B2 PETULA DVORAK


Volunteeraholic aims to kick


her habit dvorak from B1


County grew by about two kids thanks to recent budget cuts, and who knows what’s in store for kids in D.C. public schools this year amid the firings, mayoral campaigning and wedding plan- ning going on. With every school budget cut — and they have come in the tens of millions this year — blossoms a volunteer opportunity. Some schools have become so depend- ent on parent power that they’ve made volunteering mandatory, including a couple of schools in Prince William. It’s a pernicious addiction, volunteering at your kid’s school. It’s hard to say it’s a bad thing, because it plays into your parenting insecurities, no matter who you are. Stay-at- home-parents are often relied on too much and have work heaped upon them. Some of my mom friends told


me they feel compelled to never say no, because they somehow feel a need to justify their stay-at- home decision. “I’m not going to give up my career and then do this half- assed,” an uber-mom who left K Street for the world of pre-K told me after creating a precision spreadsheet to orchestrate a pumpkin-patch carpool. And the parents who work outside the home often feel like they’re getting the stink-eye ev- ery time they check their Black- Berrys at pick-up time, so they overcompensate with baking, laminating, running the school’s Web site or writing grant propos- als.


And of course there are the parents who work two jobs or have situations that simply don’t allow them to volunteer. They are often left alienated and shunned, wanting to help, but finding no reasonable place to do it.


We lie to our bosses when


we’re in the classroom; we lie to the teachers and our kids when we’re at work. We drag along the smaller children while shelving library books or pulling weeds in the playground. My husband re- cently complained that I had in- vested more time and energy in our son’s preschool than either of our parents ever gave to our en- tire college educations. (I’m afraid he’s right). School fundraising fueled by parent volunteers has gone way beyond that hideous, door-to- door gift wrap racket. There are Web sites that put school auc- tions online, like schoolauction. com, or help you rally, con, co- erce and organize your chump parents, like VolunteerSpot.com. I found myself spending hours ignoring my children so I could master and run the school auc- tion cataloguing and payment software. All, ostensibly, for the benefit of the very humans I was ignoring. And that’s the moment when the volunteering binge began to seem powerfully stupid. Every study known to human- kind has shown that parental in- volvement is key to a child’s edu- cational success. But I’m not ter- ribly sure that all the work I was doing meant very much to my children.


“If you really like doing the


auction stuff and charity galas, that’s cool. But call that your hobby, that’s for you,” one of my mom friends whose three kids are much older than mine and whose hair, house and head are all much saner than my own. I can accept that. But I also be-


lieve that being in the classroom, doing hands-on work alongside your children, lets you know what’s going on in the classroom and assures your child that you are part of his or her education. Should this happen once a week? Once a month? Or once a year? It’s all so confusing. Someone challenged me to go


30 days without volunteering, just to see if I could do it. We visited my son’s classroom last week for orientation for the new year. I filled out the PTA sign-up sheet with abandon. Field trips? Check! Web site sup- port? Check! Bake sale? Check! And then I stuffed it into my


purse.


E-mail me your biggest volunteering gripes at dvorakp@washpost.com.


THE DAILY QUIZ


Which of the following is listed in Carolyn Butler’s AnyBODY column as ways to build up your immune system to fight colds


and viruses?? (Hint: check today’s Health section)


EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.


LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST After Labor Day, Washington area traffic will look more like this.


Ah, the end of summer, the return of gridlock


by Ashley Halsey III How about if everyone takes


Tuesday off? What, you say you can’t? Then join the crowd — of about 1.5 million people in the Washington area who plan to drive to work alone after celebrat- ing the traditional end to summer on Labor Day. The respite from obscene traf-


fic congestion in July and August is over, a fact punctuated by the dawn of what AAA Mid-Atlantic likes to call “Terrible Traffic Tues- day.” “When the alarm clock sounds


Tuesday morning, commuters will once again face a mind- numbing, soul-robbing surge in gridlock for the first time in months,” said AAA spokesman John B. Townsend II. “Many of them will drive alone in bumper- to-bumper traffic, along with thousands of school buses trans- porting nearly a million students, including those heading to school on the Virginia side of the Poto- mac for the first time.” Townsend says half of the re-


gion’s 3million workers will drive to work alone.


