Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the prime minister of Ireland, took in a history-making rugby match at a bar in Pentagon City over the weekend.
Varadkar watched the Ireland claim the Guinness Six Nations crown on home soil for the first time in 75 years at Maddie and Eddie’s, the Irish bar at Westpost (formerly Pentagon Row) owned by notable local chef — and Dublin native — Cathal Armstrong.
Media outlets from Ireland and the UK wrote about and carried photos from Varadkar’s visit Saturday afternoon.
More from the Irish Examiner:
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has congratulated the Irish rugby team on winning the Grand Slam.
Ireland made history in Dublin as they completed just the fourth Grand Slam in their history as they were crowned Guinness Six Nations champions on home soil for the first time in 75 years.
Speaking in Washington, Mr Varadkar said: “Congratulations to the Grand Slam winning Irish team and staff.
“A fantastic achievement. Wishing them all the very best for their World Cup preparations.”
Varadkar posted a video showing him in the midst of a packed crowd cheering on Ireland.
What a way to round off an incredible week to be Irish, @IrishRugby winning the Grand Slam at home.
Bring on the World Cup! pic.twitter.com/W8giriZwid
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) March 18, 2023
“What a way to keep the St Patrick’s Day weekend going strong!” the bar wrote on Instagram.
On Saturday, Irish Taoiseach @LeoVaradkar was at Mattie and Eddie’s Irish Bar and Restaurant at @PentagonRow for the Six Nations Championship Rugby! @NationalLanding @ARLnowDOTcom 🏉 ☘️ 🛒 https://t.co/dezKVkmBU3
— CartChaos22202 (@CartChaos22202) March 19, 2023
Local residents can now weigh in on the “future of pickleball” at the Walter Reed Community Center.
A survey was sent out earlier this week by the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation (DPR) asking the community to provide input and feedback about the new outdoor pickleball courts coming to the community center at 2909 16th Street S., south of Columbia Pike.
The dedicated courts will replace the tennis courts that are currently there.
The survey asks a series of questions, some with multiple choice answers and some with a text box, including the survey taker’s “current relationship” with the community center, how often they use the pickleball courts already there, and when they typically play.
There’s also a question that addresses the noise coming from the courts, a prickly topic that has led to threats of legal action.
“Noise is a concern associated with pickleball play,” reads the question. “The County is committed to incorporating sound reduction measures as part of this project. What are some creative ideas to consider?”
Locals have through Tuesday, February 28 to provide the county with their thoughts.
Residents voted in November, as part of the bond referendum, to spend $2 million to convert and update existing tennis courts into pickleball courts across the county, including at Walter Reed.
The plan is to convert the current tennis court area into nine dedicated pickleball courts by adding pavement, netting, lighting, fencing, and other needed equipment. There will also be seating, shade, signage, landscaping, ADA-accessible walkways, and “sound reduction measures.” As part of the project, the basketball court will also be converted back to its original use.
This online survey is actually the “start” of the engagement process for the project, DPR spokesperson Martha Holland told ARLnow in an email.
“The County wants to hear from all stakeholders to create a project that serves the pickleball community while fitting into the community context,” she wrote. “The online feedback form is the first step to gather input to inform concept designs. The County hopes to learn and gain insights on a wide range of issues from uses and user experience, as well as considerations, designs, and demographics – to ensure we’re hearing from as many community members as possible.”
Community meetings are set to be held throughout this year to discuss the project, per a recently published timeline on the county’s website. The first is planned for Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. at Walter Reed, Holland said.
There are expected to be additional community meetings and online surveys throughout the year, with several currently scheduled for the spring and summer.
“It is important to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of this project and have a chance to provide input throughout,” Holland said.
With all of this community engagement, construction of the pickleball courts is being pushed back.
Construction is not expected to start for more than a year from now, in spring 2024, per the timeline. Completion is estimated for early 2025, a full two years from now.
In recent years, pickleball has become a hot-button issue in Arlington. The sport soared in popularity during the pandemic, with the county adding more courts to meet demand.
As courts increased, though, so did complaints from some locals about the noise.
When a pickleball hits a paddle, it can often produce a loud pop sound that has become infamously known as “pickleball pop.” This has led DPR to close certain public courts that are situated near homes. At least one court was eventually reopened.
Then, late last year, two citizen groups threatened legal action against the county.
