Smithsonian articles from September 2006

Smithsonian archives from September 2006

Climate change: time often shapes perceptions.(FROM THE EDITOR)
September 1, 2006... ELIZABETH WILSON, who wrote our cover story ("The Queen Who Would Be King," p. 80) about the controversial female pharaoh who ruled Egypt c. 1479-1458 B.C., lives near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She was often in the...

In the field behind my auntie Josie's home in Ohio.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... READERS RESPOND TO THE JULY ISSUE In the field behind my auntie Josie's home in Ohio, my siblings and I picked quarts of wild strawberries ("Berried Treasure"). Small yet so flavorful. Though we ate as we picked, there were still plenty...

Tomb raider?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... ANCIENT EGYPT and dinosaurs have fascinated me since I was a child. Unearthing dinosaur bones doesn't seem offensive. However, I no longer feel as comfortable about digging up ancient Egyptians ("A Mystery Fit for a Pharaoh"), or any other...

Conservative costs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... I GREATLY ENJOYED the article about preserving wildlife in India and Nepal ("Building an Arc"), and I was struck by how much good a little bit more money would do in the realm of conservation. The article relates how the local people have been...

Food versus fuel.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... MICHAEL POLLAN says that brute-force nitrogen fixation is essential to feeding much of the world's population, but that the energy cost is so great that we need to put a stop to it ("What's Eating America"). It seems to me that the problem is...

Give him a break.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... VACATION ADVOCATE Joe Robinson needs some days off ("Interview"). He's right about Americans being overworked, but he should turn his time and talents to lobbying for better wages, health insurance, education, political election reform, making...

Through the mill: because of a Lewis Hine photograph, Addie Card became the poster child of child labor. But what became of Addie Card?(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
September 1, 2006... SHE LEANS casually on her spinning frame, staring out at the camera, dressed in a filthy work smock. Her bare feet, planted firmly, are slick with black grease. Her left arm rests easily on the huge machinery but crooked at a strange angle, as...

Charlayne Hunter-Gault: her new book says our views of Africa are outdated.(Interview)
September 1, 2006... Reporter Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who was one of the first African-American students to attend the University of Georgia, in 1961, has just published her second book, New News Out of Africa. WHAT'S THE NEW NEWS? People in America aren't...

Dept. of surveillance.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(honesty research)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... People tend to be on best behavior when they're being watched. But what if the only eyes staring at them are on paper? In a University of Newcastle lounge where paying for coffee was optional, researchers placed a picture of either flowers or a...

Meal planning.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(meercat feeding)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Meerkats, those sociable mongooses in southern Africa, have a daunting favored dish: scorpions. So how do meerkat pups learn to eat without getting stung? Gradually, according to a new University of Cambridge study. The researchers found that...

Weather mavens.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(mangabey behavior)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Researchers from Scotland's University of St. Andrews followed a group of mangabeys in Uganda's Kabale Forest as the animals foraged for figs and the larvae that infest the fruit. Once the animals ate the takings from a particular tree, they...

Detangling history.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(oldest known spider and web)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Two pieces of Spanish amber contain the oldest known spider web (trapped wasp, inset) and orb-weaving spider; both specimens are at least 110 million years old. The new findings, along with an analysis of the proteins in spider silk, indicate...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(orchid reproduction)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... NAME: Holcoglossum amesianum, a tree-dwelling orchid INNOVATION: Mateless mating YOU CAN'T MEAN: Actually, we can. Other flowering plants pollinate themselves, but only with help from birds, insects, wind, gravity or sticky secretions....

Five years later: tourists flock to the World Trade Center site, but for New Yorkers, 9/11 is history.(MY KIND OF TOWN)
September 1, 2006... THE TOURISTS STILL ARRIVE at the edge of the void. In summer, they wear shorts and-shirts and baseball caps. In winter, they bundle up against the harbor wind. They don't gawk. They make no stupid jokes. "It was right over there, Ruth," a...

September anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
September 1, 2006... 40 YEARS AGO THE FINAL FRONTIER Captain Kirk and the intrepid crew of the USS Enterprise set out to "boldly go where no man has gone before" when "Star Trek" premieres September 8, 1966. Poor ratings get the spacey TV series canceled after...

Big questions.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Anselm Kiefer)(Thumbnail biography)
September 1, 2006... There are no pearly gates or shiny halos in Anselm Kiefer's heaven. His II-by I8-foot painting The Hierarchy of Angels--its steel-blue surface is overlaid with chalky yellow paint, pitted by lumps of lead and affixed with an airplane...

