white knuckled wanderer

The Appellate Court Judge on Eric Volz

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:25:00 +0000

One of the appellate judges who ruled Eric Volz should be released from prison was interviewed as part of the package on the Today Show earlier this week. He looked at the evidence and clearly saw that there was no possible way that Eric could have possibly committed the crime he was convicted of, ruling that he should be immediately released.

Unforunately, if past record serves as an indicator, he'll probably lose his job or began to face threats from the public due to the anger and propaganda surrounding the trial, which is a shame. As my brother said yesterday: you do the right thing, and sometimes it hurts you.

Too bad the original judge caved to the massive local and media pressure in the original trial in which she discarded the evidence in favor of the "easier" road of conviction. If only she had half the gumption of this man.

Watch the entire 6-minute package from the Today Show. (Video not embedded)

And as always, http://www.friendsofericvolz.com

Free Eric Volz!

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:24:00 +0000

I haven't posted in a long while, but I need to get some traffic going to Will Hinton's open letter to President Bush, urging his involvement in freeing Eric Volz, an American held illegally in prison in Nicaragua, from prison immediately. His conviction was overturned earlier this week, but Nicaraguan authorities are holding him in jail without cause or merit under the law.

Free Eric Volz!

Learn more at www.friendsofericvolz.com

Amazon still sitting on hands

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:39:00 +0000

A full 10 days after placing an order for 4 in-stock items, direct from Amazon, and receiving a shipping message 6 days ago, I still get this message when I try to track the package:

And you know why? Because they haven't shipped it yet, even though it says they have. So Amazon: I'm not signing up for your silly prime service. So quit intentionally delaying my orders if you want me to come back. There are plenty of other options these days.

Amazon: Intentionally slowing down free shipping?

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:55:00 +0000

We'll know in a few days, but I suspect the answer to be "yes". I ordered a few cd's last, all in stock, and all directly from Amazon and not a third party. As I usually do, I got the free Super Saver Shipping since the order qualified. I don't expect to receive the order in two days or anything, but I certainly expect it to be shipped as soon as the items are pulled and ready.

I made the order on October 19th, and it didn't ship until October 23rd, even though all the items were in stock. But even now, when I login to check the status of the order and click "track your package," a message comes up that says "tracking information not available at this time." I may be way off base, but I suspect that it hasn't been shipped yet and is simply on hold in a warehouse somewhere, since the estimated delivery date is October 31 - November 6th.

Seriously, 12 days at the earliest to deliver 4 in-stock cd's, when I'm in DC and likely near a distribution center of some kind? I'm guessing if I ever do get detailed tracking info that I'll find out that the package did not ship on the 23rd, but likely several days after that.

There's no form of shipping on the lowest rung, UPS, DHL, FedEx, or even USPS, that takes 8 days to make it to a destination that's not hidden in North Dakota or something. Once it's shipped, there's no reason it would take less than 3-4 business days to get here, unless the CD's were ONLY in a warehouse in Seattle. And even then, UPS usually still makes it cross-country in five days.

I've used Super Saver Shipping for years now, and I suspected that Amazon is intentionally delaying their free shipping to entice customers to sign up for their new Amazon Prime shipping service; a great deal if you order 9-10 or more times a year.

Turns out I'm not the only one who has noticed the drop in service:

http://www.epinions.com/content_289099452036
http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx?14@@.3c8c1fa5/3
http://michael1111.blogspot.com/2007/01/amazon-sucks.html

and most damning of all, their own customer forum

Amazon, if I'm way off base here, I'll delete this post. But I seriously doubt my order is even in the mail.

I'll be ok. Not a big deal, but this is seriously annoying.

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:32:00 +0000

I nearly dropped the paper when I read this yesterday:

Fred Smoot, less than a role model already (Minnesota Sex Boat scandal), perhaps uttered the dumbest quote of the NFL year so far after the Redskins close win last Sunday. Smoot, apparently forgetting about some guy named "Mike Vick" for the moment, made a less-than-fortunate analogy to the Redskins' ability to finish teams off:

Later, cornerback Fred Smoot grumbled in the locker room that he and his teammates could not keep allowing these games to unravel. "Finish it off" is a phrase the Washington players often use to describe games in which they appear to be in control early. They had come close to not finishing "it off."
"Once you got the dog down you got to kill it," Smoot said.

Uhhh...Fred Smoot everyone! Let's give him a hand!

Moving update

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:03:00 +0000

I never thought we'd be this far along after just four days, but we're nearly finished moving.

Courtesy of our gracious new landlords, they let us start moving "some stuff over" on Monday. I don't think they knew we were going to move absolutely everything over during the course of the week, but that's what we've done. After Tuesday, we had piles of stuff in the center of each room, but after he painted the living room on Tuesday, I figured that room was done anyway. So I started organizing and putting things where they go.

