AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, the environment is the hip cause of the moment, and as a result, Earth Day is going to be bigger, better and more celebrity-packed than ever before.

Random celebrity appearances include comedian Chevy Chase and mogul Russell Simmons. But what we're really concerned with is the music.

This Sunday, for the price of zero dollars, you can catch a lineup that includes the Roots, Thievery Corporation, Gov't Mule, O.A.R., Ne-Yo, Jordin Sparks, Talib Kweli and Ziggy Marley. Thank Mother Earth next time you get a chance; not only for sustaining the lives of us ingrates, but for inspiring such an awesome free show.

» The National Mall, Between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, Sun., 12 p.m., free. (Smithsonian)

Now's a perfect time to take in the Botanic Garden, before the humidity and bugginess of summer sets in.

IT'S NEARLY 80 DEGREES OUTSIDE. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. Spring is finally, finally in full flower on a blissful Friday, and where are we?

Yeah. Dullsville.

So, I set out to see how this wondrous day is treating a group of people who, unlike us, aren't working — the tourists. The answer: pretty darned well.

My first stop was the Capitol.

As you can see, the line for tours, located on the south side of the building, was growing pretty long. The sidewalks in front of the museums on Jefferson Drive SW were populated, but navigable.

Which meant plenty of tourist entertainment. I was walking past the National Museum of the American Indian when I heard a male voice frustratedly bellow, "Dude, it's a bus zone!"

The bellower was a guy in his late teens, "dude" was a similarly aged friend in a sleeveless shirt, and both had apparently thought they could sidle up to an open parking space right in front of the museum.

There wasn't any such confusion in front of the Air and Space Museum: not a patch of curb was open except a designated unloading area. I counted 16 buses in all, eight of them school buses.

The Mall itself was a jogger's paradise, and folks in shorts and running shoes were taking full advantage. As were families like the one pictured at right. And at least one pair of parents with their 6ish-year-old daughter strapped into one of those questionable child harnesses, complete with leash. Which just seems not quite right.

Continue Reading "Around Town: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" »

WHETHER YOU HAVE your nieces and nephews for the day, or you want to be able to enjoy some art with your kids, or you just happen to like Disney and you'e not going to be ashamed of that, head over to the National Gallery on Saturday for a screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast."

It's a romantic tale of a woman who changes a man. Or, if you'd rather see it another way, a woman who puts up with absolutely dreadful treatment until suddenly the man just changes by himself. Magically. Ha.

» National Gallery of Art, 600 Constitution Ave. NW; Sat., 11:30 a.m., free; 202-737-4215 (Smithsonian)

Photo courtesy Disney Pictures, Inc.

WHEN YOUR OPTIONS ARE a seat on the ground or, well, a seat on the ground, then a natural chair formed from petrified sand dunes suddenly sounds pretty comfortable.

At least it did 12,000 years ago.

When Albert Ammerman — a seasoned archaeologist and professor of humanities at Colgate University — traveled to Cyprus in 2003 to search for evidence of early seafaring peoples, his peers thought that he was making a bad career move. Prior excavations hadn't turned up much of anything.

"A lot of people thought I was crazy. It was kind of risky to go out and do something that nobody else could do," said the professor. "However, we had the good fortune to look in the right place."

Continue Reading "Sitting on a Beach: Archaeologist Albert Ammerman" »

IT MAY SEEM too Mary Poppins for the average urbane D.C. native, but the Smithsonian Kite Festival is really amazingly beautiful.

Head down on Saturday, March 29, either to watch or to register to fly. You'll have to avoid stepping on any children (or maybe you can put the small ones on strings and launch them into the air), but the kites are worth seeing.

Cherry Blossoms come but once a year; you might as well get some joy out of them — along with all the frustration you feel when trapped behind yet another oblivious tourist at a Metro turnstile.

» Smithsonian Kite Festival, National Mall at the Washington Monument; Registration begins 10 a.m., free; 202-633-3030. (Smithsonian)

Photo by Marvin Joesph/The Washington Post

MAYBE YOU MADE a New Year's resolution to save money. Or perhaps you're less than excited about dropping a couple hundred dollars on one meal. Whatever the reason, your wanting to save a few bucks doesn't mean resigning yourself to frugal dining when you're craving fancy food and service. It's all in the strategy.

START WITH AN END GOAL: Check out menupages.com or restaurant Web sites for prices and come up with a budget for the evening's meal. And be realistic: Set a drink minimum and plan for the cost of drinks and tip.

LEARN WHERE TO GO WHEN: You don't have to wait for Restaurant Week to score a deal. Head to Restaurant Eve (see map, No. 1) for the weekday Lickety Split lunch, meaning you can taste Cathal Armstrong's cuisine for less than $20. Plan on Sunday dinner at The Majestic (see map, No. 2) — $78 for a family-style dinner for four. Ask for the upstairs menu in the lounge at The Source (see map, No. 3). If you're dying to try lacquered Chinese duckling or anything else on the fancy menu, the entire thing is available in the downstairs casual environs. Sit at the bar of CityZen (pictured above; see map, No. 4), where a three-course tasting menu at one of the top restaurants in town is $45. Hit up Dino (see map, No. 5) on Sundays and Mondays, when wines over $50 are 33 percent off. There are deals like this all over the city; it's just a matter of keeping an ear to the ground.

Continue Reading "Out & About: Eating Cheap, Surrounded by Luxury" »

WHEN THE FLAG GALLERY at the renovated National Museum of American History opens to the public, it'll look something like what's depicted in the rendering at right.

But you'll have to wait a little longer to catch a glimpse of the state-of-the-art gallery — and the new museum. As The Post's Jacqueline Trescott reports, the Smithsonian is delaying the museum's reopening from the summer to the fall. The museum closed in fall 2006 and is undergoing $85 million worth of renovations and upgrades.

» "National Museum of American History" [Smithsonian]

» EARLIER: "Around Town: Farewell to a Museum" [Free Ride/Express]

Rendering courtesy National Museum of American History

"THE POLAR BEAR is the icon of the Arctic," said photographer Norbert Rosing. "If you are not triggered by them, you are dead in the heart."

Rosing knows a bit about polar bears. He's photographed them for 20 years, taking yearly trips to the Canadian and Scandinavian Arctic to capture the bears in their natural environment as they play, fight, tend to their cubs and even engage in some Donner Party behavior.

"This year, I've seen for the first time cannibalism between bears," said the German photographer, who will present his images and talk about them at the S. Dillon Ripley Center on Tuesday. "When I saw it first, I figured it is a mother eating its own cub because she looked like a female bear and the little one was pretty little."

But the game wardens, Rosing said, were unable to confirm if the larger bear was a male or female — they only knew that it was a cub of two and a half years in good health. "Why the cub died, nobody knows. I wish I could have told the story that it was mother and cub, but I have to stick with the facts."

Continue Reading "Northern Exposure: Norbert Rosing" »

UP IN THE FOURTH-FLOOR PATRONS' LOUNGE at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, there's a portrait of the recently retired founding director of the museum, W. Richard West Jr. How much did the commissioned piece cost the museum? $48,500.

The expenditure is again raising questions about spending at the Smithsonian. Last month, The Post detailed West's travel expenses over the past four years, which involved trips to Paris, Venice, Singapore, Australia and Indonesia that cost a total of $250,000.

Writes The Post's James V. Grimaldi:

Two U.S. senators have asked for independent investigations of West's spending. And, pending a review of West's travel, the Smithsonian Board of Regents has removed West from the committee to select a new secretary of the Smithsonian to replace Lawrence M. Small, who resigned in March after questions were raised about his compensation and spending.

"It appears that Mr. West was determined to meet Mr. Small's champagne lifestyle, glass for glass," Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter yesterday to the Board of Regents.

» "Portrait Cost Indian Museum $48,500" [WaPo]
» EARLIER: "Indian Museum Director Spent Lavishly on Travel" [WaPo]

Portrait by Burt Silverman

IN 1996, THE BARTLESVILLE, OKLA., HOUSE in which Joe and Etsuko Price displayed their collection of Edo-period (1615-1868) paintings fell prey to arson. It was an immeasurable loss for admirers of Bruce Goff, the eccentric Frank Lloyd Wright protege who designed the building.

For admirers of Japanese art, though, the situation wasn't so grave.

The Prices had already relocated their holdings to a Goff-co-designed wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And so it is that for the next four months the finest pieces will be rotated through the Sackler Gallery's "Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes: Edo Masters from the Price Collection."

Continue Reading "Dusk Till Dawn: Price's Edo Masters" »