The Barn Stormin' Brothers

Dance Made in a Country that Makes War

2008-05-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Dance Made in a Country that Makes War began as an inquiry into the lives of people who serve to protect the United States of America. Through interviews with domestic and foreign soldiers, as well as the FBI, Police Officers, and activists, the subject matter meanders from the disconnect between civilians and the military, the muscle memory of violence, the effects of group mentality on the individual, and ends finally with the questioning of the dancers' personal roles in the actions of our military at home and abroad. The dancers perform all necessary stage-hand roles so that the show is self-contained. We operate in some semblance of a military unit, relying on ourselves to make lighting and sound happen, rather than having stage-hands who make things happen behind the scenes. The show presented here is a work-in-progress with its next version to be performed at the Grass Roots Festival in Trumansburg, NY this July. Dance Made begins while the audience is entering the performance space. Audience members must walk through or around the stage to get to their seats, which cascade down from the true stage, spilling onto the dance floor.

The show is broken into scenes with two reoccurring tableaux. The first tableaux, as seen here, is the TV scene, where the cast join their bodies to support an average American couple watching the evening news. Duet created from extraction personal experiences.
Group Movement focusing on unity, structure, timing. Our movement uses no musical ques, requiring the dancers to rely one another to stay together.

The second Tableaux is the Voterbooth Sequence. Each dancer is assigned a booth in which they pretend to cry until they are overcome by real emotion, at which point they leave the booth and ring a bell on stage, signalling to the others that the exercise has been successful. The exercise is a reversal of military training by which one is stripped of their normal emotional responses.

A quartet emerges from the lines of voter booths, and does a dance of search and collision, ending with the precarious balancing of their booths.
We return to the TV Tableaux to find the couple immersed in each other while the newscaster speaks of social reform, environmental successes, important stuff. The newscaster is similarly disconnected with what he speaks about, receiving a manicure while reporting the good news.
The scene deteriorates with the couch pulling away from the couple, rolling as a mass of disorderly bodies back to the Voterbooth Quartet which is played in reverse.
Back in their original formation, the dancers begin pretending to laugh. They continue, playing with their lights, and making faces at one another until someone is really overcome with laughter, at which point they exit their booth and go to ring the bell.
Having successfully reintroduced emotion into their bodies, the quartet emerges again, leaving their booths in the lines. The perform an exploration in the muscle memory of violent experiences as a means of extracting them from their bodies.

The cast is unified by armless costumes which turn their bodies into bags of motion. Rebekah sings a lullaby to her bread baby telling the tale of foreboding chaos. She faints just as the arm attacks her, tearing apart her bread baby and eating it as the march off. She wakes from her faint and screams in terror, then forgetting completely what has happened, exits singing a cheerful tune.
We return to our final TV Tableaux to find the couple getting off as the newscaster tells of death and destruction. They are literally using the news as porn.
The lights are out and we hear the trailing voices of news reports. The Extro begins with the sound of a heartbeat. Lights up to reveal one cast member beating his heals on the floor at the front of the stage, while the rest lay at the back of the space, beating on their bodies in a rhythmic fashion.
The beat themselves to the front of the stage and join the heartbeat with their heels. Facing one another the cast answers questions they've imagined from the warm-up at the beginning of the show, speaking aloud to each other so that the audience can hear them.

As they speak about their personal relationship to war, art, society, an old wheezing figure crosses the stage pushing a graveyard of amputated Christmas Trees.
When through talking the dancers begin freezing in positions of every-day movements. Changing positions in unison and holding between changes in freeze-frame. After some time of this people in the audience begin throwing shoes over the heads of dancers and audience members alike, bombing the empty space with footwear.
The dancers continue freeze-framing until after the bombing has stopped. They all turn slowly upstage to see what has happened while they were busy with their normal lives. They crawl to standing passing through the wreckage, coming together for a bow.
(Thank you Collin Polnitsky for your photography.)

Director: Kate Shearman
Assistant Director: Rebekah Dillon
Dancers: Beatrice Barbareschi, Shiela Brown, Rebekah Dillon, Katherine Hayes, Athena Kokoronis, Michael Margolin, Biz Miller, Kelly Ryan, Kate Shearman, Emilie Blum Stark-Menneg, Noni TheLittleOne, J. Young.

Our Next Big Thing...

2008-04-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

This new dance performance combines sculpture, journalism, and dance to examine the experience of Americans in our ever changing democracy. The evening shows contain nudity and some sexual content, the afternoon show on Sunday will be tailored to be appropriate for children of all ages. If you are interested in volunteering for the show please email Kate: kathrynlynnshearman@gmail.com.

Kate's San Franciscan Farewell and Second Sermon

2007-11-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

Thank you Stacy and Brent for your photo and support!

It's the second day on the train and I can't believe how sore my back is. Who'd of thought that sitting back relaxing, letting the great country-side pass you by could cause so much physical tension. It might be the stark contrast- six weeks of cross-country biking followed by long rides into and out of the Bay Area, soccer in the mission and some kick-my-ass dance classes- then suddenly sitting. Lots of sitting and sleep. Sleeping in chairs with foot-rests and paper pillows. I've put my tennis balls to work- the balls that held me together on the ride are resting behind my back, rubbing as I wiggle, the thick-ropes of muscle that protect my spine.

In San Francisco I met Julietta, a small-town superhero of revolutionary inspiration, misplaced on the National Terrorist Suspect List and in San Francisco as the owner an awesome little coffee shop by the ocean that serves great espresso, toast and coconuts. We hit it off and had a haircutting session in the dunes which Blake and I had previously been afraid to walk on near the guy doing drugs and the couple having sex. I love California. Shameless pagans running rampant through the cities!

I missed my bus to Ukiah where half of Ithaca was working on a farm, so we rode our bikes on a foggy day over the bridge of beauty and death to the sound of the giant sea-creature barking long loud sighs of excitement and anger. Through Sausalito where the Italian Gelateria had given me a waffle cone of lovin that knocked my socks off after a Sunday dance experience with Ilonka that was funner than Church(!), and on into the little windy mountain roads of tall and ancient trees. The woods are amazing, I mean, that's all there is to say...AmaZing. Biked back just in time to catch the last ferry and sat outside on the deck watching the lights of Alcatraz and San Francisco emerge slowly from the chewably thick fog. We came back to Blake's sublet, raw and exhausted from an amazing adventure to find-out that our friend who he had subletted from was on her way home with a couple(which turned out to be four) friends and they would be sharing our one-little room.

We went to the Day of the Dead parade which is a bunch of people dressed up in elaborate and colorful death-themed costumes, dancing, playing music and walking around the Mission with no separation between spectators and performers. Sam vowed to wear a skeleton costume next year, and I vowed to be a Hispanic male dancer wearing feathers and a rawhide g-string next year. We met a friend of Sam's and ate tacos from the taco window and played soccer with Davey, Ghan, Blake and me verse some Mexicans who had likely been playing since 5pm that day, if not also lifting bricks since 6am. Needless to say, we whooped them. They might have been sharking us, but who cares. It was a blast.

