Portland

As much as I enjoy playing Gym Jobs, after five straight it was a pleasant change of pace to perform in the beautiful Merrill Auditorium at City Hall in Portland, Maine. A magnificent set of organ pipes adorned the back wall of the stage, and the audience seating curved gracefully, embracing the stage area for a more intimate setting even in a vast space.

Behind the percussion, some sheet music and a baton were encased behind glass and framed with an ornate metal plaque, in memory of Hermann Kotzschmar, an organist, composer, conductor, and teacher in Portland for fifty years. I was intrigued by the plaque and the organ pipes, and found a nice web site with the history of the concert hall; http://www.foko.org/history.htm.

Even in a great concert hall, though, the audiences are not always so different from those found attending a Gym Job. There were plenty of red sweaters and jackets, Marine Corps League hats, VFW hats, and some patriotic apparel. A cute trio of older ladies sat near the band; they marched down the aisle wearing matching jackets made to look like American flags. Discarding the jackets, they wore matching shirts, identical to the jackets. Accessories make the outfit – they wore matching shoes, white with blue stripes. The mood of the audience was as enthusiastic as that of any Gym Job; applause was frequent and often deafening.

Lisa, Liz, Karen and I braved the misty morning weather and suburban streets around the mall for our walk. The mist was too fine to open the umbrella, but we were fairly drenched by the time we walked our four miles and returned to the hotel. It was a first – time to turn on the heater and drape the damp apparel in hopes it would dry before departure. It was a damp day all the way around. The carpet in the room had seemed a little sticky on check-in, but in the morning I discovered a puddle had formed under my suitcase, where it was sitting next to the heater/air conditioning unit. Fortunately only the exterior was wet; I unloaded the suitcase and Karen helped me set it up on the table to dry before repacking. Thankfully I am addicted to packing cubes, so repacking was a very simple process.