2022
Dear Friends & Family,
Once again it’s time for my annual year
in retrospective or the “all about me” letter. I do live alone after all…except
for all the wildlife that comes to visit. If you’re reading this online, you
will find clickable links (underlined) to lots of photos and videos. If not
online, you won’t see the photos or videos and, consequently, will miss the
best part! Best get thee to a computer (or iPad or iPhone) and visit my web
site at http://saxchick.net. Just click on the
Holiday Newsletter graphic. It will remain online until next December, when it
will be replaced with a new holiday letter.
My old man cat, Morris, crossed the Rainbow
Bridge on August 11th this year. He was blind and diabetic and generally in
declining health. My daughter Lois rescued him 16 years ago and brought him
home in a bucket. He was a good buddy and provided a lot of love and comfort
throughout those years. I may eventually get another cat or two but for now am
enjoying my newfound freedom and cleaner house.
I continue to teach a few students
(saxophone and trumpet) and am happy to keep the numbers low and devote my
energy to a special few. I had several high school students graduate this year
and go off to college. Over the years of lessons I grow very close to my students and their families. It
is gratifying to watch them grow and mature – both musically and chronologically.
Speaking of families, we observed a significant
event in our family this year. Our Aunt Marion, the last remaining member of our
mother’s family of eight siblings, turned 99 in July. My sister and I celebrated
with her at her residence in Dixon, Illinois. She is still mobile and sharp as
a tack! We also gathered together for family holiday celebrations. Here is a
little photo album of our
tribe.
I finally grew weary of mowing and
trimming around tree stumps so I had a dozen of them ground out this fall. That
will alleviate a lot of frustration and extra work in my yard. I’m trying to
make my life easier to manage as I get old and decrepit. Of course, I still
have enough creative energy to mow around my lawn sax and my prairie takes care of itself.
I continued my obsession with
photographing the beautiful birds
and other wildlife that come to visit here. Most birds are camera shy and are
not very accommodating at posing for me. I try to lure them in with peanuts but the birds are
so quick (and my camera and I are so slow) that it is a challenge to capture
good photos. Still, I keep at it and occasionally get lucky.
I planted a garden again this year. This time
I tried something new: laying down landscape cloth to keep the weeds out. It
was a lot of work and my back is still paying the price…but I didn’t have any
weeds except for a few hardy ones that managed to poke their way through by the
end of the gardening season and a few that took advantage of the few spots of
exposed soil around some plants. I think it had an adverse effect on some
plants but I’m going to stick with it for next year and see how it goes after a
year without tilling the soil. I always enjoy planting new and interesting
things: varieties of summer and winter squash, purple sugar snap peas,
cylindrical beets, and mystery eggplants, I already have my seeds (including
some new and unusual bean, squash, and eggplant varieties) for next year’s garden…since I will
have to start them indoors by Valentine’s Day and, of course, because I do
everything before it’s time!
This was a banner year for apples! My trees produced
bountiful crops of all kinds of apples: Wolf River (huge but mealy cooking
apples), Macs, Honeygold (crisp and sweet), Cortland,
Fuji, and Pink Lady. The specimens were also better than usual...bigger and
mostly critter-free (without spraying). My black walnut trees also produced a
huge crop this year. The ground was littered with walnuts, which of course I
had to pick up before I could mow my lawn before winter. Once they were all
gathered and dumped on my shop driveway I drove over them to encourage the
husks to loosen, then spent ten hours (over several days) husking them by hand.
I hope I am ambitious enough to crack them (in a vise) and pick out the
nutmeats…but I don’t have a very good track record for that project.
I turned 71 this year and believe this
may be officially old: everything either hurts or leaks, I can’t remember
anything, my fingers are twisting, and I snack on TumsI
It’s a good thing I still have my sense of humor; my other senses are all
diminishing! I am thankful to have friends who are willing to put up with me.
This year my carpet mural production
consisted of two “Homage to FLW” murals and two murals created for an exhibit
with the theme of Democracy. If selected they will be on display at Madison’s
Overture Center Playhouse Gallery, where my Covid
mural was on display in last year’s “Everything Covid”
exhibit. I contemplated retiring from making carpet murals, as my carpet stock
was getting low and my back was complaining. However, after a thoughtful fellow
artist friend secured the mother lode of carpet samples for me, I reconsidered
and ordered a new batch of frames.