Since Monday, we've filled up my truck 8 times, and a friend's car trunk twice on Tuesday when we had help from friends. Not only did this save us the cost of having to rent a moving truck to do it in one day, the place is 3/4 unpacked and settled. Every night this week (except Monday when I just moved everything from the walls), I've taken the Bride back home and then biked back over to arrange the bedroom (Tuesday), arrange and unpack the living room (Wednesday), and put wardrobes together (Wednesday and Thursday).

Wednesday and Thursday, we just took one load in the truck over and then spent the rest of the time unpacking and organizing.

So now we have left: Couch, bed, dresser, dressing table, baker's rack, kitchen table, and bathroom stuff. That's basically it. So instead of a full 14 hour day on Saturday in the heat of packing an entire truck, moving it all into the apartment, and then unpacking in the midst of chaos, we're going to have 2 hours and 2-4 truckloads of big stuff left. That's it.

This is totally the way to move.

I'd post some pictures I took the other night. I found the camera after all, but now I can't find the cable to hook it up!

If we can get some help, we'll move everything but the bed tonight and sleep in a nearly empty house. We have Labor Day off on Monday, and up until yesterday, I figured we were going to be busy unpacking and recovering all day on Monday and not able to enjoy it.

Dude, we're going to be DONE on Monday.

But we might be recovering. Last week (coding and launching the new blog) and then this one at work (three speeches) have been crazy, and I haven't gone to sleep before 1:30 a single day this week after working at the new place late every night.

I think I'm about as tired as I have ever been. I'm totally going on fumes at this point. I'm not actually sure how I'm still sitting upright and getting work done at all.

I'll have some pictures once I find a cord. Later!

I'll be on the lookout for a pony-tailed Scottish guy with a big sword

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:43:00 +0000

Man, I meant to post this the day it happened, but unfortunately I was actually working at work, so I couldn't. I was telling my friend Dan this story this afternoon, and it reminded me to post it. There's going to be some colorful language here, so turn away if you don't want to read it (ahem family members)

I'm sitting in Farragut Square with my friend Kasey last Thursday eating lunch. There are a few interesting characters who hang out in the park all day long, from the hordes of bike couriers, to the sleeping homeless guys, and occassionally the severely crazy people.

There's a woman I've seen there before, usually talking to herself hanging out in the park. Well, I'm in the middle of a conversation with Kasey, but I see her making a beeline for us from across the park with her eyes fixed on me. So I'm listening or talking one, but I'm totally distracted with this woman walking up to us.

And she stops right next to us, bends down closely, looks severely pissed off, waves a finger in my face, and says emphatically:

Don't you EVER tell me to settle down again! If you do, I will find a FUCKING Highlander to come after you! Do you hear me?

-speechless-

Kasey and I sorta just stared at her dumbfounded, and tried not to laugh as she waited for us to concur that we understood the ramifications of ever telling her to settle down.

I for one, am going to be on the lookout for this guy on my six'o clock for the next few weeks:

The moving has begun

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:36:00 +0000

Well, I should be in bed now, but I have too much rolling around my brain. Measurements, boxes, furniture alignments, and all that's left won't stop cycling through my gray matter. The moving began on Monday. I guess it really began last Saturday when we started packing what we could fit in a corner of Meridian Place. Our new landlords were kind enough to let us start moving in early, and it's made all the difference in how this process has worked out.

The old tenants moved out the first week of August, and then our landlords went out of town 'til the 11th. I asked if we could get in a day or two early, and it turns out we got a week instead. Mr. Landlord is still painting the walls to make things look fresh, and handling a few other things, but we started taking our stuff over last night.

I tell you what, moving things over in batches during 75 degree evenings sure beats the experience we had last year. Hottest day of the summer, moving in the middle of the day...good night that was terrible.

Last night we started moving, just the two of us, and we got 3 full loads in the truck over, which was a lot of stuff! I did the last load by myself, and it was late enough that parking was terrible here so I had to ferry it halfway down the block to the truck. All our stuff basically got piled up in the center of the rooms over in Mt.P so the walls could still be painted.

Here's what it looked like with the other folks stuff in it:

We'll send pictures after this Saturday when we get all moved in and all.

After last night's tiring work by ourselves, tonight we had help. So thanks Laura, Randall, Yan, and Daniel for all of the great help. You are all good friends and you gave selflessly. We appreciate it.

When we suffered through the moving by ourselves when we got to DC, we comforted ourselves with the knowledge that we'd probably have some friends here by the time we moved again, so all that we brought in by ourselves, would be brought back out with the help of others.

Tomorrow night we're just going over with one load, maybe 2, and then beginning the process of putting things where they go now that walls are painted. We've got our IKEA wardrobes that we've got to put together, and lots of boxes to unpack. There's not a whole lot left to move before we're ready to really get all the way out of here. We'll be moving the bed, couch, and other big stuff over on Saturday, but hopefully finishing in time for the UGA vs. Okie State game later that evening.

