Decluttered our Saturday Night Service today.

A persistent problem made more difficult as all Band members have aged is moving all our stuff out back for the Lawn Mass in the summer, and back in again after the service. We solicited volunteers, but in this aging parish there are few who can do much on a regular basis. So a change has been coming, and in the end it was quite simple.

It started with my permanently damaged spine prompting me to try playing standing up. I mocked up a stand at home that seemed promising and tried it last week in the parish house. What go tme was how sore I was each week after 3 hous of sitting in a bad chair and then being opinned behind he autoharo stand by all the equipment surroiunding me. It was vey weird playing and singnig while standing butby the end of the servivce i was woring pretty well.

So what I decided is that since my main instrument is y voice, all I REALLY need to move outdoors when there are volunteers to set us up is my tiny amp, a music stand, a mic stand, a folding stool to perch on while singing, and the ability to move from there to a chair in the congregation during the long parts with no music.

With that in mind I arranged all my gear modularly to be able to move it as little as necessary. I took back the use of a folding screen to screen it all off in a corner of the parish house, where we will hold the service those weeks that there are no volunteers available to help with law setup and teardown.

Then to facilitate orderly teardown (for which there are usually 5+ eager volunteers who want to work too fast for us to supervise effectively), I took pix of each of our arrayed stuff-- what goes where and how it goes-- for ease of access and minimal use of space (because it is space we share with community groups).

I'll print the pix in B/W to tape over each station, slap some color-coded tape on each person's batch of stuff, color code the signage-- and Bob's your uncle.

Then there are the binders that house the ministry I coordinate of "We Remember 260 Black Lives," which will be moving to the deep window wells set above our stuff. (One piece of display art is already attached to my screen.) The binders we play from are spilling out of a large plastic bar/food service cart, and I have my eye out for a bookcase for those.

All this will guide our in-the-church stowage once he cool weather is back, too. I'm keeping that 4-panel screen for my own ministry display use, and Hardi is planning to fix is one broken panel (and perhaps add one to make an odd number) for better accordian-standing solidity.

~S~