Extra, Extra! Read All About It! Part 2

Along with my friends Nettie and Sara, I’m seated in a Winnipeg church sanctuary as an extra in the new TV sitcom, “Maria and the Mennos.” Lucy, the Artistic Director, rearranges us numerous times before she’s satisfied. The Director, Paul, instructs us to mouth conversations but not release so much as a whisper. Every sound will be picked up by the boom mic and only the main actors’ voices should be recorded. We repeat the same short scene about four times and are sent downstairs again.

Over the next four hours, we wait—going dead silent whenever we hear the command, “Rolling!”

Once the scene is captured, they holler down the stairs again. “Cut!” and we are free to speak. The longest of these silences lasts perhaps three minutes, but by the sighs of relief around the room, you’d think we’d been asked to hold our breath the entire time.

The craft services crew feeds us a fantastic Mennonite lunch of borscht, perogies, farmer sausage, coleslaw, and pie. The cast and crew join us, and we get to chat with Erna, who plays Sarah, Maria’s mother-in-law. Erna fills us in on some of the joys and challenges of making a TV show. After only nine weeks of shooting, they’re already starting their final week of filming 13 episodes. I guess that’s how it works on a shoestring budget. Director Paul is a lovely man who repeatedly expresses his appreciation to us.

We wait some more. I finish reading my book. Someone finds a Crokinole board. Other extras get their chance to go upstairs. Finally, around 3:30, they call us all up. This time, we will stay for a full singing session. We’re rearranged based on the colors we wear and our height while seated (I assume. No reasons are offered). In some cases, extras need to straddle two chairs to get the shot just right. I’m impressed by how tightly all the people and equipment are squished together. How do they shoot the scene without capturing any of the other cameras, light stands, or mics? It’s an art, for sure.

After being moved four times, I end up in the front row of the congregation. I’m not privy to the camera’s view, so who knows whether I’m in the shot? One crew member reads out the scene and “take” numbers. Another responds in what sounds like their own filmmaker’s language. I hear words called out like “Set” and “Rolling.” The slate claps. And finally, “Action!”

I’m relieved when the first hymn we’re asked to sing is familiar but surprised when they provide no opportunity to rehearse or even warm up our voices. They simply roll the camera and the piano player starts in.

I needn’t worry. The crowd of Mennonites surrounding me can pull off four-part harmony at the drop of a bonnet, apparently. Clearly, I’m in the midst of experienced choir members. The second song is new to me, and I’m more grateful than ever for the ability to sight-read, weak though it is. I mostly lip-sync my way through the first take. 

On the set of Maria and the Mennos

Because they might splice together clips from different takes, it’s imperative that the tempo of the songs be exactly the same on every take. To accomplish this, a real-life music director stands slightly to the side, off-camera. Using a metronome app, she holds her phone to her ear with one hand while directing us with the other. She wraps that hand in fluorescent tape to make it easier for us to see in our peripheral vision. We pretend to focus on the actor who fake-leads us. We sing both songs four times each, interspersed with the actors’ bits.

Our day ends around five o’clock. Nettie’s excited to be in one additional scene on the sidewalk before we pack up and head home. How cool will it be if Nettie appears in the show’s opening title sequence?

I’m glad I said “yo” to this opportunity, but I’m not eager to be an extra again. That much waiting around felt too unproductive—even if I did get two columns out of it! However, if you ever have the opportunity (and you’re confident the show won’t compromise your morals) I say go for it! At the very least, you’ll eat some great food, maybe learn a new song, and finish whatever book you’re reading.

That’s a wrap!

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 8

Sadly, our list of forty things went ignored for three solid weeks. This past Sunday afternoon I said, “c’mon, let’s pick one item from the list we can do today.” The weather was lovely. We were staying home. The answer seemed obvious.

#12 Draw a Hopscotch on the sidewalk and watch what happens.

A city sidewalk runs about twenty feet in front of our house, which not all the homes in town can say. And it’s fairly busy, especially on a lovely summer evening. We’d already “borrowed” two fat chunks of sidewalk chalk from our grandsons in anticipation of this day. I grabbed my phone so I could prove we did this together, and out we went.

The other man’s sidewalk is always smoother.

Our stretch of sidewalk is old and sort of crumbly. We were tempted to go around the corner and draw our hopscotch on the smooth, new sidewalk in front of the neighbour’s house. But then we’d need to beg them for seats in front of their picture window to fulfill the second half of our project: watch what happens.

So we picked the smoothest looking section we could find in front of our own picture window. Jon grabbed the push broom from the garage and started sweeping away the sand and stones while I stood watching, wondering if passersby were saying, “look at that selfish old woman, making her poor one-armed husband sweep the sidewalk while she just stands there.” I should have found a shovel to lean on to really complete the picture.

Then Jon took the camera so I could start drawing. I’d downloaded a diagram from the internet to make sure I got it right. I couldn’t believe how quickly we went through our chalk! Betcha it would have gone farther on the neighbour’s smooth new sidewalk.

