Face Masks ... Hit Show Grocery Stores ... Rotten Bananas in Demand ... My Fun House Gets a Reboot ... Ringling's Return Gets Ignored ...

Now I’m starting to feel guilty even going out for a walk. I’ve been using a turtle neck for a make-do face mask, I’d hate to be too tightly wrapped in those hospital things, fearing no escape. 

I’ll go to a nearby 7-11 to get the Saturday Wall Street Journal and grab some bananas  — if they have any. Yesterday, I wanted to buy all four left, a sorry lot, and got them for only a buck. No wonder;  By the time home, one had already turned thoroughly rotten on me.  Going to the Piedmont Grocery, the lines are so long, grocery shopping is the new waiting in line for tickets to Hamilton.

T. Paper is not an issue with me.  My nephew blames the national stamped on  “rear end paranoia.”  I predict a Broadway musical.

Inside, luckily I have things to do.  Such as renewing work on my model fun house, now that, at last, I’ve secured the Walking Charlie figurines I need for the moving platform above Laughing Sal

This project was begun  nearly two years ago.  It took about a year alone to find someone to create  Sal.  In desperation, I turned to working with and from a plastic figurine, to try shaping her into Sal.  You can see the barbaric surgery I subjected her to for arm repositioning.  And then I pasted a photo copy of the real Sal's face on her face.  Impressive?

 A nice lady in San Jose, doll house and miniatures enthusiast Ruth Heisch, had been following my quest, now and then e-mailing to see how I was doing.  And when she saw this monstrosity, out of pity or respect, she offered to dress Sal herself.  Bingo!  There was the magic breakthrough! Ruth gave Sal her hairdo and red shoes as well.

Yes, if the arms look short, it was NOT my surgery that did it.   (And, please, don't report me to the AMA)  The wavy card-stock you see: over it rides a pin attached to Sal, so that as the pin goes up and down, Sal moves forward and backward.  My nephew proclaimed it an "invention."

It took about another year to find somebody to make the Walking Charlies.  In this case, from Japan, puppeteer artist Nao Kobayashi. I had to keep pressing and pushing her through draft images to make them thinner – before sending them to an oven to bake.  I am pleased with the result, pleased enough, even though her Charlies are not  exactly as gaunt and lean as the real ones.  Below, I'm placing small thin platforms under their shoes, to make it easier to move them into place on the round turntable before securing.

While Sal rocks in half-deimented laughter back and forth, calmly above, the Charlies will move in a slow circle of  austere propriety. I never thought about this contrast in character until now.

And then there is  the Greatest Show on Earth.  Remember?  Although Kenneth Feld made known his plans to revitalize the show, you  will not learn a thing about it if you read  the insufferably elitist PC perfect Circus Talk, or go to the  CFA website. Not a word from either.

Shame on them both.  With Circus Talk, a house organ for the academic-based circus deconstruction industry, I can understand their revulsion over anything bearing the name  Ringling.  After all, didn’t they and their disdain for real circus  help fuel the campaign to run it off the road?  In a new issue, sent my way, as I am Covington Connected, they cover the flu influenza pandemic  of 1918, of how it affected “showbiz” Every venue is covered, except for circus.   We know that Ringling ended the season a bit early. 

As for the CFA: Knock Knock! Is anybody there? Does anybody care?  What do you think Kenneth Feld is to think when he can’t get even a rise from YOU?

APPALLING. 

Not only is circus dying, so too, apparently the fan base that would have once cheered such news.

Post script: I went to the 7-ll, and got some fresh bananas!  But no WSJ. Drats. I hope columnist Peggy Noonan, pending Corona test results, was okay.