Smithsonian articles from October 2007

Smithsonian archives from October 2007

Memories ... Of a lost father, an abandoned airplane and a composer's dilemma.(FROM THE EDITOR)
October 1, 2007... JOHN DARNTON--who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage, for the New York Times, of the Solidarity movement in Poland--is writing a book about his father, also a New York Times correspondent. The senior Darnton was killed by shrapnel in 1942 on...

The so-called "sport" of catch-and-release fishing is nothing less than the heartless torture of innocent animals for the questionable pleasure of human beings who should know better ("Fish Story").(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... READERS RESPOND TO THE AUGUST ISSUE The so-called "sport" of catch-and-release fishing is nothing less than the heartless torture of innocent animals for the questionable pleasure of human beings who should know better ("Fish Story")....

Unhooked.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... FISH CAUGHT WITH barbed hooks and then released are often marred by open sores, some of them quite extensive. Barbless hooks can minimize the disfigurement. Anglers should be encouraged to use them as a matter of conscience. Since I switched to...

Papa's Cuba.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... THERE IS A HUGE difference between Ernest Hemingway's Cuba and the Cuba that Valerie Hemingway visited 47 years later. All the customers that shared a daiquiri with Ernest Hemingway in the Floridita or a room in the Ambos Mundos Hotel or any...

Taking Atlanta's temperature.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... I HAVE LIVED in metropolitan Atlanta for 45 years ("Some Don't Like It Hot"). Yes, it's too hot in the summer. But a big plus for me is the multicultural, multiracial population. There have been problems, and still are, but Atlanta is living...

Model cowboy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... MY GRANDFATHER, the artist Allen TupperTrue, was the unnamed model wearing "full cowboy regalia" in the photograph accompanying the "Around the Mall" story about Liza Kirwin's book Artists in Their Studios. But the studio in the photograph was...

Smile. please?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... PSYCHOLOGIST Dacher Keltner misses the point when he says it's alienating for managers to "order their subordinates to smile" ("What's Behind a Smile?"). At my shop, all customers are greeted with a smile. If I had a dollar for every frowning...

Salad days: the author at lunch, New York City, 1949.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
October 1, 2007... FLEUR COWLES, an energetic publisher from a publishing family, decided she wanted a totally new magazine to symbolize the victorious, new America that, as of 1948, was all aglitter in all of the arts, including some where we had had little...

Back from the brink.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Black-footed ferrets )(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Black-footed ferrets were declared extinct in 1979, victims of disease, loss of their prairie habitat, and the poisoning and shooting of their prey, prairie dogs. A few years later, a group of 18 was found in Wyoming. Thanks to captive...

Thinking ahead.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(New Caledonian crows )(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... New Caledonian crows can plan ahead to solve a problem, say New Zealand researchers, who put meat behind bars and gave the birds access to a stick too short to reach the food. Six of seven birds tested used the short stick to reach a longer...

Trees thrive on fear.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Aspen )(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Aspen are particularly tasty to elk and have long suffered from over-browsing in Yellowstone National Park. But now aspen in some areas are making a comeback--thanks to wolves. Though eradicated from Yellowstone in the 1920s, wolves were...

What ravages of time?(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Frozen microbes )(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Frozen microbes found in samples of eight-million-year-old Antarctic ice (right), the oldest ice on earth, are alive--alive!--according to a study led by Rutgers University. True, once the microbes (mostly bacteria) were thawed, they grew and...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(California ground squirrel)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... NAME: Spermophilus beecheyi, or the California ground squirrel. OBVIOUS DEFENSIVE WEAPON: Tail waving. Ground squirrels wave their tails to appear larger to, and thus intimidate, hungry snakes. SECRET DEFENSIVE WEAPON: Tail heating....

Haunted big house.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Eastern State Penitentiary)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... PHILADELPHIA -- With its 30-foot-high stone walls and crenelated towers, Philadelphia's massive, medieval-looking Eastern State Penitentiary has a foreboding air even on a sunny afternoon. But on October nights, the place can be petrifying....

Bats out of hell.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Mexican free-tailed bats )(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... ROCKSPRINGS, TEXAS -- As evening falls, a massive whirlwind of four million bats rises from a cactus-studded limestone ridge, emerging in a flutter of beating wings from a 361-foot-deep cave called Devil's Sinkhole. These Mexican free-tailed...

Wee trees.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(bonsai hawthorn, hornbeam and red maple trees)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA -- This fall's biggest attraction at the state's 434-acre arboretum may be the smallest: tiny trees in seasonal red and gold. Using bonsai techniques on native Appalachian trees such as hawthorn, hornbeam and red...

Wet paint.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Ojai Studio Artists Tour )(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... OJAI, CALIFORNIA -- Setting aside a freshly thrown pot, ceramic artist Bruce Tomkinson turns to his visitors and begins to explain why his work is a contrast of old and new. A mile away, guests at printmaker Linda Taylor's studio find her in...

Yeah, sometimes the traffic can be really baaad.(THIS MONTH'S GUIDE TO NOTABLE AMERICAN DESTINATIONS AND HAPPENINGS)(Trailing of the Sheep Festival)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... KETCHUM, IDAHO -- Every October hundreds of sheep take to the streets of this wealthy ski resort town, plodding past a golf course and multi-million-dollar houses during the Trailing of the Sheep Festival. It has been a four-month journey for...

