Category Archives: education

2024, education, Family, Farming Update, Gatherings, Media, Theatre, Uncategorized

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? ❤️

2023, animals, education, Family, Farming Update, Gatherings, Uncategorized, work

Heat!

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Today’s Farming Update post comes from Ben.

No snow this year. I’m kinda OK with that. I’m sure it’s coming yet…we got 2 or 3 months of winter to get through, so I’m hooking up the rear blade and I’ll keep watching the forecast and I’ll get the snow blower in the shed if I have too. We will need the moisture somehow, and the cold weather does help kill bugs, but these up and down temps are really hard on cattle. Pneumonia and respiratory issues are common with these temperature fluctuations.

The farm magazines are making predictions and they pretty much always say “stay the course”. Don’t make drastic changes in crop rotations or marketing plans. Yet. I’ve gotten pecuniary plans from the co-op for fertilizer and spraying for 2024 and things are actually down a little bit from 2023. A few thousand dollars here and a few thousand there and pretty soon I’m talking real money. But I’m not planning any more major projects for next year. Yet. I mean beyond getting the fourth wall in the shed. We may not do that next slab of concrete. Yet.

County property tax adjuster was here this week. The permit for my shed remodeling project came in and he was following up. I know the guy from our township business with the county, and we talked for half an hour. Five minutes of that had to do with the shed remodeling.

Yesterday I got a 100 gallon propane tank placed so I can have temporary heat in the shed this winter. The deliver guy joked I was going to use a lot of propane trying to heat the whole shed. Yep. I better get the temp wall up. That’s my plan for these couple warm days. So far I’m not making much progress.

While I’m making plans for shed heat, back on Sunday night it was 8° and the well house thermometer was showing 35° and I am a gambling man and I hate to pay for electricity I don’t really need to use, but it’s also worth hedging your bets and I went out and turned on the well house heater. It was 18° the next morning but I slept soundly knowing I didn’t have to worry about that.
Myself, and I know other people, use that phrase: I may do something that seems extreme, but, “I will be able to sleep at night”.

Got my final dividend check from AMPI, the co-op to whom I sold milk. They are on a 20 year dividend payout and this was my last one. Whopping $2.19 cents. Twenty years since I milked a cow and did all those chores seems like a lifetime ago. Seems like a whole DIFFERENT life. And it really was. I wouldn’t of missed it for anything. I still miss the cows’ personalities, and the situations they gave me and the people I met as a result.

Our kids daycare having a barn and farm tour.


Our bulk tank was a “Zero” brand. Kind of an oddball as the company had a unique design that didn’t work the way most dairy pipelines did. It was the first pipeline we installed in 1983 replacing the Surge brand buckets. Surge buckets were revolutionary when they came out in the 1920’s. (See this website for a lot of interesting information. “Interesting” if you’re into that sort of thing. https://www.surgemilker.com/history.html

The zero pipeline had some really unique features, but it also had a couple pretty serious drawbacks that affected the cows health. Too complicated to get into here. I replaced the pipeline, (keeping the Zero tank) in the mid 1990s with a Delaval system; a much more traditional system that was easier to service and cheaper parts. I sold the bulk tank a few years after we sold the milk cows. I saw a video online the other day of the same brand of tank and it brought back some nostalgic memories.

This photo was the milk house. The bulk tank is on the left. 600 gallons. Note the step stool to reach the lid for cleaning or samples. The four milker units are hanging, for washing, on the right. Wow, looking at this photo myself gives me so many memories. So many things I fixed over the years and so much time spent in there. The milkhouse was remodeled when we did the pipeline in 1983, but before that it was still the milkhouse and I remember washing the old bulk tank and surge milkers in there and my folks would say, “How did you get so wet??”. Well, I was washing stuff. Shrug. My history.


This photo was the ‘receiver jar’. You can see the milk came into that, and when it was about 2/3rds full, it pumped over to the bulk tank. I really loved having that jar. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but that was my favorite part of dairy farming: watching the milk rush into that and pump out. I’d watch that jar for hours.


Everybody travel safe if you are.
Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays!

HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO DO SOMETHING SO YOU COULD SLEEP?  WHERE WERE YOU IN 2003?

2023, education, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Treats

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Husband has been the secretary on the board of directors for our local food pantry for the past three years. He has to type the minutes for the monthly meetings, a thankless task. His term is up this month. He typed his last minutes on Saturday.

