Smithsonian articles from October 2003

Smithsonian archives from October 2003

Tony Blair goes to war: in a new book, a British journalist documents the day-by-day march into conflict in Iraq.(Thirty Days: Tony Blair and the Test of History by Peter Stothard)(Excerpt)
October 1, 2003... "This is your 50th birthday present, Prime Minister," says Strategy Director Alastair Campbell as Tony Blair comes through the front door of No. 10 Downing Street. "Peter Stothard is going to follow you everywhere you go for 50 days." Tony...

Dazzling Dubai: the Persian Gulf kingdom has embraced openness and capitalism. Might other Mideast nations follow?(United Arab Emirates)(Column)
October 1, 2003... At the sheikh rashid terminal of Dubai International Airport--a glittering temple of Ali Baba eclecticism and gateway to this 1,500-square-mile principality on the Persian Gulf--a visitor steps onto a carpet patterned after wind-ruffled desert...

Wise Guys: from absorbing shocks to shock absorbers.(Editor's Note/Gabon and Dubai adventures)(Editorial)
October 1, 2003... To create his striking portraits of animals in a remote rain forest in the West African nation of Gabon ("Portraits in the Wild," p. 60), photographer Carlton Ward Jr. had to handle a lot of slippery frogs, biting insects, poised-for-flight...

Portraits in the wild: in an unexplored region of Africa's Atlantic coast, an innovative photographer captures Gabon's bountiful wildlife.(The Edge of Africa)
October 1, 2003... There is a special place in Africa where elephants, chimps and forest buffalo walk on white sand beaches and hippos swim in the sea. But that's not all that's remarkable about this stretch of Gabon's coast. As the last undeveloped slice of...

On the march.(Just Looking/"trash people" art installation by HA Schult)
October 1, 2003... ON THE MARCH "We live in a trash time, we produce trash and we become trash," says German artist HA Schult. So in 1996, he created 1,000 "trash people," on display in August at the Matterhorn in Switzerland. Shipped from Germany, the figures...

Folk art jubilee: self-taught artists and their fans mingle each fall at Alabama's up close and personal Kentuck Festival.(Kentuck Festival of the Arts)
October 1, 2003... Under the towering pines hard by Alabama's Black Warrior River, the talk at 8 a.m. on an October Saturday is of a forecast of rain. When the exhibited work of 38 folk artists is made of mud, cardboard, sticks and rags--and the exhibit is...

Paper chase: looking up his high-school Permanent Record Card leaves our author curiously grateful for his failings.(The Last Page)(Column)
October 1, 2003... School was where i went to fall short of my potential. I stared out the classroom window or at the carvings on my wooden desk or into the middle distance where, faintly, I could see recess. These reveries invariably ended with the hard sound of...

Fanning the flames.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... U.S. forest service Ranger Kate Klein ("Fire Fight") blames environmentalists for not being able to implement timely fuel-treatment projects. Her frustration is justified. But the Forest Service lost credibility when it insisted through most of...

Necessary reconciliation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Why do chimp males not fight to a conclusion and kill or expel the losers, leaving the alpha with a harem? It would seem better than "an endless round of challenges, fights, coalition-building and brokering of favors," as author Richard Conniff...

Worthy wordsmithery.(Letters)
October 1, 2003... Walter Isaacson suggests that when Benjamin Franklin reviewed a draft of the Declaration of Independence and changed "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to "We hold these truths to be self-evident," he was making the document...

Pulp art gets glossy.(Letters)
October 1, 2003... I was surprised and delighted to see the cover of your August issue ("Guys and Molls"). Pulp art is finally receiving overdue attention and respect. Even 50 years after it first appeared, de Soto's cover painting grabs the reader. The top pulp...

Base deception: in 1821, the French craved a classical Greek sculpture. In the Venus de Milo, they thought they finally had one. Never mind that it wasn't really classical.(Presence Of Mind)
October 1, 2003... The Venus de Milo is the most famous sculpture and, after the Mona Lisa, the most famous work of art in the world. The hordes of visitors who jam into her alcove in the Louvre museum in Paris every day are one proof of her popularity, but more...

