Today is Presidents Day, and as a result, many area businesses, including the Federal Government, are closed, and this is one of those rare late winter three day weekends. That is, unless you work somewhere that only offer the Original Six holidays, in which case you’re cursing the rest of the non-working populous today. The holiday began in celebration of George Washington, America’s First President, and the General of her armies during the Revolutionary War. Most of the time, we see celebrations of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on this day, their contributions to the history of the Union are quite significant, and after all, they had birthdays this month. Today, however, I want to draw attention to a different President of the United States of America: Millard Fillmore, the 13th President.

On the death of President Zachary Taylor in July of 1850, then Vice President Millard Fillmore took office as the second unelected President of the union. Taylor’s entire cabinet submitted their resignations and went their way, and Fillmore was left to fill all the vacancies. His first choice was Daniel Webster for Secretary of State, and the two of them marched through the Capitol five bills that would forever change the United States:

• Admit California to the United States
• Settle the Texas boundary with New Mexico
• Admit New Mexico as a Territory
• The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which had significant consequences for Americans in the Northeast, and could be credited in part with the Civil War that followed.)
• The Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia (which is really why I chose him)

Fillmore & Webster did all five of these in scant 90 days, making pretty much every Congress thereafter look like a bunch of lolligagging buffoons. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was initially an attempt at settling the slavery issue between the abolitionist North and the slave-owning South, but it turned into an uneasy truce as the northerners resented the idea of returning the South’s slaves.

President Fillmore can be credited with the abolition of slavery, the admittance of California as a State (largely due to the gold strike in 1849) and the admittance of New Mexico as a Territory, further expanding the borders of the US. Toward the end of his presidency, he sent Admiral Perry to pursue trade routes with then-closed-state Japan. Much of this information was gleaned from Wikipedia, though, honestly, most of their page is word for word from his White House bio, so I figure we’re pretty safe on this one, yeah?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Today is your last opportunity to see this year’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition features the work of 51 artists selected as finalists in the Portrait Gallery’s first national portrait competition.

My favorite is the Olmec inspired Large Head by Nina Levy:

Now just imagine this work as she describes it in her Artist Statement:

This head is a portrait of my son Archer at almost two years old. I originally sculpted it as a part of a larger site-specific installation called Toss. In February of 2006, the head was suspended in the center of the two-story gallery space at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. It was flanked front and back by a male and a female figure, both headless and swinging as if on a trapeze, tossing the head between them.

Ain’t that trippy? And just one more reason to get your ass to the National Portrait Gallery now!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

photo courtesy of BODIES

Great news – the BODIES exhibit is coming to our area in April and it’ll be in the old Newseum space in Rosslyn. The Post article about it was filled with blah-blah-blah about the controversy that never seems to die down around the various polymer-preserved bodies shows, but what you should really know is that this one is an amazing look into our bodies. I got to see the exhibit in New York City last fall and it’s nothing short of astounding, and that’s from someone who, as the son of a pathology nurse, probably has gotten to see more inner workings than the average bear. Just the display of a full lung circulatory system with all the surrounding bits removed is worth the price of admission. If you’ve ever, say, lurched your clumsy self across a half-frozen parking lot, you might find it hard to believe there’s that much fine & delicate machinery inside you.

With regards to the question of what level of consent may or may not have been received from the former controllers of these displayed bodies, I suggest this: get the hell over it. As far as I’m concerned, every one of you people who shows this over-enthusiastic level of interest in what’s done with your carrying case after you’re finished inhabiting are is hurting the people who keep walking the earth after you’re gone. Barring organ donation, I think education – even in the guise of entertainment – is a perfectly good use of our leftover meat.

