austin_dern | Entries tagged with merry-go-round museum

June 2025

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So. Thursday. I got the congratulations. I went into a round of doubts that the thing had happened. This was not only because the last six years have been so harsh on the idea of good things happening. It also reflected that when my recruiter's supervisor called --- phoning because I had not answered the recruiter's call in the nearly ten minutes since it was left; some recruiters have got no chill whatsoever --- he said I was ``shortlisted''. To me, that sounds like ``I am one of a handful of candidates'', and I wanted it confirmed that I had actually been offered the job. Yes; apparently the term of art here is that the shortlist is the list of people they want to hire and they were offering to me first (or anyone ahead of me had already rejected it). So that was cleared up.

Next came a bunch of forms. I-9, W-4, direct deposit, that sort of thing. They also wanted copies of my passport and social security card and when we got to that I asked if there were a secure dropbox or encrypted e-mail system they had since I don't really want to send my social security number, passport, and bank information out on the open Internet. They said if I could send it encrypted that was great or they could take it by fax or physical mail. I would end up doing both. It turns out Kinko's has self-service faxing right from their photocopiers, although it's slower than I remember faxing being from a dedicated unit. Then I went to the post office to mail this stuff to their office which turns out to be next to Farmington Hills, where Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum looms. When I got home there was a fresh message on the machine that they couldn't read one of the things on the faxed copy of my passport, and before I could call (or e-mail; this was something safe to send in plain text) they called again. No chill, I tell you.

Another thing I needed for this: a drug screening. Yes, for a hybrid office job programming, they want to check whether I might be on the marihuana. Which has been legal for several years in Michigan, at least as long as you spell it wrong like that. Also four other drugs and I forget which but bunnyhugger looked them up. I suppose it's a blanket requirement for any state- or state-support jobs but it's still hard to contextually justify. Especially the pot screening. The screening center they had is a lab on the south side of town, near one of the movie theaters, sitting in a strip mall that looks like where you'd go for urine sample collection. That went like you'd expect. Somehow it still weirded me that the little jar with my urine in it was warm, even though it would be alarming if it were not. Somehow I don't get that same reaction when I've donated blood and happen to feel that bag.

And, I started slowly to share the news. With my parents, first, and bunnyhugger's parents. And my brother who'd given me so much advice about interviewing. He had a flood of new information to provide, ranging from offering to share his PowerPoint deck about how to make useful reports to one's supervisors and also something about using Medical Savings Accounts, or possibly Health Savings Accounts. Apparently if you load up enough money into one you can use it as a hack to get tax-free investment income. I'm going to have him repeat all that in print for me later.

The recruiter's supervisor told me they wanted me to start the 18th of December. This is a Sunday. He promised to check and get back to me and yes, they mean the week of the 18th. So, the week before Christmas, which is not bad since it suggests I'll have a gentle introduction to things. I'm not at all sure what to expect that first day since I'm supposed to go into the office Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I hope someone tells me what they expect.

(I also don't know when to expect pay to start. I'm hoping that it's going to be weekly as it would make my life a lot easier to have a paycheck by the 30th of December. Again, I suppose someone will say something at some point.)

Here's more of the Merry-Go-Round Museum from our visit Halloweekends Friday, before we'd even seen Cedar Point yet.

Another model merry-go-round up front, this one with just a few horses but finely detailed ones that look plausibly like replicas of real figures to me, but I'm not the expert.

The remote control for one of the merry-go-round miniatures, along with the playlist.

And here's one of the prizes of the carousel (on loan from the Dinger collection, which made carousel-animal carving an appreciated art), one of the carousel horses featured on that famous stamp series.

Some more of the horses set up front, and a view of one of the other carousel stamp horses.

The rounding board here marks the passage from the front room to the main part of the viewing gallery and the museum's operating carousel.

Sheet of the carousel stamps fresh from the 80s.

Trivia: In 1643 Connecticut passed a law giving two highway surveoyrs per town the right to call every fit man to mend highways once a year. Refusal carried a five-shilling fine. Source: The King's Best Highway: The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Route That Made America, Eric Jaffe.

Currently Reading: Bizarro #10, Dan Piraro.

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I'm ... employed?

It's just like that. Wednesday I went in, for my first in-person interview since, uh, 2007? This for another job with the State of Michigan and I don't know why they wanted an in-person interview but, fine. I'd gotten my dress shirt dry-cleaned last week, and after bunnyhugger urged it I wore my very good suit, the one I got married in. And found a rubber band to tie my hair back, rather than let it be the glorious halo of hair that it achieves now when it's fully dry. My hair isn't long enough for a real ponytail, but this did give me the look of Senior Computer Guy Who Has Opinions About Endian-ness, or maybe a lesser signer of the Constitution. We're talking your Jonathan Daytons, here. (Don't look up Jonathan Dayton.) She thought I looked sharp and, yeah, I did. It turns out I might be not just a long-hair guy but a tied-long-hair guy.

The interview was at one of the state office buildings that I haven't quite walked to, in the past, but that I could if it weren't cold and for 10 am. And extremely windy; we spent the day with a steady, like, 20 mph wind heading east.

It was much more of a technical interview than I expected, although it was also a generally lower level of difficulty than I would have expected either. As in, the first question was to name the three kinds of list element in HTML. I was taken aback and asked, ``You mean, like, ordered lists and unordered lists?`` And was told that I had nailed it, with my instant reply to that. The third type of list they didn't even know of until they started looking up questions to ask, and it came to me about as they revealed it. (Dictionary lists, used for glossaries in the HTML standards guidelines of 1998 and forgotten about since.) Some of the questions I aced. One --- what the difference is between an SQL 'INNER JOIN' and an 'OUTER JOIN' --- I was prepped for because I'd bombed it at the previous interview. (I warmed up with the joke that ``the INNER JOIN is the one I always start with and then realize I wanted OUTER JOIN instead''.) Some I just went on too long about; the first fifteen minutes or so was me explaining longer than they wanted and being chided for that. I explained that as a former academic it's my compulsion to explain a lot and hard to get me to shut up, and then I remembered that the last thing I should do --- ever, but especially in this setting --- is be self-deprecating. Even when it's funny, it's giving the wrong impression to people who don't know the real you.

And some I just bombed, including failing to define ``polymorphism'', a basic piece of programming, although I was able to get enough of a chat going that I think they remembered me as having answered it? And I bobbled explaining what a ``foreign key'' is in a database, although if I'd just started talking I probably would have worked it out before the end of a sentence. (It's when one table contains the unique identifier --- the key --- for another table. So, like, if you have a table of user's names, it might have as a foreign key their ID number, used in other tables.) Near the end we came to a section on Angular, a technology I don't know anything about, and when I said I'd only ever studied it without deploying an example they asked if I'd rather skip those questions. I would be so grateful if they did.

If anything did clinch it for me, it might have been the last topic, about Americans with Disability Act compliance. Or as I see it, just simple accessibility. I've been trying to make accessible web sites since I first read about the issue in like 1997, so I was able to quickly rattle off things that make web sites more accessible. Like, not fixing type fonts or sizes. Using only high-contrast color pairings. Never using color as the lone signifier of meaning; you need color, shape, and texture at a minimum (texture being more a real-world matter, but you can style things so as to reinforce color). That for any audio you need a transcript; for any video you need a transcript and a descriptive audio. One question was what are some HTML tags necessary for ADA-compliant web sites and the obvious answer was image alt text, to explain the point of an image to people who don't see it. None of this was very deep, to my way of thinking, but I suppose I tend to think anything I know isn't very deep. I started to write ``anything I know outside my academic specialty'' but I also deep down feel I don't know my specialty very deeply either.

The oddest thing came at the end when the guy who'll be my supervisor asked, as a PhD, would I have trouble dealing with less intelligent folks like him, who has a bachelor's and an associate's, or one of the other interviewers (also a bachelor's). (The third interviewer had a master's.) And, well, no, of course not, and I tried to emphasize that a doctorate just reflects having a certain kind of persistance and diligence, and that intelligence doesn't have much to do with it. And, I pointed out, he knows things with a depth and thoroughness that I never will. I regretted not pointing out also that even if I were more intelligent than someone else, that doesn't make them less worth respect, or me worth more, but it didn't occur to me at the time, because I'm not that smart. (And at some point saying too much works against you.)

While walking me out my future supervisor talked about my Singapore teaching experience and whether I was looking to jump back to academia. And I admitted while I loved the life, it's over for me; the schools can get better mathematicians than me. And then I remembered about not deprecating myself but, well, what can I say? Maybe something that doesn't make it sound like I'm settling for programming because I can't get a job I really want. Mm.

I got home and wrote up my impressions for my recruiter, which amounted to thinking that while it went pretty well --- we ran long, always a good sign --- they're going to go for someone who didn't bobble simple questions like defining polymorphism.

And then Thursday, I slept in; it was the rare day that bunnyhugger was up and showered and downstairs before me. She said there was a message just left on the machine for me. The recruiter I was working with started out by saying she had an update for me about the job I'd interviewed for and I was ready to tell bunnyhugger they'd rejected me already, but the recruiter went on to say ``Congratulations, you have been selected'' and I stood, jaw dropped, at this. bunnyhugger saw me and asked what was wrong; despite hearing the message as it was recorded and again as it was replayed, she hadn't listened, which is how she failed to learn before I did that the longest unemployment of my life had its end.

