People & Places | The Americas | Smithsonian.com

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

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

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

How Artificial Intelligence Can Change Higher Education

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

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

Why Mass Incarceration Defines Us As a Society

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 07:00:00 GMT

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

Malibu’s Epic Battle of Surfers Vs. Environmentalists

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

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

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

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:34:45 GMT

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

Why School Should Be More Like Summer Camp

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:14:03 GMT

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

Meet Team USA’s Marlen Esparza, the New Face of Women’s Boxing

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:51:14 GMT

When Marlen Esparza was young, about 5 or 6 years old and growing up in Houston, she watched boxing on television, often VHS tapes of Julio Cesar Chavez, the Mexican fighter who won six titles in three weight classes in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Her father, David, who immigrated to the United States was a supervisor at a welding plant and was a huge fan of the sport. Esparza recalls accompanying her father as he dropped her brothers off at Houston' Elite Boxing Gym where Rudy Silva, then training to become a police officer, took only boys under his wing. “My brothers didn’t like [boxing]. But I always wanted to try it so one time I did.” She was about 12 the first

When Russia Colonized California: Celebrating 200 Years of Fort Ross

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:10:42 GMT

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

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

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 06:00:00 GMT

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

Hope Solo Drops Her Guard

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:12:41 GMT

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

Help the Homeless? There's an App for That

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:36:16 GMT

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

Why America is the World's Shelter

Wed, 16 May 2012 01:30:00 GMT

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

The New Hot Item on the Housing Market: Bomb Shelters

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:44:18 GMT

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

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

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:36:26 GMT

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

Gripping Photos of Fallen Soldiers’ Bedrooms

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:30:00 GMT

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

Livin' on the Dock of the Bay

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:15:37 GMT

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

Words from the Dictionary of American Regional English

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

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

The Devastating Costs of the Amazon Gold Rush

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

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

Scandinavians’ Strange Holiday Lutefisk Tradition

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:26:47 GMT

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

Preparing for a New River

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

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

Artisanal Wheat On the Rise

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

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

Vivian Maier: The Unheralded Street Photographer

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

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

California’s Disappearing Apple Orchards

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:33:29 GMT

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

Lincoln, Nebraska: Home on the Prairie

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

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

What Became of the Taíno?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

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

On the Elwha, a New Life When the Dam Breaks

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 06:53:46 GMT

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

Will the Real Juan Valdez Please Stand Up?

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:29:40 GMT

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

Missoula: A Perfect Mix of Town and Country

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

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

A Mega-Dam Dilemma in the Amazon

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

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

Delicious Wild Mushroom Recipes

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:08:04 GMT

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

The Surprisingly Exciting World of Mushroom Picking

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:26:17 GMT

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

The Secrets Behind Your Flowers

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

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

Highlights From “Infinity of Nations”

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:50:20 GMT

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

Shooting the American Dream in Suburbia

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

The Pathway Home Makes Inroads in Treating PTSD

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

In Haiti, the Art of Resilience

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

Poll: Americans Predict Life in 2050

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

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

Los Jetsons

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

President Barack Obama: Why I’m Optimistic

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

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

The Changing Demographics of America

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 GMT

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

A Youth Renaissance for Native Americans

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

Breeding the Perfect Bull

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

Photographing Baltimore's Working Class

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

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

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

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

Capturing Appalachia's "Mountain People"

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

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

The Scurlock Studio: Picture of Prosperity

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

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

Out of the Guatemalan Gang Culture, an Artist

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

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

Finding America's Heart by Harley

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:23:34 GMT

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

Wildlife Trafficking

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

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

From Brooklyn to Worthington, Minnesota

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

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

Photographer Robert Morrison’s Montana

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:22:57 GMT

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

Columbus' Confusion About the New World

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

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

Micronations of the World

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:11:04 GMT

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

Escaping the Iron Curtain

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

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

Children of the Vietnam War

Fri, 08 May 2009 05:44:23 GMT

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

Ka’iulani: Hawaii’s Island Rose

Mon, 11 May 2009 02:55:15 GMT

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

Cowboys and Immigrants

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

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

Tangier Island and the Way of the Watermen

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

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

Cindy Sherman: Monument Valley Girl

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

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

Up Close at Trinidad's Carnival

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

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

Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

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

Robert Frank’s Curious Perspective

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

The Last Doughboy of World War I

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

The Cowboy in Winter

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

In Seattle, a Northwest Passage

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Blue Ridge Bluegrass

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:47:55 GMT

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

Olympic Athletes Who Took a Stand

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:46:10 GMT

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

Growing Up Gambino

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:48:08 GMT

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

Let Me Be Franc

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

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

John Muir's Yosemite

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

It's in the Bag

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Frybread

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Wild at Heart

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

About Carleton Watkins

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Frybread Recipe

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:52:18 GMT

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

On the Job: Courtroom Sketch Artist

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:10:25 GMT

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

Montague the Magnificent

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Points of Interest

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Interview with Leigh Montville

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Tomatoes in the Bullpen

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:13:03 GMT

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

The Morning After

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

"Those Aren't Rumors"

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:06:35 GMT

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

The Sodfather

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:13:30 GMT

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

Points of Interest

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:09:42 GMT

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

Doug Fine, Journalist, New Mexico

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:51:26 GMT

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

For Hire: Holiday Window Designer

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:44:47 GMT

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

Summertime for Gershwin

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

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

Hemingway's Cuba, Cuba's Hemingway

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:01:33 GMT

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

Going With the Grain

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:53:32 GMT

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

Tongue Tied

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:52:36 GMT

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

Hill of Beans

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:40:39 GMT

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

The Fog Lifts

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

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

Tips from the Top

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:09:05 GMT

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