Letters, Radiograms, and Seasickness
#153: More letter research, a doodle, Liz Chaderton, Rajiv Surendra, Shane Finan, PeerTube, Patrice Vecchione, Mark Gisbourne, Postwar Art, Al Stewart, Tabassian, Cissoko, & Graham
THEN & NOW
I continue to sort through my parents’ letters, trying to find out exactly what ship my mother boarded to come to the U.S. By lunch time, today, I hadn’t found it, but I did succeed in separating (almost) all the 1940s-50s letters from all the 1960s-80s letters! So, that’s a start.
As a child, I was used to seeing letters from the Philippines appear in our mailbox in Santa Cruz; as an older adult the world of hand-written letters had receded with the advent of the computer and internet. But I’m now so habituated to using email and social media that—except for this research into my parents’ letters—I always think of email as the first line of communication, and I have stopped being a letter writer.
But, going through all these old letters written on stationery, I find it amazing how often people communicated via airmail in those days. Back then, airmail was the swiftest mode for sending paper mail across the oceans.
And for really quick service, there were “RCA Radiograms,” typed messages transmitted by radio. The messages had bright red headers displaying the RCA logo’s red lightning bolt. Two views of the earth were depicted on the left and right sides of the logo; the word “Fast“ was above the globe showing the Americas, and “Direct” above the globe showing the continents of Africa, Europe, and Australia. Radiograms were sort of the “Twitter” or “Bluesky” of communication in those days; you had to get right to the point and keep your message short—barely enough space for one sentence. And messages were much more private back then!
While sorting letters by decade, I read paragraphs from a few random missives, which revealed a bit more of my parents’ story. For example, in one letter from 1948, I learned that my grandfather’s1 land was in Tampi, Sorsogon. Both of my parents communicated with relatives from Mindanao (on my dad’s side) more often than I had thought. I learned that two families from San Francisco—close friends of my father who would later become my godparents—began writing to my mom as early as 1949, assuring her that they would be there for her, in case she needed anything while Dad was at sea.
Later this afternoon, I finally found a letter relating why my mother missed her embarkation date of March 16, 1950 on the U.S.A.T. General W. H. Gordon, and I learned the name of the ship that finally carried her to the United States. Believing that her husband would be worried, she had sent him two radiograms, and finally a letter dated March 22nd, letting him know she would be arriving in San Francisco on the S.S. President Cleveland.
I had seen photos of my mother after the war when she was still in Manila, and she did not look well. She had lost a lot of weight. So I wasn’t surprised to read that, shortly before the embarkation date and after getting a tooth pulled during a dentist visit, she came down with the flu; soon after, her gums started hemorrhaging. A doctor prescribed “metaphin,”2 which seemed to help. She tried to convince her family that she could leave on March 16, but they weren’t having any of that.
Instead, they arranged for her to leave in April on the S.S. President Cleveland, a “1940s moderne” tourist-class ship that also carried migrants, but provided much better lodgings than the refugee-carrying troop ship General W. H. Gordon. Even the economy class on the President Cleveland had a “lounge, veranda, and pool aft on the lower decks.” Nevertheless, as Mom reported to me decades later, she spent almost the entire voyage miserably seasick. No doubt it also cost the family a lot more money to reserve a berth for her on the President Cleveland—which is probably why Mom requested $200 extra from Dad, saying she would explain why when she saw him in San Francisco.
As luck would have it, I found a 1949-50 video of the S.S. President Cleveland. About halfway through, it shows the war-torn rubble of Manila and postwar Hong Kong. The soundtrack by Ralph Vaughn Williams3 lends a melancholy air to the film; during those early post-war years (and despite the “tourist-class” status of the ship), many of the passengers were traveling out of necessity—leaving home and setting out for a hopeful but uncertain life in foreign lands.
Watching the video, I can more fully appreciate how my mother felt upon leaving her large family in Manila—the city that had suffered so much destruction and violence during the war—and to arrive in San Francisco, alone, to start a new life—her husband at work on a ship, hundreds of miles away.
