Features: Talk of Takoma  •  Howard Kohn

July, 2006

The Takoma Park way: all things in due time

Kid rooms finally open at Community Center

The soccer and baseball coaches who helped carry Debra Haiduven’s worldly possessions from a U-haul truck into a Hodges Heights basement rental in the spring of 2001 talked assuredly of her excellent timing. As the City’s new recreation director Debra had arrived exactly at the go-ahead moment for Takoma Park’s first community center.

On June 15th, five years later, Debra finally opened the doors on a dance studio, teen lounge and game arena. “It's only been five years? I feel like I've aged ten,” Debra said with tired giddiness.

She could afford to joke a little. After spending so much of her time here dealing with false starts, missed deadlines and other headaches involving the community center, she was able to watch 150 adolescents and teenagers clearly enjoy themselves as they jostled in and out of the new rooms during a two-evening open house. The kids zinged air-hockey pucks and tested ping-pong paddles. They flopped onto red false-leather couches and stepped gingerly on a hardwood dance floor.

Debra and her staffers wore big smiles of relief. For a few days leading up to the celebration it looked like another deadline might get blown. “I have to pinch myself. We made it!” she said. “At least this far.”

The three “kid” rooms finished off phase two of the project, adding to a computer lab, exhibit halls, an art-making room and classrooms that opened last December in phase one, but still left undone are awarming kitchen for parties, an upgraded auditorium for amateur theater and evening concerts, plus a gym.

Though the kitchen is not yet on a timetable, the auditorium may be ready as early as August. City Councilmember Bruce Williams, who remodels houses in his day job, has offered to build an eight-foot extension to the front and side of the stage, and he and his partner Geoffrey Burkhart already have made a donation through the Takoma Foundation to pay for the materials. There also are plans to install a black curtain on a curved track that can be pulled in front of the Council dais for a backdrop during stage performances.

For the gym a total of $1.5 million has been raised thus far in state grants and private funds pending an estimate of the actual cost. The Council is supposed to get a professionally calculated estimate in September from civil engineers who will be taking into account soil stability, location of utility lines and other variables.

Debra refuses to be anything but optimistic: “I still believe!”

“Woodstock Effect”: Music across the generations

The teenagers around Forest Park used to have the same negligible regard for documentary filmmaker and local sports coach Carl Catanese as for any other middle-aged guy, but then Carl built a temporary concert stage behind his house on Elm Avenue.

He had in mind the famous plywood platform of Max Yasgur’s farm, and he pulled into his flashback scheme a number of neighbors and friends old enough to remember Woodstock (Ted Jacobson, Roy Kahn, Len Seligman, Wendy Lanxner, Mark Felsenthal, John Howard). Also his wife Shari Daniels. (“She thought I was crazy.”) A year ago Carl and his buddies stomped and hop-danced on the stage in an outdoor jam they called “Elmstock ’05.”

Among kids in the neighborhood there was a buzz that Carl had a young, wild side to him. A few teenagers decided to approach him with something ulterior: Hey, if you do it again, maybe we can kick out the jams, too?

This spring, after wrapping upproduction of a bio-film on George Washington, Carl let it be known he would resurrect the stage. His new fans brought hammers and gloves. They helped him hang an “Elmstock ‘06” banner painted with psychedelic flourish and set up cardboard potties. Shari fashioned a rubber stamp they used to print “Elmstock Rocks 2006” on T-shirts, shorts and bodies.

On the afternoon of June 10th the teens, taking turns with the geezers, brought down the house. The Graphite Blimp quartet, Tyler Kelly on bass, Ele Rubenstein on drums, Kit Benz on guitar and Amber Rounds on vocals, fired up a medley of Led Zeppelin covers. (“They were seriously good!”) Noah Robinson played and sang his own compositions on guitar. Aaron Kozloff on bass and the Jacobson brothers, Austin on drums and Sam on guitar, did original and oldie numbers. The Seligman brothers Ben and Jesse got in their licks.

The decibels were big enough for the police to show up briefly to quiet things down.

At one point a teenager was heard to say, “Carl, you’re my hero.”

Shari instructed her husband to nod, listen and keep his mouth shut in all exchanges: “Don’t spoil everything by trying to engage in an actual conversation.”

Silver Chips endorses Raskin & starts a war of words

The Washington Post editorial of June 17 made it seem the editorial board of Blair High’s student newspaper, Silver Chips, had endorsed Takoma Park’s Jamie Raskin in the District 20 State Senate race out of pique at his opponent, incumbent Ida Ruben.

It’s true the top editors of the paper, often described as one of the best in the country, felt Ida brushed them off. They had managed to get her on the phone once, but she was too busy to talk, and three messages they left went unreturned, according to editor Eve Gleichman. (Ida says she doesn’t remember the messages.)

But the Silver Chips’ endorsement was based far more on Jamie’s work in local student politics dating back to a 1996 decision by the Montgomery County school board to ban the showing of a TV debate about same-sex marriage, titled “Shades of Grey” and produced by Blair students.

