Gandhi's fun circus adventure

So, I promised you Providence, RI today, but I'm going to go back on my word. Since Katie mentioned my darling cat in her comment, I am going to digress and tell you all about his time traveling with The Greatest Show on Earth.

When I joined the circus, it was the first time since I'd moved away from my parents' house that I was going to be living somewhere that I could own a pet. So I immediately decided to get a cat. My friend Heather told me that she had friends that had a cat that would have some kittens soon and they'd be ready for adoption right about when I was going to be in Hershey, PA with the circus (that was May 2000). Unfortunately, it turned out that they decided to keep all of the kittens, so I was suddenly in Hershey, where I had planned to get a cat, with no leads on a cat. So I called my mother (in Baltimore, which is only 1 1/2 hours from Hershey) and asked her to start looking in the newspaper and the Pennysaver for free kittens. She finally found a woman that had 2 younger cats (one 1 year, one 6 months) to give away, so there I was in my huge Ford F350 supercab dually truck (another story for later), driving to Baltimore to get a new kitty. I met my mother at this person's house, since my mom was going to lend me her cat carrier to get the cat back to my trailer in Hershey. I picked the younger of the two, the little 6-month old boy cat, simply because we couldn't catch the 1-year old girl.

I loaded him up in the cat carrier, and of course he cried all the way back to Hershey. We got back to my trailer and I let him out of the carrier and he immediately went and hid in the darkest, smallest spot he could find between the sofa and the wall. I think he stayed there for a whole day, until I finally pulled him out. Anyway, my next job was coming up with a name for him. I had decided I wanted to name him after one of the circus tigers. Their names were Vanya, Assam, Jaipur, Gandhi, Tibet, Tora, Jasmine, and Appollo. (OK, so I didn't remember all of those names off the top of my head 4 years after I left the show - I had to break out the program. I did remember 4 of them, though....) I really wanted to name the cat after a tiger that had the same coloring as him (he's an orange tabby, so he's most like the Bengals called goldens - orange with orange stripes), so that would have been Vanya or Assam. I liked the name Vanya, but then I realized that Vanya was a girl tiger, and it didn't seem to be quite right for my little boy cat. I finally picked Gandhi because it was my favorite of the boy-tiger names. And it seems to still fit, since I later was told that Gandhi was the craziest of the tigers out on tour.

Anyway, little Gandhi was about to start his fun year and a half on the road with the circus. I'm not sure how fun he really thought it was, but he seemed to get used to it. Since I was driving from city to city, I started out by putting him in the cat carrier and putting it in the back seat of the truck for each trip. I was afraid to leave him in the trailer for fear that something would fall on him. The cabinets had catches, but they certainly could have come loose. Eventually, I decided he shouldn't be shut in the carrier for the whole trip, so I started letting him out. On the longer trips I brought his litter box and food and water dish into the truck and put them on the floor of the back seat. He really started enjoying those trips - he'd stand on the back seat with his front paws on the edge of the window and look out at all the interesting things, or he'd climb up in the dashboard (on the passenger's side) and enjoy the sun coming in, or he'd sit on the back of the bench seat between me and the passenger's seat and just look around. It kept me from feeling like I was driving all by myself and he seemed to enjoy it too. There were a few times when I was afraid I'd lost him. On one trip, I stopped at a rest area and got out to stretch and he slipped out of the cab too and hid under the very center of my trailer. It took some work to get him out of there. Then, when I was leaving San Francisco, I got out of the cab at a traffic light to check the connection between the trailer and the truck and left the door open. I didn't really think about having left the door open until about 5 minutes later when I didn't know where Gandhi was. The next 15 minutes or so were a panic for me, since I couldn't find anywhere to pull over and check for him. It turned out that he was hiding under the back seat and probably hadn't even noticed that I had ever gotten out of the truck.

