Category Archives: Theatre

2024, Fantasy, Movies, Mysteries, Theatre, Uncategorized

The Game is Afoot

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I have a fair few number of favorite fictional characters but I know it won’t surprise anybody here that Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are tops in my book.   I have the movies Hound of the Baskervilles (Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) as well as Murder on the Orient Express (Albert Finney) saved on my TV so it’s accurate to say I’ve seen them repeatedly.

Several years ago my BFF and I decided that for our birthdays we would do experiences together rather than do more “stuff”.  She does Cantus tickets for us and I do a play for us each fall.  I pick three options, write them up a bit and she chooses one.

This year, a production called Holmes/Poirot was finally scheduled at Park Square Theatre.  There had been discussion of it during the summer of 2023, but it never materialized.  When I presented BFF with the three choices this year, I had my fingers crossed that she would choose Holmes/Poirot.  Luckily she’s a sleuth fan as well.  We’ve done a couple of other Sherlock “knock-offs”s as well as doing the Science Museum exhibition a couple of years ago. 

The expectation was that the play would be a mash-up with the detectives pitted against each other, even though you’d have to mess with the time continuum to do this.  Considering I’ve read a book with Sherlock as a dog and another with a time traveling Miss Marple facsimile, I can handle a little time continuum disturbance.  When we sat down with our programs, it was clear that it was going to be two different stories…. Holmes in Act One and Poirot in Act Two.  The two main actors change roles for the second act.  Sherlock Holmes becomes Colonel Hastings and John Watson becomes Hercule Poirot.  The other seven actors switch up characters as well. 

During intermission BFF and I wondered aloud how long it would take us to re-orient ourselves to the actors changing parts.  We didn’t need to worry.  Within just a couple of minutes, we were all in.   It was an inspired juxtaposition; both actors were excellent and completely believable in their roles.  The second act was played for more comedy, which was perfect because…. well… Poirot.  It’s hard not to play him with a splash of silliness.

Absolutely no spoiler alerts here but suffice it to say that the writing was great and had BFF and I guessing to the end of each segment.  It was an immediate standing ovation.  I’m highly recommending this if you can stlll get tickets. 

Do you have a preferred detective?  Fictional or otherwise?

2024, Fantasy, Gatherings, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized

Do Your Part

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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?

2024, animals, Farming Update, Theatre, Uncategorized, work

Life

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

It sure does get dark early. By the time I get home from work, change clothes, and talk with Kelly a bit, it’s dusk. And it’s only going to get worse for a while yet, and I’ll be OK with that once it’s cold and “winter”, but I got too much going on right now. The world goes round, and the seasons change, and it’s OK. Even the roadside vegetable stands have all closed and that’s kinda sad. It seems to happen so fast!

I really do love fall and wrapping up the seasons. The harvest and the fieldwork and completing that circle, it all just feels right. My friend Diane and I have always talked about how we get that urge to ‘pack up’ and suddenly we’re all about organizing. Cleaned off my home office desk one day, and then at the college, I took some pillows up the prop room and spent an hour packing up greenery and organizing.

Some of you have an ‘Arts and Crap’ room, I have props. It’s kind of a disaster. In theater lingo, a ‘prop’ is something the actor handles, versus the set or furniture. If you think about it, you can imagine all the stuff a theater might have for ‘props’. Anna or Catherine might have stories about props and props people. But here, I just tell the kids to try and get it somewhere near something else that looks like it. But they don’t care, and once you go down that road, you’re headed for disaster. I’ve had several people offer to clean it up. Maybe they chicken out once they look at it. ANYWAY, I cleaned up a corner and that’s a start. A few more corners to go. One day at a time.

At home, I was supposed to get the shop heater on Thursday, but it got postponed to Tuesday. And I need to move some stuff so they can work in there. Meaning once again, half the crap is moved to another place, and I was just getting so I could find it now. The pallet rack is the biggest deal. I’m taking half of it apart and maybe I can drag the other half out of the way.

I got a lot of other stuff done. Got new hydraulic hoses for the tractor loader, and since I replaced all the rest last summer, they are all new now and good for another 20 years unless I break one.

