So often during tumultuous times, Washington’s village, Capitol Hill, is a calm refuge, a place where friends meet under the elms while the whole earth trembles. But not the week past.

It was a week of huge minor events. General Motors announced the end of production of the hideous, warlike Humvee, and The New York Times reported very thoroughly on a new phenomenon: emotional-support dogs.

Of the Humvee, the less said the better. I have always loved General Motors, a company that plows on, making huge blunders and then slowly correcting itself and throughout making cars that to me at least represent everything amiable and lovable about America (plus they have the world’s best electrical systems).

Thus the announcement of the end of the Humvee was a welcome sign of health and good sense, like a drunk waking up and promising never to drink anything stronger than Sprite. On the local scene, the Hill’s most prominent Humvee was the crusher owned by Doug Jefferies of Results the Gym; it drew constant complaints to which Jefferies paid no attention. Now it is a relic.

The emotional-support dog, on the other hand, is a subject so enjoyable as to beg more exploration. It appeared in the Times Sunday; unlike our somehow tentative and patronizing “gray lady” the Post, the Times seems desperate to prove itself far ahead of every trend and weekly presents a parade of weird and strange people and behaviors as if they were normal — thus the dog.

The emotional-support dog, it seems, is a dog with an owner so fragile and wracked that it (the dog) is necessary to maintain mental health. Though New York restaurateurs, hoteliers, shop owners, etc. have long frowned on dogs coming in to places of business, it seems that some New Yorky dog owners have produced documentation, doctors’ letters and notes from lawyers, to show that they should be allowed to keep their dogs at hand (or lap), just as blind people are allowed their guide dogs.

Their shattered nerves and hair-trigger psyches, it’s argued, are just as worthy of protection by the Americans with Disabilities Act as are the blind and the deaf. And New York authorities have agreed. The 1990 act states that animals trained to help people function should be allowed access to all businesses catering to the public.

The emotional-support dog is bound to come here. Not only are many thousands of dogs on the Hill, but also the quite intense and hyperactive type of personality of owners here poses a real need for emotional support from dogs.

There has already been one case of such a dog in Congress, in the office of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa); an aide, according to a source, kept a dog under her desk because she was deaf. Curiously, her job was to answer the telephone, the source avows.

After all, dogs are far more sensible than their owners. Happiness is a blanket, a bone, a run in the park, a regular dinner, a pat on the head. Would it be so for us.

Right now many of these dogs exercise their support function only in certain parks where owners gather for morning coffee before going off to move the world with legislation, legal briefs or scribbling. But thanks to New York, it seems certain that someone soon will challenge a Starbucks or a Metro station manager or one of the 8th Street boîtes with a needed chow or poodle and will inform the owner that the dog is emotional support, covered by the Disabilities Act.

It’s high time.

ELIOT JUNIOR HIGH
Charter partner?

Public school Superintendent Clifford B. Janey’s plans to close six schools east of Rock Creek Park has been seized upon in the hypersensitive world of D.C. race relations, yet it is the eastern half of the city that has been leaking black families into Prince George’s and Montgomery counties for decades.

One affected school presents a unique opportunity. It is Eliot Junior High School, the junior partner of much larger Eastern High School, located at 1830 Constitution Ave. N.E. Eliot won’t be closed; Janey plans to lease excess space at the school, which has enrolled about half its capacity of 776 students.

Who would want to rent half a junior high? A charter school, natch. But it remains to be seen whether D.C. Public Schools officials will be able to stomach face-to-face interaction with a charter school. Many public school teachers and administrators see the charter schools as the enemy.

CROPP OF YAWNS
Tony’s dull decision

Need more proof that Mayor Tony Williams (D) is bored out of his skull?

Item: His mayoral-race endorsement of the city’s tedious, unimaginative, business-as-usual City Council chairwoman, Linda Cropp (D). Sadly, it was inevitable that Cropp, who operates out of sight and behind closed doors, and whose only great attribute is patient ambition, should get Williams’ nod.

Mrs. Cropp, a failure on the school board, hack as a City Council member, fumbler and backtracker as chairwoman, taker of all sides of a position, will usher in the new post-Williams era under a cloud of euphemisms, clichés and old Marion Barry cronies.

There seems little chance that voters will revolt against Cropp, even though she is as different from Williams as chalk to cheese. Without a crisis to awaken voters, her closest challenger, Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4), is seriously damaged and the other candidates will split the anti-Cropp vote.

Cropp has quite naturally surrounded herself with political relics of the dysfunctional Barry era. In fact she’s married to one of them, Dwight Cropp, a senior Barry adviser, a man who has defended Barry for turning City Hall into a job bank.

Dwight Cropp left politics to become a professor at George Washington University in 1989, the year before Barry was arrested and charged in the infamous crack cocaine sting. Barry associates’ names include Elijah Rogers, Marshall Brown and Max Berry, and, according to veteran reporter Harry Jaffe, even Ivanhoe Donaldson, Barry crony and Barry’s top strategist in his first mayoral campaign, a man who went to jail for embezzling city funds, is indirectly involved, working for Cropp pollster Diane Feldman.

These connections don’t prove that Cropp is another Barry; it’s generational. Barry and Cropp arrived in D.C. the same year (1965) both served on the school board, both came up through the City Council. The institutional memory and the mind-set are parallel. But don’t look for Barry’s charm or his in-your-face attitude toward Congress.

The primary is now hers to lose. The most voters can hope for is that she will be a faithful trustee of the Williams trust fund — an inheritor, not a creator. The danger is that the cronies are smiling, ready and waiting to revive the bad old days of Barry, and soon may well have free access to 1 Judiciary Square.

Metro

• Port Cafe, the long awaited coffeehouse on Eastern Market corner, 7th at North Carolina, has an unmatched location — but sippers and schmoozers there report little buzz in the beverages. It’s just another coffee shop with clean décor and comfortable seating. ...

• All that business about “induction” (good) and “deduction” (bad) at the CIA sent Hillites scurrying to the dictionary as Gen. Michael Hayden testified before the Senate intelligence committee. “Induction” means summoning the facts to fit the argument; “deduction” means gathering all the facts to produce the argument. ...

• Barry Watch: The odd thing is not that former mayor and present Councilman Marion Barry (D), the city’s top cop magnet, got involved in a minor traffic accident last week; it was the circumstances that look bad: (1) after midnight, (2) 1st and K streets S.E., where the street cry is simply “need anything?” (3) alone and “visiting a friend.” ...

•The city has money ready to help moderate-income people make down payments on homes. But prices here have towered so far out of sight that the $20,000 to $30,000 available per transaction won’t cut it. Over $10 million in down-payment assistance is being returned to the general fund. ...

• What to do with RFK, now that the new stadium is here (or at least begun)? Experience shows the old place did just fine after the Redskins abandoned it for the suburbs — mainly with soccer, music and shows. The new sports entrant is pro lacrosse, now negotiating to play in the D.C. Armory. But RFK would be perfect for the sport. ...

• New at Market Lunch, the venerable restaurant within Eastern Market: an array of fish items, including a seasonal rockfish sandwich (as well as the normal whiting) and seasonal sea trout, the fabulous migrating fish just now making its way up the bays of the East Coast. ...

• Momentum for the $400 million National Capital Medical Center at former D.C. General ground to a halt when city Chief Financial Officer Nat Gandhi pointed out the obvious future financial risks. Now what about restoring part of the existing hospital to make a smaller, more efficient treatment center?