News & Politics

Veena Trehan • July 26, 2011

For D.C. residents wilting in 90-plus-degree days, stepping out of the heat can be a welcome relief. But chilly stores and restaurants are bringing winter back at great harm to our budget, bodies, and planet. Crank up your thermostats, Washingtonians, and rack up these benefits:

#1 An Accidental Bikini-Ready Bod — Georgetown saleswoman Durban Clarke is on an unintentional diet. “Normally I have a big ol’ sandwich for lunch,” she sighs languidly, withering in an 84-degree store with broken air conditioning. “Today I could barely finish a pear.” Not surprising: eating less and lighter is typical when hot. That’s useful information for locals trying to shed a few pounds before lounging in swimwear as well as others aiming to drop more. And the evidence is beyond anecdotal. A study in a 2006 International Journal of Obesity cites air conditioning as an important, often overlooked contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic. It’s time for Washingtonians to warm up — and slim down.

#2 Eliminating the Implicit Instruction: “Bring a Jacket, It’s 95 Degrees” —
Many workers must dress both for inside temperatures in the 60s or low 70s and sweltering outside air or suffer the consequences. For one Georgetown worker keeping warm starts at her core. “I wear a padded bra every day to work,” she confesses. But avoiding frequent battles over thermostat settings with her male coworkers requires even more — her chair holds a jacket and a sweater while her desk hides a space heater. Numerous other locals use their props in winter and summer with little basis. Four of five people around the world are comfortable between from about 76 and 89 degrees at a 92-degree outdoor temperature, according to analysis in the air conditioning book “Losing Our Cool” by Stan Cox.

#3 “It’s How Much?” (or Avoiding Statement Shock) —
It took the last seven summers to bring two 100-degree days but the mercury’s already reached 100 three times this year. And June featured more than twice the usual count of 90-degree days. The soaring heat is sending electricity bills skyward. Boosting the thermostat can keep them in check. Pepco recommends setting air conditioning to 78 degrees and using energy-efficient fans. “Every degree you raise your thermostat can result in a 5 percent savings on the cost of cooling your home,” says Clay Anderson, spokesman for the electric company which serves more than 750,000 Maryland and D.C. residents.

#4 Conserving Energy: It’s In Again — Conservation may not be as hip as it was in 1979 when solar panels topped the White House and jumpsuit-clad residents pored over electric bills. But the reasons to cut back are just as compelling. Local provider Pepco’s fuel mix relies much more on carbon-emitting sources (three-quarters overall, including 40 percent coal) than carbon-free (about one-quarter nuclear and renewables). And using carbon-producing energy can contribute to a nasty cycle where greater greenhouse gas emissions bring warmer temperatures which prompt more a/c use. Turning down the thermostat — particularly during hot daytime hours — can also help avoid electrical equipment failures. Make it warmer to shrink carbon footprints and lessen grid stress.

#5 (No More) “You’re Hot Then You’re Cold” —
So sings a furious Katy Perry afraid of being jilted at the altar. Frequent temperature hiccups might be easier on the emotions but they’re uncomfortable physically. In fact, a year after central air conditioning was installed in the U.S. Capitol, Rep. John Rankin rose to complain that the 15 to 20 degree temperature differential was too much. “This is a regular Republican atmosphere,” said the Mississippi Democrat, “and it’s enough to kill anyone if it continues.” In fact, surrounding temperatures rarely varied by 30-plus degrees until this century, and many signs show we aren’t made to duck in and out of cold spaces. The quick switch stresses out bodies that have to adjust their internal thermostat, which can bring on headaches and chills and lower immunity to colds.

Of course, the usual cautions apply. Stay hydrated. Be alert for symptoms that might indicate heat illness, particularly in vulnerable populations like seniors and children. But generally, boost those temps as an act of consideration for your coworkers and clients, and for people everywhere.

Gary Tischler •

Baseball will always be the same, no matter how much it isn’t the same.

