THE GROCERY STORE WAS ONCE THE LARGEST SAFEWAY IN THE NATION

By Tommy Woodward

The Safeway at Hechinger Mall — the one neighbors affectionately christened with a jokey nickname for its less-than-sparkling atmosphere — has closed after more than four decades, leaving the Kingman Park neighborhood a little shorter on full-service grocery options.

“UnSafeway. End of an era,” a reader wrote on PoPville’s Facebook page.

The store on Maryland Avenue NE, with 63,000 square feet, was at one time one of the largest stores in the nation, according to an article in The Washington Post (back when the newspaper had blanket coverage of the metropolitan area). That story said the supermarket was set to open in May 1981, which would make it 45 years old.

The Safeway was one of the original tenants at what was then the new Hechinger Mall.

Coupled with the closure last year of the CVS on Bladensburg Road, the shuttering of the Safeway on May 16 has created a food desert, a reader wrote on Facebook.

ANC Commissioner Charquinta McCray kept the neighborhood informed, noting that the pharmacy transferred to the Safeway on Capitol Hill (1415 14th Street SE) on April 1, and that the H Street/Hechinger Mall ownership group is looking for a replacement grocer — though no candidate has been announced.

For now, the discount chain Aldi at 901 17th St. NE, plus Whole Foods and Giant along H Street, are your options. Aldi has no pharmacy.

The Hechinger Mall closure is part of a national story.

Parent company Albertsons — which absorbed Safeway in a $9.2 billion deal in 2015 — has been shutting down stores across the country, with Safeway alone closing a dozen locations in recent years. The company’s official explanation: the lease was up, and they chose to “reinvest resources into other existing stores,” according to a statement from Safeway. Translation: the numbers didn’t work.

It was not announced how many layoffs occurred when the supermarket closed.

“Following the collapse of a proposed $24.6 billion merger between Kroger (KR) and Albertsons, both companies have shifted away from expansion and toward consolidation,” TheStreet.com wrote. “Rather than growing their national footprint, they are closing underperforming locations and reallocating resources to higher-performing stores and digital operations.

The UnSafeway’s closing also coincides with the end of DC Streetcar service along H Street, which stopped running March 31.

STANTON PARK CELEBRATION

National Park Service invites you to a birthday party for America’s 250th

By NPS

Saddle up for a lively picnic at Stanton Park. Grab a blanket and lunch for a day of living history demonstrations, lawn games, Junior Ranger activities, and interpretive stories. Attendees can also witness the unveiling of the park’s newly restored Nathanael Greene statue and catch historic walking tours.

A highlight of the day is the unveiling of the newly restored Nathanael Greene statue, taking place from 11:15 AM to 12:30 PM. The ceremony will feature remarks from NACE Superintendent Serena Bellew, DC Councilmember-for-life Charles Allen, and Park Ranger Vince Vaise as the community celebrates the renewed tribute to one of the Revolutionary War’s most significant leaders.

Visitors are encouraged to pack a picnic blanket and lunch and enjoy a full day of activities that highlight the stories and spirit of the Revolutionary War.

10:00 AM–2:00 PM: Community picnic, living history, historic games, Junior Ranger activities

11:15 AM–11:30 AM: US Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps parade through the park

11:30 AM–12:30 PM: Unveiling ceremony of the restored Nathanael Greene statue

12:30-2:00: Historic walking tours with the Capitol Hill Restoration Society starting every half hour

NOISY CONCERT COMING TO THE HILL

Tens of thousands of rock fans are coming to the RFK parking lot this month.

The Vans Warped Tour will return on June 13-14, featuring genres of rock, punk rock, alternative, pop punk, and emo, among others, at the festival grounds at RFK (i.e. the parking lot.) The iconic festival will have a continued focus on community and nurturing the next generation of artists, musicians, and extreme athletes, the promoters said.

On Saturday and Sunday, the show starts at 11:00 a.m. and ends at 10:00 p.m., with 40,000 expected attendees over both days.

JOIN PETS AND PANSIES MARCHING IN THE FOURTH OF JULY PARADE

Urn gardening volunteers and dog owners who patronize Lincoln Park have signed up to march in the annual Independence Day parade. It is the second year for the group, loosely known as Friends of Capitol Hill Parks.

Anyone can join us. Our theme is pups and petals, so bring your dog and wear your floral shirt. Hawaiian shirts work out nicely.

A few important notes for participants:

• If your group plans to include a vehicle in the parade, the city requires vehicle information and proof of insurance. Vehicle registration details should be included in the registration form.

• Participants marching with animals must be able to provide vaccination records and veterinarian information if requested.

Parade Day Schedule (Approximate)

8:30 AM – Vehicles line up facing north under the bridge at 8th St & Virginia Ave SE. (Proof of insurance required)

9:30 AM – Marchers meet with their groups

9:45 AM – All groups in position under the bridge

10:00 AM – Parade begins promptly with “The Commandant’s Own” United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps

10:02 AM – Naval Lodge steps off, followed by local elected officials

10:05 AM – Remaining groups proceed as directed by parade organizers. To help keep the parade moving smoothly, groups will be spaced out slightly, so we appreciate your patience. The Capitol Hill BID “Men and Women in Blue” will bring up the rear of the parade.

12:00 PM – Parade concludes. Please remember to turn left onto D Street at the end of the route so groups behind you may continue marching smoothly.

The parade route remains the same as in previous years: northbound on 8th Street SE, ending at the Eastern Market Metro Plaza at 8th & D Street SE. As additional details become available, they will be emailed out to registrants and posted on the website: https://www.capitolhill4thparade.com/

We’re looking forward to another fantastic parade and celebrating with all of you this year.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody, opinion and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

Copy editor H. BETTS is taking the day off to review her ranked choice ballot.

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Lincoln Park’s newspaper delivery man is tired of having guns waved in his face. He just wants to do his job. He quit. Can you blame him?

While politicians (like Charles Allen) like to say that crime and carjackings are down, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. It isn’t a crime wave — unless it happens to you.

Benny, the longtime delivery person for The Washington Post and other newspapers, is giving up his job.

On Sunday morning, near 13th St. and North Carolina Ave NE, two juveniles pointed a gun in his face and demanded his car, according to an account relayed by newspaper distributors.

Benny (we’re not using his surname) got out and began yelling. A neighbor said she was calling police.

The juveniles tried to drive away, but the car was a stick shift and it stalled out because they apparently didn’t know how to drive a stick.

The would-be bandits then took off on foot.

Benny quit the next day stating that he had been held up by carjackers at least nine times over the past ten years.

MPD responded to this call for service, but the victim, Benny, had left the scene, said Officer Lee Lepe, an MPD spokesman. “If you’re in contact with Benny, would you assist us in asking him to call 911 or visit the 1D police station to file a police report,” Lepe said.

GRAND OPENING

WINE & BUTTER’S ‘LE PETIT SCOOP’ ICE CREAM SHOP SERVES FIRST CUSTOMERS

Wine & Butter Café on Lincoln Park opened its ice cream shop this week — just in time for Memorial Day, the official launch of summer

GLORIA LAUNCHES CONTRAST AD IN LONGSHOT WARD 6 BID

Gloria Nauden, the longshot underdog candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Ward 6 Council seat, is getting ready to launch a video ad that goes after career politician and Councilmember-For-Life Charles Allen on lack of responsiveness and opposition to spending increases for the police department.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter has obtained a copy exclusively.

In the ad, Lisa Pinter, a Lincoln Park area resident, talks about being carjacked in front of her home. Allen made a promise that he did not keep, she says in the ad.

Meanwhile, Allen is also running an ad on local TV “introducing” himself, which is kind of funny since he has worked in the Ward 6 council office for two decades — first as top aide to Councilmember Tommy Wells and then succeeding his boss. (The Lincoln Park Newsletter has seen the ad on streaming television.)

Allen and Wells grew up a few blocks from each other in Birmingham, Alabama. Nauden was born in Korea (the son of a Black service member and Korean mother) and has lived in the District for more than three decades.

Allen has garnered endorsements from seemingly every political interest in the city — which is part of his problem. He is thought to be a tool of the liberal special interests and listens only to biased, agenda-driven interest groups, some of which have pretty crazy ideas (young criminals deserve a break because their frontal cortex is not developed), giving the impression that he generally disregards the concerns of local citizens and their safety.

A favorite of local media (what’s the most dangerous place in Washington? Between Charles Allen and a journalist), Allen is the prohibitive favorite and Nauden seems to be primarily a protest vote for those who are sick of Charles’ patronizing, whiny tone.

By contrast, Gloria is political neophyte, and it shows on the campaign trail. As the Hill Rag said, Nauden is “less specific in her proposals” — which is the takeaway from most who have watched her campaign performance.

But, they add, at least she listens. That’s her campaign in a nutshell.

Lincoln Park curmudgeon Mark Ugoretz said he is voting for a ham sandwich.

Gee, Matt Yglesias really does not like Janeese Lewis George

NEERA TANDEN ENDORSES MCDUFFIE

The former Obama aide and president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal Democratic think tank, warns against electing Janeese.

But, hey, Charles Allen endorsed George; guess we should do what Charles says.

Meet the candidates for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council

https://51st.news/at-large-candidates-dc-council-anita-bonds/

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS is wondering exactly how ranked-choice voting works and who her second choice should be.

CHARLES ALLEN ENDORSES THE MAYORAL CANDIDATE WHO OPPOSES CURFEWS TO DETER RIOTING TEENS.

OF COURSE HE DOES.

Where does most of Janeese George’s support come from? Commentator Matt Yglesias sums it up:

Black DC voters: We should arrest criminals

White DC Voters: No that’s racist.

Former Post local columnist Marc Fisher’s take:

TRUE DC LOCAL SUPPORT MCDUFFIE

NEWCOMERS SUPPORT GEORGE

Carl Cole, Washingtonian Who Witnessed the Bulldozing of His Neighborhood and Championed Its Rivers, Dies at 82

LONGTIME LECTOR, MINISTER AND VOLUNTEER AT ST. PETER’S ON CAPITOL HILL SUFFERS HEART ATTACK

Carl Cole, a multigenerational Washingtonian who grew up along the Southwest waterfront, served as a commissioner of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and spent decades advocating for the city’s rivers and the communities built along their banks, died on April 30, 2026, after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 82.

He was well-known on Capitol Hill, particularly at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, where he was a parish council member, eucharistic minister and active participant in the community life of the parish

Born on June 1, 1943, at Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University) in Washington, Carl Calvin Cole was one of 13 children and was raised in the 300 block of I Street SW. A longtime defender of the close-knit neighborhood, Carl never stopped countering what he considered a lingering historical mischaracterization. Long after city planners had targeted the Southwest part of the District for “urban renewal,” Carl repeatedly countered municipal officials who alleged it had been a slum worthy of wholesale demolition. He once told newsman Tom Sherwood that his ancestors had lived on the Southwest waterfront for more than 150 years.

In fact, Carl said, he grown up in one of the finest communities in the world. “I still value the people that I knew in Southwest far more than any other associations that I have ever made in my life. Ever,” he said in a 2005 oral history interview for the Capitol Hill History Project.

Carl came of age in deeply segregated Washington. He attended schools in the Division Two system — the District’s separate, all-Black public school division — including Smallwood Elementary, S.J. Boyne, Jefferson Junior High, and Eastern High School. He later recalled that the teachers in those schools were, by necessity, exceptionally credentialed: Black educators in that era were typically required to hold advanced degrees and subject-matter expertise, making his childhood instructors the equivalent of music professors, artists, and scholars.

His family’s roots in Washington ran extraordinarily deep. A 2018 DCist profile noted that the Cole family had been rooted in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood for approximately 160 years. Carl often traced those connections through aunts, uncles, grandparents, and church communities that linked his family to the earliest chapters of Black Washington.

On a May morning in 1954, when Carl was ten years old, he stood and watched as workers demolished 333 I Street SW — a neighborhood grocery store that had belonged to a man named Mr. Coleman. It was the first building razed in the federally driven urban renewal that would eventually erase the entire community he had known.

Carl became one of the most thoughtful and persistent critics of what he called the “bulldozing” of Southwest, arguing to the end of his life that it was a failure of planning, not an erasure of blight, and that the evidence — crime statistics, test scores, housing stock — simply did not support the slum designation used to justify it.

“It was just a good idea that turned into a mad idea that kept feeding upon itself over a period of years,” he said.

The Anacostia River was Carl’s other lifelong passion, and his relationship with DC’s other national river began in boyhood. As a Boy Scout in Troop 1205 in 1958, he undertook a project he titled “My Urban Wilderness,” exploring the banks of the river and documenting the birds, deer, and raccoons he found living there. For him, the Anacostia was as intriguing as any national park. He learned to sail, paddle, and swim in its waters, and never relinquished the view that the river was, as he put it, “fishable and swimmable” — because he had always fished and swum in it.

Carl understood the Anacostia – sometimes called the forgotten river – to be interwoven with the nation’s history. In colonial times, he noted, it was Washington’s deeper river, with ships sailing through to Bladensburg. The Washington Navy Yard had been the capital’s principal port in the early republic, where diplomats landed. He could speak with equal authority about the War of 1812, about John Wilkes Booth’s escape across a bridge over the Anacostia, and about the hanging of Mary Surratt and three co-conspirators at Fort McNair on July 7, 1865. Planners in the capital’s early decades had envisioned the Anacostia’s shores as the site of statesmen’s homes; industrial development had foreclosed that vision. “There is a lot of history here,” he said.

Carl told The Washington Post in a profile published in 1996 that he remembered how people would buy their seafood right off commercial fishing ships, and how the whistle on the old Bay Line Steamer to Norfolk would sound every night at 11. He first dived into the Anacostia at Buzzard Point.

"Of all the places I have traveled to in the world, I can't think of any place I'd rather live than over here in Anacostia," Carol told Post writer Vernon Loeb, who is now the executive editor of Inside Climate News. "If I want to see a flight of heron, geese, egrets, I just go out my front door and walk a few blocks."

He adamantly disagreed with many people who made assumptions about the river’s decline. “This has nothing to do with race,” he asserted, pointing out that until relatively recently, many of the Anacostia’s neighborhoods had been populated largely by white residents, including military families.

In 1987, Carl became the founding president of the Organization for Anacostia Rowing and Sailing, known as OARS. In the years that followed, the Capital Rowing Club, the Gonzaga High School rowing club, and other scholastic teams took root along the same stretch of river, some fielding regional and national champions in racing shells and dragon boats. They operated out of a refurbished brick boathouse on National Park Service land between the Navy Yard and the Army Corps of Engineers shoreline.

“This is a dream of mine,” Carl said at the time of the restored facility. He also participated in a program called “Kids Set Sail,” aimed at introducing young people to the river he had known as a boy. “You educate people about the river when you get them on the water,” he said. “The river is like a library. To learn from it, you have to use it.”

He believed the way to rehabilitate the river’s reputation was not through rhetoric but through presence. “Get them used to it,” he said of would-be skeptics. “Get people out racing in dragon boats. That’s how you make a difference.” What was needed, he argued, was “human interaction and not a search for demons.”

That philosophy extended to the young people around him. Carl had a gift for recognizing potential, particularly in those who shared his love of the water. The son of a fellow parishioner at St. Peter’s, drawn to boats and rivers, found his first Capitol Hill job at DC Sail through Carl’s quiet encouragement — setting in motion a career. (He went on to become a captain of the tall ship American Spirit, and a captain with the Potomac Water Taxi.)

Carl’s civic life was wide-ranging beyond the waterfront. He served as a commissioner of the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities and sat on the board of the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, a body charged with guiding the redevelopment of Washington’s historically neglected eastern riverfront. He was a longtime member and board member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, one of the city’s oldest civic organizations, tracing its origins to 1865. At an AOI luncheon in 2018, he pointed to the group’s diversity as evidence that Washington could still come together across lines of race and class. “It gives you a special feeling,” he said. “And we’re open to everyone who wants to come in.”

A member of the Capital Yacht Club, Carl held a captain’s license and could sail a tall ship, and had at various points in his life also learned to fly an airplane. He loved opera — “Aida” in particular, recalling an all-Black production at the National Guard Armory in 1948 — as well as literature, art, golf (which he had been playing since the age of twelve), rowing, and cycling. He also cherished the Langston Golf Course, the first golf course designed for African-American golfers.

