This Month
4 Dishing with
Marguerite Kelly
6 Girls, Girls, Girls
8 Our Divine
Sisterhood
10 Ladies Who Serv e
Lunch and Dinner
13 The House that
Alice Built
16 Congresswoman
Bruckenkeller
Explains the Hill
D e p a rt m e n t s
Vo i c e M a i l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Ask Judith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 8
Spencer Says . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 0
Business Bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 1
Business Serv i c e s. . . . . . .2 5
D o w n L o a d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 7
Capital Kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 5
Kids’ Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . .3 8
H o ro s c o p e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 9
Community Calendar . . .3 9
C l a s s i f i e d s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 1
Vol. 2 No. 10 January 19 2001
o f
T h e
H i l l
Capitol Hill
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709 12th Stre e t , S E
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Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
S a t u rday 10am-2pm
709 12th Stre e t , SE
on Capitol Hill
F ree off-street parking
Convenient to Eastern
Market Metro
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No amount of cute brick
sidewalks or old-fashioned
lighting is going to alter this.
Without changing these two fac -
tors, no one is ever going to want to
spend time in this space, and it isn’t
going to be the sort of gateway we’d
like for the Heart of the Hill.
My solution: run Pennsylvania around
the square, like Mass and Maryland
Avenues run around Stanton Park.
The resulting public square would be
substantial. An idea for it’s focal point
would be a nice bandstand—call it
“Sousa Square.”
Plenty of paved area should be preserved
—the space could be used for an
expanded weekend market or alterna -
tive location (that parking lot across
from Eastern Market may not be there
forever), or for small festivals—craft
fairs, music events, etc.
This arrangement would be much
better for pedestrians, especially those
coming out of the Metro…
The importance of making this area
more pedestrian friendly shouldn’t be
underestimated. Right now, it acts as a
substantial barrier, separating most of
the Hill from Barracks Row. On a typical
weekend, Eastern Market and 8th
Street might as well be on opposite
sides of the city—one is crawling with
people, one is a ghost town, but
they’re only 1 block apart!
This new square would unify these
two areas, to the benefit of both.
As to the bus stops, ideally, I’d like
to make them go away entirely…but I
know what a battle that would
be. Instead, I’d reduce the number of
stops from 5 to 2…these stops would
be enclosed (by a modern take on our
hairpin iron fences perhaps) to trap litter
and improve the aesthetics. If
enough funding was available, giving
the stops the full Victoriana treatment,
with lots of historically cor rect details,
would be great…
While we’re at it, and since it’s
planned anyway, the Metro entrance
could be redone to fit the theme.
This idea represents a major overhaul,
I know. “Make no little plans,”
someone once said, and this is certainly
ambitious.
H o w e v e r, given all that is going on at
the moment, is it really that much to
hope for? I mean, we have the Barr a c k s
Row redevelopment, the Millennium
A rch project, the Navy Ya rd/M Stre e t
developments, the NCPC naming the
EM Plaza as a desirable site for memorials,
and, as I understand it, several million
dollars in Federal Highway
Administration funds that must be
spent in Wa rd 6 (re p rogrammed fro m
the canceled Barney Circ l e
b y p a s s ) . What an amazing convergence,
and yet, save for the Voice of
the Hill’s intere s t ,
nothing has been
seriously pro p o s e d
for this vital bit
of geography.
And it’s the buckle
which should
bind it all together!
Thanks to the Voice for putting this
issue before the Hill Community and for
all your good work over the past year.
R O B E R T WRIGHT
Robert Wright really poured himself into this
assignment, even providing sketches of his
plan—these were forwarded to Jill Dowling
of the 8th Street/Main Street project. And
yes, we are still collecting ideas for how to
make the Eastern Market Metro plaza mor e
inviting. E-mail your suggestions to
Stephanie@voiceofthehill.com, or mail them
to the editorial office, 242 Kentucky
Avenue, SE 20003.
To the Editor:
While I agree with Mr. Duncan
Spencer’s view that Capitol Hill is a
vibrant community that needs newcomers
[NIMBY on the Hill, December
2000], it is unfortunate that he sees
neighborhood concerns regarding the
high density Medlink/Holladay project
as a total rejection of residential development
on that site. Well thought out
development takes into account its
impact on a neighborhood. Thus far,
the proposed plans neglect this important
aspect.
Mr. Spencer and I also concur on the
beauty of the charming hill towns in
Tuscany and walled cities in Spain. I
would be hard pressed to find a 7-story
building in any of those historic towns!
The lessons from historic European
towns lies in construction that
respects the density and character of
the towns without overwhelming their
infrastructure. Indiscriminate new
construction and blind opposition to
development are equally problematic.
SARA NIEV ES-GRAFALS
To the Editor:
[Spencer says] “The genius of great
architecture is that building which
expresses its own time and people’s
present needs without looking back,
enslaved by the past.”
I think Duncan needs to spend a bit
more time studying architecture and
development before associating a
statement such as that with the development
proposed for the Medlink
site. Maybe he would consider the
apartment buildings strewn about
Connecticut Avenue, NW “genius of
great architecture” too?
Having created my livelihood in the con-
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 3
Vo i cem a i l
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The focus is on the community and
includes contiguous neighborhoods
from Gallaudet University to the
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Publication and distribution is the
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Advertising deadline is the first of
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Contributing Writers
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VOICE o f
T h e
H i l l
Kristen Hartke
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Duncan Spencer
To the Editor:
WOW! Thank you so much for writing
up an article on us for the Voice of the
Hill website. Four new mentors have
already signed up as a result of the
article!
I know that you were coming up on
your deadline the day I emailed over
our information, so I was not expecting
the information to go in quite this
soon. But I really, really, really appreciate
you taking the time to include
it. What a fabulous contribution you
have made to our program.
All the best (and many thanks
again!),
AV E RY OUEL LETTE
Capitol Hill Center Director
The Higher Achievement Program (HAP)
HAP is still looking for volunteers to tutor
students at Hine Jr. High. Please see the
Download section for details.
To the Editor:
I had been acquainted with Anwar
Saleem and his business, Hair Rage
International, prior to reading the
November issue. I had even admired
Mr. Saleem for his leadership in the H
Street Merchants and Professional
Association. But it was not until I saw
his ad in the Voice in November that I
made an appointment for a midweekspecial
haircut.
Judging from the number of compliments
I have gotten, that was the best
$15.00 I have spent in a long time. I
enjoyed the salon’s atmosphere and
aesthetics (which I later found out Mr.
Saleem himself designed). Best of all, I
enjoyed the stories of H Street in its
heyday that my stylist, Diane, and Mr.
Saleem shared with me.
I hope this letter encourages more H
Street businesses to advertise in the
Voice. And I hope that more of your
readers will support the businesses
who do.
Yours,
M A RY VOGEL
To the Editor:
Hopefully you’re still taking com -
ments/ideas on what to do with the
Eastern Market Metro plaza [Download
section, December 2000].
There are two major problems, as I
see it, with the cur rent arrangement of
the area around the Metro—and let me
digress to say that I’m not just talking
about the plaza itself, but the whole
area, inclusive of the park on the north
side of Pennsylvania: It’s chopped into
too many pieces by roads, making it
very pedestrian unfriendly, and the five
busy bus stops surrounding it doom it
to be a litter-strewn transportation
depot. continued on page 34
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
4 www.voiceofthehill.com
the defining feature of Marguerite’s
life. The attitude infuses the wise,
sympathetic advice she dispenses to
worried parents in her weekly
Washington Post column (it appears
in the Style section on Wednesdays)
and it’s what led her to open her
home to various “stray” kids over the
years, young relatives or friends who
for one reason or another needed a
home for weeks or months.
“Some we helped, some we
didn’t,” she says, describing the
experience as a “lesson in humility.”
But, in fact, the thing she is
proudest of in her life is not the
three parenting books she’s written
and certainly not the careers of her
four children.“Oh, no,” she says to
that suggestion. “What they’ve
accomplished they’ve done on their
own.”
What Marguerite Kelly looks back
on with a sense of a job well done is
the way she handled the rather
unglamorous task she took on as a
young woman—caring for her husband’s
aging parents.
As Marguerite tells it, she knew
she wanted to marry Tom Kelly, a
charming reporter from Washington,
as soon as she met him at the
New Orleans paper, but he “wouldn’t
marry me until he had paid off his
car and I was no longer a teenager.”
They wed in 1952, when she was
20, both continuing in their jobs at
the Item.
But on a Christmas visit to Tom’s
parents the following year “we realized
that we couldn’t walk out on
them.” Tom’s mother was senile,
remembering nothing after the age
of 16, and regularly running away
from home.His father, a “dear guy”
who had owned a downtown restaurant
called “Kelly’s,” was overwhelmed
with the responsibility of
caring for her.
Though a successful 22-year-old
Marguerite Kelly, who
writes the
Washington Post
“Family Almanac”
column, started her
professional life as “Happy” Lelong,
a 17 year old “copy kid” on the New
Orleans Item newspaper.
Two years later she—whose role
models were political columnist
Dorothy Thompson and comic strip
investigative reporter Brenda Starr—
was “over the moon” when she was
promoted to a full-fledged reporter.
Marguerite told me recently that, “It
never occurred to me women
couldn’t get ahead.”
Marguerite set great store by what
she had learned from the two strong
and unusual women who raised her
after her mother’s dramatic death in
a house fire when Marguerite was
just 6.
Her mother’s sister, Aunt Kay, a
“lovely gal” fond of spike heels and
décolleté dresses, folded Marguerite
into her own busy, financially
stretched, slightly eccentric household
and cared for her until she was
ready for high school.
Tante Margot, a proper matron in
Middleburg, Virginia, was the sister
of Marguerite’s father. (He, according
to Marguerite, was a “roué,” a
rake. French sprinkles Kelly’s conversation,
part of her heritage from the
French Huguenot Lelongs).
Tante Margot gave Marguerite a
weekend home in the country, while
she attended Georgetown Visitation
for two years, and took her to restaurants
and theater in Washington.
These two women showed
Marguerite manners, thrift,
resilience and joy. When she asked
Aunt Kay how she could ever repay
her kindness, Marguerite was told,
“You just have to pass it on.”
Indeed, passing on the kindness
she received from her aunts has been
D I S H I N Gw i t h
M A R G U E R I T E
K E L LY
BY STEPHANIE DEUTSCH
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 5
who loved working, Marguerite
made the decision to stay home with
her husband’s parents.
She and Tom moved into 404
Constitution Avenue, NE, the house
where Tom had grown up. Tom
went to work at the Washington Daily
News while Marguerite locked the
doors, hid the house keys, did the
shopping and cooking, “waxed all
the furniture every month,” read a
lot and “had no friends”—the neighbors
included a lot of “racist white
old-timers” who weren’t terribly welcoming.
The neighboring houses were all
red brick with porches. “The people
next door wouldn’t talk to us for two
years after we took the por ch off and
painted the house gray,” she remembers.
Tom’s parents died as the young
couple were beginning their own
family. Kate, Michael, Meg and Nell
all grew up in the same house their
father had.
In 1971 the Kellys moved down
the block, to the large corner house
at 420 Constitution Avenue that
Marguerite had had her eye on for
years. With its generous proportions
and side porch, it reminded her of
New Orleans. Tom still refers to the
move as their “flight to the suburbs.”
The Hill was changing in those
years of the late fifties and early sixties,
with young couples moving in.
“There were all these bright women
at home with children,” she recalls,
remembering the brass knockers and
painted doors that started to
appear—along with window air conditioners.
Marguerite started giving coffees
to help neighborhood women get to
know each other and got many of
them involved with Friendship
House, whose board she had
joined.At that time, Friendship
House was “the big connecting point
in the neighborhood. There was a
real sense of community.”
She and her pals would go door to
door, soliciting pledges of volunteer
hours to be used tutoring, helping in
the day care center (then the largest
in Washington) or working in the
office.
She created the fir st “Market Day”
which was supposed to sell arts and
crafts made by the underemployed.
“It was a lovely idea,” she remembers,
“but very labor intensive.”
After Friendship House,
Marguerite moved on to politics. “I
like to organize,” she admits—which
is a partial explanation for her 10
years as a Democratic precinct cap -
tain, and later a ward leader, recruit -
ing block captains for sixty square
blocks from the Supreme Court to
Club Koko at 8th and H Streets
Northeast.
She ran non-partisan voter registration
drives, giving out free
Popsicles to kids if they brought in
an adult to register: “One year,
we gave away 500 Popsicles in
the rain.” Another time she lured
voters with free rat poison.
In August of 1963 Marguerite
set up a lemonade stand for the
Freedom Marchers streaming
down Constitution Avenue on
their way to the Lincoln
Memorial. “I had a baby due in
two weeks,” she explains. “I couldn’t
march, so that was my contribution.”
She dressed her three kids in
their best clothes and stood with
them next to a sign that read “Free
lemonade for Freedom Marchers.”
Those days were all about “grass
roots stuff,” Marguerite says. “But
during the sixties it got more and
more tense. The riots were clearly
coming.”
In the late sixties Marguerite
turned her attention back to
writing. She had done some freelance
investigative reporting for the
Washington Post on, among other
things, pricing policies at Safeway
and had begun thinking about a
book on child rearing.
“I found it so hard, rearing Kate
and Mike,” she remembers. “When I
came up with techniques that
worked, I though I should pass them
on.”
On her first book, The Mother’s
Almanac, Marguerite worked with
friend, neighbor and researcher, Elia
Parsons.The book appeared in 1975,
subtitled “The Most Complete Book
Ever Written on Loving and Living
with Small Children.” Though
Marguerite had been warned it
wouldn’t sell well, it has sold over
800,000 copies so far and has been
reissued.
That book was followed by The
Mother’s Almanac II, Your Child from
Six to Twelve, which also has been
reissued, and then Marguerite Kelly’s
Family Almanac, A Helpful Guide to
Navigating Through the Everyday
Issues of Modern Life, a compilation
of the columns Marguerite began
writing for the Post in 1979.
And what, I ask Marguerite, makes
her approach to children and their
care distinctive?
“I am more respectful of children
than some,” she says. “And I am less
authoritarian. It’s easy to abuse your
power as a parent. I know I did.”
Marguerite stresses creating situations
where children take responsibility
for aspects of their own lives—
through completing chores for the
family, making gifts, having small
jobs, becoming competent in skills
from cooking to pet care to furniture
polishing (a particular favorite).
She also encourages asking children
of all ages what they think
about issues from public affairs to
family problems.
Marguerite greatly values hard
work, loyalty and courage as virtues
that children need to be taught and
encouraged in.
Her Aunt Kay taught her a lot
about family loyalty and hard work.
Courage she learned from her mother,
who ran back into her burning
home to save one of her kids, not
realizing that he had already been
rescued by someone else.
Marguerite’s mother died in the
blaze.
That kind of courage isn’t called
for very often, but one senses that
having learned it in such a vivid and
horrifying way, Marguerite regards it
with uncommon respect.
How did she help her children
become brave and loyal? “Within
tight boundaries, I let them take
risks,” she says.
When Kate and Mike were 13 and
14, for example, Marguerite and Tom
sent them to stay with distant
cousins in Ireland for 7 weeks. “They
lived with a family that had 9 kids.
There was a boys’ bedroom, a girls’
bedroom and an outhouse. It was an
unusual experience,” she says, “and
it showed them a lot.”
Today, the Kelly children are
grown and married with successful
careers. Kate is senior editor of parenting
and family issues for U.S.
News and World Report, Michael is a
syndicated columnist and editor at
the Atlantic Monthly, Meg is a writer
for As the World Turns, and Nell is
a teacher.
Marguerite describes her children
as “well grounded,” citing as an
example Nell’s decision to trade a
lucrative job making “good money
and bad movies” as an assistant film
editor, for the satisfaction of teaching
kindergarten in the Bronx.
And it’s not surprising to learn
that though Marguerite claims to
have been less than overjoyed at
becoming a grandmother at 52, she
enjoys this role.She has eight grandchildren
and they visit often.
Despite her busy schedule,
Marguerite reserves Thursday nights
for something she admits to being
quite proud of.
“Family dinner” is a simple meal,
“a roast and a salad or some thing,”
prepared by Marguerite, that she and
Tom transport to daughter Kate’s
home in Northwest D.C. It’s casual
and easy, a chance for parents, children
and grandchildren to enjoy
each other, a respite for Kate, whose
husband works nights.
It’s no work at all for anyone
except, of course, for Marguerite.
Aunt Kay would surely approve.
In addition to writing for the Voice,
Stephanie Deutsch reviews books for the
Washington Times and other publica -
tions and is writing a book .
“I am more respectful of
children than some…And I
am less authoritarian. It’s
easy to abuse your power
as a parent. I know I did.”
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
6 www.voiceofthehill.com
day she came home and found Stan
sitting on the bed with all three girls,
putting bows in their hair. She
laughs, “And he had a bow in his
hair, also. I figured he had really
arrived as a father at that point.”
Ben Harrison agrees that being a
father of girls has contributed to his
personal growth, saying “I can paint
fingernails now with the best of
them. It’s an acquired skill.”
And Lloyd Raines admits to some
occasional ridicule by his daughters
when he asks to meet the boys they
are dating. Says Raines, “I consider
myself a feminist but sometimes I do
things that are traditional and the y
think that I’m acting old-fashioned.”
Although he is surprised to say it,
Ben Harrison loves to see the girls
dressed in matching outfits. “It
seemed sort of silly to me,” says
Harrison, “but the fir st time we had
Gracie and Elizabeth in matching
dresses, I had to admit that they
looked cute as hell. Their grandmother
sent four red dresses for all
the girls this Christmas and they
really looked adorable. Maybe if we
had four boys we’d dress them up in
matching plaid bow ties or something,
but the girls really do look
cute that way.”
Occasionally dressing the girls in
matching outfits can have its practical
side too, according to Ben. Last
summer, when Libby was pregnant
with Hannah, she bought matching
bathing suits for the girls, the better
to help her keep an eye on them as
they ran around at Cheverly Pool—
especially their third daughter, Page,
who is such a whirlwind of activity
that Harrison says “I’d stack Page up
against any boy any time.”
All three fathers ag ree that the
girls have more opportunities to
push boundaries and enjoy a wide
variety of activities than boys do.
“In our house,” says Ben, “the
older girls like Barbie and Pokemon
pretty equally.” Solloway and Raines
both have daughters who participate
in crew, soccer, hiking, and other
sports, while also being interested in
dance, music, and books.
The fathers also like to car ve out
some time to spend with their
daughters on their own: Stan
Solloway has coached all of his
daughters in different sports, while
Ben Harrison takes the girls on a
camping trip at the beach each
September. Lloyd Raines and his
daughters try to have dinner together
several nights a week, “So that we
can look each other in the eye and
talk about what’s going on in our
lives.”
With Meriah Burke-Raines
approaching college, her father is
also feeling the pangs of her immi -
nent departure from their family’s
daily activities: “I’m very conscious
BY KRISTEN HART K E
When Ben Harrison is walking down
the street with his four girls, who
range in age from six years to five
months, he gets a lot of comments
from passersby. “I think if you have
four boys,” says Harrison, “people
are more likely to say ‘Oh Gosh! Four
boys!’ If you have four girls, they say
‘Oh, how sweet! Four little girls!’”
Being a father of daughters is a
special privilege, according to Lloyd
Raines, whose daughters Meriah, age
17, and Rachel, age 15, split their
time between the Capitol Hill homes
of Raines and their mother Sarah
Burke. “I think having girls at this
point in history is very interesting,”
says Raines. “They have so many
opportunities to explore their interests
without feeling constrained by
society. It’s an exciting time.”
Raines confesses to having had a
preference for having daughters, saying,
“I thought it would be interes ting
to see what life looked like
through their eyes. I knew what it
was like to grow up as a boy. I hoped,
I think, to help the girls to grow up
to be very confident in themselves.”
Ben Harrison, who grew up with
three brothers and three sisters
(while his wife, Libby Clarke, is the
youngest of 11) harbored somewhat
of a preference for daughters, as well.
“Libby’s sister has four boys,” says
Harrison, “and she’s burst into tears
with every successive girl we had. I’d
have to say, watching her with those
boys, that having all boys seems like
a pretty intense proposition. That’s
not saying that girls are easy, but
they certainly are different.”
Stan Soloway is sure that his three
girls—Mollie, age 18, Anna, age 15,
and Sonya, age 11—are much easier
to deal with than boys. “I think that
life is certainly a little less busy and
chaotic with girls,” says Soloway,
“and we definitely have a calmer
household than we would if we’d
had boys. We never had to deal with
things like roughhousing or toy
guns.”
On the other hand, fathers of girls
must often wade into unfamiliar territory,
like dolls, makeup, the color
pink, and—horrors!—dating boys.
“When Mollie was first born,” says
Soloway, “I insisted that she not
wear any pink. We just dressed her in
baby overalls, but she had no hair so
people would often mistake her for a
boy. One night we were at the
movies and my wife had Mollie up
on her shoulder and someone
behind us called her “Butch.” After
that, I decided that maybe some
pink was not such a bad idea, just so
people would know she was a girl.”
Kathy Soloway has a fond memory
of her husband when the girls were
young— which she calls “His fines t
moment as the father of girls.” One
Girls
Girls
Girls
B E I N G A D A D I N A N A L L - G I R L WO R L D
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 7
of the fact that Meriah will soon be
out on her own and the time is very
precious.”
Stan Soloway’s oldest daughter is a
freshman at Colgate this year, so he
has already had to deal with a slightly
quieter household, although, he
quips, “There are still three women
in the house, so it’s not that much
different.”
The biggest challenge to raising
girls for all these fathers seems to be
in allowing their daughters to
explore their identities while keeping
them protected at the same time.
“The pressures on girls are much
heavier,” says Soloway, “and the
risks much greater.”
Harrison finds that it can be tricky
to maintain a balance in a parentdaughter
relationship, saying, “I
think there’s a conflict between
wanting your child to have spunk
and a spine and wanting them to do
what you say. When boys act up,
people have a tendency to say “Oh
well, boys will be boys.” Although
it’s not our intention, we probably
have expected the girls to be a little
more compliant, a little more ‘yes,
mommy, yes, daddy’.”
Lloyd Raines feels that his daughters
are successfully navigating all
the complications of their girlhood
and credits them with having “a
deep sense of compassion and empathy
for others. They each stand on
their own two feet very well.” And
although Stan Solloway confesses
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I F I O N LY H A D A S O N
A Lament
BY GREGORY CAVA N A U G H
The holidays were approaching and to save possible embarrassment it
had to be done. The water in the bathroom sink was taking longer and
longer to drain—the pop-up mechanism was tangled around with girls’
hair, again.
Being a balding guy whose longest hair is about 4 inches, these foot
long strands were undoubtedly from the Big Princess and the Little
Princess who live here. A man’s home is not his castle. Unless he’s loaded,
it’s just another work site. Move the bobby pins, hair combs and face
scrub. Additional reminders that it’s the two of THEM, and me.
What if my intelligent and beautiful Little Princess (who, at this
moment, is very busy changing her nail polish from pale green to blue—
while giggling on the phone) had been a Prince?
But then, I don’t want a prince. I want a boy who would be under the
sink with me, wanting to know which is the best wrench to use—and
fetching it.
Being Saturday morning he would have finished washing the car and
my truck, hoping we’d go for driving lessons later—him needing to know
how to drive stick. He’d be listening to each piece of advice on parking,
backing, watching out for the other guy, knowing that if he pays attention
he’d be able to drive as good as his old man in no time.
Now we’d be under the sink talking about how we might be shoveling
snow together before long, how we’ve got to repaint the whole house in
the spring, and how maybe I could find time to teach him how to use the
router.
