Photo by Warren Brant:

The summer before going into high school my mother told me about a new experimental school called St Paul Open School. It was the first publically funded school modeled after the Freedom Schools that sprang up during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

I jumped at the chance to enroll; I already had a Billy Jack hat. It was a wide brimmed black felt hat with an Indian headband. Billy Jack was the main character of a movie by the same name released my summer between junior high school and senior high school. Billy was a half-blood Indian and Green Beret Vietnam War Vet, who was the defender of the same kind of Hippie Free School that my mom had just enrolled me into for the fall. Thank god I had the right hat.

The first day of school the building was not quite ready. Most of the converted warehouse was left wide open with minimal walls separating the cavernous space. The main job was to paint the entire interior in the psychedelic colors of the time.

During the first week we assembled in a downtown St Paul community college auditorium. We were 500 guinea pigs, ages Kindergarten through 12^th grade, excited to be a part of a brave new social experiment. What I remember clearly is Vice Principle, David Legg walking to the podium with his signature limp. David was from England. All of the teachers were on a first name bases even the Principle and Vice Principle.

With his thick British accent David announced, “At this school there are no grade levels.”

We cheered in one voice realizing that the artificial age barriers separating us had just evaporated.

David paused for dramatic effect before shouting, “At this school there are no grades.”

All the children erupted with unrestrained joy for being unshackled from having to bring a report card home to their parents ever again.

With master showmanship David waited for the perfect moment before shouting above the mayhem, “At this school there are no rules!”

What was heard next was the sound of 500 young minds exploding from the realization that for the first time in their lives they were truly free.

After the chaos of the first morning I tracked down my Billy Jack hat from under a kindergartner’s chair. For the rest of the week we performed community service; waiting for our building’s paint to dry.

The Monday morning of the second week, our building was finally ready for school. Imagine 500 children entering at a run, and not stop running all day. At the end of the day the teachers complained of backaches from teaching standing up. They would snatch a slow moving child from the herd and hunch over a math or science book for a few minutes, until the call of freedom distracted the child back into the intoxicating chaos of unbridled play.

I met my best friend that day. Ted Pirsig, a lanky, longhaired boy who pulled me aside in the gym to play handball. We were bouncing a tennis ball against the brightly colored radiator covers that ran the length of the room.

Ted missed my return volley. After retrieving the ball he turned to me and said, “Normally it would be your turn to serve, but because there are no rules at St Paul Open School that rule only applies on Tuesday.”

We went on to have a lovely afternoon making up our own rules wherever we wandered. That day Ted’s father Robert Pirsig was home writing a book called, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; the book that changed my generation.

Buddhism is the only path that has ever made sense to me. I think you can be Christian Buddhist. I think you can be a Jewish Buddhist. I think you can be an Islamic Buddhist, I even think you can be a Lutheran Buddhist.

I remember having to go meet my Lutheran Minister in his office when I began taking Hatha Yoga at my hippie high school. My mom was concerned about my soul. I told my pastor that it was just a lot of stretching. Today my mom’s church offers Yoga Class on Tuesday afternoons.

We divide up our world by putting people in boxes. If their box is on the right side of your opinions then maybe they’ll open up your box and really learn

what gifts you have to offer. If your opinion is on the wrong side of their opinions then that box will remain closed and who you are will be a mystery.

Attending a school with no rules enabled me to slip through the system without being indoctrinated. This freedom allowed me to live a life of painting outside the lines. Thanks to St Paul Open School I think I now rebel against the status quo every time I walk out my front door.

I have inherited the sense of humor of my father and the moral compass of my mother to navigate through a world of cognitive dissonance. Where there is laughter there is either pain being inflicted or healed. Like Buddha I try to lean towards the good. Pain is the great warning that something is wrong in the world. We don’t touch fire because we know that it burns. I always thought the clown’s spirit was born on the day that the second caveman was burnt by fire.

Laughter has become the coin of my trade. At an early age I learned to slip between the cracks of society’s expectations into a world were I had the freedom to walk into a room upside down if I chose to that day.

