Smithsonian articles from August 2007

Smithsonian archives from August 2007

Expats: Hemingways in Cuba and Yanks in Prague.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Ernest Hemingway; Yankees in Czech Republic)
August 1, 2007... OVER A LONG CAREER as a globe-trotting journalist, Jonathan Kandell has often found himself in Prague, Czech Republic. There he kept running into "Americans who were doing very interesting things," Kandell says. "That wasn't really the case in...

I have just begun practicing the art of origami, and I marvel at Robert Lang's artistic creations and also at how he has developed folding patterns for practical uses ("Into the Fold").(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... READERS RESPOND TO THE JUNE ISSUE I have just begun practicing the art of origami, and I marvel at Robert Lang's artistic creations and also at how he has developed folding patterns for practical uses ("Into the Fold"). But most amazing to...

Fighting malaria.(LETTERS)(former United States President Jimmy Carter's health campaign in Ethiopia)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... "THE ETHIOPIA Campaign," about former president Jimmy Carter's efforts to rid that nation of malaria, was a tribute to his generosity and to the power of sharing our knowledge, resources and problem-solving techniques to benefit others. ...

Spotting Beery.(LETTERS)(actor Wallace Beery in a photo; Grand Teton National Park)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Like William E. Darton of San Diego, who wrote that "If I am wrong, I'll eat my ten gallon hat," quite a few movie buffs--more than 100--wrote to say that one of the unidentified ranchers in the photograph (reproduced below) in "Jewel of the...

How Aaron died.(LETTERS)(bible)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IN THE ARTICLE "Reconstructing Petra," the sidebar about Mount Aaron says "the Old Testament relates that... Aaron was left naked to die of exposure at the top of a mountain." This misrepresents what is described in Numbers 20:23-29. Verse 28...

The decline and fall of mammoths.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... What doomed the woolly mammoth? The blame has sometimes been fixed on human hunters, but a study from the University of London and elsewhere argues otherwise. Analyzing DNA from mammoth bones, teeth and tusks from Siberia and Alaska,11 the...

Deep-sea chatter.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(clownfish; animal communication)(Report)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Clownfish "chirp" and "pop" to defend territory or attract mates. Scientists from Belgium and Virginia, using X-rays and high-speed video, found that the fish has a specialized jaw ligament that snaps its teeth together to make these noises.

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Milkweed Tiger Moth)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... NAME: Euchaetes egle, or Milkweed Tiger Moth. POTENTIAL FOOD FOR: Red bats and big brown bats. FAVORITE GAMBIT: Sounding gross. Literally. They don't taste gross, at least not to bats. But they deter their predators, which hunt by...

Unexpected survivors.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(wildlife in Sudan)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Against the odds, wildlife is flourishing in southern Sudan, beset by a 21-year civil war until 2005 (conflict continues in the western region of Darfur). Wildlife Conservation Society biologists, in the first aerial survey since 1982, estimate...

Traveling plants.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Plants may be better pioneers than people realized, according to a new study led by University of Oslo researchers. They analyzed DNA from nine species of flowering plants in Svalbard, a remote island group between Norway and the North Pole, to...

A horrible blessing: "how am I going to save my grandbabies?" she asked after the hurricane struck, two years ago this month.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Katrina 2005)
August 1, 2007... HURRICANE KATRINA had already driven Cynthia Scott from her home in the Algiers section of New Orleans, but her lowest moment was still to come. Stranded on a highway overpass, she was caring for six children and their mother, who had given...

Grand view.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Grand Canyon Skywalk)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... HUALAPAI RESERVATION, ARIZONA -- Since opening in late March, the horseshoe-shaped, glass-bottomed steel deck extending 70 feet past the western rim of the Grand Canyon has been drawing some 2,000 visitors a day. The Hualapai tribe, which owns...

Nowhere near down under.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Kangaroo Conservation Center)
August 1, 2007... DAWSONVILLE, GEORGIA -- Soon after boarding a safari truck, we spot a mob of kangaroos lounging beneath a stand of tulip poplars. Minutes later, we come upon about 40 more of the animals lolling in a grassy field. During the 90-minute tour, we...

Hot spot.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Hatch Chile Festival)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... HATCH, NEW MEXICO -- Thousands pay homage to the hot pod over Labor Day weekend at the homegrown Hatch Chile Festival, now in its 36th year. The air is heavy with the sharp, smoky aroma of roasting green chiles, which aficionados lug home in...

Ancient text messages.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Rosenbach Museum & Library; Jewish books exhibit)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... PHILADELPHIA -- "Books, in Jewish tradition, are treated like people," says David Stern, a professor of classical Hebrew literature at the University of Pennsylvania. "When they're worn out, no longer used, they are buried." He points to a...

Plantation paintings.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Ogden Museum of Southern Art)
August 1, 2007... NEW ORLEANS -- During her lifetime, the African-American self-taught artist Clementine Hunter, who died in 1988 at the age of 102, was known to few outside the Deep South. Today her work is widely collected, and her paintings, which sold for 25...

Some don't like it hot: Atlantans regard summer--and the overheated tourists it spawns--woefully.(MY KIND OF TOWN)
August 1, 2007... ABOUT ATLANTA, people say just the opposite of what they say about New York City: It's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there. Especially in the summer. Atlantans regard enthusiastic vacationers with dismay We'll...

August anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)(people and events)
August 1, 2007... 420 YEARS AGO LITTLE GIRL LOST Virginia Dare is born August 18, 1587, on Roanoke Island, the first child of English parents in America. Days later her grandfather, the colony's governor, leaves for England for supplies; on his return in...

Creative spaces.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(photographs of artists at work)(Artists in Their Studios; book)
August 1, 2007... Among the 75 artists pictured in Liza Kirwin's new book, Artists in Their Studios, is the renowned N. C. Wyeth, in Denver, Colorado, in 1904. A model in full cowboy regalia patiently holds his pose for the jauntily clad Wyeth, a bandanna at his...

Mighty mouse.(FROM THE CASTLE)(Smithsonian Institutions' website)
August 1, 2007... I RECENTLY MET a family visiting the Smithsonian from Alabama. The mother had come here 15 years ago with her high-school class, and she was proud to bring her children now She told me something that has stayed with me: the family had saved for...

The dignity of the subject.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(W.E.B. Du Bois photographs)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... W.E.B. Du Bois, the civil rights leader and sociologist, understood the power of photography to reshape public attitudes. "Why do not more young colored men and women take up photography as a career?" Du Bois wrote in 1923. "The average white...

Baby Dell: a proto PC harkens back to the birth of an industry.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(PC's Limited Turbo)
August 1, 2007... WHEN HE WAS 15, in 1980, Michael Dell took apart an Apple II computer and reassembled it, much as an earlier generation of teenagers had taken apart the engines of their Fords and Chevies. A few years later, Dell, by then a pre-med student at...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko)(Interview)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... LESLIE MARMON SILKO, whose groundbreaking novel Ceremony has just been rereleased in a 30th-anniversary edition, recently appeared at the National Museum of the American Indian. She spoke with the magazine's David Zax. YOU ARE ARGUABLY THE...

Jukebox.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Por Por: Honk Horn Music of Ghana; sound recording)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... TRAFFIC JAM The Drivers Union of Accra, Ghana, makes music out of a sound usually heard only in traffic--rowdy honking. They also bang bells, drum, sing, call-and-respond and laugh heartily. The rambunctious music, called Por Por (from the...

What's Up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(exhibits)
August 1, 2007... SURF THE ARCTIC Anthropologists in the 19th century commissioned Kodiak Island's Sugpiaq people to demonstrate their boat-building techniques. Their foot-long model (right) is part of the Smithsonian's Inuit culture collection, browsable at a...

The pirate hunters: though buccaneering is back with a vengeance, stepped-up law enforcement and high-tech tools are helping protect shipping on the high seas.
August 1, 2007... The attack came after daybreak. The Delta Ranger, a cargo ship carrying bauxite, was steaming through the ink-blue Indian Ocean in January 2006, about 200 nautical miles off Somalia's coast. A crewman on the bridge spied two speedboats zooming...

Americans in Prague: a second wave of expatriates is now playing a vital role in the renaissance of the Czech capital.
August 1, 2007... WILLIAM LOBKOWICZ MOVED TO PRAGUE IN 1990, joining the hordes of young Americans drawn to the beautiful Czech capital in the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution that had peacefully toppled the Communist regime a year earlier. Lobkowicz, then a...

Elvis lives!("Elvis tribute artists"; Elvis Presley)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... "I'M JUST SO TIRED OF BEING ELVIS PRESLEY," he said when his fame had become almost too much to bear. Thirty years ago--on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42--he was relieved of that burden. But it was soon taken up by people trying to look like...

Hemingway's Cuba Cuba's Hemingway: his last personal secretary returns to Havana and discovers that the novelist's mythic presence looms larger than ever.(Ernest Hemighway)
August 1, 2007... A NORTHER WAS RAGING OVER HAVANA, bending and twisting the royal palm fronds against a threatening gray sky. My taxi splashed through the puddles along the Malecon, the majestic coastal road that circles half the city, as fierce waves cascaded...

Pride of the realm: an extraordinary collection of pictures has traveled from the United Kingdom's national portrait gallery to ours.(Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery)("Great Britons" exhibit)
August 1, 2007... AFTER THE BRITISH ARTIST Alessandro Raho won a commission from the National Portrait Gallery, London to paint Dame Judi Dench's portrait, he made an appointment to meet the actress at the museum to discuss arrangements. As it happened, she...

On the case: Kathy Reichs, the forensic expert who helped inspire the TV show "Bones," talks about homicides, DNA and her latest novel.(Bones to Ashes; book)(Interview)
August 1, 2007... WHEN SHE'S NOT WORKING for North Carolina's chief medical examiner in Charlotte, and for Quebec's central crime lab in Montreal, she writes bestselling crime novels featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. The character inspired...

Fish story: native trout are returning to America's rivers and streams, thanks to new thinking by scientists and conservationists.
August 1, 2007... THE IMMIGRANTS, crowded into the damp hold of the German steamship Werra, were not particularly welcome when they made landfall in the United States on February 24, 1883. Xenophobic feelings were running high, with many Americans worried that...

House broken: what really happened at that summer rental.(THE LAST PAGE)
August 1, 2007... TO: Island Rental Properties, Inc. FROM: Moose, K-Dog et al. RE: Our security deposit Dear Mrs. Van Der Hooten, THANK YOU SO MUCH for renting us your house at 23 Safe Harbor Lane. It is a truly beautiful home, and you must...