I sat on a bus overnight and had a three-hour layover in L.A. at 7am. Luckily I was able to meet an old friend who I hadn't seen in years and who I was desperately longing for to pass the time. She ended up driving me the last hour to see Melissa in Irvine. It was nice to see my sister, she has a new apartment, new job, new car, and new boyfriend since last I visited. We drove around a bunch, ate amazing tapas on a roof that overlooked the coast, and had cupcakes at a place that had WOODEN- not plastic or even corn plastic- utensils, visited the beach though briefly, and went out for some traditional Italian/American cuisine with her main squeeze. At one point we were talking about our brother and parents and the possibility of them moving West. At a lull in the conversation I noticed how odd it is that palm trees have come to symbolize California and they are themselves a non-native species, "Actually," I said, "that's a rather appropriate allegory for California." And Melissa added,"This is where people come to invent themselves. They come to California to make a new life for themselves." Silence followed as we watched the freeway disappear beneath us and I thought about myself and how sure I had felt about moving out here only a minute before; suddenly I was unsure. I am happy with myself. I don't want to "invent" myself. Is that why she had come here? And Davey and Ghan and Kat and Sam? Are we all really running away from the East Coast that made us who we are? Are we ashamed of our paler complexions? Do we need California to make us whole?
* * *
The third day on the train began at day break with a view of a cement wall. There were two plain-clothes dicks on the train waking everyone with a flashlight in the eyes to ask if this black suitcase (full of weed) belonged to anyone. Of course no one claimed it and they felt it necessary to body-search two young Latino men just to confirm my suspicions that law-enforcers are generally racist. Funny that the only person I know of on this train who might have actually been the owner is a young white man on his way home from a summer of organic 'herbal' farming. No one was arrested though I heard the word said more than once while the dicks were talking to the Latino men. They called in their names and getting nothing from headquarters and nothing from the pockets they moved on with a suitcase full of fun. Do you think that they are going to flush that shit down the toilet or maybe burn it in the bonfire at their next police barbecue? I talked to our conductor about it- we have a very cool train conductor- he's got this serious short Jerry-Curl and wears square-rimmed bifocals, tall and thin with a great smile and always using it. He said, "Somebody is really pissed right now, but their doing a good job of hiding it."

The woman working in the cafe car makes this announcement every time she opens- four times a day. "The cafe car is now open for (meal name), and we'd like to remind you that shoes must be worn in cafe car, and if you have children with you the children must also be wearing their shoes." She must have a really terrible foot fear, or maybe it's a private joke that she has taken to its limits. We talked about Obama yesterday. She was saying that she thinks he's got the right idea- that he doesn't take money from lobbyists and is really interested in bringing the power back to the people. I asked her what she thinks it will take to get Obama elected? "We need to get people out to vote. And, people need to not see him as a black man. They need to see him as man. He's an American, half his family is white and half is black." I like him too and am ready to volunteer for his campaign when I get to Ithaca. I saw in USA Today- trashy of the trash papers- some graph that showed Hillary leading in the popularity charts with Obama trailing and Edwards at a steady third place. Man, I really don't want to see our first female president be Hillary Clinton. When I was a kid and didn't know any better I was all about her. She's a lady, my mom was in her college class, what more did I need to know. But no more. I can't see her turning this country around. I can't see her putting her finances out of mind when making decisions. She may be a woman, but she's not a role model for me, she might as well not be a woman- her attitude lacks universal compassion for human life. I'm sick of politicians who endorse aggression. War is evil, the worst of all evils. What we need is a revolutionary- a young president with the GUTS to stand up for what's right. My impression of Barrack Obama is that he believes in diplomacy, the constitution, the foundation of democracy. I want to see the aggression machine dismantled and peace made a priority. There was a moment in Salt Lake City when Emilie said, "I think we're interested in different things in art. It seems like you are more interested in the politics of art and I am more interested in the poetics of art." I can't say that I didn't feel hurt by this- I did. I felt like I was being labelled and shoved into the box of fleeting, un-lasting artists, destined to make slogan-boards and buttons for events that already happened. But after trying to deny it, I must admit that I am interested in the politics of art. This doesn't mean that I am motivated by a political agenda, and it doesn't mean that my art lacks poetry, but there is a social conscience implicit in the things that I do. I think that artistically I work in a context of free-association and my outer influences are sometimes political, often environmental, personal and social. I do have a vision of a more community oriented society- and a government that invests its resources in productive and sustainable infrastructures and activities.

In any case we will be in Chicago by 4pm today which is EXCITING! cause we have six hours to walk around before our train connection to Syracus. Four days on a train is a long time on a train. Maybe a little too long for some of us. That being said, I still prefer it to the bus, plane or car. We have made a little community here on our four-day journey. We met a rap artist, G-Child who likes to party more than anything else practically. We had some drinks, sang, talked. Last night our farmer friend opened a bottle of champagne for a bunch of us to share. G-Child got off in Denver with the invitation to collaborate some time. It would be interesting- he's working on a song right now about guns that have clips. He asked Blake if he ever "packs heat?" I want to sing a chorus on his gun song, it'll be the peace-activist teaming up with the gangsta, I'll sing "I could never kill a bird/ And I can hardly swat a fly/ But I can somehow kill mosquitos/ And I don't even really have to try/ So I guess I get it/ How a man can kill another man/ He just sees him as a pest/ and lays his soul to rest/ in the hot Arabian sand." He'll follow with a list of all the guns with clips and their special people-killing capabilities. It'll be called "Can Peace Carry a Piece?"

My body is a little tense from all the sitting- different from sitting on a bike. As we passed through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and then the Rockies I was panged with the feeling of loss at not having tackled those fantastic vistas. It felt wrong to make it through each mountain range in a matter of hours, and without breaking a sweat. I am reminded that we only made it two-thirds across before the evening cold and the dryness of the dessert sucked us into their vortex of energy loss and mental distraction. We became anxious to make, not just experience, and yet we felt compelled to keep moving to beat the winter. Out there on the road with no locomotive bubble to protect us from the reality of time, weather, the seasons, it felt as though winter was biting our heals- there was also the problem that I couldn't eat anything for a week- but now, two weeks after we said goodbye to our fantastic bicycle voyage, I feel remorse for it and long to finish. I had a dream a few nights ago that we woke up outside of Salt Lake City and I had my appetite back and we decided to go on and it felt great! Of course it is easy after two weeks rest to look back and think you could have kept going. I have to remind myself that we were ready, or rather, we were done. We recorded an album and saw the great Spiral Jetti which felt like an ending. Our last day riding confirmed it- we had a ten mile down hill into town and we were pedaling the entire time. Kansas came back with a vengeance. She wasn't going to let us off that easy. We were going to have to fight a headwind that was stronger than gravity on a 5% grade ten miles long. It should have taken us thirty minutes, but we pedaled a good two hours down this hill, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill all day just to arrive at the bottom the next morning. We never mentioned it on the blog, but Emilie had an injury this entire trip that nearly put an end to it way back in Hazard, KY. With that in mind I can rest my feelings of dissatisfaction. We went a hell of a lot farther than Hazard, KY. We met tons of people and learned more than we can rightly collect in a single work of art, piece of writing or story. People along the way would say- "This is an experience you'll never forget" and it sounded a little cliche at the time, but they're right. We are changed. Our bodies and brains have absorbed and transformed the passing of land and time and humanity in a way that will never leave us. I am grateful to all who supported us on our journey and look forward to the next evolution in this process. Keep an eye out for those postcards.