At home in the trailer, his favorite part was the blinds. In a travel trailer, the blinds are held to the wall and have a cord laced through them as a guide up and down so that they don't flop around during travel. When the blinds were down, Gandhi could crawl past the cord and nestle himself into the blind against the window. He was good at figuring out which way we were facing and which blind would be sunniest! Sometimes he could look out at the horses or the elephants - what a lucky cat.

While the show was in Phoenix, the General Manager was having his train room re-floored and had to go stay in a hotel for a night. He left his dog, Maxine, a rottweiler, with me for the night. I think that was probably the most traumatic experience Gandhi had on the circus. I don't think either animal knew what to think of the other.

In Los Angeles, I was convinced by Garrett, our transportation department head, to adopt a little black farm cat. Gandhi seemed to be a bit afraid of her. It turned out that she was a royal terror and really belonged on the farm, so during the run in Anaheim I took her back to the farm. She never even got a name. Ah well.

In San Diego, it was time to get Gandhi fixed. My friend Katie, who I went to high school with, was living in San Diego at the time and went with me when I picked him up from the vet (Did you go with us when I dropped him off too??) Then we went back to my trailer to hang out and spent most of the time laughing at the poor cat with the big cone collar around his neck. I took pity on him and took it off far sooner than I was supposed to. I didn't think he'd be able to eat with it on.

Gandhi's next big adventure was in Cleveland, OH (October 2000) when I got promoted and moved out of the trailer and onto the train. Of course, he was scared to death again of the new place. I can't remember where he found to hide in the train room. I think it was under the sofa. He got used to it pretty quickly and started to like it. Then came the first Sunday night after the move. Sunday nights were the night to leave a city, so an engine would hook up to the train and we'd head out. The hooking up part is usually somewhat jolting and always loud as the slack between the cars gets taken up. It scared Gandhi to death (again) and he came and crawled under the covers (the train usually pulls out around 3 or 4 am) right next to me. He would have stayed there for the whole trip if I hadn't made him come out. He eventually got used to the train while it was moving, but he never liked the hooking up part. Every time we left a city, there was a fuzzy blob next to my leg.

Gandhi didn't have as much opportunity for fun adventures on the train. He didn't ever really have to leave the train room, since I wasn't driving anymore. And even when I did drive, he could stay on the train during the move. There was a window in my room that we had put a table next to, so he could get up on the table and look out the window, but I don't know if it was as exciting for him as being in the truck. Eventually we left the circus to move to Pittsburgh and he got to be scared to death again of another new home. Poor little guy - he's not big on change. Once we got a second cat, he got better at it - when we moved with both of them to a house that we bought, neither of them was very scared.

So, that's the story of Gandhi's adventures on the circus. People always ask me if he's a really peaceful cat when I tell them his name. No one expects my answer to be "Oh, he's named after a circus tiger - I didn't even think of the man when I named him."

It's all your fault, Jenny!!!

