It's a tradition. My wife, Laurel (shown above) and I always go to the Salem Art Fair on Friday afternoon. The dogs are left at home, where they dream of chasing squirrels, while we spend three hours or so dreaming of being able to take home all the beautiful pieces of art we see.

The Salem Art Fair & Festival, it's official name, gets better every year. For a while it seemed like there weren't that many new booths. But now fresh artists abound. (Or, I'm getting senile and can't remember who was there the previous year.)

To answer an important question first, yes, I did buy some art. It works great to hold the highlighters and pen that accompany my morning nonfiction book reading. A note in the small drawer at the bottom of the box says it was made by Kyoko Niikuni following traditional Japanese designs, but no two are alike. Each box is covered with washi, a type of rice paper which had its origins in the Edo Period in Japan. (Of course, you knew that already.)

I consider art to encompass the booths of the artists, including the names of their artistic endeavors. Ten 2 Midnight Studios... nice. I take it this refers to the time women are out and about wearing this artist's jewelry. Me, I'm dozing in a hot bath or sitting in front of the TV.

Sea creatures, mostly. It's difficult for me to know what the large piece of art represents, but I like it.

This artist makes baskets and such out of pine needles. She said she no longer collects them herself, but gets them from someone in Georgia. I told her that it must take a lot of patience to do what she does. Yes, she said, but this is the only part of her life that she's patient about. I admired the title of this piece: "Friday Night Orgasm." She told me a prelude is coming. "Friday Night Foreplay"?

Laurel, heading down the "main street" of the Art Fair. We both wore tie-dyed t-shirts. Didn't make them ourselves, but some artistic person did.

Here we are, in our tie-dyed glory, courtesy of a photo taken by a neighbor, Frank Bobbio, who we ran into (OK, not literally) at the Art Fair.

I love looking at photographs of places that make me think, "It'd be so great to live there." Well, if it had high speed broadband in addition to being beautiful.

Art fair colors run the gamut from bright and gaudy to pale and restrained. On the whole, I'm more attracted to the bright colors.

Even with the distracting reflections in the photo I took, this piece of art was wonderfully calming.

The piece on the left appealed to me. There's an angular rock in our yard that I balance another rock on the top of. Takes some care, and a deer, squirrel, or running dog always knocks it off before too long. Which gives me a chance to do the balancing again.

More brightness. I believe this artist is at the Art Fair every year. Which is great, because I adore their garden art.

Creative way to to hold fruit, or whatever.

Laurel came so close to buying some earrings. None clearly spoke "take me home" to her though.

I wanted to scream "Watch out!" to this woman. She might have been the artist, however, who would be used to wildlife staring at her through big eyes.

Oh, did I mention I like colorful art? (Answer: yes, several times already.)

This booth was appealingly laid out.

These pieces made me feel like I was viewing vegetation on an alien world. A beautiful alien world.

There's something for everybody at the Art Fair. I wasn't much interested in this booth, but I bet a lot of other people were.

The woman told me that her service animal was a Scottish Deerhound. I said, "I can easily see this dog chasing down a deer." Our own dogs are sized to run after squirrels, not deer.

The majestic trees in Bush Park are natural works of art themselves.

Friday was a perfect Art Fair day. Sunny and warm, but not too warm. Plenty of people, but not too many people.

Nice idea, to use grey rocks to display the mostly silver jewelry.

This booth made me raise my eyes. It was the only one I recall seeing that boasted banners.

The smell, ah, the marvelous smell. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, we'd just eaten at the south food court when we passed by the Kettle Corn enticement.