Chuck is a project superintendent for Nardi Construction, the company that, along with Akridge, is putting the finishing touches on a new state-of-the-art evidence control facility for the District's police department. The building is a couple of hundred yards from the vacant lot where "Guns Into Plowshares" had sat rusting for the last few years. As part of the construction, sculptor Esther Augsburger's artwork was installed out front. It's a huge, four-ton plow blade encrusted with hundreds of disabled handguns collected during the city's Wild West '90s.  I thought Esther might be glad it isn't on its side, forlorn, but the news of the move didn't improve her mood. This marks the second time the sculpture has been relocated without informing her, which she says violates an agreement signed by all parties when "Guns Into Plowshares" was donated in 1997.  "We offered to take it back and said we would finance refinishing and re-placing of the sculpture," said Esther, who created the work with her son Michael. "They said, 'No way, that's our sculpture. We want it placed near our police department where the public can see the message is coming from us.' "  Esther says not very many people will see it where it is now, given that it's in an odd little corner of the city, near the vehicle impound lot and police academy.  "That sculpture is not just a minor piece of work, you know," she said. "For it to be stuck way down there, I just don't understand."  Chuck McNulty says the police like it, though. They walk up to it, look at the guns - turned in during an amnesty - and point them out as if they were old friends.  I was at work one Saturday a few months ago when District workers were converting a piece of 15th Street NW into bike lanes. They striped the westernmost lane, demarcating the bike area. They put up stanchions. Later that week the parking meters on that side of the street were removed.  I applaud the city for its bike-friendly ways, the legacy of previous mayor Adrian Fenty and his transportation director, Gabe Klein.  And yet I wonder about the wording on the signs that are supposed to keep drivers from plastering the cyclists using the lanes. The signs read "Turning Vehicles" above this somewhat rebus-like arrangement:  [Stop sign] to [pedestrian] [bicycle].  Shouldn't that "to" be a "for"? Don't we stop for pedestrians, as opposed to stopping to them? Otherwise, aren't the signs instructing drivers who are turning left to get out of their vehicles and walk or bike?  Speaking of signs, I noticed that the sign above the old Christian Science Reading Room on Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring is partially covered by a new sign announcing the next tenant: Jamachi Plastic Surgery and Medispa.  I guess matters of the body are more important than matters of the soul. (Never fear, the reading room just moved a few blocks.)  Heartbreak of the modern Washingtonian in winter: While walking down the street in the bitter cold, do you text inexpertly with your gloves on or do you take your gloves off, risking frostbite just so you can be communicating for every single minute?
Just a few weeks ago, I wrote that "Guns Into Plowshares," the massive, metaphorical sculpture that once stood in front of police headquarters in downtown D.C., was still languishing on its side near Blue Plains in Southwest. Imagine my surprise when Chuck McNulty told me it wasn't.