Hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina, Watson is a rising senior at Charlotte Country Day School, where he is enrolled in the IB Diploma Programme. Watson is passionate about discussing everything from current events, politics, religion, and social issues, to video games and viral videos. Just don't ask him about the Kardashians.
A gardener shows off their patriotism.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
One of the composting sites used by gardeners to make use of the biological material from weeds. "Cooking" a compost site refers to allowing the material in the site to decompose naturally so as to better release the potential nutrients in the plants when the compost is used as soil later.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
A stand of coneflowers blooms along the wall of the four-acre site. Plants that spread easily, like coneflowers, are planted along the wall away from the garden plots to prevent these plants from overtaking other people's gardens.
Photo by Nadav-Pais Greenapple
Each gardener can decorate their plot however they deem appropriate. Some, like this gardener, choose to include decorative pieces such as bird baths.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
Diversity in professions and backgrounds is common in the gardens. Akman said this plot is owned by an interior designer and color specialist.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
Despite a heat wave that has plagued D.C. with more than three days of 90+ degree heat, these flowers are still as vibrant as ever, thanks to the Newark Street Community Garden's new watering system.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
A group of daisies soaks up the sun. While the heat wave this past week has been uncomfortable for humans, these flowers are doing well.
Photo by Gia Scirrotto
A group of plots in the gardens. The community gardens have 190 members and 200 plots, with a waiting list more than 100 people long.
Photo by Gia Scirrotto
A closer look at one of the many garden plots seen in the previous photo.
Photo by Gia Scirrotto
Susan Akman points to one of the garden's new compost bins. These bins are more advanced than the open-air compost piles currently used by the gardens, and are designed to lower the time required for the compost to "cook." They are kept under lock and key to ensure their security.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
More hardy flowers brave the 90+ degree heat.
Photo by Gia Scirrotto
The rain garden that is on the property of the adjacent dog park has, much to Akman's chagrin, fallen into neglect and has become overgrown.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
This picnic table is in the children's garden. Children young as 2 years old come to plant things such as garlic and tomatoes.
Photo by Gia Scirrotto
This plot belongs to Elwood Gautier, a longtime member of the Newark Community Garden. At one time, Gautier used an unused plot to grow food to donate to food banks.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
Susan Akman inspects the fruits of one patron's labor. Excess foodstuffs are commonly donated to food banks in the area.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
A group of flowers of varying colors comes into bloom in this neatly organized plot of the gardens.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
A plastic flamingo adorns the barrier of one patron's plot and looks out over the rest of the gardens. Ornaments like these are common, and serve to make each plot more unique and individualized.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
The adjacent children's playground provides space for kids to play in the shade of large metal flowers. The garden, playground and nearby dog park all share the same water supply.
Photo by Nadav Pais-Greenapple
Susan Akman walks down one of the garden's long woodchip paths, flanked by the patrons' plots.
Photo by Watson Dolhare
WASHINGTON —The Newark Street Community Garden, on the corner of 39th and Newark streets, is celebrating its 40th year. And despite the recent consecutive days of over 90-degree weather, gardeners are still out planting and maintaining their plots. Susan Akman, a senior gardener and former president of the board. loves to come to the gardens between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning.
“It is very peaceful,” Akman said. So much so that she recalled one woman’s immediate reaction to 9/11 was to come to the gardens, she said.
The garden may be a quiet, tranquil space, but a lot of hard work goes into the upkeep of the plots, Akman said. Many of the 190 gardeners come out on the second Saturday of every month in order to remove weeds and plant new crops. The garden community is extremely diverse.
“We have people from all over the world,” Akman said, with community members bringing unique crops and agricultural techniques from regions including Portugal, Lithuania and parts of Africa and Asia.
Gardeners have the freedom to make their plots as colorful and creative as they want, so long as none of their crops are invasive species. The work pays off. The garden is the “largest, and probably the oldest” of its kind in the area, Akman said.
To find out more about the Newark Street Community Gardens, visit their website here.
WASHINGTON — Coverage of the rigor of college academics often takes a back seat to reporting on the partying that occurs on some campuses, which includes the use of illicit drugs and alcohol. But some university health centers also find prescription-drug use for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, medications also a problem, as students even without attention deficit, try to gain a competitive edge during college.
