2025 May 30: AlterNet: "'Divine trolling': Pope schedules Chicago mass on the same day as Trump's military parade"
2025 May 30: AlterNet: "'Divine trolling': Pope schedules Chicago mass on the same day as Trump's military parade"
Daphne Eftychia Arthur, guitarist+. Read.
This week I'm trying something I haven't done in ages on my humor blog: letting Robert Benchley write it. I like this. He's got a pretty solid comic voice. Here's what you might have missed if you weren't reading it day-by-day:
With that having got you moderately amused now please enjoy the end of our stop-in at Cedar Point last July, as photographed:
This is not the Space Age ride mentioned as a rotation point. This is a ride in Planet Snoopy, a completely separate kids area on the other side of the Coliseum from the Kiddie Kingdom.
And this is a small performance area in Planet Snoopy that I think we've never been around when it was in use.
Walking over to something or other (Iron Dragon) we saw a pack of musicians performing in front of the Coasters Diner. Also someone who bought a seagull backpack, that's nice.
Also you can see a mother who does not have the time for people in poodle skirts dancing.
And here's Iron Dragon, always a favorite, although in its last season before the indignity of a fast-pass line-cutting lane was installed.
Meanwhile the griffin, now gold, stands proudly there and refuses to explain why it vanished for a few years and why it's in front of Iron Dragon instead of the griffin-themed GateKeeper.
Now here is the turnstile outside the Cedar Downs racing carousel. I photograph this just because I'd never paid any attention to the manufacturer of the turnstile before, so here we go.
The afternoon light flatters the horses here.
The lights inside not being on improves the composition here. I should have centered the center area, though. If I ever get the chance I'll have to re-photograph this right.
Tilting the camera this severely emphasizes how the horses are racing, moving back and forth in those slots, so that some look like they're leaping ahead of the pack.
Cedar Downs is next to the Cadillac Cars, last remaining tracked car ride.
And that's our drop-in done. Here's a look to the front of the park from Cedar Downs on the right and in the concrete you see how much has been done to dry up the rain already.
Trivia: On the fourth flight day of Gemini 4, the astronauts found themselves unable to turn off the computer (to conserve spacecraft power). Even after switching the unit to off the computer light stayed on, with no malfunction light. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 63: The Abdominal Snowman, Ralph Stein, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. There's a lot of energy going into this story, especially after the four thousandth college football story by Sims and Zaboly.
More of not having time to write anything so please enjoy Cedar Point as on the day we dropped in last July.
Resting in the Kiddie Kingdom as it might have rained. We had always thought this building had to have been the station for a train ride or something like that, before its long use as a lost-persons center. Turns out no, it never was. When the Kiddie Kingdom used to be enclosed this was the way you entered and exited, though, which is why it's a substantial building without any particular entertainment value.
The Kiddie Kingdom motorcycle ride where you go around in a small vehicle and hit a buzzer lots.
And the control panel for the station, including the note about what ride an operator here should go to next (Space Age).
Enough of the Kiddie Kingdom; we're back at Blue Streak and ready for a front-seat ride! Soon.
I got to see the sign with the text to read in case of service interruptions, but I couldn't get my camera to take a clear photo of it.
The lift hill and the queue area that normally seems over-ample for Blue Streak. It fills up a bit come Halloweekends.
And here's Cedar Point's Windseeker! Will this be the time I finally ride it?
Yes. Despite the recent rain the ride was going and I chose to take this moment for a ride that proved pretty normal, compared to getting stopped up top like at Kings Island.
Here's what the ride looks like at full height from under the queue's covering.
And I liked this picture of a guy almost trapped between the fence railings up front. Tighten this up and you have a good album cover.
Yeah, like that! Now you have the whole image of the guy not knowing he's confined to a narrow column, and that in-between fences behind and in front of him.
Windseeker exits on this nice view of the back of the Wild Mouse's lift hill, and so you can see the back of the cat who's reaching for a mouse car.
