Here, in a series of short clips, The History Channel takes a look at the origins of Labor Day, changing methods of manufacturing and legislative gains made by labor unions.

As part of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, construction activities will require ramp and lane closures throughout the week of September 5 in the Capital Beltway (I-95/495 South) Telegraph Road area. No closures are scheduled on Labor Day, Sept. 6.

OVERNIGHT on Wednesday, Sept. 8, installation of a sign structure will narrow the Capital Beltway Outer Loop between the Eisenhower Connector and Telegraph Road. The Outer Loop entrance ramp at the Eisenhower Connector will be closed as well as the Outer Loop exit ramps to Telegraph Road.

Milling and paving activities will require the closures of Telegraph Road North between the Capital Beltway and Pershing Avenue overnight, Friday, Sept. 10 and continue through Saturday, Sept. 11. All lanes on Telegraph Road North will be closed as of 10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10. Pershing Avenue West will remain open.

At approximately 7 a.m., Saturday Sept. 11, crews will open the leftmost lane on Telegraph Road. All work is expected to be complete by 5 p.m., Saturday Sept. 11, at which time all lanes on Telegraph Road will be restored.

The detailed lane/ramp closures and corresponding detours are found below:

Capital Beltway Outer Loop (I-95/495 North) – Night Work

Wednesday, Sept. 8 from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. the following morning:

• The Outer Loop will be narrowed to one lane between the Eisenhower Connector and Telegraph Road.
  • Detour: Motorists can exit at the Eisenhower Connector and take Eisenhower Avenue East, turn left onto Mill Road and to Telegraph Road or the Beltway.
• Both exits from the Outer Loop to Telegraph Road North/South will be closed.

Capital Beltway (I-95/495) – Day Work

Tuesday, Sept. 7 from noon to 1 p.m.:

• Both the Inner and Outer Loops of the Beltway will be narrowed to two lanes.

Telegraph Road – Night Work

Friday, Sept. 10 through Saturday, Sept. 11 from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. the following morning:

• Telegraph Road North will be closed between the Capital Beltway and Pershing Avenue.
  • Detour: Motorists accessing the Beltway should take Huntington Avenue East to Route 1 North. Motorists wishing to access Telegraph Road North can take the temporary detour to the ramp from Telegraph Road North to Eisenhower Avenue, continue straight onto Stovall Street, make a left onto Pershing Avenue, and turn right onto Telegraph Road North.

Tuesday, Sept. 7 through Thursday, Sept. 9 from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. the following morning:

• Telegraph Road South will be narrowed to one lane between Mill Road and Huntington Avenue.
• Telegraph Road North will be narrowed to one lane between Huntington Avenue and Duke Street.
• Telegraph Road South to the Inner Loop (I-95/495 South) will be closed.
  • Detour: Motorists should take Telegraph Road South to Mill Road to Eisenhower Avenue, then turn left at the Eisenhower Connector to link up with the Inner Loop.

Telegraph Road – Day Work

Tuesday, Sept. 7 through Thursday, Sept. 9 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Friday, Sept. 3 from 9:30 a.m. to noon:

• Telegraph Road South will be narrowed to one lane between Mill Road and Huntington Avenue.
• Telegraph Road North will be narrowed to one lane between Huntington Avenue and Duke Street.
• Telegraph Road North to the Outer Loop (I-95/495 North) will be closed.
  • Detour: Motorists should take Telegraph Road North to the Inner Loop (I-95/495 South) ramp to Telegraph Road South to the ramp to the Outer Loop.

Saturday, Sept. 11 from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.:

• Telegraph Road North will be narrowed to one lane between the Capital Beltway and Pershing Avenue.

Motorists are urged to seek alternate routes to their destinations to avoid delays. Please use caution when traveling in this area. All construction-related work and dates are subject to change, depending on weather, material and contractor availability or other unforeseen conditions.

For more information about the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project visit our website at www.wilsonbridge.com.

In Alexandria, we’ve had our parking rates raised. Why? The parking meters and the red light cameras are all about the revenue for the City of Alexandria. As you can see from both candidates in the video, they would like even more revenue from the people. Mr. Orange wants to impose a commuter tax in D.C. Exit question, could the recent raising of parking meter rates in Alexandria be considered a commuter tax?

