We have a new church Worship and Music director, who also directs the choir. She is our son’s age, and we have known her since we first saw her at her infant baptism 35 years ago. She was an elementary music teacher and has a lovely mezzo voice. She has purchased lots of new, challenging music for us. We had got pretty entrenched with the same pieces with the former director.
Our church choir is pretty small with about ten regular singers. We are often short on sopranos, which we were yesterday on Reformation Sunday. This is a big day for Lutherans, and there was a display of Luther’s 95 Theses in the front of the church. Our choir director planned big, and we sang three very challenging choral pieces, and recruited the high school band director to play timpani, a college trombone student, a high school trumpet player, and three sopranos who sing in the Badlands Opera organization. Ironically, four of our visiting musicians were Roman Catholics, but they sat cheerfully through two services and sang “A Mighty Fortress” with gusto. They even took communion!
Our bell choir director is also the organist. She has been taking the choir director’s lead and giving us very challenging music, too. It is fun, but sort of daunting to try new things and stretch ourselves in ways we haven’t had to before. The congregation is very happy with our efforts. I believe it was Gustav Holst who said in reference to small church choirs attempting difficult musical pieces that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”, which I take as encouragement to keep performing these challenging works even if we don’t do them perfectly.
What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately? Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened? What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed?
This week has all been about the theater. Well, Covid and Theatre, I guess. Wait, Covid was last week. It’s all a blur. I’m over the symptoms, but still testing positive. Good thing I work alone most of the time. And by now I shouldn’t be contagious anymore.
It’s rained a lot lately. And now it’s getting cold. We’ve had more than six inches of rain since the end of September. Oh well.
We open a show Saturday, and then next week will be two shows a day for all five days. Kids are bused in from the local area elementary schools. This kid show has always been a big hit for us, and of course we haven’t been able to do one since 2019. We were afraid we had lost a lot of the contacts at the schools and weren’t really sure what kind of reception we’d get this year. We feel really lucky to have an audience for all 10 shows, including three that are sold out. The play is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth night’ called “Lions in Illyria” by Robert Kauzlaric. Very cartoony and big and goofy and the kids should enjoy it. And short at 65 minutes. The three days I missed with Covid would have been helpful about now. I’m sure the paint will be dry by Saturday afternoon. Things will be ‘good enough’. I did take a few shortcuts, I called in some favors. The show must go on. As long as we can keep cast healthy.
I have a can full of stir sticks at the college. I’m pretty sure some of them were here when I started the job 17 years ago. I do know that I threw out a bunch a few years ago and for this show I decided to put all the ones that I’ve used a different container, because I feel like the sticks at the back of the first can were being neglected. Kelly was in to help paint one day and her goal was to use up all the stir sticks. She made a good dent in it. The can on the left is the unused sticks for the show, and the can on the right are the ones that I have used.
I learned how to paint marble for the show. The white and pink one I painted using a ripped T-shirt. My friend Paul came in and painted the green one. He makes it look so easy. And he enjoyed having an easy project like this.
I’ve talked with Crop Insurance about my soybeans. We started some preliminary claims just so the paperwork is out there. I’ve got until December 10 to get them harvested. After that we just write it off and let them go to insurance. This week of 20° temps at night will certainly freeze everything, but honestly, I’m not sure if the beans will ever dry down enough to harvest. We would need a good week of clear sunny, warmish temperatures and that’s really pushing it this time of the year. But with these weather patterns, who knows. I get home about 10:00 PM these nights (after rehearsal) and I was out picking up hoses and taking the outside faucet off the wellhouse. I need to pick up the pressure washer and hand sprayer yet.
Luna has moved right in and made herself at home. Our bed is her favorite place to be now. She loves to play catch and Tug-O-War. She’s shredded a few toys. And we’ve left her home alone and she’s just fine. Doesn’t like it, but at least she’s not chewing up the furniture.
