We have now arrived at the highlight of Ann Arbor’s calendar: the annual art fair, featuring a thousand artists over thirty city blocks and a gazillion visitors to the area. Many Ann Arborites become jaded over time, reaching the point where they ho-hum the very mention of the July event. Not me. I really enjoy the fair, walking around, filling my eyes with beauty.
I look forward to it, as do, clearly, a gazillion other people, including the artists. Good sales at the Ann Arbor art fair can position them well for the rest of the year. It can be grueling; it’s only recently gone from being a four-day event to a three-day. And then there’s the weather wildcard.
Possibly the only predictable aspect of Ann Arbor weather is that the worst weather of the summer will happen during the art fair. Recognizing this reality, the organizers tried scheduling the fair for a week later, one year, but to no avail. It still coincided with the worst weather of the summer.
Some years, the problem is heat. I remember when, standing with other fans in a favorite artist’s booth, a woman said, “It’s so hot, sweat just dripped on my leg, and it wasn’t even mine.”
If there’s rain, the artists who work in clay feel themselves fortunate in their choice of medium, as ceramics look even better wet. On the flip side, my friend Abby was at the Potters Guild exhibit one year when there came a giant wind that sent the greater portion of the pots crashing to the ground.
That may have been the same giant wind that sent me dashing along a downtown sidewalk, helping an artist retrieve her paintings. I went one way and she went the other, trying to save most of her year’s output.
This year’s weather event came, so to speak, out of the blue. It’s smoke. So much of Canada, and now Minnesota, are on fire, that the entire state of Michigan is under an ongoing hazardous-air-quality advisory. Meteorologists and health authorities are telling everyone to stay indoors if at all possible, and to wear a mask and limit your time outdoors if you must go out.
Yesterday, one of the Detroit news stations reported that fair organizers were providing respirator masks for the artists. I haven’t heard any official doctrine on what to do for your stinging eyes, but a friend now takes a bottle of eyedrops with her whenever she leaves the house. Her eyes still sting.
Folks around town and around the state are trying to cheer themselves up. My petite friend Abby—she who witnessed the Potters Guild crash—says what she does to improve her outlook is eat. Chocolate and cheese are foods of choice. Also, Abby says, “I play pickleball. Call my sister. Or call up my friends and say, ‘Can we get together?’ or ‘Can you come over for a cup of tea?’”
Lee says she cheers herself up by walking the dog. We can certainly relate to that at our house, where we still miss Rascal multiple times every day. Lee’s horse gives her a lift, too, when they go for a ride. “I read. I talk to my sister. My sister and I talk every day. I chat to my friends. When I was younger, I would like to go and shop.”* **
Chris says she mostly doesn’t need cheering up but that, when she does, she’ll have a glass of wine, call her friends, and eat potato chips. Charlene’s even more succinct. “Pray,” she says.
Daughter Number Three, who was camping along Lake Superior when the air quality was still good, is bummed by the smoke that has arrived since then. Her coping strategy these days, she says, is to play the piano. “I’ll play for about an hour. Go hang out with friends. Pat the cat. Talk to the cat. And talk to myself.” Sometimes, she tells me, she argues with herself. Out loud.
Maybe I should ask her to argue out how to approach going to the art fair when the air is full of smoke.
17 July 2026
*Many Thrift Shop customers do the same.
**When Lee was a child growing up in urban England, she reports, air quality was a frequent concern. When the smog was bad enough, school would be dismissed at lunchtime and the children turned loose to make their way home. Sometimes, a bus driver not deeply familiar with his route would lose track of where he was in the haze in a roundabout. He’d go around the circle multiple times, trying to see the correct turn while the children advised him.