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  • Papa’s Diary Project Map

    Papa covered a lot of ground in 1924, visiting every corner of the city from Brooklyn to the Bronx (occasionally on the same day).

    The map below shows some of the places he hit throughout the year. (Click on a marker to read more about any location, and zoom and drag as you would with any Google map.) I’ll keep adding new locations, so stay tuned.

    Papa’s Diary Map at Google Maps

  • About This Project

    My grandfather, Harry Scheurman, kept a diary in 1924 when he was twenty-nine years old. He had been in America for 11 years, but much of his family still lived in the central European, Jewish ghetto of his youth. He was a garment worker, union activist and Zionist fundraiser. He was also unmarried and terribly lonely.

    I’ve always found his diary to be fascinating reading, and I’ve always wanted to share it with people who might find it interesting. So, each day in 2007 (*2008 update below) I’ll transcribe and post each day’s corresponding entry, and I’ll also annotate with contextual details about his life, historical details about the social, political and cultural subjects in circulation that year, and whatever thoughts and feelings his words bring to mind.

    Since I have a day job and don’t pretend to be a great researcher, I invite contributions from anyone who’s interested in the subjects I’ll touch on, including immigrant life in the 1920’s, the rise of radio as a social force, the history of the Jewish labor movement, the history of New York-based Zionist organizations (particularly the Order of the Sons of Zion) Jewish ghetto life in Austro-Hungary (especially Snyatyn) New York baseball in the 1920’s, Coney Island of the 1920’s, Calvin Coolidge and the 1924 Presidential campaign. Feel free to add comments to any post, or if you’re interested in getting more involved please write to papasdiary ‘at’ gmail.com with the word “Contribution” in the subject line.

    Finally, if you’re just getting started with Papa’s Diary Project, here are a few good subjects to check out:

    ———————-

    January 5, 2008 Update: Papa’s Letters and more

    Now that I’ve posted every entry from Papa’s 1924 diary, I’m going to start posting the letters he wrote to my grandmother (a.k.a. “Nana”) during their five-year courtship. My mother had believed these letters lost until I found them in her attic just recently. I think I’ve got them all, though the ribbon with with Nana tied them together seems to be gone.

    As of now I’ve only read a few of the letters, but it’s clear that, not surprisingly, they constitute a different sort of narrative than Papa’s diary, less rich in the details of day-to-day life but no less intimate and revealing. I expect to post about one a week throughout 2008, and I’ll also be posting updates to my comments on Papa’s diary since there’s still plenty of research to do. I’ve gotten great contributions from readers over the last year and hope to get more, so if you see anything you’d like to chime in on (our ever-expanding list of subjects might help you get acquainted with the things we’ve covered so far) please send me an e-mail or drop a comment on the appropriate post.

  • Notes On Usage

    If you’re reading this you can assume that any spelling or punctuation errors appear as they do in my grandfather’s original diary entries. I’ve dispensed with the “[sic]” notation, which I find distracting. Similarly, after some trial and error I’ve decided to include line breaks as they appear in his entries, because his sentences don’t flow quite right when I mess around with them.

    I’ve also tried to include struck-through words when possible. Please just remember that struck-through text has a different connotation in the age of blogging, as it’s a humorous device used to convey what the author really means or would like to write (e.g. “President Bush delivered his pack of lies State of the Union address today”). This is obviously not what my grandfather had in mind when striking through text, but I still think it’s valuable and interesting to examine his mistakes and changes. For that reason, I will also indicate when he’s inserted text by bracketing the text [like this].

    I do have some questions as to whether his punctuation and capitalization are in line with the style of the day, are personal choices, or are by-products of the collision between his old-world education and his adopted language. His English was self-taught (apparently he accomplished this by reading newspapers in the 42nd Street Public Library) but he was intelligent and had a capacity for languages (he grew up speaking six or seven, which was typical and perhaps even necessary for people who grew up on the trade routes between Eastern and Western Europe. ) The overall strength of his writing and penmanship leads me to believe he paid close attention to formalities, but I do see a few habits that I’m curious about, for example:

    – He seems to use commas in place of periods a lot, and reserves periods for the end of paragraphs. Was this typical of European educated writers in the 1920’s?

    – He never, as far as I can see, used apostrophes. Was this due to expedience, choice or is it simply a mistake? He often leaves periods off the ends of sentences, so perhaps he was just in a hurry.

    – When he uses quotation marks, his open quotes appear to the lower left of the first quoted word, and his close quote appear above the last word. This is clearly an early Twentieth Century style, which leads me to believe some of his other punctuation choices are deliberate.

    I’ll try to figure this out on my own, but please let me know what you know about this kind of thing.

  • Monday Eve Dec 31

    [Note: This entry appears on the Jan 1 page of the diary, with the date handwritten at the top of the page. The entry for Jan 1 appears at the bottom of this page and continues in an addendum page at the back of the book.]

    Monday Eve Dec. 31 6:30 pm

    “I am in love with love”

    just what cousin Jean told me
    yes that is just it. I love everything
    that is good and beautiful, and yet
    I have to find a girl (of my dreams)
    with a vision to see also the
    good things that are in me.

    7:00 pm. Better late than never,
    Being a nonbeliever in resolutions
    for the New Year, I cannot resist
    in making just one,
    To save and spend less.

    7:30 pm I really do not know why I feel
    somewhat depressed,
    I don’t feel like going out with friends
    celebrating the N. Year.

    ————

    Matt’s Notes

    I’m not sure why my grandfather (I knew him as “Papa”, hence the title of this site) time-stamped each paragraph in this inaugural entry, but I like it because it gives some shape to the course of his evening. I picture him getting ready to go out, thinking about meeting his friends, maybe running a bit late as he figures out just how he wants to record his thoughts. Is he sitting at a desk? Probably not — at the time he started this journal he was living in a friend’s tenement apartment, and I can’t imagine that he had much space for himself, let alone a desk. He must have used a fountain pen.

    He was a big fan of anything dramatically sentimental (he loved opera, Tchaikovsky, was touched by patriotic holidays) so the impending New Year inspires a fitting statement of self-reflection: “I am in love with love”. He views his own loneliness as something poetic, a dreamy quest to find someone who shares his love of beauty. It’s a little sad and a little sweet, but it reflects something essential about his character that anyone who knew him attests to: a remarkable ability to see the good in people and in the world.

    Considering his life up until then, he had every right to be bitter and cynical. He grew up in the town of Snyatyn, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish ghetto where pogroms and poverty were real, daily threats (I don’t know about you, but when I get my time machine working I’m not going back there to sport my circumcision). Though he was a factory worker who lived in relative poverty, he was under constant pressure from the European brothers and sisters who resented his presumed unwillingness to share the untold riches he was surely earning in America. Wanting to be loved for his gentle soul, he was beholden to a social system where matrimonial transactions hinged on financial, not spiritual, currency. How could he have maintained his romantic outlook at all?

    Of course, his optimism did not go unscathed in the years before he started his diary. You can’t really blame him when he says, sixty minutes after penning his “I am in love with love” statement, that he doesn’t feel like seeing his friends and that “I really do not know why I feel somewhat depressed”. In fact, this single diary entry, with its sudden transition in tone, shows us at once the struggle that would continue to tug him all year: the poet’s love of beauty versus the realist’s creeping sadness, brought to the surface as he reflects on the approaching milestone of New Year’s Day, 1924.

    As I sit and write this on December 31, 2006, I think I’m a lot like my Papa, a “nonbeliever in resolutions” who cannot help but set down a hope or two for the new year. My main one at this moment is that I can do justice to this diary. I think a lot of people will find it touching, or at least worth reading as a historical curiosity, which is one reason why I’m publishing it in this way. And, naturally, I think it’s fascinating because it belonged to my Papa. Though he died when I was only four and I remember just a handful of moments with him, his gentleness, his steadying effect on my family and his capacity to feel thrilled at my every gesture still fill me with a glow; in a way, I remember him more as a feeling than as a person, with a four-year-old’s purity of thought and unconditional fascination.

