IN PRAISE OF THE ITINERANT CIRCUS.

Texas circus historian Janet M. Davis advises Washington Post readers that the end of Ringling Barnum is not the end of circus as we know it.  It's all stuff my regular readers know, but it might be new to new readers and even the most informed among you can benefit from a modicum of repetition.

To wit:

1. The circus is not dying.  Find an itinerant circus coming to your town, and go to it.
2. Circus professionals study logistics.  The movement of the circus is anything but chaos.
3. Friends of the animals have long scrutinized the circus.  How long will an elephant or a tiger put up with an abusive, puny human?
4. Read Phineas T. Barnum's Struggles and Triumphs.  Only suckers believe he was a con man.
5. Circus began as travelling education.  Until tax-supported zoos replaced the menagerie, and the Overly Earnest Types started thinking of circus as pedagogy.  And attention spans diminished?

Find yourself a circus and go to it.

See you down the road.