Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Ahahaha! Marcus, I'm afraid we will never know the answer to either
one.
  

    

And speaking of the Monday & Thursday updates, here's a link to yesterday's
post:

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/74734550451/leon-starts-to-
settle-in>

In the letter from Leon excerpted in this post, he's talking about finding a
room to rent (he's paying $15 a month for a shared room) and Fawn uses an
online price calculator to turn that into 2012 dollars.

Fawn, are there other unexpected details like this you find yourself
researching? Google streetview pics of what their addresses were? Popular
1940 recipes?

(Also, I like that he immediately tells Elly she'd like this kind of work
herself.)
  

    
Of course I've looked up all their addresses on Google Street View!
For example, here's the street where Leon rented a room when he first
got to DC: http://goo.gl/maps/EP796. It even looks pretty much as I
imagine it must have in 1940. 

The letters are full of references that would have made perfect sense
to Leon and Elly, but 70+ years on, they send me haring off to the
Internet to figure them out. And some of the references turn out to be
amazing stories of their own. For example, Leon refers in one letter to
Elly joining a study group at her school -- in context, it's clear
that it's a Marxist study circle -- led by a "S. Seifter," whom Leon
calls "really brilliant -- he was awarded some kind of teaching
fellowship." 

It turns out that in 1940, Sam Seifter was a grad student in
biochemistry at Case Western University, where Elly was earning her
degree part-time. But he went on to become one of the founding faculty
members (in 1955) of Albert Einstein School of Medicine at Yeshiva
University in New York, where he was an early opponent of McCarthy's
blacklisting of academics. More than that, in 1968 he helped establish
a first-of-its-kind scholarship program that gave promising minority
students a year of intensive tutoring at Einstein to improve their
academic qualifications for admission to medical school. The school
honored him for that in 1991 by establishing an annual lecture on
minority issues in his name. Seifter continued to research and teach
well into his 80s and died in 2009 at the age of 92. And that is
EXACTLY the kind of person Leon and Elly would have hung around with in
the '40s.
  

    
It just keeps getting better!
  

    
wow!
  

    
wow taken out of my mouth! btw I LOVE that you looked it up on google street
view.
  

    

Wow indeed.

I can see a zillion wormholes of related history to fall into.
  

    
Really, the tough part is going to be developing a sense of which wormholes
not to wriggle through.
  

    
I hope eventually to wriggle through ALL of them.
  

    
Loving this story!  
  

    

Is there a particular wormhole you've started to research that is an area
you never ever would have imagined?

(I have ended up with a weird pocket of knowledge about the mating cycle of
the eels that populate the greater Saint Lawrence Waterway from jumping
topic-to-topic in some online research, for example.)

So, I guess I am asking, what's your biggest eel so far?

Also, this is totally a selfish question based on the developing crush on
Leon, but-- do you have a picture of him? (Young or old.) I'd love to see
his face.
  

    
i like any commie-meeting-related digression! 
  

    
I do have pictures of Leon, though so far none from as early as the
'40s, and I'll be posting them on the blog at some point!

As for the eels, the whole thing's all about a moray.

(Couldn't help it. Sorry. NOT SORRY.)

So far the most unexpected bit of research involved the mid-century
equivalent of a Kardashian. I'll definitely be posting that, too.
  

    
For those of you just arriving, it's Thursday, which means a new blog
post. 

http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/75057992045/intellectual-interco
urse

I probably should have saved the big reveal that I actually met Leon
until much later, but if I hadn't mentioned it right up front, it would
be a mystery how I know all these other details, like who Rudy and Bea
and Fred are.
  

    

I love the letter you post from today.

"... there must be no question of superiority — we will each recognize the
excellences of the other in order to learn from one another and thus develop
as many facets as possible."

LEON! <3.

Fawn, is there any kind of help you need or questions you haven't been able
to answer that the experts-at-large on the WELL and beyond could help
research?
  

    
In addition to the part Brady mentioned, a few other gems that made me
smile were:
"That’s probably the main reason I like you a little."  and "Say hello
to Wm in the patronizing tone I always use."
  

    
The big question right now is related to Leon's time in the Army. He
maintained that he was treated differently because he was a known
Communist -- but I don't see any evidence of that in any way. For one
thing, this was the '40s; McCarthyism was still a few years away. For
another, I think maybe he was just miffed that he didn't see any
fighting. He was a smart guy, so he got tapped for clerk duty. He ended
up in the Quartermaster Corps, which is responsible for making sure
soldiers in the field are appropriately supplied -- he spent the war
safely at a desk, even though it was eventually a desk in France and,
after V-E Day, in the public safety office of Eisenhower's Supreme
Command HQ in Berlin. Not where you'd expect them to put someone if
they thought he was a political liability.

So what I'd like to know is whether the Army actually did treat
soldiers in WWII any differently if they were Communists, or had
relatives in Axis countries, or what have you. I just don't know where
to start researching that. 
  

    
McCarthy was a johnny-come-lately to red-baiting.  It had been going on 
here since the 1920s.  

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids>
  

    
i wonder if any of the jewish rescue orgs of the 30s (and whomever has taken
them over now) might know of how ppl with family in occupied
countries/communists were treated in the u.s. armed forces.
obviously a lot of those who got out in the 30s still had family over there
and//or were commies.

possibly also anyone who knew about how people who had fought in the spanish
civil war were treated in the u.s. army?

oblique but possible leads...
  

    
also maybe red diaper babies?
  

    
Conlon Nancarrow was an American who fought with the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, was held prisoner, and didn't like the way he was treated
when he returned to the states.  He ended up moving to Mexico, later
became a Mexican citizen, but had routine problems getting passports
and such.
  

    

I suspect there wasn't much bad treatment of Commies in the armed forces,
after all they were on the same side fighting against the Nazis and Japan.
The father of a friend of mine was a Conscientious Objector in WWII, not a
popular thing to be then.
  

    
yeah, i suspect COs were treated much more poorly than (somewhat former)
commies
  

    
I do gather that the US military eagerly welcomed members of the
Lincoln Brigades. 
  

    
All of these general ideas are good. Can anyone help me find some
specific sources? For example, who is the current leading historian of
the labor movement in the 1930s? Which university has a history
department with someone who's an expert on WWII military history? Etc.