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?

Green Trees! Because the campus has existed since 1851, and was even considered public park space by the McMillan Plan, some say the surrounding area has developed without any green space to speak of: Cliff Valenti, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1A chairman, told City Desk: “In other parts of D.C., there are tons of large accessible parks within walking distance… [the plan] really needs to consider equal distribution of park space in our city.” He added that, instead of condos, AFRH should consider leasing the space to the National Park Service to raise revenue.

Green Money! According to the AFRH development plan website, the home was hit with a financial crisis in the 1990s and was permitted by Congress in 2002 to explore a private development option. AFRH says: “New businesses and housing will generate jobs for neighbors, enhance property values and create new tax revenue.” Ross, writing on the blog Prince of Petworth, says, “They are vastly under funded and desperate.”

Next Step: Valenti says the ANC issued a letter of opposition to parts of the plan at its meeting yesterday. In the meantime, tree-lovers have until Dec. 8 to submit comments to CapitalSpace. Jeff Hinkle, a spokesman for the CapitalSpace plan, says, “Our partner agency team is already reviewing comments and discussing responses.”

Photo by Blacknell, Creative Commons Attribution License

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.

But she set up a fabulous monument to herself years ago, and pretty much engraved her life story on the many stones that make up the place. Why let others write your epitaph?

She's had to change the etched-in-stone bio over time, to take into account job changes and add in a divorce or two.

I once called up Davis to ask about the fabulous plot, but she didn't want to talk about it for a couple reasons. She said it was “her busy stockholder meeting season. And besides, she added, "Everybody already knows about that."

That second statement ain't true at all, but in all my years of asking questions, that’s the best non-answer I've ever gotten.

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.

Because of the space limitations, since 1996, only current and former AFRH residents are accepted for burial.

Yet, the remaining spaces are hardly going fast, says Moshier, who lives on the grounds.

There were no burials here today, and only one in the past two weeks: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. (retired) George Richer, a 95-year old tenant of AFRH, was the cemetery’s most recent acquisition.

There was no landscaping scheduled today, either. And, because most of the dead are at this National Cemetery are long, long dead, on most days folks don’t come by to lay flowers on any gravesites or mull over lost love or days gone by or whatever folks at cemeteries mull over.

I hung out at the cemetery for an hour, and no visitors came by. Only one car even came in through the front gate, but quickly turned right around and left.

Moshier says the only big day at the cemetery any more is Memorial Day. That’s because Maj. General John Logan, the Civil War hero and former federal legislator who gave us Decoration Day and formalized Memorial Day celebrations in this country – and who is the man behind Logan Circle — is buried here with his family.

Every Memorial Day, Logan’s fans hold a small service at his gravesite. As these sites go, it’s quite a sight: The Logans get the only mausoleum on the grounds. I’ve lived in apartments much smaller than their burial housing, truth be told.

But, nobody stopped by to see Logan’s death digs during my visit.

So what’s an average day like at this cemetery, I ask Moshier: “The squirrels would make their rounds, maybe the raccoon would make a run at the garbage can,” he says. “I could go for a day here where even the phone is reasonably quiet.”

You want your cemeteries to be quiet, especially if you live on the grounds. But Moshier is a bit sad that his workplace doesn’t get more attention.

“It’s beautiful here,” he says. “I call this cemetery the best kept secret in Washington.”

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.

The punishment gets everybody else’s attention, and the frazzled teacher snaps the group-minus-one photo and lets the kids disperse.

After a few second to let Rope defrazzle, I ask him if his students realize how in vogue all things Lincoln are right now.

“No,” he says. “I don't know that they know that he's in the news now. But if you ask them what he did during the Civil War, they know that. They’ve been taught that.”

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."