I know that November and December are very busy seasons for musicians, but I have been astounded by the number of musical performances by local musicians since we moved here. When I grew up here, all the music was in the school and the churches.
In the last two weeks there have been musical performances by a variety of groups downtown in stores, in outdoor public performance spaces, and in the Palace, the old Vaudeville theatre. They performed in the snow storms. The music ranged from classical, folk, and rock. Children and adults have been playing and singing all around town. The school is having concerts.
Next Sunday, there is a big concert of a variety of musicians at the Senior Center. We bought tickets to attend. I signed Husband up for guitar lessons at the local music school. Is this typical for small town Minnesota? Our ND town was extremely musical, but not like this.
What is your favorite holiday music? What would you like to perform or hear?
Husband and our 7 year old grandson spent most of Thanksgiving Day in the basement messing around with various string instruments. Grandson brought the three-quarter size guitar we got him in the summer. He and his Opa (Husband’s German name. I am Oma.) practiced tuning the guitar and his cello to eachother, and Opa taught him the difference between bass and treble clef, and that you could play the same tune in both clefs. Grandson also noodled around on the piano upstsirs using the sustain pedal until it got too annoying and we had to have him stop. He actually asked Opa if they could “jam” next time.
During the afternoon, grandson came upstairs and excitedly announced “Opa is teaching me finger picking”. He is to start piano and guitar lessons in the spring. At home he likes to just strum his guitar once a day and practice trying to play chords. He also thought Opa’s cello was pretty cool.
I learned cooking, gardening, and that History was a most interesting subject from my grandparents. Grandson wants me to make tirimisu with him one of these days, and loves to cook with his parents. I am so glad we can help foster these interests, as they really make for a satisfying life.
What skills did your older relatives and grandparents teach you?What names did you use to address your grandparents?
Except for thirty banker’s boxes full of books, we have unpacked everything else from the move. We are awaiting the arrival of seven bookcases sometime next week.
There are a few things that we can’t find, and I doubt they are in with the books. I am missing the widemouth graniteware funnel I use to fill canning jars. The cornstarch container has gone missing. Snow scrapers for the truck are nowhere to be found. All of those are easily replaced.
Husband was distressed earlier this week, however, when he couldn’t find his cello endpin anchor. It prevents the cello from sliding out from underneath him when he plays it on a wood or laminate floor. I found some on Amazon, but they would take several days to arrive, and he really wanted to try out the cello . We searched all over with no luck, and then I got what I thought was a brilliant idea for a temporary solution. The plug for the kitchen sink broke shortly after we moved in, and we went to Ace Hardware in town to get a replacement. Since we weren’t exactly sure what one would work the best so we bought a couple of different kinds. I remembered that one we had stored under the sink would work great for an endpin. It was rubber and perfectly shaped if put upside down:
He was so happy to play his cello. I will order some real endpins, as he always seems to misplace them, but this will work well for now.
What have been some of your memorable misplacements? What have been some of your more brilliant ideas?
The former owner of our home runs a satellite communication company that provides TV and entertainment systems to health care/senior living facilities and hotels nationwide. His office is right on Main Street. He and his wife insisted that the three televisions in the home had to stay when we bought the house. They are hard-wired into a myriad of cables that run through the walls and from upstairs to downstairs and out of doors. They also left us several DVD players and stereo receivers.
There are six speakers upstairs in the ceilings of the kitchen, dining room, and living room, along with three speakers in the garage, and two attached to the house in the backyard. The ceilings in the basement bedrooms and family room also have speakers, and another huge room in the basement has several speakers in the ceiling and walls.
The header photo shows the main controls for this sound system. It resides in a cupboard in the kitchen. One can choose what part of the house you want to have sound from the radio, TV, DVD. CD, computer, or any other media player you can figure out how to hook up to the main system. The former owner graciously came over last week to show me how to operate the system. I gave him a package of lefse. It is complicated. I am a successful trial and error button pusher, so I think I will figure it out. eventually.
When did you get your first sound system? What did it consist of? What music do you think we should play on the outdoor speakers?
