PSA 404/407 meeting tomorrow

801 Shepherd Street NW

The Police Service Area (PSA) meeting for 404 and 407 is tomorrow, Thursday, May 28th at 801 Shepherd St NW at 7pm. This is a very casual meeting and is a great opportunity to meet with local MPD officers and leadership, ask about recent incidents, express concerns or give them an 'atta boy compliment.

Not sure who from MPD will be attending, but should be the lieutenants from each PSA and perhaps Inspector Vendette Parker. 4D Commander Manlapaz attends when able.

PSA 404 & 407 meet quarterly, so if you miss this one, the next will be sometime at the end of summer.

I'll be there to take notes and will share after.

May 30th is going to be busy

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This weekend is busy -- EL Haynes has a festival, Powell Elementary is having a Carnival at Upshur Park at 11am, and the Petworth Library is having a Summer Reading Kickoff celebration, featuring one of the National's Presidential Mascots. Wonder who it'll be (please be Teddy please be Teddy!)

You can meet the mascot at the Petworth Library (4200 Kansas Ave NW) from 2:30 - 3pm on the 30th.

I'll post more info on all three events soon.

Is Petworth strange & hypnotic?

Nah, we just enjoying living here. (Ok, maybe we're a little strange.) 

What is it about Petworth that inspires so many strange, hynpotic blogs? http://t.co/cGnQXlUiuV

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) May 26, 2015

Thank You 1,000 times

Thank you 1,000 times over for supporting Petworth News! It's a nice birthday present to have the Facebook page hit 1,000 Likes. 

I hope the blog here at PetworthNews.org and on Facebook continues to be useful to the community.

Be sure to come out to Petworth Citizen on Monday, June 29th at 6pm to celebrate!

Mildly interesting side note: the 1,000th Like was Katie Ashmore (thanks Katie!) then someone unliked the page, bringing it back to 999, then Dan Hausman brought it back to 1,000 (thanks Dan!) and Jeff Davis was 1,001 (thanks Jeff!).

Bottle of hydrochloric acid found at Petworth spray park

An example of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid used at a pool

File under WTF for the DC's Department of Parks & Recreation...

A parent found a full and uncapped bottle of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid at the Petworth Spray park on Sunday. The chemical is used as a cleaning agent and likely left by a DPR employee after cleaning the water pumps, etc., for the opening weekend... a very, very absent-minded employee who needs to be retrained on proper chemical handling.  (Here's some examples on how muriatic acid is used.)

Read the full article and some angry comments on Popville.com.

5/27/15 Update: I followed up with the DCPR Aquatics Director.

Video of WW2 plane's emergency landing at Reagan National

Did you watch the Arsenal of Democracy flyover on May 8th? If you did, then you saw one of the WW2 fighters, the TBM Avenger, peel off from formation as it was coming over the city and head south. The pilot of the TBM Avenger had to conduct an emergency landing at Reagan National airport due to a hydraulic fluid leak. He posted a video of the event on YouTube. It's pretty interesting.

In the video, you can see the pilot open the canopy wider as what appears to be smoke starts to fill his cockpit. The pilot thought his passenger had passed out (in fact, the passenger was looking at what he thought was a fire).

"A 1500 psi pinhole hydraulic leak vaporized in the cockpit, appeared like smoke, and prompted a decision to abort the flyover and land at Reagan DCA airport," text accompanying the video says

Use Pause for lessons learned. This is the Emergency Landing at DCA, Reagan National, of the Military Aviation Museum TBM Avenger during the 70th anniversary of VE Day, Arsenal of Democracy flyover. A 1500psi pinhole hydraulic leak vaporized in the cockpit, appeared like smoke, and prompted a decision to abort the flyover and land at Reagan DCA airport.

It's a DC birthday

I received some cool, DC-centric birthday gifts from family and friends today. A beautiful gold leaf map of DC (you can even see Petworth on it) and a signed copy of The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos. Thanks Heather & Fletchers!

And you know you're getting older when your teenage niece writes in a birthday card "Age is only a number!"  :)

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A sign of the times in DC

Posted on a streetlight...  "Helping DC residents grow it organically since 2015"  

Truly a sign of the times for Initiative 71 and pot decriminalization here in Washington.

Memorial Day 2015

Thank you to those who served and sacrificed for freedom. Today is about remembering who gave their last full measure to protect and defend.

It's about being a good neighbor

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This.

I've mentioned before on the blog (ok, complained) about litter in front of people's homes... saying unless you're infirm, how about grabbing a bag and spending a few minutes picking up litter once in a while?

Today, walking home from the Metro, that's exactly what I saw David Bylsma doing on 7th Street NW. I walked by and said "Thanks for picking up the garbage!" and he gave me a smile and a thumbs up. 

Then I remembered my earlier post, and realized that I wanted to shine a light on this neighbor who was doing something positive for his street. So I walked back, introduced myself and started chatting with him.

"It looked so bad today," David said. "So I thought I'd get a bag and pick some up. Then I decided I'm just gonna do the whole block." 

With a pair of gloves and a garbage bag, he picked up all the litter strewn along his part of 7th Street. "It hasn't taken me that long to do the whole block. My back isn't that sore," he said with a smile.

This is something we should all take the time to do once in a while.

Thanks David!

5/25 Update: To put an interesting perspective on this article, it has been one of my most popular articles on Facebook. It's been read 3,306 times, Liked 118 times. And the comments are great. Give them a read.