austin_dern

With the trip to Bronner's and now the Nite Lites 5K kicking off the Christmas season, what did we have to look forward to but the next weekend but kicking off of the Christmas season? This one looks like it might stick, since it's been a tradition of ours since we stopped attending Midwest Fur Fest. I refer to the Silver Bells In The City winter market and electric light parade. Mostly the parade.

We did stop first in the City Hall, for a bathroom break and to get popcorn and hot chocolate. Also to have a look around City Hall for what might be the last time. They finally have not just a deal to replace City Hall with a new structure but have actually broken ground and have things rising from what used to be a dry cleaners. The existing building's supposed to be renovated into a hotel and I guess that'll be nice if it works, but it probably won't be a gathering point and cheap snacks stand for Silver Bells when that happens.

The parade seemed to start even later than usual, although it was not horribly cold or windy so the wait wasn't bad. It was short on the number of marching bands --- nine by my count --- although bunnyhugger had barely got done complaining about how they seem to have dropped the best-band contest when the announcer came on to tell us who won the best-band contest. The bands all looked pretty good, none marching badly enough that bunnyhugger said anything aloud about people being out of step. And there was apparently some coordination between the bands so that there wasn't any repeating of a particular song and I don't think even the medleys overlapped much. The piece I half-remember is the announcer said one of the bands would be playing [ some 60s tune that hasn't got anything to do with Christmas or Thanksgiving or parades or anything ] and then they went and played Margaret Cobb and Bruce Channel's ``Hey! Baby'' instead. (The one with the refrain ``I wanna know // if you'll be my girl'', if that helps narrow it down.) bunnyhugger will surely remember and tell me and I'll feel foolish I forgot. [ Edit: It was ``Twist and Shout''; thanks, love. ]

The tree lighting was done before the community sing, which was anyway two quick songs that nobody sang along to, possibly because I don't know what the second song was but it didn't sound anything like a Christmas song. After that came the drone show, which has been getting a bit more interesting every year but is still basically, y'know, a drone show. For some reason a bunch of the constellations put up were themed to Wicked: For Good. Last year had a bunch of The Wizard of Oz images, in honor of the event's ruby anniversary, so I'm looking forward to this new Wizard of Oz Universe theme they've picked up for the thing. I'm a Hungry Tiger fan.

After the fireworks we went to the shopping village, which had expanded from past years by having grease trucks farther east than it'd had before. We got some veggie falafels from a truck just moments before it closed down. bunnyhugger also got a jar of garlic-flavored cooking oil from a place that we worked out has to be operating out of the neighborhood center a couple blocks from us. We've had it in a few bowls of ramen and it does add a very nice touch.

After all that --- and by then the village was closing up, as it always seems to do just as we've gotten there --- we went back to the state tree to get some photos of it up-close. We were just admiring how they don't seem to need the sort of complex wooden tresle they used to have for these trees; it just stood straight. And then bunnyhugger overheard some kids asking what that thing was and that it was a rabbit. She was expecting a wild rabbit had somehow stuck around the capital grounds through the crowd and noise and fireworks. The truth was maybe more amazing.

It was a domesticated rabbit, one on a leash, hopping around a little bit and sniffing around and eating the occasional leaf or blade of grass. An angora, which their owner explained was why they were so chill. Angora rabbits have to spend about fifteen hours a day being held in a lap and groomed, so they're used to contact --- and many people came up asking if it was safe to pet them --- and being restrained by things like leashes. We were amazed, and delighted, to meet a rabbit like this but also couldn't help imagining, gads, one excited dog and it's an awful day. The owner did say a quick bit about sometimes dogs are trouble but I guess she's confident in being able to gather the rabbit up fast. Oh also the rabbit is nine years old, which is outright old; they're doing very well getting around for being such a senior rabbit.

I won't be surprised if we never see that rabbit again, but it was wonderful encountering them at all. Made for a great way to send off the introduction to the Christmas season.

