2013 Sand Sculpting Festival

This year marked the 10th anniversary for the Revere Beach National Sand Sculpting Festival. I try to go every year because the artists' work is always stunning. And I thought we picked the cooler day of the weekend but we had a 99 degree record breaking day. Even though the event has National in its name, the participants come from all over. 

The top four were from Canada, US, Mexico and Holland respectively.

And just to humble brag before getting into the pics...

One of my shots was featured on the Flickr Daily Blog on July 30th! 

The first thing that greeted us as we approached the beach was a flight of kites.

Sure it's not every day you see a giant panda flying in the sky but there was a slightly more unusual kite flying up there. That one right in the middle of the shot...

Mailbox Invaders - Retro-y Goodness

Recently, relatively new League of Extraordinary Bloggers member Trash Man over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture hosted a crazy giveaway or as he called it "free junk!" While the winner's circle was occupied by Goodwill Geek, TM (can I call ya TM?) was awesome enough to send out consolation prizes to all who entered the contest.

We didn't know we were getting anything until after the contest was over so that was a nice surprise! Come to find out, the two of us live in the same state not too far away so I'm probably the first one to get their consolation prize.

What I got was an envelope packed with "retro-y goodness"™

First, we got comics! Cap and The Defenders are from the 80s and the Tales book is from '77. Although it's a reprint, the cover and pencils were done by Gil Kane. The Defenders was always one of my favorite books because it had Doc Strange in it, added bonus: Scarlet Witch is in this ish! Cap's going at it with Anaconda on his cover. I've never really liked her.
I mean, how can you not call yourself Ana Conda?

Trading cards? We got those! I think they're all from the 80s, I'm not up on my GPK history. I'm going to tear these open but I ain't eatin the gum! Some of them will get recycled into the Random Box O Stuff that I grab from when I send to other bloggers. I'm most interested to see just how 3D the Jaws 3D cards are!

And I realized that I left out the what's probably the coolest, and smallest, part of the prize pack: a LEGO Series 1 Robot Minifig! I've actually had this guy on my want list for some time. Now I can finally have the good and evil robots fight each other.

A huge thanks to Trash Man! Be sure to swing by his blog and twitter: @ItsTrashCulture

World War II Documents

A couple months ago my step-dad acquired a bunch of stuff from an estate sale. There were lots of postcards, some hand painted from Italy and others more "recent" like this one from 1972 Iowa. There were also quite a few antique photos from the early 1900s, most of which are creepy! But what really caught my eye was a bunch of WWII era documents.

Unfortunately, I don't have any context for these things but I thought they were pretty cool and wanted to share them. It's one thing to read about history but I enjoy reading and handling things like old newspaper clippings which are physical parts of history.

You can click on images to see them bigger and/or browse them on Flickr.

The majority (and possibly even all) of these items are from 1945. The below letter was sent by Pvt. Charles Rochette who was assigned to the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion (AIB). Taunton is my home town.

It's just a soldier writing home to his wife and recently born daughter. The last part is what really paints a picture for me where he talks about being out on patrol, gathering fire wood and then making some coffee to have with a fruit cake.

I wasn't sure if the remaining items were tied to Pvt. Rochette because they're from the 7th Armored Division ("Lucky Seventh") and he's in the 38th AIB. (I  have no idea how military hierarchy works!) But I did learn me something after some Wiki exploration!
The 38th Armored Infantry Battalion was part of the 7th Armored Division, a-ha!

Here's a flyer from a salon in Aywaille Belgium.
Shave and a haircut, 27 cents!

The 7th Armored participated in the Battle of St. Vith which was part of the Battle of the Bulge. These are all cut out from newspapers at the time. Not much of interest on the backs.

Here's a typewritten account of troop movements. Unsure if it was written by Rochette.

Lastly, here's the equivalent of the company newsletter for the 7th. One side is world news, the other specifically about what's going on with the 7th.