Month: January 2006

Saw a pix of Brian Brown and his wife Louise in today’s Washington Post Home Section. Now I have heard of Mr. Brown on the Eckington listserv, and right now my memory is telling me some postings have been critical (deserving? maybe not) of Mr. Brown. Something about a dumpster that might not have been his…
Anywho, I looked at the picture and thought, oh my, I think I’ve met them before. It was 2000 and I was looking for a place in DC and answered an ad for a room in Mt. Vernon Sq. I and another gal showed up for the viewing. The owner, who I think was Mrs. Brown, owned at least two houses over on Morgan or Kirby (I don’t remember the street) and the Mrs. showed us the room soon to be available (the guy was moving out) and a neighboring house they were restoring. She went on about the history and the details. I remember the available room was tiny and I wasn’t interested in it for the price it was going for. Also I had a saying, and still have it, “I work in a museum, I don’t want to live in one.”
There are some who doubt the Browns dedication to history and restoration. If they are the same folks I met that day when looking for a room to rent, the Browns are dedicated to it in their living space. They will do right by Le Droit.

At a coffee hour I was chatting with a retired librarian who had worked at MLK and she mentioned how she didn’t like the building. In her opinion it was a bad, bad, bad building for a library. It might have been a perfectly good building for an office but not so for a library. Sorry but you can’t just stuff a bunch a books in any old building (even if it is a van der Rohe) and call it a perfectly functioning library. I think ALA, the American Library Association, has a subcommittee on library buildings that actually address the needs of libraries. I was happy to read in the Post that Susan Fifer Canby, UMD College of (Library and )Information Studies grad and 2004 Alumna of the Year is on the mayor’s library panel (I’m a ClIS grad too). I may saunter into one of the many series of public meetings to hear what the members of the panel have to say.
The Waltha Daniel’s library in Shaw. That is an ugly building with maintenance issues.

A couple of things again from London Calling (that book on the middle class in gentrifying neighborhoods) struck me. One was the authors wrote repeatingly that the middle class, in the gentrifying neighborhoods, were a numerical minority and the other thing, probably mentioned once was that of overall middle class behavior gentrification was a small tiny itty bitty expression. Think of it. Of all the people I would squarely put in the middle class column at work, most live in the burbs and are very happy to live far away (except for the commute).
Yet when you are in the gentrifying neighborhood I gather it looks more like a middle class invasion. No. We’re just the odd balls. Everybody else is taking over farmland so they can have a yard and a driveway.
If moving into gentrifying hoods is a minor action expression of middle class behavior then that explains why aren’t there more middle class blacks moving into Shaw. Looking at my own middle class family (oh and for my new readers I’m black) only two of us live in the city. One aunt lives on the other side of the river in SE but she and my late uncle moved there after WWII way before the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Everybody else came to DC in the late 60s and 70s and moved to the burbs. When I came in the 90s I first lived in the suburbs and got flak from my family for choosing the District. I’m quite sure they are wondering when I’m going to snap out of this phase, sell the house move to PG or NoVa and live like normal (new construction house with a car in the driveway).
The whole of American middle classdom, regardless of race, seem to have little interest in moving to the ‘hood. Because really, the occasional gunshots at night, the friendly neighborhood drug dealers, the adventures of C the crackho, the trash, the headaches with the city, not for everyone.

I intended to be in bed in the next 3 minutes so let me quickly recap tonight’s meeting, which I’ll go into greater detail later.
* There were ANC 5C board elections. Jim is no longer the Chairman.
* Mondie made his proposal to the board. His project was not approved by the board. Boardmember Brother Phillips took him to task.
* Recorded some of the proposal and the back and forth regarding the Mondie item. But fooling around with the sound is going to take a week.

On the meeting agenda, but not tackled by the time Toby, John, Karl and I left the meeting, was BZA Application No. 17437 Amsale Teku would like a variance to put a “Beauty Salon” at 1543 New Jersey Ave NW.

Me go sleepy now.

I should have posted this around Thanksgiving or Christmas but better late than never. People when you leave for a weekend or vacation turn off your mail and newspaper delivery. You can go on line to USPS.GOV and have them hold your mail for three days. I go on-line to get the Post to stop delivery, which can be hit or miss. Why? Because nothing says I’m not home like three wet newspapers piled in your yard.
Also have a neighbor, someone, kinda keep a eye out for UPS or FedEx packages that have a way of showing up unexpectedly. Or at least those little notices.
I know some of you have exciting jobs that wisk you away at the last minute. I’m sure even super secret agents go on line while waiting from the airport to tell the post office to hold their mail and send their neighbor a quick e-mail saying to place unexpected packages under the porch or behind a plant.