Wonder, Happiness,
Brother Kate

A Twenty Mile Climb in the Desert

2007-11-04T16:30:00.000-08:00

This is the Comb Ridge in Utah that stood in the way of the Mormon's western expansion- a ridge of stone that shoots out into the sky at 60-degrees with a sheer drop off the other side. The Mormon's lowered their covered wagons over the edge with ropes! Ropes!

Squares in the Spiral

2007-11-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

the journey to an unfrozen iceland...

2007-10-23T15:05:00.001-07:00

The faucets leak in Salt Lake City. In the three hours of sleep between bathroom visits the bath tub in Chaz's apartment has filled up nearly too much. In the bathroom at the used book store, as big and bright as a Barnes and Nobel, I consider writing "You're losing water" at the bottom of the sink before plugging it up, but decide not to, mainly since my marker is outside with my unattended bike. I am looking for the vegetarian's bible, Oahspe, and there is a copy though no one can find it. Must have gone missing. The man who told me about it says its a hard book to come by.

We have made friends with some Salt Lakians who show us around town and though they have never been to the Jetti, are excited to go. So we load up in Chaz's truck with all the necessities for a journey- as Buzz described to me on a car ride to New York once, it promises to be long and wrangley. Emilie and I squeeze in with pears we knocked down in a parking lot this morning, bread we stole off the table at Chaz's job, pastries (we bought), a guitar, saw, and disposable camera. The ride takes us from the south end of the lake to the far north end, 70 miles away. We sing along to Nirvana, Niel Young, Bonnie Raite, the Pretenders, Nina Simone, and various other memorables.

Turning down the dirt road I feel excited and giggly. If there is one thing that Emilie and I have learned on this trip- its how to laugh together. We were in this great little coffee/outfitter shop sharing a pizza with Chaz and Mitch, and we were laughing and joking our pants off, so much so that we stirred the owner who came down all happy and excited to see who was to jolly. We are now stoked with anticipation and appreciation for the experience that a little piece of paper with directions scrawled cryptically by Chris, the owner of the local record shop, has in store for us. We keep our eyes open- though we're tired from not enough sleep- for the "trash" which is a major mile marker, and then the "rusty trailer". We don't actually ever see such a trailer, only some rusty metal that resembles the roof of a car, some oil barrels, and rocks that look like the souls of seals. We name this place The Seal Graveyard. The rocks and divits in the road are getting too big so we park and begin our walk, expecting to see the landmarks- a fork in the road and a jetty, "not the spiral jetty"- around every bend. There is more road than we expected and consider that we may have gone the wrong way, but venture farther.

The sun is calling us West and the road bends toward it so we go, nearly blinded by golden. I am amazed and a little surprised to see the shore line- a good mile from the water. There is a field of crusty white crystal that beckon us to them. They are thick and icy in texture, but not cold. In fact, we are struck by how warm the water is on our cold, ashy skin. We see the first jetty and quicken our step. Chaz is playing the guitar, narrating our pilgrimage and filling the dense and beautiful silence with the sounds of dream sequences, sweet and nostalgic. The sun is setting and there it is. Long and curly like my hair after it rains.

Black airy rocks, hard with heat and time. Washes of white growing with distance mimic the surface. We enter. It feels important. It feels good. Here miles from nowhere, we are in a very peaceful place.

Instinctively we all split and wander about basking in the atmosphere- the history. The joy of fulfilling a quest, of meeting a legend. I can't get over the wonder of this Great Salt Lake, it's bed which has been growing as the water is shrinking in this sate of Utah, known for industry..."Busy as Bees" there motto, the largest open pit mine which can be seen from space is here, beside ski resorts with "the finest skiing in the US" beside the Mother Church where the Ladder Day Saints make home, where fresh water runs down the drain at an alarming rate, where the sky is blue and full of snowy peaks, where a great little enclave of hipsters make music and try to eat organic, where Robert Smithson made a reason for us to venture out and feel this strange, salty scape.

I walk the jetty, spiraling inward and think of its effect- I see the panorama three times before I come to sit at the end. Before me is the shore and an eastern view of the seal graveyard, the mountains behind it, the old jetti and several abandoned structures where there was once water. I want to cry- to donate my tears to the biggest collection of tears I've ever experienced- but I can't. I feel such joy, listening as Emilie takes her saw and Chaz his guitar. They are on the shore and I am in the center of the jetty- at the end of the jetty. I am surrounded, protected. Usually the end of a jetty is exposed and you feel vulnerable, but here I am safe. There is no wind, there is no sound, you can see no cars, no cities, nothing that is active with man, except us.

I would love to continue, but the library is about to close. More when we can. The pictures are coming too. Much Love, Kate

This is a post in the making, come back tomorrow night.

2007-10-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

Thank you Mitch for the photos in this post..and the ride to Salt Lake City. That's right fellows, we are in the city of the Great Salt Lake, which seems to be quickly turning into a great salt field. We have had a fantastic run of community meetings and chance path crossings. We saw the people who planted water for us on the Burr Trail at a little restaurant/the happening spot in the towm of Escalante, UT. We also met the boys we had seen in Boulder and convinced them, or did they convince us? to take us to Salt Lake City where we have recorded our songs at Archival Recordings Studio, made some really great food, seen the great music scene and met nice people...

Santa Fe Farmers Market

2007-10-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

We played with local busker extraordinaire Michael Comb. Photographer Jennifer Esperanza took some wonderful photos (including the one posted. www.jenniferesperanza.com www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferesperanza

At the time we were headed out of town towards Albuquerque, but the folks in Santa Fe convinced us to go north towards the red rocks. So we did!

We get it, the Desert.

2007-10-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

If you've ever driven through southern Utah you probably have a good understanding of the vastness of the canyons and ridges, the saturation of the red rocks, the contrast of sand against the green ground fur. The water mirages are there, at least Emilie can see them, and a fox too coming curiously to the edge of the road to see Kate in her red turtleneck and bushy cargo tail, chuggin on up the gravel road. Dressed in turbined headgear to protect her already rosy face from the late afternoon sun, Emilie stops at the top of the switchbacks as Kate scrambles around the last curve of the three mile uphill that is definitely curvier that "the curviest street in the world" in San Francisco, and has brought us nearly 1000feet higher in elevation. At the top we meet our water- three gallons planted the day before by some willing car travellers. Only problem is we just filled up at the bottom and can't carry the wait. We are a little less than half way up(and is is mostly climbing) the Burr Trail, an old cattle route established around 1800, is a largely gravel road, at least fifty percent gravel and slick-rock with patches of sand wash that reaches from Bullfrog, a resort town on the edge of Lake Powell to Boulder, Utah. It is about seventy miles long and there is no water in between. Here's a photo we grabbed from Flickr, (thank you dgans) to give you an idea of this stretch of road...