Pictures to follow....

If I can find where I packed the camera.

The LA Times on Critical Mass

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:18:00 +0000

For those of you who may not know what it is, Critical Mass is a monthly (or other intervals) bike ride by bike advocates. I took part in one back in Athens on my old BMX bike. Bike riders bike en masse, flaunting traffic regulations, blocking traffic, and doing everything possible to draw attention to themselves and the need for better bike facilities and conditions on our roads. Now, to be fair, not all Critical Mass rides across the country are as rude as the ones portrayed in this story from the LA Times, but many of them are.

As a biker, and one who is concerned about safety and accesibility of bikers in The District and beyond, I can't say I've ever thought these rides were a good idea. I know some would argue that when the pendulum has swung far to one side of the spectrum (designing for cars at all costs), overcompensation is required to swing the pendulum far back the other direction so it recenters.

While I was reading this story this morning, I thought of this analogy:

There once was (or is) a popular perception that all the major news and media outlets, especially network and cable television news, had a leftist or liberal slant. So along came Fox News. They came up with a nifty slogan—"Fair and Balanced". Which would be great, except they want to have it both ways.

They want to be known as the unbiased, fair, accurate answer to the perceived leftist slant, which they say has no business in journalism and isn't fair to viewers. But rather than actually living up to "We Report, You Decide", they clearly skew to the Right instead. So which is it? Fair and balanced, or "recentering the discussion by tilting the other direction? You can't be both. I wouldn't mind FN so much if they just came out and said, "hey, the playing field is unlevel, so we're just going to a news organization with a slant that serves as a mouthpiece for the Right, cus, y'know, they don't really have one out there."

I feel like Critical Mass does a similar thing. Yes it raises awareness about the car-centric view of roads, possibly like the initial discussion about Fox News got people talking about the bias of networks. (It sure did when I was in journalism school.) But at the end of the day, I think Critical Mass does more harm than good by escalating the issue (roads made for all users) into an open hostile polemicized "battle." And then they become exactly what they're protesting: One small user group dominating the roadway at the expense of the other.

A quote from the story illustrates this well: "For 29 days a month, cars call the shots. It's Auto Mass," said Kate McCarthy, a member of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. "But for a few hours of one day, we turn the tables. We take the streets back."

And in doing so in such a fashion where traffic rules don't apply, rudeness rules the day, and the needs of others fall by the wayside, they take what should be a reasoned discussion and devolve it into an oversimplified "Us vs. Them" battle that does no one any good.

I'd imagine that if I was a regular motorist in DC, and was on the fence about the need for more money for sharrows, bike lanes, or other bike facilities, this sort of action could certainly sway me against the bikers. It's self-serving and completely un-productive. More bikers organizing (like with WABA here) and positively reinforcing their message through events like Bike to Work Day and targeted lobbying of officials and business leaders will lead to much more of a productive outcome than pissing everyone off with blatant disrespect.

In the story, several of the riders complain about the perception that motorists have of them: that they're riding a child's toy and that they should grow up. And the biker respond with a monthly childish hissy fit, flaunting the rules that they say the drivers should have to obey. That'll teach em that you're not children!

If you're not willing to follow the rules on one day out of 30, why would you follow them on the other 29? And why shouldn't the cars box you in and smash their car into your bike for no reason if you do the same?

Thumbs down, Critical Mass.

Going hungry so the cars keep running

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:30:00 +0000

Will ethanol save us from climate change, reduce our dependence on foreign oil (or oil period), and allow us to keep living the exact same way?

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests.

Here's to hoping this story will soon shift from lefty type publications easily dismissed by segments of society and into the Newsweeks of the world. He may be too alarmist for some of you, but James Kunstler has been all over this one for years now.

As a Pennsylvania farmer put it to me in February: "It looks like we're going to burn up the last remaining six inches of Midwest topsoil in our gas-tanks." Friedman's statement also ignores the facts that running cars on ethanol would make no material difference in the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, or that ethanol is 20 percent less efficient than gasoline, meaning we would have to produce and use that much more of the stuff just to stay where we are.

"And yooouuu are......?"

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:54:00 +0000

AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin

"Hi, I'm new first-baseman Mark Teixeira. I just got here from Texas"

"Hi, I'm...uh....(mumble)-baseman Scott Thorman. Sit here, I was just getting up to catch my plane to Richmond."

-awkward silence-

Tex arrived during the seventh inning, in uniform after taking BP in the tunnel, and was greeted with a nice ovation. Wish I coulda been there. At least I'll get to see 'em three times in September against the Nats

As for how it felt walking out of the tunnel for his first time in the building as a Braves player?

