MY DAY: Yesterday afternoon I visited the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn, N.Y., and enjoyed seeing the various apartments and having the opportunity to talk with some of the people living there. Of course, the ultimate object of any housing project is to have satisfied tenants.

Our first visit was to an apartment with two bedrooms, kitchen, sitting room and bath. The young couple had two children and the wife’s mother with them. The man is a longshoreman with only intermittent days of work. The girl seemed proud and happy and she had acquired many possessions which she showed me with pride. Her mother brought out a plate of little cakes and some little glasses and poured out some homemade wine which she offered to us all. We drank to their health and happiness and we wished for them the steady job on which so much depends. Little enough to ask of life and yet often impossible to attain.

Our next family was in a larger three bedroom, sitting room, kitchen and bath apartment. They had four children and the man was on WPA.

Our last apartment was one of the very small one bedroom, sitting room, kitchen and bath type. The young couple who lived there had had the sad experience of losing their first baby, but the young woman’s mother, who was visiting her, told me what a change this new apartment made in her life.

These apartments seemed to me very well planned. All of them have eliminated unnecessary doors. The kitchen, for instance, has no door, neither has the living room. The bedroom, bathroom and one closet have doors. The other closets are recessed with curtains. The landscaping around the houses is attractive, and scattered around the project are eight small playgrounds for children. I hope that some day everyone can live in quarters which are as pleasant as this, if for no other reason than that it will cost the taxpayers less and that the next generation will be healthier.

On Friday we went to Boston to see my new grandchild. He is a sweet baby with a nicely shaped head and ears that lie flat against his head. His hair is so fair that it hardly shows. He refused to open his eyes for me, so I don’t know their color, but I surmise it’s blue. I was only allowed to see him through a glass window, so I am looking forward to seeing him next in his own home and knowing more about him. I am sure he is going to be a real person very soon.

On the whole, our family works and plays hard, but there is one member who takes his job so seriously that not even the advent of a baby curtails his working hours. Don’t think John lost one hour. I am glad of this, for there is a real obligation on every one of us these days to do our job, whatever it may be, a little better than we have done it before.

If the need comes for any of us to do a different kind of work from what we are doing at present, the call will be unmistakable. But the fact that we do our daily jobs well will make it easier for anyone who has to take our place and will make us more efficient in anything else we have to take up. Besides going on with the daily routine, keeps our feet on the ground and that is sorely needed in times like these.

Two extremes have come to me in the last few days. One was a young man who announced to me that all talk of a “fifth column” was ridiculous and that there was no such thing in the United States. This, just because he and his friends and those with whom he talked, did not happen to touch any “fifth column” activities.

On the other hand, a woman suggested that we all go out and learn to shoot and sleep with a gun beside our beds in preparation for parachute troops or riots in our neighborhoods.

Both of these attitudes are obviously silly. We want to take proper precautions but, in other ways, we want to go on with our daily life and our daily job in calm security.

RADICALS AND THE ARTS: Miss Dorothy Day, a former rough and tumble radical who became a Catholic, has written a book calledFrom Union Square to Rome, in which she asks herself if the old desire to be with the poor and mean and abandoned was not mixed with a desire to be with the dissipated.

The question has arisen in other lands, prompted by the conduct and language and the studied physical and moral frowsiness of individuals who have identified themselves with radical movements.

The arts also have served as an excuse for a dirty way of life, and some artists of this type, being incompetent painters and writers, easily persuade themselves that they could command high prices if they would compromise with their principles. They become radical painters and writers to excuse their failure to themselves and disguise it to their friends.

Greenwich Village 20 years ago was a haunt of sloppy fakers who said they desired to live their lives in their own way, unfettered by middle-class conventions — which was another way of saying that they wanted to engage in some promiscuous sleeping-around and didn’t like soap. They had read about the art and independent thinking in a dirty quarter of Paris, and for a time maintained a similar artistic and intellectual slum in New York, most of whose inhabitants overdrank and produced punk poetry and short stories and incompetent smears on canvas.

There were quite a few young corn-fed frauds of both sexes from the Middle West, putting into effect ideas of conduct and morality which they had heard talked up on the campus, but the colony in New York, as well as the one in Paris, also in included unsightly females of considerable age with small private incomes who liked to sit around nasty little joints listening to the talk and reading of the unwashed literati and squinting at distorted pictures and imagine themselves to be of the arts.

