In honor of the one-month anniversary of this article, we give you a new Mike Mount cartoon.

In case you don’t get the reference, it also riffs on some of the controversy over the Walter Reed pickleball courts.

There has been little additional news about the repeat indecent exposure suspect since our last article, though a few days later we did pick up some scanner traffic suggesting that police were actively working the case and might have identified a perpetrator.

You knew it was coming. This week’s Mike Mount cartoon is about that controversial Missing Middle vote last week.

Tired of reading about it? Well, might want to steel yourself this week, as ARLnow has a series of follow up articles planned. And it’s clearly what many locals are continuing to talk about (in real life and in cartoon form).

See all of Mike’s local ‘toons in the now-monthly ARLnow Press Club weekend edition newsletter.

Being a school board member is a tough job, which perhaps explains why it can sometimes be difficult to find candidates who want to run for the position.

Nonetheless, elected officials in charge of steering a large public school system are not immune from criticism, no matter how thankless the job may be.

This week’s Mike Mount cartoon takes two recent memes and imagines them as the potential representation of current feelings towards the Arlington School Board, in light of a stretch that saw a fatal in-school overdose, a possible armed trespasser and other school news of note.

See all of Mike’s local ‘toons in the now-monthly ARLnow Press Club weekend edition newsletter.

This month’s Mike Mount cartoon is a holiday special.

Santa may be coming to town, but he better not park his sled in a privately-owned lot that’s contracted with a certain prolific trespass towing company.

See of Mike Mount’s local ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend edition newsletter.

This month’s Mike Mount cartoon takes on two hot button issues: Taylor Swift’s concert ticket debacle and Arlington’s ongoing camp registration saga.

The website crashes suffered by Ticketmaster as millions of Swifties tried to secure tickets to her latest tour are reminiscent of those caused by Arlington parents eager to get their kids in coveted county summer camp slots.

As we reported last week, Arlington parks department officials are promising further improvements in the registration process and technology, but so far the clicking fingers of local moms and dads are undefeated.

See of Mike Mount’s local ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter. Your membership supports our reporting and includes the daily Early Morning Notes newsletter, previewing the stories we’re planning to cover that day.

This month’s Mike Mount cartoon gently ribs Arlington’s most prolific candidate for local office: Audrey Clement.

Clement, who we’ve covered since she first ran more than a decade ago, has thus far been unsuccessful in her nearly annual quest for seats on the Arlington County Board and school board. But she remains undeterred, and is hoping to win over voters with an anti-Missing Middle housing message this year.

Perhaps this is the year for Clement and, as the cartoon suggests, residents will no longer be able to keep track of their Arlington tenure by counting the hats she has tossed in the ring.

See of Mike Mount’s local ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter. Your membership supports our reporting and includes the daily Early Morning Notes newsletter, previewing the stories we’re planning to cover that day.

Whatever you think of Arlington’s missing middle housing proposal — and there are those who strongly support and oppose it — you might find yourself agreeing with Mike Mount’s latest cartoon.

For opponents, suddenly living next to a multiplex building in what has otherwise been an exclusively single-family home neighborhood for decades may seem like the worst idea ever. For supporters, proposing eight-plexes off the bat, even if only on certain large lots, may seem in retrospect like a blunder that galvanized opposition.

Catch all of Mike Mount’s local ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter. Your membership supports our reporting and includes the daily Early Morning Notes newsletter, previewing the stories we’re planning to cover that day.

This week, Mike Mount is tackling the topic of recently-created neighborhood names.

Mike’s new cartoon pokes fun at modern place name inventions, perhaps given recent media attention for National Landing — the nearly four-year-old collective term for Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard — and its self-appointed “NaLa” nickname.

There is an obvious South Park reference to be made here, and the cartoon comes up with its own absurd new place name. But one thing that’s not fictional: there is, in fact, a Taco Bell Cantina coming soon — to Courthouse.

Catch all of Mike Mount’s local ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter.

This month’s highlighted cartoon by noted local satirist Mike Mount wades into the “missing middle” housing issue.

For all the talk on one side of the debate about parking, school capacity and neighborhood character, and on the other about welcoming new residents and providing more reasonably priced housing, there may be those with a more simplistic view, the cartoon suggests.

Mike’s weekly cartoons are on currently vacation but will return in August. Catch all of them in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter.

Now that Mike Mount is Arlington famous we’re going to highlight another of his local cartoons a bit earlier in the month than usual.

This past weekend Mike took on the hot button topic (on Nextdoor in North Arlington, at least) of roundabouts. If you think of them as circular neighborhood parks, maybe (for the critics) roundabouts are not so bad after all?

Catch all of Mike’s ‘toons in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter.

‘Conservation’ Nixed in New Name — “The Neighborhood Conservation Program has a new name: Arlington Neighborhoods Program. [Three county departments] announced the new name for the interdepartmental program after almost a yearlong renaming process… The Neighborhood Conservation Program Review (NCPR) Final Report recommended changing the program name because the word ‘conservation’ often evokes a negative connotation and suggests exclusivity.” [Arlington County]

Big Scholarship Match for WHS Grads — “A newly announced dollar-for-dollar match could net the Wakefield High School Educational Foundation’s scholarship fund as much as $2 million over the coming year. It was announced June 2 that Henry ‘Ric’ Duques, a 1961 graduate of the high school, and his wife Dawn had made an up-to-$1 million pledge to the foundation, which will match funds raised by the organization for the year ending June 30, 2023.” [Sun Gazette]

Remembering Local Desegregation Efforts — “Our racial history commemorators have thoroughly marked the 1959 integration of Stratford Junior High School, a first for long-segregated Virginia. But those four African American student pioneers stood on the shoulders of a select group of older peers, whose legal efforts have gone relatively unsung.” [Falls Church News-Press]

New Monument at Arlington Nat’l Cemetery — “A monument now stands in memory of the first astronauts to die in their spacecraft, 55 years after a fire on the launchpad claimed their lives. Family members of the fallen Apollo 1 crew came together with NASA officials, space industry leaders and members of the space community to dedicate the new monument during a ceremony(opens in new tab) held Thursday (June 2) at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. The memorial is located… in Section 3 of the cemetery.” [Space.com]

ARLnow Cartoonist’s Work Highlighted — “But the father of two has long been a fan of the art form and in the past year, he has become a community cartoonist. [Mike Mount] creates weekly cartoons for an online news outlet in his Northern Virginia county, capturing within those scribbled squares the weird, comical and relatable parts of living in one of Washington’s suburbs.” [Washington Post]

Nature Center Advocate Keeps Advocating — “Look up ‘indefatigable’ in an online dictionary, and a photo of Duke Banks might pop up. Recently given the brushoff – politely but for the second time – by the County Board, Banks is not stopping in his efforts to restore hours that were cut at Arlington’s two local nature centers during the pandemic. Banks pressed his case at the May 24 meeting of the Arlington Park and Recreation Commission.” [Sun Gazette]

It’s Monday — Clear throughout the day. High of 80 and low of 61. Sunrise at 5:45 am and sunset at 8:32 pm. [Weather.gov]