The Life of Sally Hemings exhibit gives a complete look at Hemings’ life, thanks to excerpts from her son
Madison’s memoir. Photo by Eze Amos
When Gayle Jessup White climbed down into the space, essentially a trench dug about four feet below the floor, the first thing she did was scoop up some dirt and rub it on her hands and arms. White’s great, great, great grandfather, Peter Hemings, was an enslaved cook at Monticello, and he had stood on that very ground, possibly in the same spot, some 200 years before.
“It was an amazing moment,” says White, the community engagement officer at Monticello. “When I come in here I feel that moment every time.”
The archaeological site that shows the remains of the first kitchen at Monticello in the south wing is one of the last pieces of the five-year Mountaintop Project, which sought to tell a more complete version of Thomas Jefferson’s home by bringing to light the stories of the people who lived there—both enslaved and free—through 30 restored spaces and exhibits. The first phase of the project, completed in 2015, included the restoration of Mulberry Row, made up of 20 dwellings and workshops of the enslaved, indentured servants, free blacks and free whites at Monticello, as well as the launch of the Hemings Family Tour. The second phase of the project, which began in 2015 and was opened to the public last weekend, includes six new exhibits and restored spaces, most notably the Life of Sally Hemings, a digital interactive exhibit housed in the slave quarters in the south wing where Hemings lived with her four surviving children. It marks the first time Jefferson’s enslaved mistress, who gave birth to six of his children, has received a space at Monticello for her story.
The Monticello Dairy was unable to supply the household and its guests with enough butter and cream, so enslaved workers carted in hundreds of pounds of butter every winter from Poplar Forest, which was 90 miles away. Photo by Eze Amos.
“Returning another part of the Mountaintop back to the Jefferson period, especially getting the Sally Hemings room back and giving her a space on the mountaintop, is just phenomenal,” says Gardiner Hallock, the Robert H. Smith director of restoration at Monticello. “…[You get] a sense of her as a human being; you bring her humanity back.”
Other newly opened spaces include The Dairy, a restored room where the enslaved made butter and cheese for the household; the Getting Word oral history project; the Granger-Hemings Kitchen; the Textile Workshop, a restored 1775 structure where enslaved women made clothes; and the Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson exhibit, a restored room in the original living quarters above the south wing, designed to offer a fuller picture of Jefferson’s wife.
“We’ve really been focusing our restoration efforts on spaces where women were the primary occupants, either in terms of the work being done or the spaces being occupied,” says Emilie Johnson, assistant curator. “We do a great job of bringing Thomas Jefferson to life in our tours of the main house, and it allows these other spaces to bring these other stories to life.”
About 300 descendants of the enslaved community at Monticello—the largest gathering to date—attended the June 16 opening day of the new exhibits, which included a permanent exhibit for the Getting Word oral history project, which ties the past and present. Photo by Eze Amos.
Living history
On June 16, Monticello opened its newest exhibits to the public and welcomed 300 descendants of the enslaved community that lived and worked at the 5,000-acre plantation–607 people total, and as many as 130 at any one time–to celebrate Juneteenth, the national holiday that honors the abolition of slavery, and the 25th anniversary of Monticello’s Getting Word oral history project, which tells the stories of the enslaved through their descendants.
Niya Bates, Monticello’s public historian of slavery and the African American life and director of the oral history project, says Getting Word ties the past and present by spotlighting six of the largest families of enslaved people at Monticello, and tracing their descendants through history as they fought for civil rights in the 1910s, 1960s and today.
The oral histories collected from descendants have been used previously during the Slavery at Monticello tours, but the permanent exhibit, which includes photos of the descendants as well as their ancestors, is the first time the project has enjoyed a physical space, next to the Hemings exhibit in one of the former slave quarters.
“I hope people take away how many people the institution of slavery impacted,” Bates says. “We have a really prominent descendant in Sally Hemings, but we also have these other families—I want them to know the experience of slavery at Monticello affected hundreds, if not thousands, of people through the generations.”
The Cook’s Room, located in the south wing, shows what the slave quarters would have looked like during Thomas Jefferson’s era. Photo by Eze Amos
Gayle Jessup White first learned of her relation to Jefferson when she was in her teens. Her family spoke of the connection on her father’s side, but they didn’t have any documented proof. White’s grandmother, who was from Charlottesville, died when her dad was 5, and he never knew her. But White remembered the stories that were passed down from generations, and during her first visit to Monticello in 2004, she told the tour guide she was a descendant of Jefferson. She had mixed feelings about the notion—that the man who wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal also owned slaves, which she calls “a blot on his legacy”–but she kept feeling pulled back to Monticello. She continued researching her ancestry, and discovered she was also related to Peter Hemings, Jefferson’s longtime cook.
“As I learned more about my family and as I began to connect and confirmed ties with Jefferson and learned about my ancestors, this place started to feel like home to me,” she says.
White says she still feels “tingly” when she walks into the Granger-Hemings kitchen exhibit at the end of the south wing. The space tells the stories of enslaved cooks Ursula Granger, and Sally Hemings’ brothers, Peter and James (who made Monticello known for its French cuisine), and shows the imprint of what the kitchen looked like from an archaeological standpoint.
Fraser Neiman, Monticello’s director of archaeology, points out three indentations in the dirt wall in the trench adjacent to the exhibit, the place where Jefferson’s original stove would have gone (it was replaced with a French-inspired stew stove that used coals and induction for cooking on a stovetop). The cellar kitchen was part of the oldest standing building Jefferson constructed at Monticello in 1770 (his living quarters were on top), and plans drawn in Jefferson’s handwriting show his idea for the kitchen below.
Dairymaids produced cream, butter and soft cheese stored in The Dairy (now a restored room in the south wing) for the lavish meals that Thomas Jefferson served. Photo by Eze Amos.
According to Neiman, his team, which has done archaeological digs all across the property, usually has a roadmap going in, but they never know if they’ll find evidence that the space matches a drawing, or if the sketch was merely one of Jefferson’s “doodles.” In this case, the drawing of the stew stove and dresser countertop matched the remains Neiman’s team uncovered, including an original fireplace. This space, which housed men’s bathrooms most recently, was preserved after Jefferson moved the kitchen closer to the main house in 1802, and workmen raised the cellar floor three and a half feet to match the grade of the rest of the south wing. The dirt dumped on top to fill in the kitchen space kept intact evidence of what existed before—and kept the soil that Granger and the Hemingses and countless other people walked on every day undisturbed.
“From the moment they started pulling things down to the moment they’re putting something old and something new together, this has been an amazing experience, eye-opening for me,” White says. “I feel a sense of gratitude to the researchers, historians, carpenters and brick masons who all worked together. I feel a real appreciation for their work as a colleague, but as a descendant I feel a real sense of gratitude.”
In a gentleman’s agreement, Peter Hemings, a dignified man who worked as cook, brewer and tailor, was sold after Jefferson died to Jefferson’s nephew for $1 and given his freedom. White says it’s hard to imagine what that must have been like for her great, great, great grandfather—what life must have been like for all the enslaved people at Monticello. With tears in her eyes, she glances out a small window, and says, “They’re all family. They’re still here.”
Hand-painted Chinese porcelain plate fragments were among the recovered items during the archaeological excavation of the Granger-Hemings kitchen. Photo by Eze Amos.
A room of her own
The main feature in the Life of Sally Hemings exhibit is a plain dress form, which serves as a backdrop
for the images that are projected onto it, as well as the wraparound screen behind it, while passages from Hemings’ son’s memoir are used to reveal more about his mother’s life. Niya Bates was part of the team that constructed the exhibit, and she says when they first started conceptualizing it, their historian sides threatened to win over as they gravitated toward displaying the information in a typical exhibit setting. But an outside exhibition firm told them that Madison Hemings’ memoir reads more like poetry—and suggested an interactive, immersive experience using his words.
“It’s the most beautiful way we could have expressed her story,” Bates says. “It’s the closest we can get to having her voice without actually having her.”
Two panels flanking the entrance to the exhibit serve the dual purposes of providing biographical information about Hemings as a world traveler, seamstress, mother, daughter, liberator and inherited property, and leaning into the Jefferson-Hemings controversy by outlining DNA evidence of the pair’s relationship. They also provide a look at historians’ and Hemings’ descendants’ views on an enslaved woman’s lack of legal right to consent to a sexual relationship with her master, and the unequal power masters held.
Hemings was born in 1773 to John Wayles (Martha Jefferson’s father) and his enslaved servant, Elizabeth Hemings, thus making her and Jefferson’s wife half-sisters. When Martha came to live at Monticello she brought Hemings, then a toddler, and Hemings’ mother and siblings with her as “inherited property.” When Jefferson went to live in Paris during his time as United States Minister to France, Hemings worked there for two and a half years as a servant in his household. At age 16, Hemings, who was legally free in France, refused to return to Monticello unless she enjoyed “extraordinary privileges” that ensured she would be allowed to raise her children and do light work such as sewing. In addition, she got Jefferson to promise to free her future children at age 21. Hemings’ son, Madison, refers to his mother as Jefferson’s concubine in his writing (Hemings gave birth to at least six of Jefferson’s children). Hemings saw two of her surviving sons (Madison and Eston) gain legal freedom in Jefferson’s will, and she had limited contact with her two eldest children (Beverly and Harriet) after they left Monticello and entered into Washington, D.C.’s white society (three of Hemings’ grandparents were of European descent). Hemings lived unofficially free in Charlottesville from Jefferson’s death in 1826 until her death in 1835.
