Light calendar doesn’t mean nothing is going on

By Rebecca Petersen | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, January 19, 2008

We’ve had a couple of quiet weeks, or seemingly so, while trying to catch up on “year end” and prepare for this week’s annual meeting and volunteer appreciation event.

But now the doors are wide open again and even though it’s January and we don’t have many events on the calendar, it’s business as usual and busyness as usual.

For instance, the usual monthly happenings keep happening even when we don’t have events.

These include Song Writer’s Group and Open Mic Night on the first Thursday of every month, at 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., respectively at The Kaddatz Hotel.

Tangled Knotters meets the second Saturday of every month, from 1 to 4 p.m. at The Kaddatz Hotel; Celtic Music Jam, the third Thursday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at The Kaddatz Hotel; Children’s Choir, every Tuesday after school; Early Childhood Music Classes on Tuesday and Friday at 10 a.m. at The Kaddatz Hotel; art exhibits that rotate every six weeks.

So, this week was busyness as usual. Christopher Welle was here on Tuesday putting up his photographic exhibit. It will be up until Feb. 18. You must stop in and see it.

In fact, next Thursday, Jan. 24, we’ll be hosting an open house for Christopher.

You’ll have a chance to meet the artist, talk to him about his work, buy something, sign the guest book, and join us for refreshments.

The open house is from 5 to 7 p.m. here in the lobby of A Center for the Arts. Please note the spelling of Christopher’s last name. It’s Welle.

I must have left off the last ‘e’ in one of my previous columns. (My apologies to Christopher and all of the Welles.)

You may or may not know that I’m often sensitive about the number of e’s in someone’s last name, since I’m a Petersen who spells her last name with all e’s.

So I’m totally apologetic, even apologetic about misspelling Christopher’s last name and not including all of the e’s.

For most of my life I’ve been trying to make sure that e’s are not ignored. So one time I wrote this poem for the humor of my family. Maybe Christopher will appreciate it, as well.

“Whoever would think, without writing in ink, that an ‘e’ would mean anything, more than a wink, of an eye as it passes from ‘s’ on to ‘n’ and then slips in an ‘o’, where the ‘e’ should have been?”

“There are some of us creatures, with something to say, about how you spell Petersen... What’s the right way?”

“When you spell Petersen, put in the ‘e’, and the ‘e’ and the ‘e’, for then you will see, that there’s something important in having no ‘o’s, it’s that ‘e’ has more angles than ‘o’, don’t you know?”

Well the “poem” won great praise from my family. I got letters, and needle points and framed copies and lifelong kudos.

It probably won’t win many friends amongst the Petersons who spell their name with an ‘o’, but maybe Christopher will forgive me for misspelling his last name.

I always tell people I’m not sensitive about this, but maybe I am. Maybe we all are. Maybe we should be. It’s identifies who we are in so many ways.

Names are an important way to remember people, places, and things. Which is exactly what we’ll be doing this coming Tuesday at the volunteer and membership event when we take a “Walk Down Memory Lane,” remembering so many people, places and things that have happened here over the past 25 years.

Rebecca Petersen is the director of A Center for the Arts in downtown Fergus Falls.