Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Exhibits, exhibits, exhibits!

We are half way through the North Dakota Museum of Art exhibit "Marking the Land" now. This photo exhibit has so many novel ideas on the ingenuity of people! I especially find the photos showing the handmade Stations of the Cross in the Catholic Church photo interested as well as the many items that dot the landscape of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The exhibit will be displayed in the Roseau City Center through February 28.

We have been unable to show certain videos on the SMART board. The SMART board uses a video application that works with only a few formats and it has been discouraging again and again to try and play videos with Real or Windows Media Player as neither show up on the board. Last Thursday, I contacted SMART concerning this problem and worked for about 2 hours will a tech person only to have her decided we needed to work with someone who was more knowledgeable. I have to say, they are awesome to work with, I have worked with several individuals over time and  they have all been very helpful and solved our problem. Yesterday the tech person she turned me over to called and we resolved the problem! Hurray! We can now show any video on the board.

We have been going into our cache of photos and showing them on the board also. Yesterday we started with Roosevelt logging photos and in the afternoon we switched to photos of the dredging of the Roseau River, taken in about 1915. These were very interesting. I thought it would be nice to have some background music and turned on a classical radio station on iTunes for this and found it to be very effective. We have a person who is always telling us we should have music in the museum, well this way we do! I think we will put together information and photos of the former One Women and put them on the SMART board during Woman's History Month.

The focus of Woman's History Month is One Woman, of course, and Women in Government. Our committee has been very helpful and we are getting down to the wire now and need to get our exhibits together. It takes so much time to do these things and volunteers are such an important part of doing the job.

I noticed a red squirrel in the yard last week one day. We have never had red squirrels here. When I told Ardmore he decided to put some sunflower seeds on the snow and see if it would come back. Now we have two squirrels visiting our bird feeders. The second time the one came he noticed seeds on top of the table on the deck where we keep our feeder.He tried to climb up the legs but they were too smooth and he fell back onto the snow below the table. After examining the area, he headed for the deck railing and climbed to the top of the railing, eyeballed the distance between the railing and the table and took the leap. Now he discovered he had much more to eat! The chickadees and red polls will have to share their food.




James seems to be enjoying his ground school with Cathay Pacific in Australia. It has been very hot at times though. About two weeks ago he said it was 105. We were sitting at about -28 that morning so it was quite a contrast. He will start fight school in about three weeks which he is very excited to start. Ashley seems to be enjoying her time with her family. They celebrated their Chinese New Year about two weeks ago. All of her family came to Dunon to be together.