Tag Archives: Music

1950s Flashback

Posted on by
1

The Cincinnati Museum Center has presented a 1940s Day or Weekend annually since 2011. I attended the third in 2013. Saturday was their first-ever 1950s Day. Asked on their Facebook page if this would also be an annual event, the museum said no. It is intended to be a one-time thing to mate up with the ongoing Julia Child and Barbie exhibits. “But,” they added, “it could come back!” I don’t really remember the 1940s, but I do remember the 1950s, and the rain on Saturday looked just like rain did when Ike was in the White House and Waite Hoyt was on the radio.

Individual information tables lined the rotunda. Pictured are King Records Legacy, Casablanca Vintage Clothing, and the American Sign Museum with a genuine 1950 NEON SIGN.

I stepped into the Newsreel Theater intending to watch a few minutes of the Moving Images presentation and ended up staying more than an hour watching clips of “Melody Showcase”, “Midwestern Hayride”, and commercials. I don’t remember “Melody Showcase”, but “Midwestern Hayride” was a staple at our house, and it’s even possible that I saw some of what I saw today when it was broadcast live.

1950s Day included quite a bit of live music. I caught the P&G Big Band, the Queen City Sisters, and Naomi Carman and the Bluecreek Boys. I do intend to check out the Barbie and Julia Child exhibits sometime, but the museum was far too crowded for that on Saturday. I’ll slip them in on a weekday when school’s in session and employed people are doing employee things.  

Living on the Air in Cincinnati

Posted on by
4

I’m sure everybody is familiar with the joke about someone having “a face for radio.” It’s based on the idea that you do not have to look good to sound good. That’s an idea that often applies doubly to buildings. I’ve not been in a lot of radio stations, but I have been in enough to know that the people behind the microphones are frequently speaking in a dark cubicle far from prying and non-prying eyes, with little for their own eyes to take in as they work. That description has applied to Cincinnati’s WVXU and WGUC, but will no longer. Cincinnati Public Radio is letting the public see its new building this weekend. The bulk of personnel are already operating in the new space, and the plan is to switch broadcasting activity at noon on Tuesday.

I attended Saturday’s open house, which repeats today, April 27, 2025, from 1:00 to 5:00. Directions and other details are here. The cartoon in the opening photo stood not far from the entrance. The distance between speech balloons represents reporter Bill Rinehart’s signature pause when identifying debris on the roadway. I got my first view of the building from a drive by a few weeks ago, but this was my first up-close and stationary look.

And it was obviously my first look inside. That is the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Woodwind Quintet on stage in an area dubbed The Gathering Space. There is also a Performance Studio. With spaces such as this, dare we hope that live music performances — possibly featuring local talent — might be in CPR’s future?

Pictures from the upper floor, including subjects from the preceding paragraph, show how open the building is.

The Instrument Petting Zoo, which seemed to be a big hit, was a new one on me. A more traditional petting zoo was also on the agenda, but the pettees had not yet arrived when I was there. After I walked to my car and worked my way back through the traffic to exit, I saw a Cincinnati Zoo van parked near the front door. I’m pretty sure that meant additional petting was happening or about to.

There are a number of smaller work areas, including some without windows. Most, if not all, of these are mixing and editing stations where a little isolation is a good thing.

As far as I know, the food trucks will not always be there, but they were certainly welcome on Saturday and will be there on Sunday if you want to grab a meal or some Graeter’s ice cream while checking out the building. The CSO quintet was piped outside to a nice park-like area, so I assume Sunday’s Gathering Space performances will be as well. That is where I listened while enjoying some black raspberry chocolate chip. The new place is finished, and the Welcome Weekend is half over. Cincinnati Public Radio is just about done packin’ and unpackin’.

ADDENDUM 29-Apr-2025: Although I was aware of the building’s forward-thinking mass timber construction and actually had it in mind as something to point out when I snapped the picture of the stairway, it completely got away from me during the writing phase. I was reminded of my glaring oversight as I listened to the official throwing of the switch at noon today. The core of this building is not steel or concrete. This is the first mass timber building in Cincinnati. Learn about mass timber here and watch a video about why Cincinnati Public Radio chose it here. 

