ABCDE METRO sunday, august 22, 2010
POSTLOCAL.com 76, 9 a.m. 83, noon 87, 5 p.m. 79, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Harold Connolly, 79, won an Olympic gold medal in the hammer throw and held the world record in the event for nine consecutive years. C6
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LOCAL OPINIONS
Fenty vs. Gray We asked: “How will the challenges facing the city for the next four years be different from the last four? What will you do to address them?” Read their responses. C5
THE DISTRICT
Settlement over kiosks D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles says that a deal has been reached with one of five firms accused of defrauding about 30 area churches by promising them a free way to do outreach but which cost them nearly $1 million. C4
ROBERT McCARTNEY
Federal dollars alone no longer can fuel region’s job growth
region that it’s time once again to work to reduce our dependence on federal dollars for the area’s prosperity. Virginia politicians of both parties are
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competing to see who can agitate loudest to block the reductions, which will hit especially hard among Northern Virginia high-tech companies and in the Hampton Roads area. My parochial, booster self wants to see the politicians succeed. But my high-minded self – which, in this case, is also the realistic one – says we should just accept that some streams of federal funds that have nourished our area are going to dry up. The U.S. Treasury is running too large a deficit for us to think otherwise. Instead of presuming that we can stop
the evolution, we should adapt to it. That means finding ways to expand our share of jobs and contracts in the private sector.
Bobbie Kilberg, president of the
Northern Virginia Technology Council, said the Obama administration’s push to shrink federal contractor spending and bring it inside the government puts thousands of jobs at risk in our area — especially among small- and middle-size firms that are usually a dynamic part of the economy. “I am really very nervous about it,” Kilberg said. “We definitely need to grow aggressively our [private] business-to-business market.” Of course, it’s mainly up to the companies to hustle to find more private-sector work. But their success or failure will affect the economic health of the entire region. Politicians, business groups and other civic leaders should lend them a hand. Here’s why that’s necessary: Local businesses looking for new, non-government customers will be
mccartney continued on C3
Bringing Bollywood to other side of the world Indian-born local filmmakers
casting for movie they say will be first shot in U.S.
by Tara Bahrampour
The strapping 36-year-old actor, wear- ing a leather blazer and shades, strode into the conference room at the Hamp- ton Inn in College Park, where a panel of filmmakers awaited. “You guys are having casting all the
way out here, huh?” asked Ozzy Fiaz, his Urdu accent swirled with a strong flavor of Long Island, where he has lived since age 11 and drives a taxi between acting gigs.
Fiaz had driven for four hours and
hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since 4:30 a.m. because he was fasting for Ramadan, but he and two dozen other South Asian actors from the Eastern sea- board flocked here Saturday to audition for a movie titled “9 Eleven.” According to its Indian-born makers, it will be the first Bollywood movie to be filmed in Washington, and they are look- ing for 15 to 20 main characters and 250 extras. The producer, Narain Mathur, a real
estate agent in Waldorf who has long been interested in Bollywood, funded the project, which has a budget of under $1
EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Priya Mathur, assisting with the casting of “9 Eleven,” holds a photo of actress Jyoti Singh. The producers were looking to choose a cast of 15 to 20 main characters.
million. The director, Manan Singh Ka- tohora, is a Silver Spring resident who has made two low-budget English-lan- guage movies, including “a cross-cultural lesbian film,” and also works as a pro- moter for South Asian businesses in the United States. They compare the film, which they hope to release next spring, to Holly- wood productions such as “Inception” and “Crash.” Plenty of U.S. film directors shoot in India and vice versa, they said, noting that the new Julia Roberts film “Eat Pray Love” was filmed partly in In- dia. To count as a Bollywood movie, the
film does not need to be shot in India but must be in Hindi, said Katohora, adding, “I watch every single Hindi film, and I’m 120 percent sure a Bollywood film has never been shot here.” As the day progressed, one actor after
another read from a script in Hindi while bathed in klieg lights. One young woman was eliminated immediately — her Hindi wasn’t good enough. A stage actor wowed the filmmakers with his emotion but wasn’t sure he could get a month off from his IT job for this fall’s filming. In fact, many who auditioned had day jobs in software engineering or systems analysis. “Indian immigrants are fulfilled” fi- nancially, said one of the auditioners, Paul Singh, a computer systems adminis- trator from Fairfax Station who is also a stand-up comic. “Now they’re looking for things that give them more fulfillment.” Several said their families had initially opposed their acting aspirations. “I’ve been discouraged all my life, and now I’m finally doing it,” said Farida
bollywood continued on C4
harp cuts in defense jobs announced recently by the Pentagon present a wake-up call for the Washington
Support limited for Muslims
in prison INADEQUATE FUNDS FOR CHAPLAINS
In Va., most money goes to Protestant clergy
by Kevin Sieff PHOTOS BY TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Ronald Hrabal brought a bearskin rug he says belonged to Bette Davis’s daughter to the D.C. taping of “Antiques Roadshow.” Appraiser Rudy Franchi explains how Hrabal, who lives in New Jersey, can try to prove its provenance.