Yesterday was a snow day for me as my agency was closed. Husband had a morning Zoom meeting for his Bismarck agency, which he did on his computer at the kitchen table. It didn’t last long, and we made a somewhat treacherous trip to the grocery store before the snow got any deeper. The city plows hadn’t been out and it was very slippery.
I made banana bread when we got back from the store, which filled the house with a wonderful aroma. Smells can be so evocative. The smell of Charteuse brings me back 45 years to memories of warm summer evenings in Moorhead having a drink after dinner with friends. I wouldn’t touch the stuff now with a ten foot pole, but the memories are good ones.
Kyrill has a very powerful sense of smell, and he can tell whenever we have been to the pet store and picked up treats for him without even taking them out of the bag. He mobs us when we walk in the door and tries to get to the bags. He can smell wrapped hard candy in my pants pockets, and tries to put his nose down my pocket to extract them. He may not see the bunnies as he walks past them, but he can smell where their holes are and tries to dig them out. I think it would be very distracting to have such a keen sense of smell.
What smells and tastes are evocative for you? What are your favorite smells to have wafting through your home?
The main north-south highway route through my town sports a deep underpass beneath the east-west rail tracks that pass through the middle of town. It is prone to flooding, and for many years it was the only way to get from the north side of town to the south side of town when a train was passing.
The underpass has large cement walls. About 10 years ago a civic minded friend, with the blessing of the City and State authorities, commissioned a California mural artist to paint the sides the the underpass. He painted regional images, like Ukrainian dancers, rodeo cowboys, wheat fields, and Badlands on the cement walls. It was really lovely.
Over the years, moisture has leached through the paint and it has become unstable. The paint was peeling off with no way to restore the images. There was surprisingly very little vandalism, I should add. A couple of weeks ago, the city closed the underpass and painted over the murals with white paint. It was sad, but there wasn’t anything else to do. I wonder how much public art we have lost over the centuries due to problems like this.
What are your favorite public art works? What would you want to paint on a mural?
Besides NDSU in Fargo and UND in Grand Forks, there are five other smaller, State-funded four year colleges in ND. That is in addition to the State-funded technical college in Wahpeton and two smaller State-funded two year colleges in Bottineau and Williston. That is a lot of State colleges for a place as sparsely populated as ND.
The five smaller four year colleges are enshrined in the ND State Constitution. That means they must continue to exist unless the Constitution is amended. The colleges are expected to be financially self supporting with tuition and not with tax dollars. What is a college to do, though, if, as national trends tell us, there will be fewer and fewer students attending college due to declining birth rates?
The college in our town is facing this very issue, and has made the very unpopular and draconian decision to eliminate the Music and Theatre Departments. They even are firing the guy who is the main tech person who is the only one who knows how the electronics in the auditorium work. It is traditionally a Teacher’s College and has strong Nursing, Agriculture, and Business Departments. I am sure they didn’t even consider eliminating the sports teams. They have told the Music and Theatre majors they need to find somewhere else to go next year.
What is a college without a band? It is hard enough to find elementary and secondary music teachers out here, and now it will be doubly difficult. State law requires that State property like the band instruments, band and choir music, and pianos, can’t be sold and must be given away. Our church is going to try to snag the timpani and big percussion instruments. I might try for a bass clarinet, as that is my instrument. It is all very sad.
If you went to college or technical school, what were your most memorable experiences? What makes a college a good place?
We have purple grapes hanging all over the place on our deck. They were particularly plenteous this year because of our snow last winter and the summer rains. You can see some of them in the header photo. The late fall migrants as well as the birds who stay around all winter have been gathering in droves to eat them. I used to make grape jelly but we don’t eat that much jelly, and a little grape jelly goes a long way, so we leave them for the birds. The grapes will dry and be a nice food source for them and the squirrels all winter. Squirrels have also made off with all the nuts on our hazel shrubs. I hope they ate them and didn’t just bury them in random places like they usually do.