His stepfather, Charles Petty, who had completed only the second grade in Sumter, South Carolina, was in Carl’s telling among the wisest men he ever knew — a man who cleaned government bathrooms for most of his working life and who counseled a teenage grandchild with the instruction: “What you do with your life is simply this — you learn, you learn, you learn, and then you read some more.”

Carl was born into a Protestant family but converted to Catholicism — a decision he described as lifelong and somewhat defiant, noting that it remained a source of gentle family exasperation many decades later. He and his wife, Rise Cole, were longtime parishioners of St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill, where he served the parish in many capacities: as an usher, an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, and a member of the parish council.

“He was unstinting in his aid,” recalled Lynn Marsh Freeman, a former administrator at the parish. “His input was sought after and valued.” Carl adored his family, and especially his grandchildren. His funeral Mass was held on May 23, 2026, at St. Peter’s, at 313 Second Street SE, where visitation preceded the Mass and a reception followed in the parish hall.

He is survived by his wife, Rise Cole, and six children: Senetra Yvonne, Senetra Marie, Kenji Ono, Samantha, Robert and Robin.

Carl often said that what a person takes away from childhood — not the bricks and mortar, but the people — is what forms them. By that measure, Carl drew on a very rich inheritance, and spent a long life giving it back to his city.

A FAREWELL GIFT FROM STEFANIE

WINE, BUTTER AND ICE CREAM

Wine & Butter Café on Lincoln Park is preparing to open its ice cream shop.

MAY IS THE TIME TO FORAGE FOR JUNEBERRIES — THAT IS IN DC

By Casey Trees

The Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.) is a standout among native North American trees, prized for its resilience, beauty, and ecological value. But most of all, it is prized for its delicious berries, which ripen later in the spring or early summer.

The Serviceberry has many names. Many know this tree as the “Juneberry,” as the berries historically ripen in June. Though they often ripen earlier in the mid-Atlantic, and increasingly earlier in general due to warmer temperatures.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS is wondering why DC candidates who oppose law-and-order are leading in the polls.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

HOW TO AVOID TRAFFIC JAMS ON RFK CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT

From Renee Dworakowski

ANC 6A Administrator

We are grappling with public transportation issues as we anticipate the opening and operation of a new stadium at the old RFK site.

Your participation can help inform what happens as the H Street Streetcar has ceased service and we look to a future that assures safe movement through the district for public transit, automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians both on game days and every day.

Please join us online this Monday evening, 5/18 at 7 pm.

The agenda for the Monday, May 18, 2026 TPS Committee has been posted on the ANC 6A website at https://anc6a.org/wp-content/uploads/TPSA0526.pdf

This meeting will be conducted virtually via Zoom. Use this link: https://dc-gov.zoom.us/j/85008421063

Call-in Number: 1 301 715 8592; Webinar ID (access code): 850 0842 1063. One tap mobile: +13017158592,,85008421063#

Barry Svrluga (former Post sports columnist) takes on the Trump takeover

[Excerpt] At one level, who manages the District’s three municipal courses — East Potomac, Langston and Rock Creek — and what they charge to play are trivial matters.

But the three courses have become symbols of what it’s like to live in the District during the second Trump term. National Guard troops still walk through our neighborhoods — with very little to do but talk to each other. Some parks in the middle of traffic circles are fenced off, marked by messages that President Donald Trump is making Washington safe and beautiful. The bottom of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument has been painted blue. The Kennedy Center is threatened with renovation and closure for two years, sending the Washington Ballet and the National Symphony Orchestra looking for new homes. Life here is altered, and not for the better.

J6 RIOTER EJECTED FROM NATS PARK OVER RACIST BANNER

The Washington Nationals ejected a patron from Nats Park on Sunday after he unfurled a banner promoting a white nationalist website and calling for the deportation of “100+ million.”

An usher tried to confiscate the banner in the upper deck on the first-base line, but three people yanked it back before fleeing, a team spokesman told The Athletic.

It was unclear how the patron got the poster into the stadium under the Nats Park’s strict bag policy. The banner was unfurled during the customary fourth inning tribute to U.S. service members.

On X, political extremist and a Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang took credit for the banner. Lang posted that the crowd was not happy with the sign. “They might have killed us if we didn’t get escorted out,” Lang wrote on X.

Edward Jacob “Jake” Lang, originally from the Hudson Valley in New York, is a right-wing influencer, provocateur and a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Florida, according to the American Jewish Committee website. who has gained national attention for his extremist views and events.

Lang was indicted on 11 criminal counts, including assaulting police officers with dangerous weapons, after he was photographed wielding a baseball bat and police shield at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Among other offenses, he was charged with striking a Metropolitan Police officer with a baseball bat.

The indictment was dismissed at the request of acting U.S. Attorney Edward Martin after President Trump pardoned the rioters. On Jan. 21, 2025, Lang was released from D.C. Central Detention Facility after four years in prison.

After the Jan. 6 riot, Lang could be seen in his own social media posts swinging a baseball bat at police officers and thrusting a riot shield at them as a mob attacked police near the west entrance of the Capitol, according to the court filings.

“I was the leader of Liberty today,” Lang wrote on social media at the time. “Arrest me. You are on the wrong side of history.”

SPEAKING OF BAD BEHAVIOR IN THE NAVY YARD

‘I’ll have a bandage with my barbacoa burrito bowl ‘

FAST FOOD OUTLET MELEE

(McDuffie attacks rival mayoral candidate’s stance against curfew)

LINCOLN PARK NEWSLETTER INDICTED OVER “TROOP 8647” STORY

DOJ EXPANDS PROBE TO INCLUDE NUMBERS, CUPCAKES, AND MEDIEVAL FALCONRY

LINCOLN PARK — Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging the Lincoln Park Newsletter with “aggravated numerical implication and first-degree whimsy” after it published an AI-generated article featuring a fictional Girl Scout Troop 8647, a number authorities allege was intended to suggest “86 47,” or, as one official clarified, “a sequence that arrives pre-interpreted.”

The charges stem from a fake story describing the gruesome slaying of a one-eyed man one Saturday morning in Lincoln Park—an event characterized by investigators in the sarcastic article as “highly visible, extremely loud, and unfolding with the narrative pacing of something that knows it is being described”—while, just feet away, Troop 8647 conducted a red velvet cupcake sale advertised as “crime-free.”

The Lincoln Park Newsletter said the charges were meritless and merely retaliation for the $900 trillion lawsuit filed by the news organization last week. Also, the news organization said that the story was not its fault because it was created by an artificial intelligence website.

In the parody account, labeled the newsletter’s first “AI parody news story,” fictitious authorities confirmed the killing was witnessed by multiple bystanders, several uniformed personnel, a medieval falconer, and “at least one man who insisted he was a footnote.”

“The victim was attacked in a manner that was unmistakably a violent crime,” said one investigator. “There were shouting noises, dramatic pauses, and at one point a second, smaller crime briefly occurred and then apologized.”

Despite the incident, officials stressed that the more serious concern was the number.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche-Casa said the indictment reflects a broader effort to address “the growing misuse of integers in narrative environments.”

“We take all threats seriously, especially those embedded in what might otherwise appear to be whimsical, pastry-adjacent, or historically reenacted contexts,” Blanche-Casa said. “When you create a troop numbered 8647, place it next to a theatrical killing, and surround it with red velvet cupcakes and a falcon that refuses to comment, you are no longer reporting—you are arranging reality.”

An AI-generated image of a red velvet cupcake table labeled “Troop 8647,” guarded by a falcon wearing a diminutive but authoritative hat.

According to the indictment, the Lincoln Park Newsletter “knowingly constructed a fictional scenario in which violence, dessert, and medieval bird management coexisted without explanation,” thereby “causing readers to encounter a number and experience a brief but prosecutable sense of ‘wait a minute.’”

Investigators emphasized the number’s structure.

“This is four digits, presented confidently,” said one official. “No qualifiers. No parentheses. Just 8-6-4-7, sitting there, implying.”

The charging documents, which were reviewed as they were spontaneously combusting, also cite the publication’s disclaimer—“We suspect it is all fake. But, hey, AI is never wrong!”—as evidence of what prosecutors called “premeditated shrugging.”

Blanche-Casa declined to name a specific statute but indicated the conduct likely violated “several provisions, including numerical suggestion, contextual boldness, and operating a fictional Girl Scout troop without a permit or ocean.”

At one point during the announcement, Blanche-Casa unveiled a chart titled “NUMBERS CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW,” which included 8647, 1234 (“too convenient”), and “7 (just suspicious on its own).”

AI-generated courtroom sketch depicting the Lincoln Park Newsletter as a stack of papers being cross-examined by a judge, a falcon, and a red velvet cupcake.

The indictment has drawn immediate criticism from civil liberties advocates, including the Free Expression Arithmetic Project (FEAP), which called the case “a deeply unconstitutional attempt to regulate both numbers and vibes simultaneously.”

“In this country, you are allowed to invent a completely fictional, highly choreographed public killing, place it next to a cheerful cupcake sale, add a bird from another century, and assign any number you want to any troop you made up five seconds ago,” said FEAP executive director Lila Gomez. “That is not a crime. That is, at minimum, two genres.”

Gomez warned of frosting consequences.

“If this stands, every number becomes evidence, every dessert becomes motive, and every falcon becomes, frankly, a witness,” she said. “Today it’s 8647. Tomorrow it’s the number of raisins in a scone during a tense but unrelated incident.”

At press time, federal officials confirmed they were expanding their investigation to include “additional integers, several adjectives, and one suspiciously confident semicolon,” while reiterating that the Lincoln Park Newsletter is presumed innocent unless its digits can be shown to have “meant something, deliberately, with tone.”

“The message here is simple,” Blanche-Casa said. “If you’re going to make things up, don’t also make them add up.”

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS is taking a moment from copy editing and reviewing the handiwork of DDOT and the new, improved Mary and Al Arrighi Alley, which took 28 years to repair.

THE 45TH KITCHEL INJURY LAW CAPITOL HILL CLASSIC

10K, 3K, FUN RUN | MAY 17, 2026

The Capitol Hill Classic, a tradition for more than four decades, is a 10K and 3K road race, and a Kids Fun Run around Stanton Park. Proceeds from the race support the Capitol Hill Cluster School, a DC Public School. Over 4,400 people registered for the 2025 Classic.

Details here https://www.capitolhillclassic.com/

The funds raised go toward the Capitol Hill Cluster School to help bridge the gap between its DC Public Schools budget and the money needed to fund field trips, art supplies, classroom projects, school gardens and teachers’ requests and professional development.

The sponsor, Kitchel Injury Law, is a firm that represents clients who sue insurance companies, employers and others for damages and injuries caused by personal injury, car crashes, bicycle accidents, wrongful deaths, medical malpractice, etc.

Road closures will cause significant delays on Sunday morning. (SEE BELOW.)

NUTHIN’ TO DO

LINCOLN PARK CAFE PICTURED IN WARD 6 CAMPAIGN AD

Memorial paddle for Will Lankford this weekend

Who: DC, VA, MD area friends/paddlers who got on the river with Will, anyone who wants to paddle the Gorge and attain/climb up to O-Deck,

When: Sunday, May 17 at 1 p.m.

Where: Meet at Anglers to set shuttle, then head up to GF parking lot to meet at the Flake eddy below the Fingers. Those not running the falls can put on at Sandy Beaches.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/23881072257/posts/10164317508542258/

Why: Remember Will

YARD SALES GALORE

It must be spring because residents are putting their crap out and trying to get you to buy it.

So get ready to do some SPRING CLEANING and SPRING DUMPING this weekend.

Yard Sale Extravaganza on Saturday

A big yard sale for all. Morning-ish to afternoon-ish all over Capitol Hill

The third Capitol Hill Yard Sale Extravaganza, hosted by The Hill is Home, is a GIGANTIC yard sale along the streets of Capitol Hill this Saturday.

Details here padlet.com/thehillishome/THIHMayYardSale

Maury Yard Sale on Sunday

Maury Elementary’s first SPRING Yard Sale is the perfect chance to clear out the clutter and “pass along” (get rid of) the things you and your family have outgrown. 🌸☀️

Until Friday afternoon, the school’s parents are seeking like-new and great-condition items including kids’ clothing, toys, books, household items, bikes, scooters, games, and more.

The sale is Sunday, May 17, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

LINCOLN PARK NEWSLETTER FILES $900 TRILLION LAWSUIT AGAINST TRUMP, CRYPTO

PRESIDENT, MEME COIN INDUSTRY ACCUSED OF GRAND LARCENY OF GOLDEN STATUE IDEA

By Scherzer Barkstein and Tommy Woodward

WASHINGTON— The Lincoln Park Newsletter, the most trusted and award-winning* news publication serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park, filed a landmark lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Lincoln Park on Tuesday, alleging that President Donald J. Trump, his administration, and a shadowy cabal of cryptocurrency investors conspired to steal the newsletter’s exclusive intellectual property: the idea of erecting a large golden statue of Donald Trump.

The suit, Lincoln Park Newsletter v. Trump, Crypto Guys, God, Fort Knox, and Whoever Else Did This, seeks $900 trillion in damages, plus the return of all gold, an apology written in gold ink, and a formal acknowledgment that the Lincoln Park Newsletter thought of it first.

“This outrage will not stand,” said Milo Wilkerson, President and King of Lincoln Park, speaking to the press from his throne behind the second bench near the east statue of Mary McCloud Bethune. “The theft of intellectual property is outrageous. We published our vision of a five-story solid gold Trump statue in Lincoln Park in August of 2025. Eight months later, there’s a 22-foot gold statue of Trump at a golf course in Miami. Coincidence? I think not. We coined this. Literally. Before the coins.”

THE HEIST OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

According to the 847-page complaint, the Lincoln Park Newsletter first published a parody story in August 2025 that Trump planned to install a massive solid gold statue of himself in the center of Lincoln Park, requiring Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to drain Fort Knox and melt down the entire national gold reserve to complete the project.

The newsletter’s investigative team — Tommy Woodward and Scherzer Barkstein, whose names are on close hold for their own protection because of the vindictive and retaliatory nature of the Trump administration — broke the fake story exclusively.

Months later, a group of cryptocurrency investors paid $450,000 to commission sculptor Alan Cottrill to build a 22-foot gold-leafed bronze statue dubbed “Don Colossus,” which was unveiled at Trump National Doral Miami on May 6, 2026, to great fanfare and a dedication ceremony led by a strange evangelical pastor who felt the need to clarify that it was not a golden calf.

“Not a golden calf,” the Lincoln Park Newsletter noted in a press release. “Sure. And we’re not a Pulitzer Prize–winning media institution. But here we are.”

The lawsuit alleges that at some point between August 2025 and May 2026, agents of the Trump administration, working in concert with cryptocurrency speculators promoting something called the $PATRIOT meme coin, accessed the Lincoln Park Newsletter’s proprietary golden statue concept and parody news story and then reverse engineered it and constructed it — at a golf course in Florida, no less — without credit, compensation, or so much as a complimentary newsletter subscription or waiving green fees.

THE DESPICABLE CONSPIRACY

The complaint lays out what it describes as “the most audacious act of intellectual property theft since someone stole the idea of putting your name on things from someone who wasn’t Donald Trump.”

“The Lincoln Park Newsletter’s proposed the five-story solid gold statue first,” the lawsuit states. “The defendant then built a 22-foot solid gold statue. That’s basically the same thing, except smaller, at a golf course, in Miami, paid for by meme coin people as a bribe. The concept is identical.”

Legal scholars have described the case as “unusual,” “unprecedented,” and “something that definitely exists.”

The newsletter’s attorneys, Biggie Smalls, the former acting CEO, mayor and Supreme Leader of Lincoln Park in the absence of Fairy Maran, and Kiki Mijares-Shafai, of the law firm of Bigs, Smalls and Mijares-Shafai, argue that the Trump administration was directly aware of the Lincoln Park Newletter’s parody reporting, citing as evidence the fact that Trump has reportedly seen everything ever written about himself, typically within four minutes of publication.

