A new city, a new publication

Greetings from Asbury Park…er, actually Washington D.C.

I’m here in the nation’s capital interning for Smithsonian magazine. I just finished the third week of my internship and thought a blog would be the best way to capture/document my experience (OK, it’s easy, too).

So far, I’ve been doing a lot of fact-checking, specifically on two larger features relating to archaeology and paleobiology. I started a series for the food blog today about the history of American lunches. Believe it or not, it was actually interesting to research and I got to interview Lynne Olver, the creator of the Food Timeline, who has seemingly infinite knowledge of American cuisine.

Photo that I took last weekend of Warhol's self portrait at the Hirshhorn.

My first blog post for Smithsonian was a study about the evolution of laughter that was done by tickling infant humans, chimps, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas. First off, how do you get to be the lab assistant who tickles primates? No, despite my love of primates (I did a paper on gibbons and siamangs last quarter and got teased mercilessly by my j-school friends about it), I don’t want this job. I only wonder how one would get this sort of thing. I guess just by being a lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) grad student/research assistant.

Aside from internship work, I’ve been out seeing the sights. Yes, I’m an epic nerd and plan to go to all of the Smithsonian museums. I’ve already been through the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Hirshhorn and the Freer and Sackler Galleries. Tomorrow, I’m tackling the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture for Warholapaloolza. After seeing some Warhol at the Hirshhorn, I’m on a pop and modern art kick.

One thing that was extremely moving, and unexpected, was going to the WWII Memorial on the 65th anniversary of D-Day. It was incredible to see veterans taking in the massive memorial in front of them, posing for photos and honoring fallen comrades.

I actually just finished reading two books about war. The first was The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz, which chronicles the ambush of the First Cavalry Division in Sadr City, Iraq in 2004. The second was the graphic novel MAUS by Art Spiegelman, which tells the story of a Holocaust survivor through the art of his son. I plan to post reviews of both soon, but suffice to say, they tell griping stories about human tradegy and how individuals cope in situations of extreme violence.