Here is what’s going on Wednesday in Arlington, from our event calendar.
No events today. Have one to promote? Submit it to the calendar.
🌤️ Wednesday’s forecast
There’s a slight chance of rain before 10am, with partly sunny conditions and a high of 61°F. Expect northwest winds of 7-12 mph, increasing to 13-18 mph in the afternoon and gusting up to 28 mph. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low of 41°F, and winds will blow at 11-16 mph with gusts up to 23 mph. Thanksgiving Day will be sunny with a high of 55°F; winds will be 8-13 mph and will gust up to 22 mph. See more from Weather.gov.
💡 Quote of the Day
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
🌅 Tonight’s sunset
Thanks for reading! Feel free to discuss the day’s happenings in the comments.
ACPD officer conducts traffic stop during November 2023 Street Smart campaign in Courthouse (staff photo by James Jarvis)
High speeds, traffic scofflaws and distracted drivers are the top three reasons people feel unsafe when traveling around Arlington.
That is according to the county’s latest Vision Zero mid-year report, which summarized how Arlingtonians responded to online and in-person surveys about their top concerns as travelers.
County data on fatal and severe-injury crashes appear to back that up. Among speeding, distracted driving and alcohol, speeding leads the pack as a factor in serious crashes.
To tackle speeding — and one day, other traffic violations — Arlington County is laser-focused on automated enforcement. The road to get there, however, is long and some goals could take years of politicking to achieve.
First, the county has to implement speed cameras in school and work zones, which the Arlington County Board authorized in January 2022, shortly after the General Assembly permitted this.
Although Arlington is still working on procuring a contract for speed cameras, the County Board, the Vision Zero team and ACPD are working on expanding the use of speed cameras by including it among legislative priorities in the upcoming General Assembly session.
This could be an uphill battle, as some local legislators told ARLnow there is not yet an appetite in Richmond for widespread automated enforcement.
“The General Assembly has been reticent to allow full use of red light cameras,” said Sen. Adam Ebbin. “I think there might be some hesitancy to having fully automated enforcement, in general.”
Still, the county is pursuing automated enforcement to influence driver behavior when police are not present, lower its reliance on in-person enforcement and reduce potentially adverse interactions with police.
“They’re doing everything they can with what they’ve got right now,” says Vision Zero Coordinator Christine Baker, of the traffic enforcement Arlington County Police Department currently conducts. “We’re both just really hoping for more automation to help keep that progress toward better behaviors.”
Automation would also “let officers do the work that they need to do and leave the traffic enforcement up to ubiquitous, unbiased technologies,” she said.
Mike Doyle, the president of Northern Virginia Families for Safer Streets, agrees that it would limit potential racial bias and escalation in routine stops as well as alleviate police staffing shortages.
“Technology, with a photo and sending the ticket to the person, mitigates the risk of the officer,” he said.
Cameras would be effective, he says, “as long as the speed cameras are balanced in terms of equity: we can’t put them just in all the poor sections of town — they have to be where the speeding is.”
ARLnow asked ACPD whether it supports more cameras or has concerns about the hours officers might have to dedicate to reviewing footage.
Police spokeswoman Ashley Savage says the department “will continue to work collaboratively with the County on any future legislative changes to automated enforcement programs.”
ACPD reports keeping busy with enforcement
Despite staffing concerns — and scaling back operations due to low numbers — ACPD says it is committed to traffic enforcement and considers it a key safety initiative.
ACPD is authorized to have 377 officers and currently has a “functional staffing level” of 278 sworn officers, down from 284 this fall. Sworn offices can stop people for traffic violations and are “expected to meaningfully contribute to the department’s key initiatives,” through education and enforcement, Savage said.
How many are assigned to traffic duties is sensitive information, she said.
“In March 2022, the department announced service changes due to a reduction in our workforce,” says Savage. “There were no key impacts to transportation safety and the department reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring the orderly flow of traffic in the County while conducting transportation safety enforcement and education campaigns.”
Enforcement stats from ACPD (data visualization by Jo DeVoe)
ACPD’s Special Operations Section conducts education and enforcement in “identified areas of concern with the goal of voluntary compliance when police are not present, Savage said.