The stubborn scientist who unraveled a mystery of the night: fifty years ago, Eugene Aserinsky discovered rapid eye movement and changed the way we think about sleep and dreaming.
October 1, 2003... Night after night Eugene Aserinsky had been working late. He'd dragged an ancient brain-wave machine, an Offner Dynograph, from the basement to the physiology lab on the second floor of Abbott Hall at the University of Chicago. He had tinkered...

Stanley meets livingstone: the American journalist's harrowing 1871 quest to find England's most celebrated explorer is also a story of newfound fascination with Africa, the growing power of newspapers and the United States' emergence as a world power.
October 1, 2003... As America rebuilt following the Civil War, a rift developed with her old nemesis, Great Britain. Superpower Britain and the ascendant United States were at loggerheads over such issues as the sinking of the British-built warship Alabama,...

Eminent Victorians: Julia Margaret Cameron's evocative photographs of Lord Tennyson and other 19th-century British notables pioneered the art of portraiture.(Indelible Images/From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron & Victorian Photography)(Biography)
October 1, 2003... When Alfred, Lord Tennyson first saw the photograph that his friend Julia Margaret Cameron took of him in May 1865, he joked that he looked like a "dirty monk." After the portrait was exhibited, a critic wrote that any court in the land would...

Loving the highway man: six postcards from the summer of 1950 tell a tale of two sweethearts and an America on the move.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)
October 1, 2003... Pete Koltnow is 74 years old, has been married 53 years, and has two daughters and six grandchildren, but when he talks about "wagging his thumb" to get a ride, a youthful sparkle shines in the old hitchhiker's eyes. It's summer 1950, and...

Here's looking at me.(From The Attic/Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower and the First Ladies Hall, National Museum of American History)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... "It's an awfully good likeness," said Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower of a mannequin clad in the gown the first lady wore for Ike's 1953 inaugural ball. (It was coiffed with the famed "Mamie bangs," which the press nagged her to restyle.) Before a...

Here, have a seat: we'll do anything to lend verisimilitude to the American History Museum's new exhibition.(Around the mall: scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond)(Column)
October 1, 2003... Friendly though we are here at the magazine, we don't usually respond to visitors with shirt-off-our-backs effusion. But when the National Museum of American History's Steve Lubar and Laura Hansen dropped by the other day, we did. As they stood...

282.(Who's Counting?/black-footed ferrets)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... 282 BLACK-FOOTED FERRETS HAVE BEEN BORN AT THE NATIONAL ZOO. THESE FURTIVE CREATURES WERE ONCE THE MOST ENDANGERED MAMMAL IN NORTH AMERICA; ONLY 18 EXISTED BY 1985. BUT THANKS TO EFFORTS BY SCIENTISTS AT THE ZOO AND ELSEWHERE, THE SPECIES...

This month in history: October anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.(United States)
October 1, 2003... 75 YEARS AGO: BALLYHOOED BLIMP On October 15, 1928, the Graf Zeppelin lands in Lakehurst, New Jersey, after a 111-hour trip from Germany--the first transatlantic crossing by an airship carrying paying passengers. The hydrogen-filled ship...

Useful gadget: the legendary explorers carried destiny on their expedition. But they could not have fulfilled it without this unprepossessing device.(The Object At Hand/compass invention by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark)(Column)
October 1, 2003... A few years ago, I spent ten days following the trail of T. E. Lawrence through the Jordanian desert, replicating the audacious English officer's famously implausible dash to Akaba. My steed for the trip was a brand-new Land Rover, as...

All aboard! A new multimedia exhibition shows how innovations in transportation spurred the growth of the nation.(From the Secretary/"America on the Move" at National Museum of American History)
October 1, 2003... The largest exhibition ever to be installed in the National Museum of American History will open on November 22, and its ringing invitation will be hard to resist: All aboard! "America on the Move" is a spectacular multimedia presentation of...