It's Full Potential

You may recall that while Anna and I were living in the Twin Cities I got my old radio working again thanks to a sweet saint named Del. It has continued to work well here in Dundee, except it is sometimes hard to get something worth listening to, unless you are keenly interested in the price of corn, hogs, cattle, soybeans and the like. I listen dutifully to at least one farm report during the day so that I can understand the economic plights of my neighbors, but when I have heard the same report once an hour over the past three hours I get a little tired of local radio. Anna and I listen to NPR frequently, but even that gets tiresome during the fund-raising drives they do, like right now. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the members of NPR and Minnesota Public Radio, because without them I wouldn't get to listen to things like Click and Clack, the Tappert brothers on Car-Talk, and I would know nothing of Guy Noir. NPR really has nothing to do with my old radio anyway because they broadcast on FM, and it is an AM radio. Country music comes in great, but a steady diet of country is like having oatmeal for breakfast every day. It isn't bad for you, but after a while you get tired of it. It's nice to have eggs once in a while.

Okay, I'm kind of getting into another long-winded prelude, so I'll cut to the chase. When I got my radio fixed in St. Paul, Del pointed out that there is a place on the back to plug in something else if I want to, such as a record player or an FM receiver. Looking at the jack, I couldn't tell what kind of cord would plug into it, so I basically ignored it. Still, I thought, if I could somehow get this thing to play FM, I could listen to NPR through this radio instead of the other stereo, and it would be fun to increase its versatility by increasing the available bands. I remember asking Del if he knew where I could get an FM receiver for the thing, and he basically threw up his hands and said, "Darned if I know!" so I kind of forgot about it.

This last weekend however, Anna and I were exploring Sioux Falls, South Dakota and just happened to find ourselves at a Toys "R" Us store. We were looking for a chess set, and after we found one we liked we just kind of wandered around the store for a bit. As luck would have it, they happened to have Sony Walkman FM/CD players on sale for an incredible price of $5! It suddenly occured to me that perhaps I could directly wire the headphone jack into the jack on the back of the old radio and I could get the FM to play that way, and even have the ability to play CD's as well. I figured that even if it didn't work I would only be out $5 and my disappointment.

When I got the walkman home and wired the headphone jack in, lo and behold, it didn't work. Dang! I was disappointed. "Ah well," I consoled myself, "It was only $5." That sounds like the end of the story, but since I'm still typing there must be more, and there is! Last Tuesday I was rummaging around the house while Anna was at play practice, looking for an A/C adapter to use on the walkman so that I wouldn't have to use batteries in it all the time. I thought I had one, and for some reason (probably a $5 reason) the thing didn't come with one, but after searching every known box in our house that might hold one, I couldn't find it. What I DID find was a patch cord that had a headphone plug on one end, and two RCA plugs on the other. We had used it to plug the DVD player into the stereo, but since the DVD player broke, and the stereo is in a different room now anyway, the cord ended up in a box in storage. I wondered if the RCA plug would fit into that jack on the back of my old radio. I was a little worried about shorting something out that I couldn't fix, but I figured it was worth a shot. I thought the worst that can happen is I might break a jack I don't use anyway, so what the heck. I plugged the headphone end into the headphone jack, and one of the RCA ends into the old radio, which I knew meant I was only getting one side of the stereo signal, but it is not a stereo radio, so there is no other option. I turned on the radio and pushed the auxilary button on the front, and what do you know! It works! I tried both of the RCA plugs and the sound quality seems about the same, so I just left one of them in. The great thing is that, not only can we now listen to FM (and therefore NPR) through the old radio, but we can also play CD's through it. We can listen to our Glen Miller, Benny Goodman and Andrews Sisters with the speakers they were meant to be heard from. It is very fun, and great for our swing dancing! I still don't have an A/C adapter, so next week I think I'll head for Radio Shack and see if I can find one that is compatible, but in the meantime, it is fun to be able to play what we want through the old radio, even if we still don't own a record player. It's still nice to hear this old radio and use it to its full potential. Blogged by Don.

