Apologies to Noelle My Car

 

Today Travalon went back to Cherokee Marsh and took more photos of the common mergansers and the tundra swans and the flicker.

I think this puffy little bird is a chickadee.

Judging by some of his other photos, which weren't clear enough to post, he also saw red-headed ducks, canvasbacks, scaups, goldeneyes, and ring-necked ducks. I have posted his photos of all these types of ducks on this blog previously, or you can just google them if you wonder what they look like.

Meanwhile, I worked on campus, and in my building not one, not two, but three people said they liked my new plaid tam, two of our grad students and someone I didn't know in the elevator. One guy said it was very stylish. When I walked with Hardingfele at lunch, she said it is very 70's, but I think it's an older style than that. She wants us to play for some singalong at her department, on a Tuesday when I'm not usually on campus. I have to think about this one. Maybe I'll take the afternoon off and drive in - she said she could get me a parking pass. I asked if we had music, and she said no, but everything's in G, so she's right in that I don't need music for that. She wants me to play the mandolin, and she and her coworker will play violin, and a woman we don't know will play the guitar.

Speaking of playing, this evening I brought the violin to the Moldy Jam jam. I left home earlier than usual but had to park far away, and I got to the music club in time but they had already started to play. My A string is starting to unravel, but it is a gut string I've had on there since I did early music, and that was ages ago. It may be time to put new, steel strings on the violin. Heaven knows the mandolin has needed new strings for ages; Travalon bought a set for me some time ago, and now I can't find them, and Hardingfele always mocks me for it. She changes her strings every year - is that really necessary? The string didn't break during the jam session, but I didn't know the first few songs and wondered why I had even come. Then people started to call out tunes I did know, so it was more fun, and the ones I didn't know seemed easier to pick up. I called out two tunes I've known since childhood, "Rakes of Mallow" and "Blackberry Blossom," and they were happy because those are tunes they know but don't do all the time. (I was trying to do old timey tunes instead of Irish ones, since I always do Irish ones, but "Rakes of Mallow" is Irish - oops!) People were really friendly to me tonight, so I was kind of late leaving the club, and then I had the long walk to the car, plus it kept sounding like a train was coming but it never came on the track alongside the street where I parked. On the drive home I hit a median really hard (no idea why), and the plastic wheel well came off of the front driver's side wheel, so I had to stop and pick it up. I apologized to Noelle my car, but she drove fine without it. She is fifteen years old now, so we have to think how much we really want to spend on repairs for her. If she drives fine without this part, and you can't really tell there's a problem by looking at her, does it really matter? Maybe it was the full moon that caused all this weirdness tonight - it was so beautiful, with a rainbow around it, but they say it makes people crazy. There's supposed to be a lunar eclipse early this morning, around five, but I don't plan to be up to see that.

Famous Hat

Benton's Beatles Connection

 

Today I worked on campus again, but I felt more faded, like the lack of sleep caught up to me even though I thought I'd caught back up. I took a walk at lunch, but it was cold and drizzly, so I made it a little shorter than usual. However, I discovered a wonderful thing in the cantina in the next building: caffeinated chocolate bars! That helped me get through the rest of the workday, plus the Union meeting afterwards.

I forgot to mention that yesterday as my colleague and I walked on Library Mall at lunchtime, we saw a guy walking another guy on a leash. The guy being walked was walking on all fours and barking like a dog. My colleague asked me what that was about, but I was just as clueless as she was, even if I did grow up in this country.

Another thing I keep forgetting to mention is that the postcard that I sent from Bimini to the Work Gang arrived on Monday, while I was out chasing the eclipse. I had totally given up hope that it would ever arrive! Like the one Ma Hat got, it was postmarked 16 February, and hers arrived exactly a month later, but this one took almost two months. Did it go on its own vacation on the way to Madtown?

Part of the reason Travalon was happy to go to Benton to see the eclipse is because it has a Beatles connection: George Harrison's sister married a guy who lived in Benton and moved there herself, and George came to visit, so everywhere in town you see Beatles stuff. There was a little park off the town square with this commemorative sign:

There were vintage Beatles photos at one of the antiques shops, but they didn't appear to be for sale. And outside of town there is a big monument to the Beatles. So it was the perfect place for Travalon, besides being right in the center of the eclipse's path so that we saw maximum totality.

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The Smiling Sidewalk

 

Today I worked on campus, and my coworkers were all duly impressed with Travalon's photos of the total eclipse. Then at lunch I went on an inadvertently long walk with my colleague because I thought the carillon rang the three-quarters hour but it was actually ringing one, so I thought I had fifteen more minutes to walk when I should have been heading back into work. Nobody said anything, but I feel guilty and will make up the time. My colleague was surprised that I hadn't headed back to work when the carillon rang. She also laughed at me for taking this photo, but sometimes the sidewalk just smiles up at you.

In the afternoon we had the big department meeting with all the faculty, and as always I took minutes. The chair said we should all take ten minutes to talk to the person next to us, so I was going to ask the faculty member on my left how his kids were doing, but the faculty on my right started talking to me, and it turned out she had taken her son to Bloomington, Indiana to see the eclipse, so we just yakked about the eclipse the whole time. She wasn't on the campus there when it happened, but she was close enough to the campus to hear all the cheering when the moon totally blocked the sun. To me, it was a deeply spiritual thing, partly because it looked like the Eye of God up in the sky, but mostly because I feel like the fact that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but also 400 times closer, so that they appear to be the same size and we can have total solar eclipses, is too implausible to be a coincidence. I feel like this is some of the most concrete evidence for a Divine Creator that we have.

Here are some photos of the loot we acquired on this trip. First are the two rosaries I bought in Benton just a couple of hours before the eclipse.