You can dress it up all you want with mascot races, raffle drawings, over-priced hot dogs, home-run explosions and astronomical salaries, but there will always be small boys down by the dugout, staring longingly at the kid pitcher, seeing their someday selves. There will always be older people sitting in the shady seats under bleachers, taking it all in, remembering. There will always be guys in T-shirts, sons and fathers with matching mitts, suburban college kids basking in beer, guys posing with the portraits of legends like DiMaggio, Mantle and Cobb.

There will always be phenoms.

That’s what the Washington Nationals have right now: an out-and-out, genuine, dyed-in-the-fastball phenom and All-American young guy with a beard stubble and a hundred-mile-an-hour whiffer.

That would be Stephen Strasburg, the rookie sensation pitcher who, in four starts since coming up from the minors like a savior, has won two, lost one, and struck out a ton. He’s young, unassuming, professional, married and throws a ball that sinks like the Titanic on its last breath.

That’s what a group of seniors from the Georgetown Senior Center, still game in their own way, and still reeling with memories from the loss of founder Virginia Allen, got to see for a trip to the ballpark led by Jorge Bernardo, driving the van and leading the way.

They ate hot dogs, stayed out of the sun, they cheered as grandmother and grandson (Marta Mejia and Sebastian Carazo), aunt and nephew (Helen Adams and Gerard Duckett) and mother and daughter (Janice Rahimi and Jamila), or as themselves, like Gloria Jiminez, Jane Markovic, Betty Snowden, Betty Hoppel and volunteer Mary Meyer.

Some cheered as old diehard Chicago baseball fans, like Vivian Lee, who, as the presidential mascot race came up, remembered the ways of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, Jr., who was the first great baseball promoter. “People thought he was a little bit crazy,” she said. “In Chicago, you were back in the 1950s and probably now a White Sox Fan or a Cubs fan. I was a White Sox fan. We lived in Hyde Park.”

We reminisced, rattled off old names: Early Wynn, Chico Carresquel, Minnie Minoso, Rocky Colavito, Nellie Fox and so on.

Baseball lives on like that, in the reciting of names.

Down by the field, before the game, Strasburg was warming up: raised leg, follow through, intense concentration, red uniform on green field. Cameras were clicking in the sun.

The game was like a slow, teasing dance. Strasburg struck out nine, but gave up nine hits, most of them, strangely, on two-strike counts. It may be that the kid doesn’t know how to throw a bad pitch on purpose, which is a learned thing with time.

In front of us, a young man was yelling and screaming, drowning out the occasional “yikes” from our group. He could have been Strasburg — except for the tattoos, the nose piercing, the fanatic eyes. But he did sport a wobbly chin beard and he bounced up, hand held high, before I realized he was high-fiving. He ran down the row of the Georgetown ladies and high-fived them all after another Strasburg strike out.

That’s the game, folks.

It ended 1-0 for the Kansas City Royals, on dinkers and dubious hits and on nothing much for us.

But everyone will remember the afternoon, the silence on the field, the shadows, the stillness until the windup and the pitch.

That was baseball, the day the folks from the Georgetown Senior Center came to watch.

Gary Tischler •

Contentious, abrasive, thorough, skeptical, dogged, courageous, trustworthy. High praise, indeed.

All of those words are job requirements and descriptions for what today is an endangered species in the field of journalism: the investigative reporter.

All of those words pretty much fit Daniel Schorr, one of the last of the great television and radio reporters who passed away at the age of 93 last week.

Today’s luminaries in the news may have more memorable faces, more dramatic delivery, and they’re certainly better looking, but they can’t hold a candle to the likes of Schorr, who managed to tick off just about every president, elected official and government official he came in contact with, including Nikita Khrushchev, Eisenhower, JFK, CIA directors, senate committee chairs and, most fondly and importantly to him, President Richard Nixon.

Schorr, who died while still working for National Public Radio, came from the Edward R. Murrow informal school of journalism, full of tough, in-your-face, questioning reporters and anchors. That school included Walter Cronkite, once the anchor for the nation on CBS, a network for which Schorr worked until becoming embroiled in intelligence committee findings he discovered, reported and then leaked IN TOTO during the presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

Schorr was discovered by Murrow and became a member of his team, though in his own idiosyncratic way. He was a CBS reporter in Moscow until a KGB reporter refused to let him return. He managed to anger both Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, but most of all he made Nixon, who didn’t like the media to begin with, turn green and paranoid.

Schorr managed to win Emmy for his Watergate reporting on CBS, for “outstanding achievement within a regularly scheduled program.”

His reporting landed Schorr on Nixon’s infamous “enemies” list a large and eclectic rundown of political foes which also included the likes of Broadway star Carol Channing and New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. Schorr, like many members of the list, was inordinately proud of his presence there.

In the 1970s, a House Committee investigating the intelligence community, especially the CIA, decided to dub its finding secret. Schorr leaked the findings to the Village Voice after CBS refused to run the story. He was subsequently fired, leading to questions about his integrity, a reporter’s most valuable asset. Schorr, in the end, was vindicated, and you can find an echo of the incident in the recent leaking of classified information about the Afghan war by a watchdog Web site.

Schorr’s passing, like that of Cronkite, is a reminder of the huge changes in the media. They’ve never been replaced.

Gary Tischler •

There’s no question that education reform is the biggest issue in the 2010 District of Columbia election campaign.

Mayor Adrian Fenty ran on a promise to reform the District’s woeful school system and won big time in 2006. Now, he’s backing his designated Chancellor Michelle Rhee in her every move, including her struggle to gain control over hiring and firing teachers. Rhee herself seems to have interjected herself into the campaign when she questioned challenger Chairman Vincent Gray’s commitment to education reform and whether he would support a activist reform chancellor like herself fully.

So it stands to reason, as rumors swirled last week, that when Rhee announced that she was dismissing 241 teachers, the majority of which had received poor or below-minimum performance evaluations under a new and controversial grading system, sooner or later the other shoe would drop.

After all, the 241 (and another 700 or more who are under the cloud of being judged “minimally effective”) teachers, coupled with the nearly 300 who were terminated after a controversial budget crisis last year, amount to over 10 percent of the D.C. teacher workforce. (Some of the 241 were fired for not being properly credentialed).

The firings, based on a new evaluation system called IMPACT, which included at least 50 percent value on test scores, comes about a month before schools are set to open and a little less than two months before the Sept. 14 primaries.

Yet, at this writing, political response has been muted. While the D.C. Teachers Union and its president have vowed to challenge the firings, which would seem to indicate they were surprised by the evaluations, and while there is considerable chat among bloggers, education professionals and the like about what the firings mean and the use of IMPACT, Gray so far has not taken a stand. He said only that he wanted to look further into the basis for the firings.

The firings, and the union protest, come after the District and the union had successfully negotiated a complicated contract agreement earlier this year, which included retroactive pay raises for the teachers but more control over firing by Rhee. An impending mass firing, or the use of IMPACT evaluation for this year appears not to have been mentioned at the time, although the union did object to the use of IMPACT in general.

Mayor Fenty and Rhee aggressively defended the firings as further steps forward in education reform. “Every child in the District of Columbia Public Schools has a right to an effective teacher, in every classroom, every school, every neighborhood, every ward of this city,” Rhee said. Fenty said the action puts the District one step closer to that goal.

Not explained was who would replace the fired teachers.

The issue now becomes who takes command of the education reform issue, an issue in which D.C., for better or worse, is now in the forefront of a national movement. With the firings, that issue has become central to any future debates in the election campaign.

Gary Tischler •

There is a new mental health problem out there. I call it The Real Housewives of Washington D.C. Stress Syndrome. It’s what can happen to you after watching just one episode of the much-anticipated, much-ballyhooed Bravo reality show which features not only the notorious Michaele Salahi and her husband Tareq but four other so-called D.C. women in proximity to power and status, which is all that counts in Washington, apparently.

I admit it: I watched the first episode. I don’t dare go further, because, well, God only knows what will happen. As it was, I dreamt about the episodes afterward, and they weren’t good dreams. After each commercial break I felt as if I were a runway model, needing to purge. This stuff will do things to you.

