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The Lone Ranger (1942) by Elizabeth Olds. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

Monday, January 31: Reel Injun

Entertaining and insightful, this documentary explores representations of Native Americans across 100 years of cinema and uncovers how these celluloid myths led to the world’s understanding—and misunderstanding—of Native peoples. Clips from classic and recent films with candid interviews trace the evolution of depictions of Native people from the silent film era to today. Free. American Indian Museum, 12:30-2:00 PM. Repeats today at 3:30 PM.

Tuesday, February 1: FONZ Photo Club

If you’re a shutterbug with a penchant for snapping shots of critters, come on out to the National Zoo and participate in the Friends Of the National Zoo (FONZ) photo club’s monthly meeting. Share your photos, hear from speakers and learn about new techniques that may help you capture that picture perfect moment. You must already be a FONZ member to participate. For more information on the FONZ photo club and how to participate, check out its website. National Zoo, 7:00-9:30 PM

Wednesday, February 2: Conservation Clinic

Everyone has pieces in their homes that they hope to preserve for future generations—but making sure those prized possessions survive can sometimes be tricky. Come on over to the Lunder Conservation Center, which is providing conservation clinics to help you with questions about a painting, sculpture, drawing print or frame in your personal collection. Free, but registration is required. Call 202-633-5821 or email DWRCLunder@si.edu and specify “CLINIC” in the subject line to set up your appointment today. Clinics take place year-round on the first Wednesday of each month. Free. American Art Museum, 9:00-11:00 AM.

Thursday, February 3: North African Film Festival

Enjoy screenings of the films of Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria every Thursday this February. Today, come see the sweeping romantic drama Cairo Time. Juliette, a fashion magazine editor, travels to Cairo to meet her husband for a three-week vacation. When he is unavoidably delayed, his trusted friend Tareq keeps her company. As he guides her through the sights, sounds, and unique customs of Cairo, unexpected feelings emerge leading to an awakening of emotion that takes Juliette by surprise. Director Ruba Nadda moderates this program. Free. African Art Museum, 7:00 PM

Friday, February 4: Please Do Not Disturb

This fast-paced comedy weaves together three tales: A television host trying to talk his wife out of reporting him for domestic abuse; a clergyman who gets a lesson in urban life when a chatty thief steals his wallet and negotiates its return by phone; and a persistent television repairman’s complicated appointment with a suspicious elderly couple. The film will be presented in Persian with English subtitles. Free. Freer, 7:00 PM.

For updates on all exhibitions and events, visit our companion site goSmithsonian.com

The Challenger Space Shuttle exploded 25 years ago today. Courtesy NASA

“The footage,” says space history curator Valerie Neal, “has become seared into our memory.”

Twenty-five years ago today, on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The mood leading up to the launch was full of promise. NASA was coming off of nine missions in 1985, and with 12 scheduled missions, 1986, says space history curator Valerie Neal of the National Air and Space Museum, “was supposed to be a banner year.” Christa McAuliffe, sponsored by a NASA project, was about to be the first teacher in space, and classrooms of students across the country were tuned in for the television coverage. “This was to be a teachable moment. But that teachable moment,” says Neal, which was to inspire future astronauts to come, “became much different.”

A rubber O-ring seal in one of the Challenger‘s solid rocket boosters had failed during liftoff, causing hot gases to leak through a joint and flames to burn through the support attaching the booster to an external fuel tank. The booster crashed into the tank, liquid hydrogen and oxygen ignited and, just 73 seconds into flight, the shuttle tore apart. The crew compartment crashed into the ocean, killing all seven crew members.

Neal shared her memory of that day with me:

“At the time, I was living in Huntsville, Alabama, and I was a writer under contract to NASA. I was specifically working on the early shuttle missions in the 1980s, writing about them, what would be happening on the missions, especially what kind of scientific research would be done on the missions. I was also writing about the upcoming Hubble space telescope. So I had some familiarity with shuttle operations and with crew training. On that particular morning, I had just returned from a business trip, and I was in my office. My office mates called me into the conference room at launch time. We had a television in there, and it was our custom to gather to watch the launches. So we were standing around chatting during the countdown and had the usual exclamations of joy that the launch had happened on time and apparently perfectly. As we were lingering there in the conference room and watching as the camera followed the shuttle during its ascent, it quickly became evident that something had gone terribly awry. The exhaust plume didn’t look like it was supposed to. Instead of being straight and confined, suddenly there was a big bulge in it, and then trails of vapor started falling from it, almost like they do in a fireworks display. We were all stunned into silence. Even the NASA announcer was stunned into silence. Nobody quite new what to make of it.

