Features: Talk of Takoma  •  Howard Kohn

	May, 2006

A federal case finds its way into a local election

The “Raskin Lied” sign that Edith Blackwell posted in her yard at the corner of Maple and Valley View Avenues has its origin in a footnote to a law review article.

The article, written last year by American University constitutional scholar Jamie Raskin, deals with the U. S. Interior Department's unsympathetic approach to the Cobell v. Norton case, a lawsuit by native tribes to claim as much as $27.5 billion the federal government allegedly owes in royalties for oil, gas and timber taken from Indian lands.

Edith is one of the Interior attorneys assigned to the case. Jamie mentions her by name only in the rather neutral context of a footnote, but he took to task Interior's entire battery of lawyers, reporting they “repeatedly deceived the court and flouted, defied, and ignored judicial orders.” Edith was upset by Jamie's criticism because an internal Interior investigation had cleared her of any personal wrongdoing.

This March, after Jamie decided to challenge incumbent Ida Ruben for the local seat in the State Senate, Edith put up her sign.   In April, after watching numerous blue-and-white “Raskin” campaign signs go up in neighboring yards, Edith took her own down. “This wave in favor of Jamie is too much for one little person to fight against,” she says.

Jamie is referring anyone interested in his dispute with Edith to the rulings of the presiding judge, conservative Republican Royce Lamberth, who has stated: “After all these years our government still treats Native American Indians as if they were somehow less than deserving of the respect that should be afforded to everyone.”   So infuriated has Judge Lamberth been by the Interior Department's handling of the Cobell case that he took the unprecedented step of holding the Secretary of Interior in contempt of court.

Reforming juvenile delinquents
starts with reforming juvenile “prison”

Offered a chance last year to reverse the prodigiously sad record of the District of Columbia's Oak Hill prison-like detention center where kids with bad attitudes often get hardened into kids with worse attitudes, the nationally regarded social reformer and longtime Takoma Park soccer coach Vinnie Schiraldi could not pass it up.  

For Vinnie it has meant less time with his wife and two children, less time on the soccer field, and, as the new head of the D. C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, unending duels with bureaucrats.   He is exhausting himself trying to change a place so lacking the humane touch that, he says, “I wouldn't want to kennel my dog there.”

Vinnie takes pride in ending the long lockdowns at Oak Hill and moving some teenagers back home for special counseling with their parents.   Yet, for every kid for whom the reforms may be too little and too late, “it is a terrible feeling.”

Bob Sheldon picks himself up,
tries marathon biking again

Bob Sheldon's helmet probably prevented massive injury, but his spill from a bike last fall might have caused others to hang up their riding shorts.   For a while in the hospital Bob couldn't remember the name of his only son. From inner-ear damage he now is afflicted with partial loss of hearing and an incessant ringing noise.   

But within three weeks Bob was riding again.   Within six weeks he did a 75-K ride, and in April he reached a select circle of only about 100 Americans who have qualified for the 5000-K medal.   In the past four years he has completed the 1200-K Paris Brest Paris, an understudy to the Tour de France, plus enough other qualifying Brevets to accumulate 5,000 kilometers of arduous biking.

“Getting back on a bike was my road to recovery,” Bob says. By temperament, he is ideal for the rigor of sports; he doesn't like to rest. For 43 years he has commuted by bike to every one of his jobs. In the 1990's, before he became obsessed with marathon biking, he coached soccer, baseball and basketball and was a soccer commissioner here in town.  

Living again in Takoma Park after a period of exile in Silver Spring, Bob also recently joined the board of the Takoma Foundation.

A glass of wine & thou,
but not on city property

It is not quite true that all artists and writers feel naked without a glass of wine at hand. The fact, though, that the city code forbids a wine-and-cheese party at the community center, or booze of any kind on city property, surprised Alice Sims and others on the Arts & Humanities Commission when they began organizing artistic and literary events earlier this year.

“Who would've thought?!” said Alice, who asked city officials for an explanation.

The explanation lies in Takoma Park's long history as a dry town.   Last year the City Council discussed changing the prohibition on alcohol but stuck with the status quo.

Now the Recreation Committee, taking up Alice's query, is formulating a policy to allow wine and beer at the community center on a trial basis and within certain limits. The policy is expected to be forwarded to the Council for new discussion sometime this spring.

Gone, but Mary Stover
hasn't & isn't forgotten

Mary Stover is no longer the eyes and ears of Old Takoma, having taken a job in Baltimore, but when she spied an inaccuracy in last month's “Talk of Takoma” she dashed off an e-mail on behalf of her old employers. “The new Savory is not the only eatery in Old Takoma serving beer and wine,” she wrote. “Middle Eastern Cuisine sells beer and wine, and so does the old Savory and Takoma Station.   Remember, Old Takoma is not just ‘Old Town.'   Old Takoma stretches from the Junction into Takoma D.C.”

In a final duty for the Takoma Foundation, which she also served for two years as president, Mary will be at the community center on May 13 with Voice publisher-and-editor Eric Bond to host the “Azalea Awards,” a salute to local businesses, volunteer groups and individuals voted best in their class.

The style for the event is spoof Hollywood. Expect to see the unfurling of a $25 red carpet, Mary gussied-up in a tiara and a ball gown, Eric in a tux. Local politicians, who seldom consider themselves a legitimate source of amusement, are invited to wear custom bibs for a pie-eating contest. Mary is fonder of the term “humble pie” contest. Expect to see most of this year's challengers and a few incumbents, notably the good-spirited Sheila Hixson, the most powerful woman in the state legislature.

Mary herself will be honored and toasted at a City Council session later this spring for her years of volunteering in town.

Birds of different feathers
come together

The South-loving yellow-crowned night herons and the North-loving Baltimore orioles have found common ground in Takoma Park.

The construction of one heron nest, branches passed beak to beak, was watched in April by hikers along Sligo Creek.   The herons picked a tree right on Hilltop Road, near the Maple Avenue bridge and next to a parking area, a testament to northern, urban acclimation for a bird from the southern swamps.

The rich-whistling, orange-bellied oriole, heard more often than seen, has made several appearances in town the past few springs after many years when sightings were rare.

Best teacher in the country
must leave her kids

The White House ceremony in April celebrating Kimberly Oliver's selection as National Teacher of the Year brought national attention to Broad Acres Elementary where, starting in 2000, she chose to teach because almost all the students live in difficult circumstances.

Softly dynamic, Ms. Oliver has made readers out of dozens of kindergartners, but, in her new role in which “America is my classroom,” she must begin a year's tour of conferences, seminars, receptions and so forth and leave her kids at Broad Acres behind.

6th-grade team goes “global”

Seven 6th-graders from Takoma Park Middle— Langston Alexander, Melodi Anahtar, Megan Healy, Edie Hopkins, Gabriel Koempel, Maya Kozarsky, and Sterling Mulbry— will be in Knoxville in late May for the “global” level of the Destination Imagination competition that is geared to students who are creative, spontaneous and self-driven. The team made the final cut at the state level in April.

Two other teams from Takoma Park Middle just missed going “global” — the 8th grade "Back At You" team (Lily Alexander, Nicole Hoffman, Anya Kozarsky, Rachel Mulbry and Maria Vishnevsky) and the mixed-grade “How'd That Happen” team (Becca Arbacher, Daniel Mourad, Maddy Kenton, Elizabeth Partan, Rebecca Partan and Vidhya Vijayakumar).

A writer can go home again

A killer will strike soon in Takoma Park, and the police will be baffled: Mystery writer Pari Noskin Taichert guarantees it.   Pari, who lived here in the 1980's, returned in April for a few days to reacquaint herself with our placid leafy spring scene that in her next book will hide villainy. For inspiration she chatted up Greg Moorin at Summer Delights and other folks in Old Takoma. Pari's previously published mysteries are The Clovis Incident and Belen Hitch.

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