Husband said he got the motivation for finishing the minutes by promising himself that he could bake some rye bread when he was done. He loves baking rye bread so much he considers it a treat. The bread was really good.

I had a dear friend who was a philosophy professor who would reward himself with a small glass of cognac and a good cigar after grading every twenty essays and papers. I always wondered if his grading of the first papers was somewhat different from the grading of the last papers. Freshman philosophy essays must have been pretty tedious to read year after year.

What motivates you to finish a tedious job? Ever had to write up meeting minutes? Did you ever take a philosophy class?

2023, Automotive, education, Family, Technology

Turning….

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Over the weekend I was driving in the left lane on 66th when a white car pulled in front of me.  I was started to grumble my usual sarcastic “Thanks for signaling” when I noticed the driver had his left arm sticking straight out of his window.  After a bit I thought maybe he was signaling his turn but that seemed so ancient of a gesture that I was sure I was wrong.  Then he signaled again with his arm when he moved over into the left-turn lane. 

His brake lights were working fine so I don’t know if his turn lights don’t or if he just likes the breeze on his arm on a lovely day.  What I do know is that using your arm for a turn signal, while it was taught routinely when I was a kid, is not taught now.  YA had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her.

Do you have air-conditioning in your car?  Or do you prefer opening the windows to get the breeze?

2023, education, Family, gardening, Kids, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Fall

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Yesterday was the first day of fall, and it was cool and cloudy, I noticed this week that the leaves were just starting to change color. The garden is finally slowing down. I am done canning tomatoes.

Fall has always been my favorite season. Not too hot, not too cold. (We won’t talk about the Ocober 5, 2005 snowstorm that shut the area down for three days and broke off hundreds of tree limbs.) I like the cooler nights.

Things at work always pick up in the fall, especially for those of us who work with children. Bad news at parent-teacher conferences means the phones start ringing at my agency from calls from frantic parents wanting help for their ornery children. Fall is a time of truth and reckoning for some of us.

What are your favorite things about fall? Any favorite fall songs or poems? Did your parents ever get bad news at parent-teacher conferences?

2023, education, Family, History, Kids, Uncategorized

First Day Of School

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Last Wednesday was our grandson’s first day of Kindergarten. He was happy, proud and confident. He is, after all, 5 years old, and in his mind, he can do anything! His parents were dewy eyed, and our DIL had to redo her eye makeup when she got to work after dropping grandson off. I reminded son that I missed his first day of school since I had moved to Iowa to do my psychology internship, leaving him for the year with his father.

My first day of school was in Mrs. Helling’s room. I teased my mother in the weeks before school as she, a Grade 3 teacher, was getting her room ready and I would go with her to the school , warning her that I would slip into Mrs. Cooney’s room next door. Wouldn’t you know, my teasing got me all confused and I actually went into Mrs. Cooney’s classroom and was told to go next door. I was mortified!

What are some of your memories of first days of school?

2023, education, Family, Food, Gatherings, Travel, Uncategorized

Certified

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Daughter came up with an interesting proposal for a winter family gathering this year. She thinks that we should go to Hawaii with her, her brother, and his wife, and all take a class being offered there in November to become Certified Barbeque Competition Judges. I don’t know how much call there is for Barbecue Judges, or how rigorous the one day training is. I suppose we could fine other things to do as long as were there. I would rather go to Paris and work with a master baguette maker.

Ever since I lived in Canada I giggle whenever I hear that something or someone is certified, as it has a different meaning in Canada and England than it does in the States. Those who we call Certified Public Accountants are called Chartered Public Accountants in Canada, as being “certified” there can mean that you have been declared seriously mentally ill, and may have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps one would have to be a little crazy, though, to become a barbeque judge.

What would you like to become certified as? What are your experiences with judges or being a judge?

2023, Art, education, Family, Uncategorized

Silk Purses

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I have no artistic ability whatsoever, and I am amazed by those who do. Husband can draw quite well, and his mother painted landscapes. Our daughter also has some nice artistic abilities.

I don’t think Daughter really liked art projects very much in the early grades, but seemed to really like an art class she took as an elective in High School. One of her projects was to weave a basket. It seemed to start out ok, but just didn’t work out as she wanted it to, and thought she had failed the project. The art teacher, however, saw something more in her failed basket.