(Bigs, Smalls and Mijares-Shafai is also handling a $1 billion lawsuit involving the spontaneous combustion of a battery-operated lawnmower that caused serious garage and yard damage, and injury to a resident.)

Crypto industry defendants, reached for comment via their Discord server, responded with a single animated GIF of a rocket ship and the words “TO THE MOON.” Their lawyers have not yet filed a response, as they were reportedly still trying to figure out where Lincoln Park is.

REACTION: OUTRAGE

Milo Wilkerson, President and King of Lincoln Park, held a press conference from his customary spot near Fairy Marran’s dog-friendly bench, flanked by two squirrels and a corgi named Jalapeño Biscuit.

“The theft of intellectual property is outrageous,” Wilkerson repeated, for emphasis. “We thought of the giant gold statue. We reported the giant gold statue. We published artist’s renderings of the giant gold statue with gold-plated benches and gold trash cans. And now there is a giant gold statue at a golf course in Florida and no one has called us. Not one call. Zero calls. We are owed everything. Bigly.”

Lincoln Park Mayor-for-Life and Supreme Leader Fairy Maran, who recently returned to the throne after a period of absence during which Biggie Smalls served as acting Supreme Leader, issued a statement calling the theft “an attack on community journalism and also on gold.”

“Biggie and I are prepared to take down the Trump statue,” Maran added, referencing earlier sworn declarations before the Lincoln Park High Command. “We said that in August. Also our idea.”

The Trump White House declined to comment, though Truth Social posts indicate the President remains very pleased with the statue, describing it as “The Real Deal – GOLD – At Doral in Miami. Put there by great American Patriots!!!”

The Lincoln Park Newsletter noted that Lincoln Park, DC is also in America, and its patriots also have gold, conceptually speaking.

LEGAL ANALYSIS

Harvard Law School Professor Emmeline Tremblay-Socks, who has not been contacted for this story and does not exist, described the lawsuit as “highly creative.”

“The plaintiff is arguing that you can own the idea of a giant gold Trump statue,” Tremblay-Socks did not say. “That’s a bold legal theory. Almost as bold as melting down Fort Knox to build one.”

The newsletter has requested a jury of Lincoln Park residents, which its attorneys noted would consist entirely of people who are extremely invested in what happens to Lincoln Park, extremely opinionated about it, and available most mornings between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. near the dog pen in the center of the park.

A hearing has been scheduled for some time before the gold runs out.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter contains parody, opinion, and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

*Awards self-issued by the Lincoln Park Newsletter editorial board.

SAVE THE DATE: JULY 4

Fairy Marran has announced that the urn volunteers and friends will march in the Barracks Row Independence Day Parade.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

FUNDRAISING RACE CAUSES ROAD CLOSURES AND PARKING RESTRICTIONS

NO PARKING

The following streets will be posted as Emergency No Parking on Sunday, May 17, 2026, from 3:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and closed from 5:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.:

• C Street from 4th Street to 6th Street, NE

• 3rd Street from Massachusetts Avenue to 4th Street, NE

• 3rd Street from Maryland Avenue to 4th Street, NE

• 4th Street from Massachusetts Avenue to Maryland Avenue, NE

• 5th Street from Constitution Avenue to C Street, NE

• 6th Street, NE from Massachusetts Avenue to Maryland Avenue, NE

The following streets will be posted as Emergency No Parking on Sunday, May 17, 2026, from 3:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.:

• Maryland Avenue from 4th Street to 3rd Street, NE

• 3rd Street, NE from Maryland Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• 2nd Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• 4th Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• Constitution Avenue, NE from 4th Street to 1st Street, NE

• 1st Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• Independence Avenue, SE from 1st Street to 4th Street, SE

• East Capitol Street, NE from 3rd Street, NE/SE to 22nd Street, NE

• West bound exit ramp (Ames Street, NE) to East Capitol Street, NE

• West bound Whitney Young Memorial Bridge

ROAD CLOSURES

The following streets will be closed to vehicle traffic on Sunday, May 17, 2026, from approximately 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.:

• Maryland Avenue from 4th Street to 3rd Street, NE

• 2nd Street, NE from Maryland Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• 2nd Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• 4th Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• Constitution Avenue, NE from 4th Street to 1st Street, NE

• 1st Street, NE from Constitution Avenue, NE to Independence Avenue, SE

• Independence Avenue, SE from 1st Street to 4th Street, SE

• East Capitol Street, NE from 3rd Street, NE/SE to 22nd Street, NE

• Westbound exit ramp (Ames Street, NE) to East Capitol Street, NE

• Westbound Whitney Young Memorial Bridge

The 3K will involve the following roads:

• 4th St NE from C St NE to East Capitol

• East Capitol from 3rd St NE to 12th St NE, going around the SOUTH side of Lincoln Park

• 3rd St NE from East Capitol to Maryland

• Maryland from 3rd St NE to C St NE/5th St NE

Copy Editor H. BETTS will not be in the Capitol Hill Classic nor on the road on Sunday morning.

Former Capitol Hill resident mourned after dying in a whitewater kayaking accident at Great Falls, Maryland

William “Will” Caulfield Lankford, 22, scholar, athlete and outdoorsman, dies traversing popular but risky whitewater run

William “Will” Lankford, a 22‑year‑old Capitol Hill native whose life crossed baseball fields, wrestling mats, river rapids and finance spreadsheets, died May 3 in a kayaking accident on the Potomac River near Great Falls.

The accident occurred when Will was kayaking a stretch of the Potomac known as the Virginia Lines with two friends and became separated from the group. Will’s companions saw he was no longer with them, paddled back upstream and found him, freed him from his boat and brought him to shore, where they performed CPR. Bystanders, including an off‑duty nurse, assisted until emergency crews arrived.

Maryland Natural Resources Police and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue responded around 2:45 p.m. First responders took over lifesaving efforts and transported Will to Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, where he died, a spokesman for the county said.

He was wearing a life vest at the time, state officials told The Baltimore Banner.

Will grew up on Capitol Hill near Folger Park in Washington, DC, where the Hill’s close‑knit youth sports scene helped shape his early years. As a player in Capitol Hill Little League, he developed a love of baseball and played for the Capitol Hill Crushers travel team, building the kind of friendships and shared rituals that urban youth sports can uniquely foster.

Capitol Hill Little League’s emphasis on sportsmanship, confidence, responsibility and perseverance became part of Will’s competitive DNA. Even as a serious competitor, he had a hilarious sense of humor: At 12, he wisecracked with teammates he was getting Tommy John surgery for his 13th birthday, a dry baseball joke.

In high school, Lankford took that competitive drive to the wrestling mat at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. He became a member of the varsity wrestling team and, over the course of his career, moved up through weight classes, winning a regional championship at 145 pounds before eventually competing at 182.

At the Region 3D tournament in 2021, he wrestled at 182 pounds in one of Virginia’s most demanding regional brackets. The discipline of the sport— weight management, one‑on‑one pressure and relentless conditioning—left a mark on how he approached challenges even beyond sports.

After graduating from E.C. Glass, Lankford enrolled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he graduated with distinction in 2025 with a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics and a concentration in Finance. At UVA, he combined rigorous coursework with applied experience in tax consulting and the outdoor adventure industry, developing a quantitative toolkit that fit naturally with his interest in how organizations work and how resources move.

Whitewater sports became a central thread in his life during those years.

Beginning in the summer after his senior year of high school, Lankford worked as a whitewater rafting guide at Wild Waters Outdoor Center in Warrensburg, New York, a seasonal job he held for nearly five years. Douglas Azaert, founder of Wild Waters, told The Baltimore Banner that Lankford was an “expert kayaker” who always carried a distinctive politeness: a “yes sir, no sir” way of speaking to others that stayed with him on and off the river.

“He was such a light,” Azaert said. “He would make almost every situation more positive. If you were having a down day, he would come into the room or the office and you immediately just felt a little bit better because his presence was there.”

Back in Charlottesville, Lankford served as a kayaking instructor with UVA’s Intramural Recreation Outdoor Adventure program from January 2022 through graduation, teaching new boaters the skills and safety practices of the sport he loved. As Treasurer of the Outdoors Club at UVA from March 2022 to May 2025, he helped manage budgets and trips, applying his data analysis and Excel skills to keep the organization on course. Those roles reflected a young man as comfortable navigating rapids as reconciling accounts.

After college, Lankford joined BDO, an accounting firm, as a Tax Associate focused on innovation and economic incentives. He analyzed research activities and expenditures to identify eligible R&D and sustainability projects, led qualitative analyses of business components and calculated tax credits for a diverse set of clients. His work included interviews and data analysis for more than 30 clients and contributed to multimillion‑dollar reimbursements. He was pursuing professional licensure as a CPA, extending the quantitative foundation he had built in college and positioning himself for a long‑term career in tax and finance.

Online and in his community, Lankford’s death has been described as a terrible loss. A friend, Siobhan Monahan, wrote that his community is now a “family in mourning” and said, “We’ve lost a brother… It’s horrific hearing this kind of news after watching them grow from little ducklings in this sport,” according to The Baltimore Banner.

News of the accident quickly spread across the internet. An account of the accident, published on the American Whitewater website, describes how Lankford led his group through “the Spout,” a powerful rapid at Great Falls familiar to kayakers, on a low‑water day, with the river measuring 3.2 feet at Little Falls. He began to struggle and disappeared from view as the current pushed his kayak against the undercut wall.

A fellow paddler reported in an online chat that Will was able to briefly raise his head above water with his feet braced against the rock — but then he slipped beneath the surface and was washed into the pool below.

A longtime Great Falls boater quoted in the report said the current there can form a “cauldron” that drives swimmers and boats into the wall; while many paddlers have washed through safely, he said, the undercut and strong current can make it nearly impossible to roll or escape once pinned, and Lankford appears to have been held just long enough to drown.

From the whitewater rivers of the Adirondacks to the classrooms of UVA and the offices of BDO, Will carried a consistent mix of competitive intensity, intellectual curiosity and an abiding love of the outdoors

William Caulfield Lankford was born July 2003 and is survived by his parents of Lynchburg, Virginia – Kim Lankford, a personal finance journalist and author, and Dr. Houman Tavaf-Motamen, a heart surgeon.

Lankford died doing something he loved, on a stretch of river that had become important to his sense of place and community. His loss is being felt on Capitol Hill, in Charlottesville and Lynchburg, at Wild Waters and BDO, and on the rocks and trails where he spent so much of his free time. For many in the paddling community, his memory will flow with the Potomac at Great Falls and in the quiet preparations every paddler makes before easing a boat into powerful water.

Ward 6 Debate Live

On Tuesday, May 11, from 7-9 pm at Hill Center there will be a candidate forum with the Democratic candidates for the Ward 6 Council race.

Submit your questions in advance to debate@hillrag.com.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS plans to attack the lanternflies with everything she’s got, as soon as she finishes editing this newsletter.

ALSO LOWER DOWN IN THIS NEWSLETTER

LINCOLN PARK NEWSLETTER JOINS THE NATIONAL TREND: CREATING NEWS STORIES WITH AI

STORY BELOW

By Queenie Q. Quincy

A resident of 11th Street NE was the victim of a theft from his car on Tuesday.

The resident was returning home to retrieve a lost item and left the car outside his back gate while he ran inside the home in the 100 block of 11th St. NE.

Two guys on a dark blue moped dressed in black and wearing face masks opened the car door and stole his briefcase.

A neighbor saw the thieves from his office and started yelling at them, causing them to rush, grab the bag and take off. The neighbor ran over to warn the victim, and they both saw the robbers exiting the Arrighi alley onto 10th Street NE.

The victim drove around a bit looking for his briefcase without success. The victim’s dog walker found the briefcase in the alley behind the church at 10th and Mass Ave. NE.

The contents were strewn on the pavement but were all there.

There was no license plate number to give the police — it was covered up — but if some camera on the alley had captured the crime, it would have been helpful. (Contact friendsofcapitolhillparks@gmail.com if you have any information.)

MOSQUITO WARRIORS SOUGHT

By Roberta Shapiro*

ANC commissioner

I wanted to share something exciting happening right here on Capitol Hill that you may want to know about.

A neighbor started the Itty Bitty Mosquito Population Committee this spring — a grassroots, spray-free effort to actually do something about our mosquito problem by organizing block by block. At best, mosquitoes are very annoying. At worst, they are a vector for a growing number of serious diseases.

There are simple, nontoxic steps we can use to try to significantly reduce mosquitoes in our neighborhood, but only if we do them together.

The committee organizes around block captains — neighbors who coordinate trap placement, treat communal catch basins and telecom vaults, and keep everyone on track through the season. Some blocks already have over 90% household participation.

Itty Bitty has 80+ block captains (I am one) mapped across the Hill, nearly 1,500 subscribers, and the committee is collecting data all summer to measure what this kind of community effort actually achieves.

WUSA9 came out to cover it. Watch here →

Find your block captain or become one: ittybittymosquitocommittee.org/block-captains →

Learn more and subscribe: ittybittymosquitocommittee.org →

*Note: I have no financial interest in this product.

LIGHT POST FINALLY REPAIRED AFTER A YEAR

GLORIA VS. CHARLES VS. MICHAEL

Ward 6 Debate Live

On Tuesday, May 11 from 7-9 pm at Hill Center there will be a candidate forum with the Democratic candidates for the Ward 6 Council race.

Submit your questions in advance to debate@hillrag.com.

Charles Allen, who has been in office for more than a decade and is seeking a fourth term, has two challengers for the Democratic nomination: lawyer Michael Murphy (www.murphyforward6.com) and Philanthropy DMV CEO and former ANC 6A02 commissioner Gloria Nauden (www.gloriaforward6.com).

Allen’s challengers are highlighting their calls to increase police protection as a way to send the National Guard home, as opposed to Allen’s prior defund-the-police stance.

This event is co-hosted by the DC Democrats, the Ward 6 Democrats, Capital Community News (the Hill Rag, East of the River News, and Midcity DC News), Spotlight DC, Transmission, and the Hill Center.

https://www.mobilize.us/dcdemsward2/event/931439/

Due to space constraints, they will be capping registration at 140 people, but the forum will also be live broadcast on the Hill Center’s Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/hillcenter.

SPRING AWAKENING TICKETS GONE

SOLD OUT

By G Mijares-Shafai

TICKETS for the St. Mark’s Players’ upcoming musical, Spring Awakening, are SOLD OUT.

WE WILL LET YOU KNOW IF MORE SHOWS ARE ADDED.
📍 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Capitol Hill)
🎟️ tickets:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/stmarksplayers/2135818

g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com

CASEY TREES IN LINCOLN PARK TO BE WATERED NEXT WEEK

The Lincoln Park Newsletter Publisher and CEO of Friends of Lincoln Park Mary Farran contacted Casey Trees about a lack of water. Those who donated money to plant the trees were promised the trees would be watered every few weeks.

Liam Ulasevich, director of tree operations, responded:

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I was expecting a great degree of transplant shock for that deodar cedar. We will have our crews out there next week. I will let you know the day soon.”

Details on the 250 trees program:

https://caseytrees.org/2026/04/tree-plantings-for-americas-250-begin-at-lincoln-park/?utm_source=leaflet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=leaflet

WELCOME!

NEW GARDENER ADOPTS AN URN

Hello! My name is Christine Hernandez, and I am a German teacher who finds joy in slow mornings and time in the garden.

When I’m not in the classroom, I can be found reading, swimming, playing bocce on the Mall, or on my yoga mat.

My husband and I are often out with our two Bernese Mountain dogs, searching for coffee and thinking of our 23-year-old son, who is currently in Liberia with the Peace Corps.

LINCOLN PARK NEWSLETTER JOINS THE NATIONAL TREND: CREATING NEWS STORIES WITH AI

Artificial intelligence is sweeping through the news industry. It is “transforming the way journalists around the world gather and disseminate information,” The New York Times says. “Traditional news organizations increasingly use tools from companies like OpenAI and Google to streamline work that used to take hours: sifting through reams of information, tracking down sources and suggesting headlines.”

Here is an LPN AI-generated news story. We suspect it is all fake. But, hey, AI is never wrong!

