FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

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Showing posts with label City of Washington D.C.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label City of Washington D.C.. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

My 9/11 memory of Washington, D.C. - "Be careful what you wish for." An avalanche of moods, moments and memories are always front and center




I've seen film director Paul Greengrass's wonderful film United 93 about seven times by now. It always gets me where I live. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475276/


Every time I see it, I think back to my friends and I at work on Pennsylvania Avenue the morning of September 11th, ten blocks away from the U.S. Capitol, across the street from the FBI headquarters and the Dept. of Justice.
And unlike most of you, I wonder if not but for the bravery and heroism of the United 93 Passengers & Crew, would I even be alive?
Or, alternatively, actually been an witness to the plane's descent into the Capitol building in an attempt to decapitate it, killing thousands of people and demoralizing the country even more than had happned by the attacks on the World Trade Center?


United we stand...

The symbol that was all over Arlington, Virginia in the days and months after 9/11. 
Including on my front door.

Thoughts on The Pentagon and 9/11
Let me relate a 9/11 anecdote that gives you some sort of insight into me, and informs my posts here. I lived for about 15 years in Washington, D.C., and while there, worked on behalf of some of the top law firms and business groups in town, doing all sorts of things on both Capitol Hill and along the K Street corridor. 
While doing so, I was fortunate to meet and befriend lots of very talented, committed and impressive people, including lots from the media, think tank and public policy sectors, as well as the diplomatic community.

On 9/11, I was a few weeks into working on a project for Crowell & Moring on behalf of our client, General Electric's Aviation division, for an upcoming federal trial that would take us to Dayton the following week for what was expected to be 6-8 weeks.

C&M is an international law firm headquartered in DC, and I worked at the main office on Pennsylvania Avenue, right across the street from the FBI headquarters and the Dept. of Justice, and adjacent to the Naval Memorial. 
After the initial reports of the attack in New York and on the nearby Pentagon just minutes after I walked into the office just after 8:30 am with my gym bag, in last time then we realized,  from our vantage point on the large wraparound patio balcony overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue that we had access to from the main reception lobby, we could see past the Old Post Office across the street to our west, and could clearly see the smoke rising up from The Pentagon to our southwest, where many of my neighbors in northern Arlington worked. 
The smoke from American Airlines flight 77 out of Dulles, bound for Los Angeles.

Being slightly closer to The White House than to the U.S. Capitol -but located high enough in the building to be in a position to have seen any attack on either- once we received word right before 11 am from the building's management company to evacuate the building because a plane within range of D.C. still hadn't been counted for and landed as ordered to -what we would all later all know as United Flight 93- I decided to forego playing the starring role of a sardine in a can on the always-crowded Washington Metrorail, and decided to walk the 7-plus miles to my home in north Arlington.

Mostly via K Street, up to M Street in Georgetown, and finally cross the Key Bridge over the Potomac river to Lee Highway in Arlington, and then west for a few miles.
Which is to say, along some of the most densely-populated real estate in the greater Washington DC area.

All along the road from Rosslyn going west, there were city, state and federal police cars everywhere because the fear was so great that there was a second surprise element of the attack that would take place before the end of the day, so police were on high alert for anything unusual, including attempts to blow up bridges.

When I got a few blocks away from the office after our evacuation was made mandatory and was near Metro Center, the middle of the Metro system in downtown DC, literally one of thousands of people walking down the street, as if an NFL football game had just ended to both my east and west, whom do you suppose I walked right into, but the one man, whom, IF things had fallen differently, might've played a much larger role that tragic day, and be a name that most of you would know now?

(As I walked and walked, it was while listening on my Sony AM/FM/TV portable radio, via ABC News' Good Morning America -the same program that had informed my entire floor for 90 minutes after we gathered en masse around my radio with the great sound quality that also allowed us to listen to VHF TV signals in our floor lobby area, maybe 60 of us- that I first learned that some of the planes involved in the attacks had left out of Boston's Logan Airport.
That news made my heart sink, and made the already-long walk home seem far longer than it normally would, since one of my recent former housemates in Arlington, Jennifer Dugan, a wonderfully sweet, thoughtful and immensely adorable University of Rhode Island grad, was, in fact, a flight attendant for the then-US Airways, working out of... Logan Airport. I listened to that radio the entire time I walked home, very fearful of what else I would hear.)

