Wednesday Aug 27

[no entry]

————–

Nothing from Papa today, so I thought I’d share this photo of him, in which he seems to be a little older than in his photos from the early 1920’s. It looks like it was taken in a photo booth, perhaps on the Coney Island boardwalk, some time around 1930. Had he already met my grandmother? Had he, at this point, finally overcome the forces of stasis and dispatched the unfulfilled longing he suffered from and wrote about in 1924?

———

And here are some notable New York Times headlines that might have caught Papa’s eye on this day:

• Henry Ford Defends Klan As a Body of Patriots

• Ohio Democrats Denounce the Ku Klux Klan, Putting Davis’s Statement Into Their Platform
• COOLIDGE STUDIES KU KLUX KLAN ISSUE; President Reads Many Letters to Him Giving Various Views on the Klan.
• Flier Going 105 Miles an Hour Broadcasts to Nassau County — Looks like radio communication from a moving airplane was still a novelty in 1924.
• RADIO CONFERENCE CALLED BY HOOVER; Better Regulation of Wireless to Be Discussed — Public to Be Represented. — The explosive popularity of radio, and the crowding of the airwaves, demanded some kind of government action. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce and a friend of big business (as was his boss, President Coolidge) was loathe to regulate anything but called a bunch of conferences to ask broadcasters, many of them large corporations, how they’d like to regulate themselves. Not surprisingly and despite Hoover’s occasional rhetoric to the contrary, commercialism and the influence of corporations dictated the development of the broadcasting industry during this period.
• ASSAILS ALIENISTS OF FRANKS SLAYERS; Prosecutor, in Last Argument, Scores ‘Twaddle’ of the ‘Three Wise Men of the East.’ — The Leopold and Loeb trial was wrapping up. In his summation, defense attorney Clarence Darrow had made an eloquent plea to save his clients from the death penalty. Prosecuting attorney Robert E. Crowe now attempted to counter Darrow’s arguments, and ridicule the psychologists who helped support them, in a strident, passionate speech. Darrow prevailed, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison plus 99 years.