Sunset last night

I really am going to miss this view.

Women's Titanic Memorial in Southwest DC

This post is a response to Melissa’s question about the Titanic Memorial from the comments on QOTD: How to Respond to Teens Attacking Adults in SW DC. Picture by Flickr user NCinDC.

If you follow the sidewalk southeast past the last club on Water Street, SW, you will find yourself leaving the road to walk on a wide promenade between the glimmering surface of the Washington Channel and the high, curving boughs of old trees in Washington Channel Park.

Follow the quaint globe lights to the very end of the park and you will see a tall statue of a man with his arms flung wide to form a cross, a flowing stone cloth partly draped around his body. Behind his left hand the water stretches out past Hains Point to join the Anacostia and Potomac rivers as they flow together toward the ocean.

It's a quiet spot, a fitting place for a silent tribute, even though it's not the location the monument's designers had in mind.

According to the Great Lakes Titanic Society and the National Park Service, the Women's Titanic Memorial was initially erected by the Women's Titanic Memorial Association in Rock Creek Park at the end of New Hampshire Avenue on May 26, 1931 to honor the men who gave their lives on the Titanic so that women and children could escape on life boats.

Just over thirty years later, in 1966, the planners for the Kennedy Center decided on the same spot, so the Women's Titanic Monument was slipped into storage to make room. In 1968 the monument was quietly planted in its current home in Washington Channel Park, and soon few besides the locals seemed to remember it existed.

According to an old fragment of a Washington Post article, twelve years later a small group of men decided to change that. In 1978 they began an annual tradition of toasting the men who gave their lives on the Titanic every April 15th. This tradition has expanded into a full evening of events: a men-only black tie dinner by the Kennedy Center on the 14th, followed by a ceremonial walk to the memorial in full tuxedos, and culminating in a round of champagne toasts in front of the memorial at 1:30 a.m. on the 15th.

The Men's Titanic Society coordinates this quirky annual event. It has become such an ingrained tradition that the society's founder and president, Jim Silman, poo-poohed a suggestion this year to move the memorial to a more prominent position at the tip of Hains Point where J. Seward Johnson's sculpture "The Awakening" once stood.

To reach Washington Channel Park and the Women's Titanic Memorial by Metro, you can walk straight south from the Waterfront Metro on 4th Street and hang a left on P Street. However, it's a prettier walk if you take M Street to 6th Street SW and walk through Washington Channel Park, especially if you manage to come in time to watch the sunset play on the water of the Channel.

Google Map:

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Posting Delay - Titanic Memorial

UPDATE 11/15/08 10:34 p.m.: The post is now up here.

The Titanic Memorial post I promised to put up today will go up tonight tomorrow. Sorry for the delay!

QOTD: Walking Lessons and Shoes

Today’s article brought up two questions. A link on the Around Town section of NBC’s local Washington, DC news site about walking lessons led to an article in the New York Times about walking lessons... in New York City. While some local residents may be interested in taking or offering walking lessons after reading the article, it seemed a little odd to include an article about a class in New York City in a section about the DC area.

The linked article explored walking lessons in yoga classes offered by Jonathan FitzGordon at Yoga Center of Brooklyn. They sound similar to the classes by Amy Matthews at the Breathing Project referenced in an article seven months ago in New York Magazine about walking barefoot. Unlike this earlier article, the New York Times article does not mention one of the most obvious culprits for bad posture and walking-related health problems: shoes. More specifically, shoes that are known to destroy people’s bodies, such as high-heeled pumps.

I thought this was particularly interesting since the picture on NBC’s site for the article includes four women in what could be a dance studio, three of whom appear to be wearing three to four inch heels.

Would you take walking lessons to allow you to continue to wear uncomfortable shoes, or would you switch shoes first? Do you think FitzGordon didn’t mention shoes because he figured it would be easier to get New Yorkers to take lessons without having to convince them to give up their heels?

And, do you think “local” articles should always refer to things happening in and around DC, or is it okay to have one that’s actually for New York City?

QOTD: How to Respond to Teens Attacking Adults in SW DC

According to NBC (thanks DCist for the link), last week a woman was assaulted "for fun" a couple of blocks from what will be my new home. The article also mentions that teenagers jumped a police officer in front of the nearby CVS after he asked them why they were not in school. The teens stole his radio and tried to take his gun. A month ago an elderly man died after being beat up by teenagers in the same area.

