Well, we made it through the Mexican leg of our journey, and it was time to start all over again in the United States, which, for me, was an adjustment. It was a weird adjustment. I went from constantly hearing Spanish being spoken around me, eating tortillas filled with whatever meat was for lunch, and taking cold showers to English, wheat bread, and warm showers. It was pretty sweet. It was also weird seeing speed limit signs in miles per hour again. Our destination was Sahuarita, Arizona, which is just about an hour outside of Tucson, which is where the original Up with People headquarters were before they moved to Denver, Colorado in 1993. This is a bit of random trivia that will become important later in the post.
Anyway, this city was extra special because I was hosted with my two best friends on the tour, Jochem, my roommate in Denver, and his now-girlfriend, Angela, and her parents Lucia and Lorenzo Montebello. It was really cool to see where one of our castmembers came from, and where she grew up. Almost immediately upon arrival, Lucia pulled out a whole bunch of Angela's school photos, and some of her artwork from school. It was really cool to see how Angela grew up, because we really don't get to see those kinds of things of our castmates while on tour. In Mexico, Angela had asked me what I had wanted when we got to our house, and of course, with me being me, I said, "macaroni and cheese." And so, when we got to the Montebello residence, Lucia's three-cheese macaroni and cheese was waiting for us on the stove. I could tell this was going to be a really, really, really good week.
During the day, we did some really cool Community Impact work for the city of Sahuarita. On the first day of CI, we went to a place called "Casa de Esperanza," where they have a multi-generational program for both pre-school aged children, and elderly people. It was really cool to see how these two worlds melded together. All of the pre-schoolers called the elderly people either, "Grandma," or, "Grandpa," and so all of the older folks that were there had nametags that said, "Grandma Barbara," or, "Grandpa Bert."
Our task for that particular day was to paint a water feature that the children used on their playground. First, we had to sand everything down so that the new coats of paint would adhere to the wood. This gave Sarah and Katrin of Germany the perfect opportunity to show us their power tool prowess. Not only that, but we all got safety glasses that made us all look really super cool.
After we all got done sanding everything, it was time for lunch, after which we all went into the pre-school part of the building and introduced ourselves to the kids. I loved the looks on all the kids faces when we said who we were in our native languages, and pointed to where we were from on the globe. Then we all sang Frère Jacques in each of our languages. Judging by how the kids just stared at us, I'm thinking that this visit will stick with them for a long time to come.
When we were all finished, the Casa de Esperanza pre-school water feature was once again a brilliant red, white, and yellow.
The morning of the water feature CI, one of our Edcation Coordinators, Aoife (pronounced: EE-fuh; I think Gaelic is much worse to try to read than English), had come up to me to say that they had mentioned me to one of the people who would be working with us the next day at Madera Canyon, one of our CI sites in the Arizona mountains. It just so happened that he's been working on getting that particular site more ADA compliant, and requested that I speak to him. Aoife said that it was totally my decision, and that I didn't have to go down there if I didn't want to. I didn't really have to think much about it. To get a chance to help other disabled people enjoy the beauty of the canyon, and to give my feedback from the point of view of a disabled person was a great honor.
When I got there, I met Phil English, an octogenarian volunteer for the "Friends of Madera Canyon," which is a group of volunteers that work closely with the Forest Service of Arizona in order to do the upkeep for Madera Canyon. While the other people were hefting big logs out from under a bridge, Phil was taking me on a tour of the Canyon and the surrounding area, telling me everything possible about its history, its wildlife, and its future. When he wasn't talking about the Canyon, he was telling stories about how he grew up across the street from Dick and Jerry Van Dyke, and told me that it was Dick that got him his first job on the radio. Being the pop culture freak that I am, it was really super cool to hear those stories. After I got a tour of the entire canyon, he showed me the trails that needed work. He pointed out where the trails were leading to, and then he told me how he planned on making everything accessible. He asked me what my opinion was, and I said that his ideas were really good ones. It was so great to see someone who was so devoted to one thing. This place is his world, and he obviously wants to share it with everybody.
Now back to the part of the post where I said that Tucson, Arizona, was the UwP headquarters for much of its history. Since we were near the old headquarters site, we got to meet with J. Blanton Belk, the founder of Up with People. This man has led the most incredible life of anybody that I have ever met. He was personal friends with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Jesse Owens, two of the most influential African Americans in history. He has also had dinner with kings and queens, and after all of this, he still remains securely grounded, and extremely down to Earth. I had the fortune of eating dinner with him that day, before the show, and he talked about having dinner with Martin Luther King Jr. the night after he delivered the immortal "I Have a Dream" speech. He also talked about how the UwP song, "What Color is God's Skin" influenced that very speech. That will probably go down in history as one of my most interesting dinner conversations that I will ever get to experience.
Mr. Belk was not the only VIP that was going to see the show. The Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen, the very people who wrote the Up with People song were going to see the show, and perform a couple of songs at the end of our show. Then there were all of the original creative team that made UwP what it was in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. But to top it all off, Pieter von Vallenhoven, the Dutch Queen's brother-in-law, was there watching the show. It was so cool to be around my Dutch friends as they met a member of their Royal Family. It turns out that not only is Professor von Vallenhoven a member of the Board of Directors for Up with People, but when one of the casts traveled to the Netherlands about 10 years ago, he hosted a couple of the students. After my dinner with Mr. Belk, Jochem came over to me and asked me if I wanted to meet the Prince. And the only conceivable answer to that question is, "Duh!" So, Jochem introduced me to him, and he asked me where I was from. I said, "Maine, in the United States," and the Prince nodded knowingly. Then he asked me if I was looking out for Jochem. I said that we were like brothers, and that we were looking out for each other, and that made him smile. We joked around for a little while, and then it was time to get ready for this VIP performance and try to put out of my mind everyone who would be seeing the show, which was hard to do.
The show was probably one of the most memorable shows to date. The tension was palpable. I always love it when we go into cities where there are large pockets of alumni, because the whole cast could go up there, sing every note of the show wrong, light the stage on fire, and we'd still get a thunderous standing ovation. Anyway, the show was one of the best shows we had ever put up, and we were rewarded by hearing the Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen do their stuff on stage. Part of their stuff on stage included Mr. Allen masterfully playing the xylophone. I had never heard anything like it. But what was great to hear afterwards was that the original creative team loved the show so much that they said that they were no longer worried that UwP would make a strong comeback onto the world scene. Knowing that my cast, my family, was a part of that, makes me proud beyond words.
After the show, and striking the set, it was time to go back to the Montebello's house to take it easy for a couple of days. It was so nice to be able to sleep for twelve hours. That's one of the things I've sorely missed while being on this tour. I think I may sleep the entire month of January away when I get back. My really cool week ended when Lucia, a Reiki Master, did a session on me. The session was quicker than expected because she said that when she did the scan, she found that my chakras were perfectly in line. "Not only are you well-adjusted, but you don't see yourself as a victim at all," she said. The only real Reiki thing she did was to wake up my root chakra, which was apparently really asleep. Right afterwards, I went to sleep, so that I could wake up really early in the morning and travel to Albuquerque, to do some more incredible things, and meet some more incredible people.
See you guys on da flip side, yo!
Anyway, this city was extra special because I was hosted with my two best friends on the tour, Jochem, my roommate in Denver, and his now-girlfriend, Angela, and her parents Lucia and Lorenzo Montebello. It was really cool to see where one of our castmembers came from, and where she grew up. Almost immediately upon arrival, Lucia pulled out a whole bunch of Angela's school photos, and some of her artwork from school. It was really cool to see how Angela grew up, because we really don't get to see those kinds of things of our castmates while on tour. In Mexico, Angela had asked me what I had wanted when we got to our house, and of course, with me being me, I said, "macaroni and cheese." And so, when we got to the Montebello residence, Lucia's three-cheese macaroni and cheese was waiting for us on the stove. I could tell this was going to be a really, really, really good week.
During the day, we did some really cool Community Impact work for the city of Sahuarita. On the first day of CI, we went to a place called "Casa de Esperanza," where they have a multi-generational program for both pre-school aged children, and elderly people. It was really cool to see how these two worlds melded together. All of the pre-schoolers called the elderly people either, "Grandma," or, "Grandpa," and so all of the older folks that were there had nametags that said, "Grandma Barbara," or, "Grandpa Bert."
Our task for that particular day was to paint a water feature that the children used on their playground. First, we had to sand everything down so that the new coats of paint would adhere to the wood. This gave Sarah and Katrin of Germany the perfect opportunity to show us their power tool prowess. Not only that, but we all got safety glasses that made us all look really super cool.
After we all got done sanding everything, it was time for lunch, after which we all went into the pre-school part of the building and introduced ourselves to the kids. I loved the looks on all the kids faces when we said who we were in our native languages, and pointed to where we were from on the globe. Then we all sang Frère Jacques in each of our languages. Judging by how the kids just stared at us, I'm thinking that this visit will stick with them for a long time to come.
When we were all finished, the Casa de Esperanza pre-school water feature was once again a brilliant red, white, and yellow.
