People & Places | Smithsonian.com

What Traditional Societies Can Teach You About Life

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 06:19:53 GMT

For most humans living today, it's hard to imagine life without written language, governments and large-scale agriculture. But on the scale of human history, all of these are recent inventions. Until just 11,000 years ago, we lived in small groups, hunting, gathering and practicing simple farming. Tribal warfare was common, life spans were short and strangers were rarely encountered. While that lifestyle might seem to belong to the distant past, it is also the life that our bodies and our brains are adapted to, and it’s a life that some people around the world still live. In his latest book, Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, argues that we also

A Look Into Brazil’s Makeover of Rio’s Slums

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Marcos Rodrigo Neves remembers the bad old days in Rocinha, the largest favela, or slum, in Rio de Janeiro. A baby-faced 27-year-old with a linebacker’s build and close-cropped black hair, Rodrigo grew up dirt poor and fatherless in a tenement in Valão, one of the favela’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Drug-trafficking gangs controlled the turf, and police rarely entered out of fear they could be ambushed in the alleys. “Many classmates and friends died of overdoses or in drug violence,” he told me, sitting in the front cubicle of the Instituto Wark Roc-inha, the tiny art gallery and teaching workshop he runs, tucked on a grimy alley in the heart of the favel

How Artificial Intelligence Can Change Higher Education

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

On the day I met Sebastian Thrun in Palo Alto, the State of California legalized self-driving cars. Gov. Jerry Brown arrived at the Google campus in one of the company’s computer-controlled Priuses to sign the bill into law. “California is a big deal,” said Thrun, the founder of Google’s autonomous-car program, “because it tends to be hard to legislate here.” He said it with typical understatement. An idea that was in its technological infancy a decade ago, when Thrun and his colleagues were racing to develop a vehicle that could drive itself more than a few miles on a desert test course, was now being officially sanctioned by the country’s most p

Why Mass Incarceration Defines Us As a Society

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

It is late in the afternoon in Montgomery. The banks of the Alabama River are largely deserted. Bryan Stevenson and I walk slowly up the cobblestones from the expanse of the river into the city. We pass through a small, gloomy tunnel beneath some railway tracks, climb a slight incline and stand at the head of Commerce Street, which runs into the heart of Alabama’s capital. The walk was one of the most notorious in the antebellum South. “This street was the most active slave-trading space in America for almost a decade,” Stevenson says. Four slave depots stood nearby. “They would bring people off the boat. They would parade them up the street in chains. White planta

Malibu’s Epic Battle of Surfers Vs. Environmentalists

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

When a swell approaches Malibu’s most famous beach, Surfrider, it begins breaking just above a long, curved alluvial fan of sediment and stones near the mouth of Malibu Creek. It then flattens out, rears up again and rounds a small cove before running toward the shore for 200 yards. Here, according to Matt Warshaw’s book The History of Surfing, it “becomes the faultless Malibu wave of legend”—a wave that spawned Southern California surf culture. The plot of the classic 1966 movie Endless Summer was the quest for, in the words of the film’s director-narrator, “a place as good as Malibu.” In 2010, Surfrider was designated the first World Surfin

PHOTOS: The Distressing Worldwide Boom in Cosmetic Surgery

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Photographer Zed Nelson traveled the world documenting how body improvement has practically become a new religion

How a Missile Silo Became the Most Difficult Interior Decorating Job Ever

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:34:45 GMT

Mushroom clouds never figured into the nightmares of Alexander Michael. He was 4 years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and, as a kid in Sydney, Australia, he says, "all the action in the U.S. was far enough away from us … to be amused by the goings-on, not afraid, as we didn’t really understand the scale and consequences.” Meanwhile, halfway across the globe, Richard Somerset, a 21-year-old U.S. Air Force airman training to become a ballistic missile analyst technician, was well aware of the threat of nuclear war. Within a few weeks of the end of the crisis, he was stationed at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in northeastern New York and assigned to an At

The Mooncake: A Treat, a Bribe or a Tradition Whose Time Has Passed?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 03:10:14 GMT

Sienna Parulis-Cook had been living in China for nine months when, in the summer of 2007, she found herself in the belly of the country’s $1.42 billion mooncake industry. A Chinese bakery chain had hired the 22-year-old American to market their contemporary take on the traditional palm-sized pastry that’s widely popular in China. Soon Parulis-Cook was hawking mooncakes door-to-door at Beijing restaurants, and advertising them to multinational corporations that were keen to delight their Chinese employees. “It opened up a whole new world of mooncakes,” said Parulis-Cook from Beijing. Growing up in Vermont, Parulis-Cook had read tales of mooncake that made the palm

Why School Should Be More Like Summer Camp

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:14:03 GMT

In 2004, hedge fund analyst Salman Khan began tutoring his 12-year-old cousin, Nadia, in some basic math concepts. Since he lived in Boston and she in New Orleans, they spoke by telephone, and he used Yahoo! Doodle to work through specific problems. As other family members requested his services, Khan began to post simple video lectures on YouTube. Khan realized he was on to something when strangers began leaving comments, thanking him for explaining things like systems of equations and geometry in a way that finally made sense. In 2009, Khan quit his lucrative job to put all his efforts into Khan Academy. He founded the nonprofit with a lofty goal in mind: to provide a free, world-class

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Revolutionary Leader

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:03:03 GMT

On a steamy evening at the beginning of the rainy season, a crowd of 10,000 packs the street outside the National League for Democracy headquarters in downtown Yangon. Volunteers pass out bottled water in the oppressive heat, while a Burmese vaudeville team performs folk dances on a red carpet. This headquarters, a crucible of opposition to Myanmar’s military junta until it was forced to shut down nearly a decade ago, is about to reopen in a lavish ceremony. At 6 p.m., a white sport utility vehicle pulls up, and Aung San Suu Kyi emerges to a jubilant roar. “Amay Suu”—Mother Suu—chant thousands in the throng. Radiant in an indigo dress, white roses in her hair,

Kok-Boru, the Horse Game You Won’t See at the Olympics

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 04:30:30 GMT

Five autumns ago, on a quiet Monday afternoon in Barskoon, a village on the shores of Issyk Kul Lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan, Ishen Obolbekov was lounging in his backyard yurt when he heard what sounded like the clackety clack of horse hooves smacking asphalt. The noise appeared to grow louder. Obolbekov, who is six feet tall and cuts an urbane figure, walked outside and saw the snow-capped Ala-Too Mountains that tower above his village. Then he watched as about a dozen horse-mounted teenage boys stormed his front yard and presented him with a headless goat. They didn’t need to explain. Obolbekov, 49, co-owns a horse-trekking company and hails from a family of shepherds. He knew the

When Russia Colonized California: Celebrating 200 Years of Fort Ross

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:10:42 GMT

By afternoon, the fog has burned off the hillsides at California’s Fort Ross State Park. The wood-burning oven is loaded with hearty loaves of bread, little boys are climbing on the cannons and dancers hold hands as they circle in the grass, singing a lilting Russian folk song. The women and girls wear long, brightly patterned dresses, with strands of amber beads around their necks and their hair swept up under colorful scarves-- festive attire for a weekend gathering. The men and boys are dressed in simple white tunics, belted at the waist. Except for the intermittent murmur of traffic winding along the Pacific Coast Highway nearby, this remote stretch of coastline about 90 miles n

There's a New Breed of Forty-Niners Rushing to the Pacific

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Nugget Alley is a fabled fork in the San Gabriel River just an hour outside Los Angeles. Gold prospectors with names like Backpack Dave, Recon John and the Bulldozer are again flocking there, and to California’s other strike-it-rich waterways. In previous lives they were movie lighting techs and Caribbean sport boat captains and penny-stock investors and soldiers. Now all day they hunt for color against gray river rocks. Their ramshackle camps have, by some estimates, doubled over the past four years as the unemployment rate spiked and the precious metal skyrocketed to a record high of more than $1,500 an ounce. Scores of hard-core prospectors work the San Gabriel, and perhaps 50,00

Hope Solo Drops Her Guard

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:12:41 GMT

You are in the loneliest position on the soccer field. You spend agonizing stretches of time unable to do anything but wait and watch—until suddenly you are at the center of a thundering attack. Even then, your actions are tightly circumscribed: Goalies can’t win games, they can only save them. There are few soccer players better suited to the position than the perfectly named Hope Solo. A self-described loner, she is the best player on the U.S. women’s soccer team, and its most outspoken. Solo first talked her way into the headlines in 2007, when she was inexplicably benched for a World Cup match against Brazil. The U.S. lost 4-0, its worst defeat in World Cup history.

Help the Homeless? There's an App for That

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:36:16 GMT

Just over a decade ago, Boston doctors began monitoring a population of 119 homeless people with health problems. The subjects’ average age was 47. Today roughly half of them are dead. That toll is not atypical: a homeless person of any medical background is roughly four times more likely to die than a housed person of the same age. These deaths are often lonely, anonymous affairs. After being warehoused in a city coroner’s office for months, the body may be cremated and buried in a pauper’s field. “Somebody dying on our streets—I think that’s as bad as it gets in America,” says Rebecca Kanis, director of the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a movement of

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Protecting Women From Militant Islam

Wed, 16 May 2012 01:30:00 GMT

In the United States, author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues her work on behalf of Muslim women and girls with her eponymous Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation. She spoke with Smithsonian about the Foundation’s mission and its ongoing efforts to protect Muslim women in this country from oppression and violence. Could you discuss the work of the AHA Foundation, the essence of your goal and what your future plans are? The foundation’s mission is to protect women from violence justified in the name of culture and religion. By religion, first and foremost I mean militant Islam. The violence that these women encounter is the result of their desire to be free. The freedom they seek

Why America is the World's Shelter

Wed, 16 May 2012 01:30:00 GMT

I remember when I was a child in Somalia and my father, who had graduated from Columbia University, would say, “My dream would be to make Somalia like America.” So, the first time I heard about America, it was as a place my father wanted to replicate. I was born into a Muslim family in Mogadishu. It was a place in turmoil. My father, who was a politician and an opponent of the dictator Siad Barré, was imprisoned. He later escaped and when I was 8 we fled after him to Saudi Arabia. It is a theocracy: There is one state, one religion, that practically imprisons women. All Saudi women are under virtual house arrest; a male companion must accompany them whenever they leave

The New Hot Item on the Housing Market: Bomb Shelters

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:44:18 GMT

A decade of disasters, from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to widespread earthquakes, has ignited a boom in the bomb-shelter business. (So has the end of the world, which some claim the Maya pegged for this December.) New reality TV shows, including the Discovery Channel’s “Doomsday Bunkers,” track the phenomenon. And there’s an “exponential” growth in consumer interest, says California-based Robert Vicino, who aims to place 6,000 people in shelters built by his firm, Vivos. A share in his luxurious group bunkers, designed to house hundreds of inhabitants at each of several sites (an Indiana location is finished; a California project is underway) costs $10,0

Inside the Plan to Get 100,000 Homeless Off the Streets

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:36:26 GMT

Homeless shelters became widespread during the 1980s, when an economic recession, the elimination of many single-room occupancy buildings and the closure of some mental institutions led to a homelessness epidemic. With strict curfews and spartan conditions, shelters were meant to be temporary. The logic was that people weren’t ready for permanent homes until their addictions and psychological problems were addressed. For some, this strategy made sense. But many avoided treatment and shuttled in and out of shelters. “It wasn’t working,” says Eric Belsky, a Harvard University housing scholar. “What you needed to do was get people into housing, then provide the

Gripping Photos of Fallen Soldiers’ Bedrooms

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:30:00 GMT

A photographer's images of domestic tranquility pay tribute to U.S. service members

What Happened to Kalinka Bamberski?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:22:36 GMT

The story begins in October 2009, with the kidnapping of Dieter Krombach, who was suspected of murdering his French stepdaughter, Kalinka Bamberski, 27 years earlier, in Germany. Krombach, a German doctor, had been convicted in absentia in a French court in 1995 on the basis of tissue samples that indicated Kalinka had been raped and then given a fatal injection. But the German government claimed the evidence was inconclusive and refused to extradite him. – Joshua Hammer This piece is an excerpt from "The Kalinka Affair" by Joshua Hammer. The full ebook single is available for sale from The Atavist, through Kindle Singles, iBooks, The Atavist app, and other outlets via The Atavist w

Livin' on the Dock of the Bay

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:15:37 GMT

Larry Moyer faced me across a cluttered wooden table in the sitting room of the houseboat Evil Eye. He was wearing a brown suede vest. His eyes gleamed benevolently beneath a purple beret. A white beard billowed down his neck, thick as the smoke from his narrow black cigar. Though Shel Silverstein has been gone 13 years, his spirit seemed to be with us as we relaxed in his former houseboat. Moyer—a filmmaker, painter and photographer who now stewards the Evil Eye—traveled with The Giving Tree author for years, when they worked together as a writer/photographer team for Playboy during the magazine’s first two decades. That was a while ago; Moyer turned 88 earlier this yea

Women: The Libyan Rebellion's Secret Weapon

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Inas Fathy’s transformation into a secret agent for the rebels began weeks before the first shots were fired in the Libyan uprising that erupted in February 2011. Inspired by the revolution in neighboring Tunisia, she clandestinely distributed anti-Qaddafi leaflets in Souq al-Juma, a working-class neighborhood of Tripoli. Then her resistance to the regime escalated. “I wanted to see that dog, Qaddafi, go down in defeat.” A 26-year-old freelance computer engineer, Fathy took heart from the missiles that fell almost daily on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s strongholds in Tripoli beginning March 19. Army barracks, TV stations, communications towers and Qaddafi’s resid

A Fabulous New Luxury Hotel—In North Korea?

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

“Luxury” is not the first word that comes to mind when describing North Korea. But the April 15 centennial birthday celebration of “Eternal Leader” Kim Il-sung is scheduled to include the opening of the tallest and swankiest building in Pyongyang: the Ryugyong Hotel. Official descriptions of the 1,080-foot-high edifice promise 3,000 suites, business facilities, an observation deck and revolving restaurants. Ryugyong translates as “Capital of Willows,” but wags have dubbed it the “Hotel of Doom.” The unsightly pyramidal structure has invited comparisons to an evil castle or an earth-bound Death Star. In earlier years, pundits also called

Words from the Dictionary of American Regional English

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

On to Z!” reads the tombstone of Frederic Cassidy, the first editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). He started the project in 1962, and the dictionary’s last words (Sl-Z) will finally be published this month. Thanks to DARE, we will always know that a “gospel bird” once meant a chicken, “long sugar” was molasses, a “toad-strangler” (a.k.a. “duck-drownder,” “belly-washer” or “cob-floater”) was a heavy rainstorm and “Old Huldy” was the sun. The dictionary includes some 60,000 entries, based in part on thousands of interviews conducted from Hawaii to remotest Maine. Research

The Devastating Costs of the Amazon Gold Rush

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

It’s a few hours before dawn in the Peruvian rainforest, and five bare light bulbs hang from a wire above a 40-foot-deep pit. Gold miners, operating illegally, have worked in this chasm since 11 a.m. yesterday. Standing waist-deep in muddy water, they chew coca leaves to stave off exhaustion and hunger. In the pit a minivan-size gasoline engine, set on a wooden cargo pallet, powers a pump, which siphons water from a nearby river. A man holding a flexible ribbed-plastic hose aims the water jet at the walls, tearing away chunks of earth and enlarging the pit every minute until it’s now about the size of six football fields laid side by side. The engine also drives an industrial

Scandinavians’ Strange Holiday Lutefisk Tradition

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:26:47 GMT

Although the doors don’t open until 11 a.m., the parking lot is already filling up on a Friday morning at Lakeview Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin. Inside, volunteers busily set tables, stir boiling pots and dish out plates of food they’ve been planning and preparing for weeks. Outside, pink-cheeked diners decked in Nordic sweaters head up the steps, eager for their annual taste of lye-soaked cod drenched in melted butter. “I like lutefisk! It tastes good to me,” says Nelson Walstead with a laugh. Walstead, a Norwegian-American, is the chief organizer of Lakeview Lutheran’s annual lutefisk dinner. “It makes me feel good to know we are keeping the

Preparing for a New River

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

The turquoise, snow-fed Elwha River crashes through the cedar forests of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. In the early 1900s, the river was dammed to generate electricity for a nearby logging town, but the dams devastated the Klallam Indians who had lived along the Elwha for thousands of years. The structures blocked the river’s salmon runs and flooded a sacred place on the riverbanks considered the tribe’s creation site. Now the two antique dams are being dismantled—the largest and most ambitious undertaking of its kind in U.S. history. Demolition began this past September and will take three years to complete. It will free up some 70 miles of salmon habitat and al