While I know my current neighborhood is hardly the safest place in the world, the majority of the violence I have witnessed here involved black teenagers and young adults fighting with each other. As a white woman who is friendly but largely uninvolved in my neighbors' worlds, the worst I ever received was some benign drunken harrassment and a few young boys hitting on me. Almost all of my interactions with my neighbors here have been positive, even when I was digging into things some people would rather not talk about.

Seeing articles like this makes me wonder if the same thing will work in my new neighborhood.

I've already spent some time in Southwest. While the street I'm going to live on seems sleepy and quiet, plenty of people (including teenagers) hang out on the stoops just a few blocks over. There is also a very obvious income gap between my section of the neighborhood and theirs. On the one side, multi-story, expensive-looking rowhouses sheltered by tall, old trees and fronted by carefully maintained gardens line the streets. On the other, short, small, identical homes squat along treeless streets with waist-height chain-link fences and clothes lines in the back. My section of the neighborhood is mixed race; the other section seems to be almost all black.

The split in the neighborhood lies along 3rd Street SW, next to the commercial area that includes Safeway, the Metro, the CVS and Bank of America trailers, and the dirt pit that will become the new Waterside Mall. As the NBC article mentions, plenty of teenagers hang out in front of the stores there. I've said hello to them and laughed at their jokes, but I've never questioned them or challenged their right to be there as the police officer did.

When I move to Southwest I plan to start reporting on the area. This means, at a minimum, I will be walking around and talking to everyone I meet, getting to know who lives there, who works there, who hangs out, and what their stories are. Including the teenagers. Inevitably some people will disagree with the articles that come out of these conversations.

Years ago in Texas several of my guy friends realized that they could not stop me from going into places they saw as dangerous. Long before I took a Sociology class or wrote an article, I walked into places others labeled "The Barrio" or "that crack house" just to talk to the people who lived there. My friends' reaction, in typical Texas fashion, was to give me easily concealed weapons and teach me how to seriously injure or kill someone.

Inscription: "(Heart) for Chris with love"

I never had to use these weapons, and I stopped carrying them when I started needing to pass metal detectors to get into the libraries in DC. I also stopped carrying them because I don't want to wind up accidentally killing or crippling someone over a misunderstanding or pretty theft. To me, losing my wallet is not worth someone else's life.

On the other hand, I don't want to end up with my hands held behind my back by one teenager as another one beats me up just for walking down the street. Being able to throw the person holding me would be great in this instance, but would having a weapon like a knife, a night stick, pepper spray, or even a gun help? I don't know.

What do you think? Should I start bearing arms and really practicing martial arts again, or are my best defenses being aware, making friends, and talking my way through the situations I find myself in? Do I realistically need to worry about this more in Southwest than in Columbia Heights?

QOTD: Police Locker Homophobic Vandalism -- The Second Victim

UPDATE 11/12/08 12:00 p.m.:
Amanda Hess at The Sexist posted today about the questions raised in this blog post. She writes that she has contacted the MPD for more information about how they're handling the misogynistic aspect of this crime and promises to update "if and when I hear back from MPD."


Original post 11/11/08 2:45 p.m.:
In this article from Friday, the Washington Blade reports about an anti-gay slur scrawled across the locker of an openly gay DC police officer, Matt Mahl. One sentence of the article mentions a second person, although both the article and the police appear to be overlooking her:

Police sources familiar with the incident said the graffiti referred to Mahl as a “fag” and made lewd references to sexual acts by Mahl and a female police sergeant who is also assigned to the Third District substation.

This female sergeant was arguably also the victim of this hate crime.

A Google search turned up two other articles about the incident, one from the Washington City Paper's The Sexist blog and one from NBC. While it's somewhat understandable that the Blade focused on the gay male victim because it is a paper for the GLBT community, the two other articles covering this incident also neglected to note the second victim.

Why do you think Mahl received attention from the MPD and the media while the female sergeant was overlooked?

Franklin School Shelter Closing Today

Franklin School Homeless Shelter

UPDATE: Sept. 26, 7:15 p.m. Leslie Kershaw, Communications Specialist for Mayor Fenty's Office, sent the following comment in response to emailed questions about the change in Franklin School Shelter's closing date: "Today, the administration is excited to announce it has housed more than 300 long term shelter residents. We are currently in the process of preparing a summary illustrating the fulfillment of the Mayor's commitment to provide permanent supportive housing for our homeless neighbors, instead of placing them in a poor shelter environment."

