WAMU: Metro Connection

Eruvim Protect Boundaries and Traditions for Local Jews

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:40:00 -0400

At the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Macomb Street in Tenleytown, a thin wire stretches diagonally across the road. Although the line connects two telephone poles, it has nothing to do with electricity.

The string is part of an eruv, a symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to carry items outside of their homes on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.

Jews refrain from doing work on Shabbat and follow a series of commandments, called mitzvot, that dictate what they can and cannot do on the day of rest. One restriction is against carrying things outside of the home, which means that religious Jews would have to leave their keys, children's toys, and even non-ambulatory children at home.

But Jews can carry inside of their homes. By symbolically enclosing the community, Jews effectively create a giant house within which people can carry.

Rabbi Barry Freundel of Kesher Israel set up the Philip Rabinowitz Memorial Eruv, which is about 18 miles in circumference. He says the eruv is technically a boundary and a collection of food. In the synagogue, he points out several boxes of matzo that are sitting on a bookshelf.

"That's the communal food that sort of unites all of the houses in the community into one large house," he says. "Inside a house, one is able to carry physical objects like a handkerchief or keys, or push a baby carriage, or push a wheelchair, on the Sabbath. Outside of such a structure, you can't."

Along with the communal food, you have to enclose the area where you want to carry. Freundel says this is usually done by connecting a series of walls and doorways, which are loosely defined in Judaism.

"One of the things that you're allowed to have is as many doorways in your building as is necessary," Freundel says. "A doorway is defined in Jewish law as a side post and something that goes across, and it doesn't matter how thick or thin that is."

That's where telephone poles and wires like the one on Wisconsin Avenue come into play. The poles represent the sides of the door, and the wire connects them.

In addition to the telephone poles, Freundel says that natural or preexisting walls sometimes become part of the boundary. One example is the sea walls along the Potomac River.

"Those walls constitute walls that demarcate an area on that border," says Freundel. "There are fences on the Langston Golf Course or the National Arboretum, or the Metro. Those fences are there. We don't have to do anything to them; they just sit there."

He says these borders are adopted as part of the eruv, and are connected to the doorway structures to complete a circle around the area. Once a prayer is said over the communal food, the eruv is up and people can carry.

Shabbat in D.C.

The symbolic boundary is highly useful for observant Jews, especially those with young children. Freundel's eruv is one of three in D.C. Together they form the D.C. eruvim, which cover a large swath of the city, but not all of it.

Freundel says that it makes sense to only enclose areas where Jews live. It costs more money to extend the eruv, and the larger area requires more people to check it.

Because Jews depend on the eruv to carry things on Shabbat, the structure has to be checked on a weekly basis. Carol Cowan is a member of Kesher Israel who checked the eruv for 10 years.

She says it's difficult to spot the eruv, partly because it's meant to be discreet in order to preserve the aesthetics of the area. But there are little tricks to spotting the difference between a utility wire and a string that exists solely as part of the eruv.

Cowan pointed out a string with a pretzel-looking knot where it had once broken and been repaired. "I don't think you're going to see a knot like that in a utility line," she said. "It doesn't look like it would carry your power or your phone signals very well."

Cowan's old route includes the part of the eruv that extends into Tenleytown. But the border stops short of The American University campus on Massachusetts Avenue.

Freundel says other parts of D.C. are outside the eruv because there aren't many Jews living there. But AU is an exception. About 20 percent of undergraduates are Jewish, according to the university.

For observant Jewish students like Orly Treitman and Zach Belinsky, living outside the eruv poses a weekly problem.

Out of necessity, the students bend the rules to carry their keys. But Belinsky says it's frustrating to know that he's breaking Shabbat every time he leaves his apartment with keys in his pocket.

Being outside the eruv means they can't carry anything unless they're wearing it. That means if Treitman wants a sweater for her walk back, she has to wear it to campus even if it's still warm outside.

"I can't carry a lot of other things that I would normally have with me," she says. "I always put on makeup for Shabbat, because that's part of what makes it special, but I can't carry lipstick around to refresh it."

Treitman and Belinsky say they'd like to see the eruv extended to include AU, and Freundel says this could be done, but it wouldn't be easy or cheap.

