The Reindeer Keeper

Years back if you'd opened that door in the photo and walked inside, you would have discovered a talented and hard-working woman who spent her life in the world of dance; teaching dance to anyone willing to learn. Of course, willing to learn, in her book, meant possessing the ability to listen, to pay attention, to be able to take criticism and then accepting the criticism which she herself described as "essential." It didn't matter if you were a young child-a moody teenager or nervous adult. If you were in her School of Dance, this instructor let it be known that she was there to teach. Lack of attention or fooling around would not be tolerated. The instructor's name was Ruth Dumas, who at the age of sixteen, moved to New York City to study dance.To pay for her lessons and expenses, she'd assist with instruction. After opening her school of dance when returning to her hometown in 1935, Ruth kept studying dance during the summers in New York City with Danc...

As the snow keeps falling in this month of March I am reminded of my mother and a 33rpm vinyl record album she played over and over again on a record player which was part of a fancy console complete with a radio featuring both AM & FM channels as well as a space to store albums. She bought the massive console as a gift for the family or so she said when it was delivered days before Christmas one year when I was in Junior High School. Thinking back, I believe the main purpose of that console was for my mother to play a particular song from one of her favorite Dean Martin Christmas albums. The song was titled-“A Marshmallow World.” She played that song not only in December but all through the winter months. Each of us in that household knew every word, every pause in that song. We’d automatically sing along without even realizing it. My mother was a fanatic Saturday morning clean-the-house-thoroughly kind of person which meant I had to pitch in. Dean Martin made that tort...