Category Archives: miscellaneous; general interest

Kids are so matter of fact.

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The L train this morning.

9:45 a.m.

Two cute kids, boys, sitting next to me.

I waved (raised palm) at the boy next to me, on my left. “Hi, good morning,” I said.

He smiled and said something.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Madison Square Garden.”

“For what?”

“To see the Harlem Globe Trotters.”

“Wow! They’re still playing? I used to see them as a kid [a fact which doesn’t interest or impress my interlocutor].”

No response.

(I’m not sure what I actually did say. I never did see the Globetrotters play, as a spectator.)

“They’re a lot of fun,” I said.

No response, at first, then the boy said, “It’s for my birthday.”

“How old are you?”

“Nine.” Said in a flat tone, without inflection, as if it were no big deal.

And, indeed, at this age, while having a birthday is certainly fun and exciting, the fact of what one’s age is is not an important one.

And life is taken and experienced as it occurs.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  December 27, 2019

“Go find your wife!”

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To put this post in context I should begin by saying that I have had a bad day. All sorts of things big and small have been going wrong.

I have been highly stressed and then when I was about to go out, my wife and I had a pointless argument over something trivial that spoiled my afternoon.

 

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My wife does most of her grocery shopping at Costco. Costco is a huge store selling grocery and other products at reduced prices; it operates on a membership-only basis.

My wife and I went shopping together in the early evening, beginning with Costco. The store is usually crowded, especially on days before holidays.

I decided to wait outside while my wife was shopping. Big Costco-like stores tire me.

After a half an hour or so, I got bored and restless. I’ll go inside and see if I can find my wife, I thought. Better wandering the aisles and gawking at shoppers than sitting still.

There was a burly guy at the entrance. He was talking with a coworker and didn’t seem to notice me. But then he said something indistinct indicating that he was inquiring whether I was a Costco member. I knew it was a members-only store, and on the rare occasions when I am there with my wife she shows her card at the door.

I might have just kept going (pretending I hadn’t heard). Sometimes that works. But I thought to myself, honesty is probably the best policy. It usually is.

“I’m looking for my wife. She’s shopping,” I said. Then I added, “I don’t have a Costco card.”

“You’re looking for your wife?” he replied with a big smile. He seemed amused, acted as if that tickled him.

“Welcome, brother!” he said. “Go find your wife!”

This little incident and interaction made my day and magically helped offset or reduce the tension I had been feeling. The Costco “gatekeeper” displayed humanity and a lack of officiousness.

The moral of the story. The smallest acts of human empathy and kindness can do more good than one would think and can have an incremental effect in terms of their larger benefits.

— Roger W. Smith

  December 23, 2019

new vocabulary III

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new vocabulary – November 2019

 

My high school English teacher, Robert W. Tighe: “Look up a word three times and it’s yours.”

It’s been a year and a half since I last posted a compilation of vocabulary words I have looked up.

The above WORD DOCUMENT is a compilation of all the words I have looked up since then. They are my notes. But, obviously, the definitions were often cut and pasted by me from the internet.

I have never ceased to look up words and rarely fail to. I think these lists illustrate that a good vocabulary is built from one’s reading.

As I was looking over the list today, I was struck by how many words I have looked up over this period (it is my practice to keep a record of the words and their definitions) and how many words I had either never encountered before, or may have seen but could not define.

Every single word was encountered by me in READING.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   November 2019

Sharpiegate and Orwell

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Democracies used to collapse suddenly, with tanks rolling noisily toward the presidential palace. In the 21st century, however, the process is usually subtler.

Authoritarianism is on the march across much of the world, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual, so that it’s hard to point to a single moment and say, this is the day democracy ended. You just wake up one morning and realize that it’s gone. …

And the events of the past week have demonstrated how this can happen right here in America.

At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit that he misstated a weather projection by claiming that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, was kind of funny, even though it was also scary — it’s not reassuring when the president of the United States can’t face reality. But it stopped being any kind of joke on Friday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement falsely backing up Trump’s claim that it had warned about an Alabama threat.

Why is this frightening? Because it shows that even the leadership of NOAA, which should be the most technical and apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to Trump that it’s willing not just to overrule its own experts but to lie, simply to avoid a bit of presidential embarrassment.

Think about it: If even weather forecasters are expected to be apologists for Dear Leader, the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.

— “How Democracy Dies, American-Style: Sharpies, auto emissions and the weaponization of policy,” op-ed, By Paul Krugman, The New York Times, September 9, 2019

 

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Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of ‘The Times’, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from ‘The Times’ of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, ‘The Times’ of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

–posted by Roger W. Smith

  September 2019

Grover Cleveland was right.