He says AU was the one area that frustrated him when building the eruv.

"There were no physical structures up there that we could use and no telephone wires behind American University that would work," Freundel says. "To go ahead and try to string wire, which you can do, in that area would have cost us an extra 10 or 15,000 dollars, and frankly we just didn't have the money to spend."

If somebody is willing to finance the project, Freundel says he'd be happy to work with them. But until then, observant Jews like Belinsky and Treitman will technically be stepping outside the boundaries of their faith every time they leave their homes on the Sabbath.

[Music: "Sher" by Salomon Klezmorim from Klezmagic / "Borderline" by Madonna from MadonnaGreatestMusik]

D.C.'s Alley Dwellers Live In The Heart Of It All, Out Of Sight

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:35:00 -0400

With her tidy blond hair and whisper of a voice, Phyllis Klein seems a bit like a real estate agent giving a typical house tour.

"Inside is our walk-in closet," she says.

But she's no agent, and the house is anything but typical.

"And underneath our bed pulls out."

That's right: The bed pulls out from a hole carved underneath the closet. And the bathroom is a former chimney. In fact, the whole living space, including the galley kitchen with a salvaged stove, and the bunk beds where Klein's daughters sleep, is only one room, and about 650 square feet.

"So you can see we very well prepare our kids for dorm life," Klein says.

For the past two decades, Klein and her husband, artist Alex Mayer, have raised their two daughters in a tiny alley dwelling off U Street, not far from Dupont Circle.

"Originally, it was a smokehouse where they made sausages," she says. "I'm told that Dupont Circle was a meat market in the original sense."

But Mayer says that, by the time he bought the building in the late 1970s, the lot looked more like a "warzone."

"The windows were open, the doors were gone, and people were throwing their trash inside the building," he says. Later, he learned that the building had survived five fires.

So, when Klein moved in in the '80s, Mayer was living in a trailer, knee-deep in renovations that would transform the space into an artist's studio and apartment.

I moved into an Airstream that was parked in the building;," Klein recalls. "It was a true test of compatibility."

But if life inside the building was challenging, life outside was even tougher. "There were crimes that would happen right under our window because the criminals thought we were in an abandoned building," she says. "People would bring stolen cars back here and strip them. There was drug dealing, prostitution."

Plus, she says, poor drainage caused water to rush down the alley during heavy rains. "You sort of felt like you were riding in a boat more than driving in a car," she says. And without a precise address, or even a street name, it could be hard for friends to stop by, or just get the mail.

"Sometimes people couldn't find us," she says. "And sometimes that was just fine. And sometimes you did want to be found."

But Klein says she loved living in the alley. "It was magical because here I was in this little matrix of alleys surrounded by these historic buildings," she says.

For generations, D.C.'s alley dwellers have lived off the grid and behind the scenes. Kim Williams, with the city's preservation office, is conducting a survey of the stables, smokehouses and other structures that dot D.C. alleys in an effort to help guide future development.

"In general, the city was not heavily populated until the Civil War," she says. "So all of a sudden, the density increased, and the possibility of housing became limited."

In 1909, a man named Charles Weller spent a month documenting life in Blagden Alley. But Williams says his study painted a problematic portrait of the predominantly black community there:

"It is with some misgivings that one leaves the well-lighted outer streets with their impressive residences, and turns into a narrow passageway where he must walk by faith not sight. Night with its dark shadows accentuates the strangeness of the scene. .... A group of people are seen playing together roughly. A cheap phonograph nearby rasps out a merry ditty. The shrill cries of children pierce the air as the ragged, dirty youngsters dart about amongst their elders. Two lads with notably large feet and broken shoes dance skillfully while a slovenly fat woman picks her guitar. From the little mission in the alley parlor comes occasionally a wail, primitive chanting. An uncouth black man lounges up to a buxom woman and hugs her."

Weller's study galvanized the local slum-clearing movement, which was championed by first ladies Ellen Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt. But Williams says it was the streetcar and the automobile that really drove most people away from the alleys, and sometimes out of the city altogether. And yet, she says, there were still those who chose to stay.