Artisanal Wheat On the Rise

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Under the warm August sun, the wiry, lushly bearded farmer moves at a slow walk through the field, swinging his scythe in a steady rhythm, the tawny stalks of wheat falling to one side in neat rows. From time to time he pauses to hone his curved steel blade on the stone he keeps in a belt pouch. He is followed by three or four young women, who gather the felled stalks by the armload, picking out the stems of mayweed and ragweed, tying the wheat into sheaves, and standing up the sheaves into shocks that will dry and ripen in the sun until they in turn are assembled into circular head-high ricks that will resist the autumn rains until the time to bring the harvest indoors for threshing. Civ

Vivian Maier: The Unheralded Street Photographer

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Brian Levant’s mother, brother and sister were waiting to give him a ride home from the skating rink one day in the early 1960s when the neighbors’ nanny appeared. “I was coming toward the car,” Levant recalls, “and she just stuck the lens in there in the window and took a picture.” Residents of the Chicago suburb of Highland Park had gotten used to the nanny doing that, along with her French accent, her penchant for wearing men’s coats and boots, and the look and gait that led children to call her “bird lady.” Her real name was Vivian Maier, and she wore a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera around her neck, more body part than accesso

California’s Disappearing Apple Orchards

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:33:29 GMT

Sonoma County is among the most esteemed wine-growing areas in the world, but it used to be famous for a different crop. Located just north of San Francisco, this region of rolling hills, vast dairy spreads and conifer forests flanking the coast was once the heart of a thriving apple industry. In its heyday in the early and mid 20th century, more than 13,000 acres of apple orchards blanketed the county. These groves consisted of scores of varieties and supported hundreds of farmers. But one by one, Sonoma County’s apple farmers are giving up. Though apples are the nation’s most popular fruit, they are relatively worthless in Sonoma County, where wine grapes draw more than ten

Lincoln, Nebraska: Home on the Prairie

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

The thing you have to understand about Lincoln is that it falls under the radar. Unless you’re from Nebraska—or possibly South Dakota or Iowa—it’s probably not a place you’d think of visiting, much less moving to. No matter how unaffordable life becomes in Brooklyn or Portland or Austin, Lincoln is unlikely to turn up on a list of “unexpected hipster destinations.” But, being extremely unhip, I moved there anyway. In 1999, when I was 29, I traded New York City for it and stayed nearly four years. This was a strange thing to do, and it perplexed a lot of people, particularly because I did not, contrary to some assumptions, go there for school or a g

A New Crisis for Egypt's Copts

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:49:15 GMT

Fakhri Saad Eskander leads me through the marble-tiled courtyard of the Church of St. Mina and St. George in Sol, Egypt. We pass a mural depicting St. George and the Dragon, climb a freshly painted staircase to the roof and gaze across a sea of mud-brick houses and date palm trees. Above us rises a white concrete dome topped by a gold cross, symbols of Coptic Christianity. The church—rebuilt after its destruction by an Islamic mob four months earlier—has a gleaming exterior that contrasts with the dun-brown townscape here, two hours south of Cairo. “We are grateful to the army for rebuilding our church for us,” says Eskander, a lean, bearded man of 25 who wears a gr

What Became of the Taíno?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

If you have ever paddled a canoe, napped in a hammock, savored a barbecue, smoked tobacco or tracked a hurricane across Cuba, you have paid tribute to the Taíno, the Indians who invented those words long before they welcomed Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492. Their world, which had its origins among the Arawak tribes of the Orinoco Delta, gradually spread from Venezuela across the Antilles in waves of voyaging and settlement begun around 400 B.C. Mingling with people already established in the Caribbean, they developed self-sufficient communities on the island of Hispaniola, in what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic; in Jamaica and eastern Cuba; in Puerto Rico, th

An Image of Innocence Abroad

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

After spending a madcap day in Florence 60 years ago, Ruth Orkin, an American photographer, jotted in her diary: “Shot Jinx in morn in color—at Arno & Piazza Signoria, then got idea for pic story. Satire on Am. girl alone in Europe.” That’s all it was supposed to be. “It was a lark,” says the woman at the center of Orkin’s picture story. Nonetheless, one of the images they made together, American Girl in Italy, would become an enduring emblem of post-World War II femininity—and male chauvinism. The American girl, Ninalee Craig, was 23 years old and, she says, a “rather commanding” six feet tall when she caught Orkin’s

On the Elwha, a New Life When the Dam Breaks

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 06:53:46 GMT

The nation’s largest and most ambitious dam removal will begin this month, when workers start demolishing two antique dams on Washington state’s Elwha River. The Elwha has been cut off from its source in the Olympic Mountains for almost a century, and its once rich salmon runs have dwindled to practically nothing. The dams will be notched down gradually, over three years, and it will take even longer for fish to return in force. Yet the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, whose culture is rooted in the river, already feels the project’s impact. I visited the watershed before demolition began, as some of the tribe’s youngest members awaited the river’s transformation.

Will the Real Juan Valdez Please Stand Up?

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:29:40 GMT

Strolling past the colorful shops in the colonial town of Salento, in the heart of Colombia’s eje cafetero, or Coffee Triangle—the country’s main coffee-growing region—I’m struck by its intrinsic beauty. Both sides of the narrow street are lined with one- and two-story whitewashed structures, some with balconies and most with doors and window sills saturated in deep red, oranges and blues. A young mother and baby occupy a bench in front of one of the local trinket shops. Across the road, a teenage couple walks arm in arm by a café selling potato-stuffed rellenas and chorizo. But there is one person I spot that really gets my heart pumping. Leaning in t

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete. Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and

The Struggle Within Islam

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

After the cold war ended in 1991, the notion of a “clash of civilizations”—simplistically summarized as a global split between Muslims and the rest of the world—defined debates over the world’s new ideological divide. “In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame,” the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote in a controversial 1993 essay for Foreign Affairs. “This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia.” Future conflicts, he concluded, “will not be primarily ideological or primarily econom

Missoula: A Perfect Mix of Town and Country

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Many towns in the West consider themselves “outdoor” towns—suggesting a citizenry eager to bike, run, ski, paddle, hunt, fish, hike, backpack, float and camp. Missoula, Montana, is one of these towns, but it possesses some indefinable spirit that keeps it from being confused with any other. Many of the West’s outdoor towns lie farther south, and closer to larger population centers. Missoula still has space around it. In autumn, Missoula swells to some 67,000 souls, but just when you think it will tip over into a seething metropolis, it contracts; students from the University of Montana flee for winter or spring break. In summer, people head for Yellowstone, Glacier

Inside the ER at Mt. Everest

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:44:58 GMT

A middle-aged woman squats motionless on the side of the trail, sheltering her head from the falling snow with a tattered grain sack. Luanne Freer, an emergency room doctor from Bozeman, Montana, whose athletic build and energetic demeanor belie her 53 years, sets down her backpack and places her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Sanche cha?” she asks. Are you OK? The woman motions to her head, then her belly and points up-valley. Ashish Lohani, a Nepali doctor studying high-altitude medicine, translates. “She has a terrible headache and is feeling nauseous,” he says. The woman, from the Rai lowlands south of the Khumbu Valley, was herding her yaks on the popu

Where Agatha Christie Dreamed Up Murder

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

On a crisp winter morning in Devon, England, sunlight streams through the floor-to-ceiling French windows of the manor house called Greenway, the secluded estate where Agatha Christie spent nearly every summer from 1938 until her death in 1976—and which opened to the public in February 2009. Gazing beyond a verdant lawn through bare branches of magnolia and sweet-chestnut trees, I glimpse the River Dart, glinting silver as it courses past forested hills. Robyn Brown, the house’s manager, leads me into the library. Christie’s reading chair sits by the window; a butler’s tray holds bottles of spirits; and a frieze depicting World War II battle scenes—incongruous

The Timeless Wisdom of Kenko

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Around the year 1330, a poet and Buddhist monk named Kenko wrote Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)—an eccentric, sedate and gemlike assemblage of his thoughts on life, death, weather, manners, aesthetics, nature, drinking, conversational bores, sex, house design, the beauties of understatement and imperfection. For a monk, Kenko was remarkably worldly; for a former imperial courtier, he was unusually spiritual. He was a fatalist and a crank. He articulated the Japanese aesthetic of beauty as something inherently impermanent—an aesthetic that acquires almost unbearable pertinence at moments when an earthquake and tsunami may shatter existing arrangements. Kenko yearned for a

Women in Science

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:29:30 GMT

Smithsonian spotlights the women that are changing the face of scientific research

Myanmar's Young Artists and Activists

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note, April 3, 2012: The election of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—the face of her nation’s pro-democracy movement—to Parliament opens a dramatic new chapter in Burma’s journey from oppressive military rule. Her supporters, from young artists seeking freedom of expression, to a generation of activists long committed to the struggle against the ruling generals—believe that a sea change is overtaking their society. We wrote about her supporters in March 2011. The New Zero Gallery and Art Studio looks out over a scruffy street of coconut palms, noodle stalls and cybercafés in Yangon (Rangoon), the capital of Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country for

A Mega-Dam Dilemma in the Amazon

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

The town of Puerto Maldonado lies about 600 miles east of Lima, Peru, but locals call it the Wild West. Gold-buying offices line its main avenues. Bars fill the side streets, offering beer and cheap lomo saltado—stir-fried meat and vegetables served with rice and French fries. Miners and farmers motorbike into the sprawling central market to stock up on T-shirts and dried alpaca meat. Garbage and stray dogs fill the alleyways. There’s a pioneer cemetery on the edge of town, where its first residents are buried. And Puerto Maldonado is booming. Officially, it has a population of 25,000, but no one can keep up with the new arrivals—hundreds each month, mostly from the Ande

The Surprisingly Exciting World of Mushroom Picking

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:26:17 GMT

It’s ten minutes past 7 p.m. on a Friday in Eugene, and I’m squeezed into a folding chair in a crowded basement classroom at the University of Oregon, staring at a table covered with mushrooms. People are still pushing into the room, filling the chairs and settling themselves cross-legged on the floor. The air is thick with the smell of fungi. All around, I overhear snatches of conversation as old friends and new acquaintances swap lore and advice: “Forget hiking anymore,” one white-haired woman in a fleece jacket and boots tells the graduate student sitting near her. “You’ll always be looking down!” We’ve all assembled to listen to Ed Frede

The Secrets Behind Your Flowers

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

In 1967 David Cheever, a graduate student in horticulture at Colorado State University, wrote a term paper titled “Bogotá, Colombia as a Cut-Flower Exporter for World Markets.” The paper suggested that the savanna near Colombia’s capital was an ideal place to grow flowers to sell in the United States. The savanna is a high plain fanning out from the Andean foothills, about 8,700 feet above sea level and 320 miles north of the Equator, and close to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Those circumstances, Cheever wrote, create a pleasant climate with little temperature variation and consistent light, about 12 hours per day year-round—ideal for a crop

Seeing Dubai Through a Cell Phone Camera

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

For years Joel Sternfeld roamed the country with the sort of camera that rests on a tripod and usually requires the photographer to compose each shot carefully from beneath a black drape. Beginning in the late 1980s he became known for photographs that examined how Americans related to one another and to their environment—his best-known book, American Prospects (1987), highlighted incongruities between people and places, such as a woman sunbathing with warships in the far background, or a firefighter buying a pumpkin while a house burns. But for his most recent project, he went to Dubai and took pictures in shopping malls with an iPhone. This new direction was, in fact, a logical

Catching the Bamboo Train

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

We were a few miles from the nearest village when we ran out of gas. The motor, a small thing perched on the back of a queen-size bamboo platform, spat out a few tubercular-sounding coughs and gave up. There were three of us riding this Frankenstein’s pump trolley, known in Cambodia as a norry, including my interpreter and the conductor, a short, elderly man with sunbaked skin and the permanent squint of failing eyesight. The morning was wretchedly hot, and in addition to a long-sleeved shirt and pants to block the sun, I wore a hat on my head and a scarf around my face. One could stay dry when moving along, the oncoming air acting like a mighty fan. But as the norry rolled to a slow

Highlights From “Infinity of Nations”

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:50:20 GMT

A new exhibition explores thousands of years of artwork from the Native nations of North, Central and South America

A Short Walk in the Afghan Countryside

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:46:43 GMT

After a week in Kabul, I traveled by van to the Bamiyan Valley, most famous, in recent history, for being the place where the Taliban blew up two giant stone Buddhas in 2001. I planned to visit and maybe offer a little help to the Bamyan Family Park, an enormous enclosed garden with flowers and caged parakeets and swing sets and fountains, where Afghan families—especially women—can stroll and play. My friend Marnie Gustavson oversees the park, but she was stuck in Kabul running the venerable PARSA, a nonprofit that’s helped widows, orphans, the wounded and other Afghans since 1996, and she couldn’t come along. “Be sure you get out and walk around,” she

Searching for Buddha in Afghanistan

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Clad in a safari suit, sun hat, hiking boots and leather gloves, Zemaryalai Tarzi leads the way from his tent to a rectangular pit in the Bamiyan Valley of northern Afghanistan. Crenulated sandstone cliffs, honeycombed with man-made grottoes, loom above us. Two giant cavities about a half-mile apart in the rock face mark the sites where two huge sixth-century statues of the Buddha, destroyed a decade ago by the Taliban, stood for 1,500 years. At the base of the cliff lies the inner sanctum of a site Tarzi calls the Royal Monastery, an elaborate complex erected during the third century that contains corridors, esplanades and chambers where sacred objects were stored. "We're looking at wha

Resurrecting the Czar

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Valentin Gribenyuk trudges ahead of me through a birch and pine forest outside Yekaterinburg, Russia, waving oversize mosquitoes from his neck and face. The woods close in around us as we follow a trail, stepping over rotting tree trunks and dark puddles. “Right here is the Old Koptyaki Road,” he says, pointing to a dirt and gravel path next to a gas pipeline. “This is where the assassins drove their truck.” We stop at a spot where nine timbers are embedded in the ground. A simple wooden cross stands vigil. “The bodies were found buried right [at the site marked by] these planks.” Like many Russians, Gribenyuk, a 64-year-old geologist, has long been obs

In Sicily, Defying the Mafia

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Until recently, Ernesto Bisanti could not have imagined he would face down the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing)—the Sicilian Mafia. In 1986 Bisanti started a furniture factory in Palermo. Soon after, a man he recognized as one of the neighborhood’s Mafiosi visited him. The man demanded the equivalent of about $6,000 a year, Bisanti told me, “ ‘to keep things quiet. It will be cheaper for you than hiring a security guard.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t want to see you every month, so I will come every June and December, and you will give me $3,000 each time.’ ” Bisanti accepted the deal—as had nearly all the shop and business owners in the city.

Shooting the American Dream in Suburbia

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Bill Owens spent the late 1960s and early ’70s as a photographer for the Livermore Independent News, a thrice-weekly newspaper serving towns and communities east of San Francisco Bay, some of which were being swallowed by new housing developments. In those clusters of cookie-cutter tract houses, freshly painted and sodded, Owens faced a daunting task. “I worked all week taking pictures for the newspaper, which often sent me to places where there weren’t any images,” Owens recalls. “But I still had to come back with a picture.” Over time, Owens got to know the people in the new houses, and he discovered their devotion to the American dream—“

In Haiti, the Art of Resilience

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Six weeks had passed since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 230,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million others homeless. But the ground was still shaking in the nation’s rubble-strewn capital, Port-au-Prince, and 87-year-old Préfète Duffaut wasn’t taking any chances. One of the most prominent Haitian artists of the past 50 years was sleeping in a crude tent made of plastic sheeting and salvaged wood, fearful his earthquake-damaged house would collapse at any moment. “Did you feel the tremors last night?” Duffaut asked. Yes, I had felt the ground shake in my hotel room around 4:30 that morning. It was the second straight night of

The Pathway Home Makes Inroads in Treating PTSD

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

They went off to war brimming with confidence and eager for the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. They returned, many of them, showing no visible wounds but utterly transformed by combat—with symptoms of involuntary trembling, irritability, restlessness, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, emotional numbness, sensitivity to noise, and, all too often, a tendency to seek relief in alcohol, drugs or suicide. “Families and friends are shocked when one of these guys comes back,” says Fred Gusman, a social worker and mental health specialist now serving as director of the Pathway Home, a nonprofit residential treatment center in Yountville, California, where active and

The Sport of Camel Jumping

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Among the members of the Zaraniq tribe on the west coast of Yemen are, apparently, the world’s only professional camel jumpers. “This is what we do,” says Bhayder Mohammed Yusef Qubaisi, a champion bounder. The presumably ancient sport was recently documented by Adam Reynolds, a 30-year-old photojournalist from Bloomington, Indiana. Reynolds spent six months in Yemen before being deported this past May, he believes for photographing leaders of a secessionist movement. Politically, Yemen is troubled, with a repressive but weak government beleaguered by insurgents in the largely lawless northern and southern regions. U.S. authorities have expressed concern that a large num

Poll: Americans Predict Life in 2050

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

A Smithsonian/Pew poll finds optimism about science and social progress despite worries about the environment and population growth

Los Jetsons

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Experts predict the U.S. population will become increasingly diverse, with the greatest gains among Latinos.

