These athletes went vegan — and stayed strong.

want to get the most bang for every bite.” Loomis, who served as team internist for football’s St. Louis (now Los Angeles) Rams and baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals before he got interested in plant-based medicine, saw professional athletes develop serious health problems at an early age by focusing only on eating a lot of calories. “I call it ‘bro science,’ ” he says. “They’re thinking about getting big and strong without thinking about the long-term impact. But if we help develop healthy habits in younger athletes, it helps them in post-career.” Inflammation caused by dietary choices, which can lead to a host of chronic diseases, Matt Frazier, 35, an ultramarathoner and author of “No Meat Athlete,” used a gradual transition from omnivore to vegan for his own diet. “I spent a whole year without eating four-legged animals before I took the next step and cut the two-legged animals out of my diet, and then spent a month there before I stopped eating fish,” he says. At that point, Frazier found that his speed and endurance were increasing, leading him to shave 10 minutes off his marathon time to ultimately qualify for the Boston Marathon. Over the next two years, he gradually cut out eggs and dairy. “I think short-term challenges are a great way to dive in and see what it’s like,” Frazier says. “Try a 10-day vegetarian or vegan challenge, and if it goes well, make it 30 days. Having that finish line at the end keeps you from having to deal with those ‘I can never eat a cheeseburger again?’ thoughts that aren’t helpful at all when you’re trying to transition.” The feared loss of indulgent food is a topic that seems to come up often among both vegan athletes and curious omnivores. “Your relationship with food becomes pleasing your palate versus making your body look good,” says bodybuilder Washington. “Even when I travel, I head straight for the local Whole Foods and start looking for the ingredients to make a spicy vegan pizza or pan-seared tofu with Japanese sweet potatoes. When you become a vegan, you become a foodie.” Carter concurs. “I like to make junk food that’s not really junk food,” he says. “My favorite is nachos with couscous, beans and cashew-cheese queso. I’ve converted so many athletes with that cashew cheese — they eat it and say, “Man, that tastes just like real cheese, bro!”


Prominent athletes who made headlines with their vegan diets

Kendrick Farris of the United States lifts weights during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at Riocentro in Brazil. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) Here are a few prominent athletes who have made headlines because of their plant-based diets: Michaela Copenhaver Meagan Duhamel Kendrick Farris Scott Jurek Carl Lewis — Kristen Hartke


TamalFest DC returns to Columbia Heights on Dec. 4

Get your fill of tamales at the second annual TamalFest DC on Dec. 4, at the Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights. (Deb Lindsey/The Washington Post) RESERVE NOW DEC. 2 NORWEGIAN HOLIDAY BAZAAR: DEC. 3 METROCOOKING DC: WINE DINNER: DEC. 4 TAMALFEST: — Kara Elder Send event listings to food@washpost.com with CALENDAR in the subject line.


Japan and South Korea sign long-awaited intelligence-sharing deal

her political life amid allegations linking her to a corruption and influence-peddling scandal. But Han Min-koo, the South’s defense minister, and Yasumasa Nagamine, Japan’s ambassador to South Korea, signed the deal in a ceremony in Seoul on Wednesday. The agreement “will help restrain Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development programs,” Moon Sang-gyun, spokesman for the South’s Defense Ministry, told reporters. In Japan, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said the deal was “more important than ever as North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs pose a new level of threat.” Several of the missiles that North Korea has fired this year have landed in Japan’s air-defense-identification zone. The deal would augment allied deterrence and defense by giving both countries expeditious information about North Korean threats from each other’s sensors, said Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation. But the accord is good for the United States as well, he said. “It will also improve trilateral security cooperation, with the U.S. no longer having to play operator in the middle of phone calls between Seoul and Tokyo,” Klingner said. The deal remains controversial in Seoul, where opposition parties are strongly against it and want the defense minister dismissed for signing it. It is also unpopular in Beijing, where China’s Foreign Ministry criticized the deal Wednesday, saying that South Korea and Japan were “locked in a Cold War mind-set.” “South Korea and Japan . . . have in effect forged a military alliance by signing the pact, strengthening the U.S.-led alliance and further upsetting the strategic balance in Northeast Asia,” Lu Chao, a research fellow at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the state-run Chinese newspaper Global Times. Beijing has become increasingly angry at Seoul’s stronger military cooperation with the United States after North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests this year. These events helped Seoul overcome its previous reluctance to agree to host a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, commonly known as THAAD, to intercept North Korean missiles. President Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing was infuriated by the decision, viewing it as a way for the United States to keep China’s military in check. Klingner said Seoul and Tokyo should build on the deal by integrating the South Korean and Japanese programs to improve the likelihood of successfully intercepting North Korean missiles. “Seoul’s refusal to do so due to historic strains with Japan is like a baseball coach telling his


Learning to love the secret language of urine

tale that encompassed all the patient’s symptoms and lab abnormalities. The diagnosis turned out to be glomerulonephritis, a rare form of kidney disease. He was able to look inside that patient with a clairvoyance that seemed positively sorcerous, with urine as his crystal ball. From that moment I was determined to learn urine’s subtle language. In the months that followed, I practiced wielding the dipstick and centrifuge, and trained my eyes to recognize clues under the microscope. I befriended hospital lab technicians and had them save interesting specimens to broaden my experience of diseases. A designated cup with my name on it soon appeared in the laboratory fridge, where the technicians would leave their latest finds. When my patients needed a urinalysis, I performed it myself rather than sending samples to the laboratory only to receive back computerized results. With my own (gloved) hands, I carried the patients’ still-warm samples to the microscope lab and personally extracted their stories. Doing it myself gave me a deeper sense of the pathologies playing out inside my patients. And repeating the ritual of dipstick and centrifuge again and again created an intimacy with them and a growing respect for my favorite bodily fluid. I began to comprehend urine’s enigmatic language. White blood cells on the dipstick speak of urinary tract infection, while crystals under the microscope explain some cases of flank pain. But more than other fluids, pee reveals hints not only about trouble with its own exit route through the urinary tract, but also about the body as a whole — even systemic, seemingly unrelated problems. Red urine can imply problems like kidney stones and bladder cancer, but it can also indicate a genetic defect in red blood cells, a breakdown of muscle cells or a recent meal of beets. Urine can uncover a cause of infection in the lungs, announce a recent drug ingestion or, in diabetics, confess the failings of a distant pancreas. In previous centuries, physicians made this last diagnosis by tasting urine for sweetness, a time when taste buds were the only assay. Today, thankfully, this is no longer necessary, though decoding urine still often feels like being a sommelier. Years after medical school, I worked in an emergency room and discovered more fundamental reasons to appreciate urine. In questioning each ER patient, I always brought the conversation back to urine, no matter the primary problem. Whether the


National Zoo stays open late for ZooLights exhibit

Half a million lights give the zoo a new look at night until January 1. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Winter is the perfect time to see Washington in a different light. The crowds have thinned, and those humid 95-degree days are long gone. And the National Zoo is a different experience because of 500,000 bulbs that illuminate the annual ZooLights celebration. Eco-friendly twinkly lights will decorate zoo walkways, trees and buildings. Sculptures featuring popular zoo residents, including elephants and giant pandas, light up in time to music. If walking and watching isn’t enough excitement, head to Lion & Tiger Hill, home to a 150-foot-long snowless tubing run. Rides on the trackless train and the carousel also will be available. Don’t forget to visit a few of the zoo’s real animals. The Kids’ Farm, Reptile Discovery Center, Small Mammal House, Think Tank (orangutans) and Great Cats exhibit will be open in the evening. There’s no guarantee, however, that the animals will be as lively as the humans in attendance. When: You may see a glowing version of your favorite zoo resident at ZooLights. (Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Where: How much: For more information: More ZooLights celebrations Columbus Zoo Detroit Zoo Denver Zoo Houston Zoo Jacksonville Zoo Lincoln Park Zoo Los Angeles Zoo Memphis Zoo Miami Zoo Oregon Zoo Phoenix Zoo San Diego Zoo St. Louis Zoo Stone Zoo Utah’s Hogle Zoo Woodland Park Zoo — Christina Barron


Online magazine to open up FBI files on the ‘D.B. Cooper’ skyjacking case

This is an artist's sketch of the skyjacker known as “Dan Cooper,” or “D.B. Cooper,” from the recollections of passengers and crew of a Northwest Orient jet he hijacked between Portland and Seattle on Nov. 24, 1971, Thanksgiving eve. 'Cooper' later parachuted from the plane with $200,000 in ransom money. Dead or alive, he has not been found. (FBI via AP) It’s one of America’s most enduring mysteries — the only unsolved hijacking of a commercial airliner in the country’s history: Who was the man known as “D.B. Cooper” who took control of a Northwest Orient jet shortly before Thanksgiving in 1971 and parachuted out with $200,000? On Thanksgiving Day, a website founded by the author of the most authoritative book on Cooper is releasing hundreds of FBI investigative documents related to the case. Geoffrey Gray, author of “Skyjack” and founder of the online magazine True Ink, will publish dozens of documents showing the FBI’s interviews with the passengers and crew of the flight, and its assessment of the physical evidence. The magazine will release a second group of documents in a couple of weeks and a third and final release before the end of the year. By the end of 2016, True Ink will have disseminated hundreds of FBI papers on the Cooper case. “We’re opening up everything we have to the public, and we need help solving the case,” Gray said. Where did the files come from? Gray, who talked to current and former law enforcement officials for his 2011 book, said he obtained the documents through people he interviewed. He wasn’t able to pore through every page, and he’s hoping that True Ink readers will sign up for access, type up their notes into the magazine’s interactive project and eventually find new information to identify the hijacker. The case has spawned legions of “Cooperites” — self-appointed citizen sleuths and investigators who have called the FBI with tips and various theories about Cooper’s real identity. It all began Nov. 24, 1971, when a man who gave the name “Dan Cooper” bought a ticket on a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore. to Seattle. As the plane took off, Cooper gave an attendant a note saying he possessed a bomb and then demanded $200,000. After the plane landed in Seattle, the passengers got off safely and the cash was brought aboard, but the crew stayed. Cooper ordered the flight


