Power Supply launches
• March 12, 2013

A new Paleo delivery system has launched from local resident Robert Morton, which eliminates processed food, including grains, dairy, sugar and preservatives. The Power Supply mission is to build healthy, accessible meals and it has charted benchmark and baseline standards to help users understand where their food falls. Customers place an order using the MyPowerSupply.com website, and meals can be ordered for lunch and dinner in three or five day increments. Prices range from $35 for three day’s worth of lunch meals, to $119 for five day’s worth of lunch and dinner meals. Customers can alert the company to permanent substitutions for ingredients as well. Power Supply delivers meals on Monday and Thursday to Crossfit gyms across D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Power Up for Spring
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Get ready to ring in the summer with the Garden Marketplace March 22 through 24 at the Washington Convention Center. The show features hundreds of displays of products and flowers, including water lilies to bamboo table fountains and exotic bulbs. The show goes from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day.

D.C. Environmental Film Festival Heats Up
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The D.C. Environmental Film Festival returns March 12 with 190 documentary, feature, animated, archival, experimental and children’s films. The films will be shown at more than 75 venues around Washington, D.C., including museums, embassies, libraries, universities and local theaters. The critical role of rivers and watersheds will be a special focus of the 2013 Festival’s films, selected to provide fresh perspectives on global, national and local environmental issues. Filmmakers and special guests will discuss their work at the festival. Most screenings are free to the public and include discussion with filmmakers or scientists.

E.L. Haynes High School Opens in NW
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E.L. Haynes High School opened March 7 at 4501 Kansas Ave., NW, and a ceremony included remarks from Mayor Vincent Gray, Councilmember Muriel Bowser and a keynote from Maria Gomez, founder and president of social services non-profit Mary’s Center. Founded in 2004 and designated a Tier One High-Performing School by the DC Public Charter School Board, E.L. Haynes Public Charter School currently serves 950 students from grades pre-school through ten and is recognized locally and nationally for advancing student achievement. E.L. Haynes High School now fulfills the school’s college preparation promise and is a non-selective public high school designed so that every student will successfully complete a college-prep program. The 33,000-square-foot addition adjoins 12,000 existing square feet of space, adding 400 students. The facility includes science labs, a gymnasium, specialized spaces for the arts, a technology lab for video game design and programming courses and an indoor/outdoor cafeteria. The project team included architects Shinberg Levinas and general contractor Forrester Construction. Grants from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, Qualified School Construction Bond, and support from The Campaign for E.L. Haynes Public Charter School funded the project.

J. Chocolatier Departs
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J. Chocolatier’s retail shop on 33rd Street closed March 4. It will become an online operation.
“We have had a fantastic three-and-a-half years in our Georgetown location,” wrote J. Chocolatier owner Jane Morris in an email. “J. Chocolatier will continue bringing delicious chocolates to the D.C. area. . . . “We are proud to say that our Georgetown retail sales have grown every year, with increases ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent year-over-year. … In fact, we are exiting the Georgetown store up 27 percent so far for 2013.”

Forever Yogurt Coming, Too
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But, wait, there’s more: Chicago-based Forever Yogurt indicates that it is coming to Georgetown, seeking two locations. It already is set for 1728 Columbia Road, NW, in Adams Morgan. The franchise company is riding the yogurt mania wave. The company shows on its website locations — from Princeton to Panama — being prepared for new Forever Yogurt stores.

Capitol Prague Opens in April
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Capitol Prague Restaurant Coming: A new restaurant will fill the void left by the departed Morso. Capitol Prague Restaurant will soon set up at M and Potomac Streets, part of the Eton Court complex.

Capitol Prague will operate a restaurant and a coffee shop two doors away, said manager Petra Foist, who added, “We hope to open in mid-April.” With Czech and Slovak cuisine—schnitzel, goulash, braised pork and dumplings—as well as various beers, “it will be down-home cooking,” Foist said. Capitol Prague will be the only restaurant in Washington, D.C., with Czechvar lager on draft, she said. That beer is made by the famed Budweiser Budvar Brewery (Bud?jovický Budvar) in the Czech Republic. (Capitol Prague is still constructing its website.)

BID Cheers 26 New Businesses in 2012
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Known as D.C.’s “Shopping Playground,” Georgetown saw 26 new national and independent merchant openings in 2012, with several exciting new openings planned for early 2013, the Georgetown Business Improvement District announced last week.

“Georgetown continues to be the Washington area’s premier retail destination and the leader in bringing exclusive local, national and international brands to shoppers,” said Joe Sternlieb, CEO of the Georgetown BID. “Not only do stores want to set up their business in Georgetown’s urban retail-friendly setting, but customers want to come here because it’s not your typical mall and is a beautiful, historic place to spend your time. It’s a ‘meeting place’ for Washingtonians, and we’re optimistic that the neighborhood will only continue to provide more choices in not only shopping, but food, hospitality and entertainment as well.”

