Weekend Roundup May 10, 2012
• May 14, 2012

Blessing of the Bicycles

May 12th, 2012 at 08:30 AM | dumbartonpastor@yahoo.com | Tel: 202-333-7212 | Event Website

Rev. Mary Kay Totty of Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown will bless bicycles to provide safety for their riders, where two bike paths are located: C&O Towpath and Capital Crescent Trail. Open to all, nondenominational.

Address

Fletcher’s Cove,

4940 Canal Road,

Washington DC 20007

The 6th Annual Potomac River Waterfowl Show

May 12th, 2012 at 10:00 AM | 5 | silver.wang@hillandknowlton.com | Tel: (301) 885-0108 | Event Website

The Potomac River Waterfowl Show, sponsored by The Community Foundation of Charles County, features dozens of award-winning artists showcasing their world class wildlife art. Proceeds from the show benefit the foundation’s grant and scholarship program. Admission: $5 per person, 12 years and under free. Purchase decoys, carvings, prints and original artwork directly from artists. Free appraisals of decoys and related collectibles.Food available on-site. Decoy carving contest. Live Auction at 2pm

Address

Grace Lutheran Family Life Center,

1200 Charles Street,

La Plata, MD 20646

A Serene Sunday – Mother’s Day

May 13th, 2012 at 01:00 AM | Suggested donation | Tel: (202) 686-5807 | Event Website

Treat mom to a special retreat at Hillwood. This is one of the select Sundays Hillwood is open during the year. Enjoy a stroll through the spring gardens, Mansion and special exhibition, The Style that Rules the Empires: Russia, Napoleon and 1812. Sunday, May 13 from 1-5 p.m.

Address

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens,

4155 Linnean Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20008

Retro Garden Games

May 12th, 2012 at 10:00 AM | Free | Tel: (202) 686-5807 | Event Website

Exercise your mind and body by exploring fun outdoor lawn games from a bygone era, including hula hoops, jump rope and pogo sticks. Visit Hillwood at the Smithsonian Institution’s Garden Fest on the National Mall, in celebration of National Public Gardens Day. This year’s theme is “Gardening for Healthy Living” and is part of the Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens initiative.

Address

National Mall

Basya Schechter: Songs of Wonder

May 15th, 2012 at 07:30 PM | $15; $12 for Members/Seniors/Students | Event Website

The newest project from Pharaoh’s Daughter’s Basya Schechter sets the Yiddish poetry of the civil rights activist and Jewish philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to music. Songs of Wonder blends soulful grooves and lush instrumentation with Heschel’s powerful poetry. A rich new collection of Yiddish songs, these colorful arrangements feature many of New York’s greatest Jewish musicians.

Address

Washington DCJCC

1529 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

TREES FOR GEORGETOWN – SPRING CELEBRATION

May 16th, 2012 at 01:23 PM | betsyemes@aol.com | Event Website

Please join Trees for Georgetown on Wednesday, May 16, at the home of Patrick McGettigan, a house with a history.

Mr. McGettigan’s house is one of a row of five “spec” houses built in 1817 by the mayor of Georgetown, John Cox. These were grand houses, in the Federal style, with stables for horses in the back, and became known as Cox’s Row. Mr. Cox gave 3327 to his daughter. The house underwent many changes over the years, including division into apartments, until it was purchased and beautifully renovated by Mr. McGettigan in 1998.

Trees for Georgetown plants, cares for and maintains residential street trees in Geporgetown and has planted over 2,000 trees. Just one new tree costs $900 to purchase, plant and provide protective tree box fencing. We need your help to keep Trees for Georgetown growing!

For tickets and information contact: Betsy Emes, betsyemes@aol.com.

Address

the home of Patrick McGettigan

One Lump or Two: Mad Hatters Tea at Tudor Place
• May 10, 2012

On Saturday, March 31, Tudor Place hosted its Mad Hatters Tea. This sold-out event encouraged guests to wear festive hats, enjoy afternoon tea while sampling delicious tea sandwiches and desserts. Following the ceremony, guests were allowed to create and decorate their own spring bonnet.

The highlight of the tea was a lovely talk about “Taking Tea” within Tudor Place and how Federalists preferred their sugar and why tea had to kept under lock and key.

