Smithsonian articles from March 2006

Smithsonian archives from March 2006

Have canine, will travel: our fur-flung correspondents in dogged pursuit.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
March 1, 2006... PHOTOGRAPHS of international supermodels gallivanting around Europe aren't our style. But when the model in question has four paws, floppy ears and an inordinate fondness for spaghetti--well, we couldn't resist. Meet Pecorino, an 8-year-old...

Brains conquer beauty: scientists break code to create perfect gemstones with even more fire and brilliance than mined diamonds.(Advertisement)
March 1, 2006... There is little doubt that a natural mined diamond of top quality is one of the world's most magnificent gems. It is much coveted for its exquisite beauty, but the simple truth is that diamonds are just compressed crystallized carbon. The...

Field trip! Education experts help children, their teachers, parents and grandparents get the most out of a museum visit--real or virtual.(From the SECRETARY)
March 1, 2006... FEW WORDS from a teacher stir as much excitement as "field trip." Students always love the chance to break away from the books and go sightseeing. Enjoyable exhibitions and promoting the powerful synergy of curiosity, learning and fun are of...

Covering Chavez.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... Readers respond to the January issue: I AM APPALLED by the one-sided view of Hugo Chavez's regime in Katherine Ellison's "Venezuela Steers A New Course." And to get it so wrong! Whatever the problems of the country pre-Chavez, it was...

Humans not hippos.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... AS A RESULT of the ruthlessness of Robert Mugabe, one of the world's worst dictators, nearly a million people in Zimbabwe have been rendered homeless, their homes bulldozed right in front of them--and "Hippo Haven" is worried about hippos? I do...

Presidential prerogative.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... "MY WHOLE SOUL IS IN IT," about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, was fascinating and timely in light of Bush's "eavesdropping" authorization to the National Security Agency. Should Lincoln's use of constitutional war powers be less...

Guess who came to dinner.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... "CEZANNE" MAKES a common mistake by attributing the description of Paul Cezanne's crude table manners to a letter by Mary Cassatt. In fact, the letter's author is American artist Matilda Lewis. JANINE VOLKMAR TRINIDAD, CALIFORNIA ...

Calling all wasps.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Corn has a perhaps unexpected capacity: retaliation. When a caterpillar chomps on a cornstalk, the plant releases a chemical SOS that summons tiny parasitic wasps no longer than an eyelash. The wasps land on the caterpillar and lay eggs. Within...

Baggage claim.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The gourds that Native Americans used for millennia as containers did not originate in Africa and float across the Atlantic, say experts led by Bruce Smith of the National Museum of American History. New analyses of ancient gourd fragments in...

Do dolphins eavesdrop?(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Dolphins emit high-pitched clicks and gauge their distance from objects by listening to the echoes--a way of perceiving called echolocation. But a new study of rough-toothed dolphins (right), which swim in tightly coordinated formations, shows...

Mountain retreat.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... THE AMERICAN PIKA IS A RABBIT RELATIVE THAT LIVES IN THE MOUNTAINS. IN RECENT DECADES, 9 OF ITS 25 KNOWN POPULATIONS IN CALIFORNIA, NEVADA AND OREGON HAVE DIED OUT. DONALD GRAYSON OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUND THAT PIKAS, WHICH CANNOT...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... NAME: Temnothorax albipennis (an English ant) NEAT TRICK: Tandem running, in which an experienced ant leads a naive ant from the nest to food. NEATER TRICK: Teaching. The ants establish their route with two-way communication--the...

The power of prayer: a news photographer in India captures a devotional moment that goes back a thousand years.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
March 1, 2006... IN 1993, DOUG CURRAN was covering the Indian subcontinent as a photographer for Agence France-Presse. Among many Asia hands, the assignment is considered a dream job, because of India's visual feast--its teeming universe of saints and villains,...

The best and brightest: a small museum illuminates Las Vegas' past by restoring the city's classic neon signs.(POINTS OF INTEREST)
March 1, 2006... A VISITOR TO THE SOUTH END of the Strip in Las Vegas sees a number of objects against the night sky: the spotlight atop the pyramid-shaped Luxor Hotel, so bright it is said to be visible from outer space; the gold block letters, each several...

Bags of vintage US silver coins saved from melt-down!
March 1, 2006... For the first time ever the First Federal Mint is releasing to the public bags of historic U.S. silver coins not seen in circulation for decades. They are priced not by the rarity of the individual coin but by silver weight... in full size...

Visionary virtuoso: Ray Charles' fusion of gospel and blues changed the face of American popular music.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
March 1, 2006... RAY CHARLES, who died at age 73 on June 10, 2004, lives on in America's collective inner ear. So much so that it's a challenge to think of anyone else who ever performed such songs as "Georgia On My Mind," "What'd I Say" and "You Don't Know...

Spain makes a stand: after more than 400 years, a fort built by conquistadors in the Carolinas has finally been found.(DIGS)(Fort San Juan, north of Morganton, North Carolina)
March 1, 2006... IN THE FOOTHILLS of the Appalachians, I park in a cornfield just off an unmarked dirt road. A canvas canopy is the only structure visible in the quiet valley, where two dozen archaeologists and community college students are braving the July...

