This and That: A Random Hopscotch Through Reston News

Apparently some other stuff has happened of late besides that, whazzitcalled, "town hall" that got Reston on the front page of the CNN and the Fox News with distinctly un-Restony words like "chaos." We wouldn't know, as we just managed to walk back to our car, conveniently parked nearly a mile away from SLHS. Moving on!

• Loudoun County was going to have a giant planned community not unlike Reston, but of course it's gone completely bankrupt and its large tracts of land were auctioned off. There can be only one! Okay, two, if you count our Satanic doppelganger in Maryland.
  
  
• The U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat 5 satellite went out of control a few weeks back, but apparently has been stabilized, though its power is at a critically low level, forcing USGS to suspend imaging operations. Which is just as well, because you know how annoying it is to watch home videos with the little low battery light flashing in the top right corner of the screen.
  
  
• The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston has been leasing space to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society of Sterling. Here's the rabbi's explanation:
  

  "The prophet Isaiah said our houses would be houses of prayer for all people," said Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk. "Now, I don't know if Isaiah could have imagined us hosting Ramadan in the synagogue, but the basic idea is there."

  A nice antidote to the -- at times -- thinly veiled hate we saw the other night.
  
  
• That public hearing on Reston bus service we wrote about a while back happened, and the good news is that no service cuts are planned. The bad news? RIBS is horribly inefficient.

  Christy Wegener, a transportation planner for Fairfax County, said there is no plan to alter RIBS but planners wanted the community's input on the best way to make changes that could improve the system. Wegener said some routes are late 70 percent of the time. "That's unacceptable," she said. She said Reston and Herndon have changed a lot in the past decade and RIBS has not kept up.

  
  
• Even doggies can get involved in charity! The American Cancer Society held a "bark for life" at Lake Fairfax last weekend. Clicky clicky for cute pictures and whatnot.
  
  
• Speaking of the Town Hall -- we just can't let it go! -- apparently while folks were screaming at each other inside, honest-to-goodness fisticuffs were happening outside. Let this be the final word, though:

  In the words of high school student Katie Smith, 17, who attended the event, "It was better than Springer."

  Well put.