Frigid Friday

 

Today classes at the university were canceled. Seabird had said the university was closed due to the extreme cold, but I wasn't sure if we still had to work, so this morning I logged in, and sure enough, we had to work. My meeting (the one I had to reschedule my dental appointment for) still happened. Come to think of it, I didn't notice Seabird logged in, so I hope she doesn't get in trouble... Madison schools were also closed, so Travalon had the day off of work, since his work shuts down when the schools shut down. We walked around the house a bit, listening to reggae and Delta blues (his latest interest), and at lunch I ran around the house, listening to salsa with my bluetooth headphones, now that they are charged. I got enough steps and enough active minutes today, but still not enough cardio load, whatever that is. I had 54 and the Fitbit wanted me to have 68, but I don't even know what the units are.

Travalon wasn't sure he wanted to brave the cold to meet Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy for the St. James Spaghetti Dinner, but I guess a whole day around the house doing nothing bored him enough that he decided we could risk it. I wore my warmest hoodie and the neck thing they gave us back when we did the Turkey Trot, pulling it up over my nose, and with my warm, new gloves, my fixed-up super long, warm coat, and my Third Eye toque, I was good to go in the polar temperatures. We drove across town without incident and met the guys at the church, where we enjoyed the food and the company. Another guy arrived just as things were shutting down and we were thinking of leaving, so we did stay longer than expected. We got back home without incident (Travalon's car started just fine both ways), and now we are snuggled into the warmth of our house. Our faucets are all dribbling a little bit to keep our pipes from bursting (the guy who came late had burst pipes in his house - yikes!), so it sounds like we are living in the little fountain I used to have on my desk at work years ago. It's a soothing sound.

The B-Boy asked me an interesting question tonight: which do I prefer, Nashville or Memphis? While Nashville has such a cool museum and is a fun town, I just love the vibe of cities on the river. Not just Memphis, but the Twin Cities and Dubuque and St. Louis and even little towns like Hannibal, Missouri. And of course the Queen of all River Cities, New Orleans. It's so hard to explain, but there's just a feeling to those river towns. Kansas City is a river town too, though of course it's not on the Mississippi but the Missouri, but it also kind of has that vibe. It's like a little bit grimy, a little bit rough, but also a little bit cosmopolitan. I would love to drive down the Mississippi, or even better go down by boat. Maybe I'm channeling Mark Twain a little bit here. I love the ocean even more, but I do love the river. And lakes too - let me not neglect the charm of lake cities like Chicago. Of course, Chicago has its own river, and honestly the two most magical boat rides I've taken have been on the Chicago River, the one where the buildings were lit up red, white and blue for the Fourth of July, and the one where the river was dyed green for St. Patrick's Day. I think I just love being near water. A fortune teller once told me when I was young that I have a need to be by water, and she must be right. Give me a water city, and I'll adore it.

Famous Hat

Thirsty Thursday

 

Today Seabird worked on campus, which isn't usual for a Thursday, so I went up and talked to her in the morning, and then at lunch we walked all around in our building since it was so cold out. The students are back, so it's harder to walk around in our building, but not impossible. I had two meetings this afternoon (yawn!), then after work I drove to the Nitty Gritty in Sun Prairie to join Mamastep and her eclectic group of friends for her birthday party. We were supposed to wear crowns or tiaras, and Mamastep had an impressive headdress with ram's horns and flowers, but I was the only other person who wore something, the rather underwhelming tiara from my wedding. Somehow I remembered it being more crownlike, but it's really just a fancy headband. I also wore the red plaid scarf or shawl type thing I got at a random gas station in Kentucky and never blogged about before, over my green sweater. This seems like it might be a good outfit for the Burns dinner. Travalon joined the party over an hour late due to his work schedule, but he was not even the last person to arrive. I really enjoy seeing Mamastep's friends - they are a great group of people. 

Then Seabird texted me that the university will be closed tomorrow due to the extreme cold. I am not clear on if this means I don't have to work, since I was going to work from home anyway. I was supposed to have a dentist appointment tomorrow at 11:30, but then they changed it to noon, and so I rescheduled because I have a meeting at one. Just as glad not to have to leave the house tomorrow, but I'm not sure if my meeting (which is an online one) is still happening.

