This broadcast describes Roosevelt’s stop in Louisville on his 1938 transcontinental tour. It begins with the radio broadcaster describing the setting and general mood in exacting detail. Roosevelt, leaning on his military aid, Colonel Edward M. Watson, delivers a speech addressing the cataclysmic events of the 1937 floods and outlines his plans for a coordinated federal agency to address natural disasters and to build an infrastructure for flood prevention (i.e. TVA).
This broadcast will coincide roughly with Eve and Patrick’s arrival at their Uncle Isaac’s farm in Kentucky. This will be one of the first broadcasts Eve hears, and she will be particularly fascinated to hear the President speak from a nearby locale. In part this broadcast will affirm the intersection of her rural environment with a more urban and global one. She allows herself to daydream more than ever of living elsewhere. Direct quotations from Roosevelt’s speech as well as the newscaster’s descriptions will appear in a few poems from Chapter 2, as they do in the poem “Cathedral Radio, 1938” included below. Phrases directly quoted from the broadcast are marked with asterisks.
