Some days in the 1960s

Sam Smith - My circulation staff for the Capitol East Gazette in the 1960s, our office just eight blocks from the Capital, came from the neighborhood -- when they weren't in jail. At one point, about half of them were. I found needles behind stacks of papers in the office, had a few checks stolen …

Humphrey Bogart and me

Humphrey Bogart and me  Sam Smith – The only successful movement of which your editor was a part back in the 1950s was one that contributed to the revival of the movie Casablanca, now celebrating its 80th birthday, and its hero, Humphrey Bogart. As exams intruded on our lives at Harvard, more than a few …

Bits from the past: Living east of the Capitol in the 1960s

Sam Smith - In my 1960s neighborhood east of the US Capitol, the Age of Aquarius often looked more like a war zone. Many of the people there were not part of a counter-culture but of an abandoned culture. Even the jukebox at the Stanton Grill -- purveyors of Greek and American food to white …

Memories revived by "The Irishman"

Sam Smith - I went to see "The Irishman," expecting just the fine movie that it is, but was surprised by a number of passages that also brought back memories of my own life. For starters there were the shots of the 1957 Senate hearing by the Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management. …

Interview with Sam & Kathy Smith on leaving Washington in 2009

WITH KOJO NNAMDI, WAMU, 2009 INTERVIEW

My brief career as a poet

Sam Smith -For a brief time in the early Sixties I worked for Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill. The editor, Sid Yudain, gave me considerable leeway including letting me write occasional poems. The most impressive one, lengthwise at least, was called A Representative Christmas List. It was an ode containing the name of every …

Finding music

Sam Smith, 1977 – My  earliest musical memory is of sitting on the john and singing "I got to Kansas City on a Friday; by Saturday I'd learned a thing or two. . ." That and the big posters my parents had of all the instruments of the orchestra and going to a children's concert …

Turning 30 in the 1960s

Sam Smith - There would come to be the notion that the sixties were the product of immaculate conception. In fact, they were more an act of conversion, conversion of the isolated, unfocused, dispersed and inarticulate alienation of the 1950s into a mass movement with common language, direction, and rules. One of those rules was …

DC Diary: A new century

From "Multitudes: An Unauthorized Memoir" by Sam Smith San Francisco I long avoided San Francisco because I considered earthquakes one hazard I could easily eliminate. That was before both my sons took up periodic residence there and gave me the courage and purpose that I lacked. Now, my 17-year affair with the Bay Area is …

DC moments

Unofficial tales from an official city Sam Smith Although I have written mostly of national or general matters, I share with theologian Martin Marty the belief that we all need a place from which to view the world. While the effects of life may be global, life itself is local, something politicians and media often, …

DC in the 1990s

Sam Smith Time zones When I moved my office four blocks closer to downtown I knew I was going to be in a new neighborhood. What I soon found out, however, was that I was also in a new time zone. In my old digs, three blocks of old row buildings north of Dupont Circle …

DC in the 1970s

From "Multitudes: An Unauthorized Memoir"by Sam Smith AUTHOR IN APPALLING 1970s WEAR, SPEAKING AT A PARTY FOR HIS BOOK, "CAPTIVE CAPITAL," AT THE AFRICAN MUSEUM. JULIUS HOBSON AND JO BUTLER AT LEFT; GWEN REISS, MUSEUM DIRECTOR WARREN ROBBINS AND BOB BERG AT RIGHT. Moving into the 70s Memory can fool us. Up close the 1960s …

A story I wish I hadn’t read

Sam Smith Although I have a number of times seen the sign near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as you head towards Tampa, Florida, I had never looked up why there would be a park along the bay named for the Coast Guard Cutter Blackthorn. The Blackthorn was a sister ship of the cutter Spar on …

Seems like old times

Sam Smith Three years ago my wife gave me a great 75th birthday party at Linda Bean’s restaurant across from her grandfather’s Maine store. Everything went well until the next morning when I realized I had blown my cover. Part of my strategy in life has been to pretend that I wasn’t getting any older, …

Dowsing with Henry Gross

Sam Smith - Water witches - aka dowsers are thriving in drought stricken California. Odd as it may seem, it's a topic about which I know a bit. For example, there was that day in the 1950s when the actress Bette Davis came to my parents' Maine farm to help us find water. Actually, she …