Falls Church News-Press 5-19-2022

May 19 - 25, 2022

Fa lls Chur c h, V i r g i ni a • ww w. fc np. c om • Fr ee

Fou n d e d 1991 • Vol. X X XII No. 14

The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia

66 Signatures Set West F.C. 10 Acres In Motion

Preparing For The New

Groundbreaking of City’s Biggest Project Today

by Nicholas F. Benton

Falls Church News-Press

In a complex signing event at the Falls Church City Hall last Friday, the long-awaited 99-year lease on the 10 acres of land at the City’s west end between the City, the City’s Economic Development Authority and the West Falls Partners group of EYA, Regency and Hoffman Associates was completed. Over 66 documents were signed in the morning-long event at the F.C. City Hall.

City Manager Wyatt Shields, City Attorney Carol McKoskrey and F.C. Economic Development Authority (EDA) chief Bob Young wore out their signing hands and maybe a pen or two in the culmination of a decadeslong process such that construction on the site is now due to commence.

In recognition of that, a formal groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for today (Thursday,

Continued on Page 4

ONE OF FALLS CHURCH’S more iconic landmarks, the four story old Robertson Building at the City’s central intersection at N. Washington (Rt. 29) and E Broad (Rt. 7) is coming down now, and the old Applebee’s building behind it is already gone. It’ll take a bit, but what will come in their place is going to be fabulous. (Photo: Dan Lehman).

Meridian Theater Receives 9 Cappie Nominations

by Amanda Snead

Falls Church News-Press

Meridian High School recently received nine Cappie nominations for their production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [Revised].”

Nominations include best play, best ensemble in a play, best male role in a play, best female role in a play and more.

According to their website, the Cappies are “a writing and awards program that trains high school theatre and journalism students to be expert writers,

critical thinkers, and leaders.”

Meridian is a member of the Cappies of the National Capital Area. Each participating school selects a show to attend where they have pre, mid and post-show discussions about the performance and write reviews based on

both technical and performance aspects of the production. The best written reviews are then sent to local news outlets as well as the school that put on the performance.

“My favorite part of my

Continued on Page 9

Inside This Week Celebrating Dark Sky Week in Northern VA

New Exhibit Now Open At Falls Church Arts

See Story, Page 10

See Photos, Page 14

Dark Sky Week took place at the end of April with many local observatories getting involved. This takes place just a few months before the James Webb Telescope is set to complete set-up.

Falls Church Arts has opened their Black and White show this week with a variety of B&W art in different mediums including photography, paintings and photographs.

The show is open until June 26.

Index

Comment...................................... 5,7,8 Editorial................................................ 6 Letters.................................................. 6 Crime Report....................................... 8 Business News.................................. 12 News & Notes..............................16,17 Calendar......................................18,19 Classifieds......................................... 20 Critter Corner..................................... 22 FCCPS Page..................................... 23

PAGE 2 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

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NEWS BRIEFS F.C. Council, Housing Group Mull Home Ownership Terms The Falls Church City Council held a joint work session with the City’s Housing Commission this Monday with a focus on how to move ahead with an Amazon 2 Reach grant of $3.4 million dedicated to advancing affordable housing in the City. The funds will be put to the uses of extending the affordable housing subsidies at the Read Building, 402 W. Broad, for another 10 years and advancing an affordable housing ownership program for up to 18 properties.

Disagreements arose between some Council members and the D.C.-based non-profit NHP Foundation dedicated to preserving affordable housing that signed an agreement to work with the Housing Commission in February. At the point a homeowner in the program choses to sell a unit, the question arose over whether the proceeds from the sale should be split between the homeowner and the City at an 80-20 ratio, or 75-25. The latter would afford more for the City to recoup its investments in the maintenance and upgrade of the home.

The Council is expected to vote on the terms at its next business meeting.

Governor May Veto F.C. Bill To Expand Board Memberships Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin initially vetoed a bill that passed both houses of the state legislature unanimously that was requested by the City of Falls Church to permit volunteers to serve on City boards and commissions if they are not City residents. The legislature offered two new amendments to the bill last month and the governor now has until the end of next week to confirm his veto.

So reported State Del. Marcus Simon, who represents Falls Church, in remarks to the monthly luncheon of the F.C. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday. The politically spilt legislature and governor are expected to reconvene on June 1 to settle residual differences on the state budget, including on how the governor’s push for a grocery tax cut will be funded.

Eden Center Recognized By Va. Historical Commission The Virginia Historical Commission (VHC) has recognized Vietnamese immi-

grants in Northern Virginia as a significant part of Virginia history by awarding the Eden Center an Official Virginia Historical Marker. The designation honors Vietnamese Immigrants in Northern Virginia as an important and educational part of local history.

A dedication ceremony to commemorate the event will be held Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at Eden Center at 3:30 p.m.

Speakers for the afternoon will include Mayor David Tarter, Trinh Nguyen Mau, Chairman of the Vietnamese Senior Citizen’s Association, and Alan B. Frank, Sr. VP and General Counsel of Capital Commercial Properties, Inc. The Eden Center will host the ceremony and welcomes the public to share in and witness this exciting historical event.

“The Official Virginia Historical Marker program helps bring attention to community treasures and the importance of their preservation,” said Douglas Ebenstein, President and Chairman of the Board of Eden Center, Inc., and Capital Commercial Properties, Inc. “Awareness and education are among the best ways to guarantee the preservation of history. This designation is a tool that will increase public awareness of important cultural resources, like Eden Center.”

Creative Cauldron Wins Roberts Fund Grant Falls Church’s Creative Cauldron was recently awarded a 2022 Ross Roberts Fund for the Arts grant from the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia. The grant will fund a new bi-lingual teaching artist staff position, helping Creative Cauldron expand its program outreach to Spanish-speaking families and patrons in its service area.

Creative Cauldron Founder and Producing Artistic Director Laura Connors Hull commented on the impact that the grant will have on the organization: “This Ross Roberts Grant will help us begin an exciting new chapter in our history.

Through it we will be able to better serve Spanish-speaking families by providing bilingual programming. We celebrate the rich diversity of stories and culture that flourish in our Northern Virginia community.”

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 3

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PAGE 4 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

99 Year Lease Signed On 10 Acre Project in Falls Church Continued from Page 1

May 19). It marks one of the biggest days among many in the City of Falls Church’s history. It not only signals the start of construction of multiple mixed-use components on the land, but it also the start of what will expand beyond those 10 acres to include adjacent land now occupied

by Virginia Tech and WMATA at the West Falls Church Metro station site, a combined total of over 40 acres all being planned for extensive development.

It is noted that, put together, the new developed area will be bigger and more consequential than the Mosaic project in Merrifield.

Construction of a boulevard through the center of all three parcels connecting Route 7 to the West Falls Church Metro station is expected to begin soon. It will be known as the West Falls Station Boulevard.”

The signings last week insure, among other things, that the funding will be there to pay for Falls Church’s new $120 million Meridian High School campus at no cost to City taxpayers.

It brings the combined projects, and the City of Falls Church, into

the middle of the wider Northern Virginia tech and higher education boom led by the decision of Amazon to locate its second national headquarters (HQ2) just down the road.

That move played a big part in last week’s announcement by Boeing that it will move its headquarters from Chicago to this immediate area, and a lot more.

Now, according to a market impact study published last month, the area has a whopping eight million square feet of new office space in the pipeline, with an anticipated 9,000 new jobs, all over and above Amazon’s plans.

In response to last Friday’s signing and today’s groundbreaking, the F.C. City Hall issued a statement saying that “10 years of thoughtful, deliberate planning, negotiations, and community input led to the signing of the 99 year ground lease for the West Falls project. The payments – in large amounts in two phases, then in smaller amounts for 99 years — will finance the completed high school project.”

F.C. developer Bob Young, chair of the EDA who was in on all the signings last week, also issued a statement,

He wrote, “On behalf of the City Council and the Economic Development Authority, this past Friday morning I was extraordinarily pleased to sign my name 66 times to the documents needed to implement the West End Project.

“This is truly a monumental event for our Little City, and when linked with the prospective development of the adjacent Virginia Tech and Metro sites, will have an enormously beneficial effect on our community for years to come. Among other things, for example, the Project will generate a large scale expansion of places to go and things to do, prompt a significant increase in affordable housing units, and spur a major decrease over time in the tax rate.

“In celebrating this milestone achievement, I think it is important to likewise acknowledge the extraordinary contributions on the part of many, many people over the years of effort it took to bring it about. While it’s not possible to name them all, they were an integral part of literally hundreds of public meetings that included virtually all of our Boards and Commissions, the City Council, and scores of community members.

Among these many meetings, the

CITY OF FALLS CHURCH OFFICIALS who participated in the lease signing for the 10 acres at the City’s west end were (left to right), City Manager Wyatt Shields, City Attorney Carol McCoskrie, and Chair of the Economic Development Authority Bob Young. (C������� P����). visioning session held by the Urban Land Institute, at the urging of the City’s Community Planning and Economic Development Director, Jim Snyder, needs to be singled out.

At this key event, participants laid out the collective vision for how the 10 acre property might be developed, which is about to become a reality.

“In addition, great credit should go to City Manager, Wyatt Shields and City Attorney, Carol McCoskrie, and their staffs for their dedicated and tireless efforts over the last two

years to help make this all happen.

Likewise, I want to acknowledge the role played by Falls Church News Press Owner/Publisher Nick Benton, who for more than 30 years has advocated for sensible commercial development in the City and, most recently, for this Project in particular.

“In closing, let me again express my thanks to everyone mentioned above and the hundreds of others who volunteered their time and effort to bring the West End Project to this important point.”

Public Open House: Friday, 5/20 from 4-7 PM | Saturday, 5/21 & Sunday, 5/22 from 1-4 PM

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Commentary

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 5

TikTok May Be More Dangerous Than It Looks Ezra Klein

NEW YORK TIMES

At the core of the frenzied interest in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is an intuition that I think is right: The major social media platforms are, in some hard-to-define way, essential to modern life.

Call them town squares. Call them infrastructure. They exist in some nether region between public utility and private concern. They are too important to entrust to billionaires and businesses, but that makes them too dangerous to hand over to governments. We have not yet found a satisfying answer to the problem of their ownership and governance. But some arrangements are more worrying than others. There are fates worse than Musk.

TikTok, as we know it today, is only a few years old. But its growth is like nothing we’ve seen before. In 2021, it had more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, more site visits than Google. The app is best known for viral dance trends, but there was a time when Twitter was 140-character updates about lunch orders and Facebook was restricted to elite universities. Things change.

Perhaps they have already changed. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at a Presbyterian college in South Carolina, and asked some of the students where they liked to get their news. Almost every one said TikTok. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. And Chinese companies are vulnerable to the whims and the will of the Chinese government.

There is no possible ambiguity on this point: The Chinese Communist Party spent much of the last year cracking down on its tech sector. They made a particular example out of Jack Ma, the highflying founder of Alibaba. The message was unmistakable: CEOs will act in accordance with party wishes or see their lives upended and their companies dismembered.

In August 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order insisting that TikTok sell itself to an American firm or be banned in the United States. By the fall, ByteDance was looking for a buyer, with Oracle and Walmart the likeliest suitors, but then Joe Biden won the election and the sale was shelved.

In June, Biden replaced Trump’s executive order, which was sloppily written and being successfully challenged in court, with one of his own.

The problem, as Biden’s order defines it, is that apps like TikTok “can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including United States persons’ personal information and proprietary business information. This data collection threatens to provide foreign adversaries with access to that information.”

Let’s call this the data espionage problem. Apps like TikTok collect data from users. That data could be valuable to foreign governments. That’s why the Army and Navy banned TikTok from soldiers’ work phones, and why Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a bill to ban it on all government devices.