In the background, we hear the Big Princess complaining about something
we didn’t do and he says, “She just doesn’t understand us guys,
does she?” And I say, “It’s just the two of us.”
The editor’s husband is King of the Wishful Thinkers.
Fr a g er’ s
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that having all girls “makes you feel
lonely every once in a while,” he
also enjoys their enthusiasm and
convictions, even if he doesn’t
always understand them.
But the final word on all these
girls comes from Ben Harrison: “In
the end, it’s just great to have four
kids, whether they’re boys or girls.
We have a lot of fun.”
Kristen Hartke’s husband lives in an
all-girl world that includes the dog.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
8 www.voiceofthehill.com
in 1998—has been at
Douglas Memorial since
1986. But the reverend part
of her story starts with her
graduation from Coppin
State with a degree in—
business.
(You’ll notice that one of
the wonderful things our
group has in common is
how many of them set off
in one direction only to
find themselves drawn
back by their call.)
Charlene found herself
working at Baltimore’s
Union Baptist Childcare
Center after she graduated from college,
though she knew that her call
had already come:
“I grew up in a Pentecostal
church, so seeing women in the
ministry was nothing new to me,
nor was it difficult to see myself as a
minister. After getting my degree in
business, I thought I might get an
MBA and maybe even be a CEO. But
from the moment I fir st stood to
proclaim the Word, I knew that the
gift was there. My mentors encouraged
me; my work schedule was
arranged so I could enroll in the
Master of Divinity program at
Howard. After I g raduated, I served
at a Methodist church in
Reisterstown [Maryland] and then
was appointed to serve as Pastor at
Douglas Memorial.”
Judith Davis
Christ Church Episcopal, 6th and G
Street, SE
Judith Davis, Rector at Christ
Church Episcopal, was not merely
considering another career, she was
neck-deep in one: she was a tenured
professor of Allied Health and
Hematology at North Carolina State
The sociological verdict is in: our
professional ministry is being taken
over by women. As a generation of
male ministers gray and retire, pulpits
almost everywhere are being
filled by our mothers, sisters, aunts,
and cousins. The Lutheran Church
of the Reformation, Douglas
Memorial United Methodist,
Washington Church of the Brethren,
Capitol Hill Presbyterian, and Christ
Church-Washington Parish all bear
witness. Women have been hearing
the call for a long time. The church
is finally responding.
Charlene Monk
Douglas Memorial Church, 11th and
H Street, NE
Charlene Monk has seniority of
tenure among the ministers I spoke
with, although she’s far from the
senior member of the g roup.
Dr. Monk—she finished her doctorate
at Howard’s School of Divinity
car and drove to New Haven. My cats
and I cried all the way.”
Davis graduated from Yale in 1991
and came to Capitol Hill in 1996.
Alice Martin-Adkins
Washington Church of the Brethren,
4th and N. Carolina Avenue, SE
For Alice Martin-Adkins, Senior
Pastor at the Washington Church of
the Brethren, there were fewer institutional
obstacles: the Church of the
Brethren started ordaining women
in the late ’50s.
Growing up Southern Baptist just
outside of Richmond, Virginia, she
was always involved in church. But
when she went to college, she started
out in theater and looked for a
way to combine it with her interes t
in ministering. The call won out. She
came to Washington in the early ‘70s
University. But her call was there.
“I always wanted to be a minister,”
she says, “but the Episcopal Church
was not yet ordaining women, so I
couldn’t think about it.”
Nevertheless, she managed to keep
her call alive and meld it with her
profession by working in a hospital
ministry. “After ordination for
Episcopal women began in 1974, my
parish started pushing me to go to
seminary. It was hard: my grad students
loved me and I had tenure. But
in the end, you have to be a fool for
Christ. I wanted at first to be a hospital
chaplain, but
my bishop said
‘No, you can’t
decide where God
is going to call
you.’ So I decided
to go to Yale to
prepare for the
Episcopal ministry.
My friends at
NC State said ‘We
all think you’re
nuts. We wish we
had the courage to
do it.’ I packed up
everything in my
Judith Davis went from tenured professor
of Allied Health and Hematology at
North Carolina State University to rector
of Christ Church Capitol Hill.
Charlene Monk came to Douglas
Memorial via a business degree and a
childhood in the Pentecostal tradition.
Alice Martin-Adkins started in theater
and looked for ways to combine it with
her call to minister.
Our Divine Sist e r h ood
BY GENE MIL LER
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 9
to study at InterMet, an ecumenical
“seminary-without-walls.” Alice’s
training assignment? Washington
Church of the Brethren, where she
discovered she not only had
Brethren ecclesial inclinations, but
Brethren roots.
After she finished seminary, she
served Brethren churches in Illinois,
Maryland, and Pennsylvania before
returning to Washington as senior
pastor in 1998.
“Oh yes, there were barriers for
me,” she says. “ There were always
people, including women, who didn’t
believe that women should be
ordained, so they would vote against
me. Even after the vote was decided,
they would continue to tell me why I
shouldn’t be who I was. But here’s a
wonderful example of God’s presence
at work: often the people who
were so opposed are the ones who’ve
maintained contact with me as I’ve
moved on.”
Katie Nugent
Tried Stone Fire Baptized Holiness
Church, 13th and C Streets, NE
Outside the mainstream of American
Protestantism, there are African-
American churches with a long tradition
of ordaining women.
The Reverend Katie Nugent of
Tried Stone Fire Baptized Holiness
Church has been in the ministry in
one way or another since 1959. Her
denomination has been ordaining
women since 1898.
“I was raised Baptist in northern
Louisiana,” she tells me. “When I
was in my twenties, I went north to
Evanston [Illinois] looking for
work.” The intensity of her spiritual
experience and commitment—“I
was saved and sanctified in 1958”—
led her to begin attending a Fire
Baptized Holiness church, although
she retained her Baptist ties.
She remembers her call like it was
yesterday: “One Sunday morning,
the Lord called to me. ‘Preach!’ He
said. It was so great in my spirit that
I couldn’t possibly doubt it.” The
Baptists appreciated her call enough
to license her to the ministry, but
they weren’t quite ready to ordain
her. Nothing personal: they just
weren’t ordaining women.
Rev. Nugent decided that she did -
n’t want to be the cause of continued
struggle, “...so I went back to a
church where they wanted me.” She
was ordained District Evangelist for
Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana by
the Fire Baptized Holiness Church in
1962.
In 1974, she returned to Louisiana
and founded and pastored Faith
Tabernacle in Monroe. In 1993, her
denomination’s Board of Bishops
put her on the road again, landing
her at Capitol Hill’s Tried Stone
church in 1997.
Like many of her colleagues here,
Rev. Nugent came to an aging and
transient congregation. She’s working
to rebuild and revitalize the
group. She understands what she’s
up against in a world that values possessions
and status: “We’re not a
church where you can just come and
go as you please. We’re a church that
is set apart. We don’t live loose. We
call for accountability.”
Notwithstanding her denomination’s
century-long tradition of
ordaining women, Rev. Nugent
shares a difficulty with many of her
Capitol Hill sisters: the “stainedglass
ceiling.” Women in the paid
ministry are concentrated in the
lower ranks. It’s difficult for a
woman to be ordained a bishop or to
be appointed senior or lead minister
in a large parish. Just last summer,
national headlines were made when
Rev. Vashti McKenzie was elected the
first female bishop in the African
Methodist Episcopal Church.
Wanda McNeil
Lutheran Church of the Reformation,
2nd and E. Capitol, NE
Reverend Wanda McNeil, Associate
Pastor at the Lutheran Church of the
Reformation, has wrestled with
career advancement: her church is
now looking for a senior pastor.
She came to Capitol Hill in 1990
to assist in the regular ministry and
create a church outreach program.
She’s still doing both: she carries out
the “normal” functions of a minister
and also heads up the Southeas t
Ministry, which provides social services
across the Anacostia.
When the senior position at her
church opened up recently, she put
her name in, but later withdrew it. “I
really had to think hard about how
being a senior pastor would affect
my involvement with the Southeast
Ministry, which is so dear to my
heart. In the end, I realized that I’m
happy doing what I’m doing. Senior
pastors aren’t the ones out in the
field.”
The Powers that Be
In addition to the hard question of
career advancement, McNeil points
out another seduction peculiar to
Capitol Hill: she nods in the direction
of the Capitol Building, visible
through her office window. “It’s so
easy to have your head turned just
by being here, close to all this
power.”
Judith Davis echoes McNeil’s concern:
“Ministers are supposed to
model a counter-cultural life of holiness
and prayer, but it is easy to get
sucked into the hard pace of work
and life on the Hill. It ’s hard to
model something different.”
Charlene Monk has been more
deeply involved with the political
life of the city than mos t: she served
as Special Assistant for Religious
Affairs for Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly.
Still, she says, “If you want to be a
Hollywood star, the ministry is not
for you. We are not called to be
served, but to serve. You deny yourself
and answer God’s call. And you
find yourself blessed in the midst of
denial.”
The road for women ministers
remains a tough one because
churches often have great difficulty
with change. There’s a story,
though, that they all tell: the work is
hard and the hours are long, but the
benefits are out of this world.
Gene Miller is the Voice of the Hill’s
Religion Editor
545 7th St., SE /Washington, DC 20003
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Katie Nugent remembers her call like it
was yesterday… “It was so great in my
spirit that I couldn’t possibly doubt it.”
Wanda McNeil came to Capitol Hill in
1990 to assist in the regular ministry
and create a church outreach program.
She’s still doing both.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
10 www.voiceofthehill.com
Tunnicliff’s, directly across from
Eastern Market, belongs to veteran
restaurateur Lynne Breaux. New
Orleans born Breaux was once catering
director for the Royal Orleans
Hotel. In 1984, she left the Big Easy
to head the catering division at
Washington’s Ritz Carlton and later
the Madison. Finding herself “captivated”
by Capitol Hill, she then pur -
chased Tunnicliff’s.
While Lynne and I are chatting
over mugs of hot cider, a plumber
informs her that he’s repaired the
toilet in the men’s room. “I WISH
Eastern Market would get decent
bathrooms,” she sighs. “Then everybody
wouldn’t have to use ours.”
But there’s more to operating a
restaurant than making sure the
plumbing works.* One of the mor e
irksome parts of being a female
restaurateur is “having a salesperson
come in, see a male bartender and
assume he’s in charge,” she says.
“However, when I bought
Tunnicliff’s, I was amazed at the
plethora of women business owners,
particularly along Seventh Street. It
was wonderful!”
Market Row does happen to be a
hotbed of businesses that are woman
owned or co-owned. Besides the
restaurants, Dottie’s Boutique, the
Forecast,Clothes Encounters of a
Second Kind, Fairy Godmother, and
Bird in Hand all have female owners,
while The Village, Eastern Market
Title, Yarmouth Realty, and Khan El-
Khalili are co-owned by women.
We’re not going to even attempt to
name realtors.
Then there’s Prego. For the past 16
years, the popular Italian deli/carryout
has been operated by Koreanborn
Yong Choi. While Prego stocks
BY CELESTE MCCAL L
New York may be filled with “Ladies
Who Lunch,” but the Hill is filled
with ladies who serve it. Bordering
Eastern Market, along Pennsylvania
Avenue, dotting Barracks Row, and
around Massachusetts Avenue,
women are dishing up German,
French and Turkish cuisine, Italian
subs, southern fare, steaks, vegetarian
soups and sandwiches, coffee and
muffins. Top the list off with a scoop
of Ben & Jerry’s,hold the cherry.
A trio of talented women own the
Bluestone Café, elegantly quartered
in what was once our shabby old
Post Office. The idea was hatched
one Easter Sunday, when Teresa
Juliano (the restaurant’s original
chef), Robin Rains,Jane Dietze and
Suzanne Michel were lamenting
Capitol Hill’s scarcity of upscale dining,
and decided to fill the gap. Now
presiding over Bluestone’s gleaming
kitchen are Matthew Andersen and
pastry chef Lisa Wilcut. The res taurant,
by the way, was named after
the bluestone chimneys of the 200-
year-old farmhouse Robin and
Suzanne own in the Shenandoah
Valley—where the restaurant’s heirloom
tomatoes and other vegetables
are grown.
Next door, and sharing the sidewalk
café, is Ben & Jerry’s Scoop
Shop, owned by Bluestone investor,
Lori Johnson, who also co-owns, with
partner Wendy Dorfman, the delightful
new coffee bar, Stompin’ Grounds,
just steps away. For those who
mourned the demise of its popular
predecessor, Roasters on the Hill, the
shop retains a remnant; its brew
comes from Baltimore-based Java
Journey, which was created by one of
Roasters owners, Carla Wing.
Monday night half-price burgers—
and its retro-fog of cigarette smoke.
Neighbors also seek out Mickey’s
dartboards and regulation-sized pool
tables.
Owner Mickey Pultz, whose
daughters Joan and Judy help out
occasionally, purchased the business
13 years ago. “For a while, it was
pastas, spices, cheeses, oils, vinegars,
salads, and soups—the big draw are
the overstuffed Italian subs. Just try
showing up any day at high noon.
Chances are, you’ll have a wait.
The first stop on 8th Street, also
called, for obvious reasons, Barracks
Row, is Mickey’s Patio,a homespun
eatery/watering hole beloved for
Ladies Who (Serve )
L u n ch, and Dinner
Dilek Mit of Anatolia on Pennsylvania Avenue,SE
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 11
tough being a woman alone in business,”
Mickey muses. But these days
she’s in great company.
Her neighbor for the past two
years has been Ellington’s on Eighth,
owned by Marsha Martin, who also
opened The 8th Street Market across
the street—all the while serving as
Special Assistant to HHS Secretary,
Donna Shalala.
Marsha, who spent 20 years in
New York before being tapped by
Shalala, says the Big Apple taught
her plenty about people, and food.
After earning a doctorate at
Columbia University, she was executive
director of the Interagency
Council on the Homeless for HUD—
and she still found time to study
hotel and restaurant management at
New York Technical College.
One of the things she missed most
when she moved to the Hill was
being able “to walk around the corner
and get a decent $5.50 glass of
Champagne.” And so, the birth of
Ellington’s. Something else she
missed were the excellent delis. And
the 8th Street Market was born.
The restaurant hosts a regular lineup
of musical performers from
Wednesday to Sunday. If the
evening’s mild, Ellington’s has one
of the prettiest little gardens
around—after dinner you can go
back in, grab a table or a bar stool,
and catch some tunes.
Owning a restaurant had been a
life-long dream for Sandy Thompson,
co-owner of Sheridan’s 1874 Old
West Steakhouse, which faces the
Marine Barracks. Sandy and partner
Steve Sabatini unveiled Sheridan’s
New Year’s Eve 1999.
Once the home of hobnob
hotspot, The Broker, and more
recently the Louisiana Café,
Sheridan’s upstairs dining room features
chandeliers, gilt-framed mirrors
and Oriental carpets—wonderfully
witty when your server is clad
in chaps and a ten gallon hat.
Downstairs, in the bar and dance
hall, there’s nightly C&W dancing
(they give lessons, too).
Sandy, by the way, also owns Red
River Western Wear on Pennsylvania
Avenue.
Close to the Capitol, on
Pennsylvania Avenue, is Turkishborn
Alana Turker, who purchased
Good Health Natural Foods six
months ago. Alana is passionate
about her business, and cooking: She
attended culinary school in Istanbul.
“I love vegetarian food,” she says.
“When this opportunity came
along, everything sounded right to
me. I thought I could do it because I
love it!”
Good Health carries vitamins,
grains and other organic products,
but customers have really taken to
Alana’s eats. They make a beeline for
the self-service counter laden with
vegetarian sushi, brown rice, greens,
soup and her “famous” mayo-free
potato salad.
Down the street is Anatolia,
Washington’s only Turkish restaurant,
which Dilek Mit and
husband/partner Yildirim Mit purchased
in 1995. Dilek, who grew up
in a cooking household, honed her
skills in the catering division of her
brother’s business, Cenan’s Bakery in
Vienna. Dilek’s baklava, with its 44-
layers of paper-thin phyllo, is the
stuff of legends.
On Massachusetts Avenue NE is a
long-running success story, 2 Quail,
which is owned by Michelle Sullivan.
Michelle, who acquired the restaurant
a year and a half ago, was raised
with a Continental accent. Though
she grew up in suburban Virginia,
her French-born mother served pâté
and brie for breakfast, and evenings
focused on the dinner table. “We
had a different attitude,” she says.
“Food is more than fuel; it ’s a social
instrument.”
Ever since Bruce Thompson and
Robert Selke founded 2 Quail 15
years ago, diners have loved its overstuffed
sofas, mismatched silverware
and funky decor. Critics dubbed it
“Washington’s most romantic”
restaurant. Michelle, a graduate of
L’Academie de Cuisine, continues
the romance as she makes subtle
changes to the menu, emphasizing
seasonal foods, organic “whenever
possible,” and always very fresh.
Downstairs from 2 Quail is one of
Washington’s few German restaurants,
Café Berlin, owned by Peggy
Reed and Irene Khashan. Flowered
cloths top the well-spaced tables,
which allow for quiet conversations
(how rare is that?) in the cozy little
warren of dining rooms. Besides the
generous Wurst platter, other
favorites are Wiener schnitzel,
Sauerbraten, Spaetzle—and the sidewalk
café, which resembles a living
Renoir from early spring ‘til late fall.
Another of the Hill’s g reat sidewalk
cafes is across the street, at La
Brasserie, which is owned by a pair
of capable Frenchwomen, Audrey
and Karine Dequeker. The sisters,
who come from Lille near the
Belgian border, teamed up with
Thomas Cannon to purchase La
Brasserie from founder, Raymond
Compet, nine years ago.
The young women brought excellent
credentials. Audrey attended
hotel management and cooking
school in France. Karine has an
accounting degree. When asked
about her excellent English, Audrey
explains that she had 12 years of the
language in France. In the U.S., she
picked up, “whatever I was missing.”
Audrey’s biggest challenge is,
“Keeping abreast of food and wine
trends, and making sure customers
are happy.” Another, rather ubiqui-
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V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
12 www.voiceofthehill.com
tous, problem: training and retaining
competent staff: “In the United
States, many people do not have
[adequate] training. Not like in
Europe where they attend [restaurant]
school.”
Like most of the Hill’s female
restaurateurs, the sisters live within a
few blocks of their restaurant. Says
Audrey, “It makes life easier!”
Union Station boasts B. Smith’s,
named for model/cookbook author
Barbara Smith. Carpeting and crisp
white tablecloths lend a formal air to
the dining room—once the Station’s
Presidential Waiting Room—but
service is warm and friendly.
Cooking is upscale Southern: shecrab
chowder, okra gumbo, and a
“Swamp Thing” with greens, seafood
and vegetables.
Just steps from the Station is the
stylish Bis, created by Jeff and Sallie
Buben, who also have Vidalia downtown.
Sleek surfaces, muted colors,
comfortable banquettes and a
gleaming display kitchen are as
enticing as the top rated
French/American cuisine. The clubby
bar is packed on Friday evenings.
In mild weather the front of the
restaurant opens to embrace the
street—and the cozy sidewalk café.
Bis is adjacent to the Hotel George,
15 E Street NW.
*Beyond plumbing woes, are lease
woes. At press time, Lynne had notified
her landlord that she was terminating
her lease February 28. When
asked if she was trying to pressure
her landlord she said, “No comment.”
Celeste McCall is a regular contributor
to the Voice of the Hill
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Lynne Breaux of Tunnicliff’s,a Hill institution.
Will landlord woes send her
packing?
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 13
who retaliated by setting the house
on fire. Substantial damage was
incurred, but Sewall rebuilt in 1820.
Sewall’s family continued to own
the house, renting it to Senators and
Secretaries, until 1922, when they
sold it to a Senator Dale from
Vermont.
From 1922 until 1929, the
National Women’s Party was head-
BY PAT TY CURRAN
In the shadow of the Capitol, across
the street from the Supreme Court,
and next to the Hart Senate Office
Building, stands a mansion that is
one of the Hill’s oldest structures. A
house that bore witness to the guns
and torches of British soldiers who
stormed the Capitol in 1814—its
inhabitants offering the only armed
resistance in all of Washington.
Senators and a Treasury Secretary
have called the place home, and it
has been the site of countless elegant
soirees.
But if the walls of the Sewall-
Belmont House could chat, their
best stories would probably be of the
radicals who moved in sometime in
1929, when the National Women’s
Party made this stately house their
national headquarters.
These steely suffragettes, led by
Quaker and Party founder Alice Paul,
represented the second generation of
the women’s movement in America.
Their innovative strategies and tactics
re-energized an American suffrage
movement that had been
stalled for over half a century.
Most Unladylike
“Alice Paul invented the protest politics
of the 20th centur y,” says Nancy
Morrison, executive director of the
National Women’s Party.
Paul’s tactics included most unladylike
activities like marches, hunger
strikes, and silent vigils. She and her
cohorts were the first group to picket
the White House, chaining themselves
to the gates, and willingly
going to jail rather than pay fines
when they were arrested.
They wore their prison clothes like
a badge of honor, and made sure the
press had lots of opportunities to
photograph them.
Such scandalous behavior raised
the profile of the suffragist movement.
In 1920, four years after Paul
founded the National Women’s
Party, and 72 years after the seminal
Seneca Falls Convention where the
fight for women’s voting rights
began, the 19th Amendment was
passed, giving women the right to
vote.
Paul’s vision of full equality for
women inspired her to write the
Equal Rights Amendment three
years later, and the fight for its pas -
sage and for legal, economic, and
societal equality for women is waged
from within the Sewall-Belmont
House to this day.
History of a House
Robert Sewall built the house in
1799. In 1814, during the War of
1812, shots were fired at American
soldiers taking refuge there. The
occupants fired back at the Brits,
bought the Brick Capitol for the
Women’s Party, partly with the
funds she won when she successfully
sued her first husband, William
Vanderbilt, for adultery. (At the
time, women could sue for divorce
in only three states.)
When it was decided that the
Supreme Court should be built on
the Brick Capitol site, Belmont sold
the building to the government and
bought the Sewall House, adding her
name to the moniker, and providing
the Women’s Party with a new
home.
Nerve Center of a
Movement
The Sewall-Belmont House offered
meeting space and lodging to suffragists
from all over the world, including
the Party’s international wing,
the World Women’s Party.
Women judges, lobbyists, and
activists lived and worked here for
over forty years; Alice Paul lived here
until 1972. Paul’s ground-floor office
contains some of the most his torically
significant pieces in the build -
ing, including a desk that belonged
to Susan B. Anthony, and the chair
that Elizabeth Cady Stanton used at
the historic 1848 Seneca Falls
Committee Convention.
Women’s Party Education
Coordinator Beth Holler says that
Paul preferred to work in her upstairs
bedroom with its view of the
Supreme Court, (that’s where you
can see the desk where she wrote the
Equal Rights Amendment).
“The downstairs was a hub of
activity and probably very noisy,”
says Holler. The living room, also
known as the “yellow room,” was
the “nerve center for the women’s
movement from the 1930s through
the sixties.”
This room, figures Holler, was
most likely where the Party’s card
file was kept. This early “database”
consisted of a card for each member
of Congress, detailing their voting
records, personal information, and
their sympathy (or lack thereof) to
women’s issues.
The buzz in the living room hasn’t
died down yet—Holler notes that a
group of women from Kuwait recently
convened in the living room to
discuss tactics they could bring to
the women’s movement in their
country.