With our hostess’s humorous recant of sifting bugs from tea to explaining what lumps were, taking tea at Tudor Place may turn into a personal tradition for many.

Tudor Place’s next tea event will be Spring Tea and Chocolate Workshop for children 5+ and families
on Thursday, April 5, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Guest will enjoy a festive spring tea, complete with tempting treats and an intriguing lesson to go with it on the history of pouring tea. Following the tea service, children will learn the basics of chocolate – where it comes from, how it is made and how it was appreciated – while creating their own three-dimensional chocolate eggs to take home.

Member child, $20; non-member child, $25; accompanying adult, $10.

Visit Tudor Place at Tudorplace.org to learn of other upcoming teas and events.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo at the Washington Monument (photos)
•

On May 5, “everyone is Latino”, was the slogan of this year’s National Cinco de Mayo Festival held at the base of the Washington Monument. Cinco de Mayo is a time to commemorate the Battle of Puebla against Frech colonizers, in 1862, an important event in Mexico’s history. The free, family festival, in this 20th annual edition, was organized by the Maru Montero Dance Company and featured dance performances, live music, delicious Latin food and a Mexican market. The festival celebrated not just Mexican Americans but all Latinos in our country.

View our photos by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="100787,123861,123870,123878,123887,123895,123903,123911,123920,123928,123936,123945,123855,123845,123982,123974,123785,123968,123797,123961,123804,123813,123821,123829,123837,123953" nav="thumbs"]

International Children’s Festival (photos)
•

The International Children’s Festival is an interactive, educational event that allows children of all ages to travel the world in a single day. This year’s 6th annual edition was held at the The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Sunday May 6, 2012.
The Festival is hosted by Meridian International Center and THIS for Diplomats, in partnership with Cultural Tourism DC and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

View our photos of the event by clicking on the photo icons below.

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Garden Tour: Just the Ticket to See Neighbors, Friends and Get Inspired
•

The 84th Georgetown Garden Tour, held Saturday May 5, showed off eight gardens along with side and back yards of varying scale, cresting at the Allbrittons’ Bowie-Sevier House on Q Street. All eight home gardens were on the east side of town, as some observers noted, due to the O and P Streets reconstruction on the west side.

Anna Fuhrman’s P Street back garden, with its clever use of a small space, surprised and delighted visitors, while the mansion on Q Street is large enough to impress as well as include a garden entrance on P Street. Three homes adjacent to each other on 28th Street contain details to show off their own personalities: Boyden Gray’s old-school Georgetown feel; the Wests’ almost exclusive, energetic use of white flowers and plants; a Hugh Jacobsen addition to the Hodges house that leads to a soothing and cozy patio and garden. The Pillsburys’ sculptures from Bali complete a contemplative green space on O Street.

At Christ Church, the Georgetown Garden Club greeted those on the tour, sold items for gardeners, young and old, and had people lined up for its afternoon tea. As sponsor of the tour, the non-profit Georgetown Garden Club stated: “All proceeds from the tour are returned to Georgetown, to its parks, recreation facilities and green spaces and beautiful trees. We dedicate our efforts to a vibrant, clean environment that can be enjoyed by all who stroll the streets of our village.”

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Meeting at UDC Tonight on Wisconsin Avenue Work in Glover Park
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In response to concerns about the construction work in Glover Park along Wisconsin Avenue, Ward 3 council member Mary Cheh and Terry Bellamy, director of D.C.’s Department of Transportation, will meet with residents in Window’s Lounge at the University of the District of Columbia from 7 to 8:30 p.m., 4200 Connecticut Ave., N.W.

Among other upper northwest D.C. items to be discussed, DDOT will address the Glover Park construction on Wisconsin Avenue. The projects widens sidewalks, includes a median and turn lanes and a reduction in traffic lanes.

Residents and Georgetown’s advisory neighborhood commission contend that there is additional traffic on side streets because of Wisconsin Avenue back-ups and want a traffic study on the problem.

