Great evening of music, neighboring at the museum

What a great evening at the museum! Thanks to the Chariton Community Band, the volunteers who worked hard to pull this off --- and to everyone who attended. Kay registered about 170 guests, but it seems likely some bypassed the registration book since there are many ways onto the campus. We served about 160 hot dogs along with chips and water, another way we have of counting heads.

The weather was absolutely perfect. We had wind and heavy rains that brought down a few branches early in the afternoon, but that dropped the temperatures into the 70s. Despite official predictions that we'd be steaming again before nightfall,  the late afternoon and evening remained cool.

The grounds looked fantastic, thanks to the efforts of gardeners Kay Brown and Dan Morrett and our groundskeeper, Kurt Prough.

Kathleen and Karoline spent many hours this week deploying textiles from the collection --- sorted and cataloged last winter by Kay --- in the Stephens House. It's not every day your can see a table set on a hand-woven and embroidered cloth that dates from the 1830s and an elaborate bedspread designed and embroidered by a young woman while her husband was in service during the Civil War.

And it certainly was interesting to visit during the evening with Sean and Anne Ballard --- Sean is a descendant of Lucas County's first settlers, John and Hannah Ballard, and we were able to show them some letters written by members of this family at the turn of the 20th century.

The peanuts were wonderful this year, roasted to perfection by Bob, Jim and Rex; Ann and Kathleen served the food; and the band, directed by Diane Tordoff, sounded wonderful. It's not easy to deploy the band and its related equipment and sound system on the museum patio. They sounded just great.

You'll have two more opportunities to see and hear the band before its early summer season ends. The band will perform at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 4, in the gazebo on the courthouse lawn and at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 5, in the recently renovated bandstand in the Russell town park, where an ice cream social is being held.