This time at the Musée I got pictures of nothing with a carousel in it. Yet is this entry still tagged 'carousels'? I don't know, it depends if I remember when scheduling this to post.

Some fairground-style attractions here now, including totally legitimate artwork of three of the caballeros and whoever Douce is.

The docent explains something about the ball-throwing gallery here.

Here's the figures that you would throw balls at,

Display of some of the ball-rolling tables with a scenic backgrop to give it a period appearance.

Something we did not get to see demonstrated, tragically: a fairground ride that gives you just a little push up and then slide back down. I feel like we saw something like this at Rye Playland ages ago but couldn't swear to it.

And, probably from a carousel, a pig-shaped mount to ride in.

Trivia: Five miles of beachfront in Russian-occupied Crimea was stripped down to clay foundation and the sand sold on the black market. Source: The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, Vin Beiser.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 75: Grand Poobahr of Smoochistan, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

The dye that we hoped might help us tell the brown mice apart has worn off, so we're back to thinking one of them kind of looks bigger than the other so that's going to tell us which is which? Maybe it'll be more obvious as we have more time with them.

Meanwhile Crystal, the elder mouse, I watched monkeying around climbing the wire mesh of their cage so she's at least feeling young yet.

That's not a lot to say about what's going on today so please take a double helping of pictures from the Silver Bells Electric Light Parade.

Hager Fox, which does heating and air conditioning, was one of multiple floats to have a Grinch.

And here's the big inflatable Hager Fox!

And here's a festival queen of something or other with plenty of lights around.

The giant rotating head of Ransom E Olds watches the crowd.

And then here's a Wizard of Oz float for whoever did that.

The slippers seem bigger than they appear on-screen.

And this robotty figure is somehow tied to ZapZone, which the pinball map tells me is the nearest place to play the Hot Wheels pinball machine.

Here's eternal favorites the Petoskey Steel Drum Band moving in! You can tell I took a video because the aspect ratio is changed here.

Now imagine this picture but the whole truck is bouncing up and down with the beat.

A small flurry blows through and does nothing to impair anything but maybe one picture of the night.

Sad to say Metro Lansing's only got the one roller derby team but at least it has a purple roller skate float.

And here's a glowing cow. I think this is the one for local convenience store chain Quality Dairy.

Trivia: Señor Wences performed as a juggler until the management of his theater (the Casino Theatre in Buenos Aires) decreed that only acts not requiring musical accompaniment could appear, so he adapted a ventriloquy routine he had last performed in school eighteen years before. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. He'd picked up juggling as a way to rebuild his hand strength after a bullfighting accident.

Currently Reading: BBC History, July 2025. Editor Rob Attar.

A small thing I forgot to mention the other day, but that I don't want forgotten for good. When I was driving home --- with my car at that magical 142,500 miles --- I noticed several wild turkeys on the side of the road. They were just hanging out, and looked really good in the early-evening light, with their heads almost shiny. Nice moment. I didn't know that there even were turkeys in that area. I expect to see them farther from the Interstate.

That's all. Just didn't want that forgotten. And now ... the last pictures from our big Halloweekends visit last year! The next Cedar Point photos you see on this blog will be from this year! ... Except ...

Gemini in the evening light; we're getting close to sunset and not that long before the park closes.

Way back over near what's now the Boardwalk area is this building, where long ago Helen Keller gave an important speech. Here it's decorated for the season.

Little view of the control booth for the Atomic Scrambler.

Midway Carousel, and what seems to me like a rare focus on the mirrors in the center.

And now the park is closed; GateKeeper's lights are already off, and people are rushing to the bathroom and to leave.

A last picture of the Midway Carousel, after its last ride but before they turn off the lights.

We took a shortcut through the Breakers since that was an option now, to get back to the car. It's surprising it's this dark considering there were still some people staying there through Monday morning.

And a last walk through the lobby --- Linus is writing the Great Pumpkin --- for the weekend.

