I posted something on Shaw Rez’s blog that made me think I should just post here instead of ranting there.
What unites us? What makes Shaw, Shaw, and not Glover Park or Fort Lincoln or Avondale? What makes the stuff that falls outside of the borders (and for the sake of argument I’m sticking with every neighborhood that falls within the border, whether they like it or not) different and within the same? And does it hold true over time?
The easy answer, which I’ve been pointing to over and over and over again like a broken record is the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area hashed out by the Redevelopment Land Agency and the National Capital Planning Commission and any other government body that wanted to ‘fix’ the area in the 60s and 70s. But there is a past, preceding the creation of those borders, and possibly the creation of the school’s borders, with various notables ‘passing through’ and buildings of various sorts being built for various sorts for various reasons. And in the past and the present there is the hard answer of what makes Shaw, Shaw.
Just sticking with the present, what makes Shaw, Shaw? I’m going to say there is probably not one answer. And I’m saying that because I know I’m going to leave something out. First thing that comes to mind, right now, lunchtime on a Wednesday, is the amount of ‘affordable’ and public housing that exists with private and market rate housing in the same space. That is part of the character because it puts people of various income levels together in the same neighborhood. It puts services and service organizations that serve and advocate for the poor, in the neighborhood. If you want to talk history, you can find bits of or ghosts of“the Great Society” in Shaw. Anyway, those things play a part in the character.
There is more but my lunch hour is over with.
Day: May 9, 2007
3 years for a tree
About 2-3 years ago the tree in front of my house died. The first year, I wasn’t sure it died but put a request in to have it ‘taken care of’ by the city. The leaves had fallen before all the other trees, and all the leaves kind of dropped at once. Well the city did nothing that first year. The second year, it was dead. It didn’t come back. No leaves. Nothing. I updated the request I had with the city from last year, saying it was most definitely dead. Nothing. Then I started complaining to then ANC Jim Berry, and making some commentary at the BACA meetings about it.
As Winter came the bark from the tree began to fall off in huge chunks and revealed big cracks in the tree, about 1/4 of an inch wide. The way the cracks formed and the way the tree was shaped, I could see a huge limb falling on one of the parked cars or worse the tree falling on my house.
Well yesterday, strolling by the house I discovered the tree is now gone. Yay! Took the City nearly three years to get it gone, but now it is gone. No one is in danger of having it fall on them. Also another dead tree on the block is gone too. Yay.