Yesterday was tiring but satisfying. We played in the bell choir at both morning church services, came home and packed up seven boxes of Dresden Stollen and cookies (one box had a Bremer Klaben instead of a stollen) and got them to the UPS store. We then played bells and sang at the annual Lessons and Carols service at our church in the afternoon. I got to read the Bidding Prayer again. By 5:00 PM we were done and free. We are heartily sick of being town musicians at Christmas.
By town musicians, I mean some of the few people who are active in the musical community in our small town. The majority of town musicians are affiliated in some way with our Lutheran church. Our local college had a vibrant and active music department with a band and a choir. They had music festivals for high school students and hosted lots of concerts. The recent college president decided that the music and theatre departments didn’t have enough student majors, so he closed them down last year. The Education department has enough music education majors and they need to have some sort of music going on, so they have a band of one person and a choir of six singers. Our bell choir played with them two weeks ago at a Christmas concert in the college student center. Had our bell choir not been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a concert. I should add that the decision by the college president was so unpopular he quit. I don’t think they will reinstate the music department, though.
The Lessons and Carols service was lovely, and our church music director had a local classical guitarist, someone I had never heard of, play the following piece.
The guitarist appears to be Spanish. I have no idea how he got to North Dakota, but it was delightful to hear him. We have only one more vocal choir performance next Sunday, and no rehearsals this week, so we are free to relax and chill. Christmas hysteria is over, at least in our house. I may need to order more classical guitar recordings, though.
What musical instrument would you like to hear more of? How is the Christmas hysteria at your abode?
When Alice’s Restaurant Massacre by Arlo Guthrie was recorded in 1967, I was 11 years old. I remember it clearly and saved up to buy the record album pretty quickly. I couldn’t find any little clips, so this is the whole thing.
I loved folk music – it made me feel quite part of the times. Not quite rebellious – I didn’t have much to be rebellious about. My folks were quite liberal for the times; once when I was in junior high they excused me from school so I could protest against the war with the Webster College kids (college was between our house and the junior high). Although I don’t know if either of them ever listened to Alice’s Restaurant, I’m pretty sure at least my father would have thought it was quite funny.
In looking up the dates I discovered that the song, sometimes referred to as “talking blues” is also known as a “shaggy dog” story. Wikipedia defines it as “an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax. In other words, it is a long story that is intended to be amusing and that has an intentionally silly or meaningless ending.” Mark Twain, Gogol and Isaac Asimov were all cited as contributors to this “genre”. Who knew?
Arlo was adamant that he used the name Alice’s Restaurant because he liked it, not because the restaurant in the song was anything like the actual restaurant, owned by a friend of his, Alice Brock.
Alice was an artist, a restauranteur and a writer. She thought the song was funny but did not like the movie. She felt that she was wildly misrepresented in the movie and was fairly vocal about it, hence Arlos’ comments that it wasn’t HER restaurant in the song. One of the movie’s producers apparently made it possible for her to publish a cookbook.
As the years went by she came to appreciate how her role in the song and movie had somehow catapulted her into a 60s icon. Brock even recorded a series of custom introductions to Alice’s Restaurant for stations that regularly play the song on Thanksgiving. She and Arlo also combined their talents for a children’s book, Mooses Come Walking, and they remained friends until her death.
Alice passed away last Thursday, just a week from Thanksgiving, the holiday that inadvertently shoved her life into fame and recognition. I will have to play the whole Massacre tomorrow while I’m getting my vegetarian sourdough sage stuffing ready.
I’m having a mental disconnect this week. It’s like my internal clock knows that Thanksgiving is WAY late this year. I’m itching to bring out my holiday movies and ask Alexa to play some of my silly holiday tunes.
Normally I do a lot of my holiday stuff early but the Friday after Thanksgiving is my official “get going” day. That’s when cookies start, that’s when I assemble the cards for mailing and wrap anything that has to get shipped. This year, because Thanksgiving is so late, I’m doing some of my tasks ahead of time. Cards are all done and got assembled for mailing last night. Eggs are all packed into their cartons. All gifts that have to shipped are wrapped. Today I will sort out boxes for each address I have to ship to.