President Barack Obama: Why I’m Optimistic

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

There is, of course, no way of knowing what new challenges and new possibilities will emerge over the next 40 years. There is no way of knowing how life will be different in 2050. But if we do what’s required in our own time, I am confident the future will be brighter for our people, and our country. Such confidence stems largely from the genius of America. From our earliest days, we have reimagined and remade ourselves again and again. Colonists in the 1750s couldn’t have imagined that 40 years later, they would be living in a nation, independent of empire. Farmers in the first decades of the 19th century couldn’t have imagined that 40 years later, their continent would

The Changing Demographics of America

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

Estimates of the United states population at the middle of the 21st century vary, from the U.N.’s 404 million to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 422 to 458 million. To develop a snapshot of the nation at 2050, particularly its astonishing diversity and youthfulness, I use the nice round number of 400 million people, or roughly 100 million more than we have today. The United States is also expected to grow somewhat older. The portion of the population that is currently at least 65 years old—13 percent—is expected to reach about 20 percent by 2050. This “graying of America” has helped convince some commentators of the nation’s declining eminence. For examp

The Age of Peace

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

One overlooked benefit of aging populations may be the prospect of a more peaceful world. Demographers have found that developing nations with “youth bulges”—more than 40 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 29—are 2.5 times more prone to internal conflict, including terrorism, than countries with fewer young people, largely because of high unemployment combined with youthful exuberance and vulnerability to peers. “The more young people you have, the more violence you have,” says Mark Haas, a political scientist at Duquesne University who has spent the past three years studying how aging patterns among major world powers will affect U.S. securi

A Youth Renaissance for Native Americans

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

“Ooooh, look at that!” Shahela exclaims. My daughter and I watch in fascination as an enormous grayish-purple cloud sweeps over the golden-brown rolling hills of the plains, cascades through the expansive sky and merges with the yellow horizon. At that moment, I’m awe-struck by the power of the season changing from winter to spring, and I realize the spectacle would not be as beautiful without the dark gray cloud on the horizon. I’m always inspired by the rebirth of the seasons. After I was born to my biological mother, Rose, of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, I was reborn within days to my adopted parents, Barb and Earl, in a white middle-class home in

Melinda French Gates on Saving Lives

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

“We decided we would use our money to help give everyone, no matter where they live, the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life,” Melinda French Gates tells Smithsonian. One of the few people in the world who can say such a thing and mean it literally, Gates is a co-chair of and, by most accounts, the conscience of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy. It was in 1994 that Melinda French, then a Microsoft executive, married the company’s founder and chairman, Bill Gates. The couple launched the foundation that same year with a donation of stock worth $94 million, and has since made contributions valued at $28 billion.

Vuvuzela: The Buzz of the World Cup

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:55:18 GMT

Players taking to the pitch for the World Cup games in South Africa may want to pack some extra equipment in addition to shinguards, cleats and jerseys: earplugs. The earplugs will protect against the aural assault of vuvuzelas. The plastic horns are a South African cultural phenomenon that that when played by hundreds or thousands of fans, sounds like a giant, angry swarm of hornets amplified to a volume that would make Ozzy Osbourne flinch. South African fans play the horns to spur their favorite players into action on the field. “It’s really loud,” says John Nauright, professor of sports management at George Mason University and the author of “Long Run to Free

Delicious Wild Mushroom Recipes

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:08:04 GMT

Wild Mushroom Risotto with Oregon White Truffle Oil From the Joel Palmer House in Dayton, Ore. Serves 10 as a small starter or 4 for a main course. ½ oz dried porcini 1 qt. water 1 tsp. sugar 1 tbsp. salt 1 tbsp. soy sauce ¼ lb. unsalted butter 1 cup long grain rice ½ oz. dried onion Grated parmesan cheese 2 oz Joel Palmer House Oregon White Truffle Oil Directions: In uncovered saucepan, bring water, dried mushrooms, sugar, salt and soy sauce to boil. Strain out the liquid and reserve. Chop the mushrooms finely. In a medium sauté pan melt the butter and add the dried onion and rice. Stir for 1 minute then add the reserved mushroom liquid. Cook uncovered an

Shanghai’s European Suburbs

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:15:11 GMT

Chinese urban planners are building new towns with a foreign flair, each mimicking architecture from Europe’s storied cities

Kurdish Heritage Reclaimed

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

In the breathtakingly rugged Turkish province of Hakkari, pristine rivers surge through spectacular mountain gorges and partridges feed beneath tall clusters of white hollyhock. I’m attending the marriage celebration of 24-year-old Baris and his 21-year-old bride, Dilan, in the Kurdish heartland near the borders of Syria, Iran and Iraq. This is not the actual wedding; the civil and religious ceremonies were performed earlier in the week. Not until after this party, though, will the couple spend their first night together as husband and wife. It will be a short celebration by Kurdish standards—barely 36 hours. Neither eating nor drinking plays much of a role at a traditi

Breeding the Perfect Bull

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

There once was a bull, an astonishing bull with a handsome, wide muzzle, stunning scrotal circumference and a square frame solid as a sycamore. He was the son of Cherokee Canyon, the grandson of Make My Day—a noble pedigree. The cowboy who designed him, who chose the semen, selected the dam, prepared and inseminated the uterus, named him Revelation. “We don’t intend to present this bull as divine,” the cowboy, Donnell Brown, would write in his 2005 sale catalog, “but we do count it a blessing to have raised him.” Brown was a salesman by nature, but not given to hyperbole. He believed in his heart that Revelation, at just a year-and-a-half old, could beco

Joshua Hammer on “In Sicily, Defying the Mafia”

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:30:26 GMT

Berlin-based author and freelancer Joshua Hammer is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian, having written, just in this last year, about Kashgar’s imperiled old quarter, antiquities smuggling in Mali, Sherlock Holmes’ London and a new approach to the electric car. For the October issue, he reports on the anti-Mafia movement in Sicily, led by organizations like Addiopizzo, a group of business owners working, as its name suggests, to bid goodbye to the pizzo, or the protection money the mafia has long forced them to pay. What drew you to this story? I’ve been interested in the mafia for years. My father was a journalist and author, and he specialized for many years in org

Photographing Baltimore's Working Class

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The man habitually carried a compass to find the sun on cloudy days; toilet paper to diffuse the light of his flashbulbs; and a machete to deal with unsightly vegetation—and heaven knows what else—that got in his way. But A. Aubrey Bodine once said his favorite tool was his alarm clock. To take advantage of morning light, the Maryland photographer often rose before dawn and set out for the Baltimore waterfront, where the big freighters might be ferrying sugar, bananas or, as on the day Longshoremen was shot in 1955 at the B&O railroad pier, rubber. “He’d go down there in the middle of the night sometimes, with thousands of dollars of camera equipment,” hi

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Writers, particularly novelists, are linked to place. It’s impossible to think of Charles Dickens and not to think of Dickens’ London; impossible to think of James Joyce and not to think of Joyce’s Dublin; and so with Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor—each is inextricably linked to a region, as to a language-dialect of particular sharpness, vividness, idiosyncrasy. We are all regionalists in our origins, however “universal” our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take

Capturing Appalachia's "Mountain People"

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Esther Renee Adams was born on her grandmother’s birthday, June 2, and was named for her, though eventually, after “Mamaw” started calling her “Nay Bug” (because she was scared of ladybugs), everyone else did, too. No granddaughter loved her grandmother more. Mamaw could take the smart out of a wasp sting and hold her own in bubble-gum-blowing contests. She was always game to slice into the Fourth of July watermelon a few days early. Mamaw died of emphysema in July 1990, when Nay Bug was 7. “Half of me died, too,” she says. Mamaw was laid out in her own home. In the mountains of eastern Kentucky, such “country wakes” could last for da

Joyce Carol Oates on "Going Home Again"

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of numerous novels, short-story collections, essays, plays and books for children. I recently spoke with the 71-year-old writer about her experience writing about her hometown of Lockport, New York, in “Going Home Again,” which appears in the March issue of Smithsonian. How much had you thought about “home” and what it meant to you prior to this assignment? Probably more than most people. Because I’m a novelist, a writer of fiction, I probably do think of these things fairly often, fairly consistently. I have stories and novels that are set in my hometown area, and childhood memories are written about. We tend to write about wh

The Scurlock Studio: Picture of Prosperity

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Long before a black family moved into the president’s quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. was an African-American capital: as far back as Reconstruction, black families made their way to the city on their migration north. By the turn of the 20th century, the District of Columbia had a strong and aspiring black middle class, whose members plied almost every trade in town. Yet in 1894, a black business leader named Andrew F. Hilyer noted an absence: “There is a splendid opening for a first class Afro-American photographer as we all like to have our pictures taken.” Addison Scurlock filled the bill. He had come to Washington in 1900 from Fayetteville, No

Out of the Guatemalan Gang Culture, an Artist

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Carlos Perez wishes now that he had burned his clothes instead of giving them away. He thinks mostly about his shirt—white, and emblazoned with the image of a dying gang member. “It’s hard to think now that someone else is wearing the shirt, thinking it’s cool,” Perez says as he contemplates a photograph taken of him in 2001 in his family’s yard in the Guatemalan village of Magdalena Milpas Altas. He was 18 then—a budding artist, but also a member of the 18th Street Gang, a violent, illicit Los Angeles-based group that has gained ground in Guatemala and El Salvador. “At the time, he really had a foot in both worlds,” says Donna DeCesa

Finding America's Heart by Harley

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:23:34 GMT

Carl Snow speaks in that reassuring country baritone you tend to associate with seasoned airline captains. That’s only fitting, since he has flown jets for some 40 years now and has trained his share of the aspiring pilots who flock to his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for flight instruction. So when a steady, understated gentleman like Carl Snow tells you that about the best aviation student he ever taught was a middle-aged insurance executive named John Gussenhoven, you take him at his word. “John’s a quick study,” Snow says. “I never had to tell him anything more than once.” By any reckoning, Gussenhoven, 63, is a most unusual man. Though he’s m

Wildlife Trafficking

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Two fire-red birds swooped screeching through the forest, flared their yellow and blue wings and alighted on the upright trunk of a dead palm tree. In the green shadows, the scarlet macaws were dazzling; they might as well have been shot from flamethrowers. One slipped into a hole in the tree, then popped its head out and touched beaks with its mate, whose long red tail pressed against the trunk. The birds eyed us suspiciously. As well they should have. I was with hunters who wanted the macaws' chicks. We were in the Amazon Basin of northern Ecuador, where I had gone to learn more about wildlife trafficking in Latin America. I wanted to get to the source of the problem. I wanted to learn

Looting Mali's History

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

I'm sitting in the courtyard of a mud-walled compound in a village in central Mali, 40 miles east of the Niger River, waiting for a clandestine meeting to begin. Donkeys, sheep, goats, chickens and ducks wander around the courtyard; a dozen women pound millet, chat in singsong voices and cast shy glances in my direction. My host, whom I'll call Ahmadou Oungoyba, is a slim, prosperous-looking man draped in a purple bubu, a traditional Malian gown. He disappears into a storage room, then emerges minutes later carrying several objects wrapped in white cloth. Oungoyba unfolds the first bundle to reveal a Giacometti-like human figure carved out of weathered blond wood. He says the piece, splint

From Brooklyn to Worthington, Minnesota

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He was an altar boy. He played stickball and freeze tag on safe, tree-lined streets. To hear my dad talk about it, one would've thought he had grown up in some long-lost Eden, an urban paradise that had vanished beneath the seas of history, and until his death a few years ago, he held fast to an impossibly idyllic, relentlessly romanticized Brooklyn of the 1920s and '30s. No matter that his own father died in 1925. No matter that he went to work as a 12-year-old to help support a family of five. No matter th

Photographer Robert Morrison’s Montana

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:22:57 GMT

The artist’s eye for the off-kilter and unusual offers a distinctive portrait of the West at the turn of the 20th century

Columbus' Confusion About the New World

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In the year 1513, a group of men led by Vasco Núñez de Balboa marched across the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean. They had been looking for it—they knew it existed—and, familiar as they were with oceans, they had no difficulty in recognizing it when they saw it. On their way, however, they saw a good many things they had not been looking for and were not familiar with. When they returned to Spain to tell what they had seen, it was not a simple matter to find words for everything. For example, they had killed a large and ferocious wild animal. They called it a tiger, although there were no tigers in Spain and none of the men had ever seen one be

The Fatal Consequences of Counterfeit Drugs

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In Battambang, Cambodia, a western province full of poor farmers barely managing to grow enough rice to live on, the top government official charged with fighting malaria is Ouk Vichea. His job—contending with as many as 10,000 malaria cases a year in an area twice as large as Delaware—is made even more challenging by ruthless, increasingly sophisticated criminals, whose handiwork Ouk Vichea was about to demonstrate. Standing in his cluttered lab only a few paces wide in the provincial capital, also called Battambang, he held up a small plastic bag containing two identical blister packs labeled artesunate, a powerful antimalarial. One was authentic. The other? "It's 100 p

Micronations of the World

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:11:04 GMT

Most tourists who cross the bridge from Annapolis, Md., into Eastport don't realize that they're entering another nation. After all, the boat slips and frame houses with carefully tended flower gardens on the east bank of Spa Creek look just like those on the west bank. Signs are written in English, cars drive on the right side of the road, and no border patrol guards in dark sunglasses are checking passports. But the hitchhiker's thumb-shaped peninsula jutting into the Chesapeake Bay is in fact the Maritime Republic of Eastport, lovingly called the MRE. The micronation of some 6,000 people broke away from Annapolis—and Maryland and the United States—in 1998, on Super Bowl Sun

Escaping the Iron Curtain

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In the spring of 1974, Andrej Bozek came up with a plan so risky that he kept it even from his wife. "She probably would have gone to the police," he says. "I probably would have," Irene Bozek agrees. "I thought it was much too dangerous." Andrej, a bus-factory worker in the battle-worn Polish city of Olawa, wanted desperately to get Irene and their three children out from under the repression of the country's Communist regime. But to discourage defection, the Polish government almost never allowed families to leave together, and the Iron Curtain was heavily guarded. So Andrej plotted to take his youngest child, 3-year-old Alec, on a legal, ten-day vacation

Children of the Vietnam War

Fri, 08 May 2009 05:44:23 GMT

They grew up as the leftovers of an unpopular war, straddling two worlds but belonging to neither. Most never knew their fathers. Many were abandoned by their mothers at the gates of orphanages. Some were discarded in garbage cans. Schoolmates taunted and pummeled them and mocked the features that gave them the face of the enemy—round blue eyes and light skin, or dark skin and tight curly hair if their soldier-dads were African-Americans. Their destiny was to become waifs and beggars, living in the streets and parks of South Vietnam's cities, sustained by a single dream: to get to America and find their fathers. But neither America nor Vietnam wanted the kids known as Amerasians and

The Legends Behind the Dragon Boat Festival

Fri, 15 May 2009 06:56:39 GMT

There are many competing explanations for Duanwu Jie, the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar—this year, May 28. All involve some combination of dragons, spirits, loyalty, honor and food—some of the most important traditions in Chinese culture. The festival’s main elements—now popular the world over—are racing long, narrow wooden boats decorated with dragons and eating sticky-rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves, called zongzi in Mandarin, and jung in Cantonese. “Usually Chinese festivals are explained by the traumatic death of some great paragon of virtue,” says Andrew Chittick, a pro

Ka’iulani: Hawaii’s Island Rose

Mon, 11 May 2009 02:55:15 GMT

2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. It was only through a complicated series of events that this independent island kingdom, thousands of miles away from the west coast of North America, joined the United States. One of the pivotal figures in this history is also surprisingly little known, though the story of Princess Ka’iulani is both tragic and inspiring. “Princess Ka’iulani is an important person in the history of Hawaii, but not necessarily because of the things she accomplished in her life,” says DeSoto Brown, archivist at Hawaii’s Bishop Museum. “She never got to be a ruler, so you can’t really look at her politi

Cowboys and Immigrants

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

At Fort Clark in West Texas one night in the 1870s, my great-grandmother Ella Mollen Morrow was asleep in the officers' quarters. Her husband, Maj. Albert Morrow, was several days' ride away, on patrol with his troop of Fourth U.S. Cavalry. A soldier, probably drunk, crawled into the house through a window. My great-grandmother heard him. She took up a Colt .44 revolver and warned him to get out. He kept coming at her. She warned him again. The man kept coming. She shot him—"between the eyes," as a family history said, adding, "No inquiry was held, or deemed necessary." That was the frontier, all right, and I confess that during the presidential campaign last fa