He noticed that instead of a basket she had created a lovely Flamenco dancer. You can see her head thrown back, with her orange hair, and the outlines of her body under her dress. Daughter was surprised I still had the dancer. It reminds me that lovely things can come out of what we think are failures.

What kind of art are you best at? What kind of art do you like to have around you and look at? When have you made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

2023, animals, education, Farming Update, home, News, Theatre, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Officially Summer

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Today’s post and farm update comes from Ben.

It’s hardly fair that down here in our valley, it’s colder in the winter AND hotter in the summer. It’s not even noon on Thursday and it’s 89°. Plus, we don’t always get the breeze. What a cruel, cruel world.

I just took the back off the chicken coop and turned on their fan. Supposed to get baby chicks next week. They won’t hardly need a heat lamp. 

The corn is growing, soybeans are just coming out, and the oats is looking a little rough in a few spots, but it’s coming along. We think the cold and rain right after planting affected the oats. Oats doesn’t like wet ground, plus there may have been enough rain to wash out some nutrients. We’ll have to see how it does. The co-op is getting ready to spray for weeds in the corn, and to spray the oats with fungicides and to prevent broadleaf weeds.

 
I’m officially done working at the college for the summer, but considering I wasn’t there last week when I was supposed to be, I have to go back and at least haul out garbage and put some things away and sit in the dark theater for a few minutes and have my talk with the room and just feel the energy. Yeah. I do that. All the people and activities that have come through the theater in the last 12 months, it’s good to take time and reflect on them.

Our neighbors who rent our pasture have brought cattle out.

The cows were really interested in my cutting grass right next to them the other night. I just didn’t have a camera on me.


The next show I’m lighting, ‘Raisin in the Sun’, has gotten through the first few tech rehearsals and it should be getting easier now. My friend Paul has been working night and day on the set. Three doors, a window, full vintage kitchen with working sink. And what a lot of props in this show! (It was funny to watch the cast try to figure out the record player).

The directors are from the Twin Cities.

You probably all know the plot or have seen the movies and know it’s about a black family. Finding actors of color in Rochester is difficult; in the community theaters, there may be a few. At the college, we might have two or three. So to find eight for this show, plus understudies, took a lot of community engagement before-hand. And there’s a lot of new people! I know one actor, who was at the college 13 years ago. It’s a good group of actors, and they’re doing great, and it should be a good production.

I keep saying my life is slowing down. Next week. I’ve rescheduled a massage for the third time. I’ve rescheduled a fire alarm inspection twice, and the dentist once. 

I had to stop at the Farm Service Agency on Thursday and do my crop certification. I tell them what I planted where and when and how many acres. That information is used to determine cropping history and eligibility for payments in the event of natural disasters or other government payments.

Their map acres don’t match my map acres and they map out all the waterways and I end up with 55 fields on their maps. I only have about 19 fields on my maps. The staff there is always great and I hand them my maps with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is, and they figure it out. I come back later and sign it.

I started cleaning up machinery. Swept out the cab of the tractor and power washed the outside.

Started to wash the next tractor and the power washer made some terrible grinding sounds, and then it didn’t make any sounds anymore. Hmm.

I spent a few hours one day riding around in a big truck guiding the driver as he applied calcium chloride for dust control on the township gravel roads. It’s a fun way to spend a few hours.

Spotted 5 sandhill cranes a few different days. And we’re still hearing them call.

I got most of the soybean fields dragged to smooth them out. I’ve stopped now because the beans are too close to sprouting. It sure is dusty and dry, (see header photo) and every spring I’m reminded how much I rely on the ‘texture’ to find my path. It’s harder when it’s this dry and the ground didn’t work up well.

I also use a boating app that maps my route. That way I can at least tell if I skipped a spot somewhere. I use a free version, so I don’t get a map, I just get the path.

It is useful especially at night and trying to find where I left off in a field. I saw a drivers ed car: ‘St. Joseph Driving School’ with a Renaissance style image spread across the whole drivers side of St. Joseph. Considering ‘Catholic.org’ says Joseph is the patron saint of dying, maybe that’s not who I want for a driving instructor. But it seems like a great name, and it was a great image for the business!

Hauling my fertilizer wagon and some other small things to the auction in Plainview.

Next week, NEXT WEEK, I’ll start working on the shop!

DID YOU HAVE DRIVERS ED?

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR SPIRITUAL ENERGY?