Finally, Afghanistan is trying to penetrate and purge high-level corruption

Fareed Ahmed, a bank clerk accused and convicted of stealing $150,000 from a bank account, stands in the dock next to court officers and lawyers during his trial in the new Anti-Corruption Justice Center. (Pam Constable/The Washington Post) KABUL — It showed a brief scuffle on a garden path outside a housing complex in the capital. Plainclothes detectives surrounded the defendant, who protested and pulled back sharply. The camera zoomed in on his hands and pockets, then shifted to the nearby bushes, where some crumpled currency bills lay. This was the “gotcha” moment in the first of two trials held in the new Anti-Corruption Justice Center this month, the opening salvo in the government’s ambitious, much-touted effort to penetrate and purge an entrenched system of high-level official corruption. The proceedings were held last Saturday in a makeshift courtroom, hastily converted from a cafeteria, deep inside a highsecurity police compound. There were U.N. and international police officials in the audience, taking notes and listening to simultaneous translation on earphones, and a bank of TV cameras filming at the back. The government’s case was meticulously prepared, a bribery sting with marked bills and tapped cellphones. The chief judge, who had granted the defense an extra week to prepare, read the defendant his rights. The young prosecutor, clad in a flimsy velvet robe with gold trim, recited a lengthy charge sheet. Abdulhai Jurat, a former military prosecutor accused of bribery, stands in the dock surrounded by police at his trial in the new Anti-Corruption Justice Center. (Pam Constable/The Washington Post) “We caught him red-handed . . . this was in flagrante delicto,” the prosecutor declared after the incriminating video was switched off. The defendant, Abdulhai Jurat, stood silently through most of the trial, but his attorney presented an energetic and detailed defense. He challenged the government’s right to monitor phone calls, charged that the video had been doctored and suggested that the crumpled bills in the garden had been planted there beforehand. “This case has been a conspiracy against my client,” he declared, stabbing the air dramatically. “I watched the video five times and it never shows him throwing the money out.” Finally, Jurat spoke briefly from the dock, denouncing the proceeding as a “show trial” and adding, “At the end of 35 years of service, I should be appreciated, not tried in front of the media.” Ten minutes later, he was convicted


National Zoo Panda Cub recovers from life-saving surgery

The Panda cub Bei Bei is recuperating from emergency surgery at the Smithsonian National Zoo to alleviate a life-endangering blockage of his intestine. Spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said that Bei Bei is conscious and recovering at the zoo’s panda facility after the Friday morning surgery. The blockage, which is a rare ailment for Giant Pandas, was a dense mass of partially-digested bamboo about the size of a lemon located at the top of his small intestine. Quick-thinking and expert care by zoo staff and volunteer veterinarians likely saved the life of the young cub, who turned one in August. On Thursday, Bei Bei was observed behaving abnormally by sleeping more than usual and showing little interest in eating. According to zoo officials, he also appeared nauseous and vomited twice. After initial treatment for his nausea, Bei Bei was transported to the zoo’s onsite veterinary hospital Friday morning where he underwent ultrasound screening by radiologist Elyshia Hankin of the Friendship Hospital for Animals. An endoscopic exam also confirmed what the veterinarians suspected: the blockage had distended into Bei Bei’s small intestine and was causing him significant distress that left unaddressed was life-threatening. In this Jan. 16, 2016 file photo, giant panda cub Bei Bei roams in his pen as he goes on public exhibit for the first time at the National Zoo, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) Soon after, veterinary surgeon Sebastian Gordon stepped in to removed the mass. The procedure was completed smoothly, Baker-Masson said. As he recovers, Bei Bei will be fed soft foods such as sweet potatoes and pears before transitioning back to his regular diet of bamboo. Bei Bei, who is still nursing from his mother Mei Xiang, had been eating solid foods for some time, Baker-Masson said, noting that while intestinal blockages are a rare occurrence they can affect exotic animals and house pets alike. For the time being, Bei Bei will be monitored by the zoo staff and kept away from public view. The panda house is also temporarily closed but Bao Bao, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang can be seen from their outdoor yards.


Caffeinated gum is the latest energy booster in the athletic nutrition market

In particular, I was clear-minded and could tackle any doubts I had at that point in the run.” Muir is experiencing exactly what she should with the gum, says Kristina LaRue, an Orlando-based registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition. “Caffeine is a well-studied performance enhancer,” she says. “It can make the load feel easier and does help with focus and clarity.” Up until 2004 the World Anti Doping Agency placed limits on caffeine intake, but it is so ubiquitous that it dropped the limit. It is still, however, banned at the NCAA level. Carl Paton, an associate professor at New Zealand’s Eastern Institute of Technology, has conducted three studies on caffeinated gum and its impact on performance in endurance sports. “You get similar effects to gels and tablets, but it’s absorbed faster, and you may not need as big of a dose,” he says. He concurs on Muir’s also experiencing a mental boost. “Caffeine has the benefit of reducing the perception of fatigue, so you can potentially run harder with it in your system,” he says. In a 2014 study on the impact of the gum on the race performances of male and female cyclists, Paton found that the biggest gain came in the final 10 kilometers of a 30K time trial. “The gum improved both endurance and sprinting power at the end of the effort, most likely through an increase in nervous system activation,” he says. A separate study he conducted in 2010 on male cyclists also found that the caffeinated gum delayed fatigue during repeated, high-intensity sprint exercise. In this study, researchers measured testosterone and cortisol concentrations and determined that the gum elevated the former while reducing the latter. Higher levels of testosterone are shown to improve performance, while cortisol is a stress hormone that has been shown to hurt it. It is for all these reasons that Olympic runner Nick Symmonds developed a caffeinated gum targeted to endurance athletes. He likens his “Run Gum” to an energy drink such as Red Bull, without any of the potential digestive distress that sometimes accompanies such performance aids. “You want to improve performance, but you don’t want to fill up,” he says. “Gum is a better delivery vehicle.” Like Muir, 52-year-old runner Matt Ingram, of Plano, Tex., is a recent convert to the gum. “I’ve never been a big supplement person,” he says, “but the gum can make the first


Bei Bei has lifesaving surgery to remove half-eaten chunk of bamboo

Giant panda cub Bei Bei, seen here in August, underwent emergency surgery Friday to remove a chunk of chewed bamboo from his intestines. Veterinarians are hopeful for a full recovery. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Giant panda cub Bei Bei can be thankful for National Zoo veterinarians and zookeepers who quickly responded to a Thanksgiving Day stomachache. The cub had a blockage in his intestines that required emergency surgery Friday to save his life. Doctors removed a lemon-size partly chewed piece of bamboo. “I’m extremely proud and thankful for our team of keepers, veterinarians, animal care staff, volunteer medical experts and all staff who have helped facilitate the urgent response,” said Director Dennis Kelly in a statement. “Bei Bei’s prognosis is very good. The challenge will be for our team to monitor him safely and that requires his cooperation. We will keep everyone up to speed as he recovers.” As of midafternoon Friday, Bei Bei, who turned 1 in August, was awake and recovering inside the zoo’s panda house. Over the weekend, zookeepers will feed him soft foods, such as pears and sweet potatoes. The zoo said he is expected to go back to a normal diet — including bamboo — in the near future. The panda team promised daily updates on the zoo’s social media accounts. For now, the panda house will be closed, zoo officials said.


Local Digest: Nov. 25, 2016

THE DISTRICT Panda cub has surgery The panda cub Bei Bei is recuperating at the Smithsonian National Zoo after emergency surgery to alleviate a life-threatening intestinal blockage. Spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said that Bei Bei is conscious and recovering at the zoo’s panda facility after the Friday-morning surgery. The blockage, which is a rare ailment for giant pandas, was a dense mass of partly digested bamboo about the size of a lemon lodged at the top of his small intestine. Quick-thinking and expert care by zoo staffers and volunteer veterinarians likely saved the life of the young cub, who turned 1 in August. — T. Rees Shapiro VIRGINIA Man slain in Manassas Police in Manassas are investigating the shooting death early Friday of a 44-year-old man, according to authorities. The victim was identified as Jose Tomas Valasquez, of Manassas. Manassas police said the shooting occurred about 1 a.m. in the 9200 block of Byrd Drive. Valasquez was pronounced dead at a hospital. — Peter Hermann


Police following leads in daytime slaying of Southeast teenager

D.C. police detectives are continuing to follow leads into the shooting death of a teenage girl who was killed Friday in broad daylight in Southeast Washington a few days after arriving home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Investigators provided few details and have not released any information about possible suspects in connection with the shooting that ended 16-year-old Breyona McMillian’s life. “It’s an active and ongoing investigation,” Dustin Sternbeck, a public information officer for D.C. police, said Saturday. He added that detectives are trying to determine whether Breyona was a bystander caught in crossfire or the shooter’s intended target. Breyona was standing near the 1200 block of I Street just before noon when someone started shooting from a car that had driven into the courtyard or driveway of the Potomac Gardens public housing complex, police said. The teen was several feet away from a relative’s apartment when she was shot. Family members declined to be interviewed Saturday. Outside their building, mourners and neighbors created a small memorial for Breyona decorated with teddy bears, an empty champagne bottle and several melted tea candles. A neighbor said Breyona had come home days earlier after spending months away at a school in Iowa. Friends expressed shock on social media, sharing photos of the teenager at Potomac Gardens. A young woman who identified herself as Breyona’s cousin told local TV reporters that the teenager was well-loved. A relative set up a fundraising page to help pay for Breyona’s funeral costs. Some of the donors noted they were neighbors who lived across the street from the public housing complex, which has a long history of drug and crime problems. It now sits on the edge of a gentrifying Capitol Hill community that has changed significantly in recent years and become increasingly wealthy, diverse and expensive. Steps away from the wrought-iron fence marking the complex’s border are renovated rowhouses selling for up to $1 million. A Harris Teeter grocery store was built one block away. Also nearby is Barracks Row, a popular dining and nightlife spot.