“I think there are a lot of elements that are different than people might expect in a story about an enslaved woman, like her travel to Paris and her being allowed to live with her family,” Bates says. “All different elements about Sally Hemings’ life could be quite surprising, which is why we wanted to give people that space. This could be pretty emotional for a lot of people, especially the descendants, or anyone with a connection to this history.”
Donna Chen, an assistant engineering professor at UVA, says being a working mom to children Audrey, 4, and Cora, 1, with husband Mike Frink sometimes requires creative child care solutions, like sharing a nanny with another family. Photo by Eze Amos
Afew days after the photos circulated—on news stations, in print stories and Facebook feeds—the comments turned from what HRH the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton was wearing (a long-sleeved red dress with a lacy white Peter Pan collar reminiscent of what Princess Diana wore after son Harry’s birth) to how she was wearing a dress and heels with perfectly coiffed hair just a few hours after giving birth to her third child.
“That’s insane,” says Robin Truxel, owner of truPilates and an advocate for helping moms become stronger before and after pregnancy, about the Instagram-obsessed culture in which we live. Truxel herself has two children, ages 3 and 16 months.
Society has certainly played into the notion of the superhero mom. Not only is she the center of a family, she’s often returning to work soon after a baby’s birth—sometimes out of necessity, because the United States is the only industrialized nation without federally mandated paid maternity leave—and still learning to navigate a new world. Once a child is born, his mom has to shed her former self and start to navigate under a new identity, one that can feel false and is filled with anxieties: finding affordable child care and leaving her baby for the first time, what her rights are in asking her employer for a private room to pump breast milk three times a day and—no biggie—how to keep a tiny human alive.
In this constant ticker tape of thoughts, a mom’s attention is generally turned outward. But local health care professionals say it’s imperative that moms learn to take a deep breath and focus on their own thoughts, feelings and needs, because a healthy mom means a healthy baby—and a healthy family.
“Being a mom is your greatest happiness and your greatest stress,” says Elizabeth Irvin, executive director of the Women’s Initiative, which provides mental health counseling, social support and education offerings to women regardless of their ability to pay. Irvin, a mom herself to two boys ages 5 and 10, says, “You’re a mom until the day you die. It doesn’t matter how old your children are. The need for support just changes and grows as your child’s development changes and grows.”
Systemic issues in our societal structure that isolate the family unit into taking care of itself are huge, says Irvin, who claims that doing it alone in a low-income household is an “impossibility. There have to be other people involved to just get through a day.”
Scary stats
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act allows full-time employees in companies with 50 or more employees up to 12 weeks of medical leave, but few families can afford to take up to three months off (with no federal paid leave, compensation varies by company). According to a 2012 study by the Department of Labor, 42 percent of all FMLA leave in the United States is 10 days or fewer.
Donna Chen says the push on a national level for federal standards for paid maternity leave should center on parental leave. Because moms generally become the primary caregiver for children during the first few months of their lives, this sets up a system where moms remain the primary caregiver even after returning to work. Chen says she and her husband each take a half day when one of their children is sick. She says no one questions her reason for being absent, but her husband has had to explain that his wife was teaching during that time and he needed to be at home with his sick child.
UVA’s Abby Palko says the lack of paid maternity leave in the U.S. is “horrific.” She points to Sweden that has a “use it or lose” policy for paid paternity leave for both moms and dads, with single parents getting both blocks of time. Palko also points to systemic issues such as lack of affordable child care, unequal access to health care and an increase in maternal mortality rates in the U.S. NPR and ProPublica released results of a study last year that revealed the United States has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world: 26.4 per 100,000 births compared with 9.2 in the U.K. and 3.8 in Finland.
A lack of affordable child care—especially during nontraditional work hours of second and third shifts—is a common concern for the women Irvin’s staff helps. They must rely on their outside network for help, which could include family members or neighbors.
“We’re expecting women to do it all, and there’s similar but different pressures on guys, but still there’s this pressure to do it all, have it all, instead of pressure on society to be structured in a way that provides the support so people can do bits and pieces of it all in a sustainable and enjoyable way,” says Abby Palko, director of the Maxine Platzer Women’s Center at UVA.
Donna Chen, an assistant engineering professor at UVA, found out she was pregnant with her second child shortly after moving to Charlottesville from Austin, Texas, in 2015. Being in a male-dominated industry, Chen didn’t have a peer network to ask for recommendations aboutOB/GYNs, preschools and other family necessities, so she turned to Facebook. She became a member of several local mom groups, because she knew, after starting her own moms neighborhood group in Texas, that having a pipeline to area resources is key in a family’s success. And the Facebook groups double as support systems, much like Sister Circle, aimed at African-American women at the Women’s Initiative, or the yoga class for moms and babies at Bend Yoga. And other programs exist throughout our community, like the Becoming a Working Mom class held a few weeks ago through the UVA Health System and ReadyKids. They provide a safe space to ask questions and get honest answers, and to know you’re not alone.
“So much is by word of mouth, and there’s a lot of pressure to keep motherhood hidden,” Chen says. “In the beginning it’s graphic, it’s not real pretty. People don’t want to talk about that phase in their life when they’re wearing diapers because they’re basically healing down there. There’s a lack of open information out there, which is why these Facebook groups exist. It’s shocking to me why we can’t talk about this beyond the moms groups.”
Kelly Cox, who opened Bend Yoga seven years ago and previously worked as a mental health counselor for women, says our society doesn’t address issues moms face, especially mental health issues like postpartum depression. In her pre- and post-delivery classes, the women talk about how hormones can affect a person, and the struggles around breastfeeding—from the difficulties of teaching a baby to latch on to finding an hour and a half during the work day to pump.
“I think empowering women, especially in the time we’re in, is the most important thing we can do,” Cox says.
Shaking things up
After Amanda Ames had her first child in April 2015, she started Googling topics about going back to work. She was shocked that she came up with almost nothing. There were plenty of books about pregnancy and raising a child, but few resources for working moms and the issues they might face when returning from maternity leave. About a year later, Ames saw a comment thread in a local Facebook group for moms. Someone asked about resources for working moms, and everyone had the same answer: Nobody is talking about this.
Of course, Ames, an associate attorney with Womble Bond Dickinson, says she realized why no one was writing about this: Working moms were just too busy. So, she developed an idea for a website called Project Work Mom, similar to Humans of New York. Ames asked friends to share their stories—a paragraph about their day—along with a photo.
When her first daughter was born, Chen was a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas, Austin. She shared an office with a male colleague, and brought in a screen so she could pump at her desk. But the biggest hurdle was keeping her pumped milk cold until she got home. If the bus was late, it “would get pretty dicey with how long my ice pack was going to last.” Chen also remembers having to travel to a conference when her first baby was 6 months old. She was going to be gone for five days and had to pump enough milk to last for the duration. She was worried if she would have enough milk, and knew they’d be down to the last 8 ounces by the time she returned.
“I’ve known friends who pumped in equipment closets or a specific stall in a bathroom,” Chen says. “It takes time and you’re supposed to make up that time—that’s why moms get discouraged with pumping. I know a lot of women don’t have that luxury, especially hourly workers.”
When MIT student Catherine D’ignazio found herself pumping on the floor of a bathroom stall after her third child was born, she told herself there had to be a better way. That led to D’ignazio, now a professor at Emerson College, to co-found the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon in 2014, a conference dedicated to improving the breast pump device and breast pumping conditions for women. When Ames was preparing to return to work this February after the birth of her son, she came across the second iteration of the breast pump hackathon, which this year included a family leave policy summit. She submitted an application and was one of 100 participants from all over the world who was invited to the MIT Media Lab the last weekend in April to create products and apps to improve quality of life for moms. App developers, moms and product designers all partnered on ideas that ranged from a mindfulness-based app to identify postpartum depression (Ames’ group), a baby-feeding kit for people in disaster areas and a fabric shelf that can hang around a mom’s neck or on the back of a bathroom door so she doesn’t have to set her breast pump on a toilet.
Ames says this conference differed from the first in that it sought to include women of all backgrounds, so that “we’re not just designing for the 1 percent.”
“We talked a lot about equity in design,” she says. “That was something eye-opening and something that once I thought about it seemed so obvious: Women need to be designing products and apps and processes for women. And we need to bring in more women of color, LGBTQ families, single moms, low-wage workers.”
Although Ames’ group’s app that tracks a mom’s mood over time and gives them mindfulness tools to lessen the effects of postpartum depression didn’t win the hackathon, she says she’d still like to see it developed. And her goal with Project Work Mom, which has morphed largely into a Facebook page, is to connect people with resources, as well as connect people to each other so they can see there are lots of ways to approach motherhood. It’s not one-size-fits-all.
