Talk to Me, Baby
Forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni will be at Nat Geo on Friday evening. Image courtesy of National Geographic.
This week, we have a number of Earth Day discussions, including two promising events at National Geographic, a family day at the Anacostia Community Museum, and even a Corcoran lecture on sustainability in interior design.
Monday:
» At 7 p.m., Politics and Prose hosts essayist Adina Hoffman as she discusses her tribute biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammed Ali, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century.
Tuesday:
» The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World author and investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg appears at Politics and Prose tonight at 7 p.m. to discuss her most recent work which "exposes the global war on women's reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences."
» Learn about Evaluating and Collecting Craft tonight at 6:45 p.m. at the S. Dillon Ripley Center. The lecture costs $30, but includes a ticket to the Smithsonian Craft Show, which runs from April 23 to 26 at the National Building Museum.
Wednesday:
» From 3:30 to 5 p.m. this afternoon, join the New America Foundation for Democracy Promotion in the Age of Obama: Prospects for Reform. The authors of Revitalizing U.S. Democracy Promotion: A Comprehensive Plan for Reform will be joined by a panel of experts including Ted Piccone of the Brookings Institution, Thomas Melia of Freedom House and Chris Homan, Foreign Policy Advisor to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL).
» The S. Dillon Ripley Center brings us another lecture tonight at 6:45 p.m., focusing on the science of Creating the Focused Life. Author Winifred Gallagher and neuroscientist Richard Restak "discuss how the brain focuses, and how we can skillfully harness that ability to create a more fulfilled life." $20.
» The Anacostia Community Museum hosts a family-friendly discussion tonight for Earth Day, titled Reducing Your Carbon Footprint. Speakers from the Sierra Club, the Ward 8 Environmental Council, and the EPA will share some simple tips to being environmentally responsible.
» Another environmental option tonight is National Geographic's Blue Whales: Making a Comeback with photographer and scientist Flip Nicklin who will be sharing his experiences going on more than 5,500 dives, most recently off the Central American coast "where an upwelling of cool, nutrient-rich water serves as an oasis for a population of blue whales which has been growing in size." $18.
» Or, join the Goethe Institute at 7:30 p.m. for a book reading and discussion with Lev Raphael, author of My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped. The memoir is told by "a son of Holocaust survivors, haunted by his parents’ suffering and traumatic losses under Nazi rule [who] was certain that Germany was one place in the world he would never visit."
Thursday:
» $25 gets you in the door to the Corcoran's 7 p.m. Nature Informs Interior Design lecture with Stephen Drucker. Drucker has been writing about interior design in pubs such as Travel & Leisure, Martha Stewart Living, Architectural Digest and Hearst Magazine for 30 years, and he'll share his expertise on the increasing trend of environmental sustainability in the field.
» Or, head to Sixth and I at 7 p.m. for a free gallery talk with artist Laura Elkins, who has been painting herself as the First Ladies since 2000. Her work in this series is now on display in the Social Hall, and "examines notions of power, femininity, sexuality, and aging in the traditional genre of portraiture."
Friday:
» From 1 to 5 p.m. today at the Natural History Museum, forensic experts will be on hand to share their expertise and ask questions during Forensic Friday. Visitors will "observe first-hand the basic methods used for documenting human remains recovered from archaeological investigations."
» Stick around until 7 p.m. for a lecture with 2009 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Lisa Randall titled Invigorating Physics with Extra Dimensions in the Natural History's Baird Auditorium. Randall has become the most cited theoretical physicist in the world "for her work involving extra dimensions of space ... and her suggestion that might ... allow us to live in a world with an infinite extra dimension—possibly even in a three-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe." General admission is $25, but students with valid I.D. get in for $10.
» Or, head to National Geographic for a 7:30 p.m. lecture with forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni, whose Big Canopy Database has allowed scientists "to manage and share rain forest data across multiple disciplines—critical to the race to save these essential forests." $18.
Saturday:
» The S. Dillon Ripley Center brings us an all-day $120 seminar today starting at 9:30 a.m. titled Abraham Lincoln, Esquire. Attorney and scholar Arthur T. Downey will take a look at Lincoln as lawyer, President, and interpreter of the Constitution.
Sunday:
» Learn more about the District today at 1 p.m. at Politics and Prose with Mark Ozer, who will be appearing with his latest book Washington, D.C.: Politics and Place: The Historical Geography of the District of Columbia.
» Today's 2 p.m. weekend lecture at the National Gallery of Art is one more in the Picasso series, titled Monument. If you missed last week's, get there by 12:30 p.m. for a screening of the lecture in the West Building's ground floor lecture hall.