Update from a snowy spring

A beautiful Saturday in International Falls, so I felt like updating this blog in the first time in, oh, forever. There’s a lot of news from the Adams corner of Minnesota. Perhaps some of you are aware that winter is hanging on a bit longer than normal this year. This last week, parts of the Northland (that is roughly Minnesota north of Duluth) got over a foot of snow, and this in the second week of April! We had about six inches as most, and that has largely disappeared now with a sunny day and 40+ degrees to help it along. We’re in the middle of ‘Ugly Spring’ the season after snowmelt but before the grass and trees start to green out.

I’m working hard preparing for our first ever ‘Kids Show’ at the Icebox Radio Theater, that is, a show specifically for performers under the age of 20. Rehearsals have been a lot of fun, and I feel energized whenever I’m working with the kids. Plus, this will be the first show we’ll broadcast on our very own internet radio station. That’s right, the show is going out live over the world wide web. Find a link at http://www.iceboxradio.org. Thus endeth the commercial.

My other big news on a personal note is that I am going to become a college instructor this fall. The theater’s involvement at Rainy River Community College inspired RRCC Provost (and IBRT board member) Wayne Merrell to ask if I wouldn’t like to teach a class or two. I wrote up a proposal for ‘Introduction to Audio Art and Internet Technologies’ and the Academic Affairs committee was very excited about it. The idea is that artists in remote areas such as I-Falls are often detached from the usual artistic support systems, and don’t always get to share their work or . This should not be in the internet age, so I’d like to teach people how to blog, podcast, and generally write and produce their own audio art (read: Poetry, drama, prose, etc) and share it with the world. Highfalutin ideas, to be sure, but when opportunity knocks, and one has a kid headed to college, one must listen.

I’ll keep this post short for now but I’ll also encourage Diane to add a post very soon. There’s a lot of news (but then again, there’s a lot of water under the bridge from our last post) but keep reading, and we’ll update soon. Maybe we’ll even get our high school senior to make an entry.

Talk to you soon.

Jeff