Month: February 2010

From- Subject: [MPD-5D] Neighbors Who Are Unable to Get Around

Because me knocking on some strangers door while I’m angry is not a good idea. My neighbors and I have shoveled our street, but the routes to the Giant, the Metro and most bus stops are ice covered danger zones for the elderly who walk with canes and have basically shut in the wheelchair bound.

Haven’t you noticed fewer or almost no motorized wheelchairs around lately? So my sympathy is for the people who have been trapped in their homes because others are too lazy or too cheap (there are 10 yr olds w/ shovels looking to make money) to shovel their sidewalks.

Look around at who is getting around and notice who is missing.
This morning mothers are having to lead their small children through small icy trails of yellow lined paths to get to school.
The wrongness of it angers me because pedestrians deserve better and they deserve justice.

The preceeding was in response to this regarding ticketing for lack of snow removal on the MPD 5th District listserv:

Yes, businesses should be ticketed, but have you knocked on the door of your neighbors and asked why they have not shoveled?
>
> Maybe there is a sick and shut in person or someone not physically able to move the amount of snow that is out there. I have lived in my neighborhood for eight years and my husband and son are very vigilant about keeping our space shoveled. However, during this last storm, our shovel broke and although our area was shoveled for the first storm, he could not shovel with his hands and he could not even get out of the parking space to look for one. My neighbor came to the rescue and let us borrow one until we were able to purchase a new one.
>
> I am tired of the snow more than the next person, but be neighborly and see what the circumstance is before begging to give someone a ticket. This is an unusual storm and unless you are young and very able, the ice is very difficult to move even for the strongest man right now.
>
> Calm down people and have a little patience.

Parking Gets Ugly

Well I just called 911 to tell them not to bother as the fight broke up.
I was just about to shut down for the night when I heard yelling. Yelling beyond the usual drunken guy walking down the street or crazed teen yelling. Looked out the window and saw loudmouth buppie lawyer in his usual loudmouth form yelling at someone. It took me a while to figure out what the heck he was screaming about. A parking space. Another neighbor, let’s call her ‘skinny Jewish gal’ or “SJG’ (she has a name but so does Loudmouth Buppie Lawyer) in the car behind his SUV, being yelled at. This goes on a bit too long when another neighbor comes out and tells him to cool it. Then Loudmouth Buppie Lawyer dude turned his verbal abuse to the neighbor dude who I can’t think of a good name for, and then they are in the middle of the street yelling at each other. Sometime in this I call the cops. Neighbor dude’s wife come out and says something, then more neighbors appear in their doorways. Next thing I see neighbor dude and loudmouth buppie lawyer are yelling and are chest to chest.
All over a friggin parking space.

Clear Path

Okay I guess the credit would go to DC Rec and KIPP and a ‘few’ homeowners along the way. But if you are going east to west along P Street the path along the Kennedy Playground on P is nice and big and clear. It continues along the church on P and 6th, and then it get’s icy. You have to cross over to the KIPP school where it is also big and clear and at NJ it is a icy walk. NJ is when I turn and it’s okay enough, not clear of ice but walkable.

I don’t really agree with this- labor event

I was a little bit snarky when I got the announcement about a gathering in Shaw regarding worker’s rights. The PDF, which I’m not attaching, mainly because my Firefox don’t like PDFs, says:

Workers’ Rights Board Hearing
Wage Theft
DC’s Hidden Crime
Every day hard working people in DC are denied their fair wages. Workers are:
+ Classified as contractors
+ Denied overtime
+Paid below minimum wage, paid less than agreed, paid with bad checks, and sometimes paid not at all.
Thursday February 18th
6:30-9PM
First Rising Mt. Zion Church
602 N St, NW
Mt. Vernon Sq metro’
Join academic, faith and political leaders in examining this hidden crime wave….

No problem with addressing criminality in contract law and tax evasion (classification of workers as contractors), however I did have a problem with a blurb on the email:

Every day working people in our city have their hard-earned wages skimmed or outright stolen from them. Employers withhold tips, force people to work off the clock, pay less than the minimum or prevailing wage, pay less than promised, and sometimes run off without paying at all.
For poor and working people who already struggle to make ends meet, even a small theft of wages can be disastrous for their families. Cumulatively, employers steal billions of dollars from millions of workers – money that is lost to families and communities, exacerbating the current economic crisis.

To me this insinuates that most employers are criminals, which is a line of thinking I find very disagreeable. Also with the mention of “millions” and considering that the population of the District hovering somewhere around just half that, this doesn’t hint at a local discussion, but rather a general anti-capitalist gathering. I also note a lack of mentioning resources for victims of these offenses (if it is so widespread and everything). Instead of being snarky, I’m just stating what I am okay with and where I strongly disagree.

