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— posted by Roger W. Smith
September 2025
Zyuzev arrested
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Category Archives: miscellaneous; general interest
Music brings it all back.
I shared my post
with a friend from high school. This led to an exchange of emails between us.
I wrote the following:
There is something about music — this is often true of popular music — that it embeds itself in your brain so that you recall exactly how it sounded when you first heard it and what your state of mind was at the time.
It was a Saturday night in 1956 (I think), and my older brother and I were watching the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey show on TV. Elvis Presley, whom we had both never heard of, sings “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Johnny Cash sings “I Walk the Line” on another show.
The Diamonds “Litle Darlin’,” probably on American Bandstand; and “A Teenager in Love” (Dion and the Belmonts, who were — how would I have known it then? — from the Bronx, a place I never heard of.).
Richie Valens “Oh, Donna.” Such direct emotion, which I could only experience vicariously then
In junior high, in the lunchroom, there is dancing. Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Kids dancing close.
I am in the sixth grade in our barbershop on Mass Ave. An Elvis song is playing on the radio: “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.” If only I could be another Elvis.
I am transported back fully to my state of mind as a preteen at the Agassiz School in Cambridge, and our house near Harvard Square. My emotions, then, my “worldview” (such as it was), my yearnings.
When I went to a Pat Boone movie in Harvard Square and heard him sing the tacky song “April Love” and flip hamburgers in a cookout scene while wearing a chef’s hat (and crooning). Me in my bedroom in Cambridge hearing Pat Boone’s hit “I Almost Lost My Mind” on the radio over and over again. I was doing something like playing a card or board game with myself or flipping through magazines — Sport magazine (not to be confused with Sports Illustrated) was a favorite of mine. Also fan magazines about Elvis and other rock stars which I bought at the Montrose Spa on Mass Ave.
The teen (and preteen) emotions we had.
The things that excited us.
Music brings it all back.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
June 2025
Roger Smith, Cambridge, MA, 1957
“Truman was right, even if there was such carnage.” … “There was no reason to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.”
‘The Lonely Voyage of the Enola Gay’ – Washington Post 5-15-2025
Posted here:
“The lonely, 80-year voyage of the Enola Gay”
By Samuel Hawley
The Washington Post
May 15, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/15/enola-gay-history-anniversary-atomic-bomb/
As well as readers’ comments on the Post site.
— Roger W. Smith
May 18, 2025
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See also my posts:
a letter to editor re the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
more thoughts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki
thoughts about Hiroshima
Vladimir Nabokov and Pitirim A. Sorokin
In 1940, Vladimir Nabokov emigrated to the United States. Some correspondence related to this event is contained in the following post on my Sorokin site:
— Roger W. Smith
the crooked straight
“Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.”
William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell”
* * *
“He would never make concessions for money—always was so.” – George W. Whitman (Walt Whitman’s brother), as told to Horace Traubel
* * *
“There was silence in the room. It was an awed, a dreadful silence, the vacant interval when death itself was yet a moment away.”
Roger Sugrue: ‘ “I think we can say this: that knowing what he knows now, if he had it to do all over again, there’s not the slightest doubt but that he’d do it all very, very differently!”
Frank Skeffington: “The hell I would!”*
*The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor. The main character, Frank Skeffington, was based on Boston Mayor James Michael Curly.
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my work/life experience
high school senior summer job as night clerk in hotel on Cape Cod … $35 a week plus room and board
college freshman; great job in library … my supervisor, a Haitian guy, was very nice to me
1965: horrible summer jobs … busboy dishwasher; boss was a jerk didn’t like me I got fired … got job in factory. I was inept and hated job … foreman was an a-hole; everyone hated him …. maybe $2.50 per hr
summer 1966: got great summer job on college grounds crew $2.50 per hr … J loved being outdoors weeding gardens, raking, etc. I became good friends with Jim Sweeney, a regular employee, and his family
1968: worked on a private estate near Boston as an assistant gardener … boss (head gardener) was Dutch
1969: first job in NYC … worked for a nonprofit on East 18th Street … office boy … salary $80 per week
1970-1972: conscientious objector status … did alternative service in hospitals on psychiatric ward and an intensive care unit
Christmas 1972: worked as temp in Boston department store
1973-77: worked in clerical capacity in dean’s office at Columbia University … took lots of courses
1977-1986: publishing firms: copywriter … freelance writing and editing
1986-1988: grad school at NYU … internship at New York Newsday …. freelance writing
1989-2001: worked for international consulting firm in Communications and Marketing departments
2001-present: freelance writing and scholarship … taught briefly in English Dept of St. John’s University (not a great job) … developed websites and became proficient at translating
The people I met! The experiences! The opportunities for study and learning.
— Roger W. Smith
March 2025
on Johnson’s memory
He discovered a great ambition to excel, which roused him to counteract his indolence. He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read.
— James Boswell, Life of Johnson
I can proudly say, without exaggeration, that this is also true of me.
— Roger W. Smith
December 2024
a letter to editor re the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see my post:
— Roger W. Smith
November 2024
post updated
This post has gotten surprisingly little readership. I think the letter posted is of intrinsic interest. I have transcribed the letter, which should make it easier to read.
— Roger W Smith
September 2024
Ralph Colp, Jr., “Why Stalin Couldn’t Stop Laughing”
2 Ralph Colp, Jr., ‘Why Stalin Couldn’t Stop Laughing’ – Clio’s Psyche, Sept 1996
Posted here (PDF above):
Ralph Colp, Jr., “Why Stalin Couldn’t Stop Laughing,” Clio’s Psyche, Volume 3, Number 2 (September, 1996)
This article provides concise and cogent insights into the mind and personality of a dictator.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
August 2024
the beauty of Russian syntax
Если окажутся, хоть некоторые, хоть слабые шансы на успех, было бы грешно их не использовать. (Yesli okazhutsya, khot’ nekotoryye, khot’ slabyye shansy na uspekh, bylo by greshno ikh ne ispol’zovat’.)
If there are at least some, even faint, chances of success, it would be a sin not to make use of them.
— Yuri Doykov, Pochemu molchal Pitirim Sorokin?; Ot Lubyanki do Garvarda (1918-1930) [Why was he silent?; Pitirim Sorokin? From the Lubyanka to Harvard (1918-1930]
The words are a quotation from Alexander Guchkov, a minister of war in Kerensky’s provisional government, in a letter to Sorokin.
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Russian is, indeed, an intricate and beautiful language.
The subjunctive is used here; and subtle wording to get the writer’s point across.
грешно: dative case of грех (sin)
грешно (dative), pronounced greshno
грех (nominative), pronounced grekh
The Russian letter х has no sound corresponding to any English letter. It is the first letter in the surname Khrushchev.
I love studying languages. French, for instance, in high school Learning the intricacies of verbs and conjugations. The passé composé; le subjonctif.
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иди и впредь не греши
idi i vpred’ ne greshi
go and sin no more
— John 8:11 (Old Church Slavonic)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024