(Video via Greater Greater Washington)

The City of Alexandria’s public safety departments, led by Mayor Bill Euille, Fire Chief Adam Thiel, Police chief Earl Cook, and Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, will host a joint memorial service on Saturday, September 11 at 12 noon at the George Washington Masonic Temple near our neighborhood to honor the sacrifice of our nation’s first responders in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Employees from the Fire, Police, and Sheriff’s Office will participate in a special ceremony, “Return to Quarters,” in which a commemorative “ringing of the bell” will be conducted with the traditional 5-5-5-5 code that has been used by firefighters since 1870 to signal the loss of a colleague.

Please note that the Temple will remain open to visitors during the memorial service. Free parking is available on the grounds of the Temple.

Due to recent beaver activity in the park, Parks Operations staff needs your assistance in the installation of wire caging around trees. This summer, twenty trees have been lost to beavers who have taken up residence in the storm water retention pond. This conservation activity is great for the entire family, and all that is needed is to be at the park at 8 a.m. The City will provide all necessary supplies, and light refreshments will be served.

For additional information and to RSVP, contact Roger Blakeley, Deputy Director, at 703.746.5495 by Wednesday, September 8.

HOW IT WORKS:
1. Visit all 28 stores in the Old Town Boutique District over the 3-day event.
2. Get your card stamped by each store.
3. Return your fully stamped card to any participating store by the end of the shopping weekend.
4. Be entered to win one $2,800 grand prize shopping spree and 28 $100 prizes!**

*While supplies last.
**No purchase necessary to receive your free gift or to enter to win prizes.

• The Weather Channel’s Tropical Update

REMINDER: You can access videos that we have posted at anytime via the Wibiya toolbar below.

Help celebrate the premiere of Top Chef Just Desserts with a free dessert! Just make an online reservation and dine at one of the restaurants at this link on September 15, and you will get a free dessert for every 2 diners at your table. See list at this link for participating restaurants and their meal participation.

In our neighborhood, Joe Theismann’s Restaurant is participating in this promotion with a freebie off their regular menu (HINT: If you haven’t tried it yet, get the Peanut Butter Pie – it is spectacular!).  If you love Italian food like I do, Laporta’s, located at 1600 Duke Street, is also offering a free dessert from their regular menu.

Locally, the Chart House is participating with a free Mud Pie during dinner (making me hungry just thinking about it) and the Del Merie Grill in Del Ray, one of Tom Seitsma’s treasures, is participating like Joe Theismann’s with a free dessert from their regular menu. Monroe’s, located on Commonwealth Ave in Alexandria, is also offering a free dessert off it’s menu.

Lastly, remember to tune in September 15 to watch the premiere of Top Chef Just Desserts on BRAVO! Here’s a sneak peek:

Turns out a local trade association (My guess is the ASCO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology) was having an auction which was a complete liquidation of its office furnishings located at their old address in the 1900 Duke Street building. From the pictures, it looked like some good stuff. Here is video with a description of the auction in question.

Hooray for Books! wants to invite you to the First Annual Alexandria Story Festival, brought to you by Wright to Read and Hooray For Books! Children’s Bookstore. The Festival will be held at the Jefferson Houston field, located at 1501 Cameron Street, from 10 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 18, 2010.

The cost?Admission is free for this day of family fun.

Authors Sandy Pugh, Lezlie Evans, Melissa Thomson and Nick Bruel will read aloud on stage from their books, sharing their motivations for writing and methods for illustrating. Local authors Sharon Hickey, Tamatha Hollingsworth, and Captain Brandon Barnett will also read in tents to small groups and lead children in activities related to art, recycling, and exercise.

Books will be available for purchase, and the authors will be happy to autograph their books! Progressive hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon will provide musical entertainment. There will be food for sale at low prices. Every attendee will receive a raffle ticket for a chance to win one of the many books that will be given away.

For more information, visit this link.

During the two-day Festival of the Arts, King Street will be transformed into a world-class outdoor art gallery when the festival booths line King Street between S. Washington Street and Union Street Streets – over six blocks of artwork!

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The festival is FREE and open to the public.

Alexandria Festival of the Arts – Links to important info

• List of participating artists

Hope to see you on the terrace!

Milling and paving activities along the Inner Loop at Telegraph Road, originally announced on August 20, has been modified. Starting at 9 p.m. Friday, August 27, construction crews will close the ramp from the Inner Loop (I-95/495 South) to Telegraph Road North, and begin taking lanes on Telegraph Road North between Huntington Avenue and Pershing Avenue. All lanes on Telegraph Road North will be closed as of 10 p.m. Friday, Aug.. 27. Pershing Avenue West will remain open and will be used as a temporary detour route.

