Falls Church News-Press - April 10, 2008 edition

Leaders of Falls Church Episcopalians who’ve remained aligned with the national Episcopal Church, after an archconservative majority from their local church voted to defect in 2006, said they were “saddened” by last week’s initial court ruling on who gets to control the historic church property. But they proclaimed in a statement, “With or without the ruling, we

remain the church, we will worship, and we will continue to reach out to those in need. We are reminded of the need now more than ever to proclaim our presence in Falls Church, and to reach out ever more diligently.”

On the other side, a leader of the defectors proclaimed, “God has provided wonderfully!”

Last week, Judge Randy Bellows of the Fairfax Circuit Court completed the first of three legal steps to determine if the “continuing Episcopalians”

or the defectors currently occupying the church site will have control of the site.

He issued a lengthy ruling almost five months after a November 2007 trial that a Civil War-era Virginia statute, the socalled 57-9 statute, granting a local congregation the right to control the property it occupies would apply to the case involving the Falls Church defectors and 11 other “breakaway” con-

In an exclusive interview with the News-Press Monday, the foremost authority on economic trends in Northern Virginia drew a stark contrast between the state of economic affairs inside the Beltway, including in Falls Church, compared to regions outside it.

Dr. Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University’s School for Public Policy, said that the greater Falls Church area of Fairfax County and its environs constitute “probably the strongest area” of the county and that housing there is already “showing some signs of stability.”

On the other hand, he said economic conditions in the Northern Virginia regions to the west continue to worsen and cannot expect a turnaround for up to two years. As much of the U.S. heads deeper into recessionary conditions, things are “terrible” in areas such as Prince William, Stafford, Fauquier, Spotsylvania and other outlying counties, where there is a 20month backlog in home sales, compared to five months inside the Beltway, he said.

Home sales in the Falls Church, Arlington and Alexandria areas “will pick up

by September if they haven’t already,” Fuller forecasted, saying that for these areas, right now it’s as bad as it’s going to get.

By contrast not only to outlying areas of this region, but to places like Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit, “new jobs are still being created here,” and the growth in unemployment has Continued on Page 4

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April 10 - 16, 2008

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Vol. XVIII, No. 6 April 10 - 16, 2008

One thing that everyone involved in the debate over the approval of the new $317 million City Center project in downtown Falls Church should agree on is the need for the project to involve first-rate architectural, landscaping and public art design. This is Falls Church’s one best shot at making an impression on the region, and it should not squander it. Unfortunately, however, the City is not currently ready to take on this challenge, or even to grasp what should be involved.

Presently, there are only two forces in play: the developer’s own architectural planning and an array of amateurs on the City side. With all due respect, the City cannot count on the developer’s desire to produce a world-class architectural design. It would add to its costs and eat into its profitable densities. On the other hand, the City has no one within its own ranks it can reliably count on to bring the weight of expertise and artistic passion to spearhead a negotiation to ensure the kind of artistically and culturally distinctive center everyone wants.

Right now, the only influence the City is being afforded on the look of the new center will be a yet-to-be-announced public charette, where amateur citizens can participate in a usually-futile effort to delineate a wish list using felt-tipped pens and butcher paper hung on walls. This is a ticket to frustration. If, on the other hand, heaven forbid the citizens in this way were allowed to have the final say, the result could be catastrophic. Falls Church has had earlier, painful experiences of this kind, such as the “citizen committee” approach to selecting the public art for the George Mason Square that led to the choice of the infamous “breadsticks fountain,” which was ugly and quickly fell apart.

No, citizens of the City of Falls Church need to eat their pride and recognize that they most likely do not have within their own ranks the expertise needed to guide this effort. The City needs to retain a truly qualified consultant to guide its efforts on this critical matter.

The look of the new City Center is going to define whether it is a success or not, and will be with the City a long, long time. This is not something that can be ignored or given a short shrift because a few bureaucrats at City Hall aren’t willing to admit they don’t know enough about what such matters should involve. The arts are not their thing.

The City hires consultants constantly to bring expertise to its planning process. It needs to move very swiftly if an architectural and artistic design consultant is to be brought on in time to make a major impact on the City Center project without holding it up.

This is no time for “consensus,” but for expertise. The City is in the enviable position of having a virtually limitless array of possibilities for shaping a distinctive look and character by way of it.

The “special place” many in Falls Church are looking for is here already: it IS Falls Church! It only awaits how it will come to look to itself and the world.

Platform 1. Keep the news clean and fair.

2. Play no favorites, never mix business and editorial policy.

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6. Give “value received” for every dollar you take in.

7. Make the paper show profit if you can, but above all keep it clean, fearless and fair.

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The News-Press is delivered to every household and many businesses in the City of Falls Church (22046), and to many homes and businesses (but not all) in the adjacent 22041, 22042, 22043, 22044 and 22205 zip codes. Its total circulation of 30,500 per issue is greater than any other newspaper in the distribution area, including dailies. For complete advertising information, call us or check out our web site.

Call 532-3267 or visit www.FCNP.com

More Letters on Page 6

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 3

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April 10 - 16, 2008

“Do you agree with the contention that F.C.’s economy is stronger than other parts of the Northern Virginia region?”

• Yes • No been slight.

“The growth here has been the slowest since 2002, about 2.5% annually now, which is zero against inflation,” he said.

“But the area has been relatively cushioned.”

Fuller said he stood by his earlier predictions that an office and

residential construction boom is coming to the Tysons Corner area, although he’s downgraded his forecast some since the beginning of the year. “We’re doing better than the rest of the U.S. in this area,” he said.

Outlying areas are mired in economic woes because the biggest parts of their economies are based on retail and housing, while

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consumers don’t have money to spend and thousands of homes are going into foreclosure.

On the other hand, the areas inside the Beltway feast off government contracts for defense, homeland security and infrastructure.

Fuller said this won’t change significantly even if things change in Iraq or with a new regime in the White House.

He also said the trends will be roughly the same no matter who gets elected president.

“There will be some slowdown in government contracts at first,” with the onset of a new presidency, Fuller said. “But, it will be because it is common for a new president to take some time, about six months, learning how to spend money.”

“As a new government takes hold, there is a leasing curve.

There will be a temporary slowdown in the awarding of contracts,” he said.

Fuller and his Center for Regional Analysis were retained by the City of Falls Church’s Economic Development

• Don’t know/Don’t care

Vote on-line at www.FCNP.com Results of Last Week’s Question: “Which way do you hope the judge rules in the Episcopal Church case?”

The FCNP On-Line polls are surveys, not scientific polls.

Authority in 2006 to prepare a so-called “Big Picture Study” of the demographics and economic trends of the areas contiguous to the City of Falls Church.

It was in that study that he reported the annual disposable income of 100,000 persons living in the census tracts in and around the City area was approximately $4 billion.

The study served as an impe-

tus for City officials to continue ahead with encouraging large scale mixed-use projects.

Fuller’s projections of growth in Tysons Corner and the immediacy of a large consumer base in the region immediately contiguous to the City of Falls Church suggested that there would be a market for considerable new residential and retail growth in the city.

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 5

gregations in Virginia.

As Judge Bellows said he would last November, he will now move to consider the second, even more important, of three issues in the case, namely, the constitutionality of the 57-9 statute, itself. He set the hearing date on that subject for May 28.

Following that, he will move to the third phase in the fall, dealing with whether internal agreements within the denomination that the local church agreed to in the 1970s will have the force of real estate contract law.

Many following the case were not surprised at Judge Bellows’ narrow ruling on the applicability of the 57-9 statute last week, assessing the second and third phases to be much more important.

The constitutionality issue has ramifications for every church in Virginia and even nationally. Depending on Judge Bellows’ ruling on that matter, it could revert to the Virginia Supreme Court and even beyond

that.

In a statement received last week from Patrick Getlein of the Virginia Diocese of the Episcopal Church, it is asserted, “While the ruling in this case is not final, the preliminary ruling amounts to a government intrusion into a denomination’s right to self-governance and reaches far beyond the Episcopal Church and issues of property….(It) puts every hierarchical denomination on notice that a group of persons who no longer wish to be part of the denomination can now split off, form a new group, selfdeclare they are a branch of the original group and assert rights under the law regardless of the denomination’s own rules.”

Meanwhile, the defectors who continue to occupy the historic Falls Church property hailed Judge Bellows’ preliminary ruling last week. In a letter to that group, which is now aligned with the right-wing Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, the Rev. John Yates wrote on their web site, “We are grateful for this initial victory today. It is huge! God has

provided wonderfully.”

A prominent member of the congregation, K.C. McAlpin, wrote in a letter to the editor, published elsewhere in this edition, that Judge Bellows’ decision marked “a major victory for the freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.”

But the Diocese and national Episcopal stand is that the guarantee of freedom of religion was undermined by a ruling on a statute that empowers the government to step in and rule on the affairs within a religious denomination.

Meanwhile, the “continuing Episcopalians” in Falls Church, exiled from the historic church property to worship and carry on their church mission as guests of the Falls Church Presbyterian Church across the street, vow to carry on. The letter from their leaders, Senior Warden William Fetsch and Priest-in-Charge Rev. Michael Pipkin, affirmed their group “will provide for the needy, minister to the sick, comfort the mournful, and we will strive for justice and peace among all people. In our work as the church, we will continue to partner with local organizations, such as Homestretch, and we will develop partnerships with other Falls Church congregations, Episcopal or otherwise, as we meet our Lord in the faces of our neighbors.”

Graffiti/Damage to Property, Giant Food, 1230 W Broad St., April 1, 12:13 a.m., unknown person(s) wrote graffiti on the rear entrance of the establishment.

Larceny, Exxon, 400 W Broad St., April 3, 6:04 p.m., unknown person(s) pumped $80.08 worth of unleaded gasoline. Incident to the case, police escorted the subject back to the establishment to pay for the gasoline.

Larceny from Vehicle, 200 blk.

Gundry Dr., April 3, 6:58 p.m., unknown person(s) stole the front license plate off of a vehicle.

Driving under the Influence, 100 blk. Hillwood Ave., April 3, 9:50 p.m., police arrested a female, 29, of Bethesda, MD 20814 for DUI. Fraud by Impersonation, 200 blk.

W Cameron Rd., between March 29 and March 30, unknown person(s) opened a Sears’s and RadioShack charge card in the victim’s name.

Suspicious Event, 400 blk. Hampton Ct., March 31, 6:00 a.m., unknown person(s) used victim’s personal information to subscribe to eight magazines.

Disorderly Conduct, 1000 blk. W Broad St., March 28, 2:45 p.m., a juvenile was reported throwing objects from a window on the school bus.

Drunkenness, 400 S Washington St., April 4, 3:15 p.m., police arrested a male, 46, of Alexandria, VA for DIP. Drunkenness, 100 blk. Hillwood Ave., April 4, 11:17 p.m., police arrested a male, 46, of Falls Church, VA for DIP. Driving under the Influence, 1000 blk.

W Broad St., April 5, 1:31 a.m., police arrested a male, 27, of Baltimore, MD for DUI. Drug/Narcotic Violation, 900 blk.

W Broad St., April 4, 3:04 p.m., police arrested a male, 26, of Annandale, VA for DUID, Refusal and Possession of a Controlled Substance.

Larceny, Shoplifting, Giant Foods, 1230 W Broad St., April 5, 9:02 p.m., police arrested a male, 25, of Falls Church, VA for stealing a pack of DVDRW Discs. Incident to the case, suspect was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon.

Drunkenness, 200 blk. N Washington St., April 5, 10:00 p.m., police arrested a female, 28, of Falls Church, VA for DIP. Liquor Law Violation, State Theatre, 220 N Washington St., April 5, 10:34 p.m., police arrested a male, 20, of Fairfax, VA for Possession of Alcohol Underage.

Drunkenness, 1100 blk. S Washington St., April 6, 6:36 p.m., police arrested a male, 54, of Falls Church, VA for DIP. Larceny, La Caraquena Restaurant, 300 W Broad St., #A, April 5, between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m., unknown person(s) stole $304.00 cash from a purse.

Drunkenness, 100 blk. S Washington St., April 6, 10:51 p.m., police arrested a male, 46, of Alexandria, VA for DIP and Urinating in Public.

Drunkenness, 1000 blk. E Broad St., April 7, 12:07 a.m., police arrested a male, 46, of NO FIXED ADDRESS, for DIP. Drunkenness, 100 blk. W Westmoreland Rd., April 7, 11:55 a.m., police arrested a male, 52, of Falls Church, VA for DIP. Fraud, Zyng Asian Grill, 502 W Broad St., April 7, 8:34 p.m., unknown person(s) left the establishment without paying the $80.00 bar tab. The suspect is described as a W/M, 6’0, 40-45 YOA, brown wavy hair, wearing a green and white shirt.

Suspicious Event, 100 blk. S Spring St., April 7, 9:02 p.m., unknown person(s) attempted to gain entry inside a residence by using a ladder to enter through a window. The suspects were frightened off by a witness.

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April 10 - 16, 2008

months are waiting for sisters and brothers who forgot and who will help us come home. There is no greater love.

Dr. Jackie L’Heureux Via the Internet religiosity and set up shop down the road.

Yates has his devoted followers. Far many more attendees, however, remained in the original building waiting out ‘somebody else’s fight’. The church is beautiful, Sunday school is terrific and the kids have their friends there, and what’s-hisname only says something really annoying only every couple of months. They’ll work it out. I get that—at one time with my 4 sons, a busy career, going to school full time—well, you have to pick your causes.

Except this one goes to the heart of who we are as Episcopalians. We don’t have to like the person standing next to us in God’s house. We can revile the person standing next to us. But in God’s house we will worship shoulder to shoulder with anyone who comes to the house of God. That’s who we are. That’s what we teach our children. It’s back to basic time in the Episcopal Church, and those of us who have been huddling together in the loft of the Presbyterian Church for 18

Editor, Fairfax Circuit Judge Randy Bellows’ ruling that The Falls Church and the other church congregation that broke away from the Episcopal Church USA are entitled to their churches is a major victory for the freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Overwhelming majorities of these congregations voted to leave the national church.

Despite the allegations of detractors, the reasons they left had to do with fundamental issues such as the divinity of Christ and the authority of the Bible.

The national church and the diocese tried to argue that there was no “division” over doctrine.

But Judge Bellows wrote that “evidence of ‘a division’ had occurred in the (Virginia) diocese, the Episcopal Church USA, and the Anglican Communion is not only compelling but over-

whelming.”

Whatever their opinion of Christ or views of historic Christian beliefs, Americans will always favor freedom.

And it is precisely our freedom from state-supported ecclesiastical bureaucracies that makes the U.S. different from European nations where religion is dying, and gives rise to the religious pluralism and tolerance in which our religious diversity thrives.

Thank you, Judge Bellows, for defending that freedom.

K.C. McAlpin Falls Church

Editor, The recent letter to the editor

by June and Mike Beyer provides an opportunity to clarify some information about the Falls Church Education Foundation.

The Beyer’s concern for our schools is very characteristic of our community -- families and business leaders who care deeply about a high quality education for our children. In fact, that commitment to quality education is what inspired the creation of the Falls Church

Education Foundation in 2003 - to provide supplemental financial support to our schools.

A majority of our funds are designated by their generous donors for particular purposes -- primarily scholarships for both current and future years and are invested accordingly. Last year, the Foundation distributed a total of more than $32,000 for the benefit of the Falls Church City School students through scholarship awards. Our work also includes raising funds for ongoing needs throughout the year including support for special projects and learning opportunities for both teachers and students. These include, among others: paying for poets in residence, guest lecturers, teacher grants, and also student academic competitions like the Robotics Club.

The Foundation has supported the George Mason Robotics Club in the past and is contribut-

ing $500 towards their expenses to compete for the National Championship this year.

The Foundation’s Legacy Endowment Fund is a cornerstone of our mission -- to provide long-term financial support to sustain the system’s high standards. However, with the majority of the Foundation donor’s contributions being for specified gifts, we’ve made slower than hoped for progress in building the Endowment Fund. We will continue to focus on this portion of our charter, building for the future, along with the Foundation’s more current, here and now, efforts.

We’re certainly grateful to all of Foundation’s donors--more than 1,000 now--and proud to steward your generous gifts for the benefit of our students.

Dan Gardner & Donna Englander F.C. Education Foundation

“Make mention of Me on My earth, that in My heaven I may remember thee, thus shall Mine eyes and thine be solaced.”

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The Baha’is of Falls Church

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 7

2 Face-Offs Set for F.C. City Council Candidates Two events will give the seven candidates running to fill three Falls Church City Council seats an opportunity to face off prior to the May 6 election, it was announced this week. The League of Women Voters of Falls Church is teaming with the F.C. Village Preservation and Improvement Society to co-sponsor a candidates’ forum next Wednesday, April 16, in the Council chambers at City Hall. The event will be carried live on Falls Church Cable TV. Then, on Tuesday, April 29, the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce will sponsor a candidates’ debate at a location yet to be determined, with plans to televise or videotape the debate pending. F.C. Mayor Robin Gardner and Vice Mayor Lindy Hockenberry are seeking re-election to third terms, while Nader Baroukh, Ed Hillegass, Margaret Housen, Patrice Lepczyzk and Lawrence Webb are all running for the first time. Four are seeking to fill three seats on the F.C. School Board, including incumbents Joan Wodiska and Kieran Sharpe and newcomers Charlotte Hyland and Kim Maller.

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“Not Your Average Joe’s� is the brand of the restaurant that has signed the first retail tenant lease at The Spectrum, Waterford Development’s new mixed use project at 444 W. Broad St., it was announced this week. There are currently 14 restaurants in the chain that was launched in 1994 in Massachusetts by founder Steve Silverstein.

It is designed “to bring big city food into suburban neighborhoods at an affordable price,� according to a statement. It is scheduled to open this November in a 6,500 square foot location, facing directly onto W. Broad Street and the Market Square portion of the project.

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Gov. Kaine Hosting Town Meeting in F.C. Area Saturday The auditorium at the Falls Church areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Luther Jackson Middle School will be the location of a town hall meeting this Saturday conducted by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Kaine will be eliciting public input on proposals for a statewide solution to transportation funding. Area public officials will be present, and the general public is also invited to attend. The location is 3020 Gallows Road, near Route 50.

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PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

NOTICE OF FALLS CHURCH CITY DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS The Falls Church City Democratic Committee hereby announces that it will hold an unassembled caucus between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, 2008, in the Senior Center at the Falls Church Community Center, 223 Little Falls Street, for the purpose of electing 6 delegates and 3 alternates to the 8th Congressional District Democratic Convention and the 2008 Virginia Democratic State Convention. In accord with the results of the February 12, 2008, Democratic Presidential Preferential Primary, 4 delegates and 2 alternates will be pledged to support Barack Obama, 2 delegates and I alternate will be pledged to support Hillary Clinton.

F.C. Housing Advocates Stress Need for Community Support Affordable housing advocates speaking at a confab in Falls Church last week stressed the importance of building community support for the Falls Church Housing Corporation and Homestretch, Inc. ambitious plans to build a seven-story, 174 unit affordable housing project adjacent the new City Center in downtown Falls Church.

Keynote speaker Melissa Bondi spoke on the importance of affordable housing for â&#x20AC;&#x153;smart urban growth,â&#x20AC;? enabling employees to live near where they work. Highlighting the need, she pointed out that the average Falls Church home costs $527,000, and based on federal guidelines that housing costs should not exceed 30% of income, that sum would require a household income of $189,000 to afford. Yet, the mean average salary in the region is less then $45,000.