This included a number of neighbors who live across the street from Walter Reed with one resident saying the noise already coming from the courts was “excessive” and “intrusive.” That resident told ARLnow at the time they did not support the plan to build even more outdoor courts.
“It sounds really comical, but when you live across the street from an endless stream of just popping, it’s not funny,” they said.
Membership in the seven-decade-old Arlington Chess Club has increased by more than 40% since prior to the pandemic.
The club has seen an influx of new members since coming back to in-person play in August at Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church, near Ballston, president Adam Chrisney told ARLnow. The club has been around since the 1950s, which likely makes it the oldest chess club in the D.C. area.
There are now nearly 225 members of the Arlington Chess Club, a 40% increase since early 2020, according to Chrisney. During the regularly-scheduled Friday night meet-ups at the church, 30 to 35 people on average show up. That number, though, has reached 60 a few times recently.
At the club’s monthly weekend tournaments, held at the Marriott Residence Inn in Ballston, participation is up “at least 20%” since those also returned in late summer.
The increased numbers mirror national trends, with chess’s popularity reaching heights not seen in 50 years.
Chrisney believes the renewed interest is related to two factors: folks increasingly taking up chess online, but then seeking out in-person play opportunities, and the streaming success of The Queen’s Gambit.
In the early days of the pandemic, people were sitting at home with not much to do. So, they went online to get their chess fix.
“Online chess was an activity that saw a huge amount of participation,” Chrisney said. “And I think people, once they got out [more], realize there were face-to-face opportunities to play chess.”
The Queen’s Gambit, meanwhile, which reached its zenith of popularity in the pandemic’s early days. The Netflix hit demonstrated that chess could be “sexy and cool,” Chrisney said.
The Arlington Chess Club was founded in 1954 by Col. John D. Mattheson, per the club’s website. It’s believed to be the oldest continuous club in the region and widely considered the strongest in terms of standard of play.
“The club has also produced more than its fair share of Virginia State Champions,” reads the website.
Chrisney is actually the only third president of the club in its nearly 70-year history. Despite its longevity and sterling reputation, the club does face long-term challenges. A permanent and affordable venue and a multi-member active board that runs operations are the two things that Chrisney believes the club needs to remain viable.
As much as he enjoys being the club’s president, it’s a volunteer position that requires a serious commitment. Plus, he misses playing.
“I used to be one of the more active players in the D.C. metropolitan area and [now] the amount I play is about 10% of what it used to be,” Chrisney said. “I want to get back to playing.”
Another long-term goal of the club is to get more age and gender diversity. While Chrisney didn’t have exact numbers, about 20% of the club is under the age of 18. That used to be a bit higher prior to the pandemic.
For years, the club was known as a place for young players “on the rise” to come to hone their skills.
“We probably see a larger quotient of prodigies than the other clubs,” Chrisney said.
Additionally, Chrisney would like to make a push to attract more female players with chess still being “mostly… a male activity.” He estimates less than 5% of club members are women.
He cited Chess Girls D.C., the non-profit that encourages more young women to play chess, as a potential future partner that could bring in more players to the club.
While a permanent venue, a more distributed volunteer workload, and added diversity in membership are all goals, Chrisney said there is no lack of interest in the Arlington Chess Club.
“We have been going strong since the 1950s,” he said. “And there’s no sign of dissipating.”
(Updated at 11:20 a.m.) A local civic association says a lawsuit may be imminent over the infamous pickleball pop.
In a recent community newsletter, Old Glebe Civic Association leaders detailed their displeasure with the county ending a pilot program that closed a popular standalone pickleball court at Glebe Road Park earlier this year.
The program was initially enacted as a means to mitigate the noise of the loud pop sound produced by a pickleball hitting a paddle that was bothering some close-by neighbors, primarily those who live on a dead-end block near the courts.
The OGCA called that pilot program a “compromise” since it also looked to appease players by restriping a nearby tennis court for pickleball so there were now four courts, as opposed to the previous three. But with the program now being “abandoned,” the newsletter says, “the noise issue has become more contentious.”
The county has since proposed another pilot program that would reopen the standalone pickleball court but with limited hours and surrounded by a “noise reducing fence,” a spokesperson with the Department of Parks and Recreation tells ARLnow.
However, the OGCA opposes any reopening of the pickleball court and wrote that if the county doesn’t find a better way to mitigate the noise, legal action might be taken.