“I wanted to convey there’s no right way to do this, which is important when you’re feeling overwhelmed,” Ames says.
Bellamy Shoffner, mom to Cade, 6, and Cyrus, 3, with husband, Charles, publishes an online quarterly magazine for parents that discusses topics such as social justice and race. Photo by Eze Amos
After the events of August 12, Bellamy Shoffner, mom to two boys ages 6 and 3, wrote an essay on Medium.com titled, “What Really Happened in Charlottesville.” In the months following the Unite the Right rally, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she could–and should–be doing more. She wanted to effect change.
“It’s very important for me to do everything I can to make my children’s future better,” she says. “They’re just on the wrong side of statistics: They’re boys and they’re black. And there’s not a lot of hope for them. I almost feel like I don’t have an option, you know?”
Shoffner, who created her first eight-page newspaper when she was 16, did what came naturally: She wrote, and she read other authors’ work. She kept feeling the pull of wanting to offer something tangible, thus she created the online quarterly magazine Hold the Line. The first issue, published in December, is geared to parents and focuses on racial and social justice issues. And its articles offer solutions: How to talk to your children about race, why self-care is important for the family unit.
Shoffner, who served as the editor, art director and page designer, says she didn’t know what the end product would be until it was finished—much like you wonder if your baby will look like you: Does it have Shoffner’s eyes? Her nose? What it does have is Shoffner’s voice. She not only wrote a piece titled “When Color is Clear” about growing up African-American in a predominantly white suburbs in Delaware, but she edited and designed every page of the 110-page issue, no small feat for a mom of two young boys who also works part-time for Virginia Humanities. She spent many 14-hour stretches in front of a computer, while her husband took care of the kids. The result of her efforts, she hopes, is that she releases something out into the world that flourishes. That she has birthed something that will continue to grow as lessons are learned, as life becomes hard and puts pressure on.
“The idea of the reach (readers in 50 states and 10 countries) is why I thought it was important,” Shoffner says. “To share these personal stories and impact as many people as we can is really valuable.”
Shoffner’s essay on being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when her second son was 4 months old won second place in the 2017 Women’s Initiative Challenge Into Change writing contest. While she was playing on the floor with him one day, one of her arms was weak. She attributed it to carrying him around all the time. But, a few days later, she couldn’t see well out of one eye. Today she says her health comes in waves: There are good days and bad days. But she says that’s why it’s even more important for her to continue working, to continue producing a magazine—to show her sons that they can overcome struggles.
“I don’t feel successful because I don’t feel done,” she says. “There’s so much left to do.”
Creating communities
Getting in the door is one hurdle for moms, especially working moms, who come to the Women’s Initiative to discuss parenthood stresses. But beyond that, it’s hard for women to discuss their own struggles: They frame their concerns around their children. Elizabeth Irvin, a licensed clinical social worker, says part of the nonprofit’s work is to help moms realize it’s okay to direct some of their care and worry toward themselves because in the end they’re serving their children.
Cultural systems also come into play, says Ingrid Ramos, a therapist and coordinator of the Latina program at the organization. She says that in Latino culture, being a mom is largely seen as central to women’s lives. Another factor in seeking help is a lack of a support system, especially for immigrants from other countries who moved here with their husband and children but no other family members.
“It creates an imbalance where they are focused on what they have to do, not what they need,” Ramos says. “But once they’ve found us they tend to enjoy it. ‘Oh, I’ve found some relief. I can take this hour for myself.’”
When the Women’s Initiative launched the Sister Circle in October 2015, program coordinator Shelly Wood says they had no idea how many people would show up. She was excited they had a huge showing of 25 people (the eight- to 10-week sessions that occur on an ongoing basis are now capped at 10 to 12 people), which validated their feeling that there was a need for this in the community. Some of the issues discussed in the group include a wish for more physicians and OB/GYNs of color, the stigma of mental health and reaching out for help, more affordable child care along with nontraditional hours, more leave from work and more activities for families of color in Charlottesville.
Wood has an 11-year-old daughter and says she wishes there had been a support group like the one she runs when her daughter was young, so she could have connected with other mothers her age and more resources.
“I wanted to stay home but there was that guilt of going back to work,” she says. “Thank god grandma was our baby-sitter, but a lot of people don’t have that as an option.”
Another main topic of discussion is stereotypes black mothers feel they have to combat, that when someone seems them walking down the street with their child, it’s assumed she’s a single mother or on welfare.
“We just wanted to be thought of as mothers like everybody else.”
The new moms group at the Women’s Initiative is in its second year. Irvin says all working moms face some of the same challenges, and can benefit from finding others going through similar struggles.
“Mothering is an experience shared by most women at some point in their lives,” she says. “Can we be authentic about the joys and struggles of this journey? Because that’s where women tend to get the most support—natural support circles.”
Kelly Cox, co-owner of Bend Yoga, not only offers classes for pregnant and new moms (and their babies!), but connects clients with other parenting resources in town. Cramer photo
The first thing Bend Yoga’s Cox tells a mom is that she’s not going to help her get her pre-baby body back, but she is going to make her stronger to help care for the baby.
“I understand wanting to feel powerful in your body again or feel stronger,” she says.
Cox, also a doula who helps moms with the birthing process, says the current trend toward having a natural birth—with no epidural—causes anxiety for some mothers.
“I think anyone who leaves the hospital after giving birth, whether it’s abdominally or vaginally, and doesn’t feel like a total badass…it’s the coolest thing you’re ever going to do,” she says.
TruPilates’ Truxel echoes that sentiment and says she works with moms from the first trimester to several weeks postpartum when moms want to start working out again. Truxel uses a three-prong approach to get the body in proper alignment, with focus on correct breathing and strengthening the pelvic floor to prevent injuries when moms resume their normal activities.
“I look at moms like you’re an elite athlete and need to rehab,” she says. “You wouldn’t hike Mount Everest if you’ve only been walking around the block.”
Truxel says she struggled with postpartum depression after the birth of both of her children, as well as anxiety attacks with her second child. She says although doctors often screen for postpartum depression at a mom’s first checkup, she says the moms she works with say they often start struggling four or five months after giving birth, when they’ve gone back to work and have to juggle getting dinner on the table, picking up kids from daycare, etc.
“That’s something that’s not talked about,” Truxel says. “Is there shame associated with that, or women don’t realize it when they’re in it? …I don’t know what the answer is, [but what’s important is] support and just normalizing that this is really hard, as opposed to everything having to be perfect and amazing.”
Kelly Rossi remembers the moment she felt sure about becoming a mom: When her son smiled for the first time at 8 weeks old. Growing up, Rossi, associate director of sports nutrition for 10 athletic teams at UVA, went back and forth on whether she wanted to have children, and says that feeling persisted even after her son’s birth—up until that smile.
“I love when I come home at night and see him crawling over to hug me, feeling the love,” she says.
Rossi says her pregnancy was fairly easy—she felt great and kept to her workouts until Braxton Hicks contractions at 23 weeks turned her normal six-days-a-week routine into walks with the dog and yoga. After her son was born, Rossi noticed some pressure in her pelvic area but attributed it to having just pushed out a 7-pound baby. This being her first baby, she didn’t know what to expect, what was normal.
At her six-week post-delivery checkup—standard for new moms—Rossi was diagnosed with a rectocele—which is basically a hernia in the pelvic area. That diagnosis means Rossi can no longer lift anything heavier than 10 pounds, and Kayden hit that mark two months after his birth. This means Rossi’s husband, Reed Dibler, has to wake up every time the baby cries in order to place him in his mother’s arms. And at work, Rossi has to ask for help during the more physically demanding parts of her job. Not only was Rossi adjusting to new motherhood, she was adjusting to the realization that she may not be able to pick up her son when he’s 2. Surgery is an option, though it could complicate future pregnancies, and Rossi’s doctors say the birth injury could go away on its own—though it could come and go.
“I would say it’s more of an emotional trauma than a physical one,” Rossi says. “You want to be able to hold your baby and feel like a strong mom. I’m not able to exercise, do my job fully and not able to be the mom I want to be, honestly.”
Although not diagnosed with postpartum depression, Rossi says she experienced a four-week period in January, about six months after the birth, when she struggled emotionally. She had been going to weekly physical therapy sessions to treat her injury, in conjunction with a weekly pilates session with Truxel to work on strengthening her pelvic floor. When Rossi had to miss a few sessions, she realized how much she had been relying on Truxel not just for physical but emotional support.
After Rossi gave birth, she says moms she didn’t know well, women she knew from working in the same industry, reached out to check on her. They offered daily support and shared stories of their own struggles. Rossi says she was surprised to hear that people she had previously thought of as strong and with no issues were going through some of the same things. Today she pays that forward within her own circle, and makes sure to check in with new moms so they know they’re not alone.