Isfahan: Iran's Hidden Jewel

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The courtyard is coated in a fine brown dust, the surrounding walls are crumbling and the flaking plaster is the same monotonous khaki color as the ground. This decrepit house in a decaying maze of narrow alleys in Isfahan, Iran, betrays little of the old capital's glory days in the 17th century. Suddenly, a paint-splattered worker picking at a nearby wall shouts, waves his steel trowel and points. Underneath a coarse layer of straw and mud, a faded but distinct array of blue, green and yellow abstract patterns emerges—a hint of the dazzling shapes and colors that once made this courtyard dance in the shimmering sun. I crowd up to the wall with Hamid Mazaheri and Mehrdad Moslemzadeh

Tangier Island and the Way of the Watermen

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Tangier Island is an isolated patch of Virginia marshland in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, just south of the Maryland line. For centuries the island has been a community of watermen, the Chesapeake term for people who harvest the crabs, oysters and fish in the bay. "Tangier is a living history. We've been doing this hundreds of years," says James Eskridge, the mayor of Tangier. "We are really not that far from D.C. or Richmond, but you can come here and step back in time." Houses line narrow streets that follow patches of high ground in the town of Tangier, population 535. With no bridge to the mainland, supplies and people arrive on the daily mail boat from Crisf

In Northern Ireland, Getting Past the Troubles

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The crime that still haunts Don Browne took place on a cold, damp evening in February 1985 outside a housing development in a working-class neighborhood of Derry, Northern Ireland. That night, Browne says, he handed over a cache of weapons to fellow members of a Catholic paramilitary unit. The gunmen whom he had supplied pulled up to a row house where Douglas McElhinney, 42, a former officer in the Ulster Defense Regiment—the Northern Ireland branch of the British Army—was visiting a friend. As McElhinney was about to drive away, a member of the hit squad killed him with a sawed-off shotgun. For his role in the murder, Browne, now 49, was sentenced to life. At the time a membe

Up Close at Trinidad's Carnival

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When Northerners think of the caribbean, Trinidad isn't usually the first place that comes to mind. Until recently, Trinidad had few tourist-oriented hotels or restaurants, and its crime rate is so high that visitors are advised not to venture outdoors wearing watches or jewelry, and definitely not at night. What Trinidad does have is carnival—a centuries-old blowout reputedly so wild and intense that it makes Mardi Gras look like a Veterans Day parade. I had a reason beyond hedonism for making the trip. I'd spent nine years researching a book on the carnival tradition, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. Prehistoric rock drawings suggest that costuming and group da

Cindy Sherman: Monument Valley Girl

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The enduring image of the American West is one of endless plains and unpopulated vistas. In a 1904 photograph by Edward Curtis, the monumental cliffs of Canyon de Chelly in northern Arizona dwarf the Navajo horsemen riding by. Then there's the photograph on this page, made in 1979: a lone woman sits on a tree branch in a desolate precinct of Monument Valley, near the border of Arizona and Utah. She—not the landscape—is the subject. Who is she? Why does she look as fresh as a cactus flower? And what is this photograph doing in the same exhibition as the Curtis picture from 1904? The exhibition, "Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West," goes on display March

Barbara Ehrenreich on “Up Close at Carnival”

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:59:31 GMT

Barbara Ehrenreich has been a columnist for the New York Times and Time magazine and has authored several books including This Land is Their Land, Nickel and Dimed and Dancing in the Streets, about the history of collective joy, as celebrated in carnivals and other festivities around the world. She contributes to Harper’s, The Nation and now Smithsonian. “I tend to gravitate towards topics that either infuriate me, and this includes all kinds of things on economic injustice, or fascinate me and arouse my curiosity,” says Ehrenreich. Her feature story “Up Close at Carnival” in Smithsonian’s February issue, falls under the latter. You went into this exper

One Woman's Journey to Save Child Slaves

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:10:11 GMT

Jared Greenberg didn't expect Somaly Mam to meet him at the airport in Phnom Penh. After all, she was an award-winning human rights activist, the head of a multinational organization. He was an idealistic college graduate who'd foolishly promised to raise her a million dollars the week before. "I was so moved that she was there," he says, remembering that first meeting. "Right away, she started talking about trafficking." Born in northeastern Cambodia—she's not sure exactly which year—Mam's life story offers bleak insight into the ravages of poverty. She grew up in a forest village near the Vietnamese border. At 14 she was married to a soldier who abused h

Africa on the Fly

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

The children playing at the elementary school across the street from George Steinmetz's house didn't miss a beat when, grunting in his driveway, he strapped on his flying machine. His outfit was pure New Jersey dad—loafers, blue jeans and a fleece vest—but his hair was wild and the shadows beneath his eyes were as dark as the volcanic craters he likes to photograph from the sky. Steinmetz had been up until 3 that morning dangling from the rafters of his garage to test his new motorized paragliding harness. "To be honest, it's a big pain," he said as his assistant, Jessica Licciardello, yanked at the engine's cord, checking it before we headed out for a test flight. "But, you se

Isfahan: Iran’s Hidden Jewel

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:08:58 GMT

Andrew Lawler has written for newsletters, newspapers, and magazines about topics ranging from astronomy to zoology. He has been a Washington reporter covering Capitol Hill and the White House, a Boston correspondent for a science magazine writing about universities, and now is a freelancer living in the woods of Maine. What drew you to this story? Can you describe its genesis? One morning I woke up in a hotel room in Washington and watched the coverage surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the US. I was appalled by the presentation of Iran as a barbaric state intent on terrorism. Having traveled before in that country, my experience was profoundly different. That

Pakistan's Sufis Preach Faith and Ecstasy

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rosewater mixed with a waft of hashish smoke. Drummers pounded away as celebrants swathed in red pushed a camel bedecked with garlands, tinsel and multihued scarfs through the heaving crowd. A man skirted past, grinning and dancing, his face glistening like the golden dome of a shrine nearby. "Mast Qalandar!" he cried. "The ecstasy of Qalandar!" The camel reached a courtyard packed with hundreds of men jumping in place with their hands in the air, chanting "Qalandar!" for the saint buried inside the shrine. The men threw rose petals at a dozen women who danced in what seemed like a mosh pit near th

The Pygmies' Plight

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Some 50 Pygmies of the Baka clan lead me single file through a steaming rain forest in Cameroon. Scrambling across tree trunks over streams, we hack through heavy undergrowth with machetes and cut away vinelike lianas hanging like curtains in our path. After two hours, we reach a small clearing beneath a hardwood tree canopy that almost blots out the sky. For thousands of years Pygmies have lived in harmony with equatorial Africa's magnificent jungles. They inhabit a narrow band of tropical rain forest about four degrees above and four degrees below the Equator, stretching from Cameroon's Atlantic coast eastward to Lake Victoria in Uganda. With about 250,000 of them remaining, Pygmies are

Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

John White wasn't the most exacting painter that 16th-century England had to offer, or so his watercolors of the New World suggest. His diamondback terrapin has six toes instead of five; one of his native women, the wife of a powerful chief, has two right feet; his study of a scorpion looks cramped and rushed. In historical context, though, these quibbles seem unimportant: no Englishman had ever painted America before. White was burdened with unveiling a whole new realm. In the 1580s, England had yet to establish a permanent colonial foothold in the Western Hemisphere, while Spain's settlements in Central and South America were thriving. Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a series of explo

One Man's Korean War

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

On the June morning in 1950 when war broke out in Korea, John Rich was ensconced in what he calls a "correspondents villa" in coastal Japan, anticipating a long soak in a wooden tub with steam curling off the surface and a fire underneath. Rich's editor at the International News Service had other plans. "Get your fanny back to Tokyo!" he bellowed over the phone. Days later, the 32-year-old reporter was on a landing ship loaded with artillery and bound for Pusan, Korea. Along with notebooks and summer clothes, Rich carried some Kodachrome film and his new camera, a keepsake from a recent field trip to a Japanese lens factory led by the Life magazine photographer David D

Robert Frank’s Curious Perspective

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

It's a safe bet that Robert Frank had never seen a denim-clad black couple on a Harley-Davidson before he came to the United States. Such a sight, like many others the 32-year-old Swiss émigré photographed in the mid-1950s for his quietly earthshaking book The Americans, would have been a novelty to a European, and indeed to many Americans at the time. No doubt what caught Frank's eye was the chance to frame in a single composition three elements—blue jeans, people of color and a Harley—that still symbolize this country for much of the fascinated world. Motorcycles and racial divisions are among the motifs that help to unify The Americans, along with jukeboxes,

Snapshot: Istanbul

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

With a skyline studded with domes and minarets, Istanbul is one of the truly great romantic cities. In Turkey's largest city, the continents of Europe and Asia come together as West meets East, separated only by the 18 miles of the Bosporus Strait that stretches from the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south. And in the less literal sense, on the vibrant streets of this city of 12 million people, miniskirts and trendy boots mingle with colorful Muslim head scarves and prayer beads. Origins: Istanbul is a treasure trove of history still being uncovered. Archaeological remains show that people have inhabited the immediate area of present-day Istanbul for tens of thousand

Abigail Tucker on "One Man's Korean War"

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

What drew you to this story? John Rich is a distinguished journalist who couldn't seem to stop recording history, even in his spare time. His color pictures were meant to be personal keepsakes but they've become invaluable artifacts. His drive to ceaselessly report is impressive and very inspiring. Did you have a favorite moment while interviewing John Rich? John's memories of the war are impeccable and he has not lost the love of details that animated his radio and television broadcasts. It was great whenever he came up names or dates or even quotes from half a century ago. He could remember, for instance, the song the Scottish bagpipers played as they marched past him into battle. Were

Inside Iran's Fury

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

No American who was alive and alert in the early 1980s will ever forget the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, captured American diplomats and staff and held 52 of them captive for 444 days. In the United States, the television news program "Nightline" emerged to give nightly updates on the crisis, with anchorman Ted Koppel beginning each report by announcing that it was now "Day 53" or "Day 318" of the crisis. For Americans, still recovering from defeat in Vietnam, the hostage crisis was a searing ordeal. It stunned the nation and undermined Jimmy Carter's presidency. Many Americans see it as the pivotal episode in the history

The Last Doughboy of World War I

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note: Frank Buckles died on Sunday, February 27, 2011 of natural causes. He was 110 years old and the last surviving American veteran of World War I. Frank Woodruff Buckles was visiting the Kansas State Fair in Wichita one day in the summer of 1917 when, seeing a Marine Corps recruiting booth, he decided to enlist; the nation had just entered World War I. Buckles was only 16, but he told the recruiting sergeant he was 18. The recruiter, perhaps suspecting the boy's real age, offered a fib of his own: he told Buckles he had to be at least 21 to become a United States Marine. Undaunted, Buckles passed another booth and tried his luck with a Navy recruiter. He, too, turned Buckles d

For Studs Terkel, Chicago Was a City Called Heaven

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:26:32 GMT

Editor's Note, May 16, 2012: Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author and historian, reflected on the character of the city of Chicago for us in 2006. He died in 2008 at the age of 96. Today would have been his 100th birthday. Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders... Carl Sandburg, the white-haired old Swede with the wild cowlick, drawled out that brag in 1914. Today, he is regarded in more soft-spoken quarters as an old gaffer, out of fashion, more attuned to the street corner than the class in American studies. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the c

The Cowboy in Winter

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Two black dots appeared in the distance, barely visible through swirling snow. Drawing closer, they resolved into recognizable forms: a man on a horse, a dog running alongside. "That'll be Gerald," said Ken Perry, a rancher who had driven photographer Sam Abell high into the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana in 1985 to search for cowboys still working in the traditional style. "No one else would be up here" in the forbidding Montana winter. In Abell's telling, he grabbed his camera, pushed open the door of Perry's pickup truck and stepped into the cold. There he began shooting pictures of a man named Gerald Mack, a horse named Sky and a dog named Cisco Kid. Th

Swiftboating George Washington

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Back page of the January 3, 1789, edition of the Philadelphia Weekly Gazette: We, the delaware boat veterans, take as our solemn duty before our Creator to make known the truth concerning the Presidential candidate who calls himself George Washington. We beseech the public to read our account. General Washington hath permitted certain myths and misconceptions to arise surrounding his alleged role in the crossing of the Delaware River on December 25, 1776. As pious and patriotic citizens, We have the Means of calling the right of it in question and thereby setting history's record straight. On the night recalled, Each one of us did cross the Delaware. But none did see General Washingt

Stephen Kinzer on "Inside Iran's Fury"

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Stephen Kinzer was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for more than 20 years, holding posts in over 50 countries on five continents. The author of several books, he now teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University and writes on world affairs for The Guardian. I recently caught up with Kinzer to discuss his experience reporting Smithsonian's October feature, "Inside Iran's Fury." What drew you to this story? Can you describe its genesis a bit? I was the New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul during the late 1990s. I was sitting at my desk one day when the telephone rang, and it was my boss from New York telling me that he had chosen me to go t

Climbing the Via Ferrata

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:59:45 GMT

From my lofty perch 8,900 feet above sea level in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the view is spectacular. Towering peaks frame an idyllic Alpine valley, with deep-green pine forests and golden foothills. It’s hard to believe that just 90 or so years ago, during World War I, these mountains were wracked by violence: explosions blew off summits and shrapnel pierced tree trunks. Even now, the ground is littered with bits of barbed wire and other debris from the conflict. Thanks to a network of fixed climbing routes installed during the war, this breathtaking vista and history-rich area is accessible to anyone, not just experienced climbers. The routes, rigged with cables and ropes,

In Seattle, a Northwest Passage

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

I was hired in 1976 to teach at the University of Washington, and so made the cross-country drive to Seattle from Long Island, where I'd been a doctoral student in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. But before leaving for a part of the country completely unknown to me (I'd never been west of the Mississippi), I mentioned to my friend and mentor, the novelist John Gardner, that my wife, newborn son and I were moving to the Pacific Northwest. I remember he paused, pushed his vanilla-colored Prince Valiant hair back from his eyes and looked as if a pleasant image had flickered suddenly through his mind. Then he said, "If my daughter ever married a black man, t

Clan-Do Spirit

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

When I was 20 years old, I crammed my most valued possessions into a big purple backpack and moved to Prague. This was in the mid-1990s, when the city was buzzing with American expats—writers, artists, musicians, bohemians—searching for the modern-day equivalent of Hemingway's Paris. The city's gothic, winding, Escher-like streets were bustling with energy, but when it came to Jewish life, the city was a ghost town. Late at night I would walk through the vacant Jewish quarter, with its many moss-covered tombstones shrouded in fog, and I would feel like the last Jew alive. One evening, I wandered into a dimly lit antiques shop behind Prague Castle and found a tray stacked with

Blue Ridge Bluegrass

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:47:55 GMT

If you drive through Floyd on a Friday evening, you'll have slow down when you pass the country store of this tiny town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Crowds of people mill about the street, many carrying mandolins, banjos, basses and other instruments. In alleys and parking lots they form impromptu groups playing bluegrass and traditional country music. The jam sessions are fluid; a young guitarist backs up a group of old timers and then joins a fiddle player from the Midwest. Inside the spacious Floyd Country Store, bands from across the region play on a small stage and dancers fill the floor. Their tapping feet provide percussion to the music. "The country store has a un

Newcomers

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

If you think the past few issues have been looking pretty smart, as I do, we have Maria Guerrere Keehan, our new art director, to thank. Maria came to us this past January from Fortune, where she had been an associate art director for some 18 years. Her relationship with Smithsonian, however, goes back much further, to the subscription her parents gave her when she was about 14. "I think I read it all through college," she says. That would be the University of Connecticut. As for her design sense, "I hate the word 'elegant,' but I don't know what else to say. I tend to be a traditionalist, and I do try to keep the readership in mind. I really believe that it's not about me

Celebrating American Indian Heritage with Events around the Country

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:15:15 GMT

Read about those Native Americans who shaped our history and culture, from the Battle of Little Bighorn to the contemporary arts

Hispanic Heritage Month Events

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:59:43 GMT

Learn about Hispanic Heritage celebrations in your state

At the Smithsonian

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:20:39 GMT

Learn about Hispanic Heritage celebrations at the Smithsonian Institution

Celebrating American Indian Heritage with Events at the Smithsonian

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:42:56 GMT

Read about those Native Americans who shaped our history and culture, from the Battle of Little Bighorn to the contemporary arts

A Yankee in China

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:41:02 GMT

In 1990, William Lindesay, a British authority on the Great Wall, Beijing, happened upon a copy of The Great Wall of China, a travelogue by William Edgar Geil—very likely the first individual, Chinese included—to traverse the entire Great Wall of China, at the turn of the century . Lindesay himself is the author of Alone on the Great Wall, an account of on his own 1,500-mile excursion in 1987. Lindesay thumbed through the book, transfixed by the photographs, particularly one showing Geil near a tower on a remote section of the wall. Lindesay possessed his own photograph of that very site; however, by the time he arrived there in 1987, the tower visible in Geil's image had vanis

