‘Next to Normal’ Review
• July 19, 2011

The Kennedy Center is currently hosting two very different productions that nevertheless call themselves Broadway musicals.

There’s the big, splashy, big voice, big sets, big show, big bucks (theirs and yours) “Wicked” heading through August at the Opera House, with tickets as hard to come by as a debt ceiling solution. And then there’s “Next to Normal,” with big voices, but also with big ideas, a show horse of an entirely different color and progeny.

Both probably are indicators of where Broadway might be headed, a two-way street where there’s room for both.

“Next to Normal” is such a surprise in content, intent and intensity that to call it merely a “musical” would be a serious understatement. More of a rock opera—most of the dialogue is sung in one way or another—it deals with a dysfunctional, contemporary American family struggling with its bi-polar mom at the center of its universe.

With such an inferno of psychological stress to deal with, there’s not much room for fun and funnies, and only the barest of razor-sharp ironies and tight, to the point humor. But what you end up with is something entirely original and unlikely. A frayed Cinderella of a show which began as a one-song fragment, expanded to a full-blown show, had a difficult off-Broadway run and came to be part of an Arena Stage season two years ago. Returned to Broadway, won Tonys, and—a rarity—a Pulitzer Prize, and a Tony for its star, the amazing Alice Ripley.

Ripley is on hand for the road company now at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater and if you get a chance, (July 11 is closing time) go see “Next to Normal.” It’s heart-breaking, punch-in-the-mouth, astonishing theater.

Ripley plays Diana, a diagnosed bi-polar mom, former architect, and huge bundle of unpredictable and often destructive behavior which has the whole family on constant edge. This has been an over-a-decade life situation for this family—the infinitely patient husband, the gifted daughter who feels invisible, her astonishingly kind boyfriend, the son, and of course Diana, feverish, coltish, dramatic, desperate, sexy and fascinating in a glow-in-the-dark way that people with mental illness can sometimes be. She is the dark sun of the house, along with her dark son.

The folks who put this together have some experience with “serious” musical shows—Michael Greif directed the smash hit “Rent,” a rock musical with a La Boheme touch on urban artists and their lives.

“Next to Normal,” if it has antecedents, seems a stage cousin to “American Beauty,” the dark, bitter, funny cinematic riff on suburbanites. But “Normal,” with a book by Brian Yorkey and a rock score that’s more like a condition and state of mind than tuneful or lyrical, isn’t concerned with class, place or work. It’s about a family caught up in an iron, tension-stress filled issue of illness and emotional crisis that’s just plain ongoing. The solution is very American: medicate the patient and embrace denial like a fiend, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always electric shock therapy.

In the end, of course, this isn’t social criticism or even a heavy dose of profundity with music: It’s a show about emotional pain and secrets, and the cost in wear and tear over time. It’s a tight night where you can’t get away from the anguish that everyone’s feeling, anguish we’ve all felt at some point in our lives over something. In “Next to Normal,” we really feel their pain.

The music and Ripley are the keys here—it’s not your normal Broadway score with recognizable songs and borders and cutoffs, not even next to normal, so integrated is the music into the life of the characters. While there’s recognizable “songs”—“Just Another Day” sets the sparse stage and set, “I’m Alive” is a defiant lament by the son, “Hey” is a touching, very now love song for the daughter and her new friend – the score keeps insinuating itself like another character.

Ripley has pretty much owned the part of Diana since she took it over on Broadway, and it appears to have taken a toll on her voice, which is now rich with rasp, as well as a capability to hit long and high notes, she now seems to sing the way people talk under stress. Asa Somers as her husband Dan, Preston Sadler as Henry, Curt Hansen as Gabe and Jeremy Kushner as two different shrinks are all emotionally affecting, but that’s especially true of Emma Huton as the daughter, who gets richer and better through the course of the show.

You won’t be dancing when you come out, or defying gravity. You might be a little shaky in the knees after a night with “Next to Normal.” But that’s a good thing. It’s practically next to normal.