They also address safety concerns, work with Vision Zero staff, deploy variable message boards and other technology, and manage the police department’s participation in local and regional traffic safety programs.
The unit includes civilians who work as parking enforcement agents; traffic directors during events, crashes and emergencies; and school crossing guards.
Address:6223 Langston Blvd Neighborhood: Lee Ridge Type: 3 BR, 2 BA single-family detached – 3300 sq. ft. Listed: $1,299,000
Noteworthy: City living with tailored country surroundings/two-car garage
A timeless North Arlington Cape Cod, lovingly maintained and thoughtfully upgraded by the same owners since 1995.
This home features three upstairs bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Set behind a handsome stone retaining wall, the home enjoys wonderful privacy and quiet, thanks to its solid one-foot-thick stone construction. Large windows on every side invite natural light to spill across the high ceilings, solid wood floors, and custom built-ins found throughout both levels.
The kitchen is a chef’s delight, complete with a gas cooktop, granite countertops, and a suite of thoughtful additions including a microwave with convection capabilities. Surround sound enhances the first floor, ceiling and wall speakers in the sunroom, dining room, and living room, and SpeakerCraft ceiling speakers in the kitchen. Bright recessed lighting runs throughout the home, while the basement shines with upgraded fixtures that bring exceptional brightness to the space.
Outdoor living is equally as inviting with a rear stone patio and exterior lighting with carriage lamps and multiple spotlights that showcase the grounds beautifully. The primary suite is a true retreat with custom built-in cabinetry featuring granite countertops that flow seamlessly into the walk-in closet and bathroom.
Recent updates include exterior and interior painting (2024), a fully renovated lower-level bath (2024), and roof replacements over both the house and garage (2017). An oversized detached two-car garage with storage plus a driveway accommodating four or more cars provides exceptional convenience. This residence offers easy access to Georgetown, downtown DC, Airports, and Metro.
Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, discussing UAP incidents at George Mason University (staff photo by James Jarvis)
The head of the U.S. intelligence agency tasked with investigating alleged alien spacecraft sightings says it found no evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth.
Instead, Kirkpatrick fears the handful of the agency’s unresolved cases might be examples of unidentified, advanced earthly technologies instead of alien spacecraft, which poses a “big national security risk.”
“The best thing that could have happened in this job is to find the aliens because the alternative… is not a good thing,” Kirkpatrick said during a George Mason University panel on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP, last week.
The event — a few months after a memorable Congressional hearing on potential extraterrestrials this summer — focused on AARO’s findings from some 800 reported sightings and their implications for national security. While the vast majority of objects are benign, a small handful give Kirkpatrick pause.
“There was only about 2-4%, I think was around the number, that we have enough data for that are truly something we want to go dig in and go figure out what that is, and most everything else we can readily identify,” he said.
Most of the time, sightings wind up being everyday items, such as balloons, often misreported due to “training problems.”
“We have a number of pilots who will see these off in the distance, and there is an optical illusion that they will often see it’s called parallax,” he said.
“But they see it. They don’t understand it. They report it, and they write down in their report this is a UAP… they will clearly say, however, it looks like a balloon. It’s got a tether on it. It looks like it’s flying with the wind. But it because they mark it as a UAP it comes to us,” Kirkpatrick continued.
Before AARO’s inception in July 2022, there was very little serious analysis of UAP sightings, says Kirkpatrick, who is retiring next month.
His job, and that of AARO, has been to resolve reported sightings and develop a framework for evaluating sightings to use going forward.
First, Kirkpatrick says, scientists have to determine what the sensors that sensed a UAP are intended to detect, he says. Then, analysts compare these findings with information from the intelligence community on known entities or individuals who may be “doing something that matches those signatures.”
If the two groups disagree, Kirkpatrick says they try and get to a solution in what he affectionately called a “cage match.”
So far, no evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found. The unexplained 2-4% of cases — often resembling state-of-the-art earthly technologies, such as spherical drones — give him pause, however.
“We did a commercial drone survey and did some research going on out there and do you know what then the next biggest wave of drone technology is? Spherical drones,” he said. “Do you know why? Because they’re safe to use inside, so if they crash into people that, you don’t get hit in the head with a propeller.”
