Smithsonian articles from January 2009

Smithsonian archives from January 2009

Elevations: disparate views from on high.(FROM THE EDITOR)
January 1, 2009... CRAIG WELCH, who covers the environment for the Seattle Times, says once we start playing "with the tapestry of Mother Nature, we never know exactly what's going to happen." That's the theme of his piece ("The Spotted Owl's New Nemesis," p. 62)...

Harold Holzer said of Lincoln's first election.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... Oh, that we could say today what Harold Holzer said of Lincoln's first election to the presidency ("Election Day 1860"): that it was a "bitter, raucous, six-month-long campaign." Only six months? For that short a campaign, we might even...

Lincoln's second victory.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... "Election Day 1860" provides excellent insight into the mood and circumstances surrounding Abraham Lincoln as the returns came in and he finally realized that he had been elected. But the election of 1864 is of equal fascination and gravity,...

Missing soldier.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... ON reaching the end of your informative article about John Rich's color photographs ["One Man's Korean War"], I was disappointed that you didn't include the picture of a "South Korean soldier with pink flowers lashed to his helmet," as author...

What a country.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... WHEN I VISITED the National Museum of American History a few years ago, what stopped me dead in my tracks was the Greensboro, North Carolina, Lunch Counter ["From the Castle: History Ahead"], site of the 1960 desegregation sit-in. What kind of...

Motorcycle parts.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... PERHAPS in the 1950s, motorcycling meant defiance ["Curious Perspective"], but for America's early black aviators of the 1920s and '30s motorcycles were an affordable means of transportation and even a source of airplane engine parts. My...

Wild things: life as we know it.
January 1, 2009... THE DEPTHS OF EVOLUTION Researchers studying the origins of deep-sea animals analyzed the family tree of octopuses that live in total darkness. The eight-legged creatures evolved from a common ancestor that lived 34 million years ago in...

The more the merrier: Neal Slavin captures the night some Santas bent the rules.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
January 1, 2009... IT WAS THE SEASON, and photographer Neal Slavin was racking his brain for a holiday picture. This was 1987, and Slavin had been doing a series of group portraits for the Washington Post Magazine. "I got to thinking," he says. "What happens...

January anniversaries momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
January 1, 2009... 170 YEARS AGO PICTURE THIS Members of the Academy of Sciences in Paris learn in January 1839 of Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre's pioneering photographic process. It's the first method to achieve widespread success--Daguerre's...

Teaming up.(FROM THE CASTLE)(Przewalski's horses)
January 1, 2009... THERE IS HOPE for the Przewalski's horse. Native to China and Mongolia, it was declared extinct in the wild in 1970. But now 1,600 Przewalski's horses thrive in breeding programs like the one at our National Zoo's Conservation and Research...

Intelligent designer practical innovations that touched many lives.(Around the Mall)(Charles "Chuck" Harrison)
January 1, 2009... IN 1966, Charles "Chuck" Harrison, an industrial designer at Sears, Roebuck & Company, got rid of an everyday nuisance--the early-morning clanging or" metal garbage cans--by creating the first-ever plastic garbage bin. "When that can hit the...

Jukebox.(Around the Mall)(Smithsonian.com/jukebox)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... HAIL TO THE CHIEF FDR delivered his fourth and final inaugural address in 1945, With the nation still at war, it was considered inappropriate to mark the occasion with festivities--and his speech, fewer than 600 words, echoed the day's solemn...

There's no place like home.(Around the Mall)
January 1, 2009... IN 1939, sixteen-year-old Judy Garland donned a pair of ruby slippers and danced her way into moviegoers' hearts in The Wizard of Oz. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH)--which reopened this past November after a two-year...

Q & A.(Around the Mall)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... WHAT ASPECTS OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE INSPIRE YOUR WORK? The respect for the natural world is certainly one of them. Also, a keen sense for aesthetics. My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, "I never knew an Indian...

Making history.(Around the Mall)
January 1, 2009... EASY RIDER In 1984, curator Ann Yonemura purchased a ceremonial palanquin--a form of transport favored by warlords in 19th-century Japan--for the then yet-to-be-opened Sackler Gallery of Art. "It had these three-leafed circular crests and heavy...

What's up.(Around the Mall)
January 1, 2009... GOLD FILLINGS Japanese artisans repaired broken crockery by plugging the cracks with plant resin lacquer and gold dust (left: bowl). See 14 of these precious patch-ups at the Freer Gallery of Art until May 10. MAKING SPACE Artists...

Samarra rises: in 2006, sectarian violence engulfed Iraq after terrorists destroyed the mosque of the golden dome, built on a site sacred to Shiites for 1,100 years, today, Sunnis and Shiites are working together to restore the shrine and the war-torn city.
January 1, 2009... I'm standing on a street corner in the center of Samarra--a strife-scarred Sunni city of 120,000 people on the Tigris River in Iraq--surrounded by a squad of American troops. The crackle of two-way radios and boots crunching shards of glass are...

Winging it: dangling from a paraglider with a propeller on his back, photographer George Steinmetz gets a new perspective on Africa.
January 1, 2009... THE CHILDREN PLAYING AT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL across the street from George Steinmetz's house didn't miss a beat when, grunting in his driveway, he strapped on his flying machine. His outfit was pure New Jersey dad--loafers, blue jeans and a...

Gene therapy in a new light: a husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewing hopes for a controversial field of medicine.
January 1, 2009... The small, windowless space at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia looks like any eye doctor's examining room, with an adjustable chair and half a dozen machines for testing vision. The 20-year-old patient, however, has not come all the way...

New nemesis: an epic battle between environmentalists and loggers left much of the bird's habitat protected. Now the celebrity species faces a new threat--a tougher owl.(THE SPOTTED OWL'S)
January 1, 2009... ERIC FORSMAN TRAMPED ACROSS the spongy ground with one ear tipped to the tangled branches above. We were circling an isolated Douglas fir and cedar stand near Mary's Peak, the highest point in Oregon's Coast Range, scouring the trees for a puff...

Night visions: for Vincent van Gogh, fantasy and reality merged after dark in some of his most enduring works, as a new exhibition reminds us.
January 1, 2009... With his bright sunflowers, searing wheat fields and blazing yellow skies, Vincent van Gogh was fanatic about light. "Oh! that beautiful midsummer sun here," he wrote to the painter Emile Bernard in 1888 from the south of France. "It beats down...

Mining the mountains: explosives and giant machines are increasingly destroying Appalachian peaks to obtain coal. Opponents say the practice kills forests, threatens tourism and damages human health. One operation looms over a tiny West Virginia town, where residents and the industry are fighting over.
January 1, 2009... For most of its route through the hardscrabble towns of West Virginia's central Appalachian highlands, U.S. Highway 60 follows riverbanks and valleys. But as it approaches Gauley Mountain, it swoops dramatically upward, making switchbacks over...

Frost, Nixon and me: how I discovered what is gained and lost when history is turned into entertainment.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
January 1, 2009... IN MAY 1976, IN A RATHER DIM New York City hotel room filled with David Frost's cigar smoke, the British television personality put an intriguing proposition to me: leave your leafy academic perch for a year and prepare me for what could be a...