Happy birthday to Pope Bob from Chicago, I mean Leo!
Today was a crazy meeting day. I met with my sort-of boss, a colleague, my actual boss, and a faculty member (each individually, not altogether), and then I had a shared governance meeting at work. I wasn't going to do that again, now that I'm salaried, but my district got reconfigured and then we no longer had a representative, so I stepped forward. What a pain! The meeting ends at five, and then it was running late so I had to leave to catch the 5:20 shuttle or I'd be stuck on campus until 20 to 6. Around 5:15 there was suddenly a steady stream of undergrads heading south. And the strangest thing is that as I've gotten older, in general the undergrads seemed younger and younger until a few years ago they looked twelve to me, but this cohort looks about thirty-five with a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit. They are so haggard! What happened to them??
When the shuttle dropped us off at the parking lot, a train was just pulling out to the south, and it had lots of beautiful graffiti on it. The other riders got in their cars and sped off, but I stood watching it, and then I noticed the shuttle driver seemed to be watching it too. Maybe he is also an art aficionado. As I was riding in the shuttle, I shuddered at the sight of some concrete monstrosity on campus, and it suddenly occurred to me why I love train graffiti so much: it's someone out there painting not for money or fame, but to add some beauty to our ugly modern world. I respect that, even if they are technically breaking the law.
My next stop was a political action group's open house, right on my way home. A neighbor was there, trying to talk me into canvassing or phone banking, and there were some really delectable treats. Then Travalon arrived at Zippy Lube, which is right next door, so I joined him for dinner there. While today was a cold, rainy day after all the hot, sunny ones we have had, I was far more cheerful than yesterday, and the jazz they were playing certainly did nothing to bring down my happy mood. It really started on my shuttle ride, just before the ugly concrete. Was I just happy to be heading home?
As promised, here are more screenshots from our train day a few weeks ago. This is a train we saw from the park in Waukesha. It had a lot of colorful graffiti, but it was going so fast that everything is kind of blurry.
Is that you, Santa Claus?
Here it came into sharp focus for just a moment:
There are still three more trains, although I did post photos from two of them, the ones we saw from Von Loppy's. It may take some work, but I'll try to see if there are graffiti that I missed when I was taking photos. I am willing to put in the work for you, my loyal readers.