The Great Wall of China Is Under Siege

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:31:39 GMT

The Great Wall of China snakes along a ridge in front of me, its towers and ramparts creating a panorama that could have been lifted from a Ming dynasty scroll. I should be enjoying the view, but I'm focused instead on the feet of my guide, Sun Zhenyuan. Clambering behind him across the rocks, I can't help but marvel at his footwear. He is wearing cloth slippers with wafer-thin rubber soles, better suited to tai chi than a trek along a mountainous section of the wall. Sun, a 59-year-old farmer turned preservationist, is conducting a daily reconnaissance along a crumbling 16th-century stretch of the wall overlooking his home, Dongjiakou village, in eastern Hebei Province. We stand nearly 4

Olympic Athletes Who Took a Stand

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:46:10 GMT

When the medals were awarded for the men's 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Olympic Games, Life magazine photographer John Dominis was only about 20 feet away from the podium. "I didn't think it was a big news event," Dominis says. "I was expecting a normal ceremony. I hardly noticed what was happening when I was shooting." Indeed, the ceremony that October 16 "actually passed without much general notice in the packed Olympic Stadium," New York Times correspondent Joseph M. Sheehan reported from Mexico City. But by the time Sheehan's observation appeared in print three days later, the event had become front-page news: for politicizing the Games, U.S. Olympic offi

Paul Polak, Social Entrepreneur, Golden, Colorado

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:04:12 GMT

Paul Polak has been helping people escape poverty in Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and elsewhere for 27 years. In Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail, the 74-year-old former psychiatrist and founder of International Development Enterprises—a nonprofit that develops low-cost equipment for farmers—argues that simple tools such as a $25 water pump can do more than large cash donations to aid many of the world's "dollar-a-day" people, of which there are an estimated 1.2 billion. Why did you switch from psychiatry to poverty? In working with mentally ill people in Denver, I learned that their poverty was a bigger contributor to their state of mind than psyc

Blood in the Water at the 1956 Olympics

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:43:44 GMT

The scar is slight, just a little half-moon over Ervin Zador's right eye, a remnant from the most famous water polo game in Olympic history. In December 1956, just a month after the Soviet Union had crushed a Hungarian revolt in Budapest, the two nations' teams met in a brutal match at the Melbourne Games that came to be known as the "Blood on the Water" game. Officials ended it before time expired when a Soviet player sucker-punched Zador. A wire-service photograph of Zador, standing on the pool deck in his trunks, dazed, blood streaming down his face, was published in newspapers and magazines around the world. The picture presaged the political nature of the modern Olympics, which would

Challenges

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:45:40 GMT

Former Newsweek foreign correspondent Brook Larmer lived in China for some seven years before moving to Bangkok in 2006, and he had crisscrossed the Great Wall on a number of occasions. "It's not just a structure but a living organism," he says. "It may have been 364 years since the wall served any kind of military function, but its meaning and the way it's defined both in China and abroad continue to evolve." Reporting "Up Against the Wall", Larmer began with an extended hike along what is known as the "wild wall" in Hebei Province, to which he was drawn by news of a man whose family has lived close to the structure for hundreds of years and who is

Growing Up Gambino

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:48:08 GMT

When it comes to the Mafia, there are five infamous surnames: Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese, Bonanno and the best known—my own—Gambino. And that name inevitably provokes two words that I've heard more times than I can count, so I might as well just spare you the breath: Any relation? Truth is, I don't entirely know. Some details lend themselves to speculation. My father was born in Ozone Park, Queens, which was the stamping ground of John J. Gotti, who seized control of the Gambino Family in the 1980s. And when my dad and the rest of the family (that's "family," not "Family") moved to Long Island in 1960, it was James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke, the tru

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:48:10 GMT

George Lopez on humor and race, a national list of festivals and more

Black History and Heritage Month

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:47:38 GMT

Daring slave escapes, civil rights milestones, interview with poet Rita Dove and an essay by President Barack Obama

Celebrating American Indian Heritage

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:47:15 GMT

Read about those Native Americans who shaped our history and culture, from the Cherokees vs. Andrew Jackson to cooking Native foods

John Muir's Yosemite

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

The naturalist John Muir is so closely associated with Yosemite National Park—after all, he helped draw up its proposed boundaries in 1889, wrote the magazine articles that led to its creation in 1890 and co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892 to protect it—that you'd think his first shelter there would be well marked. But only park historians and a few Muir devotees even know where the little log cabin was, just yards from the Yosemite Falls Trail. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, for here one can experience the Yosemite that inspired Muir. The crisp summer morning that I was guided to the site, the mountain air was perfumed with ponderosa and cedar; jays, larks and ground squir

Precarious Lebanon

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Ramzi Ghosn takes a bite of a bruschetta and a sip of red wine and gazes through the windows of his Provençal-style restaurant at the wintry vineyards and snow-blanketed mountains in the distance. Diners at rustic oak tables are sampling the winery's Sunday menu—lentil salad, fondue, quail, apple tarts and arak, a powerful anise-flavored liqueur. In the center of the room a trio of chefs slide baby lamb chops into a brick oven; a Chopin piano sonata plays softly in the background. "I started preparing meals for a few friends, and then it just grew," Ghosn says with more than a touch of pride. It could be Tuscany. But this is the Bekaa Valley, a fertile, sun-drenched

It's in the Bag

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

More than the home run, more than the strikeout, the double play distills the physicality of baseball. The instant the ball is hit, the fielders strive for timing and precision; the base runners strive for speed and disruption. When the lead runner launches himself cleats-first toward second base, it's like flashing a switchblade during a pas de deux. Neil Leifer may appreciate the moment more keenly than even some of the countless major leaguers who have executed the double play over baseball generations. In 1965, Leifer figured out how to get a worm's-eye view of one. His ingenious methodology yielded just one image, but that was enough to capture what no photographer had captured befor

Wonders and Whoppers

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

"I tell you," wrote Marco Polo, "that this palace is of... unmeasured wealth." Its roof is sheathed in gold "in such a way as we cover our house with lead." Even the floors are gold, "more indeed than two fingers thick. And all the other parts of the palace and the halls and windows are likewise adorned with gold." In this gilded domain, he declared, lived the ruler of an island kingdom called Cipangu (that is, Japan), whose waters yielded red pearls "very beautiful and round and large." Scholars believe Europeans had never heard of Cipangu before Polo told them about it in The Description of the World, which he started writing about 1298,

Frybread

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

On Dwayne Lewis's first night home on the reservation in northeastern Arizona, he sat in the kitchen, watching his mother prepare dinner. Etta Lewis, 71, set the cast iron skillet on the burner, poured in corn oil, and lit the stove. She began moving a ball of dough back and forth between her hands, until she'd formed a large pancake. She then pierced a hole in the center of the pancake with the back of her thumb, and laid it in the skillet. The bread puffed, and Etta turned it once with the fork, and flipped it over. It's not easy to fashion the perfect piece of frybead, but it had only taken Etta a few seconds to do it. She'd been making the food for so long that the work seemed part of

Stouthearted Men

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Andrew Curry first heard about plans to replicate a 1,000-year-old Viking ship and sail it from Roskilde, Denmark, to Dublin when he visited Denmark's Viking Ship Museum six years ago. He's been following the Sea Stallion "living-archaeology" project ever since. The idea behind it is to learn more about how the Norsemen were able to travel such long distances and what motivated them to do so. Curry, a freelance writer based in Berlin, visited the ship's crew in Roskilde last spring. "I think the real revelation for me," he says, "was how developed and extensive the Viking explorations were in the East. They had an incredible network in Russia, and there were Viking

You Will Feel No Pain

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:59:42 GMT

Doctors and patients swear hypnosis works, but after years of research we still don't know how

Wild at Heart

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

At 9 a.m. the morning fog is beginning to lift from eastern Yosemite Valley. Thirteen sixth graders are milling around, preparing to set off on a daylong excursion. Bundled in fleece jackets against the chilly air, the kids are chattering about their ultimate destination: Yosemite's "Spider Caves." One rumor—that it's pitch-dark in there—is true. But others just may be exaggerated. "My sister has been there before; she said you can fall a really long way," says 11-year-old Charles Healow. The students have converged here under the auspices of the Yosemite National Institutes, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting young people with this magnificen

Frybread Recipe

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:52:18 GMT

Ingredients: 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/4 cups warm water Extra flour for processing (Yield: 8 to 12 small portions or 6 to 8 larger portions) Directions: To make the dough thoroughly blend the flour with the baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl or on a suitable, clean working surface. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the warm water in the center of the well. Work the flour mixture into the water with a wooden spoon, or use your hands. Gently knead the dough into a ball and form it into a roll about 3 inches in diameter. Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel to prevent drying and let the dough relax for a minimu

Times of Trouble

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

1943 — Lebanon, which was a French territory after World War I, becomes an independent republic. 1958 — U.S. President Eisenhower sends Marines to Lebanon to quell a burgeoning civil war. 1967-1970 — After the Arab-Israeli War, an influx of Palestinian refugees establish camps in Lebanon, which become a base for militants and the nascent Palestinian Liberation Organization. 1975 — Civil war erupts in Lebanon after Christian militants attack a busload of Palestinians in Beirut, igniting sectarian tensions. 1976 — Syrian troops move into Beirut to support the Lebanese army, and end up staying for nearly 30 years. 1978 — Israeli troops invade Lebanon.

About Carleton Watkins

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Carleton Watkins' Yosemite pictures brought him worldwide acclaim and were groundbreaking technically and artistically. He was arguably the most artistic American landscape photographer in the 19th century. In 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the pre-eminent photography critic of the day, praised Watkins and wrote that he had achieved "a perfection of art which compares with the finest European work." In 1868, Watkins was awarded a medal for landscape photography at the Paris International Exposition. In 1873 he received the Medal of Progress award at the Vienna Exposition, and in 1876 he exhibited his pictures at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and at the Chilean Exposit

On the Job: Courtroom Sketch Artist

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:10:25 GMT

In the late 1960s, Andy Austin began sketching scenes and people around the city of Chicago. Her wanderings eventually led her to the courtroom and a job as a sketch artist for a local Chicago television news station. Over the years, she's drawn three indicted governors and countless judges, witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants. While on break from sketching the Tony Rezko proceedings last spring, Austin discussed the famous trials and faces she's depicted and her recent book, Rule 53: Capturing Hippies, Spies, Politicians and Murderers in an American Courtroom (Lake Claremont Press, April 2008). How did you get into this line of work? Well, I was really lucky, because in one impulsive mo

Montague the Magnificent

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

The man who called himself John Montague seemed to appear out of nowhere, simply popping up at the first tee of the public golf courses around Hollywood, California, in the early 1930s. He was a squat and powerful character, somewhere in his late 20s, and he came armed with a pleasant disposition, good looks and a curious set of oversize clubs that featured a driver that weighed nearly twice as much as normal, a monster of a club with a huge head that sent golf balls well over 300 yards down the fairways. Or at least it did for him. He knew how to make that driver work. "My brother Bob first met Montague when he was playing out at Sunset Fields," Bud McCray, a local golfer of n

Big Deals

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Nicholas Schmidle, who lives in Washington, D.C., spent nearly two years in Pakistan as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, which funds overseas writing fellowships. An article Schmidle published earlier this year in the New York Times Magazine about a resurgent Taliban got him in hot water with the authorities, and he left Pakistan precipitately. But the country nagged at him. "I just felt that mainstream Islam in Pakistan was so sorely overlooked," he says. It was mystical, peaceful Sufism, in particular, that held his attention. "While the Taliban were grabbing all the headlines and wielding the big guns, the Sufis had the numbers and represented the true

Black History Heritage Month Smithsonian Events

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:31:48 GMT

Learn about Black History celebrations at the Smithsonian

Black History Heritage Month Events

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:31:58 GMT

Learn about Black History celebrations in your state

Interview with Leigh Montville

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Bestselling sportswriter Leigh Montville was researching Babe Ruth for his 2006 book, The Big Bam, when he came across an exhibition golf match Ruth played with a man named John Montague. The round attracted about 10,000 people, who became so rowdy that the match was called after nine holes, and Montville got the sense that it was the mysterious Montague, whose name didn't ring a bell, that drew the crowd, not the Bambino. "I started looking into it, and he had quite a story," says Montville of Montague, who, it turned out, was a fugitive taking cover as a golf stunt man of sorts in Hollywood. Montville tells the story of the golfing wonder in his new book, The Mysterious Montagu

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:48:48 GMT

For this year's celebration, read about the culture and history of Asian Americans and attend events being held at the Smithsonian

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:39:18 GMT

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Nationwide Events

Fri, 01 May 2009 09:15:57 GMT

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Nationwide Events

Women's History and Heritage Month Events

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:44:25 GMT

Learn about Women's History celebrations in your state

Women's History and Heritage Month Smithsonian Events

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:44:25 GMT

Learn about Women's History celebrations at the Smithsonian

Boxes: A Lesson in Maintenance

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:49:21 GMT

Boxes: A Lesson in Maintenance

Fire and Brimstone

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:52:02 GMT

Even a Dante or a Milton would be struck dumb: inside the crater of the Kawah Ijen volcano lies a landscape bereft of life. A turquoise lake of sulfuric acid bubbles like a sorcerer's cauldron, and the earth belches great plumes of acrid smoke. Here on the eastern end of Indonesia's island of Java, men venture daily into this 7,500-foot volcano's maw in search not of fire but of brimstone, the ancients' term for sulfur. "The fumes are the worst," says Hong Kong-based photographer Justin Guariglia, who captured this hell on film. The rank odor of sulfurous vapors hints at something primal and forbidden. On one occasion, a surge of steam and sulfur dioxide enveloped Guariglia and

Magical Mystery Tour

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:01:17 GMT

The moment he saw the signboard in 1992, National Museum of American History curator Bill Yeingst knew that he had uncovered a watershed artifact of the 1960s. In the company of novelist and counterculture guru Ken Kesey (author of 1962's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Yeingst had turned up an old 3- by 5 ¾-foot wooden panel painted in psychedelic colors. It had announced the arrival of Kesey and his traveling companions, the Merry Pranksters, when their bus rolled into towns and cities across America in the mid-1960s. Yeingst had made his way to Kesey's Oregon farm in search of an even more numinous '60s talisman, the 1939 International Harvester school bus in which Kesey and t

People & Places

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:21:35 GMT

Read about more inspiring individuals at smithsonian.com/people-places

Let Me Be Franc

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

On July 3, 2008, Québécois will rendezvous with dozens of performers—acrobats, musicians, and even a Samuel de Champlain impersonator—at the Place de l'Assembée-Nationale, the plaza in front of Quebec's Parliament, to wish Quebec City bonne anniversaire on its 400th birthday. Nearby, sleek skyscrapers will tower above new Quebec City, while horses pull carriages over cobblestones behind the turreted walls of Old Town Quebec. Over the past 400 years, the city (and province) of Quebec has been controlled by France, Britain, and finally Canada. In 1995, a referendum on sovereignty nearly made Quebec an independent nation. Today, as the province faces declinin

Points of Interest

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Shell Gains North Padre Island, Texas—Every few days in the summer, a dozen or so people gather here on the north beach just before dawn to watch newly hatched Kemp's ridley turtles, the size and color of overbaked gingersnaps, plunge into the surf. While it's estimated that only one in 300 will make it to adulthood, the odds for the survival of this endangered species (Lepidochelys kempi) have improved dramatically in the past 20 years. Thanks to conservation efforts, a record 10,596 hatchlings scuttled off Texas beaches last year. "Humans caused the ridley's decline," says National Park Service biologist Donna Shaver, "and now humans are part of their success."