Did you ever watch a dog chasing a ball or a stick and watch them running and grabbing at it off the ground and think, doesn’t that hurt your lips scraping them across the gravel like that?
We pondered that playing with Luna the other day. It doesn’t seem to bother Luna.
Daughter came up with this Halloween costume all on her own:
Last week driving to Plainview there was a lot of corn still standing. This week a lot of corn has been harvested. Not mine, but all the corn around us. Several guys have finished. And now they’re hard into fall fertilizer and tillage. If any of you retired people want a job, I’m sure you could go to any of the larger farms in the area and get a job driving a tractor or truck for about 3 months. Depending on weather, it’s long days, lack of sleep, field meals, and, if you’re like my brother, “it’s just round and round- it’s boring!” But it’s big equipment and it can be fun. It wouldn’t work for me right now. I can’t get there until mid morning by the time I take daughter in. And I may have to leave mid-afternoon to pick her up. And I have a show this evening… Nope, I’m not the ideal candidate. YOU might be!
And the equipment sure is fun to see.
This week was all about getting the college show finished. We have our first show at 2:00 PM Saturday, the 1st. It will be ready, and ‘good enough’, but if I had more time, I’d tweak a little more.
It’s a good thing this set isn’t any bigger. I don’t know what happens to me that everything turns into a rush at the end, whether trying to get book work done to meet my accountant, or finish a set, or get the machine shed enclosed before cold weather comes, apparently I think I like the thrill of the rush of adrenaline and the whooshing sound the deadlines make as they go past.
Music lately has been some boogie woogie piano, my usual ‘All That Jazz’ movie soundtrack, and then playing a video of “The Gospel at Colonus”, from 1985. The full show is available on YouTube. I’ve had the CD for years, and we saw it at the Ordway maybe 10 years ago. This production has Morgan Freeman, Jevetta Steele, The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and SO MUCH good gospel music. I was painting alone and singing and shouting along. HALLELUJAH! AMEN!
So. The lack of concrete. I mentioned on the blog one day that I didn’t feel good over the weekend and postponed the concrete.
Last Friday afternoon I rented a little machine called a plate compactor. It’s about the size of a small snowblower, I believe the plate measured 17“ x 20“ and its got a little Honda gas engine on it, and a long handle and when you rev it up it vibrates really fast and compacts whatever it is you’re trying to compact. In this case, about 8 inches of gravel as a sub-base for the concrete. It goes really good in one direction; pretty much drives itself. And it’s not too hard to go in circles, but if you drive it into a corner, you’re kind of stuck. The only instructions they gave me when I picked it up was how to start it. Later on I was on YouTube trying to find some instructions on running this thing, or if there was a certain amount of time you needed to compact material and the only videos I could find were how to start it. What somebody needs to make is a video that’s gonna tell you right up front, this thing’s gonna kick your ass. For the first half an hour. Because when you drive it into the corner the only way to get it back out is to use brute force and pull it back against the machine’s compaction motion. And eventually you’ll figure out you can flip the handle over and sort of steer it, almost one handed, but that doesn’t really help if you’re in a corner with a couple of walls. Anyway I learned a lot that first hour. And when I woke up Saturday morning, muscles I didn’t know I had hurt. And then my stomach started to hurt, then I got the chills, and I just didn’t feel that great. But, I had a lot of work to do.
WFriday evening I had finished compacting the sub base inside the shed, that 20′ x 20‘ area. Saturday morning I started putting gravel in. Kelly came and helped. That woman really is too good for me. She has an attention to detail that I don’t. She’ll spend hours working on something that I said was “good enough” long before. I was still feeling terrible and I finally had to go in the house and take a nap. Three hours later she was still adding a little gravel here, taking off a little there. She used those YouTube videos to learn how to start the machine and she was compacting gravel. We use one of those laser levels that sits on a tripod and puts out a green laser beam line. Then I have a stick with three marks on it: the height of the existing concrete, then a mark for the sub-base, and a mark for the Gravel.
