What would you like to know about St. Joan of Arc? Do you have a story about our parish or of general interest that you think others would like to hear? For story ideas, contact Jeff Rholl, jeff@stjoan.com.

Editor's Note: The SJA website completed stories on all of our regular musicians in June of 2004 with one notable exception, Dan Chouinard. Dan is a busy man and a man with an interesting life that took time and words to profile. We offer his story in two parts. This is Part 2. Part 1 can be found at this link.

Dan Chouinard: Part 2

Michael: You've traveled extensively with your bicycle. What drew you to excursions in Europe?

Dan: The AIDS rides were my first long distance bicycle rides and they did, in fact, inspire me and demonstrate to me that this was not only possible, but that it was in fact a really good way to travel. I was already bicycling a lot, but mostly as a commuter in town. At the time of the AIDS rides, I was also doing occasional work for RSVP tours, which is the gay lesbian travel company based here in town. I started to get some bookings with them and with some other friends on European gigs. In the mid '90s these were my first trips back to Europe since college. It had been over ten years since I had been to Europe and these trips reminded me of my fascination with travel and traveling to a place where a different language was spoken. So it wasn't long before I wanted to go over there with a bicycle.

Michael: So you would come there with very little on you, basically, a back pack.

Dan: My first trip was a month long trip biking around Italy which was four years ago. Then I carried nothing but some clothes. I stayed in hotels and hostels and ate all of my meals in restaurants and traveled that way for a month.

Michael: With no itinerary of performing, just to travel.

Dan: Just to travel and I went back a year later but on a cruise ship gig; I didn't have a bicycle but I did have an accordion. That was the year of 9/11 and I got stuck there for a week. I wasn't able to fly home. My flight home was scheduled for Sept. 12 and I didn't get out until Sept. 19. So I had a whole week of rambling in the South of France during a time of great sadness and foreboding. I thought, well, why not rent a bicycle and find a cheap place to stay. I found a camper in a camp ground that I could rent for a week. Meeting people and making music and of living out in the streets of Nice, I decided then that I wanted to have a longer, prolonged experience of wandering about Europe with my accordion and on the bicycle—this vehicle that permitted me such a close and intimate contact with the places I was passing through.

By far the biggest trip was two years ago which last five months. You figure out how you are going to live very simply and cheaply. Part of that strategy for me was playing in the streets when I could. Using music as a way to meet people and [encourage] perhaps an invitation to dinner or to stay. I found people who offered me food and lodging and friendship. I knit together this five months of staying with people I met, staying in hotels, camping, staying with farmers who needed help on their farm, and in the course of all of that, I wound up spending very little, less than a $1,000 a month.

Michael: There's a lot of uncertainty when you just depend on the kindness of folks. Your ability to give to them is a trade off kind of a thing. It's something we don't embrace here in the United States that I think you can find readily in Europe.

Dan: We're too busy making money. We're too busy being proud of how busy we are. Our cities reflect our priorities. Our cities are not built for street musicians and for people who want to linger and listen to music or gather and talk. Our cities are built for the efficient movement of vehicles and goods. They are not really for people. The public sphere is really down in the dumps right now and thankfully European cities were built along different and ancient models that had more to do with people spending time together in festivals and markets.

So all of this makes it sort of a rich and exotic experience for me, an American who grew up partly in suburbia and part out in the country, to go to these European cities that are so rich in architectural detail and diversity of people who walk out in the streets.

Michael: In this environment people are able to get to know one another and I think the more people know each other, there are less enemies. From your excursions I think you've discovered the secret to getting along with one another better; you simply get to know one another.

Dan: It is said that we build our cities and our cities influence who we are. I'm not suggesting that European cities are not trafficked, choked, polluted and sprawling, and characterized increasingly by the indifference and unfamiliarity that we see here. But there's the built-in environment that seems to create a different feeling and you just feel differently as you walk through a square that is ringed by buildings that were built during the Renaissance.

Michael: A news profile located in the Reader [a former Twin Cities news publication and competitor with City Pages] featured a column called the Closet around 1997-98. It was such a bizarre idea that looked at what was in people's closets.

Dan has used his farm upbringing to help coordinate the St. Joan of Arc community garden, "Left Field"

Dan: I think it was a great idea for a column.

Michael: What struck me about reading what was in your closet, Dan, was that you only owned two belts? [He laughs.] Did you ever increase that amount?

Dan: No, I own two black belts.

Michael: Not a brown and a black one that's reversible?

Dan: No, neither one is reversible. There both black belts. The brown one has been gone for some time now. My only dress shoes are black shoes. My only dress pants are black. I like a certain simplicity. That's one reason I don't want to complicate with too many options.

Michael: So you definitely have the familiar uniform wardrobe.

Dan: Right. I'm inching towards the Monastic in my dress, I think. I moving towards just a simple brown cloak with a rope.

Michael: That's great. You're lying.[We laugh.], I knew I was gay since I was five years old and it manifested itself with different signs as I got older. As a I child I perceived myself as an adult and I only wanted to hang out with grownups. That's why I didn't get along with other kids. I was always comfortable with myself. Most kids weren't comfortable with me. What was that like for you as a child? Was it painful? Did you not address it? Was it something present?