CrisisLink Warns of Iraq Warâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mental Health Costs CrisisLink, the Northern Virginia-based suicide hotline service fighting to retain its funding from Fairfax County in the current budget crunch, will hold a press conference Friday noting that â&#x20AC;&#x153;several recent studies and reports have highlighted alarming trends in the number of soldiers experiencing mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicide.â&#x20AC;? The organization notes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Efforts undertaken today are critical to preventing future waves of veterans from living at the edges of society and facing the tragic struggles and lifetimes of difficulties that veterans from previous eras have experienced.â&#x20AC;?

8th District GOP Challenger Kicks Off Campaign Amit Singh, a small business owner, kicked off his Republican campaign to unseat Rep. Jim Moran in the 8th District of Virginia last Friday with a media reception and rally in Alexandria. He outlined his â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vision for the Futureâ&#x20AC;? at the rally, based on principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility and personal freedom. Moran will be seeking re-election to a tenth term in November.

Any person wishing to seek election as a delegate/alternate must file with Betty Coll, Chair of the Falls Church City Democratic Committee, 315 N. Virginia Avenue, Falls Church VA 22046 no later than 5:00 p.m. Monday, April 14, 2008. On that day only, from 3:00-5:00 p.m. the pre-filing forms can be submitted to the FCCDC chair in the Art Room at the Falls Church Community Center. Such persons shall declare at the time of filing which Presidential candidate he/she is pledged to support. A voluntary administrative fee of $25.00 (which may be waived) will be charged at the time of filing for those wishing to be elected delegates/alternates, which includes $10.00 for an administrative fee, a $5.00 fee for the 8th Congressional District Convention, and a $10.00 fee for the 2008 Virginia Democratic State Convention.

There is no charge for those wishing to attend and vote at the caucus on April 19.

Any person attending the caucus, before participating in that caucus, shall sign a standardized Caucus Participation Form stating that he/she is a Democrat, does not intend to support any candidate who is opposed to a Democratic nominee in the ensuing general election, believes in the principles of the Democratic Party, and is a registered voter in the City of Falls Church. Caucus Participation Forms must be filled out at the caucus prior to voting. After voting, participants are free to depart from the caucus. The caucus will conclude promptly at 7:00 p.m. at which time the doors will be closed and no person may complete a form or vote after that time with the exception of those persons in line at 7:00 p.m.

Persons who will not be able to vote in the April 19, 2008, caucus may vote absentee of Thursday, April 17, 2008, 7:00-9:00 p.m. in the Art Room in the Falls Church Community Center, at the 223 Little Falls Street, Falls Church.

For further information, please contact Betty Coll, Chair of the Falls Church City Democratic Committee at 703-516-1363 or wolfecoll@aol.com.

Authorize and paid for by the Falls Church City Democratic Committee

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April 10 - 16, 2008

falls church news press.qxp

April 10 - 16, 2008

4/4/2008

4:26 PM

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Page 10

April 10 - 16, 2008

The U.S. brought no shortage of misconceptions into Iraq, but surely the longest lasting has been what you might call: Founding Fatherism. This is the belief that peace will come to the country when the nation’s political elites gather at a convention hall and make a series of grand compromises involving power-sharing and a new constitution.

The Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqis to make this sort of grand compromise for years -- to little effect.

The Democrats happily declare that there has been no political progress in Iraq because this grand compromise is the only kind of political progress they can conceive of.

The grand compromise model would be appropriate if Iraq were a Western country living in the shadow of the Magna Carta. But Iraq is not that kind of country.

As Philip Carl Salzman argues in “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (brilliantly reviewed

by Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard), many Middle Eastern societies are tribal. The most salient structure is the local lineage group. National leaders do not make giant sacrifices on behalf of the nation because their higher loyalty is to the sect or clan.

Order is achieved not by the top-down imposition of abstract law. Instead, order is achieved through fluid balance of power agreements between local groups.

In a society like this, political progress takes different forms. It’s not top down. It’s bottom up.

And this is exactly the sort of progress we are seeing in Iraq. While the Green Zone politicians have taken advantage of the surge by trying to entrench their own power, things are happening at the grassroots.

Iraqis are growing more optimistic. Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say their lives are going well, up from 39 percent last August, according to a poll conducted by ABC News and other global television networks. Forty-nine percent now say the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, the highest figure recorded since this poll began in 2004.

More generally, the Iraqi people are sick of war and are punishing those leaders and forces that perpetrate it. “A vital factor in the security improvement is public backlash against the chaos and extremism of the past five years,” declared Yahia Said of the Revenue Watch Institute in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And, as one would expect, the local clans have

taken control. Iraqi politics have become hyperlocalized, Colin Kahl, a Georgetown professor and Obama adviser, has observed. The most prestigious groups in Iraqi society are tribes and Awakening Councils. Many of these councils earned legitimacy by fighting during the height of the violence and have now come out in the open as local authorities.

These groups have created a fluid network of fragile truces. They squabble over money, power, ideology and sectarian issues. But they have incentives to keep the peace. Sunni leaders have come to realize that they can’t win a civil war against the Shiites. Shiite militia leaders recognize their own prestige and power drops the more they fight.

As Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations observed in his Senate testimony last week: “This does not mean sectarian harmony or brotherly affection in Iraq. But it does mean that cold, hard strategic reality increasingly makes acting on hatred too costly for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.”

The surge didn’t create the network of truces, but the truces couldn’t have happened without the surge. More than 70,000 local council members are paid by the Americans. They rely on the U.S. military to enforce bargains and deter truce-breaking.

Thanks to these arrangements, ethno-sectarian violence dropped by 90 percent between June 2007 and March 2008. That’s the result of political progress, not just counterinsurgency techniques.

It has become common to belittle these truces.

After all, they are not written by legislators on parchment. And indeed there’s a significant chance that they will indeed collapse and the country will devolve into anarchy.

But in certain societies, this is the way order is established, through what Salzman calls “balanced opposition.” As long as the network of truces holds, then the next president (Democrat or Republican) will have an overwhelming incentive to nurture the fragile peace.

That will mean drawing down U.S. troops at a slow pace, continuing the local reconstruction efforts, supporting local elections and reaching an informal agreement with Iran and the Saudis to reduce outside interference. Iraq will look like a lot of places in the world: a series of cold and fragile understandings, with occasional flare-ups (like in Basra), but no genocide and no terror state.

At this week’s hearings on Capitol Hill, Democrats will declare that the surge has not produced political progress and therefore the whole thing is for naught.

That’s wrong. There has been political progress. It just doesn’t look the way we expected it to.

WASHINGTON -- Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future.

The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week.

Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office.

That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch.

Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass the Iraqi debacle on to his successor.

You can forget accountability for the yet-to-be

defined U.S. military mission which has taken more than 4,000 American lives, possibly a million Iraqi lives and destroyed a country.

Think of President Harry Truman and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who both understood that war was too important to be left to the generals in the field.

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.

Those two presidents finally drummed up enough courage to just say “no.”

Petraeus is too smart to be pinned down on when the U.S. can pull out more troops, especially when there’s been a new flare-up of sectarian violence in Iraq. Let’s say he is careful and selfprotective, trying to hold on.

Continued on Page 42

What’s behind the world food crisis?

You hear a lot about the financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way -- and it’s hurting a lot more people.

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans, but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

There have already been food riots around the world. Foodsupplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers -- and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.

How did this happen? The answer is a combination of longterm trends, bad luck -- and bad policy.

Let’s start with the things that aren’t anyone’s fault.

First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese -- that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners.

Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.

Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of BTUs go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs.

High oil prices, by the way, also have a lot to do with the growth of China and other emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, these rising economic powers are competing with the rest of us for scarce resources, including oil and farmland, driving up prices for raw materials of all sorts.

Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. In particular, Australia, normally the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought.

I said that these factors behind the food crisis aren’t anyone’s fault, but that’s not quite true. The rise of China and other emerging economies is the main force driving oil prices, but the invasion of Iraq -- which proponents promised would lead to cheap oil -- has also reduced oil supplies.

And bad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages.

Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.

The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”

This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. Turns out even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate climate change by promoting deforestation.

Meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. Put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: All the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

One reason the food crisis has gotten so severe, so fast, is that major players in the grain market grew complacent.

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. However, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, as everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once -- in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable.

What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the United Nations’ World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.

We also need a pushback against biofuels, which were a mistake.

But how much can be done? Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.

April 10 - 16, 2008

In the cover story of the April 2008 edition of National Geographic magazine, “Africa’s Ragged Edge: Journey Into the Sahel,” author Paul Salopek, photographer Pascal Maitre and the editors do a terrific job introducing readers to perhaps the most important region of the world that no one, almost, has heard about.

The Sahara is known, the Sahel is not.

Yet the Sahel is perhaps the largest contiguous arable region on the planet, dwarfing the entire continental United States in scale.

From coast to coast, from Dakar on the west to the Red Sea on the east, it is at least one-anda-half times the width of the U.S. Presently, despite its dry and undeveloped condition, it is home to an estimated 55 million mostly poverty-stricken and ethno-politically divided people.

As the National Geographic article points out, the Sahel’s dimensions have shifted over the centuries due to the amount of rainfall. Just as the arable land in the U.S. plains can devolve from agriculturally-fertile to dust bowls, so it goes for the Sahel. The Sahara Desert can encroach on its land under drought conditions, or it can recede when there is rain. At one point a thousand years ago, much of it was fertile and lush, and in that era Timbuktu on the Niger River in modern Mali was the seat of a rich and powerful regime.

What the National Geographic article does not talk about is the potential and, indeed, the necessity to transform that region through large-scale water diversion projects. In fact, studies now relegated to obscurity were done by the French, who once dominated the region, on how to transfer water in huge quantities from the Congo River, one of the most powerful on the planet, into the Sahel specifically into the Lake Chad basin.

There is a single mountain range north of the Congo River that would have to be scaled by a water diversion effort, although for the largest portion of the trip, water would flow by gravity downhill to Lake Chad.

From Lake Chad, a network of canals would be built transferring large quantities of water onto the arable land far to the east and west. It is now known, for example, that a giant, ancient lake bed sits under modern day Darfur to the east, suggesting the capacity of that region to receive and hold large quantities of water for agricultural purposes.

It was exactly this kind of approach that turned the Central Valley of California into one of the world’s great breadbaskets over the first half of the 20th century. The Central Valley was itself once an ocean bottom and its similarity in appearance to whole regions of the Sahel can be seen in areas where the canals have not come to provide irrigation for intensive fruit and vegetable cultivation.

The Los Angles basin in Southern California was also developed by a similar means. Once dry and barely arable, it flourished once the Hoover Dam was built on the Colorado River in Nevada and water began being diverted. A basin once capable of supporting a few thousand people is now home to more than 12 million.

The critical importance of reviving the push for a large-scale water diversion project into the Sahel is defined not only from the standpoint of its impact on ending poverty, but also from the global warming perspective.

Waters as powerful as the Congo River’s that flow to the ocean without environmental impact do nothing to stem the current global warming trend that threatens to wreak monumental damage to the planet.

However, if that water can be put to the use of creating vegetation, resulting in a cooling of the atmosphere, then it can play a vital role in reversing global warming.

By irrigating the Sahel using water from the Congo River, resulting agricultural capability would not only feed the people there, and provide exports for the rest of the world, it would cause a shift in the atmosphere, precipitating patterns of rainfall that were not there before.

For an area as vast as the Sahel, this could have global atmospheric consequences in a way that could help cancel out warming trends globally. The double benefit from this approach seems hard to dispute.

A great new envisioning, investment and diplomatic effort would be required to pull this off, but then its success would be epochal for the entire planet. Who wants to get started?  Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com

Page 11

WASHINGTON -- Maybe it was because I was sitting in the back of the Senate chamber with three war protesters -- grim-faced, chanting women dressed in black hooded cloaks, white makeup and blood-red hands -- that I felt as though I were watching a production of “Macbeth” rather than a hearing on Iraq.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” the witches in the play said. “Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Many words hovered Tuesday in the Senate -including some pointed ones by the woman and two men vying to be commander in chief. But the words seemed trapped in a labyrinth leading nowhere.

The Surge Twins were back, but the day-long testimony of David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker before two committees seemed more depressing this time. As the Bard writes in “Macbeth”: “From that spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort swells.”

They arrived on the heels of the Maliki debacle in Basra, which made it stunningly clear -- after a cease-fire was brokered in Iran -- that we’re spending $3 trillion as our own economy goes off a cliff so that Iran can have a dysfunctional little friend.

Not good news, given Ahmadinejad’s announcement that his scientists are putting 6,000 new uranium-enriching centrifuges in place.

I like General Petraeus’ air of restrained competence and Ambassador Crocker’s air of wry worldweariness. But now they seem swallowed up by the fresh violence and ancient tribal antagonisms that they were supposed to be overcoming.

The guardians of Iraq offer more of the same - a post-Surge Pause or “consolidation and evaluation,” as the general generically puts it -- and no answers about how we can stop our ward from aligning with our enemy.

The way forward, Petraeus said, should be “conditions-based.”

Even in a place as prosaic as the Senate, this news spurred existential angst.

Sen. Evan Bayh summed up the Dada nature of our plan in Iraq: “We’ll know when we get there, and we don’t know when we’re going to get there.”

A confused Sen. Chuck Hagel asked the pair: “So, where’s the surge? What are we doing? I don’t see Secretary Rice doing any Kissinger-esque flying around. Where is the diplomatic surge? So, where is the surge? What are you talking about?”

Condi is too busy floating trial balloons about being John McCain’s running mate to bother about the fact that she was instrumental in two historic blunders: 9/11 and Iraq.

It’s hard to follow the narrative of our misadven-

ture in Iraq. We went in to help the Shiites who we betrayed in the first Gulf War shake off their Sunni tormentors. But then, predictably for everyone except the chuckleheaded W. and Cheney, the Shiites began tormenting the Sunnis. So we put 90,000 Sunni Sons of Iraq -- some of the same ones who were exploding American soldiers -- on our payroll so they’d stop shooting at Americans and helping alQaida. Our troops have gone from policing a SunniShiite civil war to policing a Shiite-Shiite power struggle, while Osama bin Laden plots in peace as al-Qaida in Iraq distracts us and drains our military resources.

Even some senators got confused.

John McCain seemed to repeat his recent confusion over tribes, mistakenly referring to al-Qaida again as a “sect of Shiites” before correcting himself and saying: “or Sunnis or anybody else.”

And Sen. Joe Biden theorized that “The Awakening,” made up of Sunnis, might decide to get into a civil war with Sunnis, presumably meaning Shiites.

But Biden asked a trenchant, if attenuated, question of Crocker about al-Qaida: “If you could take it out, you had a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there and said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every al-Qaida source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every al-Qaida personnel in Iraq,’ which would you pick?”

Given the progress beating back al-Qaida in Iraq, the ambassador replied, he would pick the hiding place of bin Laden.

“That would be a smart choice,” Biden noted.

Sen. John Warner asked the essential question -- the one that makes it clear that W. and Cheney hurt the national interest: Is the war making us safer here at home?

Petraeus avoided answering. But he acknowledged that the “fragile” gains there are “reversible.” “The champagne bottle,” he told Bayh, “has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator.”

You know you’re in trouble when Barbara Boxer is the voice of reason.

“Why is it,” she asked, “after all we have given -- 4,024 American lives, gone; more than half-abillion dollars spent; all this for the Iraqi people, but it’s the Iranian president who is greeted with kisses and flowers?”

She warmed to: “He got a red-carpet treatment, and we are losing our sons and daughters every single day for the Iraqis to be free. It is irritating is my point.”

Crocker dryly assured the senator from California that he believed that Dick Cheney had also gotten kissed on his visit to Iraq.

Page 12

It was business as usual when Tonight Show host Jay Leno asked his guest, Ryan Phillippe, to give his “gayest look” because he once played a gay character on the soap opera “One Life to Live.” The mortified reaction of Phillippe, however, combined with the outrage of gay rights groups, hopefully represents the end of a shameful era where it was acceptable to portray homosexuals as punch lines instead of people. While Leno apologized, the industry has a sorry record of thoughtlessly exploiting gays for cheap laughs.

Gay advocates have traditionally given comedians and sitcom writers wide latitude because for decades their material offered rare visibility. At one time, it was a relief when comedians made cracks about the “love that dare not speak its name,” even if it came with the cruel cost of homosexuals being made the constant butt of tasteless jokes. While their words stung, they were certainly preferable to railing preachers who declared gays sinful or the conservative politicians who attacked basic legal rights. With little information about homosexuality – comedy offered a way to raise the topic among peers. Gay people could use the occasion of a joke to see how friends reacted and get a better idea who might be accepting – or who also might be gay.

Additionally, comedy served as a useful icebreaker in educating people about this controversial topic. For example, when I attended The University of Florida in the early 1990’s, I would often speak to social science classes about my sexual orientation. Most of the students, at that time, had no openly gay friends. To break the palpable tension, I regularly told a joke about how I came out to my girlfriend.

I recounted to the students that since I was unable to utter the word “gay”, I took three tangerines off of a tree. One represented me, the other my girlfriend and the third a guy I was interested in at school. I then guardedly told my girlfriend, “if I were to go on a date, who would I go out with.

After that, with hesitation, I slid the citrus that represented me, next to the produce that represented my male crush. The self-deprecating punch line was, “that was certainly one way to tell my girlfriend that I was a fruit.”

The joke was always a hit and many of the students opened their minds after they laughed. Humor was a way to find common ground so we could discuss the real issues of crass stereotypes and rampant discrimination.

Nonetheless, I would never dream of telling that antiquated joke today as the world has dramatically changed. In contemporary America, the majority of people know someone who is gay or lesbian.

Visibility is no longer a major issue and there are positive role models for today’s gay youth. There are also a plethora of state and federal laws that now protect homosexuals from discrimination, while the next generation is favorably disposed to full marriage rights.

Indeed, in 2008 there is nothing shocking or bizarre about the existence of gay people in everyday life. We are bankers, sanitary workers, doctors, parents, flight attendants and talk show hosts.

Unfortunately, many comedians still act as if it were 1978 and immaturely treat homosexuality like an exotic novelty.

If one watches network sitcoms, gags involving gays are disturbingly ubiquitous. The wisecracks are astounding in their sheer number and outright brazenness. After all, could you imagine if Leno had learned that an actor’s first role was a Jew and he urged him to “look Jewish”?

Unfortunately, there is a double standard when it comes to homosexuals in America. All too often, it is acceptable to disguise humiliation as humor, with the audience laughing at us, not with us.

One wonders if many of today’s writers could complete a sitcom script without lacing it with homophobic laugh lines.

Deciding when a joke is funny or anti-gay fodder is a delicate task. It does not help the gay and lesbian movement to be seen as killjoys, but, at the same time, much damage is done when we are comically killed for the joy of others. Society should be concerned whether the cumulative effect of demeaning jokes has a negative impact on gay teenagers, who are more likely to commit suicide.

So, where is the appropriate place to draw the line?

If gay individuals or groups do something that is actually amusing or absurd, it is perfectly acceptable that they be laughed at and lampooned. However, simply being gay – or insinuating that someone is homosexual - should not be considered inherently funny. The punch line should never be: “Ha, ha, ha, you’re gay.” If the comedy writers can’t come up with more creative jokes, they should seriously consider new jobs.

