The study of planets comes full circle: Carnegie Earth and Planets, the scientific institution on Broad Branch Road, has been hosting lectures for its neighbors since 2006. The subject of its December 5th lecture is a callback to the first: Do other Earth-like planets exist? The 2024 version of the talk will provide some answers. […]
A new Forest Hills Park advocacy group forms
Forest Hills Park exists today because people lobbied for a neighborhood play space nearly 90 years ago. The park continues to need advocates, and a Van Ness Main Street-affiliated group is now taking on the task: How about some Good Clean Fun in Forest Hills Park? That’s the name of a new group forming in […]
October in the Neighborhood: Pull weeds for free national park passes; Zombie flicks and ping pong lessons; Celebrate Halloween… and Howl-o-ween
Trade weeds for free national park passes: September 28th is National Public Lands Day, which is both a work day for volunteers in U.S. national parks, and a celebration of their service. It’s free to visit every national park on this day. In DC, the National Park Service and Rock Creek Conservancy are extending the […]
September in the Neighborhood: Community-powered celebrating, feasting, and weed wrangling
September’s neighborhood events are all about community: working together, picnicking together, playing together, and gathering together to enjoy local amenities and culture. You could do all of these things during Celebrate Van Ness Main Street on Saturday, September 14th. VNMS is teaming up with Friends of Peirce Mill and Forest Hills of DC Senior Living […]
The most recent Linnean Park trail work was also a teaching moment
If you’ve walked the Linnean Park trail in the past couple of months, you may have noticed some improvements. For those, we can thank volunteers who have adopted the park, a pair of trail maintenance experts, the DC Department of Energy and the Environment (DOEE), and a group of young people being trained in the […]
A Rock Creek trails expert answers our questions about the Soapstone project
The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club is a volunteer organization and National Park Service that manages around 1,000 miles of hiking trails in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, including those in and around Rock Creek Park. So when we had questions about DC Water’s plans to use wood chips as a […]
February in the Neighborhood: Take out the big trash, and clean up the forest
Did you know? When a resident of a single-family home wants to throw out an old couch, the DC Department of Public Works will come and collect it for free. But for DC residents in apartment buildings and condos, getting rid of bulk trash requires calling and paying a junk hauler, or hauling it yourself […]
Save the trees! At three local parks, volunteers are doing that and more – by attacking invasive weeds.
One day over Martin Luther King weekend, a few expert Weed Warriors and a large number of less-experienced volunteers gathered in the wooded area behind the Politics and Prose parking lot to pick up trash and free dozens of trees from invasive English ivy. And whether they realized it or not, they played a role […]
January in the Neighborhood: Save local forests and sing to the trees
The world’s problems – political, environmental, and otherwise – can seem overwhelming, and it can feel like there’s little we can do as individuals to effect change. We do have the power to tackle local issues, however, and can make a big and immediate difference. DCist recently gave, as an example, the non-native invasive species […]
October in the Neighborhood: Listen and learn with UDC Music; Grain Fair, Halloween celebrations
Some of the neighborhood events on our October calendar: Listen and learn with UDC’s music programs. UDC hosts periodic lunchtime lectures and performances in the Recital Hall (Building 46-Performing Arts). This month’s topics and guests are the piano music of Black composers (Tuesday, October 3rd), the founder/executive director of the Capitol Hill Jazz Foundation (Tuesday, […]