State Fair

Perfect weather. The sheep barn, shearing ewes, just a touch-up by a practiced hand, and judging the rams, hanging onto the big curly horns of the willful beasts. The butter cow, butter Brown, butter Bengal, and butter boy; ice cream hits the spot on a hot day.

The beef cattle show in the Voinovich building is a lot like a football crowd, with human sons and daughters resembling their beefy fathers and mothers as they stand around and talk the talk after showing their animals. Nextdoor in the coliseum ponies pulling wagons, getting ribbons from the pony queen, smiling and standing gamely in the soft dirt in her heels and gown, while the organ plays on, one continuous farm medly blending "Anchors Aweigh" with the Marine Hymn, the Notre Dame fight song, "If They Could See Me Now," and finally "God Bless America."

A cow gives birth to a calf in front of a small outdoor audience. Swine lounge and nap in fresh beds of clean wood shavings, twitching slightly as they dream of corn, or soybean meal, or other swine, or pearls, who knows what hogs dream of?

We stroll out past a stage where gypsy music from several eastern Mediterranean lands suggests dancing and centuries of trading tunes and riffs on the violin, guitar, and bass. We take our time looking at visual art from all over Ohio, a few quite arresting and a lot more all over the map in quality, subject, and medium, like the folks viewing it. We did see one painting called "Searching," which is what my eye was doing, by a friend named Sky.

Finally arts and crafts, quilts, stitchery, leather, barrel making, woodworking, jewelry, and a Lego City that looks just like downtown Columbus. I bought a pair of stoneware baking pans from a pottery in Zanesville, and on the way home a six-pack of Old Speckled Hen.