SPORTS: SPIRIT HEAD COACH PUTS PLAYERS FIRST ARTS: YOUR GUIDE TO THE

High Spirits

Kris Ward never expected to be an NWSL head coach, but after leading the Washington Spirit to its first title as an interim coach, the club hired him on a permanent basis.

By Kelyn Soong

@KelynSoong

Kris Ward

WASHINGTON SPIRIT HEAD coach Kris Ward brings the same mug with him to every match. On one side is a sticker with the word “BELIEVE” in blue letters on a yellow background. On the other side, another sticker reads, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Both are references to the hit Apple TV series Ted Lasso, about an American college football coach who is hired to manage an English Premier League team. Ward is a fan of the show, and he shares a few things in common with the title character. They’re around the same age, and Ward, 42, is also a first-time professional soccer head coach learning the ropes in a job he didn’t expect to have. Both Lasso and Ward take a playercentric approach to coaching. Spirit players have credited Ward with creating a positive team atmosphere after the club fired former head coach Richie Burke.

“There are certain moments that I relate to for sure,” Ward says of the show.

But the similarities mostly end there. Unlike Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), Ward has been coaching soccer for more than two decades. The Spirit hired Ward in August of 2020 as a team tactical analysis and player performance development coach—a new position he pitched to the club. And one year later, Ward replaced Burke, who was fired following an independent third-party investigation into allegations from former players of verbal and emotional abuse.

Ward took over on an interim basis, and in his first job as a professional soccer head coach, he led the team to a 9-2-3 record and the Spirit’s first National Women’s Soccer League title. Their two losses were forfeits for violating the league’s COVID-19 protocols. The club named Ward its permanent head coach last December but did not disclose the terms. The Post reports that Ward received a two-year contract with a one-year club option. The jump from an assistant to head coach is one riddled with unforeseen challenges and complex dynamics, but those around Ward believe he is ready for the task.

The Spirit opens the new season against Orlando Pride on March 19 for the group stage of the 2022 NWSL Challenge Cup. It will be the first match of Ward’s first full season as one of the 12 head coaches in the NWSL. Ward calls the promotion a “happy accident.”

“It was good [that] it pushed me out of my comfort zone,” he says.

Ward couldn’t bear to sit idly by on the bench with an ankle injury while his teammates at Union University squandered its lead in a regional playoff match.

The Division II team based out of Jackson, Tennessee, was fighting to qualify for a national tournament and went into halftime with a 3-0 lead. But as Ward looked around, he noticed that the opposing team’s coach didn’t appear concerned. Meanwhile, his coach, Ward recalls, was “just going nuts” in celebration. When the second half started, Union University’s opponents scored twice in 15 minutes.

“I’m looking at our coach, who’s now sitting on the bench with his head in his hands and doesn’t know what to do,” Ward says.

The young college student noticed a mismatch on the field, so he walked down the sideline and told his two teammates to swap positions. Union University won the match, 4-2, and Ward believes his advice helped “stop the bleeding.” On the bus ride back home, Ward realized he wanted to become a soccer coach. Before that, Ward, a history enthusiast, was leaning more toward a job as an archeologist in the model of Indiana Jones.

“It was legitimately like someone turned on the lights in a dark room, and was like, you should think about this,” he says. “It was really an epiphany.”

Ward grew up in Manassas and Centreville, and started coaching high-school and club soccer in the area when he was 19. Ward also eventually coached for the Washington Freedom, the defunct local team that played in the Women’s Professional Soccer league, and D.C. United. He first worked as an assistant coach for the Spirit in 2013, and his most recent head coaching job prior to the Spirit was with the Harvard-Westlake School, an independent college-preparatory high school in the Los Angeles area.

But even with two decades of coaching experience, nothing could quite prepare Ward for a professional head coaching job. His relationship to the players and staff immediately changed due to his responsibilities, and those dynamics can sometimes become “very lonely” because of the new boundaries, he says.

“I’m the one who makes the decisions at the end of the day,” Ward says. “I have to decide whether you’re playing or not, traveling or not traveling. I’ve got to speak to the medical staff, I’ve got to speak to the player, I’ve got to speak to all kinds of people to decide if this is the best situation.”

Ben Olsen, the Spirit’s president and acting general manager, understands Ward’s position better than most. In 2010, Olsen was promoted from assistant to interim head coach of D.C. United after a dreadful start to the season under its previous manager. Olsen accepted the permanent position later that

year and served in that role for 11 seasons.

“They’re two completely different jobs, and they come with two completely different responsibilities, two completely different intensities,” Olsen says of the differences between an assistant and a head coach. “You can’t compare it, and you have to get into the role, and within days, you realize how different it is. Because you’re the boss, and you’re making the final decision, and everybody wants a piece of you.”

To help him through the process, Ward turned to the Spirit’s sports psychologist, Amanda Visek, and some of his closest friends, including Dave Tenney, the high performance director for Major League Soccer’s Austin FC, throughout the season. “I would joke with the players all the time that I was on the phone with the sports psychologist more than they were,” Ward says. “Because I needed it, too. … We had six-hour calls sometimes.”

Spirit captain Tori Huster and defender Sam Staab both credit Ward for putting

players in the “drivers’ seat.” The team also improved its on-field tactics under Ward. One of the first changes Ward made last season was to give players more information on defense. He created guidelines on specific game-time situations, such as how the team should attack opponents and what to look for in transition. “Just a little bit more specifics in that sense, but not so over the top [that] they couldn’t move,” Ward says. “They had to be free within that to explore and create their own things.” The defense craved a structure and development that didn’t exist under Burke. After Ward took over, the defense allowed just three goals in its final eight games.