"Once I found out how to get down there, it was nice," Teixeira said. "It was great just walking out there. I came out, the bases were loaded, and we scored some more runs. It was just nice being out there, and when the fans realized I was here and gave me a nice ovation, it felt great."

Street Mayors: A unique bit of city life

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:53:00 +0000

Shortly after we moved to Meridian Place, we met a great man named Matthew, who lives down closer to 14th Street. He's lived in the same rowhouse since the late 50's or early 60's, and saw everyone leave after the riots, and has witnessed the slow—and rapid—transformation of the neighborhood with the opening of the Green Line in 1999 and plenty of other factors.

Matthew has raised all his children in this house, and now has more grandchildren than he can count on two hands. Almost every morning, as I set out for work on my bike, I'm greeting with a wave and a "hey there, young man" as I wave back to Matthew sitting on his porch. He looks out for everyone on the street, knows most of the people who have been there for awhile by name, and knows the rest of the faces, probably.

The Bride blogged about Matthew shortly after we moved here. We heard stories from other friends of ours, including our pastor Glenn at GraceDC who said they have a "mayor" on his street as well. (Turns out its the same guy as this WaPo story - Outlaw) The first time they tried to have a package delivered to their house, he came over and politely notified them that no one on the street has any packages delivered directly to their house — he receives all of them. And he showed 'em where he had keys hanging to nearly every house on the block, so everyone knew where they had a spare when locked out or could ask him to water the plants and feed the dog. His mayoralty is a little more involved than ours. Apparently, this phenomenon is not uncommon all over the city—of a longtime resident who looks after things for everyone.

On the many streets in D.C. full of rowhouses and townhomes, rather than tall buildings with doormen like other big cities, these de facto street supes are a welcome addition, making many of our neighborhoods great places to live.

The Bride sent me this story from the Washington Post about one such Mayor near Stanton Park on Capitol Hill.

In a city of workaholics who leave home early and return late, many neighborhoods have their version of William Outlaw -- or would like to. The 80-year-old retiree accepts packages for 130 Capital Hill neighbors when they are not home during delivery hours. His practice is so well established that delivery services often head directly to his door without stopping elsewhere on the block. Some neighbors call Outlaw the unofficial mayor of the street, not only for his grass-roots post office but also for the way he volunteers to clean sidewalks, check on homes while neighbors are vacationing and do other odd chores...His name is passed like a secret treasure among grateful neighbors, so much so that real estate agents have touted him as a selling point to prospective buyers.

Read the rest of the story in the Washington Post

Well, if you've gotta cut the neighborhood in half...

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:29:00 +0000

...you might as well make good use of typically underutilized space. This is the area under the SE/SW freeway that cuts off the greater Navy Yard area (and greater SW) from the rest of 8th Street SE, Barracks Row, and Capitol Hill. I'm not sure how this came to be, but it's a great use of space that ordinarily just becomes parking or a haven for criminals and those who want to stay out of sight.

I was poking back through some old photos on Flickr, and I saw this photo from our self-guided alley tour we did of Capitol Hill awhile back.

Anyone local know how this got installed?

UnderpassBBall.JPG, originally uploaded by whiteknuckled.

The streets are filled with blood and crazy killers! Pictures at 11!

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:57:00 +0000

After working (in newspapers) in a tiny media market in middle america and dealing with patently unwatchable local news that even from time to time just read our stories on the air, I was ready to be back in a town where local television journalism was taken seriously and done with excellence.

This is not that town.

The local news here is generally terrible, and there are way too many anchors who talk in "anchor voice" which sounds like me trying to do a really bad imitation of a game show announcer.

Anyway, I noticed this sad story from my neighborhood over the weekend, where apparently a homeless guy got stabbed by someone on 14th Street. Upon opening the link, I was greeted with this "fantastic" image, since they didn't have any video or photos to correlate with the story.

ABC 7: In the future, if you don't have any corresponding pictures, we can do without the blood-filled graphic and "angry" knife-wielding hand, which was probably only Frank the Office Page who got handed a knife and told to "act like you're going to stab someone while we photograph your hand."

You stay classy, San Diego.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:03:00 +0000

The Bride and I went out to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens for the first time over the weekend. Good stuff. I don't want to steal her thunder, so I'll just have a brief view, but check out the video of the water on the lily pad. If you do go, now is the best to see the flowers in bloom, and going after a rain can result in a sight like this:

I'm Lucky. Stupid....but lucky

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:46:00 +0000

So last night we were headed back to our friend Jess's house in Columbia Heights following jazz in the sculpture garden, which is really a story in itself due the rain. I had all of our food and the blanket and stuff hanging on my bike, so I went home to drop it all off before biking over to meet The Bride and our friends Ben and Brooke who were walking over to Jess's

So at about 9:15 or so, I came by our rowhouse on Meridian, and laid my bike against the front steps, and went inside with the bags to set 'em down before coming right back outside to leave. So I'm inside for about 10-15 seconds, and I come outside, and as I'm coming up the basement steps, I don't see my bike wheel in front of the steps. "CRAP!"

