A PICTORIAL JOURNAL

Saturday, July 21

Our 2nd stop was Troy, Montana, where we camped out in the woods on Lin’s land, where we enjoyed the privacy and quiet of the forest.

 

We stayed in Troy for three nights, and it was fabulous to wake up in the morning and realize that we didn’t have to pack up and tear down camp. We were initially a bit tentative about the things growing in the woods, because there were a bunch of leaves which looked like twigs of three, tinged with red. But we were assured that there was zero poison ivy/oak in the woods and we haven’t had problems with that. The first morning we were in camp, while the bulk of the troop went to the park in Troy for workshops, David de la Rocha and Vern went to the hardware store, and with Sid’s help put up the SHOWER, pictured at right. It’s not a solar shower, but rather a garden hose hooked up to a propane tank, which provides seemingly limitless amounts of hot water. It even has a double shower head, for bathing a deux.  

Above: Tiberio & Nancy make lunch in the kitchen, with Tony in the background.

 

Below: Lunch in Troy.

It turned out that the townsfolk in Troy had fond memories of our previous visit, which included a mini-parade through the supermarket. In order not to disappoint them, we re-enacted this event.

Kootenai seems to be pronounced “Kootnee” by some natives.

The town was fantastic (we did give them a “Fantastico” after the potluck dinner the night we arrived. They turned our day of workshops and performances into a kind of county fair, with food booths, balloons and face-painting. They also joined the parade with incredible animal costumes.

The favorite food was, hands down, the huckleberry ice cream, which was totally delicious. Runner-up would probably be the homemade kettle corn, made in enormous vats. It was light and puffy, just slightly salty sweet, and it did not send a “stop eating” signal to your brain, which seemed dangerous. The local restaurant owners were also selling grilled things and corn, and since we didn’t eat dinner until we were back at camp after the show (10:30pm) a lot of Chautauquans grabbed sustenance here. 

Diane (in pink; I’m the one posting this page) got her face painted by Michelle, who also gave her the scarf  as a lovely souvenir of Troy.

Somewhat hilariously, the giant animal costumes assemble in front of a picture of a Sandhill crane (red face) on our U-haul trailer. To further confuse you, it says “Mississippi” on the trailer.

But we really are in Montana.

Haute Trash: The outfits that Robin Worley puts together for the trash fashion show are often held together by duct tape, and sometimes it seems that they’re held together by spit. This was certainly David Rain Ortez’s feeling, as his tire rubber ensemble fell off as soon as he was in front of the crowd. At left, you can see him trying quite desperately to keep his clothes on. We had a nice glimpse of the river in back of the stage.

Nine-year-old Ravyn has impressed us all with her stage presence and poise — here she is on tall stilts. But the real amazing performance in Troy wasn’t by one of our own, it was by Alan Lane, playing steel guitar with one arm and a prosthetic he made himself. He had been a logger and a tree came down and pinched his arm off. For daily life he just goes around one-armed, but wears this wooden limb with a built-in pick on the end for playing.

The show opens with one number from The Planets (see them below), followed by Faith, pictured at left. We close out the show with Nanda, who never fail to get the audience cheering.

Sunday, July 22

We did a run-out to Eureka from Troy. While the bulk of the group took off in busses and trucks, Howard and several others stuck around camp to wash the spandex movie screen we’d borrowed for outdoor shows. It proved to be quite a challenge, but we got the screen as spanking clean as we could—blindingly white in the sun, actually.

 

A lot of people showed up for the workshops, and avidly enjoyed the various projects. Robyn Albro leads a very creative mask making workshop, below.

 

 

It’s so great to see how captivated the kids are by what we’re doing. Look (at right) at how fixated these guys are at the drumming workshop.

 

The shows begin with a song from Gavi’s band The Planets, who are not giving out Tourist Information, despite the sign behind them.

Monday: Cleaning up and clearing out of Troy. Jerry and Sondra at right show off a beautiful piece of wood that they’ve polished. Notice piles of junk in the background. Below, the rather amazing chair that Jerry made and finished—it’s quite comfortable. Below that is Jerry’s horse.

