Arts & Culture | Trends & Traditions | Smithsonian.com

Where’d You Get Those Creepers?

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:42:05 GMT

Typical creepers. In modern slang, a “creeper” is that odd, socially awkward guy you know from the office, dorm, neighborhood, local restaurant. You can also call him a creep. A couple of years ago, Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew premiered the digital short called “The Creep,” with filmmaker and creeper John Waters, on “Saturday Night Live,” spawning a series of YouTube imitators mimicking the stilted, zombielike dance. Going back 50 years, another dance spawned a different sort of “creeper.” The dance was done to the 1953 hit ”The Creep,” from big-band leader Ken Mackintosh. A slow shuffle movement, it was embrace

For Perusing Pleasure, Zandra Rhodes’ New Online Fashion Archive

Thu, 02 May 2013 05:11:40 GMT

(c) Zandra Rhodes 2012. Paris, Frills and Button Flowers, Autumn/Winter 1971. If you want to lose a few hours, head over to the online fashion archive of designer Zandra Rhodes. Born in 1940 in southeast England, the pink-haired, flamboyantly dressed Rhodes was first exposed to fashion by her mother, a fitter for a Paris fashion house. She immersed herself in sartorial studies, and more specifically textile design, when she enrolled in the Medway College of Art and then the Royal College of Art before opening her own London boutique with Sylvia Ayton in 1967, the Fulham Road Clothes Shop. She got her break in 1969 when Diana Vreeland featured a few of her pieces in Vogue. From there,

The Story of Elizabeth Keckley, Former-Slave-Turned-Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:49:52 GMT

Mary T. & Lizzy K. runs through May 5, 2013, at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Illustration by Jody Hewgill. Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery in 1818 in Virginia. Although she encountered one hardship after another, with sheer determination, a network of supporters and valuable dressmaking skills, she eventually bought her freedom from her St. Louis owners for $1,200. She made her way to Washington, D.C. in 1860 to establish her own dressmaking business and met first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Just after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, in 1861, the FLOTUS hired Keckley (also spelled Keckly) as her personal modiste. Keckley took on the role of dressmaker,

‘I Remember’: An Artist’s Chronicle of What We Wore

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:29:01 GMT

A fashion spread, Hollywood movie or advertisement usually doesn’t reflect with accuracy what everyday people actually wore at a given time. Historically speaking, to really get a sense of the fashions of the times, old newsreels, photojournalism and catalogs offer more true-to-life examples of what was in style. The cover of Joe Brainard’s I Remember One literary source is the book-length poem I Remember, by writer and artist Joe Brainard. When it was originally published—in three parts between 1970 and 1973 by Angel Hair Books—the small print runs sold out quickly. Most recently it’s been published by Granary Books. The 1,000 entries in this work all begin with “I rememb

The History of the Flapper, Part 5: Who Was Behind the Fashions?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:14:51 GMT

Ballerina Desiree Lubovska in a dress by Jean Patou. Photography by Adolf de Meyer, c. 1921. Have a look at the paintings of Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and other Cubist painters whose work included hard, geometric forms and visible lines. As these artists were working in their studios, fashion designers, particularly those in France, were taking cues from their paintings. With la garçonne (the flapper, in French) in mind, the designers created fashions with the clean lines and angular forms we now associate with the 1920s-and with Cubism. The styles we’ve come to connect with Louise Brooks, Norma Talmadge, Colleen Moore and other American actresses on the silve

Lilly Pulitzer: Remembering the ‘Queen of Prep’

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:08:39 GMT

Lilly Pulitzer fits a model with one of her creations. Carlo Allegri / Getty Images Anything is possible with sunshine and a little pink! —Lilly Pulitzer It all began with an orange juice-stained dress. American fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer, who died this weekend at age 81, started her iconic clothing line out of necessity. She had moved to Palm Beach, Florida, in the early 1950s after eloping with her then-husband, Peter Pulitzer, who owned citrus groves in the area. She opened an orange juice stand and while working there, discovered that squeezing juice was a messy business. To camouflage the inevitable stains, she said, she designed brightly printed sleeveless dresses. The st

When The Gap Was Everywhere

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:28:39 GMT

Art Club 2000, Untitled (Conrans I), 1992-93. Chromogenic color print, 8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm). Courtesy the artist and the Estate of Colin de Land “We knew that nostalgia goes hand in hand with style as the driving force behind all these decisions. What art succeeds or gets remembered and functions again? What has shelf life? What makes it? It’s all nostalgia. We knew we were engaging in that. History is always as close as the person you’re talking to and what they’re talking about.” —Art Club 2000, Art Forum, February 2013 In 1993, seven students from Cooper Union formed an artists’ collective called Art Club 2000 with the help of Colin

Sagging Pants Butt Up Against the Law

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 02:16:36 GMT

Super low-slung pants. A campaign in Massachusetts is determined to put an end to wearing saggy pants by enforcing a law enacted back in 1784 and amended in 1987. According to Section 16, “Open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior,” under the “Crimes Against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order”: A man or woman, married or unmarried, who is guilty of open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than three years or in jail for not more than two years or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars. Up to three years in jail and a few hundred dollar fine just for wearing your pants low?! Omar Re

A Refreshing Take on Fashion Television: A Q&A with L.A. Frock Stars’ Star Doris Raymond

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:38:28 GMT

The Way We Wore team, from left, Jascmeen Bush, Shelly Lyn, owner Doris Raymond, Sarah Bergman, Kyle Blackmon (c) NHNZ If your wardrobe is seriously lacking the next time you have a red carpet event on the horizon, consider taking a trip to The Way We Wore. The vintage boutique, its proprietor Doris Raymond, and her upbeat staff are the subjects of a new series called “L.A. Frock Stars,” which premiered last week on the Smithsonian Channel. Over the course of six episodes, the docu-reality show follows Doris and members of her charismatic team as they travel from California to Texas to New York on the hunt for rare fashions to stock in her Los Angeles shop. We’re not tal

The Perils of Wearing Clothes

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:30:28 GMT

High, high heels. Courtesy of Wikicommons Last month, Chinese school uniforms made the news. Studies had shown that possibly as many as 25,000 children in Shanghai, China, were wearing mandated uniforms that were essentially poisoning them. The fabric contained toxic aromatic amines, thought to be carcinogens and found in plastics, dyes and pesticides. Ingesting, inhaling or absorbing the chemicals is considered hazardous and some countries have banned them. Students were told to stop wearing the outfits made by Shanghai Ouxia Clothing Company until a complete investigation had taken place. Horrifying, but not particularly surprising, considering how much China appears in the headlin

The Aughts: When People Wore Their Causes on Their Sleeves, Literally

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:06:27 GMT

John Kerry at a campaign rally, showing off his wristbands. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert At every stump speech, meet and greet, and town hall gathering during the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry wore a very distinctive bracelet: the bright yellow LiveStrong wristband. He wasn’t the only recognizable figure to embrace the cancer cause through a silicone band. Usher, Lindsay Lohan and Ben Affleck were also some of the 80 million-plus people who made it known they supported a good cause, and felt cool doing it too. What followed was a charity wristband explosion, a distinctive way to wear your heart on your sleeve, or your cause on your wrist. Silicone gel “awareness bands&

The History of the Flapper, Part 4: Emboldened by the Bob

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 02:30:59 GMT

Actress Louise Brooks with bob and bee-stung lips, 1920s. On May 1, 1920, the Saturday Evening Post published F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” a short story about a sweet yet socially inept young woman who is tricked by her cousin into allowing a barber to lop off her hair. With her new do, she is castigated by everyone: Boys no longer like her, she’s uninvited to a social gathering in her honor, and it’s feared that her haircut will cause a scandal for her family. In the beginning of the 20th century, that’s how serious it was to cut off your locks. At that time, long tresses epitomized a pristine kind of femininity exemplified by the Gibson girl. Hair may have been wor

The History of the Flapper, Part 3: The Rectangular Silhouette

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 04:19:16 GMT

Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts & Sciences, 1925-1926. If a woman in the 1920s had a boyish figure and was naturally skinny, she was all set to slip on a slim sheath, a signature look of the 1920s. But if she was plump and curvaceous, she might choose certain undergarments to help achieve the fashionable unisex flapper shape. The flapper silhouette was distinctive, and if you’re a fan of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” you’ve seen it in full effect this season: angular (basically rectangular), androgynous, slender and straight. It was influenced by Braque, Picasso, Leger and others artists whose work had hard, geometric forms and visible lines. Under

The Origins of Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 03:46:50 GMT

Actress Raquel Torres, by Ruth Harriet Louis, 1920s. Courtesy VintageGal It was during the Roman Empire that St. Valentine is said to have left a note to his jailer’s daughter, “From your Valentine” before his execution on February 14. Today, thanks to St. Valentine, cards expressing one’s heartfelt emotions, a. k. a. valentines, are given to that special someone. To defer to a classic idiom: It’s a day to wear our heart on our sleeve. We use the phrase casually, to mean exposing our true emotions, making ourselves vulnerable and letting it all hang out. The phrase is so pervasive that from Ringo Starr to Eminem to Carrie Underwood, those words-turned-lyrics have found their way int

The Masked Merriment of Mardi Gras

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:57:52 GMT

Vintage Mardi Gras postcard, date unknown. Shrove Tuesday is a day to be remembered by strangers in New Orleans, for that is the day for fun, frolic, and comic masquerading. All of the mischief of the city is alive and wide awake in active operation. Men and boys, women and girls, bond and free, white and black, yellow and brown, exert themselves to invent and appear in grotesque, quizzical, diabolic, horrible, strange masks, and disguises. Human bodies are seen with heads of beasts and birds, beasts and birds with human heads; demi-beasts, demi-fishes, snakes’ heads and bodies with arms of apes; man-bats from the moon; mermaids; satyrs, beggars, monks, and robbers parade and ma

The History of the Flapper, Part 2: Makeup Makes a Bold Entrance

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:14:16 GMT

Clara Bow with compact, 1920s. Let us take a look at the young person as she strolls across the lawn of her parents’ suburban home, having just put the car away after driving sixty miles in two hours. She is, for one thing, a very pretty girl. Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect—pallor mortis, poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes—the latter looking not so much debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic. Her walk duplicates the swagger supposed by innocent America to go with the female half of a Paris Apache dance. Flapper Jane by Bruce Bliven The New Republic September 9, 1925

The History of the Flapper, Part 1: A Call for Freedom

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 07:55:16 GMT

Women’s dress of the 1910s. In the age before the Roaring Twenties, women were still wearing floor-length dresses. Waists were cinched. Arms and legs were covered. Corsets were standard on a daily basis. Hair was long. The Gibson girl was the idealized image of beauty. And the Victorian attitudes toward dress and etiquette created a strict moral climate. Then the 1920s hit and things changed rapidly. The 19th Amendment passed in 1920 giving women the right to vote. Women began attending college. The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed by Alice Paul in 1923. World War I was over and men wanted their jobs back. Women, though, who had joined the workforce while the men were at war,

Why Hypercolor T-Shirts Were Just a One-Hit Wonder

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:03:03 GMT

It was 1991: “Roseanne was on TV, Terminator 2 was on the big screen, Color Me Badd was on the radio and Hypercolor t-shirts were on the backs of millions of middle- and high school-age kids across America. The Hypercolor fad gripped the nation that year, thanks to the Seattle-based sportswear company that created them, Generra. In fact, in a brief three-month span, between February and May 1991, the company sold a whopping $50 million worth of color-changing, heat-sensitive T-shirts, shorts, pants, sweatshirts and tights. Touchable Hypercolor T-shirts in action. In addition to its color-morphing cool factor, the “mood-ring of the ’90s” also had game-c

A History of Sequins from King Tut to the King of Pop

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 03:23:00 GMT

What do Michael Jackson, King Tut and Leonardo da Vinci have in common? A penchant for sequins. At some point between 1480 and 1482, Leonardo whipped together a sketch for a machine that, using levers and pulleys, would punch small disks out of a metal sheet. Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch for a device for making sequins. Sketch from the Codex Atlanticus housed at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Since the device was never actually made, we don’t know if the Renaissance jack-of-all-trades dreamt it up to glamourize the gamurra, a typical women’s dress of the time, or if it had some greater utilitarian purpose. Going back centuries before Leonard, there’s Tutan

How One Museum Looks to Combat Ageism

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

I walk alone through the tunnel-like hallway, surrounded by large-lettered questions in stark black on white: “Is being old good or bad?” “At what age will you be old?” “Are you curious about the future?” The future looms sooner than I expect, in the yellow simulation room at the end of the tunnel. I strap heavy white metal shoes over my flip-flops and clomp up a set of stairs. The effort of hoisting my weighed-down legs makes this everyday task more arduous. “Aging causes loss of muscle mass,” a sign near the stairs explains, adding that this can lead to decreased strength and speed. The simulation room is part of the “Dialogue With

The Legend of the Christmas Stocking

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 03:18:00 GMT

Christmas stockings made by a “Gentleman of German heritage,” 1950s. “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.” – A Visit From Saint Nicholas As far back as 1823, when Clement Clarke Moore (or possibly Henry Livingston Jr.) wrote “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” stockings were hung near the fireplace, awaiting a visit from Santa Claus. At the end of the poem, St. Nick “fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,/And laying his finger aside of his nose/And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.” Hanging stockings, 1954. Stockings have been an essential pa

Your Guide to Selecting the Best (or Is It Worst?) Ugly Christmas Sweater

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:47:00 GMT

Matching mother/daughter candy cane sweaters from Leisure Arts, 1989. Knitting pattern via Etsy. Spending quality time with family, drinking cider by the fire and playing Secret Santa all encourage getting into the festive holiday mood. So, too, is taking out your ugly Christmas sweaters—and, if you’re really lucky, showing off your tackiest at an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. In recent years, ugly Christmas sweaters have emerged with newfound public acceptance: They’re no longer creations made by craft store-obsessed grandmas and foisted upon family members only to wind up at a thrift store. Instead, they’ve become a cultural meme, filled to the brim with an egg

The Best in Fashion History: Penny Loafers, Forgotten Suitcases and Hermès Scarves

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:47:00 GMT

Bass Weejun loafers for Christmas (c. 1960). The Bass Weejun loafer is not named after a Native American tribe. Suitcases sometimes are time capsules. And a postal worker can design high-end scarves. What follows is Threaded’s second blog roundup of sartorial curiosities from around the web, turning on their head assumptions about what we wear and why we hold onto things. “There’s something about Weejuns that says something about you.” Bass Weejun ad, 1960s. The classic loafer, and various bedazzled iterations of it, have come roaring back into public consciousness since residing on the feet of dressed-down corporates for the past couple decades. How the

Dress Codes and Etiquette, Part 3: The Death of the Dinner Jacket on Open Water

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:43:00 GMT

Dining aboard the RMS Caronia, from a 1950s World Cruise brochure. As the sun dips below the ocean’s horizon on a cruise ship, swimsuits and flip-flops give way to the evening’s dictated dress code. Depending on the cruise, that means suits or tuxedos for men and formal gowns or cocktail dresses for women. The dining room code, in contrast to the informality elsewhere on the ship, is a relic of another time. Cruise ship dining with white gloves, 1960s. Ship dining rooms were formal from the start, at the beginning of the 20th century. They reflected the lavish lifestyle that their wealthy transatlantic passengers enjoyed on land and the attire that was typical when hig

A Holiday Shopping Reminder: Do We Really Need That Extra Pair of Jeans?

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:32:00 GMT

Higbee’s department store, 1963. via Cleveland State University, Michael Schwartz Library Special Collections, Cleveland Press Collection. With Thanksgiving behind us and the new year on the horizon, we have officially entered holiday shopping season. Black Friday buying frenzies gets more frenetic every year as ads remind us, repeatedly, to shop early and shop often. It’s tough not to get sucked into the mindset that the only way to be festive is to consume. It’s stating the obvious, but getting into the holiday spirit still means slowing down and spending time with family and friends. It’s also about being more considered about our wish lists and deliberate

Giving Thanks to Clothes That Stretch

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 05:27:00 GMT

We can offer our gratitude this Thanksgiving to the English inventor Thomas Hancock for allowing our clothes to give a little as we indulge in a holiday feast. Without Hancock, we might not have elastic. And without elastic, this holiday could be very uncomfortable. Thomas Hancock’s Masticator. Hancock was a key player in establishing the British rubber industry. While patenting and producing elastic fastenings for gloves, suspenders and stockings in 1820, he was struck by how much rubber he was wasting. An early environmentalist, he invented a machine called the masticator that shreds scraps of rubber and allows those remnants to be recycled. Fun fact: Before patenting the mast

Penn Jillette Reveals the Secrets of Fire-Eating

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

I didn’t learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business. You don’t want to learn fire-eating from a book, but that’s how I started. I read Step Right Up! by Dan Mannix—the 1950 memoir of a real-life carny—and I wanted to be “with it.” Dan didn’t explain how to eat fire, but I felt I could read between the lines and figure it out. I was 19 years old, and like many men that age, I felt invincible. I wasn’t, and you aren’t. Remember that. Do not eat fire! I practiced all afternoon and burned the snot out of my mouth and lips. My mouth looked like wall-to-wall herpes s

James Bond’s Dapper Dinner Jackets

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:33:00 GMT

Sean Connery getting fitted for one of his classic suit jackets by Anthony Sinclair. Along with the requisite high-tech gadgets and gizmos, it wouldn’t be a James Bond movie without 007 sporting an impeccably fitted dinner jacket (usually accompanied by some high-stakes hijinks). The dinner jacket—or tuxedo, as it’s less elegantly referred to in the United States, or smoking (as in le smoking), as it’s wonderfully called in some parts of Europe—has been around since the late 19th century when the Prince of Wales lopped of the tails of his tailcoat for less formal, but still fancy, dinner parties. It’s thought to have made its way across the pond af

5 Essential James Bond Accessories

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 03:57:00 GMT

Desmond Llewelyn as Q in License to Kill showing Bond (Timothy Dalton) the camera gun that, when put together, became a sniper rifle. James Bond’s accessories are never what they seem, thanks to the ingenuity of “Q” as Desmond Llewelyn was known in the 17 007 films in which he appeared. A watch was never just a timepiece. A briefcase was never a mere file holder. His accessories weren’t chosen for style (although, of course, if they were Bond’s, they were always stylish), but for their function. In those 17 films, audiences would await Q’s customary arrival. He’d present an impeccably dressed Bond with his new handy—and always handsome&m

Favorites From the Cooper-Hewitt’s New Online Collection

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 03:25:00 GMT

Matchbook in the shape of a folded men’s shirt, with incised checkerboard-patterned weave, cuffs and bib, smiling child’s head peering out from opening at collar. Reverse inscribed “New York Clothing House, 102 & 104 Baltimore St., Baltimore.” Upper curved section swings open to reveal match compartment, c. mid-19th century. Image: Cooper-Hewitt The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, has recently digitized 60 percent of its collection and made it available to the public. If my math is correct, that means that 123,802 objects spanning 24 centuries can now be viewed online. Prints, drawings, graphic design, decorative

Incredible Political Fashion Statements From Past Elections

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:54:00 GMT

It’s hard to believe—especially as the East Coast reels in the aftermath of Sandy—that the election is just a few days away. While the candidates crisscross battleground states in last-ditch efforts to win over undecided voters, and volunteers go door to door to get out the vote, voices are growing hoarse with strain. Of course, if all else fails and laryngitis sets in, you can communicate your campaign message through dress! Usually, that means the requisite campaign T-shirt, button, baseball cap—or mask, if you really want to make your point. But occasionally, campaign-wear turns more creative. Rocky paper campaign dress for Nelson Rockefeller, 1960s. The most

12 Creepy Kids in Halloween Masks

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 03:24:00 GMT

Pumpkinhead and cat(?), date unknown. It wouldn’t be Halloween without masks. Jokers, scary clowns, gorillas and, when the presidential election converges with Halloween, tricker-or-treaters in presidential candidate masks (the Nixon mask never gets old) come out in all their anonymous glory. Pop culture aside, masks have been around for thousands of years. In fact, the oldest preserved mask is about 9,000 years old. That said, it’s assumed that masks were made centuries and centuries prior. Used for ceremonies and rituals, decoration, camouflage, entertainment (comedy and tragedy drama masks, of course), sport and protection, they’re handy, multipurpose accessorie

The Witches of Halloween Past

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:17:00 GMT

If recent memes are any indication, it’s likely you’ll wind up as Big Bird, a face-eating zombie, Psy or the Ecco Homo fresco for Halloween. Or, there are the classics. You know, the default ghosts, scarecrows, clowns and witches our parents’ and even our grandparents’ generations wore for Halloween. (Turns out that my grandmother, my mother and I all had our turns as teenage witches, going door-to-door clad in black pointy hats collecting our bounty.) Contestants in the Halloween Slick Chick beauty contest in Anaheim, California, 1947. Silk stockings ad from Ipswich Hosiery, 1927. Halloween is thought to date back more than 2,000 years to a time when Celti

Dress Codes and Etiquette, Part 2: Diana Vreeland vs. Emily Post on Vulgarity

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 01:52:00 GMT

Emily Post (left): Photo by Philippe Halsman, 1946, National Portrait Gallery. Diana Vreeland (right): Drawing by Richard Ely, 1989, National Portrait Gallery. This weekend, I saw the documentary, The Eye Has to Travel, a portrait of the legendary fashion editor and larger-than-life eccentric Diana Vreeland. Just like her friend Coco Chanel, who was well-known for her quips, or Chanelisms as they were often called, Vreeland also had her own one-liners on life and style. Frequently during the film Vreeland tossed around the word “vulgar.” “Never fear being vulgar, just boring,” was one of her familiar sayings. Another was “Vulgarity is a very important in

Taking a Closer Look at an Odd Pair of Very, Very Old Socks

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Socks from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. I can’t stop staring at these socks. A pair of very, very old socks made in Egypt sometime between A.D. 250 and A.D. 420. While putting together Threaded’s Stocking Series (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), I did a double take when I came upon this different type of foot covering. Maybe it’s the angle of the photo, or the split toe style meant to be worn with sandals, but they’re disorienting, right? They don’t look 1,600 years old, but they don’t look new either. And they’re bright red! I don’t expect something that’s over 1,000 years old to look so vibrant. Maybe, too, it’s the si

Dress Codes and Etiquette, Part 1: What Not to Wear to High School in the 1960s

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 08:07:00 GMT

Dress code illustration, 1960s. Stories about dress code enforcement have continued to pop up in the news. For work, school and leisure, strict rules about proper etiquette are bulleted on website after website. No trench coats to high school. No low-backed dresses to prom. No visible tattoos and piercings on teachers. No hooded sweatshirts if you’re going out dancing. No zippered jackets when visiting a magic castle. No satin (unless it’s from Betsey Johnson or Dolce & Gabbana) to pledge a sorority. Lots of regulations from the powers that be—some with explanations, others just because. When it came to dressing for high school in the early to mid-1960s, the cle

Stocking Series, Part 4: The Rebellious Roll Garters

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 03:35:00 GMT

Bold women in their bathing suits and rolled stockings. Note the uniformed officials in the background who don’t look pleased. Date unknown. It’s time to bring back rolled stockings. This isn’t attributable to scientific research or trend-spotting. It’s that in compiling Threaded’s Stocking Series (read Parts 1, 2, and 3), this was one trend I could imagine incorporating into what I wear today (as opposed to, say, paint-on stockings). Grimace if you like, but I’m imagining navy stockings rolled just below the knee, clog sandals, a knee-length, high-waisted pinstriped skirt and a vintage 1980s paisley blouse (with the shoulder pads intact, of course)

This 105-Year-Old Made Marilyn Monroe’s Earrings

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:56:00 GMT

By now, I’m sure Threaded readers know that I derive great satisfaction – or some might say, nerd out – uncovering the social and historical context of clothing. One of my projects, Worn Stories, does that in an even more personal way; it’s a collection of stories I edit from interesting individuals based on a piece of clothing or an accessory with a very specific memory connected to it. I recently posted a story on Worn Stories about a sprightly centenarian, Sadie Mintz, that I thought Threaded readers would enjoy so I’ve re-posted it here in its entirety. Sadie Mintz at 18 years old (left) and at 105 years old (right). Sadie Mintz Entrepreneur Hollywood,

As a Matter of Fact: Jockeys, Tartans and Cowboy Glam

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:09:00 GMT

Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors original label featured a topless cowgirl (left) who got a fringed bolero in 1963. Image: Collectors Weekly Until this week, I didn’t know much about how cowboys began wearing rhinestones, who invented tighty whities or why plaid was once outlawed. But I’ve since been schooled by a motley assortment of sartorial history. Because I think you’ll be as enlightened as I was, what follows is Threaded’s first blog roundup. For starters, the bedazzled cowboy. How did we move from a rough-and-tumble John Wayne-type of masculinity that’s seeped into every western flick to rodeo wear that’s more glam than grit? We’ve got Nud

Antonio’s World: The Life and Work of a Celebrated Fashion Illustrator

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:03:00 GMT

Maria Snyder, Italian Vanity, Versace, 1983. “I’m from the generation that came to New York to meet their idols. In my case it was Andy Warhol and Antonio Lopez.” —Anna Sui What do Jerry Hall, Jessica Lange and Grace Jones have in common? Antonio Lopez. Without him, these women, along with other “Antonio Girls,” as he called his coterie of beauties, might not be the household names they are today. An influential fashion world figure from the 1960s to the ’80s, Antonio had an eye for spotting talent and illustrating beauty, transforming aspiring models and actresses into pinnacles of glamour. Fernand Leger series, the New York Times, 1966.

Yayoi Kusama, High Priestess of Polka Dots

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 03:54:00 GMT

Collection of the artist. © Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc. Artist Yayoi Kusama established the Church of Self-Obliteration and appointed herself the “High Priestess of Polka Dots” to officiate at a gay wedding between two men in 1968. For their nuptials, she also designed the couple’s wedding outfit: a two-person bridal gown. (And instead of a Bible, they used a New York City telephone book for the ceremony, she told Index magazine.) Since the wedding dress wasn’t included in the Yayoi Kusama retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, we can only imagine what it might’ve looked like. Nonetheless, from the late &rsquo

Orlon! Dacron! Antron! The Great American Knits of Fall 1965

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 04:34:00 GMT

An ad for fall knits from the New York Times. “Is the knitted way of life your life?” —The Great American Knits Fall 1965 DuPont certainly hoped so. On a recent trip to visit my family in Delaware I dropped off my overnight bag in my childhood bedroom and found a stack of papers and books my mother had left on my bureau that belonged to my grandmother. As I sorted through the pile of 1950s barbecue how-to booklets, 1970s Valentine’s Day cards and other miscellany, I found this gem of an advertisement from the New York Times, August 29, 1965, “The Great American Knits Fall 1965.” How timely with the first fall chill in the air! Printed on newsprin

Stockings Series, Part 3: Ads from the Archives, 1890-1939

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:08:23 GMT

An 1891 Ivory ad blamed the wrong brand of soap for ruining stockings. “Just see, father, how this stocking is ruined, and I’ve only worn it once. I though it was because Jane had rubbed it too hard, but Mother says it’s all the fault of the soap that Jane used. And she wants you to be sure and order a box of Ivory Soap to-day.” The story of stockings began before the nylon version captivated American women. Leading up to the craze for the synthetic stretchy material, silk stockings had their moment from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. As hemlines rose and legs were exposed, silk stockings became an essential part of many women’s

Only in New York: The Lady in Lime Green

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:59:00 GMT

Elizabeth Sweetheart. Yesterday, while riding the F train into Manhattan from Brooklyn, I saw Elizabeth Sweetheart. She was sitting on the subway, wearing lime green from head to toe, glowing. Her hair, backpack, necklace, nail polish—everything—was that vibrant shade. Before she got off the train in downtown Brooklyn, I introduced myself to her quickly and asked if I could snap her photo on my phone. I don’t know what prompted me to ask the only other question I had time to blurt out before we arrived at her stop – How long have you been dressing in green? Her response: 16 years. And then she was gone. With New York Fashion Week winding down, and one waiflike

It’s a Woman’s World With the End of Men

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 03:04:26 GMT

In 1966, music legend James Brown recorded “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” in a New York City studio. The song quickly climbed Billboard’s music charts and became a classic in Brown’s repertoire. “This is a man’s world,” strains Brown in the raw, soulful song. Over four decades later, Hanna Rosin is singing a different tune. As senior editor at the Atlantic, Rosin wrote a much-talked-about cover story in the summer of 2010, boldly declaring that for the first time in our male-dominated history, women are pulling ahead. In her new book, The End of Men, she describes in greater detail this shift in social order and how it i

Paint-on Hosiery During the War Years

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:14:00 GMT

With nylon or silk hose hard to come by, women had the look of stockings brushed on their legs. So it’s Saturday night in 1941, and you want to wear stockings with your cocktail dress, but the new wonder material nylon has been rationed for the war effort and has disappeared from department store shelves. What do you do in such times of patriotic privation? You get resourceful, and cover your legs with a layer of nude-colored makeup, and line the back of each leg with a trompe l’oeil seam. A successful application of liquid stockings and seams. Last week, in the first post from the Stocking Series, we heard about the huge reception of nylon hosiery. On May 16, 1940, of

New York Fashion Week, Past and Present

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:23:00 GMT

Philosophy show at Fashion Week, 2008. Today kicked off New York Fashion Week, the debut of the Spring 2013 designer collections, and for the next seven days, if you don’t catch them on the runway, you may run into six-foot-tall models on the subway, post-show, in cut-offs and T-shirts, faces still made up. Twice a year, like clockwork, I expect a few NYFW constants: lithe models teetering (or taking a spill) on the catwalk; Anna Wintour, expressionless, seated in the front row; popping flashbulbs; PR girls with headsets; celebrities rubbing elbows. It’s been like that as long as I can remember, but in the scheme of things, that isn’t all that long. How did this ann

Stocking Series, Part 1: Wartime Rationing and Nylon Riots

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:13:00 GMT

Women making hosiery at Minnesac Mills, Philadelphia. (Photo by Lewis Hine, 1936-37.) Women want men, career, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love and cheap stockings that don’t run. –Phyllis Diller Nylon stockings made their debut in my hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, on October 24, 1939. That’s because Wallace Hume Carothers, the chemist who invented the synthetic material in 1935, worked for the DuPont company, which is headquartered there. In fact, the first test sale to DuPont employees’ wives took place at the company’s experimental station, just up the street from my childhood home. Not long before th

The Swimsuit Series, Part 6: Ladies in Wading in Art

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:49:00 GMT

Swim Before Dark, 1978, by Helen Miranda Wilson As Labor Day approaches and summer sadly draws to a close, Threaded’s Swimsuit Series nears its end. But before we pack up our beach towels and boogie boards, let’s take a dip (I know, I know!) into the Smithsonian’s assorted collections. Ads, old photos, and even swimsuit competitions can trace the history of bathing suits. But so can depictions of bathing suits in art. In fact, as I mentioned in the first Swimsuit Series post, it was a mosaic found in a cave that first showed women donning bathing suit-like garments in the fourth century A.D. From the Smithsonian’s vast offerings, we can learn about bathing s

What Did Playtex Have to Do With Neil Armstrong?

