The holiday

Happy Juneteenth...

I have previously, in this space, mentioned On Juneteenth, an outstanding book of essays from 2021, by the distinguished historian, and Harvard professor, Annette Gordon-Reed. 

Here is the book's amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Annette-Gordon-Reed/dp/1631498835/ref

Professor Gordon-Reed's 2008 work, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

A Children's Dictionary

The book, below--The Picture Dictionary for Children--was a favorite of mine, during early childhood.

I have several books from childhood, and when I happen to look at them (or even, simply, see their spines on one of the bookshelves in the apartment), I'll often get a sense (usually a somewhat vague sense, to be sure, but a sense nonetheless) of that which I felt looking at them when I was very young. 

The dictionary was originally published in 1939 by Grosset & Dunlap; subsequent editions were brought out in 1945, 1948, and 1958 (the latter, two years after I was born).  The book's title page indicates that the 1958 edition was "Completely Revised," including new pictures. All of the pictures in the book are drawings, as opposed to photographs.

I was looking through the book recently, and noticed something which I found amusing.  

The book includes an entry for "radio" (see image below), which features a drawing of a large, old-fashioned radio (the kind which was a piece of furniture, and which had a place of prominence in many homes, during radio's most popular years as a medium). 

The book also includes a definition of the word "broadcast" (see below), which includes, likewise, a reference to radio.

Yet the 1958 edition, interestingly, does not have an entry for "television," despite television's ubiquity at the time (and whose rise, as a cultural force, had been accompanied by a significant decline in radio's popularity). There are, in the book, definitions of telegram, and telephone (see image)--but not television.  I also looked up abbreviations for television, on the off-chance they might have been included--such as "TV," and "Tee-Vee." "Tee-Vee" had been employed as a written abbreviation during the medium's early years--in some newspapers and magazines, for example. But neither abbreviation--as with the word television itself--appears in the dictionary I very much enjoyed as a child.

Television Influence, 1955

Influence--influences of many sorts (literary, popular culture, art, sports, science, etc.)--can be found in unexpected places.

Below is an image from the book The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris. The book was published in hardcover by Little, Brown in 1973. A paperback edition was released by Ticknor & Fields in 1991.

There are many images of baseball cards in the book, including one from 1955, for the player Wilmer "Billy" Shantz.  In 1954, he was a catcher with the Athletics, during their final season in Philadelphia; he stayed with the team in 1955, for its first season in Kansas City.  

His baseball career began in 1948.  In addition to his time with the Athletics, he played for various Minor League teams; a good deal of his career was spent with Triple A teams. In 1959 and 1960 he played for the New York Yankees' Triple A club in Richmond, and in 1960 was brought back to the Majors and played in one Yankees game. It was his last Major League appearance.

He returned to the Richmond team for two seasons.  He then stayed in the Yankees' Minor League system for the remainder of his career--which ended in 1969--as a player/coach, and as a manager. 

His brother was pitcher Bobby Shantz, who had a lengthy Major League career, and was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1952.

The card below, from the Bowman company, is made to look like a television set; the picture of Mr. Shantz serves, ostensibly, as the television image.  (The bottom of the card, at its center, says, for emphasis, "Color TV.") 

The authors wrote: "Around 1955, the creative people in the bubble gum game, starved as they were for new marketing and promotional techniques, decided that perhaps it was time to take advantage of the latest national craze--television."