Beware of the big hole in the ground.
I’m posting Sunday because I plan to sleep late so I may dream. But anyway, Sunday morning the wind was gusting pretty mighty. My ride to church took twice as long because I could not breathe. The wind was blowing in such a way that I could not get any air into me and I tried gasping for air. I had to stop and turn my head or cup my hands over my mouth. Also it was a pain trying to stay upright and balanced on the bike. In a skirt. In heels.
The wind was fairly strong. Strong enough to blow down the barriers on 9th and Q? On my way back home I noticed that the boards and all that around the big hole on 9th and Q were down in the hole. The building the hole had eaten was gone but so was the gate. With the strong winds it would not be too hard to imagine someone’s small dog or child gusted into the hole from the sidewalk. Really there was little between the sidewalk and the hole. The picture with the boards on the ground, that grey image in the corner, that’s public sidewalk. Next to it, 6 ft hole. Yes, I did call 311 about it. I’m not sure what they can do about it with the winds. Yellow warning tape will blow away if the winds keep blowing the way they have.

Yes, I don’t sound like black but I don’t care. It took me a week to make and here it is TC1. I now have a greater respect for recording and radio professionals. I realize that my talent, if you want to call it that, is in listening and writing, not talking. Also I want to apologize for a certain tone in my voice when talking about the name “Truxton Circle” and my pronunciation of Karl’s name I just didn’t feel like recording those segments again. The repetative background music might be annoying but it covers the whine of the computer fan. I might need to find another loop. Also what do you want with a dying Windows 98 PC and a Radio Shack microphone?
Pod notes:
*Intro
*Song -If the metro don’t go there it don’t exist by Andrew Pants of songstowearpantsto.com
*Truxton Circle news and announcements
*Shaw and gentrification. What is Shaw, neighborhoods within Shaw and a small bit about gentrification.

Direct Download (Right Click and Save As)

Disclaimer- I’m not a parent so I know squat.
Disclaimer II- Catholic Schools mentioned.

Extra intro: I was looking for a book on DC private schools to go along with this posting but didn’t find it in the bookstore where I had last seen it (darned it someone bought it!) and I couldn’t remember the title or describe what it looked like so I couldn’t ask the nice people at the bookstore, lest I look like a complete idiot. I found something close “Georgia Irvin’s Guide to Schools: Metropolitan Washington Independent and Public/Pre-K-12” but it wasn’t the same book because the book I wanted had Immaculate Conception Catholic Church over on N St, by the Giant. Georgia Irvin didn’t have that. Doing a search with Amazon I found “Independent School Guide for Washington, D.C. and Surrounding Area” by Jill Zacharie and I think that is the book I wanted. Once I get my hands on it I will more than likely give it to Nathan, so he may do something on his blog.

