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

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NEW YORK—We left my son's ranch in Meeker, Colo., and Adlai Stevenson, who had a meeting in Denver that night, met us at the airport with his sister Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Eugenie Anderson, and a number of the Denver Democratic candidates and officials. We all went to church together and then I traveled back to New York by plane.

The Congressman from Denver who traveled back with me said he did not think a real interest in the campaign had yet developed in Colorado.

People there are too absorbed in their own difficulties, and the question of how Denver is to get an adequate water supply is far more interesting than who will win the election!

This I can understand, for Denver has had such a long drought that it is difficult for the people there to think of anything but their immediate problems. They are rationed on water for use in their gardens and know it will be some time before a new water supply can serve them.

I was very glad that Stevenson spoke of the needs of the older people in his speech this week, for I think that is one of the great problems before us.

One of the things, however, that often is brought to my attention is the problem of housing, not only for older people but for single people, and I am wondering whether we could not have a study made of the Swedish and Norwegian group housing, which is adjusted in rentals to people's income.

In the case of older people, these rentals are based on the average pension that a worker would receive. As I remember the plan in Sweden, where apartments are built for older people, this housing is never isolated but built around a park, at one end of which are the old people's apartments, with apartments for young families on the side. You frequently see children playing in the park, being watched by the elderly people.

I think there is a tie between the very old and the very young. The old people stay younger in living with youth and youth feels better understood because the elderly grownups have the time to listen, as their own parents, in the press of many duties, frequently cannot do.

The problems of the aged touch many of the other problems in our country, and I think it would pay us to consult with Charles Palmer, of Atlanta, Ga., who has made studies of the aged in other areas of the world and see if we cannot adapt these ideas and improve on them for the benefit of our own people.

I have just been sent a most delightful book, written by John Becker and illustrations by his wife, Virginia Campbell. It is called "New Feathers for the Old Goose" and includes nursery rhymes of the old "Mother Goose" type which any child will adore. The "Going to Sleep" rhyme of seven little rabits would be good, I think, for grownups to learn. Certainly by the time they have finished saying it, even those with insomnia would be ready to go to sleep.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1956, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 28, 1956

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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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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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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