I'm finally up in the photo roll to, uh, Halloweekends, like I just finished writing about in plain text here. Well, here, enjoy some pictures of the Merry-Go-Round Museum to start.

The entrance to the Merry-Go-Round Museum! The booth there, I believe, is taken from a vintage carousel's (Euclid Beach Park?), and it's where you go to buy admission and to get your wooden nickels, the ride tokens.

To the left (as you enter the building) of the entrance is the first set of displays, including one of the brass ring arms that carousels used to use before parks went to pay-one-price. I couldn't get a good look at the statue up top and I feel like that's new but am not sure.

Joy For Every Generation, as they've long had up front at the Merry-Go-Round Museum. The black-and-white photograph banners in back I believe are new.

Definitely new: this little coin-op carousel that bunnyhugger's examining.

All of the figures are neat stained-glass animals, a great idea for a piece like this.

Can you spot the flirting rabbit? (Actually I'm not sure it is flirting.) Anyway, lot of menagerie figures on this glass merry-go-round.

Trivia: Screen Gems made five cartoon shorts based on Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. Source: Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Leonard Maltin.

Currently Reading: Bizarro #10, Dan Piraro.

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Our plan Friday to get going early in the morning succeeded. Maybe a quarter-hour later than we really wanted, but that's nothing in the scheme of things. And it brought us to the Merry-Go-Round Museum in downtown Sandusky, unaffiliated with Cedar Point, at about 2:00. They closed at 4:00; we'd hoped that would be enough time. From past visits where we felt like we'd mostly seen the things most important I thought it was likely we would have, but, you know, we hadn't been there in three years, who knows how much had changed within?

It had changed some. Right away in the front room we saw a coin-op machine, with a stained glass carousel. Like, all the animals and the whole structure were stained glass figures, turning for a couple minutes for a coin. There was another in the front room of the onetime post office, too, noticed later on.

Missing from the front, and not explained until bunnyhugger asked the person working the gift shop counter: this year's carving. The Merry-Go-Round Museum carved nearly all the animals on its antique-frame carousel, and carves a new one as a fundraising raffle every year. They've had a series of holiday-themed carousels and every year bunnyhugger buys a dozen and I buy half-a-dozen tickets, and every year we hear nothing after it's drawn. Well, they don't have one ready this year. They're working on a replica of Stargazer, their lead horse and the mascot figure for the museum. It's taken longer than it 'should' have, owing to the pandemic. If it strikes you that carving a wooden horse is probably a pretty solitary occupation, well, it is. They figure it's also going to be the last of the horses they raffle off, because their carvers are finding a shortage of the time and energy for this sort of long, hard donated work.

That reduction in time available for the carvers, or maybe a lingering Covid-19 change, showed in some rearrangement of the museum. The corner of the museum which had been the carving station was moved into a little alcove that seemed to be the loading dock. It seems like a less convenient space, particularly for getting out from behind the stand and into the museum proper although I guess if you're just doing work that isn't a significant problem. There's fewer sight lines to it, but since the museum usually only has a couple people in it at any moment I guess that's nothing too bad?

The relocation of the carving station does give space for a couple new items. There's a series of horses that show, loosely, how the carving goes, from the initial wood box that looks like a low-polyhedron horse to increasing levels of detail and paint and all. What seems to be some sort of charity project, a horse figure covered in signatures and drawings and the like. Some new figures on display, donkeys and sea horses and the like. They also switched out the cabinet display of miscellaneous merry-go-round stuff (including a merry-go-round children's board game) with one that's all Euclid Beach Park memorabilia. (Cedar Downs, the derby racer carousel at Cedar Point, used to be the American Racing Derby at Euclid Beach Park.)

We saw two pressed-penny machines, leaving bunnyhugger the question of which one to use. No wrong answer, of course, and I had a good pre-zinc penny to use for a good shiny impression. And we got our ride on their antique-mechanism, modern-carvings carousel in, this time to the theme from Ghostbusters. We've ridden to that once or twice before, but somehow we seem more likely to get the theme to The Addams Family or Batman. Other tracks on the roll include Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead, as well as Dem Dry Bones and The Purple People Eater. We didn't hear them all.

We did have our fill of the museum, we felt, after maybe an hour and a half. We weren't sure if it was already check-in time at the Hotel Breakers, but we figured it couldn't be far off. Especially considering whatever traffic we would endure on the way into the park.

We set off.

Let's enjoy more of Michigan's Adventure on what was a most enjoyable day.

(Tapping forehead) Thunderhawk roller coaster can't blow your shoes off if you don't wear your shoes on it!

View of the whole of Thunderhawk, mostly to prove to myself that they did not change the entrance next year. Every year I think they changed it and they did not.

Little patio area by the lagoon that, earlier this season, was emptied out and taped off. It's open again with ... not really any big obvious changes? Maybe they just wanted to limit how much stuff they had to clean for a while.

The sea dragon, most interesting figure on the Chance fiberglass carousel the park has.

Zach's Zoomer had one row closed, probably for the restraints being stuck closed.

Hey, they painted off the Zoom! that used to be on the back of the train, that's no fair!

Trivia: Franz Kafka had a doctorate in law. Source: Know-It-All, A J Jacobs.

Currently Reading: Apollo Pilot: The Memoirs of Astronaut Donn Eisele, Donn Eisele, Francis French.

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Way back in August we decided to resume a pre-Covid tradition: the Halloweekends visit to Cedar Point. Friday to Saturday at the park. We'd be taking a risk, certainly. But we mostly stay outdoors, usually going inside only to warm up at a show or the Coliseum or something like that, and we could mask up for that. We're vaccinated, of course, and bivalent-boosted. We picked closing weekend for the park, figuring the most-likely-coldest weekend of the season would be the least-crowed. A worry that turned out to be needless: what if I had a new job? Well, if they wanted to hire me they wouldn't let a preplanned vacation stand in the way. Nobody wanted to hire me, of course, but it was a nice fantasy while it lasted.

Also forgotten: Halloweekends has gotten 33% bigger this year. They open in the evening Thursdays, now, with full days both Friday and Saturday before closing at 8 pm Sundays. If we'd known we might have booked an extra day. Maybe not; we were booking before we learned bunnyhugger would need to teach an extra class, eating up Thursdays. Though I guess she might have cancelled class, or we'd have got there Thursday night and got into the park early Friday. Something to consider for next year.

This has been a warm October. Pleasant to live through, as long as you ignore how this reflects the climate collapse. But weekends particularly at Cedar Point have been warm and sunny and not too windy, and the park's gotten full of people. Fan forums have been even more full of people complaining what Cedar Point is doing wrong, mostly, selling too many season passes to people who use them to go to the park a lot. I am a bit more sympathetic to the park --- October is when they pay for the rest of the year --- but still have the amusement-park-enthusiast wish that the park have a thriving busy season except for the days I visit. Then, I want the park to be all-but-deserted. You know, like our day in September which was an exquisitely good riding day. (Sad to say that same day next year the park is closed, bought out for a private event.) So, we watched the forecast with a slight disappointment as the weather promised to be better and better. Well, we would brave whatever happened, that's all.

The other thing is we planned to go to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, again for the first time since the pandemic began. I've said sometimes we should make a trip just for that, since it's, you know, a pretty spacious place that's never crowded. But it's also a four-hour drive for a place that's maybe two or three hours' wandering around. Anyway, we always fit a side trip to the Merry-Go-Round Museum in to our Halloweekends visit, so we could plan on that.

Given the threat of warm, good weather all weekend we feared that Cedar Point would be packed on Saturday and Sunday. Past experience tells us on good-weather October weekends it could take one or two hours to drive the couple miles from downtown Sandusky to Cedar Point. So we planned to go to the museum Friday, and stay entirely at the park Saturday and Sunday. Friday's always the least-crowded day at the park. It would force us to get up and leave earlier in the day, though not worse than we had done for our September trip to the park. And if all were well, we'd brave the least-bad traffic and spend a pleasant-weather weekend at the park. With Sunshine dropped off at bunnyhugger's parents the day before (I went alone, because bunnyhugger was teaching), we were reasonably set to go.

I have, of course, many more Michigan's Adventure pictures, but let's spend today looking at pictures of (non-wild) rabbits at the park.

One of the two working bunnies, if you call it working, at the petting zoo in Michigan's Adventure.

And here's the two rabbits together, wondering what my problem is. I wonder too, bunnies, I wonder too.

And here's the album cover for the two rabbits.

Got a snap of the English spotted rabbit grooming a paw!

English spotted rabbit deciding they want to be where the larger one was.

They've found a new equilibrium in a slightly different position, underneath the table, as far from grabby human fingers as possible.

Trivia: Mars candies launched Maltesers in 1936, initially labelled as low-fat ``energy balls''. Source: Sweets: A History of Temptation, Tim Richardson.

Currently Reading: Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, Alexandra Lange.