From addict to runner to prisoner to writer: Charlie Engle’s cinematic saga

parts of “Running Man” have absolutely nothing to do with running. "Running Man," by Charlie Engle (Scribner) The book is divided into a triathlon of sorts: It begins with Engle’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, transitions into his athletic adventures and then finishes with his recent stint in a federal prison, where he served a year and a half for mortgage fraud. That’s a lot of material to cover. Thankfully, Engle sticks with a pacing strategy that feels borrowed from one of his races — he heads out at a quick clip and keeps the action coming, stopping only when necessary to recover. It takes only two pages to go from his birth in 1962 in a small town in North Carolina to his first sip of beer. (As a kid, he picked up a bottle at a party hosted by his bohemian playwright mom and her then-husband.) Much bigger problems arose after Engle’s first bump of cocaine in college. To make money to do coke, he started selling it. He dropped out of school. He stole money from his dad’s ice cream shop in California. He went on benders that lasted days — drinking and snorting until he ran out of cash. Yet, Engle managed to keep it together enough to get married, hold a job as a car salesman and even run with a local club. His first major race was the 1989 Big Sur Marathon. He’d been warned not to run the day before the event, so he partied the whole night instead. To prepare, he dusted off his nose, splashed on some cologne and tossed back a few aspirin. Because this is Engle — a true pro at the puke-and-rally — he arrived at the finish line in just under three hours and 30 minutes anyway. And then? “I put a call in to my drug dealer.” Not long after, Engle checked himself into a rehab clinic. Things, however, only got worse as he relapsed with a series of life-threatening crack binges that are tough to read about. The final one, just after the birth of his first son, Brett, was a six-day spree that left his car riddled with bullet holes. It also convinced Engle, an atheist, that it was time to accept a “higher power.” He prayed, went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — and then another and another and another (all on


She thought she ran the race of her life. Officials call it a terrible case of cheating.

cabinet, labeled “Cheater.” He said he’d gone through all of this before with Huffman. He remembered back to the days following the race and asking Angela Anderson, the race’s deputy director, to investigate. “She came back and said, ‘This is an incredible lady. She works with Team Fisher House; she’s a veteran fundraiser; she was brutally attacked and suffered PTSD. She wouldn’t cheat. She’s a wonderful lady,’ ” Nealis recalled. “I said, ‘I’m glad she’s a wonderful lady, but this doesn’t add up.’ ” Pat Huffman says, ‘Being accused of this changed everything.’ (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) A matter of time Cheating is considered a cardinal sin among runners, a dedicated, tireless lot who respect the effort and sacrifices it takes to simply reach the starting line. In Huffman’s case, Nealis felt he had more than enough evidence. The Marine Corps Marathon contracts with a photography company that stations a photographer every mile or so, with more placed downtown to capture the picturesque backdrops and classic buildings. More than a dozen are spread across the course. He told them to search for Huffman’s bib No. 7243. There are plenty of photographs and eyewitnesses that show Huffman at both the start and the finish, but none could be found for a nearly seven-mile stretch in the middle of the course. She’s like a ghost for the bulk of the race. In the photos that do exist of Huffman, Nealis felt her gait looked suspicious, her feet close together and too close to the ground. She didn’t look like an elite runner who typically posts such a fast time, he said. He requested the data from the timing chip that runners carry throughout the race. There are five mats on the course that register when a runner has passed — the start/finish and four more every three miles or so. Huffman’s chip showed her at the start and hitting the first mat three miles into the race. But the chip didn’t record her crossing the next two mats. She doesn’t show up on the course again until the 12-mile mark. Huffman said race organizers initially told her that her chip didn’t register at the start of the race; Nealis denies this and said he was vague in his explanation while they investigated, keeping his cards close to his chest. Huffman said she can’t be held responsible for cameras that didn’t catch her


‘People see me as a threat’: An art project gives voice to anguished Baltimore teens

across the country and students at one of the most troubled schools in Baltimore. The project, Breaking Frames, which is now hanging at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center in downtown Baltimore, features original works based on the students’ words. Taken together, the pieces provide insight into the lives of young people who have experienced more loss than many of their peers and attend a school at risk of closure. The city’s school board is scheduled to vote Dec. 13 on whether to shutter the school, along with four others. Baltimore is considering whether to close Renaissance Academy for the second time. The school lost three students to violence last school year, including one who was stabbed in a biology classroom. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) Renaissance sits next to a notorious housing project, about a mile from where the Freddie Gray riots erupted in April 2015. Last school year, it lost three students to violence, including 17-year-old Ananias Jolley, who was fatally stabbed in a biology class. It was after two more students died that Yoder and Wardin, both 31, came up with the idea for the art project. Yoder said their hope was that it would not only give students a forum to express themselves, but also provide a way for their stories to resonate with people with little connection to West Baltimore. Artists from as far away as California and Alaska participated. Yoder’s favorite part of the project has been showing the students the finished pieces. “Just knowing someone had to spend hours thinking about them and their stories is very powerful to them,” she said. “The artwork we got was outstanding and I think that shocked the kids a little bit. They were clearly taken very seriously.” More than $3,000 worth of art has sold, and the rest is being auctioned online through the Breaking Frames website until Dec. 11. Yoder said the proceeds will benefit the students, who will decide how best to spend the money. Artist Maceo Anthony Cooper-Jenkins, who grew up in Prince George’s County and works at Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School as an instructional coach, said he didn’t think twice about participating. His work was based on the words of Gregory Rochester, now 17, who wrote how seeing people killed for “dumb stuff,” along with police killings, “make you don’t want to go outside.” “I almost got stabbed just


Suburbs seeking transit look for ways to keep residents from being priced out

rate will leave the pricey community with 90 new affordable and workforce housing units — a net gain of 22 above what was there before and more overall for lower-income families. Moreover, HOC officials said, they’re near top-notch public schools, transportation, shopping and other amenities. “This was a good opportunity,” said Shauna Sorrells, HOC’s director of legislative and public affairs. “We get more units of a higher quality and deeper affordability, all with mixed incomes.” The issue, which some experts call “transit-induced gentrification,” is gaining new attention in Montgomery and other once auto-centric suburbs building light-rail and rapid bus lines to revitalize older areas, attract younger workers, and help an increasing number of lower-income residents reach jobs. Focusing growth around transit stations has become the way many inner suburbs plan to thrive without adding to the sprawl that has left them drowning in traffic. The Purple Line project remains ensnared in a federal lawsuit over its potential environmental impacts, and trains aren’t expected to carry passengers for at least five years. But government officials, nonprofit groups and some developers are already strategizing how to prevent the $2 billion line from inadvertently creating a swath of suburban wealth that could upend long-standing communities and leave the line underutilized. “Being able to have affordable, reliable and safe transit is critical for a lot of communities, particularly low-income communities because they need that option,” said David Bowers, of the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners. “But we need policymakers and leaders to be much more intentional about preserving affordable housing along those corridors.” Ideally, proponents say, expanding transit most benefits people of lower incomes, particularly in the sprawling suburbs, because more can forego the expense of owning a car. That leaves them more money for rent or mortgage payments. But suburban transit-oriented living, in high demand from millennials and empty-nest baby boomers looking to downsize, is in such short supply that it commands premium prices — and can encourage property owners to cash in by selling, redeveloping or raising rents. Gerrit Knaap, director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, is heading a coalition of public officials and private and nonprofit groups that is keeping tabs on the Purple Line project’s social and economic impacts. The center, on behalf of the group, is monitoring rents, employment, median incomes and other trends along the 16-mile alignment — both


Preferred Metro late-night service proposal: 1 a.m. weekend closing; 11:30 p.m. on weekdays

system’s urgent maintenance needs justify the reduced hours and that there is no less discriminatory alternative, allowing for an exception under the act. “Metro believes that the least discriminatory option is Proposal 3, because it is overwhelmingly favored by both minority and low-income populations,” the agency said. Critics however, say it’s inaccurate to use responses to the four proposals to gauge public support. “If you give me four bad choices and I’m forced to pick one of the four, the one I pick doesn’t make it a good choice,” said John A. Boardman, executive secretary-treasurer for Unite Here Local 25, which represents 7,000 restaurant, hospitality and cleaning workers in the region. “To provide a bad choice is the same as providing no viable choice at all.” The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington worries that reduced service hours will stifle growth in the industry, which propelled the District’s restaurant scene to the ranks of the prestigious Michelin Guide for the first time this year. ‘We fear that reducing Metro’s hours of operation will slow the strong momentum among our local business at a time when we have the opportunity to thrive,” said Kathy Hollinger, the organization’s president and chief executive. Opponents say the shortened hours will be an unmanageable burden on workers. “We have people right now with a 12 o’clock cutoff that have to punch out and sprint, literally, to the Metro station to make the last train,” Boardman said. “If you take a half-hour off that, we’re done, we can’t make it.” Metro says expanding its maintenance windows from 33 to 41 hours per week will permit the agency to “launch an aggressive, industry-grade maintenance program” that will allow a shift from emergency to preventive maintenance. SafeTrack, the long-term maintenance program aimed at restoring the system to a state of good repair, was a step in that direction — imposing a moratorium on early openings and late closures for special events, and shuttering the system at midnight every day of the week. Other proposals that had been floated by the agency included closing the system at midnight Monday through Saturday, but keeping early openings each day of the week; closing 30 minutes earlier on weekdays to keep the system open until 11:30 p.m. on Sundays; and keeping the system open until 3 a.m. on weekends, but delaying Sunday opening until noon. The new hours, if approved, would go into