A while ago, I started a document that was my memories of the circus, written after the fact. I only got 2 1/2 cities written (Those of us on the show count our time by cities, as in "that happened 3 cities ago, right?" or "I bought these pants in Lexington." Weeks and months mean little on tour, memories are jogged by cities and arenas) but the file was already 3 pages long. Anyway, your prompting will, hopefully, get me to write more. Anyway, here's what I wrote about Philadelphia:
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Philadelphia is where I joined the circus. It was sort of a training by fire – I just jumped right in and started working. I worked a few days, learning some things about the show, but right now I can’t remember exactly what. Then I went home to Baltimore for Easter, left my car at my parents’ house, took the train back to Philly and off I went. Easter Sunday was closing for the show in Philly, so by the time I arrived back at the First Union Arena (which may have still been Core States Arena back then), the load out was in full swing. I just followed Steve around, basically, and did what he needed to have done. I was informed that I couldn’t go on the load out floor without a hard hat, so I found one and jumped in. Steve had me checking the casual labor personnel – there were performers who got paid extra to help with load in and load out, but we had to make sure they showed up each week. I learned quite a few names that way.
When the load out in the arena was over, we walked over to the flats – at that time in Philly we were able to use a siding at the far end of the parking lot to park the whole train. I think that’s not true anymore. Unfortunately, there was another train stopped on the tracks closer to the arena, so the loading of the train was delayed until we could get that train moved and get the rest of the wagons and people across the tracks.
I wasn’t really clear on exactly what was going on at the time. All I knew is that I was not going to drive that truck and trailer that I was living in by myself to Providence, RI, so Steve was going to drive while I rode along. Which of course meant that we had Foster (Steve’s dog) with us on the drive as well. Also, we took Stashek, the floor boss, who was at that point filling in on pre-rig for Kazik, the TD. Kazik was off the unit because he was having some surgery to repair his leg where it had gotten broken (I think by an elephant) years before.
So, at about 1am we finally left Philly for Providence and the Providence Civic Center. I really thought we were going to crash several times because Steve sure looked to me like he was falling asleep at the wheel. It was light out by the time we pulled into the arena parking lot. It was pretty small, and I didn’t even know how much we were going to cram in there.
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So that's what I wrote. Here's some explanation of things that might not have been clear. When I joined the show, I was assigned to live in a travel trailer so that I could beat the train to the next city and set up the main outside lot. The most interesting thing about it was that it had been the tall man's trailer on the previous tour. Ringling Bros had had it custom made for him, and then when he left after his 2-year contract was up, they recycled it for the Assistant Ops Manager on the Blue Unit - me. This tends to be a story that people like to hear about.
My bed was 9 feet long. I had one box that I brought with me to the show that lived at the foot of my bed and never moved until I moved out of that trailer. I don't even remember what was in it, I just know I didn't have to unpack it.
In the bathroom, there was a mirror that had been put in for the tall man's wife (who was short, shorter than me) that worked just fine for me. Then there was a mirror for him. When I started dating my husband and he spent a few weeks with me in the trailer, he realized that the wife mirror was too short and the tall man mirror was too tall for a normal 6' man. hee hee
I couldn't reach the shower head in the shower. If I wanted to adjust the stream a different direction I had to knock it around with a shampoo bottle.
I had to stand on the bed to reach most of the clothing storage areas in the bedroom.
There were shelves in the cabinets in the kitchen area that I NEVER used because I couldn't reach them.
Another quirk about the trailer that had nothing to do with the tall man was that there was a range top, but no oven. So I bought a toaster oven and did all of my oven-type cooking in that. The range top was a flat top stove, though, and I fell in love with it. Once we left the circus and bought a house, I insisted on a flat top range. It's the best thing ever (at least in the world of appliances)

Okay, that's enough for now. Tomorrow, Providence, RI. And more explanation of trains, sidings, my truck and trailer, pre-rig, and anything else you didn't quite get.

Running away to join the circus

Well, I've been prompted to tell more circus stories. It only takes one and then I'll never shut up about it. I hope you're ready for it!!

It's kind of hard to just start talking about my time with Ringling Brothers - it's easier when I'm with a group of people and happen to mention it casually and then get a slew of questions - "Did you really live on a train?", "What did you do for them - were you a contortionist?", and the inevitable "How are the animals treated, anyway?"

I guess the best place to start is the beginning. I had a friend in grad school, Steve, who had left the circus to come to grad school. When we graduated, he got a better job with them and went off on tour with the Ringling Brothers Blue unit, 128th edition. I went off and worked a summer at a stock theatre in New Jersey, then went back to the alumni season of the program I had just graduated from to work on a show, then went back to NJ for a Christmas show and finally landed at the Virginia Opera in Norfolk, VA. About a month after I started working there, the circus came to town and it was Steve's unit (side note - Ringling Brothers now has 3 touring units - the red, the blue, and the gold. Red and blue follow the same routes but staggered by one year. The gold unit is smaller and plays much smaller towns) so of course I went to visit. I showed up to see him during the load-in, which was an overnight load-in. The animals walked into town from the stock cars at about 11pm and Steve arranged it so that I could accompany them. I walked with the Operations Manager, Dave, and got my first tast of PETA. Their headquarters is in Norfolk, so there were LOTS of protestors that walked right along with us. Dave insisted that everyone keep their mouths shut, since everyone who works for the circus and cares about the animals feels about the same way as I do about PETA. He didn't want any incidents to happen. Nothing actually occurred, but I came to realize that the animal walks were not usually that serious, quiet, and well-chaperoned.