A Living Museum
Besides being Party headquarters,
the house is a museum. Its finel y
proportioned rooms are filled with
works of art depicting the women’s
movement and its leaders, and a
large collection of photographs, publications,
books, and ephemera.
Virtually every significant contrib -
utor to the early women’s movement
is represented here in oil, marble, or
quartered in the “Old Brick Capitol,”
where the Supreme Court stands
today.
(Used as a temporary headquarters
for Congress when the Capitol was
damaged by those pesky invading
British, the Old Brick Capitol was at
one time a DC jail and later an apartment
building.)
The suffragist Alva Belmont
The House
that
Alice Built
A Living History of Women’s Suffrage
The Sewall-Belmont House.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
14 www.voiceofthehill.com
bronze. And all of the paintings,
sculptures, and works of art in the
house were created by women—Paul
and her party wanted the house to
be a showcase for women in the arts.
Capitol Hill sculptress, Adelaide
Johnson, was commissioned by Alva
Belmont to create busts of Stanton,
Anthony, and Lucretia Mott. (Later,
the Women’s Party commissioned
Johnson to sculpt those same three
pioneers into a “portrait monument,”
which was donated to the
Capitol. The sculpture was relegated
to the Capitol’s crypt until 1996,
when someone noticed that no
women were included in Statuary
Hall, and the ladies were installed in
the Rotunda.)
The bust of Alice Paul shows her
wearing her “Jailed for Freedom” pin
on a chain. Such pins were awarded
to members who were arrested and
chose to go to jail for the cause.
Pride of place belongs to the
diminutive, yet life-sized, mother-ofpearl
and ivory statue of Joan of Arc
in the hallway. The legendary
French soldier was the patron saint
of the early women’s movement,
first in the U.K. and then here. Her
image is invoked again in the painting
of Inez Milholland Boisserain
leading a 1913 suffrage march on
horseback, carrying a banner reading
“Forward into Light.”
Boisserain caught pneumonia
while participating in suffrage
marches and protests all over the
country; her dying words, addressed
to President Wilson, “Mr. President,
how long must
women wait for liberty?”
became a rallying
cry for the movement.
Hanging in the
upstairs halls are original
cartoon drawings
by Nina Allender published
in the Party ’s
magazine, The
Suffragist, later rechristened
Equal
Rights.
Allender’s drawings
served as spin control
for the suffragists.
“The term ‘suffragist’
was actually somewhat
derogatory,”
explains Morrison,
“and the press portrayed
them as brutal
looking, rough
women. Nina
Allender’s drawings of
elegant, well-comported
ladies countered
the negative media
image.”
A Rift Over Racism?
There is evidence of racism in the
early women’s movement; some
women refused to march with
African-Americans, and some
charged that Paul herself was less
than sympathetic to the civil rights
movement and saw black women’s
organizations as spoilers.
“She had a single purpose in
mind,” says Morrison in her defense,
“which was to get the vote for
women.”
private parties • celebrations • special events
2 Quail 2 Quail
Front hall of Sewall-Belmont House; bust of Alice Paul on left.
Inez Millholland Boisserain,poster girl
for the NWP. The original painting is
displayed in the Sewall-Belmont
House.
A Nina Allender drawing on display at
the Sewall-Belmont House.
Alice Paul’s office; the desk belonged
to Susan B. Anthony, the chair was
used by Lecretia Mott at the 1848
Seneca Fall Convention.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 15
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The National Capital Bank has become a
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give our neighbors the personal attention
our founders insisted upon. In fact, 91%
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So if you’re looking for a mortgage, an
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we invite you to visit us. We ’ re not the
biggest bank – but we’re always working
to be the best. Stop in and find out how
we can be a good neighbor for you.
African-American women are well
represented in the House today.
There’s a fine bronze statuette of
Sojourner Truth, and one wall is covered
with photographs of prominent
African American women.
Though he later parted ways with
the movement, there is a portrait of
Frederick Douglas, who spoke at the
Seneca Falls Convention. He is the
only male represented in the art collection.
Saving the House that Alice
Built
Designated a National Historic
Landmark in 1974, the Sewall-
Belmont House is operated by the
National Women’s Party and the
National Park Service in a public-pr ivate
partnership.
In 1999, the Sewall-Belmont
House was chosen to receive matching
grant money in conjunction
with the “Save America’s Treasures”
program. Until June 2002, every dollar
donated will be matched with
dollars from the federal prog ram.
The help is badly needed.
The National Women’s Party collection
includes countless artifacts—
banners, costumes, and scrapbooks
among them—that need to be con -
served and cannot be exhibited in
the House until climate control and
appropriate lighting is installed.
Structural repairs are also needed,
including brick pointing and insulation.
Work on the house will begin
this summer and continue as funds
allow.
“Most of the women’s history sites
in this country have been absorbed
by the National Park Service,” says
Morrison. “We’d like the Sewall-
Belmont House to remain an independent
women’s history site and a
museum where people can go to
learn the story of the fight for
women’s equality.”
Tax-deductible contributions may
be sent to the National Women’s
Party Millennium Fund at the
Sewall-Belmont House, 144
Constitution Avenue, NE, 20002.
The house can also be rented for
events and parties—the School-
Within-A-School Charter at Peabody
will again hold its annual auction
there this spring.
Sewell-Belmont House is open for
tours Tuesday through Saturday; the
phone number is 546-1210.
Patty Curran is the Kids Editor of the
Voice of the Hill
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
16 www.voiceofthehill.com
VOICE: Congresswoman
Bruckenkeller, we thank you for generously
offering your time for this
interview.
ELB: That’s quite all right, it ’s my
pleasure. As you know, I am particularly
fond of the Hill and after all,
few people have lived here longer
than I have.
VOICE: I’m sure you’ve been asked
this before, but what is your opinion
of the recent presidential election?
What does it all mean—especially
for the Hill?
ELB: Almost nothing, young man!
Do you know how many administrations
I’ve seen come and go in my
lifetime? The Hill is a community,
one that transcends minor political
waffling. Most of us will just go
about our business, bickering about
this and that. What I most love
about the Hill is that it’s just small
town America–mind you, with an
edge.
VOICE: Sorry to be obtuse. But
surely, you must have opinions
about the new administration?
ELB: Oh, you bring out the diplo -
mat in me! I can only say this, and if
it is less than direct, please recall
that I was brought up to be discreet
at all times, and then recall the circumstances
over which I first came
to the House….
VOICE: Yes, that must have been
painful.
ELB: That sarong chasing, redneck
SOB…Oh, dear. Please excuse
my lapse…I’m so sorry…anyway, as
you were saying?
VOICE: The new administration.
ELB: Well, I was certainly
enthralled by the dramatic aspects of
this election, and I will admit this
little secret, I became a virtual addict
to the various talk shows on the
radio, I mean, my goodness.
While it would be imprudent of
me to disclose my presidential preference,
I will say this, Washington
has tended to be, let me say…more
“fun,” during a Democratic administration.
I may be old, but Bill and I
had the chance one time to slow
dance to “When a Man Loves a
Woman.” And lord knows how
many times I had to remove
President Johnson’s hand from various
part of my body. And Jack
Kennedy, well…
So I challenge President-elect Bush
to bring some fun to his administration.
I recall that he once owned the
Texas Rangers—which began as an
expansion team in the early 1960s as
the second incarnation of the
Washington Senators. Maybe he
could bring them back to
Washington.
VOICE: Wouldn’t that be great—
to be able to stroll down East Capitol
Street to a baseball game.
ELB: Honey, if you don’t know
what happiness is, you just don’t
C o n gre s s wo m a n
Elizabeth Lacey
B ruckenkeller E x p l a i n s
the Hill
BY ALAN DONOVA N
Congresswoman Elizabeth Lacey Bruckenkeller (I-Louisiana), eighteen-term representative,
and the grand dame of Washington society and culture, has lived on
Capitol Hill since the early 1950s, when as a young woman she married then-
Congressman Orville Bruckenkeller, one of the Young Turks of the newly triumphant
Eisenhower-led Republican party.
In 1964 she was appointed to fill out the remaining term of her recently
deceased husband, who suffered “death via misadventure” while conducting a
fact-finding tour of French Polynesia.
Later that year she was elected to Congress in her own right, and has served ever
since. In 1972, in protest over then President Nixon’s Vietnam policies, she
changed her affiliation to Independent.
From the first, the Bruckenkellers recognized the value of the Hill, acquiring
property at a pace unknown in this era. At one time
the couple owned East Capitol Street in its
entirety, and for a brief period the
Washington Redskins, (“’A darn bunch of
underachievers,’ Orville used to say.”).
Still lively in her 80s (“I’m hoping to
outlast Strom Thurmond”) and still a
major force in both local and national
issues, the Congresswoman lives in a small,
but fashionable condo overlooking Lincoln
Park (“I like to see which people pick up
their dog’s poopie!”).
She graciously granted The Voice
this interview, which took
place on the day Vice
President Gore conceded
the closely contested
Presidential contest.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 17
choices! While Mr. O’Neill and I go
quite a way back and share memories
that no reporter will ever know, I
believe that I would choose to rest
beside Mr. Sousa for the chance to
hear some of his melodies in that
great mystery beyond. As far as Mr.
Hoover is concerned…He asked too
many personal questions, that one
did. Such a little man, and he did
perspire so…
VOICE: Hmmh. Favorite hardware
store?
ELB: That, naturally, would be
Frager’s. Though I’ve never understood
how John can find anything in
that place! One gets dizzy walking
through the aisles.
VOICE: Favorite newspaper?
ELB: Well, I certainly very much
enjoyed your article about the train
in last month’s issue of the Voice. I
don’t understand why The
Washington Post doesn’t snap you up!
I’ll have to speak to Katie about that.
VOICE: Well, thank you. I can’t let
the opportunity pass to ask you
about some of the women of the Hill
who are making a real impact – after
all, that’s the theme of this issue.
ELB: Well, now. That is somewhat
difficult. There are so many
women making significant contributions
to the lives of all of us on the
Hill. I fear that I would neglect
someone. But, let me mention just a
teeny tiny few…
Oh! For someone with a national
impact, it would have to be my good
friend Babs Boxer. I do admire her
so. She loves the Hill nearly as much
as she does her lovely California.
Always busy that one–but she still
finds the time to join me in an occasional
brandy and to share some
juicy gossip about her Senate col -
leagues!
Locally? I am proud that we have
chosen Sharon Ambrose to represent
us on the City Council, though I
hope she doesn’t fool around too
awfully much with the laws governing
alcohol consumption. I want to
maintain my daily ration of
brandy—it keeps me young! Sure
would like to toast her on that pretty
Bluestone Café patio….
And that Eleanor Holmes Norton!
Now there’s a pistol. Ooooh, I could
go on….but I think I’m hearing bells.
VOICE: I want to thank you,
Congresswoman. It’s been a pleasure.
ELB: The pleasure was mine,
young man.
Freelance writer, Alan Donovan, wrote
about the model trains at Union Station
for last month’s issue of the Voice.
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know. Baseball on Capitol Hill–now
you tell me, what could be better
than that?
VOICE: A few questions, rapid
fire?
ELB: Certainly, I love a good
game.
VOICE: Favorite place to buy g roceries?
ELB: Oh, Eastern Market, without
a doubt. I like to stroll over to the
Market when the weather is fine. I
do see too many members of the
press though.
VOICE: Like?
ELB: That chatty Diana McLellan,
she threatened to include me in that
scandalous new book of hers, The
Girls. Can you imagine! And little
Megan Rosenfeld—she tried to rope
me into making a gingerbread house
with her this year. Oh my.
VOICE: Second choice?
ELB: Safeway. While I would love
to see a Fresh Fields on the Hill, I
must admit that my old friend
Safeway is getting better. Besides, I
bump into all of my former House
colleagues there! Why just the o ther
day Tom Foley and I were debating
prunes vs. bran….
VOICE: Prunes vs. bran?
ELB: Why, yes. Do you have a
problem too?
VOICE: Ah…favorite restaurant?
ELB: Now, that would be
impolitic, wouldn’t you say? After
all, there are so many fine establishments
in our neighborhood. I mainly
eat at home these years, though I
used to join Senator Moynihan at
the Hawk and Dove for a brandy in
the evenings.
VOICE: Best “unknown” part of
the Hill?
ELB: The railroad tracks underneath
the Capitol. Who knows what
goes on down there?
VOICE: Best place to walk a dog?
ELB: Well, as you know, I have a
fondness for terriers, and I just love
to take my dogs—I have two sweet
little Jack Russell’s at the moment—
to Congressional Cemetery. I still
have a thing or two to say to some
people, and now that they can’t
answer back. Ha!
VOICE: Would you consider joining
some of your predecessors in
choosing Congressional Cemetery as
a final place of rest?
ELB: That is a subject I hope not to
deal with for some years to come;
after all, I still have much to do for
my constituents…
VOICE: But if you were to choose
it, would you prefer to be buried
close to a) Tip O’Neill, b) John Philip
Sousa, or c) J. Edgar Hoover?
ELB: Goodness gracious! What
Is Your House Fe e l i n g
Stressed Out?
Who has time to deal with it?
Your home should be a safe haven—a source of
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You don’t have to start all over. Sometimes it takes no
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If you own or rent, if you’re selling or buying, if you just
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You have your own sense of style. What you don’t have
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You need someone to demystify the whole process.
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V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
18 www.voiceofthehill.com
Ask Judith
Part Two: Think Quality
Last month I talked about what you should do to
manage the stuff you store so you can store more in
less space.
This time we’ll discuss the physical aspects of
sto rage. The quality of your sto rage space is as
important as the quantity. Bad storage space is
almost worse than none at all.
Many people think a vanity cabinet in the bathroom
is good. But consider what’s under that bathroom
sink: plumbing.
Sooner or later there’ll be a leak, which is likely to
continue for a while befo re you discover it, by
which time you have a nasty soggy mess. The space
is also too deep: things get pushed to the back of
the cabinet and don’t reappear until you have to
unload everything to fix the leak.
I favor pedestal sinks for the honesty of th e
plumbing fixture.
Instead of a vanity, install a cabinet over every
toilet—Ikea has plenty of fine ones. If they’re 6-
inches deep they’ll be just deep enough for toilet
paper and not so deep that things are forever lost.
And consider running them wall to wa l l — o r
nearly to the ceiling. Even if you have to stand on
the toilet to get to the top shelves, there are bound
to be things you don’t use that often: the travel kits,
the extra 20 boxes of tissues. If you have hair dryers,
curling irons, and other bulky appliances, look for
replacements that fit on a 6-inch shelf, or get slightly
deeper cabinets.
A terrible trio is the basement, the attic, and the
garage—any of these spaces could become good
storage, but too often they’re not. I have seen basements
with as many square feet as some of our
houses, carpeted with a layer of boxes—no shelves,
no organization. Short of extensive re n ova t i o n ,
these areas are too hot, too cold, too damp, subject
to floods and/or leaks, or too far out of sight.
So, what do you do when your irresistible street
treasure, your second wife’s dead husband’s stuff
and your grandmother’s dishes push you over the
top?
Here’s how to improve the quality of your storage
space:
Closets
Very few people feel like they have enough closet
space—and too often what they do have is poorly
configured. Before converting any living space to
closets, optimize what you already have.
1. Configure and reconfigure.
Think hard about what you are storing in each closet
and how best to store it. If you are storing a
bunch of retired picture frames in the coat closet, as
I once discovered we were, bounce ‘em. That shelf is
for hats and helmets.
Add hooks inside a bedroom closet for belts—add
hooks on the backs of the closet doors for necklaces.
Put shoe racks in the bottoms of the closets.
(You’ll still have dust bunnies but they will be on
the floor, not on the shoes).
Split a closet vertically to get a tall space for the
ladder and the storm panels for the screened doors.
Double the bars: Shirts, blouses, and suits are all
relatively short compared to pants hung by the
cuff, dresses, evening wear. I would estimate that
half of every closet can have two tiers of closet rods.
See: you just increased your hanging area by 50%!
Sometimes you discover that what you have is
not what you need. When my parents moved into
a new assisted living apartment everything fit fine
except there was nowhere to store the boxes of
Christmas tschotkes and my father’s sections of 2 x
12s.
They actually had too many clothes closets, so we
fitted one of them with shelving. The tschotkeswent
into neatly labeled cartons, and the boards were
laid on the shelves. (No, I don’t know why my
father has those sections of 2 x 12s. But by then we
were hardly talking, so I just s tored them for him.)
Go to Home Depot or wherever and look at all
the ways you can stretch your closets.
2. Use every inch of vertical space.
The top shelf of most closets is way too low—but
then, the top of the door into the closet is usually
too low, too.
Take a look in all your closets: if you see a lot of
unused space at the top, consider taking out the
doors (especially if they are junky 6’8” hollow core
m o d e rn ones). Then raise the door height and
recapture that volume.
If your house is modern, you can get new solid
core doors of just about any height. If your house is
pretty intact, you may be able to find tall, appropriate
doors, through the grapevine or at the Brass
Knob.
Another way to recapture that volume is by cutting
an opening above the closet door and
installing a permanent shelf to the full depth of the
closet. Close it off with a small door if you wish.
3. Use every inch of horizontal space, too.
If you have a four-foot wide closet and a two and a
half-foot wide closet door, almost half your closet
space is hidden behind a wall. That’s where that
pair of black slacks you know darn well you got
back from the cleaners has been hiding for the last
three years.
Again, change the opening to the full width of
the closet so you can see everything when you open
the door.
Sometimes the closets that came with our old
houses were laid out for metric size hangers instead
of Imperial and are too shallow to close the door.
These are hopeless. You’ll have to either bite the
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V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 19
bullet and convert the closet
to shelves, or rebuild th e
whole thing to be deep
enough. Twenty-four inches
is the absolutely perfect stand
a rd depth for a cloth i n g
closet. Not an inch deeper.
And go less than 23” at your
own risk!
Wi th luck, you may discover
a closet that is deeper
than 24”.
A four-foot deep closet is
an out-of-season dre a m .
Install two bars, one in front
of the other and rotate your
clothes seasonally. If the closet
is just 36” deep, put a row
of one-foot deep shelves in
the back.
These shelves will test your
discipline: th ey are slightly
out of sight and so will tend
to accumulate purses from 1968 unless you are careful.
Shelves
Now, we’ll move onto one of the great overlooked
ways to make storage efficient, thus storing more:
shelves!
1. Get more shelves for your kitchen cabinets:
Most kitchen cabinets come with a bare minimum
of shelves. Adding them can increase useable space
remarkably—there is often a lot
of wa sted volume in cabinet s
because you need to store relatively
short things.
Sometimes this is a quality of
life improvement more than an
i n c rease in space: seve ra l
shelves, each with its own pile of
plates makes it much easier to
get at those plates than when
th ey are sta cked twenty high
and you want the white-withgold-
rim ones on the bottom of
the pile.
2. All the shelves in your house
should be adjustable:
W h ether in closets, cabinet s ,
o r — f avo rite case in point—
bookcases. Wi th adjusta b l e
shelves you can use every inch.
(I know there is an aesthetic
where the vertical shelf spacing
is lots taller than, say, the books: Like really big
plates in restaurants with really tiny servings. But if
that’s your aesthetic, you probably aren’t worrying
about how to fit more books onto your shelves.)
If you do want to fit as many books as possible,
you have to adjust the shelves so that there is just an
inch of space above the median-sized book. Clearly,
some will be taller: lay ‘em on their sides, make a little
pile with median-sized books on top of that big
guy, and keep going.
If you let your ta l l e st books det e rmine shelf
LARRY CHARTIENITZ Pardoe/ERA
(Direct) 202-546-7000 x 228
(Cell) 202-255-3731
E-mail: lchartienitz@pardoe.com
Licensed in DC, VA and MD.
For a FREE analysis of your pre s e n t
h o m e ’s worth, call or email:
Have you
o u t g rown your
p resent
d i g s ?
height, you’ll be losing a lot of space.
Those line-bore holes should be very close too. I
like the holes to be an inch apart, or an inch and a
half at most. If you can only adjust your shelves in
three-inch increments, it is hardly better than having
non-adjustable shelves.
3. You can never be too rich or have too many bookshelves:
If you have any books in boxes I suggest you need
more bookshelves—and I suggest, always, that you
build them in rather than buy them as separate furniture.
Bookshelves as separate furniture will never use
every inch of vertical and horizontal space. Besides,
over time, buying bookshelves creates a miscellany
of ill-assorted furniture that is visually distressing.
Think hard about built-ins, plan them carefully
to hold all the specialized things you may want to
store in addition to books (CDs, video tapes, jigsaw
puzzles…).
Here’s one more shopping tip to help with storage:
Buy platform beds with drawers underneath!
This doesn’t apply, of course, to Aunt Ida’s antique,
or if you’ve always wanted that brass bed, but sooner
or later almost everyone buys a bed. Think storage
when you do! I never understood the purpose
of box springs anyway.
Judith Capen, AIA, practicing restoration architect, is
the author of many of the Capitol Hill Restoration
Society’s award-winning guidelines for work on Capitol
Hill homes.
Instead of a vanity, install a cabinet over
every toilet.
20 www.voiceofthehill.com
Spencer Says
BY DUNCAN SPENCER
Behind every great man there’s a woman,
right? But behind every great woman—
there’s a male called a handbag. He’s a
quiet guy, the one you will see standing
in the aisle at the th e a t re looking
thoughtfully toward the ladies room. Or you’ll spot
him returning from the buffet with a concerned
look and two plates, two glasses and two napkins.
He may be on the stairs carrying up or down a
coat. He may be behind the wheel waiting at a
restaurant door. Or you may not notice him at all,
except as a male presence without plumage, a necessary
accessory to a busy woman doer.
Take our political leaders here on the Hill. Ever
heard of Mr. Eleanor Holmes Norton? Mr. Sharon
Ambrose? Invisible, they are.
I could go down the list, but I won’t. In my own
alley there are a few fine puling pallid specimens of
the handbag race. The husband of a certain senator.
The husband of a well-regarded radio voice. The
lawyer partner of a professional spiritualist. As for
me, I’m the handbag of a well-regarded reporter for
a large metropolitan daily. No names, please. We
handbags actually prefer anonymity.
It’s not an easy life, being elbowed out of the way
at receptions by eager people with hungry eyes,
watching others rake the crowd and never stop for a
moment at your face, seeing other women asking
silently by their expressions, “What can she possibly
see in him?”
Nor is it exactly a bowl of cherries to be at the
office party where she knows everyone and you
stand like a statue fielding the very occasional,
“And what do you do?” Practiced handbags know
that nothing is really expected in the way of information
from that question and the correct truthful
response is simply to say, “I’m with her.”
It’s not exactly humiliating, of course. That kind
of humiliation is completely incorrect, passé, even
politically dangerous here in Washington.
It is humbling, however, to feel what sensitive
women have felt for years in the company of their
powerful husbands, and most men have difficulty
being humble, unless they are confronted by someone
large, threatening and possibly armed.
It takes some getting used to, this ghostly almost
invisible life as a consort.
The modern penchant for name retention makes
it even harder. Usually the powerful woman takes
on not only her maiden name, but a decorative
middle name that adds a musical pronunciamento of
importance. In Washington this habit is most pronounced,
and I must admit that I like it. It gives
names more weight and makes them much easier to
remember. And remembering names is one of the
most important skills the handbag must master.
The downside is that yo u’re inev i ta b ly introduced
as “my husband Bill (or Ed or Emilio).” No
three names there.
Handbags have rules, most of which must be
learned. First, the more important or powerful a
woman is, the more necessary it is for her to have an
attendant. Chaucer knew this when he wrot e
“what women mosten want is mastereye,” in the
wife of Bath’s Tale. Secretly, women would like a
host of attendants, but one dun male in a wellpressed
suit will have to do.
