ABCDE METRO tuesday, august 3, 2010


POSTLOCAL.com Catch up


76, 9 a.m. 86, noon 89, 5 p.m. 82, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Mitch Miller, 99, was a musician, record company executive and the host of a popular ’60s television show, “Sing Along With Mitch.” B6


on all the news Out of town or just out of the loop? Check out News Reload at PostLocal.com and get up to speed on everything you missed.


THE REGION


Metro fare issues After two days of glitches and posting new signs in stations explaining its rate increases, the transit agency expects to start charging higher fares Tuesday. B5


road again


Historic building is on the


1969 FILE PHOTO/THE WASHINGTON POST


The building as it was being moved to Third and G streets NW. A splinter group of European-born Orthodox Jews built the city’s first synagogue in downtown Washington 134 years ago.


Council chairman sees ‘political harassment’


by Ann E. Marimow During Mayor Adrian M. Fen-


ty’s tenure, the District Depart- ment of Transportation appar- ently has gone after only one resi- dent for violating the city’s height limit on fences: D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray. “We didn’t find any others,” said the department’s Freedom of Information Act officer, Diana G. Jordan, in response to a request from The Washington Post to re- view citations. Jordan said Monday that her


office had conducted an exten- sive look at citations issued since January 2007, when Fenty took office. Gray, who is challenging the


mayor in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary, said the findings sup-


B DC MD VA S


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Historical horse sense Sculptor Clark Mills modeled the steed on which Andrew Jackson sits in the notable Lafayette Square statue after his own, Olympus. Erected in 1853, it is the first bronze statue cast in the United States. B2


Gray fence flap raises questions


about D.C. policy LONE VIOLATION UNDER FENTY


port his assertion that he was singled out and given the run- around by the city’s bureaucracy during a seven-month saga in- volving the black aluminum fence that surrounded his Hill- crest home, which has been part- ly dismantled. “It corroborates what I sus-


pected and says to me it’s politi- cal harassment,” Gray said. “I suspect, but will never know, that this would have been very rou- tine if I were not running for mayor.” In April, the department is- sued a series of $300-a-day cita- tions totaling $2,400 because Gray had not completed an appli- cation for a 5-foot-7-inch fence, which he installed two years ago without proper permits. Gray was ordered to lower or move the fence in the spring after an obscure but powerful Public Space Committee overseen by the mayor subsequently found that he had not provided sufficient justification for exceeding the District’s 31


⁄2 -foot height limit on


fences built in public space. The fate of the fence emerged as a campaign issue, with Fenty


fence continued on B4 Barry is cleared MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST The Lillian and Albert Small Museum will be relocated to a temporary spot then to its permanent home at Third and F streets NW.


Home of D.C.’s first synagogue to move a second time to make way for development by Derek Kravitz


I


PTA secretary, car-pool mom, soccer coach.


S Or the guy who just muscled


his way to the edge of the stage and is doing an out-of-control air-guitar riff with the band? Gray at the temples? Class dad, household


dishwasher, science project overseer. Or get a load of the couple at


Minibar, a D.C. temple of creative cuisine, feeding each other sea urchin ceviche with hibiscus and groping like they’re on a first date. Geez, get a room. Look out Washington, it’s summer. The kids are away, and the parents are out to play. “Oh, we have parents who go to the Dominican Republic, Hawaii; some really have a good time,”


PETULA DVORAK


said Alina Ackenbom, one of the directors at Camp Friendship in Palmyra, Va. “There’s one set of parents we can’t get hold of now at all because they’re on an African safari.” Wasn’t it just a couple of years


ago that the big parenting story was about “helicopter parents,” the kind who hovered over their children 24-7? Overprotective control freaks who — if they could bear to send their mini-me


dvorak continued on B8


t’s been called the “Small Jewish Museum That Could” and the “Wandering Building” after the medieval tale of the doomed Wander-