Jay Leno’s interview with Ryan Phillippe was quite perfunctory and the comedian had no apparent malice. He had simply trotted out a tired industry formula that had been repeated thousands of times. But, the old routine did not elicit a routine response, signifying that gay people are finally standing up to the stand-up comics.

April 10 - 16, 2008

The House this week approved a resolution I offered to credit a lesser recognized group of people affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-the children of American service members.

April is the National Month of the Military Child. In 1986, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger officially declared April as such, recognizing the need to provide quality services and support for children of military families. Every Secretary of Defense since has continued this tradition. Ft. Myer and Ft. Belvoir, military installations in Virginia’s 8th District, have taken this directive seriously, each year hosting all-day events where military kids can relax and just be kids.

We ask a lot of our troops.

But the sacrifices they make are often shared, because the military family is a unit that travels in spirit wherever duty calls.

Half of all military children are under the age of seven, and many live in single parent families or families where both parents are in the military. With more than a quarter of a million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines currently deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other points around the globe, the Department of Defense estimates that nearly 50% of these deployed service members leave children back in the States with family and friends.

Now that the wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan have entered their sixth and seven years respectively, more than one million children in the U.S. have a parent or family member currently serving active military duty. On a sadder note, over 3,400 of these military children have lost a parent deployed overseas since September, 2001.

The effect of our prolonged engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan has had a serious impact on military children. The Defense Department reports that psychological services are up significantly for military kids since the wars began.

A few years ago, Tricia Johnson, co-founder of Kids Serve Too, a military fam-

ily advocacy group, came to my office with the idea for honoring military children with a congressional resolution. Tricia knows firsthand the strain of having a spouse serving overseas puts on the military family, especially the children. She has two daughters and her husband, an army reservist, has served two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

Tricia and her daughters have been tireless advocates for military families. Their commitment to helping others in their same situation-dealing with having a parent on the front lines of battle is more than commendable, it is a conscientiousness example for all Americans to follow. Tricia’s daughter Claire believes that we should honor military children every month, not just during April. I agree.

Hopefully this resolution will serve as a reminder to others that we need to keep these special families and their littlest soldiers in mind throughout the year.

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 13

On most report cards, a grade of C- would raise a lot of questions when you tried to explain it to Mom and Dad. They probably would demand a lot of improvement in the next grading period.

Improvement is exactly what’s needed for the Chesapeake Bay. At a news conference last Thursday on the shore of the Severn River overlooking the United States Naval Academy grounds, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science issued a Chesapeake Bay Report Card for 2007 in a familiar (to some) little brown envelope. The overall grade was a C-, up slightly from the 2006 grade of D+. Scores are based on the Bay Health Index, which measures three water quality indicators (chlorophyll, water clarity, dissolved oxygen) and three biotic indicators (clams and worms at the bottom, phytoplankton in the middle, and aquatic grasses at the top, of the water column) toward scientifically derived ecological goals.

Bay health remained in poor condition in most regions, although the Upper Bay fared better than the middle and lower sections. The most improved regions were the Upper Western Shore and Choptank River in Maryland. The summer drought, while difficult for many homeowners, actually led to fewer nutrients and sediment flowing into the Bay, which is a good thing. But water clarity continued to be poor, and numerous harmful algal blooms and fish kills were recorded around the Bay tributaries, including the Potomac River. There was a slight improvement in aquatic grasses, according to the report card.

Last Sunday, many meetings were held throughout Virginia’s 8th Congressional District to launch a new voter identification, get-out-the-vote campaign for the district’s Democrats.

This effort is part of a major new national campaign to build party strength nationwide, rather than concentrate primarily on Democratic strongholds.

This program is almost superfluous in Arlington, which probably has one of the best organized citizen-based local parties in the nation. But at the very least, Arlington can be a valuable role model in showing the country’s Democrats how it’s done.

The meeting for Oakland, Clarendon and Park Lane Precincts was held in the hallowed halls of the Carpool Brew Pub at North Quincy Street and Fairfax Drive. About 20 came, most of them relatively new young voters and party activists, and a couple of hoary veterans. After some socializing, we were treated to a telephone conference call with 8th District Congressman Jim Moran and Governor Tim Kaine who exhorted us to get out the vote to turn Virginia into a blue state, a real possibility this year. Moran

When I was in school, our report cards included a rating called “deportment,” and a grade of C- most certainly would have gotten written comments from the teacher about expected improvement. Deportment is all about conduct and behavior, and it is our behavior that must change to restore the Chesapeake Bay to a healthy condition.

Upgrades at many municipal wastewater treatment plants have reduced nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants flowing into the Bay, but atmospheric nitrogen depositions, such as from automobile emissions, are harder to calculate and control.

Homeowner behavior change can be as simple as curbing the use of household fertilizers on lawns. Rain gardens direct water from impervious surfaces like roofs and driveways into vegetated areas which slow the speed of the runoff and filter pollutants. Riparian buffers, a fancy name for planting trees and shrubs along streams and creeks, have positive effects on water quality, and are not very hard to do. Log on to www.fairfaxreleaf.org for more information about planting events in our area.

Another Bay report card will be issued next year. Together, all residents of the 64,000 square mile Chesapeake Bay watershed will be graded on improvement (log on to www.eco-check.org to learn more about what you can do). We must do better than a C-.

came by in person a little bit later to give us a pep talk as only Jim Moran can give it Then we were treated to a video from the Democratic National Committee outlining their new Neighborhood Leader Program, melding modern computer technology and old-fashioned shoe leather.

In a nutshell, they are looking for volunteers who will agree to contact 25 people living nearby.

They will then send their contact’s party and voting preferences in to a national data base.

The national party will then collate the data and create precinct lists complete with maps with walking routes for the workers to knock on doors to get out the vote on Election Day. We veterans recognized immediately what we were seeing. It was simply an update of the paper-based system we were using in Arlington more than 40 years ago!

Every precinct worker made it a point to contact most of the voters in their precinct two or three times a year. They would then enter the information gleaned from their neighborhood friends on an index card. This file was meticulously maintained on a year-to-year basis and used to get out the

vote. On Election Day only the most positively ranked would be urged to vote!

This reflected the circular that Abraham Lincoln prepared for Illinois’s Whig Party in which he outlined a statewide organization reaching down to the neighborhood level in which data would be collected on each voter, and each precinct worker would endeavor to get to know as many people as possible, collecting and keeping data that would be used to get out the vote.

In 1964, wife Jean was precinct captain in Abingdon Precinct, which included all of Fairlington north of Shirley Highway down to Shirley House. Her 33 precinct workers had mapped every cul-desac for the LBJ campaign. “I knew what most ate for breakfast and when their kids had measles,” Jean said.

In the final analysis, the most successful campaigns are usually the result of hard work on the part of tens of thousands of volunteers and vast investment of shoe leather. Now, as Arlington goes, so goes the nation!

Richard Barton may be emailed at rbarton@towervillas.com 

Those of you management comwho follow the panies came to the actions of the Virginia Housing Virginia General Commission and Assembly know asked that their that progress is industry be better often slow and regulated. The bill incremental in sets up an indenature. An exampendent board at

By Mary ple would be the the state level; ban on smoking in Margaret Whipple requires insurance public places that and bonding of has not yet passed. management comThe Governor has panies, and proissued an execuvides a complaint tive order to ban mechanism. smoking in state buildings; Another bill that passed many restaurants and malls easily was one to require have banned smoking volun- reporting of infectious distarily; and the various bills eases that occur in assisted in the 2008 Session, includ- living facilities or childcare ing the bill I patroned to centers. This bill was in ban smoking in most public response to a serious noroplaces along with bills to virus outbreak at an area ban smoking in restaurants assisted living facility that and bars passed the Senate, became known to public only to be killed in a House health officials only when subcommittee. So there is the EMS crews noted how progress, albeit slow. many patients they were takSome bills are presented ing to the hospital from one for a number of years before address. Early reporting is they pass. Another bill of very helpful in preventing mine that failed in the House the spread of such diseases. this year is one that would Several bills I carried that allow self-insured locali- affect the voting process ties to offer health insurance were approved. One exempts to members of an employ- localities that acquired elecee’s household who are not tronic voting machines prior related by birth or marriage. to July 1, 2007 from the Virginia was one of the last prohibition on wireless comin the nation to allow private munications; another allows companies to offer this ben- the electronic transmission efit, and clearly it will take of absentee ballots to citimore time to get this bill zens overseas; a third allows through; at least it was heard localities to purchase elecby the full committee. tronic pollbooks.

Fortunately there are Other legislation of mine some successes to offset the made requested changes disappointments. in the Falls Church City This year I was patron of Charter; extended the sura bill providing more pro- charge on the transient tections to common inter- occupancy tax in Arlington; est communities. These are and allows Fairfax County condominium associations to contributed to nonprofit or homeowners association organizations that want to that are governed by a board clean up and beautify their of directors and that often neighborhoods. employ professional manEach legislator has similar agement companies to carry experiences: successes that out the day-to-day manage- move Virginia forward even ment activities. The bill as other objectives remain was occasioned by a widely- elusive. publicized embezzlement of funds from some homeown-  Senator Mary Margaret ers’ associations in Northern Whipple may be emailed at Virginia. To their credit, the district31@sov.state.va.us

Page 14

April 10 - 16, 2008

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April 10 - 16, 2008

GCM Faculty Plays Ball In tribute to the NCAA Final Four just passing, staff members at George C. Marshall high school (7731 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church) have reinvigorated some of their old hoop dreams and will be playing in a charity faculty basketball game on Friday, April 11. The proceeds of the event will be going to the St. Jude Children’s hospital. Doors open at 5:45 p.m. with tip-off at 6:30 p.m. Tickets will be available at the door, $2 for adults and $1 for children. The Fairfax Falcons, a wheelchair sports league, may also be making a special halftime appearance.

An Evening of Live AudioVisual Performance For those sick of the traditional Shakespearian theater, Gallery5 studios (200 W. Marshall St., Richmond) is offering a night of the potential future of theater – the audiovisual performance. Artists, musicians and filmmakers will be “exploring the sensual synthesis of sight and sound.”

Feautring Detroit original A/V

Page 15

unity Shenanigans.tv. The event will take place on Friday, April 11 at 8 p.m., with tickets costing $3. For more information, visit www.gallery5arts.org or call 804-644-0005.

Set ‘Hearts at Ease’ With Creative Cauldron Celebrate the April birthdays of two Renaissance geniuses (Leonardo daVinci and William Shakespeare) with an evening of rarely heard early music, performed on shawms, cornetto, Renaissance tromboni, krummhorns, recorders and the like. The evening includes popular pieces from the time by Isaac, Francesco d’Ana, Giovanni Gastoldi, Thomas Morley and Anthony Holborne performed by five of the Washington area’s leading early music performers.

The April 19 show, presented by Creative Cauldron, is $15, $10 for children under 12, and will be held at the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment (222 N. Washington St., Falls Church). The event begins at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, visit www.creativecauldron.com.

United Methodist Silent Auction The Graham Road United Methodist Church Preschool (2929 Graham Rd., Falls Church) is holding its 3rd Annual Silent Auction on Saturday, April 12 from 5:30 – 8 p.m. The auction features donations from more than 100 local and national businesses, including sporting event tickets, restaurant certificates and goodie baskets. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 703-573-4451.

FC Residents Nominated for Service Awards Two groups and five individuals from Falls Church have been nominated for a Fairfax County Service Award, which will be given awarded on the morning of Thursday, April 24.

Citizens Jennifer Bermudez, Ira Kirschbaum, Margaret Ann Reeves, Liza Ruiz and Charles Woody were nominated for individual awards.

The Lord of Life Renovation

Group and the Students of the Congressional Schools of Virginia were the groups nominated for group awards. The award ceremony will be taking place at 8 a.m. on April 24 at the McLean Hilton (7920 Jones Branch Dr., McLean), with Dr. Alan Merten, the president of George Mason University, serving as this year’s keynote speaker. Tickets cost $35 for individuals. For more information, visit www.volunteerfairfax.org.

Fundraiser for Haitian Orthodox Mission The Holy Ascension Orthodox Church (500 W. Annandale Rd., Falls Church) is hosting a fundraiser for the Haitian Orthodox Mission on Friday, April 11 at 7 p.m. Fr. Gregory Williams will speak about the Mission’s work and current events in Haiti.

Haitian folk art and coffee will be available for purchase, and refreshments will be served.

There will also be a raffle.

For more information, call 703847-8178.

SATURDAY MORNINGS IN APRIL, the Junior Girl Scouts of Troop 5322 of Haycock Elementary School in Falls Church will be distributing energy-saving flourescent light bulbs at the Falls Church Community Center. The enviromentally friendly projects is made possible by a $500 grant from the Clean Fairfax Council.

(Photo: Courtesy Sue Saarnio and Barbara McCormack)

MCLEAN’S WOMEN QUAD CREW TEAM races at the Walter Mess Regatta on Saturday, April 5. McLean’s entire crew team is off to a great start, with many first place finishes in regattas during the past two weekends. Pictured here are seniors Marla Brendley, Katherine Geithman, Emily Smith and McKenzie Harper. (Photo: Courtesy John DaCrema) PAID ADVERTISEMENT

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April 10 - 16, 2008

The Greater Merrifield Business Association and the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce are co-hosting the “Richmond Report,” a luncheon featuring presentations by Virginia Senator Mary Margaret Whipple, Delegate Bob Hull and Delegate Jim Scott. The luncheon will take place from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 15 at the Italian Café in Falls Church (7161 Lee Highway). Reservations are required. Tickets are $27 for members and $32 for nonmembers. Should space be available, walk-ins will be charged an additional $5. Reserve seats through the Falls Church Chamber at info@fallschurchchamber.org or through the GMBA at Nikki@ hammondagency.com. *** Arlington County is hosting Universal Design, a presentation and discussion about universal design in residential and civic facilities and urban design. It is the fourth installment of Arlington’s Architectural Speaker Series created to spark public discussion on how to achieve superior architecture in the County. Universal Design refers to “the design of products and environments to be usable to the greatest extent possible by people of all ages and abilities.” Richard Duncan, executive director of Housing Works in Chapel Hill, NC will speak. The presentation will take place from 7 – 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 17 at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater (1611 N. Kent St., Arlington). The event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available on Arlington Ridge Road. *** Bratt Décor, the Falls Church retailer of baby cribs, baby furniture, kids furniture, and children’s accessories will be closing April 19, 2008. Founded by Mary and Stephen Bauer, Bratt Decor opened in September of 2007. Despite being a favorite retailer of celebrities with a brisk internet business and popular stores, the children’s boutique in Idylwood Shopping Plaza is closing due to poor sales.

The store is offering 30% off on all items now through its closing. Bratt Décor is located at 7505 Leesburg Pike. For more information, visit www.brattdecor. com. *** The Village Preservation and Improvement Society is hosting a Green Home Remodeling Tour from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 19 in conjunction with the Arbor Day celebration at Frady Park that same day. The tour is of a home totally redone with the environment in mind. Visit www.VPIS.org for more information. Go to vpisecotour@hotmail.com for tickets. *** Educational Options, Inc. has purchased the office building at 360 S. Washington Street in Falls Church. The three story, 14,070 square foot building was purchased from Sanabel Al Kheer Inc. for $3 million. Educational Options, which provides web-based educational products for students, will move its Virginia headquarters from Arlington to Falls Church later in the year. For more information about Educational Options visit www.edoptions.com. *** Two new independently owned restaurants and an independently owned gourmet wine shop will be opening this month in Falls Church. Dogwood Tavern, offering American food, acoustic music and televised sports, will be opening at 132 W. Broad Street, Pie-tanza, featuring wood-fired pizza, will be located at 1216 W. Broad Street and Red, White & Bleu Wine and Gourmet Shop, offering more than 400 wines and a variety of gourmet items, will be located at 127 S. Washington Street in Falls Church. *** Not Your Average Joe’s restaurant will be opening in Falls Church this fall. The national chain has signed a 6,500-square-foot lease in Waterford Development’s new mixed-use project called Spectrum on W. Broad Street.

The restaurant, which was founded in 1994 by Steve Silverstein, offers creative, casual cuisine and a special gluten free menu. Currently, there are 14 restaurants in Massachusetts and one in Virginia at the Lansdowne Town Center in Leesburg.

While Not Your Average Joe’s is the first committed retail tenant at Spectrum, a number of other companies have expressed interest in retail space including several bistro and wine bar concepts, day spas, and a smoothie establishment, among others. To learn more about the 31,000 square feet of retail space available at Spectrum, please contact Chris Ciliberti, president of Waterford Commercial Development, at 703-674-1699. To learn more about Not Your Average Joe’s visit www.notyouraveragejoes.com. *** The Fairfax County Economic Development Authority released results of a study on the highest priority for investments that will lead to meaningful technological advances within the next decade. Of those polled, 37 percent selected “fuel efficiency and alternative fuels” from a list of seven categories of potential investment. Placing second was “medical” (30 percent) followed by the “environment” (14 percent). As a percentage of the total, the other categories registered at 10% or less. The FCEDA survey was conducted March 7-9, 2008 by Ipsos Public Affairs, an independent, leading global research company. For a copy of the study or for more information about the Fairfax County EDA, visit www.FairfaxCountyEDA.org which maintains marketing offices in San Francisco, Bangalore, Frankfurt, London, Seoul and Tel Aviv.  The Business News & Notes section is compiled by Sally Cole, Executive Director of Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce. She may be emailed at sally@ fallschurchchamber.org

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 17

Ed Hillegass for City Council Dear Fellow Citizens of Falls Church

Fuel prices alone are unlikely to bring America to its senses. It clearly will take outright shortages with lines at the pumps, curtailed deliveries and many other misfortunes before serious measures to deal with declining oil supplies –- speed limits, rationing, mandatory car pools, improved mass transit -- are taken. Thus the question becomes: how soon?

Gasoline and diesel are two different animals in America.

Most gasoline is used for personal travel and much of that for convenience and, as we shall find out shortly, is not essential to the economy. Diesel in America is, for the most part, an essential fuel in that it is used to perform money-making work or, in its heating oil form, keep us from freezing. If diesel becomes too expensive, and those expenses cannot be passed on, then the consumption of diesel will be cut back.

This in fact is already happening -- the government is reporting that distillate consumption of diesel and heating oil currently is down by 3.1 percent as compared to the same four week period last year. This is undoubtedly due to the price of diesel and heating oil which is now around $4 a gallon, an increase of $1.17 a gallon since last year.

The word “distillates” encompasses both diesel and heating oil which are about the same thing; except that the clean air rules in the U.S. require most of the sulfur be removed before burning it in a motor. Currently there is a world-wide shortage of distillates which is most severe in China where long lines of trucks waiting for fuel are appearing across the country.

Before examining what might lead to shortages in the U.S., it is useful to get some understanding of distillates and the role they play in American life. Few appreciate that diesel is one of the best of the liquid fuels, for it will move your car further than the same quantity of gasoline. As a result, the gasoline-powered car is fast disappearing in Europe and is being replaced by small dieselpowered ones that are delivering 40, 50 and even 60 miles per gallon. In some European countries, diesel-powered cars are now approaching 80 percent of new car sales.

In America, about 77 percent of our daily consumption of

about 4 million barrels of distillates is used in diesel engines.

