Author: Mary Ann Zehr
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Mary Ann Zehr, Contributor
Book Event Review: Big Read 2025
The NEA’s Big Read goals are “to inspire meaningful conversations, celebrate local creativity, elevate a wide variety of voices and perspectives, and build stronger connections in each community.”
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Book Review: Motherhood
She has one child: a two-year old. She loves that child. But this young mother is not unflappable. Increasingly, she is angry.
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Guns Into Plowshares Returns to D.C.
“Sadly this art is relevant today,” wrote Jordyn Thompson, now a junior preparing to be a secondary history teacher. She wrote that the sculpture draws attention to “the use of guns and gun violence, which is a pandemic in today’s society.”
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Total Eclipse
It was no small miracle that seven people in my family–ages 8 to 91–and I viewed the total eclipse together from the same spot on a grassy bank at a service plaza of the Ohio turnpike on April 8. The four minutes of collective awe we experienced while viewing an uncommon celestial ring of light affirms that we can be joyful as a family.
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Solace and joy during pandemic (head to the woods now if you want to see mountain laurel blossoms)
In May, I’ve had minimal part-time work, so I’ve spent hours in the mountains. It’s all been at one place, Hone Quarry Recreation Area (in the George Washington National Forest), a gem for its diversity of flora and fauna. My personal project of noticing and learning the names of plants, insects, birds, and other creatures there has provided purpose. It has also been a source of solace and joy.
An entrepreneurial, adventurous local couple has charted a new & mostly gravel bike route across Virginia
For their latest “experiment,” serial experimenters David Landis and Anna Dintaman have mapped out a 550-mile bikepacking route across Virginia. The new TransVirginia Bike Route—or TransVA—connects Washington, D.C., to Damascus using existing rails-to-trails and rural dirt or gravel roads, often on public lands.
