Night of Moths and Day of Cranes

 

A terrible thing happened on Thursday evening while I was doing Night Prayer: my chair broke! The back came off, and this has happened before but Travalon just popped it back on. This time every time he popped it back on, it popped back off again. He was overexerting himself so much that I was afraid he would drop dead of a heart attack, and I'd rather do without the chair than without the husband, so I said don't bother, we can afford a new chair. At the moment the chair is just sitting there with the back lying behind it like it's asleep or something. More chair news soon...

Last night I talked to Tiffy early because Travalon and I were going on a moth walk at night. I told her how I'm the Worst Catholic Ever and got some chakra crystals. These are tiny little pyramids.

I also showed her the picture I colored in my astrology coloring book. I said would you like me to do one for you with the neon pens or the sparkly ones, and she said sparkly since she doesn't have a blacklight. So here is her picture.

I didn't have anything resembling flesh color of any race among my pens, so I guess she's Irish...?

Then Travalon and I went on the moth walk with about a dozen other people. Someone I worked with at the Press was there, so we talked to her. The guy leading the walk had painted some trees with this potent-smelling mixture of beer, bananas, and molasses to attract moths, and he had also set up two UV lights with nets over them. Here is a picture of one.

You can see how the moths hang out on the outside of the net.

Check it out! My shirt and hoodie glow under the UV light!

And so does the leader's T-shirt! Can you see the luna moth on it? It continued to glow in the dark.

Here are some more photos of moths.

This is actually a cicada hatching out of its larval skin. It's hard to see, but the leaf is pointing right at it.

And more moths.

This big ugly bug is a fish fly.

I love this golden moth - so pretty!

This morning I had a two-hour training session, but I survived, and then Travalon and I went to the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo. He brought his good camera and took lots of photos of the modern-day dinosaurs. This is a sarus crane.

These are blue cranes.

These are demoiselle cranes.

Apparently they are the same astrological sign as Tiffy!

My favorite - the black crowned crane from Africa!

These are wattled cranes.

This hooded crane was talking to us, but I'm not sure what it was trying to tell us.

The red-crowned crane was so beautiful. It kept dancing, but then it went in its house.

I think some of the cranes were hiding in their houses today, because we never saw the Eurasian cranes or the brolgas. These black-necked cranes are considered sacred in some Asian cultures, and they had a chant you could listen to about them. I believe it's the same one I posted on this blog last year in the video the Foundation sent about the prayer wheels being made in Nepal.

I love how he fluffed up his tail!

And here are the prayer wheels! They have cranes on them.

This is the white-naped crane.

Then we crossed over a stream with some large tadpoles in it.

This is the whooping crane, just like the ones we have seen at Horicon and Theresa Marshes.

The Siberian cranes were Travalon's favorites.

There were lots of flowers at the Crane Foundation too. Here is a calla lily, looking better than mine in my garden plot. (One white one bloomed, the orange one seems to have died, and the black one has leaves but no flowers.)

And there were so many wildflowers! Here is a cardinal flower with something purple that I feel like I should know what it is, but I can't tell you offhand.

My plant app says this is an evening primrose. I'm not sure about that...

It says this is spotted bee balm.

It says this is rough blazing star.

And it says this is prairie blazing star.

We came back on the Merrimac ferry. Here are some photos of our short boat ride.

Then we took a hike on Governor's Island, and we saw lots of sailboats.

We were hoping to see the loon that is allegedly hanging out in Warner Bay (we did see it on our pontoon boat cruise), but we had no luck. We did see sandhill cranes a bunch of times on our way back from Baraboo, and then tonight at Night Prayer, Richard Bonomo said he was out biking when some big birds were in his way on the bike path. He said they looked like turkeys but not exactly, and I asked him if he could be more specific. I thought they might have been cranes, and then when I showed him photos from the Crane Foundation, he said, "Yes! That's what they were!" I'm not surprised, because cranes are second only to Canada geese for being all, "Oh, were you about to go down this path? In that case, I'm going to cross it. You'll just have to wait." I don't know why. Who can understand bird psychology? Maybe they are still mad that they used to rule the world, but now we mammals have taken over, so the only way they can get back at us is to purposely get in our way.

