V.w.verweij

Since 2011 Project Aware has been collecting data from volunteer scuba divers about underwater debris around the world. The Dive Against Debris Map shows the location of debris and trash scuba divers have removed and reported to Project Aware since 2011. If you select a marker on the map you can view details about the type and amount of debris reported and removed by Project Aware scuba divers

See these tweets and pic:

One driver reportedly threatened a cyclist who pointed out that cars don't belong in bike lanes. [ more › ]

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. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit. Please try to send horizontal photos 640×480 (medium size on your iphone) if possible.

“Pancho from Columbia Heights says: “Rooftop season is almost here!”

“Java and Python the African dwarf frogs. They’re Adams Morgan residents but spend most of their time entertaining mom’s co-workers on her desk in Rosslyn.”

“This is Gracie and Izzie, taking a brief respite from guard duty on a beautiful Sunday afternoon at 14th & T St NW.”

The Mysterious Creature on the Cliff

Washington managed to get through the Civil War by the skin of its teeth. For years it had been a small, unkempt, backward town, perennially neglected by its congressional overlords. The war violently wrenched it into the modern world. Perched on the edge of the Confederacy and heavily populated by Southern sympathizers, it was a place of turmoil and danger. Powerful armies ran through and around it, disrupting lives, convulsing the countryside, and flooding the city with thousands of wounded and dying soldiers. It would never be the same again.


But it was in the decades after the war ended that the really big changes occurred. The old Southern gentry either faded away or retreated behind closed doors to become “cave-dwellers.” Northerners took over the government, commerce, and the city’s social life. In the 1870s Governor Alexander “Boss” Shepherd famously extended and paved the city’s streets, laid new sewers, and generally transformed the city’s infrastructure overnight. Elegant homes were built, and a new breed of corrupt politicians, decadent lobbyists, and genteel socialites moved in. The climax of this dramatic trend was a brief, sublime era at the end of the century when Washington society was filled with exquisite refinement, lofty aspirations, and extraordinary pretense. It is this moment in the sun that noted historian William Seale brings so artfully to life in his fascinating new book, The Imperial Season: America's Capital in the Time of the First Ambassadors, 1893-1918, published by Smithsonian Books.


Seale begins in 1893, the year Great Britain raised its minister plenipotentiary in Washington, Sir Julian Pauncefote (1828-1902), to the rank of Ambassador, the first time a foreign country had recognized the pre-eminence of the United States by officially establishing an embassy here (of course, only after the U.S. had sent an ambassador to London). Soon Europe's other major powers had embassies here as well, and a new order built on European diplomatic formalities came to dominate the capital's social life.

Alvey Adee on his bicycle, just south of the State, War, and Navy Building (source: Library of Congress).

Seale revels in the great men and determined women that transformed Washington in those days. One of his favorites is Alvey Adee (1842-1924), a top State Department aide who, despite being deaf, played a central role in orchestrating not just all of the city's diplomatic events but many private functions as well, ensuring that all went off precisely according to the elaborate standards of the day. Though largely unknown now, Adee was a fascinating man. Seale introduces us to him as the city's most famous bicycle fanatic. "Although he was an easy-going man on foot, Adee took a mad delight in speed that sometimes made him a menace on his bicycle. Pedestrians instinctively stepped aside as he flew along, bent over the handlebars," Seale tells us. It's just one of many telling details he includes about the multitude of personalities that animated the city's imperial season.

John Hay, circa 1902 (source: Library of Congress).

Another key player was John Hay (1838-1905), who had begun his career as one of Lincoln's personal secretaries and by the 1890s, after marrying into money, seemed well-settled into a life of quiet leisure. But in 1896 he suddenly entered the political spotlight when he decided to promote, very successfully, the cause of William McKinley for president. He went on to serve as McKinley's ambassador to London and secretary of state. "When he became ambassador, relations were still sensitive between the United States and Great Britain," Seale explains. "...Hay was able to smooth it all out by sheer force of personality and intelligence, assuring the British that they and the United States had common interests and a common civilization." Hay presided over relations with Britain in what Seale calls the "pivotal year" of 1898, when the U.S. was proudly snatching a handful of former colonies from Spain after gliding to victory in the brief but glorious Spanish-American War. The country had come of age on the international scene, and the feathers of our British chums were barely ruffled.

