IMAGE: Jason E. Powell, Looking Into the Past: Loudoun County Courthouse, Leesburg, VA
It’s been a busy week here at Encyclopedia Virginia: we’re working on a terrific project that will make our site even more classroom-friendly. As we wind down for the weekend, check out our favorite links from this week:
- This Washington Post article focuses on vintage photography websites, such as Shorpy, HistoryPin, and My Daguerreotype Boyfriend. But in particular it showcases Jason E. Powell’s Looking Into the Past. Powell has traveled to Washington, D.C., Fredericksburg, Alexandria, Manassas, Warrenton, and my hometown of Leesburg, photographing vintage images in their present-day locations.
- Similarly, I’ve been enjoying the photos, documents, and recordings posted on Our Presidents, the tumblr of the National Archives’ Presidential Libraries, which range from silly (a letter begging Dwight Eisenhower not to let the army cut Elvis Presley’s hair—”if you cut his side burns off we will just die!”) to solemn (a phone call between Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the same day that the bodies of three Mississippi civil rights workers were found).
- In response to the statistic that 65 percent of today’s school-age children may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet, Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times calls for a focus on digital literacy in the classroom.
Plus, here are a few recent Encyclopedia Virginia entries that you might enjoy:
- Learn about the pastor whose sermons might have inspired the great orator Patrick Henry in The Great Awakening in Virginia
- Discover who said, “if ever the lord had cause to consume the cittyes of Sodom and Gomorrah he might as justly and more severely execute his wrath upon Virginia” in Puritans in Colonial Virginia
- Learn about the exchange program between the Powhatan Indians and the English in Languages and Interpreters in Early Virginia Indian Society
