Georgetown Stops for Karzai, Who Sees Afghanistan ?Moving Forward? January 16, 2013
• January 16, 2013

Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Georgetown University Jan. 11 to give a speech, entitled ?Afghanistan Beyond 2014: A Perspective on Afghan-U.S. Relations,? at Gaston Hall.

Before the speech, Karzai?s motorcade got presidential treatment and caused temporary roadblocks on the west side of Georgetown, leaving motorists stopped on 34th and 35th street and other streets that intersected with M Street. One woman who lives on the 3600 block of Prospect Street, part of the motorcade route, was ordered by police not to drive to her nearby home, which has a garage, but in the opposite direction into the campus. A block away, she left her car with its lights flashing to gather items from her home and then travel with her two children back to her car to pick a third child. She and most affected motorists were halted for at least 25 minutes, as the university awaited the Afghan president.

Karzai met President Barack Obama earlier that Friday at the White House to discuss the withdrawal of most U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the months and year ahead and the transition of Afghan troops as U.S. troops take on a supporting and training role by the end of 2014.

Karzai reminded all that his country and the U.S. had come together after the September 11 attacks in 2001 ?for a great cause?: to free the world of terrorists, liberate Afghanistan and take down the Taliban.

ANC Opposes Bowling Alley If Agreement Not Made
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Agreeing with residents who live in the Georgetown Park condominiums, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E voted at its Jan. 2 monthly meeting to oppose the construction of a bowling alley in the former Shops at Georgetown Park if an enforceable agreement is not made.

The request by new tenant, Pinstripes, a Illinois-based Italian bistro with bowling and bocce as well as banquet space, caught flak from condo residents, who fear more noise from the proposed bowling alley.

It came down to ANC chair Ron Lewis to offer a resolution that would oppose the bowling alley before the Board of Zoning Adjustment at its Jan. 15 meeting — if the condominium association and Pinstripes cannot strike an agreement on vibration and noise control with an “enforceable mechanism for securing that assurance.” The ANC also opposed an outdoor patio, also proposed by Pinstripes.

G2 Bus Resumes West Side Route
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With the completion of the O and P Streets Rehabilitation Project, Metro Rail’s G2 bus route on the west side of Georgetown was resumed the last week of 2012. Look to see the G2 making its usual rounds along O and P Street with a stop at main gates of Georgetown University at 37th Street. For about a year and a half, its route ended at Wisconsin Avenue.

Disgruntled ‘Vet’ Threatens to Jump, Causes Gridlock
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Just before 5 p.m., Key Bridge was completely shut down for at least three hours Jan. 8, as police dealt with a potential jumper who was clinging to the eastern railing of the bridge. According to several sources who requested anonymity, a 30-year black male who claimed to be a veteran was upset about his benefits or lack thereof. The incident brought out hundreds of police officers, who shut down streets from the West End, east of Georgetown, and shut down parts of Wisconsin Avenue. Traffic was snarled all the way to Arizona Avenue. No one could walk or drive over the bridge until 8 p.m. A swat team was dispatched with repellers ready to leap from the bridge to hook the men if he had jumped. He was talked out of a potential suicide by police, who took the uninjured man away in an ambulance.

Georgetowner Benefit Raises Thousands for Senior Center
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The Georgetowner’s Holiday Benefit and Bazaar, held at the George Town Club, Nov. 29, attracted a great crowd and garnered $5,574.50 for the Georgetown Senior Center, said Georgetowner publisher Sonya Bernhardt, who added that the Georgetown Media Group has also pledged $7,000 in in-kind donations for the center. The group meets three times a week at St. John’s parish hall on O Street.

Jack’s Boathouse Eviction Paused; Owner Fights to Stay
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The National Park Service has put on hold the termination of its lease with Jack’s Boathouse, the popular canoe and kayak renting facility on the Potomac River in the shadow of Key Bridge.

“In the last 24 hours, I have received hundreds of emails from citizens concerned with the future of Jack’s Boathouse,” said National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis in a Dec. 24 statement, according to the Washington Post. The Park Service director added that he had “directed the staff at the park and the Regional Office to withhold further action on the lease termination until I have conducted a thorough review and determined the best course of action.”

A Dec. 18 letter from the National Park Service to Paul Simkin, owner of Jack’s Canoes & Kayaks, LLC, informed him that his business had until the end of January to vacate the property.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton’s office issued a statement on the situation Jan. 15:
“Congresswoman Norton is so concerned about the situation at Jack’s Boathouse that we are sending a letter to the National Park Service outlining her concerns. Paul Simkin has not only kept open this facility, he has invested significantly in it, for the greater good of the community despite the NPS’s failure to maintain it.”

