Marylin sez, "Joel Sartore's photos from various state fairs capture some bizarre moments: like hissing cockroaches from Madagascar pulling tiny tractors; Minnesota sisters with rainbow glitter pigtails; bleachers full of 8,400 Iowa fairgoers all about to bite into corndogs simultaneously; Minnesota Dairy Princess Kristy Mussman posing in a freezer so a sculptor can render her likeness in a giant slab of butter; contestants in a mother-daughter lookalike contest; volunteers in Iowa all slumped over in folding chairs at the suggestion of a hypnotist. Garrison Keillor wrote the state fair feature story in the July issue on National Geographic, enumerating the Ten Chief Joys of the State Fair."
The Ten Chief Joys of the State Fair are:
1. To eat food with your two hands.
2. To feel extreme centrifugal force reshaping your face and jowls as you are flung or whirled turbulently and you experience that intense joyfulness that is indistinguishable from anguish, or (as you get older) to observe other persons in extreme centrifugal situations.
3. To mingle, merge, mill, jostle gently, and flock together with throngs, swarms, mobs, and multitudes of persons slight or hefty, punky or preppy, young or ancient, wandering through the hubbub and amplified razzmatazz and raw neon and clouds of wiener steam in search of some elusive thing, nobody is sure exactly what.
