austin_dern

Thank you, dear bunnyhugger.

We finally got to the Merry-Go-Round Museum maybe a quarter after two, giving us not quite two hours to hang out and see the sights. Fortunately we've seen many of them before, but there's always ones we can look at again and feel are new, like this E Joy Morris sea monster that's not quite the one you see reproduced on Chance fiberglass carousels, but is a kin to it. Or looking at the animals they've carved for their own carousel, like the rabbit that's adorable but so tiny that no one over 60 pounds is allowed to ride it. Or just studying again the big Toy Town map for an amusement park (that seems kind of low on specific rides) never built, somewhere in Iowa, that's just imagination-capturing. I also realized that weekend was the 50th anniversary of a National Carousel Roundtable conference held in Flint, one of the key moments in the development of merry-go-round appreciation. I thought it was wonderful we were here on the 50th anniversary of the organizational beginnings and then remembered that the program they have on display shows the October 1974 meeting was their second annual meeting. (I believe it's the one where the Norris family presented what they were able to determine about George W Long's carousel history, though.)

And then there's new things, as there are every year. The one standing out here was a sign from Cedar Point. The rides there used to have custom-made art showing off the ride, usually with a character saying how tall you need to be to ride this ride. The Merry-Go-Round Museum had somehow acquired the sign for Blue Streak, showing a lightning-wielding superhero hovering somewhere above the Space Spiral, which was not actually near Blue Streak, but it's nice and dramatic. They had some miscellaneous other old stuff too --- a Welcome to Cedar Point sign that has to date to around 2000, a kiddie height guide using Peanuts characters (so, from sometime after 2008 or so), a papier mache figure formerly on the Midway Carousel.

Something going on we didn't quite understand: some family had lost a something. We didn't pay detailed attention to the family that was one of the big group having a tour --- and a carousel ride --- as we got in. But after we had thought they'd left, they were back, casting blame at one another in the search for something. I was feeling the need to go over and lend my thing-finding experience but also felt like I needed to not get involved in other people's tense moments. Eventually the father declared that he had found it, everyone was now to assemble at the car as they were leaving. Someone asked him where he found it and he answered, ``Does it matter?'' I am torn between whether this means it was in his pocket or he was lying about having found it and would reveal the lie when they were too far away to drive back.

A surprise we maybe should not have been surprised by was the raffling off of a carousel horse. They'd announced for 2021 that they were doing one last raffle of one last horse, at the end of 2022. Last year, they announced the final raffle had been postponed to the end of 2023. You will be stunned, then, that bunnyhugger bought another six raffle tickets for the horse to be raffled off New Year's Eve, 2024-25. Along the way we got the story of the horse that had been won by some party that didn't pick it up for ... I want to say ten years. (They were from way out of the area --- I want to say California --- and had trouble arranging a time when they could be back in Ohio with means to drive back to California. Even when they did, story goes, they didn't have space for it and so loaned it to a neighbor who did.) We'll see.

Also we saw how the museum had a couple of carousel calendars for past years. I mean really past years, like 2008 or so. They don't have one for 2025, unfortunately. bunnyhugger plans to make her own out of the pictures she's taken this year. Including ones at the Merry-Go-Round Museum, although the skeletons they've set on some of the animals as Halloween theming constrain what she can use. But outthinking constraints is part of what makes art, isn't it?

And now back to Pinball At The Zoo pictures. Will there be any pinball this set of pictures? Or will I focus in on ...

Pixy Prize is one of the redemption or prize games that were on sale --- this one was already sold --- so unfortunately I didn't see it in demonstration. But I got some idea of what might be going on from looking at the pixies on bottom.

So you see those figures with the big heads and open mouths and enormous barber-pole antennas, right? Well, are you ready for ...

Yeah! They have faces on back of their heads too. In fact, they have duplicate bodies on the back, so they can rotate around and always come to a rest looking at the customer.

Just a little long-distance shot from near Pixy Prize at some of the games and people playing them.

One of Stern's rare misfires in recent years was the Led Zeppelin table. Here's a playfield being offered for sale individually and I don't think it moved. Could be wrong, though.

Oh yeah, so, we were no where near threatening to compete in the Pinball At The Zoo main tournament but here's pictures of two of the trophy plaques, things someones not us (specifically, ADB, currently the 45th-highest ranked player in the world and DOM, the 122nd) could hang in their living rooms.

Trivia: The Convention of Mortefontaine, signed the 3rd of October, 1800, at a chateau north of Paris, ended the Quasi-War with France. News of it first arrived in Baltimore the 7th of November, too late to affect the Presidential election. Source: John Adams, David McCullough.

Currently Reading: Comics.