Trivia: On Gemini 4's third day of flight Pat White, wife of astronaut Ed White, besides talking with her husband also passed along some capcom notes to adjust some dials, and the flight surgeon's instruction to drink more water and get more rest. Pat McDivitt, Jim McDivitt's wife, repeated the drink-more-water instruction. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 63: The Abdominal Snowman, Ralph Stein, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.
You know what we did after that Kennywood visit and that Pinball event? If you guessed ``went to an amusement park, probably Cedar Point'' good news, you get to see pictures of exactly that event now:
Traditional establishing shot, proving that both my car and Cedar Point were in view at the same time.
The entrance, looking not as grand as it did during the eclipse but still, nice. Note the electronic sign warns that Top Thrill 2 will not open today; it could have said, all season.
Boardwalk Nights! The Cedar Point 150 sign turns out to be a good spot to put signs for all kinds of temporary events.
Blue Streak, standing firm despite the threatening clouds.
And here's Raptor, again with clouds that look like they don't want any fun going on.
Of course even a short visit to Cedar Point will see carousels, such as the Kiddy Kingdom one here.
We spent a little time looking around the Kiddie Kingdom rides, mostly out of a sense that someday they're going to renovate them otu of existence and we'll feel bad about that.
Though a lot of the Kiddie Kingdom rides are like this, a toy vehicle going in a circle with a buzzer the kid can press to make noise.
There's the carousel. The armored horse on the left is a fiberglass replica; the original is, last anyone confirmed, gathering dust in the art department for some reason.
Back to rides, like the spinning tubs one here that was closed lest the rain you see there make it unsafe to operate.
Here's two of the rabbits on the Kiddie Kingdom carousel. At the end of the season an operator claimed they had names, although we're not sure we believed the claim and I'm not sure I remember them. They were straightforward ones like you might make if you weren't trying very hard, like, Snowball and Caramel or something like that.
Kiddie Kingdom Carousel, some flat kiddie ride or other, and one of the domes of the Coliseum.
Trivia: On the second day of its flight Gemini 4 astronauts surpassed the total duration record of all eight previous United States astronauts combined, as well as the duration record for a multi-crew spacecraft set by Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2 three months earlier. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 62: WEE vs I.O.U., Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. Yep, that sure was another college football tale, although this one at least introduces the element that Olive Oyl eats a lot of olives, thereby justifying one element of this one Gene Deitch-made 60s Popeye cartoon.
(PS: there is no significance to the subject line, a lyric from Sparks's ``Tips for Teens''. I couldn't think of a good song to use and this was playing. Pay it no mind.)
Now to close out pictures of the Women's International Pinball Tournament, as again, no time to write just now.
Pinburgh championship banners seen from the first floor, near where they keep all the Long Croquet Mallets on the wall.
A break in the action. This might have been lunch or just the time before the scheduled next round.
The waiting area, waiting around.
I went over to this little side balcony where I got an extreme shot of the previous WIPT champion banners.
And over there they had the original King Kong! Hi-Deal is one of Bally's last electromechanical games, but don't worry, it's another collect-the-playing-cards game.
From by Hi-Deal you get this view of the tournament organizers area, with all the people wearing STAFF shirts and plastic crates of stuff.
Here I got up real close to the top-four-finishers plaques and you know what I discovered about how they're held up?
Yeah, it's all done with cans of soda pop! Only the first place finisher gets a Diet Coke, everyone else has to accept Regular Sprite.
This is just side art from a bouncy-ball crane game that, I don't know, there's something appealing even though the kangaroo face was drawn kind of weird.
Disused PAPA call-a-tournament-official-over station; you push the button and they get word that someone should be over. They had a couple of these off hidden behind things. Anyway I don't know what the winged, horned pinball is supposed to mean.
Later in the day the bagels were replaced with lots of popcorn.
And at the venue we saw Labyrinth for the first time, playing it enough to understand there's cool stuff going on here, not enough to understand how to do any of it on purpose.
