It's a Brand New Year

Christopher and Ayden La Celle.

We had a busy time over Christmas and New Years: Marsha’s three children and seven grandchildren all gathered in Bossier City. Lupita came with husband Matt from Moses Lake, Washington and their three sons, Jacob, Christopher and Jordan. Jacob will be graduating from High School this year and looking for a baseball scholarship to college.


Jun came with husband Mike from Portland, Oregon where they are doctors and cancer researchers. Baby Ayden is just a few months old and was the hit of the season, naturally.

Matt and Mike explored their old stamping grounds and a bunch of us went to the Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl (isn’t that a contradiction?) where two teams which had managed as many wins as losses during the recent football season battled with one another for some kind of bragging rights. It was a once in a lifetime experience. I mean that.

Marsha’s brother Dick came from San Antonio with Phyllis and their son/ grandson Nate, and we celebrated Dick’s 60th birthday and our 25th Wedding Anniversary (Nov. 28th, but we were on the road) and New Years Eve, too. Also, Grandpa LaCelle and wife Alice came from Albuquerque for a few days and stayed with most everybody over at Shelly, Timothy, Ryan and Emily's place. And a great time was had by all.

On Christmas Day we talked on the transatlantic blower to my sister Fiona in Highgate, London. She and Gerald were hosting a family Christmas dinner: my daughter Justine, the author of the recently released “Spin the Bottle,”
(see Tin Press) her husband Hugh, my brother Peter and wife Joan from the Gold Coast of Australia. We vowed that we would spend next Christmas in blighty.

We began the Travelogue season in Florida, which is nice in midwinter. Soon we’ll be in the frozen north and we are reading about all the chilly weather which is prevalent in places like Michigan, at the moment. Oh well.



The Fire God!




Singing around the campfire, Geneva, Florida.
Note: The two bottom pictures can be glued together so that Janet's legs form the connecting point.

In Florida we spend one day at the beach near Palm Harbor where our old friend Bunny Coppock lives; and we spent a couple of days near Orlando where Janet Williams from Unadilla Forks, New York (Marsha’s home village), was staying with her son, longtime Florida denizen, Duane. The highlight there (well, there were the oysters, too) was an evening with the fire god at Duane’s place. We got to sing and meet new people and we hope to be back in Florida in January next year.

Merry Christmas

When we first met Bimbo, she was part of this Border Collie community (OK, there's a Shelty in there, too) which lives in Langton Matravers, Dorset. We saw her running on a hillside near the English Channel and she looked so much like Cammie from a distance that our hearts missed a beat and we had to get to know her.
Zoe, her mistress, said that she was a little standoffish, so we shouldn't be surprised if she didn't bond with us; she wasn't even likely to go for walks with Peggy, Zoe's mother, or other family members. But Bimbo took to us. She chose us. She bonded immediately and came to our camper and went on tour with us to pubs all over England that summer of 1996. At the end of the season we said our tearful farewells.
Next summer we were back in England and our first act was to go and get Bimbo so she could travel with us again. At the end of that summer, Zoe gave us this gift, this dog which became the third member of our traveling show. We never took her back to England: there were quarantine rules which later relaxed somewhat for continental travelers, and there were doggie passports, but Bimbo really didn't take well to air travel, so we never put her into a plane again. Zoe and Peggy never got to see her, but we kept them abreast of her life and when Bimbo passed away in October, they wept along with us.
Anyway, these are Zoe's dogs now: none of them knew Bimbo personally, but they are all members of Zoe's group and they do agility training and live with a cat and a bird and some other creatures. When we visit Langton Matravers we take them for walks on the hills and go for drinks at the Square and Compass in Worth Matravers (see the scene with the Morris dancers in our film, "La Manche: The English Channel" and the the border collies' scene in "It's Great! Britain.")
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Back Home in Louisiana

Home. Our house has survived our neglect once again and we have our new room and modern bathroom now, so it's even better than staying at a Motel 6. Without Bimbo we were able to experiment with non-Motel 6 motels and we stayed at 3 or 4 motels with indoor swimming pools. Memorable was Howard Johnson's in Lincoln, Nebraska, which had a huge pool and resort type area. The (yes) Motel 6 in Waterloo, Iowa, has a welcoming indoor pool, as does the Comfort Inn in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was part of our payment for doing the lecture series there. There was a least one other pool but I can't think of it at the moment.
The great thing is that during the winter months very few people use the pools, so we are mostly alone in there. And there's usually a hot tub involved as well.
And speaking of "lecture series," I refer to these wonderful institutions in New England which are FREE lecture series. A benefactor, a Carnegie, perhaps, or some such, has left a chunk of money to perpetuate the education of the masses through an annual series of illustrated lectures, and we are the current beneficiaries of this remarkable foresight. Portsmouth, NH, is one such series. The benefactor in this case being a modest school teacher named Phyllis Hodgdon whose family carries on the tradition.
I love these series best of all: others are in Concord, New Hampshire, Greene and Portland, Maine, and Woburn, Mass. These are examples of the American spirit at its greatest. The hell with jazz; give me a free lecture series any day.
Merry Christmas.