Room with a view.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(National Zoo's Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Due to open September 20 after two years of construction, the National Zoo's Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat adds some 12,000 square feet to the outdoor space available to Tian Tian (above, inspecting building progress this past March), his mate,...

Trailblazers: this month, pandas and other exotic creatures go on view at the National Zoo's new Asia Trail.(FROM THE SECRETARY)
September 1, 2006... ON SEPTEMBER 20, when the spectacular new Asia Trail at the National Zoo opens, many visitors will rush right to its centerpiece, the Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat, to see the Zoo's super-celebrity panda cub Tai Shan. But some will no doubt get...

Simonized: in 1978, a new electronic toy ushered in the era of computer games.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(Simon)
September 1, 2006... MANY WHO STUDY tipping points in social history contend that the oft-noted generation gap spontaneously erupted in the mid-1960s, when Jack Weinberg, a 24-year-old leader of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California, told followers not...

Q & A: Steve Fossett donated his Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer to the National air and space museum. On March 3, 2005, after 67 hours aboard the craft, he became the first person to fly alone around the world nonstop. He spoke with our Katy June-Friesen.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Interview)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN ENDURANCE RECORDS? They're not dependent upon coordination or skill. Instead, they're something that just about anyone can do... with proper planning and training. So I've thrived because all I have to do is make up...

Who's counting?(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(McGuffey Readers)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... 29 McGuffey Readers are in the Smithsonian Libraries. The American primers, first published in 1836 and still in print today, taught figures from Henry Ford to Theodore Roosevelt that A is for Ax.

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
September 1, 2006... THE TAO OF TEA In his 1906 Book of Tea, historian Okakura Kakuzo called Japan's favorite beverage, and the ritual of making it, "a religion of the art of life." Japanese tea bowls (an 18th- to 19th-century vessel) are at the Freer Gallery...

Sleeping with cannibals: our intrepid reporter gets up close and personal with remote New Guinea natives who say they still eat their fellow tribesmen.(Korowai tribe)(Travel narrative)
September 1, 2006... For days I've been slogging through a rain-soaked jungle in Indonesian New Guinea, on a quest to visit members of the Korowai tribe, among the last people on earth to practice cannibalism. Soon after first light this morning I boarded a...

To be or not to be Shakespeare: while skeptics continue to question the authorship of his plays, and exhibition raises doubts about the authenticity of his portraits.(Biography)
September 1, 2006... EVEN IF YOU'RE a regular visitor to London, it's probably never occurred to you to stop in to see William Shakespeare's original manuscripts at the British Museum or Library. That's just as well. There are no original manuscripts. Not so much...

The queen who would be king: was she a scheming stepmother or a strong and effective ruler? History's view of the pharaoh Hatshepsut has been revised.(Biography)
September 1, 2006... It was a hot, dusty day in early 1927, and Herbert Winlock was staring at a scene of brutal destruction that had all the hallmarks of a vicious personal attack. Signs of desecration were everywhere; eyes had been gouged out, heads lopped off,...

Storm warnings: is global warming to blame for the intensity of recent Atlantic hurricanes? While experts debate that question, they agree that more devastating tempests are headed our way.
September 1, 2006... PLUNGING THROUGH A STAND OF POISON IVY, Jeffrey Donnelly wades into Oyster Pond and begins assembling a crude raft. He and two colleagues lash a piece of plywood on top of two aluminum canoes and push off, paddling their makeshift catamaran...

Steeped in history: New York's breathtaking Finger Lakes district has inspired American notables from Mark Twain to Harriet Tubman.(Travel narrative)
September 1, 2006... "IT IS THE LOVELIEST STUDY you ever saw," Mark Twain wrote to a friend about the octagonal hilltop pavilion his in-laws provided him in 1874. Located at Quarry Farm, just outside the town of Elmira in northwestern New York, Twain's aerie...

Encore! Encore! Lorenzo Da Ponte was a hit in Europe: a courtier, a cad, the librettist for Mozart's finest operas. But the New World truly tested his creative powers.(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)(Biography)
September 1, 2006... THERE SEEMED nothing remarkable about the Italian passenger who stepped off the packet boat Columbia as it docked in Philadelphia on June 4,1805, except that he was tall and, for a man in his mid-50s, prematurely toothless. During the two-month...

The wrath of Khan: even IRS auditors will tremble in my presence!(THE LAST PAGE)(Thomas R. Robinson)(Genghis Khan)
September 1, 2006... The first American to be able to claim descent from Genghis Khan has been discovered. He is Thomas R. Robinson, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. --The New York Times, June 6 ME,...