Let the summer begin...

Finally...here's the long Memorial Day Weekend...and Saturday night the Foo Fighters are rocking Austin City Limits, followed by a fascinating documentary about the Vietnamese community struggling like everybody else to survive Katrina and it's aftermath...A Village Called Versailles...10 & 11pm

On Sunday, PBS will unite the nation with an evening that has become an American tradition. The multi award-winning NATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT, featuring an all-star line-up in performance with the National Symphony Orchestra, honors the service and sacrifice of the men and women in uniform, their families at home and all those who have given their lives for this country. The top-rated show will be broadcast live in HD from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, and is co-hosted for the fifth time by Emmy Award-winner Gary Sinise ("CSI: New York") and Tony Award-winner Joe Mantegna ("Criminal Minds"), two acclaimed actors who have dedicated themselves to veterans' causes and supporting the troops in active service...7pm

And on Monday, see how the country dealt with it's economic crisis...in the 1930's. American Experience presents "Civilian Conservation Corps". Throughout the decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation's forests and parks, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting fires and maintaining roads and trails. Corps workers lived in camps under quasi-military discipline, and received a wage of 30 dollars per month, 25 of which they were required to send home to their families...8pm

Are you really smarter than a 4th grader?

The guys are still working on the Newton Centre Project in this edition of This Old House Hour...7pm

The annual National Geographic Bee returns for the 22nd consecutive year with host and moderator Alex Trebek. The 2010 National Geographic Bee will feature 54 fourth- to eighth-graders, all winners of their state-level geographic bees, triumphing over a field of nearly 5 million students to earn a place in the national championships...8pm

And finally, Globe Trekker rolls the dice and heads into truly dangerous waters...
Las Vegas...9pm

Boots on the ground...

Tonight on KACV we conclude the fascinating documentary series Ground War, exploring the technological innovations that have transformed warfare throughout the ages.
Parts 3 and 4 tonight tracks the development of artillery from the ancient Greeks through the invention of gunpowder in China, to the very latest generation of big guns and directed-energy weapons...Ground War...8pm

the BIG BANG theory...

Hot on the heels of the Icelandic volcano that erupted in April, disrupting European air travel, tonight's Nova investigates the Mystery of the Megavolcano...A remote lake in Southeast Asia conceals evidence of Earth's greatest volcanic cataclysm that exploded so violently during the Ice Age that gases and ash may have encircled the globe and blotted out the sun for years on end...7pm

Face to Face visits with State Representative David Swinford, as he prepares to retire after two decades of service...8pm

One year after the deadliest domestic airline accident in seven years,FRONTLINE investigates the crash of Continental 3407 in Buffalo, NY...9pm

how to be a hobo...

Back from Austin for the PBS annual conference...heard about some great shows on the horizon...details coming up!

Meanwhile, tonight Antiques Roadshow is still in San Jose...7pm

American Experience takes us Riding The Rails. During the Depression-era of the 1930s, tens of thousands of teenagers hopped freight trains in search of a better life elsewhere. What they discovered was a mixture of adventure, camaraderie, hardship and loneliness. Sound romantic?
Find out the truth tonight...8pm

Still the best and the brightest...

Tonight on "Recreating America: Creativity and Learning"...

For much of its history, the word "America" has stood for the brightest ideas, the most resourceful solutions and the most provocative insights. Is this still true today? The documentary explores the importance of creativity in education by highlighting four schools in Oklahoma and assessing how the state's teachers are attempting to teach and promote creativity as a new standard in education...8pm

Learn more about the world with a trip to Senegal and it's capital city Dakar...
Globe Trekker at 9pm

When You're Strange...

Rock fans are in for a treat...American Masters presents The Doors: When You're Strange.
The creative chemistry of four brilliant artists -- drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and singer Jim Morrison -- made The Doors one of America's most iconic and influential, theatrical and mysterious rock bands. This film is the first feature documentary to tell their story, with original footage shot between their formation in 1965 and Morrison's death in 1971. It follows the band from the corridors of UCLA's film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, onto the stages of electrifying sold-out performances and chronicles the creation of their six landmark studio albums. Narrated by Johnny Depp, rare cinema verite allows an intimate glimpse into their musical collaboration -- and their offstage lives...8pm

From the little theater to Broadway...

