This weekend:

Time for back-to-school shopping with the little ones and then I hope to check out a few miles of The World’s Longest Yard Sale. I’ve never been before, but I hope to get pictures of some interesting things.

Humor:

Tool Glossary- Miss Cellania has a very funny list of what different tools really do. If you’ve every worked on you own car, it will bring a smile to your face.

Literature:

Mark Twain’s autobiography will finally be published in its entirety 100 years after his death. Squeeee! The first three volumes of his 500,000 word autobiography will be released in November. Twain dictated most of it to a stenographer in the four years before his death at 74 on April 21, 1910. He argued that speaking his recollections and opinions, rather than writing them down, allowed him to adopt a more natural, colloquial and frank tone… Check out the rest of the story.

Photography:

The Arrow of Time- A couple photographs themselves every June 17th , starting in 1976, adding the kids as they come. It’s interesting not only to watch them age over the 34 years, but also to watch as photography advances and the pictures become sharper.

Color Photographs from the Depression-(via TYWKIWDBI) This collection of 70 pictures is amazing and beautiful. From homesteaders to peach pickers, state fairs to railroad yards, the pictures provide an interesting slice of American life from 1939-1943. These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

Of special interest to those of us in Tennessee, #63 shows a TVA dam in progress and #66 shows an African American woman building bombers in Tennessee. I knew nuclear reasearch went on at Oak Ridge  and we had a munitions plant here in Chattanooga, but I didn’t realize planes were also built in the state. I found the Tennessee WWII Reenactor’s website has quite a bit of trivia.  Tennessee’s first defense plant was the Vultee Aircraft manufacturing plant, located in Nashville, TN.  During WWII, the plant built dive bomber aircraft, the P-38 lightning fighters, and employed hundreds of women workers, a.k.a “Rosie the Riveters”.