Is an Exemption from Historic Preservation Designation for Religious Institutions Needed in the District of Columbia?

In December 2007, the District of Columbia\u27s Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB), in a unanimous decision, landmarked the Third Church of Christ Scientist, built by the firm of famous architect I.M. Pei in 1970, because of the building’s architectural significance. The decision was controversial and drew community and media attention because the landmark was a modern structure and the designation was made over the opposition of the congregants and some community members. As a result of the landmark designation, the congregation’s ability to redevelop the church will be limited and will require HPRB approval. The church argued that the building is too expensive to maintain while some community members argued that the building is architectural blight. Still, HPRB found that the church is an important and significant example of Brutalism, an architectural style associated with the 1950s to 1970s known for the use of roughly cast concrete. Because of interest surrounding the Third Church of Christ Scientist landmark decision, city officials are now poised to engage in a conversation about the wisdom of passing an ordinance that specifically allows religious institutions to opt out of historic preservation designations. In fact, a bill that would allow religious exemptions for historic properties was recently proposed by a city council member then quickly withdrawn. Because the bill was withdrawn, this paper will not focus exclusively on this bill. However, the possibility remains that a similar bill may be introduced and the previously proposed bill will be used for a point of reference for how a potential city ordinance in the District of Columbia could look

Annotated Bibliography of Elsie Singmaster’s Gettysburg Writings

Our fellow Adams Countian, Elsie Singmaster Lewars (1879-1958), was a well -known author of regional fiction during the first half of the twentieth century. She wrote about the people and places she knew first hand. She spent most of her first twenty years in an ethnic Pennsylvania German community, Macungie, Pennsylvania. Having descended on her father’s side from Pennsylvania Germans who settled in the eastern part of the state beginning in the eighteenth century, she understood “her people” because she lived among them. When she began to write for publication in 1905, her first characters and plots drew upon her heritage. The early twentieth century interest in local color literature contributed to the initial popularity of her stories then published in American literary journals. Known professionally as Elsie Singmaster, she established a reputation as a skilled and sympathetic portrayer of Pennsylvania German life in a developing and diverse American culture

Beyond Occupy Wall Street: A Case Study of Strike Debt’s Rolling Jubilee as an Emergent Form of Political Action

On May 13, 2013, the non-profit organization calling itself Strike Debt purchased $12 million of delinquent medical consumer debt from a random selection of 1,190 Americans and abolished their obligations (Rolling Jubilee 2013). To date,$15 million of consumer debt has been purchased with donations and abolished by this branch of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in an initiative they are calling the Rolling Jubilee. Through this program, Strike Debt is undertaking as its course of social activism the project of identifying and raising public awareness of debt as the key burden uniting “the 99 percent” (Rolling Jubilee 2013)

The Waiting Room: Re-Making Adulthood Among America’s Underemployed

This dissertation takes as its starting point the problem of underemployment among young adults in the post-recession United States. Recent studies have shown that the number of college-educated Americans employed in positions not requiring a degree has reached historic highs. Such analyses are limited, however, in that they do not capture the lived effects of such trends—how underemployment insinuates itself into a person\u27s worldview and identity. This ethnographic study delves into the intimate correlates of macroeconomic change by investigating the impact of underemployment on notions of adulthood among recent college graduates working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul restaurant industry. For the young people that I interviewed and worked alongside for a year, a central question in their lives appeared to be, how does one become an adult without the stable pay and prestige that has defined legitimate, middle class adulthood for prior generations? My study found that, for many white collar hopefuls, the beginnings of their careers were defined by a period of precarious employment—a waiting room, as some called it—for wealth, self-actualization, and adulthood itself. For those workers without means to subsidize their wages during this period, restaurant work provided an essential income stream and bulwark against economic instability. This period of underemployment ultimately fostered a waiting room subjectivity, a stultifying, yet creative state in which workers dealt with the practical problem of becoming adults despite deficits in prestige and income. Their tactics were crystallized in the internet meme adulting and ranged from traditional consumer activities such as purchasing a bed frame to communalist householding arrangements. Overall, I argue that their waiting room world constitutes one refraction of an emerging generational subject, haunted by the norms of the twentieth century but birthed into an era where those norms have collapsed into a disordered state of adulthood, fertile with risk and possibility

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Jockey Falls, Injuries, and Fatalities Associated With Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse Racing in California, 2007-2011.

BackgroundDespite the popularity of the horse racing industry in the United States and the wide recognition that horse racing is one of the most hazardous occupations, little focused research into the prevention of falls by and injuries to jockeys has been conducted.PurposeTo describe the incidence rates and characteristics of falls and injuries to Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing jockeys in the state of California.Study designDescriptive epidemiology study.MethodsData on race-day falls and injuries were extracted from jockey accident reports submitted to the California Horse Racing Board from January 2007 to December 2011. Denominator data, number of jockey race rides, were obtained from commercial and industry databases. Jockey fall, injury, and fatality incidence rates and ratios in Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse flat races were estimated using Poisson regression. Characteristics of falls and injuries are described and compared.ResultsIn Thoroughbred races, 184 jockey injuries occurred from 360 reported jockey falls, 180,646 race rides, 23,500 races, and 3350 race meetings. In Quarter Horse races, 85 jockey injuries occurred from 145 jockey falls, 46,106 race rides, 6320 races, and 1053 race meetings. Jockey falls occurred at a rate of 1.99 falls per 1000 rides in Thoroughbred races, with 51% of falls resulting in jockey injury, and 3.14 falls per 1000 rides in Quarter Horse races, with 59% of falls resulting in jockey injury. The majority of falls occurred during a race, with catastrophic injury or sudden death of the horse reported as the most common cause in both Thoroughbred (29%) and Quarter Horse (44%) races. During the period studied, 1 jockey fatality resulted from a fall. Jockey fall rates were lower but injury rates were comparable to those reported internationally.ConclusionOn average, a licensed jockey in California can expect to have a fall every 502 rides in Thoroughbred races and every 318 rides in Quarter Horse races. While jockey fall rates were lower, injury rates were similar to those in other racing jurisdictions. The high proportion of jockey falls caused by horse fatalities should be further investigated

Improving the reading skills of struggling secondary students in a real-world setting: Issues of implementation and sustainability

Reading difficulties have been associated with limited academic success and related social-emotional outcomes including anxiety and low motivation. Recent research on the educational impact of the COVID-19 pandemic indicates that children with poor reading skills were disproportionally disadvantaged. This growing number of students experiencing reading difficulties will require effective implementation of strategies to prevent long-term disadvantage, including in the challenging context of secondary schools where teachers are unfamiliar with reading instruction and constrained by timetabling of subjects and teachers. This research examined whether a Direct Instruction programme could be implemented with fidelity in the real world of a secondary school over a sustained period. Reading progress was monitored using a standardised assessment. Programme implementation was monitored via interviews with staff, classroom observations, and field notes. These data revealed that, whilst fidelity of programme implementation was challenging, programme delivery and student ability and confidence in reading improved over the three years