A few weeks ago, at a town dinner honoring Garrett Park‘s archivist, UD chatted with her friend Peter Benjamin about the Metro.

She mentioned the Metro to Peter because she vaguely recalled he had some position there, and because there’d just been some bad train accidents.

As she began talking about the system, she saw Peter assume the brace-for-impact position. He clearly expected — clearly often heard — angry complaints. But UD only wanted to say that despite its difficulties she loved the Metro system; that she was grateful, year after year, to live in a city with clean, well-lit, reasonably reliable public transportation.

Peter’s shoulders relaxed as she spoke; he looked astonished, elated.

That vague position of his in the Metro system has been clarified: He’s just been appointed chair of the board.

Peter Benjamin, a veteran engineer with 20 years of experience in senior positions at Metro, took the helm of the agency’s board of directors Thursday, stepping into a critical role as the agency faces the biggest budget and leadership challenges in its history.

… Over the course of 20 years, Benjamin, 67, a technocrat known for his grasp of the complexities of running Metro, served as the agency’s chief financial officer, director of planning and senior financial adviser.

Before that, he worked on technology development and program analysis for a decade at the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, now the Federal Transit Administration. In the early 1970s, he headed the DOT’s Urban Analysis Group. He served as mayor of Garrett Park from 1996-2000 and 2002-04…

That last bit’s the most important, of course, packing the most prestige…

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Garrett Park’s scary tree canopy also made the Washington Post:

Being at work Dec. 29 was a good thing for Darren Welch and his wife, Joanna, because it meant a tree that had crashed onto their Garrett Park deck and tore down an electrical line that day hadn’t also crushed their cars.

“The deck was essentially destroyed,” said Darren Welch, whose house is on Kenilworth Avenue.

The tree caused power outages to 116 homes and damaged a gas meter, causing it to leak, according to Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. A few Kenilworth Avenue homes were evacuated as a precaution. The tree, a mighty Northern red oak with sound wood, probably had no obvious signs of what the town arborist thinks was the cause of its downfall: root rot.

“For a tree to blow down without leaves on it like that — first of all, it was old, but it probably had root damage from construction or something that may have happened years ago,” said Phil Normandy, a Kensington horticulturist who consults with Garrett Park about the health of trees on town property.

A tree such as Welch’s, which was not in Normandy’s official purview, can thrive even though it has a weak root system, delivering nutrients without stability, Normandy said.

If that diagnosis is not a comfort to residents living under the shade of Garrett Park’s arboretum — a title that since 1977 has spurred Garrett Park to plant more than 400 trees and shrubs for beautification and education — perhaps this will be: Normandy, a tree specialist who has worked for 30 years at Brookside Gardens, checks the town’s trees once or twice a year for evidence of poor health. Trees he deems unstable are put on a removal list; rogues that might become dangerous are put on a watch list and get more regular checkups…

One tree that will be removed this year, a big willow oak on Montrose Road, had many residents concerned because it has a large cavity. Normandy poked around in the hole, “much in the way a dentist would check a cavity,” but couldn’t determine the health of the tree, which was still outwardly lush.

The town called Bartlett Tree Co., which has technology that can assess the extent of a cavity in a tree, and the decision was made to remove it.

“It still could snap, and it probably would make mincemeat of somebody’s house, so that one will be coming down this winter,” Normandy said…

House, deck, car — Aren’t we missing something here? Trees can make mincemeat of people too, you know…