Pleasant Living Magazine

For anyone who yearns to re-live life on an 18th century plantation, the summer camps programs at Stratford Hall can make that dream a reality. The children “live it” and the adults can join the fun as well and admire and encourage the young folks—a touching family bonding experience. Participants can experience a multitude of hands-on activities, such as creating bricks by hand-mixing the gooey clay to the right consistency, then pressing the clay into a brick mold before it can be fired in a kiln. The young brick makers are then reminded that they have only 599,999 more bricks to go to build the Stratford great house. The fun continues as the children try their hand at laying bricks—not as easy as it looks. What better way to come to appreciate the skill of Congo, the 18th century Stratford slave, who was highly valued for his bricklaying talents.

The Revolutionary War comes to life for children and grandparents alike as they shoulder their wooden muskets and march about the plantation to the accompaniment of “Yankee Doodle,” of course. Yes, most of us have trouble keeping the right and left feet where they are supposed to be. Campers even try their hand at loading musket balls and “black powder” into cartridges. As members of the Virginia Militia, under the command of Stratford’s Richard Henry Lee, the young recruits reenact a skirmish with a British landing party at Stratford’s landing on the Potomac. When one “red coat” is killed, he is buried by the Militia in the sand of Stratford’s beach with a reverent ceremony. These are just two of the dozens of challenging and fun-filled activities that comprise the summer camp programs—a Grandparent Camp, Family Weekend Adventure Camp, and intergenerational Elderhostel.

In the River Country, quality private schools are working to embrace change that works. They look at today’s workplace, and ponder what students need in order to become a part of it. They see innovative technology, and consider its effects, on the future and on the classroom. They note developments in society, government, issues, and the world, and decide how students can best fit in with the positive and stand up against the negative. These schools desire change, but only as it benefits the students. The River Country is fortunate to have quality private educational opportunities for children through senior year, for day students and boarders, schools that are attuned to change, each with its own unique strengths.

To inform the PL reader, and to assist in decision making for PL parents, we have included a list of private schools in our area.

Of the diversity of Virginia’s natural beauty, outdoors recreation, and cultural activities, the River Country presents its own unique ways to enjoy the best of nature and the fruits of man’s labor.

In my work with Pleasant Living magazine, I’ve explored this land between the rivers that feed into the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve floated down the unspoiled Dragon Run, paddled the rivers and estuaries, feasted on the seafood and sipped the wine, browsed the shops, and met the friendly, down-to-earth people, the come here’s as well as the been here’s.

Lying east of the state’s fall line, this low country is a vein-work of streams and rivers, marshes and swamps. Although the area was settled by British colonists early in U.S. history, it still retains much of its rural character. Once you cross the York River from the south, or the Potomac River from the north, you’ll find forests and farmland, fields and watery vistas, farmhouses and small towns.

On a recent trip to the area, I had the opportunity to explore further. Even better, I was privileged to use the stately Tides Inn in Irvington, Virginia as my hub.

Few books are as special as the ones our parents used to read to us to make us go to sleep. Over the years we might outgrow the singsong sentences and fantastical plots (then again, we might not). The pages might yellow and tear, or become incomprehensible beneath layers of crayon and peanut butter fingerprints. We might even misplace these paper treasures, or pass them on to smaller hands; but we do not forget them. They stay with us as vessels for our oldest memories.

For Ryan Semonin of New Kent, though, the best bedtime stories didn’t come with a glossy cover or illustrations. They were told to him by his mother, Terri Sebastian, as she read aloud from a stack of handwritten pages. The stories were her own, or perhaps, more appropriately, they were Ryan’s, as each story was directly inspired by Terri’s interactions with her inquisitive three-year-old son. In lieu of pictures, Terri would tell Ryan to close his eyes and imagine—and that’s just what he did.

As Ryan grew up, the handwritten stories were shelved, and they might have remained there for a long time, had a tragic accident not occurred during the summer before Ryan’s sophomore year of high school. At the age of fifteen, the vivacious young man had his life cut short after suffering severe head trauma.

To Order, see link below