October 22, Leavenworth.
It's the maize, stupid.
Sheyla puts Maizena, or corn starch, on her son's diaper rashes and it works wonders. How come I haven't heard about this in two years I don't know, but exit diaper rash ointments brought all the way from France, an expensive option to say the least, adios talc made of who-knows what chemical substance, and enter maize from the corner market, all-natural and a dollar fifty a box, and it goes in the soup too (just not from the same box hopefully.)
Related chemical news: last month I realized that the wipes I was using contained multi versions of paraben, a chemical used in everything from cosmetics to food whose safety has increasingly come under scrutiny. I had started avoiding it long ago, preferring all-natural baby lotions and sunscreens but somehow didn't think of checking the most obvious, the most ubiquitous - the wipes. The ones I buy now have organic cotton and no parabens, and they're cheap, too, and that's important for this circus family.
Corn and cotton, my abCs.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
More rain.
October 22, Leavenworth.
After yesterday's storms more of the same today leading to parking delays upon arriving onto the lot. We opted for staying far from the backstage but safe and dry on pavement. Not so lucky the crew who has to raise the tent under the rain and in the cold.
After yesterday's storms more of the same today leading to parking delays upon arriving onto the lot. We opted for staying far from the backstage but safe and dry on pavement. Not so lucky the crew who has to raise the tent under the rain and in the cold.
The gang and a party.
October 21, Cleveland.
Sheyla and her family arrived late last night on their way from working at a circus up in Minnesota back to Dallas. Counting the little ones there were eleven of us sleeping in the trailer, Sheyla, Alain and their son, Friedman, don Sandro and dona Maigo, two muchachos traveling with them, and us four.
The three little locos are playing like there was no tomorrow - the key to kids' home bliss lies in numbers, I've always believed (if only I were younger or had won the lottery Dylan and Nicolas would have lots of brothers and sisters.) Unfortunately the whole gang of them have to leave later today.
Also today, the big top birthday party of Arwen, Tavana and Danny's daughter, and Jaret, Carmen and Jorge's son.
From left, Nathan, Arwen, Doricela, Alain and Friedman, Girard, Jaret, Carmen, John and Johnnie, with Eddie, Danny and Vickie seated in the back.
A trailer with a view.
October 21, Cleveland, Missouri (29 miles, corner of highway D and Highway Y.)
The trapezist in our midst.
October 20, Pleasant Hill.
Tavana Luvas is the one who adds those quirky quotes and notes to the bottom of our morning routes. She works in the office, but her heart is in the big top.
She was a flying trapeze artist all her life. She made her debut at 16 after having performed a variety of other acts, alone or with her younger sister, since she was nine years old. "I used to be somebody," she said.
All through her career her mother kept trying to get her to tour Europe with big name circuses but she would get pregnant every time a contract was at hand. Tavana had three boys and a girl, Arwen, whose birthday we celebrated yesterday, but none of her grown children has gone on to a circus career. "They just never showed an interest in it," she said. She cannot remember ever thinking about her interests either but did what she was told to do and so was taught circus acts by her grandmother, who was "the teacher in the family."
Her grandmother had come over from Germany and made up the name Luvas after a movie star of the time. Tavana is the fourth generation of circus performer in her family, and it looks like she might be the last of the bohemians.
Le Brone and Tavana in the Kelly Miller Circus office.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
A trailer with a view.
October 19, Grain Valley, Missouri (48 miles, corner of Main Street and highway 40.)
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Warm.
October 17, Richmond.
The circus generator was on last night, we were warm, heaven.
And today Fridman changed the gas heater in the trailer, and that means we shouldn't be cold again.
The circus generator was on last night, we were warm, heaven.
And today Fridman changed the gas heater in the trailer, and that means we shouldn't be cold again.
Sky grass.
October 16, Carrolton.
The circus is in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping plaza (our guess is that there had to be a last minute change of locations because of the weather conditions yesterday) and the trailer is facing a large, gutted storefront.
Nature has taken back its realm and grass grows on the eves of the roof.
Out.
October 16, Carrolton.
The day after rain, clothes and shoes are strewn everywhere outside, to air out and dry, to be cleaned or polished, and it's like the circus' dirty laundry is out, literally.