“We hope that a new compromise can be reached before affected parties turn to law courts for resolution of the issue, as has happened repeatedly in other cities throughout the country,” the newsletter reads.
Pickleball has exploded in popularity over the last several years in Arlington. It has prompted players to ask the county for more courts — which the county is now expected to deliver after a bond referendum including $2 million for pickleball has passed.
The impact of the sport’s rise has not sat well with everyone, though. The crowds and noise — particularly the loud pickleball pop — at certain local courts have bothered some surrounding neighbors. This includes those who live near Glebe Road Park.
“The noise from pickleball has become a major problem for residents of nearby houses — particularly those living on the section of Tazewell Street off of 38th Street,” reads the OGCA newsletter. “Some of the houses are only 135 feet from a ‘stand alone’ pickleball court; the noise from the court reverberates across the amphitheater-like terrain downhill to Tazewell Street and can be heard distinctly (and constantly) inside the houses.”
These concerns are not unique to Arlington, with the county looking to other jurisdictions to figure out how best to broker a pickleball peace. The initial pilot program, which ran from April to early September, closed down the pickleball court closest to the houses, but also added two more courts to the park by restriping a tennis court.
While the county “learned a lot” from the pilot, it didn’t paint a “full picture” about the best way forward, a county official told ARLnow.
“Over the last several months tennis and pickleball players, despite some inherent conflicts, have adjusted to sharing the two multi-use courts at Glebe Park. The courts have been very busy,” DPR spokesperson Martha Holland said. “Throughout the duration of this pilot, we have heard from park users and neighbors alike about the need to reopen the stand-alone court and to allow for pickleball plus other recreational options (soccer, fitness workouts, etc.).”
So, in response, the county is instituting a “Phase 2” pilot program that will keep the striping on the park’s tennis courts and install a “noise reducing fence” on three sides of the standalone court.
“The side of the court that touches the basketball court will not be wrapped, for safety reasons. Once the fence is up, DPR will reopen the court and monitor its use,” said Holland.
In addition, the court will be available via a reservation system and the court lights will be turned off at 10 p.m.
For the first time in three decades, two Marymount University teams won their conference titles on the same day with both earning a trip to their respective NCAA tournaments.
On Saturday, Nov. 5, Marymount’s women’s volleyball team and the men’s soccer team each won the NCAA Division III Atlantic East Conference championship.
It was a bit of sports history for the small Catholic university on N. Glebe Road, marking the first time since 1992 that two Marymount teams won such big matches on the same day. Both are now headed to their NCAA tournaments to vie for a national championship.
For the volleyball team, this is the third time in five seasons and the first such trip since 2019. The program has been around since 1981, with head coach Beth Ann Wilson at the helm for the last 30 of those years.
The team will head about an hour away to play the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg on Thursday in the opening round of the national tournament, the program learned on Monday afternoon.
This season has been a true turnaround for the Marymount men’s soccer team. It’s the first time in its 33-year history that it won more games than it lost in a season, wrapped up a conference championship, and made the NCAA tournament.
The men’s soccer team will also make their way to Mary Washington and Fredericksburg for their tournament game, set to play Eastern University on Saturday in the first round.
“We’re so proud of our men’s soccer and women’s volleyball team for winning the Atlantic East Conference and earning automatic bids into the NCAA Tournament on Saturday,” Marymount Director of Athletics Jill McCabe tells ARLnow. “For men’s soccer to win the first conference title in program history in front of an amazing home crowd, it was truly a special moment for Marymount University. Our women’s volleyball team went on the road to beat a team they had lost to just over two weeks ago to get back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.”
Marymount University has 22 varsity-level sports teams, including men’s and women’s wrestling, which was just added this past spring. They all compete in NCAA Division III, which typically includes smaller schools and provides no athletic scholarships — though student athletes are eligible for other types of scholarships.
The university, meanwhile, is developing plans to build a new sports facility on a piece of county-owned land near campus. Before anything is built, however, it will need to go through a formal review process. Marymount is planning to hold an informational meeting on Nov. 29 to discuss the plan with the community.
(Updated 9:55 p.m.) Marymount University is developing plans to build a new sports facility on an embattled parcel of county property near its campus.