The Player: Father John Adams
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“Our vision is that we go out of business,” says our July Player, Father John Adams, president of So Others Might Eat (SOME).

Adams is the only D.C. leader Bob Madigan and I have interviewed who speaks hopefully of the demise of his organization. And a glance around – inside the O Street building where we sit that provides medical and psychiatric care and across the street to the dining room that serves about 900 meals each day – illustrate the huge vacuum were even two of the 40 SOME facilities to disappear.

But Father John believes these services shouldn’t be the responsibility of a nonprofit. “Everybody that needs food should have it, everybody that needs a home should have it, everybody that need medical care should have it,” he elaborates.

“We’re probably going to be around a while,” he adds wryly, “especially as the economy is not getting better.”

A two-day electricity outage during our early June interview has closed down the dental clinic and limited medical care, and they’ve had to switch from hot meals to sandwiches but Father John appears unruffled. With an accent that hints of his original hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, he projects calm as he voices his commitment to D.C.’s poor and homeless.

But actions speak even louder than words or, in the quote he likes to reference by St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” And evidence of his three decades of caring and effective leadership abounds. To name just two: he was chosen as a finalist for the 2007 Opus Prize, a top international humanitarian award that brought SOME $100,000, and was selected as an Olympic torch carrier. SOME has been visited by the last three presidents; pictures show the Obama family serving lunch on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day last year.

Support (Not Just for the Celebrities)

Issues of mental health, drug abuse and addiction play out daily in the media. Politicians, journalists and actors check into rehab to cure their addictions, then surface again to promote a new show or movie. Yet for the poor these failures are more costly, often snowballing as they lose jobs, health services, safety and their homes. But our society often demonizes and depersonalizes them, viewing them as a group whose failures justify immense suffering (about 70 percent of women on the streets have been abused, as an example) and the loss of our compassion.

SOME offers deeply personalized stepping stones back to a secure and healthy life. SOME’s tagline – “restoring hope and dignity one person at a time” – and early attempts to improve food and conditions in which it was served under founder Father McKenna 40 years ago show as much.

For many, it begins with dining. The cheerful waiting room features a large screen TV showing a video of services available across the street: dental, medical or psychiatric care; support of a social worker, or help for drug addiction. After one of the two hot meals served daily, people can shower, choose from clothing donations, or remain to hear success stories of formerly homeless (20 percent of SOME staff).

“If you did it, I can do it for sure,’ they think,” says Father John, “because they knew some of these people on the streets.”

A path through SOME may include being placed in a safe house almost immediately or seeing a doctor or getting a psychiatric evaluation or dental work. Or one might join a drug treatment program of a year-and-a-half (completed successfully a high 80 percent of the time) that includes 90 days in a West Virginia facility nicknamed Miracle Mountain by its residents. Care often culminates with job training aimed at earning participants a living wage (defined by Father John as $15 per hour with full benefits).

Help Through Homes

While SOME already plays a critical role a city where one in six people live below the poverty line, their current goal, to tackle what they see as the biggest need in D.C., is even more ambitious. About seven years ago, they decided to expand permanent housing for very low income people by an additional 1000 units. Single adults, families and elderly people earning 30 percent below the median area salary are eligible. The $38 million investment – structured as a sophisticated package of loans, tax credits, tax exempt bonds and their own equity – is well underway.

Providing homes for the poor has been a circular journey for Father John. As one of seven children to an Erie family, he led a secure existence until his father was injured at his steel industry job and laid off. The tyke ended up going to eight different elementary schools as his family scraped by.

“We were the first homeless family in Erie because we lived in tents all summer long. We thought it was great,” he recalls. “My parents were very upset about the whole thing. We struggled and I think what kept us going in a lot of ways was the church, nuns, and priests that very quietly helped out or we probably wouldn’t have had anything to eat.”

He was influenced to choose a faith-based career. After attending the Divine Word Missionary high school seminary, he studied philosophy, theology and social work at Catholic University. He joined Catholic Charities in Northern Virginia and started the Christ House in Alexandria to work with poor before joining SOME as a director 32 years ago. SOME was serving about 60 meals a day, often improvising.

