Day of the Dead in Kenosha

 

Yesterday Travalon and I drove to Kenosha and met Tiffy for lunch at Sooshibay, the restaurant with the sushi conveyor belt. Travalon doesn't like sushi, but you can order things off the menu, and then I've seen them come on the track above the conveyor belt. However, Travalon's food was brought out by a waiter, all old-school, so we wondered if the track was broken... until seeing other people get their food on it. What the hey? After that the three of us took a walk at Petrifying Springs Park. 

Travalon took those photos using his phone. Here are photos I took with my phone.

After we bid adieu to Tiffy, we got coffee at Summer Moon and then went to Mass at Holy Rosary.

On the way to Waukegan, we passed the Kenosha Business Park, where I had seen a very strange tree on the way to meet Tiffy. We went to find it and couldn't get closer than this, but you can see that in the dark it has a light on top, plus it has cellphone things on it, so my suspicion that it was a "tree" disguising a cellphone tower seems to be correct.

My phone identified a plant in this photo, so I wondered if it meant the "tree," but it said "cattails," which isn't right either, since the plants in the foreground are domestic corn.

We drove to the Genesee Theater in Waukegan to see Tower of Power and War, and they were both excellent. The crowd was a mature one (we were among the youngest people there), and very diverse and friendly. If you like funk music, you must be part of the "family" no matter what color you are. Enjoy this photo my phone took while I was trying to make a video of War singing my favorite song by them, "Cisco Kid." (Longtime readers may remember how this song woke me up the day we had lunch delivered by the robot.) (I did succeed in making a video, and it's pretty cool, so if people want me to post it, I can try putting it on YouTube and seeing if I don't get a copyright violation.) 

In case you were wondering (because I know you were), Travalon's favorite song by War is "Spill the Wine," which according to the lead singer is one of their oldest songs. Many people's favorite song by War is "Low Rider," so that's what they did for an encore. They played second; Tower of Power played first, and they just kept the funk up nonstop, whereas War's lead singer talked a little too much for our taste... but when they did bring the funk, oh man did they bring the funk! They funked so hard that I'm still funking just thinking about it!

We got back to our hotel in Kenosha around midnight and just fell into bed without showering, figuring we would swim first thing in the morning. The pool opened at six, and we were up at 6:30 due to the time change, so we had it all to ourselves. After showering and checking out, we went down to the lighthouse in Kenosha, on the shores of Lake Michigan.

After a lovely walk there, we went to the Mars Cheese Castle (as featured previously on this blog) and had an early lunch of a grilled cheese sandwich and some mac and cheese that I took home. I also bought another Mars Cheese Castle shirt, but this one is neon coral, not tie-dyed like the first one. It ought to glow under blacklight. We got home in time to watch most of the Packer game, and at half time I took a rosary walk in the neighborhood and saw these red trees with a very red car.

The Packers were struggling against Carolina, partly because the refs called a penalty on them every time they had a little momentum going. Worse, it was Jordan Love's birthday today - how sad to lose on your own birthday, and by a field goal! However, I didn't know they lost during my drumming lesson. My FitBit said I got a workout from drumming, but I can't see what it thought my exercise was because it's being weird. After that Travalon and I took a brief walk near Yahara Park, then I cheated and put my FitBit on my dominant hand so I'd get my move hours for 5:00. I got them, and then my steps for the day, and my FitBit thinks I did twenty minutes on an elliptical while I was playing Irish tunes on the violin. We had a really great session today, especially when we did "Si Bheag, Si Mhor" very gently and were really together - the air just sang. That was in honor of the souls of the departed for Day of the Dead, although the song about a big fairy hill and a little fairy hill really has nothing to do with Purgatory, but it seemed like a better choice for dedicating to them than, say, the frantic reel "Drowsy Maggie" or the complicated slip jig "Kid on the Mountain." Or really any hornpipe. 

My FitBit is finally showing me all my workouts today: Swimming this morning, the walk by the lake, the walk in the neighborhood, "rowing machine" while I was drumming, the walk by Yahara Park, and two different times it thought I was using an elliptical machine while we were fiddling. Who knew playing music could be such good exercise?

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Haven't We Heard This Story Before?

