The 40th Anniversary, the announcer guy told us, is the Ruby Anniversary and that's probably why Michigan's State Tree is lit all in red (with a white star topper). I don't believe this is the 40th year that Michigan has had a State Tree, but it is the 40th Silver Bells in the City, with an outdoor market and --- for most of those years --- an electric light parade. We were not clear whether they mean this is the 40th time there has been a Silver Bells, or 40 years since the first Silver Bells --- note those are not the same thing --- nor how they count 2020 when they didn't do the parade or market and faked having a fireworks show. Well, you know what kind of people ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I are.
We set out about 5:00, an hour before the start of the show, and somehow were still late enough that we couldn't get a front-row spot to watch the parade from. We didn't have a bad spot, though; we were off behind the main TV camera where they let VIPs into the reviewing stand, so we actually had two lines of sight for okay photographs, one at the reviewing stand and one just past the TV camera, in front of the state capitol.
The parade went much as you might expect; though there were a couple small drops of rain there wasn't anything like the storm of 2016 that we'll never stop talking about. There were ten or so marching bands; I had only counted eight but sometimes forgot my mental count. bunnyhugger paid closer attention and said nothing bad about the bands' synchronized stepping though even I could see some of them were ... let's say unpracticed. Her uncertainty is that the final band, the one before Santa, wasn't announced as Santa's Band so she might have counted an eleventh as the band in the spot of honor there.
I don't know if it was something for the 40th Year or whatnot but there were a couple new floats more sophisticated and stylish than have been the usual for Silver Bells, including ones with animated elements. One, for the Curwood Castle over in Owosso, claimed even to have a working waterfall, although we didn't see it. Maybe it was on the other side of the float. One of the floats had a full Wizard of Oz theme going including giant ruby slippers, and this wasn't even for the roller derby team.
The announcer promised a drone show and an enhanced fireworks show and we're always up for a fireworks show. The drone show was all right, had some clever stuff, including ruby slippers clacking together, which was the prompt I needed to make me realize oh, there's a red theme because of this supposed ruby anniversary. The fireworks were good --- it's a fireworks show, after all --- but I don't know there was anything particularly heightened about it. I was just relieved the fireworks happened, since it had been very windy all day. In the reflected glow of the street lights you could see the clouds of expired fireworks were booking it to the southeast.
After the fireworks we walked down to the outdoor market where we discovered how busy the place can be if you don't go in to City Hall to warm up and use the bathroom for twenty minutes first. There was such a line at the place giving out free coffee, though, and an even longer one at the truck selling elephant ears. We eventually got through the crowds enough to buy hot chocolate, and some edible raw cookie dough that brightened bunnyhugger's day today, and some peanut brittle I haven't tried yet.
After all this we walked back to the State Tree to get some up-close photos. We don't know what all was going on but there were walls of cops marching down the sidewalk telling some people to get moving, and keep moving, and all. I don't know if this was related to the Free Palestine protesters waving signs around near the tree, or if it was just police noticing a bunch of Black people in the crowd, or if even something actually serious happened. While we were at the tree something or other happened a block east (in front of the city police headquarters) and cops ran over to whatever that all was. I can't find any news articles about the incident --- all the ones online appear to be reports about the upcoming Silver Bells --- so since I missed the 11:00 news last night I'll probably never know what was going on.
While this has been a very warm autumn, we finally started getting roughly seasonal weather this week, and after a couple hours in the cold my camera batteries decided they'd had enough. So I didn't get as many up-close pictures of the tree by night as I wanted. But I should have the chance to stop in again; this is only the start of the holiday season.
This morning, bunnyhugger went downtown again to run in the Silver Bells 5K, and by reports she did successfully, apart from walking instead (as planned). She had a reindeer costume of her own making, improving on the gear she'd had last year by making a new partial-face-mask with false fur and clay antlers and some Christmas-y pine branch decorations put in to sell the Christmasness of it all. She got a bunch of compliments about how cute it was and one comment about its spookiness from someone who seems to have mistaken it for a Krampus mask, and then apologized for ``stealing your joy''. But many more people said positive things about her costume than tried to steal her joy, so it was a good bit of work. She's gotten quite good at these partial-face-masks and is looking to chances to make more of them.
Now for some relaxing views of the most visually calm environment known to humanity, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum:
How about some more establishing shots of what Marvin's looks like above eye level? Yeah, there sure is a lot going on here. I'm not sure what Dr Marvin's Sex Change Machine is --- it's too high up to put a coin in --- but my guess is a mannequin that does a quick change from manly to womanly dress.
There's a very long chain running a twisty path along the ceiling with these big airplane models --- they're maybe two or three feet long --- and now and then someone puts a quarter in the box that makes them lurch forward and progress around a while.
And here's the Jersey Jack game Toy Story 4 doing one of those wonders that are only possible in modern pinball: it's downloading a three gigabyte patch updating the game a major version number and, as you can see from the clock, it's at about 8:40 pm, that is to say, in the middle of pinball league. It happens nobody was playing then but no reason there couldn't have been, and no reason people couldn't have been playing before and after when the game rules had changed in various ways.
I liked Toy Story 4 (it's since been replaced with the Jersey Jack Avatar); here's some of the playfield, including Bo Peep on the lower left and the miniature TV screen that provides instructions and sometimes a backwards map of New Jersey.
And here's the right-hand side of the upper playfield, including that bunny-and-duck plush that were stitched together and a pop-up ramp for that Yes I Canada guy.
Slightly broader view of the playfield. To the left of Yes I Canada! is the Gabby Gabby popup; now and then she appears on the playfield and I don't know, you hit her for some reason. I never got the hang of everything that was going on except that there was a lot going on and it was generally fun.
Trivia: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek got interested in the polishing of lenses --- leading him to creating the microscope --- from the magnifying glasses that he and other drapers used to determine the thread count of fabrics. Source: The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, Vince Beiser.
Currently Reading: Poincaré and the Three-Body Problem, June Barrow-Green.