Second, never try to upstage, by voice, clothing,
drinking, bawdy jokes, flir tation, or other well-seasoned
male devices, the important other. Nothing
could be more pathetic than a handbag trying to
crow like a rooster.
Third, learn to be grateful for the opportunities
offered. Free munchies and drinks. Reams of good
advice from friends of the important other who
want to be remembered to her. An occasional useful
contact. And the benign non-sexual approval of all
her friends.
Fourth, dress the part. Quiet, traditional suits
and combinations are best even if the important
other is in the throes of some fashion revolution
involving leather, skimpy scarves, or long ear rings.
But never be the worst dressed man in the room, or
the best dressed. And no distinctive jewelry such as
tongue rings or eyebrow hoops.
Fifth, learn the g raceful “hovering exit” which is
practiced when the important other enters a room
to find many eyes on her. Maintain your station
while the g roup approaches and makes its recognition
noises—from murm u rs to squeals. Then
smoothly release the other into the surrounding
group while smiling and nodding—no word is nece
s s a ry. Wait outside the ring until an anxious
glance informs you that it ’s time to bring a refreshment.
Sixth, know when to exit. A time is good, but seldom
works. A prearranged signal is best. Action
often must be taken sui generis. Enter the group
quietly, station yourself at the left shoulder of the
important other and murmur loudly enough to be
heard, “It’s that phone call you were dreading.”
Seventh, learn, little by little the subjects which
are verboten to the particular important other.
So there you have it. In time, a kind of serene confidence
and inner calm will come to you. You will
begin to notice the actions of other members of the
handbag tribe, and even communicate with them
by a quiet word, a smile or simply a glance across a
crowded room.
Realize, it could be a lot worse. I learned the ropes
from my younger brother Rod who married a successful
actress. When they came to Washington
from Los Angeles for a reception before a movie she
was s tarring in at the Kennedy Center’s American
Film Theatre, I had a chance to see him in action. It
was like watching a great pro athlete going through
practiced moves.
Since my own imp o rtant other was, for th e
moment, cast into shadow by the glamour and
glory of the visiting actress, we were fellow handbags
for the evening, an easy transition (for me at
least.)
As the actress entered the reception room, the
usual group of sycophants and “best pals who want
something” had been replaced by a brazen pack of
p h oto gra p h e rs who closed in re l e n t l e s s ly. They
zeroed in on the star, actually shoving my brother
aside with sharp elbows and scarcely a “sorry mister.”
I stared in awe at the graceful movement, as he
raised his hands with a smile and a kind of spirituality
and said, “no problem, man, do your job.” He
h ove red nearby as the lens men twisted and
crouched, working angles that would produce only
the usual shot of this handsome person. His smile
only withered as the session trailed off and the
actress turned away. “Buddy,” said one of the photogs,
(these we re the days when smoking wa s
allowed in Washington), “have you got a light?”
He never flinched.
Duncan Spencer is a regular columnist for the Voice of
the Hill and the Hill newspapers. His views are occa -
sionally shared by one or another of the publishers.
Spencer invites you to rant back to:
Dcspencer9@aol.com
The Life of A Hill Handbag:
E v e ry Woman Needs One
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 21
Business Bits
Lawyers love ice cream.
One big shot firm so loves the stuff they celebrate
the first Tuesday of the month, every month, with
an ice cream bash.
The Rolling Stones love it too. We hear they were
positively inhaling it backstage during their last
concert tour.
And some folks wanna take it with them. Funeral
sweets replaced funeral meats at a recent wake. The
dearly departed did love his Ben & Jerrys.
Sitting in a beam of sunlight on the windowsill
of Lori Johnston’s office, a slow eleva
tor ride above her other ve n t u re ,
Sto mp i n’ Grounds, is a photo that wa s
taken last summer of the Scoop Shop owner
shaking hands with President Clinton on
the White House lawn. “We did three picnics
in one we e k ,” she says. “T h e
Congressional Picnic, the Press Picnic and
the White House Staff Picnic.”
So what would it cost me if I wanted to,
say, invite ten 8-year-olds to an ice cream
party? “Nothing,” she says. “We wouldn’t
do it.” There is a 50-person minimum for
Ben & Jerry’s catering.
50 little darlings in a Capitol Hill row
house? Oy.
“If we had a big store we could do kids
parties—we find they work best as in-house
operations. But anyway, this ice cream is
targeted more to adults.”
Oh yeah, Chunky Monkey, Phish Food,
real grown-up. Breyer’s French Vanilla? That’s kid’s
stuff.
Ben & Jerry’s caters right out of the shop. The
department is run by Henry Lewis, who used to
work at Roasters on the Hill, which is now Stompin’
Grounds. Henry knows what he’s doing; he was in
food service at the Smithsonian for years. This left
him well equipped for catering wakes, the Stones,
and the Capitol Hill Re sto ration Society House
Tour.
Lori looks really snazzy today, she’s got on this
lean black pantsuit for some meeting downtown at
noon. But she more often resembles one of the
street kids from Our Gang, bouncing around in
jeans and boyishly-bobbed blond hair. At a glance
she looks like a teenager (Dawn, the manager of
Banana Café, actually carded her last fall), but she’s
34, and one of the Hill’s most energetic entrepreneurs.
She sta rted out wo rking for a comp a ny th a t
owned five Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops. Other than a
year in Annapolis, when she opened and managed
one of their branch stores, she’s lived in the DC area
all her life.
But only now can she claim the title of third-gene
ration Hillite. Though her gra n d m other live d
here, and her mother grew up here (attending Hine
Jr. High and Eastern), Lori was raised in Alexandria.
Growing up, she rarely came downtown; her mom
was leery of the dangerous city. When Lori moved
into town in the early 90’s she lived in Adams
Morgan and Dupont Circle.
“One day,” she says, “a friend and I drove over to
Eastern Market and I went ‘Oh…I had no idea!’ She
took me to the pool, she took me all around, and I
said to myself, ‘what are you doing in Northwest?
So I moved to D Street NE.”
T h a t’s the way Lori seems to do things: I
thought…so I did.
She’s since moved to Independence Avenue, a
few blocks away from her little empire, and her
mother has “reconnected” with her roots. Lori says,
“She’s very happy that I’m here, and brings her
friends to visit.”
Lori’s first business solo was a Ben & Jerry’s in
Georgetown, which she bought from the people
she was working for. (She sold that shop last fall.)
The story of the Hill’s Scoop Shop began late in
1998 when she noticed a smashing renovation-inprogress
on 7th Street. “I was talking to Kitty Kaupp
[of Stanton Development] about the Post Office
building,” she tells me, “and I got a call from Robin
Raines, one of the women who was planning
Bluestone Café. She said, ‘What are you doing? Are
you trying to take our space?’ I had no idea…”
Somehow, probably in the course of that conversation,
Lori became a partner in Bluestone.
The space was divided so that the restaurant
occupies about two-thirds of the building, and Ben
& Jerry’s has the rest. The two businesses share the
busy patio. (Modify that: Busy in warm weather
patio.)
Then came Stompin’ Grounds, “an odd story,”
says Lori. “I was a regular customer at Roasters on
the Hill. I’d get my coffee in the morning and then
head for Georgetown or wherever. It was part of my
day. I went in one day and saw a sign saying ‘Going
out of business,’” Lori pauses before continuing, “I
was upset. And then I thought, ‘Tewana Littlejohn
and Henry Lewis, they’re going to need jobs.’” She
hired both for Ben & Jerry’s.
From a single bean a coffee bar was born. As it
happens, she was just heading off to visit her brother
in Seattle, and that trip was mostly spent exploring
the city’s booming coffee house scene.
Lori quickly found herself, “thinking up a
name for a coffee house on the Hill.”
When she came home, she was still playing
with names, “My assistant manager in
G e o r g etown came up with Sto mp i n’
Grounds.” That did it. Lori was off, teaming
up for this ve n t u re with friend We n d y
D o rfman, who used to manage Fi re h o o k
Bakery at Dupont Circle. Wendy’s now the
store’s managing partner.
The little coffee shop was gutted to make
room for more seating. Presiding over every
d etail was art i st and designer Sarah Lee
Terrat, who created the if-grandma-was-ahooker
interior, painted the extraordinary
m u ral of turn - o f - th e - c e n t u ry East e rn
Market, and another on the back wall that
fe a t u res Lori ’s mother and th ree of her
friends. Sarah Lee even made those wicked
fringed lampshades.
Says Lori, “When we were shopping for
furniture it was so fun, we drove over the
entire state of Vermont and she’d pick out these
harem style pillows and I’m thinking—in my head
its not coming together—but I just trusted her and
it works.”
Up front now, is a funky little living room with a
deep sofa and a club chair, where people curl-up,
sprawl, flop, or drape themselves. Game boards
form the tops of the handful of tables that line the
wall opposite the sleek counter (built by Sarah Lee’s
husband). There’s a little more seating tucked at the
rear. Outside are tables and chairs that can be used
all year (just pull one off the stack) by fresh air
freaks and the world’s last few smokers (there’s an
odd pairing).
Though Roasters on the Hill, a fixture for ten
years, succumbed to competition from Xando and
Bread and Chocolate, Lori says Stompin’ Grounds is
“doing very well. We have a very loyal customer
base, and there’s been a tremendous amount of
excitement generated around the store, especially
since we started doing poetry readings and playing
music out on the patio. I keep getting these CD’s
coming in, from Ontario, Hartford, New York.”
M ay’s entertainment, she says, is alre a d y
booked—there’ll be something doing every weekend
day—and into the evening for the Hill’s Second
Saturday gallery crawl.
What’s the Scoop on Lori Johnston?
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
22 www.voiceofthehill.com
“That’s what makes it fun,” says Lori. “And now,
with this line-up of patios, with the umbrellas outside
in the summertime... it’s quite a scene.”
Stompin’ Grounds is still serving Roaster’s coffee.
Carla Wing, one of Roaster’s partners, is now roasting
it in Baltimore, and supplying coffee houses,
hotels and restaurants.
Now that Ben & Jerry’s is a fixture, Stompin’
Grounds is bustling and Bluestone has hit its stride,
what’s next?
Off the top of her head: “I talk about pizza. I talk
about bagels. I drive around the city and ideas keep
coming to me. I have a lot of great ideas for businesses
on the Hill. I’d like to see—what I see on the
[Voice] discussion site a lot—a bookstore café like
Kramerbooks. It would be so great!
“I like the idea a friend of mine in Alexandria has,
to open a kids bookstore café. We have so many
mothers with small children on the Hill now, and a
l ot of them come and hang out at Sto mp i n’
Grounds. But we’re so small—it’s a hard spot for
that. There’s definitely a need here for someplace
for people to go with their kids during the day—or
at night—a place where they could all be. Where
the adults could read and the kids could play.
“And a bagel place would be just brilliant. I have
the whole idea if anybody wants it, just come talk
to me. It’s sitting at the top of my head.”
Then again, she’s not sure if she’ll open another
business immediately. She Cheshire catly smiles
and says she might do something else, something
completely different….
Lori Johnston
Ben & Jerry’s, 327 7th Street, SE, 965-2222
St o mp i n’ Grounds, 666 Pe n n s yl vania Avenue, SE,
546-5228
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Woah, Nelly. Given the ascension of George the
Second, the hottest shop on the Hill, and possibly
in the entire city, is Red River Western Wear at 641
Pennsylvania Avenue. Last Friday at noon, news
crews from NBC, CNBC and a Canadian TV station
were zooming in on the shop’s Tony Lama boots
and gold-trimmed black Stetsons. They’re not the
first. Lately the joint has been crawling with press.
Red River is owned by Sandy Thompson, the
Hill’s own Dolly Parton, who is also a pardner in
Sheridan’s Steakhouse on Barracks Row. Sandy’s got
the joint fully loaded with both Western formal
wear and casual duds for men and women.
Should you have the taste, the bod, and the moxy
to wear such a thing, this is THE place for all out razzle-
dazzle beaded evening gowns. Top sellers for
men? Real live gatorskin boots from Cow Town, and
Western-style tux shirts.
Come Out of the Closet. If you have plenty of suits
and dresses, but you never seem to have a thing to
we a r, Judy Ro s e n feld is the woman to see.
Rosenfeld’s genius is being able to pull together any
look, from punk to princess. She got her start in
N ew Yo rk with cutting edge designer, No rm a
Kamali. When she moved to DC, she took post
graduate degrees at Saks Jandel and Harri et t
Kassman.
The backbone of Judy’s business is “closet editing,”
helping women see what they have, what real-
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 23
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
24 www.voiceofthehill.com
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
T HOM BURNS
Knowledge and Integrity
Celebrating 24 Years
in the Capitol Hill
Real Estate Market
605 Pennsylvania Ave., SE • 202-546-7000 x304
ly works, and what they need—then, if you want,
she’ll even go shopping for you. She knows every
inch of local fashion turf.
S o m ething else she does is handle a line of
designer clothing from the Worth Collection, a
New York company that’s been around for ten years
( J u d y’s been with them from the sta rt). While
Worth’s prices are comparable to “DKNY or Ellen
Tracy. Quality-wise they compete with Escada, or
Gucci,” says Judy. That’s because the company does
very little advertising, and has no stores. The collection
is shown, for a brief week each season, from the
homes of its 400 representatives.
Judy won’t leak the names of the high-powered
types that shop with her—suffice it to say there are
plenty. She insists that’s irrelevant, anyway. The
Worth Collection would suit anyone who loves
beautiful, and beautifully made, clothes—and is
tired of relying on teenage sales help for tips on
style.
Judy will be showing Worth’s spring collection
f rom Fe b ru a ry 17 to Fe b ru a ry 22. Call for an
appointment, 547-2372.
Designing Woman I. Coddling the royal rumps of
the big donors who prefer to sit out the Inaugural
Parade in the swoosh confines of the St. Regis Hotel,
will be Alice Wilson, of the Hill’s furniture resource,
A n t i que and Contemp o ra ry Leasing and Sales.
Alice, ACL’s interior designer and manager, will be
creating seating areas for the Hotel’s State Salon and
the Chandelier Room. For the evening, she’ll be setting
up a pit stop for those who swoon from too
much dancing and bubbly at the Inaugural Ball at
the JW Marriott Hotel.
Alice also confides that she’s just completed a
one-bedroom apartment at the new, and super luxurious,
Ritz Carleton residences (don’t you dare call
them condos). ACL supplied eve ry thing fro m
ceramic dogs to a four-poster mahogany bed. Alice
says she used a number of Asian antiques from a
collection that they imported directly from China
last summer.
None of this activity is unusual. Over the years,
ACL has furnished summit conferences, sets for
films like Silence of the Lambs, and temporary digs
for stars such as Cher, Jack Nicholson and Dixie
Carter.
ACL’s 20,000 sq. ft. warehouse at 709 12th Street,
SE has become the secret weapon of real estate
agents who need to get top dollar for an empty
mansion, or for newcomers who don’t have a spare
minute to shop.
Everything here is for sale, lease or lease with
option to buy, and despite all the rarified activity,
the staff’s about as down-to-earth as you can get.
No snoots. And much of the furniture is moderately
priced.
(There’s also a bargain center upstairs where you
can pick up excellent deals on sofas, tables, rugs
and accessories—but you have to keep coming back
and checking. Some days there’s little, other days
it’s packed.)
Designing Woman II. Before Chris Alvear signed the
lease on his new furniture, craft and design shop,
Alvear Studios, he called on Riva Wine to evaluate
the location. South African-born Riva, who’s been
practicing the ancient Chinese design-philosophy
of Feng Shui for over 25-years, gave the place an
immediate nod.
Situated between a laundry (“water is very cleansing
and energizing”) and Capitol Hill Bicyc l e s
( b i kes are made of steel, which translates to
money), she told him the shop was sited for success.
Riva suggested he incorporate a little of each
element to bring balance. So he put a fountain near
the front door, and metal frames on many of the
mirrors that hang on the shop walls.
If that grabs you as a bit wifty, much of Feng Shui
is far more commonsensical.
The fountain has a pleasant sound, which makes
people feel good as soon as they come in, and the
mirrors also serve to widen the narrow space. When
Chris wanted to paint one of the exposed ceiling
beams red, Riva said no. “Ceiling beams already feel
like they’re pressing down. Some people feel they
want to bend their heads when they pass under
them,” she tells me. Painting the beam red would
attract the eye even more. Plus, the color used in
this way will make people “feel unsafe, like there’s
fire on the ceiling.”
But put red on a front door and Riva says, “it’s
inviting, it’s friendly, you see it and think, ‘it’s nice
to visit these people.’”
True, isn’t it. Think about it.
Riva Wine is now working by appointment at
A lvear Studios, 705 8th St re et, SE, We d n e s d ay
through Friday. You can call Chris at the store, 546-
(continued on page 34)
EQUAL HOUSING
OPPORTUNITY
www.voiceofthehill.com 25
Internet Provider Services
DC Access
118 Kentucky Ave, SE 546-5898
www.dcaccess.net — a local ISP
Mason
Michaliga Masonr y
321 C Street, SE
544-4484
Mortgage Lenders
Apex Home Loans
301-474-7100
See our ad on page 12
Jeffrey A. Love, Loan Officer
Federal Funding Mortgage Corp
202-210--7106 jlove@ffmcorp.com
Pet Supplies
Doolittle’s Pet Supply
224 7th St., SE 544-8710
See our ad on page 18
Office Supplies
Capitol Hill Innervision
Art and Office Supplies
701 8th St., SE 544-4664
Photography
Asman Custom Photo Service, Inc
924 Penn. Ave, SE 547-7713
See our ad on page 19
Motophoto
666 PA Ave., SE 547-2100
See our ad on page 11
Picture Framing
Frame of Mine
522 8th St., SE 543-3030
See our ad on page 34
Newman Gallery and Custom Frames
511 11th St., SE 544-7577
See our ad on page 29
Plumbing & Heating
Leakbusters Plumbing & Remodeling
202 544-5000
Real Estate
Valerie M. Blake
Prudential Car ruthers Realtors
5025 Wisconsin Ave, NW 202-362-1348, x111
www.DCHomeQuest.com
Antiques
Antiques on the Hill
701 North Carolina Ave., SE
See our ad on page 26
Astrology
Ajai
Good advice since 1979
543-9053
Attorneys
Rick Halberstein & Karen Byrne
705 D St., SE 543-1110
Arts Center
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
545 7th St., SE 547-6839
See our ad on page 33, 39
Association
CHAMPS
621 PA Ave., SE 547-7788
Bank
National Capital Bank
316 PA Ave.,SE 546-8000
See our ad on page 15
Bed and Breakfast
Bullmoose B&B
5th and S Sts.,NE 547-1050
Doolittle Guest House
504 E. Capitol Street, SE 546-6622
See our ad on page 7
Bicycles
Capitol Hill Bikes
709 8th St.,SE 544-4234
See our ad on page 36
Books
Capitol Hill Books
657 C Street, SE, 544-1621
Good Used Books Bought & Sold.
Riverby Books
419 E. Capitol St., SE 547-3228
See our ad on page 28
Chimney Cleaning
Winston’s Chimney Service
Washington DC (301)571-8546
See our ad on page 26
Church
Christ Church Washington Parish
620 G St., SE 547-9300
See our ad on page 41
St. Peter’s Church
2nd & C Street, SE 547-1430
See our ad page 34
Clothing & Gifts
Art & Soul
225 PA Ave., SE 548-0105
See our ad on page 33
The Village
705 N. Carolina Ave., SE 546-3040
Computer Consultant
Better Computer Solutions
623 N. Carolina Ave., SE 546-8084
See our ad on page 29
Drug Store
Grubbs Care Pharmacy
326 E Capitol SE 543-4400
See our ad on page 12
Electric Repairs
Bob Willett / K&W Electric
301-283-4004
Service work small jobs
Funeral Services
Pinckney-Spangler Funeral Home
524 8th St. NE, 544-7720
A full service funeral home. Traditional burial
or cremation services. Burial or cremation
can be accompanied by a viewing and/or
funeral or memorial service.
Garden and Landscape
Gingko Gardens
911 11th St., SE 543-5172
See our ad on page 40
Frager’s Garden Center
1115 Penna Ave., SE,
543-6157
Ornamental Garden
544-7831
District Cityscapes, Inc
202-544-4886
Hardware
Fragers Hardware
1115 Pennsylvania Ave., SE 543-6157
See our ad on page 7
Health & Fitness
GI Jane
645 Pennsylvania Ave., SE 547-7906
See our ad on page 26
Results the Gym
3rd & G Sts, SE, 234-5678
See our ad on page 23
Home Furnishings
Woven History
311 7th St., SE 543-1705
See our ad on page 42
Home Repair
Handyman on the Hill
Washington DC 206-7185
See our ad on page 30
Hotel
Capitol Hill Suites
200 C St., SE 543-6000
See our ad on page 7
Income Tax Services
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service
8th St., SE 554-8840
Business Directory Listings:
Voice of the Hill is including a yellow-pages style directory of businesses and services that cater to the Capitol Hill community.
To be included in the directory businesses must commit to a one-year contract, payable in advance by check, Visa or
Mastercard. The annual fee is $250. Display advertisers on annual contracts will be included in the directory at no additional
charge.
Each business will be given three lines in the directory; two must be used for the company name, address and phone number.
An extra line is available for your name, a description of your business or service, or a direction to see your ad. Additional
lines may be added at an annual cost of $60 per line (per year). If you would like to be included in the next directory, please
fill in the following form and send it, along with your check or payment information, to: The Voice of the Hill, 120 11th St., SE,
Washington, DC 20003. If you have questions please call Bruce Robey at 544-0703.
Your Name:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Company Name: ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Address:_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Phone: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Business Description: (30 character maximum) ____________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Please charge my Mastercard or Visa
Name on Card: _________________________________________________________________________________________________
Card Number: _______________________________________________________________________Expiration Date:____________
Business Serv i c e s
Thom Burns
Coldwell Banker Real Estate
109 8th St. NE 547-5805
Larr y C
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
Tom & Alice Faison
REMAX Real Estate
220 7th St., SE 546-5881
John C. Formant
John C. Formant Real Estate
225 PA Ave., SE 544-3900
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
See our ad on the back cover
Jackie von Schlegel
REMAX Real Estate
220 7th St., 547-5600
Phyllis Jane Young
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
John Parker
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
Real Estate Settlement
Congressional Title
650 PA Ave., SE 544-0800
See our ad on page 29
Eastern Market Title
210 7th St., SE 546-3100
See our ad on page 28
Restaurants
2 Quail
320 Massachusetts Ave. NE 543-8030
See our ad on page 14
Banana Café
400 8th St., SE 543-5906
See our ad on page 29
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
327 7th St., SE 546-CAKE
See our ad on page 31
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
26 www.voiceofthehill.com
Business Serv i c e s
Bluestone Cafe
327 7th St., SE 547-9007
See our ad on page 22
Café Berlin
322 Mass. Ave., NE 543-7656
German American Cuisine
Hawk ’n’ Dove
329 PA Ave., SE 543-3300
See our ad on page 30
Sheridan’s Steak House
713 8th St., SE 546-6955
See our ad on page 32
Stompin’ Grounds
666 Pennsylvanai Ave., SE, 546-5778
See our ad on page 30
Salons
RPM Salon
225 PA Ave., SE 543-6481
See our ad on page 31
Randolph Cree
325 7th St., SE
In early 2001.
