Month: March 2005

Cabs
For the past few Sundays when I have been too lazy to get my butt out of the house in time to catch the bus to church, I have tried to catch a cab. Lo, and behold, I have caught them.
I remember when I couldn’t. I would walk along Rhode Island Ave to the metro and keep an eye out for a cab. Most of the time, I’d be at the station before I saw a cab. Now, I can seem to catch one between 6th and 5th Streets.
I know I could catch one quicker along Florida, but Florida is the border between zone 1 and zone 2 and I don’t need to pay extra when I could move over one block. Also, I like to clearly catch a cab in zone 1 so I don’t have to argue with the cabbie about the zones. That happened when I caught one from Union Station (50 Mass Ave, NE), which is still in zone 1, but the cabbie argued that it was in zone 2, which is at 2nd St NE.
Anyway, I have to test the cab catching theory on a weeknight. I see them, but it is a different story when you’re trying to catch them.

Yeah, a compost posting… again. I don’t want folks to get the wrong idea, but this compost bin is not large. It’s a 20 gallon garbage pail. I know not a large pile, but it is much better than the earlier compost bin I had which was a white 10-15 gallon kitchen trash can I found on the sidewalk.
I began composting soon after settling in here in Truxton, I know this because of the cherry tomatoes. I had a house warming party and a guest (Matt) brought a big bowl of cherry tomatoes from his garden. All the tomatoes didn’t get eaten and I tossed them in the small white bin. I used the compost for the front yard and the next Spring got cherry tomatoes growing along my gates. I didn’t plant them, so I guess some seed from Matt’s tomatoes survived the composting and germinated in the ground.
My approach to composting then was toss and sort of ignore. Everyso often I would try turning the compost but it was a square bin and kind of heavy. It sat in the corner of the backyard and was fine until I noticed the stench. I thought it was bums using that area of the alley to go to the bathroom. No, it was my compost. Smelled like a hog farm in July.
I knew what my mistakes were. For one, it was left uncovered. I had tried covering the top but got lazier and stopped putting the cover on and water got in and the holes in the bottom of the pail were clogged, so I had standing water. Second, I also failed to turn the compost. Aerating the compost allows oxygen to get in and keep it from stinking. So I used up most of the stinky, but well decomposed, compost in some containers and in the front yard and started a new bin in the green 20 gallon garbage can.
The green can is much better. Besides being bigger, it has its own cover, holds more, thus a greater chance to generate heat (a good thing), and its shape allowed me to turn the can by knocking it over on its side and rolling it around. Well once it got a lot of material in it, I had to stop knocking it over, because matter kept escaping and the lid wouldn’t stay on. I now have to aerate by going in with the garden claw and turning the compost. The worms don’t seem to like it.
The aerating and the cover keep down on any stink, but I also try to keep it balanced. Too much nitrogen will make the pile smell like ammonia. So I throw in “browns” like crushed leaves and shredded paper. Although coffee grounds are a “green”, the strong coffee(sometimes chocolate) smell, just covers anything else in the pile.
The turning and the minimal amount of heat as well as the worms have rewarded me with some lovely looking compost this year. I’m going to mix it in with garden soil and some peat moss, to lighten the dirt, and some sand and add it to the front and the containers. But before I do that I’m going to have to test the dirt I make and see what it needs (more nitrogen? more acid?). I’m excited about this coming Spring and can’t wait to get planting.

FYI
Apparently the comment feature was down for a while. Well I use Blogger and sometimes I experience posting problems, but I only post once a day, so it get out at some point. The worst of it is when I go to post and get a 404 screen and lose my posting. I’ve lost a good number, sigh. Anyway, if you can’t post or are having problems, wait a while, or email me.

“Either way, city officials see it as a gain, because they are people in their highest-earning years who do not use many government services.” –From the 3/10/05 Washington Post Article Population Shows Gains and Losses

That phrase annoyed me.
Yes, I don’t use housing vouchers, or go to the employment office, or child services, or any of those city services, but I still need government. Also I don’t want the city to think I don’t need government services.
The middle classes, as well as the working classes need schools that aren’t falling apart. Of course, the people who can afford to, vote with their feet, as it is easier to up and move to the burbs than fight to get the city to educate kids in a clean and safe environment.
I want the city to enforce it’s laws. The quality of this service has been great to poor, depending on the day, and the agency. Sometimes you call DPW about an illegally parked car and they’ll come out and ticket it and boot it and it will be gone in a week, other times it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r for the piece of crap to move.
I want the city to get the middle class, high tax bracket, big old real estate taxed populace emotionally invested in the city government. Parks and Recreation could be an alternative to privately owned recreation facilities. But they ain’t so we don’t care about the parks as much as we could cause we can’t/don’t use them. Schools, I don’t have kids and so why should I care? I could care a bit more if the grounds and facitlies were open to the community for events and other activities (ie the track at Dunbar, hint, hint).
Okay DC, you got all this money from real estate and from higher incomes moving into the city, please, please, please don’t blow it.

