The storms have passed. In their wake are several damaged trees and shrubs that I was very fond of. I’ll cover that topic on another day. Today I’m taking a look backward at events that happened on the 26th day in the month of January.

January 26, 2019

One of the venues for our monthly jam was The Peoples Place. It was established by the Seven-Day Adventists as a community meeting place in downtown Gardner, MA. Paul Warren made arrangements so that we could use the space for music. After several years of operation, Paul needed to move to Florida to take care of family. In this photo I believe we were all waving to him. It was an interesting building. It used to be a storefront for a heating oil company. The acoustics were amazing. Lots of music was played here. Eventually the jams ended.

I had my chance to sing a few tunes.

The String Section. Note the inlay work that the late John Williams did on the fingerboard of his fiddle. Besides music, John was a skilled wood carver (birds).

January 26, 2013

I received my first pacemaker on January 25, 2013. They kept me overnight so they could tabs on how it was going. The next morning (January 26th) a Medtronic technician came to the bedside with a laptop looking device. She placed a hockey puck sized device over the pacemaker and proceeded to program my heartbeat. It was weird sensation to feel my heart being remotely controlled. That pacer kept me going for almost ten years. The battery was almost depleted, so I have a new model, one that actually has bluetooth. Imagine that.