I drank a lot of water at the birthday party (a LOT of water), but no alcohol. Still, while driving home, I somehow took a wrong turn at the roundabout on Highway 19 and started heading toward Waunakee. Travalon had been following me the whole way, but I noted that he did not copy my mistake. I should have just taken River Road, and then I wouldn't have looked so stupid. Can't blame it on my excessive water intake.

I got a new sticker from DuoLingo, and the owl appears to be stoned:

I texted it to Travalon, who responded with an owl that appears to be drunk:

I am doing Spanish, and one of the exercises will have English words on the left and Spanish words on the right, and I'm supposed to match them. But then I thought DuoLingo was making things up, because one of the (allegedly) English words was "bezorging," and I have spoken this language for over half a century but don't know that word, so I had to figure it out by the process of elimination. I thought, "Go home, DuoLingo, you're drunk!" Now it's making up English words? But in fact it's a real word... in Dutch. It means delivery. So why does DuoLingo think a Dutch word is an English one? Is it losing its mind? Is it just trying to see if I'm paying attention? Is it going to try to teach me Dutch by slipping words in now and then? What's even happening?? At least in my department I can find someone to help me translate any Dutch words I come across.

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Woodrow Wednesday

 

Today I worked on campus, and at lunch there was an early music concert, so I sat with the Former Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player, and she gave me a new instrument. It's called a woodrow, and it's strung like a mountain dulcimer but shaped like a small rebec. It's very cute, and because I had my ukulele with me, and the Snark tuner in the case pocket, I was able to tune the woodrow. It's tuned with the lowest string a D, then the next one an A above that, and the top two a D an octave above the bottom string. Seabird came down to see the new instrument, and then another colleague stopped in, so the three of us were yakking about work and other stuff, and at one point I pulled out the ukulele and strummed a few chords. That got the attention of our chair, and he stopped over and asked who was playing music, so I admitted that it was me. Oddly, while the ukulele was in tune with itself, it was a little bit flat, so that means all the strings went flat at exactly the same rate. 

After work I drove to the Lone Girl for the ukulele strum. I got there a little early, so I wasn't concerned that it was only the two leaders, the woman taking our money at the door (we pay $5 to help cover the cost of the room rental), and another guy... but then nobody else came. Was it the weather? The other guy said he had seen some other ukulele regulars downstairs having beers, so we joked about sending someone down to collect them, but we finally gave up and started playing, and a few other people trickled in, then half an hour later the big group from downstairs showed up, thinking that we were starting half an hour later than we did. They even argued that the email said that, but I'm quite sure it didn't, otherwise I wouldn't have had to leave work a bit early to get there in time. I thought the theme of today's strum was going to be country music, so I was going to title this post "Western Wednesday" to keep up the alliteration theme, but it was actually "Songs that Have Been Covered a Lot." I really enjoyed this strum, and Travalon came in and listened to us toward the end, and he said he enjoyed this music too. Afterwards he and I had dinner at the Lone Girl, and he had a really good toffee-flavored beer. Apparently over the holidays they had a spicy chocolate chestnut beer - wish I'd gotten to try that! Sounds amazing.

It was snowing when we headed home, so I was hoping to go at a comfortable speed, but of course there were always people behind me in a big hurry, despite the late hour and bad weather. I went to the Kwik Trip near our house to top off my tires with air before the cold weather hits, but their machine was out of order, just like the one in Waunakee. Hopefully my tires don't get too low in the cold! Are there any working machines in town?

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Tribulation Tuesday

 

