Word: ringed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last Thursday I went to The Big Apple Circus, a one-ring show with the big-top pitched at Marine Industrial Park, twenty minutes by foot from the State T-stop. The Big Apple is a two-elephant circus. That is how a circus used to be advertised, by the elephant-count. In the late nineteenth century, circus owners competed for the elephant crown. In 1881, Barnum had four elephants, Forepaugh had five, and the Sells Brothers called their gig the "Great European Seven Elephant Railroad Show." No match for Pompey, who is 61 B.C. advertised a celebration...
Ringling Brothers was the last circus I had seen, twelve years earlier. Their three-ring extravaganza in a vaulted coliseum whose ceiling receded into darkness hyperstimulated the senses of a ten-year-old. Brightly clad acrobats, new smells, band music and peanuts demanded simultaneous attention. To get back to my seat, I parted the madding crowd by holding my cotton candy out in front and marching straight ahead...
...Apple is different. The scale is much smaller: A clown at ground level can throw an inflated beach ball to the top row, and the ring is just three and one-half elephant lengths across. The audience remains seated except during intermission. The air is well circulated, and there is a noticeable lack of circus smell. You are close enough to the action so that in slow moments you consider what percentage of the ticket price goes for liability insurance. With the lights lowered, you share with the performers a living-room intimacy...
...Apple parades the usual assortment of acts. There are horse tricks, clowns, acrobats and a band. This array has changed surprisingly little in two hundred years. In 1770, Philip Astley, a skilled equestrian who could ride balanced on his head, brought together in one ring "Chinese Shadows, Tumbling, Slack-Rope Vaulting, Egyptian Pyramids" and a clown named Burt. Flocks of Londoners paid a shilling to see the show, the first modern circus...
...Noriega's day, Colombian cartels -- which are responsible for nearly all the cocaine sold in the U.S. -- regularly used neighboring Panama for back-door operations. But DEA officials dispute that view, arguing that the increased seizures are the result of successful sting operations. Once undercover agents infiltrate a drug ring, the agency often tries to arrange a delivery in Panama City, where the local police force breaks up the deal...