For the rest of the evening and in the two days following, we watched the various reactions as people walked by. Most ignored it. But the ones who not only noticed it, but hopped it, did so with huge smiles on their faces, and made me smile too. My favorite was a mom with two little boys. She stopped to show them how it was done and then they tried. So cute. (I’d post pictures or videos, but I didn’t take any. Seemed rude and wrong somehow.)

We’re having so much fun watching people hop our hopscotch, I want to go out and buy a supply of chalk so I can keep it there all the time. Such a little thing, so much joy. I hope I never ignore another hopscotch beneath my feet. No matter how crumbly the sidewalk.

“Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have.” Ecclesiastes 6:9

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 6

We’ve knocked three more items off our list since my last update, which brings our current total to twelve. My hope is that whatever we don’t manage to pull off this year will carry forward to next and we’ll have developed a new habit, finally becoming a little less “recreationally challenged.” It’s only taken 40 years!

#29. Eat a Jimmy’s Fat Boy. Anyone who lives in Portage la Prairie knows that Jimmy “the Greek” Sarlas has been an icon for years, as has his establishment, Jimmy’s Submarine and Dairy Delight. But somehow Jon and I had never actually tried one of his famous Fat Boys. Our grandsons’ visit seemed like the perfect opportunity to go to Jimmy’s and not have to cook.

Jon and I shared a Double Fat Boy and an order of fries—basically the equivalent of two burgers and two orders of fries anywhere else, and twice as delicious. And messy. But, oh so tasty. Really, seriously, yummy. And not a bad price, considering it’s all homemade. If I ate a Fat Boy every day, I wouldn’t turn into a Boy, but that other thing? Definitely.

Jon and I didn’t smooch at Jimmy’s, but Keegan reminded me later that while we’d sat in our booth, I’d given Rorin a little kiss on the top of his head. “You kissed the wrong man,” Keegan said.

The man I kissed.

 #33. Pin the Tail on the Bunny. Last summer when this list of 40 things was still a work in progress, we invited our kids and grandkids to add to it. This one was Allistar’s contribution. He’s a huge rabbit fan and has a pet one at home named Thumper. Jon and I decided we’d feel a tad silly playing Pin the Tail on the Bunny by ourselves unless, in Jon’s words, I was the bunny. This isn’t that sort of blog.

So with the grandboys here, we colored a large Easter bunny, stuck magnets to colored pompoms, took turns blindfolding and spinning each other around for a rousing round. I came in dead last. Keegan’s was probably the closest, but Grandpa claims Keegan cheated and used both hands. Competition is fierce around here.

 

Allistar spins Rorin

Final results

#22. Go Somewhere by Train. Because it sells out early, we booked tickets weeks ago for the Mother’s Day ride on the Prairie Dog Central, pulled by a coal-fueled steam engine over a century old. Departing from the old Inkster Station north of the Winnipeg perimeter, the train took us north for about an hour at a speed of 15 miles per hour (it could go faster, we were told, but they want it to keep working and there’s no place to buy parts!), and let us off in Grosse Isle. There, vendors waited to meet our refreshment and crafting needs while “Fire and Ice” provided live music. Museum buildings were free for the touring—an old home, school, and church. Young passengers enjoyed a petting zoo and miniature train.

Jon chats with a train man

As for me, I decided a new bauble to commemorate the day was in order and found the perfect item from the lady selling jewelry: a little pewter nest with three eggs to represent my three babies. I love it!

After 90 minutes, they called “All Aboard!” and we rode back, this time on the tail end instead of the first car behind the engine. The black coal smoke has quite the distinct odor that I’m sure triggers memories for those old enough to remember. While my extroverted husband chatted with the other passengers, I was content to sit quietly, imagining I was April or Bernadette or Emmaleen—the main characters in my current novel in progress—traveling in the style they would, right down to the pine wood interiors of the train cars to the pot-bellied stove in each car—thankfully, not in use.

I’m so glad we went, and I recommend it for all ages. Of course, it provided us with a new place to kiss—inside the train, as well as at Grosse Isle. So we’re making good progress on the kissing list.

The unfinished jigsaw puzzle, however, is still sitting there. I swear it scowls back at me every time I walk by.

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 5

That darn old jigsaw puzzle is still monopolizing our dining table, but we crossed a couple more things off our list of forty.

#34. Read a classic together aloud. It took six weeks and two renewals at the library, but we finally finished Black Beauty. Not what we expected. Jon thought he’d read it as a kid, but soon realized he was thinking of The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. Black Beauty is a horse’s “autobiography” and at first, it was hard for me to look past the writing style of 1877: sentences that drag on for paragraphs and paragraphs that drag on for pages.

Once we realized the book made such a strong statement on animal cruelty, I said, “I wonder if Anna Sewell was trying to do for horses what Harriot Beecher Stowe did for slaves when she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin?” After we finished and I did a little research, it became clear that I was not alone in those thoughts. With fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is considered one of the best-selling books and the most influential anticruelty novel of all time. Standard practices for cab horses, in particular, changed for the better following its publication. For me, it was especially interesting to know it was Sewell’s only novel and that she died just five months after it was published.

