By Heidi Glenn

It's hard not to want to ask a million questions as you look through Lillian Yonally's World War II-era color photos of American female pilots in uniform. Female pilots in World War II? Flying bombers? In color? What was their story?

For those who weren't alive then, it can sometimes seem as if World War II took place in black and white -- no doubt the result of absorbing countless historical photographs. In contrast, Yonally's color shots, gauzy and toned with primary blues, greens and reds, look as if they were plucked from a daydream.

Lillian Yonally at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, in 1943. (Courtesy of Lillian Yonally)

Yonally, now 87, was one of about 1,100 young women in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a short-lived military program known as WASP that trained civilian volunteers to fly planes stateside so men could report overseas for combat duty. The women, who were required to have previous flight experience, trained at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, and then were stationed at 120 Army air bases within the U.S.

NPR Photo Editor Coburn Dukehart and I interviewed Yonally to find out what it was like to be part of the first group of female military pilots. You can hear her talk about her experiences and view her rare color photographs in the slideshow below.

Yonally shot the photos from 1943-1944 at Avenger Field, when she was 21 and training as a WASP, and then at Camp Irwin in California, where she was stationed. At Camp Irwin, she would tow targets behind her plane so gunners on the ground could practice shooting -- with live ammunition. The groundbreaking WASP program was halted after just two years in large part because male civilian pilots lobbied for their jobs, but not before proving that women could fly. (They're being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Yonally will be there.)

Yonally's father gave her a camera, an Argus C3, which she said was considered contraband on base. It didn't stop her from shooting, though, and she took photos of her friends, the planes she flew and her instructors. She would mail the film back to Boston, and her dad would develop it into color slides. This way, she thought, her family could see what she was up to, and she would have a record of her experience waiting for her when she got home.

Lillian Yonally on the wing of a Douglass Daughtless during her service as a WASP. (Courtesy of Lillian Yonally)

And then there are the stories behind the photos themselves. One of a plane -- a PT-19 -- with a pink and purple sky bursting in the background was meant to show her family that she was up at dawn. Yonally, it turns out, was never known to get up early. Another is of a wishing well at Avenger Field, where the young pilots celebrated after passing tests. Another image shows Yonally in a jumpsuit and holding a US Air Corps mailbag --taken to show her family her new training attire.

We also wanted to know whether Yonally and her fellow pilots realized just how truly special the WASP program was. She got most excited while talking about the act of flying and about women in flight. She is clearly passionate about both, but Yonally is, like the other WASP featured in Susan Stamberg's story and those in an accompanying interactive, unassuming about her duty.

A PT-19 at sunrise at Avenger Field. Yonally took this photo to show her parents that she was getting up early for training. (Courtesy of Lillian Yonally/)

"I don't think I took time to think about it," Yonally told us. "I just thought it was a wonderful opportunity, and we were very gung-ho for it."

Nevertheless, she says, the photos capture the start of showing "that women could do anything."

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By Robert Krulwich

If somebody says, "I'll give you 10 seconds to tell me about DNA," don't trust blogger "bennybb."

Maths in Deauville, Normandy (Rene Maltete)

I love this photo. But bennybb is wrong.

Yes daddies are different from mommies, that's true. But we babies, instead of being a blend of the two, we're going to go one way or another. After all, if mommies and daddies really blended, we babies would all be hermaphrodites.

So good try, bennybb. But back to biology class you go.

If you would like a big whopping genetics lessons, check out this guide on Nature.com.

(Thanks to blogger Jason Kottke, who -- I don't know this for sure, but I am going to guess -- got a B- in biology from Mrs. Kropotkin.)

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By Tanya Ballard Brown

Today as we download our music, type on our computers and tweet and text to our friends it may be hard to imagine a time when you needed to rely on a switchboard operator to make a call. Or a time when telegraphs were used to transmit messages around the world.

In general, while communication and other things are now faster, some of the technological advances that we enjoy may have come at the cost of interacting with people -- the elevator operator, the iceman and the milkman.

As innovations render more jobs obsolete, NPR takes a look back at some of what we've lost to progress.