"There was a sense of community in these alleys that these people said they wouldn't give up for anything," she says.

For example, Klein says she loved living among a tight-knit community of artists, and she says the affordable alley dwelling gave her the flexibility to stay home with her two daughters.

"It afforded me the freedom to raise my family," she says.

Meanwhile, over the years, she says she and her neighbors were able to improve life in the alley.

"We made great gains," she says. "We got the alley surface redone so now we have proper drainage. We got signage. We got the alleys named. We're finally on the D.C. map."

And she's still pushing to protect the alley now that a large new apartment building is rising directly in front of her home.

"There's so much potential in the alleys," she says. "Where the kids play, where people recreate, there's a lot that can be done in alleys that can't be done in the frontage. I just hope we can preserve what we have."

After all, her daughter, 18 year-old Alexa Klein-Mayer says the tight quarters just brought the family closer together.

"I can't get away with anything," says Klein-Mayer. "Our house is so small that my parents always know what's going on with me. And I always know what's going on with them. I think I feel a lot more connected with them because we live in such a close space."

And her parents say that's right up their alley.

[Music: "Alley Cat" by Bent Fabric from Your Hit Parade - '60s Instrumentals - Take Two]

The Location: Investigating Cairo Builder's Chilling Connection

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:30:00 -0400

As debate continues about relaxing D.C.'s Heights of Buildings Act--the 1899 law that limits most buildings in the District to no higher than 130 feet--little is said about the man who inadvertently helped bring about that law: Thomas F. Schneider.

The architect and developer designed the Cairo: the 12-story building on Q Street NW that sparked such public uproar, Congress passed a law to prevent further tall buildings from going up in Washington.

But just before the Cairo was built, T.F. Schneider's name was plastered all over the newspapers for something else entirely: connection to a cold-blooded murder that led to the biggest trial Washington, D.C., had ever seen.

T.F. Schneider is responsible for the block of elegant row houses on Q Street between 17th and 18th Streets Northwest. He designed and built the houses on spec; he even sold one (1739 Q Street NW) to his parents, while he resided in a mansion on the corner of 18th Street. But on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 31, 1892, tragedy struck the block, right in front of 1733 Q Street NW, when Schneider's brother, Howard, murdered his own wife and brother-in-law.

The Hamlink family resided at 1733. Howard met the daughter, Amanda ("Amy," for short), and courted her in the spring and summer of 1892. In June, as he and Amy took a trip to Hyattsville, Howard whipped out a revolver and threatened to kill himself if Amy didn't marry him.

As a young, sensitive woman, Amy agreed to the marriage. When her father, Col. Hamlink, found out about the wedding, he forced Howard to move into the house so he could keep an eye on the odd fellow.

Kim Bender details the entire story in her blog, "The Location," and as she puts it, the marriage between Howard and Amy wasn't wine and roses... at all.

"[Howard] had an erratic personality," Bender says. "He started staying out really late at night. He would get angry if his wife confronted him about where he was. He would threaten to shoot her. It was not the most pleasant situation."

One night in December 1891, Howard came home late, again, and Amy locked him out of the house. The next day he wrote her a letter to say he couldn't get in the night before; he also asked if Amy would "come away" with him.

"She writes back. 'No I want you to take your stuff and leave,'" Bender says. "[And] no one really knows this at the time, but it turns out he has actually been courting this other woman who's staying with her sister in another Q Street row house. So when he asks Amy to come away with him, he's been advised that he could get a quick divorce in Chicago."

On Jan. 30, Howard sent another note, in which he begged Amy to come away with him. Again, he was rebuffed. He sent a further note on Jan. 31, but Amy never received it, since she decided to go to church with her brother, Frank, and her sister, Jenny.

"They walk up the north side of Q Street toward 18th Street because there's a church that they go to right around there," Bender says. "They thought that there had been services that night but the lights were off. So they turn around and they walk back, and as they're approaching their home at 1733 Q, a man crosses the south side to the north side of the street and they notice that it is Howard J. Schneider!"

When Howard called out to Amy, Jenny walked nervously ahead. Frank stayed behind, though, to protect his little sister.