I decided I didn’t want to stay in the room very long and see it over and over again and hear speculation and chit chat. I just felt like I needed to get outside and get a breath of fresh air. I think that it struck me that soberly because I had just recently sent in an application for the Journalist-in-Space competition, which was to be the next citizen flight after the Teacher in Space. At the time, part of what Christa McAuliffe represented was the fact that the shuttle was safe enough that ordinary citizens could now fly on it, that you didn’t have to be a professional astronaut. I realized very keenly that it wasn’t perfectly safe. I was a young mother at the time with a six-year-old. I knew that Christa McAuliffe and the men in the crew also had young children. It just struck me that there was a lot more to flying on the shuttle than I had quite realized. That added a whole new dimension to my thoughts about going into space. I knew that there would be plenty of news and analyses, and I could process that all later. But I just wanted this shell of silence around me that day to absorb the tragedy. As it happened, later that day when the mail came, I had a postcard from NASA saying that my application packet for Journalist in Space had been received. I knew then that that flight was not likely to happen any time soon, and, in fact, it never did.”

That night, President Reagan, who was supposed to deliver his State of the Union, instead acted, says Neal, as “mourner-in-chief.” In a televised address, he declared the tragedy a national loss. ”We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe,” he said. And the president ended on an eloquent note, borrowing phrasing from poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s “High Flight“: ”We will never forget them, not the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and ‘slipped to the surly bonds of Earth…to touch the face of God.’”

Flowers, flags and other mementos started appearing in a spontaneous memorial at the National Air and Space Museum. “We have become a gathering place for that,” says Neal, “to both celebrate or mourn events in space.” On display in the museum’s Moving Beyond Earth exhibition is a particularly poignant Challenger artifact—a commemorative plaque that NASA gave to each of the astronauts’ families and the museum on the first anniversary of the disaster. On it, are the names and portraits of Challenger‘s crew members, a mission patch and a small United States flag that was recovered from debris on the ocean floor.

Today, Neal reflects on the tragedy and the lessons learned from it on NASM’s AirSpace blog.

Budapest String Quartet (1941) by Joseph Wolins. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

Friday, January 28: Historic Theater: Time Trials of Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold is generally remembered as a traitor—but has popular opinion clouded historical fact? Take a spot on the jury panel, meet Benedict Arnold and decide if this infamous Revolutionary War figure was a patriot or a total rat fink. These 20-minute interactive performances reveal the people behind the objects on view and the emotions in their stories. Free. American History Museum, 1-1:20 PM. This performance will repeat today at 2:30 and 4:00 PM and on Saturday, January 30 at 11:00 AM, 2:30 PM and 4:00 PM.

Saturday, January 29: The Axelrod String Quartet Saturday Series

Tonight, the Axelrod Quartet makes use of instruments in the Smithsonian’s collections to perform pieces by Haydn, Bartok, and Woldemar Bargiel. Tickets are required. Rates are: $32 general admission; $25 for members; $23 for senior members. Tickets may be purchased online or at the Resident Associate Program box office which is located on the National Mall in the Ripley Center on the National Mall. American History Museum, 7:00 PM.

Sunday, January 30: Portrait Discovery Kit Activity

Perfect for persons ages five and up, the Portrait Discovery Kit invites younger art lovers to take an interactive tour of the museum. Seek-and-find cards, self-portrait pads, portrait detective and historian guides, and other activities will help kids learn more about the people depicted in the artwork and their contributions to American history. A museum educator explains how to use the kit before sending you to explore the galleries. Free. Kits are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To borrow a kit, an adult must leave a cell phone number and an e-mail address. Kits must be returned before 4 PM. Portrait Gallery, 1:00-4:00 PM. This event repeats year-round on most Saturdays and Sundays between 1:00 and 4:00 PM.

For updates on all exhibitions and events, visit our companion site goSmithsonian.com

Blackbird swarm, courtesy of Flickr user ndomer73

The official cause of death of the estimated 4,000 to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds found in the town of Beebe, Arkansas on New Year’s Eve is blunt-force trauma, according to the results of three independent laboratory tests that were reviewed and released by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) yesterday. Severe weather, chemicals and bacteria were all ruled out as causes for the deaths.

The tests were conducted by the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS), the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The SCWDS report concluded that, “In most instances, such traumatic injuries in wild birds are due to flying into stationary objects such as trees, houses, windows, power lines, towers, etc.”

These findings come as no surprise to Gary Graves, a Smithsonian curator of birds, who predicted a similar conclusion earlier this month. “Well, it’s kind of what I expected,” Graves said. “There’s nothing mysterious in it.”

What was interesting to Graves was the size of the birds’ roost, which, according to the report, was estimated at 1.6 million birds. “That’s huge. So when you look at the number that was actually killed, that’s hardly any,” Graves said about the 4,000 to 5,000 that died in the incident.

But what caused the birds to fly the coop?

“It appears,” the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission concluded, that “unusually loud noises, reported shortly before the birds began to fall, caused the birds to flush from the large roost. Additional New Year’s Eve fireworks in the area may have forced the birds to fly at a lower altitude than normal. Blackbirds have poor night vision and typically do not fly at night.”

According to Graves, we may never know what spooked them, conclusively. “There’s a proximate cause and an ultimate cause. The proximate cause was death by blunt force trauma, but what spooked the birds, that hasn’t been absolutely determined,” Graves said. “And it never will be. You can’t go back in time and recreate the event and no one was there recording the event as it happened.”

The Arkansas Game and Fish statement reports that radar images determined that the first group of approximately 6,000 to 7,000 birds began their exodus at 10:20 PM. There was another exodus, slightly smaller in number, at 11:21 PM. Gary Graves knows Sidney Gauthreaux, the expert who studied the images, and trusts his findings. “The guy is the world expert on avian radar ornithology,” Graves said.

Graves says he still continues to receive correspondence from people speculating about the cause of the bird die-off. “People have sent me some very strange stories and links,” Graves said, including one from a women who claims to be from the Constellation Pleiades and knows of a government conspiracy. ”It’s just preposterous the fantastic things that people believe,” Graves said of some of the theories.

And so, it appears, the mystery is solved. There was no conspiracy, and the subsequent bird deaths reported in Louisiana, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden are unrelated.

“They’re independent events,” Graves said. “The common denominators are big roosts, a lot of birds in a single place and bird behavior, but they aren’t connected by some kind of causal thing.”

“What astounds me as a scientist is that people want to find some kind of extraordinary cause for the most mundane things,” he said. “And one of the bedrock, fundamental foundations of science is parsimony. What that means, often times, is the simplest explanation is the correct one and if you can’t disprove the simplest explanation, there’s no need to go to a more extraordinary one.”

Smithsonian orchid specialist Tom Mirenda bought this orchid (Embrea rodigasiana) as a tiny seedling on a trip to Ecuador. It won the American Orchid Society's Jesup Trophy for best species shown in 2009. Courtesy of Tom Mirenda.

For the last 17 years, the Smithsonian Gardens and the United States Botanic Garden have teamed up to host an annual orchid exhibition. And, each year, says Tom Mirenda, a museum specialist for the Smithsonian Orchid Collection, “We try to have a different aspect of orchidology that we feature.”

To the non-expert, it might seem like the theme would have quickly exhausted itself. But one conversation with Mirenda and you realize that orchids are remarkably diverse.

The plant family is one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world (some say the daisy family is a contender), and some 300 or 400 new species are discovered each year. They are extremely adaptable and are therefore found in habitats across the globe. Not to mention, says Mirenda, “They engage in something that you would almost have to call behavior.” When a pollinator lands on a hammer orchid, for example, the Australian flower uses its lip, a modified petal, as a cantilever to bonk the insect on its back and deposit pollen. A bucket orchid nearly drowns bees in its lip, full of liquid, before letting them out through an escape hatch in the back of the flower, where the pollen is conveniently located.

And, oddly enough, tiny orchids called lepanthes are structured in a way that resembles the female genitalia of fruit flies and fungus gnats, so poor, confused male insects attempt to mate with the flowers and spread pollen in the process. ”There are lots of weird and wonderful things,” says Mirenda. “I could go on and on.”

This year’s exhibition “Orchids: A View from the East,” opening Saturday, January 29, at the National Museum of Natural History, explores how the plant has been revered and cultivated in China for centuries. The show, featuring more than 200 live orchids from the Smithsonian’s collection, opens with a garden modeled after those that Chinese scholars grew 500 years ago. Displays inform visitors about how orchids were used in Chinese medicines and as status symbols in Chinese art. Then, the exhibition finishes with a bold, colorful display of orchids, like those popular today in Taiwan, where the flowers are genetically manipulated and produced in mass quantities.

“Orchids: A View from the East” is on view through April 24. An Orchid Exhibit Family Day, when visitors can talk with experts, take their picture with a life-sized orchid and pot their own plant to take home, is scheduled for Saturday, February 26. A companion show, “The Orchid in Chinese Painting,” is currently open at the Sackler Gallery through July 17, 2011.