AREA MAN SLAIN IN GRUESOME ATTACK; GIRL SCOUT CUPCAKE SALE A SUCCESS

LINCOLN PARK — In a powerful demonstration of the federal government’s renewed commitment to public safety, a one-eyed Lincoln Park man was brutally slain Saturday morning directly in front of National Guardsmen deployed from Idaho to prevent exactly that sort of thing.

The killing occurred at approximately 10:47 a.m., just as members of Girl Scout Troop 8647 began a red velvet cupcake sale explicitly marketed as “crime-free.” The Guardsmen—who arrived in Washington earlier this week as part of President Trump’s “Total Visual Deterrence Initiative”—were stationed less than 30 feet away and reportedly observed the entire incident with what one witness described as “commendable stillness.”

“They did not overreact,” said one administration official. “That’s discipline. That’s restraint. That’s Idaho.”

According to preliminary reports, the victim—known locally as “the one-eyed guy” and, less formally, “you know, him”—was attacked in a manner authorities later confirmed was “highly visible, extremely loud, and difficult to misinterpret as anything other than a violent crime.”

At least four Guardsmen reportedly made sustained eye contact with the situation as it unfolded.

“We were told our presence alone would reduce crime,” said Specialist Caleb H., who confirmed this was his first time east of Nebraska. “And honestly, I think it did, conceptually.”

The troop had been deployed under a sweeping federal directive aimed at “ending crime in Washington, D.C., immediately,” a goal the administration says remains on track.

“This was an isolated success-adjacent outcome,” a spokesperson clarified. “Crime is now significantly more noticeable, which is the first step toward ending it.”

Meanwhile, the Girl Scouts adapted quickly.

“At first we thought about pausing,” said 8647 Troop leader Denise Harper, adjusting a “Support Local Girls” sign as sirens echoed behind her. “But then we remembered the girls had Square set up, and honestly, the line was incredible.”

Several customers confirmed that the juxtaposition of active violence and baked goods created what one described as “a heightened sense of urgency around dessert.”

“I wasn’t even going to stop,” said resident Kevin L., holding a half-eaten cupcake. “But then I saw the National Guard, and I thought, wow, this must be a really safe place to buy pastries.”

The Guardsmen maintained their positions throughout the incident, occasionally nodding in a manner residents found reassuring, if not directly useful.

“They looked very official,” said one onlooker. “At one point, one of them adjusted his stance. You could tell something was being handled, just not… this.”

When asked whether the deployment would be reconsidered, officials were unequivocal.

“Absolutely not,” said one senior advisor traveling with Trump. “If anything, we need more Guardsmen from states even less familiar with urban environments. That’s how you restore order.”

By early afternoon, the crime scene remained active, the Guardsmen remained present, and Troop 8647 had completely sold out of red velvet cupcakes, citing what they described as “historic, enforcement-adjacent demand.”

At press time, federal officials confirmed that crime in Washington, D.C., had been reduced by 100 percent in areas not currently experiencing crime.

In a statement, administration officials called the deployment “a strong early indicator that crime is now happening in a more controlled and visible manner,” adding that additional units from states “even calmer than Idaho” may be sent to further stand idly by the situation.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.)
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS, taking a moment from copy editing and hunting down invasive spotted lanternflies, is bemused about the makeover of the Mary and Al Arrighi alley in an election year.

DDOT FINALLY PLANS TO FIX DILAPIDATED ARRIGHI ALLEY

By the District Department of Transportation

DDOT will begin an alley improvement project in your neighborhood [finally!] on about Wednesday, May 6, 2026, weather permitting. The work will include concrete and brick work and will be completed in sections to minimize impacts and access to the alley.

Work is currently scheduled for the alley at Square 0965 bound by Constitution Avenue NE, 11th ST NE, Massachusetts NE, and 10th St NE, and it is estimated that this work will take approximately two weeks to complete, weather permitting. Workdays are Monday through Saturday between the hours of 7 AM to 7 PM. [They will all be gone by 3 PM. Who are you kidding?]

Once the work begins, the areas under construction will be closed and parking will not be permitted. Pedestrians and vehicles will not have access to private property with entrances along the alley. “Emergency No Parking” signs will be posted 72 hours before work is set to begin. [Don’t count on it.] In emergency situations access may be possible by notifying our on-s DDOT inspector/contractor or by calling the number below. [You’ll be lucky if anyone answers.]

For removal of trash during alley work:

Residential: Trash will be collected in front of your property until the project is completed. If your trash can is too cumbersome to handle, please use thick trash bags and place them in the public space in front of your property. This action is being coordinated by DOT with the Department of Public Works. Questions regarding trash pick-up must be directed to the DPW at 202-576-9000 or 202-576-9054.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during the repair work. If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please contact DDOT at 202-599-6811 or by email at francis.abreu@dc.gov.

Weed Warrior Training - May 13 - Please Share

By Becky George

NPS - NACE - Volunteers-In-Parks Program Coordinator

I’m excited to announce that our annual regional Weed Warrior event is coming up. This is training for anyone interested in getting involved in hands-on invasive plant removal and helping restore our local parks.

This year’s training brings together an incredible group of partners, including Arlington County Parks, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal NHP, DC Department of Energy and Environment, George Washington Memorial Parkway, Manassas National Battlefield, Monocacy National Battlefield, National Capital Parks-East, and Rock Creek Park!

The training is offered in two parts:

• A virtual session on Wednesday, May 13 from 6-9 pm

>>>>>> PRISM Weed Warrior Training Registration Link<<<<<<<

• An in-person field session at a participating park, most taking place on the morning of Saturday, May 16

To become a certified Weed Warrior volunteer, participants must attend both sessions.

This is a great opportunity to learn how to identify and manage invasive plants, connect with others, and make a real impact in our parks. Please share the registration link with anyone who may be interested!

>>>>>> PRISM Weed Warrior Training Registration Link<<<<<<<

rebecca_george@nps.gov

GLORIA AND CHARLES

WARD 6 CANDIDATES FORUM AT 3 P.M. AT KING-GREENLEAF

VERONNEAU TRIO Comes to Capitol Hill for a Benefit Concert

In support of migrants and refugees, vocalist Lynn Veronneau joins guitarist Ken Avis and collaborator Dave Kline (violin) , April 25 at 7:30 p.m. for an evening of bossa nova, blues, soul and swing from the best of their award-winning albums.

On stage, VERONNEAU is fresh, fun, beautiful, and elegant.

All proceeds will go to support Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid and Good Neighbors Capitol Hill, two organizations that ensure our newest neighbors are welcomed with dignity, stability, and care through the provision of emergency shelter, legal and prenatal clinics, meals, clothing, and apartment furnishings and household set-ups for families arriving with little to no support].

A minimum donation of $25 is suggested, and more would be gratefully accepted if you can afford it.

The concert is Saturday, April 25 @ 7:30 PM, St. Mark’s Church, 301 A St. SE . Tickets available online, Veronneau Concert, and at the door.

MAURY BOOK AND BAKE SALE SATURDAY

Maury fifth graders sponsor a book and bake sale on Saturday to support the class graduation trip.

Off the Hill: Uncorked

DC brings 100+ wines and local food trucks to Nationals Park on Saturday, April 25. Tickets
Nationals Park, 1500 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, DC 20003

The Washington Spirit face the Kansas City Current at Audi Field Friday night in an NWSL rivalry match. Tickets
Audi Field, 100 Potomac Avenue SW, Washington, DC

ONE OF THE BEST PLANT SALES OF THE YEAR IS SATURDAY

Looking for great places to get organic plants? Have you planted your spring flowers in your container or urn? Check out the sale of the year.

FONA SALE MOVES BACK TO LARGER SPACE

The annual Garden Fair & Plant Sale at the National Arboretum is on Saturday, April 25th from 9 AM to 4 PM. Shop from thousands of plants hand-selected by our team of garden experts, browse from 25+ local vendors selling plant-related products, and enjoy free family activities.

Tents are set up for sales if you’re worried about the rain.

There will be thousands of annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, and rare plants curated by FONA’s garden experts. Whether you’re looking for herbs for your apartment balcony or shade-loving perennials for your yard, the Plant Sale tent has great options at great prices. No matter your gardening experience level, our garden experts can answer your questions and offer advice. Plan to pay with a credit or debit card for purchases from the Plant Sale tent (no cash sales).

Schedule

8 AM: Arboretum opens to the public. Members may start lining up outside the Plant Sale tent for members-only hours.

9 AM – 11 AM: Members-only hours in the Plant Sale tent. The Vendor Village is open to the public during this time. Donate any amount to become a FONA member and get early access.

9 AM – 4 PM: Shop locally-made home goods, food & drink, and more at the Vendor Village.

10 AM – 2 PM: Free family-friendly activities are offered by DC Child Care Connections.

11 AM – 4 PM: Public hours for the Plant Sale tent, open to all

4 PM: Event ends. All visitors must pick up their plants from plant sitting by this time.

5 PM: Arboretum closes to the public.

Vendors

PLANTS & GARDEN

6 Kings Farm: Wool fertilizer and soil amendment

• Boujie Plants: Customized plants, containers, and soil blends

• Cultivate the City: Plants (including houseplants) and garden-related products

• Embrace the Succ: Rare cacti and succulents

• Herb Society of America: Potomac Unit: Herbs

• Pitcheresque Plants: Carnivorous plants

• Plants & What Knot: Kokedama, air plants, and living wall art

• Plant Bazaar DC: Indoor and outdoor plants

• Radical Roots Organic Farm: Specialty organic fruit and vegetable seedlings

ART & HOME DECOR

• Bruce Ciske Pottery: Ceramic vases and ikebana containers

• D’Boho Mama: Handmade cards, journals, and macrame

• Down2Earth Pottery: Functional and wearable ceramic art

• Lita + Ro: Hand-poured soy candles

• Marcella Kriebel Art + Illustration: Watercolor prints, towels, aprons, and tote bags

CLOTHING, JEWELRY, AND BEAUTY

• Bailiwick Clothing Company: Clothing and accessories with unique DC and DMV designs

• bianca + jean: Handmade accessories and curated gifts

• Earth Essentials by Erica: Small-batch skincare and self-care products

• Heiress Oils: Organic essential-oil based mosquito repellent

• One Seed Designs: Landscape-inspired handmade silver and stone jewelry

• Silver Quill Studio: Jewelry and sun catchers made from recycled materials

FOOD & DRINK

• Black Sesame Rolls: Korean and Japanese onigiri and rice rolls

• Blossom Bakery: Fresh-baked breakfast items, sandwiches, and salads

• Frosty Softy: Soft serve ice cream, milkshakes, shaved ice, and other desserts

• JackiCan Fresh Fruit Jams: Small batch fresh fruit jams made from local fruit

• Pearl Fine Teas: Premium high quality loose leaf teas

• Phowheels: Vietnamese cuisine with a modern twist

• Taco Dirty To Me: Freshly made fusion tacos

• Zeke’s Coffee of DC: Fresh hot coffee and cold brew, plus coffee beans

  ---

  LINCOLN PARK GANG ORGANIZES A ‘SPRING AWAKENING’ GROUP

By G Mijares-Shafai

For those interested, we will be purchasing a block of tickets for St. Mark’s Players’ upcoming musical: Spring Awakening — especially for subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter. (We have not decided the date, yet.) By purchasing with the group, you will receive a $5 discount off the normal ticket price of $25. Email g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com.

Spring Awakening is a bold and emotionally charged musical set in Germany during the late 1800s exploring the challenges of adolescence, identity, and self-discovery with a contemporary edge.

Parental discretion advised. (One song is entitled “Totally Fucked.” Get the picture?)

📅 Multiple performance dates from May 1 through May 16
📍 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Capitol Hill)
🎟️ Get your tickets here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/stmarksplayers/2135818

If interested in purchasing with the group, please email Gerardo Mijares-Shafai at g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com by no later than Monday, April 27, 2026.

Time to plant

If you want to try planting with seeds, the commissioner of the urns has harvested some seeds from my Mexican sunflowers that many of you admired last year. The commish is happy to share them with you (and he also has some milkweed seeds). These plants are very good for attracting Monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS IS EAGER FOR WARD 6 COUNCIL MEMBER CANDIDATE’S GOVERNMENT THAT WORKS. BUT SHE IS SKEPTICAL.

MAISON DES GLACES

Wine & Butter, the popular cafe on Lincoln Park, is planning to open a new ice cream shop later this spring, as soon as next month, according to sources familiar with the plans.

The hand-dipped ice cream shop will be located in the old Surroundings florist next door to Wine & Butter. Charles Hudman sold the building to Attila Suzer and Lisa Friedman in 2023, and Hudman continued to run Surroundings until he died last year.

It seems as if there is no end to ice cream shops opening — and closing. Eastern Market Bakery has had hand-scooped ice cream for decades. There’s also Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, 660 Penn SE, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, 526 Eighth St. SE and the Capitol Candy Jar, 201 15th St. NE — not to mention a couple or so on H Street NE and one in Union Market.

Moorenko’s Ice Cream, 740 C St. SE, closed last year and the owner, Susan Soorenko, 73, told WTOP she had put the shop and another in Bethesda up for sale. Since then, there has been little activity in the shop and no indication that a buyer has been found.

And of course supermodel Tyra Banks signed a lease at the old Forecast clothing and gift shop and then backed out, prompting an ongoing legal battle.

The popularity of Wine & Butter — long lines could be seen on Saturday morning — might bode well for Suzer and Friedman, who writes about the environment for The New York Times.

ANNUAL GARDEN SALES

Looking for great places to get organic plants? Have you planted your spring flowers in your container or urn?

Here are two sales the next two weekends.

MONASTERY GARDEN GUILD

FMGG Plant & Herb Sale on April 18 and 19! Purchase organic products and take a free Garden Tour, courtesy of the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild.

New for 2026 – native plants!
herbs & vegetables | monastery-grown plants
annuals & perennials | evergreens, trees & shrubs
craft & food vendors | local honey and more!

FONA SALE MOVES BACK TO LARGER SPACE

The annual Garden Fair & Plant Sale at the National Arboretum is on Saturday, April 25th from 9 AM to 4 PM. Shop from thousands of plants hand-selected by our team of garden experts, browse from 25+ local vendors selling plant-related products, and enjoy free family activities.

There will be thousands of annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, and rare plants curated by FONA’s garden experts. Whether you’re looking for herbs for your apartment balcony or shade-loving perennials for your yard, the Plant Sale tent has great options at great prices. No matter your gardening experience level, our garden experts can answer your questions and offer advice. Plan to pay with a credit or debit card for purchases from the Plant Sale tent (no cash sales).

Schedule

8 AM: Arboretum opens to the public. Members may start lining up outside the Plant Sale tent for members-only hours.

9 AM – 11 AM: Members-only hours in the Plant Sale tent. The Vendor Village is open to the public during this time. Donate any amount to become a FONA member and get early access.

9 AM – 4 PM: Shop locally-made home goods, food & drink, and more at the Vendor Village.

10 AM – 2 PM: Free family-friendly activities are offered by DC Child Care Connections.

11 AM – 4 PM: Public hours for the Plant Sale tent, open to all

4 PM: Event ends. All visitors must pick up their plants from plant sitting by this time.

5 PM: Arboretum closes to the public.

Vendors

PLANTS & GARDEN

• 6 Kings Farm: Wool fertilizer and soil amendment

• Boujie Plants: Customized plants, containers, and soil blends

• Cultivate the City: Plants (including houseplants) and garden-related products

• Embrace the Succ: Rare cacti and succulents

• Herb Society of America: Potomac Unit: Herbs

• Pitcheresque Plants: Carnivorous plants

• Plants & What Knot: Kokedama, air plants, and living wall art

• Plant Bazaar DC: Indoor and outdoor plants

• Radical Roots Organic Farm: Specialty organic fruit and vegetable seedlings

ART & HOME DECOR

• Bruce Ciske Pottery: Ceramic vases and ikebana containers

• D’Boho Mama: Handmade cards, journals, and macrame

• Down2Earth Pottery: Functional and wearable ceramic art

• Lita + Ro: Hand-poured soy candles

• Marcella Kriebel Art + Illustration: Watercolor prints, towels, aprons, and tote bags

CLOTHING, JEWELRY, AND BEAUTY

• Bailiwick Clothing Company: Clothing and accessories with unique DC and DMV designs

• bianca + jean: Handmade accessories and curated gifts

• Earth Essentials by Erica: Small-batch skincare and self-care products

• Heiress Oils: Organic essential-oil based mosquito repellent

• One Seed Designs: Landscape-inspired handmade silver and stone jewelry

• Silver Quill Studio: Jewelry and sun catchers made from recycled materials

FOOD & DRINK

• Black Sesame Rolls: Korean and Japanese onigiri and rice rolls

• Blossom Bakery: Fresh-baked breakfast items, sandwiches, and salads

• Frosty Softy: Soft serve ice cream, milkshakes, shaved ice, and other desserts

• JackiCan Fresh Fruit Jams: Small batch fresh fruit jams made from local fruit

• Pearl Fine Teas: Premium high quality loose leaf teas

• Phowheels: Vietnamese cuisine with a modern twist

• Taco Dirty To Me: Freshly made fusion tacos

• Zeke’s Coffee of DC: Fresh hot coffee and cold brew, plus coffee beans

  ---

  Sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Memorial draws big crowd

“I liked the unveiling, although the unveiller was smoking a cigar and I worried he would set the whole thing afire,” one wag said. “People seemed to be having a good time and there was an Eleanor Holmes Norton re-enactor handing out the programs.”