Trivia: During the Great Fear --- a stretch in July and August 1789 when the French countryside erupted in panic at rumor of what might come from the aristocracy or from foreign invaders --- gossip spread at apparently supernatural speeds: in the Languedoc hills, on a single day, the same rumor appeared in places twenty miles apart and unconnected by road. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb. Wikipedia notes the abolition of the feudal regime in August 1789 was a measure the National Assembly took to appease the peasantry and quiet the fear.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

The Thursday after our Michigan's Adventure trip we had another journey, this one out to Downtown East Lansing, which was having an 80s Night festival. For this they closed off a couple of streets near Pinball Pete's and this little triangular wedge of a park that's in the heart of downtown. Also while there I learned there's a historic plaque explaining why this wedge is there: long ago it had been where the streetcar between Lansing and East Lansing turned around. The trolley's been gone almost a century now but it offers a good spot for 80s Night and other civic events. I don't know where the Lansing trolley turnaround was. I assume near the capital but there isn't an obvious road wedge. Maybe in what are now parklands next to the river.

We didn't get to the whole thing; just too much pulling on our attention, somehow. But we got to a good bit of it. There was a band, a locally famous set, doing spot-on covers of classic 80s dance tunes. I kept waiting for a Trevor Horn-connected song but somehow ``Two Tribes'' didn't fit the dancing-in-the-streets vibe people wanted. There were also hopscotch and long jump and running tracks set up in the street with, I had assumed tape, but when I was by the area a couple weeks later the markings were still there and mostly intact. I don't know what you could possibly put down that would last a month-plus in city traffic. Or they re-lay them every time there's an event night and I didn't know about what that week's was.

We met up with a bunch of pinball-league friends there, partly because they like doing fun stuff too. Also because Pinball Pete's brought up two pinball machines and set them on free play and we weren't going to turn down convenient nearby free play. Unfortunately Pinball Pete's doesn't have any actual 1980s pinball machines anymore. But they brought out two games with 80s band themes, the 1990s Guns N Roses from Data East and the 2017(?) Aerosmith by Stern. The Aerosmith had been temporarily plundered from a bowling alley on the west side of town where someone's trying to start a pinball league; when RED, working for Pinball Pete's, told him they were taking the game out for a couple days he shrugged and said that's fine. Aerosmith is an odd game that seems like it should be fun, but none of the shots are fun to make, and being a little bit off tends to drain you right away. If you have a good game it's fun but it's so hard to have a good game.

The 90s Guns N Roses is decent, but it's also a 90s game by Data East so the scoring is obscure and unbalanced. When I played against bunnyhugger and FAE and MAG I happened to luck into a mode where I just shot orbits, pretty easy to do on the game, and got forty million points each time. Not every game went like that, but it's the sort of thing that demoralizes the competitive play.

Also driving bunnyhugger crazy is the number of kids who would run up and, not knowing how you play pinball, start four games, play a while and then maybe abandon games and maybe not. At one point we had to explain to a woman behind us that we were not hogging the game, we were taking turns, like the game says, within a single game and would let her kid play as soon as we were done. I worsened matters by getting an extr aball, of course.

But most fascinating to me, somehow, was that they had a ``Tetris Tumble'' game. This is a bunch of Tetris blocks, to be put on a base with a semicircular bottom, and you keep stacking blocks on until they tip over. Some kids intuited quickly that the point of the game was you roll the big soft die beside it to pick which shape piece you add, making it a challenge. Others figured, you know, you can put pieces perpendicular to the plane that the base implies, and therefore fit more pieces more compactly than the rules would imply. I like that. Shows imagination.

It was a fun evening, and it was fun going to East Lansing just to have fun. Reminded me that oh, yeah, I could just go to Pinball Pete's and hang out a while, something I haven't done in forever.

bunnyhugger celebrated the 80s of this by taking out of storage her real actual 1980s-vintage Cedar Point T-shirt for the Iron Dragon coaster. I remembered only halfway through the evening that oh yeah, I did have a very 80s T-shirt, my Buggles concert shirt, that I should have worn. Maybe next time.