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This week in my humor blog? Popeye and Fatty Coon. If you like that, you'll like this:

I don't care what anyone says, I stand behind that Second-Tier-Hanna-Barbera Characters or Rejected Names for Snuffy Smith piece. Now, let's finish off the visit to the Merry-Go-Round Museum and see the thing we visited in the hope we could avoid the traffic jam leading back to Cedar Point, back in October 2019.

Another picture of the miniature carousel. There's a couple of miniature carousels they have there and I don't think any of them are quite working but they're hopeful.

Actually, it's the men's room. (The two genders: Dentzel Carrousells and C W Parker Amusements.)

A rocking horse carved by Philadelphia Toboggan Company (which made carousels through to the late 20s). Remarkably, they appear to only have made two rocking horses even though I'd think that a natural if upscale market to move into.

A photograph of all sorts of carousel terms, in case you want to show off your knowledge of what a shield is.

Given the excellent weather, Cedar Point was packed, with waits of an hour or more just to get into the park. So we diverted out of Sandusky to go to Cheesehaven, which is what it sounds like and promises 125 Kinds Of Cheese. Also, look at that mouse cartoon character. He's hoping you haven't found the stuff he's set up.

I don't know why I declined the chance to buy Let There Be Dragons goat milk oatmeal soap, but I did, and that's that.

The great mouse statue inside Cheesehaven. You either love this place already or you're wrong.

Old vending machine that they've kept around. It's not working but have to admire that the place kept the machine around in that interval when it was too old to really work but not old enough to be an adorable piece of vintage hardware.

And they also kept this even more vintage vending machine!

They also have this pay phone, although I don't know whether it's working. I like that it has a clock, though. All pay phones should have had that.

Trivia: From 1935 Berlin television broadcast a motion picture newsreel, called The Mirror Of The Day, on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday evenings. Source: The American Newsreel, 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding.

Currently Reading: I Gotta Go: The Commentary of Ian Shoales, Ian Shoales.

And meanwhile? How November 2020 Treated My Mathematics Blog lets you know just what it says on the label there.

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It's my antepenultimate giant essay for the year. My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Extraneous Solutions does the work of the letter 'X' and I hope you enjoy as I think it taught me something about extraneous solutions. Also missing solutions, although that gets less attention.

And in cartoon-watching? It's a special 60s Popeye: The Whiffle Bird’s Revenge and Rough House’s Screen Debut for everyone who's looking for minor characters appearing.

Now back to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, seen in October of 2019.

The event room at the Merry-Go-Round Museum. They offer the place out for stuff like weddings and if we had known, we ... wouldn't have had our wedding there. Too far for her parents, given the dogs they had to care for. But hey, a wedding with unlimited merry-go-round rides? There's some appeal there.

Panels talking about carousel magnate Daniel Müller, including a picture of one of his sculptures.

The Merry-Go-Round Game, with a great mid-century design; I love that disc, particularly. According to BoardGameGeek, it's a spin-and-move game. But they also have three pictures of what appear to be very different games, only one of which is the one depicted here.

One of the doors into the event room, with some of the decorations of a carousel above it and also, note, the poster for the 2nd Annual National Carousel Association convention, held in Flint in 1974. Why Flint? Good question! Crossroads Village, a county park near Flint, would get in a C W Parker antique carousel that's in good shape and runs at six rotations per minute so it's actually a thrill ride, but that wasn't there in 1974 and I don't know of anything carousel-related that was. bunnyhugger has learned there was at least one carousel carver in Saginaw, Michigan, in the early 20th century but that's still a bit away from Flint.

Merry-Go-Round museum picture of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, showing off zero carousels.

An elephant-with-houda figure, from a circa 1925 Allan Herschell carousel.

Scenery panels from a circa 1900 Gustav Dentzel carousel in original factory paint, says the sign.

Some more of the scenery panels. I imagine that's Independence Hall at the left of this picture, and Venice on the right. The center I can't place; could it be Niagara Falls?

A horse I've photographed before. It shows off the four states of restoration, going from unrestored (hindlegs); stripped to bare wood; wood repaired and primed; and fresh-painted (head and front legs).

Head being carved. I think there's something reindeer in this.

More of the reindeer under construction.

Tabletop miniature carousel they have on display at the museum, along with a roster of what looks like who's adopted, or maybe signed up to repair, each figure. Paul Roth got a lot in.

Trivia: The London Catalogue recorded 45,000 books published between 1816 and 1851; 10,300 of which were works on divinity. Source: The Age of Paradox: A Biography of England 1841 - 1851, John W Dodds.

Currently Reading: I Gotta Go: The Commentary of Ian Shoales, Ian Shoales.

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Sorry, been busy all evening watching SCTV musical sketches. Quick question: what's funnier, any given SCTV fake band name, or any scene where a Simpsons character gives a false name for themselves? I know, it's a tough call.

But on to my stuff. Here's comic strips. What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Who's this Emperor Joonkar? September - November 2020 plot recap here.

And now some more time at the Merry-Go-Round Museum:

You see why a dog this handsome would get our attention.

The rabbit in position, showing how they're outracing the dog who might or might not be pursuing.

One of the band organ scrolls they have for their running merry-go-round, with a bunch of music we never hear because we're always visiting this place in October.

The band organ scroll we always hear, because it's what they play for October. Not all of these songs naturally extend to a four-minute ride cycle, must be said.

More of the carousel in context, again with the little rabbit at its center. There's the row of sea dragons in the background.

Everything you need from the C W Parker factory, including, per the sign: 'Jumping Horse Carry-Us-All; Ferris Wheels; Monkey Speedways; Carved Wagon Fronts; Complete Carnival Companies; Military Band Organs and Orchestrations; Mechanical Shooting Galleries; Portable Electric Lighting Plants; Pullman, Baggage, and Flat Cars; Illusions; Concessions; Hand Painted Banners and Show Fronts; Tent Top and Side Walls --- ANYTHING and EVERYTHING the show man needs''.

Some British-carved carousel mounts. They always loved their roosters, and painted them like they were peacocks or something. And ... for some reason, around the Boer War, they really got in to Boer War generals as centaurs.

Seriously, it's like the only time you'll see a centaur on a carousel and for some reason they look like this and can't do a proper Union Jack.

Now it just looks like an editorial cartoon somehow.

So it turns out if you look at a centaur from the front it looks like this. I have not the faintest idea who this is supposed to represent, by the way; if you have any ideas, please let me know, but not his family because they'd probably be embarrassed to know.

Reindeer carousel figures, including the deer featured in 2014's ``Holidays at the White House'' display that Michelle Obama oversaw. They have a picture of the deer on display at the White House there.

Some more deer with scenery panels beyond.

Trivia: The first protective tariff in United States history was an 1816 duty of 25 cents per yard on cotton cloth. Source: An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, John Steele Gordon.

Currently Reading: I Gotta Go: The Commentary of Ian Shoales, Ian Shoales.

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Using my A to Z Archives: Xor leads off my mathematics blog this week. In cartoon-watching there's 60s Popeye: Time Marches Backwards, or Prehistoric Popeye done early for everyone who wanted to see Wimpy not eat a cow-dinosaur.

On to Saturday of our proper Halloweekend 2019 trip to Cedar Point. We picked Saturday as the better day to go away from the Point and to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, since the weather was really nice and we figured the park would be crowded. We had no idea.

bunnyhugger playing the piano set outside the Merry-Go-Round Museum. Also, see how nice the weather was that she's not wearing a jacket or anything too heavy.

``Don't talk to me, or to my me, ever again.'' One of the horses used for the Post Office's 1980s series of carousel stamps, along with a replica of the stamp.

Some history-of-carousels posters in the front room of the Merry-Go-Round Museum.

The poster talking about Le Grand Carousel, 1662.

And some more carousel history, showing off how they could be hand-cranked mechanisms.

Looking back at the entrance to the museum. I think the ticket window there came from Euclid Beach Park (Cleveland), but could be wrong; it might just be in the style of a ride ticket window.

2019's carousel raffle horse. We did not win.

Looking into the opened back of one of the band organs, to see the music scrolls loaded up and also the maker's labels.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum's carousel, featuring one of the sea serpents that they carved themselves.

Do you want to talk knowledgeably about the parts of a carousel? Here's a chart that would help you, if you were talking to someone who knew what a drop rod was.

More of the animals on their carousel; here's a great-looking dog I don't remember from previous visits.

And an adorable tiny rabbit figure, on the innermost row. Has a 60-pound weight limit, unfortunately.

Trivia: The 'Black Plan' for calendar reform builds up leap days until a full week can be added to December. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: I Gotta Go: The Commentary of Ian Shoales, Ian Shoales.

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The National Baby Food Festival's cancelled for 2020. This is getting serious. While Pinball At The Zoo, in Kalamazoo, is the state's biggest event and the one that I always think I do well in without actually doing so, the Baby Food Festival is the second-biggest event and the one that actually does launch me into state finals.

The pinball tournament normally held at the Baby Food Festival might still happen. It's officially part of the Meijer State Games. Some of these events have been cancelled for the year, but as best I can tell there's no declaration about what the state of pinball is. Even if the event is held, though, a lot of what makes the Baby Food Festival's tournament so valuable, IFPA-wise, is that people attending the festival come in and play a few games, depositing their slight value as tournament players into a jackpot that us serious players take in. Even if the Games do happen, they might not be worth enough to help me get to a top-24 position and invite to the State Championship Series.

If there even is a State Championship Series for this year. It's now been longer without any sanctioned pinball than has been with, for 2020, and the International Flipper Pinball Association hasn't announced plans for that to change. Even if there is, I'm not convinced that it's safe. I think I wouldn't feel safe going to a tournament event before the state opens up arcades for socialization, at least, and maybe not even then if the daily infection rate remains too high. Sitting this year out might be the best thing for me.

Not sat out, technically: my humor blog. Here's what's run on it the past week.

We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files which was last week's major piece and a big pile of nonsense.
Statistics May: How the past month treated my humor blog and the usual roster of lists of things that somehow always gets me more 'likes' than anything else I write in a month.
Statistics Saturday: The Boxes You Have a quick guide
60s Popeye: returning to the Aladdin’s Lamp with the Sea Hag! Who doesn't like the Sea Hag?
Regarding the use of Neodymium in the production of bright purple glass in a little follow-up.
What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Why does Saul Wynter have a teenage daughter? March – June 2020 which contains a reference to polycules, and then today I remembered my Dad specifically said he enjoys reading my Mary Worth plot recaps, so there's probably that for me to talk about him with next time we chat.
Everything you need to know to understand me as a writer as I reflect on stuff I have written in the past.
Everything there is to say about the creation and use of tools by rooks which is this week's big pile of nonsense.

Let's wrap up the Merry-Go-Round Museum and get back to Cedar Point, where I'll get wrapped up in something maybe better than the Town Hall Museum. You'll see.

Carousel hog making off with some corn.

Carousel fox sneaks into your house, eats all your pasta ...

This fangy creature, a secondary figure on one of the Merry-Go-Round Museum's horses, is a billiken. Billiken are not some minor spirit of long-ago ancient days; they were charm dolls created from the early 1900s. Around the time Kewpie dolls came out. So if you're wondering where Saint Louis University got its mascot from, it's this thing.

The front of the Merry-Go-Round Museum, which was a WPA-era post office and one of the surprisingly few round ones.

Back to Cedar Point! Here's the view out our Breakers hotel-room entrance.

And here, after a rest, we finally get in, near sunset and after there's been a spot of rain to get us in a reflective mood.

The area near the beach entrance, over where the Oceana stadium had been torn down. The dome in the center-left is the Coliseum. Most of the rides here are from a secondary Planet Snoopy kids' area.

Looking back from near the launch platform at Raptor's lift hill and one of its many spirals. There is a lot of queue area, you can see, although I don't think we've been there a time when half that queue was needed. Mostly it's a way to test how patiently someone will go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, through gates before cutting under.

The stage at the Aldrich Theater, waiting for the Midnight Syndicate show. It had returned to Cedar Point, displacing the magic-and-dance show, with its blend of live music and fourth-wall-breaking horror. Always fun to see.

Back toward the Kiddie Kingdom. The building on the left is a lost-persons and message center (Cedar Point has no central public address system). It also clearly at some point was a train ride station. Interesting building reuse.

For dinner we went to Melt, one of the few sit-in restaurants, and over by the Kiddie Kingdom. Melt is in fact an Ohio-area chain, serving sandwiches the size of bricks; we each had a fried-grilled-cheese sandwich that would have adequately fed both of us. The thrill, though, was in the wall decor, which was all old Cedar Point stuff. Here's artwork from the old Iron Dragon ride-height sign, from before they replaced it with a dull generic chainwide height notice.

And this is the minimum-height sign for Calypso, a ride which they've since relocated and renamed the Tiki Twirl.

Circa 1990 advertising art for Magnum XL-200, rather fancifully suggesting the ride goes all the way into space, or at least above the Space Spiral (which was at the other end of the park). The Space Spiral was 330 feet tall, although riders only got up to 285 feet. Magnum XL-200 is 205 feet tall.

Old ride-height sign for a kiddie ride, Sir Bumpalot's Boats. Wikipedia lists no such ride, but the list of former Cedar Point attractions mentions the Bumper Boats, a kiddie ride near the Gemini children area, from 1993 to 2013.

Ride sign art that isn't complete enough to identify it. But bunnyhugger remembers this as the art for Power Tower, which opened in 1998, giving some idea of how recently, really, Cedar Point got rid of these more interesting custom signs.

Schwabinchen was at the park from 1970 to 2002. I assume this is the actual ride height sign and, boy, the marionette aspect is certainly an artistic choice, isn't it? I'm sorry they went to generic height signs because the artistic impulses that create something like this are wonderful and quirky and strange and I want more of that.

Trivia: The first successful chocolate mill in America, Walter Baker & Company of Massachusettes, opened in 1765. Source: Hershey: Milton S Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams, Michael D'Antonio.

Currently Reading: Perfect Behavior, David Ogden Stewart. Not the guy who played Dr Jumba.

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Cedar Point's announced its plans for a reopening fiasco. (I assume Kings Island, also in Ohio, is using the same plans.) Reduced capacity, as anyone would have guessed. In fact, even season pass holders have to buy a day's reservation. Health declaration given over their app, and a temperature screening before entering the park. Social distancing ``markings and signage'' and who knows what that'll do to the queues. Face masks required at all times, which as bunnyhugger notes, will be very interesting on Top Thrill Dragster, the roller coaster that goes 120 miles per hour.

A certain kind of person --- let's dig deep in the barrel of euphemisms and call them ``big whiny crybabies unable to imagine not wanting other people pointlessly killed'' --- is Very Upset about this mask requirement. Apparently they're making promises not to go to Cedar Point if they have to wear a mask all day. Which, you know, great: these are the people who should not go out in public. But they're bluffing, unfortunately, and they'll go and they'll be so annoying to deal with that park employees will give up.

Cedar Point plans to have season passholder-only days the 9th and 10th of July, to open the weird season. As a fan of systems-struggling-through-the-chaos I am really interested to see this. I'm almost offended by how much I want to see how big a fiasco this is and, actually, how well it works through the craziness. I doubt that it's safe, or wise, though. Maybe, if things get better, we can go in August, or more likely September. I just don't feel good about this, not right now.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum announced a similar plan, requiring face coverings and putting direction arrows through the museum. Big whiny crybabies unable to imagine not wanting other people pointlessly killed are apparently Very Upset about this, too. But they hope to reopen ... well, the 11th. Anyway, here's some pictures from our October 2018 visit, a pleasant time as always.

Charles Carmel-carved sea monster, from 1905, and festooned with jewels by one M D Borelli. I know what you're thinking: isn't that the same model sea serpent seen on the Michigan's Adventure carousel? No, it's not; look at the wings more closely. Next time we get to Michigan's Adventure I'll try to take a picture from a roughly similar pose, and then I'll forget to do anything with the picture.

Looking up at the sea monster. In the background is a 1910 Dentzel jumping rabbit.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum has its own carousel, an antique mechanism with mounts either on loan or that they've carved themselves. Here's their chariot, with a seasonal decoration sitting right next to the naked harp lady.

King Triton, I suppose, riding a fish in what had once been the rounding boards atop a carousel. This is the private-events door again. Note the poster for the National Carousel Association's second-annual convention, held in Flint a week and a half before bunnyhugger was born.

Skeleton riding the museum's ostrich. Seems like an over-dramatic way to keep riders from getting on the ostrich, but it is classier than a ``Do not ride this animal'' saddle cover.

Children's barber chair from the Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, from back when the barbers needed kids to be hopping up and down all the time.

M C Ilions decorative panels. I believe there's like four more of these, in storage, because already this reaches like twelve feet side to side.

There are a couple miniature carousels. Here's one with a tiny goat and bunny that wasn't yet stored to working condition in 2018 and I don't think it was running when we were there in 2019. I think the lighting had been repaired, though.

Cute little tiny purple horse, too.

Different tiny bunny and horse on another miniature carousel.

And here's the 2018 raffle horse, being carved. I don't think this was tied to a specific holiday, which made a break from routine for the museum.

The saddle of the raffle horses carries the museum's initials and the date. They also include markings inside the mount so that nobody doing restoration work on one in the future should be mistaken into thinking it's older than it actually is.

Easterland! The museum has a strange, enormous poster showing a hypothetical amusement park, Toy Town, that we keep watching and keep finding fascinating and know nothing about. I know I share pictures of this, and details of it, every year but it's just endlessly fascinating.

Here's the Wonderful Wizard of Oz-themed area for the park. You should be able to spot the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Glinda. I can make out Jack Pumpkinhead, H M Woggle-Bug (TE), and the Frogman of the Yips. So it gets into the later books too.

Looks like the Crooked Man has found a whole Crooked Neighborhood to move in to, right between the bandshell and Santa's Workshop. Good for him. ... Obviously this place was never built, but wouldn't it have been fantastic if it were? Even granting that it would have declined and been abandoned. It would make such a superlative ruin.