"Frank says, 'leave her alone,'" Bender says. "And Howard grabs Amy by the wrist and says 'She is my wife. I can do whatever I want.'"

Then came the gunshots.

"Howard shoots five bullets," Bender recounts. "One goes into Frank's neck. Three go into Amy's abdomen; he's still holding onto her wrist when he shoots her in the abdomen, so really close range. And one, which probably was aiming at Frank, goes into the bay window in the front parlor of 1733 Q Street and embeds itself into the wall."

That's when Howard threw down the gun and ran toward 17th Street. Frank tried to give chase, but his wounds proved too damaging; he died right there in the street.

At this point, people on Q Street started flooding out of their homes.

"All the neighbors have heard these shots," Bender says. "And when someone says 'What happened?' Amy says 'Schneider shot my brother Frank, and he shot me, too.' And she survived for six more days and then she died. Howard turned himself in to the police that evening."

As for what was happening with T.F. Schneider in the midst of all this, Bender says his involvement in the murder leads her to believe that, like Howard, "T.F. was a little off, too. [He] is actually quoted in the newspaper the day after this murder saying, 'That girl only married my brother for his money. She's not to be trusted, that whole family, it's like they're gold diggers.'"

Bender says during the murder trial, T.F. Schneider was accused of intimidating witnesses, "which is a really interesting twist to this story because most of the witnesses were not just neighbors of T.F. Schneider and his family, but he sold their property to them."

And some of them still owed T.F. money.

"He was specifically asked on the stand about this one man, Mr. Bean, who before this incident had asked T.F. Schneider if he could extend a $2,000 note that he owed, and Schneider said, 'Sure no problem,'" Bender recounts. "And then after Mr. Bean's wife testified [against Howard], T.F. Schneider said, 'No, you can't extend that note anymore.'"

"So, he had a lot of power over these people," she continues. "They all still testified against his brother, and his brother was still convicted of murdering both Amy and Frank."

In the end, Howard was hanged in 1893. One year later, T.F. Schneider's Cairo building went up just a block away from the scene of the murder.

"He's lucky that we remember him for this lovely building and for the fantastic tree-lined block of Q Street row houses between 17th and 18th Streets," Bender says. "Because we could remember T.F. for the chilly murders committed by his brother, Howard."

[Music: "Turn Your Face" by John Davis from Title Tracks / "She's Got You High" by Mumraa from 500 Days of Summer (Original Soundtrack)]

Door To Door: Capitol Hill, D.C. And Elkridge, Md.

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:25:00 -0400

It's our weekly trip around the region. This week, we visit D.C.'s Capitol Hill and Elkridge, Md.

[Music: "No, Girl" by John Davis from Title Tracks / "I Walk The Line" by The Dave Clark Five from Instrumental Diamonds, Vol. 3 - Out of This World]

Remembering A Man Who Broke Boundaries Of Earth, Sky

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:20:00 -0400

When Al Welsh was born in Russia in 1881, no one had yet figured out how to fly an airplane. Welsh couldn't have known it then, but after moving to Washington, D.C., he would go on to be a protégée of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and one of the world’s first pilots.

Laura Apelbaum is the executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington. She has a framed painting of Welsh in her downtown office. She marvels at how a young immigrant with a thick accent climbed the ranks of American society.

“One minute you’re living in a shtetl in Russia, and then you're flying a plane with the Wright Brothers,” she says.

Welsh worked as a bookkeeper and a part-time physical education teacher. From his home on 4½ Street Southwest, he was within earshot of the Wright Brothers’ first public flight demonstration in America.

Orville Wright had come to Washington to show off their plane—and hopefully, sell it, to the U.S. government. The testing ground was a big grassy knoll at Fort Meyer, adjacent to Arlington Cemetery.

Paul Glenshaw, an airplane history fanatic and executive director of the Discovery of Flight Foundation, says the demonstration was a major draw.

“They handed out tickets, and thousands of people would come,” says Glenshaw. “One day Congress shut down, and all tromped across the Potomac to see him fly.”

Al Welsh was one of the faces in the crowd, but that day changed his life.

