You Say, "To-Mah-To"...

And I say, "All of Japan will agree with you"...

To-mah-to...
The name of the vegetable (or fruit?) in Japanese, and the pronunciation of the syllables that decorate this baby T-shirt.

Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in June, so the day of the local Japanese community's annual flea market. I didn't really need a baby T-shirt, but at $.25, the design was too adorable to resist. I'm hoping it will fit a neighbor's one-and-a-half year old, so I can take pictures of him wearing it as he toddles by. He is a fast one, but maybe I can manage to get a rear view—

Two labels sewn inside the collar—

Another item I couldn't manage to resist—

This truly is using your noggin!

There are always giveaway piles, too. I picked up some home-maker magazines—

"Heart and Hand" (above, left) is devoted to recipes and crafts. Here are directions for making gift envelopes from decorative papers—

I like the inexplicable prop here; this hand-made envelope will be just the thing for storing your Blue Eagle tickets!

More seriously, it's interesting how this real artifact can become a context-free prop in a Japanese magazine illustration. I can't find any background, but the image shows tickets printed "In full compliance"—

Globe [?] Ticket Company, Los Angeles
(According to teeny and partly blurred font in magazine image)

The L.A. event may have been held under of the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, which promoted public performances throughout the country. The Library of Congress's FTP collection includes photos; posters for plays and other public performances are in the WPA poster collection. Though I've seen lots of archival images, I've never come across tickets that from one of these long-ago events.

It's history that is all but lost to popular knowledge. And a depressing, if unsurprising, thing: never try searching "NRA" without adding, Great Depression.