One of the most gratifying things about writing a Blog, that is intended to come out on a pretty regular basis, is to have someone tell you that they have enjoy reading it and have missed seeing it when you don’t write one.
A number of people told me that during the last couple of weeks and I was really pleased to hear from “my audience.”
When I headed out into the “Prairie” with granddaughter 11-year-old Taylor Bera in October, I began a weekly log of the travels with the cast and crew of “Little House on the Prairie The Musical.”
A couple of weeks ago I left the trail in Toronto to be home in New Jersey to spend time with Helen, my wife of nearly 48 years, who I haven’t seen since the first of the year (except via Webcam). Taylor’s mother, Kelly, and father, Joe, plus older sister, Maggie, took up the trail in split shifts for two weeks.
I’m now back in Toronto for the last week of a five-week run before heading back to the states for our next stop in Tampa, FL.
Helen will be rejoining the tour then when we hit, what we hope will be, much warmer weather. We’ll have two stops in Florida, Tampa and Naples; a week in Raleigh and then a week in Appleton, WI, just before our Easter break.
Now back to the last two weeks—I really enjoyed being home with Helen and my older daughter Terri’s family, but keep wondering if the weather gods were also waiting for me to come home to bring the heaviest snowfall of the season.
I came home Friday morning (Feb. 5), a day earlier than planned, to avoid the snow delays that did hit the NYC area later that night even though towns north of our home in Parlin really didn’t get much, if any, snow. We had enough to use the gasoline powered snow plow to clear the driveways the next morning.
It was just a forerunner of a storm that would hit us the following Tuesday night, all day Wednesday and into Thursday. Four plowings later, the storm stopped and Kelly and Maggie were able to fly out for Toronto on Friday morning.
I guess it was fate that brought me back to NJ when it did, since “fate” knows I’m an experienced “digger outer.” Our area was hit pretty hard but points further south including Washington, DC, were buried a lot deeper.
We had another snowfall early last week, but that one only required a manual snow shoveling.
Now for a recap of what transpired on the “Little House Prairie” while I was back in the wilds of New Jersey.
Taylor and her schoolmates were busy with regular classes the last two weeks but found time a couple of class trips. Taylor says that her favorite was a trip to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum). She says she liked all of the exhibits that are housed in Canada’s largest museum of world culture and natural history.
Joe and I both missed the class trip because we were in the air at the time. Joe did get to go with Taylor and others from the play when they spent time at a Habitat for Humanity project in Toronto. The Habitat visit was filmed by local TV crews and some of the cast members told Taylor they saw film of her working on the JumboTron in Dundas-Yonge Street Square. Little House cast and crew (including Taylor and Joe) got to take in a “Jersey Boys” performance on a day-off.
Last week mom Kelly went with the class and other cast members on a tour of the sacred treasures from the Tomb of King Tut on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. You may recall that Tut ruled for nine years before he died in this late teens, so he really was a boy king. His tomb was discovered in 1922.
Taylor also had a good week as an actor: she got to do what an understudy does best by filling in as the younger Ingalls daughter, Carrie, and then yesterday picked up the Tony Award for youth actor from the Main Street Players back home for her role as Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Here’s a pictorial recap of the last two weeks (thanks to pictures made by Taylor, tutor-wrangler Carolyn Dunning and others in the cast):
http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=271576513803%3A1568836058
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