[143/366] not fair

[cosmolinguist]

I'm not at all surprised and it's the responsible thing to do and I don't know if I could have gone anyway but the news that the Minnesota State Fair has been canceled has made me really sad. [warning: link also contains numbers relating to covid cases in Minnesota]

It calls itself The Great Minnesota Get-Together and that's always seemed like such a hokey slogan but now "getting together" feels half evil and half mythical and I hate that. I hate it so much.

I'm really impressed with how the guy in charge handled it, though:

Hammer said the board had heard feedback from fair fans along the lines of let the healthy people go. “That's not who we are and that's not what we do,” he said. “It's got to be accessible to everybody. And a significant number of folks have some sort of health risk, some sort of compromised health.”

"We all love the fair and that's exactly why we can't have a fair this year,” he said.

Bless him.

We're gonna see a lot more "let the healthy people go" bullshit as this wears on, and it's nice to see it shot down already.

I shared this on Mastodon, and the admin of my Minneapolis/St. Paul-based instance (it has no less than two State-Fair-related custom emoji!) said "that's such a classic Minnesota response to people clamoring to exclude people, it's beautiful." And it is.

Comments

[otter]

I evidently misinterpreted his earlier "all or nothing" comments a few weeks ago. I strongly support his reasoning and decision.

If you'd like, I can make and send you a Minnesota State Fair Lover zippy pouch, in either red, turquoise blue, or purple. We have printed many, and I doubt my 'boss' will invest in the zipper pulls to finish them this year. For some odd reason, I think they'd sell better without the fair than they do with. But it's not my place to ask her to risk that (albeit small) investment. Her sales are next to nothing.

[cosmolinguist]

I think they might sell well in a year without a fair, yes! But I understand it's not your decision to make.

I'd absolutely love one, though, how kind of you to offer! Blue, for preference. :) Thank you.

[radiantfracture]

If it is weird to cheer a cancellation, so be it: yay.

[cosmolinguist]

It is. The state fair was a staple of my life when I was a kid: my parents have been almost every year since they've been together which is almost fifty now! They wouldn't take my brother and I until we were old enough to walk around all day without making them miserable so it had this air of something really special they did while we had to stay with our grandparents.

And since I've left I've missed it so much, it's like a distillation of everything that I miss about Minnesota. I've timed trips back in the summer in order to be able to go the state fair, one was last year and I just had a blast. I'm glad for those memories now.

Even when I can't go, though, I just love hearing about it and knowing it exists and it's weird and sad to contemplate a year without that. But, as you say, we have to cheer the cancelations these days.

[radiantfracture]

Totally makes sense to grieve for it. I just meant that I too was glad they were thinking of everyone (and also thinking like people in a real pandemic).

[silveradept]

We are glad that there isn't the opportunity for people to spread the disease. But sad that the fair is not happening, because fairs are important and useful things.