V.w.verweij

If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please send an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood.

“This is Bradley, the three-legged beagle, of Navy Yard. Named after Wizards’ #3 Bradley Beal (get it?)”

“Winston from Mt. Pleasant”

“Heidi, a Baltimore resident, surveys her new weekend spot in Capitol Hill.”

call of the bae

I made a fake learning magazine and left it in a Barnes & Noble. You can buy or download it here

If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please send an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood.

“Toby of Columbia Heights just wants to play with you.”

“Prison Duke” of Bloomingdale. Formerly a prison rehabilitation program dog. In a very contemplative mood.”

Photo by PoPville flickr user angela n.

[Here’s some great photos from last year. Please email your photos to princeofpetworth@gmail.com, tweet them to me @PoPville, upload to the PoPville flickr pool or message me on the PoPville Facebook page. Thanks!]

From MPD:

“On Tuesday, October 24, 2017, the Annual High Heel Race will take place in the District of Columbia. In conjunction with this event, there will be several street closures that motorists should take into consideration:

Closures

The following streets will be closed from approximately 6:30 pm to approximately 11:00 pm, at which time the roadways mentioned below will be closed to traffic:

· 17th Street, NW, between Riggs Place, NW to P Street, NW – Southbound

· Riggs Place, R Street, Corcoran Street, Q Street, and Church Street will be closed between 16th Street, NW, to 18th Street, NW – Eastbound & Westbound

Race/Walk Route

The race start time will be 9:00 pm, at which time the roadways mentioned below will be closed to traffic:

· Race will begin at 17th and R Street, NW, and travel south on 17th Street, NW

· Race will disband prior to 17th & P Street, NW”

Photo by PoPville flickr user Mark Andre

Well these are awesome. Pprojections on the Freer Sackler Museum:

“Join us for a festival of Asian art, food, and cultures to celebrate the grand reopening of the Freer|Sackler. The IlluminAsia festival will transform the museums’ grounds with an Asian food market, interactive cooking and art demonstrations, live music by members of the Silkroad Ensemble, and creations by local and international artists. Inside, visitors can experience the reimagined galleries and innovative exhibitions, as well as performances, conversations, and other immersive activities.

IlluminAsia kicks off on Saturday, October 14, with a night market featuring food and art and a stunning animated projection on the Freer Gallery façade.”

Photo by PoPville flickr user Peter Hershey

Photo by PoPville flickr user angela n.

Photo by PoPville flickr user Mark Andre

Photo by PoPville flickr user angela n.

Thanks to Arthur for sending from Bloomingdale.

Thanks to Alex for sending:

“New mural on U street on the side of Work It Studio”

This is by Kaliq Crosby and is one of the 10 new murals just announced.

If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please send an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood.

“This is Hogarth from NoMa / Gallaudet area.”

“Tina the Great Dane from City Dogs Rescue, is looking forward to fall in Cleveland Park.”

Columbia Pike is set for a new piece of public art: a 60-foot wind turbine blade on Arlington County’s western border with Fairfax County.

The blade, entitled “The Pike,” is designed by the noted sculptor Donald Lipski, and will stand on the southern side of the intersection of Columbia Pike and S. Jefferson Street in the Arlington Mill neighborhood.

At a talk at the Columbia Pike Branch Library last month, Lipski said he was inspired by the design of wind turbine blades and the pike weapon, which is a long thrusting spear. He also noted that there are still disused windmills along Columbia Pike that were once used to pump water.

“It’s just put up as this big beautiful thing,” Lipski said. “It’s a found object, it’s recycled, it’s emblematic of wind energy, it’s emblematic of a Pike, but one that’s vertical, one that’s in the open position and says, ‘Come on in. Everybody is welcome. You don’t have to pay a toll even though it used to be a Pike'”

Lipski said he will reuse an old 50-foot-long turbine blade, stand it up vertically on a 10-foot pedestal and then cover the pedestal in coins from the various countries and nationalities represented along the Pike. The sculpture will be lit at night by a series of lights around its base.

The use of coins also harks back to when the Pike used to be a toll road, first designed to connect the District of Columbia with areas to the west.

“Citizens of Arlington would go and rummage around in their drawers and find coins from their home country and give me those coins, and I would build them into the sculpture,” Lipski said.

And in return for letting him use their coins in his sculpture, Lipski said he will design a commemorative coin and give one to each person who donates in exchange.

The work had been intended to coincide with the opening of the since-canceled streetcar, but will go ahead as the Pike prepares for the launch of the “Premium Transit Network” of buses.