Cold.
October 16, Carrolton.
The muddy days are back and so is the cold.
I had forgotten how hard it is to get up in the morning when it's cold, outside and nearly as much inside too, how hard it is to get out of a warm bed and dress, the clothes wet to the touch with cold, how hard it is to have to take the children our of bed and carry them out to the frigid truck, how uncomfortable it feels, how unfair to them.
But it is sunny now, four hours and almost a hundred miles later, the light just came on, the trailer is slowly warming up, and we made it here safe.
The muddy days are back and so is the cold.
I had forgotten how hard it is to get up in the morning when it's cold, outside and nearly as much inside too, how hard it is to get out of a warm bed and dress, the clothes wet to the touch with cold, how hard it is to have to take the children our of bed and carry them out to the frigid truck, how uncomfortable it feels, how unfair to them.
But it is sunny now, four hours and almost a hundred miles later, the light just came on, the trailer is slowly warming up, and we made it here safe.
Stuck.
October 15, Centralia.
Centralia is only about 20 miles from Columbia, where I spent some three years studying for a degree in photojournalism in the early nineties, and I was to meet an old friend there today but instead I found myself waiting all day in vain in a combination of bad planning and bad luck.
I forgot to call Greg last night to remind him and he never answered his phone or showed up today, and I couldn't leave the lot because I and everybody else were stuck in the mud in a flooded lot. It is now ten at night and I still haven't heard from Greg; we are waiting for the forklift to come and pull us out to dry grounds, the last ones since we were parked last too this morning, as usual.
The muddy days are back.
Centralia is only about 20 miles from Columbia, where I spent some three years studying for a degree in photojournalism in the early nineties, and I was to meet an old friend there today but instead I found myself waiting all day in vain in a combination of bad planning and bad luck.
I forgot to call Greg last night to remind him and he never answered his phone or showed up today, and I couldn't leave the lot because I and everybody else were stuck in the mud in a flooded lot. It is now ten at night and I still haven't heard from Greg; we are waiting for the forklift to come and pull us out to dry grounds, the last ones since we were parked last too this morning, as usual.
The muddy days are back.
News flash: the Kelly Miller Library lives.
October 14, New Bloomfield.
The Kelly Miller Circus Library is still on, I found out yesterday from a flyer backstage as I was taking pictures of Girard, and there is a large plastic box full of books already. There was an urgent call for volunteers to take the box in and out every day. Unfortunately there are only books in English and a big part of people here do not speak it, much less read it. Whether they would read were there books in Spanish is another question.
There is a ritual in the circus and it is a sacred one. The first thing people do when they get to the lot every morning is to take out their satellite TV dish. Each and every day, pointing this way and that, and sometimes for a very long time, they bend over their UFO-like metal god until they align it and get a signal, a practice bordering on insanity. This year at Kelly Miller the only ones without a dish - and hence without TV - are Sara, Vickie and Eddie, Myrna, Jim and us.
People don't read anymore, complained a yard sale lady in Chicago as she saw me browsing her books.
And yet.
I bought the books, and the Kelly Miller Circus library thrives, even with all those ugly dishes around.
The Kelly Miller Circus Library is still on, I found out yesterday from a flyer backstage as I was taking pictures of Girard, and there is a large plastic box full of books already. There was an urgent call for volunteers to take the box in and out every day. Unfortunately there are only books in English and a big part of people here do not speak it, much less read it. Whether they would read were there books in Spanish is another question.
There is a ritual in the circus and it is a sacred one. The first thing people do when they get to the lot every morning is to take out their satellite TV dish. Each and every day, pointing this way and that, and sometimes for a very long time, they bend over their UFO-like metal god until they align it and get a signal, a practice bordering on insanity. This year at Kelly Miller the only ones without a dish - and hence without TV - are Sara, Vickie and Eddie, Myrna, Jim and us.
People don't read anymore, complained a yard sale lady in Chicago as she saw me browsing her books.
And yet.
I bought the books, and the Kelly Miller Circus library thrives, even with all those ugly dishes around.
Motherhood's perks.
October 14, New Bloomfield.
