All posts by reneeinnd

2026, Government, home, Uncategorized

Proud

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Husband attends a weekly men’s bible study at our church, and a man more elderly than Husband welcomed him and told him he had moved to a good county, as people here take care of each other.

I always knew that people here were good to one another, but this was really brought home to me by an article in the local paper last week that a private and county funded program was paying for outpatient mental health treatment for county residents with unaffordable deductibles or no insurance. There has been a 200% increase in residents using the program over the past year. Eligible residents only need to pay $25 per session for up to 10 sessions. As a mental health professional and county resident I am elated to hear this. I believe we will contribute to this fund.

Yesterday we attended the grand opening of the new butcher shop in town started with funds from a community group and owned and operated by the granddaughter of our former milk man. It is a wonderful place, and hundreds of people visited it and loved it.

Husband has signed up for a canoe/kayak day trip on the Rock River on June 13th sponsored by the Chamber of Comnerce. He is renting a canoe from the Chamber for the trip. The woman at the Chamber was so concerned that a canoe might be too much for him that she told him they will bring an extra kayak just in case he needs it. I am really happy we moved here!

What has your city or county done lately that makes you proud? What are your favorite charities and local help organizations?

2026, animals, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Hummers

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In North Dakota we would see the occasional hummingbird in the fall as they migrated west to their winter quarters. They loved the flowers in our garden, especially the monarda and cone flowers. I was glad they could get some sustenance in our yard before they headed over the Rockies.

I never saw many hummingbirds in Luverne when I was growing up. I was fooled many times by hummingbird moths.

Since moving back we have seen several hummingbirds in our yard, small, emerald green ones. Yesterday Boommate concocted a clear, bird friendly hummingbird solution to put in the feeder outside her window. She plans to lure them with a basket of flowers on a plant hanger. I am excited to have this. The birds are so magical. I am sure her cats will be fascinated as they peer out the window at the birds.

Boommate tells us there used to be, or perhaps still is, a couple in the Cities who had several dozen hummingbird feeders in their yard who would cook up gallons of liquid for the feeders every day. They apparently had hundreds of hummingbirds in their yard. I don’t think we are up to something of that magnitude, but what a sight!

Got Hummers? Been fooled by the moths? Opinions about bird feeding?

2026, Family, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Scientific Furniture Shopping

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Daughter is really putting down roots in Tacoma and has purchased a condo. It is quite a bit bigger than than her apartment.

Daughter has enlisted numerous friends to help with the move. She has a dear friend who is an engineer of some sort and who has been through the house buying and refurnishing process and who has taken her in hand regarding buying new furniture.

Daughter needs a new sofa. Friend insisted that the sofa must have a frame made from wood from a certain place in North Carolina for strength and longevity, along with many other caveats for structural stability. The two young women spent the day in Seattle yesterday sitting on sofas. Daughter texted me that she found one she loved at Crate and Barrel and was deciding on fabric swatches. I do hope the internal structure met the engineer’s specifications!

I think I like the advice another friend gave daughter regarding buying furniture: “buy once, cry once”, meaning buy the best you can afford so it lasts longer.

Any furniture buying stories? How do your tastes in furniture style run?

2026, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Heads And Shoulders, Knees And Toes

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The childhood song has been going through my head. Husband is 72. Boommate and I are 68. Between the three of us, I think we have one functional body (but three functional brains).

Husband has arthritis and carpal tunnel issues in both hands. Boommate has had both knees replaced. She also had a shoulder repair after getting knocked over by a horse. I was doing pretty well until recently when I seem to have developed arthritis in both my shoulders that has greatly reduced my range of motion and caused a lot of pain. The sciatica issues for me are manageable and just intermittent. I have a broken toe that healed crooked and is totally numb.

It has been interesting seeing how we have managed to get gardening and moving chores done cooperatively. I am the only one who can crawl on my hands and knees. That means I can get down really low and weed and plant and plug things in. Boommate and Husband are taller than I am, so they can stretch and reach things that I can’t. Boommate and I have great manual dexterity to counter Husband’s hand problems. Husband is very strong and can carry stuff we can’t. It is all working out!

How are you joints and tendons these days? What chores are you doling out to others? What is the best team you ever worked with?

