Helen Hayes Awards Adopts New Name
• October 17, 2011

The Helen Hayes Awards announced today the completion of the re-branding of their organization, unveiling their new name, theatreWashington, which will continue to promote Washington-area theaters. The change in name comes with a new system of governance, a rearranged staff and a revamped website. The Helen Hayes Awards will continue one part of theatreWashington’s main focuses. The 2012 Helen Hayes Awards is set for April 23 at the Warner Theatre.

The organization is now structured into five branches, Theatre Services, Communications and Audience Development, TheatreWashington.org, Operations and Development, all overseen by President and CEO Linda Levy Grossman.

According to a recent press release: “theatreWashington will be governed by a 25 member Board of Directors led by Chairman Victor Shargai, (President, Victor Shargai and Associates); Vice Chairman Betsy Karmin (Partner, DLA Piper); Secretary Robert Winter (Partner, Arnold and Porter); and Treasurer Kurt Crowl (Vice President, Connoisseur Travel. The Board of Directors will also include four members of the professional theatre community.

The Helen Hayes Awards will be overseen by a 20 member Board of Governors comprised of members of the professional theatre community and knowledgeable theatre supporters.”

The new website, TheatreWashington.org, will be completed in phases through the end of the year and will feature a “Find a Show” function which will allow users to search and filter productions.

“It is wonderful to finally do the things we have envisioned for so long,” said Grossman in a press release. “So many partners have worked tirelessly for more than two years to bring theatreWashington to fruition. We are fortified with a great team so the combination of our expanded capacity along with the collaboration and involvement of our Washington theatres, makes for endless possibilities.”

Navigate Your Columbus Day
• October 13, 2011

Parking enforcement will be suspended for the duration of Columbus Day, meaning that ticketing for expired parking meters and residential parking will not take place. Happy parking!

Trash and recycling will not be collected today and will instead be shifted one day back for the remainder of the week, meaning that Monday’s trash will be collected on Tuesday and so on. If you live in a neighborhood where trash is collected twice a week, Monday and Thursday collections will be made Tuesday and Friday while collections made Tuesday and Friday will be made Wednesday and Saturday.

Metrorail and Metrobus services will run on Saturday schedules. The following late night trips, however, have been cancelled: G2 from Georgetown at 12:58 a.m. and 1:34 a.m., G2 form LeDroit Park at 12:30 a.m. and 1:06 a.m., D2 from Glover Park at 1:12 a.m., 1:52 a.m. and 2:32 a.m., D2 from Dupont Circle Station at 1:35 a.m., 2:15 a.m. and 2:55 a.m.

All D.C. Public Schools and offices will be closed, as well as the Public Library and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Al Davis Dies at 85
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The Department of THEY DON’T MAKE THEM LIKE THAT ANYMORE, professional football team owners division.

Washington is a town of football fanatics, especially Redskin fanatics. The Redskins have had their share of hate ‘em or love ‘em or both owners. The irascible Jack Kent Cooke among them with his three super bowl titles. Cooke’s legendary ego got a pass from most fans, just as the fact that Dan Snyder’s failure to even get into a Super Bowl has a lot to do with fan displeasure.

When it comes to ego, legend and sheer can-you-top-this personality, there probably wasn’t anybody larger in life and legend than Al Davis, the Oakland Raiders owner and sometimes coach who helped bring about the creation of Super Bowls and the merger of the National Football League with the fledgling American Football League and took his team back and forth from Oakland to Los Angeles and back, much to the displeasure of the NFL.

There was nobody quite like Davis, who passed away at the age of 85 last week. As coach and owner of the Raiders, he helped build an outlaw image for the team, who wore black and silver uniforms and acted and played like pirates. In 48 years, his Raiders won 15 conference titles and three Super Bowls including an embarrassing rout of the Redskins led by Joe Gibbs.

He had legendary players—Big Ben Davidson, a lineman with a mustache as big as his head, George Blanda, the eternal quarterback and place kicker who played practically forever until his death last year, Ken “The Snake” Stabler, a quarterback of Southern daring, the controversial and hard-hitting safety Jack Tatum, and Gene Upshaw, an offensive guard who rose to become head of the NFL Players Union.

Only one team in the AFL was meaner and tougher, and that was the Terry Bradshaw led Pittsburgh Steelers who had the Raiders’ number.

Davis was brash, outspoken, paranoid, egomaniacal and had a brilliant football mind and was forward looking in leading the way to the merger than made the NFL the greatest show on earth.

