Duane Busick catches 'The Welcome Table' parade on video

Videographer Duane Busick was at Malcolm Dalglish's The Welcome Table last Saturday night, and soon thereafter posted a video called "Malcolm's Parade" on You Tube. The Welcome Table was a remarkable, magical concert of original song and dance, with a wide emotional range: from the Dr. Seussian-ridiculous (a dance of deer and young hunter to the sounds of a huge marching bassoon ensemble, "Abbotts Bromley Horndance") to the sublime.

One of my favorite pieces was "The Brink," Malcolm's story of an unexpected all-night vigil in a human knot with other teen climbers on a mountain ledge in the Wyoming Wind River Range in late August of 1969. (You can hear the haunting beginning of this song here; it's on the CD Into the Sky.) He sang it Saturday night with Mia Dalglish, Lydia Elmer, and Moira Smiley; it gave me goose bumps, as it always does.

The evening ended with this Pie March, first performed in Hobart, Tasmania in July 2009. The words were changed for the Bloomington performance, and the theme adapted to celebrate pie, as a postscript to a Dalglish's "Pie R Pie." At the foot of sculptor Dale Enochs's limestone "Bloomington Banquet," volunteers served five kinds of Bloomingfoods pie to a crowd over 400 people. We gathered near Enochs's limestone and copper fire pit to eat, sing, and stave off the winter blues.

It's fantastic to see this little film catch some of the spirit of the night. Busick has been busy with less happy occasions recently, including a protest on our courthouse lawn of Governor Mitch Daniels's cuts to public education in Indiana. The Welcome Table came on the heels of a vote just the night before when the local school board eliminated teachers, special programs, media specialists (librarians), summer school, Honey Creek historic school, trips to Bradford Woods, and other important features of the Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC).

Busick is the youngest of 12 children, and was born and raised in Paoli, Indiana, home of Lost River Community Co-op. Both Duane and his wife, Kathy Loser, a librarian at Bloomington High School North, are dedicated advocates of education and the arts. Duane recently created a facebook page called Support Public Education in Monroe County. It has become a space for community conversation, activism, and strategic suggestions in response to over 3 million dollars in cuts of state aid to our school corporation. Thank you, Duane!