Bei Bei is recovering from surgery and taking his medicine

THE DISTRICT Bei Bei is off the bamboo Bei Bei, a giant panda cub at the National Zoo, is off the bamboo for while as he recovers from emergency surgery Friday for an intestinal blockage caused by partially digested bamboo. The panda appeared to almost smile Tuesday morning after gobbling down medicine cleverly hidden in a sweet potato. The zoo’s panda house is closed to help Bei Bei recover. Zookeepers are keeping Bei Bei off bamboo for now. — Dana Hedgpeth MARYLAND Charges in fatal shooting Authorities have charged a 34-year-old man in the shooting of a Prince George’s County man whom police say he knew and had argued with before the Nov. 11 incident. Muhammad Ali of Bladensburg was charged with first- and second-degree murder in the death of Tyrone Shirriel Jr., 46, of Oxon Hill. Police in Prince George’s County police said they found Shirriel at about 6 p.m. inside a home in the 13600 block of Tower Road after a report of a shooting. The initial investigation, police said, found that the two knew each other and had a “verbal and physical altercation” before the shooting. Ali is being held in jail on a no-bond status, police said. — Dana Hedgpeth Police say man was homicide victim An unidentified male found in a shallow grave Nov. 12 in Montgomery County was the victim of a homicide, police said. Hikers had found a body in a grave in the woods along the 11500 block of Game Preserve Road, Montgomery County Police said in a statement Monday. The cause of death remains under investigation, the statement said, but authorities said it is being investigated as a homicide. Police described the victim as a Hispanic male about 5 feet 6 inches tall in his late teens to early 20s, and asked for the public’s help in identifying him. — Justin Wm. Moyer Police accuse man in homicide A D.C. man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a September homicide in Prince George’s County, police said. On Sept. 8 at about 11 a.m., officers responding to the 2500 block of Southern Avenue in Temple Hills found George Barnes, 52, of Temple Hills, suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. On Tuesday, John Hazelwood, 26, of Southeast, was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, assault and weapons charges, according to the statement, and is being held without bond. An investigation


MetroCooking DC returns to the District this weekend

Carla Hall is one of many celebrity chefs participating in MetroCooking DC, the annual culinary show taking place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center this weekend. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) THURSDAY BEER DINNER: FRIDAY NORWEGIAN HOLIDAY BAZAAR: WINE TASTING: SATURDAY METROCOOKING DC: WINE DINNER: SUNDAY NOSH, SIP AND SCHMOOZE: TAMALFEST: RESERVE NOW DEC. 11 COOKING CLASS: — Kara Elder Send event listings to food@washpost.com with CALENDAR in the subject line.


James Taylor’s strength was melancholy. Now he must cope with contentment.

on the yellow paper. Range Cattle Saddle Pastures to change “It’s got some really strong internal rhymes. Let’s see.” Snow Turnpike Boston Ten thousand more to go “So it had a very strict form. And it was not easy to make it. It was like a mathematical puzzle, or a Sudoku. And I think that to start a song being a lullaby to a little boy and then to take that, in the second verse, and sort of recapitulate it to myself — at my current moment of realizing that my career might be a go, that I actually could write songs, that I was a functioning musician, that I had problems but there was a way forward . . . ” A small waterfall goes splish beyond the bungalow’s sliding glass door. The white California light pierces the hedgerow, stripes his gray-blue polo shirt, glints on the gold of his wire-frame glasses. He is admiring something he made 46 years ago as if he has just discovered it. “I just think the song’s got a lot to it.” From left, Bobby McFerrin, Paul Simon, Dianne Reeves and James Taylor perform at the Nearness of You concert in New York in January 2015. (Scott Roth/Invision/AP) ‘Bittersweet and low’ Anyone younger than 50 is forgiven for not knowing this: James Taylor was a babe. A 6-foot-3 stalk of corn and sensitivity. Flowing chestnut locks. A demure pornstache. A way of picking the strings of a guitar as if he was fingering the valves of your heart. Put some sky-blue denim on him, lean him against a wooden post, tell him to look straight into the camera and good night, you moonlight ladies. Taylor’s second album — “Sweet Baby James,” the one with the words “fire” and “rain” on the cover — sold 1.6 million copies in its first year. By March 1971, he was on the cover of Time, illustrated as a Christ-like, post-Woodstock troubadour under the headline “The New Rock: Bittersweet and Low.” “I find comfort in fatalism and inevitability . . . in things like earthquakes and eclipses of the moon because I have no hand in them,” Taylor, then 22, told Time. “They relieve me of responsibility.” James Taylor and members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra rehearse at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall in Dallas on Nov. 8, 1999. (Donna McWilliam/AP) His medium is the elements — wind,


Montgomery County Animal Watch

Montgomery county These cases were received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. Germantown Possible neglect or simple cat clowder?: Montgomery Village Cruelty/neglect: Guide Dog Foundation seeks volunteers The Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind needs volunteers for the puppy training program to help raise and train a 12- to 18-month-old puppy to become a guide dog for the blind or a service dog for a veteran. 866-282-8046 or guidedog.org. Paw volunteers needed The Partnership for Animal Welfare is a nonprofit group of volunteers chartered to facilitate the rescue and adoption of homeless domestic animals, mainly dogs and cats, and place them in loving and stable homes. PAW is currently in need of volunteers to foster dogs and cats, provide transportation to vet appointments and handle animals at adoption shows. For more information, go to paw-rescue.org or leave a message at 301-572-4729. Reduced FEES FOR CATS Cats and kittens will be available for adoption at the next open house of Friends of Montgomery County Animals at the following location. Call 301-977-4833 or visit fmca.org or facebook.com/fmcainfo.PetSmart at Milestone Center, 20924 Frederick Rd., Germantown. Hours: 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday. Cats at no-kill shelter Cats and kittens will be available for adoption through the Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County’s no-kill shelter at the following location. For information, call 301-740-2511 or visit awlmc.org.Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County no-kill shelter, 12 Park Ave., Gaithersburg. Hours: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Humane Society adoptions The Montgomery County Humane Society’s private rescue shelter has dogs, puppies, cats and kittens available for adoption. Call 240-252-2555 or visit mchumane.org.MCHS Adoptions and Education Center, 601 S. Stonestreet Ave., Rockville. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except holidays. — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


She says she was harassed by superiors. Now she protests outside the TSA for hours.

blood drawn as part of her Army enlistment. She’d signed up weeks earlier, attracted by the notion of precision and discipline. She was 17 years old. An announcement came over the intercom. Something bad was happening in New York. On the ride home with her recruiter to Belton, Tex., about an hour north of Austin, she listened in disbelief to news of planes piercing skyscrapers. It only confirmed for her that she was on the right path. She came from a military family. Her paternal grandfather was a Korean War infantryman. Her father, who was born in Puerto Rico, was a career Army veteran who moved to Texas, where he met Bermudez’s Mexican American mother. Boys had always noticed Alyssa Bermudez. She’s slender and athletic, with delicate features and dark brown eyes. On her high school track squad, she says she heard the catcalls when she walked past the boys’ teams. She tried to ignore them. It got worse in the Army, she says. During basic training, a fellow soldier kept remarking about how much he liked how she held her chest in the air when she marched, and how her hips swayed. She felt she had little choice but to put up with it. She wanted to be a soldier. She spent four years in the Army, then took an honorable discharge to have more time at home with her young son while her husband, also a soldier, was doing long deployments in the Middle East. Being out of uniform didn’t feel right. As her marriage was crumbling, she reenlisted in late 2007, and a year later, she was being sent to Iraq, where she led a team that made complex maps to be used by field commanders, a job that earned her a Bronze Star for excellence. Iraq left scars. She talks about a night, an awful night in Iraq, in a quavering voice. The walls were tall, she says, spooling fragments of memories through tears. She breaks down entirely recounting that moment. She can’t continue. Documents related to her Equal Employment Opportunity complaint against TSA tell the rest: She says she was sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. When she returned to the States after a year-long deployment, the trauma was still there, but something unexpected nagged at her. Iraq had been horrible. Yet, for some indefinable reason, she wanted to go back — the world made sense


Trump is surrounding himself with generals. That’s dangerous.

particularly acute now, after 15 years of war, when the military has achieved such policy and budget primacy, and military tools are often looked to as options of first, rather than last, resort. It is not obvious that retired military officers are the right people to better use nonmilitary tools of statecraft. And there is a societal dimension of civil-military relations that may suffer by the appointment of retired military leaders to high office. The share of veterans in society is in decline, a result of a smaller military, the lack of conscription and a growing population. Concerns abound about the civil-military divide, and how the military should relate to society when a shrinking percentage of Americans serve in uniform or have a personal connection to those who do. Senior military leaders have spent their entire adult lives inside the bubble of the force — living in America’s most exclusive gated communities, in an insular society that has its own legal code, language and customs. Our military is both a part of America and apart from America. Generals and admirals emerging from this environment may be stellar leaders and military professionals, but they make unlikely ambassadors to bridge the civil-military divide. This is true even for generals such as Mattis and Petraeus, great students of civil-military relations who have each written on the subject. Mattis, in his new book with Kori Schake, “Warriors and Citizens,” highlights the difference between civilian and veteran approaches to policymaking, writing that “veterans are believed to be more hesitant to use military force than civilians.” However, Mattis and Schake add that “military leaders often try to leach the politics out of political decision making in order to better analyze problems and develop strategy; this can lead to ‘perfect’ solutions impractical for consideration by elected officials whose portfolios are broader than the military mandate alone.” This is the essence of the challenge facing senior military leaders promoted to the political level: how to appropriately consider nonmilitary factors, including electoral politics and the will of the people, when making decisions for the country. Finally, Trump’s embrace of the generals may undermine the apolitical, professional ethos at the heart of our all-volunteer force. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey implored his fellow generals and admirals to “not become part of the public political landscape” during the 2016 election. Although he was speaking of political


What does the insect industry want? A cricket in every pot.

