Painting a Better World

Mary Ann Lederer’s story has a bright line down the middle: Before she was shot in the back at age 35, and since then as she turns 70 on July 4 and marks half her life in a wheelchair. Lederer’s is a tale of surviving and thriving, told too little except among fans of her art, of her teachings on diet, nutrition and the health practices she says saved her life and fans of an activism that began in the 1960s when she was one of Cincinnati’s early civil rights promoters.