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Botanist John Kress with his Burmese guide, photo courtesy of John Kress

For over thirty years, it has been part of botanist John Kress’s job to comb tropical forests for rarely seen plant species. With the National Museum of Natural History as his home base, he’s explored the Amazon, the Andes, Madagascar, the South Pacific, tropical Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and, more recently, Myanmar. Next month, his latest endeavor, The Weeping Goldsmith, a first-person account of his travels and discoveries over the course of nine years in Myanmar, is due out in bookstores September 8.

“I knew Myanmar was loaded with gingers,” Kress has said, and gingers are his specialty. He was also enticed by the fact that few botanists had been to the isolated, politically-repressive country in the last half-century. His chances of finding many yet undiscovered plants in the biodiversity hotspot were high. Among his many finds, was “the weeping goldsmith,” a ginger flower and the namesake of his book. Legend has it that the local goldsmiths were brought to tears by the blossom because their creations paled in comparison to its beauty.

The Weeping Goldsmith contains excerpts from Kress’s field journals, narrative on his encounters with the people and culture of the country and some 200 of his own color photographs of exotic plants, landscapes and temples. And Kress hopes that readers come away with an understanding of the front-line work that Smithsonian scientists do and an appreciation of the fact that there are still places in the world in need of exploring.

I recently spent some time with Kress out on Plummers Island in the Potomac River—the closest thing to tropics inside the Beltway. The resulting article, “Cracking the Code,” explains another of his projects. He and his colleagues have successfully barcoded all 250 plant species on the island.

Randall Rosenthall's wood sculpture of the February 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine. (Courtesy of the artist.)

What stood out most to artist Randall Rosenthal about the February 2009 Smithsonian magazine cover was that behind the side-by-side portraits of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were two different shades of black.

Paying attention to such subtle details is what’s helped make Rosenthal, a trained painter, architect and carpenter, a success in both the craft and fine arts world.

From his Long Island home, Rosenthal creates wooden replicas of newspapers, baseball cards, and stacks of hundred dollar bills out of solid blocks of wood. He then hand-paints the sculptures to resemble, say, a post-election day Washington Post, or a legal pad complete with scribbles.

“From 6-feet away, they look dead-on real,” Rosenthal says. “And when you get close you have to convince yourself that they’re not.”

After reading and enjoying the Smithsonian article about what unites Darwin and Lincoln, Rosenthal took out a block of solid wood and whittled it to look like the February 2009 issue stacked on top of two old magazines, mailing address and subtitles included.

It took Rosenthal two weeks to complete the sculpture–a week to carve and a week to paint. Getting Lincoln right was a challenge, though Darwin was easy, Rosenthal says, “all you need is the white beard.”

He brought the work to the Smithsonian Craft Show held last weekend, where it was popular with attendees. It was not the first time Rosenthal flattered us. The long-time subscriber won “Best in Show” with a similar piece at the 2006 Craft Show.

And as the quality content of Smithsonian magazine expands to the Web, we at Around the Mall can’t help but wonder whether Rosenthal will consider a woodblock replica of Smithsonian.com for 2010.

Doug Owsley is the Smithsonian’s bone detective. Doug can read a human skeleton, like you can read this post. He’s a forensic anthropologist and for the last two decades, Doug along with his assistant Kari Bruwelheide, has been called in to help with some of the country’s most notorious crime scenes and tragedies—Branch Davidians, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Pentagon after 9/11.

And just as a host of new forensic tools, DNA analysis, the electron microscope have enhanced crime scene investigations, so has it furthered the study and analysis at prehistoric and historic dig sites. At Jamestown, VA, and St. Mary’s City, Md, Doug and Kari have been working a with a team of forensic investigators to uncover the lost stories of the men and women who settled in these early colonial outposts. The new exhibition, “Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake,” is an eye into scientific discovery and the history it has revealed. Meet Doug as he takes us on a tour of the exhibition above and check out our feature, too.

Dodges Ridge (1947) by Andrew Wyeth, American Art Museum.

Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep, January 15, at age 91. He was a part of a highly gifted continuum of artists—the son of illustrator NC Wyeth, brother of Henriette Wyeth and father of Jamie Wyeth—and over the course of his lifetime he produced a body of technically and aesthetically astounding work that melds realism with surrealism and abstract expressionism. It is a style that has garnered both controversy and admiration.

(Fred Rogers was a fan of his work and had the artist appear on his popular children’s program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Check out the video below. In 1963 Wyeth was awarded a Presidential Freedom Award—the highest civilian honor—by President John F. Kennedy and in 1970 was feted by President Richard Nixon with a black tie dinner and the first-ever exhibition of a living artist’s work in the White House.)

In 1948, at age 31, he created Christina’s World, which has since become an icon of American art. Wyeth is survived by his wife, Betsy, sons, Nicholas and Jamie, and his paintings. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is fortunate to own several of his pieces. (Dodges Ridge, pictured above, is currently the only one on view.) Read more about Andrew Wyeth’s legacy in “Wyeth’s World,” originally published in the June 2006 issue of Smithsonian.

Zora Neale Hurston was a woman of many talents. Born in 1891, she earned a BA in anthropology at Barnard College and her work documenting African American culture and folklore in the American South earned her a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to continue her ethnographic studies. Hurston also forged a literary career at the height of the Harlem Renaissance writing plays, short stories and a string of four novels—including her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God. By the early 1950s, she was working odd jobs and living in poverty. All her books had gone out of print and she died in obscurity in 1960.

Thanks to a 1975 article by Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Hurston’s body of work finally started receiving the attention and respect it deserved.

Hurston was commemorated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum with a screening of the documentary film, Zora Neale Hurston: A Heart with Room for Every Joy. It was succinct survey and celebration of her life and work, and a pleasure to watch if only to hear Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discuss, contextualize and defend Hurston’s writing. (And if you haven’t already, check out his excellent African American Lives series on PBS.)

I was, however, a little surprised that no one mentioned the 1991 discovery of Hurston’s unpublished collection of folklore from the Gulf States discovered in Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archive. But this is a minor quibble. (And those writings were finally published in 2001 as Every Tongue Got to Confess.)

Thankfully, Their Eyes Were Watching God is making it on reading lists all over the country. I first read it my junior year in high school and absolutely loved Hurston’s razor wit and beautiful insights into the human condition. (Only two books have ever gotten me misty-eyed: Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men when Lennie gets plugged, and Eyes, with the mythically tragic romance of Janie and Tea Cake.) I’m currently rereading Eyes and have her other novels sitting on my bookshelf, awaiting consumption. If you haven’t already been exposed to Hurston, I can’t urge you enough to start reading her work. If you’re not moved, please try to find your pulse.

Are there any authors or specific books that have left an impression on you? Start a discussion in the comments area below!

(Photograph by Carl van Vechten, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

“A lot of people don’t know that women used to play professional baseball,” said Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, looking appalled.

If you didn’t know this either, prepared to be schooled.

Mamie is one of three women who played in the Negro Leagues, all-black baseball teams where giants like Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige got their start in the years when baseball, like almost everything else in America, was segregated. The Leagues drew thousands of fans, had their own World Series and All-Star Game, and for many years were one of the nation’s biggest black-owned and –operated businesses.

Mamie, who was invited by the Anacostia Community Museum yesterday to speak as part of an exhibit about the Negro Leagues, said her path to the pitcher’s mound was far from smooth.

She started playing ball as a kid. When times were hard, she made her own baseballs out of twine, masking tape and rocks. In 1953 she signed with the Indianapolis Clowns (who, through some strange trick of geography, were actually based in New York). For the next two years, she was the only female pitcher amid a sea of male sluggers.

“Some guy told me I couldn’t strike him out because I was no bigger than a peanut,” said Mamie. The way she tells it, she nodded at the guy. And then she struck him out. That’s when she got the nickname “Peanut.”

Robert Hall, Assistant Director for Education at the Anacostia Community Museum, said it was important for museum-goers to hear from one of the few women who played the game.“If you looked around, you saw there were a lot of girls,” he said, referring to the audience at the lecture. “She’s told the girls a part of their history they didn’t know about.”

Did you know women once played pro baseball? Could that ever happen again? Tell us what you think in the comments area below.

Hundreds of years ago Native Americans gathered on the shores of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, New York, and made a commitment to the environment. “In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation,” stated the Great Law of Peace, a constitution that created the Iroquois Confederacy.

However, having grown up not far from the lake on the outskirts of the Onondaga Nation reservation, I’m familiar with the sad irony of its current state. Today, as a result of nearby factories dumping industrial waste in its waters, Onondaga Lake is one of the most polluted lakes in the world.

Naturally, when I heard that Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, was going to speak at the National Museum of the American Indian’s recent “Call to Consciousness on Climate Change” symposium, I wanted to hear his plea.

Chief Lyons didn’t claim to know how to solve climate change, but his sage warning, delivered with a quiet confidence, was more motivational than any in-your-face rally for change. And, weeks later, I’m still chewing on some of his words.

Quoting a friend, he said, “People are still a biological experiment.” He noted that it took over 400 million years for humans to reach a population of 2.5 billion and then only the past 58 years for that population to nearly triple. “That’s not sustainable. The earth will balance,” he says. “That’s what it does – through crises, disease and shortages.”

His connection to the earth – and I listened to him talk about his elder brother the sun and his grandfathers the four winds – was inspiring. And he attributes today’s environmental degradation to the absence of this affinity in most of the human race. “You may intellectually understand it, but you don’t feel it,” he told his audience. “Try hard.”

Rico Newman, of the Piscataway-Conoy Indians of southern Maryland, who opened the ceremony with a prayer, broke down the word “Piscataway,” defining it as where salt and fresh waters come together. He was speaking of the Atlantic Ocean and the Potomac River, and I felt a bit shamed. I have never been so in tune with a place. And I thought, the Native American voice is a voice to be heard.

In conjunction with the symposium, the Museum of the American Indian is hosting a summer concert series on the second and fourth Fridays in July and August to showcase native talent. Listen to some of the upcoming performers.
(Photograph courtesy of NMAI photographer, Katherine Fogden)