Kelly is not afraid of hard work and she said she was enjoying it. I just wanted to move on because I’m always moving onto the next project.
Saturday night I came in the house and took a shower and then I soaked in the tub for half an hour and I went to bed.
Sunday morning we were back at it. All we had to do on Sunday was a little area 13‘ x 6‘ to be a walkway at the front door of the shop. I didn’t have much energy and if I had to get on the ground to do something, I tended to stay there for a while. Outside the shed, I cut a hole in the wall and shoved a piece of PVC pipe in for the drain, and then I laid in the dirt for a while. There was a thistle under my left shoulder. It hurt. Eventually I got up.
And by Monday, I knew I had to postpone the concrete. I needed to take that off my plate. A friend told me I don’t need a plate, I need a turkey platter. Yeah. That’s about right.
Almost ready!
Speaking of pondering, I read these two phrases in a new display at the college art gallery. :
Ouch. That seems kinda harsh.
This one reminds me of that quote: “In order to discover new lands, you must consent to lose site of the shore.”
The display is photographs by Ethan Aaro Jones, and is called “Unsearchable Distance”.
My BFF suggested we go see Ann Reed last week; I haven’t seen Ann in a live performance for many years so I was excited to go. She has such a huge repertoire, I hate to admit that this is still my favorite:
She (along with Joan Griffith) did a great set and in between many of the songs, she shared haiku with us, some of hers and some that she had found along the way. When I went looking on the internet afterwards, I discovered she has a book entitled Our Daily Breath: Haiku & Photographs.
During my search I found a website, Haiku Universe, that will sent you a daily haiku or short poem. You know me, I couldn’t resist. It’s been fun the last week or so to get a little haiku every day. Here’s one I particularly liked (by Tomas O’Leary):
then it came to me
like a bomb in my lunch bag –
it was my day off.
So I’ve had haiku on my mind. Here are a couple of mine:
My orthopedists
Are both about twelve years old.
Having bad knees stinks.
It’s that time of year –
All of my hard work, yard wise
Fills up many bags.
Do you have any fall clean-up/organizing that needs doing? Any haiku or poems speaking to you?
October 5, 2025 was puppy day. Lou and I travelled to Kimball, MN to a small acreage outside of the little town where the kennel, Minnesota Country Corgis, is located. This is the same dog breeder as the one who provided us with our Phoebe. He is her half brother (same sire). We had been there to visit ten days before. At that time we were offered the choice of the last puppy left from a 6 puppy litter (mama Betsy), or to choose one from a 4 puppy litter (mama Annie). The 4 puppy litter was an accidental pregnancy after the breeder’s husband mistakenly let the dam and sire “socialize”. Diane, the breeder, was away from home that weekend. Her husband reversed her instructions, so the Christmas litter was born in August. Oops.
We chose the last puppy of the 6 puppy litter, and named him McGee. It has been a week now. McGee is making himself at home. He has gained 1 pound, survived a mild case of diarrhea after eating too much, and he slept almost all day on Wednesday. He seemed exhausted by the adjustment to a new home. He is personable and loves to play and chew. Watch the teeth. So now McGee is the best puppy ever, only rivaled by our other past dogs. My son, the neighbor kids, and other friends have come to visit him and welcome him to the world.
Our Baboon, Linda, in a rush of inspiration, wrote this parody of Me and Bobby McGee earlier last week on the pizza blog. It makes me smile about the puppy and at remembering Janis Joplin and Kris Kristofferson, great musicians. (The dental plate reference is about Lou’s lost dentures, which were restored to him and are safely in his mouth.)
Sittin’ down in Eden Prairie, thinkin’ ‘bout a plate. Dentist’s office lost it in the mail. Puppy chewed a shoelace up, left me in a state And he just sits there waggn’ his little tail.
Boredom’s just another word for nothin’ left to chew Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t chewed. And feelin’ mad is easy, Lord, when Puppy chews the shoes. But feelin’ mad is never good for me…. Never good for me and my Puppy McGee.
