Smithsonian articles from November 2007

Smithsonian archives from November 2007

Consequential: cold winters, hot jaguars and a night to remember.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
November 1, 2007... DAVID HALBERSTAM WROTE 21 BOOKS, including The Best and the Brightest, about the Vietnam War, and The Powers That Be, about the news media. But the author told friends he thought his latest, The Coldest Winter, about the Korean War, was his...

I really enjoyed "Washington & Lafayette," about the friendship between these two men.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... READERS RESPOND TO THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE I really enjoyed "Washington & Lafayette," about the friendship between these two men. Lafayette had great admiration for the newly formed United States of America. Before he died, he arranged to have...

Fast friends.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... JAMES R. GAINES never answers his own question of how the Marquis de Lafayette so quickly ingratiated himself with General Washington in August 1777. Gaines dismisses the father-son explanation as "unsatisfying" and then suggests that both men,...

Restoring Afghanistan.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... ALTHOUGH BILLIONS of dollars in international aid have been poured into rebuilding an Afghanistan shattered by years of war, Afghans remain mostly bystanders at projects planned and implemented by outsiders who come for awhile, do their work...

Kerouac's flat tire.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... "REMEMBERING Jack Kerouac" had me revisiting On the Road. Its outlook now seems very middle-class and adolescent, portraying the onset of the self-absorption or narcissism that has become increasingly typical. The Beats were so focused on...

Cannibal art.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... Dozens of readers were dismayed that we didn't explain the admittedly bizarre 1641 painting of a largely naked Tapuya woman holding a severed human hand and hauling a basket in which a human foot can be seen ("When Portugal Ruled the Seas," p....

Fatal swarm.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... To kill a hornet, Asian honeybees will mob it and generate so much heat that the hornet dies. But Cyprian honeybees fight with a type of hornet that is adapted to hot climates and can withstand such "thermo-balling." According to researchers in...

Dept. of defense.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(department, )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... The oldest known case of chemical warfare was preserved in a drip of sap 100 million years ago. Researchers from Oregon State University and elsewhere found a soldier beetle encased in amber with a larger insect's antenna across its...

Twice bitten.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(moray eels )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Most fish use suction to gulp down prey. But new research shows that moray eels grab food with their jaws--and then launch a second set of jaws (tinted white in the X-ray) to pull prey into the esophagus. Researchers at the University of...

Baby babble.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(female rhesus macaques )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Female rhesus macaques use baby talk, say researchers who observed the interactions of 19 adult female monkeys on a small island off Puerto Rico. The monkeys made grunts and "girneys"--nasal whines--most often when an infant was present. The...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(african elephant)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... NAME: Loxodonta africana, the African elephant. THE ADVANTAGES OF AGE: The older a bull elephant gets, the more successful he is at siring calves, says a new study led by Duke University. WHAT'S THEIR SECRET? Bull elephants grow nearly...

Trunk show: even in 1992, Steve McCurry says, Kabul was full of surprises.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
November 1, 2007... THE RELIC from 1959 was hard to miss. Painted taxicab yellow and battered by the years, the old Chevrolet came lumbering around a corner, cruised majestically down the faded brown streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, and swept past Steve McCurry. ...

Abandoned ship: what really happened aboard the Mary Celeste? More than a century after her crew went missing, a scenario is emerging.(PHENOMENA)
November 1, 2007... THE BRITISH BRIG Dei Gratia was about 400 miles east of the Azores on December 5, 1872, when crew members spotted a ship adrift in the choppy seas. Capt. David Morehouse was taken aback to discover that the unguided vessel was the Mary Celeste,...

Interview Steven Amstrup, wildlife biologist, Anchorage, Alaska: a new study spotlights the plight of the polar bear, but there's still time to help the beloved creature.(Interview)
November 1, 2007... Because of global warming, the polar bear population is likely to shrink to one-third of its current size within 50 years, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The report was coordinated by Steven Amstrup of the USGS Alaska...

Confederate daughter.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Mary Custis Lee )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... RICHMOND, VIRGINIA -- In November 2002, E. Hunt Burke, president of the Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust Company in Alexandria, Virginia, discovered a pair of old steamer trunks in the bank basement. The trunks, which had sat in a vault untouched...

Mingling with manatees.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... CRYSTAL RIVER, FLORIDA -- It's the only place in the country where people are allowed to get up close and personal with the gentle, refrigerator-size manatee. From November to March, as many as 400 West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus...

Strings attached.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Hazelle, Inc. )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI -- As puppet masters go, Hazelle Rollins isn't as well known as Shari Lewis or Jim Henson, but her contribution to the craft is the subject of the quirky Puppetry Arts Institute, a storefront museum a few miles from the...

A glass ceiling to love.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Chihuly Bridge of Glass )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... TACOMA, WASHINGTON -- Spanning Interstate 705, the 500-foot-long Chihuly Bridge of Glass connects the revitalized downtown area with the waterfront and the Museum of Glass, which commissioned the walkway from glass maestro (and Tacoma native)...

