Blog Events Join Us Grants & Programs Latest PostsJan 23 – Women In NetworkingJanuary 12, 2019THIS IS A FREE EVENT Please join us and other women looking to be inspired! “More than just another networking group”. FRWRC WIN is open to all the women in our community. It was founded on the concept of women lifting each other up, through meaningful connections, opportunities to learn from one another and shared interests. We hope you will join us. Bring your lunch and business cards to share and a door prize if you like. Guest Speaker: Kristin Black Topic: The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) - success stories, tales from the field, and ongoing research efforts from this local world renowned research center Wednesday, January 23 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM 213 E Main Street (Open House-Meet in the Middle) The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) plays a leading role in the Smithsonian’s global efforts to save wildlife species from extinction and train future generations of conservationists. SCBI spearheads research programs at its headquarters in Front Royal, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and at field research stations and training sites worldwide. SCBI scientists tackle some of today’s most complex conservation challenges by applying and sharing what they learn about animal behavior and reproduction, ecology, genetics, migration and conservation sustainability. Kristin will share some of the conservation success stories, tales from the field, and ongoing research efforts from this local world renowned research center. Bio- Kristin Black is the Friends of the National Zoo education programs specialist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal. She coordinates outreach programs highlighting SCBI’s efforts to save species and habitats locally and around the world. Kristin has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from James Madison University and a master’s degree in environmental education from Slippery Rock University. Prior to joining the team at SCBI, she held positions in education and animal care at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program, and SeaWorld San Diego. Note from Beth Waller: In late March 2016, we opened a new space on Main Street in the Middle of Main building. It is called Team Waller’s “Open House: Meet in the Middle” and will serve as a resource to our community. We will offer a wealth of real estate and community information, as well as cutting edge technology to learn more about listings, the buying process, and our local community attractions and resources. This space isn’t just for Beth Waller Real Estate; it is for the entire community. We will open our doors to community groups to educate the public about the causes that are close to their hearts and also offer our space as a meeting venue to anyone in need of a local location. Helping our community grow and serve as a resource to our neighbors is “What Matters” to us.... Read more...Jan 17 – WomanGatheringJanuary 12, 2019THIS IS A FREE EVENTPlease join us and other women looking to be inspired! WomanGatherings are informational and inspirational evenings intended to nurture the womanspirit in each of us. Guest Speaker: Miranda HopeTopic: Yoga FB LIVE @ 6:15 PM with hostess Eka Kapiotis Miranda Hope attained her first yoga certificate in 2001 and has taught over a thousand classes, including hundreds of trauma-sensitive yoga and meditation classes to warriors and the incarcerated. She is a member of Warriors at Ease and The Prison Yoga Project. She has degrees from Stanford and Columbia Universities and, when not teaching yoga, has worked as a high school teacher, a counselor, a singer/songwriter, and a mom. Miranda will speak about why yoga is so uniquely poised to be of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual benefit to all of us and specifically to the incarcerated men and women doing time just a few miles north of Front Royal at RSW Jail. She will also discuss the dozen most surprising things — from the ridiculous to the profound –that she has learned about yoga, the incarcerated, and herself while offering those classes.... Read more...January 2019 Book ReviewJanuary 1, 2019The Library Book By Susan Orlean (*Note: The following abridged book commentary was written by Ron Charles who writes about books for the Washington Post. The complete commentary can be found online in the Washington Post Book Review section. ) *Susan Orlean had never burned a book before. The idea was repulsive to her, calling up images of Nazis tossing Torahs into the flames. But she wanted to know what it felt like to watch a book ignite, writhe in brittle waves and blow away. So there she was, putting a match to her copy of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”“It was as if the book had exploded,” she writes, feeling overwhelmed by “the realization of how fast a thing full of human stories can be made to disappear.” Orlean, a longtime New Yorker writer, has been captivating us with human stories for decades, and her latest book is a wide-ranging, deeply personal and terrifically engaging investigation of humanity’s bulwark against oblivion: the library. At the center of “The Library Book”is a seven-hour fire that raged through the Los Angeles Central Library on April 29, 1986, destroying or damaging more than a million books. That conflagration — the largest library disaster in American history — is the furnace at the center of Orlean’s story, which is fueled by regular additions of memoir, biography, history and science. In one particularly sobering chapter, she reminds us, “People have been burning libraries for nearly as long as they’ve been building libraries.” The number of books deliberately consigned to the flames is in the billions. “I sometimes find it hard to believe there are any books left in the world.” But amid such gloom is much light. As a narrator, Orlean moves like fire herself, with a pyrotechnic style that smolders for a time over some ancient bibliographic tragedy, leaps to the latest technique in book restoration and then illuminates the story of a wildly eccentric librarian. Along the way, we learn how libraries have evolved, responded to depressions and wars, and generally thrived despite a constant struggle for funds. Over the holidays, every booklover in America is