Recent Articles
Finding Yogic Bliss in Greenbelt
Over the years I’ve tried a half dozen different yoga teachers and found none that were a good fit for me. Living in Takoma Park, I naturally tried the local yoga establishment – Willow Street, with almost 30 different instructors. Here’s what I disliked about the classes I tried – partnering! I wanted yoga to [...]
Q&A with Yoga Teacher Laura Bonkosky
This is the first in a series of interviews with the people who teach yoga in Greenbelt. Read more about it here. Laura Bonkosky teaches the Lunchtime Yoga classes Tuesday and Thursday through the Greenbelt Department of Recreation. Here’s the Rec Dept Activity Guide; yoga is on pages 16 and 17. Laura moved to [...]
How to Donate Locally
Before moving from my last home, a little Sears bungalow that managed to have a full basement and garage-turned-tool-shed, I had to get rid of lots of stuff. And except for a few antiques, I gave it all away – through Freecycle or to close neighbors via our Yahoo group, where I announced an everything-goes [...]
New Forest Steward Program AND 10th Anniversary of Greenbelt Forest Preserve
Greenbelt’s Year of the Forest If I thought Greenbelt’s 75th anniversary year was chockful of events, this year may turn out to be just as busy, with two new programs celebrating and taking care of the forests closest to us. Here’s a short explanation (if I got it right) of the programs, and a heads-up [...]
Where Local Fitness-Seekers Find Support
Curious to know what goes on at the PLAY Fitness and Nutrition Workshops given by Kim Rush Lynch and Chelsea Calhoun, I stopped by their free sneak peak the other day. There was a nice turn-out of women of a certain age, and after some movement – fun, playful movement – things got interesting as [...]
Why Screening is So Important, and How to Get it on the Cheap
When I started my new townhouse garden in Old Greenbelt I knew enough to do three kinda permanent things in the yard as soon as possible – patios, paths, and some evergreen screening plants. And I did all that and sat back to enjoy the view, such as it is – neighbors’ storage areas, nd [...]
Lunchtime Yoga is Worth Your Lunch Hour
By Chelsea L. Calhoun, NASM CPT The week before Christmas I did an intense leg workout and took a pole dancing class on Monday, and on Tuesday went roller skating. The result – extremely tight quads. I could barely walk. Since I was determined to experience several different types of exercise classes during my holiday [...]
Kim’s Tips for the Winter Blues and Invitation to PLAY
by Kim Rush Lynch The holidays are over and the football season is about to wrap up. Unless you’re a cold-weather person who enjoys the outdoors, the end of January can bring the winter blues. Because our bodies naturally want to hibernate this time of year, we find ourselves moving less and eating more. In [...]
Standing O for Eric Zhang’s Greenbelt 2012 Blog
by Kathy Labukas The Friends of Greenbelt Museum‘s first lecture of the year was held at the Community Center this past Monday, featuring Eric Zhang’s presentation about Greenbelt2012, his photography blog of Greenbelt’s 75th Anniversary Year. He did not consider this a lecture, since he knew that most of the audience knew much about Greenbelt [...]
Beaverdam Creek Passes Water Tests with Flying Colors
Test Results It took me a while to figure out where the rain that falls on Greenbelt ends up, but thanks to Mark Cristal here, I’ve learned that it’s the Beaverdam Creek (and then into the Anacostia River). Beaverdam Creek has a watch group that works to protect and improve the creek, and that includes [...]
It’s Easy to Love-Hate Ikea
People drive hours to shop at the precious few Ikea stores in the U.S. Greenbelters are just 10 minutes away, so naturally we shop at the Swedish mega-store. To furnish my new (1937) home, I acquired a few items there myself – Malm bed and night stand, two Billy bookcases, and a desk. I’ve also [...]
Awesome Greenbelter Jean Cook
Greenbelt Live has succeeded wildly at one of its primary goal - as a way for me to meet Greenbelters, especially the more active ones who have an impact. And looking into the volunteer program GIVES led to my spending some time with one of the city’s top volunteers, a previous winner of Citizen of [...]
Grocery-Shopping Resolutions
As a new Co-op member last year I shopped there several times a week, almost always charging my purchases – until I read about what a huge difference it would make to them if we all switched to debit cards. Seems that the cost to the merchant is so much less for debit cards, the [...]
Anniversary Thoughts about Moving to Greenbelt
I recently passed the one-year mark for living in Old Greenbelt, which prompts me to reflect on the big move from Takoma Park after 26 years there. No deep thoughts, just some of my Favorite Things about the change, now that my seven months of construction and painting are over and I’ve had five months [...]
Help Greenbelt’s City Website get a Free Extreme Make-over!
Great News! The City of Greenbelt is a finalist in the Civic Plus Extreme Website Makeover Contest! The winning community will get a full website makeover and web content management for free for two years. This is worth several thousand dollars and will help make our website much more interactive. Civic Plus is one of [...]
Flat-Screen TVs, Explained by Glenise at Best Buy
No, I’m not employed by Best Buy; I just had a nice experience and want to recommend the person who made it happen. It’s Glenise here, who explained for me the many flat-screen TV options and why I’d want to pay more for some but not others, depending on what I use it for. She [...]
Got too much stuff? Try Greenbelt’s Freecycle
Freecycle is an international collection of over 5,000 local email groups for the purpose of giving away stuff to folks who live nearby. It boasts over 9 million members worldwide, which makes me feel a bit less special for being one of them, but that’s okay. Before I downsized by moving to Greenbelt I had [...]
Holiday Hoopla at the Farmers Market
I know I’m not the only one who’s really missed the Greenbelt Farmers Market these last two weeks since it closed for the regular season. I’ve been volunteering there all season and it’s such a fun place to hang out and chat people up! (Thanks to Dorrie Bates for suggesting I volunteer for the Market [...]
Greenbelter Alison Gary, Fashion Blogger Extraordinaire
It was a fabulous blog story about New Deal bar manager and “fashionista” Amethyst Dwyer that led me to the fashion and style blog Wardrobe Oxygen. That’s a topic I never, ever read about, which tells you a lot about my own “style”, which I give no thought to but probably should. But this particular [...]
A Gardener (and Worker) Reaction to Greenbelt’s Friezes.
I recently wrote a story for a national gardening blog I contribute to about the friezes on our Community Center, with the garden-centric title: “To promote general welfare? Garden!” That quote was prompted by the images on the last frieze, showing the raising and holding of flowers to illustrate said general welfare, a correlation I [...]
