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Paulina Phelps • May 1, 2014

A time of year in Washington unlike any other, Easter Sunday is upon us. With the cherry blossoms past full bloom and the sound of birds chirping, the stage is set. With its rich history, D.C. has an abundance of churches, thus making the decision of which church to attend for Easter Sunday Mass or service a difficult one. For downtown, the first is Easter mass at St. Matthews Cathedral, which was founded in 1840, and resembles a Renaissance and Romanesque design.

How about a very special Washington tradition? At 6:30 a.m., Easter morning, more than 6,000 people gather annually at the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The event is coordinated by Capital Church of Vienna, Va., whose host and Pastor Amos Dodge writes: “As the sun rises over the Capitol dome, the mall rings with sounds of joyful celebration as we proclaim together that Christ is risen!”?The pastor has this additional advice: “Dress comfortably. We suggest a coat or blanket for the often brisk morning. Directed parking provided.  Service happens rain or shine.”

For Georgetown, one stand-out is Holy Trinity Catholic Church on 36th Street. Founded in 1794, Holy Trinity is the oldest Catholic parish in Washington and is frequented by many notables, such as Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. It was John F. Kennedy’s church, when he lived in Georgetown.

St. John’s Episcopal Church on O Street is also a classic for Easter. Among its historical churchgoers are Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key, who also attended another Episcopal church: Christ Church, also on O Street on Georgetown’s east side.

Georgetown Lutheran Church at Wisconsin Avenue and Volta Place is celebrating its 245th anniversary. Between services, there will be an Easter egg hunt at 9:15 a.m. At Rose Park on Dumbarton Street sits the First Baptist Church of Georgetown. Its congregation celebrated 150 years last year. Farther west on the street near Wisconsin Avenue is Dumbarton United Methodist Church, the oldest Methodist church in D.C. Besides its 11 a.m. Sunday service, the church will have an open house on April 26, the same day as the Georgetown House Tour.

For some, Easter isn’t complete without a brunch get-together. D.C. offers a wide choice. For some at the Georgetowner, the list includes – but is an exclusive to – 1789 Restaurant, Billy Martin’ Tavern, Brasserie Beck, Fiola Mare, Teddy & the Bully Bar, Tony & Joe’s Seafood Place and Malmaison. Call right now, if you want to go.

For those staying at home, Dean & Deluca and Whole Foods offer several Easter meals to go. Order online, if you wish.

The day after Easter Sunday, Washington also hosts one of the quintessential Easter events in our country, hosted at the most recognizable house in our country, the White House. The 136th White House Easter Egg Roll will occur Monday, April 21. The event will feature live music, sports courts, storytelling and, most importantly, Easter Egg Rolling on the south lawn of the White House. It is one of the hardest tickets in town to get.

Hosted by the first family, the event’s theme this year “Hop into Healthy, Swing into Shape” reflects first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative, which promotes healthy eating in hopes of solving the epidemic of childhood obesity. As the inspiration for most of the events NBC Washington reported on Monday, April 14, that there will be an “Eggtivity Zone Obstacle Course,” yoga garden, basketball and tennis on the presidential courts and Hop to It! — an instructional dance party. This year’s special guests include Jim Carrey, Ariana Grande, Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri and the Cookie Monster, according to the first lady’s Let’s Move blog. It is a wonderful, all-American way to take part in Easter joy.

Paulina Phelps •

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking for the public’s assistance in finding the man wanted for a series of bank robberies in Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland. The three incidents occurred on Jan. 29, Jan. 13, and March 28 at the following banks: the Bank of America in Chevy Chase, Md., Capital One Bank on Connecticut Avenue in D.C. and Bank of America in D.C.’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.

The FBI’s Wanted Poster announced: “In each of the robberies the subject entered the bank, approached the counter and handed the victim teller a note that demanded money and implied that he had a weapon. After receiving the money, the subject fled the bank on foot.”