TikTok is working on an answer: “Project Texas,” a plan to host data for U.S. customers on U.S. servers, and somehow restrict access by its parent company. But as Emily BakerWhite of BuzzFeed News writes in an excellent report, “Project Texas appears to be primarily an exercise in geography, one that seems well positioned to address concerns about the Chinese government accessing Americans’ personal information. But it does not address other ways that China could weaponize the platform, like tweaking TikTok algorithms to increase exposure to divisive content, or adjusting the platform to seed or encourage disinformation campaigns.”

Let’s call this the manipulation problem. TikTok’s real power isn’t over our data. It’s over what users watch and create. It’s over the opaque algorithm that governs what gets

Continued on Page 7

Our Man in Arlington

By Charlie Clark

Our citizenry harbors an unquantifiable demand for a special nostalgic item: souvenirs in the form of now-removed street signs for the old Lee Highway.

In the 10 months since the county board changed the century-old road to Langston Blvd., transportation staff have received several requests for the objects from 74 intersections now sitting in storage. “I’ve been a resident on Lee Highway (now Langston Boulevard) at three different addresses since 1994,” Tom Wolfe, active on the Plan Langston Boulevard initiative, told me. “I have lived at my current address for 23 years. I’d like to have a Lee Highway sign to remember what five miles of Arlington was called for almost a century.”

Sorry, says the county. “Following their removal in February, a number of the `Lee’ street signs were put in storage at the Center for Local History,” said county spokesman Benjamin Aiken. “The center does not have an immediate plan for future use. Several signs were provided to the Arlington Historical Society. We did field inquiries by the public. However, given the potential for the signs to be used in ways the county may not support, the decision was made not to satisfy individual requests.”

Given continuing resistance to the name change from traditionalists and defenders of Robert E. Lee, the county appears worried some might post the signs to protest. That could cause confusion given the ongoing mélange of labels on the

thoroughfare. If you drive by N. Woodstock St. and the also-renamed Cherry Hill Rd. (formerly Old Lee Highway), you see three apartment house signs still labeled Lee Highway: Lorcom House, Balmoral and Oak Crest.

The eight green Virginia Department of Transportation signs on I-66 still say Lee Highway.

(VDOT says they are working with Arlington on the change.) And the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is sitting on a December recommendation from a Confederate Names Task Force to remove Lee’s name from that county’s Lee Highway and Lee-Jackson Highway. (One candidate: Langston Boulevard.)

Meanwhile, those upset by the demotion of Lee might study up on the abolitionist lawyer, academic pioneer and Congressman John M. Langston. True, his direct connection to Arlington is minor. I scanned his autobiography and the 2017 biography by Linda Salisbury and found only three references. Mercer lived in what then was Alexandria County beginning in 1867 as inspector general for the War Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. That brought him to the village on what was Arlington House land, but his larger charge took him to several states.

He was sworn in 1885 as president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute by a justice of the peace in Old Town.

In 1925, Arlington named Langston Elementary School more because of the Virginia-born African-American’s general accomplishments. As author Wilma Jones

reports in “Halls Hill: More Than a Neighborhood,” our school board in November 1969 was scolded for racial bias by United Black Front leader Rev. Douglas Moore. He asked board members whether they knew who Langston was. Each replied no. *** On May 7, citizens of Green Valley gathered to dedicate John Robinson Jr. Town Square.

The five-year $3.25 million remake of the park in this historically black community created a peaceful rock garden with plantings, benches and open water drainage. The dominant vertical is the FREED sculpture, built from interconnected “slave badges” recalling emancipated blacks from nearby Freedman’s Village.

During my visit an AfricanAmerican man was immersed in conversation with an Asian-American mom and her two toddlers. *** A wonderful biographical tribute to my Arlington Historical Society colleague Gerry Haines is posted on the website www.arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org.

The 79-year-old Ph.D. who died April 8 had a stellar career as an archivist at the National Archives, the National Security Agency, the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office.

A sought-after lecturer, Gerry became a TV personality clarifying the government’s explanations of UFO sightings, reported his friend and neighbor retired Arlington Treasurer Frank O’Leary.

An athlete as a youth in Detroit, Gerry was also a force in his N. Highland St. neighborhood and a preservation activist for our history group.

PAGE 6 | MAY 19 - 25. 2022

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Vol. XXXII, No. 14 May 19 - 25, 2022 • City of Falls Church ‘Business of the Year’ 1991 & 2001 • • Certified by the Commonwealth of Virginia to Publish Official Legal Notices • • Member, Virginia Press Association •

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A New Public Carousel, Please!

Yes, it is another ceremonial hard-hat donning and shiny shovel in the pre-placed dirt pile combination media photo-op and community wide celebration that is scheduled for this morning (May 19) in the City of Falls Church, this one signaling commencement the biggest project yet, the 10 acres where the City’s old high school used to sit. As we can see from the photo on Page One of this edition, this comes as the demolition of the Broad and Washington site is still underway following a similar event hosted by the Insight Property Group there just a couple weeks ago. And still, these are neither the beginning or end of it.

Approvals by the F.C. City Council are nearing for a Founders Row 2 project catty corner to Founders Row 1, still under construction even as folks have begun to move into apartments there, and the One City Center project catty corner to the Insight project at Broad and Washington. Smaller infill projects, such as a new future for the property where the old Stratford Motor Lodge is now boarded up, and more are also sprinkled about the City. Do we need to delineate all of them that have sprouted up since 2002, once the City began to realize that such developments restricted to its commercially-zoned corridors, was good for paying for quality education for the City’s youths. That has been the case so much so that the City recently completed its new $120 million high school without it having cost local taxpayers a dime, even as the City Council was able to lop a whopping nine cents off its residential real estate rate this spring to help offset the region’s booming rise in assessed real estate values.

Not just Falls Church, although the City has been among the first jurisdictions to go down this path, but now the entire Northern Virginia region, inclusive of the jurisdictions of Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Falls Church, are making huge gains as corporate giant Amazon chose the region for its second headquarters over stiff competition from other areas. As those other areas, including New York and Boston, ran into pressures from their locals to put heavy restrictions on an Amazon move to those areas, Northern Virginia won over Amazon, and not the least because, with initiative from the little but aggressive City of F.C. for over two decades, a predisposition for smart growth, and with it high quality educational opportunities, made it the most attractive.

The News-Press has learned that City economic development leaders are reporting many more major development opportunities for Falls Church, too.

There should be no letting up on this push to make the region enjoy a trend-setting cultural, educational and smart growth-led true New Renaissance.

In this context, the News-Press favors a charming new public carousel to be placed on the grounds between the west and east-bound lanes of the soon-to-be constructed new West Falls Station Boulevard. Please.

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F.C. Chamber Says Thanks

Editor, The Greater Falls Church Chamber and its members are grateful that the proposed Commercial and Industrial Tax (C&I) failed.

Passage would have had significant ramifications for our community — a ripple effect hurting our businesses, services and ultimately Falls Church families.

Businesses in Falls Church have struggled – valiantly – for the past two-plus years, adapting and responding to the global pandemic.

We continue our struggles daily as our members navigate labor shortages, supply chain challenges, and the threat of lost income from fewer office rentals and nonrenewal of leases. The Chamber exists to protect our businesses and our families, and to safeguard the business-friendly reputation we’ve fostered that makes Falls Church such an attractive place for new businesses to locate. Now is certainly not the time for a new tax, nor the foreseeable future. Our membership overwhelmingly agreed – and enthusiastically engaged to help defeat the proposal.

The Chamber appreciates the support we received from Mayor Tarter and the City Council, as well as the thoughtful briefing from City Manager Wyatt Shields. While the C&I Tax could have become a new revenue source for the city, we heard loud and clear from our community that it would hurt our businesses.

Thankfully, our elected officials heard us. The road to economic recovery may yet be long, but we have one less obstacle.

Elise Neil Bengtson, Executive Director, Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce Emily Jenkins, Greater Falls Church Chamber Board of Directors Falls Church

Spreading WS Awareness Editor, May is Williams syndrome (WS) awareness month. As a parent of a young child with WS, it has become a mission for our family to spread awareness, raise funds and promote inclusion of people with WS and others with special needs in general.

WS is a rare genetic condition that can affect anyone. The incidence is 1 in 10,000 with approximately

30,000 Americans having WS. It occurs when there is a spontaneous deletion of 26 to 28 genes on chromosome 7. One of the missing genes is the elastin gene, which confers elasticity to organs and tissues. As a result, people with WS can have cardiovascular issues, developmental and learning challenges (including non-verbal learning disabilities). At the same time, they have extraordinary gifts, including hypersociability, an affinity for music and striking language skills.

Our family had never heard of WS before our son’s diagnosis, as the non-invasive prenatal testing and ultrasound evaluations did not indicate concerns. Our cardiologist, one of the many specialists, whom our son now sees for regular monitoring, diagnosed WS based on mild stenosis and unique facial features (i.e. puffiness around the eyes, a stellate iris pattern, full lips and long philtrum). His diagnosis was confirmed with a FISH test and microarray when he was around 6 weeks old.

According to the National Institutes of Health, there are more than 7,000 rare diseases. Therefore, it is currently impossible to test for every possible condition known to exist.

Ironically, my father, Jouni Uitto, M.D., Ph.D. who was knighted by his home country of Finland last summer for his contributions to genetic research and therapy, was one of the first researchers to clone and identify mutations in the elastin gene. When asked about WS, he said “while there is considerable variability in the severity of the disease, people with WS are delightful, joyful, endearing and deserving of support.”

Our son is thriving due to the love and support from family, friends, teachers and healthcare professionals. We are deeply grateful to the Williams Syndrome Association (WSA), which will have its biannual conference this summer in Schaumberg, IL. I volunteer as a Family Support Specialist for the WSA. To learn more about WS, donate or find resources, please go to: williams-syndrome.org.

Jess Iverson Falls Church

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Editor’s Essay

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MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 7

As a Nation, We Can No Longer Tolerate the GOP’s Lies Nicholas F. Benton FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS

In a backhanded congratulations to the pro-Trump winners of the GOP primaries this Tuesday, the Democratic N a t i o n a l Committee issued a statement assuring them that they will be inundated with the following questions between now and this November’s midterm elections: Do you believe Donald Trump’s Big Lie and do you support his calls to still overturn the 2020 election?

Do you support an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest?

Do you support the current Republican plan that could end the guarantee of Social Security and Medicare and raise taxes on half of

Americans?

Do you support making Donald Trump’s tax giveaways to billionaires permanent?

This editor will be eager to report the answers to these questions often during the course of this year’s important election campaigns.

Already, Republicans are not happy that news organizations are reminding readers where their party stands on abortions without exceptions and the racist “replacement theory” so enthusiastically promoted by the likes of Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

Just this week, the Associated Press, the Insider, the Rolling Stone, the New York Times and National Public Radio took heavy hits at the racist and sexist nature of the policies GOP candidates have committed to.

The Associated Press reported this: “Several mainstream Republican Senate candidates are drawing on the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory once confined to the far-right fringes of U.S. politics to court voters this campaign season,

promoting the baseless notion that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in America.”

The Insider reported as follows: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said racism in all its forms is ‘abhorrent’ but sidestepped questions about his party’s association with the so-called replacement theory at his weekly press conference at the Capitol on Tuesday.

McConnell was speaking just days after a white man shot and killed 10 people in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York.”

The Rolling Stone wrote this: “Elise Stefanik is the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. She is a member of the party’s leadership, in other words, elevated last year by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. She’s also one of a growing contingent of conservatives who have brushed up against the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, a white supremacist tenet holding that white people are being replaced by people of color and, politically speaking, that

Democrats are deliberately trying to flood the U.S. with immigrants in order to gain an electoral advantage.

The mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday was inspired by the great replacement, but that didn’t keep Stefanik from continuing to push the idea that Democrats are trying to replace white people with people of color.”

The New York Times reported this: “Yet in recent months, versions of the same ideas, sanded down and shorn of explicitly antiBlack and antisemitic themes, have become commonplace in the Republican Party — spoken aloud at congressional hearings, echoed in Republican campaign advertisements and embraced by a growing array of right-wing candidates and media personalities.”

National Public Radio said this: “The ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory isn’t fringe anymore, it’s mainstream.”

Indeed, this shows a promising trend, that news organizations are becoming more and more likely to

tell the public what this racist, sexist stuff really represents. Much more of that is required to ensure the public isn’t duped and subjected to more big lies going into this November.

After all, responsible reporting requires that truth enters into the equation in a central way. It is not just a question of repeating what liars say. It is necessary that falsehoods be called out and actual realities set in their place.

Having the media, or the Internet, be a passive receptor of lies has been the biggest problem the nation has had at least since 2015. There are always people lying and deceiving, but it has been the historic role of the media to monitor and report lies and deceptions as such and not to condone them to stand unchallenged.

There is no question but that free societies have been targets of the worst forms of lying and fakery by their enemies, strategic and otherwise, in a relentless assault.

We all can no longer abdicate our responsibility.

Commentary

TikTok May Be More Dangerous Than It Looks Continued from Page 5

seen and what doesn’t.

TikTok has been thick with videos backing the Russian narrative on the war in Ukraine.

Media Matters, for instance, tracked an apparently coordinated campaign driven by 186 Russian TikTok influencers who normally post beauty tips, prank videos and fluff. And we know that China has been amplifying Russian propaganda worldwide. How comfortable are we with not knowing whether the Chinese Communist Party decided to weigh in on how the algorithm treats these videos? How comfortable will we be with a similar situation in five years, when TikTok is even more entrenched in the lives of Americans, and the company has freedom it may not feel today to operate as it pleases?

Imagine a world in which the United States has a contested presidential election, as it did in 2020 (to say nothing of 2000).

If one candidate was friendlier to Chinese interests, might the Chinese Communist Party insist

that ByteDance give a nudge to content favoring that candidate?

Or if they wanted to weaken America rather than shape the outcome, maybe TikTok begins serving up more and more videos with election conspiracies, sowing chaos at a moment when the country is near fracture.

None of this is far-fetched.

We know that TikTok’s content moderation guidelines clamped down on videos and topics at the Chinese government’s behest, though it says its rules have changed since then. We know that other foreign countries — Russia comes to mind — have used American social networks to drive division and doubt.

It is telling that China sees such dangers as obvious enough to have built a firewall against them internally: They’ve banned Facebook and Google and Twitter and, yes, TikTok. ByteDance has had to manage a different version of the app, known as Douyin, for Chinese audiences, one that abides by the rules of Chinese censors.

China has long seen these platforms as potential weapons. As

China’s authoritarian turn continues, and as relations between our countries worsen, it is not far-fetched to suspect they might do unto us what they have always feared we would do unto them.

“No analogies are perfect, but the closest analogy I can think of is to imagine if the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union had decided to plow some of its oil export profits into buying up broadcast television stations across the U.S.,” my former colleague Matthew Yglesias wrote in his newsletter, Slow Boring.

“The FCC wouldn’t have let them. And if the FCC for some reason did let them, the Commerce Department would have blocked it. And if a judge said the Commerce Department was wrong and control over the information ecosystem didn’t meet the relevant national security standard, Congress would have passed a new law.”

As analogies go, I think that’s a good starting point. But if the Soviet Union had bought up local television stations across the nation, we’d know they

had done it, and there’d be an understanding of what those stations were, and what they were attempting, just as was true with Russia Today. The propaganda would be known as propaganda.

TikTok’s billion users don’t think they’re looking at a Chinese government propaganda operation because, for the most part, they’re not. They’re watching makeup tutorials and recipes and lip sync videos and funny dances.

But that would make it all the more powerful a propaganda outlet, if deployed. And because each TikTok feed is different, we have no real way of knowing what people are seeing. It would be trivially easy to use it to shape or distort public opinion, and to do so quietly, perhaps untraceably.

In all of this, I’m suggest-

ing a simple principle, albeit one that will not be simple to apply: Our collective attention is important. Whoever (or whatever) controls our attention controls, to a large degree, our future. The social media platforms that hold and shape our attention need to be governed in the public interest. That means knowing who’s truly running them and how they’re running them.

I’m not sure which of the social network owners currently clear that bar. But I’m certain ByteDance doesn’t. On this, Donald Trump was right, and the Biden administration should finish what he started.

By Ezra Klein © 2022 The New York Times

CO MME NT

PAGE 8 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

A Penny for Your Thoughts

News of Greater Falls Church

By Supervisor Penny Gross

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s purported draft opinion supporting overturn of Roe v. Wade has significant constitutional implications for women, their families, and their health care providers. Curiously, in Fairfax County, other provisions of the U. S. Constitution came into play last week when Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors, requesting that the police establish expanded security perimeters around the homes of the three Justices who reside in Fairfax County. The governor’s letter also stated his “fundamental belief that demonstrations and picketing should not be allowed at the Justices’ homes as they are meant to intimidate and influence the Justices, not to mention, scaring their families and small children.”

Board Chairman Jeff McKay, in his response, noted that both “pro-life and pro-choice gatherings have occurred at Justice Alito’s home, and on both occasions, the groups peacefully assembled for a matter of minutes and self-dispersed without incident.” Governor Youngkin should know better. When he took the oath of office as Virginia’s governor in January, Mr. Youngkin swore to “support the Constitution of the United States.” Yet, as Chairman McKay pointed out, the governor’s request to establish a security perimeter that “limited unauthorized vehicle and pedestrian access to neighborhoods surrounding the Justices’ homes is paramount to a checkpoint that federal courts have held violates the Fourth Amendment.” Additionally, the First Amendment guarantees the exercise of freedom of speech and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

By virtue of geography, Fairfax County is home to many federal officials and their families, and our police officers are well-trained and experienced in keeping everyone – officials, their families, affected neighborhoods, and demonstrators safe – regardless of the political opinions espoused by anyone or any group. That’s the way democracy and our Constitution are supposed to work, despite the efforts of some elected officials to

rescind basic principles.

The firestorm that was created by the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion was not unexpected. Women’s reproductive health has been under attack for decades, and the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirmed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, and a later decision affirmed that her privacy rights are constitutionally protected.

Years before Roe, I remember a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt to my hometown in March of 1959. As a young Catholic high school student, I attended her speech at MacArthur Court (the University of Oregon’s basketball arena at that time) and was rather stunned that this famous mother of six supported “birth control.”

She didn’t offer much more detail, as she focused on the United Nations, universal human rights, and population control, especially the latter since global crop failures and political unrest were contributing to worldwide famines.

Mrs. Roosevelt was right. The first prescription contraceptives weren’t approved by the Federal Drug Administration until the following year, and the choice to have an abortion was rarely mentioned in those days. In Connecticut, the ancient Comstock Law of 1873 prevented prescribing, or sending through the mails, any contraceptive device or providing materials for the wife’s use to prevent pregnancy (I couldn’t find anything in that case that mentioned proscriptions on devices for husband’s usage); that law wasn’t overturned by the Supreme Court until 1965. I was working in the United States Senate when Roe was decided; it was another step in the long history of fighting for women’s rights in this country. For nearly 50 years, women have relied on the protections of Roe to make their very personal decisions about their health care without government interference. Those protections affect millions of women and must not be abrogated.  Penny Gross is the Mason District Supervisor, in the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. She may be emailed at mason@fairfaxcounty.gov.

C i t y o f Fa l l s C h u r c h

C RI M E R E PO RT Week of May 9 - 15, 2022 Shoplifting, Wilson Blvd, May 11, 11:30 AM, unknown suspect took items of value from a business. Suspect described as a female with long dark hair wearing a light colored top and dark pants, sunglasses and ball cap.

Commercial Burglary, Larceny from Motor Vehicle, Roosevelt Blvd, May 12, 12:33 AM, an unknown suspect entered the property, rummaged through several vehicles, and entered the business through a

window. Several items of value were reported missing from the vehicles and business. Suspect described as a slender male, hair worn in a bun, black t-shirt with a “venom” logo, wearing blue jeans and white sneakers.

Investigation continues.

Larceny from Vehicle, Walnut St, between 6:30 PM, May 9 and 11 AM, May 12, unknown suspect(s) removed the catalytic converter from a Toyota Prius.

Larceny from Vehicle, Pine St, between 6:30 PM, May 3 and 7 PM,

May 13, unknown suspect(s) removed the catalytic converter from a Toyota Prius.

Larceny, S Maple Ave, between 5:30 PM, May 2 and 5:30 PM, May 13, unknown suspect(s) cut the lock on a Cannondal Carbon 2 bicycle and removed it from a garage.

Shoplifting, W Broad St, May 15, 8:50 AM, items of value were taken by a suspect described as a male, unknown age, approximately 5`7 wearing a red hooded sweatshirt and a black backpack.

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Delegate Marcus Simon’s

Richmond Report Protecting rights to abortion care is the reason I am in the General Assembly today.

When I got married, although my wife shared my political leanings and admired my involvement in the community on the various boards and commissions for which I volunteered, she had no interest in being the spouse of an elected official. And she certainly didn’t want the demands of elected office taking me away from our young family.

Something changed, though, one night when we were watching late night TV in 2012. Virginia was in the headlines for passing a bill requiring anyone seeking abortion care to be subjected to an invasive transvaginal ultrasound regardless of whether it was deemed medically necessary or not.

That was when we decided that it was worth our family making those sacrifices to fight to protect abortion rights. I ran for the seat of my retiring mentor in 2013 and took office in 2014. Our small little Democratic minority, barely able to prevent a Governor’s veto from being overridden, fought to win seats, one election at a time, until finally in November 2019, we were able to take the majority. And then, in 2020 we were finally able to repeal that transvaginal ultrasound mandate in Virginia.

We used that majority to fight for other rights too. We protected the right to vote by increasing voter access, moving Virginia’s ranking up 37 spots for ease of voting.

We fought to protect human rights, creating a comprehensive anti-discrimination law, the Virginia Values Act, to prevent discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.

We worked to protect the rights of all kids to feel safe and respected in their schools, creating model policies for the treatment of transgender students, allowing them to focus on learning in an environment free from bullying, bigotry and fear.

Workers’ rights to earn a living wage for an honest day’s work were strengthened through our efforts to promote collective bargaining and raise the minimum wage.

Our right to be able to enter public spaces free from the fear of gun violence was respected with common-sense gun violence prevention laws, including empower-

ing localities like Fairfax County and Falls Church City to restrict firearms from public buildings and parks.

We accomplished so much in those two years. Now, we’re dealing with a very different Administration that is intent on rolling back this progress, much like we’re seeing in other states and in Congress.

Last week, I attended the Spring Conference of the DLCC in Annapolis Maryland where I had a chance to meet and talk with Democratic state legislators from around the country. When they saw Virginia on my name tag they were like “oh, Virginia” – and gave me a knowing sigh or nod.

In spite of the fact that more than six in 10 Loudoun County voters went Democratic, what people saw on the national news was the noise a small minority was able to generate there.

Legislators from New Mexico have developed talking points about Critical Race Theory and are working on a strategy for making sure parents know how much they matter and how important they are in making educational policy. Folks from Florida see our Governor trying to out DeSantis their Governor and told us just how damaging their new “don’t say gay” law is turning out to be. The Governor knows he’s being watched too.

The regular session is over.

Reconvened session, the one-day session where we vote on whether or not to override Governor’s vetoes and adopt his recommended changes to our bills, has come and gone. All without a budget for the Commonwealth.

During our veto session I made some headlines comparing the Governor’s plan to force the entire Loudoun County School Board to stand for reelection a year early to something a dictator might do.

Was that over the top? Or was it an apt comparison?

We’ve all been impressed watching ordinary Ukrainians going to extraordinary lengths to fight for their country and their right to self-determination.