“When I first came we had the building across the street which was an old animal shelter and SOME had just purchased it six months before with 2 or 3 people working part-time,” he recalls. “We were struggling – the place was not in great shape. We had to often times cook on a neighbor’s stove upstairs and bring the food down. There was no hot water running.”

He was determined to get basic services and to build a volunteer presence. However, he took an unusual step, deciding to sell a house in Northeast that had been purchased for drug treatment but was unstaffed in order to buy a stove and get hot water.

Next they added dental care. Georgetown University agreed to provide full time faculty member and to require dental students to volunteer for two weeks and Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald convinced Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joe Califano to donate dental chairs.

Over three decades they added transitional and permanent housing, state-of-the-art job training and a summer camp for seniors.

The Challenges Ahead

The deinstitutionalization movement and dramatic social cuts under President Ronald Reagan – including drastic cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development – expanded the homeless population in the 1970s and 1980s. The recent recession has also grown this impoverished group. Yet again this country is contemplating major cuts to health and social services, imposing sacrifices disproportionately on the poor and middle class rather than the richest Americans who have thrived these past three decades.

And while the Catholic Church has a rich trove of documents on social justice and other religions prescribe helping the poor, America, despite its highly religious population, hasn’t adopted these values as a guiding force in policy making.

Locally, the fight’s had recent success. Father John and other nonprofit leaders reversed the large majority of tens of millions of dollars of proposed D.C. budget cuts that would have affected the poor and homeless, although a huge need still remains.

For a moment, Father John gets passionate and political.

“This is supposedly one of the more powerful cities in the world but we can’t take care of our own people,” he pauses. “That says something.” [gallery ids="100229,106494,106510,106506,106502,106499" nav="thumbs"]

Dark Clouds Overhead
• July 13, 2011

A snaky, hunchbacked Richard opens Shakespeare’s “Richard III” every time with the intonation “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

At least it’s winter in not-so-merry old England. Now is the summer of our discontent, and disconnect. Not to mention it’s really, really hot and dry.

Now the world, we ourselves in this city, and across the country, sit under a cloud, waiting. The summer is full of irresolution, of something’s-going-to-happen-but-not-in-a-good-way, of portents and omens. In ancient Rome right about now, they would have slaughtered a goat and looked at its liver for signs.

All we can do is wait:

To see what happens with the investigations that are now working their way through the heart of the city government while its leadership—mainly Mayor Vincent Gray—remain silent on the outcome. Gray, City and Council Chairman Kwame Brown are both under a cloud awaiting results of various investigations, a process that seems long, tedious and full of the kind of suspense that can hold the city’s policies and politics hostage.

Meanwhile, the dark, dark cloud of the great 2011 Raising-the-Debt-Ceiling crisis, an exercise in political jockeying that would be fascinating except for the fact that the continuing irresolution is frightening to each and every one of us. Although you could hardly tell by the way the administration, the House of Representatives and Senate and all politicians, elected officials and who knows, interns, are going about the business of solving the crisis.

Out there in the great wide world, the stormy Middle Eastern spring which saw authoritarian regimes fall with dramatic and startling suddenness (Tunisia, and goodbye Mubarek’s Egypt) and others tremble at their core (Libya, Syria, Bahrain,Yemen), has turned into a sultry, violence-driven, and irresolute summer of uncertainty and fear. That particular cloud, which also encompasses other nations and spreads out to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel and the other oil states, not to mention Iran, could turn into a flood-carrying cloudburst at any time.

Irresolution—that helpless feeling that something big is going to happen, hinted at by the nervous flapping of bird wings before a tsunami or earthquake—is the temper of our times in this city. It’s the atmosphere of the times and the talk and silence of the town and the bird food of the chattering classes in the media because here we are, living in the midst of history. It’s a dark cloud that hangs over our local city government, over the meeting rooms at the White House and Capitol Hill, over nervous Embassy Row. But it’s already burst over Minneapolis, St. Paul where they’re living the results of government bankruptcy and insolvency, where the government, and all that it oversees, handles and processes, has shut down.

