By Michael S. Hopkins Correspondent
After the pandemic upended so much, even the weirdest things – pig races, machete juggling, fried banana stands – are normalizing.
Yes, we’re talking about the fair, here again after a pandemic-induced hiatus. And if not in your county or state, perhaps the next one over.
Fairs are one of humanity’s oldest traditions, and for those making the trek to attend one, it can invoke “archetypal narratives that we intuitively crave, the tale of leaving town and encountering ‘the other.’ It’s the story of the hero’s metamorphosis,” writes our correspondent. We sent him to the San Diego County Fair, where, among the carnival barkers and wild-animal whisperers, he found Americans who, with their newfound freedom, rushed into crowds, driven by the desire to feel communal again. To rub shoulders with strangers heedlessly under a warm sky. To rejoin life en masse.
A day at the fair during America s summer of reopening
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The Christian Science Monitor Daily for July 26, 2021
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