Writing about Universalist Christianity and improving how churches work
The Church of the Holy City (Swedenborgian) is the church I attend most Sundays. They will hold Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols at 4:00 pm — this might be the earliest Christmas Eve service in the city! — at the corner of 16th and Corcoran Streets, NW.
If you need an early service intown Washington, this might be the place for you.
This isn’t about Universalism but Washington.
As many of you might know, the former Montreal Expos were slated to become Washington’s new franchise, the Nationals, thus restoring pro baseball to the city since the loss of the Senators. If we are to believe Mayor Williams, this feat is crucial. But a large segment of the District of Columbia populus — given our odd and undemocratic status within the United States, I can’t say citizens of DC — are opposed to shelling out about a half a billion tax-payer dollars to subsidize the will of a private industry whose workers and managers are hardly hurting for cash.
Plus, in a city where democratic governance is still a touchy matter, it is monstrous how cavalier Williams (along with a few city council members, including my own Ward Two member, Jack Evans) has been with the will of the people, and how blind he’s been to the real costs (high) and real financial benefits (few) of a new baseball stadium to Washington. All this, mind you, before the team even has owners: the former Montreal franchise is held jointly by the rest of Major League Baseball.
Compromise on the Council has led to a public-private shared cost plan . . . that Major League Baseball has rejected. So they won’t play if we half-million Washingtonians and our businesses won’t pay for their Xanadu.
Good: let them take their ball and shake down some other city. Perhaps we can use the money saved and get our public hospital back.
No DC Taxes for Baseball.org
Washington’s baseball dream ‘close to dying’ (Joseph White, AP Sports writer)
Bus-loving people will have already seen the London ‘My other car is a bus — new advertising campaign — I only wish I could get one of the bumper stickers!
That said: Washington’s buses could use some more practical help, especially with the capacity of the Metrorail system being stretched towards breaking.
We all know that rail is “sexier” than bus, but that’s were the room for growth is — affordable growth anyway — and buses are more convenient and practical for a large segment of the populus than the rails anyway. (Neither home nor work is less than a twenty-minute walk from a rail station, but there’s a bus that goes very close from one to the other. I would have to drive if it wasn’t for the bus.) Time to treat them with some respect.
We could be more like London: encourage pride in our strikingly extensive and relatively modern system and provide more information for potential users. WMATA buses are quite difficult to use if you don’t already use them. It took far too long to get free system maps printed (and as it is, you have to ask for them at subway stations). The experimental downtown route direction maps were printed too fine, without adequate direction, and are already outdated. Weekly bus passes are sold at too few many shops. Bus stops are inadequately marked. There are several problems, and they are all resolvable.
A good starting palce would be to adopt London-style “spider maps.” These combine realistic local neighborhood maps (centering on a rail station) with stylized radiating bus routes. The format is based on the famous London Underground map. Hubby and I found the concept invaluable in our visit last year, and once implemented the bare details can be printed at the individual stops — far more helpful than the truth-bending minute-by-minute, long-distance-train-style schedules currently posted.
Since a picture is worth more than my feeble description, here’s a link to get some spider maps to review.
Is there no rest or peace in this world?
Isn’t bad enough that we residents of the District of Columbia have few rights the Congress need to respect that we have to face a referendum on defining marriage as “one man and one woman”, too? Thanks to Terrance for the tip.
Board Meeting Rescheduled
The DC Board of Elections and Ethics announces that the regularly scheduled meeting of Wednesday, November 17, at 10:30 am has been rescheduled for Thursday, November 18, at 10:30 am. All issues and matters on the agenda for the meeting of November 17 will be placed on the agenda for the meeting on November 18, including certification of the results of November 2, 2004 Presidential General Election and a public hearing to consider whether the proposed “District of Columbia Marriage Protection Act†is a proper subject matter for an initiative.As previously scheduled, the meeting will be held in Room 280-North of the One Judiciary Square building located at 441 Fourth Street, NW.
For further information, the public may call 202-727-2525 (TDD: 202-638-8916).
I can’t be there. Perhaps some one else who wants to defend our home rights and the possibility of same-sex marriage can be there for me.
And even if the matter has merit, I’ll fight this like my life depends on it.
Dang if I wasn’t followed by the spy blimp from my apartment to my bus stop. Or rather, the putt-putt-putting blimp was rounding up from Capitol Hill and heading up P Street in the same direction as my bus.
And there it was, over Georgetown when I got out from work. Odd, but perhaps it might lend its identity to the new-but-who-cares baseball team that we’re evidently in dire need of.
Either that or call the team the Washington Black Squirrels (which we have many of).
I was one of those Washington residents that all the wire services (here’s a short article from the VOA) say were stunned when they (we) saw the blimp overhead this morning. Goody: first Iraq and Afghanistan, now us.
I’m note sure what else to say about the spy security craft, except that it was almost overhead when I was waiting for my bus this morning. It was closer to the Seventeenth Street row of gay bars and restaurants, though, so the “stand and model” crowd at JR’s would have benefited more from our Government’s interests.
Hubby and I saw this development on our way to dinner tonight.
Clara Barton Condominium [link is dead]
The reference isn’t gratuitous; the complex incorporates the building Barton — a known Universalist — used when she was doing her Civil War work for lost servicemen.
A cool, rainy day in Washington, and life is back to normal.
Just a minute to make a link to the offical Unitarian Universalist Association reportage of yesterday’s shin-dig.
UUs Gather in Washington to Support the March for Women’s Lives
Well, it seems I’ve been quoted in the Washington Post, too. Nice.
Part of the reason (and in addition to what I wrote yesterday) I’ll be using military allusions in the sermon, naturally enough, is because Monday is Memorial Day. If this never-ending rain and glum lifts — even if for a couple of hours — I’ll go visit the grave of Henry Noble Couden. He was a Universalist minister and for a quarter-century the chaplain for the
House of Representatives. A Union soldier, Couden was blinded at Vickburg.
He, his wife, and one of his two sons are buried at Arlington National Cemetery . (His other son, the Rev. Will Couden was the interim minister here in Washington during the First World War.)
After Sunday worship. A few church members asked about the Commission on Appraisal report mentioned in the press article. Here’s that commission’s website, too.