Circusitis

I think I'm suffering from a severe case of circusitis. Somehow the circus is involved in almost everything I do. I see references to it on TV, I walk into Borders and see a book about an elephant I just read about, Modoc, while driving a song called "Trapeze" by Iron and Wine pops up on shuffle on my Ipod and today I even won Scattegories by using juggling as a past time, wire walking as something you see at the circus, and elephants as an animal. I even have dreams about the circus! When I first got hired at the library, I was hired to index Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus programs from 1919 to present. During this time I index some 4000 plus articles in the database. This is really how I learned a lot of what I know about the circus. While indexing I would see something interesting and read the article. Almost everything I read made me curious so I would look up more information on people, acts and animals. One day I was indexing an article in the 100th anniversary edition of RBBB and I saw a picture of the Wild Men of Borneo. I was really curious about these two fellows and looked up a little more about them. They were two brothers, Hiram and Barney Davis who were in Barnum and Bailey's side show in the late 1800s. The brothers were dwarfs who possessed extraordinary strength. They were billed as Waino and Plutano, the Wild Men of Borneo. There even was a booklet that was written describing their capture. After reading about these gents, I had a dream that I was actually meeting them. The dream wasn't anything special, but I think it was then that I knew that the circus isn't just part of my job, it's a part of me and I love it.

“It is the only spectacle I know that, while you watch it, gives the quality of a truly happy dream.” --Ernest Hemingway on the circus