Smithsonian articles from February 2004

Smithsonian archives from February 2004

Rescuing Angkor: an unprecedented effort to reclaim the ancient temples from the Cambodian jungle is racing against a tourist onslaught.
February 1, 2004... In a clearing of the tropical forest near the entrance to Ta Som, an 800-year-old temple at Angkor, in northwest Cambodia, two architects are having a friendly argument. For the umpteenth time, they're debating what to do about the towering...

Baghdad beyond the headlines: from gleeful schoolkids to a literary scholar who loves Humphrey Bogart, a photographer captures a reawakening but still wary city.
February 1, 2004... I had little idea what to expect. My impressions had come mainly from daily news reports of the fighting and casualties and the coalition government's struggles to gain a footing on unstable ground. Journalists who had spent time in the city...

Digging into a historic rivalry: as archaeologists unearth a secret slave passageway used by abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, scholars reevaluate his reputation and that of his neighbor and nemesis, James Buchanan.
February 1, 2004... When, in 2002, archaeologists Mary Ann Levine and James Delle's crew of student excavators broke through the roof of an old cistern in the courtyard of a house belonging to one of 19th-century America's most important politicians, they...

Reverberations: from booby traps to poolside parties.(Editor's Note)
February 1, 2004... Photographer michael freeman, a regular contributor to Smithsonian ("Rescuing Angkor Wat," p. 42), first visited Angkor in 1989, as the ten-year war of occupation between Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and Vietnam was winding down. With the front lines...

Winner by a decision: when Sonny Liston decided not to meet the Beatles 40 years ago, photographer Harry Benson pulled a switcheroo.(Indelible Images)
February 1, 2004... The beatles were furious. They were standing in the center of the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach, a large, dingy, smoky room that smelled of sweat and liniment, stamping their feet and jabbering among themselves. They'd been conned!...

Stellar nursery.(Just looking)
February 1, 2004... Resembling a red dragon in full gallop, a cloud of dust and gas emerges from obscurity in a November photograph by NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope. The $670 million observatory uses breakthrough infrared technology to capture the cloud,...

Overlooked aviator.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... Nowhere in the wonderful "Taking Wing" was Glenn Curtiss mentioned. The Wright brothers deserve all the accolades they received, but Curtiss contributed to the development of improvements like the aileron, French name or no, essential to...

Oppressed in Iraq.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... Andrew Cockburn's "Iraq's Oppressed Majority," about the Shiite Muslims, did not deal with the status of women--the real oppressed group. We need to be sure that any democratic process includes women. We need to be there now, working to prepare...

Watergate lesson?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... I suspect that most of William Gaines' journalism students ("Who Was Deep Throat?") are idealistic and envision themselves as reporters with integrity who would protect the confidentiality of an informant to the point of going to jail. Yet...

Another pretender.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... In writing about Patrick O'Brian ("Master Storyteller"), Anthony Day says that just as O'Brian "invented his addictive tales, he had, it turned out, invented himself." Much the same can be said of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, who buried his...

A sumpcious dinner; William Clark--a better explorer than speller--tells his older brother of the impending transfer of the Louisiana Territory to the United States.(Lewis and Clark)
February 1, 2004... While the expedition was getting organized on the banks of the Mississippi River in February 1804, William Clark wrote to his older brother Jonathan, on whom he had come to rely for guidance and counsel. Twenty years older than William,...

Down the drain: it felt like "pow! right in the kisser" when the Smithsonian's David Shayt had to give up his quest for a kitchen sink from the 1950s TV series "The Honeymooners".(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)
February 1, 2004... "You're still at it?" David Shayt's daughter asked him one mid-November evening. He was. The National Museum of American History staff member was three hours into a marathon screening of the 1950s television series "The Honeymooners" in his...

From the attic.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)
February 1, 2004... Safety Is Job One "Visitors to the Smithsonian have been rather mystified at the clouds of dust and the evidences of labor," reported the Washington Post of July 26, 1879. The Institution's castle building, crammed to its towers with growing...

