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Genie In A Lift!

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben

This week has been about theater. It’s one of those periods where I have to get a show ready, plus class, plus the real job, plus the everyday household stuff and chickens and kids and dogs and, you know… “Any Idiot can handle a crisis, it’s the day to day living that wears you out”.

I’m lighting Hamlet this week. “A Reimagined Classic” is the marketing tagline. I don’t know my Shakespeare, so I don’t know which parts have been “reimagined”. I know the script jumps over scenes, and it ends with Act 7 and it’s still 2.5 hours long. I recognize many well-known lines. And there’s some funny stuff in the first half. It’s probably not a spoiler to say everyone dies at the end. Being reimagined, I can use some non-traditional lighting and some color washes on the backwall, as well as color on the actors. Here’s a picture from my tech table, just to give you an idea, with work lights still on.

Scenic design by Erica Zaffarano, directed by Merritt Olson.

Paper tech will be on Saturday evening, meaning the director and tech people go through the script and coordinate sound and lighting cues so the Stage Manager, who runs it all, has everything they need. Sunday evening will be a full run through with costumes, sound, and lights. Generally, Monday will be make up, wigs, plus all the other stuff. It’s really interesting, the show can be really humming along, and then you throw all the tech stuff in, and the show takes about 4 steps back. As an actor, it’s just a lot of stuff your brain is dealing with besides lines and blocking (movement).

We had our first meeting at our new Haverhill Township townhall on Wednesday. Bathrooms! Running water! HEAT! And AC!

Our old townhall was basically a one room school. A wonderful place with a lot of character, but it was 100 years old. With no running water, and an outhouse… The only State Insured Outhouse in Minnesota!

I went to 4H there, I did one act plays on that stage, and my mom and dad met as infants when their bassinettes were put behind the furnace by their respective moms during Mothers and Daughters Club. A lot of history in this building.

At the college, I’m working on the set model for The Curious Savage, by John Patrick, our spring play. I also got the genie lift out and tie a rope up at the ceiling for the physics demonstration show Saturday and, since I had the genie out, I changed some burned out fluorescent lamps. I keep a log of when I change lamps so I can change several at the same time if they’re all on the same timeline. Some of these 8’ fluorescents have been going since March 2, 2015! It isn’t unusual to get 6 or 7 years out of them. I’ve got one set in the shop that’s been going since January 25th of 2012!!

When I walk back from class on the other end of the campus on the first floor, I walk up 5 floors, to a roof access door, just to get steps in, then back to my office on the 2nd floor. Written on the wall by the roof access is some pretty wise graffiti: “you bleed just to know you’re alive” and next to it, “Don’t forget you can live without bleeding “
And these: “The quality of life is determined by the questions you ask” – WB 2017
“If you don’t ask the questions, you’re never going to know the answers” – SF 2018

WHERE OR HOW DID YOUR PARENTS MEET? OR YOU AND YOUR SPOUSE? ❤️

59 thoughts on “Genie In A Lift!”

  1. My parents met at Von’s Grocery in Lynwood, CA (a Los Angeles suburb) in 1947. Dad was a young veteran on the climb to store managing, Mom was a checker. The marriage, unstable and unsatisfactory for both of them, lasted until 1971.

    Char (my spouse) and I met on a short-term volunteer gig in Taiwan in 1976. It took three years of “one of us on one side of the Pacific and the other on the other” before we both fetched up in central New Jersey, and got married (in Michigan) in 1980. So far, so good.

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  2. I don’t know how my parents met. They both lived in a small rural community. It would be odd they did not know each other. At a dance is very likely. They both loved to dance.

    The rural community I grew up in has preserved the one room school. It serves many purposes such as a polling place but it is not an organized township. It is now called the Knife River Valley Country Club which holds monthy dances and has since I was about 10. It is a 4H meeting place, is rented out for wedding dances, etc.

    Sandy and I met at the U of M hospital where we both worked in the department of neurology. I have told this story too many times on here.

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    1. Well, speaking only for myself, of course, I don’t remember the details, except for the fact that you were very young, and that Sandy is older than you. I’d love a refresher.

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    2. My mind is elsewhere. Wednesday I started having pains that would indicate I did have pancreatic cancer. Thursday they got worse and changed. Called for an appointment with my gp. For Friday. Pains changed again. GP was very concerned. Doubted it was the pancreas. Did whole series of tests. Results appeared in my portal two hours ago. All say I have a damaged liver.