Social Services
Capitol Hill Group Ministr y
421 Seward Sq., SE 544-0385
Schools
Capitol Hill Day School
210 S. Carolina Ave., SE 547-2244
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Cleanings • Repairs • Relinings
Expert second opinion
Air duct cleaning
301-571-8546
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Chimney Ser v i c e
Edmund Burke School
2955 Upton St., NW 362-8882
Levine School of Music
2801 Upton St., NW 686-9772
St Peter’s School
422 3rd St., SE 544-1618
Spiritual Advisors
Corrin Bennett
920 G St., SE 543-5825
Gabrielle Hill
639 E. Capitol SE 544-438
See ad on page 31
Vacation/Travel Consultants
Jan Cammarata
Judiciary Express Travel
7th & Penn SE, 547-3007
Workshops
Writer’s Way Workshops
Make time for you! 547-3506
www.dcwritersway.org
Yoga Studio
Dancing Heart Center for Yoga
221 5th St., NE 544-0841
See our ad on page 31
St. Marks Yoga Center
3rd $ A St., SE 546-4964
www.us.net/edow/1/stmch/yoga.htm
Computer We e n i e s
• Repairs, Upgrades, Troubleshootong
• Network & Lan Installation
• Internet Web Page Development
• Quality Work at Reasonable Rates
202-543-7055
t h e c a n c e r d i a g n o s i s
frightening, maddening,
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individual, couples and group
psychotherapy for those with cancer
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but also a time for
self-reflection and enhancement
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MARKET POULTRY
Eastern Market
225 7th St., SE 202-543-7470
MARKET POULTRY
Eastern Market
225 7th St., SE 202-543-7470
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 27
d o w nL o a d
Planning the Future of Capitol Hill
Karina Ricks Wants You!
January 4. No doubt about it, these are boom times
for DC. But while there’s much to be said for economic
and residential growth, it shouldn’t be at the
expense of the things that drew us to the city, and
to Capitol Hill, in the first place—so says Karina
Ricks of DC’s Office of Planning, our Neighborhood
Planning Coordinator for Ward 6, and the woman
in charge of helping us plot our priorities, and see
that they’re attended to.
In the past, Karina says, the city government had
a habit of making tantalizing promises-then falling
a mite short on delivery. This administration wants
to flip the planning, have residents of the city’s various
neighborhoods decide what they need and
want, what the priorities should be, and then take
an active role in making sure that improvements
are carried out.
Since needs differ markedly from area to area,
Ward 6 has been broken into 4 neighborhood “clust
e rs”: H St re et and Benning Road; the M
Street/waterfront area; Ward 6 east of the river; and
Pennsylvania Avenue/Capitol Hill. Planning sessions
will be happening more-or-less simultaneously
in each area.
Karina will hold the first of several Capitol Hill
sessions on January 30 from 7:30 to 9PM at 921
Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. This one will be “leadership
orientation” -an opportunity, she says, for the
Office of Planning to, “pull together the leadership
that we know of,” the business and civic associations,
non-profits and churches.
It will also be an opportunity to tap the energies
of any resident—affiliated with an organization or
no-that wants to take a serious, very involved role
in the planning process. Ricks says, “You could
have moved into the neighborhood yesterday and
just want to be a part of this.”
But she wants doers, not talkers, and she’s serious
about that.
It will also be a way to take stock of those whose
voices are not represented by existing organizations,
like young adults, and teenagers of high
school age. They too, says Karina, “are stakeholders
in the community. . . I t’s imp o rtant to hear th e i r
issues and problems and offer potential solutions.”
A month or two after this first meeting, Ricks will
hold a “visioning meeting,” a call for all Hill residents
to come and say, “What you like and don’t
l i ke. What are the Hill’s essential ingre d i e n t s —
what makes it special, and what could make it better...
Then we’ll put together a laundry list of what
people feel the neighborhood is, and could be, and
begin to prioritize—decide where we need to focus
our energies.”
Everything’s up for consideration: Housing, business
and economic development, the env i ro nment,
public safety, architecture, historic preservation,
schools and education, recreational opportunities.
Once the priority list is established residents will
be asked to consider the best ways to implement the
ideas—including deciding if certain tasks would be
better managed by local organizations, as opposed
to dumping them in the lap of some city agency
(and then carping about how the project was bungled).
By October, says Karina, the Office of Planning
expects to have priority lists from 39 neighborhood
clusters, and will use them to make recommendations
for the citywide budget as well as making
them the basis of legally required Ward Plans.
If we’re successful,” she says, “it will be tremendous
—getting ordinary neighborhood input into
how the city allocates its resources.”
ANC 6B to Press for Rumble Strips
New Officers Elected, Zoning Variances Approved
January 11. At their January 9 session, Advisory
Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 6B approved a
proposal by new Chair, Ken Jarboe, to request the
installation of rumble strips near schools and playgrounds,
and around Lincoln Park.
Jarboe explained that he’d noticed the traffic
bumpity bumps around several of our schools, and
thought all of the schools on Capitol Hill should
have them. He noted, in particular, that “we have a
problem with high-speed traffic around Tyler,” the
elementary school at 10th and G, SE.
(The rumble strips Jarboe was referring to were
put in last spring, after a parent coalition led by 3rd
St re et, SE resident Jane McNew, and Bre n t
Elementary’s Forrest Wilson, pressed the city to
i n stall them around Brent and St. Pet e r’s
Interparish School.)
At Jarboe’s re qu e st, the ANC’s Exe c u t i ve
Secretary, Gottlieb Simon, had looked into this and
found that “the city will put in strips once requested.
But only if requested.”
Commissioner Kalima Abdul-Sabor support e d
Jarboe’s idea, but felt the Hill’s many playgrounds
should be included. Commissioner Ann Black
asked that the crosswalks around Lincoln Park be
added as well, to try and slow speeding commuters.
Commissioner Charles White voiced a hesitation,
“Maybe the schools wouldn’t be inclined to
have that,” he said. He suggested talking to the
PTAs first, to see if “They’d be willing to want
them.”
The ANC voted to support the rumble st ri p
request, though there was concern that the city
would not have funds to install them in all of the
locations. It was agreed that a pri o rity list be
included: schools first, then playgrounds, th e n
Lincoln Park.
In other ANC business, the Commission
approved a zoning variance application by Clay
and Alicia Sell to construct an addition to the rear
of their circa 1870, stucco over clapboard home at
500 A Street, SE.
The ANC’s zoning sub-committee ori g i n a l ly
heard this request last October, and had recommended
that the variance be turned down. Andre
Houston, the project architect represented the Sells
at that meeting. Clay Sell explained that “work
schedules” kept him and his wife from attending.
Though it is usual for the ANC to accept the
report of the sub-committee, this one was overturned.
Houston, citing several similar cases that have
won zoning approval, argued that the Sells’ house,
a corner property just two rooms deep, one room
wide, and two stories tall, is unusually small for the
neighborhood: The “basis of a hardship” for his
clients—hardship being a key argument for allowing
a homeowner to increase the size of a house
beyond what is permitted by zoning regulations.
Houston compared the Sell’s home to dwellings
in Sursum Corda, a low-income housing project in
DC. Several years ago, he said, the city decided that
these small homes were inadequate for families.
He also presented an elaborate photo/mock-up of
houses in surrounding blocks, showing how small
the Sell home is compared to neighbors. Houston
particularly emphasized that other corner houses
in the area fill most of the land in the lot.
Clay Sell said that he and his wife bought the
house four years ago. They have since had a son,
and would like to have more children, but space is
too tight. Sell said that 57 of his neighbors had
signed a petition to support the extension, and he’s
heard “nothing but praise for the design.” One
neighbor, Sell said, told him that previous owners
didn’t keep-up the property “because it was too
small,” and felt the addition would make it more
desirable.
In addition to the petition, Sell presented commissioners
with numerous letters of support for the
project. It was noted that most of them were dated
December 2000.
Pete Waldron, the ANC’s recently retired chair
and a member of the subcommittee that had decided
against approving the addition, asked the new
commissioners to respect the subcommittee report.
Among other issues, “there was no record of support”
from neighbors when the subcommittee met.
Neither did the Commissioners feel, “the standard
of hardship was met. The Sells knew what they were
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
28 www.voiceofthehill.com
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buying...The standard of hardship is not a neighbor
saying, ‘this land needs to be filled in.’” Waldron
quipped, “My yard begs for a swimming pool.”
Also urging adoption of the subcommittee’s recommendation
was ex-commissioner Jessica Cogan,
who had been the subcommittee chair.
Ken Jarboe, who was also at that October session,
said he was “very disturbed originally. ‘We want a
bigger house so bend the rules’—that’s the way it
came across—‘We just want a normal house.’ Well,
I live in a former 1840 bar...I’m not sure I know
what a normal house is.” He also commented on
the design, which has yet to be reviewed by the
Capitol Hill Restoration Society, “It looks like a
Victorian addition to a Federal-style house. I’d be
surprised if you get this one by.”
“Having said that,” Jarboe continued, “I think
you’ve convinced me. The presentation and information
gives us enough to go on.”
Jarboe noted, and this should be a caution for
anyone who requires the recommendation of the
ANC, “This happens fre qu e n t ly. We don’t get
enough information for the committee. The size of
the neighbor’s houses made a difference to me—if
this makes the house similar to neighbors, not bigger.”
Nine commissioners voted to support the Sells,
three were opposed, and one abstained.
If the hearing on the Sells property was lengthy
and somewhat contentious, the application by
Doug Jefferies, owner of the soon-to-be Results The
Gym, to move several curb cuts and install another,
sailed through with scarcely a speed bump.
Jefferies, who finally got his building permits on
January 8—“it only took fifteen weeks for a one
month process”—wants to make it possible for several
cars to park up against the front of the building,
and also to provide an entrance and an exit to the
rear parking lot. The intent is to relieve potential
parking problems in the area and create better traffic
flow.
New Commissioner Julie Olson, a neighbor of
Doug’s and of Results, said, “Doug’s been working
with the community to alleviate potential parking
problems.” While she felt neighbors would approve
his request, she suggested that Doug should meet
with them before the ANC gave its approval.
But Jefferies countered that the delayed permits
had already pushed back his opening from April to
June, and without the curb cuts, work vehicles
wouldn’t be able to get close enough to the property
to begin construction. Talking to residents first
would cause another month’s delay.
The commission decided to approve Jeffe ri e s
request, with the proviso that he meet with neighbors
within two weeks.
The ANC heard one last case, this presented by
Pat Taylor, who lives near the Boys and Girls Club at
17th and C Street, SE.
Taylor was representing her neighbors, who are
petitioning the city to make C Street, between 17th
and 18th, one way. Payne Elementary, the Boys and
Girls Club and Eastern High School are all in the
area, Taylor explained, and C Street has become, “a
high speed commuter route.” She claims to have
counted, one rush-hour morning, the way 90 cars
a p p ro a ched the stop sign: 56% stopped, 40%
“coasted” through, and 4% didn’t stop at all.
The neighbor’s petition, Taylor said, was sent to
the city’s traffic division last May. Word came back
that if a “majority [of neighbors] approved and the
ANC approved,” the change would be made.
The 19 signatures on the petition, said Taylor,
represent the majority.
The ANC voted to support the neighbors.
One last vote was on the evening’s agenda: electing
new officers. It was entirely chad free.
Ken Jarboe, as we already noted, was elected
Chair. Will Hill is the new Vice Chair, Kalimah
Abdul-Sabur is Secretary, Bob Siegel is Treasurer,
and Neil Glick is Parliamentarian.
Committee Chairs will be named at the Februar y
13 meeting.
Calling All History Buffs!
Pitch Your Research Topics Here....
January 4. Applications are now being accepted for
United States Capitol Historical Society Fellowships
for research on topics related to the art and architecture
of the Capitol complex.
Barbara Wolanin, Curator for the Architect of the
Capitol, says she hopes to see some good proposals
this year—last year’s harvest was pretty lean.
Research topics must relate to some aspect of art
or architecture within the Capitol complex: the
c o n gressional office buildings, the Libra ry of
Congress buildings, the Supreme Court building, or
the Botanic Garden.
As a for instance, Wolanin says one re c e n t ly
funded project involved researching a portrait of
Marie Antoinette that was once in the Capitol.
The fellowship, which was established in 1986, is
funded by the US Capitol Historical Society and
j o i n t ly administ e red with the Architect of th e
C a p i tol. The stipend is $15 00 per month and,
depending upon the scope of the project, can be for
between one and twelve months.
The deadline for application submissions is
M a rch 15, 2001 for fe l l owships beginning
September 1, 2001.
To see if you have a topic that might be in the
ballpark, look at the US Capitol Historic Society
website: www. u s chs.org. You can also e-mail
Barbara Wolanin, at bwolanin@aoc.gov, or call her
at 202-228-2700 if you would like to discuss a possible
topic.
Calling All History Buffs, Part II
Researching Neighborhood Histor y
January 5. Curious about our neighborhood’s past?
The Historical Society of Washington (HSW) will be
conducting another of its popular research tutorials
on Tuesday, January 23 from 5:45 to 8:45PM.
Join Gail Redmann, HSW Library Director, and
historian Matthew Gilmore (who recently founded
H-DC, a website for those interested in the history
of our Capital city) to learn how to use the wealth of
h i sto rical material available at The Histo ri c a l
S o c i ety of Wa s h i n g ton, DC and the Wa s h i n gtoniana
Division of the DC Public Library. The
tutorial includes tours of both of those research
centers.
The cost includes HSW admission, refreshments,
p ro gram handouts, and ro u n d - t rip Met ro fare .
Space is limited, so reservations and advance payment
are required. HSW members $15; Non-members
$20. For reservations call 202-785-2068 extension
111.
I Dare You to Try It
Street Cleaning Suspended, Parking Permitted
January 2. The DC Department of Public Works has
announced that mechanical st re et cleaning has
been suspended until March 21. What with the
frigid temperatures, the street-sweeping machines,
which spray a film of water over the asphalt, would
turn the streets into skating rinks.
Those who park along street cleaning routes, we
hear, will not need to move their vehicles during
the cleaning hours (which are sometimes clearly
marked on street signs). They say no tickets will be
issued.
Question: Has anyone told the meter persons?
Eastern High School Band to March in
Inaugural Parade
J a n u a ry 3. The East e rn Senior High Sch o o l
Marching Band will be representing the District of
Columbia in the January 20th Inaugural Parade.
Only 38 bands in the country have been invited to
participate in the celebration.
This will be the Ravens third presidential strut
down “The Avenue.” The band has previously been
invited to march in the inaugural parades of Ronald
Regan and George the First.
A New Day for Kentucky Courts
Neighbors Vet Pair of Proposals
January 11. The DC Housing Authority (DCHA) has
two proposals in hand for the redevelopment of the
Ke n t u cky Courts family dwellings at Ke n t u ck y
Avenue and C Street, SE. The agency will decide
between them on February 14, and construction is
expected to begin in 2002.
This is the second go-round for proposals for the
45-unit housing project that was closed in 1996 for
housing code violations, and the second try for one
of the deve l o p e rs, Innova t i ve Deve l o p m e n t
Solutions/Community Preservation and Development
Corporation (IDS) of Washington, DC. The
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 29
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other developer is the Pennrose/Henson Company
of Baltimore, MD.
The earlier Request for Proposal (RFP) was withdrawn
when DCHA realized that they had not been
clear about the scope of the project, and which
properties were included.
The latest plans were presented to the community
at a meeting at Payne Elementary School on
December 14, which was organized by DCHA and
the Ke n t u cky Courts Developer Selection
Committee, an advisory group of Capitol Hill residents.
It was noted in the meeting announcement that
the design proposals “are preliminary, and will only
be used as a means of choosing among the finalists...
a starting point for subsequent deliberation
between DCHA and the developer with input from
the community.”
Jessica Franklin, DCH A’s Project Manager,
Councilmember Sharon Ambrose and the developers
themselves lauded the quality and worthiness of
both proposals. “It’s tough to decide between the
two,” said the Councilmember.
The IDS proposal is similar to the plan they pre-
Image 323 A S A L O N F O R A L L S E RV I C E S A N D A L L P E O P L E
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V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
30 www.voiceofthehill.com
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sented last February, when the firm responded to
the city’s original RFP. IDS president Andy
Botticello said they’d raze the existing project and
e rect 20 townhouse condominiums along Ke ntucky
Avenue, C Street and 14th Street.
“This will not look like a cookie cutter project.
There will be not one repeated façade,” he said.
“We’ll cluster different types of stylistic façades, as
they do on the Hill and in Georgetown. It will be
almost impossible to tell the difference between the
old and the new.”
The developer showed slides of similar projects
he had comp l eted along with the arch i t e c t u ra l
firm, Sorg and Associates.
Each building, Botticello said, would be three stories
tall and contain an English basement apartment
at ground level, with a two-story home above.
Both units would have access from the front and
the back. The lower level would have a rear “courtyard,”
the upper level would have a “terrace.”
Ten of the units would be reserved for public
housing residents who would receive “home ownership
counseling and mandatory job training,” as
well as assistance in purchasing their homes.
IDS architect Suman Sorg, of Sorg and Associates,
a firm specializing in urban “infill” housing,
explained that her job is to “try to understand the
building types [in the area] and fill in the blanks.
Sorg and Associates built Parkside, a lower-end
townhouse community in No rth e a st, which
Suman Sorg says “shows the care and detail of our
work.” Parkside won a Washingtonian Residential
A wa rd from Washingtonian Maga z i n e/ A m e ri c a n
Institute of Architects, Washington, DC Chapter, in
1998, and an Award of Merit from the American
Institute of Architects, Washington, DC Chapter, in
1992.
At the higher end, $500,000+, the architect was
recently approved by the Old Georgetown Board to
c o n st ruct 14 “luxury townhomes” at 28th and
Olive Street, NW.
P ricing for the two - sto ry condominiums at
Kentucky Courts would begin at $235,000. The
English basements would start at $145,000.
The Pe n n rose/Hensen team skipped the slide
show but brought along drawings of the community
that they envision, and floor plans for the townhouses
they propose.
Rick Barnhart, President of Pennrose Properties,
said his firm owns and operates over 4,000 apartment
units and has “never had a deal go bad in 30
years.”
The company has developed more than 5,000
“affordable housing units” in the Mid-Atlantic area
and has won numerous awards for urban design
and his toric preservation. Similar projects include
the East Capitol Dwellings in the Dist ri c t ,
M a n ch e ster Gardens in Pittsburgh and Mount
Vernon Mews in Baltimore.
Barnhart’s development partner, Daniel Henson
of the Henson Company, has worked on a number
of projects in Baltimore’s Fells Point and Federal
Hill neighborhoods, and was Baltimore ’s Commissioner
of Housing for five years.
What attracted the deve l o p e rs to Ke n t u ck y
Courts, said Henson, was “taking a neighborhood
that’s teetering, and bringing it back. One block
away is a different neighborhood.”
What also attracted them was the possibility of
becoming the first project in the country to try a
n ew HUD pro gram for people that qualify fo r
Section 8 housing. The program, which will be
g u a ranteed by Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest
home lender, allows Section 8 renters to use their
vouchers toward buying a home, not just renting.
These tenants, Hensen said, are people that are
working, “You get the cream of the crop.”
Like IDS, the Pennrose/Henson proposal would
have 20 three-story buildings that resemble townhouses
lining Kentucky Avenue, C Street, SE and
14th Street. But in this plan, each of the houses
would have two units of equal size.
The developers call the bi-level condominiums
“ p i g g y b a ck units.” Each apartment would be
accessed from a common vestibule. The lower level
apartment would have the full ground floor and
half the second floor. The other would be reached
via stairs from the vestibule, have the other half of
the second floor and the full third floor.
There would be a front and rear entrance to the
lower level apartment, which would also have a
patio and a parking space. The upper level apartment
would have a balcony, no rear exit and no
parking space.
Fewer parking spaces at the rear of the development
would allow for a “community park,” and a
“tot lot.” The developers explained that they “preferred
public green space to parking spaces.”
The facades of the buildings would be bri ck ,
though the design details would vary. The project’s
architect said that some would have front porches,
others would have front balconies, various colors
would be used, and th e re would be diffe re n t
rooftops.
Eight of the apartments, or 20%, would be for
Section 8 subsidized buye rs. The remaining 32
apartments would be market rate units priced at
$197,500.
A new day is dawning
for Kentucky Courts.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 31
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In both the IDS and the Pennrose/Hensen proposals,
the low-income housing would be mixed
with the market rate units to avoid any sense of stigma.
B oth deve l o p e rs would provide maintenance,
including trash pick-up, snow removal, landscaping
and grounds upkeep. A condominium association
would work with the management company.
Even though the IDS development team’s concept
was sketchier than that of Pennrose/Hensen it
emerged, with few hesitations, as the audience
preference.
Points in favor included the 2-story townhouse
with English basement design that would be, as one
person said, “a better fit in the neighborhood.”
That both units would have private space in the
rear was also appreciated, as was, not surprisingly, a
parking space for each unit—though there was a
dispute over the best way to access the lot.
Also preferred was the higher number of units
that would be reser ved for low-income buyers, and
the lower pricing for the English basements.
The Pennrose/Hensen plan received heavy criticism.
One woman remarked that the party walls on
the second floor would be noisy, and that the apartment
design would make the units less desirable
than other homes in the neighborhood, making it
difficult for residents to “integrate into the community.”
The second floor units with their lack of rear
access, garden space and parking were also viewed
as less desirable, and several mentioned that the
common vestibule might become a public safety
problem.
For more information about the developers, you
can ch e ck out the IDS arch i t e c t’s web site at
http://www.sorgandassociates.com, and Pennrose
Development at www.pennrose.com.
At press time: Contrary to neighborhood scuttlebutt,
a decision to select IDS as the developer of
Kentucky Courts has not been finalized. Says Jessica
Franklin, “If you were at the meeting you would
have noticed that [IDS] was definitely the community’s
preference...All comments have been taken
into consideration, but the decision is not official
until it is presented to the Board of Directors.” That
meeting will be on Valentine’s Day, February 14.
Make a Difference: Mentor
Neighborhood Learning Center ISO Volunteers
January 10. One of the most rewarding ways to ge t
involved in the community is mentoring: Helping a
smart kid, who needs a little boost, succeed.
The Higher A chievement Program (HAP), which
runs a Neighborhood Learning Center at Hine Jr.
High School at 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue, SE,
has a 25-year history of challenging “DC’s brightest
students” to succeed academically, and as leaders.
They do this by identifying motivated students and
hooking them up with a “Learning Mentor” who
devotes a couple of hours a week to helping one or
a few kids with English, math or technology.
75% of HAP participants go on to accelerated
high schools and 95% go to college.
For more information, or a sign-up application,
visit HAP’s website at www.higherachievement.org.
You can also call their office at 842-5116.
Spring is in the Air
Community Garden Gone to Seed? Getta GROW
Grant
Garden Resources of Washington (GROW) has jus t
announced the availability of small grants up to
$ 1, 000 for community greening projects in
Washington DC.
Funds for supplies, tools, seeds and such are
available to community and youth groups, schools,
churches, civic associations, community gardens
and other organizations for projects like new gardens,
tree plantings, garden renovations, educational
projects and special events.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
32 www.voiceofthehill.com
Alvear Studio
design & imports
accessories,home, handicraft,art
presents
“This Is Sacred”
original art by artist
Ronald John Ranftle
January 26,2001
Reception 6-9pm
Mexican cooking classes
Feb 4
Leonardo Robledo,
Pier 5 Hotel:
Mexican Chesapeake Bay fusion
Feb 11
Nathan Beauchamp, Bistro Bis:
Traditional Mexican desserts
Feb 18
Joshua Ball, Washington
area private chef:
Mole sauces
Feb 25
Paul Begley, Classic
Affairs catering:
Mexican appetizers
Space is limited
call for details
705 8th st,se • 202-546-8434
hours wed-sun 11-8 closed mon & tue
Applications are due by March 5, 2001. Funds
will be released by mid-April.