At approximately 7 a.m., Saturday Aug. 28, crews will open the leftmost lane on Telegraph Road North and the ramp from the Inner Loop to Telegraph Road North. All work is expected to be complete by 5 p.m., Saturday Aug. 28, at which time all lanes on Telegraph Road will be restored.

Motorists traveling on Telegraph Road North to Duke Street can take the temporary detour to the ramp from Telegraph Road North to Eisenhower Avenue, continue straight onto Stovall Street, make a left onto Pershing Avenue, and turn right onto Telegraph Road North.

Motorists are urged to seek alternate routes to their destinations to avoid delays. Please use caution when traveling in this area. All construction-related work and dates are subject to change, depending on weather, material and contractor availability or other unforeseen conditions.

For more information about the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project visit our website at www.wilsonbridge.com.

The reason they keep coming back is someone (or a few someone’s) keeps feeding them each Summer. PLEASE do not feed them. If you see anyone else feeding them, PLEASE tell them to stop. The excess bird droppings can’t be good for anyone. In fact, the Illinois Department of Health has posted health hazards that come from excess bird droppings.

The folks at Carlyle Towers and Carlyle Place do the best they can to keep the sidewalks clean of the dropppings but, we as a neighborhood need to do more to help combat this. If you have never seen the HUGE flock, see the video below.

Bird droppings at Carlyle Towers East

REMINDER: IF YOU SEE SOMEONE FEEDING THESE BIRDS – PLEASE ASK THEM TO STOP!

Metro plans to implement the morning phase of its new “peak-of-the-peak” fare beginning Monday, and users of SmarTrip electronic fare cards will get another complication this fall: They won’t be able to exit the system with a negative balance.

The peak-of-the-peak fees affect riders who travel during the busiest periods, between 7:30 and 9 a.m. and 4:30 and 6 p.m. weekdays

Metro implemented the surcharge of 20 cents for riding during the busiest afternoon periods on Aug. 3. However, the transit agency delayed the morning increase due to the complexities of reprogramming the fare system.

This fall Metro also plans to require that SmarTrip users have enough fare to exit the system. The current system allows users to exit even if they don’t have enough value stored on the cards for the complete trip. SmarTrip readers will be added to exit fare machines located in the stations, Metro said, but exit fare payments must be made in cash.

The increases are part of an expansive new fare plan that Metro began implementing to help cover a budget deficit of $190 million for the current fiscal year. Metrorail fares rose by about 18 percent overall June 27, although the fares varied with the length of the trip and the time of day. Friday and Saturday night-owl riders started paying peak fares.

As Metro prepared to implement phase 2 of the increases early this month, Metrorail riders were faced with malfunctioning fare gates, glitches with SmarTrip cards and general confusion over fares.

The Green Lantern on Slate.com posted on how revolving doors are much better for the environment two years ago:

Generally speaking, air flows in and out of a building because of differences in air pressure. (In the winter, heated air rises toward the top of a building, and—as long as there are any openings on the ground floor—cold air rushes in to replace it. The opposite happens in the summer, with the cold air flowing out the front doors.) Regular foot traffic in a large office building can result in air leaks of up to 30,000 cubic feet per minute.

That presents a challenge for engineers: How do you allow people and things to move in and out of a building while minimizing unwanted air flow? The revolving door was presented as a solution for this age-old problem more than 100 years ago, long before anyone was talking about carbon footprints or global warming. (The primary purpose, according to the original patent application—filed by one Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia—was to prevent the “entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust.“) A revolving door isn’t airtight (PDF), but the barrier it creates makes the impact of that air pressure differential less important. Every time the door spins, some air will leave the building and some will come in, but overall, much less passes.

How big a difference can using a revolving door make? In 2006, a team of graduate students at MIT conducted an analysis of door use in one building on campus, E25, where they found just 23 percent of visitors used the revolving doors. According to their calculations, the swinging door allowed as much as eight times more air to pass through the building than the revolving door. Applying average Boston weather to their equations, the MIT team found that if everyone used the revolving doors, it would save more than 75,000 kilowatt-hours of energy—about 1.5 percent of the total required to heat and cool the building—and prevent 14.6 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted.* (By way of comparison, the EPA says an average American vehicle emits about six tons of carbon dioxide over a year.) The gains are also big enough that they could easily cover the energy needed to power an automatic revolving door like this one, which has a 250-watt motor.

