Smithsonian articles from August 2005

Smithsonian archives from August 2005

Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 1, 2005... BOUND FOR CANAAN: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AND THE WAR FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA FERGUS M. BORDEWICH AMISTAD / HARPERCOLLINS, $27.95 The creation of the Undergound Railroad is shrouded in the mists of legend. Now Fergus M. Bordewich tells the...

The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 1, 2005... THE PERFECTIONIST: LIFE AND DEATH IN HAUTE CUISINE RUDOLPH CHELMINSKI GOTHAM / PENGUIN, $27.50 In this meticulously reported book about the rise and fall of French chef Bernard Loiseau, we enter a world where the preparation of...

Return to Da Lat: a veteran Vietnam correspondent revisits the romantic retreat where he, and so many others, sought respite from war in Indochina.
August 1, 2005... I often search for traces of nostalgia while traveling abroad, on the theory that delving into the past helps one understand the present. Particularly in Asia, long my turf as a newspaper correspondent, I'm intrigued by vestiges of the...

War stories: remembering the sound and fury--and the joy--of the end of World War II.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
August 1, 2005... Our copy chief, Karen Larkins, put together the special package about the end of World War II ("It's Over!" page 52). She got the idea during a Sunday brunch with her mother, Patricia, who told Karen that she had been on a train traveling from...

E-gad! Americans discard more than 100 million computers, cellphones and other electronic devices each year. As "e-waste" piles up, so does concern about this growing threat to the environment.
August 1, 2005... Electronic waste is accumulating faster than anyone knows what to do with it, almost three times faster than ordinary household trash. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University estimate that at least 60 million PCs have already been buried in...

World's unlikeliest bestseller: fifty years ago a brewer's bet spawned a compelling compendium of feats, stunts and trivia.(Guinness Book of World Records)
August 1, 2005... Record books note that the first man to break the four-minute mile was England's Roger Bannister. The same books list the current world record in the mile as 3:43.13 (Hicham El Guerrouj, July 7, 1999). Yet no world-class miler has ever faced...

Footloose: the image of Bruce McCandless' spacewalk two decades ago still amazes. It was the first untethered walk ever--and was among the last.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
August 1, 2005... It may not have been a giant leap for mankind, but Bruce McCandless II took an awfully big step on February 7, 1984, when he ventured out of the shuttle Challenger and became the first person to fly freely in space, untethered to a craft....

Ready for his close-up.(JUST LOOKING)(new Cheetah at Washington, D.C.'s National Zoo)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Cheetah cub Chaka and his mother, Zazi, primp before the youngster's June 25 "reveal" at Washington, D.C.'s National Zoo. Shielded from the public eye until 10 weeks of age, Chaka and his four siblings now relish the spotlight, says Craig...

Give weeds a chance: how a cultivated dislike of gardening can lead to more time on the porch.(THE LAST PAGE)
August 1, 2005... "Mom, the sun is not your friend," my daughter once said to me. And being out in the sun is only one of the things I don't like about gardening. I also don't like digging (too dirty), dragging hoses around (too twisty), seeing leaves close up...

Border dispute.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... "cross purposes," which romanticizes and glorifies the lives and successes of illegal immigrants, does ill service to the realities of life in the border states. In California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, illegal immigrants are overwhelming...

Keeping time with Einstein.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... albert einstein ("The Year of Albert Einstein") routinely practiced the violin. My friend, the great American tenor Jan Peerce--several of whose performances I conducted and whose musical training was originally in the violin--and his wife,...

Not a pretty picture.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... i read "Hazy Days in Our Parks" with much sadness. We have visited the national parks since 1952. The pictures we took on those early visits, when our children were young, were clear and crisp. The pictures we have taken the past ten years or...

The wrong "Deep Throat".(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... i wrote in the December 2003 issue ("Who Was Deep Throat?") that the news reporting class I teach had deduced that Deep Throat, secret source of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward during the Watergate crisis that began 33 years ago, was Fred...

A bittersweet homecoming: as the corps finally makes contact with the Shoshone Indians, interpreter Sacagawea reunites with her family.(LEWIS AND CLARK: 200 YEARS AGO THIS AUGUST)(Diary entry)
August 1, 2005... After Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the Indian interpreter and guide Sacagawea is probably the most famous member of the expedition. Her contributions were praised by the captains; William Clark wrote to Sacagawea's husband, Toussaint...

Hitting the crab pot jackpot: fishermen have cashed in helping scientists study the rapid, worrisome decline of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
August 1, 2005... Ralph yates was plying the waters of the Chesapeake Bay last summer in his boat, Critter Gitter, when he pulled up a crab pot and found that he'd caught a winning lottery ticket. The trap held a female blue crab bearing a pink plastic tag that...

Speak softly, carry a big rifle.(FROM THE ATTIC)(Teddy Roosevelt's job at the Smithsonian)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... In the spring of 1909, a feisty 50-year-old Teddy Roosevelt, having just finished his second term as the 26th president of the United States, went to work for the Smithsonian Institution. He headed up the yearlong Smithsonian-Roosevelt African...

Tribal art on the Web.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(http://wintercounts.si.edu)
August 1, 2005... A TRADITIONAL LAKOTA ART FORM GARNERS RECOGNITION the most comprehensive exhibition yet of a Lakota Indian art form is on view in an on-line-only show of nearly a thousand images dating to the 1700s. The exhibition offers one of the most...

