Confessions of a positive cynic

 To those who can’t figure out how someone like your editor, whom Marion Barry once called a “cynical cat,” can favor, for example, the positive teaching of multiculturalism over only telling the history of racism, this excerpt from an article I wrote in 2000 helps to explain it. Sam Smith - To view our times …

What I learned on my vacation

Sam Smith, 2008 - Some years ago a high schooler by the name of Sam used to take out our office trash and serve as our computer consultant (in no particular order). Sam is now with a major government contractor complete with a top secret clearance, but I always save up a question or two for …

Flotsam & Jetsam: Ernest Hemingway

Sam Smith – Reading a review of a new biography of Ernest Hemingway by Mary V Dearborn in the Nation, I found myself resenting, but not denying, the information provided. It wasn’t the first time Hemingway’s story has not been a happy or encouraging one. But then fiction authors are not meant to be role …

How I lost my French cruller and rediscovered Hannibal Hamlin

Sam Smith - I was in a Dunkin' Donut shop in Paris Maine and to my amazement there was still one French cruller left, so I ordered it.   The young woman behind the counter started to put it on a plate but a senior assistant told she couldn't serve it because it was after 11 …

A mountain disaster too close to forget

[A friend has sent me a long, recent story from the Philadelphia Inquirer & Daily News site, Philly.com, about one of Canada's worst mountain disasters that occurred 62 years ago. The reason he sent it to me was because one of the seven boys killed went to our school and was a member of Boy …

Pocket paradigms

FROM THE WRITINGS OF SAM SMITH Abortion Conservatives believe in the sanctity of life from conception until exit from the birth canal. Progressives believe in the sanctity of life from birth to death. Action Thought without action is the coitus interruptus of the mind You can't text your way to the presidency, you can't Facebook …

Learning to laugh in Maine

Sam Smith Long before Bert & I, I started collecting Maine humor during my summer visits. One of my sources as a boy was Walter Stowe for whom I worked on various projects. Mr. Stowe appreciated having someone to instruct and demonstrate his immunity to poison ivy by chewing on some its leaves. He had …

Weekend update

Sam Smith - During a trip last weekend to the coastal area north of Boston, my wife and I stayed at the Emerson Inn by the Sea in Rockport. It was neither its original name nor in its original location. It had once been a tavern nearby until in 1856 some 200 townswomen, as well …

Switching channels

Sam Smith   We couldn’t take it any longer so last week my wife and I changed our family dinner time TV show from Chris Matthews to the PBS News Hour. For me the choice was driven by the fact that I would rather fall asleep of boredom than be hollered at one more time …

50 years behind the masthead

Sam Smith A few years back, Mark Plotkin started an interview with me on WTOP this way: "How do you respond to those who say you're just outrageous, off the wall, beyond normal?" Here's part of what I told him: If you go back and read what I wrote ten, twenty or thirty years ago …

The war on terror before 9/11

With US Airways going out the door, we thought we would revive one of our fond memories, as reported in 1999:  The Progressive Review's editor, Sam Smith, was detained at Washington National Airport for a half hour as five US Airways security officials, 3 police officers, and one bomb-sniffing dog attempted to determine if he …

My JFK moments

Sam Smith In the summer of 1957, I covered a Senate investigation of the Teamsters Union. Among those seated at the long panel table was young John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. His brother, Robert, served as a counsel for the committee. At one point, a prostitute witness made some off-color comment that brought guffaws from …

Things my father didn’t tell me

 Sam Smith The recent story about finding huge amounts of art hidden by the Nazis didn't surprise me as much as it once might have. Here, from our overstocked archives, is why: After World War II broke out, my father, who had worked for the New Deal from almost the beginning and was then over …

On travel

Sam Smith - My general view of travel matches Samuel Johnson's when asked if Rome was worth seeing: "Worth seeing, yes. Worth going to see, no." Perhaps it is because of too many unexpectedly fluid stools left in too many foreign lands. Perhaps it is because of our strange legal system that forces ramps to …

My cellphone deficit disorder

Sam Smith - Watching a woman pull her bag from the train overhead bag compartment, stuff some papers into it and make her way to the door - all the time never removing her bent head from the cellphone stuck between it and her shoulder, I noticed that she at no point opened her mouth. …