A Weather Blight, Get Out for the Night and the Purple Line in Sight

Happy Tuesday, Takoma Park! 

It's National Night Out Day—er, Night! That, and a few other things you need to know to be in the know in Takoma Park today, brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department:

1. All Good Things Must Come to an End: And so it is with the heavenly weather we saw to open the week. The National Weather Service says to expect a rainy Tuesday, followed by a return to reality—it is August, after all—with clouds, humidity, a chance of showers and thunderstorms and temperatures in the mid-80s throughout the remainder of the workweek.

2. Get Out!: Tonight is National Night Out across Montgomery County. Piney Branch Elementary hosts Takoma Park’s community gathering. Learn more here.

3. Not Your Mother’s Newspaper: Not for long anyway, if you’re Washington Post Co. CEO Don Graham, whose family, for four generations, has owned the venerable newspaper known for the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. The paper of record in the nation’s capital and other Post Co. properties, including The Gazette, will be sold to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

4. ICYMI: Cheers and Jeers: Construction and operation of the Purple Line could be put in private hands, Gov. Martin O’Malley said quite publicly on Monday in Bethesda. Get off our trail, onlookers said.

5. If a Tree is Felled in Your Yard, and the County Charges $3,700, Does It Make a Sound?: It does among Takoma Park Patch readers, who sounded off about Monday’s article that itself looked at reader reaction to a new Montgomery County law requiring residents and businesses to pay the cost of planting three new trees for every one that they cut down. Robert Curry called the law “asinine.” Jay Levy said “in a more sane world, government would have plenty of money” for tree removal instead of warplanes. Barbie Rosenblatt put it bluntly: “We must get rid of this law.”

Keep up with big news from around the county and around the state on Facebook: Get Montgomery County Top News here and click here to “like” our Maryland Patch page. 

For a full list of things to do this week, check out the Patch events calendar.