Growing topic
Each year, Palko’s staff at the Women’s Center welcomes 30 interns from all areas of study: law, public policy, nonprofits, marketing, to help with a variety of tasks, ranging from a legal clinic to an online journal. The students take a class in both the fall and spring semester that discusses mothering and parenting topics. Palko leads the spring session, which this year looked at topics such as doula services, reproductive justice and the women’s place in the work world and challenges women face when building a career. She says she’s excited to see a lot of “really smart, dedicated and super thoughtful students” teaming up with Women’s Center staff to discuss the big picture of parenting issues and how a number of problems are interrelated: the climate, economy, access to resources and services. “There’s an understanding that there’s a constellation of things that need to be addressed,” she says.
The mom of an 11-year-old daughter, she says she sees a shift moving in the right direction.
“There’s a couple of different conversations going on that will hopefully lead to better understanding of what effective parenting looks like and better support for people doing it,” she says.
Shelly Wood says she she’s also seeing a shift—“a tiny, slow shift but definitely a shift”—in her clients at the Women’s Initiative. She says as more spaces such as the yoga for women of color class are offered, it’s opening up places to “help ourselves.”
“More spaces mean more available opportunities that can only help destigmatize that it’s okay to reach out for help, it’s okay to have these feeling of feeling stressed as a mother.”
At Bend Yoga there’s a “family tree” on one wall that features a tree with a green leaf with the name of each mother and baby that are part of the community.
“I think we’re so individualized until this process of pregnancy happens,” Cox says. “It takes a village to raise the village.”
The first time I met Kelly Cox, she was sitting on a green exercise ball with a baby in each arm. She bounced both babies on her knees while two moms in front of her held their yoga poses. Cox, co-owner of Bend Yoga, offers classes for moms from pregnancy to post-birth, as well as support groups that center on topics such as postpartum depression and breastfeeding. Cox, also a doula who helps mothers throughout the birthing process, aims to connect women with resources in the area–whether with single practitioners or classes at hospitals—so they don’t feel so alone in their journey.
In this week’s feature (p. 21), you’ll meet moms who are striving to juggle it all: multiple children, returning to work after having a baby and finding time for a few quiet moments to recharge. Many of them say they benefit from support groups—whether informal or formal—to share their concerns and advice with. Cox likens this to when
children were raised in communities—and these support systems were built into our daily lives. “It takes a village to raise the village,” she says.—Jessica Luck
The top Facebook post last week was “Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll: New apartment complex promises at least one of those,” with 19 reactions, 11 comments and 8 shares.
The prompt sends a wave of encouragement from the fielders as one of the bowlers for the Charlottesville Cricket Club gets a running start and uses a round-arm action to hurl the leather-bound ball down the dirt pitch toward the heavily padded batter at the other end. The ball sails past the batter and hits the wicket. The team erupts in cheers, because if this were a real game, the batter would have been out.
The club’s first practice session of the season in early March at Darden Towe Park consisted of an hour spent prepping the field, located directly behind the Little League diamond on the north side of the park, catching practice, then a practice game with several bowlers and batters taking turns at the pitch. The club, formed in 2002 by Dr. Prabhakar Reddi, has been using the county park as its practice and game space since 2008. Vice captain John D’Costa, who played cricket while growing up in India, says they are thankful the county helps maintain their pitch, which is a 22-yard-long dirt rectangle.
During the practice, several batters rack up runs by hitting fours and sixes. A four-run hit means the ball touches the ground before bouncing over the field’s boundary in any direction (unlike baseball, a batter can hit the ball forward, backward and to either side). A six-run hit occurs when the ball sails cleanly over the boundary line.
Similar to baseball, if a fielder for the opposite team catches a hit in the air, the batter is out (one of 10 ways a batter can get out). But the similarities end there; there are no bases to run in cricket. Two batters stand at the opposite end of the pitch near the wooden wicket stationed in the ground, and when a ball is hit (anything other than a four or six) the batters can run from one end of the pitch to the other. If both batters make it to the other end, that’s one run. They can run back and forth as many times until the ball reaches the hands of the wicket-keeper.
Cricket is the national sport of England and thus is “like religion” in India, which was ruled by England for 200 years, D’Costa says. The members of the Charlottesville cricket team come from several countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Australia and the West Indies. Many are grad students or work at UVA, and the roster varies year to year. But whenever they come to the cricket field, the players “forget where they are,” D’Costa says.
The ultimate goal is to send some of the Charlottesville players to the U.S. national team tryouts to compete on an international level with the best teams in the world. For now, the Charlottesville players enjoy the camaraderie at weekly practices and 12 games during their season, which runs from late March through September. But they’re always looking for more members—whether someone has never set foot on a pitch or grew up with a cricket bat in hand. The club is also starting a league on Saturdays in which anyone interested in learning the sport can play with a tape tennis ball, which is safer. The players hope to pass on the love of the sport to the next generation, so that cricket in Charlottesville and the Mid-Atlantic Cricket Conference grows.
“This is something that I love to do,” D’Costa says. “I grew up with this, and I want the first generation to take it over in the future. I give my heart for this.”
Darden Towe Park. Photo: Jack Looney
Park place
Darden Towe Park comprises 113 acres and includes a Little League baseball field, three softball fields, four multi-purpose fields for soccer, lacrosse and football, four tennis courts and 3.8 miles of trails.
As you drive the around the northwest side of the park, you’ll often spot outdoor-lovers in colorful life jackets loading kayaks into the Rivanna River. On the opposite end of the park, follow the sound of barking to the one-acre dog park, which seems to always have at least a couple of furry friends enjoying the fresh air.
Holly Herring and Randi Rod took photos of themselves on every long run to document their journey. Photo: Amy Jackson
When Randi Rod says she completed a couch-to-10-mile running program, she means it. She was sitting on her couch when her friend, Holly Herring, called last fall to ask her to run the Charlottesville Ten Miler with her. Rod, 53, who hadn’t exercised much while raising her three children (her youngest is 16), laughed at the suggestion, but said she’d do it.
The two showed up to the first training session, organized by Ragged Mountain Running Shop, in late October not knowing what to expect. They were in the beginners group, and were told to go around the track at UVA’s Lannigan Field twice. The women planned to walk the curves at either end and run the straightaways, but Rod says she remembers jogging the first stretch and thinking, “We’re never going to be able to do this.”
For the next 23 weeks, Rod and Herring met every Saturday morning for official practice with their training group, and ran at least one day a week together, either around Rod’s hilly Peacock Hill neighborhood or various outdoor spots. One of the best things about running outside is rediscovering the place where you live, Rod says.
One of the first solo runs the pair did—two miles—was in Claudius Crozet Park. They started on the paved trail and then branched off to one of the dirt paths. They marveled at the streams and wooden bridges they had no idea existed in their backyard.
“It’s so fun to discover all this stuff,” Rod says. “You don’t see it in your car when you’re zooming down the road.”
Rod says another key motivator in training for the popular Charlottesville race was running with someone else. They made a pact during training that they were not going to push themselves so hard that they wanted to quit, because their goal was simple: to finish. The pair walked up hills and jogged down them, with the goal of running a 15-minute-mile pace. Their race goal was 2 hours, 30 minutes. On March 24, they crossed the finish line under pace in 2 hours and 26 minutes. The first thing they did after finishing was high-five each other, and Rod also got a big hug from Ragged Mountain co-owner Mark Lorenzoni.
Rod says she wore her finisher’s medal to a celebratory breakfast at Cavalier Diner, and kept it on in the car on the way to Cape Charles, where the friends stayed overnight to celebrate their success.
“We kept looking at each other and saying, ‘Can you believe what we just did? We’re rock stars!” Rod says.
The pair plan to keep up their running with the goal of training for a half marathon.
“After 10 miles, what’s another three?” Rod asks.
Words to run by
Randi Rod says if she can do it, anyone can do it. She remembers how excited she was the first time she ran two miles without walking, as well as the point when six miles no longer seemed daunting.
“Just try it,” she says. “I didn’t think I would last, but once you get going, you get sucked in. Then, you don’t want to let yourself down.”
Housing must-haves: near a great coffee shop, walkable to amenities like the library, grocery store and a park. The home can be on the smaller side—since it’s just you—and you don’t need a huge yard, but something that allows you to enjoy the neighbor-hood would be ideal. The main concern, of course, is affordability. ν In terms of a housing checklist, some may be surprised to find that millennials and seniors are remarkably similar, yet the 65 and up crowd is often seen as a separate audience. But the needs and wants of people who seek to age in the place they call home apply to everyone. And that’s the key idea behind the Charlottesville Area Alliance, made up of more than 25 organizations in the region that are ensuring that seniors are not left out of the larger planning conversations for our community. Because what’s often good for the podcast-obsessed college student is great for the retiree who wants to take classes to continue learning. They say age is just a number, and our area’s percentage of 65 and older residents is growing quickly—22 percent of our population by 2030.
Not only are seniors making up more of our demographic distribution, but they are living longer.
That’s good news, right? Although the national life expectancy is increasing—it’s now at 78—the average health span is about a decade lower, meaning the last 10 years of one’s life isn’t necessarily a time of wellness.
“Aging is identified as the biggest demographic issue our community faces,” says Peter Thompson, executive director of Charlottesville’s Senior Center, which serves 8,000 people a year. “The key that research consistently shows is how we can help seniors stay as active and engaged as long as possible so they can be assets for their family and community instead of becoming a burden—I hate to use that word, but that’s what people think of.”
