The silver lining of the cloud.

October 16, Brunswick.

In my home town of Columbia, Missouri, nobody came to the circus.
We had no sponsor here so I had let all my friends know about it but that clearly was not enough; nobody had heard anything about it until I told them, not on the radio, not in the newspapers, no posters, no flyers, nothing, and nobody came, naturally. I so wanted it to be a success.
But it was, because all the people I had invited to see the show were thrilled by it, and one of them, a woman from Belgium who founded a school in Columbia, said it was the best circus show she remembered seeing, much better than Ringling (of course I happen to think the same.)
And I got a kick out of seeing Bill, a mathematics genius who teaches at the University of Missouri, laugh at Harlond's long-running joke, "the Harlond special" (two bags of peanuts for three dollars when one costs a dollar fifty - he must have been delighted to do it again, like old times) Bill and his wife, Asma, who is from Morocco and another math professor at the university, are the kind of people who made me feel as if I had known them my whole life the day I met them, back in April. I only wish we had had more time than a lightning visit at the circus. We invited them over to our trailer to share in Brian's dinner and they left asking us to give their compliments to the chef.
Dinner and a show, world class, that's the Kelly Miller Circus.