Ideology and Art Fair (from the front lines)

Funny things happen when you squish all the ideologues in Ann Arbor into one block in ninety-degree heat and set the mood with an suave, amplified trilingual guitarist. Yes, friends, Art Fair may be a blast or, if you're a townie, a plague upon the city, but I contend that the real place to go for the action is the Walk of the Non-Profits. Stretching between Division and Fifth along Liberty, everybody from the Jesus Made Me Kosher to the Land A Space Rover On Mars to the Republicans/Democrats/ProLife/ProChoice/ProBanana/AntiBanana/ProHappiness/AntiFun - it's all there.

And I was all there, as much as the heat would allow me to be, myself one of these poor do-gooder souls who invested their hearts and sweat into a ten by ten plastic booth, hoping to lure passersby into my den of goodwill.

Rats, shopping carts, and nice people.

 

I was getting a new aquarium for our pet rats, the reason being that our rats had grown a lot since we saved them from being snake food on New Year's Eve, and they felt a little squished within those glass walls. It was a ten minute walk to the shopping area, on a nice paved path along a speedy four-lane road with the bonus feature of pedestrian-activated traffic signals.