It was on this day in 1869 that the opera “Das Rheingold” by Richard Wagner premiered on the stage at the National Theatre Munich, Germany. It is 150 minutes long and is the first of an epic four-part drama known as Der Ring des Nibelungen. Rheingold, although it is the beginning of Wagner’s famous cycle, Rheingold was the last of the texts to be written. Wagner didn’t want any of the Ring to be performed until all the parts were complete. King Ludwig II of Bavaria thought otherwise and ordered the staging of Rheingold in 1869. It wasn’t until 1876 that the entirety of Ring was performed at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria. These days, Bayreuth still stages the entire Ring epic each year, a total of four operas that add up to about 18 hours of stage time. Other opera houses tend to stage the Ring over the course of a few years.
Although I recognize some of the music instantly,
I didn’t have a clue what The Ring is all about. The plot is EXTREMELY complex and begins with the theft of gold that is then made into a magic ring Lots and lots of Norse gods and goddesses; truly I didn’t even know there were that many. In the end, Brunhilde (who had been a goddess but was stripped of her immortality) returns the ring but not before Valhalla and the gods are destroyed.
Now that I know more about The Rheingold and The Ring, it doesn’t increase my desire to ever see it. Certainly not 18 hours of it. I’m not a particularly big fan of opera to start with but that much plot to keep track of might make my head explode?
While I love the State Fair, I’m not all that big on the grandstand shows. Not sure why – just not my thing. Every now and then I go to a show – last one before this year was Garrison Keillor, back in 2017.
Back in the spring, the Happy Together tour was announced in an email from the State Fair folks. Later that same day, my friend Lori, who loves the fair as much as I do, emailed me with the dates she and her husband were going to be on the fairgrounds (she lives in Chicago now). For some reason, the grandstand show and Lori being in town seemed like a sign. We texted back and forth a bit about going together and then I bought the tickets.
When I was leaving for the fairgrounds on Monday night, YA said “will you know any of the songs?” Her opinion of my musical knowledge is that I don’t know anything written in the last thirty years. She might be correct, but I assured her that the 60s and 70s are another thing entirely.
Here was the line-up: the Cowsills, the Vogues, Gary Puckett, Little Anthony, Jay & the Americans and the Turtles. Each group got four songs – they all did their most popular and on the fourth song, videos of each group back in the day was aired on the big screens.
It was a fun show and I DID know all the words to all the songs – and sang them unashamedly (along with everyone else in the grandstand). It was a little bittersweet though as the 60s is now too long ago for these performers to still be stumping around. None of the bands had all their original members; only the Cowsills were all Cowsills, just fewer of them. The Turtles were actually represented by Ron Dante, who was a member of the Archies, but was never a Turtle. (This turned out to be fun because there was an extra song for that set – Sugar, Sugar, which is one of my favorites.) And the single performers (Gary P, Little Anthony) were struggling. And while I know all the words to the Gary Puckett songs (Young Girl, Woman, This Girl is a Woman Now and Lady Willpower), listening to the lyrics in 2025 is a bit…. squirmy.
If another Happy Together tour comes around and it again features the 60s, I think I’ll take a pass. Unless it’s for the 70s – then I might give that a go!
I’ve noticed some soybean fields just starting to turn yellow. Kelly says the barn swallows are grouping up. And acorns are dropping. All that probably means something.
Crop prices keep dropping, too. Due to predictions of good yields across the corn belt. Locally, corn is under $3.50 / bushel, and soybeans are under $10. That’s a tough place to be. My direct costs to grow and harvest corn is roughly $400 / acre, and for soybeans about $300 / acre. Not knowing how the fall will shape up, or what drying costs might be, we’re speculating on final yields and prices. Making conservative estimates of $3.00 / bu final price means I’d need 133 bu / acre to cover costs. And that should be doable. Optimistically I’d have 180 bu / acre. That would leave me $273/ acre to cover repair costs, fuel, interest, crop insurance, pay off the loans, make payments on long term debt, ect. Soybeans work out the same way, just different numbers. Neither is in the bin yet, so we’ll see. This is why I have a few other jobs. To support my farming hobby. (eye roll)
Last weekend Padawan and I did a bunch of stuff. We packed the wheel bearings with grease and took the other wheel hub apart to replace those bearings. Both rear tires were wore out; one was on borrowed time. A few days later I went to Appel Service in Millville MN with the two wagon tires, a tire from the plow I had replace this spring, and another tire I found in the shop that I haven’t remember what it’s for yet. I’ve talked about Appels before; we’ve been taking tires to them for years and years. It’s about 25 minutes away. Great guys and a great drive.