Before I hear from a single one of you about prisoner treatment in China, where many of these bodies came from, tell me: have you signed up to be an organ donor yet?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I caught the obituary for Walter Sondheim Jr in Friday’s Post, but I was just reminded of it by an entry in a weekly email newsletter that I get called This Is True. True’s Publisher, Randy Cassingham, runs a weekly bit at the end of it which he calls his “honorary unsubscribe,” where he pays homage to recent deaths of people who he thinks aren’t getting the press they deserve in their passing. This week’s is Mr Sondheim, who I happily think he’s a bit wrong about not getting enough attention. Friday’s Post obit is of decent size and there’s a New York Times piece as well.

All the obits contain a lot of talk about Mr Sondheim’s role in integrating Baltimore, and it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come in not a lot of time. It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t so long ago we had two very distinct and very paths laid out in our society. I remember as a kid in the late 70s being in a Sears in Coral Gables and my father pointing out to me the spot on the wall above the two water fountains where you could see there used to be something attached to the wall. The something being plaques that said “Whites” and “Coloreds,” and which my father clearly remembered, since he’d been chased off as a child for drinking from the “colored” fountain. It’s been almost thirty years since he told me that story, which is farther in the past for me than it was for him when he relayed it.

Those fifty years combined can seem like a lot when you spend most of your day thinking how far off next month’s vacation is, but they shoot by quick. Cassingham’s piece has a fun quote that’s not in the Post or Times obit. When the MD school board president of the time threatened to overturn Sondheim’s integration after the fact, Sondheim told him “that he could come to Baltimore and try to unscramble the egg that we had scrambled if he wanted to.” A great quip, in my book, and a great man.

Also of note to those of us in the area is all the work Sondheim did towards the Inner Harbor revitalization. School integration in Baltimore may not have impacted any of us reading this, but if you’ve gone to an Orioles game or the Baltimore Aquarium you’ve been a beneficiary of his efforts as well. Personally I find Baltimore delightful, for all its flaws, and I’ve considered living there on many an occasion. I’m more drawn to Fells Point than Inner Harbor, but it’s not hard for me to understand why someone would want to spend their retirement working to improve the fortunes of Charm City. Thanks, Mr Sondheim, for both the product of your hard work and the inspiration.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I was looking for a link so I could talk briefly about the upcoming BODIES exhibit in the old Newseum space and came across this story from January.

D.C. police believe a naked construction worker who fell to his death this week slipped and fell four stories down an elevator shaft.

Joseph Oliver, 23, of La Plata was discovered about 6 a.m. Wednesday in the basement elevator shaft area of the Newseum, which is being built at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, officials said.

Authorities said it was unclear why he was naked, according to C.V. Morris, head of the department’s Violent Crimes Branch.

No sign of any follow-ups in the Post on this one. Damned weird – of all the times I’ve been naked at my job it’s NEVER been near an elevator shaft.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Just in time for a winter wandering, the Asia Trail at the National Zoo is now open. Feel free to gawk at the seven Asian species shivering in the cold:

• sloth bears
• fishing cats
• red pandas
• a Japanese giant salamander
• clouded leopards
• Asian small-clawed otters
• and giant pandas

No word yet on if the otters get to play with the salamander – I think that would be a short, but tasty play time.

The red panda wasn’t playing so much as pacing when this crowd checked him out last weekend. He looked like a mental ward patient, walking back and forth on a little raised ledge until he spotted a grapefruit. Then he was all about eating the fleshly fruit, a welcomed break to his confinement.

As you can tell, I worry about the larger animals in the zoo. Often they look more insane prisoners than happy-go-lucky exotic species. Yes, they live a long and pampered life, but would you want to live in a zoo?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Last night in Southeast DC, a woman in her 20s was fatally struck by a W2 bus, bringing the number of fatal bus accidents involving WMATA to three in 2007, and to four within 8 months. The accident earlier in the week that claimed the lives of two Alexandria women prompted WMATA’s new general manager John Catoe to promise safety training for all drivers on a yearly basis.

