The Bothwell Estate

 

Outside the estate

Here is an early player piano.  The device is rolled up to the keys and depresses them according to the information stored on the roll.

A secret compartment in the library

The Bothwell Estate

The dining room

The front entryway

A view in the game room.

Another view in the game room.

The library

The Bothwell Estate

This picture was shot in the attic.

Here is a view of one of the bedrooms.

This is a swarm of bees above the shade.

The boiler

A view of highway 65 north of Sedalia as seen from the Bothwell Estate.

The Bothwell Estate

Coffee with Claire

I thought I would post the latest episode of "Coffee with Claire" for you this evening since both Oklahoma senators are mentioned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05wAB9FMg4I

Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival

Below are some pictures I took at the 2013 Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri.  The Festival ran from June 5 thru June 8.  We arrived there on June 6 and left on June 8.

Vacation pictures

We ate lunch at this pub one day.

Food vendors on the sidewalk

Pettis County Courthouse

Stark Pavilion

Vacation pictures

Pettis County Courthouse

Statue

Food vendor 

 

Stark Pavilion

Vacation pictures

This is Tom Brier performing in the depot.

Vacation pictures

This is the Katy Depot in Sedalia.

Here is another view.

This is where passengers once boarded.

Sculpture

Vacation pictures

At an evening concert.

Vacation pictures

This venue is close to a railroad track (mainline between KC and St. Louis).  Whenever a train would pass thru, it would disrupt whatever was going on at the time.  The track was about twenty feet on the other side of the wall.

 

Here is the site of the Maple Leaf Club.  It is now a performance venue.

A tube player on the site of the Maple Leaf Club plays his instrument.

Vacation pictures

We did some geocaching on this trip.  Can you spot the cache in this picture?

 

This cloth is covered in notes.  The cloth is in The Ragtime Store on Ohio St. in Sedalia.

 

Vacation pictures

A mother and her daughter played and sang.

 

Street scene in Sedalia.

 

Street scene in Sedalia.  In the background is a large tent where piano players performed.  This was one of five venues.

We stayed at Rodeway Motel in Sweet Springs, MO.  It is about 30 miles north of Sedalia. I took this picture out the back window of our room.

Vacation pictures

At this venue, a woman is playing a clarinet.

Here a man is playing ragtime piano.  I am guessing that this piano was loaned to the Festival by a local piano company since the protective padding remains wrapped around the lower parts.

Here is a trio composed of piano, tube, and ratchets.

The tube player also sang.

Back from vacation

We are back from a vacation to Sedalia, Mo.  We left Wednesday evening around 4:40 pm.  We drove to Nevada, Mo. and got a room for the night at the Super 8.  There are several geocaches in Nevada, and we had just enough time to look for two before it got dark.  The first cache we looked for was on a caboose in a park.  We got some help finding the cache from a person who was familiar with the location.

The second cache was near the county courthouse.  There just happened to be a concert going on there with a crowd of a couple hundred out on the courthouse lawn.  As darkness fell, we had not found the cache.  But with so many people around, we did not check out every possibility.

The next morning, we got up and drove on to Sedalia -- a town of about 20,000 inhabitants. I took a lot of pictures there.  I will post some later.  There were plenty of people there for the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival.  This was our first year to attend the event.  It ran from Wednesday the 5th thru Saturday the 9th.  Some of the best ragtime piano players in the nation were there.

There were five performance venues going nonstop from 9am until 5pm each day.  The daytime piano playing was free.  Only the evening performances were ticketed events.

Due to the popularity of the event, lodging was sold out.  I had phoned motels looking for a room about a month prior to the Festival, but all were sold out.  We stayed in Sweet Springs, which is about 30 miles away to the north.

I had time to find two caches while in Sedalia.  We had pleasent weather while there.  We plan to go back next year.

Saturday afternoon, we drove to Springfield and spent the night at my parents' apartment.  We left Sunday afternoon and returned to Sand Springs.

Weather settles down

It appears the weather in Oklahoma has settled down for a while.  We have had a spate of rough weather.  Nearby Broken Arrow was hit with a tornado a few days ago.  Other parts of the state had it worse.

There is nothing new to write about.  I have been doing my usual activities.  Today I was the speaker at church.  I spoke about the book The God Virus.  It was written by psychologist Darrel Ray.

I will once again be playing piano for Edna on the 16th and 23rd.

It appears that I will once again be the speaker for Humanist Sunday in July.  I'm not sure yet what my topic will be.

I am continuing my walking regimen.  I am somewhere around 160 miles for the year so far.  I had to miss the last couple of volkswalks.  I should go out to Keystone Lake and do the year-round walk there a few times.

Reflections on a bad week for Oklahoma

Some two dozen people lost their life earlier this week.  Most of them were residents of Moore.  An additional several hundred sustained injuries from the tornado -- a tornado at one point 1.3 miles wide which stayed on the ground for 17 miles.  Several hundreds of homes were destroyed and many more suffered damage.

It is such an event as this that makes the atheist wish there were a god who could and would intervene on behalf of the victims.  But alas, there was no help from above.  If you value your life, don't pray for a miracle -- build a storm shelter.

This morning, we had our May Food and Fellowship gathering.  In attendance were David, Mark, Lisa, Randy, Dawn, Marilyn, Barbara, Gail, Jan, and Dan.  We ate at La Hacienda on Peoria.

Earlier this week I posted another duet video on YouTube.  Search for "Gail and Dan at piano" if you would like to view it.

We dodged a bullet tonight

May is a bad month for tornadoes.  Tonight three super cells developed near OKC.  They were headed up I-44 toward the Tulsa area.  They fizzled out before getting here.  I haven't heard yet if there were any fatalities.

Gail is expecting an important phone call tomorrow.  She asked if I would be willing to practice duets at her house.  So I will be going to her house tomorrow.

Quotation

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.   --Terry Pratchett

Reading / Playing / Walking / Cutting

Last night I finished reading a book by C. S. Lewis.  The title was The Great Divorce.  It is the next book for discussion by the Methodist Book Club.  It was to be the book for May, but for some reason the May meeting was canceled.  Thankfully, it was not too long.  It was written some sixty to seventy years ago, a time when it was acceptable to hurl insults at atheists.  Nowdays people are more tolerant of religious diversity.

On Sunday, Edna, the church pianist, had another commitment.  I filled in for her.  I played a ten-minute interlude, and then our minister was led in.  He was led in account he is blind now and must be shown the way.  Shown is not the right word.  He has to feel his way around.  He is familiar with the sanctuary, having preached there many time before the onset of his blindness.

Vanessa had told me that the closing hymn would be "Over My Head," but she had not informed me of the opening hymn.  I suggested "Lift Every Voice and Sing."  She said she had been thinking about that hymn, too.  So that was our opening hymn.

Gail and I provided the special music, which was Gershwin's I've Got Rhythm.

Following the service, four of us engaged in hand-drumming.  I brought my two drums, and the church had two drums.  It was the first time I had drummed in a couple of years.  The four of us were myself, Vanessa, Gerald (the minister), and Hagi. I had to leave after ten minutes to get to a birthday party for Luke, my grandson.

At the birthday party for Luke, there were nine people.  We had fried chicken and potato salad for lunch.

The next day was Monday, and Gail drove over for our weekly practice.  She is considering going to a hospital in Denver in hopes of getting more information about her lung condition.  She has seen two doctors in Tulsa.  Both said it would be too dangerous to do a lung biopsy.

Today I cut the grass in the back yard.  We have taken so much out of the backyard that it is possible to cut it quickly.

Some recent photos

This picture was taken inside the Red Barn Cafe and Hen House Bakery in Mt. Vernon, MO just a few miles west of Springfield  We had dinner on the way to Springfield.  They had a good amount of business.

We got up one morning and looked outside to see sleet covering the car.  This was May 3, 2013.

Here is another view of the sleet covering many objects.  It snowed all day May 3 in Springfield.  Very little stuck to the grass.

This is a view inside our living room.  The object covered up in the background is my piano.  We had to cover up everything and move any items near the windows toward the center of the room in preparation for the installation of new windows.

