Smithsonian articles from May 2004

Smithsonian archives from May 2004

Supremely Wilde: how an 1882 portrait of the flamboyant man of letters reached the highest court in the land and changed U.S. law forever.(Indelible Images)(Biography)
May 1, 2004... even with his prodigious talent for notoriety, it is doubtful Oscar Wilde could have inveigled the United States Supreme Court into featuring his image in a landmark judicial decision. But this portrait of Wilde--taken in New York City in 1882,...

As Told at the Explorers Club: More Than Fifty Gripping Tales of Adventure.(book)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Lyons Press, $24.95 i once had the pleasure of spending Christmas week in a stately house in Shropshire, just across the border from Wales. Though milady, the mother of a friend and my hostess, was a bit daft and the house a bit drafty,...

Cafe society: San Francisco's quirky neighborhood hangouts offer a window into the life of the city.(destination America)
May 1, 2004... most american cities don't really have cafes; it's Starbucks or nothing--an odd shortcoming in a country that regards itself as the land of choice and plenty. But San Francisco offers up a glorious exception: the city holds too many cafes to...

Before the mast: aboard the sailing ships of the Maine Windjammer fleet, passengers voyage into America's maritime history.(destination America)
May 1, 2004... "where shall the winds take us today?" John Foss, captain of the American Eagle, likes to pose this question each morning as his 92-foot, two-masted schooner gets under way on Maine's Penobscot Bay. The vessel might skim down Eggemoggin Reach...

Fielder's choice: in rural Iowa, baseball fans and film buffs alike flock to a divided field of dreams.(destination America)
May 1, 2004... for 15 years now, Dyersville, Iowa, a small farm town (pop. 4,000) 25 miles west of Dubuque, has been a place where a certain breed of American romantic converges. Some 60,000 visitors find their way here each year, traveling country roads and...

Hit the road: trim a sail! Hit a pitch! Relive the past! Get a buzz! (Coffee, of course.) Here, eight beckoning variations on the great American summer vacation. Their secret ingredient? The unexpected.(destination America)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Where to go this summer? That's what we at Smithsonian were wondering one frigid dark day last winter. Rugged? Fancy? Beach? Mountain? East? West? Yikes! Without even leaving the lower 48, we realized, a person with that good ol' American...

O'Keeffe country: in Santa Fe, a museum devoted to the pioneering artist pays homage to her genius.(destination America)(The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, New Mexico)
May 1, 2004... georgia o'keeffe first cast her eye on the seductively dramatic vistas of New Mexico in 1917. Eventually, the high-desert terrain north of Santa Fe--a landscape she painted with an obsession born of genius--would become known as O'Keeffe...

Time capsule: the 18th-century village of Old Salem, North Carolina, endures as a lovingly restored urban oasis.(destination America)
May 1, 2004... it's not so very crowded at the Winkler Bakery in Old Salem, North Carolina, which is to say the line has not quite snaked out the door. Inside, the yeasty fragrance of fresh bread mingles with the sweet scent of two local delicacies--Moravian...

Living tradition: inhabitants of Whidbey Island, Washington, hold fast to their richly layered heritage.(destination America)
May 1, 2004... should you ever find yourself driving the back streets of Whidbey Island, Washington, at two in the morning, don't be surprised if you have to share the road with a house--and an early 20th-century one at that. Over the past couple of years,...

Yellowstone: in the beginning: in the 1870s, intrepid adventurers explored the magnificent wilderness that would become our first national park.(destination America)(Column)
May 1, 2004... the most prized diversion in Yellowstone National Park these days is climbing a steep staircase up to the highest gable of Old Faithful Inn, the cathedral-like timber lodge in the Upper Geyser Basin that has been a landmark architectural...

A fresh look at Diane Arbus: a new retrospective featuring an unprecedented number of the troubled photographer's images makes the case for her innovative artistry.("Diane Arbus Revelations" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California)
May 1, 2004... Diane Arbus' work was included in only a handful of museum exhibitions before she died, by her own hand, at the age of 48 in 1971. Nevertheless, she had already gained renown with a series of unforgettable images--a "Jewish giant" looming over...

Medicine from the sea: from slime to sponges, scientists are plumbing the ocean's depths for new medications to treat cancer, pain and other ailments.(Fred Rainey )
May 1, 2004... fred rainey was standing aboard the 100-foot-long Spree about seven miles off the marshy Louisiana coast, rocking on four-foot swells. All around, oil-rig platforms rose like skyscrapers from the heaving waters of the Gulf of Mexico's "oil...

Rocking the cradle: in Iran, an archaeologist is racing to uncover a literate Bronze Age society he believes predates ancient Mesopotamia. Critics say he may be overreaching, but they concede his dig will likely change our view of the dawn of civilization.(Yousef Madjidzadeh)
May 1, 2004... swathed modestly in a black head scarf and wearing black sunglasses and a black visor, Akram Gholami is standing in the bottom of a trench, carefully brushing at a tiny section of an exposed earth wall. It is one of the last days of a six-week...

Night vision.(Just Looking)(art installation near freeway in Bath, England by Richard Box)
May 1, 2004... Earlier this year, passersby on a freeway in Bath, England, encountered a rare spectacle: a hillside "planted" with 1,301 unwired fluorescent tubes that became more visible as the sun set. Richard Box, a 34-year-old artist-in-residence at the...

The law that ripped America in two: one hundred fifty years ago, the Kansas-Nebraska Act set the stage for America's civil war.(history)
May 1, 2004... Abolitionist john brown--failed businessman, sometime farmer and full-time agent, he believed, of a God more disposed to retribution than mercy--rode into the Pottawatomie Valley in the new territory of Kansas on May 24, 1856, intent on...

Back story: you may beat out a bunt, but there's no running away from the past.(The Last Page)(Column)
May 1, 2004... i was trying to get rid of a name, a childhood nickname. I had moved from Indiana to start a new job in Georgia, and I was making certain I'd not inadvertently brought it with me from North to South. I methodically went through my mental...

Costs of living longer.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... i enjoyed "Kenyon's Ageless Quest," by Stephen Hall, about research into the aging process by Cynthia Kenyon and others and the possibility of extending the human life span. But what about the social, economic and environmental consequences? If...

Remembering Bataan.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... donovan webster's article "In Their Footsteps," about the Bataan Death March, evoked memories of my uncle who survived the march but ultimately succumbed to malaria at Camp O'Donnell in the Philippines. But I was dismayed to learn about the...

Fair duel?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... in the picture of the pistols used in the Burr and Hamilton duel, one is a flintlock and the other a percussion cap. Was that their original condition, or had one been "modernized"? It hardly seems fair to duel with an unmatched pair. ...

Running the canal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... when the transfer of the Panama Canal ("Panama Rises") began, the naysayers said Panamanians would not be able to operate the canal as well as the Americans. Your article shows otherwise and affirms that Panamanians have improved on the canal's...

Statue stature.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... "return of a giant" says the 55-foot-tall Vulcan monument in Birmingham, Alabama, is "the largest statue of any kind in the United States after the Statue of Liberty." That would be news to residents of Butte, Montana, who are watched over by...

Beets us.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... "no chive left behind," about produce illiteracy, struck a chord. My husband once asked a grocery-store clerk, "Do you know where I can find ginger root?" The young man replied, "Which department does she work in?" SHERRI L. BERGMAN ...

Bubley couple.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... unbeknownst to us, the photographer Esther Bubley ("Private Eye") took a picture of me and my fiancee on the steps of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in 1943 (below) while I was on liberty from my naval station. The photograph was published that...