Today I worked from home - not too much to say about that. But I was trying to straighten out some messes, like the Burns dinner cluster munch. Mamastep really wanted to go, but it was sold out, and now our Shamrock Club buddy can't go so she was going to give Mamastep her ticket. However, Mamastep couldn't get a hold of either her or the St. Andrews club to verify this. Meanwhile, I had a strange charge on my play money credit card, and I couldn't remember what it was for and couldn't find a receipt. (Did I think to look in my spam folder? No. Because I'm an idiot.) The name of the business made no sense, and when I googled it, it seemed to be a software company, so I reported the charge because I knew I had not purchased any software. This was last week, and then in the middle of the night last night I remembered it was for the Burns dinner - oh no!!! Maybe they had canceled our reservations when I disputed the charge! Of course the credit card company is always reachable, and the customer support employees all seem to live in India so it was probably daytime for them. They told me the dispute is already working its way through the system and I can't stop it. So I emailed the St. Andrews club, and Mamastep suggested contacting them via social media, which turned out to be a really effective way to do it, because I heard back right away that they hadn't heard anything about a dispute, my reservations were still good to go, and if there was a problem I could just pay another way. Phew! Though now it turns out Travalon has been to not one but two Burns dinners already, only he didn't know that's what they were because they were part of a tour of Scotland. He is not excited about another dinner of haggis with neeps and tatties. Well, maybe the tatties. (Translation: dinner will be a mix of organ meat and oatmeal with turnips and potatoes on the side.) I have never been to a Burns dinner, in honor of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns and his ode to haggis. Honestly, I think Travalon only agreed to go because it's in the Forward clubhouse, which isn't very big so I don't know how they're going to get all these people in there for dinner, plus bagpipers, plus a band for a ceilidh. Anyway, they had also switched our Shamrock Club buddy's name to Mamastep's, so we are all good to go... for the moment. And I got my new credit card today. 

I am beginning to wonder if Dear Leader sold his soul to the devil, the way he says he knows he's not going to Heaven. One thing is sure, he doesn't know what joy is because he puts all his value on the wrong things. He seems to be very jealous of those of us who do feel joy, and I wonder if he knows his time is short so he wants to destroy us all with him. How else to explain his stubborn insistence on starting World War III by invading Greenland? He never talks this much about doing something without eventually doing it. We all know he's mad about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but I did have to laugh at his text to the Norwegian Prime Minister that since he didn't win it, he doesn't care about peace right now. Way to say the quiet part out loud. I just saw a video by a death doula who says people are even more themselves as they are dying, so narcissists are almost unbearable. I wonder if the Supreme Malignant Narcissist is in the process of dying, and so any pretense he had of caring about anything or anyone else is getting tossed to the side. He wants Greenland? He's taking Greenland. And, of course, it does distract from everyone saying, "Release the Epstein files, already!" Those have got to be really bad for him if he's working so hard to change the conversation, after running on how he would immediately release them. Of course, if he gets in the way of the filthy rich, they will just take him out. Hold on, things are about to get really interesting. I can see why the blessing is: "May you live in uninteresting times."

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Merganser Monday

 

First of all, congratulations to the Hoosiers on their perfect season and college football championship.

Today was so, so cold out. We had a relaxed morning; I meant to do some more plant care and cleaning, but instead I wrote to Mariah and screwed around on social media. Eventually Travalon and I did venture out to Sauk to see eagles; we saw a few eagles flying around, but mostly what we saw were mergansers. These are mostly common mergansers, and the white ones with black heads and red bills are males, while the gray ones with reddish-brown heads and perky crests are females.

In the following picture, it looks like a male goldeneye is pursuing a female merganser.

I don't know what these little birds on the phone line are, but they are cute.

Wait, what? There are still mallards around too? 

This looks like it could be a male red-breasted merganser, but it's hard to tell. It could be a female common merganser.

This guy is like, "I am outta here!"

And he's gone!

We stopped by Pheasant Branch to see if we could find the eagles' nest, but you must have to get out of the car to see it, and we were too cold. We did see three very cute deer up close, in someone's yard, and Travalon said if the deer were in his yard, he'd invite them in for some corn when it's so cold out.

Then we came home and I had an edible we had gotten in Galena, so a while ago but it didn't expire until this coming April. I remember taking a whole one and being way too stoned, and then I saw that it said to cut it in half. Why is this my problem? Why not just make two small ones instead of one big one? But I did their work for them for no pay, and... it seemed just as potent. Time slowed down, but music was amazing. I could hear each part of the music distinctly, and the lyrics seemed to stand out more. While in this state, I wrote another story in my story prompt journal, using the prompt, "The best thing that ever happened":

"The best thing that ever happened was that God became man and then died for our sins. That story has already been written by four other guys, maybe you've heard of them? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That's a lot of perspectives, but do you know whose is missing? A woman's! And I was right there to see it all - no, not Mary Magdalene - me, Johanna. At least one of them mentioned me being right there under the cross. Yeah, I saw it all, and could I tell you stories! Hmm, no advance and 20% of net sales? Let me think about it. I'm not in any hurry, people have already waited two thousand years to hear my side of things, they can wait a few more months. Just think, I can answer all your questions about Jesus, like how tall he was, what color his eyes were, whether he had a favorite song - you know, the things men never seem to remember. Is is best friend of thirty years married? He thinks so, and he's pretty sure her name is Pam, or is that the girlfriend he got after the divorce, or was that his friend John he was thinking of...? They have no idea."

