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If you missed last night's performance of 'The Nutcracker' at Kidd-Key Auditorium in Sherman, you missed something special for the Christmas season.
The Denison Dance Academy has performed this ballet for the past two seasons...and it only gets better and better...
Last nights performance is the second for the Kidd-Key Auditorium, as the other show was at Eisenhower Auditorium at Denison High School.. The lighting at Eisenhower was atrocious and was far from the quality of Kidd-Key and my photographs from Eisenhower are some of the poorest quality I have ever shot. Kidd-Key was made for this type of presentation and the lighting was very good.
Denison Dance Academy Director Ilona Nogarr (lavender dress) played the part of Mrs Stahbaum, the Christmas Party Hostess and the maid is my daughter, Laura Lara. Here they prepare for the party by doing a little house cleaning.
Laura, playing the part of the maid, has just passed out some drinks to the two grandmothers, played by Amy Heinen and Selina Stone (my wife), in the big blue dress. The premise of the play is the granny's get a little tipsy as the party goes on around them.
The party gets going as more and more guests arrive...the dancing party girls are: Elizabeth, Kaya, Sarah, Julianne, Mackenzie, and Brooklyn.
Mikayla (my niece) played the part of Clara and performed flawlessly...Here dancing with the Nutcracker toy. She would get into a squabble with Fritz (played by my grandson Louie) resulting in the Nutcracker toy being broken.
Several of the performers had multiple roles to play in the ballet...Here Mikayla joins Miranda Lamb in an Arabian Dance.
They called it an Arabian Dance... I would have said Siamese if you had asked me, but nobody did.
Here Megan McCullogh leads a herd of small lambs onto the stage... They are: Kira, Kadence, Sophia, Lola, Sheperd, Emily, and Mary.. A pretty flock if I ever saw one.
After Herr Drosselmeyer (Rocky Massey) winds up the dolls with the magic key we are treated to a dance... The dolls are Tiffany Garner and Hannah Cornelison..
When Mother Gegan (giant puppet) made her appearance onstage, she was accompanied by Abraham, Kira, Julianne, and Grey... I don't know how the tall broad was getting home, but hopefully somebody has a car with a sunroof.
The Spanish dancers also made a showing at the party...Here Tiffany, Megan, and Miranda strut their stuff...
The adult party-goers join the festivities... They are: Jake & Marquin, Louie & Hannah, Rocky and Ilona, Mike & Darcy, Clay & Itzel, and Hunter & Cadience.
Here Clara (Mikayla) falls asleep on the sofa and is surrounded by mice... played by Hayden, Ashlyn, Sarah, Grey, Brooklyn, Mackenzie, Kadence, Julianne, Kaya, Annabelle, and Ann.
The mice get into a battle with the Nutcracker (Hannah Cornelison) and the soldiers.. played by Cadience, Skyler, Hope, Sarah, and Lillian.
Check the snowflakes... they are played by Miranda, Tiffany, Megan, Darcy, Cadiance, Hannah, Hope, and Lillian...(the little blonde on the far right is my granddaughter Lilly).
Clara (Mikayla) is surrounded by little flowers... they are: Emmaline, Emmalee, Hope, Lillian, Sarah, Kaya, Elizabeth, and Skyler. (That's my Blondie on the far left side)
Professional dancers Anton and Darli Iakovieva left a frozen over Connecticut to fly in for the performance. They are part of the Connecticut Ballet and both have extensive training in both Europe and the United States. Darli is the daughter of Denison Dance Academy Director Ilona Nogarr and we are treated when they join the local performances.
The grand finale brought all the cast members to the stage again and flower bouquets were passed out. The Nutcracker performance was just the thing to get the Christmas spirit passed around. I hope it is a joyous Christmas for you and yours and may you be enriched with health and happiness all the days of your life. God Bless !!
The Cowboys and the Bears were the stars of this past Monday Night Football game... The weather was anything but conducive to football as the kick-off temperature was nine (9) degrees with a windchill factor of eight below zero.
Dallas was tied with Philadelphia for the lead in the Eastern Division of the NFC at the beginning of this game as the Eagles had won the previous day. If you believe in the Sports Illustrated jinx, this game added a lot to the mystic. Last week Dallas quarterback Tony Romo had been on the cover of the weekly magazine.
The so-called jinx or curse is suppose to be bad luck for you if you are on the cover.. Just the previous week Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron had been on the cover and his team lost to Auburn, robbing the Tide of a chance to repeat as National Champs.
