Smithsonian Magazine April 2022

“Women scientists persevered and brought reason.” TWITTER: @SmithsonianMag INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine Carrying the Torch In his column (“Powerful Currency,” March 2022), Secretary Bunch mentioned that Sally Ride stood on the shoulders of women who came before her, and he also pointed to the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. This initiative stands on the 20-plus years of work by the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), which has lobbied Congress, provided educational programs to millions and privately funded the women’s museum congressional commission. I am proud that our efforts helped the nation recognize the many roles of women and the significance of their contributions. I wish the board of the American Women’s History Museum great success in carrying the torch forward. Joan Wages | President Emerita, NWHM Beyond the Trojan…

America’s Home Run AN EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM PUTS A NEW STAMP ON THE HISTORY OF THE NATION’S FAVORITE PASTTIME SOME OF MY EARLIEST memories are of sitting next to my grandfather, watching Jackie Robinson play first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was too young to know what the Dodgers were, who Robinson was, or why my grandfather was glued to the television. But I knew this moment meant something special to him. In the following years, I began to understand what had kept his eyes on that screen, though my team was the Yankees. I played baseball diligently growing up, but I was never great. Still, like my grandfather and like millions of other Americans, I fell in love with the sport. The strength and patience…

N A LETTER to his daughter not long after the United States won its independence, Benjamin Franklin branded the bald eagle a “bird of bad moral character.” He wished, he wrote, that it “had not been chosen as the representative of our country.” Many believe that he also lobbied for the turkey as national bird. That’s not true, however. In fact, Congress has never chosen a national bird, as it has a national mammal (the bison) and national tree (the oak). What the Continental Congress did was put the bald eagle on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. Long venerated by Native cultures, Haliaeetus leucocephalus lives only in North America, a distinction that suited a young republic eager to assert an American-born identity separate from Europe. Ever…

FRANÇOISE GILOT was fresh off her first gallery exhibition when, at 21, she met Pablo Picasso in a Paris bistro. While she remains best known for their decade-long affair, during which she served as his favorite model, Gilot, who turned 100 in November, has undergone an artistic reappraisal—one that some critics say was long overdue. Her spare abstract works, expressionist landscapes and perceptive portraits hang in top museums. Now a new book, Françoise Gilot: The Years in France, offers a survey of her oeuvre before she emigrated to the United States, in 1970. “Picasso created portraits of his young muse in all kinds of media… that would guarantee the immortality of his model,” Annie Maïllis, Gilot’s friend and biographer, writes in an introductory essay. “To maintain control over her own…

AMECHANICAL RUCKUS. Oiled metal clattering hard and loose. A room astounding in its clutter, alive with spinning gears, reciprocating arms, rattling chains. A single man at the controls, coaxing the steampunk contraption along. It’s publishing as an athletic act, all the more impressive for its medieval roots. “It’s just what I know, so there’s no point in changing,” says Dean Coombs, the man running the machine. Coombs, 70, is publisher and editor of the Saguache Crescent, the weekly for Saguache, Colorado, a hamlet of around 500 souls high in the Rocky Mountains. The Crescent goes to press every Tuesday. It costs 35 cents at the local gas station and town thrift store, and you can snag a copy for free at the 4th Street Diner and Bakery. An annual subscription…

RACIAL INEQUITY SHOWS UP in eve ry dimension of health care,” says Neel Shah, an assistant professor in obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer of Maven Clinic, a pioneering virtual clinic for women and families. The physician lent his expertise to Color of Care, a new documentary from the Smithsonian Channel about racial disparities in health—and how to address them. We asked Shah about the historical roots of these problems. You’ve pointed to longstanding deficiencies in medical education, including a lack of representation. Yes. This has been true throughout the history of medical training, but even in 2022 it remains uncommon when you’re learning about rashes in dermatology to see representation of melanated skin. Similarly, a common way to know that certain patients are unwell—perhaps…