In pictures, now, we're up to Saturday afternoon and evening at Halloweekends. Hope you like Cedar Point pictures!

bunnyhugger, in Stitch livery, hanging out at the balcony of the Hotel Breakers. Note that Linus is writing the Great Pumpkin on the TV screen down there.

Late afternoon view of Top Thrill Dragster/Top Thrill 2's ``top hat'', at the time the most expensive piece of park decoration they had. (The ride is finally running.)

Some nice early-evening clouds that I liked looking at here.

And a nice moment of the Mine Ride where you see the train coming as close as it gets to the entrance.

More of the nice sunset sky, with a view of the Top Thrill 2 second spire decorative element on the side there. You can also see the now-removed Celebration Stage, lit up in bright blue, bottom center.

And a slight turn of the head gets you to the Coasters diner and the Corkscrew coaster, plus the new water tower, and a sky that looks incredibly darker despite being the same moment.

Trivia: Carson City, Michigan, was named that by Thomas Scott, who was the first (white) landowner in the village and with his nephews built a sawmill and grist mill. Scott had been in Carson City, Nevada, in its boom days. The Nevada city had been named after Christopher 'Kit' Carson. Source: Michigan Place Names: the History of the Founding and the Naming of More Than Five Thousand Past and Present Michigan Communities, Walter Romig.

Currently Reading: Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic, Simon Winchester.

I'm afraid that as we spent the evening at the Jackson County Fair, report to follow, I didn't have time to write about Six Flags America today. So we'll instead advance to the next thing on my photo roll.

So early October there was an aurora visible from our town, and even more incredibly, the skies were clear so we could see it. I heard the rumors of something being up while bunnyhugger was out on her own walk, and rushed out with my camera to see that indeed it was there. Here's my pictures.

Photographing the sky from the park at the end of our street, which I thought might be dark enough to see. And I could see a bit of something. The camera picks up much more detail, as everyone says. I'm trying not to process the photos any further to show them to you, but the camera does a lot of work even besides just having the shutter open to gather light that eyes are too insensitive to see.

An attempt at shooting roughly straight up in the park while hiding away from the street lights.

But after this picture I thought the park on our street didn't have good enough dark and I'd have to go looking to a bigger park with more dark spaces.

So here's the sky from a larger park a couple blocks west. And yeah, street lights are obscuring the darkness, but at least I can be farther away from those.

But here's the whole park seen from a normal angle, and the skies above.

In this aspect ratio the park looks like Cedar Point or something by night.

Here I set the camera down on a wall or something and snapped pointing directly up. My camera wasn't able to figure out where to put the focus.

The aurora was already fading by this point; you can see the stars more than the northern lights here.

A last photograph, while walking neighborhood streets looking for good seeing. I think this is where I talked with a guy who'd just got back from out of town where he'd gone to see it in way more darkness. I'm not sure if that streaky star in the upper right corner is an airplane that was moving or just the result of my camera twitching in my hand.

Trivia: Brazil borders ten other countries. Source: The Uncyclopedia, Gideon Haigh.

Currently Reading: The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History, Deborah Valenze.

While we were basically untouched by last week's storm front and still-increasing tornado count that doesn't mean we haven't been affected. Here's a trivial but still annoying one for you. I was scheduled to donate blood Monday after work. A couple hours before I got a text and a voice mail that the appointment was cancelled, please re-schedule. I rescheduled for Tuesday and mid-Tuesday got the same message, although this time the voice mail was from some guy in Idaho? Information communicated to me for some reason?

But what happened with the appointments? My paragraph opening tells you the essentials --- the local donation center was still blacked out --- but not the thrilling details. That part of town, only a couple blocks north of us, got hit far worse than we did. One street that's basically what ours would turn into, if it continued through a park, had every tree shredded or destroyed. That's not what hit the Red Cross center, though. Or other things nearby, including the grocery where we pick up stuff it's not worth going to Meijer's for. (Meijer's has far more fake-meat food and variety of pop, so don't @ us.)

