All Saints students come to Lakeville Senior Center

Linda Walter, Activities Director at Lakeville Senior Center, contacted me a few weeks ago to do a show at their new facility by the fire hall in Lakeville. In the past, I've done programs which included my Christmas book and my Thanksgiving book during those seasons, but this time she said that 100 students for nearby All Saints Catholic School were walking down to the Senior Center for Harvest activities and wondered if I would do my Halloween story for them.  I gladly agreed.

The students at All Saints always make good audience members.

I did several programs at the school last year and the students

 always listened intently and asked great questions.

Students ranged in age from Kindergarten  through grade five. For safety and student enjoyment, each fifth grader was paired with a younger student as they walked from the school to the Senior Center and as they listened to the program. Adults sat in the back.

The students' questions didn't disappoint me. One student asked about the process of putting an image onto the DVD. A younger student asked "How come it looks so real?"

Thanks to Linda Walter for inviting Nancy and me to do the Heritage Program and Photograph Display, and thanks to the students and teachers at All Saints for coming on down to listen.

Corn Show at Glasgow, Wisconsin

Last April Sandy Ravnum, Media Specialist for the Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau Elementary Schools in Wisconsin, invited me to do my Farm Heritage Program in each of the three schools, and when Nancy and I came there, she guided us from school to school and gave us brief tours of each school. We had a really fun day.

Sandy understood how impressed we were with the area and the schools, and she decided to invite us to a local harvest celebration near Glasgow, Wisconsin, which is simply called "The Corn Show."

Last Saturday, after taking an enjoyable drive down Highway 61 from Redwing to Winona and then driving about another 25 miles through the beautiful countryside of Wisconsin, we arrived at the site of The Corn Show about 10:45 A.M. Nancy and I soon learned the area was rich with rural heritage and the people were eager to share their stories. So let me say first, we thank the people of Glasgow for sharing their farm heritage with us.

The site of The Corn Show is the school house and school yard of the country school which was built in 1921. The local organization takes care of the school and uses it and the sheds behind it for their annual harvest celebration.

The activities of The Corn Show were a combination of those found in a small county fair and a country school picnic.

Sheds in the back displayed produce to be judged:

Pictures from local families of past farm activities were displayed in an adjoining shed:

Machinery brought in by local farmers was displayed on the grounds:

 The basement of the school displayed preserves and crafts to be judged:

 In the afternoon games were scheduled to be played by adults and young people, but first the club served a great noon meal in the basement of the school.
After the leisurely meal and much visiting, people gathered upstairs in the schoolhouse to hear my one-hour Farm Heritage Program.

The stage in the front made the schoolroom a great place to perform. Nancy displayed our books and farm heritage photos along the wall of the room.

Audience members seemed to enjoy the show. Many were teary-eyed and gave me kind comments after the show, and several game me hugs.

In the afternoon popular games included the "bale toss" where men competed to see who could throw the bale the best distance and, pictured below, the ball toss and the rope pull.

Two young men competing by trying to throw the ball into the milk can.

Teams competing in the "tug of war."

After items were judged, ribbons were handed out and places were announced.

Our friend Sandy Ravnum, who invited us to the event, won the quilt competition.

Sandy's son Ted restored a 1965 John Deere 3020, which according to her husband Steve, was purchased by his family in 1965 and was the biggest tractor around the area at the time.

Owner demonstrating a small feed grinder powered by a small engine.

To show the size of the winning sunflower head, Sandy holds her hand next to it.

We revisited the photo display to get some closeups.

School interior in the 1940s.

There were lots of great pictures of harvesting (too many to post), but one that caught my eye displayed the pride and joy shown by farmers who no longer had to shovel oats or carry sacks when they unloaded grain. If you are on of those who remember unloading oats by hand, you understand what a big deal an elevator and a hydraulic hoist was at the time.

Before we left, we visited with Sandy and Dan, who is the president of The Corn Show organization.

Sandy, Dan, and I enjoying swapping stories as we visited before we left the event.

Jane Thompson, who had purchased a book after my program, caught us before we left to get a photo.

Sandy and I in front of the school.

We couldn't resist snapping a photo of a beautiful, huge oak (above)

before we hit the road for home (below).

The Glasgow Corn Show is an authentic harvest festival consisting of local people showing their produce to be judged. It is not an event designed to attract thousands of people, but it is more like a wonderful, friendly neighborhood get-together.

And yet, 2012 MARKED THE 96TH CONSECUTIVE YEAR OF THE EVENT!

Now that's real farm heritage!

 Nancy and I felt privileged to be there and especially honored to be part of their entertainment program. 
We thank Sandy for inviting us and for sponsoring our lunch, and we also thank the many members of the organization for their effort in putting on the show. Their hospitality toward us made us feel welcome and helped us enjoy the entire event.

Photographs by Nancy A. Fredrickson

DEAL! the musical, a review

Last night Nancy and I had the pleasure of attending a musical play at The Ritz Theater in Minneapolis.
Deal! the Musical uses a family's weekly poker game to expose the tensions and tragedies in the lives of a family and a few friends over the nine-year period from Christmas of 1958 to Christmas of 1967. The entertaining dialogue has an authentic feel to it that goes beyond nostalgia, and like the dialogue, the music is fun, but often very moving. Deal! will make you laugh often and keep you smiling even as you tear up through the many tender scenes.

Deal! is based on playwright/composer Tom Broadbent's experience with his family's weekly card games, which he proclaims in his program comments, "taught me the value of long-term relationships and forgiveness." The story follows Art and Elsie, who have just moved into town after loosing a farm they had been renting for three years. Although Art holds on to his dream of owning a farm, Elsie has settled in quickly and enjoys having a job in town with regular hours. Their two daughters, Julie, 15, and Audrey, 13, cope with real-life issues of lack of self-esteem, conflicts with their mother, conflicts between each other, and conflicts with facing their futures.
Other regulars at the poker game are Pearl, a recently widowed neighbor who copes with loss by successfully managing a liquor store; Oscar, a friend who spends too much time at the Lost and Found Tavern;  and his newest girlfriend, Millie, whose tragic loss and difficult past drives her abuse of alcohol.

Although alcohol's affect on Oscar and Millie is the cause of much really good humor, the play does not glamorize consumption. Events and dialogue clearly show them as people needing to break from past issues and getting absolutely nowhere by using alcohol to cope.
Also, there is a good deal of swearing in the play, but I think it serves the play well, adding a degree of realism and even some humor that is true to the story and the author's experience. I do not believe the play glorifies cursing, but I cannot predict what effect it might have on young people. Would young people see the cursing for it's emptiness or adopt it in their vocabulary?  A conversation between parent and child would be advised should you take a teenager to the play. I think it's fair to say the play is intended for an adult audience.

The play had me at the first scene, which takes place on Christmas Eve, 1958, with details of characters and story rolled into the opening number, "Deal Dammit,"where each character sings verses of personal exposition as they impatiently await the beginning of the poker game. Clear, detailed exposition has never been more fun.
But the play gets even better. I found the brief yelling battles between sisters and between daughters and mother particularly convincing. There were no villains. Musical numbers and dialogue evoked empathy for each individual in Scene Two where Julie opens her heart to the audience in "Julie's Song" and Audrey returns from a date with a Catholic boy. After greeting the poker players and denying that her outing with a Catholic boy was a real "date," she goes to her room to dream of him as her parents and their friends joyfully joke about Catholics and proclaim she will not marry one. Meanwhile in her room, Audrey sings "My Catholic Boy," which shows that her feelings for him go way beyond friendship.

The play is extremely funny, but without flinching it addresses head-on the issues of religion, alcohol, conflicts between parents and children, personal health tragedies, loss of dreams, and the regular hard, uphill journey of life for people who are not sheltered by money or success.

Through it all, it's hard-working wife and mother Elsie who keeps everything together, but the play makes her no perfect heroine. I found myself almost aching as she handles or mishandles conflicts with her daughters and as she expresses resentment because of their dissatisfaction of the life she has struggled to provide for them. We learn of Elsie's hard life as a child on the farm, and it's through Elsie that we feel the pain and joy of sacrificing for those you love. After many of her attempts at doing the right thing have come back to bite her, she perseveres and never gives up on her husband, daughters and friends. Elsie doesn't "save" anyone, but her family and friends understand she makes it better for everyone.

Chad VanKekerix's set design allowed for fluid movement from scene without many prop changes. It was pleasing and functional. Since subsequent setting in scenes often had a time lapse of several years, pictures from the era were projected on the wall behind the poker table and accompanied by short narration which served to set mood and fill in transitional material. The photographs were particularly enjoyable and the narration smooth and unobtrusive.

In a musical with eight cast members, each of whom sings and plays a prominent role in the story line, I feel it is high praise to the director and to the cast for me to say there were no weaknesses in the cast. Cast members were strong. In a tightly-knit musical like Deal!, any one weak portrayal would destroy much of the play. I found their characters believable and empathetic, and I found their songs delightful and moving.  Catherine Battocletti as Pearl convincingly portrayed a friend who belonged with the family. As a widow, she was able to scramble to some success even as other central characters were slipping. Most entertaining was her leading of the musical number "Jug Band" during a Mother's Day poker game attended only by the women. The men, of course, are all fishing. Though the role of women is strong throughout the play, this scene in particular displays the plight of womanhood as dictated by their bodies and their places in society. Women both lead and follow in their essential roles in the family, but men tend to get the glory while the women are expected to sacrifice.
Aly Westberg as Julie and Lizzie Schwarzrock as Audrey were particularly convincing in handling the aging of their characters from young teens to married women. David Roberts as Oscar and Kim Kivens as Millie excelled at playing drunk humor with credibility, evoking both empathy and disgust. Jon Andrew Hegge as Art and Laurie Flanigan-Hegge as Elsie both carried the weight of the story, projecting vulnerability and humor. Flanigan-Hegge was especially adept at winning hearts with her convincing portrayal of a mother who gives of herself, sometimes getting little in return.

Work by Audio Designer, Collin Sherraden; Technical Director, Chris Carpenter; Lighting Designer, Jennifer DeGolier; and Costume and Props Designer, Rien Schlecht, contributed flawlessly to make the show move smoothly and effectively.

Playwright/Composer Tom Broadbent; Playwright Jerry Seifert;  Director Joshua James Campbell; Musical Director Kyle Ross Thomas, and Musical Arranger Shane Keister have created a musical that makes for an enjoyable evening, filled with humor, fun music, and serious themes that are real to most everyone. Deal! was produced by Kurt Larsen, and the Executive Producer was Jim Foltz.

The show runs through May 6th at The Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. NE, Minneapolis. Call 612-436-1129 for tickets. Go to www.ritzdolls.com for more information.