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Robert Devaney • November 28, 2011

On Nov. 16, the board of directors of the Georgetown Business Association elected its officers for 2012 and held its networking reception at F.Scott’s restaurant on 36th Street.

Succeeding Joe Giannino as president will be Rokas Beresniovas of HSBC Bank USA. The new vice president will be Riyad Said of Wells Fargo; treasurer, Karen Ohri of Georgetown Floorcoverings; secretary, Janine Schoonover of Serendipity3. They begin their one-year terms Jan. 1.

“Building on great leadership for the past two years, the GBA has new energy and is getting younger members,” Beresniovas said. “We have to sustain that, and we have built better relationships with many community groups.” The GBA — which also acts as a lobbyist for small businesses — works closely with the Georgetown Business Improvement District, which is not allowed to lobby.

The GBA’s Dec. 14 annual meeting on Dumbarton House will elect new members to its board and celebrate the holiday season.

Georgetowner •

Alliance Francaise Celebration of Beaujolais

November 18th, 2011 at 6:00 to 9:00PM | $ 40.00 members, $ 50.00 admission VIP: $120 | Tel: 202-234-7911 | Event Website

Kick off the beginning of the French wine harvest with a formal celebration at The Washington Club hosted by Alliance Francaise. This event will offer the greatest variety of entertainment, in a building that was used as a temporary White House during the Coolidge administration. During this evening, guests will enjoy the beautiful building, a live jazz band, fashion show, silent auction, DJ and dinner buffet from a local Franco-inspired restaurant. An open bar will be set with their traditional red and white beverages.

Address

The Washington Club

15 Dupont Circle

Washington DC

The Washington Harbour Food Drive

November 17-22nd, 2011 All Day | Tel: 202-944-4230 |

The Washington Harbour is now collecting non-perishable food items for donation to the Food Drive for SOME (So Others Might Eat). From now until November 22, donation boxes will be located in the East and West office lobbies at 3000 and 3050 K Street NW, Washington, DC at The Washington Harbour. The lobbies are open from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The collection will be donated to help stock the food pantry at SOME, which provides meals to those in need in the Washington, D.C. area. Suggested food items include: nutrition bars; cereal; pasta & sauce; rice; beans; macaroni; canned meat/soup/vegetables; peanut butter/jelly; evaporated milk; instant potatoes; instant oatmeal; ground coffee.

Address

Washington Harbour Condominium

3030 K St NW

Washington DC 20007

“Masters of Illusion: Impossible Magic”

November 19th, 2011 at 8:00 PM | Event Website

The illusionists from TV’s “Masters of Illusion: Impossible Magic” come to Strathmore for two nights for a live magic show. Saturday, Nov. 19, 8 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2 p.m. Masters of Illusion Live!, which NBC Radio declares is the “best non-stop family entertainment anywhere!” features a cadre of talented showstoppers –Mark Kalin, Jinger Leigh, Farrell Dillon, Darren Romeo, Kevin James and Aaron Radatz.

Address

Music Center at Strathmore

5301 Tuckerman Lane

North Bethesda, MD 20852

Sculpture Garden Ice Rink Opening

November 19th, 2011 at 10:00 AM | $8.00 for adults and $7.00 for children, students, and seniors | ngaicerink@guestservices.com | Tel: (202) 216-9397 | Event Website

The National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden Ice Rink is scheduled to open this Saturday at 10 a.m. despite warm-ish weather. Check it out for a chance to enjoy this winter activity while wearing only a light jacket. Call 202-216-9397 for more information and for conditions.

Address

7th St NW & Constitution Avenue

Washington D.C.

15th Annual Holiday Brunches with Santa

November 27th, 2011 at 10:00 AM | $39.95 for adults and $20.00 for children ages 4-11 | lisa@lindarothpr.com | Tel: 202- 416-8555 | Event Website

Santa Claus is flying into town early again this season, parking his reindeer and sled atop the world-famous Kennedy Center, as Roof Terrace Restaurant prepares for its 15th Annual Holiday Brunches with Santa. Families and friends are invited to gather amidst live jazz music and incomparable skyline views, while visiting with Old St. Nick to share their holiday wish lists.

When: Sunday, November 27; Saturday, December 10; Sunday, December 11; Saturday, December 17; Sunday, December 18.

