Smithsonian.com

YWCA Camp for Girls (1930) by Addison Scurlock. Image courtesy of the American History Museum.

Friday, May 29: You Can’t Do That Amelia!: Flights of Fancy—Stories for Children

Bring the little ones in your family out for story time at the National Air and Space Museum. This week, come hear about Amelia Earhart’s escapades as a little girl with a reading of Kimberly Wagner Killer’s You Can’t Do That Amelia!. Hang around after the reading to participate in an art activity and while you’re there, don’t forget to see Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega, which she used to make her historic flight across the Atlantic in 1932. And if your kids want to hear more about Amelia, or read about her on their own, I totally recommend Women Who Dare: Amelia Earhart by Susan Reyburn. Free. National Air and Space Museum, 11:00 AM

Saturday, May 30: John Ferling signs his book, The Ascent of George Washington

Award-winning author John Ferling will be available to sign his book, The Ascent of George Washington. Ferling has also been a contributing author to Smithsonian magazine, most recently in 2007 with his piece, “100 Days That Shook the World.” Free. American History Museum, 1:00-3:00 PM

Sunday, May 31: The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington

A docent will take you on a tour of the photography exhibition, The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington. The show celebrates and document’s black Washington DC through almost a century’s worth of photographs. Free. American History Museum, 10:30 AM

Want all the news on Smithsonian exhibits and events? Visit our companion website, goSmithsonian.com to plan your visit.

In the rainforests of Peru, scientists with the National Zoo’s Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity Program set up cameras that “trap” wildlife in the area, digitally at least. When an animal walks by one of these traps, sensors register its body heat and movement, giving researchers a candid shot of nature. The photos are used to document rainforest biodiversity.

Below are three photographs that show the range of Peruvian wildlife. For 20 more images, check out the Zoo’s Flickr Page.

Gotcha! An Amazon Red Squirrel, a common site in Peru, appears to pose for the camera. (Courtesy of the National Zoo.)

An adult male jaguar "stalks" the camera. He was photographed nine times at four different cameras. (Courtesy of the National Zoo.)

There's a reason this armadillo is called giant. Members of this species can weigh up to 71 pounds. The photo was taken at night. (Courtesy of the National Zoo.)

A rhesus monkey, Able, is being ready for placement into a capsule for a preflight test of Jupiter, AM-18 mission. AM-18 was launched on May 28, 1959 and also carried a squirrel monkey, Baker. (Courtesy of NASA.)

On May 28, 1959, a rhesus monkey named Able, plucked from a zoo in Independence, Kansas, and a squirrel monkey named Baker, made history as the first mammals to survive space flight.

Strapped into specially-designed couches inside a Jupiter missile nose cone, Able and Baker flew 300 miles above the surface of the earth reaching speeds more than 10,000 miles per hour.

Animals had been sent into space before. In 1957, two years before the monkeys’ flight, the Soviets watched Laika, the space dog, orbit around the Earth. She did not survive.

But Able and Baker did, and their survival was evidence that mammals, even humans, could safely travel through space. Two years later, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet, became the first person in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Unfortunately, a few days after the historic flight, Able did not survive surgery to remove an infected electrode from under her skin. Her body was preserved and is now on view at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum.

Able recently found new life as a star in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. She and partner-in-mischief Dexter, a capuchin monkey from the first Night at the Museum movie, can be seen testing security guard Larry Daley’s patience with some slapstick comedy.

A young boy makes his name as a scientific illustrator for the Smithsonian in "The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet," a new novel by Reif Larsen.

If one could guess the species of bird that fatally crashed through the kitchen window at the moment of T.S. Spivet’s birth, it would be the Baird’s sparrow, Ammodramus bairdii.

The spirit of Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet, the brainy 12-year-old protagonist of the new novel, “The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen, seems loosely inspired by the second secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Spencer Baird, (1823-1887).

More than a dozen species, including the sparrow, are named for Baird, who was a passionate scholar of natural history, especially ornithology. Not only did he increase the Smithsonian’s collection from 6,000 to 2.5 million specimens, he founded the Megatherium Society, a group of young explorers who lived in the towers and basement of Smithsonian Castle when not venturing across the United States acquiring specimens.

In this story, fact meets fiction. When the fictional T. S. Spivet hears the true story of the society, he goes silent for three days, “perhaps out of jealousy that time’s insistence on linearity prevented me from ever joining,” he writes. Spivet then asks his mother to start one in his home state of Montana. To which she replies, “The Megatheriums are extinct.”

But luck finds Spivet when a Mr. G. H. Jibsen, Undersecretary of Illustration and Design at the Smithsonian, informs the preteen that he’s won the Institution’s prestigious Baird Award for the popular advancement of science. Though only 12, Spivet already made a name for himself in the field of scientific illustration. He could map, for instance, how a female Australian dung beetle Onthophagus sagittarius uses its horns during copulation. The catch is that nobody knows he’s 12.

This is how “The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet” begins. The gifted young artist, who loves mapping the world as much as Spencer Baird loved collecting it, sets off from Montana to Washington D.C. to meet Mr. Jibsen and claim his prize.

The author, Reif Larsen, began writing “T. S. Spivet” while an MFA student at Columbia University. He later decided to incorporate scientific illustrations in the margins (drawn by the author) to add an extra dimension to the read. In an era where the Internet and Kindle rules all, Larsen’s unique hybrid of literature, art and science, offers a rare moment when you can sit and truly experience what you are reading. A possible exception to 19th-century scientist Louis Agassiz’s remark, “Study nature, not books.”

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, the size of a baby grand piano, will soon be on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. (Courtesy of NASA.)

By the summer of 1990, NASA’s “Hubble troubles” had Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski outraged. “They have had 10 years to put this together and spent $2.8 billion to be able to get this right,” she told an Associated Press reporter. “Now we find that the Hubble telescope has a cataract.”

The surgery to repair the telescope’s defect involved a replacement part—”the camera that saved Hubble.” After an exciting space walk last week to replace it, the retired camera is slated to go on view at the National Air and Space Museum in late fall. A fitful conclusion to the camera’s noble tale.

NASA launched the Hubble telescope in April 1990 with the promise that it would bring in a new era of astronomical discovery. The shuttle that delivered Hubble into space had already returned by the time scientists and engineers realized that there was a problem—a defective main mirror.

When Hubble transmitted its first blurred images back to earth on May 20, 1990, Ed Weiler, Hubble’s program scientist at the time, described the feeling “like climbing to the top of Mount Everest and then suddenly, within a couple of months, sinking to the bottom of the Dead Sea.”

For three years, the word Hubble at a cocktail party brought a room full of chuckles. As late-night comedians poked fun at the bus-sized “tin can” orbiting the planet, NASA scientists were busy building a camera to compensate for the defect.

The piano-sized Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was installed on December 2, 1993. And by January, 1994, Hubble was beginning to earn its credibility back. At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA astronomers identified a neighborhood of aging stars, known as white dwarfs, in a dense field of other stars. (These stars would later reveal the universe’s birthday.)

Public adoration for Hubble grew as it sent back pictures of stars being born in the Eagle Nebula and colliding galaxies. The second camera is credited with “saving Hubble,” not just from the original defect, but also after the technical failure of the Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed in 2002.

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was removed on May 14, 2009, (no thanks to a stubborn bolt), and returned to Earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. It was replaced with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 3, which promises to take even higher quality photographs than its predecessor.

The retired camera will arrive at the Air and Space Museum some time in October or November. “I really look forward to the moment when I get to walk up to it in the Smithsonian and say, ‘that is the camera that saved Hubble,’” says Ed Weiler, a NASA official.

This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the Hubble mirror was defective and not the camera. The final quote was previously attributed incorrectly to John Trauger.

Pocahontas (ca. 1890) by Antonion Zeno Shindler. A variation of this image is on display at the new exhibit, Jamestown, Québec and Sante Fe. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

It would be a century after Christopher Columbus’ 1492 trip across the ocean blue to the New World before Europe would show interest in settling that strange continent across the Atlantic.

By the early 1600s, however, France, Spain and England were looking to expand their influence and set their sights on North America.

The new exhibit “Jamestown, Québec and Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings,” on view at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery in the Ripley Center, gives an impressionistic view of how these three colonies began to shape a new nation.

It’s a big story to tell, and this show offers a glimpse of different aspects of colonial life, from the domestic to the religious to the political and economic. If you’re like me and are quickly forgetting third grade history, it’s a nice refresher course on the basic events and motivations for New World settlement and expansion.

