At the Folk Festival in 2011
If 2020 had been like other years Manitobans would have been attending the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Birds Hill Park this past weekend. The event was cancelled due to the pandemic but the Folk Festival organized a virtual concert for July 11 and encouraged people to get together outside on their yards to watch it on Saturday night. 
We were fortunate enough to be invited to a country property near Lowe Farm for an alternate Folk Festival evening hosted by our friends Roger and Ruth. A screen and speakers had been set up on the yard for watching the performers and listening to the music. 
We parked our cars alongside the grain bins. 
Tie-dyed sheets billowing in the breeze and a painting of a quilt on the barn gave the farmyard a ‘folkie’ kind of feel.
Before the festivities sponsored by the Folk Festival hit the big screen Roger our host favoured us with four numbers he had written himself, accompanied by two members of his family.
Roger tells us about the songs he has written
One of Roger’s songs had been inspired by a trip on the Trans Siberian railroad, another by a trip to South America and one celebrated a barnstorming baseball team from the American Negro Baseball League that came to play a game in nearby Roland Manitoba when Roger’s father was a young man. 
Roger’s band also shared a piece about his father’s perspective on the world when he was over a hundred years old. 
The evening included a fabulous meal and…………..
an opportunity to explore a labyrinth that had been cut into the field behind the house. 
You could pick up some stones, that represented your hopes or wishes to hold as you made your way down the paths.
I was all alone in the labyrinth as I wound my way through the beautiful wild prairie grasses and flowers. 
I basked in the beauty of the yellow fields in the distance, the sound of the wind in the grass, and the endless blue sky above me.
After the music was over some of the guests engaged in games of catch with ball gloves and balls supplied by Ruth and Roger’s neighbour. We left as the sun was going down.
It wasn’t the same as being at Bird’s Hill Park for the Folk Festival but it was a great alternative in a setting every bit as beautiful. Thanks, Roger and Ruth.
Other posts…………..
Knuckleball- Think Mennonite Corner Gas
As many of you know during the pandemic I’ve been working my way through Making Comics an instruction manual by Lynda Barry which attempts to get even the most reluctant and artistically challenged person drawing and exploring their life through sketching. One recent assignment was to draw self-portraits of ourselves looking at an object and then write what both we and the object were seeing from our own points of view. 
This was one I did. I was at the Thrift Store where I volunteer and was sorting and pricing Christmas goods. 
We were sitting on our roof top last night having a glass of wine with friends and were treated to this gorgeous sunset. Amid a global pandemic and a week of processing troubling and heart-breaking images of racism and the anger and frustration it has caused, it was nice to have a soul-satisfying moment courtesy of creation. 
My $200 cheque and a personal letter from the premier of Manitoba arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Everyone over the age of 65 in our province received this money to help us weather the COVID-19 crisis. I understand that some seniors are struggling financially but many of us receive pensions and no longer have to worry about house payments or the expenses of children and their educations. We have health plans to help us cope with medical expenses. I do wonder if these cheques shouldn’t have been targeted at seniors who have a lower income level and the rest given to young people struggling with job loss, late rent payments and child care stresses, but perhaps it was easier to just send them to everyone over 65. The premier suggests in his letter that if we think others could use the money more than we can, we should donate the money to charity. I will do exactly that!
Our bike ride yesterday morning was freezing but we did make one stop. We were driving down Dufferin Avenue and we smelled COFFEE! We discovered the 
While we were waiting for the Royal Canoe show appropriately named Glacial to start down at The Forks on Friday night I thought to myself, when my son was born who would have thought that someday I would be watching him play in a well known Canadian band performing a concert for thousands of people in a kind of glacial fortress creating music on instruments made of ice? How ‘cool’ is that?
The place was packed with people enjoying food and drink before the free performance at 7 pm. 
It was neat to see families there and people from every age category out to enjoy a Winnipeg evening that was just cold enough so the ice instruments and beautiful stage set didn’t melt but not so cold that standing outside for just over an hour to listen to the music didn’t freeze your toes. 
During the show, the band members explained how the various instruments had been constructed and how the sounds of ice breaking, scraping and smashing had been created and recorded in the garage at our son’s home. According 
There was a light show on the walls of the Johnson Terminal behind the band and the ice set designed by Luca Roncoroni was stunning!
