O Say Can You See?

Eco-cities on the horizon

One of my favorite things in the museum’s Science in American Life exhibition is the “Ecology Now” poster commemorating the establishment of Earth Day in 1970. As Earth Day 2009 approaches on April 22, I find myself reflecting on Inventing for the Environment, a volume the Lemelson Center produced a few years ago. I do so in the conviction that its theme looms even larger today than it did when the book first came out. Countering the view that technology only disrupts natural processes, our book’s contributors focused on inventors and innovators who have devoted their imaginations to shaping a better environmental future.

Today, the buzz is all about “sustainability,” with an emphasis on alternative energies, renewable resources, and carbon-neutral technologies. Sustainability, however, has taken on a whole new dimension with the rise of the eco-city concept. I say “concept,” because, although the idea has been around for at least a couple of decades, no eco-city has yet been fully realized.

As defined by the visionary urban ecologist Richard Register, eco-cities are designed to be in balance with nature. Actually they come in many sizes and flavors, including retrofitted derelict industrial areas and small eco-villages, as in the plans for “Bicycle City”—a particular favorite of mine. The most fascinating variety, however, are the attempts to build completely new cities on the principle of total environmental sustainability. Using the most advanced technologies (including some not even invented yet), these new cities are designed to be completely self-sufficient. Each will generate its own power, grow its own food, and recycle its water, while minimizing to near zero the output of waste, especially C02.

Two of the most extravagant projects currently on the books are Masdar in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates and Dongtan in China. Abu Dhabi is touting Masdar as the “greenest city on earth,” eventually a zero-carbon footprint town of 50,000 inhabitants and 1,500 businesses. Most spectacularly, the city is built on a plinth or platform, with all the infrastructure and transportation concealed beneath. Competing with Masdar for the title of the world’s first fully realized eco-city is Dongtan, about 25 miles from Shanghai. The city will produce its own energy through wind, solar, bio-fuel, and recycled waste, including human sewage.

Both projects pose formidable environmental challenges: The green city of Masdar sits in the middle of a desert and Dongtan on a major wetland. Their very concept raises a host of questions and issues, but the central one is this: How real are they? Some say they are exciting new directions, but others claim that, in the case of Masdar, the eco-city diverts attention away from Abu Dhabi’s petroleum industry, and, with Dongtan, China creates a fig leaf for its polluted metropolises. In the end, is ultimate sustainability really sustainable?

Art Molella is Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History.

Contributing—or not—to the collections

“Do you have Rebecca’s arrival hanbok?” Noriko Sanefuji stood in my office doorway and smiled. Do I remember what my daughter was wearing when she arrived? Doesn’t every mother?

Our daughter came on a huge 747 to O’Hare International Airport on a hot May afternoon, one of perhaps a dozen babies being escorted to the United States to their adoptive parents. Volunteers carried each baby, cleaned up after the 30-hour trip and dressed in new outfits, into the arms of their new moms and dads. Armed only with tiny photos and huge, aching hearts, we knew which one was ours, even before our names were called. Of course I remember!

Korean dress, 1955. Gift of Betty Holt Blankenship.

But Noriko, who works in the museum’s Division of Work and Industry, was seeking a particular article of clothing. On display now in the museum’s case, “Barriers to Bridges: Asian American Immigration,” is a diminutive hanbok (ceremonial dress) from one of the first Holt adoptees, Betty Rhee, who arrived in 1955. Our conservators were trying to determine if the dress is too fragile to stay on display for an extended time, and Noriko was seeking another one to possibly take its place. Sometimes we have similar artifacts readily available in our storage cabinets. However, the Asian-Pacific American collection is fairly new and doesn’t have the depth of, say, our collections of political buttons or military uniforms or photographs. But I had to tell Noriko that in the 20+ years between Betty Rhee and Rebecca, the arrival outfits had become more practical—our daughter arrived wearing a soft blue, two-piece outfit, machine-embroidered with pastel flowers.

Thankfully, another gracious donor has expressed willingness to donate a hanbok similar to the original. So the bigger question—could my husband and I have let our daughter’s arrival outfit go—remains unanswered. I’m the one who has held onto (not that many! but some!) clothing and toys and books and papers that signify the unfolding exhibition of our children’s lives. Hey, I work for a history museum! And I’m not ready yet. But the process gave me a bit more insight—and deeper appreciation—for the generous people who have told the stories and contributed the objects that we have in our collections. And we all are a little richer.