Jamie, a first-class constitutional scholar, went to bat for the students at a time when the smart money made many mainstream Democrats jittery around the subject of wedlock for gays and lesbians. Jamie, in his fired-up way, started in with arguments about censorship and got the school board to rescind the ban.

Instead of simply returning to life at American University, where he is a professor, Jamie recruited students from his law classes and lawyer-friends to teach high school students in the metropolitan area about their rights. “‘Shades of Grey’ was a textbook case where the very rights students are taught to respect in civics classes were abridged,” he says.

He also wrote a textbook, We, the Students, and enlisted the widows of Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan to form the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project that, with his book as the main guide, expanded the teaching of student rights into semester-long classes in several states.

“He has really helped kids—future teachers, journalists, lawyers—understand the Constitution,” Eve Gleichman says.

By endorsing Jamie, meanwhile, the editors did manage to get Ida Ruben’s attention. She called the Blair front office to insist on “equal time” in the paper, a too-little, too-late move the Washington Post said made her look “like an ill-tempered rookie.”

Silver Chips has ceased publishing for the summer, and the Democratic primary will be held soon after fall classes begin, so probably nothing more will come of Ida’s complaint. Regardless, Eve says the editors are solidly behind their endorsement: “This isn’t about Ida Ruben. This is about Jamie – he’s the best.”

Sligo Creek photo panels moved to namesake school

Takoma Park photographer Stan Barouh, whose house fronts on Sligo Creek, was hunting for leaves along the creek in the fall of 2002 when his eye caught the Carroll Avenue bridge, a structure so in tune with the rocky stream that its rough majesty often goes unnoticed. Stan walked into the water and snapped a shot with a wide-angle lens and warming filter.

That might have been the end of the story except Marty Ittner, a graphic designer and printmaker, met Stan when their dogs, Megan and Paco, got into a friendly exchange of paws and teeth during a walk along the creek.

The creek is Marty’s cause. The group Friends of Sligo Creek divided the creek into sections for regular cleanups of litter and weeds, and Marty is designated as “steward” of Section Two, which includes the bridge. Earlier this year she made news by discovering and reporting a noxious overflow from Columbia Union College into waters near the bridge.

Marty fell in love with Stan’s photo and thought it ought to be on display somewhere. In 2004 an opportunity presented itself. The Arts & Humanities Commission was soliciting artistic renderings for a series of stand-up murals that were subsequently posted around the community center to add a little gaiety to the drab construction scene. Marty volunteered to construct artwork on behalf of Friends of Sligo Creek.

Whereas the artisans of other local groups (Historic Takoma, the sports leagues, and so forth) created colorful murals on 4-ft-x-4-ft cuts of plywood, Marty painted her panel of plywood black and set out to place Stan’s photo on the wood as a matrix of 14 separate silkscreen plates.

She downloaded a high-resolution image and printed the plates with an extra large halftone dot. Each plate was exposed onto a stretched photosensitive screen and then reassembled into the whole. Because a single 4x4 piece of wood seemed too small she used two panels. Still Marty was disappointed. “The image was black and white, and that felt stark,” she says. “So I got this idea to sponge it with a brown wash like a hand-tinted photograph.”

The result was a sun-spotted, sepia-toned waterscape that looked a century or two old. It was mounted next to the back door of the community center and elicited a lot of “wow!” commentary for two years.

When the murals were taken down for the opening of the community center, Marty made sure Stan’s photo wasn’t stuck in a storage room. With assistance from Clair Garman, who handcrafted an elegant black frame, Marty arranged for the panels to hang in the entranceway to Sligo Creek Elementary. Students and teachers crammed into the lobby for an unveiling a few weeks ago.

The school principal, Diantha Lay, is thrilled. “Every time I come through the front doors, I feel like I’m in an art gallery,” she says.

City police officer accused of brutality

On June 29 Cpl. Douglas Malarkey of the Takoma Park police department was indicted for assaulting John Courtney, a homeless man, on the Prince George’s side of East West Highway. Courtney was being handcuffed about two in the morning of January 8 when Malarkey jumped on his back, breaking three of Courtney’s ribs, according to the indictment.

The testimony against Malarkey came from three of his fellow officers.

Malarkey is one of the City’s canine officers. He was featured in a local Cable TV public-service segment that won an award this year from the Alliance for Community Media.

A man and his iPod
And two helpful geeks

Pat Loveless, the blind political troubadour heard often during the citizen comment period of City Council sessions, wanted to transfer tunes from CDs onto an iPod. So he sought out Phil Shapiro, who calls himself the “public geek” of the community center.

Phil was able to import the music into “iTunes” on a power Mac but couldn’t complete the transaction. So on June 21st he put out a plea on the Voice listserv.

Two days later Phil reported that someone had come to the rescue: “The correct technique is to drag the music straight from the ‘iTunes’ play-list onto the picture of the iPod icon on the left side of the ‘iTunes’ screen.” The guy who proved to be even geekier than Phil was Eric Bond, editor and publisher of the Voice.

New librarian, interim chief,
other comings and goings

• Karen MacPherson, a longtime town resident who in 28 years as a journalist wrote a great deal about children and children’s books, has always been an admirer of the City’s children’s librarian, Jillian Hershberger. And vice versa. Now, as of August 1st, Karen will be taking Jillian’s job.

