Category Archives: Uncategorized

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Two-day wine-and-dine festival at Bourbon Steak this weekend.
• Are we really going to let Baltimore beat us in the gondola race?

It’s time for a monthly update for neighbors of Hyde Addison Elementary School, Georgetown’s only public elementary school! 

Hyde is in full Autumn/Halloween mode which culminates in the annual costumed procession on the streets around Hyde on the morning of October 31—cross your fingers for dry weather and wish the kids a happy Halloween if they toddle past you around 9am on Tuesday.

Prospective Family Open Houses Start Next Week! 

Hyde’s principal, Dr. Calvin Hooks, and other Hyde leaders will be hosting five Prospective Family Open Houses over the next few months (two virtual, three in-person), with the first one scheduled for Friday November 3^rd at 2pm.  This in-person open house will begin with a presentation from Dr. Hooks and other members of the instructional leadership team and include a Q&A session and building tour. 

Parents are Welcomed to Be Part of Hyde

This is our second year at Hyde, with our oldest in 1^st grade and our 2^nd oldest in PK4.  One thing I have enjoyed is the opportunities I have to visit Hyde during the school day and get a sense of what our children are learning, and build connections with the teachers, other parents, and my children’s classmates.  Last Wednesday I was a chaperone on a field trip with my son’s PK4 class to an orchard/pumpkin patch.  And this past Friday, all parents were welcomed into the classrooms for the first half hour of school to see what their students have been working on for the first two months of school.

My Children are Learning Critical Skills at Hyde

When I visited my 1^st grader’s classroom this past Friday, four of the students did a short presentation on their most recent writing lesson: opinion writing.  I enjoyed seeing them improve on their public speaking.  They explained that opinion writing is meant to persuade the reader of something the writer believes, and it must be backed up with at least 3 reasons.  Then parents sat at tables with their student and read some opinion essays their student had recently written (which started with an outline!).  As someone who is paid to write persuasively every day for clients (I’m an attorney), the importance of this lesson and these skills resonated with me. Frankly, I am often instructing junior attorneys to outline first and then structure their paragraphs correctly: a topic sentence which declares something, followed by sentences which support the topic sentence/declaration (yes, its that basic even for attorneys).  You’d think they’d teach this in law school but…

Hyde’s Playground is Open All Weekend Long!

The playground at Hyde is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays.  Please

enjoy this community resource (but please don’t leave behind trash or any other items).

Your support of Hyde is welcome and much appreciated!  Hyde’s PTA contributes essential financial support to Hyde and greatly appreciates the financial support some Georgetown and Burleith community members have already given this fall.  Please consider donating at https://hydeaddisondc.org/donate and be on the lookout for some of our upcoming fundraisers tied to the winter holidays. 

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Former Jackie Kennedy house sells at auction.
• Great video on the history of the Exorcist steps.

Welcome to the November Northwest Georgetown ANC update!

Happy Halloween! Remember this week to be extra careful with lots of little kiddies about late at night. Georgetown is back to its pre-pandemic peak in terms of crowds of trick-or-treaters, so get ready with your candy.

ANC Meeting

Much less festively, Monday night the ANC will be meeting for its November session. It will be at its normal time, 6:30 pm, and fully virtual. I have faith, however, that this will be the last fully virtual ANC meeting for quite a while. I believe that the hybrid meetings that we have held this year were a success and I would like to see that be the model going forward. Stay tuned!

As for the meeting itself, the notable items include a follow up on the BID’s public space application for the streateries and extended sidewalks. The Public Space Committee will hold a hearing on the application later this month. The ANC will hear an updated from the BID on changes they’ve made to their application and plans after their first Old Georgetown Board meeting. Last month we adopted a resolution supporting the application. Barring any radical changes, I believe that position will remain the same following this meeting.

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown GLOW returning again this year.
• Should it take a marathon to make our streets so enjoyable?

Next Monday night, the ANC will meet for its November session. It will be back on zoom and starting at 6:30 pm.

I believe this will be the last fully zoom ANC meeting we will hold for the foreseeable future. After a few successful hybrid meetings, there is a sense that that is the best of both worlds. Additionally, we may be looking to hold the meetings at other locations throughout the neighborhood other than just Visitation.

As for this final virtual meeting, there are some hopefully interesting items on the agenda, such as:

• Crime update. There have been a few alarming crimes in the neighborhood over the past month and I expect we will get updates on those.
• Streateries: As mentioned last month, the BID’s extended sidewalk application will be heard by the Public Space Committee this month. The ANC will hear about any updates to the application and program from the BID and will likely consider a further resolution specifically for the Public Space Committee.
• We will also hear about a PUD for a project behind the British School which will result in a lot of funds being directed to local causes.

Here is the full agenda:

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The Friends of Montrose Park reported that the historic white oak that stood next to the playground was taken down. Visitors to the park could see for a while now that the tree was struggling. The Friends stated that it was ill with “Hypoxylon, a fungal disease that rapidly affects oaks when they are already under stress from other factors including drought and root injury.”

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Scofflaw parking truly has a deep history in Georgetown.
• What you can find at Baker’s Daughter.

Yesterday I celebrated the return of leaf peeping season. Today I’m, well, not celebrating, but announcing the far less glamorous leaf picking up season.

The city did a fairly poor job of collection leaves last year. Some of this can be chalked up to weather, but the long and the short of it was that people followed the city’s instructions when to put out leaves, the city was extremely late, and the piles and bags of leaves turned into a giant mess in the meantime. In some cases the bags broke open, frozen solid and created a genuinely dangerous tripping hazard.

The city acknowledged its shortcomings and is trying a different approach this year. Instead of giving a far off window for when the crews plan to service a particular neighborhood, the city is waiting until much closer to the date before alerting residents. So there’s no target date for when leaves will be collected in Georgetown as of right now. But we will get a notification the week before our collection. That way the leaves will be out on the sidewalk a much shorter time-frame. The notifications will come a variety of ways, including from door hangers and from the website. I will try to spread the word as it comes in as well. The collections begin October 30th. There will be (at least) two passes through each neighborhood.

Will this work better than last year? We’ll see! It’s hard to imaging it working worse.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Madeleine Albright’s former house sells.
• Georgetown Women’s Basketball coach dies.