Applicants are strongly urged to attend a grant
information meeting at GROW at 1419 V St NW (2-
1/2 blocks from the U St/Cardozo Metro) on one of
the following dates:
Wednesday, January 24 at 6:30 PM
Saturday, January 27 at 9 AM
Tuesday, January 30 at 6:30 PM
Saturday, February 3 at 10 AM
Garden Resources of Washington is a non-profit
that has provided funds for numerous greening
projects in the Capitol Hill area. They encourage:
“environmental stewardship, neighborhood revitalization,
community food security and local food
production, community self-reliance, and youth
development through community gardening.”
For an application or more information, call 234-
0591 or e-mail GROW19@aol.com
Spring is in the Air, Part II
Gardening Conference to be Held February 18-19
A passel of organizations, including the American
Community Gardening Association, Gard e n
Re s o u rces of Wa s h i n g ton, and Fi rst Tri n i t y
Lutheran Church will be hosting a conference this
February 18 and 19 on how to go about implementing
—and sustaining—community and youth gardening
projects.
A p p ro p riate, th ey say, for eve ryone from st udents,
to neighborhood leaders, to master gardeners,
the one and a half day conference “includes a
dynamic mix of learning and networking.”
The confe rence will be held at Fi rst Tri n i t y
Lutheran Church, 309 E Street, NW. A meeting
agenda and the registration application are available
at www.voiceofthehill.com.
Off the Mall Memorials
Commission Cites 14 Possible Hill Sites
J a n u a ry 4. Just released by the National Capita l
Planning Commission (NCPC) is the final dra ft of a
“ M e m o rials and Museums Master Plan”: a comp i l ation
of sites around the Dist rict that are considere d
p rime locations for new monuments and museums.
John Fo n d e rs m i th of DC’s Department of
Planning says: “We’re running out of space in the
monumental core. An average of one memorial a
year comes along and there’s not enough room to
put them up without damaging the sense of place.”
The plan was created over a five-year period by a
task force that included members of the NCPC, the
Fine Arts Commission and the National Capital
Memorial Commission. The task force is taking a
broad look at possible places for new monuments
in the city—which would not only keep the Mall
u n c l u t t e red, but also encourage visito rs to th e
Capital to tour, and bring revenue to, our neighborhoods.
From an original list of 400 locations, the possibilities
have been whittled to 102—14 of them on
Capitol Hill, including sites like Barney Circle, the
Navy Yard and waterfront, RFK Stadium and the
Eastern Market Metro Plaza.
H oweve r, Fo n d e rs m i th says, “just because th e re ’s a
site outlined, that doesn’t mean th e re’ll be something
built. Some sites will be developed in 50 ye a rs ,
oth e rs neve r.” Still, with monuments planned fo r
residential neighborhoods, public discussion is part
i c u l a rly imp o rta n t: “People may have qu e st i o n s
about some sites, and might want oth e rs added.”
A public meeting to discuss the draft has already
been held, but public comment will be accepted
until January 30. If you want to get your two cents
in, call 482-7200.
BZA Hearing on BP/Amoco
The Saga Continues...
December 21. The Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA)
has defer red BP/Amoco’s application for a Special
Exception to build a mega-gas station at 2nd and H
Streets SE to March 20. While this has not killed the
project—which has drawn fire from groups all over
the neighborhood and DC’s Office of Planning—
the gas company received a clear signal that it needs
to come up with a plan that everyone can live with.
The proposed project is huge; nearly five times
the size of the existing 7000 sq. ft. station. Plans
include fuel dispensers with Intern et access, a
canopy equipped with enviro-friendly solar panels,
a 4300 sq. ft. mini-mart, and a 5000 sq. ft. car wash.
To take the edge off the high-techie stuff, Amoco
proposes to plant 20 canopy trees, 100 bushes, 19
evergreens, and several ornamental trees. They also
say they’ll offer social improvement programs that
will provide job and skills training.
But, while BP/Amoco sees this project as an
opportunity to create a showpiece of a gas station,
neighborhood groups see it as a disaster for the revitalization
of the H Street commercial corridor—
sited, as it is, at the “gateway” to the avenue.
Lined up in opposition are Councilwo m a n
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 33
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S h a ron Ambrose, Ad v i s o ry Neighborhood Commission
6A, the Sta n ton Pa rk Neighborh o o d
Association, and the Capitol Hill Re sto ra t i o n
S o c i et y, all of whom argued for the post p o n e m e n t .
Until re c e n t ly the only blocking possibility has been
to defeat Amoco’s re qu e st to close an alley on th e
site, a move that will re qu i re City Council approva l .
If the Council denies the application, Amoco will
n ot have the space th ey need to comp l ete their plan.
High-test fuel for the opposition has since arrived
w i th the issuance of a 15-page re p o rt by th e
District’s Office of Planning, which includes this
final recommendation on page 7:
“The Office of Planning recommends that BZA
application 16648, requesting a special exception to
permit redevelopment and enlargement of a gasoline
service station be denied. The Office of
Planning met with the applicant and discussed
design alternatives. The applicant was unwilling to
change the site design; claiming visibility was maximized
by this design. BP/Amoco ‘only sells gas’
and would not consider putting other preferred
uses or structures on the site.”
With negotiations between the gas company and
the community now at an impasse, the BZA
deferred the hearing until the various issues have
been resolved.
Millennium Gets Nod from EMCAC
Committee Report Issued
December 15. The East e rn Market Community
Advisory Committee (EMCAC) narrowly voted to
endorse the Eastern Market Joint Venture’s (EMJV)
proposal for the management of Eastern Market at a
m e eting held December 13 at the Capitol Hill
Natatorium.
Four members of the Committee voted for EMJV,
a part n e rship of two real estate comp a n i e s ,
Millennium Real Estate Ad v i s o rs and LLP/Site
Realty Group. Two members voted against the pr oposal,
and two abstained.
E M CAC ’s recommendation has been passed
along to the Office of Pro p e rty Management
(OPM), which will make the final decision on the
Market’s new management.
EMJV was one of three proposals being considered
by EMCAC, an organization comprised of representatives
of community organizations, market
vendors and public officials that was created as part
of the Eastern Market legislation that was passed a
few years ago. All three of these proposals have been
available for review on the Voice of the Hill website
since mid-November.
B rian Furness, who ch a i rs EMCAC ’s Management
and Operations Sub-committee, said in his
introductory remarks, that he was, “struck by the
s e riousness of the offe re rs. There was much to
admire and respect in each of the proposals. I hope
we can draw on the ideas and even the talents [of
the offerers that were not accepted].”
He said, the “overriding concern” of the committee
was selecting “effective experienced management”
for the 100 year-old market. And the committee
felt that EMJV offered the best package.
“This is not the end of the process,” cautioned
Furness. If the city accepts the committee’s recommendation,
we “still must confront negotiating a
responsive business plan that respects community
opinion.”
Furness knew that the committee’s choice was
not going to be popular in all quarters, noting that
some preferred the more community oriented proposal
from Matt Hussman, and some liked none at
all.
About this he was right. Larry Gallo, the outdoor
vendor representative to EMCAC drew applause
from the audience when he said: “I strongly disagree
with the recommendation. It suggests that
the city accept a suburban strip-mall operation to
run the Market. It will put a severe financial burden
on the Market and the vendors. Potential burdens
so great that they could result in the demise of
Eastern Market.”
Joining Gallo on the nay side of the vote was Dick
S c u l ly of the East e rn Market Pre s e rvation and
Development Corporation. When EMJV got the
majority nod, Scully proposed that “minority or
dissenting views” be included with the recommendation
to the city, particularly since the vote in
favor of Millennium was so narrow.
Furness responded that “everyone’s free to submit
personal views to OPM, but they shouldn’t be
attached, they were not approved by the committee.”
Monte Edwards of the Stanton Park Neighborhood
Association, added, “We don’t want to hold
up the handover to Mr. Reece tonight.”
Scully snapped back, “There’ll be no delay. I’ll
hand it over now.”
Abstaining from the vote were Angela Brunson
and Bill Glasgow, who represent the Farmers’ Line
and the South Hall merchants. The two share a single
vote on the EMCAC and were apparently at
odds over the choices.
Also abstaining from the vote was Ad v i s o ry
Neighborhood Committee (ANC) 6B commissioner
Will Hill, who explained in an interview that he
“didn’t have time to put [the issue] before the ANC
for a discussion and a vote.”
Ellen Opper-Weiner, who represents the Mayor,
and Jean Marie Neal, who re p resents Councilmember
Ambrose, are non-voting members of the
EMCAC Board. However, both voiced their support
for the Millennium proposal.
The lack of a vote by the ANC is likely to come up
again. By law, the city is to give “great weight” to
the position of the ANC, but the ANC has taken no
position.
We’re told that the December 12 meeting of the
ANC lacked a quorum, so there was a “general discussion
of the process” that would be used by
EMCAC to select the Market Manager, but no discussion
of the substance of the proposals, and no
vote.
ANC6B Commissioner Ken Jarboe says, “This was
the first real discussion by the ANC on Eastern
Market since we elected our representative.”
There is a question of whether the ANC will have
a n other opportunity to weigh in once the city
makes its Market Manager selection—which would
give the community another go at the proposal.
Now on line at www.voiceofthehill.com is the
text of the re p o rt submitted by EMCAC ’s
Management and Operations Subcommittee, and
in Hill Talk, a sizzling discussion of the decision.
Have Four Wheel Drive?
Food & Friends Needs You!
December 29: From Food & Friends, an organization
that delive rs meals to people living with
HIV/AIDS and other life - th reatening illnesses
th roughout the Wa s h i n g ton Met ro p o l i tan are a ,
and on Capitol Hill:
“Food & Friends must continue to deliver meals
and groceries to persons living with HIV/AIDS and
other life-threatening illnesses despite bad weather
conditions. During storms, many volunteer delive
ry dri ve rs call in and cancel, leaving Food &
Friends with limited resources to deliver meals.
‘Our clients depend on these meals to stay
h e a l thy,’ says Craig Shniderman, Exe c u t i ve
Director, who in fact has a four-wheel drive truck of
his own. ‘Regardless of the weather conditions, we
have to work together to meet the needs of our
clients. Everyone on our staff has been busy planning
all of our deliveries, but we desperately need
more volunteers.’
Vo l u n t e e rs with fo u r-wheel dri ve vehicles are
being lined up in advance to ensure that every
client will be reached. Persons with four-wheel
drive vehicles that are willing to make deliveries to
people living with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening
illnesses are asked to call 202-488-8278.
Food & Friends will be delivering meals on a critical
need basis, delivering extra meals known as
“storm bags” to ensure each person has enough
food, just in case the weather conditions worsen.”
Food & Friends is located at 58 L Street, SE, near
the intersection of M and South Capitol. Volunteers
with four-wheel drive vehicles please call 488-
8278.
The Download section of the Voice of the Hill is just a
taste of the news that’s been posted to www.voiceofthe -
hill.com over the last month-articles and newsbites
that are still timely, and worth including. The date pre -
ceding each article is the date the piece appeared on the
site.
Unless otherwise noted, all Download articles are
w ritten by the Voice of the Hill’s Editor- I n - C h i e f ,
Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Writers
on the
Hill
F E B R U A R Y 1 0
Judith Harris, Poetry;
Jean Nordhaus, Poetr y
M A R C H 1 0
Connie Shade, Poetry;
Catherine Breeden, Fiction
A P R I L 1 4
Shirley Cochrane, Poetry and
fiction; David Kresh, Poetr y
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A new program of
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V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
s t ruction and development industry, and having chosen
the city due to “it’s density, tightness and compaction,”
I am excited by the prospect of sensible
development. Holladay’s proposed design, however,
have propelled the current rooflines far past the existing
buildings, boasting heights that rival the arc h i t e ctural
genius exhibited in NW. I am aghast at the
p rospect, and will continue to suppor t the eff o rt to
scale back the pro j e c t .
KIRSTEN HARSHAW
To the Editor:
This letter is in response to Duncan Spencer’s
“NIMBY on the Hill” column in which he chastises Hill
residents for opposing the Holladay Corp. plan to build
a large apartment complex on the Medlink Hospital
site. Like many of our neighbors, we are against this
project, although we do agree with some of Mr.
Spencer’s viewpoints.
We agree that more residential development,
including apartments, is desirable on Capitol Hill. An
influx of new residents will make the community more
vibrant and the streets safer. However, we do NOT
believe that the massive, 7 or 8 story, 230+ unit
building proposed by Holladay Corporation is in keeping
with the character of our neighborhood, which is
within a federally recognized historic district.
A development of this size and mass would fit nicely
on Connecticut Avenue, but it will dwarf the surrounding
historic row houses, churches, and modestsized
apartment buildings that are the essence of
Capitol Hill’s charm. For an example of a project that
respects the historical fabric of Capitol Hill, consider
34 www.voiceofthehill.com
the recently completed Ellen Wilson development [on
the north side of the Freeway between between 6th
and 7th Streets, SE].
Mr. Spencer’s harsh generalization of Hill residents
opposed to Holladay’s project as “spoiled brats”
resistant to any kind of change is insulting. We do not
oppose more residential buildings, but we are concerned
that ir responsible development will rob
our unique neighborhood of its beauty and charm.
While we are thrilled with the increasing popularity
of Capitol Hill, let us not forget what makes this
neighborhood so desirable.
Sincerely,
ROB LUCCHESI AND EL LEN ANDERSON
The Voice received enough letters about Duncan Spencer’s
December column to build an 8-story building. Space pr o -
hibits printing them all, but we’ve made them available at
www.voiceofthehill.com.
And on the subject of Ellen Wilson:
To the Editor:
Whatever happened to the long promised and awaited
fee simple, market rate housing at Ellen Wilson. The
community was promised that it would be built. The
community was promised 100% brick and we got stucco
and vinyl siding. Is the promise of market rate fee
simple houses going the way of the promise of all
brick? The developer can change the name but can a
leopard change its spots?
J IM SIMPSON
Tune in next month…
Letters (continued from page 3)
8434, or call Riva directly, 484-8686, to set up an
appointment.
Dust Off Your Check Books I. Art & Soul, emporium
of Capitol Hill chic, has kicked off the New Year in
style with 30% off clothing, jewelry, and accessories
—absolutely everything in this treasure of a
store is reduced this month. Art & Soul is at 225 PA
Ave., SE.
Dust Off Your Checkbooks II. Meanwhile, the Hill’s
gallery of “art, clothing and unusual stuff” has
snipped prices on a spectrum of wearable and displayable
items by 25-50% of the original tag—and
the sale includes watercolors by Alan Braley! The
Village is at 705 N. Carolina, SE, around the corner
from Eastern Market.
Oooooh it’s Spicier than a Bowl of Gumbo Ya-Ya.
Word on the street was that Tunnicliffs Tavern, THE
place for Mardi Gras revels, would be popping its
last balloon on February 28. When we queried prop
ri eto r, New Orleans belle, Lynne Breaux, she
heaved her magnificent prowess (this was on the
phone, but I could tell) and sighed, “Yes, it’s true.”
But maybe she’s just playing tough crayfish with
the landlord over the terms of her new lease? To
that, she said, and we quote, “No comment.”
Business bits is written by Voice of the Hill, Editor-in-
Chief, Stephanie Cavanaugh
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Business Bits (continued from page 24)
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 35
C a p i t a lK i d s
COMPI LED BY PATTY CURRAN
A Tribute to Sharon
On December 28, a group of Hill children and their
parents braved the chilly winds on the H Street
bridge to install and dedicate a “Hopscotch Kid” to
Sharon Negri, who recently resigned as Director of
The Hill Preschool after 13 years.
The tile mosaic of a skipping child stands on the
southeast side of the bridge, near Union Station. A
plaque at its foot reads, “For Sharon Negri, with
love and gratitude from The Hill Preschool families
who thrived under her care.” The hopscotch kids
who adorn both sides of the bridge were designed
by Deird re Saunder, parent of a Hill Pre s ch o o l
alumnus.
Hill Preschool Board Member Catherine Taylor
organized the effort. “We needed to do something
extraordinary to commemorate Sharon’s dedication
to the kids of Capitol Hill,” she said. Those
attending the dedication enjoyed a lunch afterward
and the opportunity to catch up with Sharon, who
has been caring for her mother in New York state
since late last summer.
If you would like to make a modest contribution
to the cost of sponsoring Sharon’s Hopscotch Kid,
please make a check out to Catherine Taylor and
send it to her at 149 No rth Carolina Ave., SE,
Washington, DC 20003. You will be provided with
a receipt for this tax-deductible donation, which
the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities
will use for the upkeep of the bridge.
Congrats to Chris!
Hill Scout Flies High
C h ri stopher Byrne, the son of Ka ren and Pet e r
Byrne, has earned the Boy Scouts highest honor,
the Eagle Scout Award. Nearly a hundred Scouts,
family, and friends attended Christopher’s award
c e re m o ny at St. Mark ’s Episcopal Church on
Saturday afternoon, December 30.
The Eagle Court of Honor was called to order
when Scoutmaster Michael McCabe announced
that Christopher has completed all requirements
and has been declared fit to receive the award by
National Boy Scouts of America. Jeff Serf a s s ,
Chairman of Troop 500, Capitol Hill Scouts, presented
the Eagle badge to Christopher in recognition
of his earning 21 Merit Badges and planning
and leading a book drive that gathered, catalogued,
and shelved hundreds of children’s books for the
library at the Watkins Elementary School campus
of the Capitol Hill Cluster School.
She’s Gone to Ghana!
Kirby Capen, daughter of Judith Capen and Robert
Weinstein, and a Junior at School Without Walls,
has been accepted by AFS (they bill themselves as
the “Leading International Student Exchange for
more than 50 years”). Kirby will live with a family
in Ghana for six months, and attend a local high
school.
More about the AFS program and Kirby’s adventures
when she returns.
Winter Wonderland at Peabody
Larry Watson and Joe Allen’s kindergarten students
in the Early Childhood Pro gram at Pe a b o d y
Elementary made a Winter Wonderland for their
classroom. Here they share their experience with
us—how it was created, what was fun about it, and
what they learned along the way. Thanks to Janice
MacKinnon for contributing the photo and the
kid’s writings.
About our Winter Wonderland
I liked when I made the Winter Wonderland. I made a
green and white house and two people. I put sweaters,
mittens and boots on them. I painted sticks, and bal -
loons and taped them to make streetlights.—Corey
I made a snow person, out of paper. We colored it with
crayons, then we attached the clothes onto the people.
We put them into the milk cartons onto skis, and put
them in our village. —J’Vaughna
When I made my house, when I set it up, it was fun,
cause I painted, and I set it up and I put grass on it. I put
Christmas trees on it, I put snow on it, and I liked it very
much. It’s very good to share our work with my other
friends in school. —Kennedy
We like the Winter City. I liked when my friends will
come with me to the Winter Wonderland. I made two
kids with snowsuits and boots. I used paper, and I col -
ored my paper, and everything in my picture, and I cut
them out, then Ms. Allen said I had to finish it tomor -
row. —Malcolm.
My group made a house. First, we painted, then we put
some snow on it. It was made of plastic. We wore gloves
to tear up the snow. We made it stick with glue.—
Seyvon
Hopscotch Kid dedicated to past director of The Hill
Preschool,Sharon Negri.
Eagle Scout Christopher Byrne and proud mom,Karen.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
36 www.voiceofthehill.com
709 8th Street, SE
Washington, DC
202-544-4234
capitolhillbikes@aol.com
We’re open Tuesday—Friday, 11-7
Thursday ’til 9 Closed Monday
Saturday 10-6 Sunday 12-5
Perfect for longdistance
charity rides.
Come ride the
N EW
Cannond ale
Road Warrior.
Come ride the
N EW
Cannond ale
Road Warrior.
Help Wa n t e d
• Baseball Coaches •
• Fast Pitch Softball Coaches •
• Field Groomers •
202-546-7000 ext. 251
John Parker, Commissioner
Be a Community “Doer,”
and call us!
We painted houses that
were made out of snack car -
tons. After we painted
them, we put them outside.
My house had white win -
dows and doors. We made
them out of heavy paper.
We drawed kids and then
we cut them out. The kids
are playing Hide-and-go-
Seek on the snow. —Daion
I said we needed to put the
Sun up in the sky. I helped
Ms. Allen, and the children
helped me and Ms. Allen do
all their jobs. –Rodney
The friends helped me make
the snow. Diamond helped
me tear up the plastic snow,
and then put it on the
mountain and in the win -
dows. —Amor
I did make snow. We made
clouds out of paper, white
and blue. We made a sky.
Corey made streetlights,
they sit outside. They light
up and make it easy for peo -
ple to see. —Alli
The people in the village
want to have a church,
because it makes them feel better. Some of them trav el
all over the place, and some people need some food, the
people in the church share. And they hope to have their
children visit during Christmas time. —Diamond
I made two paper children, and I dressed them so they
could go outside and play on their skis. I did a skier,
with green sparkles on it and red skis. He is going
down the hill.—Capria
I told Ms. Allen what to put around the houses. I
thought it was a good idea to put the Snowman Family
around the houses. —De’Quon
I made the big blue house, with pink doors and win -
dows. I painted it first, then I put the snow on the roof.
After that I put the windows and doors on. It was fun
to do an art project. For my next project, I want to get
paper and cut it to make something like a butterfly or a
box. I would give it to Mr. Watson, and say “Happy
Holiday.” —Alexus
I cut out the trees, with Ms. Allen, then I put glue on
the trees and red, blue and pink sparkles. When I fin -
ished I thought it would look good, with the other
things the children were making. For my next project, I
want to make a fake person. —Asia
Capital Kids is compiled by Patty Cur ran, section edi -
tor. Let her help you brag about your kids! Please send
news from your school, or news about your children, to
Patty at: 1371 A St., NE, Washington, DC 20002, or
via e-mail to pdtki@erols.com. The deadline for sub -
missions is the last Friday of the month prior to publi -
cation.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 37
BY JYOTSNA SREENIVA S A N
We are fortunate to have over a dozen elementary
schools in and around Capitol Hill—public and private.
But as important as these schools are to our
community and our children, the leaders of these
schools are often unknown.
This month we introduce you to four of our principals,
next month we’ll bring you more. We hope
to give you a better sense of who these leaders are,
and also give parents of young children an idea of
the options.
Don’t forget! The public school “out of bounds”
registration deadline is February 28!
Connie Cowley
Brent Elementary School,
330 Third St. SE, 698-3363
Type of school: Public
Grades: PreK-6
Number of Students: 315
Special Programs: Museum Magnet School
Connie Cowley, in her second year as principal of Brent,
has previous experience as an assistant principal, guid -
ance counselor, and science teacher at other schools in
DC.
What philosophy guides the way you run your
school?
In partnership with the Smithsonian Institution,
we are the only elementary museum magnet school
in the District of Columbia. We explore, explain
and exhibit as a way to provide meaningful learning
experiences for all children. Students use investigation
and problem solving to learn about issues,
and use writing and art to explain and exhibit what
they have learned. Each year our teachers come up
with a broad theme for the year, and each classroom
is transformed into a gallery based on that
theme.
What are you especially proud of?
We have a wo n d e rful pro fessional deve l o p m e n t
program for teachers. Every Wednesday afternoon
they focus on “best practices in education.” We
bring experts in to work with our teachers. Our
parents are very supportive, and do a good job of
fundraising for us.