Protests continued in the rain on the corner by the shelter this evening. A lone homeless man who gave his name as Philip stood apart from the protesters in front of the building and waited patiently to be picked up and taken to his new shelter. He said the city was relocating him to the "North Capitol" homeless shelter, the shelter run by Community for Creative Non-Violence at 425 Second Street N.W.

When asked how he felt about the Franklin shelter closing, Philip shrugged. "It's been coming for a long time."



Left: Protests continue. Right: Philip, former Franklin occupant.




UPDATE: Sept. 26, 3:50 p.m. Rodney Savoy, Program Manager for Franklin School Shelter, has confirmed that the shelter closed to the homeless at 7 a.m. this morning, and that they expect to have "the majority of the furniture moved out" by close of business today. He said the staff at Franklin first learned of Fenty's decision to close the shelter today on Thursday, but since they had been preparing for closure on Oct. 1, things went smoothly.

According to Savoy, only 53 homeless men stayed in the shelter last night; out of those men, 11 are "going to supportive housing units" and the rest will be accommodated at other shelters in the area.

Savoy confirmed that the Department of Human Services was responsible for providing the D.C. Council with names and new addresses for the former occupants of the shelter. DHS declined to comment for this article, referring all inquiries back to Fenty administration spokesperson Mafara Hobson.

Savoy plans to keep in touch with some of the men from the shelter in his new position. He will be moving to Fortitude Housing, which he said is part of Anchor Mental Health and will help provide support for the men who have moved into apartments.

---

Sept. 26, 1:30 p.m., Washington, DC: The last occupants of the Franklin School Shelter walked out into the cold and wet with their belongings at 7 a.m. this morning. Staff members of the homeless shelter for men confirmed this morning that the shelter will close permanently at 5 p.m. today.

Franklin School Shelter is one of the last remaining homeless shelters located in downtown D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has pressed forward on plans to close the shelter over the objections of homeless advocate groups and resistance from the D.C. Council as part of his ambitious program to move homeless residents into more permanent housing.

While the administration celebrated successfully moving 53 homeless men from the shelter into apartments earlier this month, the city has not yet released permanent housing plans for the remaining 250 regular occupants of the shelter.

The D.C. council passed emergency legislation on Sept. 16 demanding the mayor keep Franklin School Shelter open until he provides a detailed plan to provide housing and services for these men. The mayor must sign or veto the legislation by close of business today.

In an article about protests last night over the shelter’s closing, the Washington Post reported that Fenty administration spokeswoman Mafara Hobson refused to confirm or deny rumors that the shelter was closing today, stating only that “The administration is still committed to providing permanent supportive housing to the men at Franklin Shelter, with the end goal of closing the shelter by Oct. 1.”

Administration officials did not return calls for comment on why the shelter was closing five days early by press time.

New Camera!

Remember how I was complaining about exceeding the limitations of my point-and-shoot digital camera? After some research I decided to invest in a Canon 30D as my beginner DSLR camera. Then I got lucky on craigslist and found someone selling not only the camera body I wanted, but three lenses, a flash, and assorted other camera accessories. Here are some preliminary shots.

Old camera: the national monument and the capitol from my window during the blackout on March 10, 2008:

New camera: national monument from my window:

Now with my fancy zoom lens:

The capitol from my window, zoomed in:


Clearly I still need to work on focusing, but for a first try without even looking at the manual, I'm happy. Real photo projects coming soon. :)

GRDC # 2: Hamster Rock

Jam Session from left: Mona Schamess, Maia Cafri, Starr Hill, and Skye Ray, with coach Jeanni Centofanti at bottom.

On Saturday, Aug. 16 the ladies of Jam Session stepped out under the blue and green lights of the 9:30 Club main stage and began their first performance by yelling out "We're Jam Session, and we love hamster!" Featuring frontwoman Skye Ray on vocals, Mona Schamess on guitar and vocals, Maia Cafri on bass, Starr Hill on drums, and Gigi Diaz on keys, the young women performed a complex piece that fused several tempos and styles and included some fancy beatboxing by Ray.

Like the other girls in the Girls Rock! DC inaugural showcase at the 930 Club in Washington, DC, the ladies in Jam Session met, formed a band, and wrote a song for the showcase all in the space of five days. Many of the girls in the showcase, including Cafri from Jam Session, picked up their instruments for the very first time that week.

