Featured Story
Volunteers and kids learn from each other
Every Friday afternoon, second-grade students clutching books and pencils gather in the bright atrium of Wheaton Woods Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland, some running or skipping down the hall to meet with a tutor six or seven decades older than they are. They spend the next 40 minutes in the Grandreaders program, deciphering words, ferreting out meaning and discovering the joy of... READ MORE
Older adults can help kids thrive in school
Jay Corwin, a retired Fairfax County firefighter who has driven a county school bus in the Oakton, Virginia, area for 11 years, says he feels like an amateur psychologist for “his” kids. “I’ve become a stable, caring fixture in the children’s lives,” he explained. In chatting with his young passengers, Corwin learns all about their families, interests and anxieties. When... READ MORE
Robert Kanigel is a man of many stories
In 1970, Robert Kanigel, a former engineer with opinions about the state of the world, knocked on the door of a Baltimore rowhouse known as Harry. It was the home and office of the editors of a countercultural underground newspaper, also called Harry, published every two weeks from 1969 to 1972. Kanigel had something to say. The editor had a suggestion: “Why don’t you write about... READ MORE
How Kojo Nnamdi became D.C.’s voice
Perhaps the best part of writing a memoir is time travel. That’s what Kojo Nnamdi, 81, has discovered over the past several years as he wrote his memoir, which he expects will be published next year. The longtime WAMU 88.5 host, who will be the keynote speaker at the Beacon 50+ Expo on November 8, said the writing process took him back to his childhood in Guyana, then a British... READ MORE
Grit and glory at the Senior Olympics
A marshmallow changed the trajectory of Bernie Stamm’s life. Stamm was just 6 years old when World War II ended and American soldiers visited his small Swiss village. The airmen, who had accidentally bombed the town on Christmas Day, arrived bearing gifts, including a novelty: marshmallows. Impressed by their swagger, Stamm began dreaming of America. He became a U.S. citizen when he... READ MORE
Keeper of Baltimore’s literary history
Jeff Jerome did not enter the Baltimore catacombs as an Edgar Allan Poe scholar. He entered with a camera. When Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer needed a photograph of the tunnels beneath Westminster Church, Poe’s final resting place, Jerome, a young photographer and tour guide, was there. But when Jerome stepped into that shadowy underground world not far from Camden Yards... READ MORE
Power couple forges bold new book
Sometimes great partnerships start in unlikely places. For Kai Bird and his wife, Susan Goldmark, it was their college cafeteria. Married three years later, the two traveled overseas, filing weekly stories from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as a team. In their ensuing 50-year marriage, their careers rarely aligned. Bird published eight books, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning... READ MORE
A Maryland farmer comes full circle
Farming “was probably in my DNA from the start,” said Anna Chaney, a 13th-generation Anne Arundel native. “I grew up on a farm raising vegetables, sweet corn, squash and tomatoes, selling them roadside and learning a solid work ethic.” Chaney remembers growing and preserving vegetables with her grandmothers, and she felt a strong desire to share those experiences with her own... READ MORE
How Ann Friedman made a museum for words
When people first walk into Planet Word, a museum near the National Mall, they enter a room with a large, blinking globe. The soft chatter of languages from German to Tagalog to Piscataway emanates from several tablets. “When the elevator doors open and you hear people gasp, adults and children, it’s just the nicest reaction you could get,” said Ann B. Friedman, founder and CEO ... READ MORE
Volunteers seek adventure on tall ships
They douse the sails and throw the lines. They operate the whipstaff and capstan, mastering terms like yardarms and spars. That’s part of the fun and challenge of volunteering on a tall ship — and volunteers over 50 are the heart of many tall ships’ operations. Four tall ships docked on the Alexandria waterfront this summer for Sails on the Potomac, wowing landlubbers. And an... READ MORE
Cover Stories 2026