DDOT disagree and wrote: “The original Glover Park Transportation Study did basic modeling of future traffic conditions with the recommended improvements and did not identify any critical problems. For this reason we do not believe it necessary to halt the construction project for further study. As DDOT began construction on the Wisconsin Avenue Streetscape project, we have done some spot traffic and speed counts at Tunlaw and 37th Street. This will provide another data point in addition to the baseline data used in the planning study, and we will continue to monitor conditions both during and after construction.”

To improve information about schedules and other questions, DDOT created a website for the job: WisconsinAvenueProject.com.

USA Science & Engineering Festival Inspires Kids (photos)
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What was billed as the largest celebration of science in the US, the 2nd USA Science and Engineering Festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on April 28-29 featured over 3000 interractive exhibits and 100 stage shows. Funded with money raised by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Larry Bock, a free admission was a factor in attracting an estimated crowd of over 300,000 The goal was to excite students in the US about science and technology to better enable this nation to compete internationally.

View our photographs of the event by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="100773,123608,123616,123625,123633,123641,123649,123657,123665,123673,123598,123592,123584,123708,123702,123534,123696,123690,123545,123555,123565,123575,123682" nav="thumbs"]

Facebook Initiative Encourages Organ Donation
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Inspired by events such as last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which left countless Japanese citizens in need of unavailable medical attention, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is attempting to mobilize organ donator registration among company’s community of 900 odd million users.

Facebook is partnering with Donate Life America, a national umbrella organization for local groups working to increase the number of registered organ, eye and tissue donors, adding a new and human depth to the social network’s role in “keeping people connected.” In its announcement last Tuesday, the social networking behemoth said that it will allow its members to share their donor status with friends and family and to link to state databases where people in the United States can register online to officially become donors. And the results have already been staggering.

“It’s absolutely critical at this time when online communication and social media are really the way people are communicating,” said Julia Rivera, director of communications for the New York Organ Donor Network.

“This is great news,” agrees John Green, community relations director for the Gift of Life Donr Program, based in Philadelphia. “It has the potential to be one of the biggest campaigns to increase donor designation that we’ve ever seen.”

According to Donate Life America, Nearly 114,000 men, women and children are currently waiting for a lifesaving transplant, while thousands more are in need of tissue or corneal transplants to resume normal lives or restore sight. Meanwhile, less than 50% of adults in the US have signed up to be an organ donor through their state registry.

The hope is that Facebook’s initiative will bring out the conversation around organ donation and propel it into the realm of social media trends—a far and noble cry from your standard Facebook memes (God knows, I think we’ve all had enough of “FML” and “Texts from Last Night.”)

“We’re hoping people will be excited about the initiative and it will prompt them to take the next step and register to be a donor,” said Aisha Huertas Michel, who works with Donate Life America.

Sure enough, last Tuesday, the first day of the initiative, organ donation registries in 10 states reported as many new volunteer donors as they typically see in one month. According to Donate Life America’s stats, California alone witnessed a 700 percent increase over the number of new volunteers on a typical day.

By Tuesday evening, 100,000 people had declared themselves organ donors on their Facebook profiles, a critical step, physicians said, in speeding the organ donation process because it lets families know their relatives’ wishes.

Among those 100,000 users, 10,000 had linked through Facebook to sign up directly with their state organ donation registries.

Surgeons and transplant advocates have heralded the program, calling the initiative a “game changer.”

In an interview on Good Morning America on Tuesday, Zuckerberg also cited his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, who is studying to become a pediatrician, in inspiring the initiative. “Our dinner conversations are often about Facebook and kids, and the kids that she’s meeting,” he said. “She’ll see them getting sicker, then, all of a sudden, an organ becomes available, and she comes home and her face is all lit up because someone’s life is going to be better because of this.”

Dr. Jeffrey Punch, director of transplant surgery at the University of Michigan, was also complimentary of Facebook’s efforts, though not without emphasizing the severe need for organ donors in the real world, not just online. “This is a huge step forward,” he said. “But nothing is going to solve donation problem overnight.”