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    3. Looie and Adeline were 9 years apart in age. He had gone off to to North Dakota to work on a ranch and on the Northern Pacific railroad and then came back to Sebeka. So now that I think about it, they would had to have met somehow at that point. A dance is a very likely scenario. My sister does not know either. I know he sent money back to his mother while he was gone, about the only income she would have had in the 20’s and 30’s to raise the four younger children. He got a job as a deputy sheriff when he came back.

      Clyde And Sandra: I frequently went over to her office to handle orders. Sandra, being Sandra, had to be charming and funny. She attached silly poems to the completed orders. So I wrote some back. At one point the fact she was 25 and I was 20 came up. She announced she had a sister my age. For awhile she was less casual with me. I got the message. Then she announced she had friends by Lake Harriet (Is that the lake with a new name?) and she could borrow their bikes. So we rode around the lake a couple times. It did not feel like a date as such. The poems had turned into poetry about the Beckman Spinco glass man she was secretly ordering for herself. That was the company for which most of the orders were written. I started working there in early Febrary 1965. At the beginning of June she and four other women who worked in that office rented a house on Lake Minnetonka. She invited me to a party they were having the first weekend. I told her I was riding the bus back to Chicago for the end of the school year party and to see friends graduate. She announced she loved Chicago and she would drive me there. I could do my things and she would to the loop. The next Tuesday we decided to get married in a year. Thursday we decided to get married August 7. I enrolled at the U for three years with a new major, English Ed., not biochemistry/physiology. She switched to working for a publishing company. For graduation she typed up the poems and the graphics department designed a book and had it bound. It was going to be a big surprise. But I had figured it out. A few years ago we looked through it and were so embarresed we distroyed it.

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  3. My parents met in a bar in Newcastle upon Tyne in the spring of 1942. Dad’s ship had been torpedoed and sunk off the east coast of Scotland. Upon rescue the crew had been brought to Newcastle. Mom, a transplant from Ireland, was there to work in a factory making airplane parts, the only job for which she qualified, having virtually no education. They were both 21. They married later that year, and I was born nine months and five days after their wedding.

    The marriage was rocky from day one, due to many different factors, one of which was mom’s mental health issues. But the stayed together till mom died at age 72. Dad died seven months later, a lonely and bitter old man.

    I sometimes think their lives were sad, and certainly could have been so much better (my view). But I think the truth is, they both somehow enriched the life of the other.

    Knowing where they both come from, I’m curious about what shaped them to become the complex and interesting people they both were. How I wish I had had more of that curiosity while they were both still alive.

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  4. Wow, that genie is something! and I love the claim to fame: “The only State Insured Outhouse in Minnesota!” – are you sure you want to give that up??

    My folks met in a math class at what was then Iowa State Teachers College, now University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls. He was a veteran on the GI bill, she had worked at the phone company a year before going; they got married in 1946.

    I’ve told before about how I met Husband, but for now the short version – his sister and I worked together at my first real Mpls. job. He was moving to the cities at the same time Rose and I had decided to get an apartment together, so we looked for a 3-bedroom instead of a 2-bedroom apt.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons

    Ben, this was an interesting post with the theater equipment, graffiti, and the township meeting hall. I remember my grandmother telling stories of putting babies and baby animals she was nursing into independence, near stoves and furnaces for warmth like your parents as babies.

    My parents met at a tiny EUB (now Methodist) church college in my home town. That college is defunct. These little church colleges scattered on the prairies acted as institutions that socialized farm and small town kids into the larger world. Really, they acted as missions. Dad had always been younger than his school classmates because he started school 2 years early. So he took what would now be called a gap year, to work on the farm and mature before going to college. Mom was headed to Mankato State until her older sister decided she would not make it there, and signed her up for Westmar College which was smaller. But she did this without telling mom, and Aunt Ruth cancelled mom’s enrollment at Mankato. Yes, really. Who would do this? And mom accepted this sanguinely! She thought Ruth knew best. Because of that my parents met and married in 1951.

    Lou and I met at a singles dance, the only one I ever attended. I was not enjoying it. Every divorced man there felt free to cop a feel and maul me. I was getting ready to leave when Lou asked me to dance. By then I was so sick of wandering hands, I made him stand far from me. He did that so I went on a date with hiim again. BTW, he got mauled by women, too. 