2023, education, Family, Farming Update, Gatherings, Nature, Seasons, Weather

May Showers

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This weekend’s Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Talking about animals…. Again… I heard the song ‘Sky Pilot’ by The Animals.

How many of the baboons have served in the military? Thank you for serving.

Anything you’d like to share about your service?

Any comments about the song?

I got started planting corn on Friday. Checked seed depth and placement.

Then I got rained out. It wasn’t supposed to rain until 7:00 and then only a little bit. Well. It started raining about 4:30. And it doesn’t take much before it’s sticking to the wheels of the tractor and planter, and the press wheels and closing wheels. And once that happens, seed depth is affected and it’s time to stop. And it rained all evening and we got an inch. Then another half inch the next day. And another inch Thursday. And I was dealing with Commencement Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday so the rain was OK. A lot of other guys got corn got planted though. Big equipment and many guys working a lot of longer hours than I do. Kudo’s to them. I talked to one guy who not only finished planting corn but finished planting soybeans as well. He said, “When we start something we go hard.” I guess. And it’s more than just him working it too. So it goes. We’ll get there.

Commencement went well; a good bunch of people, and while there were some minor technical issues, nothing serious. My work student, April and I hung a few lights last week, before they placed the stage. Monday, the IT guys had the projector hanging and running and the screen up before I got there at 10:00 AM.

April and I then hung the rest of the main lights, we got all the ground stuff running before I went home Monday evening about 7:00. It should have been sooner, but I had some issues. There was a high impendence air gap* in one of the fixtures that daisy chained to several others. And I numbered some of them wrong. Twice. I spent two hours trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Part of me just wanted to go home and deal with it in the morning with a fresh mind. But I knew I’d lay in bed thinking about this. I knew I had to fix it before I went home. Ah. Yep, Brain Fart. Numbered them appropriately and I went home and slept well.

It always comes down fast; a lot of helpers picking up chairs and the IT crew get their stuff down quick, and April and I got our stuff down quick and we were done with the hard part by 9:00 PM. Hauled my stuff back to the theater and the truck showed up for the rental stuff and I was home having ice cream by 10:00 PM.

AND! None of my appendages or internal organs fell off, or plugged up, or turned red, or swoll up! Yay me! I can do this!!  

Last week was Kelly’s birthday. This week was my birthday. And Friday the 12th was our 33rd wedding anniversary. We don’t celebrate too hard. (we all took the day off and slept in) There’s a big family reunion happening on Saturday. It started as a ‘cousins get-together’; my nieces and nephews; that set of cousins. Some from Florida, some from South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and various places in Minnesota. The cousins getting together turned into the whole families getting together and we’ll celebrate all the birthdays in May (There’s at least 6), Mothers day, our anniversary, our son and DiL’s anniversary, and our matriarch, my mom, turning 97 on the 16th.

Kelly and I always laugh about going to the all-night grocery store about midnight before our wedding because she wanted 3 gallons of lime sherbet for the punch the next day. I remember saying “Where are you going to put it!??” in her tiny little apartment freezer.

Kelly’s taste and smell are coming back after her covid. And she’s got a bit of a cough yet. My nose still runs, but I’m good otherwise.

We were running errands the other night and taking the scenic route and heard, off in the corner of a parking lot, a Jazz band. They were playing New Orleans jazz and it was really fun and we parked and listened to them for a few minutes. We tried to find out if they do this every Sunday night or it was just a jam session, or what, but we didn’t find anyone that spoke English. Man, they were good!

Signed a contract for insulation for the shop. Found some ‘reject’ windows at a lumber yard that I decided to add. Used some chalk and marked out the floor for the walls and doors. Talked to some HVAC and LP guys about how big of a heater I’d need and where to put the LP tank.

My college boss made a comment about the next show opening in 2 weeks and my head kinda went blank for a minute. Heck. My focus was just on getting through commencement. I knew there was another show at the end of the month, but I hadn’t really looked at the calendar yet. It’s fairly small, and fairly easy. (and to be honest, I’m waiting for this whole thing to fall apart, but I didn’t say that out loud). So, I better work on that next week. I still haven’t gotten the college shop cleaned up from the play we closed on April 29th because we went right into concerts and then right into commencement. It’s making me crazy.

Then I’m doing another show opening the first week of June. Another in July, another in August, and then summer’s over and I’m back at the college. Bother.

What are your summer plans? Did you play with matches?