The Issue: In an overhaul of green spaces in the District,  residents in Park View and the surrounding area may be left without a park to view. The Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH), a rolling 272-acre campus, has not been open to the public since 1968—but the community still considers it the neighborhood’s primary green space, and there have been several proposals over the years to open the land to general use. But now the AFRH is planning to develop the northwest southeast part of the site to increase cash flow and the CapitalSpace Draft Plan, a collaboration of D.C. and federal agencies, has no plans to take the space into consideration. Will residents be left with concrete? Read More "Neighborhood Watch: Grass Not Greener on the Other Side of Park View" »

Jerry Carter runs the workout room at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

It's a huge and impressive facility, with all the free weights and strength and cardio machines any gym manager could want.

But at least one thing separates Carter's workplace from a typical gym: The average age of residents at the Retirement Home is 83, Carter says.

So something called Osteo-balls, which are basically beach balls with handles and are designed to improve flexibility, are a much hotter attraction than the 50-pound dumbells.

On an average day, the gym is most crowded during the morning Osteo-ball class.

He loves the work.

"I've got a theory: Just keep them in motion," Carter says. "When I see people move in here, and see their attitude and the whole mental part change from coming [to the gym], see them start doing things they thought they couldn't do, start to want to ride bicycles here and get outside to ride bicycles, that gets me going. And I see it all the time."

Because of the demographic of his customer base, Carter has to look after his patrons a lot closer than most guys who run gyms. He's trained in several forms of lifesaving, he says.

Just in case.

"If they fall, we're ready," he says.

Nobody's died in the gym during Carter's five years of managing it.

Alvado Campbell spent the afternoon in the puzzle room at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

He spends a lot of afternoons there. Evenings, too.

"Puzzles are a habit of mine," he says.

Campbell, is a 78-year old Korean War vet. He's a DC native, and moved from over by RFK Stadium in Southeast to AFRH a year ago.

Campbell's daily routine ends with him working on puzzles till his 10:30 bedtime.

He's now working on a 1000-piece farm scene that will take "7 to 10 days" to complete. He started putting the pieces together last night, after watching Fred Astaire in "Daddy Long Legs" in the Retirement Home's theater.

"That was a good movie," he says. "Then I came here."

Campbell says that he's amazed how many activities are available to residents. He would have gone to the golf course on the complex today, he says, but was worried that yesterday's rains would mean no carts could be used.

So he did puzzles instead.

As he heads off to the Retirement Home cafeteria for Thursday's dinner, hoping salmon cakes are on the menu, Campbell tells me he'll return to the puzzle room later tonight.

Again, that's his routine.

Evelyn Y. Davis wants to go to Petworth, she just doesn't want to go now.

Just across the street from the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits Rock Creek Cemetery, an equally beautiful resting place for civilians. It's on the grounds of the oldest church in DC, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and bodies have been buried here since 1719.

Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Longworth, Constitution signer Abraham Baldwin and "Meet the Press" icon Tim Russert are among the assembled dead.

And, again, it's a beautiful place to visit.

Seeing the burial plot for Davis is alone worth the trip.

She’s a DC resident who has gained international fame after decades of playing the gadfly role at stockholders meetings.

One more thing about Davis: She's very much alive.

Read More "…But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There" »

“We’re losing a World War II veteran or two every week,” a resident of the Armed Forces Retirement Home told me this morning.

But if that’s true, the dead aren’t being buried across the street. That’s where the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits. (The name of the residence changed, the affiliated cemetery's didn't.)

The Petworth cemetery has been accepting bodies of military dead since August of 1861, three years before the more famous Arlington Cemetery opened for business.

And after all these years, the soldiers’ cemetery on Rock Creek Church and Harewood Rds NW is almost filled up: 14,420 bodies have been placed in 13,893 graves, according to cemetery records. (Families and couples occasionally pile onto each other in the same plot.)

“We’ve only got 121 slots left,” says Dr. David Moshier, the caretaker of the cemetery.

Read More "A Nice Place to Visit…" »

Abe Lincoln hasn't been this hot since his body went cold.

Lincoln turned 200 this month. The new president idolizes him. Heck, his memorial just hosted one of the biggest rock concerts in U.S. history.

A crowd of kids from Hearst Elementary were among those making the pilgrimage today to Lincoln’s summer cottage in Petworth, the newly restored residence on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

“I need a nice, Lincoln-like smile from all of you!” shouts William Rope, a third-grade teacher at Hearst and the main adult chaperone on the field trip.

Rope has lined up his class in front of a statue of Lincoln in the rear of the cottage for a photo op, but he’s having trouble getting his pupils to follow orders.

Two-thirds of the kids smile, as per instructions.

The rest do various unauthorized, third-gradey things, like make goofy faces and poke each other in the arm.

Rope finally has reached the end of his, well, you know. And the teacher decides, as Lincoln would have, that for the good of the whole, some individuals must suffer: The teacher loudly tosses one of the funny facemakers out of the group.

Read More "Abe Lincoln Smiled? Who Knew?" »

Fliers posted around the Armed Forces Retirement Home promote special movie screenings in the house theater to commemorate Black History Month.

There's no film today. But tomorrow's feature will be "Remember the Titans."

Don't even get me started on "Remember the Titans."

Joseph Doyle volunteers most days at the Scott Library at the Armed Forces Retirement Home, where he lives.

He loves the quality of life there, in no small part because of the library.

"I bet it's the only library in Washington, DC, that's open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year," says Doyle, 76. "I even worked on Thanksgiving."

Along with the hours, Doyle is quite proud of the Scott Library's unofficial mascot, a massive goldfishy-looking fish that swims alone in a tank near the main entrance.

"Watch this: He knows tricks!" Doyle tells me.

He then runs his index finger along the front pane of the tank, and the goldfishy-looking fish ("He doesn't have a name, far as I know," says Doyle) puts his nose against the glass and follows Doyle's finger wherever it goes.

I tell him I'd never seen a fish do a trick.

"Oh, he's just hungry," Doyle says, modestly. "He thinks I'm gonna feed him. That's all."