I don't think the magazine had anything to do with Dallas' demise, as Tony Romo looked great under the severe conditions. He tossed three touchdowns and controlled a good pace on the field. It's the defense of Dallas that is causing all the trouble. They allowed a good (but not great) Bear's team to run roughshod over them in front of a national TV audience.
Chicago running back Matt Forte ran for a hundred yards and scored two touchdowns as the Bears prevailed 45-28 over the Boys. Chicago was led by back-up quarterback Josh McCown and all he did was throw four (4) touchdown passes enroute to 348 yards of passing offense.
McCown, number 12 above, has been filling in for Jay Cutler (#6) while he recovers from an injury...BUT now there are players calling for McCown to get the starting job and let Cutler take his services elsewhere. Meanwhile, McCown shredded the Dallas secondary with accurate passes to Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall..
...So much so that McCown was today named NFC Offensive Player of the Week. Six of his aerials went to Marshall for one hundred yards.
The fans in Dallas cried out for a change in the offensive play-calling and more running so Romo would not be passing on every down...
Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray ran the ball eighteen times for one-hundred and forty-six yards... a good day for him... but you have to play defense when the other team has the ball. In my pre-season forecast for the Cowboys (see September 5th posting) I predicted they would finish no better than 9 wins and 7 losses. At the time I didn't know the entire NFC East would be such a pitiful example of pro football. Now I realize that 9-7 might win the division title.
Dallas has a home game this Sunday (December 15th) against the Green Bay Packers.... then on the road to play the Washington Redskins before closing out the regular season with a home game against Philadelphia. Currently residing at 7 wins and 6 losses, Dallas players are talking about winning out the remainder of the schedule. I just don't see it! Quarterback Aaron Rogers is scheduled to return to action for Green Bay this week, and they are a completely different team with him leading them. The Redskins are ripe to be finished off. Disappointment in their record and a current squabble between QB Robert Griffin III and Head Coach Mike Shanahan has turned rancid. Game sixteen should decide it for Dallas... They beat the Eagles when they played in the City of Brotherly Love, but Philly has made great strides since that game...and throw in the factor each team hates the other..
One good aspect of this past Monday night's game... The Bears retired the jersey of former player and head coach Mike Ditka. Iron Mike was also a player and assistant coach in Dallas, ..so it was fitting he should be honored at this particular game...
Another indicator of the years going by is the number of friends that are dying off on me.. Just this past week I lost another one and I have been in somewhat of a funk since getting the news.
After my thirty year career in Radio/TV broadcasting I wanted to find something to get me away from the rapes, murders, and violence of the news beat. I had driven my brother's race car all over the country in an enclosed trailer back in the 1970's, so I thought, why not trucking...and if you are going to drive a truck,..you might as well drive for the best.
I started driving for Wal-Mart in 1997 but I did not get the job easily... I was an outside carrier for seventeen months before the opening became available. An outside carrier is when you are employed by another company but you pull only Wal-Mart trailers. About thirty Wal-Mart drivers signed a petition endorsing my application and the general transportation manager at the Palestine, Texas distribution center was impressed. I became one of the first drivers hired in almost four years at Palestine.
One of the drivers that stood up for my hiring was Terry Williams, better known as Bullwinkle over the CB radio.
Bullwinkle was a man who was willing to go the extra mile in his job, but also ready to lend a hand to anyone who needed assistance. He was a larger than life individual but always had an easy smile on his face. The driver pool at Palestine was around three hundred men and just about all knew Terry and had some good comment to pass along. Terry worked for Wal-Mart for twenty-two years and retired this past July. He was installing a dishwasher in his kitchen when he suffered a major stroke, dying about a week later.
Did I mention that Terry was a car nut?.. He and his sons would rebuild old cars into like-new condition. Terry met me at a local cafe once during the late 1990's and he was driving a 1937 Chevrolet Coupe you would swear was brand new... BUT it had a late model running gear with a Chevrolet V8 under the hood. One of his last remodeling jobs was a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air with a fuel-injected engine. Guess what led the funeral procession from the church to the cemetery?
The immaculate detail of this vehicle tells you what a great mechanic Bullwinkle was. I retired from Wal-Mart in 2009 but a lot of former drivers who retired long before me showed up for the funeral, a display of just how much Terry was loved and respected. Wal-Mart has an army of drivers numbering over seven thousand,..but Terry was one of a kind..and he was my friend. So long Bullwinkle, and put in a good word for me with Saint Peter.
