Did This Man Invent Color Photography?

"There, do you see it?” she asks, holding up a small, silvery rectangle in the half-lit room.

For a moment, I do: a splash of blue on a bird’s wings. Then it disappears. The photograph, captured some 160 years ago, reveals the outline of an owl and three smaller birds.

Lifting another plate from a storage box labeled “Hill, Levi,” Michelle Delaney sighs as she examines it.

“Oh, that makes me sad. You used to be able to make out the outline of the village in the center here, but it’s faded even more now,” she says. I see only a blur of brown, gray and white; what a ghost might look like caught on camera...

Read more about Levi Hill, the mysterious minister who may or may not have been the first to invent color photography, in the April issue of Smithsonian.

John Marshall and the Ju/'hoansi

The African giraffe stumbles to a halt, bewildered by the poisoned spears studding its breast and flanks. Moments later, it falls stiffly backward. The giraffe's slender legs point skyward, then swing sideways as it collapses in the desert dust. The scene flashes to a Ju/'hoansi hunter, tearing into a joint of glistening red meat with his knife.

Read the rest of my piece about filmmaker John Marshall's footage of one of Africa's last hunter-gatherer tribes, in the Nov. 2009 issue of Smithsonian.

Ant-thropology and "Doctor Bugs"

I had a fun assignment for the August issue of Smithsonian: catch up with Mark Moffett, aka "Doctor Bugs," for a short profile pegged to his photo exhibit at the Natural History museum. This guy is a true character, and a born storyteller...for days after the interview, I couldn't stop spouting trivia about ants and all the parallels between their lives and ours.

You can read it here, if you want to become a bug dork, too.

Salami, Mr. Holcomb?

My latest article for Smithsonian magazine catches up with one of the first women to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, and the poor plebe she yelled at in a historic photo by Lucian Perkins.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Salami-Mr-Holcomb.html

It was a pleasure to report this story, because all of the people involved are just so genuinely nice!

Ireland's Hill of Tara, an "endangered cultural site"

I wrote this short feature as part of a magazine package about "endangered cultural sites," and I think it's by far the most-read, most-commented-on thing I've ever written...not that I'm too surprised, as there's clearly a lot of passion surrounding the issue.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Endangered-Cultural-Treasures-The-Hill-of-Tara-Ireland.html

My other blog

Most of my writing these days is about food and drink from a Smithsonian perspective (science, history, anthropology, etc.)... it's called "Food And Think" and you'll find it on the upper right of the Smithsonian.com homepage, or by clicking here:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/

I'm psyched to have help from a friend and former colleague with this endeavor---Lisa Bramen was a fellow features reporter with me at The Post-Star, and won awards there for her writing about food and other subjects... and now she's my FAT co-blogger! (er, only acronymically speaking, of course.)

Q&A with Sarah Vowell

Did I mention how cool my job is? I got to interview Sarah Vowell! I love her stuff on NPR's This American Life, and her books, the latest of which contains intriguing reflections about the Puritans:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Sarah-Vowell-Puritans-Legacy.html

The "Blue Rider" artists

My favorite artists, Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, were part of something called the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group in early 20th-century Germany. And since they happened to be based in Munich, the city starring in the latest feature I fact-checked for Smithsonian, it seemed a good excuse to write something about them as an "online extra"...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/blue_rider.html

Adventures of a Portuguese Poet

For Smithsonian.com, a short story about Luis Vaz de Camoes, who I personally hadn't heard of until I started fact-checking a feature on Macau. He had kind of a crazy life!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/portuguese-poet.html

Winslow Homer's long face

Poor Homer.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/no-more-long-faces.html