Last night I emailed my last assignment of 2007, which will inevitably be my first piece going to press in 2008. The article sent was a DVD review for The Free Lance-Star Town & County and presents what I consider to be a fair and balanced critique of Franklin Springs Family Media’s new documentary titled “Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story.”

Now it’s no secret that this film and subject matter is a favorite of mine, but I made a point to state that not all will be of the same mindset about the movie. The review is timely too as VMI’s Col. Keith Gibson is coming to town to speak on “Jackson Before the War” at Spotsylvania Middle School on January 11th at 7pm. I myself am making a point to attend the program and very much look forward to meeting the Colonel.

On a related note, our good friend Richard Williams has posted a link over on his blog with a great 1-hour interview on the Moody Broadcasting Network with the film’s director Ken Carpenter. I highly recommend it for both fans and skeptics alike as it generated an intelligent discussion with phone calls of people who are both vehemently positive and negative in their reactions. (I know all about that.) Listen Here

That review covers the newspaper-side of my contributions for the first of the New Year, on the magazine-side I have a feature on the "Top-10 Confederate Generals" that is running in the Jan/Feb issue of Civil War Historian. This piece was commissioned by the CWH editors and was penned in a manner to hopefully generate reader feedback. If it does well and garners the reaction that we are hoping for, I will be doing a Union version in a following issue.

Well, that’s all folks from me this year. It's now time for family and celebration. Happy birthday Jesus! Have a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year. I’ll be back in a couple weeks with lots more to blog about. Thanks for all of your encouragement and support in 2007. I’m very much looking forward to whatever treasures we’ll be sharing in 2008.