OK, so pretty sexist at the end there, and really just a stream of conscience blather, not a story, although you get the idea she's pitching it to a literary agent. Then I got sucked into watching the football game. Travalon really wanted Indiana to win, but he also wanted Miami to make it a game, and they did - they were just about to win by one point when the ball was intercepted. Which reminds me, Wolverhampton got their first and (so far) only win on my birthday. If I were the huge fan instead of Travalon, I'd say that was a birthday present for me. But I'm still a bit stoned even all these hours later, so maybe I'll wrap up this post before it becomes as stream-of-concience as my "story."

Famous Hat

Where Does the Plastic Go?

 

The funny little mauve unicorn featured on this blog yesterday is now named Ursula. Also, Jilly Moose's Warmy moose is now named Cosmo. I know everyone was waiting for those updates.

Yesterday I found out my high school friend died back in May, when I saw that there was a fake Facebook profile pretending to be her asking to be my friend, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen one of her posts in a while. She usually posted silly things about coffee or alcohol, and indeed her last post was something like, "I drink a fruit smoothie every morning for my health, but the bartender keeps calling it a piña colada." The next day she died. I'm not that surprised, since she was in heart failure caused by diabetes, but I feel like a fool not to have noticed sooner. In fact, I wished her a Happy Birthday in September when she'd already been dead nearly three months. The thing is that she was a single mother who worked at Walmart, and I'll bet she didn't even have health insurance until she had to go on disability and could get Medicaid, and by then the damage had been done. If she'd had health insurance like I do, they would have pestered her (like they pester me) to get her blood sugar down while it's still in the borderline range, and she would probably still be alive. Also, she loved hiking and birdwatching like I do, but she probably never got to visit the tropics, even though she worked just as hard. I think of the woman working alone at a Subway we stopped in just before boarding our cruise, and I wondered if she was a single mother too, frantically serving a huge crowd of customers because one of her coworkers didn't show up. She certainly works as hard as I do, but I'll bet she has never gotten to go on a cruise herself. Everyone deserves leisure time. I tipped that woman $20, which is probably more than she makes in an hour, and I say this not to toot my own horn but to humbly acknowledge my privilege. 

Today after Mass, Travalon and I learned how to collect the plastic people bring to our church to recycle it. We have to invest in a small scale, which we just learned today, but that won't break our budget. We have to take a photo of the plastic, weigh it, and then bring it to Pick N Save. And we have to do this every week that we are able. I didn't want to voluntell Travalon when they mentioned this chore at the Care for Creation meeting, but he was willing to do something to help the environment. 

At my Brazilian drum lesson, we practiced the song we are going to perform at Carnaval with the little instrument that looks like a ukulele, a bass (played by one of us students), and a singer. It really helped to hear the context for our rhythms, and the song is a total ear worm. Very, very catchy. (If anyone wants to see this performance, let me know, and I can get you more details.) They had all of us drums in rows, and I thought I'd be safely in the back, playing a big drum, but for some reason I was in the front. No idea if this is the final configuration, but there will be dancers in front of us so nobody will see me anyway. The dancers all wear these four-foot headdresses, so that should block me from the audience's view, and they also all have bare navels, so that should distract the audience. I think I'm safe if I get out of step with the rest of the group, which seemed to happen a lot today.

Practice ended early, so Travalon picked me up, and we went to Garver Mill to have a warm drink. (We ended up trading, since what I had ordered was too sweet for me, but he liked it.) Then I went to the Slow Irish Session, and a fiddler from my band, the former bass player from our band, Famie, and a couple of people from Brazilian drumming were among the people there. I feel like my brain is still in the Bahamas, because I struggled with the tunes last night, but today was hardly better. We played a couple that I had to give up and look at the music, which I consider defeat. By the end I was getting more into the groove, and my violin was a trooper - she didn't go out of tune at all, despite the cold. Did I mention that the Former Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player is bringing me another instrument on Wednesday? It's a strummed string instrument I've never heard of, so I'm very curious. It's called a Woodrow. I still need to learn to play the Chinese moon guitar and the sitar and get strings for the bowed psaltry, which is missing half of them. That should be my New Year's resolution: take care of the instruments (and plants, and rosaries) that I already have before acquiring more.

Guess what? My earplugs glow under blacklight!

I know this because my drumming buddy went to a Bears-friendly bar in town to watch the game after our drumming lesson, and she sent me this photo:

Also, it's that time again - time for some DuoLingo bragging!

Seabird just joined DuoLingo, so now we are friends on there. She is studying Portuguese because she's going to Lisbon in April. It was a crazy day for people texting me: Seabird's news, my drumming buddy's news about the earplugs, and my Shamrock Club buddy texting to ask if Mamastep still wanted a ticket to the sold-out Burns dinner next Saturday. I said yes she does, is someone not able to go? and it was my buddy. Sort of ironic, since I was hoping they could meet, both being Aquarii with eclectic interests, and they would have been the only two people I knew there, other than Travalon. At least as far as I know. Though I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the couple from the Shamrock Club that we keep running into all over the place are there too, so that would be fun. Here's hoping!

Famous Hat

A Very Short Story on a Very Snowy Day

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then in the evening I met Cecil Markovitch (the Instigator), the Single B-Boy, R Van the Terrible, and Richard Bonomo for a fish fry at Kavanaugh's. I wasn't going to have a drink, but then they had ice cream drinks, so I caved and had a grasshopper. When we left, the weather was terrible, with sleety snow, but I made it home and talked to Tiffy until Travalon came home from the Van Halen tribute band concert he was at. I had brought most of my dinner home, so he had some of it.

Today the snow continued, and we didn't venture out until after three. I made a video for you of Travalon's train videos the first day of our road trip:

Then I went up into the loft to take care of Jolly Bob, which had a lot of dead leaves after our trip. The Norfolk Island pine looks really bad and may not make it, but it was struggling before the trip. It was so happy at Rich's house, but it wasn't happy where I had it in the loft, so I moved it in front of a south-facing window, and it only seems unhappier. I am at a loss. Maybe it's too hot in the loft, and it loved the barely-heated back room where Rich had it. I was going to take care of the plants in the main plant room (I already did some of that right after we got back), but for some reason I was exhausted after pulling dead leaves off of Jolly Bob, even though my FitBit said it was only seven minutes of moderate exercise. But the FitBit never seems to agree with my lived experience, whether it's saying I had twenty minutes of intense exercise when I was barely doing anything or only light exercise after a walk so vigorous that I can barely catch my breath. It makes zero sense.

Travalon and I went to the pharmacy to get my special face cream, and we got some chocolate and, weirdly, earrings. They are "woke" earrings made of recycled materials or something by indigenous communities. I just really liked them.

Then we went to Barnes and Noble because Cecil had given me a gift certificate for my birthday, and Travalon loves that place and needs no excuse to go. I got a creative writing journal with prompts for short stories, a book about unsolved mysteries, and this little cutie:

No name yet. I haven't even decided what gender it is. (Funny - last night we had a big discussion about gender vs. sex.) All that was more than the gift certificate, but Travalon generously donated his $5 loyalty reward to the cause, so I hardly had to pay anything.

Our last stop was to Klein's Greenhouse, because I had a coupon for $5 off this month on a houseplant for my birthday. I knew just what I wanted, too - a black ZZ plant, because the one at work really didn't like being watered with leftover coffee (weird, because the green ZZ plant LOVED it), and it is barely alive. It hasn't died completely yet, but it hasn't had any new growth in forever, and it lost all its leaves, so it just has some stumps sticking up. Everything I've read says it can recover, but will it? I promise never to water the new black ZZ plant with old, cold coffee. It was also a lot cheaper, even before the coupon, than the original black ZZ plant was. Maybe I got ripped off with that one.

