December 7-8 Christmas Baked Goods Benefit

November 5 PlayStart at the Polls Food Sale

October 19 Main Street Pumpkin Fest-PlayStart literature and photo display

Sept. 25 Back to School Night-PlayStart literature and photo display

July 27 Saturday 5-8 PM.Bill Parsons Benefit Concert, 1739 Kilbourne, the home of Joseph, Carol Collins and Steve Askin

For our PlayStart Benefit Concert July 27, Steve Askin and Carole Collins hung our PlayStart banner over their door and generously opened their home, Joseph Samora Collins Askin shared his toys, Gretchen McMullen brought pizza, Dos Gringos provided a "reception plate." Over our protests that kids did not have to make a donation, almost-four-year-old Alyssa insisted on giving us the contents of her piggybank (we sneaked her foreign coins back to her parents Anne and Brian, fearing Bank of America would balk when we went to cash in the pesos even if it was for a good cause). Shannon Ferguson pasted tattoos on little kids' arms and legs, whichever limb they stuck out first.

Bill Parsons and Eric Weinberg sang and played guitar (and donated $5 out of the $15 cost of each CD they sold at the party). We have invited Bill and Eric back to sing at our groundbreaking, and they have promised to come. We have also invited them to write a song for us, perhaps based on their best known hit, Enron-ron ( I suggested PlayStart-start) You can hear their songs and learn their concert schedule for the rest of the summer at their web sites, www.billparsons.com and www.weinberg.com. Their next DC appearance is Wednesday Aug 21 at 12:00pm at Franklin Park, as part of that Park's Concert Series.

We were also honored to have both long-time DC Council member Hilda Mason and our present Council member Jim Graham join us for our PlayStart benefit. Peter Stebbins of Walbridge House had brought Hilda–"I knew PlayStart was something she would support, she had been a teacher herself, and I knew there would be people here who would remember her and be happy to see her." Hilda Mason had gone from being a teacher in the DC School System in the 60's to being elected to the School Board to representing the DC Statehood Party on the City Council for 21 years, until she finally retired in 1998–the same year Jim Graham was elected to represent Ward I. She and Jim hugged and reminisced about when he was at Whitman-Walker and she was on the Council, and he told her he was running his re-election campaign based on a campaign slogan of hers: "I am running as though I am losing" even when she (and he) was not.

We thanked Jim for the $25,000 he got PlayStart from the Parks Department (and I offered to let him make a speech, but he refused, saying he was having too good a time, and this was a" very Mount Pleasant party.")

We gained new supporters as well as $550 more toward our playground. And a week later, we learned we had been awarded $15,000.00 from the Philip Graham Foundation at the Washington Post.

May 17 The HeadStart teachers and parents took all 56 three- and four-year-olds to Walter Pierce Park's playground. We had planned to let them "vote with their feet" while we observed which pieces of equipment they preferred. They took the 42 bus from Lamont Park to 18th and Columbia and then lined up and marched down Adams Mill to the park, two by two, wearing their bright yellow Bancroft T-shirts. When they spotted the playground, they broke rank. They ran toward it and played nonstop for two hours till parents and teachers made them stop and eat. They loved everything!

Watching them play, the PlayStart Organizing Committee member present to photograph the field trip--who has occasionally longed to stop organizing and return to taking care of her neglected garden–suddenly felt all the work really was worthwhile.

The next day, at the Bancroft Spring Fair, we held our formal PlayStart election, to choose the equipment we wanted in our new playground. We commandeered the chain link fence lining one side of the Bancroft playground and hung up pictures of the ten different pieces of equipment the HeadStart teachers had chosen out of the hundreds they had reviewed. Then the children five and under (with patient assistance from Jenny Sherman and Tricia Davis-Muffett) got to vote for their top five, dropping their little ballots in the envelopes attached to each picture (in a non-binding referendum, adults and older children were also allowed to register their opinions). Elinor Hart, an active member of the League of Women Voters, closely monitored the vote.

In spite of cold dreary weather, we also made a lot of money at the Fair: $25,174.85 . $174.85 came from selling donated books, helium balloons, face painting, bookmarks and placemats made by the HeadStart kids and teachers, and, in a joint effort, the Garden Project sold clay pots the kids had painted (with that money going to the PTA), and PlayStart sold plants to go in the pots. Iris McTaggart and Charlotte Frazier sold 200 helium balloons (although we suspect, from the crowd of boys surrounding them at the end of the Fair that not all those balloons went for their full 50 cents price). Kate Krezel and then David Greenfield painted faces, David continuing to face paint an hour and a half after the Fair had officially ended.

The biggest fund-raising event of our day, however, took place when City Councilman Jim Graham showed up! Jim has given of his time, talent and treasure–he confirmed that he had convinced the city to set aside $25,000 in the parks and recreation capital projects budget for PlayStart. In one fell swoop, he put us over the halfway mark and with enough money to buy all five pieces of playground equipment chosen that day. He also put us in a unique position: this will be the first time ever, to the best of our knowledge, that the Parks and Recreation Department, the DC Public School System, foundations and community members will all be working together to make our city a better place for children.

