The Golden Strings

Tonight we enjoyed the first concert in this year's Dickinson Area Concert Series: a performance by The Golden Strings, a group of ten musicians from the Minneapolis, MN area. There were six violinists (one of whom was Clifford Brunzell, the founder and leader), one drummer, one string bass player, one accordionist, and one vocal soloist. Everyone was very accomplished with his/her instrument (even the soloists, who started off tentative but ended the night singing robustly); however, the spotlight was definitely on the violins. Those folks often left the stage to wander around the audience while still playing, some of them holding entire conversations with audience members without missing a note! They played all styles of music from all eras and incorporated humor in their song choices, their song stylings, or their song introductions throughout the night.

My dad and stepmother were in town for the weekend, so we took them to the concert, and they enjoyed it, too. My dad plays accordion, and he really appreciated the accordionist on stage and his abilities. The girls enjoyed the concert, too, although it kept them up too late on a night before school. And the house was packed in the Dorothy Stickney Auditorium on the campus of Dickinson State University tonight. It was great to see such support for the arts and to enjoy such great art for such an unbelievably reasonable price. Bravo!

Simon and Son and Snow

Just last week we attended one of the concerts offered by the Dickinson Area Concert Association in this year's series.  Well, the next scheduled concert . . . was tonight!  We skipped Scandinavian Saturday supper this week due to last night's Norwegian buffet, ate our usual Friday night meal of homemade pizza, and got ready to leave.  It was snowing and scheduled to continue throughout the night, and I knew I'd have to get up super-early tomorrow to start snowblowing and shoveling so that Susan and the girls can be at church at 7:30 A.M.; so I wasn't eager to forgo supper tonight in order to go out and clear the driveway in time for us to drive to the concert.  So we walked there instead.  Through the continuously falling snow.  And the cold wind.  And the piles of snow on the unshoveled sidewalks and unplowed streets between our house and the university.

Four Sax-y Men

Last night we enjoyed another event in the Dickinson Area Concert Series. It was a concert by Presidio Saxophone Quartet from the Tucson, AZ area. Each of the men played a different saxophone: soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone. They were excellent, making the saxophone sound truly beautiful (which I don't recall thinking when hearing it played by classmates in high school [with apologies to my sister who herself played sax]). They played classical music and jazz and ragtime and modern.

In between songs, they took turns stepping to the microphone and telling a little about themselves, their travels, and their musical selections. Apparently they had played for a tough crowd in SD a few days earlier; they made much of the fact that we were a much more receptive, welcoming, energized, and attentive audience. But, hey, how could we not be? Their fingering and tonguing skills (simmer down, now . . .) were remarkable; they were able to play with speed and precision as well as dynamics and expression. Each concert in this series has amazed me and made me happy to have the chance to enjoy such fine music with my family, especially the kids, who are "getting culture," as one fellow audience member put it. (Hillary fell asleep a few minutes after the concert began, and Suzanna fell asleep after Presidio returned from intermission. Can one "get culture" passively while sleeping?)

P.S. Presidio shared little tidbits about the relatively young history of the saxophone, too, explaining that it wasn't created until the 1840s, so there isn't as much music written for the sax as for many other instruments. Learn a little about it yourself at "Sax Appeal" (love that title).

Awesome Concert

Wow. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

The second concert in the Dickinson Area Concert Series was tonight, and I haven't experienced anything so wonderful in a long time . . . if ever. Tonight's artists were an a capella men's quartet called Cadence. Dylan Bell, Ross Lynde, Carl Berger, and Kevin Fox are Toronto musicians--a high-energy, humorous, active bunch whose voices blend well, who display a high level of musicianship, and who know how to infect the audience with their own joyful attitudes.

They sang a wide variety of music, from '40s and '50s standards to '60s and '70s rock "classics" to more recent songs. In between, they performed their schtick, told jokes, introduced themselves and their songs, and interacted with the audience. In fact, at one point Ross came over to where we were seated (near the stage, as luck would have it) and asked me my name, whether the women seated around me were my family, the names of my daughters ("Three girls? Wow! How many bathrooms do you have in your house?"), and Susan's name. Then he invited her to join them on stage!

They seated her on a chair, surrounded her, got down on a knee, and serenaded her with "My Romance." She was a good sport, and they were funny, joking about being in love with her and telling me from onstage how lucky I am. Suzanna could hardly contain her giggles over seeing Mommy up on stage, and Abigail and Hillary were giddy and antsy, jumping up and down and beaming from ear to ear. It was almost as great to watch the three of them as it was to see Susan up on stage with Cadence and to hear them sing and joke and act all swoony!

Afterward several audience members approached us to say "hi" to Susan, having known her from years ago and recognizing her while she was on stage. We bought two CDs of Cadence's music and had each singer autograph each CD. They were good sports, very amiable, and sincerely interested in listening to the girls' comments and answering their questions. I had the sense that they'd be folks we'd enjoy hanging out with in a social setting.

I'm listening to one of their CDs as I write this; it's great, too, and brings back to my mind their onstage antics (that was an important part of why the concert was so enjoyable). Their Web site motto (proclaiming their a capella-ness: "Instruments are for surgeons") reflects their fun attitude. I can't praise them enough. It was terrific. This concert series was a great investment.

P.S. I forgot to ask them afterward during autograph time whether any (or all) of them had ever been in the musical Forever Plaid. I was in that show a decade ago with my friends Patrick, Paul, and Darin, so I was delightedly surprised to hear Cadence sing two songs in nearly the same arrangements as they appear in the musical: "Mathilda" and "Scotland the Brave." And I mean nearly identical arrangements, so if they've never been in the musical, then at least they have seen it and been inspired by it. That deja vu (deja heard?) was a nice element of the evening, too!

Jazzed About Jazz

We have paid for a family membership to the Dickinson Area Concert Association yearly since moving here, and we have greatly enjoyed the concerts and plays that have been part of each season. Tonight was no exception. The opening event of this season was a concert by Chris Brubeck's Triple Play. Chris Brubeck's father is the legendary American jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, some of whose music includes "Take Five," "Unsquare Dance" (in 7/4 time), and "Blue Rondo à la Turk" (in 9/8 time).

Well, Chris certainly has inherited his father's musical talents--and developed some of his own, too. He and two fellow members of the ensemble came out on stage in pretty casual clothes and played a variety of funk and jazz. Chris himself alternated between bass trombone, piano, and fretless electric bass guitar. Joel stuck with guitar, and "Madcat" played a kind of hi-hat cymbal and a variety of harmonicas and jaw harps. They all took turns singing, too.

Their enjoyment over playing together was contagious. They laughed and exchanged one-liners and played without looking at music sheets and improvised and interacted with the audience and paused to tell stories or explain interesting aspects of upcoming songs and switched instruments and thoroughly impressed those of us in the audience for whom jazz isn't a first choice when selecting music to listen to.

For a play date after school today, Hillary had her friend Lexi over, whose parents were planning to go to the concert, too. So Lexi stayed for supper, and we brought her along to the concert, where we sat beside her parents and her toddler sister. Her dad (a colleague in my department at work, by the way) is a jazz aficionado, so he was lovin' every minute of it. Lexi even got invited onstage to help Madcat play one song. He had a container of all sorts of noise makers: toys and party favors that one winds up, blows through, shakes, or taps in order to make sound. He told her that he was going to start the song and occasionally reach out his hand, and she was to place into it anything at all from the box. Each time she did that, he kept the song going on the harmonica and added to the rhythm whatever she handed him. At one point he was even playing two harmonicas with his mouth and a third with his nose!

We had to tell Hillary all about it, though, because she slept through that song! The night just got a wee bit too long for her, and she nodded off toward the end. But we all had a great time.

Hey, Nice Brass!

The next concert in the Dickinson Area Concert Association's current season was tonight: a brass and percussion group called River City 6.  We continue to be pleased with the quality of the performances offered in the concert series.  The gentlemen in this group tonight were not only very gifted musicians, but they were also funny and all-around entertaining.  We were amazed at their beautiful sound, impressive technique, and range of song styles (from classical to traditional religious to early 20th-century pop music to American musicals, etc.).  The lone percussionist, who remained in the background most of the night (supporting the two trumpets, euphonium, trombone, and tuba), got a chance to shine, too, with a xylophone solo that demonstrated his speed and dexterity with the mallets.  Time flew, and the concert ended too quickly.

A Capell-awesome

We have season tickets to the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series of performances by various musicians on national tour, and the final concert of this season was tonight. It was a concert by Home Free, and they were just terrific! You'll get a good sense of their awesomeness by going to their site to listen to their music and view their videos yourself.

We liked their tight and accurate harmonies and rhythms, their outgoing personalities and humor (verbal, physical, and musical), and their contemporaneity (they used a digital projector for various purposes throughout the concert, they collected our e-mail addresses to add to an electronic mailing list, and they stood on stage and took digital photos of the crowd and then posted the pics to their Facebook page). They won us over; afterward we bought all their CDs and got in line for the girls to hug them and get their autographs.

And we're already looking forward to the next season of concerts. Each year that we have been season ticket holders, we have felt that it has been a very good investment, that's for sure.

A Week of Fun Events

Monday
I was invited to a taste-testing at noon. The university president's wife is hosting an event tomorrow before the Homecoming football game, and she invited me to taste all the food that she's considering serving and provide feedback so that she can finalize her menu. Well, not only me, of course; she invited about a dozen of us, some faculty and some staff. What a great idea for establishing goodwill and enouraging interaction . . . and treating us with some great food! Dining Services prepared all the food using the first lady's recipes, and she provided us with folders containing all the recipes featured on the menu. We ate, wrote down our feedback, and left with plastic-wrap-covered plates of leftovers!

Thursday
I attended a banquet honoring this year's Alumni Fellows, distinguished alumni chosen from each department to return to campus during Homecoming and be honored for their accomplishments after graduating from our university. Our department's alumna spoke to one of my classes yesterday morning, and she gave an eloquent acceptance speech at last night's banquet. The alumna from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science happens to be a woman who used to teach at the high school that I attended! Her husband (himself a DSU grad) got a job at our school and taught me geometry and computer programming. After they got married, she got hired at our school, too. In the years since, they have moved on to another district where he has become the superintendent, and she has distinguished herself in educational technology. It was a fun blast from the past to see them again and visit briefly. (And the food was delicious: salad with a teriyaki/mandarin orange dressing, marinated roast pork tenderloin, new potatoes, green beans almondine, and pineapple cake for dessert.)