The investigations were sparked what seems like centuries ago by a very minor candidate in the field of the 2010 mayoral race which saw Gray defeat incumbent Adrian Fenty. That would be Sulaimon Brown, who, after getting fired from a job given to him by the administration, charged that Gray aides had paid him to stay in the race and continue his attacks on Fenty. Nothing has been the same since for Gray, who had swept into office with a “one city” dream and a reputation for high integrity – a reputation which has taken some hits.

The story is by now familiar and yet madly resists resolution. The city government and the city council are plagued not only by Gray’s troubles, but by those of Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. and more importantly by chairman Kwame Brown, whose 2008 campaign finances and activities are now being probed by the Feds. A council investigation climaxed in a circus-like testimony by Sulaimon Brown, decked out in dark glasses and insisting that the mayor is a crook, a litany he’s repeated all over the city. A recent Washington Post has shown that only 47 percent of D.C. Democrats have a favorable opinion of Gray, down from 60 percent, and that his unfavorables have jumped by 24 percent. Meanwhile, a grand jury is looking at the Gray campaign’s activities, including the Brown charges. In addition, there’s at least one website calling for Gray’s recall out there.

All of this has resulted a feeling of both foreboding and lethargy in the government. No doubt, there are folks out there planning their 2014 campaigns for mayor. While there is grumbling, gossiping and chatter in the neighborhoods, there is mostly silence at the top. The mayor has studiously avoided talking to the press or made any compelling statement on the whole mess.

The cloud, in short, stays put, stays dark.

The debt ceiling cloud remains also, amid some dire predictions that the country may default on its debt if the ceiling isn’t raised, which it has been for decades, almost routinely. The battle is taking place in negotiations between President Obama, the house leadership and the senate leadership. It’s a political battle in which the GOP, sensing opportunity, wants huge budget cuts in the trillions for next to nothing, not even closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and for corporations.

The GOP stalwarts, especially die-harder Mitch McConnell in the Senate cry “tax hike” and “job killer.” Obama hands out deadlines. The president and House Leader John Boehner came very close to reaching a startling comprehensive agreement which included major cuts AND tax hikes, which freaked out the Tea Party stalwarts in both houses, causing Boehner to give it up. Maybe its time to golf again.

The background, of course, for all concerned, is the 2012 election and a hostile intransigence that hard to figure.

It’s a black cloud, looming, coming soon to an unemployment line (up to 9.2 percent) near you.

In the Middle East, you can see the fear and irresolution. If Syria, which has always thought to be one of the more solid repressive regimes in the region, can tremble—in spite of government forces firing on demonstrators—then anything can happen. It’s an ongoing process – Yemen very nearly fell to opponents, the Egyptian revolution has given way to further demonstrations, the situation in Libya has turned into a bloody and unresolved civil war which has sucked in NATO and the Obama administration.

What does energy look like in California?
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Nestled in the heart of California’s Central Valley, and located in Fresno County, is the City of Mendota. Mendota bears the designation of “Cantaloupe Center of the World”, as agriculture is an important part of the City’s economy. The City of Mendota origins lie in the railroad industry. In 1891, Mendota thrived as a Southern Pacific Railroad storage and switching facility site. The first post office opened in 1892, and the City incorporated in 1942. Mendota has grown progressively, with agriculture always at the heart of the City. The city suffers from chronic unemployment, averaging 20 percent. In 2009, a drought combined with a recession caused unemployment to surge above 40 percent. The unemployment peaked at 45 percent in 2011 and has started to head downward. Mendota stands behind its strong heritage and community pride.

Mendota stands at the crossroads of its past and a green energy future. Mendota is developing into a leading community in Fresno County, and industries across the globe are keeping an eye on the projects underway there. One of those industries is what has made California a champion in the world, Green Energy Technology.

