9-11 Twenty-two years later

SUMMARY: We'll never forget, but we can't remember every day of every year

From a reply to another blog about today

My dad's photo of the New York city skyline, when we visited in1975
The World Trade Center only 2 years old

I didn't realize what day it was until I had to write the date on something. It doesn't kick me in the gut so much any more. Not like the first day, watching the videos (on TV of course--most channels it seemed) over and over in shock. Not like the 2nd day, watching again. And, by afternoon, realizing that if I kept that up, I might never climb out of that hole. I recorded a couple of hours of the news, then turned off the TV and didn't go back to it. But there was no escaping the numbing realization of what had happened -- not just to the iconic buildings, but so so many people who had nothing to do with anything. Just people. Dead. Hundreds of men, women, children; moms, dads, sisters, brothers, business partners, cousins, lovers, husbands, wives, teammates, best friends--whole departments of companies wiped out-- and all of the first responders who paid the worst price of their professions.

But now--it was a long time ago.

Twenty-two years. More than a generation. My youngest--barely adult--niece wasn't born yet and the next youngest was only a year old. Over 13,000 babies were born in the US on that day (this article from 2021 shares some of the things that these adults will never know as a result of the fallout from the event). Imagine 22 years more of that many babies born every day, making well over a million US-born residents who have no idea what life was like. And it was different!

Day after day now, we encounter restrictions that didn't exist. There's a boundary of Before and After, like a black line drawn across time. A curtain beyond which, looking back, can't be seen through, really, unless you were there and already know.

But I don't think about it much, any more, really. Life is what it is and it's hard to stay angry and afraid this long. Still, today, and 9-11s in the future, I'll remember.

https://news.yahoo.com/babies-born-on-9-11-turn-20-sept-11-anniversary-090055997.html

A couple of my photos from 1983 from atop the towers (unedited, sorry). The tower was 10 years old.

It fell at age 28.

Some of the bridges across the East River into Manhattan (where the towers were); I think the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges

It was a long, long way down.
You can barely see how many taxis there are (yellow)
I haven't taken the time to identify the streets or buildings--
but I wonder how many of these still exist after the disaster--

Getting Ready to Write -- Fiction

SUMMARY: Beforehand it's research but, like,  fun!

(Started in a comment on an artist's post about an image he created.)

1860s cowboys or cavalry?
More photos of dress from that era

In a private group, an artist posted a style sheet for a character in his [wild-west-magical-realism] graphic novel--the man's appearance, every angle, every expression in which he had drawn him. He adds another sketch to it every time he draws some other angle or expression or clothing view.

I liked seeing that. 

It startlingly echoed the for-fun fan fiction (FFFF?) project I'm working on that takes place in the 1860s-'80s "wild west" using characters, names, and tropes from the original author of a trilogy (which I talked about a little here), intermingled with true history and familiar tropes of wild-west time and place.  In other words, fan fiction/historical fiction that gives verisimilitude to both universes that readers of either might recognize and yet is different from both. 

I'm a writer, not an artist particularly but, like [the artist], I need to decide--before plunging into writing--who and what will be in the story, what they look like and their backstory, whether a  person or a town.

So I'm up to my eyeballs in [internet] research on what real cowboys really wore during that time and gold- and silver-rush mining Colorado (and other areas up and down the Rockies) mining towns when they start up and then after a few years, and from among the images, descriptions, and explanations, I need to pick what style goes with each character or location.  I can also invent anything about anyone or anyplace, but this is supposed to be a "short" for-fun fiction so I don't want to have to invent very much but I also don't want it to take place in the author's original time and place nor in the actual wild west (if there ever was such a thing).

What the previously nonexistent Virginia City looked like
in 1867, seven years after the discovery there of the Comstock Lode.

And then 10 years later at its peak of estimated 25,000 residents.
Fifteen years after that, the population had dropped to 6,000. 
40 years later, about 600. About there it has been ever since.

In other words, this is an Alternate Universe of the American west and ditto of the original books.

And of course I track what people and towns and buildings and landscapes look like; I don't want Billy to accidentally have green eyes somewhere where they've been blue all along (not that kind of story: no magic). 

I'm sharing this info with an artist who came up with a single idea and location and set of characters (same wild west/original fiction) and is creating a painting of it.  I'm building the story around that, but we are currently going back and forth on what the artist's vision is and how I want to work with it, so it's important to record and share details. He's even given me a floorplan layout of the building in which his particular scene in the story takes place--which is extremely cool, because then I don't have to invent a layout myself and try to remember it.

