* AWARDS: The US Green Building Council has officially awarded LEED Gold status to Canal Park, thanks to its sustainable development design that includes electric car charging stations, an extensive storm water collection and reuse system, as well as tree boxes and bio swales that provide filtration for street-level runoff surrounding the park.

* SPOTLIGHTS: The spring edition of the 11th Street Bridges newsletter is out, without any actual news on the project but instead spotlighting the small and local businesses that have partnered with DDOT on the project.

* TWEEPING: If you are wanting to keep up with the ever-growing lineup of nearby businesses and organizations, feel free to bookmark my Near Southeast Businesses Twitter list, as an easy way to quickly scan their latest missives in one spot.

* PROPERTY FOR SALE!: Over the years I've had a lot of people contact me desperate for leads on available property. I finally have acres of empty land to offer, but the commute might be a bit rough.

* BETA TO THE MAX: I've been down the rabbit hole over the past few days, as I have finally begun to redesign the interior pages of JDLand, which have needed a refresh since about 2006. (I already mentioned my first cut at redesigning the home page.)

It's a pretty mammoth undertaking, and will take a while to implement, but if you want to see an early prototype of what I'm going for, you can look at the Community Center page, or the Square 701 page, or the Akridge Half Street page, or my Past News page for Yards Parcel A. Note that some stuff will be broken as of now, but the pages do respond to different screen sizes, which also means that the non-blog portion of the site should become much more mobile friendly. As of now it's probably a bit screwy in older browsers, but should be okay if you're using up-to-date Chrome, Firefox, or IE. And the irony isn't lost on me that I haven't been posting much work on JDLand over the past few days because I've been working so much on JDLand.

* VAN NESS LOBBYING: Members of the Van Ness Parents Group are urging interested parties to pick up the phone on Thursday, May 1 and call councilmember David Catania's office to urge that the full $15 million earmarked for the modernization of Van Ness Elementary be kept in next year's budget. Back on April 17, Catania, who chairs the Education Committee, commented that he would consider reallocating all of the Van Ness funds to other schools, postponing the school's reopening until Fall 2016, which would be a significant blow to the parents who have been working for a number of years to get the neighborhood's elementary school reopened. The Hill Rag has more on this issue, along with other current issues affecting nearby schools.

* RANDOM PHOTO 2: It seems hard to believe that construction of the long-delayed Capper Community Center could actually be about to start, but this sign erected at 5th and L last week would appear to be another step in that direction.

* TASTE OF 8TH: It's a little outside the JDLand lines, but since hunger knows no boundaries, I'll mention that Taste of 8th is back, on Saturday, May 3, from 1 to 4 pm. For $5 for a single taste or $20 for a five-pack, you can get an appetizer-sized "taste" from many of the restaurants along Barracks Row.

* TINKERING: In my quest to never leave well enough alone, I'm doing some work on the site that may cause things to look (unintentionally) odd. Hopefully if that happens, I'll notice relatively quickly, but I'd be happy if you'd let me know. And, if you're brave, feel free to test out a beta version of the home page that resizes various elements based on your screen width. (Rejoice, ultra-big-screen users!) Just remember that "beta" means I may break it while working on it.

* ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM: On March 21, there is to be a forum with DC mayoral candidates focusing on sustainability and environmental issues, at the Boilermaker Shops at 300 Tingey St., SE, from 6 to 8 pm. It has been organized by the local chapter of the Sierra Club along with the Capitol Riverfront BID, the neighborhood group Near Southeast Community Partners and a coalition of multiple groups now operating under an umbrella group called United for a Healthy Anacostia River. The clock is ticking down toward DC Primary Election Day, on April 1.

And, speaking of the river, the Anacostia Riverkeeper group is having a fundraiser on April 3 from 5 to 8 pm. Bring this flyer (and your appetite) to Nando's Peri-Peri at the Boilermaker Shops to help support its efforts to clean up the Anacostia watershed. They'd like an RSVP in advance, for an accurate head count.

* AT THE DRIVE-IN: Presumably in anticipation of their not-as-yet-underway Ballpark Square office/residential/hotel/retail project, developers Grosvenor, McCaffery and Skanska are co-sponsoring with the BID a "Groundbreaking at the Capitol Riverfront Drive-In Movie Weekend" on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22. They are inviting folks to "pull into the converted drive-in movie theater at 1st and M Streets, SE to watch great films and purchase popular DC food truck cuisine." Friday's movie will be Toy Story, and Saturday's will be The Matrix. Both screenings start at 7:30 pm.

