Sand Painter

Last week, a local art fair almost got rained out. The tables for kid's crafts stood bare and dripping. In the afternoon, the skies cleared and the sand painting tent opened. Soon toddlers, ten-year-olds and teenagers were bent over their asphalt canvas, the school parking lot, pouring lines and dots of colored sand. The older ones worked carefully, building radiating, sort-of-symmetrical mandalas. The littlest ones simply dumped out the sand and spread it across the ground with their hands, delighting in the novelty of sand that was something other than sand-colored. I vote for sand-painting tents at adult venues such as wine festivals or chili cook-offs. Why should the kids have all the fun?