Miscellaneous pictures from the fair

The Jasper County Fair is now history, but I still have a bunch of pictures that I have not used.

Below are some of the big prize winners in the open class arts and craft categories. I recall the watercolor on the left at the high school art show at SJC. In fact, I had a picture of it. The dress has so many ribbons on it you can hardly see it. The photograph above it was entered by a blogger, Little Indiana. (I know that because she mentioned it on her Little Indiana Facebook feed.)

Speaking of blogging, I thought of blogging when looking at all of these posters entered by 4Hers. The skills you develop doing these posters are much like the skills you need for blogging: telling a story and illustrating it when necessary (or in my case, illustrating it even when not necessary). I wonder if 4H has ever considered joining the 21st century and having the students move from paper to computers. Everyone is doing it--the number of checks written each year declines as people have switched to electronic payment, and Amazon now sells more e-books than paper books. Will 4H ever make the switch?

 The photographers from the Rensselaer Republican kept busy taking pictures of all the winners in the various livestock categories. And sometimes mothers also want to take a picture.

 The fair queen and her court saw me taking a picture and waved. I thought I should reward them by using the picture even if it was taken from the wrong angle. (It is best to have the light source behind you rather than in front of you.) They were finishing the tractor parade on its first day.

I wandered down the the Midway a few times, and only on Thursday night did I see many people playing the carny games. My guess is that many of the people who play would not purchase the prize of the game if they saw it in the store for the same price as the game. There is something about winning it in a game that makes useless junk valuable.

I wanted to know how the carny business is doing this year. It seems that it is a purchase that people would cut back on in tough economic times, and these are tough economic times. I would have asked, but I did not think I could trust the answers.

Old people do not go on rides like this one--tt would take too many days to recover from the experience. What happens to our bodies after we reach adulthood so that we no longer can do these rides? (Or are there any old people out there who do ride these kinds of rides?)

The Midway is one center of fair activity. Another is the plaza between the commercial building and the livestock barns. Different vendors had exhibits there on different days. On one day I saw a radio station from Lafayette closing up, and on the last day there was a big McDonald truck giving away free samples of some coffee confection. (I do not drink coffee, so I cannot give you a reaction.) Big Dog Rentals also had their day in the sun--on one of our dog days.

Normally the free stage program was on the free stage, but the Horseshoe Cloggers were on the plaza.

The crowds were often quite small for the free entertainment. One thing I noticed was that some of them did not have their bands playing with them, but were using a sound track. If we get that part canned, why not go all the way and get rid of the live singer?

I took a lot of livestock pictures last year, so took very few this year. These are from the dairy tent. Despite the heat, these cattle look pretty comfortable.

An important piece of equipment for those with animals at the fair was a fan. There were a lot of fans at the fair this year--both kinds.

This horse had funny eyes, so I took its picture.

I hope you are not tired of fair pictures, because I still have a few more for future posts.