A worker distributes a block of ice in 1936.(Fox Photos/Getty Images)

View a gallery of historical photos of jobs gone by the wayside.

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By Robert Krulwich

It's time to honor the films and performances that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members (roughly 6,000 people) choose as best of the year.

So why do we let a bunch of movie professionals or people who used to work in the business choose "bests" for us? Well, first, I don't think you would disagree that popular movies aren't always the "best" ones. And intriguingly, what's popular in one neighborhood is shockingly unpopular on the other side of town. People in different places feel very, very differently about the movies.

For example, run your cursor across these maps published in the New York Times. Each one is divided into ZIP codes that show which films got the most and the fewest Netflix rentals in 2009. So you can go to your neighborhood and see what your neighbors wanted or didn't want to see. Then check the neighborhood next door, then across town, then across the country. The differences are astonishing.

Screen grab from nytimes.com

If you want to find how the NYT put together this project together, you can read the inside scoop here.

More coverage of the Oscars.

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By Claire O'Neill

You know you have a problem when more than one friend shows you the same obscure link. If there's one thing I love as much as photography, it's breakfast -- and people know it. I received this link from two people in one day: photographs of breakfast! The best of both worlds!

The series was recently made by photographer Oliver Schwarzwald for the German magazine Feld Hommes, in an issue themed "awake." The idea was to showcase the ways in which various countries break fast, from Russia to the United States. I don't know how he managed to get a cup of orange juice without a cup, but he says that was an important stylistic choice. A cup is a cup no matter what country you're in; the food should speak for itself. I have to admit: The French croissant and cafe au lait are speaking to me right now.

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By Robert Krulwich

We dream, we listen, we look. We hope that maybe one day we will discover life out in the universe -- something we can talk to or at least something fascinatingly different to look at.

Meanwhile, right here -- right where we live -- are creatures so extraordinarily spooky in landscapes so deeply strange they might as well be on the Planet Zantar. These critters could easily pass as extraterrestrials. They don't look Earth-like. But they are.

Here, courtesy of the BBC, are enormous worms and candy-colored sea stars having lunch:

This comes from David Attenborough's special Life on BBC 4. Life is from the makers of the Planet Earth series, and will air on the Discovery Channel in late March.

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By Claire O'Neill

Maybe it's macabre, but the blood-eating Venus flytrap from Little Shop of Horrors always fed a fascination in me. I once had a friend with a miniature potted flytrap and that, too, was really creepy and cool. A coworker once had one as a pet. I mean, the idea of a carnivorous plant is so counterintuitive, so freakish, it almost shakes the bedrock of my commitment to vegetarianism. If a plant can eat animals, why would I only eat plants? I blame an article in the March issue of National Geographic magazine for shattering my worldview.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But this article has definitely rekindled my fascination with these anomalous plants. It explains how a specimen without muscles or nerves actually uses electricity to sense movement. Sometimes, in the case of pitcher plants, for example, they have the help of other critters and bacteria to break down their prey, and then they simply absorb the remaining nutrients.

Although definitely the Schwarzenegger of the plant world, carnivorous plants are quite inefficient. They devote most of their energy to an excessively elaborate digestive process. They're also endangered; in addition to environmental concerns, poaching for black-market sales threatens their existence.

The plant portraits in the story were taken by Germany-based Helene Schmitz, whose interest in plants surpasses mine tenfold. In 1999, she traveled to the island of Ven, Sweden, to photograph what remains of the garden of 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe. And her book, A Passion for Systems, explores the sexual reproduction system of plants, as originally outlined by Carl Linnaeus.

The article is well worth a read if you're interested in how -- and why -- the plant digestive process works. Otherwise, at least check out the rest of the photos.

Also: an obligatory nod to early animatronics.

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By Robert Krulwich

So you look down from space (if you happen to be a Google Earth satellite) and you think, "What IS that?"

Google Earth images of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon, Ariz.

