Smithsonian articles from January 2002

Smithsonian archives from January 2002

Just Folk : FROM SAMPLERS TO SUGAR BOWLS, WEATHERVANES TO WHISTLES, AN ENGAGING EXHIBITION HERALDS THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM'S NEW HOME IN MANHATTAN.
January 1, 2002... During the revolutionary war, a German-speaking Pennsylvanian painted a fanciful portrait of his Commander in Chief's wife. With rouged cheeks and high heels, "Laedy Waschington" sits astride a rearing horse, a tulip in her right hand. The...

Hero for our Time : CHALLENGED TO PROVE HIS GERM THEORY OF DISEASE, LOUIS PASTEUR SHAPED THE TERRAIN ON WHICH THE BATTLE AGAINST ANTHRAX IS BEING FOUGHT.
January 1, 2002... The famous veterinarian Monsieur H. Rossignol had had it with chemist Louis Pasteur and his outrageous theory that germs caused disease. The final straw came in 1881 when Pasteur announced that vaccinating livestock--in effect giving them the...

Close Calls : DANGER COMES WITH THE TERRITORY FOR OUR WRITERS.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... John Seidensticker, whose tiger story begins on page 62, is a senior curator at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and a world-renowned expert on big cats. In 1974, the Indian government invited him to West Bengal to deal with a...

Spiders in the Sky.(documentation of construction of Empire State Building by photographer Lewis Wickes Hine)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... For six months in 1930, Lewis Wickes Hine was on top of the world. Literally. Commissioned to document the construction of the Empire State Building, from May to November of that year the 56-year-old photographer clambered up stairs, perched...

Tumbleweeds, big sky and the open road embody the romantic ideal of the American West.(tumbleweed as environmental effect of livestock grazing)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Tumbleweeds, big sky and the open road embody the romantic ideal of the American West. But in fact tumbleweeds are a symptom of the intensive livestock grazing that has allowed invasive weeds to muscle out native plants. The aliens, especially...

Of Mies and Mice.(creative process of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the apostle of modernism in architecture, towered above his contemporaries like a glass-and-steel skyscraper over a row of modest town houses, which explains why both the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2002... TURNING POINT How inappropriate to run Rudy Chelminski's November 2001 puff piece on Philippe Petit after what happened to the World Trade Center. Petit's lawless lark put the lives of dozens of police and emergency workers at risk--a...

Martin as Muse.(In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., art exhibition)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... On January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been 73 years old. His assassination April 4, 1968, sparked an outpouring of emotions around the world. For artists, those emotions materialized in a torrent of acrylics, oils, ceramics, ink...

Orchid Meister : TO THE BLOSSOM BORN.(horticulturist Cheyenne Kim's research with orchids; horticultural exhibit in Washington D.C.)(Brief Article)(Interview)
January 1, 2002... Studying orchids is not for the faint of heart. Smithsonian horticulturist Cheyenne Kim recalls surprising a slumbering 25-foot anaconda while doing fieldwork in a Brazilian jungle in 1998. "It was blocking our way, so my colleague threw a...

Poetic Justice : TRIBUTE TO LANGSTON HUGHES.(Postal Service to issue commemorative stamp of poet; exhibition at National Postal Museum)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... one day in 1925 aspiring poet Langston Hughes saw an opportunity. Across the dining room of Washington, D.C.'s Wardman Park Hotel, where the 23-year-old Hughes was working as a busboy, he spotted Vachel Lindsay, who was scheduled to give a...

Catharsis and Comfort.(museum staff paint mural at Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery to honour memory of victims of terrorist attacks)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... A month after September 11, a wooden construction barrier shielding ongoing renovations at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. evolved into a block-long mural commemorating the victims of...

Visit the Smithsonian.(information services; museum schedules)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... For a free Associates' planning packet, call Smithsonian Information, 202-357-2700 or 202-357-1729 (TTY), 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, or send an e-mail to info@info.si.edu. INFORMATION CENTER Upon...