Circle in Troy is above on the right, with Harry holding forth. Immediately to the right are our two favorite groupies, Aggie and Amber. They showed up as soon as we got to Troy, moved in a lived with us and came to all our events. They were great, friendly gals, and we enjoyed having them around. They had us all sign their shirts before we left.

On the way from Troy to Browning, we hit major construction. The dirt road below is a major interstate highway. Our reward was the wonderful lake at Logan State Park. That’s Dream standing on Vern’s shoulders.

Tuesday:

Two very important people: at left, Tove loading the truck, and on the right driver Kevin and his bus. His tie-dye shirt made him the most visible hiker in Glacier National Park.

Above left, a tailgate lunch in the parking lot at Glacier. Normal people serve sandwiches or some other portable food. Not Tiberio—he made lentil soup and served it with leftover pasta and rice. The soup splashed a tad in Pom’s car on the drive to the Park. Pom was not so happy with the mess.

Bighorn sheep graze in the valley, and at right is one of the shuttle busses that brought us up a few miles from the parking lot and for which we had to wait a long time. However, if you have to wait somewhere, this kind of scenery helps. 

Above, the Chautauqua troupe in Browning.

We’re holding up cartoons of the Browning Runnin’ Indians, drawn by a local artist (who is in the middle of the 2nd row).

photo by Michelle Bates

photo by Michelle Bates

The Show in Browning,

Wednesday July 25

 

Dr. Happenstance’s Sauntering Cabinet of Prestidigitation: contact juggling from Daniel.

photo by Michelle Bates

Jasmine, Erin’s daughter and great-granddaughter of a respected Blackfeet tribal member, was a big hit in Browning.

photo by Michelle Bates

The drum section rehearses before the parade: Harry, Tasche, Ben, Sid.

Howard is presenting a seven-minute version of the slide-show “An Convenient Truth” at our shows,

and the full-length version at workshops.

Spike and Boom-boom.

photo by Michelle Bates

Browning, the main town on the Blackfeet reservation, can be a tough sell. But we won them over, and we all had a fabulous time. Below, Tasche and Anna light up the gym as cheerleaders in their Haute Trash fashions.

Dream and Vern,

from Dream Science Circus.

photo by Michelle Bates

photo by Michelle Bates

CHAUTAUQUA TOUR ~ 2007

A PICTORIAL JOURNAL

 

Email journal—this is a compilation of all the emails that were sent out, both during the tour and after we all got home.

 

 

The institutional kitchen at the boarding school in Browning. Tiberio hated it, and ended up bringing in the volcano burner.

The Hutterite Story

For complete details, see the email journal (link at top of page). The short version is that Harry, Chen, Tomoki and Daniel M went hunting for Hutterites, found some and came away alive to tell the tale.

Hutterites coming.

Hutterites going.

The mighty hunters tell of their daring deeds.

Even the Blackfeet have espresso.

Karl was one of the stars of the Chautauqua vs Browning basketball game. We lost by one point.

photo by Michelle Bates

Our secret weapon turned out to be Morgan, who made the Browning boys really nervous when she appeared to reach towards their crotches.

photo by Michelle Bates

Stephen Bent’s hiphop juggling as “Foolio” while his homies sing  

  “Juggla’s Paradise.”                                  photo by Michelle Bates

Thursday, July 26

We broke camp at Browning, cleaned up their building a lot for them (while a “carpet show” went on in the main rec room, with a guy riding around on a giant vacuum) and took off for Polson.

 

Along the way we stopped at Running Eagle Falls in Glacier National Park, for a very cold swim in the glacier melt stream. A fabulous waterfall came out of the middle of a rock face—a diving challenge that few of our acrobats could resist. Less intrepid jumpers went off a lower rock; even less intrepid types were content to dunk their feet in the icy water.

Tomoki did a backflip from the high rocks, which was amazing.

Tyler, jumping from the opposite cliff.

Friday, July 27—Saturday, July 28

We camped at Fort Missoula, and conducted secret rites in both our yurt, being constructed below, and the beehive burner which found itself in our campsite.

Space ship or top of the beehive burner?

You be the judge.

Secret circle ritual, led by Ray.

In the yurt: food, guitar, community, internet access

(Nancy, Dream & Michelle).

Two-high: Stephen and Tyler.

MISSOULA PARADE & SHOW

One little guy REALLY liked Kim.

Hapless audience members support David Clay.

Howard, hot.

Sarah’s make-up artistry was stunning—here she works on Alex.

Faith, joined by a local favorite.

photo by Michelle Bates

Noodleini Family,

complete with Teeny-Weeny at right

Wildfires in the mountains gave a pink glow to the sky at sunset. This is the old lookout tower in Fort Missoula.

FUN at NIGHT

After a trip down the river in tubes, Tony produced a BBQ — he’s seen here getting the salmon ready. His secret ingredient appears to be ’sliced arm.’ To rouse up the coals a large electric fan was found, deployed below right by Daoud, with assistance from Nancy. 

A marauding midnight parade.

After a night of carousing, there’s no better treat than pancakes, made by Somer Joe and Josiah.

Sunday & Monday, July 29/30— Polson

We camped at a small field in a community area next to a school. The best places seemed to be up against the tennis courts, seen below and below right.

The quilt-making workshop never failed to attract people, including this group of special needs folks.

The Land Philharmonic played at every show on instruments made in Montana. The violin and guitar were cardboard instruments made by Ray Jacobs, and the bucket bass and 5-gallon cello were made by Pom.

Players are, left to right: Sean, Pom, Diane and Gavi.

photo by Michelle Bates

What will the spawn of these two homemade cellos look like?!?

Tuesday, July 31 — Hot Springs

Raising the rigging takes a lot of hands and a slow approach.

The wildfires which were burning continuously during this week poured smoke into the air as the show ended and the sun began to set. Alex often liked to go up on the rope after shows, to spectacular effect in this case.

2) It can get quite sticky as you mix, but when you’ve put in enough flour…...

Wednesday, August 1—Hot Springs

Tiberio scheduled a pasta-making workshop, with the idea that we’d make our own lunch.

It was a lot of fun, both to watch and to eat.

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1) First you mix two eggs into a cup of flour. And mix and mix.

3) ...it turns into a soft dough. That’s the presenter Janell with Tiberio.

4) Then you use whatever cylindrical object you have at hand (rolling pin, wine bottle, oxygen tank) and roll the dough out very thin.

6) ...and cook a sauce of garlic,

fresh tomatoes and basil.

5) You cut ribbons of pasta and then separate them...

Tiberio mixes the pasta with the sauce—

e mangiamo!

Friday/Saturday, August 3 & 4

Eagle, Idaho

Full days, with two community shows, a full-length presentation of Howard’s An Inconvenient Truth slide show, workshops and a real show. The show benefited the local Alzheimer’s association, and we did mini-shows at two of their facilities on Friday. That would be Friday the 3rd. And it was sunny.

Humagreen is people!

The band and the Alzheimer’s folks get cozy.

 Frank, up on his unicycle grabbing some guy’s head while holding a bunch of sharp knives, pretty much scared the bejeezus out of everyone.

An odd statue is decorated à la Chautauqua, complete with sexy babe.

Parade in Eagle, which headed through the

small farmers’ market.

Howard and his dotty assistants,

Diane and Andrine, served up his

 famous stir-fry for dinner.

Kiyota taught Tasche the ropes, er…. wires…

of running the sound board, which she did

on her own for the final two shows.

Ben and Callie, our great stagehands.

Jasper celebrated his 25th birthday with three onstage pies (there he is above enjoying one), as well as with his Luthor character, shown at right swinging a girlie-man from the audience. With assistance from Sean the Bear (left), Luthor served the weak man a cup of

tea when he couldn’t bend a nail.

Tomoki sports Sarah’s fabulous mask make-up.

Frank, on fire.

Cathy on the rope under the stars.

Massage train.

Ben found a kitty.

Thursday, August 2

A travel day, although we actually started the afternoon before. It was quite a long drive from where we were to Idaho. Along the way most of us managed to take breaks and hike in to hot springs — wonderful!

 

And then we went home, by plane, bus and car. A lot of us had re-entry problems as we adjusted from life with our traveling family to what we normally do. We all miss Chautauqua a lot, and can’t wait for the next tour!