July 30th, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good Morning from Collegeville,
It is so hard to believe that July is almost over. So much to do and so little time. The Yukon Gold potatoes and the green beans are wonderful. There are going to be tons of cucumbers. My granddaughter Chrissy and her friend Riley have been helping with the weeding since I still have not been able to crank up the tiller. I took them to the Pine Grove Zoo in Little Falls as a treat. It is a very clean zoo with enough diversity to make it interesting. The bear cubs seemed to be the favorite.
This weekend, the River Song Music festival is Hutchinson. It takes place at the Masonic West River Park today and tomorrow. Check it out at
www.riversongfestival.org
Congratulations to MPR on making (literally ‘making’!) the top 10 lists for Vita.mn! The Current was selected as the Best Radio Station and the 6 top Favorite Disc Jockeys are all from The Current. They even created a category for MPR, “Favorite Shows on MPR” Here are some highlights:
http://www.vita.mn/story.php?id=98854719
The show this week is a mix of the two January shows from the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Special guests include Sara Watkins, Andy Stein, Frederica Von Stade and bluesman Elvin Bishop singing “What the Hell is Going On.”
Save the Date: The Annual Season Opening Gala Fundraiser for the Paramount Theater & Visual Arts Center in downtown Saint Cloud is Saturday October 2nd. The Fabulous Armadillos featuring Alex Ligertwood from Santana are the attraction. Tickets are available at the box office or
www.paramountarts.org
Also, check out the gift shop at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library here on the Saint John’s campus. They also have a display of the Saint John’s Bible. One of the items that “smiled at me” was a hand crafted wood barreled fountain pen for only $40.
“Well done is better than well said” Benjamin Franklin
July 23rd, 2010 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
Last evening was my first visit to Sunset Stages at St. Ben’s. The George Maurer Trio plus Rachel Holder put on a great performance in the Darnall Amphitheater on the campus of the College of Saint Benedict. The clouds went away just in time and they stayed away until midnight. Next Wednesday is the final act of the summer series, Monroe Crossing. For tickets go to www.csbsju.edu/finearts If you need a place to eat before the 7:30 event, check out The Local Blend on Minnesota Street across from the church.
The Target Field is well worth the trip. The Trobec Bus picked us up in Clearwater and we arrived in plenty of time to have supper or a hot dog before the game. Section 318 row 12 is a bit on the high side. It took Barby a while to adjust. I would recommend section “T” row 10. They did let me in with a water bottle in my MPR tote bag. The concessions are a bit steep. The game was over in one hour and fifty two minutes and when we got back on the bus, the skies opened up. The Twins beat Chicago 3 to 2. It is well worth the trouble. The Northstar train track goes passed the gate.
If you ever have wanted to have a home on a super clean small lake, check out this property near Upsala. If you are interested call Amy Holmen at 320-291-0882. Click the following URL to see the listing: http://matrix.northstarmls.com/de.asp?ID=8013130938
The show this week is a mix of shows that were performed over the past few years from the historic State Theater on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. Guests include Jearlyn Steele, Ricky Skaggs, Cowboy Jack Clement and Becky Schlegel. Enjoy the show. Tickets are on sale for the State Fair gig on Friday night September 3.
“Within us all there are wells of thought and dynamos of energy which are not suspected until emergencies arise. Then oftentimes we find that it is comparatively simple to double or treble our former capacities and to amaze ourselves by the results achieved.” Thomas J. Watson
July 16th, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good morning from Collegeville,
OUCH ! that hurt. My wrist reminds me of Frankenstein. Because of the risk of treating the wrong limb, the first thing the nurse asks of you is to take a purple marker and place a “X” on the arm that is to be fixed. The surgeon then adds his or her initials. When they removed the bandage I noticed that the surgeon started cutting at the exact spot that I had marked. The surgery was on Wednesday and on Friday the workman’s comp nurse said that I could return to work with one restriction, I could only use my left hand. I told her that I loved my job, but that I could not do it with one hand tied behind my back. Late Tuesday morning the order was changed to “return to work with no restrictions”. I over did it a bit yesterday and I had to stop moving it. I am leaving soon to take my granddaughter to the zoo.
The city of Wadena continues to undergo the recovery from the tornado. My son, Erik has helped to launch a new website, www.treesforwadena.com If you are so inclined, perhaps you can help to bring the shade back to Wadena.
