Red Nose Diaries

Home on the Grange

This morning--about 8 a.m.-- while I was editing my research paper on Hopi clowns, I heard screaming from the downstairs apartment. It's Spooky Nell's birthday today. (The middle Brit child, who last year was famous for morbid musings and lying in the middle of the road). I can only assume that she woke up and found her presents and decorations which were previously hidden in my apartment.

When I popped in to say hi on my way to the Second Sunday Grange Pancake Breakfast (!), it looked like Christmas morning--decorations, and wrapping everywhere, the parents collapsed on the bed. They had to reenact their live Jack-in-the-Box for me--Mum wound up a cardboard box, everyone sang, and then Finn jumped (naked) out of it.

For $3.25 you get pancakes (or toast), two eggs any way you want, sausage or ham, coffee and juice. I was waited on by three middle-aged men, and two girls under 10. I met a woman named Elaine--a 12 year resident, and then was joined by my new friends and neighbors--an organic farmer and an HSU student. I was tempted by the table of cookies and daffodil bulbs.
Afterwards I got a tour of my neighbors' house (they plan to move that back shed, and put in a deck) and went home with a bagful of tomatoes.

And now the academic homestretch. Have to edit my paper on "The Congress of Clowns and other Russian Circus Acts", and finish my 20 page journal on "Mounting an Original Work", and my three-person clown play based on Artaud's "Theatre and It's Double".

Clown Factoid for the day: In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev called a conference of circus clowns, ciritcs and government officials because he found that the circus was lacking in satire.