What are the major challenges facing your school?
We don’t have enough space. I would like a science
lab, a larger computer lab, and an exhibit hall.
What are you planning for the future to improve
your school?
I would love to have a full-time music teacher, a foreign
language teacher, and a bus so that we can go
more easily to the museums.
Joan Kelly
Tyler Elementary School,
1001 G St. SE, 698-3577
Type of school: Public
Grades: PreK - 6
Number of Students: 350
Special P rograms: Success for All Reading Program (in
which students are grouped by ability rather than age,
and spend 90 minutes per day in reading activities).
Joan Kelly has been principal of Tyler for 14 years.
What philosophy guides the way you run your
school?
All children can learn at their own pace, given the
appropriate instruction and time. We are preparing
children to be positive citizens and lifelong learners.
What are you especially proud of?
We met our six targets for the Stanford 9 test this
past spring, and we received a $15,000 award from
the DC Public School System. This year we began
p a rticipating in the “Say Yes to a Yo u n g st e r’s
Future” program, which is a hands-on math and
science family activity one Saturday a month. The
children are learning a lot, and getting very excited
about math and science.
What are the major challenges facing your school?
Our parents are not always as involved in their
child’s education as I’d like them to be. I’d like to
see parents help their students with homework,
read to the children, and come in to volunteer.
More parental support will help improve test scores
and academics. Also, our school building needs
repairs.
What are you planning for the future to improve
your school?
We will improve our math program and work on
meeting the DC Public School standards.
John Pannell
Edison-Friendship Charter School,
1343 Potomac Ave. SE, 547-5800
Type of school: Public Charter
Grades: K-5
Number of Students: 900
Special Programs: Success for All Reading Program
John Pannell was Principal of Malcolm X Elementary
S chool in DC befo re becoming principal of Edison-
Friendship when it started three years ago.
What philosophy guides the way you run your
school?
Our mission statement is to provide a world-class
education for students with diverse needs, while
p roviding tech n o l o g i c a l ly sta t e - o f - th e - a rt techniques
and methodologies. Every child from third
grade on is given a computer to take home, and
homework assignments are e-mailed to the students.
What are you especially proud of?
Two years in a row, we received a four-star achievement
award from Edison Schools for our student
a ch i evement, financial management, sch o o l
design, customer satisfaction and system growth.
We are one of only two Edison schools, out of 113
schools nationwide, to receive this award twice.
What are the major challenges facing your school?
Most of our students come from economically disadvantaged
homes. They come from all over the
District, and we have had to create a community for
ourselves, despite our many differences.
What are you planning for the future to improve
your school?
We will expand the playground, landscape th e
grounds, and implement an expanded summer
program.
Michael Woods
Cornerstone Community School
Type of school: Private (Christian)
Grades: 1-5 (will add Pre-K and Sixth through Eighth
grades in next few years)
Number of Students: 46 (will grow to 200)
Special Programs: Christ-based curriculum
Michael Woods was assistant director of a neighbor -
hood ministry for teens, and a history teacher, before
coming to Cornerstone Community School this year.
What philosophy guides the way you run your
school?
Our school is Christ-based. We have chapel or Bible
study every day. Our math word problems, our
reading, and our science feature Bible teachings.
We believe that every child can learn, and we group
children by ability, not age.
What are you especially proud of?
Discipline. I feel I have helped to bring a different
atmosphere to the school. Students know that if
they misbehave they will be sent to see me.
What are the major challenges facing your school?
We are looking for our own building, and fundraising
for that.
What are you planning for the future to improve
your school?
I would like to implement a “mastery” program in
which we help each student find a subject that gets
them really fired up, and learn about that in depth
through the years. We intend to be the very best
school in the city in terms of academics. When the
kids g raduate from eighth grade, I intend them to
be able to make their mark on any high school they
choose.
Stay tuned: The February issue of the Voice of the Hill
will fe a t u re interv i ews with the principals of
Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School, Maury Elementary
School, Village Learning Center Public Charter
S chool, Capitol Hill Day School, St. Pet e r’s
Interparish School, Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian,
World Public Charter School, Tree of Life Community
Public Charter School, Miner Elementa ry
School and the Capitol Hill Cluster School.
Jyotsna Sreenivasan is a Capitol Hill parent.
I t’s Elementa ry :
Talking with Hill
P r i n c i p a l s
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
38 www.voiceofthehill.com
PROUDLY SPONSORED BY Jackie
PEACHES AND POOH BEAR
K i d s ’ C a l e n d a r Activities of Particular Interest to Kids and Their Pare n t s
Jackie von Schlegel, CBR, GRI
Capitol Hill and Chesapeake Beach are our neighborhoods, we hope you’ll make them yours.
202-547-5600 (W) • 202-543-4296 (H) • 301-855-6443 (H)
email: jackiev@realtor.com / Licensed in DC, MD and VA
REMAX Capital Properties
Exhibits and Special Events
At the Capital Children’s Museum:
The Washington We Know
A photographic view of our capital city beyond the
monuments: Everyday life from the heart of our neighborhoods.
Also: Every weekend in February features
sidewalk games! Play favorites including “Mother May
I” and “Double Dutch.” Visit the front desk for exact
times and further details. Admission. Capital
Children’s Museum. 800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Union Station Celebrates Black History Month
Each weekend in February brings a special event to
the Great Hall of Union Station, but the weekend
beginning Friday, February 9 brings a particular treat
for kids (and the young at heart): A “Black Doll
Show,” featuring a delightful collection of unique and
elaborate dolls. Looking is free. The exhibit will be
open 11AM to 7PM, Friday through Sunday.
Saturday, January 20
Watch short clay animation movies, then create one
of your own! 11 AM, 1:30 PM and 3 PM. Capital
Children’s Museum. 800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Sunday, January 21
Are You a Sumo Champion? Learn about the art of
Sumo wrestling and play a table version of the sport.
11 AM - 3 PM. Capital Children’s Museum. 800 Third
St., NE. 675-4133.
Tuesday, January 23
Toddler Story Time: Stories, songs, films and more.
Ages 3-5. 10 AM. NE Library. 7th and Maryland, NE
698-3299.
Thursday, January 25
Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday with art!
Draw or write about this special day and display your
work at the librar y. 4 PM. NE Librar y. 7th and
Maryland, NE 698-3299.
Saturday, January 27
Discovery Center: A cachet is a special envelope
designed to celebrate stamps in a commemorative
way. Make your own cachet highlighting American
stamps. National Postal Museum. 1 - 3 PM. 2 Mass.
Ave., NE. Free. 633-9360.
Films: 3-10 year olds can watch filmstrips based on
children’s literature. 11:30 AM. NE Library. 7th and
Maryland, NE. 698-3299.
Where Does the Sun Come From? Learn about the
Ancient Aztecs and the sun’s importance as a
Mexican symbol. 11 AM and 2 PM. Capital Children’s
Museum. 800 Third St., NE. Space is limited. 675-
4133.
Tuesday, January 30
Toddler Story Time: Stories, songs, films and more.
Ages 3-5. 10 AM. NE Library. 7th and Maryland, NE
698-3299.
D.C. Public Schools Track Meet. D.C. Armor y. 1:30 -
7 PM. Call 547-9077 for more information. Free
admission.
Wednesday, January 31
Toddler Story Time: Stories, songs, films and more.
Ages 3-5. 10 AM. NE Library. 7th and Maryland, NE
698-3299.
Saturday, February 3
P.S. I Love You: Make your own special mailbox just
in time for Valentine’s Day. Please bring a shoebox or
other cardboard container; all other supplies will be
provided. National Postal Museum. 1 - 3 PM. 2 Mass.
Ave., NE. 633-9360.
Sunday, February 4
Setsubun in Japan: What do beans have to do with
ghosts? Learn their important role and make a scary
oni mask. 11 AM - 3 PM. Capital Children’s Museum.
800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Friday, February 9
Black Doll Show. Today through Sunday: A delightful
collection of unique and elaborate dolls are on display
in Union Station’s Great Hall. Free. 11AM-7PM.
Saturday, February 10
Be a Musician! Take part in a Mexican sing-a-long
while learning how to make and play your own traditional
musical instrument. 11 AM and 2 PM. Also:
Setsubun in Japan: What do beans have to do with
ghosts? See 2/4 listing. Capital Children’s Museum.
800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Sunday, February 11
Setsubun in Japan: What do beans have to do with
ghosts? Learn their important role and make a scary
oni mask. 11 AM - 3 PM. Capital Children’s Museum.
800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Saturday, February 17
Discovery Center: Celebrate President’s Day with
patterned Presidential portraits!. Visitors will make
stamp mosaic portraits with canceled stamps.
National Postal Museum. 1 - 3 PM. 2 Mass. Ave., NE.
633-9360.
Pixilation: Come watch examples of pixilation and
animate yourself in your very own cartoon! 11 AM,
1:30 PM, and 3 PM. Each program lasts approx. 15
minutes. Also today: Make your own hachimaki
(Japanese headband), and learn about Blues music.
Capital Children’s Museum. 800 Third St., NE. Space
is limited, sign up at the desk the day of the event.
800 Third St., NE. 675-4133.
Gardening Conference. Learn how to create, sustain
and get funding for a community or youth garden.
Appropriate for interested teens and parents. Register
by calling: 703-228-6423
Sunday, February 18
Understanding the Blues: View a multi-media presentation
tracing the history of the blues. 1 PM, 2:30
PM, 4 PM. Capital Children’s Museum. 800 Third St.,
NE. 675-4133.
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 39
S TA R RY
DAYS
Your Astrological Guide
to the Pursuit of
Happiness
BY AJAI ©
Got something you want
to do? This calendar
helps you get things
done, and it works for
everyone! There are more
Planets in Astrology then
just your Sun Sign. The
pull of all of the Planets
impacts every one of us
regardless of our birthday,
and using this calendar
can help us all in our
Pursuit of Happiness.
Friday 1.19.01
Base your decisions on the
highest good for the most
people.
Saturday 1.20.01
Under the big tent of the
sky, there’s room for all. Live
and let live. Let go, and let
Go
Sunday 1.21.01
Practice compassion.
Celebrate inclusion.
Monday 1.22.01
Sometimes Reality wears a
stern face. Make it smile.
Tuesday 1.23.01
Just before sleep, write a
positive note about the State
of your World.
Wednesday 1.24.01
Saturn turns Direct, and the
Chinese New Year begins the
Year of the Snake.
Regenerate yourself: Shed
the old You like snakes shed
their old skins.
Thursday 1.25.01
Jupiter turns Direct! Go slow
shopping. Do you really need
this? What would you sur render
in exchange for this?
One of your kitchen chairs?
Friday 1.26.01
Take the afternoon off!
Wander. Lose yourself in a
garden that charms you.
Saturday 1.27.01
Sleep in. Snuggle with your
sweetie. Were the dreams
you had last night the same?
Sunday 1.28.01
Linger with spiritual people,
with artifacts that reawaken
and inspire the Divine.
Monday 1.29.01
Leap boldly into this day.
Tuesday 1.30.01
Take a concrete step to
bring all of your beliefs into
reality by addressing just
one. Example: If you value
Truth; speak Truth, even if
Truth leaves you feeling vulnerable.
Wednesday 1.31.01
Instead of a cup of coffee
this morning, massage your
ears!
Thursday 2.1.01
Note the first thing you think
when you wake.
Friday 2.2.01
Counter a potential this
afternoon to be scattered by
focusing on one task at a
time.
Saturday 2.3.01
Not the best day to her d
cats. The Planet Mercur y
turns Retrograde 8:58
tonight.
Sunday 2.4.01
Reserve this evening, to
honor your family.
Monday 2.5.01
Cook soup.
Tuesday 2.6.01
Take a deep breath, and slow
down. Real slow. Cut someone
some slack.
Wednesday 2.7.01
Let’s be light on our feet.
Wear slightly silly hats. And
smile. Lots. Smiling is like a
magnet. What will be attract -
ed to your magnet?
Thursday 2.8.01
The Moon is Full. Tickle your
lover. Tickling is always
good, but a Full Moon tickle
is the best.
Friday 2.9.01
Pay the piper and dance the
milk animals home.
Saturday 2.10.01
1. Clean your house. 2.
Invite friends to dinner.
Sunday 2.11.01
Hang with your buddies.
Monday 2.12.01
Around 10 tonight, drink hot
herb tea, and curl up with a
new book.
Tuesday 2.13.01
Forget your enemies. Count
your friends!
Wednesday 2.14.01
Open wide the door to your
heart. Beat drums. Blow
horns. Sing songs!
Thursday 2.15.01
Sometime today allow yourself
to do the most outra -
geous thing you can conceive.
Ajai once lived nine years in
a yoga ashram. Now he lives
on Capitol Hill, teaches
yoga, and studies astrology
and cats.
May you be happy,
Ajai
speech and the statue of the
“Maltese Falcon” that was
used in the film of the same
name. Madison Building.
Open indefinitely
Here to Stay: The Legacy
of George and Ira Gershwin
The George and Ira Gershwin
Room is a permanent exhibition
area for materials from
the Library’s George and Ira
Gershwin Collection, the
world’s preeminent resource
for the documentary legacy
of the Gershwin brothers.
“Here to Stay: The Legacy of
George and Ira Gershwin”
includes George’s piano and
desk, Ira’s typing table and
typewriter, a self-portrait oil
painting of each brother,
handwritten musical manuscripts
and other documents
that chronicle their lives and
careers. An audio-video kiosk
allows visitors to view film
footage and learn mor e
about the Gershwins and
their music. (George and Ira
Gershwin Room, Northwest
Ground Floor Corridor of the
Jefferson Building, open
indefinitely)
American Treasures of the
Library of Congress
The unprecedented
“American Treasures” exhibition
showcases 240 items
that represent the breadth
and depth of the Library’s
American historical items.
(Southwest Gallery and
Pavilion of the Thomas
Jefferson Building). For addi -
tional information, call 707-
3834.
Folger Shakespeare
Library, 201 East
Capitol St., SE
Writing on Hands, Memory
and Knowledge in Early
Modern Europe
The hand, while universally
familiar, is a novel subject
for an exhibition. Vital to
human experience, the hand
is involved in touching, feel -
ing, acting, writing, creating,
thinking, counting, remembering,
and speaking. In visual
communication, the hand
is a universal symbol able to
convey and reveal different
types of information essential
to human activity. From
the earliest pictorial records
to the present day, representations
of the hand, independent
of the body, present
a wide array of imagery dealing
with both the
external/material/visible
and internal/spiritual/invisible
qualities of human existence.
From the profuse
array of available imager y,
the exhibition focuses on
representation of the hand
inscribed with, or sur rounded
by, systems of graphic signs.
The 70-80 works in the exhi -
bition embrace such fields as
anatomy, religion, philosophy,
psychology, music theory,
mathematics, literature,
emblematics, and the occult
sciences. Through March 3.
EXHIBITS
National Arboretum
Bonsai Winter Silhouette
Show, January 20-28
View the bare branches of
these diminutive beauties as
works of art. A unique exhibit
of deciduous bonsai mas -
terpieces from the permanent
collection of National
Bonsai and Penjing Museum.
Free. Open 10Am to
3:30PM. 3501 New York
Ave., NE. 245-2726.
Union Station
The Station Celebrates
Black History Month
The weekend beginning
February 4, brings the
“Black Arts Fest,” featuring
Washington’s finest African-
American artists showing
and selling jewelr y, paintings,
sculptures and handicrafts.
On February 9, a
delightful collection of
“unique and elaborate” dolls
will be on display in the
Station’s “Black Doll Show.”
Free, in Union Station’s
Great Hall. 11AM-7PM.
National Postal
Museum
Closing February 23!
Recounting the Roosevelt
Presentation Albums,
1903-1905
Three rare, intact presenta -
tion stamp albums from the
Roosevelt administration are
on display. These albums
were given away as “favors”
by the postal service.
Albums contain proof impres -
sions of US stamps issued
from 1847 to 1903.
Originally costing about $20
to produce, an intact
Roosevelt Presentation
Album can sell for $75,000
or more today. Rarities
Gallery.
The Library of Congress:
Closing February 17!
Herblock’s Political
Cartoons
The Library of Congress honors
renowned editorial cartoonist
Herb Block
(“Herblock”) with a major
exhibition of his original
drawings. The subjects
include all 12 presidents
from Herbert Hoover to Bill
Clinton and the presidential
candidates in the 2000 election.
The exhibition celebrates
Herblock’s gift to the
Library of Congress of more
than 100 original works,
spanning 70 years of world
history and his distinguished
career.
By Securing to Authors:
Copyright, Commerce, and
Creativity in America
Exhibition features a wide
range of items that have
been copyrighted in America,
including original Ken and
Barbie dolls, Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream
Washington Navy Yard,
8th and M Sts., SE
The Navy in the Forgotten
War: Korea 1950-53
Exhibit commemorates the
50th anniversary of the conflict
in Korea, covering the
themes of naval aviation,
gunfire support, amphibious
operations, minesweeping,
medical support, and
armistice negotiations. A
restored Landing Craft
Vehicle Personnel (LCVP) will
dominate the exhibition.
Navy Museum Annex,
Building 70. Exhibit will
remain on display until 2001.
Friday, January 19
• Opening reception: the
Millennium Arts Center.
Celebrate artists and the
arts at the New Millennium
Arts Center, 65 I St., SW.
Exhibit features work of
artists from across the U.S.
6-9PM. Free, but you must
RSVP 479-2572.
• Good Shabbos. The Hill
Havurah gathers at 6:30 PM
to celebrate Shabbot at the
home of Alan Levine and
Laurie Siegel. Join them to
welcome the Shabbot followed
by a potluck supper.
They say, “feel free to invite
friends, neighbors, etc. to
join us on this special
evening.” If you have any
questions, call 544-5675.
•Films on the Hill:
Dodsworth (1936) Sinclair
Lewis’ brilliant character
study of a down-to-earth
American mogul and his
spoiled social-climbing wife.
Going Bye Bye (1934) This
short features Laurel &
Hardy at their best! Capitol
Hill Arts Workshop. 7:30
PM. 545 7th St., SE. Call
547-6839 or visit
www.chaw.org for details.
Saturday, January 20
• Inauguration Day
• Bonsai Winter Silhouette
Show. Through January 28 at
the National Arboretum: View
bare branches of bonsai mas -
terpieces from the perma -
nent collection. 10 AM-3:30
PM. Free, but may be
mobbed with Democrats
today. 3501 NY Ave., NE.
• Artist’s Innaugural Ball at
the New Millennium Arts
Center. Live bands and DJ,
dancing, hors d’oeuvres,
cash bar. Dress is creative
“glitz.” $35 includes membership
in the arts center for
a year! 65 I St., SW. Tickets:
479-2572.
Monday, January 22
• Books & Beyond: George
Soros and Librarian of
Congress James Billington
discuss Soros’ new book
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
40 www.voiceofthehill.com
• Films on the Hill: Desire
(1936). Gary Cooper and
Marlene Dietrich star in this
romantic romp, widely considered
one of the best films
of the 1930’s. Capitol Hill
Arts Workshop. 7:30 PM.
545 7th St., SE. Call 547-
6839 or visit www.chaw.org
for details.
• PEN/Faulkner Reading:
Kate Wheeler, author of Not
Where I Started From, and
Colson Whitehead, author of
The Intuitionist, read from
their works in the Folger
Theatre. 201 East Capitol
St., SE. 8 PM. Call 675-0345
for tickets and information.
Saturday, February 17
• Afternoon Delight. The
Isreal Camerata Jerusalem
will perform Mozart’s Piano
Concerto no. 27 with guest
pianist Ilya Itin, and Haydns
Symphony no. 78. Library of
Congress, Jefferson Building.
2PM. Free—but tickets are
required, and they may be
gone. Call 707-5502.
• Orchid Forum and Sales.
Nationally recognized orchid
experts tell you all you need
to know about these magnificent
exotics. Lectures
throughout the day, sale is
8AM to 10AM. $25 includes
box lunch. National
Arboretum, 3501 NY Ave.,
NE. To register: 703-644-
6424.
• Discovery Center:
Celebrate President’s Day
with patterned Presidential
portraits! Visitors will make
stamp mosaic portraits with
canceled stamps. National
Postal Museum. 1 - 3 PM. 2
Mass. Ave., NE. 633-9360.
•Love Letters . AR Gurney’s
charming play features
James Foster and Adele
Robey in a cabaret setting.
Directed by Paul-Douglas
Michnewicz, at the Capitol
Hill Arts Workshop, 8PM.
$15 includes refreshments.
545 7th St., SE. 547-6839.
• Gardening Conference.
Today and tomorrow, a passel
of organizations, including
the American Community
Gardening Association and
Garden Resources of
Washington will host a conference
on creating community
and youth gardening
projects. Register by calling:
703-228-6423
St., SE. 8 PM. Call 544-7077
for ticket and subscription
information.
• Black Doll Show. Let your
inner child play, and the
adult in you appreciate! A
show of unique and elaborate
dolls is on display through
this weekend at Union
Station. Free. 11AM-7PM.
Sunday, February 11
• Last night to see the Gay
and Lesbian Chorus of
Washington D.C. performance
“Notes on Love,” a con -
cert exploring love’s many
meanings and manifestations.
4 PM. Unitarian
Universalist Church of
Arlington. 4444 Arlington
Blvd. For ticket information
visit www.lgcw.org or call
546-1549.
• The Folger Consort chamber
music ensemble’s final
performances of “What then
is Love.” Folger Theatre. 201
East Capitol St., SE. 2 PM &
5 PM. Call 544-7077 for
ticket and subscription information.
• Black Doll Show. Let your
inner child play, and the
adult in you appreciate! Last
chance to see this unique
and elaborate display of
African-American dolls at
Union Station. Free. 11AM-
7PM.
• Songs of Democracy. The
Capitol Hill Chorale presents
Handel’s Coronation
Anthems coupled with
Howard Hanson’s Song of
Democracy . 7:30PM. St.
Joseph’s Catholic Church,
2nd and C Sts., NE. $15
reserved, $10 general admission.
547-6839.
Tuesday, February 13
• Readings on Love. The
Library of Congress celebrates
Valentine’s Day with
romantic poetry readings.
Madison Building at Noon.
Free. No tickets. 707-1308.
• ANC6B meeting - 921
Pennsylvania Ave., SE.
Always informative, if hardly
romantic. Free. No tickets. 7
PM.
• Super Tuesday: Tonight’s
talk features Hill resident
Kay Brown discussing both
the Black Arts and Black
Power movements of the
1960’s and 70’s. 7:30 PM.
403 7th St., SE. Call 698-
3372 for information.
• Capitol Hill Garden Club.
Matthew Evans, Director of
Capitol Grounds speaks on
the Capitol Gardens. Capitol
Hill Baptist Church., 5th and
A NE, rear. 7PM refresh -
ments. Program at 7:30
sharp. Free.
Wednesday, February 14
• Valentine’s Day
• Frederick Douglass’s
Birthday. Wreath laying at
memorial site, 1411 W St.,
SE. Time: TBA. 426-5961.
Friday, February 16
• Love Letters. AR Gurney’s
charming play features
James Foster and Adele
Robey in a cabaret setting.
Directed by Paul-Douglas
Michnewicz, at the Capitol
Hill Arts Workshop, 8PM.
$15 includes refreshments.
545 7th St., SE. 547-6839.
Open Society: Reforming
Global Capitalism. Library of
Congress, Mumford Room.
6:30 PM. Contact: 707-
5221.