Traveling the Lost Continent

I am reading Bill Bryson's "Lost Continent" which has a great deal to say about Iowa and other places we are visiting on this first leg of the 2007-08 season. Bimbo is no longer with us, but we have a slew of memories and lots of documents of her life with us. Attached is Bimbo and the friendly squirrel near Multnomah Falls, Oregon, from a couple of years back.
Now we are in Grand Island, Nebraska, at the Island Motel in which "all the rooms are nice" (The Proprietess) and they are, but the first one we were assigned didn't do well on the High Speed Wireless, so we got an upstairs room instead. Both the rooms are nice.
The Buffalo with Marsha is in Nebraska, but not Grand Island. It's at Kearney (pronounced "Carney") where there is also a bridge across I-80. If you saw the movie "About Schmidt" — and not a lot of people did — with Jack Nicholson in an RV, you have seen this spot. It's sort of a "Now you're really in the West" type of monument, like the Arch in St. Louis, but further west.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 11th of November, Veterans Day, we do a show at the renovated Grand Theater downtown. La Manche/The English Channel has a wonderfully sad segment on the Normandy Landing Beaches and I've been pushing this feature for this show.
Yesterday we drove up from Bella Vista, Arkansas, after a show at the Arts Center of the Ozarks. It was the premier of La Manche and it went well, lots of compliments from the older folks and one guy who'd actually landed on D-Day, having taken the place of an officer who'd been killed in Operation Tiger, the one we mention where 750 men were killed by German E-boats off the Slapton Sands in Devon, several weeks before D-Day.
The other day when we did France - perhaps it was in Madison, Wisconsin - a veteran came up an gave us copies of his maps of the advance of his regiment from Omaha Beach towards St. Lo in the weeks following the landings. It was slow going and he was a medic, which probably wasn't a lot of fun.
It's great to have the reactions from these few survivors who are always so thankful and so outgoing in their appreciation of the recognition we give them in the French film and now in La Manche.
We have lots of La Manche's to do now: Fremont, Lincoln, Kearney and a couple of shows just north of Denver before we take our Thanksgiving break which involves a drive to Portland, Maine, from Colorado.
There's a lot of driving involved but the perqs are visiting with old friend and relations. In Bella Vista we stayed overnight with Cathy and Jim Reed whom we had not seen for ten years. Cathy is a dear friend from Shreveport from back in the Mr. Rooter (she got a buyer for the company), Mama Mia and Gaslight Theater days in the 1980's. Also visiting: John and Carol Bourque. Carol we knew from Shreveport and she made a great gumbo for the evening meal. Her husband John is a Cajun with a great sense of humor and joie de vivre.
In the Northeast, we'll be looking up Marsha's cousin Gary Salamacha again. We've already visited twice since we've been in this travel business, and we're looking forward to doing it again.

Natchitoches Children's Tour

The Children’s Tour

Monty and Marsha are joined on the Cane River front stage, Natchitoches, by friend Joan Heffernan (in the hat) from Roadwater, Somerset, England. Joan sings in the local choir and appears at the monthly folk club at the pub in Luxborough. She also sings two of our songs, "I Just Can't Help Myself," and "Dark Lonely Nights." The kids are third graders from the Parish.


The last week in September is time for the annual Children’s Tour in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches (APHN) sponsors the program which is offered to all third grade classes throughout the Parish. This past September (‘07) there were about 25 participating classes.

They arrive on their buses from all points: Cloutierville, Fairview-Alpha, Marthaville, Provencal, and many schools in the city of Natchitoches itself. There are private schools as well as public. Each class has a list of places to visit, and the schedule is overseen by Martha Wynn. It’s a labor of love for Martha.

They may start at the Prudhomme-Rouquier House, a big white mansion built of bousillage in the late 18th century; or they may start at the Court House Museum, where this year the creator of the Blue Dog, George Rodrigue, was having an exhibit.

They may start with us, down on the stage by the river: we’ll sing them songs of old Louisiana and end with a rousing version of the state song, “You Are My Sunshine.” The program starts at about 8:30 am, Monday to Friday, and runs til about noon when they climb on their buses and head back to their little towns and schools. All a great deal wiser.