That man I'm referring to is George Terwilliger, then of the DC office of McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe LLP, whom I knew from 1627 Eye Street, the home of the New York Times' DC bureau, a place that I spent A LOT of time at over my last 11 years there, which explains why I personally know some of the high-profile people I do, including many Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and columnists, and DC insiders whose names you would recognize.

Mr. Terwilliger was the man that much of the Washington press corps and Beltway Crowd was reporting was the likely first choice for President George W. Bush to be the new FBI Director, and a person that many of my friends at 1627 had an enormous amount of respect and admiration for, even if they disagreed with him politically. 

When I saw him in passing on the sidewalk near a CVS, with a concerned and pensive look on his face, and he looked at me and shot me a look of recognition, even more than nearly everyone passing us on both sides and spilling out onto the road, all I could think to myself was, "Be careful what you wish for."

As most of you know, President Trump was at the Flight 93 National Memorial 
today.

This is a beautiful but sobering memorial and I urge any of you ever heading across the country to try to see, especially in the Fall. maybe after seeing Gettysburg, another favorite place of mine that never disappoints and always leaves you feeling smaller -and full of gratitude.

Dave
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Saturday, June 18, 2016

My Muhammad Ali update, with great insight into him from two longtime favorites of mine, Roy Firestone and Maureen Dowd; @RoyFirestone @NYTimesDowd



#MuhammadAli thru prism of an avid, teenage sports fan in 1970's #Miami. #transcendent #SoFL
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/remembering-muhammad-ali-thru-prism-of.html

 I have seen and read so many great and inspiring things about Muhammad Ali since my initial blog post of June 3rd about him and my memories of him from the 1970's while I was growing-up in Miami and South Florida, where he spent so much time -inc. the time I actually received an award from him- that I initially thought I'd have a lot of trouble deciding what to be sure to include in any update I ever did.

 In the end, though, I decided to keep it simple, something that I don't always do here on the blog.

 I decided to include the contributions from two hyper-observant people that I've both long admired and have come to know to a small extent over the intervening years since first leaving South Florida for college in Bloomington and my life thereafter.
Each person, uniquely, with their own personality clearly shining through, shares some insight and reflections about Ali and what to me made Ali such a unique character in American and world history: Maureen Dowd and Roy Firestone.

 I really encourage anyone who has NOT read my earlier post to do so first, since they'll gain some very useful context on me and my observations about Ali that I think will well serve you to better appreciate the three of them. Trust me, you'll be glad you did!

 That June 3rd post of mine also includes a great video of Roy talking about Ali that as I have said and written elsewhere, has the great advantage of not only being funny and sweet, but 100% true.
#perceptive doesn't even begin to describe it.
I've posted it below, too.

 Ironically, as it happens, I also once shared an early film review of Will Smith as Ali with Maureen Dowd in the lobby of the NY Times Washington bureau, where she works as a columnist.
That's the same lobby where for SO many years during the 15 years I lived and worked in the D.C. area, until 2003, that I used to spend a LOT of time after work with friends who not only worked upstairs at the Times, but also well-informed media-centric friends who worked nearby in downtown D.C., right around the corner of the Baltimore Orioles team store, another longtime haunt of mine.

 (For those of you who are new to the blog, the Orioles store is where, on 9/11, hours after it happened, I first saw video of the Twin Towers coming down, after my colleagues and I were ordered to evacuate earlier that morning from our office, then located across the street from the FBI and Dept. of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue, due to growing concern about the exact location of a "missing" airplane. The airplane which we subsequently came to know and grieve for which carried the very brave passengers and crew of United #93. 
Knowing that one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers that morning had originated out of Boston had filled me with dread all day because... on 9/11, one of my former Arlington housemates was a flight attendant who worked out of Logan Airport, so...) 

 There in the lobby of the Army-Navy Building on Eye Street is also where, as I have blogged about previously, Maureen Dowd and I picked up our respective copies of Variety's Daily Gotham edition, Monday thru Friday. That edition is the one seldom seen in 99% of the country, and has the green masthead on the top to differentiate it from its much-larger weekly edition with the red masthead.