“Honestly, I think he just kind of let us do us,” Staab says.

Olsen says he interviewed “several” coaching candidates, but Ward stood out because of the way he handled the team last season from an emotional intelligence standpoint and as a tactician on the field.

“It doesn’t hurt to go undefeated and win a championship,” Olsen adds. “So in some ways, he made my job very easy.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, Ward occasionally rises from his desk to chat with players as they walk by on their way out of the training facility. In front of him, a whiteboard displays staff and players’ votes for an ongoing fashion competition between him and goalkeeper coach Paul Crichton. “Paul is dressing like an English player from the 1990s … I got more casual but still nice looking street wear,” Ward explains. This is the part of the job that he has always enjoyed: building relationships and working with players one-on-one.

“I was perfectly happy being in my cubicle last year before everything happened, just doing a video, and just talking with people, like ‘Here’s your performance from the game. Here’s how we can make it a little bit better,’” Ward says.

The club has high expectations this season. Reigning NWSL Rookie of the Year Trinity Rodman looks to build on her historic rookie season, and the Spirit also returns U.S. Women’s National Team players Kelley

O’Hara, Emily Sonnett, Andi Sullivan, and Ashley Hatch, who won the Golden Boot award last season as the top goal scorer in the league. Aubrey Kingsbury (formerly Bledsoe) was named the 2021 NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year.

“We want to improve off of what we did last year, we want to score more goals, we want to have more shutouts, we want to be more dynamic as a team, and we feel like we have the players to do that,” Ward says. “I think we’re actually stronger this year than we were last year. ... We’re very close to having two starters in every position.”

The team is also expected to hire former NWSL star Angela Salem as an assistant coach. Salem previously played for the Spirit in 2015, and she will join a coaching staff that includes Crichton and assistant coach Lee Nguyen. In several ways, Ward is still the same coach who in 2020 greeted players with a fist bump every morning and then quietly went to work at his desk.

Except now, he’s the one calling all the shots.

“It doesn’t hurt to go undefeated and win a championship. So in some ways, he made my job very easy,” says Ben Olsen.

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The New Fire at Engine 22

Firefighters are trained to douse flames. Today, they’re more often called to assist the ailing and elderly.

By Alexandra Moe Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

Mike Murphy and James “Gordo” Gordon

When the green light flashes at Engine Company 22, on Georgia Avenue NW in Shepherd Park, Captain James Gordon, better known as Gordo, climbs into the black seat of Truck 11, the 40-foot ladder truck. Technician Mike Murphy climbs into the driver’s seat and they head toward the emergency. Murphy competed for the driver position at the station, a role he’s wanted since boyhood, when a rusty abandoned fire truck at Turkey Thicket Park sparked a dream.

Now the front cab of Truck 11 is real, and, like the fire station, a second home, one that Murphy shares with Gordo—a cockpit of mounted laptops, headphones, radio systems, flashlights, and a fire helmet. A heavy black coat, within reach when jumping in the truck, hangs on Gordo’s door.

Driving a 20-ton truck down thin urban avenues requires not just grace and technical skill, but a photographic memory. To earn the job, Murphy, then 28, drove the streets surrounding the station on his days off. He also got out and walked them. Addresses, alleyways, and “problem spots” that could blow up in flame—old churches, industrial wastelands—burrowed into his memory. Neighborhood familiarization, as this memorization is called, strengthens through nightly flash cards, so that how to get there is ultimately the last thing on a driver’s mind when the green light flashes.

It was surprising, then, two years ago, when Murphy was called to an address he had never heard of before. And to arrive and not see a house at all, let alone a person who had called with an emergency.

“Is there a house here?” he asked Gordo, surveying the lot of overgrown trees. “How is someone living here?”

Then, as the pair made their way beneath the overgrowth, a house and an address emerged, and inside, an elderly man who had been “living destitute for years to get this way,” Murphy says. “The guy was like, ‘I don’t need help.’” But clearly he did, and now that he had summoned the nerve to call 911 and the firefighters had responded, “then it becomes like, now I am going to call every day,” says Murphy.

There is no resignation or annoyance in his voice, but empathy.

Such is the role of firefighters increasingly in U.S. cities like D.C., as home and structural fires diminish, and senior caregiving needs escalate.

In 2017, only 4 percent of calls that firefighters responded to involved actual fires, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The vast majority of calls—80 percent in Washington, D.C. in 2020, for example—are for medical emergencies. Many times, an old person has fallen and can’t get up (a “lift assist,” in firefighter-speak). In 2020, the DC Fire and EMS Department performed nearly 4,000 lift assists, an average of 10 per day. In plain English: Firefighters spend a surprising amount of time picking our parents and grandparents up off the ground.

With the U.S. in the grips of a caregiving crisis, as 10,000 Americans daily turn 65, and aides are not only in short supply but often prohibitively expensive, are firefighters such as Murphy and Gordo becoming short-term senior caregivers on wheels?

When we think of fires, we often think of men in heavy beige coats standing before orange plumes swallowing the American West. But starting in the late 1970s, fires in the U.S. began to plummet, thanks to decades of prevention education, improved building regulations (think: sprinklers), and fire-resistant technology. Today, you are infinitely more likely to get hit by a car, felled by a gun, or drown in a pool than become engulfed in flames in your kitchen.

Some bad news, amid the good: When fires do occur, they are much worse, due to today’s building materials—primarily plastic—which serve as fuel. As a result, says Gordo, fires burn hotter and quicker. Fewer fires are breaking out but the ones that do are higher risk and hungrier. (One needs only to look at the tragic, ferocious blazes at Kennedy Street NW in 2019 and G Street SW this year, as examples. Truck 11 was the first ladder truck on the scene at the Kennedy Street blaze.)

