A "Fair" Event

I finally entered an arts & crafts show on Saturday - my first foray into selling my own artwork.  Boy, it's a lot of work setting up a booth for a one day fair!  Not sure if this was the best venue to display fine art prints: the gal to my right was selling glass angels, and the one to my left was the tie-dye queen.  And a sweet old lady across the way made a killing with her bees-wax lotion... she even wore a little bee antenna hat.  Hmmm - maybe next time I should look for a wild-west art show.  Seriously though, we did meet a lot of people and I got some good exposure as a local artist.  We didn't do too badly on the day either - I think in the end we made up our booth cost and then some.

   It felt kind of weird just sitting there all day - kind of like we were on display too.  It's one thing when you're selling a product for someone else, but something completely different when it's your own artwork.  In hindsight I should have hired some guy named Guido from Queens to stand in the aisle: "Hey you - you wanna buy a nice piece of artwork?  No?  How's about I pays you a visit wit my cousin Vinny some evening?  Oh, you DO wanna buy it - now that's more like it!"  We met some interesting people too.  One guy was chatting quite freely until I mentioned that I'm a pastor at The Journey.  He kind of muttered under his breath that he attends a different church (where the pastor makes no bones about not being a fan of our church) and then beat a hasty retreat.  It's sad, really.  Whatever happened to Jesus's words, "By this shall all men know you are my disciples, by the love you have for one another?"  To be fair, I did meet a great family who moved here from Georgia two years ago.  I was wearing my "Booger Holler" shirt from a restaurant in Blairsville, GA, and he stopped me as I was walking out of the gym thinking I was from there (I had to confess that someone gave me the shirt).  Turns out they're Christians and they attend a church in Bailey, and we compared notes as fellow Colorado greenhorns about our experiences in moving to the mountains.

Speaking of living in the mountains: yesterday evening Danny came over with his electronic fox call to see if we could call in a fox.  I've been trying to trap one for weeks, but they always seem to steal the bait without setting the pressure switch.  Probably a good thing too, since I found out that fox season only just started November 1st.  The fox call worked like a charm, and we shot a black/silver fox after playing the call for about 30 minutes.  This is the perfect time of year for foxes too, because their pelts are thick and healthy.  This particular fox was old, with broken teeth and diseased gums.  It took a little while to skin it, and in the process Danny says, "You smell that?  That's just the way they taste, too."  I'll take his word for it.  Once skinned it looked kind of like an evil zombie cat - really weird.
     Of course, my girls are mad at me this morning for killing it.  They felt sorry for the bear I killed too.  Hey, we live in the mountains now. Apparently our neighbors have been feeding this fox to the point that it was almost tame.  Not anymore they're not.  These are wild animals folks, not neighborhood pets!  They carry diseases and can be a danger to children and small pets.  Deer are one thing, but foxes and coyotes are predators by nature.  Maybe we should put meat out at night so we can get to know the cougars too.