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Saturday: Well, this might be kind of boring to the rest of you, but it was good for me. Cooked the Big Breakfast (corned beef hash, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs) and did laundry, then whiled away my afternoon chatting on AIM. :)
Sunday: Went to Common Ground Fair.
This is a huge hippie-back-to-the-land event which has been going on since I was a kid. Mom often volunteered at the FedCo booth (Federation of Co-operatives, which is now long gone, although the seeds division still exists) so I guess I think of it as part of my childhood and family traditions.
Now it seems much more oriented to vendors of stuff - mostly clothing and house furnishings. Beautiful stuff, but still... It seems as though there used to be far more booths on alternative housing, energy and heating, tools and agricultural practices, animal husbandry, human health, spirituality, and social and political action. All of that is still there, but it's all around the periphery and there just seems to be far less of it.
They've moved fairgrounds twice, and are now located in Unity, which is hard to get to and has a bizarrely long walk from the parking area (unpaved) to the fairgrounds. Because this piece of land hasn't been used as a fairgrounds for generations, it lacks the old fairground buildings. This may sound pouty, but I miss those buildings. Walking through them made me feel linked to the agricultural tradition. They've built some new structures, but they don't seem to feel right, to me.
And at this site they decided that all the food offered on the fairground has to have all ingredients grown in Maine. That means no coffee or real tea available on the fairgrounds. They let a coffee vendor set up on the route from the parking-lot, and apparently he's mobbed in the morning with all the people who have their booths on the grounds coming out to get their morning fix. I neglected to get a fix on the way in, and having also forgotten to have tea before I left home in the morning, I suffered.
Good points - Ate barbecued chicken, lamb sausage and fries that had been potatoes less than five minutes before. Saw lots of beautiful merchandise which I drooled over, and numerous times Eor and I said to one another that if we had a house we'd want that in it. But we don't, so that saves us from spending lots of money. ;) Watched a kid, maybe eight years old, spinning wool as though that was his job. Came home with a new pepper plant which now graces my desk (and has been watered and pruned back a little).
Must run and get the car shampooed. They just phoned to make sure I'm still coming.
Sunday: Went to Common Ground Fair.
This is a huge hippie-back-to-the-land event which has been going on since I was a kid. Mom often volunteered at the FedCo booth (Federation of Co-operatives, which is now long gone, although the seeds division still exists) so I guess I think of it as part of my childhood and family traditions.
Now it seems much more oriented to vendors of stuff - mostly clothing and house furnishings. Beautiful stuff, but still... It seems as though there used to be far more booths on alternative housing, energy and heating, tools and agricultural practices, animal husbandry, human health, spirituality, and social and political action. All of that is still there, but it's all around the periphery and there just seems to be far less of it.
They've moved fairgrounds twice, and are now located in Unity, which is hard to get to and has a bizarrely long walk from the parking area (unpaved) to the fairgrounds. Because this piece of land hasn't been used as a fairgrounds for generations, it lacks the old fairground buildings. This may sound pouty, but I miss those buildings. Walking through them made me feel linked to the agricultural tradition. They've built some new structures, but they don't seem to feel right, to me.
And at this site they decided that all the food offered on the fairground has to have all ingredients grown in Maine. That means no coffee or real tea available on the fairgrounds. They let a coffee vendor set up on the route from the parking-lot, and apparently he's mobbed in the morning with all the people who have their booths on the grounds coming out to get their morning fix. I neglected to get a fix on the way in, and having also forgotten to have tea before I left home in the morning, I suffered.
Good points - Ate barbecued chicken, lamb sausage and fries that had been potatoes less than five minutes before. Saw lots of beautiful merchandise which I drooled over, and numerous times Eor and I said to one another that if we had a house we'd want that in it. But we don't, so that saves us from spending lots of money. ;) Watched a kid, maybe eight years old, spinning wool as though that was his job. Came home with a new pepper plant which now graces my desk (and has been watered and pruned back a little).
Must run and get the car shampooed. They just phoned to make sure I'm still coming.
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From:
no subject
I'd rather go to the Full Circle Summer Fair, held in July by WERU-FM, at the Blue Hill Fairgrounds. It's much more like the Common Ground Fair used to be before the yuppies took over MOFGA. :-)
From:
no subject
I guess I'll consider going to Full Circle next year, but I don't have any particular ties to that. Part of my interest in Common Ground is seeing how it changes over the years.