AAA has joined transportation planners in encouraging com- muters to help avert gridlock. “We are poised to help guide commuters into trying and using great alternatives to driving alone to and from work during this in- crease in traffic congestion when people are back from vacations and schools are back in session,” said Nicholas W. Ramfos, director of Commuter Connections. “Com- muters who use alternatives like carpooling, transit and bicycling


may find they save money and time and feel less stressed.” The return of the masses to work will coincide with resump- tion of roadwork that took the holiday weekend off. On Interstate 495, construction will resume on high-occupancy toll lanes along a 14-mile corridor from the Springfield interchange to the Dulles Toll Road, with a major shift of four lanes Friday as a new Route 50.


bridge opens over Another big move in that proj-


ect will take place overnight start- ing Wednesday, when I-495 southbound will close starting 9:30 p.m. at Interstate 66 as the old I-66 eastbound bridges over the Capital Beltway are demol- ished. Those overnight closings are expected to last two weeks. The Maryland State Highway Administration also has sched- uled a busy week of highway re- pair. In Montgomery County, there will be work on Good Hope Road, on Route 124 between Airpark Road and Rosewood Manor Lane, and on Route 355 between Mon- trose and Old Georgetown roads. In Prince George’s County, there will be multiple overnight closures on portions of Interstate 95. There also will be daytime lane closures on Route 301 as re- habilitation of the Route 214 bridge continues. Commuters in Georgetown will


find they now can make a left turn from M Street onto north- bound Wisconsin Avenue. The “no left turn” restriction has been removed, replaced with a left- turn arrow.


halseya@washpost.com


Linemen bond through grueling live-wire work


power from B1


would monitor and prepare the work on the ground. They had plenty of time but shouldn’t be complacent, he told them. Oh, and be sure to stretch. Spitler also reminded everyone


that the day would be Brandon Robertson’s first time barehand- ing. Robertson, 27, is a married fa- ther from Louisa. He looked anx- ious, admitting that although he was excited, he was also “a little nervous.” But he came prepared, getting about six hours of sleep the night before and downing a sausage-and-egg sandwich for breakfast. Robertson was assigned to work with Buster Payne, a 52- year-old part-time pastor from Gordonsville. Payne is the group’s veteran, tall and burly with a deep, rich voice and thinning sil- ver hair. The two chatted quietly in a corner as they slipped into their barehanding suits, Robertson’s clean and unmarked, Payne’s worn to a dull gray. The light- weight suits are made of fire- retardant material and thinly wo- ven strands of stainless steel. In addition to a hard hat, the $1,300 suit comes with boots with a con- ductive sole, a jumper, a hooded shirt, gloves and socks.


Containing the electricity


Before starting a job, the crew- men run a three-minute test in which they raise the truck’s buck- et on its boom so that it makes contact with the transmission line. This energizes the bucket and ensures that the electricity does not flow beyond the bucket. After the test, the bucket is low-


ered. The linemen climb in, and it is raised again so that they are at eye level with the transmission line. They clamp a “hot stick” on- to the line to energize the bucket.


The stick is then removed and the bucket remains connected to the line with wired clamps. The linemen’s suits protect them from electrocution. As they work, electricity flows around their bodies. The truck’s insulat- ed fiberglass boom makes sure that the electricity does not travel outside the bucket. Payne, with 32 years of experi- ence, is the group’s mentor, the fa- ther figure many of the men turn to for advice. He started working on the distribution lines in 1978, when many of his crewmates were just boys or not even born. He moved to the transmission side and was trained to barehand in 1991. Payne’s experience is something the rest of the crew re- lies on. “What better teacher do you have than somebody who’s done it 100 times?” said lineman trainee Rickey Seay II, 27. Lineman trainee Chris Lacy, 39, also came over from the dis- tribution side. There, “you’re used to . . . staying away from the volt- age. Then you go into barehand- ing mode — you’re actually reach- ing into and grabbing live wire.” Greg Boutchyard, trim, tanned and clean-shaven, recalled his first day barehanding. “To be honest, it wasn’t that big of a deal,” said Boutchyard, 40. The line he was working on went through a cemetery, and he re- membered joking that “we’re in the right place if anything hap- pens.”