A Holocaust lesson, in paper clips.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)( The Children's Holocaust Memorial)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... WHITWELL, TENNESSEE -- This former coal-mining town (pop. 1,600) 15 miles from Chattanooga might seem an unlikely place for a Holocaust memorial. But on the grounds of the Whitwell Middle School sits a German rail car that transported Jews to...

November anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
November 1, 2007... 60 YEARS AGO HUGE FLYING BOAT SEEN OVER CALIFORNIA Millionaire aviator Howard Hughes, 41, puts five years and $25 million to the test when he flies his 218-foot-long, 400,000-pound wooden plane for a mile over Long Beach harbor November 2,...

Beading the way.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Identity by Design an American Indian beadwork exhibition)
November 1, 2007... Made from elk skin and covered in countless blue and white beads sewed on one at a time, the dress is a highlight of the National Museum of the American Indian's "Identity by Design" exhibition, recently extended to August 2008. Perhaps the...

Jukebox.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Paul Robeson's "Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees")(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... THE ROBESON SPIRIT The only known recording of Paul Robeson (1898-1976) singing "Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees" can be heard in the collection On My Journey, the first Smithsonian Folkways release in the African American Legacy...

Small world.(FROM THE CASTLE)(Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries and Legacy: Spain and the United States in the Age of Independence, 1763-1848)(Calendar)
November 1, 2007... TWO EXTRAORDINARY Smithsonian exhibitions help us understand the origins and tapestry of American diversity created by centuries of immigration and international exchange. "Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th & 17th...

Sky king: Pan Am founder Juan Trippe turned Americans into frequent fliers.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
November 1, 2007... AS A BOY, Juan Trippe had witnessed Wilbur Wright's 1909 flight around the Statue of Liberty; as a teenager, he learned to fly. In 1917, he left Yale to become a military pilot. He didn't see combat, but aviation continued to fascinate him...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(questions and answers)(Interview)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... CHIP KIDD, a graphic designer and author, received a 2007 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for one of his innovative book covers. He spoke with the magazine's Jess Blumberg. YOU'VE DESIGNED SOME 1,000 BOOK COVERS. HOW DO YOU KEEP THEM...

News flash.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(New York City's Times Square )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... All the gaudy lights for which New York City's Times Square is known can be traced to an Election Day marvel, Smithsonian archivist Darcy Tell explains in her new book, Times Square Spectacular (HarperCollins). On November 7, 1904, the New York...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(museum exhibits)(Brief article)(Calendar)
November 1, 2007... CLOSE ENCOUNTER Paris-based Romanian artist Mircea Cantor put a live deer and a live wolf in a small gallery and filmed the result. (No, the wolf doesn's attack.) His 2005 Deeparture is at the Hirshhorn until December 9. PATRIOT ACTS ...

Unearthing Egypt's greatest temple: archaeologists are finally grasping the true grandeur of the monument built 3,400 years ago by Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
November 1, 2007... "HEYA HUP!" Deep in a muddy pit, a dozen workers wrestle with Egypt's fearsome lion goddess, struggling to raise her into the sunlight for the first time in more than 3,000 years. She is Sekhmet--"the one who is powerful"--the embodiment of the...

The Gates of Paradise: restored to their Renaissance glory, panels from the gilded doors sculpted by the Florentine master Lorenzo Ghiberti tour the United States for the first time.
November 1, 2007... MICHELANGELO LIKENED THE GILDED BRONZE DOORS of Florence's Baptistery of San Giovanni to the "Gates of Paradise." The phrase stuck, for reasons that anyone who has seen them will understand. Combining a goldsmith's delicacy with a foundryman's...

A prayer for the Ganges: across India, environmentalists battle a tide of troubles to clean up a river revered as the source of life.
November 1, 2007... A BLUE STREAM spews from beneath brick factory buildings in Kanpur, India. The dark ribbon curls down a dirt embankment and flows into the Ganges River. "That's toxic runoff," says Rakesh Jaiswal, a 48-year-old environmental activist, as he...

On the prowl: long absent from the United States, a few jaguars now roam the wilds along the border with Mexico. How will the crackdown on illegal immigrants affect the big cats?
November 1, 2007... IMPERIAL SAGUARO CACTUSES EMBRACE THE ARIZONA SKY WITH THORN-STUDDED LIMBS, presiding over a realm of spiny ocotillos, prickly pear, cat's-claw and all manner of skin-shredding brush. Halfway up a rock-strewn trail, a young wildlife biologist...

Point. shoot. See: in Zambia, a New York City photographer teaches kids orphaned by AIDS how to take pictures. They teach him a lesson about living.(Klaus Schoenwiese)
November 1, 2007... KLAUS SCHOENWIESE traveled down the road eight miles north of Lusaka, Zambia, through soft hills, still lush from the rainy season, and fields of maize that were beginning to dry. Charcoal sellers whizzed by on bikes. His Land Cruiser turned at...

Turning a new leaf: the story of one man's fall.(THE LAST PAGE)(why do leaves turn)
November 1, 2007... MY FRIEND ALICE and I stood on some boulders overlooking the North Fork of the Santiam River in Oregon. Below us the water pooled, then trickled through a fissure and into the Santiam's whitecapped channel. Moss, boulders, water, blue...