Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

When bunnyhugger brought our pet rabbit and the mice down to her parents' house Friday the 5th it was with this reassurance: if she forgot anything in the last-minute rush of pet-packing it was fine, our drive down would start off passing close enough to their house that we could add a side trip without any great inconvenience. I didn't seriously expect that to be taken up but when we discovered she'd left some of the rabbit's vegetables in the fridge --- and that they'd be a terribly rotted mass before we got back --- the side trip made sense. bunnyhugger cursed herself out for not noticing them despite hints like, huh, I hadn't got carrots for the week, but really, it wasn't a big diversion.

Our trip, starting Saturday the 6th, had the weird luxury of letting us sleep in, and even late enough we could be confident the mail wasn't delivered on us. This because we weren't trying to get to an amusement park that day, just to Chicago, for the first and longest of our hotel stays. After years of talking about doing it, we were finally to get to some Chicagoland amusement parks, one that bunnyhugger had never been to, plus a place in Madison, plus the Dells, and --- at my encouragement --- Valleyfair! in Minneapolis. (The last was not really a ``last chance to see'' visit, but the park --- like Michigan's Adventure --- was this year sold to a company that has previously only ever run water parks and goodness knows if they're going to try keeping the dry park up.)

So the first day was just one of driving from Lansing to bunnyhugger's parents, with a stop just long enough to say goodbye to the rabbit and mice again and dishearten their poor dog who would not be getting the fun extra-long walk bunnyhugger's existence promises, and then getting on I-94 and driving all the way to Chicago. The drive gave us a neat surprise; an exit we stopped at for a stretch and a pop turned out to be next to the tinniest Biggby Coffee we could imagine, a spot that looks like a drive-up ice-cream stand converted to coffee service. As we got to Chicago it got a little more annoying, particularly since I missed one turn-off. (bunnyhugger told me to take the upcoming exit for I-394; I looked at the road and saw the right two lanes were 94 and the second-from-left lane was state road 294 and did not perceive that the leftmost late was 394.) This sent us through more city driving than bunnyhugger wanted to ride through but I can't say it was bad. My standard for ``bad'' is that time in Boston when I had to merge at a T intersection and told bunnyhugger to close her eyes so she wouldn't have to experience this.

The hotel was ... packed. Like, furry-convention-level packed, complete with a loud DJ and something going on in the main ballroom. Based on the people we saw wandering around it looks like it was a wedding reception, something of that class. And the person in front of us was having some terrible problem with their reservation, something where the clerk was talking about how there would be a refund possible and there was another hotel with the same name that was across the street and maybe they would something something something. (The clerk would mention to us, in a plain violation of HIPAA, that the customer had trouble stemming from booking the wrong dates.)

And then we had our own, not brief enough, trouble getting our booking in. Somehow the first couple attempts at the clerk finding our room failed and since we already knew they had nothing available we were fearing something really bad. Finally bunnyhugger shared her tiny phone with the clerk and they transcribed something successfully and ah! There was our room, on the third floor, as it turned out all our hotel rooms this trip would be, something that got more amusing the more times it happened.

bunnyhugger chose the hotel partly on the strength of Yelp reviews saying it looked like the hotel in The Shining, which it does if you think any hotel that has wood paneling and uses that slender typeface you use for chapter titles in a book about the building of Rockefeller Center. Is it dated? Yes. Is it gorgeous? Yes, absolutely. I mean, every door had a doorbell, with lights behind it to signal whether you wanted privacy or were requesting the room to be made up. It was exactly the right place for us.

We found a nearby Culver's and got cheese curds and their surprisingly good veggie burger and settled down to a not-as-early-as-we-hoped night's sleep. Our plan was to spend most of the next eight days going to amusement parks in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and so we would, though with many changes in fortune and disappointments and pleasant surprises. Also, somehow, severe rain affecting all but one of those days, which is why in hindsight I think this trip report is best called the Old Northwest Tempest.

With today's pictures, we close out the closing-day trip to Cedar Point that, while disappointing, was still a trip to Cedar Point with a dear friend we couldn't see enough. When I left off we were on the train riding to the front of the park.

Mine Ride's station seen from the far end where the train exits; this is the best view you can get of that side of things. Note Steel Vengeance in the background, with a train almost at the top of its lift hill.

More stuff in Boneville: an elopement scene among the skeletons.

And one of those moments of skeleton railroad construction where they did the systems tests just fine but skipped the integration test.

bunnyhugger getting a ride on her rabbit on the Kiddie Kingdom carousel.

Gorgeous evening night behind Raptor.

And, finally, a picture of MWS after he and I got a front-seat ride on Top Thrill 2; it was his 100th roller coaster ever, finally ridden, and while we were too late for the chance to get on Siren's Curse, it was a great ride and a great moment and a happy climax to an otherwise mediocre day. It's a poor photograph but we needed to move on as it was well after closing.