The show this week is a special compilation for all the summer readers who are able to recline in a patch of shade and read a book the way it was meant to be read. Special guests include Anna Karenina, Dave Frishberg, poet Donald Hall and Maria Jette. The Public Domain Free from Copyright Non-Royalty-Paying Radio Theater is also featured doing a version of “The Ugly Duckling”. Enjoy the show. We will be at the Twins game.
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” Benjamin Disraeli
July 2nd, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good sunny morning from Collegeville,
It has a been a beautiful week in central Minnesota. The forecast has been for thunder storms this weekend, but hopefully they will hold off until after our 25th annual Hagstrom/Osberg Golf Open. My mother and her sister had 10 children between the two of them and every year we gather at the Little Falls Country Club and participate in a “scramble”. There is a traveling trophy with the names of the winning team engraved on it. After golf, we go to brother Bill’s house south of Little Falls for a picnic. My wrist will still be in a splint, but I can putt.
Erik is spending a lot of time helping with the clean up in Wadena, but things are getting back to normal. He and the kids came down to Upsala last night to pick up a spare air-conditioner from his sister Kerry, since the shade trees are gone. Soon there will be a website up and running to aid in the re-planting of trees in Wadena.
I closed on the sale of the yellow house last Friday and I won the 4th quarter sales contest, so Barby and I will be going to a performance of A Prairie Home Companion in the fall and we get to stay at The Saint Paul Hotel. “Thank you” to all of you who chose to use Minnesota Public Radio to “get the word out” about your business or your event in fiscal year 2010.
The show this week is the last live show of the season and it will be performed at the Ravinia Festival Pavilion in Highland Park, Illinois. Special guests include Nashville Hall of Fame singer-songwriter John Prine, Howard Levy, Andra Suchy and the regular cast of characters. Enjoy the show. Garrison will be flying home after the show to arrive in Avon at Fisher’s Club on Sunday, July 4th, for the Lake Wobegon Community Choir Annual Reunion. The event will take place on the public beach in front of Fisher’s. Music will start at 7:30 PM or so and at 8 PM he will invite the crowd to sing patriotic songs to celebrate Independence Day. It is free and open to the public. Be sure to bring a chair or beach towel. Dinner inside is not free but worth every penny. For reservations call 320-356-7372.
I am going to have surgery on my wrist next Wednesday, so there will be no note next Friday. Enjoy the holiday weekend.
“I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone’s golf game. It’s called an eraser” Arnold Palmer
June 25th, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good morning from Collegeville,
The sky is dark and scary looking. June has been a very active month for weather in central Minnesota. Last Thursday my son Erik and I left early for Woody’s Fairly Reliable Resort on Rainy Lake. We joined up with his friend Jason who also lives in Wadena. We had lunch at Hardees’s in International Falls, which is owned and operated by Dave Peterson, the “Fishmeister”. He reports on the fishing on Rainy Lake on www.fishingmn.com By 5 o’clock we were on Rainy River below the railroad bridge when Erik’s cell phone rang. It was his wife Jena who had just come up from their basement on Irving Street in Wadena. Their house had been damaged by a tornado and Erik said, ” I am on my way home”.
He called Jason on his cell and the two of them got into Jason’s pickup and headed back to Wadena. Jason’s house was not damaged and so they all gathered there. The next morning they were able to see that just a few blocks to the west of Erik and Jena’s home, it looked like a war zone. Many homes had been damaged beyond repair. The siren warning system had worked and no one was killed. Erik purchased a chainsaw and on Saturday his cousin Kris Holmen and Joe Holthaus drove up from Upsala bringing a Bobcat equipped with a grappler hook. They cleared eight yards that day. Joe could scratch your nose with the grappler hook and not injure you. He was cheered as he worked.