A pedestrian overpass for one of the four-lane roads there collapsed in the storm, screwing up traffic for a good while and gathering a lot of road crews. And apparently it's been enough of a mess there that they claimed they'd be getting the power back sometime Tuesday night.

I've rescheduled my appointment for Saturday afternoon. We'll just see what happens.

Happening now, back in July? Kennywood. Last you saw were pictures going into the Old Mill ride. And now here's ...

The refurbished Old Mill signage, which looks kind of like if you had something almost plausibly 1901 design but still new. (I feel that's a font you wouldn't get in 1901 but I can't justify that claim.) The skeleton figure in the other Old Mill sign turns up in a lot of the scenes inside.

Now here's the Sky Rocket, which we rode for the first time this decade. Here it's paused on a brake run.

Good look up so you can see the underside of the coaster and also the wheels underneath and on the side of the track which make it so difficult for a train to fly off.

You'd never see a train derailment if Amtrak could run on this system!

Train is out of here. The wild thing is this is just the slow speed of a train released from the brakes and rolling into the station.

And here's the operator's console for Sky Rocket. Not even twelve buttons to the whole thing!

Trivia: In the early modern era, the Flemish areas of the Low Countries preserved farmland vitality with a seven-crop rotation cycle. Source: Food in History, Reay Tannahill.

Currently Reading: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss.

Jumping a little ahead, for convenience's sake, I got my teeth examined, X-rayed, and polished. By the professional dentist, understand, not just anyone anywhere.

Not much different to report from last time, though. My extreme good luck in health continues, with no sign of trouble among my teeth and even my gums looking like they're not receding importantly. They tried an ultrasonic device for cleaning some spots of my teeth and that was a novel experience. Not a bad one, understand. Just a different sort of vibration from any I'm used to. The cold water used along with this confirmed I don't have any particularly sensitive spots in my teeth or my gums, good news that will inspire bunnyhugger to kick my shins for being so good at teeth.

My tooth-grinding continues, though. Not because it's made my gums recede appreciably since half a year ago, but I guess they had it in my file and were asking about its progress. I couldn't swear I'd noticed it in my sleep, but bunny_hugger has and I passed that on. They're going to check with my insurance and see whether they'll cover getting a mouth guard and all to say what it'll cost me, besides a couple hours off for measurement and fitting appointments.

The hygienist told me she'd found a couple times she'd taken them out overnight. I think this is extremely likely for me since I'm an active sleeper doing a lot of squirming around. She thinks it's likely I'd lose the impulse to take it out after a couple weeks. bunnyhugger had a different experience herself. But maybe I'll be good about this.

And in pictures, back to the 4th of July and the same fireworks pictures several times over:

A couple lanterns being let go at once.

And here's a nice sparkler shower with a telephone pole coming out its center.

Here we go. Some other town's fireworks plus a couple lanterns in the sky.

And now downtown has its show starting. Or maybe the ball park. Hard to be sure.

But between the city's fireworks and individuals doing their own shows you can see how smokey it gets here in early July.

I believe this is two fireworks shows photographed at once but it's hard to be sure, at this remove.

Trivia: Telephones of the 1880s were extremely vulnerable to background electrical interference, both from the weather and from the electric light and electric trolley services also stringing wires around cities, to the point of being unusable when a trolley car switched tracks or a city electric light sputtered. Source: Telephone: The First Hundred Years, John Brooks.

Currently Reading: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich. Translator Ayça Türkoğlu.

The 40th Anniversary, the announcer guy told us, is the Ruby Anniversary and that's probably why Michigan's State Tree is lit all in red (with a white star topper). I don't believe this is the 40th year that Michigan has had a State Tree, but it is the 40th Silver Bells in the City, with an outdoor market and --- for most of those years --- an electric light parade. We were not clear whether they mean this is the 40th time there has been a Silver Bells, or 40 years since the first Silver Bells --- note those are not the same thing --- nor how they count 2020 when they didn't do the parade or market and faked having a fireworks show. Well, you know what kind of people bunnyhugger and I are.

We set out about 5:00, an hour before the start of the show, and somehow were still late enough that we couldn't get a front-row spot to watch the parade from. We didn't have a bad spot, though; we were off behind the main TV camera where they let VIPs into the reviewing stand, so we actually had two lines of sight for okay photographs, one at the reviewing stand and one just past the TV camera, in front of the state capitol.

The parade went much as you might expect; though there were a couple small drops of rain there wasn't anything like the storm of 2016 that we'll never stop talking about. There were ten or so marching bands; I had only counted eight but sometimes forgot my mental count. bunnyhugger paid closer attention and said nothing bad about the bands' synchronized stepping though even I could see some of them were ... let's say unpracticed. Her uncertainty is that the final band, the one before Santa, wasn't announced as Santa's Band so she might have counted an eleventh as the band in the spot of honor there.

I don't know if it was something for the 40th Year or whatnot but there were a couple new floats more sophisticated and stylish than have been the usual for Silver Bells, including ones with animated elements. One, for the Curwood Castle over in Owosso, claimed even to have a working waterfall, although we didn't see it. Maybe it was on the other side of the float. One of the floats had a full Wizard of Oz theme going including giant ruby slippers, and this wasn't even for the roller derby team.

The announcer promised a drone show and an enhanced fireworks show and we're always up for a fireworks show. The drone show was all right, had some clever stuff, including ruby slippers clacking together, which was the prompt I needed to make me realize oh, there's a red theme because of this supposed ruby anniversary. The fireworks were good --- it's a fireworks show, after all --- but I don't know there was anything particularly heightened about it. I was just relieved the fireworks happened, since it had been very windy all day. In the reflected glow of the street lights you could see the clouds of expired fireworks were booking it to the southeast.

After the fireworks we walked down to the outdoor market where we discovered how busy the place can be if you don't go in to City Hall to warm up and use the bathroom for twenty minutes first. There was such a line at the place giving out free coffee, though, and an even longer one at the truck selling elephant ears. We eventually got through the crowds enough to buy hot chocolate, and some edible raw cookie dough that brightened bunnyhugger's day today, and some peanut brittle I haven't tried yet.

After all this we walked back to the State Tree to get some up-close photos. We don't know what all was going on but there were walls of cops marching down the sidewalk telling some people to get moving, and keep moving, and all. I don't know if this was related to the Free Palestine protesters waving signs around near the tree, or if it was just police noticing a bunch of Black people in the crowd, or if even something actually serious happened. While we were at the tree something or other happened a block east (in front of the city police headquarters) and cops ran over to whatever that all was. I can't find any news articles about the incident --- all the ones online appear to be reports about the upcoming Silver Bells --- so since I missed the 11:00 news last night I'll probably never know what was going on.

While this has been a very warm autumn, we finally started getting roughly seasonal weather this week, and after a couple hours in the cold my camera batteries decided they'd had enough. So I didn't get as many up-close pictures of the tree by night as I wanted. But I should have the chance to stop in again; this is only the start of the holiday season.

This morning, bunnyhugger went downtown again to run in the Silver Bells 5K, and by reports she did successfully, apart from walking instead (as planned). She had a reindeer costume of her own making, improving on the gear she'd had last year by making a new partial-face-mask with false fur and clay antlers and some Christmas-y pine branch decorations put in to sell the Christmasness of it all. She got a bunch of compliments about how cute it was and one comment about its spookiness from someone who seems to have mistaken it for a Krampus mask, and then apologized for ``stealing your joy''. But many more people said positive things about her costume than tried to steal her joy, so it was a good bit of work. She's gotten quite good at these partial-face-masks and is looking to chances to make more of them.