A week ago, Simkin retained lawyer Charles Camp, who wrote to Park Service, citing a detail of September 1985 resolution by the District Council, concerning the transfer of D.C. public land in the area around Jack’s: “The National Park Service shall assume responsibility to repair, maintain, and protect all wharves, piers, bulkheads, and similar structures that are located on the transferred land or in the adjacent waters.”

Camp further wrote to the NPS: “Unless you believe jurisdiction over the land occupied by Jack’s Boathouse has reverted back to the District of Columbia, and given that my client needs to have Jack’s Boathouse fully up and ready for the next season by March 7, 2013, I ask that you promptly begin making necessary repairs and maintenance to ‘all wharves, piers, bulkheads, and similar structures that are located on’ the property occupied by Jack’s, including such structures ‘in the adjacent waters.’”
Simkin’s dilemma is that his business is only a few weeks from opening and he does not know “whether to order boats, bring back employees or even paint signs,” he said. He does not understand, he said, why the Park Service will not tell him what is going on.

The news that Jack’s Boathouse would be closed — first reported by the Georgetowner — launched a barrage of comments on various news websites as well as on Jack’s Boathouse Facebook page and a petition page for Jack’s on Change.org

Owner Paul Simkin found the comments “heartening” and responded in kind: “We are beyond overjoyed. While there is much work still to be done to ensure a future at the boathouse, we are hoping beyond hope that we will be able to be there for our customers and that our great staff will be able to hold on to their jobs.”

Despite remaining unsure of his business’s situation, Simkin praised Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, whose 2010 wedding reception was at the boathouse. “He has been a guardian angel to us,” Simkin said. “He has made all the difference in the world, reaching out to the mayor and the Park Service.”

Jack Evans Report: New Year, New Terms
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As we begin the new year, these are indeed exciting times for the District.

Personally, I was sworn in for my sixth full term on the Council on Jan. 2 by Judge John Ferren of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, a former corporation counsel to the District of Columbia. My son John held the Bible and I asked my staff to join me on stage – it was a great event.

In just a matter of days, President Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term. Since I have lived in Washington for nearly 35 years and have served on the Council for almost 22 years, I was reflecting back over my interaction with the various presidents. I first attended a presidential swearing in for President Ronald Regan in January 1981, and still have the pictures to prove it! I remember how cold it was in January 1985, when the inauguration was moved indoors. I witnessed the 1989 swearing in of President George Bush from afar, but actually had a good ticket for the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton, whose campaign I co-chaired in the District. As a member of the City Council, we each got 2 tickets. I attended the 1997 second swearing in of President Clinton, both of the ceremonies for President George Bush, and the ceremony for President Obama’s first inauguration. I always found them to be interesting and exciting. But times have changed, haven’t they? I remember going for a jog on the Mall with Bill Clinton shortly before he was sworn in and then going to McDonalds. This could not happen today with the increased security. We have truly lost something.

During the Clinton years, the local government had a good relationship with the White House. We on the Council were included in a number of events. There was even a person at the White House who was a liaison to the local government. The relationship was not as active during the early Bush years, but it did pick up during his second term. I remember meeting Bush 43 at the Martin Luther King Library on MLK Day. He and his wife, Laura, were very personable. However, as a government, there was less involvement, particularly with respect to issues facing cities. We had hoped this would change with President Obama – I remember him meeting with former Mayor Fenty at Ben’s Chili Bowl four years ago, but I think it is fair to say we are hoping for a more productive relationship between the President and the District in the second term.

There are many opportunities for interaction between our local government and President Obama’s administration. And, remember, President Obama and his family are my constituents, as residents of Ward 2. Happy New Year to all of you and your families, and best wishes for a great 2013!

Like the Road Runner, Congress Manages to Escape Trouble
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Remember Thelma and Louise?

Louise shoots a drunk guy who tried to rape Thelma. They headed for Mexico, chased by police cars and helicopters. Everyone was in a state of hysteria. Holding hands, Thelma and Louise decided to control their own destiny, hit the accelerator, and drove over the cliff. The movie ended before they hit bottom.

What about Road Runner? For decades, Wile E. Coyote has been chasing Road Runner. In every episode, Road Runner speeds over a cliff, realizes he is standing in midair, turns around, runs back to the safety of solid land, and off he goes, still beyond the reach of Wile E. Coyote.