Tonight
Our family attended an absolutely phenomenal concert. We have tickets to the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series again this year (it has been a wonderful annual investment that's worth far more than what the tickets cost--incredible!), and tonight's concert was a performance by Stringfever, a "genetically modified" quartet of players of "violectric" instruments. They're genetically modified in that they are three brothers and a cousin. And the instruments are electric violins and cellos--much like electric guitars--made by Violectra. I had never seen or heard of such a thing: instead of solid bodies, the instruments consisted of strings over the plastic?/metal? outline of a tradition violin/cello shape! And they achieved sounds both traditional and funkadelic, making some songs sound like rock concerts and others like classical concerts.

They were talented and technically adept with their instruments, and they were also funny and fun to watch. And the highlight of the night was when they asked for volunteers from the audience who would be willing to come up on stage and help them with a certain song. Abigail turned to me immediately to ask permission to raise her hand, and both she and Hillary had their arms raised so quickly that I think I heard them slicing through the air!

And guess what. The two of them were selected to join Stringfever on stage! The song was a demonstration of how all four musicians could play one song using the same instrument: the cello. They gave Abigail and Hillary each one of the violins, showed them how to hold them, and instructed them to pluck a particular string on cue. Then the men played the song beautifully but comedically, making much ado of intertwining their arms, trading bows, taking over one another's parts, etc.

Hillary and Abigail waited patiently throughout the song, their violins in position and their fingers on the correct string, tapping their feet and keeping an eye out for the cue to play. A few measures before the song's end, the two men who had shown the girls what to do leapt away from the cello, crouched in front of the girls, and finally give them the go-ahead. Their simultaneous string plucks produced the note that ended the song! That in itself (i.e., all that waiting for just one note) added to the humor of the song, but it was thrilling for the girls to be on stage; and they hugged me so hard when they sat back down that I knew they were absolutely delighted. They got many compliments by other patrons after the concert; and in addition to autographing the girls' programs, the musicians gave them key chains and a magnet with "Stringfever" on them. Even Suzanna--as sister of the volunteers--received that treat afterwards!

I highly advise you to give yourself a treat and watch some of Stringfever's videos from their Web site. Those excerpts will give you a sense of what we enjoyed tonight. It was a great end to a busy, stressful week.

Bringing the Blonde Beauties to a Baritone (and a Bianist)

Tonight we enjoyed another [you could catch up here] in the Dickinson Area Concert Association's season of concerts (in cooperation with Allied Concert Services): baritone Leon Williams with pianist Michael Fennelly.

(I'll give you a moment to check out all those links before proceeding . . . There:)

Williams sang a mix of Negro spirituals, operatic arias, French drinking songs, American classics, and hymns--quite a range! His voice is very pleasant, and his delivery was entertaining; his gestures, posture, and facial expressions always conveyed the meaning behind the words and helped to interpret the music. I even got a good sense of the meaning of the songs that he sung in foreign languages! (No surprise: he has stage experience performing in operas.)

We also enjoyed the occasional solos by Fennelly (the link above allows you to hear samples of his playing), which were quite impressive. My favorite was his extended Gershwin solo, but he was fantastic throughout. I noticed his alertness while accompanying, always keeping an eye on Williams and playing in reaction to or anticipation of Leon's changes in pace. He's a fast-talker, making his introductions of his solos difficult to decipher, but his talent was easy to understand.

The girls enjoyed the concert but were pooped out by the time we got home, asking permission to go straight to bed! Alas, we denied them that simple request in order to gather the family on our bed and announce Mommy's recent big news. Their reaction was decidedly low-key, perhaps in part because of their fatigue but also because of their obliviousness to family income. As long as they're safe, warm, clothed, well fed, and loved, they don't much care how much their parents are making or where they're working, I guess. And that's fine with us.

Mardis Gras and Music

A couple fun events from this weekend:

• Our friend Michelle invited us to her house for a belated Mardi Gras party last night. She held a similar event last year (remember?). She had her house decorated with New Orleans posters and Mardi Gras masks, and she served gumbo and a traditional king cake. Susan made a fruit pizza (giant baked sugar cookie for the crust, sweetened cream cheese frosting for the sauce, and various kinds of fresh fruit sliced and arranged artistically for the toppings) to share, and it was a big hit. Michelle has a knack for inviting family and friends and colleagues to make for a delightful mix of guests, so we never know just whom we will visit with or about what subjects (last night's topics: conspiracy theories about city government during city-wide flooding, wildlife conservation, medicinal marijuana and aging Baby Boomers, and stock car racing).
• This afternoon we attended a concert performance by Ten O'Clock Classics as part of the Dickinson Area Concert Association's current season. It has been several months since the last concert (remember?), but we didn't forget our regular routine: enter, march down to the first or second row, and take our place in a prominent position so that we can see what's going on and the musicians can make eye contact with us. (This is what has gotten some of us up on stage with the performers from time to time, too.) The group consists of a pianist, a violinist, a cellist, and a vocalist, and they perform in various combinations. My favorite number featured the cellist playing a song that had her creating all sorts of unsual sounds on the instrument: plucking the strings, tapping it like a percussion instrument, using the bow in different spots along the neck for various effects, etc.

