2 March 1957
These past days have been busy, almost a delirium of activity. The Plain Dealer has been writing splendid reportorial work. The Cleveland Press is still a snarling rag!
My P. D. Was just delivered by Stanley – will write more later, especially about Janie E. Oster and Dunham school and melting pots and Ida Dennis and Mark Schinnerer and Paul Pokhorny and Mrs. Carmen – State Board members of the Ohio State Board of Education.
Later –
Well, after reading my P. D. – The world is in better shape than ever, and, I believe I can go back to this little series of notebooks and my scribblings.
Most interesting to me for the moment to write about this morning is Nancy and Mrs. Smythe – her art teacher.
Mrs. Smythe has been giving Nancy one hell of a time these first few weeks of the semester. Nancy was elected class president and Mrs. Smythe has made a sorry role for Nancy. She’s yelled at Nancy, been unreasonable with her, told Nancy she was no damn good as a president, the class needed a new president, helped Nancy not at all, until Nancy came home and wept with sorrow, anger, and desperation.
Nancy and I have talked the situation over a few times, but the weeping session almost brought out Kurt’s big guns. We were all set to have Kurt give Mrs. Smythe the cool Zachmann going over if she didn’t lay off Nancy, our fine family artist.
I, however, kept hoping Nancy could carry her own ball, so that her victory, if it came, would be Nancy’s alone.
Yesterday afternoon Nancy told this story. Mrs. Smythe picked up a picture drawn by someone in Nancy’s class. Mrs. Smythe took a good look at it and was starting to say: “Why this is beautiful! Who drew this picture?”
Nancy said, “I did.”
After this announcement by Nancy, Nancy said Mrs. Smythe almost choked!
P.S. Nancy tells me Mrs. Smythe gave her two sheets of paper to draw a street scene on instead of all the other youngsters one sheet, as the class filed out of the art class.
Hello! Hum!!
That’s that for the present. Except this two sheets of paper to draw a street scene over the weekend was in lieu of a detention after school for being a bad student. The whole class was supposed to get this detention for talking.
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Zachmannisia just for the day: Cleveland is a melting pot of nationalities? Well – ll – l – let’s say the US is a bigger pot – not only of nationalities, but also of (religions). Maybe I should have written it smaller, like this ( world religions).
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I feel pretty good this morning!
