Saturday, October 24

We've had a busy day. Since we wanted to be at the museum by 10:30 a.m. for a couple of programs, I skipped my exercises this morning.

The first thing going on at the museum was an inter-tribal Indian dance event. Several men and women, and even a couple of little girls, dressed in colorful costumes, performed several dances. The meanings of the movements of the dancers were described to the audience by one of the drummers, so that we could better appreciate their purpose. Among the dances was one for a successful buffalo hunt, a sneak-up dance, for the purpose of successfully sneaking up on the enemy, and a jingle dress dance, for the purpose of healing.

The ten-year-old daughter of one of the adult dancers performed the jingle dress dance. Her father noted that the child suffers from autism following an inoculation, but with the help of the jingle dress, combined with medical science and prayer, her autism is under control to the point that she is able to fully participate in school and other activities.

Another little girl performed the fancy shawl dance, and she was very cute. Two women also performed traditional female dances. At the end of the performances, the women of the audience were invited to ask the male dancers to dance with them. If an Indian male is asked to dance, he must do so or pay the woman, since to refuse is to insult the woman. We ladies were hesitant to participate, but finally all the Indian men but one had a partner. I finally decided I'd join that last one.

The dance we did was a simple follow-the-lead-couple, hop-step, hop-step dance. After several minutes of dancing around in a circle and through the audience, though, I felt I'd gotten a nice workout. Hubbie stayed on the sidelines, snapping pictures.

Since there were no chairs provided, Mother used her wheelchair for seating. Following the performance, we went inside the museum for a program on sausage making. One of my professors from college and his wife demonstrated the technique, and then provided written instructions and recipes. I do not eat sausage, and haven't for many years...not since the time when I was still living at home with my parents and, while suffering a violent case of flu, I was thoroughly sickened by the smell of sausage cooking one morning. But I took copies of the information to pass on to Sis.

After this program, we returned home for lunch. Then Hubbie and I changed into dress clothes to go over to the college to attend the inaugural ceremony for the new president (Mother opted to stay home). The ceremony, held outdoors in the warm, sunny garden quadrangle, was very nice. The college's bagpipers led the dignitaries, professors and senior students, all in regalia, to the podium, and special people like our state's governor, and a state senator spoke. The community chorale group joined the college chorale to perform two songs, and two interpreters for the deaf were on the podium.

Hubbie and I sat in the sun, though there were shaded seats. But the sun felt good after yesterday's very chilly, windy temp. We did have to use our programs to shield our eyes, but it was no sacrifice.

After the ceremony, we were greeted by Mother's and my friend, whom we visited last Tuesday afternoon. She said she had three more small bags of crafting stuff she wanted to send to Mother, and would we please stop by her house and pick them up. We did.

We were back home around 4 p.m. Mother was here and heating the leftover chicken noodle soup for our supper, which we had with more biscuits and honey. After supper, Mother went home, and Hubbie and I watched our favorite college football play to another disappointing loss. I'd recorded the game on DVR while we were out and about today.

We ended the evening with a couple of more TV shows I'd recorded. Of course, when the cable guy replaced our old cable box, we lost all the movies and TV shows I'd recorded, so after watching the few shows I recorded on the new one, and that we watched tonight, the DVR is empty.