Special Events

Yesterday Suzanna took her grandpa (Susan's dad, Roger) to a Veterans Day program held on the university campus.  Suzanna's geography teacher, himself in the military, encouraged his students to attend and suggested that they invite a veteran to accompany them . . . . so Suzanna did that!  She didn't have school yesterday anyway, so she phoned Grandpa and asked if he could pick her up.  Afterward I asked Suzanna for a debriefing, and she said that it had been interesting but that the speakers "weren't really talking with seventh-graders in mind"; she didn't know really what their speeches were about.  At least it was quality grandpa/granddaughter time.

This evening Susan and Suzanna went off to a rosemaling workshop (sponsored by our Sons of Norway lodge) that will continue all day tomorrow, so Abigail, Hillary, and I went by ourselves to a music concert, the next one in the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series for this season.  We thoroughly enjoyed Cahal Dunne, an Irish pianist and singer who has lived in the U.S. for a couple decades.  He told jokes (very funny) between songs and played instrumental solos (expertly--he's a classically trained pianist) and accompanied himself as he sang (with an easy-to-listen-to voice) and changed his suit coat often to match the kinds of songs that he would be playing (e.g., red/white/blue for patriotic tunes).  And it was a super-long concert; we definitely got our money's worth!  You can hear some of his jokes, piano playing, and singing here.

A Guthrie Evening

Minnesotans and theatre folk will think, from the title, that this post is about having seen a play in Minneapolis. No, not that Guthrie.

This Guthrie.

We have season tickets for the Dickinson Area Concert Association offerings, and last night was a terrific performance by The Vanaver Caravan, a dance/vocal/instrumental troupe that brought to our city their "Pastures of Plenty" concert work. It was a tribute to the music of Woody Guthrie, nearly all of which was completely new to me (except for the night's final song, "This Land Is Your Land"). A handful of musicians stood downstage right, some of them singing, some of them playing (a variety of string instruments--fiddles, banjoes, guitars, etc.), and some of them doing both. They introduced numbers with explanations of Guthrie's life and philosophy and his inspiration for writing each (which was a bit of a history lesson for me). Most of the songs also featured the dance troupe center stage interpreting the music and lyrics with appropriately choreographed routines: Appalachian clogging, the Lindy hop, modern, etc.

Susan couldn't attend; she had to work a shift in the kitchen for the annual Mardi Gras held at the school where she works (a fundraiser for Dickinson Catholic schools). So I took the girls, and we found seats in the very front row (of the very crowded Stickney Auditorium at DSU). We had an unobstructed view, of course, of everything, and the girls were alert to all the details on stage. Dancers themselves, they were particularly interested in watching the choreography. Abigail could hardly contain herself, twitching around in her seat as though any minute she would bound up on stage to join them. Hillary and Suzanna, too, tapped the rhythms of the songs on my legs and sat unblinking with mouths agape and faces grinning throughout.

Afterward they were able to get Bill's (the artistic director) autograph on their programs, and they clogged and square danced their way out of the auditorium, reviewing their favorite parts, their favorite dancers (the ones who wore bright smiles as they danced), and their dreams of someday being on stage like that themselves. Without coaxing from me, they even offered to check with the bus driver of their future tour bus to see if Mommy and Daddy could ride along from booking to booking.

They had plenty more to tell Susan as we all gathered in the kitchen afterward for late-night lemonade and buttered popcorn to compare stories of our evenings, followed by several rounds of Mad Libs. What a great night.

Church, Chimis, Chores, and Chiu

The title of this post is an alliterative summary of the day:

It started with Sunday school and then church at St. John. First things first: we bought some lefse and peach kuchen that The Church Ladies had made and were selling between church services. Then to class. This was week two of a three-week commitment for parents to accompany their fourth-grade children to Sunday school to learn about baptism, continue memorizing the books of the Old Testament, memorize a Bible verse, learn some of Luther's prayers, and discuss the sacraments. Suzanna already has her chosen verse (Romans 6:3-4) memorized as well as all the books of the Bible, and she has already completed the entire "homework" packet that they're assigned to do a little bit of each week. All this she did last Sunday after returning home from the first session. Overachiever. Church afterward was an opportunity to visit with Susan's grandma, Laura, who is a member there. Hillary also gave Pastor Lisa a hug during the regular post-church "greet 'n' grope" at the door (she always hugs Pastor Steve, too, on our way out), and Abigail complimented Pastor Lisa on "good church," saying she would miss it until next week. Suck-up.

Afterward the girls conned me into taking the family out to eat. We parked at one restaurant and walked across the street to eat at another! We were going to try The Red Pheasant but, upon discovering that they serve only a breakfast-y buffet on Sundays, we walked over to El Sombrero, a Mexican restaurant with delicious food. There I had a dish that featured three chimichangas: chicken, seafood, and shredded beef. The girls gobbled down their burritos and ate the pre-meal very hot salsa and chips like nobody's business. Hillary alternated between panting with her tongue out over the pain of the spicy salsa's sting, slurping down orange soda, and reaching for another salsa-laden chip. Sucker. Great meal, though.

The weather was beautiful, so after we got home, I did some outdoor preparing for winter. I put away tables and chairs, cleaned and covered the grill, stored garden hoses, and put away decorative lights from the veranda. Indoors Susan did laundry and vacuumed, and the girls practiced piano lessons and folded laundry. We ate lefse and kuchen (from church) with our supper: baked cod, pasta in a creamy tomato sauce, and snow peas.