Currently, the property at 26th Street N. and Old Dominion Drive, in the Old Dominion neighborhood, is home to a temporary road salt storage “dome” and a parking lot used for mulch distribution. In 2019, despite opposition from some neighbors, the county demolished a roughly 90-year-old water storage tank, repurposed for road salt, which was on the brink of collapse.
The tank saga came a few years after the county proposed and later nixed plans to relocate Fire Station 8 from Langston Blvd to the Old Dominion neighborhood.
Now, Marymount University, which was recently ranked for the first time as a national university and is showing other signs of growth — including higher enrollment rates, new softball and wrestling teams and new academic majors — is trying its hand at redeveloping the site.
The school, which has its main campus across from the county property and an additional presence in Ballston, first put forward a plan for the property two years ago. It proposes to build a sports field, a children’s playground and an enhanced walking trails to Missionhurst Preserve, according to a map on the university’s website.
In addition, it would replace the existing temporary salt dome with a new, solar-powered one, along with a mulch area.
A little less than a year ago, it also put forward a proposal to build new diamond fields where the Washington-Liberty High School baseball diamond in Quincy Park and the softball diamond on school property are. Since then, it has been in talks with W-L, Arlington Public Schools and the Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation.
Marymount has advertised an informational meeting on this proposal, scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 29.
The university said in a statement to ARLnow that the session acts on a suggestion from Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz to “build consensus among community members and inform them of our proposed plans to create a generational green space for Arlington at 26th Street N. and Old Dominion Drive that would improve and expand recreational opportunities for the County’s residents.”
It added that the forthcoming meeting also acts on a suggestion from a neighborhood association to meet with the three impacted neighborhood groups together. Marymount says it notified and invited Schwartz and the Arlington County Board to the meeting.
“We have put a great deal of thought and consideration into both projects, but these are proposals,” the university said. “We are discussing them with the neighborhood associations to receive their feedback after repeated attempts were made to communicate with the County about them.”
But Arlington County released a statement this afternoon (Monday) to clarify it has not endorsed the project.
“The County and APS received notice of Marymount’s November 29 Information Session at the same time Marymount informed the general public,” the statement reads. “The County and APS are not associated with or participating in the November 29 Information Session and do not sanction the materials or proposals presented by Marymount University.”
Per the statement, members of the Arlington County Board and the School Board have met with Marymount over the last year, at the university’s request, to hear the proposed concepts.
“At those meetings, County and APS staff asked clarifying questions but no decision was reached,” the county said. “At no time did County or APS staff indicate that these proposed facilities were feasible or acceptable.”
If conquering Arlington wasn’t enough, pickleball is now headed to Iceland thanks to two locals.
This past weekend, Arlington-based pickleball coaches Ruth Ellis and Helen White hosted a group of Icelandic tennis players at the Walter Reed Community Center to kick start a collaboration between Arlington’s pickleball community and Tennishöllin, a tennis club in Kopavógur, Iceland.
In a return volley, Ellis and White are set to head to Kopavógur next month to lead several pickleball workshops for the general public there.
The hope is to start a pickleball craze in Iceland, much like what’s happened here in Arlington.
“So many people I’m meeting have been to Iceland. So, there’s a lot of sport tourism possibilities for a place like Iceland,” Helen White, a leader in Arlington’s pickleball community and a local ambassador for the sport, told ARLnow. “Yes, you want to see the country, but if you’re a pickleball player, you also want to play with local pickleball players.”
The idea for the collaboration with the tennis club in Kopavógur came from Ellis, who was born in Iceland and goes back often to visit family. She’s an avid pickleball player and, while thinking about her next trip home, realized that it could be tough for her to find a game.
“I was trying to see if I could play pickleball while I was there, and there’s nobody playing there,” said Ellis, who actually lives in D.C. but plays mostly in Arlington. “There’s no active pickleball scene in Iceland at the moment. To me, that looked like a situation that needed to be remedied.”
While it was popular prior to the pandemic, pickleball has boomed in Arlington in recent years. Courts across the county are often full, with residents asking for more. The Department of Parks and Recreation has dedicated $2 million to build more courts and restripe tennis courts, though it might take some time before those are ready for a match.
However, not everyone loves the game. The sound of the ball hitting the paddle — the infamous pickleball pop — can be loud, so much so that the county shut down a court this summer because the pop sound was annoying the neighbors.
