A handful of different things kind of congealed into a column this week.

First, Joan and I had a great time at a Saturday performance of “Beetlejuice, The Musical,” in Sioux Falls.

For Representative Boebert’s benefit, here is how the second act ended: ghost wants girl, girl agrees to marry ghost, then girl turns tables on ghost and banishes him to the netherworld.

Intermingled within the course of the show before the curtain fell, is some very good, lyrically challenging music, certainly enough to get a Colorado congresswoman dancing in her seat with inhibition.

In a way, it is hard to blame her. There is something about people - very talented people - doing what they love to do and doing it well.

While the show was wonderful and brought the soundtrack I had listened to very often come to life, the true triumph took place in the seats of the Washington Pavilion theater.

We got there early, and perused the bright and colorful t-shirts…and beverages… available and people watched. For the first time in our somewhat regular trips to see musicals, we were in the upper regions of the age groups represented. Yeah, we’re getting older, but the crowd attending Beetlejuice was populated largely by late teen to 30-year olds, which is an absolutely wonderful sight to see.

Live theater in general and musicals in particular have long been the domain of the older crowd, but Saturday night, there was an abundance of brightly colorful costumes being worn.

I have a feeling that this is one of the good aspects of access to the outside world via YouTube.

The second youth triumph showed up in my inbox on Thursday. A press release from a media company called Scholaroo contained its 2023 SAT Scores index. The index showed that 10 of the top 12 schools in average SAT scores are located in the midwest, including North Dakota (1), Nebraska (2), Kansas (3) and South Dakota (8) all stacked neatly here in ‘flyover territory.’ Wisconsin is fifth Iowa is sixth, Minnesota is No. 9 and both Wyoming and Montana at top 12.

While both the east and west coasts foster the belief that they are the bastions of academic achievement, thanks to a midwest work ethic and dedicated teachers throughout the region, rural kids showed up big time. Congratulations to all the students, teachers and administrators who contributed to this success.

I watched in amazement Tuesday, as members of the U.S. House of Representatives debated whether to keep Republican Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House. A string of McCarthy supporters spoke on his behalf, while Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, another Republican, voiced his opposition.

Gaetz continually returned to McCarthy’s working with Democrats to create a method to continue governmental financing for the next few weeks as a bad thing. However, when the vote was tallied after the debate wrapped up, it was a handful of Republicans, voting with the entire block of Democrats that lead to McCarthy being ousted.

“Hey there Matt, I’m Kettle…you’re black.”

What were Republicans thinking?

From their standpoint, a chasm that already exists in their party got wider and deeper, and they will need to somehow elect a new speaker. Should work out well for them; it only took 15 rounds of voting to elect McCarthy back in January.

What were the Democrats thinking?

McCarthy is a Republican, and in today’s governmental setup, it’s become more like Hatfields and McCoys than elected leadership, however, he had shown that he was able to at least work with the other side of the aisle, if pressed, to make government work.

What were they all thinking?