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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
By Leonard Shapiro
It’s going to be a very happy holiday season around these parts for many magical reasons.
From a selfish point of view, we’re especially delighted to have Beck and Bowen Slater on our cover. We’ve always made it a point to put children out front at this time of the year, and don’t you know they seem to get cuter by the year.
Speaking about magic, at Country ZEST, we’re publishing our sixth holiday issue. And, we also have plenty more to be thankful for, particularly our fabulous designer, Meredith Hancock, and so many dedicated and immensely talented writers and photographers who fill our pages with fascinating stories and eye-popping images in every issue.
A huge thanks as well to our loyal advertisers, many with us from the start, and of course, to our devoted readers, who provide us with what the late, great Ben Bradlee, my boss at The Washington Post, used to call “psychic income.” That would be all those lovely emails, letters, phone calls and conversations out on the street telling us how much they enjoy the publication.
I suspect there may be more of the same once this edition hits the street and post office boxes all around. Two of our resident historians again have knocked it out of the park. John Toler writes about the 50th anniversary of the tragic TWA Flight 514 plane crash on Mount Weather and Denis Cotter, remembers World War I flying ace and aviation pioneer General Billy Mitchell, who lived in Middleburg for a number of years.
Treavor Lord, a world-class educator, is marking 15 years as the head of school at Middleburg’s Hill School, and 35 years since he began there as a teacher in 1990. In a continuing effort to involve local high school journalists in ZEST, we have a terrific piece on a special program at Highland School in Warrenton written by Highland senior Ally Blunt, and already has all the right reportorial instincts, and a nice writing touch, too.
There’s so much more, including a feature story on a dedicated Fauquier County employee retiring after 36 years at the Marshall waste collection site, otherwise known to locals simply as “The Dump.” Peggy Wang has had some rather unique experiences over the years, and made countless friends, with no trash talk necessary.
And so, most of all, we wish one and all a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year, filled with a healthy dose of ZEST, for sure.