Dan: I was a child completely oblivious to the whole world of sexual innuendo, signals and talk until a very late age. Part of it was conflicting with having been an older kid in a big family with all my siblings. Except for one, they were younger than me. So my life growing up in my family was about the younger kids. I was also, I think, fearful enough about being different in any way and sufficiently wedded to the idea of conformity as a kid that I didn't even address the signs of the "I think" that started to creep into my world as an adolescent. I was just out to live with these confusions as things would some day resolve themselves. And I continued in that sort of mind set until I was 22. Actually, I met the guy who became my first boyfriend and finally had a reason to acknowledge my sexuality.

Michael: Was that difficult to come out to your family or is that an evolving process?

Dan: Well, I think, I imagine for everyone it was difficult in a different way. For me, no. The difficulty for me was finding the words and the willpower to do it. I knew once I fell in love with this man at St. John's, I wanted to tell people about it. So the only difficulty really was my own nervousness at each one of those early coming out talks. The first ones were with my brothers and with my friends up at St. John's. When I went home that summer, I came out to my parents right away. Some of my siblings were still young enough where it really wasn't going to be an issue for awhile. I wanted everyone to know, everyone who meant anything to me. So in the first couple of months after I came out to myself, I made about three dozen appointments for lunch with various people in my life.

Michael: And they were received with ease or was it difficult transition for them?

Dan: Well, there were difficulties in the transition, but I would say there was great goodwill and a sense of acceptance all around.

Michael: You fostered a gay child. How did that come about?

Dan: I bought a house with a partner in 1988. It was a big house and we always kept a couple of rooms rented. At one point the person who responded to an ad that we had out at the time for a roommate was a 17 year old kid who was homeless and living in a shelter. He had run away from his mom when he was 14 and had been living mostly on the streets, crashing on the couches of various friends for a couple of years, and was trying to get things back together. He had gotten some money saved up so he could get a room somewhere. It was only after I had shown him the place and then left for a two week gig out of town that he came back and spoke with Nick, my partner at the time, and confided with Nick that he was also looking for kind of a gay family to become a part of. Nick was sufficiently open to that idea. He called and asked me what I thought; I thought that might be something that we could try.

So I left home [for this gig in Florida] and I came back home with a kid who called me Dad. He decided while I was gone that I would be Dad and Nick would be Daddy. He was very much gung-ho about the whole prospect of having a couple of gay dads. It was a very intense five months of trying to work things out at a time when Nick and I were in the midst of acknowledging that things between us were not working out all that well and having this kid was an additional challenge that was not having the effect of drawing us together. In fact, it was having the effect of splitting us apart along the cracks that had already formed.

Michael: Very difficult time.

Dan: It was. Conray was a very independent and stubborn kid and he wasn't necessarily making it easy on us. He had lived independently for a long time and I think all three of us had some sort of romantic and fairly unrealistic notions of what this family was going to require.

Michael: Had he gone to school from 14 to 17?

Dan: He had not been going to school.

Michael: So, I assume, you wanted or tried to get him to go to school or some kind of education.

Dan: Yes. That was our first priority. He was in school for a year. He went to a traditional school and he dropped out and he signed up at an alternative school for artistic kids in downtown St. Paul for the remainder of the school year.

Michael: He eventually moved out and on with his life. He was with you for about a year.

Dan: No, he was with me on and off for four years.

Michael: We at St. Joan's believe in welcoming everyone where ever they are on their journey. The gay and lesbian portion of our community have been attacked by an opposition that insist that supporting gay people means you’re promoting or recruiting their lifestyle. What's an effective strategy to combat these attackers?

Dan: I believe that we're on the right path when as a community we are open to the input of all our members. That we then take what we glean from the broader membership at St. Joan's and hash out specific approaches amongst communities of people who have long standing and deep familiarity and love of St. Joan's. I have great faith that the path we follow will be one of both commitment to our ideals and of compassion for those who aren't quite ready to be there with us yet.

But I do believe it's a question of readiness. I do believe in time that the message of universal compassion will be understood in its entire breath and scope to include all people including gays and lesbians. This is obviously a challenging time for the whole church and it's a time of reexamining our ideals but I guess I agree with the sentiments voiced by the pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church. About three weeks ago in the Star Tribune [prior to 11/28/04] he wrote an editorial. His name is David Guertininian. He wrote an editorial in which he said, you know these are the dying gasps of a dying dragon. These are the gasps of an institution on the verge of radical change who are on the verge of surrendering old and dead ideas.

I believe that one of our great priorities ought to be to lead by example and to show an example of joy and inclusion and welcome that ultimately will prove irresistible to those who are ready to let go and embrace a more inclusive sort of Catholicism.

Michael Reinbold, a continuing web reporter, freelances as a writer and banquet caterer. A passionate believer in SJA's mission of social justice and collaborative ministry, Michael is an SJA Choir member, mass reader, Team Oz AIDS rider and Grace House volunteer cook. With an extensive background in theater, photography and fundraising, he relishes all aspects of the arts, staying fit and inspiring and working with people.

Michael: We need to prevail. We need to just keep doing what we're doing.

Dan: I say we keep on doing what we're doing so well, which is to be joyful, to be inclusive, and also to be fiercely outspoken, articulate and compassionate in our defense.

Peg LaSota comes from a photography background. She now works in the digital world, computer instruction, and with "videography" and the restoration of family films. She is enthusiastic about capturing family memories and preserving them digitally. Along with that, her time is spent with her family and her love for learning Spanish, piano, recorder.....and of course singing with the choir!