Anyway, I hung around the load-in for at least 4 hours or so. I met my future husband, although he likes to remind me that I don't remember meeting him that night. I met lots of people over the course of that week. I got to see a lot of the operations of the Greatest Show on Earth, and it was really a neat experience. I think I got too tired to stay around 3 or 4am. Later in the week, I went by to talk to Steve again and he had me interview with the General Manager, Jeff. I later found out that Jeff would be leaving the unit to tour with a different show, Kaliedoscape, so Dave would be moving up to General Mgr and Steve would be Operations Manager, so they needed a new Asst Ops Manager. A few months later, Steve called and offered me the job. It was very hard to walk out on the VA Opera and it's one of only two theatre contracts I've left early. I gave them about 3 or 4 weeks notice, so they were able to replace me before I left.

I joined up with the show in Philadelphia, PA just before Easter in April, 2000. It was the start of a really fun adventure, which had plenty of difficult moments as well.

More later.....

PETA go home!!

So, this morning my husband left the newspaper open for me to the article that accompanied this photo:

You can read the blurb that went with it here.

And my response to those three accusations is "Untrue, Untrue, Untrue!!!" Now I have to be careful of what I write beyond that response, for fear that PETA will one day find this blog and quote some small piece out of context that makes it sound like I'm saying something that I'm not. I've already changed the words I originally wrote in place of "I'm saying something that I'm not." What a pain. And while I worked for Ringling, I wouldn't even have dared to write anything on this issue, positive, negative or otherwise because no matter what I said, they would have added some ellipses and made it sound bad.

Anyway, my husband I worked for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey for a short time (that's where we met) and can say from first hand experience that PETA does not know what they are talking about in relation to Ringling Bros. I cannot speak in relation to other circuses, as I have not worked for any other circus, but considering their lack of research and knowledge about the current conditions at Ringling, I would be loathe to believe any claims they make. My opinion is that PETA is working with 60+ year old information and 60+ year old photos and then lumping all circuses, past and present, into one and making generalizations.

Unfortunately, PETA members protesting the circus seem to be young (from what I've seen around the country), often college students who not only think they can change the world by themselves, but also that it's their duty to do so, violently if necessary. I have watched several of them get arrested, and it seems such a shame, since the acts they claim to be protesting against are absolute works of fiction. I wish these kids would spend more time checking out the claims made by PETA before blindly following them into situations that could be detrimental to their future lives in the world.

There are a few key things to know about Ringling Brothers:

• First of all, the animals are treated better than the two-legged employees. For example, there are several vet techs that travel with the show and 2 vets that visit at least once a month each, but there aren't any doctors, nurses, physical therapists, etc for the people.


• Secondly, USDA inspectors arrive on the three touring units every few months for inspections. There are sometimes minor problems (the carrots are being stored in a refrigerated truck that is 2 degrees too warm, perhaps) but not major problems, particularly with the health and well-being of the animals.


• Thirdly, although I agree that wild animals should not have been taken from the wild in the first place, that happened many years ago and we can't change the fact that it happened. Happily, people are more educated now about that and animals are no longer taken from the wild legally. Since most animals currently in captivity cannot be safely released into the wild, Ringling Brothers continues to do the world a favor by breeding these (mostly endangered) animals and working with them in the traveling shows. One day there will no longer be Asian elephants in the wild - what does PETA want then? No elephants anywhere on this planet?

I absolutely support wildlife preservation groups and animal welfare groups, but I encourage any of you who agree with me to support any group OTHER than PETA. They (as an organization, not necessarily each individual member) are uninformed and don't seem to want to get informed. They also seem to enjoy being disruptive and handing disturbing photos to small children just before they go to see The Greatest Show on Earth.