Although I know what cookies I’m making this year and have a list of ingredients I need, I haven’t started baking yet. That just seems sacrosanct before Thanksgiving. But I will be doing the shopping run for those ingredients today so I’m ready to go early on Friday morning. My goal this year is to get all the cookies done in 7 days. Fingers crossed.
But all this normally-after-Thanksgiving frenzy is messing with me. I’m dreaming about my spreadsheets and what order I should do the cookies. And I’m spending a lot of time going through things in my head. The dreams aren’t bad by any means, but it is a little weird. Assuming by next weekend, my disconnect will be re-connected!
Thanksgiving doesn’t engender any of this for me. We go elsewhere and I only have to do two things which can be done that morning. YA has one dish to make as well. So no spreadsheets, no lists and no dreams. Guess I can be grateful that I only have big prep for one holiday at this time of year!
What holiday prep needs to be done at your place but you’d prefer if brownies came in at night and did it for you?
One of my little next-door neighbors is turning six this week. Since her mom will be out of town for a work trip on her actual birthday, Marie (name changed to protect the innocent) had her birthday party yesterday.
Apparently her first choice for a theme party was Ghost Spider. I had no idea who this was – had to look it up – a Marvel friend of Spider Man.
One component of the party that had been promised was to be a visit from a real-life character. Unfortunately there are no Ghost Spider impersonators in the Twin Cities. Marie had a choice – Ghost Spider theme party with no real-life entertainment or a different theme.
I got a text yesterday afternoon that said “if you want to see a princess coming up the walk, go to the window now”. It was Tiana from Princess and the Frog. I have to say, she was beautiful and the costume was quite luxurious. (She also traveled with a “handler” which I thought was pretty funny.) As she was going up the front steps to the house, you could see all the little girls crowded onto the porch, waiting to greet her. Apparently, not only did she read to the girls, she also sang; Marie’s parents, who are both music teachers, reported afterwards that Tiana had a really nice voice. Win win all around.
YA had quite a few theme birthdays growing up but we never had any live-action characters. If we had, we would have had Barney, a pirate, a cat, a dog, a surfer dude, Pocahontas and a cupcake! Thank goodness she’s past the stage where I have to keep up with the Jones’ now!
Did you ever have a theme birthday party as a kid? If you didn’t, what would you have liked?
I see that the Badlands Opera Project, our local opera company, is putting on Amahl and the Night Visitors again this December. They staged it last year, with our church choir director and her 12 year old daughter as Amahl’s mother and Amahl. Both have wonderful voices. This year’s production will have a different Amahl and mother, this time a mom and son duo.
All the singers are local, except for the guy who sings the part of the tallest King with the deepest voice. He sings that part and other low, cameo roles such as Zarastro from The Magic Flute, all over the county. I am not sure where he is from, but he isn’t from ND. Imagine having a specialty voice like that. He’ll be back for this year’s production. I guess he really liked singing with our local company.
If I could magically have a voice other than the low alto voice I have, I would want to be a belter like Patti Lupone in Anything Goes. Of course I would also have to be able to dance, which would be a problem, I’m afraid. Oh well, I suppose I could magically make myself a dancer, too.
If you could magically get an operatc or musical theater voice, what roles would you want to perform?
Yesterday was Reformation Sunday, a big day in the Lutheran Church. At our Lutheran congregation it was also the day for the 9th graders to get confirmed. Husband and I are both choir members, and we sang at both services.
I am a lifelong Lutheran, but I have never liked the Lutheran penchant for singing every single verse of every hymn. Even though I am a church musician, singing verse after verse is annoying and exhausting. Yesterday was particularly annoying, since many of the hymns had five verses. We barreled through A Mighty Fortress and Built On A Rock. I was thankful, that the slow, emotionally expressive organist had the day off. When she plays, she takes us slower and slower through each verse and song. She has no understanding of the difficulty of breath support for singers during slow hymns. I was also thankful that for the second service when confirmation was held, they cut all the hymn verses to three to save time. What a relief! Husband and I came home and took three hour naps.
What do you find annoying about the organizations you belong to? What songs do you like to sing?
