Where people come to see 'em
Another quiet week on my mathematics blog, with comics and self-examination the order of the day. Well, here.
- Reading the Comics, September 24, 2017: September 24, 2017 Edition with a Gil to look at that's got a surprisingly good class lesson thing to talk about.
- How September 2017 Treated My Mathematics Blog with readership numbers and all that.
- Reading the Comics, September 29, 2017: Anthropomorphic Mathematics Edition, with a Mutts to look at.
- Reading the Comics, October 4, 2017: Time-Honored Traditions Edition, without any pictures. Sorry.
And last, do you know What's Going On In The Amazing Spider-Man? July - October 2017 are waiting for you to learn. I thought it was all a great time myself. Anyway, for photos, here's the Merry-Go-Round Museum some more.
Rooster from about 1895 in, the sign says, the original factory paint. One of the paradoxes of carousel carving appreciation is that non-horse figures --- ``menagerie figures'' --- were surprisingly rare in the day. It was mostly horses. But that makes non-horses really interesting and thus, collected and featured. You see this bias in my own photographs. So it can give a false impression about what kinds of animals were carved. But there were a fair number of roosters and some lions and tigers and stuff like that back in the day.
Secondary figures also on the mount were common enough. Here's a tiger with a rather griffon-y dragon as a secondary figure and also someone's high-concept character.
One of the two chariots on the Merry-Go-Round Museum's working antique carousel. I'm not sure if this is an antique chariot, although the styling, especially the nude woman atop the harp atop the world-weary lion, looks it to me.
The Merry-Go-Round Museum's other chariot on the antique carousel. I also don't know whether this is an antique chariot. I get the impression that it's newer but that might just be that it's got a brighter paint scheme. It's put on the opposite side of the carousel so the two chariots don't fight.
Some more miscellaneous carousel-themed merchandise including a Makit-and-bakit kit of the kind you'd think would be easier to find these days. We just found the Makit-and-bakit shelves at Meijer last week. If there's one at Michael's it has completely escaped us.
From the Hall of Dubiously Wise Inventions: a carousel barber chair so that kids can sit down to get their hair cut and I have to imagine start hopping up and down like they were on an actual horse or one of the non-outer-row horses on a carousel. I don't know. It's great and I'd have loved it, I just don't know how well it could serve the ``stop fidgeting while you're a kid and a stranger is waving cutting blades around your ear'' goal.
Trivia: In 1907 Gimbels advertised a ten-pound tub of butter for $2.98. (It was a loss-leader.) Source: Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class, Jan Whitaker.
Currently Reading: The Vulgar Tongue: Green's History of Slang, Jonathon Green.