Finding Things

By Kendall Kroesen

We are mostly settled in, after almost a month here in Indiana. The furniture is arranged, curtains are hung, trash cans are lined, we have some art on the walls, and things have been put away. 

But where have they been put? This house is smaller than our Tucson house, but between the house and the furniture it has many more locations for storage. Specifically: 32 drawers, 28 cabinets, 6 closets, 2 spare bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 pantry, and 1 two-car garage. It's one thing to put stuff away and another thing to find it again. 

Drawers and cabinets in the kitchen.

I still have to open an average of 2 or 3 drawers or cabinets to find what I'm looking for. This is on top of my "male pattern blindness." That's when the thing you want is right there where you're looking, but nonetheless you can't see it. A few days ago I was looking in the pantry for a small bag of rice. Mary Beth pointed out that it was straight ahead of me at eye level. 

There is always more to do to the house, but we try to get out and do other things too. But the simplest things now apparently require you to jump through digital hoops. Mary Beth found two tickets online to an event in Richmond. She would have preferred to just print out the tickets, but the online purchase required you to download (yet another) app. It's called Vivid Seats. I didn't have the right Apple password for her phone so I had to change it. Then there was a frustrating lag time between changing the password and when the phone would accept the new password in order to download the app. Eventually it worked and I downloaded the app and the digital tickets. Just to satisfy a deep craving for something non-digital, I printed out the tickets from the app! Has digital tech really improved our lives? Maybe. But mostly it has been used to improve the bottom line for a company and make more work for you. They no longer have to snail mail you a ticket or hold a physical ticket for you at the ticket office (if there even is a physical ticket office anymore). Luddite me. 

Sorry about that digression. The event that we bought tickets for is a baseball game between two teams in the Northwoods League. The first thing that surprised me was that Mary Beth wanted to go to a baseball game. The only baseball game we went to in Tucson was preceded by a dachshund race--a lead-up to the "Weiner Nationals"--and after that we didn't stay for the whole game! But her nephew Saige is a former baseball player and high school baseball coach, so I guess she wants to make a first hand report about the game to him. Also, the two teams that will be playing have very interesting names. 

Turns out the Northwoods League is a summer developmental opportunity for college baseball players. There are 26 teams including the Rochester Honkers, the Wausau Woodchucks, the Mankato MoonDogs, and the Minot Hot Tots. 

Our game is between the Richmond Flying Mummies and the Traverse City Pit Spitters. The name Flying Mummies honors two facts about Richmond history. First, the young Wright brothers lived here for a while before moving to Dayton, Ohio. So flying is on people's minds a lot. Second, Richmond is the only city in Indiana that has an Egyptian mummy. In fact it has two! No ancient Egyptian ever flew and the Wright brothers aren't mummies, as far as I know, but there you go. Flying Mummies.  

Traverse City, up in Michigan, claims to be the tart cherry capital of the world, and obviously you have to spit out the pit.


We are finding many other things to do as well. On Thursday we went to the first event for Mary Beth's 50th high school reunion, and on Saturday night we went to the last--a gala dinner at Richmond's premier (and only) country club. Mary Beth reunited with many high school friends and acquaintances, and I met several interesting people. Many had returned to Richmond for this event from the places where they live. Some big city folks were surprised that we had moved to their small-town place of origin!

On Friday night we went to a free presentation of an abridged (1-hour) version of Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night in a place called The Underground. Appropriately, The Underground is the semi-subterranean basement of The Reid Center. The Reid Center is a beautiful building that was originally a Presbyterian church opened in 1906. It has a storied history that you can read about at the link above. The sanctuary features an amazing organ by Hooks and Hastings House, and unsurpassed stained-glass windows and interior design by Louis C. Tiffany of Tiffany Studios. No longer used by a congregation, it has become a center for the performing arts. The building doesn't have air conditioning yet, so it was close down there. They are raising money for upkeep to the building, including air conditioning. I'll gladly donate! 

The performance used minimal sets and costumes. It was performed immediately in front of a relatively small audience making the event quite intimate. At least some of the performers were improv experts. They interacted with the audience pulled some funny stunts. When Viola (disguised as Cesario) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek get into a fight, they wore boxing gloves.


 Well, we are finding things: bags of rice, baseball games, and how to defeat, or at least adapt to, technology. 

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