of scientific literature that people who are allergic to shellfish may also be allergic to insects,” McSeveney says. Overall, however, the process of producing insect foodstuffs seems to be fairly straightforward for the industry. That doesn’t mean that getting crickets on home shelves will be easy. Its main mission, the coalition says, is to educate potential consumers, do research and establish best practices for production, packaging and the palate. Because food suppliers and consumers are less familiar with crickets than with beef, the North American Edible Insect Coalition will likely have to push for more-explicit farming and production guidelines to protect and reassure the public — essentially putting the industry in the odd position of seeking more oversight. Consumers will want to be confident that regulators know what to look for when inspecting insect production lines, and they’ll need to be taught how to properly prepare the insects they buy. By educating food companies and the FDA, the group says, it can put voluntary standards and certifications in place that can help make bugs supermarket staples. For decades, crickets and other insects have been raised on farms as bait for anglers and feed for pet reptiles. It’s only in recent years that demand has surged for insects bred and farmed to human food standards in the United States. There may be few hurdles preventing Americans from chowing down on cricket tacos and mealworm-flour-filled cookies, but wrestling with the feds may be easier than charming U.S. consumers. And it doesn’t matter that we’re behind the rest of the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization Among the world’s most commonly eaten bugs, the FAO says, are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps and ants. Add to that grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. “I initially got interested in eating bugs when I went to Thailand in 2006,” says Kevin Bachhuber, founder of Big Cricket Farms, which originated in Youngstown, Ohio, but is looking for a new home after water supply problems. The FAO reported more than 20,000 insect farming enterprises in Thailand as of 2013, when the organization published its most recent thorough report on the benefits of the practice. “I was like, ‘This is frickin’ delicious,’ ” Bachhuber recalls. Many enthusiasts describe crickets, for example, as tasting like roasted seeds or nuts, slightly earthy with a delectable umami flavor. “But when I came home and was like, ‘Hey, everyone, we should eat bugs,’ they were


farms as well as the resulting environmental footprint. In the FAO’s 2013 report on insects as food, the organization trumpeted them as an answer to the world’s growing food insecurity woes. When the report was released, a small but passionate group of bug-loving entrepreneurs such as Bachhuber seized the opportunity to market such products as protein bars and Chirps (chips) full of cricket flour. While some of these snacks and flours have made it to shelves of health-conscious national chains such as Whole Foods Market, they’ve all been the passion projects of small start-ups. You won’t see the likes of Nestle or Kraft lining up to put out buggy products just yet. Some food companies still worry that the ickiness issue will keep consumers from paying for cricket flour and mealworm butter. Most insect farms in North America focus on crickets, Allen speculates, because the “worm” in mealworm, no more difficult to farm and no less delicious, is a little harder to overcome. Yet, farmers also say that discussions with large companies are turning from worries over taboos to frets over logistics. “The conversation has matured and changed,” says Jarrod Goldin, a chiropractor and co-founder of Entomo Farms, which transitioned to farming crickets for human consumption in 2014, after a decade of producing bugs for pet feed and other uses. “At first it was always about the ick factor, and then we started being able to talk about environmental benefits, and then it went to health benefits, and now we’re hearing people say, ‘Wow, it looks like a real business opportunity.’ ” To meet FDA standards, Entomo Farms, based in Norwood, Ontario, started hiring “new technologists” to improve production and began collecting more empirical data on quality standards, Goldin says. Bachhuber, who now focuses on bringing cricket farms up to human food standards, makes the conversion process sound pretty intuitive. Farmers focus on transparency in their production, implementing policies on cleanliness and microbial testing. They retool their facilities to produce frozen insects, which are desirable for grounding into cricket flour and similar products, instead of shipping out the hearty, live bugs to pet stores. The hardest part is figuring out aspects such as flavor profile, ensuring a consistent product in terms of taste. A lizard might not notice that one batch of crickets tastes different from another — or if it does, it probably won’t say so. But humans are


Royal Concertgebouw makes a mark with the overfamiliar in D.C.

Semyon Bychkov knew exactly what he wanted out of the great Concertgebouw orchestra in yet another Mahler Fifth. (Musacchio Ianniello) When the world’s great orchestras go on tour, they want to showcase themselves with the world’s great masterworks. In April, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mariss Jansons brought Mahler’s Fifth Symphony to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. On Tuesday night, thanks again to Washington Performing Arts, it was the turn of the Royal Concertgebouw, once voted the greatest orchestra in the world, which Jansons used to lead until he opted to throw in his lot entirely with the Bavarians; it was left to guest conductor Semyon Bychkov to offer up his account. It’s nice for home audiences to have a standard of comparison: Christoph Eschenbach led the National Symphony Orchestra in the Mahler Fifth in 2015, and Marin Alsop led it with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this spring. It must be getting into our ears by now. And this is the problem that every great orchestra faces: If fewer and fewer soloists, fewer and fewer pieces are accepted as guaranteed ticket sellers, it becomes harder and harder to make your mark. Admittedly, the Concertgebouw has something of a trademark on Mahler, since Willem Mengelberg, its conductor for 50 years and a friend of the composer’s, regularly rolled out his newest pieces on the Concertgebouw stage. The richness and depth of this particular orchestra still fits well with this rich, melodious, nostalgic music, which offers so much meat for emotional interpretation, coupled with the satisfaction of hearing an orchestra in full cry. A Mahler symphony is generally an event, and the Concertgebouw made it one Tuesday night. It just had to work a little harder to get there. Bychkov had a very clear idea about what he wanted to do with the piece — but not, thankfully, one that smacked of a “concept,” despite the unusual and arresting opening. The trumpet call that usually blares out proudly at the start of the piece was here a questioning probe into the void, quiet and hesitant (quite a feat for a trumpet player), gradually crescendoing but needing to be joined by the full strength of the orchestra before coming into its own. And the whole first movement that followed was taken at a pace so slow it was downright lugubrious, sometimes verging on the bathetic. Yet it never dragged; nor did it,


Seven of the 12 Fed districts described fall growth as modest to moderate

Levi Strauss & Co., that sartorial emblem of America’s mythologized West with its gun-toting cowboys, would like you to keep your firearms out of its stores. Even in states where it’s legal, the company’s leader said Wednesday. Levi chief executive Chip Bergh expressed concerns over maintaining a safe environment at its stores in a note published on the LinkedIn networking site. ● Nintendo’s newest Pokémon games set company records for sales in the Americas, the company said Wednesday. In less than two weeks, “Pokémon Sun” and “Pokémon Moon” sold a combined total of 3.7 million units for the Nintendo 3DS game systems, according to a company statement. That makes the titles the company’s fastest-selling yet and represents an 85 percent increase over the previous record, set in 2013, also by Pokémon titles. ● Fiat Chrysler said its new gas-electric hybrid minivan will get the equivalent of 84 miles per gallon in electric mode and 32 mpg in city-highway mileage when in hybrid mode. The redesigned Chrysler Pacifica minivan went on sale this year, and the hybrid version is due out this month. The company said the numbers have been confirmed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The minivan can go 33 miles on battery power. After that, it switches to hybrid mode. It costs $41,995 before a $7,500 federal income tax credit. ● GoPro, struggling to get traction with its action-cameras and new drone, said it will cut about 15 percent of its workforce and close its entertainment division. GoPro, which isn’t profitable, will cut more than 200 full-time positions, a company statement said Wednesday. GoPro also said its president, Tony Bates, will step down by the end of the year. ● U.S. companies added 216,000 jobs in November, the most since June. Payroll provider ADP said that nearly all the gains occurred in service sectors such as retail, hotels and restaurants, as well as higher-paying professional services. Construction firms added 2,000 jobs, while manufacturing shed 10,000. The ADP data cover only private businesses and often diverge from official figures. Economists forecast that the government’s jobs report, to be released Friday, will show a gain of 174,000 jobs, according to data provider FactSet. — From news services Coming Today ● 10 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management releases its manufacturing index for November. ● 10 a.m.: Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates. ● 10 a.m.: Commerce Department releases construction spending for October.


Castro was a false liberator

two Soviet-backed neighbors, southern Yemen and Somalia. However, Somalia’s dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, balked. He saw the upheaval in Addis Ababa differently: as an opportunity to seize Ethiopian territory long inhabited by ethnic Somalis. Somalia invaded this arid region, known as the Ogaden, in July 1977. Castro responded by sending 17,000 soldiers (armed and transported by Moscow) to save Mengistu and punish what was — as Castro correctly pointed out — a clear violation of international law by Siad Barre. Never mind that, to Somalis, Ethiopia’s borders were those of Haile Selassie’s defunct empire, which had split their ancestral land and enjoyed international recognition only due to Western imperial machinations. At the time, President Jimmy Carter was pursuing better relations with Havana and even considering an end to the U.S. embargo. Cuban military intervention in Africa, predictably, made it impossible for Carter to pursue the opening. Castro didn’t mind that, either. By March 1978, the Cubans had ousted the Somalis — and then stayed to deter Somalia (now armed by Washington) from trying again. With the Cuban forces watching his back, Mengistu wrapped up his bloody campaign of domestic repression, known as “the Red Terror,” and sent his own Soviet-equipped, Cuban-trained troops to crush a rebellion in Eritrea. The last Cuban troops did not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture. Abandoned by Havana (and Moscow), and facing a rebellion, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe in 1991; dictator Robert Mugabe, another close friend of Cuba, granted him asylum. Today, of course, the Horn of Africa remains tumultuous. Somalia is a failed state, which not even 25,000 U.S. troops could stabilize in the early 1990s. In Ethiopia, Mengistu’s successors cooperate with the United States against terrorism, and the United States, in return, mostly tolerates their human rights abuses. Looking back, it’s hard to see what lasting benefit, if any, Castro’s intervention achieved, though the sacrifice of Cuban blood and treasure 8,000 miles from home was certainly permanent. What’s impressive, rather, is the senselessness of it all. Cuba brought no more order out of chaos in the Horn than the other, larger foreign powers — from the British Empire to Mussolini’s Italy to Barack Obama’s America — that have intervened over the centuries. Perhaps Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, the soldier who actually led Cuba’s troops in


