Saturday, October 2bd, 2010 – we were sitting around the house not doing much of anything at all, so I took the family out to the Santa Maria Grapes and Grains Festival, a yearly event that we have here in Santa Maria. It was a decent day, as far as weather was concerned, when we arrived the parking was terrible, and I immediately thought it was going to a bad idea, but I was pleasantly proved wrong. I took my family to the Santa Maria natural Museum exhibit first, the girls loved the displays and saw some interesting animals, the only bizarre moment was the guide that was doing the tour used the following statement, which made my girls cringe “ Most of these animals were collected from road kill incidents of found already dead, they were once alive, but now they are dead, and stuffed” so matter of fact, and without any emotion she began to explain what that meant, my girls were a little taken back and started walking around saying “poor birdy” or “poor beaver”, here are some more fun images of that moment.
We then went to the Street Painting Event, and there was a petting zoo area, we also ran into Albert, the best friend of my son Michael, Albert works for the Parks and Recreation Department, always a happy guy and never a bad word to say about anything. as you can see from the pictures, there were many activities for kids to do, not just vendors and salesmen. so many times I go to fairs and events and find that they were just excuses to set up shop, or try to get charity donations from people that don’t have anything to give.This was a really great event hosted by the city, which should do more like this.
I found one kid was doing a replica of an Andy Warhol print of Elizabeth Taylor, and it was really cool, because this kid was doing something special, something that they wanted to do, something expressive about who 
they are and want to be.
The Petting Zoo is not very big, but it had baby animals, now nobody can resist baby animals, can they, my girls just loved it so much they actually wanted to join the local AG group so they could 
do this everyday, I thought about saying yes, but I looked over at the goats and said to myself “ yeah, and who's going to have to clean it up”, we moved on to the next area.
I was wandering around at saw the Teacher and students from the Alan Hancock College Ceramics Program, which I used to be a part of and got a chance to say hi to my former teacher Bob, and fellow student Sue, who were doing demonstrations of the Wheel Process and I was able to get a short Video, no sound, but you get to see a great Artist doing what he does best.
2010 Grapes and Grains Festival Wheel Ceramics Demonstration
And here are some stills,
Bob is a great Teacher and the people really loved watching him do his work, in the time I was standing there watching he made 35 Bowls and Dishes, it took him about 36 min to do this, I remember it took me about 60 min to make 1 item, so he is the master artist and I am still just a hack, at ceramics anyway.
this blog entry was not so much as a tribute or critique of the event, but just a statement, one never knows what fun is out there unless they look, so many of the people I know say this town is lame or boring, and sometimes I do agree, but then I go out with my kids and I am reminded that fun is fun only if you let it be fun, just be happy to be alive and live each new day as if it were a new chance at happiness, and you will be happy, my kids often remind me of how life can be great, which is why I love them more and more each day.
Joseph Timmons, Newly Humbled Father, yet again.
