Smithsonian articles from February 2009

Smithsonian archives from February 2009

Competitive edge.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2009... PRIOR TO HIS DESIGN of the U.S. Capitol, William Thornton ["Capitol Fellow"] won another competition. As a result, in 1789 he designed Library Hall for Benjamin Franklin's Library Company of Philadelphia. Razed in 1884, the building was...

On their own.(WILD THINGS)
February 1, 2009... Five species of Hawaiian birds--all now extinct--looked so much like Asian and Australian birds called honeyeaters that scientists thought they were all in the same family. The birds had curved bills to reach inside flowers and long, brushy...

Gourds on the go.(WILD THINGS)
February 1, 2009... Hey, Cinderella, pumpkins really do travel well. A new genetic analysis of 147 species of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) by the University of Munich suggests that gourds originated in Asia and floated across oceans to other continents. In the...

Observed.(WILD THINGS)
February 1, 2009... NAME: Equus caballus, the horse. RUNS WITH: The herd. RECOGNIZES: Individuals within the herd. UNEXPECTED TALENT: Listening. In a new study, University of Sussex researchers presented a test horse with a herd mate, led the herd...

Special delivery: it took three generations to produce Wayne F. Miller's photograph of his newborn son.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
February 1, 2009... OF THE 503 PHOTOGRAPHS by 273 photographers that were in Edward Steichen's landmark "Family of Man" exhibition in 1955, one may best reflect the show's title. Made on September 19, 1946, by Wayne F. Miller, it depicts the moment of birth--a...

Bodies of evidence: excavations at a cemetery in Thailand reveal a 4,000-year-old indigenous culture.(DIGS)
February 1, 2009... THE LITHE YOUNG woman rotates her wrists and hips, slowly and elegantly moving across the stage to the music of a traditional Cambodian orchestra. She seems the very embodiment of an apsara, the beautiful supernatural being that dances for the...

Washed ashore: the Pulitzer Prize-winning author delights in the island town's off-season.(MY KIND OF TOWN VINEYARD HAVEN, MASSACHUSETTS)( Geraldine Brooks)
February 1, 2009... HERE'S WHAT I LOVE MOST about my town: its edges. In three directions, Vineyard Haven ends abruptly, as a town should, surrendering, gracefully and completely, to farms and fields and watery expanses of harbor and salt ponds. Within minutes,...

Thinking ahead.(FROM THE CASTLE)
February 1, 2009... A DOLLAR WAS A LOT of money for 10-year-old Orrin Nash. In 1925, when young Orrin mailed a contribution to the Smithsonian, he explained that he had read the Institution needed money and that "the dollar enclosed... I earned today."...

Joint effort: evidence surfaces of an unlikely partnership in North America.(Around the Mall)
February 1, 2009... BILL FITZHUGH KNEW he'd found something when he stepped off his research boat in the summer of 2001 at Quebec's Hare Harbor and saw red tiles beneath wet moss. Fitzhugh, director of the Smithsonian's Arctic Studies Center at the National...

Q&A.(Around the Mall)
February 1, 2009... The landscape photographer FRANK GOHLKE, whose images have appeared in more than ten books, has a new show, "Accommodating Nature," at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He spoke with the magazine's Anika Gupta. YOU ONCE SAID YOU TRY TO...

Lincoln's contested legacy: great emancipator or unreconstructed racist? Defender of civil liberties or subverter of the constitution? Each generation evokes a different Lincoln. but who was he?(February 12, 1809 * Two Centuries of Genius)
February 1, 2009... FROM THE TIME OF HIS DEATH IN 1865 TO THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, February 12, 2009, there has never been a decade in which Abraham Lincoln's influence has not been felt. Yet it has not been a smooth, unfolding history, but a jagged...

What Darwin didn't know: today's scientists marvel that the 19th-century naturalist's grand vision of evolution is still the key to life.(February 12, 1809 * Two Centuries of Genius)
February 1, 2009... CHARLES DARWIN WAS JUST 28 YEARS OLD WHEN, IN 1837, HE SCRIBBLED IN a notebook "one species does change into another"--one of the first hints of his great theory. He'd recently returned to England after his five-year journey as a naturalist...

Up close at carnival: what's really behind the raucous pre-Lenten rite? An intrepid scholar hits the streets of Trinidad to find out.
February 1, 2009... WHEN NORTHERNERS THINK OF THE CARIBBEAN, TRINIDAD isn't usually the first place that comes to mind. Until recently, Trinidad had few tourist-oriented hotels or restaurants, and its crime rate is so high that visitors are advised not to venture...

Requiem for the redhead: the next great extinction--carrot tops.(THE LAST PAGE)
February 1, 2009... NOT LONG AGO, newspapers and magazines reported that, by the end of the century, redheads, of whom I am one, will be extinct. Gone. Kaput. Since then, other scientists have raised doubts about the great redhead extinction theory, especially...