American society is purpose-driven—we’re often defined by what we do—and once someone loses that familiar identifier, he can become lost if he doesn’t replace it with a new passion, Thompson says. For instance, Senior Center members volunteer 50,000 hours annually at other nonprofits in the community, whether that means taking tickets at the Paramount Theater or participating in equine therapy.
The Senior Center offers more than 100 programs, including a hiking group. Courtesy photo
But even though more seniors reside in Charlottesville and the five surrounding counties (a combination of people living longer and people choosing to retire here), older people can be an invisible population, Thompson says. Oftentimes, seniors are seen as an “other,” not as an inevitable future group of which we’ll all be a member. Even among retirees, he says, people in their mid-70s often don’t use the term “senior” to describe themselves. In their minds, a senior citizen is a frail, almost-bedridden individual, which is a stark contrast to the active members at the center who line dance, do tai chi, hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains, play in bands, teach children to fish, go on day trips throughout the state and even take African safaris together.
That’s one of the reasons why the Senior Center, which has resided at its Pepsi Place location since 1991 and plans to break ground later this year on a new building in Belvedere, will be called, simply, The Center at Belvedere. The existing Senior Center hosts 100 recurring programs a year, and rents out space to community groups hosting forums and programs or even weddings and quinceañeras, and Thompson says they realized about 10 years ago that they were going to outgrow the 20,000-square-foot space. The main meeting room downstairs doubles as a dance space, and its linoleum-tiled floor isn’t ideal for people with back problems. In addition, the room was not wired for acoustics, and hearing can be a barrier for many seniors who attend programs there.
The new 60,000-square-foot center will have a performing arts space, which community groups can rent, a Greenberry’s café/library with access to an outdoor space, several classrooms and meeting rooms, and a Martha Jefferson Hospital clinic that will be open to anyone in the community. Thompson says his goal is for the center to foster intergenerational relationships between people of all ages.
The new 60,000-square-foot Center at Belvedere will have a performing arts space, which community groups can rent, a Greenberry’s café/library with access to an outdoor space, several classrooms and meeting rooms, and a Martha Jefferson Hospital clinic that will be open to anyone in the community. Courtesy rendering
The $24 million project will be funded partly by a $1.2 million and $2 million one-time capital investment from the city and county, respectively. Since its founding in 1960, the Senior Center has never sought public funding as a 501c3, but Thompson says its community felt private philanthropists would see the project as more viable if the local government supported it.
“You look at city and county budgets and even if you look at federal dialogue, typically they say ‘we can’t afford entitlements.’ There’s never talk of how can we celebrate the success of people living longer now, how can we help people stay healthy,” Thompson says. “At the federal level, there’s a policy that says building and rebuilding senior centers should be a priority. There’s a theoretical understanding that that’s a key to dealing with an aging population. But there’s no money allocated to it—hasn’t been for 10 years.”
He points to city and county research in which they benchmarked other college towns and counties in Virginia, all of which funded a senior center—some as much as 100 percent.
He credits former City Councilor Kristen Szakos with being an early supporter of the plan.
“She understood it here,” Thompson says as he points to his head. “But she got it here,” he says, tapping his chest.
Thompson is also quick to point out that seniors are not just using societal resources but are working and oftentimes serving as caregivers to each other or grandchildren. He mentions a woman in her 70s who hikes with a Senior Center group and is also running the Boston Marathon this Saturday. She fell ill with the flu recently and was housebound for three weeks. Never married and with no children, it was her hiking group that brought her food and took her to the doctor.
“Aging is a fundamental issue that is a community-wide issue, and we’re all playing a part in it, for better or for worse,” Thompson says.
Common bond
The idea for the Charlottesville Area Alliance was born in 2014 when leaders of several organizations saw that our area’s senior population was projected to increase from 24,375 in 2000 to 63,821 by 2030—a 162 percent jump, while the county’s senior population is growing at an even quicker rate. For instance, in Albemarle County, 22 percent of the population by 2030 is expected to be seniors, a jump of almost 185 percent compared with the demographic distribution in 2000. In Charlottesville, the percentage from 2000 to 2030 is predicted to increase from 10 percent to 12 percent (a 50 percent increase in terms of total population, from 4,490 to 6,720).
In the last year, the City of Charlottesville and both Albemarle and Fluvanna counties signed a charter committing to being age-friendly communities. But helping to break down the needs of this population and shape what an age-friendly community looks like is where the alliance comes in.
Now at 25 members, including public and private entities such as Hospice of the Piedmont, Alzheimer’s Association Central and Western Virginia, JAUNT, Legal Aid Justice Center, Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Region 10 and both hospital systems, the alliance has broken into five work groups that examine the World Health Organization’s national metrics of what an age-friendly community looks like in the arenas of outdoor spaces, housing, health care, transportation, social opportunities, learning, civic engagement and employment. It asses where our region is as a whole—celebrating successes and identifying areas of need. Another goal of the group is to serve as an advocacy arm for this part of the community to make sure that the senior voice is being heard regarding funding for and development of our area’s amenities, and to ensure the Charlottesville area remains a viable location to age in place.
According to Marta Keane, JABA’s executive director who was a core member alongside Thompson in forming the alliance, issues such as securing affordable housing (a senior might have bought a house in Belmont in the 1950s but be unable to afford the taxes now) are driving some older members to the counties. The conversation of affordable housing in Charlottesville often focuses on workforce housing, Keane says, and she wants developers and tax-relief programs to take seniors into account too. Eleven percent of seniors in our region are at the poverty level making, $11,000 a year. Keane points to a city affordable housing tax relief for people who make 30 or 40 percent of the city’s average median income, but says some seniors can’t even afford that.
“That’s the thing I think with aging, it’s not a little box,” Keane says. “Everything that affects others affects aging, maybe in a different way, but it’s everything in our life. That’s part of the misperception, when you say, ‘Okay here are seniors.’” She waves her arms in a big circular motion: “No, heeerrreee are seniors.”
Living in the county can prove difficult for seniors who are unable to drive themselves to doctor appointments, the grocery and social activities. And Keane says that loss of mobility is often a key factor in social isolation that can lead to mental and physical health problems: 26 percent of seniors in our region live alone.
JAUNT offers transit service to residents in and outside of the urban ring, with about 50 percent of its 300,000 annual rides taking place in Charlottesville. The other 50 percent are split among the surrounding counties, and each municipality funds JAUNT’s services to its area. The hiking group at the Senior Center often goes on five- to eight-mile hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
In the city, residents have access to both the CAT bus system and JAUNT, but residents in the area’s surrounding counties rely solely on JAUNT, which contracts with each county municipality to establish routes, services and funding, based on need. JAUNT makes 300,000 trips a year, with about 50 percent of its them in Charlottesville and the remaining 50 percent split between the surrounding six counties.
Brad Sheffield, executive director of JAUNT, says seniors make up about 40 percent of the public transit’s overall ridership, although capturing exact population demographics is difficult because some seniors (often targeted as victims of scams) are leery about sharing personal information. JAUNT offers curb-to-curb service and employs drivers who are trained in paratransit services, such as knowing how to properly secure people in wheelchairs on the bus. The system runs fixed routes, but has an intricate system of scheduling based on who has requested services in a particular area. Sheffield says as more seniors move into an area and request services, other subsets of the population needing transit (those needing a ride to work or school) often emerge.
“I think that’s why the alliance talks about an age-friendly community because it’s not age-limited,” he says. “Without a doubt, if you get decision-makers to better understand a resource or service that’s put in place for one part of our population, it can actually serve way more if it’s taken into account when it’s implemented.”
Chip Boyles, vice chair of the alliance and executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, says his connection to city and county officials offers the alliance a direct pipeline to organizations and discussions its members should be a part of. When Boyles was with the Redevelopment Authority in Baton Rouge, it brought in a consultant on a 200-acre development mixed-use, mixed-income project. And the consultant said that in 30 years of doing business, it was the first time she was able to determine that people who were aging and people in their 20s were looking for exactly the same things: smaller houses in good neighborhoods and close to amenities.
“That has carried on and we’re finding the same thing here,” Boyles says. “That’s where the planning comes in because it’s so non-traditional. The thing that we have to watch out for in a college town is the student housing is so lucrative for developers, and making sure they’re aware of the demand from older couples or individuals who are changing housing.”
In addition, “we hear a lot of times, ‘Let’s do this because the millennials like these,” Boyles says. “But someone needs to be there to say the 50-, 60-, 70-something would also like this. And so the voice of being at the table is so crucial—that’s where we’ve been trying to provide help with the alliance.”
Another key point when talking about seniors, JABA’s Marta Keane says, is that people ages 60 to 90 are all grouped together, but no one would ever group 20- to 50-year-olds together when talking about needs of the “middle-aged” population.
“The idea of age-friendly is that what’s important for seniors is important for everybody,” she says. “It’s not exclusive.”
