Berger cookies are a Baltimore thing... despite growing up just forty miles down I-95, I'd never tasted one until last year. Now I'm hooked, because really, what more do you want out of a cookie than an inch of fudge frosting on the top? The factory feels like a sugar sauna; the floors are slick with chocolate and there are guys in white aprons scooping massive handfuls of margarine and corn syrup into industrial mixers that could be older than they are. Take a deep breath... yummmmmmmmm.....

--Petra Mayer

Whether you stroll, bike, bus, metro, or drive to work - chances are you'll regularly pass by one person. If you're lucky, that person will wear a bright orange straw hat. And his name will be Gregory Tyrone Walton. This is an audio slideshow of the Capitol Hill commute through Walton's eyes. -- Tina Tennessen

Ned Wharton, Knight trainee

One of the joys of Knight Training is the opportunity to spend five weeks with a smart, creative, and fun-loving group of NPR colleagues. We paired off to get to know each other even better with the assignment of making audio slideshow "profiles." It was great to learn more about NPR's Debbie Elliott and her family life on the Gulf Coast:

And for her turn, Debbie created this wonderful slideshow where I'm the old codger reminiscing about the days of reel-to-reel tape:

Ned Wharton, Knight trainee

For the past couple of years, my son has been renting a cello from this violin shop in Bethesda, Maryland. There's a wonderfully ramshackle, Old World feel to the place, and when we were given a Knight training assignment to create an audio slide show, Potter's seemed like just the spot. Thanks to proprietor Dalton Potter and his staff for letting me look and listen behind the scenes. (Note: an earlier iteration of this slideshow, sans audio, and with a few different pictures, can be seen here.)

Just months before I moved to Washington, a five-alarm fire nearly destroyed a local landmark here: Eastern Market, which opened in 1873.

The beautiful building housed more than a dozen businesses: butchers, fishmongers, cheese sellers, and florists. Months after the conflagration, the District of Columbia erected a temporary facility across the street. Many of the vendors moved in.

Now, two years later, reconstruction and restoration of the original Eastern Market is nearly finished. At the end of the month, this centerpiece of the Capitol Hill community will be reopened.

--David Gura

Here's what you won't see in this slideshow: a young woman in a short dress cat-walking on the roof of a stretched Hummer limo; urban dogs frolicking in the intersection's tiny patch of grass; and kids peddling four-dollar boxes of candy. Eventually I will beat the blur. - Tina Tennessen

The little city of Falls Church, Va., sandwiched between Arlington and Fairfax counties five miles west of D.C., has held a Memorial Day parade almost every year since the 1950s.

It's not your usual Memorial Day parade -- nary a high school marching band (the city's too small), only a couple VFW drill teams, a fairly big contingent of Shriners in mini-cars, and mainly, lots of cultural and ethnic groups from around the area.

Then there's the Westsider Marching Band, which buses down from Baltimore every year. As the Westsiders grow in popularity, they get moved further back in the parade order. This year they were almost at the end.

And here they are.

-- Peter Overby

This morning, I walked to Dumbarton Oaks a sprawling estate, high above Georgetown. Gail Griffin, the director of gardens and grounds there, kindly introduced me to Rigoberto "Rigo" Castellon, a crew leader.

For an hour, he graciously gave me a tour of the impressive grounds. Afterward, I watched him and his co-workers pot plants and arrange the arbor terrace, overlooking a small grove of Kiefer pear trees. A dozen people oversee the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, which were designed by landscape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand.

About those Kiefer pears: As you'll see in these photographs, the gardening crew has put clear glass bottles around several of them. (Castellon uses twine to hold them in place.) When the pears are ripe -- and larger, the gardeners will fill the bottle with brandy. (This tradition is time-honored, I was told.) -- David Gura

That's right, I attempted to kill two birds with one camera. Both a slideshow, and a manicure. Which would have been good for my favorite salon, because business has dropped off, much as it has everywhere. I got tired, and begged off on the mani-pedi after shooting. Trying to get the camera to focus was, as you can see, challenge enough. I'm a verbal girl. Images are rough on me.

-- Barrie Hardymon