Back in the park and fed we would have a couple hours left in Dollywood. We used a good part of an hour on the park's original ride, a narrow-gauge train ride up and down the mountain at the center of the park. This is on a coal-fired train, once part of the building of the Alcan Highway, they take the coal seriously. Particularly, the emergency cable running the center of the ceiling of the cars is intended not to stop the train but to call for medical attention when you get off the train. That attention is for getting fire in your eyes, because the engine is pouring out ash and some of it is still on fire and you would rather not have lasting agony there. The safety spiel explains what to do in case of this and also that it is not a cable-pull-worthy medical situation if you just get some soot in your eye. Let your tears wash that out.

bunnyhugger and I --- forced to sit in separate rows because of the crowding of the cars --- put our sunglasses on. This wouldn't block every angle of eye attack but it at least reduces them.

As it chugs up the hill you get views from behind of a lot of the park, which is as we like it. We also saw a field where a couple park people were examining each of maybe two hundred gizmos laid out in rows and columns. I thought this was preparation for the firework show, and I get partial credit. They were prepping the drones that make up half the firework/lights show. The park has a pretty nice nightly firework show, in part because the middle half of the programming is drones taking on configurations that are getting more interesting but are, I assume, cheaper long-term than fireworks which are, after all, consumable goods. The fireworks and the drones coordinate so they appear at roughly the same spot in the sky, taking turns with the airspace. I couldn't figure where the launch site for the fireworks was.

Besides seeing wonderful angles of Big Bear Mountain, and smoke rolling in on the Smokey Mountains, we also saw this one lodge perched atop the mountain. The ride operator on the PA asked if we knew who owned that lodge, overlooking the whole valley and Dollywood particularly. Dolly Parton, everyone's natural guess. Nope; she doesn't own it. It's a rental.

After that we had been on, and enjoyed, all the must-see rides at the park and could spend the last couple hours taking things as they caught our eye. Or looking for the ``Roadside Attraction'' art-type exhibits. Or looking for the Coke Freestyle machine that I swore I had seen the day before, which we only found after the park had closed and the restaurant it was in probably was closed. Maybe not. By that point we figured we could just go home anyway.

But before that we got re-rides on several roller coasters and we did our level best to head for the Wildwood Grove so we could get a night ride on Big Bear Mountain and, if our calculations about how the park behaved were right, get there close enough to closing hour that we could spend most of the wait after the park was closed. And here, sad to say, after a day and a third of guiding us around the park as if I had ever been there before, my navigation sense failed me. I would have sworn that the branch leading to Wildwood Grove was before the Mystery Mine and when we reached that and saw no sign of the turnoff I thought we'd missed it. So I led us back downhill and got provably beyond the limit of where the branch could possibly have been. And without enough time, we figured, to get the whole way to the back of Wildwood Grove where Big Bear Mountain was.

To try salvaging anything we went back to Lightning Rod, which might not have been much closer but was all downhill at least. And there, I managed to start walking up the fast-lane line-cutters queue just like I had the day before, and didn't understand what bunnyhugger was talking about when she tried to explain what I was doing wrong to me. Eventually we got there, anyway. And --- after some waiting around for stragglers to get on --- did get to the ride, for the last ride of the night, enjoying the thrill of a quite good coaster roaring out into the night sky in the woods on a hill, with much of the ride spent hidden from the lights of the park. It was like blending the great parts of Cedar Point's Steel Vengeance with those of Kings Island's The Beast. It was a consolation finish for the night, but a pretty good one at that.

What did we get to after the Merry-Go-Round Museum? And before going back to Cedar Point for the evening that Halloweekends Saturday? Why, to the most curious structure in Sandusky that's not the pyramid without its building. You ready? Really ready? All right, then ...

So here it is: the U building. Once a thriving part of Sandusky's Something Industry, it's been sitting empty a long while and its big powerful U logo fascinates us every time we see or think of it.

Here's that U logo in the chimney in back. We do like a building with logos in bricks; you dont' see that anymore. After observing that, though, it's hard not to quip that we looked it up and they put this pattern in in 2007.

And here's the sign atop the building. Imagine what that looks like in neon by night.

Whatever the heck it's about there's at least this old hand-painted sign to ask us not to park around where we parked.

See, that's where we parked. Figured it was probably safe enough. And it gives you the basic layout of a place that looks like it should be a SimCity 2000 construct.

It's old enough to have that awful flimsy window old factories used to have, but hasn't been abandoned long enough for every window to get smashed in.

Trivia: A Reo Motor Car Company airmail shipment in August 1928 --- about a month after the Lansing airport was dedicated --- established that air travel time between Lansing and Chicago was slightly over two hours. It carried ten tons of mail, roughly 350,000 letters. Source: The Bicentennial History of Ingham County, Michigan, Ford Stevens Caesar.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Sundays Supplement Volume 10: 1948, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

After the rain and food and eagle delays we finally --- and seriously, this was something like 3:30 by my camera --- got to Blazing Fury. This was one of the two roller coasters we hadn't gotten to the day before. It's also the oldest roller coaster at Dollywood; it opened in June 1978 and the Roller Coaster Database knows of only one coaster, a wooden coaster relocated(!) from Cedar Point(!) they had before that. It is one of the park's two fire-fighter-themed coasters, which probably makes sense if you know more Dolly Parton lore than I do. It's got many charming touches, like posters extolling the heroism of old-timey (fictional) firefighters, and a hand-painted sign explaining it ``is an indoor roller coaster consisting of special effects in a dark environment''. That is, it's got dark-ride elements, much like Mystery Mine.

