DCentric

Book Review: A New Biography of U Street “Washington’s U Street: A Biography, a rare piece of D.C. history not focused on the city’s most powerful inhabitants, chronicles the African American heritage that happens to center around the area between Shaw, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, and Columbia Heights. That set of diverging, intertwined storylines has long waited for a suitable telling…As I entered the world of U Street, I came to appreciate more and more that its history is about how human beings strive for beauty in the face of stupidity, folly, injustice, and brutality” (Washington City Paper)

Rhee criticizes teacher tenure, unions in nonprofit agenda “Former D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee released a policy agenda for nationwide education reform Monday that criticizes tenure and teachers’ unions while lauding Rhee hallmarks like merit pay and Teach for America. Although no one is particularly surprised about Rhee’s agenda, plenty of education traditionalists are already fuming over the document from StudentsFirst, the nonprofit education-reform advocacy group Rhee founded last month.” (Washington Examiner )

Who Are We Protecting by Censoring ‘Huck Finn’? “…NewSouth Books would seem to be creating a baby-food version of Huckleberry Finn, with the n-word replaced by “slave” because of feedback from teachers who claim the book has become “unteachable.” I see. Eighth-graders are too unformed to understand the difference between someone calling someone else the n-word and an author using the word in an ancient book to reveal characters as ignorant. Interesting, given that the same eighth-graders hear the same word used by rappers daily and understand the difference between that usage — as a term of endearment — and the epithet one.” (The Root)

D.C. opens new dog park in NW “D.C. officials opened the District’s fifth dog park on Arkansas Avenue in the District on Saturday, WTOP reported. The Friends of 16th Street Heights Parks will be responsible for opening and closing the park — dubbed the Upshur Dog Park, every day, and doing some basic cleanup, officials said. A sixth dog park, in the northeast section of the District, is in the works.” (voices.washingtonpost.com)

Girl Killed in AZ Shootings Born on 9/11 in Maryland “The 9-year-old girl killed in the shooting that has critically injured Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was born in Maryland. Christina Taylor Green was born shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Her father, John Green, is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Earlier, he was a scout with the Baltimore Orioles and had a family farm in Conowingo, Md. Christina’s mother, Roxanna Green, said Christina was always aware she was born on 9/11 and was very patriotic.” (NBC Washington)

So how dangerous is the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station? “As it turns out, it’s more dangerous than most, but not as dangerous as many people assume it to be. According to Metro’s 2009 crime statistics (the most recent we could find with a station-by-station breakdown), L’Enfant Plaza doesn’t even land on the system’s top ten list of high-crime stations. That, despite the fact that it’s a core transfer station and the seventh-busiest overall in Metro, with more than 22,000 passenger entries per day.” (tbd.com)