Been a While

I have been working on the book with every spare moment. When I have time that I am not working on the Book I am Practicing with the the Brigade or working on the Brigade handbooks.

The book has gone a bit crazy. It is over three hundred pages and I am still writing chapters to insert to explain what is happening. I am beginning to think that it is too complicated. So for the moment I am not writing anything new for the book. For the last week I have been editing a print out of the book. There are few things that I am worse at than trying to edit something. Besides my usual spelling and grammar short coming it is boring.

On the up side writing the clown handbook is going like gang busters. The first section is mostly done and the second is very close. The third section is the largest and most complex of the first six sections. It is about half way done. Walt and I figure that we can have it done by the end of this month. There are a ton of pictures that have to go into this section. Fortunately we have a bunch of photogenic apprentice clowns. So working on the pictures should not be a big deal. JC Prelue did the pictures for seven balloon animal in less than a couple hours. So in reality we probably have ten or so hours of taking pictures for the section.

Incidentally I should probably explain what I am rambling on about. In order to clone our clown Brigade in other Division of The Salvation Army we are going to need instructional materials. Each section concentrates on an area of clown study. So when it is finished there will be a modular handbook that new clowns can learn from. At first we wanted to form a library of all the books that one would need. When we started working on the list we gave up after fourty books.

Also there is not definitive work on clown ministry and humor therapy. So it is up to us to come up with something. The first section is basic information on the Brigade, ranks, The eleven Doctrine of The Salvation Army, Equipment that sort of thing.

The Second section is all of the rules and polity of the organization. The last couple years there has been a great deal of experimentation in this area. There is a very definite way that a circus clown troupe is set up. There is a deffinite way that a church groups are set up. There is not a great deal of over lap between the two. Ironically The Salvation Army military structure is fairly compadible with the Circus. Actually there are a great many similarities between clown and circus history and The Salvation Army, but I digress.

Nine months ago we put together a Brigade Council. This is similar to the Clown or Troupe Council that would rule a clown Troupe or one of the old performing guilds. In the last few months some of the problems with running the Brigade have started to right themselves.


Anyway back to the handbook. The third section is the first Proficiency. From this point on each section is a Proficiency or a sort of clown merit badge. This one is the basic clowning. There is the different type of clowns. The first Fifteen Balloon animals, first ten ledgermain tricks, basic juggling and the performing rules for a clown. We have half the balloon animals done and the juggling stuff done. WE also have the types of clown stuff done as well.

The other three section that have to with Ledgermain {Magic}, Ballon Animals and Juggling. Each of these section has to do with each of these skills in a more compelte way. These sections are for clowns that are going to specialise in that area. By the way there are currently 28 proficiencies we have with another ten or so we will have in the next year. So each of these sections needs a section written for it. And some like balloon need a section for every fourty or fifty balloons. So that one will have four or five sections.

We want to have the first six sections done for our training retreat in the spring.

Anyway I have no idea why any of this would be any interest to anyone but my clowns. And come to think of it I think Walk is the only one of these that reads this blog. And since he is at all the meeting this was even more pointless than usual. In addition to that it was probably hard to read. I usually make some attempt to edit this thing, believe it or not. Any way I phones that in this time.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.