March 7, 2004
Sedona, Arizona, USA

11:12am. The slide show at the LA county jail rocked. The 80 inmates I spoke to were part of an innovative program that mixes races, and gives them more trust-- such as full-length pencils. Normally, Blacks and Hispanics are kept separate due to gang affiliation. I was told that if a black and Hispanic share a cell, and then either one are moved to a segregated part of the prison, they could be killed. Any kind of new program is tried here first. The men were tough looking, as you could imagine, but were all very friendly to me and appreciated the show. One guy even said he would pay me to do a show at his kid's school. Liz and James, the educators who invited me, said they would help set up more shows when I return to LA in April.

Peggy, was hanging with me that day, but wasn't allowed in to see the show because she didn't have security clearance. Afterward, we went to Sony Studios to meet a friend working on animation for Spiderman 2. He had done the first Spiderman as well, and it was neat to here about the back ground behind visual effects. We sat outside and he showed us 3D slides through a stereo viewer-- like a View Master... that works with a camera that shoots two images at once. He had taken a wicked picture of Moriah, Luna and I at the Pimp'n' Ho party, and gifted us this image with the special viewer.

On the way back to Pasadena I stopped in to see John in Santa Monica, who has emailed me a few times, but we'd never met, and Rick, a Burner who loaned me a projector. Navigating afternoon traffic in LA was hell and I'd be happy to never do it again.

Thursday morning I packed up my things from the Rabbit Hole, and was on the road 2pm. The Dragonfly Spaceship was very heavy loaded with everything-- including kayak and bike on top. One of the back tires was old, and I was worried about it blowing out. Heading across Arizona toward Phoenix, I thought, "I need to get a car jack". A half hour later, the tire blew out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but desert as far as the eye could see. I got out to flag down help, but then it started raining-- down pouring, so from inside the car, I flashed S.O.S at on coming traffic with a flashlight. An officer showed up 20 minutes later, loaned me a jack, and I was on my way again after putting on the spare.

At midnight, I tented at a rest spot an hour from Flagstaff. In the morning, driving through the mountains was tricky due to dense low cloud cover and the highway was slippery with fresh snow. All public schools in Flagstaff were closed due to the snowfall, but I was headed to the Star School, which was a charter school, 30 miles east near the Hopi Reservation, where most of the students lived.

It was a large dragonfly workshop-- with a couple dozen students and two teachers. With that many students it was challenging to focus on the counseling part of the activity, but I tried. Anyone who didn't finish, I finished it for them. At the end of the day, all the students came together for a slide show.

I spent the night at Kate and Mark's ranch, which is off the grid, without a neighbor in sight. Kate and I walked in the moonlight, and she showed me a straw bail house and Hopi Hogon they built. In the morning, I completed dragonflies students couldn't finish, and Miles, Kate's son, made two more dragonflies, which he sold for $35 to a trio of sisters in a restaurant we ate at in Sedona that night. How's that for empowering education?! Later in the evening we went to a the Sedona Film fest to see a Black Rock Burning, a Burning Man doc, and a doc about the rise in Juveniles being tried as adults, which was Shocking, very sad, and motivated me to continue doing shows in the prison system. After that, I hooked up with Aleece, the filmmaker of Black Rock Burning, and we went dancing at the Rincon... where I met up with my friend Corey, and then went to a film fest after party at the home of Sarah West, the creator of Angel Heart Healing Music.

I'm now at Corey's, soon to head to the Summit Resort to meet my folks.