I run up the steps, and my neighbor Josue sees me, looks at my face, and says "you just got your bike stolen, didn't you!"

He was walking up after parking his car and there was a guy walking up the street near our place. When he got to his house next door, he's going inside and sees the guy riding a bike across the street into the alley. Then I show my face, and he put 2 and 2 together.

We take off down to the alley on the S. side of Meridian place, look all the way to 14th, don't see him, and run around behind the building across the street. All this time, I have flip flops on and can barely keep 'em on running. We come back to the house, I grab shoes from inside, and we go to get in my truck and look through the neighborhood.

Josue and I both knew that whoever it was, they probably lived in the neighborhood, and the chances that they would bike it far away were unlikely. So we started driving around. After about 7-10 minutes, were getting ready to give up and head back. I'm coming south on Holmead, and right at Oak Street, there's a couple of kids on bikes turning onto Holmead towards us.

I see the first one, and can tell it's not mine by the shape of the handlebars. But as we get closer, the second one is DEFINITELY mine. So I swerve my truck in front of the kid as he turns north onto Holmead, so I block him in up against the curb.

He lays the bike down as Josue gets out of the truck and asks him something about "is that your bike." There are two couples walking by, and a lady sitting on her porch on the corner, so the kid just takes off up Holmead, leaving my bike on the side of the road. I grab it, and stick it in the back of my truck. The lady asks us, "did he steal that bike?" I said "yes", though I didn't know at the time that it wasn't the same guy who stole it. She said she knew him or something like that.

A cop came up pretty quick due to my truck parked basically across the road, we told him what happened, and he took off up Holmead to look for the kid.

After a few minutes, he came back and said he couldn't find him, and would I like to file a report. Josue says that neither of us could ID the guy who took it, the kid likely wouldn't be prosecuted anyway for receiving stolen property. I said there was no real point in filing a report, since I got my bike back, didn't get shot looking for it or confronting the thief, and we couldn't ID the guy who took it.

The cop said it was probably a crackhead or junkie of some kind who took it, which makes sense. It was an older guy, according to Josue, not a kid, and the cop said he probably biked around the corner and sold it for 10 bucks to the nearest 14-year-old and got his fix for the day. Jumping to conclusions, perhaps, but it makes sense.

Anyway, so despite being an idiot by leaving my bike outside, even for just 15 seconds, I managed to get it back within 15 minutes. He tossed off my bike lock and helmet, so I've gotta replace those today, but it's better than buying a new bike, eh?

The only other thing I really did lose is a convenient excuse to buy a new road bike, which I'd been thinking of doing since I'm still riding a 50 pound mountain bike to commute only. I guess I'll just have to save money for that instead.

Lake Mead goes down, grass comes out

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

One look at this startling picture from Lake Mead near the Hoover Dam, and you can see why Las Vegas has no future. This very interesting story from the NYT is about how Las Vegas and the Southern Nevada Water Authority are paying current residents to tear up their lawns and replace it with more sensible xeriscaping that uses little to no water, while also making new development grass-free, due to the massive water shortage that the region is facing (and won't end anytime soon).

According to the story, watering lawns and gardens represents 60% of the water usage in Las Vegas, which is actually more than what the casinos use on the Strip and in the grandiose founatins. Lake Mead is at 2/3 of its normal level, and with drought conditions persisting and not going away anytime soon, all of the new development out west that survives based on cheap land, cheap gasoline, abundant energy to air condition it 10 months of the year, and abundant water will soon come to a crashing halt.

On a related note, during the timeshare presentation last weekend we attended to pay for our weekend away, our very nice saleslady told us we should visit Vegas sometime on a vacation, because "the architecture was so wonderful. I mean, it's like you're really in Venice, or New York, or Paris".

-grimace-

Griffith Stadium in NW DC

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:57:00 +0000

(More photos added) I'll save all my yapping about this stadium for another post, but I wanted to show you some images I worked up yesterday on my lunch break.

Griffith Stadium was the home of the Washington Nationals, the Negro League Homestead Grays, and then the Washington Senators, from 1911 to 1965 when it was demolished without fanfare six years before the Senators left for Texas. It was a beautiful old park with crazy dimensions that had character oozing from its aged steel and concrete.

It basically sat on the site where Howard U Hospital is today, bordered by the alley north of U Street to the south, 5th Street NW to the east, W Street to the north (almost), and Georgia Ave to the west. There were about 4-5 rowhouses and one tree north of the U Street alley on 5th Street NW that the Nationals couldn't buy, and as a result, the centerfield fence juts right back into the outfield to compensate.

