The latest

This has been a busy two months. Student tours and the Minnesota History Contest was on the agenda for the full month of May.We served students from Badger, Greenbush and Roseau with educational SMART board programs on Farm Animals for kindergarten and preK, Local Ojibwa History for first grade and immigration for second graders. We also had scavenger hunts for the older students. Some easier ones for the younger students.

The Minnesota History Contest went well, with Lake of the Woods sixth grade participating for the first time. I hope they felt is was valuable enough and want to participate again next year. A neighbor girl, Ivy Braaten took first place. First time Roseau has taken first place. Warroad took second and third and there was a tie for fourth. We give trophies to the first three positions and medals to the next three and all six receive $50 savings bonds. These are sponsored by Border State Bank, Citizens State Bank and Security State Bank.

The end of the month had great excitment for our daughter Michelle as she finally graduated. She now has her music degree. She will do a credinial program next. She taught piano, violin, viola, and voice this past year. She is now enjoying her summer as most of her students take the summer off.

Michelle and Dave are coming to visit during the Roseau County Fair. They will be here for a little over a week. They are looking forward to attending the fair and seeing some of her former classmates and church friends.

Ashley spent about six weeks in Austrailia with James in May and June. They took in some of the local site seeing tours. Saw the penquins, kowals, and kangaroos. Adelade is near the ocean so they were able to site see in that area also. They did quite a bit of bicycling while she was there. By chance someone who had lived in their apartment before they had left a bike and it was perfect for her.

James has about five or six weeks left in his training there. He will then go to Hong Kong for more training with Cathay Pacific Airlines. He is really enjoying this time. He enjoys learning and is challenged by the various things he is being taught.

We open a new exhibit next week, a church exhibit called Faith Matters: Churches in Minnesota's Historic  Northwest. We will add a few local churches to the mix and a list of past and present churches. Preparations for the New Harmonies exhibit with programs and exhibits are under way also.  We are going to open on November 12th with the Story of Music, the Story of Home. A musical program about the music and insturments that are a part of U.S. heritage. Today I received a list from several individuals from the western area of our county telling about the bands, dances halls and pavilions that were popular when they were young. It is going to be a busy summer and fall!

Happy Birthday, Brian!

Forty-five years ago, our Brian entered the world at 7# 9 oz and 21 inches long. We now had a girl and a boy, amazing! This little tyke grew up to be the charming man he is today.Handsome and debonair, street smart and able to understand the world he lives in.Happy Birthday, Brian!

This week has been an adventure in discovering new and different ideas about exhibit design. On Tuesday, Britt and I headed down to Fargo-Moorhead, working our way south on 32 out of Thief River Falls because of the flood Red River closing part of 29.

The Big Picture and the Little Picture… Exhibit Design Insights & Case Display Details meeting was hosted by the Clay County Historical Society at the Hjemkomst Center. Pam Burkehart and Claudia M. Pratt were our presenters. They are both excellent designers but I honestly think that Britt is every bit as clever.Her idea of using the insulted tubing used for pipes for the bars in the jail cell she created in the museum shows how creative she really is. Today is started putting the exhibit for the clay animals designed by the advanced art class at the Roseau School following the Artist-in-Residence program we partnered with the school. This partnership brought the very talented Memo to the school to spend a week teaching the students the different types of clay work. No pottery in this class, faces and animals instead.

I am in my third week of physical therapy, Pain and Torture, and that it has been. By the time we are done with the half hour session, both my therapist and I are sweating and I am half crying from the pain of it all. I have gone from 82 degrees to 105 and we are both thinking we may have to settle for that. My back was so sore last night I laid on an ice pack prior to going to sleep, one on my knee and one on my lower back.I think part of it comes from being out of shape. I need to find an all around fitness program and work at it. Perhaps a personal trainer would be a good thing for a while. I wonder if there are any in the Roseau area. Tomorrow is another day in a course of PT so I think I will hit the sack and get a good nights sleep.

Knee Replacement and return to physical therapy

After suffering in with some back pain and going to a chiropractor and massage therapist, my regular doctor finally returned from vacation and suggested physical therapy. I knew my range of motion was not good. I have been lax in doing my exercises for about a year and a half. I have done some walking but not the kind of exercises that will help the range of motion. Some people probably think whatever they have is good enough after that long. Mine ROM was 82 degrees, considering that we live in a split entry home, that is not good enough and was causing me to improvise too much.

