last vote-count in Iowa, is expected to get a little more than an eight-point margin of victory.

Still, let’s face it. This race so far has been a farce, a joke, a circus, a media obsession, and anyone who still thinks anyone can actually beat Romney—loved or unloved—is smoking something funny.

With the climax of the Iowa caucuses — aren’t you glad we don’t have to revisit that state anymore? — it’s time to say that Romney has won the nomination, and just give up on the idea that somewhere out there, there will come a man, or even Sarah Palin, who will ignite the fury of the Tea Party and smite down the bland, Gore-like Mitt, whose only known stand so far is the opinion that he is opposed to President Barack Obama.

I know—there’s dozens of primaries left all over the country stretching into the next few months—but there’s no chance that Romney can blow this nomination. He has too much money, too many good-looking children, and a blasé, murky, fuzzy, spin-like-topsy approach to issues that add up to a winner.

Maybe not a popular winner, maybe not an inspirational winner, but a winner nonetheless. Just ask Newt Gingrich, who was erased by a Romney SuperPAC attack in the blink of the time between two polls.

But seriously, folks, let’s take a look at this so-called race for the GOP lineup for the race to the presidential nomination.

All those pictures of the stalwarts lined up next to one another on a stage in debate after debate—truthfully, didn’t you just feel like giggling a little bit?

Except for Romney, who’s been there before, and who in the very least looks presidential, and can out debate anybody, that bunch looked more like a future “Dancing With the Stars” or “Celebrity Apprentice” cast than a group running for President of the United States. And don’t think that Michelle Bachman, now at last out of the race, might not show up and kick butt on one of those shows, not to mention Herman Cain, the pizza king, dial 9-9-9?

Romney was Mr. Steadfast in these proceedings, never really ahead of the pack but always the front runner, hovering around 25 percent in the polls. Every week, it seemed that there was a new leader: Bachman herself was the briefest of leaders in the polls after winning the Iowa straw poll which is something less than a caucus but something more than drawing straws for designated driver.

Along came the mighty Rick Perry, who figured if Bachman could win one thing, why he could probably win the whole thing just by showing up and throwing a Texas hat in the ring. He soared in the polls, running past Romney like a sprinter. So well-heeled and financed was Perry, so successful a politician in Texas (he could at no risk not return calls to Karl Rove) that there was a lot of boot-quaking going on, at least in the media.

Except that he showed up for the debates, where he proved to be as adept as Elmer Fudd, and even worse than the previous governor of Texas. Perry proved to have trouble with complete sentences, ideas and memory.

That was probably better than having trouble with women. Just ask Bill Clinton, I mean Herman Cain, the African-American former Pizza company executive with the 9-9-9 plan, who, for no discernible reason, rose in the polls and became the darling of the Tea Party, which by now had adopted a stance of anybody-but-Mitt. There came a time when Cain started behaving like he was in a national primary campaign and not a book tour, and further, he thought he could win. Right up until those pesky women showed up with their sexual harassment talk, including the last one who said she had a lengthy affair with him. Soon enough and inevitably, Cain folded up his campaign tent, went home to sleep on the couch and, as far as we know, has not been heard from since.

Enter Newt Gingrich the former Speaker of the House who caused Bill Clinton no ends of trouble, often married, author, intellectual, smart guy and, well, loose cannon. Still compared to the rest of the bunch, he looked like Einstein, although a portly Einstein. Romney, in fact, acted as if he were worried because chances were good that Gingrich could hold his own in a debate and had a blonde wife.

No worries. The Romney Superpac blasted Gingrich out of the water and into fourth place in the Iowa caucuses which he had led in the polls only 15 minutes ago, causing him to call Romney someone who didn’t tell the truth. Nobody dared call Romney a liar, but the word disingenuous came up quite a lot, which nobody paid attention to.

Enter — after lurking in the campaign and debates like a stalker — , who talked values, had little money and only recently said he would annul all gay marriages when he became president and that he would attack Iran’s nuclear reactor if he became president.
Nobody paid attention. Santorum was surging, and urging, and that was all that mattered. Give it another two weeks, and that will be the end of that.