As three year old Leah put it, “A tomato came and Willie and I cried, no more tomatoes”
If you would like to help you can do that by going to
http://www.midcentralbank.com/contact-us/disaster-recovery/
The show this week is a live broadcast form the Koussevitzky Music Shed at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, MA. Special guests include the Wailin’ Jennys, Hilary Thavis, Andra Suchy and the Guy’s All Star Shoe Band. Enjoy the show. Garrison was at Fisher’s Club in Avon on Wednesday evening. It was an awesome event. He plans to come back on July 4th to lead a sing-a-long. Make your reservations early. 320-356-7372
“There is no limit to the good a man can do if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.” Anonymous
June 16th, 2010 by
Good afternoon from Collegeville,
This is going out early ’cause I am going fishing with my brothers and my son at Woody’s Fairly Reliable Resort on Rainy Lake. Sometime in the nineties, my youngest brother Craig was invited by his father-in-law, Jim, to go along on a fly-in fishing trip to Trout Lake in Canada. Over time, my other brothers, who were into fishing, were invited to go along. In 2003 brother Bill offered to pay the way for my son Erik, so I decided to go fishing too. I have never been much of a fisherman, but I always enjoyed fishing with Erik. I am the oldest of five Osberg brothers and it was a wonderful bonding time. The next year we went to brother Brian’s cabin instead. Erik was working as a weekend sportscaster on Channel 10/13 in Duluth and he did a story on fishing with Woody for his TV show. He suggested that we try Woody’s instead of the fly-in in 2005. We had a great time and the greatest part is that Woody has a wonderful pub filled with memorabilia of his hockey days. In 2018 Craig’s son Grayson will be able to come along and in 2021 my grandson William Harley Osberg will join the gang. Brother Bill will have to clean up his act a little bit with a 12 year old boy in the group. Check it out at www.fairlyreliable.com It is worth the drive just to meet Woody.
The show this week is a live broadcast from the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Special guests include veteran bluegrass center fielders Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Vocalist Andra Suchy, who has become somewhat of a regular , will join the usual cast of the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott and Fred Newman. Enjoy the show .
‘Fair and equal are not the same and don’t confuse them.” G.L. Berg
June 11th, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good morning from Collegeville,
This is what the farmers call a “million dollar rain”. June is the wettest month of the year in Minnesota and this year may be true to form. The crops are looking great. Kerry is helping to keep the garden in Upsala under control. If you get out there every day for a few minutes, it is possible to keep most of the weeds out.
The garden is on church property. The parsonage was built in 1892 and in the early fifties the church built a new parsonage and Mary Heisick purchased the old one. In 1971 Mary died and her daughter Irene and husband John (my in-laws) sold the farm and moved to town. Their bachelor farmer son, Jackie, asked for permission to plow up a chunk of ground west of the old parsonage. He planted an asparagus bed further west. I purchased the house from the estate of Irene and now my daughter Kerry and her children live there. I never intended to be a gardener, but after a couple of years of letting it go to seed, I got hold of an old tiller and now I do enjoy gardening.
One of my life goals is to get on the design committee here at St. John’s University. The latest project is the reworking of the plaza between the new church (1961) and The Great Hall. The first step was the removal of the two giant silver maple trees. Steve Wendt of Wendt and Sons did the work. Steve told me that the larger one was “seeded” in 1893 and the smaller one was seeded in 1894. I had no idea that silver maples grew that big. The 11th annual Caramel Roll Ride on the Lake Wobegon Trail takes place tomorrow morning in Albany. Hopefully the rain will let up. You can register at the check-in booth next to the City Hall in Albany. 400 Railroad Avenue 56307. Registration fee for adults is $25, children ages 7 – 15 is $15 and children 6 and under ride free. Check out the new website at www.lakewobegontrail.com I will be there handing out caramel rolls.
The show this week is a live show from the Star Theater in Spokane, Washington. Special guests include the fine whines of veteran troubadours, Robin and Linda Williams, the coolest cow-poke around, Wylie Gustafson and singer-songwriter, Andra Suchy. Enjoy the show.
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out” John Wooden
June 4th, 2010 by Gary Osberg
Good sad morning from Collegeville,
I am listening online to the last broadcast of Dale Connelly doing Radio Heartland. In December of 2008 Dale and Jim Ed Poole did the final Morning Show live from The Fitzgerald Theater. There was standing room only. Fred Bursch and his wife Teri went dressed in black because they were in mourning for the “Morning Show”. During the next pledge drive, one of the premiums was a cd of the performance. It is one of my favorites.
