Description
Contents: Smithsonian horizons, Letters to the Editor, Around the Mall and beyond, Phenomena, comment and notes, Around the World with Wilkes and his ‘scientifics’ (Returning in 1942, he brought back enough to put the Smithsonian in the museum for good.), An Aristocrat with a Difference (Born to the purple, a dwarf by heredity, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec changed out way of seeing Paris.(, Plastic has – literally – found its way into our hearts (Once scorned as cheap and vulgar, it has now captured a high-tech image – and the marketplace.), Sears Sold Everything Else, so Why Not Houses (And they did – 100,000 between 1908 and ’37; today owners and preservationists delight in them.(, A Galaxy of Sea Stars (Starfish, that is; whatever the name, their eating habits vary from the prosaic to the unnerving.), When Movie Queens reigned in Queens (That was in the days of the Astoria studio; now cameras are rolling again, and so is a new museum.), A Life of Buddhism, Barley, Yaks and Barter (existence is not easy in Dolpo, a frontier region of Nepal, but neither is it lacking in humor.), To Know a Pig, They Say, Is to Love One (And many people do, as the much aligned hog roots its way to new esteem – even as a pet.), The Pale Light of Pure Terror (NASM marks the return of Halley’s Comet with artists’ views of once-fearsome phenomena.), Horticulture’s Crown Jewels (Orchids make up the most beautiful, varied and sexy family of flowering plants in the world.), Taking a not-so-slow Boat to China (Pan Am’s flying boats inaugurated transoceanic fights in a style passengers have not seen since.), Death in the Black Forest (Waldsterben it’s called, but that doesn’t explain why trees are dying there and over much of Europe.)
Issue: November 1985
Condition: Very Good