That’s all that happened, and everyone knew it that was going to happen.

So why the fuss?

Would going over fiscal cliff have been such a bad thing? Taxes would have gone up to Clinton-era rates (when 22 million new jobs were created). Discretionary domestic and defense spending will be cut by about 5%.

Simpson-Bowles is looking much better today. It and a number of other commissions seem to agree that deficits must be reduced by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. The fiscal cliff would have done it. Avoiding the fiscal cliff means less deficit reduction over the next couple of years and more deficit reduction in future years. In other words, to avoid a painful adjustment now, we’ll have less economic growth in the future.

Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan supported heading off the cliff. They believe in taking some strong medicine now in exchange for increased growth in the future rather than tepid growth or slight recession for years.

Mr. Volker did just that in the early 1980s. He raised interest rates to choke the 10% inflation of those times. Unemployment climbed to 10% and created a deep recession. Two years later, after the economy lost almost 3 million jobs, the U.S. came roaring back. Over the next six years of President Reagan’s presidency, stock market values surged fourfold and 16 million new jobs were created.

Both President Obama and the Republicans bought into Thelma and Louise rather than Road Runner, that is, that we would hit the bottom rather than running back.

Republicans knew that on Jan. 3, a new Congress would be sworn in with more Democrats and less Republicans in both the House and the Senate, and that it would be easier to cut a deal before that happened.

So, at the stroke of midnight after tax rates went up, they voted for a tax cut.

Everyone claimed victory.

President Obama got his higher tax rates on the wealthiest taxpayers.

Republicans got to vote for a tax cut for most people.

Even Grover Norquist declared victory and said that his pledge was intact.

On Jan. 3, the new Congress will arrive and begin the arduous task of dealing with spending cuts, the debt ceiling, and entitlements reform.

Like the Road Runner, the US economy will again speed off the cliff, look down, turn around, come back, and still escape the clutches of Wile E. Coyote.

Until March . . .

Beep beep.

A Great Weekend to Be in the Capital
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The New Year has already rushed in on us living her in Washington D.C., daring you to catch your breath, but also reminding you that living here is like living nowhere else in the United States, in the world.

Already, we’ve more or less avoided going over a cliff and at the last second no less, with more thrills and spills to come—hello, debt ceiling, hello, government shutdown … or not.

We live in Washington, and we’re grateful for it, or should be, because here, people can live in their neighborhoods and still be a part of history every day, which is something you can’t do in Ames, Iowa, or Tuscaloosa, or San Francisco or Toledo, Ohio, or Toledo Spain.

The world comes to this city and we can’t help but noticing—look what happened just recently when the President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai came to meet with President Barack Obama and talk about the future of his country, and the future of our eventual withdrawal from his country. Karzai also happened to be giving an address at Georgetown University and with that speech—rare in terms of the opportunities provided to hear the leader of a country where American soldiers are still fighting and dying—we are reminded of where we live. The visit was also a reminder of the fact that all of us—in Georgetown, Adams Morgan, in all the wards, in Anacostia or Chevy Chase, live in a city where events of major and ritual import happen every day. In a few days, we’ll be celebrating the ritualistic inauguration of President Barack Obama for a second time, in an entirely different mood from his first, on the same day that we celebrate the birthday of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Both celebrations are events and are accompanied by other events—balls and parades, concerts and speeches, prayers and the gathering of crowds. At times like these, we gather on the Capitol, near the White House, along Pennsylvania Avenue, in our churches, and our performance arts centers and venues. Words will be said meant to inspire, but could also ire, given the current political climate of intemperance and gridlock. Songs will be sung—Smokey Robinson is in town for an MLK celebration.

Not far off is the State of the Union Address, and the great debates and hearings at the Supreme Court, this time taking up the issue of gay marriage. Lincoln and Washington will have birthdays, and before you know it, it will be opening day of the baseball season, and the spring opera season and Cherry Blossoms. The elected officials will once again gather to attempt to deal with each other with civility and a hope of a practical result. The language currently—on debt, deficits, gun control, shut downs and spending and saving and taxes and the like is uncommonly apocalyptic, apoplectic and uncompromising on just about any issue. Here in this city we hear the noises of discontent daily, they are a part of our walking-to-work muzak, along with the voices on the radio arguing health care, Obama, Boehner, the fate of the Redskins and the efficacy of photographic speed traps.
We still have no voting representative in Congress and are not likely to become a state anytime soon, but we appear to have a flush economy, a changing population and governing bodies that are not held in high esteem. Surely, you might know that the city council, the executive with the mayor in charge, might have something to do with the city’s enviable economic situation, but you can’t prove it by the news coverage, the news itself, where even respected elected types don’t get treated with respect. This may have something to do with the fact that the potential legal troubles hanging over the mayor’s head and others are still unresolved and remain an unrepentant focus of interest for the media.

