WMRA is pleased to introduce Micro Books & Brews - a new offshoot of our regular Books & Brews series featuring some of our past guests.
Micro Books & Brews is hosted by Mary Katharine Froehlich in partnership with Stone Soup Books. There are three events scheduled in this Micro series, each taking place on a Wednesday evening from 7-8pm, with book signing by the author to follow. The series discussion will be held in the Rockfish Lounge at Rockfish Valley Community Center in Nellysford, VA.
- Wednesday, October 25th at 7pm - Kat Maier, Energetic Herbalism
Our featured author for October 25th is Kat Maier, who will be discussing her book Energetic Herbalism. By honoring ancient wisdom and presenting it in an innovative way, Energetic Herbalism is a profound and practical guide to family and community care for those seeking to move beyond symptom relief and into a truly holistic framework of health. Throughout, the author invites readers to explore their personal relationships with plants and their environs as they discover diverse models of healing.
About the author: Kat Maier, RH, (AHG) is the founder and director of Sacred Plant Traditions, a center for herbal studies in Charlottesville, Virginia. In clinical practice for over 30 years, Kat teaches internationally at universities, conferences, and herbal schools. She began her study of plants as a Peace Corps volunteer, and her training as a Physician’s Assistant allows her to weave the language of biomedicine into her practice of traditional energetic herbalism. She is a founding member of Botanica Mobile Clinic, a nonprofit dedicated to providing accessible herbal medicine to local communities, and has served as president of United Plant Savers.
- Previous Events -
- Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - M.S. Marangione, Across the Blue Ridge Mountains
Our featured author for August 30th was M.S. Marangione, discussing her book Across the Blue Ridge Mountains. This work is a deeply researched novel firmly based in history that captures how a woman, regardless of time period, has to live by the fateful decisions she makes and how resilience and showing up to the table are her only ways forward. Through her life’s journey, a stream of characters appear that reflects the best and worst in her but inevitably force her to grow in ways she may not be ready for. Ultimately, her inner strength must rise to meet many challenges.
About the author: M.S. Marangione fell in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains when in her early twenties and moved to Virginia from New York. One evening, when at the Alexandria Public Library in Northern Virginia, she came across a display on Shenandoah National Park with photos of the mountain families and books like Hollow Folk, the Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park, Recollections; The People of the Blue Ridge Remember. At that time, the mid-1980s, these were the only books published, and Hollow Folk was highly biased. Yet, it lit a fire in her to discover more about the people and families of the Shenandoah National Park. When Marangione moved to the Shenandoah Valley, leaving her intelligence analyst career and becoming a teacher, she dived into the research and spent many hours locating the old homesites on the SNP. After presenting at many academic conferences on the subject, one winter’s morning, Mary’s voice emerged and Marangione started writing Across the Blue Ridge Mountains. M.S. Marangione is a Professor of American and Appalachian Literature at Blue Ridge Community College. Her poetry has been published in Lumina magazine, Sagewoman, and the North Shore Woman’s Newspaper.
- Wednesday, September 27, 2023 - Leonard M. Adkins, Hiking and Traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway
Our featured author for September 27th was Leonard M. Adkins, primarily discussing his book Hiking & Traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway. This comprehensive guidebook provides a detailed description of every official National Park Service trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway. But that's just the beginning: veteran hiker Leonard M. Adkins includes information on every trail that touches the parkway, including the Appalachian Trail and other public pathways on national park, state park, national forest, municipal, and private lands, along with citations for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
About the author: Leonard M. Adkins has hiked more than 21,000 miles exploring the backcountry areas of North America, Europe, New Zealand and the Caribbean, including 5 traverses of the full length of the Appalachian Trail. An award-winning author, Leonard has 21 other books about hiking in Virginia and hopes to also spotlight two of his most recent publications, Hike Virginia North of US 60, and All About the Appalachian Trail.