City slinkers: why are coyotes, those cunning denizens of the plains and rural west, moving into urban centers like Chicago and Washington, D.C.?(PHENOMENA & CURIOSITIES)
March 1, 2006... KEN FEREBEE was one of the first to notice. He's a National Park Service biologist assigned to Rock Creek Park, a 1,755-acre swath of woods, ball fields and picnic areas in the heart of Washington, D.C. Since 2004, he'd observed that deer...

American comic: a benchmark exhibition reveals the lighter side of artist Grant Wood.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BETOND)
March 1, 2006... "COMEDY is nothing more than tragedy deferred," the essayist Pico Iyer has written. For the painter Grant Wood, best known for his 1930's American Gothic, the tragedy is that most of his comedy has been deferred so long. But Wood's gentle...

Black history.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BETOND)(National Museum of African American History and Culture )(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... If all goes as planned, a new National Museum of African American History and Culture will occupy a prominent five-acre site on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian's Board of Regents announced January 30. Advocates...

Talking bones.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BETOND)(Kennewick Man)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The 9,500-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man is finally giving up some of its secrets, to scientists led by Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley. The anthropologist was scheduled to announce the team's findings February 23...

Joy of science: an award-winning author's view of teaching Darwinian evolution is anything but textbook.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BETOND)(JOY HAKIM)(Interview)
March 1, 2006... JOY HAKIM, author of the middle-school American history series The History of US, has been called the "J.K. Rowling of textbooks" because of her lively writing style and block-buster book sales--more than four million so far. This past fall,...

Hurry in.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BETOND)(Colombian gold exhibit)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Spanish explorers would have killed (and did) for a collection of Colombian gold as large as the one on view at the National Museum of Natural History through April 9. A FUNERARY MASK, 100 B.C. TO A.D. 800, IS IN "THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT...

This month in history: March anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
March 1, 2006... 25 YEARS AGO: ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION John Hinckley Jr., vying for actress Jodie Foster's attention, shoots President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, in Washington, D.C. "Honey, I forgot to duck," the 70-year-old leader tells his wife,...

Edvard Munch: beyond The Scream; Though the Norwegian artist is known for a single image, he was one of the most prolific, innovative and influential figures in modern art.
March 1, 2006... EDVARD MUNCH, who never married, called his paintings his children and hated to be separated from them. Living alone on his estate outside Oslo for the last 27 years of his life, increasingly revered and increasingly isolated, he surrounded...

Secrets of the Range Creek ranch: archaeologists cheered when Waldo Wilcox's vast spread was deeded to the State of Utah, believing that it holds keys to a tribe that flourished 1,000 years ago--and then mysteriously vanished.
March 1, 2006... Until he got famous, Waldo Wilcox spent most of his life moving cattle through a remote valley in Utah, 150 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. He had a 4,200-acre spread deep in the Book Cliffs region--a wilderness with rock walls that rise to...

Continental crossroads: East greets West as Hungary's history-rich capital embraces the future.(Destination EUROPE: Budapest)
March 1, 2006... AT THE NEARLY century-old Gellert Hotel, site of a venerable spa on the west bank of the Danube, a dip into a steaming mineral bath makes a fitting start for soaking up the spirit of Budapest, Hungary's beguiling capital. The Gellert's...

Bone voyage: on assignment with Europe's most peripatetic canine.(Pecorino)
March 1, 2006... ONE DAY EIGHT YEARS AGO, a young landscape photographer from Vienna was visiting a farm near Verona, Italy, when he learned about a spotted puppy with black ears that no one wanted. The photographer, Toni Anzenberger, adopted the dog and named...

Crowning glory: sixty years after it was reduced to rubble by Allied bombing, the reconstructed Baroque Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, once again dominates the historic city's skyline.(Destination EUROPE: Dresden)
March 1, 2006... FOR CENTURIES, the German city of Dresden was one of Europe's architectural and artistic gems--its "Florence on the Elbe." The Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, a masterpiece of Protestant Baroque design built in the early 18th-century,...

Ben Franklin slept here: the ingenious founding father's only surviving residence, in London, is reborn as a museum.(Destination EUROPE: London)
March 1, 2006... JEFFERSON HAS his Monticello; Washington, Mount Vernon. Now, thanks to years of dogged fundraising on both sides of the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin's only surviving residence, Number 36 Craven Street, London, opened its doors to the public on...

Highlights & hot spots.(Destination EUROPE 2006)(Calendar)
March 1, 2006... THE EUROPEAN FINE ART FAIR The Netherlands -- March 10-19 Maastricht, the oldest city in the Netherlands, turns into a vast museum--except just about everything is for sale. This year, 218 dealers from 14 countries will showcase 25,000...

Dancing in the dark: just as Thomas Edison gave "genius" new dimension, his efforts as a filmmaker defined its limits.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
March 1, 2006... CERTAIN CREATORS astound us with their sheer fecundity. Anyone who has ever tried to write fiction can only marvel at the 400-plus books that the late Georges Simenon ("Inspector Maigret") turned out. Franz Joseph Haydn found time to compose...

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... THE WORST HARD TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL TIMOTHY EGAN HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, $28 EVEN TODAY, writes Timothy Egan, the daunting expanse of this nation's southern plains "scares people in...