Arguably it's a dark ride that has a couple of roller coaster elements; the Roller Coaster Database says it's mostly a powered incline, but the three drops make it roller coaster enough for them. There was a modest line for this, and there would be when we came back later. It is fun, though, just what we're looking for in dark rides --- moving props, gags (I think this is the one where a spinster-y woman chases after a man who calls her [ something ] hit in the head), fake-outs about where you're going to fall beneath something. Apparently until 2011 there was a water splashdown, but that was removed to reduce wear on the ride. It didn't feel like there was an obvious lack in the ride, although knowing what had been there makes some more sense of the end of the ride. (Though, oddly, its duplicate at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, kept its splashdown, I'm told.)

And then it was on to the last coaster we hadn't ridden. This was the Tennessee Tornado and it was weeks since a tornado hit the Lansing area so it's tasteful to ride. And an exciting one: it's among the last roller coasters constructed by Arrow Dynamics, the company that made steel coasters coasters practical. It's not the sort of crazily overdone string of loops like Kings Island's Vortex was; it's a more restrained thing with, I think two loops and a sidewinder. It's also got a nice element of the track going through the center of one of the loops, which feels like more of a novelty than it really, truly is.

With that, though, we'd gotten to all ten of Dollywood's roller coasters, and enjoyed rides, often front-seat rides, on all of them. We would go back to various coasters, starting with Wild Eagle, and get better looks at things such as this sculpture in the Wildwood Grove that looks like a lyre, with ribbons of dripping water as the strings.

Also an attraction in Wildwood Grove? The Black Bear Trail, a long steeplechase-style ride with bear mounts. It looked like the Moose on the Loose that delighted us, and still delights us, from Darien Lake. Also La Chevauchée de Guillaume at Festyland. At Dollywood, the ride figure is a bear, following a level path around scenery. There was some music but not, as we were hoping, an unending monologue from the bear delivering cornball jokes, the way Moose on the Loose did. The ride operator welcoming us back was good for it, though. I forget just what he told bunnyhugger and what he told me, but it differed from what he told the guy behind me, too, so he's got at least three bits of schtick for riders having a bear time. Fun stuff and I hope more parks get this kind of ride in. It's merry.

Had enough of the Merry-Go-Round Museum? Because I haven't, quite yet, and you're going to get to look at the results!

The Wurlitzer band organ that the museum occasionally plays, and that convinces people band organs are hecking loud. Also the huge banner that explains all the parts of the carousel.

Photograph of a miniature (but still, like three-foot-wide) carousel that my recollection is they'd love to get working but it's really hard what with everything being very precise when it's that small.

Sign for Gustav Dentzel's late-19th-century carousel carvers. Also, evidence of how loose people have been with the spelling of ``carousel'' over the years.

One of the penny press machines the Merry-Go-Round museum has. Sadly they have the ones where you just push a button to start things rather than grind them but at least it takes actual change and not a credit card. Note this is not the one that's next to the Wurlitzer, photographed above.

Peeking in the back of a penny-press machine. It's ... about like you might expect, really, but I do appreciate the schematic diagrams so people have a fighting chance of fixing the thing.

Another of the crayon drawover pieces, with a horse's head and carving tools.

Trivia: Neil Armstrong's Model A-7L space suit, for the moon walk, was serial number 056; his backup suit was 057. Buzz Aldrin's was serial number 077; backup, number 076. Mike Collins flew intravehicular model suit, serial number 033. Source: Lunar Outfitters: Making the Apollo Space Suit, Bill Ayrey. It doesn't say what (trusting there was one) Collins's backup suit serial number was. I imagine there was one, from the waste-anything-but-time conditions up through the first landing, but can't confirm it without, like, trying.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Sundays Supplement Volume 9: 1947, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Another regular week in my humor blog, so, you know, miscellaneous little bits and discoveries of curious pop culture items. Including a vintage 1947 comic book page that's a little weird. I bet you'll like at least one of these:

• MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 15
• In Which I Learn Something That Makes Me Go, ‘Huh'
• Statistics Saturday: Backyard Animals Who Have Opinions and Want YOU to Know Them
• But the Street Is Abuzz Over This Transaction
• When Nintendo Hard meets Popeye Hard
• What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Is anything going on? April - July 2024
• In Which I Refresh My Respect for _Slylock Fox_
• MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 16

With my photos, you know well, I've been at the Merry-Go-Round Museum. Please enjoy some more of that:

Here's the first of a couple pictures that reveal some important secrets: how to carve a carousel horse! Here's an early stage, with the roughest blocks for the body, neck, and head.