Three quarters of this is used in trucks and the rest is used “off highway” on farms or boats or at construction sites, etc. As we only use heating oil for about 6 months in the winter, consumption of distillates in the U.S. is highly seasonal with consumption building to a peak in January and February and then dropping off towards the end of April when the heating season is largely over.

Distillate stockpiles in the U.S., therefore, vary by season with a buildup in the late spring,

summer and fall followed by a rapid drop from late December to May as oil burners across the northern U.S. are cranked up.

The severity of the winter too has lot do to with how much heating oil is consumed each year and there is always a danger unusual cold will deplete stockpiles to the point where shortages exist.

This seasonal pattern suggests that when distillate shortages come to the U.S. they first will arrive during the heating season, either as a result of unusually cold weather or simply insufficient increases in stockpiles during the warmer months. As a 42 gallon barrel of oil will make only abut 10 gallons of diesel and heating oil, the U.S. must import about 6 percent or about 250–350,000 barrels of refined diesel and heating oil each day. Most of this comes from “safe” places like Canada and the Virgin Islands, but some must come from the world market.

It is these imports that may become our Achilles heel, for we are now facing increasingly stiff competition as we purchase distillates abroad. Within the last year China has started to import large quantities of refined diesel. A new source of demand is the power shortage that is developing all over the world. As there is no quick solution to inadequate electricity being available on national grids, the demand for imported diesel to fuel emergency small local generators is already growing rapidly. The bottom line is that world diesel prices

have nowhere to go but up.

U.S. imports of diesel appear to be dropping. For most of 2006 we were importing about 350,000 barrels a day. In the first quarter of 2007, we imported an average of 360,000 barrels a day but by last fall this had dropped to 260,000 barrels and was the same for the first quarter of 2008. This could of course turn around, but given growing demand and lack of an increased supply worldwide, it is likely that it will become harder and much more expensive to find diesel and heating oil to import.

In recent years, U.S. stockpiles usually peaked at around 135-145 million barrels in December and then declined to a low of 100-110 million barrels at the end of April.

So far this year seems about normal.

Our stockpile at the end of March was 109 million barrels, a little low, but still in the acceptable range.

The two new factors this year, however, are the high prices and slowing economy which already is cutting demand by 3 percent or 130,000 barrels a day and the rapidly increasing demand for imported diesel around the world.

This balance bears close watching. In another two weeks, U.S. stockpiles should start rising again so that we can start accumulating enough heating oil for next winter. If demand continues to stay below normal, we will know that the use of diesel for industry and transport is causing at least some of the drop in demand. If demand returns closer to normal in a couple of months, then it would suggest that drop in the use of costly home heating was behind at least some of the recent decline in demand.

It is a little too early to panic.

However, if stockpiles do not start increasing at something approaching normal rates, there could be trouble just ahead. If we should have a mild winter, then we may be able to escape for another year. If, however, we do not build adequate stockpiles this summer or next and winter turns out to be unusually cold, prices will spiral even higher and the first serious U.S. shortages in the last 25 years could easily develop.  Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years.

This election is about who will set the values for our community!

Will it be the Chamber of Commerce or other Special Interests seeking the financial benefits of condominium development?

Or will it be Independent Candidates like me who will work to: •

Ed and Nikki “If the chamber of Commerce asks why does the Referendum require 60/40 commerical on commerically zoned property?”

“My answer is straightforward: The Chamber, the EDA and the City Council have been in lock step approving projects which in total approach 75% residential use on commercially zoned property.”

“They call them mixed use projects: I call them ‘False Advertising.’”

• •

Support a real city center development Protect the schools from a huge population increase Find efficiencies in the city government to protect your tax dollars

If you support the Referendum and my candidacy it will result in:

•

• •

More commercial development on commercially zoned property to lessen the impact of significant and rapid increase in population A more diverse tax base to protect the homeowner from an undue burden Moderating the growth in the school population and maintaining our small classroom size

Visit www.saveourfallschurch.net for additional views and commentary

Authorized & Paid for by friends of Ed Hillegass

Things Should Have a Center.

So Should Falls Church. :K\ ,W 'RHVQ·W How It Can Still Happen. @ www.saveourfallschurch.net

Paid for by a “Bunch of Friends of the Referendum” Photo of City entrance “sign” at Roosevelt and Sycamore Streets

News-Press On the Web: www.FCNP.com

Page 18

I suppose I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am. After all, you don’t become an entrepreneurial mogul with seriously flawed foresight. However, I never, ever, ever expected Washington Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis’s rose-colored prognostications regarding his team to play out in such grand fashion.

And yet there were the Capitals last Saturday, playoff-bound as the unlikely champions of the NHL’s Southeast Division. The players grinned, they screamed and embraced each other on the ice, while an unbroken sea of red-clad fans in turn embraced them with their cheers from behind the boards of a packed Verizon Center.

I did not see this coming. I mean, I thought the Capitals had the talent to make the playoffs entering this season. I even thought they had the momentum to come full circle from an atrocious start and slide into the playoffs in the season’s final game. But the deafening din from the throng of 18,000-plus passionate fans?

Nope. Not even a little.

Let me color my doubts with some context.

Five years ago the Caps qualified for the playoffs. The team featured one of the top scorers in the game in Jaromir Jagr and welcomed a division rival to the rink, at the time, known as MCI Center. Empty seats abounded.

Playoff fever? Not so much.

It was that sort of tepid response from Washington fans that first made me think that Washington wasn’t, and would never be, a hockey town. When the Caps returned to the ice following the 2004-05 lockout, the picture was no more inspiring.

Stars like Jagr, Robert Lang, Peter Bondra and Sergei Gonchar had been shipped off, and even the highly-touted arrival of Alex Ovechkin couldn’t boost bleak attendance figures. A year later, with Ovechkin firmly entrenched as a once-in-a-generation talent, with no progress in the “points” column and attendance still low, contraction seemed a more likely future for the Caps than a Stanley Cup. But Leonsis’s faith wasn’t as flimsy as mine, and he deserves a champagne shower of praise for that.

When I interviewed him oneon-one during the Olympic break in 2006, he spoke of how it was his goal to reinvent his team with “young legs” set in motion by hungry spirits. He thought that such displays of on-ice desire would resonate with fans (similarly “on ice” at the time) and eventually draw customers back to the Caps. While the theory

April 10 - 16, 2008

sounded valid at the time, I thought it was a bit of silverlining spin job to accentuate the positive of his product. Did he really see a successful future for his franchise? The answer to that question came on January 10, 2008 when Leonsis locked up Ovechkin for 13-years with the largest contract in NHL history.

Successful businessmen do not accumulate wealth by spending imprudently. Hall-of-Fame-caliber talent or not, if Leonsis’s vision of Verizon Center in 2010 was that of a half-empty, emotional black hole — an apt description at times over the past three seasons — he never would have sunk that sort of money into Ovechkin. So when Leonsis made that commitment to the Capitals, did he foresee the sweetness of this past Saturday?

Perhaps, but as with most successful entrepreneurs, the key isn’t necessarily their ability to foresee the future so much as their conviction to make that desirable day a reality. When Leonsis coughed up for Ovechkin’s contract, the Caps’ record sat below .500, attendance was still mediocre and the team’s finances figured to finish in the red. He still approved the deal.

At this year’s trade deadline, the Caps were on the skids, dropping five of their previous six games. When the opportunity arose to add some veteran players — and their pricier contracts — for a playoff run, Leonsis gave the green light.

The moves all paid dividends.

The Caps won, the crowds came and the season continues, bringing a windfall of playoff revenues.

Since the rebuild began, Leonsis tried to sell fans on his team. But for all of his silver-lining citations and what, at times, seemed like overly-optimistic opinions, he never once presented a false front. He never lied about his commitment to the team and to the fans — even the ones that had temporarily forsaken him.

In a perfect world, such behavior would be common place, but struggling sports teams seldom receive the commitment the Capitals have from Leonsis. Fans of the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Florida Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates, feel free to send in your testimonials.

So as the euphoria of the Stanley Cup Playoffs washes over Washington this weekend, praise the players that willed this team into the postseason. But save something for the man in the owners’ box that made this playoff push possible.

Entering this spring season, George Mason coach Jennifer Parsons loaded her varsity girls soccer team’s schedule with as many tough non-district games as possible in an effort to prepare her squad for the arduous climb to the state tournament in June.

Thus far, the Mustangs have held their own against the bigger schools. Despite coming together as a whole team for the first time this season last week — school trips, injuries and sickness left the Mustangs disjointed for most of March — Mason is beginning to mesh and, as their unofficial slogan says, become “one team” with “one goal” and “one heart.”

Last Wednesday, coach Parsons’ team fell to AAA Washington-Lee High School in a battle of local schools, 2-0.

The decisive goal was scored in the game’s opening heartbeat, as poor Mustang defense led to a Generals’ goal 24 seconds in.

A W-L midfielder sprinted down the left side behind the Mason defense and a weak cross was booted into the back of the net, past senior goalie Lauren Jekowsky.

Things did not improve for the Mustangs after the goal, as Washington-Lee dominated possession in the early minutes and winning the 50-50 balls.

However, the Generals were unable to capitalize, as a pair of Mustang freshmen midfielders in Elle Silverman and Violet Miller began to press up and slow the Washington-Lee attack.

Whatever open looks the Mason forwards had at the goal

was usually quickly stifled by an offsides call, however a blast by senior Rachel Kazman in the 32nd minute bounced off the Generals’ keeper, followed by junior Virginia Fresne, who nailed her shot right into the hands of the goalie.

At halftime, Rebecca Jackson entered goal, following the two-goalie platoon strategy Parsons has employed throughout this season. Jackson showed her senior savvy with an immediate save for the Mustangs.

But Mason could mount little success in the offensive end.

Another breakaway by Fresne in the 59th minute bounced off the hands of the keeper.

Jackson made a second notable save shortly thereafter, however an errant goal kick

by the goalie landed right in the middle of the box, and was trapped by a Generals’ striker, who promptly scored to bring the final to 2-0.

On Monday, the Mustangs battled AA Potomac Falls to a 1-1 draw. Miller scored the equalizer, as Mason was unable to capitalize in overtime against the Panthers.

All of the non-district contests have just served as preparation for this Friday’s Bull Run District opener at Moore Cadillac Stadium against Manassas Park High at 7 p.m.

While the immediate games are just as pressing, all roads for the Mustangs lead to an April 21 date at defending state-runner up and Region B champion Clarke County.

George Mason High School track and cross country star Susanna Sullivan signed a Letter of Intent on Tuesday to accept a scholarship from the University of Notre Dame.

Sullivan, one of the top runners in Virginia, is the reigning cross country champion in the Bull Run District, as well as Region B. This past season she broke the 18-minute barrier with a time of 17:58 while competing at the Glory Days Grill

Invitational.

The Washington Post named Sullivan to its All-Met second team this past Fall.

Sullivan will race for both the cross country and track teams

with Notre Dame. She is currently finishing out her senior season on the Mason High track team, where she specializes in the mile and two-mile events.

April 10 - 16, 2008

On Saturday, the Girls U11 team of the Falls Church Youth Lacrosse League traveled to Fort Hunt where they exploded offensively against a perennial powerhouse program, winning 18-0.

Ten players scored goals, with Samie Boryan and Madie Hof leading the way with three goals each. The team was also in action on Sunday, hosting undefeated Springfield. Madie Hof scored both goals in a 5-2 defeat for the home team, while goalie Claire Tourkin had several nice saves.

On Saturday, April 5, the Boys U11s hosted the Prince William No. 2 team and won 5-1. Eriksen Johansen led all scorers with three goals, Brandon Ward tallied two and Myles Cobb assisted on one of the goals. Sean Fitzgerald led the team with six ground balls, followed closely by Andrew Trauth with five.

The defense, anchored by goalie Dan Dusenberry, continued to play very well, holding Prince William to only one goal.

The U11s’ record now stands at 3-0.

The U13 boys hosted a very strong Spotsylvania team and while Falls Church lost, 7-1, they exhibited improved play. Patrick Trauth tallied the

The Mason boys tennis team outdueled Briar Woods on Friday in a close 5-4 victory. With the team score tied 3-3, and focused on the upcoming doubles matches. Mason junior Johnny Vroom and sophomore Tim Goetz regrouped the team and helped Mason win two of the three doubles matches to emerge with the overall victory. Vroom is undefeated in singles play this season.

Not in the mood for dramatics again, the Mason boys smote Park View High School on Tuesday by an 8-1 margin. Freshman Daniel Fletcher clinched the win for the Mustangs with a victory at No. 6 singles.

The victories bumped the Mason record to 5-1 overall this year.

Falls Church High Boys Lacrosse The Jaguars have opened their season on a four-game winning streak.

After escaping Stone Bridge with a 13-12 victory earlier in the season, Falls Church posted a huge home blowout over Wakefield, 19-2. On Monday, the boys found themselves up against Lee High School at home, where they won 13-9. Their next game is at home against Mt. Vernon on Friday at 7:15 p.m.

McLean High Boys Lacrosse The Highlander lacrosse team stumbled slightly this week, losing on the road to Langley 15-6 on Tuesday night.

The loss dropped their season record to 5-2-1. The Highlanders were paced

Page 19

lone goal and Keenan Glahn, substituting for the injured Nathaniel Schwarz, played inspired goal stopping numerous shots.

On Saturday, the Girls U13 team also traveled to Fort Hunt, where they were defeated 9-6. Still, they had their most impressive offensive output to date, as six girls scored — Emma Washa, Ellen Francis, Victoria Nnaji, Kaelin Seitz, Haley Zullo and Emily Rosenburg. On Sunday, the U13 girls hosted Springfield in what was an even more impressive outing, though again it resulted in a narrow loss. In the first half, they were up 3-1, but Springfield edged back into the game and eventually tied it up 3-3.

During the second half, it continued to be a close game, tied at seven, but then Springfield ended up scoring a pair of goals and won the game 9-7.

Nnaji tallied three goals, while Julia Western, Rosenberg, Zullo and Caroline Metzmeier tallied one each.

This coming weekend, the boys are on the road, while the girls will host games at George Mason High School’s Moore Cadillac Stadium on Sunday afternoon starting at 1 p.m.

by junior attackman Brad Mason’s two goals, but the team as a whole could not muster the offense to match the incredible offensive output of Langley.

Regardless, the team is looking to regroup with an away game against W.T. Woodson tonight at 7:15.

George C. Marshall High Boys Soccer The Marshall Boys Soccer team experienced an up-and-down week over the past seven days, winning a game and losing a game to move their overall record to 4-2-1.

Last Thursday, the team fell to Stone Bridge, 3-0, but on Monday night, the boys turned the tide thanks to a reinvigorated offense, scoring four goals on their way to a 4-2 victory over Woodson on the road. The first half of the game featured tenacious defense, as neither team had scored a goal by halftime.

However, the beginning of the second half played out much like their game on Thursday against Stone Bridge, with the Statesmen unable to put the ball in the goal while their opponent methodically established a lead.

Marshall senior defender Jorge Romero turned the game around, scoring a goal in the 30th minute of the second half. Senior midfielder Brendan Stringer tied the game with three minutes left to play, and the boys headed to overtime. Two quick goals from sophomore midfielder Ajay Amin and freshman striker Dylan Goodale gave Marshall the win.

s

Following last Monday’s game against Potomac Falls, the George Mason High School boys varsity soccer team trotted off the field at Moore Cadillac Stadium with a sense of accomplishment and pride on their faces, unfazed by the fact that they were the owners of the low number in the 2-0 final score.

So, after falling to the AA Panthers, why was Mason so upbeat? Well, after 80 minutes of a physical and up-tempo style of play on the parts of both teams, the Mustangs walked off the pitch knowing they held the state runner-up and perennial juggernaut to a mere two goals, and came within a few defensive miscues of an unlikely upset.

Junior Anthony Andrianarison, who was faced with the task of marking Gatorade State Player of the Year and First-Team Washington Post All-Met selection Uche Onyeador, responded remarkably, shutting down a player who had scored 42 goals last year by holding the senior scoreless throughout the contest.

Andrianarison consistently frustrated Onyeador, drawing several pushing and shielding fouls from the Potomac Falls star with his flypaper-like defense. Towards the end of the game, the striker began to shoot at every opportunity, slicing his way past the defense, but Andrianarison was always there waiting to prevent any further damage. After the game, the Mason sweeper described his performance in three short words, “shut him down.”

“I was very proud of how [Anthony] played tonight,” said Mason Head Coach Arthur Iwanicki. “Onyeador did not even get close to the goal at all.”

For the most part, the rest of the Mason defense also shutdown the potent Panther offense. Senior captains Matt Gresko, Wesley Frank and Tim Brooks held the back lines for freshman keeper Tyler Back. However, one early defensive miscue led to the deciding goal.

A misplaced header landed right at the feat of a Panther striker early in the first half, and the Potomac Falls forward blasted it past Back. The shot struck the legs of a diving Gresko, who attempted to deflect the shot away. Instead the shot

ricocheted into the net, giving a 1-0 lead to Potomac Falls that the Panthers would not relinquish. The second Panther score came on a beautiful cross in the 36th minute that found the back of the Mason net by way of a well-placed Panther header.

From the looks of the second half, however, it seemed Mason was destined for a comeback. The one chance the Mustangs got at a breakaway goal was quelled instantaneously by an ill-timed whistle on the complete opposite end of the field.

With senior Antonio Randrianasolo turning the corner on the right wing with only the keeper to beat in the 63rd minute, the referee halted play, much to the chagrin of the Mustang sideline, to raise a red card on a Panther winger, who had shoved Mason junior Jon Brooks in the back.

Despite the ejection, Mason could not recapture their momentum and their few last-ditch scoring efforts fell just short.

“I think we played pretty well tonight, especially in the second half,” commented Iwanicki after the contest. “They took advantage of some mistakes on our part, but good teams will do that to you.”

Iwanicki was also sure to mention the efforts of junior Elio Randrianasolo, who constantly weaved in and out of the bigger Panther defense, finding open shots for himself, as well as Frank and Gresko on the defensive end.

The loss to Potomac Falls can serve as a benchmark for Iwanicki’s team, who will take on Manassas Park in their first Bull Run District game this Friday.

The Cougars lost to Potomac Falls 8-0 early in the season, with Onyeador netting four goals. The Mustangs will begin their defense of last season’s undefeated district record on the road at 7 p.m.

From the looks of last Monday’s game, it appears as though the speed and athleticism of the Mustangs (1-2) will be hard to match. With Back holding down the fort consistently in goal, the solid play of the defense and the run-and-gun offense should click when they need it the most.

In order to keep firing on all cylinders, Iwanicki said that his team would have to stay healthy and gain more experience — something that a 2-0 loss almost certainly provided.

Page 20

April 10 - 16, 2008

By Bryan Toporek

Falls Church News-Press

The George Mason M

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April 10 - 16, 2008

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April 10 - 16, 2008

‘Philip Johnson: Architecture as Art’

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Through July 31 at the Kreeger Museum (2401 Foxhall Rd. NW, D.C.).

Museum Hours: Docent guided tours Tuesday through Friday at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Reservations required.

Saturday Hours 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Optional guided tours 10:30 a.m., noon, and again at 2 p.m. If you want to walk around unattended you have to come on Saturdays.

Suggested donations $8 per person, $5 for seniors and students. For further information, see www.keegermuseum. org, or call 202-338-3552.