2026, Kids, Media, Music, Uncategorized, Words

Childhood Misunderstandings

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As I drove to Brookings this week I heard MPR play a recording by Van Cliburn. I remembered my confusion, as a child, regarding his name. I could never figure out why no one ever mentioned his first name. My confusion stemmed from growing up in an area heavily populated by Dutch immigrants. There were Vanden Hoeks, Van Neuenhuizens, Van Roekels, etc, so I thought Van Cliburn was his full last name. Imagine my surprise when I realized Van was his first name and he wasn’t Dutch!

This memory triggered another language based misunderstanding regarding Offenbach. In one of my first piano books I had a very simple piece written by Offenbach, but I didn’t know that was a formal name. I thought it was a German word that meant that you had to stand up when you played the piece, getting “Off the bench or off your backside”. I remember my piano teacher trying not to laugh when I explained my reasoning for why I stood up to play the piece.

A few weeks ago I was complaining to my daughter in law about my dislike for my exercise class, but how it was helping me improve my strength and stamina. Grandson was eying the Tylenol bottle at the time, and asked why, if I took Tylenol and it said “extra strength” did I even go to my class, since the Tylenol would give me extra strength. We explained it was the Tylenol that was strong, but it didn’t make me strong.

I think my favorite childhood misunderstanding was that held by a good friend from college. He was an accomplished oboe player from a small town in Eastern ND. The summer after he graduated from high school he travelled to Europe with a concert band from the International Music Camp (located on the ND/Canadian border). They played a concert in Washington, DC before heading overseas. He told me his confusion hearing the length of time the flight to Europe would take from DC, because it seemed so short, and his embarrassment realizing that his entire life he thought Washington, DC was in Washington State, hence the shorter travel time!

Any memorable childhood misunderstandings?

2026, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Low Alto

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When I was in high school I was fortunate to have wonderful music teachers and choir/ band directors. My favorite choir director, Mr. Phelps, was a Concordia College, Moorhead grad who eventually settled in the Twin Cities, where he was equally beloved by students there.

Mr. Phelps, aka Showboat Phelps to other local directors, really knew how to put on a show, be it musicals or difficult choral pieces. One Christmas we did The Messiah. It is a demanding piece with a very high First Tenor part. Mr. Phelps had no qualms about enlisting the Second Altos to sing First Tenor in the Messiah as well as on any other song the Tenors struggled with. I am a Second Alto, and to this day I still know the First Tenor part from The Messiah much better than the Alto part.

My speaking voice isn’t particularly low, but singing Tenor in high school as my voice was maturing kept my singing range really low. My voice breaks at the C above Middle C, and I am able to get down comfortably to the D below Middle C. That is pretty low.

Last week in church choir the Bass section was having a hard time with a couple of measures that had several accidentals. it was identical to the Alto part an octave higher. The director joked that it was too bad we couldn’t sing the part with the Bass section in their register. I told her I could, and I did. The Sopranos were astounded I could sing that low. I was the only one who could sing the measures correctly. Thanks, Mr. Phelps. It’s just too bad you didn’t have me sing along with the Sopranos as well as the Tenors. Think of what my vocal range would have been if you had!

What were your best/worst school music experiences? What is your vocal range?

2026, Food, home, Uncategorized

All Is Revealed

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Our kitchen is very long and runs east and west. The living room is at the east end, and an open area where we keep the piano, media cabinet, and musical instruments is at the west end. There is a window on the far west wall. The photo below shows the west window by the media cabinet, and was shot ftom the livingroom.

Our kitchen cupboards are stained a dark walnut brown. They usually don’t show much dirt or spills. We try to keep things pretty neat and clean when we cook, but spills do happen and we wipe them up, of course.

I generally feel pretty good about the cleanliness of our kitchen, and a casual glance most times of day would support that assessment. However, when the sun shines through the far west window, it illuminates every spill, smudge, smear, and dust particle on the cupboard doors that makes it look as though we have been flinging food all over the place and leaving it to it drip down and dry. That is a lot of cupboard front to wash regularly, but the revealing afternoon sun keeps me on my alert. It is one of my least favorite cleaning chores. I suppose I could just shut the blinds to block the sun, but the Dutch in me couldn’t live with the knowledge that the cupboard fronts need cleaning.

What housecleaning tasks do you dislike the most? What do you like or dislike about your kitchen cupboards.

