Snow is falling lightly outside today, while inside our cozy home people are making preparations. Cookie dough is chilling in the fridge; presents large and small are hidden in closets and bags, awaiting their wrappings; and plenty of secrets are being kept behind closed doors. “I need to use the oven – no one come in here.” “Has anyone seen the tape?”

Christmas Eve has a different energy now that my kids are older, and it’s a good different. Instead of trying so hard all day to contain their excitement about the gifts that await them in the hours ahead, Louisa, Seb and Elias have been occupied by thoughts about a gift for someone else (well, at least somewhat – I won’t pretend that they haven’t closely inspected the names on the gifts already under the tree).
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I have much to catch up on, after not blogging for two weeks. Here’s an encapsulated version of our recent musical family activity:

• White Christmas: I can’t go any longer without bragging about my husband, Steve, and the amazing job he did in the Northfield Arts Guild’s production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. He played the lead role of Bob Wallace (the Bing Crosby character, if you’re familiar with the movie).

My great-grandfather G. Oliver Riggs has been called “St. Cloud’s Music Man,” and I sometimes use that phrase as a way of explaining his career (with the caveat that, unlike the fictional Prof. Harold Hill, G. Oliver really was a talented musician and director). But the “music man” description also fits my grandfather Ronald.

I had planned to do some work this morning on my book project, picking up from where I left off yesterday, writing about the spring of 1925. That’s when G. Oliver’s St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band was preparing to make a splash at the International Kiwanis Convention in St. Paul.

I somehow got diverted. Ah, procrastination. But like many of my diversions, it was still related to G. Oliver.

What do you get a vintage bandmaster on his 142nd birthday?

It sounds like the opening line of a joke, but it’s really just a rhetorical question. Because I don’t know what my great-grandfather G. Oliver’s favorite kind of cake was, I went to CakeWalk in Northfield today and brought home a delicious-looking fruit tart.

An unexpected development has both slowed and advanced my progress this month in writing the book about G. Oliver Riggs and the St. Cloud Municipal Band: I found a delightful, 98-year-old source of information!

While studying a list of members of the first boys’ band G. Oliver organized in St. Cloud in 1923, I noticed the name Theodore Papermaster. Cool name! I thought, and filed it away in my brain. An hour later, I was looking at a newspaper article about a piano recital given by G.
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It’s Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, which means it’s a great day to consider giving to any number of worthy nonprofit organizations throughout the state. Of course, you can donate to these groups any day of the year. But there’s something fun about a day dedicated to giving, and in many cases, depending on the organization, a gift given today will be matched.

Arts and cultural organizations rate high on the list of our family’s donations.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of attending the St. Cloud Municipal Band’s 125th anniversary concert with my parents.

The 57-member band sounded fantastic as it led the audience back in time, decade by decade, with songs that evoked the band’s 125-year history. Four guest former conductors – Dave Haedt, Mel Hauck, Marv Pearson and Lowell Larson – took turns directing 14 pieces.

The past week has been hectic but fun. I attended three school concerts within a five-day period (plus a performance of the musical Meshuggah Nuns at the Paradise Theater in Faribault, starring my friend Myrna). So it seemed only fitting, considering all the schedule-juggling, that the district band concert last night had a circus theme.

Six years ago this month, I launched into a project to learn more about the life and career of my great-grandfather, pioneer Minnesota bandmaster G. Oliver Riggs. It all started with a comment my dad made about his “music man” grandfather – and a realization on my part that I knew next to nothing about this ancestor of mine.

My intention at first was simply to help my dad with a timeline of G. Oliver’s career that he could pass on to the St.
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