The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

WASHINGTON, Friday—I want to thank the many people who have so kindly remembered my birthday and sent me cards and messages of good wishes. One always hopes that each year one gains added wisdom, but, at least, if one gains an increasing number of friends, there is a satisfaction in piled-up years.

I have an appeal to remind my readers that it is their patriotic duty to save all waste paper. You should sell it to your junk dealer, or give it to your schools, churches, Boy Scouts, organized charities, or building superintendents.

Apparently there are many things which are affected by the shortage of waste paper at the present time, so here is one more thing you can do as a housewife. They multiply day by day, and there must be times when the housewife feels there is no small gesture in her household which is not tied up with the war in some way. That is as it should be, for it is the preservation of our homes for which this war is being fought, so we are tied to the war effort by many strings.

Yesterday I went to the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior to look at some of the handwork done by different tribes throughout the country. It is really very exciting to see the old designs and skills being used for modern purposes. I found one rug in which the colors were so soft and exquisite that no modern artist could have blended anything lovelier.

Then I found some scrap baskets, which would have fitted into nothing except the most modern kind of room. They were white leather tied together by leather thongs, but the shape and color made them demand modern glass lighting and stylized modernistic furniture. It is curious how the old and new can come together.

In the afternoon I went to speak to the ladies of the Senate and House who belong to the Red Cross unit. They met in the auditorium of the Congressional Library and it was very pleasant to have this opportunity of seeing so many familiar faces again.

The curtailment of entertainment during the war means that many of us have fewer opportunities of meeting together. In some ways I think it is a disadvantage, for the war creates so many interests which are vital to women. If I knew of some way to create more opportunity for women to meet and to discuss the problems of the present and the future, I would do all I could to bring it about, for our responsibility to the next generation is very great.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 16, 1943

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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