Our last event of the day was a concert by Frederic Chiu, a classical pianist performing at Dickinson State University as part of the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series, to which we have season tickets (and did last year, too). He was terrific. Hey, you can even listen to him here! He played Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev, Liszt, and Beethoven. The girls were excellent audience members, sitting very well and paying good attention even during the final number, which itself lasted a half-hour! Maybe they will recall him when they practice their piano lessons and will aspire to play as well as he does. (With the excellent piano teacher that they have, by the way, that's entirely possible.)

P.S. More on the Mobergs as a Sunday school-going family here and here.

Abigail's Viennese Orchestra Performance!

Abigail with Russell McGregor tonight in the auditorium of Trinity High School

Who is Russell McGregor, and what's going on in that photo?  I'll tell you!

Cruz Control

We have season tickets from the Dickinson Area Concert Association, and the next event in the lineup was tonight.  After supper we walked up the street to the Catholic school auditorium where tonight's concert was held.  We heard Edgar Cruz, an acoustic guitarist who plays in many different styles.  He played original songs as well as famous Latin songs, classical music, hits of the early 1900s, and rock staples.  He's versatile!  And he has a warm, easy-going presence on stage, making for a relaxing performance of easy-to-listen-to guitar music.  You can hear him here, or watch him play "Bohemian Rhapsody" here.

Post-Conference Potpourri

So, after a long day spent in airports, I returned home last night around 10:15 PM. The conference was worthwhile; all the sessions that I attended offered me practical ideas for the courses that I teach as well as inspiration for improvements that I could make. I got a lot of work done, too: grading exams, planning for my classes, and reading (quite an array, too: UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, On a Raven's Wing: New Tales in Honor of Edgar Allan Poe, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard).

(Faithful Reader, do you recall "Airline Humor" from 2.5 years ago? Well, the flight attendant on the leg from Dickinson to Denver last week was a little punchy and threw in some funny lines during the safety demonstration. She told us that the seat cushions would double as flotation devices "in the unlikely event that we should even encounter any water between here and Denver and need to attempt a landing on it." Teasing about the highly cramped quarters aboard the small airplane, she let us know that, once the captain had turned off the seatbelt sign, we could "feel free to canter up and down the aisle.")

I returned home to a houseful of women with tales to tell of their own adventures whilst I was away. Suzanna and Abigail each played in the annual piano festival on Saturday (I missed it last year, too, while away for a different conference), and they both earned superior ratings. This means that, should they earn superiors again next year, they will have earned enough points for their first trophy. (That's how the system works: one superior equals five points; 15 points equals the first trophy; every 15 points thereafter equals a larger trophy. My sisters will know what I mean; we all collected superiors and trophies of our own through the years. My three trophies sit on our piano here at home; Cathy earned three, too; and Sandy took lessons long enough to earn four!) Susan was impressed with the musicality and precision of the girls' performances--and evidently so were the judges. Congratulations, Suzanna and Abigail!

On Sunday Susan and the girls attended church and Sunday school (of course), and then attended the monthly Sons of Norway meeting (and brought along Susan's grandma Laura), and then attended the next performance in the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series, this one by a group called Counterpoint, with whom all the blonde ladies were thoroughly impressed.

Here's our Sons of Norway lodge's banner.

Here's the cake that was served in celebration of our lodge's having been around for 11 years. (I asked Susan why they celebrated the 11th anniversary since we generally only make a fuss about anniversaries divisible by five. She figures they do it annually. Hey, it's a reason to eat cake.)

Lodge food.

The girls and their great-grandma Laura.

P.S. The blog Bacon Unwrapped features entries on preparing a pork loin stuffed with pork sausage and wrapped in bacon as well as on drinking bacon-flavored vodka. What's not to love about such a site? Check it out!

Sweet 16, Part II: Enchanted Highway

(If you have not already read "Sweet 16, Part I: Beautiful Music," please do so before reading this post.)

Besides the girls' band concert in the morning and the handbell concert at church in the evening, Susan and I didn't have anything else planned for our 16th anniversary last Friday. So I suggested to her that we go see a nearby attraction that, for whatever reason, we hadn't yet checked out in our three years of living here: the Enchanted Highway. I thought it would be fun to take a leisurely drive along the highway, viewing the giant metal sculptures and enjoying the scenery. Well, it turned out to be even more fun than that!

After Abigail and Suzanna had played in their concert, we picked up sandwiches from Subway and then headed east on the Interstate without telling the girls our intentions. About 10 miles east of Dickinson is the exit for the Enchanted Highway, marked on the north side by Geese in Flight, the world's largest scrap metal sculpture (according to the Guinness World Book of Records), which we have driven by many times over the years. We took the exit and drove the winding gravel road up the hill to Geese in Flight, where we found a gravel parking lot, an information board, and a covered picnic area. We had no idea that it was set up as a tourist site! The sculptor, Gary Greff, has even welded hundreds of metal geese to metal fence posts that line the drive from the highway to the site--impressive! After posing for a few photos, we ate at the picnic table and tried to get trucks on the Interstate to blow their horns for us.

Geese in Flight is even more impressive viewed from its parking lot than from a moving vehicle passing by on the Interstate!

The anniversary couple! I'm a little more silvery than I was 16 years ago, but Susan's still looking youthful.

The girls thought that picnicking there was our surprise activity for the afternoon, so when we left, they wondered why I continued south on the highway instead of turning back onto the Interstate. After guessing correctly that we'd be driving the Enchanted Highway, they wondered what to expect--and we couldn't help them there. I assumed that we'd be looking at huge metal sculptures off in the distance, slowing down the vehicle once in a while in order to snap a few pictures before driving to the next sculpture. As it turns out, the site of each sculpture is set up with a parking lot, an information kiosk, and a picnic area, so we got to pull in and spend time at each one.

Driving south on the Enchanted Highway from Geese in Flight, one next encounters Deer Crossing. When we pulled into the parking lot, we discovered a maze set up just west of the sculpture. The girls squealed and headed for the maze, where we spent a lot of time chasing each other through the twisting paths formed by upright sheets of rusting metal with various designs cut into them. That explains the setting for these next pics of Suzanna, Abigail, and Hillary:

A sign on the highway near Lefor, ND. Love it!

Before we reached the next sculpture on the Enchanted Highway, our camera's batteries died (Boo! Hiss!). Fortunately, we had our camcorder along, so we took videos at each site instead (Yippee! Yay!). I'll share with you some video highlights in a moment; but first, here's an explanation of what you'll see:

• Grasshopper's Delight -- The girls frolicked on two miniature "rocking" grasshoppers on springs and on multi-level metal scaffolding set up like playground monkey bars. We were the only visitors at the first two sites; but at this sculpture and the remaining ones, we had company: several out-of-state vehicles caught up to us and followed us the rest of the trip.
• Fisherman's Dream -- After the deer maze and the grasshopper playground, the girls were expecting that every sculpture would have a children's play area. Alas, that didn't pan out. However, they did climb around on the fish and hide behind the metal seaweeds.
• Pheasants on the Prairie -- We had fun peering through the wire mesh covering the birds--up close, it's see-through; but from a distance, it shows the paint job that gives the pheasants a realistic look. The girls climbed around on the metal stems of grass near the birds' feet.
• Theodore Roosevelt Rides Again -- Set in front of the pipe outline of President Roosevelt is a stage coach pulled by wooden horses. The girls and I boarded the coach for some imaginary Old West traveling!
• Tin Family -- We could stand on the base of each tin person and look up into the hollow body to see the engineering that went into the construction of each sculpture. I suggested that each person needed some tin underpants, which was met with eye rolls by the girls.
• Enchanted Highway Gift Shop -- Entering Regent, ND from the Enchanted Highway, one finds the Enchanted Highway Gift Shop, where we got some ice cream cones and visited with the woman working the counter. Outside are some smaller metal sculptures: a metal Christmas tree, some buffalo, and a pretty big "whirlygig" of a household whose inhabitants move when one presses a button to activate the motors throughout the sculpture.

Now you're ready to view the video:

After driving around Regent a bit, we took Highway 21 west and then turned north on Highway 22, stopping off in New England for a quick drive through that town before reaching Dickinson. We had some time available before the evening concert, so we had supper at Sanford's, where Susan and I shared a very flavorful dish: shrimp jambalaya with deep-fried tilapia, black-eyed peas, and piping-hot bread with honey butter. It was a great finish to our midday road trip and, along with the concerts that started and ended the day, and terrific way to spend our anniversary!

P.S. The girls were in fine form throughout the day, spouting off many gems that made Susan and me laugh out loud. I can't remember them all, but here are a few of the funny things that they said:

• When Suzanna got out of the vehicle at the Pheasants on the Prairie site, she didn't like whatever it was that she smelled in the air, so she turned to us, waved her hand in front of her nose, scrunched her nose disapprovingly, and said, "The pheasants have pooped."
• It was overcast throughout Friday afternoon, and it sprinkled on us a little bit. In response Suzanna declared, "A little rain won't stop us--we're the Mobergs! [pause] We really should have a theme song."
• Suzanna had said something else pretty funny earlier in the afternoon, but none of us could remember what it was. Suzanna wondered why I was trying so hard to recall it, so I teased her by saying, "Well, it's not as if you say witty things all the time." Abigail gasped very loudly, turned to Suzanna sympathetically, and told her, "Take offense!"
• When I told the girls that the Tin Family should have tin underwear, I said that it would cover up their tin naughty bits. Hillary thought that was hilarious and went off to report to Susan what I had said. But in Hillary's retelling, it was tin "noxy bits."
• When we pulled up in front of the gift shop in Regent and saw the enormous metal evergreen tree draped in Christmas lights, Abigail promptly referred to it as "Faux Christmas Tree." That inspired the three girls to gather at the base of the tree, pose with the fingers of each hand interlocked, and improvise a version of the famous Christmas carol. Because you can't hear the lyrics in the video clip above, here's what they sang: "Faux Christmas tree, faux Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches / [repeat] / How fake they are and hard as tin / Made from metal, and it's such a sin / Faux Christmas tree . . ." They had absolutely no qualms about standing on the main street of the town singing their song while cars passed by. And do they get any points for having the word "faux" in their vocabulary?
• Hillary fell asleep in the vehicle on the drive back to Dickinson. Someone must have been talking too loudly or making some kind of noise, which caused Suzanna--referring to her youngest sibling--to say, "You're going to wake up the baby!"

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A Night to (Barely) Remember

Ah, the 1980s in the United States. Such an incredible era in which to come of age. Such remarkable contributions to the world in terms of music, fashion, makeup, and hairstyles. What American phenomenon best provides a snapshot of what the '80s meant in those terms to those of us who survived that decade? Why, the high school prom, that's what!

