Happy mid-October! We have plenty of cool places to spend your weekend, including …

Multicultural Career Intern Program (Columbia Heights Education Campus, 3101 16th Street NW)

Between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM on Saturday, head over to MCIP’s 3rd Annual Booksale in support of the middle school and high school libraries at the CHEC — thousands of books in all genres at very reasonable prices.

Earth Sangha (at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, 13950 Dawson Beach Road, Woodbridge, VA)

Help out with invasive plant removal, clearing invasive vines and grasses from Earth Sangha’s grassland site, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Saturday. Directions right here.

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From “The Suburbanization of Housing Choice Voucher Recipients,” published by The Brookings Institution on October 11, 2011:

Just as the suburbanization of poverty has gathered momentum, Americans who use housing choice vouchers (HCV) to help pay for their housing have increasingly moved into suburban areas as well.

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Go Big on Education: Five Big Ideas for the Senate to Put in Federal Education Law (Center for American Progress): “Next week the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is scheduled to vote on a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act” and CAP here outlines “five big policy ideas the Senate should put in its bill to ensure the next ESEA is big and bold enough to improve the education system, and thus our nation’s economy.” The fifth and final recommendation? Encourage and reward bold thinking by educators, authorizing “competitive programs such as Race to the Top, the Investing in Innovation Fund, or the Teacher Incentive Fund, to spur states and districts to innovation.” Do you agree?

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Hope that you all had a good long weekend! So, do you have a fall wedding or anniversary coming up this month? Why not combine philanthropy and celebration with another cool Catalogue web feature: gift registries.

First, just create a CFP account. We talked about this last month, and it’s both free and simple. Once you’ve done that, browse our non-profits as much as you like. If a particular organization captures your interest, click the bolded “add to favorites” link at the bottom of their description (see below):

Once an organization is one of your “favorites,” you can add it to your Gift Registry:

Just keep adding non-profits in the same way and, once you have saved all your favorites, you can publish your registry: including a title, personal message, and easy-t0-share URL. And friends and family can make gifts to your chosen non-profits in celebration of your event. Moreover, if you would like visitors to your registry to consider specific wish list items from a certain non-profit, you can leave a comment on that non-profit’s page — which only your visitors will see. And you can update your registry at any time. Think of it as a celebratory way to customize the CFP site for your event:

Enjoy the weekend, Greater Washington! And consider spending it with …

Dance Place (3225 8th Street NE)

Precise, positive, and powerful. Join the Dance Place Step Team for “Step It Up DC,” an afternoon of workshops followed by an informal performance starting at 5:30 PM on Friday.

Habitat for Humanity of Montgomery County (9110 Gaither Road, Gaithersburg, MD)

Do you need to gain control of your energy expenses? If you attended the first session of “Watt Watchers,” stop by for your second FREE energy saving class on Saturday from 10:00 AM to noon.

Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (545 7th Street SE)

Starting on Saturday at 5:00 PM, the Capitol Hill Art League (CHAL) proudly presents an all-media juried exhibit entitled “The Art of Craft.” The juror of the show is Steve Fleming, artist and instructor at The Art League.

And in this coming week … Earth Sangha will be planting sumac, wingstem, and various goldenrods at Meadwood Recreation Area on Wednesday from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM; the Mautner Project‘s Raffle for a Reason begins on Wednesday too!

The present moment is creative, creating with an unheard-of intensity.

– pioneer of modern architecture Le Corbusier, born today in 1887

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

– American novelist Caroline Gordon, born today in 1895

DC-Area Apartment Rents Rise, Vacancy Second Lowest in the Country (Urban Turf via DCentric): “… rents in the DC area for Class A and B apartments have risen 3.6 percent over the past twelve months while vacancy rates sit at 2.8 percent, the lowest for any metro area in the country except for New York City.” For Class A apartments (primarily large buildings constructed after 1991), the vacancy rate is just 1.6% and rental rates “averaged $2,582/month, up from $2,448/month in September 2010.” So not only is affordable rental housing difficult to locate in the city, any rental housing is not easy to come by — and the search alone can require both funds and time.

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Today, let’s catch a glimpse into … Capital Partners for Education, which serves motivated students from under-resourced neighborhoods who both need and want a rigorous high school preparatory education. On the road to college, CPE offers students a unique package of tuition assistance to attend one of 17 partner private secondary schools, as well as adult mentors to guide them. Psyched for the new school year, the freshman class of 2015 jumped (or perhaps climbed) into into this past September’s Back to School Retreat.

For the past five years, 100% of CPE’s graduating seniors have gone on to college. You can help CPE maintain that perfect record right here.

DC has many resources in abundance. But apparently, doctors are not one of them. A new report from the DC Board of Medicine reveals that, while nearly 9,000 doctors are licensed to work here, fewer than half actually practice in the District. Of that, 72% do not live in the District and and less than 75% spend more than 20 hours per week with patients. According to the Washington Post:

The numbers drop even further among actively practicing primary-care doctors: 382 in internal medicine, 307 in pediatrics, 119 in obstetrics and gynecology, and 110 in family practice. [...]

The report found that actively practicing doctors are clustered in Wards 1, 2, 3 and 5, near hospitals. Health-care experts said any shortages that might be perceived in the District depend very heavily on where a person lives.

In Ward 3, for example, there is an abundance of physicians, with “literally hundreds of doctors to choose from,” said Michael Williams, chief of health-care operations for the nonprofit DC Primary Care Association. But he said only 90 doctors list a business address east of the Anacostia River. Read all »