When trying to recall all the concerts, plays, musicals, and
operas I attended this year I realized there were lots of them! I feel
blessed to have dear friends with whom to attend these cultural events that
enrich my life. If not for my treasured friends (who enrich my life
immeasurably) I would probably just stay home and watch TV and eat chocolate!
Okay, I do that anyway.
Though Covid
19 is still with us, live performances are back in full swing. My APT schedule
consisted of only one play, as the first two were
cancelled - one due to Covid in the cast and the
other due to ill-timed rain. The third one, however, was a grand finale: APT’s
talented actors gave an outrageously grand and comic performance of The
Moors by Jen Silverman. It was a most unusual play – a dark comedy with
some life lessons thrown in for good measure. Colleen Madden’s talking and
trilling moor hen had me in stitches and had James DeVita,
as a mastiff dog, falling head over heels in love with her! Kelsey Brennan’s
ballad in celebration of the murder of her overly critical sister (Tracy
Michelle Arnold, who reminded me of a Maggie Smith character)) had the audience
roaring!
My first trip to the Fireside Theater
in Fort Atkinson was delightful! It began with a fabulous buffet dinner,
followed by the musical A Mighty Fortress Is Our Basement,
presented by the Church Basement Ladies.
It is a theater in the round, giving everyone a good view of the action on stage
in the center. As expected, the church ladies were a hoot and I want to go back
for more (food and musical)!
A very thoughtful friend gave me prime
tickets for Hairspray (the musical) at
the Overture Center. I thoroughly enjoyed the laughs and welcome break from the
tension in the world.
My concert buddy and I resumed our
season of Madison Symphony Orchestra concerts (following a Covid year of cancellations). It was a make-up year
celebrating Beethoven. Highlights (not all Beethoven) included January 24th
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (with
actors from American Players Theater), February 14th (Rachmaninoff,
Kodaly, Beethoven), March 14th Beethoven concert (Egmont Overture, September
25th season opener Beethoven’s 9th
Symphony, November 13th (Marquez, Bruch, and Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony No. 6} and December 4th Madison Symphony Christmas. We always
take a selfie at these
concerts so, if she approves and it’s not too scary, I will include one.
As usual, I attended three operas (that’s what’s in the
subscription) at the Overture Center this year: on February 20th Bock/Harnick’s She Loves
Me, on May 1st Offenbach’s Overture
in the Underworld (an entertaining romp through Hades), and Strauss’s Salome on November 6th. All
were excellent but the most recent was my favorite. The production of “Salome”
was as fabulous as it was outrageous, largely due to the leading character’s
outstanding vocal range and power - and bonus dancing ability! The giant-sized
pit orchestra was also most impressive, with extended solo passages by tuba and
contrabassoon as well as flute and Eb clarinet at the
other end of the tonal spectrum.
We actually do have an excellent
concert series right here in Richland Center, just down the hill from my house!
This year I got to hear Otis Murphy (saxophonist extraordinaire) and Greg Zelek (outstanding Overture Center organist).
Our saxophone quartet, Burlap Sax,
met a few times this year, though not often enough to satisfy my addiction! Our
first session was on April 3rd, when we recorded the Ukranian
National Anthem in support of the people of Ukraine, who had just begun to
suffer under Putin’s dastardly invasion that still lingers on. We scheduled two
holiday programs, December 11th and 18th, for Walmart
shoppers. It has become a favorite venue for us! I will add photo proof after
our first performance. We tried to book a Halloween concert, and even compiled
a folder full of spooky music, but could not get our schedules together to do
it so we just had our own Halloween session in my shop/studio. We recorded a
couple of appropriately frightful tunes for you to hear. Due to
a good sale and free shipping offer at Vistaprint…I
was inspired to order some new embroidered polo shirts to add to our holiday
collection. They are not my original designs, just my finds…and, in some cases,
Vistaprint’s re-design to work with their embroidery
process. I am so impressed with the embroidery (though I know it’s
computerized) that I have become a bit obsessed with coming up with excuses to
order new shirts!
As always, I wish each of you a holiday
season filled with people who appreciate and adore you, music that stirs your
soul, pets that love you unconditionally, food that’s worth the calories, and
health good enough to enjoy it all!
A joyous and prosperous new year to you all!
Love,
Carol Kramer
