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.

New Year, New Inauguration, New Feeling

I was waiting for the new year to really get started in my new discipline of writing every day.  I have been doing very well with the twitter regimen.  I tired to write something relevant about my southwest DC community everyday last year.  Even though I wasn't always all that relevant, I did manage to put down a thought or two in 140 characters or less every day.  But Twitter is really a mind killer for writers.  Distilling thoughts to such a fine point, makes the creative juices just dry up after that 140 characters.  My mind is now reduced to the 140 character sound bite. I no longer seem capable of thinking past a certain number of letters to expand on my thought in any relevant way.  Even as I type this I am unconsciously counting the characters.

The other thing that has really bummed me out about my blog is the fact that everyone now has darling pictures and/or sketches to illustrate what they are writing about.  No longer can a person just bare their soul with the written word.  Now we must entertain with cute illustrations and pictures of our surroundings.  I still am having trouble learning how to text pictures I take on my phone.  How can I be expected to upload pictures to a blog or make drawings that I then scan into the computer and upload?

I must say I was totally relieved when President Obama was re-elected in November.  I was one of the few in my family who was happy about the outcome of the elections but I know he is what is best for the country at this time.  I am not naive enough to think that the President is the one who really runs the country.  He is just the one who stands at the head of the country. People look to him for leadership. I personally like his calm manner and steady deliberate way.  He will have to contend with a Congress that was elected from a Gerry-rigged country that sent a majority Republican Congress to Washington from the same counties that sent the President here.  It is a real recipe for disaster, unless....those representatives represent the wishes of the people and not the rhetoric of their party. I think the chances they will do that is slim.

The Inauguration is always a new beginning and I volunteered to work this time as I did in 2009. I was just as excited as I had been when I stood on the Mall in 2009 from 4am until after noon and heard President Barack Hussein  Obama take the oath of office for the first time.  This year I was assigned the Commander in Chief's Inaugural Ball.  I was to be on Access Control and make sure only the right people went the right places.  To get the gig, I had to fill out a long detailed questionnaire online.  I also had to attend a training and walk-through at the convention center where the ball was to take place.  I had to report several hours before the ball began to receive my credentials and final assignment  Everything was very secret and last minute supposedly for security reasons. There is one reason I think it is because they didn't know what the heck they were doing.  At no time during any training, check-in, or before credentialing, did anyone ask for identification, ask me any identifying questions, or in any other was identify that I was the person who had applied for the job or taken the training. I COULD HAVE BEEN ANY JOE BLOW TERRORIST ROAMING FREE IN THE CONVENTION CENTER WITH FREE ACCESS TO THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT. Fortunately, I wasn't and neither were any of the other 10,000 or so volunteers who the Presidential Inauguration Committee let loose on the public on Monday.....but it does give one pause. Thank God for the Secret Service.

                                                            The view from my balcony

So, I would like to be more active in 2013. I would like to bring a few illustrations to the table. I would like to finally settle my personal conundrum. I hope I can help my community.

DCmud - The Urban Real Estate Digest of Washington DC: Hoffman-Madison Details Second-Stage Plans for Southwest Waterfront

     This was in DC MUD this morning and I can't 
     let it go by with out comment. 

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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.

Speaker Boehner working to solve financial crisis?

Last night I went over to the only place in Southwest DC where you can get a drink and dinner on the water, Cantina Marina.  It is a lovely neighborhood place where a everyone gathers and bring dogs, kids, and parents to socialize, eat, and unwind.  All types come there and when you walk down that ramp, rank and fame are usually left behind.  Last night all of that was blown out of the water.

About 8:45, the manager of the Gangplank marina and his assistant came in and said that Speaker Boehner was on his way.  No big deal, he came often when a certain bartender was on duty and sat down with the rest of us around the big square bar.  I thought it was kind of odd he would be coming last night when all the leaders were supposed to be working day and night on the debt ceiling.  Then it turned out that it was not just the Speaker on his way.  It was a whole boatload (literally) who docked on the Celebrity after nearly running into the crowded dining deck.   In the meantime, a couple of secret service looking guys came in a swept the place looking very official.

 Then all of a sudden it was just crazy.  Everyone who had been upstairs were told they had to vacate immediately, even if they were in the middle of a meal. They started coming down and were trying to get a table or space at the bar and service.  Then crowds of people started coming in off the boat and down the ramp.  They were mostly old goats and youngish girls and where shown upstairs.  At some point, Boehner arrived surrounded by a phalanx of suited men and a couple of women.  The guards then withdrew to the front of the building.  After the crowd arrived, no one downstairs could get service to save their souls until everyone upstairs had been fully covered. The staff at Cantina did yeoman service to try and cover the influx of people and the now less than satisfied regulars.

To add insult to injury, when I left about 45 minutes later, out front there was his large SUV suburban parked blocking the handicapped access from the restaurant.  The engine had obviously been running the entire time because there was quite a puddle of water from the condenser. The six goons just laughed when asked to turn off the motor.  "The no idling law does not apply to the Speaker of the House," I was told.

So I guess, it was bad enough that they played that little baseball game last night. I guess the reason they couldn't make it to meetings this morning with the President is because they all had heavy heads from their big party last night after the game.  I live right above Cantina.  They were there well past midnight. The speaker is really taking things seriously.  He really takes DC law seriously. Maybe he was just prematurely celebrating what he is anticipating to be a victory.

I am now the other woman

I have now become the other woman in my own marriage.  It seems kind of funny only it isn't. I'm not laughing.

Sold down the river by the National Capitol Planning Commission and Commission on Fine Arts

According to our Friends at the National Planning Commission and the US Commission on Fine Arts, nothing in SW  Washington is important enough to save from their great vision.On 2 April 2009 they adopted a plan that will, among other things, make the SW Waterfront the means to "transform federal precincts surrounding the National Mall into vibrant destinations and to improve the physical and visual connections between the city,the National Mall,and the waterfront while achieving the highest levels of livability and sustainability incentral Washington" all at the expense of the SW Waterfront.

The plan is to "transform the Southwest Rectangle into a distinguished and pedestrian friendly workplace, a cultural hub,and an exciting and welcoming visitor destination." I kind of think that already discribes the SW neighborhood that I live in. I can walk by the water, watch the boats, see and talk with my neighbors and people from all over the world.  We have recently reopened Arena Stage and several thousand workers come to Fort McNair and city offices on 4th St SW each day.  According to the plan they would like to add tens of thousands of workers, thousands of residents and unknown numbers of visitors that would arrive on enhanced streets and bridges to form "multiple linkages" that would span the channel from P and N streets"that improve access" to Potomac Park.

This plan is being used as the basis for the PUD filed on 10 Feb 2011by PN Hoffman et all for their plan to develope the SW Waterfront with their wall of 11 and 12 story buildings and the elimination of Water Street,even though NCPC has just begun the first of their 10 planned studies on the Monumental Core Framework Plan.  The Washington Canal and Channel Study was deemed to be number 4 in priority.

I think this raises enough questions that the closing of Water Street should be put on hold until the Washington Canal and Channel Study has been completed. This plan's first objective is to celebrate the city as a symbol.  "Washington's iconic urban form and skyline are recognized around the world as symbols of American democracy."  If Water Street is closed and 10 tall buildings are built there, our skyline will be unrecognizable fom the water, from the land, or from the air.