Slightly more advanced work. The neck is near its final shape and the head is partway there, while the body's been shaved down a little and stenciled for the real work.

And another step forward. Head and neck carved and given a first layer of paint, body starting to be carved. I don't know whether carving front to back (or, one end to the other) is true to the historic practice when these were being mass-produced or is an attempt at showing the various stages with as few models as possible.

Deer that I believe were part of Michelle Obama's White House Christmas decorations one year. I should have rotated this picture but it's more interesting in this orientation.

I guess if you're a skeleton and you're going to sit side-saddle it is safer to sit around the pole.

I believe this is one of the older horses. Note the poles coming out between both sets of legs; I imagine without knowing that this had been on a carousel that didn't have the pole dangling up and down.

Getting some pictures of the working carousel, which has mostly their own, modern, carvings on it. Here's a rabbit, too small for us to ever ride.

The rabbit seen from front, where you can see they're looking just a little bit off to the right. Not much.

And here's the inside of the rabbit, with as much (or as little) carving and decoration on the inside as on the out.

Antique lion seen here walking the tightrope of the chain in front of it.

Two band organs, with one of them showing off the antique horse that's been set into four stages showing off the progression of carousel restoration.

And here's a view of the Parker carousel from the back of the back room. You can see some of the crowd of older people who were milling around inside.

Trivia: Gus Grissom's Mercury launch attempt on the 19th of July, 1961, reached to ten minutes 30 seconds before launch, when a hold was called to wait for a break in the cloud cover. None came, and as the liquid oxygen tanks had been filled, a 48-hour delay was needed. Source: This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, Loyd S Swenson Jr, James M Grimwood, Charles C Alexander. NASA SP-4201.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Sundays Supplement Volume 9: 1947, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

With the rest of our night we'd go looking for roller coasters to ride. I may list some of this out of order but does that much matter? We would go along this branch off the main ring, into an area called Wildwood Grove with a narrative --- explained by a sign up front --- about a butterfly leading a girl into a special grove and a dazzling tree at its center. The area is beautiful, yes, and decorated heavily with lights even for an amusement park, complete with trees that are so heavily illuminated that they carry that Christmas Tree splendor through the heat of June.

Also, we ran into something we were not at all expecting. These were a couple of human-propelled spinning tops, or merry-go-rounds in the playground sense. We hadn't seen one of those since d'Efteling. These were a temporary attraction, and for some reason owned by DTE Energy Beacon Park Foundation and the Downtown Detroit Partnership. I guess they're hoping to get people excited about Detroit by showing the city's ability even in these tough times to get people to spin.

As we got into Wildwood Grove a couple DJs were getting ready for a big dance class/dance party underneath the very decorated tree. There would also be fireworks over this, that we'd see in time. But we were off here in search of roller coasters, like you'd expect. One was Dragonflier, themed to the insect, not the dragon, sorry. This is a five-year-old family suspended coaster, the gentle version of Cedar Point's Raptor or Canada's Wonderland's Silver Streak. There's about a dozen like this operating, mostly overseas. It's a pleasant ride, feeling very lightweight and even delicate for the motion which makes good use of the ground as a thing to hug.

The other coaster in the area, just a bit over a year old, was Big Bear Mountain. This was the only substantial line we'd see at the park that day or the next, with something like a half-hour spent waiting for our turn at this. (Based on the monitors around the park, giving line updates, this was close to the best we could have done.) This is a steel coaster, with a linear induction launch and two boosts along its way. The premise is that you're part of a party going out in search of the big bear spotted being all scary in the vicinity. All along the queue are signs warning, by the way, don't go looking for bears, it's a mistake to go seeking out bear encounters, but let's carry on with this ride anyway.

The trains are made to look like Jeeps, or at least utility vehicles, with tires and fake windshields and all. And the ride is great, fun and twisty and exciting, and --- since we got to the ride after dark --- with stretches that go into the surprisingly dark, isolated parts of the park that aren't even that far from the Wildwood Grove midway. It's a great ride, wonderful use of the landscape and light and shadow. And sound, too, with an unseen search guide who's just, darned it, not sure we saw The Bear on that ride. bunnyhugger observed this is a great way to square the circle of wanting to give people a thematic reason to ride again while also wanting them to feel they'd met the goal. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some features that we didn't recognize that might look Big Bear-ish, especially at a glance at 48 miles per hour.

We were delighted with the ride and it was only the length of the queue that kept us from going for another ride right away. But we did resolve to get back for another night ride the next day. In this we failed, entirely because of me. After a day and a half of seemingly perfect navigational skill of the park, I lost my nerve when the turnoff to Wildwood Grove seemed too far off, and directed us the wrong way, with too little time left in the day to correct for my mistake. I felt awful about that at the time, and still feel bad about it; we only got the one ride on this and it's a coaster that bears re-riding.