We live in the sweet solace of neighborhoods where kids get taken to daycare and grow in spurts, and dogs rule on the sidewalks, where parking, shopping for groceries, getting flu shots, it’s the universal living and dying of every day, while within earshot, and eyesight, the great wild and wide world and its protests and protestations, its cultures, its troubles and dangers, lives right with us, down the street, inside government office buildings, the embassies of the world, in cultural institutions, in a note of music from a foreign land at an embassy on Massachusetts Avenue.

We, who live in Washington, those 99 percenters of us, appear after all to be rich in the wealth offered to us by living in a place that brings us the world into our world.

Inaugural Weekend, Always a Big Deal
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You might be hearing media chatter around town that the upcoming second-term inauguration of President Barack Obama is not as much excitement this time around, that there’s very little scuttlebutt surrounding the event on Monday, that it’s, well, no big deal.

For sure, this inauguration will not have any of the historic drama and precedent of Pres. Obama’s first inauguration four years ago when he became the first African American to be inaugurated as President of the United States and drew the largest crowds in the history of such events in Washington, D.C.

Don’t believe that blasé is king this time around. In this town, and in our country, and perhaps the world, the event itself has always been a big deal, a marker, an occasion full of certain kinds of majestic traditions and rituals, omens and portents, comings and goings, beginnings, endings and continuations, invocations and marching bands, cheers and cheerleaders. People always come by the thousands and people always remember.

If you have lived in Washington for any length of time, the presidential inauguration becomes a personal kind of occasion and memory, depending on the extent of your participation. There will be parades. There will be inaugural balls. There will be speeches and swearing in and perhaps even some swearing.

We live in an information age where we seem to know an awful lot about historic events, as if we’d been there and known the presidents personally—these days Ronald Reagan’s joke that “I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine,” seems not just a reference to an old campaign anecdote, but a state of mind.

For certain, the most romantic, most resonant, echoing imagery for almost any presidential inauguration was the one surrounding John F. Kennedy. The occasion—full of snow and cold and wintry weather and youthful optimism—spoke to just about everything in our political history and our feelings about our democracy. You could be forgiven if you think you remember just how cold it was, or still hear the stories of Kennedy’s resounding challenge to American citizens to “ask not what your country can do for you”, and the image of JFK and the older, serious Eisenhower riding together, top-hatted in the cold air. You think you remember the pre-eminent shaman poet of our times, Robert Frost, wintry hair, wintry voice, trying to remember the poem he wrote for the occasion, and you remember Jackie Kennedy, the first lady, fulfilling the promise of youthful, graceful, just plain high class beauty that was almost royal.

The longer I live in Washington, the more I can sometimes talk myself into thinking I was here for that cold January day in 1961. Watching Daniel Day Lewis in “Lincoln” makes me think I actually heard Lincoln’s second inauguration speech line that began “With malice toward none and charity toward all”. He opened his second term near the end of the war not far in time from his assassination.

These things matter, and not just if the president catches a cold. Until inaugurations were televised, people who did not attend, learned about them only through reportage. Now we know everything there is to know, but perhaps not as much as we should.
Let me be honest—I have never attended an inaugural ball, but I remember how they looked, the glow, the dresses, occasions where even presidents not known for their romantic images can look endearing. Here, we got to see that Richard loved Pat, and George loved Laura and Nancy was crazy about Ron, and Barack and Michelle locked eyes to “At Last”. That music, that dance, those balls are part of inaugural lore. It’s where we first saw Nancy Reagan’s utterly genuine and adoring look.

I remember the cheers at the news of the release of the hostages when Reagan took the oath, remember the jeers as crowds noted the helicopter departure of George W. Bush. I remember turning around near a press section in front of the podium last inauguration and seeing those multitudes stretching energetically to the Washington Monument.

That was a big deal.

This will be too, differently, smaller, perhaps, but all the same a big deal, because all the same history is present, on this Monday, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s present with this man who gets to say again, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear …”
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