This Month
4 Covering the Whole
Horse: Bill Nack on
the Track
6 Girl Talk with Diana
McLellan
8 Milloy Holds Cour t
10 Absolute Honesty,
Coupled with
R e s p e c t :
Cochrane’s Wa y
12 Cookbooks to Help
Raise the Roof
14 Readers Wr i t e
P o e t ry
21 A rc de Barn e y
D e p a rt m e n t s
Vo i c e M a i l. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
H o ro s c o p e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 8
Ask Judith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 9
Business Pro f i l e . . . . . . . . . .2 3
Business Bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 6
Business Serv i c e s. . . . . . .2 7
D o w n L o a d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 9
Capital Kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 8
Kids’ Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . .4 2
Community Calendar . . .4 3
C l a s s i f i e d s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 6
Vol. 3 No. 4 July 20 2001
o f
T h e
H i l l
Wo r d s , w o r d s
words on Capitol
H i l l :
Wo r d s , w o r d s
words on Capitol
H i l l :what we ’re
reading and
what we ’re
w ri t i n g
A n t i q u e&
Con t e m p o r a ry
A n t i q u e&
Con t e m p o r a ry
L E A S I N G A N D S A L E S
709 12th Stre e t , S E
Wa s h i n g t o n , D C
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
202.547.3030
w w w. a n t i q u e l e a s i n g. c o m
709 12th Stre e t , S E
Wa s h i n g t o n , D C
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
202.547.3030
w w w. a n t i q u e l e a s i n g. c o m
Get Your Home Ready
for the Spring Sunshine
Come Visit
our Huge
S h o w ro o m !
Over 20,000 square feet
of furn i t u re, carpets,
paintings, lamps and
a c c e s s o r i e s
Your Neighborhood Furniture Source for Leasing or Buying
Well, why should tenants
involve themselves in projects
and issues for community
betterment if it defeats their
own interests? I must admit that
I will now think twice about trying
to convince them to join me out on
the limb!
I do have a suggestion for tenants
and others who want to see a more
sane housing system over the long
term, though. Join the New Columbia
Community Land Trust (202-986-9225),
learn the ropes and help form more
community land trusts all over town.
CLTs offer security, equity and legacy
without the rampant speculation in
housing that all of us who are not professional
speculators face. Maybe your
home has gone up $100,000 since you
bought it a year ago, but so has the
rest of the market.
M A RY VOGEL
To the Editor:
It is so exciting to see that the invaluable
contribution you make to the community
through the Voice of the Hill
was recognized by CHAMPS [see
Outstanding Capitol Hill Business
Award story in Download, Page
29]. Your efforts are truly outstanding,
and your newspaper and the website
are great assets to life on the Hill. As
both a resident and on behalf of
Barracks Row MainStreet, thank you
and keep up the good work!
J IL L DOWLING
To the Editor:
It is a summer night in late June, warm
but not too hot. A perfect night for an
after dinner walk with my dog Ash—or
so I thought…
I was heading for Lincoln Park when
I became aware of a dog running
towards us followed by a teenage boy
on a scooter yelling at the dog. I had
stopped to cross East Capitol, but
thought the dog might
head for the street
and perhaps I
could help. So I
waited there.
This was not at
all what the dog
had in mind. He
attacked Ash with a strangle hold on
his neck. I was terrified and screaming.
The boy arrived and tried to get the
dog away but he would not let go of
Ash’s neck. I picked up the scooter
and started beating the dog—I fear I
also got the boy, but was intent on trying
to get his dog to let go of Ash. He
finally did let go, but not for several
minutes. Ash was very traumatized and
at first could not walk. He is 11-yearsold,
in good health, but he has bad hips
and his back legs were clearly hurt.
He is still limping, and it remains to
be seen if his back legs will recover.
This is exactly why we have leash
laws and why they should be enforced
in public areas. Why do some selfselected
dog owners feel themselves
above the law—like red light runners?
Not everyone likes dogs. Many people
are very frightened of them and are terrified
when they see dogs off their
leashes. Can we not respect their right
to be on the sidewalk and not feel
threatened?
I would argue that all but professionally
trained dogs could, in unusual
circumstances, turn on people or other
animals.
Why this animal decided to attack
Ash I will never know, but he did, and
should never have been without a
leash. I guess I should feel lucky that
he did not attack me.
As a dog owner and Hill resident for
30-years I wish we could convince
other owners to obey the leash laws,
and get the police to enforce them.
ASHTON DOUGLASS
www.voiceofthehill.com 3
Vo i cem a i l The Voice of the Hill is published and
distributed monthly to Capitol Hill
residence and business locations.
The focus is on the community and
includes contiguous neighborhoods
from Gallaudet University to the
Navy Yard and from the Capitol to
the Stadium Armory Complex.
Publication and distribution is the
third Friday of each month.
Advertising deadline is the first of
the month preceding publication.
Voice of the Hill
120 11th St., SE, Rear
Washington DC 20003
Calendar and Editorial
242 Kentucky Ave., SE 20003
202-544-0703 Main office
202-544-2557 Editorial
202-547-5133 Fax
www.voiceofthehill.com
bruce@voiceofthehill.com
stephanie@voiceofthehill.com
adele@voiceofthehill.com
Staff
Stephanie Cavanaugh,
Editor
Bruce Robey
WebMaster
Adele Robey
Graphic Design and Production
Mark Segraves, Advertising
Claudia Bell, Advertising
Gene Miller, Church Editor
Larry Kaufer, Sports Editor
Patty Curran, Kids’ News Editor
Sarah Godfrey Intern
Publishers
Phoenix Graphics, Inc.
T/A Voice of the Hill
and Stephanie Cavanaugh
Community Action Group:
Distribution
Contributing Writers
Judith Capen
Paul Cymrot
Sarah Godfrey
Tom Hamilton
Memberships
Printing & Graphic Communication
Association
Printing Industry of America
Capitol Hill Association of
Merchants and Professionals
Art Directors Club of Metropolitan
Washington
Barracks Row Business Alliance
Independent Free Papers of America
H Street Merchants Association
VOICE o f
T h e
H i l l
Tom Kelly
Jim Laise
Jim Myers
To the Editor:
Recently, Stanton Park’s highly dedicated
neighborhood association
newsletter distributor, Dee Atwell,
called me to see if I would continue to
deliver the newsletters to the three
block area I had been covering for the
last year and a half—for just a little
longer. A month earlier I had told her
that new owners (who wanted to move
in themselves) were displacing me from
my home—so I was resigning.
Here’s how our conversation went. It
starts with me. . .
Dee, I was talking to David
(another neighborhood activist who
has recently renovated properties on
H Street, NE) yesterday. I told him
that my new landlords renovated the
downstairs apartment, then nearly
doubled the rent on it and they were
kicking me out of the upstairs portion
of the house so they could live
there themselves. Ya’ know what he
said, “Well, that sounds good for
me—rents going up and owners
moving in!”
Please, excuse me if I’m sounding
negative, Dee, but I feel like I’ve
been sitting out here on a limb sawing
it off on myself. Not only have I
been distributing the neighborhood
newsletter door-to-door in rain,
snow, heat and cold for the last 18
months, I’ve suffered through multiple
insect bites to transform the
hardpan clay and broken glass that
was once my yard into a terrific
native plant landscape, I’ve been at
the thick of it in countless neighborhood
meetings on hot issues, spearheaded
the tree subcommittee and
picked up litter. Oh how I’ve picked
up litter! Now I’m tough out of
luck—rents skyrocketing and I have
three months to get out. What was
it all for?
People whose property values I
have helped raise are celebrating
their good fortune without the least
concern for the demise of mine. I
helped everyone—at least if they
owned a home—now no one is helping
me. That’s our housing system.
Sorry Dee, since none of our fine
owners on these blocks will volunteer,
I don’t feel like being their
enabler anymore.
During some of those countless
issue meetings I refer to above I
heard owners get up and talk about
how they did not want to see more
apartments in their neighborhood.
Tenants do not care as much about
the neighborhood as we owners,
they would say. They just treat it as
a place to lay their head. They don’t
get involved.
A note of thanks to the many many Hill residents
that sent submissions for this our third annual poet -
ry and fiction issue. The response was tremendous,
and the selection process was torturous—we only
have so much space. What we looked for, as always,
was a variety of rhythms and tones and an emotional balance. Some
of the pieces made us smile, some made us sigh; each tugs at the heart
in a different way. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
On the cover: Capitol Hill born and bred Abigail Umansky catches up with her journal. Keeping her company is Andy, the Voice-dog.
4 www.voiceofthehill.com
to make a change that seemed so
drastic and, to some, illogical. That
message, pinned on the company
bulletin board, read in part, “I’ve
been covering politicians for four
and a half years, and I decided that I
finally wanted to cover the whole
horse.”
His timing could not have been
better. The year was 1972 and a justly
admired horse named Riva Ridge
would almost, but not quite, win the
Triple Crown. Nack was hanging
around Belmont Park when he ran
into Jimmy Gaffney, a well-regarded
horseman. Gaffney wanted to show
him a horse that
would make the
world forget
there ever
was a
Riva
BY TOM HAMI LTON
During an office
Christmas party in
Suffolk County on Long
Island, Bill Nack, a
political and environmental
writer for Newsday, climbed
on top of a table and recited the
names of all the horses that had won
the Kentucky Derby since the year
1875, almost a century before. His
editor took note of this extraordinary
feat and shortly thereafter took
Nack aside. Might he be interested in
changing his beat, the editor wanted
to know. Would he, in short, be
interested in swapping the politicians
for the horses?
Although Nack had loved horses
all his life—he first memorized the
Kentucky Derby winners at the age
of ten—he had to consider the consequences
of this move. He was one
of a group of hard-driving, young,
idealistic reporters working for the
new, beloved publisher at Newsday,
Bill Moyers. Government and politics
and the requisite scandals were
his beat, and he was good at it. He
had covered the city of Islip and
then Suffolk County. Next would
be New York State government in
Albany, and then would come the
White House.
Could the racetrack be better than
the White House? He consulted with
his wife, Mary, and, with her encour -
agement, decided that maybe it
could.
The switch begged for an explana -
tion. Nack’s editor asked him to
write something that would explain
to his peers just why he had chosen
of Watergate, of Nixon, Haldeman
and Ehrlichman, et al. Secretariat
was a balm for the bruised American
psyche—and a blessing for Nack.
The tough decision to choose horses
over politicians must now have
seemed like providence.
Secretariat won the Triple Crown
in 1973. He won the Derby with a
time as yet unequaled. He broke the
record at the Preakness, too,
although he isn’t given credit; the
electric timer had malfunctioned.
The Belmont Stakes, the third race in
the Triple Crown, is the real test of
champions according to aficionados.
Secretariat won by an astounding 31
lengths.
Even before the Triple Crown,
Nack had made enough notes about
Secretariat to produce a book. A colleague
put him in touch with an
ambitious publisher named Arthur
Fields. Nack told Fields what he had,
the story of a g reat horse that was
about to win the Triple Crown.
“What’s the Triple Crown?” Fields
asked. Nack told him, and then
explained that Secretariat had
recently been sold to a syndicate for
six million dollars, a syndicate
owned by Mellons, Vanderbuilts and
DuPonts. Fields didn’t know thoroughbreds,
but he did know money
and the pedigrees of those who had
it. He was interested. Then, when
Secretariat appeared on the covers of
Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated,
all in the same week, Fields was ver y
interested. “If Secretariat wins the
Triple Crown, whatever that is,”
Fields promised, “I’ll publish
your book.”
Secretariat: the
Making of a
Champion is
still in
print.
Red
Ridge. Sure, thought Nack, they all
say that, but he was a reporter, he
was curious, and he went to see.
What Gaffney showed him was a
big, beautiful, chestnut thoroughbred
named Secretariat.
Secretariat became the nation’s
darling. He was pure and honest, as
gorgeous as a Greek discus thrower,
and thoroughly incorruptible. He
didn’t do drugs, he didn’t beat his
wife, he didn’t even have
a lawyer. Why was
this important?
Because it
was the
time
On th e
Inside Tr a ckw i th
C a p i tol Hill Wri t e r
Bill Nack
www.voiceofthehill.com 5
Smith, arguably our greatest sportswriter
—and who was Nack’s model
and became his friend—called it a
“book that is the next best thing to
watching Secretariat run.” Nack does
a wonderful, gravelly imitation of
Smith that is both amusing and
endearing.
Nack’s flair for writing was apparent
early on. A journalism major at
the University of Illinois, he started
out as sports editor for the college
paper, The Daily Illini. When the editor
—future film critic Roger Ebert—
left, Nack took his place. “I worked
sixty hours a week and almost
flunked out,” he says now. Then, one
credit short of his master’s, he decided
to meet his military obligation as
an R.O.T.C. commissioned officer.
An early and obvious assignment
was as the assistant editor for
Infantry Times at Ft. Benning,
Georgia. But then he found himself
in Vietnam, assigned to headquarters
in Saigon where he rubbed decorated
shoulders with the likes of
Creighton Abrams and William
Westmoreland. This assignment did
not shelter him, however, from the
horrors of combat, the chaos of the
Tet offensive, or the loss of friends.
While still at Newsday, he began to
tire of the daily turf beat. Nack’s editor
suggested that he follow in Red
Smith’s footsteps and write a sports
column four times a
week. Developing a deeper understanding
of a much broader range of
sports, as well as a columnist’s point
of view, wasn’t easy. But in a year
and a half he was “humming,” loving
it and feeling he could do it forever.
Then Sports Illustrated gave him a
freelance assignment to write about
a horse named Forego, which won
him a coveted Eclipse award for
excellence in magazine writing from
the Thoroughbred Racing
Association. Nack went on to win
five more Eclipse awards, and six
statues of horses are scattered about
his living room in silent testimony.
After the Forego article, Sports
Illustrated asked him to join the staff,
and Nack—who’s an emotional kind
of guy—tearfully bade farewell to
Newsday.
In-depth profiles, especially historical
profiles, became his specialty
at Sports Illustrated. Nack says of Red
Smith that he wrote more about people
than about sports. Clearly, Nack
does too. There is, as one example, a
fascinating piece about Martin
Berger, the best catcher in professional
baseball, circa 1900, who axed
his wife and children to death. This
was not before Berger alienated most
of his teammates, who were finding
him, well, a bit unpleasant.
