Just as we are about to move out of National Poetry Month, I want to sneak in an amazing collection of poems that came out last year. The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (Bloomsbury, 2011; now in paperback) is the book acclaimed poet Kevin…

Gertrude Murrell DuPont Howland doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. Especially not at this stage of her life. She’ll be 102 in July.

The Richmond native was a dutiful wife and mother until she divorced and became an archaeologist in her 60s, traveling to digs all over the world: from Afghanistan and Turkey to Italy, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. She traversed the Khyber Pass and went to Hong Kong.

Her second husband, now deceased, was happy to…