Smithsonian articles from August 2003

Smithsonian archives from August 2003

Benjamin Franklin joins the revolution: returning to Philadelphia from England in 1775, the "wisest American" kept his political leanings to himself. But not for long.
August 1, 2003... Benjamin Franklin, the Boston-born publisher of Poor Richard's Almanack, the inventor of bifocals and the Franklin stove, the "penny saved is a penny earned" pioneer of self-help, the master negotiator and resourceful scientist, was also...

Shore thing: in the new Boston Harbor Islands national park, city dwellers can escape the madding crowds.
August 1, 2003... Doree Cox and Katharine Wolfe sport bedrolls, water bottles, and backpacks bulging with MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) ordered from a military catalog. For these wilderness hikers, Maine is old hat, the Adirondacks a walk in the park. But roughing...

Chess queen: at 22, Jennifer Shahade is the strongest American-born woman chess player ever.
August 1, 2003... On the third Thursday of this past March, when many art galleries across Manhattan were holding openings, 75 people milled about the Viewing Gallery on West 17th Street, sipping wine, eating cookies and occasionally glancing at the...

Greener pastures: some things do get better. (Editor's Note).
August 1, 2003... Sixteen years ago Paul Hoffman wrote an article for Smithsonian about giving up chess because, as a teenager, he had become too obsessed with the game. He also felt that tournament participants constituted a "white-male club of social misfits."...

Fire fight: with forests burning, U.S. officials are clashing with environmentalists over how best to reduce the risk of catastrophic blazes.
August 1, 2003... Kate Klein parks her U.S. Forest Service pickup truck along a muddy dirt road and climbs up a steep, rocky outcrop through a ghostly stand of burned ponderosa pines. Her boots sink into soot and ash. It is spring in the Apache-Sitgreaves...

Mesopotamian masterpieces: exquisite art and artifacts from the world's earliest civilization are dazzling visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
August 1, 2003... As Iraq fitfully rebuilds, a groundbreaking exhibition is showcasing that nation's rich roots in Mesopotamia, the region that gave birth to the world's first urban civilization some 5,000 years ago. "Art of the First Cities: The Third...

Dream assignment: photographer Bob Adelman's picture of Martin Luther King, Jr., taken 40 years ago, captures one of the greatest speeches in American history. (Indelible Images).
August 1, 2003... A quarter of a million people gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was August 28, 1963, and many there that day knew the final speaker as an activist who had led...

Just looking.
August 1, 2003... RAINBOW COALITION "There's nothing sweeter," says Abdessalam Najjar of these schoolboys on a giggle break in their local playground, "than a rainbow shared by Jewish and Palestinian kids." Najjar is mayor of an experiment: a village of 50...

IRAQ's lost antiquities. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... It is tragic that the Bush administration overlooked information about the dangers to Iraq's treasures ("Saving Iraq's Treasures") and the possibility of widespread looting by a deprived population suddenly set free after years of despotic...

Elephantine addendum. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... "Great expectations" highlights the importance of captive-elephant breeding programs to the survival of African and Asian elephants. But the article neglects contributions by commercial exhibitors. Feld Entertainment, the parent company of...

Eco-hypocrisy? (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... One cannot read about Carl Hiaasen's noble environmental battle to preserve the Everglades ("Land Shark") without sensing some small personal hypocrisies. Hiaasen's family home overlooks Florida Bay--though he has opposed waterfront...

Jefferson's cabinet confirmed. (Letters).
August 1, 2003... It appears that the world's greatest deliberative body ("Capitol Discovery," about the Senate ledger dating to 1790 that was found this past November) deliberated a little too long if it advised and consented to the appointment of President...

Cloning's perverse incentives. (Letters).
August 1, 2003... If scientists could just clone a species that has died off because of human irresponsibility ("True or False? Extinction is Forever"), where is the incentive to reform? Cloning would appear to remove the consequences of overhunting, pollution...

Noguchi threw pottery askew: by breaking the rules, the modernist artist set himself--and Japanese ceramics--free. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(ceramist Isamu Noguchi)
August 1, 2003... Julian raby is a gray-topped, British-accented art historian who was a professor of Islamic Art at Oxford University before becoming director of the Freer and Sackler galleries in May 2002. This spring, Raby was master of ceremonies at the...

Raccoons' Island idyll ends. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).
August 1, 2003... Once considered threatened natives of the West Indies, raccoons turn out to be tourists These raccoons are clever--so clever that for the past hundred years they've fooled scientists into thinking they are native to Guadeloupe, Barbados...

Who's counting? (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(Illustration)
August 1, 2003... 115 IMAGES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON ORNAMENT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, INCLUDING THIS CIRCA 1870 EMBROIDERED PANEL AND JEAN-ANTOINE HOUDON'S CIRCA 1786 BUST. THE FIRST PRESIDENT WAS THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN THE COUNTRY DURING HIS LIFETIME,...

This month in history: August anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... 225 YEARS AGO: BRAVA! One of the world's preeminent opera houses, La Scala, opens in Milan August 3, 1778, with Salieri's L'Europa riconosciuta. Among the enduring works that will premiere there are Verdi's Otello and Falstaff, Puccini's...

Wild thing: for 100 years, Harleys have fueled our road-warrior fantasies. (The Object At Hand).
August 1, 2003... Young woman in a bar to "Johnny," played by Marlon Brando: "What are you rebelling against?" Brando: "Whad'ya got?" --The Wild One (1954) The guys--and a few women dressed in tight slacks and tighter sweaters--were just having a...

To touch the heavens: Noreen Grice has given the visually impaired a feel for the universe. (People File).
August 1, 2003... Nearly three years ago, astronomer Noreen Grice was spending all her weekends working--not gazing up at the stars, but hunched over her kitchen table in Connecticut carving circles, scoring squiggles and jabbing bumps into thin,...

Easy riders: was there ever a kid who didn't love a pony? (Photo Finish).(Illustration)
August 1, 2003... Jimmy Carter, 1920s Sandra Day (O'Connor), 1940 Marlon Brando and his sister, 1930 Jacqueline Bouvier (Kennedy Onassis), 1939 Diana Spencer, 1974 (Princess of Wales) George W. Bush, 1949 Hayley Mills, 1950s Peter...

Fakahatchee ghosts: but no exorcisms, please--these rare orchids are the stars of a hit movie and a best-selling book. (Points Of Interest).
August 1, 2003... On a warm Florida afternoon, Mike Owen steps off a forest trail into dark, knee-deep water. He pockets the little yellow waterproof notebook in which he records everything he sees in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve and sloshes deeper into...

Why Lewis and Clark matter: amid all the hoopla, it's easy to lose sight of the expedition's true significance. (Presence Of Mind).
August 1, 2003... As the Lewis and Clark bicentennial approaches--the Corps of Discovery set out from Camp Dubois at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers on May 14, 1804--all the signs of a great cultural-historical wallow are in place. Hundreds...

Guys and molls: bold, garish and steamy cover images from popular pulp-fiction magazines of the 1930s and '40s have made their way from newsstands to museum walls.
August 1, 2003... A blonde in a red strapless gown grasps the receiver of an emergency telephone, but her call to the cops has been interrupted. From behind her, a beefy brute with a scar on his cheek clamps a meaty hand over her mouth. His other hand presses a...

Baywatch: Smithsonian scientists' study of the Chesapeake may benefit a wider world. (From the Secretary).
August 1, 2003... Not all alien species are from deep space, and not all alien invasions raise a ruckus. Of particular interest to scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, are aliens who arrive...