The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is back in Washington DC, from June 24th to July 4th, but you won’t find it on the National Mall. It’s gone vitual, like everything else during this pandemic. Here’s the schedule. You can’t go to the food concessions this year, but they’ve promised a gift shop.
_____________
Shortlink: https://wp.me/p6sb6-rPO
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The Smithsonian National Zoo reports that panda daddy Tian Tian is “in full rut,” scent-marking, rolling around, and bleating at panda momma Mei Xiang, who is restlessness but not really into it: “She often responds to Tian Tian’s calls with a moan vocalization that indicates she is not interested in him just yet.”
The female panda only goes into heat for at most 3 days a year, leaving 362 when she’s JUST NOT IN THE MOOD thankyouverymuch. Pass the bamboo, please.
More:
“Giant Panda Tian Tian Is Feeling Horny, Restless,” Rachel Kurzius, DCist
___________________
Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-ppn
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is back in Washington DC, June 29th to July 4th and July 7th to July 10th. You’ll find it on the National Mall between Fourth and Seventh streets, north of the National Air and Space Museum. The free festival features Basque culture of the Old World and the Americas (music, dance, craft and foodways), music of California, and the cultural impact of Immigration.
The festival schedule is here. See you on the line at the food concessions.
_____________
Shortlink: http://wp.me/p6sb6-o3B
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park made a rare juvenile female Ailuropoda melanoleuca available for public observation today, and hundreds of researchers participated. Review of preliminary field notes indicates wide agreement that the specimen is a widdle bitty roly-poly fuzzy-wuzzy cutise-wootsie-poo.
The National Zoo’s cute little panda princess needs a name. Vote here (or here for the Chinese ballot). Voting closes November 22nd.
More:
“Name of zoo’s giant panda cub is going up for a vote,” Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post
________________________
Shortlink: http://wp.me/p6sb6-hKR
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
Orangutans at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are using iPads. That explains lots of blog comment threads ….
Seriously, this is a giant evolutionary step for our caged simian cousins. App-groping apes will become just as productive as iPad-toting humans, spending hours with Facebook and Angry Birds.
More:
“What Happens When You Give an Orangutan an iPad?,” Leah Binkovitz, Around the Mall blog
______________________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-fIs
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
The 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival begins today on the National Mall. The free event is a highlight of Washington’s summer. Dates: June 24 to 28 and July 1 to 5.
This year, visitors can experience the cultures of Mexico and the DC area’s Asian Pacific American communities and peek into the workings of the Smithsonian itself. There are special evening events, including this Saturday’s concert by Haitian artists Boukman Eksperyans and Tines Salvant (Saturday, June 26, 6PM). Be sure to pick up a program book and learn more about the people you meet and what you see, hear, and taste.
A special event has been added to the 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a tribute concert dedicated to Diana Parker, long-time festival Director, who will be retiring later this year.
On Saturday June 27th at 7 PM, at the Festival’s Welsh Dragon Stage on the National Mall, some friends of Diana’s will share their music: Blues musicians Phil Wiggins and Corey Harris and members of award-winning Cajun band BeauSoleil.
Diana Parker has been with the Folklife Festival since 1975, after working with other Smithsonian programs and at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. A consultant to Cultural Olympiads, the Los Angeles Festival, and every public presidential inaugural celebration since 1976, she helped produce the WWII Reunion on the Mall dedicating the WWII Memorial, and the First Americans Festival celebrating the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.
More here.
The Welsh Dragon is the big tent near the Smithsonian Castle (map).
Can’t make it? See the live webcast here.
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, and concise. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The 43rd Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall (June 24-June 28 and July 1-5, 2009) will feature the culture of Wales, Latin American music, and African American oral tradition.
Jacqueline Trescott wrote about festival plans in the Washington Post, and the paper’s “Going Out Guru” Fritz Hahn suggested booking Welsh musical faves Tom Jones, Super Furry Animals, Dame Shirley Bassey, mclusky, Catatonia, Helen Love, and Teen Anthems. Mr. Hahn also recomended another Welsh product, Brains Dark.
Iechyd Da (Cheers).
(Pronunciation)
Put the Smithsonian on the Web and everyone can help curate the collections. What could be wrong with that?
Plenty.
The Institution held a “gathering” recently, Smithsonian 2.0. It was an updated cabaret version of a bigger production staged eight years ago at the museum’s 150th birthday party. There seem to have been no Smithsonian 2.0 speakers who would not personally benefit if the Smithsonian bestowed its blessing on “Web 2.0” measures.
Sadly, most models proposed at the meeting were antithetical to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge,” the Smithsonian’s mission. Unless, that is, the Smithsonian now interprets “diffuse” in its adjectival sense, “being at once verbose and ill-organized” (Merriam-Webster).
NotionsCapital 