Your Sound Choice
Musical ramblings from the manager
By now, readers of these FTV ramblings are well aware that ‘drummer’ is my main musical gig. I was inspired early on by the likes of Dave Clark (of the Dave Clark Five) to be a singing drummer and as such acted as the lead or co-lead singer in every band I was in. I […]
From the Vaults: American Roads Among the many topics covered by Simon Winchester in his book The Men Who United the States (2013, Harper-Perennial Books), one that fascinated me a lot was the history of American roads. Winchester notes that at the turn of the nineteenth century, 96 percent of travel in America was […]
Raise your hands if you were in the audience for one or both of the Measured Chaos shows at the Ontonagon Theater for the Performing Arts in the summer of 2005 or 2009. If you were, then this will be a re-introduction to the band’s guitarist, harmonica player, lead vocalist, and leader, Al Jacquez. […]
At the end of my first year working in the Huron Mountain Club kitchen as a busboy turned dishwasher, my stress level was reduced for several reasons. We had survived the busiest part of the summer season short-handed with only two busboys and me pushing the dishes coming out of two dining rooms three meals […]
On those occasions when my students would complain the work I had assigned was boring, I would play the ‘Helen Toivonen Card’. As an educational mentor, they didn’t come much better than Helen. If her students complained, she would agree with them and say, “You are right. This is soooo boring, why don’t you […]
As a space geek, I got accustomed to NASA (the National Aeronautic and Space Administration) using acronyms for just about everything. It only really bugged me when they would use one and not tell you what it meant, YKWIM (You Know What I Mean)? Okay, I am just toying with you a bit because […]
Okay fans of The Doors, complete the lyric begun in the title: Weird scenes . . . inside the gold mine (which comes from The End, the final track of their eponymous debut album). I purposely made this a little too easy so it would serve as a red herring. With my apologies to Jim […]
If evening planetary gazing is your thing, March is going to be a big disappointment to you. There are no naked eye planets visible in the evening sky this month. Uranus will be in the western sky and will be visible with binoculars or a small telescope about an hour after sunset. If the […]
From the Vaults: Live Shows Revisited Time to dig into the past and reminisce about some of the live concerts I have been privileged to attend. The list is too long to talk about more than a few at a time. The wheels really started rolling when I did an internet search under the […]
Perhaps it would be closer to the point if I entitled this FTV ‘Historical Snowmobiling Adventures’ as I haven’t ridden one since our kids were in elementary school. Grandpa Ed (my dad) always kept a Ski-doo Elan at camp he called ‘the kid’s machine’ so they could take a spin when we stopped by. […]