Another short post this week.
I spent Saturday tabulating competition results at the Red Fern Fèis in Tahlequah. It’s sponsored by Encore Performing Society, which is the same organization that puts on Nutcracker each year. The Fèis is part of the Red Fern Festival activities. I’ll be doing the same thing Sunday at the Cherokee Capital Fèis.
This is another one of those things I let myself get dragged into by hanging around the studio so much.
What’s a fèis? Glad you asked.
Three years ago, it was picking up judges from the Tulsa airport and helping with setup and teardown. Last year they asked if I’d help with tabulation. We take the handwritten score sheets from the judges and enter the information into FeisWorks. Four of us do our best to turn the scores around quickly. The hard part is that the judges watch a bunch of dancers at once and write 20 to 30 words about each dancer. It can be difficult to read their handwriting. We often turn to another tabulator for help in interpreting things, especially early in the day. Each tabulator generally focuses on one judge throughout the day though, which gets us used to their handwriting and abbreviations—no two judges use the same abbreviations, either.
But it’s a lot of fun to help out.
Football
No, it’s not about Michigan. <grin>
The NFL drafted their 2025 class this past week. The big news was about Shedeur Sanders, the son of Deion Sanders. The Colorado QB was expected to go in the first five picks but instead didn’t get drafted until the 5th round, and then by a team who already had a QB.
I teased Middle Son about Ohio State’s Will Howard getting drafted behind Sanders. He laughed and said it didn’t count because the Browns drafted Sanders.
What’s often more interesting than the actual draft is the post-draft signing of Undrafted Free Agents. UDFA are the guys who were draft-eligible but didn’t get picked up in the seven draft rounds. A couple of Michigan players I expected to go in the draft didn’t get picked up, but they did sign free agent contracts, including Donovan Edwards, who got picked up by the Jets.
And the coolest part about the UDFA signings so far?
A Muskogee kid signed a pro contract.
Defensive tackle Devin Brandt-Epps, a 2019 graduate of Hilldale High School here in town, signed with the Buffalo Bills. He makes the 13th player from Muskogee since 1926.
Writing
At least a couple of times a week, I’ll check my blog stats to see what posts are popular and so forth. A couple of years ago, I posted a list of the top five posts for the year, and I might get around to doing that again.
There will be a new one on the list, I think.
For some reason, this Cover Songs post about Phil Collins is getting a lot of traction lately. I don’t get it. It kind of languished there for the first year or so, then dropped off to nothing. I have no idea why it suddenly took off a year ago. Odd, that.
In theory, it’s inspiring me to make a serious effort at covering that topic better. I’ve got Big Plans™ to make more Music For A Sunday Afternoon posts.
We’ll see.
Speaking of cover songs, Tommy Johansson appeared in my YT feed this week. Good stuff.
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