At first blush, one would assume this show to be a review of Philip Johnson’s life and architectural work. What you will find here upon arrival is a review of Johnson’s late career sculptural works and architecture. It’s a fuzzy distinction he’s made with many of these pieces.

Sadly these works aren’t placed in context to Philip Johnson’s oeuvre. Seeing as how Johnson passed away in January 2005 at the ripe old age of 98, it would seem there was time for more perspective on Johnson’s career and influence in the art and architecture fields here in the U.S. It’s no small influence to be sure.

As a bit of background, in 1930 Johnson founded the Architecture and Design department within the Modern Museum of Art in New York. After meeting Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and touring Europe, Johnson helped stage the seminal show “International Style: Architecture Since 1922” at MoMA in 1932. After World War II, Johnson abandoned his history, philosophy and journalism backgrounds and entered the field of architecture.

As evidence of Johnson’s lifelong flirtation with cutting-edge design, he built his own residence in New Canaan, Conn.

What was to become one of the most famous structures ever built, the “Glass House” is now part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. (See www. philipjohnsonglasshouse.org.) Note that plans to see this structure need to be made well in advance. Regular tour tickets for his former Connecticut home are sold out through 2008. They can still manage to squeeze you in this year if you go for one of the $500 or $1,000 dollar tickets ... that’s per person.

Stodgy ol’ Washington has never been much on style or design, but at least a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings exist. Frank Gehry tried to add on to the Corcoran Museum. Philip Johnson in part designed Tycon Towers 1 (2 and 3 were planned, but never built) at 8000 Towers Crescent Drive in the Tysons Corner area. Colloquially referred to as “The Shopping Bag Building” due to its two handle-like arches extending above the roof line. The 17-story structure was completed in 1986.

The other widely known Johnson structure around town is the Kreeger Museum itself.

Originally the residence of GEICO Insurance president, and then chairman, David Lloyd Kreeger and his wife Carmen, the structure was completed in 1967 and remained their residence until opening as a museum in 1994. The residence was designed around a repeating domed cubic module. The curved tops and symmetrical hard geometry of the modules feel like something designed in the 1970s, and again speak to Johnson’s cutting-edge nature. Looking around you, note the rich use of materials. Reportedly costing $1.9 million to build in the 1960s it certainly must have been a “spare no expense” structure.

Hardly a case of lawyer turned corporate magnate buying taste, the Kreegers were a key part of the local arts scene.

David served as president of the National Symphony Orchestra, founded the Washington Opera, served on the boards of Arena Stage, Dumbarton Oaks, the National Gallery, as well as president and chairman of the Corcoran Gallery of Art for nearly 20 years. Other than that, he was an accomplished amateur violinist, an impressionist and modern art collector.

The Philip Johnson show, located in the two basement exhibition halls, includes numerous models of late career structures. However the real focus here is on Johnson’s sculptures that may or may not have lead to architecture as we think of it. Johnson, at a certain level, made no distinction between his pure sculpture and buildings with sculptural influences.

In the supporting film, Johnson takes a playful yet straight-faced whack at I. M. Pei, stating that a lone pyramid is a boring and silly structure. Stopping to chuckle at his own wit, he goes on to say that a bunch of pyramidal forms is quite entertaining.

Holding up a model of Chainlink Garden Pavilion, he states that a jumble of pyramids placed together look like an iceberg or glacier — and they do.

Note: For architecture groupies, there will be a panel discussion at the Kreeger, Tuesday, May 6, at 6:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6.) The topic of conversation will be Philip Johnson and his role and influence in 20th century architecture and beyond. The panel will include the curator for this show, Hilary Lewis, as well as Alan Ritchie, the Principal of Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects, as well as the former Washington Post Architecture critic Benjamin Forgey.

Tickets for the lecture are $12 and are free for members. For reservations, call 202-338-3552.  The Northern Virginia Art Beat is compiled by Kevin Mellema. See www.fcnp. com for photos and more. To e-mail submissions, send them to mulsane@aol.com.

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 25

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Send community event submissions to the News-Press by e-mail at calendar@fcnp.com; fax 703-532-3396; or by regular mail to 450 West Broad Street #321, Falls Church, VA 22046. Please include any photos or artwork with submissions. Deadline is Monday at noon for each week’s edition.

Community Events THURSDAY, APRIL 10 Story Hour. Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church). Free. Mon. – Thurs. 10:30 a.m. 703-2485077 (TTY 711).

Rotary Club Meeting. Pat Malone, president of the Alexandria Aces and Joe Straub, president of the Falls Church/ Annandale Babe Ruth League will speak about supporting local baseball. Harvest Moon Restaurant (7260 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). $10. 6:30 p.m. Visitors welcome.

Mr. Skip. Kids’ music. Stacy’s Coffee Parlor (709 W. Broad St., Falls Church). 10:30 a.m. 703538-6266.

Yoga for Health and Longevity.

Series of stretches led by Mary Nipper. Center for Spiritual Enlightenment (222 N Washington St., Falls Church).

Suggested offering of $110 for 8 Thursdays 7 - 8:30 p.m. 540854-4841.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11 Madeline Kunin Author Talk.

Former governor of Vermont,

former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, and Deputy Secretary of Education in the Clinton Administration, will discuss her latest book, “Pearls, Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead.” Shirlington Branch Library (4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington). 1 p.m. Book signing to follow. 703-228-6545.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12 Farmers’ Market in Falls Church.

Falls Church City Hall (300 Park Ave., Falls Church). 9 a.m. – noon.

Brubeck and Taylor Talk. Jazz legends Dave Brubeck and Dr. Billy Taylor celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month with a discussion of Brubeck’s 1958 State Department Tour. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2700 F St. NW, D.C.). $15. 4 p.m. For more information, call 202-467-4600.

Music Teaching Information Session. Musikgarten offers a free three-hour information session for prospective music teachers.

Columbia Institute of Fine Arts (103 W. Columbia St., Falls Church). 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. For more information, call 800-216-6864.

SUNDAY, APRIL 13 Four-Minute Dating. Speed dating every Sunday night hosted by Professionals in the City. Stacy’s Coffee Parlor (709 W. Broad St., Falls Church).

10:30 a.m. 703-538-6266.

MONDAY, APRIL 14 Books Demo. Downloadable audio books demonstration.

Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church). Free. 7 p.m. 703-2485077 (TTY 711).

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 Story Hour. Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church). Free. Mon. – Thurs. 10:30 a.m. 703-2485077 (TTY 711).

Meet Tom Horn. Meet the GMHS athletic director. Stacy’s Coffee Parlor (709 W. Broad St., Falls Church). 8:30 a.m. For more information, call 703-538-6266.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 Spy v. Spy. Inside stories from the former KGB general Oleg Kalugin

&

‘Self-Accusation.’ Theatre du Jour presents a confessional style account of life experience play. D.C. Arts Center (2438 18th St. D.C.). $15 regular, $12 members. 7:30 p.m. 202-4627833.

‘Shear Madness.’ Comedic whodunit performance that lets the audience solve the salon crime. Kennedy Center (2700 F St., NW Washington, D.C.). $40-$50. 8 P.M. 202-4674600.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11

Ben Bailey. From Comedy Central, the host of “Cash Cab” on the Discovery Channel.

Ongoing comedy event. The Improv (1140 Connecticut Ave. NW, D.C.). $17 each show.

Two shows at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. 202-393-3939.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12

Carmen & Swan Lake. Famous ballet presented by St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre.

GMU Center for the Arts(4400 University Dr., Fairfax). $27, $46, $54. 8 p.m. 703-9932787.

SUNDAY, APRIL 13

‘Keyboard Conversations’ with Jeffrey Siegel. Noteworthy pianist performs his �inal concert of this series. GMU Center for the Arts (4400

Open Mic Night. Sign up at the door. Stacy’s Coffee Parlor (709 W. Broad St., Falls Church). 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 703-538-6266.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17 Story Hour. Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church). Free. Mon. – Thurs. 10:30 a.m. For more information, call 703-248-5077.

Rotary Club Meeting. Eric Latham speaks about his Walk Across America for Cancer Research. Harvest Moon Restaurant (7260 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). $10. 6:30 p.m. Visitors welcome.

PTA/PTSA Dinner. Annual Northern Virginia District Board Meeting. Old Town Hall (10209 Main St., Fairfax). 6 p.m. PTA & PTSA members welcome.

For more information, visit novadistrictpta.org.

T

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R��������� National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade

Theater Fine Arts THURSDAY, APRIL 10

and FBI expert David Major.

International Spy Museum (800 F St. NW, Washington, D.C.). $20 regular, $16 for members. 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 202-393-7798.

University Dr., Fairfax). $19, $30, $38. 7 p.m. 703-9932787.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15

‘In Blood.’ Part of the American College Theatre Festival.

Parental guidance advised.

Kennedy Center (2700 F St., NW Washington, D.C.). $10.

7:30 p.m. 202-467-4600.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17

Judah Friedlander. Nationally recognized stand-up comedian.

The Improv (1140 Connecticut Ave. NW, D.C.). $17 each show.

Two shows at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. 202-393-3939.

7th and Constitution Ave. NW and going to 17th St. Saturday, April 10, 10 a.m.

A

fter a long, if not really harsh, winter, it’s going to hit the mid70s for the first time in 2008 on Saturday, perfect to be outside, notwithstanding some April showers. The parade is a great way to celebrate the onset of warmer weather. It will be followed by the Sakura Matsuri Japanese street festival around 12th and Pennsylvania Ave. The parade’s conclusion will also coincide with the opening of the “Library of Congress Experience” on Capitol Hill, replete with new immersive interactive exhibits. At noon, the brass doors of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress (10 First Street SE) will be opened to the public for the first time in over a decade. For more information, visit www.MyLOC.gov.

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 27

live_music&nightlife THURSDAY, APRIL 10 L��� J���. Sign of the Whale (7279 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). For more information, call 703-5731616.

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Reggae. The State Theatre (220 N. Washington St., Falls Church). $20. Doors open: 7 p.m. Showtime: 9 p.m. 703-237-0300.

T�� F����� B�������. With Justin Townes Earle and McCarthy Trenching. IOTA Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington). $12.

Showtime: 9 p.m. 703-522-8340.

R���� M�G����. Folk. The Barns at Wolf Trap (1645 Trap Rd., Vienna). $25. Showtime: 8 p.m.

703-255-1900.

S����� P���� ��� R�����. NuJazz/Soul/Fusion. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $12.

Showtime: 8 p.m. 703-255-1566.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11 R��� B�����. Rock. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $10.

Two shows. Early show: 7 p.m. with Signal 13. Late show: 9:30 p.m. with Tsunami Rising and Sing Like Stars. 703-255-1566.

T�� E���� B����� B���. Blues/ Soul. JV’s Restaurant (6666 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). $5 cover. www.jvsrestaurant.com.

J���� C������ ���� P���� C����.

IOTA Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington). $12. Showtime: 9 p.m. 703-522-8340.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12 K������ N����. Sign of the Whale (7279 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). 10 p.m.- 1:30 a.m. For more information, call 703-5731616.

M��� N����� CD R������. Featuring Steve Sidley of Sam’s House.

IOTA Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington). $10. 2 p.m. All ages, no smoking. 703-522-8340.

C���� B������’� T����� P���. J���.

Alden Theatre (1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean). $34/$28 for McLean district residents. Showtime: 8 p.m. 703-790-9223.

T������ P��������. With Whitley.

IOTA Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington). $15. Showtime: 9 p.m. 703-522-8340.

B������ I�������� J��� Q������.

Jazz. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2700 F St. NW, D.C.). Free show on the Millenium Stage. Showtime: 6 p.m. 202-467-4600.

SUNDAY, APRIL 13 D��� B������ ��� R����� L����. J���. The John F. Kennedy

Center for the Performing Arts (2700 F St. NW, D.C.). $20-$45.

Showtime: 7 p.m. 202-467-700.

S���������� C�����. Acoustic.

Featuring Luke Brindley, Anthony Fiacco, Shane Hines, Todd Wright. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave., E. Vienna). $10. Showtime: 7 p.m.

L��� �� ��� S������ S���. With Dave Elliott, Claude Arthur, Dan Hovey, Mike Westcott and Mike Tash. JV’s Restaurant (6666 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). $5 cover. 9 p.m. www.jvsrestaurant. com.

MONDAY, APRIL 14 P�������� ��� C��� M��’� L������. Reggae/Rock. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $10. 8 p.m. 703-255-1566.

6 D�� B�����. With Herb and Hanson. IOTA Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington). $8. 8:30 p.m. 703-522-8340.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 D���� B�������. Jam. The State Theatre (220 N. Washington St., Falls Church). $30 advance, $35 day of. Doors open: 7 p.m.

Showtime: 9 p.m. 703-237-0300.

F��� E��������� ��� A����� A��� M�����. Roots Rock. Jam-

min’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $20 advance, $25 at door.

7:30 p.m. 703-255-1566.

T�� P�����. Folk. The Barns at Wolf Trap (1645 Trap Rd., Vienna). $20. Showtime: 8 p.m.

703-255-1900.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 T������ ‘20�� A���������� T���.’ Celtic. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $15. 7:30 p.m. 703-255-1566.

K������ ��� ��������. Sign of the Whale (7279 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). 10 p.m. – 1:30 a.m. For more information, call 703-5731616.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17 L��� J���. Sign of the Whale (7279 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). For more information, call 703-5731616.

C���� M������ ��� ��� K��. Pop/ Rock. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $10 advance, $12 at door. 7:30 p.m. 703-2551566.

T���� ��� T�� M������. Jamaican. The State Theatre (220 N. Washington St., Falls Church). $26. Doors open: 7 p.m. Showtime: 8:30 p.m. 703-237-0300.

P������� A����...

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his Saturday marks the anniversary of two space travel milestones. On April 12, 1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took the first ever manned space flight on April 12, 1961 and, 20 yeas later, the U.S. launched the first space shuttle flight. Definitely a reason to celebrate, no? Every year on April 12, Yuri’s Night parties are held throughout the world to commemorate these events and are the “St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo for space,” according to the press release. Yuri’s Night Alexandria at Art Whino will give you a chance to show your space appreciation, with a party raging until 2 a.m. featuring cosmic-concoctions, a space-centric art showcase, DJ Red Poncho Space Bear and a slew of burlesque performances from performers such as Miss Saturn, L’il Dutch and, of course, Master Uranus. The party will be epic and prizes for best dressed will be awarded at midnight, so make sure you wear your finest celestial attire.

What: Yuri’s Night Alexandria Cost: $20/advance, $25/door (incl. 3 drink vouchers) When: Saturday, April 12, 8 p.m. - 2 a.m.

Where: Art Whino, 717 N. Saint Asaph St., Alexandria, VA See www.outofthisworldparty.com for tickets & more info

Friday, April 25 — 4th Annual Falls Church City Art Show & Sale.

A show featuring artwork by City residents and employees. Falls Church City Community Center (223 Little Falls St., Falls Church).

Free. 5 - 7 p.m.

Sunday, May 4 — Spring Open Studios. Artist showcase that only opens twice a year! Jackson Art Center (3048 R St., NW D.C.). Free to public. Noon - 5 p.m. 703-698-9473.

C������� S���������� Be sure to include time, location, cost of admission, contact person and any other pertinent information. Event listings will be edited for content and space limitations.

Please include any photos or artwork with submissions. Deadline is Monday at noon for the current week’s edition.

Email: calendar@fcnp.com Fax: 703-532-3396; Attn: FCNP Calendar Mail: 450 West Broad Street, #321, Falls Church, VA 22046

Page 28

April 10 - 16, 2008

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at Sunrise Senior Living Join in the festivities as Sunrise Senior Living hosts a Spring Open House Celebration. At this exciting event you can mingle with neighbors, residents and guests. You can also enjoy seasonal fare and delight in a variety of themed entertainment.

While you’re here, meet our team, tour our community and find out what we do to make our community a place seniors are proud to call home.

Come visit our communities and learn about our Spring Specials – see what makes living at Sunrise so special!

EVENT DETAILS

Spring Open House Celebration Brighton Gardens of Arlington Saturday, April 19th 11:00am to 2:00pm Sunrise of Falls Church Saturday, April 26th 11:00am to 2:00pm

Brighton Gardens of Arlington 703-294-6875 3821 Wilson Blvd, Arlingon, VA 22203 IL, AL, MC Sunrise of Falls Church 703-534-2700 330 North Washington St, Falls Church, VA 22046 AL, MC IL= Independent Living AL=Assisted Living MC=Memory Care For more information and a FREE online newsletter, visit www.sunriseseniorliving.com

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April 10 - 16, 2008

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Gretchen Kuhrmann, Artistic Director

concert postponed THE GERMAN ROMANTICS Previously scheduled for Friday, April 11, 2008 Rescheduled for October 17, 2008 Next CHORALIS event: Saturday, May 3, 2008 GALA SILENT AUCTION – 6:30 pm THE BEST OF ECHOS in concert – 8 pm Falls Church Presbyterian Church

Tickets/info: www.choralis.org, 703 237-2499

 The alarm clock buzzes. Keanu Reeves wakes up fully dressed in a striped shirt, raises his gun and rolls out of bed. He puts his piece on the bathroom sink, next to his toothbrush, and takes a good long look at himself in the mirror. Then he pukes in the toilet.

He climbs into the car and heads down the freeway as a glowing orange orb shimmers behind the skyscrapers of Los Angeles. Only the sun isn’t rising. It’s setting.

Night: Koreatown. Tom Ludlow (Reeves) stops by a liquor store and gulps down a couple of teeny airline bottles of vodka. He insults some Korean hoods, who want to buy a machine gun he’s got stashed in his trunk, insinuating that

Tom Ludlow.......... Keanu Reeves Jack Wander......Forest Whitaker James Biggs............Hugh Laurie Paul Diskant ............ Chris Evans Coates . ........................ Common Grill . ........................... The Game Scribble.. Cedric the Entertainer Fox Searchlight presents a film directed by David Ayer. Produced

they’re Japanese. “You dress white, talk black and drive Jew,” he tells them before throwing in an all-purpose anti-Asian slur.

Ludlow is a racist cop, a renegade cop, a vigilante cop.

We know this because next he wantonly massacres a bunch of Korean bad guys and makes it look like they shot one another.

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by Erwin Stoff, Alexandra Milchan and Lucas Foster. Written

by James Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss. Photographed

by Gabriel Beristain. Edited by Jeffrey Ford. Music by Graeme Revell.

Running time: 108 minutes.

Classified: R (for strong violence and pervasive language).

Then, when he’s confronted by his African-American ex-partner, Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), he yells, “I’m racist!” In response, Washington calls him a “white boy.” This seems especially odd because the ChineseHawaiian-Caucasian Reeves is, ancestrally speaking, roughly as white as Barack Obama.

This is the setup for “Street Kings,” which immediately forgets it ever brought up all that racial stuff anyway. Almost as quickly, it loses interest in its main character’s alcoholism. Then it raises the idea that Ludlow may still be in pain over his wife’s death, but instantly ignores that, too, turning its deficit of attention to the killing of a police officer. The murder investigation leads the bull-headed Ludlow -who, mind you, does not play by the rules! -- along a twisted trail of corruption that leads all the way to the highest levels of the LAPD. Yeah, I know. Who could have anticipated that?

