News & Politics

Robert Devaney • October 28, 2014

Last week’s torrential rainstorm caused untreated sewerage to flow into the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, according to the National Park Service. The wastewater also flowed into the canal in Georgetown, prompting NPS to caution people not to fish in the canal and to sanitize any items that were in the water below Lock 6 until the end of Sunday. NPS said that the overflow amounted to 5 million gallons.

The canal’s towpath remains open.

Other spillage from the storm also caused the Capital Crescent Trail between Fletcher’s Cove and Water Street (K Street) to be closed. The trail will be closed for several weeks, according to WJLA.

Gary Tischler •

In this town, which is our town, the world is always with you, right outside the morning-opened door, the Georgetown streets, in cushy hotels, in front of the White House which we pass every day, in the traffic jams, from which we glimpse visiting black limo dignitaries, amid the demonstrators who come here every year, always different but always the same.

In this town, which is our town, history is always with us, our monuments are concrete paeans and poems to our shared histories and memories. We’re always remembering, commemorating, celebrating the singular events of our events, which are imbedded in cement, in the grassy knolls of our memories and cemeteries, in books and street addresses.

No other city is quite like this in this quality—our local news are national and world news, our daily travels to offices, work and chores take us through a kind of daily theme park of history. Some things occur here, rest here and our part of our routine like a backpack, the clothes we wear, the messages we retrieve from our open pads while having coffee at a Starbucks.

Yet, we live in our blocks and villages and neighborhoods, and sleep under blue-dark skies, and wake up to retrieve the morning or pore over the magical contents of a baseball box score: IP 7 H 3 R 0 ER 0 BB 1 SO 10 MNP 99 ERA 3.39. That would be the beatifically splendid pitching line on the Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg in a 4-0 win over the Phillies.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, a large part of the other part of the world came to Washington as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, in which leaders from most of the nations in the continent of Africa arrived for discussions, workshops, gatherings, speeches and policy-making, headed by President Barack Obama.

They—political leaders and business leaders and perhaps social and cultural leaders— came from all over Africa, from Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and a host of other countries. Black cars whizzed around town, stopping traffic around places like the Mandarin Hotel. There was a particular logjam around the Four Seasons Hotel across from the Georgetowner office on M Street. Still and all, the day proceeded on the avenue: a couple taking a self, sitting on the faux cow in front of Ben and Jerry’s, a father trying to tickle his baby boy into a laugh in front of a clothing store, and fashion-conscious girls prancing in twos and threes along the avenue as if it were spring still and all.

We breathe, we dance or come out of the Whole Foods Store, slightly less richer on a Saturday when the bloody struggle in Gaza came home to Lafayette Square in front of the White House in a protest rally by thousands of Palestinian supporters, condemning the rising death toll there, the Israeli incursion and invasion of the Gaza strip to stop rocket firing by Hamas. It is one of those horrible tragedies where we all have opinions, in our town, this town.

Earlier in the week, Latinos, some of them illegal immigrants also gathered to protest in front of the same White House, demanding an end to deportations sparked by the flow of illegal immigrants mostly young people at the Texas border, streaming up from Central American countries.

The world echoes loudly here, especially if, as some of us do, or have done, we mingle with the gathered crowds, and when we do that, we seem to tumble under the onrush of history.

Life, of course, doesn’t care about the town, any town, and it moves on, and provides us with its own lessons. One day, a 69-year-old woman named Patsy Stokes Burton of La Plata, Md., a mother of four, went to one of her four jobs in Upper Marlboro and was struck by a bus and died of her injuries. Her husband Mack Burton said, “When she left yesterday, she told me to have a good day and I told her to have a good day.” The words, so everyday, suddenly turned into last words. Burton said, “I have no vendetta against that driver. Like I said, she was just out doing her job. It happened, and not a thing in the world anybody can do about it.”

One day, history comes that way in our town, old history, refreshed in the passing of someone we felt we knew who made history. Today, the news came that James Brady, the former press secretary of President Ronald Reagan, who was among those who was shot in an assassination attempt on the president in 1981, died at the age of 73. He was paralyzed by his wounds. For a time his name was on gun control legislation—the Brady Bill—which was eventually allowed to expire as law.

In this town, our town, we make our own diversions, the daily life this city gives. On Saturday, we went to the National Zoo, in hopes of catching up with Bao Bao, which we did not. But we did see the two sets of lion cubs, three by three, and their lionesses, their mothers, lounge a little separate from each other, like worldly, sanguine young ladies and women. A distance away, father lion lounged, his tail swatting flies, looking like the laziest, most regal of lion kings, black mane darkly royal.