Ethiopia arrests top Oromo opposition politician after Europe Parliament speech

It has been held up as an economic model for Africa after a decade of high growth, though that has faltered this year because of a severe drought and the unrest. In a briefing of foreign diplomats on Nov. 17, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said that the country has largely returned to calm since the emergency was declared and that the economy had been unaffected. He also said that the government understood the roots of the unrest and promised a more representative parliament — the last election, in 2015, returned a legislative body with no opposition presence. But Gudina was arrested on the same day that Defense Minister Siraj Fegessa, the head of the Command Post, held a meeting with opposition parties promising that the emergency law did not pose a threat to them. “It rather guaranteed the existence of opposition parties,” he said, according to the state-controlled Fanabc news site. Local and international rights organizations have condemned the arrests accompanying the state of emergency, including of journalists and politicians. “The Ethiopian government says it is open for dialogue with protesters, yet their actions demonstrate the complete opposite,” said Felix Horne, senior researcher for Ethiopia at Human Rights Watch. “Merera’s arrest is illustrative of the ongoing crackdown against those that express opinions independent of the government, and his arrest will likely increase anger and frustration within the Oromo community.” The Committee to Protect Journalists describes Ethiopia as the third worst jailer of journalists in Africa after Eritrea and Egypt. In the past month, two members of the Zone 9 blogging collective were rearrested along with a newspaper editor. The Zone 9 bloggers had originally been held for a year and a half and were released in July 2015, coinciding with the visit of President Obama. Gudina spoke frequently with international media about the plight of the Oromo. Though hundreds of his party colleagues and most of his key deputies had been arrested, he expressed doubt that the government would go so far as to detain him, as well. “I think for them, most of the leaders of the regime, they know me, and it is not in their interests to detain me. It could provoke wider Oromo action,” he told The Post a year ago. “The strategy of the regime, they say, is to suspend the leadership in the air — they take the middle level and the grass roots.”


Britain has no idea what to do next, and that’s dangerous

to be “have cake and eat it.”) The result is a classic revolutionary dynamic. In the general chaos, the loudest, clearest and most convincing voices are the most radical: Leave the E.U., leave all of its institutions and just take the hit. Start paying high tariffs, lose the right to sell services in Europe, drop out of those research teams, eliminate all relationships with allies. A small number of anti-European Conservatives — they’ve been preparing this moment for years — are arguing for this form of “hard Brexit.” So is the UK Independence Party and its most powerful media backer, the Daily Mail . May, like a hapless Kerensky, spends much of her time trying to counter or pander to the minority radicals. At her party conference in October, she threw a bone to the xenophobes by mocking “citizens of the world”; the rest of the time, she gives the impression, in the words of Financial Times columnist David Allen Green, that she is in “an intense negotiation” — not with the E.U., but with her own politicians and press. Already, the ideas being mooted in the British political debate are much more extreme than anything heard in the referendum campaign, and far from what many people thought they were voting for. But the really dangerous bit comes next. If May makes any compromises at all, the radicals will blame her, not their own folly, for the broken promises. If there’s no extra money for the NHS, if the populist press doesn’t feel “control” has been taken back, if too many immigrants remain — then the fanatics will find scapegoats: anyone deemed insufficiently radical, or inadequately nationalist, or lacking in nerve. Unless the moderate majority organizes itself into an organized, aggressive and verbal lobby, the angry minority will win this argument. Because this is 2016 and not 1917, I don’t expect an actual civil war to follow. But the damage in lost trade, lost political clout and lost time may be worse than it could have been, and the bitter politics will keep Britain divided and inward-looking for many years. Read more from Anne Applebaum’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook. Read more on this topic: Sebastian Mallaby: Britain’s post-Brexit warning George F. Will: Britain’s welcome revival of nationhood Charles Krauthammer: Sovereign Kingdom or little England? Michael McFaul: Brexit is a win for Putin


A former communist neighborhood showpiece offers a history lesson in Krakow, Poland

the bowl and along the edges. “People always thought it was made from the strongest material, but once it came down [during the collapse of communism in 1989] the insides were mostly empty . . . so that tells you something.” I reflect on this, then raise my glass and say to Izabela and to Poland generally in these uncertain times, “na zdrowie” — to your health. Biggar is a writer based in Northern California and the District. More from Travel: Around the world in 20 days: How to visit seven countries in one 21,623-mile adventure In this Alaskan village, get nose-to-nose with polar bears Still finding kicks on Route 66 If you go Where to stay Hotel Santorini 35b Bulwarowa St. 011-48-12-680-51-95 santorinikrakow.pl/?lang=en Hotel options in Nowa Huta are more limited than in and around Old Town Krakow (which is just 20-to-25 minutes away on the tram). One exception is Hotel Santorini, where modern rooms can be found starting at about $60. Hotel Grand Fenix 12 Osiedle Zlotej Jesieni St. hotelfelix.pl/kontakt 011-48-12-361-96-03 Basic, modern facilities and free WiFi, with rooms starting at $30. Where to eat Stylowa Restaurant C3 Osiedle Centrum 011-48-12-644-26-19 stylowa-nowahuta.pl/index_eng.html Offers affordable, traditional Polish food in an Old World setting. Entrees start at about $5. Optional outdoor seating. Klub Kombinator 25 Osiedle Szkolne 011-48-518-645-582 facebook.com/KlubKombinator Kombinator is popular with students and offers a casual atmosphere and a good range of Polish beer and of course, vodka. For an authentic Polish vodka, try Zubrowka (look for a bison on the label). Drinks are available for less than $10. What to do The Nowa Huta walking tour crazyguides.com The company offers tours of off-the-beaten-path sites in Krakow. The Nowa Huta walking tours cost about $25 and the friendly guides provide a good way to converse with young local residents. Tours can be arranged for individuals or groups, and on foot or in a vintage Communist-era automobile. Museum of Poland Under the Communist Regime Os. Centrum E1 011-48-12-446-78-21 bit.ly/MuseumofPoland Located in a former socialist movie theater, the museum focuses on daily life during communism and has an exhibit on local nuclear shelters in its basement. In addition to Nowa Huta, interesting spots nearby Krakow include Kazimierz — the gentrifying old Jewish quarter where Oskar Schindler had his famous factory — medieval Old Town (also a World Heritage site) and the deep salt mines in Wieliczka. Information krakow.pl/english — H.B.


Japan and South Korea impose new sanctions on North Korea

Korean soldiers look toward their leader Kim Jong Un from a military parade vehicle as they carry packs marked with the nuclear symbol during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File) (Wong Maye-E/AP) “These sanctions are largely symbolic,” said Kim Kwang-jin, who worked as a North Korean bank representative in Singapore until he defected in 2003. “But they are still important because they add more heat to the increasing boiling sanctions on North Korea. Sometimes even symbolic actions are needed.” Simultaneously, Tokyo expanded its blacklist of people affiliated with the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, a pro-North Korean group also known as Chongryon or Chosen Soren. A total of 58 people will now be banned from reentering Japan after visiting North Korea. The Japanese government also blacklisted more North Koreans and banned Japanese ships that have stopped at North Korean ports from entering Japan, although it is not clear that any such ships have been to North Korean in recent years. “This year, North Korea went ahead with two nuclear tests and launched more than 20 ballistic missiles,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told his cabinet Friday, introducing the sanctions. “This presents a new level of threat, and such outrageous acts are absolutely unacceptable.” Like the South Korean measures, Japan’s sanctions were unlikely to have much tangible impact, but they, too, served a psychological purpose, said Toshimitsu Shigemura of Waseda University. "These sanctions are to show North Korea as a threat that there are more things Japan could do as sanctions and Japan would impose more if necessary," he said. “And they are to put pressure on China, as it has been reluctant to cooperate.” In the latest multilateral effort to punish North Korea for its defiance of bans on nuclear and missile testing, the U.N. Security Council imposed a cap Wednesday on North Korea’s exports of coal, a major source of hard currency for the regime in Pyongyang. This tightens the sanctions imposed in March after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. Those measures included an exemption for coal exports that were for “livelihood” purposes, but American and South Korean officials privately complained that Beijing was allowing coal to flow almost unfettered out of North Korea. Recent Chinese customs data show that coal exports from North Korea have returned to normal levels after a brief dip following


Aung San Suu Kyi should demonstrate moral leadership

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in Singapore on Dec. 1. (Roslan Rahman/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) In his Nov. 27 letter, “Burma’s leader must first consolidate power,” Lex Rieffel should have mentioned that Burma’s 2008 constitution is rigged against Aung San Suu Kyi, the military continues to breathe down her neck and she has no control of major departments/ministries pertaining to the security services. However, as the Nov. 22 editorial “In Burma, a flashpoint ignites” pointed out, as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient — with all this implies in terms of moral authority and leadership — and by the massive mandate given to her by the people of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi does need to demonstrate this moral leadership by “educating” her people on the false aspects of this thorny problem. Because, while there is no doubt that there are some illegal migrants from Bangladesh in the Rohingya population, it is historically incorrect to say that people whose ancestors have been in Burma since at least the 15th century are all Bengalis. It is the hope of those of us who worked so hard and assiduously for the restoration of democracy in Burma that our faith in Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership will be vindicated in the near future. Bilal M. Raschid, Bethesda The writer is past president of the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma and the Burmese Muslim Association.


Hints From Heloise: Monarch madness!

