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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.12

7/31/2020

The Great Bicycle Race That Isn't

July 31, 2020

The other day, I happened to be walking past the teepee near the entrance to the town when I came upon this sign. (The Stray Bullet was "currently closed" only because it was late in the day.)

My heart lifted with excitement: THE CYCLISTS ARE BACK!!! The Tour Divide Race is on! This is one of the great events of the year when cyclists from around the world pass through Ovando on one of the most challenging races in the world, from Banff, Canada to Antelope Springs, New Mexico near the Mexican border—2,745 miles or 4,418 kilometers over rugged, beautiful country, across the longest dirt touring route in the world. They come through our little town from places like Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK as well as towns and cities across the US. Several have said that Ovando is their favorite stopping place. The whole town receives them with a warm welcome and follows the race online. Conversations in the store are around how close a racer is and when they will arrive. Some are rooting for a favorite rider from a previous race. But the official greeter, the sign-maker, the Welcome Wagoneer, is Kathy Schoendoerfer—co-owner of the Blackfoot Angler and Town Crier. If you come visit, she has stories to tell! (I have written about it with Kathy’s photos here ).

You can get a first-hand view of this amazing event in Lael Wilcox’s video of her 2019 race, “I Just Want To Ride.”

Sadly, I found out at the store that the Tour Divide Race has been cancelled. But there are still cyclists who come through and they are warmly welcomed, as you can see from the sign!

We’ve had a face-lift on this side of town with a new paint job to our building. We look spiffy and ready for the world. It’s a lift too to see the open door of the Stray Bullet Café for breakfast and traffic through the Angler. I also appreciate the gentle reminders of coronavirus precautions.

The Tour Divide is not the only Great Bicycle Race that Isn’t! If you can believe it, the Tour de France has gone virtual. Another testimony to human ingenuity and tech talents. In this short video, you will see the actual riders at home, riding their hearts out on stationery bikes, their speeds recorded via the virtual site. It’s amazing to watch, though it certainly doesn’t take the place of the real McCoy. But a lot of real McCoys have fallen by the wayside in these months. Here are high-lights, but you should check in on one of the online races. Awesome!

Now here is something to make you smile. Once again it comes from the streets of Havana where, in spite of sometimes difficult conditions, joy is never in short supply. This flash mob plays Rondo alla Mambo, which combines the music of Mozart and Cuban Mambo.

In another short video, Sarah Willis tells us a bit more about how this event came about! (Click on the link.)

After the 3 year-old Danish dancing marvel I shared in the last Letter, I have another Super Toddler who will surprise you. The ability of a 3 year old to entertain, adult-like, by dancing, may be outdone by the sight of adults behaving like children. Either way, this Chinese version of the ever-popular “Got Talent” genre is worth the watch.

Here are Chinese dancers in a more serious and traditional form of dance that is truly extraordinary, made more so by the fact that the dancers are all deaf and the musicians are all visually impaired. This is the Dance of the Thousand-Hand Boddhisattva. The disabilities of the performers underline the dance as a further expression of the Goddess of Mercy.

“Guanyin made an oath to worry about all living things
until they are free from problems and suffering.
At this point, the goddess tried to help ordinary people
and noticed how her hands began to be torn apart.
Amitabha helped her and gave her thousands of hands.”

The next piece I want to share is another remarkable example of a disability—in this case blindness and autism--transformed into the offering of a spiritual gift by a ten-year old boy. I think you will be moved by it and the hope it provides for overcoming hardship. Meet the inspiring Christopher Duffley.

Goodness shows up in unexpected places, on land and sea. I thank my friend Wayne Tyson for sharing a video of the rescue of a humpbacked whale by a small fishing boat crew. Keep in mind that a humpback whale can grow to 60 feet long, and weigh up to 40 tons. A mere shrug of a flipper (up to 16 feet long) could have upended the fragile craft, which makes their courage even greater and the whale’s appreciation of them even more obvious.