When bird meets plane.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)
February 1, 2004... Smithsonian ornithologists develop a new tool to help pilots steer clear of avian hazards It's not pretty when birds and airplanes collide. But scientists at the National Museum of Natural History's Feather Lab, who have long identified...

Who's counting? 44,040.
February 1, 2004... Valentines--loved and not lost--are preserved in the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History. The tradition of exchanging billets-doux of laughing cupids, lacy hearts and nestling doves has been with us since the 1700s. But...

Fury over a gentle giant: Floridians raise a ruckus over manatees as biologists weigh prospects for the endangered species' survival.
February 1, 2004... As a chill wind rippled across the Caloosahatchee River and into downtown Fort Myers, Florida, in December 2002, some 3,000 people surged through the doors of the riverfront convention center. Many waved signs. "Don't Tread On Me!" "Don't Give...

Lord Nelson: hero and ... cad! A cache of recently discovered letters darkens the British naval warrior's honor and enhances that of his long-suffering wife, Frances.
February 1, 2004... "I can only say that no woman can feel the least attention from a husband more than I do," Frances Nelson wrote to a friend in 1801. By then, her celebrated husband--England's greatest naval hero--was openly cohabiting with another woman, and a...

Special delivery: in the 1900s, health officials believed that puncturing supposedly disease-infested mail and then fumigating it slowed the spread of illness.(Perforation paddle: National Postal Museum)
February 1, 2004... In the wake of the anthrax attacks of 2001, letters bound for Washington, D.C. began taking a major detour. Before arriving at the desks of congressmen, White House aides or, for that matter, Smithsonian staffers, mountains of letters were...

The mad potter of Biloxi; self-styled eccentric George E. Ohr's wild, weird, wonderful pots gathered dust in a garage for half a century. Now architect Frank Gehry is designing a museum dedicated to the artist who made them.
February 1, 2004... Riding the train south through the deep pine woods of Mississippi in the early 1880s, tourists to the Gulf Coast came to Biloxi for sunshine and surf. Along with its beaches, the little town had its own opera house, white streets paved with...

Gas guzzlers: new research shows how microscopic diatoms remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and may help keep the planet from overheating.(Phenomena & Curiosities)
February 1, 2004... In my apartment, in San Francisco, I've just poured into the palm of my hand some of what may be the world's best defense against global warming. It arrived in a one-pint plastic container from EaglePicher Filtration and Minerals, Inc., a Reno,...

Slippery slopes; winter is all downhill from here.(Photo Finish)
February 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Arnold Schwarzenegger and George H.W. Bush, 1991 Annie and John H. Glenn Jr. with son, David, and daughter, Lyn, 1961 Robert and Ethel Kennedy with, from front, Courtney, David, Kathleen, Bobby, Kerry,...

Maine's lost colony; archaeologists uncover an early American settlement that history forgot.(Points Of Interest)
February 1, 2004... Not far from portland along Maine's winding coast, someone has placed a neatly lettered sign on an otherwise undistinguished boulder. It reads: Popham Rock 1607. A play on Plymouth Rock 1620, some 200 miles south? Not entirely. A colony called...

Man of many parts; a new exhibition showcases Bearden's innovative collages and stakes a claim for him in the pantheon of 20th-century American artists.(romare bearden)
February 1, 2004... Romare Bearden lived in many dimensions. He had a degree in education, but became a painter. He borrowed ideas from the 14th-century Florentine artist Giotto and from Byzantine mosaics, but used spray paint, sandpaper and Clorox on his...

Will power: estate bequests by donors past and present keep the world's largest museum and research complex humming.(From the Secretary)
February 1, 2004... Anyone who aspires to estate planning that's both responsible and bold can take heart from the example of James Smithson. The English scientist drew his will in 1826 and made a leap of faith. He bequeathed his entire fortune to the United...

This month in history; February anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
February 1, 2004... 20 YEARS AGO: no strings Leaving the relative safety of the space shuttle, American Bruce McCandless II takes the first untethered spacewalk, February 7, 1984. Sporting a backpack powered by 24 nitrogen-firing jets, he roams 320 feet from...