One Fall Afternoon

This afternoon we strolled a little over a mile to a neighborhood festival, one we had attended for the first time last year, just a couple of months after moving here. I haven't been feeling well and won't feel well until I get another tube inserted in my right ear. The world seems muffled, distant, and subdued. So at first it seemed to me as if my ill-health were affecting my experience at the festival. However, even one of the vendors observed to us that the atmosphere was subdued, not "as crazy" and lively as last year. Last year, I drove my art car in the parade. This year the parade was very short and consisted mainly of fire trucks, community groups, and politicians. No high school bands. No women dressed up in costume (except for the Red Hat Ladies), no art car. As these pictures illustrate , however, we did see people in costume lurking among the vending tents. (Click on photo for an enlarged view.)

Nothing illustrates the subdued atmosphere so much as the two pictures below. I took the first picture of this vendor last year at the festival. The artist didn't really want me to take her picture, but I cajoled her into letting me do so, and I took a couple of photographs. She was very vivacious, and we talked for a while. This year I didn't speak with her, but as we passed her tent, we noticed that her lovely handmade hats were a little less crazy this year--lovely but less flamboyant. She herself seemed sad, lonely. I wish I had talked with her, but I wasn't well. Also, I get tired of asking people to speak louder. Until I have this Eustachian tube blockage taken care of, I prefer talking intimately with people where I can lean in close and won't be distracted by extraneous noise.

When we walked up to the edge of the festival, we first noticed a vending area with tiny clothes hung around the white fabric of the canvas pavilion top. Beside the tent was a large machine of fluffy polyester stuffing. Someone was holding a plush bear up to a pipe hooked up to this machine and--this shows how my mind was working--it seemed to me as if all the stuffing from the bear were being sucked into the machine with its clear, bear-shaped window. "Is this where plush toys go when they die?" I wondered. "Someone sucks out all their stuffing, and their flattened bodies are turned to other uses?"
Silly me. Children would be appalled by such an idea, and here they were happily gathered around this vendor with whom I talked later. The vendor and her husband are hired for birthday parties. They bring their flat plush toys, and the birthday party participants choose a toy and then have the toy filled with the polyester stuffing. The machine injects the stuffing in the toy. Then the kid gets to choose an outfit for the now-happily-plump plush animal.

As we were walking away from the vendor's tent, I noticed a pale green crocheted table cloth on a table under the tent. I stroked the cloth and asked, "Did you crochet this?"

"No, my husband's grandmother did." She stroked her belly and added, "She has crocheted several blankets for our baby."

"I crochet, too," I said, "and my grandmother crocheted baby blankets for my children. I still have the blankets, but the babies are now grown," and I motioned toward Mary-Margaret.

The most memorable sight of the afternoon was a garden we passed on our walk to the festival. I've walked by this garden a number of times but today stopped to take a few pictures of the funky art scattered among the herbs and flowers.

A kitty came out to greet us, and we stopped to communicate.

Despite my ill health, the afternoon was pleasant. We finally received close to two inches of rain earlier this week after a month of dry weather, so the fall foliage has perked up. It's really been a lovely day.