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 06:08:00 GMT

Pressure suit, A7-L worn by Armstrong. Materials for the overalls include beta cloth, rubber, nylon, plastic connectors, aluminum neck ring, aluminum wrist locking rings, aluminum zipper and brass with neoprene gasket. “A spacesuit is made out of a flight suit, a Goodrich tire, a bra, a girdle, a raincoat, a tomato worm.” From the book Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, by Nicholas de Monchaux Or, that’s what a spacesuit was made from in 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died this past weekend, donned the bulky, Pillsbury-Doughboy-looking suit of great engineering and design ingenuity to take humankind’s first steps on the moon. A spacesuit is “the w

Hit-Making Hot Pants

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 03:35:00 GMT

On their wedding day in 1971, my mom changed from her gown into hot pants and my dad removed her garter as the celebration drew to a close. My parents were married on June 20, 1971. Just before they left the celebration at the Hotel DuPont’s Gold Ballroom in Wilmington, Delaware, for their honeymoon, my mother changed out of a floor-length lace gown into hot pants. Red, white and blue polka-dotted hot pants and a long skirt with a slit up the front. That wardrobe choice is not surprising given that 1971 was the year of the hot pants. As my parents drove away with “Just Married!” scribbled across the back windshield of their car, I wonder what song was playing on the

The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 07:07:57 GMT

Send Us Your Pink Flamingos! John Waters’ childhood yard was an exercise in good taste. His mother, the president of a local garden club, cultivated burgeoning flowerbeds and precise hedges. In their buttoned-up Maryland suburb, lawn ornaments of any kind, let alone plastic pink flamingos, were anathema. One house down the street had a fake wishing well and that was painful enough. “I don’t remember ever seeing a pink flamingo where I grew up,” the filmmaker muses. “I think I saw them in East Baltimore.” In 1972, Waters released the film Pink Flamingos, which was called both an abomination and an instant classic. The movie has almost nothing to do wit

Top 10 Chanelisms: Coco’s Wise Words to Mark Her Birthday

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:49:00 GMT

Coco Chanel demonstrates the sleeve construction and how the high armhole permits freedom of movement without lifting the hem of the jacket. Yesterday would have been the 129th birthday of Coco Chanel, one of the most stylish Leos in history (if fashion were, for some reason, arranged by the Zodiac). Born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19, 1883, to very humble beginnings, Coco, as she became known in her 20s—either because she was 1) a poseur, or performer, who danced to a similarly named song or 2) because of her cocaine-related proclivities—was determined to change her destiny. Not only did she succeed in pulling herself up from her well-designed, perfectly tailored

The 11 Things You Didn’t Know About Wheaties

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 06:49:47 GMT

Wheaties has been around for nearly 90 years, but when did they start putting athletes on the cover?

Through the Lens of Cosmo Covers: Remembering Helen Gurley Brown

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:37:17 GMT

Cosmopolitan, August 1970 Earlier this week, Cosmopolitan magazine’s longtime editor Helen Gurley Brown passed away at 90. Brown was famous (or infamous) for bringing blunt and colorful conversations about sex and relationships into the mainstream first with her 1962 bestseller Sex and the Single Girl and then at Cosmo, which she transformed from a sober publication for homemakers into the lifestyle magazine for the modern career woman. With Brown at the helm–for more than three decades, from 1965 to 1997–you could expect to see cover lines like “Don’t Be Afraid of Men Who Whistle and Ogle You–Enjoy!” (June 1970), “Are Younger Men the Answer?” (April 1973) and “What to Do With (and To)

Q&A: Jayson Musson Breaks Down Coogi Sweaters

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 06:11:00 GMT

Living Better Now, courtesy of the artist and Salon 94. Coogi sweaters bring to mind Bill Cosby dancing around with a silly grin wearing the bulky pullover with a pair of nice slacks, Notorious B.I.G. shouting them out as a status symbol in “Big Poppa,” and my 70-something-year-old Jewish grandfather sporting them in the early 1990s because that’s what my grandmother told him to wear. It makes me a little nostalgic for a time when Cliff Huxtable, Biggie and Grandpa Oscar somehow all shared a colorful, swirly and knitted heritage. Now, the Australian-jumpers-turned-American-status-symbols have been reworked and stretched onto canvases by artist Jayson Musson (best kno

As the Olympic Games Conclude, a Look Back at U.S. Opening Ceremony Outfits

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:41:32 GMT

The XXX Olympiad nears its end, and soon our athletes will be saying goodbye to the crowds and the cameras, finally exhaling, and heading back across the pond to the States. Yes, packing is on my mind again, but it must feel weird to stand there, looking around your Olympic village digs, packing up your clothes and gear, and then carefully folding your opening ceremony outfit, wondering what you are going to do with Ralph Lauren’s fitted navy blazers and cream trousers/skirts and matching head wear? Besides embarrassment at Lauren’s scandalous mode of manufacturing (made in China!), I wonder what the athletes thought of their duds. Yes, the customary opening night uniforms were weird. Bu

The Swimsuit Series, Part 5: Olympic Athletes, Posing

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 01:01:00 GMT

Mark Spitz, 1972. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, by unidentified artist. A few years before Farrah Fawcett donned her red bathing suit, seven-time gold medalist Mark Spitz wore his stars and stripes Speedo to dramatic effect in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Tanned and toned in this photo, Spitz stands, arms akimbo, grinning and gilded with first-place medallions. If Fawcett was the 1970s manifestation of the All-American girl in her one-piece, Spitz was the male equivalent: virile and mustached, confident. (That ‘stache, incidentally, began as a form of rebellion against his swimming coach’s instructions and was going to be shaved off before the Olympic

Packing List Series, Part 2: An Artist’s Illustrated Guide

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:41:00 GMT

Adolf Konrad’s sketched packing list, December 16, 1963. When German-born but New Jersey-bred artist Adolf Konrad (1915-2003) traveled through Rome and Egypt in 1962 and 1963, he made himself a visual packing aid. Amidst illustrations of street life and landscapes, his sketchbook included a graphic packing list in watercolor and ink accompanied by a sketch of the wanderer himself wearing only his skivvies. Adolf Konrad in his skivvies, 1963. Clothing was kept minimal: A couple of pairs of pants, underwear and socks, a few shirts, a coat, a blazer, sunglasses. (Although if you take a closer look, striped boxers, playful socks and red polka-dotted shirt with oversized green co

When LBJ Ordered Pants From the White House

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:10:00 GMT

A president’s legacy includes his landmark legislation (or lack thereof), his Supreme Court nominees, his wars begun or ended—and, of course, a commemorative library with the papers, effects and artifacts (including, recently, Mickey Mouse) that are arranged to sympathetically tell the story of that legacy. Apparel winds up as display artifacts too. Seeing a genuine item worn by a historical figure, the president of the United States of America, who stepped into that pair of gabardine trousers or put that tricorn atop his head (or whose fashionable wife wore that apricot silk ziberline dress), provides the kind of rare, humanizing experience that is difficult to come by from

The Long Journey of Chief Joseph’s War Shirt

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 06:14:00 GMT

Chief Joseph painting by Cyrenius Hall at the National Portrait Gallery. You know Chief Joseph, even if you don’t know him by name. He’s not Sitting Bull, or Geronimo, but you probably recognize Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce tribe, whose famous image was commemorated by the U.S. Postal Service with the 6-cent stamp in 1968. Notice what he’s wearing—a tan garment with blue beaded brocade that was his war shirt , which just sold to an anonymous buyer at the annual Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Reno, Nevada, for $877,500. The whopping sum doesn’t just come from the beauty of the well-preserved garment (although it’s a stunner), but its pr

Q&A: Archaeologist Unearths 600-year-old Bra in Castle

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 07:19:00 GMT

The bra is a lot older than we thought. Image courtesy of Beatrix Nutz It was a mere couple of weeks ago on Threaded, on the supposed 66th birthday of the bikini, that I suggested that the two-piece was, in fact, much older—500 years older based on an Italian mosaic in Sicily. Now, we’re left to ponder another widely held assumption, but this time the undergarment in question is a bra. Last week, Beatrix Nutz, an archaeologist and researcher at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, shook the foundation, so to speak, in an August 2012 article in BBC History, announcing that she had unearthed four bras and a pair of underwear dating back to the 15th century. Found in an

The Swimsuit Series, Part 4: A Competitive Swimmer’s Musings

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 03:05:12 GMT

Artist and author Leanne Shapton trained for the Olympic swimming trials as a teenager. Her newest book, Swimming Studies, which was released this month, is a quiet, weightless and elegant collection of stories about the life of a swimmer who is inescapably drawn to the water even after she is no longer rigorously competing. To continue Threaded’s Swimsuit Series, and with the Summer Olympics around the corner, I’ve excerpted part of her chapter “Bathing” along with some of the book’s images of Shapton’s swimsuits and their accompanying provenances. Vintage blue and white floral-printed cotton suit, no label, used for recreational swimming, 2006-2009.

Remembering Bloomingdale’s Chairman, the Dearly Departed Martin Traub, 1925-2012

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 06:36:08 GMT

Marvin Traub was a retailer who brought theater into the department store world with opulent merchandising displays. The passing of Marvin Traub this Wednesday, the former chairman and chief executive of Bloomingdale’s, is bittersweet. Sadly, his death fortifies the end of the lavish department store era. But his New York Times obituary includes some rich details about the department store’s storied history that are a cultural delight. Seeing the perfect pairing, I’ve interspersed a set of ornate images from a 1973 Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating with descriptions from his Times obit detailing Bloomingdale’s merchandising decadence in the 1970s and ’80s under his reign. A

Packing List Series, Part 1: Joan Didion

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:05:00 GMT

Joan Didion’s work and lifestyle set the tone for a generation of women. Image: Incase I was in that stage of packing where the suitcase was empty and the bed was piled haphazardly with clothes and the closet looks ransacked, when I suddenly and fondly recalled preparing for summer camp at Timber Tops in the Poconos. Every year we’d get that list from Timber Tops, a numerically descending inventory of summer: 15 pairs of socks, 15 pairs of underwear, 10 T-shirts, 5 pairs of shorts, 3 towels, 2 bathing suits, 1 pair of long pants, 1 long-sleeved shirt, 1 pair of sneakers, 1 pair of flip-flops, toothpaste, toothbrush, sunblock, bug spray. It was such a methodically satisfyin

Swimsuit Series, Part 3: Is Today Truly the 66th Anniversary of the First Bikini?

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:16:35 GMT

Micheline Bernardini modeling Louis Réard’s bikini. It’s widely regarded that on this day 66 years ago, the bikini was first introduced to the public by French engineer Louis Réard at the Piscine Molitor swimming pool complex in Paris. The two-piece was coined the “bikini” by Réard because he believed the new itty-bitty suit would wield the same explosive effect as recent atomic tests at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. And it did. In planning the debut of his new swimsuit, Réard had trouble finding a professional model who would deign to wear the scandalously skimpy two-piece. So he turned to Micheline Bernardini, an exotic dancer at the Casino de Paris, who

Wearing Wool, All Summer Long

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 01:44:22 GMT

Sheep wear wool in the summer, but then again, they live in Scotland. Or Ireland. Or other cool places with low stone walls. For the rest of us, we want less fur (or fur-based fabric) on sweltering days. But, as we know from the evolution of bathing suits, that wasn’t always so. In the 19th century, modesty reigned. Case in point: this illustrated catalog, circa 1884, from John E. Kaughran & Co., a purveyor of spring and summer fashions that look like (and occasionally were) bereavement wear meant for January. John E. Kaughran & Co. was a dry goods merchant with three locations in Manhattan, at 765, 767 and 769 Broadway, and a robust mail-order business. According to the 1884 c

The Swimsuit Series, Part 2: Beauty Pageants and the Inevitable Swimsuit Competition

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 01:38:00 GMT

Beauty contest, by Reginald Marsh, c. 1938-45. Beauty resists definition. One might say it does so by definition: The subjective thing called beauty cannot be measured, quantified or otherwise objectively evaluated. Which isn’t to say we haven’t tried! Yes, the beauty pageant has been around a long time. It was not long after Henry David Thoreau said that the “perception of beauty is a moral test” that his contemporary P.T. Barnum inaugurated the world’s first official beauty pageant, which was staged in 1854 and which was deemed so risqué that Barnum had to tone it down by asking women to submit daguerreotypes for judging instead of hosting a li

The Indelible Mister Rogers

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:44:57 GMT

Mr. Rogers’ cardigan at the National Museum of American History However you feel about the Mister Rogers Remixed video that’s gone viral over the past few weeks, one thing is certain (which was certainly reinforced by the popularity of that video): Mr. Rogers has had a lasting, positive and calming effect on millions of children and adults since his show, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” first aired in the U.S. in 1968. How many of us can recite every word to “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” on command like we’d just heard it yesterday? So to discover that one of Fred Rogers’ many cardigans had been donated to the Smithsonian’s permanent collection for

Welcome to Threaded! And a Dig Through the Archives

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:13:20 GMT

Welcome to Threaded, your go-to fashion blog for all things historical and sartorial! Threaded will explore the history and anecdotes behind clothing, jewelry, accessories, textiles and related paraphernalia. The Smithsonian Institution’s archive is vast and rich, spanning centuries and continents. It’s full of stories, folded neatly into suitcases (or, at times, tossed quickly into duffels), waiting to be unpacked (metaphorically speaking, of course!). I’ll be doing that unpacking, unearthing finds from the museums’ collections specific to clothing, dress, costume, and history, and sharing them here on Threaded. In addition to highlighting overlooked gems from the museum’s inventor

