Smithsonian articles from August 2004

Smithsonian archives from August 2004

Impressionism's American Childe: a new exhibition of works by Childe Hassam, a pioneering interpreter of the French style, highlights his "in corrigibly joyous" break with the past.
August 1, 2004... In the summer of 1889, a 29-year-old American artist with an unusual name, Childe Hassam, rented a studio in Paris' Montmartre district. Littering the space were unsold canvases abandoned by the previous tenant-"un peintre fou," the concierge...

Fault lines: weighing threats on land and from the sea.(Editor's Note)
August 1, 2004... In 25 years of writing magazine articles about some of the planet's more remote destinations, Leslie Allen never got to Tuvalu. She even began to wonder if it existed. Some world maps don't bother to show Tuvalu, a constellation of small...

Fallen star: when Mary Decker crashed to the ground at the Los Angeles Olympics 20 years ago this month, a young photographer was there to capture the anguish.(Indelible Images)
August 1, 2004... The curse of the sports photographer has always been redundancy. Year after year, city after city, he travels in a pack, following the competitive grind in pursuit of images that rise above decorating the box scores and go on to shape our...

Brutal mercies.(Just Looking)
August 1, 2004... A Greek Revival farmhouse was spared while others behind it were swept away, as the "most beautiful tornado" photographer Eric Michael Nguyen says he has ever seen touched down near Mulvane, south of Wichita, Kansas, in June. The...

Of mice and Mars: one small squeak for mankind.(The Last Page)
August 1, 2004... In 2006, scientists from three universities will launch the Mars Biosatellite Gravity Program: the first mission to study the effects of Martian gravity on mammals. Researchers will pack a team of mice into an "artificial-gravity spacecraft"...

Diplomacy, death and desertion: a delegation of Indians seems surprised by the harsh punishment that a deserter receives. And a corpsman is buried.(Lewis And Clark)
August 1, 2004... Two hundred years ago this month, on August 3, 1804, the expedition held its first meeting with Indians-a delegation of Oto and Missouri leaders. (A second council occurred farther upriver on August 18 and 19.) In these meetings Lewis and Clark...

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... flying pancake? A group of Texas retirees is restoring one of the oddest aircraft ever to fly.(Around The Mall)
August 1, 2004... Jack Brouse says it's like "opening up King Tut's tomb." Sitting beneath the only V-173 "Flying Pancake" ever built, Brouse pulls open the hatch of the World War II-era aircraft to reveal an engine that may not have seen the light of day in...

From the attic.(Around The Mall)
August 1, 2004... Remembering Reagan It was January 20, 1981, and news of the release of 52 American hostages in Iran was competing for attention with the inauguration of a new president. That night, nine inaugural balls would be held, three at Smithsonian...

Refuge for Refugees: an Australian architect turns shipping containers into shelter.(Around The Mall)
August 1, 2004... A rusting shipping container stands in the garden of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in Manhattan. It appears as though a Dumpster somehow jumped the fence. But the 22-foot-long container, shaded by a plastic, canopy...

Who's counting (Around The Mall).
August 1, 2004... Sumatran tigers were born at the National Zoo on May 2. The mother, 11-year-old Soyono, and cubs are doing well. Sumatran tigers are critically endangered, with fewer than 500 remaining in the wild, and some experts say the great cat will be...

This month in history: August anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
August 1, 2004... 1,925 YEARS AGO: BURIED TREASURES The frescoed Villa of the Mysteries (below), and everything else at Pompeii, is buried under more than 19 feet of ash and debris from a two-day eruption of Mount Vesuvius, August 24-25, a.d. 79. "Darkness...

Token of appreciation: a grateful Pomo Indian's gift to a friend exemplifies the highest form of Native American artistry.(The Object At Hand)
August 1, 2004... In the early 1900s, William and Mary Benson, a Pomo Indian couple, won renown for their exquisite Native American baskets. In 1912, they gave one of William's most masterly pieces to a trusted friend. It is now among 200 artifacts in "The...

