This and That: A Random Stagger Through Reston News

• On the eve of a fascist "smoking ban" that was put into place in Virginia restaurants earlier this week, a group of protestors decided to have a "four stogie feast" at Morton's in Reston Town Center as a protest, of sorts, setting off the fire alarms in the process.
  
  
• Reston Community Players former president Sue Pinkman was named citizen of the year by the Reston Citizens Association, the first time the award has gone to a leader of an arts group.
  
  
• Democracy was definitely in action when folks from the impoverished village of "Great" Falls slummed it came to Reston to complain about a fancy turn lane on Rt. 7 that would allow more Loudoun County poors to shatter the bucolic beauty of its 7-11 and Safeway:

  More than 150 people, most of them Great Falls residents, showed up for the meeting at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School in Reston, and they were not happy. However, the public comment period on the project closed six years ago, and it was approved in 2004. The purpose of the meeting was simply to explain that additional turn lane was necessary.

  Heh. To be fair, maybe they just want to keep Loudoun's "serial smoocher" away.
  
  
• Oracle is proposing to build a 203,000-square-foot office complex on its property in Reston.
  
  
• A few weeks back, the Washington Post had an interesting feature about 13-year-old Smar Abuagla, a Langston Hughes middle school student who chose to wear a head scarf at school for the first time this year. Was there taunting and the throwing of items at Abuagla, including a zucchini? Oh, yes.
  
  
• Palestinians are looking to build their first planned community. Guess what fancy beige real estate development they picked as a model?

  These communities are patterned after American suburban development -- the new city, Rawabi, is specifically designed for upwardly mobile families of a sort that in the United States might gravitate to places such as Reston, Va. The developments are also relying on another American import, the home mortgage, including creation of a Fannie Mae-style institution for the West Bank.

  Easy mortgages and confounding regulations. What could possibly go wrong?
  
  
• Reston resident Dwayne Phillips, 50, is walking the length of U.S. 11, bit by bit. Last year, he and his wife walked from Reston to Chattanooga, Tenn., and in October he was in Mississippi, hoping to make it the full length of the highway, which ends in New Orleans. Beats sitting on the Toll Road at rush hour, is all we know.