In summer groups of such people move to places in the far suburbs to go around half-naked, if not altogether nude, and the town of Westport, Conn., which did have a colony of legitimate artists, suffered from the presence of carousing counterfeits. The neighbors got an impression that art meant free love, personal filth and drunkenness, and that most writers and artists were Communists, because the incompetents are likely to condemn a system which refuses to appreciate their talents.

It was not any scientific curiosity that prompted the fad of Viennese mind-probing, but an appetite for horribly foul sex stuff and the hope of dirty people that some head-feeler would tell them that they could cure their nervousness only by spending a week-end in a cabin off somewhere away from it all with some other man’s girl or some other woman’s gentleman friend. Medical necessity might just justify conduct which otherwise would be difficult to explain, and when both members of a domestic combination were similarly troubled the doctor’s orders were likely to be regarded as law.

Radical thought and belief does not truly express itself in filthy attire and dirty fingernails, for radicals purport to be intelligent, and it is only the ignorant who have an excuse for dirt when soap and water are almost free and whiskbrooms are a dime. Nevertheless, affected frowsiness has come to be offered as evidence of advanced thought, and profane and obscene speech is sometimes offered by women as proof that they are fighting mad at the condition of the poor or the sufferings of the Spanish Communists and don’t give a damn for the opinion of the complacent respectables who wash their smug and stupid faces.

Probably it is not so much the radical ideas but offensive personalities, and on warm days an odor as of something not quite fresh, which have made most Americans suspicious of radicalism. There is also a deterrent in the apparent, though not real, requirement that to sympathise with radical ideas one must give up hygiene, become personally filthy and, as between husband and wife, each agree that the other may jump the fence whenever he or she is troubled by a dream.

YOUTH AT `DEAD END,’ WHAT’S THE CURE?: Young people — mobs of them! Laughing squads of lovely girls, husky boys, lining up for the annual graduation parade. Studies over, school days at an end, off they go. Into what? Into a world which yesterday petted and encouraged them, but is now suddenly indifferent to their need, hostile to their demands. Into an enforced idleness that wrecks their pride and enthusiasm, destroys their ambition and illusions…turns dreams into doubt, determination into despair and patriotism into an embittered sneer.

“Scarehead stuff”? No! The tragic and shameful truth. Yearly, 2,000,000 — TWO MILLION, COUNT ‘EM! — young Americans, cream of the crop in brain and brawn, leave our schools and step down and out to join the ranks of the unemployed.

Timber lands, oil wells, scenic beauty, fruit trees, livestock — cows, apples, pigs, peaches – all these precious “natural resources” the nation fights strenuously to protect and conserve — spending, willingly, billions in that struggle. Yet each year, two million young graduates and uncounted thousands of uneducated youngsters — more precious to America than all her other “natural resources” combined — are junked!

For, remember, unemployment means more than an empty pocket. It means an empty spirit… an empty spirit which breeds maggots as surely as dead flesh.

Have you seen the play Dead End? There’s as shocking a sermon-in-the-flesh as a nation ever faced. Hush…darkness…the curtain rises on such a scene, such a problem as you may find in any American city today. An east side’s “dead end” terminal at the river’s edge. Rotting tenements…crumbling warehouses…cluttered with filth, riddled with hideouts. Above the brawling, blowsy, fly-blown hell juts the hanging garden of a millionaire. Below — scuttling through the stinking darkness like a pack of rats, goes The Gang.

The Gang! All children — some of them mere babes — they paw the garbage for food, pounce like beasts on anyone they hate — anything they desire. Snickering — without a flicker of conscience — they inflict incredible torture, retail absolute depravity. Why not? Unwanted, unloved, not one of them has ever known decent pride or joy. Cut off from all life’s honorable trails, they seek adventure in the “Dead End” slime.

Are the young people themselves to blame? Have they become spoiled by the easy luxury of this Machine Age…are they “too choosey” to accept jobs which their fathers took gladly?

Or is society responsible? Should the Government, regardless of party, conserve and protect youth as it now conserves and protects its timber land, scenic beauty, livestock? Is not youth the most precious of all “natural resources” and should it not be treated accordingly?

Do you remember Henley’s magnificent rallying cry, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”? In those lines the fighting human spirit hurls its defiance at adversity. Time and again that spirit – blazing in the heart of the Youth — has swept America out of its “Dead End,” ON TO VICTORY!

I, `SPY’: Shirley was not especially astonished to learn that following a press breakfast with some of the girls from the cast of Minsky Follies that I was helping them find new lodging… Cheryl Taylor was the young lady in question and I picked up facts I hadn’t known about, like she ordinarily sings, but had to be a “Show Girl” because she had her jaw broken in an automobile accident some months back. A show girl, I find, is one who walks around “with” clothes. A Minsky “model,” on the other hand, has most of her clothes artfully removed. Glamorous Lili St. Cyr, however, is one of the “stars” along with comedian Pinky Lee… And she doesn’t exactly wear a “Mother Hubbard.” At the Orpheum.

