Running for BOD and Southwest Modernism

Ok, we are 4 days into the campaign and things are getting NASTY!  The old man (CF) has decided he doesn't have to follow the rules set down by election committee because I think he can't remember them.  So far he has published a campaign flyer with the logo of Harbour Square in a prominent position and posted on the community bulletin board.  He has also publicly admonished me for "electioneering" at the gatehouse...which is not against the rules.

The election committee has been decimated because the only non-board member has resigned saying that her job finished after the candidates' forum.  The candidates forum went fairly well.  Although there were 10 candidates, everyone got their say.  The moderator kept statements to 3 minutes and questions and answers were kept to one minute each. Most questions were for all the panelists so there was a pass the microphone down the line kind of procedure   There was also a groundswell of hope for community involvement and openness of governance that were 2 of my main planks.  The 3 standing board members had their feet held to the fire more than once.  Only once was really wrong information given to the public by a panel member. He was corrected in due course by both audience and other panelists. (Guess who?)

Tonight we have our informal "meet and greet" where alcohol meets politics   I hate this part.  Although I probably do better at this kind of thing where I can respond to inquiries instead of get up and sell myself, the personal interaction is painful for me.  I always feel so awkward and silly looking.  What do I do with my hands? Should I drink beer or wine?  Will my blood sugar plummet and make me stupid? What if no one wants to talk to me? My back is hurting and I have to stand all night, will I be able to keep a smile on my face? How do I correct the other guy's lies without making him look like a fool?

I just want to make this a better place to live  I want to make sure that the management is doing its job.  I want to make sure that the board is organized and professional and responsive to the community. I want to give everyone who wants to volunteer a chance to contribute. Is that naive?

Harbour Square was granted Historic Status today by the DC Historic Preservation Review Board.  In their comments, they stated they would like to establish Southwest Modernist District. After hearing a lecture on Tuesday evening by speakers Richard Longstreth, of George Washington University, and Todd Ray, of Studio Twenty Seven Architecture, I feel the significance of our neighborhood deserves that designation.
Did you know this was the first planned integrated housing in the United States? Beyond that the areas of openness combined with mixed high-rise and low-rise buildings make it unique. It was a major laboratory of modern architecture and landscape design in the 1960's.  According to Longstreth Southwest is the "fullest and richest manifestation of modernist design in the world." The only other intact area left is Lafayette Park in Detroit. Unfortunately, not everyone at Harbour Square agrees and that is going to be the next big fight.....Sigh.

Why I Run...How to Campaign

It is that time of year again.  Harbour Square Elections are just around the corner.  I have decided to run for the Board of Directors for the 3rd time since I moved in in the fall of 2008. Why do I continue to expose myself to this kind of exquisite abuse? I have been asking myself this question all week.  I need to come up with my campaign slogan and get my letter written to the membership this weekend if I stand any kind of chance and yet my thoughts are still so muddled and confused.

I did choose my business card logo. I have been introducing myself and handing them out at the gatehouse in the evenings this week.  I have 3 owls on a branch.  I guess because I will always be watching and thinking. But that is as far as I have gotten.  Maybe if I think out loud I can make some sense of why I want to do this thing.

I know what I do NOT want.  I do not want more of what we have had for the last 2 years.  We have had a board of directors that has thrived in secrecy and absolute power.  They have abolished all volunteer committees and taken over all functions of our once thriving and cooperative cooperative.  No longer is there a feeling of consensus building and community.  All we have is fear and mistrust.  We live in a prison like atmosphere where a few, very few, rule the roost like a fox guarding the hen house. The management has driven off any kind or well meaning employee and all the rest must report any exchange with a resident to the management or be reprimanded.

Even though we are located in the District of Columbia, we were incorporated in Delaware  so our Board insists we don't need to follow the laws of either State or District.  They are a rouge entity unto themselves. They hold executive sessions where no minutes are kept and important decisions are made that will affect our coop for years to come. For instance they voted to back the waterfront development in a secret meeting   They also negotiated the contract with the management company in secret with the terms and prices kept secret from the board who was asked to vote on the contract with out the terms being know to all but the President. No copies of the contract were available for review by anyone.  The board also regularly has sessions that constitute a quorum where business is conducted that are not announced and business is conducted that have no minutes kept even though both Delaware and DC law say this is not right.