Nack’s final profile for Sports
Illustrated, at least as a member of the
staff—he retired several days ago—is
about the only member of the
American professional sports community
to die in Vietnam, Bob
Kalso. Tacked to his wall is a pho tograph
of the football player, once
All-American at the University of
Oklahoma and a rising star with the
Buffalo Bills. He always has a picture
of the person he is profiling, to stare
at and reflect on. Beneath the picture
is a rubbing of Kalso’s name
taken from the Vietnam Memorial,
and another of Kalso’s war buddy,
Robert Johnson.
Kalso, Nack says, was “handsome
as sin” and “a gem of a human
being.” He had a wife who loved him
as much as he loved her, and he had
the promise of a great career. He also
had an R.O.T.C. commission and a
commitment, which he believed he
had to keep. Nack tells of Roger
Staubach, the great Dallas quarterback,
who explained why he also
served. “I decided I wanted to go. I
should go, because if I ran away from
this I might run away from things all
my life.” Nack continues with his
own thoughts: “When you do something
like that, when you run away,
that’s what you do, that’s who you
are, that’s your character.”
Character, for Nack, is important
Retirement doesn’t mean that
Nack plans to stop writing. He’ll
probably write a book, possibly
about Kalso. Retirement also doesn’t
mean he’ll leave the Hill. He likes it
here. He came here in 1987. He hadn’t
lived in a city since he lef t
Chicago at the age of ten. He wanted
the urban experience, and his friend
Andrew Beyer, turf reporter for the
Washington Post, told him the Hill, a
great place to live, and urged him to
move here. So he did, and he doesn’t
regret it. He likes the convenience of
walking to one of a dozen, favored
restaurants, or to the Mall, the
National Gallery and the
Smithsonian museums. He especially
likes the proximity to the Library
of Congress where he does much of
his research. But maybe most of all
he likes the people and their diversi -
ty of background, age and race. “I’m
a ‘hello’ kinda guy,” he says, “and
when I greet someone on the street
it’s rare that I don’t get a greeting
back.”
If you run into Bill Nack, ask him
to tell you about Alydar, the great
horse that was murdered for insurance
money, or about Bill Clinton at
Belmont Park, or the history of
Yankee Stadium, or the War in
Vietnam, or the great characters he
has met throughout his rich career.
You’ll be glad you did, for Bill Nack
not only writes a great story, he spins
a great yarn. Just don’t forget to say
“hello.”
Tom Hamilton is putting the finishing
touches on the great American novel.
The Drain Game
BY KEITH G. TIDBALL
I was always rooting for the underdog, though my winners never won. It
was those last struggling seconds that seemed always to captivate me
most, when it had to be then, or never. That razor’s edge, where one really
knew about life and death, to make it or not to make it, to be victorious or
vanquished. I pondered these thoughts often, or thoughts like these,
though probably more vague and juvenile, while shivering in an empty
enameled tub, glistening wet, at the glorious and tragic end of the game,
of the ritual, staring at the shinny-rimmed hole, squatting and peering
down, listening to those last gurgles that signified my “horse’s” loss once
again.
We were young, before we learned how not to be naked. My sister and I
took baths together in an old ball-foot tub. It was a smooth, glistening
white tub, with faint hairline cracks in the enamel that looked like little
spider webs. There was worn-out enamel around the drain that seemed
sort of like a hole in the sole of a worn out shoe The water was always just
a touch too hot, and entry was its own adventure. It was my time to prove
my bravery to my little sister, and to my mother, who never seemed as
impressed.
Mother would always take my sister out of the bath first, to work on her
tangles. I stayed in longer because I was dirtier, because I was older,
because I was a boy. After awhile my mother would say “pull the plug”
and I would, with relish. For now, the game, the ritual, the race began
again.
Carefully, I placed some piece of flotsam behind me, at the far end of
the tub from the faucets, from the drain, and observed, noting its characteristics.
These were my horses, my winners: a hair, a floating chunk of
soap, perhaps some lint. Then I pulled the plug, fired the starting gun,
flung open the gates.
First there was the sound, the rush of water filling the empty pipes and
then a subtle disturbance on the surface followed by the slow movement
of water. I tracked the flotsam horse with g rowing anticipation, monitoring
the water’s growing momentum, watching the awkward dance of the
little whirlwind over the drain.
As the water level lowered, I shifted to a kneeling position, watching my
long-shot go around me or through my legs, at which point I would squat,
positioned to watch my horse win, my horse overcome the odds, overcome
the current, the gravity, and demonstrate to me, to the world, at
long last, victory. Victory over inevitability, over all that which is predetermined
or fore-ordained, of all that is ruled by rules and probability.
Often at this point I would vaguely become aware of my mother’s voice
somewhere in the distance asking me to hurry. But I squeezed it out. The
race was on, the ritual begun.
I knew almost “by-heart” the path my horse would take. Straight down
the middle until, picking up steam, he would swing to the left, suddenly
caught in the pull, but fighting outward. He would struggle, and I would
agonize for him, trying to will him free, to desire for him victory so
intensely that he broke the spell. The more the concentric rings tightened,
the more the orbit closed around the drain, the more focused I
became, and the more anxious. Though the whole race was actually over
in seconds, the space in my mind’s time reckoning was vacuous and seemingly
eternal, a lifetime of almost suspended, breath holding, vicarious
clinging to the precipice. And then it would end, my horse having disappeared,
down the drain.
There was always a delayed reaction within me; I would s tare for a
moment in disbelief, incredulously, and then suddenly and expectantly,
but with a familiar dread, spring towards
the drain to peer down the dark hole, hop -
ing against hope. But there was nothing,
just the familiar gurgling sound, and the
slow dawning of disappointment and frustration,
as I simultaneously became aware
of my foolish position, cold, wet, naked,
squatting in the empty tub, and mother
calling.
Keith Tidball, who wrote “Talking Trash” for
our May issue, is an anthropologist working in
the field of International Development. He
and his family have lived on the Hill for three
years.
6 www.voiceofthehill.com
nor lecherous, the book was a long
time gestating. Diana was
approached back in 1995 by a publisher
who wanted her to do a book
on DeAcosta, a mighty power in lesbian
circles in the fir st half of the
20th Century, and she got a hefty
advance. Her editor suggested she
broaden the focus to emphasize
Mercedes’ more famous playmates
and she did, spending a couple of
years researching and writing.
Then the editor was replaced and
the new editor hated the whole idea.
After a considerable delay, Diana
found a new publisher, St. Martin’s,
which gave her “a very modest
advance, indeed.” She went back to
writing and rewriting.
She says the experience, which
included digging through government
reports and papers, left her,
“with some odd skills, I don ’t really
want: how to spot lies, discern what
they hide and recognize motives.”
When she noticed that Dietrich
and Garbo both insisted, vigorously
and repeatedly, that they were only
casual acquaintances, such vehemence
struck Diana as excessive. She
discovered they had been in a
German-made movie, ‘Joyless Street,’
together, in 1925, when Dietrich was
already a star and Garbo a beginner.
BY TOM KELLY
When Air Commodore Dicken of
the Royal Air Force, would toast the
Queen at dinnertime, his daughter
Diana would not join in. She was
always willing to give most people—
Brits and non-Brits—the benefit of
the doubt, but she drew the line at
the Royal Family.
It was the fifties and the young
were moving toward rebellion all
over the western world and so in her
own gentle way was Diana. “I was
going to art school in Portsmouth
and wearing white lipstick and sit -
ting around drinking coffee and
being as bad as I knew how to be.”
Diana was not the type to throw
things or paint slogans on public
buildings. She was against the Royals
and higher education (though her
husband is a PhD) but she was too
much in sympathy with practically
everybody else to be a real trouble -
maker. She still looks alarmed at the
suggestion that she might have ever
actually done something really
unseemly. When she was rude to the
Queen it was perfectly clear that the
Queen would never know.
The Commodore, an affectionate
father “and very clever,” assumed
that she was going through a phase
and they remained close friends
until his death.
Diana and her husband, Richard
McLellan, have lived in the 500
block of Constitution Avenue NE for
over thirty years, during which time
she has worked for The Evening Star,
The Washington Post, The Washington
Times and the Washingtonian as a
gossip writer. She is probably the
least judgmental one in the history
of that odd trade.
She is what she calls “bloody
minded,” which means that she is
against authority and on the side of
a wide range of underdogs—and
willing to listen to their side of the
story with an open mind and sympathetic
heart.
If she were to run into Roger
Clinton she might give him an
encouraging smile and ask him how
he was getting along with Bill.
And if, while still a slip of a girl,
she had run into Greta Garbo, she
might have asked the star if she was
having any fun, and with whom was
she having it, and maybe Garbo
would have told all about Marlene
Dietrich and she could have written
her very-well selling, The Girls:
Sappho Goes To Hollywood, forty years
sooner.
Diana’s new book is a thoroughly
researched report on girl-meets-girl
romances that involved Greta,
Marlene, Tallulah Bankhead, Alla
Nazimova, Mercedes DeAcosta and
other names, more or less familiar,
some more surprising than others.
Lively and gossipy but not leering
A Little
G i rl Ta l k
w i th Diana
M c L e l l a n
www.voiceofthehill.com 7
She also discovered that Dietrich had
been married to a Communist
named Otto Katz back then. As a
result, the focus of the book shifted
from Mercedes to Marlene.
Dietrich, she discovered, seemed
to have the broadest possible concept
of love, patriotism and loyalty.
She was romantically involved
with, among others: Bankhead, Kay
Frances, Edith Piaf, whiskey millionairess
Joe Carstairs and, she suspects,
Garbo herself. There were a good
many men as well as women, most
of them famous: Erich Maria
Remarque, Jimmy Stewart, Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr., William F. Paley,
Maurice Chevalier. “Her nights,’
writes Diana, “were like a French
bedroom farce, her suitors tumbling
over one another as she juggled their
schedules.”
Still magnificent at 46, and s tarring
as Erika, an ex-Nazi chanteuse
in A Foreign Affair, “She reportedly
had love affairs with everyone on
the set, from stand-ins and secretaries
to stuntmen.”
Conspicuously patriotic during
World War II, flying off for weeks on
end to entertain American troops
stationed in far-off lands, she was at
the same time undisturbed by her
hidden husband’s prolonged and
astonishingly successful effort at
Hollywood fund raising for the
Russians and Communist Party. Otto
was an active agent of the USSR for
over thirty years and she remained
his loyal but discreet protector until
his death in 1952.
Diana rewrote The Girls four
times—cutting 100 pages
“which improved it a lot”—
and it was published last
October to considerable
acclaim.
Harvard’s Gay and Lesbian
Review gave its significant
stamp of approval: “an
exciting excursion into a
world that was as glamorous
as it was repressive...
McLellan’s research was
clearly a labor of love.
Resisting romanticization
on one hand and sensationalism
on the other, she captures
the style, courage and
outrageousness of a lesbian
world, now vanished…”
The New York Times found
it “breezy” and “mercifully
free of theorizing,” the
London Daily Mail, “the
fullest guide anyone could
possibly want to the hectic…
female partnerships
and sunderings in Hollywood,” The
New York Post, “a helluva book” the
Baltimore Sun told its readers they
may expect “to revel in naughtiness”
and the Washington Post said it offers
“swirling narrative and Byzantine
romantic configurations.”
Some reviewers focused on the
THE BEST
“EXTRA
BEDROOMS”
ON CAPITOL
HILL
Corner of
5th & A Streets, NE
202-547-1050
reserve@
BullMoose-B-and-B.com
www.BullMoose-B-and-B.com
417 East Capitol St., SE
202-543-4342
Paul Cymrot Steve Cymrot
riverby@erols.com
A n s wers to Frequently asked questions at the bookstore .
1) Yes, we buy books all the time.
2) Downstairs through the door to the right of the paperbacks.
3) Every day from 10 til 6 for sure, but we’re usually here later
in the evenings.
4) No,we don’t. If you want coffee, go to Jimmy T’s.
5) Yes, we buy books. Not magazines, not prints. Just, books.
6) Fine thank you. How are you?
7) Yes, all of them. Some of them several times.
8) Since Mid-March.
9) Marked in pencil on the top corner of the first blank page.
10) Actually, we are. Someone with some experience, who can fill
in a few days a week, maybe more if we ever go on vacation.
If we don’t have the book you’re looking for, we’ll almost
certainly have some other book.
Celebrating 4 months of service to Capitol Hi l l
O ver 3,064 books sold.
Open every day from 10-6, often earlier and later.
book’s political aspects, and The Girls
has been favorably reviewed as solid
reporting on the pr evalence and
influence of Communists and
Communist agents in Hollywood
during and after World War II.
It is in its third printing in the
United States and doing awfully well
in England. It is also showing signs
of becoming a cult classic, one that
will be bought by succeeding generations
of cult members, which is pretty
close to being the best kind of
classic an author can write.
(So far Dietrich’s daughter and
son-in-law have resisted its publication
in Germany, not primarily
because of the sexual revelations but
because of the revelations about her
hidden marriage to Otto.)
And where does Diana—mother of
Fiona, Mrs. Joe Weeks, an interior
designer, and the grandmother of
Tara, Sam and Griff, as well as wife of
Richard—go from here? “The Brits
are doing a documentary on ‘The
Girls’ and I’ll be working on that,
which sounds great. After that I may
do another book, maybe ‘The Boys’.”
Tom Kelly last wrote a short history of
food—Capitol Hill style—for the Voice
of the Hill.
8 www.voiceofthehill.com
There was a slight hitch. The cost for
each young member was about
$2,700.
That column brought an outpouring
of contributions and, even more
valuable, paid performance bookings.
Have they raised what was
needed? “They should be gone by
now,” he says with fair satisfaction.
“They made a nice little chunk .”
Milloy has been banging out his
column since 1975, when the Post
hired him to “find a way to write
about parts of the city that just hadn’t
been written about before… So
many stories hadn’t been told, and
there was a niche. So that became
what I did.”
He’s made it an art form. When
Washingtonian Magazine named him
a “Washingtonian of the Year” in
1988, they said: “Milloy takes readers
to places most Washingtonians
never go … and finds pockets of
hope on the trash-strewn landscape,
people doing good against the odds.