We went back home, and I wrote a story in the creative writing journal. Here is my story, using the prompt "A taxi driver who is hailed by his doppelgänger:"

Easy McGee was out driving his cab last Thursday night when he was hailed by someone who looked suspiciously familiar. He wasn't very interesting-looking, and Easy tried to place where he'd seen him before.
"Where you goin'?" Easy asked him.
"The Four Foot Hotel," said the stranger. "Wait... don't I know you from somewhere?"
"Name's Easy McGee," said Easy.
"Hm," said the stranger as he slid into the cab. "That doesn't ring a bell. I'm Wiley O'Reilly."
Easy inspected Wiley in the rearview mirror, then he let his eyes slide to his own face and realized with a shock where he'd seen the man before.
"We could be twins!" he said.
"Interesting," said Wiley. "Where do you hail from?"
"Alberta, Georgia."
"I'm from Georgia, Alberta. How old are you?"
"Forty-six," said Easy, who wasn't ashamed of being middle-aged, though he considered the question impertinent.
"Me too," said Wiley, and then he turned into five raccoons wearing party hats... and Easy McGee woke up in his own bed.

Me again. I emailed the story to Cecil and said, "Sorry you wasted your money like that." Which reminds me that when we were texting about the Django Djam, he said he was going to have a grasshopper even if it shortened his life, so Travalon said, "Life is short. Why not make it shorter?" and Cecil said, "That is some good Croatian logic!" And in case you are wondering, there is no Alberta, Georgia, nor is there a Georgia in Alberta. That's why it's called "fiction."

I wasn't sure if the Irish session at Lakeside Coffee House was canceled due to snow, and the red-headed flute player was out of town anyway, but Famie went and said there were a ton of people there. I got there a bit late, and my fiddle was only a little out of tune, plus she didn't seem mad like the mandolin - she seemed happy to see me, like, "Ah, there you are again, old friend!" But Famie and I were flummoxed by the sheer number of tunes we didn't know. Once in a while they would play one we knew, but it was too fast for her to play along. Travalon had dropped me off, so when he came back at what I thought was the ending time for the session, I went over to join him, and just then they decided to play the Ballydesmond Polkas, so of course I had to stay for that. According to Famie, the session was still going strong almost an hour after I thought it was ending, but I was done anyway. She said they played a lot more tunes we knew last month, while I was on my trip with Travalon. That's okay, I'll take palm trees over jigs and reels any day.

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Photos from Travalon's Good Camera: Half Moon Cay

 

Today I worked on campus again, and at lunchtime I walked with Hardingfele in her building. There were some faculty and grad students around, so life is coming back to the place. I went up to another floor and saw this cool Christmas card someone had hand-drawn, but there was nothing written inside:

I forgot to post this, which I actually got a couple of days ago, but it's never too late for some DuoLingo bragging:

Yesterday Travalon had to work at the front desk, but he had company:

Today some athletes from the university visited his work to play with the kids, and he got Blackwell's autograph for me. Then he went to see a Beach Boys tribute band while I came home and crashed. Still not feeling the best after the dose of diet medication...

As promised, here are photos from Travalon's good camera from our day on Half Moon Cay. First, though, are a couple more photos of a masked booby and some sunset photos from our day at sea.

Here are photos from Half Moon Cay. First, there was another cruise ship already there.

And lots of smaller boats going back and forth to bring people from the two ships.

There was a "town square" area with souvenir shops and this guy playing music:

Here are some photos from our eco-lagoon tour. This is fan coral.

What kind of fruit is on this shrub?

Mangroves have such cool roots.

We saw lots of these fish.

And lots of cacti! In the Bahamas?

We saw birds we know from back home: a great blue heron and a snowy egret.

This is the little chapel on the island.

You can see the coral reefs just under the shallow water.

Here is what the coral looked like through the glass-bottomed boat:

A heron and an egret together.

Ever wonder what Travalon would look like holding a sea cucumber? Wonder no more!

He looks like he's about to take a bite out of it. And here are the coral all collected together.

I don't know why they have this fake shark in the water of the lagoon.

More mangroves with their cool roots.

A conch shell lying on the bottom of the lagoon.

Here are photos from the beach on Half Moon Cay.

Back on the ship, we went to the Ocean View Bar and watched the coastline of Eleuthera. 

No sunset photos from the Third Day of Christmas, because we were at Mass, and someone closed the drapes in the room on the windows facing the ocean. They left the drapes on the interior windows open, so people could gawk at us as they walked by. I would have preferred that the people in charge do the opposite and let us gaze at the sunset but not have others gazing at us. I don't consider Mass a spectator sport.

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