I had briefly read, in one of my mother’s letters, that her mother, my grandmother Matea Abad Groyon, was unhappy about her eldest daughter leaving for the U.S., and came close to vetoing the trip altogether. As it turned out, the two would never see each other again.
ART
Sometimes you just need to doodle. I started out by drawing this with a Rapidograph technical pen (Rapidographs don’t leak ink) while sitting in bed, listening to a lecture on YouTube. The next day, I finished it off on the dining table with a glass dip pen and ink. It’s amazing how easy it is to control ink flow with a glass dip pen (although some are easier to use than others). They are both beautiful and functional.
The pen I used above is by “m. x. made,” and it was inexpensive, bought on Amazon. But it does the job well. Regardless of how cheap or expensive, you have to handle glass dip pens carefully: press too hard, and they can break.4
RABBIT HOLE
Watercolorist Liz Chaderton on glass dip pens and the best inks for them:
Actor, artist, and calligrapher Rajiv Surendra: “Letter Writing is Not Dead! Part 1”:
Irish artist Shane Finan creates art in response to the Jackie Clarke archive and the Irish Civil War, with inspiration by local (Santa Cruz) scholar Donna Haraway. This grabbed my attention because of my interest in both newspaper and image archives and art. Also, I’m posting this because I’m a bit frustrated by the fact that many of the best videos are produced on multinational conglomerate-owned YouTube—i.e., Google. But there IS a de-centralized, non-corporate (no advertising!) alternative, and that’s PeerTube, where the video in the link above is posted. It’s a perfectly good platform. But it needs more art content, especially art that is not digital. If I make any future video art content, I’m thinking of using PeerTube.
Recycled Book Art, a workshop with author/artist Patrice Vecchione at the Monterey Public Library, July 18, 10:15—12:45 pm. Got an old book you’d like to recycle as art? This sounds fun, and I’m going. See you there?
Book art by Patrice Vecchione. Art historian Mark Gisbourne on “The Haptic Eye Part I: The Eyes of the Skin.” A few years ago, I wrote a longish essay on haptic art. It’s been awhile since I’ve thought of it, but Gisbourne’s focus on “the immediacy of sense experience” brings it all back:
“Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965.” Art Museum Director Okwui Enwezor and curators of Haus der Kunst take you on a tour of an art exhibition about the postwar period and its repercussions—artistic and otherwise—around the world. Content Warning: Images pertaining to war, death, and destruction.
SOUNDINGS
Al Stewart’s songs always seem to be about some kind of liminal situation—being between or after wars (“Post World War II Blues”), standing on the border, migrating, or getting lost in the past. Here he is singing one of my favorites, “Time Passages,”5 live at Daryl’s House Club in 2022 with The Empty Pockets. The song seems appropriate for this issue:
Well I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There's something back here that you left behind
—from “Time Passages,” by Alistair Stewart and Peter White
Constantinople / Kiya Tabassian, Ablaye Cissoko, Patrick Graham / “TRAVERSÉES” — Full concert:
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My mother’s father, Ignacio Grefalda Groyon.
Or possibly “metaphen” (nitromersol, a mercury-containing medication used as a disinfectant during that period).
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 in D Major: III. Romanza; Lento, Sir John Barbirolli.
You can also repair the tip by polishing the broken end with a fine grade of sandpaper.
“Time Passages” written by: Alistair Ian Stewart, Peter Harry White. Album: Time Passages Live. Released: 1978. Video by Patrick Gill & TJ ByrnesAl Stewart with The Empty Pockets - LIVE at Daryl's House Club April 18, 2022. Production, Recording & Mixing by Peter Moshay.
Also loved Rajiv! I am reminded of all those years in Belize (22!) during which I wrote at least once a month, usually twice, to my parents. My mother saved many of my blue foldable airmail letters, and perhaps it is time to find the box they are inhabiting.
Amazing footage. How brave she was to venture into the unknown!