I've walked and biked the square, and I have yet to find any sort of plaque or marker commemorating the 70+ years of baseball played on the site (National ballpark actually sat east of this site, opened in 1892 and burned in 1911, leading to this place being built.)

It's a shame that the neighborhood could today feel like Wrigleyville if the park was still standing, with 5th Street as Sheffield and the U Street alley as Waveland Avenue. It wasn't as smooth a park as Wrigley, Comiskey, or Fenway, due in large part to the fact that it wasn't built mostly at once like Wrigley was. Griffith was just a lower deck for years before the second deck and outfield seats were added. The second deck didn't even really connect to the lower deck, so it would be a lot harder to buy cheap tickets and move up like you can at Nats games today!

I've decided to make it my personal mission to make sure that Cultural Tourism DC or some other DC entity recognizes this historic site with some sort of marker. I'm sure there's gotta be some other people out there like me that love baseball, baseball stadiums, and would love to see where Josh Gibson, Harmon Killebrew and others knocked the ball around a park in a DC neighborhood. I'll save my full "outrage" until I've thoroughly checked the area for some sort of marker, though I'm 99% certain there isn't one there.

I think it'd be a great thing for the neighborhood to memorialize and include in one of the Cultural Tourism walking tours, especially due to how the stadium fits into the African-American heritage of the greater U Street neighborhood, with the Grays using it as their "home away from home" for years.

Don't miss the note where Mickey Mantle's tape-measure homer landed back in the day. It was supposedly well over 500 feet, landing in the backyyard of 434 Oakdale, and significantly longer than the one he nearly hit over the RF roof at Yankee Stadium, or the one he hit over the seats in right-center at the Stadium.

Anyway, enjoy. Thanks to Google Earth and the power of the internets for the photos to make this sort of visualization possible. Click on any of them for a larger version

From the east, looking west/slightly northwest

From the southeast, looking almost directly northwest

From the northeast, looking to the southwest

From the east, looking west/slightly northwest. It's interesting to notice that the area was significantly more dense back when this picture was taken, which was the oldest aerial shot I could find of the stadium. There are few, if any, surface parking lots, and buildings fill out almost every block. I'm sure some of that is due to the riots, which were focused nearby at 14th and U street, but I'm sure some of that is the suburban-centric development mentality in the neighborhood over the last 30 years.

From the direct south, looking due north. Notice the rowhouses on U Street that are still there today, as well as a few of the ones on the corner of U and 5th that forced the outfield fence to jut back into play.

Same thing, just in black and white.

Check out:
• Baseball in Washington, D.C. by Frank Ceresi, Mark Rucker, Carol McMains
• And the always irreplacable Ballparks.com

For Sale

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:40:00 +0000

For Sale: One Michael Vick replica jersey, size medium. This jersey was a gift a few years ago, was lightly worn during football season only, has never lived up to its potential, and is now too embarassing to wear. $1 or best offer. Consider adding a "1" to either side of the 7 and having a highly-prized "Eric Newman" or "Kurt Quarterman" jersey.

Overheard: Delivery Envy

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:59:00 +0000

Overheard this morning while locking up my bike out front of my office on L Street:

FedEx guys are parked on the side of the street, and two guys sitting in the truck are chatting about all sorts of things right next to my bike. A UPS guy walks up with a package in hand to the open drivers' side door.

UPS Guy: "Man, I just want to know how I can get a job with FedEx....so I can sit around in the truck and talk all day. (Laughs)

14 years and 65 days later

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Well, after much chastising from my family that "my blog never has anything personal" on it anymore, I figured it was time for a post about something other than Columbia Heights, DC, or urban affairs and growth-related stuff. For the record, I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's book and he didn't pay me to write this.

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I'm not sure why I even started thinking about it several weeks ago, but for some reason it occured to me that this Christmas will mark 15 years since my dad died. I remember marking years as I've grown older....1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years....Once the shock subsided of processing a number as huge as 15, I recalled that I was 14 years old when it happened...leading me to start counting days in my head.

I was born in October 1978, and Dad died in December 1992. I was 14 years and 65 days old. Once I counted, I discovered that 14 years and 65 days since that day passed back in February. February 20 if you really want to know.

So more than 2 months after the fact, laying on my bed after midnight, my wife sleeping next to me, I came to the conclusion that I passed a tipping point: I had now lived longer without my father than I did with him. For the rest of my days, the time I possessed a father here on earth will always be smaller than the other half — even as that "half" slowly racks up days, weeks, and years, transforming from half to 2/3 and 3/4 and 5/6, capturing an ever larger share of life. And by that time, my two older brothers will have also joined me in the space following the tipping point. Mom, for better or for worse, has many years to go to reach such a point, but has certainly had the most difficult road — one that none of her sons understand. Even now as a married man, hers is a pain I can imagine but can't comprehend.

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What does all that mean? I don't really know. I don't think there's any great significance to the fact that I'm the first in my family to pass this point, but it is a tipping point nonetheless. I was the last to join the family, and therefore the first to personally pass this moment.

Is life somehow different now? I'm not really sure. For a guy who always remembers when "the day" in December rolls around, I didn't even realize this when it happened. I had to break out a calculator to see if "it" had even happened. ("Hmm, I don't feel different", he said)

But I still can't shake the feeling that it "matters" somehow — that there's something worth noting. So here I am.

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I meant to write about this weeks ago, but got pushed aside in the midst of other things. But last night, at my community group for Grace DC, I was the designated "chestnut". That sounds corny, I know, but it's one of the ways we get to know each other and push past the surface to get at what lies beneath. Once every 4-6 weeks or so, one person gets "roasted" — that is, they share whatever they want to share about themselves for the duration of the meeting, and everyone else asks questions. Nothing is really off limits, but the expressed purpose of this group is "community", which encompasses sharing that which may make us uncomfortable (and letting others care for our needs).

So before last night, I remembered I had a video of me giving my "testimony" (ugh, I hate that word) in 1996 during a youth event known as GoldRush that we hosted at our church. I hadn't watched it in probably 5 years since my friend Jonathan gave it to me after digging it out of the archives. In fact, The Bride had never even seen it before.

So rather than try to go back and try to remember what 1992-1995 was like, since dad's death was by far the emotional and spiritual touchstone and turning point for me, I brought the time machine known as the VCR over and showed this tape, using the 15 minutes of "17-year old Me" as a springboard for the rest of the story.

Other than it being slightly embarassing to watch myself, it reminded me of how central dad's death was in my life in those days. A day didn't go by that I didn't think of it or act out of the anger that resulted from it. Things are different now, though the grief is certainly still just as real. As my friend Ryan wrote in the prologue of his new album, I finally began to heed God's beautiful and seemingly upside-down advice: "Put down...all your weapons. Let me in...through your open wounds."

I guess that's really the signifiance of this "tipping point": It's not so much that I've lived longer "without" than "with", it's that I've been incorporating loss and grief into my life longer than than I was just receiving love and parenting. Which got me to thinking about grief...

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A friend from community group emailed me today to thank me for my candor and willingness to share something so personal and emotional last night, mentioning that a friend recently lost a parent and that it was good to hear a story of how God cared for one of his children and was a "father to the fatherless". I wrote her back while at work, and told her this:

I would say that the greatest lesson I learned about grief is this: We hear very often about grief as a process that you go "through", or that it's eventually something you get "over". What really happens, and what I hope was evident last night, is that grief is really a process of taking something terrible that happened and slowly but surely incorporating that into who you are.

I'll never be the same as I would have been if it hadn't happened, and I'm certainly not over it. Last night was good evidence of that to me. But progress — if you want to call it that — happened when I began to dive deep into the grief and learned how to make it part of me.

It seems counter-intuitive, but that's my take on it. I will forever be a man who lost his dad as a teenager. That shaped me then, and it will continue to shape me — certainly as I have children and become a father myself one day. It's not necessarily any less hurtful now than it was 15 years ago, but I am much more at ease and peace with my dad's death being an inseparable part of who I am. But I still miss him unspeakably.

And that, my friend, is the process of grief.

I guess life on the backside of this tipping point will be much like life immediately on the side from which I came, right?. But it won't be like 14 years ago anymore than 14 years from now will be like today. Each year brings something new as I move into a different period of my life. I am forever marked by this, forever changed, and eternally different. I'm still deep in this tunnel of sorts that I was supposed to pass "through".

I tell myself that it's insignificant that more than 14 years and 65 days have passed since Dad died.

I tell myself that, but I don't really believe it...as my first 14 years and 65 days slip further into memory, growing smaller in the rearview mirror.

What a game, what a pitcher, what a guy

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Fri, 25 May 2007 14:57:00 +0000

150 saves, 15 postseason wins (MLB record), 1 Cy Young, 53 complete games, 7-time All Star, 3.26 career ERA, over 2800 strikeouts (17th all-time), 55 saves in 2002 (NL record).

And now.... 200 Wins.

Hear, hear, John Smoltz. The Hall awaits you.

New Circulator in the works?

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:53:00 +0000

For one, I love the Circulator buses. They run all the time, and are lower to the ground, efficient, and comfy blah blah blah. I do wish they had bike racks sometimes, though. And that the one around the Mall ran all the time rather than just weekends in the cold months.

Anyway, looks like a new one might be coming our way to a much-needed N/S corridor that will help stadium traffic when the new ballpark opens.

From Jacqueline Dupree's new ballpark blog on the Post:

"And DDOT's Laden also said that an agreement is close to being reached that would add a Circulator bus line linking Union Station, the new U.S. Capitol Visitors Center and the Capitol South and Navy Yard Metro stations, which would give riders direct access to the red, orange, and blue lines without having to change trains at L'Enfant Plaza."

Democrats: The Pro-crime, pro-graffiti party in D.C.

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:45:00 +0000

Interesting story today about the fledgling Republican Party in D.C. Thought this quote was kind of funny:

"'The people I talk to at the door, I find that people sound pretty Republican,' Hammond said. 'They want safe communities that support morals. . . . Right now, we're hoping to clean up the graffiti on North Capitol Street.'"

For me at least, that's why I registered as an independent. Because I haven't chosen yet between whether or not I'm for or against crime and graffiti, Democrat or Republican. Oh, and also because I like for my vote to just be a rubber stamp for whoever won the Democratic primary.

Y'know, since I'm a tax-paying citizen who lives in the U.S., but have no other direct representation to speak of.

Consensus Buildings vs. Robert Moses-style planning in Curitiba

noreply@blogger.com (bill mcneal) — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:18:00 +0000

From Richard Layman's blog, I saw this story about Curitiba, Brazil in the NYT Magazine. The parts about Bus Rapid Transit were why I clicked the link, but what I really noticed was the reasoning they gave for why transit ridership, recycling, and eco-mindedness all seem to be trending downwards in the city.

It made me think of the current re-examinations that have been going on in regards to Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. When Jane Jacobs died last year, it seemed no newspaper could write about her without mentioning Robert Moses. And they couldn't talk about "Death and Life" without talking about "The Power Broker". For better or worse, they're likely to be linked forever in history. (Which will only gain momentum in 2008 when Anthony Flint's new book comes out.)

It was a contrast in styles — Jacobs was the grassroots organizer and neighborhood activist. From the bottom-up, she was able to save the Village. Moses had more consolidated power and authority than any urban planner or mayor will ever have again. So it's often uttered that what we need is another Robert Moses, albeit one who shares a pro-city perspective that values Jacobs' urbanism and people-first planning. This thought used to sound appealing to me, but now it scares me.

Consider: In Curitiba, the plans and implementation in the 60's and 70's came from one man in who was in some ways a figurehead leader who had power because the military dictatorship handed it to him. Quite different from Moses, but maybe not all that different after all. Curitiba might be a good lesson as to what happens when there is no consensus-building, no ownership, no charettes, no visioning, and no citizen particpation in the process of figuring out what sort of city to become:

“Curitiba began early to look at recycling garbage — that is true, and it is good,” says Teresa Urban, a local journalist and environmental activist. “But the separation of recycled garbage is a little part of all the garbage we have here. There is no tradition of participation here. The mayor sold to the people the idea that this is a wonderful city. And the people think, This is wonderful, I don’t have to do anything.”

Like other left-wing critics, Urban traces the lack of participation to an original sin. The progressive urban planning of Curitiba was not initiated by a democratic process; it was set in motion by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964 and ruled Brazil until the mid-’80s. Its environmentalism is rooted in authoritarianism. “They didn’t have to confront the public through public participation, and the decisions could be made by urban planners — architects acting as politicians,” says Clara Irazabal, who has written a book comparing the urban planning experiences of Curitiba and Portland, Ore. The city that has been called the most forward-looking in the Western Hemisphere is an outgrowth of an era that many Brazilians prefer not to look back on. Jaime Lerner, the archangel of the Curitiba green movement, was anointed by the dragons of war...

...“He never asked if something was good or not,” Rischbieter remarks. “He would say, ‘I’ll go do it.’ I would say, ‘You have to go ask people and get their opinions.’ He would say, ‘No, they won’t agree with me, and it has to be done.’ He is not a political animal, he is a dictator.”

The story closes with a graf that hammers home the need for planning at the regional and megaregional scale:

Nor is Curitiba a single town any longer. It’s a conurbation. Planning must be for the metropolitan region, not just for the municipality. Does it matter that Curitiba bans polluting industries if the neighboring town of AraucÃ¡ria has an oil refinery belching smoke on the city line? Similarly, if the new immigrants to the poor surrounding communities don’t recycle, then Curitiba’s landfill, the only such facility in the metropolitan region, will fill up even sooner. Like garbage, water does not respect city limits: Curitiba’s water supply depends on reservoirs controlled by municipalities outside its borders. What was never simple has become even more complex. For a long time, the citizens of Curitiba were so proud of the city’s reputation as an urban showplace that they kept re-electing urban planners — self-styled technical experts who seemed to be above politics and who vaunted their expertise in running the buses, building the parks and recycling the garbage. But a mayor today must be able to negotiate successfully with other mayors if reform is to work. Mayors need to be politicians, even in Curitiba.