Ted Pirsig and I both learned to ride the unicycle at St Paul Open School. The school lockers were the perfect distance apart to aid us in balancing precariously on one wheel while riding down our school’s hallways.

However, I’m the one who caught the performing bug. I was still living at home when I told my mom that I was going to become a professional clown. She wasn’t quite sure about my career chose. Her friends scolded her that she was the one who raised me to be an independent thinker.

I remember nearly giving her a heart attack the day she caught me juggling her carving knives in the kitchen. Red faced she declared, “Someday I’m going to write a book called, ‘The Mother of a Clown!”

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Photo by Linda Brant-Malm:

Photo by Warren Brant:

My Father was a writer just like my Mother, except she could spell. Through the years he made his living in various ways, but his passion was traveling, photographing his travels, and writing about his travels afterwards. His first self-published book was a travel log of the Upper Mississippi. His next book on the Lower Mississippi he printed twice, the second time my Mother proofread it. I loved traveling with him down the Mississippi, from its source in Minnesota to New Orleans. In Hannibal, Missouri, my Father took pictures of me dressed as Tom Sawyer for his book. I loved running around Mark Twain’s hometown, imagining myself as Huck Finn with a corncob pipe, or Tom Sawyer with a bamboo fishing pole, while my Father took my picture. We rented a boat to take us out to the famous Jackson’s Island, where Huck and Tom played pirates. I insisted that he leave me alone on the island for a full hour, so I could run free without adult supervision, just like in the story. As soon as my Father left with the boat, I instantly realized two things. First, the island was infested with a multitude of bloodthirsty mosquitoes in biblical proportions, and second there was no way off, and no place to hide. If Eternal Heaven can be experienced in a transcendent moment, I experienced Eternal Hell in that hour on Jackson’s Island.

In 1969 I grew my hair long like a hippie. My Father loudly mourned the loss of me as his ideal model for his book. I guess Huck Finn didn’t have long hair in his imagination.

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Photo by Warren Brant:

After days of begging, my mother finally agreed to shave my head like a Mohawk Indian. With her electric clippers she transformed my blonde crew cut into a single strip of hair running down the center of my skull. For a truly authentic look she then rubbed my head with the soot from the bottom of her cooking pot.

It was 1962, and I was causing chaos on American streets way before punk rock, and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. I could be seen in my loincloth running across the freshly cut lawns of my St Paul neighborhood. I remember the sweet pungent smell, and how the wet grass clippings stuck to the bottom of my bare feet. The flat top of my Mohawk matched the shape of the manicured hedge-rows planted along driveways and between yards.

My problem was that my mother insisted I wear tighty-whities under my homemade loincloth. I argued that, “Tarzan does not wear tighty-whities.” I clearly remember watching our Zenith black and white TV to study the construction of Johnny Weissmuller’s loincloth. Once when Tarzan was climbing on a sheer mountain cliff a gust of wind revealed the key-missing piece of material absent from my costume. When I tried to explain this essential detail to my mom, I saw her eyes glaze over as if it was one detail too many.

The little girl next-door, Sandy Seestedt, was of course scandalized when she saw me hide my tighty-whities in the bushes as soon as I was out of site of my mom. Every time the wind blew Sandy would get another lesson in male anatomy.

It didn’t feel natural playing Cowboys and Indians in the antiseptic environment of my neighborhood. But just one block east of my house was Beaver Lake. I’m told that the local Indians named it for it’s original shape. The City of St Paul later drained off the beaver’s tail to develop it into a city park. Today it looks more like a turtle, but when I was five years old it was my private wilderness. I ditched my tiighty-whities in the tall grass by the water and imagined I was a real Indian boy roaming the undeveloped shoreline alone. I would spend endless hours catching tadpoles in the marshy water, or exploring the woods along the shore. Eventually my hair grew back and I became an ordinary boy again. But the fleeting time I had a Mohawk – running free with the summer breeze caressing my body – is the closest I’ve ever felt to nature.

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Photo by Warren Brant:

During the summer 1962 I was turning six years old, and I wanted to invite my kindergarten girlfriend, Renee McCoy, to my birthday party. I insisted on dressing up as a knight in shining armor to deliver a special invitation to her that included a rose from our garden. I remember my mother fitting me with cardboard packing tubes for arms. I complained that my arms needed to bend. I explained to my mom, “I’m supposed to be, ‘A Knight in Shining Armor,’ not the Tin Woodman after a rainstorm!” She painstakingly crafted moving elbows out of tin foil taped onto cardboard sheets carefully cut into the correct shapes that she stapled together for an authentic look.

The day my knight costume was ready I couldn’t wait to deliver my birthday invitation to Renee. She lived two blocks down on Magnolia Avenue one house in from the far end. My father had followed me like the Paparazzi with his German made Leica camera. We arrived at her family’s ranch style house with red wood siding, and a shiny chain link fence around the entire property. The gate’s hinges squeaked as I entered and walked up to ring the doorbell. All I remember after that is Renee’s face flushing crimson when I bent down on one knee and presenting her invitation in a sealed white envelope along with a red rose freshly cut from the rose bush growing outside my parents bedroom window.

On the day of my party, Renee arrived in a white dress with spotless white gloves. Her outfit must have been from a recent wedding where Renee was asked to be the Flower Girl. I thought she looked like a princess that had leaped right off the page of a fairytale. My mother chuckled when Renee refused to take off her gloves the entire time. Those gloves bravely survived her lunch of a hot dog with mustard, with a side of baked beans, followed by cake and ice cream. She chose chocolate.

I remember Renee waiting in line with the boys to tryout my brand new toy rifle. When it was her turn to shoot I can still remember how my heart mysteriously fluttered when she kneeled in her frilly dress and squeezed the trigger of my gun with her tiny white-gloved finger. Renee McCoy was the prettiest girl in kindergarten.

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Photo by Warren Brant:

My fondest childhood memory with my mother was when she would help me make costumes for dress-up. Crowded in my parents’ tiny bedroom was her writing desk. She would clear the typewriter and fountain pens from her cheap veneer mahogany desktop to make room for her costume dream factory. The main piece of equipment was a black portable Singer sewing machine. In the clutter of her desktop drawer we found the additional required tools for our many creations. She owned two types of scissors. One was a pinking shears that magically made a zigzag cut. But her heavy-duty polished steel fabric scissors was the workhorse of the operation. We used it to cut cardboard, canvas, and rope of almost any thicknesses. Besides these vital cutting tools this mysterious long shallow drawer contained a paper punch, stapler, masking tape, and most important of all, safety pins of all sizes. With these clever fasteners my mother could make miracles happen. Whatever my imagination could think of my mother would struggle to make it into reality.

One day I might imagine I was Mighty Mouse wearing swimming trunks, over long johns, with a bath towel Mom carefully safety pinned to my shoulders as a cape. Another day I would wear just the swimming trunks, with large cardboard tubes strapped to my back, like scuba tanks from the TV show Sea Hunt. Before learning how to swim, I imagined swimming like the show’s star, because we shared the same first name. When my mother tried to teach me to swim, I insisted she first buy me a scuba mask. I clearly explained to her that if I was going to learn how to swim, I needed to do it underwater, just like Lloyd Bridges.

Photo by Warren Brant:

Photo by White House staff photographer:

This is a picture of my mother schooling President Bush on international affairs, when she was volunteering for the Red Cross after the I-35W bridge collapsed in 2007.  Below is an excerpt from the book I’m writing called, The Mother of a Clown.

My Mother the Peacemaker

My five-foot, hunchbacked mother looks every bit like a Lutheran Mother Theresa as she waits to be of service at the temporary Red Cross headquarters, hastily set-up yesterday when the I-35W Bridge collapsed during the peak of Minneapolis’ rush hour traffic. She’s wearing a Red Cross vest with a name-tag that simply reads, ”Elaine.”

An important looking government official comes into the room and asks for volunteers to greet President Bush. Air Force One was scheduled to land in under an hour.

My mother hears a man mutter, “I’m staying inside. Bush just thinks he can come here to this disaster of 13 dead to make-up for his botched response to Hurricane Katrina.”

