Category: Uncategorized

The TruxtonCircle.Org website

Ran into THE Scott Roberts at one of the last few Sundays left for the 2018 Bloomingdale Farmers Market. He mentioned the Truxton Circle history site. Yes, the date says 2014. I haven’t updated it for various reasons. Here they are:

  1. Data Clean Up: How. I knew there were some problems with the data. Part of the biggest problem was figuring out how to deal with it. I know the best way to eat an elephant is to start with small bites, but the question is how to cook the dang thing. My 1940 data was split into two different tables, because 2 different people worked on it. Because they didn’t transcribe in the same way, that has taken some time to fix. And I wanted to put all censuses into one monster table. I haven’t done that, because the fields change from census to census.
  2. Data Clean Up: Who-What? Another problem with the data is that it contains incorrect and incomplete information. I’ve explored this with my Black Home Owners of 1940 series and the post United States Census- People Lie. I have come to a stop because I don’t know what to do about a man listed as a husband and homeowner when he is neither. When the land records show that his supposed wife is the owner and widow of another man. I’ve stopped before with other challenges, only to restart it when I’ve completely forgotten about them… until I look at my notes….
  3. Data Clean Up: Documenting it all. In my last attempt to clean up the data in the 1940 census, I would document each change in a separate worksheet. So if I found the address was wrong, I would have a line saying on this date which lines and which fields were changed from what to what. It is tedious. My natural habit is not to leave good notes for myself which later winds up biting me in the rear.
  4. Time. I ain’t got it. I got a baby. Destruct-O-baby has eaten up a lot of my time in ways I did not imagine. I thought I knew what I was getting into with adoption, but I didn’t. I am also too cheap to hire a sitter so I can sit down and work on it.  The only reason I’m able to post this is because Destructo is napping.
  5. Wo-Manpower. It’s just me. Back in 2012 I was able to hire two people with the DC Humanities grant. But that was just for a few months. The Help has his own pet project he’s been working on for over a decade. He doesn’t pull me into his project, I don’t pull him into mine. I also did my own website design and maintenance. I am way behind on this, and when I do update TruxtonCircle.org I’ll have to hire a professional to go in and clean it up…… but after I’ve cleaned up the data. Or at least the 20th century data.

Don’t drink outta the tap! Water Advisory for Friday the 13th

Okay I thought Babyman’s Exorcist-esque event had something to do with a new food I let him try… lemons are cool, that quick pickle, not so much. Now I think it might have something to do with the water advisory. The DC Water site is down, but the local NBC affiliate has an interactive map.

Truxton Circle is in the area of concern.

Help your lower income neighbors save on phone, electric and gas

This is sorta kinda related to Are You Really Middle Class? Or not, depending on your read of this.

At the last BACA meeting someone from the DC government’s Public Service Commission came by and gave out tote bags. Since we’ve gutted those bags and removed the helpful info contained, I figured it would be right to share this with y’all before we chuck it into the recycling bin.

If someone makes under the RES & RAD Income Guidelines (I’ll get to that later) they can get $3 a month land line, up to 30% off of their PEPCO bills, and 25% off from their gas bill. Water is run by the city so nothing for you there.

RAD is Residential Aid Discount and RES is Residential Essential Service. And like figuring out if you’re middle class or poor, it all depends on household size.

Household Size Maximum Annual Income
1 $30,776
2 $40,245
3 $49,715
4 $59,184
5 $66,653
6 $78,123
7 $79,898
8 $81,674

Now you must wonder, how does one apply to this great program? Well apparently you call DDOE via 311, or the Public Service Commission at 202-626-5120.  For the cheaper phone line you have to participate in certain federal programs, what federal programs I do not know, but call 1-800-253-0846 and ask about Economy II. What barriers there may be to actually get these discounts I have no idea. But know they exist.

The In Shaw blog is a mess and so am I

I’m going to let this go live. And maybe next month I will try to bring back or fix the URLs for the previous 2010-2017 blog entries on the Inshaw Blog. But it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Why?

As the blog title hints there are several things going on in my off-line life. For one I have a money pit in Baltimore. Second, I have an in-law situation where we are attempting to move my mother-in-law from CA to DC. Due to a horrid mix of complications and bad lawyers it is a slow moving tragedy I have to keep my eye on. Third, our AC died and apparently needs to be replaced. This is tiny in relation to the other two things, and we went out and bought some units from Home Depot so at least part of the house can be cool.

Maybe, just maybe after I’ve fixed and undone poor workmanship, got my mother in law settled in a place where we can better care for her and the Summer heat is behind me, I can clean up all the messy files on my server.

