— posted by Roger W. Smith
October 2024
my books on transcendentalism
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Tag Archives: Roger W. Smith
an obliterated artwork … jejune writing
Robert E. Lee – NY Times 10-27-2023
‘Controversial Statue Surrenders to the Furnace’
re:
“The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace”
By Erin Thompson
The New York Times
October 27, 2023
The piece is verbose, bloated, windy; and is way too long for an op-ed.
Generic writing characterized by simplistic formulations that are foreseen as sounding good to the target audience, but which, in themselves are simplistic and nonsensical. It’s equivalent to the type of writing (in different venues) known as psychobabble.
One can imagine (the writer is a professor) the writers of such essays being products of the educational system predominant now and which seems to have existed since the 1970s, in which English composition classes were watered down — and anything purporting to be a statement of a student’s views was judged to be worthy of an A, despite questions of intellectual rigor and what our English teachers in the 1960s told us to avoid: fuzzy writing and generalities.
Some of the broad, sweeping, meaningless assertions — devoid of any informational content or substance — are highlighted by me below in bold. The quotations are from Professor Thompson’s op-ed.
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Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee. The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground.
[Roger W. Smith: re “Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground.” I highlighted this sentence because it is meant to affect us with a profound sensation as a poet or novelist might do — or, if not quite that — to achieve a rhetorical affect. like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
Here it is bathos.]
I stood next to Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, who had invited me to witness the last moments of the figure that had gazed down on Charlottesville, Va., from atop a massive steed from 1924, when it was installed, until 2021, when it was removed by the City Council. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Schmidt are the founders of the Swords Into Plowshares project, a community group that led a campaign to melt the statue down and use the metal to make a new public artwork. ,,,
Lee’s journey to the melting pot began more than seven years and two lawsuits ago, when a Charlottesville high school student, Zyahna Bryant, started a petition to remove the monument. “I am offended every time I pass it,” she wrote. “I am reminded over and over again of the pain of my ancestors.” The Charlottesville City Council voted to move the statue, but a lawsuit was quickly filed by a coalition of Confederate heritage supporters to keep it in place. A series of rallies by Klan members, white nationalists and others sought to protect the “world of gods and heroes like Robert E. Lee,” as Richard Spencer put it while leading a tiki-torch-lit march. …
Yet we never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical context or placed in private hands, but many simply disappeared into storage. I like to think of them as America’s strategic racism reserve.
What should we do with them? Just leaving them there for some future generation to deal with dishonors the intensity of emotions for all involved. But each possible outcome has costs and consequences. Each carries important symbolic weight. And no, we can’t just give them all to the Smithsonian.
The way our communities dispose of these artifacts may influence America’s racial dynamic over the next century, just as erecting them did for the hundred-year period now ending. Three years after George Floyd’s death, seven years after Ms. Bryant’s petition, 99 years after the monument’s installation and 158 years after the end of the Civil War, it’s high time we start figuring this out.
***
… Dr. Schmidt … described the Lee monument as “a lie from the time it was put in.” More than half of the residents of Charlottesville and the surrounding county were enslaved during the Civil War, meaning that “the majority of our community was elated when the Union troops came.” …
But as her perspective evolved, Dr. Schmidt no longer wanted to put Lee in a museum. She was thinking of something much more primal.
Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. It does no good to simply reveal the secret — in this case, to tell people that most of the Confederate monuments were erected not at the end of the Civil War, to honor those who fought, but at the height of Jim Crow, to entrench a system of racial hierarchy. That’s already part of their appeal. Dr. Taussig has argued that public secrets don’t lose their power unless they are transformed in a manner that does justice to the scale of the secret. He compares the process to desecration. How can you expect people to stop believing in their gods without providing some other way of making sense of this world and our future?
Swords Into Plowshares might have been the first to propose melting, but other communities are working out their own creative visions for Lee’s afterlife. …
Covering this story over the past few years, I’ve come to realize two things. First, when a monument disappears without a ceremony to mark why it is coming down, a community has no chance to recognize that it has itself changed. (Ideally the ceremony is public, but because of safety concerns, the melting I attended was not.) Second, if you are outraged that something’s happening to your community’s heroic statue of Lee, you’re not going to be any less outraged if the statue is moved to some hidden storeroom than if it’s thrown into a landfill. So if all changes, large or small, will be resisted, why not go for the ones with the most symbolic resonance?
