Smithsonian articles from May 2003

Smithsonian archives from May 2003

Raghubir Singh's window onto India: the late photographer used India's all-purpose vehicle as both prop and symbol. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).
May 1, 2003... In street photography, the automobile has usually spelled alienation. In William Klein's 1955 image Cadillac, New York, two salesmen stand in a showroom, their mordant faces at odds with the car's glamorous premise. In Robert Frank's 1955-56...

From the attic.(Scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond.)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... MOONWATCH MADNESS J. Allen Hynek got the call at 6:30 p.m. October 4, 1957. The associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, near Boston, hung up and told a colleague: "There's a Russian satellite up." Sputnik's launch...

Celebrating country music's roots: the Smithsonian Folklife Festival mixes the music of Scotland, Mali and Appalachia. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).
May 1, 2003... A.P. Carter was destined for fame. But on July 31, 1927, he was tired and dusty from the drive he and his wife, Sara, and Sara's cousin, Maybelle Addington, had made from their home in Maces Springs, Virginia. It was only 25 miles to Bristol,...

Who's counting? Fun facts from the Folklife Festival. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 400 POUNDS AND SIX FEET LONG AT ITS LARGEST, THE NILE PERCH IS A MALIAN DELICACY. HUGE FILLETS WILL BE BROUGHT TO THE MALL AND PREPARED WITH CHILI SAUCE, FRIED BANANAS AND RICE TO SHOWCASE MALI'S CUISINE. THE FISH THRIVES IN THE NIGER...

Designer in the hot seat: artist Critz Campbell enlightens us about a luminous chair named Eudora. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(Interview)
May 1, 2003... The smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum presents 80 cutting-edge artists and design firms in the exhibition "National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now," which runs to January 25, 2004. Among the exhibits is Chicago-based...

Hurry in. (Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond).(leaded glass work of Frank Lloyd Wright showcased at the Renwick Gallery)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... "Light Screens: The Leaded Glass of Frank Lloyd Wright," now at the Renwick Gallery, closes July 20. The architect, who died in 1959 at age 92, is less known for his windows, which evoke the Japanese screens that inspired him. (Left, casement...

Constant Battles: the Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Steven A. LeBlanc, with Katherine E. Register St. Martin's Press, $29.95 Ours is a world immersed in war: Afghanistan, the Balkans, Kashmir, central Africa--and, of course, Iraq. The outbreak of so much global hostility may lead us to...

Star-Spangled Manners.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Judith Martin W.W.Norton, $24.95 I'm not sure that Judith Martin admires the take-him-down-a-peg strain in the American character as much as I do, but she sure understands it. For me this attitude was best exemplified by a waitress in a...

The Nature of Cuba: tiny frogs. Vast swamps. Pristine rivers. Whether by design or default, the island boasts the Caribbean's best-kept wildlands. But for how long?
May 1, 2003... On a winding road not far from the vibrant colonial city of Santiago de Cuba, we stop to admire a particularly stunning coastline of cliffs, coves and beaches that seems to stretch to infinity. And just inland are the towering Sierra Maestra....

Yes disastrous times: our unusually far-flung correspondents report. (Editor's Note).
May 1, 2003... Of the many protagonists in modern Iraq's tumultuous history, Jonathan Kandell met only one, Dame Freya Stark. But at the time, says Kandell, who wrote our story about Iraq's tortured recent history ("Iraq's Unruly Century," p. 44), he was...

Finally, the top of the world: a witness to the first ascent of Mount Everest 50 years ago this month recalls Edmund Hillary's aplomb, Tenzing Norgay's grace and other glories of the last earthly adventure.
May 1, 2003... Fifty years ago, on May 29, 1953, two men stood on the summit of Mount Everest, Chomo-lungma (Goddess Mother) to its own people. At 29,035 feet it is the highest spot on earth, and nobody had ever been up there before. Above it there was only...

Burra Sahib: where will "Sir Ed" celebrate the ascent's big anniversary? Not at the queen's London gala. Hint: for decades he has aided the Sherpas.(Edmund Hillary on 50th anniversary of his Everst climb)(Interview)
May 1, 2003... They call him Burra Sahib--big in stature, big in heart--and they have it just right. Yes, he has had lucrative endorsement gigs with Sears, Rolex and now Toyota (and has led expeditions to the South Pole and the source of the Ganges). But...