Trivia: Capcom Gus Grissom gave Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White the go-head for his spacewalk one hour 33 minutes into the flight. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler. They would try opening the hatch at just under four hours into the flight.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 62: WEE vs I.O.U., Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. Noelle observes it's the last Tom Sims-penned story so of course it's another college football tale.
I don't have the time to really write anything up right now, so please enjoy pictures of the Revived Women's International Pinball Tournament, 2024 edition.
bunnyhugger discovering how much of Total Nuclear Annihilation she's lost touch with.
A look across the lower level of the movie theater. It was before noon so that's why the lower level isn't busy enough to be dead. Later, the smell of movie popcorn would dominate things.
And here's the trophies for the top four finishers! bunnyhugger would not be among them, but she didn't do badly.
Waiting area and lounge set up for players in the middle of the floor, along with a projection screen that would show whatever they thought deserved it. On the side you can see a Genesis, conceivably the one of my long-departed glory days at Pinburgh.
People gather together to hear opening announcements and play the Pinball National Anthem (the high-score theme from Space Station).
And gathering for the group photo, with both real cameras and cell phones!
bunnyhugger joins in the Pledge of Pinball Allegiance (liberty and just a wee bit more margin on the ball save timer for all).
Round one! Tragically, bunnyhugger's tournament would begin with Paragon. The format was the same as the WIPT of 2019, at least.
And here she faces up to, ugh, Paragon.
Sometime later she writes down scores (probably) for one of the other games that bank. Feels like Aladdin's Castle to me, but no way to know for sure. Or she's just setting the pen down.
Meanwhile with nothing else to do I got some time in on blob-themed game Quicksilver, in the free-play area.
Not sure I'd ever seen the airbrushed side panel art on a Quicksilver before. Turns out this melty blobby game manages to find room for silhouetted nipples.
Trivia: Albrecht Dürer, after receiving one of Martin Luther's works as a gift from Duke Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony in 1520, wrote (Duke Frederick's secretary and court chaplain) that he would draw Luther's portrait and engrave it in copper, ``if God helps me to come to'' him. Dürer would never meet, nor draw, Luther. Source: Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Lisa Jardine.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 61: King Bee and Queen Bee, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. And after an intriguing start the characters just decide to leave. It's a choice that kind of makes sense but it should have been used as a stronger punch line.
I mentioned in passing the Zen Tournament, the traditional end-of-the-pinball-season match where teams of players try to win a double-elimination contest. We had that Tuesday night and once again bunnyhugger and I were a team. The format was, apart from the teams-of-people-playing, the same as we used in league finals, best-of-three matches and a team eliminated only after losing a second round of that.
The surprising thing, especially given we hadn't practiced at all. On our very first game against the team of PCL and DG, Black Knight: Sword of Rage, we lost, but after rallying from an enormous gap, and losing by only a couple hundred thousand points. I felt great for that; bunnyhugger felt the opposite. On Dungeons and Dragons we learned that there was a brand-new code update just that day that made Dragon Multiball, the thing everyone goes for, more difficult to reach. We won anyway but it was luckier than it should have been. We lost on the last game, though, and went into the Second Chance Bracket.
But once there we were we started doing well again. This included some really dominating games of Tron, The Beatles --- I think we had a million points plus on the first ball, and that's where you'd hope to be after two balls --- and in the next round, had a game of Pulp Fiction where we made up a half-million-point gap on one ball. I count myself lucky when I get a half-million points a whole game of Pulp Fiction, never mind on one ball and splitting flipper responsibilities. If that weren't enough we managed to beat the team of DMC and RED --- my pick for the team of destiny here --- in three games, winning on Tales of the Arabian Nights thanks to a killer first ball, and squeaking out a win on Jaws on the bonus of the last ball.
