September 15, 2007
Joe and I performed for about that number of resplendent Red Hats at the Shooting Star casino in Mahnomen today. It will take a while to recover, but it went fairly well. After the casino gig, I took off to the Cities where I am performing at a church tomorrow afternoon for a fundraiser. I am in a hotel in downtown Minneapolis that I got on Priceline.com, in the old Milwaukee Road depot, and I was going to walk around downtown, but am completely disabled due to a sore toe. Dumb. So I'll stay in with my foot up. I was going to see if I could get down in time to see Santana pitch, but the game starts early on Saturday nights so no dice. Santana lost anyway. He's now officially human.
September 14, 2007
 Drove to Fergus Falls this evening to talk to the Minnesota Master Gardeners Conference at the community college. On the way down, I got to drive through my favorite scenery in the world, the rolling hills between Rollag and I-94. The picture above shows another willow, while some others need to be bigger to show the detail. The clouds were kind of strange this afternoon. They had a nice meal for us. There were 125 in attendance. Nice people, a receptive audience. I am not used to doing speeches on gardening in the fall, but I brought 127 Chestnut apples for them, and that broke the ice, I think.
September 12, 2007
 This carving is by Jerry Fugelseth of Fertile. It fits well on the mantle.
 Finally went out to shoot some photos tonight at sunset. The colors are getting nice. Above is a little hollow of cottonwood cut through with a township road.  Above is a field northeast of Little Norway Church that has been left to grow up into some sort of grass.  Another cottonwood hollow, except these are long dead. And then, a soybean field with some picturesque willow. Willow are derided as a junk tree, but as far as I am concerned, no tree makes a more elegant contribution to the rural landscape.
Last night as I was driving down the road, iPod blaring, I thought to myself, I have never seen a prettier day in my life. It was cool and sunny. Driving down the road at about 5:30 was just perfect. The iPod project continues. I have spent hours loading the discs onto the computer. I am still not done. But then you plug the iPod into the computer and all the tunes immediately load up to the iPod. There are about 2,200 tunes on there now, enough to keep me busy. What is fun is that without the hassle of dealing with the CD, I am more willing to try unfamiliar music than I was when I had to pull the CD down from the shelf and load it into the player. So, I am finding all sorts of fun things in my CD collection that I either forgot I had, or didn't know I had. Isn't that exciting? Life's little pleasures. Another fun thing: Some of the CDs which were too scratched to play on the car stereo work just fine on the iPod. So, some of my favorite CDs, which I assumed I would have to buy new because they no longer played, are back in working order. AT THE VETERAN'S MEMORIAL CHARITY AUCTION a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a beautiful carving of a horse's head by local carver Jerry Fugelseth. Unfortunately, before it left the building the carving got bumped off the table and the ears broke off. Jerry called and offered to glue them back on for me. So, I drove over to Jerry's shop and had a look at some of his works of art. He makes carvings out of many kinds of wood. He seems to enjoy collecting various woods as well. Since I love wood as well, even though I don't work with it, I enjoyed seeing some of the slabs of exotic woods from Africa and South America. He also had some beautiful carvings of cottonwood bark which I couldn't resist. I bought two. And I traded horses. But the most fun is hearing a craftsman talk about his craft. Jerry teaches carving locally. He has also won many contests, not all local. He has a particularly good touch with human faces, I think. He studies faces all the time, he said, trying to get at their secret. Jerry's in it for the fun. If he wanted to market his stuff, it would be worth quite a bit. I think he takes more pride in turning down big offers for his favorite pieces than he does actually selling any of his pieces.
September 10, 2007
Well, I broke down and bought a new gadget. What sold me on the iPod was the idea that I could consolidate all of my music onto a wallet-sized little slab of steel. I ordered the thing on the weekend. Then, I realized that I would have to load all my CDs, some 300 of them, onto my computer before loading them onto the iPod. So, that has taken some time. But when the FedEx guy came with the iPod at about noon today, I was ready. I plugged the thing into my computer, and immediately, in five minutes, it loaded up 1540 songs onto the iPod. Once they were loaded, I plugged in the earphones, put the thing in my pocket, and walked around outside oblivious. CDs are cumbersome. They scratch. Their cases break. And they get ugly after a while. So, I am going to store them all. I took down the racks on the wall today. They're all going to be on the iPod. What a welcome consolidation of clutter! Plus, I can hook the iPod up to my stereo, or I can just put it in my pocket, or I can hook it up to the stereo system in my pickup. Now, we'll see if I use it.
September 09, 2007
Habitat for Humanity of Crookston has asked if I would be willing to allow house tours to raise funds for their organization. Of course! That's a good cause. So, on September 30, a Sunday, from 3-6 p.m., for a small donation to a good cause, people are free to come out to see the Swamp Castle.
It is a good feeling to have completed a book. It came out to 309 pages. I handed it over yesterday, and then I put away all the folders of clippings in a big box. Of course, as we edit the book, I may have to get out the stuff and dig for details again, but I'll save that for later. I have no idea how much editing the book needs to get into final form. A lot of people have negative views of editors; I do not. A good editor can make a book. In fact, I am optimistic that the editor will see the obvious, glaring things that I missed. There were a few problems I just did not resolve, and perhaps an outside eye will provide a new perspective. Now, it is time to get some firewood put up for winter.
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