 Even in a large and important city like D.C., there was a very tiny delivery window for the handful of people who subscribed to Daily Variety and could get it hand-delivered on a same day basis, at no extra cost, and luckily for me, 1627 Eye Street was one of them.
It helped enormously that the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA, the U.S. film industry's trade association has its lobbying HQ in D.C. just down the block on Eye Street, which is how it came to be so many times over my 15 years there that I saw and even had a chance to talk sometimes to its iconic leader Jack Valenti, often while he was making his way down to the nearby CVS.

 Sometimes, in her haste to get upstairs, depending upon who swung by the concierge's desk in the lobby first that particular morning, Maureen would grab my copy by mistake, so I'd have to take the copy with her name on the mailing label.
Which, as I've remarked here previously, occasionally, got me some pretty quizzical looks on my Metro ride home later to Arlington. :-)











Roy Firestone remembers Muhammad Ali on Good Day LA. with hosts Steve Edwards and Maria Sansone. He talked about his first interview ever, and it was interviewing Muhammad. He was only 21 years old.
FOX 11 Los Angeles YouTube Channel video, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://youtu.be/NKguJRUCIx0
Muhammad Ali's Procession
The New York Times YouTube Channel, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://youtu.be/G5ZDZMLfgqY


Muhammad Ali's Funeral
The New York Times YouTube Channel, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYFb97j7Ro




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Friday, May 29, 2015

Personal thoughts on the proposed idea of a gondola going across the Potomac River, next to Key Bridge, from Washington DC's Georgetown area to Arlington County's Rosslyn Metro station. Naturally, it causes me to recall crossing it on 9/11. Don't ruin the views of that iconic bridge -and the iconic views FROM it. NO to the #gondola









GreaterGreaterWashington blog
Yes, it's worth looking into a gondola in DC 
by Topher Mathews 
May 29, 2015


Having lived in Arlington County for about 15 years from 1988-2003, a mile north of Ballston Metro, conservatively, I've walked across Key Bridge about a thousand-plus times to get to and from Georgetown and Downtown DC from Arlington. 
It actually could be even more times, since I also worked part-time for a few years at stores in Georgetown, both at the Abercrobie & Fitch in the Georgetown Mall in the early '90's, and years later at the Barnes & Noble Superstore .and often walked home at night after closing.

 USA Today's Susan Page was a very frequent visitor at Barnes & Noble, especially baseball-related books, and A&F was where I'd first told then-U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson -whom I was a big admirer of- just what I'd heard and read about the newly-elected to the House Bernie Sanders of Vermont, after he admitted that he'd never heard of him before.

Many if not most walks across the bridge came on weekends when the Metro runs less frequently and I could walk to Georgetown and its great Washington Harbour area, one that I so often used as a second home for writing purposes, in about 75 minutes.
Roughly the same amount of time as walking to Ballston Metro and waiting and waiting and waiting... and then walking to Georgetown from the Foggy Bottom metro next to GWU, George Washington University.
If the weather was even halfway nice I'd usually walk, especially on sunny Sundays when I could listen to sports radio on my walk into Georgetown and not really think so much about the distance.
If you hadn't already caught on from previous posts over the past eight years, I'm a longtime walker from way back...

As I've written about previously here on the blog, including back on September 11th, 2011, 

9/11 -George F. Will on the American landscape ten years after 9/11: Commemoration can’t heal what is self-inflicted

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-george-f-will-on-american-landscape.html


that includes my experiences on 9/11, walking from my office on Pennsylvania Avenue opposite the DOJ and the FBI, and walking' the seven-plus miles or so home because, 

a.) the Metro was packed like sardines times ten, and, frankly,
b.) I didn't want to be underground for so long and not know what was going on.

Everyone in my office had been kept informed via my awesome portable Sony radio the size of a sub sandwich, which had TV station audio reception back then, before FCC's Digital TV changes changed that.
We all listened to the audio of NBC's Today Show, but I didn't personally see footage of collapsing WTC Towers until hours later, at the Baltimore Orioles team store in downtown DC around the corner from NY Times Washington bureau, where I headed after my building was ordered to evacuate because of the fears that a plane -what we later came to all know was United #93- would be used to attack the Capitol Building or the White House.