Nicolas uttered his first words recently. They were "chat" followed by "thé" (cat and tea.)
It's official, he's my son.
Of course that's not counting the first sounds he made, the usual Mama and Papa - although in truth he's all Papa, so much so that I believe it must have something to do with Fridman's hands being his first contact with the outside world. And no, Dylan didn't say Lynn every two minutes when he was a baby, but that's probably because he's never again seen the midwife that received him at the birthing center outside of Savannah, Georgia, on a rainy evening in November almost three years ago.
Sometimes it's good to have delusions, they make the world sweeter.
So, Nicolas says Papa all the time, sweet and soft, but when he gets upset he screams Mamaaa!
Isn't it wonderful to be a mother, asked my friend Zuzana.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Little itinerant learners.
October 14, New Bloomfield.
Every day at nine o'clock Natalie, or sometimes Casey, take Georgia by the hand and they walk over to school. But instead of walking to the curb to wait for the school bus their walk is never more than a few minutes long, if that much, for at the circus school is always at your doorsteps.
The Kelly Miller Circus school is at the cook house every week day for two hours. Dee Dee McGavy-Perez teaches ten kids aged five to 12 in coordination with the Hugo, Oklahoma, school district, where they are enrolled in winter. Hugo is where the circus is based and most of the performers' family live there during the off season, from November to March. "Most of the time they're honors students," says Dee Dee.
The most challenging thing about teaching circus school is having to switch gears between the big ones and the little ones, she adds. In July the Rosales twins, now five years old, entered the school, adding one more grade to the group. There are other challenges, like the weather; like the circus itself the cook house is a tent and it gets wet and cold and hot and breezy, circus life is in the open, but always there is school.
Dee Dee came into the circus gradually after encountering a collegiate circus when she went to college at Illinois State in Bloomington. When friends left to work for the Kelly Miller Circus, then under David Rawls' ownership, she followed often to visit and soon ended up quitting her job and moving there herself, working as "the all-around useful person." She started teaching by accident and found out that was her calling; between the Universoul Circus and Kelly Miller Circus she has taught for more than ten years, following generations of circus kids.
Like Jessica Perez, 12, who now often steps in as her teaching assistant.
Jessica (left) answers Dee Dee as Girard looks on during school.
Flying debut.
October 13, Warrenton.
Girard Rosales today debuted a new solo act. It is an astonishing flying on-your-head trapeze act called head-balancing trapeze he practiced when he was younger. It replaced the opening act of the second part of the show by the Rosales family, the "wheels of destiny." Backstage he was fidgeting nervously.
When he walked home afterward the other performers started applauding.
He'd passed.
Girard listens to John going over the announcement as John's son, Johnnie, waits to open the curtain.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Days of thunder.
October 13, Warrenton.
Turning on the radio day after day and listening to the news of the unfolding crisis in the global financial market, the unprecedented, the unbelievable, and I get the feeling of living through history in the making, momentous days - if only the future of life as we know it wasn't hanging in the balance.
Turning on the radio day after day and listening to the news of the unfolding crisis in the global financial market, the unprecedented, the unbelievable, and I get the feeling of living through history in the making, momentous days - if only the future of life as we know it wasn't hanging in the balance.
Back into Missouri.
October 12, Washington.
The change of scenery has always surprised me, no matter how many times I've crossed the Illinois-Missouri line over the Mississippi, the flat and uniform corn and soybean fields of the Illinois side metamorphosing into curves and colors on the Missouri side as fields and forests alternate in a jigsaw puzzle of picture-perfect rural American landscape. I called MIssouri home for several years as a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and grew to like its unassuming beauty, comforting in its scale when the out-of-this-world magnitude of the Western landscapes would leave me feeling exposed and vulnerable.
The change of scenery has always surprised me, no matter how many times I've crossed the Illinois-Missouri line over the Mississippi, the flat and uniform corn and soybean fields of the Illinois side metamorphosing into curves and colors on the Missouri side as fields and forests alternate in a jigsaw puzzle of picture-perfect rural American landscape. I called MIssouri home for several years as a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and grew to like its unassuming beauty, comforting in its scale when the out-of-this-world magnitude of the Western landscapes would leave me feeling exposed and vulnerable.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Sara and Gigi.
October 11, Troy.
Following with the Kelly Miller Circus end-of-season photo series, Sara and Gigi. They are probably coming back next year, but Gigi will be a different person.
Natalie - and a circus baby on the way.
October 11, Troy.
Natalie is 13 weeks pregnant and this is truly wonderful news as she wanted it with so much fervor. Congratulations Natalie!
European photographers according to Steve.
October 11, Troy.
She also sent a picture of the kids, a la "European photographers" according to Steve, ie with their head cut off (flashback to photo days in Jax.)
The trailer.
October 11, Troy.
Tiffany called to say she was sad we were getting "further and further away;" later she sent pictures.
My one regret from Jacksonville was forgetting to take a picture of the trailer in Liliana's driveway.
Friday, October 10, 2008
And all the work.
October 10, Troy.
In between the first and second Trailer with a Views, here's what a few men can do.
Watching Lisa.
October 10, Troy.
Luis, Cuco's brother, is the prop guys' boss. I used to get the two of them confused as they look much alike, same mustache, same longuish hair, same square built.
Lisa is one of the three elephants that work at the circus.
Route 66.
October 9, Staunton.
The signs on highway 4: Historic Illinois Route 66, 1926-1930. It took a country road off 4 then joined it again a few miles south.
The mother of all roads, the road much traveled, the mythical road, ending in my once turf of San Bernardino, dusty, forlorn San Bernardino where I would search in vain for signs of that American icon and find cheap strip malls and no-man's lands dotted with homeless along five-lane freeways - but what more American?
The signs on highway 4: Historic Illinois Route 66, 1926-1930. It took a country road off 4 then joined it again a few miles south.
The mother of all roads, the road much traveled, the mythical road, ending in my once turf of San Bernardino, dusty, forlorn San Bernardino where I would search in vain for signs of that American icon and find cheap strip malls and no-man's lands dotted with homeless along five-lane freeways - but what more American?
I'm on again, but somebody's off.
October 8, Girard.
Fridman spent the night at Liliana's with us and we left at six o'clock to catch the circus. Liliana was awake, she suffers from insomnia and is always up early. I miss her, and Dylan even more so.
It was like old times driving this morning, the fields and small towns so familiar.
Circus news: Mr. Perfect Picture/Librarian, aka Dereck, bolted yesterday in Jacksonville, of all places. He was also known, among the Spanish-speaking, as "el loco," and indeed he was a little off.
I guess the Kelly Miller Circus library is on hiatus until further notice, like Circus Chimera.
Fridman spent the night at Liliana's with us and we left at six o'clock to catch the circus. Liliana was awake, she suffers from insomnia and is always up early. I miss her, and Dylan even more so.
It was like old times driving this morning, the fields and small towns so familiar.
Circus news: Mr. Perfect Picture/Librarian, aka Dereck, bolted yesterday in Jacksonville, of all places. He was also known, among the Spanish-speaking, as "el loco," and indeed he was a little off.
I guess the Kelly Miller Circus library is on hiatus until further notice, like Circus Chimera.
Going home to Jacksonville.
October 7, Jacksonville, Illinois (94 miles, Liliana's house.)
Jumping ahead I came straight to Jacksonville, where I used to work. It's been six years since I left and I've never been back. It was a Sunday morning drive before farm people start for church, highway 72 all but empty. I missed the Illiopolis (Sunday, 38 miles) and Chatham (Monday, 36 miles) stops.
I am staying at my friend Liliana's house, a few blocks from where I used to live, and parked the trailer in her driveway (crushing more than a few of her lavender bushes in the process.)
Liliana is a gem of a woman, a busy bee, strong opinions and a huge heart packed into a little woman of 75. She's from Costa Rica but has been living in Jacksonville for many years; her second husband, Charlie, as tall and lanky as she's short and plump, all humor and sweetness, died in 2003. Liliana never tires of defending Latinos and advancing the cause of the underdog and she knows just about everybody, as often happens to active people in small communities, so that a trip to the grocery store with her on Monday turned into a social event as she stopped at every aisle to greet someone new. Dylan took to her in a minute and called her Yayana, and he and Nicolas ran around her beautiful home and managed not to break any of the many South and Central American artifacts she's collected over the years.