Marco Polo's Guide to Afghanistan : Two Americans retrace the steps of the 13th-century Italian merchant through a harsh land of tough, hospitable people.
January 1, 2002... "Of the countries we traveled through," says photographer Denis Belliveau, "Afghanistan most resembled the account by Marco Polo," the 13th-century Venetian merchant whose journal still fascinates readers today. During the window of time...

What's for Dinner?(food types and preparation in different societies)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... NAMGAY FAMILY: SHINKGHEY, BHUTAN Meals revolve around a steaming pot of red rice, large enough to feed friends and members of the extended family who frequently appear unnannounced. Members of the nat-omo family (above) in the North...

Harp Hero : ENDANGERED INSTRUMENTS TUG ONE MUSICIAN'S HEARTSTRINGS.(folk musician and instrument restorer Margaret MacArthur)
January 1, 2002... As the clock struck two in the Marlboro, Vermont, town meetinghouse, a crowd began to gather for an afternoon concert. Soon, the austere interior of that 19th-century landmark, flooded with light from tall windows, would fill to capacity. The...

Dragonfly Dramas : DESERT WHITETAILS AND FLAME SKIMMERS CAVORT IN THE SINKHOLES OF NEW MEXICO'S BITTER LAKE REFUGE.(research on odonata species)
January 1, 2002... "Gomphid!" someone shouted, and the little thing with the gleaming fuselage hovered, then sped away. I was standing on the whitish gypsum-rich hardpan that passes for soil in the desert about 15 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. The air...

Prince of Tides : BEFORE "ECOLOGY" BECAME A BUZZWORD, JOHN STEINBECK PREACHED THAT "MAN IS RELATED TO THE WHOLE THING".
January 1, 2002... On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth next month, John Steinbeck will be justly celebrated as a major American writer. Between 1929 and his death in 1968, Steinbeck published nearly 30 books. His masterpiece, The Grapes of...

Sharing the Wealth : from the secretary.(Smithsonian Institution's exhibition of stored items through affiliate museums and organizations)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... It began as a simple enough notion in 1996: open the attic. The characterization of the Smithsonian as the "nation's attic" is not without a sting, an attic being the space to which things are consigned when their useful time has past: the...

Too Much? WHY DOES SMITHSONIAN FEEL THE NEED TO BE SO TOPICAL?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... For this department, a distinguished writer is asked to read the magazine's articles before publication and to comment or elaborate on them or take issue with them. Ok, call me an unpatriotic grump, but I don't see why everything we read...

Tiger Tracks : REVISITING HIS OLD HAUNTS IN NEPAL, THE AUTHOR LOOKS FOR TIGERS AND FINDS A CLEVER NEW STRATEGY FOR SAVING THEM.
January 1, 2002... If it wasn't exactly a homecoming, it was the next best thing. I'd been crossing and recrossing the Rapti River on elephant for three days, looking for tigers. The Rapti runs across the top of Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park, a...

Master of Middle Earth : WHEN J.R.R. TOLKIEN FINALLY COMPLETED HIS LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY IN 1949, THE OXFORD DON SCARCELY IMAGINED HIS FANTASY EPIC WOULD ENTRANCE 100 MILLION READERS.
January 1, 2002... He wrote, most often, late into the night, in a modest study cluttered with heaps of books and papers and looking out onto a garden. The Oxford don, harried by the necessity of preparing lectures and publishing scholarly research, had little...

Silk Robes & Cell Phones.(Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth)(Excerpt)
January 1, 2002... THREE DECADES AFTER FRANCES FITZGERALD WON A PULITZER PRIZE FOR FIRE IN THE LAKE, HER CLASSIC WORK ON VIETNAM, SHE RETURNED WITH PHOTOJOURNALIST MARY CROSS. WHAT THEY DOCUMENTED IN THEIR NEW BOOK, VIETNAM: SPIRITS OF THE EARTH, FROM WHICH THE...