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

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The Washington Symphony Orchestra last night gave a most beautiful concert with Josef Hoffman as the soloist. I had to leave just before the end because I had arranged to call Seattle at a given time and I realized that I was going to be late. I hated to miss the last number, and my guests who remained told me that was a fine ending.

Today has been on the whole a very quiet day. Gray and foggy outside, but the planes seem to be flying overhead, so I imagine that we are just in a pocket, and the rest of the world may be enjoying the sunlight.

I like riding in this kind of weather, the landscape with the floating ice in the river, and the born red look to the trees, blurred in the distance and yet so sharp nearby that every little twig stands out, gives one a curious feeling of being very close to the earth and the things of nature and blurs out the cars and the busy streets.

Lunch alone in my sitting room with a friend, and then a visit to the National Broadcasting Company's new studios where Mr. Carlton Smith presided over the broadcast for the Business and Professional Women. This group has been making a survey of women in various fields of occupation and this broadcast was to bring before their own members and the public the fact that they were offering us new information of great interest to us all.

Miss Earlene White who is the new President of the National Business and Professional Women, is a very charming woman and I like doing anything, whether professional or purely recreational with Mrs. Eleanor Patterson. She would probably say that I knew her very slightly, but that does not prevent me from feeling when with her that hers is a very alive and vital intelligence which I enjoy.

I forgot to mention that the President went over and spent an evening at the Rural Arts Exhibit before it closed. I understand that the Special Skills Division of Resettlement which is now incorporated in the Department of Agriculture, is responsible for fostering much of the work which flowered in that exhibition. I do not mean by that, that they initiated it, I simply mean that they have encouraged many people who have been interested in keeping alive our rural arts. With WPA and NYA they have been able to bring it more before the public so that we really are becoming conscious of the fact that we have folk arts and skills just as truly as have other nations.

I am hoping that people will understand that this is not unimportant because it goes deeper into our national life than many think. It means recreation and mental and spiritual satisfactions in rural life. Without it we cannot hope to keep the best of our youth on our farms or in our semi-rural districts.

E.R.



About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 17, 1937

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

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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.

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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 draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated December 16, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 16 December 1937, AERP, FDRL