Got some hydraulic hoses off the chisel plow and took them to John Deere. They make all the hoses as needed. It was busy at the parts counter, so I told them I’d come back on Saturday to pick those up. There are two women at the parts counter now, Belinda (Or ‘B’ as I realized they call her). I don’t know the other woman; I haven’t worked with her much. But Belinda is fun.

I also got the 630 running again so I could move that. (Had pinched a wire going to the starter and created a ‘dead short’ and had smoke coming from under the dash. Accidently let out some magic black smoke but I was able to get it back in). it’s not running well, and it needs further investigation, but at least it’s running.

I took the carburator off the ‘4-wheeler’ and cleaned it and put it back on and it ran for 100 yards, and then I limped it back to the shed and pushed it out of the way. Will come back to that later. But I’m getting good at taking the carburator off.

Sounds like my neighbors will get my soybeans out this weekend. Good to have that done, and sure glad the weather has been holding.

I’ve been listening to Kris Kristofferson this week. He wrote so many songs you know, but you’re not used to him singing them. What a talent he was.

It’s fun to hear other versions of familiar songs. These are not by Kris, butTennessee Stud or Don’t think Twice, it’s alright are two that come to mind that have multiple covers.

On the duck front, we’re down to four. Went from 22 to 11 to 8 and now 4.

The world just keeps going around.

WHAT CYCLES DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized

Oma Sees All

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I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here this week in Brookings. Son’s surgery went well. He is home recuperating. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and made slow cooker Bolognese sauce and chicken enchiladas. I also got to drive six year old Grandson to school, which is terribly fun. One morning we listened to a number from Cats on the Sirius XM Broadway station, and he was rather astounded when I told him that the performers were singing and dancing in cat suits. He also liked the number from Hamilton that we heard.

Son and Daughter In Law are good parents with quite appropriate limits and expectations. I tend to call Grandson out more often for minor infractions, though. It was pretty funny when, one evening at supper, Grandson announced, with a huge sigh, that Oma’s eyes saw everything, and there wasn’t anything he could get away with that I didn’t see. This was after I reminded him to eat his penne with his fork and not his fingers. He made a point of showing us his fork skills after that.

What is the first Broadway musical you remember hearing or seeing? What is your favorite musical now? How was your relationship with your grandparents?

2024, Family, Theatre, Travel, Uncategorized

Hamilton

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At the end of her work program in London, YA took a couple more days just for herself.  She transferred to a hotel in the City (the group program had been in Hampshire) and enjoyed her time walking around, seeing the sights, doing a bit of shopping. 

On Friday I got a text asking if $120 was too much money to spend on a Hamilton ticket.  My first response, as a cheap, miserly old mom was to discourage her from blowing a wad on anything.  It’s almost always my go-to position, sorry to say.

But as I thought about it for a bit I realized a couple of things.  #1 – she is a grown woman, enjoying time in London.  If she has the money for it, this would be a wonderful memory of her trip. (And truth be told, I’ve been to the theatre in London and remember it fondly [although I didn’t have to pay for it myself].)  #2 – paying $120 for a ticket to Hamilton in London is basically stealing it.    I sent her a text telling her to go for it.

She chose the Saturday matinee so she could walk to/from during daylight.  Then she texted me that her ticket was in a box.  When I asked why, she said it was the best deal at that showing.  She got there pretty early so was able to sent photos of her box (the header photo) and this photo showing the view from the box. 

Apparently her box price included a drink and a snack, which was provided by the butler, whose services were also included as part of the box.  My goodness.   And then, as if enough fortune hadn’t already given her a wink and a nod, the other three seats in the box remained unsold.  So for $120 she got a private box, a butler, a drink and snack, a walking transfer and, of course, Hamilton.  What a way to go!

I’m so happy that she was able to have this marvelous experience and so so glad that I got over myself and didn’t spoil her fun. 

Can you ever remember a time you’ve given dubious advice? Taken dubious advice?

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, Theatre, Uncategorized

Party On!

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The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

Menards has Christmas decorations out. Oh my…

We got a little rain Thursday night. For the heavy storms, large hail, and wind they were predicting, we got about 3/10 of an inch. It was a nice rain and we needed it.

