Mass at Irish Fest

 

Yesterday Celtic Lass and I got to County Clare early in the morning, after I ate the other half of my omelet from Saturday morning and we stopped at McDonald's to get breakfast for her and coffee for me. There was a woman driving the shuttle, and it turned out she was the wife of Lyman, the guy who had been driving the shuttle every other time we'd taken it. We got into Irish Fest free by donating two cans of food, then we went to the big auditorium for Mass. Celtic Lass took some photos.

The Bishop of Down, who had heard my confession on Saturday, celebrated the Mass. There were so many people there! Celtic Lass went to Cederburg to check out a quilting museum, so I wandered the grounds alone. The entire weekend I had not heard a bodhran, the classic Irish drum, but as I headed toward the Failte VIP lounge, I heard the distinct sound of one.

I sat listening and realized the couple ahead of me were from the Shamrock Club, so we sat together in a small patch of shade. The next band at that stage were the Brigideens, highly recommended by Celtic Lass, and they were a women's trad group with a bodhran. Then I grabbed some lunch and went up to the Failte VIP lounge, where I bought the previous years' picks. There were five previous years, and they were sold in packs of three, so they said they'd sell me five for the price of two three-packs and throw in a bottle of water. Here are the picks; the purple one is the one I saved from this year.

The red-headed flute player arrived, and she and I checked out the Irish dog breeds (as Tiffy and I had the day before), then we went back to the session area, and I sat in the circle between her and another woman I kind of knew, loving the vibe. There were bodhran players and a number of fiddles, a hammer dulcimer, guitars, whistles, and bouzoukis, and a couple dancing in the center of the circle. Then a guitarist arrived and needed my seat, so I went back to Failte VIP to wait for Travalon to arrive. Can you believe this? He ended up on the same shuttle as Celtic Lass when she was returning from Cederburg!

While I waited for them, I watched a band with uillean pipes from the VIP section.

The sound is so haunting, it gives me chills. Travalon loved the VIP lounge, and honestly it's worth the money because you can sit in the shade away from the crowds. We hung out there a bit, then he and I got some dinner and were sitting in the shade by the lake when the flute player came by. We begged her to join us, but she said she was too hot and was heading home. We joined Celtic Lass to see the pipes and drums and Scottish dancers, then we went shopping again. Travalon got a couple of T-shirts I should have him model soon, and I got a bag that Travalon said looked really good with my Aer Lingus hat and Irish Fest Summer School T-shirt, so I asked him to take a photo.

I did forget to tell one story from Saturday that Celtic Lass thought was hilarious: while we were watching the Scottish dancers, they had a bunch of people from the audience come and do a Scottish country dance, but it was like herding cats. I thought Tiffy said, "That dancing looks like ass," which I can imagine other people saying, but it seemed out of character for her, so I said, "What?" She repeated what she'd said, and I said, "They look like ass?" so she said, "It looks like chah-ose." This is because I told her how, in fifth grade, it suddenly occurred to me that the word kay-oss that I always heard but never saw written meant the same thing as the word chah-ose that I always saw written but never heard anyone say, so I realized my mistake. Yesterday when we watched the dancers again instructing the audience members, Celtic Lass said, "Does it look like choss?" and I didn't understand for a second, then I was like, "Chah-ose? Yes it does!"

Meanwhile, I was actually keeping up with my DuoLingo:

Last night we left during the big celebration at the end, when all the bands are on stage together, and I got my stuff out of Celtic Lass's car and rode home with Travalon. Today I worked from home and went on my lunch break with Travalon to pick up the car, since it's close to where he had to go for work. That all went very smoothly, and while I missed my lunchtime walk, I'd had enough sunshine and walking this weekend that a break was probably in order. 