If you wanted to make a strictly generic parody of crime writer James Ellroy’s hardboiled Southland fiction (“L. A. Confidential,” “The Black Dahlia,” “White Jazz”), could you do worse than to hire Ellroy himself and then, maybe, rewrite him a few times? Maybe not, because that’s what appears to have happened here. Ellroy is credited with the templatestamped story and is listed first in the screenplay credits, followed by Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss, each of their names separated by an “and” instead of an ampersand, which tells you that they did not work together.

Director David Ayer (writer of “Training Day” and co-writer of “The Fast and the Furious”) has also been fingered as a scripting suspect, but he is not identified by name in the final line-up. If you’ve seen the trailer, know that about half of what’s in it isn’t in the final movie. That’s a hint.

“Street Kings” is an anemic attempt to evoke the big, shiny action pictures of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the heyday of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, when Timothy Dalton was 007 and Clint

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 31

gets light again. Rating: Two stars.

(Jim Emerson)

P C

haos Theory (Comedy, PG-13, 86 minutes). Ryan Reynolds is an efficiency expert who becomes inefficient when his wife (Emily Mortimer) throws off his timing. She resets

their clock one morning, triggering a chain of disastrous coincidences and misunderstandings that ruins their lives. A romantic comedy within a superfluous framing device (aren’t most such bookends superfluous?) that turns pretty dark and weepy before it

“POWERFUL AND EVOCATIVE. A MOVING TALE OF COURAGE, DETERMINATION AND UNQUENCHABLE HOPE.” CLAUDIA PUIG,

Eastwood had fewer wrinkles and bigger hair. Back when, if an aquarium appeared in a scene, somebody was damn sure going to shoot it before the movie was over. The films, good and bad, were loud and slick and mostly set in L.A., directed by people like John McTiernan, Richard Donner, Tony Scott and Renny Harlin: the “Die Hards,” the “Lethal Weapons,” “The Rookie,” “The Last Boy Scout,” “The Last Action Hero.”

Reeves got in on that wave, too, with “Point Break” and “Speed,” dodging bullets and breaking regulations in the name of the law. Those were the days when overkill was never enough, and “Street Kings” at least gets that part right. The crooked cops are not only crooked, they’re also murderers willing to drop everything to rape their victims’ widows and girlfriends just for fun. They are bad, bad, bad.

So is the screenplay, which reads like a Bartlett’s of generalpurpose action-movie lines: “You were toe-to-toe with evil and you won.”

“Why can’t you have a normal life like everybody else?”

“Everything I touch dies.”

“Who are you to judge me?”

That doesn’t even scratch the

surface of the movie’s banality, but every once in a while there’s a real doozy like: “He’s got a Ph.D. in catching cops slipping up!” Or a text message from one crooked cop to another: “He’s here. Kill him.” And then the dude signs his nickname.

But come on, don’t give Keanu Reeves -- or anybody, for that matter -- a line like this, about Tom’s ex-partner: “We were black and white in black and white, back when it meant something.” Are these people trying to make the “Showgirls” of retro-1990s cop movies?

Sophomore director Ayer (“Harsh Times”) is maybe not so sure. He seems invested in the chases and shootouts, but sometimes his spatial relationships break down, and you can’t tell who is where. In one gunfight an entire Harvest Gold-colored refrigerator materializes out of nowhere. Meanwhile, AcademyAward winner Forest Whitaker doesn’t seem to know what movie this should be, while “House” star Hugh Laurie -- giving exactly the same performance he does on TV -- may be in on the joke, even if nobody else is.



riceless (Romantic comedy, PG-13, 104 minutes). In this French romantic comedy, director Pierre Salvadori tries to teach a lesson that only the French could manage. Set in the beautiful south of France, the film features an ultimately tasteless, empty story about people who do degrading things to themselves and others.

That said, it’s all done with cleareyed insight and a light touch that makes “Priceless” a palatable comedy with a delightful adult sensibility.

Add in personable performances by Audrey Tautou and Gad Elmaleh and, even if these are lessons we don’t care about, we’ll at least listen.

Rating: Two and a half stars. (Mary Houlihan)

S

mart People (Comedy, R, 95 minutes) Dennis Quaid plays a dour lit professor who’s indifferent to his students and just about everything else, including his family. A widower, he lives with his Young Republican daughter (Ellen Page, toning down her Juno ever so slightly) and ne’er-dowell stepbrother (Thomas Haden Church), who acts as his chauffeur.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays a doctor and former student instrumental in bringing him out of his brittle shell.

Reasonably smart and mildly funny, but not brilliant. Rating: Two and a half stars. (Jim Emerson)

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“AN INTENSE, RIVETING THRILLER! Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker give powerhouse performances.”

DC Sub. Press Thurs 4/10 2x5 AlliedDc RL

Steve Oldfield, FOX-TV

UNO (Comedy, PG-13, 92 m., 2007). Very smart, very funny and then very touching; it begins with the pacing of a screwball comedy and ends as a portrait of characters we have come to love.

Ellen Page in an Oscar-worthy performance as a pregnant 16-year-old who decides to keep the child. With J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney wonderful as her parents, older and wiser than most parents in teenage comedies. And Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the would-be adoptive parents, and Michael Cera, shyly winning as Juno’s boyfriend.

Screenplay by Diablo Cody, directed

by Jason Reitman; the best movie of 2007. Rating: Four stars.

B

EFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD (Drama, R, 117 m., 2007).

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play brothers who conspire on a “victimless crime” with dire consequences, in one of the year’s best thrillers -- and films. Co-starring Marisa Tomei, Amy Ryan, Rosemary Harris; one of the best films by the cinematic treasure Sidney Lumet.

Rating: Four stars

L

ARS AND THE REAL GIRL (Comedy, PG-13, 106 m., 2007). Ryan Gosling plays Lars Lindstrom, a painfully shy young man who can barely stand the touch of another human being. One day he orders a life-sized love doll through the Internet, using “Bianca” not for sex but for companionship.

He expects everyone else to treat the doll the same way, including his brother (Paul Schneider), sister-inlaw (Emily Mortimer) and therapist (Patricia Clarkson). Only after the movie is over do you realize what a balancing act it was, what risks it took, what rewards is contains.

Directed by Craig Gillespie, written

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Continued on Page 32

Page 32

April 10 - 16, 2008

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HERE WILL BE BLOOD (Drama, R, 158 m., 2008).

Daniel Day-Lewis in a virtuoso performance as an obsessed loner, starting with nothing and becoming a California oil tycoon in a life dominated by greed, duplicity, hatred and loneliness. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic is ambitious and relentless as the study of a human monster.

Magnificent visuals created by cinematographer Robert Elswit and set designer Jack Fisk. A debatable ending, and the film’s reach exceeds its grasp, which is not a dishonorable thing. Rating: Three and a half stars.

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ALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (Comedy, R, 96 m., 2007). The versatile John C. Reilly in a spoof of biopics about singing stars; he does plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on. He’s like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off. Funny, but sometimes curiously close to real sentiment.

Directed by Jake Kasdan, written by him and Judd (“Superbad”) Apatow.

Rating: Three stars.

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T

HE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP (Fantasy, PG, 111 m., 2007). An enchanting family film, set in wartime Scotland, where a 12-year-old finds an egg that hatches into an amphibian that grows so large it has to be moved to the nearest large body of water, which is, you guessed it, Loch Ness. Based on a book by the author of “Babe,” made by the director of “My Dog Skip,” starring Alex Etel, star of “Millions” -- and lives up to this heritage. A great choice for the holiday season.

Rating: Three and a half stars.

L

IONS FOR LAMBS (Drama, R, 88 m., 2008). A talkathon following three storylines, with a flashback linking them. In Washington, a journalist (Meryl Streep) sits down for an exclusive interview with a Republican senator (Tom Cruise) who has presidential ambitions. In Los Angeles, a political science professor (Robert Redford) sits down to discuss the purposes of life with a brilliant but disappointing student (Andrew Garfield). And in Afghanistan, two of the professor’s former pupils (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) are involved in a firefight on a snowy mountain peak. At the beginning, the movie seems to be going somewhere. When we realize it’s going in circles, our interest flags. Directed by Redford. Rating: Two and a half stars.

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ESURRECTING THE CHAMP (Sports drama, PG13, 111 m., 2008). Samuel L. Jackson stars as a former boxer, now a skid row drunk nicknamed Champ, who tells his story to a sportswriter (Josh Hartnett). He was a contender once, he says, and the writer scents a great story. Jackson is good, so is Alan Alda as the writer’s editor, although the movie bogs down in details of the writer’s domestic life. Rating: Three stars.

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 33

This blond Canadian might have a stage full of instruments dripping shades of cotton candy — including a sparkly pink drum kit and similarly pink piano — but don’t expect to see another Britney or Christina walk onto the checkered stage of Avril Lavgine’s Best Damn Tour.

“My songs aren’t bubblegum pop dance songs and I don’t have background dancers on every single song like them,” says Lavigne. “I’m not wearing a microphone on my head. I’m playing guitar. I’m playing the drums. I’m playing piano.”

The dancers, however, are a change for the angsty songstress who kicked off the string of shows March 5 in Victoria, British Columbia and brings her setlists of Grammy-nominated hits to George Mason University’s Patriot Center in Fairfax next Tuesday, April 15. Still, she says the addition is still representational of her rock roots and doesn’t portend a metamorphosis

into a pop princess.

“The show is going to be very upbeat and the production will be bigger in the sense of my dancers,” says Lavigne. “The dancing is very me; it’s very kicking and punching and stomping and marching, stuff that I was always doing onstage.”

Dancing won’t be the only new thing Lavigne’s whipped up for fans this tour.

Recently having covered Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” the recorded single will play live to a video montage of images of Lavigne throughout her career — some rumored to include a younger Lavigne flipping the bird. When asked directly about the buzz of hearsay, Lavigne remained vague, yet hinted at her colorful poses from her “Complicated” starting point.

“This was actually Jamie King, my set director’s idea. He just wanted to put some fun images up on the screen from when I was 17 with my fists in the air screaming or my little kick shots,” says Lavigne. “I was quite animated in a lot of my photo shoots when I first came out.”

That fledgling feistiness hasn’t faltered since she hit the music scene in 2002 with the release of her first album Let Go. If anything, she says her confidence level in front of fans has grown since her tie-wearing days, despite her introverted tendencies.

“A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I’m actually shy around people I don’t know. With my first concert, I didn’t really talk on stage besides ‘Thank you guys, I love you,’ or whatever. I was always comfortable singing, but being a performer is a totally different thing,” says Lavigne. “Now, I’ve just kind of learned how to work a crowd, how to talk to an audience. I’m more confident.”

The energy of Lavigne’s music has also transformed from tour to tour. Referring to songs from her last album, Under My Skin, as “dark and deep,” Lavigne’s well aware of how the tone of her music can bring a crowd up or down.

“My last record was pretty mid-tempo and serious, like every song was bringing down the audience and I wanted to go up.

I just wanted to rock,” says Lavigne. “A lot of my inspiration for the Best Damn Thing came from knowing what kind of songs I wanted to play live. I can bring it up with songs like ‘Girlfriend’ and ‘Sk8er Boi,’ open and close with those big songs and bring out the dancers, but I can also come down and come out on the piano with ‘When You’re Gone,’ ‘Alone’ and ‘By Myself.’”

There’s no doubt Lavigne will be working the crowd by tickling those pink ivories, among other instruments during her live show, though she remains quite modest about her guitar-playing skills.

“I’m not a lead guitarist. I will always say I’m not the greatest player, but I’m good. I love to play guitar. I use it as a writing tool and I love to play it live,” says Lavigne.

Of course, a series of recent accolades belie her humble claims. Taking time off from her tour this month to perform at Canada’s 2008 Juno Awards, she earned multiple nominations, including Album of the Year — perhaps an example of that “extra love” she said she is shown by the bordering North.

“When I go there, I feel like everyone, my fans, are like ‘Woo-hoo, she’s Canadian,’ and I feel like I’ve come home. I’m Canada’s girl for them,” says Lavigne.

• Avril Lavigne plays The Patriot Center Tuesday, April 15. Tickets are $42.50 and doors open at 7 p.m. Boys Like Girls opens the show. For more on Avril Lavigne, visit www.avrillavigne.com.

Page 34

April 10 - 16, 2008

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 35

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They’re taking off the gloves in the whiskey wars, if what I saw at the recent annual Whisky Live event in New York City was any indicator.

The event, one of a dozen or so held around the globe each year under sponsorship of the influential U.K. magazine Whisky, brings together acolytes of various whiskies from Scotland, Ireland, Japan and the United States.

Rather than simply pushing their familiar lineup of brands, each year we’re seeing more and more limited-edition distillations and new sub-genre niche products.

And, the long-reigning big boys are becoming targets as well. Just ask Brian Dvoret.

He’s the national sales executive and self-proclaimed “company Scotch geek” for The Speyside, maker of an excellent 12-year-old single highland malt he challenges all to compare directly to the competition’s Johnnie Walker Blue Label, one of the superstars of blended Scotches retailing in the $180 range for the 750-milliliter bottle.

“Go ahead, just try Speyside then go try the Blue and come back and tell me what you think,” Dvoret boomed to all comers at Whisky Live.

Johnnie Walker Red Label, Black Label, Gold Label and even Green Label are more accessible pricewise than Blue Label. It is, in the words of its makers, “our rarest blend ... created from the rarest and most expensive whiskies in the world.”

In fact, the company’s explains its process this way: “(It) recreates the flavors of the Walkers’ early whiskies (of the 1820s) ... . Every single component ... has been handpicked from exclusive distilleries, some of which are no longer in existence. As soon as they’re discovered, they’re set aside for Blue Label and matured until their absolute peak -- no matter how long that may take.”

Blue Label truly has an old style set of characteristics, and since it is a blend of 16 or so whiskies it is difficult to pinpoint the heart of it even though it is widely known to be Royal Lochnagar, a rare malt.

It is at once nutty, pungent and peppery, with floral notes in the nose and initial hit on the palate as well. The traditional smokiness, accompanied by clear notes of caramel and vanilla, help make it a complex offering that is obviously superior in overall character to most others in its price range.

Taking Dvoret’s challenge, I also tried The Speyside’s King’s Crest 25 Year Old Blended Scotch, priced like Blue Label upwards of $200 a bottle. I found it a worthy competitor, perhaps even superior in the peaty, hazlenut flavors that removed all traces of any unpleasant heat.

But one couldn’t spend too much time on any one or two styles. There were American bourbons, Japanese Scotches, Irish whiskies and other temptations to sample.

Highlights and news notes gleaned from wandering the aisles: • A representative for The Famous Grouse, asked if bestselling author W.E.B. Griffin is on the distiller’s payroll since he frequently makes mention of the Scotch in his novels, replied: “You can’t imagine how many times we’re asked that. As best I have been able to find out, he’s just a fan of the brand and has no other connection to it.”

• Michter’s, the adventuresome American distiller, not only had its entire line of bourbons and whiskies out for sampling, its representatives also shared word that the company is planning to release an extremely limited collection -- 300 bottles of each -- of 25-year-old bourbon and 25-year-old rye in time for Father’s Day in June.

• Even though purists might insist Scotch whisky can be made only in Scotland, the huge Japanese distiller Suntory was pushing its Yamazaki and winning over visitors to its pouring table with excellent 12- and 18-year-old single malts. They are produced using copper pot stills and a process the company calls “mostly peat free.” Both expressions are full bodied, coppery gold liquids.

The 12 is replete with wood, malt, honey and fruit notes; the 18 sweeter, with elements of strawberry, honey and toffee.

• Jameson’s newest Irish whiskey expressions, released in the past few weeks, do the brand proud. The Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve, which I sampled some time ago for my “Tasting Notes”, goes for a hefty $250, with only 1,000 bottles available in the limited-edition U.S. release. The Jameson Gold, at a more approachable $60, is a blend of cask-matured old Jameson whiskies.

April 10 - 16, 2008

Thai Restaurant and Bar Live Music

926 W. Broad St, Falls Church, VA, 22046 703-534-0095

Dinner: Tues-Sun: 5:00-10:00PM Fri & Sat 5:00-11:00PM Bar: Sun-Thurs 5:00-11:00PM Fri & Sat 5:00-1:30AM Live Music: Tues-Thu: 7:30-11:00PM Fri & Sat: 8:30-1:00AM, Sun: 7:00-10:30PM

April 10 - 16, 2008

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© 2008 David Levinson Wilk

Complete the grid so each row, column and 3-by-3 box (in bold borders) contains every digit, 1 to 9. For strategies on how to solve Sudoku, visit www.sudoku.org.uk

1

Across 1. Texas' state dish 6. Large accounts?

11. Arthur of "The Golden Girls"

4/13/08

© 2008 The Mepham Group. Distributed by Tribune Media Services. All rights reserved.

14. Spoke (up) 15. "____ luck!"

16. Atty.'s title 17. Vigorously attack a mizzen?

19. He sells Squishees to Bart on "The Simpsons" 20. "Enough!"

21. Bass ____ 22. Eur. peak seen in Antonioni's "L'Avventura" 24. Backing 26. Level 27. Place some items on the back burner, perhaps?

33. Esau's brother

Last Thursday’s Puzzle Solved 35. Farm soils 36. mayHbe smoked O It S R or C pickled A

B A R C A J O H N N E D F A S T B A P T Q U I T R O Y M A W S D S L E M A N O V A L P O R T A P I T S T L Y D S

R Y E R T A R P

B O O

A G S O N T N S E A K A I P T L T H I L Y A C A L B O L E T S P S A

D A H O T T A H E S P A P T R E T H N O E S R O N E N L A V L A H E Y L E O I L E N A P S S S C

E G O I S T

P O T A S H

M P I A A D T S A T R Y

© 2008 N. F. Benton

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April 10 - 16, 2008

Announcements

ROOM FOR RENT

Female, Non Smoker to share house in FC. Metro & bus nearby Call 703-798-4743

ATTIC TREASURE SALE

Saturday, May 3th, 10am - 1pm. Donations accepted Friday May 2nd 9am - 9pm at Falls Church Community Center. Benefits activites of Village Preservation + Improvement Society.

Syrain Travel Document #007529 has been lost last week. Please contact if you found this passport. M.H.A.R @ 703-928-2169

For Sale COMPUTER

Free Internet Education Event! Set includes tutorials $199 703-212-9174

FOR SALE PARK TOWER CONDO

ROOM FOR RENT

Services

Good References & experience, 703-395-5971 or 703-231-4135

Mature lady, no smoking. 571-216-7012.

LOST TRAVEL DOCUMENT

COMPUTER SOLUTIONS

Affordable At Last!! Individualized Residential & Small Business PC Repair, Consulting, Preventive Maintenance, Upgrades, Installations, Virus Removal, Data Recovery & more! (55/hr On-Site Service) Please send Inquiries to EsotericaComputers@gmail.com or Call 703-7985763 (Ask for Allan)

Home-Based Tutoring Services. Experienced Qualified & Caring. Bill Coonors 314-348-1346

50% Off List Price. Call 703-560-3900 Washington Photo Copy.

Opening all ages - State Licensed - First Aid/CPR Trained - 9 years experience. Call Anjo 703-5775287

MULCH TOP SOIL WOOD CHIPS

Free delivery. 703-623-0101

Help Wanted.

CLEANING HELP WANTED

Cleaning,buffing floors, Falls Church area. $9.00 hr. 7am-9:30am. 1/800-342-2104

COPY SHOP OPERATOR

Part Time person to run copy machines and take customer orders. Computer knowledge required.