Address

Roof Terrace Restaurant

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

2700 F Street

Washington, DC

Gary Tischler •

Everyone agrees.

Andy Rooney, who died at the age of 92 last week, was a curmudgeon.

The CBS correspondent, who had become an icon to Americans if not the world for delivering intemperate, grouchy, funny and sometimes controversial commentaries from 1978 to 2011, made his attitude of irritation and annoyance so much a part of his shtick, that he turned it into a profession.

As in: Curmudgeon Andy Rooney dies at 92. The word or variations on that theme—the New York Times headlined him the “Cranky Voice of CBS”—unquestionably made its way into numerous headlines across the land.

Rooney, in an interview with 60 Minutes Colleague Morley Safer, saw himself as a writer, not a man with an attitude. But it was the attitude, hitched to a man who could rumple brand new clothes in seconds, sitting behind a rumpled desk, looking at the audiences out from under a set of imposing, bristling eyebrows with baleful eyes, which endeared himself to audiences as much as what he had to say.

Remembering some of his “spoken essays,” and some of the comments he made to Safer about refusing to give autographs, or his low opinions of fan mail he received, I suspect the curmudgeon was no act. I suspect that he highlighted his curmudgeon credentials with relish, it was authentic to a fault, and as such things often happen in mysterious ways, the quality came across on television in a way that made him a beloved everyman, where the same quality might make you want to grimace in person.

Rooney wrote about himself, or rather how he dealt with daily life, and all of its annoyances from cereal boxes too big for the meager amount of cereal they contained to the omnipresence of hefty phone books, the commercialization and preponderance of useless products, the mystery of keys and why they wouldn’t turn. He had no patience for youth culture and refused to take it seriously. Those kinds of rants received an affectionate and recognizable hearing from a huge audience, the rest of us out there, especially, you suspect, men who got set in their ways around the age of ten on certain matters. He spoke the frustrating rant and language that a long-married man might speak over breakfast, with the spouse nodding ‘yes, dear,’ who is bewildered by the mysteries of a can opener.

He was of course much more serious than Paul Revere warning of the coming of the fall of civilization. There’s an element of the truism that as you get older, the past seems rosier than it was, and the future looks bleak, which of course it does, giving where age in the end brings us. He had strong and powerful opinions about events and people, and never lacked courage in saying what he thought needed saying, hence his take on the “Shock and Awe” start of the second Gulf war: “We didn’t shock them, and we didn’t awe them in Baghdad. The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him.”

Rooney, you can fairly suspect, had an intemperate temperament, probably gained honestly. An avowed pacifist, he was part of that Tom Brokaw, dubbed Greatest Generation which served in World War II, in his case as a war correspondent for Stars and Stripes. He accompanied bomber crews on raids into Germany, deliberately putting himself into harm’s and flak’s way. He started out as a writer—including working for loveable and sometimes curmudgeonal Arthur Godfrey before landing a job with CBS.

He got into trouble more than once, as curmudgeons often do with rash judgments and comments about gays, African Americans, women—he didn’t think they should be sideline reporters at football games—and Kurt Cobain. Statements which he sometimes regretted because they rode against the grain of his self-described liberalism.

But he could also be generous, and eloquent, as when he wrote about the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which blew up after takeoff in 1986. “We can all be prouder to be human beings l because that’s what they were. They make up for a lot of liars cheats and terrorists among us.”

Andy Rooney died of serious complications from surgery. He made his last appearance on 60 Minutes on Oct. 2 of this year.

In the Safer interview, Rooney said he thought about death a lot. “I don’t like it,” he said.

Me neither. On this matter, we are all curmudgeons.

Samantha Hungerford •

The 17-year-old boy who was shot on M Street Halloween night died today after eight days spent in critical condition. The teenager is the first fatality among the six victims that were shot that night in five separate incidents throughout D.C.

On Oct. 31, a man was arrested close to the scene of the Georgetown crime and charged with carrying a pistol without a license, according to The Washington Post. The District police have not yet stated whether that man will be charged with the shooting. They also have not released the names of the man who was arrested or the young victim.

Gary Tischler •

Just as presidents are always called “Mr. President,” so every boxer who put on gloves and won a championship can call himself champ, even if he’s turned into a chump.