Now, in honor of that majestic creature of the sea, I share one of my favorite pieces with you. Turn up your best speakers or don your finest earphones to listen to the song of the humpback whale as recorded in the depths by Roger Payne and “sung with” by the incomparable Paul Winter Consort in his composition Whale Lullaby, from the album Callings. Dedicated to the memory of my friend, and the whales’ friend, Jim Meadows, with thanks to Craig Wilson who introduced me to this album so many years ago.

On the lighter side… Growing up in the 1950s, we never missed watching Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner skits on the Show of Shows. Carl Reiner just passed away, so if you weren’t familiar with him, you will see him in this skit as the Health Food Restaurant Waiter. Considering that health food restaurants were virtually nonexistent in the 50s, the piece is ahead of its time!

Fast forward to the 70s. I was part of the Earth Song Bookstore-Ocean Song Gallery family in Del Mar, California. It was the Happening Place back then and our Halloween Parties were open to the whole town and so well-attended that the Fire Department eventually shut them down. Music was provided by Peter Sprague’s Dance of the Universe band made up of talented young musicians from Torrey Pines High School. Peter went on to become one of our finest jazz musicians, playing with Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Ravi Shankar and other celebrated musicians, gaining a worldwide reputation for his compositions and recordings.

Put your earphones back on! I have a real treat for you, to end this letter on a mellow note. Unable to perform his live concerts, Peter decided to do virtual concerts from his recording studio, Spragueland, in Encinitas, California. In addition to great music, you get to see behind the scenes of a professional recording studio. I’m astonished by the quantity of wires and levers that surround them! Not only is Peter a superb composer-guitarist, but a technical wizard as well. Many great albums have come out of Spragueland over the years.

It is a full concert, but you can pause between numbers or just take in the first one. That was my intention but I got lured into listening to the last note. You get a front row seat for some jazz greats. Enjoy!

This is for my young friend and budding musician Max Del Monte, and my seasoned jazz-lover Kathleen Chambers.

On that note, I wish you good health and happy days.

Stay safe!
Sheri Ritchlin

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Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.11

7/3/2020

1 Comment

Hope and Restoration

The town is coming awake after the long winter’s sleep and it is green green green with summer rains. The Ovando Inn has visitors and—apart from these days of rain—the fisher folk are enjoying the lure of the Blackfoot River. Kathy and Travis are busy in the Blackfoot Angler. We now have a beautiful new town website, upgraded from our old beautiful town website. If you would like to take a peek at what goes on in this town of 50 and the Greater Metropolitan Area that surrounds it, (i.e. mountains, valleys, creeks, ranches and the million acre Bob Marshall Wilderness), here it is: ovandomontana.net

There are three businesses below me: On the left is Kathy and Travis’s realm, the Blackfoot Angler. In the center is Colleen’s Stray Bullet Café and on the right is the Blackfoot Challenge. Above them is my Hermitage with the great view you see at the top of the letter, taken from my desk.

Here is a description of “the Challenge” in its own words:

OUR STORY begins in the early 1970s, when landowners along the Blackfoot River recognized the need to build partnerships with public agencies in order to address natural resource threats facing the watershed. By focusing their early efforts where they agreed, these partners realized they could accomplish much more by working together. These early conversations paved the way for what would become public stream access and walk-in hunting on private lands in Montana.

Today the Blackfoot Challenge is active on many fronts, including the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA), an innovative effort involving community ownership and cooperative ecosystem management across 41,000 acres of public and private land formerly owned by Plum Creek Timber Company that encompasses an important transition zone between wilderness, national forest, and productive private valley bottoms, with lush riparian and wetland areas and important wildlife habitat.

Among its projects is a program with Fish and Wildlife to bring back the Trumpeter Swans that became so endeared to many of us as children through E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan. I think this is as good a story for adults as E.B. White’s was for children! Here is a heart-warming real-life scene that takes place right here in Ovando.

