February 20th, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
The temperature is still at single digits in the morning. The number of hours of daylight has increased to almost 11 hours, so it feels a little bit like spring but not really. It is hard to imagine planting potatoes on Good Friday which falls on April 10th this year. I did see a skunk on the road and no he did not make it across. That is a good sign. The gardener on campus is pruning the trees and some of the song birds are doing their best to attract some attention. It has been a long winter, but it will get warmer someday, you can count on it. Hope springs eternal.
This is “Membership Drive Week”, so if you are so inclined, simply go to www.mpr.org and click on “contribute now”. If you are a listener to www.radioheartland.org you may get a Radio Heartland coffee mug or a CD of the final performance of “The Morning Show” for only $10 per month.
Please do be careful out there. A good friend of mine fell and broke his wrist. He fell in his own backyard. The show this week is the annual “Slip and Fall February Blues Show” live from the Fitzgerald Theater. This is the final show from the Fitz this season, so if you have not been to a show, you can get into the rush line early in the afternoon on Saturday and you may be able to get a seat on the stage. Special guests this week are the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, fiddler Peter Ostroushko, Andra Suchy and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors. Enjoy the show.
“In spite of illness, in spite of the archenemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” Edith Wharton
February 13th, 2009 by admin
February 13, 2009
Good morning from Collegeville,
While cleaning out a storage room, I came across a Technics Quartz model SL-1200MK2 turntable. I hooked it up to our super size speakers in the control room and it works. When MPR moved their broadcasting team to St. Paul, they left behind a small collection of LPs. I found a 7 LP box set labeled “Jazz From The Low Countries” produced by Radio Nederland in 1983. WOW! I was impressed. Last weekend I made a trip to Upsala and in the basement of the Parsonage house I found “Muted Jazz” with Jonah Jones, a LP that was given to me in the fifties. The last time we had a turntable system in the home, was in 1989. I seem to have blown a power supply in the pre-amp, so it may be a while before I can enjoy the oldies again. No one else in the Collegeville office even owns a LP.
The show this week is special Valentine’s Day love broadcast live from The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Special guests include Grammy Award winning Cajun institution known as BeauSoleil with Michael Doucet and prolific world jazz trombonist and composer, Roswell Rudd. They will also have singer and erstwhile Wailin’ Jenny, Heather Masse and opera legend Vern Sutton. You have until noon today to enter the special Valentine’s Day Poem and Song Contest. Simply go to www.prairiehome.org and you will be able to watch a special YouTube video from Garrison and more info on how to enter the contest.
“Happiness cannot come from without, it must come from within.” Helen Keller
February 6th, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
It is finally starting to warm up a little bit. This has been one of the coldest winters that we have had for a while. The news is mostly doom and gloom.
“Stimulus Bill”, kind of like “Calamity Jane”. I can imagine someone writing a song or a play using that title. It is a bit scary out there, but I am sure that we will see better days ahead. Hope is what we need more of. Or just go to www.radioheartland.org to escape for a while. Don’t do drugs, do radio.
Gold’s Gym in Sartell is hosting the first annual Charity 6K Walk/Run on Saturday February 21st to raise funds to build a school for orphans in rural Ghana, Africa. Sometimes it helps to do something good for someone else to take your mind of yourself. Maybe this is for you. For details go to www.200orphanagesworldwide.org
The show this week is live from The Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. Guests include two Bluegrass veterans, Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent, performing together in perfect harmony as “Dailey and Vincent”. Legendary Scottish folk singer Jean Redpath will also be on the bill. Andra Suchy will join the usual cast of characters. Enjoy the show.
“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Robert Burns
February 2nd, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
I celebrated my tenth birthday on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. My mother along with her four children were returning from a stint as US Army dependents stationed in Vienna, Austria. My Dad was held over in Vienna and when he arrived in Upsala a few weeks later, Ma was in New Ulm visiting her cousin Helen. Dad borrowed a brand new 1954 Chevy from Uncle Duke who owned Hagstrom Chevrolet in Upsala and my brother Bill and I rode with him to New Ulm. I was napping in the back seat and I woke up when our car was broadsided by a dump truck. I had a broken leg. I still can remember the pain when they were putting me on the X-Ray table at the hospital in Cokato. The cast was from my toes to my crotch. I was in the hospital for a few weeks and when it came time to transport me back to Upsala, Dad took me to Uncle Elmer’s. Uncle Elmer and his wife Ethyl owned the Dokken Funeral Home in Cokato. I had to spend the night on a cot on the main floor of the funeral home. The next day they hauled me to Upsala in a black Studebaker hearse. That explains a lot, huh!
The show this week is live from The Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. Special guests include members of the legendary country western swing band “Asleep At The Wheel”, Ray Benson and Eddie Rivers and the vocal quartet of Maria Jette, Christina Baldwin, Dan Dressen and Bradley Greenwald. Singer Andra Suchy and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors will round out the talent. Enjoy the show.
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out”. Chekhov
January 23rd, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
Another cold snap is on the way. This may be the first January in a long time without a January thaw. It only makes the anticipation of spring that much stronger. I really should get some seed catalogs. I suppose I could just “Google” seed catalogs and go from there.
Many of my son’s friends work construction during the summer. They work hard and they play even harder. When winter rolls around some of them get laid off. Although this can make for lean times budget wise, they are blessed with free time. This free time allows them to pursue the simple pleasures in live, like ice fishing.
One of Erik’s friends has taken the sport of ice fishing to a new level. He won $15,000 in the lottery. After taxes he cleared just under $10,000 so he spent all of it on his fish house. It’s is a state of the art home away from home. A hydraulic system allows him to raise and lower it at will. It even has a satellite TV. Now his winters are a little bit easier to bear.
The show this week is live from the DECC auditorium in Duluth. Special guests include honky-tonk stars Joe Ely and Joel Guzman along with singer-songwriter Heather Masse. Enjoy the show.
“All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” Winston S. Churchill
January 23rd, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
I had a meeting with a caterer this week who also is the new President of the Minnesota Dark House & Angling Association. He described in detail the concept of sitting in a fish house without windows, out on the frozen lake, above a sloping reef, staring into a six foot by three foot hole in the ice poised with a spear. In his restaurant, The Creamery, in Rice, Minnesota, we were able to study a framed reproduction of a painting celebrating the “poor mans sport” that is only allowed in a few states. The only fish that you can harvest this way are Northern and rough fish like carp. The way he described it, you use a combination of a live sucker minnow in a harness and a carved decoy to draw the fish in. Some of the old handmade decoys can fetch a fancy price. He assured me that in a well built dark house, staying warm is not a problem. You learn something new every day. For more information go to www.mndarkhouse.org
The show this week is a live performance from the Palace Theater in Louisville, Kentucky. Special guests include honky tonk angel and 65th member of the Grand Ole Opry, Patty Loveless and genre-defying Kentucky singer song-writer Brigid Kaelin. Enjoy the show.
“Run your decoys high, keep your spear on your shoulder, and keep your foot off the rope.” Unknown
January 9th, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
I am still upset with Great Grandma Anne Oien for not taking the train from Chicago south to Kentucky instead of north to Minneapolis. She could just as well have settled on a 40 acre horse ranch in Bluegrass Country as the farm close to the railroad near Cushing. That way I would be complaining about the cool fifties instead of the bitter cold below zero that is heading our way this coming week. I know that a whole lot of folks thought that Minnesota reminded them of Norway so they conned others into coming here to shiver together in the winter and swat mosquitoes in the summer. They were less than honest. There is nothing to do but stay close to the fire. Maybe I should take up ice fishing.
This week the APHC staff is on its annual ice fishing retreat to the mighty Lake of the Woods and so they are revisiting two shows that they did last January from The Fitzgerald Theater. Special guests include Becky Schlegel, Suzy Bogguss, Roy Blount Jr and Chuck Mead of BR-549. Chuck will give a talk on the philosophy of honky-tonk music plus Nellie McKay will make her debut performance. Enjoy the show.
This email was delayed due to computer problems which may have been a blessing since The Fed-Ex folks just dropped off four pairs of tickets to The Metropolitan Opera at the Parkwood Theater in Waite Park for tomorrow at noon. The show is “La Rondine”, live on the big screen. Please contact me if you want to go and you can pick up the tickets in St. Cloud this afternoon..
“Blessings continue to abound. Also some sharp fears, even the occasional battle with desolation.
It helps to be surrounded as I am by love.” Br. Dietrich Reinhart 5/17/1949 – 12/29/2008
January 2nd, 2009 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
2008 is history. Not a great year in some ways. My mother passed on in January and that kind of set the tone. The good news is she will never be forgotten.
