A Celebration of Humanity

Our community has a Labor Day arts festival every year.

I don't normally go since standing in line to eat food made out of a truck in the 110 degree heat is usually not enough of a selling point for me.

Or the overly priced pieces of colored glass sold from tents.

Although, I have always wanted to learn how to blow glass.

I have seen it demonstrated several times 

and it never ceases to amaze me.

We can heat something to a red hot stage and then

using nothing more than the air from our lungs

blow it into some amazingly elegant shape.

Even if I blew nothing more than odd shaped bubbles, I'd still want to learn how.

And I will.

Oh, I will.

And then I will be so proud of my odd shaped hand-blown glass bubbles

 that I will call it "art" and sell it from a tent at a festival.

So the moral of that rabbit trail story?

Don't judge.

You don't know what dreams are being fulfilled when you pick up 

some misshapen piece of glass with a hefty price tag.

So we went to the arts festival this year.

I know, but it looked like rain and we thought it wouldn't be 

crowded and/or hot because of the looming dark cloud overhead.

But the cloud quickly dissolved to reveal a beautifully intense sun capable of melting glass all by itself.

So every food truck had 850 people in line.

But the people watching was just 

Top. Notch.

While we ate, we were able to see a small stage area with what seemed to be a completely random assortment of people wearing tie-dyed shirts.

And when I say RANDOM I mean

cannot see the common thread among them kinda random.

Except that they were all doing a dance

to Indian music.

It was a coming together to form a circle 

then a spinning 

and then a single file line 

kinda dance.

Then they did it all over again to a Beyonce song.

All the while, an older man from the group skipped 

through the audience clapping to get the crowd "pumped".

They were having an absolute blast.

Completely. Fascinating.

After Monte finished his pulled pork sandwich he asked,

"How did this group get together?"

We all pondered that question and added a few more of our own:

Was the group formed by answering a 

flyer on the library bulletin board?

Were there auditions?

How are group decisions made on things such as costuming and choreography?

We kept pondering as we started to peruse the art booths and ran into this:

She was saying that they asked her to be a football player but she said, with a teence
bit of attitude, "No, I want to be a FAIRY!" Then she swooped her wings.

In case you didn't notice, they are on stilts. Did I mention it was quite windy that day?

Then Ellie started grabbing my arm and doing the whole "look over there" head nudge that I completely missed until she finally cried out,

"A parrot! A woman is walking around with a 

parrot. And she is pushing an empty stroller!"

This parrot was the most striking Crayola shade of blue.

And huge.

She gave him a beak kiss right after I snapped this picture.

I had so many questions for her but unsure she wanted to be asked any of them

so we pondered them among ourselves.

Questions like:

How do you know the bird won't fly away?

Did you clip its wings?

Does that hurt the bird to clip its wings?

Do you buckle the bird into the stroller so it won't fly away?

Or does it simply get exhausted from sitting on your shoulder all day?

Is that a baby stroller or a specific parrot-made one?

Do you fear it will one day peck your eyes out while you sleep?

Does it enjoy a good arts festival?

Now don't start thinking I am making fun of these people.

I am not.

I am celebrating them.

They have the confidence to dance freely 

in public with their friends.

They proudly walk through a park with their pet on their 

shoulder pushing a back up plan in case things go awry.

I applaud them.

Seeing how I just started back up with tap class last night and my saddlebags are crazy sore this morning

and I have ALWAYS tried to get my dog Nigel to sit in my bicycle basket 

while I go for rides but he will have NONE OF IT,

well, I am just a genre, 

a setting 

and a pet species off.

But I can totally relate.

God made us so completely and wonderfully different 

yet we can see 

(if we look hard enough) 

the common bond of His fingerprints on all us.

And that is certainly something to celebrate.

I didn't even mention the silent flash mob we walked into by mistake when we first got to the festival.

We had questions that we actually asked out loud

but no one heard us since they were all wearing ear buds to their iPods.

Hence the silent part of a silent flash mob.

Fascinating.