A Note from the Chairman on FSC's Archives

Dr. Richard Smith, FSC Chairman

A note from the Chairman on FSC's Archives

Dear FSC Friends,

Like most treasure hunts, mine involves a lot of drudgery, physical work, impossible to justify expenses, and trips to the dump.

It started over a decade ago when I bought a plane ticket (my first expense) and made my way to southern California to see what I might find. It was just a hunch and a lark. Frankly, I didn’t expect to find much.

By all accounts, that should have been the end of it because most of what I found screamed mediocrity and maybe even scam. One moment, however, stood out from the rest. It was literally less than a minute amidst a three-day trip.

It came when I opened the top drawer of a five-drawer file cabinet, pulled out a random folder, and looked inside. It wasn’t the specific content that stirred me. I didn’t even really know what I was looking at. It was just the handwriting. The handwriting whispered refinement, curiosity, education, care, meticulousness, and passion.

I put the folder back in the drawer and thumbed through the rest of the tightly packed contents enough to confirm that the whole drawer was full of the detailed handwritten cataloguing of a scientist in pursuit of new knowledge. The words I said to myself were, “This should be in the Smithsonian.”

That handwriting and those meticulous notes belonged to Edward R. Dewey, the founder and first president of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. At the time I had no idea that one of Dewey’s close collaborators was Dr. Charles Greeley Abbott – the fifth secretary of the Smithsonian! Dr. Abbott’s career at the Smithsonian spanned a total of 78 years (he lived to be 101) and “was marked by such momentous events as the first airplane flight, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the first human to walk on the moon.”

The FSC archives have taken quite the journey over the past 40 years. At one point they resided in the World Trade Center, before they were moved offsite to a storage unit shortly before the attacks of 9/11.

Today, through an inexplicable series of events, they reside at my home, and for the past few months, I’ve spent my Saturdays separating the wheat from the chaff and, yes, making trips to the dump.

Along the way I’ve found some little gems, and this month we’re adding a From the Archives series to highlight the past work of the Foundation. This month’s archives article is titled The Need for Interdisciplinary Cycles Research. Like the archives themselves, this piece by Dewey conveys the full scope of the vision and mission of what Dewey, Abbott, and others set out to achieve.

Spending time in the archives is a humbling experience because it is a reminder that our founders were out to fundamentally change the way we understand our world – and they were serious about it as evidenced by their sense of urgency and excitement.

We’re standing in some big shoes at the FSC. It’s both unnerving and comforting to realize that the vision and mission of the FSC transcends any one individual contributor. We’ve got a lot of work to do to fulfill that vision and mission, but I think we can all feel good about the small but meaningful steps we’re taking together.

Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director

P.S. If you’d like to help us ensure that the FSC archives do eventually end up in the Smithsonian, we could use your help to acquire things like new file cabinets, storage facilities and digital conversion equipment. Donations are welcome here!