Birds like to congregate in our yard with all the shrubs and protection from the wind as well as the feeders. We use black oil sunflower seeds in the feeders. I don’t care if the squirrels eat them, since they get hungry, too. I like our yard being a favorite hangout. Husband and I sat on the deck this afternoon in the calm, sunny weather listening to all the bird song after finishing our winter preparations for the yard. It was lovely.
Where were your favorite hangouts as a kid and as a teenager?
My mom was diagnosed with Covid Sunday. Nothing serious, (well, for a 97 yr old, anything is serious) but she just had cold symptoms. I visited her Sunday afternoon to help with supper and see how she was doing. I used extra precautions. And by Thursday she was pretty much back to her normal.
Monday morning, we learned of the death of one of Kelly’s coworkers. A woman who was the party planner and team cheerleader at work, and usually Kelly’s confidant and meeting co-giggler and chief conspirator. “DD” had become a good friend of the family and she was the first to bring cookies and lemonade when I had shoulder surgery and back surgery. She’d been fighting cancer for 8 years and nothing was working. She started some last-ditch efforts this fall, while being told all the side effects, and the possibility of having about 6 months left. Her son is in 11th grade, and her plan was to be here through his graduation. And then, well, the plan changed. She’d been in the hospital for a few weeks and breathing had become an issue. Then she was diagnosed with Leukemia. She never could get a break. Kelly and I always said she just needed a ‘do over’. Her son is the young padawan who worked with me over the summers. There’s a lot of support and family around and we all hope he realizes that and overcomes all the forthcoming obstacles. Mom and son had talked about this possibility and things are set up well for him.
Tuesday evening, I tested positive for Covid. Made it through 3 years! Just cold symptoms; stuffy nose, a bit of a cough. Tired, with some body aches Wednesday. Right after I told Kelly I shouldn’t be running heavy machinery, I went out and used the tractor and loader and ripped out some stumps and moved some junk, leveled some gravel, and hauled more in, and scraped up some dirt and filled in a hole in the yard that had been there since July. Sometimes we just need to do it, right? It didn’t involve physical labor, and I needed a nap afterward. By Friday I’m feeling pretty good, still testing positive, and I can tell I have covid brain.
Wednesday, I got word of another death. A fellow theater technician in Rochester. Janet was a lighting designer and technical director at the civic theater for years. She had told me her cancer was back and she had started treatments. She said it was terminal, but she might last 10 years, and she laughed. Two weeks later, she had died. I don’t know details, but it’s another reminder we need to be grateful for each day.
Do the thing! Say I Love You! Make the call! Get past the bitterness!
DD and Janet were just such great people. And it sucks so much they’ve left us too early.
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Nothing harvested yet. I’ve said the soybeans should be OK. “There will at least be a crop there” is what I said last week. That’s still true, but they need to actually be harvested and sold before I can count them. Mine still have some green in them. While we had 27 degrees last week, that was only in the low spots and many plants and weeds are still green. And with the damp, cool weather we’re having, harvest of soybeans isn’t happening. According to the USDA production report and statistics, as of 10/15, 76% of soybeans had been harvested. About average. Soybeans are very susceptible to moisture, so these cool days makes them hard to get dry enough to combine, and the more we get into November, the more cool days we get. So, we keep our fingers crossed. The corn won’t be an issue getting harvested. Barring windstorms knock-on-wood. I’d like it before the ground freezes so I can do tillage work.
The puppy. We’ve named her Luna. She’s pretty much decided to stay here.
She’s very food oriented and will do anything we want if there’s a treat offered.
The last few days we haven’t had her on a leash. Humphrey has decided she’s not much of a threat. They don’t interact a lot, and he’s got his pillows, which she doesn’t use, and he just kind of accepts this is what it is now. We give him a lot of extra attention. Bailey and Luna play a lot together. I think Bailey is more annoyed that even Luna gets to go in the house! Luna doesn’t pay much attention to the chickens. She can run 25 MPH! We’re in the gator timing her. She’s crazy fast!