And when the circus comes to your town, go see it. (If you live in Pittsburgh, it will be here Nov 2-6.) It's really a great show and well done.
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So, I wrote the post above 2 days ago and decided not to publish it right away, because I was afraid I was being a bit harsh on PETA. So I went and checked out their website. And it made me even madder. I was wrong - they're not uninformed, they're worse. They're selectively informed. They take every incident on the circus and spin it so that it sounds bad. They mention that two of the baby elephants on Ringling have foot problems and are often sent off the road as a result. Well, that's GOOD that they're sent back to the Center for Elephant Conservation to have their feet taken care of!! Elephants notoriously have foot problems. It's not a result of being out with the circus. And the alpacas that they speak of are Felix, Jasper, and the one whose name I can't remember. Felix is an albino, so if he had vision problems it doesn't surprise me. The nameless one (boy, I wish I could remember his name) had some leg problems, but that didn't develop on the road. I remember being in Lexington, KY and sending the elephant Rebecca home to the CEC - she was being retired from circus life because she was having some problems keeping up. Animals get old just like people and Ringling treats the older animals with as much care and love as the younger ones.

Another thing that just gets me going about PETA is that they find disgruntled employees who've been fired (usually for coming to work drunk, not coming to work at all, using a variety of controlled substances, or, in rare cases, harming the animals themselves, which is grounds for IMMEDIATE dismissal) and PAY them to sign an affidavit testifying to some cruelty of some sort. They have an affidavit up there signed by Frank Hagan, a man who I hired (stupid, stupid, stupid me) to work on the floor crew, NOT the animal crew. While I was on the circus, he once went out to a bar after the show, started buying rounds of drinks for the whole bar, claimed to be the tiger trainer, and then skipped out on the tab, prompting the police to show up at the train looking for him at 3am. The General Manager was woken up to deal with it. Boy, if I had been the one woken up, he'd have been fired on the spot. Anyway, his claim of being the tiger trainer was a lie then, so I wouldn't be surprised if he lied about being a lion handler on his PETA affidavit.

It's a pity that these are the types of people hired on the circus, but it's even more of a pity that PETA takes such advantage of them.

I've got to stop now or I'm going to start beating something. And it won't be my cats, I promise.

The Cancer Corridor

The smoking habit continues to boggle my mind, each and every day. There's this one section of sidewalk between the stage door of the theatre I work in and the 7-11, where I like to get coffee, that we've dubbed "Cancer Corridor." When you walk out of the stage door, you encounter a sidewalk tumor of culinary school students, all smoking. It makes me not want to eat at any of the restaurants in Pittsburgh, since I've seen how dirty all of the young cooks are. Then, you walk down the sidewalk toward the 7-11 past a bus stop. Another sidewalk tumor that spreads out nearly the length of the block, and again, all smoking. I'm going to have cancer before I'm 40 from second-hand smoke.

Fortunately, my trips to the 7-11 are far fewer than they used to be now that I've started drinking the coffee in the rehearsal hall. However, I've realized that really, just about every sidewalk is a cancer corridor. And the smokers are just not very respectful of the non-smokers. I get smoke blown in my face all the time - people walking toward me, people walking in front of me - I can't seem to get away from it!

And here's my last and biggest rant about smoking. What makes smokers think that their butts are just going to disappear into the ether and not be a pollution problem????? The alley that I walk down every day just got repaved. I walked down it just after the pavers left and it was a beautiful (Ok, not really) expanse of new asphalt. I walked back down it that evening and it was FULL of cigarette butts. It really made me see the problem pretty clearly. Why can't smokers see that it's a problem?

My brain is empty today

Yesterday I had lots of thoughts while driving, but today I can't even come up with one of them. I think my brain emptied itself while I was sleeping last night. Really, that's not surprising, as it's the first good night of sleep I've gotten in a while. I've spent the last week and a half working 9:30am to 10pm. And that's 6 days a week, not just 5. I've finally got a morning off today. And tomorrow, which makes me jump for joy.