For the record, I am no longer quite so bothered about the Salahis. I see now why they wanted so desperately to appear on this show. Like needs like, and to them, the crowd on this show must have seemed like a vision of home. Problem is, the rest of the cast is not happy about being with them, as we found out, and no doubt will continue to find out. Lynda Erkiletian, founder of the T.H.E. Artist Agency, has already started a whispering campaign that Michaele is dangerously thin and an intervention might be required.

Why this show is called housewives of Washington, real or unreal, is beyond me. Much of it seems to be in Virginia, but then again, there was the 1.5 million ratings, big numbers for cable. Who knew there were that many people in McLean?

The Salahis almost feel like naifs in this group, which includes Stacie Scott Turner, a Sotheby’s realtor and the only black member of the housewives. Turner keeps looking agog at her racially insensitive friends, who say things like “I think hair salons should be integrated.” In fact, if you watch this show, you might get the impression that the most powerful people in Washington are not the president, politicians or lobbyists, but celebrity chefs and hair dressers.

Meanwhile, newly arrived Brit Catherine Ommanney (Cat for short, and appropriately so) is vying for the role of queen of mean and making her way in what she sees as the top social circles in Washington. Why anyone would talk to a woman who wrote a self-described “racy” tell-all memoir about living in London called “Inbox Full” is beyond me, but this a world full of “beyond me” moments.

It does make you think about the end of civilization as we know it, as do many things today. Sometimes it seems as if the only American contributions to world popular culture in the 21st century have been zombie movies and reality shows, and often its hard to tell the differences between “28 Days Later” and “The Rachel Zoe Project.”

Michaele complains on this episode that people don’t think she and her husband are people of substance and insists that they are. She feels, after all, that if people hugged more, the world would be a better place, which is hard to argue with since it’s such a jaw dropper. And she has, after all, gone toe to toe with Whoopee Goldberg.

In the world of reality shows, you don’t have to pick on one person, there’s so much to choose from, and that doesn’t even include Billy Bush. What we have here is the physical manifestation of absolute weightlessness, if such a thing is possible.

Remember, this report was written while under the influences of TRHOWDC Syndrome. I cannot be held responsible for my words.

Jeff Malet •

I recently had a ringside seat to some of the best in political theater. (To be precise, I wasn’t actually “ringside” but in the center of the ring in the photographer’s pit, and my “seat” was the floor.) I am referring to the separate hearings this month on Capitol Hill between members of the Senate and prominent figures from Wall Street and the oil industry.

These hearings represented but another chapter in the century’s old tug-of-war between advocates of free markets against those pushing for stronger regulation. Earlier chapters were punctuated by the breaking up of the big corporate trusts by Teddy Roosevelt, and the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a response to abuses that precipitated the Great Crash of 1929 (and the subsequent Depression). Both of these measures provided firm underpinnings for the long-term health and growth of our economy and society. Today, after an extended period of relaxed regulation and government oversight, another major reexamination is certainly in order.

The behavior of Goldman Sachs and BP was predictable. The officers of any corporation owe their allegiance first and foremost to their shareholders, and their goal is to maximize profits to those shareholders. Nothing implies that these corporate goals have to be consistent with the American public interest.

BP, of course, is primarily owned by foreign shareholders. But much of the American public would be surprised at the large degree to which foreign interests own shares in most major American-based corporations. And many do not appreciate that the oil BP will produce in deep water, for which it pays minimal royalties to our government, is destined for the international oil markets. The pollution that these wells produce, of course, stays right here in the USA.

Goldman Sachs derives much of its profit from its trading desk, where many believe it uses its market-making position to unfair advantage and to the detriment of its customers. Many of these activities, while creating profits for Goldman Sachs, provide questionable benefits to the overall economy.

It’s all about accountability and responsibility. An economy functions best when resources are optimally allocated, so costs to the environment must be born by the polluters. Unfortunately, ethical behavior on Wall Street often takes a back seat to the allure of big money. To quote James Madison, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Some have argued that our fragile economy cannot tolerate further regulation, but the opposite is certainly true.

The author, a former mutual fund manager, contributes photographs to The Georgetowner and The Downtowner.
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