MWS died a month ago. Tomorrow we're to have a charity pinball tournament in his memory.

Trivia: Among the tenants signed up for Rockefeller Center for its opening was the Information Division of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, which rented space in the RCA Building (30 Rock) for ``the largest collection of aeronautical books in this country''. Source: Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, Daniel Okrent. (A rental less baffling when you know they signed up Curtiss-Wright and a number of other aviation companies early on.)

Currently Reading: Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation, Robyn Arianrhod.

(Don't worry if you can't figure the significance of the subject line. I will explain it in time unless I forget.)

I've been thinking for a while about games that are bad for you.

Not, you understand, games that have bad content. Not that I'm saying that's impossible, exactly, but art is art, and while you can certainly say -terrible- things with art, there's nothing unique about games that make "bad/racist/sexist/violent" games any worse than any other media with those elements.

No, what I'm talking about is games that make your life worse, or at least more hazardous, just by playing them.

( Games that take something from you that doesn't balance the enjoyment you get out of them, that weaponize the urge to play, to win, to succeed into a kind of attack against the players, in a way that doesn't really balance. )

I have a lot more to say on the topic, and I suppose I could go into specifics with individual games, but that was long enough.

My humor blog this week brings us a lot of comic strip stuff! Much of it is plot recaps of Popeye but there's also some nonsense about Beetle Bailey and B.C. so enjoy that.

• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 1: A Finale
• We can finally point to a contemporary _Beetle Bailey_ fox
• Statistics Saturday: Some Common Cheese Mistakes
• If This Imaginary Event Turns Out to Be Fictional I Shall Have Words
• This Might Break My Suspension of Disbelief in _B.C._
• What's Going On In Olive and Popeye? Why is the Sea Hag helping? March - June 2026
• What's Going On In Thimble Theatre (Popeye)? What is with that creepy tiger thing? March - June 2026
• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 2: The Author Notes

Next thing on the photo roll is the trip we made with MWS down to Cedar Point for their closing day last season. We thought this would be a pretty good riding day and maybe give him the chance to ride his 100th and 101st roller coasters and turns out the park was packed, rides were slow, and he had to go back to the car and rest a while, so the day ended up disappointing, and we promised we'd have a better trip this year.

Cedar Point's welcome sign up front of the Midway Carousel, which I think I only shared photographs of from the back side before.

You know the season's gone on too long when the pumpkin pig statue has fallen over.

Tall skeleton walker pointing to one of the kids near the Bonewalk.

Here's what one of them --- there were several working the crowd --- look like with their handler acting all casually on the left side there.

I suppose this was a pretty boring park map anyway. (I assume they were swapping out the Halloween map for the Regular Season map but it seems like they had like five months more to do that in.)

SkyHawk and the building that used to be the far end of the Frontier Trail sky ride, but in a really good afternoon light.

We took the (full-size) train to get back to the front of the park, and I got a picture of this antique carriage just because, you know, who knows when it'll be gone?

As long as I'm photographing boring stuff in the park that might suddenly disappear? How about the Perey-brand turnstile counting the riders?

Ride operator giving warning abut what not to do on the train (mess around).

There's bunches of scenes of comic mayhem starring skeletons in a vaguely old west town that's not part of the Halloweekends decoration, at least not anymore; they're there year-round.

Moment of afternoon sun behind the Mine Ride roller coaster and the lake it runs over.

And a picture-postcard-ready photograph of the Mine Ride over the water. The smoke is from the train carrying us.

Trivia: The expression ``mail-order'' is first recorded in English in 1867. Source: The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores, Robert Hendrickson. Etymology Online gives 1875, by the way, but since Hendrickson doesn't say what his citation is I suppose it's impossible for the truth to ever be known. Hendrickson offers the speculation that ordering of specific goods by mail during the Civil War left United States customers ready to think of buying stuff generally by mail and setting them up for department-store catalogues the rest of the century.

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

So in other home-repair stuff here's something that was not specifically connected to our recent trip. But it did make packing for the trip more stressful to bunny_hugger, who did not need that. She does enough travel planning and house-preparing, she doesn't need appliance malfunctions too.

What happened was the dryer stopped drying. At least stopped drying in any reasonable time; she had some pairs of blue jeans in for hours and they were only warm and damp after all that. The drum was tumbling and the dryer producing heat all right, but not much air was coming out the vent outside the house. It would fall to me when we got home to call a repair guy, and then to call a different one because it turned out I didn't remember who our preferred appliance repair guy was.

I know what a subset of you are thinking. Dryer has heat, and spins, but not much air comes out the vent. This has to be a clogged vent hose. Yes, you've diagnosed it correctly. Also, turns out according to sites that look legitimate-ish, you should be cleaning out those vent hoses more often than our current ``never''. One site said clean it annually.