 

Today I worked from home and got a lot done. Travalon went into work earlier than usual, so I walked alone on Governor's Island at lunchtime. He got home from work earlier too, and when he did, I changed into an appropriately autumnal outfit, grabbed Niko, and hopped in the car. We drove to the Dorfhaus (which apparently means "village house," since Jilly Moose looked it up), and when we arrived, Jilly Moose was there, and we took photos of the sunset. Here's mine.

Here's hers.

The Dorfhaus has this inexplicable little tower, so I took photos of that too.

In this photo, you can see lights in the top window:

I saw a boy about eight asking his parents, "What's in there?" Good question, kid. I'd love to get in there myself. It's like the mystery room in Maeders that you can see over the front door - what's in there??

We were soon joined by Cecil Markovitch, the Single B-Boy, R Van the Terrible, and the guy Travalon and I spent Thanksgiving 2020 with, who apparently doesn't have a name on this blog. (Yet.) I was a little sad because there was a flamenco guitar concert tonight, but Travalon went to my Irish extravaganza last night, so I owed him a night to do what he wanted, and he loves to talk to Nameless Guy about classic rock bands. Literally all evening the two of them talked about this. As usual we had an hour and forty minute wait, but for some reason I wasn't mathing well in my head today, so I was thinking we wouldn't eat until 8:30. We found a large enough table for all of us behind the back bar, and we got some appetizers (a giant pretzel and cheese curds), and some people had pre-dinner drinks. Finally it occurred to me that we would be eating around 7:40, so I don't know where that extra hour came from - did my brain take a trip and find itself in another time zone? The buzzer to notify us that our table was ready went off not long after that, so they were accurate in their timing.

I'm not a big one for fried fish, but the breading at the Dorfhaus is light and delicious. Of course they brought out the fritters first, and I had two, plus my whole bowl of coleslaw, so by the time the fish came out, I could only eat a little of it, and virtually none of the German potato salad. (I despise the picnic-type potato salad you usually get, but the warm, vinegar-based German potato salad is wonderful.) I did share an after-dinner grasshopper with Travalon, and everyone else got their own ice cream drink, except for Nameless Guy. There was an oompah band playing all evening, and R Van the Terrible, Cecil, and I all agreed that a little of that music goes a long way. Still, while I would have preferred flamenco, live music is always fun. I was a little afraid R Van would bring up politics, but she was perfectly behaved all evening. Suddenly Cecil turned to me and asked, "Do you have Travalon tied up tomorrow?" I didn't want to say in front of R Van that we were going to the protest, so I said, "I can't talk about that here!" but they all misinterpreted that to mean that I was implying Travalon and I would in fact be engaging in bondage tomorrow, and they thought that was hilarious. Crisis averted!

However, the funniest part of the evening was probably when I was telling them all the story of how Rich, Kathbert, and I were hiking at Indian Lake County Park and it was a bit muddy, so when I was about to go down a hill, Kathbert said, "No, let Rich go first - he's going to fall, and you don't want him to fall on you." He gave her his patented Wounded Puppy look and started going down the hill... and promptly fell on his keister. His pants were so full of mud that he took them off and tried to wash them at the pump, so under his neon melon-colored rain poncho that said "Diocese of Madison" across the back, his legs were bare to his socks. He looked like he was going to flash someone. And every step he took, the rain poncho gave him a little wedgie, and not long after this adventure it fell apart, probably out of humiliation. When I got done telling the story, Cecil said, "I want to hear Rich's side," so I checked the Rich Tracker on my phone, and he was driving on the highway, so I called him and put him on speaker phone. He related the story so closely to the way I had that R Van the Terrible was shocked, even down to the wedgie and the color of the rain poncho. (He did throw in some details I didn't know or remember, like that the poncho was from World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, and that we had driven to the park in Kathbert's car, which is why he was so intent on not getting it dirty.) You would have thought he'd heard me relate it... and upon further reflection, I do think that is exactly what happened. While his mother is a wonderful storyteller, in general Rich has trouble conveying events in chronological order or in a coherent way, and he gets hung up on weird details and then leaves out important ones. (True story: he once told me someone we knew had her baby, and it was so many inches long and so many pounds heavy, born at this exact time... but he couldn't tell me the name or even the gender.) But I tend to talk in anecdotes (Tiffy says this is because I'm Irish, although our college friend who is as German as it gets also does this), and Rich may have heard me tell the story so many times that when he was called upon to relate it, his recounting was so eerily similar to mine. Anyway, that's what Travalon and I decided as we drove home. 