So this put us into finals, against the team of PCL and DG again. They beat us on Godzilla, like we kind of expected, although we didn't do badly. On The Addams Family it took us a little while but we finally got the rhythm of the skill shot, and shooting the ramp, and shooting the chair to start modes and that gave us a very easy win. Then they picked Jurassic Park, which we never play, and rarely play well, and we just couldn't do anything. We even failed to get the T-Rex Multiball started, so the game was a loss. And with that, we lost the tournament, but we got far closer than we were expecting, We should have expected; bunnyhugger had been counting on using down time during the tournament to get some work done so naturally she would have no time.
For the side tournament --- there's always a side tournament --- bunnyhugger brought in her All-American Girl toy machine, The Flip Side, figuring there was no way this could be such a long-playing game as to make the tournament drag on. In this she was correct. She did not foresee the possibility of someone beating her long-held high score on her own table, and while RED did not beat her high score, he came closer than she was comfortable with. We also streamed this on PCL's rig, which was very funny because the rig is set up for a pinball game of normal dimensions, not something small enough for a squirrel to be able to play. I don't know that this is the first time anyone's streamed The Flip Side for an actual sanctioned pinball tournament but it's a rarity at least. So if anyone caught the stream, they got to enjoy that oddness too.
Coming up now on the photo roll: the Women's International Pinball Tournament, the thing we really went to Pittsburgh for. This used to be held the day after Pinburgh finals, but with ... well, there was a revival of Pinburgh. Without the backing of ReplayFX and the dispersed collection of games from PAPA headquarters it can't command the Anthrocon convention center, but after all, the important thing in a tournament is the playing, right? So here's how that looked ...
The new location of Pinburgh! Which we almost drove right past because we ... were expecting some kind of dedicated sports-event facility, not the upper level of a multiplex.
But here it is, the revived Women's Intergalactic Pinball Tournament. Also something held there for the first time, the pre-Pinburgh Bash At The Burgh tournament that we didn't get to.
They had the rights to the name as well as the banners from Previous Pinburgh, including the ones that reflected the 2019 champions that would have debuted at Pinburgh 2020.
And ... there's the venue, the mezzanine level of the multiplex here. You can totally date these photos to this year because there's Yet Another Alien Movie among the posters.
Players warming up. Also filling up, since they provided bagels! If we'd known I probably would still have eaten so many eggs from the hotel breakfast but still, that's nice seeing.
Spanish Eyes! And still featuring its Pinburgh 2019 bank sign, so there's a good chance I played this literal table for something that counts before. Also look at that art; it's a pity that artist didn't do more games.
Trivia: One of the Sanskrit words for 'Friday' was 'Sukravara', honoring Venus and meaning 'bright, resplendent'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 61: King Bee and Queen Bee, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.
When last I reported about my lost camera and Motor City Furry Con we'd had established two important things. First, they had my camera! Second, it was in storage so who knows when they'd find the chance to recover it?
Well. I could manage going to Pinball At The Zoo without a camera and even the handful of things we got to in May without. Mostly local pinball stuff, although this might be the first time I don't have a proper ``what we compete for'' picture of the plaques at pinball night. But we are coming up on things I must have a camera for, and while yes, my iPhone is probably adequate for most purposes I want a camera that's a proper camera.
So I went looking and found a used Panasonic Lumix camera, one very close to the camera I had before my misplaced camera. And I finally have all the pieces I need for it together --- camera, memory card, battery and spare battery, charger, and the data/power cable that connects it to a computer or USB power supply! I even found that my old camera bag, the one used for the previous camera, fits this new one just fine. It lacks a strap --- I'd transferred that to my Samsung camera so that's in the Motor City Furry Con Lost And Found Storage Locker right now --- but the important thing is I can take good pictures and plenty of them. And the zoom on this doesn't --- yet --- get jammed up partway through, putting it ahead of my Samsung.
Now, of course, I just have to explain what I need to take pictures of that made me spend money on this.
We close the month now with something I bet you'd never thought you would see: the end of Kennywood pictures from our trip last year! And what comes up to follow this? Hm. There's so many possibilities ...
Oh yeah, we rented a locker for the second time ever and had to get stuff out of it. Do you see our locker number? Well, it was easy to remember since it was 1054 and I need hardly remind you what an important year that was.
Super Kaleidoscope, the charming circular-shaped building up front with the candy shop inside. It just looks good. You can make out the Old Mill's frontage in the background.
The Goodnight heart, last thing you see before entering the tunnel to leave Kennywood.
They've painted the tunnel with all kinds of Kennywood memorabilia and items, including a replica ticket from nearly a century ago and the reminder to gentlemen after using the washroom.
Looking back at the park from the parking lot.
And here's a panoramic view at the end of the night, to match the one had at the start of the day.
Trivia: The pancreas's name reflects its label as ``pan'' (all) and ``kreas'' (flesh), an organ of all flesh. The name may reflect early lack of knowledge of what it did and was simply there. Source: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.
This week my humor blog has seen a lot being made out of the fact Wikipedia has a list of notable soups. But there's also other stuff, no less weakly motivated. For example:
Now something that never needs motivation, the sharing of pictures of Kennywood. Enjoy!
Here's a picture of some of the horses from the inside of the carousel, showing off the less-elaborately-carved sides.
This is the band organ, a Wurlitzer something or other model.
Here's that carousel tiger scaring off some riders.
And someone so delighted she's clapping and leaning back. (Yes, I know, she's taking a picture and not stepping back a little.)
Is that the night already? Vending booths all closed up here.
The traditional picture from the bridge of the Racer and midway games and Jack Rabbit. That tree on the right's obscuring the logo almost completely now.
It is the end of the night! Grand Carousel with all the lights off, and people being quietly but insistently pushed toward the exit.
So here's another quick picture of the lake, looking over towards Steel Curtain so there's none of that pesky nature obscuring the buildings.
The waters were quite still and the reflection of Steel Curtain looked great.
And here's Jack Rabbit where you can see the neon logo and the parts of the legs that still aren't illuminated.
Refreshments continues to be one of bunnyhugger's favorite pieces of neon.
And here's the Kangaroo. The rainbow-lit roo is part of a lights animation, the extra brightness and colors jumping from right to left.
Trivia: During World War II, Japan had 99 motorized farm tractors. Source: The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food, Lizzie Collingham. (Given the typical size and landscaping of rice paddies it's not obvious that more would have helped much, and in any case, fuel and oil were short.)
Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.
bunnyhugger, stirred up by my post last night about the tree and the risk it might present, spent too much time worrying about what to do and turned to doing something about it this afternoon. And by remarkable stroke, found something very effective: a couple guys who could come out to the house today to give an estimate, and who're scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon to cut the fallen branch down and chop it up into useful wood. So now we're set to be even more well-stocked for when we get the fireplace converted into something not dangerously unsafe to operate.
Also we got back the clock. As promised they had it ready Wednesday; I ventured in after work, but before going to the card store to get my father a birthday card. (This spun out into also getting father's day cards, saving me a trip sometime in two weeks.) As bunnyhugger texted to ask if I was stopping for something after work I was on my way to the art glass shop. This was all but the work of a minute. I came in and both the woman and the guy who'd been in the car on Saturday telling me she'd gone back in were there. I started to explain what my deal was when the woman pointed to the counter. I was delighted, and said so, by how lovely the new glass looks.
bunnyhugger observed maybe the real difference was just that it was completely new and clean. But it does look great. And now it's on the wall and everything's in good shape in this part of this room of the house! We're making progress.
And now we return to Kennywood and to the flying saucer gift shop!
And here's the 90s t-shirt. Steel Phantom was rebuilt into Phantom's Revenge; Wipeout and Pitt Fall are gone (Wipeout to Lake Compounce). I can't find any information about Fort Kennywood and wonder if it might have been a show or event or something that wouldn't make lists of former attractions.
bunnyhugger admiring the Grand Carousel by night.
The carousel all white-lit and brilliant by night.