What are we willing to do to protect our rights?  Delegate Simon represents the 53rd District in the Virginia House of Delegates. He may be emailed at DelMSimon@house.virginia.gov

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 9

Cappies Praise MHS’ Unique Shakespeare Production

Continued from Page 1

experience with Cappies has been participating in the postshow discussions with fellow Cappies critics from all over Northern Virginia,” said Erin Tarpgaard, a junior at MHS and lead critic on the Meridian Cappies team. “These discussions allow me to meet and learn from writers, actors, and techies from many other high schools. Cappies is a very positive environment that is full of high schoolers recognizing the hard work of other high schoolers, and I have loved being the lead critic for Meridian’s Cappies team.”

This will be the first time the gala is in person since 2019.

In 2020 there were no nominations as the pandemic hit halfway through the season and not every school had the chance to perform their spring plays.

In 2021, the Cappies hosted a virtual event but MHS made the decision to opt out.

Their spring production received high praises from the critics in attendance.

“Meridian High School’s ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [Revised]’ was charming, hilarious, and perfectly bizarre,” said Alayna Steele from West Springfield High School in her review. “For a show attempting to capture all of William Shakespeare’s plays in just over 90 minutes, this play was expectedly chaotic in the most engaging way. With a non-existent fourth wall, the cast was able to interact with the audience hilariously and organically, and it was all pulled off by a troupe of 30 actors performing a play meant for three.”

“At the end of the jampacked 97 minutes the audience was left with the kind of buzz that only comes from hours of laughter,” said Atticus Gregory from Heritage High School.

“Meridian High School’s modernized retelling of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [Revised]’ could not have been funnier and is a must see for all.”

Full reviews from Steele and

THE GOREY GOURMET cooking show parodies Titus Andronicus in “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [Revised]” (P����: C���� S��/FCCPS).

Gregory can be found at cappies. com/nca.

Since MHS received a nomination for best play, they will have a chance to perform a 3 minute segment of their play at the event and reenter the rehearsal process.

“The real exciting part is getting to perform at the Kennedy

Center as part of the gala like we did with ‘Spamalot.’ What I said to the kids then also was that [performing at the Kennedy Center] is the true award and the entertaining part,” said Shawn Northrip, a Film and Theater teacher at MHS and director of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

(abridged) [Revised].’ “It was a great experience. When I talk to those students now, they still refer to it as one of the highlights of their lives.”

The Cappie Gala is set for June 6 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall.

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PAGE 10 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Dark Sky Week Takes Place Ahead of Webb Unveiling

BY NICHOLAS F. BENTON

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS

In just a couple of months, the new James Webb Space Telescope, by far the most powerful that humanity on this planet has been able to come up with yet, will complete its set-up and testing from its location already 18 million miles in space, and will finally be commissioned to begin routine probing and sending back crystal clear images from far deeper in the universe, and further back in time than we’ve been able to observe ever before. The results are already proving astounding.

The NASA project, run in conjunction with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, was built in part

by Falls Church’s Northrup Grumman company.

This Saturday, May 21, is the annual Astronomy Day at the Crockett Park in nearby Midland, Virginia when a lot of new stargazers are expected due to the interest in the new telescope and its revelations.

The park is south of Warrenton off Route 15 and the event goes from 1 to 4 p.m..

The scientists involved in the Webb telescope project have limited discussions of the scope of what the new telescope will be able to show going much, much further back to the time when the “Big Bang” that allegedly founded the universe occured.

It will also provide enormous amounts of new data about the relatively-recently discovered phenomena of “black holes” and how they operate, including by providing images that are already coming in of “event horizons” on the lips of black holes, including the one we recently discovered, sits at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

It will also be able to document how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity operates in real time, the way that gravity bends the time-space continuum, revealing a lot of new information on the implications of this for our current appreciation of timespace.

And it will likely be that the $64 dollar question will be conclusively answered, too, dealing with the existence and extent, or not, of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. There should be enough “signatures” out there

that we will be able to identify for the first time to determine that.

All these exciting developments coming beginning in just the next few months is already turning the gaze of millions on our tiny orb skyward. In recent years, the expanse of urbanization, and its use of electric light, has dramatically diminished our ability to look upon and contemplate the universe in which we sit.

So as data from the new James Webb Space Telescope begins to filter in to observers on this planet, finding places nearby with a diminished urbanization impact, where folks can get a relatively clear and good look at our skies, will assuredly become much more important.

So far around here, help is available in the form of a small Chantilly-based Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC), active in this area since 1980 with now about 1,000 members.

Among its regular activities is involvement with an annual International Dark Sky Week, observed during the week of the new moon in April (this year it fell between Apr. 22 — 30), founded in 2003 by a high school student from Virginia in an effort to raise awareness of light pollution (any unneeded artificial light) and its harmful effects on nocturnal animals, like bats and other pollinators.

But Dark Sky Week also highlights, of course, the night sky itself and presents a dedicated opportunity for amateur astronomers and stargazers to get a better look at the universe we are in.

The less light pollution, the better the view. In fact, according to the National Park Service, “roughly 80 percent of people in North America cannot see the Milky Way due to electric lights at night.” The dark sky is nowhere near as dark and clear as it once was, especially in the densely-populated, urbanized Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Even though the official Dark Sky Week is over, the website — found at idsw.darksky.org — features events from all around the world that occur throughout the year (organizations can even submit an event to add to the online calendar).

The local astronomy club’s

emphasis rests on supporting the active observation of the sky, as well as on coordinating community outreach on an individual and group basis. Their motto, “To observe, and to help others observe,” encapsulates their work, which in turn embraces a wide range of astronomers, from newcomers to professional researchers and educators.

NOVAC holds monthly meetings with guests from the professional astronomical community, mentors new members, participates with Astronomical League and International Dark Sky Association programs, and provides observing sessions for local youth and civic groups, like various Scout troops.

The club also hosts two major events each year, weather permitting: Astronomy Day in the month of May and StarGaze in October. This year, Astronomy Day is this coming Saturday, May 21, at C.M. Crockett Park, 10066 Rogues Rd., in Midland, Virginia.

Astronomy Day includes a telescope meet and greet, solar and night sky observing, and other demonstrations.

NOVAC cooperates with George Mason University (that has its own observatory at its Fairfax campus), the University of Maryland, the Analemma Society, the Chevy Chase Community Center and other astronomy programs in the Washington, D.C. region.

The Analemma Society (analemma.org) has a similar mission, operating “exclusively for educational and scientific purposes,” seeking to further develop “awareness, appreciation, and understanding of science through astronomy” for all.

The “homebase” of all this rests at Observatory Park at Turner Farm (925 Springvale Rd, Great Falls, Virginia), operated by the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA). The observatory there includes an Orientation Room utilized for educational programs, featuring three telescopes and a retractable, “roll-top” roof.

Robert Kellogg, Analemma Society webmaster, explained how in addition to the different events and courses at Observatory Park, there are experiential activities, “such as opening the observatory grounds…to watch the lunar

TURNER FARM’S OBSERVATORY PARK is a great place for people young and old to learn about astronomy hands-on. The Analemma Society, serving the Northern Virginia area, holds a variety of stargazing and educational events at Turner Farm, including Astronomy Festivals and eclipse observations. To learn more, visit analemma.org. (P���� J������ K������). eclipse” (which took place this past Sunday night, on the 15th).

Alan Figgatt, a co-coordinator of the astronomy courses offered through the FCPA and the Parktakes program, works with Jeff Kretsch in leading a team of volunteers during the Friday night public observations, using binoculars and telescopes. “The Friday public sessions are weather dependent,” explains Figgatt. “We have canceled the last two Friday events due to weather.”

NOVAC events, activities at Observatory Park and these nature walks all in some way incorporate information on light pollution, as artificial sources of light, especially in great quantity, not only make it harder to see all the stars on a given night but often negatively affect nocturnal animals and their place in the ecosystem.

Tammy Schwab, Manager, Education and Outreach at FCPA Resource Management, talked about light pollution in the region, explaining how “one of the immediately noticeable impacts of light pollution is the number of stars you can see with the naked eye. With light pollution in effect, only the brightest stars can be seen as the dimmer stars…are now washed out by the sky glow of light pollution.”

Schwab added that “this impacts other astronomy activities” as well, “including reducing the number of meteors seen during a meteor shower event.

In general, these effects reduce the impact of the night sky experience that you might feel when in a dark sky area seeing millions of stars and the milky way.” Burke Lake Park, at 7315 Ox Rd, Fairfax Station, VA, is one of these dark sky areas available to the public and will be hosting a series of Campfire Saturdays: Stargazing events throughout next month.

“Some of FCPA’s astronomy programs across the county are about simply stargazing with the naked eye, learning and appreciating constellations and their stories…however, Fairfax county is very lucky to have the rolltop observatory at Turner Farm,” Schwab says.

Even though they are specifically designed to see farther and deeper into space, “telescope observations are also impacted by light pollution. While planets themselves are little impacted, we lose sight of many of their moons.

With a good pair of binoculars or small telescope you could see four of Jupiter’s 53 named moons.”

In terms of in-person astronomy programs and events, Schwab explained that they are “actually at their peak from October to January when the sky gets darker earlier, allowing more reasonable time for viewing. This is when we have our monthly astronomy festivals. In the summer, darkness comes so late it is hard schedule programs lasting until true darkness.”

(Alex Russell contributed to this report).

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

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MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 11

Mustangs Stay Hot as Regular Athletic Seasons Come to a Close

by Ryan McCafferty Falls Church News-Press

Another week brought another healthy serving of wins for the various Meridian High School Mustangs athletic programs, many of which concluded their regular season schedules. Among those were both lacrosse teams, as the boys traveled to Kettle Run on Monday to win 17-6 before returning home to fall to Brentsville on Wednesday in a 7-9 thriller and then wallop Eastern View 22-3 in their season finale the next

night, bringing their final regular season record to 8-6. The girls played only Kettle Run and Eastern View, both at home and on the same nights, and dominated both teams 21-4 and 25-3 respectively, and move to 12-1 on the season with one game remaining before the playoffs.

Both teams will play in the regional quarterfinals tonight, Thursday, May 19.

The baseball team watched its scorching hot winning streak reach ten games after starting the season 4-4, as they beat Falls Church 12-2 on Monday

at home, Manassas Park 15-5 on Tuesday on the road, and returned to their stomping grounds to take down Brentsville in a defensive slugfest 1-0 on Friday. Meanwhile softball lost its lone game of the week, a 0-7 shuthout at home against Brentsville on Friday.

Both teams still have one more week of action before their postseason begins.

The boys’ tennis team also had a rather light week, losing in a nailbiter to Alexandria City at home on Monday in a 4-5 decision for their only

matchup, while the girls also fell to Alexandria City 2-7 but were able to defeat Skyline 7-2 the following night. Both teams are now 7-5 for the season while both also have two regular season games remaining.

Meanwhile on the soccer field, the boys swept Manassas Park and Brentsville on Tuesday and Friday respectively, the former a 2-0 road victory and the latter a 7-0 domination at home, as they continue their undefeated season with their lone non-win being a tie against Annandale on April the 18th. The girls

defeated Manassas Park 8-0 on Tuesday, their game at home, and then fell as they visited Brentsville by a score of 3-6 on Friday, bringing their overall record to 7-4-3. Both teams still have several games to go before their regular season concludes.

All in all, it was another successful week for the Mustangs.

This season has come and gone in a hurry, and with several programs in prime position to make noise in their regional brackets, it will be exciting to see which of them have their efforts rewarded in the coming month.

Falls Church Little League: Featured ‘Game of the Week’

by Erika Toman

The Avalanche beat the Blueberries 2-1 in a low scoring pitcher’s duel In their final year of Little League, two of the league’s most accomplished players showed what they were made of Wednesday, May 11 by leading their respective teams on the pitching mound. Matteo P. dominated the mound for the Avalanche (coach Pipia, sponsored by Montage Marketing).

The pitcher dished a no-hitter through three and two-thirds

innings pitched, striking out ten on the way, with no runs allowed.

Elijah P. of the Blueberries (coach Greiner, sponsored by Cape Partners LLC) had another sterling performance with nine strikeouts, allowing only three hits in four innings pitched, with two runs allowed.