A Birthday in Hoosierland

Posted on by
6

I set another personal age record yesterday. Even though the celebration was spread over three days and 300 miles, I am reporting it with a blog post rather than a multi-page trip journal for no particular reason although laziness could be a factor. The seeds were planted when I saw that Jason Wilber and Dave Jacques (John Prine’s long-time accompanists) had a concert planned in Chattanooga. I was interested, but before I could act on that, a date in Jasper, Indiana, was announced. When I realized that the Jasper concert was on my birthday and that a single front-row seat was available, I grabbed that seat and built the rest of the party around it.

Things got started on Thursday with breakfast at a favorite restaurant just inside the Indiana border. Folks at the State Line Restaurant make their own goetta (in and on the omelet) and strawberry jam (soon to be all over the toast), which makes it one of the best places ever to start a birthday party. The restaurant is not only on the state line; it is also on US-50, and that’s what I headed west on.

Although the trip was organized around a concert, this turned out to be the splurge of the outing. I visited the West Baden Springs Hotel with a group of friends back in 2007. At that time, it had only been open for a few months following a long closure and major restoration. I told myself I would stay there someday, and today, a little over seventeen years later, I did.

I stayed in this room and ate dinner at the hotel’s Ballard’s Restaurant, which uses a small section of the 200-foot diameter “Eighth Wonder of the World” dome as its dining area. The photos are from and of my table. That’s baked cavatappi on the plate and Trash Panda blonde ale in the glass.

Friday started with breakfast at Nila’s Place and ended with dinner at Schnitzelbank. When I began looking into Jasper eateries, Schnitzelbank consistently appeared as one of the best in town. I penciled it in as a likely spot for my birthday dinner. Then I went looking for a fish fry for the Friday night I would be in Jasper. It did not take long for me to discover that Schnitzelbank holds a very popular seafood buffet every Friday during Lent. So, a seafood buffet became my Friday fish fry, and I got rid of any problem I might have coordinating dinner at this very popular restaurant with the Saturday night concert. Here’s that buffet from one end to the other.

I definitely lucked out on my birthday breakfast spot. I’m pretty sure that everyone else at a rather busy Cranberries knew each other, and the waitress called me honey multiple times. I found a pretty good place for dinner, too. The fact that Pub ‘N’ Grub was about a block from the concert venue was a big plus. With the steady rain, I wished it were closer.

The Astra Theater is not exactly on the town square, but its entrance is accessed through an opening between two buildings at a corner of the square. It opened as a movie theater in 1936 and operated as a movie house until closing in 2002. After much refurbishing, it reopened in 2018 as a combination movie theater and performance venue.

That front-row seat was great for hearing and for seeing but not so great for photographing. Jason and Dave played a bunch of Prine songs and told a bunch of Prine stories. Sam Lewis and Andy West, both friends of John’s, joined them for a few songs and shared their own stories. This was a great kickoff to a tour they are doing, which will include a variety of guests at the different shows. Yeah, it’s a pretty good way to spend a birthday.

ADDENDUM 7-Apr-2025: Partially because they didn’t fit smoothly into the narrative and partly because I wanted to make sure the post was ready for Sunday morning, I omitted some of the things I did other than eating and sleeping. I doubt anyone is surprised that visiting breweries filled some of my idle time. I reached West Baden Springs way too early for check-in on Thursday, so I drove about fifteen miles south to check out Patoka Lake Brewing. On Friday, I tried out Saint Bebedict’s Brew Works in Ferdinand, and I also visited the Dubois County Museum in Jasper. I took no external pictures there and very few inside. A 1910 Sears Runsbout did catch my eye inside the large and impressive museum. Part of Saturday was filled with visits to the Santa Claus Brewing Company in Santa Claus and Yard Goat Artisan Ales in Huntingburg.

Dulcimers Galore

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even know that a dulcimer museum existed let alone that it was within a dozen miles of my home. On the last Sunday of August, I visited the American Folk Music School/The National Dulcimer Museum and learned that the museum has been in operation for about two years and that the school it shares space with has been there for about five years.

US-42 (a.k.a., Reading Road) splits into separate north and southbound sections in Sharonville, OH, where the museum is located. The windows in the opening photo face the northbound lanes. The entrance and a parking lot are at the rear of the building. When I entered, Vickey Sasser, the knowledgeable and energetic lady behind the operation, had just started a museum tour with a group of people who knew much more about dulcimers than I did. Some were wearing shirts with the logos of assorted area dulcimer clubs and Vickie knew several by name.

There are, of course, factory-made dulcimers but most of the more interesting ones, which means most of those in the museum, are made by individuals. The wide variations in design, materials, and craftsmanship are part of what makes them interesting.

