Month: May 2006

…don’t move into this neighborhood. More particularly, don’t move into Northern Truxton Circle. So yesterday I go out back to get my garbage can to bring to the front (because if you haven’t gotten the 10 zillion e-mails from Jim Berry reminding you that Wednesday is the new trash day, today, trash day) when I find 4 puffy little kittens on my doorstep. They were feral kitties, because one of the little guys hissed at me. If trapped, and spayed and neutered, they might be able to be adopted and turned into fat lazy house cats. I was describing this to the cat people of Square 507 and started off with, “they are black and white…” Yeah. Stop right there. Most of the feral cats around here are black and white. It is like a rule that you can’t be a cat unless you are black and white. So, I really should have known better with describing them as black and white, which is as descriptive as “cat with a tail.”
Sometime back someone lost their black and white house cat and put up signs. Sadly, it was a black and white cat. The difference between that cat and the NoTC colony, it was fatter. But with the cat people feeding the alley cats, fat is sort of relative.

News 4 reported a house on the 1200 block of New Jersey Ave has slid off it’s foundation. I was chatting with Truxtonian and he mentioned how the bricks of this houses are not built on a slab. Just bricks on dirt. Yes, people, some of you are just living on bricks, on dirt. You have no real stable foundation. Throw in a little digging, a little rain, you’ve got either a collapsed wall or, in this case, a leaning rowhouse. Looks like it may have been 1242 NJ Ave NW.
Unless you have seen your foundation, your rafters, the bones of your house, just accept that it may just be standing by the grace of G-d, and not because it has strong bones.
The DCFD also has coverage of the house as well.

Via Jim:
Neighbors,

Below please find a flyer for the MPD annual fundraiser to send kids to camp. If you or someone you know is interested in supporting this activity, please let me know at your earliest convenience.

Best,

Jim Berry
ANC 5C
——
The Chief of Police Citizens Advisory Council -Invites You to a Benefit Dinner to Send Kids to Camp

When: Friday, June 02, 2006 6:30 p.m. . 10:00 p.m.

Where: The Washington Navy Yard
Washington / Commodore / Anacostia Banquet Room
8th & .M. Streets, SE
(Use 8th Street Gate . A Picture I.D. is required)

Cost: $40.00 Per Ticket
$400.00 Per Table of 10
Door Prizes

Proceeds will be used to:

1. Send Inner-City Youth to Camp Brown
2. Construct Additional Cabins
3. Repair Hurricane Damage

Sponsored By: The Chief of Police Citizens Advisory Council

Make Checks payable to:

Joseph K. Smith Memorial Summer Camp Fund.
For More Information Please Contact:
Stanley J. Mayes – Treasurer (202) 773-3217
Rev. Thomas S. Alston – Secretary . (202) 584-4431

I’ve been looking at my backyard trying to figure out what I’m going to have for dinner and I’m stumped. I thinned out the chard and the spinach a couple of days ago and they made wonderful dishes. But those plants need more time to grow and take advantage of the space made. There are a few pea pods but really, a dish of just pea pods? I already had a big salad for lunch, so no salad. Also I want to give that some time to grow as well. The salad is beginning to look a little ragged. I have no tomatoes. The squash are still seedlings. I’m not sure what the broccoli plant is doing and the brussels sprouts are a lost cause. The strawberries are not big producers. Besides I have a whole slew of strawberries from the farmer’s market. If I take a few pea pods, a spring onion and a few spinach leaves I can greatly improve some ramen noodles. But I’m not in the mood for lots of salt.
I could defrost the trout in the freezer and make a really great dish with spring onions. The spring onions from last year are getting quite big and are begging to be used. I don’t feel like fish tonight.
Maybe I will just eat a bunch of pea pods. That, and heat up some croissants, make a cup of tea and call it a night.

Urban Spaces|Urban Places’ Frank A. Mills has an excellent post on types of neighborhoods. He starts out talking about hanging out with his neighbor. Which is the same thing I did. Saturday morning, after getting my baked goods at Catania Bakery, stopped by Justin’s as he was sitting in his front yard reading the paper. We just sat there for a while yakking away, one of his neighbors stopped by for a quick talk and later, I called one of my neighbors over (also on his way back from Catania). And like Mills, I saw that it is these relationships that we have with our neighbors that make a good neighborhood. It’s not the buildings, it’s the people.
A relational neighborhood, well in one definition “we find that a relational neighborhood is a neighborhood where residents share a commitment to the neighborhood, to each other, and to joint participation in improving their neighborhood.” One of the building block of creating or supporting the commitment and the relationships is face to face meeting. We need a place where we can meet each other on a regular basis. For some folks it is the park where you let the doggies run free. Others it’s the monthly BACA meetings and other neighborhood civic/political organizations. And maybe this is why we get so excited over businesses in or very near the TC (Truxton Circle), because it would be another place to run into each other and have that face to face contact.
Anyway, read Urban Spaces, it is an excellent post.