Torn Asunder: enslaved Africans endured the largest forced migration in history.(Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas," an exhibition in August at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture.)
May 1, 2003... "Middle passage." Could words be blander? They suggest a way out, reasonable progress, a moderate course. And yet the blandness conceals an infamy, for Middle Passage was the name given the forced journey across the Atlantic of millions of...

Winter of discontent: even as he endured the hardships of Valley Forge, George Washington faced another challenge: critics who questioned his fitness to lead.
May 1, 2003... George washington's troops could easily be followed as they trudged through the wintry expanse of southeastern Pennsylvania in late December 1777. The soldiers, many of them ragged and shoeless, left bloody footprints in the snow, marking the...

Into the breach: David Douglas Duncan's life photographs captured the courage and anguish of marines in Korea, bringing home the gravity of war. (Indelible Images).(portrait of Capt. F. I. "Ike" Fenton, August 1950)
May 1, 2003... In hilly terrain near Puson, South Korea, Capt. F. I. "Ike" Fenton of the U.S. Marines hears more bad news. It is August 1950, and his company has been fighting all night. More than half of his 190 men are wounded or killed. They are out of...

Iraq's unruly century: ever since Britain carved the nation out of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the land long known as Mesopotamia has been wracked by instability.
May 1, 2003... As summer temperatures headed toward 105 degrees on the morning of August 23, 1921, some 1,500 dignitaries assembled in the courtyard of a government building on the banks of the Tigris River for a coronation. British Army officers and colonial...

Just looking.(Canusa St. runs along Canada/United States border)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... SIDE BY SIDE "I think we should all be one country," says Canadian Francyne Tougas (blue vest, white shirt), a resident of half-mile-long Canusa (pronounced Canoosa) Street, which runs along the border between Canada and the United States. On...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... Readers respond to the March issue: HOT TRANSCRIPT I commend you for publishing "The Hunt for Hot Stuff," about the efforts of international experts to track down abandoned radioactive devices in the former Soviet Union. Last spring,...

This month in history: May anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 100 YEARS AGO: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL Born May 29, 1903, in England, Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope moves to the U.S. at age 4. The vaudevillian turned "master of the one-liner" stars in more than 50 films, including seven "Road" pictures with...

Comfort zone: a cardiganed Fred Rogers made every kid feel cozy and warm. (The Object At Hand).
May 1, 2003... At the outset of each episode, he zipped on that trademark sweater, inaugurating a new day on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the Pittsburgh-based children's TV program that would become the longest-running series in the history of public...

Mystery bumps: scientists knew that alligators' jaws are covered in bumps--but it took biologist Daphne Soares to figure out why. .
May 1, 2003... On a hot july day in a Louisiana marsh in 1999, Daphne Soares was riding in the back of a pickup truck next to a thrashing six-foot-long alligator. Though the reptile was tied up and its mouth cinched shut, Soares couldn't take her eyes off its...

The hand that rules the world: Woodrow Wilson (a self-described mama's boy) made it official in 1914. Happy Mother's Day. (Photo Finish).
May 1, 2003... Mom Debbi Sereseroz holds Megan, 6, waving to departing National Guard dad in February. An Eskimo mother and child pose circa 1905. Shavanaas Begum (India, 1989) lifts for Parveen. JoAnn Salazar (in March) hugs her daughter Amy....

Still ahead of his time: born 200 years ago this month, Ralph Waldo Emerson had some strange ideas about the natural world. Recent research suggests they might even be true. (Presence Of Mind).
May 1, 2003... Within living memory of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the authentic cultural voice of America had spoken, outlining the future of American science, philosophy, scholarship, poetry and even landscape design. Today, many people do not...

Russia's treasure-house: searching for the past on the eve of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, a former foreign correspondent finds the future.
May 1, 2003... Nevsky prospekt, St. Petersburg's main thoroughfare, radiates out from a landmark of neoclassical architecture that once housed the headquarters of the Russian Navy. It was here at the Admiralty, where the swift, gray waters of the Neva River...

James Turrell's light fantastic: the innovative artist has devoted his life to transforming a crater in the Arizona desert into a monument to light.
May 1, 2003... Standing on the rim of an ancient volcanic crater in northern Arizona, with the Painted Desert as a spectacular backdrop, James Turrell surveys all he has wrought. For a quarter of a century, this 60-year-old artist has been transforming the...