Antiquing (or Shopping for Antiques)

Anna and I have one strong passion that we share. We both really enjoy shopping for antiques. Some people really have no idea what the attraction is, but in some ways for us, it is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon perusing the things that were useful in yester-years, and in some cases we can add to some of the things we like to collect. Anna likes to collect salt and pepper shakers, and, in a never ending effort to replicate my childhood, I like to collect Anchor Hocking Wexford glassware. We now own much more Anchor Hocking Wexford glassware than our family ever had when I was a child, but that doesn't matter, I like the pattern, Anchor Hocking doesn't make it anymore, so it is therefore collectible, and so I collect it. That is enough justification for me.

We have also managed to collect Royal's Colonial Homestead pattern of dishes, only because Anna's mother gave her Anna's great-grandmother's platter from that collection and one day we found a whole bunch of dishes in that pattern at a thrift store, so since we already had the platter we decided to get that set. It is not the most desirable pattern that Royal ever put out, but we like it, and we have a lot of it, so we keep it around. Every now and then we find a piece we don't have yet, so we add it to our collection.

All of this is prelude to the point of this post. You see, the common denominator in all of our collecting up to this point is that everything we collect is small. Being still in seminary, and knowing that as a seminary student I have to move a lot, we have disciplined ourselves to collect small things that pack easily so that we don't have to concern ourselves with being over-burdened with excess furniture. Not to say that we don't have any antique furniture, we do. We have Anna's grandma's old sewing machine and her rocking chair, Her great-grandfather's trunk and oak sleigh bed with matching dresser and chest of drawers, and of course I have been packing my old radio around with me for years. But up until now, we have not purchased any large antique furniture together. We did purchase a small end-table from a second hand store, and we purchased a platform bed that I turned into a console table, and in Stillwater we found a nice book rack that stores all of Anna's transcription books, but we had not purchased any nice, old every day furniture from an antique store, ever.

That changed today. You see, about a month ago I attended a pastor's conference at a church near Lamberton. After the conference I needed to get to the store so I could purchase some refreshments for my internship committee that was meeting that night. While I was in town I noticed there was an antique store just a block down the street from the grocery store, so I went inside to see if it would be something that Anna and I would enjoy exploring together sometime. When I perused the store initially I noticed there were a significant number of dealers that sold salt and pepper shakers, so I told Anna when I got home that I thought it would be fun to check out that antique store sometime. Anna had an appointment in Slayton today and after that we had lunch at our favorite little cafe there. Over lunch Anna said she wasn't really interested in going home right away, so I suggested that maybe this would be a good day to explore that antique store in Lamberton. Well, she said that sounded good, so off we went.

Sure enough, there were lots of salt and pepper shakers around, just like I had remembered it, but as we wandered around the store, Anna's eyes fell upon this wonderful old mission-style oak rocker. It had a padded seat, but the rest of it was solid oak. Anna sat in it and discovered that the old rocker was extremely comfortable, so she had me sit in it and try it out so she could ask me what I thought. I have to admit, it is a very comfortable rocker, but I reminded Anna that we had driven our Subaru to the town today, and I was doubtful that the rocker would fit into it. We fussed and fumed for the longest time, but finally we gave in and bought it. Sure enough, there was no way it was going home in that Subaru! We asked the store clerk if they could store it for us until we could get back to town again in a couple of weeks, and she readily agreed.

On the way home, the more we thought about it, the more we wanted to get our new toy so we could play with it! We knew it would fit into our station wagon, and we also knew that the store was open until 5, and it was only 3, so if we hustled we could get home, pick up the Ford, gas it up and make it back to Lamberton before the store closed. We decided to go for it! We made the mad dash back to Lamberton and got there by 4:30. Plenty of time to pick up our new treasure and head back home. Now it sits in our sitting room, proud as can be, and we will get to enjoy it someday, if we can get Jasper out of it. Ahh, antique shopping is so much fun! Blogged by Don

Wish I had this talent!