We had an hour or so left in the park when that was done but, happily for us, the queues were getting somehow even shorter. And with the rest of the coasters dotted around the main ring of the park we could get to them almost one after another. The first we got to after Big Bear Mountain was FireChaser Express, one of the fire-fighter-themed roller coasters of the park. It launches and returns to a Fire Station Number 7 building, and goes through settings that include props on ``fire''. One of them I see on the Roller Coaster Database is Crazy Charlie's Fireworks Emporium, a thing I didn't recognize when we were on the ride. I just knew there was a heap of things set to look like they were on fire and then --- well, I don't want to spoil the secret of the ride. bunnyhugger was annoyed enough that the parking lot tram ride gave it away in some of their ride chatter.

From there we ran over to Wild Eagle, a wing coaster, much like Cedar Point's GateKeeper. This was the first wing coaster in the United States. It's got much of the feel and excitement of GateKeeper. The ride is shorter, and doesn't have the advantage of going through needle eyes the way its successor does. But Wild Eagle has the advantage of being able to go through the terrain, with real hills that can let you play with how high off the ground and how far your drops are. Also the abundant queue area shows off a lot of stuff about eagles (yeah, I know you're blushing, c_eagle) and several sculptures. These were great to see, but we didn't see them well, as it was getting dark and we wanted to be sure we got on the coaster before the official closing hour of 10:00. (We didn't know if they would close the queues early, or if they'd get a ride to everyone waiting by the park's closing moment. Turns out they were going for giving a ride to everyone waiting.)

We got in, we got the last ride of the night, and we were amazed that we had managed in a few hours to ride eight of the ten roller coasters at Dollywood. There were things we had missed, particularly in food (we ended up getting dinner from a Burger King on the way back to the hotel) but, oh, everything indicated that Monday was going to be great. Also hot. But great.

My pictures return now to the Merry-Go-Round Museum; hope you like what you see.

Here's the sort of horse you see all over the place at the Merry-Go-Round Museum.

But the tail is off! Would you like to see inside a carousel horse? What do you imagine you'd see? You ready?

Yeah, there you go. Carousel horses are hollow, the better to not crush the carousel (or the workers) under their own weight. There also will sometimes be notes made on the inside by carvers or restorers to give a provenance (or notes) in a place that can't be lost from the horse.

And here's the Merry-Go-Round Museum's working carousel. The family of Scooby-Doo-ish sea monsters is on the left. The skeleton I suppose is light enough for that inner row horse.

Novelty that I don't remember seeing before, a sales-clerk example horse head.

Skeleton riding a Pepto-Bismol-pink horse, as they will.

Trivia: In 1326 the continental staple --- the designated spot where a body of merchants had exclusive right to purchase certain goods --- for English wool in Bruges was abolished, and the staple moved to England. It would be reestablished in Antwerp in 1338. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Volume 36: Boogerman, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Is anything going on? April - July 2024 And I explain how while a lot might not actually be going on, there's reasons for that.

When the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, Ohio, was organizing in the late 80s the fashion was to describe the ride as merry-go-rounds. In recent decades ``carousel'' has become the classier word, for some reason. (Some have tried retrofitting a distinction between merry-go-rounds and carousels. Ignore them.) But they've stuck with the old name and made MGRM their logotype. So why, on the receipts from the gift shop this year, did they give the name of the business as the Museum of Carousel Art and History?

We don't know. It wasn't mentioned. From appearances that Halloweekends Saturday the Merry-Go-Round Museum was carrying on as it traditionally does. It was busier than usual for one of our visits, as a pack of a dozen or more people who all look like my mother's friends got there just ahead of us and were taking the guided tour. bunnyhugger often remarks to me how she could give the tour, and there wasn't anything to this year that suggests she isn't still able. Possibly more able: the docent gave the impression that there's no brass-ring-game carousels operating anymore, when bunnyhugger and I have ridden on three of them, one as recently as four months before. Or the docent was simplifying for the sake of my mom's friends.

The crowd does seem like a good thing for the museum, though, which in our annual visits had seemed to be getting sparser attendance up to the pandemic. And there had been some word of a big part of their holdings --- on loan, as these things often are, from a collector's estate --- going back to the estate. bunnyhugger will make very clear whether they have or not. The floor itself seemed well-stocked with exhibits, some of them new or somewhat new to me. Maybe a better indication of the museum's health is the gift shop, which after a couple of skant years was stocked with plenty of stuff, including new back issues of merry-go-round trade magazines.

They also had, for what they say is the last time, raffle tickets for a carousel horse. This is the same one I had thought they were raffling off New Year's Day 2023, but apparently they've given the last horse one more year and this will be the last. Of course we hope every year to win but now if we win we'll have to hope the horse doesn't fight with bunnyhugger's rabbit.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum decorated for Halloween in a way I don't remember before. They got bunches of skeletons and many of them were riding the horses around the place. Fun bit. I hope this all suggests the museum's on an upswing.

