Fete de Marquette, Now with Irish Fest!

 

This morning after Mass there was the monthly Care for Creation meeting, but Mass was very short so we were sitting around before the meeting, and some Shamrock Club people sat at our table and told me they had spent all day yesterday at the green room for the performers... which was the music club I practically live at. I had no idea! Then the meeting was very short too, so Travalon and I took the time (now that I don't have drumming lessons, since this session is over) to drive to Cottage Grove to see the end of one rail line. Then we headed back to Fete de Marquette.

Since Madison Irish Fest is part of Fete de Marquette this year, we went into the tent seeking some shade and heard the same guy as yesterday, then we heard a lot more bagpipes than last night. I forgot to mention that yesterday, as we were leaving the Fete, we ran into the Daughter of Denni and some friends of hers, and they asked us to join them, but I just wanted to get out of my polyester drumming jersey and heavy white denim jeans. Today we ran into a Shamrock Club buddy, an old coworker of Travalon's, and an old coworker of mine from my days at the Press. She is really into Irish stuff, but oddly she was there to see Los Lobos, not any of the Irish music acts. It was some great people-watching at the Fete: I saw a woman in a blue, green, and purple dress with hair that matched; two guys wearing the same tie-dyed T-shirt from Joe's Crab Shack who apparently didn't know each other so they saluted each other; a guy who saw my "John Barleycorn is Dead" T-shirt and said, "That's a great album!"; and several couples older than we are who danced enthusiastically, as well as lots of cute kids and dogs. We left the Irish Fest tent and caught the zydeco band we'd thought about seeing last night, so that was cool. Then we had some Mexican food and listened to Los Lobos. They were great, doing rockabilly, deep blues, ranchero, salsa, rock like ZZ Top, and of course they ended with "La Bamba." I highly recommend seeing them live. Everyone was so happy watching them, Mexicans and Anglos and Blacks all dancing and bopping their heads to the music. What a joyous scene!

We did get some free stuff during the Fete, like yesterday I went to the Elks table and won a rubber ducky. I could choose whatever one I wanted, so I took this one:

I'm calling her Orla Sullivan because Orlaith (pronounced Orla) means "golden princess" and Sullivan means "one-eyed" in Irish.

Today when we first got to the Fete, someone wanted us to fill out a religion survey, so we did, and they gave us free waters and a free bubble wand.

The wand goes really well with Orla Sullivan.

I don't know why I'm so attracted to one-eyed creatures, but O'Sullivan is a very common name in my family. Speaking of one-eyed creatures, Niko and Nenagh came with me both days, so they had a very music-filled weekend. Yesterday while I was drumming, Travalon held my "Train Nerd" bag they were in.

If you spun a wheel, you got a fan and sunglasses. I went to spin it, thinking it was $5, but it was $30, and there was a long line, so I gave up. After the Fete was wrapping up, I got a fan and sunglasses, since they don't need them now.

I love how the top of the fleur-de-lis is the State Capitol! The sunglasses just say "Fete 2026." But I can always use an extra pair since I constantly lose or break them. For example, I can no longer find the rainbow WORT-FM sunglasses I bought for $5 at last year's Willy Street Fair.

As we were leaving, someone noticed my "Train Nerd" bag and said I had to meet his grandson, a young guy who asked if we knew about Big Boy and was duly impressed that we had seen it. For some reason our walk back to the car didn't count as a workout, so once we got home, I watered my poor, parched outside plants and then took a twenty-minute walk. The afterglow from the sunset was so lovely.

I also reached another major milestone on DuoLingo:

Oh, and I forgot to post this fun imprint in the sidewalk at Durward's Glen:

Here are some more screenshots from another of Travalon's train videos. He has one video over five minutes long, so I will tackle that one another day. I'll just do this one for now.

Now that one didn't have nearly as many as the one last night, so here are some on a train Travalon saw on Friday evening while I was talking to Tiffy. I heard it coming and alerted him, and he was able to make a short video of it.

The guy who always makes a video of this train and posts it on social media posted this particular train, so I could see one good piece of graffiti on the other side of it. I'll try to get a screenshot of that tomorrow, and the five-minute train video screenshots. (I just watched it, and there are some really good examples of graffiti on it.) The other videos are an Amtrak train with no graffiti, a freight train with a bunch of identical cars and no graffiti, and a track repair vehicle, so nothing to glean from any of those.