[Roger W. Smith: “the melting”: this is new jargon indeed, a neologism that is ridiculous … what is “a melting?: .. is it of the same order of words as a christening or a seance?]
That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities. …
***
A very different process is consuming the world’s largest Lee, who rides, 76 feet tall, across the granite cliff face of Stone Mountain, just outside Atlanta. …
…
Lee’s face was the last piece to go into the crucible. Given how often the monument and its ideals were celebrated with flames — from Klansmen’s torches to the tiki torches of white nationalists in 2017 — it seemed fitting for flames to close over the monument.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
October 2023
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Addendum:
The Washington Post also published on op-ed:
“Lee’s statue is gone. What it unleashed remains.”
By Theresa Vargas
October 28, 2023
Reader comments touched upon the question of destroying a work of art. I feel that this is regrettable and depressing to contemplate. It’s similar in my mind to the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Statue from in front of the Museum of Natural History three years ago.
A few random comments from the current Washington Post article:
* * *
What you’re missing is that it’s a work of art. Shall we destroy paintings of [Lee] and other people in history that we disdain today? A statue is no different. Did you read the story of Napoleon’s statue? He was forced out of France into exile. But the statue is art.
* * *
Somehow your reasoning feels disingenuous. When art causes maltreatment of another, it needs to be done away with.
* * *
The Lee statue was not a work of art. Art informs. Art brings joy and peace. Art is inclusive. This statue was erected during the height of the Jim Crow era to intimidate Black Charlottesville residents. Learn your history. And don’t begin that journey by looking at statues.
* * *
Are you aware that the National Portrait Gallery in Washington has a portrait of Benedict Arnold hanging on its walls? What’s the difference here? It’s a work of art, my friend. Put it in the Smithsonian.
* * *
You mean blasting off the images, like the Taliban did to the Buddha statues at Bamiyan?
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See also my posts:
“I like it the way it is.”
pompous pontificating, clumsy locutions, a tissue of generalities; doublespeak … how NOT to write
pompous pontificating, clumsy locutions, a tissue of generalities; doublespeak … how NOT to write
how to say nothing in 1,035 words … generic writing II
Ed Linn, “The Kid’s Last Game”
Ed Linn, ‘The Kid’s Last Game’ – Sport, February 1961
Posted here:
Ed Linn, “The Kid’s Last Game”
Sport
January 1961
In my opinion, Linn’s article is superior and a lot more informative than John Updike’s well known piece: “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” (The New Yorker, October 22 1960).
— posted by Roger W. Smith
October 2023
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Acknowledgment:
This was a very hard article to procure. ((I was a devoted reader of Sport magazine back in those days). Paul Friedman,, a research librarian at the New York Public Library, went out of his way to copy the article for me. The library has a full run of old Sport issues — the actual magazines — which require photocopying.
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See also:
“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” is regarded as a classic. I would say, “Great effort.”
“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” is regarded as a classic. I would say, “Great effort.”
post updated
James T. Farrell on Mark Twain
James T. Farell, ‘Twain’s Huckleberry Finn’ – NYTBR 12-12-1943
Posted here (PDF above) is an article by James T. Farrell:
“Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and the Era He Lived In”
The New York Times Book Review
December 12, 1943
I have been an admirer of Farrell ever since I read Studs Lonigan. (I can thank my wife for calling my attention to it.) Farrell’s novel of boyhood recalls Twain and gave him insight into Huckleberry Finn.
There is an unforgettable passage in Chapter XXXI of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom wrestles with his scruples, his conscience. He knows he should do “the right thing” and turn Jim, the runaway slave, in, but he just can’t bring himself to do it:
“[I] got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now. …
I can’t resist saying: what a great passage!
— posted by Roger W. Smith
August 2023
the complete Jesuit Relations
La huictiesme nous arriuasmes aux trois Riuieres, le seiour y est fort agréable, la terre sablonneuse, la pesche en son temps tres-abõdante. Vn Sauuage rapportera quelquefois dans son Canot douze ou quinze Esturgeons, dont le moindre sera par fois de la hauteur d’vn homme. Il y a quantité d’autres poissons tres-excellens. Les Français ont nõmé ce lieu les trois Riuieres, pource qu’il sort des terres vn assez beau fleuue, qui se vient dégorger dans la grande Riuiere de sainct Laurens par trois principales emboucheures, causées par plusieurs petites Isles, qui se rencontrent à l’entrée de ce fleuue, nommé des Sauuages Metaberoutin. Ie décrirois volontiers la beauté de ce lieu, mais ie crains d’estre long; Tout le pays entre Kebec & ceste nouuelle Habitation, que nous appellerõs la Residence de la Conception, m’a semblé fort agreable, il est entrecoupé de ruisseaux & de fleuues, qui se déchargent d’espaces en espaces dans le Roy des fleuues, c’est à dire, dans la grande riuiere de S. Laurens, qui a bien encore en ce lieu là quelque deux à trois mille pas de large quoy qu’il soit à trente lieuës au dessus de Kebec.
