theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Washington D.C.

  • dear america

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    happy tax day, america!

    just a friendly reminder that your friendly neighbors here in Washington, DC pay all the taxes you do, get federal bureaucrats / international ambassadors / presidential motorcades clogging up our roads, and get to welcome your tour groups / protests / elected officials to our little town each spring and summer (and fall, and winter) — all without voting representation in the process you all seem to deride so much.

    (i’m not great with history, but i hear wars have broken out over just this sort of thing.)

    so, while the rest of the country is basking in the warm glow of a recently passed federal budget — DC is once again being told how to spend it’s money by a bunch of outsiders who use our city’s name as a kind of expletive to describe everything that is wrong with the planet.

    for the record, we don’t mind (necessarily) doing our part for democracy and taking one for the team. we’d just like to be able to vote against it.

  • missed the cherry blossoms

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    not sure what the heck we were doing, but we completely flaked on the cherry blossoms this year.

    mount pleasant is a lot of things, but “hot bed of Yoshino cherry trees” is sadly not one of them — though i guess that means it’s also not a “hot bed of tourists in ugly shorts jacked up to their necks.”

    you win some, you lose some.

  • out: walter pierce, national zoo

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: walter pierce, national zoo

  • out: walter pierce park

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    photo of the week // seventeen months
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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: walter pierce park

  • save the kids’ farm at the national zoo

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    it looks like Congress hates babies.

    the national zoo is losing about half a million dollars in funding this year, and the Smithsonian is planning on shuttering sparklet’s beloved kids’ farm (and it’s sister attraction, the pizza park) to offset the short fall.

    according to the washington city paper:

    The Kids Farm costs $250,000 per year to operate with three staffmembers, and given that it hosts no endangered species and is not a part of the Zoo’s research activities, it was an easy thing to lose.

    “The kids farm is very important to me personally,” said Zoo director Dennis Kelly. “But it is a change that we can affect relatively quickly and relatively safely for the animals.”

    of course the cynic in me (who spent four years on Capitol Hill, and five in non-profit fundraising) is hoping that the image of the kids farm on the chopping block is just a lever of sorts…

    while i’m sure there’s not a lot of corporate interests lining up to sponsor the anteater pavillion, but something tells me that the Zoo is hoping to parlay the impending public outcry to line up sponsors for both the farm (john deere, osh kosh, gerbers, organic valley) and the pizza park (pizza hut, papa john’s, domino’s).

    in a recent interview, the head of the Zoo let slip that it would take “just a $5 million endowment” to save both the farm and the pizza park in perpetuity.

    until then, i think we can expect a steady stream of photogenic baby sit-ins, bake sales, and fundraisers.

  • out: walter pierce park

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    ohthankgod.

    it’s a balmy 49º out today, so sparklet and i got the heck outside. neither of us do particularly well (with each other) when we’re stuck inside each and every afternoon for three months, so its a #$&*#%ing relief to get even a little bit of running and sliding in.

    sparklet must have cycled through walter pierce park’s slides two dozen times in the half hour we were there. by the end, her hair was standing on end from the accumulated static electricity from the slides.

    wow, i can’t wait for spring.

  • transit is like soo 2008

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    I’m commuting by public transit today — for the first time since the Bush II administration.

    Public transit isn’t especially kind to me these days.

    I’ve got 3 bus lines and a metro stop within 10 minutes of my door, but it takes a little under 70 minutes to actually use them to get to work.

    … which does not compare favorably to the 22 minutes it takes me to get to the office by car.

    … even if that office is a major conservation organization (we’re Eco-friendly, not Eco-crazy).

    I digress.

    We’re getting a POD (portable storage container) delivered to the house on Saturday, just in time to have our M.O.H. spend the weekend helping is pack.

    Unfortunately, the District hasn’t seemed particularly interested in giving us a permit (in a timely manner, at least) to park the POD on city streets.

    … which means we can’t put up emergency no parking signs asking people not to park where we need to put the POD.

    … which means we’re using the car to block off that space.

    … which means I’m commuting by public transit, regardless of fact that it increases my daily commute time by 416%.

    If there is a silver lining, it’s that I’m actually listening to music that I bought three months ago (Sara Barellies, The Killers, Arcade Fire) that I haven’t been alone with my MP3 player long enough to listen to.

    That, and I have plenty of time to blog about things that I would have otherwise completely ignored.

  • out: national building museum

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    national building museum with aunt melissa, washington, dc

  • christmas downtown

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    christmas downtown, washington, dc

  • you suck, montgomery county

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    just got a “notice of delinquent parking ticket” in the mail from montgomery county, maryland for parking at an expired meter on november 12th at 5:17pm.

    there are a couple of problems with this scenario:

    • we never got the original notice of the parking violation for which we are now “delinquent.”
    • i wasn’t in montgomery county that day — twelve minutes before our “violation,” i took these pictures of kate at our home in mount pleasant and proceeded to upload them to flickr four minutes *after* our violation.
    • my wife wasn’t in montgomery county that day — thirty minutes after our “violation,” the lady sparkler stopped by pupusaria san miguel on her way home from work (for the best latin food in D.C., incidentally).
    • the “infraction” occurred on a federal holiday (Veteran’s Day) when parking restrictions don’t apply.
    • the citation *does not* list a make or model, so there is no confirmation that it was our car and not just a typo of our license plate.

    however, the only recourse Montgomery County provides is to appear — in person — before the 6th District Court in Rockville.

    given the cost of the ticket (at least in relation to my wife’s billing rate) and the distance between my work and the courthouse (55 minutes in decent traffic) there is no way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks that we’re going to contest the citation.

    you suck, montgomery county — yet another reason i’m never moving to the suburbs.

    PHOTO: Uploaded to Flickr by eddie.welker on 7 Sep 09, 12.59PM EST, via Creative Commons license.