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For no particular reason, I decided today I'd try to find picture of the remarkable Harpers Ferry, only a short drive from where I live. Harpers Ferry is a striking gap in the mountains where the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers merge. You can also see it from space with Google maps and from high-altitude aerial on MapQuest. The Google image is slightly better. Of course, Harpers Ferry is a very significant historical site for the Civil War era, too. From the ground, it provides some nice views. I've provided a small variety here. This one is a somewhat artistic photo:...

Walter Ciszek (1904-1984) Before there was an Armistice Day, Walter Ciszek was born on November 11, 1904, and lived through a crucified century. Death came gracefully in 1984 on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In boyhood he was a bully in a gang on the gritty streets of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and Ciszek’s Polish immigrant father dragged him to the police station, hoping to put him into a reform school. Everyone thought he was joking when the eighth grader announced that he would enter the Polish minor seminary. The seminarian swam in an icy lake and rose before dawn...

WESTWOOD ONE LAUNCHES THE MONICA CROWLEY SHOW --New Program to Air Saturdays, Noon - 3 p.m. ET-- Beginning Saturday, April 1, 2006 New York, NY Monday, Mar 20, 2006 - Westwood One (NYSE: WON) is proud to announce the national launch of The Monica Crowley Show, the three-hour talk program hosted by author and news personality Monica Crowley. The show begins Saturday, April 1, 2006, and will air from noon to 3 p.m. ET. The Monica Crowley Show will debut on major market stations across the country including: WABC-AM New York, WTKK-FM Boston and WTNT-AM Washington DC. The show will...

The Diocese of Allentown is asking the Vatican to canonize a Shenandoah priest who survived more than two decades of imprisonment in the Soviet Union. The diocese sent three crates of materials concerning the Rev. Walter Ciszek’s life to Rome two weeks ago. The crates included six cardboard boxes that contained things such as sworn testimony from 45 witnesses and thousands of typed pages of his writings and meditations. The documents reportedly took 16 years to compile. The Vatican is slated to review them beginning Tuesday. “They arrived last week,” Sister Albertine of the Father Walter Ciszek Prayer League in...

RICHMOND, Jan. 25 -- It may not actually mention Virginia or even be about Virginia, but "Shenandoah" may soon become the commonwealth's official state song. A Senate panel has voted to designate the melodious folk tune as the state's "interim official state song" -- temporary, that is, in case something better comes along. The commonwealth has gone without a theme since 1997, when lawmakers retired "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" because its lyrics were deemed offensive to black citizens. Lawmakers labeled the anthem, with its references to "darkies" and "massas," the state's "emeritus song" and appointed a 12-member committee...

This Day In History | Civil War July 24 1864 Battle of Kernstown, Virginia Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops under General George Crook to keep the Shenandoah Valley clear of Yankees. On June 13, 1864, General Robert E. Lee sent Early north from Petersburg to clear the Shenandoah of Union troops and relieve pressure on his own beleaguered force. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had been pinned in Petersburg after a bloody six-week campaign with General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. The campaign mimicked that of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's in 1862, when the Confederates...

>>>Book Review<<<<Recent headlines have proved a vindication of sorts for frustrated historians who cringe at the question, "Why should I care about something that happened ages ago?" Suddenly, "Deep Throat" is on the nation's lips almost as breathlessly as it was 35 years ago. So why should we care about "The Last Shot," Lynn Schooler's entry into the Civil War canon? "It is incompatible with virtue that the South should ever be reconciled to the North," said Capt. James Waddell, skipper of the Confederate vessel that would fire the last shot of the Civil War. Substitute "red state" or "blue...

Washington -- Last Saturday, after awakening at 5:00 a.m. in Virginia's Shenandoah Mountains to hunt wild turkey, I showered and dressed in black tie for one of my favorite Washington evenings, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. If I did not see any turkeys during the matutinal hunt, I was guaranteed to see them in abundance during the vespertine melee that this distinguished gathering has become. In all of New York there is nothing quite like it, though you can find an approximation of it on the Virginia countryside. I have in mind the county fair, at least the county...