Saturday.

A couple weekends ago I attended the (second annual!) autumn festival in a nearby city. ("City" is misleading. St. Croix Falls has a population of about 2,000, but it is officially a city for governmental purposes. Wisconsin distinguishes between cities and villages, but don't ask me the differences. I know those differences exist but they do not concern me so I do not clutter my brain with them.)

It was a beautiful, sunny day. So sunny, in fact, that I had to stop at Wally World to buy some sunglasses.

What I saw in the parking lot:

 

Buggy on a flatbed trailer behind a pickup. (In literary circles, this is known as foreshadowing.)

I had signed up to work at the Friends of the Polk County Libraries stand. Here is my friend Colleen, the librarian. You can see my felted wine bottle cozies at the left. She had already sold two ($10 each! thanks!) by the time I got there at ten o'clock.

 

Thanks to all of you who helped me with the marketing. The tags described them as both reusable gift bags and wine bottle cozies and had a paragraph describing what the money would be for. The Friends are trying to raise money for a $25,000 matching grant, funds to be used to hire a technical support person to serve the ten municipal libraries.

Rear view of a book browser:

 

The theme of the festival was "Buy Local" so there were lots of local vendors.

 

 

 

 

Some vendors were not as obviously local.

 

There is a substantial Somali population in the Twin Cities, but I had no idea it had expanded to the St. Croix Valley. Hurrah for diversity!

 

Speaking of local diversity...

 

The professional theater (where #2 son was a stagehand and later ran sound and lights) sold old costumes -- just in time for Halloween.

 

Remember the buggy on the flatbed? I saw it again, this time hard at work.

 

Hey! What's that down in the parking lot?

 

Every good festival has a sandpile for the kids.

My lunch was local...

 

...from here:

 

I love their barbecue. And all their meat comes from a local butcher, just down the street from their bricks-and-mortar restaurant.

Part of the festival was the dedication of the new library, which is now located in a building that used to be a Holiday Foods supermarket but had sat empty for a number of years. This little town raised $1 million (a million dollars!) to renovate the building and parking lot and make the structure energy efficient.

Solar panels on the roof:

There were elected officials. The state senator and assemblyperson who represent this city:

 

The mayor and the librarian (the mayor is elected; the librarian is not):

 

There was a harpist before the dedication and a signer during the speeches. (What do you call the person who signs? "Signer" doesn't sound right.)

  

After the dedication I worked in the festival information booth until 4:30 when the vendor booths closed. The lady running the booth across the street from the info booth gave me some red and some orange tomatoes plus a small basket of cherry tomatoes, all from her garden. The cherry tomatoes were the best I have ever eaten. I need to find that woman and learn what breed they were and how she raised them. Yummmm.

And now, a bonus -- that day's Saturday sky: