No Entry

[No entry today]

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Matt’s Notes

Here’s what might have intrigued Papa in the papers on this day:

• New York City received approval for a planned municipal broadcasting station called CONY.
• Baseball season opened with the Yankees up in Boston and the Dodgers and Giants playing each other at the Polo Grounds
• Young slugger Lou Gehrig, the pride of Columbia University, was sent to the Yankees’ minor league team in Hartford
• “Danzig Welcomes Jews”: “Plans are being perfected by the leaders of Jewish societies for the establishment in the Free City of Danzig of a special university for Jewish students discriminated against in the universities of Eastern Europe.”
• A Wesleyan Professor who knew Woodrow Wilson attested to Wilson’s “Profound Faith in God.” (Papa was a great admirer of President Wilson.)
• “Urges American Jews to Be More Jewish“: “To keep the American Jew Jewish was the determination stirring delegates of the American Union of Hebrew Congregations at its conference which closed today, according to David A. Brown of Detroit, who was made Chairman of a committee created to prepare a financing program.”

[no entry]

Matt’s Notes

Since there’s no entry today, I figured I’d share this picture of me and Papa from around 1968. This must be in my family’s Manhattan apartment, where we lived until I was around three.

Note how he keeps a tight grip on that length of string, lest my plastic lamb attain an unsafe rate of speed.

If you’re just getting started with Papa’s Diary Project, here are a few good topics to jump into:

• B’nai Zion
• The 20th Century Girl
• Sniatyn
• Papa’s Father’s Injury

And please don’t ignore my Cry For Help.

[no entry]

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Matt’s Notes

This is the third day in a row without an entry from Papa. I’m worried that I haven’t heard from him, as if he were alive.

I don’t think he was too busy to write in his diary, since he usually reported a full day’s events even if he got home late. Maybe he just went to work and spent the evening listening to the radio and reading the paper.

Some New York Times headlines that might have caught his eye that day included:

• FLOOD OF MESSAGES POURS IN ON SMITH; Congratulations and Wishes of Good Luck Follow Action on Candidacy – This refers to New York Governor Al Smith, who officially became a Presidential candidate after his nomination at the Democratic State Convention.
• TWO HOMERS HELP GIANTS BEAT ROBINS – The results of the opening day, 7-1 victory for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers)
• YANKS’ RALLY FAILS AND RED SOX WIN, 9-6 – The defending champion Yankees lost their opening day game (on their way to a second place finish).
• RUSSIANS PREFER ‘TARZAN’ TO MARX; Also Scrap Red Propaganda for O. Henry, Wells, Jack London and Conan Doyle. – The Times quotes a Russian newspaper story in which a “Soviet poet is shocked” at the popularity of Western writers in his country. “We publish books and pamphlets about Marxism and our great revolution. We encourage young authors to interpret its spirit and inspire the masses. We even issue cheap editions of the Russian classics. But the public reads — what? — ‘Tarzan'”.

[no entry]

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Matt’s Notes

This isn’t the first time Papa has left a page of his diary blank, but under the current circumstances — he’s still mourning his father, has a forced week off from work due to the slack summer season, and is generally prone to depression when idle — his silence seems more loaded.

Still, I’m sure he read the papers that day, so here are a couple of headlines that might have caught his eye:

• CONFIDENT SMITH WILL BE NOMINATED; F.D. Roosevelt Says West Is Turning to Governor as a Real Leader.
• M’ADOO, IF BEATEN, EXPECTED TO SWING HIS VOTES TO GLASS; Virginia Senator Now Looms as Important “Dark Horse” for Democratic Nomination.

These were the only two articles in New York Times that day about the upcoming Presidential election, even though 1924 was an election year and the Democratic National Convention was coming to New York in a month. Quite different from the amount of campaign coverage we see in May 2007, even though the election is over a year away.

Some other items of interest for Papa would have included a blurb on the installation of new officers at the American Jewish Historical Society (a group that’s been helpful to this project, by the way) baseball coverage about a Giants win and Yankee and Dodger losses, and reviews of the films Cytherea and the now-legendary Sherlock, Jr. with Buster Keaton.

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Matt’s Notes

Ever since his father died back in May, Papa has shown a tendency to leave his diary pages blank when he’s feeling especially low. He’s shown a pronounced shift into such a mood over the last week or so, though I’m not sure whether something specific triggered it or whether it’s just part of the ebb and flow of mourning. (It does seem to have roughly coincided with his return to work after a forced three-week break, so even though he’s happy to be making money again, perhaps the monotony of factory work has given him a sense of inertia.)

[no entry]

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No word from Papa today, but here’s what was going on in the world:

ALL-DAY FIGHT OPENS MOVE TO GAIN MERCY FOR FRANKS SLAYERS; Defense Seeks to Show Mitigating Mental Disease by Testimony of Experts. [Clarence Darrow opened his defense in the Leopold and Loeb trial, though he would eventually advise his clients to plead guilty. Eventually spared the death penalty, Loeb would be murdered in prison while Leopold was paroled after 33 years.]

CROWDS GREET DAVIS ON WAY TO NEW YORK; Candidate, Warmly Welcomed at Rockland and Bath, Makes Brief Speeches. [Democratic Presidential candidate John W. Davis, back from an eleven-day vacation in Maine, began his campaign in earnest.]

Rye Bread Cost Rises in Vienna. [I figure Papa might have been interested in the price of bread in Vienna since he was Austro-Hungarian. Rye bread was, according to the Times, “the people’s (sic) staple diet it Austria.”]

THOMAS HITS DAVIS FOR STAND ON LABOR; Socialist Nominee for Governor Says Democratic Leader Has Never Acted for People. [As a union activist, Papa would probably have read anything about John W. Davis’s relationship with labor.]

GOMPERS OPPOSES ENDORSING PARTIES; Declares Federation Executive Won’t Pick Any Candidates at Atlantic City Meeting. [After some well-publicized consideration, Samuel Gompers decided not to throw the support of the American Federation of Labor behind any Presidential candidate, saying “…the one hope for the wage earners on the political field lies in being partisan to principles and not to political organizations.”]

AIR MAIL MAKES GOOD; And New York-San Francisco Service Will Be Continued. [After a thirty-day trail of transcontinental airmail, the Postal Service decided to make the New York-San Francisco run permanent. According to airmailpioneers.org, “The schedule required departure from the initial termini in the morning and arrival at the end of the route late in the afternoon of the next day.” Night flying, only a two-year-old practice among Postal Service pilots, made this schedule possible.]