American Culture

The familiar flag, the dancing black woman and the enigmatic, questioning title are among the first things one notices about Doris Colbert Kennedy's exuberant, politically conscious painting So, How's the Harvest?, on view at the James E. Lewis Museum at Morgan State University. The flag, which billows in a great half circle from the top left-hand corner of the canvas down the woman's body to fall on the grass at the bottom, lets us know the image has a didactic purpose. It is, first of all, the drapery of art and artifice, like the heavy scarlet curtains that frame a baroque Madonna, or the billowing tri-color banner in Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.

You can learn about McDonald's, Star Wars, baseball, Disney and Michaels Jackson and Jordan without ever setting foot on American soil. Not so Thanksgiving: To appreciate its importance in American culture - with the emphasis on the family, on counting blessings and on stuffing one's stomach with no reluctance - you have to be here. For those born outside this country, Thanksgiving offers one of the easiest paths to assimilation. Most are introduced to the holiday by an American family; before long they're hosting their own Thanksgiving meals.

Holding a thin piece of deerskin stretched tightly over a small brown painted coffee can, Alex Genuario concentrated on threading a piece of hemp through the small holes poked in the hide. Standing next to him, his younger brother, Dominic, threaded beads onto his piece of hemp and attached a wild turkey feather as a finishing touch. The Genuario brothers, 11 and 9, were making Native American drums as part of a program at the nature center in Piney Run Park in Sykesville. More than 15 elementary school-aged children participated in the event that was designed to teach them about Native American culture and make use of real animal hide donated to the nature center.

WHEN GOV. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. called multiculturalism "bunk" and "crap" about a year ago, you'd have thought, judging from the reaction of some folks, that he'd just taken out a lifetime membership in the Ku Klux Klan. With the advent of "ethnomathematics," maybe some of those same folks will climb down off the governor's back. But I'm getting just a wee bit ahead of the discussion I had with Ehrlich at the governor's mansion Friday. The governor rehashed that multiculturalism business so he could clarify what his views are - and aren't.

Supporters looking to cement the standing of Baltimore's African American Heritage Festival as one of the region's premier summer events got the ultimate validation yesterday from Gloria Bartholomew: It's a big deal, she said, even by New York standards. The Brooklynite came down to Baltimore with her sister and brother-in-law so they could join her nephew, Walter Nanton of Chase, in what has become an annual rite for his family - sampling the food, hearing the music perusing the art and soaking up the history of their African-American and Afro-Caribbean heritage.

More than 350 years have passed since the first enslaved Africans, taken forcibly from their homelands and sold to people in a land thousands of miles away, set foot in Maryland. Beginning this weekend, their stories and the stories of their descendants - the men and women of African heritage who have lived, toiled, suffered, thrived and died in a land sometimes called the Free State - will be told in a gleaming new $34 million museum on the eastern edge of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Named for a pioneering black businessman and philanthropist, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, at 830 E. Pratt St., will open officially tomorrow.

THE APPLE iPod digital music player was the hot item this past holiday season, moving 4.5 million units. From Hollywood hipsters to Washington deal-makers to middle America's middle-schoolers, the iPod was the gift to give or get -- if you could get it. The spectacular success of the fetish object of the moment raises interesting questions about the state of our culture. The iPod is just expensive enough to be chic, like luxury perfume, and just hard enough to get to be coveted, like last winter's Ugg boots.

While others fanned away the smoke as the fire was lit at the second Four Bay Winds Native American Gathering, Mary White beckoned the spirit of her great- great-grandfather, who was of the Cherokee nation, to come to her. Although the wind blew ferociously, the fire at the center of the arena didn't die. Some there said the ancestors kept it burning. Nearly 800 people gathered in the grassy field behind the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace at the Lock House to experience the spirit of Native American culture yesterday.

While others fanned away the smoke as the fire was lit at the second Four Bay Winds Native American Gathering, Mary White beckoned the spirit of her great- great-grandfather, who was of the Cherokee nation, to come to her. Although the wind blew ferociously, the fire at the center of the arena didn't die. Some there said the ancestors kept it burning. Nearly 800 people gathered in the grassy field behind the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace at the Lock House to experience the spirit of Native American culture yesterday.

NOW OR NEVER Indulge your inner space cadet Saturday at the Anne Arundel Community College Astronomy Club's Community Observing Night. Bring your own telescope or binoculars or use one of AACC's eight telescopes to gaze at stars, planets and the moon. Weather permitting, this family event will be held from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. in parking lots A and B, near the AACC's Astronomy Lab, at 101 College Parkway, Arnold. Admission is free. Call 410-798-6625 after 6 p.m. -- Vera Adelman COMING UP Celebrate Native American culture at the 12th annual Howard County Pow-Wow / American Indian Show and Festival Saturday and Sunday at the Howard County Fairgrounds in Friendship.