Shovel

With the temps hovering around a wee above and below freezing…. mainly below, the ugly nasty multicolored snow is going to be with us for a while. Some blocks are awesome and well shoveled. Fourth St, parts of Q, parts of 8th, the sidewalks are passable, it’s just bad when you go from well shoveled to a few deep footsteps leading to the slushy road. Hey DC gov, I’ll not walk in the street if you actually cite people for not shoveling. When there is some sort of pathway, I’ll stick to the sidewalk, so the advisement’s to not walk in the street is pointless when your law (is it a law or just an impotent regulation?) has no teeth.
You make people change sides of the street during street cleaning or move their cars for rush hour. And regardless of health, vacation or what have you, people find a way to comply. Why? Because when you enforce it with ticketing, it gets done. Back when DC didn’t bother ticketing anything on my street, cars would sit for weeks without moving. There were signs saying move, but they were ignored. Then the city started seriously ticketing, and now neighbors will move your car (if you ask nicely & give gifts) if you can’t because of vacation or weird job schedules or the fact that you’re in a 1/2 body cast. So until the city actually backs up the admonitions of not walking in the street and pleas to owners to shovel their sidewalks with real money fines and liens, there is only shaming. Here are a few blog posts of shame in Mt Vernon, Georgetown, and on Georgia Avenue.
I’m pretty shoveled out but I see a few bus stops I may want to use in the coming days (as this crap will still be around) that need shoveling, as I have no intention of walking the .25 mile to the station in yellow snow lined icy paths.

So far, so good

After chatting with neighbors on the phone and passing by with the old snow shovel (but we’re running out of places to shovel it) I found out I’m okay comparatively.
1- I haven’t torn anything in my leg and thusly I’m not crippled like one poor soul.
2- My roof, so far is holding. The folks down the block suffered a partial roof collapse.
3- And the furnace still works. Last I spoke with another set of neighbor’s whose heat went out. Hopefully they can get it back up and running again.
4- Luckily no one expects me to be at work as the Federal gov’mit is closed. Unfortunately, a good friend of mine who is a contractor, (lowly paid, not the big money type), can’t work when we’re closed and will have to find a way to eat the week of non-work he’s not getting paid for.

I cleaned off the roof of my first floor kitchen and knocked off some of the ice icicles from the safety of a window. There is a big hunk of ice weighing down one section of the gutter that I couldn’t reach safely. Sigh. I’ll try to deal with that tomorrow. I’ve been checking some of the old cracks in the kitchen ceiling and so far no change. My next door neighbor is very worried about his roof and shoveled it. I’m just trusting that the equally spread out weight and some fixes after the gut job renovation helped.
Here’s to praying for sun and above freezing temps.

Food & Friends call for help

On Thursday, February 11th, Food & Friends needs 20 volunteers to deliver meals, especially those with 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Those without cars would be very much appreciated in the kitchen, and it would be great if they could come between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Volunteers may sign up to chendersonATfoodandfriends.org. This information is also available on our website at www.foodandfriends.org/winterstorm2010. Without Food & Friends, our clients likely will not eat, so the help of the community is vital. Meals may be picked up from Food & Friends (219 Riggs Road, NE/Washington, DC) between 10 a.m. and 12 am., we will provide detailed delivery directions, and routes should take no more than 3 hours. For more information, prospective volunteers may call 202.841.5347.

As a pedestrian I find this disturbing

Some blogger got hit by some SUV. Nobody died but the pedestrian did wind up with a broken knee. However the disturbing factor, the struck pedestrian was charged with jaywalking and presented with a ticket in the hospital. From the pedestrian’s telling of it, he was not jogging and seemed to have the right of way as the countdown said he still had time to cross and was in the crosswalk. However the State Dept Security person driving the black SUV seems to have reported it differently saying the pedestrian was a jogger and not in the crosswalk.
As a pedestrian, I find it very disturbing, particularly because I walk in areas where black SUV filled with feds, zip around all the time. If there are any witnesses to this event who can challenge the State Dept’s PR Orwellian release please do.

Would shaming work?


Snowed over sidewalk
Originally uploaded by In Shaw

Georgetown Metropolitian is encouraging neighbors to name names and forward photos of violators who don’t shovel their walks. The hope is that the owners will be shamed into shoveling their sidewalks and making pedestrian routes safer.
I don’t know. Some sidewalks I know are harder to shovel than others. Brick is a ^%#!!! pain to shovel. Yeah it’s pweurdy and “historic” looking, but 1/2 the time it is a pedestrian hazard. So I have some, some, sympathy for people with brick who can’t completely clear off their sidewalk. But they need to try because trudging in anything above 4 inches is a pain too.
This weekend about a foot (more or less) of snow is predicted. And you are more than welcomed to start a Flickr group highlighting violators, and tell me about it so I may blog about it. But I find it better for my soul to just put on some tunes, bundle up and shovel mine and my neighbors’ sidewalks. I mean if you’re feeling vindictive you could pile snow in front of a serial violator’s gate/door/ driveway.