Junction bar manager Alec Spidalieri. Photo by Sanjay Suchak
As I walk through the doors of Junction, bar manager Alec Spidalieri beckons me to the upstairs area, adjacent to the kitchen. He’s got something cooking that he can’t leave for very long. In fact, one of the ingredients he’s making is the brown butter-washed rum for the Rum Communion, the winning cocktail in C-VILLE’s inaugural Hooch Dreams bracket contest.
When Spidalieri heard that the daiquiri-style drink had taken the top spot, he was surprised. He knew Junction was up against Lost Saint in the first round, and says he honestly thought they’d get knocked out early by the West Main bar. But, if you’ve followed our cocktail bracket matchups online or on social media, you know why we had to name this drink the winner. The judges’ comments consistently praised the Rum Communion for its sweet yet tart notes, butterscotch undertones and creamy mouthfeel.
The daiquiri is one of Spidalieri’s favorite drinks—“I love rum,” he says—as it represents the holy trinity of the Caribbean: rum, lime and sugar. It may sound simple, but it’s more than the sum of its parts. And the possibilities of riffing off those three main ingredients to create new and seasonal drinks is endless, he says. The idea for the Rum Communion was born out of an online recipe for a rum cake; Spidalieri knew the pineapple and brown butter elements could be shaken up and turned into a cocktail.
His drinks of choice
“Wine, I drink a lot wine—probably too much wine, but I don’t drink as much as people would think. I love most wines unless it’s overtly poorly made. I cannot name a favorite.”
“I like Scotch a lot and I love rum, I really do. I’ll sip those neat mostly.”
“I’m very nomadic beer-wise. I’m not a huge hop-head, but I like porters and dark beers.”
Even though the drink is one of the most time-consuming to make in his repertoire (see below for the full recipe), Spidalieri says he doesn’t mind. And his attention to detail is evident, from the list of hundreds of potential cocktail names he keeps on his phone, to his near-constant rotation of homemade shrubs, syrups and cordials he has brewing and steeping. The laid-back black T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing bartender swears most of his job involves moving boxes around (he mentions his love of spreadsheets at least twice during our interview), but his passion for creating a great drinking experience is obvious.
“It’s a hobby,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like a job.”
When he was conceptualizing the restaurant’s new spring menu, he toyed with replacing the Rum Communion with another daiquiri, but—don’t worry—he kept it as one of the restaurant’s staple drinks. He says he might add another daiquiri on the summer menu, because, really, can you have too many well-balanced drinks that for a brief moment make you think you’re lying on a warm beach next to turquoise water? We don’t think so.
“That’s my job—helping people unwind every day,” Spidalieri says. “It’s really a pleasure to do that for a living: Give people happy juice in glasses.”
WINNING WORDS
In the final round of our cocktail bracket, the Rum Communion squared off against Tavola’s Alpha & Omega.
“As a small child, I was once found under the Thanksgiving table scooping handfuls of sugar directly from the bag into my mouth, so it’s safe to say I don’t shy away from a little sweetness. And while, yes, Junction’s Rum Communion is more dessert-y than some of the other cocktails in our booze bracket—that brown butter-washed rum! that pineapple!—it’s full and creamy and smooth enough for multiple glasses. Don’t stop until you’re under the table.”—Caite White, Knife & Fork editor
Rum Communion. Photo by Sanjay Suchak
RECIPE
Junction’s Alec Spidalieri says he first heard of the brown butter-washing technique at Belmont neighbor Tavola, when its former bar manager, Christian Johnson, put a brown butter-washed bourbon drink on the menu. After trying it, Spidalieri said to himself, “I gotta do this sometime.”
Although he says the recipe for the Rum Communion looks intimidating, it’s more of a passive process where you let ingredients sit for a long time.
His words of wisdom: “Don’t burn the butter. Pull it off the heat when it starts to turn caramel brown.”
Rum Communion
2 oz. brown butter-washed Pusser’s British Navy Rum (Blue Label)
1 oz. grilled pineapple cordial
.75 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
Add all ingredients to shaker, add ice, shake aggressively until well-chilled. Double-strain into a chilled coupe/cocktail glass. Garnish with a floating lime wheel.
Brown butter-washed rum
1 750ml bottle Pusser’s
1 lb. unsalted butter
Slice the butter into smaller cubes and add to a medium-sized sauce pan. Heat butter at low heat, then turn up to medium heat when it is all melted. Whisk the butter continuously and keep over heat until it browns (should take about 10 minutes), being careful not to let it burn or boil over. Remove from heat. When the butter stops steaming, add rum, while whisking rapidly for 20 seconds to homogenize. (After this point, stop stirring the mixture; you don’t want it to break.) Let the pot sit out for two hours at room temperature, then put it in the freezer overnight. Once it’s frozen, separate the layer of butter fat that has frozen at the top (it’ll be a disk shape) and discard or repurpose. Fine-strain the remaining liquid and put back into the original bottle. Doesn’t hurt to keep it refrigerated, and give it a nice shake before use. Warning: You will lose about 15 percent of the original amount of rum in this process.
Grilled pineapple cordial
1 pineapple
1 tsp. salt
1 tbs. citric acid
3 cups sugar
1 cup dry white wine
1 oz. vodka (to further fortify)
Yield: about 1 quart
Skin pineapple and cut into planks. Grill evenly on two sides, about four minutes on each side; there should be a good char. Combine with all remaining ingredients in a bowl and let macerate for three hours (with salt and sugar covering everything). Blend with an immersion blender on its high setting and then fine strain, pressing against the strainer with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid. Store in a clean container and keep refrigerated. Should keep for a month or more.
The dwellings of the enslaved inhabitants at Montpelier stand in the South Yard, adjacent to the Madisons' main house. Photo by Eze Amos
Amateur archaeologists had been kneeling in the dirt of the South Yard at James Madison’s Montpelier for hours, painstakingly searching for intact artifacts that could be used in exhibits detailing the lives of the enslaved community that was forced to live and toil there. Among them was Leontyne Peck, who was participating in her first weeklong excavation. Peck thought the experience would enrich her life, but she didn’t expect it to be so personal.
As she carefully dug through the brown soil to unearth connections to the people who had been there before, she discovered a connection to her past—a hand-carved pipe covered in Masonic symbols. Peck has vivid memories of her paternal grandfather, Willie Clay, who grew up in Madison County, Virginia, and who had also been a Mason, smoking a pipe filled with cherry tobacco.
“When I touched the pipe, it was like I was touching my grandfather,” she says. “I actually felt connected with him.”
Peck says she understands why descendants of the enslaved people often don’t feel comfortable visiting sites where slavery was the oppressive foundation upon which the landowner’s prosperity was possible (places like Montpelier, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Highland). But for Peck, “I feel like I’m home,” she says. Peck has even earned the nickname “Universal Cousin” from her time spent on digs at Montpelier. The first thing she asks someone when she meets him is, “What is your surname?” From one name, Peck, originally from West Virginia, can trace their shared heritage, her own lineage born from the Clays of Madison County and Orange (her maiden name was Clay), to the enslaved communities at both Montpelier and Monticello.
Leontyne Peck, a descendant of the enslaved community at both Montpelier and Monticello, has participated in several archaeological digs at Montpelier and often finds artifacts from people who lived there. Photo courtesy of Montpelier
Since her first dig three years ago, Peck has uncovered a meaningful object each time. Once it was a marble (which she plucked out of the ground after only 10 minutes), and another time a pink crystal, not dissimilar to the one Peck has in her own home, to bring good luck, as part of the African spiritual tradition.
“Finding the crystal was another sign to say, ‘We were here, we brought our traditions with us,’ and they passed the traditions on,” Peck says. “[The crystal says] ‘you can work me, you’re getting my labor to get what you need but you can’t take my spirit, you can’t take my soul. When I have this quiet moment with my spiritual force you can never take that from me.’”
Peck says it’s become somewhat of a joke that she always finds something when she participates in a dig—but it doesn’t surprise her.
“There are certain people walking the earth, and I count myself among them, that the ancestors have said, ‘Tell our story and tell our full story because we weren’t born to work for people day in and day out. Our humanity was taken and it needs to be restored.’ …Every time I go on a dig it’s a spiritual journey for me because I feel as though I’m helping to recover and touch the humanity of the enslaved men and women and children who were there.”
The staff at Montpelier has focused on that holistic narrative with their newest exhibit, “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” which debuted in June. The exhibit was made possible by a $10 million gift in 2014 from philanthropist David Rubenstein, and in 2015 museum staff began meeting with members of the Montpelier enslaved descendant community as well as scholars and museum colleagues who concentrate on African-American history. The main goals that emerged from those workshops were two things that are rarely seen at historical sites: Connect the history of slavery with the present, and illuminate the humanity and stories of the enslaved community.
“If you’re African-American, the legacy of slavery is something you live with every day and your families think that way,” says Giles Morris, Montpelier’s vice president for marketing and communications. “If you’re white, you never think that way; you think it’s a historical thing that happened.”
Talking about history in a new context
Divided into two former cellar spaces underneath the main house and continuing into the adjacent South Yard (where dozens of members of the enslaved community lived and worked), the exhibit shines a spotlight on the present-day effects of slavery and racism in its Legacies of Slavery video, the economics of slavery, ways in which protections for slavery were written into the Constitution by its author—Madison—and the fate of the enslaved community at Montpelier, with the stories told by their descendants.