Now for some relaxing views of the most visually calm environment known to humanity, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum:

How about some more establishing shots of what Marvin's looks like above eye level? Yeah, there sure is a lot going on here. I'm not sure what Dr Marvin's Sex Change Machine is --- it's too high up to put a coin in --- but my guess is a mannequin that does a quick change from manly to womanly dress.

There's a very long chain running a twisty path along the ceiling with these big airplane models --- they're maybe two or three feet long --- and now and then someone puts a quarter in the box that makes them lurch forward and progress around a while.

And here's the Jersey Jack game Toy Story 4 doing one of those wonders that are only possible in modern pinball: it's downloading a three gigabyte patch updating the game a major version number and, as you can see from the clock, it's at about 8:40 pm, that is to say, in the middle of pinball league. It happens nobody was playing then but no reason there couldn't have been, and no reason people couldn't have been playing before and after when the game rules had changed in various ways.

I liked Toy Story 4 (it's since been replaced with the Jersey Jack Avatar); here's some of the playfield, including Bo Peep on the lower left and the miniature TV screen that provides instructions and sometimes a backwards map of New Jersey.

And here's the right-hand side of the upper playfield, including that bunny-and-duck plush that were stitched together and a pop-up ramp for that Yes I Canada guy.

Slightly broader view of the playfield. To the left of Yes I Canada! is the Gabby Gabby popup; now and then she appears on the playfield and I don't know, you hit her for some reason. I never got the hang of everything that was going on except that there was a lot going on and it was generally fun.

Trivia: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek got interested in the polishing of lenses --- leading him to creating the microscope --- from the magnifying glasses that he and other drapers used to determine the thread count of fabrics. Source: The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, Vince Beiser.

Currently Reading: Poincaré and the Three-Body Problem, June Barrow-Green.

Sunday we made our second amusement park trip of the Halloween season, and our first to Cedar Point. We hoped for our usual sort of six-hour Sunday trip --- bunnyhugger had Monday off for reasons of academic calendars but I did not (and won't have this coming Monday off either) --- but ended up at the park about a half-hour late. The construction zone that blocked off our access to US 127 South has grown a side blockage to keep us off the other path to 127. There was a literal stoppage on I-96 East. And turns out there's construction all along US 23 between I-96 and Ann Arbor. I assume someday there's going to be an end to this construction zone, but I know there won't be. There's similar problems with the other side of 127 that bunnyhugger needs to get to and from work.

It was a busy day at the park. Not so packed as Columbo's Day Weekend will be, but still, it was sunny, cloudless, and in the low 80s, a fine late-August/early-September day except for being in early October. Despite this there were weird lines for things. At one point Millennium Force's electronic queue estimated the wait time at 30 minutes, and from what I could see of the queue it probably wasn't even that. That's just freaky. GateKeeper, no less freakily, had a wait of 30 minutes or so according to its queue. When we first saw that wait, it was because the ride had been down for maintenance and most people were waiting it through. But later on, after the ride was going again, the line was still almost as long. Again, quite freaky.

But most freaky of all? And wonderful? And that would have got us going to the park even if we hadn't already planned to go? Remember how the carousel at Michigan's Adventure was dubbed the ``Scare-ousel'' and was running backward? They had the Midway Scare-ousel and it was running backwards. They warned people that it would do this at the start of the ride, I suppose heading off kids offended that the rules of the universe were betrayed by this. And they were still using the band organ --- already in need of tuning --- playing the Halloween/scary-songs soundtrack, plus the theme to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?. Also from the tunes playing I learned bunnyhugger doesn't know the tune ``Mysterious Mose'' or at least doesn't remember it by name. I'd have tried to hum it for her but everything I try to hum comes out sounding like Morse code.