Some well-known builders or performers have multiple instruments in the museum. By far the largest collection of this sort is associated with performer Kevin Roth. That’s Vickey Sasser in the third picture holding a dulcimer that, if I understood her correctly, Kevin had made specifically for a single performance of the national anthem at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

The museum is preparing a space for a collection of instruments from performer Bing Futch. Bing has performed and conducted workshops at the museum in the past and will be doing both again next June. Available right now is his video of a recent visit to the museum in which he and Vickie provide a much better overview than my few photos and uninformed commentary.

Although the bulk of the instruments displayed at the museum are mountain dulcimers, there are others including hammer dulcimers, autoharps, and flutes. Here Vickey is holding a hurdy-gurdy that I believe was made specifically for the museum. I have seen a few hurdy-gurdys in the past so already had some of my early misconceptions corrected but this one is small and simple and even opens for an up-close view of the internal workings. I think I finally understand how these things work.

Being open just two hours a month is clearly not a lot. Plus, due to another commitment, Vickey will not be opening the museum for its “last Sunday” showing in September. On the other hand, she is often on-site giving lessons and such so, if the scheduled monthly window can’t be made to work for you, there’s a pretty good chance it could be arranged for her to let you in that back door at some other time.

Trip Peek #136 Trip #142 Common Ground on the Hill

Posted on by
Reply

This picture is from my 2017 Common Ground on the Hill trip. I had wanted to attend the Common Ground on the Hill Roots Music & Arts Festival for several years and this was the year that I finally made it. The photo shows the all-musicians-on-deck finale of the showcase concert that took place on the day I reached the festival in Westminster, MD. This was the ninth day of the trip because once I decided to attend Common Ground, I started adding items from my “someday” list to the agenda. Before I reached the pictured concert, I had been pulled to the top of West Virginia’s Bald Knob by a Shay steam-powered locomotive, toured James Madison’s Montpelier, treated to a tour of Richmond, VA, by a friend, celebrated Independence Day in Williamsburg, VA, got rear-ended at a stop light, and sideswiped in a parking lot. Those last two events led to replacing my Subaru once I got home but, despite taking a beating, the 2011 Forester took care of me on what was a very enjoyable trip.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

2024 Appalachian Festival

Posted on by
Reply

I know I have gone to the Cincinnati Appalachian Festival before but I don’t know when. It was first held in 1970 so I could have attended fifty years ago. That seems ridiculous, of course. Surely I’ve attended more recently than that. I believe that I must have but the truth is that I have no clear memories to support that belief and I most definitely have no physical evidence. As crazy as it sounds, it seems at least possible that my visit on Saturday was the first in a half-century or so.

Like any good festival, there were food vendors. There were also crafts and other items offered for sale along with numerous displays with nothing for sale at all.

Demonstrations of various aspects of life in the area during past times were offered. Blacksmithing and weaving were both very important parts of Appalachian life.

Maybe I should have spent more time among the vendors and taken more pictures of the exhibits but I guess I was more interested in the music. Two stages presented a non-stop parade of Bluegrass and other forms of American Roots Music. The only groups I saw on the Up Close & Personal stage were Sherry Stanforth & Tangled Roots and the Forest Hills Bluegrass Band. I had actually seen FHBB earlier on the other stage but did not immediately recognize them because I’d not heard the Dobro earlier.

Here is the Forest Hills Bluegrass Band on the Appalachian Heritage Stage with the fellow at stage-left playing a banjo. The middle picture is of the Wayfarers (check out that bass) with Sammy Adkins and the Sandy Hook Mountain Boys filling out the panel.

I also checked out some of the non-stop action in the dancing tent. That’s the Country Steps Cloggers in red and two different lines of the Kentucky Bluegrass Cloggers in blue.

As much as I enjoyed the bluegrass and cloggers, I believe I spent more time watching the Native American dancers.

A skilled drum circle backed the dancers and often supplied singing and chanting too. When the dancers and drummers took a well-deserved break, a talented flute player (and maker) filled the space wonderfully.

A lot of energy went into the dancing but it was quite apparent that the dancers had also put considerable effort into their authentic dress.

I have many more pictures of the Native American dancing but will move on after these scenes from a dance depicting ritualized combat between two warriors.