On the drive back to Cedar Point --- which we feared would be packed, as Saturday was not quite as warm as Friday but it was still, like, low-50s, extremely comfortable weather --- we made a stop. This is because at 1538 First Street in Sandusky is a mysterious brick building that's fascinated us every time we drive past. It's your standard style abandoned industrial place, surrounded by empty fields. But a no-longer-working lighted sign atop the building and built into the brickface are light-colored U's, inset in a circle, speaking boldly of the building's history as having been at one time something. We've called it things like the Underdog Building and the Power U Building. After years of swearing we'd someday stop and get good pictures of it, this time, we did.

The building shows of its abandonment, with a lot of old, fractured glass windows and a front door that's just the plywood nailed into the back. (How did that carpenter get out?) It's a pretty attractive piece of industrial ruin and it so happens the empty lot adjacent is one that has a view of Cedar Point's skyline. But meanwhile this building sits there, metal shutters rusting and windows getting muddy and cracked, its only apparent remaining purpose being holding a sign painted in the brick pointing people to eat at Lyman Harbor, across the street.

bunnyhugger, using her documentation-sleuthing skills, found the story of the U Building. I forget what the U stands for, but it was, I think, an electrical parts company that went out of business in the early 2000's. So this building has been derelict a while, but not, like, from time immemorial. Just long enough to look lost forever.

On to something that doesn't lok a bit lost: Gilroy Gardens, and our ride on the Rose Garden Round Boats.

Looking ahead at this last stretch of pond before the return station. I think the white dome in the upper right corner is the mushroom swings ride.

There was some kind of backup at the return station, but that gave me time to notice and try taking a picture of the operator wearing the safety harness there.

So there's the people taking our boat after us. Also, a decent image of what the Gilroy Gardens park uniforms look like.

Looking on at another boat making the return to the station.

And here's a view from the bridge over the ride, so you can see a lot of boats ready to or starting to go.

Waterfall, one of many little ones around the park.

Trivia: In 1260 Venetian merchants built a ship with displacement of about 500 tons, the Roccaforte, and within a few years built another of the same size. In comparison the Mayflower, built centuries later, was only about 180 tons. Source: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World, Amir D Aczel.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

My mathematics blog is still out there, somewhere. So is my humor blog, which just answered Why is everyone mad at _Funky Winkerbean_ this week? and see if you can spot the joke I put in specifically for bunnyhugger. Anyway, here's Merry-Go-Round Museum pictures:

Looking inside the ear of the pig, Wilbur, so as to see the spider painted in there. This might be the best picture I've ever taken of Charlotte.

I thought this was more in focus when I took the picture! But on top of the New Halloween Roll, the one we always hear when we visit in October. Its songs: Ghostbusters Theme; The Purple People Eater; Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead; Dem Dry Bones; the theme to The Addams Family; the Funeral March of a Marionette (the Alfred Hitchcock Presents theme); and from there I lose it. Sorry. I think one of them is the Skeleton Rag and the last the Dance of the Demons?

The family of sea dragons seen from the inside of the carousel.

And here's a view from between the adult sea dragons, because I wanted to record the patterns on the backs of their saddles. Note the one on the left has a saddle held up by small ... dolphins? Fish? Something.

And now I'm getting out of the carousel even though it's not like there's a particular reason to rush. You can see the bunny on the right there.

And one of the chariots, showing off the classic traditional carousel themes of lions, harps, and nekkid ladies.

Ostrich on their carousel, a figure I'm not sure we've ever ridden.

And here's a look of the whole carousel and the entrance gate for the ride.

The carousel horse-shaped chair used at the Wanamaker's department store's barber shop in Philadelphia. I keep forgetting to ask my father if he ever went there; it'd be unlikely (he was on the wrong side of New Jersey for that) but not impossible.

A circa 1910 Charles Carmel outer row horse (you can see by how it's standing rather than jumping) in the outer room of the museum.

And here's the horse in slightly more context, with another outer-row horse being ridden by a skeleton.

Ah, so, that door from W H Dentzel Carrousells [sic]? Above it they also have a sign for G A Dentzel's Caroussell [sic] building. I didn't notice any special mention made of the G A Dentzel 155th anniversary.

Trivia: During their second moonwalk the Apollo 17 crew deployed three explosive packages, to support the lunar seismic profiling experiment. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: King of All Balloons: The Adventurous Life of James Sadler, the First English Aeronaut, Mark Davies.

The big news: I have a start date! It's the date I expected, but still, it's official. I feel like I can start spending money for things I'll need for work on the trust that I'll be able to pay for them.

Smaller news. My phone has been one of the lingering things I would have to deal with before the end of the year, since the 2G and 3G networks are shutting down and my phone is on at least one of those. Not sure. I bought the prepaid phone in November of 2008 and it's been reliable enough since then, even though they took away the perfect-for-me prepaid plan and switched it to a cost-per-month plan that I don't like. Replacing the phone with something was a thing I figured I could deal with when I had income again but since that wasn't happening I started looking for alternatives.

