A lot of jurisdictions around the country canceled Fourth of July fireworks displays, citing an increased risk of fires due to drought conditions. But of course that’s not the case here in the District, where the federal government exploded dozens and dozens of shells, dahlias, and peonies, and D.C. residents upstaged it with an incalculable number of their own bombs.
It’s not just about Independence Day for Washingtonians. Fireworks here are their own thing. To the delight of many and the horror of some, the summer months surrounding the Fourth of July are Fireworks Season.
As early as late June Capitol Hill residents could hear the telltale whistling and crackling from nearby blocks, and some residents began the annual tradition of Fireworks Fretting, in which the police department is deluged with calls from terrified or irritated residents. The concerned back-and-forth on local list-serves quickens.
Any fun kind of firework is illegal in the District, but people explode so many of them that enforcing the law is virtually impossible. In an e-mail, fire marshal Gary Palmer said he wishes the District would consider banning fireworks, even though boom-lovers could easily drive to another jurisdiction to get them. He acknowledged the difficulty of enforcing the law as it is, but added that his department tries anyway.
“Our task force arrested 14 people for illegal firework sales, revoked seven permits at stands for illegal sales and confiscated over 100 cases of illegal fireworks,” said Palmer. “It filled more than an entire tractor trailer.”
On July 3, Hillscape conducted an evening reconnaissance mission throughout Northeast Capitol Hill. At 10:30 p.m. on the corner of 8th and E streets NE, three youths were slouched against parked cars, setting M-80s on the sidewalk and launching mortars into the sky. They weren’t too keen on chatting with a reporter, but they said they would go nuts on the Fourth and that they hadn’t had any trouble from officials or fireworks fretters.
Bored, one of them went inside to his house next door while his friend raised a pudgy arm to shoot off some mortars. Eight colorful bombs launched into the air in the most unceremonious fireworks displays Hillscape has ever seen. The boy didn’t even watch most of them himself. After they stopped, he waved the canister in front of his face, unsure whether more were coming out.
Police commander Diane Groomes said the First District, which includes Capitol Hill, received a “bulk” of the 6,100 citywide 911 and 311 calls. Police wrote citations and confiscated some fireworks, but did not have to respond to any violent crime on or near the Hill. Fire department spokesman Alan Etter said in an e-mail that the department did have to put out a few fireworks-related fires, but he didn’t specify where by press time.
Hillscape spent a few evening hours on July 4 atop an apartment building at 14th and D streets NE. As the sun set, more and more colorful explosions popped up all around. When night had fallen, it seemed every city block in sight had committed its every resource to a sustained assault on the sky.
The exploding panorama visible from that rooftop easily put the federal government’s show to shame. It was louder, and it was longer, and something about it just felt democratic — hundreds, thousands of people working together, putting on a show you could watch without subjecting yourself to herding by police or homeland security madness. One can only hope the fireworks fretters never succeed in stopping this local tradition.
Adrian Fenty gets to tell George Bush what to do
On June 29, President Bush signed a bill requiring all federal agencies located in states to heed the governor’s wishes on lowering flags to honor a soldier’s death. Michigan Democrats Rep. Bart Stupak and Sen. Carl Levin introduced the legislation after Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm couldn’t get federal agencies in her state to lower the flag in honor of a local soldier killed in Iraq.
The legislation specifically includes the “Mayor of the District of Columbia.” That means when a soldier from D.C. dies, Mayor Adrian Fenty can tell President Bush to lower the flag at the White House.
Church evicts day care
The chapel at the Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church has high, vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows, and on a bright day the room is filled with a kindly light. But during the day, the chapel isn’t a chapel at all. It’s the “Pony Room” for the Jenkins Hill Child Development Center, filled with cubbies, kiddie chairs and two-foot tables. The room is one of three in the building used by Jenkins Hill, which has operated at the church on 4th Street SE since 1981.
That arrangement is coming to an end. In June, the church announced in a press release that as of Aug. 31, 2008, Jenkins Hill would no longer have a place there.
According to the press release, the church’s governing board of elders “has increasingly become aware of new opportunities for worship, programming and other community service opportunities which would require use of the space occupied by Jenkins Hill.”
That has upset parents who had been involved with the church’s “Plan for Easily Transformable Chapel/Pony Room Space.” Both parties signed the deal in the first week of June after six months of negotiation. The plan, complete with a diagram, dictates that the chapel must have a “neutral appearance” that “conveys neither a child care environment nor a religious environment.”
“I don’t understand why we spent that year in negotiations,” says Jenkins Hill parent-board president Denise Diggs.
Diggs says a major sticking point was the church’s request to have Jenkins Hill staffers stash the kiddie furniture, including bookcases. She protested that that would be too much physical labor to ask on top of nine hours of controlling small children.
About 14 tots head to Jenkins Hill for care every day year-round, and director Susan Nowak says the program boasts a waitlist of over 100 — evidence of the importance of daycare on the Hill, she says. Pastor Andrew Walton says the church congregation numbers roughly 120, 75 percent of whom live nearby.
Walton says the church wants to be able to rethink the way it uses the entire building, and it may put its offices in the chapel.
Diggs suspects that the church may be able to take in a lot more money if it could boost capacity for its Washington Seminar Center, which hosts out-of-town groups to take on issues such as peacemaking, social justice, and interfaith dialogue. The church’s financial statements from 2005 show that the seminar is a major source of revenue. But Walton denies any financial incentive for booting the daycare program.
“Our church is not in the business of space rental,” he says. “We’re here to serve the community.”
If Capitol Hill Presbyterian can make more money from seminars, Diggs says she wouldn’t blame it for doing so. The church never increased Jenkins Hill’s rent unduly, and if the church wanted to cancel its daycare program, Diggs thinks this would be the nicest possible way. Meanwhile, Jenkins Hill says its main focus is finding a new location on Capitol Hill, and it’s grateful to have until late 2008 to do that.
“The heart of Jenkins Hill is probably hurting a little bit right now,” says Nowak. “But we have to move on.”