The morning of the water feature CI, one of our Edcation Coordinators, Aoife (pronounced: EE-fuh; I think Gaelic is much worse to try to read than English), had come up to me to say that they had mentioned me to one of the people who would be working with us the next day at Madera Canyon, one of our CI sites in the Arizona mountains. It just so happened that he's been working on getting that particular site more ADA compliant, and requested that I speak to him. Aoife said that it was totally my decision, and that I didn't have to go down there if I didn't want to. I didn't really have to think much about it. To get a chance to help other disabled people enjoy the beauty of the canyon, and to give my feedback from the point of view of a disabled person was a great honor.
When I got there, I met Phil English, an octogenarian volunteer for the "Friends of Madera Canyon," which is a group of volunteers that work closely with the Forest Service of Arizona in order to do the upkeep for Madera Canyon. While the other people were hefting big logs out from under a bridge, Phil was taking me on a tour of the Canyon and the surrounding area, telling me everything possible about its history, its wildlife, and its future. When he wasn't talking about the Canyon, he was telling stories about how he grew up across the street from Dick and Jerry Van Dyke, and told me that it was Dick that got him his first job on the radio. Being the pop culture freak that I am, it was really super cool to hear those stories. After I got a tour of the entire canyon, he showed me the trails that needed work. He pointed out where the trails were leading to, and then he told me how he planned on making everything accessible. He asked me what my opinion was, and I said that his ideas were really good ones. It was so great to see someone who was so devoted to one thing. This place is his world, and he obviously wants to share it with everybody.
Now back to the part of the post where I said that Tucson, Arizona, was the UwP headquarters for much of its history. Since we were near the old headquarters site, we got to meet with J. Blanton Belk, the founder of Up with People. This man has led the most incredible life of anybody that I have ever met. He was personal friends with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Jesse Owens, two of the most influential African Americans in history. He has also had dinner with kings and queens, and after all of this, he still remains securely grounded, and extremely down to Earth. I had the fortune of eating dinner with him that day, before the show, and he talked about having dinner with Martin Luther King Jr. the night after he delivered the immortal "I Have a Dream" speech. He also talked about how the UwP song, "What Color is God's Skin" influenced that very speech. That will probably go down in history as one of my most interesting dinner conversations that I will ever get to experience.
Mr. Belk was not the only VIP that was going to see the show. The Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen, the very people who wrote the Up with People song were going to see the show, and perform a couple of songs at the end of our show. Then there were all of the original creative team that made UwP what it was in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. But to top it all off, Pieter von Vallenhoven, the Dutch Queen's brother-in-law, was there watching the show. It was so cool to be around my Dutch friends as they met a member of their Royal Family. It turns out that not only is Professor von Vallenhoven a member of the Board of Directors for Up with People, but when one of the casts traveled to the Netherlands about 10 years ago, he hosted a couple of the students. After my dinner with Mr. Belk, Jochem came over to me and asked me if I wanted to meet the Prince. And the only conceivable answer to that question is, "Duh!" So, Jochem introduced me to him, and he asked me where I was from. I said, "Maine, in the United States," and the Prince nodded knowingly. Then he asked me if I was looking out for Jochem. I said that we were like brothers, and that we were looking out for each other, and that made him smile. We joked around for a little while, and then it was time to get ready for this VIP performance and try to put out of my mind everyone who would be seeing the show, which was hard to do.
The show was probably one of the most memorable shows to date. The tension was palpable. I always love it when we go into cities where there are large pockets of alumni, because the whole cast could go up there, sing every note of the show wrong, light the stage on fire, and we'd still get a thunderous standing ovation. Anyway, the show was one of the best shows we had ever put up, and we were rewarded by hearing the Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen do their stuff on stage. Part of their stuff on stage included Mr. Allen masterfully playing the xylophone. I had never heard anything like it. But what was great to hear afterwards was that the original creative team loved the show so much that they said that they were no longer worried that UwP would make a strong comeback onto the world scene. Knowing that my cast, my family, was a part of that, makes me proud beyond words.
After the show, and striking the set, it was time to go back to the Montebello's house to take it easy for a couple of days. It was so nice to be able to sleep for twelve hours. That's one of the things I've sorely missed while being on this tour. I think I may sleep the entire month of January away when I get back. My really cool week ended when Lucia, a Reiki Master, did a session on me. The session was quicker than expected because she said that when she did the scan, she found that my chakras were perfectly in line. "Not only are you well-adjusted, but you don't see yourself as a victim at all," she said. The only real Reiki thing she did was to wake up my root chakra, which was apparently really asleep. Right afterwards, I went to sleep, so that I could wake up really early in the morning and travel to Albuquerque, to do some more incredible things, and meet some more incredible people.
See you guys on da flip side, yo!
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