When I showed the rosaries to Travalon, he saw this sign he hadn't noticed before. It's like it was made especially for him!

These are the things I got at the antiques mall in El Paso (Illinois) on Sunday.  

From left to right: a tiny fork pin, an orange rosary with a Celtic cross on it, a St. Anne's chaplet, a purple rosary, a missionary rosary with very small, delicate beads, an Infant of Prague chaplet, and a wooden rosary. The orange rosary fascinates me because if it's Irish and orange, then it's Protestant, right? But... it's a rosary. Who can explain this? I'd love to know the story behind it.

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Niko at the Solar Eclipse

 

Yesterday morning at 5:57 the phone rang, waking us from a deep sleep. For a moment I couldn't figure out what was going on, and then I remembered that I was in a hotel room in Decatur, Illinois, and we had put in a 6 am wake-up call to get to Benton in time to see the eclipse. We quickly ate breakfast and hit the road, and everything was going smoothly until Travalon's "check tire" light came on. We soon found a gas station with an air pump that was $2, but the readings didn't make any sense - the tires seemed to be getting lower as Travalon filled them. Fortunately a guy who was a mechanic helped us out with his own little pump that you plug into the phone charger, and soon we were on our way again.

We arrived in Benton around 11:30, so we probably could have slept in longer, but this way we could have a leisurely lunch and even go to the antiques shops on the square. I bought a couple of rosaries, and Travalon found something that seemed to be made for him: a Sinclair sign with Dino the Dinosaur and characters from The Flintstones. Photos soon. 

I had seen on a video of the projected path of the eclipse that Benton would be right in the middle of the path, meaning totality for the solar eclipse would be at its maximum of slightly over four minutes. We had originally been planning to go to Carbondale, but that was going to be a zoo and was about forty minutes further south, so Benton seemed like a good plan. It was perfect too, with enough people to feel festive but not crowded. We got out our camping chairs and our special glasses and looked at the sun. Travalon had a lens for his camera to take photos, but we couldn't get it to work. A younger guy offered to take a photo on my phone through the glasses (we had two extra pairs), and this is what he got.

You can kind of see the "bite" out of the sun where the moon is starting to cover it, but I've seen way better photos. As the sliver of sun got narrower and narrower, it got darker and darker, and colder and colder (it had been 80 F out), and the streetlights came on.

You could see the stars appear in the sky, and the birds got confused and stopped singing. Then we couldn't see any more sliver of light through our glasses, so we took them off and saw - totality! I can't think of a good word to describe it, because people call everything "awesome" and "amazing" so I need something stronger. Spectacular? Travalon took some really good photos, but there's nothing like looking up in the sky and seeing a black ball with white light flowing around the edges.

Here you can see a star (actually probably a planet) in the lower right side of the photo.

It was kind of like a giant Niko in the sky, an eye surrounded by dark blue. Of course in my excitement I had forgotten Niko in the car - I meant to have him watch it with me. I brought Tenebrae too, but she was also in the car. Then again, maybe they could see it from the car.

Afterwards we had been planning to go back to the fish restaurant where we'd had lunch for some key lime pie, but they had a note up that they would be closed from 1-4, so we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant and had Mexican sodas and dessert. The people at the next table had a black margarita, and it was so cool-looking, but I figured they would think it was weird if I asked to take a photo of it, and we didn't want to get a drink because we had to hit the road.

Travalon took back roads, and we hit a couple of backups that lasted for a few minutes, but nothing too major. It took a while to make forward progress because we had to keep slowing down to go through towns, but that way passed interesting things like this carillon in Centralia.

We also discovered Kitchell Park in Pana, a great place to take a bathroom break and stretch our legs. Here are some photos.

The bridge leads to a small island, which we walked around. We did try to get on the freeway, but it was a parking lot so we continued through Bloomington, which has such interesting lights at night. This is not a very good photo, but it gives you an idea. There were also some very colorful lights on other buildings.

In Normal the highway was moving, so we got on it and headed home, arriving very late and getting into bed just after two in the morning. What a long day! But so worth it! And playing The Game helped us survive all that driving. I had thought I wouldn't get any exercise, but somehow I got all my move hours, five miles of walking, and enough active minutes too. We did walk around Benton a lot.

Today I woke up before my alarm and snuck out of bed so Travalon could keep sleeping. I worked from home, and Rich gave me a ride to adoration while Travalon picked me up so I wouldn't have to drive in my sleep-deprived state. Anna Banana II offered to lead Night Prayer for me, since Tuesday is my usual night. I appreciate everyone's help! I will fall into bed early tonight and hopefully wake up refreshed tomorrow.

Famous Hat

Partial Eclipse and More Garden Mystery

 

This morning there was a partial eclipse at just after 5 am. I figured I would be asleep, but in fact I was awake and could have looked out the window. I was thinking it was unsafe to look at a solar eclipse, but of course it was sunrise, so the sun was faint enough to look at. Someone got a photo of it not far from our house, and I could have done the same if I had just looked out the window. It faces east.

When I went to my garden this evening, I looked more carefully at the white flower, and whoever planted it left the label. It's a shasta daisy. Isn't it pretty?

But the thing is that we're not allowed to have perennials in our garden plots. And today I noticed they had planted an ornamental grass, which is also a perennial, so are they trying to get me in trouble?? I talked to the organizers of the garden, and they don't know why this is happening. Someone else had radishes planted in her plot (why couldn't they have done that in my plot? I had to plant my own radishes!), and one guy even got an email from a mystery person saying they had planted some tomatoes in his plot. Is this all the work of one deranged individual? This has never happened to any of us before.

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