Monday through Friday 8:30am to 1:30pm. Call Quick Copy 703-532-9190

DRIVERS/ LOCAL CDL-A

Career Training. Swift Transportation Trains and Employs! Dedicated, Regional & OTR Fleets.

800-397-2423

EDUCATIONAL COACH/TUTOR

FAMILY DAY HOME

GIT RID OF IT

For Removal of Junk, Trash, Yard Debris, Appliances, Furniture & Estate clean-ups. Call 703-533-0094/571-251-5962

DIGITAL TRANSFERS

Record and tapes to CD. Home videos to DVD. WWW.SAVEITONCD.COM 703-263-9212

HANDYMAN

Spring is here. Do you need painting, drywall or repairs done. Call Sam the Handyman. 703-2376134 or 703 283-0955

HANDYMAN SERVICE

Windows, doors, rotted wood, petdoors, lighting, fans, faucets, fences, bath, Flat screen TV installation and kitchen remodeling. Insured Free estimates. Call Doug (703) 556-4276 www.novahandyman.com

HELP WANTED

Sheet Metal Mechanic or experienced helper.

Dixie Sheet Metal. 703/533 -1111.

LUBE TECHNICIAN WANTED

Experienced lube-tech wanted for busy lubeshop in Falls Church VA call Julio at 703-380-7281.

SUPPORT POSITION

Key data, operate copy machine and scanner.

Keyboard skills and computer knowledge required.

Call SAID Inc. 703-532-9190

For Rent

HONEY-DO HANDYMAN

Cosmetic Home repairs and inspections.

Painting, plumbing, electrical service, carpentry. Bsmts and bathrooms finished. Problem solver with references. Gutter cleaning & repair.

Subpumps, drainage, snaking. Tree removal and expert landscape service by Certified Arborist. Decks, fencing, siding & roof repairs.

Service calls for appliances. 703-560-0799.

HOUSE CLEANING BY JAKELIN

Licensed, Honest, Experienced, References. Call 703-863-3821

Excellent

HOUSE CLEANING SERVICE

FC ROOMS FOR RENT

2 rooms and bath in private home for a senior lady.

55 and older, non smokers only need apply. Rent negociable. 571-330-4466. Ask for Marlene.

Available 7 days a week. Week, biweekly, monthly or one time. Good references in Falls Church City.

10 years experience. For further information call me at 703-848-8322. Senior discount, Ask: Susy.

ROOM FOR RENT

HOUSE CLEANING SERVICE

Falls Church City - Furnished room for rent for single person: internet, washer/dryer, private entrance, quiet residential neighborhood. 703-5347945

Low rates. Good references. Call Dolores 571/2321091.

classads@fcnp.com

POST OFFICE NOW HIRING AVG. PAY $20/HR, $57K/YR INCLUDING FEDERAL BENEFITS AND OVERTIME Placed by adSource, not affiliated with USPS who hires.

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MORALES LANDSCAPE & LAWN CARE

Deadline: 2 p.m. Tuesdays

Spring Clean - Up, Mulching, seeding & many others. Call David (o) 703-502-3990 or (c) 571-2214330

PREVENT FORECLOSURE

Owe less than $250,000 on your home and need to sell? Contact local family looking to buy. fairfaxhome@yahoo.com and renovations, reasonable rates, painting, drywall, carpentry, deck, fence, siding, tile, electrical, plumbing. FREE ESTIMATES. Please call 703655-2838.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARINGS ON PROPOSED BUDGET BY THE CITY OF FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA The ordinances referenced below were given first reading and a public hearing on Monday, March 24, 2008. The public hearings will continue on April 14 and April 28, 2008, with second reading and final action scheduled for April 28, 2008 - all at 7:30 p.m., Official Time, or as soon thereafter as may be heard.

(TO8-07) Ordinance Setting The Rate Of Tax Levy On Real Estate, Personal Property And Machinery And Tools, And All Other Property Segregated By Law For Local Taxation In The City Of Falls Church, Virginia, For The Tax Year 2008. [Tax rate of $1.04 per $100 of assessed value.]

(TO8-08) Ordinance Fixing And Determining The Budget Of Expenditures And Revenues, Appropriating Funds For The Fiscal Year 2008-2009: General Fund; School Operating Fund; School Community Service Fund; And School Food Service Fund; Water Revenue Fund And Sewer Revenue Fund And Approval Of The Capital Improvement Plan

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARINGS The ordinance referenced below was given first reading and a public hearing on Monday, March 10, 2008, and referred to the Planning Commission and other boards and commissions; with second reading and a public hearing scheduled for April 14, 2008.

(TR8-17) Resolution Amending And Reenacting Resolution 2004-30 Granting Special Exception SE04-0162 For Mixed Use Development At 400-412 South Maple Avenue (RPC# 52-309-023), Known As "500 South Maple Avenue" To Atlantic Realty Companies, Inc. And Their Successors.

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the following ordinance and resolution were given first reading on March 10, 2008, and referred to the Planning Commission and other boards and commission.

The second reading and a public hearing scheduled for April 28, 2008 has been postponed to MAY 12, 2008.

(TO8-06) An Ordinance to Amend the Official Zoning District Map of the City of Falls Church, Virginia, by Rezoning Approximately 0.68 Acres of Land from T1, Transitional District to B-1, Limited Business District for the properties with the Real Property Code Numbers 51-131-020, 51-131-021, 51-131-022, 51131-023, and 51-131-029 by Jefferson Park LLC. (TR8-18) A Resolution to Grant a Special Exception for Commercial Height Bonus for Approximately 1.12 Acres of Land With the Real Property Code Numbers 51-131-006, 51-131-007, 51-131-020, 51-131-021, 51-131-022, 51-131-023, and 51-131-029 by Jefferson Park LLC. All public hearings will be held in the Council Chambers, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church, Virginia.

Copies of legislation may be obtained from the City Clerk's office (703-248-5014) or at cityclerk@fallschurchva.gov. This location is fully accessible to persons with physical disabilities.

Special services or assistance to persons with disabilities may be requested in advance. To speak at a public hearing, fill out a speaker slip and give it to the Clerk at the left front table. Speakers will be called forward by the Mayor at the appropriate time.

KATHLEEN CLARKEN BUSCHOW CITY CLERK

fied A u d Fo r r m .FCNP word .COM at

WWW

MARIAS HOUSE CLEANING

PROPERTY IMPROVEMENT

CHILD CARE

Experienced childcare provider provides quality care for your infant in F.C. home. (703) 241-0605.

Extra Large 2bed, 1Ba unit for sale. 1100 square feet, extra storage, pool, updated kitchen, great condition, no investors, no pets.

Email Suzanne@Buckrealtors.com 703-395-8741

SUPER SALE NEW- REBUILT COPIERS

LAWN & GARDEN

Lawn mowing, cleaning, mulching & edging. Low rates. Call Ernesto 703-932-9565

(Box Ads are $20 per column inch) (two days before publication)

Phone: 703-532-3267 • Fax: 703-532-3396 E-Mail: classads@fcnp.com Mail: 450 W. Broad St. #321, Falls Church, VA 22046 Please include payment (check or money order) with your ad or call us to arrange payment by credit card.

For public and legal notices, please email legalads@fcnp.com The Falls Church News-Press accepts no financial responsibility for typographical errors in advertisements. Advertising which has minor discrepancies such as misspelling or small type transposition, but which do not affect the ability of the reader to respond to the ad will be considered substantially correct and full payment is required. The Falls Church News-Press is not responsible if the original copy is not typewritten or legible and clear. The Falls Church News-Press is not responsible for copy changes made by telephone.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES ABC LICENSE

The following establishment is applying to the VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL for an Internet Wine Retailer license to sell alcoholic beverages: Wilkinson Wine Cellar, LLC, headquarated and trading at 7601 Brittany Parc Court, Falls Church, Virginia 22043; maintaining commercial storage space and trading at 11199 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, Virginia 22030. This notice was authorized by Stephanie Wilkinson, Member and Registered Agent of Wilkinson Wine Cellar, LLC.

PUBLIC NOTICE CITY OF FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA PLANNING COMMISSION PUBLIC HEARING On Monday, April 21, 2008, the City of Falls Church Planning Commission, at 7:45 p.m. will hold a first public hearing during their regularly scheduled meeting, in the City Council Chambers of City Hall, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church, Virginia 22046, on the following application: (TO8-06) An Ordinance to Amend the Official Zoning District Map of the City of Falls Church, Virginia,

by Rezoning Approximately 0.68 Acres of Land from T-1, Transitional District to B-1, Limited Business District for the properties with the Real Property Code Numbers 51-131-020, 51131-021, 51-131-022, 51-131023, and 51-131-029 by Jefferson Park LLC. (TR8-18) A Resolution to Grant a Special Exception for Commercial Height Bonus for Approximately 1.12 Acres of Land With the Real Property Code Numbers 51-131006, 51-131-007, 51-131-020, 51-131-021, 51-131-022, 51-131023, and 51-131-029 by Jefferson Park LLC. A second public hearing will be held on May 5, 2008. Interested persons may appear and present their views.

Information on or copies of the proposed Ordinance and Resolution may be viewed in the City's Planning Division at City Hall, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church, Virginia, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., 703-248-5040.

News-Press Classifieds Remember, New Classified Deadlines: Every Tuesday, 2 p.m.!

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES SECTION 106 PUBLIC NOTICE American Tower Corporation is proposing a 10- by 15-foot compound expansion.

The existing telecommunications facility is located southwest of the State Route 1 and State Route 244 interchange located in Bailey’s Crossroads, Fairfax County, Virginia. For the purposes of this review process, a 30-foot perimeter to the north, south, east, and west around the existing 1,200-square foot lease area was also assessed. American Tower Corporation seeks comments from all interested persons on the impact of the tower on any districts, sites, buildings, structures, or objects significant in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, or culture, that are listed or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Specific information about the project, including the historic preservation reviews that American Tower Corporation has conducted pursuant to the rules of the Federal Communications Commission (47 C.F.R. Sections 1.1307(4)) and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (36 C.F.R. Part 800) will be made available to interested persons who request the information from the contact below. All questions, comments, and correspondence should be directed to American Tower Corporation, 10 Presidential Way, Woburn, MA, 01801, ATTN: Environmental Services or Enviro.Services@AmericanTower.com

by May 2, 2008

PUBLIC NOTICE PUBLIC NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Falls Church Volunteer Fire Department will meet 4/21/08 at the firehouse, located at 6950 Little Falls Road, Arlington, VA 22040 at 7:00 p.m., in a public hearing pursuant to the requirements of Section 147 (f) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, on a proposal that the Borrower enter into a promissory note with Republic First National Corp. under the “Code” in order to finance the acquisition of equipment.

The equipment to be financed consists of (the “Equipment”) and will be located at the firehouse in Arlington, VA 22040. To finance the costs of such Equipment and to pay costs and expenses incidental to the financing, the Borrower proposes to enter into a promissory note with Republic First National Corp. in the maximum aggregate principal amount of $153,000.00. The Borrower will be required to pay all expenses of the operating, maintaining, and insuring the Project and to pay all taxes on the Equipment. The loan payments due pursuant to the promissory note will be payable and secured by a security interest Lien on the Equipment above here mentioned. All persons interested may appear and be at said time and place or may file written comments with the department prior to the hearing set forth herein above. 4/10/2008. By the order of the Falls Church Volunteer Fire Department.

classads@fcnp.com

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 39

Professional Services

Professional Services

Walsh & Assoc.

PC Attorneys

COMPUTER REPAIR

•Injury cases & Death cases •Medical/Legal malpractice •Breach of contract •Commerical/Insurance • Car accidents Free Consultation 703-448-0073 Hablamos Español 703-798-3448

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Home Improvement Since 1981

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• (703) 536-6731

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M.D. PAINTING AND DECORATING CO.

• Interior • Exterior • Dry Wall Repair • Wallpaper Removal and Paint• • Deck & Wood Pressure Wash and Sealant• • Reasonable Prices • Small and Big Jobs• • Good Quality • Painting and Finishing• • Licensed and Insured• Call for Free Estimate Cell: (703) 966-2954

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We Scrub Credit for FREE

JOSEPH HOME IMPROVEMENT Drywall • Paint Exterior / Interior, Bath & Kitchen Remodeling, Basements, Handyman, Moving, Clean Garage, All kinds of hauling

Hot Investment Opportunity!

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Joseph

Licensed Work

Cell 703-507-5005 Tel 703-507-8300

Home Improvement

703-868-5999

www.bentonpotter.com

Government contract law, all areas of business and corporate law.

In Falls Church 703-992-9255, in D.C. 202-416-1660

Roof Replacements Rubber Roofs • Flat Roofs Leak Specialists • Roof Coatings Chimney • Repair Facia&Soffit Decks Built&Repaired • Coatings Wood Repair • Drywall Repair Gutters • Siding • Ext.&Int. Painting 24 hr. Emergency Service

Kitchens & Bathrooms Tile • Hardwood Floors Wood Trim • Painting • Drywall

GET

NOTICED! in the News-Press

Mike’s Carpet Cleaning 5 Rooms deep cleaned only $98 •Stretching•Mold Remediation •Oriental Rugs•Upholstery•Pet Problems • 24 Hour Emergency Water Damage We Clean the White House!

Call Mike 703-978-2270

Other Services

Licensed Free Estimates 703-593-3383

J. NINA PLUMBING Repair, Remodeling, New, 20 years experience For New and Remodeling Free Estimates Call

(571) 214-3006

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With Personal Service

Lawn & Garden Seven Brothers Landscaping Service

Spring Cleanup, mulching, mowing, edging, trimming.

Residential & Commercial Tree Service & Snow Removal

703-241-4990

Spring Special

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with

Eileen Levy Create unique art masterpieces using acrylics, water-based oils, pencils and an innovative variety of tools and brushes.

Held at 111 Park Avenue Falls Church on Tuesday Evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm Cost: $90 On-going monthly enrollment Enroll on-line at www.creativecauldron.org Or call 571-239-5288

Food & Dining

Ledo Pizza Caterers Tysons Station • 7510 Leesburg Pike Falls Church, VA

(703) 847-5336

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703-508-3976 or 703-323-9251

Weaver Enterprises

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REMODELING & ADDITION, CERAMIC, TILE, FINISHED CARPENTRY, CROWN MOLDING, CHAIRS, DECK RAILS, STAIR, WINDOWS, DOORS, CONCRETE, SIDEWALKS, DRIVEWAYS, BRICK INSTALLED & REPAIRED

Phone # Cell Number

703-848-8322 703-901-2431

703-532-3267

703-532-3267

to advertise!

Ask about our specials!

Business & Service Directory 1 x 1” Ad 3 mo. = $220 • 6 mo. = $420 • 1 yr. = $770 1 x 1.5” Ad 3 mo. = $330 • 6 mo. = $630 • 1 yr. = $1155 1 x 2” Ad 3 mo. = $440 • 6 mo. = $840 • 1 yr. = $1540

1 x 2” ad 1 x 1.5” ad 1 x 1”

Page 40

April 10 - 16, 2008

The Week

703-534-8644 703-241-0934 703-538-2398 703-237-9089 703-731-8433 703-241-0419 703-538-5986 703-248-5004*

city calendar

APRIL 10

12

13 14

Schools Third Quarter Ends Story Hour, 10:30 a.m.

City Council/School Board Work Session, 7:30 p.m.

Farmers Market, 9 a.m.-Noon Neighborhood Tree Program, 9:30 a.m.-Noon National Library Week Begins Schools Professional Day Yard Waste, Bundled Brush,

& Special Collections Story Hour, 10:30 a.m.

City Council, 7:30 p.m.

Volunteer Fire Department Business, 8 p.m.

15 Federal Income Tax Returns Due Story Hour, 10:30 a.m.

Historical Commission, 7:30 p.m.

16 General District Court in Session Senior Citizens Commission, 4 p.m.

Story Hour, 7 p.m.

Library Board of Trustees, 7:30 p.m.

Tree Commission, 7:30 p.m.

17 Story Hour, 10:30 a.m.

Human Services Advisory Council, 7 p.m.

Board of Zoning Appeals, 7:30 p.m.

Environmental Services Council, 7:30 p.m.

Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee Meetings City Hall, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church

The Falls Church Area American Association of University Women is holding its annual Used Book Sale on Friday, April 11 from 9 a.m.-9 p.m., and Saturday, April 12 from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., at the Falls Church Community Center, 223 Little Falls St. Choose from more than 40,000 books priced at $3 or less. Half-price specials on Saturday. Call 703-534-5345 for details.

Register for the City’s Online Newsletter at www.fallschurchva.gov

City Launches New Web Site Classes and Events The City of Falls Church general government has revamped its Web site, www.fallschurchva.gov.

The new site offers visitors a more comprehensive listing of City services, detailed information on City departmental operations, and a complete listing of City licenses, permits, and applications. The new site contains drop-down menus of available online services and more ways to navigate to information.

The new Web site includes features designed to improve accessibility for users with disabilities.

Images on the site contain “alt tags,” which aid users who listen to the content of the site by using a screen reader, rather than reading the site. Browsers also have the ability to change the size of the text on the Web site.

Located at the top right corner are options for normal, medium, and large text.

The City’s new Web site was programmed by the City’s IT contractor (IntelliDyne, LLC) and is managed by the City Office of Communications.

Special Events

Neighborhood Tree Program Tree Planting Event Saturday, April 12, 9:30 a.m.-noon Meet at 304 N.Virginia Ave. Come out and have some fun while doing a good deed for the environment. Help plant trees in the North Virginia Avenue and Riley Street neighborhood. Call 703-536-3049 to sign up for this free event.

4th Annual Art Show & Sale Friday, April 25, 5 p.m.-7 p.m., Opening Reception Saturday, April 26, Noon-4 p.m., Exhibition & Sale Community Center, 223 Little Falls St. City residents and employees of all ages are invited to submit original artwork (limit two submissions per person). Photography, paintings (watercolor, oil, or acrylic), and drawings (pencil or pastel) of any size will be accepted. Call 703-248-5199 (TTY 711) for more information on this free event.

Recycling Extravaganza Saturday, April 26, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Recycling Center, 217 Gordon Road Bring unwanted electronics, textiles, medical supplies and much more.All materials will be recycled or donated to charity. For a complete list of acceptable donations, visit www.fallschurchva. gov or call 703-248-5176 (TTY 711).

Visit www.fallschurchva.gov today and let us know what you think of the new site. Please take a moment to complete a 10-question survey to help guide further improvements to the site. If you would like to join a community-based focus group to provide feedback on the site, e-mail ngobbo@fallschurchva.gov or call 703-248-5003 (TTY 711).

Additional questions and comments may be directed to publicinfo@fallschurchva.gov.

Economic Stimulus Payment Information Even if you are not required to file a tax return, you may still be eligible for an economic stimulus payment from the federal government.

• Did you receive Social Security Administration (SSA) or Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) benefits in 2007?

• Did you receive disability compensation, disability pension or survivors’ benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2007?

File your return by the regular April 15 deadline. If you file after April 15, with or without a tax-filing extension, your payment will be delayed.

If you live in the City of Falls Church, call the Housing and Human Services Division at 703-248-5005 (TTY 711) for information or to make an appointment.