CIGAR-SMOKING RE-ENACTOR UNVEILS STATUE

WATCH AS HE NEARLY SENDS THE TARP UP IN FLAMES

By G Mijares-Shafai

Be sure to check out the St. Mark’s Players’ upcoming musical: Spring Awakening.

Spring Awakening is a bold and emotionally charged musical set in Germany during the late 1800s exploring the challenges of adolescence, identity, and self-discovery with a contemporary edge.

📅 Multiple performance dates from May 1 through May 16
📍 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Capitol Hill)
🎟️ Get your tickets here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/stmarksplayers/2135818

g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com

RING FOUND IN LINCOLN PARK

A small diamond ring band was found by a citizen and his dog in Lincoln Park on Monday, March 30. Contact the Treat Lady in the park on a bench on the north side of the park every morning from 7:30 AM to 8 AM or text 240-329-7355

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS IS EAGER TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WARD 6 COUNCIL MEMBER CANDIDATE.

HAPPY EASTER!

The Historic Congressional Cemetery, located at 1801 E St SE, Washington, DC, hosts a community Easter Sunrise Service on Sunday, April 5, 2026, starting at 6:30 AM. Organized in partnership with Christ Church Capitol Hill, this service offers a local, reflective alternative to larger DC services, welcoming all for worship amidst the historic grounds. Join Monica Mills, Gracie and Norma Rae for the service.

LINCOLN STATUE BIRTHDAY PARTY ON SATURDAY

Sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Memorial to be feted on Saturday

National Park Service news release

Join the National Park Service as we reflect on a living symbol of America’s 250‑year journey toward full freedom by observing the 150th anniversary of the dedication and unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park.

Lincoln Park is the largest Capitol Hill Park and features monuments to two of the nation’s greatest leaders—one of which was dedicated to President Abraham Lincoln. Unveiled on April 14, 1876, the 11th anniversary of President Lincoln’s death, over 25,000 people attended the event.

On Saturday, April 11, 2026, the schedule of programming will include:

• Children’s activities, park tours, and exhibits - 12 pm

• Statue unveiling - 2 pm

• Panel Discussion on the Emancipation Memorial’s History - 3:30 pm

• Wreath laying - 4:45 pm

Temporary Closure of the Center Turf Panel in Lincoln Park

Lincoln Park Central Turf Panel Closed: April 4–July 3, 2026

The central turf panel at Lincoln Park will be closed from April 4–July 3, 2026, for restoration.

Mary Farran, the mayor of Lincoln Park, immediately issued a statement asking the National Park Service to WAIT until after Independence Day so that the illegal informal fireworks “show” that occurs annually does not destroy the new grass.

“Please wait until July 5 to take the fence down,” Mayor Farran said.

The fence is an annual disruption to Lincoln Park.

“This temporary closure is necessary to protect the park’s natural and cultural resources during a comprehensive turf restoration which will improve the visitor experience,” said Serena Bellew, Superintendent of National Capital Parks - East.

NPS describes the project as “over-seeding the center and northern panels. The result will be durable turf that is more tolerant of heavy use.”

Rangers make these suggestions:

1. Leash and clean up after your pet. It’s the law, and you’ll keep others safe and protect the grass.

2. Observe closures. Giving the new grass a chance to grow strong will make it ready to be played on this summer.

3. Stay off wet grass. If the ground is wet, walking on it can compact the soil and damage the roots, resulting in another cycle of reseeding.

   ---

DOZENS OF VOLUNTEERS PLANT 36 TREES IN LINCOLN PARK

Casey Trees partners with National Park Service

More than four dozen volunteers joined workers from Casey trees and the National Park Service plant 36 new trees in Lincoln Park on Saturday morning.

The planting of seedlings is part of “Casey Trees’ 250 Years of America,” 250 Trees for its Capital.

Other trees are to be planted across historic federal parks in Washington in honor of America’s 250th anniversary.

Casey Trees provided volunteers with shovels, pickaxes and rakes to plant the trees. Participants received hands-on training after grabbing bagels and water.

Participants split up into groups supervised by a trained volunteer and began planting trees in designated spots marked with pink flags.

Here is a rundown of the trees and where they will be, based upon our interpretation of the map below.

• Four Red Maple trees (Acer Rubrum), two on the north side of the park and two on the south side. (Purple dot)

• One Deodar Cedar pine tree (Cedrus Deodara) on the northwest corner (red dot

  

• Three Washington Hawthornes (Crataegus Phaenopyrum) in the squares on the plaza near the Emancipation statue (light green)

  

  

• Three Nellie R. Stevens evergreens (Ilex aquifolium x cornuta), one west of the north playground, one in the northeast corner, and one south of the south playground (grey dot)

  

• 15 Star Magnolias (Magnolia stellata), situated along the lower plaza between the statues. These replace trees that suffered a lot of abuse from children swinging from their branches and people hanging hammocks on them.

  

• Four Willow Oak trees (Quercus phellos), in various places (avocado green dots)

• Two American linden, or American basswood (Tilia Americana), one north and one south of the Bethune statue. (Kelly green dot)

  

• American elm (Ulmus Americana) in the southwest corner (aqua green)

  

By G Mijares-Shafai

Be sure to check out the St. Mark’s Players’ upcoming musical: Spring Awakening.

Spring Awakening is a bold and emotionally charged musical set in Germany during the late 1800s exploring the challenges of adolescence, identity, and self-discovery with a contemporary edge. With a powerful rock score and deeply moving story, Spring Awakening remains as relevant today as ever.

📅 Multiple performance dates from May 1 through May 16
📍 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Capitol Hill)
🎟️ Get your tickets here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/stmarksplayers/2135818

Seating is open, so it is recommended that you arrive early to secure the best spots.

Invite friends, family, and anyone who appreciates compelling live performance, please.

Note: This production is intended for mature audiences. No patrons under the age of 17 admitted without parent or adult guardian. For a detailed description of the subject matter explored in SPRING AWAKENING, please refer to the following link.

g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com

RING FOUND IN LINCOLN PARK

A small diamond ring band was found by a citizen and his dog in Lincoln Park on Monday, March 30. Contact the Treat Lady in the park on a bench on the north side of the park every morning from 7:30 AM to 8 AM or text 240-329-7355

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

SHE’S NOT CHUCKLES

In reply to Lincoln Park Newsletter’s concern about who Gloria is: I am pleased to illuminate that that Gloria Nauden’s principal credential is that she is not the present incumbent.

Suffice it to say that this voter would vote for a ham sandwich in lieu of the incumbent. A ham sandwich, however, has not qualified for the primary.

— Mark Ugoretz

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS IS EAGER TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WARD 6 COUNCIL MEMBER CANDIDATE.

LINCOLN PARK FINALLY GETS SOME ATTENTION — FROM CASEY TREES, NOT THE GOVERNMENT

PLANTING CELEBRATION ON APRIL 4 IN LINCOLN PARK

By Scherzer Barkstein

Casey Trees has released the map of where it plans to plant trees in Lincoln Park on Saturday as part of its 250 Years of America, 250 Trees for its Capital campaign.

Here is a rundown of the trees and where they will be, based upon our interpretation of the map below.

• Four Red Maple trees (Acer Rubrum), two on the north side of the park and two on the south side. (Purple dot)

• One Deodar Cedar pine tree (Cedrus Deodara) on the northwest corner (red dot)

• Three Washington Hawthornes (Crataegus Phaenopyrum) in the squares on the plaza near the Emancipation statue (light green)

• Three Nellie R. Stevens evergreens (Ilex aquifolium x cornuta), one west of the north playground, one in the northeast corner, and one south of the south playground (grey dot)

• 15 Star Magnolias (Magnolia stellata), situated along the lower plaza between the statues. These replace trees that suffered a lot of abuse from people hanging from them, hanging hammocks and swinging from the branches.

• Four Willow Oak trees (Quercus phellos), in various places (avocado green dots)

• Two American linden, or American basswood (Tilia Americana), one north and one south of the Bethune statue. (Kelly green dot)

• American elm (Ulmus Americana) in the southwest corner (aqua green)

The tree planting is part of a campaign to raise $125,000 to plant 250 native and historic trees across historic federal parks in the nation’s capital, in partnership with National Capital Parks-East.

The Lincoln Park Community Tree Planting begins on Saturday at 8 a.m. and continues until noon. Come and watch without signing up. Or sign up here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-tree-planting-lincoln-park-tickets-1984406813197

Casey Trees is partnering with Latham & Watkins law firm as part of the project.

Questions about the event: please email friends@caseytrees.org or call/text the on-site contact, Emily Koppel, at 714-321-3659.

WILL LINCOLN PARK BE LEFT OUT OF TRUMP’S PARK SPENDING SPREE?

$10 billion fund proposed for DC construction and beautification projects

By Tommy Woodward

Decrying decaying parks in the nation’s capital, the Trump administration on Friday proposed creating a $10 billion fund to pay for construction and beautification projects in the District.

The fund is part of the budget proposal that would include record-smashing one-and-a-half-trillion-dollar defense budget for fiscal year 2027. If passed, it would be the largest U.S. defense budget in American history.

Trump told Christian and religious leaders that the whopping $500 billion increase in the Pentagon’s budget would come with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, daycare and programs for the poor. (Note that the Christian nationalist ministers remained silent, the Gospel of Matthew be damned — Matthew 25:40.)

The DC beautification spending spree, if approved, would be a huge economic boost to the District of Columbia, the Washington Business Journal said.

“Many historic park features and public-facing infrastructure throughout the city show signs of decay, years of heavy public use, and inadequate maintenance,” the four-page “topline” budget document states.

The fact that this proposal is among the very few in the list shows Trump’s interest in making it a priority. Typically such proposals are buried in a massive budget request.

Historically, most attention to parks is on the National Mall and in the western half of Washington. The National Park Service typically has neglected the parks in the eastern half because of budget restraints.

For example, Lincoln Park has millions of dollars in deferred maintenance. The irrigation system installed more than a decade ago has been broken for years, many benches are busted and local residents have put in tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to plant the concrete urns and sponsor trees to be planted on Saturday in the park.

Business Recorder reported this was one of the pet projects that Trump wants funded. The $10 billion mandatory fund would establish the “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program” within the National Park Service “to coordinate, plan, and execute targeted, priority construction and beautification projects in and around Washington, D.C.,” Trump’s budget request states.

The proposal must be approved by Congress.

“Once complete, these projects would improve safety and accessibility, rehabilitate historic buildings and landscapes, and enhance architectural grandeur so that Americans can once again be proud of the Nation’s capital,” the proposal states.

“In addition, this generational investment in the restoration of Washington, D.C., would drive economic development in the city, increase visitation from across the world, and lower future infrastructure lifecycle costs,” the proposal states.

By G Mijares-Shafai

Be sure to check out the St. Mark’s Players’ upcoming musical: Spring Awakening.

Spring Awakening is a bold and emotionally charged musical set in Germany during the late 1800s exploring the challenges of adolescence, identity, and self-discovery with a contemporary edge. With a powerful rock score and deeply moving story, Spring Awakening remains as relevant today as ever.

📅 Multiple performance dates from May 1 through May 16
📍 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Capitol Hill)
🎟️ Get your tickets here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/stmarksplayers/2135818

Seating is open, so it is recommended that you arrive early to secure the best spots.

Invite friends, family, and anyone who appreciates compelling live performance, please.

Note: This production is intended for mature audiences. No patrons under the age of 17 admitted without parent or adult guardian. For a detailed description of the subject matter explored in SPRING AWAKENING, please refer to the following link.

g.mijaresshafai@gmail.com

RING FOUND IN LINCOLN PARK

A small diamond ring band was found by a citizen and his dog in Lincoln Park on Monday, March 30. Contact the Treat Lady in the park on a bench on the north side of the park every morning from 7:30 AM to 8 AM or text 240-329-7355

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

H. BETTS STILL DOES NOT KNOW WHO GLORIA NAUDEN IS, BUT IS EDITING THIS NEWSLETTER ANYWAY.

Neighbors organizing to obliterate mosquitoes.

By Michelle Mingrone

Mosquito season on Capitol Hill has gotten bad, and we’re done complaining about it.

The Itty Bitty Mosquito Population Committee is a grassroots neighborhood effort focused on spray-free mosquito prevention and control. We started with a simple listserv post in March 2026 and heard back from over 1,000 interested households in the first week.

Turns out we’re not alone in our suffering.

I spoke this week with Biogents, the GAT trap manufacturer, and the representatives there said they are floored by the response of 1,000 responses.

Needless to say, they’re in. Here’s what came out of the conversation:

They want to partner, not just sell us traps

The overwhelming response from our community caught Biogents’ attention in a big way and they’re responding. They’re offering deeper discounts and more hands-on engagement than they’d typically provide because the scale of interest here is genuinely valuable to them as a European company working to crack the American market. Our participation and testimonials matter to them and in exchange they’re committed to helping us actually solve our mosquito problem and not just sell us traps.

We are focused on getting BG-GAT traps broadly deployed across our neighborhoods at a deep discount. The more households that participate, the better the results.

What is a BG-GAT trap? Here is a summary from the website of the BG-GAT trap maker, Biogents USA

Biogents BG-GAT (Gravid Aedes Trap) is a low-cost and easy to use tool that can help you reduce the population of Asian tiger (Aedes albopictus) and yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) in your backyard. These species are day active, very aggressive, and can transmit diseases like dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya.

In comparison to the BG-Mosquitaire trap which attracts mosquitoes seeking a bloodmeal, the BG-GAT targets a different stage of the mosquitoes: those mosquitoes that have already bitten and are now searching for a place to lay their eggs. The trap mimics an alternative breeding site and uses water and oviposition cues to attract egg laying female Asian tiger and yellow fever mosquitoes. Once in the trap, the mosquitoes are collected on a sticky surface and die.

Beyond traps, we are planning to map and treat catch basins and other standing water in public spaces, supporting native plant initiatives and building relationships with DC Health and other city agencies to make insecticide-free mosquito control more proactive across the district.

We’re just getting started — and we’re figuring it out as we go.

Subscribe to learn the latest on discounted mosquito traps, upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and new mosquito-free initiatives.

Are GAT traps actually effective?

I don’t have firsthand experience with their traps beyond the reports I’ve read, and I don’t want to oversell them before we’ve seen results ourselves. That said, I’m genuinely encouraged.

The evidence says that communities with high participation rates have seen meaningful reductions. Biogents has been remarkably willing to invest in and engage directly with our community rather than just sell us traps. If it works, we’ll be the first to say so loudly. If it doesn’t, we’ll say that too.

GAT traps are only one piece of the puzzle — they target egg-laying adult females —but mosquitoes need to be tackled across their lifecycle for real results. Standing water elimination and BTi treatment knock out larvae, while Biogents’ Mosquitaire trap (a pricier, CO2-powered option) targets host-seeking adults.

Town hall at the end of April

Biogents has offered to come to Capitol Hill for a live town hall to answer questions and walk us through everything in the last two weeks of April. They’re also offering to visit some of our blocks to talk through optimal trap placement and strategy.