In one study of undergraduates at a large, public, Southeastern research university in the United States in the mid-2000s, as many as 34 percent of the 1,811 students surveyed reported the illegal use of these medications. The authors, whose work was published in the Journal of American College Health, reported that students used the drugs “in periods of high academic stress and found them to reduce fatigue while increasing reading comprehension, interest, cognition and memory, and that most had little information about the drug and found procurement to be both easy and stigma-free.”
Many students don’t realize the legal and physical consequences that can result from the abuse of these medications. Side effects of ADHD medications’ abuse can be mild, including headaches, stomach aches, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite and increased irritability, but also can be more severe, in some cases causing palpitations, an inability to lower one’s heart rate after exercise and neurosis. ADHD medications can also react poorly with other medications.
David Reitman
Dr. David Reitman, medical director at the American University Student Health Center, said there are three illegal activities most commonly associated with ADHD medications: diversion, misuse and performance enhancement. All are “flatly illegal,” says Reitman. Misuse is when someone has a legitimate prescription for ADHD medications, but is abusing them, taking more than the prescribed dosage, or is giving them to a colleague. The most common use is for performance enhancement, when students without a legitimate need for the medications are taking them to focus for long study or work sessions.
The recent legalization of marijuana in the D.C. area may also lead to a rise in abuse of ADHD medications. “Even if you’re just smoking marijuana on the weekends with your friends, it’s going to remain in the fat cells of your brain and leech out over several days,” said Dr. Reitman, who holds board certifications in adolescent medicine, addiction medicine and pediatrics. “That’s going to take away motivation; it’s going to take away ability to organize, take away ability to focus. And then you’re trying to take these medications to try to compensate.”
This may result in students becoming locked into dependence on ADHD medications, as they need them in order to recover their mental faculties after recreational drug and alcohol use, even if only occasionally.
Librarian Megan McNitt shows off the collection of magazines. Photo by Giovanna Scirrotto
WASHINGTON — In the cosmopolitan age of the Internet and smartphones, the printed word has seemingly been suffering an agonizingly slow death — as devices for reading such as e-books are becoming ever more popular, libraries have had a hard time of it. But in the neighborhood of Tenleytown, this is simply not the the case. “The library is really engaged in the community,” says Karen Blackman-Mills, the library’s branch manager. “We host a lot of community focus groups.”
The Tenleytown library has actually become an enormous fixture in the community during an era where most libraries’ usage has plummeted. The library is a hugely popular study destination for college students, who enjoy the usage of the study rooms and the 20 powerful computers arrayed around the library. Local families also come for the children’s read-alongs every day. In fact, the Tenleytown library has such popular children’s events that there are tickets to reserve spots. The library sees “easily 100 or more upstairs every day,” whether they are looking for a quiet study space, or simply perusing the library’s literary collection of thousands of books, Blackman-Mills said.
Karen Blackman-Mills holds one of the summer reading programs for children. Photo by Giovanna Scirrotto.
It is these local families who comprise the majority of the library’s business. Children’s books are the most circulated, and the library’s staff tries to develop a love for reading and knowledge in the children of the community.
The library’s status as a community fixture is not new. The two story building on Wisconsin and Albemarle, originally constructed in the 1960s, underwent extensive renovations in 2011 to become more technologically advanced and environmentally friendly, a controversial move at the time. Features added include a green roof, solar panels and a reduction in water for sewage by 49 percent. These innovations, among many others, make the library 27 percent more energy efficient than a comparable building.
The $16 million renovations, while expensive, had a dual purpose: representing the community’s liberal values, which include an interest in protecting the environment, and saving money in the long term, she said.
“If you can save $1 million in utilities a year…it’s amazing,” says Megan McNitt, one of the adult librarians. Additionally, the library felt pressured by the community to renovate due to problems presented by aging materials at the nearby Cleveland Park library. “People become very attached to their neighborhood library…a lot of people even come from other towns,” says McNitt.
Strollers line the wall while the popular children’s reading program is in session. Photo by Giovanna Scirrotto
Indeed, while the library is a fixture for the Tenleytown community, it remains a public space, open for anyone’s use. People from nearby towns in Virginia and Maryland often come to the library, and enjoy the same level of access as anyone from Tenleytown; they are even able to get library cards. When checking out books, the current policy is that they have no late fees for children’s books, and coming soon library-goers will not be required to pay for any books they lose.
Whatever else the future may hold, McNitt believes that the Tenleytown library will only continue to have an immensely positive impact on its community. She is also confident that the library will remain successful in the face of competition from e-readers, and she will “expect the unexpected,” she said.