“The champ is dead,” read one headline, and you might be forgiven if you thought that Muhammad Ali, the man who in many people’s minds is THE champ, had passed. But when news came that Smokin’ Joe Frazier, the man with the fierce left-handed punch and the bearing of a modest man, had died, for sure a little piece of Muhammad Ali died too.

The two men, along with George Foreman, provided a level of high-stakes drama in heavyweight boxing annals rarely seen before and never seen since. Ali, through astonishing boxing skills and a charismatic, brash, brassy, exultant ego and personality, achieved untouchable-icon status in the American boxing pantheon – something the quiet, stolid, straight-ahead Frazier never managed. He merely punched the sun god into the canvas, and in three fights, one of which was the Fight of the Century, the other the Thrilla in Manila, he solidified the legends of both men by being unstoppable, even in two defeats.

Every obituary of Frazier, who died at the young age of 67 after a shockingly brief bout with liver cancer, talked about his fights with Ali, who treated Frazier in those days with all the sharp-tongued jabbing and malice the man was famous for and capable of. To African Americans, Ali was the hero, Frazier was the inarticulate foil, which in hindsight, was patently unfair to Frazier, and perhaps overlooked some of Ali’s more cruel flaws. Ali, after all, stood up to the powers that be for refusing to enter the draft, a costly, controversial and principled move when many African American soldiers were dying in Viet Nam. Ali was always the jabber, the rope-a-doper, the poet, the sting-like-a-bee dancer in the ring. Frazier was in the mode of Joe Louis and, more so, Dempsey and Rocky Marciano, inelegant but frighteningly lethal punchers.

“I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration,” Ali said. “My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones.”

Gracious words from the former champ who still suffers from the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease. Not so gracious were the references that described Frazier as a gorilla, to better to rhyme with Manila, and calling him an Uncle Tom. Frazier could not get over the slights, the smirks and the insults. When Ali lit the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta, Frazier’s response to a request for a comment was “They should have thrown him in.”

But he forgave if not forgot. “I forgive him,” Frazier said just before the 40th anniversary of his first fight with Ali, in which he floored him, a first for Ali. “He’s in a bad way.”

Ali, in fact, respected Frazier’s courage as a fighter, no more so than in the third fight in Manila, in one of those raw, impossibly brutal fights where no one ever backed off. By the 14th round Frazier couldn’t see and his trainer refused to let him come out to fight the final round. Ali was almost as exhausted and beat up.

“Closest thing to dying that I know of,” Ali reportedly said. In a post-fight interview, he said, “Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God Bless him.”

“He’s the greatest fighter of all times, next to me.”

To the people that knew Frazier in Philadelphia, where he is an icon, he didn’t need to stand next to anybody. He was as upright as any man could be.

Foreman, made one of the most genial and well-liked sports self-promoters who ever lived, took Frazier’s title from him, but lost it quickly to Ali who rope-a-doped him in Zaire in another fight of the century. “Good night, Joe Frazier. I love you dear friends, George Foreman,” it said on Foreman’s twitter page.

When you look at the sporting scene today, it’s all about money, very little about character and there are no heavyweights on the boxing scene who could carry Frazier’s coffee or take on Ali in his prime and have a chance of two rounds, let alone 15. Lots of razzle and dazzle out there, just some no-names wrapped in title belts that blot out the sun and media money, not much class.

Class he had in abundance. If class were money, Frazier died a rich man.

Zachariah Weaver •

The building at 1078 Wisconsin Ave. was built in 1889, the same year PAUL Bakery started in northern France, Marketing Manager Laetitia Steiner said about the bakery’s new location in Georgetown.

“So that’s like destiny,” she said.

PAUL began in Lille in northern France as a family-built company, and is now an international chain bakery with 453 shops in 25 different countries around the world. The new Georgetown location, however, gives PAUL an advantage because of its authentic old structure that adds to PAUL’S experience.

PAUL, which has announced various opening dates, is set to open up in Georgetown on Nov. 21, marking its first official day of business.

“When we started building the store we had to re-secure the whole thing,” Steiner said. “But we kept as much original stuff as we could, like the brick walls.”

She explained that all of the decoration is imported and that they made sure with their local architect that everything stayed true to PAUL’s spirit. She said she feels that Georgetown seems to have some knowledge of what PAUL is supposed to be like and that this location provides what the bakeries in France offer.