A visit to Target

Today we went to the Target store at the Tulsa Hills shopping center.  On our last visit there a couple of months ago I saw a bookshelf which I thought might be good for my piano music.  Presently, I am using a shelf I built myself some twenty years ago.  I used it for my magazines for several years, but decided to use it for my sheet music a few years ago.

The storage unit I built is six feet high with nine shelves about 14" square.  Since I am constantly buying new music, I ran out of space a year or two ago.  We went over to Target to buy the shelf, but they had none in stock.  In fact, they discontinued the item.  We checked at Lowe's, also in Tulsa Hills shopping center, but found nothing to our liking there.  We returned home without making a purchase.

We came back from another extended stay in Springfield, MO on Sunday.  I had to miss church.  It was Humanist Sunday and Joy Avery gave the talk.  Edna, the church pianist, will not be able to be at church this coming Sunday.  I plan to fill in for her.

Back on Easter Sunday, my father fell and broke his hip.  Thus the many trips to Springfield.  Dad is at home recuperating now.

Yesterday, we had all the windows (except the laundry room) in the house replaced.  The new windows look nice.  The crew of four worked from about 7 am to noon.

Piano and medical matters

I was on the way to the post office today when my phone rang.  It was Gail.  Gail's mother-in-law is staying at Gail's house due to her (the mother-in-law's) fragile nature.  Gail invited me to her house to practice piano duets today.  She wanted to stay close to her phone (landline) since she was expecting a call from her doctor.  I said I would be there at 1 pm.

I showed up at the Storey residence at 1 pm.  Gail's mother-in-law, Ruby, was there, along with a caregiver and Gail's husband Glenn.  We talked some about my father's condition and about the trips we have been making back and forth to Springfield.  While I was there, Gail's doctor office called with the date of an appointment for Gail.  This is the phone call she has been expecting for the past few days.

Sometime ago, we, the Storeys and the Nerrens, took a road trip to Ponca City for the purpose of eating at a world-famous restaurant at the Ponca City airport by the name of Enrique's.  It is a Mexican restaurant.  We talked about doing the same thing again this year.  We might even search for a geocache while there.  There is a labyrinth in the city which I have never walked. 

If you would like to search for geocaches in your area, go to www.geocaching.com and type in your ZIP code and take a look at your area.

Poetry Sunday

Back to my blog.  I’ve been away for a while and have neglected to update this blog for several days.  It’s time for an update.

We returned home from Springfield after another extended stay.  In some ways going back to Missouri is like returning to civilization after a period in the wilderness.  After all, Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907, decades after Missouri became a part of the union.

I went to church this morning, having missed the last two weeks.  As part of the revised Sunday service procedure, I now play piano in the minutes before the service starts, while the church pianist, Edna, makes her way to the church.  Edna is also the church pianist for another church which has an earlier service time.

Today was Poetry Sunday.  Several of us read poems for the service.  I read “O, Kharma,
Dharma, Pudding and Pie” by Philip Appleman.

There have been a couple of big changes in my life this month.  The first involves my parents in Springfield.  I’m afraid I can’t say any more about this at this time.

The other big change involves a health scare for Gail, my partner of some eight years in playing piano duets.  She is undergoing medical tests.  We have not played together since March.  She had lung cancer two years ago.  We fear it is coming back.

To Springfield and back

We took a trip to Springfield, Missouri and stayed eight days.  We got back home on Monday, April 8.  The reason for the lengthy stay will have to be withheld.  Suffice it to say that both of my parents are still alive.

Monday evening was the date of the Methodist Book Club.  We uniformly agreed that the selection for April was a dud, with the exception of Kat.  I found the humor of the book to be juvenile.  The author of the book is Jenny Lawson, and I think her favorite word is "fuck."  The book's title is Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir).   Next month the selection is by C. S. Lewis.  The title of the book is The Great Divorce.

I have had to miss the last two duet practice sessions.  Maybe I will be home next Monday.

I got my hair cut on Tuesday.  I was a bit overdue for one.