The Unfair Common Ground Fair

Here in Maine there is a much-touted annual September event called The Common Ground Fair. At heart it is a typical county fair, but with a "cause," that being the celebration of sustainability, veganism, composting, recycling, sheep-shearing, yarn-spinning, non-GMOism, gluten freedom and all those other woke things that separate the holier-than-thou younger generation from its elders, who in their minds still toss empty Burger King wrappers out of car windows and strangle all the dolphins in the ocean with littered plastic rings from six-packs of Budweiser. 

Anyway, when we moved here 12 years ago we heard repeatedly that we MUST go to the Common Ground Fair if we were any kind of decent people. So we made the hour-plus drive, parked in the giant parking lot almost a mile from the fairgrounds, had a lovely walk through the woods to get there and it turned out to be a big yawn. We visited all the different tents, saw some people on stilts performing for the kiddies, bought some baskets and organic applesauce and a couple of pumpkins, watched a few sheep getting sheared and knives getting sharpened and baskets being made, saw milk turn into butter, heard all about how 9/11 was an inside job and drove home, content to never return.

Then our son became one of the presenters at Common Ground, so we went back to support his efforts, teaching how to make various types of baskets from natural materials, and moccasins from deer hide, and more like that. His friends and mentors were there too, sharing their knowledge of living off the grid and on the land, armed with little but the sweat of their brow and some elbow grease. It was all pretty inspiring and very impressive. Those particular classes were what separated this fair from most of the others where what you do is eat pizza, corn on the cob, fried clams, hot dogs, French fries and cotton candy, buy arts and crafts, go on kiddie rides and win giant stuffed animals by throwing coins at empty Coke bottles.

Alas, this year the producers of the Fair known as MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners), voted to ban and eliminate all the presenters who were sharing knowledge learned from reading about  Maine's original inhabitants, the Wabanaki tribe. Apparently these hateful and privileged white people, while incredibly resourceful, weren't teaching, they were stealing the old traditions from the Wabanaki and thus had to be stopped! It was time for Maine to WOKE UP! Essentially any reason to go to Common Ground Fair was eliminated. 

Oh well, like last year the Fair has been cancelled for 2021 due to the recent surge in COVID cases. Maybe by next year the pandemic will be over and the Woke Movement will have been mercifully put to sleep, allowing all those really interesting presenters to return. We can only hope.