I’ve been seeing some of the neighbors chopping corn, and some of the YouTube farmers I watch are chopping, and it’s amazing how much the technology has changed in this regard in the last 30 years. While many large dairy farms are still using bunkers and pits for silage, a few are going back to cement upright silos. One place I watch on YT had 3, 100′ tall silos built this summer. Two for corn silage, and 1 for haylage. (Haylage or silage is the entire crop all chopped up; The stalk and ear, or the alfalfa, rye, sorghum, whatever, all chopped up, and packed and allowed to ferment. It may be in an oxygen limiting silo ((the blue ‘Harvestore’ ones)) or the plain cement ones.) Bunkers are faster to fill, but take more manpower and equipment to fill, pack, cover, and unload. Upright silos fill a bit slower and take a little more routine maintenance, but they settle on their own and pack strictly from its own weight, and they seem to be automated enough, especially nowadays, that feeding takes a lot less work.

And now they have cameras in the silos to monitor operation, and the electrical cable travels inside and doesn’t need to be moved from door to door. It’s been kind of fun to see and reminisce. There’s a young man climbing the 100′ silos– keyword “young man”… Not sure I’d be doing that anymore.

We used two 18′ diameter, by 50′ tall silos. One for 1st crop hay chopped and filled in June, and the other for corn, filled in September. Usually the primary ingredient for dairy cattle ration is corn silage. Course it depends on geography. In some places it’s grass or hay. Every farm is different. Our cows got ground corn inside the barn, (plus minerals and protein supplements) but they got hay and corn silage outside, plus grass in summer.

The hay silage is dusty, and once a month I’d have to go up the chute and open up a lower door and move the unloader arm down, and every couple of months move the electrical cable and it was just a dusty dirty terrible job. Corn Silage wasn’t as dusty, but still had to open the doors and move the cable and do regular maintenance on the unloaders, and chop off what was frozen to the walls in the spring… it was a whole big thing. I don’t miss a lot of it.

The Custom guys are chopping with these huge eight or ten row choppers that can go across the rows if needed, they don’t have to follow the rows. Then it’s loaded into trucks, or tractors and wagons that follow the chopper and are filled almost automatically, and it’s so much easier than it was 30 years ago when I was doing it with our 2 row pull type chopper. Again, just fun to see

I managed to have one afternoon and a couple hours one other day to work in my shop. Got some sill plates bolted to the concrete floor and I have one post up.

Here is old technology mixed with new. A plumbob and a laser!

I took in some fire extinguishers to be renewed. This one from 1995 still worked great!

I showed daughter how to pull the pin and spray it around. Got a new one to replace this old one.

This week is Tech rehearsals for a 1920s jazz musical called ‘The Wild Party’ at the Rep Theater. Spending a lot of time here getting the new lights hooked up and the lightboard talking to the laptop. (Had to call in an expert to help do that). Here’s a picture of the lighting board from the tour ‘Back to the Future’ at the Orpheum.

Here is our new board at the Rep.

Their board has more knobs and screens. They win.

I did get a new battery put back in Kelly‘s tractor and had that running for a while. But there was a few wisps of smoke coming from under the dash, and the lights don’t work, so I assume I’m not done working on that yet.

And the 630 starter is making a funky sound.

And the 4-wheeler that I put the new carburetor on isn’t working again.

And the lawnmower still quits after it gets hot.

I have some things to work on yet.

Thursday night the dogs met a skunk.  I wasn’t there, Kelly and daughter were. We thought Bailey got the worst of it and she got a special bath (thank you Kelly), but this morning it was Humphrey that smells. Everyone is just staying outside for now.

Can you snap your fingers? Did I ask this before?  The musical director for this show, snapped her fingers LOUDLY, with a real good SNAP for almost the entire 2 hour rehearsal! After rehearsal I asked to see her fingers. I wanted to see if those fingers were twice as big as the rest. No, but she has a callous on that one finger. It’s interesting how that must be a young person’s thing. Daughter can snap good, too. I get a muffled little snap.

Not counting groans and moans, how many noises can you make with your body?

2024, Art, Movies, Poems, Theatre, TV, Uncategorized

RIP James Earl Jones

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I read the news yesterday that James Earl Jones passed away on Monday at the age of 93.

It turns out that I’ve seen a fair number of the films that he’s been in.  Not a majority by any means – he did after all either appear or lend his voice to over 100 films/tv shows and had a rich background in theatre as well. 

I saw his first two forays into film by luck of the draw.  His first was in 1964 in Dr. Strangelove as Lt. Lothar Zogg, one of the pilots of the last bomber. 

