Augusta Arts Festival

Festivals are pretty much the same sort of thing whether you are in Austria or Czechia or here. Most have tents with or without stages, food, and music and dancing, and maybe some art and arts and crafts. The Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival that we went to this past weekend to read our stories had it all. As with many festivals the purpose is to celebrate and to showcase local culture, and because of the fairly large immigrant populations in Augusta, it has the flavor of both an arts and crafts fair and international food and music festival. The cost for admission is just $5 for the entire weekend, and this entitles you to peruse the artists' tents, enjoy the music and dancing at four or five stages, and to buy food from the 30 booths offering food from 35 different nations. This availability of such a great variety of cuisines is one of my favorite things about my own country as is the fact that we all exist peacefully together. It is also, dare I say it, heartwarming that many of us also take great pleasure in learning about those who aren't at all like us. So, we watched a lot of Irish performers and some Indian dancers, ate a whole lot of good food, and Bram and I got henna tattoos.