I know some of you have heard me talk about Mendota BioEnergy LLC and their Advanced Bionenergy Beet Center before in previous articles. Just this week, I sat down with two instrumental people from the development team: Jim Tischer, project coordinator and Leon Woods, regulatory affairs. They walked me through the development process step by step. Then, they spent time with me explaining what makes Mendota’s “Energy” Beet Advanced Bioenergy Center different from what the rest of the U.S. knows as Ethanol.

Mendota Bioenergy LLC will test the feasibility of converting sugar beets and such agricultural waste as almond orchard prunings into several kinds of transportation fuel, green electricity and other green products.

An Energy Commission grant will support the pre-development work for the design and construction of the Advanced Bioenergy Center in Mendota. This work includes exploring the project’s technical feasibility, its economic viability and its life-cycle environmental impacts. Mendota Bioenergy will analyze the sustainability of the plan, assess the properties of sugar beets and other feedstock materials, and then develop technology to convert the biomass into useful products.

If the project proves to be feasible, the Center could convert 840,000 tons of sugar beets and 80,000 tons of farm bio waste into 33.5 million gallons of ethanol each year; 1.6 mm (more) standard cubic feet of biomethane for making compressed natural gas; 6.3 megawatts of certified green electricity; and high-nutrient compost and liquid fertilizer. The project could provide a major industrial boost to this agricultural area, a designated Enterprise Zone.

The Advanced Bioenergy Center will use four different technologies to produce its products, including advanced ethanol production, anaerobic digestion, biomass gasification, and water recycling and wastewater treatment. The project is expected to reclaim one million gallons of treated wastewater a day from the City of Mendota Wastewater Treatment Plant that will be used for biorefinery operations. It will also provide nearly 119 million additional gallons of water each year to be used for on-farm irrigation and landscaping purposes.

The project will benefit Medota in a number of ways. The project could create approximately 250 direct and 50 indirect construction jobs in the Fresno County agricultural community of Mendota, along with 50 long-term jobs at the biorefinery, and an additional 50 jobs for feedstock operations. Approximately 160 new laborers and agricultural workers will be needed to support additional sugar beet production on 80 area farms.

The ethanol and CNG produced would replace 23 million gallons of gasoline each year, cutting greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum by 45 percent for ethanol and 86 percent for CNG.
Cogeneration will be used to produce steam and green-energy that will be reintegrated as process energy into the biorefinery process.

Additional benefits will include decreased air quality impacts associated with the burning of agricultural waste, and production of high-grade soil amendments that can replace fossil based fertilizers.

Other such projects that I know of in other states are also being developed around a model similar to Mendota’s “Energy” Beet Biorefinery. One thing in these projects have in common is their ability to make this non-food crop America’s answer to Brazil’s super successful sugarcane ethanol industry. Only time will tell, but from what the experts say so far, this is going to be a big advancement in America catching up to the rest of the world in Advance Biofuels. This can only help us in our goal to make America energy independent from OPEC’s monopoly on the “Strategic Commodity” we call oil.

These farmers and businessman in California aren’t about to let the economy dictate their future, they are making the future economy of California and the nation the old fashion way with hard work and smart solutions. Solutions that are clean, green and beneficial to us all.

Today, the Debt Ceiling debate is MAD
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Fifty years ago, it was called MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.

By the 1980s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union together had amassed 25,000 nuclear warheads aimed at each other. Carl Sagan, the people’s scientist, compared it to two people standing in a room the size of a football field filled up to their chins with gasoline, each holding 10,000 matches and each threatening to light one.
Today, the Debt Ceiling debate is MAD.

First, what is the Debt Ceiling? Until 1939, Congress approved the issuance of a Treasury bond every time the U.S. needed to borrow money to pay its bills. In 1939, Congress authorized the Treasury Department to borrow the money needed to fund the government, but set a limit on how much it could borrow. That limit is the Debt Ceiling. For the past several decades, the Treasury has been borrowing money four out of every five business days and the Debt Ceiling is approaching $14 trillion. Our lenders, in approximately equal amounts, are the Federal Reserve, U.S. investors and foreign investors (mostly the central banks of China, Japan and the United Kingdom).