The second film was The Comedians in 1967, although it wasn’t very funny and I didn’t remember that he was the rebel doctor who got his throat slit 2/3 of the way through the movie.  In fact, until The Great White Hope in 1970, I hadn’t even know his name and wouldn’t have been able to tell you he had been in the earlier movies.  Now, like most everyone else, I hear his voice and know immediately who it is.

It’s interesting to me that JEJ stuttered as a child.  I heard him say in an interview once “one of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.”  I don’t remember if this was having to do with his stutter (apparently he didn’t speak for about 8 years as a kid) or more having to do with feeling the need to keep quiet in a contentious world. 

He got over his stutter with the help of a teacher who encouraged him to read poetry.  And read poetry he did.  One of his biggest stage hits was as Othello.  Here is a bit that he did for a White House Poetry event:

He seemed to be able to play just about any kind of role – Moor King, evil Jedi, doctor, teacher, not too bright police office, lion, wise legendary author – you name it.  

I’ve made a list of films that he appeared in.  Guess I have another rabbit hole for the next couple of weeks!

Do you have a favorite JEJ film?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Theatre

He Made Me Ice Cream

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I brought a crate of peaches to Brookings, and for some reason, I started thinking about peach ice cream. That led to the memory of a friend of mine telling me about some ice cream she had made with a special ice cream maker she had just bought-a Ninja Creami.

Well, wouldn’t you know that the Brookings Walmart had one of those, so I bought it, and Grandson and I have had the best time this week making ice cream. He assisted in making all the mixes and running the machinery. The mixes were mainly cream and flavorings, but no eggs.

The whole premise of this contraption is that you can make a small amount of ice cream quickly after the mix has been in the freezer over night. The mixes are easy and don’t need to be cooked. Then, you put the container in the machine, which sends a whirly blade into the frozen mixture and tuns it into ice cream or sorbet.

We made lemon sorbet, coffee ice cream, peach ice cream, strawberry ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and mixed berry sorbet. Grandson quickly figured out how to get the thing set up. He was so proud and happy seeing his parents eat the ice cream he had made. He said the coffee ice cream was his favorite.

I remember family members struggling with ice, salt, and noisy electric or hand cranked ice cream makers. Boy, it tasted good, though, but it was quite a production. This was easy. Too easy!

What are your favorite ice creams? Memories of ice cream making? Ever seen the musical She Loves Me?

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Theatre, Uncategorized

What A Ride

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

What a week it’s been. So much going on and I pretty much hit the wall on Wednesday, but I powered through until Thursday when, after Wednesday night’s rain (2.06 then another .2″) I could stay home and have a lazy day. I may have drifted off a couple times. 

We are REALLY excited about the hot and cold water faucets installed in our garage.

No more cold water dog baths! It’s kinda dumb how excited we are about this! 

Plus got ‘SpongeBob, the Musical’ ready to open and that became a really fun, silly show with more witty one liners and dialogue than I realized. (When lighting a show, I’m not fully listening for the first few rehearsals; my mind is in other places. Yeah, I’m supposed to read the script first, but you, it’s only ‘Spongebob’…) The show opened last night. 

Last week, I did finally finish cutting oats. I started Thursday, the swather ran for an hour and a half and died. An hour later it ran for half an hour and died. The next morning it ran for 45 minutes and died. (The generator isn’t working either, so I’d drive the gator up there and take the battery jump pack along and jump start it every time). I made some phone calls and googled symptoms for a while. This thing has a Chyrsler Slant 6 engine in it. If you know anything about cars, you know about the Slant 6. It was ubiquitous in Chrysler cars for quite a few years in the 1960’s and ’70’s. It might be the fuel pump, might be the ignition coil, hard to say. John Deere doesn’t stock any of those parts anymore, but I called a local auto parts place. The young man there– key words being ‘young man’, I knew he was too young. And when he said to me, “Is the coil that round cylinder thing?” I knew I had the wrong guy. 

