Smithsonian articles from April 2005

Smithsonian archives from April 2005

William Clark and the Shaping of the West.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... William Clark and the Shaping of the West Landon Y. Jones Hill and Wang, $25.00 In a deeply researched, splendidly written biography (a part of which appeared in Smithsonian), William Clark and the Shaping of the West, Landon Y. Jones...

Little Bighorn Reborn: with a new Indian memorial, the site of Custer's last stand draws descendants of victors and vanquished alike.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... "A beautiful place...," I murmured to no one in particular, gazing down from a hilltop to cottonwood forests on both sides of a lazy river. A woman at my side finished the thought: "...to die." A touch morbid for an exchange between...

A road less traveled: Cape Cod's two-lane Route 6A offers a direct conduit to a New England of yesteryear.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... Landscapes, like beauty, may well be colored by the eye of the beholder, but steering along tree-shaded Route 6A on a mild summer day, with blue inlets of Cape Cod Bay on one side and white picket-fenced houses on the other, I'm tempted to...

One Writer's Garden: in Jackson, Mississippi, preservationists are restoring the verdant retreat that sustained novelist Eudora Welty.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... On a recent morning in Jackson, Mississippi, the garden where novelist Eudora Welty once muddied her knees, fussed over camellias and cultivated a lifetime of stories hums with life. Bees hover over bright disks of zinnias, among spires of...

Rapture of the deep: Pennekamp State Park--the nation's first coral-reef sanctuary--protects a thriving ecosystem beneath the waves.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... The coral-reef formations are eerily vivid through transparent panels in the glass-bottom boat. Rainbow parrotfish--their brilliant markings doing justice to their name--glide above the reef, flanked by black-and-white-striped sergeant majors,...

Shore bird: architect Santiago Calatrava created an urban landmark in the guise of an addition for the Milwaukee Art Museum.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... In 1994, the Zurich-based architect Santiago Calatrava got a call inviting him to submit a design for a proposed addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. He promptly went to a map. "I knew it was in the Midwest, having been to Chicago," Calatrava...

Healing arts: at Ojo Caliente, site of New Mexico's ancient hot springs, an artisan revives the craft of Native American pottery.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... New mexico has beckoned as a land of enchantment ever since Spanish conquistadors invaded it in the 16th century, searching for riches. While they never found fabled streets paved with gold, some of Coronado's footsore soldiers may have been...

Footpath atop the west: since the 1930s, the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, extending from Mexico to Canada, has beckoned young and old.(Destination America)
April 1, 2005... From 8,000 feet up the side of San Jacinto Peak in Southern California, Interstate 10, at the base of the gorge, snakes through the San Bernardino Mountains and enters the Mojave Desert. Ahead of me to the north rises the snowcapped cone of...

Swords and sandals: in Libya, again open to U.S. travelers after more than two decades, archaeologists have uncovered spectacular mosaics of the glories of Rome.(DIGS)
April 1, 2005... Helmut Ziegert returned to the coast of Libya last year to follow up on a tantalizing discovery. In September 2000, his colleague Marliese Wendowski was excavating what she thought was a large farmhouse when, 12 feet deep in the sandy soil, she...

The old ballgames: civil rights chronicler Ernest Withers also photographed the glories of black baseball, including pioneering big leaguer Jackie Robinson.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Negro League Baseball)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... For the black community in memphis, the return of spring meant the return of baseball at Martin's Stadium, home of the Red Sox from 1923 to 1960. "Ah, man, lotta people and pretty girls," blues legend B.B. King once said of the ballpark, where...

Faces of the fallen.(JUST LOOKING)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Each portrait "is about love and loss, generosity and patriotism," says Washington, D.C.-area portrait artist Annette Polan. Last May, Polan began enlisting some 200 artists to create 1,314 portraits of American servicemen and servicewomen...

Out of time: less than a decade after their first contact with the outside world, the volatile Korubo of the Amazon still live in almost total isolation. Their fiercest champion, Indian tracker Sydney Possuelo, is trying to keep their world intact. But how long can he, and they, hold out?
April 1, 2005... Deep in the amazon jungle, i stumble along a sodden track carved through steamy undergrowth, frequently sinking to my knees in the mud. Leading the way is a bushy-bearded, fiery-eyed Brazilian, Sydney Possuelo, South America's leading expert on...

Hugs and kisses from the IRS: a kinder, gentler tax form is on the way.(THE LAST PAGE)
April 1, 2005... "There is no excuse for rude treatment by IRS personnel. They are on the public payroll, and their job is to serve the public."--U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords (I-Vermont), member, Senate Finance Committee Stung by criticism about poor service,...

Who knew?(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Paul Raffaele's article "Uganda: The Horror" has done readers a great service by opening our eyes to the atrocities there. As I read the article, I cried for these children. The photographs convey a sense of hope for Uganda and allow us to see...

Go snakeheads!(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... As Helen Fields pointed out in "Invasion of the Snakeheads," the introduction of new species into the Potomac River watershed is not new. In addition to largemouth bass, channel catfish, blue catfish, Asian carp and rainbow trout, the list of...

Mesmerizing history.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Pamela Constable's "Assignment Afghanistan" made me feel that I was right alongside her as she made her numerous journeys to this area. I was mesmerized by the history, the people and the hardships she conveyed. The description of the families...

Gates crasher.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... As a New Yorker who regularly uses Central Park, I anticipated with some concern Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation of The Gates ("Christo Does Central Park"). The day after the piece opened, I visited the park. I can relate that The...

