Sep. 19--Old Main on the York Fairgrounds is a good place to ponder other people's obsessions.

The moment you walk in and see needlepoint scenes so detailed that they appear to be paintings, you start to wonder just what kind of obsessive person can sweat over such detail to achieve that kind of perfection. The skill is admirable, but what really gets you is the amount of time, the intense concentration, the attention to minute detail that goes into every stitch.

It has to be an obsession.

These folks are kindred spirits, and I say that as someone who, the last time he moved, needed a separate truck to move his books and who, the last time he was asked, could not remember how many guitars he owns.

I know obsession.

And it's here, hanging on the walls and residing in the display cases in Old Main.

Past the needlepoint and the dressmaking and the knitting -- which includes a sweater-vest bearing the image of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, the pipe-smoking icon of the Church of the Subgenius -- you come to the bugs.

Pinned to a board in glass-topped cases are loads of the kinds of creatures that, if you were to encounter one in your basement, you would go Serena Williams on its sorry insect butt. Here, you will find large collections of Coleoptera -- also known as beetles.

Which gives me the opportunity to share this fun fact about beetles, gleaned from Coleoptera.org: When a bombardier beetle senses danger, it "fires (poison) through his

anus in up to 30 cm distance with an enviable archery skill. Some species can produce 15-20 consequent shots."

And some people say this column is not educational.

Past the stuffed animals -- and by stuffed, I mean taxidermied critters, including a raccoon that looks poised to strike a defenseless garbage can -- you come to the artwork.

If you've ever gazed at, say, a Jackson Pollock painting and said, "My kid could do that," this is the place for you. In the under-10 category, you can see some very good abstract work, paint splatters and drips that evoke some variety of art.

Some of the more realistic paintings are very strange -- one that sticks out was a boldly colored river scene, rendered in a vivid hallucinatory style, that reminded me of a Hieronymus Bosch landscape of the River Styx.

There is a cat that looks like one of the aliens from "War of the Worlds," the Tom Cruise remake, not the good Gene Barry one. The cat is smiling. Maybe it just digested Tom Cruise.

There's a crayon Mona Lisa. On the work, the artist wrote, "My Mona Lisa is standing. She is in a magical land.