Frankly, I’ve ignored this blog for a while now because I’m blogging so many other places, some for pay. And it’s on those other blogs that I’ve been posting reports of my new home and garden in Greenbelt, which means there’s nowhere to send people who just want to know what’s up with me, especially my nongardening friends and family.
So here’s a catchup, and from here on I’ll be updating here more regularly, at least to send readers to new posts I’ve published elsewhere.
On Moving, and Starting a New Garden
My lawnless old garden.
- First I fret about selling my over-landscaped old garden and the house on it.
My new back garden, definitely "before".
- Then in November, after buying and selling, I fret about creating a new garden, where I hoped to NOT repeat the same old mistakes.
The front was available to be planted in the spring, as soon as the flagstone patio and walkway were done. The early May report is here. Late-season update coming soon.
Back garden in late July.
By mid-July all the construction was done, including the flagstone patio on the back, so my first back-yard post is from late July. Then I wrote about back-yard suggestions from blog readers. Hey this blogging really pays off! Not with money, of course, but occasionally with something else. And for a local garden center I wrote about three challenges I’d encountered in creating a new garden: First, there’s all that empty space. Then there’s poor soil. And there MUST be screening.
In the two months since I posted to this blog I’ve moved and done lots of shopping and planning for my new home and garden. I’ll share about that soon enough but for now, I want to write about cycling again after at least 15 years. My former neighborhood was terrible for cycling – hilly and dangerous – but my new one is fabulous, with trails and parks and even farmland. So I took my old bike to a funky local bike shop (now owned by a 50-something woman I bonded with instantly) to get it ready for action again. And here it is – my Nishiki Colorado vintage early ’90s, takings its first-ever trip on the subway to D.C.
Which makes me wonder why I’ve never done this before, taken a bike on the subway. It cost nothing extra and is the absolute best way to see the memorials in the touristy part of town, where parking spaces are nonexistent.
Seeing the Monuments by Bike
The Martin Luther King Memorial, from across the Tidal Basin
My first stop and the main reason for the outing was to see the new MLK Memorial along the Tidal Basin, which I reviewed here. It’s right next door to the FDR, my favorite, so I checked in there, and then for contrast, the World War II Memorial, which may be my least favorite of them all.
The World War II Memorial
Two wars. Two completely opposite memorials.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Albert Einstein Memorial Statue
By chance I spied the new Albert Einstein statue, which I’d never seen in person. A tour guide there pointed out that his nose has been wiped shiny by visitors rubbing it, and his lap gets a lot of sitting on, too. I’m hoping to see some of that action the next time I visit. Love the statue – it’s by the same sculptor who did the JFK bust in the Kennedy Center.
Cycling past Lakes and Farms
Much closer to home – in fact about a half-mile from my house – are the 6,500 acres of the Beltsville Ag Research Center (the largest in the world). With the smell of fresh manure in the air and roads with names like Poultry, Dairy and Animal Husbandry, it seems like the real deal – farmland. I’ve cycled there a few times already, and always stop at this stream to look for eagles returning to their nest, which you can see in this photo along the treeline, on the left.
Greenbelt Lake
And closest of all to my house is Greenbelt Lake, which I ride or walk around often. I recently heard from someone who grew up here that it was dug by hand during the ’30s, to give work to the unemployed. So thank you, New Deal Socialism!
Back in the Saddle at a Certain Age
I can certainly confirm the old adage that you never forget how to ride a bike. Forgetting how to use the gears is something else, but it wasn’t hard to relearn. My cycling now won’t be quite the same as it was in the ’90s, though. I got rid of my fast(er) road bike and kept just the slower all-terrain bike. No need to pretend to be a racer anymore. Also? No need to ride with cycling groups that go way too fast for me, just because the cool guys are in the faster group. IF I ride with groups again, it’ll be with the mostly female slow-poke groups, right where I belong. And I sure as hell won’t be signing up for those killer cycling tours of Vermont like I once did with a former husband. No more pretending to be like serious bikers, the ones who profess to liking hills. Oy.
Here’s my best shot of the Rally for Sanity, a view many people there would actually envy – of Jon Stewart on stage, with a close-up of him on the Jumbotron to the left. I got a somewhat better view with my binoculars, and felt lucky to see even this much and be able to hear about half of what he said. That’s because the rally was over-attended by a lot, so there weren’t enough Jumbotrons or loud speakers to enable most of the rallyers to see or hear anything. Except for the funny signs and costumes. But the crowd was nice to each other, which one would expect, right? And I’m glad I went – just for the good vibes if nothing else. Now I just wish I’d remembered to set my damn VCR to tape the show – coz I’m hearing that Comedy Central has announced it won’t be shown again. Huh?