Famous Hat

Research Study and Brazilian Drumming at the Fete de Marquette

 

Yesterday I took the day off of work for an all-day research study on aging. I had to do memory tests (like the one Dear Leader keeps saying that he's acing), motor tests, and an MRI that lasted a whole hour. They let me listen to Earth, Wind and Fire for most of it (there were a couple of scans were I had to let my mind wander), and I could hear the annoying sounds of the MRI through my headphones, but at one point they were in sync with the beat of "Getaway," so that was kind of cool. I also got free lunch from Jimmy John's and a couple of protein snack bars, and eventually I will receive a generous check in the mail.

Meanwhile, Travalon went to Duplainville and Waukesha to see trains. He made several videos, and here are some screenshots of graffiti from them.

Whew! That was just ONE train! I may wait to post screenshots from the other four videos until another day when I have nothing else to blog about.

Today was the big day: I was marching with the Brazilian drumming group to the Fete de Marquette! It was only students, not the "big kids" who know what they're doing. We gathered at the Quadra to bring drums to Hotel Indigo, where we gathered. Here is a picture of only the women drummers with the dancers, who are all women.

And another angle.

I felt like a little kid as we marched, trying to keep up with the others. I started in the middle of the pack, but soon everyone passed me, and I was struggling to keep up at the very end of the line. I did laugh at the videos Travalon took, because I even looked like a little kid, much slower and shorter than the others and in that big sun hat. My drum was also much smaller, and it kept swinging around and bashing me, so I now have quite a bruise on my left knee. But other people sort of naturally joined our parade, so I had a whole bunch of random people marching after me. We reached the Fete de Marquette and gathered on a rise to perform for a few minutes, then we sped right back to Hotel Indigo. My FitBit said I took a run at that time.

Other people took the drums back to the Quadra, so Travalon and I walked back to the Fete and hunted down some extremely healthy food: key lime cheesecake ice cream, Portuguese chicken curry (that's probably kind of healthy - I mean, it did have vegetables), deep fried cheese curds, and mint lavender lemonade. This year the Madison Irish Fest was a tent at the back of the Fete, so we wandered that way after eating with some congenial strangers, and we sat in one of the precious spots of shade while listening to Irish music. Famie my Irish teacher had just returned from Ireland, and she stopped by to say hi to us. The Shamrock Club asked both of us to volunteer at the exact time I was performing, and neither of us could do it. Meanwhile, my drumming buddy was at the Great Dane with her husband, about to watch the Norway vs. England World Cup game. We debated about joining them or staying at the Fete de Marquette, but we decided to go to Bagpipes in the Glen.

Durward's Glen is out near Baraboo, so it took us some time to get there, but I really enjoyed sitting in an air-conditioned car after marching around at top speed in the heat. I would give this event a ten out of ten for venue, because unlike the Fete there was tons of shade, and it was so green and beautiful. I'd give it a three out of ten for bathrooms, because there were four for all of us, one was out of order, and then the others went out of order too, but fortunately there were random ones scattered throughout the main building. I would also give it a three out of ten for being as advertised, because there was about five minutes of pipes and drums, and otherwise it was groups playing Irish tunes, which I didn't mind that much, but we had come to hear bagpipes. We had fried chicken and desserts from a bake sale, so an altogether non-healthy eating day. Oh, and more lemonade. When we bought the baked goods, they were two for one at the end of the night, and then they gave us even more for free. Then we took the ferry on the way home, and Lake Wisconsin was so beautiful in the twilight (or, as the Scottish say, the gloaming). We debated going to hear a zydeco band at the Fete, when it would no longer be six billion degrees there, but we were tired and just came home.

I forgot to post this photo of a plant coming out of a pipe that I saw while doing a rosary walk yesterday evening while waiting for Travalon to come pick me up.

I got done kind of early because the study coordinator forgot I was coming in, so I could only do two-thirds of the MRI. Which is fine, an hour is long enough in there. I couldn't have done it for another half hour. I'll go back on Monday and do the other half hour.

I also saw this by our dock yesterday.

It looks like shamrocks, but it's actually wood sorrel, which is a type of oxalis. It tastes like lemon because of the oxalic acid in it. Actual shamrocks are those clovers with the really small yellow flowers - "seamrog" (pronounced shamrock) is Irish for "small clover," or "seamar." We have it here, it's invasive, and it's everywhere, but it's a very nutritious plant for wildlife so whatever. The Irish used to eat it before they had potatoes. We could still eat shamrocks and wood sorrel - probably healther than what I ate today!

Famous Hat