  For friends of Jillian, who announced last month she is starting over in Santa Fe, the City is throwing a going-away party at the community center on the evening of July 24th, 6 to 7:30.

• The gregarious Ed Coursey, commander of the police patrol division the past four years, will serve as interim chief during the search for a successor to outgoing Chief Cindy Creamer.

• Students at Piney Branch Elementary will henceforth have a chance to win an annual award for creative writing in honor of Dottie Sturek, the well-liked 4th-grade teacher who retired after nearly 20 years at the school.

• The Takoma Park Middle principal, Jean Haven, was transferred in June to a job in the school system’s central office. The new principal, to be named sometime this summer, will inherit the dilemma of the 8th-grade field trip. A week-long winter trip to Florida that high-achieving students used to get as a reward was canceled this year after criticism that the students left behind were disproportionately from poor families.

• Soccer balls, novelty items for birthday gifts, a big line of Dungeons & Dragons game supplies, sports clothes – the store Fair Day’s Play that opened in June at 7050 Carroll Avenue in Old Takoma (in the old State Farm office) is stocked with play things, which explains the last part of the store’s cleverly worded name. The first part is explained by one of the owners, Pat Greenfield: “Everything we sell comes from manufacturers who provide decent wages and working conditions and do not use child labor.” Says the other owner, Robert Pleasure: “That’s why we located here. We felt our philosophy would be appreciated.”

Hixson, Mizeur lead District 20 delegate race

The talk at political events this year is that the two leaders for the three District 20 State Delegate seats are incumbent Sheila Hixson and new candidate Heather Mizeur, a former City Councilmember who would have been a White House adviser if John Kerry had been elected president.

The new Maryland House Legislation Leadership poll confirms the talk. In the poll Sheila is the first choice of 30 percent of those surveyed, the second choice of 19 percent and the third choice of 14 percent, giving her a total of 63 percent. Heather got a total of 40 percent.

None of the other five candidates was close, suggesting the third seat is up for grabs.

Coach G happily throws a one-hopper

Photo: Julie Wiatt

Coach G winds up for a ceremonial first pitch on his 50th birthday.

Given a chance to be his natural self for his 50th birthday, namely an eternal hotdog, Gary Weinstein took to the mound at a crowded ballpark to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. He tossed the ball first to his mom, then to his dad, then to his teenage son. He might’ve tossed it to his wife, but she was holding a camera.

The emcee, Bruce Adams, kept urging him to throw to the catcher. It was all part of the show at the Thunderbolts-Big Train game on June 30th to pay tribute to Gary’s work with ball-playing kids. Known as “Coach G,” Gary assumed the local baseball mantle after Lee Jordan’s death and organized the Takoma Park-Silver Spring Babe Ruth youth league.

Finally Gary went into his windup and threw the pitch. It was a strike, if you can call a ball that bounces over the plate a strike. At one time a misfired throw might have mattered to Gary, a spectacular player in adult softball leagues who nearly lost his life when beaned by a line drive in the spring of 2001. Now “110 percent recovered,” he says, “I count every day as a blessing. I feel blessed to hug friends and family.”

Gary gave out lots of hugs at his party. He also winged a second pitch to the plate, a curve, a tad outside and low. In an email report afterwards Bruce Adams wrote: “As expected, the game started a few minutes late as we had a hard time getting Coach G off the mound. He was ready to go nine.”

Tribute to Lee Jordan, whose work lives on

The coconut, spice, carrot, lemon and chocolate cakes Pat Matthews baked for a special day of reminiscences at the community center were heavy with piping. Pat used to have a side business as a cake decorator. “That’s something I learned in one of your classes,” she said with delight to Belle Ziegler, who started the City’s recreation department in 1967.

The memorial ceremony on June 3rd was in honor of Pat’s late father, Lee Jordan, the Negro League baseball player who came home to Takoma Park and, while working as a school janitor, coached wisecracks and tough love from the 1950’s into the 1980’s and who was inducted into the Montgomery County Civil Rights Hall of Fame this year.

Joyce Seamens, who grew up in Ward Four on Mr. Jordan’s street, Ritchie Avenue, talked about how he laid the foundation for much of the sports and recreational activity that exists in town today. “He left a big, big legacy,” Joyce said. “Not just the kids he set on the straight and narrow, but all the parents he inspired to be generous with their own time.”

One by one, members of that old gang stepped to a podium to give testimonials.

A woman presented a framed photograph of her son in one of Mr. Jordan’s recycled uniforms. “I want everyone to know how well my son turned out,” she explained.

Joyce’s husband Terry, who represents Ward Four on the City Council, showed a videotape of interviews he conducted with Mr. Jordan’s family and neighbors. The pastor of Mr. Jordan’s church spoke of him as a man who often called the congregation to prayer.

Fire Chief Jimmy Jarboe remembered being on duty the day a small rec center behind Piney Branch Elementary burned down in the late 1970’s. In the aftermath of that fire members of Mr. Jordan’s sports leagues started a petition drive that set in motion the long campaign for a community center.

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