Fall approaches, as does the general election. Given the division within the country, the stoking of alarm, no doubt many feel that we are on a slippery slope. No one can know what the future will be. Our insecurity prompts us to seek what is base, dishonorable, – to be defensive minded. I think that is a dark tunnel that I prefer not enter.

A reliable antidote to the metastasis of ill will, the anticipation of conflict, — is an old fashioned county fair! Surely a fair is an effective counterweight to expecting the worst of others, and by extension of oneself.  These photos were taken at the Sandwich Fair yesterday. County Fairs are annual celebrations of our relationship with the land, with the domestic animals that provide sustenance, and of our fellows upon whose labor, and goodwill we depend.

Anyone who does not want to see

what is lofty in a man

looks that much more keenly
for what is low in him and mere foreground
-and thus betrays himself.

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, aphorism 275