The very next morning “Radio Heartland” was launched on the internet and on HD radio in the Twin Cities. Bursch Travel American Express has been the sponsor from the very beginning. Every time someone goes online to www.radioheartland.org and hits the listen button, they hear a very short message acknowledging Bursch Travel as the sponsor. In the month of April, the listen button was clicked on over 56,000 times. When I called Fred to tell him that Dale was no longer going to do the 6 AM – 9 PM portion and that “Jasper” the computer was going to take over, Fred agreed to continue with his sponsorship. Check them out at www.burschtravel.com
A little while ago, Jim Ed Poole came on with Dale and it was very special. Bart the Bear made a special trip down from the woods to offer to growl at whomever. Dale declined the offer of assistance. Very lucky for someone. This has been a tough decision, but someday maybe Dale will reappear on the airwaves “somewhere over the rainbow”. Eva Cassidy.
The show this week is live from The Santa Barbara Bowl in Southern California. Special guests include bluesman Elvin Bishop and fiddler extraordinaire Sara Watkins along with the Royal Academy of Radio Actors. Enjoy the show.
“The sense of humor is the oil of life’s engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh.” G.S, Merriam
June 1st, 2010 by
Good morning from Collegeville,
Monday we will celebrate Memorial Day. This national holiday commemorates the men and women who have died in military service to their country. The first “Decoration Day” was celebrated in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston, West Virginia. The official birthplace of Decoration Day is Waterloo, New York where they honored those who had died in the Civil War on May 5, 1866. The alternative name of “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882, but did not become common until after WW II. (source: Wikipedia”)
When I was a youngun in Upsala, we always had a Memorial Day service at the school and a parade down Main Street. Sometime after I left town in 1961, the practice died out. Then in the eighties, Lorna Koehn, a member of the American Legion Auxiliary, brought back the Memorial Day celebration in Upsala. I can still picture her marching in front of a group of children holding bunches of lilacs. The Upsala First Responce Team added the offering of a picnic lunch at City Park where they serve hamburgers and rhubarb pie with ice cream. The children still wait in eager anticipation for the chance to collect the spent brass shells after the 21 gun salute. They make good whistles. I hope to see you there.
Be sure to take the time to honor those in your life who have passed on. If you happen to meet a service member, simply say “Thank you for serving”. They deserve our respect no matter what your position is on war.
The show this week is a live performance from the Filene Center at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia. Special guests include the grandfather of the singer-songwriter era, Tom Rush, brilliant acoustic artists Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and eclectic jazz vocalist Inga Swearingen. Here in central Minnesota you can enjoy the show on Saturday from 5 PM to 7 PM on both the classical and the news networks. The show will be rebroadcast on Sunday at 11 AM on the news network including KNSR 88.9 from Collegeville.
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Bertrand Russell.
We are starting a new networking group in St. Cloud. We will meet every Wednesday morning at 7:15 in the Legend’s Bar at the Holiday Inn. If you are interested, check us out at www.myfirestorm.com
May 24th, 2010 by
Good morning from Collegeville,
It is a cloudy day in central Minnesota, but we had a week of sunny warm weather, so life is good. The potatoes are starting to break through the dirt. I decided to “Google” potatoes and it appears that I have been planting the seed potatoes too deep. The old man in Upsala told me 4 inches, but the web says 1 to 2 inches. That might explain why it sometimes takes so long for the plant to pop out. I also searched for Echo Tillers online and found a repair shop in Freeport not far from Charlie’s Cafe. Now I just need to get the big tiller to my brother-in-law in Belgrade.
All of my spare time has been spent on the list of “fixes” that the USDA Rural Development inspection came up with on the yellow house. Not only do I have to scrap and paint, there can be no paint chips on the ground. So now I am out there with a shop vac sucking up paint chips. If the appraisal comes in ok, the buyer will get all new windows instead of me spending my whole vacation scrapping and painting. My days as a landlord are numbered. Thank goodness.
List of things that we might be able to get along without:
1. The extra buttons that are sewed onto the bottom of men’s dress shirts. (how often do we need them)
2. Cigarette filters. (think of all of the trash that would disappear. It drives me crazy when I see a butt on the ground two feet from an ash receptacle) If you are worried about the health of smokers, then put a five cent deposit on every cigarette and maybe kids would pick them up and turn them in like they used to do with pop bottles.
The show this week is a very special live performance from The Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. Special guests include humorist Roy Blount Jr, folk-singer songwriter Caroline Herring, the Steep Canyon Rangers and blues singer E.G. Kight. Enjoy the show.
“There are two rules for successful investing: Buy low. Sell High. If you refuse to do either, your odds of success are greatly diminished.” Erik Osberg Financial Planner
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