The title of the exhibit centers around a quote from Madison during the Constitutional Convention on June 6, 1787, which is displayed on a pillar at the beginning of the exhibit: “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.” In contrast, the adjacent economics of slavery part of the exhibit shows that wealth of the domestic slave trade, including in Virginia, was built on the sale of humans—considered property by their owners—to cotton mill owners in the South. Another interactive exhibit reveals that all states allowed slavery in 1787 at the end of the American Revolution.
The next room walks visitors through debates on slavery during Madison’s time, while another room shows an elevated written Constitution with six sections outlined in red. Each highlighted passage corresponds to a panel in the room that illuminates how that language perpetuated slavery without stating so outright.
“People are interested in James Madison for his role in creating the Constitution, which is our rights, our way of understanding our rights,” Morris says. “…he both personally denied freedom to the enslaved people who lived and worked here but also publicly he compromised over slavery and saw the compromises through—and he had very complex and nuanced and interesting writing about all of that. Instead of it being compartmentalized, having the hero story over here and slavery over here, how do you tell one story about how America got created?”
The Legacy of Slavery video features four different perspectives on how slavery and the legacy of slavery are connected to present-day events such as police officers shooting black men and white supremacist rallies. Photo by Eze AmosThe original idea was to have the Constitution on the floor of the exhibit, but the end result is an elevated Constitution with highlighted passages containing language that perpetuated slavery without stating so outright. Photo by Eze AmosThe Economics of Slavery portion of the exhibit includes an interactive station that shows how much of Virginia’s wealth was built on the domestic slave trade. Photo by Eze Amos
One hurdle for Montpelier was the lack of documentation surrounding plantation life. Madison’s wife, Dolley, and her son, Payne Todd, then the property’s administrator, sold the property in 1846 to cover debt (many documents vanished with the sale), and Madison’s formal books, which had been transferred to UVA’s Rotunda after his death in 1836, burned in the 1895 fire. And Montpelier staff has been building its history with only eight known last names of members of its enslaved community. Because Montpelier is relatively new in relation to other presidential homes (the Montpelier Foundation was established in 2000 and the Madison house only opened to the public in 2009), and because of the flexibility that comes with less historical documentation, the staff has expanded the definition of its enslaved community to anyone who has connections to the western Orange County area and wants to share their oral history and genealogy. Their contributions are seen most in the second part of the exhibit focused on the lives of the enslaved.
One question that arose during the creation of the exhibit: How do you depict slavery in a non-photographic era? With a primary goal from the descendant community being to illuminate the humanity of their ancestors, staff wanted to be careful not to misappropriate any images. They used photos of enslaved people from the Library of Congress and created a shadow effect around the photo. They then overlaid on top words that could have identified who this person was.
The contemporary look of the panels and the space as a whole was intentional, Morris says. By placing visitors in a context they are familiar with, they are more likely to relate to the members of the enslaved community. On one of the panels, a woman bending over to work in a field is defined as: “I was a mother. I was broken. I was tired. I was a singer. I was a worshiper. I was angry.” But each panel ends with the same line: “I was property.”
“People can’t identify with working 14 hours of back-breaking labor every day, can’t identify with the emotional realities [of slavery],” Morris says. “A lot of the story will never be told and can’t ever be told, and we have to acknowledge it. It has to be in the conversation.”
The next room unpacks further the thought of enslaved people as property, with images of actual ledgers from the household projected onto the wall. The notes, written in loopy scrawl, show meticulous records of everything bought and sold. In one letter, Payne Todd asks for a suit of clothes, and Dolley Madison responds that she’s planning on selling certain people and then he’ll have enough money for his clothes.
A video playing in the next room, Fate in the Balance, illustrates this idea in perhaps the most tangible way. During research for the exhibit, the team at Montpelier discovered the story of the Stewart family, and through oral histories, letters and newspapers were able to trace the stories of Ellen Stewart, her mother, Sukey (Dolley Madison’s ladies maid), and other members of the family. Filmed by Northern Light Productions, the movie was shot in Boston with actors behind a screen. The end result looks like a moving chalk drawing—living history that’s fluid.
The film focuses on the fate of the Stewart family after Madison’s death. His will transferred ownership of the enslaved people (300 total in his lifetime) to his wife, but stated no one should be sold without his or her consent. The film watches as members of the Stewart family are sold to pay debts: first Ellen’s brother, Ben, then her sister, Becca, and finally her mother, Sukey. It details how Paul Jennings, who had been Madison’s servant in the White House, eventually earned his freedom and attempted to help 77 enslaved people, including Ellen, escape.
When Peck first saw the video, which she calls “the most powerful part of the exhibit,” she couldn’t watch it all the way through. When the image of Becca holding her baby, whom she had to leave behind at Montpelier, was shown, Peck was so overwhelmed she had to leave the room. She eventually returned and cried through the rest of the film, because “that is the essence of what the exhibit is trying to teach people, about the humanity of the people who were there.”
Fate in the Balance tells the story of the enslaved Stewart family through the eyes of 15-year-old Ellen (top), using live actors shot behind a screen. The family’s history was traced by letters, newspapers and oral histories. Photos by Eze Amos
Margaret Jordan, a board member at Montpelier who lives in Dallas, is a descendant of Jennings and says she feels lucky that her family knows not only the history of how they are related to Jennings, but who he was as a person. For the exhibit, Jordan was filmed for one of the multimedia stations in which descendants and historians discuss topics around slavery. She says the interview caused her to reflect on something she hadn’t put into words: what slavery means to her.
“The world has had slaves for many centuries, but they’ve never had chattel slavery like America has where it was such a dehumanization, a deliberate institutional strategy and attempt to dehumanize an individual and make them into a piece of nothing, something to be bought and sold and take away someone’s complete dignity and not use their last names,” she says. “When I really stopped and dealt with that it’s more than sobering.”
Jordan read the convocation at the opening of the exhibit last June and has spoken at several events at Montpelier throughout the years. She says the first time she visited the exhibit she couldn’t make it through the entire thing because it’s so emotionally draining, but she calls the exhibit “important” and says she always reads something new each time.
“I feel like I’m on hallowed ground when I’m at Montpelier because I know there were hundreds of people who lived there and we know the names of some proportion of them but not all of them, and you feel them looking down saying, ‘Continue to make us be real to people: We lived here, we worked here, we were a part of this, and we suffered here. It’s really important that it be understood that we existed.’”
Framing the national conversation
In mid-February, Montpelier staff, in conjunction with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, organized a national summit on teaching slavery. The goal? Create a universal rubric that could be used in schools and at historic institutions. Fifty scholars, museum interpreters from around the country (including representatives of Monticello and Highland) and descendants of the enslaved community convened for a weekend-long series of workshops and discussions, all aimed at creating the framework for teaching the history of slavery that could become a national model. The goal is to roll out out the rubric in June.
“We had a shared version that historic sites could play a leading role, not just a role, in how the nation comes to understand American slavery,” says Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at Ohio State University.
Jeffries can be heard speaking in the Legacies of Slavery video about the “Disney version” of history he often sees his students bring into the classroom, and myths associated with that.
He was conflicted when Montpelier first asked him to contribute to the exhibit in late 2016. His historian side wanted to jump at the chance to be involved, but he says the African-American in him made him hesitate. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be affiliated with an institution that had fostered slavery. But Jeffries says from his first weekend on the property, when he saw the majority of work that had been done on the exhibit, it was clear that they “got it.”
“Slavery is bound by time but its legacy isn’t,” he says. “Slavery was an economic system that at its core was designed to extract labor at its cheapest possible cost, and once slavery ends the same impulse that drove slavery continues forward, justified by this belief in white supremacy so that everything that we see afterward in terms of race relations, the African-American condition to the development of America is tied to these implications of what slavery was. The things we see today are informed very much so by what happened in the past.”
Jeffries studied history, and specifically African-American history, as a way to explain what he saw growing up in Brooklyn. Riding the subway in a big city was an easy way to see that segregation still existed, and Jeffries was dissatisfied with the explanations he learned in school. And he says lack of education of American history is a growing issue, with an increasing emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. He points to a study released in January from the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Teaching the Hard History of American Slavery,” for which he served as chairman of the advisory committee. It surveyed high school seniors and social studies teachers, and analyzed state content standards and 10 popular history textbooks. The results? Only 8 percent of high school seniors could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War; just 44 percent correctly answered that slavery was legal in every colony during the American Revolution. Going forward, Jeffries says it is even more important for historic sites to give detailed and complete history lessons.
“Part of the challenge for places like Montpelier is not only to tell an accurate story but also to educate—re-educate people because they aren’t coming in as blank slates,” Jeffries says. “They’re coming with a version of slavery and the role of enslaved people in that story that’s very often just wrong.”
Peck, who also attended the summit, has a term for what she believes should be a straightforward discussion of our American history, including its contentious past: “straight, no chaser.” She says slavery is a collective open, gaping wound for all people, the medicine for which is changing education curriculums from kindergarten to post-secondary institutions, as well as having people continue to educate their families. While in West Virginia, she led a Saturday morning group for white and black children called Club Noir in which they discussed African-American history and culture and took field trips.