What I do want to have is a cooperative that is based on open meetings that adhere to the letter of the law. I want to have a board that welcomes input from the owners and incorporates that input into every decision. I want to be a member of the board that does my research to be knowledgeable about every issue that the board is confronted with. I would hope that instead of getting the board books on Friday before a meeting, we would get an informational book at the Tuesday working session the week before the board meeting. I would like to see more owners attend the working sessions and have break out groups where group participation could take advantage of the great wealth of knowledge we have here at Harbour Square. It could be known as brainstorming night where  no idea would be too off the wall to be considered. If it is good enough for the Army, surely it will work for us.

I am a member of CAI (Community Associations Institute), I have worked as a facilitator for the Army Family Team Building Program, I have written constitutions and bylaws for organizations ranging from Officers' Wives' groups to bringing churches current with state law, I have read and understand the DC and Delaware laws governing the common interests and ownership of real estate.

Basically, we all just want to live our lives and be left alone. Too many rules can bankrupt a community.  Look at the case in Fairfax's Olde Bellehaven community.

Feud over sign could force Fairfax's Olde Belhaven to sell square 

 All that happened over 2 inches on a sign.  I don't want that to happen to Harbour Square. With some of the shenanigans that our current and past 2 year's board have pulled, there have been distinct opportunities for exactly this kind of action to have happened here. With 6 openings on the board due to resignations and departures, Harbour Square has a  unique opportunity to go a different direction. We have got to go forward into the future.  Our best assets are our grounds, our roof, and our people. Although the new landscape master plan is a beginning, in past years we have neglected our grounds, squandered our roof , and lost a bunch of people. Let's not continue.

Field Mouse on the 8th Floor?

Yesterday I was reading my email when a little brown something caught my eye. I looked over to the pillows by my air vent and saw a field mouse moving with purpose toward the water container I had placed there to try and get some moisture in the air. I saw Miss Mouse ( I always anthropomorphize animals I see) just as she saw me.  Our eyes locked and she scurried back around the leg of the coffee table, under the writing desk, behind The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and disappeared behind my Grandmother's shapely divan. I got up to look for her but she had vanished as quickly as she had appeared. 

Where had she come from? Where had she gone? Had she come in the day before when I had left the patio door in the next room open for some time while I was watering the plants? But if she had, how would she have gotten to the eighth floor?  Had she been living all this time in my Christmas tree? It is now that I must confess that I have not yet taken down my gorgeous tree. It has petrified in place with it's all red decorations that are entirely appropriate for view until Valentine's Day. 

Then I got this horrible thought; she was living in the bottom drawer of the linen chest.  She was living in the drawer that I hadn't been able to open since I moved into the apartment over 4 years ago. She probably had a lovely nest with her babies and had lived there for years and for some reason she had just come out yesterday because it was such a dismal dark day that she had been confused into thinking it was night. She must be subsisting on the bird food that is thrown out by Franny and Zooey, the birds, with their messy habits. If I were to keep the bird detritus clean, I would have to be on 24 hour duty. As it is, I am doing good to sweep up once a day. I bet Miss Mouse has a deal with Missy Lu and Moonbeam that she won't bother them if they don't bother her. After I saw her, I took Moonbeam, the cat over to where she had run. Moonbeam just sniffed and looked at me like,"So what do you want me to do?" Missy Lu, the dog, was laying on the divan watching the whole thing take place. She never moved a muscle.

Anyway, I immediately called the Harbour Square Management office and reported my sighting.  They promised to get right back to me. This being Harbour Square and the fact that our Maintenance scheduling has been taken over by a machine, I was given an appointment for resolution of a week from yesterday ( 6 February).  I guess mice in the building are no big deal to HS Management. I found out about my scheduling from a form email I received late in the afternoon.  I wish that Dolores, the wonderful lady who used to handle maintenance issues, was still here. I guess I will have to handle this problem myself. A good night's sleep always clarifies issues. So this morning I decided I would have to get the bottom drawer out of the linen chest. 

The linen chest had originally been the changing table for my son, Luciano. I found it in a second hand store in  Lawton, Oklahoma in the spring of 1982. It came covered in multiple layers of ugly paint but it was just the right height to change diapers and had 2 wide drawers and 2 small drawers at the top. I got it cheap, cheap, cheap. I used Formby's Paint and Poly Remover to get the paint off because it was supposed to be all natural and gentle for a pregnant person to use.  It turned out to be the best thing I could have done.  It turned out to have been a early American Cherry piece with inlay of a lighter wood and is probably one of my most important pieces. I always thought if Antiques Road show came here, I would take it to be appraised. But time has not been kind to the changing (linen) chest on four spindly legs. It got worm wood when we took it to Germany.  One of it's legs got broken on the move from Kansas to Oklahoma. The final indignity came on the 18th  and final move from 2038 Pierce Mill Rd NW, DC to here.  The bottom drawer got jammed in so tight  that I couldn't get it out.