The media — especially all the lads and gals with their iPads at the ready, their pie-charts and projections and their thumbs on the pulse of regular folks — can take a lot of the blame for this Iowa obsession. Media folks love the race itself, and ponder every vote and percentage point like high priests at a ceremony blessing the new consul in ancient Rome, pulling out hearts of chickens and rabbits feet to make their predictions. They love the process — so much so that they hang on every word a Perry, a Santorum, a Gingrich, a Cain has to say as if they meant something.

Did any of them seriously think that any of that bunch beside Romney was a serious presidential candidate?

And, oh, I’m sorry I forgot to say anything about Ron Paul, mainly because finishing third is like kissing your sister. And I’m sorry I forgot to mention Jon Huntsman, the other Mormon in the race because … well … I forgot.

Gary Tischler •

All last year, it seemed, different parts of the District of Columbia government were hanging under a cloud of suspicion, as Mayor Vincent Gray, Chairman Kwame Brown and Ward Five council member Harry Thomas, Jr., await the outcome of federal investigations.

The city, in short, was waiting for one of the three shoes to drop.

This week, one of them did, and it fell on Thomas, who resigned Thursday night after rumors and reports had swirled all week on local television news, websites and newspapers that he had reached an agreement or deal with the U.S. District Attorney’s Office that he would resign and that he would probably be facing jail time.

On Friday, Jan. 6, Thomas stood up in U.S. District Judge and pleaded guilty to two federal felonies, admitting that he had embezzled $350,00 in government money meant to go to a youth athletic program and that he had falsified federal income tax reports.

According to a report in the Washington Post, he answered U.S. Judge John D. Bates with “Guilty as charged, your honor.”

The resignation was historic. Thomas, who occupied the Ward 5 seat once held by his father as well as current at-large council member Vincent Orange, became the first sitting member of the D.C. Council since the beginning of home rule to resign his office under a cloud. That’s a dubious distinction for a once promising political career.

Suspicions about the fraud, theft or embezzlings have been long-standing, first raised by a Republican opponent after his 2010 re-election campaign, although vigorously denied by Thomas. The money was apparently funneled through a non-profit called Team Thomas, created by Thomas as a source of funds for youth athletics, funds which Thomas allegedly used for luxury cars and vacations among other things.

Recently, indicating the seriousness of the federal investigation, teams of FBI and IRS agents launched a raid on the Thomas residence, seizing a number of items and an SUV. Thomas had also agreed to pay back the some $300,000, although he did not admit he had done anything wrong.

Things came to a head this week with reports from television reporters citing individuals close to Thomas that he would be resigning.

The result leaves Ward 5 without a council representative at least until May, when a special election could be held. In addition, there are also early races for the Democratic and Republican nominations for several council seats.

Several council members had already called for Thomas’s resignation, as did Mayor Vincent Gray recently. Chairman Brown was not among them.

“I think it’s time to move on and heal and and work as hard as we can to gain the trust of Washingtonians,” Brown said in a television interview. He also indicated he felt “confident” about the outcome of the investigation into his 2008 campaign practices.

Thomas’s resignation comes amid newly created ethics reform legislation which the council is now attempting to give a final approval.

There is no small irony that the ethics package, praised by many, but criticized by others for not going far enough, is on its way to becoming a fact of life in the District, with key members of the government still under investigation.

Robert Devaney • December 30, 2011

The reorganized Georgetown Senior Center held Christmas lunch Dec. 19 at St. John’s Episcopal Church on O Street. Founded in 1982 by the late and beloved Virginia Allen, the non-profit regularly gathers its members at the parish hall for lunch Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Volunteers help with the food and fellowship — local restaurants often pitch in, and Mary Meyer and Karen Cruise are still helping in the kitchen. For the seniors, there are programs after lunch as well as day trips to movies or Washington sights. For more information, call 202-316-2632 or visit www.GeorgetownSeniorCenter.org. [gallery ids="100447,114837,114882,114847,114874,114857,114866" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

For sheer size and sense of fun, the big winner in Georgetown’s Christmas decorations has to go to Jack Davies of Prospect Street. His 20-feet-tall, inflated Santa Claus waves, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas” from the back of his house with its grand vista of the Potomac River to all entering D.C. from Virginia. While many Georgetown homes are trimmed from evergreens, red ribbons and small lights, Davies’s Santa makes for a happy surprise.

The Santa on his rooftop, overlooking Canal Road and M Street, can be seen by Key Bridge commuters stuck in traffic. And it is up there, Davies says, to make people smile. Davies, founder of AOL International, is a philanthropist and businessman who is part owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics.