Never underestimate the power of a fictional story.

 And while we’re on the theme of animals…

#6. Visit the snake dens at Narcisse. It’s common knowledge that wherever there’s a unique point of interest on the planet, the people who appreciate it least are those within a three-hour radius of said point. Narcisse, Manitoba, is known for hosting the world’s largest concentration of snakes, due to a combination of limestone crevices below the frost line where garter snakes can safely hibernate in minus forty temperatures, and nearby marshes teaming with frogs to eat. In spring, the snakes come out to mate and their sheer numbers attract three to four thousand human visitors a day!

 Although our kids had gone to Narcisse on school field trips, and even our grandsons had visited, Jon and I had never made the two-hour trip. So we teamed up with our son Nate and his three boys (their mother decided she’d prefer a quiet afternoon home alone to mingling with snakes. Go figure.) The weather was perfect and we enjoyed a sunny picnic before heading out on the three-kilometer hike where you can view four different snake pits from the relative security of wooden platforms.

Some say the feelings many women have toward snakes goes back to Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden when God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman…” We equate snakes with the devil himself. When I posted this photo of myself holding a snake the next day, the reactions from several female friends were predictable: “I wouldn’t be caught dead,” or “you’re braver than me!” Even my animal-loving mother said she wouldn’t hold a snake for five thousand dollars. I said, “Seriously? For five thousand dollars, I think I’d eat one!”

Properly cooked, of course.

My theory is, it’s not that the snakes are so frightening. We simply hate the “startle” and the speed at which they move when you’re in your back yard and suddenly there’s one at your feet. Or, like the time when I was a kid on my bike and a snake somehow got caught in the spokes of my front tire and flipped up into my face. Not cool. But when you’re expecting to see one—or thousands—the startle factor is gone, and they are simply interesting, harmless little creatures. At any rate, it was a great memory to make with five of my favorite guys in all the world.

Plus, the snake pits gave Jon and me another place to kiss. The kissing list is now up to 22. Eighteen more to go!

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 3

We’ve been able to knock a few more adventures off our list of 40, starting with…

Our Cabin

#5. Stay at Tallpine Lodges. Back in 1996, Jon and I went to Tallpine Lodges at West Hawk Lake, Manitoba (just inside the Ontario border) for a few days of much needed relaxation. It was a year after Jon’s amputation and we’d been through a lot, so those days of quiet solitude and reflection remained a warm memory and we always thought it would be fun to go back.

It only took twenty years, but we made it—and this time, we could afford to upgrade a little from the cheapest of their 16 cottages! It’s a couples-only resort with no visitors allowed, so it’s very quiet—especially during the off season. Our cabin had its own sauna and Jacuzzi tub, electric fireplace (they still had the real kind when we were there the first time!) and the grounds have tame deer that wander around being friendly and looking for handouts. I fell for their gorgeous big eyes and fed them our apples.

It was wonderfully relaxing and we combined it with…

#25. Have an Unplugged Weekend. We weren’t sure which of us would find this a greater challenge, Jon (who’s pretty glued to the games on his tablet) or me (who’s pretty glued to her laptop and Facebook.) We did “cheat” by checking our phones a couple of times just to make sure the kids didn’t have any emergencies, or at least that was our excuse. But other than that, we really did stay unplugged and we didn’t miss our screen time. We watched one movie the old fashioned way (DVD) and listened to some worship CDs. Mostly, we read and slept. It was also a perfect time to tackle…

#27. Play a Board Game. Technically, there is no board in Yahtzee, so maybe this was a cheat. But Jon’s favorite board games are conquer-the-world-or-at-least-the-economy games like Monopoly, Risk, and Cash Flow. All of which, I loathe. The ones I like (you know, the kind that build relationships and create opportunities for laughter instead of competitive greed) are Apples to Apples and the like. Which Jon loathes. So we had to find something we can both tolerate. Yahtzee fit the bill. We each won one round. We each got one Yahtzee. And we got a good start on…

#34. Read a Classic Aloud Together. It took us a while to select which classic we’d read. Looking at various online lists and not wanting to get bogged down in 600 pages of Tolstoy or endless passages of description from Dickens, we settled on Black Beauty. I was surprised, when I borrowed it from the library, by how thin it was. I figured we’d easily burn through it over the weekend. But who knew it would be boring? Really. To me, the most interesting thing about it is noting all the things author Anna Sewell did in 1877 that writers can’t get away with nowadays. Like sentences that fill entire paragraphs and paragraphs that fill entire pages. We won’t be checking this box off just yet, but hopefully before the book is due back.

On the list of kissing locations, we added our cottage and the top of a hill overlooking West Hawk Lake—it’s the deepest lake in the province at 115 meters (377 feet). The granite cliffs make for gorgeous scenery. There are several more places we could have added if we could just remember to kiss while we’re there.

Until next time...

Overlooking the beach at West Hawk Lake, still frozen on April 3