By T. REES SHAPIRO, published in Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
Virginia Hanlon Grohl spent more than 30 years in the classroom as a Fairfax County public school teacher, and she remains passionate about the value of an education. So then why did she allow her 17-year-old to drop out of high school and leave their Springfield home to tour the country with a rock band? Because mothers know best.
By MONIQUE CALELLO, published in News Leader (Metered Paywall - 3 to 4 articles a month)
It is a seasonably warm late October day when Nikki Narduzzi and her daughter Maya, Aunt Donna and Mee-Maw sit at Narduzzi’s dining room table in her Staunton home with a basket of dried lavender. The four women are laughing and talking while removing flowers from lavender stems. From time to time, Narduzzi gets up from the table to check on a pot roast and a tray of roasting asparagus. ... These four women aren’t just family. They are survivors. Two years ago, they would find themselves together in a place of suffering and desperation. “I don’t care what side you swing from; if anyone had somebody they loved and cared about enough and they were suffering, I hope they would make the same choices,” says Donna Graber. They look at each other and smile. Their laughter grows quiet as they remember the moment Narduzzi decided to break the law and use cannabis oil.
By ROBYN SIDERSKY, published in Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
For nearly 400 years, ferries have been crossing the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth. And as far back as anyone with Elizabeth River Ferries can remember, a man has been at the helm. Until now. Alex Aguinaldo, 24, will soon be behind the wheel of a 78-foot vessel.
By NOAM SCHEIBER, published in New York Times (Metered Paywall - 1 to 2 articles a month)
Just past 9:30 on a Wednesday morning in March, after she drove 20 minutes to drop her son, Jack, off at preschool, after she trekked back for an hour across the Washington metro area into Fairfax, Va., for work, and long, long after she answered her first email, Maria Simon sat in a windowless conference room weighing the odds that she would be able to make a party in Jack’s class two days hence.
By GABRIELLA SOUZA, published in Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
That morning, Ruth Jones put on a gray skirt and a silk blouse with hints of orange and pink. She fastened pearls around her neck and put on rose-colored lipstick bought just for the occasion. She wanted to stand out. She was trying for her dream job and in her hometown, no less. Ruth walked into the South Hampton Roads YWCA's nondescript office on Colley Avenue in Norfolk, confident in what she was about to do.
By TERENCE MCARDLE, published in Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
The women were clubbed, beaten and tortured by the guards at the Occoquan Workhouse. The 33 suffragists from the National Woman’s Party had been arrested Nov. 10, 1917, while picketing outside the White House for the right to vote. The male guards at the Northern Virginia prison manacled the party’s co-founder Lucy Burns by her hands to the bars above her cell and forced her to stand all night. Dorothy Day, who would later establish the Catholic Worker houses, had her arm twisted behind her back and was slammed twice over the back of an iron bench.
By CRAIG BELCHER, published in Richmond Magazine
There’s a two-lane stretch of highway between the Arkansas towns of Cotton Plant and Brinkley that was renamed last year. It’s now the Sister Rosetta Tharpe Highway, in honor of the woman who created rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, a woman. And yes, she played an electric guitar.
