Friday June 27

Not important

------------

The words "not important," as I noted the last time Papa wrote them in his diary, seem charged with importance. While he has slowly chipped away at the despair he felt in the aftermath of his father's death, he has not yet figured out exactly how to get on with his life and is still inclined to feel unmoored and lonely. So, I'll ask again: when he says his day was unimportant, is he expressing his own feeling of unimportance?

--------------

I expect Papa spent much of the day listening to the Democratic Convention on the radio. Nominations were finally complete -- 18 candidates were officially in the field, according to the New York Times -- but intense conflict over the tone of anti-Klan language in the party platform had finally boiled over (committee members had literally come to blows over the issue on the convention floor.) The longest and most contentious balloting in convention history was about to start.