    A few years after he died, I dreamed that he came to me in the night and sat on my bed to chat with me, to explain that he was gone forever but that he was still with me. After that, I would go to bed each night wishing that I’d dream of him again, but it never happened. Maybe this diary is so important to me because, even though he writes it as a much younger man than I am now, I can still find traces of his mature self in his words, and by reading, retyping and sharing it I can find, somewhere in its pages, that last moment with him that I never had.

  • Index of Updates

    I frequently revisit posts to add additional thoughts, photos, facts and references as they arrive. Here’s a quick summary. I’ve listed the date of the update first and the date of the original post after that. (Note that all updates aren’t dated — I only started dating my updates a few days into this project and I haven’t been dating them if I add them the same day.)

    Updated in February:

    3/12 – Mar 8: Added Mom’s comments about the opera
    3/10 – Mar 3: Added Time Magazine‘s review of Wild Oranges
    3/8 – Feb 22: Reader Dina writes about her own grandfather’s American heroes
    3/1 – Feb 28: Mom’s comments on a photo of her family
    2/6 – Jan 9: Information on Papa’s status as a Cohen, and why he can’t be near the dead
    2/6 – Jan 27: Mom’s comments on Papa and Chinese food
    2/4 – Jan 20: Mom’s additions on cousin Ruchale
    2/4 – Jan 12: Some information from the New York Times on Cafe Royal

    Updated in January:

    1/20 – Jan 19: Mom’s comments on Papa
    1/14 – Jan 13: Correction and photo of Aunt Clara
    1/13 – Jan 12: “Golus” discussion
    Jan 1: Comment on Volga boat song; photo of Capitol Theatre
    Jan 2: Information about tuberculosis
    Jan 3: Quote from feedback about Keren Hayesod
    Jan 4: Commentary
    Jan 5: Photo of Papa in formal wear; information on “cabinet cards”
    Jan 6: Photos of Papa from early 70’s
    Jan 7: Information on WEAF
    Jan 10: Information on fraternal organizations
    Jan 11: Clinton theater background; link to NYT article on movie escapism
    Jan 16: Speculation on Papa’s motives
    Jan 28: More thoughts on the secular inheritance of religious ideals

  • Tuesday Jan 1

    Jan. 1
    Last night’s New Years adventures
    will be found on last pages.
    I spent the day quietly at home

    [from a memoranda page at the end of the diary]

    Jan 1, 1924

    New Years Eve. in N.Y. is certainly
    an event, last night I deserted my
    friends for a while at 11:30 I was
    in the jam of the merry and noise
    making crowds, Poor, rich, soldiers
    sailors, old and young, some masqu-
    eraded with countless noisemaking
    devices, looking into their faces, every-
    body seems to be happy, Slowly I fought
    my way to the Capitol Thea. to make
    the special midnight performance,
    after leaving the theatre at 1:45 the
    Street was still crowded with the gay
    throngs.

    Am I the only one whom this
    carnival fails to make happy? But I
    think I did notice sadness in some
    eyes, are their souls hungry? Longing?
    My New Years Eve, was at an end at an
    East Side joint where prohibition drinks
    were freely served, I reached home 4am.

    ————–

    Matt’s Notes

    This entry really starts to give us a feeling for the New York City my grandfather lived in. His description of the crowds is almost cinematic, a whirl of costumed extras (soldiers and sailors? Really?) with smiling faces blowing into noisemakers and clogging the streets. It’s not hard to picture at all.

    His offhand mention of the Capitol Theatre, though, really places him a different, long-ago New York. The Capitol, which once stood at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway in New York City, was one of the grand movie palaces that used to be common in America. They disappeared way before my time, but as I understand it they were enormous, spectacular spaces, gilded to the nines and outfitted to invoke the European palaces that their largely immigrant audiences would never have gotten near back home.

    In palaces like the Capitol, movies screenings were almost beside the point. Nightly programming included orchestral music (remember that films were silent in 1924, so theaters were outfitted for live orchestras as a matter of course) as well as ballet and opera performances from the theaters’ resident companies.

    According to the New York Times archive, the New Years performance my grandfather saw was an exemplary mashup, including “Chaminade’s ‘Air de Ballet’ by the Capitol singers and dancers”, the “Volga Boat Song” (a Russian folk song — you know the tune) and the “Skaters Waltz”. The draw for my grandfather, though, would have been the Capitol Grand Orchestra’s scheduled performance of the “1812 Overture” (no doubt with the cannons going off at midnight) since he was a huge fan of Tchaikovsky. (Oddly enough, as I write this on New Year’s Day in 2007 the “1812 Overture” started playing on the radio station I’m listening to on the Web. Maybe it’s a New Year’s tradition that I wasn’t aware of.)

    His reference to the bar he winds up in is the oddest detail for me. I always gathered that he had something like a Buddhist’s monks beatific vibe and moral virtue, and preferred to spend his free time raising funds for Zionist organizations and going to synagogues. It’s hard to imagine that he ever took a sip of alcohol other than at his own bris, let alone wander into a “joint” to drink illegally, but I suppose it was the order of the day on New Year’s eve.

    I also find it interesting that he refers to illegal alcohol as “prohibition liquor”, which I always thought was a label created for historical reference. It’s a very official-sounding term; maybe he uses it rather than something more slangy because he’s not exposed to drinking all that much.

    Though Papa gives the New Year’s spectacle its due, he’s clearly unable to shake the low mood he mentions in his previous entry. The way he wanders away from his friends to search strangers’ faces for some sign of kinship, some confirmation that other people feel as lonely and dissatisfied as he does, is terribly wistful yet oddly comforting to me. Of course there are others in the crowd who feel at odds with the spectacle, who reflect on their own concerns while pretending to celebrate — if I’d been there there, I might have been of of them, someone in whose eyes he noticed sadness. Haven’t I been known to back away from a crowd, watch a party from the sidelines, withdraw into my own head when I feel at odds with the people around me?

    Maybe I share Papa’s very brand of self-reflectiveness, passed to me through his genes or through his influence on my mother. And if that’s the case, it’s not so bad. Papa was admired and beloved, an exemplar for his family of a life well lived, a source of vivid, affectionate memories for a grandson and a granddaughter who barely knew him. It occurs to me that whatever I have in common with him is worth embracing if it means I can be more like him.

    ————

    Additional references for this post:

    – Gabler, Neal. “For 25 Cents, Every Moviegoer Was Royalty“, The New York Times, 10/24/89 (subscription required).

    ——-

    Update

    I’ve been thinking a little more about “The Volga Boat Song” I mentioned above (give it a listen if you haven’t already). I’ve always thought of this tune as the default accompaniment to images of drudgery or dread in early 20th-Century movies — I feel like I’ve heard it in Bugs Bunny episodes, Max Fleischer cartoons and maybe even Universal horror movies — but I guess I figured it was just always there and never considered its origins. It must have been a real touchstone for immigrants if the Capitol Theater played it on New Year’s Eve for an audience that was no doubt packed with Eastern European Jews like my grandfather. And since Jewish immigrants were no strangers to radio and film work, it’s no wonder that imports like “The Volga Boat Song” found their way into the popular culture of the day.

    ————–

    Update 3/19 –

    Listen here to the Volga Boat Song:

    Image Credit: Library of Congress LC-USZ62-113144. Inquiring into ownership.

  • Cry For Help

    It’s about to get harder for me to spend as much time as I’d like on research for this project. That’s why I’m calling on you, my legions of readers — and make no mistake, your numbers are so vast that to keep count takes almost all of my fingers — for research help.

