INFO DESK

Five women, scantily clad in their loose and light dresses with their breasts showing just so much with their skin artificially tan and their teeth artificially white and their hair artificially highlighted and their wrinkles tucked and their eyes half closed walk in, one's looking directly at me, still walking, approaching, her hand coming to the counter, she's still walking, and she lightly taps the top of my hand with her finger tips.

If my grandfather had a Linkedin profile in 1963 it would look like this

Royall George Smith

Vice-President — Copy

Lennen & Newell | Marketing and Advertising

Experience

Vice-President of Copy

Lennen & Newell

1956-Present (7 years)

  

Copywriter

Young & Rubicam

1952-1956

Copywriter

Kenyon & Eckhardt 

1950-1951

Copywriter

Benton & Bowles 

1947-1950

Copywriter

J. Walter Thompson 

1946-1947

Skills

copy     fiction      building contractor

Education

University of Arizona

1937-1938

USC 

1938-1940

Yale 

1945-1946

Groups &

Associations:

Advertising Writers Association

Activities and Societies:

Aluminum Heart (Doubleday)

Columbia Journalism Review

FOUND NOTEBOOK

The following haikus were written on a reporter's pad soon after Steve and I moved to Portland at the end of 2004. The pad was kept in the bathroom of our apartment. Steve's in bold. 

You showed me respect

for my mother and women, also work ethic

You would shake your head

Your wife needs some help 

I walked away from Grandma

Don't hate me for that 

I shall do my best 

Will it be enough for you 

if I stay true blue?

I want all the time 

to think about the one time 

that we connected.  

Twenty-five years old

psychotic relationship 

Who knocks this time?

Life that is ruined

forty-dollar desk trade back

 message: I love you. 

Who could it be?

Jerry and Rachel Nobel; 

they want to meet up.

Vacation from pride, 

gestation lasts for 3 months, 

elation, can't hide.

No need for comma, 

just let sentence go, flow. 

OK, how bout now,

THE KNEW YEAR

Last year
was left sitting
in the next to
best seat in the house.


In front of it was
a shot glass
of spilled whiskey
(re)filled with beer.


2011 was
left alone with
the coats.


They're seated
three: his, hers, his.


Not seated
but standing:
he, she, them.


In the new year,
the vision forward
eclipses
the rear view—
periphery seems
                wider.


This year
a better seat.