Trees: wise, sturdy, stoic. I have always loved trees—individually and for the forest they form collectively. These slender pines seem to be on a race to reach the sun, or at least the Carolina blue sky, with their piney tufts topping each barked pole and shading the ground below. But on a recent hike through…
Ever heard of the Stephen Stills band “Manassas?” Me neither, until this week. Apparently, this is the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the first (of two) albums by the band named “Manassas.” Stephen Stills (of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and—sometimes—Young fame) formed this band in the wake of a chance encounter with Chris Hillman…
There were some interesting Easter traditions in my house as I was growing up. Yes, we got the chocolate-filled baskets with a years’ worth of M&Ms just beneath the grass. Yes, we got the chocolate bunny which we either crunched off the head immediately or saved for last—depending upon our age and relative spunk. Yes,…
Alleghanian Orogeny sounds like a concept that belongs in a sex self-help book. But actually, it’s a geological term to describe what occurred over a billion years ago in central Virginia when the ground smashed together until rolls and ridges formed the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today, those mountains harbor wildlife, prop up sunrises and sunsets,…
On the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) of each November, I think of Lucy Burns, a suffragist who was jailed in the Lorton Workhouse Prison in Virginia for picketing. Burns frequently protested in front of the White House between 1916-1918 to influence President Wilson to support the right to vote for women, resulting in…
As we wind down this month of March, also known as the National Woman’s History Month, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ida B. Wells. She was a woman to remember. Born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi, she lost her parents to the yellow fever epidemic in 1878 and became the sole…