Courtland Milloy keeps our eyes on
the prize–a better city for all its people.”
The Louisiana native got started in
the newspaper big leagues at the
Miami Herald, covering crime in
South Florida. The time was Nixon’s
end, and much more alluring was
the glamorously cloak and dagger
BY STEPHANIE CAVANAUGH
A recent column on women dressing
provocatively brought a heap of
mail. “It was about sex,” Courtland
Milloy grins, “and sex gets to everybody.
I don’t think I’m going to do
that anymore. I’ll leave skirts alone
for a while.”
Such an outpouring is the excep -
tion, says the Hill resident and
Washington Post columnist. While
millions of copies of his column
wing their way around the country,
the feedback is surprisingly paltry.
“In the universe of possible respons -
es, what you get back is not representative
at all...I have no idea who
reads it and when.”
He mentions, a bit wistfully, letters
he received from political cartoonist
Pat Oliphant and NBC News
Bureau Chief, Tim Russert. There was
also, he recalls, an admiring note
from a woman in “the boonies of
North Carolina.”
But his words are read, oh yes, and
their impact reverberates through
the Washington community. A late
January column told of the DC Boys
Choir, a group of 9 to 13-year-olds
from some of the city ’s most troubled
neighborhoods that had been
invited to perform in the Canterbur y
International Children’s Choir
Festival in England this summer.
the decorator. “She says I have no
taste,” he shrugs.
Courtland’s voice has the musical
softness of his Louisiana roots; his
words have slight country break that
leaves you wondering if they’ll end
in a laugh or a wail.
His dad taught journalism at the
local high school, which is how the
younger Milloy got hooked on writing.
He began polishing his style
scribbling editorials for the school
newspaper…and selling advertising:
“No conflict there—just write good
about people that place the ads.”
The experience made him decide,
“This might not be a bad way to
make a living.”
Milloy’s mother was a teacher at
the school, too—of typing and
shorthand. Neighborhood kids, he
tells me, used to ink L.O.V.E. across
the knuckles of one hand, and
H.A.T.E. across the knuckles of the
other. His were a cheat sheet for the
middle row of the typewriter keyboard:
A. S. D. F. on one hand, and
J. K. L. ; on the other. “What a nerd,”
he chuckles.
After high school he entered
Louisiana State University but quickly
transferred to Southern Illinois
University where he could work on
the newspaper—and get paid—in his
freshman year. Then came the Miami
reporting being done by the Post’s
Woodward and Bernstein, so nor th
he moved.
Though he has been interviewed
before, it’s obviously an unusual spot
for him to be in—he attempted to
interview me before I could interview
him. “It’s weird you having the
notebook and the tape recorder and
you have to worry about the tape
running out,” he said. Then he settled
back, grinned charmingly, and
added, “That’s good.”
Courtland lives in an immaculate
Victorian on C Street, NE, with a
glossy black iron staircase and a
stained glass transom above the
front door. It’s a beautiful house—
built in the 1890’s, he tells me.
Oriental carpets cover the buffed
floors and bright sun filters through
a tame jungle of plants in the front
bay, dancing off the down-poofed
white couch. There are five fireplaces,
including one in the base -
ment. All work, except the one in
the book-lined dining room. That
one hasn’t been uncovered, yet. It’s
all a work in progress.
It wasn’t a shell when they bought
it, he says, “but to hear the lady of
the house tell it…it might as well
have been.”
Milloy’s wife, real estate agent and
antiques collector Bridget Cline, is
TALKING
SMOKED TURKEY A N D
P R O V O L O N E W I T H
C O U RTLAND
M I L L O Y
www.voiceofthehill.com 9
Herald, and a couple of years later
the Washington Post.
Milloy’s columns are a panorama
of Washington city life, with an
African American focus. But, he
remarks contentedly, “the Post
Ombudsman [Michael Getler] wrote
a column about my column—and I
liked the way he put it: Even if the
subject happens to be about African
Americans, it could be anybody. It’s
about the human story.”
“Racism is real,” says the columnist.
“Race is not. It’s all a biological
fiction…People are more alike than
different no matter where they’re
from.”
Milloy’s column has been missing
from the Post for several weeks. He
takes time off every year, “to
reflect—I’m grateful that the Post lets
me do this. You look at the same
thing over and over again and you
start missing things.” So he stops
and listens. Gets a sense of the direction
of the wind, or the encroachment
of global warming, before
spinning into another year of
columns, exploring, asking questions
that sometimes have no
answers, or at least easy answers.
In the thick of the recent controversy
about kids from Evans Middle
School visiting the DC Jail he used
the column to thunder his disap -
proval: “Take some kids from a lowincome,
high-crime area of the
District who start ‘acting out’ in
school. Maybe they’re disturbed by
something they’ve heard or seen. A
homicide, perhaps. One way to help
such children would be to embrace
them, listen to them and try to
understand.”
Instead, he railed, these “troubled
kids are taken to the D.C. Jail, where
they are strip-searched, subjected to
humiliating body cavity checks,
placed in view of a masturbating
inmate and cursed at by guards—all
in the name of being ‘scared
straight.’ What’s next? Gang rape?”
Milloy has an 11-year-old son of
his own, so his radar is acute. Josiah
is growing quickly and energetically,
as boys do—and his father has
learned first-hand the way the public
school system deals with spunk
and spirit, at least when it comes to
black boys. Josiah went to kindergarten
at Peabody and attended
Watkins elementary for a while, but
is now out at Burgundy Farms, a pr ivate
School in Alexandria.
“I hate to say that the public
schools are bad—both of my parents
were public school teachers—[and I
have] a great affinity for public
schools. But for my boy,” he stresses,
“and the way I was raising him…he
needed extra support and an atmosphere
where boys are allowed to be
boys.”
Though he stresses that moving
Josiah to private school was to suit
the needs of his own child, it sounds
an atmosphere he’d like to see for
every father’s son.
These young children are being
“demonized,” his article about the
jail tour continued. “Imagine a
group of white students being subjected
to body searches because they
were caught fighting, cutting class or
using foul language. Do you think
those responsible would still have
jobs?”
Milloy’s column brought a frustrated
response from Hine Jr. High
School teacher Lois Wiley: “Have
you ever taught middle school children
with severe problems? Did they
disturb your lessons, refuse to follow
any directions, steal, cheat, lie and
cause you pain, tears and sleepless
nights?…You have to do something,”
she wrote.
To which he replied, in consider -
ably more words than this, that jail
visits might not be the best way to
turn such a dismal situation around.
Then came a third column, and
in his patented style of cutting the
mustard with a big dollop of honey,
came a warm hug for the students at
Evans, and their teachers.
Milloy covered an art show produced
by graduating 8th graders
with entertainment provided by the
school’s string ensemble and “a
dozen crisply dressed students who
performed a variety of gospel songs,
including a moving rendition of
“Jesus Is the Center of My Joy.”
Some of the paintings that hung
from the walls were so outstanding,
he reported, “that they had been on
display at the Smithsonian’s
Museum of American History.”
That column ended with a quote
from Alice Hutchinson, president of
the Episcopal Church Women of
Atonement, which sponsored the
show, “They remind us of the saying
by Marva Collins, the famous educator
from Chicago, that there is a brilliant
student inside every child.”
In most of his columns Milloy
finds a neat balance between blame
and praise: “I think it ’s really important
—the carrot and the stick. One
or the other would not work; you
need both to prod people…. When
you write something good it fires
them up…it allows them to put the
word ‘constructive’ in front of the
critique.”
So when he writes, as he did this
spring, a horrific story of a young
man, Dino, who’s more interested in
getting ahead than looking sharp,
and was attacked for the shabbiness
of his clothes, the focus slides from
harsh to inspirational. “Black
America has to be the only place in
the world where that kind of think -
ing can almost get you killed,” he
said. “How did we allow our children
to become brainwashed into believing
that overpriced baggy pants and
sneakers are cool, while being smar t
is not?” Then there are the words of
Dino, who explained to the police
why he thought the boys had
attacked him: “I don’t need Tommy
Hilfiger or Eddie Bauer or any of
those clothes for me to know who I
am. I know who I am. They don’t
know who they are.”
Are there solutions? Milloy praises
a group that Del. Eleanor Holmes
Norton has gotten behind, the
Commission on Black Men and Boys
in the District of Columbia. Funded
by a $100,000 grant from the
Department of Labor, the commission
will spend a year studying federal,
private and community assistance
programs, determining which
programs work best and where in the
city they are needed most.
He’s also believes that mixedincome
housing, like the Hill’s Ellen
Wilson project on 7th Street near the
Freeway, the planned development
at Kentucky Courts, and the small
town-sized project being considered
for our waterfront, can bring about
positive changes.
Milloy, who has observed several
successful projects in Montgomery
County, says, “When the bulk [of
the residents are] middle income,
and a minority upper income and a
minority low income, the lower
income people will mimic the
behavior of the upper income people
in no time…In my view the big problem
with concentrated poverty is
that there’s nobody to mimic.”
When people of many backgrounds
and income levels live
together, he adds, “Low income people,
especially the mothers, say ‘ah,
my kid can do that’…they want their
kids to be different. It reinforces the
behavior, to be better. They become
model kids—and excel—because
poverty is not equated with intelli -
gence.
This fascination with people’s differences
and similarities was one of
the things that attracted him to the
Hill: “I noticed in my coverage of the
city that this was one of the most
diverse communities—this is a
microcosm. Everything the city has
to offer can be found right here: different
people, different cultures, different
styles of architecture.”
Saturdays at Eastern Market are so
interesting, he tells me, “It’s so
friendly, it reminds me of
Louisiana…a little country atmosphere…
I go into Prego and [Mrs.
Choi] calls, ‘Ah! Hey! You want that
smoked turkey and provolone?’ Yes,
My name is smoked turkey and provolone,”
he laughs his musical
laugh.
Stephanie Cavanaugh is editor in chief
of the Voice of the Hill.
“Saturdays at Eastern
Market are so
interesting…It’s so
friendly, it reminds me of
Louisiana…a little country
atmosphere…I go into
Prego and [Mrs. Choi]
calls, ‘Ah! Hey! You want
that smoked turkey and
provolone?’ Yes, my name
is smoked turkey and
provolone…”
10 www.voiceofthehill.com
hands of Hill graphic designer Adele
Robey who promised to leave “innocent”
spelling and illustrations
intact and preserve the lovely text. It
is now on sale locally at The Writers’
Center in Bethesda.
On a recent visit to Knoxville to
see her old grade school chum,
Shirley was accosted by a dozen or so
Knoxville “Ya-Yas” yearning for signatures
or less. “So yewah the one
who helped Beutsy make that book,”
she recalls them saying.
“Never again have I seen that
degree of enthusiasm for a projected
work of art,” she sighs.
When Shirley Graves was
but a young girl in
Chapel Hill she would
look over at school
chum Betsy Ann
Bowman’s desk. On
some days, Bowman
might be writing notes to Shirley
about the boys in the front row, or
perhaps making school notepaper
dolls. But one afternoon when
Shirley slid her languid eyes over to
Bowman’s desk, she saw circles: A set
of quarter-wide rounds represented a
mother and father; a bevy of girls
were represented by nickels; the boys
were represented by pennies. Finally,
there were babies. Betsy used dimes
for them.
In all there were 14 coined heads,
“a family,” Bowman whispered to
her friend. Before the day was over
each member of the family had a
body, and the girls pursued writing
about them in The Jones Family.
Shirley and Betsy put their
descriptions of the family and its
Depression Era small town experiences
into manuscript form: “76
pages long, laboriously printed; 31
chapters, irregularly numbered; and
40 crayoned illustrations.” It was
then packed it away with the mothballs
and dust bunnies—where it
rested until 1992.
With six children between them
and some eight grandchildren,
Graves, now known better as Shirley
Cochrane, and Bowman, whose last
name became Townsend, decided to
“republish” their book.
They put it in the inestimable
Cochrane began a lifetime of letters.
Having graduated from the prestigious
Agnes Scott College in
Decatur, Ga., Cochrane returned
home to Chapel Hill, where she
worked in little theatre and edited
for the University of North Carolina
Press.
It was during that time that she
met Bill who was doing World War II
time for Uncle Sam and training at
UNC. He later enticed her with stories
of fighting on the Mediterranean
front, after which the two
married in 1945. In ’54, the
Cochranes moved to Capitol Hill
where Bill worked for North
Carolina Democrat L. Kerr Scott.
Shirley and Bill bought what
passes for a mansion in these parts,
at 3rd and A Street, NE, and she
remembers being one of the few
young couples in the neighborhood.
Now, she recollects fondly, the tables
have turned, and they remain one of
the elder couples here. Bill even had
a sandwich named for him at the old
Tunnicliff’s near Eastern Market.
Shirley’s early writing career
soared. She wrote for the women’s
magazines until they began publishing
what Shirley would classify as
smut. “Sex and cosmetics—and I
don’t write about sex and cosme tics,”
she giggles from her Seventh
Street writing nook.
It was at Hopkins in 1969-70
where her plans changed. JHU’s
Writing Seminars are among the
most revered in the world. A recent
survey put the Seminars in the
Number two spot behind the
University of Iowa as the country’s
foremost creative writing program.
It was there that she met a poet
named Elliott Coleman who encouraged
her to write something besides
prose. “I was seduced by poetry,” she
says, “because it directly expresses
emotion.”
Along with the esteemed poet and
editor Jean Nordhaus, Cochrane and
a friend by the name of Sharon
Ambrose started what came to be
known simply as The Capitol Hill
Writing Group in 1975. From the
Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church,
the group began meeting in members’
living rooms to read and dis -
cuss their own work.
“Our ethos and way of working
has remained constant: absolute
honesty coupled with respect both
for the person and the poem,” the
Capitol Hill group wrote on the
Preface page of its The Other Side of
the Hill 1975-95 [Forest Woods], a
compilation of their evolving collection
of poetry.
Others members have come and
gone, including Ambrose, but the
core remains at seven, including
Nordhaus, Mary Ann Larken, Russell
Spicer, Hastings Wyman, Jr., Patric
Pepper and Robert Sargent. All have
Shirley has done a great deal of
writing since grade school. With her
husband Bill, a former Senior
Advisor to the Senate Rules
Committee, she has also reared two
sons, taught many classes and completed
a graduate writing program at
Johns Hopkins. But that single
youthful Chapel Hill moment—or
moments—boosted a career that is
still alive and well, and has paid dividends
to other would-be authors
exponentially.