The integral traits All of the linemen will tell you


that barehanding is not for every- one. It can be intense work, physi- cally exhausting and lasting all day. It’s not uncommon for crews to work through lunch, eating their meals in a bucket truck more than 100 feet in the air. “There’s times you go up and don’t come down for six or seven


POINTS EVENTS


Free Movies & Special Events! PostPoints members are frequently invited to enter contests for free movie screenings, theatre tickets and ballgames. Currently, you can enter for a chance to win tickets to an advance movie screening of The Town, and also a seat at the exclusive Author’s Breakfast for participants in the upcoming National Book Festival. Contest deadlines, event dates and all the details are at washingtonpost.com/ postpoints. Click on “Events & Contests” today!


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Honk if you’d love for someone else to become the angriest person in a traffic jam


it should be like getting angry at the sun for rising, right? And yet ...


L The other day I was creeping


up Georgia Avenue in an especially foul mood. It was about 100 degrees outside. Traffic was worse than normal. I sat through a couple of cycles of a light as idiots blocked the intersection. The minute I had a bit of breathing room, a metallic green Jeep cut in front of me without signaling. Now, I advise my daughters not to use the horn as a rebuke. By all means, use it to keep a pedestrian from stepping in front of you, but don’t use it as an irritated little snipe. Well, easier said than done. After the Jeep cut me off, I gave him a blast of my horn. The driver responded by . . . well, I can’t be sure exactly what he did. It was a hand gesture of some sort, I know that much, but whether it referred to an orifice or an appendage or an orifice and an appendage, I can’t say. All I know for sure is that he was mad at me for being mad at him. I caught a glimpse of him as he whipped in front of me, and then I saw part of his face in his rearview mirror. What I saw was the face of an angry man: complexion reddening, veins throbbing, spittle flying. I can’t tell you how much


better that made me feel. He was suddenly the angriest man in the traffic jam. Like some sort of gridlock messiah, he had taken the sins of the road onto himself and improved my mood.


Route 666


Here’s something that must happen to every driver in Washington: You are confronted


iving in Washington, we ought to be used to abysmal traffic. Getting upset about


with a choice of more-or-less equal routes to your destination. You commit to one, and then you spend the whole time wondering whether you’d have been better off going the other way. You obsess about it, convinced that if only you had chosen Rock Creek Parkway over 16th Street (or vice versa), you’d be sailing along. But you can’t know for sure. And that troubles you. I envision a system that would answer these sorts of questions once and for all. I haven’t perfected the details, but I imagine it would involve GPS, tiny transponders, WiFi and a


I advise my daughters not to use the horn as a rebuke. Well, easier said than done.


network of drivers willing to share their travel information. If you were curious whether your trip from Springfield to Wheaton via Interstate 395, 14th Street and Georgia Avenue was faster than that of someone who had chosen to take the Inner Loop of the Beltway, you would simply enter the particulars of your trip online. The computer would search for someone who’d picked the other route at roughly the same moment as you and compare the elapsed times. What possible use would this


have? It would ease that nagging feeling once and for all. And at least some of the time it would silence passengers who say, “I told you we should have gone the other way.”


What’s in a name? Pity the dyslexic Montgomery


County voter. As the Sept. 14 election approaches, he can be forgiven for confusing Candidate Ehrlich with Candidate Elrich. The former is Bob Ehrlich, the Republican trying to win back the governorship. The latter is Marc Elrich, a Democratic incumbent at-large member of the County Council. Are the names really similar enough to cause a mixup? Yes, said Dale Tibbitts of the Elrich campaign. “We’ve had a number of encounters in public when we’re distributing literature and people recoil quickly,” Dale said. These, presumably, are Democrats who fear their hands would be burned by Republican campaign fliers.