We don’t necessarily need 100 traps on a block to get great results. With smart placement, 30 well-placed traps can outperform 100 poorly placed ones — and they want to help us figure that out.

I know this time of year is tricky with spring break and planned activities, so we’ll make sure there’s a virtual attendance option and that the session is recorded. Biogents also mentioned potentially coming back for a second town hall later in the season, which is great news for anyone who can’t make the first one.

Trap Purchasing Logistics

By the time of the town hall, Biogents will have set up a dedicated landing page for our community to order directly, with heavily discounted packages. They’re working up pricing proposals now and will share details next week — they’ve assured me they’re being as aggressive as possible on price in exchange for the publicity. They’re also exploring sponsoring traps for some families if the numbers work out. I’ll share all of that as soon as I have it.

Volunteer meetup on Saturday April 4

For the 150+ of you who expressed interest in getting more involved — I’m aiming to hold a meetup on Saturday April 4 to start planning the town hall and put heads together on catch basin initiatives, block coordination, outreach and more. Still sorting out a location — if you know of a good spot, let me know at ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com.

We need a place to meet. Can you help?

For the town hall at the end of April, we need a proper venue — somewhere that can accommodate a good-sized crowd in the Capitol Hill area. If you have a connection or lead on a space, please reach out at ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com. Any and all ideas welcome!

Stay tuned!

Michelle has been in DC for 12 years, on Capitol Hill for 8. Lifelong mosquito target. Has 2 kids (ages 4 and 6) who attend a DC Public School on Capitol Hill. Professionally, she has worked in software development although her educational background and early career were in public health. She is an avid (but admittedly very amateur) gardener.

FOUND IN LINCOLN PARK: RING

Small diamond ring band found in Lincoln Park on Monday, March 30. Contact the Treat Lady in the park on a bench on the north side of the park every morning from 7:30 AM to 8 AM or text 240-329-7355

COMMANDER CITY ON THE ANACOSTIA

By Edna Boone

The city is working on a Master Plan for the RFK city. Please consider weighing in and pushing out to your contacts and on social media, etc.

https://mayor.dc.gov/release/take-rfk-master-plan-survey-open-through-april-12

Take the Survey

Please allow at least 30 minutes to complete this survey. It will remain open from March 31, 2026 – April 12, 2026.

Take the survey here: https://publicinput.com/rfkmodule

PLANTING CELEBRATION ON APRIL 4 IN LINCOLN PARK

By Casey Trees

Casey Trees is planning to be in Lincoln Park on Saturday to plant 37 new trees as part of its 250 Years of America, 250 Trees for its Capital campaign.

The forecast looks warm and sunny.

This is part of an ambitious campaign to raise $125,000 to plant 250 native and historic trees across historic federal parks in the nation’s capital, in partnership with National Capital Parks-East.

You are welcome to join us for the Lincoln Park Community Tree Planting on Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. You can come and watch without signing up. Or sign up here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-tree-planting-lincoln-park-tickets-1984406813197

Casey Trees is partnering with Latham & Watkins law firm as part of the project.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts wants to know who Gloria Nauden is and whether she should contact Tiffany for a Gloria yard sign. Email Tiffanybdavidson@gmail.com

CORRECTION: The last edition left out the middle initial of Floyd R. Turbo. It is “R.”

By Helen Betts

More than a dozen fire department vehicles, including three hook-and-ladder trucks, responded to a house fire north of Lincoln Park on Saturday.

A man and his dog were left without a home after the row house fire on 11th Street NE across from Park Street, two blocks north of Lincoln Park, DC Fire said on social media.

In a post on the X around noon, DC Fire and EMS said firefighters responded to a fire on the first floor of a two-story row house in the 200 block of 11th Street NE.

The occupants of the home safely escaped with no injuries, and crews extinguished the flames before they spread beyond the first floor.

A PoPville reader reported just before noon:

“there are at least two engines and 3 ladder trucks with lots of fire fighters. The house is on the west side of 11th where it hits park ne. National guard is being useful for keeping perimeter so that’s a win.”

Officials noted that the Red Cross would be assisting one man and one dog who lived in the home.

The cause of the fire was not determined.

A witness saw at least one lithium ion battery in the house and two e-bikes near the house. Lithium ion batteries require firefighters to call the HazMat unit to remove them. Firefighters told a witness they were unsure if the lithium battery caused the fire, though they have been known to cause many fires.

Floyd Turbo contributed to this report.

PLANTING CELEBRATION ON APRIL 4 IN LINCOLN PARK

By Casey Trees

Spring is almost here, and the trees you helped make possible are ready to take root.

Thanks to your support of Casey Trees’ 250 Years of America, 250 Trees for its Capital campaign, your generosity is about to become something tangible and lasting: 37 new trees in Lincoln Park. We would love for you to be there to help plant them.

Casey Trees is organizing an ambitious campaign to raise $125,000 to plant 250 native and historic trees across historic federal parks in the nation’s capital, in partnership with National Capital Parks-East (NACE).

Join us for the Lincoln Park Community Tree Planting on Saturday, April 4th from 8 a.m. to noon. Sign up here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-tree-planting-lincoln-park-tickets-1984406813197

Tickets became available on Thursday, March 19.

‘There is nothing like this in DC or almost anywhere else’

By David Klevan

dklevan@gmail.com

If you have a child/children who are interested in theatre and acting, I wanted to share this truly excellent opportunity with you.

My daughter has participated in the Traveling Players Ensemble (TPE) for several years now, and it has been an extraordinary experience. TPE offers opportunities year round -- in fact, if you want to get a taste for the quality of their work, today they will be showing three Greek plays for ages 6+, 8+, and 13+ respectively (information and tickets available here).

Where the program really shines is their summer programs (flyer attached). My daughter will be in her third year with their Shakespeare Troupe -- a pre-professional six week residential conservatory program where the kids produce and act in a full-length Shakespeare play that they take on the road and perform for the public in several venues around Virginia (this summer they will perform King Lear).

There is nothing like this in DC or almost anywhere else (kids come from as far away as Brooklyn, Connecticut, and North Carolina for the summer camp).

I’m doing the hard sell for three reasons:

1. I know the quality of the program and the difference this has made for my daughter.

2. Their studio is in Tysons Corner, and well... that is not near Capitol Hill (though our daughter and her friends regularly get there and back via the Silver line).

3. If I’m being honest, I want to save this program for future generations. As you undoubtably know, the current administration has deeply cut and is trying to eliminate NEH grants that small arts organizations like this one rely upon to survive. So, if this remotely interests you, please do check them out.

If you or your kid want to learn more, please feel free to let me know. dklevan@gmail.com I’d be glad to share more info.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is chasing fire trucks.

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: DC GARBAGE MAN TOSSES TRASH BINS IN NOMA ALLEY

By Scherzer Barkstein

Llewellyn Jones noticed something strange happening in his alley in September.

He looked in his back yard and saw that his bushes in the back of his house were effectively crushed and there was garbage everywhere. It happened more than once.

“There were multiple times where I’d go out and find the bins in the bushes,” Llewellyn said.

Who on earth would dump garbage into his bushes. Just strange.

“I assumed it could be the garbageman, but sometimes there’s also random people wandering the alleys that have mental health issues,” he said.

An economics journalist who lives near K and 2nd Streets NE in NoMa, Llewellyn did what any good reporter would do: He looked for evidence.

“I wanted proof as it just seemed too crazy to accuse the garbagemen of actively throwing garbage around,” he said.

Llewellyn set up a Ring camera aimed at his trash cans, but the camera never seemed to capture the culprit in the act.

“Every time it happened there would be a suspicious break in the footage when the bins went from upright to all over the place (which is crazy in and of itself),” Llewellyn wrote in an email to the Lincoln Park Newsletter.

He contacted Ring, but nothing seemed to work.

“I gave up on that device and bought a $30 trail camera on Amazon instead,” Llewellyn said.

The camera arrived on Monday. The trash gets picked up on Fridays. He got the footage on Friday. Here it is:

Then, Llewellyn posted the video on X, which went semi-viral with more than 400 comments and 1,300 reposts, including with some racist comments.

He tagged Councilmember Charles Allen, who responded to his X post. (Llewellyn and the councilmember coached the same Capitol Hill Little League team, so they are friends.) He said he would call the Department of Public Works.

The Department of Public Works also responded on X.

“I thought it might have something to do with this alley being small and a dead end. Maybe he was getting the bins out of the way in a sloppy, haphazard manner? But the bins are not in the way,” he wrote.

This was not the first problem with DPW.

There was no garbage pickup in Llewellyn’s alley throughout October as well as most of January following the snowstorm. He put in a lot of tickets with 311. Eventually DPW picked up the trash in November with an apology.

On Monday, it happened again. Trash dumped in the alley. The camera motion detector was slow and missed it, but Llewellyn saw him and confronted the trash man.

“I had words with the garbageman who admitted to it,” Llewellyn said. He said “something about how he didn’t want cans near cars and all the garbage on the ground is from the rats.

“Really dishonest. And there’s garbage all over the alley as usual.”

SNOWSTORM A BUST FOR DC

District dodges the blizzard bullet

TUESDAY ROAD CLOSURES FOR SOTU

RED LINES = ROAD CLOSURE

PINKISH SHADING = PEDESTRIANS RESTRICTED ZONE

BIG TREE DOWN

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is wondering if there will really be road work on 11th Street. Or is it another no-parking fake.

Milo Wilkerson is tired of being the publisher. He has asked Mary Farran to take over.

By Tommy Woodward

The mass layoffs at The Washington Post continue to reverberate through the region. Initially, attention focused on the elimination of the sports page, Book World, and severe cutbacks in foreign news and the Metro section.

One effect of the cuts has been overlooked: Post coverage of the local theater community.

Now, Theatre Washington, the group that represents community venues throughout the region from the Atlas Performing Arts Center to the Arena Stage, is expressing its dismay and disappointment at the Washington Post cuts in arts coverage. Among the layoffs are theater critic Naveen Kumar and theater editor Zachary Pincus-Roth.

Theatre Washington said the theater community will be collateral damage in the layoffs, which are devastating to the theater community.

”For decades, the Post has served as a critical ‘local national’ voice for our region’s arts ecosystem, providing rigorous criticism, thoughtful features, and sustained coverage that helped connect artists to residents and visitors, elevate regional work to national attention, and document the cultural life of the Washington, DC region,” the statement from Theatre Washington begins.

“The loss of this dedicated coverage is not simply a media issue; it is a civic and cultural loss for our entire region.”

Theatre Washington noted that the industry is “a powerful economic engine” with 89 nonprofit theater organizations that employ more than 4,000 people and engage thousands of volunteers. The payroll for artists and staff amounts to more than $80 million annually, and the groups maintain $1 billion in combined assets, Theatre Washington said.

“This makes theatre not only a cultural cornerstone but also a major contributor to the region’s economic health and vitality,” the group said.

The Post Style section frequently covered local productions, wrote reviews, featured local theaters and its leaders, which the group said were crucial for telling the public about their offering and for bringing theater-goers to their venues.

“Strong arts journalism matters,” the statement said. “Equally important, they help audiences discover work, deepen understanding, and feel connected to the stories being told on our stages.”

The group gave a nod to other coverage, which can be heard on WAMU, WETA and local television outlets, saying they do vital work too. However, the statement added, “no single outlet can fully replace the reach, influence, and regional perspective that The Washington Post has historically provided.”

The group said it “stands in solidarity” with fired arts journalists and critics.

Facing the loss of coverage, the group plans to turn to “outlets, platforms, and independent journalists who demonstrate a meaningful commitment to arts and culture coverage. We will seek out and support new and existing models, including digital outlets, newsletters, podcasts, Substacks, and collaborative initiatives that invest in serious, sustained arts journalism.”

”We believe a community as culturally rich and vibrant as the Washington, DC region deserves a strong, visible, and well-resourced arts press,” the group said.

Signatories to the statement

Amy Austin and Lee Cromwell, Theatre Washington
Kurt Boehm and Sarah Chapin, Adventure Theatre MTC
Edgar Dobie and Hana S. Sharif, Arena Stage
Jarrod Bennett, Atlas Performing Arts Center
Sara Barker and Kathleen Akerley, Avant Bard Theatre
Christina Day, Clown Cabaret
Barbara Webber, Compass Rose Theater
Allison Arkell Stockman and Anderson Wells, Constellation Theatre Company
Tracey Erbacher and Samba Pathak, District Fringe
Karin Rosnizeck, Expats Theatre
Rebecca Medrano and Gustavo Ott, GALA Hispanic Theatre
Sabrina Mandell and Mark Jaster, Happenstance Theater
Joanne Lamparter and Layne Holley, Imagination Stage
Susan Rhea and Alexis Hartwick, Keegan Theatre
Reginald L. Douglas and Serge Seiden, Mosaic Theater Company
Heather Lanza and Vicki Kile, NextStop Theatre Company
Beryl Jolly, National Theatre Foundation
Jason Loewith and Debbie Ellinghaus, Olney Theatre Center
Karen Lange, Pinky Swear Productions
Jason Tamborini and Christie Johnson, Prologue Theatre
Ed Zakreski and Ryan Rilette, Round House Theatre
Jenny McConnell Frederick and Randy Baker, Rorschach Theatre
Simon Godwin and Angela Lee Gieras, Shakespeare Theatre Company
Maggie Boland and Matthew Gardiner, Signature Theatre
Rebecca Ende Lichtenberg and David Muse, Studio Theatre
Paata Tsikurishvili and Ben Cunis, Synetic Theater
Elizabeth Dinkova and Anderson Molina, Spooky Action Theater
Alex Levy, 1st Stage
Isabel Dawson, The Puppet Co.
Shanara Gabrielle, Theater Alliance
Hayley Finn and David Lloyd Olson, Theater J
Ari Roth and A. Lorraine Robinson, Voices Festival Productions
Bill Largess and Lynn Steinmetz, Washington Stage Guild
Kimberly E. Douglas and Reggie D. White, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

WHERE DO YOU TURN FOR ARTS COVERAGE NOW?

Marks & Vincentelli, a Substack podcast on the theater hosted by critics Peter Marks (Washington Post) and Elisabeth Vincentelli (New York Times) recommends DC Theater Arts.

“Websites like the long-running DC Theater Arts are now the go-to places for local coverage,” they wrote.

DC Theater Arts, which has the benefit of the correct spelling of theater, describes itself as “Washington, DC’s most comprehensive source of performing arts coverage.”

Marks & Vincentelli talked to Nicole Hertvik and Eric Colchamiro, who are editor in chief and board chair, respectively, of DC Theater Arts. The duo wrote that the website “now finds itself propelled to the forefront of theater coverage in the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia) area.”

Listen here:

The site features reviews, artist interviews, news, show calendars, and ticket discounts.

Olney Theatre’s Jason Loewith: ‘The loss is huge”

In an email interview with Mary Farran, publisher of Lincoln Park Newsletter, Jason Loewith, a former Capitol Hill resident who regularly visited the Treat Lady when he lived near Lincoln Park.

Jason expressed his good fortune to be artistic director of Olney Theatre Center, which has been around since 1938.

He lamented the Post closure as his theater opened a brand-new musical with Broadway ambitions, “Little Miss Perfect,” by writer and composer Joriah Kwamé. It is a coming-of-age story about a Black teenager in a largely white school coming to terms with her sexuality.

Days before The Washington Post Chief theater critic Naveen Kumar was going to Olney to review Little Miss Perfect, the Post fired their entire arts and culture team.

“This show, Little Miss Perfect, will likely be the first show in more than six decades at Olney Theatre that hasn't gotten a review from its hometown daily,” Jason wrote in an email to Mary.

“That depresses ticket sales, of course, but more importantly curtails all national ambitions of every theater in town, from Arena to Shakespeare to Signature to us; it means we lose the incredible value of direct artistic feedback from trusted experts for our artists and artistry.”

Jason sees a time where local theater becomes an "insider's game where only people already in the know get to experience the transcendence and delight and empathy that live performance offers. The loss is huge.”

New York and Chicago are now the only two cities in the entire country with theater critics left on their daily papers. It's a national cultural loss.