Then a woman blurts, “I didn’t vote for him last election, and I’m not going out there today.”

My mother remembers a promise she had made and says, “Well, I didn’t vote for him either, but I’ll go out and meet The President.”

She knows that I’m directing a show at a Fringe Festival just a few blocks away, so she immediately picks up the phone and calls me hoping I can meet The President too.

I’m sitting in the front row of God’s Mischief, the show I’m directing. Sitting next to me is Dean J. Seal, the producer of the Fringe Festival. The house lights dim and the show is just beginning when my phone rings in my pants pocket. Josette Antomarchi, whose one-woman show I’m directing, gives me her best indignant French glare. This is really embarrassing because, Josette, is normally my director. Rosie and I have hired her for the past five years to direct us in our husband and wife clown show. It was a huge honor when she asked me to direct her.

Dean the producer glances at me sideways as I struggle to fish my phone out of my pocket and manage to hang it up by the third ring.

My mom is disgusted when she is dumped into my voice mail system after just three rings. She hangs up, and dials again.

Again my pants pocket rings. Josette, whose Antomarchi family blood is co-mingled with Napoleon’s blood, begins to boil. Dean can’t help but chuckle quietly as I fumble to switch my phone to vibrate. I sheepishly put my pulsating phone back in my pocket, and endure the quiet but clear buzzing emanating from my pants until it mercifully stops. I then settle in for the hour-long show.

After six rings Mom gets my voice mail again. She leaves a rambling message then hangs up her desktop phone. Shaking her head she laughs at how hard it is to explain anything on one of those newfangled answering machines.   Within the hour the White House handlers come back to fetch her and the other volunteers because the presidential limo is about to arrive.

Not many Red Cross workers are joining Mom outside to greet President Bush.   As she waits on the hard concrete in the hot sun, her painkillers are managing to take the edge off the acute discomfort of her strangulated intestines.   She is scheduled for a major operation in two days, but until then the doctor restricted her to a liquid diet, and sent her home until the surgery.

My mother just returned from Africa, and is still recovering from jetlag. It was a year of joy and pain. The joy was her pride in establishing the first school for counseling in Tanzania at Iringa University. Her pain started when she crushed two vertebrae after slipping in the shower of her isolated mountaintop house.   In the spring she caught malaria while still recovering from her broken back. She was rushed to the hospital in the bouncing backseat of a Toyota Corolla, speeding down a poorly maintained mountain road. My mother, the farmer’s daughter, complained, “I could churn butter on this road” while she laughed between the bumps and her excruciating back spasms.

Our family was worried sick when Mom caught malaria. I was running around with my hair on fire wanting to get on the next plane and bring her home.

I finally was able to reach my Uncle Arnold by phone. He was with her in Africa, and assured me that she was fine. Arnold’s argument was, “What your mother is doing here is the most important work of her life. She is leaving a legacy; let her complete it.”

Last night when my mother received a call for volunteers from the Red Cross she was recovering from jetlag, malaria, and a broken back, while anxiously awaiting her surgery.   True to character she said to the aid worker, “Yes, I will be happy to help.”

Her job today is to serve as a psychologist caring for any Red Cross aid worker who is suffering from the stress of caring for the victims of the disaster. Back in the 1990s when she learned the Red Cross was looking for licensed psychologists to care for the mental health of their stressed out aid workers she thought, “That’s a perfect job for a woman like me in my mid-seventies.” and immediately signed-up.   Now she is in her eighties and is not ready to let a little pain slow her down.

As she waits for President Bush’s limousine to arrive, she thinks back to serving in New York after 911 where the other aid workers called her, “The Funky Little Old Lady,” because of her eccentric lavender and lilac outfits, capped off with her purple bulbous toed shoes, that hinted at the clown hiding inside her.

In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a female aid worker refused to listen to my mother’s advise about taking short breaks to relieve her stress. The next day that same lady sought out my mother after a restless sleep filled with nightmares.   My mother taught her to simply take a moment to breath after hanging up the phone, to release the stress of one victim’s personal crisis, before answering the call of the next victim.