Weekend Roundup May 3,2012
• May 7, 2012

The Virginia Gold Cup Celebrates 87 Years

May 5th, 2012 at 10:00 AM | $85 for a car pass (up to 6 passengers) | Event Website

One of the nation’s largest steeplechase races where 50,000 people will gather to see the finest horses in the world compete over the lush green course. Features six hurdle and timber horse races, Jack Russel Terrier races, tent, tailgate and hat contects and 30 vender booths for shopping

Address

Great Meadow

5089 Old Tavern Road

The Plains, VA

African Wildlife Ambassadors: Cheetah Day

May 5th, 2012 at 11:00 AM | Free | zoonj@si.edu | Tel: 202-633-3455 | Event Website

Join the African Wildlife Ambassadors as they celebrate the fastest land animal on the planet—the cheetah—with a day of fun-filled, family-friendly activities. See special animal demos and keeper talks; touch and feel cheetah objects; get a temporary tattoo; take your picture with a life-size cheetah plush or cardboard cutout; learn how cheetahs communicate and leave a message for the cats on the Scent Tree; guess the weight of the animals at the Cheetah Conservation Station and win a prize.

Address

Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park,

3001 Connecticut Ave NW,

Washington DC, 20008

Meet Author Gregory Jordan

May 5th, 2012 at 01:00 PM | jwilliams@ipgbook.com | Tel: 312.337.0747

Meet author Gregory Jordan at a book signing that he will conduct at Politics and Prose for his new book: Willie Mays Aikens: Safe at Home.

About the book:
In 1980, Willie Mays Aikens became the first Major League Baseball player to hit two home runs in one game twice in a World Series and was tabbed by many as the “next Reggie Jackson.” But Aikens drove himself out of baseball and into one of the longest prison sentences ever given to a professional athlete.

Address

Politics and Prose

5015 Connecticut Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20016

Eileen Fisher Styling Event at The Phoenix

May 5th, 2012 at 10:00 AM | 202.338.4404 | Event Website

Enjoy a gift with your Eileen Fisher purchase & giveaways throughout the day! 10% of Eileen Fisher purchase of 4250 or more will be donated to Fair Chance.

Address

The Phoenix

1514 Wisconsin Ave. NW Georgetown

Washington DC 20007

The National Cinco de Mayo Festival

May 5th, 2012 at 12:00 PM | Event Website

The Maru Montero Dance Company and LULAC are celebrating 20 years of hosting the festival with a free concert by Luis Enrique, health screenings, healthy food demonstrations with celebrity chefs and important health information

Address

Sylvan Theatre on the National Mall

Will on the Hill, 10th anniversary of Political Satire

May 7th, 2012 at 07:30 PM | $50 | WillontheHill@ShakespeareTheatre.org | Tel: (202) 547-3230

About the play: Director and his stage manager must coral a group of Washington luminaries into giving a benefit performance of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in a short time and with an inexperienced cast .. but all turns out well in the end.

Address

Shakespeare Theatre Company

516 8th St SE

No Extending Liquor-serving hours, but yes to Sunday Store Sales
• May 4, 2012

There’s an old operetta song that basically encourages and celebrates the joy of drinking.

It’s called “Drink, Drink, Drink.”
Maybe on Sunday. But to all hours of the morning? Really?

Mayor Vincent Gray, always in search of surplus revenue, has proposed extending operating hours for bars and restaurants from two to three a.m. in the morning on weeknights, and from three to four a.m. on Friday and Saturday, easily the busiest drink, drink, drink nights of the week.

There is also a proposal that liquor stores in the District of Columbia be allowed to operate on Sundays, as they are currently in Virginia and Maryland.

To the first, we say: seriously?

To the second, we say, okay, why not, what’s good for Maryland and Virginia shouldn’t be that bad for the District of Columbia.

But more opportunities to be further inebriated into the early morning hours–is that a good idea? For Georgetown–where the restaurant and bar activity is high profile, as well as for such areas as downtown DC, Logan Circle on P Street, 14th and U, Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle, that just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

All of these neighborhoods feature a bar and restaurant scene that doesn’t always align smoothly with its residential areas. Muggings and thefts, especially at closing time, are often a feature and consequence of that scene, when customers make their way to their cars, or in the case of Georgetown University students, to their dormitories or apartments.

It hardly makes sense to us because extending hours also extends opportunities for mischief and crime and further disturbs the peace of the residential areas. The potential human costs of such an extension, it seems to us, offsets whatever increase in the coffers of restaurants and the District’s tax revenues.