‘H Street’
courtesy of ‘NCinDC’

Last night, the word came first via tweet, and then via story: Voice of the Hill has stopped operation.  A community paper that began its life as a website, the print monthly cited rising costs and declining revenue.  The paper lost their founder, Bruce Robey, just a few months ago to a heart attack.  Losing the Voice is particularly difficult in a town whose paper of record is a national news organization and not a more local body.

The Post’s Marc Fisher penned an obituary for the paper, and our friends at The Hill Is Home and DCist have noted their departure. This is a big gap in the world of the hyperlocal, and we hope that there will rise from its ashes, as we’ve seen elsewhere, a dedicated publication to match its departure.

Godspeed, Voice.

‘Walter E. Washington’
courtesy of ‘dbking’

Maryland authorities revoked the license of a Riverdale funeral home when, during a surprise inspection, they found 40 bodies in bags stacked in their garage. The remains were in poor repair with their identification tags damaged, or in some cases, absent.  Chambers Funeral Home has a contract with Georgetown University to remove and cremate the remains after cadaver dissection by medical students, and there’s a decent chance that’s where the bodies came from, instead of representing bodies of clients awaiting burial.

Even so, this is pretty creepy and awful.

”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

A recently-passed Arizona Law has the City Council seeking to pass a citywide official boycott on the state of Arizona, forcing city pension funds and retirement funds to divest their holdings of Arizona companies, and restricting official travel from the State in response to their state criminalization of illegal immigration.

The council was quite adamant in opposition to the law, despite significant national support for the law. In addition to the formal boycott measures, which require further discussion and votes, the council unanimously presented a bill that would require that MPD not transmit arrest data to Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

’95/365′
courtesy of ‘Danilo.Lewis|Fotography’

Police made an arrest this morning, according to the Washington Post, related the murder of middle school principal Brian Betts, murdered in his home two weeks ago. The arrest, related to the use of his stolen credit card, places the first suspect in the case in custody. The woman’s name was not released by Montgomery County Police, nor were the charges, but a second warrant is out for the arrest of a man accused with Betts’ murder.

‘Harrington Signing Contract’
courtesy of ‘Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M’

There are some days that it has to suck to be Michelle Rhee. You’re busting your ass to line up methods to pay for the raises that you want to give to the good men and women working in the classroom in DC School, including doing some outside-the-box thinking to add non-profit stakeholders to the mix and then the DC CFO, who should be providing feedback all throughout the process, comes in and shits all over your parade, saying that the contract can’t stand.

That’s got to be a frustration that can barely be understood. Why wasn’t the CFO, or the CFO’s office inside the School District, cognizant of the problems that this new contract, and the methods for funding it, speaking up before the contract agreement was handled? Is this a place where Michelle Rhee got a little mavericky and didn’t do the due diligence? I don’t think that’s outside my impressions of her leadership style; this is the same chancellor who has said some pretty brash things in her tenure. Or is this a problem inside the DCPS-CFO relationship? The fight over whether or not there’s a surplus or deficit seems like something that would indicate that DCPS’ books don’t match up with the CFO’s books.

Regardless, this means that the contract cannot go in for approval to rank and file teachers, which is another setback for WTU’s George Parker’s tenure as president of the union, and as he faces an election before the end of next month, it’s going to be a priority for him to get the contract done before he can face his membership.

If you work in Dupont Circle near 18th and Connecticut odds are you heard a loud thud not too long ago. My co-workers and I looked out our window to see that a giant duct fell off the side of a building on the corner of N St NW and Connecticut so yous truly went to investigate.

It appears a duct vent connected to the 1800 Cafe located on N St came crashing down this afternoon and totaled 1800 Cafe owner Mike Choi’s car. The duct also crushed the glass of his father’s windshield. Both cars were located in their usual parking spaces in the alley behind the cafe.

No one was hurt.

More photos after the page break. Continue reading →

‘National Zoo – Resting Her Head – 12-30-09’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

Sadly, the news from the National Zoo this morning is that Mei Xiang was not pregnant with a new younger sibling to now-absent Tai Shan. The Panda pregnancy process is fairly opaque, even with trained veterinarians involved, and pseudo-pregnancies are the norm with these creatures. There will be no Butterstick II: Electric Bugaloo, for which we are all quite sad. Bad pandas are cute as buttons. Adult pandas? Meh.

The Panda enclosure opens again this morning, if you wanted to let Mei Xiang and Tian Tian know your feelings on the matter.

Stupid welfare pandas.
Continue reading →