The aid worker complained “But when the phone rings it could be someone in serious trouble,”

“It’s okay,” my mother counseled ”They’re not going to go away. You don’t have to answer the phone on the first ring.”

The presidential limousine arrives with a flurry of Secret Service agents getting into position. Bush gets out from the backseat dressed in a blue windbreaker with the presidential seal sewn on his left breast. His eye catches a little old lady wearing purple shoes and reads her nametag. In his thick Texan drawl he says, “Elaine, how ya doin?”

My mother seizes the cue and steps forward past the Secret Service and offers The President her small 83-year-old wrinkled hand. When Bush goes to shake her hand, my mother doesn’t let go. Holding his hand tight she looks up at him and asks, “Mr. President, can I say a sentence to you?”

Bush laughs at the spunk of this little old lady and replies, “Why Elaine, you can say a whole paragraph to me.”

My mother releases the President’s hand and locks him with her piercing blue eyes, “Mr. President, I read in the paper that you are starting peace negotiations for a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians?” She continues on for a full paragraph.

Startled by my mom’s spontaneous speech Bush replies, “Well, as a matter of fact, Elaine, I’m meeting with top officials on this issue in Washington tomorrow.”

Without releasing Bush from her gaze, my mother counsels him, “Mr. President, when the going gets tough, keep at it. Please don’t give up because this is important for you to accomplish.”

Later a government official notices my mother’s nametag, “So, you’re Elaine?”

My mother responds “Yes I am. Why do you ask?”

“You’re the little old lady that Bush couldn’t stop talking about.” He laughs, “When you brought up the peace negotiations in Israel you really blindsided him, Elaine.”

Josette’s show ends just as President Bush gets into his limo and drives away. Outside the theater I listen to my mother’s voice mail. I make my apologies to Dean and Josette and quickly drive over to the address my mother left on my phone. Mom is still standing outside the Red Cross headquarters when I drive up.

“You just missed the President,” she scolds. Then she fills me in on all the details of meeting President Bush, as I marvel at her limitless energy.

I say, “Mom, you just got home from Africa; you’re about to have surgery; and you’re still recovering from malaria.”

She answers with a sparkle in her eyes, “Yes?”

I blurt out, “Are you crazy?”

The next day I visit my mom at her house. I’m scared because her surgery is tomorrow, and nervous because I feel I need to fulfill some intangible role as her Spiritual Advocate. Awkwardly I suggest praying together.

My mother’s eyes brighten as she scoots closer to me on the couch, and reaches out her hands. When I place my hands in hers I feel a spiritual current flow from her frail fingers directly into my heart. I look up and I see a radiant glow transform her wise ancient face. She looks into my eyes and waits for me to start.

With the weight of the world on my heart I begin to mumble an improvised prayer. As I speak my mother slips into a deep meditation with such a practiced grace, it would put a gray haired yogi master to shame.

After our prayer she looks up at me and says, “If I die tomorrow I’ll be satisfied with the life I’ve lived.”

A little shocked by my mom talking so directly about her own death, I ask, “What are you saying Mom?”

She proudly straightens up her tiny 5-foot frame and says, “I may never do anything greater than what I accomplished this past year in Africa.”   With a twinkle in her eyes she adds, “And I think I had my peak moment yesterday.”

I laugh and say, “You sure did tell Bush, Mom.”

She shrugs and says, “I kept a promise.”

Puzzled I ask, “What promise?”

She then tells me about a promise she made to a group of Palestinian Christians on her last trip to Israel. They informed her that to be both a Palestinian and a Christian is to be the minority of the minority in Israel. No one was on their side. They pleaded with my mother that when she returned to America to please tell her President about their plight. My mother laughed and promised, but not until today did she believe she would ever have the opportunity to keep her promise.

I laugh and say, “My mother the peacemaker.”

Photo by Linda Brant-Malm:

Pictured here is my mother with Don Shelby the former anchor of WCCO TV News.  Don Shelby always kept an Emergency Clown Nose on his desk at the television station.  He told my mother that when the stress in the newsroom would get too high he put on his Emergency Clown Nose to break the tension.