In addition to providing information on the location and date of the incidents, a short description of the robber is provided in the FBI’s wanted poster. He is a black male, who is estimated to be between 5’7” and 5’9”, medium build and between 25 to 30 years old.

If you see or hear of any information that can lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of this individual, contact the FBI — which is offering a reward of $5,000.
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Robert Devaney •

The District Department of Transportation will be conducting an inspection of the Whitehurst Freeway Bridge over K Street, NW, from Tuesday, April 22, to Wednesday, April 23. This will require single-lane closures and take place during off-peak hours between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., weather permitting.

The required lane closures and inspection activities are scheduled to occur as follows: Whitehurst Freeway over K Street, NW. On Tuesday, April 22, there will be a right-lane closure of eastbound K Street, NW, under the Whitehurst Freeway. On Wednesday, April 23, there will be a right-lane closure of westbound K Street, NW, under the Whitehurst Freeway.

Traffic controls will be in place to warn motorists as they approach these areas

Serafine George •

The U.S. Park Police have released a description of the suspect from the sexual assault in Glover Park on April 1.

According to a bulletin from the Park Police, it is looking for a black male with short hair, approximately six feet tall and weighing between 230 to 240 pounds. The suspect has a distinct tattoo of an “N” with stars through it on the back of his left hand.

If anyone has any information or believes they saw something that may relate to this incident, contact the USPP Tip Line at 202-610-8737.

Anonymous Tips can be left on the U.S. Park Police Tip Line 202-610-8737 or U.S. Park Police Communications Section 202-610-7500.

A woman was sexually assaulted in Glover-Archbold Park in the 3100 block of K Street, NW, just west of Georgetown University’s main campus April 1, said U.S. Park Police which is investigating the crime. The victim was walking alone when she was attacked from behind in the area of Foxhall Road and Canal Road around 8:50 p.m. The attacker then took her through the area of the Capital Crescent Trail. The attacker then fled toward Canal Road, NW, on foot after assaulting the victim. The park has a jogging and hiking trail.

During 2012, two sexual assaults took place near Canal Road and the C&O Canal. One woman was attacked on July 25, when jogging along the Capital Crescent trail at 9:15 p.m. Another woman was attacked on July 7, around 1 a.m. near 31st and M Streets, close to the canal.

In 1998, Christina Mirzayan was sexually assaulted and then beaten to death on Canal Road – near where the April 1 crime occurred — when walking home from a dinner with friends. Mirzayan was spending her summer on a science and technology fellowship, now named in her memory, at the National Academy of Sciences.

Her attacker was linked to the assault of nine other women. His attacks became increasingly more violent ending with the killing of Mirzayan. The case remains open.

Gary Tischler •

Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed on last week, leaving behind words and worlds of words and inventions that became books and stories that, if we read seriously and with care and joy, we will keep in our minds for as long as we live or as long as we are able.

He was a Colombian, but he came to personify all the great surging works of Latin American and Spanish-language literature of the latter part of the last century. It was encapsulated into a kind of genre called “magical realism,” of which he was neither the pioneer-inventor nor the lone practitioner, neither in Latin America or in the world. But it might be fair to say that his works brought something unique to the form—the writing was outsized, intoxicating, perfumed with roiling lyricism where reality in the form of sex, politics, and setting bumped up against magic, improbability, music and the whiff of both brimstone and heaven.

He grew up in varying circumstances, and worked in various jobs, and lived in various countries, and traveled and struggled, but, starting as a wordsmith, he ended up a word god in the form of his illustrious novels, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” “Love in the Time of Cholera,” “The General in His Labyrinth” and “Chronicles of a Death Foretold.”

In 1982, he won the Nobel Prize for literature for “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.” His response was a speech called “The Solitude of Latin America.” In truth, he was a Latin American writer, and he was not alone in that, only in the quality and size of his gifts. One thinks of Isabelle Allende from Chile, Carlos Fuentes from Mexico, the Brazilian Jorge Armado.