Requirements: • Social Security card • Filing Status: Single or Married Filing Jointly • Qualifying Income must be $3,000 or more • Proof of income from Social Security or Railroad Retirement (2007 SSA 1099 and/or 2007 RRB 1099) • Veteran’s Benefits – provide the total received in 2007 • Banking information (deposit slip or voided check) to have payment deposited directly to your account Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is not eligible for economic stimulus.

For information in your language please call 703-248-5005 (TTY 711) to request an interpreter. Để có thông tin bằng ngôn ngữ của quý vị, xin gọi 703-248-5005 để yêu cầu người thông dịch.

Register to Receive Emergency Alerts

FOR THE WEEK of

Para recibir información en su idioma por favor llame al 703 248-5005 (TTY 711) para solicitar un intérprete.

Classes

Paid registration required. Call 703-248-5077 (TTY 711) for fees and more information.

Dog Obedience Level 1 Ages of Dogs: 4 months and up Ages of People: 9 years old and up Thursdays, April 10-May 29, 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Class includes obedience, home management, discipline and problem solving.

Dog Obedience Levels 2, 3 & 4 Ages of Dogs: 6 months and up Ages of People: 9 years and up Thursdays, April 10-May 29, 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Levels 2, 3 and 4 will prepare the pet owner and their dog for off leash work with basic commands.

Early Childhood STEP Parenting Class Thursdays, April 10-May 8, 7-9 p.m.

Topics include understanding young children’s behavior and misbehavior, discipline, listening and talking to young children, and understanding children’s emotional and social development.

Workshop (Ages 16-21) Saturday, April 12, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Prepare your teen or young adult for summer employment or upcoming college interviews by enrolling them in this beneficial workshop.

City of Falls Church Farmers Market Every Saturday from 9 a.m. - Noon

National Library Week Celebration

at Mary Riley Styles Public Library • April 13-20, 2008 The Best Book I’ve Read Lately Revealed April – All Month Long During the entire month of April, you’re invited to tell us the titles of the best books you’ve read recently. Results will be displayed throughout the library. Forms are available at the Reference Desk.

eo

wl f K no e d g e r Library • You

Book Sale

The City of Falls Church is committed to the letter and spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act.This document will be made available in alternate format upon request. Call 703-248-5003 (TTY 711).

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Thursday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Council Chambers. Committee will review/finalize recommendations to City Council.

Wednesday, April 16 at 7 p.m. in the Training Center. Clarion Associates meeting with Committee to discuss recommendations and technical comments.

Thursday, April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Training Center. Joint City Council/Planning Commission Work Session with Clarion consulting team. Advisory Committee recommendations to City Council/Planning Commission.

Questions or Comments? City of Falls Church, Harry E.Wells Building, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church,VA 22046 703-248-5003 (TTY 711)

in the Circ l

* Indicates TTY 711 Accessibility

provided as a public service by the city of falls church

Mary Riley Styles Public Library

• Jo

Mayor Robin S. Gardner . . . . . . . . . .

Vice Mayor M. R. Lindy Hockenberry . . . .

City Council David C. Chavern . . . . . . . . . .

Harold Lippman. . . . . . . . . . .

Daniel Maller . . . . . . . . . . . . .

David F. Snyder. . . . . . . . . . . .

Daniel X. Sze . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

City Manager Wyatt Shields. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Home Page <www.fallschurchva.gov>

Falls Church, Virginia Learn to Download FREE Audiobooks Monday, April 14, 7 p.m.

National Library Week 2008 Saturday, April 19, 10:30 a.m.

Did you know that you can download 1,600+ audio books through the library’s Web site and then listen to them on your computer or MP3 player for free? Learn how to use this wonderful service during these free demonstrations.To register, stop by the Reference Desk or call 703-248-5035 (TTY 711).

Puppet Show (for ages 3 and older) Wednesday, April 16, 7 p.m.

KayDee Puppets will perform Rumplestiltskin and Noddaberry Good Day. Magic Show Sunday, April 20, 1 p.m.

Children of all ages are invited to see Master Magician Paul Krendl as he performs amazing magical feats.

Party and Raffle Sunday, April 20, 2 p.m.

Join us as we celebrate National Library Week—and you, our amazing patrons. Enjoy refreshments and attend our raffle drawing. All MRS Library cardholders are eligible to enter the raffle.

Raffle Prizes: • 5 MP3 players (compatible with our free downloadable audiobook service!).

The players were donated by the Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust.

Falls Church Recreation & Parks Division 223 Little Falls Street • 3 signed copies of A Virginia Village Goes to Falls Church, VA 22046 War: Falls Church During the Civil War by Bradley E. Gernand.

703-248-5077* Phone Numbers • MRS Library tote bags.

Open Gym/Weather Hotline 703-248-5125* • And other fun items!

Special Events Hotline 703-248-5178* Fine Amnesty Week Fax 703-536-5125 Sunday, April 13-Saturday, April 20 Senior Center 703-248-5020*/21* Mary Riley Styles Public Library is forgiving library Community Center Hours fines for overdue items returned during National Monday-Thursday 8 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.

Library Week!

Friday 8 a.m. - Midnight 8:30 a.m. - Midnight For more information,call 703-248-5030 (TTY 711) or Saturday Sunday Noon - 6 p.m. visit www.falls-church.lib.va.us.

Open Gym Hours The City of Falls Church is committed to the letter and spirit of the American with Disabilities Act. To Open Gym hours are updated on a bi-weekly basis on the Open Gym Hotline, request a reasonable accommodation for any type of and are also posted 703-248-5125*. All hours are subject to change. disability, call 703-248-5030 (TTY 711). * Indicates TTY 711 Accessibility

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 41

ly Focus

Chairman: Craig Cheney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vice Chairman: Ronald Peppe II . . . . . . . . . .

School Board Rosaura Aguerrebere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kathryn Chandler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Susan Kearney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kieran Sharpe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Joan Wodiska. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Superintendent: Dr. Lois Berlin . . . . . . . . . . .

government and the falls church city public schools

April 10-16 , 2008

For more news about the Falls Church City Public Schools visit: www.fccps.org

SCHOOL CALENDAR DATES ARE SubjEcT To chAngE

The Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School Odyssey of the Mind teams won the regional meet in March.

This past weekend, the talented students took their shows on the road to the state competition in Sterling.

Although both teams performed well at the state contest, neither finished in the top three positions to earn an invitation to compete in the Odyssey of the Mind World Competition in May. However, some students plan to attend the competition at the University of Maryland as spectators.

703-536-8638 703-536-7564 703-532-0321 703-536-3130 703-533-1248 703-248-5601*

* Indicates TTY 711 Accessibility

MEH, TJ Embark on State ‘Odyssey’ Challenge

Odyssey of the Mind is a worldwide educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students from kindergarten through high school. Teams are scored on three components of their performance: fulfilling long-term problem requirements, overall style and a spontaneous problem that students are given on competition day.

703-237-6931 703-534-4951

The Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School 7th Grade Odyssey of the Mind team prepares to compete in state competition in Sterling on Saturday, April 8, 2008.

Pictured (bottom) Adam Witzel, (top l to r) Kevin Schmidt, Scott Connuck, John Jacobs, Liam O’Connell, and coach Dave Jacobs.

The Thomas Jefferson Elementary School 4th Grade Odyssey of the Mind team wins the regional Odyssey of the Mind tournament in March. Team members are (front, lr) Carter May, Carolyn Worley, Holden Saberhagen,, Neil Johnston, Justin Trainor, (back, l-r) Vicky-Marie AddoAshong, Annie Ferguson and coach Melissa Dana.

Screenings for Preschool Children

Mason Theatre Tames “Beast”

A Child Find Day is held at Mt. Daniel throughout the school year on the first Wednesday of each month from 1:30-3:30 pm. Parents may have their children screened for suspected delays in speech/language, fine and/or gross motor skills, cognitive abilities and daily living skills. Those children identified as eligible may receive special education services through Falls Church City Public Schools.

Child Find is an opportunity for children with special needs to receive early intervention services. Parents who have concerns regarding the development of their preschool age child (two years old by September 30, 2007) may contact Danielle Clark, Child Find Coordinator, at 703-248-5659 to discuss their concerns and schedule an appointment for the next Child Find Day, Wednesday, May 7th.

Hundreds heard “the most beautiful love story ever told” during the three-night run of Disney’s award winning Broadway musical, Beauty and the Beast, brought to the stage last week by the George Mason High School theatre department.

FCC-TV Spotlight: NASA: Destination Tomorrow Tune in to Falls Church Community Television (FCC-TV) to watch NASA: Destination Tomorrow. This 30-minute program, produced by NASA, focuses on NASA research, including new technologies, advanced aerodynamics, past achievements and medical breakthroughs. Each program gives an inside look at NASA, and demonstrates how its research and technology relates to our everyday lives.

You can watch NASA: Destination Tomorrow on FCC-TV at the following times: • Tuesdays at 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. • Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. • Sundays 1:30 p.m.

FCC-TV airs on Cox Channel 12, Verizon Channel 35 and RCN Channel 2. For a complete schedule of the variety of community programs on FCC-TV, visit www.fcctv.net.

BIE Partner of the Week Karen Waltman Pie-Tanza School involvement: Sponsor of the upcoming Falls Church PTA Home & Garden Tour Why Karen is a BIE partner: “Ed and I are very excited about the opening of our Falls Church location. We are looking forward to becoming part of the Falls Church community. It is our pleasure to support the Elementary PTA and we look forward to participating in more events in the future.”

For more information about sharing your expertise through the BIE Partnership, visit www.fccps.org or contact Marybeth Connelly at connellym@fccps.org.

School content published in The Weekly Focus is written and edited by the Falls Church City Public Schools. For more information, contact the Falls Church City Public Schools Communications Office. Phone: (703) 248-5699 Fax: (703) 248-5613.

Maurice. Students Anna Lathrop and Nicole Patierno choreographed the musical and teacher Pam Spicer directed.

The spring musical featured Joseph Kendra as the one-time spoiled prince turned beast in a spell of ugliness and loneliness cast upon him until he can learn to love a person for who she is, and get her to love him in return before a magical rose loses its petals. Martha Grace Burkey played the part of Belle, a beautiful young girl who feels lonely and misunderstood because she reads books and daydreams of a better life away from her small village.

Other cast members included Reilly O’Hara as Gaston, Nathan Ward as Lumiere, KK Bracken as Cogsworth, and Adam Gann as Belle’s father

The beast, Joseph Kendra, tries to win the heart of Belle, Martha Grace Burkey, in George Mason Theatre’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.”

PTA home & garden Tour Tickets for Sale The Falls Church Elementary PTA Home and Garden Tour is just around the corner, and it offers an inspiring look at historical properties, modern-day homes and magnificent gardens in the City of Falls Church. The annual fundraising project helps support the outdoor classrooms at Mount Daniel and Thomas Jefferson Elementary schools.

This year’s PTA Home and Garden Tour is scheduled for Sunday, May 4th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information and a sneak peek at this year’s homes, or to reserve tickets, visit www.fallschurchpta.org/hgtour.

April now -

4/25 SELP Testing (All Schools) 10 Third Quarter Ends 6:00 p.m. Mason @ Heritage (G Lacrosse) 6:30 p.m. Family Literacy Night (MD) 7:30 p.m. Heritage @ Mason (B Lacrosse) 11 Professional Day (Schools Closed/Day Care Open) 4:00 p.m. Yorktown @ Mason (B Tennis) 4:00 p.m. Mason @ Yorktown (G Tennis) 5:00 p.m. Manassas Park @ Mason (Baseball/Softball) 7:00 p.m. Manassas Park @ Mason (G Soccer) 7:00 p.m. Mason @ Manassas Park (B Soccer) 14 Professional Day (Schools Closed/Day Care Open) 7:00 p.m. Mason @ Broad Run (B Lacrosse) 7:15 p.m. Broad Run @ Mason (G Lacrosse) 7:30 p.m. Gifted and Talented Adv. Committee (GM) 15-24 SOL VAAP, VGLA & VSEP Testing (TJ/MEH/GM) 15 4th Quarter Begins 5:30 p.m. Mason @ Madison Co. (G Soccer) 7:00 p.m. Mason @ Madison Co. (Baseball/Softball) 7:00 p.m. Madison Co. @ Mason (B Soccer) 16 7:00 p.m. Elementary PTA (TJ) 5:00 p.m. Mason @ Clarke County (Track) 5:30 p.m. Briar Woods @ Mason (G Soccer) 17 5:00 p.m. Mason @ Clarke Co. (G Tennis) 7:15 p.m. Mason @ Potomac Falls (G Lacrosse) 7:30 p.m. Potomac Falls @ Mason (B Lacrosse) 7:30 p.m. 5th-7th Grade Chorus Concert (MEH) 18 7:30 p.m. Fashion Show (GM) (MD) Mt. Daniel Elementary (TJ) Thomas Jefferson Elementary (MEH) Mary Ellen Henderson Middle (GM) George Mason High Check the FCCPS Web site for more calendar information. www.fccps.org

Participate in the 2008 Triennial School Census Falls Church City residents should now have received in the mail information regarding the 2008 Triennial School Census of children.

The census count is conducted every three years by state mandate, and the data are used to determine how much sales tax revenue should be returned to local communities. Even if residents don’t have children, it is important that they respond to the census to ensure a complete count that includes all households.

Residents may respond by: • Returning the form by mail • Faxing the form to 703-248-5613 (be sure to include both sides of the form) • Responding online at www.fccps.org/census Completing the triennial school census form takes less than five minutes of your time, but means thousands of dollars for local schools.

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 42

BACK IN THE DAY dog. lazy ick qu The fox sly p e d j u m the over dog. lazy is the w No for all time cows od go me to to coaid of the pastheir Now ture.

15 s Yearo Ag

time is the all for cows good me to to coaid of the pastheir Now ture. time is the all for cows good me to to coaid of the their.

15 & 10 YEARS AGO Falls Church News-Press Vol III, No. 4 • April 15, 1993

Hull Seeks Re-election “Virginia State Delegate Bob Hull stood on the steps of the Falls Church City Hall with his wife, Lauren and son Kerry to announce his candidacy for re-election in this November election.”

“Hull was the only Democrat to file for the position, so he will automatically be on the ballet as the Democratic nominee this November.”

“No Republican has yet announced an intention to challenge Hull for the seat.”

Helen Thomas Continued from Page 10

When Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told him: “What you have given to your chain of command is a plan which has no end to it.”

The general replied: “Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year.”

Congress should wake up before it’s too late and listen to retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency.

NSA is the nation’s largest intelligence agency which monitors messages from all over the world.

Odom testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and urged an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He claimed the troop surge (escalation) has prolonged instability in Iraq and that the only “sensible strategy” is “rapid withdrawal.”

In a separate speech last week, the outspoken general said, “We are certainly to blame for the chaos in Iraq” but “we do not have the physical means to prevent it.”

Odom said the military situation in Iraq is worsened by “the proliferation of armed groups

IN THE

NEWS-P PREESS

Falls Church News-Press Vol VIII, No. 5 • April 16, 1998

It is now the time for all good to go cows to aid of the p a s their ture . * * * Throw * * Pour it up. it up

CRITTER CORNER 10 Year s Ago

It is now the time for all good to go cows to aid of the p a s their ture . * * * * * Throw Pour it it up. up

Making A Point “Falls Church School Board members sat together in the front row facing the City Council at Monday’s first hearing on the FY99 budget and in a brief silent demonstration..” “(members) held up copies of the March 26 edition of the FCNP with its headline, “George Mason HS Ranked First in Metro Area for Challenging Students” to remind Council members of why the School Boards’ recommended budget should be adopted.”

under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.”

“We are witnessing. . . the road to Balkanization of Iraq, that is political fragmentation,” Odom said War makes strange bed fellows.

The Sunnis are now on our side -- if we continue to pay them enough, of course. They would be happy to see the U.S. attack Shiite-dominated Iran. Odom said those new-found friends threaten to defect unless their fees are increased.

“The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al-Qaida if we withdraw is utter nonsense, “ Odom said. “The Sunnis will destroy al-Qaida if we leave Iraq,” he added. “The Kurds will not allow them in their region and the Shiites “detest” al-Qaida, he said.

Although the U.S. economic recession is expected to dominate the presidential election race, Iraq

won’t be on the back burner if the Petraeus hearings are any guide.

The three presidential hopefuls -- Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and Barack Obama, D-Ill. -- showed up at the high-profile hearings where Petraeus testified.

As expected, staunch-war supporter McCain said any promise to withdraw U.S. forces “would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”

In their disappointing comments, the Democratic rivals were as cautious as Petraeus.

Clinton said “it’s time to begin an orderly withdrawal of our troops.”

Obama told Petraeus that while he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, he “would not initiate a precipitous withdrawal.”

Ohio’s GOP Sen. George Voinovich seemed to express the frustration best when he told Petraeus: “The American people have had it up to here.”

QUESTIONINGLY LOOKING at her owners Paul Baker and Jen Marquardt, Nora shows off her pretty pink collar, wondering if there is any food behind the camera lens. Last December, Nora was adopted from Friends of Homeless Animals (FOHA) and given a forever home to share with her friends, another FOHA dog Kozmo and cat Bowie. Nora loves walks, partly due to the fact that they give her an opportunity to eat anything and everything her little nose can sniff out! Even acorns make the cut on her delicacy list, as she scoops them up and starts crunching.

Here Nora is seen visiting Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, where it is said the most delicious acorns are grown.

If you would like to see your pet here, e-mail us at crittercorner@fcnp.com or send a picture and short description to Falls Church News-Press c/o Critter Corner, 450 W. Broad St., Suite 321, Falls Church, VA 22046.

Visit FCNP.COM today!

Book Sale

© 2008 Hearst Newspapers

s ain

g

r Ba

tion ion c i F ict F Non

April 11-12 Fri. April 11...9 am-9 pm Sat. April 12...9 am-4 pm Hours: Mon, Tue, Thur and Fri (By Appt.)

Falls Church Community Center. 223 Little Falls Street Falls Church AAUW - Benefits women’s scholarships

New Home-Falls Church City Open House on Sunday, April 13, 2008.

Since 1968 Julie Tran, D.D.S.

William Dougherty III, D.D.S.

DID YOU KNOW THAT GUM DISEASE IS A RISK FACTOR FOR HEART DISEASE? Caring For Your Gums Can Help You Avoid More Serious Health Problems.

Call Our Office Today To Find Out More!

General, Cosmetic & Implant Dentistry

Across from City Hall 200 Little Falls St., Ste. 506

703.532.3300

Falls Church, VA 22046

Four bedrooms, family room, rec room, and three full baths. Stainless Steel Kitchen w/Grantite. Hardwood Floors on two levels. Large Master bedroom w/ Walk-In Closets. Master bathroom w/Granite and Whirlpool Tub. Walking distance to Metro.

Convenient areas to all major commuter routes. Priced to sell at only $749,900.

A Cobras quality home. 712 Northwest Street.

571.643.6601 Ask for Peter

April 10 - 16, 2008

Page 43

Just because you’re not famous doesn’t mean your pet can’t be!

Snap a pic of your critter and email it to: CRITTERCORNER@FCNP.COM OR mail it to Critter Corner c/o Falls Church News-Press 450 W. Broad Street #321 Falls Church, Va 22046

Page 44

April 10 - 16, 2008

Ju

edu R st

Wonderful Dunn Loring/Tysons Townhouse - Just Reduced

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This gem is in tip-top condition. Hurry! $620,000 See Floor Plan and pictures at www.kayes.com

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