The Daily Friend October 4, 2026 One hundred years ago, in the summer of 1926, Bill Shirer and Grant Wood sat on the terrace of the Deux Magots café in Paris and sipped white wine. Aspiring journalist Shirer was 22, painter Wood 35. Both came from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a town of little consequence in the heart of the Midwest corn belt. Wood had borrowed … Continue reading The Pursuit of Excellence: Grant Wood and William Shirer, From Cedar Rapids to the World

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, on October 10th 1774, 2,500 Virginians defeated Chief Cornstalk’s mostly Shawnee warriors at Point Pleasant, WV on the Ohio River. It was the only significant battle in a six-month-long war named after Virginia’s last colonial governor, the Earl of Dunmore, who himself led one of two columns that crossed the Allegheny Mountains into Indian country. The Virginians sought to end  Shawnee, Mingo and … Continue reading When the Virginians Defeated the Shawnees