But not everyone is so sure about the new piece of art. In letters provided to ARLnow, leaders at the Arlington Mill Civic Association said a decision approving the project was made without enough input. Planning for the art has been underway since 2012, and Lipski was selected from 88 applicants the following year.

“Remember, Lilly [Mancilla, the neighborhood’s representative on the county’s Art Advisory panel] specifically requested — and assurances had been made — that we would have input in this design process so that our neighborhood would have a piece of sculpture that pleases us,” association president Kay Langenbeck wrote in a letter to County Manager Mark Schwartz on September 18. “So you can imagine our surprise when, late in 2016, someone shared a rendering of this sculpture and told us the county had moved ahead without us.”

In response, Michelle Isabelle-Stark, the county’s Cultural Affairs Division Chief, said the project selection “followed County Board policy and County Manager approved guidelines for project development.” Isabelle-Stark said panels were convened to discuss the project in 2012 and “were fully inclusive and representative of the diversity of the residents of Columbia Pike and its Civic Associations.”

Some also objected to the design of the sculpture, in particular the use of a turbine blade, in a June letter to Angela Adams, the county’s director of public art.

“Recognizing Arlington Mill is the county’s most impoverished neighborhood, we firmly object to the implementation of any form of blade as representative of our community,” former association president Ric Birch and Douglas Park Civic Association president Adam Henderson wrote. “Further, turnpike gates are never welcoming. Their purpose and design is to stop traffic. They disrupt the flow. Surely this is not how Arlington County’s Southwestern Gateway should be depicted.”

The pair also said in the same letter that the art’s location at a heavily-trafficked intersection means further contemplation on the meaning of the sculpture by those passing by is unlikely.

“Regardless of the merits of the symbolism embedded in the art, it is doubtful that people will have the ability to, or make a point to linger to ruminate its significance,” they wrote.

Lipski said installation of the project could begin as early as next year.

Arlington Pitching Brainpower to Amazon — Arlington Economic Development Director Victor Hoskins plans to emphasize Arlington’s highly-educated workforce — 70 percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher — in trying to woo Amazon’s new headquarters to the county. [Washington Business Journal]

Animal Control Called for Normal Raccoon — Someone called animal control to report a raccoon “acting strangely” on the 600 block of S. Carlin Springs Drive last week. An animal control officer responded and determined that “its behavior was normal.” [Twitter]

Snowblower Application Deadline Nearing — Arlington’s Dept. of Parks and Recreation loans out snowblowers to groups of residents, on the condition that they agree to clear sidewalks for neighbors in need, in front of bus stops, etc. The application deadline for this coming winter is Oct. 13. [Arlington County]

Flickr pool photo by Arlington VA

The newly established wild flower meadow along the entrance to Long Branch Nature Center in mid September.

For the last couple of years, Arlington’s Parks and Recreation Department has been having a volunteer day where almost all our staff get together to volunteer a day of work and perform some team building and networking. Last year, the theme was very much environmental centered all around Arlington’s nature centers. Project choices included a stream cleanup, milkweed seed cleaning, removal of invasive shrubs, tree planting, native plant garden work, and a restoration meadow planting. While they were all a success (you can see a few of the projects in action here), I’d like to expand on the meadow planting.

The site chosen for creating a wild flower meadow was along the entrance to Long Branch Nature Center, at a site that had been treated for exotic invasive plants. Natural Resources staff pre-placed 580 pots, in small patches, representing 24 different native species for planting. The plants were all germinated from seed collected in the Arlington area, so these were about as locally native as you could get. Four-fifths of the plants were actually grown in the County’s new native plant nursery.

The day of the event was in late October of last year. County staff volunteers planted all 580 plants and then helped to water them in place. It took the better part of the day as the ground was fairly hard and there were quite a few plants. We knew we would not see any results until the next year. That the deer were already munching on them the day we placed the pots out was also less than encouraging, but we had every intention of watching them succeed, forming a wild flower meadow, a pollinator patch that we got certified as a Monarch Way Station and living up to the County’s Monarch Pledge as well.

Read more

Flying Colors is a sponsored column on the hobby of backyard bird feeding written by Michael Zuiker, owner of the Wild Birds Unlimited store at the Lee Harrison Shopping Center. Visit the store at 2437 N. Harrison Street or call 703-241-3988.

As Halloween approaches, many people are taking time to learn about one of the holiday’s well-known icons and one of nature’s most misunderstood creatures: bats.

