The Stone Arch Bridge Festival in Minneapolis drew thousands of people strolling among hundreds of art and craft vendors on a perfect summer solstice day eve. Below the bridge flows the Mississippi River, water that connects people in body and spirit.
If you could zoom in on the top photo above, what do you see? Better yet, what do you not see? No one that I could tell is postured in the ‘digital droop’, my clumsy epithet for people hunched over, looking down zoned in on their little screens. I am among them reading news, checking Facebook, and of course, playing Sudoku and solving Wordle.
The photo comes from a perfect weather day at the Stone Arch Bridge Festival last weekend in Minneapolis. Walking by hundreds of vendor tents among thousands of people, I was struck by seeming absence of people on their phones or looking down transfixed on a screen.
If there ever were an antidote for the current epidemic of digital distraction, attending such festivals would be it, proving that shared human experience is a common denominator greater than the external messages and propagandizing from those trying to sow dissension.
That’s not to say we have no differences that need reconciliation; we do, but those encounters must be balanced by the positive ones that we share. If we could just take that mood and inject it into the entire population, perhaps we could have more productive conversations among disparate groups.
If you are looking for such relief, or just a chance to get out and mingle with people in a happy environment, look around for arts and crafts sales or other themed festivals. You probably know about those in your area. Here’s a link to an online list for Minnesota at Fairs and Festivals.net. The biggie, of course, is the Minnesota State Fair, where tens of thousands share a welcoming space.
Book truck
In past years I have participated in many arts and craft shows, and also business trade shows. Once years ago, I contacted the Stone Arch Bridge Festival people about attending as a vendor with books. My pitch was that books should count as arts and crafts. Why spend $25 on a bunch of weeds or other such craft items, when you could get a good book for that amount or less?
At least this year the festival included one book vendor. If you look closely at the top photo, in the lower right corner you will see what looks like a little truck. The Little Charity Book Truck is a mobile bookstore that travels around to fairs and donates all profits to charities.
Passing by, I paused briefly to look at some of the titles. Now, after learning more about the book truck and its mission, I regret not staying longer, and perhaps even buying a book. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the proprietor, with her doing the same toward me as a potential customer.
Having been a vendor for my books at past arts and craft sales and also having staffed a business booth at many trade shows, I could easily empathize with her experience. You walk a fine line between being too pushy, yet ready to engage when someone stops to look at your display. She made no acknowledgement of my passing interest, and our party was moving on.
At least it was nice to see books there. I hope she sold enough books to make it worthwhile. If not many books, being out there in front of the public helps. As an author trying to sell books, it gives you a chance to meet potential readers, and at book fairs I always learned something even if I didn’t sell many books. Like the big Des Moines Book Festival in March 2022, where I sold one book, but had a good time visiting the city.
Market history
Markets, trade fairs, bazaars, have flourished as long as mankind has lived together in social and economic structures. This history was highly evident at the Stone Arch Bridge Festival. Long before Europeans settled by St. Anthony Falls in 1860, long before James J. Hill built the Stone Arch Bridge in 1883 to carry his trains in dramatic fashion across the Mississippi River, the Dakota people met there to connect in trade and ceremony.
Today, four Dakota tribes in Minnesota are working on the Owámniyomni Project, which will “transform five acres of land at Owámniyomni (St. Anthony Falls) into a place of restoration, education, healing and connection.”
The project “is a groundbreaking effort to heal a sacred Dakota site desecrated through colonization and industrialization. It is reconnecting us to the River that has been a source of identity, inspiration and opportunity for Dakota oyate (Dakota people) and others who call this place home.”
“Dakota people came to Owámniyomni, or ‘turbulent waters’, for ceremony, and to Wíta Wanáǧi, Spirit Island, an island oasis in the mist kicked up from the falling water, to give birth. This was – and is – a place of gathering, trade, and offerings. It is a place where the physical and spiritual worlds blend stories told from an Indigenous perspective, were rendered invisible for generations.”
Being oral societies, nothing was written in the past about their present. Research today comes from interviews of tribal elders, or university historians and scholars. “12,000 years at St. Anthony Falls” is an article for the Minnesota Historical Society by John Anfinson, formerly of the U.S. National Park Service.
Perhaps it’s this historical background and the physical and metaphysical realities of water – it sustains our bodies and brings spiritual healing – that laid the foundation for such a positive experience at the Stone Arch Bridge festival. Next year I may have some books for sale there, if the people at the Little Charity Book Truck reply to my offer of donating some of my “remainders.”