ing Jew. And for good reason. In the 134 years since a splinter group of European-born Ortho- dox Jews built the city’s first syn- agogue in downtown Washing- ton, it has been turned over to three congregations; converted into a grocery store and a bar- becue joint; slated for demoli- tion, saved and dubbed a historic landmark; literally cut in half and torn from its foundation; and moved, inch by inch, to Third Street NW, where it was renovated and reopened as a mu- seum in an area that has followed the city’s economic fortunes from


by Nikita Stewart


ney to enable three prime blocks, as if a miracle, to be added to downtown’s buildable area. The New York-based Louis Dreyfus Property Group struck an agree- ment this spring with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington to help move the building so a deck can be added above an entrance to Interstate 395 south of Massachusetts Av- enue NW, with high-rises and greenery where there is now only a recessed highway. “It’s an odd confluence of


MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST


The Small Museum, former home of the Adas Israel synagogue, is open nine hours a week, and a walking tour takes about 10 minutes.


blighted to prosperous to reces- sion.


And now the Lillian and Albert Parents gone wild


ee the woman at the bar? The one doing body shots? Fortyish?


Small Jewish Museum needs to be moved again — twice — for one more tiring and costly jour-


events,” said Laura Cohen Apel- baum, executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington. “The syna- gogue has always somehow been saved by its geography, in that it’s never been torn down. But it’s been hindered by where it is,


synagogue continued on B5


Five months after D.C. Council member Marion Barry was cen- sured and stripped of his com- mittee chairmanship for giving a contract last year to an on-again, off-again girlfriend, the Office of Campaign Finance has admon- ished the former mayor but cleared him of violating city law. Cecily E. Collier-Montgomery,


director of the campaign finance office, reprimanded Barry (D- Ward 8) in an official order post- ed Monday after the office found that he did not follow the city’s regulations for employee con- duct.


She wrote that Barry “failed to disclose his personal and finan- cial relationship with Donna Watts-Brighthaupt. Disclosure of the relationship would have re- sulted in the transparency of the transaction and removed any cloud from the contract process.” But Barry called the order a


of violating D.C. law Campaign finance office reprimands ex-mayor for girlfriend’s contract


“vindication” at a news confer- ence Monday and had harsh words for high-profile lawyer Robert S. Bennett, who led the D.C. Council’s independent in- vestigation into the contract and into several earmarks Barry gave to groups in Ward 8. “Mr. Bennett was the judge, ju-


ror, executor,” Barry said at a news conference he held at the John A. Wilson Building. “His at- titude was guilty until proven in- nocent, whereas the OCF’s atti- tude was the American way: in- nocent until proven guilty. Reading the report, there is no way anyone could not conclude that this is not a vindication of me and my actions.” The U.S. attorney’s office, which neither confirms nor de- nies investigations, had no com- ment Monday. But Barry said he is confident that there will be no charges. Barry, whose legal troubles


have pockmarked his storied po- litical career, again said that he was apologetic to the public for using poor judgment. “The ap- pearance of conflict is very sub-


barry continued on B5 Online social games create friendships and profit


FarmVille, Sorority Life and other titles attract 200 million players


by Michael S. Rosenwald The most-used function on An-


JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST


Angela Shields plays “Words With Friends” on her smartphone, a part of her daily routine. “It’s a lot more fun than e-mail,” she says.


gela Shields’s iPhone is not the phone. Or e-mail. Or the Web browser. It’s a game called Words With Friends, and she taps it open more than 10 times a day, anxious about her next move. Shields, a clinical social worker in the District, doesn’t consider herself a gamer, a term that con- jures images of 26-year-old men slaying aliens in their parents’ basements. She is 31 and funny and has many real-world friends, yet she often catches up with


them in the Scrabble-like game’s chat room while pecking out 36- point words.


“Some friends and I communi-


cate through the app more than we do through e-mail,” Shields said. “It’s a lot more fun than e- mail. I mean, you can kick their butt while we catch up about our lives.” More than 200 million people


play social games every month, and the numbers grow by the thousands every day. “Whereas the 19th century will be remem- bered for the creation of the mod- ern novel, and the 20th century was dominated by movies and images on screens, I think we can now see that games will be the dominant form of entertainment in this century,” said Jon Radoff,


games continued on B8


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54