Author: Jon

Rezoning targets rowhouses in Columbia Heights

Looks like the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for where I’m going to be living is trying to block the condo-fication of row houses, which of course is exactly what we just bought. The claim is that taking one single-family row house and turning it into multiple condos will increase traffic, limit parking, and diminish “the architectural integrity of the rowhouse blocks”.

They probably have a point, but trying to revitalize the neighborhood, and then insisting that everything stay the same, is kind of counterproductive. I’d like the neighborhood to keep some of its history, its personality, etc. If we wanted cookie-cutter suburbs, there are plenty of places in Fairfax County.

There’s going to be more traffic. It’s just a fact. As the area becomes a bigger draw, more people will come there. Parking will get worse. Traffic will get worse. Re-zoning will perhaps slow the tide, but it won’t turn it back.

And if your goal really is to keep the architechture, then make sure the outside of the houses stays more or less the same. Personally, I love the look of the old row houses. I wish our developer hadn’t made our building look like an office building. But these are separate issues.

I don’t really know what the solution here is. I agree with the intent of the ANC, but I’m not sure I agree with the execution. I guess I’m going to have to start going to these meetings when I move down there.

It’s so disappointing when you find out at 10pm that you somehow missed the announcement that it was going to snow, and didn’t notice the snow until there was almost an inch on the ground, but wake up the next morning to find that the streets are already clear.

So now you’re just stuck with the occasional icy spot, a few dumb drivers, and no excuse to stay home from work. I hear lots of people say, “Oh, it’s not the roads you have to worry about, it’s the other drivers.” I think that’s a pretty pathetic excuse. There are ALWAYS stupid drivers trying to kill you. One woman did it to me this morning. Somehow, her red light and my green turn arrow meant she could go right into the lane I was turning into.

I’m really looking forward to getting into the city, where people do the sensible thing when it snows and don’t drive for a week.

According to the Columbia Heights News Forum, it’s not looking good for a new grocery store in the DC USA site. That’s too bad. I was pulling for Whole Foods. Certainly we can make do with the one on P Street. But I hear on the forum that the new Giant and the local grocers are having a hard time keeping up with demand, and I do love Whole Foods’ organic vegetables.

It looks like it’s 1.6 miles from our house to Whole Foods. That’s doable.

As Push for Longer Hours Forms, Intriguing Models Arise in D.C. via DCIst

Kids in school 12 hours a day? It seems to be working in some schools, but I’m not totally convinced. Of course, if I were totally convinced by a one page newspaper article, that’s probably not saying much.

Anyway, it seems that some schools have had a lot of success with extended days and shorter vacations. It makes sense that, without a long summer off, kids have less time to forget what they learned in previous years. And it makes sense that spending more hours in class will make you learn more than spending fewer hours in class. But I’m not sure there has been enough research into how much might be too much. After a certain point, the kids aren’t going to learn anything. They’re going to be bored and inattentive and start causing trouble. It’s not reasonable to expect them to be in school all the time.

One school that has been successful so far has 12 hour days, broken up into a more or less normal school day, then a break in the afternoon for a few hours, and then dinner, followed by two hours of study hall. Students get home late, but all their work is done for the day. As an aside, during my last two years of high school, I did most of my homework each day either in study hall, the library, or the cafeteria. By the time I got home, I was usually completely done with school until the next morning. It was fantastic – my grades were good because I wasn’t blowing off work, and I had plenty of time to enjoy being a kid.

I’d be curious to see what happens when a couple of regular public schools try this. It will take some time, as the teachers and the curriculum will have to adjust as well as the students.

I worry, though, that some kids are really going to suffer if they spend this much time in school. For example, for me, middle school (grades 6-8 if you don’t/didn’t have middle school in your area) was an almost entirely social learning experience. I certainly learned some school stuff, but the real bulk of what I learned was about dealing with other people. Up to then, I had been in private school. Sixth grade was really my first experience having classes with kids who weren’t upper-middle-class and white. I’ve long advocated sending thirteen-year-olds in groups to work on farms and things instead of trying to teach them how to pass high school entrance proficiency tests. Get a big diverse group of kids, have them spend six weeks getting up at 5AM, shoveling manure and plucking chickens. I know, it’s prohibitively expensive. Whatever.

It’s funny to finally be really thinking about schools and techniques for teaching kids in a much less abstract way than before. The wife’s not pregnant, and we’re not trying at the moment, but having children is finally something that will probably happen sooner rather than later. I think my perspective on schools will change a lot more once I get closer to having school-age children.