Bud Verge was a friend I'd met and the very savvy and friendly manger of the O's Team store then, and it was there while he waited for his wife to come pick him that watching a TV that usually was running Orioles team highlights, that I first saw the two Towers fall.
Then I walked over to the NY Times Washington bureau to hear what some of  my friends and their colleagues had heard or was being reported, before I decided to finsih my walk home, a little bit better infromed than I had been when the fighter jets were flying directly overhead.

Lots of other north Arlington residents I know walked home by choice across Key Bridge from downtown DC or even Capitol Hill because they shared the same concerns I had, that given everything that had already happened that morning, to say nothing of all the rumors we heard reported at the time, like the State Dept. being partially-bombed, something would or could happen on the Metro -or to it.

With my work clothes in my gym bag over my shoulder and that radio under my left arm like a football, every few minutes I'd stop and let a group of passersby catch their breath, too. and together, we'd get caught up on what we "knew" at the time via uncertain voices reporting "facts" from DC or NYC.
And all you could do was shake your head at what you were hearing.

That was never more the case then when standing halfway across Key Bridge over the Potomac looking at the nearby Washington Monument, looming larger than ever.
I still remember exactly how that felt.

So yeah, while I understand the arguments for studying the gondola idea cited by GreaterGreaterWashington, I'm firmly against a gondola that would ruin the view of that iconic bridge and the views that you can see FROM it.
Let 'em walk across the bridge.
Or call Uber or lyft.
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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Insufferable, butt-kissing Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross seems willing to repudiate own fans, give up '15 home game vs Jets and play it in London for slight hypothetical possibility of landing Super Bowl. Someday. Maybe. With the right breaks

ICYMI: Butt-kissing Dolphins owner Stephen Ross perfectly willing to repudiate own fans, give up '15 home game vs Jets and play it in London for slight hypothetical possibility of landing Super Bowl. Someday. Maybe. 
With the right breaks.




Miami Dolphins In Depth blog
Bad idea: Dolphins yield Jets home game in '15,
Armando Salguero,
November 7, 2014 9:24 a.m
  
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolphins_in_depth/2014/11/i-like-the-idea-of-the-nfl-playing-games-in-london-i-even-like-the-idea-of-the-miami-dolphins-occassionally-doing-their-leag.html

There are many positive and negative things I'll never forget about my time living and working in the Washington D.C. area from 1988-2003.
One of those was that regardless of whether the Redskins were Super Bowl Champs, a very competitive team or just plain mediocre-to-awful -the Richie Pettibon years!- there was never any doubt in the mind of anyone I knew that the team genuinely was THE focus of the community's
hopes and dreams every Fall.

Just like you've heard/read/watched for decades back when CBS used to do NFC games and you could predict that before a big game against the Giants, we'd see a segment lauding Redskins fans and making the point that they had a direct connection with their fans that most NFL cities never have. (And still don't have.)
But it's true.



You didn't have to take a poll when I was living there to know that the Redskins genuinely were THE glue that held the community together, regardless of race, gender, political party, ideology or economic class.
I saw that for myself for years in tangible ways that even the South Florida I grew-up in during the Dolphins' heady era of dominance in the 1970's could never possibly replicate.

I know because I saw I witnessed it everyday in the Fall and Winter when I was on the Metro train on my way into work in the morning, esp. on Monday mornings after big Redskin wins or Friday afternoons before big games, and looked at the faces of the other commuters around me.
And even though I'd lived in Chicago when the Bears won the title in the mid-1980's, and knew well of their decades of suffering, especially when I was at IU, it was even more tangible than what I saw every morning in the Fall when I'd board an El train in Evanston down to The Loop.

It was noticeable at the hot dog stand on K Street with a Redskins pennant flying above it that played the Redskins fight song on an endless loop on their boombox on Friday afternoons. 
Noticeable precisely because it didn't surprise you,
You simply took it in stride.



Noticeable, too, at the CVS on Eye Street near the NY Times' Washington bureau, where I'd frequently run into the MPAA's Jack Valenti heading there mid-afternoon to solve a sugar or caffeine fix.
And while that weekend's weather forecast was always somewhat iffy, what wasn't iffy was knowing that once you walked into that CVS, that 99% of the employees had on a Redskin cap or skullcap.
You could take that to the bank!