Jason sees a world where the offerings are mass popularity and gimmicky shows like “Mama Mia” are shown and fewer breakouts such as “Angels in America.”

D.C. HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE ALLEGES TEACHER SMOKED WEED WITH STUDENTS OUTSIDE SCHOOL.

THEN HE TOOK ONE HOME AND SEXUALLY ABUSED HIM.

“He would smoke [marijuana] with graduates or other teenagers outside of school.”

Allegations of sex abuse five years ago have put a DC teacher on leave, WTOP reports. The abused former student talks with WTOP. https://wtop.com/dc/2026/02/allegations-of-misconduct-put-dcps-teacher-on-leave-former-student-talks-with-wtop/

The former D.C. student, now 22, initially posted on social media allegations of sex abuse against his former coach, a teacher at Banneker High School.

FISH FRY FRIDAY.

FISHY FUNDRAISER

Scout Troop 380 will hold a Lenten fish fry fundraiser on Friday, February 20 from 5- 8 pm. at St. Peter’s Parish Hall, 313 2nd St SE (enter on C Street SE). The scouts make the fish, fries, cole slaw and usually some hot pasta & tomato sauce and green salad. It is a nice event, and you can order it to-go.

The money raised helps pay for Scout outings and events and provide assistance to members in need.

To go boxes will be available, beginning at 4:30pm.

There also will be a bake sale of affordably priced cookies, treats and cake.

Tickets are available in advance by clicking here or at the door. Adults $25, children under 12 are $10 and a family is $60.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is preparing for more work from DC Water on the roads on 11th Street. No parking beginning Monday.

Milo Wilkerson has a Zoom call scheduled with Bad Bunny (they go way back) to ask him to perform at the Adopt-an-Urn annual summer picnic at Tracey’s house.

The Walk for Peace passed through Capitol Hill peacefully and the monks have now returned to Texas.

POST BLOOD BATH WAS WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT

Nearly half of the paper’s newsroom was eliminated during last week’s cuts—possibly the largest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation

The extent of the layoffs at The Washington Post is actually greater than first reported, former Post media reporter Paul Farhi says.

An accounting by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, the labor union that represents Post journalists, finds that the paper’s management eliminated closer to half of the journalists it used to employ, the Washingtonian reported.

Several news sites have confirmed the larger percentage. The news outlet Puck referred to an all-hands meeting that Post Executive Editor Matt Murray had this week.

GARDENERS WHO CAN’T WAIT FOR SPRING, TAKE NOTE

GINKGO AFTER HOURS

Tonight at 6:30, Ginkgo Gardens is holding a workshop to teach how to can make dried flower arrangements. Snacks and refreshments provided. It is free, except for the materials to make the botanical bouquets.

ANOTHER UNION PICKET LINE AT THE DUCK AND THE PEACH

Happy Valentine’s Day, Hollis

Protesters were spotted on Thursday protesting in front of The Duck and The Peach, just days before a big restaurant payday: St. Valentine’s Day.

Employees from Capitol Hill restaurants The Duck and The Peach, La Collina, and the Wells voted in December to unionize and join Unite Here Local 25.

A 70% majority of workers have asked for what’s known as a “fair process” to unionize, which refers to a simplified, privately negotiated path to union recognition, often based on signed cards, instead of a full, more adversarial election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

Eastern Point Collective founder Hollis Silverman did not respond to the Lincoln Park Newsletter. On her website, she wrote, “I was surprised when UNITE HERE Local 25 began encouraging our employees to unionize. I fully support our employees’ right to organize – they deserve to have their voices heard through a free and fair election.”

However, Silverman is not caving to pressure to follow the “fair process” of card signing, and instead is requiring workers to go through the labyrinthine process at the National Labor Relations Board.

Tommy Woodward previously reported on the dispute here:

ALERT! Lucky Dog Prim is lost

Last seen in Northeast DC, Prim is friendly and frightened so please do not chase or call her.

If you see her, please call 804-357-1241 or 518-538-3841 and please share.

She is lost in very cold temperatures so we want to get her home as quickly as possible. #lost #lostdogs #pleasehelp professionalpettrackers

MARDI GRAS THIS WEEKEND.

FISH FRY NEXT FRIDAY.

Scout Troop 380 will hold a Lenten fish fry fundraiser on Friday, February 20 from 5- 8 pm. at St. Peter’s Parish Hall, 313 2nd St SE. The scouts make the fish, fries, cole slaw and usually some hot pasta & tomato sauce and green salad. It is a nice event, and you can order it to-go.

The money raised helps pay for Scout outings and events and provide assistance to members in need.

To go boxes will be available early, beginning at 4:30pm.

There also will be a bake sale of affordably priced cookies, treats and cake.

Tickets are available in advance by clicking here or at the door. Adults $25, children under 12 are $10 and a family is $60.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is recovering from having her water shut down all night for mysterious DC Water repairs.

Milo Wilkerson has invited Bad Bunny to perform at the Adopt-an-Urn annual summer picnic at Tracey’s house.

HEY, HEY THEY’RE THE MONKS!

They’re too busy singing to put anybody down

By Mila Kendalovich

I recently drove to Dinwiddie, Virginia, to witness 19 Buddhist monks and their dog, Aloka, on their Walk for Peace. They march as a spiritual warning in places where conflict threatens civic peace and balance.

It is not a protest; rather, the march urges an inner awakening during a time that requires urgent reflection.

Since Oct. 26, 2025, about 19 monks have been on a pilgrimage, the Walk for Peace, to spread a message of peace throughout the United States, starting in Fort Worth, Texas. They arrive in DC on Tuesday, Feb. 10.

The monks began their journey at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas. They expect to reach Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, where they’ll ask Congress to recognize Buddha’s day of birth and enlightenment as a federal holiday.

If you choose to see the monks, they appreciate flowers, noting that each flower is a symbol of peace passing from one person to the next.

Along the way, the leader, Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, says the people who come out to greet them has been the key motivator for them to continue. Their journey has not been without tremendous challenges. Venerable Phra Ajarn Maha Dam Phommasan lost his leg after being struck by a car on Nov. 19. He was released from the hospital this past weekend and reunited with the monks Monday.

On Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., the monks plan to walk to the Peace Monument on Capitol Hill, and later have lunch at St. Mark’s Capitol Hill Church.

About 1:30 p.m. the monks will begin their walk to the Lincoln Memorial, where they will hold a peace gathering and concluding ceremony. The event is expected to last until about 4 p.m.

Between 4:30 and 7:30 p.m., leader Bhikkhu Pannakara will lead a meditation session at the Smith Center at George Washington University.

THE MONKS’ MARCH

Tuesday February 10

Walk from Marymount University begins

The monks are expected to walk into the city from Chain Bridge at around 8 a.m. Tuesday.

From 8 a.m. through 11 a.m., the march proceeds:

• Inbound Chain Bridge

• Turns on Canal Road and then onto Arizona Avenue NW

• Walks up Arizona Avenue NW to Loughboro Road NW

• Proceeds on Loughboro Road to Nebraska Ave NW to American University’s Campus

9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. — Public event at Bender Arena at American University.

Lunch: National United Methodist Church (invitees only)

1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. — Interfaith ceremony at Washington National Cathedral

2:30 p.m. — Unity walk on Embassy Row

Night stop: George Washington University (private event)

Wednesday February 11:

9:30 a.m. — Walk to Peace Monument/Capitol Hill begins

MPD said there will be rolling closures along the following route from approximately 9:30 a.m. through 10:30 a.m.:

23rd Street, NW from H Street to Constitution Avenue, NW

Constitution Avenue, NW from 23rd Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Pennsylvania Avenue, NW from Constitution Avenue to First Street, NW

Lunch: St. Mark’s Church, Capitol Hill. (invitees only)

1:30 p.m. — Walk to Lincoln Memorial begins

2:30 - 4:00 p.m. — Peace gathering and concluding ceremony at Lincoln Memorial

4:30 - 7:30 p.m. — Meditation session with the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, George Washington University Smith Center.

Thursday February 12:

9 a.m. — The Walk for Peace continues to Maryland. (The walk starts from Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis)

10:00–10:45 a.m. — Peace gathering at the steps of the Maryland State Capitol

12:30 p.m. — Departure for Fort Worth, Texas

LIVE MAP: FOLLOW THE MONKS’ WALK FOR PEACE

https://dhammacetiya.com/walk-for-peace/live-map/

A Tribute to The Washington Post’s Book World

Sat, 2/21/2026, 5:00pm

Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Politics and Prose plans to hold a tribute to The Washington Post’s Book World, which was shut down last week, with former Book World editors and contributors offering reminiscences.

This is a wake to honor the memory of what was a great section of the Post. This event is free with first come, first served seating.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is rewatching the Super Bowl commercials today.

Milo Wilkerson loved Bad Bunny’s halftime show.

The Washington Post just announced that embattled Publisher and CEO Will Lewis is resigning just days after the news outlet laid off at least one-third of the staff and two years of failing to find to turn around a money-losing news operation.

“All - after two years of transformation at The Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” Lewis said.

The British-born Lewis was previously publisher of The Wall Street Journal before taking over at the Post in January 2024. His rocky tenure was marked by layoffs, a failed reorganization plan that led to the departure of former top editor Sally Buzbee, and an inability to stop massive losses.

The gloating was swift.

Barry Svrluga, the popular sportswriter and columnist who was laid off, shared Lewis’s email in an X post, and referenced the publisher being spotted at the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California.

Svrugla said: “You failed, mate. You epically, monumentally failed, and showed yourself to be a coward in the process. Hope the Super Bowl is brilliant.”

“I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends,” Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post guild, said of the ouster.

“During crisis, Lewis was as checked out as a book from a public library without fines,” NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik wrote. “And he was a man without any pockets of support inside the paper. Being spotted at the Super Bowl - the coup de grace.”

Jeff D’Onofrio, the current chief financial officer and a known cost-cutter himself, will become the acting publisher and CEO, effective immediately, the Post announced.

In a statement, Post owner Jeff Bezos said, “The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity. Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus. Jeff, along with [Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray and opinion editor Adam O’Neal], are positioned to lead The Post into an exciting and thriving next chapter.”

Bezos did not mention local news in his statement.

D’Onofrio, who started at the Post in June, previously was chief financial officer for Raptive, a digital ad management company serving 6,000 creators and publishers. At Raptive, D’Onofrio oversaw the finance, human resources and data analytics teams, and negotiated acquisitions that boosted Raptive’s revenue and profits, the Post said when he was hired.

MOURNING THE DEATH OF LOCAL NEWS

By Peter Baker

Senior correspondent for The New York Times and former Washington Post journalist

@peterbakernyt (From Facebook)

Much of the mourning for the late great @washingtonpost has rightly focused on how democracy dies in darkness at the national level, which is hugely important. But the evisceration of Metro coverage is every bit as devastating because there is no comparable news outlet keeping local governments and institutions honest.

Eight of my 20 years at the Post were spent on Metro, which was the heart and soul of the Post under the legendary @dongrahamdc1. The undertakers now running the paper have all but wiped out the metro staff, leaving just 12 reporters, according to reports, to cover a region of 6.5 million people.

We had twice that many journalists in Fairfax alone back in the day. And it mattered. Reporters are the eyes and ears of the community, keeping tabs on people in power. We were there for every supervisors meeting, every school board meeting. We pored through planning commission documents and campaign filings.

When county officials wasted taxpayer money, raised taxes on overstretched homeowners, gave sweetheart zoning deals to developers who filled their election coffers, we were there. When teachers who sexually abused students were quietly transferred to other schools to do it all over again, we were there.

We were there for the more uplifting stories too, the cops who broke a cold case, the educators who turned around a struggling school, the residents who rallied to help neighbors in trouble, the student athletes who won the big game, the entrepreneurs who started something new.

Our friend @SariHorwitz who has won more Pulitzers than I can count, wrote so movingly online about the Post (https://facebook.com/share/p/1AZLTTDVto/?mibextid=wwXIfr). To recognize how indispensable local coverage is, you need only look at her holy-shit investigations of a broken child welfare system, rampant police shootings and the corporate-fed opioid crisis, stories that opened eyes and led to change.

Democracy is not just what happens at the White House and the Capitol but in our own backyards. The Post has just turned the lights down at home too.

A Tribute to The Washington Post’s Book World

Sat, 2/21/2026, 5:00pm

Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

The demise of Book World is a tragic blow to writers, readers, and the publishing industry. As a tribute to the many reviews the section carried over the years and all it did to serve the reading public, Politics and Prose will be holding an event with former Book World editors and contributors offering reminiscences.

This is a wake to honor the memory of what was a great section of the Post. This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

The Metro staff was the place to be

By Sari Horwitz

Via Facebook

When he was a little boy in the late 1950s, my husband Bill Schultz delivered The Washington Post newspaper with his brother John. It cost $1.95 a month. He went from house to house in his Virginia suburb of Hollin Hills, carrying copies of the Post in a canvas bag. He also carried a roll of nickels with him when he collected for the subscription because nearly everyone paid him $2.00 and expected a nickel in change.

We were destined to be together.

By the time Bill and I met on a blind date in 1986, I had been at The Washington Post for two years beginning as a summer intern in the Post’s business section. But the Post had touched my life more than a decade before when, as a high school student in Tucson, I devoured Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate stories. They inspired me to become a journalist.

Inside the Post’s old headquarters on 15th Street in the 1980s and 1990s, I was surrounded by journalism legends: Bob Woodward, Katharine Graham, Don Graham, Ben Bradlee (who hired me), Morton Mintz, Rick Atkinson, David Maraniss, Sally Jenkins and David Broder. And people who would become legends: Peter Baker, Kevin Merida, Kara Swisher, Jeffrey Goldberg and David Remnick.

I reported for nearly every section of the paper, including National and Style (where I wrote a story about my daughter Rachael.) But I spent nearly half of my career in the Post’s Metro section covering night cops, the schools and the city of Washington. One of my editors on the night police beat was Eugene Bachinski who taught me the importance of getting out and making sources. He had street cred — back in the day, one of his police sources had showed him the address book of a Watergate burglar that had an entry with a White House number, which Gene then shared with Woodward.

Even though the Post was famous for its big national scoops like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, to me the Metro staff was the place to be. Publisher Don Graham cared deeply about Metro. He had spent time on the streets as a D.C. cop and saw the Post as first and foremost a local paper. His mother, Katharine Graham, also cared about the city. When I covered the struggles of the DC schools in the 1990s, she invited me and other education reporters to her conference room for lunch to discuss possible solutions. Later, Don started a college scholarship fund for students from D.C. schools. In those days, the Post devoted significant resources and its best editors to holding local leaders like Mayor Marion Barry to account. Two of the year-long investigative series that I was part of were local — a probe into shootings by the DC police force and an investigation into more than 200 children who died in the District of Columbia foster care system.

Fast forward to this week when it was Metro that suffered among the most severe layoffs on what former executive editor Marty Baron called one of the darkest days in the Post’s history. Nearly the entire staff was laid off, including legendary and beloved Marty Weil — who was at the paper for 60 years — and Paul Duggan, one of the greatest writers and reporters in the newsroom. The contract was not renewed for Michael Ruane, another of Metro’s beautiful writers and excellent reporters who wrote a book with me about the terrifying 2002 Washington Sniper case. More than 300 journalists were laid off, including the Photo staff, the Sports department and nearly all the foreign correspondents.

Over my 40 years at the paper, many of us knew we could find higher-paying jobs elsewhere. But it was our loyalty to the Post, a sense that our work was a public service and the tremendous amount of fun we all had together that kept us there. It is hard to describe the thrill of working in the same newsroom alongside the likes of Anne Hull, Kate Boo, Dana Priest, Cameron Barr, Vernon Loeb, Michael Powell, Julie Tate, Peter Finn, Gene Weingarten, Mike Abramowitz, Alice R Crites, Bill Hamilton, Peter Perl, Christine Brennan, Keith Harriston, Ted Gup, Nikki Kahn, Carol Guzy, Mike Semel, Nell Henderson, Matea Gold, Carol Leonnig, Elsa Walsh, Ruth Marcus and Michel du Cille. And there were the little things that made the place seem like family. The way Don Graham, who often roamed the newsroom, sent us notes, which we called “Donny-grams,” when we wrote a story he liked. Or reporter Marty Weil walking by all our desks in the newsroom to say hello to us by name after he arrived for his late afternoon/night shift.

When Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013, the Post, like many newspapers, was losing advertising and hemorrhaging money. The days when my editors would urge me to spend more money taking sources out to dinner or encourage me to travel more across the country for stories were long over. Bezos met with a group of us, along with Publisher Katharine Weymouth (Katharine Graham’s granddaughter) when he first arrived and said all the right things about how much he cared about rescuing the Post. We were hopeful he would.

In the early years, Bezos seemed like the ideal owner. He didn’t interfere in the newsroom, infused the paper with money, increased the staff and oversaw important improvements in technology. Much has been written about how all of that sadly changed in the last several years. Two years ago, many of us, including legendary Investigations Editor Jeff Leen and my longtime colleagues Scott Higham, Valerie Strauss, Marc Fisher, Kimberly Kindy and Lynda Robinson took a Post buyout. We did so with broken hearts. We never stopped loving the Post or being reporters and editors there. We hoped the Post would find its way and somehow recover from its death spiral.

We don’t know what the Post will become now. But I do know this. Despite the failure of its leaders and as painful and devastating as this week has been, the Post is still breaking important stories and publishing impactful investigations. The enormously talented journalists who remain are working hard to bring the most accurate and comprehensive news to readers around the country and the world.

I am going to keep subscribing to the Post and reading the stories by those dedicated reporters/editors still in the newsroom and I hope you do too. They are continuing to dig deep and push forward against tremendous external and internal pressures. And they make me proud. They include my friends and former colleagues Dana Hedgpeth, Jenn Abelson, Amy Brittain, Nicole Dungca, David Fallis, Caitlin Gibson, Joe Heim, Peter Hermann, Meryl Kornfield, Joyce Lee, Ellen Nakashima, Hannah Natanson, Robert Samuels, Paul Schwartzman, Ian Shapira, Lena Sun, William Wan, Debbi Wilgoren and so many more.

RETIRED POSTIE: Post says layoffs were to balance the books. Don’t believe it.

By Scott Higham

For nearly 25 years, I had the honor of working for The Washington Post alongside some of the finest journalists in the world. One night, some of the journalists who won the Pulitzer Prize at The Post gathered for a photograph. (The Post won a total of 76)These dedicated journalists and all those who came before and after us believed in one thing: Protect the powerless and hold the powerful to account.

Officially, The Post says the elimination of 300 jobs, a third of the newsroom, was required to balance the books. Don’t believe it.

This is a calculated decision to remove one of last remaining checks on unchecked power, and to protect the financial empire of Jeff Bezos. His federal contracts are safe. Amazon is shielded from a DOJ anti-trust investigation. And we are left to mourn the death of a great American institution. Bezos destroyed in a single day what took 150 years to build to appease the powerful and hold onto his own power. It’s a sad day for The Post. It’s an even sadder day for our nation and for our democracy.

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts is getting ready to watch the Super Bowl.

Milo Wilkerson is in charge, as designated by LPN Publisher Mary Farran, who remains sheltered in place from the cold and eagerly awaits watching ‘Ice Out’ Bad Bunny.

BEZOS: NO VISION

"I'm very disappointed and find it contrary to what [Bezos] said at the time," former Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. tells NPR. "There's been no announcement about this, no rationale about this. No vision for what the paper ought to be. I'm disturbed and surprised by that."

Jeff Bezos Must Sell the Washington Post

Mass layoffs undermine his promises to protect a great American institution.

By Cameron Barr

Former senior managing editor of the Washington Post.

"In the mirror, Jeff Bezos will see a man who grievously weakened an American institution dedicated to freedom and democracy at a time when those very ideals were under enormous threat."

To put it in terms Bezos would use, he is no longer a swashbuckling badass. He should sell the Post to someone who is.

Full story here:

The Bulwark

Jeff Bezos Must Sell the Washington Post

[Editor’s note: Cameron Barr is former senior managing editor of the Washington Post. During his time there, he oversaw teams that won thirteen Pulitzers Prizes and he served as deputy to former Post executive editor Martin Baron. Cameron himself was a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2003 and was a foreign correspondent for ten years before joining the…

Read more

4 months ago · 256 likes · Cameron Barr

WHAT I SAW WHEN I LOOKED UNDER THE HOOD OF THE WASHINGTON POST

Bright journalists and business minds were ignored

By Bina Venkataraman

Former Washington Post Editor at Large for Strategy and Innovation

via LinkedIn, Friday, Feb. 6

Last night on stage in Denver, I talked about Jeff Bezos, circa 1997 – the leader who eschewed the short-metric of turning a quarterly profit in Amazon’s early days to focus on measures of long-run success – including barometers of customer loyalty. He knew what mattered: Does your audience love what you offer? …

So what happened to The Washington Post? I was a columnist & a leader on the Post’s masthead, collaborating with brilliant, talented colleagues across the opinion, business, tech, & news teams until August 2025 — and represented the Post as a moderator at events around the world. I’m sharing my take because I see something deeper than just the betrayal of mission-driven journalists by a billionaire.

Media business models are collapsing for reasons apart from any peculiarity of the Post. But the Post was positioned to make strategic bets to survive in the long term and to earn the trust of more audiences – by showcasing the talents of its world-class journalists; by making its existing readers & reputation a strength; by building deep connections to communities; by investing in experiments w/ the right metrics & patience to see whether they bore fruit.

Yet what I saw under every hood I lifted in my 2.5 years at the Post was that compelling ideas from the company’s bright journalists and business minds were ignored in favor of top-down dictates.

Yet what I saw under every hood I lifted in my 2.5 years at the Post was that compelling ideas from the company’s bright journalists and business minds were ignored in favor of top-down dictates that were out of touch with today’s media habits & American news mindsets, while lacking a clear, sensible notion of the Post’s target niche in the media landscape. (I say this as a gal who grew up in a small town in America’s now-red Heartland, who later gained East Coast bona fides.)

Meanwhile, Bezos created the appearance, if not reality, of using the Post’s opinion section to placate Trump on behalf of his other business interests. That was not just bad for democracy; it was a terrible business strategy.

Journalists earn the trust of audiences (when we do) because of our practice of holding power to account. Bezos’s choices cast a dark shadow over our capacity to build loyal audiences – that would have been true regardless of which political party or person was being placated. I chose to leave last year, like many who could, because of the impossible conundrum that put me in as a leader with a reputation built on integrity.

It breaks my heart that so many colleagues lost their jobs this week, people who bring deep purpose and passion to their journalism. What’s worse is that some of this loss would have been avoidable with a sound strategy to reinvent a media company. Others are doing it. Why Will Lewis, who has presumably had past success, can’t pull it off, is unclear to me. Why Jeff Bezos is tolerating failure without a credible plan for long-term success is the greater mystery. He’s not just betraying his promise to steward the Post. He’s betraying his own powerful beliefs about what makes a business thrive.

EULOGY FOR THE SPORTS PAGE

$1.65 million daily cost of National Guard deployment in DC

The National Guard deployment has cost taxpayers more than $330 million. That works out to nearly $1.65 million a day — with little demonstrated effect on violent crime.

Congressional report here:

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/NationalGuardReport.pdf

SNOW REMOVAL

Carlos Arevalo can dig out your car. He helps us with pruning & mulching and did a stellar job shoveling us out after the storm ended. He used to work at Surroundings before starting his own business. He’s a lovely person & hard worker.

Carlos: (202) 427-4090

Best,

Tiffany

The Fine Print

Copyright © *2022* *Friends of Capitol Hill Parks, All rights reserved.
PLANTS People Living Actively Near Their Site *
We are dog-friendly, plant-friendly, tree-friendly, eco-friendly, NPS-friendly and just generally friendly (most of the time.) 
THE BEST NEWSLETTER SERVING LINCOLN PARK
*People Living Actively Near Their Site *

All subscribers to the Lincoln Park Newsletter, a parody and news publication, become automatic members of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, the largest volunteer charitable organization serving Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, Mary Farran, president, chairwoman, CEO and Lincoln Park mayor-for-life.

If you do not want to be a free member of FRIENDS OF CAPITOL HILL PARKS, you can resign and subscribe to the newsletter and be a non-member subscriber by signing up for a very expensive, exclusive, premium over-priced pay subscription. Dogecoin is no longer accepted since it is part of an illegal global scheme linked to the richest man in the world.

Through consultation with NPS, PLANTS volunteers will purchase and install plants, which will also include aromatics. 

The Lincoln Park Newsletter is parody, opinion and news serving the area sort of around Lincoln Park.

MASTHEAD

Helen Betts forgoes her salary to copy edit this joke of a news outlet.

Milo Wilkerson is in charge, as designated by LPN Publisher Mary Farran, who remains sheltered in place from the cold.

SLASH AND RUN

STREET JUSTICE FOR SPOT SWIPER RATTLES 11TH STREET

“If you move someone’s space saver and park your car in its place, you have no right to complain about what happens to your car,” says a Boston blogger

By Tommy Woodward

An 11th Street resident has an expensive repair bill after his Jeep was vandalized this week.

And the crime has ignited a debate more commonly seen in Boston or Chicago. Now it is raging in Lincoln Park.

At issue: If you spend hours digging out a parking spot, are you entitled to save the spot with a space saver such as a chair, an ironing board, a cutout of an NFL football star, an inflatable minion, an empty keg or a statue of the Virgin Mary?

And if you move the space saver, are you rightfully subject to the consequences?

Those are the questions facing the resident of 11th Street NE. The motorist removed an ironing board saving a parking space in front of 148 11th Street NE on Sunday evening and then parked his Jeep in the space.

The next day about noon he found three tires on his Jeep flattened after someone slashed them. The tires were destroyed.

The ironing board was moved to the sidewalk. Nearby was a sheet of lined notebook paper with a note written in several colors of markers. The note said something to the effect that the owner had spent two hours digging out the spot and please do not park here.

The Lincoln Park Newsletter asked the Metropolitan Police Department about the law. A department official who asked not to be named said that District regulations prohibit spot saving. The source said that the appropriate section is 24 DCMR § 100.1, which prohibits occupying public space beyond what is permitted by law.

Curbside parking spaces are part of the public right-of-way and may not be reserved by placing objects in the space, the police source said. Doing so is considered occupying public space without authorization.

It can be costly to replace Jeep tires. Michelin tires for Jeeps generally range from $150 to over $500 per tire, depending on the model and size, with popular options.

A local resident on a listserv expressed outrage over the tire slashing.

“I think spot saving is outrageous — no one is entitled to a specific on-street parking spot, even if they dig it out,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be named. “I've dug out 5 spots in the last week — to me that's part of living in the city.”

“My daughter who uses my car, dug out the space and we maintain it when visiting the store with an old folding chair,” ANC Commissioner Stephen Kolb said. “Thus far, the space has been honored by neighbors and visitors.”

Tiffany Barnes said three cars, including hers, appear to have been fully dug out on her block of Massachusetts Avenue NE. “Each of us has used a step ladder to hold our spots,” she said.

“I understand that some folks might object to this practice,” Barnes said. “On the other hand, those cars that haven’t yet been dug out are holding spots that we can’t use so I’m sort of OK asking others to respect our spot.”

The save-a-spot debate also has appeared in national media, with this story on NPR and elsewhere this week following the big snowstorm that swept the East Coast last week.

The last DC police chief we could find who addressed the issue publicly was Cathy Lanier, who said it was illegal.

A debate played out on Fox 5’s X page. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/can-you-save-your-parking-spot-once-youve-dug-out-snow.amp

Here’s a rundown of some of the national coverage and debate about taking a spot someone was trying to save.

BALTIMORE

“Don’t do it,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said on Sunday on WBAL-TV. “If I see your chair, it’s coming with me and going into the trash.”

Obstructing the streets or sidewalks in Baltimore is prohibited, according to the city’s code.

PITTSBURGH

Pittsburgh doesn’t have rules that govern the use of space savers, they have a proud history of “parking chairs.”

Mayor Corey O’Connor’s office sees it as a “longtime tradition” of the city: “For as long as Pittsburgh has had cars, we’ve had parking chairs,” spokesperson Molly Onufer wrote in an email to NPR.

CHICAGO

In Chicago, the “dibs” process is illegal, according to Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard. Stallard’s department received about 2,000 complaints since November for “trash” on the street.

“I have seen it all,” Stallard says. “They put their grandmother’s furniture out there … or we’ve seen kitchen tables set up like you’re going to a banquet.”

BOSTON

In Beantown, the law allows the use of them for 48 hours after the end of a snow emergency, with some exceptions, according to the city’s website. “If you move someone’s space saver and park your car in its place, you have no right to complain about what happens to your car,” writes a hyper-local news site in Boston (see the full post below.)

THE WAPO-POCALYPSE

WASHINGTON — (AP) The Washington Post is laying off one-third of its staff in the newsroom and other departments, a brutal blow at one of journalism’s most legendary brands.

The Post is eliminating the sports page and books section, shrinking the number of journalists it stations overseas and severely cutting back the Metro section and editing staffs.

FUND LAUNCHED TO HELP LAID OFF STAFF

LAUNCHED: “The Washington Post Layoff Fund 2026” seeking $250K on GoFundMe:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/standing-together-for-guild-colleagues

THE REACTION

• The Atlantic: “The Murder of The Washington Post”

• The Guardian “‘It’s an absolute bloodbath’: Washington Post lays off hundreds of workers”

• Puck: “The WaPo Extinction Event”

• Former Post Metro editor and columnist Robert McCartney

  @McCartneyWP: “Multiple news outlets have posted stories on the WashPost layoffs, but so far, not The Post itself.”

• Columbia Journalism Review: “A Dismantling of the Washington Post”

• Washingtonian: “Washington Post Kills Sports Section Amid Mass Layoffs”

• Former Lincoln Park resident Lizzie Johnson, who is in Kyiv, Ukraine, on social media: “I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I’m devastated.”

  

• Gene Weingarten: “The scumbags finally struck today, officially, though they’ve been up to their scumbaggery for years. They’ve finally, killed The Washington Post two years after beginning to systematically bleed it of its dignity and its moral authority.

  “Technically the paper will still exist, but in a ruthlessly skinny form that will turn it into a tragic joke.”

  

• Former Post publisher and principal owner Don Graham has not commented on the Post since he sold it to Jeff Bezos. He spoke out for the first time today on Facebook:

It’s a bad day.

I am sad that so many excellent reporters and editors—and old friends—are losing their jobs. My first concern is for them; I will do anything I can to help.

I will have to learn a new way to read the paper, since I have started with the sports page since the late 1940’s.

I will always want the Washington Post to succeed—and you should too. It makes a difference. The paper has another strong, stand-up editor in Matt Murray. And it still has a great staff.

• Former Post Executive Editor Marty Baron:

This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations. The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever. Of course, there were acute business problems that had to be addressed. No one can deny that.

This is a period of head-spinning change in media consumption. The response to that is necessarily difficult and severely disruptive. Radical innovation is required.

The Post’s challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top —from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity. Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands.

The owner, in a note to readers, wrote that he aimed to boost trust in The Post. The effect was something else entirely: Subscribers lost trust in his stewardship and, notwithstanding the newsroom’s stellar journalism, The Post overall. Similarly, many leading journalists at The Post lost confidence in Bezos, and jumped to other news organizations. They also, in effect, were driven away. Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.

Many superior journalists will remain at The Post, delivering important work. I expect they will continue to hold power to account, as they have done spectacularly well for decades. They deserve the support of all who believe in quality journalism.

I remain personally grateful for Jeff Bezos’s steadfast support and confidence during my eight-plus years as The Post’s executive editor. During that time, he came under brutal pressure from Trump. And yet he spoke forcefully and eloquently of a free press and The Post’s mission, demonstrating his commitment in concrete terms. He often declared that The Post’s success would be among the proudest achievements of his life. I wish I detected the same spirit today. There is no sign of it.

Like many others, I’d like to hear the owner and the publisher he appointed articulate a contemporary vision that offers the prospect of financial stability and growth, demonstrates imagination and creativity, honors the heritage of The Post, shows appreciation for its remarkable staff and signals a firm sense of purpose. It is years overdue.