A lot of people do not understand the useful role bats play in helping control insect populations. Most of the myths about bats have created such fear that the topic of bat conservation is rarely discussed.

They do not drive around in fancy cars and have really cool, destructive gadgets. They also don’t have super hero friends. Although humans if they change some of their bad habits, could be those superheroes.

They do not fly into your hair. More than likely they fly near you when you are outside because you are attracting flying insects- which they love. On average one bat can consume 600 to 1,000 insects an hour. Over the course of the night, that would equate to 6,000-8,000 flying insects including mosquitos. They also eat coach roaches, beetles and flies.

Bats have vision, but it is very limited. They navigate at night and find their prey through a process call “Echolocation.” Think of it as a sophisticated type of sonar. Echolocation uses sound waves to determine where objects are in space. Bats use this to navigate and find food in the dark.

To echolocate, bats send out sounds waves from their mouth or nose.   When these sound waves hit an object, such as an insect, they produce echoes. The bats follow those echoes for a tasty meal. Some species of insects have developed a false echo that when emitted, will misdirect the bat and allow the insect to escape.

Bats are the only flying mammal on the planet. Air Force-funded projects have been created to learn how the wing motion and structure work on these mammals in an effort to create better flying machines.

There are 16 different species of bats in Virginia. Three of these species of bats, Virginia Big-Eared, Gray and Indiana are federally endangered. The Rafinesque’s bat is state endangered. The Big Brown Bat, Evening Bat and Little Brown Bat are three common species you could see at night. These three are the most likely to take up residence in a building.

If a bat is found indoors with people, the VA Department of Health recommends capturing the bat and having it tested for rabies. While less than half of 1 percent of all bats actually carry rabies, this is a time of caution. If you must handle the bat in any way, heavy gloves should be worn. But it would be better to contact a professional to help with the safe removal of the bat.

In recent years, significant populations of several hibernating bat species have declined. The cause of death is connected to Geomyces destructans, a cold temperature-loving white fungus, commonly known as White-nose Syndrome (WNS). Little Brown and Northern Long-eared Bats appear to be the species hardest hit.

WNS has been reported in 19 states in the U.S. and four Canadian provinces. It is believed that infected bats are depleting their fat reserves more quickly during hibernation, awaking more often and/or for longer periods of time. The fungus spreads across the wings causing scarring and, in the worst case, complete holes.

Secondarily, the fungus agitates the bats during hibernation causing them to wake thus expending energy. With no food source to be had during the winter, bats must rely on their fat reserves to make it through. The smallest species are most at risk because they simply are not large enough to store enough fat to last the winter.

What can be done to help? The Organization for Bat Conservation (OBC) suggests building or buying a bat box to provide roosting sites. They also suggest planting moth-attracting wildflowers to give bats an additional food source. Also, leave up dead or dying trees, as long as it is safe, to provide bats with natural shelters.

The OBC, in conjunction with Wild Birds Unlimited, has developed a bat box that meets OBC specifications and provides the features that successfully attract bats. In addition, a portion of the sales from each OBC bat box goes to OBC for bat research, rescue and public education.

These are truly amazing and beneficial creatures. The more people know about bats, the less frightening they are. If you have questions about bats, bat conservation and/or attracting bats to your yard, visit Wild Birds Unlimited, in your area.

1317 14th Street, NW

Brief update on the basement bar next to the coming Hando Mendo and Pappe Indian restaurant, it shall be called The Crown and Crow. Love it!! Stay tuned.

“New tavern, serving beer, wine and cocktails. Request for Entertainment Endorsement to include dancing and cover charge. Establishment also includes a small stage. Total Occupancy Load is 399 with seating for 200.”

If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please send an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood.

“Boomer of U Street.”

“Lucy (meow) and Luna (woof) chillin’ in the sun during a lunchtime break on Atlas District/H Street!”

Thanks to David Ross for sending:

“This mural is by Nils Westergard and is at corner of Shannon Place and V St. SE in Anacostia. Her name is Charneice Fox Richardson. She’s a DC filmmaker. She also lived in Anacostia as a kid. I wanted it to be of someone local.

It’s all part of a series I’m doing called, If Shannon Could Sing. The main street that runs through is called Shannon Place so it’s a play off of that name. It’ll be an art/music pop up at 1102 V St. SE. Many, many programs coming for the next few months in Anacostia. Exhibits, concerts (free and paid), movie series (free), food series.”

Ed. Note: Will post schedule for event series when it becomes available.