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

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NEW YORK, Tuesday—My knowledge of astronomy is confined to finding the Big and Little Dipper and the North Star, so I was much intrigued last night to notice a very wide circle surrounding the moon at some distance and a haze around the moon itself. When a child, I was always told this meant rain was coming. I have never seen just that effect before and I have no idea what caused it, but it was very lovely and sent me to bed feeling I would not regret leaving a rainy countryside this morning.

Alas, the old wives' superstitions were incorrect, for the morning dawned perfectly clear! I longed to stay in Hyde Park and try my horse again this morning to see if we could not establish a better understanding. I rode him yesterday afternoon and found a smooth place in a field and went round and round and round trying to get the rhythm of his gaits. I hope when we are in Hyde Park this summer for a number of consecutive days, that I shall get the feeling for him which I have for "Dot."

We drove as far as Harmon this morning and caught a local train there for New York City. I had hoped to be able to go this afternoon to the Herald Tribune Clinic on Housing and Air-Conditioning. Anything that has to do with housing interests me and this clinic was to be held where one could see some new wrinkles on air-conditioning.

I was much interested in Seattle, Washington, to find that even small houses are air-conditioned. In the Middle West and the West, they have taken advantage of some modern inventions more rapidly than we have in the East.

Frankly, my chief concern at the moment is how we are going to get decent low cost housing. One woman wrote me from Washington the other day and asked if I thought it was possible for a family of four people to live decently in two rooms. Another woman tells me that right in the City of Poughkeepsie there are people living under conditions which would not be considered sanitary for animals. She knows of houses where the sewer backs up and keeps the basements completely flooded. Yet, the over-crowding is such that people have to live under these conditions and pay rents which should provide them with decent housing.

I am doing a little shopping today, having some fittings and at 4:30 I am going to speak for Miss Ruth Hill to the personnel group which is working with clients receiving old age assistance under the Social Security Act. Tonight I shall attend a small dinner given by Mr. Myron Taylor in the interests of the Todhunter School. Then I take the midnight train back to Washington and a very busy life.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1938, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 13, 1938

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.

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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