    The following list contains the many people, places, organizations, musical references, events and details of New York life that appear in Papa’s diary. If you know about or are interested in any of these subjects, please write to me at papasdiary ‘at’ gmail.com or post comments about them. If you’d really like to dig in to a subject that might require ongoing research or collaboration, let me know and I’ll set up a collaborative document for us to work on.

    Note: If you want to delve into anything under a “some information already collected” heading, please let me know and I’ll share with you what I’ve got.

    Thanks!

    Matt
    1/21/07

    ——————————–

    Organizations:

    Total mysteries:

    • David Wolpohn Club
    • Downtown Zionist Club
    • Holland Belgium Club
    • Jewish Students Club
    • Judea Insurance Company
    • Kessler Zion Club
    • Kinereth Camp (probably a B’nai Zion camp in Borough Park)

    Some information already collected:

    • B’nai Zion (a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion)
    • Bar Kochba camp of B’nai Zion
    • Hebrew Free Loan Society
    • Keren Hayesod
    • Montefiore Home (later hospital)
    • Tikwaith Yehuda club
    • Zionist Organization of America
    • Information or artifacts and photos relating to Jewish fraternal organizations in general

    People (many names are incomplete in the diary, but most of these people would be affiliated with B’nai Zion, Keren Hayesod or the Zionist Organization of America):

    Total mysteries:

    • “Mr. Graf”
    • Rabbi David Horowitz
    • Leibel Krebs (described as “a legendary figure from the old country”)
    • “Dr. Schecter”
    • “Dr. Thon”
    • And a ZOA organizer mysteriously named “Blitz”
    • I.S. Hurwich

    Some information already collected:

    • “Rabbi Cook”
    • Joseph Bluestone
    • David Blaustien
    • Abraham Goldberg
    • Arthur Ruppin
    • “Judge Strahl”
    • Maurice Samuel
    • “Mr. Zeldin”
    • Eisig (Isaac) Roth
    • David Yelies or Yellis, a Zionist who lived in Palestine and visited New York in 1924

    President Calvin Coolidge

    • Relationships with Zionism and labor
    • February 12 speech on radio
    • February 22 speech on radio
    • Radio announcement of reelection on November 4

    Places

    Total mysteries:

    • Boisy (?) Hotel
    • Malick’s Restaurant
    • Regina Mansion
    • Snyatyn Synagogue

    Some information already collected:

    • Pennsylvania Hotel
    • Café Royal
    • Spring Valley, New York — Jewish summer colonies or other Jewish presence

    Movies and Movie Theaters

    Total mysteries:

    • Lists of releases playing in New York for each month of 1924

    Some information already collected:

    • Capitol Theatre
    • Clinton Theatre
    • “Woman of Paris”
    • Academy of Music
    • “Song of Love”
    • “White Sister”

    Sports

    Some information already collected:

    • Abe Goldstein (a professional boxer; won a title fight in 1924)
    • 1924 New York Yankees
    • 1924 New York Giants
    • 1924 Brooklyn Robins (a.k.a. “Dodgers”)

    Leisure

    General and specific information needed:

    • Central Park in the 20’s, esp. scenes of people rowing
    • Coney Island of the 20’s (overall experience, transportation, summer rental lockers)

    Music (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):

    • “Drigo’s Serendade”
    • Eastern European Folk tunes that would have been played in immigrant-oriented Radio in 1924
    • Gypsy String Orchestra (particularly their radio presence in the 1920’s)
    • “Gypsy Chardash”
    • “Indian Love Lyrics” (?)
    • Kessler’s Theater
    • “Kreuzer Sonata” (at Kessler’s theater on 10/9/24)
    • “Rubenstein’s Romance”
    • “Shubert’s Waltz op 64#2”
    • “Sleeping Beauty
    • “Straus’s Waltz, Artist’s Dream”
    • “Tosca”

    Opera (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):

