Pastoral prayer attitudes and mighty strong muscles This Weekend, prepare to kick-off the State Fair in the capital city next weekend, which runs Aug. 22 thru Sept 1.

The 50-week countdown is at W-minus-1. As ever for high-anticipation hosts, readiness anxiety (not to be confused with terroristic trembling, or the DeTox-symptoms of withdrawal from it), worries people across the State of the agriculture-lifestyle landscape -- and as ever, even if all party preparation things were ready, hosts would conjure up some stupid shoulda-coulda things to worry themselves that didn't happen. Trust that everything's in readiness at the Salem Fairgrounds. (Almost). Yet this is the Last Weekend and anxious anticipation excitement has reached a squealing-piggy pitch.

Or tomato-throwing tempest. Bold Red Tomato: This year's iconic symbol for the State Fair's promotion p.r. aimed at catapulting the propaganda |splat| into an Oregonian massmind realization.

With expenses modesty, the p.r. campaign printed a b&w photo of the Tomato being trucked around. We have to imagine the red ripeness.

f you happen to see an old flatbed truck hauling a single 12-foot-tall [red] tomato, don't be alarmed. You don't need to call an eye doctor or a neurologist. Call an ad man, (in a grey flannel suit), meet the creative class ... or what passes for classiness to the creative mind. Hokey as Minnie Pearl, it goes on:

"All the kids and moms love the tomato. All the dads love the truck," he said, (Matt Richards, a program assistant at the fair who owns the truck); The Dodge Ram 2500 that actually lugs the exhibit over long distances was loaned to the fairgrounds by the Withnell Motor Co. in Salem, and the American Automobile Association picked up the tab for the fuel, he said.

By having sponsors contribute to promotional efforts, the fairgrounds ends up with more money ... for other 'things'.

The strategy has been highly successful so far, said Connie Bradley, head of marketing and business development for the fairgrounds. This year's state fair has attracted the equivalent of $1 million from more than 200 sponsors, she said. "The plan next year is to come back and ask how we can increase your marketing and [decent] exposure here at the fair," Bradley said.

Encultured with a neighbors-volunteer-barn-raising tradition, ag and farm folks mostly manage themselves to ask what they can do for the State Fair, what they can step up giving according to their ability. Which is the necessary attitude for the fulfilling socialist life, without the authoritarian spy-on-and-regulate paranoid life of self-doubters and wimp-outs.

We each do what we can, and we each live better to know what that is. Self-construct. Giving self-inventory after taking stock, is kind of like charity except it's donating labor, (or existing-owned "1947 K-3 International Harvester" trucks), instead of money, (so there's no tax, and no tax write-off ... sorry, Jack, if that (socialism?) limits your income upside).

Our Fairs are homemade goods that good people doing good things do well. This weekend, the State Fair needs ProMOtion, and the state of the Art is massmedia broadcast Print ... and intertubes blogs. That would be Bojack. Let's HEAR it, folks, farmers, ag-living citizens: State FAIR! State FAIR! State FAIR gather friends.

Keep massreminded. Plan now, BE there!

Of course, we are celebrating the seasonal Sun transit into Virgo, its nurturance bringing in the sheaves, rejoicing in harvest. Traditional peak-season for bean counters. Crops this year, and the harvest, looks stunted a bit below average. It varies by crop, (bumper wheat, great-vintage grapes, in the Willamette Valley floodplain), and in some ironic p.r.-symbol boomerang, this year tomatoes dropped below their perennial glut level.

(Maybe too many dropped: Hauling safety rules hit tomatoes - Regulators mull compliance with federal cargo laws, By HANK SHAW, Capital Press, 8/15/2008 -- Tomato trucks rumbling along ... highways are as sure a sign of ... federal regulators keen on making sure no one gets hit by a flying tomato ... out of sight. That could cost the truckers who haul tomatoes millions in the process. I ate processed tomatoes million one time, tasted kinda like catsup ... back then, it came in a tall bottle ... or was it a short neck ...?)

(Aug.22-Sept.21) Virgo-time is for accounting. Calculating, as a profession. The New Moon of it (Aug.30) conventionally marks the Judaic calendar Rosh Hashana New-Year atonement and countdown (10-days' pastoral prayer) to Yom Kippur, but this year, all that, is set off a month (Sept. 29), into The Scales of Libra, (Sept.22-Oct.22). Read: There's going to be extraordinary retributive (hair-splitting and -pulling, ash-clothed self-indictment) redress, and pervasive, as invoices comes due to pay the Great Piper in the Sky (for, what, 7(?) years now of discordant lyre, catastrophing the agenda). Like, politicians pay a probative price for charges in the estate of the late Dr. Bruce Ivins. Also, winter heating oil costs get a lot of people burning mad.

That all comes later, festering for October. This weekend is Fair Party-On! and promotion needs a good buzzing. Or getting buzzed needs some promotion. Pulsing excitement is palpable. Looms and ferris wheels twirl, animals have their annual bored meeting, pink and blue cotton candy and hairdo's wilt in the afternoon sun, caliopes play the ol' stanza, people stare, it's all good. Then comes seen (in the first link) this ungood of the Fair:

... chicken and beef barbecue competitions ... broadcast over the radio by 750 KXL.

There goes the neighborhood, beautiful day in the. I sure got a beef to roast the Chicken of KXL: Salem don't need no stinking hater of public-employment good. These is our honest tax dollars honoring both work and play; so big butt-insky LIARS should get out of our emerald green empire, quit dumping on it from some Oz-hole of a bunker, and go get a job in real radio ... y'know, with the music making heads nod, having sense of community tranquility, the dashboard sounds complementing the windshield views; just see-n-sing out, "...self, it's a wonderful world." Else go pick filberts and load out 16 Tons of love potion number 9 stocking coal.

Y'know, pardners, the more promotion we volunteer to do talking amongst ourselves, the less there is for corporate-sponsored 'Howdy Doody' tongue-flappers to scam; (tax-cheating the 'rebate' for 'in-kindly' unbilled 'PSA' State Fair spots, at full rates, whereas the 'spots' are cut as tax-exposed station ID promos, which air anyway, Fair or no Fair). And the more promotion expenses we -- Fair-gather friends -- save the marketing budget, the more money left for other 'things.' C'mon, bang the gong, get blogging! Catapult the Tomato.

Besides, our tax dollars paid for that marketing budget, and the message, don't, need, NO stinking, get-rich egomaniac's microphone. Just plan, BE there, have fun, See the Wonders of Agriculture we eat and we are -- this call is person-to-person.

Good tune, although like many standards it's a bit worn from all the covers and constant radio play.

Staying in the R & B mode, this one ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRVJeshEcc0

...might be appropriate during the political conventions.