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“Although immigration was relatively free and open during the 18th and early 19th centuries, the federal government began placing restrictions as the number of immigrants rose. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, was enacted both because of economic fears and racist attitudes against Chinese workers. Other laws were also enacted to keep certain laborers from coming to the country.

“In 1897, President Grover Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have restricted immigration by requiring a literacy test that would require immigrants to read five lines from the Constitution. In his veto message, he said:

“Heretofore we have welcomed all who came to us from other lands except those whose moral or physical conditions or history threatened danger to our national welfare and safety…. We have encouraged those coming from foreign countries to cast their lot with us and join in the development of our vast domains, securing in return a share in the blessings of American citizenship.”

— “The story of Donald Trump’s grandfather, who came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor,” by Kristine Phillips, The Washington Post, June 27, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/27/the-story-of-donald-trumps-grandfather-who-came-to-the-u-s-as-an-unaccompanied-minor/?utm_term=.2052800b0108

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   August 2019

 

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SEE ALSO my post:

“immigration policy, Walt Whitman, and Donald Trump’s wall; or, the Berlin Wall redux”

immigration policy, Walt Whitman, and Donald Trump’s wall; or, the Berlin Wall redux

 

 

on photography (MINE; an exchange of emails, with apologies to Susan Sontag)

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The following is an exchange of emails I had within the past day with my friend Ewa from the Bronx. Her email from yesterday evening contained what I regard as very insightful comments.

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May 29, 2019

Dear Roger,

I appreciate all the pictures you send me. Sometimes I have no time to give them the right amount of attention, but when I do, I go over all of them carefully.

They are very nice and show different and sometimes surprising City views.

It’s interesting how people play suggestive roles in the pictures, making natural gestures look theatrical (like the one from May 19th). I sometimes get surprised by unusual framing like with the photo where the Statue of Liberty peaks from between the trunks, or fronds of greens in the park. Frozen crowds and some of the places that I have never been to make the pictures distant, but knowing the fact that I could experience them on my day off makes looking at them like at goods at the store that I could afford.

I don’t have time to walk around the city, but it gives me an insight into New York City’s architecture and landscapes and life of the city in general.

I admire the style and cropping. Once again, thank you, Roger.

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May 30, 2019

Thanks for your emails from last night, Ewa.

Thanks for complimenting my photos

I have never been good at hardly any technical, hands on skill. I never seemed to have any aptitude for photography. I was pleasantly surprised to find that several people seem to like my photos a lot.

I have gotten a little bit adept at things like cropping and tweaking photos, but I am far from being a pro.

I appreciated your email because it showed an awareness of certain key things.

My photos are a sort of paean to Manhattan, my city. My feelings about it are similar to what Walt Whitman’s were.

Your comment “It’s interesting how people play suggestive roles in the pictures making natural gestures look theatrical (like the one from May 19th)” is very much on target. I find that a photo of, say, Central Park or Fifth Avenue is enhanced by having people in it.

I have acquaintances who have much more expertise in photography than I do and who own expensive cameras. Often their photos do not engage me. A splendid photo of the Taj Mahal in the evening; a photo of whales taken from a whale watching expedition or of a moose in a national park often leave me sort of detached. I feel that if I wanted to see such photos, I could find them on an internet site for tourists or in National Geographic.

A further thought: A relative of mine, noticing that I not infrequently include photos of myself (on my City walks) in Facebook posts, posted a critical comment about this on Facebook a while ago. When I complained to the relative, the relative replied: “Don’t understand why you post a picture of yourself almost every day in the same pose.”

Well, my hero Walt Whitman loved to have his photo taken — he was fascinated by the new invention of photography — often in a photo studio on lower Broadway. Posting pictures of myself may be a form of self-flattery, but the intent is also to show myself as being part of the scene: that I was at such and such a spot in the City on a particular date and time. In different parks, on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the steps of the New York Public Library, in front of some famous Manhattan building, and so on. I think it adds verisimilitude to a sort of photographic travelogue or diary of a City walker (me).

Roger

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   May 30, 2019

Central Park 2-47 p.m. 5-19-2019

Central Park, May 19, 2019; photograph by Roger W. Smith

Walt Whitman (3)

Walt Whitman

“Congress shall make no law …”

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In a story in yesterday’s Washington Post

“Supreme Court seems to seek narrow w:ay to uphold cross that memorializes war dead”

By Robert Barnes

The Washington Post

February 27, 2019

It is indicated that

A majority of the Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed to be searching for a way — a narrow way, most likely — to allow a historic cross commemorating World War I dead to remain where it has stood for nearly 100 years.

Two of the court’s four liberals suggested the unique history of the Peace Cross in the Washington suburb of Bladensburg, Md., may provide a way to accommodate its position on public land in a highway median.

But more than an hour of oral arguments showed the difficulty the court faces when it must decide whether government’s involvement with a religious symbol has an allowable sectarian purpose or is an unconstitutional embrace of religion.

And so on.

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This is a contentious issue that has been with us for a long time. But I think it is absurd for jurists and interest groups to be splitting hairs over such questions. It calls for a satirist such as Jonathan Swift to show the absurdity of this kind of public debate.

My former therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp Jr. (not an arrogant or haughty person, it should be noted) once remarked to me, in a completely different context, that human stupidity would always be very much part of humanity, very much with us.

Here’s food for thought.

The Constitution should not be taken literally. The Founders, schooled in Enlightenment thought, were wiser than that: Their intention was to produce a document the underpinning of which was clear, rational thinking.

Some of the “original intent”/strict constructionist types — including supposedly eminent judges and jurists, and legal scholars — are, to put it bluntly, idiots. Who read and interpret the words of the Constitution over literally, without any context or nuance, and without using common sense.

So are the citizens who, in reading the words of the First Amendment, think that it was intended to prohibit public exercise of religion. The Founders would have been horrified to see it interpreted that way.

The freedom of religion clause did not bar exercise of religion, or display of crosses, Christmas trees, or creches, for example, either in public or private. This would have been unthinkable to the Founders.

 

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In making convoluted, tortuous arguments, the litigators do a great disservice to the public and threaten the common weal. Someone shouldn’t feel anxious about, or have to explain or defend oneself about, erecting or preserving a monument with a cross to honor war dead. To maintain the converse is the worst type of sophistry. And, by the way, it’s also a good example of a form of perverse presentism. Believe, me, when the Bladensburg Peace Cross was erected in 1925, it was done with good intentions. It was meant to show honor and respect. And, the Founding Fathers would be turning in their graves to be told there was something wrong about erecting a monument with a religious symbol on it.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 28, 2019

“Cruelty has a human heart.”

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“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

— Anne Frank

 

One wants to believe these words. For me it’s a guiding principle and an operating principle of daily life. It works for me.

Yes, all people have flaws, but that’s different. I try to see the goodness within.

Pettiness. Hatred. I have seen it a lot lately. What’s most hurtful, in people once close to me. Age has embittered them and turned them into haters.

 

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I had a lackluster day. I was having computer problems. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. I wanted to go for a walk in the City but never got out. I felt logy and out of sorts physically.

I got mixed up and left a tote bag with valuable papers — on the subway, I thought, but my wife found it. I had left it behind on the way to a concert.

 

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The concert was fantastic. It was foul weather–snow and sleet. There were a lot of empty seats.

I took the subway to Queens and was waiting for a bus on a dark, deserted street corner– no one around–in sleet and rain.

Suddenly, all alone, by myself, at a deserted bus stop, my feet wet, my spirits lifted and I felt better. It was an experience akin to moments of transcendence I once read about in a book by Colin Wilson,

I texted a friend: “I’m waiting for a bus. I’m happier now.”

 

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Saint Augustine taught us that evil is human. The awful thing about hatred is that it feeds on itself and is usually inflicted upon undeserving persons whom the haters are confident will not be in a position to retaliate.

Hatred makes them feel alive and like they have their own “guiding principle” and rules to live by: Thou shalt hate. It is good to despise those who deserve your scorn.

Why do they deserve it? Because they are despicable. It’s a tautology. A closed circuit whereby hatred must be discharged upon the hated to prove they deserve it. And to prove to the haters’ satisfaction that by their cruelty they vindicate themselves. The exercising of which, they feel, perversely, exalts them in self-righteousness.

Note that I said righteousness, which is different from being in the right. This type of cruelty is never “right” and is usually based upon misinformation and hasty, false, or superficial judgments.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 13, 2019

 

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Addendum:

The type of hatred exhibited by chronic haters should be distinguished from what we mean when we use the word loosely, by saying, for example: I hate busybodies, gossipers, or nosy people.

As just one example, I recall a coworker of mine once whom I just couldn’t stand. My therapist never could quite figure out why he annoyed me so. (Yet he didn’t necessarily think it was improper for me to have such feelings.) Certain things about the coworker’s personality and way of relating got on my nerves.

We worked in the same department, but I did not have to deal with him constantly. It’s just that when we did have interaction, or were working on a project together, I hated it.

