 |
••• I, Dale Blanshan, am a slightly aging gentleman with a guitar and a penchant for music from days gone by. I offer through this medium my humble justification for being so bold as to suggest further exploration of certain possibilities that could, I believe, be mutually beneficial.
••• I was educated in the grade schools of Nebraska, the high schools of Minnesota, and an embarrassing number of institutions of higher learning, at which I accumulated several degrees, including a Bachelor of Humanities, summa cum laude, which, roughly translated, means “human, very loud.” |
 |
| ••• My real education, though, outside of having a wife and nine children, came from my sainted mother’s piano and my minister father’s Sunday school, where I developed a love for all things musical. (Well, not quite all - what will those heavy metal listeners sing when they’re eighty?) Along the way I learned to strum a guitar, collected reams of old music, and sang my way through hundreds of hours in care centers.
••• One day it occurred to me, while sitting amongst the debris of several different professions, that what I really loved to do was to sing and talk about singing. There was no getting around it. If I had my druthers, I’d spend hour after hour with the music of days gone by, the poetry, chronicle, and soul of the nation. |
 |
••• From that revelation it was but a step to the next, namely, “I do have my druthers!” (Did I mention that I have a hard-working and patient spouse?) And, “Thar’s gold in them thar trills.” (Please don’t try such puns at home. I am a professional.) The rest, as they say, is history, though much of it - the gold, for example - has displayed remarkable tenacity in clinging to the future. And there’s always a wag to suggest that there might be more brass than anything else. |
|
 |
••• Since the foregoing revelations, I have been having a rollicking good time taking a musical cruise around southern Minnesota and eastern Wisconsin, carrying basketsful of song and story to numerous care and assisted living centers, senior apartments, and an odd assortment of other places. A whole new field of artistry has blossomed before my delighted eyes. (It is an art, you know. A developing one, to be sure, but even with Picasso it was years before he could paint so that nobody could recognize what he was painting.)
|
 |
| ••• I paint, but with rhythm and melody. I paint smiles and memories. On my palette there are pioneers in their westbound oxcarts and Conestoga wagons, songs into the night with the cowboys in the cattle-drive camps, shucking bees and maple sugarings, rides on the rails, drifting tumbleweeds, moonlight strolls with sweethearts and their beaus, and the laments of jilted lovers and sadder but wiser maids. It isn’t Picasso or Rembrandt. It’s Norman Rockwell. |
 |
••• And the history and color! I love the thousands and thousands of curious facts and colorful anecdotes that make up our cultural past. Who wrote both “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Take Me Out To The Ball Game?” (Jack Norworth, if he didn’t just buy the naming rights.) Who plays “Sweet Georgia Brown” during their warm-ups? (The Harlem Globetrotters.) Where can you find the song “She Shivered and Shook Like A Starling?” (I don’t know. If you do, please tell me. I’ve been looking for that song ever since the old gentleman at the nursing home hymn sing wanted it instead of “Shall We Gather At The River.”) |
|
 |
 |
••• But let’s get down to business. You may be at this website because you, the hard-working director of activities at the local Care Center, are looking for something informative, therapeutic, and fun for your residents. What luck that we found each other!
|
| ••• Here’s what we can do: You provide the audience, and I’ll provide the guitar and the songs. Nothing fancy, just my guitar and your voices. But great songs! Dozens of them. Playful songs, mournful songs, timid, audacious, and hopeful songs. Songs of gas lights and four string banjos, smiling Irish eyes, bicycles built for two, and sweethearts cuddling up a little closer. Songs of Harvest Moons and mothers at the piano in the twilight. All interspersed, of course, with humorous anecdotes and regular updates on the progress of my grandchildren. (That’s them there on the right. Aren’t they handsome? But, back to music.) |
 |
 |
••• We’ll poke around the dusty pages of song and songwriter history, ride rails and merry Oldsmobiles, meet in St. Louis (which is, of course, pronounced “St. Louie” in any song worth it’s salt) or on the banks of the Wabash. We’ll find the true meaning of “Mairzy Doats” and dream of the “Shanty in Old Shanty Town.” And every song, of course, will be sung with all of the exuberance, pathos, or humility we can reasonably muster. |
|
 |
••• So, pick up the phone. Operators are standing by! Be the first on your block! You deserve a break today! Double your pleasure, double your fun! Four out of five activity directors surveyed recommend our singalongs for their residents who chew gum!
••• Seriously now, give me a ring or drop me a note. I’ll bet we can find a time for some tuneful, harmonious singing. We might even be kindred spirits. |
 |
••• You can reach me by telephone, if you are patient enough or don’t mind voice mail, at 507-696-3412. Better would be a note to “ ” so that I have my calendar at hand when I hear from you.
••• My home base is Rochester, Minnesota. The charge for my services depends upon travel time from there and, of course, the almighty price of petrol. I’ll do my best to be reasonable and affordable. Let’s get together! |
|
|