This morning, I determined that I had to get that drawer out so I could see if Miss Mouse was nested there.  First, I had to remove the top two smaller drawers. That was simple.  I placed them on the Chinese bed in the next room.  Then I got the middle wide drawer out and put it in the other room. The middle drawer is the same size as the bottom drawer. It is 37 3/8" across and 15" wide and 5" deep. Full of table cloths it was no mean feat to pull it out of the case. I accomplished it with some exertion   There would be no way I would be able to get the bottom drawer out with the linens in place. Fortunately., the divider was partially gone. I could  remove the remaining piece and see that Miss Mouse had not built a nest in the bottom drawer.  In a way, I was kind of disappointed. I remember as a kid finding a mouse nest in the kitchen drawer at the farm and how upset my mother was.  Would I have been as upset to find Miss Mouse this morning? Now my job became just another menial housekeeping job.

Later this afternoon, the Orkin guy came and decided that the mouse came from the air vents in the building and that mice are probably all over the place. Great...now I am breathing mouse and will probably get Hanta virus.  And I thought my biggest problem was learning how to upload pictures to my blog.

Testimony in Opposition of SW Waterfront Development at Zoning Commission

Opposition to SW Waterfront Case No. 11-03

I would like to thank the Zoning Board for this opportunity to testify in opposition to the proposed development on the SW Waterfront.  I am not anti-development I am just against this development as it is stated in the currently proposed PUD I.

I am a resident of Harbour Square Cooperative, Inc. I moved here 3 years ago from Columbia Heights, another area of the city that has been developed beyond its capacity to handle the number of people, buildings, and traffic that has been dropped there.  In the beginning, we were so hopeful and trusted the developers to do the right thing: to build great buildings, move traffic, and make living there a great experience.  We were naïve and sorely disappointed. The area is an urban nightmare with high crime, horrible traffic, and ugly buildings.

I moved to SW and Harbour Square because of the serenity and beauty of the midcentury architecture and landscaping.  Chloetheil Woodward Smith designed Harbour Square. She also was the architect for Capitol Park I and II and Waterside Apartments and Townhomes.  Her forte was integrating pastoral settings with large apartment blocks and townhouses focused on bodies of water. She was always drawn to the water and in conjunction with landscape architects, Dan Kiley and Hideo Sasaki, designed award winning gardens like Harbour Square’s reflecting pool (Kiley-Illus.1) and Waterside Park along the Washington Channel (Sasaki-illus.2) that the developer wants to obliterate.

Views were also important to Chloetheil Woodward Smith. There is a picture of the current waterfront from my apartment below (illus. 3).  It is vibrant with activity every hour of the day and night. I think it is beautiful. It was designed by the firm of Smith and Assoc. The current developer has referred to it as ugly and underutilized.  Perhaps if all the plans Miss Smith designed had been carried out, it wouldn’t be quite as stark today as it has become. She designed a place to gather and shop.  She even designed a “Ponte Vecchio” type of bridge that was begun in the late 1950’s and intended to house restaurants and shops but never came to fruition (illus. 4.) What we are left with is the base of that bridge; brutal and plain.

Now the new developers come in and make grand pronouncements about huge buildings and what the neighborhood needs, but once again they don’t live here.  They have barely visited here.  They say they have had hundreds of meetings but with whom? Is it like Columbia Heights all over again?  They talk to people who will agree with them or people who want something from them.  But do they want to talk to the 16,000 or so regular people who live and work and fight the traffic and walk to the fish market and run by the water and want another grocery store? Do they consider our elderly women who love to sit in the breeze at the aforementioned Waterside Park?  Or about how great it is to be able to walk the lower promenade with your child on a tricycle and not have to worry about being run over by a car?

Alleys of 25 feet do not a grand vista make and there are too many unanswered questions in this submission to make me comfortable with endorsing it. A veggie stand once a week is not going to make up for buildings that will block my view of the Washington monument or taking away the sun at 3pm on a winter’s day. Please have them review Chloetheil Woodward Smith’s original plan at the Library of Congress (Smith & Associated Architects Architectural Drawing Archive-Waterfronts-Washington(DC) 1950-1980-Library of Congress) and come back to you with a more humane plan with current residents and buildings in mind.