The young cubs posing on ledges, with their mothers, looked for all the world, like feline debutantes in a John Singer Sargent painting, languid, self conscious and aware of being beautiful and rare, and pure. A mom licked the ears of one of the cub. You could practically hear the cub whisper, “Oh, mom, not in front of everyone,” as if an ordinary teenager.

In this town, our town, the world is always with us, one way or another, within walking distance, within a shout or the murmurs of hearts and minds, our hearts and minds.

Natalie Koltun •

The Ebola crisis in West Africa has put the world on high alert, forced some leaders to remain in their home nations to miss the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit and caused the postponement of “The Future of Development and Business in Africa, ” a forum to be held today at Georgetown University.

Like some other universities, Georgetown University has taken action against the spread of the virus. Joseph Yohe, associate vice president for risk management, and James Welsh, assistant vice president for student health, announced Friday that there will be a temporary travel moratorium on all university-sponsored trips and programs to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, three West African nations in the midst of battling what is considered to be the worst Ebola outbreak in history. This moratorium follows U.S. health officials’ travel warning about the dangers of the virus, which kills 90 percent of those infected. As for when the travel moratorium will conclude, Yohe and Welsh intend to comply with the CDC’s guidelines.

The Gaston Hall event was to feature Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who delivered the university’s School of Foreign Service commencement speech in 2010. The forum’s focus was to discuss private investment in Africa while looking at its role in the region’s health, education, poverty and emerging business opportunities, as well as benefits of receiving support by the United States’ government and other international organizations. The event has yet to be rescheduled.

Sirleaf, along with 50 other African leaders, was invited to attend the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in D.C., taking place Monday to Wednesday this week. To contain the deadly virus that has already killed over 700 people, Sirleaf and leaders of Guinea and Sierra Leone have cancelled their attendance to the summit.

Although there have been no known Ebola outbreaks in the United States to date, residents should still take caution when coming into contact with those exhibiting flu-like symptoms. A Washington, D.C.-area man was hospitalized last month after contracting a flesh-eating bacterial disease. Joe Wood of Stafford, Va., was swimming in the Potomac River when a scratch on his leg became infected with an aggressive bacteria that feeds on flesh – vibrio vulnificus. Wood was admitted to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg where he received skin graft surgery the following week.

This news comes just days after a 66-year-old Maryland man was treated for the same strain, characterized by fever, chills, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. In Maryland, the number of vibrio cases reached a 10-year high last year, according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Joseph Park •

President Obama and other African leaders are expected to meet with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, who denies ongoing human rights abuses in the small Central African nation.

Obiang will be honored by the Corporate Council for Africa, which is highlighting the “new Africa” at the summit, according to Al Jazeera America.
Many meetings will be held during the first-ever U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington D.C. from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6, with 50 heads of state in the city at the same time. It is the largest gathering of national leaders ever for a three-day event in the nation’s capital.

“President Obiang is trying to shed his image as the head of a corrupt and abusive government,” said Lisa Misol, senior business and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of giving him propaganda opportunities, President Obama should press for an end to torture, corruption and other abuses that are rife in Equatorial Guinea.”

In a recent human rights report, the State Department cited the most serious human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea as “disregard for the rule of law and due process, including police use of torture and excessive force; denial of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; and widespread official corruption.”

Nguema Mba, a former military officer who was granted status as a refugee in Belgium in 2013, was abducted illegally in his visit to Nigeria in late 2013 and turned over to Equatorial Guinea, where he is believed to be held by government authorities and tortured. Nguema still remains in custody and reportedly was transferred to solitary confinement on July 26.

The Obiang government has denied that torture takes place in Equatorial Guinea. In 2013, when the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights inspected the country, the delegation from the government highlighted “the absence of torture in the country’s prisons and the care given to inmates.”

Equatorial Guinea is one of the largest oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and has a population of 735,000, making it the wealthiest country per capita in Africa.
However, government critics allege that corruption has led to the country having only a small portion of the population sharing the wealth, while conditions for most Guineans remain worse than in many African countries with fewer natural resources.

“It is shocking that President Obiang gets the red-carpet treatment in Washington while his perceived opponents in Equatorial Guinea are thrown in prison to be flogged,” said Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer from Equatorial Guinea. “We hope President Obama tells President Obiang loud and clear to end false imprisonment, torture and oil-fueled corruption.”

Obiang has been in power since 1979 as its president, having overthrown his uncle, who was the first president of the small nation, in a bloody coup d’etat.

Gary Tischler •

James Garner was a purely American actor.

You would never think to call him a thespian, or imagine him playing Hamlet — or, getting old, King Lear.

