The Four Puppets

Published: March 16, 2015, 1:44 a.m.

The Four Puppets is a story from the country traditionally called Burma, but now known as Myanmar. We bring it to you from Dublin, just in time for St. Patrick's Day. Okay, so it's not Dublin in Ireland, but Dublin in California, back in the San Francisco Bay Area where we got our start almost 27 years ago. But this Dublin seems just as serious about St. Patrick's Day as the other one.

Since we last saw you, we performed in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. And we visited three fascinating attractions in Arkansas.

The first was the Jerome-Rohwer Interpretative Center in McGehee, a museum preserving the experiences of the thousands of Japanese-Americans who were interned (a fancy word for imprisoned) at the Jerome and Rohwer camps, which stood nearby. Among the prisoners was 5-year-old George Takei, a future star of Star Trek.

Then in North Little Rock, we toured a submarine. That's right, a submarine on the Arkansas River. And equally surprising, it flies a Turkish flag as well as the American flag. You'd be right if you guessed that there's a colorful history there. The USS Razorback was commissioned in World War II and served the U.S. Navy for many years before being sold to Turkey, where it served the Turkish navy for many more years, under the name TCG Muratreis. Now it's the USS Razorback again, and it's back in the U.S., and you can go aboard.

Then we were off to Hurricane River Cave, where we were not content to take the regular tour like normal people, but opted for the 4-hour extreme tour, which involved climbing, crawling through tight spots (if you think a submarine is close quarters, you should try this), wading in a river, and getting cold and covered with clay. We loved it!

Here's hoping you have a month of adventures.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Ang, Father) and Kimberly (everyone else)