Grange Notes by Tim Swartz, Grange President (with everyone’s help), February 26, 2019
Working together, for fun and fewer echoes
Thanks to the volunteers who showed up and worked hard on Saturday afternoon, we made fairly quick work of our project. As you will see in the pictures below, we had a good crew, who divided themselves into teams to cut the fire-resistant, acoustically transparent fabric, fill the frames with rock-wool acoustic batts (also fire-proof), wrap the frames, attach hanging cleats to the backs, and then hang them on the wall-cleats. Kurt and Tim had installed almost all the wall-cleats the day before.
Our crew included: Patty & Kurt Giavara, Merry Shernock, John & Sue Morris, Mary List-Wheeler, Stephen Wright, Dana Dwinell-Yardley, Nancy Turner & Thomas Weiss! Thanks to all of them.
I think that if you talk to any of these folks, they will tell you that it was fun as well as productive to work on a project like this–and we’ll be happy to have more of you readers join us on work-days like this in the future. The Grange runs purely on volunteers working together–an enjoying it. We even provide snacks, which you can see Merry setting out in the pictures below!
What’s the difference?
That’s what we want to know! Now that we have about 1/3 of this wall covered with acoustically-absorbent panels, is there a change in the sound quality of the Hall?
We’re hoping that this reduces the “reverb” of our notoriously “live” Main Hall. We want to hear from people who use the Hall for a variety of purposes–dances, meetings, church services, singing, instrumental music, and more. We’ll reach out to various regular users, and also want comments from everyone who uses the Hall. Email Tim at grangepresident@capitalcitygrange.org , or Patty, at FCCGHVT@gmail.comand let us know how it sounds to you.
We’ve got 6 more panels we can hang in the Hall, and we’re ready to build more, and hang them in other parts of the Hall if these do what we hope they will.
The Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall thank everyone who contributed to the fundraising campaigns which bought the materials, as well as the hard workers who built and hung the first phase of panels.
March Grange meeting: join us on Saturday to help us plan ahead
Our
monthly meeting starts at 4:15 PM on Saturday–we get together to keep
track of what we are doing, and to figure out ways of doing it better.
We’ve got a number of good things happening right now, and we’ll be talking about them:
- Dance, Sing & Jump Around is the family dance for kids & their adults. The Grange decided to sponsor this dance as a Grange activity, and first session at our Hall happened on Feb. 10th. About 40 dancers of all ages came to have fun! This is around twice what they had at their original location in Plainfield. More info at their website: Dance Sing and Jump Around. Come by and check out the live music, live calling and fun next time, on Sunday Mar. 10 from 3:00 to 4:30 PM!
- Kids Trade & Play, the clothing exchange for families continues to draw lots of kids and parents who are happy to come in out of the cold. Stop by on Mar. 9th, from 9:30 to 11:30 AM to check out the offerings of gently-used clothing, toys and “gear” for kids.
- The Acoustic Panel project of the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall is reported on above; we’ll be interested to see if the Grange meeting and potluck are improved by the panels, as part of our evaluation of the project.
- Coming later in March, an Advanced Indian cooking workshop–see below for details
So we have quite a few things to be proud of, popular with lots of folks. A small crew of dedicated volunteers keeps the whole enterprise running. We think there is more that can be done! We have room for more people who actively participate in the Grange, in the sense of developing community service projects, maintaining the Grange organization as a running entity, and managing the Hall.
We’ll be revisiting these issues, and talking about how we can make real involvement in the Grange more attractive at our meeting on Saturday. Do you have an idea for a project or community service you want to have happen? We can help you–we have facilities, and a pool of interested people like you.
We’ll also be talking about ways to structure the Grange meetings themselves to make them more interesting for newcomers, how to allow more time for the interesting programs we like to have, and more. Come and help us continue our quest to be a Grange in the 21st century!
Even if you can’t come to the meeting, send me your thoughts, ideas–and complaints.
If thinking about the cooking workshop makes you hungry, remember the Community Potluck at 6:00 after the meeting! Every month from September to June, we have an open potluck dinner, to which everyone is invited! We start about 6:00 PM, and the variety of dishes people bring is wide: green salads, local meats, Indian dals, vegetables, pasta salads and pasta main courses, chicken casseroles, soups, muffins, brownies, cider, sodas, breads and more have appeared–and disappeared! Join us to socialize as well as consume, all are welcome!
It’s time for the next Indian cooking workshop–March 24
Many
of you will remember the cooking workshop that Delna Boyce taught last
year. The participants made Parathas, Pakoras, Green Herb Chutney,
Aloo Gobi and Mango Lassi, and enjoyed both the cooking and the eating!
Delna has joined the Grange, and has offered to teach another workshop.
She is calling this “Advanced Traditional Indian Cooking”, and it will
focus on making Chicken Biriyani, along with Kachumba salad/relish.
The workshop will be from 2:00 to 5:00 on Sunday, March 24th, followed up by a shared dinner for the participants!
We can only accommodate 12 people for this workshop, so sign up soon to reserve your spot. Send an email to Merry Shernock if
you want to be on the list! Suggested donation for this workshop is
$20. This will cover all the ingredients and supplies. Come as
singles, couples, multi-generational pairs or trios, but get in touch
quickly!
Those with dietary limitations note: this workshop will include
chicken, as you might guess, and also cashew nuts, raisins and dairy
ingredients.