Dale said something similar happened in the 2006 race. “A person came up to Marc and said, ‘I’ve been seeing your bumper stickers all over the place.’ We didn’t have any bumper stickers.” Ehr-lich!


Dale said Elrich hasn’t done


any polling to determine whether it will be an issue on Election Day. “Even if we did know, we wouldn’t know how to address it. . . . I thought about getting signs that said ‘Elrich, not Ehrlich,’ but I don’t want to give him any publicity.” As for the Ehrlich campaign,


spokesman Andy Barth e-mailed me this response: “There are many things we can control in a campaign, but this isn’t one. What we want to be sure voters understand is that ours is the candidate who will deliver more jobs and lower taxes — and that he spells his name EHRLICH, Republican for Governor.” Andy’s always on message. kellyj@washpost.com


S


KLMNO


TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010


XIAOMEI CHEN/THE WASHINGTON POST Buster Payne, left, and Brandon Robertson use the barehanding technique to fix power lines.


hours,” Boutchyard said. “You don’t want to lose your fo-


cus sometimes,” Spitler added. Alineman, Payne said, needs to be professional, focused and dis- ciplined. Above all, he must be trustworthy, because “your life might depend on his move,” he said. Last year, he spent an 11-month stint as the crew’s supervisor, but he missed the hands-on work. “I was more valuable to the company as a lineman,” he said. “I’m not really good at telling peo- ple what to do.” He can pick a lineman out of a crowd, he said, in the same way a soldier might stand out because of his posture and fisted hands. “You can just tell,” Payne said,


smiling. “There’s something about them.” Not every lineman lasts. Bunn said that one employee who recently joined a barehand- ing team in Hampton couldn’t make it up a 125-foot steel pole. “He couldn’t take the height. He just froze,” said Bunn, also a for- mer transmission lineman. Back at the work site, a bucket truck was barricaded with yellow rope and wiped clean of moisture,


dust or grime, which can inter- fere with the electricity. Spitler walked around with a clipboard that had a 22-point checklist re- quired to begin the job. Payne and Robertson climbed into the bucket and raised it about 120 feet to be at eye level with the transmission line. To re-


pair the line, they wrapped 7-foot- long armor rods around the dam- aged portion. As they put the last rod in place, the anxiety dis- appeared from Robertson’s face. “It’s a whole different experi- ence when you actually come up here and do it yourself,” he said. hoshk@washpost.com


LOTTERIES September 6


DISTRICT Mid-Day Lucky Numbers:


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MARYLAND Day/Pick 3:


Pick 4:


Night/Pick-3 (Sun.): Pick-3 (Mon.): Pick-4 (Sun.): Pick-4 (Mon.):


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Not a PostPoints member yet? Log onto washingtonpost.com/postpoints for more information about this exciting free program.


Multi-Match: 8-7-6 7-1-3-6


3-8-0-2-5 0-1-3


7-9-3-2 6-1-1-9


6-6-7-2-7 7-4-6-9-8


1-2-16-24-29-38 *33 3-9-14-17-33-35*19


7-0-4


8-9-6-3 2-1-8 6-4-8


2-5-7-3 4-2-1-1


Match 5 (Sun.): Match 5 (Mon.):


VIRGINIA Day/Pick-3:


Pick-4: Cash-5:


Night/Pick-3 (Sun.): Pick-3 (Mon.): Pick-4 (Sun.): Pick-4 (Mon.): Cash-5 (Sun.): Cash-5 (Mon.):


N/A


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1-9-7 5-2-9-1


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*Bonus Ball All winning lottery numbers are official only when validated at a lottery ticket location or a lottery claims office. Because of late drawings, some results do not appear in early editions. For late lottery results, check www.washingtonpost.com/lottery.


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