Montana's Top Bananas

Ten--nine professors and a graduate student--tell forty tales in rhymed verse as they drive a van to a conference from the University of Montana to San Francisco, wedging in two odes to an earthworm & dandelion, four sonnets, four ditties, one villanelle, and singing two original songs. In the spirit and style of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," they embark on a pilgrimage to reap knowledge at the Holy Grail of computer technology in Silicon Valley with one simple rule: "you can speak at any time so long as you speak in rhyme." The themes of the tales are as diverse as the group of reluctant pilgrims, professors Virgil Vulgate, Smokey Cloud, Inger Johnson, Lupe de Vega, Lolo Sandec, T. Osprey Munsch, Tommy Tornado, Lawrence Carrow, Buster White, and graduate student Jose Roberto, "Bob."