Coney Island was the site of the festival. The former amusement park had been operating as a water park until it was sold in December to a group associated with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for development into a concert venue. The giant Sunlite Pool has already been demolished and I’ve no idea what else will disappear soon. I’m hoping that this entrance where riverboats once delivered patrons to the park — and through which I once walked while on a dinner cruise during 1988’s Tall Stacks — will be spared.

The festival continues today, May 12, 2024, 10:00-6:00.

A Win for Ansonia

Posted on by
6

Until last Friday, I don’t believe I had attended a single football game played by my high school alma mater since I graduated. Furthermore, it seems quite likely that I had not attended a game as a spectator ever. I had attended every game in the four years prior to graduation but it was always as a member of the marching band. Friday night was a new experience for me in several ways not the least of which was the favorable final score.

Of course, I’d thought about attending a game on several occasions but never followed through. I probably would not have made it to Friday’s game if my friend Terry had not been paying more attention to things than I was. Although our friendship goes back even further than high school, we did not attend the same school. Terry’s son did attend Ansonia High School and played on successful teams there in the 1980s.

As the regular season ended, it was Terry who made me aware of Ansonia’s 10-0 record and their entry into the 2023 playoffs. As the #2 seed for Division VII, their first two playoff games were on their home field but I was, unfortunately, out of town for both. Fortunately, they won them both (52-7, 34-8) to set up Friday’s match with St Henry at a neutral site. Also on the fortunate side of things, I was home for this one.

The game was a good one. Ansonia never trailed but our victory was not assured until the closing moments. With no kicking and little passing, the Tigers repeatedly moved the chains on third and fourth down with what often seemed like just inches to spare. The officials thought only one of their two-point conversion attempts was successful although there was serious disagreement from AHS fans on one of the others. Ansonia will play #1 seed Marion Local next Friday but where has not been determined. Whether or not Terry and I are there will depend a lot on the location.
ADDENDUM 19-Nov-2023: The Marion Local game was also at the Piqua stadium, and we did attend. Read about it here.

As implied by this headline from my days as a student, rooting for a winning team was once an impossible dream. The thirty-eight-game streak it refers to came to an end just a little over sixty years ago on September 13, 1963.

Both of these images are from the 1964 Ansonia High School yearbook. The first contains photos of the seniors on the team that ended the streak along with a local newspaper report of the event which attracted some national attention as well. The second image shows the entire team. In those days, yearbooks, at least those for small Ohio schools, were entirely black and white with the exception of the endpapers. There could be no better use of the book’s only splash of color than recognizing the group that ended what I believe was the longest losing streak in the nation at the time.

I mentioned that my previous AHS football game attendance involved the school band. The band’s fortunes over the last six decades do not appear to match those of the team. The picture at right shows the band during halftime of Friday’s game. I counted about twenty members, and Terry said that was noticeably more than what he remembered from the last game he attended.

There were 54 in the band that would have marched at that big 1963 win.

Dayton Porchfest 2023

Posted on by
1

I attended my first Porchfest in 2018. It was Dayton’s second. Despite good intentions, I did not make it back in 2019 and there understandably wasn’t one in 2020. Dayton did hold Porchfests in 2021 and 2022 but they did it without me. I guess I sort of forgot about them until I saw an ad of some sort a few weeks ago. Ithaca, NY, had the first Porchfest in 2007. The Dayton Porchfest was number 94. There are now more than 150 taking place each year.

That opening picture of Baker & Collins, of the band Berachah Valley, probably looks exactly like what you expect a porch fest to look like but that is not the way this one started. At 12:15, after a few announcements,  Phil’s Big Azz Brass Band kicked off the music in a parking lot. No porch could hold them.

Starting at 1:00, and continuing for the next six hours, eight to ten concerts began on porches — or something similar — throughout the Saint Anne’s Hill section of Dayton every hour on the hour. After listening to a few tunes from Baker & Collins, I moved on to catch a few from Jimmy D. Rogers then around the corner to catch a few more from Dennis Geehan and the Storied Blues Project.

This is crabswithoutlegs who, in addition to having a name that triggers a plethora of questions, were probably the highlight of my day. They are on a back porch in a fenced yard completely filled with people with more listening outside the fence. Fortunately, there was a small but steady stream of folks moving to other porches so I was able to slip inside the fence for a bit. This extremely tight jazz fusion group was made extra impressive by the apparent young age of every member.