Garner was a movie star, a television star, and in both venues, he often and famously and most memorably played the hero as anti-hero, or the anti-hero as hero. He was also a natural—his most famous anti-hero heroics were done in such a way that he hardly seemed to be acting at all. He inhabited the leads in “Maverick” (for three seasons) and, later in his life, the hero of “The Rockford Files” with a combination of elan and ease that it made him look almost lazy. In his starring movie roles, he ranged quite a bit further, but that casual comic style stayed with him through several romantic comedies with Doris Day—taking over where Rock Hudson had left off.

Garner died July 19 at the end of a long career and a full life, during which he carried his movie and television personas with him, not like baggage, but like a coat you could dig into to find reminders of his screen life.

He led a life, and it took him a while to become who he was, which was, originally, a fella by the name James Scott Bumgarner, born in Norman, Oklahoma, the home of the University of Oklahoma and “sooner boomer” football mania, a place you could stare across the flat landscape and feel the breath of next door neighbors Missouri and Texas. He did not initially dream of becoming an actor and instead went from job to job, got into the Merchant Marine and fought in Korea, and awarded two purple hearts.

A friend encouraged him to get into theater, from which he started getting small parts in films like “Sayanora” and a bigger part in “Darby’s Rangers,” a World War II, small-scale epic, in a part turned down by Charlton Heston.

But it was the “Maverick” series which made a star out of Garner—although he stayed only for three years—and in a way branded him. The series—which debuted in a time when the so-called adult westerns were king on network television—featured Garner (and later a brother played by Jack Kelly), as a slick, fancy-shirt, black hat, black jacket, gambler, who avoided conflict at all cost, not to mention heroics. Bret Maverick was catnip for ladies, often got in trouble, even when he would admit he was a coward, but somehow, kicking and screaming and very reluctantly was often the hero. He was the opposite of James Arness’s Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke.” Imagine the husky, slow-moving Arness playing Bret Maverick.

This aversion to violence made Maverick a convincing anti-hero, even when he resorted to violence. It was a kind of style you would often find in other Garner roles—“Support Your Local Sheriff,” a comedy western which was great fun, with the wonderful Jack Elam as his sidekick and, most convincingly, “The Americanization of Emily,” a World War II story, cynical and slick, in which he played an American officer who did not want to be sent to the combat zone. The parts seemed to suit Garner or he suited them. He played men who appeared strong but could dance around conflict—and commitment in the romantic comedy version—with ruggedness and verve.

Every now and then, the hidden fire and flame underneath came out as a form of obsession, a quality he shared with another well-liked star, James Stewart. He could play the all-American hero, influenced by obsession, Wyatt Earp on a killing spree in “Hour of the Gun,” the anti-hero of “Duel at Diablo” or “Mister Buddwing”.

“The Rockford Files,” another long-running series (six years), brought Garner back to television and another huge success, although he was injured in the course of playing a private eye several times and suffered mental stress in a law suit over net profits.

Although he could wear a suit and tie almost as well as Cary Grant, he was at heart a heartland kind of guy. He would continue to work in his later years—“Space Cowboys”, a popular quasi-comic story about aging astronauts with Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones, and “Murphy’s Romance,” playing a widower opposite Sally Field, a role for which he got an Oscar nomination, and the title of greatest kisser by his co-star.

James Garner, American actor, lived in Brentwood, Calif., and was 86.

Jeff Malet •

The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Celebrated its fifth annual Living Earth Festival — July 18 to July 20 — with traditional music and dance performances, an “Iron Chef”-style cook-off and a concert — all featuring Native American entertainers from across the Americas. There was also an outdoor farmers market featuring local produce, a basket weaving demonstration and hands-on family activities. Performers included the Southern Ute Bear Dancers (southern Colorodo) and the Pokagon Drum and Dance Troupe (Michigan). The festival included an exclusive concert Saturday evening with blues father-and-son duo, Twice as Good, with opening act, Missy Knott. On Sunday, Oneida chef Arlie Doxtator competed in an “Iron Chef”-style competition against Oaxacan chef Neftali Duran in preparing two appetizers, entrees and desserts that incorporate cranberries, a fruit indigenous to North America. Three local chefs served as judges. Chef Sue McWilliams, culinary instructor at Paint Branch High School Culinary Arts Program, chef Brian Patterson, an instructor and L’Academie de Cuisine, and chef Pedro Matamoros from the Golden Flame Restaurant, Silver Spring, Md.