Have roots, will travel: like the four generations of Angelenos who preceded her, the best-selling author likes to get around.(MY KIND OF TOWN)
October 1, 2007... MANY PEOPLE are lured to Los Angeles because they think it has no history and they can escape their pasts and reinvent themselves. That's not me. My great-great-grandmother--a single mother with an entrepreneurial spirit--came here from...

Interview Fred Spoor, paleontologist, London: the evolution scholar talks about a landmark new study challenging the classic view of human ancestry.(Interview)
October 1, 2007... Anthropologists have said human beings evolved in a straight line from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to us, Homo sapiens, over two million years. But fossil bones found in 2000 near Lake Turkana in Kenya are changing that view, says University...

October anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
October 1, 2007... 50 YEARS AGO AND THEY'RE OFF The space race goes into high gear when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, on October 4, 1957. The 184-pound satellite does little more than beep, but it readjusts...

Health checks.(FROM THE CASTLE)
October 1, 2007... COULD WE INVENT a global stethoscope to check our planet's health? The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) will use rain forests to do just that--measuring changes in the amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) inhaled by three million trees...

Nested interest: electronic eggs hatch new insights into breeding exotic birds at the National Zoo.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Caribbean flamingos)
October 1, 2007... IN EARLY JUNE, the squabbling on Breeding Island begins in earnest as those strutting high-strung stars of the tropics, the Caribbean flamingos, lay fist-size eggs. On many mornings, National Zoo biologist Sara Hallager walks out to the island,...

Jukebox.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... ODE TO A FEDERAL ENTITLEMENT The first recipient of Social Security benefits, Ida Mae Fuller, may not seem a promising subject for a song. But Joe Glazer (1918-2006), known as "Labor's Troubadour" (right), sang "in the footsteps of Ida Mae,...

Art and soul: bluesman Robert Young wasn't just fooling around.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
October 1, 2007... TO BE SURE, it constitutes a conversation piece. The Rube Goldberg-esque curiosity within the musical-instruments collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH) consists of two old-fashioned washboards bolted...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Cheech Marin)(Interview)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... The Smithsonian Latino Center recently honored CHEECH MARIN with a Legacy Award for his commitment to Chicano artists. He spoke with former magazine intern David Zax. PEOPLE THINK OF YOU PREDOMINANTLY AS AN ACTOR, BUT YOU'VE DONE A LOT OF...

Tuareg chic.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... What's the link between European high fashion and the Tuareg, a semi-nomadic Berber group from Saharan Africa? A new exhibition at the National Museum of African Art highlights the story. In 1998, French entrepreneur Jean-Yves Brizot formed a...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... SQUARED AWAY Pioneers traveling west along the Great Platte River Road through the Nebraska Territory in the 19th century packed only necessities, which, to them, included quilts. More than 50 quilts from the era, loaned by Nebraska museums,...

Guerrillas in their midst: in strife-torn Congo, where vicious gangs and rebel militias rule, only about 150 mountain gorillas remain in the wild. This year, eight have been brutally killed.
October 1, 2007... The path to the mountain gorillas is not for the fainthearted. For nearly two hours here in Congo, I have climbed almost vertically up a rocky trail through dense jungle, ever wary of running into the anti-government rebel militias that swarm...

Teaming up with Thoreau: one hundred fifty years after the publication of Walden, Henry David Thoreau is helping scientists monitor global warming.(Henry David Thoreau)
October 1, 2007... THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS of Concord, Massachusetts, didn't think much of young Henry David Thoreau. The cabin on Walden Pond, the night in jail for tax evasion, the constant scribbling in journals--it all seemed like a waste of a perfectly good...

Creatures of the deep! A new book of photographs taken in the ocean depths reveals a world abounding in unimagined life.
October 1, 2007... THE FIRST SIGNS that life can exist in the deepest seas were nets full of mangled goo. The Challenger Expedition, an around-the-world oceanographic study led by Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson in the 1870s, trawled as deep as 26,000...

Swamp ghosts; A journalist's quest to learn more about his father's death in New Guinea in 1942 leads him to another World War II casualty: a U.S. bomber that crashed there the same year.(B-17E Flying Fortress )
October 1, 2007... PAPUA NEW GUINEA--or PNG as it's called, sometimes with affection, sometimes in exasperation--is the kind of place tourist brochures describe as "the land that time forgot." It would be just as accurate to call it "the land that forgot time."...

The curiosity of cats: the record-breaking musical, which opened on Broadway 25 years ago, turned Andrew Lloyd Webber into a global impresario. But the smash hit underscored a conflict that dogs him to this day.
October 1, 2007... EVEN FOR BROADWAY, it was a grand opening--and a grander gamble. As audiences poured into the Winter Garden Theatre on the evening of October 7, 1982, for the American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, they knew they were getting a first...

Back to the figure: recognizable forms are showing up in the works of a new wave of contemporary painters.
October 1, 2007... THE DEATH OF PAINTING was first predicted in the middle of the 19th century, when the advent of photography seemed to snatch reality out of the painter's hand. "If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions," wrote...

Jesse James and me: as a boy, I played the outlaw. Now I know what he really was.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
October 1, 2007... IN AN OPEN FIELD down the road from our Virginia cabin, a single stone chimney stands like an aging sentry amid grazing Black Angus cattle. Since my parents bought the 11-acre retreat in 1948--called Fiery Run for the rainwater that rushes down...