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The population of Washington DC is around 592,000. (and there are an estimated 12,000 homeless).
According to the DC MPD website there have been 127 homicides since January 1st 2009 (to Friday 11/19).
On top of those Homicides there have been 6,529 "Violent Crimes" which cover Sexual Attacks, Assault with a weapon, Assault without a weapon and Robbery (against a person).
In addition there have been 23,718 "Property Crimes" a group which includes Burglary/Theft, Stolen Auto and Arson
Those are pretty shocking figures!!
Recently
on a walk along 16th Street I was amazed at the number of churches in a
2 or 3 mile stretch - many different denominations.
I guess having all these churches does not make all of us more law abiding or likely to follow the Ten Commandments.
If you can't make it to church the bus will come and get you:
More churches around my area (by no means an exhaustive list):
Remember my Diet Aids .... Remember December ? Well here I am just over a week away from December so I thought it was time to check in.
I have lost 16 lbs (about 7.3 kg) since I posted those signs all around the kitchen. With one week to go I might squeeze out another couple. That result is not too bad - it's the equivalent of 1.5 dress sizes. I did not increase my exercise; actually I don't do any exercise other than the walking required to get places and our weekend strolls which are usually 3-5 miles each Saturday and Sunday.
I just stopped eating all the nice things in the cupboard and freezer and as silly as it might sound those signs really made me stop and think about whether I really wanted to eat something. It didn't always work because the impulse part of my brain would over-ride everything and say "of course you want that lovely cream puff or ice-cream, or that entire packet of Tim Tams!" .
I continued to have a glass of wine when I got home from work; sometimes two if I'd had to be particularly nice to people at work that day. On the weekends I was easier on myself when it came to eating the "good" stuff and I definitely had more than a couple of wines!
Now I have to come up with more rhymes to get me through 2010! But, until then, what's for dinner tonight? PIZZA!
On Sunday I watched this shapely lady wobble along on stiletto heels - unfortunately they do not show up well in the photo, nor does the wobble.
Maybe you'll remember back in October, me trying to get a head start on the year end music voting/contest thing they do on WXPN and posting this. Maybe not. Anyway, I think I'm ahead of the game doing that. Well, sort of. WXPN decided to add top 10 SONGS of the year too. And the contest is a drawing to win a 50 inch plasma screen hi-def tv.
You don't have to be a member to enter or win. Vote here, if you care to.
So I compiled my list of top ten songs of the year (and added Mike Doughty's "Sad Man, Happy Man" to the album list, since I only had 9 in October)
and here they are.
- Illinois---- Hang On
- Mexican Institute of Sound--Sinfonia Agridulce
- Gomez--Airstream Driver
- Empire of the Sun--We Are The People
- Guerrilladelphia--Unstoppable
- Vic Chesnutt--Chain
- East Hundred--Slow Burning Crimes
- Jack Penate--Tonight's Today
- Sondre Lerche--Good Luck
- Mexican Institute of Sound--Reventon
(I had a hard time with #10 so I just repeated a band.)
Oh Vox, I really hate your fucking formatting. It really CHAPS MY ASS.
I give up or I will be here all night.
Just a sampling but they are all in my Vox library should anyone give a flying crap!
`
I speak English and Americans speak English but there were times when I first moved here when I was nearly in tears because I could not understand what someone was telling me. This was especially so when dealing with public transport employees when it was pretty important that I understand their direction.
I can only imagine how hard it must be for someone when English is their second or even third language. This morning I saw a Latino woman at my metro station almost crying with frustration as she dealt with the station master.
Our metro ticket machines are specifically designed to confound anyone trying to use them. In high season there are long lines of confused tourists standing in front of them while help in the form of station attendants stays well hidden.
Now, I am no slouch with train ticket machines. I have successfully operated them in China, Paris, Italy and Spain where there can be minimal help for those who don't speak the respective language. But, the first time I stood infront of a metro machine with some English words thrown around it, I was confused.
Each station has a little box where the station master sits. They rarely deem it necessary to actually come out of their little box to demonstrate the workings of the machines. They talk at you through glass using a funky tinny speaker which distorts their voice to that of a cartoon character and they don't seem to care how many times they repeat the same sentence even though before you will have figured out their instruction they could have come out and actually helped.
Many times when I walk past I hear a frustrated passenger shouting from our side and the tinny response of the metro employee and I think "poor person, half a dozen trains will have gone past by the time they understand"
Back to this morning. As I walked into the station I could hear
the poor woman trying to tell the attendant that she did exactly as she
was told and it hadn't worked. The attandant's cartoon voice came back
saying well she didn't press the "minus sign". The passenger
asked "what's a minus sign?". The attendant just kept repeating: The minus sign; the minus sign. On the machine there is a minus sign; you have to press the minus sign."
The woman said "I don't understand minus". The attendant repeated the mantra that the minus sign must be pressed.