In the evening I went to Moldy Jam and played with one of my Irish Fest picks, specifically the green one. I didn't like it quite as much as the pick I usually use, but it's fine. The feisty mandolin player showed me some really interesting chords, and the new person from last week came back. I was going to leave at the break halfway through but then did stick around, so once again I'm blogging too late. Time to wrap this up, because tomorrow I have to work on campus. At least I get a free lunch.

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More Reports from Irish Fest 2026

 

Yesterday I took the day off of work and went to the dentist in the morning, then in the early afternoon I drove to the condo of my Shamrock Club buddy (who wants to be known as Celtic Lass), and she drove us to the hotel where Travalon used to work. I took some photos for him, and he said it was really fixed up these days.

This is the roof of that atrium as viewed from our room.

Their "Caution Wet Floor/Piso Mojado" sign looked like a banana!

Then we drove to County Clare and took the free shuttle again, and I had a free ticket someone had given me, so I should get in free all four days. We went to the VIP area again and then we watched BIIRD again, as well as another all-women band called Cailini Lua.

We had really good lamb stew with marble rye bread and butter that looked like Kerrygold from the packaging, but then when you looked closer, it was a cheap knockoff. We also ran into a coworker of mine who I also saw at Irish Fest last year. We took a relatively late shuttle back to County Clare, and Celtic Lass found someone's hotel key card on the shuttle, so she gave it to our driver, Lyman.

This morning Celtic Lass met with a friend who lives here in the Milwaukee area, so I checked out the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast. They were surprisingly quick and friendly. Then we drove back to Irish Fest, thinking we had free parking as well as free entrance due to the statewide Shamrock Club meeting, but in fact we did have to pay to park. The meeting was kind of interesting, hearing what Milwaukee and La Crosse and New London Shamrock Clubs are doing. A priest came over with an Irish bishop, and somehow I ended up having this poor bishop hear my confession as we sat by the lake.

Once the actual festival started, we spent a lot of time listening to pipes and drums.

Tiffy arrived while Celtic Lass and I were listening to an Irish storyteller named Eamon De Cogain.

And here are some more pipers with dancers.

Here are photos of the Gardiner Brothers.

We kept seeing people with these cute Aer Lingus hats, so we kept asking people where they got them, and everyone had a different answer, but they were always free. While Celtic Lass was watching a different show, Tiffy and I were sitting in the shade by the lake, and we asked a group of older ladies who all had the hats, and to our surprise two of them gave us theirs. They said they were from a Badger rally that I had never heard about in either my capacity as an alumni nor as a current employee. We thought it would be bad form to ask for a third one for Celtic Lass, and we never did find one for her. Here's a selfie Tiffy took of the two of us in our new hats.

She tried to take a second one, and I didn't realize it. This one just makes me laugh. Is it my good side?

Celtic Lass saw the Brigideens and said they were really good, so I'll have to check them out tomorrow.

After Tiffy left, I went to the Irish Language tent and ran into some people I'd met before. They were giving out cake to celebrate a guy I'd never heard of, but Tiffy and I had just had chocolate chip mint shakes. Celtic Lass met me there, and then when we were leaving, we could see the beautiful lights on the bridge above us.

Now we are back at the hotel, and we'll have to get up early tomorrow for 9:30 am Mass. Yawn! I should note that a lot of these photos were taken by Celtic Lass, since her phone takes better photos than mine.

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Irish Fest Opening Night 2026

 

It's hard to say if I'll be able to blog for the next few days. I have a few minutes to blog this morning about yesterday. I worked from home in the morning, then my Shamrock Club buddy came and picked me up, and we drove to County Clare, an Irish-themed hotel and restaurant in Milwaukee. From there you can take their shuttle or The Hop to Irish Fest, so we chose the free shuttle. (Both are free, but the shuttle gets you right there.) That all worked smoothly, but then once we got off the shuttle, we went the wrong direction and were wondering why everyone else was wearing a black heavy metal concert T-shirt instead of green. At least someone appreciated my Irish Grateful Dead shirt. We got to a sign that said VIP to the left and regular admission to the right, so we went to the VIP one but were told it was a different kind of VIP, so we went to regular admission... and it was for a rock concert! We had to go all the way back to where we'd started and then a bit further to find the entrance to Irish Fest. My buddy had forgotten to get school supplies, but I had gotten a whole bunch of stuff at the Dollar Store, so I gave her the pencils and pencil sharpener, and I donated the erasers and pencil box, so we both got in free. Then we found the VIP lounge we had paid for, which has an excellent view of the main stage and also the sunset.