Welsh chased the Wright Brothers all the way to Dayton, Ohio, where they lived. He approached them about being a pilot, but offered to do anything they needed.

The Wrights were unimpressed. For their first fleet of pilots, they were looking for a certain type of elegant, daring man. Most of the other men they had interviewed had a background in automobile racing, or were wealthy sportsmen. Glenshaw points out, “Al Welsh was none of those things.”

However, Welsh stayed in Dayton, and kept knocking on their door. Until, at last, he was hired as a pilot-in-training.

The planes were not particularly safe, by modern standards. There is no proper cockpit. It's just a little bench on the wing—with no seatbelt. Eventually Welsh became the Wrights’ most trusted flight instructor. He trained the company’s most important students, including Hap Arnold, who became the five star general who led the Air Force during World War II.

By 1912, the Wright Company was working with the U.S. government to upgrade their planes. Welsh was sent to College Park Airfield to demonstrate the new equipment for the military, taking what would be his final flight.

Welsh dove at a steep angle, and as he pulled out of the dive, the wing tips came up, and almost touched. The plane fell, straight down to the ground, killing Welsh and his passenger.

Welsh’s family delayed the funeral so Orville Wright could serve as a pallbearer at the funeral. He died June 11, 1912 as the world’s first Jewish aviator.

[Music: "After You've Gone" by Al Jolson from The Singing Detective]

On The Coast: A Beach Town Debates The Meaning Of Noise

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:15:00 -0400

How, exactly, do you define noise? It's a topic on the minds of many people in Dewey Beach as of late. The community is well known for its live music and boisterous bar scene, but earlier this month, the mayor and town council voted to reduce the allowable noise levels to 70 decibels during the day and 60 at night.

Jim Dedes, chairman of Dewey's ad hoc committee on noise, says it's a much-needed change.

"There's no way you can sleep with your windows open at all, and let alone with your windows closed, you can still hear the music and the bass, says Dades. "It vibrates into your home. So it's become an issue."

Dedes says Dewey had been getting an increasing number of complaints from residents, so the town asked seven people to form a committee to look at the problem.

"One of the questions I'd asked was, what is a reasonable bass level?" says Dades. "Well, there's no answer; no one's ever measured it."

Business owners who could face fines or even lose their business licenses if they fail to comply, say the new restrictions are unreasonable.

Mitchell King, co-owner of Port restaurant in Dewey Beach, says a group of people having a normal conversation outside at night would be breaking the 60-decibel rule.

"We have an outdoor deck, and if people are out there and enjoying themselves, it's over 60," says King.

He says many businesses have already made accommodations to reduce noise levels, and he thinks this dispute could fundamentally change the resort.

"Older people that have come into this town, they should have been forewarned, 'Hey, Dewey's a party town,'" he says. "Dewey Beach, it's a way of life. It's been legendary for fifty-some years."

But Dedes says no one wants to hurt local businesses.

"A warning is really what we're looking for," he says. "We're trying to work out a balance for the community and the businesses. We don't want a dead community either. We just don't want it exceed a level that makes it so uncomfortable for people that you don't want to be here anymore."

[Music: "Sea of Love" by TW from Brawlers / "Let's Get Loud" by The Baseballs from Strike!]

From A To B: Welcome To... SuperNoVa?

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:10:00 -0400

Transportation planners are expected to publicly release recommendations in September on improving public transportation throughout northern Virginia as part of the Commonwealth's Super NoVa vision plan for the next three decades.

The unofficial border of northern Virginia as outlined on a map today contains several counties including Fairfax, Alexandria, Arlington, and Loudoun, among others. Under Super NoVa, northern Virginia would extend as far south as Caroline County and as far west as Culpeper and Frederick counties.

Planners envision the construction of cross-jurisdictional networks of light rail, bus rapid transit, car and van pooling, and bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure to connect people to their jobs in the metropolitan Washington area, and to employment and tourist locations within northern Virginia and neighboring states. The goal is to help commuters avoid the region's notorious traffic congestion.

"It's really looking at the major travel patterns of people throughout this region and trying to understand where they are and where they want to go," says Amy Inman, the manager of public transportation planning at the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, a post she has held for four years. Inman is the head planner for Super NoVa.