Well, the appliance guy came today while I was in office --- my last in-office-Wednesday on the schedule by the way --- and apparently had some good patter going with bunny_hugger. He identified the problem as a clogged hose, and cleaned it out, digging out what he said was a bird's nest from near the dryer end of things. bunny_hugger was skeptical that it could be a bird that far inside the house but her research turned up evidence that yeah, they'll do that sometimes. It's hard not to suspect nesting mice, although they'd have to get in from outside the house at least as far as the birds would too.

And turns out it wasn't just the one clog near the dryer end of things; there was another near the outlet. So we got the vent vacuumed out, bunny_hugger judges from the noise of the machinery, and as I write these words we have a short while before we learn whether we've solved the problem. Also if we've got a new annual chore of dryer-vent-cleaning, up there with dishwasher-filter-cleaning.

Postscript: it works great!

But next up in photographs? Eh, let's take a half-dozen pictures of our pet rabbit, you deserve that.

``Now look, anyone could have eaten that fun-size Almond Joy bar.''

Great moment of bunny tongue stuck out at you.

Bunny exploring the edge of the knowable world --- she's not fond of the floor on this side of the room --- while her fur gets a little sheddy.

Bunny examining the underside of the coffee table; her verdict is that it hasn't been chewed nearly enough.

Did you know solid black rabbits could phase out of existence like that? Here she is at the start of the process with just a transparent hindleg.

And here she is leaping out of frame, both forelegs half out of reality.

Trivia: Signing the Versailles Treaty for Germany were Hermann Müller, the new foreign minister, and Johannes Bell, minister of transport, who only arrived at 3 am the day of the signing; the German government had trouble finding ministers willing to put their signatures on it. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan.

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

https://revlyncox.tumblr.com/post/819675263025790976

skinnerhousebooks:

Check out these webinars related to Skinner House titles at this year’s General Assembly. And don’t forget that inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop will be offering free standard shipping for orders of $25 or more shipped within the United States from June 14th to June 21st.

Beloved as We Are: Building a Congregational Culture of Disability Inclusion by Barbara F. Meyers and Shelly Rohe—webinar: Disability: Lived Experience in a Living Tradition.

Impassioned: A Guide to Progressive Preaching by Lucas Hergert—webinar: Preaching Hope When You Don’t Feel Hopeful.

https://revlyncox.tumblr.com/post/819675263025790976

Last week was our big amusement-park trip for the year (we figure). It was also a week of heavy storms rolling through the midwest, which would shape each of our days except the first and last. I will tell of this in time.

But the storms rolled through mid-Michigan, too, and hit our home. I saw on the Motor City Furry Con Telegram group folks sharing weather updates as we sat hundreds of miles away from it. (At one point someone posted a radar map with zones marked 'you can go to bed' as the possible tornado weather had gone by, and 'stay up' for those still facing possible evacuations.)

The housesitter --- for the first time we had someone coming regularly to check on the goldfish pond, the plants, and any mail delivered against a mail hold I'd filled out both online and in person (they did hold the mail, but delivered it all to the house instead of letting me pick it up the way I specified) --- took a big branch off the pond, after one of these storms. But we got home to find that our chimney cover had fallen off, or been blown off, or in any case wasn't where it should be. A neighbor (we assume) set it on our front porch, incidentally advertising how much we weren't home, and strangely the housesitter didn't mention this or move it somewhere else.

So our return home got to be less a day of sleeping in and resting up and doing laundry --- more on that anon --- and more figuring out someone who could come out and inspect the chimney and put the cap back on. A bit of digging around and we got someone who could come out today, that is, Tuesday, while I was in the office but bunnyhugger would be home.

I can't say it was but the work of a moment to put the cap back on, as I don't know. But it was back. If I understand the verdict the reason it blew off because it was a kind of a junky cap and we can't be sure it won't blow off again. We could make more certain by getting a better-quality cap, one with screws that go in at a more secure angle. (I'm not sure how that works but I'm busy with other things so won't be looking it up.) For now, though, our chimney's in good shape, just in time for a severe thunderstorm that rolled through and so far as we can tell did no damage, this time.

Next up in pictures? Well, we just had Halloweekends so what follows would of course by Halloween. We carved pumpkins at home, as there wasn't a good time to get together with bunnyhugger's parents for it, so there's fewer jack-o-lanterns than usual this year. Sorry.

My concept for this year was to try doing something kind of dragony, with the extra detail of ridged nose. It ... looks better by candlelight, I promise.

While bunnyhugger went with a classic growly face jack-o-lantern.

bunnyhugger hung Halloween lights this (last) year. I put up the pumpkin flag, although it long predates my ever being here.

Here's our carved pumpkins on the porch step, lit by candles inside.

And that third pumpkin? That's an owl bunnyhugger carved because she hadn't done enough.

Here's a different view of the owl making it look like it's looking over its shoulder.

