QSL card for Pioneers Radio Club of Tallinn, Estonia

OK, it's silly that this is my first QSL card post in nearly four years. Time flies! If this piques your hobby interests, please check out the QSL cards category tag to see more than three dozen past Papergreat posts full of vintage ham radio correspondence grooviness. 

This nifty card, UR2KAN, which details a communication on October 1, 1973, features the Pioneers Radio Club of Tallinn, Estonia, USSR. Tallinn is the capital and most populous city of Estonia, which parted ways with the Soviet Union's occupation in August 1991. These days, in a disheartening sign of the times, Estonia is bolstering its defense capabilities and practicing for evacuations in the event that murderous Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't satisfied with merely attacking and occupying Ukraine.

We're mostly left to imagine what the Pioneers Radio Club was all about, unless we get a miraculous visit from a commenter. The only hints appear on a webpage on QRZ.com, which discusses a slice of Eastern European ham radio history from the perspective of Boris Gavrenko, who was born in the Soviet Union in 1933 and much later came to live in the United States. 

He states, in passing:

"In 1961 I met the gang of UR2KAN - UR2KAW (then the club call of a Tallinn Pioneer Palace in Estonia). It was their support and guidance that enabled the opening of the UB5ARTEK (later U5ARTEK) - All-Union International Pioneer camp in the Crimea." 

 

It seems the Pioneers Radio Club may have been something of a youth group in Tallinn, but anything beyond that is a guess. But maybe someone will stumble upon this someday and tell us more.

Pamela & James Mason's 1949 cat book

Here's a rare book, The Cats in Our Lives, that I'd love to stumble across in an independent used bookstore someday. In 1949, famed actor James Mason (1909-1984) and his then-wife Pamela Mason (1916-1996, born Pamela Helen Ostrer and also known as Pamela Kellino), who was an actress, author and screenwriter, wrote about their many cats. James Mason illustrated the volume.

They were unabashed cat lovers, as detailed in this 2014 post on the Cinema Cats blog, which is still going strong and is well worth your time!

“We are just people who keeps cats, that’s all,” James Mason told columnist Earl Wilson in 1950, according to Cinema Cats.

We resemble that statement.

Here are some online reviews of The Cats in Our Lives:

• "Mason writes just as you would have expected to — easy to hear his speaking voice and slight smile as you read, and Pamela was fun to get to know as well. Their experiences were manifold and interesting. Tragedy and fun go hand in hand with pet ownership over a period of years and the Masons had more than their share of both all through the war and the last years of the 40s decade, traveling on train and steamship all over England and America while keeping up with their deeply loved cats." (Allan, on Goodreads in 2008)
• "The book itself is fun, and it was written during the early years of Mason's marriage to Pamela Kellino when they were young and happy, so it's a very light-hearted book and it's nice to see Mason's sense of humor. His illustrations are, as all of his drawings are, very sweet and stylized." (Kathleen on Amazon in 2013)
• "In some ways, James was more revealing of his personality and character in this book than in the autobiography he wrote many years later. He and Pamela take turns writing the various chapters and you soon get a great insight as to what life was like during WWII in England and how very differently cats were treated in those days. They also wrote about non-cat topics. James discussion of raising chickens during the war in order to provide eggs for himself and his neighbors is very charming and down to earth." (Meezer on Amazon in 2010)

The Masons' cats included Toy Boy, Tribute, Whitney Thompson and Lady Augusta Leeds. (We have a Lady Samantha Penguin, who has many other names too.) You can read a little more about The Cats in Our Lives and see some of James Mason's illustrations in this 2016 piece by Sadie Stein for The Paris Review.

Bonus: Some recent cat photos

from our household 

(maybe I should write book)

From top: Venus, Orange and Dusty

Big Boi (left) and his son Bandit in the sunbeams

Venus, looking very photogenic, with Joan's artwork behind him. 

(This is roughly as close as I'm ever allowed to get to Venus.)

Unofficial family member Mamacita, a neighborhood feral we've known since December 2021. She's the mother or grandmother of several of our indoor cats. She's spayed now (hence the tipped ear). Her feral son Creamsicle takes good care of her. She likes cheese.