Alright, who thinks they’ll take it seriously? I hated at work lectures about safety and disaster awareness, they were a chore and never worth the time involved. How about hiring drivers who will pay some attention on the roads and not use the area’s citizenry as a grand game of target practice? So, how DO we fix something like this? Is there a non-bureaucratic solution that will step up safety amongst the drivers? The last thing we need is a heavy-handed council reaction trying to quell the frantic response of the citizenry. How can WMATA fix its problems?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Happy Year of the Pig!

Tomorrow starts the Chinese New Year and as you can see, Tom is all excited.

He is licking 10 year baijao – Chinese moonshine – as part of his NYE party

How might you celebrate the Lunar New Year tonight?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

There is no place to hide. After a few days, this driver still has quite a bit of windscreen real estate covered up with ice. Lazy, stupid or just plain scared of ice? The world may never know. To top it off, she was really short, at least from what I could tell, and was talking on a cell phone.

You’d think… Well, it doesn’t really matter what you’d think because apparently lots of people don’t.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I see that the middle set of tracks at the Airport stop are pretty well filled in with ice. It made me wonder – does this set of tracks get used when it’s not a dumping ground during times of inclement weather? I haven’t been riding the rails here long enough to know this and certainly don’t get as much use out of the airport as some other folks do. I am curious whether the rust on the tracks is from a long period of not being used or if it’s from the melting ice sitting there.

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It’s that time of year again – the season of crappy parking. Go ahead and blame it on the weather but I suspect people who park like this do it all year long. Come on, people! At least have the decency to pull out of traffic completely before getting out of the car.

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The DC HIV/AIDS Commission has you covered like a jimmy hat. Or, rather, WITH a jimmy hat. The DC Government is going to give out a million DC-branded condoms this year, starting with 250,000 on the streets today in places like a Ward 7 laundromat. You can peruse the list of outlets for the free condoms. My favorite? Rock Creek Academy is getting 200. Most other places are getting about 1,500 to 2,000, but RCA is getting just 200. They only have a little sex there, I guess. If you want to apply for free condoms for your organization (and Wayan, I’m staring squarely at you, you ought to set up shop just to apply.), you can fill out this form and give it a go!

So, is anyone willing to, ahem, give us a field test report of the new DC Condoms? How do they stack up against Trojan or Durex?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Beer. Barleywine. Ale. Stout. Dopplebock. Kölsch. If you only recognize two or three of these, that’s fine, but for those of us who can wax rhapsodic on the glories of each, we hang out at RFD or the Brickskellar for some of the very best that fermented barley & hops have to offer. Last night, and the night before, us beer geeks gathered for the Regional Strong Ale tasting. Judging by my partial hangover this morning, they were strong indeed.

But the best part of the tastings isn’t the beer, it’s the brewers and Bob Tupper. At the front of the room, at a dias with microphone, Bob brings the brewers up with samples of their beer, and they get to talk about it. It’s amazing what you hear when folks talk about their beer. Last night, Jeremy Cowan from Shmaltz Brewing got up and told some incredible stories about his Lenny’s Bittersweet R.I.P.A. that had us all in hysterics, especially at the time that his own grandmother one-upped his coolness factor by mentioning that she and his grandfather saw Lenny Bruce at the burlesques in San Francisco.

Watching people talk passionately about what they do is some of the coolest stuff you’ll ever see, whether they’re artists, or musicians, federal officials, or brewmasters. That kind of personal investment in one’s work is a true rarity, with many people living their work-life like they belonged as an extra on the Office. It’s inspiring.

If you think of it as paying for the story, you get to pretend that the beer is free, too.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Washington’s very own glacier seems to be receding after having hit a high point right before this last storm. The glacier I refer to is in the eastbound lane of the E Street Expressway right under the 23rd Street NW bridge. Every day I drive my wife to work, I have to swerve to miss it, so my apologies to those of you I have inconvenienced by exercising the driving skills that were so common in Worcester, MA, where I lived for four years.

The giant mound of ice was mostly destroyed by plows coming through, and not by global warming, which was my initial thought. The giant stalactite above remains attached to the bridge and is scheduled to return dripping icy water on the highway as soon as temperatures raise just a few more degrees. Yes, the glacier will rise again.