‘Antiques Roadshow’ pulls into town
5,000 bring heirlooms and kitsch to PBS show’s first taping in D.C.
by Kevin Sieff
The man with the bearskin rug thrown over his head is hoping for a big break. “It’s not just any bearskin rug,” Ron Hrabal says from some- where under the animal’s jowls. This grizzly belonged to Bette Davis’s daughter, he says. Really, he’s got the documentation to prove it. It could be worth thousands, he
says.
At the first “Antiques Roadshow” taped in Washington, he’s about to find
out that it’s worth much less. “Far be it for me to argue with a man holding a bear,” said Rudy Franchi, an appraiser with the PBS program. “But the connection to Davis is tenuous.” Hrabal pulled the bearskin rug off his head. He wasn’t happy. “This is the real deal. We’ve got let- ters from Wild Bill and everything,” said Hrabal, producing a handwritten note from the rug’s manufacturer. But the appraiser remained skeptical. Hra- bal threw the rug over his head and walked away.
About 23,000 people had scavenged for 5,000 available tickets to Satur- day’s “Roadshow” — a 14-year Amer- ican institution that one appraiser de- scribed as “the History Channel meets ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire.’ ” Families marched to the Washing-
An Asian art appraiser explains that the pieces a family brought in are known as Chinese mud porcelain.
ton Convention Center with bayonets, signed baseballs and cardboard boxes filled with a range of heirlooms and kitsch.
A man lugged an iron exercise bike
that he discovered at a recreation cen- ter in Southeast Washington.
antiques continued on C10
Tamer Mohsen carried his Koran through the metal detector of this medi- um-security prison outside of Richmond, raising his arms to be patted down by a guard. When the inspection ended, Moh- sen walked a familiar route: through Powhatan Correctional Center’s narrow, dimly lit hallways, past barred cells and security checkpoints. He made his way to the prison’s chapel, where murals of the “Last Supper” and the Crucifixion were concealed by light- blue bedsheets. He’d come here, as he does twice a month, to lead Friday prayer services for more than 40 Muslim in- mates, many of them converts, and try to moderate their embrace of a new and un- familiar faith. As the number of Muslims in the Vir- ginia prison system has grown to an esti- mated 2,200, the state has come to lean increasingly on volunteer Muslim chap- lains like Mohsen, a 35-year-old lab tech- nician who was born in Egypt. The role the Muslim chaplains play is crucial, because prisons can be a breed- ing ground for Islamic extremism, said Asghar Goraya, executive director of Muslim Chaplain Services of Virginia. But the relationship between the Vir- ginia Department of Corrections and mi- nority faith leaders has long been mired in one of the state’s most glaring anachro- nisms.
Because of a 200-year-old interpreta- tion of the state constitution that bars Virginia from doing any faith-based hir- ing, it is the only state where prison chap- lains are contractors, not state employ- ees. And until last year, the department
chaplains continued on C3 C DC MD VA S
O’Malley takes first jab
at Ehrlich’s credibility Road funds a new issue, ex-governor accused of inability to keep promises
by John Wagner
Ocean City, Md. — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley warned county lead- ers Saturday against political candi- dates who “tell people we can eat cake and lose weight,” a jab directed at the campaign promises of his leading Re- publican challenger. O’Malley’s comments came a day af- ter former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) pledged to restore 25 percent of the road aid to local governments that O’Malley (D) is diverting to help bal- ance the state budget. Restoration of that funding is a top priority for county leaders. “We all know it’s an election year,”
O’Malley told the Maryland Associa- tion of Counties, a nonpartisan group of county officials, at its annual meet- ing in Ocean City. “And we all know there will be other candidates making all sorts of promises over the next few months, the same promises they couldn’t keep in easier times.” Ehrlich said at a news conference
here Friday that his road plan would cost about $60 million and that he has been keeping close tabs on the budget impact of other promises. Those in- clude a pledge to cut the state’s sales tax, which could cost the state treasury $600million a year. Ehrlich has not
said how he would pay for all of his pro- posals. “We live in the land of the doable,” Ehrlich said at the news conference. The bulk of O’Malley’s speech Satur-
day — in which he did not mention Ehr- lich by name — was devoted to his ef- forts to create jobs and improve the state’s economy. Job creation is the leading theme of both campaigns. O’Malley said the state has had five months of job growth and added about 40,000 jobs between January and July, the best stretch since 1999. “Doesn’t that feel good to say?” he
asked the crowd. Maryland Senate Minority Leader Allan H. Kittleman (R-Howard), whom the Ehrlich campaign designated as its spokesman Saturday, criticized O’Mal- ley for giving a speech that did not give a fuller picture of his record. “He doesn’t want to talk about the past, because the past is historic tax in- creases and higher unemployment,” Kittleman said, referring to a 2007 spe- cial session in which lawmakers raised taxes by about $1.4 billion. Jockeying over jobs has been com- monplace in the campaign, but O’Mal- ley’s questioning of Ehrlich’s ability to keep promises is a new development. In his speech, O’Malley acknowl-
edged that slashing local road funding —known as “highway user revenues” — was “one of the more painful cuts we had to make in recent times.” Counties and municipalities have used the funding for a variety of proj-
o’malley continued on C4
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