But, here’s the difference between such feelings and perverse hatred. I wasn’t close to this person, and I never to my knowledge expressed any sort of anger, annoyance, or displeasure. It was more like an annoyance. (A mosquito?) With someone I was not close to. Totally different from cruelty practiced towards those close to you, cruelty meant personally for them, inflicted with relish and with a deliberate intent to wound.

drinking is one of life’s pleasures (Handel) … I second that

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Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
CHORUS
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

— Handel, Alexander’s Feast (1736; the libretto of this choral work is based on an ode by Dryden)

 

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DRUNKEN POET:
Fill up the Bowl, then, &c.

1ST FAIRY, CHORUS :
Trip it, trip it in a Ring;
Around this Mortal Dance, and Sing.

POET:
Enough, enough,
We must play at Blind Man’s Bluff.
Turn me round, and stand away,
I’ll catch whom I may.

1ST FAIRY, CHORUS:
About him go, so, so, so,
Pinch the Wretch, from Top to Toe;
Pinch him forty, forty times,
Pinch till he confess his Crimes.

POET:
Hold you damn’d tormenting Punk,
I do confess ?

BOTH FAIRIES:
What, what, &c.

POET:
I’m Drunk, as I live Boys, Drunk.

BOTH FAIRIES:
What art thou, speak?

POET:
If you will know it,
I am a scurvy Poet.

CHORUS:
Pinch him, pinch him for his Crimes,
His Nonsense, and his Dogrel Rhymes.

POET:
Hold! Oh! Oh! Oh!

BOTH FAIRIES:
Confess more, more.

POET:
I confess, I’m very poor.
Nay prithee do not pinch me so,
Good dear Devil, let me go;
And as I hope to wear the Bays,
I’ll write a Sonnet in thy Praise.

CHORUS:
Drive ‘em hence, away, away
Let ‘em sleep till break of Day.

 

— Purcell, “The Fairy-Queen” (1692; this masque — aka semi-opera — is a musical setting of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   February 2019

I’ll take compliments wherever I can get them.

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I made friends recently with a New York woman born and raised overseas — and thus intimately familiar with more than one culture and language — who showed an interest in my writing.

I hardly ever seem to not mention my blog to a new acquaintance. People say they would be interested in reading it. Few do. They rarely get back to me. I try to think of posts that might appeal to their interests, worldview, or tastes. It usually doesn’t matter.

 

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The following, for example, is an email of mine dated December 5, 2018:

 

Dear Dr. _______,

I had an appointment with you this morning. I appreciate deeply having received treatment from you over the past weeks.

At the end of the appointment, you asked me about my writings.

It occurred to me that there is a recent essay of mine that might interest you. It is also possible that it will not.

It is a long essay of around 40 pages which I posted to my blog last June. It has gotten very few readers. I doubt that many readers found my points to be persuasive, and I suspect that many readers found my essay too long and tedious to read.

Nevertheless, I feel it is a very good and well written essay worth reading. I did a lot of work on it.

It essentially presents a contrarian view or perspective on modern medical practices. I have drawn upon my own experiences working briefly in hospitals as an aide when I was a young man, my own personal observations about health, and current books which question modern medical practices.

Most extensively, I have drawn on nineteenth century writings by medical practitioners, namely, nurses and volunteers who worked in hospitals during the Civil War. Using them, I have tried to make the point that much modern medicine ignores common sense and insights gained from actual experience with patients.

I would be pleased if you read my blog. If it is not of interest to you, or you do not have time to read it, my feelings will not be hurt.

The post:

“on caring for sick people (and why the health care system often fails them) … plus, what I have learned about same from experience and reading; and from Walt Whitman, Florence Nightingale, and the heroic nurses of the Civil War”

is at

on caring for sick people (and why the health care system often fails them) … plus, what I have learned about same from experience and reading; and from Walt Whitman, Florence Nightingale, and the heroic nurses of the Civil War, by Roger W. Smith

The doctor didn’t reply. My feelings weren’t hurt, and his not replying didn’t surprise me.

 

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Nevertheless, it’s awfully nice to get an email such as I received last week from my new acquaintance, Ewa (mentioned above):

Roger, great to hear from you!

I’ve read the first three of your suggested posts today. … Your second and third post got me so inspired that I just had to start writing! It’s simplicity, light weight, and grace is very much appreciated and turns reader’s thinking into positive storytelling inner dialog! So I’ll get back to my writing now. …”

 

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“Simplicity, light weight, and grace.” Very nice (and thoughtful) words, indeed. You know what? I think she’s right. But it often takes an appreciative audience to make one appreciate one’s own strengths or see them more clearly, and her feedback was beautifully expressed. I do strive for these things — strive to achieve this — in writing, but perhaps I don’t realize it, had not quite articulated it. She made me see it.

Lest one think that I am full of myself, I make it a point to show appreciation for the writings of others when I feel moved by their writing to do so, and it’s duly appreciated.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 2019