Crowd Pleasers

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Not even Leigh Montville, who was a sports columnist for the Boston Globe and a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, had ever heard of John Montague, the mystery man who sportswriter Grantland Rice believed, in 1935, just might be the best golfer in the world. Montville stumbled onto this Technicolor, larger-than-life figure while researching a book about Babe Ruth (The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth). An exhibition golf match that Ruth played with Montague on Long Island drew about 10,000 people, most of whom, Montville insists, had come to see Montague, not Ruth. "They had to quit after nine holes because the whole place went crazy," Montville adds, "so I started

Journalists Injured on Assignment

Wed, 21 May 2008 08:31:50 GMT

Update from Paul Raffaele, May 20, Sydney, Australia Three weeks after the incident I thought I'd give a rundown on my situation. I am walking, talking, hearing, and you might not notice any difference except for a slight unsteadiness now and then, a lingering effect of the blast on my ear. My doctor says that will go away with time. My right forearm has a solid piece of shrapnel in it. An orthopedic surgeon at Bagram Air Base operated on it, but as it was near the joint, decided to leave the shrapnel inside. The arm is still painful. I can't even lift a coffee cup without pain, but my doctor says it will eventually settle. I have some scattered shrapnel wounds—entry points&mdash

The Morning After

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

At Yale's commencement, graduates traditionally smoke clay pipes and then trample them to suggest that the pleasures of college life are ended. I participated in this tradition not long ago, but the symbolism didn't hit me with full force until the next morning. At 7 a.m., I punched a time clock and entered the working world. While my peers were off to grand pursuits—backpacking trips through Europe, banking in New York City—I was beginning a two-week stint as a Yale custodian. Thus it came to pass that I was paid to haul out the pleasures of my college life with the trash. I had just pulled an all-nighter, packing and saying goodbye to friends, so I was bleary-eyed when my b

The Fog Lifts

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

One of the things that has long drawn Jonathan Kandell to Maine in general and to the area known as Acadia in particular, he says, is the ebb and flow of the waters. "At low tide, looking down at this incredible Atlantic Ocean from many vantage points in Acadia National Park, you can see people wading. Then within hours it becomes wild, crashing waves on that pink-granite coast. And the way the temperatures change and the fog comes in and out! One minute it's absolutely clear and the next you get this pea soup of a fog; you wonder if it's ever going to lift. But it always does." For Kandell, who reported our cover story ("Acadia Country," p. 46), the highlight was taki

Inside Cape Town

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:16:09 GMT

From the deck of a 40-foot sloop plying the chilly waters of Table Bay, Paul Maré gazes back at the illuminated skyline of Cape Town. It is early evening, at the close of a clear day in December. Maré and his crew, racing in the Royal Cape Yacht Club's final regatta before Christmas, hoist the jib and head the sloop out to sea. A fierce southeaster is blowing, typical of this time of year, and Maré's crew members cheer as they tack round the last race buoy and speed back toward shore and a celebratory braai, or barbecue, awaiting them on the club's patio. Maré, the descendant of French Huguenots who immigrated to South Africa in the late 17th century, is presid

The Sodfather

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:13:30 GMT

Harry Caray is smiling. Gazing down through outsized specs as a sign on a bar's rooftop high above Sheffield Avenue, the late, legendary baseball broadcaster looks as if he's seeing history in the making. Which he is. For on this cold and sunny October morning, Caray's beloved Wrigley Field is finally getting the face-lift it so desperately needs. If all goes well, the Chicago ballpark where Babe Ruth called his home run shot in 1932, where Ernie Banks smacked his 500th in 1970, where hope and heartbreak spring eternal, will look and play better than ever. So, even, might its famously cursed team (and Caray's longtime employer), the Chicago Cubs. The last time the Cubs clinched the World S

Tomatoes in the Bullpen

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:13:03 GMT

A century and a half after the earliest professional baseball clubs formed in America, 30 ballparks across the nation are now springing to life for another season. Several were built or renovated in the last decade, and construction is under way to replace others. A few remain endearingly old-fashioned—but all have come a long way since the days when fans could be impressed by eight restrooms for each gender, as they were when Yankee Stadium first opened in 1923. This utterly unofficial all-star roster of American ballparks was culled from team Web sites, newspaper archives, and several books, in particular The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip, by Josh Pahigian and Kevin O'Connell. Olde

Points of Interest

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:09:42 GMT

Abe's Getaway Washington, D.C.—Despite the convenient option to live where he worked, during his presidency Abraham Lincoln commuted 45 minutes most summer days by horseback or carriage to a cottage three miles from the White House. Now, after a seven-year, $15 million restoration by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the 34-room Gothic Revival house, built in 1842, is open to the public for the first time. It stands on the 270 acres of Soldiers' Home, the first federal retirement facility for disabled war veterans. Though Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur also retreated to the hilltop cottage, an escape from the city's bustle and muggy heat, its significance i

Tips from the Top

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:09:05 GMT

1. Fertilize six times a year.
2. Apply grub control insecticide at
the end of April and in late July or early August.
3. Aerate the lawn once in the spring and again in the fall. It helps increase the percolation rate of water, allows the proper gas exchange and alleviates organic buildup from clippings.
4. Cut the grass every three or four days.
5. Never cut off more than one-third of your plant. Keep your lawn at one and three-quarters to two inches.
6. Bagging beats mulching for those who mow once or twice a week.
7. A typical rotary mower is fine, but sharpen the blade every season.

"Those Aren't Rumors"

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:06:35 GMT

When Tom Fiedler's phone rang the evening of April 27, 1987, he thought it might be another crank call, the kind political reporters get all the time. But Fiedler, a veteran campaign chronicler for the Miami Herald, couldn't ignore the caller's message: "Gary Hart is having an affair with a friend of mine." At the time, Hart, a married U.S. senator from Colorado, was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. In announcing his candidacy two weeks earlier, he had vowed to hew to "the very highest standards of integrity and ethics," but he had since been besieged by rumors—all unsubstantiated—that he was a philanderer. Some of the innue

Doug Fine, Journalist, New Mexico

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:51:26 GMT

Two years ago, public radio reporter Doug Fine bought a 41-acre ranch in southwestern New Mexico to live off the land – and off the grid. In his book, Farewell, My Subaru, due out this month, he says he raised his own food, cut his dependence on fossil fuels and still managed not to "die in a way that would cause embarrassment if the obituary writer did his or her research." How did you come up with this idea? I wanted to see if I could reduce my oil and carbon footprint but still enjoy the amenities that we expect as Americans. In other words, to continue driving a motorized vehicle and have power at my house—not live like a total Grizzly Adams. Can I enjoy Netflix

Year of the Rat

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:12:13 GMT

For billions of people, January 1—the traditional start of the New Year for those following the Gregorian calendar—is just a simple dress rehearsal. The fall of the Waterford crystal ball in Times Square, those earnest declarations of short-lived resolutions, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, for many, these are not the hallmarks of a new year. The real festivities begin when, according to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, the new moon makes its appearance in the night sky, marking the start of the Chinese New Year. China and many other East Asian countries like Vietnam, Korea and Mongolia will celebrate the lunar New Year on February 7. Chinese New Year, one of three, state-

On the Job

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:42:46 GMT

Richard Larrabee has been a lobsterman for most of his life, and despite the long hours and dangerous conditions, he loves the job. A native of Deer Isle, Maine, he has also served as a town officer for Stonington, the island's largest town, for some 16 years. Larrabee talks about the lure of working on the water. How did you get into the business? On my mother's side, all her people were fishermen. And on my grandmother Larrabee's side, all her people were fishermen. It was in the blood. You can go to work on land—we used to run a trap mill, building lobster traps—but always, there's the water. I guess it was just meant to be. What's an average day? I get up around 3 [a.m.]

For Hire: Holiday Window Designer

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:44:47 GMT

Every holiday season, New York’s biggest department stores compete for the most lavish window displays to lure shoppers in from the cold and over to their registers. Simon Doonan, legendary creative director of Barney’s New York, has created the store’s elaborate—and often irreverent—displays for the past 21 years. His avant-garde designs have included caricatures of celebrities from Madonna to Margaret Thatcher, but this year his theme is going green. He tells Smithsonian.com what it takes to create jaw-dropping holiday designs year after year. How did you get your start? Well, like many great jobs, I got here through serendipity. In my 20s, I was very into

Bouillabaisse a la Marseillaise

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:10:52 GMT

From The French Chef Cookbook (Knopf, 1968), by Julia Child: How to make the authentic bouillabaisse is always a subject of lively discussion among French experts; each always insists that his own is the only correct version. If you do not happen to live on the Mediterranean, you cannot obtain the particular rockfish, gurnards, mullets, weavers, sea eels, wrasses, and breams which they consider the absolutely essential fish for bouillabaisse, but you can make an extremely good facsimile even if you have only frozen fish and canned clam juice to work with, because all the other essential flavors of tomatoes, onion or leeks, garlic, herbs, and olive oil are always available. Bouillabaisse

Christmas in Lalibela

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:07:54 GMT

Lalibela is a nondescript town of a few dusty streets atop a rugged mountain some 200 miles north of Addis Ababa. But its 11 monolithic churches—carved out of the red volcanic stone in the 12th century, and now a World Heritage Site—are thronged by pilgrims every Christmas. Because of differences between Western and Ethiopian calendars and traditions, Ethiopians celebrate that holiday on what Westerners know as January 7. When I visited Lalibela for Christmas celebrations this past January, the altitude—8,600 feet above sea level—and the crowds took my breath away: the tunnels and passageways connecting the churches were crammed with devotees bumping into and even

Keepers of the Lost Ark?

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:01:37 GMT

"They shall make an ark of acacia wood," God commanded Moses in the Book of Exodus, after delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. And so the Israelites built an ark, or chest, gilding it inside and out. And into this chest Moses placed stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, as given to him on Mount Sinai. Thus the ark “was worshipped by the Israelites as the embodiment of God Himself,” writes Graham Hancock in The Sign and the Seal. "Biblical and other archaic sources speak of the Ark blazing with fire and light...stopping rivers, blasting whole armies." (Steven Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark provides a special-effects approximation.) Accord

Hear Here

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:31:30 GMT

"Do you have something to catch the baby?" a woman asked Joe Caracciolo, a New York City transit foreman riding the subway on his way to work. He didn't, but the birth on the C train was not about to stop. "It just flew out," Caracciolo recalled. "It was like catching a football." When he announced "it's a boy," the whole car erupted. "Everybody was kissing and hugging." That miraculous moment is one of hundreds collected by StoryCorps, an unusual oral history project that encourages people to share their life experiences with one another in a tiny recording studio in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The boxy 8- by 10- foot structur

The Wizard of Odd

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:31:29 GMT

In the new TV western “Deadwood,” Ricky Jay plays a craps dealer and con man named Eddie Sawyer, and woe to the greenhorn who bellies up to his table. Not since the World War II hero Audie Murphy played a World War II hero has a role been so cunningly cast. Jay is perhaps the world’s greatest sleight-of-hand artist as well as a leading scholar of prestidigitation and illusion. The latest of his four books, published last year, is Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck. To write the history, Jay drew on his own collection of thousands of dice, some centuries old and many loaded, shaved or otherwise altered for cheating. That “Deadwood,” set in an 1870s gold-mi

Everybody Take A Seat

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:29:35 GMT

Maybe you’re sitting on one right now. It has a high back with slats, or arches, or a fan of leaf blades, or some intricate tracery. Its legs are wide and splayed, not solid. The plastic in the seat is three-sixteenths of an inch thick. It’s probably white, though possibly green. Maybe you like how handy it is, how you can stack it or leave it outdoors and not worry about it. Maybe you’re pleased that it cost less than a bottle of shampoo. No matter what you’re doing, millions of other people around the world are likely sitting right now on a single-piece, jointless, all-plastic, all-weather, inexpensive, molded stacking chair. It may be the most popular chair in h

New Leash on Life

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:29:28 GMT

Willi Richards nearly loses his footing when his guide dog, Victoria, lurches forward. It’s a stunning lapse in behavior, one that Richards, 47, has rarely experienced in the three years since Victoria, a black Lab, became his eyes. “Victoria is usually so polite,” he says. She sits through Sunday worship without fidgeting, bearing a beatific expression that disarms the church ladies. Just this morning, Victoria got Richards from his Brooklyn apartment to Grand Central Station and then onto a crowded train with a calm purposefulness not generally evident in rush-hour commuters. But a little over an hour later, when the pair arrive at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility,

Natural Harmony

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:08 GMT

When W. Richard West Jr. was appointed founding director of the Smithsonian's NationalMuseum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 1990, he was put in charge of a great collection and a vision. During the next 14 years, Rick West gradually set the contours of the vision in stone, so that the collection—some 800,000 artifacts gathered largely in the early decades of the 20th century by the American businessman George Gustav Heye—might be displayed as befits its remarkable distinction. NMAI now has three buildings. The HeyeCenter opened in the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan in 1994. The CulturalResourcesCenter, a study and collections facility just outside Washington, was comple

Walden's Ripple Effect

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:08 GMT

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." On the fourth of July, 1845, a month and a half after Sir John Franklin set out from London with the ships Erebus and Terror to find the Northwest Passage, Henry David Thoreau set out from the family home in Concord, Massachusetts, to take up residence at nearby Walden Pond to find himself. He was not yet 28. He had a degree from HarvardCollege, he had tried teaching and failed, and he possessed some skill in surveying. He had almost no money, but he had friends, by f

Fallen Star

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:06 GMT

The curse of the sports photographer has always been redundancy. Year after year, city after city, he travels in a pack, following the competitive grind in pursuit of images that rise above decorating the box scores and go on to shape our collective sports consciousness. David Burnett's first shot at capturing that kind of history came in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Mary Decker, a world-class runner and an American sweetheart in the tradition of Peggy Fleming and Chris Evert, was competing in the 3,000-meter race on the last day of the track-and-field events. No longer "Little Mary Decker," the pigtailed girl-wonder from New Jersey who'd set her first American record

American Odyssey

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:00 GMT

Late one night this past April in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, a window in Cha Vang’s split-level house shattered and a container filled with fire accelerant landed inside. Vang, his wife and three daughters, ages 12, 10 and 3, escaped the blaze, but the $400,000 house was destroyed. “If you want to terrorize a person or send a message, you slash a tire,” Vang, a 39-year-old prominent Hmong-American businessman and political figure, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “To burn down a house with people sleeping in it is attempted murder.” Police believe that the incident may have been connected to two previous near-fatal attacks—a shooting and another

Francis Scott Key, the Reluctant Patriot

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:24:59 GMT

One by one, the buildings at the heart of the American government went up in flames. On the evening of August 24, 1814, British troops torched the Capitol, the Treasury, the President’s House (not yet called the White House). All burned ferociously, as did the structures housing the War and the State departments. Battle-hardened redcoats had overwhelmed and scattered the largely untrained and poorly led American militiamen and regulars deployed to stop them from reaching the capital. President James Madison, along with his attorney general and secretary of state, had fled to safety across the Potomac River. Reporting news of the rout, the LondonCourier crowed: “War America woul

For Sale By Owners

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:24:57 GMT

At the mercantile store in Powell, Wyoming, you'll find clothes to suit almost everyone. In a space about the size of a baseball diamond, lit by long rows of fluorescent lights, hiking boots and blazers fairly jostle with jampacked racks of shimmering prom dresses, belly-baring tops and modest denim skirts. "I serve farmers and ranchers, bankers and lawyers," says manager Paul Ramos. Locals in this isolated town of 5,500 have an understandable proprietary pride in this humble downtown business. After all, they own it. "The Merc" has 429 shareholders, most of whom live within a few blocks of the store. The cooperative is Powell's answer to a big problem faced by many sm

Tongue Tied

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:52:36 GMT

Like most people, Johnny Hill Jr. gets frustrated when he can't remember the correct word for something he sees or wants to express. But unlike most people, he can't get help. He is one of the last people on the planet who speak Chemehuevi, a Native American language that was once prevalent in the Southwest. "It hurts," the 53-year-old Arizonan says. "The language is gone." In that regard, Hill is not alone. The plight of Chemehuevi (chay-mah-WA-vy) is very similar to that of some 200 other Native American languages, according to Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Salem, Oregon. The organization's director, Gregory Anderson, estimated that almost non

India in Peril

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:43:16 GMT

What will it take for a nationwide environmental movement to succeed in India? The environmental awareness has increased, but there's no movement as such on a national scale. I don't think it's appropriate to call it a movement if a few hundred people participate, protest, demonstrate on some issue in a country which has more than a billion people. We can't imagine a nationwide movement till there's a demand from people everywhere and from every walk of life for a clean environment. What are the main obstacles to environmental clean-up? India is faced with numerous natural hazards, multiple health hazards, various combinations of poverty, population explosion, increasing materialism and

A Prayer for the Ganges

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:43:06 GMT

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 leads me along the refuse-strewn riverbank in the vise-like heat of a spring afternoon. We're walking through the tannery district, established along the Ganges during British colonial rule and now Kanpur's economic mainstay as well as its major polluter. I had expected to find a less-than-pristine stretch of river in this grimy metropolis of four million people, but I'm not prepared for the sights and smells that greet me. Jaiswal stares gri

Point. Shoot. See

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:08:00 GMT

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 a sign marked CCHZ. Along this rutted, dirt road were a few small farmhouses, open fields of tomatoes and a fluttering flock of blue finches. Another turn took him to the Chishawasha Children's House of Zambia, an orphanage and school. In a yard shaded by low trees, Schoenwiese barely had time to step outside of his SUV before he was bombarded with hugs. "Uncle Klaus!" the kids shouted. Schoenwiese, a 43-year-old native of Germany who li

Hill of Beans

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:40:39 GMT

Eleven years ago, the Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez traveled through the Dominican Republic's western mountain region, the Cordillera Central, to write a story about the area for the Nature Conservancy. Near the town of Jarabacoa, Alvarez and her husband, Bill Eichner, met a group of struggling farmers growing coffee the traditional way—without the use of pesticides and under shade of trees. In doing so, the organic farmers were bucking a trend at larger area plantations of clearing hillside forests to plant more crops, which destroyed the natural habitat of migratory songbirds and damaged the soil with pesticides and erosion. But they needed help. Alvarez and Eichner offe