On the Road Again

We left Bossier on Saturday morning, headed up Benton Road towards Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee (who's a Republican running for president). As a sidebar, I took the test to find out which presidential candidate is closest to me on the issues and it turned out to be Dennis Kucinich. Marsha, too. Mike Huckabee was the furthest away from me.
At Hope we turned east onto I-30 and went to Benton where we sampled the luncheon buffet at Brown's. They told us there were no ribs on the menu because they had become too expensive and they didn't want to raise their prices, so they simply edited them off the buffet. Since they were the main reason we stopped for the buffet, apart from the fact that they're called Brown's, that may be the last time we stop there.
Back on the road and heading towards Memphis and just before we get there, veer north onto I-55 towards St. Louis. We stop at every Flying J within reasonable range because they usually have the cheapest diesel and we get an additional one cent per gallon off when we proffer the FJ card. Plus you can sleep there overnight in your camping van.
It's getting dark and we pass through St. Louis quite late, which is good, because traffic is minimal. About 40 miles north of the city we find a Rest Area on I-55 and pull in for the night.
Sunday and we hit the highway through Illinois. Our first destination is Madison Wisconsin, which turns out to be one thousand miles (give or take) from home. We do a little hunting around and finally settle on the old familiar Motel 6, where we stay three nights. It's within walking distance of a Big Lots, an Aldi, and a Dollar Tree. There's an Indian restaurant - the Maharaji - across the street where we do the Tuesday lunch buffet for $7.99.
Ralph Russo is the show co-ordinator, nice guy, liberal, easy to talk to. Heather runs the technical side of the show — "La Belle France" — and first night the voice is a bit fuzzy and I felt like I was pushing my voice, but it went okay. The second night we clear up the voice and it sounds much better and we get one "that was the best show ever!" from a little old lady.
Wednesday morning we check out at noon and head down through Platteville, Dubuque and Davenport and end up at Burlington, Iowa, at a real nice local motel called the Arrowhead. Tomorrow's show is "It's Great! Britain."

Unforseen Benefits

In January, Marsha and I will be in Florida. We were there two years ago and were able to look up our old friend Chris Sherman, the food and wine critic of the St. Petersburg Times. We had not seen Chris for at least 20 years. He had been a city editor at the now-defunct Shreveport Journal, an unlikely liberal newspaper in a distinctly conservative region.

We lauded him for landing such a cushy and, I must add, suitable, position. Chris was born to be a wine and food critic and looks the part: he is well-rounded and simultaneously jolly and cynical, with a great drooping mustache. He grumbled lightheadrtedly about his job — apparently Tampa-St.Pete is not restaurant heaven — but had to admit that in the big picture he’d landed on his feet.

Then we turned to our job. What a great thing, Chris opined, to be able to make feature-length films, with complete creative control, and actually have an audience for them. How many struggling filmmakers and film school graduates would not love to be in our shoes? He cited the case of an acquaintance who’d been trying to get a film together for years, battling for funding with arts councils and corporate entities.

Which got me thinking about the many perks of this job, not the least of which is meeting with friends and relations that we haven’t seen for yonks and would have perhaps never seen again. Two years ago we went to Maine and Marsha met her cousin Gary that she hadn’t seen for a couple of decades. We stayed at his house, met his family and we’ll be returning in April because we have film showings in Portland and Greene, Maine, again.

On the West Coast, we have visited with sons, daughters and grandchildren on a much more regular basis than before our travelogue days. In New York we have spent weeks where Marsha was raised, playing cards, drinking wine, and rekindling old friendships. So, too, in Michigan where we are blessed with old friends north of Detroit and new friends, the Veaches, in Jackson.

For these reasons alone it has been worth it to become travel film makers. But on top of that we get to make our own films and show them to a receptive audience. Each new film presents new challenges and a new approach to a well-trodden tradition. In our first film, “La Belle France,” we were happy to actually get it done. In our second film, “It’s Great!Britain,” we started to play with the form a little and to add a little more music.
In our third film, “Hello Louisiana,” we used music as the springboard for traveling around the state and we’re now contemplating another Louisiana music film which will incorporate our own live music. This is not a new idea for us, but it is taking a while to work out all the bugs and to find a suitable subject and form for the film part. It may happen yet.

I realize that there are various approaches to creating travelogues, from the pure filmic to the performance art, and Marsha and I tend to come down a bit closer to the latter.

For me, the travel film has been a real liberator. I started with BBC TV in the days of black and white video; moved on to musical performance and songwriting as a folk and country singer; and seized the opportunity to cut tape in the last days of analogue radio production. Combined with jobs as a waiter, barman, bicycle messenger, sewer cleaner, garbage collector, driver, bookshop manager, schoolteacher, carpenter’s assistant, and traveling minstrel, I have had all the necessary experience to make travel films.

And like Chris Sherman, I feel I’ve finally landed on my feet. And I’m lucky to have a partner to work with.