Papas Diary Project

[no entry]

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Matt’s Notes

In my dream I study with my father (olam haba) in his classroom at the Talmud Torah. I feel privileged to be with him as I always do when we are alone together. “Today I would like to try something different,” he tells me, and now I see a girl sits on the bench beside me. We sit at a table in the kitchen of a stranger’s house. My father tells me we are still in his classroom and we have been here before and he asks me to read out loud. I read carefully and try not to make any mistakes, I read for hours and I want to know my part perfectly because the girl is listening.

When I am done he asks the girl to read, instead she talks about the neighbor’s wedding and the cold weather and she gets up and stirs a pot of soup on the stove. She tells me the name of the soup but I cannot pronounce it. Now I see another girl is in the room and my father is angry with her because she was not supposed to be there but he invites her to sit down and have some soup anyway. She fills a bowl with soup and takes it out of the house and tells him she is going to share it with the whole village. I stand up and watch her leave and realize I cannot remember her face or the name of the village. I turn and sit back down to eat but my father is already walking away from the table. “New York is still outside,” I tell him. He feels his empty pockets and looks for something on the floor.

[no entry]

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No entry from Papa today, but here are some articles from the September 23rd, 1924 edition of the New York Times that might have caught his eye:

Giants, Robins in Virtual Tie; Yanks Trail Senators 2 Games – 1924 has been called baseball’s greatest season — at least by the guy who wrote Baseball’s Greatest Season, 1924 — and the Times’ accounts of the race’s final days show why. With only a handful of games left to play, the Senators appeared to have unseated the world champion Yankees at last, while in the National League the Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers) New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates were all within a game and a half of each other. The Giants would eventually lose to the Senators in the “world’s series,” as the championship was called.

RADIO FAIR DRAWS OVERFLOW CROWDS; Opens With 225 Foreign and Domestic Manufacturers Represented. — As an early radio enthusiast, Papa would have liked any news about radio innovation, and this article about a Radio World’s Fair at Madison Square Garden and the 69th Regiment Armory (a precursor, I suppose, to the Consumer Electronics Show) confirms that radio is here to stay. “The sensational growth of radio which has raised the industry from a feeble experiment a few years ago to a $400,000,000 enterprise today was reflected in the 225 exhibits…The novelties were in the shape of refinements of existing types of radio equipement, indicating that the experimental stage had been left far behind.” This article also notes the novel presence of two Japanese radio manufacturers.

NEW LABOR SYSTEM IN GARMENT INDUSTRY; R. Sadowsky, Inc., to Begin Specialization Program Today, Giving Year-Round Work. — Papa was out of work for several weeks during the summer due to the garment industry’s “slack season,” and the resulting idleness made him notably anxious. I wonder if the proposed changes to the industry this article discusses really put an end to such down time.

M’ADOO BACK, URGES US TO JOIN LEAGUE; Says Trip Abroad Strengthened His Belief That America Should Help to Prevent War. — Papa believed in the League of Nations, and hoped the United States would fully endorse it, but it wasn’t meant to be. “M’adoo” refers to William McAdoo, one of the key players in the 1924 Democratic Convention‘s embarrassing deadlock that all but guaranteed a Republican victory in the general election.

WILSON SHRINE PLANNED.; Cathedral Evidently Will Be His Permanent Resting Place. – Papa’s enthusiasm for the League of Nations went hand-in-hand with his respect for Woodrow Wilson’s legacy, so he would have been interested in any article about Wilson, who died earlier in the year.

THE SCREEN; A Dog Hero. — According to this article, Rin-Tin-Tin is an up-and-coming screen hero whose chief competition was a dog named “Strongheart” who starred in a series of silent adventures. We know how that story ended. I’m not sure if Papa would have been especially interested in dog movies, but he was a movie fan and probably read this article.

Maccab. m.

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Matt’s Notes

Papa hasn’t written anything in his diary for the past four days, and today he manages only to squeeze out two abbreviated words: “Maccab. m.” conveys, in as few letters as possible, his attendance at a meeting of his chapter of the fraternal order B’nai Zion, which goes by the nickname “The Maccabean.”

I think his recent silence, including today’s spare effort, reflects a reluctance to dwell on his private thoughts more than he has to, an exhaustion, perhaps, with his ongoing sadness and chronic longing for change. These feelings have likely become attenuated due to the approaching High Holy Days, a long stretch of contemplative milestones during which observant Jews meditate on repentance, stock-taking, and mourning. Papa really doesn’t need much help in any of these departments, and as a spiritually devoted Jew he must have found this stretch of 1924 almost too much to bear, or at least too much to write about.

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I performed my duties and played my part at the meeting as ever. We discussed the collection of dues and Jack gave a report on our progress with the credit union. After that it was as if I had used up all my words. I lingered and watched as the boys put on their coats and hats and hurried off, eager to reach their homes, alight with burning candles and the bright faces of their wives and their children. To write letters home so everyone overseas can know of their good fortune.

To what do I hurry? To whom should I write?

movie

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Matt’s Notes

For the second day in a row Papa delivers a barely-there diary entry, which to me is as sure a sign of his overwhelming internal struggles as the blank entries from earlier in the week. It’s not that he’s too busy, or tired, or distracted to write more. I think the changes he’s going through in the wake of his father’s death, and the contemplation of these changes triggered by the onset of the Jewish High Holy Days, have simply left him speechless. With his relationship to the world in question, with sadness and doubt shaking his foundations in ways he cannot yet understand, it must seem pointless, foreign, to discuss his day-to-day activities, maybe even dangerous to say anything at all. So, from this mass of emotion and contained turbulence he allows one word — “movie” — to escape before he clamps the lid back on, afraid, perhaps, of what else he might want to say.

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Still, Papa did go to the movies, so we should mention a few that he might have seen:

• Merton of the Movies, a “brilliant pictorial effort” (according to the New York Times) adapted from a George S. Kaufman play
• Sinners in Silk, a tale of idle rich New Yorkers
• Sinners in Heaven (looks like sin was in that Fall) a shipwreck story deemed “one of the dreariest efforts we have seen for some time” by the Times
• The Clean Heart, a touching tale of a writer’s nervous breakdown and recovery
• The Alaskan, a scenic drama about competing ranchers
• Captain Blood, criticized by the Times for its poor directorial technique
• Open All Night, a feature with little, it seems, to recommend it other than a well-depicted bicycle race
• Wine, a story of bootlegging and frivolous youth
• Feet of Clay, a Cecile B. De Mille effort dismissed as an indulgent trifle by the Times review. Interestingly, this review also mentions a “Phonofilm” — an early form of sound film — featuring 1924’s three major Presidential candidates, incumbent Calvin Coolidge, Democratic nominee John W. Davis, and independent Robert M. La Follette. A Times article from earlier in September describes Davis’ experience while filming his interview for this novel effort:
  

  Mr. Davis spoke on the lawn a short distance from his home. The motion picture camera was set up about ten feet from him and a microphone placed on a stand about four feet away to his left. Behind the microphone was a cabinet enclosing and amplifier. This connected with a second amplifier in the motor truck which carried the apparatus to the Davis home…

  Dr. De Forest [the director] explained that the film with sound waves photographed on it is made to pass in front of a fixed light. This light, when transmitted through the film, is flucutating. With the aid of a device known as the Case cell the fluctuation light is translated into electric current. This current is amplified a million times and then turned into sound waves again through loud speakers…

Great stuff. Meanwhile, other films hanging around town included:

• America, one of D.W. Griffith’s great masterpieces
• Yolanda
• The Sea Hawk
• Monsieur Beaucaire
• Wine
• Captain Blood
• The Iron Horse
• The Man Who Came Back
• Flirting with Love
• Janice Meredith
• The Ten Commandments
• The Thief of Bagdad

Ballgame & movie

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Matt’s Notes

With the Yankees out of town, Papa would have seen either the New York Giants clinch the Pennant with their win over the Phillies at the Polo Grounds or the Brooklyn Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers) — who were still in the race when the day began — lose to the Boston Braves. I suppose he must have seen the Dodgers game because, even considering his recent reluctance to write much in his diary, he surely couldn’t have witnessed the winning moment of such a down-to-the-wire Pennant race (this was the second-to-last game of the season for both teams) without making some note of it. It also follows that he would have left the Dodgers game with a sour feeling (much as I did after watching the Mets squander a four-run lead at Shea Stadium last night) and attempted to chase it away by going to a movie.

Erev Rosh Hashonah

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Rosh Hashanah is more commonly known as the Jewish New Year, a time of reflection, repentance and contemplation of the coming year. Papa had a deep connection with Judaism and erev Rosh Hashanah (the eve of Rosh Hashana) ordinarily would have imbued him with a solemn, spiritual awe.

This year, however, Papa would observe the first Rosh Hashanah since his beloved father’s death, the first Rosh Hashanah since he’d realized his childhood was forever lost, his family was forever changed, and his adopted country was no longer just a temporary stop on the way to some imagined restoration of the world he once knew. He must have been bent with the burden of his sadness. Was he able to hide it, as he preferred to do, from his sisters as he walked from synagogue with them, ate with them, blessed the challah and recited the prayers his father had taught him?

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I’ve searched my memory and I cannot recall any Rosh Hashanah with Papa, though I know I must have spent at least four with him. By the time I was born he would have shaken his sadness, during the holidays he would have been speechless not with feelings of loss and confusion, but with feelings of joy over his family’s presence, perfect happiness over my presence. I must have known it, this perfect happiness.