Smithsonian articles from June 2004

Smithsonian archives from June 2004

Can great coffee save the jungle? Persuaded that guilt alone won't get Americans to pay more for environmentally friendly coffee, importers are trying a market approach by giving farmers the tools to grow better beans.
June 1, 2004... Early on an arid afternoon, in a building high in the hills of Nicaragua's Las Segovias province, four North American men sit around a small table sipping freshly roasted coffee from spoons. Sipping is actually too gentle a word: it's more like...

The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872: how a Kentucky grifter and his partner pulled off one of the era's most spectacular scams--until a dedicated man of science exposed their scheme.
June 1, 2004... The rush for gold that began in California in 1848 and for silver in Nevada in 1859 filled the West with people hooked on the Next Big Thing. From grubby prospectors washing dirt in a thousand Western streams to bankers and speculators in San...

Tons of talent: picking the winners of our first photo contest required a bit of heavy lifting.(Editor's Note)
June 1, 2004... Judging our photo contest turned out to be a lot of fun. It also turned out to be a ton of work. Literally. We received more than 12,000 entries, and it fell to editorial assistants Michelle Strange and Chai Woodham to schlep heavy bag after...

Off the beaten track: during a civil rights march in 1965, photographer Bruce Davidson left the highway to focus on a single Alabama sharecropper and her nine children.(Indelible Images)
June 1, 2004... A single mother of nine, Annie Blackman picked cotton from six in the morning until eight at night, and in 1965 her day's pay was $1.25. The Blackman home, in Trickem Fork, Alabama, was a wood cabin with a front porch and a brick chimney. The...

Just looking.(elephants)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... SNACK TIME "They literally suck it down in about 30 seconds!" says photographer Gerry Ellis of the gallon of milk consumed four times a day by orphan elephants such as Natumi, 3 (with keeper Patrick Dokata in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park)....

Who wants to be a billionaire? A Rockefeller's rules for raising responsible children.(The Last Page)(John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and John D. Rockefeller, III)
June 1, 2004... John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, made philanthropy his life's work. He saw himself as the steward--not the owner--of the vast fortune his father had made, distributing more than half a billion dollars...

Defending the Alamo.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... "Remembering the alamo" shows that revisionism is still alive and well, at least in the movie industry. There are few military events in American history that contain the drama and romance of the Texians' last stand at the Alamo mission. Since...

Crying shame.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... A few times in my 61 years I have actually burst into tears. The most recent is when I read in "Colossal Ode" Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus," engraved on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. Events of the past few years have had me in a...

Unbiased Beeb?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... In response to the assertion that the BBC's World Service ("Battle of the 'Beeb'") is "the gold standard of reliable, unbiased reporting," I couldn't help thinking of the Chico Marx line in Duck Soup: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own...

Photo bombs.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... I feel quite sure that no bombardier trainees ever performed "daily calisthenics" with real 100-pound bombs as pictured in "Photos for All Time." Looking at the position of the trainees' hands in the U.S. Air Force photo, it's quite obvious...

Miffed in Seattle.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... Condescension oozes from "Vaunted Vancouver" by Jonathan Kandell, a New Yorker. He praises Stanley Park, but his description of it is feeble and partial, saying only that the "landscaped elegance" of New York's Central Park and the "restorative...

Going native in Brazil.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... "Saving the music tree," about rescuing Brazil's pernambuco, discusses precautions taken to prevent accidents with snakes, and refers to cobras. I thought cobras were indigenous only to Asia and Africa. Are they in Brazil? B. E. WHEELER...

Georgia on my mind.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... During a teachers' exchange trip last October in the Republic of Georgia, I observed firsthand some of the corruption Jeffrey Tayler highlights in "Georgia at a Crossroads," including bribes for votes before the parliamentary election and...

"Doctor" Lewis' thunderclappers: as the corps struggles up the Missouri River, eating meat and drinking muddy water, Meriwether Lewis tends to their ailments.(Lewis And Clark)
June 1, 2004... In early 1803, Meriwether Lewis had been sent by President Jefferson to Philadelphia to study with Benjamin Rush, one of the most respected physicians of the day. Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and author of the earliest...

"Find a way to stay alive".(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)(D-Day)(National D-Day Museum in New Orleans)
June 1, 2004... Sixty years ago this month, the Allies landed. A founder of the D-Day Museum was on the beach. When frank walk slogged through the waves and onto Omaha Beach at 7:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, D-Day, bodies of the dead and dying already...

From the attic.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)(Solomon G. Brown, first African-American employee of Smithsonian, assisted in breaking ground for National Museum of Natural History)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... BREAKING GROUND In a grove of doomed trees on the National Mall on June 15, 1904, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel P. Langley took his turn with a shovel before handing it to other officials in a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction...

Scrap hunt: the most revered U.S. flag is full of holes. American History Museum curators are on the case.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)
June 1, 2004... After more than 190 years, bits of the Star-Spangled Banner are still turning up. The great flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired Francis Scott Key to write the words that would become the national anthem was torn and tattered by...

1,000,000+.(Who's Counting?)(ticks)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... TICK SPECIMENS MAKE UP THE SMITHSONIAN'S U.S. NATIONAL TICK COLLECTION--THE WORLD'S LARGEST. THE NEARLY 100-YEAR-OLD COLLECTION, HOUSED SINCE 1990 AT GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY, REPRESENTS MORE THAN 700 OF THE 850 KNOWN SPECIES OF THE...

Saving the Raja's horse: British horsewoman Francesca Kelly brings India's fiery Marwari to the United States in hopes of reviving the breed.
June 1, 2004... When francesca kelly took her first trip to India--for a luxury horse safari in 1995--a friend told her, "You'll either love it or you'll hate it." A 49-year-old woman with a slightly square jaw that hints at a streak of stubbornness and...

This month in history: June anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
June 1, 2004... 90 YEARS AGO: SHOCK WAVES Following a failed attempt to bomb their car, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, are assassinated June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. Meant to free the...

Magical mystery tour: in 1964 a psychedelic placard heralded the arrival of counterculture guru Ken Kesey and his entourage to America's cities.(The Object At Hand)
June 1, 2004... The moment he saw the signboard in 1992, National Museum of American History curator Bill Yeingst knew that he had uncovered a watershed artifact of the 1960s. In the company of novelist and counterculture guru Ken Kesey (author of 1962's One...

Back to nature: artist Steve Tobin turns organic forms into sculpture.(People File)
June 1, 2004... At 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit the fire burns lime green. Embers and scraps of molten bronze skitter onto the concrete floor of an open-air shed housing the furnace. "Sweep it up," commands sculptor Steve Tobin, and ten assistants--shouting...

Bumpy road to Mars: the president envisions a future human mission to Mars, but medical researchers say surviving the journey is no spacewalk.(Phenomena & Curiosities)
June 1, 2004... On the day this past January that President Bush was scheduled to announce a major new space policy, more than 100 scientists jammed into the Grandstand Sports Bar in Montgomery, Texas, to watch the address. They had been waiting years for this...

Treasure trove.(photography contest)
June 1, 2004... Our first ever photo contest yields a rich and various bounty as we pored over the more than 12,000 entries for our first photo contest, we were sometimes reminded of Ansel Adams' observation that every picture, even a landscape with no one in...

Hear here: record your life story at a studio in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. You just may make history.(Points Of Interest)(StoryCorps)
June 1, 2004... "do you have something to catch the baby?" a woman asked Joe Caracciolo, a New York City transit foreman riding the subway on his way to work. He didn't, but the birth on the C train was not about to stop. "It just flew out," Caracciolo...

The wizard of odd: illusionist Ricky Jay, a keeper of magic's secrets, conjures up a dirty deal in TV's "Deadwood".(Television Program Review)
June 1, 2004... In the new tv western "Deadwood," Ricky Jay plays a craps dealer and con man named Eddie Sawyer, and woe to the greenhorn who bellies up to his table. Not since the World War II hero Audie Murphy played a World War II hero has a role been so...

Salem sets sail: after the Revolutionary War, ships from a little Massachusetts seaport brought the new nation wares from China and the mysterious East.
June 1, 2004... The city seal of salem, massachusetts, features neither a black-clad Puritan elder nor an American eagle but, instead, a robe-and-slippered Sumatran dignitary standing next to a row of palm trees. Below him, the city motto: Divitis Indiae usque...

Pizza park: sure, the new Kids' Farm at the National Zoo will be educational, but a giant rubber pizza and a "caring corral" will make it also a place for fun.(From the Secretary)
June 1, 2004... To the long history of Americans' infatuation with pizza, we're about to add another chapter. When the new Kids' Farm opens in June at the National Zoo here in Washington, a big, climb-aboard pie will be one of the principal attractions. What's...

Journey to the Seven Wonders: though only one of the ancient marvels still stands, they still engage our imagination--and launch a thousand tours--more than two millennia later.
June 1, 2004... Visitors to the lobby of the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan are often surprised to find a series of pictorial stained-glass panels. Added in the 1960s, they were meant to link the great skyscraper to other engineering triumphs....

A love letter set to music: the night a teenager met the girl of his dreams 50 years ago, the stars were bright above ...(Tribute)(In the Still of the Night)
June 1, 2004... Shoo doot'n shoo be doo, Shoo doot'n shoo be doo... You were on the dance floor with the one who turned you inside out. And then the music started, and you closed your eyes and floated away. In the still of the night ...