    OT: The day started out better today. Lou slept at least 7 hours last night with the pain under control. I hope today remains that way for him. Yesterday was difficult.

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  6. In about 1940, My father drove from Magnolia, MN north to near Pipestone looking for the Hollyhock Ballroom in Hatfield, a little town near Pipestone. Sammy Kaye was playing there (Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye). He got lost, and pulled into a farm yard to ask for directions. It was my grandparents’ farm. They were only a mile or so from Hatfield. My mom gave him directions, and they talked and found they were both going to Mankato State for college in the fall. My dad drove off, but not before he accidentally backed over the mailbox. They reconnected in Mankoto. My mom and her cousin went to a Mankato State footnall game. My dad was on the football team but had been clipped in a previous game against Dr. Martin Luther College in New Ulm and had a knee injury and was sitting on the bench near my mom and her cousin. They started talking, and.were married in December 1942.

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    3. That knee injury plagued him until he had knee replacement surgery in his 70’s. It also gave him a real poor opinion of Missouri Synod Lutherans, who sponsored Dr. Martin Luther College, I believe although that was my mom’s church until they joined the Norwgian Lutheran Church when I was baby.

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    5. My mother and grandmother used to talk about that “evil” ballroom. Grandma allowed no one to enter ther until, UNTIL Lawrence Welk appeared there. He was her favorite. She was then faced with a moral dilemma. I believe I heard that she and grandpa went there to see him, but the children were not allowed to go.

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        1. Where did they live? So many of my relatives talked just like LW. When people would discuss his accent I was befuddled because I was unaware he had an accent.

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        2. Welk was from Strasburg, ND in the area of southeast/Southcentral ND where there were scores of Germans from Russia. My Grandfather B’s uncle had a law firm in Jamestown, and it was one of his sons or else a grandson who married Shirley. The area is described as being surrounded by “The Saurkraut Curtain” and as being unfriendly to outsiders. They all talk funny there, like Welk did.

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        3. The Amana Colonies in Iowa have a closed social system like that, too. Some people claim that theNorwegians in Decorah, Ia are as well. I certainly found that to be true of some parts of Lou’s family.

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  7. My parents met in the Fargo ND Black Building elevator. Mom was an operator. Dad delivered legal documents to and from courts and lawyers. I’m told he exaggerated his message delivering task and he tipped frequently for the ride.

    I’m memory holing the x spouse.

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  8. I don’t know the details of how my parents met but my mother had come up from near River Falls, Wisconsin, where she lived on a farm with her mother and brother to work for the summer at the Lafayette Club on Lake Minnetonka. My father lived in Robbinsdale but at that time he was in the Navy and must have been home on leave. They married in 1946.

    In 1969, I was in college at the University of Minnesota and living on Cedar Avenue on the West Bank. I had a job at Art Materials in Dinkytown.

    Robin had transferred to the U of M after a couple of years at Carleton College. Not having grown up here, she didn’t know many people yet. She had a job at the Bridgeman’s across the street from Art Materials and lived with a roommate in a decrepit old house seven or eight blocks down 4th Street.

    The first time Robin came into Art Materials (it was in the basement of the building), I don’t think I waited on her but I definitely noticed her. She had long red hair. After she left the store I looked in the till to get her name off her check. The next time she came in I was able to say, “Hi Robin!”, which got her attention and led to a conversation which led to our having coffee at the Bridgeman’s. That was November 19, 1969.

    We’ve been together ever since. When she would work evenings at the Bridgeman’s I would show up at the end of her shift to walk her home. By about March we had decided to get married, despite the fact we were both still in school. We wanted to get married in June. Our parents talked us into postponing until August. 53 1/2 years later here we are.

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  9. I was annoyed by Husband before I even met him. The first week of graduate school in Winnipeg I was assigned a study carrell but the former occupant had not yet moved out. He was to move to his own office as a Graduate teaching assistant, but was getting back to school late because he had to attend his sister’s wedding in Sheboygan, WI

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  10. my parents met when my mom went out on a date with my dads brother.she wasn’t that taken with my uncle but fell for my dad

    my wife was the daycare director at my kids day care as my ex divorced me. Unbeknownced to me she was unhappily married and wanted to have kids but the husband was not the right guy. We had a kid and 6 years and 2 1/2 kids later we got married.
    marriage is one of those things I teach my kids to pay attention to. I am the perfect model of how not to do it. Life can be easy but then again can it really?
    i got 5 great kids out of the ordeals of marriage and wouldn’t trade that for anything. My wives realize I am not the perfect spouse. Just have a tough time with Germans I think.