The inside has plenty of mirrors so you get to see the insides of the horses in this picture.
Looking out from atop a horse. bunnyhugger grabs a picture of me here.
bunnyhugger goes for a ride on the tiger this time.
Trivia: E-470, the beltway toll highway around Denver, is an incomplete loop, with the northwestern corner never built owing to plutonium-239 contamination of the soil of the former Rocky Flats Plant, which operated from 1952 to 1992. Source: Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, Simon Winchester. In 1989 the FBI raided the plant, owned by the federal Department of Energy, over Rockwell International's shoddy management.
Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.
I have been staggering through the past few weeks, holding myself together with string and duct tape, and it is finally the Cottagecore Week.
I have finished a sashiko patch on a pair of jeans and I am very proud of myself, as well as the first of the embroidered numbers for my front & back doors, and I have solved the problem of how to print patterns onto stabilizer (use the library makerspace printer from a USB). The mending circle at the local "sustainable fashion collective" (it's a secondhand store with some mending/tailoring services) was fun and I'll go back when the bus schedule allows. Dropout.tv and the 1995 Pride & Prejudice miniseries have been my companions as I sew this week, and they are both great for that purpose. I think I will move on to North & South and perhaps Horrible Histories next. Is Shakespeare & Hathaway fun?
The knotweed in the garden has been beaten back from the path to the shed, and the asparagus is coming up spindly and feathery (I really hope that they will thicken over time, I will eat a thin asparagus spear without complaining but I love asparagus with some heft); no trace of the rhubarb, which I'm kind of upset about, but seeds are always chancy, and I'm waiting to see what happened with the watermelon and sunflowers, now that I've staked the peas. Surely something will come up? The gladiolus in the front garden are looking more promising, although I don't know what happened to everything else. I have proof that someone in the Parks Department exists, and has just been ignoring my emails (a coworker knows the parks director, and emailed her, and the person I have been trying to get in touch with answered when their boss was on the chain, but no luck since, so this is progress but not by much).
I have been wallowing in books, and can enthusiastically join the chorus of those of you who have been shrieking delightedly about Robert Jackson Bennett's latest, A Drop of Corruption, it's so good, please discuss in the comments; and I finally got my hands on Katherine Addison's The Tomb of Dragons, ditto.
This weekend we finally --- after like a week or so --- enjoyed some warm enough weather to clean out the goldfish pond, ahead of putting the fish back in for summer. That went about as usual, me mucking the pond out until I broke the pond vacuum. This time it's a simple fix, as the plastic bolt that holds the handle on the main unit of the vacuum snapped off, and that should be easy enough to replace with a metal bolt.
But while doing this I noticed something funny about the fence, the older one that bunnyhugger and her starter husband put up when the house on that side was the bad neighbor. A piece of it was loose from the other and that seemed weird and new. And then I finally registered that one of the big branches from a huge tree had fallen over and knocked it out of place. Presumably it was knocked over in the big storm that blew through a week and a half ago, and we just failed to register that fact. It would be more ridiculous and embarrassing if it had fallen over back in the Motor City Furry Con storm of late March, so we'll go with the latter date.
So besides everything else going on --- and you'll learn what that is soon enough, don't worry --- we have to figure a way to get someone with a chainsaw and a ladder out here. Also to figure out whether the tree --- which is in the space behind our back fence, but also behind the back fence of the neighbor behind us --- is on our property or theirs and whether to get an insurance company involved. And the real crisis will be if another heavy storm blows through before we can get it dealt with because the branch is something like forty feet long and still partly attached to the tree trunk, so if it fell it could ... not hit any structures, but could destroy fences, our cherry tree, or do untold damage to our goldfish pond, if only by giving local raccoons a great place to sit while fishing. More on this as it comes to pass.
And now, pictures from the end of our day at Kennywood. We're not quite there yet, don't fear.
Tried taking a picture of the fountain by night, I think with the 'Waterfall' mode on my camera so I got this nice sheen in the middle water level there.
Tried the same thing with the water fountains of the main pool and I like how strange it makes the surface of the water look.
Swings ride and the giant rigid pendulum. I believe we've ridden both of these, although not this visit.
One of the gift shops, the flying saucer one in Area 412, had some fun decade T-shirts that ... we didn't want to get, but didn't want to forget either. Of the rides listed here only the Bumper Cars are still around. (Le Cachot was the 1972 Bill Tracy redesign of a Pretzel dark ride.)
Baseball caps showing off ... either rabbit-eared squirrels or squirrel-tailed rabbits.
The Kennywood 2000s shirt lists rides that are mostly still there and ... you know, thing with the Y2K fears is they were done once 2000 started so logically ...
Trivia: Between 1856 and 1864 Cyrus Field crossed the Atlantic at least 31 times working to build the Atlantic Telegraph Company's trans-oceanic telegraph line. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.
Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.
When I got home yesterday from getting some stuff from the pet store and the hardware store I had news for bunny_hugger. She'd wondered when the Joann Fabrics in our local mall would close. The answer: 55 minutes. We dithered a small bit about whether to go; would it be just depressing, or might we get something useful like really cheap Easter egg dye kits or bolts of fleece or stuff?
We got there to learn that they didn't have any fleece left. Or Easter egg kits. Or almost anything, really; they did well at keeping the store open until they ran out of stuff. All the remaining merchandise was on two small shelving units up front, and most of that was decoration letters. If you need a box of Z's, we could set you up, except that Joann's is now closed for good and all. Someone working the tiny remaining stock was urging people to buy boxes of toothpicks with lobster or shrimp cutouts atop them. We're not sure why anyone would get these at all, even if, as she observed, they won't spoil. I had the feeling this had turned into some minor silly retail obsession, waiting to see if anyone would ever take any of this.
We also wandered around the shelving and fixtures, where another employee was doing her best to find some piece of hardware we would take home with us. Apparently some of the thread spools are also a good configuration for storing Hot Wheels cars, in case you have a hundred-plus Hot Wheel cars that need storing. But we don't, nor anything close to that. Some of the pegbord-with-bin shelving seemed like it might be useful in our basement, if it weren't too big to fit in our basement.
And yet as we were leaving I noticed they had boxes full of pegboard racks, like, the metal or plastic rods that stick out and you can hang stuff on. So we got a box of that, for five bucks, and have the promise of organizing more things in our basement and garage if we ever get to that. I also, maybe foolishly, bought a couple boxes of some silicone sheets that are meant to be pressed around mugs or other ceramic things. I don't know what to do with them but have the feeling there's probably something decorative we can do. bunny_hugger sees in them mostly a thing we'll have to get rid of at some point. I suppose either will do fine.
And that was our last Joann's visit.
Now to what I hope was merely the most recent Kennywood visit, drawing as you can see nearer its close.
Almost at The Phantom's Revenge's station and this gives a view of the exit queue. (Also the entrance for people with mobility needs, like the guy in a wheelchair coming up the other way.)
Lanes to get your seat for the ride. Note there isn't that automatic gate that keeps you away until the operator decides you may approach.
That gift shop again, now seen by night. Also showing off the Small Fry's, that place where you can get the same fries as at The Potato Patch but with less of a wait. And yes, per Kennywood: Behind The Screams, it is based on the entrance to Wonderland at Revere Beach, Massachusetts. (Yes, if you looked at that link, you saw an 'Infant Incubators' building inside Wonderland. Early 20th century was weird.)
Sitting at the top of the reflecting pool in Lost Kennywood, looking out over a beautifully clear sky and the Black Widow swing ride.
Over that way's the swing ride. Oops, accidentally got a tiny bit of a view of bunny_hugger in there. Sorry, won't do that again.
And here's how the pool looks by early night.
Trivia: Charles Babbage invented a mechanical time clock in 1844. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time --- From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett.
Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.