Let the games begin: spectators in ancient Greece endured all manner of discomfort--from oppressive heat to badgering vendors--to see the pagan festival that would become today's Olympics.
August 1, 2004... In the hills above olympia, I awoke before dawn, feeling bleary-eyed from the Greek wine I'd drunk with some rowdy archaeologists the night before. It was going to be a perfect summer day: from my hotel window I could see clear sky over the...

A matter of taste: are you a supertaster? Just stick out your tongue and say "yuck".(Phenomena & Curiosities)
August 1, 2004... There's good taste, and according to scientists, there's supertaste. Blue food coloring is going to tell me where I lie on the continuum. Armed with a bottle of blue dye No. 1 and a Q-tip, I paint my tongue cobalt, swish some water in my mouth...

Walden's ripple effect: one hundred fifty years after its publication, Henry David Thoreau's meditation remains the ultimate self-help book.(Presence Of Mind)
August 1, 2004... "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." On the fourth of July,...

Natural harmony: the new National Museum of the American Indian is a proud expression of Native American beliefs.(From the Secretary)
August 1, 2004... When W. Richard West jr. was appointed founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 1990, he was put in charge of a great collection and a vision. During the next 14 years, Rick West gradually set the...

Off to the races: before the American Revolution, no thoroughbred did more for racing's growing popularity than a plucky mare named Selima.
August 1, 2004... At 24 years of age, William Byrd III presided over a vast Virginia estate that included Westover, a prosperous tobacco plantation on the James River. He possessed a round face, soft eyes, immaculate public manners and a new toy-a horse named...

Will Tuvalu disappear beneath the sea? Global warming threatens to swamp a small island nation.
August 1, 2004... A thin white smile curves across the blank face of the South Pacific Ocean, more than a mile below. A little lower, the whiteness resolves into an arc of breakers, and the tiny turboprop heads straight for them. Only at the last moment does a...

In search of William Tell: seven hundred years ago, William Tell shot an arrow through an apple on his son's head and launched the struggle for Swiss independence. Or did he?
August 1, 2004... In the center of the town square stands a heroic bronze figure, a stern, sturdy, bearded man in homespun clothes, crossbow over his shoulder, his arm around a barefooted boy. Before him stands another stern, sturdy man, this one in a neat...

Making copies: at first, nobody bought Chester Carlson's strange idea. But trillions of documents later, his invention is the biggest thing in printing since Gutenberg.
August 1, 2004... Copying is the engine of civilization: culture is behavior duplicated. The oldest copier invented by people is language, by which an idea of yours becomes an idea of mine. The second great copying machine was writing. When the Sumerians...

Made in the shade.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... Quite contrary to the dismissive suggestion in "Can Great Coffee Save the Jungle?" that Oxfam America's coffee rescue plan is a "charity-dependent idea," it is a model program. Small farmers produce some of the finest quality coffee in the...

Rapid transit swindle?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... Clarence King and his colleagues' investigation ("The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872") remains a fine example of government science in the public service. It's a source of pride to all who labor in the historically minded U.S. Geological Survey...

Model muddle.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... I enjoyed your photo contest, "Treasure Trove," but being a car buff I have to point out that the Ford pictured on page 62 is not a 1948 model, as stated, but a 1949. ROBERT M. MINOR PORTLAND, OREGON We hereby grant you full...

Believe it or not.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... I finally understood my grandfather's complaints after reading the "This Month in History" item, "Ironic Act" (about the law signed by President Coolidge granting citizenship to Indians). Who would ever believe that American Indians were not...

A breed apart.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... Kudos to Francesca Kelly ("Saving the Raja's Horse") for her efforts in reviving the Marwari horse of India. It is in preserving such endangered breeds that we are made to understand the importance of all native breeds. NANCI FALLEY ...

Wonders never cease.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... I was grocery shopping the other day and overheard the deli employees trying to list the Seven Wonders of the World. They were guessing the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls and the like. I interrupted and explained that none of those...