Susan Walther is a programs coordinator at the National Museum of American History.

Laughing at ourselves

When I was a teenager, “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was one of the few TV shows my family could agree to watch together. Perhaps because of her training as a nurse, my mother typically viewed the program while peeking through her fingers, anticipating the next ski jump gone awry. Any time you saw a kid with something resembling a baseball bat you knew that someone or something (grandpa? the sliding glass door?) was about to get banged up. From mishaps at weddings to unfortunately-located dog poo, the show featured unrehearsed slapstick comedy in all of its glorious forms.

Tom Bergeron with donated artifacts.

Comedy as a cultural form and feature of American life is documented in the museum’s growing entertainment collections, which include artifacts ranging from costumes to sheet music. Items from “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” a pioneer in comedic reality programming and the longest-running primetime show on ABC, became the latest addition to these collections in a special donation ceremony held on April 8.

One of the artifacts, a mammoth camcorder used to film the first winning video on the show, illustrates changes in technology over the past two decades. Despite the bulky and expensive VHS recording equipment that was available in the 1980s, the show received hundreds of entries in its first season and has received over 700,000 since. Think of all the hijinks and embarrassing moments now being captured via tiny cell phone cameras and broadcast to the world via the Internet. Today, an estimated 80 million people visit YouTube every month to watch scenes that aren’t so different from AFHV’s: lots of precocious babies and even a waterskiing squirrel.

Another donated artifact, an audience voting machine, helps us to trace the show’s influence on American popular culture. The reality-show-with-voting-competition format pioneered by AFHV nearly 20 years ago is now the foundation of some of today’s most popular television shows (can you say “American Idol”?). The idea of an interactive show where the audience decides the outcome—and the performances are put on by Americans from all walks of life—now seems commonplace.

During the donation ceremony, Creator and Executive Producer Vin Di Bona confided that the show never has to rely on a laugh track. As host Tom Bergeron pointed out, I think the show’s footage of human beings and their wacky behavior underscores the universal nature of slapstick. There’s a reason that nuns catching wedding bouquets and dachshunds with live firecrackers are funny. I don’t have the foggiest idea what that reason is but I dare you watch this clip reel from “America’s Funniest Home Videos” without at least one good belly laugh.

Dana Allen-Greil is the new media project manager at the National Museum of American History.

Making the mission possible

A loyal blog reader recently suggested that we record all of our Meet Our Museum programs for podcasting. It’s a fantastic idea which we had originally hoped to accomplish and, actually, some resourceful staff members are working on recording a select few. But, due to scarce funding and staff shortages, the museum isn’t able to make all of our programs available online. As you know, everything costs money.

Flickr photo by Randen L. Pederson

You also might know that your federal tax dollars provide a large portion of the Smithsonian’s budget. However, the Smithsonian—including our own museum—relies heavily upon financial support from private individuals, corporations, and foundations in order to share its collections and programs with the public. In fact, almost every exhibition, educational program, and Web site is funded by private sources. We really can’t do anything new without your support.

Our donors are special people who share with the museum staff a passion for American history. With the declining emphasis on history and civics education in schools, museums like ours become even more important to ensuring that our future leaders learn from the nation’s storied past. And this makes our donors more important than ever.

Thanks to all of you who, through your wonderful generosity, have donated to the museum. There are many worthy causes out there—especially in a time of such economic uncertainty—but know that the museum is better able “to increase and diffuse knowledge” with your help.

If you’d like to help support the work of the museum, you can donate here.

Mike Johnson is the Development Associate in the Museum’s Office of External Affairs.

Ask me!

I am fundamentally a shy person. As a child, I would hide from my tiny, adorable, very friendly grandmother because the three people in my immediate family seemed like more than enough people in my world, thank you very much. 

And yet I now approach total strangers on a daily basis and ask them if I can help. Others in the museum world have referred to this as The Magic Vest Phenomenon, where the museum staff wears some signal (such as a vest) that says ”I work here! And I want to help you.” 

Next time you visit our museum, look for someone wearing a shiny red “ASK ME” button. Of course, we don’t have all of the answers, but we’ll certainly try to help you.

I work on online outreach educational materials for Smithsonian’s History Explorer, but my button is a nice reminder that I can contribute to making our visitors feel welcome, even just on a small scale. To me, the buttons are really concrete ways that we can show visitors we care about you.

Thanks for coming to visit us, in person or online. We’re glad you came. Let us know if we can help.

Jenny Wei is an education specialist at the National Museum of American History.