Trivia: Singer sewing ordered Otis elevator machines for its headquarters in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which opened in a 1904 ceremony blessed by priests. Source: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin.

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

The three of us took advantage of nice weather to eat sushi outdoors, at a restaurant across the street from the main library. I asked what tempura came with the tempura+nigiri lunch plate, and when I was enthusiastic about sweet potato, she offered to bring me only sweet potato, which I happily accepted.

It was good tempura, and I was pleasantly surprised that my ten pieces of nigiri included ama obi (raw shrimp), which was excellent. In the past, when I've specifically ordered ama ebi, the servers have asked if I know that it's raw shrimp. The plate also included the much more common cooked shrimp, along with fish, octopus, squid, and rice-stuffed tofu skin, which I gave to Adrian and Cattitude.

On our way to lunch, we passed a table with a sign offering people $2 to swab their noses. After we ate, I asked what they were studying--it's sampling for whatever viruses happen to be going around, as a supplement to wastewater testing, done by the same people. Sure, we'll do that; it wasn't even uncomfortable (unlike swabbing my nose for at-home covid and flu tests).

My other small contribution to public health was filling out the Your Local Epidemiologist weekly survey of people who live in or near the cities where the World Cup games are being played. The questions are about World Cup-related health and safety concerns, if any, and where I'm getting health-related information. They're sending questions weekly to people who signed up ahead of time.

And now, with the last of my days being too full of doing stuff to write about doing stuff, here's the last of our Halloweekends pictures. We're not out of October yet in my photo roll but we are closer than we've been before ...

Now this is something you never see at Cedar Point: The Derby Dogs stand was open! But since they don't have veggie dogs we couldn't take advantage of that fact.

Are we getting on evening already? There's Siren's Curse in the distance, with Corkscrew in the upper right corner.

Siren's Curse tilting over while the sun sets behind it.

And the vertical position for Siren's Curse. This may look scary but let me reassure you: it is.

Some lovely color on the trees near Cedar Downs.

bunnyhugger takes me for a drive on the Cadillac Cars, lone survivor of the antique-autos rides.

Spot of late-afternoon sunlight from the Cadillac Cars ride, as ValRavn sends a train up the lift hill.

Raptor washed in some golden light.

Tall performer near the Boardwalk area. They would pose for pictures with anyone and I just wanted to admire the tallness.

The Ska-letons performing at the Boardwalk area.

And now, coming to the end of the night finally, a streak of light as Siren's Curse drops down its lift hill.

The Siren's Curse train whips around; the lights change over the course of the ride. Hope that lasts.

Trivia: In 1979 customer-research corporation ViewPoint asked a focus group of Black persons what celebrities they saw aligned with the Filet-O-Fish (a poor seller in Black communities). Respondents offered that the sandwich was like Paul Lynde, Mary Tyler Moore, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Source: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain. The heck is with that question even? (If you can't place Paul Lynde, try and remember the voice of The Hooded Claw on Penelope Pitstop. That guy.)

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

A friend gave me her old aircon, I lugged it up three flights and got it set up, and ...it turns on and does nothing. I'll take the filter out and clean it tomorrow (UGH) but if that doesn't work, I am out of ideas. (Yes, I looked for the manual online. The troubleshooting tips are not helpful.)

Semi-relatedly, I still need to sort out repairing the oven and the dishwasher, which are both, separately, fucked up. Physical reality is the worst.

Some more pictures from the last day of our Halloweekends visit to Cedar Point. A couple of these pictures have been moved around chronologically so that I don't split a little theme across days. Don't worry. Everything more or less happened.

Anyway here's the Calypso. Not sure if the kid in the center is having a great or an awful time.

The exit ramp down from Magnum; it's nicely styled and I don't pay much attention to it.

Here's the station itself, which has these little fingers over it like a Star Trek spacedock.

Here's Troika seen in the way of the sun.

And now finally the Peanuts show is going on! Snoopy's performer is all better again.

Everyone's happy as ... we didn't really get the hang of the show. I think they went trick-or-treating around a Willy Wonka-coded chocolatier's.

Bunch of pigeons all hanging out on one peak of the Coliseum.

The other peak, however, the pigeons want nothing to do with. I wonder what made one so appealing and the other not.

We finally got to The Shrieks! Contamination show at the Jack Aldrich theater. It looked about like this.

Nice thing about the theater is the lights were just right for my camera to understand.

Costumes were fun too.

Here we go, Shrieks gang, big finale!

Trivia: In January 1678 Le Mercure galant --- the first newspaper to provide detailed fashion journalism --- announced that King Louis XIV had named Mademoiselle Camillat to be the official coiffeuse for all the ballets held at court; the Sun King was a passionate ballet enthusiast. Source: The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour, Joan DeJean.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle.

Still no writing time. Instead please enjoy pictures from the last day of our big Halloweekends trip last year. I'm being a little more judicious in my sharing of pictures this time but don't worry. There's way more I could make you look at instead.