They and I performed on a very real porch although it faced a side yard rather than the street. I had paused for a beverage at the Fifth Street Brewpub as the 1:00 concerts came to an end then spent a little extra time taking in crabswithoutlegs. As a result, I only managed to hear pieces of two of the 2:00 concerts.

Sharon Lane was the first of the 3:00 performers I saw. I’ve included a shot of the building where she performed to show that she really was on a porch. The porch that Novena performed on was much more open and stage-like.

Other 3:00 concerts I saw included Austin Wolfel, Tim Gebard & the Hit Men, and Dave Zup who performed in the street while his accompaniment was on a porch.

There is no such thing as too much music but there was more music than I could take in. It wasn’t really practical to attend all of the eight or more concerts occurring simultaneously plus I did not make it to the end of the festival. In 2018, it was rain that caused me to leave early. In 2023, it was my legs. Four hours (minus one beer) of walking wore me out. I know I missed a lot. Porchfest is a great concept and Dayton, via Saint Anne’s Hill, does it right.

 

Musical Review
Utopia, Ohio
Hugo West Theatricals

Posted on by
Reply

Wednesday is this blog’s day for reviews. Although not every Wednesday gets one, reviews do sometimes appear two or more weeks in a row. In fact, reviews appeared on six consecutive Wednesdays earlier this year. But today is definitely the first time I have ever published back-to-back reviews of premieres of locally produced musicals about local history. In addition to their being musicals with local roots and having me in the audience of their inaugural runs, both Above the Sand (reviewed here) and Utopia, Ohio, the subject of this review, convincingly demonstrate the phenomenal amount of talent in this area. The similarities between the debuts of these two new musicals are striking but there are some pretty big differences between the musicals themselves.

One difference of note is the public’s familiarity with the two subjects. Virtually everyone knows that the Wright brothers were the first humans to successfully fly a heavier-than-air machine, and many residents of southwest Ohio know a lot more of the story than that. But the story of Utopia, an unincorporated community near Cincinnati, is hardly known at all. My guess is that even people who live fairly close to the small cluster of buildings on the banks of the Ohio River know little or nothing beyond what is written on the historical marker in the opening photo and not many stop to read even that.

Utopia was actually the name of the third and final attempt at communal living at the location. The Clermont Phalanx was first. A “phalanx” was a group of followers of the writings of Charles Fourier. The Clermont Phalanx was formed in 1844 and failed in 1846. Within months of that failure, abolitionist and spiritualist John Wattles established the community of Excelsior on a portion of the phalanx property, and Josiah Warren, “America’s first anarchist”, established Utopia a short time later on another portion. A very good history of all three is available here. Joshua Steele, the writer of Utopia, Ohio, provided a nice summary in a Facebook post here.

I’ve brought up all of this background stuff because I believe a decent knowledge of the history is necessary to understand the musical. Notice I said “understand” not “enjoy”. Enjoying the musical is easy because the music and performances are so good. In fact, knowing nothing at all about the history would not keep you from enjoying the music. You can appreciate the tunes the same way you appreciate a concert or a new album. All five cast members are talented vocalists. There is no orchestra. Every cast member plays at least one instrument and some play several. The full battery includes guitar, mandolin, piano, accordion, violin, and cajon. Coordinating instruments no doubt complicated the director’s and stage manager’s jobs but it was handled quite well.

Coordinating hats also added some complexity. With more roles than actors, hats were used effectively to distinguish specific roles. Linsey Rogers and. Brad Myers were particularly adept at this. At times, images projected at the side of the stage also helped know who was who.

Determining when was when was a different matter. You might be able to tell the players without a program but not the dates. The songs of Utopia, Ohio do not tell a story chronologically, at least not in the order they were performed on Thursday. That is why, I assume, there are dates in the program. It took me way too long to realize this. Once I did, I started taking in the performance more as a concert than a play despite having a pretty good sense of the history of the three failed communities. In the end, I decided that viewing it as a series of related but not ordered musical vignettes was best. Within each vignette, the cast skillfully brought music, lyrics, actions, and expressions together to tell the intended story and to entertain as well.

A very important difference between last week’s review and this one is the fact that Utopia, Ohio‘s first run is not already over. This is being published on the morning of the second of four scheduled performances so I do not feel the too-late-to-matter guilt I did last week. Maybe I will, though, as at least one of the three remaining performances is sold out. Check for tickets here. If you do snag one, my advice is to either pay close attention to the dates in the program and put the history together in your head or ignore them completely and just tap your toes to some fine music.

