Cherry Blossom Web Cam

The National Park Service Cherry Blossom Web Cam is in full bloom. Use it to view the seasonal beauty surrounding Washington’s Tidal Basin before the fragile flowers are gone. Due to Global Climate Change, the cherry trees began blooming well before the traditional date of Washington’s biggest annual festival.

Note: Webcam does not work with Chrome. Use another browser.

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Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-cPf

Image (“Cherry Blossom Viewing at the Tidal Basin, after Hiroshige”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license. Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Reinstate Chief Chambers, Orders Merit Board

U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers was suspended from her position by the Bush administration in 2003 and fired in 2004. Her crime: expressing concern about staff shortages which endangered visitors and NPS employees.

It was the truth. The Merit Systems Protection Board has ordered the Park Police to reinstate Chief Chambers by month’s end. The Board also ordered NPS to reimburse her for legal fees and restore her pay retroactive to July 2004.

Teresa Chambers is an admired and persistent law enforcement professional. She has doggedly pursued the cause of justice as Park Police Chief and as Chief of Police in Durham, North Carolina and Riverdale Park, Maryland. It’s only right that Chief Chambers finally got some justice herself.

 More:

“Fired Park Police chief Teresa C. Chambers ordered reinstated,” Ed O’Keefe, Washington Post.

 

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Salahi Sell-Out

Tareq and Michaele Salahi have sold out their June 17th appearance at Carol Joynt’s Q & A Cafe, but we wonder how their polo match ticket sales are going. The most exciting part of next weekend’s match may be the unpaid bills and lawsuits. The was certainly the case with the Salahi’s 2008 and 2009 polo events. 

This year’s bus ads look nice, but they come cheap, and the convincing 2010 America’s Polo Cup website is misleading. Is the event “on the National Mall?” No. It’s scheduled for West Potomac Park. Is India participating?  No. The Indian Government pulled out after the Salahis crashed that White House dinner.

Weekend Blossom Blow-Out in DC

It’s the big final weekend of Washington’s National Cherry Blossom Festival®. The 2010 National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade®. Giant balloons. Marching bands. Tap dancers. Taiko drummers. Miss America. Local celebrities. The 50th Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival. The Target® Performance Stage near the Washington Monument®.

And the Cherry Blossom Web Cam is working great still broken.

 

Image (“Cherry Blossom Viewing at the Tidal Basin, after Hiroshige”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Cherry Blossom Web Cam 2010

On March 6th we reported that the National Park Service Cherry Blossom Web Cam was still showing a gray scene from last winter.  A few days later the NPS Tidal Basin web cam site posted the message “Coming Soon!”

Today’s update: April 3, 2010 — the Web Cam page is completely blank and the link has been removed.

 

Image (“Cherry Blossom Viewing at the Tidal Basin, after Hiroshige”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license. Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Eisenhower Memorial, Washington DC

The Dwight D, Eisenhower Memorial will be installed on a four acre plot on the National Mall, at the foot of Capitol Hill. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission has approved a design by renowned architect Frank Gehry. Fittingly, it resembles the large trash incinerators so common during the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961).

Rogue Beaver!

A savage beaver is attacking dogs in Virginia. Washington’s WRC-TV reports that a dog owner posted a flyer in Alexandria’s Windmill Hill Park near the Potomac, warning that a beaver bit his pooch during a walk there.

Castor canadensis is a rodent, but don’t let your pooch think it’s a big squirrel with an odd tail. The beaver is four feet long, weighs 60 pounds, and sports claws and a mouthful of wood-chipper chompers.

Beaver couples welcome new litters of cute “kits” this time of year and may be more testy than usual. Local Potomac beavers might be even more ticked off. The National Park Service deprived them of a favorite food by putting plastic sleeves on the trunks of Tidal Basin cherry trees.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Cherry Blossom Webcam

The sun is shining and Washington has warmed up a bit, but the National Park Service Cherry Blossom web cam displays a chilly, gray winter image from 2009 (above). Nice work, people.

DC’s 2010 National Cherry Blossom Festival  starts in three weeks and runs from March 27th to April 11th. Peak blossom time is usually around April 4th. Maybe the blossom web cam will be working by then.

 

The image above is a copy, grabbed 6 March 2010. The “live” feed — from last Christmas — is here. The publicity campaign for the 2010 National Cherry Blossom Festival began some weeks ago.

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Blossoms and Beavers

In Washington DC’, the symbol of springtime celebration is the flower of an unpredictable, fragile, alien species, the Yoshino cherry (Prunus x yedoensis).  This temperamental tree is a recent arrival to the shores of the Potomac, a  symbolic gift of friendship from a distant nation. The original batch of gift trees was diseased and had to be destroyed.

The trees are short-lived, bear no cherries, require extensive care, and fleetingly flash teensy, lightly-scented  flowers before they leaf out and look dull. Yoshino cherry trees produce no edible fruit, but lots of things eat these sickly shrubs anyway: insects, aphids, borers, spider mites, roundworms, fungi, verticillium wilt, bacterial canker, and beavers.

Cherry Blossom Web Cam 2009

The digital horticulturalists of the National Park Service have weeded, fertilized, and pruned their code and routers into full bloom, so you can now enjoy the 2009 Cherry Blossom Web Cam. Click here.

Note: Doesn’t work with Google Chrome. Use another browser.

Hat tip:  Danielle Piacente for the National Cherry Blossom Festival®
Cherry Blossom facts, National Park Service.

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Download the “desktop” image (Cherry Blossom Viewing at the Tidal Basin, after Hiroshige) here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.