They gave us two guitar picks we could use to get free drinks, so my buddy got a drink, but when I asked for water they said they were all out of bottled water, so they gave me a glass of it from the tap, and I didn't have to give them a pick. We also got free snacks, then we looked into food options. When we did a search for "healthy" as a choice, check out what came up:

We laughed so hard! There were options for gluten free, so my buddy found some Irish stew, while I had a very glutinous chicken pie. We went shopping, and here is the swag I got:

The puffin seems to be their theme this year. I don't recall seeing puffins in Ireland; I did see tons of them in Alaska. I named this one Seamus, which is pronounced SHAY-mus, which is Irish for James. The hat - I don't need another hat, and I've been saving my points from giving blood to get a knit cap from the Red Cross in January, but I just loved the color of this one so much. Plus I have that money from the research study on aging to play with.

We saw two bands, and the second one, a trad all-women band from Ireland called BIIRD, were so good.

Here we are.

My buddy had to work at seven this morning, so we had to leave before BIIRD were done playing. We got to the shuttle pick-up spot just as it was about to leave, so our timing was perfect, and the ride home was very smooth. (There was a lot of traffic on the way there.) I drove, and my buddy had come to my place. Today I will go to her place, and she will drive, then we're staying in a hotel the next couple of nights - the very hotel where Travalon used to work when he and I first met! Crazy, hey? I will bring Boethius my computer in case I get a chance to blog at the hotel, but we may have late nights, and it might be Monday before you hear from me again.

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Extremely Partial Eclipse

 

I forgot to mention a story from yesterday: so just about a year ago I got yelled at by another woman for walking on their condo association's boardwalk. Technically she was correct, I was trespassing, but I hadn't thought it was a big deal since people from the various condo associations go on each other's property all the time - I mean, we're all neighbors, right? So I often see this woman walking either with a man or alone, and it didn't escape my attention that they took longer to come back from the gated community area than if they had just turned around at the gate. Generally I wouldn't have cared, but if she's going to be a stickler for the rules, then by gum, she had better follow them herself! Yesterday I was out walking at lunch and saw her walking toward the gated community, so since I was going that way myself, I thought I'd see if she went into it. (I go in there all the time, but I know the people back there and they are fine with me. They have complained that other people go back there.) Interestingly enough, she turned around WELL before she reached the gate, which I realize proves nothing, but it did seem suspicious since usually her walks back that direction take so long. Then I saw the association president from the gated community, so I was going to tell her about it, but she was on the phone while walking her poodle. The poodle was happy to see me, anyway.

Today I worked on campus, and it was so much fun having our staff meeting again, starting with the dad jokes. My favorite: Did you hear the joke about gaslighting? YES, YOU DID! Then Seabird and I went out to see the partial solar eclipse at 12:23. I had glasses from the 2024 eclipse, but the sky was cloudy so I didn't have high hopes. However, the clouds parted enough to see the sun, so we excitedly put on the glasses... and saw a circle. Wow, that was really a partial eclipse! Later I saw photos on social media, and there was the slightest little dip in the edge of the sun, so we probably just thought it was a wisp of cloud if we even noticed it. Hardingfele was on a bus at that time, and Travalon was wrangling kids at the pool - yes, he gets paid to swim. The total eclipse was visible in Greenland and Spain. There's supposed to be a magnificent one next August in Egypt, with six minutes of totality. It's tempting, but I'd have to fly, and you know how I feel about flying.

