November 11, 2008

A sudden burst of perspective

I saw this:

fail owned pwned pictures
failblog.org

... which is kind of funny, and then read the comments, some of which poke fun at the Circleville event, and it was all I could do not to chime in with something like, "Actually, the Circleville Pumpkin Show is a pretty big deal!"

Deep breaths ... deep breaths ...

Of course, that's not all Circleville has going for it ... it's also the home of Ted Lewis:



I have a special fondness for vocalists that kind of talk through the songs rather than sing them. Sadly, the video is just stills, but it's a better song than the better-known "Me and My Shadow."

2 comments:

Rosemary said...

Y'know, I actually surfed over to the Pumpkin Show website to read up on its history...and while I didn't find this info there, the Wikipedia entry about it confirms what I suspected: that the dates are right, because the festival was canceled during WW II (as were many local festivals).

I must be feeling especially grumpy this evening, because it's pissing me off that the creators of that blog couldn't be bothered to do 30 seconds of research to check their facts. But I recognize that that wasn't the point.

Odd that you should mention Circleville today, since just this morning I came across some photos of a Hooverville camp in Circleville on the LOC website: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/b?ammem/fsaall:LC-USF33-006579-M1:collection=fsa

JB said...

One commenter actually suggested that as the reason, but without being as specific as WWII ... which makes sense.

I guess the quibble, then, is with the word "anniversary." The 100th anniversary of the first festival would have been in 2003. The 100th Pumpkin Show (leaving anniversary out of it) was in 2006.

Nothing ruins a fecundity festival like pedantry, I always say.