On the Lawn at the Elks Club

 

This evening right after work I got a haircut, then Travalon and I went to the Elks Club for their monthly Irish session, only this time it was out on the lawn. They had been hoping to do this for the last few sessions, but it was always bad weather. Tonight, however, was perfect. We sat with some Shamrock Club buddies and listened to the music as the group of musicians ballooned to two dozen. Two even came on a boat! Since Travalon and I got there late, we had to sit with our backs to the lake, but we could see it reflected in the windows of the club. The red-headed flute player was there, and she came and talked to us a couple of times, and another fiddler also talked to me, someone I know from Moldy Jam. The really good mandolin player even offered to let me play his mandolin, but I'd rather play the fiddle at a session. I knew a lot of the tunes they played tonight, and the flute player said all day at work she was thinking about what tunes she would start. Just today I read an article that said those exercise programs for your brain don't actually do much to stave off senility, but what does work is playing music, learning foreign languages, walking, and learning new skills (like, say, Brazilian drumming?). So it sounds like I'm doing everything right, for once.

As we left, we saw a beautiful sunset.

Then on the way home we saw a train about to cross Commercial Avenue, so we pulled into a parking lot and watched it. I took some photos of graffiti, but it was kind of dark so not all of them turned out. Here are a few that did.

The engineer waved at me as he passed by. Then the train stopped, waited a bit, and slowly backed up. We passed it, but it was moving forward again, so we pulled into a parking lot on the other side of the tracks so we could see the graffiti on the other side. It was even darker on that side, so I didn't take any photos, but I noticed one that said "4 Adult Literature." Here I thought 4AL was "for a laugh," and then I saw one that said "4 All Locations," but apparently it can stand for all sorts of things!

Travalon had the afternoon off, so he went to Columbus and made a couple of train videos. One is an AmTrak, so no graffiti on that one. The other one went by very fast, so the screenshots will be blurry, but there are some really good examples of graffiti on it. Unfortunately some of them are partially blocked by a fence. I'll try to get screenshots soon - once again it got late, so there's no time tonight.

Famous Hat

Night Mares Are Champions Again

 

Today right after work, Travalon and I went to the Duck Pond to watch the women's softball team, the Night Mares.

We hadn't gotten to a Night Mares game yet this season, and this was their last one, unless they lost. They won last night against the Wausau Ignite, so if they won tonight, they would be champions. Well, guess what?

They hit quite a few home runs and had some impressive defensive work, and they won 7-1. I was glad to see it wasn't just women there to support them, although the bros sitting behind us were a bit obnoxious - at least they were just loud, not sexist or anything. For example, one of them was loudly proclaiming that a nightmare is a horse that sits on your chest while you sleep, and I was so tempted to turn around and tell him that the "mare" comes from an Old English word for goblin, so it's a goblin that sits on your chest so you can't move, i.e., sleep paralysis. The word for a female horse has a completely different etymology.

Speaking of linguistics, stand by for an important DuoLingo announcement:

And this took forever to download to my computer, but the sky was so beautiful right after the game.

As promised, here are screenshots from the second train Travalon made a video of Tuesday afternoon in Watertown. This one is all tanker cars, or as I call them, sausage cars, except for the very last car. Most of the sausage cars didn't have any graffiti, or they had a few random scribbles, and one said "Kelsey Visconti is a rat" in regular old letters, not tag letters. I don't know who Kelsey Visconti is, but I'm sure she's a lovely person, and the only hit I got on Google is someone who lives in New Jersey. Now if they'd done it artistically, I would have posted it. Here is some artistic graffiti.

There have been some good videos on social media, so I may post some screenshots from that tomorrow. One video was almost all cars I have already posted on here, so no point in making screenshots of those, but it was fun to see them again, like they were old friends. We have our own little ecosystem of train car graffiti here in Madison, and I am here for it.

So speaking of Kelsey Visconti, one thing that came up on Google was a TikTok video by someone who was watching a train with lots of sausage cars that said she was a rat and a "snitch b--ch," and I got a screenshot of some truly beautiful graffiti from this video, whatever RNO means.

Also, my neighbor sent me a video of a painting someone had done of a long freight train with graffiti, and the graffiti was actually the lyrics to "King of the Road" by Roger Miller, a favorite song of Travalon and mine. The original painting is sold, but the guy says he sells prints, which you can find in the link in his bio... but I couldn't find the link. Bummer.

Famous Hat

Watertown Train Graffiti

 

There is not much to say about today, except that I had a couple of colleagues who called me with questions, and I wondered when I became the font of all wisdom. In both cases I was able to help them, so maybe I should mention this in my annual review, whenever that happens. As I was leaving Adoration, the steam whistle at the Union Terrace sounded, which seemed odd because it usually goes off one hour before sunset, but this was a quarter of an hour early. Usually that means a storm is coming, but so far no storm has transpired. I did see a train coming as I was heading to Adoration, but I passed before it would have impeded my forward progress, and then I saw the arms go up as I was returning from Adoration, so I just missed one. Oddly, no video has been posted yet on social media of either train.

As promised, here are screen shots of the video Travalon made yesterday in Watertown, of graffiti on the first train he saw.

This post is long enough, so I'll tackle the second train tomorrow.

Famous Hat