Upper corner of Toy Town, showing off some of the little houses and what seems to be a fanciful look-at-the-construction-equipment thing. Also some of the many, many stairs people could climb to get to the stairs leading back down. It does seem like Toy Town was a little short on rides and very well-stocked with walking paths that rise for little clear purpose. But look at the beauty of those curved buildings in the background; aren't they great? Sincerely.

Trivia: Kārlis Ulmanis, first provisional prime minister of Latvia in 1918, was a graduate of the University of Nebraska. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret Macmillan. (There's a bit of a mess here. Macmillan specifically writes ``the provisional president of Latvia, an agricultural expert from the University of Nebraska'', without naming him. Which is all right since the point was something else. But. The provisional president, Jānis Čakste, did not go to Nebraska. The provisional prime minister, Ulmanis, did. Which person was the intended reference? Either is plausible and Macmillan doesn't clarify. Anyway, Ulmanis would serve several terms as prime minister and then, after a coup, president of Latvia.)

Currently Reading: Observations by Mr Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne.

PS: Reading the Comics, June 6, 2020: Wrapping Up The Week Edition which does just what the title says.

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Michigan is loosening up the quarantine restrictions, as part of the plan to get the second, more deadly wave of Covid-19 under way. I noticed that the bar nearest us, though, the Green Door, had a sign saying they were staying closed for now while they evaluated what was safe for their staff and patrons. They'll revisit the decision after the 4th of July. I approve. And our hipster bar, The Avenue, announced they won't be opening for at least three weeks, which I guess also puts them to around the 4th of July. The Capital Area library announced they intend to start doing curbside dropoff and pickup of books the 22nd of June; it'd be nice to start borrowing books from the library again. The Michigan State University library has ``closed'' on its calendar all the way into August.

On the one hand of course I want stuff open and something like normal again. (It's, today, three full months since we went anywhere that wasn't the store or bunnyhugger's parents.) But, jeez. If we were at, like, a dozen new cases in Michigan per day I'd say it's probably reasonable. As it is we ... well, I can't find a reference for how many people are likely getting it every day. But the state's got 65,000 cases (confirmed or probable) and almost all of them are in in the arc from Detroit to Grand Rapids (as are basically all the people). It's easier to bear another month without haircuts than another six thousand people dead.

Well. More fun things, now. Saturday for Halloweekends 2018 we started the day with a trip to the Jolly Donut diner, and then, of course, the Merry-Go-Round Museum. It had some new pieces on exhibit, too, so I have a better spread of photos than frankly I had expected. Let's look.

Carousel zebra, their 2017 raffle horse. We didn't win it. I am not sure why the zebra was still on display, whether the person who won it hadn't arranged transportation or whether they were leaving it for the museum to show.

Like what you see? Take a stamp, it'll last longer. Two of the horses commemorated in the US Post Office carousel stamps, along with giant reproductions of their stamps. By the way, the Merry-Go-Round museum is a former post office so that makes this that much more fun.

Carousel animal seen through the (non-working) brass ring dispenser on display.

Carousel deer that, several years ago, was part of the White House Christmas decorations, along with a photograph of then-First Lady Michelle Obama showing it off.

Some of the displays at the museum, including rounding boards (up top), the private-functions room, and a painting now hanging over the private-functions room door.

I think this has to be a deer from a children's carousel, although I didn't take a photograph with the explanation, unfortunately.

Slightly better picture of that painting above the private-events door. It's a rather strong piece, not least for the animal seeming to leap out of frame, an action quite energetic.

A lion that's, apparently, one of the first menagerie (non-horse) figures for a carousel.

A lion that survived the Hurricane of 1938. The sign implies that it's from a carousel at Long Beach, New Jersey, although it doesn't quite say that. There's a bunch of shore towns that could have had carousels that included this one.

Two ostriches, one in a more subdued and one in a gaudy paint job. I bet the one on the right is British.

Elephant figure, which is a rare menagerie animal. The shape and size make me think this has to be a children's carousel's mount.

Saddle feature on the elephant, showing that it carries a pretty oversized howdah.

Camel and a couple of goats; I think they might all predate 1900.

And oh, here's a sphinx set up as secondary figure on the camel, and underneath the saddle.

Meanwhile here's your basic goat.

And here's a greyhound, and in the background a jumping rabbit. The greyhound's dated to an 1895 Charles Looff carousel, and the rabbit to a 1910 Dentzel.

Trivia: In 1881 the Prairie Cattle Company of Edinburgh, Scotland, was able to declare a 28% dividend. Source: Food in History, Reay Tannahill.

Currently Reading: Observations by Mr Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne. Humor, yes, although these are all pieces written for the newspapers about current events, circa 1900, so it's all a bit cryptic if you aren't somewhat hep to that era. And there's no humor more timeless than current-events joshing. Still, some bits really shine through, for example about reform administrations. (``In th' first place 'tis a gr-reat mistake to think that annywan ra-aly wants to rayform. Ye niver heerd iv a man rayformin' himsilf. He'll rayform other people gladly. He likes to do it. But a healthy man'll niver rayform while he has th' strenth. A man doesn't rayform till his will has been impaired so he hasn't power to resist what th' pa-apers calls th' blandishments iv th' timpter.'' Yes, it's all written in eye-dialect like that. Mr Dooley is proudly Irish. Sorry.)

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Saturday we figured to go to the Merry-Go-Round Museum first, and then into the park. We usually do this, unless it looks like the Sunday afternoon weather will keep too many rides from being rideable. The weather forecast for Sunday was great: upper-50s-to-low-60s and partly cloudy. The weather for Saturday was also great: mid-to-upper-50s and sunny. We, not figuring we needed the morning hours, slept in late enough housekeeping never came to our room. And we set out, aware that it might be a busy day at Cedar Point. But surely nothing like the Columbus Day weekend in 2011, when the park was so crowded they were parking cars all along the causeway leading into the park, right? ... The constant stream of cars going into the park, as we drove out, suggested otherwise. It was looking busy. Crazy, crazy busy. No, busier than that.

In hindsight, what we should have done was turn around and go back to the hotel room and re-planned. Either to spend the whole day in the park, or to get exams that bunny_hugger could grade in the car. We did neither. We went to the Merry-Go-Round museum in the confidence that sure, it might take an hour to drive from this spot two miles away back here, but it wouldn't be riotously long.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum was more crowded than usual; I don't know that it was overflow Cedar Point visitors, though. They didn't have guided tours, a bit of a shame, as it's fun seeing bunny_hugger quietly match her knowledge against the museum's staff. Also because they had new mounts on their antique carousel and we wanted to know more about them. I noticed that they'd taken off a fox, for example. But they had put on this great-looking little hound dog. Also, on the innermost ring, a tiny rabbit with a sign warning that only those 60 pounds and under may ride it. Gorgeous little rabbit, though. It's got ribbons with two names, Bob and Effie. The significance of this is unknown to us.

The museum had its raffle horse completed for the year, too, a nice blonde horse with maroon and purple and cyan saddle and gear. Between us we got a dozen and a half tickets for it. The ticket-taker up front mentioned how she remembered, one year, selling the winning raffle ticket. It was to a guy from Texas who declared there was no point selling any more because he was going to win that year's raffle. And, yeah, the winner that year was from Texas. I realize this doesn't quite prove it has to have been him, but, you know? It's a good story, let's go with that.

The band organ has a scroll of Halloween tunes, and we always wonder what song we'll get on the carousel rides, which happen around once an hour or so depending on the attendance size. bunny_hugger was hoping for the Funeral March of a Marionette, or as normal people know it, the Alfred Hitchcock theme. What we got was a version of Dem Bones, at least for our first ride. For the second we got The Addams Family theme, which like a lot of these TV themes padded to three minutes goes off on some weird diversions mid-tune.

They had the carver we see every year there again. He was hard at work for something for next December: a Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer figure. It was in pieces, and just the bare wood, but it had that Rankin-Bass shape already. We don't know whether it's going to be on the carousel just for the holiday season or whether we'll see it during a future Halloweekends visit. Or if we do make the trip we always plan to, to see the ride some summer day when we're going to Cedar Point on the side.

The attendant at the gift shop --- once more they didn't have any new carousel music CDs, although we also don't have computers that play CDs anymore --- warned us that it was really busy getting back to Cedar Point. She showed the traffic maps of Sandusky, and all the dark red and even black lines. Ominous stuff.

bunny_hugger had a great idea. In Port Clinton, maybe ten miles west of Sandusky, is Cheese Haven, a shop which ... well, it's right there in the name. We almost never get there, though, since we're usually leaving Cedar Point way after the close of business. Now? As long as they didn't close before 5 pm on a Saturday? We could get there. Maybe even get some good novel cheeses.

So we set out west and got there and had a mystery solved. I had thought that Coon's Candy, in Nevada, Ohio, used to have these mysterious old framed newspapers about the deaths of William McKinley and Warren G Harding, and that were gone the last couple visits. Nope; it was Cheese Haven, and they still had them, flanking the doors, for whatever reason. They had a nice array of cheeses, including plenty of samples of both hard cheeses and spreads. Also, like, Boyer candies I ordinarily see only in Altoona or in very dusty form. We cursed ourselves for leaving the canvas cooler bag at bunny_hugger's parents, but after all, we didn't think we'd be getting anything that needed refrigeration. I bought a slender plastic cooler bag, and hoped it'd hold up to keeping cheeses safe against the effect Sunday afternoon might have in the back of my black car. It did, and now that's joined the heap of stuff I keep in my car Just In Case, along with jumper cables and a light rain jacket.

