"From the Bay to the Blue Ridge"
By Sarah Becker War & Remembrance Conflict is often remembered by the men and women who cared: for the home front during war; for comrades and soldiers including burials, for the disabled and others. During the Revolutionary War Martha Washington successfully served as the public face of a women’s fund-raising campaign, a national campaign to […]
History of Veterans Day World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, […]
by Sarah Becker ©2017 George Washington Masonic National Memorial What do George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette; Benjamin Franklin and Amadeus Mozart; W.E.B. Du Bois, Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman have in common? All are Freemasons. Washington became a Freemason in 1752 at age 20 in Fredericksburg; then Worshipful Master of Alexandria Lodge […]
©2017 Sarah Becker The Sounds of Silence In 1966 Simon & Garfunkel had a number one song, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the U.S. Department of Transportation, and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (D-VA) died at his Berryville home. The Byrd machine passed politically from father to son, Johnson appointed the first […]
By Sarah Becker ©2017 Born in 1917—100 years ago—President John F. Kennedy (D-MA) died in his prime. On November 22, 1963 an assassin shot Kennedy dead. He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet. Kennedy was the fourth U.S. President to succumb to such wounds. For Kennedy, the past was […]
By Doug Coleman THE NEW CIVIL WAR – IS IT ON? Traditionally, Americans have gone to the polls, voted, and lived with the results whether they liked them or not. An exception was 1860, where Lincoln prevailed with a plurality of just 39.8% of the vote (even Trump got 47.5%). Lincoln’s name was not even […]
By Sarah Becker © 2017 An Act to Encourage Immigration Abraham Lincoln, in his 1864 holiday proclamation, praised Almighty God for augmenting “our free population by emancipation and by immigration…” To immigrate: to enter and settle in a foreign country. To naturalize: to admit a foreigner to citizenship. In 1790 naturalization was limited […]
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House ©2017 Sarah Becker by Sarah Becker Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian master work, the Pope-Leighey House is situated in a wooded hollow, an accepted part of historic Woodlawn’s 19th century landscape. Built for journalist Loren B. Pope, in 1940, the 1200 square feet house was moved to Woodlawn in […]
By Doug Coleman FORT ELLSWORTH In May of 1861, the Yankees occupied Alexandria. The Confederates were not far off and were gathering in force at Manassas Junction, just 30 miles away. It was imperative that they throw up fortifications to hold their bridgehead into Virginia, the port city of Alexandria, to guard against any onslaught […]
By Sarah Becker ©2017 Alexandria’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority [ARHA] follows the money. Least cost analysis has replaced cost beneficial. Lesser payments are negotiated in lieu of property taxes [PILT]. Soft loans include below market interest rates and subsidies, to the extent they are acknowledged, are non-neutral. Opportunity costs, lost opportunity costs especially […]