The decline of fires coincided with the rise in paramedicine. The Vietnam War taught us that minutes matter; that a roving medic in a rolling truck can save a life. Many urban fire departments, no longer burdened by the nonstop work of actual fires, began filling the demand for 911 emergency calls in the 1980s by cross-training members as emergency service personnel and paramedics. This resolved two pressure points: municipalities

that wanted to keep their force active and a union that wanted to keep members.

A hit TV show in the 1970s, Emergency!, ushered into U.S. living rooms the idea that paramedics—specifically, a hybrid ambulance-fire service—could soon be caring for you, when disaster strikes. (John Travolta had his first acting credit on the show, as a teenage hiker who falls off a cliff and bloodies his head. A fire truck careens up the canyon to save him.)

Since 1987, all D.C. firefighters have been required to train as EMTs. Twelve percent of uniformed members are trained paramedics, and D.C. Fire and EMS seeks out paramedics heavily in its recruitment. They’re “fast-tracked,” says FEMS public information officer Vito Maggioli, in part because they have more training. EMTs average around 150 to 200 training hours, whereas paramedics average 1,000 to 2,000 hours or more. Both are equipped for life-threatening emergencies, but paramedics can provide more complex care and make medical decisions, whereas EMTs provide basic patient care and medical transport. All D.C. firefighters are essentially health-care workers, in this sense. And since the calamities an urban firefighter might face range from car accidents to terrorist attacks, fires, heart attacks, kids stuck in trees, toxic chemical spills, lift assists, baby deliveries, and many others qualms, urban departments like D.C. and L.A. are considered “all-hazards” forces, trained for any manner of emergency.

In D.C., since firefighters are trained as EMTs and paramedics and are usually closest to the emergency, they often arrive first after a 911 call is placed. If it’s life-threatening, FEMS aims to have an EMT arrive in four to six minutes. The call taker at the Office of Unified Communications follows a specific protocol, asking a series of questions: Is this a medical emergency, a fire, or a police problem? What is the address? Is the patient awake? Are they breathing? Based on the answers, a code recommends the exact emergency response team to be dispatched, by the severity and geography of the call.

We may still think of firefighters as doing fire-related activities, but the closer definition might be problem-solver, says Gordo. They’re in the business of solving your problem, and the reason most people call, he says, is that they have a problem and “they just don’t know who else to call.” One firefighter described the role as “general responder,” the “everyman of emergency medical workers.” Many described their work as going into the “unknown,” a murky situation that can be impossible to navigate.

The emergency that many are now navigating is elder care. Chase Lambert, 35, is a San Francisco Bay Area firefighter and part of the younger generation of firefighters who came to the job as paramedics, after first working in ambulances. He understands the job now involves responding to elderly calls related to respiratory and heart issues, dementia, and diabetes. He estimates that 40 percent of the calls his department responds to involve elderly residents. He checks their blood pressure, pulse, and uses a cardiac monitor; for diabetics, he checks blood sugar, and, if necessary, administers an IV. If this sounds like the domain of a nurse or health-care clinician, it usually is. He talks with them, since many are lonely. “Sometimes you can tell they want us to hang out. You can tell it’s hard being alone,” he says. If this sounds like bedside manner, it is that, too.

Susan Braedley, a professor of social work at Canada’s Carleton University who has spent 3,000 hours in fire stations and riding along in firetrucks and wrote her dissertation on firefighters, says firefighters are “being hauled into the care economy.” More than half of the calls she went on involved elderly residents, she says. Canada’s EMS system resembles the one in the U.S., and shifted to paramedicine soon after the U.S. did, in the 1990s.

The most common call was from someone who had slipped off the toilet and become wedged between the toilet and the bathtub. Some had been there for a day or longer, she says. The firefighters were called by frantic family members who couldn’t reach their loved one, and they performed lift assists. The calls had several things in common: Those in need were elderly, often isolated, often poor, and typically men.

“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” became a catchphrase in the late 1980s and originates from a commercial for the medical alert company LifeCall, in which an elderly woman on the bathroom floor speaks into a necklace, alerting a dispatcher to her predicament. The line quickly became a punchline, but captured the phenomenon that elderly Americans were facing—they were living longer and living alone. D.C.’s elderly population grew to 80,000 in 2016, a 30 percent increase in just 11 years. Nearly 60 percent of elderly adults in the District live alone, significantly higher than the national average.

The sheer number of elderly people in the United States has skyrocketed to nearly 50 million, a 100 percent increase since 1950. And more than in any other country in the world, older Americans live alone, which poses severe health risks: increased falls, isolation, and chronic conditions worsened by missed doctor’s appointments.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation brief published in February 2020, nearly a million seniors on Medicaid are on waiting lists for a home health aide. The average cost for a home health aide in D.C. is $64,000 annually. Family members try to fill this gap, but today’s family caregivers, who are predominantly women, are also working: 60 percent have jobs. Medicare covers a home health aide only for acute care, such as recovering from surgery, and usually for only 60 days.

The unknown that firefighters are increasingly entering, the problems they are asked to “solve,” can be a gray area: Who is responsible for the elderly when caregivers are not affordable and not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and family members are working? Who will pick you up when you fall? Firefighters entered a job intending to douse flames yet learn that one of the most important skills is how to talk to an elderly person alone on a bathroom floor.

One truth about working in a firehouse is that it is part house—food needs to be bought, cooked, eaten; the place needs to be cleaned up; everybody sleeps there—and another is that it is an approximate family. Murphy and Gordo drive Truck 11 to the nearby Safeway to check for sales, steak and shrimp specials, roasts, spaghetti—enough to feed the firehouse three meals a day and extend leftovers to the next shift.