Kirkpatrick says AARO is working on ways to differentiate between earthly and alien tech signatures, though he believes the latter is far less likely.
“Now I know out in the universe, because of the vastness of the universe, it is — and I think most of the scientific community would agree with this — statistically impossible that there’s no life out there,” Kirkpatrick said. “Whether or not that’s intelligent life, whether or not they’ve traveled here, that is a diminishing probability as you go down that train.”
The Optimist Club of Arlington is holding its 76th annual Christmas tree sale!
This year, the tree sale will be held at the Knights of Columbus (5115 Little Falls Road). The lot opens for sales on November 25th. The Optimist Club is selling small and large trees ranging from tabletop size to huge 14 foot tall trees! Wreaths, garlands, tree stands, and White House Christmas ornaments will also be for sale.
Navy Federal partners with Rebuilding Together to make home safety repairs for an Arlington veteran (courtesy photo)
William Johnson (courtesy photo)
Navy Federal partners with Rebuilding Together to make home safety repairs for an Arlington veteran (courtesy photo)
(Updated at 1:25 p.m.) When volunteers hung a starch-stiff American flag on a shed belonging to 89-year-old local veteran William Johnson, he told them how proud he was to have served his country.
“You are so wonderful,” Johnson told the volunteers from Navy Federal Credit Union earlier that day. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The flag replaces a worn one that hung from the same spot for 20 years, according to a blog post from the credit union. Employees placed the finishing touch after they and staff from the nonprofit Rebuilding Together Arlington/Fairfax/Falls Church finished repairs on his red-brick Arlington home of 50 years.
Johnson served in the U.S. National Guard and Army in the 1950s and moved into the right half of a side-by-side duplex in 1966, after he and his late wife, Daisy, got married. There, they raised a daughter, who now lives down the street; worked for Virginia Hospital Center; and were active in a local church.
But the home where he and Daisy lived out their years began to show signs of aging. Johnson, a retiree on a fixed income, could neither do the work himself nor afford help. So Navy Federal teamed up with the local nonprofit Rebuilding Together Arlington/Fairfax/Falls Church, which makes home repairs for Northern Virginians in need.
“Houses need maintenance. Things change, our bodies change, and we have to adapt our homes to our bodies,” Patti Klein, the nonprofit’s executive director, tells ARLnow. “At the same time, Navy Federal wanted to work on a home of someone who served in the military. We thought it was a perfect fit.”
After volunteers wrapped up their day of service, many returned on Saturday for more jobs, though they did not have to, Klein said. The resulting work, spanning up carpentry, landscaping, painting and other jobs, moved Johnson.
“He was thrilled, he really was, and when they came back on Saturday, he was very touched by it,” Klein said.
Navy Federal Credit Union, which is headquartered in Vienna, serves military communities and “embraces and encourages service among its nearly 25,000 employees,” per the blog post.
“We believe in coming together for the community and for people who have served our military and our country, and this really embodies that,” Sun Bayless, senior vice president of Real Estate Lending at Navy Federal, told volunteers that Saturday. “We’re ready to roll up our sleeves.”
The credit union says volunteers have supported 30 projects benefiting four area low-income homeowners and 26 nonprofit organizations, several of which serve the veterans.
In Arlington, Klein says employees have helped on a number of projects, including building an outdoor classroom at Carlin Springs Elementary School.
“They really believe in community and giving back,” she said.
In total last year, the local chapter of Rebuilding Together, a national nonprofit, spruced up 115 homes, Klein said. Of them, 90% had a resident over the age of 65 and 60% had a resident with a disability. The homes tend to be older and need more work as well as aging-in-place modifications.
With Giving Tuesday around the corner, Klein says Rebuilding Together Arlington/Fairfax/Falls Church welcomes financial donations, volunteers who can work on weekdays or weekends and client referrals.
Art House 7 is a small art studio in Arlington – offering instruction in painting, ceramics, sewing and more. We are looking for kind, dedicated people who love both creating and teaching.
Ceramic Teachers are needed to teach wheel-throwing to adults and 6-12th graders and to teach hand building to elementary grades. Classes have 3-8 students.