Between driving out to Cheese Haven, and wandering around, and buying stuff, and driving back we spent maybe an hour and a half away from the red- and black-traffic lines of Sandusky. This would be all that we needed, right? It might be a bit heavy driving back to our hotel, but it'd be no real issue, surely.

Trivia: The USS Kearsarge, which recovered Wally Schirra after his Mercury flight on the 3rd of October, 1962, had left the port of San Diego the 1st of August. Source: Sigma 7: The Six Mercury Orbits of Walter M Schirra, Jr, Colin Burgess.

Currently Reading: The First Railroads: Atlas of Early Railroads, Derek Hayes.

Exploiting my A-to-Z Archives: Pigeonhole Principle, another of those things that seem so obvious it can hardly be mathematics, but it's really good mathematics despite that all.

PPS: Word on the street is that life is a carousel, my friends.

Looking at the scenery panels in the middle of the Spillman carousel at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. I don't know how original any of the designs are, but they do look plausibly 1928.

Looking up at some of the rounding board of the carousel, plus the ceiling of the enclosure, which is this cute little side building to the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

Butterfly-woman that's one of the designs you see on these carousels all the time. One of the Cedar Point carousels has this but as three-dimensional carved figures around its top.

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I'm still mostly doing comic strips on my mathematics blog. It's been a busy week even if somehow none of it rates a journal entry somehow?

All right, well. In other comic strips. What's Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What's that weird Bangallan Navy ship? December 2018 - March 2019 plot recap here.

And then let's clear out the last of pictures from the Merry-Go-Round Museum as seen in October 2017.

One of the carousel horses that was loaned to the White House as part of Michelle Obama's decoration that year.

I forget the story of this horse; possibly it's just to show what it looks like with the wood restored and primed but before paint is put on. Lot of jewels in place considering that, though. Hm.

And some more pictures from that fascinating, and huge, display of a proposed ``Toy Town'' amusement park. It's credited as ``Designed by Messmore and Damon Inc'', drawn by H L Messmore, colored by Albert Coppock, and was for a park that was proposed for ... Iowa(?). Among its theme areas would be an Easter section.

And here's part including a Santa Claus area, a wild-looking ice cream cone observation platform, a Noah's Ark, and ... uh ... a Holland area?

Toy Town, had it been made, would have including this Wizard of Oz area and wouldn't that have been great too? Also notice the dance hall with the row of animals just underneath the roof line.

The ticket window here was (if I remember right) that for the carousel ride at Euclid Beach Park, in Cleveland. I'd thought that Cleveland was trying to get it back, too, but apparently their secret agents have been foiled so far.

View of the front of the Merry-Go-Round Museum building. When this was a working post office this is the area the public would have access to.

The brass ring dispenser. A ride operator would go up the steps, pour a bucket of mostly silver and one brass ring into the opper up top, and swing the arm out where people on the outside row could reach their hands out and grab a ring.

Carousel-style chair set up for kids going to the Wanamaker's Department Store barber and who wanted to spend their entire haircut being told to stop jumping around like they're riding a real horse.

Billiken posed as the secondary figure on one of the museum's own-carved horses and mounted on their antique carousel. It turns out billikens were created by a Kansas City art teacher in the 1890s. And while billikens have mostly been dismissed from American pop culture apparently they're still enjoyed in Pacific Asia? I never noticed them when in Singapore, for what it's worth, but it's quite plausible that I didn't realize this was a relatively modern American import rather than a mysterious figure of ancient lore.

The band organ roll they play during October. The selections: The theme to Ghostbusters; The Purple People Eater; Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead; Dem Dry Bones; theme to The Addams Family; Funeral March of a Marionette (the Alfred Hitchcock Presents theme); the theme to Batman; the Skeleton Rag; Chopin's Funeral March; and Eduard Holst's Dance of the Demon.

And some of the many other scrolls that they don't use during the Halloween season. There's a lot of waltzes, marches, and the occasional fox trot. And some toe-tappers like Let Me Call You Sweetheart or A Cup Of Coffee, A Sandwich, and You.

And the outside of the Merry-Go-Round Museum, once one of the rare circular-floorplan post offices. Still looks great.

Trivia: Among the rules set by the American Association in its organizing meeting, the 3rd of November, 1881, was that the home team would be obliged to pay each game's umpire. In the National League the umpire was paid by the visiting team. Source: The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association --- Baseball's Renegade Major League, David Nemec.

Currently Reading: Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York, Ted Steinberg.

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What can I say; it's been a quiet week? So here's more Merry-Go-Round Museum pictures from when we visited around Halloweekends 2017.

Among the curios at the Merry-Go-Round Museum is this huge display for ``Getaway Summer Shoes from Thom McAn'', an advertising thing that I'm going ahead and guessing is from 1983 at the latest. Why the shoe models were posed on carousel horses? I don't know. How did it get here? Again, unknowable. But interesting anyway.

Another of the carousel stamp horses and the stamp based on it.

Edgewater Park in Detroit closed for good in 1981. I don't know if their antique carousel was sold before the park closed.

Probably I've shared this figure before, but, this kind of secondary figure on an animal is fun.

Rooster that's in its original factory paint. Also that's taken some injuries since at some point it was used as an archery target; there's arrow damage on it.

Row and number badge for a Philadelphia Toboggan Company horse. This is on the inside, the non-romance, side where it wouldn't be obvious to readers. If I've understood things rightly the 'row' number counts from the outside in, so this would be to the left of the outermost row.

One of the Merry-Go-Round Musem's street organs, although not the one they usually turn on for demonstrations of just how loud these things can be.

One of several quite detailed miniature carousels at the museum. The lights are working and there's mechanism to make the inside horses rise and fall, although I don't believe that was working yet.

bunny_hugger takes a quick look at the miniature rabbit on the carousel. In the far background is a replica of the Schwabinchen figure from the center of that now-gone Cedar Point ride.

The top is one of the horses they use to show what repair and repainting is like, which is why there's the sharp vertical-line divides between the horse's conditions. Underneath, a kiddie ride mount, a rare fox.

Oh yeah, this little Mighty Mouse is still around. He had been up in the front of the building in previous years.

A rare carousel-style horse designed to be a rocking horse. It's something I'm surprised wasn't done more often. Who do you have to be to get something like this? ... owner of the company that carves carousel horses, turns out.

Trivia: The cosmic background radio noise detected on radio antennas in 1965 --- the piece that would make the Big Bang the compelling explanation for the universe's origins --- were detected at the 4080 MHz frequency. Source: It Happend In New Jersey, Fran Capo.

Currently Reading: Dreamlands, Rob Ball. All pictures, many of them modern tintypes, of Dreamland Park in Margate, England. The tintypes and many of the color pictures are from while it was abandoned and derelict; the park, joyfully, has come back to life. (Sad to say it reopened about a month after our last visit to England so we couldn't get there, but, we do want to, at least while it lasts.)

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Sunday we had a full, busy evening. The start of it was dinner. MWS and his family go to trivia nights at a restaurant near his house. We hadn't had the chance to go in a while, but this week was Spring Break and lacked any particular pinball events and so we had the time. Plus the restaurant promised Impossible Burgers and we're eager always to try those where we can.

Trivia Night proved a roaring success. Fewer of MWS's family was there than, say, last summer when we did this a lot. But our group still had enough to dominate events. The most controversial question was a celebrity one: ``within five years, what is the age of William Shatner?'' I did my best, going from the idea he was about 35 when the Original Star Trek started and it's been fifty years from that. Fine enough, but the host said the answer he'd accept was ``the five-year range of 85-to-90''. One of our party argued, successfully, that that isn't Shatner's age ``to within five years''. We missed one question, and one optional question, through the whole of the regular rounds and so were already in the lead going in to the finals. (The question we missed was to name two of the three Saturday Night Live cast who in the last sketch of 1995 were eaten by bears or something like that.)

The final question was one that MWS's roommate K would have gotten, although our presence reassured him. The question was which US President called ``the darkest moment of my life'' having the screenplay he sent to Adolph Zukor rejected? And the key there was that you had to provide the first and last names of the President. Normally they accept just the last name. So it implies it has to be a president whose last name is ambiguous, but whose first and last name is not. And it has to be someone from after movies were a thing, so the only possible candidates would be Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Since I was the one who knew anything about Adolph Zukor that clinched the deal. We figured every other team would make the same deduction, though, and to have a chance of winning we had to bet big, and ... we did, and nobody else bet big and got it right. So we ended up way over-winning, coming up just short of a perfect score and finishing like double any other team's score.

Also their Impossible Burgers were fantastic. MWS tried a bit of mine and said it tasted like a better grade of beef than what he got from a real-meat burger.