The nights are definitely getting colder. We spoke with this guy, Jason, the other night over a campfire that he built and chicken noodle soup that he brought, about peace. He said that to him, peace is knowing yourself. It starts with inner peace. All the people in power in this country are just children who never grew up. Around twenty-twenty six people start to understand themselves and find peace with within, and the only people who are capable of making war are those who have never found that sense of self. He talked about "clicks" how all that politics is is a bunch of clicks- just like kids in high school. All trying to be popular and impressive.

I (Kate speaking) have often thought that politicians simply don't fall in love as easy and enjoy sex as much as peaceful people- which is not to say that all politicians are war-hungry, power-hogs- but a few rotten apples can ruin the barrel, and it takes some serious backbone to peace down the fighters, Al Gore did his best. We salute! We saw a sign outside of a Navajo art gallery a while back that said "We Make Art and Love, Not War". Yeah! Art and Love. That's what it's all about!

But anyway, I wanted to say something about the desert. The desert is quiet. It's different than the quiet you know inside your house at night, different than the quiet of dawn in Ithaca- this quiet is thick and full of cotton. There are pillows of emptiness collapsing over your eardrum, silence like the feeling of free falling in a dream, hollow as the canyons that carry an echo of your KOO-EE! around the world and back again with twelve reverberations, quiet like a mother's cheek against a hot forehead or a dandelion turning into flight, quiet like a heart stopped beating and at peace in a long still night.

We had breakfast in Bullfrog at a resort(the only place to get food) where everyone was from Jamaica and Indonesia. The Indonesian people loved America and wanted to keep coming back, and the Jamaicans were ready to go home to their music and food! Looking out over the canyon, now filled with water from the dammed-up Colorado River, the landscape is strange. Bright in color and lacking in culture.

We are about to set sail(actually heading into irons as we move West) for Escalante, then Red Rocks. See you soon... Brothers

Utah!

2007-10-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

The pictures are from Kansas City. We are now in the desert, in a little town with no library. We have been through the Navajo lands and saw several little oasis' of towns all with no cell phone reception or library. We are told that there is a book-mobile that comes around once a week. There are thousands of people living without a library. But here in Bluff, the weather is fine, the water is artesian, and the people are kind.

The perfection of chance..Abiquiu, NM

2007-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that I don't understand in this world. Like why we bombed Japan and then made more and more bombs as a means to "secure peace" in the world, and why we as a nation have chosen to separate from the UN in our practice of global conquest? I just don't get where that desire comes from. I also don't understand why vinegar is good for the pH of the human body- making it more alcholine even though it is an acid, or why arid climates are good for bones. There are lots of things to learn and imagine.

Night falls and the smell of juniper rolls off the hillside racing greedily with the warm breeze into my hungry head. This is New Mexico, I think. The dessert with its freckled hills and ashen mountains blowing and rubbing and washing away to fill the gullies of already dried-up rivers. We see mostly cats and dogs for road kill, and a tall-horned elk at the roadside- unafraid, but smart enough to step aside. Dark takes bed in the wooded valley, the crooks of the peaks, my face and body, before the sky. We are reminded of sun, her blessed pressence as our skin begins to creep and get cold. There's 3.1 miles on our darkened path before we find our possible rest- the organic farm of a man that doesn't know us or even that we're coming. Richard! Linda calls out as she leads us through her neighbor's yard. She's holding a flashlight and we scramble closely behind with out bikes along the narrow bridges, around school buses and hey bails. There is a dog barking and Linda shouts again- Richard! (not American but French, Reeshard) We end up in the long bus- a beautiful schoolbus-house with kitchen and loft and wood-stove and couch. It is clean and spacious and wonderful! We awake in the middle of the night to the sounds of Emilie's imagination, speaking so loudly and visciously in her dreams that we heard them out of her head. Eric had planted a seed of trouble through a bad cell-phone connection and we had to actively banish the fearful thoughts which have been altogether foreign to our minds so far. In the morning we woke without an alarm, only the rooster crowing Goodmorning! Feed us! And we will, with the compost from our feast of morning greens, eggs, peppers, potatoes, garlic and cream, all from the farm or a neighbor's farm. Amazing the bounty and beauty. We continue on our way today to a sheep farm north 50 miles. I hope to find a bed that is a pile of wool.

We were in Los Alamos the other day, visiting ancient pueblo ruins and the nuclear bomb museum. There seems to be a strong disconnect in the presentation of the museum and the history which it disturbed and created. We visited a farmer's market the next morning and changed our course completely per the recomendatios of the man, Michael who we played music with, and his friends, Hilda (from Ithaca no foolin!) and Jennifer the photographer who kindly shot the photos that will soon be a part of this post.

Off goodbye, the road ahead lies... Rose and Ed the Tiny Invisibility Circus are only 80 miles from us, but we will not be able to make it as it would cause a back-tracking and we are hot on the trail of some wool, hot-springs and Moab, UH. Lots of love and fun...Kate

Vote's are in and so are we... in Santa Fe, NM

2007-10-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

The votes were so close for the last day of our Kansas City stay that we decided to combine the two most popular. It was a difficult decision and your votes made it much easier, thank you all for your input, I hope that no one is disappointed with the verdict. At 10:55pm on Saturday night we boarded a train from Kansas City, MO to Lamy, NM. We arrived this afternoon and road north to Santa Fe in search of the sister of a friend of the family of Stark. KC was great! We got to see all of Emilie's family, see some great art, eat well, and see the unveiling the busts. Tomorrow we head South to Albuquerque where there is a Balloon Festival happening. Our plan is to offer our musical accompaniment on balloon rides...

Here's a photo of us in Missouri on the Katy Trail, (thank you Robert Atkinson). We are still without working camera but will have more pictures soon via disposable camera. More later:

Basket Balls and Holy Bells: Emilie's Re-Poem-Port

2007-10-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Installment 1: A Re-poem-Port inspired by the Sisters of St. Benedict of Ferdinand, Indiana

Imagine sitting in a huge vaulted marble room, bells, harp and organ slipping around the columns and over the pews like the black and grey seams passing through the white marble. The faith and the marble come from Italy. The hand cut wood pews, with their swirling vegetation come from Germany. An Amen and silence, except for the sound of 15 rubber basketballs reverberating through the crypt, shaking down the silk knee-highs of a little old nun at the noon day prayer. “We would be praying and you’d hear all these balls bouncing.” A high school for girls was located in the crypt below the church. The basketball court was inserted in 4 sections between the stone ground in 8’ sections of 2” shiny wooded floorboards. The black game circles were worn through by the rubber tennis shoes. The girls are gone.

