We've covered so many different stories here on the PermaRec Blog that it's easy to forget that Permanent Record is first and foremost about the amazing Manhattan Trade School report cards that I found in a file cabinet more than 16 years ago. With that in mind, here are two announcements:

1) I'll be doing a lecture/slideshow presentation about the report cards next Wednesday, Dec. 5, 7pm, at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Manhattan. It'll be part of a program of several short presentations (I can't speak for the others, but I know the organizers, and they usually tend to book interesting people). Admission is free. Full details here.

2) In case you missed it earlier this week, the long-delayed 10th installment in the Slate series is now available for your enjoyment.

The woman shown above is Doris Abravaya, who attended the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in the early 1930s. Her story is the focus of the latest full-length Permanent Record article on Slate, which also tells the story of the school's job placement counselor, Althea Kotter. (As you may recall, I explained how researcher Cate Bloomquist cracked that case last week.)

I'm very happy with the way this piece turned out -- hope you like it too. Check it out here.

On the left is Eva Greene Rosencrans; on the right, Beatrice Gross Zelin. These two women, born 10 years apart, lived remarkably similar lives: They both grew up poor and Jewish on New York's Lower East Side; both attended the Manhattan Trade School for Girls; both went on to have significant careers in the fashion industry, where their respective impacts continue to be felt today; both had major brushes with celebrity; and both finished their careers in the same place, where they may have met. Their stories -- among the most remarkable tales to emerge from my collection of Manhattan Trade School report cards -- are told today in my latest Permanent Record article on Slate.com.

I have a lot of additional research material that didn't make it into the Slate article. I'll be sharing some of that information here on the PermaRec blog in the coming days -- stay tuned.

Photo by Linda Cadovius

Here we have another photo of Rose Vrana, the only living link to Permanent Record, taken at her home in Florida. I told Rose's story in an article that was published yesterday on Slate.

Several readers singled out this passage from the article:

[Rose] has four grandchildren but isn't in contact with them. "They know where I live, but I don't know where they live," she said. "It's sad, but what can you do. That's life."

One commenter on Slate wrote, "How sad that her grandkids are not in contact with her! ... Call your Grandmother, visit her!" Several other readers posted similar comments, and a few people sent expressed these same sentiments to me via e-mail.

The situation regarding Rose's grandchildren was a tricky one. I assume there's a lot more to that story than simply "They know where I live, but I don't know where they live," but Rose didn't seem inclined to elaborate and I didn't want to push her. At one point I sort of circled back to the subject, but she didn't want to go there, so I backed off.

Little old ladies make for inherently sympathetic figures, and the notion of cutting off contact with a 95-year-old grandmother seems hard to fathom, so it's easy to paint the grandchildren as being in the wrong here. But who am I to say? I don't know the backstory. As most of us have experienced in one way or another, family dynamics can be very complicated affairs.

But here's the kicker: Rose may not know where her grandchildren are, but I do. The same research that led me to her turned up two grandsons living in New York. If I wanted, I could hop on the subway and be knocking on their doors in less than an hour.

That's a tempting idea, but I won't be doing it. One of my guiding principles with Permanent Record has been to avoid reopening anyone's old wounds. Likewise, I considered telling Rose what I know, but I decided it isn't my place to do that. (She doesn't use a computer, so I don't have to worry about her seeing this blog post.) Maybe her grandchildren will see the Slate article and decide they want to contact her, or maybe not. Like Rose said, that's life.

My article about 95-year-old Rose Vrana (shown above in her report card portrait and in a recent snapshot) has finally been published on Slate. You can check it out here. Enjoy.

The bad news is that most of the Slate series is still not functioning properly (grrrrr); the good news is that I've been given permission to republish the entire series here on this blog.

The first Slate article is, for the most part, fine (some of the photo links are a bit wonky, but it's mostly OK), so you can read that on Slate. You're better off reading the second, third, fourth, and fifth articles here. The photo interface here on the blog isn't as elegant as the one on Slate, but at least all the links work, all of the text is present and accounted for, and so on.

So if you want to take in the entire series, or pick up where you left off, here you go:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

More developments soon.