On the right you see one of the two large grass panels that were roped off – grass panels that thousands of us would have dearly loved to sit on and watch the performance from that prime position. So, not a popular day for the National Lawn, which was partially roped off because – it had recently been seeded? Maybe they should have grabbed the Lincoln Memorial spot after all.
And here’s the scene looking west from the Capitol building. And below is just a sampling of the many amusing signs on display (photos by PamelaJ).
Very sad day today. Marv Hurwitz, one of my oldest and closest friends, died this morning at the age of 77. It was sudden and fast, so a good dying for him; a shock to everyone who loved him. I blogging about him because it may help, and I don’t know what else to do.
We met back in ’73 when we both worked at Common Cause headquarters, and we became and remained friends through one of his marriages and two of mine. Through Marv I met lots of other people who became good friends, including PamJ pictured above, her husband Doug and even one of my husbands. We traveled to England together – as just friends. Marv was like that – a good friend to both men and women, an incredibly good listener who also collected guns and loved motorcycles. A dealer in antique scientific instruments whose independence from a boss we all admired.
I hope you can tell from the photos that he was also fun, though he never drank as much as the rest of us.
I’m happy that in the last years of his life Marv became close to his daughter and got to see his granddaughter Gillian every week. And he was pretty darn healthy til the end. So really, life was pretty good to Marv, and he was a wonderful friend to me. But shit, who am I going to call at the last minute for dinner or a movie? And who’s going to encourage me and tell me how silly I am to worry about money?
Hallelujah, it didn’t rain after all and a good (observed) Earth Day was had by all, one assumes. So first stop, the co-op two blocks away from me, where lots of unneeded stuff was being recycled, trees given away, and later, a darn good 12-piece jazz band entertained the crowd. And our Sunday farmer’s market was as lively as usual, what with all the commerce and this popular banjo-player, but for Earth Day we were offered cooking and gardening demonstrations, too. Nice.
Then I caught a train into the city to see the big Earth Day whoopla on the National Mall. No real schedule was posted – anywhere, for anything – so I can only report that there were lots of speeches and some big-name musicians, prominently Sting. There was also NASA, the Department of Energy, some corporations and a few nonprofits handing out literature and demonstrating aquaponics, lightweight cars, what plastic bags look like in a big wad, and whatever it is that PETA thinks they’re selling by – yet again - displaying naked women (or the illusion they’re naked, here on federal property).
Now dare I weigh in on which experience I enjoyed the most? (See, no judgments, y’all, just a preference). I think the photos tip you off that the local celebration was the livelier of the two, probably because it was mainly what neighbors are already doing, every week, and not intended to demonstrate anything at all.
But I DID get into the spirit of the Mall event when I saw these adorable students from my alma mater, one of whom hugged me when I ID’d myself as an alum. They and 30 others had taken a six-hour bus trip to be part of these event and will be schlepping right back to Northern Ohio this afternoon. I hope they’re glad they came.
Here’s the class of six, plus teachers Adele Schmidt on the far left and Sam Hampton on the far right. My co-director, the talented Mario Starks, is second from left. The students are a United Nations of aspiring filmmakers, and a wonderful bunch who produced some great 3-4-minute documentaries over six weeks. It all happened at Docs in Progress in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.
My adventures in video continue! After all my troubles buying the wrong stuff, it came time to learn to DO something. My first grown-up move was to admit that when it comes to either hardware OR software, I’m not what you would call an autodidact. So I ignored the advice of my videographer friends to “Just do it” and signed up at the nearest teaching facility that looked promising. (After my Photoshop class at the nearest community college ended up teaching me exactly nothing I needed to know, I learned to do some research before payment.)
So voila the film school - Docs in Progress, a nonprofit promoting and teaching the art of documentary-making, and it’s right in my ‘hood. I caught one of their free salons – on the subject of point of view – and noticed the atmosphere was welcoming to beginners. Same thing at the work-in-progress screenings they hold at the Geo. Wash. U. Film Department. (The screening I saw included a rousing 3-camera-crew doc about Obama’s inauguration.)
So I signed up for their “Film Production” class – really a workshop because only the first class is classroom-style. The instructor (Adele Schmidt in the photo right) has created over a dozen films for PBS, so has actual cred as a filmmaker . Now, can she teach?
Class One – The Rules
Turns out the workshop is rigidly defined and limited by rules. With the 3 video teams having only 6 classes and the weeks between to plan, film, edit and show a 3-4 minute video, ya gotta have limits. I totally support that. But it’s scary to only be allowed to shoot 30 minutes of video. Oh, we can shoot more if we want, but it won’t be downloaded for editing (gotcha!). Up to 3 still photos can be used, as well as a limited amount of music. Also, we can only use one location, and we have to use their cameras and editing equipment. Kinda like those survivor-type reality shows, and may the best team win!