Sunday morning we had lunch in the park while watching a school (high school? college? who can say?) cheer group putting on a show on a small side stage.

Here's my poignant shot of one of the performers off to the side, alone, for some reason that probably is as simple as her part wasn't up yet.

Corkscrew bestriding the midway, with the Top Thrill 2 reverse tower in its center.

Noticed some nice flowers at the park despite it being late October.

Not sure if there's a bee in the picture somewhere or if I just did a depth-of-focus thing on the flower here.

Feeling more confident now that I took these pictures just because the flowers with a bit of amusement park far beyond was scenic or something.

What if you were barely an inch tall and someone noticed you wandering around the midway near Corkscrew? How about that?

Always fun to encounter old telephone logos around the park. I can not understand how they have the pre-Saul-Bass Bell System logo on any still-legible sticker.

While waiting in line for the Calypso we noticed the Skeleton Crew doing their acrobatics show at the Boardwalk stage.

Really like this moment of one of them midway between the light fixtures.

Another moment of the Skeleton Crew bouncing between Calypso light fixtures if you don't know about perspective.

I don't know how I got a double exposure here. It seems like the same weirdness of that beach picture and the guy walking past the sun.

Trivia: in 1939 Racecar driver Cannonball Baker drove a new Crosley subcompact cross-country and back on only 130 gallons of gas, proving the company's claim of 50 miles per gallon. Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McCloure, David Stern, Michael A Banks.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle.

It sometimes happens that my journal catches up with what I'm doing and I'm left with nothing but photo dumps to publish. This is almost one of those times: I'm caught up to the start of doing something that is going to be a big report, but I'm too busy doing the thing to have time to write about it. So, please enjoy the end of my Sky Ride that Halloweekends Saturday plus the one other photo from that day that I found interesting. Tomorrow, Sunday. I mean, the Sunday of our Halloweekends trip --- look, you understand this all.

On the Sky Ride now, looking west, toward ValRavn, from elevation. You can see Siren's Curse pivoting towards the upper right edge.

Watching as a gigantic Sky Ride cart crushes innocent people below.

Caricatures and face painting underneath; in the distance ... I ... this is weird. I feel like that's got to be Rougarou in front, and therefore ValRavn behind, but that doesn't look like a ValRavn train on the lift hill so now I'm confused. I can't think of any Cedar Point roller coaster that has five cars on it.

Here's one of the Sky Ride pillars and evidence of people managing to put their band stickers on, incredibly. You know those things on the lift hill can't be a train, they'd have moved by now. But then what are they?

Evening sun behind what is unmistakably ValRavn, never mind what might be on the tracks.

Peeking in here at the Cedar Downs racing carousel.

And there's Kiddie Kingdom, survived another year.

The near-sunset sky over Raptor and Blue Streak.

Raptor, Blue Streak, and a Sky Ride car going the other way; I got almost everything this time around.

And a beauty shot of Blue Streak in the distance.

Coming in for the end of Sky Ride here.

And, to close out the night, a look up the Top Thrill 2 reverse tower.

Trivia: A 1634 conference in Paris, called by Cardinal Richelieu (and attended by only the Catholic powers) agreed that longitude and latitude should be measured from a prime meridian through the Canary Island of Ferro (now Hierro), used by Ptolemy for his maps and in common use at the time. It also set the convention that a positive longitude should be east, and a negative longitude west of that meridian. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel. Must admit I'm a little surprised people were comfortable using negative numbers in critical calculations like longitude as early as 1634.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle.

This week my humor blog's made that transition from one ancient MiSTing to another, explored a curious lot of doughnut days, and had like three times the story comic plot recaps of usual. Here's what you missed:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 20: The End
• These Doughnut Days Are Not Getting Any Less Complicated
• Statistics Saturday: Some Possible National Donut Days
• What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? Did you forget about Flash Gordon? February – April 2026
• Also the Admin Page Has Started Asking Me to Rate It
• What’s Going On In Judge Parker? You ragequitting _Judge Parker_ yet? March – June 2026
• What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? Does it *matter* how Ming came to power? April – June 2026
• MiSTed: All The King’s Horses, Part 1: A Finale

If you guessed that after going to the Merry-Go-Round Museum we'd return to Cedar Point for the rest of Halloweekends Saturday why yes, you'e definitely picked up on a very well-established pattern here! Thanks!

Steampunkified swan boat, formerly a decoration along the Frontier Trail when they were doing the steampunk-themed walkthrough. Now it's part of the Kiddie Kingdom decor.

Nice light coming in from near the building where Helen Keller gave the speech that inspired the Lions Club to support blind people.

Just a park building? Yes, but one we noticed on a walkway that we really never paid much attention to before. It's out of the way and doesn't lead you anywhere that bigger paths don't, which is why nobody uses it.

