Smithsonian articles from April 2002

Smithsonian archives from April 2002

Rising Sun : Opening this month on Alexandria's Mediterranean Waterfront, the bibliotheca Alexandrina reflects the spirit of its ancient forebear.
April 1, 2002... The egyptian sun casts fiery diamonds on the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea and silhouettes ancient minarets and modern apartment buildings alike in red. But it is on another sun--nearly 500 feet in diameter and made of glass and...

Multiple viewpoints : Photographer Edward Burtynsky's politically charged industrial landscapes are carefully crafted to elicit different interpretations.
April 1, 2002... The carcass of a cargo ship, already sheared of its forward structure, sits where it was parked on the beach at Chittagong, Bangladesh, flanked by two other scrapped vessels in various states of dismemberment. As a photography student at...

Just Looking.
April 1, 2002... Rite of Spring: Celebrating the ancient Hindu festival of Holi, which marks the vernal equinox, revelers near the city of Jaipur, in northeastern India, fling red, orange, blue, green and purple powders in a show of colors that augurs the...

Absence of Malice : In a new book, historian Ronald C. White, Jr., explains why Lincoln's second inaugural address, given just Weeks before he died, was his greatest speech.
April 1, 2002... "For too long," says Ronald C. White, Jr., "Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address has lived under the shadow of the Gettysburg Address. And yet Lincoln thought this was his best effort." White does too. In his new book, Lincoln's Greatest Speech:...

Hanging Out at the National Zoo.
April 1, 2002... Looking as if they were cobbled together from the spare parts of some wildlife assembly line--tail of raccoon, face of bush baby, eyes of meerkat--a recently installed colony of ten lemurs, rare tree-dwelling primates, clamber about the...

All Creatures Considered.
April 1, 2002... From his cluttered office in Washington's Museum of Natural History, Don Wilson describes the challenge that carried him, at least temporarily, from fieldwork in such exotic venues as Panama and Malaysia to making little pencil marks on page...

Handiwork.
April 1, 2002... From ceramic vases to silk-screened kimonos, the works at the 20th annual Smithsonian Craft Show represent the creations of 120 artisans, chosen from 1,368 applicants. The exhibition and sale, at Washington, D.C.'s National Building Museum, run...

A Country Woman at Heart.
April 1, 2002... Let us begin with a pair of brown shoes: sensible, heavy, leather clogs. Not just down-to-earth, but made for muck. They were worn by a woman who, in her middle age, finally shed the confines of a middle- class London upbringing for the fells...

Visit the Smithsonian.
April 1, 2002... For a free Associates' planning packet, call Smithsonian Information, 202-357-2700 or 202-357-1729 (TTY), 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Saturday, or send an e-mail to info@si.edu. INFORMATION CENTER Upon arrival, stop at the...

Rare Books Revealed.
April 1, 2002... For viewers logging on to the new Smithsonian Institution Libraries Web site--www.sil.si.edu--a rare book is a matter of definition. With 15 titles from the Institution's vast holdings of 40,000 volumes now being made available electronically,...

Wall of Memories.
April 1, 2002... For the thousands who came to the trauma center at New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center in search of loved ones September 11, Bellevue served an unexpected function. Within days, a plywood construction barrier, surrounding the site of an...

Sight-seeing.
April 1, 2002... For tourists and armchair travelers alike, the new Official Guide to the Smithsonian offers an excursion to the largest museum complex in the world. The guide, available in bookstores, surveys treasures such as this tomb-guardian sculpture, c....

Across America, Mastering Math.
April 1, 2002... Early in the 1800s, within a new nation's schoolhouses, American children worked diligently at their sums, scratching columns of numbers on slates. This exercise was itself a revolutionary undertaking. Traditionally, mathematics instruction had...

Wittgenstein's Ghost : When two philosophers nearly came to blows, they defined a debate that rages a half century later.
April 1, 2002... More than 50 years have passed since two famous philosophers squared off against each other at England's Cambridge University. Though their raucous debate lasted only ten minutes, it still stirs the passions of their followers. Both men...

Building to a Different Drummer : Today's timber frame revivalists are putting up everything from millionaire mansions to a replica of Thoreau's cabin.
April 1, 2002... Just when I'm getting into a 19th-century frame of mind, a chain saw screams to life and fells a tree. Dressed in a canvas kilt with silver-button snap pockets and a hatchet dangling from a hammer loop, Ben Brungraber looks like what Henry...