I particularly loved the way the crypt recorded time. The walls were thick at the bottom of the basilica to bare the weight of this religion. Huge cave windows of smooth plaster were cut into the walls, portals into the day and the changing light. The daylight revealed a stratum of memory, first the crypt was a storage space for holy relics, then a basketball court and theater, then a chapel, while the church was being restored, then an art gallery…soon I think a burial ground.

Kate and I frequent gas stations these days. Gas stations are good place to wake up, drink coffee, watch the birds play games on the telephone wires, get directions to places we’ve never been. I love the bright colors, particular the two shades of green used for the BP logo. Gas stations produce allot of disposable energy like candy wrappers, gasoline and Styrofoam cups. We’ve been to stations in Virginia, Kentucky, Indian, Illinois and Missouri. Are these florescent oasis’s non-places? They don’t record memories like the crypt in the church of St. Benedict. They will be bulldozed and flattened, bulldozed and flattened—leaving behind a soda can, trash or artifact? I wonder if people become streamlined like gas stations, hotels, highways, sub-divisions.

We sat in the church during the noon day prayer. All I could hear was the fountain between the almost whispered choruses of nuns chanting the psalms. The sound of a fountain, cool and contained added to the mellow drone. I saw hundreds of rows of pearly white and gold teeth opening and closing. Do not let the enemy in. The wind is blowing, shut all your doors!—open your heart to God…

I was imagining the way the church looked before it was restored in 2005. The Nave peaked in a spine of parachuting canvas and lopsided boards blooming into an upside down forest of horse hair. We would be sitting beneath the great underbelly of a wooly mammoth. I remembered…

…a walk with Will through Gaudi’s still unfinished la Sagrada Familia. The columns like thick milk thistle holding up the sky, creating a space of buoyancy somewhere between gravity and weightlessness. We played hide and seek in this massive fossil, but never found each other because we were always looking up. Later that night, we stumbled down a paved stone alley into a church that held the sound of the wind like a conque shell. Thousands of porticoes, some with wrought iron gates, were flickering little movies. Paintings of weeping women and dying men were glowing above mounds of smoldering red candles. I reached my hand into the smoke, dropping a coin, and lighting a wick for Papa. My grandfather was shipwrecked, on a raft for 48 days. Each day, he lay in the sun and salt eating chocolate, until it ran out. He ate condensed milk, until it ran out. He ate his own daydreams and then he was found. I am looking for milk thistle; it is supposed to remedy the gallbladder.

Kate and I are on our bicycles. We need to make it to Kansas City by Saturday at 2pm for the unveiling of a clay head that looks like my papa--Nathan Stark. Busts have gone out of fashion. It will be strange to look into this new face, especially because my grandfather was always a good four feet taller than me. Yes, it will be strange to look directly into his eyes, a head on top of a pedestal.

The hill was steep. The rain was unrelenting. Agnes Maria Dauby, Assistant director of Vocation Ministries led us through arcades, halls and courtyards to the Monastery’s Swap shop a small room filled with neat rows of pastel shirts, underwear, bras and slacks. Everything was soft and dry. We were quickly transformed and spent the next hour chatting over hot chocolate and glazed cinnamon cake.

“I don’t see how people can make it through life without God.” She was wearing a flower button down blouse. “My parents installed the faith in us.” Agnes Maria’s father worked at an army ammunition plant, driving a forklift. Her mom worked at a plastic factory where they made canisters for bubbles. I’m Imagining a whole factory filled with rotating gears, boiling plastic, and billions of bubbles. She grew up in a house, whose walls were covered in holy pictures. My grandmother on my Dad’s side had a hologram of Jesus’ face outside the bathroom. You’d look at your own face in the mirror, and then open the door and see Jesus. Depending on your point of view sometimes he had a halo and sometimes he had a crown of thorns and blood drops.

A nun in a sparkly gold top gave us a tour of the church. I can’t remember her name. I am trying to remember all the names of the people we have met on this journey. The one that sticks with me right now is AriAnA. She is nine and an expert lemonade entrepreneur. We didn’t actually meet. Her father told us about how he loved her name. “It has three A’s! When you right it out, the A’s become the mountain peaks. You can draw clouds swirling around the peaks.” Kate drew the clouds. We left the drawing on the kitchen counter in a town we might never see again.

Into Missouri and Kate's First Sermon:

2007-10-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that there's a two-hundred and twenty-five mile bike trail running through the middle of America? It's called the Katy Trail, and runs east-west through Missouri along what used to be railroad tracks. There is a freckling of little towns along the Katy trail, most of which seem in varying states of decrepitude and historification. Many were first river towns before a major flood re-routed the Missouri and the railroad came in giving new life to these majestic rural communities. The railroad service stopped in this area in 1986, plans for the trail began shortly after.

On our first day in Missouri we rode west into the headwinds that nearly stopped us in our tracks. The day before on our way to meet our lunch-date at the Lone-Star Steak House, (these men had seen us two days in a row in two different towns and asked us out for lunch West of where we saw them,) we had timed ourselves at 19 mph, but this wind brought us back to maybe 5 mph. We hadn't had breakfast and were expecting an easy 15 mile ride before meeting the head of the trail, but an easy 15 miles turned into a blusterily-tedious 30-plus miles before breakfast. By the time we got to St. Charles we were exhausted and hungry. We ate a full meal, took a nap, played music on the grass and had cannoli and espresso at a little Sicilian bakery in St. Charles before jumping on the trail. We rode beside the river for a while before snaking into a canopy of black walnut, burr oak and long, sturdy vines draping over the limbs of smaller trees. The ride was a nice change from the highways that had brought us from Louisville to the outskirts of St. Louis.

We have been riding since Evansville, IN with a broken camera. We got rained on and somehow, despite the Ziploc bags, it got wet. So bear with our wordy posts while we search for a replacement.

Every place we've been since Virginia the rivers have been low, algae ridden or totally dry, and the city water as a result tastes like algae or sulfur. We met a real nice guy, Dion Peek, who let us sleep in his antique shop, all creaky and dusty and incredibly comfortable, rode a bit the next morning to find breakfast and were turned away from the only place open in town. Stopped outside of a house with a sign that said "Think Peace" to adjust Emilie's tire, and were offered a breakfast of homegrown eggs and whole grain toast. Mmmm. (We'll talk more about that in the Think Peace post). A little later we got our fifth flat tire of the trip and met some nice people who took our picture, and convinced us to spend the night in Herman where we celebrated our almost half-way across the USA, over a glass of wine and some Schnitzel.

Not in Missouri, at least not along the Katy Trail, but everywhere before it seems like people like to burn their trash as much as they like to make biscuits. Seems like every ten miles I smell one or the other, biscuits, trash, biscuits...

Being on the road you have a lot of time to think. I would say that more than anything I think about my country. I think about how dissatisfied I am with the connection between people and their government, and how I want to see that change. The people of this country are as good and generous and kind as it gets, but the government of this country is as aggressive and power-hungry as it gets. I am riding along through this fantastic landscape and thinking to myself, what happened? When did America become a power-hungry, fear infested nation? When did CEO's and the Military become the leaders of our nation? Why has privatization been allowed to transform this generous nation into a wealth-building corporation? We can look back at the transformation- the rape of the land and native people, the settlement of Europeans and the development of Democracy- a great idea with bloody hands shaking guiltless at the signings- the unbridled development of capitalism, the creation of American billionaires and the eventual change. It's quite clear how our country has come to a place of paranoid preemptive terrorism. But we stand at an intersection with two clear paths before us. We can continue, as citizens of this nation, to let the machine of destructive militarism to search and conquer until we are hated and feared by all the nations that were once our allies, or we can create change, massive restructuring of the goals of our government. We can stand-up and refuse this war-hungry administration. I personally accept that I have not done my part in the cause of peace. I have not gone to the marches on Washington, I have not written letters to the president. I have not put aside my personal desire for comfort and safety in order to stand up for what I know is absolutely right.

I want to make this world a less violent place. I want to make this country an admirable place again. It is important to vote. It's important to vote for what you BELIEVE in. We met a man in the bakery in Herman, MO who had fought in the Korean war. He was talking about the newspaper and the History Channel and how the History Channel tells the story as it actually happened, and the newspaper is just politics. He said he was ready for a Third Party. I think that I'm ready for the abolition of the party system. I'm ready to see people declassified, government for the people by the people. Officials who run for the ideas that they stand for, not for a Democratic or Republican modification of such. I'm sick of appeasement. Everyone so eager to please, to feed the cycle. I don't want to see the first woman president of the USA doing the same crooked shit that everyone before her has done. Enough with politics! Can we get our priorities straight? Our country is in a state of financial and spiritual crisis. We don't need God, and we don't need War and we don't need Propaganda and we don't need Credit. What we need is Community. We need each other. We need to restructure our resources. We need to keep our taxes in our homeland and stop paying people to kill other people in countries across the ocean.

In short...we need to stop our government from aggressive actions.
We need to follow our hearts and do what we FEEL is right.
We need to take responsibility for our Nation and the people who run it in our name.
We need to reclaim America and save it from the falls of empire.

Between Berea, KY and Jeffersonville, IN

2007-09-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Uranium Glass in an antique shop near Berea, KY...also found a monkey clanging a pair of cymbals, a set of unusually sized wood checkers, and a couple of blackened saws that didn't quite resonate.

Tobacco Drying. Most of the barns we've seen tobacco in are painted black--possibly to absorb the sun, creating a hot house for drying.

Dried up riverbed--Kentucky is living through the largest drought in its history.

Lancaster, KY Church and water tower. Lancaster...City of the Golden Lion!

A typical stone wall that walled in the pastures on the way to Perryville KY, the Civil war battlefield where we slept.

Log Cabin for my Dad (Paul Menneg)

Modernist Building in front of the Queen of America steamer ship. We tried unsuccessfully to sing our way on.

Terry's beautiful Victorian house, which he has been restoring for the last 20 years.

Louisville, KY and on...

2007-09-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

It's hard to decide to stay or go. We find ourselves rolling into a nice town, big newly renovated library, eat some good hot food, and the rain starts pouring down and we wonder... stay? go?

For a moment we will stay and see if the rain will at least slowdown. There is a little girl wearing a headband with a battery pack and her grandmother is tugging her around by the arm like she was a sock monkey. Gracey-Joe is 3 and doesn't talk much but she likes dancing with us.

We decided to take a break from the rural bible belt and head north to Louisville, KY for a little urban revival...We called our first Warm Showers contact, Zach, and stayed for two nights in a lovely part of town, with music and good pizza. Katie, Zach's partner, gave us back rubs- AMAZING- and Emilie finally slept, pretty well. I made a huge batch of granola with oats, sesame, raw pumpkin and flax seeds, raisins, almonds, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, ginger, and nutritional yeast. We sent a bunch of it ahead to Kansas City which is where we hope to be in ten days to meet up with Emilie's mom and a bust of her late grand-daddy. We are trying to convince Blake to come out and join us, but he is reluctant, thinks that he'll throw off our gender issues.

This morning we woke, beside a man made waterfall and a high levee with railroad on top to find that we had been sleeping in poison ivy. The train rolled through all night long and Emilie was excited, like waving her arms and jumping out of bed every time. I cut my hair some more. It's almost there...almost gone...

So we tried to catch a ride on the river boat Queen, a fancy schmancy steam boat that was paddling on to St. Louis and we were nearly accepted as deck-hands but they chickened out at the last minute, protocol. So we went across the river and state line to Jeffersonville, IN where we met this wonderful man Terry who directed us to the American Barge Company where we were directed to the Vice-President who told us that we couldn't ride on a barge due to liability. Protocol. Liability. Everywhere we go we run into people who follow. But every now and again, the systems break open and you can collect a bunch of chestnuts under a tree, meet a sweet man with a mind for soliloquy and nearly convince him to leave behind his normal routine for a few days and head west with two young women as happy and full of life as himself. That's Terry. He lives in a great Victorian home with a pool house, carriage house and herb garden. He's a mason and has been fixing up this old place for the past 20 years. It is a really beautiful house, with a player piano and a baby grand, lots of windows and space. His family grew up and moved out and now he lives in two of the nine or more rooms. We drank energy drink and super greens and headed out to see the fossil beds of the Falls of the Ohio. We swam in the warm river waters and had our brains eaten out by diving vultures.

As we go on I start to wonder about this country, how people got to think the way they do. Like we're living in some dangerous, drug infested, wild human-eating animal place? Everywhere we've been people have showered us with kindness and hospitality, and still they say how dangerous it is to be travelling "alone" in this country. First of all, its funny that two women together= alone. Simple math friends, Emilie + Kate = not alone. I like challenging this notion that women are weak and can't take care of themselves, and I like challenging the idea that we need to be afraid. Where is this fear from? Do these people know other people that they fear as much as the people that they imagine that we should fear? And how much does this fear debilitate the people who behold it?

We are working on a new theatre piece dealing with the Constitution of the United States of America, checkers, and cake. I found an accordion in Berea and have been learning to play it as well as learning to juggle coal from the mountain top removal site. Emilie is getting notes on her saw now, and we're heading west to find an Abby that we heard about, 45 mile on our way. The rain has calmed down and we're off! Thanks for reading, Kate

Every Mine Has a Dog

2007-09-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

“Coal is a curse…mining is the most dangerous job in the world.” --Jim Webb

“Reclamation is like putting lipstick on a corpse.” Harry Caudill

CAM (Central Appalachia Mining) 3 Mile Job
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MRCM)

We ride our bicycles up a steep rocky road next to a river bed. Eventually we are in the middle of a dry canyon surrounded by dense conifer trees. A lone Pepsi vending machine is perched on an outcropping, bright blue and red against the sandstone.

A white truck covered in hardened cracked mud plows down the road. When the dust settles, we ask Johnny Sexton if we could go up over the flattened hilltops to look at the mine. Unfortunately we can't because everyday at 4:30 the mine is scheduled to blast. It is 4:15. A series of hefty trucks appear on the horizon of the hill, tearing towards us like a herd of spooked cattle. “You see everyone is leaving for the blast…we had a guy killed here last week, rock came out of the sky landed on the other side of the ridge-line; hit him on the head. It was terrible. Nothing like that has happened in five years.” Johnny cracks the door, and spits at the ground, a black puddle of tobacco sludge. “Just terrible, I was called to a supina, had to testify in court, was held responsible for a freak accident...I’ve seen a lot of people die, in Vietnam in car crashes... I am an emergency technician, when this guy went down, I grabbed my bag and ran towards him, but it was too late.”

Johnny concedes that mountaintop removal damages the ecosystem. “How could it not? Here we are busting up solid rock. It messes up the entire water table.” He says that because of increased levels of toxins and sulfur in the ground water most small towns in Kentucky that had previously run off of well water are now on a city reviser. On the other hand, he loves the adrenaline rush. “You think you get high when you get speed...try blowing up a mountain! We work all day, set up, make sure every things in place and then I get to push the button. We’ve got systems now where you can be a mile away and still cause the blast."

Sirens blare over the intercom in his truck. It’s hot and I can smell gasoline burning—I’m thinking about what it’s like to blow up an ancient mountain. “Siren means, all clear, set to blast in one minute.” He turns the engine of his car off and we wait in the silence for the sound. Kate says "It’s like waiting for the world to end." All three of us hold our breaths. But we hear nothing. “Well, that’s it. I bet you girls can head up and get a look around."

Every mine has a dog. CAM 3 Mile Job has two dogs. A brown and white dog called Killer Bobby, and a fierce looking black dog named Susie. We met Greg, the night shift foreman who’s worked at this mine for 16 years. He, like the majority of miners we’ve talked to, has been in the business for 30. He works 4--14 hour shifts a week on a yearly salary. Although he's been in the industry for over half of his life, he still does not have the power to decide what gets blasted. He said a lot of big businesses like Wexford Holding Company in NJ own and operate these mines deep in Kentucky.

He wanted to be an accountant, but his wife had to have a hysterectomy at 28 and options changed. He drives us up the mountains, deeper into the mine. Over his intercom we hear something about "copperhead and pigtails," a statement undoubtedly referring to the two of us girlies riding in his truck. We laugh and tease him about how lucky he is to be showing us around. He says he'll probably get a lot of shit for it tonight.

Three mile job is extensive. First we pass through a series of partially reclaimed mountain tops. Perfectly curved flattop hills covered in native grasses and a few sections of reforested Locus. When asked if he remembers what the mountains use to look like on this site he replies, yes of course. We drive over the ridge line into an arid moonscape of pillars of cracked rock and deep craters. An army of massive trucks, with wheels twice the size of human beings, stand ready to battle the stars.

Greg believes that Surface Mining and Control Reclamation Act (SMCRA) is a good thing. After coming down a steep chute, we approach a series of artificial ponds which are used as part of SMCRA to catch the water and sediment from the mine. I asked if the ponds held toxic material and he replied that they didn't. He disagreed with Johnny saying that the MRCM did not directly destroy the drinking water in the area. He reiterated that if MRCM is done mindfully it is a safe a reliable way of extracting coal.

The explosive is comprised of 94% Ammonium Nitrate and 6% Diesel. He says that the process of clearing the shot rocks is very efficient. A front-end loader relocates all of the rock debris. The revealed seam of coal is collected and loaded onto trucks and taken to trains where it is shipped to the highest bidder, usually ending up in a power plant blast furnace. We drive on top of the newly revealed coal seam which is 6-18 inches thick. The next seam of coal below this one is an estimated 26-28 feet underground; it is a 4 foot deep seam. We examine several revealed seams, the dense black is filled with waves of a rustier color. Greg explains that the rust is sulfur, but that the coal in this job is relatively low sulfur. This coal has a high British Thermal Unite (BTU). The area that was blasted today is a typical size: 51 feet of mountaintop were blasted off in a 90' by 90' area. Before blasting, 40 holes, spaced approximately 16 ft apart, were drilled in a grid pattern across the 90' square surface. The mostly sandstone and shale shelf is drilled with a 6 ¾” or 7 7/8” diameter rotary drill all the way to the top of the desired coal seam, in this case 51 feet deep. Each of the holes is filled with 40 lb. of explosives--ANFO. The top 8 feet of the hole is filled with drill cuttings.

Greg projects another 100 years of coal in these mountains. As we ride out of the mine we all imagine that a long time ago all of these mountains were covered in seaweed at the bottom of the ocean.

Berea, KY

2007-09-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

So it may have taken us longer than we thought, but ten days later, with two days rest and we are through the Appalachian Mountains! We slept in a barn last night, with Smokey the colt and George the calf to keep us company. Everyone has been sweet, we've been given places to stay, homemade spoonbread in jars, good hot meals, and about 200$ in donations, without ever asking for anything. The people of this countryside are sweeter than peaches. We seem to have made it out of coal country, out of the poorest county in the country- which happens to have the worst tasting water. Everyone buys water, why? The coal mines have made the wells really sulfuric- but the city water(highly chlorinated) doesn't taste any better. The streams are all running dry due to a drought, and there is an abundance of trash- both burning and not. We met nice man today who was pucking up trash from the side of the road.

Whitesburg, KY

2007-09-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well who'd a thunk it. Last night we had our first run-in with a hoser- that's right, some drunk-up hill-billy riding back and forth in his car tryin to get us to pull over. Of course we payed him no mind and stopped a woman driver on the road and asked if she wouldn't mind driving behind us for a while till he left us alone. Sure enough, he took off with his tail between his legs. We ended up riding with this very nice lady and her son William all the way to the next town. We talked to her about it, she spoke with a sweet low drawl of a coutry singer, beautiful- reminded me of my mothers mother, she said, "That's my neighbor. He's got a wife and kid, it just makes sick." So we were safely delivered to the firehouse where we were told the city park'd be the best place for us to hull up. A night of false starts, waking every hours or so hoping it was daylight. When it finally came we were about to leave town and I just felt like I needed something hot in my belly. So we went over to the pharmacy where we'd had dinner the night before, and ordered two coffees and some toast. Got to talking with the lady's sittin there and they suggested we stop in at the Appalshop(appalshop.org), a non-profit recording studio/film studio/radio station. Shiela and Clea sent us off with a very nice and unexpected donation, and we stopped in 20 miles later to meet their cousin, Jim Webb. He introduced us to DJ Willard Hall who was hosting the Scuttlehole Gap Get-Together and would you believe it, he put us on the air! The radio show is a bluegrass show, and we sang the other night on top of Big A Mountain in VA at a bluegrass get together. So now when people ask us what kind of music do we make we say, Newgrass Artrock. Thank you to all who got us on the air. See you in hollywood! Kate

Emilie's Coal Mine Report

2007-09-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Cherokee Coal Mine just outside of Honaker, Virginia

After eating for a good two hours at a sweet country kitchen—the usual—breakfast on the road, break your belt eggs over-easy/medium, home fries, biscuits with gravy, sausage patties and an omelet and several cups of coffee, we made it up the first hill. We were just about to enter the Breaks Interstate Park between Virginia and Kentucky, when we found the Cherokee Coal Mine!

We met George, 60 yrs, who has worked at this mine for the last 10 years. Now he works above ground, but he worked underground for 27 years. He showed us around above grown operation facilities, machinery, maps…gave us some very refreshing cold water and tips on how to avoid copperheads and rattlesnakes.

The Cherokee coal mine is the lowest mine within the surrounding mountains. It is not a strip-mine, but higher-up the mountain is stripped. They produce enough coal a day to fill 90-100 coal trucks. Each truck carries 40 tons (which is a mixture of rock and coal). This mine produces a very pure coal which is then mixed with other coal (with higher sulfur content) from the surrounding mines. The coal is then loaded onto trucks and taken to shipyards. Most of the coal from this mine is shipped to JAPAN--amazing from the Appalachian mountains of eastern Virginia all the way across the sea. Basically the coal is sold to the highest bidder. Recently the coal has sold for 180 dollars a ton, which is the most it’s ever sold for.

The mine is in operation 24/7. There are 4 shuttle cars in each section of the mine. And 12 men plus the boss on each shuttle car. No women presently employed at Cherokee. The miners work 10 hour shifts at $19 an hour, and overtime. On the sixth day they get double time. The bosses make between 70-80 thousand dollars a year.

These days the miners are traveling about 4 miles into the ground on shuttle cars with ripper heads for removing the coal. The tunnel is 20 feet wide by 43 inches high. Miners are not required to wear a respirator, only some do. Fan ventilation is required in all areas of the mine that are open and accessible to miners. Areas of the mine that are no longer in use are sealed off. The mine is also equipped with carbon monoxide detectors.

The miners take their lunch break underground. Smoking is not allowed but chewing tobacco suffices. Most reuse containers for holding ripper heads and bits as lunchboxes. Gary, who has worked underground for the last 36 years, loves fresh fruit for lunch. “I carry a fruit basket in my bucket.” He loves working as a miner following in the footsteps of his father. George on the other hand, wishes he had stayed in school, and would love to be hunting and fishing instead of mining.

Both George and Gary are interested in the idea of alternative energy--wind, solar etc. as coal is not a sustainable form of energy. They also say that there is not a lot of information available about progressive energy in the area, and that, as of late, coal mining is a thriving industry.

Photos from the mountains...

2007-09-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Miners off to Work

2007-09-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

To see a video of the miners riding out to work go to: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8491973480075724288&hl=en

Damascus, VA

2007-09-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

The bikeshop boys in Damascus convinced us to stay and do a show at their laundromat so we stayed in the soggy mountains for another day. The show was interesting, mostly men and some teenagers. At first the youngers were really wierded out, and then later seemed interested and inspired. Ate dinner with the nicest guy in town, Larry, who made us two prokchops a piece! We gobbled 'em down and had extra for lunch the next day. We saw a fourteen-year-old country singer, Ashkin, singing about broken hearts and all at the Old Mill where they make some really great potato chips. Met a woman Lorrie who had a broken heart of her own and are hoping to see her up in Ithaca some time for a real nice reunion.

In the Mountains of Appalachia

2007-09-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

Here we are, up high in the sky, climbin through rain and wind. We took two separate routes yesterday to experience the separation. It was nice in some ways, Kate didn't feel slow, Emilie got to climb the mountain real fast, but in the end we've decided to ride together. We met a biker who just came in from SF and is two days away from the end of his tour. It took him 50days, with only two days off. We stayed at a lovely little hostel in Damascus, The Place and cooked a meal on our little stove which we packed up this morning and sent off with our computer, the film camera, Kate's sleeping bag liner, Emilie's eye-liner, some clothes, and a couple of tools. Kate's bike is much lighter now and Emilie has a new, true tire. We ripped our the states we needed from the road atlas and ditched the rest. People had been asking us if we were riding for something, and Kate said, without thinking, "We're riding for peace." And that seemed about right since we started riding on September 11th. People ask, "What does it mean to ride for peace?" And we don't have a great answer. It seems like riding for peace means you put a sign on the back of your bike that people see, and simply that seeing makes them feel something or think something. There are signs all over this damn country talkin about Love Jesus and Support The Troops, and so far I think we're the only sign that says anything about Peace. Kate passed a church sign that said, "The things you do in this life, will echo throughout eternity." So maybe our peace signs will echo a little, maybe it means the same thing as Support The Troops, just from a different angle. They also ask, "Do you have a gun? Pepper spray?" We don't have any weapons 'cept our own wit. So far we're doing okay. Keep us in mind, and imagine blowing at our backs to help us battle the headwinds. Love, Both

Hollins University Show

2007-09-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

Our second day in Roanoke, one flat tire, one great dance class with Miguel Gutierrez. We doubled the length of our show--took baths in the sinks, kate bruised her bum, emilie got a really bad wedgy. Over dinner we were given great tips on how to avoid sketchy situations on the road. Thanks to everyone at Hollins for hosting us! Especially to Kate Abarbanel and Donna Faye Burchfield.

First Show in Roanoke!

2007-09-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Raonoke, VA at 4:30am and slept in a really comfortable bed... woke before noon and did a show at two at the Grand Roads Laundromat! Thank you Becky for your support, you are as wild as you were when you left home at sixteen! Our new moto is "barefoot and braless!"

2007-09-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

If you think you've seen us around Ithaca in the today, you're not mistaken. And yes, we have changed our tour dates. We'll be kicking off our tour on Saturday at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. But before we go, stop by Juna's for our openning on Friday evening from 5-7. Check out images from the lake show, aswell as original sculptures by us and get yourself on our postcard list.

The BS Brothers present: The High School Marching Band!

2007-09-02T22:53:00.001-07:00

Ithaca's Lake Show

2007-08-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

We're busy as wild hornets preparing for our tour which starts in eight days! And at the same time, making a website, making a dance performance on a raft (which we are making with a lot of help from farmers and friends), trying to raise money for our trip, looking for sponsorship from energy bar companies, and tying up loose ends for a two month hiatus. It feels a little like starting college, or summer camp. There is the eminent departure looming with great anticipation and trepidation. We're having a benefit art show at Juna's Cafe in Ithaca, NY for the month of September. All proceeds will go to feeding our hungry hundred mile days, film cost for documentation and fixing our flats. We'll have phones and occasional internet access, so if you want to meet up along the way, holla' out and we'll let you know our coordinates. The plan: we're driving the Winnebago Art Gallery to Roanoke, VA to start our trip and leave it with a friend, Kate Abarbanel who will be having a show in it while we're away, then we head west to hook up with the Transatlantic Bike Route that will lead us to Utah before we make our own route from there to San Francisco. The goal? To make it to SF in eight weeks. Crazy? Maybe, but we're very silly and believers in making impossibility a reality. Our going away show takes place on Cayuga Lake in Ithaca and will commence at 7pm on August 31st, at East Shore Park, directly following the Critical Mass from the Commons.