Circus World Pictures: 1: The music, or, thanks to Circus World I now know Mannfred Mann didn't write that song everybody knows him for.

School's out now, but just before it ended we got to go on a field trip to Circus World in Baraboo.  

Baraboo used to be the home of the Ringling Bros. circus, which is one reason the museum is there. When Ringling Bros. joined with Barnum & Bailey, they became the largest circus ever. It's a pretty neat place, for a museum.

The first part of the museum is a demonstration of the various musical instruments the circus performer used.

I do not remember the names of them all, but they're a weird lot, making all that semi-strange circus music that you probably can recall.  The most interesting one was the one over on the right, hard to see here, that consisted of metal bars; a performer would chalk his hands and run them up and down the bars to play them. It's called a "lyre" or a "friction harp."  You can get a feel for how it sounded with this:




Then there was this: "Deagan Organ Chimes," or shaker chimes: They're played by shaking and rattling them.

They sound like this:

This is a Deagan "Una Fon." It's a musical instrument made of door chimes.  They're hooked to a keyboard so you play it like a piano. I would embed another video but all the ones I could find on Youtube were amazingly annoying, so I didn't. Imagine playing a song with lots of doorbells. Or go to Youtube and search for "Una Fon."  Be warned: The guy at Circus World played it well. People on Youtube do not.

I was not able to figure out who the guy in this poster was:

He was, apparently, "Chas. Le Noire," a musical phenomenon. Googling that gets no results that seem to relate to him or the circus at all.

The music was pretty enjoyable, overall; the guy who plays the instruments did a medley of a bunch of Walt Disney songs, for no reason I could discern, but it was interesting to hear the songs played on all these different instruments.  (Mr F did not like the music much; it was too loud, so he and I faded back a ways. Mr Bunches and Sweetie stuck it out a little better.)

It was also at Circus World that I learned a calliope is not pronounced "Cah-lie-oh-pee." That's the muse. The musical instrument is supposed to be pronounced cally-ope. The music guy said this, and me being me and me being American I thought man he's gotta be wrong no way that's true. So I looked it up, and it's mostly true. Wikipedia says there's been some disputes about how the word should be pronounced over the centuries, but it appears to have been settled (as so many things are) by Bruce Springsteen.



The calliope crashed to the ground.  What if 10,000 years from now Bruce Springsteen is remembered solely as the guy who finally resolved the debate on how to pronounce calliope? (And could we get him to let us all just call the monster Frankenstein?)

More pics in the future if I remember to do them.

Giving people fair health care or a living wage = Socialism. Giving people roads and schools = ...WHATEVER #TRUMP 'MERICA!!

American Illusion

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!