I had hoped to get a photo of the monstrosity but have been unable to, since that would likely mean getting run over. Anybody else game for this endeavor, now that I sold it so well?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

In retrospect I think that maybe they’re just big Moody Blues fans, but at the time I thought “Why would someone want to get a plate that advertises them to be white Satan?”

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The Map of Our Dreams

Reading the WashPost article “A New Map for Your Cab, But It’s Still a Fare Game” by David Nakamura, you might get excited that there is a new taxi fare zone map that:

features additional streets, including North and South Capitol streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and landmarks, such as Union Station, the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, to help passengers determine where they want to go and how much it would cost.

“If you’re riding in a taxi cab in the District, it is your right as a rider to have access to clear and concise map, zone and fare information,” Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said in a statement.

The controversial zone system, however, remains unchanged, as the city still has not gone to metered fares. The boundaries of the zones also remain the same.

And so does the official taxi zone map. The DC Taxi Commission, known for its amazing flexibility and inventiveness, has to approve the new map first.

I think hell will look like our streets today before that happens, but we can always hope, pray, and wait for sanity to prevail, the sanity of meters that will never come. So while we suffer psycho taxi drivers, at least we have the reliable and interactive taxi fare calculator

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I love this tree. It stands southwest of the Washington Monument, just inside the haha wall and beside the path that ascends to the plaza and obelisk. (Before the renovation of the grounds, a path went straight down from the plaza, winding around the tree as it descended to the foot of the hill.) It’s a favorite play area for kids visiting the Monument, tourist and local alike, and wedding photographers like it for local post-nuptial shoots. Yet I know so little about the Monument Tree: what kind of tree is it? How long has it been there? Does it have a name? If it doesn’t, can we name it? What shall we name it? Can we name it George? Huh? Huh?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

I am an avid cyclist. I bike all summer, through rain and sweat. I ride in rush hour traffic for fun.

But you could not beat me with a stick to get me on a bicycle tonight.

Bitter cold, black ice, and early darkness combine to create a suicidial situation unfit for two-wheeled human-powered locomotion.

Yet what do I see in the mornings or just now at Union Station? Fools on bicycles headed into certain peril.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

I saw this flier nailed to a tree in November: Our Brother, Donald Lee, is Missing.

I ‘d forgotten about this photograph until just now, and looking at it, I wonder what happened.

But the Arlington Police wouldn’t give me any information and a Google search doesn’t show a response.

Might you know what happened? Or have you seen Donald, or his family?

Did he get in an accident, or meet the wrong person? Might he just want to flee and left with little trace? Or was his sick, and wandered away confused?

The poster says little, I know less. Do you know more?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I know, I know. Everyone is complaining about the snow/ice storm and the lack of snow removal. Well let me join in.

I come from a snowy land far, far away known as “Denver” (deh-n-ver). Not only does it snow much more than it does here in little ol’ DC, but when you wake up in the morning after a good snow storm, your street has been plowed! Neato. What a concept.

As a citizen of a city that has one of the highest tax rates in the nation (and takes up such a small geographical footprint), I have to stop and wonder at times like this, “Where are my tax dollars going?” They certainly don’t seem to be going towards fighting crime. Our police are a joke! Remember the murder that took place on Swann Street not long ago? No suspects. Nobody is in jail. Nada! And my tax dollars certainly aren’t being put towards maintaining our roads. Have you driven down streets like S or Florida lately, or in the past few years? It’s like driving on the moon! No wonder people are buying those giant SUV’s. You need one to prevent your brain from rattling as you drive through the city. Come on DC. Repave a road or two. I’d be happy to grab a shovel and help out.

Now as far as this snow storm goes, I realize that it wasn’t just a friendly dumping of powder. Yes, there was freezing rain included in the “wintry mix” which made things a little more complicated. But here’s how I would go about it:

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