From The Big Top Into The Big World: A Ringling Ringmaster's Final Bow

'The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been entertaining audiences for a long time. Its history goes back 146 years — to about the time when professional baseball emerged and before Coca-Cola was invented. After years of declining ticket sales and seemingly endless conflicts with animal rights groups, Ringling Bros. staged its final show in Uniondale, N.Y. Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson is one of hundreds of Ringling performers and crew members with extraordinary talents who will be out of a job come Monday. Recruited fresh out of college, where he'd been studying voice performance and training to be a professional opera singer, he became Ringling's first African-American ringmaster in 1998.' -- NPR