On the eighth, we arrived at the three Rivers. We found living there very agreeable; the ground is sandy, the fish very abundant in its season. A Savage will sometimes bring in his Canoe twelve or fifteen Sturgeon, the smallest of which is occasionally as long as the height of a man; besides these, there are also a number of other very good fish. The French have named this place the three Rivers, because there emerges here a very beautiful river which flows into the great River saint Lawrence through three principal mouths, caused by several little Islands which are found at the entrance of this river, which the Savages call Metaberoutin. I would like to describe the beauty of this place, but I am afraid of being tedious. The whole country between Kebec and this new Settlement, which we will call the Residence of the Conception, seems to me very pleasant; it is intersected by brooks and streams, which empty at short distances from each other into the King of rivers, that is, into the great river St. Lawrence, which is, even at this place, fully two or three thousand paces wide, although it is thirty leagues above Quebec.
— Le Jeune’s relation, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Volume 8: Quebec, Hurons, Cape Breton, 1634-1636 (1897)
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Few passages of history are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity. While the infant colonies of England still clung feebly to the shores of the Atlantic, events deeply ominous to their future were in progress, unknown to them, in the very heart of the continent. It will be seen, in the sequel of this volume, that civil and religious liberty found strange allies in this Western World.
The sources of information concerning the early Jesuits of New France are very copious. During a period of forty years, the Superior of the Mission vi sent, every summer, long and detailed reports, embodying or accompanied by the reports of his subordinates, to the Provincial of the Order at Paris, where they were annually published, in duodecimo volumes, forming the remarkable series known as the Jesuit Relations. Though the productions of men of scholastic training, they are simple and often crude in style, as might be expected of narratives hastily written in Indian lodges or rude mission-houses in the forest, amid annoyances and interruptions of all kinds. In respect to the value of their contents, they are exceedingly unequal. Modest records of marvellous adventures and sacrifices, and vivid pictures of forest-life, alternate with prolix and monotonous details of the conversion of individual savages, and the praiseworthy deportment of some exemplary neophyte. With regard to the condition and character of the primitive inhabitants of North America, it is impossible to exaggerate their value as an authority. I should add, that the closest examination has left me no doubt that these missionaries wrote in perfect good faith, and that the Relations hold a high place as authentic and trustworthy historical documents. They are very scarce, and no complete collection of them exists in America. …
— Francis Parkman, Preface; The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, And Company. 1867)
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commentary by Roger W. Smith
The Jesuit Relations, Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France, were chronicles of the Jesuit missions in New France written by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. The reports were written annually beginning in 1632 and ending in 1673. They were originally written in French, Latin, and Italian.
Comprising reports to their superiors in France, the Relations concerned the missionaries’ interactions with various North American tribes and their activities for the purpose of converting the indigenous peoples.
The missionaries made major efforts to study and understand indigenous cultures and to learn native languages.
The Relations included descriptions of the natural landscape and climactic and geographical conditions not encountered in France; also of warfare and martyrdom. An example of the former is Paul Le Jeune’s description of a journey through the woods with a band of Montagnais people, in which he describes physical hardships of carrying a great deal of belongings in the cold, with little food. The latter includes narratives of Jesuit missionaries being killed or maimed. For example: the missionaries Isaac Jogues, who died after being captured by the Mohawks, and Jean de Brébeuf. Much attention is devoted to Indians who became converts to Catholicism.
Beginning in 1896, Reuben Gold Thwaites, secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society, led a project to translate into English, unify, and cross-reference the original Relations. Thwaites and his associates compiled 73 volumes. The Thwaites edition is posted here.
By the Jesuit missionaries, the natives were called sauvages (savages). The designation in many respect seems apt.
The indigenous (Indian) peoples had a rich vocabulary for concrete things, but no words for or conception of (concepts designating) abstract ideas or terms. Most notable (they always took captives, when possible, alive) was their ferocity and cruelty in torturing their captives.