The stories of the women of that era are among the book's most compelling. The book opens with the spectacle in 1893 of the royal visit of the Infanta Eulalia of Spain (1864-1958), the 29-year-old aunt of Spain's boy king Alfonso XIII. The infanta was traveling to the U.S. to attend the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but she stopped for several days in Washington and, like other young attractive princesses before and after, created a sensation wherever she went. "At the White House reception the whole world seemed to turn out," Seale writes. "Thousands pressed to the iron fence; enthusiastic males scaled the elm trees and President Jackson's equestrian statue in Lafayette Park, and some spectators climbed to the roofs. Windows of adjacent buildings were filled with people." Though trouble was already brewing in Cuba, the war with Spain was still five years away.

Stereoview of crowds watching Eulalia's carriage procession Pennsylvania Avenue, May 1893. The view is facing southwest at 11th Street NW. Harvey's Restaurant is at the upper center. The open space at the upper right is where the foundations of the Post Office building are being built (Author's collection).

The headstrong Eulalia would go on in future years to write controversial books espousing progressive ideals, including women's independence, and her mention at the beginning of The Imperial Season bookends nicely the portrait towards the end of the book of Alice Paul (1885-1977), a firebrand for women's rights who broke from her less aggressive predecessors in pushing for a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. Seale vividly describes the women's rights parade that Paul helped organize in 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration and 20 years after the Infanta Eulalia's procession. So much had happened in those 20 years. The 1913 parade was a major turning point in pushing the cause of women's rights forward; ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution came just seven years later.

Postcard view of the Women's Suffrage parade, just south of the Treasury Building, in March 1913. The Grand Hotel, at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue is in the background (Author's collection).

As an architectural historian—he previously penned the definitive two-volume history of the White House—Seale takes great interest in the physical development of Washington during this pivotal era. Of course this was the time of the McMillan Commission, which envisioned dressing the city's core in rich neo-Roman marble attire to match the country's newfound imperial ambitions. Beaux-Arts architect Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), a member of the commission, supposedly said "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood," summing up the architectural tenor of the day. The magnificent Union Station (completed in 1908), a project he spearheaded, was surely one of the best results of the new City Beautiful push, although Seale fills us in on the drama and controversy over erection of other important Beaux-Arts pathfinders, such as the new Department of Agriculture building on the Mall (1905) and the new National Museum (1911, now the Museum of Natural History).

The Townsend mansion on Massachusetts Avenue NW, now the Cosmos Club.

Perhaps most emblematic architecturally of the Imperial Season are the great mansions of Massachusetts Avenue, a phenomenon that Seale explains with far greater acumen than others who have tackled the subject in the past. Here are the stories of the Andersons, the Townsends, the Walshes, and the Pattersons—all the wealthy families that built extraordinary Beaux-Arts mansions along Massachusetts Avenue, many of which remain as the city's most distinguished residences. Set in their unique social context and brought alive with all the charming details of Washington's annual entertainment season (from November to May), the fragile beauty of these great houses takes on a special poignancy. As much as we admire them, these splendid buildings are the profoundly impractical and extravagant products of a fleeting era who aspirations would be dashed by the onset of World War I, never to recover. After just a couple of decades as the entertainment centers they were designed to be, these houses have mostly survived as private clubs and embassies, preserved jewels from the past. They are fitting reminders of Washington's glorious imperial season, and all the better appreciated after a reading of William Seale's fine book.


To receive Streets of Washington by email: click on this link and choose "Get Streets of Washington delivered by email" from the Subscribe Now! box on the upper right hand side of the page.

The Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants has released a Google Maps portal for querying and viewing migrant deaths in Pima County Arizona. Since the year 2000 over 2,100 undocumented migrants have died within the Pima County jurisdiction. This partnership between the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and Humane Borders aims to raise awareness about migrant deaths and

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. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit. Please try to send horizontal photos 640×480 (medium size on your iphone) if possible.