Murphy and Gordo grew up around D.C—Murphy in Brookland and Gordo in Fort Belvoir—and dreamed of becoming big city firefighters. For Murphy, it was D.C. or nothing; he wanted to give back to the city that raised him. For Gordo, his awe for fire trucks began at 9, after accidentally igniting a lamp at his home and watching the engines arrive. A fire prevention class, taken as punishment, only fanned the flames of this spark. (After working together for five years at Engine 22, Gordo was promoted to battalion chief, Third Battalion, based in Anacostia, in January.)

Working 24-7 is a frequent complaint of American life and employment in a wired age. Murphy and Gordo work a 24-72: a 24-hour shift followed by three days off. A shift, called a “tour,” begins and ends at 7 a.m.

On days off, they fish and talk on the phone about firehouse projects; with all this togetherness, Gordo quips that his wife is slightly jealous of Murphy. But they’ve created a family, Gordo says. “I spent a quarter of my life with these people. If the roof blows off my house tomorrow night, the guys will be there to put a new roof on.”

It also stands in contrast to the solitariness of the elderly residents they visit when they drive Truck 11 to solve problems in the neighborhood. Often the elderly residents are alone, says Gordo. “That’s why we’re doing it,” he says, adding that most lack aides and regular family visitors. “It seemed like people weren’t being looked after.”

John Donnelly, Chief of the DC FEMS, noted, "They’re not calling us because they have other options. We’re the front line of health care for a lot of people."

The problems for the residents of Shepherd Park range from faulty air-conditioning to carbon monoxide and gas leaks, from food burning on a neighbor’s stove to actual fires. A fire could occur a few times a week, or once a month.

What happens every day, once a tour, is a lift assist, Murphy says. Shepherd Park is a historically middle-class, predominantly African American neighborhood with a large elderly population. Many residents have lived here for generations, bought their first house and lived in it for 60 years. With that comes pride. “When we show up, it’s a realization that they no longer control a part of their life,” Murphy says.

They often witness extreme vulnerability—an elderly person alone on a bathroom floor for 12 hours or more. They use the bedside manner that Lambert spoke of, developed from years of helping seniors in decline. “If you walk in, and appear shocked, imagine how you are making that person feel,” says Murphy. Many residents apologize, feeling as if they’ve failed in some way. To which Murphy says, “It’s OK, I got you, darlin’. We’ll just help you up here.” They haven’t failed. They’ve simply grown old.

“We all have parents or grandparents, right?” adds Gordo. “My attitude is, we’re going to treat them the way we want our parents to be treated.”

So, en route to Safeway, two years ago, they drove Truck 11 to carry a wheelchair-bound woman in her 80s down two sets of stairs, twice a day, three times a week, for a year. She was recovering from surgery, and had no way of getting down her front stairs to the Metro Access van that would transport her to rehab appointments. In the afternoon, they would return to carry her back up the stairs. “We’ve had a few addresses that we’ve run every day, nonstop for years,” Murphy says. This was one.

The woman eventually exchanged phone numbers with the firefighters at Engine 22, so they could plan their day to include this run. “We went through the entire process—how can we make it so we’re not sending a fire truck to this address?” Gordo says. “Because it’s a big, expensive piece of machinery. It’s not the best option that the city has.”

Some fire departments are experimenting with sending SUVs to medical calls, for just this reason. What if a fire were to break out when the ladder truck was tied up? A truck from the neighboring battalion would have to be sent, and if fires burn hotter and quicker, doesn’t every second count to get there and douse it?

But sometimes they’re the solution, after running it up the chain of city options. As the woman continued to call regularly, Engine 22 referred the case to Street Calls, a division within FEMS that coordinates home-based support and interventions, founded in 2008 to address nonurgent, frequent 911 callers. Solutions come down to the caller’s insurance type, but also what sort of apartment they live in, and whether they are able to move, says FEMS Captain Lakisha Lacey, operations manager for Street Calls. Many real-estate management companies are not obligated to install ramps or make property alterations for renters who are elderly or disabled, she says. “We are the fall back” for elderly who call in need.

“It came down to—we are the default agency for the city sometimes, when there is no other solution. She didn’t qualify to be able to move into another apartment building, or another one in that building, where she would have walk-out access,” Gordo says.

It’s a problem across geographic and economic lines in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

“There’s one on every street,” says Aaron Webster, a captain with Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, waving an arm at the surrounding Bethesda neighborhood and referring to a house with an elderly person in it, who regularly calls 911. The elderly alcoholic couple. The hoarder. The man living alone, whose wife died and who, due to pride or income, does not believe he needs a caregiver, or anyone else, for that matter, to help him.

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Mark Andersen, a co-founder of the punk activist organization Positive Force and co-director of We Are Family, a senior outreach organization in D.C. that pairs seniors who live alone with volunteers who visit them, thinks firefighters should not be doing this work. Not because elderly residents are not in real danger—he knows they are. And not because he hasn’t seen firefighters handle with extreme grace and patience many extreme emergencies involving the one thousand low-income seniors he works with monthly. But it shouldn’t come to this, to an emergency, to receive care—there should be home health aides, he says. At the least, there should be “chore aides,” to fetch basic necessities and check on safety.

Andersen is thinking of Ms. Jackson, the 90-year-old woman who said “no, no, no” behind her apartment door for three months, as he pleaded on the other side for entry. She had not been seen at St. Augustine, the historically Black Catholic church on V Street NW, for weeks, had not eaten, and was fearful that whoever was on the other side of the door would send her to a nursing home.