Sadly none of the other carousels were running backwards. I hope Cedar Point's gotten good response to this, though, and will break their rules and let other rides go backwards. We would return to the Midway Scareousel for our last ride of the night, and thought we might get two rides in a row, to catch the last ride of the night. But we and a couple people ahead of us in the queue were cut off, told that they were full up for the last ride. There were many seats left, including the chariots. We have no explanation for this and the ride operator offered none. My guess is that while the ride can get to, or close to, its usual speed in reverse it can't do that with a full load. Otherwise the operator just wanted to turn away the kids in front of us who were dressed in wolf costume. I don't see why he'd want to do that, though.

There's more to share. I'll get there.

Next on my photo roll ... pictures from walking around the neighborhood a little, for good reasons. I was going to say it was nothing special but you'll see the first picture is rather special after all.

And here's the special thing: the three-foot solid chocolate rabbit of Fabiano's chocolate. This year it sold for $750; I believe their past years' rabbits were more like $550.

The chocolate rabbit and other, much smaller chocolate things, to give you an idea what the place looks like. A couple weeks later all this would be sold or melted down. (Apart from the three-foot rabbit, given to charity.)

Street outside the chocolate shop. The trees haven't got to their blooming yet.

They were about to start a major project rebuilding the streets and sidewalks. Here's a sidewalk in so need of reconstruction that they've spray-painted warnings on its edges.

A bit of the neighborhood. In the background you can see the local Papa John's, which is unrelated to the evil company and did manage to shoo them out of town.

The streets around here could use reconstruction. But you can see peeking out underneath the old roads, like these brick- or cobblestone streets. There's a fair chance someone in there are trolley tracks.

Trivia: The novelist J B Priestley wrote of W C Fields, ``Nobody could suggest the malice of objects better than Fields. At his best moments, an ordinary room, empty of other human beings, could turn itself into a mined mountain pass.'' Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide.

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young.

My photo roll now jumps ahead to the last day of February and also the last regular day of operations for Archives, the more antiquarian-minded bookstore in East Lansing. We got to it after work, in time to be --- I believe --- the last two paying customers before it closed up apart from by-appointment openings while stock gets sold online (I imagine) or moved to its sister store.

A warning that the parking is only for Archives, the bookstore, and Dino's. There's nothing there named Dino's and there hasn't been all the time I've been in town, yet the sign looks great, possibly because they hung it up behind the power lines. (There's no reason that would have anything to do with anything.)

We were not the only people who came to Archives for last-day photos. I believe the guy taking the picture here has two cameras.

Tabooli is a local microchain (two restaurants) of Mediterranean-style food, for people who want a hummus wrap built your way like Subway would do. This spot used to be a coffee shop and there was a door to pass through into the bookstore.

And here's what the sign looked like. Today, seven months later, it ... still does, actually.

The last day that would be out there, except by appointment.

Setting sun, closing bookstore, do you get it? Huh? Symbolism? BETTER SAY YES.

And here's what it looked like inside, which is your usual sort of used bookstore arrangement.

Some of the vintage magazines, from back when The Saturday Evening Post existed or Collier's existed or people in Southern England enjoyed leisure.

Aisles half-blocked by aged cardboard boxes full of other books, not because of the closure, just because used bookstores are always like this.

Someday someone is going to file an ADA lawsuit on behalf of people with mobility issues and it's going to decimate the used bookstore industry. In the back there the shelves are boxes full of postcards, I believe.

Your usual used-bookstore arrangement, here of books about Canada. Surprised that text about Upper Canadian politics of the 1850s didn't move sooner.

Archives was more into antiquarian and rare books, which didn't mean it lacked for science fiction, just that the section was smaller than its sister store in downtown East Lansing has, and it includes things like those Gentry Lee Rendezvous with Rama sequels. Also note they have a book by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley that isn't universally panned Hugo winner They's Rather Be Right, assuming that's not just another name for the same book. (It was.)

Trivia: The British 46th Division's capture of the St Quentin Canal --- making possible the breach of the Hindenburg Line the 29th of September, 1918 --- was preceded by a creeping barrage of about 126 shells for every 500 yards of German trench over the course of eight hours. Source: The First World War, Hew Strachan.

Currently Reading: Comic books.