In the last posting, I shared what I found in the book London Calling regarding the coping strategies of middle class parents in gentrifing neighborhoods. Their options were to move when their kids became school aged, do a bit of public primary schooling then switch to private or selective secondary schooling, or just opt out and go private school all the way.
Even if a school was in a good gentrifying neighborhood, parents would note that a number of kids attending came from other poorer neighborhoods. It was not so much the poverty that bugged parents but the school ethos, the environment for learning that was important to parents. The authors wrote that “…primary schools, particularly faith schools, have maintained what is seen as an acceptable normative atmosphere in relation to learning and behaviour.” (p. 141) Which takes me to the story of my associate….
Let’s call him Bob (names changed to protect the innocent, blah, blah, blah).
Bob lived in PG County with his wife and two children. When the first one entered school it was fine for kindergarten and the first grade. In the second grade he noticed that his daughter was repeating lessons she had learned in the first grade. Worried that she might have a learning problem he approached the teacher and found out that the whole class was repeating the lesson because not all the kids had caught up and his daughter was fine. Well this was unacceptable, because it was like going backwards. So he pulled his daughter out of public school and put her in Catholic school. At this point I should note that Bob is an atheist, but would have rather send his daughter to a religious school than keep her hindered in a public school. Telling me this he also described some of his values and beliefs regarding education. Like some of the parents in my part 1 segment, he was not thrilled about shelling out money for private school, because he said at the time he and his wife didn’t have a lot of money. But they valued a good education and they valued the arts, which meant they supplemented their kids’ arts education with piano lesson. [insert Bob’s tirade about lack of school funding for the arts]. Bob happlily told me that after putting two kids through Catholic school neither one of them is Catholic, or particularly religious for that matter. Bob also pointed out another virtue of the school, it was 1/2 black (music classes were also majority Asian) so it had the desired diversity along with that ethos. One kid grew up to be a local musician, the other just finished college.
I only bring up Catholic schools because they tend to be the cheapest of the private schools, not so much my own bias (I think, but I could be wrong). I realize that because of different factors Catholic schools are not an option for some households. Flipping through Georgia Irvin’s book on private schools in DC I saw that there is financial aid and some schools have a decent financial aid package to off set costs. But then again if parents have ideological objections to private school altogether then it doesn’t matter.
Ok, now tying this back to gentrification, middle class parents like Bob sometimes bite the bullet after giving the public schools a chance and go private. Yes, moving was an option. Bob had considered moving to MoCo or NoVa, but there was a strong tie to the area where he lived, a treasured babysitter. The parents in London Calling are tied to their neighborhoods because they highly value aspects of diverse city living over the comforts of homogeneous middle class areas with good schools.
Thinking back to earlier impressions of London Calling, there was also this thing of supplementing the kids’ education where the public system fell through. Part-time homeschooling? Or doing what Bob did, send the kids to music classes? The problem is still there with the ethos in the main school if kids make fun of you because you play the flute or piano.
Usually there is a hope that as more of the middle classes move back into DC the schools will get better. If London is an example, then that ain’t going to happen. In gentrifying neighborhoods the middle class is not the numerical majority. In their neighborhood schools they aren’t a big enough group to make much of a difference either.

Big disclaimer: I am not a parent. Therefore, I know squat about education and parenting.

Well I finished a chapter in the London Calling book about the middle classes in gentrifying neighborhoods regarding education. Education, apparently everywhere, is a major concern of middle class parents. In DC it is one of the big reasons people mention in saying why they wouldn’t move to the city. Even associates who didn’t have kids or weren’t even sure they were going to have children would bring up the DC schools. And it is well known that the DC schools suck. Yeah, there are nicer ways of saying it but compared to MoCo and NoVa. Compared to PG Co., we’re not that bad, we might even rock.
Anyway, back to the book…. The parents in the various neighborhoods profiled had different coping strategies when living in gentrified neighborhoods while still trying to do right by their children’s education. The one strategy, which most of us assume many DC parents will take is to move. That is move away and out of the gentrifying neighborhood. For one, parents who have ideological qualms about selective schools and private education, they will send their kids to the non-selective public/state schools. However, when the kids age out of the primary schools there is a great impulse to move. Rather than stick around and send their children to selective or private secondary schools, they move. Of course, one could see that as a glass is half empty or half full thing. The parents do take a chance on the local public schools and send their kids to schools where they interact with kids from different classes and ethnic backgrounds. But this only lasts for so long and parents do not have any faith in the area secondary schools. From the book I am left with the impression that families wind up moving to staunchly middle class homogeneous neighborhoods with good public secondary schools. That way the parents do not have to compromise their ideological beliefs regarding public education for the sake of their children’s education.
Another coping method was similar to the first but with no qualms about selective state or private schools. Parents would send their kids to public primary schools with the plan to send them to selective or private secondary schools later. Interestingly enough, the primary schools served a purpose by helping middle class parents find each other and provide support and information regarding the move to secondary schools. The DC equivalent of a selective secondary school might be the Ellington School. I need to point out that in gentrifying neighborhoods (in this study) the middle class is not the numerical majority, and apparently middle class parents are an even smaller minority, so they need a way make the connection with others in the same boat. Those who later send their kids to private school aren’t particularly thrilled to do so and would rather spend the money in other ways. Yet the option is pay up or move.
The last option is private school all the way. This option was chosen by parents who didn’t live in an area with any primary school infrastructure and where the number of middle class families with children was really low. There are no networks of other parents in the area to tap into and it is a given that the kids will go to private school.
So there are your options parents, move, mix public and private or just suck it up and do private K-12. As this post is running a little long I’m going to do part 2 covering an associate of mine’s story of educating his kids in private school (and reasons why that do apply to gentrification) and also briefly why (according to my reading of London Calling) an influx of middle class residents don’t necessarily improve the schools in a gentrifying area.

Okay folks. I’m not going to post any more Contractor Guy stuff here. But because of the great interest in “Contractor Guy” I give you The Contractor Guy Scam Map. I’m updating it whenever. Enjoy.