As a young sports writer in Northern California, I went to write a feature about the Raiders’ training camp in Santa Rosa one year. I accidentally wandered into Davis’ office and when he discovered me, he blew a gasket and would no doubt have had me shot as a spy if the trainer had not intervened. He scared the hell out of me. But I became a Raiders fan nonetheless.

Legend has it—and I can’t vouch for this—that Davis, a workaholic, came home at 5 a.m. once and his sleeping wife turned and moaned “Oh God.” The story has it that Davis said, “You can call me Al at home, honey.” I believe the story.

One of a kind.

Lincoln Theatre to Remain Open
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Unlike the words Langston Hughes once used in his poem “Lincoln Theatre,” the movies won’t end.

For the past 24 months the Lincoln Theatre has struggled with financial sustainability and still does. Yet it will not be closing, but is in a state of dire financial struggle. At the press conference held Thursday afternoon, it was confirmed that the theatre is in need of operating funds from the District to keep the doors open past the end of the calendar year.

However, the theatre may not be getting the city funding that it needs and has scheduled a meeting with the mayor to resolve these issues.

Rick Lee, a board member of the U Street Foundation Board which operates the theatre, explained the frustration the theatre is going through.

“We found out that there is $89 million to be [divided] up across the city [for operation funding], and we’re not going to be getting any of it,” said Lee.

According to the board, the mayor has not responded to the request they put forth and the theatre must continue its struggle to maintain sustainability in the constant economic crisis affecting them.

Cynthia Robinson, another board member, stressed how important the resources they get later on in the year are. “In order for a public theatre owned by the District to operate effectively, it must have committed resources to support the operations,” Robinson said.

Robinson detailed how they have been getting the money in the past, saying that they receive their own revenue, rentals, fundraising and finally District funding for operations.

“Most of the money we get is going to go straight to keeping the doors open,” said Robinson. However, there is a staff that must be provided for and also monthly payments to be added in.

The average annual budget for the theatre is $1.7 million and their general monthly operating expenses come out to $60,000 per month. The cash on hand for them as of now is $50,000.

These problems could impact the theatre in different and drastic ways including: the ability to leave the doors open until the end of the year, the power to stage some shows and the inability to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Lincoln Theatre.

Council member Jim Graham of Ward 1 made an appearance at the conference and gave his assurance that the theatre will continue with its doors open. “We are hopeful that once we meet with the mayor, we can discuss a new system and new governance of reconsideration of these [funding] issues. That way we can assure the people that this theatre will continue to function,” Graham said.
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GBA Says Farewell to Summer on Annual Boat Ride
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The popular annual boat ride on the Potomac River, hosted by the Georgetown Business Association, brings business leaders, residents, colleagues and friends together for easy-going river sightseeing. The Sept. 21 trip, organized by the GBA’s Sue Hamilton, left Washington Harbour to view the monuments as well as Key Bridge. Captain Al Slaughter, who with his brother Eric owns Capital Yacht Charters, took the helm of the company’s Harbour Belle. D.C. councilman-at-large Vincent Orange greeted the group and went along for the ride. Food was provided by Chadwick’s Restaurant, drinks by Rhino Bar and desserts by Serendipity3 D.C. – and GBA logo cookies from Toute Sweets.

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Georgetown Waterfront Park, Years in the Making, Opens
• October 7, 2011

The completed transformation of Georgetown’s land along the Potomac River was celebrated with an official National Park Service ceremony Sept. 13 at Wisconsin Avenue and K Street. Friends and volunteers came together to salute the completion of Georgetown Waterfront Park and to honor former Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.), the park’s most influential advocate and longtime 34th Street resident, who is gravely ill.

The $24-million, 9.5-acre park was a project of the National Park Service, the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park and the District of Columbia government. The park was designed by Wallace Roberts & Todd of Philadelphia and completes 225 miles of parkland along the Potomac River’s shoreline, stretching from Mount Vernon, Va., north to Cumberland, Md. It is the largest park to be created in D.C. since Constitution Gardens was completed on the National Mall in 1976. Construction began in 2006.

Once the land of old Georgetown’s wharves and factories, the riverside had deteriorated into parking lots and empty land. In 1985, the District of Columbia transferred the waterfront land to the National Park Service. In the late 1990s, the Georgetown Waterfront Commission made the final, long push for completion, bringing together volunteers, residents, the rowing community, local leaders and the National Park Service as it highlighted the Potomac’s signature sport: rowing.

