Liberated Eagle and World War I Documentary

I hope my readers had a good weekend. Ours started off with a lot of snow, so Friday night we just walked to Mariner’s for fish, then we had a quiet evening at home. Saturday morning we didn’t have to leave the house until 10:30, and they still hadn’t plowed our driveway or shoveled our sidewalk. Fortunately Travalon has four-wheel drive, but we wondered why we pay condo fees if we are just going to have to do those things ourselves. We went to a memorial service for OK Cap’s father, and Jilly Moose, Kathbert, and Richard Bonomo were there as well. Then Travalon and I drove to Sauk in time to see a rehabilitated eagle get blessed by a member of the Menomonee tribe and then released back into the wild. I didn’t have the clearest view to make a video of any of this, but I was able to see the majestic eagle soaring into the sky. We saw lots of other eagles too, many of them standing on the frozen part of the river by the dam. Travalon wanted to see Three Dog Night, and he found a reasonable ticket, so I went over to Rich’s house to blat with him and Kathbert. I’m just not enough of a Three Dog Night fan to attend their concert.

Sunday Travalon and I went to Crema Café after brunch, then we did the perfect thing for a frigid yet sunny day: we went to the conservatory at Olbrich Gardens. I loved seeing all the cycads and ferns; for some reason the Mesozoic Garden on campus has really got me excited about ancient plants. And who is the biggest beneficiary of this newfound interest? That would be the huge, half-dead Boston fern I rescued from church years ago that has never died but never exactly recovered, either. Now that I’m all excited about it being a fern, I’ve started misting it, and lo and behold it is getting some new fronds. I guess it just needed a little TLC. Travalon and I watched the disappointing Saints game – I kind of feel like their loss isn’t legitimate, considering that non-call of pass interference probably cost them the game. We met some people for dinner at Lombardino’s, then we visited the married B-Boy and Mo-Girl and their adorable daughter. Travalon had a gift for a girl from his job (I guess they had some extras), and it was all sorts of wonderful toys and socks and hairbands. We enjoyed seeing the Super Blood Wolf Moon and tried photographing it with limited success, but it was too cold out to make a ton of effort.

Yesterday both Travalon and I had the day off for the Martin Luther King holiday. We went to Fired Up and made a tile of a red panda, then we went to the annual commemoration up at the Capitol, with gospel singers and speakers and three little kids reciting the “I Have a Dream” speech from memory. We went out to Sauk again and saw many eagles, including one flying parallel to our car. In the evening we went to a movie called They Never Grew Old, which was actual footage of World War I juxtaposed with recordings of veterans recalling the war. There was one snippet of a terrified-looking teen about to go on an offensive, and I just wanted to hug him and tell him it would be okay, but it probably wasn’t – the casualties in this offensive were horrific, so odds were he was killed or injured. I highly recommend this movie, and the short documentary after the credits about the making of it that almost everyone in the theater stayed for. This was British soldiers talking about the Western front, and they said the Bavarians were really nice, family-loving people and they hated killing them. Interestingly, that genetic test I took several years ago sent me a message today that they had updated my results, so I could see that I have ancestors from Bavaria. Also Nigeria, and they said they are working on that one to find out which tribe. I’d love to know if I am part Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba. I still remain, however, mostly English and Irish, so I will never achieve a tan.

Famous Hat