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Mark Linkous, whose nom de music, as it were, was Sparklehorse, died over the weekend. The Arlington native is remembered in the New York Times:

But disillusioned with the music business, Mr. Linkous returned to Virginia and [...]

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Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic writes about a trip to Virginia this past summer to visit Civil War battlefields:
I pulled our rental car to the side of the road, and treated my son and nephew to an awkward impromptu lecture on the bravery of Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood and Private Charles Veale. It was only [...]

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The wonderful, statewide, VFH-sponsored radio program With Good Reason featured Encyclopedia Virginia’s managing editor Matthew Gibson and one of our section editors, Dr. John Kneebone, on a recent broadcast. Listen here, where you’ll also find a discussion of the “discovery” of America.
IMAGE: I took the image above from the With Good Reason site as an [...]

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Tony Field, producer of the VFH radio program BackStory, reminds us that the show’s new episode on health care will air tonight:
BackStory’s latest episode, “Body Politics: A History of Health Care,” will be airing this evening in Central Virginia. It’s a strong show, with obvious relevance to the current debate in Washington. Features include an [...]

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Mike Seeger, the folk singer, instrumentalist, and folklorist, died in Lexington on Friday. He was 75. The New York Times has an excellent obituary, which includes this, from Bob Dylan:
“Mike was unprecedented,” Mr. Dylan wrote, adding: “As for being a folk musician, he was the supreme archetype. He could push a stake through Dracula’s black [...]

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Last month, we had occasion to mention the fact that
John Grisham is writing a screenplay about the so-called Norfolk Four, four sailors who claim to have been wrongly convicted in the rape and murder of a Norfolk woman in 1997. The men confessed to the crime, but following their guilty verdicts, recanted, claiming they had [...]

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The Washington Post weighs in on Wal-Mart and the Wilderness this morning. It’s one of those staff editorials obsessed with balance and being fair—not that there’s anything wrong with that!—but not particularly interested in actually making an argument or having an opinion.
Preservationists are right to want to protect some of the battlefield. However, if we [...]

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The National D-Day Memorial in Bedford is in danger of closing due to financial problems. A bill designed to help is wending its way through Congress:
An effort to save the National D-Day Memorial has made some progress, as the U.S. Senate passed a defense-spending bill that instructs officials to consider making the monument a federal [...]

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch published an editorial on July 16 headlined “Our Past,” in which it apologized for its support of Massive Resistance during the 1950s and beyond. (Our entry on Massive Resistance provides the requisite background.) The newspaper admitted its complicity in championing segregationist policies, writing that “the record fills us with regret.”
Massive Resistance inflicted [...]

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Well, almost. Yesterday we called attention to our Anne Spencer entry. Back in March, the Legacy Museum in Lynchburg screened a film by Keith Lee about the poet called Anne Spencer Revisited. Turns out Lee had originally wanted to do a dance, an idea that came to him after visiting Spencer’s Lynchburg home.
Keith Lee explained [...]

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