The park features pathways, granite artwork that tells the story of Georgetown as a port, a labyrinth, a bio-engineered river edge along with the newest and most popular attractions: a pergola, fountain and river stairs.

At the ceremony, Rock Creek Park Superintendent Tara Morrison greeted the crowd as it faced the Potomac, Roosevelt Island and the Kennedy Center and boats, helicopters and airplanes passed by.

“This is a grand day,” announced Robert vom Eigen, president of the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, who thanked all those working for years to change unused industrial lots into parkland, now part of the Park Service.

“No one would have loved more to be here front row and center,” said WETA president and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller of her father, Sen. Percy, whose picture is on a park plaque. Revealing that he is ill at Sibley Hospital, Rockefeller choked up as she said, “He would be thrilled to see this magnificent setting. It is his fondest and last best work.”

On behalf of the District, Ward 2 councilman Jack Evans thanked the three most responsible for the final push to get the park done: Ann Satterthwaite, Robert vom Eigen and Grace Bateman.

Paraphrasing Frederick Douglass’s thoughts on visitors to the nation’s capital, Robert Stanton of the Park Service said, “When they visit Washington, D.C., they would be at home. For those who visit Georgetown Waterfront Park, they will be home as well.”

Afterwards, hometown architects Hugh Jacobsen and Arthur Cotton Moore, sitting together at the House of Sweden reception for the park after the ceremony, approved of the new work. Pleased to see parkland and businesses side by side, Moore joked, “Hugh and I are going down those steps [at the river] tomorrow in our swimming suits.”

Sculptor John Dreyfuss, also trained as an architect, summed up Georgetown’s newest creation: “It is a triumph.”

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DC: Racism Redefined?
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By Deklan

One of the oldest and most defended characterizations of human nature is our innate desire to be hateful for no reason. Racism has been woven into the fabric of our culture, of our upbringing, and has long worked its way into our daily lives. And while racism still rules in smaller cities and communities throughout this great country, in larger, more culturally diverse cities like D.C., the nature of our diversity disproves the beliefs that racism is founded on. Right?

Admittedly, D.C. has long been a city where racial lines run deep enough to tear the city into pieces. But racism, by definition, is the belief that there are differences in people based on race and skin color. The fact that there are so many colors, so many cultures, and so many characters in D.C. makes it impossible to be racist. Sure, you can hate a group of people based on the color of their skin, but the only thing you can prove that they have in common is the color of their skin, and even that isn’t the same from person to person.

Which brings up racism’s brother and sister: prejudice and stereotyping. Prejudice takes racism to a new level, allowing an opportunity to hate someone for whatever reason you can come up with: sexual orientation, obesity, homelessness, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. And our prejudices are often based on stereotypes that we inherit and develop through environmental situations, first-hand experiences, TV and social influences.

As a culture, prejudices and stereotypes will always exist. Attributing them to other people is part of our human need to make sense of the world around us. But it doesn’t have to be negative. George Carlin said about racism that it isn’t the words we use that are bad, “it’s the racist who’s using it that you ought to be concerned about.”

That being said, is it possible to make prejudices and stereotypes funny? For example, when you see an Asian person parallel park, do you watch to see if they can do it on the first try? Are you ever shocked when your North African cab driver doesn’t drive like he’s being shot at? Or have you ever said “Hola” to a Latino person and they reply “Hey, how ya doin’?” in plain English? What about a white man who rushes past a crowd to get to the door first, only to hold it for everyone else?

On another level, D.C. has generally two types of residents: those who live here because they live here, and those who live here because they work here. Still, it often seems like everyone here is on his or her own mission. But with D.C.’s high rent, high gas, high cost of living and horrible traffic problems, who has time to hate, really? Granted there are some nice paying jobs in this city, but seriously . . . most of us are working two jobs (or more) just to pay rent and buy food. Then again, the stress from that can cause anyone to lash out I suppose. Even then, our frustrations and aggression need not be taken out on others.

As Washingtonians, we should be working to set an example to the rest of the world on how cities can function. D.C. has the ability to break stereotypes based on color and ethnicity and race. This city teaches us that we’re all different in ways that should be celebrated instead of degraded. D.C. gives us an opportunity not to judge a book by its cover, a person by his or her skin color, or cultures by the people who represent them—because just when you think you’ve got it figured out, someone will come along and prove you wrong.

