Iowa State Fair

One of the things I look forward to doing most with Ada and Logan as they get older is taking them to the Iowa State Fair. Not to brag, but Iowa's state fair is so interesting that it got written up in that popular book, 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. So have you seen it yet?

Mary sent me some terrific pictures that make me so nostalgic, here were my favorites... Click on them to enlarge.

Support Neighborhood Bookstore!

My friend Elizabeth is competing for best bookstore on the Denver Channel 7 A-List, and could use a bunch of votes from as many people as possible! The site is here. An enthusiastic recommendation (or several) wouldn't hurt either.

If you haven't visited the shop, you should; it's charming, and with used books and a credit system, it's a bargain. And I'll happily share my store credit with anyone who brings Elizabeth business, I have more than I can use!

Spook

I've been reading a book that I find so adorable that every lunch I am caught in public giggling to myself, shoulders shaking. The book is called Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife. This is the same author (Mary Roach) who wrote one of my favorites, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

This passage tickled my funny bone today, thought I would pass it along.

Is it possible to dress up like a ghost and fool people into thinking they’ve seen the real deal? Happily, there is published research to answer this question, research carried out at no lesser institution than Cambridge University. For six nights in the summer of 1959, members of the Cambridge University Society for Research in Parapsychology took turns dressing up in a white muslin sheet and walking around in a wall-traversed field behind the King’s College campus. Occasionally they would raise their arms, as ghosts will do. Other members of the team hid in bushes to observe the reactions of passersby. Although some eighty people were judged to have been in a position to see the figure, not one reacted or even gave it a second glance. The researchers found this surprising, especially given that the small herd of cows that grazed the field did, unlike the pedestrians, show considerable interest,* such that two or three at a time would follow along behind the “ghost.” To my acute disappointment, “An Experiment in Apparitional Observation and Findings,” published in the September 1959 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, includes no photographs.

* This comes as no surprise to yours truly, who has twice, on separate continents, carried out an experiment designed to prove the considerable curiosity of cows. This is an experiment I urge you to repeat, simply for the giddy thrill of it. Go into a pasture where cows are grazing in the distance. Shout to get their attention, and then suddenly lie down. The moment you do, they will hurry over to investigate, encircling you and staring down at you with unmitigated bovine fascination.

Logan's New Noise