Not to be outdone, the relief pitchers also had strong outings.

Closing out the game for the Avalanche, Patrick S. struck out four batters while allowing only one hit. For the Blueberries, Teddy G. threw one inning, allowing only one hit while

striking out two batters.

The Blueberries fought until the end when the Avalanche pulled away for good when Rocky M. drew a walk, setting Luca P. up to steal home and score the winning run.

On the offensive side, Jeremy L. notched the Blueberries only hit. The Avalanche saw hits from from Patrick S., Matteo P., and Thomas P. The Little League season will be coming to a close this month, so be sure to catch a game!

Go to www.fckll.org for the full schedule.

represents a significant opportunity to improve the well-being of native insects and animals within the local ecosystems. It will also provide students with hands-on learning opportunities as they become future stewards of the environment.

The sign up form can be found at https://www.signupgenius.com/ go/20f0d49afa92ca1f58-mount.

Field Day Volunteers Needed

Walk and Bike to School/ Work Day is Friday, May 20.

Everyone is urged to Bike/Walk — especially to the Secondary campus where biking or walking might be the quickest method to reach the campus due to an event scheduled there. Parking also will be at a premium. This is an excellent opportunity to get extra fresh air and enjoy the warming temperatures.

Note: Bike riders should learn the rules of the road and hand signals before participating. Parents should use their judgment about accompanying students.

ELIJAH P. and Matteo P.

(Photo: Teresa Pipia)

Falls Church School News & Notes

Meridian Urban Farm Project Underway The Meridian Urban Farm Project is pleased to announce the installation of several native pollinator gardens on the campus this spring. Thanks to grant funding from the Falls Church Education Foundation and technical support from the Pimmit Hills Pollinator Company and SiteOne Landscape Supply Company, these gardens were made possible. The installation of these gardens supports the FCCPS goal of increased environmental sustainability. These gardens’ maintenance and future expansion will be incorporated into classroom and extracurricular activities for both MHS and MEHMS in the coming years.

The development of pollinator gardens utilizing native plants

Field Day is finally back! Mt Daniel Field day will be held on Wednesday, June 1st. Please help run and supervise eight stations (9 for 2nd grade). Stations will be inside and outside with a water relay so the kids can cool off. If you can help, could you sign up under your child’s grade level?

The rain date is June 3rd. If you can help that day, please leave a yes or no in the comment box.

Walk or Bike To School On Friday

DOZENS TOOK ADVANTAGE of the two-night public viewing of the 2022 Meridian High School IB Art Show and reception. (Photo: FCCPS)

PAGE 12 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Fa l l s C h u r c h Business News & Notes SBA webinar

IRS is hosting a joint webinar for small business owners to address SBA programs and services. Other topics under discussion are business recordkeeping, employees vs. independent contractors, applying for exempt organization status and more. This event is hosted by your local Stakeholder Liaisons in Washington, DC & Virginia is on Wednesday, May 25, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm virtually via Microsoft Teams. It is free and the link will be shared upon registration on the SBA site (https://www.eventbrite. com/e/irs-sba-sba-overview-recordkeeping-exempt-org-employee-contractor-tickets-337238307857).

Transportation Project: Great Falls St. and Gresham Place The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) hosted its FY2022-2027 Six Year Program (SYP) Public Hearing May 12 on the 26 candidate projects submitted by the nine Northern Virginia jurisdictions for regional funding consideration at more than $1.2 billion. Falls Church has submitted one, the Northern Washington Street Multimodal Improvements Project estimated at $22.5 million which would commence in FY2026. This project includes sidewalk widening, improved intersection geometry, signal improvements, crosswalks, utility undergrounding, lighting, and landscaping between Great Falls Street and Gresham Place. This would connect economic areas, neighborhoods, parks, new commercial developments and cultural amenities. The public comment period is open through May 22, allowing one comment submission per person by email at SYPcomment@TheNoVAAuthority.org, by voicemail at 571-354-0065; by mail at Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, 3040 Williams Drive, Suite 200, Fairfax, VA 22031; or on the NVTA’s online submission form https://thenovaauthority.org/syp-comment/.

Tinner Hill Heritage Music Festival The 28th Annual Tinner Hill Heritage Musical Festival, honoring the local African American legacy, will take place on June 11th from 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. in Cherry Hill Park! The 2022 line up includes: Rebirth Brass Band, Marcia Ball, Carly Harvey’s Kiss & Ride, and more! Tickets are available and volunteers are needed! Volunteers receive free entry to the full Festival day and a meal voucher. Corporate sponsorships are also available. Please visit TinnerHill.Org for more information.

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Fairfax County Government, Refraction, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, Virginia Tech, and others will host the Smart City Challenge — an innovation competition for innovative solutions to the most pressing issues facing regions in transportation, health care, housing, infrastructure, public safety, and more. Running May 2 – June 16, all entrepreneurs and students are welcome to join to win prizes, including cash, pilot opportunities (with Fairfax County, Dominion Energy, and Virginia Innovation Partnership), participation in Smart City Works and Dominion accelerator programs, membership at Refraction’s innovation hub, and business coaching. Register at smartcityworks.org (https://www.smartcityworks.org/scc-2022/?utm_campaign=E-Bird%20 FY22&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=212593492&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_jUPEEF3mDzoVipcXdRAkS3NOeyIJhwT115cIwPYSk2JHZeU2SaItkeBNhLdpvKsYQFWvv73Y4FZjVFKBlmf3TqX2PsxKs4iTwa2apCAbYf5NM-cs&utm_content=212593492&utm_source=hs_email)

Data on Residential Sales The Northern Virginia Association of Realtors reports that the average price of a single-family detached house that sold in the region in April was almost $1.1 million. The average price for all home types, including condos, townhouses and single-family homes was $776,162. NVAR agents cover Fairfax and Arlington counties, the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church and the towns of Vienna, Herndon and Clifton. And a report on May 11 based on data provided by MarketStats by ShowingTime based on listing activity from Bright MLS reflects a year-over-year increase for the first four months of 2022 ranges from 7 percent to 18 percent among six local jurisdictions. Overall, homesellers across the area are getting more per square foot from buyers than a year before. Arlington led with a per-square-foot sales price of $496 for the January to May period, up 6.7 percent; Falls Church followed at $465, up 12.6%, and Alexandria at $438, up 6.8 percent a year before.

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 Business News & Notes is compiled by Elise Neil Bengtson, Executive Director of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce. She may be emailed at elise@fallschcurchchamber.org.

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 13

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Devin Hume McIntosh, 32, of Falls Church died suddenly May 2, 2022 in Cherry Hill, NJ. Devin was born June 2, 1989 in Alexandria. He was the son of Dennis and Susan McIntosh of Falls Church. He graduated from McLean High School in 2007. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 1130 and became an Eagle Scout in 2006.

He attended the University of Texas at Austin and was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He graduated in 2011 with a major in economics and completed the Business Foundations certificate program. In 2015, he received a master’s degree in international commerce and policy from George Mason University.

Devin loved all kinds of sports.

He was passionate about teaching sports to kids, especially those who really needed mentoring and wanted to improve their skills. He was particularly proficient in teaching swim-

ming and basketball. He coached middle school girls’ basketball teams and was a referee for McLean Youth Basketball. He loved working with kids, and they adored him. As one neighbor said, he gave encouragement to those who were discouraged. He was part of a group that built a clean water supply system for a village in Guatemala, where he charmed the village’s children. He was a very caring individual.

He worked in the health and fitness industry. This year he decided to change careers and set his sights on becoming a defense trial lawyer, keeping with his desire to help those in need. He had been accepted at Duquesne University Law School in Pittsburgh, starting school in August.

Devin is survived by his parents and his brothers, Justin McIntosh (Elena) and their children, Joelle, Gabriel and John Pascal, of Charlottesville and his brother

Jeffrey McIntosh of Chicago. Also, he is survived by his beloved rescue dog, Lulu.

Services and interment are Friday, May 20 at 11 AM at the Church of the Holy Cross, Dunn Loring, VA. Donations can be made to Spiritworks Foundation.

Backto

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Joseph “Joe” Dorsey, a resident of Falls Church City since 2002, passed away on 28 April 2022 at the age of 60, following complications from an illness. He never lost his strong sense of optimism and positive attitude up until the very end.

When Joe walked into the room, those in his company felt energy, an enthusiastic spontaneity. This was just one example of who Joe was and how he impacted those around him. Joe was a clever and gregarious person who always sought out the finest attributes in other people. It was as if Joe wanted to share all of their experiences, revel in their lives and celebrate their discoveries. Joe had boundless energy and enthusiasm that served him well throughout his life.

Born in Royal Oak, Michigan, Joe always stayed connected to his Michigan roots and his many close friends and family there. After graduating from the University of

Michigan in 1984, Joe moved to D.C. where he honorably served his country for 33 years as a decorated CIA officer. He took great professional pride in his work and traveled across the world during his career.

Joe loved to tell stories about the things he had seen, the food he ate, and the people he met during his international travel adventures. Upon retiring from the federal government in 2016, Joe pursued a second career as an Executive Leadership Coach and facilitator, leading seminars on organizational change and professional development and working one-on-one with individual clients.

Outside of the office, Joe enjoyed riding his Waterford road bike, hiking at Great Falls, fishing with his sons and attending their football and baseball games, walking on the beach and going to yoga with his wife, and doting on his cats. Joe loved watching the Washington Nationals and Detroit Tigers, and listening to music

spanning the decades from the 1960s up to today’s popular hits. He was also an avid reader of World War II history and British crime novels and enjoyed watching popular TV series.

Joe is survived by his wife, Stephanie, sons Alex Dorsey and Alex Gorman-Dorsey, and brother John Dorsey III and sister-in-law Kirsten Williams, and two nieces, Betty and Katie Dorsey. His family and friends miss his laughter, jokes, and sports commentary, and his memory will forever live on in our hearts and minds.

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Natacia Gentrup passed away on September 16, 2021. She was a Graduate of George Mason High School and attended Rollins College.

A Graveside service (ashes interned) will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 2 p.m. at Hillcrest Cemetery (1911 Forest Dr. Annapolis, MD).

She is survived by her mother, Teresa Swingle (Gentrup), her father Jeffery (Deb) Gentrup, a grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

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PAGE 14 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Falls Church Arts Black & White Show On Display Now

Falls Church Arts Black & White show is full of artists’ displaying their art in Black and White through various mediums at 700-B W Broad St, Falls Church, VA. ( photos: News-Press)

Memorial Day is almost here!

Monday, May 30, 2022 Memorial Day Parade Program 2022

Issue Date May 26, 2022

The benefits of advertising in the Falls Church News-Press Memorial Day Parade Guide Distributed with our regular weekly paper AND It will be posted on our website in its entirety (averages 1,000,000 visitors every month) AND • Extra copies of the Parade Guide will be printed and distributed at the festivities on the day of the event for the Extra 10,000 people expected to be in town that day!

To Appear In this Section: Call: Sue Johnson sjohnson@fcnp.com • 703-587-1282

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 15

Falls Church Theater Veterans Help Make ‘Rocky’ Rock

BY MARK DREISONSTOK

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-PRESS

The Sylvester Stallone film “Rocky” was a sensation in 1976, spawning a number of successful sequels. At “Rocky” and “Rocky II,” audiences cried, shouted, and cheered: “When Rocky won the fight in the second movie, people in the packed theatre were standing and cheering like it was real life. I have never seen that again!” said one eyewitness. These were not boxing fans, but rather people from a broad spectrum of life who identified with Rocky Balboa, a man who simply wished for a little respect and the certainty that he was not a loser.

In the hands of directors Toby Orenstein and Mark Minnick, “Rocky: The Musical” once again lets its everyman hero shine, broadening this to include not only one man’s heroic struggle, but also how his struggle helps him and those around him to (re)discover the humanity of love and human connection.