Marquez and the rest shared the luck and a quality that their translations into English often sounded and read like its true source, which doesn’t happen often in literature—think of Russian novels. They retained their liquidness, their clarity, the smoothness of rolling sentences.

You can get lost in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”—Marquez wasn’t easy—as in a maze and thicket of words as well as in the sheer grandiosity, the ambitions and the music and power of its ideas. It’s a rabbit hole of a book, challenging and not a little frightening, a place where you lose the threads and the memories.

Marquez reportedly suffered from dementia, which makes what he wrote and said all the more affecting: “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it” or “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

“Love in the Time of Cholera” is one of the greatest novels on boy-girl, man-woman, old man-old woman enduring love ever written, in all of its facets, its beating hearts. Every man who has ever felt any sort of heart-stopping, sweat-inducing, ghostly, love will recognize it in this: “To him, she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter.”

I wish I’d said or written that sometime in my life.

Paulina Phelps • April 25, 2014

Back for its second year and including 15,000 participants, the Nike Women’s Half Marathon runs through D.C. Saturday, April 26. Several Metro stations will be opening at 5 a.m. in preparation for the 7 a.m. start time.

In Georgetown, traffic cops are at major intersections for the race and racers – and other weekend events.

In preparation for the race, the Georgetown Nike Store on M street posted the names of runners on a painted banner outside the store. Down the street, the Nike Women’s Half Marathon D.C. Expotique – and rack packet pick-up spot — is open in front of Washington Harbour at 3050 K St., NW, Friday, April 25, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.,?and Saturday, April 26, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

If you want to cheer on runners the most popular places for fans include the Lincoln Memorial, along Independence Avenue, the Jefferson Memorial and Pennsylvania Avenue. Keep in mind that as an out-and-back race the start and the finish line are the same.

Not only has Nike produced the event, but it has also made training easy with apps like Nike+ Running App and the Nike Women’s Marathon Event App. Both apps help runners map their routes, track progress and keep the motivation needed during training. The Nike+ app tracks distance, pace, time and calories burned with GPS, giving audio feedback during your run.
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Robert Devaney • April 23, 2014

D.C.’s Department of Public Works has delivered new trash and recycling containers to residents in Georgetown. But you knew that — and saw that. Georgetown is awash in old and new trash and recycling containers, some of which make no sense for those who in rowhouses that have no side alleys. One resident looked bemused and annoyed and said, “I am not taking that through my living room.” Georgetown already enough trash and recycling boxes or barrels hanging around its sidewalks and front steps.

There will be time to express yourself at the April 28 meeting of the local advisory neighborhood commission at Georgetown Visitation Prep on 35th Street.

Jeff Jones of the ANC offered the following advice:

First, read and follow the instructions in the pamphlet provided with the new containers.

If you plan to keep the new containers:

Please remove them from public space. Containers are to be placed on the point of collection during DPW collection hours only. Generally, public space in Georgetown starts at the exterior wall (or very close to) most all of the rowhouse-type dwelling. Therefore, placing them on the sidewalk up against your home, is likely not within code. Note: disabled or elderly may obtain a waiver to have DPW collect from private space on a case by case basis. Please place the yellow stickers on your old container(s) for removal by DPW, and the current process requires you to call 311 to have those picked up.

If you do not want the new containers:

Most of the residents contacting me prefer this option, due to the larger size of the recycling container, making it more difficult to store on private space. You may place the stickers on one or both of the new containers, and call 311 to have them picked up. Continue using your current container(s) and if you would prefer you may purchase a container from a private vendor. Again, please only place the containers to the POC during collection hours only.

ANC2e is working with DPW in attempt to schedule a wholesale old and/or new container pickup date, but this has not been confirmed. This would negate the current requirement to call 311 for pickup, however please follow the instructions on the pamphlet in the meantime.