For Hire: Master Brewer

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:46:16 GMT

A brewing hobbyist-turned-master, Will Meyers of the Cambridge Brewing Company in Massachusetts brings an innovative approach to American beer-making. The American craft-brewing industry, still in its infancy at a mere 28 years old, is all about ingenuity, and Meyers is at the forefront with his award-winning experimental beers, incorporating unusual ingredients like heather flowers, jasmine and lavender. His heather ale The Wind Cried Mari won Meyers a gold medal at the 2006 Great American Beer Fest, and his Great Pumpkin Ale is a local favorite. He tells Smithsonian.com what it takes to make a great beer. Cheers! How did you get into this line of work? I started as a homebrewer about 1

Memory Blocks

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:37:56 GMT

Visitors to the bustling center of Frankfurt am Main seldom venture as far north as Eschersheimer Landstrasse 405, where Holocaust victims Alfred Grünebaum and his elderly parents, Gerson and Rosa, once lived. But those who do will discover three four-by-four inch simple brass blocks known as stolpersteine—German for "stumbling stones"—embedded in the sidewalk in front of the doorway. Each simple memorial, created by Cologne artist Gunter Demnig, chronicles the person's life and death in its starkest details: Here lived Alfred Grünebaum Born 1899 Deported 1941 Kowno/Kaunas Murdered 25 November 1941 [translated] More than 12,000 such stones have been instal

Hemingway's Cuba, Cuba's Hemingway

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:01:33 GMT

A norther was raging over havana, bending and twisting the royal palm fronds against a threatening gray sky. My taxi splashed through the puddles along the Malecón, the majestic coastal road that circles half the city, as fierce waves cascaded over the sea wall and sprayed the footpath and street. Nine miles outside the city I arrived at what I had come to see: Finca Vigía, or Lookout Farm, where Ernest Hemingway had made his home from 1939 to 1960, and where he had written seven books, including The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream. The Finca Vigía had been my home too. I lived there for six months in 1960 as Hemingway's secretary, havi

FOR HIRE: Volcanologist

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:00:53 GMT

Richard Fiske's 50-year career as a volcanologist includes 13 years with the United States Geological Survey, stints in California's Sierra Nevada, the islands of St. Vincent and Guadalupe, Japan and Hawaii and 30 years with Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Now a year and a half into retirement, Fiske continues to spend five to six weeks per year in the field, collecting enough data and samples to keep him clocking a normal schedule as a geologist emeritus in the museum's Division of Petrology and Volcanology. Fiske's work has helped people understand how and why volcanoes erupt, and now he helps Smithsonian.com understand just what it takes to be a groundbreaking volcanol

Swamp Ghosts

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:51:26 GMT

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." Schedules are not rigidly adhered to. In the capital, Port Moresby, young men with no visible means of support hang out along the roads and markets, giving the place a laid-back feel but making it dangerous at night. The topography of mountains and jungle, beautiful but almost impassable, renders national identity elusive. The six million-plus people—80 percent of whom live in remote villages—speak about 850 l

The New Civil Service

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:00:00 GMT

I watched two men enter the lobby of the Hotel Mowafaq. Most Afghans seemed to glide up the center of the lobby staircase with their shawls trailing behind them like Venetian cloaks. But these men wore Western jackets, walked quietly, and stayed close to the banister. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the hotel manager. "Follow them." He had never spoken to me before. "I'm sorry, no," I said. "I am busy." "Now. They are from the government." I followed him to a room on a floor I didn't know existed and he told me to take off my shoes and enter alone in my socks. The two men were seated on a heavy blackwood sofa, beside an aluminum spittoon.

Undaunted

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:00:00 GMT

In the mud and dust of late-winter Kabul, Rory Stewart leads me through a seedy bazaar along the north bank of the Kabul River. I follow as the British adventurer turned historic preservationist ducks beneath an archway that connects two sagging, earthen-walled houses. Instantly, we've entered the narrow passages of a once-grand neighborhood, constructed in the early 1700s by an Afghan warlord, Murad Khan, and his Iranian-Shia foot soldiers, the Kizilbash. Today, the area—known as Murad Khane—shows the devastation wrought by decades of war and neglect. For the past ten months, Stewart and an international team of architects and engineers, working in concert with a number of Afg

Going With the Grain

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:53:32 GMT

Come September in northern Minnesota, on lakes on the Ojibwa lands, harvesters, two per canoe, pole through thick clusters of wild rice plants growing along the marshy shores. One stands in the stern like a gondolier; the other sits midships and uses a pair of carved cedar "knocking" sticks to sweep the tall grasses over the bow. The rice, still in its hull, falls into the boat with a soft patter. Ricing is a picturesque tradition, but on the White Earth Indian Reservation, where unemployment approaches 50 percent, it spells survival. "It's not a pastime," says Andrea Hanks, a local Ojibwa. "It's work." Each autumn, several hundred Ojibwa harvest more than 50

Americans in Prague

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

William Lobkowicz moved to Prague in 1990, joining the hordes of young Americans drawn to the beautiful Czech capital in the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution that had peacefully toppled the Communist regime a year earlier. Lobkowicz, then a 29-year-old real estate broker from Boston, lived—like most young foreigners in the city—in a cramped, leaky walk-up apartment. But from his centuries' old townhouse off a cobblestone square, he could gaze up at Prague Castle, rising majestically on the hill across the Charles Bridge spanning the Vltava River. Or he could wander the labyrinthine, medieval alleys that inspired novelist Franz Kafka's vision of a city that ensnared its denize

An Evolving Ritual

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

The word "powwow," at least for many non-Native Americans, conjures up images of ceremonial dances practiced around the time of European settlement. But powwows were actually a late addition to Native American culture. It wasn't until the 1870s—after the U.S. government transplanted 67 tribes to Indian Territory, or present-day Oklahoma—that this practice, in an effort to maintain cultural identity, was born. More than 130 years later, intertribal powwows have evolved into a celebration—and competition—of 21st-century proportions, drawing thousands of participants and spectators from across the globe to some of the world's largest venues. Throughout the y

The Pirate Hunters

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note -- April 9, 2009: In the first capture of an American crew in over 100 years, Somali pirates took hostage the captain of the ship Maersk Alabama after an aborted attempt to seize the cargo on board. Smithsonian revisits its August 2007 article on the challenges facing those who are trying to bring an end to the piracy in the Indian Ocean. The attack came after daybreak. The Delta Ranger, a cargo ship carrying bauxite, was steaming through the ink-blue Indian Ocean in January 2006, about 200 nautical miles off Somalia's coast. A crewman on the bridge spied two speedboats zooming straight at the port side of his vessel. Moments later, bullets tore into the bridge, and vapo

Almost a Fairy Tale

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

What drew you to this story? I go to Prague quite often, and I noticed on these trips that I was meeting up with some very interesting Americans. That wasn't really the case in other places, like Warsaw, which is a much bigger city and part of a much bigger country, or Budapest, which would be comparable in population and cultural background. There was something about Prague that seemed to attract Americans who were doing very interesting things. Everybody remembers Prague right after the Velvet Revolution. There were just hordes of young Americans who moved over there, most of them fresh out of college, kind of [taking] a break before taking a serious career path. Prague was very cheap b

FOR HIRE: Fine Art Appraiser

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Since Sotheby's founder Samuel Baker sold some 400 books from an estate library in London in 1744, the company has grown into an international auction house—handling some of the most important paintings, manuscripts and books in the world. Nan Chisholm appraised fine art for Sotheby's for more than 20 years, valuing paintings from the old masters to 20th century artists, before leaving to start her own appraisal/broker business four years ago. She can also be seen on the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow" offering her expert opinion on paintings from around the world. Now she tells Smithsonian.com just what her job is worth. How did you get into this line of work? Between col

Sip 'n' Swirl, Y'all

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Vicky-Louise Bartier swirls the wine in her glass, takes a sip and smiles. She has a good feeling about the 2005 "Super Texan" Sangiovese blend. The new winemaker at Flat Creek Estate, Bartier is a decorated expert in her field. She holds degrees in enology and viticulture and has garnered more than 600 awards for her wines in Europe, the United States and her native Australia. She's come to the Texas Hill Country because she loves a challenge. Hill Country covers some 15,000 square miles of picturesque rolling terrain in central Texas. Here, creeks bubble up from springs in the limestone substratum; indigo fields of blue bonnets signal March; and pink, yellow and red wildflower

Goodbye My Coney Island?

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:00:00 GMT

It takes less than an hour and a subway fare of two dollars to get from midtown Manhattan to the southwestern edge of Brooklyn. There, crowds gather just off Surf Avenue, attracted by a barker with the handle of a screwdriver protruding from one nostril. Some turn their attention toward Serpentina, Insectavora or Diamond Donny V, who boasts "unnatural acts with animal traps." Slightly beyond the arcades, concession stands and haunted house rides, the wooden Cyclone rollercoaster clacks its way towards an 85-foot drop. For more than a century, visitors to Coney Island have been able to ride the rides, swim in the ocean (year-round, for Polar Bear Club members) and explore Astrola

Save the Casbah

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:36:36 GMT

"You want to see what is happening to the Casbah?" the slender man asks in French, as I make my way down a steep stone staircase that leads to the Mediterranean Sea. Before venturing into this storied hillside quarter of Algiers, a labyrinth of shadowy alleys and cul-de-sacs filled with idle youths casting suspicious gazes upon outsiders, I'd been warned to keep my guard up, but this fellow's earnest manner persuades me he can be trusted. Introducing himself as Oualid Mohammed, he leads me down the Rue Mustapha Latreche, named after an Algerian guerrilla who fell fighting the French in the Casbah during the war of independence that lasted from 1954 to 1962 and concluded when Fran

FOR HIRE: Secret Service Agent

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Established in 1865 to stanch the flow of counterfeit money circulating at the end of the Civil War, the Secret Service has been entrusted with a dual mission since 1901: to protect U.S. currency and political leaders. Julia Pierson has headed protective operations for the White House and served on security details for Presidents George H. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Now the agency's highest-ranking woman and head of the Office of Human Resources and Training, Pierson lets Smithsonian.com in on a few of the service's secrets. How did you get into this line of work? Initially, I got involved with the Law Enforcement Exploring program, a co-ed division of the Boy Scouts of Ameri

Global Weddings

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Weddings are magical events, rites of passage steeped in tradition. American brides traverse the aisle with "something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue" in hopes of guaranteeing a safe and happy passage on the life voyage they embark on at the altar. Around the world, an array of rich and varied wedding rituals likewise exists, full of symbolism intended to reinforce a couple's marital bond and ensure their lasting happiness. But sometimes, what's new, old or borrowed might surprise you: Japanese In traditional Japanese Shinto weddings, sake is used in a ritual called san-san-kudo, during which bride and groom take turns sipping three tastes of the ric

Chat with Jimmy Carter

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Join us here for a live chat with Nobel Peace laureate and former president Jimmy Carter to discuss "The Ethiopia Campaign" on June 28, 2007 from 11:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., E.S.T.

President Carter will be available to answer questions at that time. You may also submit a question early by sending an email to editors@smithsonian.com. Please remember to include your full name and city and state of residence.

Questions will be answered on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Summertime for Gershwin

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

In Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, along Highway 17, a middle-aged African American man sits on a lawn chair in the afternoon sun, a bucket of butter-colored strands of sweet grass at his feet. Little by little, he weaves the grass together into a braided basket. Beside him, more than 20 finished baskets hang on nails along the porch of an abandoned home converted into a kiosk. Like generations before, he learned this custom from his family, members of the Gullah Geechee nation. This distinct group of African Americans, descendants of West African slaves, have inhabited the Sea Islands and coastal regions from Florida to North Carolina since the 1700s. Today sweet grass is harder to come by

The Ethiopia Campaign

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

President Carter held a live chat about this article. His once-sandy hair had gone all white; his shoulders were a bit more stooped; his freckled face was lined with new creases. But Jimmy Carter's 82 years had diminished neither his trademark smile, which could still disarm skeptics at 20 paces, nor his enthusiasm for the long chance, which had propelled this obscure peanut farmer to national prominence in the first place. That quixotic spirit took him this past February to an impoverished corner of Ethiopia, where he would announce his most audacious crusade yet: to eliminate malaria, an elusive and ever-changing killer, from this ancient African nation of 75 million people. Now rare i

Risks and Riddles

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

There's a reason millions of people try to solve crossword puzzles each day. Amid the well-ordered combat between a puzzler's mind and the blank boxes waiting to be filled, there is satisfaction along with frustration. Even when you can't find the right answer, you know it exists. Puzzles can be solved; they have answers. But a mystery offers no such comfort. It poses a question that has no definitive answer because the answer is contingent; it depends on a future interaction of many factors, known and unknown. A mystery cannot be answered; it can only be framed, by identifying the critical factors and applying some sense of how they have interacted in the past and might interact in the

Chat with Jimmy Carter

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Join us here for a live chat with Nobel Peace laureate and former president Jimmy Carter to discuss "The Ethiopia Campaign" on June 28 from 11:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., E.S.T.

President Carter will be available to answer questions at that time. You may also submit a question early by filling in the form below. Full name, city and state of residence are required.

Questions will be answered on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Welcome to Rawda

Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 GMT

It's 8 p.m. on a Friday night at Rawda, a coffee house in the Al Sahin district of Damascus, Syria, and the regulars are filing in. They occupy chairs and tables under languid ceiling fans and a haphazardly joined ceiling of corrugated plastic sheets. Water pipes are summoned, primed and ignited, and soon the din of conversation is dueling with the clatter of dice skittering across backgammon boards. Once a movie theater, Rawda is an enclave for artists and intellectuals in a country where dissent is regularly smothered in its crib. Lately, it has become a bosom for the dispossessed. The war in Iraq has triggered a mass exodus of refugees to neighboring Syria, and Rawda plays hosts to a g

Saving Machu Picchu

Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 GMT

When Hiram Bingham, a young Yale professor, discovered Machu Picchu in 1911, he found a site overrun with vegetation. At an altitude of nearly 8,000 feet, the ruins, which sat above the cloud line in Peru's Andes Mountains, had remained relatively undisturbed for more than 300 years. Media in the United States declared it one of South America's most important and well-preserved sites. Now nearly 2,500 tourists visit Machu Picchu everyday. This influx of visitors has caused a dilemma: How can Peru promote the ruins as a tourist destination, while also preserving the fragile ancient city? In March, a controversial bridge opened within the Machu Picchu buffer zone, some four kilometers outsi

Greg Carr's Big Gamble

Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 GMT

The children come running as soon as the boat pushes onto the riverbank, mooring next to empty handmade fish traps. Greg Carr is at the front of the group of visitors clambering ashore. He lifts one child into the air, makes a face at another and greets adults with backslapping familiarity. Carr, an eager American with khaki pants and a Boy Scout's smile, has spent a lot of time in Mozambican villages like this one over the past three years, wooing officials and local elders alike in the hot, red dust. Carr's smile broadens when he sees Paulo Majacunene, who oversees this district. The tech multimillionaire turned philanthropist needs Majacunene to help him make a deal with these villager

The Mystery of Easter Island

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Hundreds of years ago, a small group of Polynesians rowed their wooden outrigger canoes across vast stretches of open sea, navigating by the evening stars and the day's ocean swells. When and why these people left their native land remains a mystery. But what is clear is that they made a small, uninhabited island with rolling hills and a lush carpet of palm trees their new home, eventually naming their 63 square miles of paradise Rapa Nui—now popularly known as Easter Island. On this outpost nearly 2,300 miles west of South America and 1,100 miles from the nearest island, the newcomers chiseled away at volcanic stone, carving moai, monolithic statues built to honor their ancestors.