Pied piper.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... My family visited Pie Town, New Mexico, in 1995, hungry for pies ("Savoring Pie Town"). To our dismay, there were none. "It's just wrong," grumbled my mother, Mary Munden, so we purchased the old Thunderbird Trading Post on Highway 60. With...

"A formidable anamal": after a winter of waiting, the corps leaves Fort Mandan and heads warily into bear country.(LEWIS AND CLARK)
April 1, 2005... Before breaking their winter camp to resume their journey up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark pack their journals and various specimens--including antelope hides, rabbit skeletons, "four liveing Magpies" and one prairie dog--to send by barge...

A new take on native traditions: celebrated movie director Chris Eyre trains a lens on the lands and lives of contemporary Indians in A Thousand Roads, debuting this month at the National Museum of the American Indian.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Movie Review)
April 1, 2005... Making a movie for a museum wasn't exactly what Chris Eyre had in mind. So Eyre, director of the acclaimed 1998 feature Smoke Signals, hesitated when the National Museum of the American Indian asked him to direct a film to run for years in its...

Outta here.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(star leaves Milky Way)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... OUTTA HERE For the first time, astronomers have observed a star speeding out of the Milky Way heading for intergalactic space, never to return. Using the Smithsonian-University of Arizona 6.5-meter telescope atop Mount Hopkins near Tucson,...

Hope Sleuth cracks case? A recent computer-aided study shows the world's largest dark blue diamond is one of a kind.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
April 1, 2005... Historians and conspiracy theorists have long claimed that other diamonds were cut from the same stone as the Hope Diamond, says Jeff Post, the gems and minerals curator who oversees the 45.52-carat Hope, the world's largest dark blue diamond...

Emerging from caves: science suffers a setback--and leads to a breakthrough.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
April 1, 2005... Reporting his story about the good people of Dayton, Tennessee, where John Scopes was tried 80 years ago for teaching evolution in the public schools ("Evolution on Trial," p. 52), Steve Kemper wanted particularly to talk to Kurt Wise, a...

This month in history: April anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
April 1, 2005... 200 YEARS AGO: ANDERSEN, THAT'S ME! Hans Christian Andersen is born in Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805. A poor cobbler's son, he listens often to folk tales told by local workhouse inmates. In 1827, he begins writing 212 tales of his...

Hearing aid: a trove of recorded sounds preserves everything from tree frog calls to murmurs of the heart.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(Column)
April 1, 2005... When I first moved to New York City in the 1960s, I rented an apartment at 72 Jane Street in Greenwich Village. With its ornate marble fireplace, tall windows and small, quiet garden, it seemed more 19th century than 20th. Jane Street happened...

Conquering polio: fifty years ago, a scientific panel declared Jonas Salk's polio vaccine a smashing success. A new book takes readers behind the headlines.(Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio)(Excerpt)(Biography)
April 1, 2005... It wasn't easy to make room for the newsreel cameras and television crews that streamed into Rackham Lecture Hall at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 50 years ago this month, not to mention the hundreds of reporters arriving from around...

Just what the doctor ordered: after prohibition went into effect, an odd alliance of special interests argued that beer worked wonders on a host of ailments.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
April 1, 2005... In 1758, young George Washington decided to seek a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He had been stymied in an earlier bid, he believed, by one crucial error: he had not "treated" the voters properly--which is to say, he had not provided...

Invention at play: the Lemelson Center celebrates a decade of nurturing the inventor in each of us.(From the SECRETARY)
April 1, 2005... By the summer of 1964, when the inventor of the sailboard, Newman Darby, launched his creation, he'd spent much of his life building boats and dreaming of making better ones. He was just 12 when he constructed his first. It sank, but he brought...

The year we were born: a look back at the world in Smithsonian Magazine's first year.(April 1970)
April 1, 2005... The first Earth Day, held April 22, promoted awareness about the deterioration of the environment. Two thousand events involving 20 million Americans took place across the country. Denis Hayes, organizer of the day, recalls the sea of people on...

On April 7, a grand jury in Edgartown, Massachusetts, chooses not to indict Senator Edward Kennedy in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned when Kennedy's car plunged into a tidal pool on Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969.(In the news)
April 1, 2005... On April 7, a grand jury in Edgartown, Massachusetts, chooses not to indict Senator Edward Kennedy in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned when Kennedy's car plunged into a tidal pool on Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969. James Boyle,...

President Nixon announces April 30 that he sent American troops into Cambodia to support South Vietnamese Army efforts to destroy Communist hide-outs there.(In the news)(Richard Nixon)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... President Nixon announces April 30 that he sent American troops into Cambodia to support South Vietnamese Army efforts to destroy Communist hide-outs there. Protests immediately erupt on college campuses throughout the country. The U.S. pulls...

Top 10 Songs of April 1970.(THE LIST)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... 1. ABC The Jackson 5 2. Let It Be The Beatles 3. Spirit in the Sky Norman Greenbaum 4. Instant Karma John Lennon 5. American Woman/No Sugar Tonight Guess Who 6. Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) Edison Lighthouse 7. Come and Get...

Comings & goings.(April 1970)
April 1, 2005... DIED: Gypsy Rose Lee, 56, Striptease artist, April 26 BORN: Uma Thurman Actress, April 29 BORN: Andre Agassi Tennis player, April 29 BORN: Smithsonian magazine Volume 1, Number 1

Jim Lovell: Apollo 13 astronaut.(WHERE ARE THEY NOW?)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, uttered the chilling phrase "Houston, we've had a problem" after an oxygen tank in the spacecraft's service module exploded. The crew (Lovell plus command module pilot John Swigert and lunar module pilot Fred...