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    1. We had a coworker who married an identical twin. He really loved her twin sister but she was already married so he married the other twin. The marriage didn’t last.

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  11. OT – The new antenna for our TV arrived last night. Hans just hooked it up, and it works beautifully. We can now pick up lots of channels we didn’t even know existed.

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      1. Micro or mackerel. It was lovely early this morning. I had to take YA to the airport at 5:30 this morning so I got a gorgeous view of it all the way home on the crosstown.

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  13. My folks knew each other in high school but not well. My dad was a football star and my mom was a jock and I guess those two groups didn’t mix a lot. Then they both went to Washinginton University; during their first semester, they met up at a party and began dating. They had both had childhoods marred by abuse and it was a cement that held them together for decades. They agreed that their life together would never be like their youth – a goal they completely achieved.

    First wasband lived on the same floor as I did my freshman year at Carleton. On our first geography class, we recognized each other so agreed to be lab mates. Looking back, not sure why we were drawn to each other.

    Second wasband was a Software Etc Manager at Southdale when I was the Assistant Manager at big B. Dalton (Software Etc was owned by B Dalton). At one point I had him come down to my store to re-arrange the computer book section. A year later, I moved from the bookstores to Software Etc. HQ so we were thrown together often. On paper, we were a much better fit but then the paper didn’t show his narcissism. 

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  14. My mother moved from a South Dakota farm to the Twin Cities when she got out of high school, right about the time the US was getting into World War II. It was a sort of chain migration – for awhile she lived with an aunt – my great-aunt Mathilda and her husband Reuben – and had three younger siblings that followed her here. At some point during or after the war she moved in with a roommate, Elaine. I’m not sure how she and Elaine met – maybe they worked together. Elaine was my half sister, my father’s daughter from his first marriage.

    Neither of my parents ever talked about how they met. My aunt Norma told me about it once when I was going through a box of photos and there was a portrait of Elaine.

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  15. I don’t really know all the details about how my parents met. Owatonna was a pretty small town in the early ‘50s. My mom was very pretty and popular and was the homecoming queen in 1953. She had that kind of happy, vivacious personality that makes young women popular. My dad was kind of a James Dean-type character when he was young. He was three years older than she was. After high school, he went into the Navy and was off to Korea as a naval corpsman. My brothers and I think he sowed a lot of wild oats while overseas.

    Dad returned to Owatonna when his father had a so-called “accident” while cleaning his pistol. My grandfather had been a doctor until this “accident”, which left him blind. My grandmother was an extremely controlling woman. My dad came home after this tragedy, and enrolled in dental school at the U of M. His younger brother, Conrad, was closer to my mom in age, but he was more serious about applying himself to his education than my dad. “Connie” was my grandmother’s preferred child, and Dad’s whole life was lived in his younger brother’s shadow. Uncle Con became a doctor; the head of research of communicable diseases at Mayo Clinic in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. I always kind of wondered if Uncle Con and Mom dated and it didn’t work out. I know they knew each other, so maybe Con introduced her to my dad. I’ll never know, and Mom never wanted to talk about it.

    Dad and Mom married in September 1956. Mom graduated from high school in 1953, but she didn’t go on to college although she told me that she wanted to be a nurse. Mom always wanted to be more than she was. Dad always wanted to be as great as his brother. His feelings of inadequacy led to alcoholism by the time I was a teen. His treatment and recovery led Mom to chemical dependency counseling. She had the right personality for it. She ended up taking her own advice, and divorced my dad in 1985.

    I have yet to find a spouse. If you see him, let him know I’m still waiting.

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  16. I met Kelly at the Rochester Civic Theater, when I was called last minute to fill in for an actor that had to drop out. The play was “You Can’t Take it With You”, but I like to say “I did. “
    Our first date was to a Mantorville Melodrama because I had won the “Golden Oink Oink” award and needed to present it the next year.
    And then I got Kelly to run spot light for a Rep Theater show, so I’d know where she’d be every night, and that was when the Rep was performing at the college. Where I work now.
    I love this story. 🥰

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