Can I say there has been lots of pain and torture? I believe so.Each one of the last seven appointments my ROM has increased and on Friday we ended at 103. Whoo hoo!  This is going to be a life long situation I am afraid. Even as I sat in church this am I was exercising my knee. Saturday I worked out at the rehab for  about 45 minutes. I found I could ride the bike much better following the workout with the leg press machine. Where I was only able to sit at a four and bike, I could go to a three.

Today is my daughter, Michelle and her husband Dave's wedding anniversary. Congratulations you two!

On Friday Michelle had Breanne and the kids over to do an an Easter egg hunt. It is things like this that cause me to be closer to her and her children. I haven't talked to Bryce in quite  while either. It is difficult when he is in the Coast Guard and on the east coast. I am sure he gets lonesome for home. He spent about two weeks in California in February. I believe he missed his family more than he thought he had. I get to talk to Breanne and Leah often but not him. Michelle can be hard to call unless she is in the car on her way to one of her 27 music students! Good thing we have mobile phones or we hardly ever talk. Between her attending the university full-time and the music students, she is one busy woman.

Yesterday afternoon the Roseau library had a professional genealogist give a workshop through the Minnesota Arts and Culture Legacy Library funding. It was given by Rick Crume.It was very informative. He examined several websites we could find information. One of the sites that looked promising was Roots Web World Connect Project. The have approximately 644 million names and it is a free website own by Ancestry. We each received a six page paper of websites. It makes one itchy to do their genealogy when they receive information that gives good sources.

FIVE THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN THE PAST WEEK

1. The Roseau library and the Roseau County Historical Society A-B-C book, P is for Pioneer went to the printers last week.
2. I finished the historical society annual report for the meeting on Saturday.
3. I worked out or went to PT six days last week.
4. The Roseau River opened in three days, the ditches opened past our house two days later.
5. We are getting things ready for the Minnesota History Contest in May.

Time to head to bed, pain and torture again at 10:30 tomorrow so need a good night's sleep.

Waiting for Spring

Today is the annual spring general conference for our church in Salt Lake City. Our family has so many good memories of us going to general conference in April.It was always inspiring to be among so many Latter-day Saints. I just turned on conference to listen and watch while I blog and President Monson announced that there is going to be a temple in Winnipeg! I am so excited! I have prayed for years to have a temple in Winnipeg. Now we will only have to drive 100 miles instead of 400 to attend the temple. Wonderful! We had a temple trip scheduled about three weeks ago. Our friends, who went were caught in a terrible blizzard on their way to the Bismarck Temple on I94. 800 motorists were rescued during that storm, including them.

This was the last week of Women's History Month so it must be time to put some photos on my blog.
This year nineteen women were selected from Roseau County cities and townships for the honor of being a One Woman.

One Women selected were Gladys Paulson – City of Badger, Alice Miller – Barnett, Alpha Darst – Barto, Marianne Kristofferson - Enstrom,  Alice Erickson – Falun, Adele Folland – City of Greenbush,  Pearl Loe – Grimstad, Avis Wiskow-Huss, Helen Bergland - Jadis, Lillian Nelson – Malung, Sadie Rygh – Mickinock (2009 selection), Dorothy Brinkman – Mickinock, Clarice Billberg – Palmville, Alma Mellquist Skime - Reine, Annette Hermansen – City of Roseau, Mary Dostal – Skagen, Frances Karlsson-Stafford, Loretta Voll-Unorganized/ Norland, and Anni Daedlow – City of Warroad. These women are well deserving of this title for their communities;  their volunteer work and serve has made their communities better places to live.

This year we were concerned about the program due the townships not sending in the name of their selections but about two months prior to March first they began arriving. This kept Britt very busy working on posters. Her creative touch can be seen throughout the museum not only in the One Woman posters she designs but in the exhibit she put together for the Women in Government area.

The programs were wonderful and well attended. Time for photos! For a closer view of the  photos click on the photo, then hold the ctrl key and increase the size by rolling your mouse wheel forward.

 

Thank you to all the wonderful volunteers who helped make the 2011 One Woman such a success and a special thank you to Britt Dahl our staff guru who designed all the Women in Government exhibits for the second program of Woman's History Month. Those photos will be put on in the future too.

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.

Frost and Rain

On Thursday we woke up to a very foggy and frosty morning. One of our visitors told me that an old wife's tale says that heavy frost means that we will have heavy rain in six months. That would put the rain at the beginning of what could be harvest time. We will see. I am even going to put it in my phone's calendar as a reminder.


This is what it looked like outside that morning: