Smithsonian articles from March 2003

Smithsonian archives from March 2003

Ice Capades: Alaska's husband-and-wife team of avalanche experts work to save lives all winter, then take to their kayaks in summer.
March 1, 2003... Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler, who are married and live in Anchorage, are gaining recognition outside Alaska for the thousands of miles they have covered in their converted sea kayaks--her recently published memoir, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys...

Exiting Vietnam: Henry Kissinger's new book revisits America's troubled extrication from Indochina.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... The Vietnam war was our longest--longer than the Civil War and the two world wars. It rent our society as no other issue had done since the War Between the States, and the wounds it inflicted have yet to completely heal. With its conjoined...

Stan the man: Stanley Meisler hits a stand-up double. (Editor's Note).(Interview)
March 1, 2003... As a general rule, magazine editors don't like to run more than one article by any one writer in the same issue. That goes for us, too, but this time we couldn't help ourselves. Stanley Meisler's story about Daniel Libeskind ("Daniel Libeskind:...

Machine dreams: a new exhibition reconsiders the industrial photographs of Margaret Bourke-White's early, "rapturous" period. (Indelible Images).(art )
March 1, 2003... Before margaret bourke-white became a celebrated photojournalist whose Life magazine pictures memorably chronicled the world's flux at mid-century--a breadline after a Kentucky flood, General Patton as he prepared to cross the Rhine, Mahatma...

Just looking (1).(upfront)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Drums of War On January 6, while United Nations inspectors chased down banned weapons in Iraq, these men from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit at the San Diego Naval Station said good-bye to their wives before leaving for the Persian Gulf....

Once upon a time: children's books by celebrities are as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here are our favorites. (The Last Page).
March 1, 2003... Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Cosby, Julie Andrews, Spike Lee--all have written children's books in the past few years. But it's not a recent trend. Famous people dabbling in this lucrative genre is a centuries-old practice. We...

Letters.
March 1, 2003... Readers respond to the January issue: Nova Scotia's Centenarians I jumped for joy when I read "Puzzle of the Century," about Nova Scotia's centenarians. My family is riddled with them. One great-great-grandmother, who had typhoid fever...

Pershing's map: the general's war room map forever captures America's triumph on the Western Front. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).
March 1, 2003... On this fine fall morning, Beth Richwine pushes a cart laden with ladder, blue plastic gloves, notebook and other tools into an exhibit space that is in the final, noisy throes of completion. She stops in front of a low, black platform that...

Streetcar ride to history. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(1959 Chicago Transit Authority railcar)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... It was a spectral sight, the 4 a.m. delivery in Washington, D.C. of a 1959 Chicago Transit Authority railcar for a new transportation exhibition that will open in November at the National Museum of American History. Once, the car rumbled along...

America's first stamps: an exhibition of priceless stamps opens a window on American life in the 1800s. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).
March 1, 2003... Wilson Hulme, the National Postal Museum's curator of philately, places a folder on a table in the museum's research library and carefully opens the jacket. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could dampen his pleasure. ...

Hurry in. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... After garnering rave reviews in New York and San Francisco, "Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting" finishes its tour at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, closing May 18. The 71-year-old German artist defies categorization: his...

From the attic. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Cairo Kaffeeklatsch Charles Lang Freer, the bearded Detroit industrialist turned art collector (second from left), couldn't read Greek. Yet somehow he knew that the $7,750 he was laying out for a bundle of ancient Greek manuscripts that...

Mischief maker: a new exhibit showcases the neglected, playful sculptures of artist Joan Miro.
March 1, 2003... By the time he reached his 70s, Joan Miro had become--with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse--a pillar of modern art whose paintings graced the walls of modern museums. But he was also a contemporary artist who never stopped innovating. A small...

"How-deeeee!": Homely country togs defined a beloved Grand Ole Opry stalwart. (The Object At Hand).(Sarah Ophelia Colley, aka Minnie Pearl)
March 1, 2003... [Minnie Pearl's hat] National Museum of American History Sarah Ophelia Colley, who portrayed the character Minnie Pearl on country music's Grand Ole Opry for half a century, never intended to make a career of playing the endearing...

Fare-minded arbiter: Quelle surprise! Englishman Derek Brown presides over France's prestigious Michelin guide to haute cuisine. (People File).(Interview)
March 1, 2003... To meet with Derek Brown, you must first pass a checkpoint at the main gate of a chic 1930s-style office building on the avenue de Breteuil in Paris. From there, you walk through a tropical garden into the reception area, where your passport or...

Caution, planets ahead: the world's largest (maybe) 9-planet solar system model goes up along Route 1 in northern Maine. (Phenomena & Curiosities).(Interview)
March 1, 2003... Beginning about 4.5 billion years ago, the theory goes, a galactic cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapsed and ignited in a blaze of thermonuclear fusion to create our Sun. Swirling around that fireball were particles that gathered into...

Whose rock is it anyway? An Indian tribe wins the first round in a long fight with rock climbers over access to Lake Tahoe's sacred Cave Rock. (Points Of Interest).
March 1, 2003... "There's nowhere else in the United States with rock climbing like this," says Dave Schuller. "It would be a horrible loss not to be able to climb here anymore." The 30-year-old manager and part-owner of an indoor climbing gym in Reno, Nevada,...

The hunt for hot stuff: in the former Soviet Union, "rad rangers" are racing to find lost radiation devices before terrorists can turn them into "dirty bombs".
March 1, 2003... Lerry Meskhi and I walk into the maw of an artificial hill, one of several missile bunkers on this derelict Soviet military base near Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia's capital. As our eyes adjust to the darkness, we follow rusty train tracks...

The big picture: our photographic collections showcase the world from the seafloor to the stars above. (From the Secretary).
March 1, 2003... What the computer has been to our time, what the printing press was to an earlier age, still photography was to the 19th century--a technological innovation of startling power. Photography brought the remote world close and made it possible for...

To the rescue: Las Vegas showman Jonathan Kraft went from riches to rags to turn a patch of Arizona desert into a refuge for abused and abandoned exotic animals.
March 1, 2003... There's a hint of the ballroom dancer about Jonathan Kraft as he glides into a cage with two large tigers, Natasha and Samantha. We're in the middle of nowhere, a flat stretch of Arizona desert, 33.5 barren acres in all, just over the Nevada...

Daniel Libeskind: architect at ground zero: from his Jewish Museum in Berlin to his proposal for the World Trade Center site, Daniel Libeskind designs buildings that reach out to history and humanity.
March 1, 2003... Daniel Libeskind, the high-spirited American architect who in early February was selected as a finalist in the much-publicized competition to design the site of the World Trade Center, was barely known outside the academic world until 1989....

Just looking (2).(exhibition of photographs of aviation cockpits)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Sweet sorrow The doomed space shuttle Columbia's flight deck was photographed in 2001 by Smithsonian's Eric Long and Mark Avino for a National Air and Space Museum book, At the Controls (distributed by Firefly Books Ltd.). The image and other...

Winter palace: the first major exhibition devoted to the Incas' fabled cold-weather retreat highlights Machu Picchu's secrets.
March 1, 2003... Although I had seen many images of Machu Picchu, nothing prepared me for the real thing. Stretching along the crest of a narrow ridge lay the mesmerizing embodiment of the Inca Empire, a civilization brought to an abrupt and bloody end by the...