An Appreciation of the Now: Fewer gunshots, fewer killings

If this was a decade ago in Shaw you’d be asking yourself. Fireworks? or Gunfire? It could have been either, or both. One of the nice things about gentrification, fewer gun shots ringing through the night. Sometimes through someone’s window.

R St blockedI’ve been thinking about a website that is still up but no longer updated, DC Homicide Watch (2010?-2014) run by a husband and wife team Chris and Laura Amico. Their documentation of every death, not just the gun victims, but also the stabbing and domestic/ child abuse victims, made them special. As far as I was concerned they were doing the Lord’s work. They not only acknowledged the life that was lost, but provided a place for that person’s friends, associates and loved ones express their grief and loss. There were several Truxton Circle victims, I don’t miss the makeshift street memorials that were a common site around the neighborhood.

There is a site that has picked up the torch of documenting every death in the District of Columbia, DC Witness. I have trouble with the layout and it doesn’t seem to want to work properly on old testy computers. I have to go back to the Google search page to find a version of the site that doesn’t seem to crash my browser. There is a beauty in simplicity.