It Feels Like Home, Faults and All

But it's Poplar Point, the 110-acre waterfront park, that is creating the most angst. D.C. Council member Marion Barry, a constant champion of "the new Ward 8," has been at odds with Mayor Adrian Fenty for not backing the proposal to put a soccer stadium on the site.

Whatever is built there, residents ask: What's in it for us? Will I still be here?

The new block association is involved in these questions and is fast becoming a player in Ward 8 politics.

Members like Buell say they are careful not to appear as know-it-alls or saviors.

There was certainly plenty here to be proud of before we showed up. One of them is my neighbor. She's about my mother's age but insists that I call her Jo. I see her mornings and afternoons sprinkling bread crusts and peanuts to attract pigeons and squirrels, who wait expectantly to feast.

A resident of more than three decades, she's also a neighborhood historian. She told me that the alley next to my house on W Street SE, and behind hers on 14th, was once used to deliver coal. One of the previous owners of my house ran a car repair business in my yard. I still find the old parts. The roses blooming in my back yard, she told me, hadn't been so plentiful in years. I was happy to do my part.

She also alerted me to the neighborhood hawk. The pigeons, scores of which come to feast, get quiet or try to get out of the way when the hawk comes calling. At least once a week, one of the pigeons doesn't make it. The hawk's attacks are swift and vicious.

It's a harsh reminder of the cycle of life, but it seems so natural to my southern Louisiana roots where hunting, fishing and raising hogs for food remain facts of life.

This is my neighborhood now and I love it, but I am under no illusions.

The streets have more litter than they should because too many people continue to throw their empty beer and soda cans and chip bags on the ground. People still sneak into alleys to relieve themselves. Crime is a persistent concern.

But unlike a decade ago when the streets were scary, they just seem normal now. There's one neighbor who talks to himself and asks everyone for two-dollars-or-a-quarter-or-a-drink-of-water in quick succession. Mothers and daughters wait for the bus stop across the street, some wearing Foot Locker, Georgetown and security guard uniforms. People say good morning when they pass. Kids stop to trick or treat. Good, for me, outweighs the bad.

The pigeons are a constant. And when one of them succumbs to the hawk, the flock is silent for a while. But the life and frolicking returns, kinda like the life of a neighborhood.