Older authorities included the two genera, Cannabis and Humulus, in the mulberry family. These and the former hackberry family (Celtidaceae) are now included in Cannabaceae. Members of the family are erect or climbing plants with petalless flowers and dry, one-seeded fruits. Hemp ("Cannabis") and hop ("Humulus") are the only economically important species.
Urticaceae
Urticaceae the nettle family comprising about 45 genera of herbs, shrubs, small trees, and a few vines, distributed primarily in tropical regions. The family is typical of the nettle order.
Many species, especially the nettles ("Urtica") and Australian nettle trees ("Laportea"), have stinging hairs on the stems and leaves. The leaves are varied and the sap is usually watery.
The small, greenish flowers often form clusters in the leaf axils. Both male and female flowers may be borne on the same plant. The curled stamens of the male flowers straighten quickly as the flowers open, releasing the pollen.
Adrian Fenty
Adrian Malik Fenty (born December 6, 1970) was the sixth, and youngest Mayor of the District of Columbia. He was a national leader in urban education reform. He lost his re-election bid in the 2010 Democratic primary to Vincent C. Gray, who went on to win the general election for mayor.
Fenty grew up in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. and graduated from Mackin Catholic High School. As a teenager, he worked at Swenson's Ice Cream next to the Uptown Theatre.
Fenty's mother is white, and his father is African-American. Adrian Fenty is the middle child of three boys—older brother Shawn, a bicycle expert, and younger brother Jess. Their parents are runners and own a Fleet Feet athletic shoe store in the D.C. neighborhood of Adams Morgan. Adrian has run in the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run each year since 2004, improving his finishing time from 1:17:22 in 2005 to 1:02:59 in 2009.
Fenty earned a B.A. in English and Economics at Oberlin College and a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.
In 1997, Fenty and lawyer Michelle Cross eloped. Michelle Cross Fenty works for the Inter-American Development Bank. They have three children: twins Matthew and Andrew (b. 2000) and Aerin Alexandra (b. 2008).
Fenty was an intern for Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-MA) before becoming involved in local politics. In addition to serving as an aide to Councilmember Kevin P. Chavous, he was elected as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in ANC 4C and was president of the 16th Street Neighborhood Civic Association.
In 2000, Fenty won a seat on the D.C. Council. Fenty ran against long-time Ward 4 Councilmember Charlene Drew Jarvis. Jarvis was well known and a heavy favorite, but Fenty campaigned hard. He pursued an aggressive door-to-door strategy and put up large numbers of green yard signs. Fenty was elected to the Council seat by a 57–43 percent margin. Unopposed in both the primary and general elections in 2004, Fenty was reelected for a second term.
As a Council member, Fenty worked on constituent services. He opposed public funding for a new baseball stadium. He proposed funding a $1 billion capital improvement program for public schools, which the Council subsequently passed in an altered form. He is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, an organization formed in 2006 and co-chaired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino.
While major, Fenty used three BlackBerry devices. One BlackBerry directly connected him to Police Chief Cathy Lanier while the latter two were for business and personal matters.
Fenty formally announced his decision to campaign for mayor of the District of Columbia on June 1, 2005. In the fall of 2005, then-mayor Anthony A. Williams made the widely anticipated announcement that he would not seek re-election, and then-Council Chair Linda Cropp announced she would be a candidate for Mayor. Other candidates included businesswoman Marie Johns, then-Council member Vincent Orange, and lobbyist Michael A. Brown. Brown dropped out of the race in September 2006.
Fenty ran on a platform of bringing a more energetic and hands-on approach to district government. Cropp trumpeted her 25 years of experience in district government and her desire to continue the progress made by Anthony Williams, who endorsed her candidacy. The race was widely viewed as neck-and-neck through the spring of 2006. Both candidates raised significant and nearly equal amounts of money –roughly $1.75 million through June 10, 2006 –and neither gained any significant advantage from the numerous debates and forums.
By July 2006, public and private polling gave Fenty a roughly 10-point advantage. Political observers have debated whether it was Fenty's unprecedented door-to-door campaign, in which he and his campaign workers visited virtually every block in the district, Cropp's lack of engagement in the campaign, or the electorate's desire for a new direction after eight years of Anthony Williams. Cropp's campaign began a series of negative attacks during the last month of the campaign. In direct mail and television advertisements, Cropp painted Fenty as unfit for the job and a careless lawyer who had been admonished by the D.C. Bar; in 2005, he received an informal admonition from the Bar Association for his role in a probate case in 1999. The attacks, however, backfired; the reaction, coupled with the endorsement of the "Washington Post" newspaper, increased Fenty's lead in the campaign's final weeks.
On September 12, 2006, Fenty won all 142 district precincts in the Democratic Primary. This had never happened before in District of Columbia history—and defeated Linda Cropp by a 57–31 percent margin.
Fenty received 89% of the vote in the general election. He became the district's sixth elected mayor since the establishment of home rule.
Fenty paid a lot of attention to education reform. On the first day of his term, in an unprecedented and controversial move, Fenty introduced legislation to restructure the school system to give him full responsibility for schools. Across the district, district residents had been demanding that the schools be "fixed." Schools in the district had been troubled for years with student test performance scores and graduation rates among the lowest in the nation. In 1996, a Control Board appointed by Congress had taken over control of the public school system, declaring that the schools were in a "state of emergency." Mayor Fenty viewed this re-structuring as the solution.
In April, 2007, the D.C. Council approved Fenty's school takeover plan, and in May 2007, legislation needed to approve the change was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush. Under the new structure, the existing superintendent was replaced by a school chief, or chancellor, who was selected by the mayor and would report directly to him. This power shift also allowed the mayor to make swift changes in the system's central office, alter teacher qualification requirements, and implement a school consolidation process. His selection of Michelle Rhee to manage District schools surprised many people. In choosing Rhee, he stepped outside of the local landscape to consult with national education experts including New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein.
The move to restructure the school's reporting system and the addition of a school chancellor as a direct report have been credited with putting the school system on the path to long-awaited improvements. To ensure that maximum resources would go directly to classrooms, the mayor and chancellor closed 23 underenrolled schools and significantly reduced the school system's central administrative staff.