Over the years, Congress has raised the Debt Ceiling with no fanfare. For example, the Debt Ceiling was raised during each year of George W. Bush’s Presidency, doubling from $5 to $10 trillion. Every time the Debt Ceiling was changed, a handful of Senators and Congressmen gave speeches on controlling the budget. Some voted against it, but they knew that others would vote to raise it.

This time, Congress is playing poker with the world economy as its chips. If the Debt Ceiling is not raised within a few weeks, the U.S. will not have enough money in the bank to pay its bills. That’s never happened, but we know it won’t be good and will probably have unforeseen consequences.

Greece defaulted, has riots in the streets, and is at the mercy of other countries. Lehman Brothers defaulted in 2008 when the government refused a bailout, and over the following months unemployment doubled and the stock market lost almost half its value. Lehman Brothers was a New York investment bank. Large, but not the largest. And nothing compared to the U.S. government.

For 2011, U.S. revenues are $2.2 trillion and expenses are $3.8 trillion. We borrow 40 percent of what we spend. How would Congress reduce spending by 40 percent next month? To listen to the talking heads, it sounds easy.

Some, including Presidential candidates, U.S. Senators and Congressmen, are saying that default would be avoided if we pay the interest and “prioritize” other spending with available funds, or cutting all other government spending by half.

Some suggest across the board spending cuts. If serious, beginning next month, Social Security benefits would drop 40 percent along with reimbursements to health care providers, all government salaries, including our military, and interest payments to our lenders. That’s drastic, but social security, health care, defense, and interest on the debt account for more than 80 percent of the budget.
Others say “Just go back to 2003 spending levels” when spending was $2.2 trillion. That may sound logical, but that’s the same 40 percent cut.

Imagine an angry and crazy couple. One picks up their child and holds it over a bridge railing and says, “If you don’t do what I demand, I’m going to drop the baby and it’s your fault.” The other says, “No, it’s your fault.”

No crazy couple should negotiate that way. And neither should the Congress.

If Congress wants to cut spending, it holds the purse strings. The President can’t spend a dime unless Congress both authorizes and appropriates the money. If it were serious, Congress could pass legislation reducing spending by 40 percent and only give the President that much to spend with specific instructions. Parents do that all the time to their kids.

Economists and corporate CEOs are begging Congress to not play this game. Rating agencies are saying that the U.S. credit rating would drop below junk bond status. It would be unmitigated disaster.

But this isn’t real poker. It’s pretend. Everyone knows that the United States is not going to default. Congress operates like kids doing their homework on a school bus a few minutes before an exam.
This debate is about demagogy. It is about political posturing, blaming the other party, and gaining political advantage up until the last minute. It is not about what is best for the United States or the world economy.
At least with nuclear warheads, everyone agreed it was MAD.

BID Members, Friends ‘Come Out and Play’ at Swedish Embassy
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Board members, staff, friends and business leaders met June 9 for a lively annual meeting of the Georgetown Business Improvement District at the House of Sweden on the edge of the Potomac. The main event was the unveiling of the redesigned BID website and a new logo and tagline for the merchants of the town – “Come Out and Play” – as well as staff, safety and finance reports. Along with Design Cuisine finger food, guests later got those cool brown swag bags with the new logo and enjoyed desserts from Sprinkles Cupcakes on M Street and Georgetown Candy on Wisconsin Avenue. Sweet! [Editor’s Note: See GT Observer in this issue for news on the BID update.] [gallery ids="100065,106149,100066,100067,100068,100069" nav="thumbs"]

DC Tops the Charts Again
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According to an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Washington DC ranks 3rd in the nation as a city with the best opportunities for young people ages 20 through 30. The research methods looked at 65 metro cities (over 800,000 in population) and used a 10-part system to mark areas with large amounts of young people with careers, strong grow rates and a reasonable cost of living. The top ten for this year are:

1.Austin

2.Houston

3.Washington

4.Raleigh

5.Dallas-Fort Worth

6.Boston

7.Oklahoma City

8.Salt Lake City

9.Seattle

10.Baton Rouge, La

A fair guess to Washington’s success is all the internships available which can provide great networking opportunities, open doors and lead to employment offers. Politico estimates that DC had over 20,000 interns in 2009 and that the numbers are continuing to rise.

