The brevity of history

Sam Smith – As I enjoy my eighth decade on this planet, one thing that has struck me is that so much  of what happened in the not so distant past seems to have disappeared from the public consciousness. I mention someone or some event from a couple of decades ago and and I get …

Ghosts

Sam Smith With Philadelphia a formal feeling came. Our house on Schoolhouse Lane was old and big and dark and tall and Victorian and sat back from the street on several acres. Other large buildings lay alongside and there was nothing in the untended hayfields across the street. The shutters were dark green, the stucco …

When God turned right

Sam Smith, 1998 - Sometime between the 1960s and the 1980s God became a conservative. This is not tosay that God wanted to become a conservative, only that the great perception processor in the sky that has assumed so many of the Lord's functions in recent years declared it so. If one wants proof that …

America: Trouble at the top

Sam Smith - They no longer build pyramids in Egypt, Mexico or Guatemala. The British royalty is beginning to fall apart. We elected someone like Donald Trump to lead us through the worst pandemic in a century. The US Senate was helpless to deal with Trump. The electric grid system in Texas couldn't handle a …

The imperfection of history

 Sam Smith – The decision in San Francisco to rename over 40 schools – including ones named for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – brings to the fore the arrogance with which we often view history. If there is one consistent thing that history teaches us it is the imperfection of it and the people …

Bringing the police back home

Sam Smith – One of the problems with our problem solving these days is a tendency to legalize, institutionalize and formalize relationships that actually depend on wise social behavior. Consider, for example, how different our ethnic relations might be if we actually taught school children about the nature and virtues of cultural variety before their …

Thinking about history

Sam Smith – Reading Colin Woodard’s remarkable book, Union, has led me to ponder about some of the failings and successes of history in our society and what we can do about it. A few thoughts: Stop shortchanging history in our schools: A 2014 study by the National Assessment of Educational Programs found that only …

Some positive approaches to ethnic relations

Sam Smith Because of the cruel  history of ethnic relations there is an emphasis on problems, crises and outrageous examples, but far less attention to the positive results of improved relations and how to reach them. Here are just a few suggestions that I’ve gathered from my own life. Treat multicultural relations as an asset …

Gatherings for the non-religious

Sam Smith – As a long time Seventh Day Agnostic who majored in anthropology I both ignore religion’s theology and respect its moral and ethical role in society. As Americans increasingly grow less interested in religion, moral and ethical matters are also losing their longtime home. Consider, for example, the role that religions have played …

Another problem with the Proud Boys

Sam Smith – As I watch Proud Boys and other “white supremacists,” a question keeps arising in my mind: how come these guys think they can define what white guys like me are about? And if I were inclined to form a group of white supremacists would they look like Proud Boys? According to BBC, …

Learn from the past, act for the future

Sam Smith - Now that Donald Trump has extended his noisy ignorance to history, it's worthwhile for the sane in this land to reflect on the useful role of the past in what we do today. Being married to a historian, I've learned not to underrate the past, but also to differentiate it from where …

Removing trash in the 1960s

Sam Smith, The Idler, May 1965 -I have been observing the trash collection operation in my Washington DC neighborhood. It is an immensely complicated procedure [including commercial recycling] that I am only beginning to understand, but here's a preliminary report. My first contact with the removers of waste came shortly after I moved back to …

Easing multi-ethnic conflict by creating multi-ethnic alliances

Sam Smith – One of the great problems with the way that we approach ethnic discrimination is that we rarely discuss cures other than the condemnation of its examples. The media, for example, seldom discusses solutions. This approach is in full swing right now as can be seen in how little real police reform is …

60TH ANNIVERSARY OF DESEGREGATION OF GLEN ECHO AMUSEMENT PARK

Sam Smith – In the summer of 1960, a local Washington movement formed to end the policy of segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park. Howard University students, members of the Bannockburn community, the local NAACP, Cedar Lane Unitarian Church and the Wheaton-Kensington Democratic Club, all picketed the park on a daily basis, as well as …

The Confederacy lives on

Sam Smith - The removal of Confederate statues is another reminder of a thesis I've pretty much kept to myself, namely that the South lost slavery and the right of succession thanks to the Civil War, but it won a lot of other things, such as the right to segregation and disproportionate control over Congress. …