Patrick Gover stars as Rocky, conveying the character’s determination in both action and song. He is especially effective in montage

training scenes conveying Rocky’s physicality through running, skipping rope, and punching a massive slab of meat as he trains for his boxing match. Gerald Jordan plays Rocky’s more experienced rival, Apollo Creed, to perfection, conveying him not as a generic opponent, but as a sympathetic character with his own heroic qualities. As unlikely as it sounds, the boxing pair harmonize brilliantly in the song “Southside Celebrity.”

Lydia Gifford as Adrian is equally effective as a shy shopkeeper who becomes more self-assured as she becomes a sustaining force for Rocky. The singer-actress has a wonderful performance in “Raining,” a folk-rock piece which showcases both her poignant vocal with soft and powerful qualities. The song is also symbolic, for the character comes out of the rain and into her own “Happiness,” also a leading song of Rocky in which she duets beautifully with Rocky.

A welcome presence in the show is Robert Biedermann as Mickey, a former fighter who “never had a wife, never had a son” yet now serves as trainer and father figure to the lonely Rocky. Mr. Biedermann,

who is also the witty warm-up host before the show, distinguishes himself in the song “In the Ring,” bringing out the depths of his character as the fighter who has devoted his life to the sport of boxing.

While Toby’s is in Columbia, Maryland, several in the show are veterans of the Falls Church stage.

Ryan Sellars, who plays Rocky’s early opponent Spider Rico, has performed with Falls Church’s Creative Cauldron theatre company, as has Marykate Brouillet, who portrays shop-girl Joanne and also an “Apollo Girl” or Apollo Creed groupie. She sings and acts wonderfully and appeared in Creative Cauldron’s “Nevermore,” telling the Falls Church News-Press that although she lives in the Columbia area, she finds it pure joy coming to perform with the Cauldron. Patricia Targete, who understudies several parts in “Rocky,” has also choreographed musicals at George Marshall High School.

Toby’s Dinner and Show is a “theatre in the round” where the audience surrounds the central stage.

This works especially well for this production, in which the audience is periodically transformed into specta-

may 20 - 30

ROCKY (PATRICK GOVER) at right fights Spider Rico (Falls Church theatre veteran Ryan Sellers) at left in “Rocky,” currently playing at Toby’s Dinner and Show in Columbia, Maryland.

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tors at a boxing match. The staging, which interleaves stylized boxing with “special effects” (fast motion, slow motion, and photo freeze frames) splendidly conveys the excitement of the ring, a testament to the combined talents of fight choreographer Justin Calhoun, lighting designer Lynn Joslin, scenic designer David A. Hopkins, and musical director Ross Scott Rawlings. On the point of music, the signature theme from “Rocky,” “Gonna Fly Now,” is heard in the fight scene between Rocky and Apollo Creed..

Many of our current movie

blockbusters are now about superheroes and cosmic mega-battles.

“Rocky: The Musical” allows us to revisit an ordinary human hero from the 1970’s in updated form. Toby’s “Rocky” is not, however, simply a trip down memory lane. Rather, the show invites us to follow Rocky’s path of pursuing our dreams in the face of adversity, while being fully engaged with others – a message sorely needed in the world of 2022.

“Rocky the Musical” runs through June 5. For further information, please visit: Toby’s Dinner Theatre at tobysdinnertheatre.com.

bull run events center

walk thru dinos

www . feeltheroar . com

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News-Press

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Community News & Notes Community Yard Sale & Swap: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

headache, but fever and chills are more common with Covid.”

Meridian Students for Sustainable Development, in partnership with the F.C. community, is organizing a yard sale and swap that will take place Saturday, May 21, from 9 a.m. — 1 p.m. All residents are invited to put up clean, unwanted household items for a share/swap/sale in their yard, driveway, or walkway (items should not be placed on public property, including streets or sidewalks). This event is designed to help residents get rid of stuff they no longer need, while benefiting community members and the environment. Sign up is optional, but strongly encouraged.

Email fccyardswap@gmail.com to have your address added to the customized Google Map or for more information.

Babysitting During the “Together Again” Gala

F.C. Schools Issue Reminder To Get Covid Booster Shots Falls Church City Public Schools (FCCPS) recently issued the following reminder about getting vaccinated and boosted: “Based on CDC guidelines in order to be considered fully vaccinated, persons over the age of 12 should have received their primary covid shot series plus a booster.” The reminder continued, stating “With graduation and other year end events coming up, please consider getting your student a booster if they are eligible. This will help them stay in school if they are exposed.” For those parents not sure where to get their children vaccinated, FCCPS suggests visiting a local CVS, the Harris Teeter Pharmacy, or one’s primary care provider.

“We have seen a steady uptick in Covid-19 and other respiratory cases. If you are sick, please stay home, get a Covid test, rest and come back when you are feeling better. Sharing is not caring when it comes to viruses of any kind.”

The reminder also stated that for those who have been exposed to Covid, wearing a mask is strongly suggested while in public around other people. “This helps keep you and everyone else healthy.” If one is not sure whether certain respiratory symptoms are indicative of Covid or seasonal allergies, FCCPS reminds all that “both seasonal allergies and Covid can cause cough, fatigue, and

The Falls Church Education Foundation Gala & Auction (taking place Friday, May 20) will be providing babysitting services for parents wishing to attend the event, with Girl Scout Troops #2259 and #2687 ready for an evening filled with fun activities like arts and crafts, games, and a kid-friendly movie for the visiting children. There will be a physical activity area and a snack area (parents must provide the snacks); the evening will be adult-supervised.

Children ages 5 — 11 can participate; the earliest a child can be dropped off is 6 p.m. and all children must be picked up by 11 p.m.

Babysitting for the FCEF “Together Again” Gala will take place at Oak Street Elementary School (601 S Oak St, Falls Church), with a parent greeter at the door. There is a suggested donation of $20 for each child. With questions, email Molly Barba at mollybarba@gmail.com.

Falls Church City Participating in Bike to Work Day 2022 “Bike to Work Day” (BTWD) is Friday, May 20, with approximately 100 pit stops in the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The first 15,000 participants who register and attend at a BTWD pit stop by bike will receive a free t-shirt; there will also be other free giveaways, like snacks and beverages (while supplies last). Most pit stops have morning hours; some are held in the afternoon, while others offer both morning and afternoon hours. The City of Falls Church will have a pit stop this year at the West End Park entrance to the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail at W&OD Trail & Grove Ave, Falls Church. It will operate between the hours of 6:30 — 9 a.m. To find a local participating pit stop or for more details on BTWD 2022, visit biketoworkmetrodc.org; for more information on the Falls Church pit stop, visit biketoworkmetrodc.org/ falls-church.

Falls Church City Public Schools encourages its students to walk and bike to school on Friday, May 20,

FALLS CHURCH Chamber of Commerce executive director Elise Neil Bengtson greets State Del. Marcus Simon as the featured speaker at the Chamber’s luncheon this week. (Photo: News-Press). as well, to promote general wellness in the community for residents of all ages. Christ Crossman United Methodist Church (384 N Washington St, Falls Church) also invites all to give up the car the following Sunday, May 22, as an extension of BTWD. In their e-newsletter, the church suggested biking, walking, riding a scooter, or running.

“We will have treats on-hand, and self-propelled attendants get dibs.

Let food be your fuel.”

Columbia Baptist Hosting Orchestra Concert for Kids Join the Columbia Orchestra as they present a morning of children’s music, storytelling, and other familyfriendly activities designed for preschoolers and younger kids. With this event, families will get the chance to encourage an early appreciation for music and to introduce their children to a variety of instruments.

The concert is free and children are welcome to come in costume. Doors will open on Saturday, May 21, at 10 a.m. with an instrument “petting zoo” and other pre-show entertainment included. The concert will begin at 10:30 a.m. The Orchestra Concert for Kids is sponsored by The Sharyn Byer Institute of Fine Arts (SIFA). For more information about

this and other upcoming events, visit columbiabaptist.org/playmemusic.

With general questions, call 703534-5700. Columbia Baptist Church is located at 103 W. Columbia St, Falls Church.

Special Donation Drive at Columbia Baptist On May 21 Donation Saturdays at Columbia Baptist Church take place monthly on the third Saturday of the month, between the hours of 10 a.m. — 12 p.m. For this upcoming donation drive, the suggested items are as listed: canned fruit, canned meat (chicken, tuna and salmon), dried deans (1 or 2lb. bags), hearty soup (Progresso, Healthy Choice, Chunky Soup), macaroni and cheese, no sodium added canned corn, no sodium added canned tomatoes, noninstant oatmeal, pasta, pasta sauce, white rice (1 or 2lb. bags). Feminine hygiene supplies are also needed; suggested items include individually wrapped pads and panty liners. This special Saturday drive, which also focuses on clothing and household supply donations, will take place at 3245 Glen Carlyn Rd, Falls Church.

Non-perishable food items may also be dropped off daily at the church’s main campus located at 103 W Columbia St, Falls Church. Local

food suppliers or restaurants wishing to donate fresh produce should email reckard@columbiabaptist.org. For more information and for updated lists of needed items, email foodpantry@columbiabaptist.org. Monetary donations can be made online at columbiabaptist.org.

Sensory Hour at Scramble Through Monday, May 23 In commemoration of Autism Awareness Month, Scramble is hosting a weekly Private Sensory Hour for children 12 and under with disabilities, now through Monday, May 23. This event will occur every Monday morning, so as not to overlap with Spring Break Camp. Scramble will allow attendants to play in every area of the playground, including the usually off-limits baby sensory area. In efforts to further and support inclusivity, Scramble will offer dimmed lighting and a quiet space to play as well. There will be coffee, hot chocolate, and baked goods available for purchase. Scramble is a clean, safe, and fun indoor playground for kids aged five months through 12 years. Both locations, in Alexandria and in Falls Church, Virginia, offer play structures, baby sensory areas, a cafe, and bookstore. The F.C. location can be found at 130 E. Fairfax

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

St, Falls Church. Private Sensory Hour is between the hours of 8 — 9:30 a.m. Visit goscramble.com for information.

City of Falls Church Blood Drive on May 30 The Inova Blood Donor Services “Bloodmobile” will be parked at Little Falls St, Falls Church, in front of the Community Center on Monday, May 30, between 11 a.m. — 3 p.m. Appointments can be booked over the phone at 866-256-6372 (use Sponsor Code 0053). Photo ID and face masks required; masks will be provided for those without. Email her at sawilliams@fallschurchva.gov for more information. To learn more about Inova Blood Donor Services, visit inovablood.org.

Tysons Library Quarterly Book and Media Sale Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library, located at 7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA, will be hosting a three day book sale for a variety of ages and interests. The sale will run on the following days: Friday, June 3, Saturday, June 4, and Sunday, June 5, between the hours of 10 a.m. — 5 p.m. Sunday will include a special bag sale where attendees will be

able to walk away with a full grocery sack of books for just $10; if less than a full bag, the items will go for half-price. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library and related activities. Donations of books and media items appreciated; volunteers welcome and needed. With questions, email tysonslibraryfriends@gmail. com or call 703-338-3307.

Upcoming Events at Mary Riley Styles Public Library Mary Riley Styles Public Library will be hosting author Brendan Slocumb for a moderated discussion centering on his debut novel, a thriller entitled “The Violin Conspiracy,” on Tuesday, May 24, in the library’s Lower Level Conference Room.

Slocumb, writing from his experience as a Black classical musician, has crafted a mystery surrounding a priceless family heirloom stolen on the eve of the most prestigious classical music competition in the world.

For the past twenty-three years, he has been a public and private school music educator, currently serving as an educational consultant for the Kennedy Center and as the concertmaster for the NOVA-Annandale Symphony Orchestra. Librarian Pete Sullivan will moderate the discus-

sion. After the raffle, 20 attendees will receive a free, signed hardback copy of the book; RSVP required online at mrspl.librarycalendar.com.

Brendan Slocumb’s author talk will begin at 7 p.m.

