Happy anniversary!

And goodbye.

Okay. Not really goodbye.

But today is the one year anniversary of this blog. (Cake!)

When I set out, I wasn’t sure I could manage a daily blog for six weeks let alone six months. When I made it to the six month mark, I wondered if I could manage a year.

When I hit the three-quarter mark, I realized that the mental overhead of coming up with something to write every day for the rest of my life and then writing it was probably not really how I wanted to be spending my time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do hope to be writing most days, if not all, for the rest of my life. But I have decided that is more likely to happen if I turn my attention back to fiction or playwriting and away from blogging.

I’m not closing down the blog.

I’ve enjoyed doing it.

I’ve enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten, and I’ve loved having subscribers. Even if some of you are ignoring the daily invasion of your inbox—(I know, I’ve subscribed to some blogs, too. There isn’t always time to read them all)—I have enjoyed the feeling that we are communicating. It has been a privilege to be allowed to enter there.

Thank you for your attention.

The blog will stay open. I just won’t be posting daily. You may not hear from me for days, weeks, months. But, who knows? If I have something to say, I’ll speak up.

If you’ve signed up for the RSS feed or the email subscription, you’ll know when that happens.

The rest of you are welcome to subscribe now or pop back in here from time to time to check.

It’s been fun! I’m proud to know that I managed it 365 days in a row.

So here is the final entry for Smith Sundays.

Elaine Smith—once upon a time, she wrote a blog post every day for a whole year!

Don’t tell me it’s not time for cake!

Anna Deveare Smith

National treasure.

Anna Deveare Smith is a playwright, professor and one of the most extraordinary actresses you will ever see.

She is a pioneer of documentary theatre and became widely known for her one-person shows in which she used material from countless interviews to construct a script and embody the people interviewed. Her best known pieces using this technique are Fires in the Mirror about the Crown Heights Riot of 1991 and Twilight: Los Angeles about the 1992 L.A. riots. If you get a chance to see them, do!

She is now known to a wider public due to her recurring roles as National Security Advisor Nancy McNally on The West Wing and as the hospital administrator on Nurse Jackie.

Her ability to fully embody, physically and vocally, the people she has interviewed has been rightfully described as chameleon-like. It’s truly amazing.

I’m really excited about an interview she recently gave to The Boston Globe in which she talks about writing a fictional play for the first time. I can’t wait to see what that turns out to be.

Go take a look at the complete interview, of course, but here’s a little bit that caught my attention and explains a lot about Ms. Smith’s work:

The thing that speaks to me the most is the idea that a child understands, an early, primal idea, which is: That’s not fair. When somebody tells me something in the course of the interview that’s not fair, I become very interested because I know what’s going to happen linguistically is that as they tell me about a moment or something that shattered their sense of who they were, they will then have to go to their most rich resources to make the world right again, in front of me. And that’s when I start working.

It sure is good work.

Take a look at this TED Talk and see for yourself.

Patti Smith

Godmother of Punk

Poet, singer, songwriter, activist. Patricia Lee “Patti” Smith has had quite a jam-packed life.

Highly influential in the punk rock movement, Smith has been a performer and songwriter for nearly 40 years. Acclaimed in her own right, she has also co-written with Bruce Springsteen, toured with Bob Dylan, co-wrote a play with Sam Shepard, had a love affair with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and married Fred “Sonic” Smith, a fellow musician.

She has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction with her memoir, Just Kids, is now working on a crime novel, pursues photography and continues to perform and support causes in which she believes, some of them controversial.

I’ve never been much of a fan of punk rock. But I admire any woman who can achieve what this one has.

Harry Smith

Anchors Away.

In 2011, CBS news anchor, Harry Smith, left the network after 25 years to head on over to NBC. I don’t watch a lot of network news, so I don’t know exactly what or how he’s doing over there, but I do remember him from The Early Show—and many stints as substitute anchor on the evening news.

Researching this post, I’ve discovered some things about Mr. Smith that I never knew and a couple of things we have in common. We both have an undergraduate degree in theater. His is a combined communications and theater degree from Central College in Iowa.

