Greenbelt Online invites all of you who live or work in Greenbelt to contribute items about your life during the shutdown in any media – photos, text, video, screen shots of zoom meetings, etc – to be compiled here in one place for posterity. Also, sharing may help other Greenbelters during these challenging times.

We’re seeking:

• Tips – what’s helping you stay healthy or sane
• How you’ve adapted to life during the shutdown
• Any personal story about the pandemic or shutdown
• Photos, videos, poems, songs or other art about the pandemic or reflecting how life is different during the shutdown

For text entries (stories, tips), you may either write about them yourself or simply provide details and we’ll write the story for you, for your approval before publication.

Win $50 Restaurant Credit

Help our local restaurants that are providing takeout or delivery services during the shutdown!

• Two winners of $50 each will be chosen – one at random and the other an “editor’s choice.”
• Enter as many times as you’d like – the more the better!
• Send to gardenersusan@gmail.com.
• Photos should be 1000 pixels wide.
• Winners may apply their $50 credit at a locally-owned Greenbelt restaurant of their choice.
• The deadline for the second of these contests is September 1.

Archiving this Moment

This is an opportunity for Greenbelters to be part of something bigger, because other towns are doing this, too. For example, the DC Public Library:

DC Public Library’s Special Collections Department wants your help in telling the story of daily life in the District during this period of social distancing. We are always connected to history, but it is rare that all of us are so drastically and suddenly affected by an event. Help us tell the story of this moment through your pictures and words.

And we like their “tips for participating”:

• Look for what has changed – recently posted rules on social distancing, face masks, empty streets, related street art
• Only submit images or stories that you have created
• Share images from inside the District of Columbia Greenbelt
• Keep in mind submissions may be eligible to be part of our collection or re-posted publicly

To participate in what may be a worldwide archive of pandemic experiences, we encourage Greenbelters to use the hashtag #archivethismoment when posting shutdown or pandemic-related photos, et cetera on social media.

NOTE: By contributing these pandemic stories, photos, et cetera, Greenbelters are making an unconditional donation of the material to the nonprofit Greenbelt Online.org and the Greenbelt Museum/City of Greenbelt, which reserve the right to keep, lend, or otherwise dispose of the donated material, and may use the material on our website, for social media or other postings, in promotional materials or in future exhibits.