Sister Alma noticed her absence in the pews and attributed it to Ms. Jackson’s blindness and increasing paranoia. She asked Andersen, who is known in the neighborhood as a trusted resource, to check on her. He slowly won her trust from the hallway, until one day, that trust disappeared, and fearing for her safety, he called 911.

A routine developed—Ms. Jackson began falling almost daily, and the firefighters and EMTs were called to lift her. They would ask to transport her to a hospital, and she refused. Part of it was paranoia, Andersen says, which could have been treated had services reached her earlier.

“Finally, we just accepted that the only way she would get taken to the hospital was when it got so bad that she passed out on the floor and couldn’t refuse to go,” Andersen says. After about a week, Andersen couldn’t reach her, the building management let him in, they found her unconscious, and he called 911.

Six firefighter-EMTs and two civilian EMTs soon joined him on the 10th floor of the brown stucco subsidized senior apartment building, and Ms. Jackson was taken to the hospital.

But he doesn’t see this in the rescue TV show, save-the-day sense.

The firefighters were very patient, very caring, but they shouldn’t have been needed, says Andersen. “There should have been in-home medical support—folks paid to be watching over her,” he says.

His organization is committed to reaching seniors pre-emergency, but it’s a lonely fight. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better initiative will help by sending more than $1 billion in grants to support direct care workers, including nurse aides and home health aides for seniors. Without regular caregivers, outreach groups such as We Are Family pose a radical idea: Your neighbor is your family.

This is an idea D.C. Fire and EMS Department Chief John Donnelly echoes. “If you have an elderly neighbor, everybody should be looking out for them,” he says. “It takes a community for you to raise a child. It also takes a community for you to age in place.”

Perhaps the word to best describe urban firefighters is “eyewitness.” They are unique, frontline eyes into elderly homes that “police would need a search warrant for,” Michael Dolinger, a D.C. firefighter, says. They see whose isolation has become perilous, who is just barely getting by.

This reimagining of the firefighter’s role is necessary, says Erik Blutinger, an emergency medicine physician who regularly interacts with firefighters in New York hospitals. “Firefighters are perceived as some of the heroes of our society, and if there was a way [of] harnessing their public image and going on some kind of media campaign illustrating what they are seeing, I think that may educate policy makers on the need for more community help.”

Firefighters, in the public imagination, are brothers bound by the commitment to put their lives on the line for each other, Gordo says. They’re heroes, bounding into the fiery World Trade Center, and working atop “the Pile,” a heap of smoldering steel, for months afterward. Every autumn, they are “smokejumpers,” quelling wildfire infernos burning in the west. And they are also senior caregivers, and will be stretched in this capacity as the elderly population in America grows to 90 million by 2050. Elder-care experts emphasize the importance of aging in place to preserve dignity and agency. Most seniors want to—and do—live at home as they age. But what it takes is other people, something John Dunne knew, in 1623:

No man is an island Entire of itself Every man is a piece of the continent A part of the main.

This is where the elderly residents of not just Shepherd Park, but all of D.C. and much of the nation, are in trouble. For them, Build Back Better, and anything to improve access to home aides, would be a much-needed lift assist.

Wearing of the Green

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Across 1. Nervous spasms 5. Vermont jam band 10. Kicker Mia 14. Reply to “Still asleep?” 15. Stress-free course 16. Cyclotron morsel 17. Approximately 19. Chuck of NBC News 20. Rights watchdog, for short 21. Louis, Charles et al. 23. Was a trailblazer 24. S’il vous plaît, across the Rhine 26. Recorded the score 28. “Isn’t that correct,” in snarky memes 30. Opinionated work 31. System.out. println (“Hello world”); e.g. 33. Diamond arbiter 34. Top-rated 35. Indonesian makeup? 37. An old college cry 40. Big O? 42. 1962 Neil Simon musical 45. Sailor Moon and Fullmetal Alchemist genre 48. Went longer than scheduled 49. Relating to smell 53. Pizzeria needs 54. “Open ___ midnight” 55. Criminals often do it 56. Hip appendage? 57. Power System servers 59. Producing a better result 63. Paper towel brand 64. Musical form 65. Modular component 66. Perceive 67. Cavalry mount 68. Yo in Oz

Down 1. Commerford of Rage Against the Machine 2. TLA on Reddit forums 3. Medicinal 4. Prism effects 5. Land of the Quechua 6. AI aboard the United States Spacecraft Discovery One 7. River that flows into the Rhône 8. Online administrator 9. Possesses that je ne sais quoi 10. Bald spot coverage 11. Some South Pacific spots 12. Vintage auto 13. Format for entering some dates 18. ___ acid 22. Stop the flow 24. Alta’s opposite 25. Computer with a Magic Trackpad 26. Adidas rival 27. Slitherer alongside the Nile 29. Elbow grease 32. London’s West End? 33. Org. for Daniil Medvedev 36. Michael D. Higgins’ republic 37. Clerical title 38. Clerical period 39. Towel embroidery word 40. ___ Khan 41. Tastefulness 43. Low-risk govt. debt instrument 44. ___ Starski (hip-hop pioneer) 45. Crime investigation necessity 46. Crime investigation excuses 47. Rodgers, four times 50. Little fights 51. “Gotta bounce” 52. Threshold 56. Cave : man : : __ : woman 58. Put into words 60. Mardi Gras, e.g.: abbr. 61. “Chandelier” hitmaker 62. Comm. device for the deaf

DCHFA, Y Your Homeownership Resource in the District.

The District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency is your homeownership resource in the District from buying a home to retaining your home; we have a homeownership program to assist you. DCHFA, Your Homeownership Resource in the District. DCHFA, Your Homeownership Resource in the District. DCHFA, Your Homeownership Resource in the District.