I’ve been working out in the shop the last few days getting the door put on the gator. It’s getting colder out, and we want doors. Our first gator had doors, but it was a lemon. This gator showed up without hard doors; it had the net half doors. I ordered the door kit, which showed up in a box 4’ wide and 6’ long on a pallet just as big. While I worked on them, the dogs either hung out inside with me or outside where Luna chewed up a bunch of sticks.
The gator turned over 100 miles. And at 17.7 hours, that’s only 5.6 MPH, which seems kinda slow. With Luna, I’m sure the average will creep up.
I’ve said before how I take the dogs outside before bed and I spend a few minutes out there watching the stars. My buddy Orion is back if I stay up late enough. Jupiter has been a bright light all year. I am grateful.
Two fairly major surprises happened here this week. One involved tomatoes. The other involved wind.
Before the first killing frost a couple of weeks ago, Husband and I picked about 80 lbs of green tomatoes. I had little faith they would ripen given their immaturity, but they did, thankfully not all at once. I just piled them in laundry baskets and cardboard boxes and set them in a warm room all covered up. I haven’t had good luck in the past ripening green tomatoes. As of yesterday we had only about 10 lbs left. Most went to the Food Pantry. I canned another five quarts of sauce with some. The remainders will get taken to work.
The other surprise was less pleasant. On Tuesday I drove home from work at a little before 5:00. I drive west and then north to get home. I live about 2 miles from my work. It was sunny with a dark cloud bank on the western horizon. It got quickly and increasingly darker as I drove west, and when I was halfway home I saw a huge wall of dust barreling towards me from the west, obscuring everything behind it. It was the very edge of a fast moving cold front. As I turned north to get to my house the wind and dust hit the van. Leaves were flying off the trees and swirling madly in small funnels. Small branches and grit hit the side of the van, and then it started to rain. The wind was clocked at 70 mph. The temperature dropped by 15°. I have never seen a cold front move in that quickly, nor have I ever been at the utter forefront of one.
What surprising things happened to you this week? How do you ripen green tomatoes?
Our local newspaper has been running adds for the last couple of weeks for the various “haunted” venues that are being offered to the public. There is one in a small town about 20 miles west of us, and one here in town at the old hospital.
The Haunted Hospital is said to be quite frightening. The owners of the building rent out much of the space to the Food Pantry, some mental health provider offices, and some take-out food places. The bulk of the building, especially the older parts from the 1930’s and 1950’s is empty, and it is there that the haunting occurs. The owners make much of the fact that many people have died in the building. They recently bought out the inventory of a defunct haunted venue from Montana, including a really old hearse.
I have never been to any of the Halloween venues. I hate being surprised or startled. I can hardly watch a movie or read a book with any suspense in it. I believe most of the teenage population of town has visited this, I believe. The real world is scary enough without adding to it for Halloween. I suppose, though that I could tolerate performing as a scary person at a haunted venue. That could be interesting.
What was your favorite Halloween costume? Whatpart would you like to perform at a haunted venue?
In an effort at team building and increased camaraderie, our new clinical director declared last Friday Band Shirt Day. Many of my coworkers wore band shirts, including a very middle aged addiction counselor who proudly showed off her Def Leppard shirt. There were lots of country music shirts, along with shirts worn by my younger colleagues sporting bands I had never heard of. All I had was a Handbell Musicians of America shirt, so I wore that.
It used to be that we could only wear jeans to work on Fridays if we paid a dollar. The proceeds went to fund the social committee and our annual Christmas party at the local Knights of Columbus Hall. We haven’t had a boozy blowout like that in almost 10 years after our party loving Regional Director retired. Now we just have a noon potluck in the big staff room in early December.
There isn’t much of a dress code at my agency now, which I think is a good thing. I dress in corduroy pants and sweaters most of the time. I like to be comfortable. I only dress up when I have to testify in court. We don’t have to pay to wear jeans anymore, either. We have more important things to be concerned about these days.
What kind of dress codes were there at your places of work? What band shirt or shirt with a picture or slogan do you like the most?
Trail Baboon 