There are passages of beauty in these relations, in which the natural landscape – woods, lakes, and streams; mountain and sky, snow and ice — are described. There is much of interest about native customs and practices. There are moving stories of religiosity, hardship, and courage.
But the descriptions of torture and martyrdom are such that one cannot bear to read them.
I became acquainted with the Jesuit Relations from reading, in its entirety, Francis Parkman’s monumental work France and England in North America. Parkman’s The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867) comprises the second and third of eight volumes.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2023
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individual volumes (PDF)
Vol. I
ACADIA: 1610-1613
Vol. II
ACADIA: 1612-1614
Vol. III
ACADIA: 1611-1616
Vol. IV
ACADIA AND QUEBEC: 1616-1629
Vol. V
QUEBEC: 1632-1633
Vol. V, pp. 168-169 (defective in above PDF)
Vol. VI
QUEBEC: 1633-1634
Vol. VII
QUEBEC, HURONS, CAPE BRETON: 1634-1635
Vol. VIII
QUEBEC, HURONS, CAPE BRETON 1634-1636
Vol. IX
QUEBEC: 1636
Vol. X
HURONS: 1636
Vol. XI
HURONS AND QUEBEC: 1636-1637
Vol. XII
QUEBEC: 1637
Vol. XIII
HURONS : 1637
Vol. XIV
HURONS AND QUEBEC: 1637-1638
Vol. XV
HURONS AND QUEBEC: 1638-1639
Vol. XVI
QUEBEC AND HURONS: 1639
Vol. XVII
HURONS AND THREE RIVERS: 1639- 1640
Vol. XVIII
HURONS AND QUEBEC: 1640
Vol. XIX
QUEBEC AND HURONS: 1640
Vol. XX
HURONS AND QUEBEC: 1640- 1641
Vol. XXI
QUEBEC AND HURONS: 1641-1642
Vol. XXII
QUEBEC AND HURONS: 1642
Vol. XXIII
HURONS, QUEBEC, IROQUOIS: 1642- 1643
Vol. XXIV
LOWER CANADA AND IROQUOIS: 1642- 1643
Vol. XXV
IROQUOIS, HURONS, QUEBEC: 1642-1644
Vol. XXVI
LOWER CANADA, HURONS: 1642- 1644
Vol XXVII
HURONS LOWER CANADA: 1642 1645
Vol XXVII (facing pages)
Vol. XXVIII (page 113 missing)
HURONS, IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA: 1645- 1646
28 jesuits28jesuuoft PAGE 113 MISING
Vol. XXVIII, pp. 113-115
Vol. XXIX
IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA, HURONS: 1646
Vol. XXX
HURONS, LOWER CANADA: 1646-1647
Vol. XXXI
IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA, ABENAKIS: 1647
Vol. XXXII
HURONS, LOWER CANADA: 1647-1648
Vol. XXXIII
LOWER CANADA, ALGONKINS, HURONS: 1648-1649
Vol. XXXIV
LOWER CANADA, HURONS: 1649
Vol. XXXV
HURONS, LOWER CANADA, ALGONKINS: 1650
Vol. XXXVI
LOWER CANADA, ABENAKIS, 1650-1651
Vol. XXXVII
LOWER CANADA, ABENAKIS: 165 I – 1652
Vol. XXXVIII
ABENAKIS, LOWER CANADA, HURONS: 1652-1653
Vol. XXXIX
HURONS: 1653
Vol. XL
HURONS, LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1653
Vol. XLI
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1654- 1656
Vol. XLII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1632- 1657
Vol. XLIII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1656- 1657
Vol. XLIV
IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA: 1656- 1658
Vol. XLV
LOWER CANADA, ACADIA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1659- 1660
Vol XLVI
LOWER CANADA, ACADIA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1659- 1661
Vol. XLVII
IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA: 1661 – 1663
Vol. XLVIII
LOWER CANADA, OTTAWAS: 1662 – 1664
Vol. XLIX
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1663- 1665
Vol. L
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1664-1667
Vol. LI
OTTAWAS, LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1666-1668
Vol. LII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS , OTTAWAS 1667-1669
Vol. LIII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1669- 1670
Vol. LIV
IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS, LOWER CANADA: 1669- 1671
Vol. LV
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1670-1672
Vol. LVI
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS,
HUDSON BAY: 1671 – 1672
Vol. LVII
HURONS, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1672-73
Vol. LVIII
OTTAWAS, LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS: 1672-1674
Vol. LIX
LOWER CANADA, ILLINOIS, OTTAWAS: 1673- 1677
Vol. LX
LOWER CANADA, ILLINOIS, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1675-1677
Vol. LXI
ALL MISSIONS: 1677-1680
Vol. LXII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS, OTTAWAS: 1681 – 1683
Vol. LXIII
LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS : 1667- 1687
Vol. LXIV
OTTAWAS, LOWER CANADA, IROQUOIS, ILLINOIS: 1689-1695
Vol. LXV
LOWER CANADA, MISSISSIPPI VALLEY: 1696-1702
Vol. LXVI