“We set up a rigid schedule,” she
wrote in The Jones Family preface.
“No more dropping by to study the
Coming Attractions at the Carolina
Theater, no stopping by my house to
check out our Shirley Temple collection.
Instead we went straight to her
house, where with a dozen shar pened
pencils and a pack of lined
notebook paper, we would settle ourselves
on the floor of her father’s
study to write.”
The Chapel Hill of the 1930s was a
“yeasty place” for writers, Shirley
says. Not only was Cochrane starting
a literary career, but authors like
Thomas Wolfe and Betty Smith (A
Tree Grows in Brooklyn) were her
neighbors. Buoyed by Miss Elizabeth
Seawell, her sixth g rade teacher,
STRICTLY Shirley
BY J IM LAISE
A N S W E R
Forgiveness—that deep forgetting—
if you need it, I can g rant it
for I drink glasses of Le the water
and dine richly on lotus fruit.
Forget, now—you too. Whatever
happened was in another time
and in a remote country
named home.
— Shirley Cochrane
www.voiceofthehill.com 11
published, and many have taught
and/or are teaching writing.
“Now it has been 20 years,” the
writers prefaced their 1996-second
anthology. “The passing time has
brought us weddings, birthdays—
and many books of poems by members.
We are older, perhaps wiser. We
meet earlier and drink less wine, but
we still laugh and gossip and eat
until the cry ‘Le t’s do poetry’ puts us
to work,”
Into her early ‘80s, Shirley barely
has slowed down. The only thing
missing is her car, which she
chucked several years ago. She can
be seen pulling her tiny g rocery caddie
around the Hill, reading at the
Arts Workshop, meeting with a Bible
study group off Pennsylvania
Avenue, attending friends’ grandchildren’s
birthday parties and of
course teaching.
Since beginning to write,
Cochrane has chosen to pay back
instructors like Seawell and
Coleman. She currently teaches a
memoir-poetry class at The Writers’
Center called “Finish It,” and has
produced some 10 writers who have
been published. She speaks about
them almost with the wistfulness
reserved for her work itself.
But one thing she has failed to forget
is the epiphanies of childhood.
She recently wrote a piece for her
Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church
newsletter about children coming to
the front of the sanctuary with
Pastor Kim Rodrigue for their Sunday
“time,” and, of course, there’s The
Jones family.
Cochrane is most excited these
days because of the coming nuptials
of her friend Betsy Bowman
Townsend, who now has four children
and eight grandchildren. They
talk on the phone as if they were still
just girls in Chapel Hill.
The two remain fast friends, based
on a love of words. Shirley has chosen
to write them, while Townsend
prefers to read them. A per fect symbiotic
relationship.
When a question stumped her,
Shirley said to me: “I’ll call Betsy, I’ve
wanted to talk to her about this article
anyway.” In many ways, they
remain the progenitors of The Jones
Family, even today.
Hill resident Jim Laise is a creative writ -
ing instructor at the universities of
Maryland and Johns Hopkins. His work
and the work of his students, have won
numerous awards.
private parties • celebrations • special events
2 Quail 2 Quail
Founded 1889
THE NATIONAL CAPITAL BANK
O F W A S H I N G T O N
316 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20003 • 202-546-8000
5228 44th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20015 • 202-966-2688
www.NationalCapitalBank.com • TDD 202-546-0772
When it comes to
investing
for your future,
consider a bank
with history.
Financial Network and The National Capital Bank are not affiliated. Please be aware that securities are offered by Financial Network Investment
Corporation, member NASD and SIPC. Investments available through Financial Network are not deposits, are not insured by the FDIC or any other
regulatory agency and are not obligations of or guaranteed by the National Capital Bank. Returns on such investments will fluctuate and investments
are subject to risks, including loss of principal.
The National Capital Bank has been a
landmark on Capitol Hill for over
100 years. We weathered the 1929
market crash and the Great Depre s s i o n ,
and more recessions than most people
would care to re m e m b e r. Today, we
remain one of the most financially-sound
banks in America.
So if you are currently investing, you
should talk with us. We offer everything
f rom IRAs to brokerage services. If you
re q u i re sophisticated investment and tax
planning, we’ll provide an orderly, sound
a p p roach to sustaining and growing your
personal financial assets. Additionally,
we’ll manage your portfolio with attention
and care. Come in and discover
one of the best banks in America —
which is happily located right in your
n e i g h b o rh o o d .
12 www.voiceofthehill.com
cookbooks as fundraisers and to
record events. And, as anyone who
has gotten lost in old recipes can
attest, these manuals provide an irreplaceable
taste of a time and a place.
Ellen Cardwell, a professional
caterer who contributed more than
25 recipes to the St. Mark’s cookbook,
says that it’s organized according
to the seasons of the church year
—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany,
Lent, Easter, The Great 50 Days and
Pentecost. The recipes can be used,
she explains, “in concert with the
availability of local produce and special
festivals.”
The recipes contained wander the
world, ranging from Indiana Chili to
Indonesian Pork Satay and Caviar
Pie to English specialties such as
Plum Bread, Brother Cadfael Herb
Tarts and Scotch Patè. The collection
is reflective of the marvelously varied
backgrounds of the contributors.
Many of the recipes are accompanied
by personal anecdotes, noting
the family history of the dish, and
when it might be served.
While it’s not exactly a snap, producing
a cookbook is easier than you
might expect. “The most time consuming
portion was transcribing
recipe entries onto the forms
required by the publisher,” says
Sarah Headley, who served on the
cookbook organizing committee.
Shakily handwritten, neatly typed,
fuzzily Xeroxed, and casually emailed
recipes were painstakingly
rekeyed onto the forms provided by
Cookbook Publishers, Inc. in
Lenexa, Kansas.
Cookbook Publishers, Inc., which
was established in 1947, is one of a
number of outfits that specialize in
helping community organizations
put together cookbooks as fundraisers.
They provide everything from
design options and organizational
tips to marketing ideas and mailing
labels. The firm offers a free kit to
get you started that can be ordered
from their website: www.cookbookpublishers.
com.
St. Mark’s customized their book
with illustrations by artist and
church member, Traci Councill, who
provided artwork for both the
dividers and the cookbook cover—a
finely detailed drawing of the cathedral
in Lichfield. Each divider has
Councill’s artwork on one side and
general cooking basics and tips on
the opposite side.
Not long ago, such embellishments
would have been out of reach
for most congregations—costing
more than what they might hope to
make from the sale of the books.
Today, color pages and fancy fonts
are fairly standard enhancements.
Cookbooks can even be converted to
CD Rom, for that hi-tech kitchen
with the computer on the counter.
Churchrecipes.com is one company
Scripture cake is one of over 200
heavenly recipes included in the St.
Mark’s Church-Lichfield Cathedral
Cookbook. It’s the cheapest to make
(provided you own a bible), and filling
in its way. But no matter how
much you like soul food, it probably
won’t be much of a hit at your next
dinner party. Fortunately, this artful
little tome includes plenty that will
appease the growling belly, much of
it sinfully good.
The St. Mark’s Cookbook was published
in 1995 to commemorate a
choir tour to the church’s sister congregation,
Lichfield Cathedral, in
England. Between its covers are
recipes from members of both
churches; favorites of Capitol Hill
parishioners like Flour-less
Chocolate Cake and Ham Jambalaya
stirred up with English specialties
like Good Friday Pudding and
Simnel Cake.
St. Mark’s is one of several churches
on the Hill that have produced
A r e c i p e fo r
F u n d ra i s i n g
BY SARAH GODFREY
s c r i p t u r e c a k e
1. 8oz. Last clause Judges V: 2 5
2. 8oz. Jeremiah VI:20
3. 1 Tbsp. I Samuel XIV: 2 5 I X
4. 3 Tbsp. Jeremiah XVII:11
5. 8oz. I Samuel XXX:12
6. 8oz. Chopped Nahum III:12
7. 2oz. Blanched and chopped Nu m b e rs XVII:8
8. 1 lb. I Kings IV: 2 2
9. Season to ta ste with II Chro n i c l e s
10. A pinch of Leviticus II:13
11. 1 small tsp. Amos IV: 5
12. 3 tbsp. last clause Judges IV: 19
Fo l l ow Solomon’s pre s c ri ption for making a good boy,
P roverbs XXIII:14, and you will make a ve ry good cake .
S et oven at 300 ° F. Beat 1, 2, and 3 to a cream. Add 4, one
at a time, still beating, then add 5, 6, and 7 and beat
a gain. Add 8, 9, 10, and 11, having prev i o u s ly mixe d
them. Add 12. Bake 2 to 212 h o u rs .
www.voiceofthehill.com 13
that specializes in doing just that.
Production is one thing, politics
another. Don’t look for help from
publishers if you’re determined to
outlaw cornflakes, Jell-O molds and
tuna casseroles in favor of crème
brulee and banana nut tortillas. The
foods of our forefathers occupy a
hallowed place in the church cookbook
cannon. Consider creating a
special section, and letting it be.
The St. Mark’s Church-Lichfield
Cathedral Cookbook is $10, and a
copy can be yours by sending your
request, and a check, to: Choir Tour,
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on
Capitol Hill, Baxter House, 118 Third
Street, SE, Washington, D.C. 20002.
Shrewsbury Biscuits
Lichfield Parish
There is a plaque on the side wall in
Castle Gates just up from Shrewsbury
Library where these biscuits
used to be made. Unfortunately, the
area is now a shopping street like any
other!
4 oz. butter
1 large egg
5 oz. caster sugar
8 oz. plain flour
Cream the butter until it is soft and
light in color. Add 4 ounces sugar.
Beat the egg; add to butter with the
flour. Mix well. Turn onto a lightly
floured board; roll out to the thic kness
of an old penny [one of theirs,
not ours]. Cut into rounds using a
212 inch fluted cutter. Arrange on
lightly greased baking sheets. Prick
with a fork. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes
or until just colored, in preheated
350° oven. Sprinkle with rest of
sugar while still hot, then allow to
cool on wire racks.
Grilled Lime-Curry Lobster
from Ellen Cardwell
4-1 to 112 lb. lobsters (Live)
12 c. olive oil (preferably extra fine
virgin)
2 c. dry white wine
12 Tbsp. Ground fresh black pepper
12 c. freshly squeezed lime juice
12 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 tsp. hot curry powder
In large bowl, combine wine, lime
juice, curry powder, and olive oil;
whisk until well blended. Add black
pepper and red pepper flakes. Steam
lobsters for 5 minutes each (do not
overcook). Lobster should be pink,
not red. With an ice pick, pierce
shell of lobster on body, tail, and
claws to provide places to marinate
flesh. Crack claws lightly if necessary.
Place lobsters in a large deep pan ;
pour marinade over them.
Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours, turning
lobsters at least 3 to 4 times. Heat
grill to high heat. With tongs,
remove each lobster; place on grill,
tummy side down. Grill 6 to 7 minutes;
turn over and grill 6 to 7 minutes
more. Do not burn. Remove
and serve with drawn butter and
lime wedges. Serves 4 people.
Grilled Fish Steaks with
Salsas
From Pam Lacey Bradshaw
Have on hand 6 fish steaks (1 inch
thick, i.e., salmon, swordfish, marlin,
tuna, or any other ocean game
fish). Brush with olive oil, lemon
juice, salt, and pepper. Sear on hot
grill (gas or coals) about 3 to 4 minutes
on a side until rare or medium
rare. Serve with one of these salsas.
Salsa No. 1: Chopped fresh garden
tomatoes with chopped fresh basil,
chopped Vidalia onion, salt and pepper,
plus Tabasco to taste.
Salsa No. 2: Canned chopped
pineapple with chopped fresh
coriander (cilantro), salt and pepper.
Salsa No.3: Chopped fresh peaches,
a little lemon juice to prevent
browning, chopped cilantro or parsley
or basil, salt and pepper.
Tuna or swordfish can be marinated
in soy sauce, garlic, olive oil,
lemon juice, and hot pepper flakes.
Serve with fruit salsa or with grilled
Vidalia onions and sweet peppers.
Hint: Warm the salsa and plates.
Lichfield Simnel Cake
From Maurice Taylor, Lichfield
Cathedral
This cake is decorated with 11 marzipan
balls to represent the 12 apostles
(minus Judas).
6 oz. Butter
3 eggs
5 oz. Caster sugar
1 tsp. almond essence
8 oz. self-rising flour
1 tsp. vanilla essence
12 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 lb. mixed dried fruit
12 tsp. cinnamon
1 lb. ready made almond paste
Cream butter and sugar. Gradually
beat in eggs and almond and vanilla
essences. Stir in sifted flour, nutmeg,
and cinnamon. Add dried fruit.
Place half the mixture into a 7 inch
greased cake pan. Roll out 1/3 of
almond paste into a circle to fit the
pan. Place the circle on top of mixture
in pan; press down and bake in
preheated 325° oven for approximately
3 hours. Cool in the tin.
To decorate, roll half of the remain -
ing almond paste into a circle; place
it on top of the cake. With the
remaining paste, make 11 egg shaped
balls; position them evenly around
the cake. Flash quickly under a hot
grill until the paste is lightly
browned (watch carefully).
Sour Cream Coffee Cake
From St. Mark’s Dance Company
112 c. sifted flour
14 lb. melted butter or margarine
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking powder
1 c. sour cream
14 tsp. salt
Topping:
13 c. sugar
12 c. nuts
1 Tbsp. Cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350°. Sift together
flour, sugar, soda, baking powder,
and salt. Add melted butter or margarine
and egg to dry ingredients;
stir until well mixed. Stir in vanilla
and sour cream. Pour half of the batter
into a tube pan; sprinkle on 12 of
topping. Add the rest of the batter;
sprinkle on remainder of topping.
Bake for 1 hour.
Sarah Godfrey is the Voice of the Hill’ s
editorial intern.
“here’s looking at you.”
Randolph Cree
hair etc.
Redken • Tigi
325 7th Street, SE • Eastern Market • 202-547-1014
Stylists
Dusty De Loach, Redken Color Educator
and Evan Pehrson
Manicurist Karen Johnson
Special thanks to our support staff:
James Crowder, Sia Mullen, Peter Von Streeruwitz,
Cortney Bright and Sylvia and Lily Lopez
Randolph Cree
Your Place
BY DAVID CRANOR
Your place
and you
rushing in to gather up the papers and magazines
from among the mess
and piling them up, only to have them
spill,
lazily across the floor;
and again
stacking them, much as you repeatedly brush the same lock of hair
behind your ear
but which, with each spirited giggle,
drops
contentedly into your face;
and me
noticing in your place only the smell of your perfume,
though I know you wear none,
and the nearness of your voice even as you
race
awkwardly around the room
and battle
against the clutter as if it doesn’t
belong there
making a place for me to
sit
as though I do.
Belong there.
In your place.
Dave Cranor is a three year resident of the Hill, a native of Texas and he recently
swore off sugary breakfast cereals.
14 www.voiceofthehill.com
A Summer Night
BY BEN FIRSCHEIN
I walk like a cat
Staccato in the heat
Jarvis powders his wig
And we revel in the night
Walk down the strip
All sorts of people
Topcoats
And Floozies
All fine
Waiting for the dinner boat
To take them far out
Out there
Where the dance is danced
Under humid skies
And the drink is drunk
Till the stroke of Two
And the Sirs with their
Fine dames
As the lights shine
On the banks
Feastin and lurchin
Like the Badass
Quite a riley site
For those that can’t partake
She Said
BY MALCOLM SHUTE
The beer was talking for me the night we met. Candles and airplane engines
and the Big Bang and the NRA on. And the way he looked in those blue khakis
and argyle socks clown! He may as well have been wearing a red nose and
fluffy orange hair as argyle socks and a self-satisfied smile. I couldn’t help
laughing, which was a mistake. Laughing puts me in a good mood. Laughing
makes me want to say awful things like, “Where have you been all my life?”
and “What’re you lookin’ at, pardner?” and, worst of all, it makes me want to
say, “Yes.”
What if I never met him? I could’ve been sitting someplace else. He could’ve
ordered me a Vodka straight and I’d have known what his intentions were. Or
I could’ve sat a little bit taller, not looked him in the eye, even crumpled up
that napkin before he sat down so I wouldn’t have had anything to write on.
What if I worked late that night, or s tayed at home? There are always a million
excuses: it’s sweeps on TV, I think I’ll call Mom, I’m tired. Would I have gone
out some other night and met someone better? But I’d planned to go out all
along, I set the napkin aside on purpose so it wouldn’t get wet, and I knew
what his intentions were: they were mine.
Malcolm Shute is the director of the Writer’s Way Workshops
Ten Worst Fears
BY TRACY HUMBLETT
That by telling him I love him, he will leave me.
That by not telling him I love him, he will leave me.
That loving him will make me weak.
That loving him will make me strong.
That loving him will leave no room for others.
That loving him will make room for others.
That sharing this something so precious could leave me out.
That sharing this something so precious could be more than I can take.
That by telling him, loving him and sharing him is a mistake.
That by not telling him, not loving him, and not sharing him is a mistake.
Tracy A. Hamblet is a Senior Operating Accountant at the Library of Congress. She
has been a resident of Capitol Hill since 1994.
But I must watch from the doc k
And dream a droily dream
Of things not to be
It isn’t fair
I say
Why them not us
So I bait my hook
With steaming worm
And watch it scream
And think: it will not last
As light plays upon light
And the water drips
In the city night
Some so fine
Others so beat
As seasons go
Summer’s a bitch
In the August heat
Ben Firschein lives in Southwest and
works for the House of Representatives.
www.voiceofthehill.com 15
Without a View
BY DAVID BOURNE
I fall
Sliced and quickly
I am spread upon my priorities
So thin, and not even to the edges
Feet equal pain
Job equals death
Life to waste
And Sundays to a slow remorse
We are most evolved
And I have still not found a more reasonable way to live
Self-help is the only best seller
While large cats die in cages
Eye for an eye—inhumane?
Orgies—immoral?
Purity is gone
The music is dead
And smoking kills.
David Bourne is a freelance writer who lives on Capitol Hill, but originally hails
from Mississippi.
n Are you tired of holes in your sidewalk?
n Are you sick of the litter and graffiti?
n Are you fed up with crime and loiterers?
n Do you want to increase your business?
nWould you like a business orange hat patrol?
THE Capitol Hill Businesss Improvement District (BID)
Campaign Is Now Underway!
A cleaner, safer and more beautiful Capitol Hill Business District is on the way!
Help Capitol Hill,jo in Downtown, Dupont and Georgetown in promoting a much better
business environment for your customers while substantially improving your bottom line
and your property values!
Commercial Property Owners:
1. Look for the BID Business Plan in the bright blue cover mailed to your tax address.
2. Read the plan carefully.You will have a say at all times.
3. Mail in your signed Petition Right Away
4. Call us with your comments and questions.
Business Owners:
1.Tell your landlord that Capitol Hill must have a BID to compete for new business.
2.Ask your landlord for a copy of the Business Plan.
3.Read the Plan carefully.You will have a say at all times.
4. Encourage your landlord to say yes to a cleaner, safer Capitol Hill.
5. Call us with your comments and questions.
THE SOONER WE BEGIN THE BETTER WE WILL BE!!
For More Inform ation call 202-546-3568
At tention Ca p i tol Hill Co m m e rcial Pro p e rty
and Business Own e rs
16 www.voiceofthehill.com
200 C Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
phone: 202-543-6000
fax: 202-547-2608
• Closest hotel to the US Capitol Building
• 152 newly renovated suites
• Capitol Hill neighborhood rates available
• Short and long term lease rates available
• Walking distance to all major monuments
• Kitchenettes in every suite
• One block to Capitol South Metro
Doolittle
Guest House
506 East Capitol Stre e t
A spacious and
c o nveniently
located bed and
b re a k fa s t .
202 546-6622
www.doolittlehouse.com
What She Did
BY SHARON NEGRI
From the start
Mother taught me
to shop for bargains,
mid-60’s Market Street,
Rockwell’s department store,
Friday nights
we headed straight
for sale tables in Clothing.
Today, I am one
in a city of one-half million,
dutifully searching
Macy’s half-off rack,
do the math in my head,
check purity of fabric next:
silk, cotton, linen,
my fingers have learned
to distinguish
100% from blends,
though she warned early
about expectation:
“even when you press
you will rarely be successful.”
Amid the just-reduced slacks,
I recall her lessons on fit,
how there is no substitute
for correct proportion and
“with a small size,
choices will be limited.”
I browse clearance skirts last,
having memorized the rule: if
summer whites are not lined,
a slip must be worn,
“one’s shape should never
be exposed by light.”
Could she have imagined then
I would pay full price
for a linen dress and plan
to let it wrinkle as it wills,
give myself up
to the whims
of its thinness and weave?
When I wear it,
she’ll no doubt say
“looks like you slept in it.” I’ll
cradle her hands, reply “yes,
and I will keep dreaming
wildly through my day
because of it.”
Sharon Negri’s poetry has appeared in
several publications and anthologies.
Her first book, The Other Side of
Now, was published by Washington
Writers’ Publishing House in 1989. Her
chapbook, Ruby and Other Lives, was
published by the Argonne Hotel Press in
July, 1996. Her latest full-length book is
Disconnected Obsessions.
Hope from a Water Garden
BY ALICE MART I N - A D K I N S
Out of the muck and mir e
rise delicate lotus,
proud lotus.
Out of the slime and silt
spread your petals lovely lily,
pure lily,
peaceful lily.
Out of the waste and worry
fly graceful egret,
watchful egret,
protective egret.
And what now of me?
No longer mired, shifted and wasted…
Lifted once more.
Where does a Capitol Hill pastor find spiritual renewal? AliceMartin-Adkins, Pastor
of the Washington City Church of the Brethren at 4th & N. Carolina Ave. SE visits
the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. It was there, one late summer day last year, that
she was inspired to write this poem.
Untitled
BY DOSHA MART I N
Before it was Capitol Hill, it was 603 3rd Street, NE—my home, my birthplace.
Remembering Mamma, a short, medium-framed woman of 52 with a large
and firm bosom and her patched-up apron, yelling for me to go outside and
pump the water, bring it inside so she can prepare dinner.
Outside, where it was usually wet and messy from the small dime-sized hole
that was in the water spigot, I would step on several small and wide pieces of
wood and I hop scotch from one to another, keeping my balance. I had to
fight to keep my balance, to not fall with Mamma’s favorite and only bucket.
When I reached the spigot, the seesaw pumping was really a job for two, but
because I was always so busy, I lied and said I could do the job. You see,
Mamma had only the one arm and my job as I saw it was to make up for it
with my little two.
Dosha Martin is participating in a workshop run by Writer’s Way for the Community
Action Group. She was born and raised on Capitol Hill—“before it was Capitol Hill.”
Pass Me the Ocean
BY LAURA MITCHELL
Forget the Valium,
just pass me the Pacific.
I’ll swallow it whole
to cool off my system.
No thanks to the chamomile tea.
But I’d take a cup of seaview,
of restless reassurance,
of cosmic tide.
Don’t bother with the comfort food.
I want salt and sand
and waves and whitecaps.
And wind.
Just pass me the ocean.
Laura Mitchell is a writer and new
mom who grew up in Southern
California and misses her ocean—but
loves the Hill.
www.voiceofthehill.com 17
Poolside Rotation
JUDY LEAV E R
June heat shimmers above the pool,
pushes people into aquamarine coolness,
that quenches and slicks back their hair.
The guard watches and swings her whistle.
Summer passes in thirty minute rotations.
The stand. Front desk. Deck cleanup.
Toddlers shriek and jump into waiting arms.
Curvaceous teens slice through the water
chased by boys the color of toast.
Young mothers bronze themselves and gossip.
By mid August swimmers are restless,
weary of flips off the board.
Sleepy toddlers whine,
mothers’ tempers flare.
The guard twists her sun streaked hair.
Lovers bicker and break up.
Late summer stagnates in half hour segments.
Air is leaden, soda pop is tepid.
College kids pack to leave.
Guards stack lounge chairs in the bathroom,
and drain the blue water into the street,
soon replaced by murky rainwater,
dead leaves, lost frogs,
the quiet emptiness of winter.
Hill resident Judy Leaver honors the season with this poem that she wrote when
her son was managing a neighborhood pool in Oklahoma.
705 8th Street,SE
Washington,DC 20003
Phone 202.546.8434
fax 202.546.1770
alvearstu@aol.com S H O P THE VILLAGE
705 N. Carolina Ave. SE Eastern Market
Tues-Fri 11-6 Sat 10-6, Sun 12-4, 202 • 546 • 3040
Gallery of art, clothing &unusual stuff
On selected Clothing ?
Summer
clothing sale!
Hydrangea
BY CONSTANCE SHADE
The hydrangea outside my window
are peeking through the glass,
blue heads bobbing in the June breeze.
They are chest high now, the blue ones,
but the pink,
the pink are twice as thick and plush,
waist-level,
drooping with the weight of their lushness
as if humbled by the gif t
of their own beauty.
Constance Shade is a freelance writer who supports her habit by working at Clothes
Encounters
accessories
furniture
handicrafts
art
tues- 10am-8pm
wed-sat 11am-8pm
sun 12-5pm
unique stuff, for unique people
ALVEAR STUDIO
design
& imports
18 www.voiceofthehill.com
T Y P E S OF U N I T S
• Bookshelves—floor to ceiling
bookcases with adjustable or
fixed shelves.
• Curio Cabinets—deep base
cabinets with counter topped
with shelving system up to
eight feet high.
• Audio-Visual Units—entertainment
centers are spacious
units for your t.v. and
stereo, with room for videos,
CD and cassettes.
Custom Wood Work,
Without the Custom
Price…that’s
R o o t ,
Hog or
D i e - L t d .
A Maker-
Manufacturer of
Built-in Furniture
You needn’t settle for less,
when you can have your own
handcrafted furniture sized
to fit your space. We use
fine woods and finishing
techniques in a masterly way
to produce elegant furniture
to enhance the beauty of any
room.
Root, Hog or Die-Ltd.
Grupo Olmeca Corporation
1730 K St., NW Suite 304
Washington, DC 20006
202-508-3646
C R A F T S M A N S H I P
Root, Hog or Die-Ltd.
Craftsmanship is excellent. We
utilize the best joinery systems
to make our “bullnoses.” Our
counters are designed with or
without radiuses. We craft our
shelves to be aesthetically pleasing
and of the highest structural
integrity, for lasting beautify and
durability.
F I N E S T F I N I S H E S
You may select from a range of
finishes. Any color you choose
can be matched to natural dyestains,
which is then sealed and
finished with clear top coats. Or
you may select any customized
color made in paint.
Please visit our website
www.olmecagroup.com
For additional information
call 202 438-7701
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 07.20.01
Dream Time is done! Attack long dormant
projects! Also, make dinner tonite
worthy of a Hollywood production!
Saturday 07.21.01
Anyone asks you a question – give ’em
an answer. Exercise your creativity.
Sunday 07.22.01
Play with children later this afternoon.
Monday 07.23.01
Pay attention to details. Organize
everything in your pantry by size.
Tuesday 07.24.01
Where in your life are you maybe a little
out of balance? Is there something simple
you could do that would tip the
scales back into balance?
Wednesday 07.25.01
Just as an experiment – lift one of your
feet out of the Realm of Indecision and
place it firmly in the Land of
Commitment. See what happens. How
do you feel?
Thursday 07.26.01
Shop this evening, but leave money &
plastic at home. Look. Touch.
Contemplate the consequences.
Friday 07.27.01
Where the Ocean meets the shore is
where the Ocean demonstrates its creativity.
Where is that sweet spot for
you?
Saturday 07.28.01
Share some of your secret thoughts,
maybe with a stranger.
Sunday 07.29.01
Leap out of bed! Greet the day with a
shout! Jump up & down! Laff out loud!
Monday 07.30.01
Remember a brave thing you have done.
Remember a brave thing you have not
done. Find a way to express today one
brave thing you have not done.
Tuesday 07.31.01
Pause for a moment to honor a teacher
who inspired you.
Wednesday 08.01.01
Think about important decisions. Don’t
act. Don’t commit. Think about things.
Say, “I’ll sleep on it.”
Thursday 08.02.01
Same drill as yesterday. Put your energy
into helping everyone see the funny side.
Tell jokes. Laff. Sign nothing. Buy nothing.
Friday 08.03.01
Ever dream of being a comedian? T ry out
your routines on friends, family and
strangers. See if you made the right decision.
It’s OK to be embarrassed.
Saturday 08.04.01
The Moon is Full at 01:56. In what ways
are you different from the people around
you? Are you OK being different?
Sunday 08.05.01
Meditate on the things that have challenged
you the most – this
week/month/year.
Monday 08.06.01
Abandon analysis. Surrender to intuition.
Tuesday 08.07.01
Analyze. Analyze. Analyze. Withhold your
decision til tomorrow.
Wednesday 08.08.01
List your best qualities. Commit to be
your best in every way at all times.
Forgive yourself if you forget, and then
return to being your best.
Thursday 08.09.01
This afternoon can be very productive.
Dare to be bold.
Friday 08.10.01
Eat a healthy b’fast, and a healthy lunch.
You know what follows if you have your
health.
Saturday 08.11.01
Touch things, people; eat with your
hands.
Sunday 08.12.01
Go outside this evening. Look for showers
of meteors.
Monday 08.13.01
While getting ready for bed consider the
concept of Responsibility.
Tuesday 08.14.01
What is the one thing you could immediately
do that would impress your friends?
Beware vanity.
Wednesday 08.15.01
Just before lunch contemplate how you
might better serve humanity.
Thursday 08.16.01
Trust your Mom. Trust your feelings.
May you be happy,
Ajai
Cat Tales from Andrew Applewhaite
Pauline’s Activity
Pauline, the cat, plays with a pink ball of yarn
in a decent sized portable barn.
The six-year-old cat cannot darn.
Pauline’s Visit
Pauline of Georgetown visited
The Humane Society’s animal shelter.
She talked with other cats.
She helped her owner
distribute toys to the cats.
A warm glow from her good deed
enveloped her for the rest of the day.
Andrew Applewhaite is a member of the Miriam’s Kitchen Writers’ Group which
meets on Thursday mornings after the Miriam’s Kitchen Feeding Program. The
group has held readings of their work at area high schools and colleges, at the MLK
Library and the Kennedy Center. Applewhaite’s poems were published in the
group’s latest collection.
Log on! www. v o i c e o f t h e h i l l . c o m
www.voiceofthehill.com 19
Ask Judith
Dear Judith:
Our stockade fence is tottering and gone altogether
in some places so we plan to replace it with a simple
board fence. My question is, how hard is it to do
yourself? I spend all day every day hunched over a
keyboard dealing with nuances of language so I
think I would like some physical activity. Besides,
it’s an excuse to buy some tools.
—ON THE FENCE
Dear On:
Good for you! I never quite understood why people
get into their cars to drive to the gym a mile away
where they do two miles on a treadmill. Instead of
hiring someone to put in a new fence, you can work
out some muscle groups you never knew you had.
The answer to how hard is it, is: very hard work,
but not very difficult. Most people who would even
consider putting in a fence themselves are probably
totally capable of doing it. Here’s what you need to
do:
1. Dig out the drawing of your house and lot you
were given when you bought the place and
check how wide and how long your lot is supposed
to be. Then take your thirty-foot tape
out and verify that your current fence reflects
the size of lot you bought. When you put in a
new fence you have a chance to correct property
line creep.
2. Talk to the neighbors with whom you share
the fence and see if they will pay for the materials
since you will do the work.
3. Figure the height. “Party” fences, or fences
separating private properties may be up to
seven feet tall by right—even taller if both
property owners agree and sign the building
permit application accordingly. This does no t
include front ya rd fences. Fences abutting
alleys are not supposed to exceed seven feet.)
4. Lay out your new fence, figuring a 4x6 pressure-
treated vertical every eight feet. The post
should be 1/3 below g rade to 2/3 above grade
so get the appropriate length. Call up your
lumberyard or whomever you’re going to buy
the materials from and see what kind of fence
boards they have—I prefer cedar—and get the
actual width. Keep in mind that a 1x6 is really
512 inches and figure on installing the boards
tight to each other since they will shrink once
th ey’re up. Order enough pre s s u re - t re a t e d
2x4’s for the crosspieces and enough nails.
The order should be large enough that someone
will deliver it, or use it as your excuse to
buy a pickup truck.
Materials note: There are a lot of plastic
board materials available now. As with all new
materials, you need to be a little skeptical, but
so far they seem pretty good: dimensionally
stable, no rot, take paint well. You may want
to consider using one of these “boards.”
5. Get a building permit. (Yes, you do need one
for a fence. And, you need your neighbors’ signatures
if the fence will straddle the property
line.)
6. You can demolish your old fence whenever
you want. Your biggest problem will be getting
rid of the remnants. You can use your
new pickup to cart it off or hire someone to do
it. I believe there are some rules about DC residents
being allowed to dump constructiontype
debris at some city dump for free with
proof of residency, but you’ll have to check.
7. Once you have your materials on site, and
have gotten rid of your old fence, lay out your
new fence. Use a string line (a long piece of
string and some stakes and nails—Fragers has
stakes) to keep your fence straight and double
ch e ck your dimensions to try to keep th e
fence on your property line.
Figure out where each vertical of your new
fence will be. If you space them slightly more
than eight feet apart, you won’t have to cut
your eight foot 2 x 4’s. Try to avoid the spots
where your old fence posts were so you don’t
have to extract their stumps as your first task.
The spacing doesn’t matter appearance-wise if
H a n d y m a n
on the Hill
Masonry Brick & Stone
Concrete Brick Pointing
Carpentry Decks & Fences
Roof Repairs Painting
2 0 2 - 2 06 - 718 5
Experienceit allthisSundayat St.James’
7:40am Matins / 8 am Low Mass /10am High Mass
CALL 202 546 1746 OR VISIT WWW. S A I N T J A M E S C H U R C H . O R G
2 2 2 EIGHTH ST REE T NE . WASHINGTON . DC 2 0 0 0 2
you install a simple board fence since you’ll
never see the posts.
(If you are installing a more decorative type
of fence, where the verticals will show, you
will have to sacrifice ease of installation for
aesthetics and figure out how to space all the
verticals exactly the same.)
8. Now you’re ready for a work out. Use your post
hole digger to dig holes for your new posts.
You are going to discover that the motion
re qu i red is re a l ly an excellent upper body
workout. And, that a three foot hole is amazingly
deep.
Once the hole is dug, you can set the post.
Drop the post into the hole and have your
assistant hold it in place while you check that
it is in the right place relative to the string line
and that it is vertical in two directions using
your new three-foot level.
When you’re confident it’s pr etty much in
the right place, shovel a little dirt into the
hole, tamp it, check level again, shovel, tamp,
and so on until you are at grade. If you have
tamped well enough you will discover that the
post is amazingly solid. Proceed to the next
post or call the fence company.
9. After all your posts are set, you can install the
crosspieces and then the fence boards. You
should string another level line for the tops of
your fence boards since very little land is dead
level. You may have to trim nearly all of the
fence boards to keep the top level. I recommend
that you nail them up, strike a chalk
20 www.voiceofthehill.com
line at the proper height, and then cut them
all off level with your new hand held circular
saw.
10. When you’re done with all that hammering
you are either done with the fence or are then
ready to stain it. Opaque or semi-transparent
stains (that allow the wood grain to show
through) are the only way to go if you want
color on your fence.
The stain soaks into the wood instead of sitting
on top of it like paint does—where it
inevitably cracks, chips or breaks down in
some way letting moisture in and trapping it,
thus hastening rot. I would never paint a
wood fence. It is a maintenance black hole
that is tota l ly unnecessary if you bought
either cedar or pressure treated boards. That is,
unless you like to paint fences and plan to do
it every year…
Of course, if you bought g rey plastic boards
you have no option but to paint.
Materials List
• Post hole digger
• Tamper
• Hammer
• Saw
• Line level
• Shovel
• 3’ level
• assistant
• 30 foot tape
• chalk line
What you might like to use your fence project as
an excuse to buy:
• pickup truck
• surveyor’s transit
• power saw (hand held circular)
• screw gun
Just Ask Rental at Fragers will rent you all the larger
ticket items if you would just as soon not own
your own post-hole digger.
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.
www.voiceofthehill.com 21
News Analysis
To a degree, I rue the moment when I began
to wonder about the Millennium
Monument th a t’s proposed for Barn ey
Circle. Foolishly, I thought I could get to the
bottom of it—or that there was a bottom.
My first ill-fated act was to call the 888 number
on a brochure I had pic ked up at a May meeting on
the monument. When I dialed the number, I got a
recording that said the number was no longer in
service.
Oh, dear.
What did this mean for the plan to build a
Roman Empire-inspired arch in Barney Circle and
surround it with a colonnade and imposing gateway
entrance to the wo n d e rs of
C o n gressional Cemet e ry? Alre a d y, yo u
see, I was foolishly assuming that such
questions have answers.
This plan, with a price tag pegged at $50
million, could mightily change the world
a round Barn ey Circ l e — for the bet t e r,
most people seem to believe, particularly
in regards to “economic development,”
whatever that might be. Few objections
have been raised—and none very forcefully.
The arch itself, which some have cleverly
dubbed the Arc de Barney, would be 80
feet high. This means that we would have
a Roman-style monument that’s 30 feet
taller than the 81 AD Arch of Titus in
Rome, considered the original among significant
triumphal arches. It would also be
11 feet taller than the splendid 312 AD
Arch of Constantine, also in Rome.
For pers p e c t i ve ’s sake, the arch at
Barney Circle would be less than half the
164 feet of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
But Pe n n s ylvania Avenue SE isn’t th e
Champs-Elysées, either.
I wanted to know more. But the more I
talked to those allegedly in the know, both
here and in Atlanta, the more I found
myself listening to tales of disillusionment
and chagrin.
I had wandered onto terrain that can
make journalists very wary, a place where accusations
fly, but nobody wants their name used. Let me
tell you, situations like this can swa l l ow up a
writer’s life, and I began to wonder about mine.
(Imagine the unlucky reporter who might decide to
investigate what’s going on at Eastern Market—a pit
from which the poor soul might never return.)
And so far we’re only talking about an idea for a
Millennium Monument; that’s all this monument
is—a notion, a few brain waves. City officials keep
pointing to this detail, too; there’s NO official proposal
on the table for Barn ey Circ l e — n o n e .
Remember that.
Right now, the Millennium Monument is an idea
that can change without warning, which seems to
be happening. Chimera-like, it appears one way for
a while and maybe a different way a few days or
weeks later. But now this shifting is starting to get a
few folks upset—and I haven’t even dealt with the
people who actually live in the Barney Circle neighborhood;
they have their own investments in the
situation.
Outside of the neighborhood, some former partisans
of the project now say the monument—at least
as they envisioned it—is virtually kaput. However,
the monumental idea apparently lives on in everevolving
incarnations in the mind of the monum
e n t’s tireless pro m ot e r, an Atlanta gentleman
named Rodney Mims Cook.
Indeed, if the monument exists at this point, its
primary location is in Mr. Cook’s head. But that’s
also what the fuss is about—no one knows what’s
cooking in Cook’s brain. Some claim he has one
intention, others claim he intends something else.
My head spins.
More specifically, former monument enthusiasts
who are devotees of classical architecture sense that
the project is evolving into something more crass
and commercial, when initially it had seemed to
exude a charming absence of venality. A year ago,
The Washington Post introduced Cook as a “philanth
ro p i st” and the monument as his altru i st i c
dream. Also, the deal seemed clear and simple. The
monument would be “financed by $50 million in
private donations from across the country,” the
Post said.
Correctly or not, the theme of the
monument as a gift became pervasive.
The brochure that I had picked up in
M ay is entitled “A Gift of a
Monument,” and inside it says, “The
monument will be a gift to the United
States by its people.”
Maybe that’s the catch—the givers
and the receivers would be the same
folks. Still, the disaffected former supporters
who wished to remain anonymous
now say that the Millennium
Monument was starting to look like a
condo development that could make
“someone” a lot of money.
In fact, even I had sensed a slight
m eta m o rphosis was at hand when
Cook at the May meeting suggest e d
that the monument project include
250 “mixed-income” housing units to
pay for the monument and its upkeep.
Jaws dropped in the room. What was
this? Condos and stores? What happened
to the $50 million in donations?
How did a Doric-style colonnade magically
evolve into condos? Where would
the people live—in the columns?
Nevertheless, it appeared that within
days of the meeting, core monument
supporters in the neighborhood decided
that, well, maybe 100 condos might
not be so bad, if it keeps the monument
plan alive.
Meanwhile, I had also managed to get another
number for Cook’s office at the American Urban
Design Foundation, AKA, monument centra l ,
which I was told is located in a former barn behind
Cook’s house in Atlanta. I got his secretary, the
foundation’s other employee besides Cook, informants
say. She said Cook would be unavailable, so I
left an urgent message.
A Monumental Question
The Arc de Barn e y
BY J IM MYERS
The real thing…Paris, France
I’d also heard that Cook had hooked up
with a new architect in connection with
his evolving visions. So I phoned David
K i t chens of the Alexa n d ria office of
Cooper Carry, an Atlanta firm. Kitchens
said the firm specializes in “urban in-fill,
mixed-use development” of the sort one
finds in Old Town. He said he has been
talking on and off to Cook over the past
few months, focusing on the residential
and commercial aspects of the Barn ey
Circle puzzle.
I n t e re st i n gly, in our brief discussion,
Kitchens referred to the arch and colonnade
as the “stagnant” or “static” elements in the
project—he used both words. “Our role is to look at
the mixed-use portions of the project that move it
beyond a static monument,” he said. “Our job is to
search for development partnerships for the more
commercial aspects.”
In a way, this makes modest sense. In searching
for a viable plan for Barney Circle, why not consider
shops and condos? In fact, surely that’s what
many ordinary mortals would come up with, if
there weren’t the image of a $50 million gift hovering
over the horizon. Maybe that ’s a problem: surely
there might be other inventive ideas for Barney
Circle and the nearby waterfront if the Millennium
Monument wasn’t in the picture.
Then the phone rang. It was Cook .