Calling all artists.(HURRY IN)
August 1, 2005... Calling all artists. Win fame and fortune. Enter a self-portrait or that of a friend or relative by September 6 in the National Portrait Gallery's first annual competition. Details may be found at www.npg.si.edu. From the gallery's...

This month in history: August anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.(Chronology)
August 1, 2005... 25 YEARS AGO: A STRIKE FOR FREEDOM Workers in a Gdansk, Poland, shipyard, led by electrician Lech Walesa, 37, begin a strike on August 14, 1980, that eventually spreads to include some 400,000 workers. Their demands are unprecedented: that...

Building the bomb: a new book about atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer charts the secret debate over deployment of the first A-bomb and the anxiety that suffused its first live test.(Biography)
August 1, 2005... J. Robert Oppenheimer was born to wealthy parents in New York City in 1904. The Depression at home and the rise of Fascism abroad drew him to progressive politics during his tenure as a professor of physics at the University of California at...

Baked Alaska: a unique study documents the disappearance of Alaska's glaciers, blamed on global warming.(PHENOMENA & CURIOSITIES)
August 1, 2005... In the late 1800s, Alaska's top tourist attraction was Muir Glacier. Ladies in ankle-length dresses and gentlemen in neckties and fedora hats strolled a boardwalk at the foot of this natural wonder. Glaciers are still a big draw in Alaska;...

In the fast lane: drivers gear up to set speed records at Utah's desolate Bonneville Salt Flats.(POINTS OF INTEREST)
August 1, 2005... For a week every august, the Bonneville Salt Flats, 120 miles west of Salt Lake City, is the site of a summer ritual in which Yankee ingenuity meets the human fascination with fast cars. Hundreds of drivers congregate in sweltering desert heat...

Ghost of a chance: how did the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was feared extinct, hang on all these years?(PRESENCE OF MIND)
August 1, 2005... The news, which came to me in a cryptic telephone call one day this past February, was electrifying: the ivory-billed woodpecker, mourned as extinct for more than 60 years, had been found in the swamp forests of eastern Arkansas. I was being...

The Price of Ambition: from the beginning, the cost of increasing and diffusing knowledge exceeded even Smithson's generosity.(From the SECRETARY)
August 1, 2005... Joseph henry, the Smithsonian Institution's first secretary (1846-1878), had a problem. Before coming to Washington, D.C., he had taught physics at Princeton University and achieved international renown for discovering scientific principles...

Mystery Man of Stonehenge: who was he and where did he come from? And what was his role in the making of the great monument? The discovery of a 4,300-year-old skeleton surrounded by intriguing artifacts has archaeologists abuzz.
August 1, 2005... In the spring of 2002, archaeologists were nearly finished excavating the site of a planned housing development in Amesbury, a town in southwestern England. It had been a "routine excavation--bread and butter, as it were," says archaeologist...

It's over! We asked readers to tell us where they were and how they reacted to the news that World War II had ended. And what a response we got.(60 YEARS AGO)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... HOMEFRONT on v-j day, I was only 7 years old, but the memory is crystal clear. We were living in a government housing project in Michigan, and there were virtually no men between ages 18 and 40 in that community of several hundred women...

Where are they now? Roger Mills: a groundbreaking marriage.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(first state-sanctioned interracial marriage in Mississippi)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... "it wasn't like a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner kind of thing," says Roger Mills today, referring to his first meeting with his future in-laws. Mills, who is white, and Berta Linson, who is African-American, were married August 2, the first...

Dallas businessman Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of JFK on his 8 mm camera, dies of cancer August 30 at age 66.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
August 1, 2005... Dallas businessman Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of JFK on his 8 mm camera, dies of cancer August 30 at age 66. In 1969, testifying at the trial of accused conspirator Clay Shaw, Zapruder recalled: "I was extremely shattered. I...

On August 28, eight years after writer Rachel Carson warned of the dangers of DDT in the New Yorker, the Agriculture Department announces restrictions on the use of the pesticide on 50 types of fruits and vegetables, forest trees, lumber, livestock and buildings.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... On August 28, eight years after writer Rachel Carson warned of the dangers of DDT in the New Yorker, the Agriculture Department announces restrictions on the use of the pesticide on 50 types of fruits and vegetables, forest trees, lumber,...

President Joseph Mobutu of the Congo (later Zaire and today the Democratic Republic of Congo) arrives in Baltimore August 3 for a 12-day visit with U.S. officials and business leaders.(IN THE NEWS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... President Joseph Mobutu of the Congo (later Zaire and today the Democratic Republic of Congo) arrives in Baltimore August 3 for a 12-day visit with U.S. officials and business leaders. Secretary of State William Rogers lauds the African...

1970 Emmy Awards.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Best New Series: All in the Family Dramatic Series: The Bold Ones: The Senator Comedy Series: All in the Family Actor, Drama: Hal Holbrook, The Bold Ones: The Senator Actress, Drama: Susan Hampshire, The First Churchills ...

Comings & goings.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)
August 1, 2005... BORN: M. Night Shyamalan Film director August 6 BORN: Claudia Schiffer Model August 25

"Women's consciousness is changing, and it's irrelevant to me whether 500 or 5,000 women turn out.(August 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... "Women's consciousness is changing, and it's irrelevant to me whether 500 or 5,000 women turn out. This is already a huge success because the women's movement is going to be the biggest movement for social and political change in the 1970s."...