I caught up with Schamess, Cafri, Hill, and Ray in the 930 Club's Moon Room after their song. I asked Hill about their fondness for hamsters, and she quickly explained that they didn't mean the small furry rodents pictured in their band art. They were referring to alternative hamster, a style of music that is "totally better than regular rock" because it includes "a little bit of everything." She said their band coach, local musician Jeanni Centofanti from the all-female punk band Mess Up The Mess, told them about it, and the band fell in love with it. Hill said the idea of alternative hamster inspired the band to include salsa, rock, and other styles in their song.

Ray told me that the best part of rock camp was making new friends, especially her band mates. The funniest? "In self defense (class), my friend accidentally kicked me in my back!"

Just before the young rockers made their way back upstairs to see their friends in the band Flaming X play, their coach, Centofanti, pointed out the glow-in-the-dark pinpoints decorating the ceiling and walls of the impromptu press room. A former 9:30 Club employee, Centofanti told her proteges that the Moon Room was painted to exactly match the sky on the night that the 9:30 Club was founded. The girls ogled the walls, then, armed with this insider knowledge, they ran up to join their friends in the performers-only balcony.

Skye Ray on vocals.

Maia Cafri on bass.

Mona Schamess on guitar and vocals.

Jam Session under the spotlights.

So there was this shooting...

(Photo has been cropped and rotated.)

At 7:35 p.m. on August 16, 2008, the cacaphony of a gun battle shattered a seemingly normal Saturday afternoon. But the backdrop wasn't Bagdad, the Gaza strip, or even Detroit; it was apartment complexes and townhouses with neatly groomed gardens right across the intersection from my window. And it happened in broad daylight, with people out walking dogs and kids everywhere.

Journalism has given me an excuse to dispense with any instincts of self-preservation and common sense I might have had before (strong emphasis on might). So, instead of watching from my window like everyone else, I rushed downstairs and plunged headfirst into an eruption of tensions that have been simmering in my neighborhood since before I came to this city four years ago.

A little over two weeks later the blog Prince of Petworth agreed to publish my article about the shooting and what happened next, calling it "the definitive account" of the events of Aug. 16. You can find that article here.

Baptism by gunfire wasn't what I thought I was signing up for when I started freelancing, but something about reporting this story felt completely natural. Not easy, but right. And while I didn't manage to get this particular article into a paper, I came the closest I've ever been, and I know a heck of a lot more about how to do my job now than I did three weeks ago.

An editor I met while interviewing people on the street said she told her partner that night that I was "a natural" at crime reporting. She also said I didn't need grad school. We'll see.

GRDC #1: Firsts and the attack of the killer reporter's notebook

Ed note: Ever have life pick you up by the scruff of the neck, shake you side to side for a bit, then put you back down again in a totally different place? This post is coming out almost 3 weeks after I wrote it because some of my neighbors decided to celebrate the afternoon with semi-automatic weapons just as I finished writing. See the next post for more details, but let's just say that the first six words here were prescient.

Post written 8/16/08

Today was a day of firsts: the first-ever showcase for the first-ever GirlsRock! DC rock camp for girls, the first performance for each of the eight bands and two DJs, and many of the girls’ first time performing the instruments they touched for the first time on Monday. It was also my first time slipping a “visitor media” tag around my neck as I walked into the 9:30 Club, squeezing through the crowd around the stage to shoot photos, and interviewing real, live band members. I think the girls may have been more nervous than I was, but it was hard to be sure.

Others have already written about rock camp and the amazing things the campers have done this week, culminating in the showcase I saw today on a stage that many bands only dream of setting foot on. My next few posts will have interviews, stories, and photos from the showcase, but I wanted to take a moment to write about my experience as well.

At just after 10:45 this morning I walked past the double line stretching around the club's corner and stepped right up to the doors. No ticket needed; I just called Ebony Dumas, Media/Events/PR Co-Chair for GirlsRock! DC, and she handed me a press badge at the door that let me come and go as I pleased.