Seriously how helpful can that be if you don't know what a "minus sign" is ?!?!?!?!
Feeling terribly sorry for the woman I said "I'll show you" and took her back to the evil machine and pointed out the + and - symbols which allow you to get a farecard for more or less than the amount that comes up on a screen.
This episode annoyed me for most of the day - so, a big minus to
Metro for customer service this morning. At 6.40am I'm sure they are
not overworked with paperwork or whatever else it is they do in those
little boxes.
How apt is this photo which I took on our Sunday walk (mural in Columbia Heights) - it says "Immigrant Rights":
I want this house and car:
Photo taken only half a mile from the depressing building made up of boxes........
~
Today, while we were walking, I was thinking of a comment Apolline had left on my Missing Strangers post about social movements and urbanization. We turned a corner and here was exactly what I had been imagining loneliness all together to look like:
`
Do you ever wonder what might have happened to people who are essentially strangers to us?
Next door to my office building is a retirement & assisted
living place - it used to have the word "Alzheimer's" in the name and
we joked about just trading one place for the other as our minds went; usually with the assumption that too much work was going to cause such a decline.
Anyway - over the last couple of months every morning, as I've walked past, an elderly man has been outside hiding behind a pillar enjoying a cigarette. Every morning I would say "good morning how are you?" and he'd respond with a loud and cheery: "Good morning to you and I'm great"
The last few mornings he was not there and I wondered if he had died or been caught. It crossed my mind that I might never know - I don't think I would've gone inside to enquire about the health of a man having a forbidden cigarette.
I was so relived to see him back this morning that I almost said "oh thank God you are ok".... I really had been quite concerned about someone whose name I don't even know.
*******
The bike below used to appear near the office during the day and
then be gone by evening. Then it arrived and stayed. And stayed and
stayed. If this had been anywhere near I live, it would've
been stripped within a few hours. After more than a month the rear
tyre is flat but no-one has stolen the helmet or attempted to steal spare parts from the bike.
So, where is the owner? Did they die at
their desk? Did they walk to the shops at lunch time and get run-over
crossing the road? Or perhaps they developed Alzheimer's and forgot they owned a bike.
I hate not knowing..... and unlike the missing elderly man, where I
could've enquired if I'd wanted to, there is no-one to ask about the bike's owner.
November 6th
`
With us all diligently slapping hand sanitizer on our hands to kill 99.99% of everything that might make us sick..... where do all the killed germs go?
These have nothing to do with dead things on hands - I just thought they were pretty. Taken on walk around the neighbourhood next to ours on the weekend:
.
Like most of the country, I have sat by horrified and deeply saddened by the incident that took place at Ft. Hood last week. I have been further saddened by how Major Hasan has been portrayed as some fundamentalist Muslim on a religious mission of some sorts and the ensuing death threats against Muslims in the Ft. Hood area. Whatever the reasons motivating Maj. Hasan, of which I am sure there were many, none of them justify further killing or threats of any kind. Hate begets hate. If we all, or even a few of us, respond to this incident by targeting Muslims because one of them made a horrendous decision not in line with their faith, the chasm will grow and more horrible incidents will ensue. As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
So, I am writing to propose a way to refocus those energies and to respond to the situation with love. Show our troops some love and get yourself educated on S.1963 - the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009. The goal of the bill is to increase mental health services to veterans. Our veterans are suffering tremendously and the VA, and the rest of the country for that matter, are woefully ill-equipped to manage the severity of the problem. We are sending these people out on multiple deployments in a war zone unlike any other before. Whatever your political take on the wars, I think we can all agree that we need to take care of our veterans. I support this bill, but encourage everyone to do their own homework on it.
If you discover you support it, please call Senator Coburn's office and ask him to remove the hold from the bill. He alone is preventing the bill from leaving committee and reaching the Senate floor for a vote. The Committee on Veterans' Affairs has a statement about it here. Senator Coburn has his rebuttal here. If you believe the bill should be supported, please call your senators and ask them to support it. If you don't know how to contact your senators, go here.
I have hesitated for some time to post this because too often well-intentioned posts about how to offer support to our troops get thread-jacked by those wanting to debate the validity of the wars. I am the daughter of a veteran who served in two wars and I am proud of my dad's service. I am also a flaming liberal who vehemently opposes the wars. If I can separate the soldier from the action, then you can, too, and I respectfully ask you to do so here. If you want to say anything hateful, discriminatory, or negative, please make your own post. I don't post publicly very often because it's easier to deal with my small community. But, our troops are part of the larger community and we ALL need to come together to support them. It isn't enough to put a ribbon on the back of your car and wear an American flag pin. The heart of our country is action and I am asking you to take some positive action today to help support our troops and turn the events at Ft. Hood into a forceful, positive response from the country in support of our combat veterans. Many thanks.
When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
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