Flushed with success, we rested for two weeks and then, at the Celebrate Mount Pleasant festival, we set up our PlayStart booth in the little kids activity area. NikiAnne Feinberg, Mara Cherkasky, Shannon Ferguson, Judy Weitz, Neil Richardson, Olivia Smith, Flora Castellino, Kimmo Kartano, Lillian Lynch and Charlotte Frazier inflated and sold over 300 balloons with little seesaws on them. Kate and David Greenfield, with assistance from Katia Garrett, Jenny Marsh, Jenny Sherman, and eight-year-old artist Makala painted faces. Makala, recently arrived from Hawaii, had set up a table next to ours to sell her paintings. When she saw all the kids lined up to have their faces painted, she left her booth in her mother's charge and joined us to help. David Greenfield's Spiderman faces were such a hit that we had to give out numbers to keep the crowd in order, and he again kept painting an hour after the festival had officially closed to satisfy his fans.

April 20, 2002 PlayStart held its first house party, and everybody came–and we quadrupled the money in our bank account!

The front yards of 1869 and 1873 Ingleside Terrace effectively turned into a singles (milk) bar, as everyone mingled, traded phone numbers and made play-dates. Council members Phil Mendelson and Jim Graham (accompanied by his little dog Roger, who was a real hit with the little kids) came by and offered support (Phil Mendelson, himself father of a 20-month-old prospective PlayStarter, even kissed a baby for the cameras). Kate painted faces, Shannon and Charlotte inflated balloons, Jenny's brother-in-law Dave Marsh cooked hot dogs and hamburgers, Neil set up a keg on his porch, Lillian gave us her informed-consumer opinion on the merits of the fire truck at Walter Pierce versus the train at 34th and Macomb, and Mary and Ana splashed happily in the little pool.

Park Road neighbor Cecile Darricarrere, mother of Lola (who can wave bye-bye in French, English and Spanish) and co-owner of the French restaurant Petits Plats (as in the French expression,"Let me make petits plats, something special, for you,") made something special for PlayStart: a gift certificate for $100 for dinner at Petits Plats, won by lucky PlayStart partygoer Jason Singer of Ingleside Terrace (to learn more about the restaurant the January issue of Washingtonian Magazine named one of the "Very Best," see www.washingtonian.com/dining/Profiles/petitsplats.html

We made over 2500 dollars and we had a lot of fun! Special thanks to Jenny Marsh and Neil Richardson, who co-hosted, and to Jamie Treworgy of Trewtech.com, our volunteer webmaster, who offered to print our invitations--and did not falter when that turned out to involve printing 3600 pieces of paper and 1800 labels, not to mention 1800 little seesaws.

Thanks to everyone who helped us assemble and deliver our invitation and "direct mail" appeal–although in our case it was more like direct male and female, as men, women, children and one dog scaled the steps of Mount Pleasant, going mail-slot to mail-slot, and saving us 600 dollars in postage. We did have to retire the dog, who kept leaving the fliers on the porch instead of putting them through the mail-slot, as we had promised the Neighborhood Alliance.

Thanks to Mara Cherkasky, Claudia Schlossberger, Anna Spencer, Steve and Joseph Askin, Tricia Davis-Muffet, her daughter Kate and her mother, Gretchen McMullen, Stephanie Snow, Sally Hunsberger, Charlotte Jacobsen, Mieke Meurs and David, Rebecca Davis, Shannon Ferguson and his yellow motorcycle, eff Bensing--and especially my neighbors on 19th St., who helped me out the night I realized I somehow had to have another 400 invitations collated, stapled and folded by the next morning–I walked down my street, knocking on doors, dropping off piles of paper, envelopes and labels and they took them in: Judy Weitz, Rosemary Regis, Kai and Chris Butler, and Mona Miller.

December 8: PlayStart, the Bancroft community playground, made its neighborhood debut. In spite of pouring rain Saturday and cold gusting wind Sunday, school and neighborhood volunteers turned out to raise $435 selling cookies and cup cakes, coffee and corn bread, pupusas and tamales at the PTA Christmas tree sale. Then our first philanthropist volunteered to match the proceeds from our sale, and we were able to put nearly $900 in our new Bank of America account.

Bancroft HeadStart parents and teachers and community people provided the food(supplemented by a generous emergency donation Sunday from Heller's Bakery when we started running out). PTA and community volunteers designed and produced a display, T-shirts and leaflets, and everyone helped sell and hand out playground information in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Many people came by to tell us what a good idea they thought it was to do a joint school-community project, and some bought a 10 cent cookie, paid with a $10 or $20 bill, and said, "Keep the change."