My memory from then on is a bit of a blur. I shot hundreds of pictures, many of which didn't come out (see below). I managed to almost run over the same fifteen people at least twelve times as I dodged through the crowd between the stage and the interview area. I got to the interview area twice just to watch band members scampering away to hang out upstairs with their friends. I finally managed to catch Allegra from The Burning Flowers, which quickly turned into a four-way interview with her and her friends. As I finished with her, the girls from Jam Session came out, and I interviewed first one, then two, then four of them plus their band coach, Jeanni Centofanti, at the same time. Then it was back to the stage to get some photos, round to the interview room again to meet up with Ebony to go backstage, and suddenly it was all over. Two and a half hours in a blink of an eye.

I walked out of the club more hyper than a sugar-high six year old, slightly dazed, sweaty, ears ringing, and somehow covered in pen marks.

Now that my heart rate has slowed down some, I have a few lessons learned. Number one: I NEED A BETTER CAMERA. I’ve known for a while that my point-and-shoot is pretty puny as far as cameras go, but the combination of darkness, lots of motion on stage, and my slightly unsteady hand completely overwhelmed its meager capabilities. The camera only has one setting that could capture both the lighting and the performers on stage, and it requires a slightly longer exposure, which means absolutely no motion. In a jostling crowd that was simply impossible, so the resulting shots were about as clear as a college freshman’s eyesight at 3 a.m. on a Saturday.
(Picture has been cropped) The effect was oddly appropriate for the band Global Rave, but not so much elsewhere.

My camera also has an agonizingly slow shutter speed, which in a performance situation meant that I missed many of the coolest moments--such as when the frontwoman in Poison Control overcame her initial shyness and stepped up onto one of the speakers to touch the fingertips of her screaming new fans.

Lesson learned number two: I should learn more about the bands before I get to the concert. Granted, normally bands aren’t formed five days before they headline at the 9:30 Club, but it's entirely possible I'll get another interview opportunity with only half a day's notice. I could have made a couple of calls and pumped my camp counselor friends for info; it would have been nice to at least know the girls’ names before they stepped out under the stage lights. As it was, the only time I could talk to band members was after their sets and while other bands played. As mentioned above, I did manage to catch the drummer from The Burning Flowers and the members of Jam Session, so look for more on those bands over the next couple of days.

Lesson learned number three: trying to photograph bands on stage at the same time as I'm trying to interview other bands back stage is difficult. Now I know why reporters and photographers are usually a team, not one person. Unfortunately the set-up was beyond my control, but maybe next time I could bring a friend to shoot photos or just pick one or two bands ahead of time. Or bring a pedometer so I know just how many calories I'm working off as I run back and forth through the crowd.

Lesson learned number four may be a lost cause: unless I can somehow remember to put the cap back on my pen, I will probably end up tattooing my right forearm every time I do this. But hey, dignity’s a small price to pay for a great story, right?


Of course, the biggest lesson learned was pretty obvious: no matter how much I may convince myself I don’t know what I’m doing, in the end, none of that matters. I love this stuff and I can’t wait to do it again!

Interviews, pics, and stories from the showcase coming soon. :)

Welcome to my new home

Summer, 2004: The escalator descending into Dupont Circle station was turned off tonight, silent in the muggy wash of laughter, cabs honking, and shouted conversation flowing out from the bars and the traffic circle. As I picked my way down several flights' worth of steps, I passed a twenty-something man standing very determinedly upright. He had planted himself firmly on one step, head nodding but spine straight, as if by standing just so he knew that somehow, in spite of his drunkenness, he would make it to wherever he was going. When I hopped off the bottom step and turned to scan the steady stream of people behind me, I could just barely see him still standing near the top. An hour later, finally at home, I wonder if he's made it to the bottom of the escalator yet.

***

This is one of my earliest memories of D.C. at night, just after I moved here from Pennsylvania. I'm happy to call this city my home now. The people here, the city itself, and how they contrast with the other places I've been have inspired much of the stuff I write.

Now that I'm starting to submit and publish those writings, I keep getting two questions that usually result in me looking down, shuffling my feet, making some kind of weird face and saying, "Um..." Those questions are:

1. So what do you write about?

2. Do you have a blog (or a website)?

The answer to the first question hasn't really changed. However, the answer to the second one is, finally: YES! Now I do. And now I get to order a whole new set of business cards.

The current plan is to update once a week or so with new articles, things I've posted on other blogs, and/or random writings like the sketch above. It would be more often if I didn't have pesky things like that full-time job that pays for my rent and writing habit, or classes so I can actually learn how to write articles... but hey, can't have everything, right?