    • “Cavalleria rusticana” (March 8th Performance)
    • “Carmen” (December 4th performance at the Met)
    • “Le Roi de Lahore” (March 26th at the Met)
    • L’Cock D’or (heard on radio march 30)
    • L’Oracolo” (heard on radio march 30)
    • Madame Butterfly” (November 22nd performance)
    • “Martha” (December 5th performance)
    • “Mefistofele” (with Chaliapin, November 24 performance)
    • “Pagliacci (March 8th Performance)
    • “Tannhauser” (November 5th at the Met) would also love an English translation of Heine’s Elementargeister, on which this opera is partly based
    • General History of the Met, the New York Opera scene, and what the Opera experience would have been like for cash-strapped immigrants

    Radio events and history:

    • 1924 Democratic convention coverage radio coverage
    • November 4 Election returns coverage
    • November 5 Coolidge reelection announcement
    • 1924 Democratic convention coverage, esp. June 26, June 30, July 8
    • April 14 Daughters of the American Revolution ceremony
    • Radio Station WEAF
    • WNYC history esp. early broadcasts in July and August

    Lifestyle:

    • Cars (Photos and information regarding cars available to immigrants in the 1920’s)
    • Writing instruments (Photos of pens and pencils used in the 1920’s)
    • Telephones (usage and technology in 1924, images of private phones in 1920’s)
    • Public transportation (trolley and subway history, maps, fare information, usage in 1920’s)

    —————

    Update 6/18/07:

    Reader Ben writes:

    In your “Notes on Usage” article, you remark that your grandfather began quotations with quote marks at the bottom of the line. This is the typographic standard for German and, I think, Polish. In computer typography (Unicode especially), they’re referred to as “low-nine quotes”

    Ben is working on some software to facilitate manuscript transcription. You can read about it at his blog, manuscripttranscription.blogspot.com.

  • The Diary

    I’ve had two separate sites geared toward lovers of journals — not the contents, but the books themselves — link to me since I started this project. I figure there must be more people out there who’d like it if I posted a little more about it, so here goes:

    Papa’s diary is about six inches high by three-and-a-half inches wide. Its cover is a deep maroon and seems to have resisted aging and fading:

    title

    The words “National Diary 1924” are lightly embossed on the diagonal across the cover in an all-caps font I’m not familiar with:

    title

    The cover appears to be constructed of linen-lined cardboard material, and shows some wear and tear around the corners and binding:

    title

    The cream-colored pages show some browning along the edges, but remain resilient and not at all brittle.

    A calendar for the year 1924 is printed on the inside cover. It looks like Papa practiced his signature a couple of times here (they read “A.H. Scheurman” because his given name was Avraham Hesh, though later he just signed his name as “Harry”.) It looks like the book cost 59 cents, as indicated by a price hand-written in the upper left. (Apologies for the blurry image — I can’t get this page to sit flat on my scanner without damaging the diary’s binding.)

    title

    A 1925 calendar is printed on the inside back cover. Papa’s scratched a few figures here, along with what appears to be a phone number:

    title

    A chart of 1924 postal rates is printed on the last page, along with a little more of Papa’s arithmetic:

    title

    A printed message, prompting the diary’s owner to order a new diary for 1925, appears at the bottom of the November 1 page:

    title

    A reminder appears at the bottom of the December 1 page:

    title

    Alas, the order number this message refers to is not anywhere to be found, nor are any indications of the diary’s manufacturer.

  • Sound and Video

    Papa’s Diary contains frequent references to music and popular culture, especially when he discusses the programming he listened to on the radio. Here are a few sound and video files from the Web that might help us understand what he saw and heard himself.

