This February, I returned to Wisconsin for a very exciting two weeks of rock ‘n roll nutrition shows. My stops included a wide variety of students and climates. I performed the Jump with Jill show in the metro area of Green Bay in Green Bay Public Schools and traveled to remote areas of Wisconsin like Tomahawk where they don’t plow the roads, they take snow mobiles! Even the student parking lot is set up with parking spaces for these fine beasts. While my hometown of Pittsburgh was pounded with two feet of snow that closed schools for two weeks, it was negative eleven degrees in Tomahawk. PE Teacher Amanda Cushman, recipient of the wonderful Carol White PE grant, explained, “We don’t cancel school until it’s negative thirty.” THE most amazing thing about the smaller towns of Wisconsin were the lack of chain restaurants. The downtown’s looked like the 1950′s– what my hometown should look like now behind all the boards– where people shop at each others stores and eat together.
I performed on two Indian Reservations this trip, including a return to the Oneida Reservation and a new stop at the Menominee Reservation. In the video, you’ll see students counting with me in their native language during the Beat of the Body for Jump with Jill, and showing me their tribal dance at the end of I Will Not Be Bought.
I spoke to nutrition students at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and future teachers at a small private school called St. Norbert College, where they treated us to homemade soup and salad.
We made the news on Mardi Gras, and you can watch me here in my beads, mask, and tri-color outfit.