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Stealing Our Credit

 

My age is creeping up on me, and very recently small print began looking so blurry that I couldn't read it. Finally this week I dug out my reading glasses, and they seem to make a huge difference, because not only can I read the fine print, but if I use them while working, then when I take them off to look at the faraway world, everything is much clearer in my distance vision too. My eyes must have been working so hard to see close things that the muscles were too fatigued to change my focus to distance. Bonus: Travalon thinks glasses on women are sexy, so he really likes to see me in my reading glasses! Too bad I didn't meet him before I went and got LASIK...

There was an astrology book I had as a teenager that Hardingfele found some years ago at a book giveaway, and she gave it to me. What struck me as an adult that hadn't registered when I was a teen was how sexist this book was: it was written in the 60's by a woman who came of age in the 40's, and the gender stereotypes are jarring. There was one story where a put-upon secretary had to write an entire letter for her boss, who then took credit for the wonderful writing style; the author was using this as an illustration of how some sun signs take advantage of others, but I think what it really illustrates is that men have always taken credit for women's work. When I was an undergrad, I helped a well-known scholar write a book about proverbs, and one could say I did the whole thing: I collected the proverbs, I organized them by topic, and I wrote the forward. The scholar did give me a tiny shout-out in the part he added to the forward, and given our power dynamic, and the fact that he gave me a free copy of the book, I was (sort of) satisfied at the time. Now I hear stories like how Rosalind Franklin did all the work to discover the structure of DNA, and Watson and Crick gave the male grad student (who did much less work) credit for the Nobel Prize, but not her. I think of the persistent legends that some of Mozart's and Mendelssohn's compositions were actually written by their older sisters, because people would believe that a school-aged boy could create something amazing, but not a teenage girl. And then I think how some men say women are the lesser sex because throughout history they have not contributed to the body of knowledge of mankind, and I think, "Seriously? Maybe ONLY women have contributed and the credit was always stolen by men!! How would we even know?" And I don't doubt this also applies for nonwhite people as well. It's grossly unjust to always steal the ideas of people who are not white men in power and then turn around and say only white men in power are intelligent, because they are the only ones coming up with ideas. That's a logical fallacy if ever I heard one!

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Unexpected Hat

 

My regular readers may remember that I sometimes mention the Daughter of Denni on this blog. Denni's real name is Dennis, but apparently he took a computer programming class ages ago that cut off the S, so from then on he was known as Denni, pronounced "den-eye." He was the fittest retired guy I knew, biking everywhere, but he had battled cancer, and I thought he had beaten it. Apparently not, because a couple of days ago Rich sent me his obituary. This may explain why I hadn't heard any details about the Daughter of Denni's annual birthday biking trip, which she had said some months ago would happen this year. (It didn't happen last year, because nothing did.) I can see why they wouldn't have it now! But I think they might have one later in the year, or next year, in honor of Denni, because if there were two things he loved, they were biking and beer.

Also in sad death news, Dusty Hill died. My regular readers may remember how Travalon and I went to see ZZ Top in November of 2019, and good thing we did! Who knew it would be our last chance? They had the same lineup for over fifty years; as the lead singer said, "Same three guys... same three chords." Dusty was the bass player, and one of the two with the famous long beards. Ironically, the only guy without a beard is named Frank Beard.

In lighter news, the zodiac perfume people may not have been scamming me when they asked for my full name and date of birth, but they did get money out of me because I ended up buying some "Capricorn-scented" lotion from them out of curiosity. It arrived today, and so did a package I wasn't expecting, which just said it was from "Fulfillment Center" somewhere in California. What?? Should I open it? It didn't tick or anything, and in fact it felt really light, so I did open it, and then I just laughed. Back in June they said anyone who gave blood would get a free T-shirt, and they gave me one even though they rejected me. In July anyone who gave blood would get a free hat, but I tried twice to give and was rejected for a different reason every time, and nobody offered me a hat. But sitting there in the box that had just been shipped to me was a baseball cap that said: "American Red Cross." So now I can look like a blood donor and smell like a Capricorn. Life is good.