The Hiphop Garden Production Company is Born
I swear I had nothing to do with being paired with Mario Starks, my smart, savvy and personable partner – we were teacher-assigned. He’s a young web designer in the nonprofit world using his off-hours to inspire people his age to acquire the skills they need. He’s also part of Global Soul Power, which showcases the “creative works of musicians, filmmakers, writers, and activists who promote world awareness messages of unity, self-respect and peace.” Good lord, how cool is that?
Asked what our new “film production company” should be called, the class decided quickly – Hiphop Garden. Okay!
Our Assigned Topic? A Civic Center
At first I thought the other two teams had been given much more promising, artsier topics – a local stage for plays, and an artist (of some sort). (All subjects were in Downtown Silver Spring.) Our topic was to interview a government worker about a new government building. Oh, goody. Like that’s anything new in this government town (DC and ‘burbs.)
But we did the research about this new civic center and the guy in charge of getting it ready for its July 1 launch, and learned it’s intended as a “tool for social transformation” and that the “government worker” is an experienced community organizer. So when we met political appointee Reemberto Rodriguez we were pleasantly surprised by his friendliness and dreams for the project’s impact on the town. Like the image of Latin Americans gathering in the large outdoor theater to watch the World Cup, or seniors hanging out in the media room and picking up skills – cool images of a lively communal space. But really, you can build a wonderful facility – indoors and out – but it’ll only succeed if people use it. So he knows he has his work cut out for him – and he’s super-happy that we’re creating a little video to help publicize it. (We learned that these student projects sometimes end up on websites, like this one for a tap-dance company.)
But can it Compete with Astroturf?
Turns out there’s an interesting landscape-related twist on our story. This this isn’t just any government building we’re talking about but one replacing an incredibly successful public “garden” called the “Silver Spring Lawn”, though the lawn was a fake. That’s right – the entire site was covered with synthetic turf for a couple of years waiting for the project to begin and to everyone’s surprise, it became a wildly popular space to hang out. Reports in the local media included residents’ rhapsodizing over its utter fakeness – no grass stains! No bugs! Landscape architects despaired at the popularity of something so devoid of actual plants, with several long reports on its popularity in Landscape Architecture Magazine, no less.
Next – the Interview w/B-Roll
More rules come into play the next time we meet with Reemberto because we can use only 40% of our 30-minutes of video interviewing him (only 12 minutes~!) and have to use the rest for B-roll (background shots). But Mario and I dutifully did our homework – creating a list of shots and questions for Reemberto – and I’ll report back after we’ve nailed those 30 minutes, so stay tuned. It’s not like you’re gardening anyway, right?
Winter's a lot more beautiful with the right architecture and some river birches, don't ya think? Like this view of the Mall side of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. (Still, I believe, our hottest tourist attraction.) I was passing by the other day on my way to the Iranian Film Festival going on at the Sackler Museum. To complete the Southwest Asian experience, I took in the Falmana: Book of Omens tour while I was there. All free, of course – like almost all museums in D.C.
Readers: Thanks so much for reading what I’ve had to say this past year and I promise – well, more of the same but with lots of video. Toward that end, I’ve been struggling to learn Adobe Premiere Elements 8 all day – and mostly watching it crash my computer. Yes, it seems that there are no video editing programs that work easily for everyone, yet. All this crap had better at least keep my brain cells too busy to waste away.
I’m signing off in deep frustration but not to worry – there’s something happy chilling in the fridge. Be safe tonight, and in the new year be healthy and happy.
Yeah, I know, it’s amazing! And the Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op has offered them for at least 10 years, just inside the front door, every Sunday afternoon from noon to 4 – and I never noticed. Never noticed that they were FREE, that is. Til one day I was standing in line and heard someone yell “Raise your hand if you want a free massage” and I found my sore gardener’s arm shooting up to claim the service. (My sore gardener’s back seconded that emotion.)
So here you see the result – not that very day but the next Sunday, too, with lots more Sunday massages to come. The massage therapist is Nicole Zeigler, totally qualified and a delightful person to boot.
What other grocery store buys four hours of massage therapists’ time every week? Or offers frequent free events in the store, like story-telling and movies? Nicole thinks this store can do it because it’s a co-op, so profit margins aren’t the only concern.
My only complaint? The young (male) clerk who suggests to customers of a certain age that they take advantage of the senior discount. Just post it, buddy, don’t ask.
.jpg)
with being paired with Mario Starks, my smart, savvy and personable partner – we were teacher-assigned. He’s a young web designer in the nonprofit world using his off-hours to inspire people his age to acquire the.jpg)