I’ve been recording my mother’s stories for several years.  I think it’s something everyone my age should do if their parents are still alive.  The reason I started recording her stories began with a phone call.

The Phone Call

The phone rings. I pickup and hear my mom’s voice, “Do you have a minute?”

I say, “I’m on a deadline Mom. Are you coming to our circus next weekend?”

My mom assures me she has it marked on her calendar, but tells me that’s not why she called.

“Okay?” I respond hesitantly, not sure what her tone means.

In a clear confident voice she says, “I’ve decided what I want to ask each of my children to do for my end of life needs.”

My heart skips a beat before I ask, “What do you mean, Mom?”

She responds back, “Well, I’m 83-years old and I’m about to spend a year in Africa.

I knew she has been planning her fifth trip to Africa. This time she is going to establish a school for counseling at Iringa University in Tanzania. She clearly wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

I ask, “Mom, are you feeling your mortality?”

She laughs, “I just want to put my life in order here at home before I go abroad again.”

She tells me that she has already spoken to my brother Jerry and my sister Linda. Jerry has agreed to take care of her Financial Estate.

I feel like I just dodged a bullet. As the eldest, Jerry is the perfect choice.

Then she tells me that my sister Linda has agreed to act as her Healthcare Advocate.

Another bullet whizzes past my ear. Linda, the middle child is again the perfect choice. As the youngest I couldn’t think of what was left to do?

Mom then says to me, “I want you to be my Spiritual Advocate.” A bullet hits me in the heart.

My first thought was, “What the hell is a Spiritual Advocate?” I don’t even belong to a church.

My mother has lived the life of a Lutheran Mother Theresa. Why is she choosing her son the professional clown, to be responsible for her soul?

Mom hangs up the phone without leaving further instructions.

To be continued…

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Photo by Warren Brant:

My first memory of my mother is when I was three years old. I remember climbing up on her lap as she was pounding away at her black Olympus typewriter on a tight deadline. She was making half-a-cent a word writing scripts to go along with educational filmstrips for the Lutheran Church. She was attempting to type up the pages that she had written in longhand the night before, while my brother, sister, and I were sleeping.

That morning, I had my mother all to myself. My brother Jerry was at school in first grade and my sister Linda was at preschool. That first memory of sitting on the lap of my mother felt like my ears popping after descending from a high altitude. All of a sudden my world felt vivid and bright.

I remember she stopped typing and cuddled me for a moment, then faced me forward on her lap. I was perched in the perfect position to reach the typewriter keys. She quickly moved her precious typewriter beyond the reach of my curious fingers, before I could turn her cleanly typed manuscript into an alphabet salad of random letters.

To solve my frustration at not being able to reach this fascinating mechanical devise, my mother took out a scrap of paper, and marked a series of dots that spelled out my name L-L-O-Y-D. She handed me a yellow pencil with a worn rubber tip, then put me on the floor next to where she had placed the scrap of paper filled with dots. She patiently taught me how to connect the dots that spelled out my own name.   That morning I felt like a writer too, as I painstakingly connected the dots to spell L-L-O-Y-D,while my mother silently returned to her desk, and attempted to type a few more words at a half-a-cent each.

Photo by Marc Norberg:

This summer I’ve spent alone. Rosie has been in Toronto all month studying Waldorf Education, and Gabe has been at the Colorado Renaissance Festival. Rosie returns next week, and I’m excited that Liza will also be visiting from Colorado, and even Gabe will make a pit stop to pick up his student-housing lease before taking off for U of W in Milwaukee.

I’ve spent most of my time writing, which is a cautionary tale. Be careful what you wish for because it might come true. Both my mother and father were writers, and I’ve always secretly dreamed of becoming a writer myself.  Well…   I now have a literary agent; two book projects; and a play that I will be collaborating with Kevin Kling on in 2016.

Starting this blog is a result of my agent, Dawn Frederick’s recommendation. I’m told that it’s important to establish a platform as an author, so this blog is the result. I will be posting short excerpts from my writing projects in the future.  As Dawn would say, “I’ve just been getting my footing up to this point.”

Look for my daily posts to read more.

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