ILLINOIS, LOUISIANA, IROQUOIS, LOWER CANADA: 1702- 1712
Vol. LXVI I
LOWER CANADA, ABENAKIS, LOUISIANA: 1716- 1727
Vol. LXVIII
LOWER CANADA, CREES, LOUISIANA: 1720-1736
Vol. LXIX
ALL MISSIONS: 1710-1756
Vol. LXX
ALL MISSIONS: 1747- 1764
Vol. LXXI
LOWER CANADA, ILLINOIS: 1759- 1791
Vol. LXXII
FINAL PREFACE, ADDITIONAL ERRATA
INDEX: A-I
Vol. LXXIII
INDEX: J-Z
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publication announcement, The Burrows Brothers Co. (1895)
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Francis Parkman, “The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century”; France and England in North America, Volume Two (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1867)
Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, vol. 1
Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, vol. 2
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secondary sources
R, Vashon Rogers, “The Jesuit Relations,” Queen’s Quarterly, April 1898
Rogers, ‘The Jesuit Relations’
Charles W. Colby, “The Jesuit Relations,” The American Historical Review, October 1901
Charles W. Colby, ‘The Jesuit Relations’
William Bennett Munro, The Jesuit relations : their value as historical material (n.p., 1905).
Munro, ‘The Jesuit Relations; Their Value as Historical Material’
Joseph P. Donnelly, S.J., Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations: Errata and Addenda (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1967)
‘Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations; Errata and Addenda’
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new vocabulary (looked up by me in past few months)
See new post on my rogers-rhetoric.com site:
— Roger W. Smith
August 2023
Carl Nielsen
The link below will take you to all my posts on Carl Nielsen, the Danish composer.
My experience of Nielsen and enthusiasm for his works — such is the case with me — comes from his vocal works.
I realize that I have attained considerable knowledge about him over the years and that my posts about him represent an impressive assemblage.
https://rogersgleanings.com/category/carl-nielsen-danish-composer/
— Roger W. Smith
July 2023
parenting
Addendum (June 23)
I just thought of something.
This post was inspired by a book I have been reading, the early chapters thereof: George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
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I am fortunate in the parents and family I had.
They were good people. The highest moral standards and character. So respectful, appreciative of, and kind to other people. Taught their children such behavior by example.
They always said we love you all (four children) equally: the same. This sounded good, but wasn’t really true. Their affections fluctuated and were not consistent. They would admire and favor one of us for some particular attribute at one time or another.
My siblings and I were very fortunate to have had an intact and stable nuclear family with two parents in a stable, loving relationship.
My mother. Beautiful. Great taste and personal qualities. Refinement. The best values. Discretion and tact. Yet by no means a snob. Modest. So genuine with other people. Met them at the most common level, by which I mean sincere and genuine, not that she somehow condescended to be nice to her “inferiors.”
My father. Not easy to get a handle on. My siblings often get pleasure from portraying him as a rake and a boor. He was very far from that — there was a lot to admire. I myself never fully appreciated the good things. He wasn’t a great father. But he was, in his own way, a good role model.
Distant and inaccessible at times. Sometimes the exact opposite (a genial host and a kind of Santa Claus on holidays; gregarious and affectionate at such and other times). Devoted to work and my mother. Great with and well liked by people in general. His behavior in this respect set a very good example. That meant a lot — means a lot — to a boy. I had thereby some notion of maleness and manhood, which are important to have as one reaches adulthood.
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I have more to say regarding parenting.
It seemed in many respects that my nuclear family – this was the 50s and 60s – was straight out of the situation comedy Father Knows Best.
But it wasn’t that. My parents were far from perfect, and their insecurities and neuroses were a factor. (Of course, none of this was evident to me then.)
