Results tagged “civilwar”

When you've got multiple Helen Hayes Awards nominees listed in your cast — as understudies — you know a production isn't exactly going to be lacking in fantastic performers.

Emmanuel Jal is a supremely charismatic young man with a gentle way of carrying himself, always ready with an infectious smile, and always willing to talk to a group of strangers about his music and the path that led him to be on a stage or at a podium in front of them. The simple fact of his standing anywhere is a triumph; at the age of seven he was transformed into a child soldier to fight in the Sudanese civil war, and spent five years with an AK-47 at the ready until a British humanitarian helped him sneak out to a better life in Kenya. His difficult path is an inspirational example of just what can happen when a little luck combines with a lot of talent, charisma, and positive attitude, as he now finds himself an international star, both for his story, and for the hip-hop he now performs, much of which is informed by the events that shaped him. He's a natural subject for a documentary, an unlikely and fascinating story of triumph over adversity, and that alone is enough to recommend War Child. On top of that, five percent of the grosses for the film go directly to Gua Africa, a group that works to help out war and poverty devastated communities in Sudan and Kenya through education. How often do you actually do some good when you spend your entertainment dollars?

Regarding Thanksgiving customs, going around the table saying what we’re thankful for is about as basic as it gets. If it seems too basic, this year you can consider adding a new dimension to the tradition by reading for the table what our Presidents have been thankful for. Thanks to the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Massachusetts, all the Thanksgiving Proclamations are available online. That means we have access to Proclamations dating from the Continental Congress...

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the...

We're a little short-staffed today, so if you've got any picks to add for this weekend, please leave them in the comments. FRIDAY >> This weekend the Uptown Theater is playing the final cut of everybody's favorite movie about replicants running amock, and young Darryl Hannah being super sci-fi hot, Blade Runner. >> If an apocalyptic future isn't exactly what you're in the mood for, try on Seattle's dream folk rockers, Band of Horses, for...

With monuments and museums, Washington, D.C. is a haven for history buffs. But what do most of us really know about Virginia? The Kathy Harty Gray Dance Theatre will combine a history lesson with dance with two performances of “Women in Virginia and Other Favorites” this weekend at Northern Virginia Community College's Alexandria campus. The performance will include excerpts of the company’s touring program “Stories to Remember about Women in Virginia”, which covers 400 years...

Written by Morgan Hargrave It is usually not a good sign when a museum’s first display details how popular it used to be. It seems the National Museum of Health and Medicine is decades removed from its glory days, when it was called the Army Medical Museum and resided in a series of more prestigious locations around D.C. It attracted between 450,000 and 765,000 visitors per year during the 1960s before being moved away from...

Written by DCist contributor Benjamin Schuman-Stoler Last week in our “revisiting sites we’ve walked by a hundred times" series we presented the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This week, we’ll look at that huge phallus in the exact center of the original D.C. map -- the Washington Monument. Screaming nothing but glory and testament, it is the classic D.C. monument. But we know its background isn’t as simple as its geometric profile. The National Park Service commissioned...

Bloggers across this fair nation thought they couldn't get a bigger gift from a Virginia senate race than they did last year, after the epic and appalling Macacaness of Sen. George Allen's eventual defeat to Sen. Jim Webb. But via Wonkette, it would seem we could all have been wrong. Rumors are flying that Pat "Homosexuality is Not Only Immoral, but Filthy" Buchanan is considering a run at the seat being vacated by Sen. John...

Dan Evans is the Charlie Brown of the post-Civil War American west. He just can't win. His wife looks at him with disappointment and disdain. His eldest son thinks he's a lily-livered coward. His creditors bully and insult him. Even nature thumbs her nose at him, refusing to give him the rain he needs to water the pastures that could feed his starving cattle. Only his youngest son still looks at him with admiration, mostly...

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: 3:10 to Yuma Mark your calendars. Labor Day is past, summer is over, and it's time for all the Oscar contenders to step into the ring. First out of the gate is 3:10 to Yuma, the second filmed version of an Elmore Leonard short story about a Civil War veteran (played here by Christian...

Tireless Prince George's County beat reporter Rosalind Helderman writes in today's Washington Post about a growing movement to have bronze statues depicting Chief Justice Roger B. Taney removed from the State House in Annapolis and Frederick City Hall this year. Taney was the justice who delivered the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case, which declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional and ruled that slaves were personal property and therefore not citizens...

You know it's too late for your civil liberties when they've gone and put the Statue of Freedom in a cage. And you thought all those people worried about the PATRIOT Act were alarmists. If you haven't glanced at the top of the Capitol lately, take a gander. Over the past week, workers have constructed scaffolding around the Statue of Freedom—the 19 ½ foot bronze sculpture atop the Capitol Dome—not in preparation for her trip...

>> Tragedy strikes the best little bar in Arlington! According to a MySpace bulletin, some miscreant has run off with Galaxy Hut's kareoke equipment, effectively squashing DCist Amanda's favorite way to spend a Thursday night. Why would someone do such a thing? Especially since wherever they take it is sure to have an inferior beer selection to the equipment's original home. Do your part and go spend some money at G Hut so they can...

From the front page of this morning's Washington Post, it seems the last person anyone expected to be right about anything, perennial whack-a-doo mayoral candidate Faith, wasn't actually that far off the mark during last year's campaign: Chocolate City is rapidly becoming Vanilla Villa. The District of Columbia will likely no longer be majority-African American within the next 13 years. The 14 percent increase in non-Hispanic white District residents and 6 percent decrease in blacks...