Aha - I've just remembered something I was thinking about yesterday. It wasn't while I was driving - it was as soon as I got home and my adorable cats met me at the door. They're just the cutest things, see:My blog-friend Blue Moon Mama (who also happens to be one of my best friends from high school) talks a lot about her "squeaker" - her almost-two-year-old boy. Since I'm childless at the moment (yes, I did say "at the moment" and yes that does mean we're talking about having a child. Please remove your jaw from the floor), I often feel the same way about the cats that she feels about her kid. It's pathetic.

Hummers (and H2s and H3s....)

So, first, I must explain that the strange conglomerate of things I post about seem to mostly come from whatever I was thinking about during the drive to work in the morning. The other day I was thinking about what to eat for lunch, hence the McD's post. Today, I found blog material in the parking garage.

I'm just a little unclear about why anyone really needs a Hummer. Granted, I suppose there are specialized uses and needs for them. There are people who need to buy farm tractors, there are people who need to buy Hummers. But, really, someone who parks in the Theatre Square parking garage in downtown Pittsburgh every day? Does that person (in fact, there are usually 2 Hummers parked there each day) really need a Hummer? Clearly not.

So, since that answer was "clearly not", I wonder what prompted him/her to buy it. I've been told it's a "status symbol" since it costs so much money. To me, it says that the owner's status is that of someone with a lot of money to burn who really doesn't care a whit about the environment, our fossil fuel supply, or whether his car door gets run into by the door of the car parked next to him, since his vehicle doesn't actually fit in his parking spot.

Interestingly, there was a time when I wanted a Hummer. But that was before it was a commercial, consumer product. I had a boyfriend (now ex) who played the lottery (PowerBall) a lot and always told me that the first thing "we'd" buy when "we" won would be a Hummer. I'm pretty sure he meant the military-issued ones. Not that they're any better environmentally, but it was much more unique to own one back then. Anyway, we never won the lottery, so we never got the Hummer. Ah well. I'll take my little Geo Prism over the hulking monster vehicles any day.

This is not a defense of McDonald's

So, this summer I watched Super Size Me and although I was fairly disgusted to see Morgan Spurlock gain 12 pounds in 7 days, I haven't stopped eating at McDonald's occasionally. I've found a few meals that can be eaten there which stay within a normal person's 1-meal calorie intake parameters (700-1000 calories for a lunch or dinner). And now and then, I like to have some greasy McDonald's fries, despite what happened (or didn't happen) to them during their 10-week stay in a jar on Morgan Spurlock's desk. (For those who didn't see the movie, I'll spoil it for you - the fries did NOTHING! 10 weeks after he poured them in a glass jar and put on the lid, they looked EXACTLY the same as they had when he put them there. Anything else would have molded and been disgusting. Why I continue to eat them, I don't know, but they're yummy anyway!)

People don't seem to take responsibility for the AMOUNT of food they put in their bodies. Just take a look at the McDonald's nutritional information chart. You can put together a fairly filling and tasty lunch with a normal amount of calories, just not by ordering a combo. It doesn't mean it's nutritionally complete, but it definitely doesn't mean that you will absolutely, for sure, no doubt, gain weight if you eat there a lot.

So, like I said, this is not a defense of McDonald's, just a rail against people who blame the company (or any other fast food chain) for making them fat. Taking responsibility for one's own actions is just not expected enough, and that bothers me. It should be expected AT ALL TIMES.

Finally figured out how to give it a title....

Now that I've got a blog, and I'm "shouting" my thoughts at the world, I have some strange feeling that I need to explain why I started a blog and why it has the name it does and all sorts of "defenses" of my blog. So, I'm going to resist that feeling and not tell you any of those things. At least not now on the first post.

I'm also going to try NOT to vent about work here. Which gives me very little to say at this point. However, the VCR just stopped, which means that the Thursday night shows have successfully taped (the NBC shows, that is) and I want to watch them. So that's all for now.