Last Stop, Toussaint Academy

After an amazing day and night at Father Joe's Villages, we left the RV in a secure lot and drove the short distance to Toussaint Academy in the car. Crystal had departed on her 6AM flight back home to Providence, RI, so our new friend, Kent showed up to do the filming. Unfortunately, we soon learned that strict privacy laws prevent the filming of teenagers at shelters, so we bid Kent goodbye until next time. He was great about it and I hope we get to work together in the future.

Toussaint Academy is named after Pierre Toussaint, a legendary freed slave who lived in New York in the 18th century. His life story is absolutely amazing, but a little too long to go into here. Check him out on the web for sure! (see photo)

Deb led a wonderful art workshop for the 12 students who participated and everyone had a lot of fun. Since Toussaint is an alternative arts and sciences high school, the kids produced some amazing art work. Some of it was so good that the kids decided to keep it instead of giving it to us for future exhibition. But that is fine, all of our activities are strictly voluntary.

Although we couldn't film the kids in the shelter, we did film our tour of the facility lead by the Jodi, the amazing program director. We also enjoyed some great coffee and food next door at Pierre's Place, a cafe owned and operated by Toussaint. We video taped great interviews with two Toussaint graduates who work at the cafe. Jodi made a short documentary film a few years ago about the school and a few of its students and has agreed to find it and let us use it in the project. Since Toussaint has a great in-house recording studio and music program, we decided to skip our recording session, but expect to receive a CD with some of the students' original music.

At the end of the day, we headed for the San Diego Zoo (not home) where Gayle and I spent the night in the RV in preparation for the annual zoo walkathon early the next morning. After that, we headed (not home) to Santa Monica where I performed with my side kick Joe Cicero before really heading home to Ojai.

God it's good to be home!