After that we went back to MWS's for some playing. We'd had a couple rounds on MWS's personal pinball, a Star Trek: The Next Generation, before dinner. After we played a couple rounds of Fluxx, a take-a-card/play-a-card game whose gimmick is the specific rules and objectives can change at any time. I won the first round, despite at one point K swiping my hand of cards (as the rules allowed). After he had done that, and played out his plundered cards, I pointed out how he could have played one card from my lost hand, and then stood pat for a round and almost certainly would have won. Second round was a bit more devious as we were getting the hang of play. I saw MWS setting up a play that I had the cards in my hand to foil, so told bunny_hugger to be ready with her Nelson Muntz Ha-ha laugh. I can't do it myself. But then MWS played a card that let him swipe one card from my hand, and he picked the one card that let him win the game right then. So bunny_hugger got to use the laugh after all, only at me.

Anyway after two games I feel confident in my mastery of Fluxx.

Afterwards we played a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The theme of the game is your party explores a haunted mansion. Then, a game event happens, the Haunt. Depending how the Haunt happened the rules change. (Usually) the party divides into two factions, each trying to foil the other. This time we got one we had played before and dimly remembered not liking, but thought it was so long ago and we couldn't pin down just what was wrong with it, so we played on.

So here's the problem with it. It turned to me, MWS, and K trying to kill bunny_hugger's character. But we had our best chance to kill her if we avoided her for as many turns as possible, building up the stats that let us succeed. All right. Oh, also, she had an item that made her much more likely to defend against these attacks. So for both of us the logical way to play was ``waste as much time as possible'', with actual combat happening rarely and ineffectively: neither of us was able to do much damage to the other. Betrayal games usually last around one to two hours. This one took four hours, and it was after 2 am before it finally broke up.

Mind, I did get a really good moment out of this. Part of the scenario had a ghost holding, and using, a medical kit. For several rounds everybody asked why a ghost would have a medical kit. Then I thought of why, and did that face-brightening smile you saw from the sloth in Zootopia. I offered that I knew why a ghost had a medical kit, and got out of bunny_hugger's punching range. ``For their boo-boos!''

I did think of it right there, but allowed that I read a lot of Harvey Comics back in the day so I probably had influences there.

bunny_hugger checked with I'm-going-to-say BoardGameGeek and found that yeah, pretty much everybody hates that Haunt. It's got a great idea, but the rules of engagement are screwed up, and anyone who knows what they're doing will end up in the same spot we did. Part of the Betrayal chic is that there's dozens of possible Haunts, and not all of them were play-tested to the point of being reasonably balanced. We should probably make a note so we don't play this one again.

Trivia: Britain's Royal Navy, by 1680, had a tonnage of about 132,000, compared to France's 135,000. Source: To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.

Currently Reading: The Originals: The New York Celtics Invent Modern Basketball, Murry Nelson. Well there, there's a game that got to fifty points. ... Which in fairness is pretty amazing considering this is before there were shot clocks or necessarily backboards. Also mentioned is a guy who could, impressively, palm the basketball. (Which was about two inches bigger in diameter than the modern one, and made of a less grippable material, mind.)

PS: The Merry-Go-Round Museum! I've got like two dozen more pictures I think worth featuring here, so get comfortable.

Here's a good close look into the eye of that 1908 Charles Carmel horse and enough scope in the background that you can see the centerpiece of the Merry-Go-Round museum, their carousel. The machinery and platform are antique, though the mounts are ones they've made themselves.

So I find on this trip I took a lot of pictures where a horse is shown in front of a picture of that horse. You can cope with that. Alternative caption: ``Don't talk to me, or my me, ever again.''

Handy glossary page in case you ever need to bluff your way through a conversation with a carousel enthusiast. ... You probably would have guessed what a ``portable carousel'' was without the hint, I admit.

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Saturday started with us driving out of Cedar Point. It was a bit cool, and more, it was rainy, and we had to make our regular pilgrimage to the Merry-Go-Round Museum. The drive out gave us our first really good daytime look at the state of reconstruction as Mean Streak continued its transformation to Steel Vengeance. (The new name was announced right before our Labor Day trip, I believe.) Mostly, and dramatically, it's clear the new lift hill will go up higher and drop much farther. Going to be a heck of a ride.

We went for lunch to this diner just outside the park. It's a real, proper diner, a wholly un-self-aware thing in such classic form that even the average Jersey Diner would have to bow to its authenticity. I'm not sure if it is actually a railcar with seating, but it's got that style, cramped and chromed and a formica tabletop with that late-50s boomerang shapes. Diners are always good spots for us to eat, what with how you can definitely get something vegetarian. We got there as it was so crowded we had to eat at the counter with our heavy winter coats tucked between the stools and the counter; over the meal, the place emptied out. So we got there fifteen minutes early, I guess is the lesson.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum I'd --- well, first, I don't want to brag but I'd found my way to without using the satellite navigation. I've gotten to Cedar Point without assistance before, but there's a flock of road signs to help the tricky part at the end driving through Sandusky. The Merry-Go-Round Museum has a way lower signaged profile and so I feel really accomplished getting from the diner to the museum without more than my loose mental map of Sandusky.

So, the Merry-Go-Round Museum. I'd been a bit worried about it last time we visited, in 2016, owing to word that they were losing a good part of their collection. Well, much of it was on loan from an estate, and the family wanted to have things back where they could enjoy them a while. An impulse I can't say is wrong or malicious or anything, but that did make me wonder (a) just how much stuff they did have in storage where it hadn't had room to display before and (b) how bare, really, the gift shop seemed. A small thing, but one of those that raises little fears about the place's long-term survival.

Maybe they did have a major turnover in the collection. There were some pieces that seemed to be gone, such as the late 19th century French cow that I couldn't forget because bunny_hugger's starter husband once explained the joke on it to the docent. (The cow was labelled ``La Belle Mere'', which is not a slightly odd sweet thought of one's mother but rather a snarky way to refer to the mother-in-law.) I believe, though I'm not sure (my photographs seem to all miss the one place I really need) the big sign for Euclid Beach Park has gone, which might reflect Cleveland's ongoing efforts to put a carousel back around the area of its famous and long-lost amusement park. The ticket window for Euclid Beach Park's carousel is still there, but who needs old-fashioned wooden ticket windows anymore?

And there were some interesting-looking new things, including a second miniature carousel. They'd had one in 2016, under careful restoration because if it worked it ought to fully work, including the miniature figures going up and down as the carousel turned. This year they had one there, and a docent even turned it on for us so we could see the many lights and see the three-foot-wide thing turning. And this wasn't the one from last year. So they now have a pair of tabletop carousels, a couple feet across, that work with lights and jumping horses and everything. And I noticed in a vestibule in the back of the building that there was another one there. I assume not working; certainly at least not plugged in. I don't know what's going on with the Merry-Go-Round Museum that suddenly everyone in the world figures to give them a tabletop miniature carousel but, hey, works for them.

The gift shop looked more robustly stocked this time around, although there hasn't been any luck in getting a new carousels calendar printed and bunny_hugger accepted that she'd have to make her own for 2018, too. The lack of a published carousels calendar is a bizarre thing; there's so many antique horses out there, and they're now appreciated as these great pieces of Americana, that I don't know why they're not in every mall calendar shop in the country. There must be some practical problem we're not thinking of.

Also in the gift shop I picked up some issues of the magazine rapidtrabbit wrote his ``Riding With The Rabbit'' column for. They had the issue announcing his unexpected death (and the fire at the Rye Playland carousel), and the one after that with people's recollections of him. I bought both, but have't somehow read them yet.

Trivia: The British, Forrest Mars-founded, Mars got its chocolate initially from Cadbury. (At the time Cadbury and Mars wouldn't have been direct competitors.) Source: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, Deborah Cadbury.

Currently Reading: The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St Clair.

PS: Some cool stuff in The Peaceable Kingdom.

Some of the Easter decorations they had and no, I don't understand the bunny on wheels either but if you were a mouse isn't that the car you would want?

While the Peaceable Kingdom was mostly an art gallery-type shop featuring kind of precious stuff for sale, it also featured a huge counter of Cheap Thrills. Things you could be interested in if you were a kid with a small budget and easily swayed by hand-made signs like this.

More of the cheap thrills. Those Tiny Babies were on sale forever.

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You know what? I've got the next trip report to start, and I've got just enough photos of the Merry-Go-Round Museum left that I'd have to jump subjects in the middle of the Thursday/Friday post. So rather than have widows in both my text and my photos I'm just going to show the rest of my Merry-Go-Round Museum photos here. Enjoy, I hope.

Some of the many, many boxes of band organ music. We usually visit in October, so we hear the Halloween recordings, including some that are on-point like requiems, some that are whimsical but appropriate like The Addams Family theme, and some that are just being goofy, like the Batman theme. Each of the scrolls is something like ten songs so probably better than a half-hour of music.

Another photo from the inside of the carousel, looking at the sea dragon family and some other, less scaled, creatures.

Glimpse down the stairs to what must have been the outside of a chariot at one point. Gryphons play(?) fighting.

Public art outside the Merry-Go-Round Museum. ``Magic Memories by Teddy Haas. Sponsored by: Ruth Parker''. I don't know either.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum's building. It's a former circular post office, one of surprisingly few. The miniature lighthouse on the right is part of the public art installation there. Can you spot bunny_hugger's head just poking over the sign?

