update on planning

Hi,

I responded to Carol's entry at the blog, too.

I think Alec MacCrea will be able to play bagpipes, but am not sure yet. What do we want him to play? Bagpipes tend to be best out of doors, but he could be on the porch and be heard very well, I think. Maybe the church is big enough for indoor pipes.

I'll want to ring the steeple bell.

How about the fire department doing ushering (in uniform)?

Church at Alfred is 11:00. Not sure if it's 10:30 or 11:00 at Alfred Station.

I haven't looked into organists yet, but Amanda Snyder is booked for the wedding. Don't know about Laurel Buckwalter, and I don't favor our current organist, as she isn't terribly smooth. Ok, perhaps (?) for church but not for this. If nothing else, perhaps Pam Bucher on piano -- she's wonderful.

I'll see what can be arranged for The Saints . . . there is a CD player and cassette player connected to the church sound system.

After all my hurrying to get the obituary to Dave Snyder, he didn't get it into this week's paper. But that was ok in the end: We got all in a panic yesterday when Jeanette was asked about when Dad's memorial was to be, and Amanda Snyder said she was playing in a wedding in our church on August 4th. Pat B. didn't have it on her calendar, but had a contract from months ago for the wedding to be held there then. She apologized profusely and we puzzled about whether to change the day, do it in the evening or earlier than 2:00, and so on. We worried about parking, and worried about how the wedding family would respond. I finally spoke with them this morning and came up with the following:

They don't have many decorations for the wedding, they will be dressing elsewhere, and they will be doing most of the photographs beforehand at the grandmother's house, so it won't be as complicated a switch as we feared. The wedding is at 4:00, so we can start the memorial at 1:00 (we'll arrange for lunches for family and church folks at the Parish House as soon as church is over at 12:00) and move to the Parish House by 3:00 -- we can just make an announcement and start herding people that way -- and I think things will be fine. We will arrange for parking at the Montessori School and bank and the old bowling alley parking lots. I suppose quite a few people will just come for church and then for the memorial, so I think we should just put on a quick meal.

Does all that sound ok?

I did some calling and learned that Dad still had two life insurance policies in place, not just one, so I'm waiting for instructions to come in the mail.

I've heard from Becky Prophet: they will be out of town but will send something by e-mail, and she offered their house for people to stay up to a week. I need to get her message and some others posted at the blog.

I also heard from Uncle Bill Turck. He sent a letter I'll share with you later, and a check. He said he wanted to give money to us for caring for Dad, rather than a memorial.

Doug