snowglobes? snowdomes?

[George Thompson]

Some years ago a man teaching a course here on baseball in literature
asked me if the library could get 25 copies of "Babe Ruth caught in a
snowstorm", by John Alexander Graham (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1973),
describing it as the best baseball novel ever written.  He wanted each
of his prospective students to have a copy to take home.  I found a
copy in the Brooklyn Public and read it myself.  If he had described it
as the worst baseball novel ever written he would have come closer, in
my opinion.

In any event, the title refers to a snowglobe with a figure of Babe
Ruth in it, which figures throughout the book.

As it turned out, I managed to acquire no copies of this book.
Nonetheless, I'm sure it is available in better libraries everywhere;
it's just that in this instance Bobst is an abjectly inferior library.
If anyone has access to a copy, you might check for what this object is
called.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
Date: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 11:16 pm
Subject: Re: snowglobes?  snowdomes?

> Don't know about pre-1950, but during that decade three
> generations of my family called 'em "those paperweights with the
> fake snow inside."
>
> Industry insiders undoubtedly knew what to call them, but I never
> noticed "snowglobe"  *or* "snowdome" till the 1980s.
>
> The level of my benightedness is not in dispute.  But were others
> at a similar loss for words?
>
> JL
> Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------
> ------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Sam Clements
> Subject: snowglobes? snowdomes?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
>
> You know. Those things that your grandmother had, the glass ball
> on a =
> stand, that had stuff inside that, when inverted or shaken, caused
> the =
> snow to fall through the liquid, perhaps around a scene.
>
> We have a column by Unca Cecil over at Straight Dope and some
> comments =
> from members there. =
> http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=3D307759
>
> My question is: What were these things commonly called in the 1900-
> 1950 =
> period, and are they known as something else in the last 20 years.
>
> Sam Clements
>
>
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