Letters
Readers Respond to the January Issue
- By Smithsonian Magazine
- Smithsonian magazine, March 2008, Subscribe
What a great story ("1908"), but why did author Jim Rasenberger end it by dwelling on the negative consequences of the technologies first developed then? I won't buy into that state of mind. I, for one, would much prefer living in 2008 and I expect great things for the future. This is an imperfect world and country, but let's shelve the doom and gloom.
John F. Runion
Binghamton, New York
Defending Norman Mailer
First, a disclosure: I am Norman Mailer's authorized biographer. When Lance Morrow speaks about Mailer's works ("Sound and Fury"), he is disingenuous, at best. Morrow says that Mailer's masterpiece, The Executioner's Song, was assembled from interviews with convicted murderer Gary Gilmore by Lawrence Schiller. True, but Mailer also did hundreds of interviews and spent six months in Utah and dug through court records and psychiatric reports and the like. Shame, shame, Morrow for throwing trashy half-truths on the grave of one of our greatest writers. Irreplaceable and unprecedented, Mailer will long be remembered as the chronicler of the American Century.
J. Michael Lennon
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Lance Morrow's essay gave a well-grounded, brilliant analysis of Mailer. I agree with him that, as time goes by, Mailer's works will have an almost total irrelevance.
Beverly Fowler-Conner
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania
Bragging Rights
I've been lucky to have seen or been to all of the places you chose in "28 Places to See Before You Die." To round out your selections, I would add the Cappadocia region of Turkey and what for me is the most beautiful place on earth, Vietnam's Halong Bay in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Margaret Gampell
Palo Alto, California
I much enjoyed the article about places to see before you die, and I understand that all such lists generate suggestions and complaints. However, I did notice that the number of man-made locations (19) far exceeded the natural (9). I was disappointed not to see Mounts McKinley or Everest, Victoria Falls, Lake Baikal, the Red Sea, the polar ice caps, the Nile River and other natural attractions that, to my mind, surpass any constructed places.
Jimmy Thomas
Jonesboro, Arkansas
Due to the accelerated degradation of earth's environment, future articles about places to see before you die might more realistically be titled, "Before They Die."
Douglas W. Benoit
Winthrop, Maine
Metric Persuasion
As a retired science teacher, I was amazed to read "The Coldest Place" and find all the temperatures given in degrees Fahrenheit. Chemists, physicists and other scientists, not to mention the rest of the world that relies on the metric system, measure temperatures using the Celsius (centigrade) or Kelvin scale. Only the United States retains "English" units. Join the modern world!
John Farnsworth
Canandaigua, New York
Corrections:
The ships pictured on page 44 were not part of the Great White Fleet of 1908, as described. They were cruisers and gunboats from an earlier period.
The Turkish ruins shown on page 91 are not Ephesus, but, rather, the Temple of Trajan at Pergamon.
The temperature chart on page 21 should have listed that water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit and that the moon's daytime surface reaches 253 degrees above zero.
"Among the Spires" lost track of time: prior to the standardization of time in England in the 19th century, when it was 9:05 p.m. in Greenwich it was 9 p.m. in Oxford. We regret the errors. —Ed.
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Comments (2)
I have a photograph of an oil painting of the Battle of Valcour with the "Philadelphia" gunship in the foreground and the "Royal Savage" engaged in battle with a British warship nearer Valcour Island. The Smithsonian has the remains of the Philadelphia which was raised from in front of my house on Lake Champlain in the 30's and kept in a roadside exhibit until moved to the Smithsonian in the 60's. I would like to send you a copy. I have never seen any other attempt to capture the Battle of Valcour Island, 1776 with American forces led by benedict Arnold.
Posted by edmnd s copeland, Ph.D. on May 4,2008 | 03:51 PM
I find it disturbing that your wonderful magazine detracts from its own quality by reporting the past in the future tense. I refer you to your monthly feature "This Month in History" in which all the references are made as if to infer that they are soon to happen.(Not to worry. All the local newscasts follow the same model.) Hopefully, this is not intended to be an example for our children to emulate. Society already bemoans the low level of education in this nation. Please do not, by example, contribute to improper grammar. Also, please hire a professional journalist to pen these articles. You should be embarrassed. Thank you, Dennis Walter
Posted by Dennis Walter on February 27,2008 | 08:16 PM