They weren’t snobs, but they were very insecure about, very concerned with, being well thought of by their peers. This was something that, by extension, we children were burdened with.
By all means, don’t do anything that might embarrass them. This was paramount. Doing wrong in this respect would bring disapproval and a tacit withdrawal or withholding of affection.
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Re parenting. As I experienced it.
(It should be noted and acknowledged that this was a different time.)
One thing that I think was very fortunate then: and which, in retrospect, is the way I think things should be: My parents weren’t mean, and although they could be critical (not necessarily a bad thing, since they enforced and were setting standards), they were usually loving and kindly. They very much wanted us to reflect credit upon them (as I observed above). So much so that, as my former therapist observed, it amounted to a form of narcissism. But they actually left us alone a lot. Allowed us to just be kids.
I feel a lot of today’s parents don’t do this. Regarding this, I think I myself very much failed and missed the boat as a parent.
In my childhood, we kids went out and played. For hours on end. With no supervision or parental intervention.
Games such as Hide and Go Seek and Giant Step. Later, board and card games. Playing ball. Building snow forts. Going places. Movies. Comic books. The toy store and candy bars. Hanging out on the stoop or curbside. Telling tall tales and being out after dark.
Hardly any scheduled or programmed activities. Until things like Little League. (And, of course, school activities and sports, most of which came later). No play dates. No karate classes, golf or tennis lessons. (My older brother and I were enrolled in ballroom dancing classes; my parents undoubtedly thought young men should be taught how to dance. And my siblings and I all took piano lessons, with varying degrees of success,) Most afternoons and evenings (and summer vacation time) were open for free play and associating with friends, outdoors or indoors.
This in my opinion is crucial. Essential for individual development, for developing one’s tastes, ideas, and a personality.
Parents must let kids be kids. Not proto adults or achievers in residence. Not paradigms. Just goofy, loveable, inchoate little people. Soon to grow up on their own schedule and in their own way.
– Roger W. Smith
June 2023
to note and wonder at each precise fact or thing
… the genius of the United States is … always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . the fluency of their speech their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness
— Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, first edition (1855)
EMILY: Good-by. Good-by, world. Good-by, my beautiful town … Mama and Papa. Good-by to … clocks ticking and … Mama’s sunflowers. And … food and … coffee. And … new-ironed dresses and … hot baths … and sleeping and waking. Oh, Earth! You’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
– Thornton Wilder, Our Town
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To note and wonder at each precise fact or thing about individual persons.
My parents, for instance:
baked apples
canned peaches and pears, pineapple
frozen strawberries
cinnamon toast
lobster
scalloped oysters
Christmas decorations and stockings
Christmas carols
the smell of a fresh bought Xmas tree
trimming the tree
Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D
Chopin
Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus
Beethoven’s piano sonata no. 27, opus 90
Jordan Marsh department store at Christmastime
Christmas candles
Thanksgiving
Easter eggs; dipping and coloring them with dye
snow shovels
snow tires and snow tire chains
Massachusetts beaches
Cape Cod
dogs
Tennyson; Idylls of the King
Hiawatha and Evangeline
George Gershwin
the Gospels
Protestant hymns
Frère Jacques
My Fair Lady, Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Brigadoon
asparagus
coffee ice cream (my mother)
ginger snaps
autumn leaves
pork strips (Chinese takeout food)
The Late Show
the funny pages (my father)
electric blankets
highballs, gin and tonics
chocolate pudding
Twenty Questions
pencils
dishwashers
clotheslines (my mother)
the four seasons
birthday parties and presents
gift giving
letters, cards, and thank you notes
reading
a summer cottage
conversation
Brueghel
coal bins
blueberry pancakes
French toast
radiators
steam irons, ironing boards
adages
fountain sodas; cherry or vanilla Cokes
frozen orange juice
fried and steamed clams
chowders
gum drops
hot chocolate
raisin bread
apple pie
corn bread
popcorn with melted butter
ZaRex
Jello
grape jelly
wax sealed jars
strawberry jam
pop up toasters
lawn mowing
trees (birch, beach)
flowers
people
These are some of the things that preserve the memory of my parents for me. Of others.
I regard it as not worthwhile to comb through the past looking for faults, which all of us have or had. The faults make us human, mean that we are so. Faults of our loved ones and ancestors. When they are or were alive, we have or had to deal with their faults. It is a somewhat different thing when we are talking about departed persons who were close to us.
— Roger W. Smith
June 2023
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