A Journal News reporter and photographer came to Van Cortlandt Manor yesterday and filed this report on Animals & Acrobats.

Cool stuff!

Jennifer Pena and her Flight of the Raptors show is one of HVBLogger's favorite parts of his favorite springtime HHV event: Animals & Acrobats, which kicks off today (right now, as we "speak"!), at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton.

Jennifer will be offering her amazing birds of prey demonstrations throughout the weekend. Animals & Acrobats takes place today, tomorrow, and Monday from 10-5. Make it easy on yourself and buy your tickets online. Thousands of visitors tend to flock to the site during this Memorial Day classic. And the weather is looking mighty fine...

If you go, post your thoughts here and feel free to send me some pics or vids and I'll post ‘em.

Ladies of Liberty: The Women who Shaped our Nation is the latest book by noted political correspondent and author Cokie Roberts. It's a companion volume to Founding Mothers, in which the author pays homage to the women whose patriotism and sacrifice helped create a new nation.

Much to HVBLogger's delight, the newly published book features Louise Livingston (1782-1860) on the front and back cover. Louise was the cosmopolitan and well-traveled widow of Edward Livingston. She and her daughter Coralie Livingston Barton used Montgomery Place, Historic Hudson Valley's Dutchess County jewel, as a summer home and remade its architecture and landscape over a forty-year period. They transformed the site into a handsome, self-sufficient estate.

(Cokie also writes about Rebecca Gratz, who has links with Washington Irving. He gets a couple of mentions, too.)

In 2007, Cokie Roberts worked with Kate Johnson, curator of Historic Hudson Valley, and Catalina Hannan, librarian of Historic Hudson Valley, on the project that would become Ladies of Liberty. The author offers warm thanks to both of them in her Acknowledgements. Bravo to Kate and Cat!

If you want to learn more about the book click here.

Don't know of Cokie Roberts? Oh, come on. Yes you do! Among other career highlights, she is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program, This Week.

Sunday was a sunny day at Sunnyside, made all the more so by the dozen artists scattered throughout the grounds creating new works of art on site as part of Artists-on-the-Hudson.

Below, you can see artist Vern Ford of Blaze fame has a cult following wherever he goes. At left, Jan Aiello of Croton captures Washington Irving's homestead in all its romantic glory.

Special thanks to Danielle Fontaine for the pics.

Brian Jay Jones is NOT the dead Rolling Stone, but he is the author of the most recent bio of Washington Irving, called "An American Original."

Besides being a total Irving fanatic and pop culture junkie, Brian is an all around cool guy who makes his daily bread as a policy wonk in Maryland.

He spoke at Irving's homestead of Sunnyside last fall, captivating the crowd with his tales of Irving's exploits. His book takes a different, more personality-based approach than the first, also excellent, Irving bio published in 2007, "The Original Knickerbocker" by the historian Andrew Burstein, who provides an in-depth analysis of Irving as an American icon.

We enjoy Brian's Literary Conceits blog, particularly his recent four-part series covering an NYC trip, and thought you might too.