It is on my Dreiser site. May be of interest.
Concerns, indirectly, literary scholarship.
— Roger W. Smith
new post
Leave a reply
new vocabulary
new vocabulary, August 2023-March 2024
I am continually amazed (I think that’s the right word) at how new words keep cropping up like dandelions in a field to intrigue and challenge the reader who thinks he or she already has a very good vocabulary.
George Eliot’s vocabulary is superb, and I am becoming acquainted with a lot of Britishims in her novels.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2024
Ty Cobb on baseball
Ty Cobb -Boston Herald 12-20-1930
Posted here (above):
“Ty Cobb, on 44th Birthday, Believes Baseball Today Is Less Attractive”
The Boston Herald
December 20, 1930
*****************************************************
I have similar feelings (some of which I have shared before) of discontent with baseball today.
“With no clock, no regulation of seconds, minutes, and hours, baseball need not submit to the inexorability of temporal limitation. … [A] team cannot stall, or run the ball into the line to kill the clock, or manipulate the clock in order to score. A tie game does not exist — all games must end in a victory and a defeat, and a tied game could conceivably go on forever. The game succeeds in creating a temporary timelessness perfectly appropriate to its richly cyclical nature.” — George Grella, “Baseball and the American Dream,” The Massachusetts Review
*****************************************************
Not true anymore!
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2024
a Canton High scrapbook
https://archive.org/details/echocantonhighsc1963unse/mode/2up
These pages are from The Echo (the Canton High School yearbook) for 1963, my junior year.
I have selected pages and photos of students and teachers I remember. It’s a personal post in that sense.
The yearbook is online on Internet Archive (link above). You may need to be a registered user to log in.
— Roger W. Smith
March 2023
*****************************************************
sister of the late John Bosanquet, my classmate, who died in a tragic accident in my sophomore year
a neighbor and close friend
Jeff Coady, Brad’s brother, was a good friend. So was Dawn Gardner, sister of my classmate Billy Gardner.
Fosdick (Dyke) Harrison was a good friend of Brad Coady and me.
my best friend Johnny Harris, who was a year ahead of me
Arthur Contois was a good friend with whom I liked to discuss classical music.
I knew Ricky Hagberg and his older sister Karen well.
I knew Bob Seavey well. Jim Russell was in all my classes.
Shown are my classmates (from Mr. Badoian’s class) Peter McWilliams and Russ Minkwitz; as well as Ricky Hagberg.
This a photo of the Mirror staff, Carlton Sancoucy, who I believe was the editor, is in the front row. I am in the back row, third from left.
In the second row are Mrs. Haines, the librarian; and Linda Haines, her daughter and my classmate (in every course). Also my classmate Jean Moore, daughter of the science department chairman. And, in the same row, a popular student and friend of mine, Eiaine Joyce; as well as Arthur Contois. Priscilia Marotta, a good friend of mine and classmate, is in the third row; as well as Carlton Sansoucy.
My friend and classmate Carol Soule, who married Russ Minkwitz, is in the first row. Elaine Joyce and Jim Russell are in the second row. And my neighbor and friend Jeff Coady is in the back row (second from right).
I had Miss Bertrand for Latin and French.
I had Mr. Tedesco two straight years for American and European history. Mr. Bowyer for civics sophomore year
I loved Miss Meade’s typewriting course.
post updated
My post
has been updated with the addition of the first movement of Haydn’s Stabat Mater (Hob. XXa:1, 1768), which I had overlooked.
Haydn’s output of religious/sacred music was prodigious.
— Roger W. Smith
March 17, 2024
Pergolesi et al.
I saw a performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater last night by Tenet Vocal Artists.
I am posting here the opening movements of four Stabat Maters I am familiar with:
Vivaldi, Stabat Mater RV 621 (1712)
Alessandro Scarlatti, Stabat Mater (1724)
Pergolesi, Stabat Mater (1736)
Haydn, Stabat Mater (Hob. XXa:1, 1768)
Dvořák, Stabat Mater (1880)
*****************************************************
For emotional power, for direct expression, it is hard to match Vivaldi, in my opinion.
Dvořák’s Stabat Mater has always affected me greatly since I first heard it, live (in rehearsal in a church in Paris) in 1972. It begins very differently than the other three posted here, with a long introduction before we hear the words
Stabat Mater dolorosa
iuxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.
The opening chords convey magnificently the searing emotional pain of the grieving mother, witness to her son’s crucifixion.
*****************************************************
the liturgical text (PDF)
*****************************************************
the Biblical source
Matthew 27:55-56
John 19:25-27
The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 10, 2024
Frank Sullivan
… in the sixth grade, an attractive unmarried parish member organized a boys’ choir for us Sunday school students at the North Church (Congregational) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The choir director, Miss Nancy Barnard, was an avid Red Sox fan, a season ticket holder. As an inducement, she promised that any boy who joined the choir would get to go to a Red Sox game at the end of the school year. I joined the choir, and because I was a monotone (as was so determined), I was relegated with other monotone boys to the back row. The first hymn that we performed was “Fairest Lord Jesus.”
We were duly taken, as promised, to a Red Sox game at the end of the school year and were in box seats right behind the Red Sox dugout. We got an autographed ball with team members’ signatures on it. (I stupidly took it out to play with a friend when I was a teenager and ruined it.) The choir director knew the players, and several came over before the game to talk with us. One was the tall pitcher Frank Sullivan. I was very excited.
“Frank,” I said, “did you get hurt the other day when you fell into the seats?” He seemed a little confused and hesitated.
“Oh,” he said, laughing, “that was the other Frank!”
I had seen a photo in the Boston Herald of third baseman Frank Malzone, one of my favorite players, diving into the seats in pursuit of a foul ball.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2024
Frank Sullivan
“Famous Red Sox Catcher-Coach Tells of Sports and Democracy in the U.S.S.R.”
re Moe Berg – Daily Worker 10-9-1940 pg 8
Posted here:
“Famous Red Sox Catcher-Coach Tells of Sports and Democracy in the U.S.S.R.”
The Daily Worker
October 9, 1940
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2023
*****************************************************
A FOOTNOTE
Moe Berg : 6 homeruns lifetime (in 1.813 at bats)
more on James Bunker Congdon
See Word document (above).
This post is a follow up to an earlier post of mine:
My Civil War ancestor John Congdon Hart (1829-1883) was James Bunker Congdon’s nephew. And, as I have noted before, the Congdon name was one my relatives were proud of. These relatives included:
John Congdon Hart, my maternal grandmother’s grandfather
Annie Congdon Hart (1856-1909), my maternal grandmother’s aunt
Annie Congdon Hart, my grandmother (niece of the above Annie Congdon Hart)
my mother, née Elinor Congdon Handy
***************************************************************
This post contains excepts pertaining to James B. Congdon from:
The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts
By Kathryn Grover
University of Massachusetts Press, 2001
He was a leader of the anti-slavery movement and was active in efforts to improve conditions for former slaves living in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
February 2024
*****************************************************
addendum
The New Bedford Directory for 1849 contains pertinent information.
James B. Congdon was a cashier at the Merchants Bank, as was his brother Joseph Congdon.
James B. held several offices, namely:
Secretary and Treasurer, New Bedford Railway
Director, New Bedford and Taunton Rail Road Corporation
Treasurer, Director, Acushnet Iron Foundry
Vice President, New Bedford Society of Natural History
Recording Secretary, Bristol County Anti-Slavery Society
President, New Bedford Society for Aiding Discharged Convicts
my George Eliot books
The above downloadable Word document contains an inventory of books by and about George Eliot l in my personal home library.
— Roger W. Smith
September 2024; updated August 2025