I am attending a conference next week in Dallas, TX for psychology regulatory boards. I attend two of them a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. These conferences are rather dull, given the topics we deal with. The organization that sponsors these conferences always tries to spice up the week with a big party on the Friday night. There is always a theme for the party, and it is no big surprise that the theme for this party is Cowboy Chic.
We have been encouraged to come in costume, such as classic western wear, fringe and leather, dresses with western twist, clunky and chunky jewelry or outsized belt buckles, and sequined cowboy hats. I own neither a cowboy hat nor cowboy boots. I have very little jewelry, and hardly anything that is sequined. No gingham or leather or fringe, either. I have no intention of buying any of the above, either. I can hardly wait to see what the folks from the Canadian Maritimes wear!
The party is on November 1, which is also All Saints Day. I would prefer to dress up like my favorite saint or martyr than dress up in western wear. I suppose, living where I do with real cowboys, that Cowboy Chic isn’t that fun or alluring. Joseph Gabriel of the Rosary, also known as the Gaucho Priest, is the patron saint of cowboys, He had leprosy, so the makeup for that would be rather challenging. I may just show up in jeans and a sweatshirt.
We used to have costume parties when we were in graduate school in Winnipeg. The most memorable was when I dressed like a large strawberry for a Halloween party. I wore tights, and the two sided pink costume went down to my knees. I got a call in the middle of the party that one of my clients was in the ER with suicidal ideation and needed to see me ASAP. It was a little hard to get the ER staff to take me seriously in that getup. My client, despite their distress, though it was hilarious.
What would you wear for Cowboy Chic? What was the last costume party you went to?
It was the Soup Swap yesterday. I’ve been going to these for almost 20 years and I always look forward to it. You make 6 quarts of soup, freeze it in 6 individual bags and then at the party we do a round robin swap. I think I’ve talked about it before.
Being a vegetarian at a soup swap in the autumn can sometimes be rough. In fact, at the very first swap I attended, I was the only one who brought a vegetarian soup; I went home with 6 frozen bags of meat soup. (I distributed them in my neighborhood). But the party is fun, so I’ve taken my chances many times since then. Yesterday was a mixed bag. We ended up with multiples of the same soups: Minestrone, African Peanut & Sweet Potato, Rosemary Lentil. In addition to these soups, I made way more of our soup that needed as YA is always complaining that I never make enough for US to have some. I made four batches:
So here is the recipe: Golden Caulifower Soup (thanks to Carissa Stanton and her Seriously, So Good cookbook.
Roasted cauliflower
4 c. chopped cauliflower florets (about 1¼ lbs)
3 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. ground turmeric
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. red chile flakes (optional)
½ tsp. pepper
Soup
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed (about 2 cups)
4 c. vegetable broth
1 can (13 ½ oz) full fat coconut milk
Pumpkin seeds (garnish)
1/3 c. pumpkin seeds
½ tbsp. olive oil
¼ tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. salt
Pepper to taste
Roast the cauliflower. Heat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, drizzle the cauliflower with the olive oil and sprinkle with the turneric, cumin, salt, chile flakes and pepper. Toss until coated. Arrange the cauliflower on a pan lined with foil and roast for 20 minutes, turning the florets halfway through. Set aside (but leave oven on).
Make the soup. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until onion is translucent (5-7 mns). Add potato, broth, coconut milk and the roasted cauliflower. Increase the heat to high. When soup boils, reduce heat and simmer covered for about 15 minutes. Use either in immersion blender or stand blender to blend the soup until smooth. Serve with the pumpkin seeds as a garnish.
Toast the pumpkin seeds. Drizzle olive oil over the pumpkin seeds and sprinkle with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Lay out the seeds on foil lined sheet and roast at 350° for about 12 minutes.
We have plenty of soup for the fall (although I’m sure I’ll have to make tomato soup soon to use up our surplus tomatoes).
A couple of months ago I was the assisting minister at our Lutheran Sunday service. Part of that job is reading, with the presiding pastor, the prayers she wrote for the service. I read through the prayers and found some grammatical errors which I corrected. I explained to the pastor what I had done, and she was grateful. Our senior pastor overheard me and got really excited and asked me if I liked editing. I told her I did. She asked me if I would be willing to edit a book she was writing, and I said I would.