Art, Art everywhere. I wish I had my aunt and uncle's talent for drawing. My grandmother also drew and I have a few of her pieces of art on our wall. These two pictures my aunt drew, these are but a few of what she has done. My aunt gave me a few of my uncle's pieces of artwork (which I am standing next to in the picture) when he was younger, just starting out. I have been packing with me this one piece for years. Where we are living, a parishoner's son does his own custom framing and mat work. So we have taken a few pieces to have finished. I was so impressed with what he did that we have taken a few more pieces down to see what magic he can do. Valentine's Day was quiet but special. We are learning living on the prairie to make our own magic, ain't life grand!
Published by Anna

The Big Dance

It's been a week since Anna and I went to the Big Dance in Fulda and did our part to help the town raise money for the new ambulance. I can now give you my review. We had a pork loin dinner with baked potato and green bean casserole with a dinner roll and berry cheesecake for dessert. The dinner was very good, even if the pork was a little dry. They had barbecue sauce available, so if you put a light coating of barbecue sauce on the meat it was better.

The real highlight of the evening, of course, was the big band. Fulda has it's own big band, called (oddly enough) "The Fulda Area Big Band". The director of the band is also the director of the high school band, but this band is all volunteer, and they were very good. Not to say the high school band is not good, but the only time I have heard them play was at a football game, and they were OK. The big band was REALLY GOOD! They played a nice variety of music including some Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, some traditional numbers that had been rearranged like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and they even played polka and waltz music. Anna and I danced for about an hour and a half before something in my knee went "Ping!" and I kind of needed to sit down. We danced just a little bit after that, but Anna didn't want to aggravate whatever it was in my knee that went ping. I suspect I irritated an old injury that I got ice skating in college, and when I put my knee support on at home it got better. Anna got a good chance to remind me that I'm getting old, but the next day we were back at it, dancing in the living room.

One positive result of going to the dance is that we were able to observe other dancers and picked up a couple of new moves, my favorite of which is a back-to-back spin. Another positive result is that some people from the Fulda church were there and complemented us on our dancing. That was nice to hear, especially since we're quite new at it. I don't know when we will get to dance in public again, but I suspect it will be sometime this spring. In the meantime we will continue to dance in our living room, with good music from Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Manhattan Transfer, The Andrews Sisters, and anyone else we can get a good beat from. We're also getting used to dancing together, and the more we do it, the more we like it! Swing dancing is really great fun, even if you're not as coordinated as Fred Astaire or Danny Kaye. I have one advantage over both of those guys; I'm not dead! HA! If you ever get a chance to learn to swing dance, I recommend it. Blogged by Don

Dance, Dance, Dance!!

Anna and I have started doing something fun, just for us. We saw an ad in one of the local papers for Swing Dance Lessons and decided to try it out. It turns out we like swing dancing! We have learned quite a few moves in just the three lessons that were covered by the course and we have the opportunity to try out our moves for real this Saturday night, when there is a big band dance in Fulda to benefit the ambulance association. We're looking forward to that, but in the meantime we practice. We have been playing some of our swing CD's and dancing through them. It takes some getting used to. One thing I have a little trouble with is that the man ALWAYS leads. That means I have to decide constantly what moves we are going to do, and then give Anna very clear indications with my hands and feet so that she knows what to do to follow my lead. There isn't much pressure involved really, because we love each other and forgive each other's missteps.

Another thing to get used to is that in swing dancing, even though the man leads, the woman gets all the flashy moves. Anna gets most of the turns and spins and dips, and I just lead her around and let her look good. The last part is easy, because, come on, she's a cutie! But the leading part I have to be just a little careful not to put too many turns in all at once or the poor woman gets dizzy! Still, we're having a blast, and I have a terrific dance partner. Good thing I like Glen Miller! Blogged by Don