“The important thing is that it’s consistent and not just during Black History Month,” Peck says. “Slavery is an extremely heavy topic but it has to be discussed.”
Kat Imhoff came on board as president and CEO of Montpelier five and a half years ago with the vision of telling a more complete American story. She says the local events of August 12 “stiffened her backbone” in providing a 360-degree view of our past.
“I believe that we are constantly rediscovering ourselves and our history,” says Imhoff. “When people treat history as something dull and boring I think you have no idea it’s actually incredibly radical. When you are willing to look under the covers and look at the complexity, and I for one believe Americans can deal with complex stories, it makes our founding very rich, but it also has reverberations about what we do and [how we] think and act today. And for us, that’s what’s so important: We want to link the past and present in order to inform our actions today and make the world a better place.”
Next year marks the 400th anniversary of the first documented slaves from Africa arriving in America at Point Comfort, Virginia. Peck hopes to be there to honor her ancestors, to honor the place where their feet first touched American soil.
“When you’re sitting around face to face you understand we want the same thing: You want your child to be happy, I want my child to be happy,” Peck says. “People want safety, family preservation, want to have fun, good careers. Then, when we dissect how come certain people have privileges and others don’t, that’s what we have to look at as a society. Make it a society that’s fair to all citizens, everyone.”
James Monroe’s Highland is in the beta testing phase of its augmented reality tours on the property’s grounds. Photo by Eze Amos
Virtual reality
James Monroe’s Highland recently announced its partnership with ARtGlass to become the first historic site in the United States to offer augmented reality tours using smart glasses designed by Epson. In the planning process for more than a year, the tour includes 11 stops for the viewer in which he is guided to specific points around the property at which images, videos, 3-D reconstructions and conversations between animated characters appear through the glasses, projected onto the Highland landscape. The experience provides the visitor with a more immersive experience, and delivers content in a new
way, says Sara Bon-Harper, Highland’s executive director.
“[The tour content is about] diversity of perspective, the connection with the larger threads of U.S. history and trying to engage the audience in a way that they couldn’t otherwise,” Bon-Harper says.
The AR tours are in a beta testing phase right now, and staff is making changes and updating content based on feedback from visitors.
Prime 109, a steakhouse bent on highlighting products from three cornerstone farms, is slated to open in May in the former Bank of America space on the Downtown Mall. Staff photo
The owners of Lampo, the cozy Neapolitan pizzeria in Belmont, first started conceptualizing the idea of a local-farm-centered steakhouse after hearing from area producers that they were frustrated with the distribution process.
Enter Prime 109, a steakhouse bent on highlighting products from three cornerstone farms, which is slated to open in May in the former Bank of America space on the Downtown Mall. The restaurant will buy whole animals from farmers, a processor will do a basic breakdown of the animal, and Prime will finish dry-aging the beef and prepare individual cuts in-house.
A butchering area and the main production part of the kitchen will occupy a space on the far left of the 109-seat restaurant, and diners will have the opportunity to sit at the chef’s table in front of a custom-built, wood-fired grill from Corey Blanc, of Blanc Creatives, or at a table underneath an antique gilded ceiling.
The Prime 109 team wants to enhance the character of the space, built in 1915, by bringing in antique materials and putting down maple flooring from an 1860 building. New additions to the space include a carrara marble staircase.
“There’s something about the classic grandeur of a bank like this, and concept of the classic American steakhouse, that really fits well together,” says Prime 109 co-owner Loren Mendosa.
Evelyn Brown, a senior at Tandem Friends School, juggles schoolwork and AP classes with a ton of extracurriculars including the school’s rock band, varsity cross county (fall), basketball (winter) and soccer (spring) and musical theater. Photos by Eze Amos
In today’s busy world, teenagers are cramming in as much as possible. Meet two teens who are seamlessly navigating packed schedules of school, sports, family, friends and volunteer commitments, and learn why they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Evelyn Brown
Senior at Tandem Friends School
Classes: AP literature, AP government and politics, AP environmental science, discrete mathematics and applications, African-American studies
Senior thesis: Recording her own EP
Extracurriculars: The school’s rock band; varsity cross county (fall), basketball (winter) and soccer (spring); Conservation Lobby Day participant; musical theater (Meg in current production of Little Women)
Dream job: Working for the United Nations’ World Health Organization
Typical daily schedule
7am: Wake up; hit snooze button once
8:30am-3:40pm: Attend morning meeting, classes and community time period
4-5pm: Play rehearsal or basketball
study hall
5:15-6:30pm: Basketball practice
6:45-8pm: Dinner, shower and time
with family
8-10 or 11pm: Finish homework
11:30pm: Go to sleep
Whether she’s doing homework on the bus on the way back from a basketball game or running through her lines before a play rehearsal, Evelyn Brown says the most important part about being involved in so many things is focusing on what she’s passionate about.
“I really appreciate all the extracurriculars that I do because it gives me the opportunity to be on a team or be in a cast and work with different people than I would see every day in my classes,” she says.
And organization is key to making her life easier: She logs into Tandem’s student portal to keep track of all of her homework assignments and due dates, and she is constantly updating her online to-do list app. And just to make sure nothing is missed, she also writes everything down in her planner. Brown estimates how long each task will take to ensure she’s not rushing to get something done and creating more stress.
The hardest part about her hectic schedule is finding time to relax and reboot (she has to miss trips to the mall with friends after school to attend sports or theater practices). But one of her outlets—music—is also a main focus for her this year: She is recording her own EP, Edges, for her senior thesis project. Songwriting is cathartic for Brown, who sings and taught herself to play guitar, and she wrote most of the songs on the seven-track album (there might be one cover, she says). The songs are centered on the theme of Brown’s transition from a high school student who is dependent on her parents to being independent and finding herself.
After participating in Model UN at Johns Hopkins University two years ago, Brown discovered her passion for public health, which she wants to study in college. She’s applied to 10 colleges and is waiting to hear back from six. So far she’s been accepted to VCU, Florida State, Allegheny College and her top pick at the moment: University of Maryland.
And one of Brown’s favorite activities this year revolved around another of her passions: the health of the Chesapeake Bay (Brown is an avid sailor). She attended Conservation Lobby Day at the end of January in Richmond, and spoke to Delegate David Toscano and State Senator Creigh Deeds about offshore drilling in the state and preserving the Eastern oyster.
“I didn’t understand I could make any kind of impact on environmental issues, so having this opportunity and learning that I really can just talk to my representatives, that was really transformational for my ideas about how I can make a difference,” Brown says.
Jackie Hartwig
Senior at St. Anne’s-Belfield School
Classes: AP biology, BC calculus, honors Spanish 5, honors English 12, 21st-century citizenship
Senior capstone thesis: Studying refugee education in Charlottesville
Extracurriculars: President of the Honor Council, varsity field hockey captain (fall) and varsity lacrosse captain (spring)
Dream job: Something that helps improve the education system through public policy
Typical daily schedule
6:15am: Wake up; walk Banxi, her bluetick coonhound
7:15am: Arrive at school for Honor Council meeting (one day a week)
8:45am-3:15pm: Attend class
3:45pm-6pm: Attend sports practice/games
6:15pm-11pm: Eat dinner, shower and then start on homework
11:45pm: Go to sleep
Jackie Hartwig embodies the term leading by example. Which is why the career STAB student (she started school there in pre-kindergarten) made sure she chose a topic for her year-long independent study capstone that would require her to get out into the Charlottesville community.
Hartwig completed the majority of her reading and gathering of empirical data for her thesis project over the summer so that during the school year she could focus on conducting interviews (during free periods, no-school days and weekends) with members of Charlottesville’s refugee community (some STAB students and students at other high schools), as well as English as a second language teachers. Hartwig’s focus is on the gap between local policies and classroomcurriculum and practices, and how effectively refugee students are supported and empowered. Hart-
wig chose her capstone topic based on her future goal of landing a job that looks at how the education system can be improved through public policy.
Organization is definitely key to Hartwig’s success, and she admits that she’s not a “huge” technology person. Instead, she relies on a written planner, plasters her window in sticky notes and keeps track of everything in color-coded binders.
Hartwig also understands the importance of a support system: She’s known most of her classmates and teammates since preschool, and says her teachers are like “second parents” who enable her to be involved so much. And Hartwig loves being in the leader role as well: Being a team captain means making sure there’s camaraderie both on and off the field, she says. She meets once a week with her lacrosse coach to talk about “behind the scenes stuff,” such as which service projects the team wants to complete.
And her involvement in Honor Council since freshman year has inspired her to be involved in her college’s honor council as well. She’s applied to six schools and is waiting to hear back from four; she has been accepted to Rhodes College and UVA.
The busy Hartwig says “getting to do everything I love is a great blessing,” but her advice to other teens is to not try to do it all.
“I just honed in on what I did feel like was fulfilling in my day-to-day life and I really pursued it,” she says. “You really have to follow through and not give up when you hit roadblocks.”