So, that said, in 2007 when the Dolphins gave up a VERY RARE Dolphins home game against the NY Giants -the Giants being the team the Dolphins have played THE LEAST in the team's existence, with just 5 games prior to that one in 42 years- in order to appease the NFL execs on Park Avenue and play the game in London, like many Dophin fans, I watched the game with more than a little anger, since every single legit Dolphins fan my age or older -esp. ones like me who were actually from South Florida- knew EXACTLY what that home game represented.
A very rare opportunity: completely squandered.

And also understood what a major customer slap in the face that decision was to Dolphin fans, given the unique history and peculiar demographics of South Florida.
To Dolphin fans who had already been stuck with a listless, punchless team for many years at that point, it felt like once again a decision had been made NOT for what was best for the team or for the fans but for... something else.
Once again stabbed in the back, even as we nursed our cold beers and chowed down on finger foods and pizza throughout South Florida.

Well, Friday's blog post by the Miami Herald's Armando Salguero suggests that clueless, disconnected-to-reality Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has really learned nothing at all from history...
It looks like decisions are once again being made NOT for the benefit of the team that's on the field or for the fans in the stands but for something else entirely.
For his benefit.

Do you honestly think the Baltimore Ravens would give up a home game against the Steelers so that Baltimore maybe, perhaps, someday, possibly host the Super Bowl? 
Or that the Seattle Seahawks would give up a home game against the S.F. Forty Niners for the same remote possiblity? Nope.
Neither do I.

The prescient statue dedicated to FDR outside The National Archives' entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington is very much to the point: "The past is prologue."
For most people, but apparently not Stephen Ross.

His insufferable ownership is just another burden for true Dolphin fans to bear who've already had to endure so many other indignities and embarrassments the past 15 years. 
To no tangible change for the better
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Monday, July 23, 2012

What privacy laws? Wash. Post's devastating story on abuse of confidential govt. information by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray's 2010 GOTV campaign, targeting public housing residents using private govt. info. HUD says use of official lists of residents would “constitute a substantial invasion of privacy”; @mikedebonis, @kitastew

For weeks now, Washington Post reporters Nikita Stewart and Mike DeBonis have consistently impressed on the ethical scandal and criminal probe involving Mayor Vincent C. Gray, while showing how talented and clever reporters who don't take anything for granted, can write informative and illuminating stories about what happens when political dynamite explodes in the hands of D.C.'s most powerful local politician, in a way that that shocks you from hundreds of miles away, even after you lived in the area for 15 years and, frankly, didn't think you could be shocked by anything going on in D.C. govt.


Their latest story concerns the use of confidential personal information in a government database and possible privacy law violations. 

The Washington Post
Mayor Gray’s 2010 campaign had database of public-housing residents
Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 campaign kept a database with the identities of nearly 6,000 public housing residents it targeted in get-out-the-vote efforts, which appears to be an unauthorized use of private government information.
By Nikita Stewart and Mike DeBonis
Published: July 22, 2012
The database, part of a cache of documents The Washington Post obtained from former campaign workers, includes residents’ names, addresses and telephone numbers. One of the documents designated “team captains” responsible for reaching out to tenants in specific housing complexes.
It is unclear who assembled the list or how the campaign got it, but two campaign workers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of an ongoing federal investigation, said it was used in the final week before the Democratic primary election to register residents and get voters to the polls.
Read the rest of the post at 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/mayor-grays-2010-campaign-had-database-of-public-housing-residents/2012/07/22/gJQAiumA3W_story.html


Listen to Mike DeBonis discuss this story on WTOP Radio earlier today:
http://wtop.com/774/2955956/Grays-2010-campaign-used-private-public-housing-data-for-targeted-campaigns


Nikita Stewart at Twitter: http://twitter.com/kitastew   
@kitastew


Mike DeBonis at Twitter is http://twitter.com/mikedebonis/
@mikedebonis


His blog at the WaPo is called District of DeBonis: "More than a city. Not quite a state. Enough for a blog" 

Her blog at the WaPo is DC Wire, where her latest post is that 48 percent of African Americans in D.C. think Mayor Gray should step down and that 44 percent think he should stay. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-wire
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