Annie will be getting out her gun at the Aqua Theater at the behest of Greater Seattle Inc., starting July 2. Vivacious Gisele McKenzie will play the part of Annie and I might mention she’s doing one of my favorite musical comedies – Annie Get Your Gun!

The new Tiki Shop down at Leschi along Lake Washington is one to really flip over, the girls tell me. Betty Minor Evans, an old school friend of mine, and her partner have, to my knowledge, the only Seattle sop specializing in Hawaiian clothes for men and women. They went to Hawaii (how’s that for tough work?) and had things made up to their own specifications. Not the loud Aloha shirt bit, but elegant casual and cock-fashions, displayed in a tasty shop along with rare black coral and other types of jewelry and fine handmade wooden ware for the table. Betty’s off to Hawaii again this week, and I must say this sure beats doing your buying in the 7th Ave. Garment District in New York.

The Seahorse, that wonderful restaurant at Mukilteo, begs to report that it now can up the population of Mukilteo by 70 per cent every day without discommoding anyone. They’ve doubled the capacity of the restaurant and now there are two lines to the groaning smorgasbord tables. Mukilteo population — 1,000. Usual Wed. smorgasbord and dinner, at the Seahorse, about 700.

WHAT’S NUDE AT THE MOVIES?: Gamercy, Madison & Broadway. World premiere The Immoral West & How It Was Lost by producers of Erotica and Mr. Teas. Nudes & Dudes. Color, ample parking, free coffee… Guild 45th Street, 2115 N. 45th Street. Surftide 77. Hilarious parody of TV “whodunits.” Detective Bernard Bingbang seeks beauteous babe with birthmark. $500,000 color production.

FOR YOU PHOTOGRAPHERS: Hollywood Studios, 111 Stewart St., has comely models like the above posing 1-10 pm daily. Technical aid, lighting provided; camera rentals; individual or group sessions. MA 2-5555.

AND NOW ABOUT LIQUOR: Never on Sunday. Bootleggers are hard to find and expensive. If you don’t have a friend with a well-stocked liquor cabinet, you’ll be dry on Sunday if you don’t stock up. Some liquor stores open from 11 am to 11 pm. Check phone book… Beer taverns can be walked in on off the street & ladies can sit at bar, but they can’t call it a bar… Cocktail lounges are tucked away behind food. You can’t let children see liquor prepared so teen agers have to eat & or dance concealed from the bar. Women can’t sit at bar, but can sit at piano, which is why we have so many “piano” bars. Liquor hours: ‘Till 2 am except Saturday, when it’s midnight. Sit still when you’re doing your drinking. I don’t think it’s the law, but it certainly is the custom not to carry your drinks in a cocktail lounge. The waitress will call you on it if you do.

SHIRLEY’S COLUMN: One of the most often-asked questions by visitors to the fair is, “where can I order good salmon?” One of the best answers to that question is “The Viceroy.” We were there for lunch the other day and were delighted to find that Henk Straatmann not only is their Maitre d’ now, but served us salmon with his practiced continental flourish. It was poached, juicy — with his wonderful Hollandaise – and a bottle of Wente Bros. Riesling. An elegantly satisfying place to dine in style — The Viceroy.

We’ll be partying about the HMS Bounty (of MGM movie fame) as this issue comes out. It’s arriving 9 days late on account of storms. No wonder they used to sail to Seattle via Honolulu in the old days! She’ll be at Shilshole Marina for a week or so for the public to sample.

Our Mr. Fecker, Mayor of Pioneer Square and one of the partners in Louie’s and the Blue Banjo, reports that attendance at Louie’s has doubled since they put the entrance on the alley, complete with peephole for doorman, “Wolfgang.” You can depart by the backdoor of the Blue Banjo, step down the dark alley to Louie’s. It all gives you a wicked “prohibition era” type feeling.

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(LATTER-DAY NOTE: Former Stranger editor S.P. Miskowski had the novel idea of turning one entire issue of the paper into a collection of “found texts,” cut and pasted together with no overt acknowledgment of their true origins. My entry combined Eleanor Roosevelt, conservative Hearst Newspapers columnist Westbrook Pegler, some Depression-era activist whose name I’ve since forgotten, and Seattle Guide editor and Underground Tour founder Bill Speidel.)