As tornadoes plow through Oklahoma recently, tonights Nova: Hunt for the Supertwister is especially intriguing. This is much more than just another "extreme weather" show, focusing on the efforts of two scientists at the University of Oklahoma to develop radically different approaches to forecasting twisters: one relies on "virtual tornados" created inside supercomputers, while the other involves hunting down real-life storms to collect data firsthand (the method that inspired the movie Twister). With jaw-dropping 3-D graphics generated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, "Hunt for the Supertwister" features spectacular footage of these terrifying twisters and gives viewers a front-row seat to the risky and thrilling art of storm chasing...7pm

Face to Face with Ellen Robertson Green profiles the adventures of an Amarillo girl who has one foot in the panhandle and the other on Broadway. As she tours the nation with the musical "Phantom of the Opera", she brings us stories of the show from behind the scenes, her rise from Amarillo Little Theater to New York City, and some life lessons that have guided her along the Great White Way...not to be missed...8pm

Ken Burns brother does whaling...

Antiques Roadshow travels to San Jose for the first of a multi-part series devoted to that garage sale Picasso...7pm

From director Ric Burns (New York: A Documentary Film, Ansel Adams, The Donner Party) "Into the Deep: Whaling & America" explores America's first global industry.And as Americans now see fortunes rise and fall on the global energy and consumer markets, the rapid commoditization of whales and the sharp decline of the whaling industry serve as a stark reminder of the volatility of the global marketplace...American Experience...8pm

When You Feel the Need to Know...

After 30 plus years in broadcasting, Bill Moyers called it a day last Friday, and is now basking in the glow of retirement...tonight, PBS premieres the next generation of weekly primetime news/ public affairs series with "Need To Know". Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham co-anchors a cross-media news and public affairs magazine that culls stories from the best of the week's online reporting, culminating in a one-hour on-air broadcast every Friday night on PBS. The program will feature documentary-style reports, short features, studio-based interviews and more...7:30pm www.pbs.org/needtoknow

Our Friday night news line-up is capped off with European Journal, where each week, teams of journalists, photographers and producers scour the continent in search of stories with impact and meaning for American viewers...it's world news with a little different slant...8:30

And if you missed this week's American Experience "Roads to Memphis", it will air again
on Sunday afternoon. A fascinating timeline tracing the final steps of Martin Luther King Jr.
and the man who brought the dream to an end, his subsequent international manhunt and capture...Roads to Memphis, Sunday 1pm.

The Dirty Little Secret...

Tonight Kevin and the crew continue in part 5 of 16 renovating the Newton Center Project on This Old House Hour...7pm

THE MISUNDERSTOOD EPIDEMIC: DEPRESSION explores the difficulties faced by those coping with varying levels of depression. Twelve Americans from all walks of life explain, in their own words, the realities of living with depression: the symptoms, thoughts of suicide, the stress it puts on families and relationships, the loss of ability to work, the stigma associated with it, and the pros and cons of different treatment methods...8pm

Dive! Dive! Dive!

Tonight "Secrets of the Dead: Japanese Super Sub" investigates, revealing the startling story of Japan's successful creation of a technological masterpiece-an aircraft carrier submarine that could blow up the Panama Canal, reach the U.S. main land undetected, and unleash panic-inducing air attacks on American civilians. How close did Japan's secret sub come to attacking America? And how did America's own top-secret super-weapon put an end to the Japanese threat?...7pm

And for all music lovers Live From Lincoln Center presents "Perlman, Ax and Ma at the Penthouse"...three masters of the concert stage -- Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax -- play Mendelssohn and more in the chamber setting of Lincoln Center's living room, the Kaplan Penthouse...hosted by Alan Alda...8pm

Roads to Memphis and the day of reckoning...

Tonight on part 3 of Antiques Roadshow in Phoenix, we find some musical instruments that date back to the early 1800's...7pm

From Emmy Award-winning director Stephen Ives, this film tells the wildly disparate yet fatefully entwined stories of an assassin, James Earl Ray, and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., against the backdrop of the seething and turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
ROADS TO MEMPHIS features eyewitness testimony from King's inner circle and the officials involved in Ray's capture and prosecution, and Hampton Sides, author of the upcoming book "Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin." Yet another excellent installment of American Experience...8pm