Surprising Sources

When I get stumped on my research, I go talk to one of our reference librarians at work. As far as I can figure out, there is nothing she can't find if given the right questions from me. It amazes me.

I decided yesterday that I needed to know more about Joe McKennon. He wrote four or five books in the 70's and up until 1980. Hubby had bought me Circus Lingo by Joe, and I also found some other books by him, including The Pictorial History of American Carnival. I dug around online looking for information on Mr. McKennon, and really found very little. At one point I found a reference stating that he once was curator of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota.

I found no more than that. My wonderful reference librarian was able to find his obituary through Lexis-Nexis, a resource I'd forgotten about. That article stated he'd been a volunteer curator and had won an award at Ringling Museum, and that he'd died in 2000. A perusal of the Ringling Museum site turned up no further details.

So, I sent a request through the museum website's "contact us" link. I received a return email within a few minutes, asking for my snailmail address so they could send me biographical information on Mr. McKennon. Yippee!!

I was also talking in email with Kevin Curdt, a former circus performer who now works in the Superior Court of California. He said he met Joe, and when he has time, he will be sharing his comments about my last blog entry about Joe (below).

Tomorrow's the big day. I still haven't figured out this darned camera, but I'm going to keep trying. It does not refresh as quick as I need it to, it won't multi-fire like it says it will, and I'm panicking. This was a LOT of money to spend on a camera for me to have the same problems as the camera I already have. Grrr.