The Blackfoot Challenge’s Adopt-a-Swan Project is not only a restoration program, but also a hands-on education program. School children from as far away as Bonner, near Missoula, get to be present for the release of the swans and then to follow them through a tracking program.

You can see how far this project ripples out in this request to sponsor a swan.

Hello,
My family lives in the Woodworth area during the summer,
and the rest of the year we live in Quito, Ecuador.
I teach 4th grade at Academia Cotopaxi, and every year
we read The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White. Our class
would like to sponsor a swan.

Please let me know how to help.

Thanks and regards,
Jody Chritton

I have mentioned before that the education of Ovando’s children is a community project in which Ovando School children can take advantage of rich local resources. Below, an Ovando School group prepares to release their swan.

As the return of the Trumpeter Swans offer hope for our local wildlife, thanks to the dedicated efforts of folks near and far, here is another moving story of literally rising up from the ashes. Notre Dame Cathedral endured a shocking destruction from a fire which erupted in April 2019.

An entire world looked on aghast as this lovely, iconic structure which had graced the Paris skyline since the 13th century, erupted in flames. How on earth do you begin to resurrect it? Once again, human ingenuity and dedication comes to the fore, applying 21st century technologies to 13th century craftsmanship. Have a look!

Here is one visionary view of how the renewed structure might be designed, blending elements of both its past and its present. Human imagination is an amazing thing.

Much closer to home was the devastating fire in Paradise, California in November 2018, which reduced the town to ashes in a matter of hours and took the lives of 85 people. Academy award-winning director Ron Howard teamed up with National Geographic to produce the documentary Rebuilding Paradise, which will be released at the end of this month. For every ticket sold, $1 will go to charities supporting the town of Paradise, California. Said Howard:

“Now more than ever, we need to remember that when people come together for the greater good we can make a positive change on our shared future. The passion and commitment of the people of Paradise, to one another and to rebuilding their community, is a reminder of the strength and resilience of the human spirit.”

These comebacks are cheering as the hard times continue and there is still no sign of let-up. As always, the international language of hope is music and people continue to join together across continents to comfort, console and express gratitude to first responders. (I include Fred and Leigh Ann at the Blackfoot Store among those). Here is the One Voice Children’s choir, “always looking for opportunities to share hope through music.”

From Quimper, France: Isaac and Nora, the 12 and 9 year-old you met in a previous letter, joined another sibling pair in Mexico to make amazing harmonies across thousands of miles with the Garcia sisters, and all from their respective homes. Isaac and Nora's father, from South Korea, introduces their song in Spanish. This is a very multi-lingual multi-instrumental family. Their mother is filming them.

Here is another cross-continent collaboration. In this global choral and orchestral performance, "people from 5 continents, professional or amateur musicians and singers, join together to sing and play Amazing Grace to give hope to those who despair, console those who mourn, and encourage those who are on the frontline!"

From the realm of classical music comes this extraordinary moment between two world-famous orchestra conductors—Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa. Ozawa has been afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. Here his friend Zubin Mehta draws him into a performance with his orchestra and the deep reservoir of musicality within Ozawa comes alive. It’s an amazing and lovely thing to watch.

Now to another international language that just rises up, untutored, in the human. At least that is the case with two-year-old William Stokkebroe of Denmark. You are going to love him! I wish he could do a reprise right here in Trixi’s Antler Saloon.

If William demonstrates that you are never too young to take to the boards, here is a couple who prove that you are never too old! Honestly, I was gasping for breath just watching them!

To catch your breath, here is a reprise of Yoga with Man’s (and Woman’s) Best Friend, which you’ve got to love. Honestly!

I close the theme of hope out with this short animation narrated by Jane Goodall.
Gracias a mi Comadre en Mexico.

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Please stay well and enjoy your summer.

Sheri Ritchlin

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Sheri Ritchlin is a free-lance writer living in Ovando, Montana ~ a town of 50 in the Blackfoot Valley.

Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.12

The Great Bicycle Race That Isn't

Letter from a Town of 50 ~ No.11

Hope and Restoration

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