(It is highly recommended that you choose one of these links and fire up some '80s music--free!--for yourself before proceeding with the rest of this post: here or here.)

Faithful readers might already suspect where I'm going with this. Good friends Jay and Erin, party planners extraordinaire and perpetual instigators of hijinks and social activities amongst our dear group of couples friends, invited us to their home in the Red River Valley for a 1980s prom for adults last night. Couples showed up in their '80s regalia to find Jay and Erin's garage decorated like a high school gym with metallic streamers and lights. '80s music blared from strategically placed speakers throughout the house and garage all night, and the refreshments table featured spiked punch. (The only thing missing: chaperones about 30 years older than us wandering the dance floor, brandishing rulers, and admonishing us to keep our distance from one another.)

We were all so photogenic that everyone was snapping pics throughout the night as though it were a Moberg family get-together! I have been judicious in my selection of photos to post here (ever-mindful of the possibility that employers, clergy, and scandalizable parents could access this blog). Here's hoping that pictures will be worth a thousand words; they just might give you an idea of what good sports everyone was to find '80s prom gear, rat their hair, and play along with the theme. It truly was a blast.

Prom theme: "A Night to Remember." (Notice the word "Barely" inserted with a caret before "Remember.") (Notice also the faux basketball hoop resting on the garage door tracks. It's all about the details, baby!)

The dark green carpeting leads from the garage floor up the steps into the mud room of the house. When the garage became a gymnasium, however, those steps became the default entrance through the balloon archway for the Grand March. The streamers (official prom colors: teal and silver) ran around the perimeter of the garage with strings of lights wrapped in tulle in each corner. Jay hung a disco ball and rigged two spotlights to shine on it from atop each garage door opener unit (upon which he also set up wireless speakers for the music).

All the kids had a slumber party at Jesse and Nicole's while the parents enjoyed the prom, but the babysitter/saint, Elizabeth, brought the troop over to Jay and Erin's to watch the Grand March. Left to right: Suzanna, Hillary, Big Ethan towering over McKenna, Mya, Abigail, Gabriel, Hannah, and Li'l' Ethan.

Daddy and his sweeties!

The only couple whose photo in the balloon archway I don't have (here they are in the dining room): Susie and Jeff

Let the Grand March begin with the host couple: Erin and Jay! (Love the side pony tail, Erin.)

Aren't we "like, totally" hot?! (Can you tell that Susan's hair is ratted and mine is moussed, gelled, and waxed into a Brandon Walsh 'do?) (My boutonnière is a leftover from our own wedding! Get! Out!)

Nicole and Jesse. Which is more '80s: Nicole's bedazzled dress top or her hairsprayed bangs and sides radiating from her skull like the Statue of Liberty? (P.S. Erin, Susan, and Nicole went to a hair stylist yesterday afternoon to get special '80s styles for the prom. Yes, they paid someone to make them look like this!)

Rob and Laurie. The volume in Laurie's hair is matched by that of Rob's tux shirt's frills.

Jared and Tanya, Jay and Erin's next-door neighbors. That's some awesome hair, Tanya.

Tracy and Corey. Corey, Jared, Rob, and Jeff were in a four-way contest for "Most '70s-Looking Tux/Suit at an '80s Prom."

Missy and Joey. Joey won the unofficial award for "Male Who Obviously Didn't Let His Date's Choice of Dress Color Dictate His Selection at the Tux Rental Shop," otherwise known as the "Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn" award.

The ubiquitous "Let's get one of all the girls together" photograph.

The male version of the photo above. We're "gnarly to the max." And "bodacious." And "bad to the bone." ("Barf me out" and "gag me with a spoon.")

Apparently if you own the garage/faux gymnasium, host the party, and supply all the booze and food, you're an automatic shoe-in for King and Queen of the Prom titles. (Get a room!)

And again: Get a room!

Who knows? It's probably perfectly innocent, but it looks borderline incriminating, so here it is. (You're welcome, Erin.) (Those specks on the garage floor are plastic cutouts in the shape of the word "Prom" written in cursive. By the next morning, they were all over the house, too.) And now, let the dancing begin:

Um, why is Rob getting all the female attention?! He's a "total clydesdale."

Nicole, this is the kind of dancing that would have the chaperones all over us like white on rice . . . but without any chaperones around, grind away!

Like Corey Hart, I wear my sunglasses at night. (Well, Rob's sunglasses.) Studly, no? (Correct answer: "Fer shur!")

Although one wouldn't normally look at me and think "Gangsta!" I think I fare better in that regard than Rob, whose pocket square (designed to match his wife's/date's prom dress) does not hip-hop fashion make. (It's "grody" and "hellacious"--he's a "major poser.") Nevertheless, we're both still pretty "rad" and "tubular" and "bomb."

On our way back home today, we stopped at Olive Garden in Fargo for dinner. (Other on-the-road meal highlights from this trip: Saturday night take-out from Giuseppe's, a new Italian restaurant in downtown Grand Forks [reviewed favorably here and here] that makes terrific chicken marsala and Friday night eat-in at Taco del Mar in Bismarck, where the salsa left a heat signature that I still can feel!) We didn't get back to Dickinson in time for Bravo Broadway, the final performance sponsored by the Dickinson Area Concert Association. But we did have time for another Star Wars movie!