DC Open Doors DC Open Doors DC Open Doors DCHFA, Your Homeownership Resource in the District. DC Open Doors DC Open Doors is your key to homeownership in the city. This program o ers competitive interest rates and lower mortgage insurance costs on fi rst trust mortgages. You are not required to be a fi rst-time homebuyer or a D.C. resident to qualify for DCOD. You must, however, be purchasing a home in the District of Columbia.

DC Open Doors

Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP)

HPAP provides interest free deferred loans for down payment and closing cost assistance up to $84,000 combined. DCHFA serves as a co-administrator of this DC Department of Housing and Community Development’s (DHCD) fi rst-time home buyer program.

DC4ME DC4ME provides mortgage assistance with optional down payment assistance to D.C. government employees. DC4ME is o ered to current full-time District government employees, including employees of District governmentbased instrumentalities, independent agencies, D.C. Public Charter Schools, and organizations, provided the applicant/ borrower’s employer falls under the oversight of the Council of the District of Columbia.

DC MAP (Mortgage Assistance Program) COVID-19

DC MAP COVID-19 provides fi nancial assistance to those a ected by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Visit www.DCHFA.org how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs. Qualifi ed borrowers can receive a loan of up to $5,000 per month to put toward their mortgage for up to six months.

Visit www.DCHFA.org for full qualifi cation guidelines and information Visit www.DCHFA.org how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs. on how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs. 815 FLORIDA AVENUE, NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20001 • 202.777.1600 • WWW.DCHFA.ORG Visit www.DCHFA.org how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs.Visit www.DCHFA.org how to apply to any of DCHFA’s homeownership programs.

DC MAP COVID-19 and nancial assistance will be granted on a rst come, rst served basis until the program allocation has been exhausted. Homeowners seeking assistance through DC MAP COVID-19 should call 202-667-7706 or DCMAP@housingetc.org to begin the process of applying.

Bring It! On

A new bicycle courier service offers an alternative model for dispirited delivery workers and restaurants.

By Michael Loria Contributing writer

“People don’t think thatyou can take 25 pizzas on a bicycle,” says Chris Rabadi. “But a Bring It! courier can.”

Rabadi leads operations for Bring It!, a bicycle courier service for local restaurants and other food and beverage businesses. During work hours, he helps run things from the Bring It! office in Naylor Court, dispatching couriers to their destinations and supporting them as needed, whether with a wheel change or a backup cell phone. The erstwhile bicycle racer handles many of the orders himself on a signature Omnium Cargo bike. Bring It! has wholesale deals with Omnium and a few other bicycle makers to ensure they’re riding the bikes that will get them there the fastest.

The brainchild of Rabadi and his partner, Kimmie Harlow, who owns the company, Bring It! began in 2020 when the pandemic was in full swing and takeout and delivery were the only options diners and restaurant owners had. For the two of them, both of whom previously worked as food deliverers, it was about creating a company that put delivery workers first; however, a few dozen restaurant owners have also found it to be the solution to their Uber problem.

“We looked into UberEats and some of the other apps and we were really opposed to their pay structure,” says Oliver Cox, a co-owner of Pearl’s Bagels in Mount Vernon Triangle. There’s still a limit to what people are comfortable spending on a breakfast sandwich, Cox says. “Once you factor in that Uber is going to take 15 percent of that, it’s almost not worth even being on those sites,” he says. The sourdough bagel shop works exclusively with Bring It! now.

The delivery commission fee for companies like UberEats and Grubhub used to be even higher. Prior to the pandemic, fees typically cost up to 30 percent of every order, taking a sizable bite out of restaurants’ earnings. Given the expanded role that delivery orders suddenly played for District restaurants during the pandemic, the D.C. Council passed a law, tied to the public health emergency, capping delivery fees at 15 percent.

The public health emergency expired this past January. What will happen now remains to be seen, but if D.C. makes those delivery caps permanent, tech platforms such as UberEats and DoorDash won’t go down without a fight. When San Francisco passed such legislation in 2021, DoorDash and Grubhub quickly sued, calling it an “irrational law, driven by naked animosity and ill-conceived economic protectionism.”

For restaurant owners, however, their issues with third-party delivery apps don’t stop at the fees. Bob Daly, the owner of DC Pizza downtown and another Bring It! partner, says thirdparty app workers have shorted customers on their promised number of pies multiple times. “Things can get wrecked along the way. They drop a $200 order of pizzas and now we’ve got to make them over again,” Daly says. “So many things can go wrong in delivery.”

Complaints like these spurred the team behind Shaw bar Ivy and Coney to create their own delivery platform, DC To-GoGo. Launched in 2020, the platform ultimately didn’t capture enough market share to become sustainable. Ironically, they lost their edge over the third-party app when D.C. enacted the delivery commission cap legislation.

Where DC To-GoGo offered an alternative to third-party delivery in the name of restaurant workers, Bring It! did so in the name of delivery workers. “We collectively got together to avoid being mistreated,” Rabadi says. “That’s what this whole project is about.”

Delivery workers run a gauntlet to deliver a meal for often very little pay. There’s a new algorithm for every app; people take food they didn’t order; a parking ticket might nix earnings; bathrooms can be scarce; and bad weather can make for a miserable ride for a bike courier.

Third-party app workers suffer particularly bad conditions. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sued DoorDash in 2019 for pocketing millions of dollars in workers’ tips and using that to cover labor costs. Georgetown scholar Katie Wells of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor argues that gig delivery workers are set up to fail. While they can dictate their own hours, because they’re classified as independent contractors, they don’t have the same protections in-house employees have, like a guaranteed minimum wage or overtime pay, all while risking their safety in a city where traffic fatalities continue to rise.