Bahzi

“Tux and Tango in Trinidad. Great to have a bonded sibling pair of kittens from WHS!”

“Mordecai takes a break from trying to get into bed in SW. The struggle is real.”

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. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit. Please try to send horizontal photos 640×480 (medium size on your iphone) if possible.

“Maisy, a WHS alum, is enjoying her new home in Park View. Interests include, playing fetch and spying on people from her top floor window perch!”

“Boudica can’t wait to get out of the car and into her home on 12th Place!”

“Paddy Rafferty of Bloomingdale”

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. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit. Please try to send horizontal photos 640×480 (medium size on your iphone) if possible.

“Ginger, who comes to Adams Morgan, DC by way of Athens, GA, is a southern kitty who loves warm weather but also loves when her people stay home for snow days and snuggles”

“This is is Angus. He’s nine weeks old and lives on W St.”

Those aviators! [ more › ]

Photo by PoPville flickr user innocentsabroad

Remember the menace of ’99? Looks like they’re plotting their revenge…

UPDATE @salimfurth tweets us:

“Pretty sure it was a groundhog. We saw it from both sides up close, and it had no beaverish tail.”

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. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit. Please try to send horizontal photos 640×480 (medium size on your iphone) if possible.

“Rocky in 16th Street Heights is perplexed his baby booties which protect the new floors!”

“I wanted to share what’s going down in Brookland. This is from my window bird feeder. Yes, I also get birds, but the more entertaining guests are the squirrels! Enjoy!”

“Bruce, a scrappy mutt from H Street NE!”

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I’ve missed you!!!

I am almost all settled in to my new apartment here in Sunny Los Angeles! I am still a few weeks away from getting a desk and computer set up at home, so i’ve been borrowing technology from friends!

Work is super fun! Nickelodeon is the best! WEEEE!

“If someone can be kicked out of school for copying a paper, a person should be kicked out of school for raping another human being.”

- Wagatwe Wanjuki, UVM Dismantling Rape Culture Conference 2014 (via byebyethinspo)

Well, before I mention today’s guest episode I just want to thank Tom, Amelia and Charlotte for their amazing work on Revenge on Rainbow Girl!  I’m really proud of them for what they were able to come up with and I hope we can do more together down the road.  If you did not read RORG, you can read it here.

Tom had said in a previous post that I might be starting American Choppers this week.  No, actually the reason I do not have any new material for you is because I am drawing American Choppers right now and I will be working on it for the next month.  The American Choppers is the new Dark Horse miniseries, so it will not be here on the site.  It will be in print only and will be in stores starting in late May.  It will release as a trilogy, much like Bad Guy Earth and President of the World.

I will see if I can squeeze in an Ask Axe Cop here or there along the way, but in the mean time, if you would like to contribute a guest episode please do!  You can submit the on the Guest Episodes page.  Thanks to Cory Kerr for making today’s guest episode with his four year old daughter Scarlett.  You can check out more of Cory’s work here.

Also, there has been some rumors surrounding the Axe Cop TV series since there were changes announced at FOX ADHD.  I can’t really say anything right now, but the changes as far as I understand them are all good and the new season of Axe Cop will make it to your TV, and it is amazing.  I’ll post more info here once I have it.

Once I have finished drawing the American Choppers, I will need to figure out what to do next.  I am considering taking a break from Axe Cop for a while to pursue some other endeavors, especially finishing book 1 of Bearmageddon.  I don’t think we will ever be finished telling Axe Cop stories, but as Malachai gets older, I think the way we make them will change.  More on that as I get it figured out.  Thanks for reading!

Ethan

The post Guest Episide #46 by Cory and Scarlett Kerr appeared first on AXE COP.

Instead of buying some new "green" products for Earth Day, start a legacy for your community by planting trees for Arbor Day.

Springtime is here and the tulips are in bloom at the Netherlands Carillon near Rosslyn.

Thousands of colorful tulips bloom every year in front of the carillon, which was a gift from the Dutch in appreciation for the sacrifices the United States made during World War II. 