With the growing realization that only paving more highways would not satisfy the demands of region's population and job growth projections, Inman says localities 50 or 75 miles away from Washington need more public transportation options. The study will evaluate the needs of future population and employment centers.

"We are envisioning mobility beyond boundaries," she says. "As we all know, there isn't just one mode of transportation that's going to be the solution, but we want to be able to provide people with travel options."

Inman says planners are focusing on maximizing the capacity of existing infrastructure in current corridors; for instance, transforming part of a major roadway into a bus rapid transit corridor instead of building a new road.

Super NoVa is gathering information from people traveling to Virginia from Maryland, West Virginia and Washington. A second round of public hearings has been held this month; officials held their first round of hearings in February. The public will get another chance to weigh in after September when the first recommendations are released. The study is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Inman says the public feedback has been useful.

"We have learned that the growth of this region is very great," she says. "In the future, the areas of Fauquier, Culpeper, and Winchester will have a developing demand for different types of public transportation, so we're learning from the localities what kinds of solutions will be necessary to address their particular transportation issues."

In some places, bus rapid transit may work. In others, light rail or increased car-pooling may be the answer. Super NoVa is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Planners are trying to ascertain which modes of transport are supportable in a given location.

"Even beyond Culpeper County there are folks who are traveling 100 miles or greater into D.C.," she says. "It's phenomenal the distance people will travel to get to their employment. We also know that we're reaching or exceeding the capacity of many of our transportation transit systems today."

Inman says Virginia's political leaders, including Gov. Bob McDonnell, have been supportive of the plan.

"Everyone understands we have to think of multiple solutions to address the transportation issues, especially in the Super Nova region, an economic engine for the commonwealth and neighboring states," she says.

Although Super NoVa is not planning new highways, Inman says the group's recommendations will square with the plans of the Virginia Department of Transportation for new roadways.

"VDOT has plans in place that we are building upon," she says, referring to VDOT's proposal to increase roadway capacity along the I-95 corridor.

[Music: "A to B" by The Futureheads from The Futureheads / "Supernova (In The Style of Liz Phair)" by The Karaoke Channel from The Karaoke Channel: Rock, Vol. 9]

Volunteers Work To Save D.C.'s Oldest Monuments

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:05:00 -0400

If you've ever looked at a map of D.C., you've probably noticed that the boundaries of our nation's capital form a diamond. These days, that diamond is technically missing a corner: the piece of land that Congress handed back to Virginia in the 1840s.

But that diamond was whole back in 1791, when it was created by a surveying team led by Maj. Andrew Ellicott, and along that diamond's borders, Maj. Ellicott's team placed 40 stones, all made of sandstone from the Aquia Creek quarry. The boundary stones, as we now know them, are the oldest monuments in D.C., and the first ever purchased by the federal government.

But after more than 200 years, the boundary stones—and the iron fences put up in the 1900s to help protect the stones—have seen better days, which is why a group of volunteers has visited the stones every May and October to do preservation work.

This past weekend, they gathered in northern Virginia to scrape off the fences' crumbling paint, so it can be replaced with a rich hunter-green shade. Their ringleader, a man named Stephen Powers, grew up in the D.C. area, and a handful of years ago, he decided to take his children to visit all 40 stones.

"As I started taking them to the stones, I got what I call 'stones fever,'" Powers recalls. "And I took over 3,500 photos of the stones, and did condition studies of them."

Since then, he's become acting co-chair of NACABOSTCO: the Nation's Capital boundary stones Committee. NACABOSTCO includes more than two dozen groups, from historical societies and local governments, to organizations like the American Society of Civil Engineers - National Capital Section, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, who first put up the fences.

The goal of NACABOSTCO is to unite the boundary stones under one owner: the federal government. Currently, the stones on the Maryland-D.C., border fall under the auspices of the District Department of Transportation, which has said it doesn't have funding for restoration or preservation.

And in Virginia, Powers says, "When the government retroceded the lands, [it] also retroceded the stones. So the Virginia stones are all owned by that landowner, many of them are in private yards. One of them is in a church parking lot. And the owner of that land actually owns those stones."