And we both spent time in Denver, CO. In fact, we were there at the same time. Who knew?!

Harry stayed longer than I did, though.

Subsequently, he spent thirteen years as a contributor to CBS Evening News and other CBS news programming, nine years as co-anchor of CBS This Morning and another nine years with CBS The Early Show along with various documentary, radio and other tv hosting tasks for other networks.

Another thing I didn’t know about him is that, apparently, he regularly commutes to work on a folding bike.

I think that’s kind of cool!

Go, Harry!

Joseph Smith

Junior

Joseph Smith, Jr.

What can you say about Joseph Smith? That doesn’t run the risk of offending somebody?

On the other hand, the creators of the musical, The Book of Mormon, have probably already taken care of that. Offending everybody, I mean.

Clearly, this is a highly influential Smith. Arguably, the only modern-day founder of a religion—assuming that you think of Mormonism as a separate religion rather than another denomination of Christianity.

I don’t know enough about Mormonism to speak knowledgeably on the subject. I don’t know all that much about Joseph Smith.

I will say, after perusing the Wikipedia entry, that it sure sounds like his life would make a great movie. The only trouble is that you’d almost have to take a position on the theological questions and that would certainly pose problems.

It’s a fascinating story, though.

Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has over 6 million followers in the United States. One of their members ran for President as the nominee of the Republican Party.

So, I say again—Joseph was and is a highly influential Smith.

Gig Smith

Helen, that is.

Helen “Gig” Smith is one of those girls in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

You know? A League of their Own?

According to her Wikipedia entry, she’s 91.

You’d think being a professional ball player and making it to 91 would be enough interesting stories for anybody’s life, but Ms. Smith was also an artist. She enlisted in World War II as a WAC and, eventually, worked for Army Intelligence on top secret cartography.

The nickname “Gig” was acquired her first day in the WACs. It stands for “government issued gripe,” and I’m thinking there’s a story or two behind that, as well.

Maybe even another movie?

Al Smith

Was he a man, or a meal?

The Al Smith Dinner is an annual event, but it comes to public prominence in presidential election years. Most of us have heard of it, many of us see clips of the candidates’ appearances on CNN or our local evening news.

And some of us—me, at least—have been unclear as to who, exactly, Al Smith was and why should he have a dinner named after him.

Well!

Here I am on Smith Sunday to enlighten you.

Al Smith was a four-time governor of New York State and the first Roman Catholic nominee for President. He lost, first, to Herbert Hoover in 1928, and he subsequently lost the Democratic Primary in 1932 to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

He was hampered in politics by his Catholicism, many people of the time fearing a Catholic President would be too influenced by the Pope.

Later, he was a vocal opponent of Roosevelt and the New Deal and has remained a thorn in the side of Democratic candidates ever since.

This is largely because of the the Dinner which is designed to benefit Catholic Charities. The Democratic Party’s continued support of the Right to Choose creates tensions around the event.

It’s too entrenched in the traditions of the campaign trail to dismissed out of hand, and, most years, all the parties involved work it out—helped somewhat by the tradition that the speeches will be humorous and self-deprecating.

So, my children, that, in a nutshell, is who Al Smith was.

Anna Nicole Smith

A cautionary tale.

The short life of Anna Nicole Smith is a sad one. Ill-educated and spectacularly beautiful seems to have been a bad combination for her. Add in drugs, Playboy, and the current oddities of our culture where a person can be famous simply for being famous, and this is what you get.

Anna Nicole was born Vickie Lynn Hogan. She acquired the Smith from her first husband whom she married at the age of 17. He was 16. Not surprisingly, the marriage didn’t last long. By the age of 24, she was a stripper and auditioning for Playboy.

Marriage to a wealthy oil tycoon 62 years her senior resulted in a lengthy dispute about his will with the battle being carried out in the courts and in the tabloids.

Smith made several attempts at an acting career with her performances being critically panned. Her subsequent reality TV show made her an object of ridicule and was ultimately canceled. She became a spokesperson for TrimSpa and PETA.