So, how do you get people to use revolving doors? The MIT group didn’t come up with an obvious answer. They were able to increase revolving-door usage by putting up signs, but the rates at E25 never rose above 63 percent (PDF). (A sign that politely asked people to use the door turned out to be more effective than one detailing the energy savings.)

Read more at this link. Here is the video:

Convenient and cool, the Alexan Carlyle is a brand new apartment community designed to enhance your lifestyle. If my wife and I didn’t have our condo already, then I am sure we’d be living here. The Alexan Carlyle is filled with upscale amenities and close to the many shops and restaurants of Old Town.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Kathy for catching the fact that I had misspelled Carlyle. The misspelling has been fixed as has the link. Thank you Kathy!

NBC4 reports on a home heating oil delivery that went to the wrong address here in Alexandria on Colonial Ave which is over near the Slaters Lane/Powhatan Ave area.

• Carlyle Club – Three-course dinner for $35
• Delia’s Mediterranean Grill & Brick Oven Pizza – Three-course dinner for $35
• Jamieson Grille at the Westin Alexandria – Three-course dinner for $35
• Joe Theismann’s Restaurant – $35 dinner for two
• La Porta’s Restaurant – Three-course dinner for $35
• Seagars Restaurant – $35 dinner for two

Kindle Blogs are auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle and updated throughout the day so you can stay current. It’s also risk free—all Kindle Blog subscriptions start with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period. If you enjoy your subscription, do nothing and it will automatically continue at the regular monthly price.

REMINDER:

We’re easily viewable on an iPod, iTouch, or iPad too using the terrific WordPress plugin WPTouch. Click on the link below (or the link at right) to find out more.

In this episode: Storm Recovery, Restaurant Week, King St Paving, Mini Pools, Payment Locations, Recreation Registration Site, and Earl Lloyd Book Signing.

You can subscribe to the City of Alexandria’s YouTube channel at this link.

Exit question, what exactly is ‘water walking?’

So, as promised in last night’s post, I called Belle Haven to find out if they were the one’s setting off the fireworks. I spoke to one of the manager’s who informed me that the fireworks show was part of a wedding reception being held at the country club. If you saw the National Harbor fireworks and the display afterwards at Belle Haven, which one seemed better to you?

From here in Carlyle, they looked like some pretty awesome fireworks at Belle Haven so it must have been an awesome wedding reception. Congrats to the bride & groom!

On exit, enjoy the fireworks show from the National Mall as seen from the South Lawn of the White House.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal reported last year:

On a campus of boxy office buildings nine miles outside Washington, D.C., some 6,300 patent examiners hold the nation’s economic future in their hands.

The next Google. The next iPhone. The next Viagra.

All could be fueled by inventions awaiting the 20 years of protection afforded by a U.S. patent – if only the patent examiners could catch up.

But they can’t. The federal system of granting patents to businesses and entrepreneurs has become overwhelmed by the growing volume and complexity of the applications it receives, creating a massive backlog that by its own reckoning could take at least six years to get under control, the Journal Sentinel has found.

Amid the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office could be seen as a way to jump-start the economy. Instead, it sits on applications for years, placing inventors at risk of losing their ideas to savvy competitors at home and abroad.

The agency took 3.5 years, on average, for each patent it issued in 2008, a Journal Sentinel analysis of patent data shows. That’s more than twice the agency’s benchmark of 18 months to deal with a patent request.

The total number of applications waiting for approval, more than 1.2 million, nearly tripled from 10 years earlier.

The Journal-Sentinal also found:

• Under a practice that Congress authorized a decade ago, the Patent Office publishes applications on its Web site 18 months after the inventor files them, outlining each innovation in detail regardless of whether an examiner has begun considering the application. The system invites competitors anywhere in the world to steal ideas.
• For more than a dozen years starting in 1992, Congress siphoned off a total of $752 million in fees from the Patent Office to pay for unrelated federal projects, decimating the agency’s ability to hire and train new examiners.
• As its backlog grew, the Patent Office began rejecting applications at an unprecedented pace. Where seven of 10 applications led to patents less than a decade ago, fewer than half are approved today – a shift that a federal appeals judge termed “suspicious.” The same judge calls the agency “practically dysfunctional.”

So what’s the Patent Office doing to trim their backlog? President Obama recently signed a bill to provide USPTO authority to spend an additional $129 Million of FY 2010 fee collections. They’re also trying to reform the patent process in order to cut the backlog and the wait time for a patent from three years to 20 months. Rebecca Jarvis at CBS News recently interviewed Patent Office Director David Kappos about this.