Smithsonian articles from January 2004

Smithsonian archives from January 2004

Say again? priceless wisdom that changed my life.(The Last Page)
January 1, 2004... home from the war in Europe in 1945 and about to ship out to the Pacific, my father was having drinks with his mother and sister at the Brown Derby restaurant, a famous Hollywood hangout. Dad's sister, the glamour girl of our family, was...

Vieques on the verge: the Navy is gone; the bombing has stopped. What happens to Puerto Rico's Vieques now?
January 1, 2004... it had all looked so simple from the plane--the Puerto Rican island of Vieques stretching out below like some outsize plantain, all lush green on the west end where the U.S. Navy stored bombs until 2001, all crater-pocked and yellowed on the...

Riding the Steppes: a 1,000-mile odyssey across Mongolia on horseback.(In the Empire of Genghis Khan)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... IN THE EMPIRE OF GENGHIS KHAN BY STANLEY STEWART LYONS PRESS, $24.95 the most fearless travel writers expect suffering, and usually they get it: inedible food, bloodthirsty mosquitoes, lice, exhaustion, hostile weather, vicious...

Variety show: off and running in the new year.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... as someone constitutionally disposed to find fault with every issue of this magazine, I have to admit I'm almost pleased with this one. There's a nice mix--something, if you'll forgive the cliche, for everyone. Well, almost everyone. (Nothing,...

Top dogs: the Polar Inuit's ancient bond with the sled dog remains intact, thanks in part to a ban on snowmobiles. But the lure of technology threatens these "sturdy, magnificent animals".
January 1, 2004... My dog sled races along the frozen polar sea of Greenland's northwestern coast, weaving through a maze of hummocks. I sit wedged against the fur-covered form of a quiet, middle-aged Inuit hunter named Ilanguaq Qaerngaq, who directs the dozen...

Profile in courage: an anonymous protester near Beijing's Tiananmen Square personifies a people's revolt of 15 years ago.(Indelible Images)
January 1, 2004... the photograph may not be beautiful or artistic, but it is nothing short of heart-stopping. There he is, a thin young man dressed in a white shirt and dark pants squaring off against a line of tanks, a lone human figure daring a great nation's...

Over the top.(Just Looking)(police dog competitions)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... OVER THE TOP Demonstrating that any obstacle can be overcome (sort of), a Ukrainian policeman and his four-legged sidekick strive for personal bests in Kiev this past October. The annual competition, run by Ukraine's Interior Ministry, pitted...

Remembering JFK.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... as a u.s. navy PT boat skipper, I was there the day JFK ("The President's Been Shot") first arrived on Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands, in April of 1943. When his boat (PT-109) was rammed in the destroyer attack on August 1, 1943, the explosion...

Loyalty to the pledge.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... "the pledge's creator," by Jeffrey Owen Jones, points out that Francis Bellamy composed the Pledge of Allegiance after the Civil War, which only a few years earlier had torn our nation apart. Bellamy's reference to "one Nation indivisible" is a...

Agony and ichthyology.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... the old debate over whether fish feel pain ("Ouch!") just won't go away. Maybe fish do feel pain, if they are injected with enough acid and venom, which is what the researchers did in the study you reported. But these poisons can never be...

Way-out whistler: before they even knew what to call it, a 19th-century artist put his mother aside to anticipate 20th-century performance art.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond)(James McNeill Whistler)
January 1, 2004... london gallerygoers in 1883 had never seen anything like the brave new exhibition "Arrangement in Yellow and White" at the Fine Art Society on New Bond Street. Least among the spectacle in this novel display of artworks was the man greeting...

From the attic.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond)(James Smithson, benefactor)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Special Delivery It is the "proper thing to do," insisted Smithsonian regent Alexander Graham Bell in December of 1903. Bell was telling fellow board members that the "earthly remains" of the Institution's benefactor, James Smithson (right),...

More fish, less guilt: for the ecologically minded, a new cookbook is a seafood lover's guide to making environmentally sound choices at the market.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... asked for her favorite recipe, ichthyologist Carole Baldwin flips through One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish: The Smithsonian Sustainable Seafood Cookbook as if it's a photo album from a particularly enjoyable summer vacation. "The trout...

Who's counting?(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond)(spacesuits at National Air and Space Museum)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... 71 spacesuits--almost all of those sent into space in NASA's early days--reside at the National Air and Space Museum. In addition to suits from the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury missions, the 200-plus-item collection includes training suits,...

This month in history: January anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
January 1, 2004... 40 YEARS AGO: OVERCOMING The January 1964 ratification of the 24th Amendment bans poll taxes, designed to keep black citizens from voting, from federal elections. "There can be no one too poor to vote," says Lyndon Johnson, who signs the...

Shooting stars: photographer Jack Pashkovsky disarmed Hollywood's royalty with his ardor and persistence.
January 1, 2004... Jack pashkovsky lived quietly in a town lit up by a thousand stars. He practiced his art anonymously. By the time he was finished, he had compiled what must be the greatest collection of celebrity photographs never seen. I first met...

Sleepless in Hawaii: insomniac islanders are hopping mad over a tiny frog that threatens their fragile ecosystem.(Phenomena & Curiosities)(coqui frogs)
January 1, 2004... a grimacing Helen Geiger stands amid bikes and beach chairs in the garage of her Hawaiian home watching two men tramp through dense foliage in her backyard. Dragging a hose from a 100-gallon tank, they are seeking a tiny prey, invisible in the...

Policing America's ports: the 19,000 cargo containers flowing into the United States each day pose a needle-in-the-haystack challenge to security officials worried about hidden terrorist weapons.
January 1, 2004... On an average day in the Port of New York and New Jersey, about 4,000 shipping containers--lined end to end, they would stretch 15 miles--are lifted off freighters and released into the arteries of American commerce. One recent morning, a U.S....

Big! Pop artist James Rosenquist returns to the limelight with a dazzling retrospective of his larger-than-life works.
January 1, 2004... as a young man in the 1950s, James Rosenquist dabbled in shapes, squiggles and splotches like lots of young American artists in thrall to Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists. But at his day job, Rosenquist created on a larger...

Fascinating relics: Smithsonian's wide-ranging mummy collection still speaks to us from centuries past.(From the Secretary)
January 1, 2004... there are mummies by design and mummies by accident. The best-known mummies, human and animal, are probably those that underwent elaborate embalming and burial procedures in ancient Egypt. Indeed, for most people, the word "mummy" is pretty...

Coming to America: a Somali Bantu refugee family leaves 19th-century travails behind in Africa to take up life in 21st-century Phoenix.
January 1, 2004... the unskilled, third-world refugee must find within himself a knack for patience. Life would be unbearable without it. In the camps, there is little to do. There is seldom electric light in the dirt-floored, tin-roof shack he and his family are...

Divided loyalties: descended from American Colonists who fled north rather than join the revolution, Canada's Tories still raise their tankards to King George.
January 1, 2004... the invitation arrived with a question: "Since we'll be dining in the 18th century," it read, "would you mind wearing a British Redcoat? Also, you'll be expected to swear loyalty to King George. I hope this won't be a problem." A week...

Looking for a few good men: while the budding Corps of Discovery plans the expedition near St. Louis, William Clark grades the recruits.(Lewis and Clark)
January 1, 2004... In June 1803, President Thomas Jefferson directed Meriwether Lewis to find a second in command for the coming expedition, someone who could take over if Lewis were killed or incapacitated along the way. But rather than pick a deputy, Lewis...