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Back to Brazilian Drum Lessons

 

Today Mass was not as exciting as last week, when two people appeared to faint and an ambulance came, but both people were fine and it just left without anyone inside. After Mass Travalon and I met Tiffy at the Venezuelan restaurant on the far East Side as has become our habit, and we saw a car in the parking lot with the Crane Foundation license plate. It was so pretty that I regretted not choosing that one over the Ice Age Trail one.

Then I had my first drum lesson in Session Two of Drum School. My buddy from the party came, and so did the older lady who makes desserts and most of the guys (maybe all of them?), plus some new people, but I didn't see the young dancer. She's probably still dancing, so I'll see her around. I was too slow and all the smaller drums were taken, so I had to take a big, heavy drum - ugh. But I kind of got into the groove banging on it. I am not expecting to become an expert Brazilian drummer and in fact don't even know exactly why I signed up for this again, but it is fun, even if it's hard. Plus the parties are fabulous.

After the drum lesson, Travalon and I went for a walk on Governor's Island, then we watched the end of the Packer game, where they looked really good against the Bengals. I don't know anything about the Bengals, so I can't say if they were worthy opponents. Travalon kindly drove me to band practice, and then he went to Butter Bird the new chicken restaurant, and of course Leopold's. I enjoyed practice a great deal today because our bassist (who seems mad that we are making her be a caller since all the other callers blacklisted us) made us play a bunch of reels at speeds I am used to, but I think the others are not so much since they don't go to the Moldy Jam jams. For me it's far easier to play melodies by ear than chords, but I decided to try to do the chords by ear tonight, and that was wonderful because I was really listening to everyone. If a tune was in, say, G major and had a simple 1-4-5 pattern, then I had no problems, but some of the more modal ones had chords I had to figure out because I didn't know the pattern like I do for major key tunes. I kind of know A Mixolydian has a G chord as well as an A major chord, but the Dorian tunes kind of throw me for a loop. This is probably something I could just look up to find the pattern, but I feel like I should just be able to pick the chords out by ear, like some guitarists do. Not our guitarist - she totally has to have them written out. The band is playing for a contra dance in December, and before that they're playing for a Ukrainian gig on a night when I'm going to hear War and Tower of Power. For whatever reason they said they can only have four people at that gig, and the bassist has no interest in going, so she left after working us hard on the reels, and I practiced a couple of Ukrainian tunes (since I love them) before Travalon came to pick me up. I'd forgotten my phone, but he said he'd be there at a quarter after eight, so just before that I walked out the door... and two seconds later I saw him driving down the street. What timing! The cutest thing about band practice was when the hostess's preschool son played the tambourine with us.

Remember when AI drew pictures of me? Here is a picture it drew of my uncle that I jam with.

Notice how AI only gave him one hat when it apparently decided I needed like eight.

Here is maybe a better photo of my Irish Fest Summer School T-shirt glowing under blacklight:

On second thought, maybe it's not better than my original photo. It glowed so much in real life, but in this photo it's just different shades of blue.

Travalon went fishing while I was at the drum lesson, and he caught a little bass.

While I was filling my day with musical pursuits, he was pursuing fish. And he got one!

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Cathopalian Mass and the Scattering

 

Yesterday Travalon and I had big dreams of going to Irish Fest before the Cathopalian Mass at St. Josephat's, but while I had a free ticket, he could only have gotten in free with some canned goods if we had arrived before eleven, and ain't no way that was happening. I had a pounding headache and felt a bit nauseated, but we walked on Governor's Island, and that helped. By the time we went to Cecil Markovitch's place. I felt fine. There were too many people to fit in one car, so Travalon drove, and the Dairyman's Daughter came in our car. We got there before the other car, so we went to the gift shop, and I (shocker!) bought a rosary bracelet. Then we went up to the church, which is so beautiful.

The closing hymn was so gorgeous.