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Train from the East

Today a really exciting (for me) thing happened when I went out to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at three. I was going to walk around in the shade under some big trees, but I heard a distant train horn, and it seemed to be from the east. Now when the trains come from the west, you hear the horn at one intersection, then another, and then the really close one just before the train passes, but I remembered not too long ago I heard the train horn, didn't hear it get any closer, and then suddenly the train was passing by from the east. So I walked over to the Nau-Ti-Gal parking lot to finish the chaplet, and I didn't hear the horn again, but suddenly there was a rumbling coming from the east so I got my camera ready just in the nick of time. Behold, the rare From the East train video! I know you're probably thinking, "This is just like all your other train videos, Famous Hat!" but the train is coming from the other direction, and now you know just how lucky I had to get to capture this video of it.

This evening as I was driving to Adoration, I saw a train with a really beautiful blue engine with red stripes on it, but there was no way for me to safely make a video of that.

Here are some recent photos. First is the sunset from last night. It looked far better in real life

Here is some artwork done by the kids Travalon works with, since they were stuck inside yesterday because the heat was so bad.

I'm thinking these were painted by boys.

And I'm guessing these were painted by girls.

These marigolds in our neighborhood just looked so cheerful in the sunshine.

And finally, some rosaries. I usually post photos of these right away, but I kept forgetting these.

The one on the left is from Ethel's mother's funeral. The other three are from Crazy Frank's Antique Shop in Mineral Point, which we stopped at on our Memorial Day road trip. You can see that the middle one of those three is a missionary rosary, and you may not be able to tell from the picture, but the one on the far right is made of rose petals. My rosary acquisition in 2021 is not nearly at the insane level of 2020.

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More Photos from Our Pontoon Boat Ride

 

Tonight Travalon and I went swimming at Governor Nelson State Park for the first time this summer. We figured on a Monday evening the beach would be quieter, and were we ever right about that - we were the only ones swimming! There was one couple sitting out on the spit of land that juts into the water, and another couple came along and had a picnic on the beach, but nobody else ventured into the water. We saw the Betty Lou Cruise, some annoying personal watercraft, and several sailboats, including one with a lovely green and white spinnaker. I love to watch sailboats with their spinnakers up, but what I'd love even more is to someday be on one. Someday... 

On the way home we saw a beautiful sunset, and I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone, but they didn't really capture it. I may post them someday, but right now I am posting the long-promised photos from our pontoon boat ride. We saw lots of beautiful houses on the lake.

Some of the houses on Maple Bluff have impressive staircases down to the water.

This is my office building, the tallest building on campus: Van Hise!

Look at this cute little boathouse!

This gazebo matches the house perfectly.

And look at the sunroom on this house! My plants would love this!

This Tudor-style house is so beautiful.

Here is another shot of the green line on Maple Bluff that they say marks what used to be the bottom of the lake.

And this is the edge of Governor's Island.

Here you can see the striped smokestack at the old Oscar Mayer plant beyond Maple Bluff. It kind of looks like a lighthouse, and boaters use it to navigate, especially at night, when it's lit up.

Here's Maple Bluff again.

And here are some good shots of the Capitol Building.

Here is Van Hise again, aka. the Killer Building.

The Red Gym and the Union Terrace.

I have been told this lovely old building is Water Chemistry. The ugly building behind it is the Helen C. White Library.

Here's the Union Terrace again! I just love how colorful it is.

And this impressive building is the Edgewater Hotel. On the lower right is the Boathouse, a restaurant where you can sit outside by the water, and sometimes they have live music.

While I have not been to the private houses we saw on this boat ride, many of the public places I know well, like the Edgewater Hotel, the Union Terrace, and of course good old Van Hise. I practically lived in that building as an undergrad. Who could have foreseen that someday I'd be earning money working there instead of spending it studying there? Life is crazy like that.

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