“I feel that Georgetown knows what this bakery is, what PAUL is,” she said. “Georgetown residents have a great knowledge of our breads and they tell me they’ve been to PAUL and ask if we will keep that certain grain they like. I say yes, we will.”

There were some Georgetown residents, she said, who asked her if a specific bread, Badine, was going to be served at the new location. Steiner is hopeful for the success of the new shop because the future customers have a good knowledge of the product.

“We are going to make sure that we reach the quality expectation of the company every single day,” Steiner said.

Steiner said she is excited that the specially-crafted breads and gourmet coffee that PAUL has served for many years, will be available at Georgetown’s location.

“At the end of training there are people that want to come in and we say, look we’re not open but let us give you some food and we have had amazing feedback,” Steiner said. “We are just so happy to finally open because it has been an ongoing story for more than three years,” she said.

There was another PAUL that opened May 2, 2011 in downtown D.C., but what makes this new location very different, according to Steiner, is the way it will staff its café with servers rather than providing a self-service café.
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Georgetowner •

Authors on Deck: Uncommon Valor By Dwight Zimmerman BY DWIGHT ZIMMERMAN and John Gresham: A SPECIAL VETERAN’S DAY EVENT

November 11th, 2011 at 12:00 PM | Free and open to the public | mweber@navymemorial.org | Tel: 202-737-2300 | Event Website

In honor of Veteran’s Day and as part of the U.S. Navy Memorial’s “Authors on Deck” book lecture series, authors Dwight Zimmerman and John Gresham will present Uncommon Valor: The Medal of Honor and The Six Warriors Who Earned it in Afghanistan and Iraq. Uncommon Valor identifies six young warriors, the dramatic details of their life-or-death situations and why they responded to those situations as they did. The book also explores the history of the Medal of Honor.

Address

United States Navy Memorial

Navy Heritage Center

701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20004

New Prints by Jake Muirhead Opening Reception

November 11th, 2011 at 05:00 PM | Free | info@oldprintgallery.com | Tel: (202) 965-1818 | Event Website

Jake Muirhead’s solo show New Prints by Jake Muirhead will open at The Old Print Gallery on November 11, 2011 with a nighttime reception, from 5-8pm. Muihead will at teh gallery to discuss his art. The show presents over 20 etchings and aquatints, featuring still lifes and figurative work. Muirhead’s prints exude a rare intensity and liveliness, which can be attributed to his working and reworking of his intaglio plates.

Address

The Old Print Gallery

1220 31st Street NW

Washington, DC 20007

National Philharmonic Performance Celebrates Women Pioneers in Law and Music

November 12th, 2011 at 08:00 PM | $32-$79 Kids under 17 are free | deborah@nationalphilharmonic.org | Tel: (301) 581-5100 | Event Website

Thee National Philharmonic, under Music Director and Conductor Piotr Gajewski, presents Women Pioneers, dedicated to women pioneers in law and music. The program is centered around Amy Beach’s Grand Mass in E-flat Major.

The Honorable Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, is hosting this event. All proceeds will go toward the Maryland Women’s Bar Association Foundation’s (MWBAF) scholarships and the Finding Justice Project, which makes record of the history of women lawyers in Maryland.

Address

National Philharmonic

The Music Center at Strathmore

5301 Tuckerman Lane

North Bethesda, MD 20852

Homage to Modern Classics

November 13th, 2011 at 04:00 PM | $15-$65 | choralarts@choralarts.org | Tel: 202.785.9727 | Event Website

The Choral Arts Society of Washington presents its season opener, “Homage to Modern Classics.” The first concert in the final season of retiring Founder Norman Scribner, the performance features celebrated works from some of the greatest composers of the 20th Century: Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna and excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky.

Address

Kennedy Center Concert Hall

2700 F Street, NW

Washington DC

The Annual Georgetowner Holiday Benefit and Bazaar

November 17th, 2011 at 06:00 PM | $75.00 | rsvp@georgetowner.com | Tel: (202) 338-4833 | Event Website

Join us to kick off the holiday season with an evening of shopping and merriment as we honor and give back to three shining stars of our community: the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown, Hope for the Warriors and Hyde-Addison Elementary School. EagleBank and Georgetown Media Group present the 2nd Annual Georgetowner Holiday Benefit and Bazaar to at the historic George Town Club Nov. 17 from 6 to 10 p.m.