A few days ago walking back with B. we noticed a woman, dressed in non-feminine slightly too big clothing, hanging out on the corner of our block. I didn’t recognize her and so I decided that I would do some yard work to keep an eye on her. I don’t want anyone getting the idea they can set up business on my block without someone noticing. B. warned me that doing that could get me in trouble with bad people. You know what? It’s my f*ing yard and my f*ing treebox and I’ll stand out and work in either one of them and observe what I want because they are f*ing mine.
By the time I changed out of my work clothes and into my gettin-dirty clothes, the woman was gone. There was work to be done on the treebox and I had to clean some trash that had flown into the yard so I stayed out there.
I stayed out there long enough to notice a trio of young boys, younger than 16, stopped in front of S.’s house. I glanced at them and went back to working on the treebox. I looked up again and asked one of the boys to stop bouncing on S.’s fence as it looked like he was on his way to bending it or breaking the fence. He stopped and then DM came out of her house and went to talk to the boys. Apparently, as I was only paying 1/2 of my attention to the conversation and the other 1/2 to the task at hand, the boys might be part of a gang trying to get DM’s son into trouble. She was trying to talk some sense into the boys telling them that gang life is a dead end road, if they have a problem with her son not to jump him or call the house threatening him, and so on. She stayed out there a good long while, long after I finished my yard tasks.

This is not a theological post, no. This post comes out of an email about a PBS documentary and a search string in my stats. Let the Church Say Amen is scheduled to air March 29th at 10:30 on PBS and as part of it’s ‘learn more‘ section of the program’s web site it has listed In Shaw. According to their site the film is about storefront churches and apparently the Shaw neighborhood is featured. So I got to thinking about churches, in general, and gentrifying Shaw.
For one the churches around here are destinations for non-Shaw as well as some residents. Many of those non-residents have cars. I’m particularly thinking of 65 year olds with large Lincoln Towncars circa 1980, mint condition. I swear those things take up as much spaces as an SUV. You have churches that seem to have a fair number of people who drive in and try to park on the streets. Now as Shaw gets gentrified, bringing in folks with cars, there are fewer parking spots on the street. Around Shiloh Baptist on 9th Street, it is really bad. Even though the church has a parking lot, and cars park at an angle on 9th, the streets cannot hold all the cars and I’ve seen horrible parking violations by people trotting into church. Cars will double park, park too close to the curb, park on both sides of a narrow street, and park in places a car should never park. This does create tension between the church and residents with cars.
Second, some churches have missions to serve the poor and other community needs. There services range from counseling, breakfasts, food stocks, clothing, and day care. There is a church not far from me that serves a breakfast with a sermon. So far so good. There isn’t a lot of trash when the mostly male crowd of scruffy looking guys shuffle in and out. The men don’t hang out in front for very long and they either remain in or head out and on their way. But how do those missions relate to gentrification and the transitioning of a neighborhood? The complaints I remember from some neighbors related to who some of the services attracted to the neighborhood and how those folks interacted with the neighbors. In more middle class neighborhoods, by comparison by what I have observed, some church missions appear less obvious, or are carried out off site, so that neighboring residents are less aware of what the church does for the needy. The churches in the middle class neighborhoods I have attended, have only advertised their fundraisers (CROP walk, bake sale, bingo, etc) to their neighbors (via exterior bulletin boards), not their soup kitchens or homeless shelter support. Whereas here, you’ll see the signs advertising the breakfasts and the clothing give aways.
Lastly, there is the church as landowner. There are many churches, from store front to historical, that just have the land there main building sits on. Then you have other churches, like Shiloh that own surrounding properties. Some are good stewards of there property, some are just BAD, bad, bad. Bad landlords. Bad at upkeep. Bad neighbors. Bad in a way that allows the property to be used by drug dealers, prostitutes and the like because they have let the property fall into disrepair, or left it unsecured. The only good excuse I have ever heard for a church allowing this was a condition in a woman’s will that left her property to her church and stated that it could only be sold at a certain dollar amount. The church did not have the funds/will to improve it and because of the will’s conditions could not sell it. Ok, maybe not a good excuse. Some churches have been able to do good with their property and be good neighbors, buying former liquor stores and expanding space for their missions, or tearing down old buildings/ or rehabbing them and making nice auxiliary buildings that ‘go’ with the surrounding neighborhood reflecting the neighborhoods changes and improvements.

