Smithsonian articles from June 2003

Smithsonian archives from June 2003

The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale Of Battling Smallpox.
June 1, 2003... JENNIFER LEE CARRELL DUTTON, $24.95 In these dire days, when fear of epidemic is great, it seems peculiar to have found pleasure in reading a book about smallpox in the 18th century, early attempts at inoculation and two heroic figures...

Haussmann: His Life And Times, And The Making Of Modern Paris.
June 1, 2003... BY MICHEL CARMONA TRANSLATED BY PATRICK CAMILLER IVAN R. DEE, $35 Paris, still arguably the world's most beautiful and livable metropolis, has not been lucky lately. During the early 1970s, the construction of the...

Shoot, don't call: announcing our first-ever photo contest. (Editor's Note).
June 1, 2003... Here's what we know now about our first-ever photo contest. It will be open to everyone except Smithsonian Institution employees and their families. There will be six winners--one best in show and a winner in each of five categories: Americana,...

Great expectations: elephant researchers believe they can boost captive-animal reproduction rates and reverse a potential population crash in zoos.
June 1, 2003... A little before 5:30 one August morning two years ago, workers at the Oakland Zoo began calling colleagues at home to hurry in. For more than a month, staff and volunteers had held a round-the-clock vigil watching a pregnant 24-year-old African...

Land Shark: in his noir satires, novelist and eco-warrior Carl Hiaasen ravages those who dare to desecrate his beloved South Florida landscape.
June 1, 2003... Standing at the wheel of his 17-foot skiff, Carl Hiaasen points to a large, graceful bird gliding in the blue distance. Black with a white patch above the tail, a wondrously wide wingspan and a gentle swaying motion, it skims low over the...

Nothing but the Struth: a new exhibition showcases the German photographer's eye for art. (Indelible Images).
June 1, 2003... Thomas Struth is one of the world's most provocative art photographers, but his huge images of people in museums and galleries--the one above is 6 by 7 feet--are not some ironic art theory exercise. "I wanted to remind my audience that when...

Saving Iraq's treasures: as archaeologists worldwide help recover looted artifacts, they worry for the safety of the great sites of early civilization.
June 1, 2003... "Oh your city! oh your house! oh your people!" wrote a scribe of ancient Sumer, portraying a dark time in the land that would become Iraq. That 4,000-year-old lament sounded all too contemporary in April as Baghdad mobs stormed Iraq's National...

Just looking.
June 1, 2003... Good-bye girls "It was heaven," says Willa McGuire Cook, 75, of her stint from 1948 to 1959 as "prima ski-ballerina" at Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Florida. The 67-year-old park--known for its water show and strolling Southern...

Coalition of the differing: it took Margaret Mead to understand the two nations separated by a common language. (The Last Page).
June 1, 2003... Recent events aside, the Americans and the British have not always seen eye to eye--neither in war nor wardrobe. In fact, during World War II the U.S. and British commands had such a terrible time communicating with one another that in 1943...

Letters.
June 1, 2003... Readers respond to the April issue: DISCOUNTED PURCHASE You refer to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 ("Westward Ho!") as a "breathtaking bargain" at four cents an acre. It was dwarfed 66 years later, however, when the 2-year-old...

Netting Bada Shanren's forgers. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond).
June 1, 2003... A royal, a monk and a madman, this 17th-century Chinese artist became a favorite of forgers The daffodils are in sunny bloom on the Mall. But in the hushed, belowground spaces of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, curator Joseph Chang whispers...

Museum mavens. (From The Attic).
June 1, 2003... Sometime in the 1870s, Misses Sally and Nelly Hewitt, while still in pigtails, used their own money to buy a collection of 12th- to 16th-century textiles at a Paris auction. The sisters dreamed of creating a museum. Their grandfather, Peter...

Of beaks and blooms. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian Museums and beyond)).
June 1, 2003... Two researchers are the first to verify Darwin's theory of coevolution in birds and flowers John Kress, chief botanist at the National Museum of Natural History, knows plenty about heliconias, having studied the brightly colored "lobster...

Who's counting?
June 1, 2003... 167 PAPER DOLLS BASED ON TV CHARACTERS (SUCH AS LUCILLE BALL, ABOVE) RESIDE WITHIN THE ARCHIVES CENTER OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY. THE ARCHIVES HAS MORE THAN 4,000 OF THESE TOYS, DEPICTING EVERYONE FROM GOLDA MEIR TO THE...

This month in history: June anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
June 1, 2003... 100 YEARS AGO: YANKEE'S PRIDE Ludwig Heinrich "Lou" Gehrig is born June 19, 1903, in New York City. For 13 straight seasons, starting in 1925, the "Iron Horse" plays for the Yankees and bats .340. Still called the greatest first baseman ever,...

Rethinking Neanderthals: research suggests the so-called brutes fashioned tools, buried their dead, maybe cared for the sick and even conversed. But why, if they were so smart, did they disappear?
June 1, 2003... Bruno Maureille unlocks the gate in a chain-link fence, and we walk into the fossil bed past a pile of limestone rubble, the detritus of an earlier dig. We're 280 miles southwest of Paris, in rolling farm country dotted with long-haired cattle...

Grand inquisitor: White House diva Helen Thomas has grilled every president since JFK. (The Object At Hand).
June 1, 2003... The Washington, D.C. cabdriver couldn't quite place her but knew that the passenger, a diminutive woman with short dark hair, was somebody important. Finally, the cabbie turned around and asked straight out: "Aren't you the woman the presidents...

Beach lady: MaVynee Betsch wants to memorialize a haven for African-Americans in the time of Jim Crow. (People File).
June 1, 2003... "Hello," I heard the cultured, worldly and refined voice say on the answering machine. "This is the Beach Lady. If you're getting this message, it may be because I have turned into a butterfly and floated out over the sand dune." When I...

True or false? Extinction is forever: researchers' efforts to clone the vanished Tasmanian tiger highlight the quandary of reviving long-gone creatures. (Phenomena & Curiosities).
June 1, 2003... "Danger," says the sign on the door of a laboratory at the Australian Museum in Sydney: "Tasmanian Tiger, Trespassers will be eaten!" The joke is that the Tasmanian tiger--a beloved symbol of the island state that appears on its license...

Curiosities and wonders: where do you put all those treasures? (From the Secretary).
June 1, 2003... Behind-the-scenes facilities at the Smithsonian can be more distant than you might imagine. The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), for example, has its principal storage facility, the Museum Support Center (MSC), in Maryland, a...

Doo wop by the sea: architects and preservationists have turned a gaudy strip of New Jersey shore into a monument to mid-century architecture. But can they keep the bulldozers at bay?
June 1, 2003... "We call this the Pupu Platter style of architecture," says Joan Husband, pointing to the Waikiki motel on Ocean Avenue in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey. As our sight-seeing trolley rolls along on a steamy summer evening, local preservationist...

Reign on! Four centuries after her death, Good Queen Bess still draws crowds. A regal rash of exhibitions and books examines her life anew.
June 1, 2003... Though more than 400 years have passed since they were painted, her portraits are as recognizable as a movie star's: the receding red hair studded with pearls, the lace ruff hugging the neck from ears to collarbone, the ghostly white face with...

Capitol discovery: senate staffers come across a historic treasure in a dusty storage room. (Points Of Interest).
June 1, 2003... After senate staffers Clare Weeks Amoruso and Douglas Connolly finished cleaning out a storeroom in the subbasement of the U.S. Capitol this past November, they noticed a door to a nearby room ajar. Curious, they walked inside and found...