Round Museum

Halloween is long past, and yet the pumpkin still occupies the back yard. In the snows of January it serves no further purpose as a Jack o'lantern, and is fully operational as an open buffet for the neighborhood squirrels.

01.22.20

Knock knock. That's the classic joke set up, quite literally like a stranger at your door who will certainly deliver a groan-inducing pun once you respond. For more than 100 years this type of "nifty" joke has traveled a repeating orbit of American humor popularity, from beginning as an explosive white-hot hilarious craze to eventual pseudo-scientific denunciation as an obsessive psychological illness, and back around again.
So... who's there?
Don.
Don who?
Don you like the joke?

01.21.20

This tiny sprig is the beginning of a tiny tree. A bonsai starts with a small cutting of any perennial woody-stemmed tree or shrub that is cultivated in a small container. Through years of careful pruning and shaping, a bonsai artist creates a small tree that mimics the shape of a full-size tree. Go baby bonsai!

01.19.20

At the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Edison's Electric Illuminating Company produced a carbon filament light bulb which had long, squiggly windings of internal filaments in order to produce enough light to brighten a room. A prolific inventor Edison may have been, but his bulb did not garner great reviews, deemed "awful" and "a cheap piece of mechanism" in the social media of his day.

01.18.20

All the way from Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to the urban wilds of Northern Liberties in Philadelphia, PA, the 33-foot-tall Bebot sculpture stands guard as a 13,000-pound robot of "calculated cuteness." With a waving hand and a cartoonish form, Bebot invites us all to engage. Go ahead, climb up the ladder into its big Round belly.

01.17.20

The water cooler bottles are racked and ready. If you follow the 8x8 rule to maintain your water balance, you'll be drinking a half a gallon a day. So, looks like you have forty-five gallons on deck and 90 days worth of consumption ahead of you. Start drinking.

01.16.20

It's National Bagel Day. So go out there and order up your favorite flavor. What will it be? Is it sesame? Whole wheat? Or cinnamon raisin or poppy seed or pumpernickel? Oh... plain... really? That choice is just too... plain. How about an everything - just go all in already! It's a very special day!

01.15.20

It has been said that a single orange tree in the early 1800s developed a double-fruit mutation that became the first navel orange. With no seeds, the only way the fruit could be propagated was through cutting and grafting onto other trees. So, think about it -- mutant genetic clone oranges have been lurking around grocery stores and stalking our breakfast tables for more than 200 years. This mutant fruit has apparently swallowed its twin whole. Orange you scared?

01.14.20

At the peak of a doorway at the Masonic Temple of Philadelphia, two symbols of Freemasonry – the compass and the square – are contained in a Round. Both are architect's tools, the compass representing spiritual eternity and infinite boundaries; the square a symbol of earth, material as well as fairness, balance, and stability.

01.13.20

"When the ebbing tide retreats
Along the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society

A simple kind mirror
To reflect upon our own
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies
Living in their pools
They soon forget about the sea"

01.12.20