ATHENS – Between brown bag lunch speakers, art exhibits, and a mobile lab, visitors to the Smithsonian exhibit now open in Athens will get to experience everything from Norman Rockwell to training with robots in the coming days.
Special events at the exhibit start Thursday and Friday, Oct. 2-3, with the Mobile Robotics Training Lab from the
Alabama Robotics Technology Park on location at “The Way We Worked – Athens” in the Limestone County Event Center. The lab will be open and staffed for public tours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, and visitors can get a first-hand glimpse of how robotics training works in Limestone County today. More information about the lab is available at www.alabamartp.org.
Starting Monday, Oct. 6, “How Have You Made Your Mark? A Study Of Hands” by will be on display at the Limestone County Archives. The exhibit consists of approximately 50 oil paintings of the hands of North Alabama individuals demonstrating the way they work.
“Because each person’s hand and handprint are uniquely theirs, I believe the hands are the symbol and thus the story of an individual’s life and work,” Nabors said. “As the focus of this project, the subject’s hands will reflect the life, passions and influence that he/she has had or continues to have on the local and, in some cases, the global community.”
Visitors are invited to view the paintings during regular hours at the Limestone County Archvies, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. The Archives is located at 102 W. Washington Street in the former L&N Passenger Depot. For more information, visit www.leenabors.com.
Wednesday, Oct. 8, the Brown Bag Lunch Speaker Series will kick off at noon at “The Way We Worked – Athens” in the Limestone County Event 
Center with “Every Picture Tells a Story: The Storytelling of Norman Rockwell” by storyteller Dolores Hydock. Hydock will share surprising stories from Rockwell’s life and career, using images of his work to follow the step-by-step process Rockwell used in becoming “America’s painter.” For more information, visit Hydock’s site at www.storypower.org.
The speaker series will continue on Oct. 29 with “Alabama Cotton and Bemis Bags: Pieced into Quilt History” by Sarah Bliss Wright. Wright will share how Bemis Bro. Bag Company in Alabama, at one time the largest cotton bag manufacturer in the United States, influenced the textile industry as a whole through innovative research, development, and marketing.
The series will conclude on Nov. 5 with “The Way Alabama Worked” by John Kvach, lead scholar for “The Way We Worked” in Alabama and professor of public history at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“The Way We Worked,” a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition hosted by the Limestone County Archives, is open now through Nov. 8 at the Limestone County Event Center, 114 W. Pryor Street, Athens. Admission is free to the exhibit, which will is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information about The Way We Worked in Athens, and to stay up to date with latest events, visit www.thewayathensworks.com or contact Rebekah Davis at 256-233-6404 or thewayathensworks@gmail.com. To schedule a group tour, contact Misti Fillingame at 205-222-5408 or tourthewayathensworks@gmail.com.
MEDIA RELEASE/ATHENS-LIMESTONE COUNTY TOURISM ASSOCIATION/TERESA A. TODD, PRESIDENT