She drove me to Beardstown, where I worked a few too many hours completing an in-depth story on the Mexican community there; we saw Julio, the school Hispanic coordinator, Rafa, the Mexican store owner and pillar of the community, I saw these streets I knew by heart and memories flooded back of endless days getting to know people there, reporting, taking pictures, learning.
But mostly the three short days in Jacksonville were filled with all the friends I left behind: there was Liliana and Tiffany and Zuzana, there were the Steves. and Rob, and John, and Ruth, and the ones I missed.
I met Zuzana in photojournalism school at the University of Columbia-Missouri and stayed with her and her husband Rob a few years later when I came to work at The Journal-Courier; she had just quit as a photographer there to raise her son, John Paul, who's now nine years old and an exact replica of his father. We went over to their house for dinner on Sunday night; Zuzana's sister, Julie, was also there. Yesterday I visited Julie's husband, John, in his stained glass shop on the square; when I first arrived in Jacksonville I briefly worked for John selling hot-dogs on the street; he's larger than life in every way, I had the time of my life.
I saw Tiffany and Steve Warmowski. He used to be my boss and quit the paper in April to shoot weddings with Tiffany full-time. She is the same friend after so many years apart, she gives the best hugs on earth, she takes the breath out of you, she's an angel without wings.
The other Steve, Steve Copper, came by this morning; he was the chief copy editor and designer at the paper and still is, only there used to be four of them working jointly and now they're only two (hi, Guido.) Steve' son, Walt, is a month younger than Dylan and as reserved as his father.
I also saw Ruth, whose husband, Guy, a successful OB-GYN, helped me so many times with medical advice and free over-the-counter drugs I can never thank him enough. They're from Quebec and have two adopted children, Louis, from Colombia, and Mireille, from Guatemala, who are now off to college.
Then there were the pilgrimages.
Today Fridman and I went to the Chinese buffet where we broke the ice the day he came up to Jacksonville from Hugo to visit me, for Christmas seven years ago, a perfect stranger from an even stranger world. Later we would often go there for lunch and stay so long they once had to tell us to leave in order to close the restaurant. The Steak'n'Shake down Morton Avenue was another planned pilgrimage stop but it moved across the street to make room for a super Walmart so we skipped, it just wouldn't have been the same.
I was reminded once again that there is no coming back to the same, here or anywhere else. You're left with your memories and if you're as lucky as I am, a bunch of really good friends.
Rob Killam and Liliana Costa during dinner at Rob and Zuzana's home in Jacksonville.
The Rosales - Jorge, Carmen and Girard.
October 4, Clinton.
The season is almost over. We just learned the Rosales family, Jorge and Carmen and their sons, Jorge's brother, Julio, his wife, Deyanira, and their daughter, Doricela, and Julio's son from a previous marriage, Brett, are not coming back next year.
I wanted to remember them as I saw them every day here; they are shown in full costumes shortly after the opening of the first show. Brett I didn't have time to catch other than warming up backstage, his juggling act comes early in the show.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Friday, October 03, 2008
Home sweet home at last?
October 3, Eureka.
Today I bought my first home. Better late than never.
It was a long time coming - the process started back in late May, derailed three times because of bureaucratic hassles, but mostly a lifetime of taking in the world ruled out any thought of ever settling down.
The house was built in 1927, it survived a century worth of hurricanes, it's small and quaint and sits on a large, overgrown lot, it needs everything and a new roof, and it's ours. It was a fluke, it was love at first sight. It's just south of downtown in Fort Myers, Florida, where I looked online after an NPR story on Lee County coming first in the country in the number of foreclosures and cheap homes for sale. It cost less than most people's down payments, and it isn't the house I saw in the picture on the internet anyway but the trees and all that lush green, my tropical paradise.
I've never been in Fort Myers, I've never seen the house, my Dad would kill me were he still alive, but then what would he have said about his only daughter running away with the circus?
October 3, Eureka, Illinois (63 miles, Eureka Plaza.)
Thursday, October 02, 2008
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