How Bathing Suits Went From Two-pieces to Long Gowns and Back

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 05:42:00 GMT

Farrah Fawcett poster based on 1976 photo by Bruce McBroom of Pro Arts Inc., and first published in Life magazine. We can’t all have our beach poses topped with copious, feathered blond locks, but we do all require swimwear, especially now that summer is upon us. As the thermometer rises, we seek water: a dip in the ocean, lounging poolside, hopping through an open fireplug on the street. All of which means donning a bathing suit. And that often means finding a bathing suit, which can be overwhelming considering the surplus of options: a one- or two-piece; sport or leisure, monotone or patterned? It wasn’t always so. Waterborne fashion has exploded in the past 50 years,

The Decades-Long Comeback of Mark Twain's Favorite Food

Mon, 21 May 2012 05:49:04 GMT

To Mark Twain, San Francisco was coffee with fresh cream at the Ocean House, a hotel and restaurant overlooking the Pacific. He also had a decided fondness for steamed mussels and champagne. But most of all, San Francisco was oysters—oysters by the bushel at the Occidental Hotel, where the day might begin with salmon and fried oysters and reach its culinary climax at 9 p.m., when, Twain wrote in 1864, he felt compelled “to move upon the supper works and destroy oysters done up in all kinds of seductive styles” until midnight, lest he offend the landlord. Every indication is that his relationship with the landlord was excellent. Having abandoned Mississippi riverboats in

How Do You Cook the Perfect Egg

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:00:00 GMT

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. But the best way to cook an egg—be it boiled, fried or poached—remains a surprisingly contentious subject in the world’s kitchens. A few seconds too long in the skillet or a single degree too high in hot water, eggsperts say, is all it takes to upset the delicate balance of texture, appearance and flavor. “I don’t think we’ll ever reach a consensus about an ideal egg,” says Dominick Cerrone, an assistant professor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Generally, he says, the criterion for a well-cooked egg is &ld

Those (Waxed Fruit) Times

Mon, 21 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The artist pays tribute to a family centerpiece that was both inedible and indelible

A Tasting Tour of Salts Around the World

Fri, 18 May 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Whenever I handle salt—to season food, pickle cucumbers, cure fish, scrub cutting boards, polish copper pots or thaw ice on my front steps—I experience a split-second cinematic flashback to a few salt sources I have visited. Each has astonished me with its grandeur and the human labor it entails. The scariest experience occurred some 30 years ago when I rode an elevator down into the salt mines on Avery Island in Louisiana, home of the fiery Tabasco empire and also of an enormous, ancient salt dome. Having donned helmet, gogglesand toe guards over shoes, and signed a waiver saying no one would be blamed for my death, I was driven in a Jeep through alleys that linked cavelike ro

Creole Gumbo Recipe From Mrs. Elie

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:52:55 GMT

Read about the history of gumbo and Lolis Eric Elie's memories of preparing the famous creole dish with his mother. Below is the recipe: Ingredients • 5 quarts water • 1 dozen fresh crabs, raw, boiled or steamed • 2 pounds medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined (reserve the shells and heads to make seafood stock) • 2 pounds smoked sausage, cut into 1 inch rounds (1 pound each of two different sausages is optimal) • 3/4 pound Creole hot sausage (if available), cut into 1 inch rounds • 2 pounds okra cut into rounds • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour • 2 large onions, coarsely chopped • 6 large cloves

Best. Gumbo. Ever.

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:53:52 GMT

Every south Louisiana boy is honor-bound to say that his mother makes the world’s best gumbo. I am distinguished from the rest of my tribe in that regard in this one particular:When I make that claim, I am telling the truth. Print out the recipe for Mrs. Elie's gumbo. My mother’s gumbo is made with okra, shrimp, crabs and several kinds of sausage (the onions, garlic, bell pepper, celery, parsley, green onions and bay leaf go without saying). My mother’s gumbo is a pleasing brown shade, roughly the color of my skin. It is slightly thickened with a roux, that mixture of flour and fat (be it vegetable, animal or dairy) that is French in origin and emblematic of Louisiana c

Where Did the Taco Come From?

Fri, 04 May 2012 04:37:36 GMT

Jeffrey M. Pilcher, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, has traveled around the world eating tacos. For the past 20 years, he has investigated the history, politics and evolution of Mexican food, including how Mexican silver miners likely invented the taco, how Mexican Americans in the Southwest reinvented it, and how businessman Glen Bell mass-marketed it to Anglo palates via the crunchy Taco Bell shell. Pilcher is author and editor, respectively, of the forthcoming Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (Oxford University Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Food History. His previous books include The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in

Five Men Who Hated (or Loved) the Number 13

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:27:13 GMT

On this Friday the 13th, read about these famous people from history who had a close connection to the supposedly unlucky number

Kelly Slater, the Chairman of the Board

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:14:30 GMT

On a bright summer morning in 1990, Kelly Slater, a lean young man from Cocoa Beach, Florida, only a couple of years out of high school, paddled his surfboard into eight-foot waves at a beach area called Trestles, in San Clemente, California. By the end of the day, after a fierce series of acrobatic rides against top competitors, Slater took the $30,000 first-place prize in the Body Glove Surfbout. Anyone who witnessed his performance that day saw the beginning of the greatest winning career in the history of surfing, and one of the mythic careers in all sports. After more than two dominant decades—he won his most recent world championship at Ocean Beach in San Francisco in 2011, no

Matt Groening Reveals the Location of the Real Springfield

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:20:41 GMT

UPDATE: "The Simpsons" responded to this interview with a new chalkboard gag before the Sunday, April 15, episode proclaiming that "The true location of Springfield is in any state but yours." Check it out. Claudia De La Roca: So take us back to the Simpsons’ foundational moment. In 1987 you were waiting for a meeting with James Brooks and you started sketching. What were you thinking? Matt Groening: I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, “Life in Hell,” for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing “The Tracey Ullman Show” for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on th

Greetings From the Land of the Make-Believe Species

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:45:58 GMT

Postcards provided proof of lake serpents, jackalopes and assorted curious monsters

The 21st-Century American Prom

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Send us your memories and photos from your prom! We had this vague idea that we would have to take someone. That was how the prom registered to the 500 kids in my high-school graduating class as we entered our senior year. For better or worse, I didn’t attend a school that featured a homecoming dance or junior prom or any all-American John Hughes-type of event. Our one and only foray into bow ties and blowouts was the senior prom—the spot of black tie in a sea of otherwise disaffected grunge. I’d managed to go through one round of prom already. I had gone with a senior boy, a friend of a friend, when I was a sophomore. Nothing scarring occurred, but I remember being bo

Teller Reveals His Secrets

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

In the last half decade, magic—normally deemed entertainment fit only for children and tourists in Las Vegas—has become shockingly respectable in the scientific world. Even I—not exactly renowned as a public speaker—have been invited to address conferences on neuroscience and perception. I asked a scientist friend (whose identity I must protect) why the sudden interest. He replied that those who fund science research find magicians “sexier than lab rats.” I’m all for helping science. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help ma

Teller Speaks on the Enduring Appeal of Magic

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Teller first became infatuated with magic around the age of 5, when he was bedridden with an illness and sent away for a magic set. “That toy became my obsession. I was magnetized to it. I worked these little gizmos till they frayed,” he says. “Nearly 60 years later, I’m still not cured.” He is now known best as the smaller, quieter half of the performing duo Penn & Teller. In addition to being one of the world’s most famous magicians, he’s also contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Atlantic; written three books with Penn; edited two volumes on magic history; and published When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!, a memoir of

What Makes an Ad Successful?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:19:10 GMT

The Martin Agency, based in Richmond, Virginia, has a knack for creating memorable ad campaigns. In the late 1960s, the group coined the now-famous tourism slogan, “Virginia is for lovers.” More recently, the ad shop has created the Geico gecko, Freecreditreport.com’s catchy jingles about the repercussions of not knowing your credit score and “Peggy,” the worthless (and despite the name, male) customer service agent of its Discover Card commercials. In advance of the 2012 Super Bowl on February 5, and the inevitable buzz over its commercials, I spoke with the agency’s chairman and chief executive officer, John Adams. An adviser to the National Museum of

How to Eat Like a King for Christmas

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:11:28 GMT

From the kitchen window of Ivan Day’s snug 17th-century farmhouse in the far north of England, snow blankets the bald Cumbrian hills of Lake District National Park. “Just look,” he chuckles, “You’re going to have a white Christmas early.” It’s the last time we will mention the weather. But it’s only the beginning of our concentration on Christmas. Two weeks before perhaps the biggest feast day in the Christian realm, I’ve flown through a hurricane-strength gale and driven white-knuckled for hours on icy rural roads to reach Day, one of England’s most esteemed food historians. Twelve to 15 times each year, he teaches courses in h

Photos: The Scariest Santas You'll Ever See

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:34:13 GMT

Browse our selected illustrations of some of the strangest and creepiest Santa Clauses ever put down on paper and then vote for your favorite

Which Santa is the Scariest?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:33:51 GMT

For all the holly jolly St. Nicholases in the world, there are always a few Santas that make you question your holiday spirit

The Hoarding Instinct

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

We have a rule in my house that for every box of stuff stashed in the attic, at least one must be removed. The reality is that it would take 6—or maybe 27—boxes to make a dent in the existing inventory. But this creates a conflict with another rule against adding to the local landfill. So, for a while, I was taking things out of the attic and, for the good of the earth, hiding them in closets and under beds. Then my grown children sat me down and said, “We love you, but...” I know how interventions work. I put on a glum face and confessed, “My name is Dad, and I am a hoarder.” And with these words, I manfully enlisted in the War on Stuff. We are all fo

The Tour Bus Has Landed

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Trip-Pal.com Lunar Vacation Reviews: “Swell intro to LunaWorld” Fred and Frederica, Ohio Reviewed June 6, 2034 Rating: ◊◊◊ We found the tourist orientation upon arrival most interesting. For instance, we never knew that electric fans don’t work on the Moon because there is no air to blow around. We also learned that lunar rover speed limits vary from 10 mph (Japanese zone) to 100 mph (French zone), so pay attention to those road signs! “Avoid the ‘Bargain’ Restaurants” Bob and Bobbie, New Mexico Reviewed October 9, 2034 Rating: ◊ There ought to be more supervision of the fast-food joints. A cheeseburger at the Buzz Aldrin Grill

Guess Who Came to Dinner

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

I don’t mind eating alone when I travel. I never give a second thought to how it looks or what people might think. Recently, after buying a theater ticket in Times Square, I wandered over to a little restaurant that doesn’t cater to the tourist crowd. It was early and I had no trouble getting a table. An older man with a full head of hair was seated just in front of me with a young, blond girl of about 15. I soon decided he must be her grandfather. After a few minutes a man with thinning curly hair and a broad smile joined them. He greeted the older man warmly, but with reserve, and he kissed the girl on the top of her head. When he began to talk, the girl rolled her eyes and

Locked Out of My Own Life

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

I just flunked my bank’s identity test. You know, the one that interrogates you about your life. I failed to identify my favorite cousin, former address and the name of my maternal grandfather. I’m sure that the person monitoring my efforts thought I was either an identity thief or a complete imbecile. The problem is, I lost my cheat sheet, a ratty piece of paper on which I had scrawled cryptic clues to my user names and passwords. It looks like a string of comic book obscenities: “Xxxxxx###,” “Xxx@#Xx,” “X##%@#xx!” The clues are phrases like “snack food dot high school home room number” or “not dog under ’70s license

Park(ing) Day’s Roadside Attraction

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:17:52 GMT

Did you participate in this year's Park(ing) Day? Submit your photos and we'll include them in a special photo gallery. If aliens were watching the Earth from space, they might well assume that cars are the planet’s dominant species. Humans, they’d quickly observe, seem to exist in order to feed and groom their well-armored masters, and propel them from place to place. That image long peeved Matthew Passmore, who decided to do something about it. Passmore, 41, is a consummate idea man who manages to seem both laid-back and highly enthusiastic. His résumé is all over the place: philosophy major at UCLA, professional bassist, intellectual property lawyer. But art

Do Kids Have Too Much Homework?

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:07:17 GMT

Homework horror stories are as timeworn as school bullies and cafeteria mystery meat. But as high-stakes testing pressures have mounted over the past decade—and global rankings for America’s schools have declined—homework has come under new scrutiny. Diane Lowrie says she fled an Ocean County, New Jersey, school district three years ago when she realized her first grader’s homework load was nearly crushing him. Reading logs, repetitive math worksheets, and regular social studies reports turned their living room into an anguished battleground. “Tears were shed, every night,” says Lowrie, 47, an environmental educator, who tried to convince school distric

Strike Up the Brand

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

You know the sense of decorum and probity that marketing consultants have brought to our political campaigns? Now they’re doing the same thing for whole countries. It’s called “nation branding,” a new, improved way to jostle for attention in the global marketplace. A key part of the mission is to sum up a nation in a single dazzling phrase. “Malaysia, Truly Asia,” for instance, or “Chile, All Ways Surprising.” South Korea briefly touted itself as “Dynamic Korea.” Officials later switched to “Korea, Sparkling,” but had second thoughts when someone pointed out that it sounded like a fizzy drink. “Miraculous Korea&r

Inside the World of Alessi

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 03:54:33 GMT

Tiny, little-known Lago d'Orta—just a mile wide, it lies to the west of Maggiore—is a sleepy European summertime destination, its forested shores peppered with stone-walled medieval villages. But hidden away at the northern end of the lake, above the town of Omegna and its gritty industrial zone, is a temple to modern international design: the Alessi factory. In 1921, a skilled metalsmith named Giovanni Alessi set up shop here, in an area with a long history of quality wood and metal handicraft. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, the family workshop turned out traditional items for the table and home—coffeepots, bowls, trays, tongs—in copper, brass, and nickel si

Letters

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

“The Triumph of Dr. Druker” shows once again how supervisors with little vision try to stifle gifted researchers and deprive humanity of such life-saving treatments as a new cancer drug. Brian Marfleet West Bloomfield, Michigan Cancer Fighter Dr. Brian Druker deserves every honor for his perseverance and work helping develop the drug Gleevec. Although my wife, Jane, and I never met him, his kind of research is what helped her live with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) for more than 26 years. Jane rode the wave of experimental drugs, including Gleevec, which kept her going. We believed in a better tomorrow, and she went on to earn a doctorate in child psychology from Tulane Uni

On the Money

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

January 1, 2015 From: Secretary of the Treasury To: Director, U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing Re: Advertising on U.S. Currency Mr. Director: As you know, in an effort to reduce our seemingly intractable national debt, President Rogers has authorized the sale of advertising space on U.S. currency. Needless to say, critics claim that this will debase and devalue this symbol of our national identity. While we take these concerns seriously, our goal is to maximize this tax-neutral opportunity for increasing revenue, within the bounds of good taste. To that end, we have drawn up some guidelines for implementing this policy: • To avoid clutter, no more than one advertiser shall pur