Comment policy on this post: No theological content please. Feel free to pan or praise a church as a non-profit in the community but avoid topics relating to creeds or beliefs.

Yea! They are done!
I finished the federal taxes some time ago, but I have done my DC taxes and I’m getting back a coupla hundred bucks. I am thankful that DC has online filing so I can just take what’s on my 1040 and plug in the numbers. Took about 20 minutes to file my DC taxes. It could have been shorter but I messed up entering the taxes I paid with the W-2 (the form don’t like decimal points).

Note: the summary of the BACA meeting is at the main In Shaw site.
I stopped by the U Street Starbucks for coffee grounds for the compost. Normally, they are pretty good, but I did get the deer in the headlights look from the kid behind the counter. I mention the Grounds for Your Grounds program. Deer. Headlights. Then I have to wait for someone who has been there at least 4 months to catch this thrilling conversation and explain to their co-worker that I want the espresso pods in the little drawer and take my little plastic bag and dump them in. I go away happy and dump the coffee grounds in my compost bin out in the backyard.
The compost bin mind you is a 30 gallon garbage can with holes drilled in the top and bottom. Nothing fancy. I’m thinking of moving to stacked storage bins next year, so I can have phases of compost. The current bin works well, I just gotta sift out the undecomposed matter.
The compost worms have been doing a great job eating my garbage. I throw in shredded receipts, dryer lint, egg shells, salad and other veggies that have gone bad in the fridge, dead plants from the previous year, discarded parts of fruits and veggies, used tea bags and coffee grounds. The worms eat it and I get compost. Life seems to have been good for the worms as they have been having little baby worms. At first I thought the pale babies were maggots, but looking closer I noticed they were longer and skinnier than maggots.
When I went to dump the coffee in, I stirred up the compost, bringing some adult and a lot of baby worms to the surface and put the espresso in. They went crazy. The baby worms were in constant movement, dancing around like crazy, surrounded by coffee grounds. I got worried and wondered if their little baby worm bodies could not take the caffeine still in the grounds….. Oh well.
Also as a garden thing The Garden District is back open.

The BACA (Bates Area Civic Association) meeting was held last night in the basement of Mt Sinai Baptist Church at about 7pm. The meeting was led by Mr. Jim Berry.

First speaker was Mr. Tashir Lee bringing up his project BZA Case No. 17298 regarding 1507 4th Street, NW. Mr. Lee and the architectural firm he has hired, Studio 27, would like to turn the 4 unit apartment Lee has purchased into a 6 unit condo. He needs 4 variances and is seeking approval from the community. Concern was expressed about the look of the design which is more modern and urban than the neighboring Victorian buildings. Also there were questions about parking as the building has 2 on street allowances and with the 3rd level Lee would like to add, would need to be excused from having to create a 3rd parking spot.

Second speakers were Mr. Tommy Wells, the District 3 Representative of the DC Board of education and Ms. Kathleen Patterson, Councilmember and Chairperson of the Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation. They spoke about the conditions of the DC school buildings, maintenance vs capital improvements and the budget. Apparently there needs to be greater political will on the part of the community to improve the interiors of the school buildings.

Councilmember Orange popped by quickly to make a few announcements and left.

Mr. Wendell Butler representing the Community Academy Public Charter School, which is going into the Armstrong building at 1st and P, threw out many national statistics about schools before speaking about the Armstrong school building they bought in 2004. It has taken them 4 months to clean out the debris and junk left by the homeless and criminal element and now the building is secure. If they are lucky the building might open for school September 2006 or 2007. There is a waiting list (if I heard right).
Meeting continued past 9:15 when I left to get a late dinner.

…you’ll have a $5 crack ho standing in front of your half million dollar home.