Having worked for third-party apps before Bring It!, Rabadi knows what it’s like. “You’re not getting paid very much on DoorDash to begin with,” he says. A large order might fetch a better tip, but otherwise earnings hover around minimum wage. “DoorDash does not take care of their couriers at all,” Rabadi says.

For some, the apps alienate them from the work. “Having these huge companies take over the industry is a major disconnect from the courier to their work and being able to get paid fairly,” Rabadi says. It makes a big difference to have an actual human dispatcher looking out for the couriers, he says.

“Math and courier work don’t go hand in hand at all. There’s no way that you can write a math problem that’s going to predict the headwind that a vehicle has to go through to get the job done,” Rabadi says. “There’s a huge amount of trust and attention to detail that comes into courier work.”

Coming up as a courier, Rabadi didn’t have the same flexibility in dictating his schedule that gig workers have. But his efforts on rainy or cold days were recognized by dispatchers who would route him to $600 days when the going was good, a huge windfall by industry standards. “[Courier work] is a lot of time in the saddle dedicating yourself in cold and rainy weather,” he says.

For their workers, Bring It! counters third-party apps by guaranteeing at least minimum wage, though often workers make more. The seven couriers cover less ground, use a dispatcher app made by bike couriers, and have technical support, including backup bicycles. “We focus on making sure our couriers are successful,” Rabadi says.

Bring It! remains small, but the model can be an inspiring alternative to dispirited delivery workers and fed up restaurant owners. A few restaurant owners have even used Bring It!’s couriers to deliver third-party app orders. “People don’t want their couriers to handle it, but we’re very highly trained, well-equipped individuals,” Rabadi says.

For Pearl’s Bagels, Bring It! was a solution after Grubhub added them to their app without consent. They noticed Grubhub workers putting in orders based on outdated menus and put a stop to it after seeing that the deliveries weren’t going smoothly. “Then you have people giving you a one star Yelp review,” Cox says.

The experience made Cox realize that there was a market for delivery, but because Bring It! limits their delivery range to what’s manageable on a bicycle, Pearl can’t reach everyone. For Cox, the trade-off is worth it. “We’re trying to make sure that what we’re putting out is as good as it can possibly be in our eyes,” he says. “If it goes out of our control, we can look bad and so for us that’s been a more important business decision than the quick, easy way of sort of getting higher volume in sales.”

The two businesses started working together late last year. Cox considered hiring an in-house delivery driver beforehand but decided against it because they weren’t sure how much delivery business there would be. It’s become a small percentage of their business, but they’ve established regulars who order multiple times a week, even if they’ve never come in person.

The relationship between the delivery workers and the restaurant is also different from what third-party app workers can expect. “They’re basically an extension of Pearl,” Cox says. Between rides, couriers might hang out, enjoy a cup of coffee, and talk about where they’re off to next.

Daly doesn’t say Bring It!’s couriers are part of the DC Pizza team, but at least he knows who to call if there’s a problem. Before partnering with Bring It!, they had an in-house delivery worker, but they decided to partner with Bring It! because they couldn’t rely on just one worker to fulfill all their deliveries. “There’s a lot involved with doing your own deliveries and it’s hard to find employees right now,” Daly says.

Working in a still somewhat deserted downtown, Daly says DC Pizza and many of the other downtown restaurants are just holding on. But delivery has helped and it’s become a larger part of their business, growing from about 5 percent before the pandemic to the 15 percent it represents today. “[Delivery] has been a big help,” Daly says. “At this point, any incremental sales are very helpful.”

DC Pizza stipulates Bring It!’s delivery range on its website, but still partner with third-party apps for those outside of it. Customers can still order from third-party apps if they’re within the delivery range, but it’s better for the restaurant if customers order through it directly.

Bring It! handles their biggest orders. “We are focused on the delivery personnel,” Rabadi says. “When you focus on people or the means of getting a job done and they’re fully equipped, stoked for the job, know they’re getting paid fairly, you can trust those individuals.”

Chris Rabadi, Kimmie Harlow, and Gunnar Morse

Mojo Rising

Maryland MC Odd Mojo brings her annual showcase to Songbyrd after a COVID-induced hiatus.

By Amari Newman Contributing writer

On March 20, Capitol Heights MC Odd Mojo will host her third annual One Very Odd Show at Songbyrd’s new Union Market location. She’s been organizing the yearly showcase since 2018, but had to delay the event for two years due to COVID lockdowns. Over drinks with City Paper, the 27-year-old artist discussed the details for her upcoming show, and how the isolation of the pandemic pushed her to new heights within her artistry.

Odd Mojo, aka Mahogany Pearson, entered the rap game as a teen in 2011. While bingewatching interviews with professional models on YouTube, she came across a Drake instrumental. “I don’t know what came over me,” she says, “but I just started writing.” She received positive feedback from her friends and family on her Drake remix, and decided to further explore her rapping capabilities.

After graduating high school in 2012, Odd Mojo continued to work on her craft. She wasn’t proclaiming herself a rapper yet, but she spent her free time writing and free-styling at different open-mic events. But it was another side project—photography—that ended up connecting her to Keyari, a member of the impactful DMV rap collective Kool Klux Klan, who asked her to photograph one of his shows in 2014. Mojo continued shooting for Keyari, and eventually told him that she was a rapper too.

Keyari responded by inviting her to a show where she met local rap pioneers Cal Rips and Sir E.U. In addition to growing her musical network, Mojo also witnessed a performance that night by Felixia (aka Sugg Savage) and Sloane Amelia under their Akoko moniker. She notes that seeing the two women perform inspired her to pursue her own music career: “When I saw these women rapping in Maryland, with a crowd, and music out, I was like, ‘I’m about to do this too.’”