The Ava Gardner Museum

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Off Interstate 95 in Smithfield, North Carolina, is an outpost of mid-century Hollywood style: the Ava Gardner Museum. Born in nearby Grabtown, Gardner would have been happy living life as a secretary behind a typewriter—and she might have had her sister not pulled her into a New York photography studio. A portrait of her demurely gazing out from underneath a simple straw bonnet attracted the attention of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio, and the 16-year-old beauty was signed to a contract, well on her way from being a poor country girl to an international star. Initially known for her leggy publicity photographs and decadent social life—which included high-profile marriag

Food Like You've Never Seen Before

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Late on a rainy evening in March, the black-sweatered crowd filled the hallways of New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education. It was late because that’s when many of the guests, who toil in restaurant kitchens, got off work. They wore black because it’s the costume of the cultural avant-garde, a movement whose leadership has improbably devolved from artists, composers and writers to the people who cut up chickens. Professional chefs, long counted among the most reliable acolytes of the bourgeoisie—why else would they be so drawn to Las Vegas?—have seized the vanguard of Revolution and are carrying it out, one hors d’oeuvre at a time. At this very m

Eight Unusual All-American Museums

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

From voodoo to barbed wire, there’s an offbeat museum for every taste

The National Museum of Health and Medicine

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Victorian-era museums of medicine often seem like freak shows—corridors lined with displays of giant skeletons, deformed fetuses, amputated feet and cancerous lesions. But they were established with a noble purpose, as places where doctors-in-training could study actual specimens. The National Museum of Health and Medicine, in Washington D.C., which was created at the start of the Civil War to further the research of military field surgery and now is open to the public, is no exception. In 1862, Surgeon General William Hammond instructed Union doctors on the front lines to send him “specimens of morbid anatomy...together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed.” The A

Ladew Topiary Gardens

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

The best place for watching the fox hunt at Harvey S. Ladew’s estate in Monkton, Maryland, is with the naked ladies. You stand among them under expansive trees, where the fox hunt never ends, regardless of season. That is because Ladew sculpted his life-size hunting scene—with fox, running hounds and mounted riders—out of living yew hedges. Ladew, a socialite transplanted from Long Island, New York, lived hard, partied hard and planted exuberantly before he died in 1976 at age 89. Today, his antique-stuffed house and his topiary gardens attract over 30,000 visitors a year. In one section of the gardens, one finds a statue of Adam and Eve: Adam accepts the forbidden frui

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

To find the Museum of Jurassic Technology, you navigate the sidewalks of Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles, ring a brass buzzer at a facade that evokes a Roman mausoleum and enter a dark, hushed antechamber filled with antique-looking display cases, trinkets and taxidermic animals. After making a suggested $5 “donation,” you are ushered into a maze of corridors containing softly lit exhibits. There are a European mole skeleton, “extinct French moths” and glittering gems, a study of the stink ant of Cameroon and a ghostly South American bat, complete with extended text by 19th-century scientists. The sounds of chirping crickets and cascading water follow your steps. Op

The Kansas Barbed Wire Museum

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

“Barbed wire was a lifesaver for this region,” says Brad Penka, president and curator of the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum, in La Crosse, Kansas. Let him count the ways: keeping animals, crops and vehicles apart and helping to make the treeless plains fencible and the United States a food exporter.

There are more than 2,400 variations of barbed wire. The first U.S. patent for a barbed fence attachment was issued in 1867. But it was not until 1874 that Joseph Farwell Glidden, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer, patented a strand in which the barbs were held in place by twisted wire. Called “The Winner,” it would become the signature fencing of the American West.

Titan Missile Museum

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

In 1963, the United States armed 54 missile silos with launchable nuclear bombs, which could travel some 6,000 miles each and kill millions of people, flash-blind hundreds of thousands and leave a blanket of nuclear fallout. Beginning in 1982, as a result of a nuclear deterrent modernization program, the Defense Department destroyed the silos and mothballed the missiles. But one silo and its defanged missile near what would become a retirement community in southern Arizona called Green Valley, were preserved as a museum, a monument to the cold war. The Titan Missile Museum, 25 miles south of Tucson, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Take a one-hour tour or opt for a $80 “t

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Jerry Gandolfo didn’t flinch when a busload of eighth-grade girls began shrieking at the front desk. The owner of the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum simply assumed that John T. Martin, who calls himself a voodoo priest, was wearing his albino python around his neck as he took tickets. A few screams were par for the course. Deeper in the museum it was uncomfortably warm, because the priest has a habit of turning down the air conditioning to accommodate his coldblooded companion. Not that Gandolfo minded: snakes are considered sacred voodoo spirits and this particular one, named Jolie Vert ( “Pretty Green,” although it is pale yellow), also furnishes the little bags of

The California Surf Museum

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Started in a restaurant in 1986 in Encinitas, California, the California Surf Museum is finally—four locations later—in a space big enough to call home. The new address is courtesy of the city of Oceanside, about a 35-minute drive north of San Diego. Leaning against a wall and hanging from the ceiling are 55 surfboards selected by curator Ric Riavic, a surfer and former school gardener, to show how surfboards have evolved. The oldest board, made of sugar pine in 1912, is seven feet long and weighs over 100 pounds. The newest, formed in 2008 and owned by four-time world champion surfer Lisa Anderson, is made of fiberglass, is nearly ten feet long and weighs around four pounds.

The Newlywed Games

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Some say that competition between spouses is like dragging a fork across a balloon. Before long, the whole thing explodes. But for me, gaining a lifelong, live-in opponent was the icing on the wedding cake. Like most people, when it came to finding a soul mate, I searched for that elusive combination of spontaneous romance and day-to-day compatibility. But I was also looking for someone who would challenge me. Having played sports since the peewee level, I’ve always had a competitive streak. The way I see it, when someone competes with me, they’re saying, “I consider you a worthy match” in wit, sport or whatever the contest. A dozen roses from a suitor may be flatt

Recipes for Rabbit Fricasse and Raspberry Fool

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:37:07 GMT

Rabbit Fricassee Adapted from Elizabeth Fowler’s recipe, c. 1684. Ingredients: 1 medium onion, chopped 2 T. butter 1 ½ cups chicken broth, divided Freshly ground salt and pepper (about 1 teaspoon of each, or to taste) 2 tsp finely chopped fresh parsley 1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary 1 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme 1 ½ lbs. boneless rabbit loin, divided into fillets (chicken thighs may be substituted) 1. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet. Season the rabbit meat with salt and pepper and place it in the skillet. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon chopped parsley. Allow to brown lightly on both sides, about 6-7 minutes. 2. Remove the meat and set aside in a warm place

Food From the Age of Shakespeare

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:37:16 GMT

Enthralled by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House stories when I was a young girl, I once made one of the frontier family’s staple dishes, a cornmeal porridge called hasty pudding. One of my fourth-grade classmates peered into the bubbling mixture and remarked, “Look, it’s breathing.” Undaunted, I’ve continued my forays into historical cookery, from the Mulligatawny stew popularized by British settlers in India to an American colonial dessert called slump. While my cooking is purely recreational, it sometimes takes inspiration from my professional life as a communications associate at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The library&rsquo

Ten Unforgettable Web Memes

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:10:34 GMT

Cats and failures highlight this list of the memes that have gone mainstream. Which ones did we miss?

What Defines a Meme?

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a ‘spark of life.’ It is information, words, instructions,” Richard Dawkins declared in 1986. Already one of the world’s foremost evolutionary biologists, he had caught the spirit of a new age. The cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding. Evolution itself embodies an ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment. “If you want to understand life,” Dawkins wrote, “don’t think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.” We

Ad Nauseam

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

In a fit of nostalgia for the 2,034th-birthday party my high-school Latin class threw for Virgil, I signed on as chairperson for the Authentic Roman Banquet at my 12-year-old son’s middle school. My son hates Latin (which I made him take), and I was hoping the banquet would bring the language alive for him and his equally alienated classmates. I had forgotten nullum beneficium est impunitum: no good deed goes unpunished. A little research turned up the disheartening news that everything culinary we associate with Rome today—pasta, pizza, etc.—came long after Julius Caesar. A cookbook of ancient recipes didn’t help. Many Roman dishes were garnished with a sauce call

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:24:27 GMT

Little Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits primly on a stool, his white skirt spread smoothly over his lap, his hands clasping a hat trimmed with a marabou feather. Shoulder-length hair and patent leather party shoes complete the ensemble. We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral. But nowadays people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance, says Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys

Connie Sweeris, Ping-Pong Diplomat

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 03:58:23 GMT

In 1971, relations were chilly between Communist China and the United States. But the unassuming sport of table tennis helped bring these two countries just a little bit closer. In April of that year, at the invitation of the Chinese government, a nine-person United States table tennis team, along with their spouses, team officials and a few selected journalists, visited China for a series of exhibition matches. So-called Ping-Pong diplomacy was born, helping to set the stage for President Richard Nixon’s visit in February 1972. “No one was envisioning that this dramatic trip to China would be a precursor to re-establishing diplomatic relations,” said Steve Bull, directo

Ten Royal Weddings to Remember

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:15:00 GMT

Kate Middleton and Prince William are just the latest young couple to walk down the aisle and into the pages of British royal history. But what she wears and who attends the wedding are merely the beginning of the story. Royal marriages, in particular, are special and the Brits’ and have run the gamut from fairy tale to bigamy to beheading. William the Conqueror and Matilda William resulted from an affair between Robert, the Duke of Normandy, and Arlette, the daughter of a tanner. Though he succeeded his father as duke, the first time he proposed to Matilda of Flanders, she refused him, citing his bastard birth. But he courted her for seven years and eventually she relented—s

The Early, Deadly Days of Motorcycle Racing

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

A century ago, Americans fell in love with speed. While the Wright Brothers flew overhead and Model T’s rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line, the new sport of motorcycle racing began drawing large crowds bent on celebrating a piston-powered future. The Hendee Manufacturing Company introduced the 1.75-horsepower, single-cylinder Indian in 1901. Harley-Davidson followed in 1903. Inevitably, racing ensued. Early contests were held on horse-racing ovals and bicycle velodromes, but around 1909 wooden tracks built specifically for cars and motorcycles began to appear in Los Angeles and then elsewhere. It was in 1911 that a livery worker named Ashley Franklin Van Order moved from I

Turn on, Log in, Wise up

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

A friend told me about some research that shows the Internet is making us all stupid. She didn’t actually tell me. She tweeted, and it ended up on my Facebook wall. Soon I received similar alerts on my other social networking hangouts, so I knew something was up. That’s how people stay informed nowadays: if the news is important, it will find us. It didn’t take me long to track down the research. It was all over the Web—in blog posts, newspaper articles and a new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, a technology writer. The gist is that constant bombardment by Internet stimuli is rewiring our brains—for the worse. We

Spoken Like a Native

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

The reasons for learning languages are numerous—if not always obvious. Standing in a lost luggage line recently at the Falcone-Borsellino Airport in Sicily, I watched as a group of new arrivals tried to cut ahead of me by forming a second line at one of the other windows. “La queue est ici,” I said sharply, and, throwing me nasty looks, they reluctantly moved behind me. Why be an ugly American when you can be an ugly Frenchman? Marquee languages definitely serve their purposes. But when you learn a minority language, like Romansh or Sioux, you become a member of a select group—a linguistically exclusive club. And with membership comes privileges. Like secrecy. My

The History of Sweetheart Candies

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 11:14:43 GMT

They’re not diamonds, but Sweethearts candies —those tiny heart-shaped confections with embossed endearments —may well be the sweetest way to get your message across on Valentine’s Day. A Michigan man, Mike Waltz, went to extraordinary lengths to collect enough “Marry Me” hearts to propose to his girlfriend in 2004. After buying several bags of the candy and finding only two or three “Marry Me” hearts in each, he e-mailed the New England Confectionery Company (Necco) that makes the candies in Revere, Massachusetts. Someone at the company must have had a big heart, because a few days later, a small box of tiny pastel “Marry Me” he

Together, At Last

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

I still listen to my old vinyl lps, and keep them sorted alphabetically. This apparent order has spawned an unexpected randomness, bringing together musicians who probably never met and likely would have been at each other’s throats if they had. Here on my shelves, though, they nestle beside each other like old friends: eccentric jazz genius Thelonious Monk and prefab pop-meisters the Monkees; country diva Patsy Cline and Jamaican reggae star Jimmy Cliff; and (one of my favorites) lean, mean trumpeter Miles Davis and girl-next-door songbird Doris Day. Another favorite: Pete Seeger and the Sex Pistols. Imagine the fireworks unleashed if the patron saint of the modern folk music revi

The History of Snowshoe Racing

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:56:44 GMT

Laurie Lambert is a runner, always has been, it seems. So when she was snowed in at her remote cabin in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains nine years ago, she strapped on a tiny pair of children’s snowshoes and went out for a long run. “It was awesome,” she remembers. “I was like, wow, I think I could make a sport out of this. Little did I know it was already a sport.” As Lambert soon found out, snowshoe racing has become an increasingly popular sport in the United States and abroad, where last January more than 5,000 people competed in the 37th running of La Ciaspolada Snowshoe Race in the Italian Dolomites, a ten-kilometer event won by a former

Lucky Foods for the New Year

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 09:27:52 GMT

My Italian grandfather was known to eat a lot of strange things: pickled eels, tripe and anything slimy that would be considered disgusting to most children. For New Year’s Day his favorite food was a giant gelatinous sausage called cotechino, cut into sections and smeared with mustard. My brother and I joked that the sausage must have been made from the worst of the pig, like the eyes. As an adult, I developed a taste for cotechino (which contains plenty of pig fat, but no eyeballs), and have learned that this delicacy, and pork in general, is often considered a propitious food to eat at the beginning of the year. Many of our holiday customs go back to when we were an agrarian soc

Postmodernism's New Typography

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

In today’s digital world, most words we read reach us via computer, television or smartphone. Even hardcover books are designed with the help of digital technology. Typographers have meticulously sculpted each individual letter, whether on the page or the computer screen, all with the help of copious mouse clicking. It wasn’t always this way. Through the early 1960s, before the advent of digital technology, typographers used metal type, often hand drawing on graph paper and using photocopiers or ink transfer to create typefonts. From the end of World War I until the 1960s, “Sans serif” fonts, distinguished by their lack of feet, or “serifs” on the ends

There Was an App for That

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

So You Want to Conquer the Alps! 218 B.C. Every elementary school student knows that Hannibal and his invading army wouldn't have gotten very far in their over-the-mountains sneak pillage of Rome had it not been for this invaluable app. It not only listed every site along the route capable of power-washing and de-icing elephants, but also gave up-to-date Blue Book prices for off-lease pachyderms in the Roman Empire. A popular app extra listed follow-the-bouncing-ball tunes and lyrics to 500-plus marching songs, credited with sufficiently lifting morale to keep Hannibal's half-frozen troops from mutinying. Versailles VIP A.D. 1774 Nobles summoned for their first appearances at the court o

Our Top 10 Stories of 2010

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:03:41 GMT

1. Henrietta Lacks’ Immortal Cells Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been on the top of many notable “Best Books of 2010” lists, so it is no surprise that this interview with Skloot was our most popular article. In 1951, scientists at Johns Hopkins University created a human cell line that became invaluable to medical research. But where did those cells come from? Skloot discusses how she tracked down the source to a black tobacco farmer from Virginia named Henrietta Lacks. 2. The Search for the Guggenheim Treasure In 1903, a barge loaded with over 7,700 silver-and-lead bars sank somewhere in Arthur Kill, the narrow body of wate

Ted Gup on “The Gift”

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:49:33 GMT

In 2008, Ted Gup, former staff writer for the Washington Post and Time and professor and chair of the journalism department at Emerson College, was given a suitcase that his mother had found in her attic. Enclosed in it were letters dated December 1933 that told of scores of Canton, Ohio, resident’s struggles through the Great Depression as well as a number of cancelled checks. Gup soon gathered that the notes were addressed to his grandfather, an Ohio businessman who had doled out $5 checks to those in need in his hometown at Christmastime. Inspired by the discovery, Gup tracked down some of the descendants of the letter writers and wrote “The Gift,” in Smithsonian&rsquo

Daughter Knows Best

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I made a last-ditch effort to get my son to make his bed in the morning. We'd been having the same argument for 23 years, and now that he was going off to law school I thought it was time for him to shape up. I honestly believed that people who left their bed unmade would never be successful in life—that an unmade bed signified sloth, indifference and lack of moral character. Winston Churchill always made his bed. Martha Washington always made her bed. Conversely, Helen of Troy never made her bed. Neither did Attila the Hun or Al Capone. I was sure of it. One morning, I arrived at my office to find an e-mail from my son with the message, "Ha! The tables have turned!"

A Yuletide Gift of Kindness

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The year was 1933 and christmas was just a week away. Deep in the trough of the Great Depression, the people of Canton, Ohio, were down on their luck and hungry. Nearly half the town was out of work. Along the railroad tracks, children in patched coats scavenged for coal spilled from passing trains. The prison and orphanage swelled with the casualties of hard times. It was then that a mysterious "B. Virdot" took out a tiny ad in the Canton Repository, offering to help the needy before Christmas. All he asked was that they write to him and tell him of their hardships. B. Virdot, he said, was not his real name, and no one would ever know his true identity. He pledged that those who wrote to

Pumpkin Carving Ideas From Around the Smithsonian

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 03:52:19 GMT

Print out and tape these stencils to your Halloween pumpkin for a different kind of jack o'lantern

Fluent in 60 Seconds

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

By the time you finish reading this paragraph you will be totally fluent in a foreign language. First, memorize this word: monapos, which means a bull. Next, remember this one: tilon, the name of a fish that once lived in Lake Prasias, Macedonia. Lastly: paprax, another fish that used to reside in the same lake. Congratulations, you now know every word of Paionian! Well, almost every word. There are a few surviving Paionian proper nouns—the names of specific people and places. But the people are long gone, and the places don’t show up on any modern road maps. Paionian—which was spoken in Illyria (or possibly Thrace) some 2,200 years ago—is one of many languages tha

My Big Hang-Up in a Connected World

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

My 81-year-old mother was sitting solemnly in a pew at Christ Church. It was a memorial service for a 101-year-old friend. In the midst of the pastor’s eulogy, my mother’s cellphone went off. The ringtone wasn’t a dirge by Chopin or Handel but the pulsating beat of “Are You Ready?” sung in full falsetto by the Chipmunks. Her 12-year-old granddaughter, Cassie, had programmed the phone. Every head in the church turned upon my mother. Poor soul, she didn’t even know how to turn it off. Fearing it might erupt again, Mother sat on the phone, hoping to smother it. Seconds later the chapel was again filled with the sound of Chipmunks; it was Cassie calling to

Cleveland, the True Birthplace of Superman

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:32:35 GMT

With the departure of basketball star LeBron James earlier this summer, Cleveland has lost a superman. James was going to save the city as its native son, rescuing Cleveland from its economic woes. His image literally loomed over the city’s residents, on a multistory billboard that dominated downtown. Now, though, with James leaving the Cavaliers for Miami, Cleveland can focus on its first Superman—the one born on Krypton. In the past, the city has not given Clark Kent and his alter ego much attention, even though he was invented by two boys on Cleveland’s East Side. But that is changing, as the city is slowly beginning to recognize its role in creating the superhero wh

So Where You From?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Americans are so nice. It’s a shame, really. It wouldn’t be so bad if nice people didn’t like small talk so much, but they seem to love it. If you’re an immigrant with an accent, as I am, your days will be filled with conversations with nice people. It goes like this: I utter a simple “thank you” to a grocery store cashier, prompting an immediate “Where are you from?” “Czech Republic,” I say. “Really? My aunt went to Russia last year,” she responds. What do I say to that? Do I go with the pointless, “That’s nice” and beat a hasty retreat? Or do I say what I’m actually thinking: “What does

Orphan Films - Recapturing Lost Snippets of History

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:31:50 GMT

They call themselves “orphanistas”: archivists, historians, students, filmmakers and film buffs who assemble every two years to view what they call orphan films. Shorts, cartoons, newsreels, travelogues, sponsored films, stock footage, advertising, propaganda, home movies, all parts of our cultural heritage that are potentially at risk because they have no owner – abandoned to disintegrate over time. This year’s symposium, held in New York City, featured films from 17 countries and included: a 1903 Objiwe performance of Hiawatha, home movies of Mahatma Gandhi, the only known visual record of refugee camps established after the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937,

Laurie Anderson on the Sounds of the Future

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Few artists have been on the cutting edge as long as Laurie Anderson, the 63-year-old musician, writer and painter who achieved wide fame in 1981 with “O Superman,” a haunting song with robotic overtones that felt like a message from the future. Anderson—who was NASA’s first (and, as yet, only) artist-in-residence, in 2002—mounted her new multimedia show Delusion this past February at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver. New York City-based writer Jamie Katz caught up with Anderson at her studio in Lower Manhattan. Can you imagine what we might be listening to in 2050? Here’s my prediction. We’re now used to massively easy, highly compressed

Married, With Glitches

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

“My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots.” —Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy Maastricht University From The American Journal of Annulment and Divorce June 2053 UNDERLYING CAUSES OF HUMAN-ROBOT MARITAL DISCORD In the first major study undertaken since the passage of the Automaton Marriage Act of 2050, questionnaires distributed to 125 recently divorced couples have yielded the following findings: PART I Humans tire of their robot mates almost three times faster than robots tire of humans. 1. The key reasons cited by humans for dissatisfaction with robots are: • &ldqu

How to Train a World Cup Referee

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:46:44 GMT

The ball is lighter, the players are faster, the tactics are more complex. And if you’re a referee working the 2010 World Cup and you can’t keep up and be in the right position, you may blow the call, outraging the hundreds of millions of fans watching worldwide. So officials working the games have to be quicker and fitter. And it means they spend long days scouting the teams, just like opponents scout each other, so they can anticipate the action and make the right call. “Teams have a reputation for a style of play. Players have certain tendencies,” says Paul Tamberino, U.S. Soccer’s director of referee development. “The referees need to know those go

A Life Devoted to the American Diner

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:56:13 GMT

What Jane Goodall is to chimpanzees and David McCullough is to John Adams, Richard Gutman is to diners. “I was interviewed for a New Yorker article about diners when I was 23 years old,” he says over a meal at the Modern Diner (est. 1941) in downtown Pawtucket, Rhode Island, one recent sunny Monday. “And now, almost 40 years later, I’m still talking about diners.” He’s gradually grown into the lofty title “important architectural historian of the diner” that George Trow sardonically bestowed on him in that 1972 “Talk of the Town” piece, progressing from graduate of Cornell’s architecture school to movie consultant on Barry L

A Worldwide Quest for Barbecue

Tue, 18 May 2010 03:24:06 GMT

Steven Raichlen had no intention of heading to Colombia as part of his five-year odyssey exploring the world’s barbecue until hearing the rumblings about a strange dish, lomo al trapo, a beef tenderloin buried in a pound of salt and a few dried oregano flakes, wrapped in a cloth, and then laid on the embers to cook caveman style. For Raichlen, who began writing about live-fire grilling 15 years ago, that’s all it took to get him on a plane to Bogotá. By the evening of his first day in Colombia, Raichlen had been to six restaurants, each specializing in regional grilling, thanks to a local barbecue fan he met at a trade show, part of an extensive network of scouts and p

Green Eggs and Salmonella?

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

These stories are suffused with the same purity that makes children appear so marvelous and blessed,” wrote Wilhelm Grimm in the preface to his volume of fairy tales. If true, then life in the 19th century was worse than I’d ever imagined. Reading these stories today is like sitting through a Quentin Tarantino movie. Have you ever added up the body count? One poor girl is transformed into a block of wood and thrown into a fire. A father risks his daughter’s life by boasting she can weave straw into gold. An evil queen tries to off her stepdaughter with a poisoned apple. I used to think we lived in more enlightened times. But as the mother of two youn

Will Work for Brain Scans

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

You know those days when your income no longer quite equals your outgo? Or when a friend suddenly discovers that Bangalore is not a party treat, but the new home in southern India of what used to be his career? That’s when I turn for comfort to the offerings on Internet job sites like Craigslist. Naturally I skip past all the practical stuff. I know I would be a truly fine database administrator and an important addition to the team at (INSERT YOUR COMPANY NAME HERE), once I find out what a database is. But I don’t sense much magic there. Likewise, the many splendid career opportunities in health care administration fail to appeal because, to be honest, I don’t like bein

Home is Where the Kitchen Is

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:09:01 GMT

For her latest book, photographer Dona Schwartz chose the home’s busiest shared space to observe how a newly blended family—two adults, one preteen, three teenagers, two college kids and two dogs—learned to live together. She spoke with Smithsonian’s food blogger, Amanda Bensen, about what she saw In the Kitchen. Why do you think the kitchen is such a central point in a family’s life? The key factor is that everybody eats, so it’s someplace where everybody’s going to turn up eventually. I guess there’s also the bathroom, but that would be even more unwelcome! (Laughs.) And there is something magnetic about the kitchen. There were often other

A Novice's Guide to Foreign Idioms

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Some years back I was invited to speak at a black-tie event for the French-American Chamber of Commerce at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Because the audience would be primarily French nationals, I was advised to avoid using American idioms in my address. This is a fine kettle of fish, I thought as I sat down to purge my vocabulary of American idioms. What I was left with at the end of the day was “Good evening,” “Thank you” and a rented tuxedo. I’d have sold the farm back then for a peek into Jag Bhalla’s 2009 book, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears, and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World. Had I done so, I could have substituted

Hybrid Sports in a League of Their Own

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Long winters without cable television in rural Vermont prompted some college friends and me to invent “tennis golf.” The game involved taking a racket and whacking a ball through a course of several landmarks, including a bronze panther, the school’s mascot. None of us were particularly good at tennis—or at golf, either, for that matter. But we were proud of our invention, even if we weren’t likely to make it to the Olympics. Perhaps I would have stood a better chance of bringing home a gold medal if tennis golf were more physically demanding. Extreme hybrid sports are popular events at the Olympics. Athletes have competed in the biathlon, which combines skii

Ten Out-of-the-Ordinary Valentine’s Day Customs

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:07:44 GMT

1. Ballot Box: In ancient Rome, when Valentine’s Day was still a pagan festival, young women would put their names in a box, to be randomly chosen by men—who, according to one account, “paid particular attention to the young women whose name they drew.” Early Christian leaders tried to discourage the practice by substituting saints’ names for women’s, but the tradition persisted. A traveler’s diary from the early 18th century notes: “On the eve of St Valentine's Day… An equal number of maids and bachelors get together; each writes his or her true or some feigned name upon separate billets, which they roll up, and draw by way of lots,

Know Your Olympic Mascots

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

From Waldi the dachshund to Mukmuk the marmot, test your memory of the the Olympic Games' colorful representatives

Stamp Tact

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The votes in the 2008 U.S. presidential election had not even been counted. In fact, the election was still months away. But Barack Obama already had his own postage stamp. “Buy a Piece of History,” read the breathless ad in Linn’s Stamp News, a weekly newspaper for philatelists—people like me who are willing to pay dearly, even obscenely, for tiny, sticky pieces of paper. But this wasn’t the United States celebrating its soon-to-be first African-American president. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has a rule that “no living person shall be honored by portrayal on U.S. postage.” The Obama stamp was issued by the Republic of Chad, which, like many o

For German Butchers, a Wurst Case Scenario

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When it comes to animal protein, the German language is lacking in euphemism. Meat is “flesh,” hamburger is “hacked flesh,” pork is “pig flesh” and uncured bacon is “belly flesh,” as in, “Could you please pass me another slice of flesh from the pig’s belly?” A favorite children’s food, a bologna-like luncheon meat, is called by the curious term “flesh sausage.” No family visit to the meat counter is complete without a free slice of “flesh sausage” rolled up and handed to a smiling youngster in a stroller. Few things put me in a pensive mood like hearing my daughter cry out in delight, “Fl

Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:46:28 GMT

When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a “flying saucer nest” in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon. Almost as soon as crop circles became public knowledge, they attracted a gaggle of self-appointed experts. An efflorescence of mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudo-scientific research, conspiracy theories and general pandemonium broke out. The patterns stamped in fields were treated as a lens through which the initiated could witness the activity of earth energies and ancient spirits, the anguish of Mother Earth in the face of

Homemade Clothes for Hollywood - Made Movies

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:33:41 GMT

A modest low-slung metal building, set in the woods off a dirt road, is home to the world-famous Thistle Hill Weavers, workplace and studio of textile historian and weaver Rabbit Goody. Approaching the building a muffled thwack-thwack-thwack mechanical sound created by power looms can be heard. When the door is opened, the noise spills out along with the smell of fibers mixed with machine oil. Goody has been involved in movies for nearly 15 years. Since her start with the movie adaptation of The Scarlet Letter (1995), starring Demi Moore, Thistle Hill Weavers has worked on dozens of films. The studio has created historically accurate fabric for a number of iconic costumes, from Tom Hanks&

Ancient Homeowner Association Rules

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Ah, the homeowners association, which dictates everything from the shape of your shrubs to the color of your house. Such meticulously planned communities are generally thought to be a modern phenomenon, but a recent archaeological excavation near England’s Hamme-on-Rye unearthed a 14th-century document that suggests otherwise: A covenant set to hand this Twelfth Day of June in the year of our Lord 1365 between the Manor by the Meadow Association of Freeholders and the owner in fee symple. Whereas the owner hath entered into this covenant in order to enjoye the especial liffestyle offered by the Manor and to avoid all unnecessary discord, the owner doth hereby acknowledge and acquies

Shopping Maul

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Elbows out, adrenaline pumping, they line up by the thousands, aquiver with the thrill of the chase. Their focus is absolute, their aim impeccable, their arms powerful, their speed impressive. Impede or deter them at your peril. Shopping, no matter the state of the economy, remains our true national sport—not football, basketball or baseball, which come with referees, umpires, fines and actual rules. This is cage match fighting without the cage. The playing season is short but intense, kicking off with Black Friday and reaching a fever pitch on December 24—the all-star playoffs. As a former saber fencer who has worked the past two years as a sales associate at a posh mall, I'

Artists' Homemade Christmas Cards

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Americans last year sent more than two billion Christmas cards, and a great many bore a familiar sentiment printed in an overseas factory and boxed for mass consumption. The more than 100 holiday cards in a new exhibition at the Smithsonian's Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, each one designed by an artist for personal use, represent a fresher approach to a tradition that is for many of us, let's admit it, something of a chore. Most of the exhibition cards celebrate Christmas, while several acknowledge Hanukkah and the New Year. They were selected from the Archives of American Art's collection of artists' ephemera, which also includes journals, sales receipts and snapshots.

