The Bardeen Penthouse and the Replacement Rosary

Generally in November I feel like I've stepped into another timeline, which makes sense since it's the month that traditionally has been considered to have the thinnest veil between us and the Other Side. This particular November seems even more extreme. Today I waited five minutes for an elevator, and just as I was about to give up and take the stairs, two of the three arrived at the same moment. Then I was going to have some more coffee, but oddly the pot of coffee was used up, which isn't a common occurrence on Thursdays, when less people seem to be around. I asked the grad student who drinks the most coffee if they wanted more, but they demurred, so I asked our former chair if she could make me a cup with her swanky single-serving coffee machine... and then a different grad student made a whole, fresh pot. 

When I took my morning walk, someone called me, and then I got back to my office and took off my coat. Suddenly I realized my phone wasn't sitting on my desk, so I checked my coat pocket for it... while I was still talking on it. 

At lunchtime Hardingfele said it was too cold outside, so we walked in her building. I was curious about a little room you can see sticking out from the top floor, and she said, "Oh, that? I know how to get there!" So she took me to a scary staircase because there's no elevator to the top floor, and I was reluctant to do it, but she swore we could get into the little room. (Narrator in Morgan Freeman's voice: "But that proved to be untrue.") It was, of course, locked, but we could see inside the window of the locked door, and it was just a bunch of mechanical stuff, so I can see why they wouldn't want randos like us wandering around in there. It was called the "Bardeen Penthouse," which sounds swanky, but trust me, it's about as far from swanky as you can get. I didn't want to go back down that staircase, but Hardingfele led me to another staircase that she said was less scary. (Narrator: "But that proved to be untrue.") It was, as far as I could tell, identical to the one we had come up. Hardingfele said I should blog about this, and so I am.

Remember my lost rosary? It was so beautiful, with its blue and burgundy knots.

I don't know where it is now, or if it even still exists, but it's becoming internet famous. Not viral yet, but one post has been viewed by fifteen hundred people, and today a faculty member said she saw the post. I did order a couple of replacement rosaries, and one arrived today. It came with a bewildering assortment of bags, pamphlets, business cards, and a tiny plastic Jesus.

This one will not be as easy to use, because the knots are too close together, and if you look at it closely, it has a crazy configuration - instead of the big knot at the bottom being the Our Father knot, it's on the righthand side, just slightly larger than and offset from the other knots. Sigh.

Meanwhile, today Travalon went to the Portage rail yard and took more photos of train graffiti. Oh yeah, first he took some in our rail yard.

Here are some photos from the Portage rail yard.

And this photo is from a park in Portage.

I had my monthly Union meeting after work, then Travalon came home late because they took the kids on a field trip to a place where you can break stuff for fun. As we were telling each other about our days, he said something about "music for a while," and it suddenly brought back a thirty-year-old memory, of when I first joined the church choir and our choir director gave me some private lessons in which he made me learn "Music for a While" by Purcell. I began to remember more and more of the song, then I found it on YouTube and sang along with the mezzo-soprano. Wow, was that ever a blast from the past!

And just think, if November has been weird so far, tomorrow is Friday the Thirteenth!

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Wacky Elevator Day

 

This morning I woke up with the names Babette and Lulu stuck in my head, so I googled them, and they're two characters in a show I never watched, The Gilmore Girls. Then the elevators were acting really weird in my building, so I was waiting forever for the elevator to go down to meet Hardingfele for a walk. Then she texted that something had come up and she couldn't do it, so I went down the stairs to the exit on the fourth floor (I would have had to go to the ground floor to meet Hardingfele), and I took a long walk. I stopped into some campus buildings to check their lost and found for my poor little rosary, even my own building, but there was no sign of it. I hope it didn't end up in the trash somewhere! We all finally figured out that you had to call the elevator to go up, and then you could get into it and hit the floor below that you wanted to go to, and it would go down. Weird. There was also someone doing some really noisy construction work in the men's bathroom on our floor (we think they were installing a sink), and my coworker said the internet wasn't working until just before I got there. I had two meetings this afternoon and fought to stay awake in both of them. On my way home from work I put up a poster in the gas station I'd stopped at that fateful night, since why not? I've put some stuff on social media too, but at this point I think the rosary is gone forever. 

Here is a photo of both little horses we got at China Lights.

You can see that they are not mirror images of each other, despite the label on the red one.

Travalon stopped at the rail yard today and took some photos.

I thought Seabird was back from China, since she started doing DuoLingo again yesterday, and why would she do that while on vacation? But she was still out of the office today. I'll see if she's back tomorrow. I'm sure she told me when she'd be back, but I can't remember anything these days, like that I have my favorite rosary in my pocket. Someday I'll get over the loss...

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Meditation on Salvation

 

Today the weather was very beautiful. Travalon and I went back to see the optician, who wasn't busy but was a little crusty at first like last time, and then she softened and was friendly. I should have new glasses in a week and a half. Then we walked around the neighborhood, looking for my lost rosary. I was so sad about my rosary, and had a lot of bitter self-recrimination over it, but at Adoration I felt more peaceful, and suddenly I realized I should be offering up this suffering for souls in Purgatory, maybe even specifically for the people who died in the plane crash on All Saints' Day. Could I retroactively offer up my suffering for the past week? I am no expert in the economy of salvation, but I'll say that this evening after leading Night Prayer I changed the sheets on our bed and then started to walk around to music, and suddenly I felt unbelievable joy. I can't prove this, but I feel like my suffering released the young copilot from Purgatory. Only a week? Well, she was only twenty, how much could she have sinned? Though I had absolutely no connection to her in life, I did feel a little bonded since she was from a Brazilian family, and I'm studying Portuguese and doing three kinds of Brazilian music. There was another time I felt like I released a young woman from Purgatory with my prayers. Is any of this real? All I can say is salvation is stranger and yet somehow far more wonderful than we can imagine. I feel like I'm having these odd experiences because of my imprudent demand to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, along with remembering my past life and never having children. My advice to you: do not put limits on God like that. I feel like this is somehow bound up with music and with art created for joy and not money, like train graffiti. I feel like there's a connection with Sunday at band practice, when we were about to work on "In Dulci Jubilo," and I said how I loved that song because the words really go into how God became man. The hostess, who is Jewish, looked at me in wonder - I'm not trying to convert anyone, but I feel like she understood what I was saying, and we had a mutual encounter with the Divine in that moment. Maybe I will never find my little rosary again, and I can only hope that it's with someone who appreciates it and not thrown in the trash or something, but maybe it really did work a miracle.

Speaking of train graffiti, here is the exciting conclusion of the video Travalon made in late October:

These next two photos, which are from one train car, are my favorites. The colors are amazing!

One more screenshot of the kid with the blocks:

Travalon has a lot more videos of real trains, plus all the videos he took at the model train show, so watch for forthcoming movies and/or screenshots.

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