going to give or get this book. As she did in her 1998 bestseller, “The Orchid Thief,”Orlean brings us along as she tries to understand the mercurial figure at the center of a crime. Harry Peak was a good-looking goofball with delusions of Hollywood stardom. He was also a liar of the pants-on-fire variety. He fibbed reflexively about everything, about his television success, his friendship with Burt Reynolds, his luncheon with Cher. But when he bragged to friends that he’d started the fire at the Los Angeles Central Library, he became the prime suspect in a criminal investigation involving the destruction of millions of dollars of city property. Orlean takes us along as she interviews Peak’s relatives and friends, reads through newspaper stories and investigators’ reports, and sifts for truth among the ashes. But what’s even more fascinating is her search through the L.A. library’s distant past. With a great eye for telling and quirky detail, she presents a vast catalogue of remarkable characters, such as Mary Jones, the first L.A. library head to graduate from a library school. Hired in 1900, Jones was also a pioneer in the development of a racially diverse collection — and she recruited black librarians. In 1905, the board decided that it would be better for a completely unqualified man to take over, but nevertheless she persisted, setting off the Great Library War, which swelled to include thousands of protesters in Los Angeles and around the country. Her eventual replacement walked to L.A. from Ohio, used an actual branding iron to mark offensive books and kept meticulous records of his more than 50 extramarital affairs. There is no shhhh-ing in this book. Inevitably, the story of the city’s great library is woven into the story of the city itself as its population expanded rapidly, placing more complex demands on the staff. Orlean explores the ongoing challenge that homelessness poses for all libraries, and she profiles inspiring librarians determined to help the most desperate and disenfranchised people in America. “Because the boundary between society and the library is porous,” she writes, “nothing good is kept out of the library, and nothing bad. Often, at the library, society’s problems are magnified.” If the spine of “The Library Book” seems strained to contain so much diverse material, that variety is also what makes this such a constant pleasure to read. And, obviously, to write. Orlean speaks movingly about her late mother, who introduced her to the library in Cleveland and instilled in her a love for these cathedrals of learning and art that contain “the looping, unending story of who we are.” “This is why I wanted to write this book,” she explains, “to tell people about a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine.” You can’t help but finish “The Library Book” and feel grateful that these marvelous places belong to us all. Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation. ... Read more...Get Your Dream On – 2019December 29, 2018Click link to apply online: Online Application For your convenience, all documents are provided online, click links. Dare to Dream Application – 2019 Dare to Dream Description – 2019 Dare to Dream Flyer – 2019 Past Funded Projects – 1999 through 2018 2019 Dare to Dream Grant Application PSA -Public Service Announcement The 2019 Dare to Dream Grant campaign begins Thursday, November 1, 2018 and runs through Friday, January 18, 2019. Applications are available at Samuels Public Library and at the Front Royal Women’s Resource Center Office (27 Cloud Street, Front Royal, VA). Please mail your application to FRWRC, PO Box 1748, Front Royal, VA 22630. You can also apply using the Online Application. If you have a dream or know someone in your life who has a dream and needs a financial boost to make it happen, this is your opportunity. Grants run up to $1,000. Dare To Dream Enrichment Grant Description Presented by the Front Royal Women’s Resource Center PURPOSE OF THE GRANTS These annual grants provide women with an opportunity to take a bold step forward in their lives or support the momentum if they are already on their way. Past recipients have used their grants to go to school or start a business. They have purchased computers, attended beauty school, created nonprofits and attended training programs along with many other projects. Refer to link for Past Funded Projects. ELIGIBILITY Women residing in Warren County and ages 18 years and older are eligible for funding through this grant. Applicants may not be enrolled in high school. APPLICANTS MAY RE-APPLY ANNUALLY INCLUDING PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS OF GRANTS. REVIEW CRITERIA Applications will be reviewed on the merit of the project or activity description. Grant review criteria may include but are not limited to the following: prior educational and/or work experience, letters of recommendation from others who have knowledge of the applicant’s capabilities, additional biographical information, other life and work experiences, volunteer work, financial need. The grant selection committee may also consider the applicant’s motivation, character, ability, or potential. Applicants must complete all sections of the application and submit the Dare to Dream Grant application between November 1, 2018 and January 18, 2019. The grant committee will review the proposal and notify the applicant if funding has been awarded in March 2018. Personal interviews will be conducted for all finalists for the grant as part of the review process. The project must be started and the grant money requested by November 30, 2019. APPLICATION DEADLINE Applications are accepted from November 1, 2018 to January 18, 2019. Applications are mailed to FRWRC, PO Box 1748, Front Royal, VA 22630 or emailed to wrc@frwrc.organd must be postmarked by 5 PM on Friday, January 18, 2019. Applications are reviewed and the recipients will be announced in March 2019. Grant money will be available as of March 2019. If you need assistance completing the application, contact FRWRC at (540) 636-7007. AMOUNT OF ASSISTANCE Eligible applicants may request up to $1,000 through this grant. NOTE: Grant money is not presented directly to the recipient. Payments are mailed directly to the training program, school, or the appropriate vendor. Grant money cannot be used for expenses incurred before March 2019.... Read more...