But they decorated it for the Halloweekends, such as with this faux-mausoleum.

This is the pathway and yeah, it's just a surprisingly quiet part of the park.

The path even takes time to commemorate a couple of trees.

Here's what ValRavn looks like from that little trail.

And here I emerge from the shade and point the camera that much farther up.

Next, I went and got on the Sky Ride. Here's the queue beneath me.

Almost ready to go Von Rolling!

I started from the far end of the ride, near Corkscrew's turnaround.

Looking from the launch platform off in the direction of Siren's Curse.

Trivia: In the late 17th century China allocated fifteen acres in Canton for the trading outposts of all outside powers, who had to share the small space. The traders also were allowed to stay only six months of the year, departing to Macao for the other half of the year, to avoid suggesting that the foreign powers had any rights to the land they used. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham. Also among the trading nations there was Denmark which, right? You never hear of Denmark sending merchants anywhere.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle. Special edition about the Artemis II mission.

1. What's one thing you liked about this book? 
2. What did you think of Hannah? Was she the title character?
3. What did you think of Viv's story as she engaged in politics?
4. The book tries hard to show you Althea's POV as someone swept up into Nazism, at least for a while. Did you buy it? Why do you think she was one of the three character viewpoints the author featured?
5. How well do you think the author portrayed the main settings: Berlin 1933, Paris 1936, and NYC 1944?
6. Had you heard of the real-life Council on Books in Wartime before? What did you think of their mission to use books as "weapons in the war of ideas"?
7. Multiple politicians are background characters or at least referenced in the book. Do you feel the author gave enough information for readers to follow along?  Did the portrayals jive with what you knew from other sources?
8. How relevant to today is this book covering events almost 100 years ago? 
9. What did you think of the relations between some of the women, and how they changed?
10. Were there any particularly strong bits of writing (e.g., sentences/moments) that struck you?
11. To whom, if anyone, would you recommend this book?
12. Further discussion questions: https://readtoenrich.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-librarian-of-burned-books-by.html

things I fucked up today so far, a list:

• forgot to take my meds before I left the house
• forgot to put my gym clothes in my bag
• forgot my ipad with my weightlifting app
• forgot my headphones
• forgot to transfer a giant file overnight
• didn't finish my tea before I left the house and the contents of the abandoned cup will be gross when I get back after several hours of 84°F/28°C

I hate being so dependent on the bus system, when the bus system is so crappy. Buses should come every ten minutes!

things I got right:

• I have my wristwatch
• I have a fresh tube of sunscreen to leave in my gym locker
• I had naan and brie for breakfast
• I am wearing office clothes
• my hair is brushed
• I have my thermos of hot tea
• I have my office key

I am pretty sure I can skedaddle off campus around 3, which will give me enough time to get snacks for the Board Annual Meeting tonight.

ETA: Okay, I snuck out of the morning event and ran home and took my meds and got all my stuff and the giant file is transferring (fingers crossed the transfer time estimate is a lie and I can drop the thumb drive off with a colleague before I leave), and maybe the day is looking up.

Forgot to complain here about something I found at the house when we got back from Anthrohio. That would be our mail. I had put in a mail hold, but there it was, everything we might have expected to receive, waiting in the box. I know you might ask: maybe the letter carrier dropped it all off at the end of the hold, when we were getting back? No, because we got back from Anthrohio on Memorial Day. It and the day before were holidays.

So I went to the post office yet again and said, I was there to find out if any mail had been held, because this was six times in a row that I had filled out mail hold requests only for the mail to get delivered anyway. They actually went back and looked for some kind of supervisory person to try and reason out what was going wrong. Her best guess was that because our route doesn't have a regular carrier right now the substitute working it didn't know about the hold. Which, fine, that maybe covers this time, but every time for the past two years?

She also offered that maybe the morning supervisor who's supposed to print out the online hold mail requests failed to do that since apparently that's not always reliably done. And was not reliably done six times. But that couldn't be because it tuned out among the pile of wrongly delivered mail that I brought with me to the post office to make my point was the printed-out hold-mail form. Here she offered that maybe the problem is that doing it online you just get this regular old sheet of paper stuffed in the box for hold mails and yeah, that just looks like a letter put in there. This seems like a structural failure of the online-hold-mail request system.

So, they gave me a thick stack of the bright yellow hold-mail cards that you give in person or put in your mailbox and suggested that I fill out the real actual paper ones, since a bright yellow heavy stock card is easier to not overlook than a faded inkjet printout that maybe doesn't necessarily get printed out?

Perhaps going to the yellow card system will break the Post Office's ``actually somehow fails to not deliver the mail'' streak. No way to know for sure yet. More on this as it comes to pass.

And now we come, at last, to the end of the Cedar Point Museum and the Merry-Go-Round Museum visit from Halloweekends some Saturday last October. You can only guess what comes next, but probably you'll do pretty well.