I've shared wayyyyyy more details than he probably wants, although he says it's fascinating and he never expected he'd learn so much from doing a one-off image for fun.

My point was: I have a lot of text notes about clothing choices--style and color and how they wear them--hair styles, attitudes towards others and each other,  where they're from originally so how they talk--likely mostly the same sort of thing that [an artist goes] through. 

I won't have actual sketches, but I do track how I expect they'll react in certain situations and how that would be expressed in body, face, and gestures. It's fun.  BUT it's also fun because I'm reusing the original author's fully realized characters, so I don't have to invent most of this.

And I think I'm within a day or two of starting to spew story onto the [digital] page. I already know more or less where I want it to go, but I can't keep saying, "he made his way through waist-high shrubbery"--I want to know what kind of vegetation is actually out there where he'll be riding. Oh, I know, sage brush and all that, but of course that's not true everywhere. So much easier to know these things before I start putting sentences and scenes in writing than to go back later and fill in a lot of [insert here some appropriate river name between uh... [sometown1] and [sometown2]].

Our deadline is October. I've barely ever done any collaborating historically, and this *is* for fun, so I'm trying to remain relaxed about it.

Hey, [in my online post to the original artist] I think I just wrote myself a rough draft of a blog post. 

Instead of actually writing on the story...?!?!

Writers. Pfft.

--------------

Town images: See them on Wikipedia at Virginia City, Nevada and Deadwood, South Dakota. Click each image for source details.

Cowboy image: Is currently on a Pinterest board, so I hope it doesn't go away...  I have saved an actual copy just in case.

Deadwood, S.D.,  the year someone discovered gold there.
These towns were not like we see them in Westerns. Muddy, grubby, horse manure everywhere...

1990s Technology Flashback

SUMMARY: Macintoshes and software and megabytes, oh my!

I'm sorting through old papers again and found this one saved email from 1990 that is a complete keeper-- so many things I had completely forgotten about! And how very much things have changed!

I bought my first mac -- a 512K -- in 1984, and when the drives stopped working and I couldn't get repairs or replacements, I bought my next mac and sent this plea to the company I worked for. I've just had a blast reading through it.

---

---

Ellen’s original email asking for info, December, 1990


Original-msg:

I've just replaced my old 512K (Mac—Minus) with a IICX but I have a
problem: I bought most of my software 5 years ago and haven't upgraded
it or paid much attention to what's going on Out There since then. As a
result, I have a marvelous machine that none of my software runs on
and I need to (sigh) also spend $ on new software. I'm trying to narrow
down my initial search by asking friends for their recommendations
rather than having to go out and find demos and try everything.

1) Word processing software: The original MacWrite has more features than
I need for 98% of the writing I do--I do a lot of writing but it's mostly
fiction; all I need to do is type paragraphs in and print them out. Macwrite
II looks pretty fancy. . .and expensive. .. what are my other options & why
should I spend $ on which?

2) Desktop publishing: I print things in "newsletter" format 6-12 times a year,
which means I need some sort of page layout thing that also handles
text processing and can at least import graphics. I don't want to spend
more than a few dollars for something that I so seldom use (and in a
purely amateur sense), but about the least expensive thing that looks
reasonable is Publish It Easy (discounted around $110) . Anyone had any
experience with this (it's fairly new), or have other inexpensive
recommendations? I've always used MacDraw in the past, and other than
being pretty inflexible for text processing, it has otherwise met
my needs. (But I'm not sure my old version of Draw works, either.)

3) Database: I spent $50 for Reflex which Borland no longer supports, so
I've got thousands of records of things like household inventory and
savings accounts that I need a new database manager for. A lot of people
have been plugging FileMaker——I've worked 9 years in the Relational
Database Management System world, though, so a little complexity and
programing requirements don't bother me (like 4D or Helix)
as long as the thing is really flexible and cheap. Any suggestions?

4) Project Management: Anyone used MacProject lately? Or any other project
scheduling tools on the mac? Does anyone have a copy I could borrow to
try out?

5) I was forced to buy a system with only 1meg RAM; I’m pretty sure I need
more, but I don't yet have a good feel as to whether 2meg will be
sufficient for most things or whether I should go higher...

