Photo: Diary of Alexander Sterrett Paxton. Credit: Washington and Lee University.

Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post writes about a collection of six Civil War diaries obtained by Washington and Lee University. The diaries were kept by Alexander Sterrett Paxton, who joined his Washington and Lee classmates in the Liberty Hall Volunteers for what he called the “war of Southern Independence & of resistance to Northern Despotism.”

Paxton wrote: “Nothing is so exciting as to get a shot at a Yankee. How strange that the better & kinder feelings of our natures should be thus changed!”

The diaries were purchased for $21,000 by a group of alumni and given to the university.

Mark St. John Erickson of the Newport News Daily Press writes about efforts to conserve the turret of the Monitor, which was recovered by Navy divers and federal archeologists in 2002.

Kate Taylor of the New York Times’ Arts Beat looks at the latest fallout from the Russian embargo on loans to American museums. The embargo is the result of a dispute with the Chabad-Lubavitch organization, which wants Russia to return a large collection of books and documents seized by the Nazis.

Some people really don’t like the idea of reinterpreting “Porgy and Bess” for Broadway.  Like Stephen Sondheim.

The L.A. Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat lovingly prepared from Twitter feeds to the most exacting standards by the bots at paper.li. What’s this? The bots are leading with nude photos of Lee Grace Dougherty from TMZ.