My 403-B has suffered but I still have a job. I really never planned on quitting working anyway so what difference does it make. I turned 65 years of age and my only health problem is acid reflux. I have given up real coffee and gone to de-caf tea in the morning plus one can of Diet Pepsi.
I got 88,000 miles on a set of tires that I purchased from Upsala Motors. I do rotate every 10,000 miles and that seems to help. I am very pleased with the Bonneville and I probably will drive it for another 88,000 miles. I am upset that Pontiac dropped the model, but if I don’t trade what difference does that make.
The Morning Show is no more, but now I listen to Radio Heartland on my lap-top. The only thing that is missing is the skits. I know you will find it hard to believe, but some folks don’t miss the Morning Show at all. Go figure. Maybe Dale Connelly will put out a cd with just skits from The Morning Show. Go to www.radioheartland.org and register your vote.
Barby and I celebrated Christmas with her family yesterday due to the birth of twins Ayda Lee and Jillian Bea on December 22nd. They are beautiful and healthy. That makes nine grandchildren between the two of us with two more on the way. Life is good.
The APHC show is no longer sponsored by Select Comfort Sleep Number Beds, but hopefully some other company will see the wisdom of sponsoring a beloved institution. The show this week is a special Second Annual Year-End Rewind with a compilation of 2008’s most memorable moments. Special guests will be Nick Lowe, Nellie McKay, tenor Raul Melo and Yo-Yo Ma. Enjoy the show.
“It’s not important that everyone is just like you, but it is very important that there is someone just like you.” Charles “T” Jones
December 19th, 2008 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
Six days until Christmas. I found the last stocking stuffer yesterday, so I have only one more gift to buy. I need something for the littlest granddaughter, Leah. Perhaps I can find something in the campus bookstore. Children love Christmas, as well they should. As with most families, some years Christmas gifts were easy to come by and some years they were hard to come by. The Christmas of 1956 was a memorable one. My mother had to take an apartment in Little Falls, having left Dad after years of his not being very responsible. That Christmas, Santa brought us six big Tonka Toy 18 wheel trucks. There was a cattle truck, an oil tanker, a freight truck and three more. For years I had the impression that they were from a social agency that served the poor. It turned out that it was Dewey Johnson, a classmate of my mothers who was acquainted with one of the founders of Tonka Toys that was the gift giver. Dewey had already passed on before I learned this from my mother, so I did not get a chance to thank him.
Perhaps you know of a family that has come upon hard times and they could use a Secret Santa.
The show this week is live from The Town Hall in New York City. Special guests include Robin and Linda Williams, Walter Bobbie, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera and the Pavlishyn Sisters plus the Royal Academy of Radio Actors. Enjoy the show.
For those of you who miss The Morning Show, simply go to www.radioheartland.org and click on “listen”. Fred Bursch and Busch Travel are proud to support online broadcasts of Radio Heartland.
“It is better to give than receive” Jesus , Acts 20:35
December 12th, 2008 by admin
Good morning from Collegeville,
No more “Morning Show”. Yesterday was the final broadcast of “The Morning Show” with Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole. It was a live broadcast from The Fitzgerald Theater with standing room only. I was not able to be there but a friend of mine and his wife went wearing black, in mourning for “The Morning Show”. They reported that it was an awesome show.
In 1969 Garrison Keillor started doing a morning drive show from here at Collegeville. In the February 1973 issue of Preview, the fore runner for Minnesota Monthly Magazine, the show was listed as “A Prairie Home Companion”. In March of 1973, Garrison took a month’s vacation and the Preview magazine listed “Morning Program” as the replacement for APHC. In April Garrison came back on the air. He did the morning drive version of APHC until he started the Saturday late afternoon show and then he probably changed it to “The Morning Show”. In 1983, he turned the show over to Jim Ed Poole and Dale Connelly. It is safe to say there will never be any thing that will compare, however Dale is doing a show online for MPR. He can be heard online at www.radioheartland.org every morning from 6 AM until 9 AM, Monday thru Friday. Jim Ed is retiring to his wood working shop. They will be greatly missed.
The APHC show this week is once again from the Town Hall in New York City. Special guests include cellist and founder of the Silk Road Project, Yo-Yo Ma, legendary lyric soprano Renee Fleming and California wild man of the modern mandolin Chris Thile. Bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer and top violist Nicholas Cords will also perform.
Enjoy the show.
“You must not think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.” Gustave Flaubert
Gary M. Osberg on the web at www.garyosberg.com
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