Kid Arthur's Court is the former name for what's now the Kiddie Kingdom.

Back out to the merry-go-round part. Here's a French cow ready to lick you.

Activity game that they had in the gift shop for some reason. Do you spot literally any mistakes? I think the whole thing is a goof.

Advertising poster for Millennium Force when it came out and was sponsored by the NBA Jam 'Big Head' secret code.

That rabbit out in the front room of the museum, but seen from below.

And the sea dragons near the front door, given time on their own.

Trivia: For the first year of the Hit Parade radio show singers earned $100 per hour-long episode, musicians $75 (counting rehearsals), and announcers $35. The budget for a weekly episode was $12,000. Source: The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Musical Radio, Thomas A DeLong.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, May/June 2026, Editor Erin Bartels.

The latest Stern Pinball game, you maybe heard, was Pokemon, a game license it's a little surprising wasn't done at any point in the past thirty years. It took a while --- we kept getting bumped back --- but a Pokemon game finally arrived in our local venue (displacing Avengers: Infinity Quest, a game I kinda like but don't feel too bad about losing) and so bunnyhugger was able finally to hold the long-delayed Launch Party.

The qualifying format was eight-round Max Matchplay, in which pairs of competitors are drawn up at random on a randomly chosen game and the winner gets a point. What makes it Max is that you don't have to wait for every round to finish before starting some more; you just need enough players to be done with their games to start assigning new ones.

My night? Started out nicely for me, playing on Monster Bash and having a first ball that just ran away with it; I got lucky and I think broke my opponent's spirit. The second game I was playing DMC on Tron and while that's a game that usually treats me well, c'mon, I was playing DMC. I got lucky that he had an awful first ball, but he ended up with a 20 million point game, and going into the last ball I only had about half that. And yet, somehow, I kept managing to keep the game going and keep racking up points and on bonus beat him. Third game was Elvira's House of Horrors, again one of my pocket games and against a much weaker opponent. Fourth game was Jaws, another game I'm weirdly good at for not understanding any rules, and I again had a first ball that I think broke my opponent's spirit.

Now, the top four people --- of 18 playing --- would go to finals and maybe win the grand prize of a plaque and a couple rating points. After a four-game winning streak I started to think how if I just did okay from here on I'd probably be in finals. Dangerous stuff to start thinking, but, next game I got another lucky pick, Attack From Mars, against another lucky opponent, and got a fifth win. Sixth game I expected to lose, as it was Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, which I don't understand at all and can't play well reliably, against MAG, who's streaky but who's an A-level player when he's on. And yet I had a good third bal land he didn't and I had six wins. I didn't know where I was in the standings but figured I was likely in finals, and one win in the next two games would make that a sure thing. As it happens I was correct in this assessment, but ...

Next round was on King Kong against BMK, who I don't think has ever finished outside the top four in Lansing Pinball League. This was going to be a game I could win only if he stumbled badly and first ball? He stumbled badly. Unfortunately I stumbled worse, and did every ball, while he did quite well on ball two and didn't need to play ball three. That's all right, though. My eighth match was on Venom, which loves me, and against one of the league's perennial B-level finalists. While neither of us did much ball one or two, I got everything happening for a killer ball three and a score that she'd have to have the best Venom of her life on. Which, slowly but eventually, she did. While I was disappointed for myself I did congratulate her profusely because she had just that good a rally and it's exciting seeing.

So, I ended up with six wins. Three people were tied with six wins, for two spots in finals (two people were tied with seven wins). So three of us --- me, DMC, and MC, a newcomer to league who was having a killer night --- would play one game of The Addams Family, lowest person going home. MC looked good to be the lowest finisher, except that I did spectacularly worse. MC managed to come to about fifteen million points, a normally disappointing score. I didn't mange to break six million, and you can break six million on skill shots alone that game. (DMC, an expert on The Addams Family, reached the wizard mode of touring the mansion on ball one I think it was, and was on his way to a second tour before his finish became moot.) After six rounds of perfect play, I finally hit three perfect failures, and was out.

BMK, FAE, DMC, and MC would go on to finals, three sets of four-player games with standings determined by finishing order. FAE --- top seed from qualifying --- won the first game (Cactus Canyon, their pick and also the game I would have picked if I'd had choice) and BMK took second; the second game (Rush) FAE took second and BMK first. At this point MC could hope for nothing better than third place in the tournament, and that if he won the final game, Pokemon, which he didn't, so all this work only got him to fourth place. DMC got third place in every game and finished third in the tournament. The champion would be whichever of FAE and BMK did better on Pokemon and FAE put up an intimidating lead. And, much as happened to me on Venom, BMK just kept whittling the lead down and down again until it was gone, and BMK won. Bad news for FAE --- who bunnyhugger realized after was wearing a whole outfit themed to a particular Pokemon I have definitely heard of and have always known a lot about --- but, goodness, everyone's thrilled to see a comeback from far behind. It's such a good show you enjoy it even when it happens to you.