Musical Review
Above the Sand
Mason Community Players

Posted on by
1

When I wrote about my first visit to the Loveland Stage Company, I spoke of the guilt I felt for taking so long to take in a play there. The same sort of guilt surrounds my first time attending a Mason Community Players production. MCP is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year which means it is six years older than LSC. I suppose I could feel extra guilty for ignoring the Mason group even longer than the Loveland group but, although I’ve lived near Mason, I have never actually lived in Mason so feeling equal levels of guilt regarding my being late to the party at both theaters seems more or less OK.

But I also feel another kind of guilt regarding this review. I have no special or early access to plays so my infrequent reviews of them are often near or even after the end of their run when few or no performances remain. I always feel a little guilty about that. That feeling increases when the production is one I want to recommend because it’s extra good or somehow unique. All that is true of Above the Sand meaning I really feel guilty about the timing of this review.

Producing any play is an accomplishment. There are certainly some particular challenges in doing it with amateurs and volunteers and doing a musical must add even more. Performers need to be able to sing and maybe dance a bit, and musicians are needed to accompany them. Community theater productions will never be a match for well-financed Broadway companies but their audiences don’t expect them to be. When a community theater company produces a successful Broadway musical it can benefit from having one or more professional productions as examples without getting dinged for not having Barbra Streisand or Gregory Hines in the cast. The production I attended Thursday night had all of the listed challenges without one of the aids. Amateurs and volunteers did indeed sing and dance accompanied by offstage volunteers playing instruments but they were not copying from anyone. This was the world premiere of Above the Sand so there was no previous production to provide an example. This gang didn’t need one.

The premiere run ended on Saturday. Not knowing how long online information will remain available, I’ve taken the liberty of copying this short description from the Mason Players’ website:

Above the Sand is written and composed by MCP member Tom Davis. It tells of the challenges and triumphs of Wilbur and Orville Wright as they bring the power of flight to the world. The story takes the audience on a journey from a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Paris, France. Above the Sand is a piece of local history that has affected life around the world. It shines a light on the struggles of those who dream an idea into reality, then ultimately triumph.

As mentioned, any community theater production requires a lot of effort, and a musical production even more. That effort is not wasted with the script Tom Davis has created. With spoken words and lyrics, it touches all key points of the Wrights’ achievement. It avoids sounding like either a science or history lesson while being a little bit of both.

I’m always intrigued by how a single stage of limited size gets used to tell stories involving multiple locations that are sometimes huge spaces. That is another challenge that this production encounters and handles quite well despite not having a Broadway-sized budget. By flipping panels, hanging pictures, and swapping some furniture, the action moves between sand dunes, living rooms, workshops, France, England, and more. In a program note, director Lara Gonzalez talks of collaborating and creating “throughout the rehearsal process”. Much of the collaboration naturally involved Gonzalez and Davis but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t at least one idea contributed by every cast and crew member.

I’ll give a shout out to the actors portraying the Wright siblings although every member of the cast of nearly twenty turned in wonderful performances. Corey Meyer (Wilbur) has the least experience of the three younger Wrights although I certainly would not have known that without a program. Nico Morello (Orville) and Eva Bower (Katharine) have both been on stage quite a bit. I had sort of mentally tagged Eva as the most polished of the cast and learned that I could be right when I read that she was first on stage at age 9.

I have no idea what, if anything, comes next for Above the Sand. I know of no plans for future performances but I sure hope that there will be some. I was entertained Thursday night, and exposed to a little science and history too. I don’t believe any of the science or history facts were really new to me but some of the emotion was. I’ve read numerous articles and books about the Wright brothers and their early flights. I’ve watched more than a few documentaries too. None of them conveyed the sense of awe from the world at large that I witnessed Thursday night. Maybe it came from the music. Or maybe it came from the personal involvement that a live performance requires. At some level, I know I have considered that the existence of powered flight changed the basic way that an awful lot of people looked at the world but it had never registered as strongly with me as it did in that theater. Before December 1903, many people had considered it impossible; others thought it merely quite difficult. The first group was now indisputably proven wrong. The second group was proven right and no longer had to guess at just how difficult it was. It took some time for the news to circle the globe and even more time for some people to accept it but that did not alter the fact. Somehow a group of people singing about something they were witnessing offstage drove that home better than any words on a page or images on a screen. Hooray for music. Hooray for live theater. Hooray for man’s ability to progress and to be amazed at his own progress.