My father found among his contacts someone with a surplus iPhone 7, though, and who was happy to send it along. That arrived on Monday and I took it to the Verizon store and learned ... that it was still carrier-locked to AT&T. It's not hard, in principle, to jailbreak a phone, but the owner of record has to confirm it. So I e-mailed my father to ask if he could get in touch with the donor and go to the web site for requesting unlocking. But he hasn't answered. I don't know if this is him waiting to hear back before responding, or whether he's just not seen my e-mail. He often complains that I don't answer e-mails and the plain fact is I do too.

I suspect this may reflect the thing where his phone's set to block me. Not as a personal matter, understand, but a couple years ago some Verizon tech upgrading him to a new phone decided the two people with the same name and Verizon phones must be the same person and merged our accounts. That was a very slight bother to un-merge, but ever since then any time I call him it goes right to a voice-mail he doesn't get, and he claims he called my cell phone and I never got any notice. I don't know how this would have spread to e-mail, but it's what I suspect. It could also be that he's just missed the e-mail.

My plan is to remind him of this when we talk this weekend, and I hope we'll get this sorted out. I suppose I could move my account to AT&T, as an alternative, but that's probably an equal hassle.

Here's a bit more of the Merry-Go-Round Museum.

A better look at the menagerie figures in front of the MC Ilions panel there. The zebra in front isn't decorated for Christmas but somehow looks like it naturally is.

Elephants were rarer figures than you'd imagine. I don't know how the skeleton rated a ride on this one. Notice in back the door window sign for W H Dentzel Carrousells [sic].

And here's the tiger, a fine and proud-looking beast, right?

Seen from front, uh, the tiger looks pretty solidly boxy.

The camel must've been a heck of a mount to get on. I like the matching crescent moons around the saddle.

An antique hippocampus in faded park paint; I don't know from where it came originally. There's a plaque above it from the National Carousel Association honoring the museum.

Trivia: Apollo 17 was the only Apollo lunar mission from which the crew could see the Earth's south pole. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: Peanuts Dell Archive, Charles M Schulz.

Sunday was our traditional day for picking our Christmas trees. We hoped to repeat our success in getting to the tree farm ahead of bunnyhugger's parents so they won't just buy a pre-cut tree they won't be happy with. But we got off to a late start, and it was slow finding a place to park as everyone in the world was there. We got there as her parents were hauling a pre-cut tree that they won't be happy with. And, as we parked, her father waved, repeatedly, in case we didn't see him.

After getting doughnuts and hot chocolate bunnyhugger and I went back looking for trees, while her parents waited in their car. We went looking for Scotch pines, because what the heck, what did we have to lose? And it turned out there were a nice number that looked about the right size for our living room, seven feet tall or so. We spent longer than we realized comparing trees that were almost all adorably shaped. While I went back to find a work glove I'd dropped somewhere bunnyhugger began cutting down our best pick, and that's moved into our living room.

For the upstairs tree we asked what kinds of trees they had in the five-to-six foot range and they admitted, not much. We started out looking for white pines, finding there was just nothing, and then going back to the Scotch pines where after some more searching we found an adorable tree just a little bit smaller than our downstairs tree. We worried briefly that we wouldn't remember which tree went where but, in that case ... well, would the mistake matter? (We did not make the mistake.)

Her parents stayed with us a while, for a fire and for Chinese food; the restaurant we wanted to order from was closed for Sundays so we went with the next-nearest place. And then, too soon, they were gone.

Or arguably not too soon, since we had another engagement. This would be the staff holiday party for the bookstore where bunnyhugger sometimes works. She had dessert to make (brownies, that she thought ended up under-done; we've got suspicions about our oven). And for me to admit I hadn't said I was going because I hadn't been sure I was invited.

This was the first bookstore staff party in three years and, despite starting off late, we got there early enough to get a seat at the table near the people bunnyhugger knows. It was a potluck dinner, with far more vegetarian selections than I remembered from past years. There was also a secret Santa exchange; to bunnyhugger's disappointment the person she got gifts for couldn't attend, having come down sick. But the person giving a gift to her was there and had a great selection, several nice coloring books including one of wild creatures, mostly robot animals in natural landscapes. One of the landscapes features a coati, so, hey, what are the odds of that?

This was the most nearly restaurant-like experience I've had since March of 2020 and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that even given the likelihood everyone there was vaccinated and boosted. I wore my mask the whole time, apar from eating, and called on my skills as a mostly-reformed fat person from a large family to eat fast.

As happened in past years they had drawings for prizes, although after a couple choice ones it turned into ``take your pick of books from these tables''. Which is how I ended up coming home with five books, although in my defense two of them are books that look like good choices to send family for Christmas. While I'm now relieved of the fear that I can't get anyone anything, I don't have much shopping time and I'm not going to be sad if I can spend less.