Thanks
-ellen





Date: Fri, ll Del: 90 15:33:13 PST
Date—Delivered: Fri, ll Dec 90 15:32:38 PST
From: pbk
To: elf
cc : macintosh_users : ;
Subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In—Reply-To: !our message of "Fri, ll Dec 90 15:21:58 PST"

To cover both aspects of 1) and 2), I have been using Word for many years,
upgrading to the latest version as they come. I may stop at version
4 since there is not much more thing I dream of that it does not
contain. If you used MacWrite, learning Word is easy. It also contains
fancy features like several columns, columns with strange shape because
you have planted figures in the middle of them, automatic TOC, Index,
a mode that allows "structure editing" (ie. working on the overall
structure of the program), spelling checker is OK (in English), not
so bad in French, It builds table, has a sort of sublanguage to write
nice looking math formulas, etc. ..

One interesting thing: This is probably one of the only program who never
blew in my face (you know the little sad looking guy or the little bomb)
and never destroyed or eaten up hours of typing.

Having owned a IICX I can tell you that pretty soon you’ll discover that
there is not much you can do with 1meq, especially if you want the comfort
of the multifinder, If you have a big screen, etc. ...

Philippe




Date: Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:12:28 PST
Dute—De1ivered: Fri, ll Dec 90 15:38:56 PST
From: ndw
To: elf
Cc: macintosh users:;
subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:21:58 231"‘

1. Macwrite II . .expensive. .other options. . .

If you really don't need much beyond whet is pretty much common to
all Mac word processors, I’m sure I have some bulletin board stuff
that will work fine (for free or ShareWare) . If you have a friend
who is a student at Stanford, you can get Textures (TeX) for about
$125. It solves 1 & 2 if you don't need WSYWIG. It's among the best
TeX implementations I've seen.

2. Desktop publishing. . .

You might want to see what fancy features are in the BBB stuff. I
haven't used any of the new cheap programs. I use FullWrite mainly,
Microsoft Word when I have to.

3 Database. . .

I haven't tried Oracle yet, but 4D is the biggest and bestest database
program besides that I've tried or heard of. If you don’t need all
the add on modules that other developers give away on the BBSes, the
high end scripting capabilities, DB fields that are sub databases,
graphical layouts that can be included in other graphical layouts, etc.,
FileMaker is probably your next best bet. (I haven't used Helix)

4. Project Management. . .

I haven't used MacProject in the last year or so. There are a couple of
PM tools on the BBSes, as I recall. Mostly low end, one or both may
have been DemoWare.

5. Ram…

At under $5 /MB, I would buy at least another 4MB. If you are a heavy
user and use Finder a lot, 8MB is nice.



Date: Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:46:00 PST
Date-Delivered: Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:ll:01 PST
Fran: vnv
To: elf
Cc: macintosh_users : ;
subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, ll Dec 90 15:21:58 PST

I don't know the answers to your questions; but you might find the
following useful if you don't get answers to them from anyone else:

*  Computerware at El Camino and California Ave in Palo Alto is
a great place to buy (good prices) and try out software. They
specialize in MacIntosh software and have a large selection,
knowledgeable staff, and you can try out any of it. ..

* Another great opportunity to see software is coming up in
January at the MacWorld Expo in SF. This is one of the
biggest Mac shows of the year. It runs Wed Jan 9 thru
Sun Jan 13, 1991. The price is a steep $25 to attend
the exhibits. Often times their are booths selling software
at a steep discount there. I plan to attend; if there is
some literature about a product you would like me to pick
up l will try to do so.

Good  Luck, Victor


Date: Fri, ll Dec 90 l5:lB:2l PS1‘
Dete—De1ivered.: Fri, ll Des 90 15:47:37 PST
From: jds
To: elf
Cc: macintosh_users : ;
subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In-Rep1y—To: Your message of "Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:33:13 PST


The only thing I can add to what’s already been stated is to avoid
WriteNow at all costs, even though various desktop publishing programs
recommend (or require) it -- it is unusually inflexible, and gives you
few of the options mentioned by PBK. You'll hate your Mac if you are
forced to use that program.



Date: Fri, 14 Dec 90 15:55:03 PST
Date-Delivered: Fri, ll Dec 90 15:52:01 PST
From: mdw
Tu: jds
Cc : ma¢:intosh__users : ;
Subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In—Reply—Tc: Your message of "Fri, ll Dec 90 15:18:24 PST”


WriteNow is supposed to be about the fastest for flat out mass changing
stuff. Nisus, which I occasionally use, is also pretty fast. Nisus also
has a lot of confusing features. It tries to be everything to everybody
and  so is a bit down on my list.




From: bobbach@mai1_pc
Subject: Assorted Mao questions
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 90 16:03:00 PST
Date—Delivered: Fri, ll Dec 90 16:04:54 PST

For Word Processing - I recommend using MS Word, mostly because
everyone else uses it, and it might be able to cover your low-end DTP
needs as well. I still use Macwrite 5.01 a lot myself - it should work
fine on your CX. Other good programs are Nisus, WriteNow, and MacWrite II.

For Database SW - I recommend FileMaker Pro (the new version of II and 4) .
It is a flat file manager, but unless you specifically need relational
capacities and features, Filemaker will serve your needs nicely. I also
used to use Reflex myself.

Definitely plan on getting more RAM. I recommend 4 megs  - and for about
$100 you can get Virtual, the virtual memory init that will give you 14
functional megs of RAM with almost no degradation of speed (w/4 megs;
some slowdown w/ 1 or 2 megs). You will probably need an 80 meg HD — 40
will work if you don't fill it up. It is definitely nice to be able to
comfortably use Multifinder.

— BobB


Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 10:56:51 PST
Date—De1ivered.: Tue, 18 Dec 90 12:52:51 PST
From: egb
: T0: jla
Cc:
macintnsh_users : ;
Subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In-Reply-E0: Your message of "Mon, 17 Dec 90 15:16:36 +0100"

re word processing, I'm a fan of word. I wrote my OOD book entirely on word,
and was able to produce camera ready copy from it (we did the illustrations
in adobe illustrator).

re databases, I  use omnis 5 for all my household files. it takes some
programming, but is pretty flexible.

egb


Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 13:29:56 +0100
Date-Delivered: Mon, 17 Dec 90 01:25:10 PST
Prom: jla
To: elf
Cc: jla
Subject: Re: Assorted Mac questions
In—Rnp1y—'!'02 Your message of "Fri, ll Dec 90 15:21:55 PST"

Hello Ellen,

I was a user of the Macintosh in my previous job, and I have at home a
Mac SE/30 bought in feb 90. Therefore I can answer some of your
questions. I did not understand for sure if this is for your job or if
you have to buy software on your own money.

WORD PROCESSING
I have used both Macwrite II and (Microsoft) Word 4.
Macwrite II is much better than the initial Macwrite, while having the
same user—friendliness. For most documents this is my favorite. It can
export and import files to/from other word processing software (with in
general some loss of formatting information however)

I have used also Word 4, when I needed an automatic summary, or to be
able to modify the formatting of many paragraphs at once. This is
necessary when the document contains more than a few pages. You should
be able to transfer files to Word PC format without any loss of information (I
never checked it on complex documents), and probably from Word PC to any
other PC word processing system, since Word is a de facto standard.

I don't think you need both Macwrite II and Word. I can send you a
disquette with these software, not to pirate them, but to try before buying

DESKTOP PUBLISHING
I have no personal experience. I think the standards are Paqemaker and
Xpress. In my previous job they chose Xpress for brochures, etc.

DATABASE
I have no personal experience, but this was chosen in my previous job.
If you have no compatibility requirement with PCs, 4D is the standard,
which allows you to build complex applications IF you write programs in
the internal language (not so complex if you have some experience in
programming) . There is also another product, made by the same editor as
4D, which is cheaper because it does not have all the 4D features
(though relying upon the same "engine") . I could find the name of this
product if you wish.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
No experience .

MEMORY
You should have 4 Mb. The reason is the following : if you want to cut
and paste between 2 applications (say for instance word and Excel), you
must have in memory : Multifinder, Word, Excel, Word document, Excel
document. With multifinder and one application of the size of Word, 2 Mb
are not sufficient. I know Apple memories are not cheap, but you can
find elsewhere 1 Mb chip for around 100$. Check the access time (I think
70 ns is required for a IIcx, but not sure).

However you can start with 2 Mb, if you use the Finder and only one
application. But it depends on the number of fonts you have, of DAs,
etc. I personally could not work any more with the Finder, I am used to
the Multifinder.

Hope this will help you

Jean-Luc

---

---

Couple of follow-on notes:

• Memory: My new current Macbook Pro has 16 GB of RAM.  That's 16,000 times more memory than the default 1 meg that came on that new machine!
• "DAs" - desk accessories, sort of like plug-ins that helped you to do common little things. I think clocks and such were DAs at one point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory#Apple_Macintosh
• Finder vs MultiFinder: Used to be that you were either viewing a list of files on your computer (Finder) OR some application. One at a time. No windows!  Multifinder came out and allowed you to have more than one thing open at a time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiFinder 
• Word processing software-- I can't believe how blase I was about anything other than plain text! My whole life revolves around text formatting!
• Notice no mention by me or anyone about photo editing.
• By "import graphics" I meant little clip art things, which is how most of us got graphics into a  lot of docs--I bought huge collections of thousands of wonderful little bitmapped images and avidly looked through them all to see what lovely creativity they could inspire.
• Number of fonts--  used to spend hours perusing  what was available and installing and uninstalling them in carefully curated sets because memory could handle only a few at a time. Now--  I have no idea, might have hundreds or thousands of typefaces and their variants and I never do any management of them at all.
• $110 seeming like a lot for a word processing tool?  hahahahaha!
• $25 seeming steep for admission to a big trade show?   hahahahah!
• coworker's comment "have been using Word for many years,upgrading to the latest version as they come. I may stop at version 4 since there is not much more thing I dream of that it does not contain. " -- hahahaha! "Everything has been invented that anyone could ever want for a personal computer, why expect anything more?"

Going to the Fair Ain't What She Used To Be

SUMMARY: With occasional appearances of Mr Fox No.12.

I loved visiting the county fair when I was younger. Miles and miles of livestock from the tiniest decorative chickens or rabbits to the largest long-horn cattle and draft horses.

Food vendors of myriad confections, from cotton candy to pepper steak to garlic fries (and ice cream!) and everything in between.

Winners and participants of nonlivestock competitions: Saliva-inducing canned goods, perfectly hand-stitched clothing, rainbows of quilts, woodworking, metalworking, photography, people's carefully curated collections of curiosities, table-setting examples.

Hawkers of fantabulous whoozitzes and whatnots that you might not see anywhere else.  And of course the carnival rides and games, gleaming, glistening, shining, glowing, in a thousand colors at day and oh so much at night. 

The Santa Clara County fairgrounds used to have a field/racetrack/grandstand, too, that drew crowds for whatever was going on at any given hour.

But--probably largely through receding interest as the agricultural Valley of Heart's Delight became Silicon Valley--the fair gradually became a shadow of its former self. Wasn't helped along by management who decided to raze the grandstand/field and all of the livestock buildings and facilities some years back, and then couldn't come up with any sort of replacement that was acceptable to the neighbors or general residents of Santa Clara County.

But--we went briefly yesterday anyway. The entry arch is the same one that has been there as long as I can remember.

Yesterday was LGBTQ day/night at the fair, as they try to draw in new audiences. So there were a lot of rainbows to put us in a cheery mood. It was a good start but didn't last long and was spotty the rest of the time.

We weren't thrilled with the entrance, even. So I'll start by complaining, apologies--it gets better (I think). We went yesterday because the fair's web page said $1 entrance all day Thursday. When we got there, it wasn't, and when I got home, their page no longer said that.

And they had the entrance very poorly laid out: Big sign pointing to "Entrance" which was a long maze of fences set up to contain a huge line (no line when we got there), and as we headed through towards the end of that, we saw people coming back in our direction and discovered that the ticket booth sat  *outside* the maze even thought it was right next to the far end of the maze where the ticket takers were. So we had to walk back along that maze (neither of us feeling physically at our best), then walk back down alongside it to get tickets, then walk back out alongside it again and all the way through it again, so I wasn't feeling charitable before we even got inside. I wasn't grumpy enough to ask one of the guards to just move part of the fence for us to walk through--wish I had. Oh, well.

OK, mostly I won't complain more; I'll just be wistful as we go.

Mr Fox No.12 came along but didn't have much to say. He said he thought that speech was generally free in the U.S. of A. but based on the condition of this location, it seems to be a little under attack, he said. He stayed low in case of sudden mass shootings in the area.

Once inside,  you betcha we spotted this right away.

We sat on a bench in the shade--it was warm, not super-hot, but my delicious but drippy dipped cone called for sitting and ice creaming and talking.

Next up: The large animal building (not a barn--those are long gone. This is a repurposed building that used to hold other exhibits and vendors). We walked through, but all the lanes between rows were closed and most of the animals were tied up facing the other way or sleeping on the far side of the pens, so that was quick and dull.

No.12 says that he saw more interesting sheep than these up in Oregon and Idaho, he says. He did scare one into moving suddenly, though, when he tried to jump off my neck when i leaned forward to take a photo. He thought that was pretty entertaining.

What sheep do when their neighbor kicks sawdust in their face.  [Nothing, apparently. Maybe he was keeping an eye on Mr Fox. Made me smile, though.]

Be glad your neck wrinkles aren't like these.

[Dangity ding dong, I just realized that all of my photos have Mr Fox No.12's signature on them because I neglected to turn that off in my smallification dialog. Darn it.]

Pretty much all the sheep, goats, and pigs that we saw looked more like this: Plump and sleepy and uninterested in giving us photo ops. Didn't they get the memo?!

Here, all the animals were projects of 4H or FFA or the like, so they were also educational projects, meaning that educational info put together by the kids lined the pens.  Perhaps without much proofreading.  But I always learn something.

This is pretty much what all the cattle looked like to us.

A quick glimpse along the pig row of the large animal building. Those are exhibitors in the middle; we couldn't walk through there.

I'm definitely sad when I go these days because it's even less than a shell of what it used to be. Don't know whether that was entirely inevitable or as a result of management over the last decade or two. This is the main entry plaza, first thing you go through. Bare.  Not many vendors of any kind anywhere.

(My sister, an avid Society for Creative Anachronism member, said that they used to provide demos of fighting and other medieval activities here in this plaza until they realized that, even on Saturday and Sunday, their group made up about half of the people actually in the plaza.)

The "competitions" hall held the usual remnants of what used to be huge displays of photos, collections, table settings, crafts, sewing, canned goods, etc. Some nice things still, and I like looking at them.  But I sure wish there were more.  Everything done pretty much by youth (K-12), now, not much in the way for adults to participate in. There are some delightfully talented young people out there, though, and that always bodes well for the future, I think.

I did like the socially conscious quilts, including some sections from the AIDS quilt and one beautiful and moving one for the Sandy Hook shooting with the names as part of the quilting. (All but the AIDS quilt also done by "youth".)

And this--

The quilt took me back to the '80s and early '90s, when they were just figuring out what was going on, and there was so much stigma, and so very, very, very many people, particularly here in the San Francisco Bay Area, dying. Frightening times.  I'm so glad that we've made progress on all those fronts.

⇨ Read more about the quilt at aidsquilt.org.

(This chart is from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. My feelings were more of remembering how hard the times were back then, viewed now from a distance, and relief that things got better. Still not perfect, but so much better.)

(My fair-going friend points out that things might not be as much better as they appear.)



So--back to the fair in general: Just a few of the things in the competition hall (which was also pretty sparse), but some beautiful items to regard. Look how that honey glows!

This is a painted gourd. (For exhibit only, not in competition.) "Miniature Garden Gourd House on Stump" by Iris Gach.

As a collector of dragons (and some other random things, don't cha know), I've always liked looking at people's personally curated collections at the fair. Like these piggies.

Outside, between the buildings, spray-paint artists were hard at work. How DO they do that directly out of spray cans?!
(Wolf. Purple. Love both.  Ooooowwwwwoooooooooo!)

Displays in the other exhibit hall were the now-usual bugs, reptiles, and Dianetics, and not too many of those, either; hall mostly empty.

One part of one of the old exhibit halls was set up as the Wizard's Challenge, which provided giant chess, giant checkers, a bunch of other giant games and toys, and this delightful giant bubbles station.  Dip, pull, and stream, and wowwwwww giant bubbles!  You could even capture a nearby friend in one!

Friend was having miserable back spasms and my hip was none too good, so we didn't stay all that long and didn't see all that much of the fair.   Didn't make it out to the carnival part, although that was our original goal for photos. Supposed to be larger this year, and if it goes well, it'll be back next year. Or, if not, there are other fairs within easy driving distance for future reference.

Instead, we quickly called it a day and headed over to Applebee's for dinner. My salmon and veggies were very good; certainly healthier than anything I'd have eaten at the fairgrounds. And one can't beat the air condition and the great companionship as two old (ahem, barely middle-aged?) friends talk up a storm. We always have things to talk about, and that is just plum wonderful.