I realize that some readers may feel that an '80s prom for adults is an idea that is "totally bogus" and "heinous," but Susan and I are glad that our "posse" is so "def," "dope," "fly," and "legit" that they found the idea "way cool" and went along with it all the way. I had a "totally radical" weekend!

The Whitest of White Culture

This post's title sounds a bit racist, so I'd better explain: The topic of this post stands in stark contrast--both figuratively and literally--to the last one. Travel with me now from the varied colors, sounds, flavors, and skin tones of the Asian continent to the pale skin, eyes, and hair as well as pale and bland palate of my own Scandinavian history . . . a celebration thereof in which we partook last night.

The fourth production in the Dickinson Area Concerts Association's 2006-07 series was last night--a musical called Church Basement Ladies, based upon the Scandinavian Lutheran humor of authors Janet Letnes Martin and Suzann Nelson. They have written books teasing/celebrating their memories of growing up Lutheran in ND and MN, where Scandinavian immigrants' descendents have tended to cling to tradition so tightly and rigidly that today's American Norske and Swede conservative behaviors, attitudes, and foods are pretty unrecognizable to modern Norwegians and Swedes who visit our country. ("You still eat lutefisk here in the States? Why?!") (Good question.)

Martin and Nelson's books include Luther's Small Dictionary: From AAL to Zululand, Growing Up Lutheran: What Does This Mean?, Lutheran Church Basement Women, They Glorified Mary, We Glorified Rice: A Catholic-Lutheran Lexicon, Cream Peas on Toast: Comfort Food for Norwegian-Lutheran Farm Kids (and Others), and They Had Stores, We Had Chores: A Town-Country Lexicon. They are a hoot for any of us who recognize from our own childhoods the many social mores, common phrases, religious practices, and foods that Martin and Nelson hold up as exemplars of just what it meant to be Lutheran growing up in this part of the country.

And let me tell ya, even the many non-Lutherans in the audience last night were in stitches. The many jabs at Catholics were received with good humor--good thing, too, since the show was performed in the auditorium of the local Catholic high school! And the truly huge auditorium was filled to overflowing; we had to sit in the balcony. The show takes place in the basement of a small MN Lutheran church in the '60s where we watch three generations of church women prepare food for lutefisk suppers, funerals, fundraisers, and weddings. In most of our communities, social events somehow involved the church; and events at church usually involved food; and food at church had to be prepared and served by somebody: the ladies of the community serving in one of the church's "circles." I was picturing many of them from Zion Lutheran Church in McGregor, ND as I watched, and I'm sure everyone else there was able to see on stage representations of people they themselves knew (or, perhaps, reflections of themselves?).

The melodies weren't particularly memorable, but the lyrics were clever, and the actors delivered them all with clarity and just the right attitude, never themselves making fun of the people whom their characters represented--instead letting the humor come from our own recognition of those people and just how like us all they actually are! The church basement ladies recite the typical foods served at a funeral (Cheez Whiz and green olives on open-face brown buns, seven kinds of pickles, watery Watkins nectar for the kids, etc.), and the audience nods and laughs with a, "Wow, that's exactly right!" kind of recognition. They make it to church and prepare the food no matter the temperature, the weather, the condition of the roads, or the failure of the church furnace. They resist seasonings and spices as sinful temptations, passing up anything more daring than salt or pepper and turning up their noses at the lasagne that the new (and "city girl") wife of the pastor innocently brings as a contribution to a potluck (but repressing their true feelings and avoiding conflict with an insincere, "Well, isn't that nice?").

This concert series has been very, very impressive; and the play last night was a true treat. It makes me proud to be a Midwestern Scandinavian Lutheran (is there any other kind, really?), no matter how repressed or conservative we are, and no matter how staid our traditions and bland our foods.

Church Basement Ladies

(Past events in this impressive concert series: The Golden Strings, Cadence, and Presidio Saxophone Quartet.)

Did We Enjoy It? You Bet Your Brass!

The final concert in the Dickinson Area Concerts Association's series for this year was last night: a high-energy, high-volume, funny, impressive performance by the brass quintet Synergy. They used no chairs the entire time; they stood and danced while they played and even walked around the auditorium amongst audience members while playing. They used no sheet music, either, remembering their entire repertoire of complicated arrangements of works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Bach, Mozart, Rossini, Copland, and Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, and George Gershwin.

The girls had a great time, owing in some part to the fact that the musicians spotted them in the audience and made it a point to target them whenever Synergy was roaming the house! Hillary was seated on my lap, and for one song, the members of the quintet took turns sitting beside her/me, continuing to play but conducting a fun conversation with her through their eye expressions before being replaced by another member of the group.

We knew this would not be your average "clah-ssical" chamber music performance when it began with a burst of fog through which the performers ran onstage. Also, one of the performers had long afro-like hair that stuck out in a bouncy bush about eight inches out from his head on all sides. He's a white man with reddish-blond hair that looks like a Toni Home Perm gone very, very wrong and left untended for about a year (check it out!). Perhaps needless to say, his coiffure drew the immediate attention of our children . . . and just about everybody else in the audience.

Hair, jokes, and theatrics aside, there was no denying their musicality. It was a super night of entertainment.

(Past events in this series: Church Basement Ladies, Presidio Saxophone Quartet, Cadence, and The Golden Strings)