The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
MAY 30, 1936
[This column has emendations. View original version]
NEW YORK—As usual a perfect avalanche of mail to sign awaited me, and friends were with me for dinner last night so I only got started on it this morning. Then, out to do a few errands before meeting a man at the office who is preparing something for publication about Colonel Howe.
It is a strange thing how many things we do not know about the people we know best until we come to try to put them down in detail. If I were asked questions about myself of the kind I tried to answer this morning, I am afraid I would be just as stupid as I was about some of the things I should know about Colonel Howe. I doubt if I could give correctly the names and dates of births and deaths of my ancestors, even as far back as my grandfather or grandmother which is rather a shocking thing, but it shows how inaccurately we usually slide through life.
I have always known that one of my greatest faults was that I seized the main points and anything colorful about a subject and didn't really dig deep enough down to have my foundations firmly placed on facts, and for many years I have struggled to make myself do this. As I come in contact on a working basis with other people the realization is borne in on me that this is something many of us do!
I took some young people out for lunch and then spoke over the radio for the Federation of Women's Clubs. Later attended a musicale at which my granddaughter played and ended up with a trip through the Women's Exposition of Arts and Industries and a tea given to me by the National Fact Finders.
So ends an active day.
E.R.
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 30, 1936
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
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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TMsd, 29 May 1936, AERP, FDRL