I don’t see them, but I now hear the robins in the morning and the evening. They must go solo from place to place and then pair up. I read yesterday that they do not sing when they are down south.

It was the most absolutely beautiful day of the year today – sunny, warm, just a slight breeze. I spent a good portion of the day in the banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel, hosting the event, Who Let the Books Out? The bigger event was Who Let the Girls out? The premise was t in preceding years and this year that the girls would go on a local shopping spree.

Hillary Saffron the ventriloquist

For some odd reason, our nonprofit didn’t make it onto the Who Let the Girls Out listed business shopping list. No matter. There was a steady stream of visitors into and out of the former banquet room. Lois, our longest serving volunteer, read several books to the kids. Then my friend Hillary Saffron took center stage with two ventriloquist puppets; one was a rather brash goose, and the other was a rather shy doll.

Hillary is a very accomplished ventriloquist. She had adults and children alike spellbound for about 45 minutes. I was sad to see her finish up. She interspersed her dialogue with her hand puppets with ventriloquist related information. For example, I didn’t know that there are six letters you can’t use when you are doing ventriloquism. What you instead do is pick a letter, say B (which is impossible to utter) and think D. I guess then the sound that comes out is a B sound.

The best part of all was when Atli, who owns the Eagle Hotel, appeared in the doorway. Hillary’s puppet Goosey had a brief conversation with him. I thought, he has to be impressed with what we’ve done and who we have brought into the banquet room.

I got to thinking, it would be fun to go to a ventriloquist conference (Hillary says they have them) and watch the entertainers both learn new things and perform.

After, I got out the wayback machine and took some who were standing around, traipsing down memory lane.

Hillary and her puppets, and me and my Wayback machine may do a performance at the Palmer Senior Center.

After everyone left, I hung out a while and put the former banquet room back in order. This took considerable time as did distributing. I’m back doing the summer route – business is picking up again. I don’t think we’ll ever be back in the K building.

I got home in time for dinner, then Pete suggested that we go for a ride. This turned out to be the real deal. We opted to pony Hrimmi, so all three mares got out. We put their boots on them, and this made them less tender footed on the gravel road. And we rode quite a ways, in fact up Buffalo Mine Road.

The better weather – it’s upping my spirits.

Next: 117. 4/28/24: My Shoulder to your Wheel