“Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.”
William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell”
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“He would never make concessions for money—always was so.” – George W. Whitman (Walt Whitman’s brother), as told to Horace Traubel
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“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