Mac down.

July 9, Merrimac.

My Mac has been down for two days; I felt like an amputee.
It finally came back to life this morning, but not the adapter I use to download pictures, which also started malfunctioning at the same time.
Hence the empty trailer views.
A ghost trailer, void trace of our tech slavery.

A trailer with a view.

July 9, Merrimac, Massachusetts (63 miles, Waterhouse field.)

A trailer with a view.

July 8, Penacook, New Hampshire (33 miles, Merrimack Valley high school grounds.)

A trailer with a view.

July 7, Bristol, New Hampshire (24 miles, Kelley park.)

A trailer with a view.

July 5, Laconia, New Hampshire (83 miles, Memorial park.)

Le ballon rouge.

July 4, Swanzey.

Fridman (watching as Nicolas makes his entrance.)

July 4, Swanzey.

The cook, the ropes and the tent

July 4, Swanzey.

Web.

July 4, Swanzey.

These being circus kids, they couldn't help but play in the web ropes before the Fourth games began.

The Fourth.

July 4, Swanzey.

We celebrated the Fourth last night, with again Lamount as master of ceremonies.
Good times of a little on the hot and muggy side.

Hot, cold and no school.

July 3, Swanzey.

It got cold yesterday, lovely cool and misty again, but today we're back in the heat of summer.
We'll be celebrating the Fourth after the shows tonight, so the shows were set at week end schedule, two and five o clock, for there are three shows tomorrow.
I didn't do school this morning as circus school is in recess and all the kids were running around playing outside right by our trailer, too tempting for Dylan and Nicolas. I have to learn to let go, for surely they'll be fine without one day of readingwritingmath with an overdose of bribing.

A trailer with a view.

July 3, Swanzey, New Hampshire (78 miles, fairgrounds.)

Time again.

July 1, North Andover.

I've enjoyed taking pictures of Don Fusco, the patriarch of the Fusco family, and now that he told me this would be his last year performing the sessions have become a tribute, and an occasion to reflect once again on the passing of time.
Time, the clay I try to shape into meaning, the passing of time, Don Fusco's last days in the limelight, the end of a circus career, a life in the circus, a life carried on by his children, the extended family, how things change and stay the same, trying to shape and twist and delve into time my primary material, but really what I'm trying to do is to challenge death and the passing of people and passions into dust with visions of beauty in my eyes.

More rain?

July 1, North Andover.

It's been a deluge since this morning, there was even a tornado warning (tornadoes in Massachusetts now?) and it looks like the rain is not going to end  any time soon.
This summer feels like a rerun of the 2009 season, Rain Central, with everything in the trailer starting to smell slightly sour, towels that never really dry hung here and there to air, but they don't, because it's damp and damper.

A trailer with a view.

July 1, North Andover, Massachusetts (72 miles, middle school grounds.)

Mud show and a difficult lot.

June 30, Douglas.

There it was, yet one more time, at the bottom of the route slip, the dreaded note: "Arrows to a difficult lot."
It's become a tradition, lately, this dreaded announcement, and the bad surprises it brings: too narrow for tractor trailers to enter or exit without acrobatics, no place to set up the cookhouse tent, hardly anywhere to set up anything else, the list goes on. Over the past two days it was a mud theater on top of no cook house tent for the fourth time in less than a month and nowhere to park backstage, and forklift show time again to two trucks out of the while mess this morning.
My friend Bitsy helped her eighty-one-year-old mother through the mud on Friday, the two of them laughing all the way about how they could now claim they'd seen to a real mud show.
It's the mudshow diaries.
After a five thirty call, we're moving tonight because of traffic.
We know the lot, it's the same lot as every year in North Andover, and no, it's not difficult.

A trailer with a view.

June 30, Douglas, Massachusetts (63 miles, next to the fire station.)

Don Fusco (circus portrait series.)

Misty circus.

June 28, Acushnet.

Bisty.

June 28, Acushnet.

They must have heard us on the other side of the tent, and up in the heavens too if there are any friends' souls up there.
It was one of these reunions you dream about, twenty years and not a wrinkle to the sweetness, your love, the strength of your bond, that flashing submerging feeling of belonging to a friend as one belongs to a place, an idea, a passion.
Bitsy is back in my life and that blazing hug and yell is all it took. Bitsy's here, Bitsy's back, and life is that much more worth living for, oh yes, with one of those friendships that give it meaning and fortitude, and joy. She has become a globe-trotting new media business superwoman and she's exactly the same person, self-deprecating humor, warmth, red-headed flame, that she was then. I am grateful for Mary Beth's friendship too, she also visited yesterday with her boys, and we had our Missouri reunion to our giddy selves (we went to journalism grad school together and there we met,) and even Bisty's Mom was here, and she's such a sweetheart and a beauty.
It was an Irish summer day, all drizzle and cool, it was warmed with our laughter.
After they all had left and all was quiet and a little sad the way it is after something good has ended, the mist rolled in, as on cue, and the circus was shrouded in a beautiful, misty dusk.