This all ran way too late into the week, but that's all right, there's other times I could sleep.

Continuing on here with the Cedar Point History Museum, as of last October:

Panel of Fantastic Facts about the park that can't date to any later than 1978 given the Jumbo Jet roller coaster's appearance in it. (That Jumbo Jet coaster was last reported operating in Belarus, if you want to ride it.)

That 'The China Shop' sign sure seems like they're saying The China Shop that had survived in the park since the 1970s and the last independent concessionaires was gone, doesn't it?

Now here's an adorable project: making miniatures of the various eras' trash bins and the parking lot section signs that used to name rides. bunnyhugger observed that Iron Dragon stands out here for being just the ride logo rather than a monochrome ride photo.

And here's a miniature reproduction of the old Iron Dragon ride-height sign. The park doesn't have ride height signs with any kind of pictures or interesting detail anymore.

I'm sorry not to have a better picture of Wildcat's ride height sign because it sure seems like a design choice.

Old photograph, from a photo opportunity I'm surprised the park hasn't brought back. They've re-created the 'Barrel of Fun' photo opportunity; surely a bench made to look like a biplane's wing wouldn't be any harder.

Trivia: In December 1860 John Sherman, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee (and brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman) told his colleagues that the federal government lacked the cash to pay their salaries. Source: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundread Years' War Over the American Dollar, H W Brands.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, May/June 2026, Editor Erin Bartels.

Last Thursday came the event we'd known we needed to do, but also kind of were okay letting slide indefinitely. But the weather Friday was forecast --- and proved to be --- utterly impossible for what we needed, heavy rains not letting up for hours. This would be the day that, at last, we released the deer mice.

bunnyhugger had scouted out a spot in a not-too-nearby park, one which had a decent amount of shelter from the sky, was not too far from water, was also not too close to the river, and seemed like somewhere we could hide the couple cheap wooden birdhouses that the mice had been using as nests. So we drove them down to the park, walked the quarter-mile-plus to the spot, and then loosely taped cardboard covers over the holes to their houses, where they were definitely holed up waiting for whatever frightening thing we were up to to pass. We wanted the cardboard over the doors so they would have to chew their way out, and so that they would not immediately look at their new surroundings and panic. That's the sort of thing that gets fresh-released rodents killed. Instead, the birdhouses are meant to be stable enough starter lairs, places they can return to for reasonable safety, while they explore the terrain and find a spot that's okay enough.

The locations also turned out to be near altogether too much poison ivy, so when we got home we slathered this stuff that's supposed to repel the ivy's oils and took showers. I've at least not gotten anything noticeable, and while bunnyhugger got a mild case she noticed from her scouting, it hasn't grown worse enough to complain about, at least.

So we set the birdhouses out --- the girls one we had a spot immediately ready; the one with the lone male we actually had to do some last-minute scouting because turned out there were fewer good spots than we expected. (We didn't want them set next to one another in case they don't actually get along.) We set down caches of food, and bowls of water, and even some bits of toilet paper since they so enjoy nesting with that. And set down branches and pieces of bark so that the houses are, if not fully hidden, at least hard for a casual human walking the trail nearby to notice. We know some things from letterboxing that come in useful here.

The disappointing thing is we never got to see the moment the mice emerge into their new lives, ones we hope fulfilling and natural enough to make up for them being much shorter than if we just kept them as pets. bunnyhugger noted that it's possible given the maximum lifespan of deer mice in captivity that they could outlive our pet rabbit, if we had kept them; and, now, that won't happen unless catastrophe strikes Athena.

The next day it rained heavily; possibly the first time the adult mice --- certainly the first time the babies --- experienced it. We hope we've done something that will be good for them.

On to less ambiguous stuff. Join with me now in more explorations of the Cedar Point Museum, roommates with the Merry-Go-Round Museum and filling up slightly more than the Merry-Go-Round Museum's main event space:

1972 Cedar Point-branded calendar --- looks like they closed Labor Day after a buyout day --- and a couple 'credit cards' from the early 90s that aren't explained. I'm going to guess something for park employees to use in the cafeteria or something?

Cedar Point resort newspaper for September 1898, a time when Kennywood was barely a plan for a dining hall.

New York Central club excursion ticket for the park. Also some tickets for specific rides on the right.

A 1910 dance card. The program seems to be alternating waltzes and two-steps, neither dances I could do.

Used to be you could just get anything in glass with the year on it.

Is that one of the horses too valuable to leave on the Frontier Carousel that's since been moved to Dorney Park? No, this is a replica that they have because of reasons. But I spent time looking for evidence.

Trivia: Formosa (Taiwan) adopted a time zone based on the Greenwich meridian in 1896. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time --- From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, May/June 2026, Editor Erin Bartels.