View our photos of the Living Earth Festival by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101816,139774,139779,139783,139788,139794,139799,139802,139808,139813,139818,139822,139827,139832,139836,139843,139768,139765,139759,139682,139688,139694,139699,139705,139709,139714,139720,139726,139730,139735,139740,139746,139750,139754,139841" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

World’s seventh-ranked Milos Raonic prevailed over his fellow countryman Vasek Pospisil in a historic all-Canadian Men’s Final at the Citi Open Tennis Tournament at the FitzGerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park on Aug. 3. Raonic beat Pospisil in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4 aided by what some describe as the best serve in Tennis. In other court action, former Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia defeated diminutive 5′ 1″ Kurumi Nara of Japan in a marathon match that exceeded two hours 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 to win the women’s singles title. In the day’s first match, the Dutch and Romanian doubles team of Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau defeated Indian doubles legend Leander Paes and Australian Samuel Groth in straight sets 7-5, 6-4 to win the Citi Open doubles event. Leander Paes is well known to local fans as a charter member of the champion Washington Kastles league tennis team. For the winners, it was their fifth ATP doubles title of the year. The day also marked the retirement of legendary D.C. public address announcer Charlie Brotman. Brotman has been behind the microphone for every inaugural parade since 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower was sworn in for his second term. He has been the Citi Open public address announcer since 1969.

View our photos of the finals days action at the Citi Open by clicking on the photo icons below. (All photos by Jeff Malet) [gallery ids="139477,139420,139412,139408,139403,139398,139394,139390,139384,139381,139425,139429,139434,139475,139470,139465,139461,139456,139452,139448,139443,139439,139376,139371,139367,139308,139303,139298,139293,139289,139284,139279,139274,139416,139312,139318,139323,139362,139359,139354,139350,139346,139341,139337,139332,139326,101823" nav="thumbs"]

Dana Farrior •

This morning marked the opening day for early voting in the 2014 General Election. As of now, the only poll open is located at One Judiciary Square. However, on Saturday, Oct. 25, all nine early voting locations will open across the District of Columbia. Voting hours run from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and will remain open until November 1 – excluding Sundays. For your convenience, the District of Columbia Board of Elections offers a webpage that will show current wait times of each Early Voting Center. For more details, including directions and contact information for each voting site, click here.

Natalie Koltun •

Meet Jibo, the “world’s first family robot,” an innovative gadget designed by robotics experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A futuristic device created by Professor Cynthia Breazeal and her team of media tech specialists, Jibo is unlike any other household gadget. Move over, Siri, Jibo is now part of the family.

Standing at just 11 inches tall, Jibo is an interactive storyteller, messenger, photographer and personal assistant. It even has the ability to learn and recognize the different voices and faces of family members under the same roof, to create a more helpful and personal experience than other gadgets.

It’s sleekly designed and packed with artificial intelligence algorithms that allow it to learn and adapt to people’s preferences and habits. It can take photos and videos, deliver hands-free messages and even read and tell stories.

Using recognition software to learn and track faces of family members, Jibo provides an advanced version of video calling, almost as if you were really there. It uses natural cues, such as body movement and speech, to know where to look during a video call and moves as if it is part of the action in a room. Its hands-free message delivery system uses the same face recognition software to ensure each message is delivered to the right person.

Designed to provide companionship while assisting its owner in coordinating and managing daily activities, this six-pound gadget wirelessly connects to the internet and will “support the unique needs to a human being as we interact with it – to empower us to succeed, thrive and grow with technology like never before,” according to Breazeal’s recent blog post about Jibo.

After just a week into its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.com, Jibo, Inc. has raised well over $1 million from nearly 2,500 backers. The campaign, with the initial goal of $100,000, was fully funded within just four hours. Because of its astonishing crowdfunding results, this little gadget now holds a record for achieving “top rank” status among the website’s 15 most funded tech projects of all time, and in just four days, according to the Jibo team. Currently, it is the most funded product that is active on the website.

Since it reached its $1-million stretch goal, the company plans to release a free bonus collection with each purchase, complete with special animation and extra movements that Jibo can execute in the home. If it reaches the $2-million mark before the last day of the campaign on Aug. 15, the company said they will release another exciting bonus collection for their customers at no additional charge.

The home robot will cost $499 in the consumer version and $599 for the developer version, which will allow engineers and developers to optimize Jibo’s capabilities on its open platform.

The initial release is scheduled for early 2016.

Click here for more information on Jibo and the record-setting crowdfunding campaign.

Dana Farrior •

On Sunday Oct. 19, 2014 at approximately 6:00 a.m., an adult female was sexually assaulted in the 3300 block of Prospect Place NW.

The Metropolitan Police Department is requesting help from the public in the search for the assailant.

The victim describes the suspect as a Hispanic male, approximately 5’7″ in height, in his twenties, clean shaven, last seen wearing a black leather jacket.

Anyone with information regarding the assault can help solve the case by texting the tip line at 50411 or calling the police at (202) 727-9099.

Also, DC Crime Solvers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the assault.