In a previous post, we explored the first part of a photo album that chronicled a young woman's journey to and from the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909. Our traveler, who remains unidentified, then returned to her life in pre-war New York, where she worked at the Brooklyn Public Library from at least 1910 to 1918, presumably as a librarian.

There is something tragic about a set of personal photos that are abandoned by those who loved them, and are later found offering themselves to a stranger for a low price. For a treasured album to be found anywhere but in the care of a family member suggests that, perhaps, something did not go according to plan.

Among the slides was a gorgeous color Kodachrome, showing my still-teenage mother striking a pose on the doorstep of what seemed to be a motel of some sort, named Loma de Oro. But it was an apartment, not a hotel, in 1953 San Diego's Golden Hill.

Even as my childhood eyes were free to peer into the dark woods on either side, I have no particular recollection of seeing anything in the forest to the west, but a lonely overgrown drive, gated off, that curved out of sight.

During the reign of King Edward II, in the early 14th century, the inch was defined as “three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise.” Is it still true today? ...

This marker and its slow drip of random itinerant readers have probably been the primary source of information shaping local awareness of the lost town of Rawsonville, Michigan. ...