* TRUCKEROO: The monthly DC food truck festival is returning to the Fairgrounds at Half and M SE for another year, starting on April 11.

* LA LA LA LA LA: The always successful Opera in the Outfield is back for another year, this time on May 3 with a simulcast of Mozart's "The Magic Flute." Gates open at 5 pm for the variety of "pre-game" activities, and the show starts at 7 pm.

And, I suppose I should mention that, nestled in between these various events, there will also be the Nationals' exhibition game against the Tigers on March 29, and the team's home opener on April 4 against the Braves. Just in case you weren't aware.

Have an event happening in the neighborhood? Let me know.

Cleaning out the pending file:

For the two or three people who use it, I've done some cleaning up of the five million lines of code on my Near Southeast Transit Options page, and it should now be more or less functional again.

It's an intense morning in the neighborhood as a shooter has barricaded himself inside the Washington Navy Yard. There are updates being fed all over the web and Twitter for those wanting to keep up. But I did want to pop my head in to say that I am still on hiatus, so I won't be returning to the Near Southeast news feed as of now. (I may have some other content coming in the coming weeks, though, so don't desert me completely.) And thank you to everyone for all the kind thoughts over the past weeks.

Here's the pseudo-official obituary, in its original form, before it gets mangled in various publications across the United States.

I'm not anywhere close to a point where I can wax poetic about any of this, except to say that it was a most cruel twist of fate to deprive my mother of the abilities to speak and eat, when there was never a person she didn't want to either talk to or feed (or both). Even in the very late stages of her illness, her smile and excitement when anyone arrived to see her lit up the room, in the same way she had lit up innumerable rooms over the years with her energy and enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, as her brain degenerated it lost any ability to send any signals other than GO-GO-GO, and her body finally gave out, like an engine that had run for way too long with no oil.

There is relief that she is now released from what these diseases did to her, but it is staggering to all of us who knew her that we are going to have to figure out a way to come to terms with the tremendous void she has left behind.

As for JDLand, I'm going to take some time to recover from these past months. I'll send up a flare when I decide what the next chapter will be.

In early 2012, after a few months of noticing her having problems remembering words, she was diagnosed with a form of dementia (FTD) that has left her memory intact but very quickly stole her speech completely and caused other cognitive issues. This was devastating enough, but within a few months we also found her to be suffering from a form of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) that targeted her throat and mouth muscles, swiftly affecting her ability to chew and swallow food.

This has been such a body blow, not only to see this woman so full of life and energy be stolen away from us week by week, but to have known from the moment of diagnosis that there was absolutely not a thing we could do about it. It's like the entire family has been riding in a car with no hands on the steering wheel.

Because it's a rare combination, and because every patient with these diseases progresses differently, we've been very much on our own in terms of trying to care for her, with my father bearing the brunt of the exhausting day-to-day work while I turned my laser-like research abilities away from hyperlocal real estate and toward trying to come up with the best strategies for keeping Mom comfortable. All while nursing a desperately broken heart, alongside the shock that everyone who knows her has felt--this was not the anticipated ending of the story of this cowgirl from Wyoming who came to the big city at age 19 in 1959. (She was supposed to drop dead on a golf course at age 95, probably after a hole-in-one. And she was certainly supposed to outlive her cranky and lazy daughter.)

We are now seeing a crossroads ahead of us, as they say. So it's time for me to make sure that my focus is where it needs to be, and that I give myself permission to stop trying to keep up with other parts of my life that I just don't have the strength or interest to deal with right now. There's too much going on in the neighborhood now for me to just keep going with a hit-or-miss approach that only serves to make me feel like I'm doing less than my best.

I'll still be around on Twitter at my @jacdupree account, because I will always need an outlet for generalized snark and carping. But I really am ending the Near Southeast news service until the storm clouds clear, whenever that may be.

I'm not 100 percent sure that I'll come back to the same approach of JDLand's past 10 years, but I'll always have my camera in hand.

Thanks to all for your patience over the past few months, and for your readership for all these years. See you around....!