It may have been better for us had we gone tree-shopping Saturday, and to the party Sunday, as all told we ate a whole lot; Monday I woke up in that weird state where I felt full but wasn't exactly not hungry either. Tricky state to be in. Nice full day, though.

Here's a touch more of the Merry-Go-Round Museum, which I might have taken more photographs of than anything else Halloweekends weekend. We'll see.

What appears to be a demonstration of how to carve a carousel horse, starting with the very plain rough box.

And here's next in the sequence of horse carvings, with more shape given to the head and with details drawn onto the body.

This had been the loading dock for the post office, and in all previous visits was closed off. It now seems to be where the carver works and demonstrates his craft. And then got decorated extra for the holiday.

The stuff inside; seems like a cramped space to carve but I suppose you really need the one person at a time there. The lighthouse was a figure that used to be outside the building, one of a matched pair . I assume this one's inside for repairs or such, but don't in fact know.

A small horse head on the carving table.

Another of the demonstrations of how to carve a horse, with the figure getting a bit more realistic. In front of that is a smaller horse, I believe an actual antique, shown in the four major stages of renovation, with the back the original condition, the second quarter the paint stripped clean, the third quarter primed, and the front repainted.

Trivia: Apollo 17's trans-lunar injection burn lasted 351.04 seconds. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: Peanuts Dell Archive, Charles M Schulz.

Let's see, getting back to chronicles of my everyday life. Thanksgiving isn't every day, but it is one of the days. We were not the hosts for it this year, instead going to bunnyhugger's parents' home. They were worried about travel, I suppose, especially after dark and facing the construction where I-94 meets Route 127, the easiest way to get from their house to ours. (The multi-year construction process has reached a new stage and there's a new way to make the turn there. bunnyhugger thinks it too awful for her to ever use. I see in it an imaginative brilliance that, among other things, cuts down on the number of traffic lights and turns what had been left- and right-turns into a much earlier lane selection. I've only tried it the once but I really like it.) They also worry about leaving their dogs untended that very long.

bunnyhugger's father kept his promise to start a fire, the condition she needed to reconcile her to not having it all at our house. It was not a terribly cold day, and the fireplace soon brought the living room up to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. It's to be envied how well it warms the place up, and we all agreed it was bizarre they didn't use the fireplace last year when they lost power for a couple days.

Because we were visiting them, we couldn't watch the recordings of the Silver Bells Electric Light Parade, or the Detroit parade, or the Macy's parade. In fact, we learned they don't know how to record something on their DVR at all, and spent some time trying to work out the process. It's not hard --- although we never did figure how to search the program guide for upcoming stuff, rather than look for it on the program guide --- but we also kind of know they're not going to start recording shows. Something has got into her father where he won't do anything he hasn't done before, especially with technology.

As you'd expect, we ate a lot. Like, more than that. But also somehow avoided nodding off, sleepy, even though we ate enough that we're still digesting. And that bunnyhugger got up fearsomely early so she could walk Lansing's 5K Turkey Trot. We failed to put together enough time to play a board game (Mice and Mystics would be the first pick; Parks, a pastoral game that's National Parks-themed, would be the second) or even watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Also the Lions lost, albeit in exciting form, although I note that when we left our house they were safely ahead. Not saying things would have been different had we hosted but we can't know that, right?

We ended up leaving before midnight, early for us, but then bunnyhugger needed to get up the next morning to work Black Friday at the bookstore, and I had to go home to be sad. You know how it is.

Let's get back to the Merry-Go-Round Museum now; there's something special to see here.

What's this? Well, it's photographs of Euclid Beach Park, formerly of Cleveland. The Merry-Go-Round Museum's replaced a little corner that used to show carousel-themed merchandise (including a carousel board game!) with a display of Euclid Beach Park stuff.

Big case of Euclid Beach Park memorabilia; the park's racing derby carousel is now the Cedar Downs carousel at Cedar Point, fastest carousel in the state and one of only three in the world where the horses move back and forth during the ride.

Smaller souvenirs of Euclid Beach Park, including a good number of pins and small cups.

Nice big souvenir plate showing a bunch of the park's rides, including the Flying Turns that were an inspiration for the ride Knoebels built in the 2000s and 2010s.

Still more Euclid Beach Park souvenirs, including another plate and I guess a letter opener that has to go be all racist too?

Close-up of the overhead display showing wonderful ephemera like the boxes and bags for ``pop corn'' and roasted peanuts. Also of tickets for rides from some park promotional days.

No less interesting to someone like me: old cheques from the park. I imagine the older checks reflect the bigger size of pre-1928 US currency.

Trivia: Apollo 17's terminal countdown proceeded as scheduled from T-28 hours until T minus two minutes, 47 seconds, when the Terminal Countdown Sequencer failed to issue the S-IVB LOX tank pressurization command. Delays due to this hold and corrective action would last two hours, forty minutes, in total. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: Bizarro #10, Dan Piraro.