Today’s headline is a reflection of my homebound day caused by an East Coast ice storm: random and (hopefully) curious.  This post is 2 parts. I hope you like them both.  Please let me know.  I live just to the right of the red circle.

The Private Part

Due to a gap in federal funding, my project hours at my writing job have been cut in half for a period of 4 months.  I was at first anxious about the reduction in my family’s monthly income.  However, I decided to take the news as a gift and take a closer look at my privates.  Yippeeee!  Having completed some graduate courses in social work with a previous goal of becoming a therapist, my inclination to offer private yoga classes is a natural evolution of my current undertakings.  Private Yoga it is.  I  have considered this notion on many occasions but haven’t taken any steps in that direction.  I have some wonderful friends poised to enter this dynamic with me – now I have some extra time to make it happen.  I am scheduled to teach my first private yoga class later this month.  I can think of nothing better than assisting another in their health, wellness and athletic goals within the framework of yoga practice.  If you want to be a better athlete – whatever your sport – Yoga can help.  If you want to be a better wife, husband, sister, worker or friend, yoga is your man.  So if clearing out the attic to make space for super positive energy and healthy change in a one-on-one exchange sounds intriguing to you, please let me know what you would like out of private yoga.  Filling the well with your good input before I move out fully in this direction with gusto. 

A suffragist, a Virginia gem and tea when I was 8

I read this article in yesterday’s paper – and learned an old family friend is a famous daughter of the Commonwealth.  As reporter Jim Nolan stated:

There have been so many great women in Virginia’s 400-plus-year history that it would seem nearly impossible to settle on 12 to immortalize in bronze for a monument in Capitol Square.

That was the task for the Women of Virginia Commemorative Commission, which made its final selections last week. 

Who’s on the list

17th century

Ann Burras Laydon of Jamestown (circa 1595 to circa 1637) — first married female settler

Cockacoeske of James City County (died circa 1686) — chief of Pamunkey Tribe

18th century

Clementina Rind of Williamsburg (1740-1774) — publisher of the Virginia Gazette

Martha Washington of Fairfax County (1731-1802) — first lady

Mary Draper Ingles of Southwest Virginia (1729-1813) — frontierswoman who was abducted by Shawnee Indians, escaped and traveled 600 miles to get home

19th century

Sally Louisa Tompkins of Mathews County (1833-1916) — Confederate hospital administrator

Elizabeth Keckley of Dinwiddie County (1818-1907) — former slave, seamstress, confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln

Sarah G. Boyd Jones of Richmond (1867-1905) — African-American physician who earned a medical degree at Howard University, returned to Richmond and became the first Virginia woman to pass the state’s medical board examinations

20th century

Virginia Estelle Randolph of Henrico County (1875-1958) — educator

Laura Lu Copenhaver of Smyth County (1868-1940) — entrepreneur

Maggie L. Walker of Richmond (1867-1934) — first black woman to charter a bank in the United States

Adele Goodman Clark of Richmond (1882-1983) — suffragist

The last lady on the list is a gem I have fond memories of – someone we drove to Mass and with whom we shared tea. I was 8 or 10 or so.  So gentile and kind and stately and elegant and artsy.  I sat at her kitchen table, mostly listened to the adult’s banter in the room – fascinated by the look of the older woman’s face.  Magical eyes, soft measured hand gestures as she spoke and a prayer shawl atop her head reflective of a time gone by.  On several occasions between 1975 and 1983, I was in the presence of Adele Goodman Clark. She was friends of my grandparents and was particularly fond of my mother (me too.)

I recognized her name, looked her up and sure enough that’s the one.  I never knew how amazing her life had been all that she had accomplished.  In short – just who I  had the privilege to know.  Here she is.

Here’s a lovely sketch of her that used to don the walls of my grandmother’s home in Ginter Park.  It now takes of residence at  Library of Virginia.

Given my mother’s close bond with Miss Clark, I bet she was a feminist of sorts.  She had the leanings.  I wish I could talk to her more about this.  Alas, she is in heaven with her grand dame of a friend.

As evolved as Adele Clark was, I bet you anything she would love yoga.

I loved yesterday’s run.  Here it is.