US Geological Survey benchmark outside the Merry-Go-Round Museum building, which as mentioned used to be a post office.

Trivia: The French astronomer Pierre Lemonnier observed and recorded the planet Uranus eight times in under a month from December 1768 to January 1769, including four successive nights from the 20th to 23rd of January. But the planet was near its stationary point, not appreciably moving, ruining the only chance Lemonnier would have of noting the object was not another faint star. Source: In Search Of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe, Richard Baum, William Sheehan. (Lemonnier had too small a telescope for the disc of Uranus to be visible.)

Currently Reading: Michigan History, September/October 2017. Editor Nancy Feldbush. Main cover article: ``This is a Class I Emergency: The Fermi 1 (nuclear power plant) Accident''. Secondary item, featured in the header: ``Celery in the U.P.''. It's like they made this one just for me.

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We drove to bunny_hugger's parents' Tuesday, the 4th of July. We'd miss the Lansing city fireworks, and miss the Albion fireworks, and what can we say but thanks, Trenton-Mercer Airport, for never giving us an easy time flying home. But it was the chance to see them, and give them salt water taffy from Berkeley Candy. And to share some of our stories, particularly about Bowcraft and the discovery of Playland Castaway Cove.

bunny_hugger's father had fireworks, something I still deep down can't quite believe is normal and healthy and all. I kept my usual wary reserve, even from the harmless stuff like sparklers. But I was also rewarded for my reserve. A big box that was supposed to shoot off a dozen Roman candles or something like that misfired, just like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon or something. Some of the rockets just exploded at once. One shot off horizontally, skidding across the street and to the neighbor opposite's porch, where it rebounded and shot up. Another one shot off horizontally the other direction, like, towards bunny_hugger. Not right at her, mind, even before she ran, but being even ten feet away from an errant rocket is not at all comfortable.

So. Yes. I understand that was a freak event. My concern: the remnants of the box were smoldering. Were all the shells spent? Was all the gunpowder exploded? bunny_hugger's father tossed the box, as he had the other spent fireworks, off the driveway and onto the lawn. I pointed out it was still smoldering, and then more when the cardboard box caught on fire. He stamped it down with his foot. I grew up in a state that banned all fireworks in 1936 and had it burned into my memory early on that this was how you lose limbs. And at that it was smoldering. I wanted to soak the remnants; he didn't want to have to re-coil the hose. I have to interpret that as an excuse but can't imagine what the real issue was.

Anyway, I insisted, and promised to wind the hose back up. And soaked down the box, and the remanent fireworks, and the driveway with a ruthlessness that reminds you, I worked four summers in the quality control lab of a gunpowder plant. And maybe I was overreacting, but I really want explosives well-tamed and under close guard.

And again, this was the freak event. Most of the fireworks were just fine, and there was one similarly spectacular collection of Roman candles that went off perfectly, and that was such a good show that the neighbors on the other side of the house applauded. That's more normal stuff.

Trivia: Casey Stengel was a holdout in the spring of 1917 when Charlie Ebbets decided to cut his salary from $5,000 to $3,300 and then, after protest from Stengel, to $2,900 and then $2,700. Source: Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself, Michael Shapiro.

Currently Reading: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach. Oh wow but the I Don't Even Own A Television podcast was so right about it.

PS: more Merry-Go-Round Museum fun.

The band organ, out front, with some of the figures that move when it's in motion. I think. We're usually in the main room, in back, when they give demonstrations of the organ and at that it's tooth-rattlingly loud. If we went out front to watch it might peel our skin off.

The working carousel as seen from inside, with a focus on their pig. It's named Wilbur. On the outside ear there's a little spider.

The Wurlitzer band organ for their carousel. Also a booklet of instructions for the thing.

PPS: Reading the Comics, October 7, 2017: Rerun Comics Edition, with 1931-vintage Popeye action.

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We were in the long, skinny line for the lone screener at Trenton's tiny airport when I realized the disaster. I had left my iPod in the rental car. I'd got in the habit of leaving the iPod in the armrest cubbyhole, and there it went invisible, and we got our stuff out of the car and returned the keys and took the shuttle from the warehouse area of the outer airport grounds to the tiny terminal without my realizing. And now, with under an hour to takeoff, I had to get it back. I left the line, telling bunny_hugger to stay while I dealt with this, and she didn't.

After a few minutes of not seeing the rental shuttle I realized of course they wouldn't be sending the shuttle around; with no incoming flights there weren't any people who needed to go from the airport to the rental desk. bunny_hugger had the printout of our rental receipts, and that had the number, and I called and explained the situation. In a couple minutes the agency guy, who worked the counter and drove the shuttle and prepped the cars and everything, was driving up with the car we had used the past week, and handed me the iPod and cable. Crisis resolved.

So now we just had to get back in the line and ... oh, the security line was almost gone. OK. Through to the tiny waiting area which, thanks to airport renovations the last few years, now has bathrooms and even a little bar. We could watch the news, featuring the New Jersey budget standoff and how Chris Christie was caught lounging on a public beach closed to the public. So we were enjoying the Republican pettiness and thinking how nice it would to be to bunny_hugger's parents in a couple hours, to collect our rabbit and to see the fireworks in their town. And then suddenly everything went wrong.

What, I'm not sure I ever got straight. But our flight was going to be delayed. By six hours, they figured, so we might get out of there around 7:30 and get to Detroit around 9 pm. I think they had to get a plane up to Trenton from Miami or something like that.

So.

First thing. There are airports where you can just kind of wander around aimlessly for six hours and at least be tolerably amused. Trenton's is not one of them. It's about the size of our dining room, and the rack of free magazines promoting Mercer County as a place to do business threatens to knock the place off balance. Of course, as public space, there aren't lockers, so there's no stowing your carry-on bags for a couple hours. And even if there were, it's in the middle of farmland-turned-into-McMansions; there's nowhere to go in walking distance to do stuff. Rent a car? For a couple hours? Maybe cheaper than taking a taxi there, but still, not great.

So we faced a right boring afternoon sitting in airport chairs and hoping the flight would come a little sooner. We thought we were stretching out what we had to do in pretty good form. For example, by holding out in the security-area waiting lounge until almost everyone else had left before collecting our meal vouchers. But that meant that everybody who was going to be on the flight was eating before us, and the bar/restaurant is not equipped to handle a plane's worth of people getting burgers. On the other hand, what did we have to rush for? We could sit and wait, watching like a hawk for signs that people were actually leaving their table. People were bad about this, although some of that might have been they didn't have the staff to clean tables promptly.

Mostly, the problems stem from the fact Trenton is a tiny airport, and that's all right normally. But if something goes wrong they don't have the reserves to handle that without it being a big mess. So we may be giving up on it, at least until they can do things like not have every attempt to fly out of it involve some crazy problem.

Well, there were tiny bits of good news. The six-hour delay shrank, a little bit at a time. Is it better to spend only five hours in a tiny airport with no services, not even public Wi-fi? Better than six hours, anyway.

Getting to bunny_hugger's parents house was ... well, we maybe could have got there in time for the city fireworks, since those have to be after dark and dark comes really late in Michigan in early summer. The state is really far west for the Eastern Time Zone. But we didn't think that wise; we'd have almost no time to spend with her parents. So instead we went home, and felt that great comfort of being back home, at least.

Trivia: There was one newspaper in New Jersey in 1777 (the Gazette); ten years later there were four. Source: New Jersey From Colony To State, 1609 - 1789, Richard P McCormick.

Currently Reading: The Vulgar Tongue: Green's History of Slang, Jonathon Green.

PS: The Merry-Go-Round Museum!

View from just inside the main room of the Merry-Go-Round Museum's working carousel and some of the exhibits on the far side. It's a nice big circular room, as the building's exterior implies should be.

A curiosity: the Cyber Coaster, formerly in a little nook in the far side of the above picture, would show a ride video from Cedar Point's Gemini roller coaster. It didn't shake side to side or anything, the way ride simulators in disused corners of shopping malls would. It just sat there. Now it sits somewhere else and the monitor showing the picture was gone.

More secondary figures: on the back of this tiger are a cherub head and an irritated-looking eagle. Why? I don't know, but file this image away for a later nightmare.

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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.

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Page Summary

Unless your daddy's filthy rich you need (la, la) an occupation for you
There are soldiers and sailors, stuntment, jailers, jewelers, G-Men ...
Feel like I'm glued on tight to this carousel
Guess I'm coming home, yeah you know I'm coming home someday
But I feel like I'm glued on tight to this carousel
I know chasing after you is like a fairytale
We go, will I catch up to love? I can never tell
Round and around like a horse on a carousel
Where it stops nobody knows
'Round and round and round it goes
You got me spinnin' round and round
That it's strange, so strange
Restless bones etherialize
Weird glows gleam where spirits dwell
You oughta be in pictures
Shrouded in a daft disguise
They really are a scree-am
Locked on your wavelength; caught in the field, falling slowly
Nights are cold on this airfield; I sit alone and watch the radar
Where people come to see 'em

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