It's a parking lot. Or maybe a supply depot. What we're looking at here is 2,600-acres in Tucson, Ariz., filled with retired helicopters, airplanes, cargo planes and old World War II bombers. Some are intact, some are broken into spare parts, but whoever* runs this place on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base has the soul of an artist.

The pieces are laid out in elegantly repeating patterns outlined by dirt roads that make diamonds or interlacing semi-circles. The view from the ground, if you happen by East Irvington Road (see Google's "Street View") is ho hum. From up above, though, for the first time we can see what you can do with more than 4,000 big steel toys that carry a price-tag of about $35 billion.

I particularly like how even the disassembled planes are organized into patterns: wings left, wings right, fuselage center, tail to the left, cockpit to the right. Apparently these planes are used for spare parts by the U.S. military, so having everything just so makes sense. I could never manage this. One look at my sock drawer and the guy who runs this lot would just sigh.

Thanks to Steve Silberman, and the UK's Daily Telegraph.

*That "whoever" would be the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG).

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By Emile Dubuisson

Although I was starting to make documentary films at the time, this was my first experience in still photography. Here, in this surreal setting, on the northern corner of the polar circle, with practically no light in the coldest month of the winter, I began to photograph what I could: a few furtive silhouettes stirred in the dim light around the wind-swept encampments.

Several weeks later we went back to Moscow and I started to process the film. My lack of experience made the development very random. Half of my films were blank, the other half almost translucent. I decided to store the negatives and left photography for nearly 10 years.

It's only after coming to New York to study at the International Center of Photography that I decided to look at the negatives again.

Very quickly, the images from Siberia kept my attention. They signify the beginning of my photographic endeavor and that first step onto which I could build. A random chemical process, an unconsciousness of the image, and a lot of chance came together to create a series that is at once constructed and magical, consistent and surreal. To my now professional eye, these images of Siberia resonate. Through them I am rediscovering a part of my innocence.


Emile Dubuisson is a French photographer, cinematographer and director living between Paris and New York. You can see more of his work in photography on his Web site and a list of his work in film on IMDb.com. We tried to edit his text down to 100 words, but opted to leave it in tact.

"100 Words" is a series in which photographers describe their work--in their words. What makes them tick? What makes a great photo? Film or digital? Positive or negative? Find out here. Curated by Graham Letorney.

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By Claire O'Neill

The winners of the World Press Photo contest were announced a few weeks ago and, as always, it has stirred some interesting conversation. On one hand, the winning photograph this year was, in a sense, surprisingly innocuous -- at least in light of past winners, which tend to be morbid or grotesque. In this video, jury chair Ayperi Karabuda Ecer explains the decision.

Women shout on a rooftop in protest to the presidential election results, Tehran, Iran, 24 June (Pietro Masturzo, Italy)

The rest of the winners weren't so quiet. Of course it's the photojournalist's job to present challenging scenes, or things we might otherwise never see. But with photo after photo of bloodshed, death, destruction, violence, gore and tears, one can't help but wonder: how much is too much?

A few stories this year were particularly difficult. (Note: these links contain graphic content.) Farah Abdi Warsameh's photos of a man being stoned to death in Somalia won 2nd prize in the general news division, while Walter Astrada's series of a bloodbath in Madagascar was the 1st place winner in the spot news division. The stories are awful -- and important to know about -- but is that level of graphic content necessary? Perhaps. I don't know.

This is actually why the winning photograph is an interesting one. It's quiet, distant and dark; it shows the origins of a much bigger story, but it doesn't showcase violence or tragedy. The perspective is somewhat removed and detached, and, in order to understand the picture, it's important to know the context. Ecer hints that this was a departure from the contest's past. You can view more photos from this rooftop series on the photographer's Web site. Below are more winners from this year's contest.

Despite the contest's generally dark tone, a few lighter stories stood out:

• Craig Golding's series of the World Masters Games


• Denis Rouvre's portrait series of Senegalese wrestlers


• Matt McClain's compelling story about a blind man's adoption of a blind boy
  
• On the more artsy side: Roderik Henderson and Peter Bialobrzeski
  

Take a look at the photos and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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