    ————————-

    January 1 entry:

    The Volga Boat Song was played in the New Years Eve concert Papa attended. Here’s a version from Radio Blog Club:

    —————————-

    January 4 entry:

    Papa recounts the story of a young Jewish woman who plays Schubert’s Serenade for immigration officials in order to qualify for an artist’s exception to the Jewish immigrant quota laws. It’s here at Radio Blog Club:

    ——————-

    March 21 entry:

    Papa describes how he listened to a boxing match in which Jewish boxer Abe Goldstein took the bantamweight title. We don’t have any footage of Golstein’s fight, but YouTube does have this 1922 fight featuring Benny Leonard, who was perhaps the most famous Jewish fighter:

    ———————

    April 6 entry:

    “Always blues, blues, even the radio is sending me blues through the air,” said Papa one rainy April day. We can’t be sure what he listened to, but here’s 1923 Bessie Smith recording of “Down Hearted Blues” from Last.fm:

    And here’s a recording of “Who’s Sorry Now” by the Original Memphis Five from Archive.org:

    —————–

    April 7 entry:

    Papa frequently says he listens to an ensemble called The Gypsy String Orchestra on the radio, and while I haven’t yet found one of their recordings, this 1914, Gypsy-influenced Berkes Bela tune from archive.org might be in the ballpark:

    —————-

    April 28 entry:

    Papa lists a number of songs the Gypsy String Orchestra played on the radio that day, among them:

    “Indian Love Lyrics,” which surely sounded a lot like this 1921 Edison Diamond Disc recording from the Library of Congress:

    A “Gypsy Chardash” along the lines of this 1920’s-ish recording by Bibor Olga Ciganyzenekara (Olga Bibor’s Gypsy Ensemble) at Archive.org:

    Papa didn’t mentioned the “Gypsy Love Song” specifically, but I thew in this 1923 recording of it, also available at Archive.org:

    On September 12, Papa used the phrase “Flaming Youth,” which was the title of a popular movie starring Colleen Moore. Here’s a video of Moore, who became a huge star after her appearance in Flaming Youth:

    Once in a while, when Papa doesn’t write in his diary for a day or two, I fill in the blanks with fictional episodes or dream sequences. I thought it would be fun to use the following Felix the Cat cartoon to illustrate a dream on October 12.

    On November 5th, Papa saw Maria Jeritza in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tannhauser. The following clip features Jeritza singing an aria from that very opera:

    And here’s a video of Herbert Von Karajan conducting the opening of Tannhauser:

    And here’s the finale of Tannhauser from archive.org (this link will open a new window)

    Papa saw Madame Butterfly on November 22nd with Beniamino Gigli and and Antonio Scotti. Here’s a clip of Gigli singing “O Solo Mio”:

    And here’s a clip of Scotti singing “Tosca”:

    Here’s a 1918 recording, via archive.org, of Frances Alda singing from Madama Butterfly.

    On November 24t, Papa saw Mefistofele at the Met with the great Chaliapin. Here’s a clip of Chaliapin singing “Ave Signori (Hail, Sovereign Lord)” from Mefistofele:

    Papa hit the Met again on December 4th, where he saw the venerable Giovanni Martinelli in Carmen. Here’s a clip from archive.org of Martinelli singing La fleur que tu m’avais jetee from Carmen.

    More opera on December 5th, and this time it’s Martha at the Met. Here’s the great Giovanni Martinelli, who Papa had seen the previous day in Carmen, singing the well known aria “M’appari tutt’amor” from Martha:

    ——–

    I got rather wistful after I posted the last diary entry on December 31, 2007, and I wound up putting this video together and posting it the next day. It’s just a slide show with pictures of Papa at various stages of his life, set to a song called “Indian Love Lyrics” that Papa heard on the radio (as mentioned above) on April 28, 1924.

  • Press and Links

    I’m not exactly sure how to get trackbacks working on Blogger, so I’ve just assembled this list of links about Papa’s Diary Project. Thanks to everyone who’s shown an interest.

    ————————
    Family Tree Magazine interviewed me for a piece in their May 2008 issue about preserving old diaries. Here’s a PDF, posted with permission.

    Here’s a link from a blog called “lfstyle.com“.

