Goodbye 2024, Hello 2025?

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It has been a pleasure to speak of all this. Ordinarily I do not believe in living in the past and seldom speak of IT.

Sonia H. Davis to Sidney and Florence Moseson, and Leonore [Moseson] Goldberg, 25 August 1964, Autobiographical Writings, Box 9, Folder 1, John Hay Library, Providence, RI.

Goodbye 2024

The end of the year is always a time of remembrance—remembering what was gained, what was lost, or what never came to be. As someone who lives by a bullet journal, I am always referring to my yearly goals page at the end of the year.  Last year I divided my annual goals to Scholarly, Literary, and Personal categories. I did the same for 2024: I had four goals for the scholarly section. I’ll break down three of them for this month’s post, and what that means for the new year in Sonia scholarship.

Goal 1: “Finish transcribing Sonia’s essays.”

While editing Two Hearts That Beat as One, I was transcribing Sonia’s essays. The first essay was transcribed on 4 October 2022, and the last on 3 June 2024. Within that span of time, I have transcribed 71 essays in total: 4 fragments, 46 essays (9 of which are duplicates with variations, and 1 that was published in The Rainbow (Vol. 2) as “Commercialism—The Curse of Art”), 21 book reviews, and miscellaneous writings.

Goal 2: “post once a month in the blog.”

With the exception of July, I published every month. The posts of 2024 were a remarkable bunch that covered an array of points, such as “What is this Phenomenon?” and “Lot #45119” which presented scans of the original draft of The Psychic Phenomenon of Love and never before seen photos of Sonia’s entire passport. Then we had biographical sketches which magnified certain phases of Sonia’s life, pertaining to her relationship with Florence Carol Greene, her correspondence with Samuel Loveman and Alfred Galpin, her time as a historical researcher, and her friendship with a Korean spy, Kilsoo Kenneth Haan.

Goal 3: “Draft and finish Sonia on Amateur Journalism.”

I felt called this year to focus on Sonia’s contribution to Amateur Journalism, especially after my two-part posts, “Amateurdom and the Editor” and “Amateurdom of the Editor”, last year. I decided to expand the subject into a full length book called An Ardent Recruit. For the majority of the year, I studied amateur journalism and its history, reading book after book. A short article on the topic was published by The Fossils in their July issue: The Fossil, Vol. 120, No. 4, Whole No. 400.

I am delighted to think that you appreciate my short and sketchy biography.

Sonia H. Davis to Leonore Goldberg, 11 September 1964, Box 1, Folder 1, From S.H. Davis 1944 – 1970, John Hay Library, Providence, RI.

Hello 2025

So, what does all of this mean for the new year in Sonia scholarship? My immediate focus remains on An Ardent Recruit. There is still so much more to unearth, many archives to scour, many threads to unite into a readable treatise. Beyond that, Sonia’s essays and correspondence remain long-term projects that I hope to pursue as time permits. Whether these projects come sooner or later, each one contributes to the larger goal of preserving and sharing Sonia H. Davis’s life and work.