Cities that did not land high on the list include Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif, Detroit and Atlanta due mostly to the lack of employment opportunities.

Tudor Place Faces Review by ANC and OGB
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Tudor Place Historic House and Garden’s expansion plans moved a step forward this week as new preliminary building plans were reviewed by ANC2E and the Old Georgetown Board.

At this Tuesday’s ANC2E meeting, Tudor Place Executive Leslie Buhler presented changes made to the site’s preliminary plans for expansion. These changes were made in response to recommendations made by the National Park Service, which holds an easement on the 5.5 acre property. First, the proposed education center on the North side of the property has been moved off of the easement line. Second, the proposed gatehouse to be built at the 31st Street entrance has been moved from the North side to the South side of the entrance.

Neighbors of Tudor Place, a group of about sixty neighboring homeowners, still oppose the current preliminary plans. One of these neighbors, Outerbridge Horsey, voiced a number of concerns at the meeting, including the height of the buildings and the number of trees that would be cut down in the construction process. The property is covered by 75 percent canopy.

The Neighbors have proposed alternative plans that would minimize the visual impact of the buildings.

On Thursday morning, the preliminary plans were reviewed by the Old Georgetown Board. Leslie Buhler says that the Board’s criticism was “very constructive,” and that Tudor Place is eager to move towards the design phase.

Thunder Burger Gets Wild
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Need something more exotic in your meat life? Tired of the same old, steak, ribs, hamburgers, and chicken breasts? How about half-pound ostrich burger with figs and elderflower jam or rattlesnake fritters? Have some kangaroo slider hop right in your mouth because every Wednesday at Georgetown’s rock-n-roll burger joint, Thunder Burger and Bar is offering some avante-guard options for the meat-adventurer.

“Wild Wednesdays at Thunder Burger and Bar” has officially started and taking burgers to new and exotic places by offering a new meat-opening items each Wednesday to try. Rumors of kangaroo, rattlesnake, and antelope will grace Wednesday menu each week, changing up the status-quo burgers and fries combo.

Don’t worry Georgetown, they are not letting the wild animals loose on M Street; chefs have found specialized exotic animal food farms to get their meat from. Excited about the variety, Thunder Burger and Bar keep pushing diners to try something new.

So no more 50’s roller-skating waitresses and double-straw milkshakes. Burgers are now about hardcore rock-n-roll: black leather, studs and exotic meats. No fear in Thunder Burger and Bar about but, still they have some of the best tasting burger in Georgetown… Just with a more wild side.

Georgetown Connected Via Metro… in 2040
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According to The Washington Examiner, and following blogs, the Brown Line proposal is getting more attention from Metro Officials. The Brown Line proposal would connect Georgetown to the rest of Washington via the Metro. The plan is to connect Friendship Heights to downtown, then to Silver Spring and White Oak.

While the plan has caught some officials’ eyes, nothing too serious has been planned: no funding, no engineering, no construction, yet. The goal is, by 2040, to have efficiently expanded the Metro to accommodate the vast growth of Washington and make travelling throughout the city much easier. Metro officials are not very interested in opening completely new lines; they would rather expand current ones in order to be more efficient and cost effective. Officials last Wednesday proposed the plane to regional officials, and are going to survey riders’ opinions during the month of July.

On estimation, the Brown Line would add about 20,000 more daily trips on the Metro, and increase Washington and Arlington residential travel from 70 percent to 74 percent, according to the Georgetown Metropolitan.

A different plan for adding Georgetown to the Metro map calls for splitting the Silver Line, another line that is in proposal status. Studies concluded that this proposal would have fewer riders than the Brown line, especially from Arlington residents because of the few stops that it would have in that area.

However, even with all this talk, there is no need to worry about up-coming delays; the goal deadline is 2040, so proposals are still in infancy. Metro officials are trying to consider every option possible first before beginning projects so that they will be cost efficient and least stressful for riders during construction.