Two years later, Mojo released her debut EP, 94, followed by a series of singles leading up to her breakout project Channel Yo Mojo in 2018. Her sample-heavy production, reminiscent of ’90s boom-bap, accompanied by her relatable lyricism on topics ranging from anxiety and depression to self-love and positive affirmations, quickly cemented Mojo as one of the most exciting upand-coming artists in the District. But since Channel Yo Mojo’s release, she has significantly slowed down her musical output, only releasing a handful of singles in the past four years. Yet, each of her releases, such as “555,” has received critical acclaim from local magazines and newspapers: In May 2021, the Washington Post called the track one of the “most essential rap and R&B music” projects of the season. Mojo attributes part of this noticeable drop-off in content to the awful timing of the pandemic. For her, it seemed like the stars had finally aligned at the beginning of 2020. She was gaining traction both locally and online, and had a plethora of shows lined up for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the pandemic took hold a couple months later— practically halting Mojo’s momentum as all of her shows were simultaneously canceled.

This year’s One Very Odd Show at Songbyrd will take place nearly two years to the day after the D.C. government ordered people to stay home. The resilient MC has regrouped and returned, headlining an eclectic lineup of rappers, singers, DJs, and musicians.

The Odd Show’s origins stem from Mojo’s struggles to establish a name for herself early in her career. She was often turned away from local promoters and venues, who she says preferred to book their friends, or artists they already had relationships with. Mojo says it’s an ongoing issue that still affects the local music community and can make shows seem exclusionary.

“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to create One Very Odd Show,” she explains. “I want to put together acts that you don’t normally see. I want you to see different people you don’t expect me to work with, or you haven’t seen me work with yet.”

This show will feature a joint set of Mojo rapping, Sir E.U DJing, and FootsXColes providing live instrumentation. When Mojo held her first Odd Show in 2018, DJ Tomiyeyo mixed her live set while FootsXColes played the drums and pianos. “This year [FootsXColes and I] are working with Sir E.U. I’ve been watching his journey, and really admire how he’s getting into more things with his artistry,” she says.

KyleOnTheMic will host the event, which will also feature sets from local rap collective 20NVR, Brooklyn singer-MC RillyRil,and other special guests. “I’m giving you a new experience,” says Mojo. “I want to give you an odd experience.”

Like the Odd Shows before this, aliens remain an ongoing theme, which Mojo credits to Pearl Rose, a graphic designer who made the flier for the inaugural event. “I just connected with the cover art on the flier, and I was like, ‘alright imma go with this.’” Since making aliens the motif of her first showcase, she’s gravitated even closer to them, incorporating extraterrestrials into her recent promotional videos and photo shoots. When asked about this consistent branding, Mojo admits she’s working on an album centered around aliens titled Something Odd Is Coming.

“After we had the last Very Odd Show [in December 2019], I started having visions [about aliens], which led to me creating the album,” says Mojo. She was studying screenwriting at the time, and began developing a script around the concept. The COVID lockdowns forced her to stay at home and reflect, not only on her career, which was abruptly halted, but on all the relationships in her life, good and bad. The unending confinement pushed Mojo to find an outlet to express herself, so she decided to fully explore the alien idea. “When I was in my room, isolated, while everything was shut down, this story came about,” she says.

Mojo’s narrative details a solo trip into the woods, where the protagonist intends to reflect on life, but instead is abducted by aliens in the middle of the night. It’s within this solitude, however, that Mojo finds herself. Her album, which she’s currently finishing mixing and hopes to release by summer, functions as the soundtrack to this story.

Despite the alien-centered storyline, the general message of the project revolves around Mojo’s struggles with self-doubt and her tendency to negatively overanalyze herself and those around her. She uses the alien abduction as a way to confront these issues. While “Earth To Mojo” explicitly describes her interactions with aliens, other songs such as “Inception” and “Runnin’” touch on deeper issues, as she reflects on past decisions and addresses her bad habits, such as being overcritical of herself, making false assumptions, and escaping her problems through marijuana and alcohol. Though a few songs, including “555” and “Action,” were recorded before the alien concept was fully developed, all 11 tracks on the album fit within her intricate narrative.

“Something Odd Is Coming has two meanings. It’s saying something odd—me, Odd Mojo—is

Odd Mojo

coming,” she says. “I know people say I don’t drop enough music, but I plan on releasing content a lot more consistently after this album.” The second meaning is more spiritual. “I believe a higher power is coming back,” Mojo explains. “It’s gonna be very odd for us because we’ve never seen anything like this. Like, we’re gonna see something in the sky.”

She wants her upcoming album to function as a wake-up call to prepare for a world-changing event. Mojo believes the only way to prepare for this is through finding peace within yourself. “Y’all have to get closer to yourselves because once you get closer to yourself, you can get closer to God,” she says. “Know that whatever happens, if you have yourself, you won’t feel lost or scared.”

Something Odd Is Coming has a fairly small list of contributors with 7G, Dejuan Cooks, John Tyler, and Owen Gomory handling production on the album. Southeast rapper Ankhlejohn will be featured on the project alongside Odd Show performers RillyRil and 20NVR.

Odd Mojo will premiere a couple tracks from the album at the March 20 event. In addition, One Very Odd Show will feature an open-mic rap cypher, and Mojo guarantees some spontaneous go-go music. “[Playing go-go at my shows] is such a freeing and unifying experience. And that’s what I want to do. I want to bring odd artists together and I want to unify us all to create a loving energy.”

One Very Odd Show takes place March 20 at Songbyrd Music House. $12–$15. songbyrddc.com.