The Zuni Way

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Two bridesmaids are helping Deidre Wyaco, a Zuni Indian, dress for her big day. She dons her tribe's traditional wedding costume—white moccasins and deer-hide leggings wound from ankle to knee; a black wool tunic layered over a white blouse; and four saucer-size turquoise-and-silver brooches pinned down the length of her skirt. The bride's sister, Darlynn Panteah, fastens a turquoise-and-silver squash blossom necklace around Wyaco's neck and adorns her with so many turquoise rings and bracelets that her hands look as if they'd been dipped in blue-green water. Wyaco's niece Michella combs her jet-black hair into a tight bun and smoothes each lock in place while a cousin places a scar

Mystery and Drama

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:53:47 GMT

How did you become interested in the Zunis? I had been to Zuni as a child in the 1960s. My folks loved to travel in the desert. They loved the Southwest, and Native American cultures, the pottery and jewelry. We had previously visited the Hopi people on their mesas, and at a time when they still permitted outsiders to see their most sacred dances. We actually saw the Snake Dance, which I've never forgotten, especially that moment when the first Snake Priest emerged from the underground kiva and began to slowly dance with a snake in his mouth. Our family also visited Acoma Pueblo, Santa Clara, Taos and several other pueblos, all of them very friendly. And then we went to Zuni. I don't remem

A Life Less Ordinary

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:59:29 GMT

She photographed Gandhi minutes before his assassination, covered the war that followed the partition of India, was with U.S. troops when they liberated Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp, was torpedoed off the African Coast, had the first cover of Life magazine and was the first Western journalist allowed in the Soviet Union. Margaret Bourke-White, the iconic photographer, didn't just raise the glass ceiling; she shattered it and threw away the pieces. At a time when women were defined by their husbands and judged by the quality of their housework, she set the standard for photojournalism and expanded the possibilities of being female. "She was a trailblazer," says Steph

Rickshaws Reinvented

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

From London to Anchorage, New York to Hanoi, it seems as if people everywhere are catching a ride on rickshaws. Surprised? Thought that those human-pulled carts, century-old symbols of exploitation and poverty, were obsolete? As of last December, they are—at least in the stereotypical form of a man in rags and a straw hat running barefoot through crowded Asian streets, drawing a cart carrying one or two obviously better-off passengers. That's when the government of West Bengal banned man-pulled rickshaws in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta)—the last place in the world where they were in widespread use. Explaining the ban at a press conference, Kolkata's Mayor Bikash Ranjan

Next Stop, Squalor

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The Dharavi squatter settlement in Mumbai is often described as the biggest slum in Asia. It sits between two rail lines in the northern part of the city, on a creek that once sustained a thriving fishery. The creek is now a sump of sewage and industrial waste, and the air above Dharavi is foul. By one estimate, the slum is home to 10,000 small factories, almost all of them illegal and unregulated. The factories provide sustenance of a sort to the million or so people who are thought to live in Dharavi, which at 432 acres is barely half the size of New York City's Central Park. There is no discernible garbage pickup, and only one toilet for every 1,440 people. It is a vision of urban hell

Rain Forest Rebel

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Inside a thatched-roof schoolhouse in Nabekodabadaquiba, a village deep in Brazil's Amazon rain forest, Surui Indians and former military cartographers huddle over the newest weapons in the tribe's fight for survival: laptop computers, satellite maps and hand-held global positioning systems. At one table, Surui illustrators place a sheet of tracing paper over a satellite image of the Sete de Setembro indigenous reserve, the enclave where this workshop is taking place. Painstakingly, the team maps out the sites of bow-and-arrow skirmishes with their tribal enemies, as well as a bloody 1960s attack on Brazilian telegraph workers who were laying cable through their territory. "We Suruis are a

Comic Phyllis Diller's Cabinet Keeps the Jokes Coming

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note, August 20, 2012: Phyllis Diller died today at the age of 95. In 2007, Owen Edwards wrote about her joke cabinet in the Smithsonian collections as part of the Object at Hand department. "I'm not a comedienne," Phyllis Diller says, at home in Los Angeles, gently correcting the word I had used to describe what she does. "Comediennes may do other stuff, like acting or singing. I'm a comic, a hard-core stand-up, so I'm responsible for my own material." Diller was one of the first celebrity comics of the television age, beginning with her appearances in the mid-1950s on the "Jack Paar Show" (the standard-setter for Carson, Leno, Letterman, et al., and, according to Diller, "the

China Rising

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

When we think of China, we tend to think of—what? The Great Wall? A roaring economy that threatens to overtake the U.S.'s? Tiananmen Square's pro-democracy demonstrations? Mao's legacy? Ping-Pong? Nixon's visit? The Forbidden City? Wait, Ping-Pong? As it happens, one of the stories that Smithsonian has published about China in the last several years is indeed about United States—matches that took crucial first steps toward improved diplomatic relations between the two wary superpowers. That's the kind of story we like to do at Smithsonian: Gain a better understanding of the present by placing the past in a fresh context. China means so many different things to our readers t

Family Ties

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Where do you come from? It's a simple question for many Americans. They rattle off a county in Ireland or a swath of Russia and claim the place as their ancestral home. But for many African Americans, a sense of identity doesn't come that easily. "African Americans are the only ones who cannot point to a country of origin," says Gina Paige, president of African Ancestry, Inc., a company in Washington, D.C. that offers DNA lineage tests. "Italian Americans don’t refer to themselves as European Americans. We are the only group that have to claim an entire continent." Over the last 20 some years, in part fueled by Alex Haley's book Roots and the subsequent miniseri

Thailand's Fight Club

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Saktaywan Boxing Gym resides on a narrow and quiet road in northern Bangkok. It is neighbored on one side by a small apartment complex and on the other side by a sewage canal. The gym is outdoors, and a rank odor lingered in the air when I first walked through its gates on a muggy afternoon in July. Three skinny, shirtless Thai boys punched and kicked invisible opponents inside a dusty boxing ring. A shaded area beside the ring housed gloves, shin guards, head protectors, four punching bags and free weights. Next to the equipment two more boys jumped rope, their bare feet bouncing in rhythm on the cracked concrete. As I watched them, Ajarn Sit, Saktaywan's 48-year-old head trainer, grabb

Harvesting Tourists

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who posed a question to Richard Conniff about his article, " Death in Happy Valley." And thanks to Conniff, the award-winning author of The Ape in the Corner Office, for his answers What drew you to this story? I had read about it in the news, and I was interested in wildlife conservation in Africa—this is actually the sixth trip I've done to Africa since 1996, reporting stories about one thing or another. I had also written about the British peerage for Smithsonian [" Class Dismissed," December 1999] and Cholmondeley had come across in the press as living a leisurely, land-owning life, like that old aristocracy. The story was more complicated

Death in Happy Valley

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Editor's note:On May 7, 2009, Tom Cholmondeley was convicted of manslaughter in the 2006 shooting of Robert Njoya. One afternoon last May, a bearded 36-year-old black man named Robert Njoya set out with friends to hunt for bush meat on a private ranch called Soysambu, in the heart of Kenya's Great Rift Valley. They brought along a pack of dogs for running animals into wire snares, and they carried an iron bar for clubbing their catch, and pangas, or machetes, for butchering the meat. That same day, a 38-year-old white man named Tom Cholmondeley, whose family has owned and managed Soysambu for almost a century, was touring the 48,000-acre property with a friend. He carried a 30-06 rifle l

Fallen Giant

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The Greek poet Pindar had wonderful things to say about heroes but less about defeat. So a couple of millennia later, Dianne Tittle de Laet, herself a poet as well as a classical scholar, was left to make sense of this image of her father, the New York Giants quarterback Y. A. Tittle. The photograph captures a moment on a Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh in September 1964. For three years, Tittle had led the Giants to the National Football League championship game, only to lose each time. He had been the league's Most Valuable Player in 1963. He was also a football ancient—38 years old—and looked it. On the play preceding this moment, he had thrown a screen pass that was interc

The Pardon

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

President Richard M. Nixon's resignation created the Ford administration—and left Ford with the excruciating dilemma of whether to intervene in Nixon's legal fate in the Watergate scandal. In the book 31 Days, published this past April, author Barry Werth provides a day-by-day chronicle of how the question took shape, and how Ford—who died December 26 at age 93—arrived at the decision that defined his "accidental" presidency. The following is adapted from the book. President Gerald R. Ford awoke early that Sunday, September 8, 1974, and took 8 a.m. Holy Communion at St. John's Episcopal Church, the "Church of the Presidents" across Lafayette Square from the White House.

Time for a Change

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

With clinks of champagne glasses and choruses of "Auld Lang Syne," people everywhere ushered into existence another Gregorian year on January 1, 2007. And that just annoys Richard Conn Henry. The Johns Hopkins University professor of physics and astronomy insists that the most widely used calendar in the world—instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582—needs to go. Come every academic year, it makes his life miserable. He has to spend a full day rearranging the dates of homework assignments and final exams on his course syllabi. Granted, he admits, that's what he's paid to do. But why should he be bothered when it really isn't necessary? "You can easily have a cale

Today's Tattoos

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Damon Conklin, owner of Super Genius Tattoo in Seattle, Washington, and founder of the Seattle Tattoo Convention, weighs in on which tattoo designs are the most popular on the West Coast. Tom Yak of New York Adorned says tattoo fans on the East Coast want the same provocative styles; the more customized, the better. 1. Flowers Conklin: Everything from the daisy on the ankle to floral arrangement, reaching across several bodyparts. Yak: Floral tattoos always remain in style. I do a lot of lotus flowers. I draw American imagery, daisies and roses, but I try to add an eastern sort of flair. 2. Lettering Conklin: Usually names and quotes, but sometimes they're elaborate. In one instance,

Travelin' Man

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Josh Hammer has written for Smithsonian about the dying of the Dead Sea, the disruption of Iraq's Marsh Arabs and the preservation of ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu. In this issue the former Newsweek correspondent, who was based in Capetown, South Africa, writes about the Basque Country of northern Spain (" Peace at Last?"), where separatists have fought the government for decades. Our Amy Crawford reached Hammer by telephone in Kabul, Afghanistan, to ask about his travels in the Basque Country. How can you mix terrorism and tourism in the same story? Hammer: I tried to weave the two together, because that's what the Basque Country is about: a very compelling mix of the best

Extreme Polo

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

By midmorning's light, a military helicopter descends on the Shandur Pass, a 12,300-foot-high valley hemmed in by mountains whose jagged peaks soar another 8,000 feet above us. This part of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province is usually inhabited only by hardy shepherds and their grazing yaks, but today more than 15,000 assorted tribesmen are on hand as Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf emerges from the chopper, a pistol on his hip. Musharraf, who has survived several assassination attempts, seems to be taking no chances in a province roamed by Muslim extremists. But still, he has come: after all, it's the annual mountain polo match between Chitral and Gilgit, rival towns on either

Mixing Terrorism and Tourism

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

What's it like to shift between war reporting in places like Afghanistan and more travel-oriented stories like this one? It's great! When I was at Newsweek for many years I was doing mostly conflict and combat reporting, and so this kind of story is a great contrast. I've got a couple of kids now and I'm really trying to scale down that danger zone stuff. The good thing about Basque country was that it did have that element of terrorism and conflict, but it was all in the past for the most part. That meant there was a good back story to be told. How can you mix terrorism and tourism in the same story? I tried to weave the two together because that's what the Basque Country is about: a ver

Peace at Last?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The first blast reverberated through the old quarter of San Sebastián at one o'clock in the afternoon. It rattled the windows of the ornate buildings around the 18th-century Santa Maria del Coro church and sent a flock of pigeons into the sky. We were standing in a cobblestone plaza outside one of the town's most famous pintxos—tapas—bars, La Cuchara de San Telmo, eating braised rabbit and sipping red Rioja wine when we heard it. A minute later came a second explosion, and then a third. "Let's go see what's happening," said my companion, Gabriella Ranelli de Aguirre, an American tour operator married to a San Sebastián native, who has been living there f

Eminent Domain

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Just about everybody has a boss. At the Smithsonian Institution, where the chief executive officer is known as the Secretary, the ultimate authority has been vested by law in its Board of Regents since the Institution's establishment 160 years ago. There's obvious uniqueness to the Smithsonian. It was established by Congress in 1846 as a trust for the American people in response to a large bequest from an obscure British scientist named James Smithson. The Smithsonian, to be located in Washington, D.C., was not to be a part of any branch of the federal government; rather, it was to be guided by an independent Board of Regents, or trustees, composed of the chief justice of the United State

Extraordinary Resilience

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

In 1976, Dr. Stuart Hauser and his colleagues began a study of 67 emotionally disturbed teenagers locked in a psychiatric hospital. As the researchers continued to track the teens' development over the years, they found that most of them remained seriously troubled as adults. But nine were thriving: they had finished school, started meaningful careers, and become responsible parents to children of their own. In a new book about the 18-year study, Out of the Woods: Tales of Resilient Teens (Harvard University Press), Hauser and coauthors Joseph Allen and Eve Golden tell the stories of four people whose extraordinary resilience carried them through tumultuous adolescence. What is resilience

Iraq Beyond the Headlines

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

During the United States-led invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, Smithsonian magazine was about to print "Jonathan Kandell, the first of seven feature stories we have published about Iraq. Those stories—69 pages in the magazine, about 30,000 words, 71 photographs and 4 original maps—cover Iraq's ancient and recent history, its ethnic and religious groups, its daily life, its archaeology, even its natural environment. We've sent writers and photographers to the Basra. We've tried to explain the origins of civilization 5,000 years ago, the failed British experiment in nation-building 100 years ago, the anger in Karbala streets three years ago. At Smithsonian, we specialize in a

An interview with Eliza Griswold, author of "Waging Peace in the Philippines"

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

What was the genesis of this story? I've covered a lot of what's been referred to as the second front in the war on terror, the Southeast Asia wing of militant Islam. One of the stops along the jihadi highway is the southern Philippines. Since the 90s there's been this link to the world of global jihad, from a couple of the Bali bombers who are currently at large there to Ramzi Yusef and Khalid Sheik Muhammad. At the same time, Filipino Muslims have a much older, very legitimate complaint about a lack of representation in the central government and all that goes along with it—they have no money, no jobs, no education. I was very interested in assessing the gravity of the situation i

Tumult in the Philippines

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

December 1898 The U.S. Navy defeats the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War and drafts a treaty that ensures U.S. control of the Philippines. February 1899 Filipino leaders reject U.S. sovereignty and launch a (failed) rebellion that lasts four years, costing tens of thousands of Filipino and thousands of U.S lives. November 1935 By U.S. decree, the Philippines becomes a self-governing commonwealth. December 1941 Japanese occupation begins. October 1944 Gen. Douglas "I Shall Return" MacArthur does just that. July 1946 The independent Republic of the Philippines is founded. 1979 Jurisdiction over U.S. military bases passes to the Philippine gov

Soft Power

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Paul Theroux, author of the novels Chicago Loop and The Mosquito Coast and numerous travel books, including The Old Pata-gonian Express and The Great Railway Bazaar, began keeping geese on his six-acre Hawaiian spread because he was sick of cutting the grass. Somebody told him that the birds would be the answer. "Three of them kept it short, and I seldom cut grass anymore," he says. "Also, I got to see aspects of goose behavior that fascinated me." In his cover essay, "Living with Geese," Theroux, never one to pull punches, takes on the rampant practice of anthropomorphism—ascribing human qualities to animals—as well as fellow gozzard E. B. White,

Last Page: Going Up?

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

My sister made her first trip to New York City years before I did. She saw all the usual sights, but her favorite story was about riding in the same elevator with Brooke Shields' father. Even though he was only related to someone famous, my sister got as close to him as you are to this magazine, and the anecdote became a fixture in any family conversation about New York, or fame, or elevators. I would tell my story about seeing Jack Nicholson from the chairlift at Aspen, and she would top me with her legendary meet-up with the father of the actress and former child model in the Big Apple elevator. I am from the Midwest. Does it show? People from the Midwest need to prove their existence b

Waging Peace in the Philippines

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

"They'll slit your throat on Jolo," people told Col. Jim Linder, head of a U.S. military task force in the Philippines. He recalled the prediction as we buzzed toward Jolo Island in a helicopter. Linder, a 45-year-old South Carolina native who has the remnants of a Southern drawl, has led Special Forces operations in the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe and Africa for the past 20 years. His latest assignment is the remote 345-square-mile island at the southernmost edge of the vast Philippines archipelago. Jolo is a known haven for Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups, including Abu Sayyaf, or "Bearer of the Sword," which has used the island for 15 year

Man of the Century

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Under a silver gray sky, I stared up at a line of elegant 19th-century buildings on the south side of Avenue Foch, a three-minute walk from the Arc de Triomphe. A guide to literary sites in Paris was in my hands. "Can I help you find something?" asked a passing Parisian. Well, yes, I said. I was trying to identify the building where, a century ago, the Boston-born writer Henry Adams (1838-1918) had worked on a book. Then in his mid-60s, Adams was straining to make sense of the world as the industrial age was remaking it; the resulting blend of autobiography, reportage, philosophy and science was published as The Education of Henry Adams. "I sit in a garret, while children

An Interview with William E. Leuchtenburg, author of "New Faces of 1946"

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Why did this story spark your interest? Most history textbooks don't pay attention to midterm elections, and yet they are sometimes when a new era of politics begins. The best example would be that textbooks spend a lot of time on the McKinley against William Jennings Bryant race in 1896, but the big shift to a new Republican era actually comes in the midterm election of 1894. So I've been interested for a long time in midterm elections, and 1946 is interesting because it appears to presage a new era, and then it doesn't turn out that way. There's a second answer, and that is that the 1946 midterm election was the first midterm election in which I was old enough to vote, and I actually wo

Q&A: Lucy Lawless

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:00:00 GMT

What do you and Xena have in common? Well, I can be quite hard-core myself, I suppose. As an actor, everything has to come out of you somewhere—otherwise it doesn't strike a chord in viewers. Of course, I never killed anybody, I haven't slain warlords, and I really can't do flips. Did you ever expect to be a leading lady in the world of campy sci-fi? No, because I never watched it, never read it, never particularly liked it. But the fact is, sci-fi deals with some of the biggest issues of philosophy and humanity and politics today. And I'm offered a lot of roles such as, "Do you want to be a cop?" or "Do you want to be a housewife?" But now sci-fi roles interes