The library will also be hosting another meeting of its Mystery Book Club on Wednesday, May 25, from 7 — 8 p.m. online through Zoom. The featured book will be “The Thirty Nine Steps” by John Buchan, the classic mystery thriller spanning England and Scotland at a time when the world teetered on the brink of WWI. Those interested in participating need to email Catherine Wilson at cwilson@ fallschurchva.gov for a meeting invite. Presented by Catherine Wilson and Eric Albrecht. Mystery Book Club meets every other month. For more information on these and other library events, visit mrspl.librarycalendar.com or call 703-248-5035. Mary Riley Styles Public Library is located 120 N Virginia Ave, Falls Church.

Assistance League Asks for Toiletry Donations Over the past few months, counselors at several of the elementary schools that Assistance League of Northern Virginia serves have

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 17

THE FALLS CHURCH FARMERS MARKET, rain or shine, is a great place to �ind fresh produce, baked goods, and �lowers all from local shops and businesses. The Market runs every Saturday, starting at 8 a.m., near City Hall at 300 Park Ave, Falls Church. (P����: S�� J������.) requested toiletries for their students. So far, the charity has been able to provide them with basics such as soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothbrush & toothpaste.

The increasing financial strains that families now face have forced parents to make difficult decisions about how to spend their limited resources; in some households, children have to share a toothbrush with other family members, while other

students, including some in fourth and fifth grade, have never owned a toothbrush and need instruction on how to use them. Visit rightgift. com/nonprofits/assistance-leaguenorthern-virginia to donate items to the ongoing toiletries campaign as well as any of the organization’s other campaigns. Visit assistanceleague.org/northern-virginia for more information about the Assistance League and its work.

Marcia Ball

Carly Harvey’s Kiss & Ride

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Rebirth Brass Band

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PAGE 18 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

FALLS CHURCH CALENDAR

FCNP Featured Event

National Hamburger Day Saturday, May 28th

BIKE TO WORK DAY is set for Friday, May 20. There will be an official pit stop at W&OD Trail & Grove Ave, between the hours of 6:30 — 9 a.m. FCCPS and Christ Crossman, among others in the already bike-friendly Little City, are encouraging everyone to leave their cars and pick up a bike.

For more details on BTWD, visit biketoworkmetrodc.org. (Photo: News-Press.)

LOCAL EVENTS THURSDAY, MAY 19 Robotic Bookmark Painting.

Technology and art combine for a bookmark-making activity at TysonsPimmit Library. (7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church.) 11 — 11:30 a.m.

Black + White Exhibition (Ending June 26). Featuring art done in black, white, and gray, this Falls Church Arts exhibit will include paintings, drawings, collages, and sculpture. F.C. Arts (700-B W. Broad St, Falls Church). Open Wednesday — Saturday from 11 a.m. — 6 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. — 2 p.m.

F.C. Chamber Orientation. The Falls Church Chamber of Commerce will host a virtual presentation focusing on the Chamber’s mission and benefits. Register online at fallschurchchamber.org to receive a Zoom link.

11:30 a.m. — 12:30 p.m.

FRIDAY, MAY 20 FCEF “Together Again” Gala. The Falls Church Education Foundation Gala & Auction will take place at Washington Golf and Country Club

(3017 N Glebe Rd, Arlington). Funds support the Super Grant program, Advanced Teacher Training Grants and programs for ESOL, Special Education, and equity of access for students. Visit fcedf.org for information. 6:30 p.m.

Jurassic Encounter: Dinosaur WalkThru Experience. Featuring more than 50 static and moving, life-like dinosaurs, the Exhibit will take place at Bull Run Events Center (7700 Bull Run Dr, Centreville, VA) Friday, May 20 — Monday, May 30. 2 — 7 p.m. on May 20; 10 a.m. — 7 p.m. on all other days. For information and tickets, visit feeltheroar.com.

Manassas Ballet Theatre's Cinderella. The Hylton Performing Arts Center will be presenting Cinderella with the Manassas Ballet Theatre Orchestra from Friday, May 20 — Sunday, May 22. For information and tickets, visit hyltoncenter. org. tre, visit manassasballet.org.

7:30 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAY 21 Falls Church Farmers Market. Every Saturday, the F.C. Farmers Market

features fresh, local produce, meat, dairy, honey, and other items. Covid19 guidelines observed. (300 Park Ave, Falls Church). 8 a.m. — 12 p.m.

Used Book Sale. The Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave, Falls Church) will host its monthly 2-day used book and media sale from 10 a.m. — 3 p.m.

Plein Air Watercolor. Led by instructor Rajendra KC; for all levels. $200 per participant. Register at fallschurcharts.org/classes. F.C. Arts Gallery (700-B W. Broad St, Falls Church). 10 a.m. — 12 p.m. and 1 — 3 p.m.

Cherry Hill Open House Tours. Free tours at Cherry Hill historic farmhouse, Saturday mornings through Oct, provided by trained volunteer docents. Visit cherryhillfallschurch. org for more information. Cherry Hill Farmhouse (312 Park Ave, Falls Church, VA). 10 a.m. — 12 p.m.

1-on-1 Technology Training.

Participants will learn new computer skills with a library volunteer. Beginner – intermediate level.

Register at librarycalendar.fairfaxcounty.gov or call 703-790-8088.

Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library (7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church).

11 a.m. — 12 p.m.

Oriental Brush Art with Darlene Kaplan. Participants will learn orien-

AN AMERICAN ICON, the hamburger, eaten by over 50 billion people annually, is celebrated on May 28th. Originating in Hamburg, Germany, the hamburger as we know it today was first developed in Seymour, Wisconsin. There is little consensus on who invented the prototype hamburger, but one can say with a great deal of certaintaty that this particular dish, found on menus around the globe, is a favorite food of many people.

The City's own Settle Down Easy Brewing (2822 Fallfax Dr, Falls Church) will be commemorating Hamburger Day with their friends at Preservation Biscuit (102 E. Fairfax St. Falls Church) between 4 – 9 p.m. Or stop by Elevation Burger (442 S Washington St, Falls Church) or Dogwood Tavern (132 W. Broad St., Falls Church) for their takes on a delicious legend. tal brush painting techniques. For all levels. Upper level conference room of Mary Riley Styles Public Library (120 N. Virginia Ave, Falls Church).

1 — 3 p.m.

Cherry Hill Farmhouse Docent Training. Cherry Hill Historic House is looking for volunteers to lead tours. Duties also include developing knowledge of the museum and its collection, and answering questions.

Email cprice@fallschurchva.gov to register. Cherry Hill Farmhouse (312 Park Ave, Falls Church). 1 — 3 p.m.

SUNDAY, MAY 22 NOVA Central Farm Markets. This year-round market features meat, produce, dairy, baked goods, and other finds. Visit nova.centralfarmmarkets.com for information. (543 Beulah Road, Vienna, VA 22180.) 9 a.m. — 1 p.m.

Building Safety Month Open House.

Tysons-Pimmit Library staff and Fairfax County Land Development

Services’ building inspectors, plan reviewers and permit technicians will demonstrate online tools and applications, answer questions and provide info on permits, home improvement projects, and more. (7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church.) 2 — 4 p.m.

Code Ninjas 3 Year Anniversary.

Code Ninjas will be celebrating their 3 year opening anniversary with a free event featuring various STEM experiences and activities. Visit codeninjas.com/va-falls-church for information. (479 S. Maple Ave, Falls Church.) 3 — 6 p.m.

MONDAY, MAY 23 F.C. Chamber Networking Mixer. The Chamber of Commerce will host its annual Rowell Court Block Party in Old Brickhouse Square in the 900 Block of W. Broad St (Rowell Court), to the right of Dominion Wine and Beer. Featuring food from several chamber member restaurants as well as raffle prizes. Visit fallschurchchamber.org for more info. 5:30 — 7 p.m.

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

LIVE MUSIC THURSDAY, MAY 19

Rodney Crowell Band. The Birchmere (3701 Mount Vernon Ave, Alexandria). $59.50. 7:30 p.m.

Goodbye Vienna. Clare and Don’s Beach Shack (130 N Washington St, Falls Church). 5:30 p.m. 703532-9283.

Live Music Fridays. Solace Outpost (444 W Broad St, Falls Church, VA 22046). 8 p.m. 571-378-1469.

Mother’s Little Helpers. The State Theatre (220 N Washington St, Falls Church). 7:30 p.m. 703-237-0300.

FRIDAY, MAY 20 Brook Yoder. Ireland’s Four Provinces (105 W Broad St., Falls Church). 6:30 p.m. 703-534-8999.

Jehovah’s Favorite Choir. Clare and Don’s Beach Shack (130 N Washington St, Falls Church). 7 p.m.

703-532-9283.

Wicked Jezabel Band. JV’s Restaurant (6666 Arlington Blvd, Falls Church). 9 p.m. 703-241-9504.

Son Rompe Pera. The State Theatre (220 N Washington St, Falls Church). $15. 8:30 p.m. 703-237-0300.

Patchwork Dorothy. Dogwood Tavern (132 W. Broad St., Falls Church). 9:30 p.m. 703-237-8333.

SATURDAY, MAY 21 McLean High & Longfellow Middle School Big Band Jam. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $12.

1:30 p.m. 703-255-1566.

Butte and Friends Rides Again.

Settle Down Easy Brewing Co. (2822 Fallfax Drive, Falls Church). 7 p.m.

703-573-2011.

THEATER & ARTS THURSDAY, MAY 19

Into the Woods. Taking from the stories and characters found within the classic Grimm fairy tale pantheon, James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim craft a witty, magical musical full of drama, humor, and surprises. Among the cast of characters are Cinderella, Jack, and the evil Witch, with “the woods” providing the backdrop for a host of tangled close calls and misadventures.

Directed by Helen Hayes Awardwinning director Matt Conner; presented by Creative Cauldron.

Sponsored by Mark Werblood, Esq., Attorney at Law. “Into the Woods” will run now — Sunday, May 29, with shows on Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Creative Cauldron is located at 410 S Maple Ave, Falls Church.

Call 703-436-9948 or visit creativecauldron.org for more information.

FRIDAY, MAY 20 The Upstairs Department.

Playwright Chelsea Marcantel’s story

will take the audience on an unexpected journey through the trials and tribulations of familial love, the limits of cynicism, and the wonder of the unexplainable. Centering on Luke who, after a serious illness, wakes up with the power to communicate with the dead, “The Upstairs Department” will follow him and his sister on a journey to test out his paranormal talent. Eventually, the two siblings end up summoning more than just voices from the afterlife. Show will run through Sunday, June 12 with performances on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m.

Presented by Signature Theatre (4200 Campbell Ave, Arlington.) Call 703-820-9771 or visit sigtheatre.org for more information.

SATURDAY, MAY 21 Shear Madness. Set in present-day Georgetown, “Shear Madness” is designed to engage locals and visitors alike as armchair detectives in order to help solve the scissor-stabbing murder of a famed concert pia-

CA L E NDA R Kathy Mattea & Suzy Bogguss. The Birchmere (3701 Mount Vernon Ave, Alexandria). $55. 7:30 p.m. 703549-7500.

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 19

Lucky Losers Show. JV’s Restaurant (6666 Arlington Blvd, Falls Church).

8:30 p.m. 703-241-9504.

Mitchell Norton. Dogwood Tavern (132 W. Broad St., Falls Church). 9:30 p.m. 703-237-8333.

SUNDAY, MAY 22 Fusion’s Got Talent. Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $10.

12:30 p.m. 703-255-1566.

Lady Di & David Cole Brunch. JV’s Restaurant (6666 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church). 1 p.m. 703-241-9504.

TUESDAY, MAY 24 James Madison HS Jazz Ensemble.

Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave. E, Vienna). $15. 7 p.m. 703-255-1566.

Traditional Irish Music. Ireland’s Four Provinces (105 W Broad St., Falls Church). 8 p.m. 703-534-8999. nist. Taking place within the Shear Madness unisex hairstyling salon, the show combines sharp improvisational humor with audience participation making for a thrilling, hilarious time at the theater. With a slightly different experience each night, “Shear Madness” will run through Sunday, Oct. 2. Presented by the Kennedy Center (2700 F St., NW, Washington, D.C., 20566).