I had eaten lunch early, right around 11, so around 4 I was ravenous. No problem, I'd get something from the vending machines... but I'd forgotten my wallet! I scrounged for change in my bag but only found 70 cents, which would buy nothing in the vending machines. So I looked in the fridge and the freezer in the break room to see if there was any abandoned food. In the freezer there was a mysterious container that said "Famous" on it... and then I remembered it was chickpea salad from a party for the grad students, which I'd put away to eat later. Well, it was later. It had been sitting in the freezer for three months, but I heated it up and it tasted fine, and I'm still alive hours later.

Someone on social media posted a video of a train going through campus, and I was hoping it was the train I'd seen on Monday, so I could grab a screenshot of the "Truckster" graffiti. It was not that train, but it did have some good graffiti.

Travalon drove me to work and picked me up afterwards, and we saw a train in the rail yard and wondered if we could watch it pull out like the one on Monday. It wasn't making any moves, so we went to the Turkish restaurant and got Turkish ice cream (honey almond flavor), and then we sat on their deck and waited to see the train go by. We saw two planes coming in to land at the airport, but the train never moved, so we went swimming at the health club. There was a school-aged boy there who was extremely obese and in a wheelchair - boy, I hope he can recover from whatever is going on!

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Payback from the Leprechauns

 

Today I worked from home, then Travalon was going to the Mallards playoff game and I was sorely tempted to skip Adoration and Night Prayer, which I was leading, to join him. I went to Adoration anyway, hoping to see a train to show I had done the right thing, but the train came while I was at Adoration. Here are some screenshots.

I just posted Travalon's photo of this next one yesterday, but the colors are so vibrant in this screenshot.

Is this next one in Irish? The first word looks like "agus," which means "and" in Irish, but then again it could be AGU5, which means nothing to me.

Travalon sent me some photos from when he was at Salmo Pond on Saturday.

He had a short day today, so he went to Columbus and saw two AmTrak trains. Here's one:

He also got this intriguing coffee cup at Julie's Cafe:

I was tempted to ditch Night Prayer and join him at the game after Adoration, but they were beaten by the Royal Oak (Michigan) Leprechauns 6-1. It was probably vengeance because the Mallards beat the Leprechauns 19-0 last June, but that was not a playoff game. Now the Mallards are out of the tournament, so baseball and softball are done for 2026 here in Madison.

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Blood Donation Overlooking Pandanus

 

Today I worked on campus for the first time in weeks. To my surprise, Seabird (who usually works remotely on Mondays) was also on campus, so we walked together at lunch. I also chatted with a couple of coworkers and a faculty member, and in the afternoon I gave blood. The room was called "Orchard View," and in fact you could see the plants below. Wish I'd thought to take a photo from up there, but here are a couple from ground level. The big plant is a pandanus, the same kind of plant used to make those pandan lattes I love so much.

As I was leaving the building, I heard a train and rushed to where I could see it. There were a number of cars with familiar graffiti, and one with a beautiful teal-colored "Truckster" that I had never seen before, but alas, I was too far away to get a photo. However, if God is talking to me in Train again, then He must be saying it was a good decision to work on campus today and give blood - I'm on the right track.

Travalon gave me a ride to work today and picked me up, and on the way home we saw a train about to take off in the rail yard. We both made videos, and here are a few screenshots from my video.

This train had a LOT of sausage cars, aka tankers.

If God is speaking to me in Train, maybe that one was assuring me that I made the right choice to skip Irish Fest Summer School this year.

And here are photos Travalon took yesterday from my future parking lot.

This is not graffiti, it's a 40th anniversary commemorative Wisconsin and Southern engine.

And here are a few from the spot off of Fair Oaks.

Maybe someday we will get a photo of "truckster" and the other cool graffiti I once saw on the way to Adoration which I have never seen again.

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