Deklan is a writer & photographer living in D.C. by way of the BP oil spill.

9/11: A Once and Future Unity
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The crisp, blue Tuesday morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was deadline day for the Georgetowner newspaper. As editor-in-chief at the time I was wondering which feature should become the cover story and considered them all less than compelling. I mused: I wish something more interesting would come along to cover. Be careful what you wish for, I know now too well. Leaving home early for the office, I had not seen the morning TV news and did not know what I had just happened at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. At the office I saw and heard the hellish news of deaths that has never really gone away. Some staffers were trying to finish work on the issue, while others were out viewing the smoke of the Pentagon and hearing helicopters and fighter jets above. Most just felt stunned and unbelieving.

Publisher Sonya Bernhardt was arranging advertising page positions, and editor David Roffman stared at his computer, still typing, recalling that huge mass of smoke he saw when coming over Key Bridge. We, the stunned and unbelieving, did not know quite what else to do. I shook my head and went outside. After high noon, I wandered toward Halcyon House which has a panorama of the Potomac and where you can see the Pentagon over in Arlington. Smoke still puffed into the azure sky. I looked down on M Street nearby, where the flag was flying in Francis Scott Key Park. This Star-Spangled Banner was flying as defiantly as its original had 187 years earlier in the face of a foreign menace. As neighbors John Dreyfuss and Chris Murray looked from the railing with me, I held up the camera and took the cover shot for the week. Hell of a way to make deadline.

Weeks and months after 9/11, the Georgetowner wrote headlines like “Terrorism Hits Home” and “A New Age Begins.” Sincere, fresh respect for firefighters, police officers and other first responders erupted, even as the anthrax threat spread. We were in a new world together. Everyone pitched in with a unity of stories on local and business news, interviews, commentary and advice. Experts, such as former national security advisor Robert McFarlane and historian Fred Hubig, gave their take on our newfound world of terrorism. Along with others, contributors like Dorree Lynn (Jack Evans and Bill Starrels included) and photographers Patrick Ryan and Neshan Naltchayan were on the scene – and still are. Still others have departed, like longtime editor and publisher David Roffman who has retired to the Gulf Coast and former associate publisher Victoria Michael, who runs a thriving public relations business. (I left the newspaper for public relations and editorial consulting but still write for it as an editor, too.)

Ten years ago, those singular evil acts welded an inseparability for all of us here, in the city and nation and, perhaps, through the world. Lives have been lost, then and since, as have new lives arrived to validate new hope. We know exactly where we were then – hearts ache for those who died – and since, what shall we say? That such a unity fades like the smoke we saw?

Today, in our historic neighborhood and nation’s capital, the Georgetown Media Group boasts young, smart writers, editors, designers and marketers – interns, too. Through all the changes, its publisher Sonya Bernhardt never stops working for improvement along with another who has never stopped: stalwart writer Gary Tischler, whose words have their own soulful unity. These two exemplify perseverance.

If September 11 is to become a day united by purposeful service, we know something about that. Just remember to wish carefully.

Memory and Witness in a Post-9/11 World
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Like witnesses at a traffic accident, everybody remembers that singular, defining day differently yet, at the same time, everyone has similar recollections of that morning in their memories and dreams.
Hard to imagine the thoughts, feelings and memories of those at ground zero and beyond in New York or the people on those doomed planes, flying into buildings, crashing into the green earth, ripping into the Pentagon. We have stories about the events, the people who survived them, those in proximity or close by in shock.

An amazing number of people recall the quality of the morning just before the first plane struck—an incredibly blue sky, here in Washington and there in New York.
All the memories will come back throughout this week and on Sunday when the memorial in New York is dedicated—there will be concerts, the sound of taps, exhibitions, commemorations, marches, and the names of the victims inscribed, recited, going out into the air of whatever weathered day there will be.

I remember a woman who was huddled around a television monitor at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington as one of the towers collapsed in a cloud of improbable dust. There was a collective gasp from the group around the monitor, people were holding their hands to their mouths, or rubbing their heads tilted backward. The woman, who was here for a medical convention was thin and stood ramrod still and said, to no one in particular, “I woke upon in one world this morning, and I’m going to home to a completely different, changed world tonight.”