Come browse for holiday gifts for your friends, family and for yourself at our unique vendors’ booths, featuring local Georgetown businesses. Highlights for attendees this year include Holiday Portraits by Philip Birmingham, an array of cocktails by Beam Global Spirits, a marvelous menu compliments of The George Town Club and a fabulous gift bag.

Address

The Georgetown Club

1530 Wisconsin Avenue NW

Washington DC 20007

Gary Tischler •

When we think of depression-era- and- beyond documentary photography, people probably don’t think of Louise Rosskam, except maybe in context of her better known husband Ed with whom she worked.

You might think, instead of Dorothea Lange perhaps, or Walker Evans and his collaboration with James Agee on “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

The Rosskams worked for institutions and corporations like the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Standard Oil Company, the Office of Information for Puerto Rico or the New Jersey Department of Education, a client list that might not pique interest or generate excitement.

Yet, “Re-Viewing Documentary: The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam,” part of a group of eclectic exhibitions currently at American University’s Katzen Arts Center, places Louise Rosskam among her better-known peers and contemporaries, all of whom displayed a photographic eye which mixed technical and professional acumen with empathy, a willingness to see and search for meaning in the image before shooting it.

Rosskam’s subjects in this exhibition of 150 photographs are characteristic of the depression-era imagery that has survived, but also go beyond. She and her husband photographed the lives of migrant workers of the kind which today excite controversy and unkind, resentful hearts. Back in the 1920s and 30s they were part of a landscape which included thousands upon thousands of workers—migrant and otherwise—sweating to barely keep food on the table. They traveled all over the country, to New Jersey and to Vermont and to California photographing the people.

There is also a lengthy, generous sampling of their study of life in Puerto Rico during the Depression and after, a land not much looked at in those times and often misunderstood, a U.S. “possession,” not a state. These were times of political stirring, but they were also hard times of poverty and suffering for the poor.

Documentary photography was the province of books, the journalism of photographic essays or case studies, a role that would soon be taken over by television imagery which cares little for emotional power and lot more for talk and melodrama. But in Rosskam’s photos, you can learn more than lifetime’s intake of travel posters—you get the soul of Puerto Rico with her photographs of sugar refineries, a portrait of the family of demonstrators killed in Ponce, framed by a wall full of bullet holes.

More startling, sad and refreshing are her photographs of a Southwest Washington neighborhood in the early 1940s and 1950s which lost its tone and character with the onset of urban renewal projects. Included in this section are haunting color images of Shulman’s Market, a red-brick corner deli with big, red Coca Cola signs, adults and children hanging by the store door, or sitting on stoops in the apartments in the neighborhood.

The powerful accompanying book by Laura Katzman and Beverly W. Brannan is a richly detailed volume that opens up further details on the remarkable careers and lives of the Rosskams, and of Louise in particular, who cared little about personal credit but a lot about the subjects they both photographed.

If you want to know what Louise Rosskam brought to the photographic, documentary table, nothing explains it better than Louise Rosskam herself: “When I got a camera in my hands, I know that I wanted to take a nicely balanced picture, with a theme….but I wanted to get people to understand what that woman holding that child, without enough to eat, felt; and therefore I waited before I took the picture—till the ultimate of her emotions seemed to show, and then quickly got a picture…I wanted to feel that, and get other people to feel it.”

You can see from her photographs at the Katzen exhibition that she got it right.

(“Re-Viewing Documentary: The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam” is at the Katzen Arts Center through Dec. 14.)

Georgetowner •

Albrecht Muth, the man who was charged last August with the murder of his wife, Viola Drath, a Georgetown resident, announced in last Friday’s hearing that he will represent himself in the trail, according to a release issued by the Drath family.

He continued to assert that his involvement with the Iraqi army lead to his wife’s murder. He is currently being held without bail.

According to the Georgetown Patch, at the end of the hearing, Muth asked Judge Russell F. Canan to note that if he dies in jail, his body should be released to the military and that he would begin an “unlimited fast” Sunday night.

Another status conference is scheduled for Feb. 3, 2012 and the trial is scheduled to begin almost a year from now on Oct. 1, 2012.

The complete statement issued by the Drath family read: “We learned in court today that Albrecht Gero Muth will be representing himself, which he has every right to do. We are grateful for the continued
hard work of the Metropolitan Police Department. We hope that justice is
served.”

To read past coverage of the case, click here