Dedicated on May 5, 1960, the carillon consists of fifty bells, which play various military hymns and anthems at noon and 6:00 p.m. daily. The bells occasionally play other songs for special occasions, like Auld Lang Syne on New Years Eve.

Photos by ARLnow.com and Flickr pool contributors Nathan Jones, Starbuck77 and BrianMKA as noted

leahhgates:

So, Fratergate is happening. (See also coverage at Jezebel, Gawker, Huffington Post, and the student-run tumblr that has been posting versions of the leaked documents with names redacted)

 As someone who has been fighting the good fight against sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation at American University for going on nine years now, and now studies why organizations tolerate misconduct that patently violates its organizational objectives, I feel compelled to weigh in. 

But it’s taken me awhile, because I’m tired. I have been at AU since August of 2005. I have been a part of the AU community as an undergraduate and a graduate, as a member of the staff and of the faculty, as an activist and an organizer. Epsilon Iota and its members have been abusing my friends, colleagues, and coworkers since literally my first week at AU—when a woman in my dorm experienced an attempted assault at an EI party.  It’s like someone’s been punching me in the face repeatedly, and on the 20^th punch someone’s finally noticed and said, “Oh my god! That guy’s punching you in the face! Why aren’t you fighting back?”

Because it’s exhausting, and I’m focused on trying to get back on my feet before they punch me again.

This makes it sound like I have a vendetta against EI. I don’t. I haven’t even spent most of my advocacy time focused on them. Do you know why? Because an illegal fraternity is just one of many outposts of rape and abuse culture on AU’s campus.

And at least they do us the courtesy of literally wearing signs.

I hope this incident provokes a serious and sustained organizational response to sexual and gender-based violence at the university that has been my home longer than any other address I’ve ever had.  I hope the immediate perpetrators face serious and public consequences for their behavior. I hope we get serious about our commitment to survivor support services and prevention education through bystander intervention and community leadership.  I hope we seriously reconsider the identity we are promoting and the privileges we enshrine for particular ways of being, acting, and achieving.  I hope we consider whether privileging those things enables some people to feel they can freely exert power through violence over others, and expect to be lauded, rather than shunned, by our community. I hope we will change the way we understand our values and apply them to those who speak up against violence, and I hope we will find our values should guide us to celebrate rather than silence that truth.

I am hopeful that we will change. I am hopeful the people I love, my students and my colleagues and my friends, will be safe and respected and valued as human beings.

But I have been walking this road a long time, and I know how easy it is to forget. I know how much easier it was to read this and say “girls should really stay away from EI, though,” instead of “why do we continue to tolerate a deeply abusive community?” I know how much easier it is to write off the threats received by anti-rape activists, like the ones my friends and I received while preparing for Take Back The Night, as a joke that will never be carried out, than to admit that, enacted or not, threats are part of creating a culture of fear, discomfort, and silence.  I know how much easier it is to keep the university out of the papers and keep abusers paying tuition by offering them a disciplinary compromise that comes with no official record that their offense was violent, instead of creating serious and public consequences. I know how much easier it is to ask survivors to be quieter or less negative, to tell them to focus on the future and stop talking about their rape, than it is to provide the institutional resources to support serious recovery—because that means admitting the scope of the damage created by violence that only exists because we allow it.

I know what is easy. And I hope that everyone with whom I share this community that I love so much, will choose what’s right, and not just what is easy.

Don't come back here! [ more › ]

Spotted the painted bug on Capitol Hill – so freaking cool:

75 Florida Ave NW. #dc #mural #suffrage #nw #bloomingdaledc #floridaavenue #1920 #equality #19thAmendment #senecafalls #righttovote #womansuffrage #NOW #feminism #girlpower #streetart #politicalart #ERA #bloomingdope @bloomingdope (at Bloomingdale)

A majority of homeless people in D.C. experience discrimination from private businesses and law enforcement agencies, according to a report, showing the need for legal protection for this vulnerable group. [ more › ]

Photographed from above, there is something unsettling about how urban sprawl is eating everything up. This artist's images show just how wasteful sprawl is.

Some species of these three-petal flowers are endangered.

Easter or not, a little rabbit cuteness goes a long way.