Singing at the Minnesota State Fair

Let me just say that the piece was difficult.  Extremely difficult.  But fun.  And all of the chorale members find ourselves walking about near the harbor and Lake Superior and coming across actual ships and singing their names the way they fit into the song.  It drives Dr. Peds nuts when I randomly break out into song when looking at large and small ships.  

It was a lot of fun to hear the other choirs and their pieces as well.  There were two in particular that i thought were absolutely beautiful and well crafted.  

The Minnesota State Fair was a spectacle to behold, as well.  I've always enjoyed a good fair, and Minnesota knows how to plan quite the extravagant event.  There were hundreds of thousands of people there that day . . . wall to wall people except that we were outside and there weren't actually walls.  I haven't navigated through a crowd like that for . . . well, maybe never.  I was happy not to have all my kids with me (But someday we'll probably take them. I think you just need to go to the Minnesota State Fair if you're from Minnesota).  We had just a little bit of spare time to look around, and I zipped over to the creative arts building and saw some amazing quilts and even a gleaming wooden kayak that someone had built.  I wanted to zig zag up to the photography building, but I didn't have time.  I did run across a booth run by the Music Educators National Conference that was an instrument petting zoo.  I've always thought that was such a neat idea, and it was so fun to see a gaggle of kids trying out trombones, violins, clarinets, trumpets and saxophones at the state fair.  There was something of everything at the state fair, and I only beheld about 1/32nd of it.