Drivers and pedestrians enjoy the sight, illuminated at night, as does Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans who says he loves it, too.

Davies first began positioning a Santa a few years ago on a back balcony and discovered how easily the wind can bring it down. This year, with the advice of friend Michael Murphy, an environmental engineer, Davies erected his winning St. Nick the week after Thanksgiving. “The best $700 I ever spent,” he says — and quite a Christmas present from one of our neighbors.
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Gary Tischler •

“Billy Elliot the Musical” started out as a movie, a smallish, critically well received and quite popular English movie about a working class kid who wanted to become a ballet dancer. The movie became a popular hit and received some award nominations. Then, as small movies often do, it disappeared, apparently indelibly embedded in the minds of people who saw it.

If you go to the Kennedy Center’s Opera House—and you should—to see “Billy Elliot the Musical,”, you might be amazed to think that this was ever anything you could call small. The touring version is big—a really big show—big in physical size, in production qualities, and most importantly, big in ambition and heart, while rarely mushing or stooping to out-and-out sentimentality.

Oh, it’s still the same old story, one boy’s fight for leaps of glory, but it manages to be fresh, original, it manages to be about big subjects—the importance of art in lives that rarely come in contact with it, the mystery of talent, and as always, the equally mysterious natures of families. At three hours, the musical should be a bit of a slog, but it’s worth every minute, a worthy payoff of time and money and a critical success at that.

We’re in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where the national mining union has just gone on strike, and the Iron Lady is out to bust the workers in villages across the country, which may explain her natural affinity for Ronald Reagan. In one such village, Billy Elliot, an adolescent boy who’s lost his mother and lives with his belligerent father, tough brother and slightly daft grandmother, is taking boxing lessons when he accidentally wanders into a ballet class. He’s intrigued, watching the energy of the dancers under the guidance of the tough-talking, colorful Mrs. Wilkinson, but he’s also put off, because in the mining culture ballet is part of the upper class world, not to mention unmanly.

Still, he comes back, and finds something in himself—a gift for movement, flight, he’s a natural—and Mrs. Wilkinson gives him private lessons.

When pops and brother find out, they cut his budding efforts to get into the National School of Ballet short. But as the miners battle cops and scabs and run out of money, it occurs to Billy’s family and the extended family of miners that maybe Billy ought to get a chance to live his dream — and theirs — with him. And so, off they—Billy and pops—go to an audition in London, an enterprise that is often funny in a clash-of-cultures way, but also results in Billy’s audition number “Electricity” where Billy, in a bout of spectacular dancing expresses what dance means to him—its electricity, its hope, its dreams and freedom.

The show—with music by Elton John, a book by Lee Hall, choreography by Peter Darling and direction by Stephen Daldry—ended up winning 10 Tonys when it first hit Broadway. The road company requires a cast of five different Billys, and just watching, somewhat awestruck, two of the big numbers Billy is featured in, you can understand the need for a break.

Lex Ishimoto was the Billy I saw, lithe, unpretentious, a kid until he started to fly and leap. Billy talks like a normal working class kid, there’s nothing treacly here, no Oliver Twist, no David Copperfield or Tiny Tim. This is an often lonely kid who misses his mother tremendously, whose best friend is an exhibitionist gay teen who likes to wear dresses, who feels adrift in the often violent, macho world of the miners.

I expect that none of the Billys are particularly grand singers—both dance and voice are exacting disciplines that require training, and, as far as I know, there is no Rudolf Nuryev’s greatest hits album.

Darling and Daldry have done something remarkable here, they’ve put dance and music in the service of the story, instead of the other way around. In depicting the battles between cops and strikers, they’ve included the ballet dancers in seamless fashion.

“Billy Elliot” is in fact, very moving, in a tug-tug way, it delves into the fulfillment and pursuit of aspirations, it creates the world of the miners with not only drama but dance and song, some of which occasionally swerves into Les Mis territory.

And it should be said that while its hero is a kid, “Billy Elliot, the Musical” is no Disney effort. It’s gritty, with the occasional blunt, four-letter gruff language of working class types, something that we can applaud, but also approach with caution, if you’re a parent.

Gary Tischler •

I’ve been reading stories about and obituaries of Christopher Hitchens these past few days.

I was amazed how much I laughed—out loud.

I mean no disrespect toward the noted writer, literary critic, verbal bomb-thrower, bane of organized religion, outrageous and
iconoclastic savager of the whole band-width of ideology and political rhetoric, who was, above all, a very serious man. His opinions and pronouncements were principled, well thought-out to the point of almost being irrefutable and passionately held.

But by God — okay, perhaps not by God — he could be and was funny in his writing, on the air, in debates and interviews and probably in his sleep. And I mean funny as in deadly serious funny. He died last week at the young age of 62 of pneumonia, and the effects of cancer of the esophagus. Put another way, he probably died of the way he lived, or rather the effects of his mammoth indulgent drinking and smoking.

He probably would have abided by that judgement, but not the one in which some mean-spirited religious types insisted he was being punished by you know who. He was towards his last days astonished by the amount of communications offering him prayers, but also urging him to repent and recognize God.

Hitchens suggested if that should somehow happen it would be from the effects of his illness, not a recantation.

He talked (and wrote) about the subject of his dying days on talk shows and his recent autobiography boldly titled “Hitch 22”. “I could not imagine seeing a good religionist on his death bed and screaming in ear that there was no afterlife, no nothing. That would be unethical,” he said.

Among the many entries in the comment sections of stories about his death there was this: “Just this once, I will admit I am not great.” God.

Hitchens became known a little late in his life as an atheist, with arguments aplenty to prove that he was right, including a book called “God is Not Great”. But he backed his arguments with his keen wit and intelligence, and it would always seem that in religious arguments, faith might trump reason, but reason holds the info cards.

What Hitchens despised was the intolerance, the violence against other religions that was practiced by fanatical religious adherents and fundamentalists, especially the most radical of Islamic believers who committed acts of terror and murdered in the name of their religion. He also attacked Mother Theresa. He loudly and bravely blasted the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini against Iranian author Salman Rushdie for his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” He was in all his opinions and writings, an equal-opportunity critic, offending friends and enemies on the left and right. And I think he was a brave man—he reported for the Nation and later Vanity Fair from war zones and once underwent waterboarding personally to be able to write about it first hand. “If this is not torture,” he wrote, “then there is no torture.”

He was a brilliant and elegant, if sometimes brutish, essayist, a keen literary critic, and by all-accounts, non-stop talker, sober or not.

As somebody noted that if you’re a famous and respected writer, you’re bound to get good notices when you die. He got good notices from really good people all of his life. On the publication of “Hitch 22,” the great English novelist Ian McEwan wrote that “If Hitchens didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to invent him.” Richard Dawkins wrote “If you are invited
to debate … with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well formed words … would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy.”

I saw Hitchens once at a faux debate at the Shakespeare Theatre in Harman Hall, where, I believe a Supreme Court justice, several media pundits, historians and Arianna Huffington as well as Hitch debated the issue of whether Henry V’s invasion of France which resulted in the battle of Agincourt was a war crime or legal. I don’t remember the outcome, but I do remember Hitchens, apropos of nothing except that Shakespeare’s ghost was in the house, gave a perfectly vivid description of Edward II’s horrific murder (from a play by Marlowe), which left even Huffington silent for a second or two.

This is the kind of thing Hitchens could be counted on to do: whatever came out of his mouth, would come out in perfectly formed sentences, it would often be risible and offensive, and dead-on in the
facts.

He was on Bill Maher’s show at least once, because Maher, you suspect, saw him as a kindred spirit because Maher flayed against people of faith religiously on his show, in the manner of a petulant boy whose favorite insult is “redneck,” a peevish boy who had obviously been hit on the knuckles with a rule by a nun in his childhood. On that occasion, Maher might have been forced to believe that there was a higher being, because he was sitting next to one.

VACLAV HAVEL

Hitchens, unlike writers like Jimmy Breslin or Norman Mailer in America, never aspired to public office, high or low, because the tradeoff is inevitably a piece of your soul.

In other countries, especially in the latter part of the 20th century, during the time of the Cold War and the relatively imminent breakup
of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe, things sometimes were different.

The dissident, writer and playwright Vaclav Havel , who died at 75 on Dec. 17, would become president of what was then Czechoslovakia and later became president of the Czech Republic when the country split in two with Slovakia becoming a separate country.

In all cases, Havel was first and foremost an eloquent dissident and provocateur in a country where creativity and dreams of freedom burned
strongly even in the darkest hours when the Soviet Union crushed the Prague Spring in 1968 with an invasion of tanks into Prague.

Havel was a prolific playwright and prolific and open dissident which caused his writings to be banned, which caused him to be arrested and land in prison. He was a hero throughout the world for his defiant stance, and his plays were performed often in the United States and frequently by Scena Theater under its director Robert McNamara in Washington, D.C.

His letters to his wife published under the title of “Letters to Olga” were widely praised for their moral resonance and example.

Writers or artists, of course, don’t always make good presidents. The presidency in the Czech Republic, as it is in other European countries,
is large ceremonial and symbolic, but as a symbol to his country Havel filled the job. As a president per se, Havel was a very good playwright.

A noted filmmaker was visiting in Washington during the D.C. Film Festival at the time of Havel’s ascendancy to the presidency and passed on this story to me. “Someone told Havel that people were already making jokes about him,” he said. “And Havel said ‘Jokes? About me? But I’m the
president.’ ” “Yes,” he was told, “That’s the joke.”

Havel reportedly found that joke funny. But then, he would, because he was a serious man.
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Robert Devaney • December 22, 2011

A man discovered on the towpath beneath Key Bridge after 5 p.m. and a United States Park Police officer responding to the emergency both died Dec. 16.

U.S. Park Police Sgt. Michael Boehm suffered a seizure 5:30 p.m. on the scene while first responding to the man on the towpath and working with D.C. Fire & EMS personnel. Boehm died of a cardiac arrest, according to Kevin Kornreich of the D.C. Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency. He was pronounced dead at Georgetown University Hospital. The 45-year-old Boehm had been with the Park Police for 19 years and was an Army veteran.

Two joggers running on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal’s towpath halted when coming upon the so-called jumper. Prospect Street resident Andy Kline and his female running companion were stunned at the sight and the pool of blood, he said. The woman, who requested anonymity, said she called 9-1-1 at 5:05 p.m.

With Key Bridge at least 35 feet above, the man on towpath was attended by D.C. Fire & EMS personnel and later pronounced dead at Georgetown University Hospital. He has not been identified by police who have also not confirmed whether he jumped or fell from the bridge.

U.S. Park Police were on the scene at 34th and the C&O Canal, next to Francis Scott Key Park, as it is part of the National Park System. Along with the D.C. Fire Department, the Metropolitan Police Department were also on the scene. With the call, “Officer Down,” there were many Park Police cruisers on the streets and a helicopter flying overhead.

The emergency snarled Friday night rush hour traffic. Police stopped M Street traffic for a time, closed Key Bridge at M Street and in Arlington for at least 20 minutes and re-routed eastbound Canal Road traffic to Virginia. Police also blocked the intersections of 34th and 35th Streets at Prospect Street for about 30 minutes. Shortly after 6:30 p.m., fire trucks, ambulances and police cars began to drive off, and roads were opened to regular traffic.

Boehm is the only line-of-duty death this year for the U.S. Park Police, one of the nation’s oldest law enforcement agencies. He is survived by his wife Corrina and son Christopher. As of yet, a memorial service has not been announced.
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Robert Devaney •

Rock/jazz pianist ELEW (Eric Lewis) held court with his mighty piano in the studio hall of Halcyon House Dec. 13 to benefit Sasha Bruce Youthwork, which provides shelter and counseling to runaway, abused and neglected children and their families. The D.C. non-profit – which began in Georgetown’s Christ Church – was enlarged by donations from Evangeline Bruce, wife of Ambassador David Bruce, following the death of their daughter Sasha who had helped troubled youths as a volunteer.

Jasmine Williams, a Sasha Bruce success story, saved from her abusive stepfather, told the crowd in John Dreyfuss’s studio that she was preparing to go to college. ELEW said he felt at home at the Sasha Bruce house. Even Mayor Vincent Gray showed up to praise the group and its founder, Deborah Shore: “We share the same values.”

Then, it was time for the main event. The expressive, high-energy ELEW pounded the ivories and plucked the cords with such tunes as “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Fireflies,” “Paint It Black” and more, along with his own “Thanksgiving” – and some Christmas riffs, too. (ELEW’s new album debuts soon.)
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