While the game has continued to grow in Arlington and the United States as a whole — with sports stars buying newly-formed professional teams — in Iceland tennis remains the favored paddle sport. But Ellis wants to change that.
She reached out to White, who was game for the project. Then, after emailing “dozens” of Icelanders, Ellis was put in touch with a woman who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Iceland. In turn, that person paired Ellis with the owners of Tennishöllin.
Tennis legend Serena Williams was apparently served up some Peruvian chicken at Virginia Square’s El Pollo Rico this past weekend.
An Instagram story posted on Williams’ account on Sunday (July 31) afternoon shows her inside of the local Peruvian chicken spot on N. Kenmore Street getting served up a heaping portion of chicken and rice.
The IG story was first spotted and tweeted by local restaurant and bar influencer Barred in DC.
Wow – @serenawilliams stopped by El Pollo Rico
Bet one of @alexisohanian Comm School buddies who lives in the DC has taken him to there before pic.twitter.com/WMpKXDLtPk
— Barred in DC (@BarredinDC) August 1, 2022
Williams is in town to support her equally-famous sister Venus, who is playing in the Citi Open in D.C. tonight. Serena surprised onlookers yesterday when she showed up on the Rock Creek Park courts to practice with her sister.
It’s unclear what lead her to El Pollo Rico, though Barred in DC guesses that her husband Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit and a UVA alum) may have had something to do with it.
ARLnow reached out to the restaurant this morning, but the manager there said he was unaware of the sports great stopping by. ARLnow also emailed owner Victor Solano but has yet to hear back as of publication.
Serena did some sightseeing in the District over the weekend as well, posting videos of her scootering around while checking out the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in the rain. It appears that McLean resident Mark Ein, who runs the Citi Open, was also with her.
Always love showing the tourists around my town…..@serenawilliams @CitiOpen pic.twitter.com/wHZXIMsrQ1
— Mark Ein (@Markein) August 1, 2022
ARLnow has reached out to Ein and his representatives to see if perhaps he’s the one who suggested the well-known local spot, but also has yet to hear back.
This isn’t El Pollo Rico’s first brush with fame. The late Anthony Bourdain featured the restaurant on his Travel Channel show “No Reservations” back in 2009.
This unassuming Peruvian chicken eatery is located on a side street off of Fairfax Drive and in the back of a low-slung building. It opened in 1988 and has continued to be a popular spot since.
An Arlington Little League team has made the state tournament, becoming one of few teams to have done so in Arlington history.
This past Fourth of July weekend, the Arlington Little League National 5070 All-Stars won the District 4 championship tournament, besting teams from across the region including Vienna and McLean. In Sunday’s championship game, the team of 14 players, ages 12 and 13 years old, defeated the Alexandria Little League All-Star team. They won by a score of 10 to 5.
The next step is the Virginia state tournament, to be held in Henrico just outside of Richmond, with their first game scheduled for this Friday. The coaches believe this is only the third team in Arlington Little League history to advance to states.
Both players and coaches told ARLnow that what made this team special was everyone’s dedication and buy-in.
“All 14 [players] bought into the team aspect of what’s best for the team as opposed to what’s best for them as an individual,” Manager Mark Nersasian told ARLnow. “We got contributions from top to bottom [of the roster].”
Thirteen-year-old Nate Moseley, who pitches and plays first base for the team and attends Dorothy Hamm Middle School, said that Nersasian and the other coaches often reiterate this concept.
“[The coaches] always tells us that we need players who play for the team name on the front, not the [last name] on the back,” he said.
That task was even more complicated by the fact the team has only been together for a few weeks. This is an all-star team, picked from more than 100 players across nine Arlington Little League teams. The team was selected, in large part, by their teammates and fellow Arlington Little Leaguers, with players voting on who they think should make up the squad. Coaches also contributed to the selection of the roster.
As expected, the players proved themselves to be some of the best ball players in Arlington. Assistant coach Keith Stone says the blended roster can sometimes be a challenge when dividing up playing time, but that wasn’t the case for this group of middle-school-aged athletes.
“Most of them were the best players on their regular team. They got brought to this [team] and they may only get to bat one time or barely get to play in the field. They all bought into the collective good for the team,” Stone said. “For 12 and 13-year-olds, that’s not always the easiest thing to do.”