2026, home, pets, Uncategorized

The Big Chews

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Our puppy is 5 months old and at the peak of teething. I am happy to report that she isn’t a chewer of furniture, although like most terriers she loves to steal socks and tries to haul off shoes that get left out.

We get her collagen chewing sticks of various lengths. She loves to gnaw on those. Rawhide is now deemed very unhealthy for dogs. She also loves to chew on her brother when they wrestle and chase. He reciprocates by stealing her favorite collagen chew whenever he can. Here she is with her longest chew. There are chews of various lengths all over the house.

Mitzi may not chew on furniture, but she has set herself a bigger goal of devouring our deck floor. We have a very large deck. It is perfect for the dogs to run and chase and tumble and wrestle

It even extends beyond the vertical boards you see, which is where the previous homeowners had their hot tub.

We knew the deck floor wasn’t in the best shape when we bought the house, and we plan to replace it one of these years with some indestructible modern composite like Trex. Mitzi decided about a month or so ago to speed up the replacement process by finding vulnerable sections in the flooring and chewing them up.

We didn’t catch on to what she was doing right away. After we realized what was happening we bought some inexpensive welcome mats to put on the vulnerable floor sections and we watch her very carefully when she is outside. The Vet and her breeder assure us that she will be over the Big Chews in a couple of weeks.

Any stories of destruction by your pets? When have you bitten off more than you could chew?

Family, home, Music, Uncategorized

Interconnected

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Yesterday was very busy for us. I had a Dorcas Circle bible study meeting at 7:00 AM ( I still can’t get over what a funny name that is), and then we had a tree service arrive to do some trimming at 8:30. At 10:15 we left for Sioux Falls to get both dogs groomed. While we waited we made a trip to Costco and HyVee grocery. We don’t plan to revisit Sioux Falls for 6 weeks or so.

At my bible study, a woman who I had not met before wanted to know who I was. I explained we had moved here from North Dakota. The other women interjected that I had grown up here. I explained that I was a Boomgaarden. She looked very closely at me and said “Of course you are! You look just like your mother!” More conversation revealed we had the same Grade 3 teacher, but in different years.

Husband wrote a cheque to the tree trimmers when they finished at 10:00. The service is owned by a husband/wife team who both do the trimming. When the wife saw my name on the cheque she asked if I had any relatives in Hawarden, Iowa. (That is a small town south of us in northwest Iowa. My father’s family is from northwest Iowa.) She said that she grew up in Hawarden, and as a little girl would take May baskets to an elderly woman named Dorothy Boomgaarden, who would always yodel for her. My grandfather had 11 brothers and sisters, and anyone around this area with that name is probably a relative. Sure enough, when I looked up Dorothy’s obituary she turned out to be the wife of one of my father’s numerous first cousins. In her obituary it stated that her passion for yodeling couldn’t be forgotten.

I continue to revel in the interconnectedness I feel here. I wish I knew the story behind the yodeling. What a great thing to put in her obituary.

What funny things would you like in your obituary? Ever tried to yodel? What interesting things could your relatives do?

2026, Family, home, Music, Uncategorized

Irritating Music

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Yesterday Husband and I heard Ravel’s Bolero on MPR. Husband commented, somewhat in jest “Friends don’t make friends listen to Bolero“. I understand that many people find the piece irritating. I recently learned that Ravel was inspired to write the piece after hearing the weaving machines in one of his father’s factories. His father was an engineer and manufacturer, and I can hear the rhythym of the machines in the music. I find that interesting, and the piece has become far more pleasant for me to listen to.

I played bass clarinet one season in the Fargo Moorhead Symphony when I was in college, and we played Bolero. Our music was rented from a national music rental company that rented music to orchestras all over the country. There are interminable sections of rests in the piece, and written into my score in pencil on about the third page of the piece were the words “Nudge Walt”. I asked the clarinet player next to me about it, and he said it was probably in reference to a bassoon player in the Philadelphia Orchestra for the bass clarinet player to alert him that his part was starting. I guess that many orchestra players have written into their contracts that they don’t have to perform Bolero.

I find most classical music wonderful, except perhaps that of Anton Bruckner, who I find ponderous and boring, and Phillip Glass, who I don’t understand at all. I also find I appreciate music the more I know about the composer. My favorite composers right now are Bartok, Sibelius, and Janacek.

Who are your favorite and least favorite composers? What kind of music do you listen to the most?