3 minute read
SOME FABULOUS FEEDBACK
SOME FABULOUS FEEDBACK
By Leonard Shapiro
Occasionally, there are even better than good days—those wondrous, out-ofthis world days when the following message pops up in the laptop.
“The purpose of this email is to express my admiration and my compliments for your…good work in publishing ZEST,” a recent email began, then gushed on.
“Love your magazine!!! The articles are so well written and interesting. Love how you focus on the rich history of the Upperville and Middleburg areas. When I receive my copy of Zest, I am eager to read it and have spent hours in doing so… It is so difficult to find not only a magazine with very interesting topics, but also to read such well written articles - huge plus.”
Many thanks to a dear reader we won’t identify at their request. Not only did it make my day, but that week and well beyond.
I’d like to think this edition will evoke the same sort of response. In my humble opinion, there’s plenty more of the same, starting with our cover feature on the force of nature known to one and all as Tutti Perricone. She’s a Middleburg native, chef and caterer extraordinaire who also happens to sing like a songbird.
She has plenty of history in this area, and that fits in quite nicely with several other stories to mark February as Black History Month. Read all about Porcha Dodson, who grew up on a farm outside Middleburg, was an academic and stage star from The Hill School through college and now is a development officer for Episcopal school in Alexandria.
Pat Reilly has profiled 96-year-old Ethel Rae Stewart, who taught at several segregated black schools in Loudoun County. And Jodi Nash focuses on a new project from the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County helping residents trace their roots back to their enslaved ancestors.
We’ve got Part II of John Rolfe Gardiner’s wonderful short story based on Middleburg, the excerpt of a new book on Huntland by Marc Leepson and another fascinating piece from John Toler on the calamitous fire that nearly destroyed The Plains in 1967.
And finally, hooray for regular ZEST contributor Sean Clancy, honored with a prestigious Eclipse Award in early January for a memorable story he wrote in August on a tragic horse race at Saratoga. It appeared in the Saratoga Special owned by Sean and his brother Joe and we’re thrilled to reprint the piece that earned racing’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get a few nice emails after this winter edition hits the streets, hopefully adding even more ZEST to your reading pleasure.
Leonard Shapiro
badgerlen@aol.com
410-570-8447