This Arlington Little League team isn’t in the same age group as those that are on ESPN every year. This team is a little bit older, mostly comprised of 13-year-olds, as opposed to 10, 11, and 12-year-olds. Therefore, the Arlington Little League team plays on fields that are larger, have longer base paths, and pitch further away.
Dylan Stone, a shortstop and pitcher, has been playing baseball in Arlington since he was four years old. He’s now 13 and attends Williamsburg Middle School. What he loves most about playing in Arlington Little League is being able to “play with friends and the competition.”
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn.
Longtime Arlington resident Jay Hedley flew A-10 fighter jets for 12 years in the Maryland Air National Guard.
When flying missions, his plane would track and record what he could see in front of him, as well as the targeting of missiles using a heads-up display. He and other pilots would review the video footage together after flying a mission to debrief.
“So then the idea came,” he said, “why don’t we train athletes the same way we use technology like this from the jet?”
So he founded HeadVantage, which equips athletes with mini cameras and eye-tracking technology. The HeadVantage camera can be fitted under the bill of a baseball cap and track the eye movements of the wearer. It can also measure the diameter of the wearer’s pupils a hundred times per second, Hedley said.
Apart from tracking eye movements, the camera also records high-definition, stabilized video footage that can be streamed live and shown on TV.
“One way you can think of it is, where GoPro can’t go,” said Hedley, distinguishing HeadVantage from the popular action camera brand.
Because of the camera’s eye-tracking and streaming abilities, HeadVantage can provide unique content to sports fans, said Jenna Kurath, the head of Comcast NBCU SportsTech.
“To be able to see it from the perspective of the athlete, to get into the mind of the athlete through the eye-tracking of those split-second decisions that they’re making,” she said, “this is going to bring new fan-engagement content to the forefront.”
With this camera, sports commentators will be able to analyze an athlete’s performance from their viewpoint.
“Oftentimes our commentators will do the replay and say, ‘How did they do this?'” Kurath said. “Now this is the ability to kind of see it through the eyes of the athlete to really get a little bit more into their mind.”
Arlington-based HeadVantage was selected as part of Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech Accelerator in 2022, a program that connected 10 startups with different program partners, such as NBC Sports, World Wrestling Entertainment and NASCAR. HeadVantage was chosen from among over 800 applicants around the world, according to a news release from NBCUniversal.
Since joining the program, HeadVantage has been prototyping the camera to be used in golf, fitting it in golfers’ glasses.
Instructors in NBC Sports’ golf shows, such as School of Golf‘s Martin Hall and others in the company’s subscribers-only GolfPass content, have used HeadVantage cameras, said Kurath, who also ran the startup program. The camera will be used in a few celebrity golf tournaments in the summer, she noted.
Hedley founded the startup in 2020, according to his LinkedIn page. Currently, his main customer is NBC Sports and his main goal for HeadVantage this year is to get the camera used in NBC golf coverage.
“I’d love to get embedded in NBC golf this year, maybe with baseball this year,” Hedley said, “So baseball and golf will be the two sports we’d focus on this year.”
Yorktown High Jumper Sets Record — “Led by two individual champions, the Yorktown Patriots finished third in the recent Virginia High School League’s Class 6 girls outdoor state track and field championships… The Patriots’ individual-event winners were Viktorie Klepetkova in the high jump for the second year in a row, but this time with a school and meet-record leap of 5-feet, 11-inches, and Anna Corcoran in the 800-meters.” [Sun Gazette]
Arlington on CBS Evening News — “The ‘walking school bus’ is helping both kids and senior citizens start the day off right. Once a week, seniors walk with students to school in Arlington, Virginia. Jan Crawford shares more.” [CBS News]
Born on Bridge, Straddled Still — “You’ve known folks born in Arlington, and you’ve known some born in D.C. But have you known anyone born in between? That is to say, born on Key Bridge? Paul Mclain, 65, recently retired as an academic assistant in the Duke University Slavic and Eurasian Studies Department, can claim such citizenship limbo. And it has caused him hassles as an adult.” [Falls Church News-Press]
Barrelling Through the I-395 Barrels — From Dave Statter: “Watch: Bad day for the barrels. At 9:40 this morning one driver decided to blaze their own trail right through them.” [Twitter]
It’s Monday — Humid and partly cloudy throughout the day. Storms possible later in the afternoon and overnight. High of 86 and low of 71. Sunrise at 5:44 am and sunset at 8:36 pm. [Weather.gov]