    The New York Times City Section published an interview with me about Papa’s Diary Project entitled “1924, Through an Ancestor’s Eyes” on October 14, 2007

    familyoralhistory.us, a site dedicated to the digital preservation of family history, gave us this shout-out on August 31, 2007.

    – Here’s a nice little mention in a post called Blogs worth knowing about from Digitization 101.

    Loho10002, a Lower East Side information site, mentioned us in their “Linkage” recommendations on August 23rd, 2007.

    Here’s a link from a Dodgers fan and history site called “The Trolley Dodger.”

    – My friends Yishane and Ray gave me a little shout-out in late May on their personal blog, feebo.com.

    – Here’s a piece I wrote for the Spring 2007 issue of a Jewish students’ magazine called “New Voices.” The headline editor made a teensy mistake (Papa’s diary was written in the 20’s, not the 30’s) but otherwise I’m happy with it.

    – The May 4, 2007 issue of the Jewish Daily Forward featured an article about Papa’s Diary Project called “Dear Diary: Back in Time

    – April 18th, 2007: A Russian Web site called Booknik wrote a long post about Papa’s Diary Project. I had no idea what it said at first, but my heroic, Russian-speaking friend Alla recently translated the comments. Here’s what she had to say:

    Matt, she called the article The story of one blog from 1924.

    Her name is Anna Shkolnik, and she writes absolutely beautifully. She perfectly translated the diary. She used very intelligent language and tone similar to Osip Mandelshtum’s memoirs. I don’t have too much time to translate her comments perfectly, but I’ll do my best to quickly translate it word by word. It’s even better, since you’ll imagine some stranger-woman with heavy Russian accent, who really got into your story:

    After she quoted some phrases from the diary, she wrote:

    Harry was not just a worker, trade union activist and a member of …”Sons of …”. now Bnai Brith. He was very lonely and sensitive man, who tried to save as much as possible to weekly send some help to his family that had to stay in Europe and suffered a lot of hardships. There is a special place in his diary where he shares his dreams about one very special girl, whom he’s willing to wait all his life. There is also some observations in his diary about the lifestyle of his American relatives. This takes the majority of pretty old yellowish pages, wrapped by linen mahagony color book cover.

    Then, she perfectly translates your comments in the diary after Jan. 1st, 1924 post:

    Matt comments practically every event, mentioned in his grandfather’s memoirs, which changes the diary’s genre itself and transforms it into the ”encyclopedia of every day things”

    The references and photos, as well as quotes from the newspapers of that time,. gently add to the town’s view, sounds, penetrating to the new yorkers’ ears, smells and other things of that time reality, forever lost for the future generations. For example, on April 17th, grandpa didn’t leave any diary posts, and Matt is worried (what could happen?). Perhaps, he was listening to his favored radio and and decided not to write that day. By the way, among the the headlines that caught his eye at the moment, there was one about Russian. This is New York TImes.

    Just like any other man who is in love, Matt talks about his granddad using such touching tone that it becomes very contagious and the reader of the diary is picking it up. It looks like Matt’s blog has more visitors than you could imagine. If publish this book and base it on the diary, he could include the comments to add many new details and information about New York during the 20th, in the best traditions of literature network, as well as the comments that simply inspire and motivate Matt to continue what he’s started.

    And then she writes:

    Booker (in Russian means person who can’t stop reading) is the website’s name. There is a comment on the bottom of the page:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
    We barely forced to leave the Diary alone and get away from it, to tell you, folks, about this wonderful man (you!). Here is some terms and names of the things that Matt is trying to find – here are the list of the terms and names, that Matt coule not define or find anywhere on the web. Do you find here in the list anything familiar – names, people?

    – The brilliantly-named Jewcy.com referred to Papa’s Diary Project back in March after I wrote to ask them a question about matzoh production.

    Here’s a reference from January 2007 on a journal-oriented blog called Duc N. Ly

    – Thanks to a referral from my cousin Joy, a notebook-oriented site called notebookism wrote a post about Papa’s Diary Project almost as soon as I started it.

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