Dear Readers: “My neighborhood has become afflicted with ‘monarch madness’! We are trying, one plant at a time, to make our ’hood into a monarch butterfly oasis. There are several houses on each block that have milkweed plants, which provide food for the monarch caterpillars and the hatched butterflies. “Our local hardware and garden center found out about the monarch project and offered a very nice discount on the plants.” Karen in Oxnard, Calif. For those who might not know, the milkweed plant is a hardy plant that is easy to grow and maintain. The blooms are colorful and provide food for many species of butterflies, as well as hummingbirds and bees. Dear Readers: ● Paper clips ● Bread-bag ties ● Thin, decorative ribbon ● Natural jute or twine ● Large safety pins. Dear Heloise: A while back, David W. wrote in about putting money in library books. While that would be a nice treat to find, I would be concerned that someone had “accidentally” left it there and then would be out the money, especially if it is a large bill. So, I would like to suggest that he put a note with the money, stating something to the fact that this is a gift. Enjoy! A Reader, via email Reader: Dear Readers: 1. The sooner, the better. The longer it is left on fabric, the more difficult it will be to remove. 2. Lift the stain slowly. Some stains will require time, patience and perseverance. 3. Repeat as often as necessary. Some stains require more than one attempt. Heloise’s column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com. 2016, King Features Syndicate


The MAD effect: One chef’s Danish pilgrimage turns her burnout into energy

investors, writers, waiters, farmers and foragers from 43 countries who made the pilgrimage to Denmark and vowed not to sit idly by. I had first learned that Regan was no idler nearly a year earlier, during a progression of nine courses at her restaurant in Chicago that added up to the second-greatest meal of my life. At Restaurant Elizabeth, the 24 seats are booked in advance like theater tickets. In lieu of the shock and awe we had experienced at a famous Michelin three-star the night before, Restaurant Elizabeth simply fed and nourished us: mushroom soup, roasted carrots, smoked rabbit. Regan, named one of Food and Wine’s Best New Chefs this year, touched every dish and ran her brigade with quiet authority. Attendees listen at Iliana Regan’s “Wolf Pack” session. (Rasmus Malmstrøm) MAD5’s theme was “Tomorrow’s kitchen: What do we hope our kitchens will be like in the future? And what can we do today to make those dreams a reality?” After Regan’s talk (“The Wolf Pack: Alpha Female & Leadership”), the conversation continued in such sessions as “Building Kitchens Conscious of Race and Identity” and “Why Fun Matters: Ambition, Creativity, Sex and the Work/Life Balance.” From under MAD’s signature red circus tent, Redzepi implored attendees not just to soak up and tweet the inspired vibe, but to shepherd its momentum back home and into action. For two days, that tent was a church and the circus was a revival meeting. Lucky Peach magazine co-founder Chris Ying urged the congregation to “treat your goals as necessities. . . . Let’s talk today about closing the distance between what we do for a living and the way we want to live.” Regan and other women are torchbearers for this notion of a compassionate kitchen. “More than being a good chef, it’s about being a good person. It’s easier to yell at your team, but there are so many other ways to reach them and teach them,” said Aisha Ibrahim, executive chef of the historic Harbor House Inn on the Mendocino Coast in California. Progress aside, women say they’re tired of being the most outspoken advocates and want men — who dominate Michelin stars and top restaurants — to shift, too, because empathy isn’t gender-specific. Chef Alex Atala is taking the challenge to heart. “There’s a responsibility of being in the spotlight,” said Atala, who runs D.O.M. in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which


Skywatch: Stars and planets brighten dark December days

then at the start of dusk, about 25 degrees above the western horizon. It sets about 8:45 p.m. While Venus is cavorting in the western sky, find Mars — a zero-magnitude object (bright) — to the south at dusk. It sets now about 9:45 p.m. Look outside tonight (Dec. 4) at Mars to find the waxing crescent moon perform a cosmic minuet with the Red Planet. After midnight, the large Jupiter now rises about 2:35 a.m. in the east and loiters in the eastern heavens until the rising morning sun washes this giant planet out of view. You’ll notice that Jupiter, which is -1.8 magnitude and quite bright, gets even brighter by mid-December as it rises in the east starting at 2 a.m. By the new year, this king of the planets rises at 1 a.m. The clear late fall and winter skies — and overall darkness — make spying constellations easier. The large and famed Orion constellation rises about 6:15 p.m., but clears the eastern horizon about 8 p.m. If you’re facing south, the so-called twins of the constellation Gemini — Castor and Pollux — will be to the left of Orion. Then fetch Sirius — the dog star — a binary star system that is the brightest star in our heavens. It rises just before 9 p.m. in the southeast, visually barking in the constellation Canis Major. Yes, days get darker until the winter solstice, which occurs Dec. 21 at 5:44 a.m., according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Sunday, for example, Washington receives only 9 hours and 35 minutes of sunlight. We will see even less light for the rest of the month. From Dec. 15-19, the metro area only gets 9 hours and 27 minutes of daylight. The least amount of daylight occurs at the solstice, as we see a slim 9 hours, 26 minutes Dec. 20-21. Then, gradually, we see more light, with 10 hours on Jan. 25 — about 53 days away. While the Geminid meteors are expected to peak Dec. 13-14, December’s full moon that night will overwhelm the shooting stars, rendering all but the brightest meteors invisible. In the nights before the peak, scan the heavens for stray Geminids. Down-to-Earth Events: ● Tomorrow (Dec. 5) — ● Tomorrow (Dec. 5) — ● Dec. 10 — ● Dec. 20 — ● Dec. 27-29 — ● All month — Friedlander can be reached at postskywatch@yahoo.com.


Beer of the Week: A festive holiday ale with a touch of spice

Port City Tidings, a Belgian-style ale released during the holiday season. (Jake Wagner/Courtesy of Port City Brewing) As the days grow colder and darker, beer drinkers often turn to stronger, darker ales. For me, a goblet full of a good Belgian-style Christmas ale, rich with sweet, warming spices, is as much a part of the season as decorating the tree while listening to soulful holiday tunes. One local beer that’s always in my fridge this time of year is Tidings, from Alexandria’s Port City Brewing. It’s a hazy, honey-colored ale that hits you with coriander and ginger right upfront, along with fruity esters. The body is full and sweet — this is a truly regional beer, brewed with Maryland wildflower honey and Virginia wheat — that pops with pepper, cardamom and ginger flavors, with a touch of clove. Some beers I’ve had this year have been overloaded with every Christmas cookie spice in the kitchen cabinet, but Tidings has a welcome balance and restraint. — Fritz Hahn Port City Tidings. portcitybrewing.com. Around $12.75 for a six-pack at the brewery or in local liquor stores. More from Food: Beer Column archive


Capitol Hill isn’t the only place sausage is made in Washington

Kevin Logan, left, and his father Cliff Logan, right, confer in the office of Logan’s Sausage Company, a family-owned Alexandria business that the elder Logan started — in retirement — in the late 1980s. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post) When it comes to business, or any pursuit for that matter, what you don’t do can be just as important as what you do. Take Cliff Logan, owner and founder of Logan’s Sausage in Alexandria and a 50-year veteran of the food business. “I am a food nut,” said the sausage king (and not the kind that’s made on Capitol Hill). Logan, a Pittsburgh-area native, was an ambitious 20-something when was approached in 1977 by visionary supermarket pioneer Israel “Izzy” Cohen, head of the Giant Food chain, the Washington-area grocery business founded by his family. Cohen was dead-set on building a massive, state-of-the-art meat-cutting plant outside Washington. It was designed to save time — and money — for his in-store butchers by taking 600-pound sides of beef from suppliers and chopping them into ready-to-buy packages of steaks, shanks, roasts, ribs, burgers, briskets, soup bones and what have you. Cohen asked Logan, his $25,000-a-year troubleshooter, for his opinion. Armed with an MBA and a head for complex operations, Logan traveled the country, snooping around similar plants and other supermarket chains. He reported back months later with a simple message: Don’t build it. Logan’s advice was to ask the suppliers to do the chopping before the meat got to the stores. “I saved him four cents a pound on the meat buying,” said Logan, 77, sitting in his cluttered office in a low-industrial area in Alexandria with his sons, Cliff III and Kevin. “That’s a lot when you are talking about the volume of meat Giant sold.” Logan became Giant’s vice president of corporate planning, ran 40-plus grocery stores for Cohen and made enough money to retire in 1986 before he turned 50. He said the key to running stores was making it easy on the customer. Keep the register lines short, and the meat and produce fresh. Cohen, a legend in the food industry, died in 1995 at 83. He was a big influence on Logan. “Izzy was a very good executive, a very unique executive,” Logan said. “He spent a lot of time working with people, a hands-on type of manager. He knew the company. Knew the people. He listened


business,” Cliff said. Cliff handles overall strategy, creates the recipes and is constantly studying meat prices to find the best buy. Oldest son Cliff III is an attorney who handles the company’s contracts and operations. As director of sales, Kevin is in charge of Logan’s “ground game,” targeting new expansion with food distributors, restaurants and grocery stores. Cliff’s career arc from suburban Pennsylvania to Washington took him through a military stint in Germany and a job working for a canning company in southeast Pennsylvania in the early 1960s. “In those days, there were little canning companies dotting the landscape,” Logan said. He was in charge of finding raw food — onions, beans — from New York state, Indiana and elsewhere to be canned. He was only 24 and earning $130 a week. “It was a responsible job for a young guy,” he said. He had a knack for spotting business opportunities and bought a five-unit apartment building for extra income. In 1968, he entered Penn for his MBA, and graduated in 1970. By then, he was married and had a young son. His appetite for the food business led him to the Pathmark grocery chain in New York and eventually to the attention of Cohen in Washington. I asked Logan how he ended up detouring into the sausage business after retirement instead of his dream of kicking back and opening his own grocery store in Small Town America. Like most things in business, it was a lark. He bought two chorizo sausage recipes from a guy at a community kitchen in Alexandria back in 1987. “I found this little sausage guy, sampled the chorizo and I loved it,” he said. “He wanted to go to Miami and open a bodega, and so I bought his two recipes.” He also bought a pickup truck with a refrigerator and three pieces of sausage-making equipment. The total cost was about $40,000. The big break came right away, when Safeway agreed to put Logan’s wares into 100 of its stores in 1988. Logan became an entrepreneur and mini-sausage mogul. He quickly invested $500,000 to build a commercial kitchen, and started producing 20,000 pounds of sausage a week. He bought another truck and another and another. Logan found employees by scouring the lines at the unemployment office. Revenue went from $100,000 a year to $500,000 a year with Safeway. Magruder’s, Shoppers Food Warehouse, Giant and


Pakistan honors Nobel winner in physics 37 years late. But his religion still stirs anger.