I thought these Masses were supposed to be quarterly, but we went to one late in January and then hadn't heard anything since. I asked Cecil if he had heard anything, but he hadn't either. (We both signed up for their email list.) Then finally they emailed about this Mass on Sunday. It was much better attended than the one in January. Travalon loves it because it's midafternoon, so we can have a relaxed morning.

After that the whole gang, plus some seminarian Cecil knows, went to Three Brothers Serbian Restaurant, where Tiffy met us. She and I had the spinach and cheese borek, which you can get three meals out of. Travalon had the chicken paprikash, which he said was almost as good as his Hungarian grandmother's recipe. When we got done with dinner, there was just time for Travalon and me to head over to Irish Fest to catch the Scattering, the big concert at the end with all the musicians together on stage.

People were leaving Irish Fest when we arrived, so we found an excellent free parking spot. I had my free ticket to get in, but at that hour they just let you in. I mentioned that my Irish teacher Famie would probably be there... and then she was four rows ahead of us! There were some empty seats right behind her, so we moved up to join her, one of her beginner students, and another girl who has been on the online conversation circle. The giant session played, and dancers danced, and there were songs for us to sing along to. It lasted about an hour and was so much fun. As we were leaving, we ran into an old coworker of mine from the Press who has a very Irish name and has always been into Irish everything. She was saying she no longer goes to the Summer School because in years past they had culture and history classes, but now everything is language or music, and she doesn't do music. She did mention the singing classes, and I said, "They still do those." I am thinking I should take one next year.

I didn't sleep at all well last night, and this morning as I pondered going into the office, I threw up twice, so I gave up and worked from home. It was not an exciting day for me, but Travalon didn't have to work, and he went fishing at Tenney Park and caught six fish. (He didn't keep any of them.) Here are four of them.

Probably because it was overcast all day and rained off and on. I never felt that much better and ended up skipping the big jam session at the music club. Oddly, I did have a very productive day at work. Here's hoping tomorrow I feel a little better.

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FART 5 F-Bomb Drop

 

Today I worked on campus, and I walked at lunch with a colleague who apparently doesn't like the outside, because we ended up exploring the building next to ours. In the afternoon we had another FART 5 confab, and it was a smaller group today so we felt freer to drop a lot of F-bombs as we each screwed something up in the new system. When I said what I'd screwed up, the look of abject horror on my boss's face was priceless, but fortunately she did figure out a way to fix it. She said this is Mortification Week for a website she is on, and I said, "Shouldn't that be during Lent?" The only one who laughed was the colleague I walked with at lunch, so I said, "I guess only the Catholics got that joke." Apparently during Mortification Week you are supposed to post stories of being mortified at work, so I am wondering if I could post the story from when I was like fourteen and the girl I was babysitting was trying to kill a smaller child at a convenience store with her mother's pleasure toy. I mean, technically it happened at work, right? I don't know how fatal it would be to be hit over the head with a dildo, but the other child was very small, just a preschooler. Fortunately the store manager grabbed my charge and hollered, "Whose kid is this?" If you are wondering why my charge had such an item in her possession, all I can say is that I would not have expected her mom to hide it in the garage so how could I have known to stop her? And it was a cool October day, so she had a big jacket to hide it under. Anyway, it felt like the faithful remnant of FART 5 had a lot of camaraderie today, or at least solidarity against our common enemy: The New System.

Travalon picked me up from work to take me to the Labor Temple for what I am hoping is the last of the ongoing series on how to organize, and he went to check out a new restaurant called Butter Bird that he said was incredible. He brought me a small piece of chicken, and it was delicious. (I was pretty full of pizza from the organizing class.) Then he took me to Christless Presbyterian Church for an early music concert. People often seem surprised that I like early music and don't like, for example, Beethoven, but the purer intervals and danceable rhythms of early music have nothing to do with later Classical music. I had somehow forgotten that Concerts on the Square exist until Jilly Moose mentioned that she went last night, so I checked out the schedule, and it was Mahler and Mozart, Shostakovich and Beethoven. Other than a little bit of Mozart, that's a lot of No Thanks on my part. The best part is that I forgot Niko in the car while at the concert tonight, and he loves early music. Travalon said if he'd known, he could have taken Niko fishing with him on the Tenney Park Jetty, and I said, "Just as long as you don't use him as bait." He did catch a little fish earlier today, at Salmo Pond. 