In my few brief encounters with the apostle of
monuments, I’ve found him eminently patient and
amiable—unflappable almost. But he’s hard to pin
down. Sometimes I feel I know less about the project
after listening to him than I did before. It almost
seems he would like to please or persuade every
interlocutor, as if to suggest that his monument can
fulfill all the dreams and fancies that people might
wish to hang on it.
So he lets us do that.
Did you think I would get to the bottom of the
Millennium Monument in a brief phone call? No
way. Right now, the essential nature of th e
Millennium Monument project is illusive; it defies
specificity. Any rendering you have seen is never
the latest one. After a year or more of workshops,
discussions, design contests and an architectural
work session called a “charette,” the concept continues
to evolve. Maybe it’s folly to try and pin it
down.
On the phone, Cook said he’s still exploring possibilities,
which he termed “doing our homework.”
And yes, for example, housing
is “one of several directions
we’re looking at.
“What we’re planning to
do is put [all the ideas] on
the table and investigate to
see which ones are viable.”
As for the disaffected for -
mer supporters, Cook recognizes
that his monument
has a capacity to draw people
in. “People have of feeling
of ow n e rship of th e
design. You don’t wa n t
them to feel rejected or smothered.”
No, we wouldn’t want that. And Cook, of course,
denied that the Millennium Monument is “a
m o n ey-making scheme.… I’ve ta ken a drop in
income to do this.”
Then he was off to catch a flight—more monument
business, he said. Which leaves me here—still
wondering, which is OK.
I’m happily reminded that even Rome wasn’t
built in a day.
Journalist Jim Myers’ most recent book is Afraid of the
Dark: What Whites and Blacks Need to Know
About Each Other and his extraordinary story of the
Kentucky Courts Housing Project was featured in the
Washington Post’s Sunday, July 1 magazine section.
Jim’s last piece for the Voice of the Hill was “A
Capitol East Manifesto,” which appeared in the
February 2001 issue.
22 www.voiceofthehill.com
N OW SHOWING IN THE GREAT HALL
SHAKESPEARE GALLERY
A multi-media viewing
of treasures from the
Folger Collection.
DESIGNER BOOKBINDERS
IN NORTH AMERICA
The best in contemporary
British bookbinding.
Through August 18.
Visit our Museum Shop and
recieve 10% off new purchases
with this ad. (not valid on previous
purchases or with other discounts.
Expires September 30, 2001)
F O L G E R S H A K E S P E A R E L I B R A R Y
Performance • Fiction & Poetry Readings • Exhibits • Family Programs • Research
Just a block from the Capitol at 201 East Capitol St, SE w w w. f o l g e r.edu 202.544.7077
Chill Out this August—
To Hill with the Beach!
Buy One Entrée,
Get One Free
August 1
through August 31
(with this ad)
Dinner served
Wednesday-
Sunday 5-9:30 p.m.
Right now, the essential nature of the Millennium
Monument project is illusive; it defies specificity. Any
rendering you have seen is never the latest one. After a
year or more of workshops, discussions, design contests
and an architectural work session called a “charette,”
the concept continues to evolve.
1874 Old West Steakhouse
www.voiceofthehill.com 23
Business Pro f i l e
“In the age of chain stores and instant
internet access, the only reason to
open a neighborhood used booksto
re is to have a neighborh o o d
bookstore,” says Steve Cymrot, coowner
of Riverby Books. “We’re on a small scale on
purpose. If all we were trying to do was to sell as
many books as fast as we could, the way to do it
would be on the computer, but if you’re doing it
that way, it might as well be lug nuts or corned beef
as books, and what’s the fun of that?”
Better by far to have a room full of books. Better
to remember that the enjoyment of books is tactile
as well as intellectual. And to remember that our
minds are associative, that to browse in a bookstore
will lead us somewhere unexpected, and better perhaps
than where we intended to go.
There is a handmade sign on the front door of
R i ve r by Books, “Attention Shake s p e a re Theatre
Goers—5 copies of Hedda Gabler still in stock.” The
5 has been crossed out and a 4 written in. Then the
4 is crossed out and a 3 written in its place.”
What does it mean about a bookstore that they’re
advertising an obscure and depressing Ibsen play
on the door?
“T h a t’s exa c t ly the point of a neighborh o o d
bookstore,” says Steve. “Rather than trying to create
an environment or a product that’s a cookie-cutter
shape made for anywhere, we want to be a part of
this community specifically. Where are we again?”
417 East Capitol Street is where. The building is
painted yellow and gold and red. It was built in
1898 and has been home to a steam laundry, an
antique store, and a series of doctor’s offices. I
stopped by one day last week to talk to Steve and
hear what he had to say about coming into the used
book business after so many years involved in other
endeavors on Capitol Hill.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, “you can’t inter -
view me. Just write what you want to write. You
know what this is about as well as I do.”
Steve is the co-owner of Riverby Books. I am the
other owner and his son. I will take over from here.
I grew up on Capitol Hill, around the corner from
what is now our bookstore, what was then the
office of Sno White, who was, believe-it-or-not, a
pediatrician. I was in Lois Kauffman’s preschool
class at Peabody where I learned to read, and in
high school, I snuck into the Library of Congress
reading rooms to learn to write term papers. In
between I delivered the Hill Rag (sort of) all the way
from the Folger to Lincoln Park.
I got in trouble for playing catch on the Capitol
G rounds, so I entertained myself by ru n n i n g
around in the background of the evening news
broadcasts and then hurrying home to watch them
with my grandfather to see if I got on TV.
My childhood was pure Capitol Hill.
Now, with the store, it’s a treat to add something
to the community that already seems to fit. Ours is
a neighborhood full of books. Peek in the windows
as you walk down the streets and apart from an
upside-down Christmas tree in one house, decorative
plaster molding in another, you will see books.
Walk down that same street and though it is not
so obvious, you will see their authors, too.
T h ey wander into the booksto re and we are
pleased, my dad and I, when they identify themselves.
It is wonderful, from the chair behind the
desk, to be introduced to the vast literacy of our
n e i g h b o rs. Adele Alexa n d e r, Fre d e ri ck Re u s s ,
Edmund and Sylvia Morris, Tom and Marguerite
Ke l ly, Diana McLellan, and we’ll include Dori s
Grumbach too, despite the fact that she closed
A Love Affair with Books
BY PAUL CYMROT
24 www.voiceofthehill.com
T HOM BURNS
Knowledge and Integrity
Celebrating 24 Years
in the Capitol Hill
Real Estate Market
605 Pennsylvania Ave., SE • 202-546-7000 x305 EQUAL HOUSING
OPPORTUNITY
Way wa rd Books and moved to Maine nearly a
decade ago. (Once a Capitol Hill author, always a
Capitol Hill author.)
Other writers have come into the store, I’m sure,
and been too modest to mention their work misshelved
under Fiction or Biography, when it should
be right up front with the other Local Authors.
(speak up, you all!)
I imagine having a bookstore is like having a bakery,
without all the trouble of having to get up
every morning to bake. We’ve had a chance to meet
people we might not have met otherwise and to talk
about topics that mightn’t elsew h e re come up
between strangers.
The books remind people of what they’ve actually
read and what they intended to read, what they’d
like to read next, and what they’re glad they’ll
never have to begin. It is exciting to chat with customers
about what they’re reading about, thinking
about, and searching for.
A Japanese man wearing a heavy, tan corduroy
jacket came into the store soon after we opened last
March. After looking around for a few minutes, he
stopped at the desk. In slow, precise English he
a s ked if we had a section on religion, which I
showed him. A few minutes after that, he asked if
we had a copy, perhaps, of the Rheims-Douai Bible.
I went to the shelves with him: King James, Oxford,
Boomer, Revised Standard, Good News.
“No, I’m afraid we don’t,” I said, then turned to
the computer to search for a copy elsew h e re :
Rheims-Douai Bible. Written in the first decade of
the 17th century, published in France and never
reprinted.
“Yes, that’s it,” he said, looking over my shoulder.
“Do you have that?”
“If it ’s anywhere, it will be at the Folger Library
down the street,” I told him.
“Yes, the Folger has a copy,” he nodded, “and
they are very nice there.” He explained that he’s
wo rking th e re this summer, re s e a rching which
t ranslations of the Bible Shake s p e a re read, and
which he may have been reading as he wrote different
plays. But photocopies cost fifteen cents a page,
no matter how many pages you get. So very expensive.
Better to find a copy of his own.
We get a phone call from Cindy or Rick at Jimmy
T’s across the street. There’s a customer here who’s
interested in this book or that book; do we have it?
It’s nice to live and work in a neighborhood that
offers complimentary book searches over waffles,
sausage and wet Folger’s crystals.
I t’s as intere sting to sit inside and look out
through the great plate glass window as to stroll the
streets and look in. A description of the view and
the passers-by would read the same this week as any
week this century. People walking their dogs, dropping
off their dry cleaning, shopping for dinner.
Some people hurry, others dawdle, perhaps reading
the small print on our sign out by the sidewalk.
Out the window we see: The Lees at Congress
Market on the corner. In the morning when we
open the store, they have been open for hours. Mrs.
Lee, her sons, their wives, their daughter riding her
scooter up and down the brick sidewalk. Elm shaded
East Capitol St re et on a summer morn i n g .
“Business is good?” Mrs. Lee asks, when I hop over
the fence to buy a drink. Yes, very good, thanks.
The Society of Women Geographers on the other
side of us. I don’t know them, yet. Or what they’re
working long hours on. A brass plaque on the brick
façade is all I know of them.
We make a pot of tea in the afternoons to encourage
people to come in, sit and relax and chat. Our
neighbors have stories that we have not heard and
if the bookstore gives them a place to tell them,
then we are the richer for it.
There’s a man who comes in every couple of
weeks with a few boxes of books to sell. He rolls
them down the street on his hand-truck and looks
through them with me in the front of the store.
Good stuff and bad stuff alike.
A man came in looking for the Supreme Court
Historical Society. Evidently it’s in a house in the
neighborhood, identified by a brass plaque but no
way else. It wasn’t in the phone book. We called the
Supreme Court itself, though, and then he went on
his way, working on whatever he was working on.
This has been a learn-as-you-go affair for my dad
and me. We had a yard sale during my spring break
in 1994 to sell all the extra books that had piled up
around the house. At $1 a book, we sold enough to
clean off the surfaces at home and to start us thinking
about the book business. We let a signed
Daphne Du Maurier go, accidentally, and that started
us thinking about book values.
I went back to college and when I came home for
winter break, the surfaces were cluttered and we
were ready to think about selling books again. We
rented a small corner of an antique mall in
Fredericksburg, where we go when we leave the
c i t y, and built enough shelves for about 1000
books. That went well enough, and in 1996 we
opened a small store of our own a few blocks from
www.voiceofthehill.com 25
Choose the Re a l tors with th e
SIGNS of success…ch o o s e
Tom & Alice Fa i s o n
A S S O C I A T E B R O K E R S , G R I
call 202.255.5554
or email FA I S O N @ Re a l to r. c o m
there: 7500 volumes and a couch and a window
overlooking the Rappahannock River.
We handled more books, learned a bit more
about what we were doing, and soon longed for a
location closer to home. When the space at 417 East
Capitol became vacant last winter we snapped up
the spot and set to work building shelves. I built the
cases and dad filled them with books according to a
system that makes perfect sense to him. Only he
knows the answer to questions like: Is Thoreau in
natural history or philosophy? Is Thomas Aquinas
in philosophy or theology? Is there a difference
b et ween Fiction and Litera t u re? A diffe re n c e
between Military and History? I can’t even begin to
explain the organization of his political section.
You’ve just got to ask him about that. As I said, it
makes sense to him.
The fun of it is that there are endless numbers of
books. We never know what’s going to come in the
door or what we’ll find in the next box. We’ve happened
across some extraordinary things.
E a rly on, for exa mple, I found some histo ry
b o o ks about Concord, Massach u s etts down at
Wechsler’s auction here DC, then took them to
Concord and sold them to the Barrow Bookstore.
The next week I spent the profit at an antique
store in a little town in Massachusetts on an 17th
century handwritten deed book, leather bound,
with pages protected by thin sheets of silk. I took it
to the rare book library at my college to see what
they could tell me about it, and the librarian there
waited until I left and then called the police, assuming
I’d stolen it. A detective was assigned to the
“case.” This unique set of documents from colonial
New England had been missing from the Recorder
of Deeds Office since the late 1960’s, before I was
born, which didn’t seem to confound his theory
that I was the thief.
There are books that we’ve bought and kept for
the store, some signed by Nobel Prize winners and
fo rmer presidents, some by our neighbors and
some by people no one has ever heard of (sometimes
they’re one and the same). You will also find
here F reddy the Pig, Angus the Duck, Nancy the
Drew, and who knows what else.
It’s a hobby that funds itself and seems to extend
itself to whatever space and time we’ll give it. Our
avocation into our vocation, as the most recent
great gray poet wrote. Ours is a story similar I’m
sure to the stories behind the other brass plaques
and window-signs in the neighborhood. We hope
to encounter other stories soon.
Paul Cymrot grew up on Capitol Hill at the end of the
Cronkite administration. You may have seen him run -
ning around in the background of the evening news
reports from the Capitol grounds. This is his first arti -
cle for Voice of the Hill.
Featured Home —24 Third Street, NE
S U P R E M E !
Rare and inviting extra wide 1872 porch
front. Totally renovated with beautiful
detailing throughout! Double parlor, eat-in
kitchen, three bedrooms, 2.5 baths.
Basement and garage! Magnificent view of
US Supreme Court and ony 2 blocks to the
US Capitol. Owner Agents. $668,000.
Canine Garden Sculptures
Now Available at Doolittle’s!
224 SeventhStreet, SE, Washington, DC
(202) 544-8710
Shop on line: www.doolittles.com !
Hand crafted in copper and steel; most breeds available!
26 www.voiceofthehill.com
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.
If you’re thinking of
moving, take an expert
with you. This market is
still hot! Maximize
your home’s
p o t e n t i a l .
For a FREE
analysis of your
p resent home’s
w o rth, call or
e m a i l :
(continued on page 41)
Anything in the Gossip I
Ben and Jerry’s to Become a “PartnerShop”
Rumors have been flying about the possible sale of
the Ben and Jerry’s Scoop Shop at Eastern Market.