Covid-19 health guidelines will be observed; for more information on the Kennedy Center’s Covid Safety Plan, visit kennedy-center.org/visit/ covid-safety. With general questions, call 202-416-8000. Visit kennedycenter.org for more information, complete showtimes, and tickets.

SUNDAY, MAY 22 Show Way: The Musical. The story centers on Soonie's greatgrandma and her special quilt, stitched with secret meanings that showed enslaved people the way to freedom. Adapted from the book by Jacqueline Woodson, with direction by Schele Williams and music by Tyrone L. Robinson.

"Show Way" highlights American history, familial love, and personal resilience over seven generations of women. Running through Sunday, May 29. Visit kennedy-center.org for complete showtimes and tickets.

BUTTE AND FRIENDS will ride again, making their way to the Little City's own Settle Down Easy Brewing this Saturday, May 21, starting at 7 p.m. The band will present its horn-laden jams and soulful vocals covering a variety of artists, from Little Feat and the Band to Phish and the Grateful Dead. (Photo: Butte and Friends/Woody Johnson.)

PAGE 20 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

PUBLIC NOTICE Notice of Public Hearing for Falls Church Residents Find out about: Park Avenue Great Streets and Downtown POA Projects VDOT Project No. U000-110-195, UPC 111667 Federal Project No. FHWA-5B01(045).

VDOT Project No. U000-110-182, UPC 110335 Federal Project No. STP-5A01 (855) The City of Falls Church has a CIP project called Park Avenue Great Street and Downtown Multimodal Improvements and has completed the 30% design concept. The proposed project would: Park Avenue Great Street Project The proposed scope of the Park Avenue Great Street project is to install two midblock crossings, widen sidewalks and remove obstructions (including utility lines), adjust intersection geometry, and increase visibility at six crossings/intersections along Park Avenue between North Virginia Avenue and North Washington Street in the City of Falls Church Downtown Planning Opportunity Area Project The proposed scope of the Downtown Planning Opportunity Area (POA) Project includes sidewalk widening, removal of obstructions, completion of missing links in the sidewalk network, and redesign of intersection geometry. The project focuses on sidewalks along North Maple Avenue and Little Falls Street, between Park Avenue and West Broad Street Review Project information at the project webpage http://www.fallschurchva.gov/ or the City of Falls Church Department of Public Works, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church, VA 22046, tel.

571-651-0133 (TTY 711). Please call ahead for staff availability.

Public Hearing A public hearing will be held to inform the public and to answer questions and receive comments on the 30% design plans on: • Thursday, May 26, 2022 at 7:00 PM • Location: City of Falls Church Recreation Center 223 Little Falls Street Falls Church, Va. 22046 The City of Falls Church ensures nondiscrimination in all programs and activities in accordance with Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For information call 703-248-5004 or (TTY 711).

PUBLIC NOTICE PLANNING COMMISSION On June 1, 2022, at 7:30 p.m., the City of Falls Church Planning Commission will hold a virtual public meeting to consider the following item and recommendation to City Council: (TR22-17): RESOLUTION TO GRANT A SPECIAL EXCEPTION SITE PLAN (SEC. 48- 488.B(3)) FOR A MIXED-USE BUILDING WITH A BUILDING HEIGHT UP TO FIFTEEN (15) STORIES ON APPROXIMATELY 0.76 ACRES OF LAND FOR THE PROPOSED SENIOR HOUSING BUILDING OF THE WEST FALLS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, LOCATED AT 7124 LEESBURG PIKE (PORTION OF REAL PROPERTY CODE NUMBER 51-221-010) ON APPLICATION BY TC MIDATLANTIC DEVELOPMENT V, INC. The application materials for the above items may be viewed on the City’s website: http://

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

C L AS S I F I E DS www.fallschurchva.gov/WFC The public hearing will be held electronically.

Meeting agenda and materials will be available on the following page prior to the public meeting: www.fallschurchva.gov/PC. Public comments will be accepted electronically only until the end of the public hearing. Please submit comments to plan@fallschurchva. gov. All participating members of Planning Commission will be present at this meeting through electronic means; and all members of the public are welcome to view the meeting at www.fallschurchva.gov/PC and on FCCTV (Cox 11, RCN 2, Verizon 35). The City of Falls Church is committed to the letter and spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act. To request a reasonable accommodation for any type of disability, call 703-248-5040 (TTY 711).

VOTER REGISTRATION DEADLINE Final day of registration is Tuesday May 31 for the June 21, 2022 Democratic Party Primary.

Sample Ballots can be found online: http:// www.fallschurchva.gov/vote All citizens, including those who are currently 17 years old, who will turn 18 years old by the November 8, 2022 General Election are eligible to register and vote.

Online Voter Registration and early/absentee ballot by mail applications: http://www.vote. virginia.gov/ Deadline for applications submitted online via the Virginia Department of Election website is 11:59 pm on May 31, 2022. Only applicants with a DMV ID like a driver’s license can submit an application electronically and these applications may also be untimely if missing material information. Please note: those applications filled out online that are required to be printed and delivered to the registrar should be treated as regular mailed in applications and need to be postmarked by May 31, 2022, to meet the deadline. The 5:00 p.m. deadline on May 31, 2022, applies if any of these are submitted in-person at the registrar’s office.

The deadline for mailed in applications remains that they be postmarked by May 31, 2022.

Early/Absentee Voting for the City of Falls Church In-Person early voting began in May at our office at City Hall, 300 Park Ave, and will continue through Saturday, June 18. During that time, residents wishing to vote early can do so 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday.

We are closed Monday May 30th for the holiday.

We are also open Saturday, June 11: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

ABC NOTICE Feed The Belly LLC trading as Ellie Bird, 125 Founders Ave Falls Church, VA 22046 . The above establishment is applying to the VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL (ABC) for a Wine and Beer on & off premises/mixed beverage restaurant license to sell or manufacture alcoholic beverages. Carey and Yuan Tang, owner/ The Veritas Law Firm. Date notice posted at establishment: 5/6/2022. NOTE: Objections to the issuance of this license must be submitted to ABC no later than 30 days from the publishing date of the first of two required newspaper legal notices. Objections should be registered at www.abc.virginia.gov or 800-552-3200.

Member. https://hiltonoliverattorneyva.com.

ATTN. AUCTIONEERS: Advertise your upcoming auctions statewide and in other states. Affordable Print and Digital Solutions reaching your target audiences. Call this paper or Landon Clark at Virginia Press Services 804-521-7576, landonc@vpa.net

DOGS, PETS or LIVESTOCK Use Happy Jack® Kennel Dip as an area spray to control lyme disease ticks, fleas, stable flies, & mosquitoes where they breed. At Northwest Ace Hardware Stores.

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Election Day Reminders for the City of Falls Church Residents are reminded that on Election Day, street parking is available on both sides of Little Falls Street by the Community Center and on Oak, Seaton, Fellows, Parker, Timber, and Jackson near Oak Street Elementary School (formerly Thomas Jefferson Elementary School). Additional details, including a voter ward map, can be found online at www. fallschurchva.gov/Vote. Contact the Registrar’s office at 703-248-5085 (TTY 711) or vote@fallschurchva.gov for more information.

HIRING? We can help you fill your open positions! Promote job listings regionally or statewide! Affordable Print and Digital Advertising Solutions reaching potential candidates. Call this paper or Landon Clark at Virginia Press Services 804-521-7576, landonc@vpa.net

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RECRUITMENT

David B. Bjerke, MPP, CERA, VREO Director of Elections & General Registrar of Voters, City of Falls Church Office of Voter Registration & Elections 300 Park Ave., Room 206C , Falls Church, VA 22046

703-992-8787

AUCTIONS

Vote By Mail: The deadline for an absentee ballot by mail is Friday, June 10th but we don’t recommend that you wait that long.

The Ward 2 Polling Place we expect to be at Falls Green Apartments in their Club House.

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Office: 703-248-5085; Fax: 703-248-5204 vote@fallschurchva.gov; http://www.fallschurchva.gov/vote

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ANSWER TO PUZZLE NO. 576

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MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 21

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ANSWER TO PUZZLE NO. 578

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PAGE 22 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

LO CA L

BACK IN THE DAY

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

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25 � 10 Y���� A�� �� ��� N���-P���� Falls Church News-Press Vol. VI, No. 9 • May 15, 1997

Falls Church News-Press Vol. XXII, No. 12 • May 17, 2012

Planners Expect to OK Start Up of New Gym at St. James

Synder Makes Direct, Public Appeal To Bulova To Negotiate Water Deal

The Falls Church Planning Commission is expected to give the go-ahead at its meeting this Monday night to permit work to start on construction of a new gymnasium at the St. James Catholic Sochool. Keith Thurston told the News-Press that the approval was “put on a fast track.”

Vice Mayor Dave Synder chairing this Monday’s Falls Church City Council meeting made a dramatic on-the-camera appeal to Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chair Shraon Bulova to end the county’s refusal to negotiate on the future of the Falls Church water system.

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

FCCPS PRO DU CTI O N Tonight!

MAY 19 - 25, 2022 | PAGE 23

Junior Emma Hart (left) nominated for Comic Actor in a Male Role in a Play and Senior Phi Oescher (right) nominated for Lead Actor in a Female Role in a Play. FCCPS Photo/Carol Sly

Meridian celebrates Nine Cappie Nominations

The Meridian High School Theatre Department has received a total of nine cappie nominations for the school’s production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[revised]” This includes the nomination of Best Play! Congratulations to all nominated! The Cappie Gala is June 6th at the Kennedy Center.

The Meridian High Cappie Nominees Sound - Wenndy Sejas Stage Management - Colleen Carpenter and Bella Villano Ensemble in a Play - Hamlet Scene Ensemble Comic Actor in a Female Role in a Play - Katie Rice Comic Actor in a Male Role in a Play - Emma Hart

Supporting Actor in a Female Role in a Play - Liv Scappa Lead Actor in a Female Role in a Play - Phi Oeschger Lead Actor in a Male Role in a Play - Drew Miller Best Play - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [Revised]

Final Clearing of West End 10-Acre Site Underway

With the construction of Meridian High School nearly complete — only a couple of “Punch-List” items remain — the final clearing of the former site of the high school is ramping up. Grading, tree removal, and other activities are underway, giving a stark new look to the corner of Route 7 and Haycock Road. As difficult as it was to see all those trees on the ground, this has been part of the plan. To redevelop the site, the trees had to be removed.

Here are answers to several questions —

Tomorrow Night!

* The new campus has native trees that will take a while to grow but will eventually provide a considerable tree canopy on the campus. The commercial development will also have new trees planted. * Some trees were planted in memory of beloved FCCPS family members. The memory and honor have been preserved in new ways. The Legacy Grove in front of Meridian High School has a place for all those memories, and new trees have been planted there. * The Legacy Kiosk has a section called “In Memoriam” to recognize those whose families purchased trees and other elements on the old campus that have been removed.

Check it out at - http://mustangs.touchpros.com

Meridian College Sports Signings

The Falls Church Education Foundation holds their annual gala and auction tomorrow, May 20 at Washington Golf and Country Club. Proceeds go to Falls Church City Public Schools for teacher grants, Special Education, and equity of access for students.

Meridian Athletics celebrates eight seniors as they prepare to take on the next step in their sports carreer. Seniors will be signing for soccer, baseball, football, field hockey, cross country/track and field, and lacrosse.

Join Meridian Athletics, athletes, and their families at the Learning Stairs in Meridian High School this afternoon from 3:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. Be sure to wish a congratulations to Noah Rodiguez, AJ Smith, Thomas Downs, Josh Stillwagner, Seth Stillwagner, Hannah Anacko, Lauren Mellon, and Emmett Wood!

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

PAGE 24 | MAY 19 - 25, 2022

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