He didn't catch anything at Tenney Park, but he did see a beautiful rainbow.

As we were driving to the concert, we saw Art Paul Schlosser walking down the street, and then he saw us and waved. He said, "My music is on Spotify now!" so we checked it out, and it was highly entertaining. Then on the drive home from the concert, we saw a glowing cloud that looked like an alligator.

Glowing alligators in the sky? Is that a bad omen? What could it portend?

Happy birthday to the Dairyman's Daughter! Hope you had a great one!

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Cactus Catastrophe

 

Today I worked on campus, and late in the morning we had a meeting about the new ticketing system that ran way over, so Seabird said she didn't have time to walk before our afternoon training in the new system. I walked with Hardingfele, and we went to Allen Centennial Gardens. Here are some photos.

Meanwhile, Travalon went fishing at Salmo Pond, and he caught a panfish.

(He let it go again.) Then he came and picked me up, and we went to St. Charles Station for dinner. He said his chicken wings and shrimp and grits were delicious, and so was his banana hurricane. (I tried them all, and they were indeed delicious!) I had the four-course meal with the theme of strawberries, so it started with strawberry bruschetta, then the next course was supposed to be a salad with strawberries, but it didn't arrive until after the main course, a chicken leg with strawberries and mashed potatoes and peas. Then for dessert they toasted a cornbread muffin and put strawberries and whipped cream on top. The drink to go with it was a strawberry mojito, but I didn't feel like a drink after the shandy last night. 

Hardingfelde had been texting me yesterday while I was at the movie about a cactus someone was giving away. She sent me a photo.

Travalon and I went to pick the cactus up tonight after dinner, and it was fine in the car on the trip home, but as soon as Travalon started carrying it up the stairs to our house, the top couple of feet broke off. We both got pricked while trying to fix this problem. Eventually we got both parts upstairs, and I stuck the broken-off part in the dirt in hopes that it will root. (Why there is a spider plant in the same pot, I couldn't tell you - they have very different watering needs.) Anyway, this might work; years ago I saw a faculty member carrying the top of a yucca he had cut from its roots, and he had the pot in the other hand. He said it used to be Dr. Cheung's plant, and he didn't want it in his office anymore. I took both the pot and the hacked-off top of the plant, and the top rooted but the roots grew a new top, so Dr. Cheung the plant has two tops now. No idea why the faculty member didn't just ask if anyone else wanted the plant before hacking it to pieces...

In other plant news, a mostly dead corn plant dracaena that Hardingfele had scavenged for me on the street (sense a pattern?) came back to life under my loving care, so I called it Lazarus. I moved it outside with a couple of other monocots, a dragon tree dracaena and a ponytail palm, and now it has a bunch of buds. Since it's the same type of plant as Jolly Bob, which bloomed a couple of winters ago, I imagine it will smell just as good. I'm waiting impatiently for the buds to open. I'll take a photo, although the flowers aren't much to look at. It's the fragrance that's so spectacular.

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Teeny Erin Bear

 

Today I met Tiffy for an early lunch at the Globe, then we drove to First Unitarian for a free concert. We got there quite early, and just as we got out of the car, the Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player called my name, so we sat with her and her husband. The concert was the dedication of a new small portative organ with wooden pipes that had a lovely sound, and our local harpsichordist played a number of Baroque pieces on it before he was joined by a cello, a violin, a soprano, and a baritone for some Handel and Bach. I saw not one but two of the faculty from my department there, which surprised me since I have never seen them at any other early music concerts in town. An odd coincidence: they are both Capricorns, like me. Also both women. I didn't really get a chance to talk to either of them because they were in the middle of conversations with other people. One person I didn't see there is the director of the press where I used to work, who is a man and a Scorpio but is often at these concerts because his wife is a professor of early music. We also ran into one of the people who used to go to the Slow Food dinners, which ended with the pandemic, and the organizer is still terrified of COVID so we talked about resurrecting the group without her.