“It’s true,” says owner Lori Johnston—who has, by
the way, no intention of selling her other enterprise,
the popular coffee house S tompin’ Grounds.
If all goes well, sometime late this fall or early
next year, ours will become the first Ben and Jerry’s
“PartnerShop” in the District. Ownership will be
transferred to the Latin American Youth Center, a
Columbia Heights based non-profit that offe rs
counseling, college guidance, health services, after
s chool re c reation and arts pro grams—and job
training.
Ben and Jerry’s began their PartnerShop program
in 1987, “selling” franchises to nonprofits that offer
job training to disadvantaged young people, and
waiving standard franchise fees so that the nonprofits
can retain their business profits to help support
their activities and programs. There are now
Pa rtnerShops in New Yo rk, San Fra n c i s c o ,
Minneapolis and nine other locations across the
country. DC will make 13.
Johnston—who’s been in the food service business
since she was a teenager and with Ben and
Jerry’s for nearly that long—has been thinking of
selling her Capitol Hill shop for some time, “But
n ot to just any b o d y.” Enamored with th e
PartnerShop program, she suggested several nonprofit
candidates to Ben and Jerry’s for consideration
—including The Latin American Youth Center.
Johnston knows the Center very well. “I love it,”
she tells us. Before opening Scoop Shops of her own
on the Hill and in Georgetown (she sold th e
Georgetown franchise last fall), she managed the
Adams Morgan Ben and Jerry’s and employed a
number of young people from the Center’s job
t raining pro gram. She joined their Board of
Directors this spring.
As it happened, the Center was also exploring
the idea of becoming a PartnerShop—and had been
looking for a suitable location for about two years
before hearing Johnston’s offer. Lori Kaplan, the
C e n t e r’s Exe c u t i ve Dire c to r, says th ey wanted a
“real live business for kids to train and work in and
l e a rn business operations, catering, inve n to ry —
marketable skills.”
Taking over the Hill Scoop Shop seemed, she says,
“a more manageable way to get into the business:
we don’t have to start from scratch; the management
staff will come and work for us; it ’s a growing
m a rket and business is getting better and
better…it’s a much more feasible operation than to
build-out a new store.”
Becoming a PartnerShop is not an easy process,
which is one reason why there are so few in operation,
and why completing the transfer to the Latin
American Youth Center is taking so long. Johnston
says the Center has submitted their business plan
“five or six times,” and Ben and Jerry’s keeps asking
for refinements. That business plan was modeled
on Johnston’s own, which was accepted on the first
go-round—that should give you an idea of how
stringent the vetting process is.
So what’s an Adam’s Morgan based non-profit
that serves Latino youth doing on Capitol Hill?
Despite the number of Mexican, Tex Mex, Cuban,
and Salvadorian restaurants in the community, relatively
few people of Latin background live here.
The latest census shows the Ward 6 Latino population
at 1565—out of 44,954 reported in the District.
Kaplan says the “Latin” part of the Center’s name
is a little misleading: “We don’t exclusively work
with Latino kids. The Center was founded 30-years
ago as the Latino community began growing and
d eveloping. But many of the kids are Asian-
American, African-American and from other places
as well…Generations of kids have come here.”
Though the Center is based in Columbia Heights,
Kaplan adds, they draw young people from all over
the city—including Capitol Hill—who hear about it
by word of mouth, or discover a pamphlet about
one or another of the organization’s programs. The
kids placed in jobs at Ben and Jerry’s will be from
here…and there.
Johnston says the Hill orientation will remain
st rong. The Center’s Managing Dire c to r, Mai
Fe rnandez, and Pa t ricia Bravo, Dire c tor of th e
Youth Opportunities Training Program, both live
in the neighborhood. And Johnston, as a Board
member and a Hill resident, will remain ve ry
involved as well. Besides, she says, “Ben and Jerry’s
has a requirement that shops work with the community
in which they are based…supporting things
like the Capitol Hill Classic.”
Thirty or so kids will cycle through the shop each
year, staying about 6 months before moving on to
other jobs, or into other positions at the Scoop
Shop. Most, says Kaplan, will be between the ages of
14 and 19: “Kids who need extra support in getting,
keeping and maintaining a job; that have a less successful
track record—poor customer skills, problems
with supervisors. But there will be others that
can sustain a job quite well.”
Kaplan promises that the kids will be well trained
before they put scoop to Chunky Monkey. All will
go through 24 to 30 hours of training in workshops
at the Center. Then they’ll be under the watchful
eye of store manager Henry Lewis and assistant
manager Crystal Kunglal. Henry and Crystal will be
staying on to run the Scoop Shop. They’re excited
about the change, says Kaplan, and “totally committed.”
The current staff will not be laid off to make way
for the new. Center kids will be phased in as current
e mp l oyees move on. “As positions open—ove r
time—we’ll get more of our kids in there,” says
Kaplan. There are, in fact, two young people from
the Center already employed at the shop.
We warned Kaplan that this community is big on
service and that a few complaints about Ben and
Jerry’s were posted to the discussion area of the
Voice website in recent months—complaints that
Johnston and staff responded to quickly. Kaplan
says she’ll keep an eye on the message board and
make sure the operation stays up to snuff.
Meanwhile Johnston will remain in hollering
d i stance a few ya rds away in her aerie above
Stompin’ Grounds—counting various beans.
She’s just back from St. Louis and training with A.
G. Edwards as a financial consultant. Shop will be
set up above the shop—and in the shop. “Like Ed,”
she laughs, referring to the lawyer on the hit TV
show that keeps an office in his bowling alley. You
can find her in the coffee bar most mornings—and
wa t ch for some planning seminars on college
financing and such this fall.
Rum Punch on the Patio! The Bluestone Café is
finally able to serve drinks on its patio-with some
we e k d ay re st rictions. The Alcoholic Beve ra g e
Business Bits
www.voiceofthehill.com 27
Finley’s Boxing Club
518 10th St., NE 202-544-9132
Women Members Welcome!
Home Furnishings
Woven Histor y
311 7th St., SE 543-1705
See our ad on page 46
Home Repair
Handyman on the Hill
Washington DC 206-7185
See our ad on page 19
Hotel
Capitol Hill Suites
200 C St., SE 543-6000
See our ad on page 16
Income Tax Services
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service
8th St., SE 554-8840
Internet Provider Services
DC Access
118 Kentucky Ave, SE 546-5898
www.dcaccess.net — a local ISP
Massage Therapy
Capitol Hill Massage Associates
Swedish, Deep Tissue, Seated Massage
544-6676, www.speedbumps.org/massage
Mason
Michaliga Masonr y
321 C Street, SE
544-4484
Mortgage Lenders
Apex Home Loans
301-474-7100
See our ad on page 15
Jeffrey A. Love, Loan Officer
Federal Funding Mortgage Corp
202-210--7106 jlove@ffmcorp.com
Office Supplies
Capitol Hill Innervision
Art and Office Supplies
701 8th St., SE 544-4664
Accounting
Marina Martin, MBA
Innovative and versatile range of services for
small business and non-profits 547-9536
Air Conditioning & Heating
John W. Fulcher
510 13th, SE, 544-8156
Service, replacements, installations
Antiques
Antiques on the Hill
701 North Carolina Ave., SE
See our ad on page 29
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 39
Association
CHAMPS
621 PA Ave., SE 547-7788
Bank
National Capital Bank
316 PA Ave.,SE 546-8000
See our ad on page 13
Bed and Breakfast
Bullmoose B&B
5th and S Sts.,NE 547-1050
See our ad on page 11
Doolittle Guest House
504 E. Capitol Street, SE 546-6622
See our ad on page 16
Maison Orleans
414 5th Street, SE, 544-3694
maisonorln@aol.com
Bicycles
Capitol Hill Bikes
709 8th St.,SE 544-4234
See our ad on page 35
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 17
Contractor
Thoreson & Associates
Capitol Hill’s local Norwegian carpenter
Renovated homes in DC since 1986. We
Work where we live. 544-3700
Chimney Cleaning
Winston’s Chimney Service
Washington DC (301)571-8546
See our ad on page 28
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
Lutheran Church of the Reformation
212 E. Capitol St., SE, 543-4200
www.reformationdc.org
St. James’ Episcopal Church
222 8th St., SE, 546-1746
www.saintjameschurch,.org
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
See our ad on page 17
Computer Consultant
Better Computer Solutions
623 N. Carolina Ave., SE 546-8084
See our ad on page 31
Drug Store
Grubbs Care Pharmacy
326 E Capitol SE 543-4400
See our ad on page 15
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 32
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 20
Health & Fitness
Results the Gym
3rd & G Sts, SE, 234-5678
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
Pet Supplies
Doolittle’s Pet Supply
224 7th St., SE 544-8710
See our ad on page 25
Photography
Motophoto
666 PA Ave., SE 547-2100
See our ad on page 2
Picture Framing
Frame of Mine
522 8th St., SE 543-3030
See our ad on page 35
Newman Gallery and Custom Frames
511 11th St., SE 544-7577
See our ad on page 30
Real Estate
Valerie M. Blake
Prudential Carruthers Realtors
5025 Wisconsin Ave, NW 202-362-1348,
x111, www.DCHomeQuest.com
Thom Burns
Coldwell Banker Real Estate
109 8th St. NE 547-5805
Larry 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
28 www.voiceofthehill.com
Business Serv i c e s
Phyllis Jane Young
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
John Parker
Pardoe Real Estate
605 PA Ave., SE 546-7000
Kristof Realty Group/Pam Kristof
REMAX Capital Realtors
202-588-2021, www.kristofgroup.com
See our pad page 17
Real Estate Settlement
Congressional Title
650 PA Ave., SE 544-0800
See our ad on page 31
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 11
Banana Café
400 8th St., SE 543-5906
See our ad on page 31
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
327 7th St., SE 546-CAKE
See our ad on page 34
Winston’s
Quality Service since 1976
Cleanings • Repairs • Relinings
Expert second opinion
Air duct cleaning
301-571-8546
Licensed • Insured • Certified
202-CHIMNEY
(244-6639)
Recommended by
Washingtonian Magazine
1984-1987
DCHIC #3615
Chimney Ser v i c e
Bluestone Cafe
327 7th St., SE 547-9007
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 34
Sheridan’s Steak House
713 8th St., SE 546-6955
See our ad page 22
Stompin’ Grounds
660 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, 546-5778
See our ad on page 34
Salons
Randolph Cree
325 7th St., SE
See our ad on page 15
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
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
543-5825
Gabrielle Hill
544-4386
Call or email hillhouse@erols.com for a brochure
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, www.dancingheartyoga.com
See our ad on page 17
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
Eggs-traordinary
Capons • Turkeys •
Ducks • Cornish Hens
Eggs-traordinary
Capons • Turkeys •
Ducks • Cornish Hens
Mel, Sr. Mel, Jr.
MARKET POULTRY
Eastern Market
225 7th St., SE 202-543-7470
MARKET POULTRY
Eastern Market
225 7th St., SE 202-543-7470
Maids-N-Things
www.maidsnthings.com
HOUSE CLEANING/
ERRAND SERVICE
202-547-7557
Visit our website for your
FREE estimate or call
202-547-7557.
Mention this ad and receive a 15%
discount for all Capitol Hill residences.
www.voiceofthehill.com 29
d o w nL o a d
AN T I QU E S
BU Y SE L L
TR A D E
701 N. CAROLINA AVE, SE
WASHINGTON, DC
202-543-1819
Toll Free 877-509-3772
t h e c a n c e r d i a g n o s i s
frightening, maddening,
confusing
individual, couples and group
psychotherapy for those with cancer
joseph tarantolo, md
board certified psychiatrist
certified group therapist
202/543-5290
but also a time for
self-reflection and enhancement
of personal development
218 7th Street, SE • Eastern Market • 202.547.7337
The Forecast will close in August
as we get our specta cular new
sp a ce ready.Look for our grand
reopening in September. ?
Meanw h ile , come in and take
advant age of fabulous bargains
on your favorite things.
W o w ! Our biggest sale ever!
Voice Voted Outstanding Business
Paper Takes CHAMPS Top Honor
June 15. You’ll pardon the boast, but news is news.
The Voice of the Hill has re c e i ved this ye a r’s
Outstanding Capitol Hill Business Award from the
C a p i tol Hill Association of Merchants and
Professionals (CHAMPS).
Mayor Anthony Williams and Councilmembers
A m b rose and Brazil applauded as publishers
Stephanie Cavanaugh and Bruce Robey received
the awa rd from CHAMPS president Dennis
B o u r gault at the We d n e s d ay, June 13 Annual
M e et i n g — th i rd part n e r, Adele Ro b ey, was busy
re h e a rsing her sta rring role in the Capitol Hill
Theater Alliance’s hit comedy, B el Age ( w h i ch
played to near sell-out audiences every night of its
4-week run).
Said Bourgault: “It’s hard to imagine a business
that could affect life on the Hill more th a n
tonight’s award recipient…Now in its second year,
this business entered an already crowded field and
went from a being an interesting on-line start-up to
a “must read.” He also had nice things to say about
our support of local events and contributions to
various neighborhood organizations. It was really
pretty exciting.
S eve ral other awa rds we re dist ributed at th e
event.
The President’s Award recognizes an individual
that Bourgault feels has made an outstanding contribution
to the organization. This honor went to
the “dedicated and dependable” Lisa Ku n k l e r
McClure of LaSalle Partners at Union Station, who
heads the Destination Capitol Hill Committee.
McClure’s is an outreach group, focused on bringing
positive attention to the Hill and luring in visitors.
Councilmember Sharon Ambrose was recognized
by the Association for her tireless work for the community.
She is “always on call,” said the President,
“and promotes our businesses in countless ways.”
Ambrose was given particularly high marks for her
“Stakeholder Meetings,” which bring together public,
private and community players with an interest
in the development of the Anacostia waterfront.
The Annual Meeting was also the occasion for
the election of officers and directors.
President Dennis P. Bourgault, Esq., owner of
Doolittle’s Pet Shop was re-elected as were 1st Vice
President, (and no he wasn’t on the award committee)
Bruce Robey of the Voice of the Hill, and 2nd
Vice President Bill Rouchell of Maison Orleans B&
B. Ka thleen Milanich of Burnham Communications