2012 marked the opening of 26 new businesses in Georgetown: From Bandolero to Luigi Parasmo Salon, Luke’s Lobster and the Washington Harbour Ice Rink. This year will include Alex and Ani, Billy Reid, Bonobos, Capella Washington, Eno Wine Bar, the Graham and Malmaison — and more to come. Visit www.GeorgetownDC.com for details.

Jack?s Boathouse Fight Now Up to CourtMarch 13, 2013
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The same day the National Park Service announced that B&G Outdoor Recreation of Massachusetts would be awarded the contract to operate at the site of Jack?s Boathouse at 3500 K St., NW, it also handed an eviction notice to Jack?s owner Paul Simkin March 1.

?The NPS violated the federal judge?s restraint order,? said Simkin, whose eviction by the National Park Service in December was changed to a wait-and-see. ?Our lawyer has filed an emergency motion for sanctions against NPS for violations.?

In its announcement about the new contract, the NPS said Jack?s did not put in a bid. Simkin responded that is because of his business?s legal action against NPS. He said a NPS letter to him states in part: ?The NPS indicates its agreement not to take any action against the plaintiff until March 31, 2013. So, that?s why this is all the more confusing, March 1, to be given an eviction notice.?

TV Legends: Bonnie Franklin, Dale Robertson
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In a communications-entertainment world where access to everything all of the time is a given, change is hardly ever noticed, or given any kind of context.

You can probably view “One Day at a Time,” the very successful network television sitcom that starred the delightfully original Bonnie Franklin as a divorced single mom raising two teenaged daughters in the 1970s on YouTube or cable channels airing old sitcoms. You might able to find “Tales of Wells Fargo” and “Iron Horse” and even “Death Valley Days,” three western series from the 1950s and ’60s, starring cowboy star Dale Robertson on Premium Cable Network’s Encore Series specializing in western fare.

Looking at them, you realize that television, like everything else in the world, has changed enormously. In a network and general cable television world of reality shows, old and new shows, those shows appear like relics or spools found in a time capsule from a distant past.

Both Franklin and Robertson died last week: Franklin, at 69 of cancer; Robertson, 92, of complications from pneumonia and lung cancer.

Franklin was a refreshing star in a network entertainment world that was dominated by cop shows—as now—and the realistically upgraded and topical sitcom world of Norman Lear who threw, like a hand grenade, “All in the Family,” onto network television, which featured Archie Bunker, a working-class paterfamilias played with great outrage by Carroll O’Connor, spewing complete politically incorrect comments and attitudes that he wore like a worn, no-sleeve t-shirt, living with his out-of-work semi-hippie son-in-law Michael, whom Archie called “Meathead,” his wife Edith and daughter Gloria. The show begat other sitcoms, “Maude” and “The Jeffersons,” where bigotry, the life of single mothers and single women and all sorts of social issues made their way into the comedy

Franklin, with her brisk red hair and no-nonsense airs, was refreshing, trying to handle her daughters with respect, tart affection and wisdom gained through her own life experiences. With Franklin’s energetic ways, the show seemed to mirror a certain amount of realism, a look at a world experienced by many women (even then the divorce rate hovered around 50 percent) if not most. The show was part of a television world where topicality had invaded a sitcom world once dominated by the more idyllic world of “The Andy Griffith Show,” or, earlier, “Leave it to Beaver” or the abysmal “Beverly Hills Hillbillies.”

These days, there are still sitcoms, we can say thankfully, although many of them have more than their fair share of raunchiness. Still, there’s “Modern Family,” the recently departed Tina Fey show—or was it Alec Baldwin’s?—“30 Rock,” “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” “New Girl” and “The Family Guy” along with “The Simpsons,” which spawned a whole new genre of adult cartoon sitcoms with all the free-flying cultish results you might expect. These are shows imbued with work-place, single life or family life content mixed in with an irreverent and often wiggy spirit, one of which—“Two and a Half Men”– gave us Charlie Sheen’s personal post-movie star life in high dudgeon.

Robertson was a star of the type we don’t have any more. There are still occasional westerns from “Open Range” of a few years back, to “Django Unchained” which is a western which began out west and moved into the pre-Civil War South, but had the spirit of a Sergio Leone “Spaghetti Western.” But there are no more western television series, especially of the type which Robertson starred in. During the 1950s and 1960s, television became the landing place du jour for Hollywood personalities who had once been western movie stars or players. Robertson himself, who wanted nothing more in life than to be able to own a ranch and raise horses, insisted he was not an actor. Usually, they were Hollywood western players —such as Hugh O’Brian (“Wyatt Earp”), Richard Boone “Wanted Dead or Alvie,”, or James Arness’s “Gunsmoke” or even the debonair, urbane Gene Barry (“Bat Masterson”)—whose career never quite reached the level of stardom or had petered out.

Robertson acquitted himself well in his three series and earned more than enough money to buy a ranch and took over the show, “Death Valley Days,” which Ronald Reagan once hosted. Reagan, as a future president, had another career awaiting him.

Robertson’s death sparks memories of his films—“The Silver Whip”—and series, enjoyed by people living in a very different America, where the phrase “gun control” might simply mean a description of the way a gunslinger twirled his gun.

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