On display now until December 29 at the New Deal Cafe is the Ekphrastic Fantastic Show, the Cafe’s third so far. So what is it? According to the Poetry Foundation, an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.  Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a ...

It’s thanks to my recent visit to the Norfolk Botanical Garden that the question in the title ever entered my mind. Like Greenbelt, it began as a New Deal project – in its case a $76,278 grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Unlike Greenbelt, all the 220 workers who built the first garden there were African-American – 200 women ...

The spanking new Royal Farms on Greenbelt Road (between the Honda dealer and the American Legion) has really opened, after several soft and official opening dates were announced and then changed. So I missed those, but stopped by a couple days later. It should be fully operational today (24 hours a day, 7 days a week), with opening problems solved ...

by Catherine Plaisant. Photos and videos by Catherine Plaisant and John Klinovsky. When the temperature finally dipped below 90 in mid-July, John Klinovsky and I looked for something to do that we had never done. What about a day at the racetrack? I have lived in the area for about 37 years without ever setting foot at Laurel Park.  In ...

Lincoln Smith speaking to members of the Greenbelt-Beltsville Garden Club in his forest garden. Lincoln Smith has been described, by one Washington Post  reporter, as a “landscape architect gone rogue,” after he quit his “high-end landscape architecture firm” to experiment and advance forest agriculture, the goal proclaimed on the home page of Forested. He started his “forest garden” in 2012 ...

When it’s THIS HOT OUTSIDE, museuming has never looked so appealing! That’s what I found last week when I visited the Baltimore Museum of  Art, which was easy and fun, I can’t remember why it’s taken me so long to see it – decades! Some details: It’s surprisingly FREE! The on-site parking costs $12/day; there may be free parking in ...

This week, with the extreme heat, I’ve been heading out at 6 a.m. for a walk before it gets unbearable. I’ve visited Lake Artemesia twice and I have news (at least it was news to me.) Walking past this newish work-out spot I stopped in my tracks – kayak rentals now available? Self-service? And just a few feet away is ...

Muppet’s creator Jim Henson is universally beloved, I think it’s safe to say, but he’s also a local hero here in Prince George’s County. We claim him because: Henson attended a variety of grade schools in his youth, including Hyattsville High School until it was closed in 1951. He completed his high school career at the newly opened Northwestern High ...

Introduction: Midwest Suburban Girl Walks into Greenbelt (with a Camera) I grew up in a suburb north of Chicago and I spent my whole young life wanting to get as far away from it as possible. So it’s funny, but also fitting, that I would return to the suburbs for my senior thesis project at George Washington University. It’s an ...

Mural depicting the arts at ERHS By reporters and photographers: ERHS sophomores Alexandra Herrera-Mazariegos and Sophia Reynolds For the past few weeks, the Eleanor Roosevelt High School Art Club has been working several weekdays after school to create a mural on the ledge looking over the stairwells. The mural represents the arts of ERHS. This painstaking project vividly captures the ...

40th Birthday Celebration Greenbelt’s beloved Co-op Grocery and Pharmacy invites us all to celebrate its 40th Birthday this Sunday, June 2, from 11-1 in Roosevelt Center and in-store, too, with a Local Food Fair! In the Center we can sample foods from great local companies like My Dad’s Chips, Matet’s Kitchen lumpia, Pop’s Praiseworthy kettle corn, and Garden Riot Sorbet, ...

UMD’s Conference on the “Local News Crisis” I recently attended a fascinating conference at the U.Maryland Merrill School of Journalism, along with Greenbelt News Review managing editor Anna Bedford-Dillow and dozens of other journalists from around the DMV. There was at least one Pulitzer winner in the audience of DMV-based journalists but I especially liked talking with the ones here ...

UMD student volunteers Uchenna Ekwunife, Ethan Pham, Trinity Killip, Meseret Arnold, with their handheld speed radar. Not shown Miguel Rodriguez. Photo by Jeff Lemieux by Jeff Lemieux Student volunteers from UMD’s Information Studies program recently recorded speeds of 68 and 70 miles per hour during a 30-minute weekday radar study of Greenbelt Road near NASA. The recording site was the ...

This April, 17 students from Greenbelt’s Eleanor Roosevelt High School traveled to Dallas, bringing 3 robots that they had designed and built. They traveled to the 2024 VEX robotics World Championship, which is billed as the largest robotics competition in the world. This year, 820 robots from 41 countries competed at this high-energy 3-day event. Each spring since 2007, the ...

Danielle at Greenbelt National Park watching community drumming with Katy Gaughan. Danielle Towers, a photojournalism major at George Washington University, first came to Greenbelt in 2022 to photograph our Labor Day Parade for an assignment, at the suggestion of the professor, who’d seen it herself. That’s when I met Danielle, as my friends and I were sitting along Crescent Road ...

Bumblebees on a Seven-Son Tree. Like many Greenbelters, I’m alarmed by the decline of bees and other pollinators and want the plants in my tiny yard to help support them. So because the coleus I’d been growing in pots in my front garden attracted no wildlife at all, I asked garden blog readers (in this post) to suggest more pollinator-friendly ...

First, Prince George’s County passed a “MeatOut Day” proclamation, urging residents to abstain from eating meat and consider the diverse alternatives available. The Council noted that “residents face a variety of chronic health conditions related to diet and the County Council is committed to improving the health of all of our residents.” We’re also encouraged to “consider the health, humane ...

English ivy growing in trees between the “Mother and Child” statue and the Granite Building in Roosevelt Center. Hey, Greenbelters! Now, before the leaves are out it’s pretty easy to spot English ivy growing in trees, where it can damage them. And a lesser-known harm is from the berries iti produces after it’s grown vertically and matures – berries that ...

From left, Barrie Hershkowitz, Greenbelters Steve and Janet Mirsky and Patty Green McCarty, and senior volunteer Dennis Hartnett.   I’ve posted my appreciation for the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge several times on this blog, including a First Visit in November, a Tram Ride in mid-March, and  the North Tract’s “Wildlife Conservation and Recreation Day.” The 12,000+ acre refuge is just 15 ...

Greenbelt is blessed with an abundance of events celebrating Black History Month – hope you’re partaking! I’ve particularly enjoyed the art shows. At the New Deal Cafe Top: Shaymar Higgs, curator of the show. Below: Lois Alexander-Lane speaking about her mother’s role in black fashion history, and artist Shanai Mushala. All month, the New Deal Cafe is filled with art ...