Daniel Smith, the son of her first marriage, died at the age of 20 of a lethal mixture of prescription drugs shortly after the birth of her second child, a daughter. She herself died five months later, also from a lethal combination of prescription drugs.

The saga continued with the continued court battle over her second husband’s estate being complicated by a battle over the paternity of her infant daughter, and it’s not entirely clear to me where it now stands.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the bankruptcy court of California did not have the authority to decide her claims against the estate. I’m not sure where this leaves those claims or the surviving daughter.

All in all, this isn’t a Smith story of which we can be proud.

Smith once said she wanted to be the next Marilyn Monroe.

Sadly, adjusted for inflation, I think she was.

Philip H. Smith

And the Smith Chart

We have a chart! Who knew?

The only thing that could make me happier is if I could actually understand it.

If you’d like to see a Smith Chart, that there link will take you to Wikipedia.

I don’t even understand Wikipedia’s explanation of a Smith Chart: “a graphical aid or nomogram for electrical and electronics engineers specializing in radio frequency (RF) engineering to assist in solving problems with transmission lines and matching circuits.”

All I get from that is you can probably buy a book on it at Radio Shack.

Philip Hagar Smith was—you guessed it—an electrical engineer who worked for Bell Labs. His main claim to fame was the invention of the Smith Chart. He also wrote a book in 1969 called Electronic Applications of the Smith Chart: In Waveguide, Circuit, and Component Analysis.

It doesn’t sound like I’d understand much of that either.

I do wish I knew more about electronics and electricity. I’ve wished that ever since that episode I mentioned in Organized Lightning when a child actor asked. Apparently, I’ve never wished it hard enough to actually do something about it, however.

It’s on my “Someday/Maybe” list, though.

Someday, I’ll take a class.

Maybe, I’ll understand the Smith Chart.

The mythical smiths

Where it all began

You know, Smith is the most common surname in the United States, Candada, and Great Britain. Its equivalent or translation appears in the top five in almost all European countries.

I’m thinking maybe I should have saved this discussion for Wondering Wednesdays, because I sure wonder why that is, don’t you? The name’s origin is trade-related. Blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths, locksmiths—all were known as smiths. And, I guess that covers a multitude of trades, but was it really so many more than cartwrights or wainwrights? Or were smiths just naturally more prolific? Maybe, being necessary for the creation and maintenance of weapons, they were behind the lines at most battles, so more of them survived?

I don’t know. But I wonder, don’t you?

I suspect, actually, upon further research, that I may have hit on something with that theory of being behind the lines. The three major smiths of mythology were all lame. It seems likely that able-bodied men would be warriors. The disabled, congenitally or through injury, would be smiths—and survive.

Wayland, the Norse hero smith, was hamstrung by King Niohad, and forced to forge items for him. In revenge, he killed the king’s sons, made goblets from their skulls, jewels from their eyes and a brooch from their teeth. He also raped the king’s daughter. (Maybe the moral is—don’t cross a smith?) He is also famous for fashioning the mail shirt that Beowulf wore.

Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths, was thrown out of heaven because of a shriveled foot (or he injured it when he was thrown out for a completely different reason). In revenge, he fashioned a throne for Hera that would not let her rise once she sat upon it. Dionysus had to go get him, get him drunk, and bring him back to Olympus to release her. (Don’t cross a smith.)

Vulcan, the Roman god of blacksmiths started out as a fire god. As the Romans conquered the Greeks, they associated many of their gods with Greek equivalents and incorporated the Greek myths. Consequently, Vulcan got thrown out of heaven, too, (by his own mother because he was so ugly) and broke his leg. In revenge, he, too, trapped his mother Juno on a specially-fashioned throne. The Roman version of her release, however, doesn’t involve alcohol. Jupiter gave him Venus for a wife, and in return, Vulcan released Juno. (Not only shouldn’t you cross a smith, but you have to buy them off when you do.)

This has all been very interesting to me. It just goes to show that the study of mythology is rewarding. I’m thinking this concept—don’t cross a smith—might be a useful one to adopt (always bearing in mind that “First, do no harm” is probably the best over-riding principle).

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Smith Sundays