Anthropomorphic food in 1948 Children's Activities recipes

Children's Activities for Home and School was a large-size (10½ inches by 13½ inches) staplebound magazine published during the middle 20th century by Child Training Assocation Inc. of Chicago. It seems that "Fun in the Kitchen," edited by Louise Price Bell, was a regular feature that showcased recipes submitted by children. (The guidelines do stipulate: "No recipe will be accepted for publication, however, if it is not accompanied by Mother's statement" the the recipe has been checked for accuracy.)

The recipes in the January 1948 issue of the magazine are accompanied by cute illustrations of anthropomorphic food by Sonia Roetter. (For more about Roetter, check out the sleuthing done by Rachel for a 2017 post on The Wandering Bunny blog.) 

The recipes and illustrations are pictured below. For search engine purposes, they are:

• Scalloped Potatoes by Evelyn M. Gavin of Lindsay, Montana
• Bran Muffins by Robert Ann Edgcomb of Ottawa, Illinois
• Tossed Salad by Sally Glensky of Tarentum, Pennsylvania
• Icebox Pudding by Pete Beltemacchi of Chicago, Illinois
• Rice Krispies Cookies by Betsy Pierce of Bismarck, North Dakota

Previous posts featuring anthropomorphism:

• "It's Time To Renew," according to this anthropomorphic alarm clock
• "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming-Pan" (1890)
• Vintage, punny get-well-soon card
• Freaky illustrations found within "The Story of Soil"
• Five groovy ads from the 1933 Furst-McNess cookbook
• 1960s Russian С Новым годом postcard ("Happy New Year!")
• Slightly creepy vintage Valentine's Day postcard
• Potentially unnecessary bonus image of a blender with a face
• Peachy little corned beef loaves and healthful cheese dishes
• Everything's better with anthropomorphism (1949's Plant Maintenance Manual)
• A fun "Merry Hallowe'en" postcard
• Happy Thanksgiving: Enjoy vintage anthropomorphic vegetables
• The one with the anthropomorphic light poles
• Anthropomorphic Bockwurst would be a terrible band name

When teenaged me tried to draw Cory Snyder

As I detailed in 2020, I was a big fan of MicroLeague Baseball as a teenager in the late 1980s. Using the "General Manager / Owner Disk," I created my own super team, called the Wallingford Smashers. For versimilitude, and because I never had a girlfriend during high school, I took the time to create a yearbook for each season of the Smashers' existence. (Yes, we're deep in The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. territory here.)

Anyway, I still have most of the yearbooks. For this one, I got creative and did my own freehand sketch of Cory Snyder, who in addition to being a Smasher in my fictional universe was a young slugger on Cleveland's real-world MLB team. That season Snyder batted .321 with 33 home runs and 81 RBIs for the Smashers, edging out Eric Davis for team MVP honors.

So this very poor drawing by me (sorry, Cory) completes the unlikely trifecta of Hideko Takamine, Toshire Mifune and Cory Snyder drawings on Papergreat. 

City of Wilmington, Delaware, scrip from 1862

Here's an interesting piece of U.S. currency history that was tucked away with some of my family's ephemera. It's a note measuring 5¾ inches by 2⅜ inches, with a value of 5 cents. 

It's dated September 1, 1862, and the text states: "Twelve Months after date the City of Wilmington Will pay FIVE CENTS to bearer in current funds when presented in sums of One Dollar. No. 2962."

There are two signatures at the bottom and two sketches of mystery women.

This is scrip, which is any substitute for legal tender. It was issued five months after the start of the Civil War, which went from April 1861 to April 1865. Coins were in severely short supply during the war. Many were hoarded because the metal used to make them had intrinsic value, and people had greater trust in coins than in paper currency. However, there was still a need for small change to keep the economy functioning, so these paper notes were created to take the place of pennies, dimes and nickels.

This one was never cashed in. So I reckon the City of Wilmington, Delaware, made a nickel off my family. Written at the top in pencil is Helen Simmons. Our family tree has a Helen Simmons Carey (1894-1957) and a Helen Gregg Simmons Chandler (1857-1913), the latter being my great-great-grandmother. I suspect this was hers, perhaps passed to her by her parents: Bauduy Simmons (1805-1882) and Ann Gregg Simmons (1811-1886).