Saturday afternoon I visited EarthWorks Expo at the Denver Merchandise Mart on 58th and I-25, expecting an event much like the Denver Green Festival. And they were quite similar, though EarthWorks Expo was smaller and in an older venue.
The talks at EarthWorks Expo were much better, however. I enjoyed learning how to garden in the winter using a cold frame (and plan to try it out again this fall, if I can manage to plant everything in the next 2 weeks), but the best speaker was Albert Bates, whom you might call an optimist-environmentalist. Yes, they do exist. His vision of the future: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
But just in case things don’t work out the way Bates wants, at least you can go out in an eco-friendly way.
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Today I turned 47 years old at 12:47 am (the witching hour). At my request, Todd got me a cake reading “Happy 45th Birthday,” because that was the last birthday I greeted with enthusiasm.
is still in business. All these stores sell unique, locally made products, like these cloth substitutes for sandwich bags (SnackTaxi) from Dragonfly.
shows the aftermath of a race between a Colorado team and the Houston Heat, who must have been grateful for the cooler weather.
to this woman at the Thailand tourism booth. I don’t think she would be able to eat in this costume.
to the place I settled on because I’d never had Filipino-American food (Tropical Grill).
And then Todd came back with what he called “Thai shave ice,” 
which is topped with red beans and 3 kinds of jellies. Weird? Maybe. Tasty? Yes, though the mixture gets less appetizing the more you eat.
Many tents had cots and coolers and chairs enough to seat a dozen people.
among other things (my apologies for the blurry point-and-shoot picture). But this year the 23-year-old festival was under new management and promised change, in the form of the Health Is Wealth Pavilion and the Gift of Green Pavilion. 
There were also two food courts, as well as numerous arts vendors 
scattered throughout the park.
a discrete area with its own small stage and a few booths. I arrived at the end of M’ Shaka Fusion’s performance and didn’t feel compelled to wait for the next act, so I moved on to the F. Cosmo Harris Gospel Stage, where a dance group was performing to recorded music.
one of two Caribbean food vendors, for the jerk pork dinner, with moist shredded pork, rice, and red cabbage coleslaw. The BBQ sauce tasted of vinegar, but my favorite condiment was the sauce marked “very spicy.” Yes! 
Then I finished with ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, which always makes me think of growing up in Kansas City. This food court also featured BBQ and the chicken-on-a-stick I enjoyed at 
but as soon as I walked in I realized I had entirely mistaken it. I was expecting exhibits about nontoxic paint and compact fluorescent light bulbs, but instead, the HUD Healthy Home explained how to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning and how to seal cracks to keep out bugs. I wondered why I’ve never seen this exhibit at any other festival; I had the same reaction to my second encounter with the car crash exhibit (the first was at Juneteenth).
While the crowd there waited for the SOS Band, they were entertained by local radio personality Reggie McDaniel 
and the members of Slam Nuba, a competitive performance poetry team that regularly competes in the National Poetry Slam. Their theme was relationships, and the second reader asserted that words are magic, both good and bad: “Your marriage is mangled because you misused your magic!” My favorite reader was the Original Woman, 
who asked the crowd stretched out on the lawn if they were tired of the fairy tales they told their daughters, tired of the stories in which all the woman are evil. She said she wanted to tell a story in which a princess wakes up a prince.
I must be a dancing fool, because what I loved most about last weekend’s two festivals was the dancing, albeit of very different kinds (see 
joining in the dandelion dance (the seeds a reference to reincarnation). I’m of two minds about posting her picture. I think it’s OK because she was performing at a public festival, but then again, I didn’t get her parents’ permission. What do you think? Leave her in, or not?
Afterward, we sought out shade at the Larimer and 19th corner of Sakura Square, where a garden memorializes Colorado governor Ralph Carr and Minoru Yasui,
who fought for the rights of Japanese during their World War II internment. (There is also a plaza in the latter’s name at 303 West Colfax, across from the Denver Mint.)
to agree to a picture. They said they got their outfits from Japanese companies, online I assume.
When I went by 
And the cowboys from the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association.
And, “How come I didn’t know how to dance like that when I was a teenager?”
Saturday I made my way to the 
on my way to the mall shuttle, I passed a wedding party swank enough to afford two photographers. Everyone but the bride wore black; I liked the bridesmaids’ sleek black satin dresses better than her elaborately appliquéd froth of a dress.
The art started this way for me: large landscapes, which you’d expect from an art fair in Colorado; metal wall hangings like sheaves of wheat; and photographs of horses, taken all over the United States but mostly in Colorado and back East, where 
it seems like more of an organic whole.