With regards to the goods, there are spectacular conquistador armor and helmets. There are maps that illustrate how the New World was marketed to potential settlers—basically, if a cartographer drew delicious fish swimming the rivers and friendly-looking inhabitants in the margins, he could rope a few people into hopping the next boat across the Atlantic in search of an abundance of food and friends. There are housewares—pots, bowls, furniture, a wedding ring that’s lost its owner—that give you an idea of domestic life 400 years ago and inspire gratitude for modern, plug-in appliances. And at the very least, you can come away from the show with a few lovely bits of trivia to toss around at your next cocktail party.

But for me, the most fascinating things were the objects that signaled how the visual lexicon of Native American populations was beginning to change as those peoples began to interact with Europeans. Take cats for instance. A hallmark of European folklore, cats were unknown to the Pueblo tribes in and around Santa Fe—but as trading relations developed between the two cultures, the Pueblo began including cats in their repertoire of animal sculptural forms.

By the 1700s, North America was very much an international continent. No one culture had claimed dominance over the region—although, in spite of the fact that Native peoples outnumbered the European transplants, they were beginning to suffer decreases in population. To catch a glimpse of America at the start of the colonial era, “Jamestown, Québec and Santa Fe” will be on display until November 1, 2009.  If you aren’t able to make it out to DC, check out the exhibit’s companion site.

Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega. Image courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum.

Tuesday, May 26: Dig It! Activities

Experience the Natural History Museum’s Dig It! exhibition a la carte! As you tour the show, keep an eye out for volunteers who will be stationed by interactive carts. They will be available to answer your questions as well as engage you in special, educational activities to enhance your experience of the exhibit. Free. Natural History Museum, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM

Wednesday, May 27: Jean Shin: Common Threads: Exhibition Tour

Celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with—deconstructed sweaters? No, I’m not talking about what happens when a loved one wreaks havoc with your prized collection of angora tops. Artist Jean Shin collected sweaters from Asian American arts communities from around the country and used them to create her piece Unraveling, which visualizes the interrelationships between people. Come contemplate the meaning of the piece a little deeper in this hour-long tour and be sure to check out the exhibition Jean Shin: Common Threads. Free. American Art Museum, 6:00 PM.

Thursday, May 28: Visualize Chinese Exclusion: Meet Our Museum

Commemorative plates are usually happy additions to one’s home decor, boasting chipper images of places you visited, historic events and, on occasion, Julie Andrews. However, in the late 19th Century, the Union Porcelain Works created ceramic pieces that illustrated the horrible reality of exclusionary policies intended to disenfranchise Chinese Americans. Curator Nancy Davis will discuss the objects and will be available to answer any questions after the presentation. Free. American History Museum, 12:00 PM

Friday, May 29: You Can’t Do That Amelia!: Flights of Fancy—Stories for Children

Bring the little ones in your family out for story time at the National Air and Space Museum. This week, come hear about Amelia Earhart’s escapades as a little girl with a reading of Kimberly Wagner Killer’s You Can’t Do That Amelia!. Hang around after the reading to participate in an art activity and while you’re there, don’t forget to see Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega, which she used to make her historic flight across the Atlantic in 1932. And if your kids want to hear more about Amelia, or read about her on their own, I totally recommend Women Who Dare: Amelia Earhart by Susan Reyburn. Free. National Air and Space Museum, 11:00 AM

Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, photo courtesy of Flickr user ehpien

Surely many will visit the National Mall this Memorial Day, placing flowers and remembrances of loved ones passed at the war memorials. Since the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial in 1982, about 25,000 mementos have been left at the base of the wall or tucked between its granite panels. From birthday cards to teddy bears to poems and letters, the National Park Service rangers who collect the keepsakes daily noticed that the Vietnam Memorial, in particular, inspired people to leave items more personal than flowers and flags. They began cataloging the items in a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, and from 1992 to 2003, over 1,500 objects from the monument’s first ten years were on view in an exhibition called “Personal Legacy: The Healing of a Nation” at the National Museum of American History.

A few items—a bottle of Jack Daniels, a wooden cross with a crown of barbed wire and an artificial Christmas tree—remain on display in the museum’s permanent exhibition “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War.” The mother of Billy Stokes, who served in Vietnam, left the Christmas tree at the wall; she used to send her son a tree each Christmas that he was in Vietnam.

Perhaps a visit to the National Museum of American History, or at least the online “Price of Freedom” exhibition, would be a fitting tribute to veterans this Memorial Day.