Pakistani physics professor Abdus Salam in London in 1979. He was joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics that year. Salam died in 1996 in London. (AP) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — But the belated honor that Pakistan announced Tuesday for the late Abdus Salam was a bold step in the Muslim-majority democracy, where officials often feel the need to appease religious hard-liners at the expense of progress and international stature. Salam was a member of the Ahmadiyya community, a minority sect that is ostracized and reviled by many Muslims in Pakistan, and whose schools and places of worship have been the frequent target of attacks. So touchy are Pakistan’s majority Sunnis about Ahmadis — who consider themselves Muslims but are widely viewed as heretics — that the decision to add Salam’s name to the National Center for Physics is the first official honor he has received in his homeland. Salam won the Nobel in 1979, sharing it with two theoretical physicists from the West. He died in 1996 in London. “The government should be congratulated for correcting a historic injustice,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, where the center is located. The move shows that Pakistan is finally “ready to move ahead in science . . . irrespective of faith,” Hoodbhoy said. “It will help soften Pakistan’s image, which is badly needed when we are accused of being intolerant and terrorist.” But even as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued a statement saying Salam’s “remarkable achievements earned fame and prestige for the country” and “deserve to be valued,” critics were cursing the physicist in online posts as a “thug,” a spy and a “traitor to Islam.” Salam left Pakistan in the 1970s after its legislature declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims, and he worked from then on in the West. Other Pakistanis, while praising Sharif for taking a step no previous government leader had risked, said it meant little as long as members of the country’s 4-million-strong Ahmadi minority are still persecuted. “This is indeed welcome news, but can the prime minister explain to us why the Ahmadi community is being hounded, beaten, jailed and brutalized?” one woman commented on Facebook. In the past several years, Ahmadis have faced deadly attacks, some by local Muslims whipped up by conservative Islamist preachers and others carried out by terrorists. In 2010, suicide attackers from a Sunni militia killed 94 people


Montgomery County Animal Watch

Montgomery county These cases were received by the Montgomery County Animal Services Division. For information, call 240-773-5900. This number provides recorded information on topics such as the new animal services and adoption center’s hours and location in Derwood, adoption and licensing procedures, and lost-and-found and field services. Gaithersburg Possible mistreatment: Hazelcrest Dr., 17800 block, Nov. 22. A caller reported that several chickens were being kept under a deck and were possibly mistreated. The caller believed the chickens were starving. Animal Services met with the homeowner, who explained that they were keeping the three birds for a relative who was out of town for the holidays. The birds’ owner was expected to pick them up in a day or so. The homeowner was told that the chickens were being kept in violation of county regulations and that if they were not removed within the day, the homeowner would be cited. The chickens were found in good condition and eventually were removed. Germantown Owner relinquishes dog: Cats at no-kill shelter Cats and kittens will be available for adoption through the Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County’s no-kill shelter at the following location. For information, call 301-740-2511 or visit awlmc.org.Animal Welfare League of Montgomery County no-kill shelter, 12 Park Ave., Gaithersburg. Hours: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Humane Society adoptions The Montgomery County Humane Society’s private rescue shelter has dogs, puppies, cats and kittens available for adoption. Call 240-252-2555 or visit mchumane.org.MCHS Adoptions and Education Center, 601 S. Stonestreet Ave., Rockville. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except holidays. Reduced FEES FOR CATS Cats and kittens will be available for adoption at the next open house of Friends of Montgomery County Animals at the following location. Call 301-977-4833 or visit fmca.org or facebook.com/fmcainfo.PetSmart at Milestone Center, 20924 Frederick Rd., Germantown. Hours: 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday. — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


Notable deaths in the Washington area

8 at a hospice in Arlington, Va. The cause was lung cancer, said a friend and colleague, Gareth James. Mr. Poff, an Arlington resident, was born in Baltimore. He worked 27 years at the Library of Congress, retiring earlier this year. During this period he also taught English as a second language in a night division of the Alexandria, Va., school system. Betty Ellen Brown, public information officer Betty Ellen Brown, 98, former public information officer in the 1970s for Montgomery County’s division of elder affairs, died Nov. 4 at her home in Rockville, Md. The cause was complications following abdominal surgery, said a son, Scott Brown. Mrs. Brown was born Betty Ellen Boylan in Enid, Okla., and did public information work in Illinois and Colorado before moving to the Washington area in 1965. She was a volunteer writing instructor with Montgomery County Public Schools and was a volunteer softball coach, Cub Scout Den Mother and Girl Scout Brownie leader. Janis Pitts, biotech industry advocate Janis Pitts, 64, an advocate for the growth of the biotech industry in Montgomery County as the director of life science strategy for the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development from 2000 to 2014, died Nov. 14 at her home in Kensington, Md. The cause was complications from a progressive neurological disease, said a daughter, Samantha Kupferman. Mrs. Pitts was born Janis Gralnick in Washington and grew up in Silver Spring, Md. In the early 1990s, she owned and managed a gourmet grocery and catering operation, Western Market, in Bethesda, Md. After leaving the county position, she briefly was director of business development at Amarex Clinical Research in Germantown, Md., assisting the company get Food and Drug Administration approval for medical products. Her avocations included tending rose bushes and collecting antique rolling pins. Yvonne Rodler, NIH tour guide Yvonne Rodler, 85, who during the 1970s gave tours of the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda to visiting doctors from foreign countries and helped plan events for other health-related organizations, died Nov. 4 at a medical center in Oakland, Calif. The cause was a stroke, said a daughter-in-law, Jenny Rodler. Mrs. Rodler was born Yvonne Mermel in Washington. In the 1950s, she worked for the CIA, where she helped test telephone eavesdropping equipment. She later edited publications of the National Register of Large Dams. In 2009, she moved to Oakland from Washington. Nicholas Chase, lawyer


Where (and what) you should be eating when you want to splurge

who think they have everything? How about a chance to learn from some of the best cooks in the business? The four-star Inn at Little Washington makes fantasies come true for amateur cooks with its Stagiaire Program, a one-, two- or three-day opportunity to study whatever you’re interested in: Baking, butchering, sauce-making and pasta creation are among the many on-site options. The bespoke packages include chef’s pants and matching apron; an autographed copy of chef Patrick O’Connell’s cookbook (“Refined American Cuisine”); lunch (but not dinner); discounts at the inn’s gift shop; and a 25 percent discount on a room at the inn. And yes, there will be face time with the star of the show, O’Connell, whose staff never schedules a class when he’s away. Rachel Hayden, spokeswoman for the esteemed dining destination, says the program attracts three primary types: “hardcore foodies in search of a different experience,” fans of the Inn who want to see it from an insider’s perspective and “rabid entertainers” hoping to step up their game at home. The Stagiaire isn’t for everybody, however. Basic knife skills and general stamina are prerequisites; participants spend much of their eight-hour days on their feet. “We used to do five-day stages,” recalls Hayden. “No one survived!” 309 Middle St., Washington, Va. 540-675-3800. theinnatlittlewashington.com. Custom-designed stages cost $1,000, $1,800 or $2,400. Steak heaven Chef Joseph Palma of Bourbon Steak. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) A study of A5 Miyazaki Japanese Wagyu. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) Chef Joe Palma has been busy putting steaks through the hearts of the competition over the past year, expanding his meat program at Bourbon Steak in Georgetown from eight selections to an impressive 26. It’s a cattle call with lots of designer brands: Wagyu from Japan, so tender and richly marbled you feel as if you’re grazing on meat butter; grass-fed, pleasantly iron-y boneless rib-eye from Tasmania; cornfed New York strip from the respected Allen Brothers in Illinois; and (open wide) a 68-ounce tomahawk rib-eye from Shenandoah Co-op in Virginia. Dry-aged for two months, the last is dubbed “The John Wayne” by Palma. Remove eight ounces of bone and maybe six ounces of fat and the carnivore still has plenty to chew on. If the beef from 7X Ranch in Colorado tastes especially delightful, it might have something to do with cows that have grazed on alfalfa, clover and brome in mountain


Scientists warn speck-size insects are on track to damage most U.S. forests

at risk through 2027.. Insect pests can undermine forest ecosystems. For example, scientists say, several species of hemlock and almost 20 species of ash could go nearly extinct in the coming decades. Such destruction would do away with a critical sponge to capture greenhouse-gas emissions, shelter for birds and beneficial insects, and food sources for bears and other animals. Dead forests also can increase the danger of wildfires. Hemlock woolly adelgids are no larger than a speck of pepper, but they do a lot of damage. (Elise Amendola/Associated Press) Although they’re small, bugs can easily overwhelm big trees with sheer numbers. “They drain the resin that otherwise defends the tree,” said Matt Ayres, an ecologist who worked on the study. “Then, the tree is toast.” Scientists say that the pest problem has worsened because of global trade and a warming climate and that there are a few methods to combat it. Those include genetic modifications, moving trees to new locations and introducing bugs that feed on pests in their native lands. To fight the emerald ash borer, the United States Agriculture Department has released wasps that feed on the insect. But some scientists worry about introducing another pest, and others complain the wasps aren’t effective because they can’t eat enough of the fast-breeding pests to make a difference. “The hope is to create balance: balance between predator and prey,” said Ken Gooch, forest health program director for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Genetic modifications also offer promise. On a research farm in Syracuse, New York, are rows of 10-foot-tall chestnut trees tweaked with a wheat gene to make them resistant to chestnut blight, a fungus that came from Japan more than a century ago and has killed millions of trees. Genetic engineering could likewise be applied to fight insects, scientists say. An alternative strategy, also a slow one, is to plant trees 50 or 100 miles away from their normal range so they can escape pests. To stop the next pest from entering the country, researchers including Gary M. Lovett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York propose measures such as switching from solid-wood shipping material, which can harbor insects, and restricting imports of certain shrubs and trees. Nonetheless, Lovett said, new pests are inevitable. “We have this [growing] global trade,” he said, “so we will get a lot more of these.” — Associated Press