First Unitarian is very close to Picnic Point, so Tiffy and I took a long, brisk walk to the end of it, and then we warmed up with warm bubble tea and just chatted for a couple of hours. Then we went to Sushi Red for my birthday dinner, only one month late. We split duck dumplings and a lobster Thermidor for appetizers and then a rainbow roll and a dragon roll (both with forbidden rice, the black stuff) for our main course, and we both had a mango daiquiri. They gave me a free lychee sorbet with a candle in it for my birthday, even though I explained that it had been a month ago, since the waitress's first question was if we were celebrating anything today, and I was like, "Yes, well..." Tiffy had a flourless chocolate cake that I helped her finish. The restaurant had a wonderful ambiance, with mood lighting and trance music in the background. 

When I got home, Travalon told me about his day. He met an old high school buddy for lunch and hung out with him for a few hours, then he went antiquing and found a tiny Irish bear for me, and then he went to a high school basketball game. When I got home, he was watching the Wolverhampton game that he had recorded, and he had no idea how it would turn out, but they won 2-0! So it was a really good day for him too.

Here is the tiny Irish bear.

Isn't she cute? Erin Bear - that's the name on the package. Yes, she was still in her package and had been for almost thirty years. How pathetic - someone just bought this at a McDonald's in the late 90's and kept it to be a collector's item instead of snuggling her like she deserves, and in the end they sold it at an antique shop for $2. But now Erin Bear is with people who appreciate her!

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Sushi-Making Party

 

Today I went to the most fun party ever: a sushi-making party! It was at Mamastep's mother's house, and her friends, family, and family's friends were there. I think there might have been thirty people at the height of things. Of course I came promptly around 11:00 am, not sure if this was a party where you had to arrive promptly, and then I was put to work rinsing the white off the rice and mixing the rice vinegar, salt, and sugar to mix into the rice. I had to rinse every batch of rice four times, and there were four rice cookers, so that was a lot of rinsing. Meanwhile, other people were chopping vegetables or cutting fish, and I flaked a can of crab meat and folded the cooked rice. We had four brands of peach-flavored saki to do a taste test, and we all agreed on what order we would rank them in for tastiness. Finally, all was ready, and I made my first sushi roll!

Not beautiful, but very tasty! Then I made a second roll, and I was informed about the existence of the sushi cutting mold, or whatever you want to call it, so my second roll was more aesthetically pleasing.

There was also a heart-shaped sushi cutting mold that other people used. Here is a sample. Someone else got an even more perfect heart-shaped bunch of sushi slices, but I didn't photograph that.

Check it out! Mamastep made a roll that looks like Olaf, the snowman from Frozen!

Meanwhile, Travalon went out to watch eagles in Sauk. He said a guy near him with a very large camera said one of the eagles was a golden eagle. He got some photos that I will post tomorrow. He also ran into Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy out there, so they all went to the Wollersheim Distillery for a drink. It was crazy there because it was Port Day at the winery. I remember going for the port release party with the Rosary Ladies one year, and it is nuts that day. Cecil and the B-Boy were going to Devil's Lake to walk across the frozen lake, but Travalon had no interest. He came back to pick me up, and we took a walk in the neighborhood, since it was finally a bit warmer out today.

In the evening Travalon and I went to see the movie A Complete Unknown, about the events leading up to Pete Seeger and Bobbie Dye Lan almost getting into a fight at a folk festival. I really enjoyed the movie, being a musician. Is Bob Dylan a jerk? Yes, but did he have a point? Also yes. Pete Seeger had taken him under his wing as an up-and-coming folk singer, and so did Joan Baez, with whom he had an affair while he was living with another girl. In 1965 he was the big draw at the Newport Folk Festival, where he had played the year before, and Seeger told him everyone wanted to see just him with a guitar. However, the movie showed him playing with a number of people, so I can understand why Dylan wanted a band with him... and they were plugged in. It was kind of a scandal, and the movie showed Seeger trying to turn off the power until his wife stopped him. I'm not sure if that's really how it happened, but I can understand both the audience wanting Dylan to do the songs they knew and loved, and Dylan himself wanting to go off in new musical directions. So who was wrong and who was right? I don't think there's a simple answer to that. Timothee Chalamet did an amazing job playing Dylan, and apparently he even did all the singing himself, and he really sounded like him. The girl playing Joan Baez also sang just like her. I'm not sure why Travalon was so interested in seeing the movie, since I have never known him to be a Bob Dylan fan, but the movie is getting rave reviews and Oscar nominations, so it seemed worth seeing. And it was!

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