I forgot to buy the dust seals for the axel hubs, which I picked up on Monday, but I had padawan reinstall the hub, even without the dust seal, just so he could see how you tighten it up and put the cotter pin in it. He had no idea what a cotter pin was. If you don’t know, it’s a split pin, length varies: length and the diameter as needed, and once through the hole, you bend the sides to prevent whatever you’re holding from coming off. I have some pins that are 1/4” diameter and 2” long and some tiny ones 1/2” long and 1/32″ diameter.
Then we drained the coolant and he replaced the radiator hose on the old John Deere 630. I had him pull the carburetor off. He is too young to know what a carburetor does. We changed the oil, oil filter, and the air filters on the big tractor, the 8200. It has two air filters; The biggest is about the size of a 5 gallon bucket. He was really impressed with that. Then a smaller inner air cleaner. He went home and cleaned up, and came back out with his girlfriend, who chased down her pet chicken, and they stayed for pizza with us. The kids, not the chicken.
I have been working on the 630 exhaust manifold. Got the bolts out and the manifold off! Heated it with a torch, just like my friend Tim J. said. Would you believe there’s another Tim J?? He’s not too much like this tim j. but that one knows a lot about old tractors. The two bolts that were broken off, I welded nuts on the top (to make a bolt head again) and they came right out! I couldn’t believe it!
Heating the castings to break the rust
Nuts welded on the broken boltsUh, this looks broken…
Took me a while to find my welding stuff as I haven’t needed that in the new shop yet. the old welder on the bottom, newer welder on the top. That old welder, maybe from the 1950’s? has taught several of us how to weld. Dad taught me and some of my nephews. The oxy-acetelyne torch to the right, I’ve had since 1982. I learned how to use a gas welder in high school shop class and mom and dad bought me this one for my 18th birthday.
WELDERS
Friday morning I went to pick up a really nice long reach 5 ton hydraulic floor jack that I got at an auction.
Then to Millville to pick up the 4 tires I had dropped off earlier in the week. I took a random gravel road, 592ndstreet out of Millville, and had a great drive, all by myself, following the Zumbro river to the North. It was a great drive! I wasn’t sure where I was, and there was no cell signal down there along the hills, but eventually the road looped back to the south and I found my way home.
MEANDERING
The truck seemed to be riding rougher than it had earlier and the tread was separating on a front tire. Thankfully it got me home, and I jacked it up (using the new jack) and went back to Millville with the truck tires. Another great drive with no one else on the road, Just the way I like it. It was about 4:15 on Friday when I got there and the shop was pretty quiet. Paul and Dan took the tires off, Jim got me two new ones, and they mounted and balanced them, and I was headed back home in about 20 minutes. I sure do like going to Millville. Good thing I’m employed again since I spent $1200 on tires Friday.
My brother came out and we took 100 bales of straw off the wagon with the broken front end, and put them on another wagon. Then I put 20 bales in the truck for delivery on Saturday, and the last 52 bales on a trailer. Perhaps Saturday I’ll get the front wheels off and see what’s really broken on there. Right after I put the two new tires back on the other wagon.
And I pulled out a disk I’m not using anymore to take to an auction next week. I pulled a bunch of junk out of the trees last week. Two old flare boxes, an old elevator, an old digger, and a 24’ bale elevator that I will also take to the auction. There wasn’t trees growing through them when I parked them there… that’s how long some of it has been there. Time to go.
Music this week is Nina Simone. I recently heard ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
Trail Baboon 