I called NAPA and I asked first, “Do you know what a Slant 6 is?” The guy scoffed. “Do I know what a slant 6 is!” OK, good. I can talk to this guy. He told me when he first started working for NAPA he was in a small farming town, and being a city boy, he didn’t know what a ‘swather’ was. He learned fast. THIS was the right guy to talk with. I replaced the ignition coil and a resistor, and it ran for 45 minutes and quit. But an hour later, it ran for 3 hours. And I was THIS CLOSE to finishing all the oats. It was 9:15 at night and dark and while there are two headlights on the swather, they don’t really light enough to see anything. And then, feeling optimistic and picturing being done, like the MN Vikings, it let me down. (Sorry for the dig. Courtesy of my brother in law, on Friday Kelly got to spend some time at the Vikings Training Camp with our daughter in law, Michelle.) The next morning, I finished cutting the last of the oats in about 15 minutes and drove it home. I guess I’ll replace the points, condenser, and fuel pump, and get the generator repaired, and maybe next year it will run better.  

In places, it looks like the deer wrapped their tongues around the plant and stripped the grain right off; it was just stalks. In places it was broken off or down. And in some places it looked OK. 

I’ll talk more about the harvest next week. But it wasn’t good. 

I couldn’t find the ducks one morning. They have found the pond. They will do a good job cleaning up the algae. And we lost one. There was a carcass down there one morning. Shucks. 

We’ve decided to have the barn painted. And I don’t want to do it, nor do I want to be climbing the ladder to the peak, nor should I be climbing up there. Twenty some years ago when I painted it last, I put the extension ladder in the loader bucket and put that up on the roof of this lean-to. And I still couldn’t reach the peak. I’ve done some dumb stuff, but not usually the same thing twice. 

I happen to see a guy painting the building where daughter attends, and we’ve hired them to paint the barn. They’re out power washing the old paint off this week. 

I had some good volunteers helping with theater stuff again.

One teenage padawan, Max, is back, so he and a volunteer met me at Menards and they loaded up 35 sheets of 1/4″ plywood (we call it ‘lauan’ which is kind of a general term) while I paid for it, and then I met them outside to load it. 

The three of us carried it into the theater. Then two more helpers arrived and the lumber yard truck showed up with two guys and the 7 of us hauled 25 sheets of 3/4″ plywood inside. It was too dang hot to work much harder than that. Plus the sprinkler repair guys were there and they moved a sprinkler pipe that was in a sightline from the booth. 

And that’s why I drifted off on Thursday. 

DESCRIBE A GOOD NAP. 

2024, Fantasy, Kids, Music, Mysteries, Songs, Theatre, Uncategorized

Prince Among Men

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My little friend next door, Minnie, loves to sing and dance.  For the past two summers she had done a summer camp at the Lundstrum Performing Arts Center; this year they presented Annie Jr (just a shorter version of Annie).  Considering that it is all untrained kids and that they get the whole thing together in two weeks, they did a great job.

This was all that Minnie talked about for two weeks.  In addition to previewing the song/dance that she was in, she regaled me with stories of how things were progressing and who was playing what part.  There were several kids who had been in Little Mermaid with her last year and although I did see the show last year, I couldn’t have told you any of the players except Minnie. 

Of course there was also the post-production discussion the day after the last performance.  I commented that the young man who played Rooster Hannigan did a nice job.  He also had a great dance solo dressed as a street Santa in the N.Y.C. song.  Minnie quickly pointed out that he had played Prince Eric in Little Mermaid.  When I said I hadn’t remembered that, she commented that he hadn’t had to do very much to be the prince.  Then she added, almost as an afterthought, that princes don’t usually have much to do. 

In her world, all her princesses and princes are represented by Disney.  As I thought about it the next few days, I realized that Disney has, for the most part, not spent too much energy on princes.  Snow White’s prince doesn’t have a name, Sleeping  Beauty’s prince does have a name (and a bit of backstory) but doesn’t have much personality.  Cinderella’s prince is also pretty non-descript.  Ariel’s prince is a little bland and definitely clueless.  Belle’s prince spends most of the movie as a beast and Tiana’s prince spends most of the movie as a frog.  Merida has three princes, all of whom are a bit… lacking.  A few princes fare a bit better in their Disney representation but clearly it’s all about the princesses. 

I’m not too worried about this unfair portrayal – I doubt that young girls and boys are too damaged by this uneven treatment.  But I also don’t believe that Barbie dolls are inherently evil either. 

If you were to be a Disney princess or prince (or villain if you prefer) for a week, who would you choose?