• Jazz Film Series: Steve
Allen Show No. 93 (NBC,
1958), Louis Armstrong: The
Gentle Giant of Jazz (Comco
Prod., 1978) and David
Garroway’s Wide, Wide
World (NBC, 1955) will be
shown this evening. Librar y
of Congress. 7 PM.
Reservations may be made
by phone, beginning one
week before any given show.
Call 707-5677 during business
hours. Reserved seats
must be claimed at least 10
minutes before show time,
after which standbys will be
admitted to unclaimed seats.
All programs are free, but
seating is limited to 64
seats. The Mary Pickford
Theater is located on the
third floor of the Madison
Building.
Tuesday, January 23
• The Southeast Librar y
“Friends” will hold their first
meeting of the year. Come
discuss ideas for the upcoming
year and learn mor e
about how you can get
involved. 6:45 PM. Contact:
Dave Gantt, 698-3371.
• Research Neighborhood
History. Curious about our
neighborhood’s past? The
Historical Society of
Washington (HSW) conducts
another of its popular
research tutorials from 5:45
to 8:45PM. Begins at the
Historical Society of
Washington, and concludes
at the Washingtoniana
Division of the DC Public
Library. Advance registration
required. HSW members
$15; Non-members $20. 785-
2068 x 111.
Wednesday, January 24
• Treasure Talk: Gerald
Gawalt, historical specialist
in the Manuscript Division,
talks about the inauguration
of Thomas Jefferson. Librar y
of Congress, Jefferson
Building. Noon. Free.
Contact: 707-9203.
Thursday, January 25
• The final program in the
Library of Congress Jazz Film
Series is the Washington premiere
of Horace Parlan by
Horace Parlan (Rough Sea
Prod., 2000), a portrait of
the pianist and composer. 7
PM. Free. See January 22
listing for admission details.
Friday, January 26
• Meet Mystery Writer John
Dunning. Best-selling mystery
writer and radio historian
John Dunning will discuss
vintage radio and his new
book, Two O’Clock Easter n
Wartime, at the Library of
Congress. 6PM, Madison
Building. Free. No tickets.
• PEN/Faulkner Reading.
Josephine Humphreys, author
of Nowhere Else on Earth,
and Elizabeth Spencer,
author of “Light in the
Piazza,” read from their work
at the Folger Shakespeare
Library, 201 E. Capitol St.
8PM reading is followed by a
book signing. $13.
Saturday, January 27
• Doolittle’s K-9
Socialization Group. Capital
Canines’ Doolittle’s Group
meets for a dog obedience
socialization session at 10
AM at 224 7th St, SE.
Designed for dogs that have
some obedience skills and
reliability around distractions.
Emphasis is on heeling,
sit-stays, down-stays. No
reservation needed. $10
(free if previously trained
with Michelle Beardsley,
Capital Canines.)
• Discovery Center: A
cachet is a special envelope
designed to celebrate
stamps in a commemorative
way. Visitors will make their
own cachets highlighting
American stamps. National
Postal Museum. 1 - 3 PM. 2
Mass. Ave., NE. 633-9360.
Monday, January 29
• The Folger Poetry Series
presents poets Elizabeth
Alexander, author of “Body of
Life,” and Marie Howe,
author of “The Good Thief,”
reading from their most
recent works. Folger
Theatre. Seminar and
Supper, 5:30 PM. Reading, 8
PM. Call 544-7077 for tick -
ets and information.
Tuesday, January 30
• Library of Congress
Symposium: “Globalization
and Minorities in Muslim
Societies” will be the topic
of today’s program. 9 AM -
3:30 PM. Thomas Jefferson
Building. Free. 707-3302.
• D.C. Public Schools Track
Meet. D.C. Armor y. 1:30 - 7
PM. Call 547-9077 for mor e
information. Free admission.
• Help Plan the Future of
Capitol Hill. See Karina Ricks
story in Download section for
info. 7:30 – 9 PM at 921
Pennsylvania Ave., the Old
Naval Hospital.
Wednesday, January 31
• Treasure Talk: Patrick
Loughney, motion picture
curator, discusses the optical
predecessors of today’s
films. Library of Congress,
Jefferson Building. Noon.
Contact: 707-9203.
Thursday, February 1
• ANC 6A Meeting. Lately
they’ve been changing the
location of this meeting at
the last minute, so check in
at www.voiceofthehill.com
the day of, and we’ll attempt
to send you in the right
direction. The time, 7PM,
does stay the same. We
think.
• Prazak String Quartet.
Renowned quartet from the
Czech Republic performs
Zemlinsky, Janacek and
Dvorak. Library of Congress,
Thomas Jefferson Building.
8PM.
Friday, February 2
• Black Arts Fest. Washing -
ton’s finest African-American
artists show and sell jewelry,
paintings, sculptures and
handicrafts. Union Station.
11AM-7PM.
Saturday, February 3
• P.S. I Love You: Families
will enjoy making their own
special mailboxes just in
time for Valentine’s Day.
Please bring a shoebox or
other cardboard container;
all other supplies will be pr ovided.
National Postal
Museum. 1 - 3 PM. Free. 2
Mass. Ave., NE. 633-9360.
• The Gay and Lesbian
Chorus of Washington DC
presents “Notes on Love,” a
concert exploring love’s
many meanings and manifestations.
8 PM. Capitol Hill
Presbyterian Church. 4th and
Independence, SE. For ticket
information visit
www.lgcw.org or call 546-
1549. Additional performances
on February 4 and 11.
• Black Arts Fest.
Washington’s finest African-
American artists show and
sell jewelry, paintings, sculptures
and handicrafts. Union
Station. 11AM-7PM.
Sunday, February 4
• The Gay and Lesbian
Chorus of Washington D.C.
presents “Notes on Love,” a
concert exploring love’s
many meanings and manifestations.
4 PM. Capitol Hill
Presbyterian Church. 4th and
Independence, SE. For ticket
information visit
www.lgcw.org or call 546-
1549. Final performance on
February 11.
• Black Arts Fest.
Washington’s finest African-
American artists show and
sell jewelry, paintings, sculptures
and handicrafts. Union
Station. 11AM-7PM.
Tuesday, February 6
• Super Tuesdays at the
Southeast Library! Tonight’s
talk features Eric Hughes
discussing his book The
Content of Their Character ,
detailing his personal battle
against workplace discrimination.
7:30 PM. 403 7th
St., SE. Call 698-3372 for
information.
Wednesday, February 7
• The Capitol Hill
Restoration Society’s
Preservation Cafe series
resumes this evening. David
Lindeman of L&M
Contracting will discuss roofing.
6:30 PM. Upstairs at
Trattoria Alberto, 502 8th
St., SE. Contact Katie Miller
at 547-7167 for details.
• Marine Concert. The
Marine Band’s Chamber
Orchestra performs at the
Library of Congress. 8PM.
Free. 433-3011.
Thursday, February 8
• Full Moon Hike. Magical 5-
mile tour of the moonlit gar -
dens of the National
Arboretum. Bundle up and
leave the spike heels in the
closet. $7. Register by call -
ing 245-4523.
Friday, February 9
• The Folger Consort chamber
music ensemble presents
“What then is Love” for
three nights only! Folger
Theatre. 201 East Capitol
St., SE. 8 PM. Call 544-7077
for ticket and subscription
information.
• Black Doll Show. Let your
inner child play, and the
adult in you appreciate! A
delightful collection of
unique and elaborate dolls is
on display through this week -
end at Union Station. Free.
11AM-7PM.
• Songs of Democracy. The
Capitol Hill Chorale presents
Handel’s Coronation
Anthems coupled with
Howard Hanson’s Song of
Democracy. Two performanc -
es, February 9 and 11,
7:30PM. St. Joseph’s
Catholic Church, 2nd and C
Sts., NE. $15 reserved, $10
general admission. 547-
6839.
Saturday, February 10
• Second Saturday, the Hill’s
gallery and shop walk, features
exhibits, one night only
store discounts, and restaurant
specials. 5-7 PM, at 20
or so locations around
Eastern Market—look for the
orange balloons, or check in
at www.voiceofthehill.com
for details.
• The Folger Consort chamber
music ensemble presents
“What then is Love.” Folger
Theatre. 201 East Capitol
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
www.voiceofthehill.com 41
Call us at
2 0 2 - 5 4 3 - 3 6 3 5
www.ramassociates.com
classifieds, etc • classifieds, etc •
La Strega
Italian Classes
Native Professor offers Private and
Semi-Private Courses
Special Travel Course over two weekends
Call 202 547-9536
email: lastrega@hotmail.com
H o m eTh e r a p y H E L P W I T H Y O U R H O U S E I S S U E S
Take the hassle out of home decorating.
Call 202-546-2289 for a consultation
or email myhometherapy@aol.com
see ad p. 17
Khan El-Khalili
321 7th Street, SE
202-543-5295
1-800-397-9441
Mohamed & Venetta Khattab
Owners
????Hand Made Egyptian Gifts & Oils
Imported from Cairo
email: maisonorln@aol.com
bbonline.com/dc/maisonorleans/
Application Service Providers to Capitol Hill.
In the Business of Supporting Local and National
Organizations for 11Years.
We do:
• Web hosting, development, email
• eCommerce, powered by InterShop
• Web based learning featuring Macromedia Authorware
• Portal development, featuring LivePublish search engine
• CD development featuring LivePublish/FolioViews search engines
• Data translation, database development, web delivery
RAM has development and hosting plans available for small and
large clients, come be the next.
Ra d i a tor Ca b i n et s
Du ra bl e ,Be a u ti ful and Prot e ctive
Don’t paint, adorn!
RADIATOR ENCLOSURES WILL:
Improve Appearance
Decrease Heat Loss Through Walls
Enhance Circulation
Custom Wood Radiator Cabinets
Cane or Metal Grills
Stain or Painted
Also…
A Complete Line of Window
Treatments & Custom Bedding
Interior & Exterior Window Treatments
LL O Y D’S
WINDOW PRODUCTS
301.599.8684
I M M E D I AT E O P E N IN G S
JOIN OUR EXCITING TEAM!
The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop cur rently has two positions available:
PART TIME DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR: Candidates must have a strong background in development
work. Knowledge of the arts and the Capitol Hill community strongly preferred. 20-30 hours/week.
YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHY INTRUCTOR: After school arts program, 4-6 p.m. 1-2 days per week. Must
have experience working with children and must have references. Camera and Black and White dark
room work. Starts February 5, for eighteen week semester.
Applicants interested in either position should fax resume to 202.543.1723 or email to info@chaw.org.
You may also mail to the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop: 545 7th Street, SE, WDC 20003.
For more information, call 202.547.6839 or go to www.chaw.org.
620 G St., SE ??Eastern Market Metro
(202) 547-9300 ??www.washingtonparish.org
Our spring schedule leaves
time for your other re l i g i o n .
At Christ Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill you
can worship Sunday mornings before tee time.
Your casual clothes are welcome.
8:15 and 11:00 am worship services
HIGH SCHOOL
GIRL SOCCER PLAYERS:
Soccer on the Hill Express,
U16 seeks committed players in all
positions for Spring season, high level
rec league. 4 games in DC,
4 in VA plus tournament.
Call Marcia at
202-547-8999
V O I C E of the Hill /January 19, 2001
42 www.voiceofthehill.com
• classifieds • classifieds • classifieds •
Positions
Help Wanted
Medical Equipment Repair
Techs: 40 hrs/wk, ever y
other Saturday. Looking for
organized individual with
flexible personality to organ -
ize and maintain wheelchairs,
hospital beds, scooters,
etc. and to evaluate,
repair and service client
equipment. Training and
career opportunities available.
Grubbs Pharmacy
202/543-4400. (1/01)
Help Wanted
Customer Service & Billing:
Capitol Hill pharmacy looking
for motivated, organized,
friendly individual to answer
phones, work cash register,
data entry. We will train to
bill Medicare, Medicaid for
medical equipment. Grubbs
Pharmacy 202/543-4400.
(1/01)
Nanny Needed
Capitol Hill parents want
nanny to care for infant and
do light housework, starting
in mid. Januar y. Call Adrian
at 202/546-3717. (1/01)
Nanny Share
Capitol Hill couple with
infant daughter looking to
share child care. Please call
Bob at 202/546-3390.
(1/01)
Seeking Nanny/Nanny
Share
Seeking family interested in
nanny share arrangement.
Seeking experienced fulltime
nanny to care for our infant
and one other child beginning
in March. Call
202/547-0311. (1/01)
Help Wanted
Part time position. Small law
office seeks pleasant compe -
tent person who can work
independently on variety of
tasks including word processing,
transcription, telephones,
etc. 15-20 hours/
week (1blk McPherson Sq.
Metro). Respond by email to
mjh@michaeljhoare.com
(12/00)
Help Wanted
Capitol Hill family seeks PT
after-school child care for 2
children from 3-7pm M-Th.
Salary neg. Car provided.
Prior experience req. Fax
resume to 202/544-5783.
Call 202/544-5769. (12/00)
Ideal Child Care
Situation
Seeking child ±2 years to
spend days with charming 2
year old girl and talented,
warm nanny in our house on
the Hill. Working adult in
home most of the time. Save
money while getting attentive,
high-quality childcare.
Available Jan. 1 Call Jason
and Sanja at 202/544-2239.
(12/00)
Services
Domestic Help Full Time
Responsible Hill resident
available for elder care/child
care/cleaning/cooking. Full
time, live out only. Donna,
202/543-4859 (1/01)
Buy, Sell, Rent
Garage/Storage Space
Wide alley access near 12th
& E St, NE. 10x20 and
20x20 units available. Ideal
for Hill contractors, market
vendors, secure parking, or
general storage. Call
202/547-4765 or email
garages@emptyattic.com
(1/01)
Beach Vacation/Golf
Reserve for next season or a
fall golf outing. Cher ry Grove
Section, No. Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. 3BR 2BA
home, 1 block from beach
Classified Ad Placement Form
First Name __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Last Name___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Address _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
City/State/ZIP _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Phone Number________________________________________________________________________Email_________________________________
Category
h Apartments/Rooms h Autoh Books h Children’s Items h Electronics
h Furnitureh Office h Marketplace h Other _________________________________________________________________________________
h Personals h Positions h Services h Tools
h Website h Newspaper h Both
Classified ads are $25.00 and appear both on the Web and in print unless otherwise specified. Visa and MasterCard are accepted.
Please describe the item and please be concise, there is a 200 website character limitation (there is no limit to print ads)_______________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Please enclose payment with ord e r. Mail to Voice of the Hill, 120 11 th St re et, SE, Wa s h i n g ton, DC 20003. Or fax info rmation
(credit card payment only) to 202-547-5133. Telephone 202-544-0703.
Credit Card Number (Visa and MC only)_________________________________________________Exp. Date _____________________________
Name on Card _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Signature____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
with dock and channel at
back door. Over 100 golf
courses nearby, and more
mini-golf than you can play.
Rent the Robeys’ beach cot -
tage.…call 202/546-7410
for rates or www.voiceofthehill/
cricket
Marketplace
Good Stuff Cheap!
We’re renovating. Good stuf f
cheap! Old stereo tape
decks, receivers, speakers,
TVs, $10-$40; natural shape
wood coffee table with inlays
$50; wood square table $40;
larg panther print (on silk,
framed) $40; bar stools $15
each; solid beech kitchen
chairs $20 each; fans, vacuums
$10 each; futon frame
$15; much more! 202/544-
3643. (1/01)
Car for Sale
1995 Ford Contour, maroon,
4-door, V6, 5 speed. Good
condition, A/C, new tires,
alarm. 60K miles. $4500/
obo. Daytime 202/464-
1662, ext. 32; eves and
wknds 202/544-1372.
(1/01)
Clawfoot Tub
Original in excellent condition.
Make an offer, call
202/547-5970 (1/01)
Books
Want to purchase
Quality used books. Single
volumes or entire library!
Call Steve at Riverby Books
202/544-1925
Books Bought and Sold.
We want what you can give,
we pay what we can afford.
Capitol Hill Books. Capitol
Hill’s only used bookstore
across the street from
Eastern Market. 657 C
Street, SE 202/544-1621
ACCOUNTING SERVICES
MARINA MARTIN, MBA
Innovative and Versatile Range of Services
for Small Business and Non-Profit
Software Installation and Training
Free Consultation
202 547-9536 lastrega@hotmail.com
Two Treasures - One Gate, On Capitol Hill
at Eastern Market Metro
Vegetable Dyed, Hand-Spun Wool
Tribal and Village Rugs
Tribal & Village Art
Open Tue-Sun 10-6
311-315 7th St., SE • Washington, DC
www.wovenhistory.com
202.543.1705
Appraising • Repairing • Cleaning •
Acquiring
Bi-monthly shipments from our own looms
®
1Black History Month
ANC 6A Meeting. They keep
changing the location, so
check in at www.voiceofthehill.
com for particulars.
Washington Photography
Show. 60 photos of everyday
life in DC go on display at
the Capital Children’s
Museum, 800 3rd St., NE.
2Ground Hog Day
Fungi! Amy Farges, author
of The Mushroom Lover’s
Mushroom Cookbook and
Primer, teaches while you
taste wild mushrooms, truf -
fle butter, & dried mushrooms-
and sip wine. Westin
Grand Hotel. 6:30 PM. $58.
703-780-9463
3The Gay and Lesbian Chorus
presents, “Notes on Love,” a
concert exploring love’s many
meanings and manifestations.
4 PM. Capitol Hill
Presbyterian Church. 4th and
Ind., SE. 546-1549.
4Celebrate Black Artists.
Washington’s finest
African-American artists
show and sell jewelry,
paintings, sculptures and
handicrafts today at Union
Station. 11AM-7PM.
5AMERICARTES: The
opening concert in the
Kennedy Center’s 3-year
festival, celebrating the
arts and culture of Latin
America. 467-4600.
8Full Moon Hike.
Magical 5-mile tour of the
moonlit gardens of the
National Arboretum. Bundle
up and leave the spike
heels in the closet. $7.
Register: 245-4523.
NBA All-Star Weekend
begins.
9The Capitol Hill Chorale
presents Handel and
Hanson. 7:30PM. St.
Joseph’s, 2nd and C Sts.,
NE. $15 reserved, $10 general
admission. 547-6839.
Civil Rights Photographic
Exhibit opens at the
Newseum
10 It’s Second Saturday! Sip
wine, catch a new art show,
and get a deal on dinner, it’s
time again for the Hill’s Gallery
Walk. 5-7 PM, at locations
around Eastern Market.
Black Doll Show . Beautiful
dolls are on display, and for
sale, through tomorrow at
Union Station. 11AM-7PM.
11 The Folger Consort pres -
ents, “What then is Love.”
Folger Theatre. 201 East
Capitol St., SE. 2 PM & 5
PM. 544-7077.
Walt Disney’s World on
Ice opens at the MCI
Center
12 Lincoln’s Birthday
Wreath laying, reading of
Gettysburg address, band
concert. Lincoln Memorial
Julia Child is the chairwoman
of the 9th Annual
Epicurean Food & Wine
Auction & Dinner at the
Omni Shoreham. 6:30 PM;
$125/person. 973-2168.
13 ANC6B meeting, 921
Pennsylvania Ave., SE. 7
PM.
Capitol Hill Garden Club.
Matthew Evans on C a p i t o l
G a rdens. Capitol Hill Baptist,
5th & A NE, re a r. 7:30 PM.
“Forever Swing” opens at
the Warner Theater
14 Valentine’s Day
Frederick Douglass’ s
Birthday. Wreath laying at
memorial site, 1411 W St.,
SE. Time: TBA. 426-5961.
15 The East Coast Jazz
Festival begins. Through
February 18 at various locations.
301-933-1822
16 Desire. Gary Cooper &
Marlene Dietrich star in
1936 romantic romp.
CHAW. 7:30 PM. 545 7th
St., SE. 547-6839.
PEN/Faulkner Reading:
Authors Kate Wheeler and
Colson Whitehead read at
the Folger Library. 201 E.
Cap. 8 PM. 675-0345.
17 Orchid Forum and Sale. $25
includes lunch. National
Arboretum, 3501 NY Ave.,
NE. Register: 703-644-6424.
Love Letters. AR Gurney’s
charming play features
James Foster and Adele
Robey in a cabaret setting.
CHAW. 8PM. $15. 545 7th
St., SE. 547-6839.
19 President’s Day
Washington’s Birthday
Parade. Nation’s largest!
1PM at Wilkes & St. Asaph
Sts. Old Town. Free.
Closing Day! “Andy
Warhol: Social Observer.”
Paintings, prints, and
photographs. Corcoran.
20
Thinking of
selling?
Call me!
21 Pucker up. A Midsummer
Night’s Dream opens at the
Folger Shakespeare Library.
201 E. Cap. St., 544-7077.
Set sail. Washington Boat
Show features powerboats,
sailboats and luxury yachts.
Washington Convention
Center. 703-823-7960.
22 THE craftiest event of the
year is the ACC Craft Fair
at Baltimore’s Convention
Center. Features 650+ artisans.
Thru February 25.
410-649-7000.
23 There’ll be acres of ideas
for your castle at the Capitol
Home & Garden Show.
Capital Expo Center,
Chantilly. Thru February 25.
703-802-0066.
King Hedley II, a new play
by August Wilson, opens at
the Eisenhower Theater.
24 Pack that tailgate! Catch the
Casanova Hunt Point to Point
at Mt. Sterling Farm in
Warrenton 540-788-4806
What? Daffs not up yet?
Sneak a peek at spring at the
Floral Quilt exhibit. Textile
Museum. 2320 S Street, NW.
667-0441.
25 Have you visted
www.smartmoney.com?
If you’re stock market shy,
check out their Smartmoney
University.
26 Perk Up a Blue Monday:
Liberace’s rhinestone
encrusted Baldwin is sure
to tickle your ivories. At the
Smithsonian International
Gallery (along with Pader -
ewski’s Steinway, Irving
Berlin’s upright, and 250
other pianos & keyboards.
27 28 Ash Wednesday
The perfect end to Februar y.
Wander “Through the
Looking Glass” at The
Octagon. The Museum of the
AIA Foundation is celebrating
its 200th with special exhibits
thru the year. 10 to 4 Tuesday
to Sunday. $5. 638-3105.
18 George Washington’ s
269th Birthday! Parade,
Fife & Drum, and sample
George’s favorite breakfast
“Hoecakes swimming in
butter and honey.”
Tomorrow too, with parade
& wreath laying. Free. At
Mt. Vernon. 703-780-2000.
6Super Tuesdays at the
Southeast Library! Author
Eric Hughes discusses “The
Content of Their Character,”
which details his personal
battle against workplace dis -
crimination. 7:30 PM. 403
7th St., SE. 698-3372
EQUAL HOUSING
OPPORTUNITY
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
7Get braced for April
Showers! The Restoration
Society’s Preservation Cafe
series: roofing. 6:30 PM.
Upstairs at Trattoria Alberto,
502 8th St., SE. 547-7167.
The Marine Band’s Chamber
Orchestra performs at the
Library of Congress. 8PM.
Free. 433-3011.
The best view on
real estate!
PHYLLIS JANE YOUNG
PARDOE Real Estate ERA
Office 202.262.7253 • Home 202.544.4236 •
email:
phyllisjaneyoung@realtor.com
Licensed broker in DC, MD and VA.
Fe b ru ary Fe b ru ary
208 5th St., SE 410 6th St., NE 218 Maryland
Ave., NE
648 East Capitol
St.
Thank You Fo r
A n o t h e r
Wo n d e rf u l
Ye a r
605 Pe n n s y l vania Avenue, SE / 202-547-3525 / www. p a rd o e . c o m EQUAL HOUSING
OPPORTUNITY
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If Yo u’re
Thinking Of
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