Meet Sesame Street's Global Cast of Characters

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:45:02 GMT

Over the course of the 40 years that the program has been on the air, Sesame Street has spawned versions in countries around the world

Historical Laughter

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Lytton Strachey made up the business about Thomas Arnold having short legs. Arnold—headmaster of Rugby, father of Matthew Arnold, paragon of manly 19th-century Christian rectitude and one of the subjects of Strachey's Eminent Victorians—had perfectly normal legs. But Strachey, for his own sly purposes, invented the indelible detail: "[Arnold's] outward appearance was the index of his inward character: everything about him denoted energy, earnestness and the best intentions. His legs, perhaps, were shorter than they should have been." (The Strachey touch is to be admired in the pseudo-diffident "perhaps" and "should." It added something to the jok

Home Sweet Homepage

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Last month our family made the big move. We migrated to the Internet. For many years, we rented an apartment in Queens, New York. But everyone we knew moved to online communities and our neighborhood changed. It's a pretty long trip to the World Wide Web, about a three-day drive. Somewhere between Newark and Camden, my wife started pleading with me to turn back, saying it was too soon for our family to go digital. Would the Internet have enough room for all four of us? How safe was the water? Where would we store our linens? Luckily, our son talked his mother down off that particular ledge. He had visited friends who had already made the move. They had nice places, he told her, complete w

Roller Derby’s Sisterhood

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:10:34 GMT

Sitting on the floor of the ice-turned-roller-derby rink in Ithaca, New York, on a sweltering August night, I fanned myself with a cardboard fan on a stick. The young man beside me with a modified mohawk and earlobe plugs thanked me for pushing some hot air his way. “Hot night,” he said, then added, “It’s a bit like being in a crock pot.” Before us, fluorescent tape marked the track on which Ithaca’s SufferJets and the Wilmington Ruff Rollers from Wilmington, Delaware, skated in a pitched battle. At that moment, the SufferJets were skating two players down because jammer Sarabellum and blocker S---- ‘N Gigglz sat in the penalty box (an area adjace

Portraits of Baseball's Tinker, Evers and Chance

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Forget bubble gum; the first collectible baseball cards came with cigarettes. The cards transformed the game, making household names of its greatest players. In the first decade of the 20th century, baseball's biggest draws included three Chicago Cub infielders who would become linked in legend: Tinker, Evers and Chance. That melodic triplet echoes down the corridors of the Hall of Fame, a box-score cadence whispering to those straining for the sounds of summers past. We can't get back to Chicago's West Side Grounds in October 1908 to see these three help the Cubs defeat the Detroit Tigers on their way to winning the World Series, but we can glimpse their era and their singular faces in ba

UBI in the Knife and Gun Club

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Young doctors these days get trained to talk nice, think pretty thoughts and steer clear of malpractice lawyers. So the colorful subculture of medical slang is probably CTD ("circling the drain"), if not DOA ("dead on arrival"), and that may be a good thing. It was probably a little insensitive when doctors sticking a pulmonary artery catheter into a plus-sized person referred to it as "harpooning." And it was never great bedside manner to remark that a newly arrived motorcycle crash victim was GPO ("good for parts only"). But in the bad old days, when medical life was more freewheeling, "MASH"-style humor was commonplace. Patient reports

A Collection of Baseball Firsts

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Who hit the first grand slam? Who was the first pinch hitter? Presenting the nine players of Smithsonian’s "They Did It First" All-Star Team

Museums With Their Own Niche

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:06:40 GMT

I peered at the rows of lunchboxes and stopped with a smile in front of a gleaming Strawberry Shortcake, its pink and white figures recalling peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, piles of crayons and an overnight party where at least one lucky girl unrolled a Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag. I wondered if one of these lunchboxes was still hidden in the dusty recesses of my house. In an instant, a tall man with hair like gray steel wool was at my side. “Ah, you’re of the metal lunchbox era!” said Tim Seewer, artist, cook and partner in Etta’s Lunchbox Café and Museum in New Plymouth, Ohio. “The Florida Board of Education decided in 1985 to ban metal lu

Cooking With Breadfruit

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:34:27 GMT

It looks a bit alien, like a green coconut with goosebumps, and it sounds like an exotic hybrid---is it produce, or a baked good?---but breadfruit is really rather ordinary in many parts of the world. "Sure, I know what breadfruit is! It grows everywhere in Puerto Rico, where I grew up, and its so good," says Carmen Eyzaguirre, a Smithsonian librarian in Washington, DC. "It tastes like something between a potato and a plantain." According to The Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii, breadfruit (artocarpus altilis) grows in almost 90 countries, mostly in the Pacific Islands, southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central America. There a

Last Fan Standing

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Early in this past season's National Hockey League playoffs, I turned on a telecast of a Washington Capitals-New York Rangers game. I have lived in Washington for the past 25 years, but I was rooting for the Rangers. Growing up, they were "my" hockey team. To this day, whenever and whomever they play, I want them to win. And hockey is the least of my New York sports allegiances. I remain, half a century past the peak of my sports passions, a fervent fan of the Yankees, Knicks and football Giants. I'm even a fan of the baseball Giants, five decades after they renounced the Polo Grounds for San Francisco. So it's been, across several decades and each of the other cities in which

Sheep, Chicks and Geese Scurry at the County Fair

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:19:08 GMT

As photographer Dan Nelken has catalogued, the county fair is the place for family farms to showcase their prized livestock

Darwin for Dads

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

When my daughter was small, I used to take her to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, I would explain why the dinosaurs disappeared and how mankind evolved from our primitive forebears. She seemed rapt. But a few weeks ago, after hearing me on the radio discuss a new book about Charles Darwin, my daughter, now 25, suggested that we reverse roles—she'd take me to the museum. She said my understanding of Darwinism needed some fine-tuning. I am not one of those lunkheads who interpret evolution as meaning only the fittest survive and their survival proves that they deserved to outlast other species. But I am one of those people who believe things usually hap

50 Years of Pantyhose

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:19:57 GMT

The story of pantyhose runs in the Gant family. Since the late Allen Gant Sr. introduced the first pair in 1959, his descendents have watched the garment move from high fashion to optional accessory. Three generations of women have now experienced waist-to-toe stockings, and few would be surprised to discover that a man invented pantyhose. But here’s the twist—it was at the request of his wife. According to Allen Gant Jr., the inventor’s son, Gant Sr. and his wife Ethel Boone Gant were on the overnight train to North Carolina, returning home from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, when a pregnant Ethel informed her husband that this would be her l

The Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:51:41 GMT

In the late 1960s, John Karras, a copy editor for the Des Moines Register, and his colleague Donald Kaul, a columnist for the paper, began to pile their ten-speed bicycles into Karras’ Volkswagen bus and drive outside of Des Moines, where they’d ride a couple times a week. They were city boys. Karras grew up in Cleveland and Kaul in Detroit, and neither had spent much time on bikes since they were kids. But they were soon enamored with cycling, especially as a way to explore rural Iowa. Eventually they ventured further and further from home and by 1971, Karras and Kaul rode 125 miles from Des Moines to Iowa City. Karras recalls the trip took them about 13 hours, and the accompl

There Oughta Be a Law

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Washington, D.C., July 4, 2509: The General Services Administration today announced completion of an exact replica of the United States' Capitol building—designed from C-SPAN videos that recorded debate in both houses of Congress in the early years of the 21st century. The grounds surrounding the Capitol have also been faithfully reproduced. There are bushes, which were beaten around, and a row of haystacks in which members of Congress used to look for needles. The driveway is paved with stones, none of which was unturned, and there are three bandwagons in front of the building upon which they frequently climbed. There are no fewer than seven flagpoles for the running up of ideas.

The Cherished Tradition of Scrapbooking

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:57:58 GMT

Graphic designer Jessica Helfand has been fascinated with visual biography since her days as a graduate student in the late 1980s, pouring over Ezra Pound’s letters and photographs in Yale’s rare book library. But the “incendiary moment,” as she calls it, which really sparked her interest in scrapbooks came in 2005, when she wrote critically of the hobby on her blog Design Observer. Helfand derided contemporary scrapbookers as “people whose concept of innovation is measured by novel ways to tie bows,” among other things, and was vilified by the craft’s enthusiasts. “I hit a nerve,” she says. Spurred on by the rise of scrapbooking as th

Jung and Zongzi Recipe

Fri, 15 May 2009 08:33:40 GMT

The Cantonese, from southern China, use a different name for the Mandarin dish zongzi; they call it jung. Since both my mother’s family and chef Martin Yan are from Guangdong, I am going to use jung for the purposes of this recipe, as well. First, a primer on the main ingredients. “What’s not to like?” says Flavor and Fortune editor Jacqueline M. Newman. “It’s carbohydrates and protein.” Rice, obviously, is the staple Chinese food, but pork is a close contender. That’s because it’s always been the most readily available, useless animal. “The cow was the farmer’s helping hand, so they didn’t want to waste it on eating

Near Misses in the Genius Department

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The MacArthur "Genius" Grant is awarded annually to between 20 and 30 talented individuals from a variety of fields who have demonstrated "extraordinary originality and dedication" in their work. Herewith a brief look at a few of the brilliant minds who just missed this year's cut: Neill Goldberger Historian Upending the academic establishment with the revolutionary premise that history cannot be understood as a linear narrative or a recurring loop, but rather as a large, multicolored rhombus. Best known for his controversial theory that Eleanor Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle were in fact the same person. Marimba Jones Playwright Quietly revolutionizing the theate

Do Not Go Gentle

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

She was so pretty, her face etched in sadness peering out the window of the bus. I guess my admiring stare caught her by surprise, because suddenly her face brightened, she stood up and offered me her seat. "Really, do I look that old and tottery?" I thought. No woman had ever done that before. And why should they? My barber tells me my hair is thicker than most guys half my age. Even my kids believe I'm still sharp enough to conquer all the electronic equipment they give me for Christmas. And it wasn't that long ago that these two legs I'm standing on carried me through all twenty-six miles, three hundred and eighty-five yards of the New York City Marathon. "Please,"

Unusual St. Patrick's Day Celebrations

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:14:55 GMT

Since the early 17th-century St. Patrick’s Day has been one of celebration. Each March, cities and towns pay tribute to the Emerald Isle – Chicago dyes its river a glowing green and New York City draws two million spectators to its parade. And as local customs meld with leprechauns, shamrocks and bagpipes, communities around the world are adding a new twist to traditional St. Patrick’s Day festivities. 1) Hot Springs, Arkansas The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade may also be the quirkiest. Across the 98-foot-long Bridge Street, labeled in the 1940s as the “Shortest Street in the World” by Ripley’s Believe It or Not, march a cast of

The Surprising Satisfactions of a Home Funeral

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Two funerals, two days apart, two grandfathers of my two sons. When my father and father-in-law died in the space of 17 days in late 2007, there wasn't a lot of time to ruminate on the meaning of it all. My wife, Sarah, and I were pretty busy booking churches, consulting priests, filing newspaper notices, writing eulogies, hiring musicians, arranging military honor guards and sorting reams of paperwork (bureaucracy outlives us all), to say nothing of having to wrangle last-minute plane tickets a week before Christmas. But all that was a sideshow. Mostly we had to deal with a couple of cold bodies. In life both men had been devout Catholics, but one was a politically conservative advertisi

Mao Zedong: King of Kitsch

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Almost 60 years have passed since Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in October 1949, promising an economic system that would muzzle capitalism's running dogs. I think most of us can agree that the Great Helmsman screwed things up pretty badly with his disastrous Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and other bloody and misguided social experiments. But love him or loathe him, Chairman Mao has done more for his people in death than he ever accomplished when he was alive and peddling his Little Red Book. He has become the King of Kitsch—and a zillion Chinese manufacturers and shopkeepers are the beneficiaries. Not to mention collectors of totalitarian memorabilia li

Weave, Wobble and Roll: Feather Bowling

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:01:17 GMT

With a thump and a rumble, what looks like a wooden wheel of Gouda zigzags down a concave clay lane, careening toward a pigeon feather standing at attention in the dirt 60-feet away. Amused onlookers howl as it maneuvers around other balls, staggering and dropping within inches of the gray plume. Cheers erupt and bottles of Belgian ale clink. It’s Saturday night at the Cadieux Café in Detroit and the partygoers play this quirky game of feather bowling to celebrate a 50th birthday with some old-fashioned Flemish fun. More akin to bocce ball than tenpin bowling, this arcane sport, which originated in western Belgium, was imported to Detroit in the 1930s by Belgian immigrants, w

At Home with the Darwins

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:57:25 GMT

In 1839, two years after he had returned from his epochal voyage aboard the Beagle, Charles Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. (The two were grandchildren of Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the renowned British pottery.) It was to be a love match of the highest order: the Darwins, who would have ten children, lived in harmony for more than 40 years, until Charles’ death in 1882. Darwin was devoted to his spirited, intelligent wife, whom he described as “good as twice refined gold.” The Darwins presided over a lively household in a rambling country manse, Down House, in Kent, 16 miles from London. There, Darwin worked in his study, laboring over On the Origin of Species

Requiem for the Redhead

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Not long ago, newspapers and magazines reported that, by the end of the century, redheads, of whom I am one, will be extinct. Gone. Kaput. Since then, other scientists have raised doubts about the great redhead extinction theory, especially since the research was conducted by the Oxford Hair Foundation—which is funded by Procter & Gamble, which manufactures hair dye. Still, who can say for sure who is right? I'm sure that, back in their day, the dinosaurs were pretty smug too. Where will we be without people like Danny Bonaduce? Bad example. How about Dwight Eisenhower? Ike was a redhead. (He was younger then.) And what other group could we taunt without fear of retribution? &qu

After an Inauguration, the Stars Come out to Play

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:00:39 GMT

In the program for President William McKinley’s 1901 inauguration, a writer prophesied the scene of a 21st -century inaugural ceremony. “Nearly a half million people had been packed into the great glass-covered arena which fronts the east façade of the new Capitol building,” the writer foresaw. To entertain them? “Four great automatic bands were placed in the corners of the space and, operated by buttons, simultaneously rendered a programme of popular music.” In 2009, President Barack Obama’s first inauguration continued the tradition of entertaining inaugural crowds, albeit with live performances instead of musical machines. Musicians including

The More the Merrier

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

'Twas the season, and photographer Neal Slavin was racking his brain for a holiday picture. This was 1987, and Slavin had been doing a series of group portraits for the Washington Post Magazine. "I got to thinking," he says. "What happens while Santa isn't working?" After rejecting a few ideas (among them, 20 figure-skating Santas), it occurred to Slavin that what Santa might most want to do after work was have a snack. "I figured he'd go in and have a hot toddy or something," he says. So he sat seven Santas around two tables at the Tastee Diner in Silver Spring, Maryland, and served up some milk and cookies. The Post Magazine group portraits were an extensi

Your Name Here

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

The other day I got a press release about the latest immortals inducted into the Thermal Spray Hall of Fame. "It's just outside Cleveland," a spokesman told me when I followed up by phone. It's not exactly a hall, he said, or even a room. More like a display panel. Then, mustering all his powers of understatement, he added, "If you think of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's not like that." Maybe he was afraid I was planning to visit. Not to worry. I was just savoring the idea that the American landscape is littered with halls of fame that frequently lack the hall, and also, well, the fame. They honor achievement in fields where ticker-tape parades and groupies are

Snowman Gone Wild

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:43:38 GMT

Like some of man’s oldest forms of folk art, the snowman is, and always has been, a byproduct of man’s primal instinct to depict himself in art, be it a cave painting or a sculpture made out of snow. A frozen Forrest Gump, he’s a reflection of our own development. The snowman’s history spans the Renaissance, the early years of the American colonies, even the Franco-Prussian War. But one of his most intriguing eras was the “Dean Martin Years,” a period of excessive drinking and questionable activity. What caused the snowman to go on the binge? This lost weekend for the snowman comes after a period of being treated poorly at the turn of the 20th century.

