Fri. Dec. 29, 2023: Bye, Bye 2023!
image courtesy of Gerd Altmann via pixabay.comFriday, December 29, 2023
Waning Moon
Uranus, Jupiter, Mercury Retrograde
Rainy and raw
We are almost at the end of the year!
On Saturday, Jupiter goes direct, meaning expansion and prosperity obstacles are smoothed out. On New Year’s Day, Mercury goes direct. Finally. This felt like a long one. I’m glad I got a lot done for the holidays prior to the retrograde, or I would have been overwhelmed with everything that went cattywampus during it.
Today’s serial episode is from Angel Hunt:
Episode 98: Complications
The boys cancel the appointment to banish the demon.
Tomorrow’s serial episode is from Deadly Dramatics:
Episode 48: Back Home
Charlies wants Nina to have protection. Nina wants some time alone.
Slogged through some more admin. Kept my primary inbox under control. Surfed some job boards and rolled my eyes a lot. Worked on my answers for the 2024 GDR questions and did some contemplation on the year. Creatively, it was strong. I need to get the financial more in balance with the creative for next year.
Set up a bunch of folders, both tangible ones and digital ones, in preparation for 2024.
Spun some ideas for a project proposal I want to write in January.
Had an idea for a group project that would be a good way to mutually grow audiences, but I doubt I could get the commitment out of the participants needed to keep it on track, and, frankly, I’m not in the mood to herd cats right now, unless, you know, they are actual cats. So that’s a no-go. I will keep my ear to the ground to see if anyone else launches something similar and then pitch myself for it.
Did a couple of short coverages. My income for these past two weeks will be pathetic.
Ended up going down the rabbit hole of the 1930 census. Found Frank W. Darling, who ran Playland at the time. He and his family lived in Larchmont/Mamaroneck Town. He’s listed as “director of Playland amusement park.” His wife, Helen, is listed as “gardener/landscaper.” With them lived Frank’s two stepsons (which means Helen was married before. I need to find her maiden name so I can track her earlier marriage record. If I can find the marriage record to Frank, I ought to be able to do that). Thomas McDonald, the eldest stepson, lived there with his wife, Opal, and they are listed as “magazine editors” which is intriguing. The younger son, William, is listed as a clerk for an electrics company. You’ve gotta wonder if they were all somehow connected to Playland. They had a servant from Northern Ireland living with them, a twenty-one-year-old young woman name Theresa Keena, only one year younger than William. Frank is listed as born in Michigan; Helen in NY; Thomas and Opal in Minnesota, and William in Massachusetts.
I definitely want to know more about Helen!
I managed to find Frank’s birth record, back in Michigan, and his parents’ names.
None of them show up easily in the 1940 Census, so I will have to do some more digging there, because Frank was at Playland until the late 1950’s or early 1960’s.
Next stop there will be trying to get the property records.
I also found Iris Woolcock in the 1930 census. I’m pretty sure it’s the same Iris at Playland who, in 1948, took an RV to Alaska and wrote a book about it. In 1930, she lived in a boarding house at 118 W. 11th Street run by an Italian-born couple, John and Henrietta Grill, who had wo children, Ida (17, born in Italy), and George (9, born in NY). Iris is listed as a “lodger” with her profession as “artist” which tracks for being the Iris Woolcock who was a Playland Painter at the time. She’s also listed as divorced, which also tracks with the Iris who wrote the book (who was by the time she went to Alaska to write the book divorced from her second husband, Charles Morrow Wilson, whom she married in 1933 and divorced in 1939).
Fellow lodgers include an actor named Joseph Parry (actor) and the journalists Amy MacMaster and Garland Smith. MacMaster wrote an expose on NYC social clubs in 1929 that’s still quoted. Garland Smith’s name, as a writer, is familiar, but I can’t place it. Yet.
There’s a play in that boarding house.
Since Dorothy Dwin was living up on Lexington Avenue, according to the same Census, at the time, and working at Playland, I can imagine Dorothy and Iris on the train together. The train had either just come into Rye or was being built – I have it in my notes somewhere. I remember, in records I went through at Westchester Archives, the payroll records of railroad builders. I made notes, thinking it would be useful, and will dig those up.
I have not found the records I need for Grace King Hutchins or Anita Minter (although I found a lot of info a few months ago about Anita’s time at Parsons, her career in advertising in Georgia, and visits she made to a nearby Vermont town to visit friends from Parsons).
I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find anything about Frank in the Coney Island records, when he was there for years. I also need to find the records of the L.A. Thompson Scenic Railway, where he was a top executive before Coney Island and Playland.
I’m happy with the puzzle pieces I found, though, because they are leading me further.
But finding these nuggets of information takes time and persistence.
I really need the WPA records. As artists ,it’s likely these women would have been part of that program.
Nearly went down another rabbit hole at the National Archives and the Smithsonian. Both need volunteer transcribers. The Smithsonian has a project transcribing letters of a woman artist that sounds fascinating; I’d be one of a group of volunteers working on that project.
But can I afford, financially, the time away from my own work to make the commitment? There’s no set number of hours; but I’d want to be able to commit to transcribing at least one document a week until the project is done.
I have to think about it. But I’m intrigued. It’s the kind of volunteer project I could do remotely, and it’s in a field that interests me – women’s diaries and letters. History that could be lost.
Today I have to do next week’s episode videos for the serials. I also have to do a library run, grocery run, and liquor store run. My webhost told me they’re raising rates this year (I have to pay at the end of January), but haven’t told me how much, so I told them I need to know – and not when they pull it from my account. With that and the rent going up, January will be a tight month, unless the script coverage picks up significantly, and I add in some other quick turn-around, quick-pay work. November was a low-reads month for the serials, so it’s not like I can count on that income. The reads picked up somewhat in December, but I won’t see that money until February.
Tomorrow, I will take my mom to the Clark for the livestream of THE MAGIC FLUTE. Yes, we will be masked. It’s the Julie Taymor production, and I’m excited to see what she did, although I am not the opera fan that my mother is. She’s so happy to go, and has been looking forward to it since I booked the tickets.
New Year’s Eve, we hope for quiet. Good food, reading, enjoying the tree, burning the second bayberry candle “down to the sprocket” for luck and prosperity. The Day will be, again, about good food, good books, and rest. I have yoga in the afternoon.
On a creative level, I’m very happy with 2023. I just need to level up the financial side of the equation in 2024, while maintaining the creative.
Thank you for your camaraderie this year, and let’s step gently into 2024, so as not to scare it.
Have a great weekend!