Right now, NACABOSTCO is working on an application to submit the stones for National Historic Landmark status.

"That would create federal funding and an ownership," says Powers. "And these stones would no longer be orphaned and forgotten, and would lead to them surviving for future generations to enjoy."

Because in a way, it's kind of shocking this generation has been able to enjoy the stones, or the ones that remain, anyhow. Originally, there were four corner stones, and nine stones on each 10-mile leg, making for 40 sites and stones.

But four of those sites no longer have their original stones. Instead, one has a plaque, two feature replicas, and the final stone acts as storage.

"We're hoping to get that one back into the ground," says Powers. "So 37 of the original stones actually still exist."

And boy, have those stones been through a lot! Powers says some were used for target practice during the Civil War. SW #4 was repeatedly struck by farm plows. And on a traffic median on Jefferson Street, just south of Columbia Pike, SW #6 was hit by a car in 1966.

"That's why it's broken in half," Powers explains. "We'd like to see this median actually widened, maybe put some more protective bollards or something around it so that another accident wouldn't happen in the future."

That would, of course, require some major engineering. So Powers says it's a good thing the American Society of Civil Engineers - National Capital Section is on board. The organization hopes to designate the boundary stones an ASCE Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It also hopes to design and raise funds for a public park at the East Corner Stone. The West Corner Stone, south of West Street in Falls Church, already has a park, named for Maj. Andrew Ellicott.

Otherwise, Powers says, the boundary stones are largely forgotten. People either pass right by without noticing. Or, if they do notice, Powers says, "[they] will come up to us and say, 'Is that a gravestone? What is that?' When we tell them what it is, they get very excited by it."

And the hope, he says, is that the federal government will get excited, too. And maybe even come down with a case of "stones fever" itself.

[Music: "Like A Rolling Stone" by Vitamin String Quartet from The String Quartet Tribute to Bob Dylan]

This Week On Metro Connection: Borders & Boundaries

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:00:00 -0400

We explore, push and occasionally leap over borders and boundaries of all sorts. We visit the stone markers placed along D.C.'s border in the 1790s and hear what's being done to protect these little-known monuments. We hear the tale of the first Jewish aviator: a man who defied long odds to become a pilot for the Wright brothers. And we find out why Virginia officials are planning for a future in a region they're calling "SuperNova."

[Music: "Every Little Bit Hurts" by John Davis from Title Tracks]

South African Dancer Flies High in D.C.

WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:50:00 -0400

Andile Ndlovu is an internationally acclaimed dancer, and a member of The Washington Ballet.

He hails from Soweto, in Johannesburg, South Africa: the townships that were once at the heart of the apartheid struggle. When he started dancing as a young boy, local kids would tease him for doing ballet; they considered it elitist, for white people only, and especially unsuitable for boys.

He began dancing hip-hop, Latin American and ballroom, and made the transition to ballet at 15. Several years later, he tied for a gold medal at the South African International Ballet Competition. That's when Washington Ballet director Septime Webre offered Ndlovu a scholarship to come to Washington, D.C., and study dance.

Now, at age 24, Ndlovu has a slew of awards under his belt, and is choreographing his first full-length work with The Washington Ballet. It's called "The Guardian of the Pool," and is part of a world-premiere ballet called Once Upon a Time. Ndlovu says this particular story is especially close to his heart, since it's based on an old fairy tale from Nelson Mandela children's books.

"It talks about a little boy, a chief's son," says Ndlovu, "[and] a water witch casts a spell on him to make him guard the pool as a python--a python that comes with healing, as well for men and women, children, for any illness."

Ndlovu says he loves Washington, D.C., more and more, with each passing year. He especially enjoys the cultural diversity and bevy of museums. But ever summer he looks forward to going back home, to South Africa.

"My mother calls it 'come back and get your blessings,'" he says. "Come back and get more blessings and then go back and carry on doing whatever you do."

The Washington Ballet's Once Upon a Time has four performances this weekend, at The Town Hall Arts Recreation Campus in Southeast D.C.

[Music: "I've Got the World on a String" by The Glendon Smith Quintet from Gourmet Jazz]