The Road to Repatriation

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:50:27 GMT

In August 2007, 38 sacred Apache objects traveled from the National Museum of the American Indian’s collection in Maryland to Arizona. The shipping crates featured breathing holes for the masks and revered artifacts inside, which Apaches believe are alive. Before sending them off, a medicine man blessed them with yellow pollen, a holy element that fosters connection with the creator. After a ceremony at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Apache elders returned the objects to sacred mountains and sites in the Southwest where they believe the spirits reside. This transfer was one of thousands that have taken place since a series of federal laws in 1989 and 1990 compelled museums to work wi

Choosing Civility in a Rude Culture

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

We are facing a crisis. There is a growing consensus that the situation is dire—and looking bleaker every day. Almost everyone has contributed to the problem, and everyone is a victim of it. This catastrophe? The "coarsening of America," as our pandemic of rudeness has been called. And if it seems alarmist to speak of rudeness in catastrophic terms, consider some of the arguments advanced by those who do: that incivility costs the nation more than $100 billion a year in accidents on the road, that billions more are lost to diminished productivity at work, and that many acts of violence have their origins in acts of rudeness. And beyond the physical damage, they say, there

Amazon Warriors

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

I once had a job writing jacket copy for children's books. All I had to do was summarize the plot and end with a question like "Can the triplets escape the Curse of the Dead Leopard?" The series was so popular that people would have bought the books if I'd just typed out the Cyrillic alphabet, but the job got me interested in jacket copy. Now I judge books as much by their jacket copy as their content. If there's a mention of a charlady detective, a dog in danger or the word "Texas," I put the book back on the shelf. But you can't read book jackets on Amazon.com. (Well, sometimes you can, but it's too technical to go into here.) Instead you have to rely on reader revie

In Politics, Just Follow the Signs

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Many of us believe that the world has been going straight downhill since the fall of the Roman Empire. Rome, founded in 753 B.C., survived as a kingdom, a republic or an empire until about A.D. 476. Any society that can survive 1,229 years must be doing something right. One reason Rome flourished as long as it did was that public policy was determined by signs and portents. Nobody ever did anything in ancient Rome without first reporting that he had seen two eagles dueling over a dead goat, or a hailstorm miraculously erupting from the Praetorian Guards' favorite fig bowl. These omens were used to justify everything: invading Thrace, deposing a rival, raising taxes, even divorcing your sp

The Million Word March

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:25:52 GMT

It used to be that the expert source on what was or wasn't a word was that school-day staple: the dictionary. American Heritage, Webster's Third, the Oxford English: there were a few trusted players in the game. But what if those players are losing their edge? Take the word "staycation." Staycation, which means to spend a vacation at home, recently appeared in the New York Times, USA Today and MSNBC. But it isn't likely to appear anytime soon in a dictionary. The same goes for "bracketology," (the science of NCAA March Madness betting) Facebook and Wikipedia. "We try to cover the most salient" words," says Joe Pickett, executive editor of the American

History's "Global Languages"

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:23:41 GMT

With nearly one-third of the world's population capable of communicating in English, it might be tempting to think that English is the world's first "global language." In fact, the idea of a "global language" is older than English itself. "Latin was the world's first recorded global language, or lingua franca, carried across Western Europe by soldiers and traders in the days of the Roman Empire," says Salikoko Mufwene, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago. Even after the Empire dissolved, Mufwene says, Latin persisted as the main language in many Western European cities. By the 18th century, each city had added words and phrases to it, lead

Four for a Quarter

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Nakki Goranin and I squeeze into a cramped photobooth in a Vermont shopping mall and practice our expressions. Goranin, a veteran, tries out some wacky poses, sticking her tongue out and squinting at the lens. I'm a bit more inhibited and, as the camera clicks off four shots, stick with a bemused smile. A minute later, the machine spits out a photo strip. "I love them," says Goranin of the photos. "They're the real Nakki." Goranin, who lives in Burlington and has just published an illustrated history of the machine, American Photobooth, asks me to sign and date the back of the strip, just as she did in the late 1960s growing up in Chicago and sharing photobooth photos

Spin Cycle

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Silkworms were first brought from Asia to Byzantium around A.D. 550. Legend has it that two monks hid silkworm eggs inside a bamboo pole to smuggle them out of China, where they were guarded as closely as state secrets. The monks then presented the eggs to Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople, where he created a thriving silk industry. Silkworms reached Italy through Sicily in the 12th century, and by the 13th century, silkworm cultivation—or sericulture—had migrated north to the Po River Valley. By the 16th century, sericulture had been introduced to the Como area. Silkworm farming was a brutal job. Since silkworms require a constant, mild temperature, entire secti

Dream On

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

FROM: HUMAN RESOURCES TO: ALL STAFF Dear Employees, We were very gratified by the positive response to last week's memo, "Cutting Medical Benefits: Healthy Companies Mean Healthy Employees." This week, we'd like to turn our attention from physical to mental health. Many of you have left notes in our comments box reporting a "worrisome" increase in "unpleasant" work-related dreams. While you might be tempted to interpret these dreams yourself, this is something better left to professionals. What appears on the surface often has a deeper meaning. So, as another employee benefit, your HR department has compiled this guide to four of the most common workplace-r

Interview: Eric G. Wilson

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:06:30 GMT

Eighty-four percent of Americans claim to be happy, a statistic that Wake Forest University English professor Eric G. Wilson finds "strange at best, troubling at worst." With a litany of self-help books, pills and plastic surgery to feed Americans' addiction to happiness, he says, "It's now easier than ever before to live a trouble-free life, to smooth out the rough edges, to hide the darkness." In his recent book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson—a non-recovering melancholic by choice—praises sorrow as the muse of many writers and songwriters, warning that to rid life of it is to rid life of a vital source of creativity. You compare the lo

A Tasting of the Grape, Among Other Things

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT

The event took place in southern Vermont, late in April, on one of those weekends when people tell each other, "it is a crime to stay indoors." The sky was high and so blue it gave you vertigo to stare into it. The first tentative leaves were unfolding on some of the birch trees and a few daffodils bloomed for some of the more fortunate gardeners. Most people did, indeed, get outdoors where they did yard and garden work, played golf, or rode a bike. There were, however, fifty visitors to Manchester's stately Equinox Hotel who remained, resolutely, indoors all weekend. From shortly after breakfast until almost dinner, they sat around tables, drinking wine. Well, they were actual

The History of the Drive-In Movie Theater

Fri, 30 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT

On June 6, 2008 the flag flying over the U.S. Capitol commemorated the 75th birthday of a distinctive slice of Americana: the drive-in movie theater. It was on that day in 1933 that Richard Hollingshead opened the first theater for the auto-bound in Camden, N.J. People paid 25 cents per car as well as per person to see the British comedy Wives Beware under the stars. The concept of showing movies outdoors wasn't novel; people often watched silent films on screens set up at beaches or other places boasting an abundance of sky. However, it took an auto-parts salesman such as Hollingshead to see the genius in giving a car-loving society one more activity they could do in their vehicles. He

Moses at the Bat

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

While baseball is generally considered a "modern" sport, there are references in the Bible that could lead one to deduce that, in fact, there were Giants in those days as well: And Abner said to Joab, "Let the young men...arise and play before us" (II Samuel 2:14) ...[and] all the people rose up... (Exodus 33:8) And Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the recorder; and Sheva was scribe... (II Samuel 20:24-25) And they said unto Jephthah, "Come and be our [Captain]" (Judges 11:6) ...and he measured two lines... (II Samuel 8:2) And he set the bases... (I Kings 7:39) And they stood every man in his place round about the camp (Judges 7:21) ...behold, Rebekah came f

Lads Without Plaids

Mon, 24 May 2010 06:44:00 GMT

Military officials said that Scottish soldiers were having to share their ceremonial kilts because defense chiefs had not finalized a contract to buy enough kilts to go around. At last count, there were just 320 kilts for 5,000 soldiers. —The New York Times, December 19, 2006 To: Office of the Quartermaster General From: Sergeant Major, Scottish Regimental Stores Re: Kilts, tartan, ceremonial 1. Due to Her Majesty’s Army Auxiliary Budget Item A-06-7895 being still in Committee, approximately 4,680 Scottish Regimental officers, NCOs and men have not been issued their regulation ceremonial kilts. Whereas, 2. Upcoming kilted Army operations are: a) Haggis Festival opening, Edin

On the Job

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:17:52 GMT

After more than 40 years judging dogs, J. Donald Jones has achieved one of the greatest accomplishments in his canine career–serving as Best in Show judge at the Westminster Kennel Club competition, which takes place February 11-12, 2008, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Jones tells Smithsonian.com about the dog eat dog world in which he lives. How did you get into this line of work? First of all, it's not a job or work necessarily. It's a hobby. I'm a retired counseling psychologist and a university dean. I've been judging dogs since 1966, and I am 75 years old. I got started like mostly everybody else does who's a judge–by having my own dogs and showing them. Shortly af

Rug-of-War

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:25:21 GMT

Attorney Mark Gold has an oriental rug in his western Massachusetts home that most people call "nice-looking" until he tells them to inspect it more closely. Then they're enthralled, because this is no run-of-the-mill textile—it's what is called an Afghan war rug, and what it depicts is somber and stunning: cleverly mixed with age-old botanical and geometric designs are tanks, hand grenades and helicopters. "It's a beautiful piece in its own right," says Gold, "but I also think telling a cultural story in that traditional medium is fascinating." The cultural story Gold's rug tells is only the beginning. Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979,

Heaven Scent

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:03:58 GMT

Among Florence's churches, Santa Maria Novella is often overlooked: it lacks the grandeur of the Duomo and the poignancy of Santa Croce, where Michelangelo and Galileo are entombed. And while its Renaissance frescoes may rival those of San Marco, its location in a seedy neighborhood near the city's main train station keeps it off the radar of many visitors to the City of Lilies. But as home to one of the world's oldest pharmacies, Santa Maria Novella boasts an attraction no other church in Italy can match. Dominican monks began concocting herbal remedies here in the 13th century, in the time of Giotto and Dante. Today, the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella still sells t

Chia Pet

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:06:26 GMT

Because many a potential pet owner, it seems, has no interest in early morning walks, cage cleaning, litter boxes or veterinary bills, the world's inventors and entrepreneurs constantly conjure creatures that ask next to nothing of their masters. Robot dogs, for example, need only a change of batteries. The pocket-size Tamagotchi, a handheld, egg-shaped computerized device marketed as a digital pet, requires daily attention, but its vital signs are strictly virtual; if it dies, one can boot up another. The pet rock may have been the most trouble-free of companions, but a goldfish was capable of more affection. Of all the undemanding critters, perhaps none is as satisfying as the Chia Pet,

Extreme Running

Tue, 06 May 2008 03:21:50 GMT

Sébastien Foucan is built like a soccer player, possessing the kind of physique that falls somewhere between a meaty-thighed sprinter and a sinewy marathoner. The Frenchman keeps his hair shaved close, like so many of the athletes that Europeans call "footballers." His offensive moves, however, aren't those of a forward or a midfielder. Foucan is one of the creators of an entirely new tandem of extreme sports—or art forms, as he says—called "parkour" and "free running." Together they're redefining the way that some people interact with their physical environments. Approximately 17 million U.S. moviegoers got a crash course in Foucan's art

Port Uncorked

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:03:43 GMT

Port, Portugal's famous fortified wine, is undergoing a personality change, shedding its snobbish image and defending its turf. The sweet wine from the rugged, steep terrain around the Douro River in northern Portugal, widely regarded as the world's first protected wine region, is renown not only for its full body (it's about 20 percent alcohol) but also for being the darling of the British establishment, the drink of "old boys" and aristocrats. Admiral Lord Nelson is said to have dipped a finger in his glass of port to draw a map of his battle tactics for the Battle of Trafalgar. "Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active," wrote British author Evelyn Waugh. "It is the comf

The Art of Pizza

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:58:35 GMT

Sitting in Ristorante Umberto, owned by the Di Porzio family for three generations and one of the oldest and most popular pizzerias in Naples, Italy's southern megalopolis, Massimo Di Porzio talks about pizza as though it were human. "The dough should be moved carefully," he says, "as if it were a baby." You have to understand: Naples is the traditional home of pizza and a place where people take their food seriously. So seriously that they masterminded an Italian law, passed three years ago, specifying what is real Neapolitan pizza—and it bears little resemblance to what we chow down in the United States in record numbers, an estimated 350 slices per second, amounting to a $37-bill

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

For Hire: Truffle Hunter

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:29:43 GMT

Charles Lefevre is an addict. And a clever one at that, because he's devised a way to sustain himself and the object of his addiction: mushrooms. Lefevre's fungus of choice is the truffle, arguably the most elegant and priciest type of all. The 42-year-old runs New World Truffieres Inc., which produces trees inoculated with truffles that farmers can use to start "truffieres"—or truffle orchards. The business, based in Oregon's Willamette Valley, began in 2000, and Lefevre now has customers across the continent. In addition to selling the trees, he helps organize the Oregon Truffle Festival in late January, when the mushrooms are at their best. Lefevre tells Smithsonian.com