She has written and published a book already. The current book is a series of twenty four devotions for Advent. The basic premise of the book is that our families of origin hand down all sorts of unhealthy expectations to us that make the Christmas holidays onerous. She is using many of the theories of one of my favorite family therapists, Murray Bowen, in the book. What could be more fun?
I have edited the first five devotions, and she plans to get the next installment to me next week. I am a devotee of the Oxford comma, and I like active verb usage. She writes well and it will be nice to see the final product when it is printed.
What kind of a manuscript editor would you be? Name some authors whose styles you like and dislike.
We’ve certainly gained some Growing Degree Units lately. The Pioneer Seed website shows 2450 GDU’s to date for Rochester. 2288 would be normal. Not as hot as last summer, and higher than 2022. Sure, blame it on corn sweat…
From an article in USA Today, they state: “During the growing season, an acre of corn sweats off about 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water a day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In Iowa, corn pumps out “a staggering 49 to 56 billion gallons of water into the atmosphere each day” throughout the state, the National Weather Service said. That can add 5 to 10 degrees to the dew point, a measure of the humidity in the air, on a hot summer day.” Farming always gets the rap.
This year’s crop is pretty much what it is now; outside of weather conditions, not much we can do to either kill it or improve it, but we still need to manage what’s there, and continue to hope for the best, and plan for next year’s crop.
The corn and soybeans honestly look pretty good, and some scouting shows a decent crop, knock-on-wood. Hail or an early frost can still put a kink in that. And the prices are the lowest they’ve been in several years. So the best we can hope for is quantity. Which, of course, makes a surplus and drives the price down.
I went to turn on the chickens fan last week, and it ran for 4 seconds and quit. I banged on it and jiggled all the cords and it wouldn’t go. Dragged out the old barn fan that I used to use, and it ran for 4 seconds and quit. A minute later it would run for 4 seconds and quit again and that’s how that went. Neither of those really was much help then. I found an old box fan under the seats at a theater the next day and hung that up for the chickens.
The last couple nights I’ve been out digging up the oat fields. I wanted it done before it rained again. (We got an inch of rain Thursday night.) The grasses have gotten ahead of me and it didn’t work up as well as it might have had I done this two weeks ago. Foxtail mostly, comes on fast and thick and it doesn’t flow through the digger too well.
Kelly came with me one night. This tractor has the ‘buddy seat’. Kelly was my buddy for a change.
Man, so many bugs! I hate turning the lights on…sure glad I’m inside the cab!
I put the alternator put back on the swather, got it running again, and mowed the weeds along the road and over at the edge of some fields. I’ve backed it into the shed and will worry about it next July I guess. I got the generator put back on the ‘C’, but haven’t got it started again yet. One day I had to drive to St. Charles, about 20 miles East of Rochester. I had lunch at Del’s Café and sat at the counter and had soup and a cheeseburger.
From St. Charles, I was head to Plainview about 20 miles to the North. I didn’t want to take the old, boring route up to Plainview, so I went through Whitewater State Park to Elba, and then that great gravel road through Whitewater’s lowlands, to Hwy 30, and through Beaver to Plainview. I had the road to myself, and I sighed contentedly several times. It was a great drive.
Back when I was ‘only’ farming, this was a good time of the year to take some day trips. Oats and straw are done. We’d be between hay crops, the crops are growing, and we’d drive to Wanamingo and look through the machinery dealerships or something fun like that. (machinery dealership lots; the farmers friend) Then we’d find lunch in a diner someplace. We attended another wedding on Saturday. Kelly’s cousin. Second wedding for each, and they’ve been together 13 years, with 6 kids between the two of them. From Junior in high school to finishing college. The kids have pretty much grown up together, and they’re such a fun family and all get along, and it was a happy, fun, beautiful wedding. Bride and Groom read vows to each other, the kids read vows to both of them, and they gave all the kids their own rings. Everyone cried. It was a great time.
Here’s a photo of Luna trying to encourage a rooster to play more. They did chase each other back and forth a few times before Bailey, the peacekeeper, would break them up.
Trail Baboon 