Welcome to May, Washington. It's beautiful outside and will stay that way throughout the week. In fact, checking WUSA's weather forecast this morning, we smiled at all the pretty suns and mild temperatures. The clearest meteorological message, though, is the helpful "Warm" and "Nice" written neatly across the image. Not too shabby. It's also nice weather for balloting. Today, voters in Wards Four and Seven head to the polls to elect new D.C. council members....

Last Saturday morning, under grey skies and whipping winds, DCist rolled out of bed to take a walking tour of Embassy Row, one of the 60 free tours being offered in this weekend's WalkingTown DC, an event offered by Cultural Tourism DC. Like Sommer, I was initially sceptical that there was much to learn about the Dupont Circle neighborhood, a familiar stomping ground for many Washington young people. But on the Embassy Row tour,...

Most Washingtonians are accustomed to participating in guided tours only when entertaining out of town guests. We all know we'll have to trek out to the monuments with family and friends at least a few times a year, so being a tourist in our own city voluntarily at other times might not sound terribly appealing. But try not to think of the tours being offered in this coming weekend's WalkingTown DC, a series of 60...

Maps are cool. We've written about them many, many times and even made our own. Free stuff is also cool. We've written about that too. So you can guess what we think about free, downloadable historical maps of D.C. We love them.

In Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), the new film from Mexican-born director Guillermo del Toro, fairy tales are terrifying. This is how fairy tales are supposed to be: coded ways of telling children about the harsh realities of adult life. As the goal of American parenting has become shielding children from reality, as if it did not exist, fairy tales have in turn become been watered down and made less frightening.

Last week, Stare DCisis explored what happens when the Supreme Court stops being polite, and starts getting real with states acting unconstitutionally. Virginia, in particular, was the perpetual thorn in the side of the early Supreme Court. Though Chief Justice John Marshall was a former Virginia legislator, the state's supreme court had some real authority problems taking orders from Marshall once he moved across the river. It may seem patently obvious that the Supreme Court...

Written by DCist contributor Andrew Wiseman. Today, Northwest D.C. is the scene of battles over gentrification and parking. In 1864, however, it was the scene of another kind of battle: an invasion by Southern troops. Fort Stevens, hidden on Quackenbos Street NW between 13th and Georgia, is a pretty unremarkable place. A few steps from the Georgia Avenue Thrift Store and a 70 bus stop, it’s basically a strangely-shaped hill (the fort’s earthworks) with a...

This week's Washington Post magazine features a sprawling story by David Von Drehel on Washington's economic juggernaut. The piece jumps around a lot, throwing out some questionable economic assertions, overhyping (we feel) the terrorist menace, and curiously detouring on the morality of Washington's growth in a post-September 11th world, but the main point of his story is clear: In the past four years, government spending in the area has skyrocketed (increasing by $18.5 billion over...

For the second time in the past few days, a Virginia House of Delegates committee has killed a bill that would authorize a quarter-cent sales tax increase dedicated to funding Metro. The bill, which was introduced in the Virginia Senate and passed there 36-3, was denied in a House Finance subcommittee last week but was allowed to come before the whole committee yesterday for another vote. It failed there by a count of 11-8, increasing the likelihood that no increase will be authorized before the end of the legislative session on March 11. The increase would only apply to the five Northern Virginia jurisdictions served by Metro, and it would be part of a regional effort to secure regular system funding and match a proposed $1.5 billion allocation to Metro introduced by U.S. Representative Tom Davis (R-Va.).

DCist is excited to welcome back our founding editor, Michael Grass, who comes to us this Sunday with a special Opinionist. One of the most frustrating things about living in Washington, D.C., for me is walking along Eye Street up and around the corner from the International Monetary Fund. Between 20th and 21st streets NW sits Kinkead’s, one of the city’s long-standing respected restaurants. Kinkead’s sits in the house where my late grandfather and my...

Amidst the government buildings and the lobbyist wheeling and dealings, the essence of D.C. past and present is frequently lost. People are constantly saying that D.C. itself has no history. People lament how it's not a "big city," how it doesn't have the identity and flavor of New York, or Boston.

TUESDAY In her work in the New Yorker, Daphne Merkin writes with a head-on style that tosses concern for political correctness to the wind and, just as often, polarizes readers, especially across the feminist spectrum. She’ll be holding court at the J tonight on the topic of the rebranding of Jewish identity and culture along hipster lines. DCJCC, 1529 16th Street NW, 7:30 pm. For tickets, call 888-621-2230 or order online at www.nextbook.org. WEDNESDAY Jared...

Well, DCist has gone and done it now. In an arbitrary post last week discussing the American Political Science Association's annual meeting in the District, former DCist food connoisseur Kanishka offered $100 to any reader who could catch Cornel West scarfing down a jumbo slice. Safe bet, right? I mean, who would have thought that Cornel West would actually scarf down, of all things, a jumbo slice? Well, one reader managed just that. Above, Cathy...

In a huge blow to the region’s economy, a federal commission charged with choosing which armed forces bases to close decided Walter Reed Army Medical Center (named after the Civil War doctor and major at right) will likely admit its last patient soon. The closure, which includes the Northwest center as well as office space in Northern Virginia, means 9,000 jobs will go elsewhere. The decision means that those jobs will shift to exurban bases,...

FRIDAY: >> If you're not Black Cat-ed out from the Unbuckled concert last night, head over to the mainstage to catch an indie-tastic show with The Whips, Her Daily Obsession (at right), and The Hard Tomorrows, all of whom we hear will put on one hell of a show. Doors are at 9:30 p.m.; $8. >> If you missed a screening of "9:30 F ST," the documentary about the old 9:30 Club, worry not --...