Flower Power 2010- Call for volunteers

Help!
The Bates Area Civic Association will be having another Flower Power Walk this year and well people are needed. Hopefully the walk will take place on a Saturday in late June, so what will be needed are people to volunteer to give tours. Before that can occur volunteers will be needed to get the word out, help with signage (producing) and volunteering to host a sign. If this interests you contact Flower Power at bacaflowerpower at gmail period com or me.
Related to neighborhood beautification, BACA is planning on having a big spruce up on May 1st. The last clean up I was able to make a dent in the trash in my alley. I picked up a big yellow bag at the start location, went back to my street, then hit the alley, and dropped it off at one of the trash drop off points.
But once again, I really need help with the Flower Power walk so please, if you can volunteer for one or more things, drop a line.

Lasty, I’m going to be migrating this blog over to another URL this week. There might be several “This blog has moved” posts. Ignore them until I post something at length stating the new URL (hopefully will be blog.inshaw.com) before updating your RSS feed.

Where would you put Grandma

I haven’t seen if the BACA blog put anything up about last night’s meeting but there was some lively discussion about Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church’s proposal that they are planning to bring before the Council about putting affordable senior housing in the MM Washington School building. And off topic but before I forget supposedly traffic is gonna be crazy around here next week.
OK, back on topic. Some things. MM Washington is not occupied and the church is somewhere in the Mount Vernon Sq. part of the neighborhood, which is why most of us have never heard of the church. Apparently it’s been there for 20 years. According to some historical record the building was previously an Italian Baptist Church. There were other representatives for the project who stated that their previous projects included Golden Rule Plaza, the one for old folks.
The negative voices at the gathering wondered about security, the homeless, and live in relatives. The developers mentioned there was a waiting list despite mentions from the assembly that they wouldn’t want to put their grandparents/parents in the facility. There were also questions about space and activities shared with the community. The peanut gallery seemed to want the developers to say that they would keep the homeless or actively discriminate against the S.O.M.E. homeless when the facility opened up the activity room for shared events. They can’t discriminate any more than anyone else who opens up an event for the public.
The developers mentioned different events or activities they hoped to have for residents. They made some mistakes in stating that there was a grocery store and pharmacy in walking distance. NY Ave is a road of death and that Safeway really isn’t in ‘safe’ walking distance. Oh, and the heroin corner is not a pharmacy. Also they mentioned that the residents would determine what activities they’d have for the activity room, so it may wind up being closed off and turned into an old folk gym.
Giovanni asked about end of life as the project is an independent living facility. Someone (I took no notes this is all in my head) asked about ‘grandchildren’ and other relatives that may want to live there with granny. Then there was the issue of parking. Apparently the SOME and mental health employees are competing with residents for parking.
Well if there is a waiting list I guess it doesn’t matter if I or you wouldn’t want your Nanna over there. It isn’t Riderwood* or South Florida (the retirement village of America). It does matter if it would be a good fit for the development of North Capitol and the residents of the Hanover section of the TC.

* This weekend I met a retired couple who live at Riderwood in Silver Spring and they just raved about it (good food, lots of clubs, and interesting residents) and made us almost want to sign up.

No one magic bullet

The Help came over for dinner, helping me put a dent in the amount of chicken dishes I made over the weekend. As a part of our date I suggested the overly romantic idea of popping into the 5C01 SMD meeting around the block [sarcasm]. Surprisingly he thought it was a great idea, and after dinner we stopped over to the meeting that was already in progress. If you say you didn’t see us, we were in the back, and we didn’t stay long. We stayed long enough to hear about the parking situation and the Catch-22 the car owning residents of Richardson Pl. are in, and interesting things about liquor licensing. Did you know the city limits the number of A & B licenses for the whole city?
Anyway, we left and got to talking about changes in the neighborhood, particularly the drug dealing on the corner. The Help has known me since before I bought the house, and has seen the neighborhood change. Since he knows me and I pledged to be honest with him I gave him my answer and I’ll share that with you. But I don’t think it varies from what I’ve said before.
There is no one thing that I believe has reduced the dealing on the corner, but rather a whole ingredient list of things. First, I think we got better policing and policing got better. The Internet has helped a lot in getting information to the public, as opposed to the few people who show up to community police meetings. It also helped to have more police patrol cars going up and down the streets. Second, politics and city services. This neighborhood is on the ass end of Ward 5 and we were ignored by then Councilman Orange. With more people involved in local level politics, demanding and engaging more of the elected representatives, who then put pressure on city officials to tackle the crime environment. Also city services and servicing got better. Third, and you know I was going to get to it, demographic changes. There are a whole bunch of things wrapped up in that. The drug dealers need an environment and support structure and when there are fewer people who would add to it, it is undermined. There are fewer neighborhood kids to recruit. Fewer people willing to feed and house dealers. Fewer houses and businesses dealers can stand in front of or visit when they need to duck the cops. Fewer walk up customers. More people complaining and calling the cops. More disapproving eyes on the street. More dog walkers. More joggers. More homeowners. Fewer absentee landlords not caring who they put into a house. Fewer vacant houses. Fewer stores to buy MD 20/20 and a 40oz (remember the old Bates Market?). And lastly, time. All things change with time.