If you've been trying to access the Slate series and haven't been able to do so, the explanation can apparently be found above. Slate unexpectedly (at least to me) unveiled a new page format today, one consequence of which is that the Permanent Record series has become a complete mish-mash. The old URLs for the articles no longer work, and I don't want to give out the new URLs yet because the content is all jumbled up -- photo links are in the wrong places, entire swaths of text have disappeared, etc. A serious mess -- extremely frustrating!

I know some of you were taking your time to get through the series, or had bookmarked it with plans to read it later. Well, now you can't. Yes, that really stinks. Even worse, the editor and art director who produced the series both left Slate just as the articles were being published, so now the whole project is orphaned. Grrrrrr. I've sent a note to Slate's ed-in-chief, asking for the content to be corrected, restored, or whatever. Keep your fingers crossed.

On the left is an 18-year-old girl named Mary Lorang; on the right, a baseball player named Carmen Fanzone.

These two people, who never knew each other, helped bring some closure to Permanent Record -- at least for me. Their stories are told in the series' final article, which is up now on Slate.

My thanks to everyone who's offered feedback on the project. Many of you have asked what will happen now that the Slate articles have been published. For now, I plan to keep updating this blog periodically, and it's possible that the project may continue in another medium -- stay tuned.

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I discussed Permanent Record yesterday on Minnesota Public radio. You can listen to the segment here.

The card you see above comes from the file of a student named Selma Kaufman, who attended Manhatttan Trade in the 1930s (you can click on it for a larger version). The entry for Sept. 14, 1934, begins with: "Selma's father came in. Typical overfed Jewish silk salesman, with no taciturnity. He has some very good instincts, however, and is really a good father."

Yeah, those Jews, always with the good instincts. I must say, I'd never heard of the stereotype of an overfed silk salesman before, nor had I ever encountered the word "taciturnity."

The Manhattan Trade report cards are filled with offhand commentary like this -- sometimes offensive, sometimes heartbreaking, always fascinating. Today's Permanent Record entry on Slate focuses on this commentary. Check it out here.

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I'll be discussing Permanent Record today (Thursday) on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning Show. I'm told I'll be on from about 10:40-11am Central Time. You can access the live streaming audio here.

One reason the Permanent Record project has been so interesting is that I was lucky enough to have found report cards from a school that was extremely well documented. The book whose cover you see above was written in 1910 by one of the school's founders, and it explains a lot about the school's founding and early workings. The whole book is available online, as is one of the school's early annual reports. Even better, a 16-minute silent film about the school was shot in 1911 (if you have a few minutes, it's definitely worth watching). All of these resources helped me understand and interpret the information on the report cards.

The history of the school is the subject of today's Permanent Record article on Slate. Along the way, we'll take a look at a few students and their descendants, and we'll also see what the school building is like today. The article is available here.

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Special Event: This Saturday, Sept. 24, I'll be hosting a small Permanent Record gathering in Brooklyn, New York. Attendees will include some of the family members I've interviewed, some researchers who've assisted me during the project, some people from Slate, and so on. We have room for a few more people, and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to have some readers on hand. If you'd like to attend, get in touch and I'll give you the details.

Last Friday I showed you a photo of Doretta LaPorta posing with her mother's report card. Today I have a short video clip of Doretta talking about her mother and the report card.

Doretta and her mother -- and how I tracked them down -- are the focus of today's Permanent Record article over on Slate. You can check it out here (click on the "2" at the top of the page).

What you see above is how the Manhattan Trade School report cards look today (well, about 25% of them -- I have three additional boxes). When I first acquired them back in 1996, each individual student's file was stapled together, and they stayed that way until I began the Permanent Record project about two years ago, at which point I removed the staples so the cards would be easier to work with. Some of the cards have little rust stains where the staples had been.

I thought about saving the staples. A serious historian or conservator would have done that, right? Historic staples! But that seemed like a bit much, even for me, so I just threw the staples away.

Anyway: The Permanent Record series on Slate finally kicks off today, and the first installment is all about the cards and how I acquired them. The series begins here.