It was one of the more prophetic, accurate statements—no doubt, thought, felt and said by others all over the world in some form or another—of the day. And here we are, ten years later, and the wounds still bleed, the shocks still come, the understanding not very much enlarged, our casualty list tripled, the danger still there, the war, undeclared but also unending. We—and the rest of the world—remain in harm’s way, vulnerable to the plots, schemes, and attacks of terrorism, terrorists, terror itself, states which support terrorism and terrorist organizations not yet named. They are not Allah’s children, nor the heart and soul of Islam, but rather they come from the most hateful, desperate and fanatic corners and perversions of faith.

We live in a different, still-drastically-changing world. In the aftermath of 9/11, we launched an attack, with the full sympathy of the world, on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, declared a victory in a war that was just beginning, then proceeded, with much, much less clarity and certainty to invade Iraq. The outcome was muddy: Saddam Hussein was captured and eventually executed; al Qaeda led a bloody insurgency against American soldiers which was eventually quelled at considerable cost, including the public standing of President Bush. Thousands died including, at last count, 4,442 American troops. We are still fighting in Afghanistan, against both al Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban, and at latest count, 1,584 Americans have been killed there.

After years of non-stop efforts, our forces, specifically an elite Navy Seal team, tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden, the reviled, elusive mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks this year, sparking a soundtrack of celebration, but not much change.

What we have seen are attempted bombings, the massacre in Fort Hood and terrorist acts in London and Spain, India and Indonesia. We’ve seen continued bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan where the roads are lined with IEDs. We have seen entirely too many of our brave warriors coming home, wearing the very latest prosthetics. They are a part of our landscape, our memorial services, and the services for the honored dead.

We have a whole new government department—Homeland Security—we have a new airport security system which takes every ounce of pleasure out of flying and has been accompanied by controversy, argument and politics.

I think we woke up on 9/l2 with the realization that the world was not a safe place, that we as a people were hated by another group of people who characterized us in ways we did not recognize and could not understand to the point that they envisioned the plan they executed. We mourned, we dealt with anthrax, and I remember a young girl across the street from our house sitting by herself with a lit candle one evening.

If you go to the website for the New York memorial, you can call up the dead, the voices of their loved ones, the details of their lives, the faces in their photographs. We individualize our tragedies in this country, even one as large, as devastating as 9/11, savor every face and time lost on earth, as a kind of act of love. It is something the perpetrators of the acts of atrocity that day—the men with the knives and box cutters and screaming commands on the planes—could not do, they rid themselves completely of imagination and empathy and did what they did gripped by a sick, sad vision that they would be rewarded in paradise.

Sunday, their victims will rise up again as ghosts of their lives, the dead of 9/11, still alive, and bringing with them the memories of a lost world.

Jack Evans Report
• October 5, 2011

It is with great disappointment that I report to you that the D.C. Council voted last week to raise our income tax for the first time in 30 years. Last week, at our first meeting after the summer recess, Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh led an effort to raise the income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 8.95 percent on incomes over $350,000. Cheh and Mendelson were joined by Councilmembers Jim Graham, Harry Thomas, Tommy Wells, Yvette Alexander and Michael Brown in passing the measure, giving the District the fifth highest income tax rate in the country. I have been opposed to the idea to increase the income tax rate ever since it was first proposed by Mayor Vincent Gray earlier this year. It was simply not necessary in light of the hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue already identified by the District’s chief financial officer this year.

Notwithstanding the facts, proponents argued that the income tax increase was necessary to undo the ill-advised municipal bond tax – in fact, this was a false choice – an amendment I offered would have obviated the need for both new tax proposals due to the most recent $89 million in projected new revenue. My amendment failed, 7-6, however, after the seventh and deciding vote was cast by Mary Cheh to raise the income tax.

Another justification presented by those who want to gratuitously raise income taxes is that it will make the income tax more progressive. In response to that point, I asked that we consider lowering the income tax rate for lower income taxpayers, which would make the income tax rate structure more progressive without stifling economic growth.

In the same way the recent irresponsible brinksmanship in Congress undermined the confidence of voters around the country, not to mention the bond rating agencies, the disingenuous debate over the District’s finances will shake the confidence of District taxpayers who see their bills increase without justification. The District has also suffered an adverse action on its bond credit rating – while this was due to issues relating to federal government spending cuts, it could possibly have been avoided if the District had more money in its savings account.

I am very concerned as we go forward about the attitude of the Mayor and the majority of the Council with respect to our finances. The city must live with the revenue we have, and we need to bring the exponential growth in government spending back under control.

As fall approaches, there is much to do, and I look forward to facing the many challenges before us.