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…
I don’t understand war. I never have and likely never will. After this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week of war in Ukraine, I found myself drawn to the Manassas Battlefield. I don’t know what I sought—answers, perspective, hope. So, I walked among the cannons, the historical kiosks, the statues, the wide-open fields, and…
Some things require imagination—a dream, a novel, a school, a better future. My husband and I often walk through the Jennie Dean Park near our house. It contains the remains of Jennie Dean’s dream of a residential school for Black students to learn agriculture and industrial skills as well as gain academic instruction. A home…
We can’t know everything. But we can yearn to learn more. I recently learned of Mr. Lewis Howard Latimer—an inventor, writer, and leader. Born in Massachusetts in 1848, he was the youngest son of slaves who escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, near my hometown. His family decided to split up and scatter to protect itself from…
